The one thing our dear Mother did not count on, was how mentally active humans such as this one could be. Almost instantly upon his full encasement in the stone, his mental panic filled her ears, almost with pathetic feminine screams coming from an otherwise male figure. It took her time to calm his mind, often playing that same song used to lure him towards the prison.
It started with the first day. In his new stone prison, our wanderer could see everything around him in this forest. The beautiful foliage, and indescribable creatures he would see outmatched any he had seen at home. Blue flowers carpeted the floor below him, bewitching unfortunate creatures with bizzar deformations upon contact. Unlike with him, they were not spared any mercy. The common fly would lose its wings, making him chuckle slightly at the irony of the bugs name. A rather dangerous looking spider would be afflicted with a multiplication to its limbs. He definitely found sixteen legs much more terrifying, so maybe it could go a good way in some cases.
He could also hear quite well, despite being a solid stone mass. This gave him access to the beautiful song Mother had put into motion, as well as the voices of the creatures around him. While he was stoned, he could definitely still feel the same emptiness he had during the beginning of this day. He was a lost wanderer, unloved by many in his world. Anytime he had felt love, it was to those lost to time, and often unable to express the same excitement for him, as he did for them. This was a man after Mother Nature's own heart. His love for nature was beyond what she had seen before, and she truly despised what she was destroying by taking this man from his world, into her own realm. As it has been, she noted the human was growing weary and tired in his stone already, and began to play a lullaby, to lure him into sleep.
Fortunately for the human, unlike many of Mother's other creatures, he could produce entire realities in his mind. His dreams weren't often memorable, but more often not, he could see vividly into the fantasies his brain held. Mother Nature could sense some conflict in his mind; he was still unsure whether or not his stone prison was the dream, and that his dream wasn't real. This would be the perfect balance to breaking her beloved subject. As such, she orchestrated his dream gradually as he fell into a deep sleep. It was here that she made herself visible to him, sitting on a small landing surrounded by a hidden oasis in the woods. A small waterfall marked the backdrop, while thinning vegetation provided a natural grass bank for the human to "wake" upon.
The joy in his heart was astounding, upon his realization that this was likely a dream. Seemingly the only times the man could ever find a care was when he was no longer among his own. And he took in the unimaginable, but yet so realistic sights. He did not yet realize that Mother was sitting in the pond, watching him adore her beautiful creation. She felt so much more pride than she could ever have before. For once, there was a creature she could make truly happy, just by giving him access to something that could reasonably exist. And she made note that she would try her best not to destroy this side of him. To be her balance, she wanted to have this common adoration for her creations with him.
Soon, she began to sing a melody, trying to grasp the man's attention.
"While I lay, in the forgotten tombs of time, my love I hold you up high. Lost old soul, come lay beside, I hold you near, even nigh the night."
And true to her wishes, the sweet notes, and slightly off beat lyrics would catch his heart, and ears. He turned his head towards the human form she had created on the landing, eyeing a woman unlike any had seen before. Her hair was beyond the base of her spine, nearly acting as a blanket around her. The pearl white dress she wore was adorned with many small crystals, which accented her neck, and the ends of the sleeves. She could easily sense the flutter in his heart, as she gave him the first genuine smile she could ever remember giving.
"Welcome, lost traveler," she said warmly, "to a world lost to the ravages of time, in it's beauty. I have seen your adoration of my creations, and wish to bestow you with a gift."
The man slowly stood up, having been prone from his slumber, and stood facing her.
"You seem so familiar, yet so unknown to me," he said, quite nervously. "And until this point, I feel I am in a dream, but all my senses appear to be intact."
She gave him a nod, patting an open spot beside her in the lush grass of the landing, beckoning him near.
"Indeed, traveler," she spoke sweetly, "I wish for you to no longer feel burdened by the world of which you live. From what I can sense, your life has been no less than isolated from your own. Abandoned by your own species, yet more than willing to keep that lonesome feeling if it means you can merge back in with nature, herself."
He wandered through the shallow waters, making his way towards her as he listened to her.
"Of course," he said. "My fellow man has done no true wrong to me, but the passage of time has proven to be far too strong. I have lost loved ones, often resorting to fauna and foliage to keep me company in my times of sorrow. No, I blame none for my travesties, but myself for being unable to help it."
Mother blinked, a bit surprised by his very wise demeanor. For a young soul such as his, he let off an aura of a millennia of strife. He did not blame his own for his worries, but indeed did blame the nature of living, itself, for his burdens. She did not know how long it would take to turn his mind into that of deception, b4and every moment she would lose this very perfect specimen, she regretted. But her mind, and her every conviction told her it would be the proper thing to do for her end goal.
So, when he finally reached her, she took him into a warm embrace, hugging the human close to her. She was quite surprised by his rather frail form. Throughout the ages, she had seen the average male to be very well built, often having to hunt, build, or forage for their goods. This one was from a relatively new time, however. The lack of wars meant a lower need for fighters. Homes were often built by others for currency, and goods were often hoarded by one to help the other. Quite similar to the Everfree Empire she had seen so long ago, yet just a bit more different. They still used the creatures around them for movement, but they had made significant advances in their trade, and learning to live more in peace, and share, than they had previously.
She held the human for a period of time, before she finally broke the song of her oasis.
"My dear human," she said softly, "What was your name in your life?"
The human looked up, smiling quite genuinely. He wasn't in love, like she had thought she would have made him be. He just needed someone to treat him like he was wanted in the world, and she had suddenly filled that void.
"My name is Errant Aurora," he replied. "In our tongue, it means Wandering Lights, in loose terms."
She nodded, smiling a bit as she slowly faded from the dream, coldly leaving him alone on the same oasis, as the dream world began to collapse around him.
"Errant Aurora," she said almost sternly, "your name will no longer be of such a human tongue, as the very degradation I sense in it is terribly unfathomable. Your light will no longer be treated as a rare display in the frigid arctics, and instead as an agent of dissidence, and discordant beauty. From now on, your name shall be Discord, the Spirit of Chaos, and Deception."
As part of her cold plan, and the renamed human started to feel quite confused as to the sudden shift from being the light, to being the very antihisis, she woke him. No longer in the land of beauty, and serenity; he once again found himself buried in the solid stone encasement in the field of blue flowers. As she hoped, it began to sow the seeds of doubt and pain in his mind. He was beginning to question which of these worlds was a dream, and which one was real.
These activities would repeat on mass. Her human would slowly begin to lose his grasp on the dream world, and the real world. Though, she did find he was beginning to find his mind trying to settle upon making these more enjoyable. He was starting to anticipate the more beautiful dreams, as they were the one point of freedom he had from the statue. As such, she made the choice after nearly an entire decade passed to begin stagnating them. No longer were the human's realities being shifted every night. They were drastically cut to once a week. Now, he was forced to stay awake for six entire days, watching as the forest would wander through its seasons. Though he was still deeply in love with the world, he was starting to grow a subtle hatred for his current scenery in the world of his stone casing.
Sensing his love for the surrounding canopies wavering, Mother carefully orchestrated an event that she hoped would even further shatter this human's sense of reality. Almost eleven years after his initial imprisonment, a wandering band of thieves and traders made their way through the woods. Mother watched closely, keeping wandering packs of Timberwolves and other creatures off of the humans, as they would eventually find the statue. Understanding it to likely be a relic lost to history, they took it upon themselves to take the artwork, and began to follow the signs that Mother laid. Often times they were clearings in the woods, or a change in the very makeup of the forest that led them deeper in, not noticing that their very world was likely changing around them. The human remained conscious of his travels, watching in splendor as the forest warped and changed around him, even more lost as to whether or not this was a dream, or the real world.
As the band found itself in a new clearing, of which Mother did her best to mimic those of the dream world she made for Discord, she failed to let them notice that a handful of their party were not who they seemed. Around a day after they stopped here, a heavy storm started to drench their campsite, trapping their carts in a thick mud, while making it very difficult for their pack animals to wander. The first night that the storm started, the first of her last Changeling hive made its appearance. The merchants and thieves were not warriors, and could do little to defend themselves from the attacking horde. The tales of the creatures had been lost over the centuries, and as such they no longer knew how to stop the revenants attacking their camp.
Discord watched in shock as in the flash of a single bolt of lighting, many of the party had transformed into black, deformed creatures that would attack the humans, cocooning a few, while dispatching the few that managed to get too far away. He watched in horror as the crowd of creatures began to grow. From a small handful, to an entire hive, the numbers grew until the group could no longer resist, and were forced to surrender. As Mother would have hoped, the human hesitantly decided that his was indeed the dream world, much to his own horror as he thought those days were gone. His usual days of lovely melody, serene scenery, and wonderful embrace were now filled with this horrific sight of strange monsters destroying humans with little to fight back.
After this skirmish ended, all that was left for him to see were ruined carts, and through the centuries that followed, the bovines and canines warping into hellish creatures, who would often get into vicious wars with the Changeling hives. He did grow to appreciate the Changeling queen, however. Dear Chrysalis, having well outlived her own mother in her age, would frequent the sight to look at the statue. She often felt she was being watched by the statue, and took to him like a friend. Mother did not plan for this, but she found it eased Discord slightly that someone was willing to talk to a motionless form of him. It almost fixed him.
And then the visits stopped. Mother did not need him fixed, she needed him broken. As she needed him broken beyond recognition of his early years, she began shifting the forest around him to prevent the aging queen from visiting him any longer, actually sensing the anger that this sparked in Discord, making Mother far too happy at the time. As the first centurie passed, since his imprisonment, she decided it was finally time to start breaking his will, and set upon him a series of events that should warp him beyond the beliefs of his former life. He had already forgotten his previous name; he no longer held love for his race, often blaming them for abandoning him. This never devolved to hatred, though, as Mother still tried to guide him. She started to taint even the dreams he looked forward to, now.
The first of many trials was the first dream he had, where she had no longer appeared before him. The music was no longer singing softly to him, and instead there was an empty oasis. No waterfall, no water even. The fish were dead in their pond, and the forest itself was a raging inferno. Fight as he might, he found he could no longer control this vivid dream as he could previously, as he had some semblance of control to change minor aspects. He couldn't put out the raging walls of fire, nor could he hope fend off the very thing he feared would appear. The first of the Changeling dream hives began swarming him. As all before him, Discord likened them to the revenant; an undead spirit who often targets someone they used to know in life. He often saw them taking forms of his old family, of which he could no longer find their names.
Losing the names of loved ones was enough for him to get slightly angry, but it got worse when they started tearing into him for losing them. They blamed him for not understanding the passages of time; they blamed him for not being able to hold on when they were growing weaker. They even blamed him for what he had never noticed. Despite the many yearss he spent in his prison, he had never aged. He had been granted a gift the ancient scholars and religious cults had sought after since the beginning of civilization. His immortality was now his crutch. They explained this to him, driving him mad as he was now no longer just out of control, he was unable to escape it from a mortal perspective; no matter if he was awake, or asleep. Now he could never differentiate between the two.
This vision of immortality took it's time on his already weak spirit. Within the first year of his new torment, his mind was broken beyond what Mother could have hoped. His love for nature would spark him back to life, but his utter hatred for his old life, and his future, would sink him back to a point he could never hope to recover; without help from the forest, he was no longer a man.
And Mother started to "help" him, thoroughly. She first revealed her true aetheral form to him. Gone was the warm, beautiful motherly figure he had grown to adore, and fear. She was still quite beautiful, but her indescribable form bit at him with the inability to put a name to anything. She taught him who she was, what she had done to his life behind him, and to all those before him. She taught him the lives of the Minotaurs, the Timberwolves; she mentioned her mix of regret and pride in the human race, how she hated having to turn them against each other, regaling the tale of the Changeling hives' rise and fall. She also began to warp his own sense of history. She started to fill him with tales he could not recall of his own past. He was now her son, in a way. She had given him a rebirth, so to speak, and it was time to teach him what the son of a Goddess could do, and should do. It was time for him to live up to his title, and to do this, she needed to set up a great deal of trouble and strife for him to live through in the upcoming years.
To help begin her work, she once more sent him into an alternate reality. Discord could no longer determine sleep from the real world, so he simply stayed with whatever Mother would have wished it to be. His first trial was to survive an entire year within the Everfree Forest, alone. He would have no companions, dream, or reality. No creatures would wander the forests, and no creatures would exist in his world. Instead, he was to live off the land's graces. Questionable dietary scheduling, without any meats to supply him with the protein he would need. Mother did grant him the ability to find the rare fruit trees, but he would need to learn how to save them, as they would not stay ripe for long.
Discord found the first night to be the most bearable. For once, he was able to relax himself, and take in the floral beauty of the forests. Left to its own design, the forest was a splendid place to be, as long as he left the darker portions alone. Within the first few weeks, he was learning to live off the land as a farmer. It was hard work, but being such a long time lover of the outdoors, he found no issues with digging by hand, and tilling the lands. For a long time, he even used the river sticks to carve out his farmland, usually replanting them to save himself from future issues. As the month would pass, however, the sheer silence of the forest began to nag at his mind. He could not imagine that he was actually this alone. He could distract himself from the silence with a few imaginary games, here and there, and with the lovely sweets he would find from time to time and try to regrow; but the silence was now a distraction.
And so it was, in the beginning of his second month into the trial, he took his first steps into the dark segments of the forest. It was not hard to find, as a total lack of light through the thickest canopies gave it a near perfect border. He marked his way with makeshift torches that he would fashion from the land, and put in clearings. But the further in he went, the less effective these torches seemed to be. And along with lesser lights, came the low whispering of the wind through the foliage. Whispering that he could easily confuse for other voices. While he was no longer alone in his mind, he doomed himself to making friends with the voices in the wind, often talking with them for hours on end, as if they were going to talk back to him. His new friends would never answer his questions, as far as he could tell. He could rarely make out a word they were saying, with how scattered their speaking was. Perhaps it was a new language to be learned.
And with this, he began to try and learn it. Within the third month, he had discovered the processes of turning some fruits into a writing tool with some river reeds and water. With these, he would temporarily mark stones, and the occasional cave walls with his new language. Being creatively bankrupt, the most he could do was form new letters, using the old sound he was familiar with to rearrange them. Eventually, he arrived to a point where only he could recognize his own handwriting. And the voices still could not understand him. By the end of the sixth month, he was more or less gone from the language he knew, and was constantly writing in these strange scripts, leaving the walls covered in many passages that he could make.
Mother rarely ever checked on him, but was extremely proud of the progress he was making, and losing. She watched as the year slowly drew towards the end, where he started to make some new, strange concoctions in the form of very early potions. They were never anything impressive that she could not do, but often times they were indeed impressive for Discord to have made it this far without her. His runes often labeled the potions with their names and effects. Some would heal the wounds he was frequently obtaining from his messing with fire, and tree climbing. One potion even let him become slightly stronger than he was now, though only by a bit. In the end, she began to decide upon his next challenge, as he would need these potions to likely survive the next few years.
Mother knew he was not a mentally strong human. This was never in her criteria when she was hunting for a specimen. As she had noted all those eons ago, he was a loving man, with everything lost, and everything he could give. Now, she had stripped away what he was willing to give; she warped his mind to where he forgot what he lost, and changed his giving nature to that of a more reserved one. But, he was swiftly approaching the edge of what she intended by the time the first year ended.
To avoid him going too far over the edge, and becoming nothing more than a hate-filled, unreasonable monster, she started the next trial without ever making herself known to him. This trial came in the form of a surprise to Discord, as a young pup, of the previously forgotten Timberwolf packs, would approach him.
He was busy in his caves at the beginning of his second year, still writing new formulas for his potions, when he started to hear sounds coming deep from inside the networks of his cave. At first he bounced in joy, realizing that Mother may finally be returning to him, to shower him with praise for his progress. But the sounds grew louder as he went further into the caverns, and these were not the sounds of her voice. Almost a yelping sound echoed through the cave, and he could only remember one creature in the last few hundred years that made those sounds, and he became very afraid to wander into his cave.
Discord could not stop himself, though, as the pained whimpers coming tugged at what was left of his original humanity, and forced him to go deeper, soon finding himself in a large cavern that he had taken residence in previously. The cave had very high ceilings, and a hot spring down in the very bottom that had soothed his sore body on many occasions, and was one of his few comforts in the world. As he walked through, the pained whimpers soon made themselves into almost pitiful growls, and barks. Once more he felts afraid to wander any deeper, but even more so to wander in further. As he came towards the spring, he found his source of deep-seated fear. Left alone, with a leg trapped under a large fallen stalactite, lay a very young Timberwolf pup. The stalactite had severed a portion of the leg, and trapped the rest underneath. It was stopping the leg from fully reforming, and likely causing immense pain to the pup as it writhed, trying to growl at Discord.
He could not help but stare at the creature, while his body made its way over, despite objections from the young one. He looked over the stalactite. While not the most impressive, it would be too large for him to lift, even with his potions. He resorted to looking around for something to help break it, or at least shift the weight of the Timberwolf's leg. He settled on the old stalactite he was using to blend potions. It was moderately heavy, and had lasted him for several months thus far. He gathered it up, bringing it back towards the still scared, but defensive pup. It stared to whimper instead of growl, but Discord paid no mind as he started to bash the side of the stalactite plugged into the ground below. He hammered repeatedly at the large rock, even as his mixing stick began to break under the force of the strikes. Strike after strike slightly budged the rock, but almost as soon as he was getting hopeful, his mixing rock broke.
He simply gave out an almost inhuman growl, and got to thinking, looking at the pup, trying to comfort it whenever it would snap at him. Mother assumed that the very core of human nature had to harbor love for the young, even if the young were those of the enemy; despite how often she had seen the evidence to the very opposite. Discord soon gave in to something he was not very happy to be trying, and backed up slowly from the stalactite. He got a few feet away, before running at the rock to try and use his body as a battering ram. As soon as he rebounded off from the initial collision, his body started to ache. He rushed at it again, trying with all his might to knock the rock off, or out of it's position. The pup had been resorting to whines and yelps, as though the rock would jolt in another direction, it was grinding the already damaged leg.
With blood now running clearly from his good shoulder, and despite the intense pains he was experiencing, Discord changed shoulders, and rushed the rock one last time, finally succeeding in forcing the imbedded tip to shift enough to tilt the rock; this sent both him and the large stone crashing to the floor, him laying there bleeding heavily from his damaged shoulder, and a likely broken shoulder on the other. He quickly tried to get up, to check on the pup, as its leg was finally beginning to heal, and the detached segment worked its way back over, returning full function to the canine's leg.
The Timberwolf's wooden tail immediately started wagging at a brisk pace, as it looked towards Discord, almost looking like it was smiling as it barked at him excitedly. He gave a genuine smile, even through his pain, nodding.
"Hey," he said softly. "Looks like you're feeling a lot better, eh?"
It yipped, running around him happily, eventually nuzzling up against his leg, receiving a tentative pat on the head from Discord. "Well, come with me bud, we might both need a little something to fix ourselves up with."
He painfully picked the pup up with his bad, but better, arm, carrying it up towards the cauldron of which he was currently mixing a strength elixir. He took the contents, pouring them out into a sinkhole in the cavern, and starting on his healing potions, as his new friend sat by watching him. He pet the canine as the fluids were being mixed, alternating his broken shoulder between the tasks.
"I really feel like I need to call you something," he said quietly, grunting. "But I can't think of a name just yet."
After almost an hour, getting weaker from the internal, and external blood loss, the potion was finally ready for consumption. He put some in a bowl shaped rock he had carved, and set it in front of the pup, who lapped at it eagerly, quite clearly not being thirsty enough to try and drink the boiling spring water. Discord swiftly drank down his own bowl-full, and sat down on the floor, letting the potion do its job, initially getting rid of the pain that had been nagging at his body for the past hour. He was now quite happy with himself, and actually had a friend to talk to, even if he couldn't quite understand it. He also couldn't understand how the thing was drinking water, but he assumed the wood was likely taking in the fluid.
He continued to stay in his spot, as the pup soon found its way down to him, nuzzling up to his side. With a smile, Discord pet the Timberwolf, surprised at how soft the wood on his body currently was. It was like a tree he had seen before, that had almost hairlike bark surrounding it. As he focused, he began to imagine the first name for the pup that he could remember from times long forgotten. A name he had abandoned, that described them both.
"I will call you Errant," he said softly, watching the pup drift off to sleep. "The Wanderer."