Part VI
Derpy was not very good at sneaking.
When she wasn’t bumbling into the suits of armor or tripping over the carpet, she was making loud observations to me about how few guard ponies there were. Every single time, I scolded her and urged her to be quiet, and she was slightly more careful, but after a few minutes she would forget again and trip over her own four left hooves. Eventually I simply gave up, for what was the point?
There wasn’t a guard to be seen anywhere. It was as if they were all having a going-away party on the higher levels of the dungeon. I could practically hear it, though that was probably either my mind or Discord playing tricks on me. At any rate, we were rapidly making our way through the dungeon. After saving Derpy from her second near-tumble down the staircase, I consulted the map.
“It seems that the staircase we have to go to is just past this hall, down to the second basement, then take a right...” I mumbled. I found it difficult to concentrate for some reason, but I tried my best and eventually had the directions committed to memory.
“Something wrong, Ditzy?” Derpy asked.
I realized I had been scowling, though I didn’t quite know why. Perhaps it was the dingy state of the dungeon--the stone was black with mildew and the iron bars, though still strong, were layered in rust top to bottom. “I just want to make it through this place as quick as I possibly can,” I muttered.
But that wasn’t quite it. Perhaps it was one of the reasons I was so anxious, but I felt a tugging sensation in the back of my mind--perhaps my conscious?--urging me that this wasn’t the way forward. That the entire reason for us going on the journey was flawed. That I was being selfish, cruel. To Derpy. Because she already... because she had a chance at...
My mind was growing increasingly fuzzy. I couldn’t quite piece together the final thought, not with his presence. I knew that the thought, no, revelation that I would have had just then was too important to dismiss, yet I had no choice. I was on a mission I intended to see through to completion. It was the only way I would be able to survive.
Snapping back to reality, I observed that there were empty cells to the right and left of us, forming a path forward. I bravely ventured forward with Derpy at my side. I tightened my scarf around my neck, but the threads came apart and the entire thing fell to scraps at my hooves. The end of the journey was coming close, and the chill of it all was beginning to set in.
A few quick turns later, we were going down the staircases to the second basement--which, unsurprisingly, was even dingier than the first. Spiderwebs clung to the corners of the halls, the place was lit by dim candlelight, and the moss on the ground was so thick in some places you could hear an audible ‘squelch’ whenever you set hoof on it.
“No wonder this place is getting shut down. It’s putrid,” I growled. “There isn’t a lack of crime; Discord is making the place impossible to take care of.”
“How do you know?” Derpy asked.
“Simple. If he can force all the guards upstairs to party and an intern to give us the keys to his cell, he obviously can make a janitor suddenly think his chemicals are a soft drink,” I explained. “Celestia is shutting this place down tomorrow not because there’s no more crime, she’s shutting it down to fumigate the place while she puts an end to Discord.”
“So... she just wants to clean up?” Derpy asked, looking around. “Sometimes when I don’t clean up after myself, Carrot Top gets mad. I wonder what she’d say if she saw this.”
I stifled an eyeroll and pushed forward. The stairway was just around the next right, but when we turned the corner, nothing was there.
I gritted my teeth. “This map is probably outdated,” I grumbled. “It looks like we have some exploring to do.”
Derpy groaned in complaint. She went up to the wall and whined, “What’re we gonna do now-Woah, ow!” She made to rest her head on the wall, but tumbled through it as if it wasn’t even there. I heard her grunts echo from behind the stone, “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” as she tumbled down an unseen stairwell.
Following her, but with slightly more prudence, I hovered through the stairway and glided down to her at the base of the stairs. “Are you alright?” I asked. She was rubbing her head, and I helped her up.
“Oww... yeah,” she mumbled. “I’ve hurt myself before lots of times. I’ll be okay.”
“Good to hear,” I said, nodding. I glanced around. “But... where in Equestria are we?”
The third basement of the dungeon seemed to have been dug out in a hurry. It was large and cylindrical, with a large iron cage occupying the majority of the room’s space. The floor wasn’t stone, only dirt, and slightly muddy dirt at that, but at least it wasn’t the squishy moss of the previous floor. The walls, too, were dirt held up by flimsy wooden supports in case of a cave-in. Water dripped from the ceiling above occasionally, and overall the atmosphere of the chamber was gloomy at best and frightening at worst.
Speaking of frightening, I realized the his presence was stronger here than it had been anywhere else. I soon realized why. In front of us, in the center of the cage, was a statue. It had a slightly gritty surface, and it appeared to have been sculpted of a strange creature, one that was a mish-mash of many other animals. Its face was frozen in shock and surprise, as if it hadn’t expected to be created in this fashion.
It was him.
I found that I was shaking slightly, trembling with apprehension. This was it. It was the moment of truth. Discord had laid out the task for me and I had succeeded. We were about to free him and unleash him into the world, leaving all we know at his mercy.
And in return, Derpy gets to be the pony she’s always dreamt of, a normal one... and I get to live.
Of course, we couldn’t do that yet. The cage was designed in such a way to make releasing Discord impossible--namely, the space between the statue and the iron bars was too great. How I knew this I didn’t quite understand. All I knew was that I had to get inside in order to do anything. However, I also suspected a trap.
“Let’s go!” Derpy exclaimed excitedly, but I yelped and pulled her back. “Huh?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed in front of her. There was a tiny, almost invisible piece of twine stretched across the chamber at about chest height. Nearly invisible to the average pony, but I had seen it from the moment we had entered this chamber. Why I didn’t realize what it was, exactly, until nearly the last moment I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I had thought it was a stray spiderweb?
“I don’t see anything. Ditzy, are you sure you’re okay?” Derpy asked.
“There’s a tripwire,” I said. “If we so much as breathe wrong on it the entirety of the guard will be down here in a minute. I know that’s not all that much at the moment but I’m fairly certain we can’t handle twenty armed personnel on our own.”
Derpy squinted, then sighed in exasperation. “It’s no use. I can’t see it. But I trust you, Ditzy. So what do we do?”
“We crawl,” I said. Squatting down, I gripped the ground ahead of me and slid forward on the slick surface of the floor. “Follow my lead.”
It was a dirty process, but eventually we managed to get across without triggering the wire. My eyes peeled for any further traps, I walked up to the cage. The cage had four locks for some odd reason, but it looked like only one of them had to be opened in order to free Discord. There was also a stone on the ground in front of the cage. It was covered in mud, but it read, ‘Animal.’ Celestia, I thought, has one crude sense of humor.
Derpy followed behind me, scraping some of the muck off her chest. “It’s really cold down here,” she mumbled.
I felt no such chill, but it was probably just my excitement that kept my core temperature high. “I don’t understand,” I muttered. “Why have four locks?”
“I think that the keys were all supposed to be spread out. But Dusty got them all together on that key ring you’re holding,” Derpy guessed.
I glanced at the keys and, indeed, there were four hoof-sized keys that looked like they would fit the hoof-sized padlocks, and I tried each of them in turn. The third one worked, and the locked clicked open. But nothing happened. That was when I realized that the padlocks, though attached to the iron bars, held no hinges together. The cage was doorless, and the padlocks were a ruse.
Perhaps, I thought, if you wanted me to free you, Discord, you’d at least allow me to have a clear mind and observe these obvious details. I shook my head, trying to shake the presence from my mind. Discord was getting desperate, but I wasn’t sure why. Was he seeing things I wasn’t? After all, if he could observe the entirety of the dungeon... “Derpy, I think we might be running short on time.”
“Why?” she asked. “We only have three locks left.”
“Instinct,” I said, carefully walking toward the next lock. The tripwires formed a square around the cage, so there was no danger of running into them again. I tried the locks with the first of the large keys. It opened as well, but nothing happened. I found myself getting increasingly aggravated, but I didn’t quite know why. Surely everything was sailing smoothly. What did I have to be angry about?
I cycled over to the third of the locks. I tried both keys, and the second one worked. The padlock opened. My scowl returned, as did Derpy’s look of worry.
I opened the fourth lock.
Nothing happened.
I exhaled. Was it relief? Was it disappointment? I couldn’t tell. All I knew is that something had gone wrong, but I didn’t know what.
“What happened?” Derpy asked. “Why isn’t the cage opening?”
“Because it has far more complex security mechanisms than we anticipated,” I said. “There’s probably a magical charm on the locks that alerts security whenever somepony tries to open them. Celestia’s magic is powerful enough to bend the iron bars down; she wouldn’t need to open the cage.”
“But... B-But...” At first I thought Derpy was going to start crying at our failure, but she appeared to be thinking hard. “The map.”
My ears twitched in annoyance. “What about the map?”
“It had... It had a word on it. Uh... can I look at it? Pretty please?” she asked, motioning to the map I had set on the ground on the opposite side of the cage.
I blinked. “You can’t possibly be talking about that note on the side, can you? ‘Kinzy?’”
The ground started to shake. I yelped and almost backed into the tripwire, but luckily I pushed Derpy and myself to the ground and yelled at her to stay put. The iron bars were slowly, shakily receding into the ground. I heard a final boom and a squish as the bars finally vanished into the dirt.
“...Cool,” Derpy breathed, staring up at the statue.
I, however, had other things on my mind. I cantered over to the stone on the ground, the one that I could barely make out as ‘Animal,’ and began to scrape the mud and grime away, revealing more words. After I finished, the text was revealed as, “What is the name of Luna’s favorite stuffed animal?”
I almost said Kinzy again, but bit my tongue realizing that could trigger the bars. “Well, we know what that mystery is about,” I muttered. “Seems to me that Dusty is more in-the-know than we thought.”
“Or maybe him,” Derpy said, pointing up at Discord.
I nodded, then remembered I hadn’t a clue where to start. And, once again, my emotions seemed to catch and hold my tongue. “Derpy... I suppose now would be... Well, it would be a good time to start.”
“Why are you frowning?” Derpy asked, trotting up to me. “This is for you, remember? And for me. For us. So smile a little,” she said, grinning. “We’re almost there!”
Try as I might, I could not rid the scowl from my face. Something about this seemed to irritate me. Something about the way it was designed. Something about the way Derpy was involved. His presence made it hard to determine what, but I knew that something was amiss, that something here shouldn’t be.
Derpy slowly walked up to the statue. The grin had vanished from her face, and she was concentrating hard. I felt his presence start to amplify, to grow. Feeding off her power. Feeding off of her rage and her sorrow, her hatred of the way she was treated and her desire to be different.
And while he was distracted, I finally managed to realize what didn’t belong in this picture.
I had gone on this journey because I wanted to preserve my own life. But that was a ruse. Discord had likely made me as a one-time spell, promising to extend my life were I able to free him. That responsibility was mine and mine alone. But now, I was relying on Derpy, somepony who already had a chance at a happy life, somepony who still had a future. And Derpy was relying on the fact that Discord would, in return for his freedom, make her... like me. A conceited, arrogant, impatient brat who had no more depth of character than a gingerbread pony.
What didn’t belong in this picture... was me.
I turned around and ran through the tripwire. Smoke billowed through unseen holes in the wall. I heard Derpy yell something, but my senses were already decaying from the poison in the gas. I collapsed to the floor and lost consciousness.
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When I came to, I was in a cell.
Not one of the dank and dreary cells of the basement, though. It was roomy and light, with a single window opposite a door leading to the lavatory. I found myself on the bottom bed of a bunk, and when I groggily got up, I noted the the floor was smooth stone tile. The room was lit somewhat brightly by a series of candles bolted to the walls.
Derpy was sitting on the other side of the room, looking cross. No, not cross. Angry. Her expression, at least with one eye, gave me the peculiar feeling that I was looking in a mirror. “Well?” she asked. “You happy?”
I swallowed the foul taste the smoke had left in my mouth. At least my memory seemed to be intact. “I’m... honestly not sure. It... It didn’t feel right.”
Derpy was shaking with anger. “I thought,” she said with a strained voice, “I thought you... I thought that you were different. I thought that you would want me to be happy.”
I gritted my teeth and turned away, still fully trying to process the magnitude of my decision. “I do want you to be happy,” I said truthfully, “but this isn’t the right way. He was using us. I almost realized that too late.” I turned and looked her in the eye. “He wouldn’t have given you happiness. He’d have turned us into dandelions and then went on his merry way to destroy Equestria.”
“I’d rather be a flower than be me,” Derpy sobbed, holding her head in her hooves and rocking, “and Equestria is stupid!” she yelled, startling me with her intensity.
For a moment, I wondered which one of us wanted to free Discord more. And then it dawned on me.
I was going to die.
Not only that, but a slow death, one where I would slowly fade away to nothing. The magic that Discord used to sustain my existence was slowly going to wither away until I was but a memory. But according to Derpy... right now, she would gladly share my fate in exchange for just a peek of what life looked like through my eyes.
Was my decision selfish? I wasn’t sure. It depends whether or not Discord would have followed through. It depends whether or not Twilight and her friends would be able to contain him. It depends on whether or not my life could have been extended at all. No, I thought. There are too many variables for my decision to have been selfish. There are too many ‘what ifs’ for me not to be confident that my decision was the correct one.
But these thoughts meant nothing to me. Whether or not I had made the right decision, I was still going to perish. But at least it was on my own terms. At least I took my life by my own hooves, I thought. But as I turned to Derpy, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not that meant anything if she was teetering on the edge of doing the same.
I wanted to explain this to her, to reach out to her. But I didn’t know where to begin. So, eventually, after a minute or two of silence save Derpy’s anguish, I said, “Derpy, you have no idea how much I sacrificed for you just now.”
“Yeah I do,” Derpy sniffed, turning to me and glaring though her eyes were puffy with tears. “Y-You got rid of the only chance for me to be m-me ‘stead of just some stupid pony who smiles and nods and does what she’s told while all Equestria la-laughs at how dumb she is!”
“...I never meant to hurt you,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you always just think ‘bout yourself and nopony else,” Derpy hissed, tears rolling down her face. She tried to say more, but the words caught in her throat and she began to hiccup.
I began to get irritated, but I tried to suppress it. I knew that nothing good would become of Derpy and I both being emotionally excited right now, and I recognized that I had, in fact, hurt her even though her plan was as mediocre as my own. It annoyed me, though, that I had to be the one to comfort her when I wasn’t going to be around much longer.
At any rate, hopefully by asking some more mundane questions I could calm Derpy down enough to get some reason out of her. After she managed to calm herself, I asked, “How long was I out?”
“A couple hours. The sun set a while ago,” Derpy said.
“What did the guards say?” I inquired.
“They said that Celestia’s gonna talk to us about how we got to Discord and why,” Derpy mumbled. “But that’s... that’s not until tomorrow.”
I noted the odd pattern of speech in her last clause but couldn’t tell if it bore any significance, so I decided to press forward in trying to defend my actions. “Discord wasn’t the answer,” I said. “There were too many ‘what-ifs’ for me to put you in danger, so to speak. I... I just didn’t want him to hurt you.”
“No-Nopony thinks I can take care of myself wh-when I can,” Derpy cried. “If you were my fr-friend you’d understand th-that.”
I snorted. “Well, you won’t have to worry about me being your friend any-” I stopped myself.
Because I realized something critical.
This wasn’t about Derpy being upset because she missed out on a chance to be like everypony else, though that certainly played a part. This wasn’t about Derpy complaining about how I think of nopony but myself, though that played a part in her sorrow, as well. Nor was this Derpy complaining about how I didn’t let her take care of herself.
This was about me. And it was about how, throughout everything, she had tried so desperately to be my friend. And it was about how, just before we found Discord, she had managed to succeed, if only a tiny bit. That had made this entire journey worthwhile. But she was determined to see it through because, as much as she wanted to be normal herself, she would have been content to stay the same as long as I was at her side.
And I realized that my decision to trip the wire and stop the release of Discord was, to her, the most selfish decision I had ever made. Because we weren’t getting a second chance at that. There was no way to reverse the flow of paranoia and rush of reinforcements surging through Everfree County Dungeon. Discord would be sealed tighter than a vacuum.
The weight of this revelation hit me like a wrecking ball.
I couldn’t find words for what seemed like the longest time. But, eventually, they managed to escape: “Derpy, first and foremost... allow me to apologize. For everything.”
She looked up. She had probably seen my expression when I realized what I had done, and she was no longer angry. Her face, though, seemed to bear the weight of all her past woes. And I feared that, when she was thrown into this cell with me, cut off from what she viewed as her only chance of change, she had lost hope. But I couldn’t let that happen. Not while I could do something about it.
“...Yeah?” she sniffed.
“I want to... apologize. For giving you false hope about all of this. I never meant... Well, I never quite understood just how much this all had meant to you until just now. But, well... it’s hard to say this without sounding unsympathetic, but Derpy, you’re smart enough that you don’t need anything Discord has to offer. It took me so long to realize that, but it’s the truth. And it’s something you need to understand,” I said.
“But it doesn’t matter what I do understand and what I don’t understand to them. They treat me the same either way,” Derpy whimpered.
“Then perhaps you should stop caring about what they think,” I snarled.
Derpy shook her head sadly. “Ditzy, I’ve h-heard that before. And I’ve heard what you said before that before. I’ve heard everything. Carrot Top has done her best to try and help me. But n-nothing’s worked. Ditzy, do you think I would have come out all the way here, kn-knowing what you were trying to do, if I didn’t think it was the last thing that could work?”
“I see your point,” I said, nodding, “but trust me when I say there are more ponies like me out there.”
“But where?” she asked.
“Wherever you’re not looking,” I said.
“But that doesn’t change that you’re gonna be gone in a little while,” Derpy said quietly, curling up into a ball. “It doesn’t change the fact that when I wake up in the morning... you might not be there to help me. And I’ve never been alone.”
I felt a pang of sympathy. Throughout all of this, she had been the one following me when, if the circumstances allowed, I would have gladly left her in the dust and flew to greener pastures. But she never would have done the same to me. I walked over to her and sat down beside her, draping my wing over her in the process. “That doesn’t matter, Derpy.”
“Why not?” Derpy asked, leaning next to me.
“Because I’m here now,” I said, though my throat was tight, “and I’m just as scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow as you are.” I found myself wrapping my hooves around her in a tight hug as I let my emotions take control. “And I need you to be strong for me.”
I felt her nod, though she was still crying. And, despite everything, despite all that I was, I felt a pair of tears run down my cheeks, as well.
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In the morning, I felt odd. When I got to my hooves, the solid tile under me felt... springy. As if I were walking on a mattress rather than stone. I inspected myself in the mirror, though, and aside from my odd gait I looked fine, if a little on the exhausted side. Judging by the fact that the sun wasn’t even up yet, it was an early winter morning. That meant I had four hours left, at best.
When I tried to shake Derpy awake, I found that my hooves phased through her slightly. Not only that, but I felt myself... pulled toward her, so much that I had to reel backward in order to resist the strange force. I paused, staring at my hooves, pondering the implications.
Luckily, I didn’t have to ponder them for long. “Rise and shine!” I heard a guard call from down the hall. He appeared to be an official Royal Guard, minus the armor; he had only a simple uniform with a toolbelt on. He, along with his more or less identical unicorn friend, allowed us both time to use the lavatory before escorting our tired bodies down the hall.
We weren’t permitted to talk, of course, though I noted that, as she began to wake up, Derpy seemed even more energetic today than she had prior. That struck me as odd, and I couldn’t quite find any explanation behind this peculiar excitement.
After a quick trip down the stairs, I found myself back in the long circular hallway that connected the castle walls to the basements floors and the courtyard. As we passed Dusty’s empty desk, a question occurred to me: “Excuse me, but-”
“No talking,” the guard to my left said.
I tried again. “But I only have a-”
I received the same results, though this time with a stern glare. “No. Talking.”
The other guard, though, the one to the right, seemed to disagree with this policy. “C’mon, they’re civs. Discord’s the one that got ‘em into this mess in the first place, or so says the Princess. They won’t try anything funny. Will you?”
“Nothing of the sort,” I said. “At any rate, I have a question.”
“Shoot,” Right said.
“Why were the basement floors vacant?” I inquired.
“As you probably already have figured out, the basement levels are in need of some... renovation,” Left explained. “The Princess plans to destroy Basement Three and then clean up the other two to make them more hospitable to prisoners.”
“In the meantime, the keeps on the side of the walls that normally house guards were fitted with bars and such to keep whatever inmates we couldn’t ship off to other jails. Make sense?” Right asked.
I nodded. Derpy was getting increasingly restless, and although Left seemed to notice, he didn’t inquire about it. I hoped that she wouldn’t try anything stupid, I really, really did.
We were nearing a stairwell and a set of double doors. Derpy had appeared to have calmed down somewhat, but she still worried me. I had no idea what was going on in her head.
Right pointed toward the double doors. “We’re right near the exit. The Princess’s right out-”
Just then, Derpy turned and slammed Left into the wall. While he was dazed, she bolted down the stairwell before Right could react. Without thinking and without hesitation, I raced after her, praying she wasn’t about to do what I thought she was.
I nearly lost her on the first basement, but by following the tracks she made in the dirt I shot toward her and tried to tackle her to the ground. I missed. I heard the rush of a squadron of guards above us.
Picking myself up, I yelled, “Just stop!”
“No!” she yelled. “I will never give up on this!”
Realizing she was serious, I shook myself off and picked up the pace, adrenaline rushing through my veins and enabling me to once again close the distance between us. I heard Right and Left catching up to us, but I also knew that Derpy would rather hurt herself than abandon what she believed was her only chance at a happy life. And she had already proven that she was willing to hurt others.
So, just as she was about to dive down to the second basement, I tackled her again. I felt a whirlwind of forces acting within me, bending, twisting, warping me. My world spiraled out of control before nosediving back down to reality.
And I realized that this time, I hadn’t missed.
But when I looked around, I was alone. And the only hoofsteps I could here were those of the half dozen or so guards galloping up to me. I tightened the purple striped scarf around my neck.
“Where...” I breathed. “Where’s Derpy?”
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