//------------------------------// // (Present Chapter 29): Waltz With a Madman // Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic // by Shadestyle //------------------------------// To the tune of "Cuban Pete", Discord shuffles down the street, snapping his fingers as he passes the various buildings. Right now, he's checking something that had been of particular interest to him right before his imprisonment, namely... "Ha! I knew it!" he says with a chortle, bumping his rear into one of the castle-town buildings as he dances by, transforming the bricks and mortar directly into brownies and fudge, which sag under their own weight. "Oh! Discord, confectionaries can't hold up their own weight at those sizes, blah blah blah square cubed!" he says mockingly, waggling his paw like a sockpuppet as he speaks in falsetto, walking past the quickly collapsing building. As he uses his chaos magic to turn things into food, a feeling of satisfaction wells up inside the Draconequis, bringing his mood up. With closed eyes, he grins, shaking his shoulders to the unheard music, snapping rapidly as Canterlot is quickly infested with large bricks-turned-crocodiles, a herd of flying books, and of course, what few ponies hadn't already managed to evacuuate, who, for now, he has opted to simply reverse the gravity of, to keep them from leaving their homes quite yet. He gives a tiny little waggle of his eagle talon, waving at the earth pony staring up into the sky from the window they're hanging off the edge of, desperately trying to climb into. The mare's bright pink cutie mark of a squeegee explaining what she was doing in front of the window in the first place, along with the various cleaning tools hanging from the window's edge. Sashaying from side to side, the spirit of Chaos approaches the building, and the pony, noticing the cakified buildings nearby, shakes her head frantically as Discord approaches. "Please don't! I don't want to fall!" they shout, bits of loose mortar and pebbles kicked free as they scrabble at the window, trying not to fall into the sky. "Don't worry! Skydiving is quite safe, or so I've heard," Discord chortles, twirling merrily before smacking the building with the tip of his tail, turning the whole thing into a giant red-velvet cookie. As the pony shrieks, their tenuous hoofhold breaking apart and sending them flipping into the air, Discord laughs, holding his gut as he doubles over with mirth. "Remember little pony, it's not the fall that kills you!" he cups his paw and talon as he shouts up at the quicky shrinking pony. He'll have to remember to go grab that one later. Dead ponies aren't fun to play with. With narrowed eyes, he watches as something darts across the sky, snatching the pony out of the air. Following the figure as they land heavily near one of the buildings, clamping the pony's legs with heavy looking crystal shoes, Discord frowns as he realizes who is meddling in his fun. "Stay low," Weiss Noir says, the mare shivering and nodding before fleeing in odd, bouncy steps due to the gravity manipulation still affecting her. Cracking his neck, Weiss smirks at Discord, casually walking into the middle of the street. "Howdy." "Really? You're going to make this another silly fight scene? Ugh, wait, please tell me you don't plan on boring me with more pointless philosophy talk like the last time we met," Discord moans, crossing his arms impetuously. Weiss shrugs, shaking his head. "Nah. Don't worry, I figured out a while ago that you're some kind of hedonist. No grand duty to chaos up there in that noggin of yours, eh?" he snarks, making the draconequis raise an eyebrow. "You don't know the first thing about me, my frustrating little conversation partner," Discord responds, raising a paw to snap the problem away. Before he can, however, another pony crashes into the ground behind him with a sizzle as the cobblestones crack, distracting him. "Oh?" he mutters, turning around to face the newcomer. Celestia frowns, fangs peeking out from her displeased expression. Her blazing mane ripples as she speaks. "Discord, leave Equestria peacefully, or surrender to us. There can be no other option for you!" she shouts, taking a threatening step out of the sagging puddle of stone beneath her. His face scrunches up with bemusement. "Celly, dear, what on earth are you talking about?" he laughs. "Blasting the countryside to rubble was pointless and boring the first time, what makes you think it'll work this time?" Weiss waves politely "She brought someone competent this time, so you might wanna' get lost, Q." Discord scoffs, pulling out a magnefying glass and glaring down at the smug unicorn through it. "You? You're a broken little husk playing pretend. 'Oh! Look at me, I'm so edgy, I wear all black and walk around talking about revenge all day! Oh hello Celestia, boy, I hate you so much! Mwah mwah mwah'!" Discord mocks, making kissy faces with his two extra hands and mashing them together, before tossing aside the magnefying glass in the third. "Maybe I should reveal what you really are, hmm, John? That under all that angst and wangst, there's a weird little monkey throwing a temper tantrum," Discord says, only to be atomized by a blast of black energy, dark magic ripping through his form in an instant. "You really need to work on your bantering, man, there's playful, and then there's rude," Weiss says with a fake smile, shaking his hand to put out the black energy clinging to it. An arm snakes around over his shoulder, revealing Discord, utterly unharmed. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I hurt your precious feelings?" he says with mock-sadness. "Weiss," Celestia attempts, glaring at Weiss's distinct bantering with the entity they were meant to be driving to fury and frustration. Ignoring her, Weiss puts an arm to his chest. "Oh no! You did! Gah! Gasp! Oh no, I'm getting corrupted and turning evil, oh heavens no, I can feel my nice personality fading as I forget what Friendship feels like! Oh, this is the end of the line for nice old Weiss, I can see the color draining from my poor coat!" he shouts, hobbling forwards and groaning melodramatically. In the background, Discord waggles his paw and talon at Weiss, as if casting a magic spell. "Weiss..!" Celestia repeats, growing frustrated with Weiss's blase behavior. After a moment, he pinches a bit of skin at his side. "See? Not a lick of color there, oh well, guess Discord won, so he'll go ahead and piss off now that we aren't a threat to his plans, so go ahead and piss off," he says with a bitter, snide undertone to his lighthearted words, glancing back at Discord, whose eyes narrow as he pretends to pack a suitcase with nothing but heart-speckled bloomers. "Weiss! We're meant to be distracting him, not playing with him!" Celestia roars, stamping a hoof and causing a massive gouge to splinter out through the streets. Discord rolls his eyes lightheartedly at Celestia, sparing one last aggrivated look at Weiss, something dark passing between the two. "Well, I was feeling pretty distracted, if I'm being honest, but then you had to go and distract me from being distracted, silly Celly!" he says, snapping a talon and teleporting away as Weiss and Celestia both fire blistering beams of raw energy that collide where he was, the meeting magics roaring like a tiny collapsing star as they combine. With a frown, Discord floats by on a pink cloud, snapping his fingers to revert the massive glowing crater they made back to a city of candy and fudge. "Let's dance, bozo," Weiss says, smirking up at the draconequis. Celestia and Weiss share a look that seems to convey something subtle and sly. 'I was right. He has to decide to use his powers in order to find out things he shouldn't know. He doesn't know everything by default. This might just work if he thinks we're here to keep his attention away from the evacuees,' Weiss thinks, his awareness briefly shifting to their "real" selves. Half a mile away, a churning black sludge made of dissoluted Shadow Clone Mass drags Celestia's unconscious body down the streets, sneaking through alleys and around buildings. 'If he thinks we're trying to stall him in order to protect the ponies, he won't bother to find out that we're actually stalling him until we can reach the castle,' he considers, pausing for a moment as a building flies past, flung by Celestia's telekinetic aura. While Celestia and Weiss control their shadow clones, this simpler, golem-like mass drags her unconscious body around to the castle, where they can check if the Elements were indeed tampered with. Quietly, the dark sludge drags her over a trash can overturned in the panic to escape earlier, smoothly traveling over it and onto the main street leading to Canterlot Castle. The mass pauses as a faint sound reaches it. The sound of crying. Though the mass lacks eyes, it's the work of moments to generate a pair, shadows congealing into bright green orbs that peer around for the source of the noise. It's a child, a foal, stuck upside down on an awning to some cafe shop, staring with open confusion at the black sludge carting around the Princess's sleeping body. The cloth of the awning is thin, and the door is too low to the ground for the foal to reach. The pair stare at each other for several moments, before, with an internal grimace, Weiss has a tentacle whip out from the shadow clone mass, grabbing the filly and dragging her inside. "Be brave, brat, your precious princess is going to fix everything soon," he barks, before slipping away. Magicant freed him from being enslaved to weaker emotions, so the choice was his to make. The thought sticks with him as he tears his way into the castle, ripping open the doors as quietly as possible, and slipping around the enchantments meant to deter intruders. He senses a shift as the weight of the princess he is carrying changes, and he senses his Vancian Magic distort as Discord lazily duels in the streets of Canterlot. It's unlikely that Celestia even noticed what Discord had done, as subtle as it was. 'There's a choice I'll have to make soon,' Weiss thinks, his shadowy double in the distance dodging a stream of jambalaia that Discord fires at both him and Celestia's clones. 'Give me the strength to make it,' he prays, entering the hall of the Elements of Harmony and approaching the doors they are meant to be locked behind. "It is -- to be --" A voice says. Gilda's heart pounds in her chest, shadows dancing in the corner of her vision. Her instincts are screaming to run, to hide, to do anything but stand here in front of... In front of? Suddenly, her attempts to remember the dreams she has been having are interrupted. "Gilda? Did you hear Trixie? This place is quite dark, do you see anything?" Trixie asks, swallowing. "Oh! uhh," Gilda helpfully responds, her natural night vision giving her a bit more information than the two ponies at her side have. "Brick walls. Long Corridor. Some torches in the walls?" she explains, reaching out and grabbing one of the wall-mounted torches. "Here, light this," Gilda offers, Sunset quickly zapping the tool with a burning ray that ignites it. "That should help, thank you," Trixie nods, squinting to see anything of interest, her eyes playing tricks on her as the dark corners of the room appear to dance and shift under the flickering torchlight. With a nod, Gilda leads them deeper into the dark tower, eventually noticing something odd that has her pausing. "The air. Something doesn't smell right," she says, holding out a talon to stop the others. Sunset sniffs at the air. "I don't smell anything," she responds, only making Gilda nod as her eyes narrow. "That's the problem. I don't either," she explains, the scents of vegetation and animal life quickly fading, and the smells she associates with stonework, the scent of dust, moss, and cobwebs failing to replace them. She glances back towards the entrance, only to realize that it's disappeared. The other two notice, looking back with growing nervousness. "Gilda, I think this was a bad idea," Trixie says, swallowing heavily as she realizes that they might very well be trapped inside this place. The griffon nudges Trixie, getting her attention. "Nowhere to move but forwards. Keep your mind off it, it won't help to panic right now," Gilda barks quietly, stalking forwards with the torch held tightly in her grip. Looking at each other for a moment, Trixie and Sunset both follow, their concerns soothed slightly by their friend's confidence. As they leave and the light of Gilda's torch begins to fade from the hall, the shadows behind them continue to dance and writhe, unbidden.