"this 60/40 isn't working, i want a hundred of your time, you're mine"
Rarity stood on a hillside, watching as the leaves of the trees rustled in the distance. A calm breeze drifted through the air, blowing her hair just the slightest bit. The moon had long since replaced the sun, its white glow lighting up the world before her. There were countless stars in the sky, little radiant specks that seemed to go on infinitely.
The grass lightly brushed against her hooves as she stared out at the expansive mountains set out in front of her. The rocky peaks stood tall in the moonlight, the sharp summits looking like daggers. She frowned slightly at the comparison.
She slowly lowered herself until she was sitting down. She felt roses beneath her hooves, the sweet smell coming from them almost intoxicating to her. A content smile settled on her face as she took in the scene before her. She looked down — when had she moved to the edge of the hill? — and watched the river slowly run. The river was a light blue, almost teal-ish color, which drew her gaze closer. She felt like she couldn't tear her eyes away from it.
She watched the fish that occasionally jumped out of the water. Some of them were bright, almost too saturated to look at. Others were dull, like they'd had the life ripped out of them by a hook. The ones that she focused her attention on were the yellow ones. Though they didn't jump the highest, their muted yet shiny color made them contrast perfectly against the dark purples and greens of the land beyond.
Two voices, distant at first, were soon heard. They sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place her hoof on who they belonged to. She could just barely make out their conversation.
"—glad we got to—"
"—such a—"
"—think that maybe—"
"—great idea."
Rarity turned her head and watched as two silhouetted ponies walked together until they stopped. One of them backed away slightly, confusing the other. The pony began to decompose from within, thick black ooze pouring out of their stomach. Their body convulsed and fell onto the floor as bile was spewed out of their invisible mouth. Silent screams rang out through the forest. Cracks of white light began to appear, starting at the hooves until there was nothing but a giant flash.
The other pony watched without moving an inch.
Where the silhouette of a pony once stood, now was the immediately recognizable shape of a draconequus. He rose to his feet like nothing had happened, stepping over the pile of acidic bile and pulling the pony into a hug. When the pony's wings shot out, Rarity realized what was happening and who the shapes has been.
She shot to her hooves immediately, shifting her body so fast that she momentarily became disoriented. She violently shook her head and began galloping to where she'd heard the voices. They had resumed speaking, but she paid no mind to what they were saying. It was white noise to her.
Every time she moved forward, the voices would move back. There was a constant space between them, no matter how fast she ran. She cried out to the disembodied voices, but they ignored her.
The figures didn't move their limbs, instead shifting backwards while remaining in the same static pose. Kissing, arms wrapped around the other. Only the occasional twitch told that they weren't statues.
Rarity caught one of her back hooves on a hidden tree root and lost her footing, crashing to the ground. Her head swam as she tried to pick herself up. The dirt was like ice to her, and she repeatedly fell back down. After what felt like a million attempts, she returned to her hooves.
The silhouettes remained where they were. They had broken their kiss and were now staring into the deep vacancy of each other's faces.
"You're so much better than my last marefriend, Rarity." The voice stabbed at her with the force of a thousand knives. It sounded so much like Fluttershy, but there were little imperfections in it. She was too low pitched, too scratchy and gravel. It was so much louder as well, making Rarity want to cover her ears.
"Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rarity." With each repetition, the voice became more distorted, crackling harshly until it become unintelligible. It was a hum of harsh noise that made the unicorn hear ringing. It continued its screeching, growing louder and higher until it was all that she could hear. "Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rarity. Rar—
—ity?"
Her grip on the pony next to her grew tighter as her eyes fluttered open. "What? Fluttershy?" She glanced around the room, feeling a sense of unfamiliarity in it. There was nothing different about Fluttershy's room as far as she could tell.
"Are you okay?" Fluttershy tried to wriggle out of Rarity's grasp, but the unicorn just pulled her closer.
"I had a terrible dream... there was—-" Rarity's eyes widened. There was no way she could tell Fluttershy about the true events of her dream. All it would do was cause a pointless fight first thing in the morning. "A timberwolf invasion." Her voice faltered slightly.
"Oh my. It— it was just a dream. You're safe now." Fluttershy placed a kiss on her marefriend's muzzle. "Better?"
Rarity nodded, her stare a thousand yards ahead.
"Good. You can let go of me now. I— I have to go take a shower."
Rarity made a discontented noise, snuggling up closer.
"You and I smell awful." They did, now that Rarity thought about it. A light musk hung in the air and the scent of sweat infiltrated her nostrils.
"But I wanna cuddle with yoooou," the unicorn whined, her voice muffled as her head was buried in the crux of Fluttershy's neck.
"As much as I want to, and I— I do, we both have a busy day today."
Rarity let out her most exaggerated groan as she let go of Fluttershy. The lack of warmth hit her immediately, making her shiver imperceptibly.
"Thank you. Are you gonna leave before I take my shower?"
Rarity pondered the question. She did have some work to do, but on the other hoof, she could feel Fluttershy slipping away from her. If her dream was any indication, things were going to go very wrong very quickly. One second without her and Fluttershy would be gone, in the arms of a certain draconequus.
She wasn't going to stand for it.
"No, I think I'll stay for a little while longer."
After a talkative breakfast, Rarity had returned home to work on an order. Everything felt slightly off as she worked. Her hooves were more limp and heavy than usual, causing her to mess up the stitching on numerous occasions. Time moved irregularly — sometimes an hour passed in the blink of an eye and sometimes a minute dragged on forever. Something was definitely going on, but she couldn't quite put her hoof on what.
Maybe she had just been distracted. She had gotten caught up in her own mind on occasion, thinking about Fluttershy and Discord. Though she didn't have hard evidence, she knew he was trying to take Fluttershy away. He was pulling her, tying strings around her and tugging as hard as he could. Rarity wouldn't be able to hold on forever if he kept at it.
There had to be a way to stop this, to end this tug of war she had found herself in. She had to have a serious talk with Fluttershy about this. She knew just how badly he was going to hurt the pegasus, and there was no way she wasn't going to stop it.
The order forgotten, she turned off her sewing machine and left the boutique running, her focus dead set on getting to Fluttershy's cottage. She didn't acknowledge any greetings, nor did she acknowledge any strange looks she got afterwards. She had somewhere to be.
With every cloud of dust that rose from her stomped hoofprints, every crunch of the soil beneath her, her resolve grew stronger. She ducked her head slightly as she picked up her pace, to stop the wind from blowing through her mane as much.
Her breath began to come out in short bursts, her lungs burning and begging for a break. She could feel the strain in her legs, but she kept pushing ahead. She had to. For Fluttershy.
When the mare in question's cottage came into view, one thing immediately became noticeable, sticking out like a sore hoof amidst the serene little home.
There was a portal on the front lawn.
Rarity toppled over when she first saw it. She lifted her head from the dirt and shook it a few times to right herself out of her daze. She looked ahead and saw that it was, in fact, still there.
There was a cyan glow around it that served as a border, with little accents of sparkles and colorful dots appearing as well. She couldn't see much of what was inside of it, but she could make out a spinning vortex that lead to a forest of decaying orange trees. All of the visible leaves were blackened and seemed to be melting, thick clumps of alluvium oozing out from where they sat.
Rarity was now at an impasse. She could either talk to Fluttershy, making her realize that Discord was trying to steal her away...
...or she could enter the portal and speak to Discord himself.
Memories of her first encounter with Discord still lingered in her mind, even after all these years. The feeling of being outside of her own body, unable to dictate what she did while under his control, sometimes haunted her. Stepping into his dimension would be like when he first arrived to Ponyville, wreaking havoc and messing with the order of everything, but a million times worse.
Was it worth it?
Rarity lifted herself up and began putting one hoof in front of the other, her mind made up. She was going to confront Discord on his own playing field. There was so much that could go wrong, but she didn't care. All that mattered to her was protecting Fluttershy.
She stopped before she entered the portal. She sized it up, examining what she could see of the inside of it. The tree that she'd seen earlier had deteriorated into a simple stump. A steady flow of something poured out of a gaping hole in the middle of it, shooting up into the air far beyond her view. The short stump was surrounded by black leaves that contorted into the shapes of tiny ponies.
Rarity took a deep breath and steeled herself, telling herself that this was for the greater good. It had to be. She stepped in—
—and began falling through the air from a thousand miles up.
She plummeted towards the ground, her body shaking from the cold wind that hit her. A scream left her lips, but there was no noise. Instead a trickle of bubbles fell out of her mouth, flying upwards. She tried to scream again, but only more bubbles came.
Everything was moving like it was sped up. One second she was unable to see the unforgiving ground below her, the next she was just about to crash into it, ending her existence in an instant.
She didn't have any time to think, any final musings or realizations before she hit the cold hard earth. But it wasn't cold, or hard, or even earth. She sunk into it for a single millisecond before she landed in a pool of water.
Rarity instinctively pulled herself upwards, but the more she swam the further the surface got from her. She could see the light of the world above watching her as it grew more and more distant. The air in her lungs was rapidly depleting, and if she didn't get out quick this was going to be her tomb.
With one final burst of energy, she pushed her body as hard as she could.
When she broke to the surface, she found that she had escaped a mud hole. Her coat was covered in freezing muck, exacerbated as she clumsily walked through the mud. Her hooves felt alien to her, like she was just learning to walk for the first time. She stumbled multiple times before she reached the grassy edge of the hole.
When she touched the grass, the world around her shifted, the previous scene visibly torn apart as everything changed. A mammoth blur passed in front of Rarity's eyes before she found herself standing on top of a solitary tree.
Finally able to stop for a moment, she took in her surroundings. The bright yellow leaves she stood on clamped her hooves together, trapping her in place with an iron grip. The colors of everything around her appeared inverted. Black was white, green was yellow, blue was red. The sky was a mix of neon colors that were eye bleeding if one stared for too long. Eldritch creatures bounced around without a care in the world on the patterned floors. The patterns would abruptly shift from checkerboard to striped seemingly at random.
Well, everything was random here. That was the point.
Pigs flew while birds rolled around, incomprehensible poetry appeared on the constantly shifting buildings, giants played hoofball with each other across continental-sized fields. Nothing was in order, except that it was. Controlled chaos, Discord liked to call it.
Milk began to fall out of a nearby cloud, starting as a few droplets before devolving into a heavy downpour. It appeared to be falling upwards, though. Then it clicked.
Rarity was upside down.
The leaves released her and she fell to the ground with a thud. She felt nothing whatsoever from the impact, picking herself up immediately after. The world had turned over and became upright again, thankfully. The sky had changed to a mix of purple with hints of blue thrown in, with ghost-like beings appearing if one looked hard enough. The ground beneath her was tiled and grey, cold to the touch. She'd rather that than having to feel the leaves hold her again.
The tree that she had been standing on was perched right next to her, and she stepped away from it slightly. Behind her sat what appeared to be a pool of some kind of liquid, though she couldn't tell what and didn't want to find out. It was acid green and a whiff of it made her eyes water. She turned around and looked in the distance.
Discord's house sat on one of the little islands, a thousand miles away.
Rarity sighed. There was no chance of her ever getting to it. She had gone through all of this trouble for nothing. Great.
A buzzing from afar caught her attention, and she shot up when she saw an island between hers and Discord's. She ran back to get a head start, but found herself asking a simple question. How was she going to get there?
She pondered it, frustrated at how another hole had formed in her plans. There was no winning in this situation. But there had to be, right? She couldn't just lose Fluttershy to Discord after all of this. Everything she'd been through in his dimension was proof that he was trying to steal Fluttershy away. He was doing all of this to try to deter her, to get her to give up. No amount of chaos was going to stop Rarity, though.
Chaos...
That was it.
If there were no rules in this dimension, then she could do anything she wanted in here. She began to gallop towards the edge of the island, adrenaline taking over. Either she would die here or she would get to the other side and save her marefriend. She just had to give it a shot.
She took the leap.
The sensation of weightlessness wasn't what she was expecting to feel as her hooves left the ground. It was a feeling that was hard to describe— like a combination of the first time she flew and the elation after she made her first ever dress. She knew she was still in her body, but all she could feel was the bliss flowing through her veins.
She felt free. She was just a pony floating in an infinite vacuum with no problems to deal with, no emotions to make things complicated, nothing holding her down. She was simply there, and she loved it.
When she regained feeling in her hooves, Rarity began to swim through the air. She was light as a feather as she moved, a small smile on her face. This was the first time since she had crossed over into this dimension that she felt she could breathe.
She forgot about everything, just taking in the moment. She found a sort of abstract beauty in the scenery. There was something oddly charming about how much disarray everything was in. For a second, as she watched a peryton fly past her, she wondered if this was all worth it.
Then she remembered why she was here.
When she landed on the lawn to Discord's house, she felt slightly lightheaded. She trotted up to the front door, her determination simultaneously growing and shrinking at the same time. Now that she was actually about to do this, she was a little nervous.
There were so many ways that things could end badly for her. The possibility of Discord becoming a villain once more, beginning his reign of terror by eliminating her, passed through her head. No. She wasn't scared of him. She wouldn't be scared of him.
Everything was going to end now, once and for all. If he didn't back down now, she would make him.
Rarity lifted her hoof and knocked on the door three times.
When the door opened, Fluttershy was standing on the other side. The mug she was holding fell out of her hooves and shattered against the floor.
"Rarity?"