//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: A Brief Lunch and Questionnaire // Story: Alicorn Amulet's Prisoner // by Taken-By-Insanity //------------------------------// Once the ponies all got their painfully bland salads, Twilight started on her questions. “So Eris, how does your magic work? Discord and I’m assuming you can break almost all laws of magic without any repercussions! Why is that?” Eris shrugged. “Because we’re Chaos? Rules are usually something that’s thrown out the window when a town is panicking, yeah?” Twilight gave a confused nod. “It’s the same thing. One way you can look at it is that magic panics when we use it, so it doesn’t follow any of its own rules.” “Oh-kay.” An answer was assumedly put on the parchment as Twilight’s quill moved a little. “How does your biology work? Discord hasn’t been very helpful in telling me how he works.” “Biology?” Eris raised a brow. “We don’t have any.” It was Twilight’s turn to raise a brow at the answer. “What do you mean? You’re both here right now and I’ve seen Discord eat and drink stuff plenty of times.” “We eat and drink for the fun of it.” Eris elaborated. “If we never ate or drank, we wouldn’t feel anything like hunger or thirst. What you see here is all there is to see.” As Eris explained this, Discord acted out her words. He pulled down a chart from somewhere, showing an image of him chopped in half. Besides some thickness to his outer layer, the inside of the Discord of the chart was completely hollow. With a stick, he pointed at the hollow inside and the outside shell, wearing a lab coat and large square glasses. Once Eris noticed the graph, she gave a small chuckle. “Thanks Discord.” “Of course dear sister.” He gave a dramatic bow. Twilight’s quill moved vigorously as she wrote down the answer to her question. “How old are you guys, exactly?” “Pfft, asking a forbidden question from a lady I see.” Eris jokingly said. “I-It’s alright if you don’t want to answer!” Twilight started in a mild panic. Eris laughed at that. “I was joking, Twilight. Anywho.” She tapped her chin in thought. She mumbled to herself as she tried adding up her total years. “One thousand years in the Amulet, a couple hundred years before that. Sense of time was wonky before that. Hm…” After a few moments of silent thought, Eris said her answer. “I’d say we’re at least three thousand years old. At most we could be an infinite number of years old though. Time was a weird thing forever ago.” “How so?” “Time hadn’t been made yet.” Discord lazily answered, sipping on a glass of chocolate milk as he hung like a bat on the room’s chandelier. “What? What do you mean?” “That’s…not something we’re allowed to talk about.” Eris answered with a shrug. “Oh! That reminds me. Discord, do we still have those hangout meetings?” “Yep.” Discord rolled his eyes. “Still as dreadfully boring as they were a thousand years ago.” “Hangout meetings?” Twilight asked. “Another thing we’re not allowed to talk about.” Eris answered. “Once or twice a year we just aren’t available is all.” “So that’s what Discord does those days.” Celestia casually mentioned with a mildly mirthful expression. “I always assumed he went to play some prank on one of the other kingdoms.” “Who’s to say I don’t?” Discord asked, suddenly next to Celestia and wrapping her lion arm around her. “Sometimes I need a little variation with my prank victims. Pranking ponies everyday can get boring, especially if it’s the same ponies.” He pointed at Celestia’s salad. “Mind the leaves, by the way. Someone stashed something suspicious there.” Celestia rolled her eyes and ate a piece of her salad. “I see that my salad is now made of chocolate.” She sighed dramatically. “There went my cheat for the day.” Luna rolled her eyes at her sister’s dramatics. “Sister, we both know you don’t follow this diet of yours outside of the dining room.” Eris and Twilight watched, the purple alicorn munching on her own salad as she waited for the next chance to ask her questions. “I do follow my diet, Luna. I just happen to give myself a little something extra to reward myself for following it.” Discord then chimed in. “Oh quit the dramatics. It just tastes like chocolate.” “You really shouldn’t ‘reward yourself’ every night, Celestia. Once a week would be better, once a month even more.” Celestia sighed. “I believe we should talk about this at a later time, Luna. After all, our main focus is on Twilight’s questions for Eris right now, not how loyal I am to my diet.” Taking that as a que to continue her questions, Twilight took the opening. “Eris, what was it like inside the Alicorn Amulet?” Eris flinched at the question but answered all the same after a moment or so. “It was…just a room. It was incredibly big and constantly glowed red but it was just a room. Whoever made it was good at making containments, because no matter how much force I put into breaking out, it held out. I could do anything inside of it when the Amulet wasn’t being worn, but when someone was wearing it I could only look at the wearer’s backstory that led them to putting on the Amulet.” “Their backstory?” “For example. When you were doing tests with the Amulet, I saw each pony who wore it and the story of what led them to putting it on. Your silhouette approached them with a chest that held the Amulet. I couldn’t see any details about you or any others nearby, but I could see the environment and where the Amulet was at the time.” Twilight scribbled onto her parchment some more, munching on her salad as she did. “I’ll have to get back to you some other time with more questions, if you’re okay with it. Those were all the big ones I had for now.” “Of course, I didn’t expect you to have all of them already. With how Discord is, I wouldn’t doubt that you ended up throwing away whatever previous list you had since you knew he wouldn’t tell you anything.” “You’re…not wrong.” Twilight tapped her chin. “I should see if I kept it anywhere. I don’t often throw away my lists.” “You have fun with that.” Eris gave a dismissive wave. “Just don’t go nuts if you don’t find it. Or do, I won’t stop you.” “Why would I go crazy over that?” Twilight questioned with confusion. “If I never find it, I’ll just assume I threw it away and make another one.” “I mean, you did have a major freak out however long ago when you ended up not sending a report to Celestia on a due date that was never explicitly given.” Eris shrugged. “You never know what can set people off sometimes.” The ponies in the room looked at Eris in open confusion. Celestia decided to be the one to ask the question. “How…did you know about that, exactly?” Eris shrugged again. “It’s a Spirit of Chaos thing. The amount of madness that Twilight was experiencing during that event is powerful enough for me to passively learn about it, as it falls into my category of Chaos.” Twilight quickly wrote this down, repeating the words to herself in a mutter as she did. “And Discord can do this too?” “Indeed.” Discord sat on a chair sticking to a window, sipping a teacup. As in the cup itself. Inside was a mold of chocolate he proceeded to much on. He continued with his mouth full. “Though I usually ignore it, too many things in this age fall into my realm of chaos for me to listen.” “Hm, yes.” Eris put a paw to her chin. “This day and age is much more peaceful and joyful. Not nearly as much chaos that I rule over seems to exist here. In other lands, perhaps, but Equestria is definitely seeing better days than before.” “I’d say a thousand years ago were just as well as today.” Luna commented. “It may have been less technologically advanced, but it was practically the same.” “Eh,” Eris replied. “A good amount of Equestria was having difficulties back then. I mean, so many tried getting into dark magic to get the power to overthrow the two of you. The only reason why no one actually tried was because most of them chickened out, especially since Luna was a bit more…temperamental. No offense, of course.” “None taken.” Luna gave a dismissive wave. “I was young and foolish back then.” She idly tapped her hoof. “Now that I think about it, we were too engrossed in matters to actually check in on our subjects back then. Or, at the very least I was.” “Yes…I do believe I irresponsibly threw a lot of my own work on yours in favor of interacting with our subjects.” Celestia sheepishly admitted. “Sorry about that, by the way.” Luna sighed. “Tis fine, sister. As long as you aren’t doing it now you are forgiven.” “Anywho.” Eris started, steering the conversation back to where it was. “The chaos these days certainly seems to be more Discord’s than mine, which I must congratulate you for. Once chaos falls somewhere, it can be hard to get it out.” “Thank you.” Celestia nodded in thanks. “It took a lot of time and work, but it’s good to hear that you believe that is the case.” “Trust me, if my chaos was running rampant these days, I’d already have recovered from the Alicorn Amulet.” Eris tapped her chin. “Although, I could just be out of range at the moment and it’s still around in areas outside of Equestria.” A butler pony entered the room and gave a brief bow. “Apologies Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, but it’s approaching time for the second Day Court.” “Thank you, Serve.” Celestia thanked the butler. The butler dismissed himself and Celestia and Luna rose from their seats. “Apologies for cutting this talk short, but duty calls.” “We may continue this conversation when dinner comes, if you’d like.” Luna offered. “While I would love to, I believe I should try catching up with the current era.” Eris answered, standing from her seat. “Do you happen to have a library in the castle?” “We have the Royal Archives.” Twilight offered. “I could take you over there before I head home.” Eris nodded. “Lead the way. Bye Celestia, by Luna.” “Until next time.” Celestia gave a wave of her hoof before leaving with Luna following behind. Discord floated above the other two remaining occupants of the room as Twilight began to head for the door with Eris in tow. “Wow.” Eris looked at the long halls of shelves, filled to the brim with books. “This is quite a collection.” “Do you need any help before I get going? I know this place like the back of my hoof.” Eris shook her head to Twilight’s question. “I think I’ll be fine. Thank you for taking me here.” “Of course. If you need any help, I’m sure a passing guard or servant can help you.” Twilight lit her horn and, in a flash of light, disappeared. “Are you really planning on reading for the rest of the day?” Discord asked as he lazily flipped through a comic book. “Most of them are far too bland to even bother.” “Yes Discord, and I plan to keep reading until sometime tomorrow at the very least.” Eris began looking through the shelves. “If I get bored, I’ll just read some fiction to break the monotony.” “Monotony?” “Dullness, boredom, lack of variety-“ “Okay, okay! You don’t have to go all dictionary on me.” Discord grumbled. “Don’t ask what a word means if it’s in a dictionary then.” Eris rolled her eyes before taking out a book. It was relatively small and had a brown cover with golden writing. “Ugh, they still use this type of writing? Was hoping that print would’ve become more popular by now. Can you get me some reading glasses?” “Sure.” Discord snapped his talons and glasses appeared on Eris’ snout. “Thank you.” Pushing the glasses to her eyes, Eris read out the title to herself. “‘A Brief Lesson in Equestria’s History, Simplified’. That’s a good start.” She opened the book and took a seat on a bean bag. “Just after the founding of Equestria, two Princesses came to be. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, the first alicorns ever seen by pony kind…”