Two creatures sat in a crystal room: a mismatched creature and a jet black alicorn with a flowing mane and tail. Sitting between them was a wooden board with various circular tiles on it. Each of the tiles had a different character on them. The mismatched creature moved one of his tiles forward.
“Your turn,” he said. The alicorn swept her foreleg across the board causing it and the tiles to fall on the floor. “Well, if you didn’t want to play xiangqi anymore, you could have said so rather than doing that.”
“I’m sick of this!” the alicorn yelled. “I hate being stuck in this hell. I hate not being able to interact with anyone else but you, and I hate that those ponies are still frolicking in the sun! How can you just sit there and accept your punishment?” The mismatched creature snapped his fingers and the tiles floated to his side. The board was once again placed between them.
“It’s quite simple, Nighty,” he answered. He lifted a tile between his fingers and placed it on the board. “Unlike you, my existence is necessary and my imprisonment here only temporary.”
“Don’t call me Nighty,” she crossed her forelegs and puffed her cheeks out.
The mismatched creature chuckled. “Now that’s just adorable. If you want me to stop calling you that, you’d best stop being cute.”
“I’m not cute!” another tile was placed on the board. “And what do you mean by your existence is necessary? You were sealed away here, and like me, you’re stuck here, Discord. So how can you be necessary?” Discord placed another tile on the board. He snapped his talons and the tip of one of them glowed. He moved it in the air in front of them as if he were drawing. When he was done, two glowing characters floated in front of them.
“Tell me,” he began. “What do these characters say?”
“平衡,” Nightmare Moon answered.
“Interesting, I would have thought that you would read it in Mandarin rather than Cantonese,” he said. “And what does that translate to?”
“Balance.”
“Excellent, we’ve established that you can read basic Ma-nese,” the pony sitting across from him gave a glare. “Let’s continue with that line of thought. The entire universe needs balance. Everything that exists currently has something to balance it out. Male and female, yin and yang, love and hate, summer and winter…”
“Day and night,” Nightmare Moon interrupted. “I’m well aware of the Cosmic Scales and how they work. I am after all, the embodiment of night.”
“And I’m the embodiment of chaos,” a tile was placed at the bottom center of the board. “And to balance out chaos, there has to be order. A balance of chaos and order are necessary for true harmony to exist. Those who sealed me away believed that they could create harmony by removing chaos, but that’s impossible. Chaos is part of the very harmony that they crave. While I personally cannot perform any acts of grand chaos, the universe is working to balance all of the order in Equestria. Even now, chaos is working through the country, just on a smaller scale.”
“How does that make your imprisonment in this hell temporary?”
“Simple. One day, the Scales will be thoroughly unbalanced. And I will be released to adjust them. Not by Celestia or Luna, or Faust forbid by the Elements themselves, but by some quirk of fate. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day.” Discord took five tiles and placed them on the board, each one space in between the next.
“If your existence is necessary,” Nightmare Moon began. “Then so is mine.”
“How so?” Discord asked.
“Like you said,” she continued. “Everything needs balance. Just as Celestia is light, I am darkness. I am the stars above, I am nightmares, I am the night, I am…”
“BATMANE!” Again, Nightmare Moon glared at her companion. “What? You set me up for that.”
“Anyways… I exist because there has to be a balance between day and night. If Celestia’s existence is necessary because she is the sun, then something has to exist to be the moon. And that something is…”
“Luna,” Discord interrupted. “You’re not the moon, Luna is. You’re just her shadow. No, you’re not even that. You’re a shadow of a shadow. Hmm… what would you call that? Shadow Squared? No, that won’t work.” The board and the tiles were flung past him. Nightmare Moon’s eyes were glowing in anger and her wings were flared out.
“What did you call me?!” she screamed. Discord blinked.
“That was unnecessary,” he deadpanned. “Apologize.”
“Never! I ask again: what did you call me?” Discord snapped his talons and two of the tiles were brought in front of him.
“Perhaps an explanation is in order,” he said. “Celestia and Luna control the sun and moon respectively.” The tiles were shown to the pony across from him.
“Pretend that this General tile,” he shook the left tile. “Is Celestia, and the other General tile is Luna. The two of them keep the cycle of day and night going so that the planet lives. When Luna became jealous, a version of you came into existence and you two became one and the same. This caused her thousand year sabbatical.” Another General tile came into existence and was brought to the right.
“While in the moon, both this version of you and Luna separated. You both inhabited the same body, but you had two different minds. Obviously, two beings could not embody the same thing. So the Scales were unbalanced. When the Elements of Harmony hit Luna with the weaponized rainbow, the second mind was destroyed, thus bringing the Scales into balance again.” The third General tile was set on fire. Nightmare Moon followed the ashes as they made their trip to the ground.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“What’s not to understand?” Discord asked. “You’re not the original Nightmare Moon. The original was killed when the Elements of Harmony purified Luna. Then again, purifying her did mean the death of a sapient being. So you can take pride in knowing that the Element Bearers may be wrapped with guilt for essentially murdering somepony.”
“You’re lying,” Nightmare Moon closed her eyes.
“Am I?” Discord swung his paw hitting the air. Cracks formed along the air as well as the room. The crystal room shattered and the two of them were left in an empty void. Hundreds of millions of voices spoke simultaneously while billions upon billions of images surrounded them. “We’re stuck in this void. All there is in here are the thoughts and memories of the living. You exist because Nightmare Moon is remembered. I was put here because my body and mind are in stasis. Since the original Nightmare Moon died instead of being put in stasis, you’re a copy of her created from memories.” Tears began flowing from Nightmare Moon’s eyes.
“Even if I am a copy,” she said. “I can still perform her will. I will bring eternal night to Equestria. And I will make them see the beauty of the night.” A fire that could ignite a thousand stars was in her eyes. The draconequus grinned.
“Here’s a little thing I learned the first time I was sent here,” the crystal room reformed around them. “While we can’t physically act in the material world, we can influence it. There are millions of thoughts here, and connected to them are millions of lives. We can direct the thoughts and emotions of any living thing on the planet.”
“Didn’t you say that you couldn’t cause any chaos?” the board and the tiles were once again brought between them.
“I said that I couldn’t personally perform acts of chaos, I didn’t say that I couldn’t convince others to do it for me,” Discord began placing tiles on the board. “If you can beat me in a game of xiangqi, I’ll show you how to influence the living. From there, you may be able to find a way to get to the physical world. Agreed?” The last of Discord’s tiles were set on the board. Nightmare Moon’s horn glowed and another set of tiles were placed on her side of the board in a similar fashion. A tile on her side was pushed forward.
“Agreed.”