I opened the doors to the subject’s..my daughter’s cages. They shook themselves and stretched their legs while getting a bearing on their surroundings. I looked over to Dusk and quietly spoke, making absolutely sure my tone was calm, “You can go now, sweetheart, but don’t wander off and come back quickly.” She timidly walked around me and made for another hallway we had passed on the way to the test chamber. I squatted down to Dawn’s eye level and I gave her a hug. I never wanted to let her go; I never wanted this for her or her sister. “Mother, I don’t understand what’s going on. Why are you acting so funny?”
“Sweetheart, there is something very important I have to tell you. My friends and I, we made a really big mistake; we did a really bad thing, but we can’t fix it.”
She looked at me, worried confusion evident in her face, “But Mother, you’re a grownup! Grownups can fix anything!”
Dusk had come back at this point, and she was even more confused than her sister, “What’s happening?”
“Mother says she did a bad thing, and she can’t fix it!”
Dusk gave a little gasp and shook her head, “No way! That can’t be true!”
“I’m afraid it is, Dusk,” I wearily said.
“But if you can’t fix the bad thing, who can?”
I strengthened myself as best as I could, but even though I tried my hardest to remain calm, my next breath went into me sounding like a rattle, “I need you two to fix my problem for me and my friends.”
Both the fillies’ eyes widened in awestruck surprise. “We get to be like grownups now?” Dawn asked.
“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s going to be really tough, but I know you can do it.”
“You really think so Mommy?” Dusk looked up to me with innocuous ecstasy.
I faked my best smile, and put as much confidence in my voice as I could, “Of course.”
The crimson miasma that was Discord pulsated. Everything was in place now; here was the Rubicon to cross.
It was finally time. It was time to toss out all of the old toys.
The cloud pulsated frenetically as it slowly moved toward the containment door; every part of his being sung with joy for the events about to take place. The door, 3 inch triple A grade Osmium alloy was instantaneously transformed into a huge slab of butter, which Discord made short work of with a half dozen butter knifes. Alarms blared and shrieked to signal the staff of a break out of their prized creation; those cacophonous wails were like those of the angry damned souls of Hell itself. It was beautiful music to Discord; but this was only the prelude.
So many tried to run as it glided blissfully about. A woman shrieked in terror as the blood colored sphere of boiling energy approached her, and even as she turned around, she was transformed into a Raggedy Ann doll, still full conscious of who and now what she was. The doll ran for her life to cower in some corner of one of the facilities, and as madness slowly crept its way into her now cotton brain, she ripped herself limb from limb.
Elsewhere, security officers attempted to surround and incapacitate the red cloud, only to find that their bullets and lasers phased right through the astral abomination, and in turn their weapons were replaced with Candy cane replicas, and their very bodies were reconstituted into sentient licorice. Panic quickly gripped the likes of everyone, and Vanguard, last known home of humankind, was in the grip of madness itself, in the clutches of an artificial mad god. The trees in the botanical gardens had uprooted themselves to walk about, crushing absolutely anything that stood in their way. People fell from above, jumped from any structure they could find. Screams filled the air, as did bubbles two feet in diameter, some bubbles larger still housing captive humans. They tried everything to escape, but the bubbles were unbreakable from the inside. As soon as the bubbles and their occupants reached the cavern ceiling of the communal areas, though, they would pop, leaving for a 4.4 second dive through empty space. It was raining men.
The insanity of reality continued even as the silence of the dead filled every inch of the now empty rathole humanity had made for itself, and for a solitary instant, Discord was satiated.
Until he felt them. Two humans yet remained. That would change; everything changes when Discord is Lord.