//------------------------------// // Recovering // Story: Me and My Lord of Chaos // by Abryssle //------------------------------// I woke again. Discord's arms, I quickly noted, remained around me in an encircling ring of limb. I looked up to the draconequus's face, and found his mismatched red eyes, shining down at me in the dark of the cave. "Hey," he said affectionately. "Whether or not I like it, that is still really damn creepy, you know." "Romantic," he countered. He gave a small kiss to my cheek, which I tried very hard to not let affect my exprssion. If there were a mood I felt regarding the moment, it would have been very hard to define. Buying myself time to think on that, I rolled onto my back, out of Discord's arms. "Aw, are you still embarrassed even by that?" "Shut up," I countered back, in a full serving of morning terseness. I stared at the cave ceiling a moment, and then, slowly, I lifted an arm into the air above me and experimentally flexed the fingers. They moved. They still had a sort of odd, ghostly feel to them, as though they were only partially there, but they moved easily and with what felt like some strength. Weird. Working, though. "You seem to have improved," Discord said. "I think so." "Can you move?" Discord said. I glanced over to him. His expression was serious, and a little excited. "Maybe." I tried to lift myself up to a seated position. It went easily—my body moved with that weird sense of ghostly weightlessness, as well, but if anything that seemed to make getting up easier than normal. I slid to the edge of the bed. Easy. I put my legs to the ground, which, after doing so, made me remember that I wasn't wearing shoes. The rock that met my socks was cold and damp even through the thin fabric, and rough as well, though not to the point of painfulness. Still, I jerked my foot up and gave a small start. Discord chuckled. "Well, you can move, certainly," Discord said. He lifted into the air from the bed, and with an odd, wave-like motion of his sinuous body seemed to crack his rather long back. Several times. I felt surprise at how unsurprised I was. "So," Discord said eagerly, bending over himself in the air to start hovering towards me. "Are you ready to go?" "Maybe," I said hesitantly. I swung my feet back onto the dry sheets so I wouldn't have to keep holding them up. "After I put on shoes, maybe." "New ones?" I looked at him. "Why?" "Well, the old ones are crap, and I can generate material objects on a whim. I'm just noting the possibility... Some stylish black boots, maybe?" I looked off the side of the bed to my old tennis shoes, which, according to my typical shoe traditions, were the only pair I had and had been worn already to the point of externally starting to collapse. So, halfway to the point where I would have actually made an effort to attain a new pair. Discord's face was simply smiling lightly as I peered back at it. "Sure," I said, with indifferent acceptance. My attention shifted to my feet, as the draconequus snapped on cue. Sure enough. New black boots, already extending up my leg underneath my pants. And as I noted that, I noted again my pants, and with them my other clothes, which had been worn (I could only guess) for roughly five solid days in a row. It wasn't the type of thing that would normally bother me, but I had barely moved throughout the time, and I could feel their stiffness even sitting still. "New clothes, too, maybe." "Why?" Discord asked earnestly. "I probably reek of... Well, me. So." "That's not the most terrible thing to reek of, you know," Discord said. "They're also stiff," I said after a moment. "Fine, fine," Discord said dismissively. Another snap. A fresh black t-shirt and black pants made out of whatever smooth material Discord kept generating clothes out of. Which was something that was perhaps worth questioning, actually. It's comfy and black. It's good enough, whatever it is. "Okay. Well. I..." My brain, set on going through the series of paranoid checks I went through whenever I left a place, seemed to struggle with the realization there was nothing to check. "I guess I'm ready to go. If we're going. But couldn't we wait a bit?" "Why would we?" Discord asked. And I had no solid answer. I could have given him an "I don't feel like it," but somehow that seemed an inappropriate route to take. "I don't know," I said calmly. "Excellent," Discord said, hovering beside me as I started to move my legs back off the bed. He smiled wide. "Let's be off, then!" I saw his fingers move together. A sudden epiphany gripped my mind. "Wait, Discord-!" The snap. The familiar flash of light. My eyes shut instantly at the sudden display of brightness assaulting my cornea, which didn't help the mix of ill-balanced position, lack of spatial awareness, and physical weakness that collaborated to let gravity drag me to the ground. It did so almost immediately, somewhat painfully. I sat a moment after it happened, anger immediately rising out of my ever-stewing emotional turmoil to steam at the surface. My eyes kept trying, boldly, to open again, but they closed again each time any light actually slipped in. "Yes?" Discord said, from somewhere to my right, evidently having picked up on my desire to speak. Before we teleported. "The element," I deadpanned. "Also, I was going to say I could try walking around before we went. Just. So. You know, I didn't immediately fall on my ass." "I brought the element along. And your ass will recover," Discord said cheerfully. "Plus, you're not in a cave anymore. Which is certainly wonderful for me, and probably for you as well." I held what I could only hope was an unreadable silence. "...Well, okay, I probably could have waited a bit longer," Discord added. "But come on. You gave me a maybe." "Yes. I did," I said, blinking. My pupils were finally contracting enough that my eyes might be able to open for an extended period soon. "It's just... I just woke up, I'm wearing new clothes that aren't really... Mine, and we've teleported from a cave I didn't know the name or location of to a new place I don't know the name or location of. And i'm still physically weak for barely understood reasons. Just... Give me a moment." To his credit, Discord did. He simply said, "Okay," turned around, and hovered a bit further away. He gave me more than enough time to have my eyes adjust, figure out vaguely what type of landscape I was in (grassy plains), and think for a moment or two. More importantly, to breath. Discord was waiting patiently now. I took several long, deep breaths, trying to release my energy with each. After a few, I felt sort of in control of my emotional range again—enough to think clearly. Calm. Calm... I'm out of it again. He was lonely, you cuddled with him, he wanted you to get back to health, he thought you were healthy enough to move—debatably, I am—and so he teleported us. To somewhere. To resume... Randomly wandering and doing shit, I suppose. He chose this field, so maybe he was aware I'm not at fully functionality yet. I cuddled with Discord, a stupid part of my thoughts echoed. For like half a day, if you count being cuddled up together in sleep. I'm newly clothed, and I can move, I repeated seriously to myself, voluntarily derailing the other train of thought. Calm. Back to... Well, not normal, but "normal" with-Discord behavior. "Okay, Discord. I'm good," I said. "Splendid," the draconequus said brightly as he snapped. He popped back into reality next to me, smiling. "What now, my liege?" "How should I know?" I said, as I got back on my feet. I looked around and examined the surrounding fields more closely. Almost entirely grass—there were a few heavily scattered trees a distance away, but that was the only non-grass vegetation, I could see—and it was excessively bright. Really bright. "Thinking. Not to put all the pressure on you—I do, in fact, think as well sometimes." "Where's the element of magic?" I asked, ignoring him and his cheery mood. He waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I put it in an inter-dimensional pocket. It's perfectly safe." "Well, then. Uh. We're good." "For what?" Discord asked insistently. "Whatever," I said dismissively. Discord said nothing, but he smiled. "So, let's get to that," I muttered under my breath. "Hmm?" "Teleport us to Ponyville," I said. "If we're gonna do things, let's do things." He raised his hand again, but paused as his fingers pressed together. "You wouldn't like to explore a new locale?" "Not in particular." "You sure? Canterlot could be fun. Celestia brings a rather delightful sense of helpless rage with her wherever she goes." I tried to consider what that would be like to see. Or confront. Frankly, I got caught up at the helpless part. Given what little of her I'd seen from the show, it was hard to envision her as truly, genuinely, pissed off and helpless. She was a godlike being, and she had magic. Helplessness didn't fit. Unless she was facing a stronger godlike being, I suppose. My eyes flickered back at Discord. "Either," I said after looking to the sky. "Lovely." He snapped. We appeared in a place that was clearly not Ponyville. Canterlot, logic whispered. It seemed to be, certainly; lots of white stone, with most of the buildings looking clean and new. Besides that, there were a bunch of well-dressed ponies staring at us with a sort of vacant surprise. My hand rose halfheartedly in greeting. Discord opted to give a sinister chuckle. The ponies slid away from us most going in silent fear or talking quietly to their fellows. Discord chuckled again. "Come on. Let's head to the castle. At minimum, the royal guards should have the guts evidently required to speak to us, even if they're terrible company." "How would you even know what the royal guards are like?" I said, following as he started off in what I could only assume to be the direction of the Canterlot Castle. "Eh, I have my ways." "Do your ways involve mind reading?" "Perhaps," he said cheerfully. "Though in this case, guessing seems to me like it would appear an equally likely method for attaining the knowledge." I gave a small nod, not that that served any point, with the draconequus in front of me. Each step I took felt off. It seemed that walking heightened my awareness of how weak my limbs still were-- The odd feeling that I had only phantom echoes where my legs and arms should have been was persistent, even though I clearly had both pairs of appendages. It was a distracting feeling, and it let me travel to the castle with a relative minimum of actually dwelling on what I was doing. Instead, I could just focus on my leg and Discord's renewed enthusiasm, which came with jokes and jest aplenty. Dwelling on what was happening might have been preferable, even though it seemed like I may have already lost the ability to ever see anyone I used to know ever again and had almost died. At least that was practical. I'm reflecting on my reflections, I thought as we reached the start of the path leading directly up to the castle. It was large, an intimidating and artfully designed structure. I wondered for a moment how long the castle could have stood there. Discord had finally, as we reached the entrance, grown quiet again. "Nice building," I said. "Hmm, yes." "...So, you expect they'll try to stop us?" Discord gave a snort of contempt. "Of course they will. They're the royal guard. And Celestia's certainly not going to be preparing hot cocoa for us." I thought a moment. The sensation in my leg grew intense for a moment, and I paused to give it a sharp shake with an irritated grunt. When I looked back up from it, Discord was looking back at me, with an expression that was somewhere between concern and amusement. "Sure you're okay, darling?" "Not particularly." I started walking again. Discord gave a small shrug of his shoulders and resumed walking too. The walk up the path leading to the castle was awkwardly silent. My eyes started to notice the spears on the walls of the castle. The royal guard, I thought. "Hey," I said. Discord looked over to me. "Could you prepare some hot cocoa for us?" "Yes," he said. He raised a hand. "I'll presume that means you actually want hot cocoa right now, right?" "Right," I said. He smirked and snapped, and two steaming mugs appeared. One in each of his hands. He offered one to me as we kept walking up. "I made it at drinkable temperatures, just for convenience," he noted. I would have smiled, but the idea of facing the guard, even with Discord at my side, felt kind of intimidating. So instead, I just said, "thanks." I sipped it as I made a quick estimation of how many spears and golden helmets I could see lining the castle walls. The taste did make me smile, and give an instinctive glance at my cup. It was perfectly blended. Perfectly. "Damn, that's good cocoa," I said after a second. We were almost to the main door, and still no one had challenged us. Discord nodded. "Indeed," he said simply. He raised a hand and snapped. I was almost unsurprised by it that time, to the degree that I didn't even drop my cup. We appeared where I imagined to be just inside the door. There weren't many guards immediately inside--There were two, one on either side of the door. They couldn't restrain their own shock. I waved a weary arm at one in greeting. "Don't move, he'll... I dunno." I took a sip from my cup after saying it. It sounded much more nonchalant than I felt. The guards seemed frozen, most likely in confusion. "We could tickle them if they attack," Discord said. "That," I said, jabbing my index finger at Discord for emphasis. I closed my eyes and gave a long exhale, willing my nerves to flow out with that breath. When I looked back to them the guards had gone from looking confused to pissed off. It was a restrained sort of anger—their faces were stiff masks full of sharp angles and lines, with subtle twitches. It was, perhaps, more frightening than if they'd just been looking murderous outright, and fear creeped into my body. "Well, thanks for the cooperation, gents, and enjoy your door," Discord said cheerfully. I followed closely behind him as we moved further into the castle. "So..." I began after we'd escaped earshot. "Don't worry so much, Aaron," Discord cut in seriously, before I said anything more. "You're with me. Nothing can harm you." The clear knowledge of my concerns, even unvoiced, was somehow rather reassuring. "...Thanks," I said after a moment. Discord smirked and nodded silently. We kept going. Occasionally, I'd see a castle servant, an occurrence which ended consistently with them noticing us and then darting away. It was still odd, being run away from. I didn't exactly feel like I should have been able to inspire terror. I wasn't a very capable terrorizer, being a presently physically-weakened teenager who hadn't exactly been strong in the first place, was rather diffident in general, and now was growing increasingly anxious (being reassured by a god evidently only helping me so much, perhaps due to the fact that relying on chaos was something of an oxymoronic concept) about the fact that we had encountered no further guard presence. I grabbed Discord's left hand with my free right, making sure my mug stayed level in my other hand. The draconequus gave a quiet, drawn out, 'Awww!' which I promptly ignored, though no doubt I was blushing now. He gave no further commentary, but his talons slid between my fingers receptively and gripped back. His hand was strong, and it embodied the force of his presence well. Having my hand in his lent back a bit of mental fortitude to my external sense of serenity. "You know," Discord said from seemingly out of nowhere, as we approached a staircase. "Sometime I think I should try being a human, just for the fun of it." "Eh, maybe. I dunno. It'd probably be kind of boring," I said. "Do you really think so? I would think it'd warrant at least a try. See your response, you know. I bet I'd look rather dashing." "You're already fine," I said casually, though halfway through my words became sharper in quality, given an awkward edge by my cognitive realization of what I was doing. Discord glanced down as me as we ascended the steps, smiling down with that perfect level of restrained, anticipatory laughter as to imply that he could have made a quip, and was only not because not making a quip or comment there was, in a fashion, a quip or comment. Especially in conjunction with his expression. "Halt!" came a sudden cry, with the air of a command. I glanced down the hallway at the top of the stairs, and it became immediately evident where the guards had gone. Or at least some of them. There were a lot of them, in that hallway, at least a score, maybe two. The idea of being afraid again occurred, but was swiftly rejected, both due to Discord's yet reassuringly present talons and the prioritized process of scanning for the one who'd delivered the order. I had recognized the voice immediately; my sight quickly yielded recognition as well, mostly because he was wearing his easily identifiable and slightly ridiculous purple armor. Ooh, Shining! said the tiny part of my conscious mind that was still geeking out about everything. Time to confront Shining, the bigger part said. Ooh, Shining! said the tiny part insistently. We had halted. There was an awkward moment where nothing happened, where no one moved or spoke. Shining looked perhaps the most awkward of everyone there, averting his gaze from us and adjusting his mane with a hoof, apparently not caring about how unprofessional it looked. "Any planned proceedings after that, my dear... Hmm." Discord turned to me. "Aaron, who is this?" "Shining Armor," I said quietly. "Ah, okay then. Any planned proceedings after that, my dear Shining Armor?" Discord concluded. "Stop you, Discord," he said seriously, stiffening his pose and hardening his face as he did so. "No, we've already stopped. After that," Discord said. Shining just stared for a moment. I felt like I should have said something, perhaps something witty, or... anything, really, just something to justify my presence. Of course, I had nothing to say, a fact I cunningly concealed by taking a long drink of hot chocolate. Discord, evidently finding this amusing, did the same with his mug. We hadn't yet let go of each other's hands, so basically we were drinking in unison while for no logically apparent reason holding hands and not doing anything violent. "...Uh-" Shining tried to start, but the poor captain was already sort of done for. He didn't seem sure of what to do. "...Yeah..." I said, after a few more seconds. Nopony said anything. "Hi, guys. How's work?" God, I thought. That was awkward. As could have been predicted, nopony said anything. Again. Discord chuckled. "Guys, are we going to be allowed to go through, or do we have to go through you? Because, and I mean this with sincere concern for your well-being, I can. You're not the best defense. Kind of futile." Discord took another sip from his mug after saying his part, gave his remaining cocoa a cursory glance, and then let go of the mug. It didn't fall, instead hovering precisely where and how he released it. "And terrible conversationalists, on the note of your failings. You can respond to us being here, if you're not going to attempt to stab us or other silly thing of the like." "You'll never rule over us," a random guard said. "True. Rule would be something of a strong term for what I intend to do over you--mostly I plan to sit. On a nice chair." He paused a moment, as if seriously envisioning his grand plan for the future (though I couldn't really say for sure that he wasn't). "Really, I'm mostly in this whole 'invasion,' thing for the sweet chair privileges and fancy titles." Shining looked sharply at the guard who'd spoken. The guard looked away, ashamed, for a second, and then went back to looking normal. Shining turned back to us. "We're just here to do what we can to stop you-" "So, nothing, then," Discord said. Shining ignored this. "-as has the royal guard for any and all threats to Canterlot and Equestria," he finished. "Guys?" I interjected meekly. "What is that?" one of the guards in the second row back said in reaction to my speaking. "I don't know," one of the others said. "Discord, could we just, like, teleport forwards?" I said with an air of whining. "We're doing nothing here. And I'm getting stressed out." "No," Shining said, as his horn started glowing bright blue. He sounded only sort of confident about the matter of us not teleporting, but the shield that suddenly sprung up around me and Discord was definitively real. My body underwent an involuntary flinch at the sudden sphere of energy appearing around us, which had the unfortunate result of making my cocoa splash out of my mug. "Damn!" I muttered instinctively as I jerked backwards. The brown liquid ran down the sphere of energy like droplets of rain on a window, towards my feet, located at the base of the shield. Discord was poking the barrier with his lion's paw, seemingly unconcerned. His claws scraped the shield. The guards watched silently. "Hmm," Discord said. "Not bad, Shiny. I'm not sure I can teleport through this." "What?" I said in exasperation. "It's an impressive barrier. I think it even seals in magic." "So you can do basically anything, but not teleport out of this?" I said, slight disbelief turning to irritation. This encounter was becoming fairly stupid. The guard couldn't do anything to stop us, in the long-term. Having to stand in front of them doing nothing was growing annoying. "Yep," Discord said calmly, looking over to me. He snatched his mug out of the air again, and took a sip before giving a contented sigh. "Anti-magic fields are pretty good at stopping magic. It's what they do, in case you hadn't deduced." The draconequus proceeded to look back to the multitude of ponies outside the bubble, now shifting around uncomfortably, uncertain of the need for their continued presence. "Did ole' Celly seriously order you all to just stop us from moving to no practical end? That seems somewhat stupid." "Yes, she did. And you apparently can't do anything from in that shield, so in my view, we've just won," Shining said with resolution. His evident success had clearly rebolstered his confidence; I found that rather silly, even from in the bubble. He was just delaying us, basically. And all the other guards had yet to do anything, and were basically standing around useless. Though... in fairness, I don't think I'd be prepared to take on an alien and a primordial force of chaos on an average day either. We sat there a bit, awkwardly silent again. I wondered what the individual guards were thinking. Most of them had assumed blank, serious faces that betrayed no feeling whatsoever. Shining had his face set in a mask that was only slightly more emotionally expressive, one of grim resolution. Staring at them had little point. I looked to Discord, instead--He was really the only other thing to look at, excluding the spilled cocoa, which I was. He was just thoughtfully stroking his goatee, with his right paw, indicating he'd put his mug back in the air. I just watched that for a couple of seconds, and then his red eyes looked to me. They shrunk just slightly, and a wide smile broke out on his face. He looked back to Shining. "You're stupidly dutiful and not a very good leader, for the captain of the royal guard. But you do seem a decent fellow. And, of course, watching us be trapped in a bubble motionless can't be too much better than being motionless in a bubble. How'd you like some entertainment?" Shining looked suspicious immediately. "Entertainment?" "That is what I said, yes." Discord looked to me. "Say, how would you like to make the rough sum of 30-ish royal guards feel incredibly uncomfortable while trying to maintain a dignified facade?" Not at all, I thought. But instead of that, what came out of my mouth was, "I... don't know...?" "Wonderful! Let's make out."