Discord shot open one wing, corkscrewing down into the blackness with the presicion that could only come from years of repetitive practice. However, he was pretty sure none of the other ponies falling knew the twisted entrnace tunnels like he did. A few Pegasi had regained flight control, banking hard to pull up behind him. The Unicorns were channeling their magic into self-leviation and - for the more powerful - wings. It was the Earth Ponies that he was worried about.
"Hey! Past here, there's a sharp left before a straight down plummet. Keep going 'til you see light. Understand? Grab anypony who seems like they won't make it!"
His voice thundered down the narrow passage, alerting all falling through it. Almost instantly, the Earth Ponies were caught by hoof and magic, pulled off into the side tunnel. Discord slowed as they passed, waiting until the screams and wingbeats faded from hearing.
"Where are you?" He muttered, lifting his ears. Slowly, he activated the stored magic in the walls, illuminating the tunnel. He knew it was spreading out behind him, too, lighting a clear path for the rescued. But at the moment, he wasn't looking or them.
Trying not to look too hard at the few bodies that had hit the sides in concussive speed, he searched for his draconic companion.
"DISCORD!"
He jerked around at the scream, instantly seeing Sunrise clinging to the tunnel edge below, unused wings fluttering helplessly. Her claws were dangerously close to sliding off the polished edge. The tears streaming from her face as her back claws skidded over the stone weren't helping her grip.
"H-h-help me!"
With a burst of adrenaline, he surged upwards, wings streched as wide as they could possibly go. He really hated how Fulmen had enchanted the walls to his magic alone.
To keep you from running away. She had said. I'm your mother, and I know best. Now, go to bed.
She hadn't bothered to remove the bonds when he moved out. Or was turned to stone. Or she died.
The dragonness's claws finally slipped, sending her rocketing down the tunnel. The fall wasn't far as Discord matched her speed below her, dropping his speed slowly so she wouldn't be hurt when they hit. Flipping onto his back, he grabbed the orange blur and pulled up quickly, ignoring the claws fearfully jabbing into his skin. Following the ponies at high speed, he swerved through the tunnel, plunging down, slowly extinguishing the tunnel's light so he would know when to slow down.
The cold dust on the surface of a once-beautiful planet impossibly stirred. A creature sat up amid a cloud of lunar soot, coughing a few times to clear his lungs before realizing the air had vanished. Grumbling angrily, he mentally reminded himself of his origins, and switched to the magic way of breathing without lungs. Standing up in a puff of dust, he looked around.
The Shard is a curious thing. It is not a living creature, nor a lifeless object. It was neither shapeless nor fixed in a single form, and had no thoughts of it's own despite being of high sentenience. It simply should not have existed. But though dark thoughts and lies of precosmical matter, it had been spurned. And had directly enflamed the small wounds of the thing that would become the omniverse.
Through some twisted hand of fate, almost all of the Shard had embedded itself in Sky, and had manisfested into Kha'dighreel. The small part left had divided over the closest unfortunate planet - which contained a young Equestria. Lying dormant in the minds of thousands, it watched the goings-on for a long time. When the country was at it's weakest point, during a war with the neighboring Zebra tribe, the largest Shard dominated the childish mind of Luna, creating the Nightmare. The smaller peices reacted to this, creating the New Lunar Republic.
From then on was history.
In the end, while on the moon, the members of the Republic died, their short lives no match for a thousand years. The smaller Shard peices joined the largest, growing the Nightmare's powers. When the thousand was over, the Nightmare was more than powerful enough to shroud the world in darkness. And when it was beaten, it exploded into armor-like peices. The ponies and Alicorns had left. Under the cover of the next night, the armor dissolved into pale black smoke, rushing away as fast as it could into the Everfree.
Celestia's magic traps were set off the second the smoke left the castle, sending the rogue shadow into the sun with amazing force. And her powerful magic had held it there for a hundred years, and Luna's for a year more. But death considerably weakened one's power, and the Shard had clung on, waiting for the right moment.
One top of that, there had only been one other creature that could hold the Shard that had melted away from Sky. It had drained into Obsidian, slowly, subtley. And with the final missing peice, the jigsaw was complete.
The Shard had once again become whole.
The creature standing on the flat, dead planet was no longer Obsidian.
The draconequus's wings folded back to his side. Sunrise crawled out of his arms, planting all feet firmly on the ground and reassuring herself that it wasn't going to move - simoutaneously trying not to vomit.
"Let's see here..." Discord muttered, looking around the dim cavern. "Turn up the lights, calm everyone down," he paused with a frown, "get someone to scrape pony off the tunnel walls."
He tried to remember his childhood. Did Fulmen have any slaves? Minions? Golems? He couldn't remember any, but... heck, it was worth a try.
Clearing his throat, he tried to remember what 'come' was in Animalian, the language Fulmen had tried to teach him so he could talk to animals. He had gotten bored twenty minutes in, but she used it all the time, so...
He sighed and straightened up, letting off a series of uncharacteristic growls and clicks. The awkward noise echoed around the dark for a while, fading out gently. In the following awkward silence, Discord began to doubt his faded memories even further.
And then something small and furry ran over his toes.
Rolling his eyes, he once again accesed the only magic available to him at the time, lighting the massive cavern that he knew contained entrances to all the passages under the entire planet. For a creature with wings, they were easy to access. Maybe the Pegasi could explore later. But at the moment, the tunnels were full to maximum.
The upper tunnels, including the ones on the roof, were suddenly spurting bats, thousands of bats that clung to every vertical or overhead surface. From the single row of tunnels on the ground came creatures that were quite different - cats. And kittens.
"She just had to be genetically loyal." He snorted, watching as the animals lined up in military-straight rows, staring at him with glinting, nightly eyes. He felt Sunrise nervously lean against his side. The ponies were surprisingly calm - from shock or knowledge of biological intelllegence, he couldn't tell.
"Umm... heh... could you guys clean up? There's going to be a mess in the..." he trailed off at the dagger-filled glare from Sunrise. "I meant, there's dust in the tunnels. And clean up your chambers, we have guests."
The point must have gotten across, because the rows left orderly, vanishing through the tunnels. Two animals were left.
One was a giant tomcat. Not fat, just... massive. Two times larger than it should have been, claws showing through ginger-tabby fur. The other was an equally-sized bat, which flapped awkwardly down from the roof to land gracefully on the cat's shoulders.
There was a tense moment of silence between Discord and the large animals, in which the pair never moved their shining eyes from his.
"Dismissed."
The cat bowed before jogging off into a tunnel, the bat still perched on his shoulders.
The rescues were silent, in a surpringly awkward way. Discord sighed.
"There will be losses. Thousands, millions... we will be affected. But Obsidian took what control he had and saved us. Understand? There's food down here, water, housing... in fact, in a cavern like this, there's an entire, abandoned kingdom, castle included. Something tells me any help we'll get is from two specific mamilia, so make yourselves at home. We're safe here, safer than you ever were on the surface. Tomorrow, I'll find everything else that came down here and bring them to the castle.
"We aren't the only creatures down here. These opened all over the world, bringing species from all origins to safety. I don't know how many will have lived, but there are magic cushions on the ground floor activated when something plummets from a distance. Like bats. The only reason we had to save each other is because the tunnel we were taking went somewhere not so nice.
"So anyway, you may see different things from us. Not like the zebras or the buffalo are different. You might see dragons, sphinx, harpies, leviathans, pheonixi, Dogs, Quetzacoatl, Griffons, Ursas, Scorpios, Capricorns... they will be different. But they are just as lost and confused as we are. If they mean harm, alert me through magic or Animalic - for those who can speak it - and I will take care of the problem."
He waited until the ponies had huddled into confused groups and lay down for a good night's - i it could be called - sleep. Discord fell back on his haunches, leaning up against the wall and absentmindedly stroking Sunrise's back as she drifted off to sleep.
He looked up as a bat flew down from a roof tunnel, something grapsed in it's tiny mouth. The noctural creature landed gracefully on the side of Discord's claw, spitting out what looked like a scroll.
"Spike..."
Discord, I have a feeling this relates to your son. What happened? Is Sunrise okay? What about Twilight?
Flipping it over, he found that a black quill had been jabbed through the corner.
I'll talk to you tomorrow. Sunrise is fine. I can see Twilight too. Get your rest.
Wrapping the quill back up in the faded parchment, he set it back in the little creatures' mouth, watching it flutter away before dimming the glow of the stone and settling off to sleep himself.