//------------------------------// // Discord Revisited // Story: Back Corner // by MONSTERmama //------------------------------// Save your pity. I don't want it. Save your support. I don't need it. Tonight, I'm breaking free. Tonight, I shall fly once more into the night. But, weaker. Tamer. Gentler. Falsified, if you will. It's been so long since the bitter sting of the Elements trobbed in my chest. I suppose by now the literal child of my brain has died or has time traveled while trying to figure out where I'll pop out. I've felt her watching my, my granddaughter watching me, my hundreds of mutant children watching me. As usual, Iron Will is angry just to be alive. He's trying to do so much good to hide the fact he's so far gone. He'll give in one day because it's in his nature and I am his father. I am Discord, dethroned ruler of chaos. Wait though--! Like a snake consuming his own tail, I shall be the only constant once again, soon. My stone shell is cracking. By the time enough has broken off for me to resume physical form, I can feel the cold. I look up into the star dotted sky and laugh. It has come to this. The unicorns are raising the stars because the sun and moon have been turned back to the wild. I don't sense Celestia or Luna any more. Those two planets must have gone rogue. The air even tastes devoid of life. It tastes like copper and the hot end of car cigarette lighters. I sniff, then with a loud pop, Screwball appears. "I waited, Daddy," she said miserably. She's riddled with scars and I want to grind her bones into dust for letting anyone hurt her. She is my daughter--she is the child of a god! How dare she let some mortal think they could best her. I fix her with a stare. "I see that you have." With that, I take to flight and she levitates after me. I wonder briefly how long the stars have been in the sky. My powers are so weak now that I can't bother them if I tried. We travel for what could have been minutes or months. There are no ponies. Dying dragons litter the land. A few sparce phoenixes caw at us before flying into the languished volcaneos below. The warmth is gone. Cadance is dead, I assume. Have the changelins, in turn, starved with the death of love itself? I travel a while longer, Screwball resting on my back. As I arrive at the forsaken catacomb of a hive, Screwball whines. "Father, I'm hungry." I know for a fact that changeling honey tastes like lime jello. I tell her as much. She dives right in, eating two hoof fulls of possibly century old jelly before really thinking about how it tastes. Honey repels bacteria, though, and the world is one big freezer. She eats contently before I find the final queen of the changeling dynasty and bitterly move on. There is soon to be nothing left to plague. I look to Screwball. Next time, I think I will give her a proper mother. We will be more grounded and together. No one will deny that we are in fact to be respected. I will make an entire subrace to praise us! I realize we must have been gone a century because when I come back to the dragon graveyard, they are but frozen carcasses and Screwball's body is rigid on my back. I look around me. I am Discord, dethroned king of chaos. The universe of my creation has expanded as much as it will. It collapses in a rush as quick as the last big bang.