//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: The Chaos Captial of the World // Story: A Heart of Stone // by BorgiaBrony //------------------------------// A Heart of Stone Chapter 7 It took a little under three hours for Discord to reach the outskirts of the darkened city of Stalliongrad. As he levitated over the city, he looked down upon the hundreds of ponies drudging through with the boredom of everyday life. “Not for long,” he thought happily to himself. He was determined to share with ponies the same joy chaos brought to him. “Hope I’m not too rusty,” he pondered as he lowered himself into the center of the city. As he came into view, he saw ponies shrink away from him, grimaces on their faces as they began to slowly back up. He was confused for a brief moment, but then he realized that they were clearly making more room for him and his chaos! Obviously! “But what to do first?” he asked himself. As he was thinking, he had to squint his eyes to protect them from a newfound blinding light. “You know,” he shouted to the unicorns shining bright beams of light on him, “blasting lights in the faces of other’s isn’t very polite!” Wait…That was it! The spotlights! What a perfect place to start some chaos! He threw up his arms, changed his hands to circular mirrors, and shone the lights right back at the unicorns, except this time, the beams were reflected with tenfold their original energy, and smacked them right off their feet. The ponies, once again, to Discord’s great confusion, began to scatter and panic just as the dragons at the colony had. “What is wrong with them?!” he thought out loud. “This is top shelf material here! Ah well,” he shrugged, “just keep on trying, they’ll get it eventually. It wasn’t long after he had released a small army of flying dictionaries on the city that it was completely deserted. A virtual ghost town. “Hmph,” Discord snarked to himself. “Prudes. They just couldn’t handle that much fun. I’m sure the ponies in the next town over won’t be nearly as boring.” This was the pattern of Discord’s life for the next two hundred years; going from one town to the next trying to spread his unique brand of chaotic humor. He would stop in each place for a week or two-or maybe it was a decade or two. He didn’t know as he never kept track- and just started making chaos. From Jell-o floors in Fillydelphia, to pepper shaker flowers in Maneiapolis, to yogurt geysers in Mareyland, and even to the zero gravity in Manehattan, chaos was everywhere and Discord wouldn’t stop until every single last river in Equestria ran red with fruit punch. And if the ponies weren’t enjoying themselves in his chaos? If they shed even a single lemon juice tear? Well, he would just have to try harder then, wouldn’t he? Try harder, but never with something he had already done before. Repetition would be predictable, unoriginal, and possibly worst of all: boring. He stood completely unopposed during this era, with one notable exception of one nighttime showdown in the sea-side city of Sharkham. It started as normally as any other day for Discord. He woke up on the roof of the Sharkham city hall and was greeted with a beautiful view of the sun rising over the ocean. “I could do with a nice breakfast,” he thought. So he snapped his fingers, summoned a chicken, and squeezed the bird until it laid two ivory eggs. Throwing the chicken aside, he popped the raw eggs into his mouth, swishing them around periodically. After a few seconds, he spat the eggs back into his palm, now fully boiled. “Now,” he said, “all I need is a little…” he looked out at the ocean. “Salt.” After flying down to the boardwalk and getting his running start, he did a cannonball into the ocean. The second his body made contact with the water, however, the water in the ocean evaporated and he was left with a basin filled with mountains upon mountains of sea salt. Over the course of the rest of the day, the last of the citizens were driven out of Sharkham (after a nasty incident involving a pack of junkyard dogs, a bookcase, and a tuba) and Discord was getting ready to head on to the next town on his journey back to Canterlot. Before he could even get himself off the ground, though, he was drilled in the back by a concussive beam of energy that sent him crashing into the purple soil below. Wiping the dirt from his mouth, he turned to face his assailant. “Do you care to tell me what in the world that was abo-“He froze up in the middle of his sentence. On the other side of the town square, adorned in lavish, sparkling jewelry, stood two alicorns. The stallion, whose green eyes stood out against the backdrop of his black coat and his miasmic, starry mane, nodded at his companion: a beautiful mare of stark yellow with a flowing brilliant orange mane. And with this confirmatory nod, the pair lunged at Discord from across the town, flying at him at breakneck speed. Discord, who was too surprised to process what was going on, stood there in wide-eyed fascination as the stallion rammed into him. Although he barely felt the impact, he was still knocked back well over six yards. A split second after he hit the ground, he could feel a cold tentacle wrap around his neck. When he opened his eyes, he could see that the stallion was using his mane to keep him in a choke-hold, while his companion was baring her glowing horn ever so close to Discord’s eye. He snapped his fingers in desperation. “Take me somewhere. Anywhere away from these two!” he thought, running out of breath. He teleported into a nearby house, gasping for air. He looked out a nearby window to see that the mystery duo was frantically searching throughout the town to find him. They didn’t utter a word, didn’t change facial expression, and didn’t show any visage of emotion. Who were these two? Why were they so intent on hurting him? And more importantly, what on earth did they have against his fun? He leaned up against the wall to decide what to do next. Run away? No, no, they’d just hunt him down again. Hurt them with his chaos? Never. He was a prankster, not a murderer (Cronus and his lackeys notwithstanding.) Then it came to him: a few days prior, when he went to gently poke a pony in the ribs, instead of flying sideways like he had intended, the maroon colt grew a sickly gray color and stopped embracing the order and structure he had known before. He had deemed this a power too dangerous for more frequent use, but now physical harm-maybe even death- was staring him right in the face. He had no other choice. He blinked to the top of the municipal building again. “Excuse me? You down there!” he shouted. “You’re not very good at hide-and-seek, are you now?” Not a second after he had finished his taunt, spells and curses flew past his head. No matter. He blinked to the top of a barn on the opposite side of the street. “Seems your aim isn’t particularly special either. I’ll bet you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn!” The alicorns were getting more and more furious with him, losing their focus and slipping into tunnel vision, all according to his plan. He blinked back into his original hiding place to get a better look at them. They were on the ground, slowly backing up into each other. Discord waited until there was just enough space in between the two. “Time to go,” he thought, and he blinked over in between the pair. Before they could react, he had already placed his hands on their backs. The color instantaneously flowed from their bodies, and by the time they turned around to face Discord, he was gone, watching on in the distance sitting atop a small schoolhouse. The alicorns looked at each other with hate in their eyes. They paced around each other for a few minutes, each one sizing up the other. That is, until the male flew into the air and once again resumed his volley of spells, only this time directed at his mate. The mare, refusing to be her former companion’s target practice, followed suit. Before long, the dark night sky was as bright as it was at noontime, completely lit up by the iridescent light of the alicorns’ spells. Discord watched the full-blown war that his attackers had created for themselves. It was becoming more and more a thing of beauty to his eyes. The colors, the lights, and the sheer unbridled chaos of it all were almost too much for him to handle. “I’ll have to do this more often,” he thought to himself with a grin. After ten minutes of magic warfare, the both the stallion and the mare were growing visibly tired. Tired, but still hateful toward the other. Summoning what appeared to be the last iota of might they had left in them, they each levitated a large building, and brought it over the other’s head, dangling it there. “Do it,” jeered the stallion, “You don’t have the guts.” “And you do?” asked the mare sarcastically. Crash. The two clouds of smoke and dust that resulted from each house conjoined to form one massive cloud of debris. From this cloud of evil, came two things: the stallion’s ornate crown, complete with a red gemstone, and one of the mare’s bracelets. Both bits of jewelry rolled across the ground until they stopped at Discord’s feet. “Nice gems,” he said to himself as he tried them on. They added quite a bit of style to Equestria’s bringer of good times, so he decided to keep them as the new parts of his wardrobe- meaning, of course, the ONLY parts of his wardrobe- and took off for the next city on his list.  Sometime later, he finally arrived at his destination: Canterlot. “After all of these years,” he thought to himself as the mountainside city came into view over the horizons. He had come a long way to get back here, a long way to get back to where he was happiest, and a long way to get back to Tia. But when he entered the city, he founded it almost abandoned. Not a soul was wandering the bustling streets of the Royal District, no pony was in the park, and no one was to be found in the buildings. “Strange,” Discord thought. “Usually towns don’t end up like this until after I arrive.” He shrugged it off and chalked it up to it being a pony holiday or something. He really didn’t care. He knew where to find the pony he was there to see. When he landed in the garden, a sudden rush of nostalgia rushed through his veins like a fruit punch river. It was all as he remembered it: the flowers, the hedge maze, and-her. There she was. After three hundred years of separation, now the only thing that stood between Discord and his only friend in the world was about forty yards. He licked his hand, slicked back his mane (which promptly stuck back up again, somehow straighter than it had been before) and began his eager march over to her. She was facing away from him. The perfect opportunity for a prank. Then, in a rare moment of doubt, he decided not to. “No. I’m not going to greet her like that. She deserves better. I’ll bet she missed me too.” He was only few feet behind her now. He tapped her on the shoulder. “Did you miss me, Tia?” he asked her playfully. “I missed you.” She remained silent. Discord grew anxious. “What’s the matter? No, ‘Hello! It’s a pleasure to see you Discord, my old friend!’?” Still no response. He tapped her again. If he hadn’t been listening intently, he never would have heard the gentle sob. He was then knocked off his feet by a dark blue and black missile. He was laid out on the ground before he fully realized who was standing over him, seething at him. “Luna? Is that you?” He took another moment to observe the dark blue mare with the miasmic, starry mane. “Wittle Woona! It is you! Do you remember me? I suppose not you were so small, but I’m sure Tia ha-.”She shut him up with a kick in his face. “HOW DAREST THOU ASSAULT THE ROYAL FAMILY OF EQUESTRIA SO GRIEVOUSLY? THOU SHALT CONSIDER THINESELF LUCKY, WRETCH, THAT WE DO NOT END YOU HERE AND NOW!” Discord, still reeling from Luna’s kick, spit out one of his protruding fangs, leaving him with only the one on the right side of his mouth. “What?” he asked, still in a daze. “What assault? I did no such thing!” Luna ripped the crown and bracelet from Discord’s body. “THESE! DID THESE ORNAMENTS NOT COME FROM TWO ALICORNS, SUCH AS OURSELF? ONE BLACK AND ONE YELLOW?” “Yes,” he said, “but I still don’t see how that…” It was only then that he realized what terrible mistake he had made. Could it be? Those two alicorns back in Sharkham were King Jupiter and Queen Solara?! “Oh mother, what have I done?” Luna stepped off of him and levitated him to his feet as Celestia returned to the scene with a bejeweled box. From said box, came out six gems unlike anything he had seen before. The gems were not levitated by either sister’s magic, but instead, lifted on their own, with Luna and Celestia with them. He gazed up at the two in awe as the gems rotated around each of them. Their eyes lit up with a bedazzling white light. And suddenly, a beam of all different colors shot out from behind them. It flew up into the sky, scraping the heavens, only to come fire back down on him. It felt like someone had dropped a few pillowcases full of bricks on his head. If there was one thing he’d remember about that day, it was the pain. The pain was terrible. He wasn’t encased in stone, as it would later be taught. No, his skin, marrow, organs, his entire being was completely turned into granite. It started in his feet and worked its way up to his chest. It was the most excruciating here, so he clutched his heart in agony. He looked up to scream, but the stone eventually glazed over his eyes. And then, there was darkness.