To my immense disappointment, no more baddies got in my way.
I was expecting Nicky to keep throwing his cannon fodder cultists at us, and maybe even hit us with a couple more of the pet Denarians he had up his sleeve. Even if none of them managed to get past my defenses to cause any casualties, just fighting off the attacks would cost us. Nicodemus and Discord were already bad enough news as it was–forcing us to face them tired and worn out would make it worse.
Which just left me with the question of why Nicky had backed off on the attack. There was really only one conclusion that made sense–for perhaps the first time in his life, Nicodemus might have been dealing with me in a semi-honest fashion. Maybe he really did just want out by this point, now that he’d gotten whatever he wanted from his arrangement with Discord. Hell, maybe he was even starting to regret letting an evil spirit of chaos that had apparently slipped beyond his control loose in the world, if for no other reason than the fact that Discord was out-eviling him.
Honestly, having him turn tail and make a run for it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen for us from a tactical point of view. We’d been putting up a good fight so far, but nobody was going to complain about the upcoming final battle being a little easier on all of us. The ponies were worn out, physically and emotionally. Over the last couple days, they’d gone from living in their happy little cartoon world to being thrust into a world full of war, pain, and death. Hell’s bells, Fluttershy and Rarity still had some of Derpy’s blood in their coats.
But despite everything they’d gone through, they were still pushing forward. They might be tired and battered, but they weren’t broken. Rainbow Dash had nearly died a couple times, and Twilight had taken one hell of a physical and psychological beating, but they weren’t letting that stop them. No matter how bad thing got, we were all going to see this thing through to the end.
As bad as it had gotten, we were almost through this thing. Stars and stones, we were ninety nine percent of the way done–we just needed to take on the evil god of chaos and the ancient head of an order of psychotic demonhosts, and we’d be done. When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound too bad. Heck, the rest of this should be a cakewalk.
My leg was still twinging in pain as we walked. Stabilizing Derpy had taken pretty much every bit of juice Lash had to spare, so there hadn’t been anything left over to fix up my bunny-bites (stop laughing, those really hurt) or Rainbow’s damaged wing. At least Fluttershy and Rarity had managed to bandage us up reasonably well. Sure, my leg still hurt every time I took a step, but I’ve learned how to deal with pain. You have to, if you wanna last in my line of work.
It was pretty easy to tell when we finally arrived at Discord’s base. I’m admittedly not that familiar with any city other than Chicago, but I’m pretty sure Vancouver normally doesn’t have a giant upside-down castle that somehow managed to combine eye-burningly bright pinks and greens in some kind of plaid pattern, and then covered all that in yellow polka-dots.
The giant neon sign labeling it ‘Discord’s Top-Secret Hidden Base (Shh!)’ was also a pretty good hint.
Since Discord’s headquarters obviously didn’t have anything as sane and ordinary as a front door, I was at a bit of a loss for how we should get in. I was about to go with the direct approach of using a couple blasts of pure kinetic force to make my own door when I saw someone walking towards us.
From the looks of the guy, he’d been one of Nicodemus’ cultists at one point. However, he’d swapped out the urban-pattern military camo most of Nicky’s goons had been wearing for something about as insanely garish as Discord’s headquarters. It also, to my immense discomfort, had what were almost certainly deliberate coverage gaps. I could’ve gone my entire life without finding out what kind of equipment Nicky’s goons were packing downstairs.
The apparent Discord cultist opened his mouth, and a foot-long tongue spilled out of it. Well, maybe that explained how he’d managed to steal some of Nicodemus’ thugpower–getting a tongue back would make for a fairly nice recruitment incentive. Or maybe it was just another example of Discord’s twisted sense of humor–Nicky’s goons had no tongues, so Discord’s would be extra tongue-y.
The cultist tried to speak, but between the fact that he’d probably only recently gained the ability to talk at all and the fact that he had to work with a ridiculously long tongue, it was kinda hard to actually make it out. “The gheat 'ohd Discohd wi' thee yoo now. Pease follow ‘e.”
The cultist walked over to a giant slide set into one side of Discord’s crazy castle, and took a seat. As soon as he was in position, he started going up the slide, because apparently gravity was working in reverse now. I guess the upside-down castle made that obvious. To be honest, Discord tended to mess around with the basic laws of reality so much that I was starting to get a little jaded about the whole experience. There’s only so much total insanity you can throw at someone before their brain stops trying to tell them that this shouldn’t be happening, and instead they just start kind of dully nodding and accepting it all.
The worst part was, while it was definitely in the top ten, Discord’s whole crazy palace of insanity wasn’t the most insane thing I’d seen. Wizards tend to have weird lives. Like that time when I killed a Black Court vampire with a turkey, that was a real winner.
I wasn’t too sure about going up Discord’s crazy slide of anti-gravity though. Discord did seem to have the taste for theatrics that’s a must for any Saturday morning cartoon villain, but as a general rule letting the baddies run your transportation is not a smart move. It wouldn’t exactly be hard for Discord to just dump us into his dungeon or whatever.
Before I could get around to sharing that particular thought, Pinkie Pie shouted, “Whee! That looks like fun!” and jumped onto the slide. A slightly annoyed-looking Rainbow Dash followed her a second later, and before long the rest of the ponies were headed up too.
Well, so much for caution. Sanya shot a look at me, gave a bemused shrug, and then hopped onto the slide behind the ponies. After a moment, I resigned myself to giving into peer pressure and hopped onto the slide as well.
It's not fun when the dumb muscle wizard with anger issues and a tendency to leap into dangerous to suicidal situations is the last to jump into the latest suicide mission. Well, at least we could count on Discord treating us to a horribly hammy monologue instead of doing something pragmatic like just shooting us.
The slide took us up to the top of Discord’s palace, and next thing I knew there were a couple dozen of Discord’s brand new cultists, all pointing guns at us.
Oh. Well crap.
That’s what I get for making assumptions.
I tried to bring a shield up, but just protecting myself wasn’t good enough–much as I’m a fan of saving my own ass, Sanya and the ponies weren’t bulletproof, and the range was way too close for them to pull off any kind of dodging. The half second I needed to expand my shield out enough to try to cover everyone was half a second I didn’t have to spare–the instant we’d landed, the cultists pulled the triggers, and their guns started roaring.
And then we all started getting pelted with Nerf darts.
The guns pointed at us looked exactly like the real deal, complete with muzzle flash, the smell and sound of gunpowder, and shell casings going flying. But instead of being riddled with bullets, the only thing hitting us was soft foam darts. Stars and stones, the Nerf projectiles were about twice as wide as the barrels of the guns they were flying out of, and clearly wouldn’t fit into the ammo clips either, but Discord’s brand of crazy clearly didn’t care about details like that.
After we’d all been thoroughly Nerfed into oblivion, the cultists stepped back, pulled out a bunch of umbrellas, flyswatters, feather dusters, and other bizarre items, then crossed them overhead like they were some sort of honor guard. Then they started cheering us on.
“Go Dresden!”
“Kick Discord’s ass, Rainbow Dash!”
“Smack him with the motherfucking rainbow of friendship, Twilight!”
Okay ... this was moving a couple places higher on my list of weirdest things that have happened to me. I swear, Discord must really want to snag the top spot on list of freaky stuff. Maybe that was his goal–to live on in my memory as that one guy who did the craziest things I’d ever seen, even a hundred years after he’s been re-statue-ified by the ponies. Makes perfect sense really–the world does revolve around me, after all.
After a bit of hesitation, we started going through Discord’s strange little honor guard arrangement. From the way Discord generally seemed to work, it was a fair bet that those umbrellas and feather dusters were very dangerous weapons. Discord did seem to work on a strange sort of anti-logic that was almost predictable in how insane and unpredictable it was.
I’m not sure what I expected to find when we entered Discord’s lair. Probably something crazy, bizarre, and in total defiance of any form of sanity. That’s probably why instead of the pit of madness, Discord had a fairly ordinary sort of office type place–because right now ordinary was about the last thing I would’ve expected from him. Honestly, if not for the fact that a couple of his looney-looking stolen cultists were in the room, I might’ve almost believed that we’d somehow gotten away from all the crazy.
Just to cap off the madness of mundanity, Discord suddenly popped into the room, dressed in the closest approximation to an ordinary business suit a ... whatever the hell his species was could wear. “Now now, we need to work faster.” He shot a critical look over the non-cultists, which I could probably safely assume were the production crew for the ponies’ cartoon. “Cupcakes was a big hit, but we’ve only got a week to finish up Rainbow Factory and Sweet Apple Massacre! So many wonderful stories, and so little time to share them all with our adoring audience!”
Pinkie sat back shaking her head at the mention of those two names--whatever Discord was talking about was bad enough to put her on her rear. I mean, she’d been sickened at what had almost happened with her back in Canterlot, but I saw a special kind of horror in her eyes. The kind I’d felt when I saw how extensively Nicodemus had tortured the Archive to try and break her. I’ve got no idea what Discord was up to, but if it was anything like what he’d done to Pinkie ... no way I was letting him do that.
“Hey asshole!” That got his attention. “Infriga!” Before the freaky chaos-creature even knew what hit him, there was a giant Discord-shaped block of ice imprisoning him. Not that I was going to stop there. “Forzare!”
Next thing everyone knew, they were covered in little frozen chunks of Discord. Huh, well that worked a little better than I expected. “Poor bastard just went to pieces.”
Before I could do too much basking in my triumph, I saw all the little frozen Discord-chunks start moving on their own. Within a couple seconds they’d all gathered back up into a single mass, and then Discord was back, looking no worse for the wear. I suppose I should’ve expected that, but just once I’d like to get into a fight with some big nasty that really does go that easily.
“Oh come on!” I leveled my blasting rod at Discord like an accusing finger. “You totally ripped that off!” I looked around for someone (or pony) to back me up, but nobody seemed to be jumping on the opportunity. I let out annoyed grumble. “Doesn’t anyone watch the good old classics anymore?” I put on a very bad imitation of an Austrian accent. “‘I’ll be back.’ ‘Hasta la vista, baby.’ Anyone?” Still no takers. Darn, you’d think with this many people around there would be a couple people who might appreciate my sense of humor. “You people need to get out more.”
Well, if I’m being fair, I suppose most of the normals were probably just in shell shock from seeing a wizard suddenly charge into the room and blast the fictional character that had somehow come to life in order to torment them. That’s the kinda thing that catches a lot of people by surprise, for some reason, and leaves them a bit too stunned to appreciate my wonderful sense of humor. Kinda hard to laugh at a good reference when your brain’s too busy thinking ‘Oh God, what the fuck just happened?’ on a repeating loop.
Then again, maybe Discord should get a pass on stealing his recovery method, since I suppose the freeze and shatter trick came from the same movie. Oh well.
If ice wouldn’t do the job, then maybe it was time fall back on the old classics. When in doubt, set it on fire. That usually works. Just to be sure, I put a little Soulfire into the spells to give it some extra kick. “Fuego!”
A bar of blue-white fire shot out of my blasting rod, straight for Discord’s head. He might be tough, but fire is one of the best elements out there for causing irreversible damage. It’s a magically and spiritually purifying force, and even a near miss can be devastating. Sure, Discord had survived Celestia’s fire magic, but now I was flinging fire in my universe – one that works according to sane rules, not crazy cartoon logic. I had a chance to at least do some damage.
Right before my blast would’ve hit him, Discord casually reached up and plucked the blast of fire out of the air like it was an annoying fly. Then he snapped the talons on his free paw to produce two slices of bread, and made a sandwich out of my spell. Then he did ... well what most people do after they make a sandwich. He ate it. “Ahh,” Discord let out a satisfied little belch of flame. “Spicy.”
Okay, I was clearly a little outmatched here. That was okay, I’ve dealt with being outmatched one way or another for pretty much my entire life as a wizard. It’s just part of how things go. Being the underdog never stopped me from finding a way to do some damage–it just meant I needed to drop the brute force approach and start getting creative.
I took a quick look around the room, and spotted my chance. Crazy as it sounds, Discord’s insane physics-defying fortress wasn’t exactly built up to code. From what I could tell, the only thing keeping it standing was a couple very interesting and completely freaky spells. Discord’s magic was obviously on a completely different level from mine, but one of the nice things about the way magic works is that it’s a lot easier to destroy than it is to create. “Nullus!”
Without Discord’s crazy magic supporting it, a chunk of the ceiling right above the chaos god gave into gravity and collapsed, burying Discord under a couple tons of solid rock. “Looks like Discord,” I paused for dramatic effect, “...just got stoned.”
For some reason, that prompted Pinkie to scream "Yeeeeaaah!" and put on a pair of sunglasses. I don’t even try to understand why she does the things she does anymore.
The rocks I’d dropped on top of Discord crumbled, and once more he emerged more-or-less unscathed. Well, unless you count the fact that his entire torso was making like an accordion. Literally. It was even playing the show’s theme song.
“Uh, Harry?” Applejack shot me one of those looks I tend to get whenever I’m being less than completely brilliant. “Maybe you oughta just let us use the Elements on him instead of tryin’ to blast him with your own magic.”
Gotta admit, she probably had a point. So far all my spells had accomplished was to tap out a chunk of my energy and leave my fragile ego in ruins. Still, even if I couldn’t take Discord down completely by myself, in a fit of righteous wrath, I should be able to make, well, some kind of meaningful contribution. “Alright Applejack, you and the other get ready while I ... I...”
Okay, so I kind of lost my train of thought halfway through that sentence. In my defense, a lot of wizards would be distracted by discovering that their blasting rod had just been transformed into a rubber chicken.
Dammit, I’d just finished carving a new blasting rod and staff to make up for the ones I lost in the whole thing with the Red Court, and now on my very first outing with them I’d gotten my staff used as a chew toy by the rabbit from hell, and now my blasting rod was gone too. “What’re you gonna do next, take away my duster?”
Okay, I really should’ve known better than to say something like that. He didn’t even let me empty out the pockets before he zapped it away. Good thing I’d left all the Denarian coins I’d picked up back with Lash, or we would be in serious trouble.
Sanya grinned at me and declared with the sort of fatalistic optimism that only a Russian could manage. “Look on bright side, Harry. At least you still have your dignity.”
Discord snapped hit talons again, and the rest of my clothes were replaced with stiletto heels, a bright pink feather boa, and white boxers with little red hearts on them. After a couple seconds of precarious wobbling, I fell flat on my face–it was my first time wearing heels. “Dammit, Sanya.” At least all the magic I’d been throwing Discord’s way should have fried any cameras or other recording devices, so hopefully this wouldn’t be immortalized on film.
Sanya just smiled at me and shrugged, as if to say ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist.’
I nearly had my eardrums blasted out by a high pitched feminine shriek of horror. “Oh Celestia, it’s hideous!” Rarity fixed her eyes on me, and her horn started glowing bright blue. “Discord, you monster. This is a crime against fashion!”
One bit of unicorn magic later, I was back in my old clothes, except that now they were ... Rarified. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she wouldn't just restore my old T-shirt and jeans, that was far too drab for her. The good old black duster was intact, but now I was stuck in a dark red button-down shirt and black slacks. At least I hadn’t been decked out in overdone war bling, and it was certainly a massive step up from what Discord had left me wearing. “Rarity, I could kiss you.”
For reasons that I’m sure had absolutely nothing to do with anything other than friendly concern for her completely platonic friend, Applejack glared at me when I said that. Hell’s bells, giving ponies souls and free will really did cause all kinds of weirdness.
For her part, Rarity blushed a bit at and tossed her tail in a way that had nothing to do with swatting away insects. “Really now darling, it’s nothing worth making a fuss over. I wanted to give you something a bit nicer, but I think my gem-finding spell doesn’t work properly on your world. I can’t even find a single fifty carat sapphire.”
Okay, time to clear this up before I got into trouble–or worse, started giving Discord ideas. “Just for the record, I’m not a ponysexual.”
“I could change that.” Discord looked a little too intrigued by the thought.
Okay, that wasn’t happening. There definitely wasn’t a hint of panic in my voice as I called out to the ponies. “Hey girls? You ready to start blasting him with the magical friendship yet? ‘Cause now would be a really good time to do that.”
“Oh yes, by all means, ‘friend’ me.” Discord casually lounged back over a couple cubicles, much to the dismay of the poor animators occupying them. “Assuming your Elements would even still work on me in the first place. After all, we’re not in Equestria anymore.” A particularly nasty grin appeared on his face, and he casually steepled his mismatched hand/paw/talon things. “So tell me, girls, how does it feel to know that your entire lives are nothing more than the fantasies of these upright primates?”
Sanya frowned at the spirit of chaos, as though he was trying to decide whether sticking Esperacchius into him would accomplish anything. The Swords of Cross are pretty darn powerful, but with how crazy Discord tends to make things there’s no way to be sure. Well, unless Sanya tried to stab him. It usually becomes pretty clear if you are hurting something when you stab it with a holy sword. “You do realize that the same applies to you? You are also cartoon character.”
Discord brought his lion paw hand up under his chin while pondered that for a bit, then just shrugged it off. “Me specifically, maybe. But the concept I represent? Eternal. Besides, I think I’ve rather turned the tables on my so-called creators, wouldn’t you say?” Discord snapped his talons and teleported over to Fluttershy, giving her a couple condescending little pats on the head. “But you poor little ponies never did manage to take control of your own destiny, did you? The minute you fall off the script, you all turn into a bunch of killers. Do you actually think your friendship is real, or just something a bunch of writers came up with to teach little girls a few cockneyed lessons about friendship?”
Rainbow tried to fly up into Discord, but having one wing bandaged against her side kept that from working. Instead she settled for smacking one of his legs with a hoof, which didn’t seem to accomplish anything other than getting his attention. “Who cares if we're a buncha cartoons? We're still gonna kick your sorry ass!
“Darn tootin'!” Applejack nodded as she pawed at the floor. “We mighta started out as a buncha cartoon critters, but we're a hay of a lot more than that now!”
Fluttershy surprised me by speaking up, and sounding surprisingly assertive about it. “It doesn't matter how we were created, whether we were born the normal way or made by cartoonists. What matters is that our friendship is real.”
Discord let out an evil little chuckle, shrank down, and started tap-dancing on my head. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t even get a grip on him to get him off. “Oh, but don't you see?” The evil god of chaos asked mockingly. “Your friendship isn't real. It wasn't you who built your friendship. Not really. These oversized monkeys made you do those things. Your entire lives are lies. All it would have taken was the a few lines on a script to end it all.”
Rainbow Dash ran up to me and got up on her hind legs, planting her forehooves on my shoulders for balance so she could look Discord more-or-less in the eye. I staggered back just a bit when she put her weight on me–these ‘little’ ponies might be small compared to real horses, but they still had a nice chunk of mass behind them. If I didn’t have my Winter Knight mojo bumping up my strength some, she probably would’ve knocked me over completely. “I don't care. So what if some weird humans made us? My friends are my friends, and nothing you say is going to change that!”
Discord finally stopped tap-dancing on my head, much to my relief, and returned to his normal size. “Maybe what I say won’t change your mind, but what I write will. Don’t forget, little ponies, I control your world now.”
“Go ahead and write whatever you want!” Rainbow shot right back. “None of your stupid words are gonna beat me! Gimme your best shot!”
“Yeah!” Pinkie turned her head to the side, and then said nobody in particular. “Besides, I've known we were cartoon characters since forever.”
Discord grinned and rubbed his paw/talons. “With pleasure. Monkeys!” Discord snapped his talons, and suddenly the room was completely full of monkeys. Monkeys with typewriters. Admittedly some of them were opting to fling poo at each other instead of actually typing, but maybe that’s just part of the creative process. Writers can really get into arguments about the smallest things, from what I have heard. At least these weren’t flying demon monkeys with flaming poo.
Yes, those do exist.
Discord looked over his new collection of primate minions. “It's been said that a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters can write Shakespeare. I'm sure I'll manage to write a story filled with terrible spelling, bad characterization, and nonsensical plot structure to end you all.”
For the next minute or so, the sounds of monkey’s pounding away madly at the keys filled the room. I guess Discord hadn’t gotten the memo that I’d uncoupled the ponies from their cartoon roots by doing something completely insane. Nothing he wrote would have any effect on them. I liked being the one holding the critical bit of information for once.
When a whole lot of nothing kept happening, Rainbow smirked at Discord. “Gee, looks like whatever trick you tried isn’t gonna work, doesn’t it?”
For once Discord seemed to be at a loss for words. Pinkie Pie was quick to fill in the gap. “What's wrong? Cat got your tongue? Weasel got your whistler? Sea ponies got your shoo be doo?”
Discord grimaced and snatched a script out of one of the typewriters. “Let's see... terrible plot, Mary Sue self insert, poorly written dialogue, out of character actions, an ending that doesn't make sense and gives the characters no real choices, a moral that’s implemented in an unnecessarily cruel and hurtful way and contradicts the events of the story itself, it's all here.”
Discord shot another look at the ponies, clearly hoping they would decide to turn all evil and stupid on him. “Well, I suppose they can’t all be winners.” Discord crumpled the script up into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder, where it promptly exploded into a mass of whipped cream and streamers. After a couple seconds, the monkeys and their typewriters did the same.
Discord sighed and rolled his eyes, then started popping the knuckles on his talons and cracking his neck. “So trickery is out then. I suppose I should congratulate you on actually managing to get one past me, but in all honesty I’m just a bit sad that it looks like we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. How cliche.”
“Says the saturday morning cartoon villain,” I grumbled under my breath.
Twilight stepped up, her horn glowing as she readied her magic. “I've read enough books to know one more cliche–in the end the good ponies always win, and the villains always lose!”
Discord didn’t even dignify that with an answer, he just shot Twilight an annoyed look and waved a paw in her general direction. Twilight countered that with a shield-bubble spell that I recognized as her big brother’s. Unlike my shield spells, her’s actually blocked Discord’s crazy chaos magic.
Stupid unicorn magic. I bet they could get away with stuff just making a shield that blocks any and all bad stuff. Meanwhile, if I don’t remember to make a shield bracelet that specifically blocks ambient heat (and uses up a little more magic to do it), I get a roasted hand that would’ve been rendered completely useless if not for my wizard healing thing. I really need to see if there’s a way to use unicorn magic without being all horny. Maybe I could swap out being the Winter Knight for being the Equestrian Knight?
Discord seemed just as aggravated as I was by how disgustingly versatile and powerful Twilight’s magic could be. “So which cliche shall you pull out now? Your rainbows and sunshine MacGuffin Deus Ex Machina, an eleventh hour superpower, or maybe an ally will show up at the last minute? Or perhaps all three at once?”
“I've always been partial to having allies show up to save my ass,” I offered. I’d probably be dead a couple dozen times over if not for the fact that I had some very good friends. “Deus ex machinas are nice, but you can never really count on them when you need. As for last-minute superpowers ... well so far I haven’t found any of those that don’t come with some kind of horrible downsides, like being a Faerie Queen’s personal bitch. Allies are pretty handy though. They save me and mine a lot of pain–I like not going through pain.”
Discord turned back to me and smiled–I think that he might actually forgotten I was there for a bit. Not that I could blame him for ignoring me after how spectacularly my efforts to blast him had failed. “Ah yes, your allies have saved you so many times, Dresden. Pity you let Nicodemus get away.” Discord shot me a nasty smirk. “Again.”
I flinched at that, but tried very hard not to let it show. With the way his lackeys had all vanished, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that Nicodemus and his crew had already cleared out of town. That pissed me off, especially after what happened to Derpy and Jenkins. However, one of the things I’ve learned in the whole wizard business is to deal with the problems you can actually do something about instead of getting worked up over things that are beyond your control. I had no idea how to find Nicodemus, and no way to catch up with him even if I knew where he was. Discord, on the other hand, I could deal with. “Nicky will get his when the time comes, but for right now I’m worrying about bigger fish, and all that.”
Discord casually lounged on the ceiling and gave me a nasty little smile. “Whatever you tell yourself so you can sleep at night.” Discord casually studied his talons before announcing with clearly forced disinterest. “You know, teleporting you to his current location would hardly require any effort on my part. For that matter, I could send you to the lairs of any of your enemies really–you have oh so very many of them. More than you know.”
“Story of my life.” I swear, if I’d been born a pony my special talent would’ve been pissing off powerful and dangerous bad guys. I briefly wondered what that cutie mark would look like. “One thing I've learned from having everyone and their uncle after my head is how to prioritize–and you know what puts people at the top of my shitlist? Hurting somebody I care about.”
Discord let out a mocking chuckle. “Oh, I don’t doubt it. That explains why you're letting the man who shot Derpy, killed Jenkins and Shiro, crippled Michael, and tortured Ivy get away. Because you’re filled with righteous wrath at the thought of him getting away.”
Dammit, Discord really knew how to push my buttons. It’s enough to make me think he must have some kind of Intellectus covering that kind of thing. That, or he and Nicodemus spent a lot of time swapping war stories. Still, I knew what his game was–good old divide and conquer. Send me running off after Nicodemus, while he dealt with the ponies. “Like I said, priorities. Nicodemus might get away for today, but right now the stakes are too big to worry about anything other than making sure your ass is grass.”
“Oh yes, your ‘priorities,’” he said, using his fingers to make airquotes that actually stayed in place in the air. “Are you sure I’m the monster here? I mean really, I've only killed, oh, a few tens of thousands of people. Do you know how many Nicodemus and the Denarians he’s worked alongside have killed over the last two thousand years? I'll give you a hint, it has ten digits.”
Okay, even though I knew exactly what he was up to, it was getting harder and harder not to snap at Discord’s bait. The worst part was, that smile on his face just got wider and wider with every fresh barb. He was playing me, we both knew it, and it was still working. Discord went in for the kill. “I wonder, which of your friends do you think he'll kill next time? Molly? Murphy? Butters? Or perhaps even ... oh my, I had no idea you were a father.”
Oh hell no. Well, that probably did confirm that Discord had some kind of Intellectus going. There’s no way he could know about my daughter under normal circumstances, but if he was calling on some kind of magical insight to find out what he could say that would really get under my skin, well that would do it. I just hope he hadn’t spread that piece of knowledge around. I’d left Maggie in the care of the Carpenters specifically to avoid this kind of thing. If Nicky ever got his hands on Maggie... I'd seen the kind of damage he'd done to kids before. Ivy had taken a helluva beating, and keeping her alive and relatively intact been a central point to his plans. If he ever got ahold of someone he wanted to hurt just to get at me...
Sure, there were literal guardian angels watching over Michael’s place and keeping her safe, but even angels have their limits. Nicky might not be able to just kick in Michael’s front door, but he’s a sneaky enough bastard to know how to find a loophole in the rules. Like Uriel’s always so fond of telling me, angels can’t do much to interfere with mortal free will. Those guardian angels hadn’t done any good when a crazy priest kidnapped one of Michael’s daughters, unless you counted Uriel possibly giving me a couple subtle little nudges along the way. Maggie would probably be safe ... but when it came to my daughter, ‘probably’ wasn't good enough.
I admit it, Discord had me dead to rights. I wanted to go after Nicodemus. Bad. He’d gotten away with too much too often, hurt too many people and ponies for me to be okay with him just walking away at the end of it. Sure, the smart thing to do would be to worry about him later and focus on the potentially world-destroying baddie right in front of me, but I’ve never been accused of being very smart. When I actually remember to use it I’ve got a decent brain, but the problem is that when push comes to shove I tend to let my heart do the thinking instead of my head.
Still, I didn’t feel right about leaving the ponies in a dangerous situation like this. Sure, my initial efforts to put the smackdown on Discord ended in a colossal failure, but there was no guarantee the Elements would work here, and if they failed, having one more wizard on hand might be enough to make up the difference. Sure, Discord and the Elements of Harmony might be punching way above my weight class, but I’ve dealt with plenty of things that do that. I just needed to do the metaphorical equivalent of jostling Discord’s elbow at a critical moment, distract him in a critical half-second to give the ponies a chance to land a hit he might have been able to block or dodge otherwise.
On the other hand ... well it’s been pointed out more than once that I’m a bit on the protective side when it comes to the ponies. Possibly to the point of being a touch overprotective. Between the fact that they were female enough to fire up the chivalry centers of my brain and the fact that they still had an element of childlike innocence to them (though recent events had probably stripped a lot of that away), it was pretty easy for me stop seeing them as allies, and start thinking of them as creatures I needed to protect.
Thing is, they’d proved themselves more than once. Hell’s bells, if we’re gonna draw up the big list of allies who’ve saved my ass from something that would’ve killed me otherwise, I’d need to add some pony names to that list. It might also be a good idea to make sure nobody ever saw that list, because I’d probably never live it down if some of my friends found out my ass had been saved by creatures with names like Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle.
Bottom line, the ponies were tough. Maybe it was time I started giving them a little more credit for that. “Can you guys take Discord?”
“We can handle him,” Twilight assured me. She gave the rest of her friends a loving smile. “Together my friends and I can do anything.”
“Go ahead, Harry,” Fluttershy added. “We'll be okay.”
Wow, even Fluttershy is telling me she'll be okay in combat? I don't know if I should be concerned or relieved. See, there I go not giving them enough credit again. Sure, Fluttershy might be one of the most gentle-natured creatures I’ve ever come across, but she can get downright dangerous when you threaten her friends. In a way, she was kind of like Michael–nice and gentle most of the time, but god help you if you pushed her into a fight.
Yeah, the ponies would be okay. I nervously licked my lips, and wished I still had a staff or blasting rod so I could tighten my grip on something. “Alright, let’s do this. Where’s Nicodemus?’
“I will go as well,” Sanya volunteered. “Ponies do not need my help to fight evil chaos god, but Harry does need help to fight ancient demon lord.” Great, I’m now officially ranked below pastel-colored equines on the list of people who can take care of themselves. As if my pride needed to take any more of a beating.
Discord grinned and snapped his talons, and the world disappeared in a flash of white light.