//------------------------------//
// Alternate Ending 
// Story: The Alicorn Delusion 
// by The Fool 
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Celestia glared defiantly through the crumbling ceiling at her distant sun, which glared defiantly back through the unnatural blizzard. The same bitter snow that pelted her face and melted against her chitinous skin blanketed the raised dais that once bore the Elements, and if she strained her ears, she could hear the neighing of windigos.

The windigos were invisible against the frosty, lifeless sky, but they were there, galloping on the biting wind like ethereal vultures waiting for her to die so they could feast on the now-rotting corpse of Equestria's harmony that she'd struggled to protect for the past thousand years.

Celestia was a fool to believe her subjects would accept her, and a greater fool to believe they wouldn't realize her mother and sister were changelings and reject them as well. Her subjects, it seemed, were smarter than she'd given them credit for. In the inhospitable hell of a world they'd brought upon themselves, they'd need to be.

Cadence and Luna lay curled up on either side of her to conserve warmth, but chitin provided little insulation, and they'd succumbed to hypothermia hours ago. It wouldn't kill them, of course. They'd slowly starve just like her, but death would take them gently and peacefully in their sleep. She envied them.

Celestia grimaced as another pang of hunger reminded her how empty her heart was. She had taken to swallowing mouthfuls of snow to trick her body, and if that didn't work, freeze herself from the inside out. While it accomplished the latter admirably, she was still awake and aware. She cursed her sun for protecting her from the cold. She wanted to believe there was still hope, that even without her, the Elements would be enough to fight back the advancing tide of darkness. Alas, she knew all too well that without her love and care, the transformation would kill Twilight just like it did Platinum.


***


Twilight knew too, but she wasn't one to go down without a fight. She had barricaded herself in Platinum's old quarters, which had remained untouched since Platinum's death and contained many a grimoire of forgotten magic that Celestia hadn't had the heart to lock away in the Canterlot Archives. Twilight was thankful for small blessings like that, for a heavy crashing had just joined the rising crescendo outside her door as the mob scouring the castle gathered in hopes of manifesting its collective desire to see her lynched over the battlements. She'd sooner melt the flesh from their bones than give them the pleasure, but she only had so much magic, and she had to conserve it. The ancient ritual she was attempting would be taxing.

She had been spared the infernal voices Luna and Platinum had experienced, so she had little trouble focusing on the archaic description of the preparations for a hexagram of amplification. Twilight had to resort to holding the chalk and drawing the lines by telekinesis, however, as the insectoid mutations being forced upon her mammalian body were slowly tearing it apart.

She finished the sixth and final glyph between the two concentric circles bordering the central hexagram and shambled inside on her atrophied legs and crumbling hooves just as several slivers of light pierced the straining wooden door where the mob's persistent battering had splintered the wood.

She ignored the mob's shouts of horror and disgust at the cadaverous half-changeling abomination she'd become, closed her one good eye, and concentrated on laying the framework of her teleportation spell as she had a hundred times before. The difference was that the ambient magic absorbed through her pores and concentrated around her horn was amplified a hundredfold into a blinding lavender corona that sent the mob falling over itself as it fled in terror.

When the magic building inside her, coursing through her veins, and struggling for release reached critical mass, she knew the spell was ready. All she had to do was give it a destination. Thinking back to the very first memory Celestia had imparted on her, Twilight vanished in a burst of light, heat, and magic that anypony unfortunate enough to be watching would only perceive through the agony of his eyes popping and gushing from their sockets like the yolks of poached eggs.

Hexagrams of amplification had fallen out of favor in the past few centuries for their contraindication with already-powerful magic, which manifested when the excess teleportation magic vaporized a spherical chunk of Canterlot Castle a hundred yards across, splitting all matter within into its individual atoms and scattered them over the city as magical fallout.


***


Discord sat in the throne room with a wine of glass clutched in his claw as he looked out across Equestria, for he had lifted what remained of the castle into the sky adjacent to its former resting place on the mountainside and turned it into an exact replica painstakingly molded from rainbow-colored gelatin so it wouldn't obstruct his view of the world beyond.

Contemplating how best to antagonize his newly inherited nation full of playthings once they washed the lactose out of their fur—for he had transformed the localized blizzard into a hail of ice cream scoops in a variety of flavors, whose impacts with his gelatin fortress made the entire structure jiggle—he became vaguely aware of a yellow pegasus pony whose hooves made impressions in the floor as she politely tried to get his attention. Absently, he asked, "Can I help you?"

"Well, yes, actually. My friends and I..." Fluttershy trailed off as he turned to face her fully with a faraway look as if he wasn't focusing on her so much as the distant scenery directly behind her. She turned to see that he was actually locked in a staring contest with Pinkie, who stood alongside Applejack, Dash, and Rarity.

"How did you get up here?" Discord asked in bemusement.

"Take a guess," Pinkie deadpanned, ruffling her pink, feathery wings.

"Ah, yes," Discord said, vaguely remembering turning all of Twilight's friends into what alicorns would be if such things existed so they wouldn't have to feel alienated once Twilight became one. In retrospect, he couldn't fathom why he'd cared. Still, he figured it'd be worth it to see their mortal friends, family, and lovers die around them. "Well, whatever you want, make it quick. I'm kind of busy."

"As I was saying," Fluttershy continued, forcing a weak smile as he turned his impatient gaze back on her, "my friends and I were hoping... Well, you see, Equestria has been in a bad place since it realized its princesses had been abducted by a group of changeling queens who had the audacity to show their true forms in public. We understand chaos is your thing and all, but we really don't think it's what Equestria needs right now, so we were just wondering if maybe you'd be so kind as to step down from the throne and give us the reigns of government so we could restore order to the land. That's all."

Throughout her needlessly wordy speech, an insane smirk had crept across Discord's face. "Really? You thought you could just fly into my castle and ask me to step down? Well, I suppose you've demonstrated your ability to do just that, but I'm afraid I have to decline. Now, off with you!"

"What about our friendship?" Fluttershy pleaded. "Don't you care what happens to Equestria, to me?"

"Let me ask you this, Fluttershy," Discord said, finally remembering their names. "Would you ever make Rainbow Dash choose between you and her dream of joining the Wonderbolts? Would you ever make Pinkie Pie choose between you and her need to throw parties? Don't answer that. I know you wouldn't, which begs the question: why would you make me choose between you and my need to sow discord and reap chaos? What kind of friend would that make you?"

"Buck this!" Dash shouted, her wings flaring. "We're alicorns now. Why don't we just kick his flank like Celestia and Luna did?"

Discord took a sip of glass from his wine, set it down on his armrest, and snapped his talons.

"My wings!" Dash cried as her wings disappeared in a poof of sparkling sky-blue dust, though her shock soon gave way to indignation at his lack of creativity as she remembered him pulling the same trick the first time he took over Equestria.

"That's why. I'm the one who made you alicorns, but the change is far from permanent. If you want to stop me and save Equestria, you won't do it with magical rainbows. You'll do it by proving that harmony is what truly lies in ponies' hearts. For your information, pony, Luna had no part in my defeat, and just like you, Celestia only succeeded by striking me while my guard was down—a cheap trick for an allegedly reformed changeling. Yes, you heard correctly. Your princesses haven't been abducted by changelings. They are changelings. They always have been, and as we speak, they're starving in the Everfree ruins because you ponies were too bigoted and intolerant to accept that, so I ask you, my little ponies, who's the real monster here?"

"We don't have to listen to this," Dash said, drew back her hoof, leveled her horn, and charged.

"Some ponies never learn," Discord sighed, snapped his talons again, and frowned when her screaming as she plummeted through the opening he'd created in the gelatin beneath her hooves brought him far less amusement than he'd expected.

"You seem to have answered your own question," Rarity said before diving through the hole after Dash, followed by Applejack, who must have realized Rarity wasn't nearly strong enough to catch Dash by herself.

Discord watched with mild interest as they swooped down and rescued Dash a scant few hundred yards above the ground. He had considered taking away their wings too and narrowing the annoying dissidents he'd have to deal with in the coming days down to Pinkie and Fluttershy but reasoned that that would be much less fun. He made a mental note to restore Dash's wings when he got around to it.

"Hey!" Fluttershy shouted, flitting over to hover in his face and stare him down in one of her rare moments of assertiveness. "Just who do you think you are?"

Discord replied in a bored monotone, "Discord, physical manifestation of the pony races' thousand years of infighting prior to their unification and Celestia and Luna's arrival from the changeling hive. That's not who I think I am, by the way, it's who I know I am. We spirits know exactly who we are and what we're meant to do, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm meant to expedite Equestria's descent into a new dark age."

He stood erect and raised his long, snake-like neck to its full height so that he towered over Fluttershy, who wilted to the floor under the predatory ferocity of his glare and further still at the cutting tone with which he asked, "The real question, Fluttershy, is what makes you think you have the right to order around a god? Just who do you think you are?"

"I..." Fluttershy looked to be on the verge of tears, but seemed to recover when she felt Pinkie's presence beside her. "I'm sorry, Discord. God or not, I never meant to order you around. I just thought... I thought our friendship meant something to you... I can see now that I was wrong."

"I think I understand."

"You do?" Fluttershy asked with cautious hope in her glistening cyan eyes.

"Oh yes, I understand perfectly. When asking nicely doesn't get your way, you try throwing your weight around, and when you meet someone who's sensible enough to realize how much stronger he is, you declare all bets off and roll out the crocodile tears in hopes of guilt tripping him into submission. You're a manipulator, plain and simple."

"I'm not manipulating you!"

"You're not doing a very good job," Discord said, slumped back into his throne, finished his glass, and tossed the wine aside. Predictably, it exploded on contact and flung bits of gelatin everywhere, including on him and Pinkie, whose body shielded Fluttershy. The defiant seriousness in Pinkie's expression as bits of gelatin slid down her face should have had him in stitches, but it failed to draw so much as a smile.

"I grow tired of this game, Fluttershy," he continued. "You never liked me for being me. You always wanted to change me. We were never friends, and we never will be. I can accept that. I can accept that nopony would ever want to be friends with the physical manifestation of everything ponies hate about themselves. I could even accept, even respect your unscrupulous methods of pursuing your agenda, but there's one thing I just can't accept."

"What's that?"

"You don't have your own agenda! All your life has been spent tending to others, helping others achieve their dreams. That's all you want in life, and it makes me sick. You have no dreams of your own. You might as well be a pep-talking puppet that other ponies can use and discard as they please without worrying about retribution. In fact..." Discord trailed off and snapped his talons once more. Where Fluttershy had knelt a moment before, a simple pink-and-yellow sock puppet pegasus pony with big cyan buttons for eyes lay limply against the floor.

Then came the screaming, followed by the sobbing and muttering as Pinkie passed swiftly through the stages of grief in no particular order. She looked up at him, all defiance gone, and asked meekly, "Why, Discord? Why would you do that? Friend or not, you don't just turn ponies into sock puppets! That's not like you! You manipulate them, turn them against each other, and even make them wish they were dead, but you don't kill them!"

Discord stepped down from his throne, knelt before her, picked up the sock puppet, and slid it over his paw. He moved its mouth instead of his as he spoke in a resonant mockery of Fluttershy's voice, "Ponies who've studied biology know conflict is written on their genes, but they willfully preserve a sanctuary of ignorance in which they can believe the past thousand years marked ponykind's transcendence over its base instincts when all they really accomplished was bottling up all their hatred and intolerance. They repressed it and repressed it, and like a powder keg that's no longer want for a spark, they've found their excuse to let it all out. From now on, you and your friends will be living in a world where 'survival of the fittest' is the rule, so you'd better adapt quick."

Visibly struggling not to throw up, Pinkie said in a quavering voice, "I don't believe that. Equestria may have killed its princesses, and you may have disbanded the Elements, but harmony will never die unless we stop fighting for it. Conflict may be in our nature, but only animals are bound by their nature."

After watching her turn tail and run out the door, presumably to regroup with her friends, Discord fell on his haunches, the floor jiggling under him like a water bed. Tears welling in his eyes, he held the sock puppet up, stared into its artificial, unblinking eyes, and sobbed, "I wish you were right."


***


Chrysalis sees all this and more as she expends the last of her energy on a remote-viewing spell. Gazing over the world she destroyed, she smiles. She wants to think harmony is dead and she killed it herself, but neither is completely true. She orchestrated its assassination, but she wasn't the one who plunged the dagger into its heart. She didn't need to be. Equestria did that all by itself.

In truth, harmony was never alive in the first place. If it were, Equestria wouldn't be freezing over, her mother and sister wouldn't be dying in exile, and most importantly, her hive wouldn't have starved. The changelings she besieged Canterlot with were already artifacts of an extinct race. The long-dead chitinous husks scattered throughout the hive are all that remains of the rest. She's no one's queen anymore. She's just an embittered old changeling waiting on death's doorstep to be let in.

The sprawling tunnels around her are as silent as a catacomb, and the glowing fungi that flourished in her mother's time have all but gone dark, so the nearby flash and pop of teleportation magic catches her attention immediately. It's about time, she thinks to herself, trying to lift her head to greet the newcomer and predictably failing. Her vestigial magic is still strong for a changeling, but her body gave out days ago, and she's been lying on the floor ever since. Whatever vengeance the newcomer has planned will be a mercy.

Exhausted from the journey, Twilight collapses on arrival, but she doesn't have far to go. The last iota of life she can detect in the entire hive is coming from the next chamber. She can only assume Chrysalis anticipated her arrival, and for whatever reason, wanted to make herself easily found. Inch by inch, she drags her limp body forward on the crumbled, bony remains of her front hooves, each yard feeling like a mile.

Facing the other way, Chrysalis doesn't see the newcomer's face but hears the chipping of hooves, recognizes the dwindling life force entering the chamber as Twilight's, and says, "Welcome home, Twilight Sparkle. I wondered when you'd finally arrive. To think that this is how it ends—with you dragging a body that's hardly yours across the cold bedrock so you can know the pleasure of taking my life before my curse takes yours and me laying here completely powerless to stop you from doing me that mercy—is all too amusing, and that's not even the punchline."

Twilight doesn't respond. Having crossed the floor during Chrysalis's reminiscing, she rolls her onto her back and straddles her chitinous belly under the sickly-green ambient light.

Despite the hatred in Twilight's glowing green eyes and red irises manifesting in the familiar purple miasma of black magic, conjuring a black crystalline stiletto out of thin air, and aiming the long, slender blade at her exposed throat, Chrysalis continues unabated, "The punchline, my dear Twilight, is that none of this would have been possible without you."

Twilight raises the stiletto into the air before plunging it through the chitinous skin of Chrysalis's neck, piercing Chrysalis's trachea with a cartilaginous crunch. She watches dispassionately as the malevolent blade greedily sucks the the magical essence from Chrysalis's body.

Chrysalis coughs up greenish-black ichor, her struggling breaths ceasing and the haunting emerald light fading from her reptilian eyes.

"I know," Twilight whispers, unsheathing the blade from Chrysalis's neck, wiping the ichor off in her faded mane, and turning the stiletto on herself. She gasps, her pupils becoming pinpricks as the point penetrates the tender skin below her sternum and slides smoothly through the various chambers of her spasming heart.

Her vision blurring and the searing pain of her magical essence being sundered from her body numbing her thoughts, she lowers her gaze to see bright crimson blood matting her fur against her skin, dripping down the length of the stiletto, trickling over Chrysalis's pale body, and pooling on the cavern floor around them. Her balance wavering, she falls onto Chrysalis's chest, her head laid across Chrysalis's neck. As silence fills the hive, the world turns to black.