Death is only the end of the beginning.
Discord found himself wondering why he allowed this to happen. Any of it. He had a chance to kill Narendra from the start. He never took it. He could have done it at any time during the whole endeavor, but didn’t. He had been sitting on the sidelines during all of the best opportunities to assist, but chose not to. What kind of guy was he, to allow so many to die, just because he wanted the satisfaction of influencing others to do his bidding? He had never thought of himself as truly evil, but what did this make him? He certainly couldn’t be good.
Ryan lay in the river before him, Harris slowly walking away in the other direction. Discord looked down at both boys with pity. Harris had lost his best friend to the jungles of Vietnam, and was obligated to leave his friend, who still lived, bleeding out in a disgusting river. As Discord watched the water around Ryan turn red, he felt queasy. Seeing this boy die here was too much for him.
The boy had changed much here. He went from being a nice, noble guy to being a cold-hearted killer of his fellow man. And it was all Discord’s fault. He had had so many chances to make everything right, but he acted too late. His failure to help initially resulted in the death of the young man before him.
Discord thought about his own world. Back home, there were no organizations that kidnapped ponies and sold them as slaves, at least as far as he knew. There were no organizations dedicated to the killing of innocents, to causing suffering to others based on ideology or race, or anything, really. There was peace, something sorely lacking in this world. Discord didn’t know much about the rest of this world, but what he had seen of it was Hellish at best. People killing and hurting each other for money and revenge. Anger. Hatred. Loss. No one deserved to live in a state of everlasting anger, or hatred, or loss. Discord looked down at Ryan, who was still just barely alive. Harris was gone, nowhere to be seen.
“No one deserves to die like this.” he said, eyes not really focusing on anything. “No one deserves to die in a place such as this.”
With a snap of his fingers and a flash of light, Discord disappeared from this world, along with the body of the boy that he would do his best to forever remember.