The Life and Times of Caughlin Mare

by Casca


2: Enter the Order of Order

"Rum and whiskey? Rum and whisky?"

"Two pennies for a birdie, three for a quail!"

"Does this sack make me look fat?"

The low murmur of the animated flour bags shuffling around her would have worried her a long time ago, but Caughlin had seen far worse. At least the bags were not malicious, and the most they could do was puff her with snout-tickling flour. Caughlin waited for her assistants to make the final calculations, amusing herself with the way their figures bent and stretched through the lens of the curved glass she was behind. With a nod from them, she closed her eyes and performed the only spell that came naturally to her.

The talking bags of flour faded away as the bubble expanded, engulfing everything in a a perfect radius. She sighed as the assistants shook their heads, and with a flick of her head, the bubble, too, vanished, leaving her alone in the chamber.

"Bravo! Well done!" said Whooves, tapping the floor enthusiastically.

"No, Doctor, that was a failure," replied Caughlin, stepping out to meet him.

"I don't see how," frowned Whooves.

"The experiment was an attempt to cast the bubble away from myself. We've placed variations in the thaumic field of the chamber-" Caughlin stopped explaining when his frown deepened, relented, and gave him a playful clop on the head instead. A bit of flour rubbed off into his mane. "And what about you?"

"What about what?" grinned Whooves.

And then she had only just stepped out of the cylinder, and he had a clean head. "Eh... oh," said Caughlin, frowning. "Wait, did I say something? I think I did. But in this set of time I haven't. I told you to stop doing that. It's disconcerting."

"Yeah, okay," replied the stallion. "It's fun, though."

Caughlin simply laughed. She felt happier, somehow, she noticed. It had been a few months since Whooves' inclusion into the Equestrian R&D department, and she had tried her best to treat him as a fellow, not as a test subject. It was hard, considering that he wanted to know the details about everything, but lacked the knowledge to understand it. She herself was curious about his powers, but figured that experimentation could wait. When he was more willing, then she might set some time aside to run tests. So Caughlin had taken him on as a student, teaching him the basics of Discordian physics and how their unique talents came to be.


Caughlin knew what "order" was, because under the Pony Elementary Education Program (PEEP), fillies were raised up for the first four years of their lives in normal, non-chaoatic conditions. This was Discord's own initiative; according to him, chaos lost its meaning without order, and so for Equestria's residents to fully "appreciate" it, he had them all experience order first. To live out perfectly normal, sheltered lives, only to be thrust out into the real world at puberty... It was cruel and twisted, but then again, this was Discord.

It was not completely bad. Through the PEEP, Caughlin had discovered her thirst for understanding. She was fascinated by the idea of heavenly bodies moving in regular patterns, and objects not moving unless given force. Discord had kept a careful eye on her, and found to his glee that instead of flinching away from the chaos of the outside world, Caughlin had taken it all in with wide, amazed eyes.

"So, little mare, I believe you have not casted a spell before." Discord had laid a reality-bending finger on her horn and stepped back to watch. "Let's see what you can do." Still stunned by the chaos, she did not feel it until it happened - the magic welled up inside of her, unused due to restrictions, rose and burst out as a reality bubble. The grass under her hooves were green instead of blue. A bouncing rock next to her lay dead still. Discord had laughed hard, she recalled, even going so far as to clap and cheer.

She shuddered at the thought of Discord taking interest in her. She glanced at her student, struggling with his newest reading assignment on density. He had not been through the PEEP; his parents had hid him, whilst they were still alive. Somehow he had managed to grasp the idea of time manipulation without any concept of it whatsoever. Just went to show that some natural talents were more natural than others, she mused.

"So, do you know about the term, time-space?" she had asked early on.

"No, no, no," he whined, "I don't get any of these sciency things! I just, you know, do it, just like that!"

"I find it very hard to believe that you can take advantage of the weakened state of time fabric 'just like that' without knowing what you're doing," snorted Caughlin.

"How do you do yours?" shot the stallion. "You probably know, though, since you're such a smarty-pants."

"What are pants?" frowned Caughlin. "Ugh, wait, you're getting me off track. Look, it's like...well, imagine a piece of fabric. Cloth." She stretched her hooves out, imagining velvet. "It goes in a certain pattern, weaves, whatever you call it. But it's made up of many, many long threads. With me? Now between those threads, in the tiny holes, is what we call 'magic'. And on those threads are things, objects, ponies like you and me. Now Discord - Discord here uses magic and rends the holes bigger. He weakens the relationship between things. He's very good at it, to the point that he does it all the time, just he pulls harder in some places than others." With gusto, she ripped the air-fabric apart. "Like the shower of frogs in Canterlot a few days before you arrived, I'm sure you heard of it. So because they're not bound to each other as tight as normally, in your case you can take hold of them and move them backwards - that's your time-reversal ability." Her hoof made a little hop from Point B to Point A. "And mine is my magic to pull things back together."

"So...you just do it?"

"Uggggh." She gently massaged her forehead with a hoof. "Yes. Yes, I just do it."


She could not help but chuckle as she remembered those slow, aggravating lessons. Whooves had grown up considerably, and was much more at ease in the Laboratory. It was touching, watching somepony grow up through her amateurish efforts.

"So, then, Doctor, you ready to explain to me what density is, and how Discord affects it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. And can you stop calling me Doctor? It's, uh, sarcastic."

"Sarcasm is funny for everypony except the user and the target," smirked Caughlin. "For the user, it isn't funny, it's just fun. Now come on."

Before Whooves could speak, there was a loud pop. He had not yet become used to it, and had gave an involuntary jump. Caughlin took a deep breath and headed toward the sound.

"Caughlin! Cauuughlin?" called out Discord, doing a mock survey of the area.

"Yes, lord Discord," greeted Caughlin, stiffening her knees from shaking. "Welcome."

"Ah, Caughlin. Good. Say, do you have anything that can spy on an area?" asked Discord.

"I'm sorry?" Caughlin blinked. A request? This is new.

"You know. An extra eye, or something. Something that records? Oh, come on, you know what I mean," grumbled Discord.

"I guess I could set something up, if we had a lens and some circuitry," said Caughlin carefully. "But we need to know more to get the design to be practical-"

"It's those damn rebels!" roared Discord, the sudden force of his voice physically pushing her back. "They're at one place, and there's at another the next! I've seared the ground, torn up forests, caused earthquakes, and they're still nowhere to be found? What do I have to do to get them, bring about the end of the world?"

"No, no, no! That's okay! Just calm down, lord Discord! We'll fix you up with something! Just tell us where you want to use it, and-"

Discord did not wait for her to finish. He pressed a talon hard on her horn. She yelled in pain briefly as an image seared itself into her mind, a scene of wasteland, still smoking.

"There's your setting. I want full surveillance of the surface in a hundred-metre radius," said Discord evenly. "When you're done with the workings, I'll find a way myself to have it linked to me. And I expect this to be done when I next come back, or so help you all."

With a crack of thunder, the tyrant left. Whooves immediately ran up to her. "Caughlin! You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Ooh, boy," muttered Caughlin, getting back on her hooves. The image had not faded from her mind. It seemed to be stuck there. "Alright, Whooves, get me a sketching pad, a pen and that new drug Team 7 was working on. Asp-something, you know, the painkiller." She raised her neck, and her head throbbed even more. "Dammit. The rest of you! I want you all to freeze your projects and prep up! Surveillance device, multi-faceted! Radius of one hundred metres from a side view! With zoom capabilities! Oh, by Discord's claws," she moaned, slumping on the floor. Whooves came quickly with the items, and after downing the drug, she drew out the landscape. It was fairly easy, as the place was simply a desolate plain of debris. It had probably been a small village, judging by the charred clay and many stumps on the edge of the radius.

"I can't make copies of these," said Caughlin, getting back up. "It hurts even to draw this. Get somebody else to duplicate the thing. Memory spell, whatshisface, tell him to come and extract it."

"Yes, ma'am!" yelped Whooves, voice unusually high, and scrambled off. Despite the agony, she felt her heart lighten at the hurried figure of her student. He was a good kid, even if he wasn't too bright.

"Hey, uh, miss?" said Whooves upon returning. "I wonder, but why don't you just use the reality bubble? That is, if the drug isn't working?"

It wasn't. Caughlin blinked at this sudden stroke of inspiration and thought about it hard. Then she shook her head.

"I can't risk that. Right now, my powers can't simply fix anything with a trace of Discord's interference, they take some of the thing away too. I can't be sure what he did to me. It may be an illusion, or he may have altered my brain itself. You remember the flour bags? If my bubble could simply un-Discord things, the bags would have remained. But they disappeared. I'm not going to risk having my brain disappear," reasoned Caughlin. "But thank you, Whooves. That was smart of you. Now go help. I just need some rest."

She wobbled slightly as she left for her room. Whooves watched her, mumbling something apologetic.

It was two hours since she lied down, each minute painful and boring, with her condition only slightly better, when she heard a loud din. There was shouting, curses and threats. Panicking, she forced herself out of bed and ran outside to see the commotion. What she saw left her speechless.

There was another pony in the middle of the den, an outsider. He had been pinned down by a load of other ponies, and he was protesting to no avail.

"Oh, Caughlin! Caughlin's here!" cried a scientist, and they all scrambled off, with Whooves refusing to budge.

"Where...did you come from?" she asked, drawing near, her mouth dry.

"So you are the famous head of the Laboratory," coughed the pony with a grim smile. "Good question-"

"I asked where!" she shouted, kicking dust into his snout.

"I'm from the Order of Order! We're the rebels, and we ask for your help!"

Caughlin felt her heart pound. Her head was in a swirl as she said, "Whooves, get off him. Get off! Take him to your room. The rest of you, pretend this never happened. Do you hear me?"

When it was just the three of them, she had a better look at him. He was a jet-black unicorn stallion with a black mane, most probably dyed. He had no cutie mark, or rather if he did it was hidden by the dye.

"You used magic to teleport here," said Caughlin, brain now whirring in overdrive. He used magic to teleport in here.

"Yes. Yes I did. We have abilities. We've mastered our environment. We know how to use Discord's chaos against him."

"So do I," said Caughlin simply, drawing near to him. It hurt even more, but she had to make sure. It was fortunate that her magic worked the way it did - rather than engulfing herself with it, the reality bubble had a small null field that just covered her horn, head and spine. She produced another bubble that wiped off over him. "Now you teleport away."

"But I-"

"Now!" she shouted, the word coming out in a croak. I've never shouted this much in a day. First time for everything, eh?

When the stallion refused to respond, she said without turning, "Whooves, get me a knife. Now. This very instant."

Abashed, he stepped over to the bedside drawer and took out a long bread knife. She decided to ignore the fact that he was hiding a long knife in his room - for now.

"Stab the silly pony's shoulder. Three, two, one-"

There was a yelp as the blade sunk into his shoulder, and more gasps of pain. Caughlin lowered the bubble, weary, and gave a confused Whooves a pat. "Go get some dressing." To the stallion she said, feeling silly as the words came out in a tumble: "I'm sorry, but I had to check. Discord's the only one theoretically that can overcome my bubble. You said that you could manipulate Discord's chaos. So can I. Much, much better. He doesn't like to get hurt, of course, so at the threat of the knife he would have revealed himself. I'm sorry, but I had to make sure. That you weren't Discord playing tricks on us."

The stallion stared at her blankly, and began to snigger painfully. "So I see, so I see. You are one heck of a mare! I just wanted to deliver a message, so I won't impose any further." He magicked a saddlebag from nowhere, and opened it. Out came a scroll and a small, green alligator: a creature known to her only through PEEP books.

"I'll get fixed up back at the base," said the stallion. "Until then, stranger." With a gasp, he teleported away before Caughlin could say any more.


She hid the two items away until Discord's next visit, which was five days later. In those five days she was stricken with heightened panic of the discovery of those items, curiousity about them and the slow madness the image was driving her into. It refused to fade, staying in her mind all the time. It kept her awake at nights and woke her up in the wee hours of the day. It interfered with her theoretics and blueprint sketching. She was almost glad that she could present the system to Discord, and the moment he left the image was relieved.

On the first day of her freedom, she decided to take out the items in favour of collapsing in rest. This was simply too important. She gathered her team together - they were family, after all, and they kept no secrets - and opened the scroll.