Celestia sat at the head of the table in the conference room of the palace. Her gaze was fixed on the three mares sitting on both sides, a few chairs down from her end of the table. Luna and Twilight were sitting on one side, with Lyra sitting opposite of Luna. Lyra had somehow acquired a stone gray hoodie and had it securely pulled over the upper half of her body, the hood riding up the crest of her mane. She drummed idly on the table to occupy herself while she waited for Celestia to say something. Every tap of her hooves was punctuated by a duck's quack, through no intent of her own. Twilight looked positively mortified about something. Luna, on the other hoof, held herself impeccably upright, her mane and tail back to their usual ethereal state.
The solar princess took a breath to speak. Before she even got the first syllable out, however, she cut herself off, unsure of how to start. It wasn't that she had nothing to say. Quite the opposite: she had myriads of introductory sentences that she could use to break the silence, and all of them were begging to be used.
Celestia had seen many years since she was first crowned as a princess. Although days of this nature had grown ever rarer over the centuries, they still occurred more often than she cared to admit. As soon as Celestia had rolled over in bed to prepare the sunrise, she knew this would be a day better spent in bed. She couldn't shirk her responsibilities as diarch, but she could just feel in her gut that today wasn't worth the effort of slipping into her gilded horseshoes. Celestia had hoped she would be proved wrong about the day; it could have been just a bad meal from the night before tweaking her insides. But her instincts had proved all too correct.
"You three certainly know how to return from a trip."
Lyra nodded. Her drumming ceased, leaving space for an uncomfortable silence to fill the room. "We didn't plan for it to happen quite like that."
Luna bowed her head in response to Lyra’s input. "Had I known you were entertaining guests during your lunch, I would have altered our means of return. I was under the impression that you preferred to have your noontime meal sans diplomacy."
Celestia kept her face pleasantly neutral as she mentally chastised herself. This is what she got for breaking her self-imposed rule to keep her lunches free from governmental obligations. Of course it wasn't her sister's fault. Luna had inferred that Celestia would be free at lunch for her sister to return. Any other day, she would have been right.
Celestia walked over to her sister. "You're right, Luna. I'm sorry things didn't work out as you hoped." She smiled and gave Luna a hug. "I really am glad you are back home safely, little sister."
"As am I, big sister." Luna returned the hug gratefully, allowing herself to shiver a little. "It was far from a pleasant experience."
Celestia held her close for a little longer. "We can talk about it later, Lu." She finally broke the embrace, choosing to sit next to Luna. Celestia cleared her throat and addressed Lyra. "I see you are having some problems with your— I'm sorry, Discord's— magic?"
Lyra nodded as she subtly shrank further into her hoodie. She wasn't cold; in fact, she was burning up from the combination of the warm room and heavy clothing. "I kind of had to unleash it for a little while, and it broke the restraining spell you cast."
Celestia looked at each mare in turn. "I presume it was instrumental in freeing Luna?"
Lyra snickered. "Heh, instrumental." She coughed and nodded quickly. "Yeah. Turns out chaos magic has a way of undoing spells."
Celestia's expression flickered. "You are right, Lyra. Discord was quite capable of subverting normal magic. At least his talents have finally come to good use."
"I guess so." Lyra fidgeted again, rubbing her shoulder.
"Remove your sweatshirt, Lyra." Celestia fixed her gaze on the nervous mare, pointedly looking at the fang protruding from beneath her upper lip.
"Uh... do I have to?" A bead of sweat rolled down her face.
"Yes."
Lyra hung her head defeatedly and grabbed the hoodie in her aura. The chaos took over and poofed it into confetti, complete with the sound of a party noisemaker in the background.
Her shoulder was mottled with brown feathers, and a vaguely ridged pattern had appeared all the way down to her knee area.
Celestia stood and walked around the table to Lyra's side, examining the feathers on her shoulder. "Is it causing you pain?"
"No. The feathers just itch something awful."
"I see." Celestia looked back at Lyra's fang, then back down at her shoulder. "When did your foreleg start doing this, and when did you get the new tooth?"
Lyra pursed her lips and took a deep breath. "Umm... the fang happened right after I unleashed the chaos. My shoulder has been doing weird things since then, although it kind of suddenly did this when Luna teleported us to your dining hall. It was only itchy before then."
Twilight finally broke out of her horrified stupor long enough to provide her input. "It would seem that intense magic usage is the impetus for these, ah, changes. At the very least, I would hypothesize that the corporeal transfigurative effects are accelerated by exposure to or usage of magic is accelerating the effects on your body. The exception being, I'm guessing, would be Princess Celestia casting a spell specifically to restrain it from causing problems." Twilight looked up to see Lyra's impressed expression and Celestia with a hint of pride in her smile. She smiled weakly and continued. "Since we now have an idea that magic usage causes an increased rate of metamorphosis, we should take precautions to protect Lyra from undue exposure to magic."
Lyra watched as Twilight and the princesses conversed about dealing with her problem. She couldn't understand a lot of the thaumobabble, so she let her mind wander, idly scratching her shoulder. Her mind turned, unbidden, to the dreams she had of Leyline. It wasn't making sense why she was dreaming of him in the first place, was it? He had confronted Eris before, obviously, but what happened? It looked like he absorbed her, somehow. Obviously Eris didn't want Lyra to see that part, because she hadn't reacted well.
She had never even heard of Eris before her dreams. Discord was the only spirit of Chaos she knew of, and Lyra absorbed his....
Lyra's heart stopped dead for a beat. "Sweet, merciful Celestia... Leyline became Discord!" she whispered. The pony who absorbed Eris in the first place was a statue in the garden. He had to know how to fix this, or at least he would know what they should try. Would Celestia release him, though?
Celestia heard her name whispered and looked at Lyra, about to ask her what the matter was, when she noticed the spaced out expression on her face. "Lyra? Lyra, are you okay?"
Lyra didn't respond, her thoughts racing. Eris's consciousness stirred uneasily in her mind before resettling.
Lyra hoped Eris couldn't hear or see her thoughts as they involuntarily raced through her dreams from the past week. She could sense lingering traces of magic from what she now recognized as Leyline's memories. The aura of the magic felt almost entirely wild. The only thing that felt different about it was a faint sensation of harmonic resonance throughout the roughly woven threads. Even as Lyra examined it, the magic could easily be felt dissipating, becoming undone as the caster who was holding it together before had been severed from the connection. Eris's consciousness could be felt pushing against it subtly, unraveling the spell thread by thread.
Lyra furrowed her brow in thought. She heard her name faintly called again, but she barely noticed as she probed the spell. Eris's aura quickly struck at the same spot Lyra was probing, and the thread of magic there snapped like a string cut by a pair of scissors. Lyra recoiled internally. If outside magic touches the spell, Eris can break it faster! She pulled herself as far away from the spell as she could. It looked like it was the only thing holding Eris back from fully possessing her, and every brush of foreign magic made it fail faster.
"Lyra Heartstrings!" Luna's voice boomed across the table, whipping Lyra's mane back into a windblown style. Lyra flinched, tipping backwards as she blinked out of the trancelike state.
"What?! What is it?!"
Luna sighed and shook her head. "You were unresponsive. We were beginning to worry about you." Twilight was looking at Lyra strangely, as though she knew what Lyra was doing while entranced.
"Princess Celestia, we need to release Discord."
The silence that followed was deafening. The other three mares looked at Lyra with a mixture of expressions: Celestia looked at her curiously, Luna was decidedly disgusted at the notion, and Twilight was squinting suspiciously.
Celestia was the first to break the silence. "What would make you think releasing a spirit of Chaos would be beneficial?"
Lyra sighed. "I wouldn't, except Discord isn't ac—" Lyra's body locked up as she experienced a stabbing pain through her brain and spine. The coppery taste of blood graced her tongue as her teeth clamped down on the inside of her cheek. The pain coursing through her nerves made her muscles spasm, forcing Lyra's hoof to rake the tabletop.
If it's all the same to you, I would rather keep my presence a secret, Lyra dear. Lyra barely kept from whimpering as she felt the sensation of talons being dragged along the backs of her eyeballs. It would be a shame if I had to do something to reinforce that.
Lyra drew herself upright again as the last vestiges of pain petered out. She panted softly, trying to compose herself. "S-sorry about that... chaos magic started acting up on me. As I was saying, Discord isn't much of a threat without his powers, and I think he may be the key to figuring this out." Lyra smiled uneasily as the princesses looked at each other, holding a silent conversation.
Lyra resumed tapping her hooves on the table idly, much to Twilight’s chagrin. Lyra looked down at her mottled foreleg while tapping, wishing she could have the hoodie back to cover herself. In response, the confetti scattered on the floor was caught up in an intangible whirlwind and swirled back into the hoodie, the fabric draped over her upper body. Lyra sighed and shook her head, even as Twilight gaped at the display.
Luna frowned before closing her eyes for a moment. "Very well, sister. Tomorrow, we shall—"
Luna was interrupted by one of the double doors slamming open and Bon Bon marching in, her eyes glowing with arcane power.
(several minutes prior)
"Lyra Heartstrings!"
Bon Bon flattened her ears as Luna's Royal Canterlot Voice rang throughout the castle, rattling the pots and pans hung in the royal kitchen. She had been talking shop with the chef, discussing pastries and hard candies.
The chef, Crème Brûlée, an offwhite mare with a light brown mane and a whisk for a cutie mark, hardly afforded the shout a second thought. "Sorry about that, Miss Bon Bon. Luna sometimes forgets that there are such things as indoor voices."
Crème noticed that the mare opposite her had spaced out. She politely cleared her throat. "Bon Bon?"
She blinked and smiled at Crème, although it had the uneasy semblance of a predatorial grin. "Excuse me, Crème. I do believe the reason I'm in Canterlot has finally presented herself." She nodded to the bewildered mare as she made for the kitchen door. "Remember, taffy should only be made on cloudy days or else it doesn't set right."
"Oh, yes, thanks for the advice. Are you sure you have to leave now, though?"
"With any luck, I'll have this matter straightened out and be back." She flashed another smile at the confused Crème before vanishing into the hallway.
Bon Bon worked her way through the castle, occasionally asking guards where Luna was. After a few minutes with no luck, she finally found one who directed her to a conference room in one of the lesser used sections of the castle. She looked at the tall double doors, then pushed one of them open.At the far end of the table there sat four ponies. Two were the royal pony sisters, sitting diagonally from each other. Celestia's protegee was sitting next to Luna, and next to Celestia was a certain, infuriating teal unicorn.
A little-known fact about ponies is that all three races have magic, contrary to popular belief. Unicorns may have the most control and strength in using it, but pegasi and earth ponies are more than capable of channeling magic to alter the world around them. This phenomenon has been extensively studied by mages, but many details are still elusive. One thing that most agree upon, however, is that emotions are strongly tied to casting spells. Any pony under intense physical or emotional stress can tap into their font to actively change the world around them. A prime example of this ability is Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom, allowing her not only to exceed the speed of sound, but also manipulate the water vapor in the air around her into that of raw rainbow material, leaving a wild rainbow in her wake.
Of course, Bon Bon had no knowledge in the field of magic, passive or active. Even so, as she marched towards Lyra in a haze of righteous fury, she tapped into that innate magical ability that all ponies have. A simple but immensely powerful restraint spell encompassed Lyra, threatening to sever more threads of the spell containing Eris if she struggled. Bon Bon's eyes and hooves glowed very faintly as she unleashed her pent-up anger at the bewildered and frightened unicorn.
"Lyra Heartstrings, you are the most irresponsible mare I have ever met! Do you know —do you even know— what you did to our front yard? More importantly, do you know what you did to my prized garden?!"
Lyra paled as the words hit her like precisely thrown bricks. She stammered incoherently at Bon Bon continued to unleash a week's worth of simmering anger, now long since reached the boiling point. "I spent six years breeding and grafting those azalea bushes from my parents' own personal edible variety! The roses were imported from Stirrope! That was over a decade's worth of finding and breeding and grafting and hybridizing plants to perfect their flavor, and you reduced them to ash piles in a single morning!" The glow faded from Bon Bon's eyes and hooves, but Lyra was still frozen in place. She cowered as Bon Bon quivered in place, looking like she might possibly be on the edge of a catastrophic existence failure.
Lyra squeezed her eyes shut, but nothing more followed. After a few seconds of absolute silence reigned, she dared to peek. Bon Bon was fanning her face with a hoof, but otherwise looked completely collected.
The royal sisters and Twilight exchanged glances as the silence stretched uncomfortably long. Lyra opened her mouth, but Bon Bon quickly cut her off. "Just... be quiet, Lyra." Bon Bon took a deep breath. "What you did was ignorant and destructive beyond what you could possibly understand, and I forgive you."
"Bon Bon, please— wait, what?"
"I forgive you." The mare slowly walked for the door, leaving behind a bewildered Lyra. The unicorn turned to the other three ponies sitting next to her and mouthed "What do I do?"
Celestia gave her a knowing look, and Lyra hung her head as she moved to stop Bon Bon. "Bonnie, wait."
"Don't call me Bonnie."
"Listen, I'll make it up to you. If you give me a list of all the plants you lost, I'll replace as many as I can."
Bon Bon stopped and stared back at Lyra incredulously. "There is no way you could possibly find everything. A lot of them were exotic, and some I bred myself."
"I said I would and I will." Lyra looked pleadingly at her friend. "Please, just give me a list. That's all I ask."
"Fine." Bon Bon trotted from the room, not looking back. "I'll write down as many as I can remember."
"I swear, I will fix this." Lyra watched as her roommate left the room, letting an eerie calm settle over the room. "I don't know how, but I will." She stared resolutely at the table for a moment. "She must be really mad. She didn't even notice the fang."