Every fiber of Tailspin's being thrummed with the desperate desire to turn tail, leap into the air, and fly as far and fast as her wings could take her. The thing, the twisted chimera with the malicious smile, was looking at her. It was coming closer.
But her legs didn't seem to want to move.
Those eyes were drilling into hers. They looked sickly and feverish, and one was far larger than the other. They seemed to shine in the darkness.
She couldn't look away.
"Oh, come now," the thing said. Its voice was still full of that oily smugness, and it was walking towards her with a lurching, uneven gait, its body coiling and uncoiling unnaturally with each step. "I am fully aware that my looks can be rather startling-" it bared its teeth at her in a motion that just barely met the requirements for being called a grin "-but, believe me, if I were going to do anything really nasty to you, it would have started already."
Finally, Tailspin managed to force her legs into motion. She still couldn't tear her gaze away from the thing's eyes, but she did succeed in taking a few shaky steps backward, into the hall from which she had come.
"W-" Her voice came out as a squeak. It was hard to even think of any appropriate words through the terror clouding her mind, and it was even harder to try and get her throat to respond. She tried again. "Who-"
The thing rolled its eyes. It wasn't a normal motion. Rather than simply moving in a circle in their sockets, both eyes flipped around entirely until they were pointed back into its head, then kept going until they had come full circle. "I did just say that, didn't I?" It sounded a bit exasperated now, but still cruelly, sarcastically amused. "I'm afraid you might have some sort of problem up here."
There was the sensation of the world twisting, and Tailspin felt her stomach heave as something that she couldn't put words to happened. There was the sensation that her eyes were seeing something that her brain couldn't process. The result was that she felt as though someone had just unstopped a drain in her head and all rational thought was pouring out of it.
The thing was gone, leaving only empty space behind. But there was something else, now - a new feeling entirely. She felt a sort of pressure inside her left ear, and there was the distinct, impossible sensation that something far too large for her ear canal had somehow managed to get inside it without in any way actually stretching it. She froze.
"Well, I must admit, I'm at a loss." Its voice was too close now, far too close, and seemed to echo around the inside of her skull. "Everything in here appears to be in working order. There really is no rational explanation for you not having heard me."
When the thing somehow pulled itself free of her ear, still at its full size but still somehow, impossibly, managing to pull itself out without ripping a hole in her head, she felt simultaneously as though she wanted to scream and vomit. She couldn't manage either. Her body wasn't capable of that much movement. Absolute, abject fear had frozen her muscles more completely than any ice. All she could do was whimper.
"Nothing for it, I suppose," the creature said in an airy, conversational tone. It was walking in circles around her now, twirling its clawed hand lazily through the air. "I'll just have to try again. I am Discord. I am Lord of Chaos, King of Madness, and Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities." It paused. "Or was it the other way around? Ah, no matter." It gave a dry chuckle. "If you prefer, you can call me Dizzy. Because we're friends."
It elbowed Tailspin in the side with its furred arm, and she staggered. The shock of its touch seemed to jar her frozen brain into action again, and she shook her head quickly, trying to clear it. The terror was still there, and still overriding most logical thought processes, but she could fight it now.
...Sort of. A bit.
"F-friends?" She could still barely force the words out. Her jaw didn't want to move. "I don't-"
"You d-d-don't...?" Discord was facing away from her as he spoke, but again, his body contorted freakishly until he was bent over backwards so far that he could grin at the pegasus, upside-down. "Don't what? Understand? You mean Spike never told you about me? Oh, I'm hurt. I truly am. Of all the things that could happen, this is the worst-"
Again, there was that horrible sensation of the word twisting, and suddenly the chimera was lying, in a pose of overdramatized woe, on an ornate fainting couch.
"-possible thing!"
It cracked open one eye, then scowled. "Well," it grumbled, sounding suddenly peeved, "on second thought, that would probably have gone over better if he was actually here. Mocking the dearly departed is so much more entertaining when somepony in the audience is personally offended by it."
Another twist. The fainting couch vanished. Discord was simply standing there once again, watching her with a thoughtful expression on his misshapen face.
Enough of Tailspin's mind was functioning again that she was actually able to form a coherent question. It took her a few seconds to get her vocal cords to cooperate, but eventually, she croaked, "You know Spike?"
"Oh, of course." Without any transition whatsoever, Discord was suddenly beside her. No, worse. He had one of his arms around her. The shock and revulsion of that touch almost made her miss the photo album that was suddenly being shoved in her face.
It looked like a scrapbook put together by someone's old grandmother when she had far too much time on her hooves. There were at least half a dozen photographs visible on the two open pages alone. The chimera's free hand came around to point at one of them in particular, which showed the six mares from the doorway standing in front of Discord, scowling. Each of them was wearing a gem in the same shape as their cutie mark.
"Spike and I go way back," the thing purred in her ear. Its breath was rank and hot, stinking of rotten meat. Again, she felt her stomach lurch, but she hadn't eaten much for several days. There was nothing to come up, even as more of the stench rolled over her from Discord's continued speech. "We first met when his friends all joined together and used the Elements of Harmony to blast me back into a statue for a few months."
He gave a slight sniff, and shut the scrapbook with a snap. It disappeared immediately, with yet another brief flash of... something that made Tailspin's eyeballs ache.
"Good times," Discord was saying. He had straightened up and was wiping a few tears away from his larger eye. "But that wasn't the extent of our relationship, of course. After a while, Princess Celestia got it into her adorable little head that I could be reformed. That I could learn to understand the magic of friendship, and use my powers for the benefit of others rather than my own amusement. Just another sickeningly-sweet plan in a long line of sickeningly-sweet plans."
He took a few steps away, and Tailspin took a few rapid gulps of relatively fresher air. Discord wasn't paying attention. He had wandered away, towards one of the statues on the right-hand side of the hall. It depicted an elegant-looking pegasus mare with a gentle smile and a cutie mark shaped like a trio of butterflies.
"She conscripted Fluttershy here-" Discord waved his clawed arm at the statue "-to be my therapist, so to speak. I never really did understand why she didn't choose Pinkie Pie instead. More common ground, you know. And then she left me in Ponyville, expecting me, the immortal embodiment of chaos and disharmony, to make friends."
Tailspin took another few steps backward. So long as the thing kept talking, she was still alive. Maybe it would get so wrapped up in its monologue that she could make a break for it. She gulped, then squeaked, "I take it that didn't work."
"Hah!" Discord laughed for a moment, then turned to grin at her again. "Well, that would have been the logical conclusion to the matter," he said. "But I decided a long time ago that there is no fun to be had in being logical about things like this. No, no, it worked. If it hadn't..."
He paused for a moment, lifting his gaze to the ceiling and muttering to himself. "Let's see," he said. One arm came up as he began to count off on his fingers. "Your scout would never have seen the castle in the Tangle, Spike would still be asleep, your coltfriend would never have found that handy little magic branch, you and your two pony friends would have been devoured by changelings, the windigos would be inside this castle right now, you would all have died instantaneously from hitting the gates, Spike's little trinket would still be around his neck instead of yours, and you'd have starved to death back in the entrance hall."
Tailspin shut her eyes to block out the nauseating sight of Discord's hand sprouting extra fingers to count on. "So we'd have died three times over, despite the fact that we wouldn't even have survived the first one?" It wasn't a particularly insightful thing to say, but something about being close to Discord seemed to be sapping her of her ability to form coherent thoughts.
"What did I say about logic?" Discord laughed. "Really. It's so much more fun if you just let it go. But..." He gave a theatrical sigh. "I know it's hard for you ponies to really get to grips with insanity. Poor souls." There was a pause. "Except Pinkie Pie, of course. Though you are disappointingly unlike her. Not a single party cannon to be found."
The pegasus opened her eyes again, cautiously, unsure of what she might see. To her relief, Discord still remained in a somewhat comprehensible position. He was perched on the head of one of the other statues, the one showing a frizzy-maned earth pony with the balloon cutie mark. Where he had conjured the glass of iced tea from, she had no idea, but so long as he wasn't rummaging around inside her head again, or altering his body in impossible ways, she could... well, "handle it" was the wrong phrase. "Stomach it" was better.
"All right," she said, trying to force her heart to stop beating so fast. "So you're... reformed."
"Indubitably." The chimeric monstrosity drained the glass in one titanic slurp, then tossed the glass away over a shoulder. There was no sound of impact. It then gave her what was apparently meant to be a cherubic smile, but only succeeded in exposing its teeth once more.
She shuddered. "And you've been helping us."
"Incontrovertibly."
Tailspin narrowed her eyes. "Why? What are you? Why should I trust you?"
Discord sat up straight and gave an awkward salute. "In reverse order, ma'am," he barked, in a sudden parody of a military tone, "you shouldn't, I refer you to my previous answers on the subject, and because, aside from being a reformed villain, things were getting unbearably boring around here."
"Boring?" Tailspin gave him a sidelong look. She couldn't stop herself from edging away a bit further.
Suddenly, Discord's mismatched hands had gripped her around her barrel, and she was being lifted into the air. How the thing had gotten behind her so quickly, she didn't know. She just knew that it was touching her again, and the sensation made her skin crawl. She fought to suppress a scream.
"Yes, yes, yes," babbled Discord. He tugged her further up, into the air above the statues, and then squeezed her hard, as if she were a stuffed doll. "Boring beyond belief, and not just because I've been stuck in this dank throne room for more centuries than I care to remember. I swear, it's almost as bad as being a statue. I mean..."
Without warning, he released her, and this time Tailspin couldn't suppress the shriek as she began to plummet back towards the ground. She tried to spread her wings, but she was in the wrong position entirely for arresting a fall, and even if she weren't, her body was still weak. She wasn't certain that she would be able to fly under ideal conditions, let alone this.
Then she felt her hooves impact something familiar. She blinked, looked down, and blinked again, certain that she must be seeing things.
There was a cloud hovering beneath her, just a few yards above the floor. It wasn't a normal cloud, either. It appeared to be made out of cotton candy. But it supported her weight, at least.
Discord, once again, didn't seem to be paying her any attention. He was doing the backstroke through the air, eyes closed, and rambling to the world in general. Watching him made Tailspin's eyes water again. She had the very distinct feeling that the world was not meant to do the things that Discord made it do.
"...can say what you like about Celestia, but at least things were interesting when she was in charge," he said casually, not even looking towards her. "Oh, she was far too stuffy for my own good, but there is something to be said for a functional monarchy. Having a country that ran smoothly always made the little muck-ups that much sweeter. Absence, as they say." He opened his eyes, frowning, and finished, in a rather more serious tone, "But then she had to go and die."
"I thought alicorns were immortal," Tailspin said. She shifted her hooves slightly on the surface of the cloud, trying to find a stable surface. The candyfloss was starting to melt and stick to her coat.
Another twist, another moment's feeling that reality was being put through the wringer, and Discord was back on the ground. This time, he was wearing... something. It was an odd ensemble in dark purple, nothing really coherent. He was also holding an equine skull in one hand, and appeared to be speaking to it rather than to Tailspin.
"Oh, they are," he said, his voice regaining its usual tone of smug self-satisfaction. "When it comes to time, at least. They can still be killed. They're like dragons. That's why the world isn't overrun with scaly fire-breathers, you know. They tend to slaughter one another over their hoards. Only a few of them live to be as old as little Spikey-Wikey out there. But I digress."
He crushed the skull between his talons with a wet snapping sound that made Tailspin feel like she was coming close to vomiting again, then sighed. "She was killed by her own little sister," he said. "Sibling squabbles always were such a painful thing to witness. And then poor Twilight had to step in and finish the job on Luna. Of course..."
The purple clothing vanished, and Discord was hovering in the air beside her cotton candy perch, grinning like a lunatic again. "For all her knowledge and talent, Twilight never was the most well-balanced of ponies," he said, in a conspiratorial whisper. "She never did fully recover from that. I tried to comfort her, of course, especially after what happened to Cadence. I was the only friend she had in the world, with Spike asleep."
Tailspin felt a sudden surge of pity towards Twilight Sparkle, which she fought desperately to keep from showing in her expression. Whether or not Discord noticed anything, he kept talking regardless. "Eventually, she got fed up with me and locked me away in here. Can you imagine? Just for trying to educate her on some of the finer points of friendship." He gave an offended huff. "And after that, things went downhill fast, just like I told her they would. And it's all come down to this mess you call a life."
He spun one claw through the air, and Tailspin's eyes widened as a map of the world, constructed, so far as she could tell, entirely from various pieces of pastry, manifested itself in front of him. It was barely a foot across, but exquisitely detailed all the same.
"You ponies are all just living out your miserable, regimented little lives behind the wall," Discord said, sounding completely exasperated now. "And Chrysalis was content to keep her subjects fed with the occasional raid rather than risk a full-on assault. Oh, there's been the occasional stray monster wandering into the settlements, and, of course, there's the annual visit from our friend in space, but nothing really interesting has happened in centuries, especially with Cadence just cooped up and waiting to die. So I decided to roll the dice and see if I couldn't shake things up a bit."
He reached out and delicately plucked away a few strands of licorice that denoted the location of the Tangle. Underneath was a large purple gumdrop.
"Dear old Spike," he said affectionately, giving the gumdrop a small pat. The licorice disappeared into his toothy maw with a snap of colliding teeth. "We never saw eye-to-eye, the two of us, but he did always have a habit of surprising people. And, right now, I think this world is due for a surprise. It took a while to worm a hole into the spell Princess Priss put on my little jail cell, and even longer to gather enough strength to reach out and try to do something with it, but eventually, I managed it."
He spread his arms wide and beamed at her. "And so here we are!"
Tailspin gave him a blank stare for a few seconds. Then she sighed. "All right," she said. "Fine. Let's say that I believe you. You're the one who's been helping us out this whole time. You still haven't told me why. What's your plan?"
"Why, to help, of course!" Discord snapped his fingers, and the candy replica of the world vanished. "Whether or not you believe it, I did actually learn something about friendship from my time in Ponyville, and even someone like myself can have an altruistic urge every once in a while."
Tailspin's expression didn't change.
He rolled his eyes again. "Oh, fine," he said. "I admit that a teeny-tiny part of it might also be that I'm a bit miffed at Miss Sparkle for locking me up in here."
"Then how," the pegasus said slowly, "does helping us get back at her for that?"
Discord's face broke into another impossibly wide, predatory grin. "Oh, my dear, sweet filly," he purred, "haven't you figured it out yet? Twilight Sparkle is the Mare in the Moon."