It was late at night in Ponyville, and the Golden Oaks Library was quite dark. Well, except for a ceiling lamp shaped like a banana peel that stood proudly at attention projecting out of the floor of the main room. Or was that the ceiling? A wall? Discord could frankly say he didn't care. Gravity was something one played bridge with on weekends, not some kind of fundamental force that had to be obeyed at all times. It didn't even have a carrier particle he had to contend with for control of things! It was practically asking to be twisted around to his whims!
The draconequus himself sat comfortably in a plush corduroy armchair next to the lamp, weighing carefully his choices of literature for the night. Daring Do and the Feather of the Phoenix, or the much more substantial Complete Compendium of Cacti? He recalled an old adage he'd come to appreciate particularly well since that dusty old manual he'd eaten when they'd first made the grievous error of releasing him for “reform” gave him indigestion for a week; some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Obviously, that particular word salad had not been among the ones amenable to digestion. But would Complete Compendium be like that, or would he just have to douse it in sauce? And would it be ketchup or some form of fruit preserve? Ah, decisions, decisions...
A flash of light came from above him and drew his attention to the floor of the library. There, standing upside-down above him, was a being he was quite sure he'd never, ever seen before...except maybe since his freeing from a prison of stone a year or so back. And then his second freeing, mere months before! Just the pony who could help, too.
“Twilight Sparkle!” he chuckled, teleporting her before him. She blinked disorientedly – her inner ear was probably trying to reason things out. He thought of a particularly bad bit of wordplay and smiled as he snapped his fingers and attempted to cast a transmogrification spell on her. “You are just the bookworm I wanted to see. Tell me, O devourer of good books, which of these tomes should I – oh, sun and moon, you figured that one out, didn't you.”
Twilight Sparkle – was she Twilight Sparkle? She seemed to have had her model swapped – looked down upon Discord the Small Green Inchworm Bedecked in a Scholar's Cap and giggled. “I've been expecting something like this for months, Discord. The whole Library has been properly enchanted against ponies casting magic on me. Though I think you might have noticed that and deactivated some of my decoys.”
“I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, Twilight,” he replied, reverting to his typical form and dusting himself off. “Things around here have been far too hectic for me to even consider breaking into your home and place of employment, disabling thirty-seven separate and diabolically devised security spells that all seemed to inexplicably be activated by my presence alone, sampling your finest vintage – the oh-eighty-seven Starswirls were particularly fine, salty but with a delicate hint of oak and a delightful aftertaste - “ He broke off, puzzled. “You seem to be taking that news rather well in stride.”
“I imagine they tasted like raspberries as well,” she added smugly, smiling.
“Why?” Now he was puzzled – had she tried to eat them before?They had tasted mainly like that, but – oh. Oh, she had played him for the fool, hadn't she?
“Illusory magical duplicates usually do.”
“There may have been a hint of raspberry as well...” he admitted grudgingly. “I have underestimated you, you conniving little warlock. I must ask – is this room even real, or do you have a pair of pills you'd like to offer me?”
“As much as I'd like to continue, Discord, there are more pressing concerns occupying my mind.” With a flash of light in her eyes, she flipped the room over and grit her teeth visibly as a shower of books plummeted from the shelves. “I should never make assumptions when you're around.”
“What assumption did you make?” he asked. His chair, of course, had remained firmly in place. If gravity was going to throw a fit like that, he saw no reason to give it more ammunition by releasing his seat into its tender book-hating grasp.
“That my inner ear was off because of a gravity differential between Domhan and Equestria.” She sighed, and reverted the room to its prior state. Even more books tumbled off the shelves, though most were caught in her aura and returned to their proper places. The ones on the ground followed suit. “What was I – right, more pressing concerns. What did you mean by 'hectic', by the way? Have any new threats come up that would require the Elements of Harmony?”
“None that Sun-Butt has seen fit to inform me of.” He took a testing bite out of Complete Compendium and chewed, considering the flavor and whether it would be worth a few weeks of indigestion for. Raspberries – bah! “And if one had, Equestria would essentially be unrecognizable at this point, considering every villain requiring their deployment has had excessively grandiose, half-baked and ultimately self-destructive schemes that would impact the whole world, with one exception.”
“You?”
“Actually, I was referring to an old pal of mine called Floral Infinity,” he replied. “I think she still has that old manor in her fragrant and incredibly evil clutches. Somepony should really get around to unleashing the rainbow of friendship upon her soon – it's occupied Equestrian soil after all, and she could try to conquer her neighbor's house at any time with her villainous army of tulips. I appreciate the vote of confidence, though. I'll remember that if I ever try to restore eternal chaos to the world again.”
“You mean it's not guaranteed?”
“It's predictable by now.” He licked the bitten-off corner of the book, regenerating it instantly. “I don't do predictable. Not on large scales, at least.”
“What about - “ She shook her head. “No, darnit! Now I have memories of you as a friend – of course now they come back – and it's making this conversation far more distracting than it should be.”
“Funny. I don't have any memories of the sort at all.” He burped and scratched under his lion arm – probably fleas again. He idly wondered what would happen to them. The last batch had become vegans and lived in a homeless shelter now.
“Getting kicked out of Caelum's court? Drunkenly promising her a night of passion and bad puns?”
He hid his surprise fairly well, he thought. Only one of his limbs went bald, and only with a sound like an elderly stallion's wheezing death rattle. The fur drifted gently to the ground in a cloud, followed by a brigade of parachute-equipped fleas. “So it wasn't a mistake. Interesting. Which name would you prefer now? Twilight Sparkle? Alpha Centauri? Your Supreme Royal Stickiness and Sparkle-Butt are options too. Or would you prefer something with numbers in it?”
“Twilight is fine,” she answered. With a frown, she added, “or Alpha, I suppose. Either works.”
“Twilight Centauri, perhaps? Alpha Sparkle?”
“Just Twilight,” she sighed. “I shouldn't have given you a choice.”
“I prefer Alpha Sparkle, actually. I think I'll go with that.”
“Just Twilight,” she affirmed, “and that's that. Are my friends all in town? Do they have access to the Elements of Harmony?” She turned towards the stairs. “If they're not here, I'll need Spike. Why he didn't stop you from coming in, I - “
“Oh, he's been living with Fluttershy since your sudden and inexplicable vanishment.” He waved his paw dismissively. “I'm curious as to what will result from it. If he starts wearing dog collars as a teenager, you'll know who to blame, at least.”
“Right. She wouldn't let him live here alone while I was away.” She spun back around. “So they're all here? Elements with them?”
“Well, all but one.”
“Who is - “ She chuckled. “Right, of course. Rainbow Dash had to go back to the Academy, didn't she?”
“I believe a one out of two is considered to be a failing grade by academic authorities in this day and age.”
Twilight frowned. “Where is she, then?”
In a burst of light, Discord was clad in formal attire and floating, and gravely lifted his hat off and placed it over his heart. “The Great Beyond, I'm afraid, dear Alpha Sparkle. Our fine feathered friend of the bluer persuasion has left our skies for greener ones in a burst of magical glory.”
She gave him an unamused look. “You're joking.”
“Oh, how I wish I was, old and dear passing acquaintance of mine!” he moaned in a quavering voice. Behind him a few duplicates of himself appeared, dabbing at their eyes with white handkerchiefs and wearing black dresses, weeping and wailing as a soft background to his announcement. “But through her own thickheadedness and obstinacy, Rainbow Dash had dabbled in magics far beyond her ken, heedless of the advice of her elders, and severed her soul from her body in a most lethal manner! Lo, how her cold, dead body lay sprawled before my eyes and the eyes of the aggrievéd princesses, in my very home which she had so unlawfully violated! It was not three days ago we laid her still form to rest in the equally blue and lifeless ground, surrounded by the crowds of her mourners – which was mainly Scootaloo and her friends, none of us actually knew where her parents live so we couldn't reach them. We should probably inform them some time.” He blew his nose. “Where was I? Ah, the funeral! Yes, it was attended by several dozen copies of Scootaloo, to fill out the ranks of the mourners a little and give her a grander sending-off to the great floating pasture in the sky. Fluttershy, as I predicted when Dash first came to me with her mad scheme, was utterly distraught; Applejack was weeping and giving herself character depth above and beyond the call of duty; Rarity sewed the death shroud herself and was there, crying, as her creation was lowered into the ground – and if you'd believe it, she didn't faint at all! Even Pinkie Pie seemed serious. The wake was serious and well-provisioned since Pinkie drowned her sorrows in her baking and leavened the cupcakes with her own tears - “
“I don't believe you.”
The chorus of the damned behind him fell silent immediately and gave her annoyed looks. Discord's attire vanished along with them in another burst of light. “What do you mean, 'I don't believe you'?”
“You're lying,” she said simply. “You're creating a falsehood as some kind of prank in incredibly poor taste. You've done it before.”
“When?”
“Caelum's hall?”
“Oh, very well, you have me there,” he sighed. He snapped his fingers and they teleported to the Ponyville Graveyard, directly in front of Dash's headstone. He even dispelled the modifications he'd made to it. Regardless of whether or not a dunce cap improved the aesthetic of the grave, he didn't think Twilight would appreciate it much at all. Unfortunate connotations were the truest enemy of the avant-garde artist that he was. “Look. In the living flesh.”
Twilight looked at the gravestone and was quiet for a while. Discord assumed she was probing it carefully with her magic senses, and probably her gravimetric and electroweak senses if she'd really come back into her powers as a star in full. If it was free of magic, had mass, and was actually newly placed, she might believe him. Of course, Alpha had always been a doubter. Though it occurred to him just now to ask himself why he even cared if she believed him or not. Rainbow Dash was dead as a doornail. Twilight could come home or stay on Domhan or fling herself miserably into the distant reaches of the universe, and he'd still be completely, wonderfully free.
“How did she die?” she asked quietly. He frowned at the lack of grief or misery or anything approaching the socially acceptable reaction of a friend who'd lost another. She sounded almost...distant. Like a portion of her wasn't entirely here.
“She was attempting an astral projection while being interdicted,” he answered, giving her a curious look. “What was most surprising was that she succeeded to the point where a mishap was possible, though she was a bit off her rocker by the end, and interdictions rely on predictions, and a lunatic is difficult to predict.”
“She'd have had to separate herself from her body for anything dangerous to happen,” Twilight – no, Alpha Centauri murmured. “Someone had to teach her how to do that.”
“Erm – well...” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “She was insistent.”
“You taught a pegasus without any prior training how to perform what is one of the single most dangerous spells possible for someone without prior training to perform,” Alpha summed up. “Why?”
“Well, she was trying to rescue you,” he answered. “I stopped her from doing anything really dangerous like charging in in an attempt to single-handedly erase kelpiekind from the face of Domhan for the crime of kidnapping you.”
“How?”
“I sent her to Caelum, of course.”
“Funny. She never mentioned it to me,” she murmured. “How did it go?”
“Well, she somehow managed to botch that,” he admitted. “She may have been attacked by Caelum for consorting with me...and then fought back.”
Alpha groaned. “Rainbow Dash...”
“And then she fell over into the extremely toxic material I'd had on paw to make a rudimentary ritual circle from,” he continued. He put on a pair of spectacles and summoned a scroll of parchment into existence. “One second, let me find my place...”
Twilight facehoofed. “There's a list?”
“Rainbow Dash, shall we say, was not cut out for interstellar adventures.” He cleared his throat and unraveled the scroll. “To recap: she made a crater several tens of feet long leading up to Fluttershy's door, bullied me into teaching her forbidden magic, assaulted the Queen of the Universe – Tia was very impressed by that one – received aid from a power or powers unknown, defied house arrest by somehow teleporting into the Everfree Forest, broke into my castle, defied the Princesses yet again and tried to astrally project to foundational-powers-know-where to find you, slipped through their interdict – their interdict with the power of two alicorns behind it – long enough to be harmed, and then was killed when her tether was severed quite by accident.” The scroll snapped shut and vanished in a puff of smoke. He crushed the spectacles and tossed them behind him, where they bounced off somepony else's grave and exploded in a small mushroom cloud. “Oh, and she tried to assault the Princesses and insulted all her friends while she was at it. I think that roughly outlines the story of how she died.”
“Power or powers unknown,” Alpha murmured thoughtfully. She looked at Dash's grave again for a long few minutes of silence. Was she mourning? Thinking? Plotting his imminent demise? Devising some fiendish spell of necromancy to call Rainbow Dash's corpse back from the grave to inflict 'awesomeness' once more upon the living? Had she fallen asleep with her eyes open? He couldn't tell. Her face was that expressionless. It was the expressionless he'd most often seen after pushing a joke too far. She was either about to snap and throw a tantrum...or do something they would both severely regret.
Then she returned her attention to Discord and her face looked like it was carved in heaven-stone, unreadable and unchanging. Even the expressionlessness was gone, were that physically possible. “That's a major unknown in this situation. I'm assuming her attempted assault of Celestia and Luna happened after her first projection and contact with this power?”
“You would be correct, actually. The rest was in chronological order.”
“Rainbow Dash can be a bit...aggressive, sometimes, but that sounds extreme even for her,” she said to herself, the mask breaking and her features betraying thoughtfulness, finally. He'd almost been worried there for a second! “I'm missing something...unless you aren't telling me everything, Discord.”
“I have told the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” he scoffed, affronted. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, and that third part of your ridiculous oath that involves baked goods.”
“Hm,” she hummed doubtfully. Nevertheless, her eyes flickered as she summoned magic and opened a wormhole. A wavering image of an underwater throne room formed in the air behind her, as if seen through a thin ornamental waterfall. She looked back as she prepared to leave again. “If she really is dead, Discord, I will hold you accountable. You taught her how to perform an astral projection, and you enabled her to perform one. If she is possessed, seriously injured, or actually dead – permanently dead, since she would be a loose soul without any kind of protection – I will come for you.” For a brief instant, her pupils were slits in orbs of colored glass sunken into angular, almost sinister features, and Discord felt like he was staring into the heart of a black hole, lethal radiation exposure and all. She smiled. She giggled a little. Softly. “If that happens, Discord, I hope you won't be squatting in Fluttershy's little cottage. You'll need to find somewhere much stronger to make things interesting at all.”
“Wait!” he said, frowning. “Are you – are you actually just leaving? Leaving dramatically? Why, I'd be almost proud if I weren't so puzzled!” An abacus appeared in the air next to his head, the beads shifting back and forth at random. “It doesn't add up! What about the power of friendship? Your dear old mentor? Surely, you can't just leave them without even saying goodbye! Why, Celestia's teeth could start to fall out any day now! You'll miss her getting fitted for her first dentures!”
“I'll pay a social visit later,” she answered absently, stepping through the portal. She sat down and gave him an appraising look – not in any kind of friendly way, either. It was the look of an alpha wolf sizing up its prey, and it actually came close to unnerving him. “There...there's a mistake I need to fix first. Without Rainbow Dash, they're useless to me. I'll keep them out of harm's way for now.” The wormhole began to narrow, then jerked to a halt. That look was back – not the look of a wolf, but the look of a black hole like the kind young stars saw in their nightmares. “And, Discord...”
“I assume this will be about my browsing in your library?”
“If I were you, I'd hope – for my own sake – that Rainbow Dash somehow survived.” She grinned. He noticed how uncannily wolflike her teeth were now. Kelpielike? They were both carnivores, he supposed. “I might even try to make myself useful and search for her. Or, Discord – I'd run.” That giggle again – more of a chuckle, really. “I'd run until I couldn't find anywhere else to run to, and then I'd keep running, because I'm starting to remember some of my spells from the War of Nightmares.”
“Erm...”
“Until we see each other again, Dissy.” The wormhole began to narrow again. “I hope you pick somewhere fun to hide...”
The wormhole closed, the wound in space healing and sealing like it had never been there at all. He floated somberly in silence for a few moments. That...she had sounded serious. Deadly serious. And 'dangerously off-kilter” was not a description he'd ever found apt for her before, as Twilight or Alpha Centauri. Something had changed, that was certain – however thick the skein of Twilight's personality was still, it had had a hole punched straight through it to something much less friendly and forgiving. He felt a faint tingle of genuine concern. No, worry. It was something that wouldn't hesitate to challenge a foundational power like himself, however insane the idea might be...and might even win. Getting mixed up in this business with Rainbow Dash had been a bad mistake, however enjoyable mucking about in interstellar politics again had been.
In a puff of smoke, he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and had a large weather-beaten suitcase in either hand, with a fishing rod clutched in his tail; a pair of sunglasses perched atop the raffia hat that now crowned his head. He almost shivered, and a fuzzy sweater popped into existence around him. Great Lights, she really was Alpha Centauri! Shivering! Fear! Nobody before or since had ever been able to make him feel like that, not even Caelum herself!
Perhaps it's time for a short vacation from this orderly little mudball, he thought, trying to distract himself. A thousand years in one place is a bit much, after all. Indeed it was! He had to move on, pull up his nascent roots and find a new set of creatures to bother. Ah, but what about Fluttershy? Much as he hated to admit it, the little yellow flap-flap had been growing on him. The rabbit, though...he could live without the rabbit. Whoever had first pulled that misnamed little rodent out of a hat had made a grave miscalculation. Was the rabbit enough of a justification to prop up his illusion that he would flee Equestria uncoerced?
The answer, of course, was an ominously dramatic nope.
I wonder what the fishing's like in Andromeda this time of year, he thought. That's far enough, right? Perhaps the Tadpole Galaxy? Am I willing to tolerate that many amphibians for an indefinite time period? Oh, boiled mushrooms, it would be an indefinite time period, wouldn't it? She was a star now. That meant immortality, persistent grudges, and bad gas. Not a combination that lent itself well to forgiveness. She wouldn't forget this little promise. Perhaps he should put more distance between himself and her. Abell, out in Horologium, maybe. Markarian was nice and isolated. Zee-eight?
He had the sneaking suspicion that, if Rainbow Dash actually was dead irreversibly, even there wouldn't be far enough away.