Duplicity.
It was an easy thing, really. It was what he was best at. Everyone did it, in one way or another, but Discord had millennia to practice the art.
A lie was a powerful thing. A small lie could trick someone for a moment. A larger one, for a day. Larger still, for a lifetime. And the nice thing, the nice thing, was that if a lie was convincing enough, and if it lasted for long enough, there ceased to be any difference between the lie and reality.
Discord, in the countless aeons since his birth, had mastered the art of lying to the world. Lying to its inhabitants was simple. A true master of the lie could fool reality itself. It was surprisingly easy; the space-time continuum never seemed to learn any of the little giveaways that its children were so annoyingly perceptive about.
Being in two places at once was simple, compared to some of the other fast ones that he had pulled.
That was why it disgusted him that it took so much of his energy to do it. He felt like an athlete that had indulged in too much fast food over the past few years, and was now attempting to run a marathon. His heart was, both metaphorically and literally, screaming at him. He told it to shut up, then, as an afterthought, got rid of it entirely. It wasn't as though he had ever really needed one anyway.
Looked at from one angle, he was still standing on the mountaintop - or, more accurately, he was sitting at a small table with a checkered cloth, sipping freshly-brewed, piping-hot magic out of a small silver teacup and admiring the view as a few errant windigoes stampeded around the distant peaks. He had considered inviting them to join him, but eventually decided against it. They were not the best party guests, really. They tended to spill the drinks.
Looked at from another, rather more actual angle, he was hanging upside-down from an ornate crystalline chandelier, with his clawed foot hooked around one of its jeweled outcroppings like a bat's.
It wasn't entirely dark in the hall. There was the dull, burnished, coppery light that leaked in through a few ruined windows, but they were too streaked with soot to allow much in the way of illumination. That left few details of the surrounding area visible.
Or, rather, it would have left few things visible if he had been relying on ordinary sight. The Lord of Madness had no trouble at all in discerning the grand throne beneath him, or the figure that sat upon it. Both had changed substantially since he had last seen them, but there was still just enough of the old to be recognizable.
And, of course, there was the heart-shaped crystal, as large as a pony's barrel, that floated in the air just in front of the figure, radiating sickening, black power. That also left little doubt as to what he was looking at.
He was fully aware that the... thing... on the throne could see him just as well as he could see it, though its head was still turned away. He wasn't particularly worried.
Still, the silence was becoming a bit oppressive.
He raised his paw to his lips and coughed, once.
"What do you want, Discord?"
Even with the body so changed, the voice remained beautiful. Discord let his expression change into a wide, toothy grin.
"Oh, I just thought I'd pop in to say hello to an old friend. I've been away for some time, you know. I thought it was only proper."
The thing on the throne shifted. There was a scraping sound.
"An old friend?" There was a note of amusement in the voice. "A bit presumptuous of you, don't you think?"
Discord laughed and twirled a claw. "Come now. I know that the two of us were never quite bosom pals, but still."
"'The two of us'?" The thing below him laughed as well. It was a familiar laugh, almost musical in its way. When it faded, a pair of eyes opened. They were brilliantly green, and the air near them seemed to fume and twist with uncontained power.
"I think," it said slowly, "you may be thinking of someone else."
Discord's grin only widened. "Oh, no," he said. "You are just the person I wanted to see." A simple lie, that. It was one of the truly easy ones, the ones that would be treated as though they were true even if the mark saw through them. Some people just couldn't resist the urge to talk. He should know. He was one of them.
Yes, two places was easy. Three, on the other hand, was going to be a bit harder.
Back on the mountaintop, Discord frowned and glanced down at the tiny cup that he held so delicately between two claws. He swirled its contents about thoughtfully for a moment, then sighed. He was rather proud of his little tea service, truth be told; the little pattern of butterflies on it was quite fetching.
But some lies... well, some lies just needed more behind them if they were going to last. And this one was going to be a doozy.
It really was a shame. The khaki one was a bit of a buzzkill, yes, but overall the other two had been... well, not nearly as much fun as Pinkie, or as sweet as Fluttershy, but... still. A shame. And there was Spike, of course, but then, there was always Spike. Things never seemed to go that dragon's way. Surely he would be used to it by now. It wasn't as though it were anything personal.
...No, that wasn't right. It was personal, wasn't it?
Yes. Personal.
With a flicker of thought, he dismissed the tea service. A moment later, it was replaced by a pint mug, which he filled from a tap that had spontaneously materialized in midair, drained in a single gulp, and immediately refilled.
Discord grinned to himself. There was no real mirth in it.
This... was not going to be fun.
But, perhaps more than anything else he had ever done, it was going to be oh so satisfying.
The guard flinched under Colonel Reveille's glare.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but I can't open the gate without authorization from-"
"I am giving the authorization!" Reveille's voice was at its full, ear-shattering volume. The guardsmare in front of him was leaning back as far as possible, obviously fighting the urge to turn and bolt.
Pith was intimately familiar with that urge. Every recruit had the fear of their drill sergeant drilled into them during basic training. He was impressed that Reveille had picked up The Voice without ever actually serving as a drill instructor.
He was more impressed that the guardsmare was actually rallying well enough to form a coherent sentence in the face of the hurricane of sound. She licked her lips once, then quavered, "Sir, if you're leaving the fortress, we need a record of where you're going-"
Pith shot a glance towards Tailspin and Compass, who were standing to his right. Tailspin had a look of faint amusement on her features as she watched the proceedings. Compass simply looked sour, and kept snatching glances at the five soldiers who stood around the three of them on all sides.
Armed escort wasn't something that Pith had ever been placed under before. He would have preferred that he and Tailspin had simply been allowed to take Compass and head out into the wilds alone; these were soldiers, not scouts, and a group this size would be a hell of a lot easier to spot than they would be on their own even if they were all trained in stealth. But Reveille had insisted, and on this, there was no budging him.
"-part of 'top secret' do you not understand, soldier?" he was shouting. "Our destination is confidential. You have a problem with that, you take it up with Tempo, understand? Now open these gates!"
The guard swallowed hard. It was, Pith had to admit, somewhat entertaining to watch a mare that size cowering in front of somepony as diminuitive as Reveille. "S-sir," she croaked, "if that's the case, then the General would have given you the override code phrase-"
Reveille paused for a moment. Then he turned his head to look at one of the guards, his expression unreadable. Pith glanced over at the guard he was looking at just in time to see a barely-perceptible nod.
Reveille snorted. "Harvest!" His voice was a bark, but not as loud as it had been a moment prior. "Code!"
The guard he had looked at saluted. "Sir! Code is apple-diamond-pear..."
Pith tuned him out and looked back to Tailspin and Compass. Both of the mares were looking up at him, their expressions identical pictures of slight confusion. After a moment, Pith shrugged and looked back towards Reveille.
The pegasus was giving the guard an expectant look. After a second's time to compose herself, the guard straightened up and nodded once. "That all seems to be in order, sir." Somehow, she managed to keep her voice from cracking. "Just let me, uh, get this gate open for you."
A few seconds later, the troupe was on the road, headed along one of the paths leading northwest from the fortress. Colonel Reveille strode along in the center of the group, walking abreast with Compass Rose just behind Pith and Tailspin. The armed escort that he had insisted upon bringing along arranged themselves in a sort of rough circle around the four of them, and spent most of their time peering around suspiciously. They walked along without speaking. The only sound was that of their hooves thudding against the rocky ground as they walked.
The first time that anyone spoke was when they crested a rise in the road. It was Tailspin who broke the silence, first with a low whistle, then with a "Well. That looks worse than I expected it to."
Pith blinked slowly and turned to look at her. She had stopped walking and turned around to face back the way they had come. In the distance, the colossal bulk of Fort Maneholdt was visible as a dark line against the horizon. From this spot, though, there were other things visible as well. Here, at the center of the cordon, the emplacements were closer together than elsewhere. Pith could clearly see, off to the south, the smoking ruin where one fortress should have been, and the black, amorphous shape that had replaced another.
And, hovering in the sky over the Tangle like a dark crown, there was a mass of black thunderheads.
Pith set his jaw and let out a low snort at the sight. His eyes darted over the shattered wrecks on the horizon, then to the Tangle, and finally back to Fort Maneholdt. Then he shook his head.
"If you're all done staring," said Reveille's voice, as sharp and brazen as the crash of cymbals, "we have somewhere to be."
Pith shook himself. "Sir," he said. "Yes, sir. Apologies, sir. I was distracted for a moment."
"I can see that," answered Reveille, looking disinterested. He frowned and jerked his head towards the path they had been taking. "Keep moving. The entire reason we're getting you three out of there is to keep you away from the changelings, and they're getting closer by the minute."
"Yes, sir. We can see that," said Tailspin, as they started forward again. She shot a look at Pith, whose stony expression mirrored her own. "They seem to be getting closer very quickly, sir," she continued. "What are the odds that we'll be able to hold?"
Reveille snorted. "Not good, unless your dragon friend has a miracle ready for us. And 'saved by an evil god-monster' doesn't count. The changelings went straight for Greenfield, punched right through. Cut the entire south side of the cordon off from reinforcement and just swept down. We only made it out of McHoofry because I called for evacuation before they actually reached us, and we had to break into small groups and run for it through the hills. I'm not sure how many actually made it."
"And Doctor Grey?" It was Compass' voice, this time. Pith could see her expression out of the corner of his eye. She still looked sour - she had a face that naturally tended towards that - but there was a tinge of worry in it as well.
Reveille grunted, then said, very simply, "Didn't make it."
There was silence for a full thirty seconds after that. Then Compass said, "I'm sorry."
Reveille didn't look at any of them. He just kept facing forward, his expression hidden from view. "This is a war," he said flatly. "People die."
"Yes," said Compass. "But I understand the two of you were close."
Pith frowned and shot her a look. This was not the thing to say at the current time. There was no immediate reprimand from Reveille, however. There was nothing but silence, and a slight twitch of his wing.
When he spoke again, his voice was short, clipped, and, for the first time, had a faint note of uncertainty in it. "My relationship with the late doctor is no concern of yours, Miss Rose," he said. "Do not press further into this matter."
"Yes, Colonel." Compass pursed her lips and let her gaze fall to the path again. For a few seconds, Pith shot she was finished, but then:
"Where are we headed, sir?"
Another twitch from Reveille's wing. "A bunker," he said, his voice firm once again. "Just south of where the nearest settlement used to be. There are a few scattered around the settlements, in case we find something we want to keep safe and can't trust the usual methods."
"I've never heard of them," said Compass. "They weren't marked on any of the maps I-"
"That," Reveille cut in, his voice rising, "would be because their locations are top secret, Miss Rose. Now, if you are finished prattling, perhaps you can focus on maintaining the proper pace. We need to get away from the front lines as quickly as possible."
Pith set his jaw. Beside him, he heard the slight hiss from Tailspin and saw her move a bit closer to the flinching Compass. But that was all. No one said anything else.
Wrapped once again in silence, they continued along the path. Behind them, Fort Maneholdt faded into the distance.
The dragon was stirring in the back of Spike's brain.
It was something that he had learned to control when he was very young. He had spent some time among others of his species, and seen the way they conducted themselves. Young dragons were greedy, boastful, petty things. He had once hoped that he would meet older dragons and find that they learned to reign in those impulses.
He had been disappointed. Elder dragons never shed their greed, or their unthinking anger, or their spiteful nature. They honed them, practiced them. They took the unthinking, brutish nature of their childhood, reigned it in, and sharpened it to a razor's edge.
Some accounts that Spike had read described dragons as noble. That was true, to an extent. Dragons were noble in the same way that a scheming duke with his eye on the throne was noble. They were haughty, vain, cruel things, and they reveled in it.
And they were strong. They were very, very strong.
Right now, Spike needed strength.
The dragon was nothing so simple as a separate entity. It wasn't a voice that spoke to him in seductive whispers, or some dark side of himself that he kept locked away. It was simply the capacity to be like others of his kind. If he wanted to, he could kill.
I say good for him.
Chrysalis' face loomed up in his memories. His claws shifted reflexively, scraping across the tabletop with a faint, shrill sound.
The sound of the door opening pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked up to see Captain Road making his way into the room.
The captain had obviously been busy since he left. His uniform was askew and untidy-looking, his mane was disheveled, and he looked more than a bit nervous. He smiled faintly when he saw Spike.
"Right," he said. "Sorry for the wait. I've been running around all over the place trying to get things done. We're ready for you, though. Follow me."
Spike took a deep breath, nodded, and stepped down off of the table. His legs protested slightly, and his wings ached heavily with the motion, but it was a marked improvement over how he had felt before the medical staff had worked on him. He still felt bruised and tired, but he was, at least, whole.
"I'm ready," he said. "Just show me what you need."
Road nodded, then turned and motioned for Spike to follow. "This way, then. The general is waiting. And we may not have much time."
Outside, the world was still masked in its perpetual half-shadow. Spike cast his eyes upward for a moment, towards the moon, and frowned to himself. He didn't look long, though. There was too much going on for him to be able to get away with not paying attention to where he was going.
Fort Maneholdt was fully awake now. When Spike and the rest had first arrived, there had been activity, yes, but it was nothing compared to the rush going on now. Spike would have thought of it as chaos if it hadn't been so readily apparent that each and every pony present knew exactly what they were doing.
Pegasi soared overhead. Earth ponies and unicorns rushed back and forth on the ground, more often than not with heavy burdens on their backs or being towed via cart. Several injured ponies on stretchers were levitated past him as he made his way out of the medical building.
And it was all done in near complete silence. Everypony present had their orders. There was almost no talking going on at all.
Even with his size back to something approaching normal, Spike towered above the crowds, and it was difficult to move without running into anyone. Once or twice, he was forced to dance out of the way of an oncoming cart.
Captain Road was moving more quickly than he was. If it weren't for his height advantage, Spike might have lost sight of his guide in the crowds. As it was, he managed to tail him towards the eastern wall of the fortress, where the crowd was thickest.
Like the rest of Fort Maneholdt, the walls were much more impressive than those that had been in place at McHoofry. McHoofry's walls had been wooden. These were stone, cyclopean things, built to last. They reared upward over Spike's head, reaching towards the dim sky.
Soldiers and other military personnel were crowded around the base of the wall, as well as moving up and down the stone steps that led up towards the parapet. None of them gave Spike so much as a glance, and the dragon shivered as he watched them. There was something haunted in their expressions.
He ducked through a brief opening in the crowd and made his way up to Captain Road. "So," he said quietly, still watching the workers, "what am I here to see?"
Road's eyes were turned upward, towards the stairs. He ran one hoof through his mane, sighed, and answered, "General Tempo wanted to speak to you. If you're fighting with us, you need a sitrep, and we need to know exactly how much you think you can do. He's up on the wall, though, and it's going to be a pain getting up there."
Spike snorted. One of his wings twitched automatically. "I can get up on my own, I think" he said. "I could try to carry you, but I don't know exactly how much strain I want to put on my wings just yet."
Road blanched slightly. "Uh, no," he said, with a few rapid shakes of his head. "No. Thank you, but no. I like my hooves on the ground, thank you very much. I'll make my own way up. But you should go to see the general."
"Fair enough." Spike nodded once, then shifted his stance and, with great care, spread his wings. "I'll meet you up there, then."
And he flapped once, tentatively, testing his strength.
He did lift. It was a clumsy thing; he was no pegasus, and going from a standing start to full speed in an instant, as he had done in the Everfree, was more stress than he was willing to put on his newly-healed limbs at the moment. Even with such a gentle takeoff as this, he felt the ache in his joints redouble. But he could fly.
A sudden, unexpected feeling of relief washed over him. He could fly. He hadn't quite registered until just now what it would mean to lose his wings. There had been too much more to consider. Now that he had a moment, though, the exhilaration of being airborne swept over him in a great wave, and he had to fight the urge to flap harder. There was no point in straining himself.
The sight that greeted him as he crested the top of the wall forced him to stop and stare for a moment.
The parapet was an impressive construction, easily wide enough for him to stand on despite his bulk and stretching off around the perimeter of the fortress in both directions. Despite this, it was full almost to its entirety. Earth ponies and unicorns of all descriptions lined the wall, almost all of them holding some sort of weapon. Overhead, heavily-armed pegasi flew in squads of four and five.
Those that weren't were either busy retrieving one or delivering one to somepony else. Javelins, spears, halberds, maces, morningstars, and a dozen other varieties were all visible. There were also a number of large, wooden mechanisms scattered along the length of the wall. Spike had no idea of the details of their design, but given that they each appeared to be loaded with a spear and pointed towards the Tangle, he could hazard a rough guess as to their function.
But that wasn't what drew his eye. No, what caught his attention was the Tangle itself.
The great mass of vines was, as best he could tell, less than a mile away - and, unlike the vines that they had forced their way through to reach Twilight's old palace, these vines were alive. They writhed visibly and sent feelers forward. Dark shapes moved between them, and their vicious thorns gouged up the ground in great furrows. It had the appearance of some great monster skulking low to the ground, waiting to pounce.
And, above it, there was the great mass of thunderheads. They were not natural clouds, but the same oily, black, thorn-covered things created by the plunder seeds, all gathered together and forced into one colossal mass. There was so much magic forced into that storm that it was no longer even truly black, but a mix of purples and blues and reds, as if the sky were bruised. Green lightning flashed within the mass of clouds, and the air was full of the distant rumble of thunder.
Spike shook himself, found a break in the crowd, and lowered himself onto the top of the wall, frowning. He was about to take a step forward to get a better look at the Tangle once again when a voice rang out.
"You."
Spike turned. General Tempo was striding towards him, tailed by a young unicorn that could only be an adjutant. The adjutant was constantly accepting files and memos from passing personnel, glancing over them, and occasionally passing one to the general. The general, for his part, dismissed most of them. His eyes were fixed on Spike, who drew himself up and cleared his throat.
"Uh... yes, sir," he said. "Me. I've decided to fight."
"Good." Tempo cast a critical eye over him. His gaze lingered for a moment on the oozing rents in his scales. "We'll need all the help we can get. The changelings have broken our southern defensive line. We've managed to get four out of the five settlements defended by those fortresses evacuated, but if we can't hold the line at Maneholdt, then it'll all have been for nothing. The changelings will crush though and take everyone. There won't be anywhere to hide."
Spike blinked. "Four out of the five, sir?"
"Yes." Tempo accepted another file from his adjutant, grunted, and handed it back. He said nothing else.
After a moment, Spike prompted, "What happened to the fifth?"
Tempo scowled. "Razed," he said flatly. "And its inhabitants taken prisoner. Along with the entire garrison at Greenfield."
"I'm sorry," said Spike. There didn't seem to be anything else to say.
Tempo merely grunted again. "Be sorry later," he said. "For now, we have to focus on keeping the rest of the settlements safe. The southern fields were already the source of most of our food stocks. We can't afford to lose any more territory. We live on a knife edge as it is."
Spike nodded and glanced back towards the Tangle. "Then how do we stop them, sir?"
"With every armed pony we can muster armed to the teeth and sitting inside the most heavily-fortified position in our territory," answered Tempo flatly. "Maneholdt is the single toughest nut to crack our military has ever established. It's turned the insects back before when it looked like it wouldn't be possible. Maneholdt will hold." He stepped forward and jabbed a hoof against Spike's chest. "You'll make sure of that."
Spike nodded again, his expression grim. "I'll do what I can."
"Good," said Tempo. "This... Chrysalis thing, assuming it is the leader, has never been able to take Maneholdt before. It's been over a decade since they made any serious attempt. We can and will stop them here, especially with a dragon as our trump card."
Something flicked on in Spike's memory. Something that Pith Helmet had said while they were resting in the Fort McHoofry infirmary.
"Ace," he muttered.
Suddenly, he felt very worried.
The great gates on Fort Maneholdt's southern wall creaked open, admitting a handful of beaten and bleeding soldiers. Two of them were pulling a cart, which was full of other ponies. All but one of the ones in the cart were unconscious.
The one who was still awake was a grey unicorn mare nursing an obviously broken hind leg. Beside her was sprawled a diminutive, olive-coated pegasus stallion wearing a colonel's uniform.
Doctor Grey raised her head and peered around at the crowd, then leaned over and draped one good leg protectively over the pegasus.
"What?" Tempo looked up from another memo, frowning.
"The ace," Spike repeated, his voice rising sharply. "What's her ace? Chrysalis might be angry, but she's not stupid. What's her plan? If she can't take Maneholdt through brute force, what's she going to do? She wouldn't throw her entire hive to their deaths without a backup."
"We're not expecting her to," said Tempo shortly. "But we've got no intelligence to work with here, no time to gather it, and no real way to do so even if we did have the time."
"But we can't just go into this blind," Spike said, unable to keep the edge of panic down. "Chrysalis has had years of experience fighting you. She's had decades to figure something out, to get things in place, but she didn't actually try to attack until now. She hasn't attacked when she was just up against normal ponies, and now I'm here. What's changed? What's her ace?"
Tempo raised his head from the latest memo and gave Spike a blank stare. "We don't know," he said, his voice slow and patient. "We can't know."
"Then what do we do?" asked Spike urgently.
Tempo took a deep breath, passed the memo back to his adjutant, and turned to look outward, towards the Tangle. "We hope," he said, "that ours is better."