There was a time when only the draconequi ruled Gaia, but that all changed when the draconequus known as Harmony gave up her true form and bred two beings, from which all equine-based life originated...
War. We could see it on the horizon, and ironically, it was Harmony who would be the instigator. It was inevitable. Harmony left us, and with her, she took our brothers and sisters whom she deemed useful to her cause. Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Generosity, Kindness, and even the eldest, Magic. They were gone. Harmony had torn them asunder for her own selfish desires, and the imbalance left in their absence was tantamount to nothing even I could conjure.
"She was your twin, younger brother," Wrath pointed out. "You should have foreseen this and put an end to the madness. Harmony has no foresight. She knows not what she does!" He was angry at me. He was always angry at me, and as such, I ignored him.
I preferred instead to stare at the magical spheres my sister had created in the sky. They rotated constantly around our beautiful Gaia, gracing it in two, completely interchangeable and different lights. I smiled up at the bodies as I watched them dance in perfect...harmony, all the while casting chaotic shapes and shadows upon the mountains below. "I...sort of like them..." I turned my head to look at my brother. Smiling, I said, "This will be a fun turn of events, don't you think this will be fun?!"
That was when my face made contact with something very hard twice. Wrath had punched me, and I was fairly certain at that point that I was lying on the cold, barren ground. Still woozy, I rose to a sitting position. "Get your head out of your ass, Discord!" Wrath shouted in my face. "Harmony took all our more benign siblings with her, and then constructed life with their essence. They are gone, but they will live on within this new life, just as we all do."
"Yes, I know that," I replied boredly, "But what does that have to do with us? So what if they have equal domain within the hearts of creatures in death as they did in life?"
"That's the thing," another voice sounded. "While we will remain in the hearts of these 'equines,' they will always prefer our fallen kin, and they will attempt to eradicate us as long as we exist! We're doomed to an eternity running!" Despair cried.
Of all my brothers, he was the only one even I could not tolerate. I used him as support in getting up, subsequently pushing him down into the dirt. "Oh shut up, Despair. You're even worse than Wrath," I rolled my eyes, but they snapped forward as my view was replaced by that of Wrath. "Yes, brother? How may I help you?" I asked amusedly.
Wrath leveled a steady glare at me. "You know he's right, Discord!" My smile faltered. "You just don't want to believe that your precious sister would do such a thing to any of us, much less leave you behind!"
My smile finally fell, as did my gaze. "Yes...you're right," I whispered. "You're right about it all..."
Wrath's grin grew in a devilish manner. "I'm always right, brother. You're the god of change, not of indecision. Things are changing, Discord. Are you going to embrace your destiny?"
It was at that point that I had three ideas that would change the course of history forever. I loved my sister...
"Yes, Wrath." I replied, an equally nefarious grin upon my face. "I know what we must do."
We knew that individually we would never stand a chance against our sister's forces. We would have to construct a unified front, and the only way to do such a thing as that would be to allow ourselves to be absorbed into the body and mind of one. And so, we held council to decide who would be our eternal leader. Who was it we would be relinquishing most of our free will to?
Wrath was the first to step forward, followed soon after by greed of course, however their arguments were weak and quickly pulled apart by our siblings. Greed had no actual reason for being chosen as leader other than the desire to rule Gaia on his own. Wrath wanted only to destroy everything we had all worked so hard to create. None of us were having that.
It was Destitution in the end, always the cold analytic, who pointed out that the actual act of taking in all of us would rip asunder the mind and body of the beholder. The chaos would be too much for one being to withstand; therefore, the only one of us with the slightest chance of surviving the transition would be the god of chaos and change.
"Me?"
"Him?" Came several other replies.
"Yes, him," Destitution answered blankly. There was no emotion behind his words. He was driven only by facts and truth. Had he been capable of basic emotion, he may have mourned the loss of Honesty. "It is the only way." The others had no other choice, and eventually abided by his words. I, however, felt like I would be sick.
"Give me some time?" I asked the others. "I need some time alone...to reflect and think about this." Not wishing to pressure me, the others let me go, and I fled far into the flatlands from the top of our mountain.
In the distance, I could see strange green things growing. I believe my sister called them "plants," and it looked like she was creating vast forests. The shortest of the plants, the grass, had almost approached the area at which I had stopped. Little did I know, my sister had already begun to create the equines from the sun and moon above.
I did some creating of my own, though much less original. Under my sister's new sky, I created a new aspect of the heart, a new draconequus. This was surprise.
"Hello, my sister. I have big plans for you." I told her. As a message to my sister, I created her as a white mare with a large, yellow mane. She would be in the perfect "equine" form my sister had told me so much about as she thought it up.
Surprise looked shocked, which would have been hilarious had I been in the mood to laugh. "You do?" She asked. "What's that?"
"Listen very closely," I explained, "I created you for our sister. This may be the last sane decision I make of my life, and I need you to follow it. She will take your essence, but you will be a constant source of enjoyment for an entire genus of beings."
Slowly and solemnly, Surprise nodded her head. She was good at heart, and I was proud for creating her. I pointed to the forest. "Go to her, and remember. Although you will become one of our sister's elements, you are, and forever will be, chaotic in nature." Surprise ran off in that direction, and I could only hope that my sister accepted the gift...
Back atop the mountain, none of my brethren seemed to know what I had done, and I was proud that I would be able to successfully surprise them, as we had before been absolutely omniscient. I had somehow created a hole in my siblings' knowledge. Now ready to perform the ritual, they circled around me, save for Obscurity, whose ghastly form surrounded and covered us all. She pulled in, sucking all our siblings painfully into my form, aided by their chanting. The pain was unbearable, and I screamed. My body began to morph. My normally serpentine body -I later created the dragons in my image- started to grow the body parts of other animals to symbolize the addition of my brothers and sisters, including changing my head to a form that as more or less equine in nature.
While my body could easily adapt, my mind did not fare nearly as well, and I felt my sanity slipping away as I had feared. I knew then that Wrath would take advantage. He and many others would use my mind's weakness to influence my actions forever more.
Over the years, Greed had me declare myself king of all Gaia. Desolation allowed me to create and destroy anything I wanted without once feeling guilty or angry at the consequences. Lust had me force equines to wish to copulate with many other animals, thus creating the manticores, chimeras, griffons, and many others. Sloth, for the most part, prevented me from doing anything about the others, but what finally pushed my sister to retaliate toward my actions was Wrath's insistence on enslaving the ponies for what they caused us to do. She would not tolerate the torture of the creatures she loved enough to sacrifice herself and several of her siblings for. I had finally declared the war we had all foreseen, and Harmony made the ponies riot. At that time, the sun and moon began to spin slower and methodically. Around and around Gaia, never ending. They had a purpose now.
After ten yeas of war, the ponies' resolve was crushed and Wrath relinquished his hold on me. It was at that point that I locked them away inside my heart, never to be released again. I knew what my sister's counter measure would be, and I would be by her side the whole way. From the celestial bodies, the Avatars of the sun and moon descended upon Gaia. They sought out their mother and from her they received her elements. When they reached me with them, they attempted to reason with me, but I was too far gone. There wasn't enough of my mind left to reason.
They encased me in stone, and it would be over two-thousand years before I was released.
"By the time I was freed from my prison, each of my siblings had found their escape route, and they took them." Discord explained to the teary-eyed ponies around him. "They were just as free as I was; As mad as I had become, their absence did not even phase me, much less did I recognize the threat that each of them posed. It seems they have some nasty plans for our dear Twilight..."
Trixie's had since become the only dry eyes in the room, and she stood up, instead looking with deadly resolve at Discord. "We need to see the princesses."