Twilight's mind had stopped. She was only processing a single image. The image was normal, that of the townsponies gathering in front of her newly formed castle. Everything was just as it should be. But when you stare at an image long enough, and look for things hard enough, strange things begin to appear.
Even as she stood there, frozen in time she began to notice something. It was small, so insignificantly small she wasn't sure it was even there. Tiny specs of fog popped up, all over the place. Tiny wisps of white, floating in the air. That's when they began to grow.
That's when things started to get truly strange. Twilight unsnapped from her position in time. She had begun to sing a song in front of her new castle, the doors to it swung wide open. But the image became more than that when Twilight had been released from the time lock. She began to experience more than just a simple image, because now she could look around, and smell, and hear what the image she had stared at held.
She turned for a moment, looking back into the palace, and she was horrified by what she saw. All of her friends, Celestia, Luna, Cadence, all of them were frozen in time, grins upon their faces. The grins only helped to make Twilight more anxious as she turned back around to face the fog spouts.
But what she saw was much more startling. The blobs had begun to shape themselves, forming into the same basic pattern. Two sections of fog split near the base, continuing up to the midsection. A roundish form had begun to take shape at the very top of the figure, and two appendages attached from the upper midsection, hanging down to waist had appeared.
Twilight's heart sank for a moment before she began to gather herself, trying to think of a logical explanation to all of this.She tried to think of comparable entities. The manifestations of Nightmare Moon came to mind, but she quickly discarded this thought. Regardless the answer came quickly to her, almost as if it were a reflex at this point.
"Discooord!" Twilight shouted. The Spirit Of Disharmony was nowhere to be seen, even after several seconds following the cry. The world remained deathly silent.
"I believe you're looking for me," a voice said, gently tapping Twilight on the shoulder with his talon. Twilight spun around to face him, her eyes burning with frustration.
"Fix this!", Twilight barked, pointing a hoof at the blobs.
"Fix what? Oh you mean those?" Discord gestured to the fog clumps. He seemed troubled by something else as he spoke. "Oh, I can't fix those my dear Twilight. There's nothing broken. They simply are. Nothing more, nothing less," Discord chuckled lightly, floating through the air, eyeing the blobs of fog that grew ever more detailed by the second. His face looked odd, for it lacked the normal smile and goofy demeanor he was known for. His eyes looked tired and world weary, as if they held knowledge that could shatter the world.
Discord seemed to get sharper before Twilight's eyes. His talons grew, he became more muscular, and his white beard extended down longer. His eyes became uniform instead of their usual oblong shapes. Above his bushy eyebrows, he bore signs of stress, and on a whole, he looked wiser.
The two remained where they were, watching the blobs grow in silence, Twilight becoming more uncomfortable by the second. Shifting slightly, she asked Discord a question.
"What exactly is happening here, Discord?"
He remained silent, distant almost. He sighed ever so slightly before turning to face Twilight, his eyes staring her down.
"You've begun to break through the barriers in your mind, Twilight,"
"What in the hay does that mean?", she rebuttled. She began to feel more nervous around the army of ghosts that were quickly taking shape.
“What it means, Twilight, is that you’re becoming more aware of the world around you. You’re beginning to see the world for what it really is, not what you want it to be. To a certain extent everything you see normally is actually there. It’s only once you step back and look at it, that you begin to see the tiny things you never noticed. And some bigger things in the case of those,” Discord said with disdain, gesturing to the rapidly forming blobs of fog. Discord spoke frantically, and passionately as if time was running out.
“But, that’s impossible. I’ve never heard of anything anywhere mentioning illusion spells on this scale.”
“You’re not listening Twilight, it’s not a spell, or any kind of magic. It’s the truth, the reality of things. Imagine you’re staring at a red wall, and you notice a tiny spec of blue. That one spec of blue might be so tiny as to not pique your interest but it’s still there. And if you look hard enough, and long enough, the whole wall will become blue, and you’ll forget that the wall was ever red,” Discord said hastily, and with a slight bit aggression in his tone.
“That … that … I … but how is this, I mean how is that possible?” Twilight inquired, her eyes searching for an answer in the crystalline floor of the entrance to the palace. Discord stopped levitating, setting down in front of Twilight who looked up at him. His expression was one of dead seriousness. It was an almost scary face to see Discord wear.
“Twilight, I am more than just a trickster who makes it rain chocolate whenever he feels like it. I am a being older than Celestia and Luna combined. I’ve had aeons to study the world around me, and if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, is that reality, everypony’s reality is a lie. Only I bear the burden of being able to see the world in all its realness."
"Why do you get to see what's truly there, while everypony else is supposedly stuck seeing illusions?" questioned Twilight skeptically.
"I'm the embodiment of Chaos Twilight, I need to know what's actually there, in order to twist things into the suitably absurd. If I couldn't see reality in all its fullness, it'd be like an earth pony jumping off a building, and hoping to somehow magically learn to fly. Can the pony try anyways? Yes. Is he going to succeed? No. I only have the tools that allow me to fulfill my purpose to it's fullest extent, and truesight is on of those things."
She shifted uneasily, looking past Discord to the blobs that had begun to … move. They inched forward a tiny fraction of an inch every second, coming towards her ever so slowly. Discord shot his lion paw forward, gripping Twilight’s cheeks.
“Look at me Twilight! Don’t pay attention to them; don’t dare to look at them,”
Twilight shut her eyes, beginning to whimper softly. She had never seen Discord like this. He was a maniacal and chaotic being, but if there was one thing Discord wasn’t, it was serious. She began to hear things, or rather, echoes of things. They seemed distant and distorted. But she could definitely hear them.
One voice said “Twilight is best pony … “
Another voice proclaimed “Death to Twilicorn!”
Still others chimed in, in their echoey, distant voices. Everything from outright praise, to violent hatred echoed from the approaching figures. Twilight put her front hooves on her ears, folding them down. Discord let Twilight fall to the ground as she was bombarded by the ghostly army of fog. He let out a long sigh.
“Perhaps you’re not ready Twilight. Perhaps I underestimated your force of will, for the third time in a row …”
Twilight heard Discord, and uncovered her ears and opening her eyes, beginning to formulate a response. But everything went white, as Discord’s face softened, snapping his fingers.
A rainbow streaked past Discord, as he magically conjured a boquete of flowers. He offered it to Princess Celestia before winking slyly, a soft smile gracing his face.
But as he did so, time slowed for Discord, and he looked over to observe Twilight and her friends finishing out a musical number. To such an ancient being, the lives of mortals moved so quickly, and yet, as he stood there, they moved so very slowly in that moment.
They moved just like the army of ghosts they would never know were watching them, one episode at a time.