//------------------------------//
// Bestest Buddies 
// Story: Traitor 
// by alarajrogers 
//------------------------------//

They collected Earth ponies in Appleoosa next, a bunch of Applejack's inbred kin from what he was able to tell. These ones were smart enough to run, not that it did them any good. Tirek breathed deeply of the dusty desert air as the magic settled into him. "Earth pony magic is underrated," he said, chuckling. "I can feel the life force of the earth itself under my hooves, ready to bend to my will."

Discord laughed. "It's too bad you can't farm the magic of farmers, or we could pen these up and milk them for magic indefinitely."

Tirek glanced at him. "What are you going on about?"

"Touchy, touchy, crankypuss. One would think I hadn't just helped you steal half a dozen ponies' magic."

Tirek took another deep breath. "Apologies, Discord. The magic... it fills me, it excites me, but it makes me irritable and impatient as well. What were you saying?"

"I was just saying it's too bad that pony magic doesn't regenerate, or we could pen up ponies like these in magic farms," Discord said, grinning. "You could harvest from them indefinitely. It'd be deliciously ironic, because they're farmers."

Tirek smiled, which Discord counted as a kind of triumph. Really, in some ways he was a bigger stick in the mud than Celestia, but he never told Discord what not to do, and that counted for a lot. "True. But unfortunately nothing in this world can regenerate its magic once it has lost it."

Discord giggled. "Au contraire, mon ami. There are, in fact, some things that regenerate magic. Just none of them would be useful to you... not as food sources, anyway."

"For the last time. I draw in magic through my mouth, but that does not mean I feed on it. I eat food, just as anyone else does."

"And you eat magic. Come on, Tirek, you open your mouth and you drink it down. Own it! Admit to it! Look at yourself in the mirror that you can't see yourself in any more and say to yourself, ‘I'm a magic vampire, and that's okay!'"

"I can see myself in... never mind. What sort of creatures regenerate their magic?"

"You're looking at one," Discord chortled. "As long as chaos exists -- and good luck with getting rid of it, even if you tried -- I can't actually permanently lose my power. I've run into a few magic vampires in my time, and let's just say I'm still around and they're not."

"But how is that possible? When I take the ponies' magic, I take their connection to whatever their special talent is as well. Yours does not work that way?"

"I don't have a connection to a special talent, Tirek. I'm Chaos. I've been to dimensions where there was no magic, and I needed to start arguments, knock over can displays in grocery stores, and drop jellybeans off tall buildings in order to build up my reserves enough that I could get back home, but even in a dimension without magic, there is still chaos. It's more fundamental a connection than magic itself." He wrapped himself around Tirek's barrel and bent his neck to murmur in the centaur's ear. "Don't go getting ideas, now," he said softly. "You couldn't even use my magic."

Tirek didn't shy away from him the way ponies typically did when he did something like this. "Why would I even think of such a thing?" Tirek said, looking him straight in the eyes. "We are allies. You help me, I help you. You're no weak and pathetic pony, no quivering prey creature; you're a predator. Like me. We hunt together."

Discord untangled himself and teleported to float above Tirek's head. "Good," he said. He descended to the ground, grabbed Tirek's paw, and raised it into the air. "All for one and one for all! Lord Tirek and Discord, the Spirit of Chaos, together against the world!"

"And we will win," Tirek said, smiling broadly at him.

"Of course we will! Who could doubt it?"




It didn't take very long. A few days. They burned through Equestria like a wildfire, devouring magic in their path. At one point Tirek got three city blocks' worth of ponies in Manehattan and became almost drunk on the power, firing bolts of destructive energy against the tall buildings, forcing Discord to rapidly create hordes of mobile trees to run in and throw themselves into supporting the things while the now-powerless ponies evacuated, at the same time grabbing Tirek and teleporting him to the Frozen North to let out the energy. After he was done melting the ice with fireballs, Discord offered him barbequed chicken and yams loaded with marshmallows. (It wasn't real chicken. Discord had never actually been able to bring himself to kill animals and eat them, or to eat animals that others had killed, aside from certain categories of extremely stupid animals like crabs and spiders. However, it was well within his power to copy a living thing but leave out the trait of "being alive", so the body he created had never actually been living and therefore he hadn't killed it. Biologically, he was a predator, moreso than Tirek in fact, and meat was tasty, and it bothered ponies terribly to watch him eat it since they didn't know he'd manufactured it with no harm done to any actual animals. Which had been a plus, until he met Fluttershy. He supposed it was going to be a plus again, and wondered why that thought made him sad.) Tirek ate heartily, complimented him on the meal, and even laughed at Discord's frilly pink "KISS THE CHEF" apron. 

Later, as they were collecting more earth ponies, he sensed the shift in the balance of magic in the world, the same way he'd sensed Twilight's original awakening even while he'd been in stone, the same way he'd sensed new Bearers coming into play. Four distributed pillars had turned into one massive, thick, lumpy support for the metathaumic field of Equestria. He thought of telling Tirek, but decided against it. What had gone for the ponies went for Tirek as well; what was the fun of giving his friends all the information he held on a platter? Let Tirek find out for himself, it would probably be funnier that way.

Because the only thing Discord could think of that could explain the sudden massive and literal imbalance, as the weight of magic shifted from four to one, was that the alicorns had combined their power. Either the four of them had literally merged into one being (he hoped not, Twilight would be far less fun to tease if she was now also Celestia, Luna and Cadance -- and then he remembered he wasn't her friend anymore and the teasing would be in the context of enmity, and it made him hurt for a moment, but after all that was the relationship he'd had with all ponies most of his life, hadn't it been?) Or three had given their power to one. It was going to be fun to find out which it would be.




Taking Canterlot was very, very easy. Of course he hadn't expected otherwise.  It had been very, very easy to take control of Canterlot when he'd broken free of his statue the first time, and the only thing that had stood in his way of taking over what had then been the capital back in the old days and slowed him down was that he'd been trying to do it with some legitimacy. Well, a few months of that and he'd learned his lesson. This takeover was as illegitimate as the one three years ago, and he preferred it that way. None of the Royal Guard were a match for him or Tirek.

He was surprised to find Shining Armor at the palace; wasn't he now like the king of the Crystal Empire or something? Or prince, right, Sombra had permanently tainted the title of king and that combined with Celestia's unwillingness to take precedence over her sister by calling herself a queen had made the titles of king and queen fall entirely out of favor in all Equestria. This implied Cadance was here. Well, of course Cadance was here, how could four alicorns have combined their power into one without the third alicorn being present?

Discord pulled two Royal Guards into the air for Tirek to grab, summoned Shining Armor's helmet onto his own head, and teleported next to the unicorn, a familiar arm around him. "Shining Armor, why, whatever are you doing here?"

Shining Armor shook Discord off and took a battle stance. "Back off, traitor!"

The clopping of Tirek's now-enormous hooves sounded on the battlement. Discord turned to see his ally dropping one of the Royal Guards Discord had just handed him a moment ago. "The only one Discord betrayed was himself. Abandoning his true nature to make friends with weak-minded equines who offer him nothing!"

Shining Armor fired a bolt of magic at Tirek, who caught it in his paw, rolled it into a ball, and swallowed it, laughing.  He then grasped Armor's muzzle and drained the unicorn dry.  Discord grinned maliciously, watching the soldier's knees wobble and finally buckle in a really funny way.

And then Shining Armor looked up at him, with the clouded eyes and the obvious weakness of the newly drained, and choked out, weakly, "How... could you... do this...?" before finally collapsing.

Something inside Discord twisted in sudden pain. Shining Armor wasn't his friend; he'd only ever even interacted with the stallion a few times, and at least one of them had centered around the typical "I hate you forever for hurting my baby sister" speech for what he'd done after breaking out of stone the first time. But Discord considered Twilight a friend, and after she had helped take care of him the day he'd gotten sick, he considered Cadance a friend -- or he had -- which made Shining Armor sort of a friend, by the commutative property of friendship. None of the ponies he'd given to Tirek up to now had been ponies he knew, let alone friends of friends. And Shining Armor was speaking as if he hadn't expected this, as if this was a true betrayal and not simply Discord reverting to his true nature.

He'd assumed all the ponies he met would understand immediately that this was his true self. That they should have expected this all along. And those who knew him, so far, had. Certainly the Wonderbolts hadn't been at all surprised by his change of heart. Why was Shining Armor surprised?

Had the stupid pony actually believed in him? Despite delivering that speech the first time they'd met after Discord's reform? Had Twilight and Cadance believed in him? He'd thought that Tirek was right, that he was betraying nothing by taking back his true nature, that the betrayal had been of himself in constraining himself for their sake... but if that was the case, why did Shining Armor's words make him feel guilty?

Tirek put a friendly arm around Discord's shoulder, driving out the doubts. "Why don't you go and have a little fun? I won't stand in your way."

Discord snickered to himself as he looked out over Canterlot, thinking of all the very amusing things he could do now that he had free reign. And then he realized that Tirek was going after the Princesses.

He didn't want to see them. He didn't want to go anywhere near them. Celestia had trusted him, enough to give him this assignment anyway, and okay, she was an idiot for trusting him but he didn't want to face the disappointment in her eyes. And Cadance had helped take care of him when he was sick. On the other hand... if one alicorn now had the power of four, a fight was going to break out. Tirek might need him... and if what Tirek encountered was powerless princesses, he might be enraged enough to kill them if Discord wasn't there to hold him back. 

He wasn't going to face Celestia, but he'd stay in earshot. Discord morphed himself into one of the stained glass windows and proceeded to rearrange it, decorating it to his liking.

As he made one window over into a picture of his own face, smiling and giving a thumbs-up, he heard Tirek try and fail to take the Princesses' now non-existent magic, and chuckled quietly to himself. Tirek was his ally, but it was always hilarious seeing someone else get owned by a clever trick. 

"Getting rid of your magic so that I cannot take it from you?" he heard Tirek rant. "That was your plan? How does it feel, knowing that soon, every Pegasus, unicorn and Earth pony will bow to my will, and that there is nothing you can do to stop it?"

This was too entertaining. Discord manifested down the hall slightly, pulling shadows around himself to be unnoticeable, and watched. And also turned the stained glass window of his defeat into an image of him successfully discording the Bearers, styled after the one that had him as a puppeteer, but it was almost an afterthought. Oh, Tia was being so proud, so calm. He was proud of her. He himself had a near-patented ability to get under her skin, and her battle with Luna had been very, very emotional for her; he'd rarely had a chance to see her shine like this. It was too bad they were on opposite sides again. "You will not prevail, Tirek," she said, and for a moment the certainty in her voice hurt, because she was wrong, Tirek would prevail... and Discord actually didn't want to see her face when she figured out how thoroughly she'd lost. 

Tirek growled, "Give my regards to Cerberus." He fired a blast, tearing open a gate directly into Tartarus.

Wait, what? Discord stared in shock for a moment as Tirek lifted his three helpless, magicless prisoners, and flung them into Tartarus. Seriously? They were magicless, no threat at all, and he'd sent them to Tartarus?

Well, but wait. Tirek had been imprisoned in Tartarus himself for centuries. Having been through an extremely lengthy and uncomfortable imprisonment himself, Discord knew what it felt like to want a little revenge. He'd had all sorts of deliciously evil plans for Celestia and Luna when he'd broken out... none of which he'd enacted, because a tiny part of him still thought of them as his love and his sister-in-law in all but actual law, and he hadn't been able to bring himself to actually hurt them, so he'd contented himself with turning Celestia's mane to taffy and casting a sleep spell on the already-sleeping Luna so she wouldn't wake up, then putting her hoof in a bowl of water. But Tirek... well, Tirek was younger than Discord. More emotional, quicker to anger, more insecure, more raw. A silly prank wouldn't satisfy him, Discord could see that.

He redesigned the window that had him as a puppeteer, replacing the symbolic ponies in the images with images of Celestia, Luna and Cadance, and played puppets with the image, as he watched Tirek close the portal. Let Tirek have his revenge for a while; Discord would come back around, after Tirek had taken all the magic in Equestria and had had a chance to cool down, and retrieve the princesses. Cerberus was Luna's dog, he wasn't likely to let them come to harm, and the eerie spirit Wardens of Tartarus would recognize Celestia's authority. They'd be treated as well as any creature ever could be in Tartarus. Discord could afford to leave them there for a little while as a gift to his ally, before overriding his authority and pulling them back.

Which reminded him, Tirek seemed to be behaving awfully unilaterally. He hadn't even talked to Discord about his plan to throw the Princesses in Tartarus before doing it. "You meant our will, didn't you?" he said to Tirek, pointedly.

"Of course," Tirek said, and stepped forward. "Here, I want you to have something." He tore the amulet he wore off his neck and brought it over to Discord, tying it around Discord's neck. "This was given to me by someone very close to me. I give it to you as a sign of my gratitude and loyalty."

Discord was stunned. No one gave him gifts. (Well, except the time Celestia baked him an exploding marshmallow fluff cake for the anniversary of the day she had met him. And the pictures little Luna had drawn of him with her and Celestia, a long long time ago. And Fluttershy giving him blankets and a hoof-stitched scarf for Hearth's Warming. And Pinkie making half a dozen balloon animal versions of him by intertwining multiple balloons with each other.) Gifts were a symbol of friendship, or family. After Tirek's derisive words about friendship, he hadn't even begun to imagine that Tirek would ever consider him as close a friend as, say, Fluttershy had (don't think about Fluttershy don't think don't think about her). But Tirek was giving him a gift. Of sentimental value.  

He held it up, smiling. "Oh, my! I do love a good accessory. I suppose that's Rarity's influence." No, don't bring up Rarity, don't think about them. Chaos was change and all that was in the past; he had a real friend now, or maybe more than that. Discord recognized the amulet, after all; he'd researched Tirek before setting out on this mission. It had belonged to Tirek's brother. By giving it to him, Tirek had just symbolically adopted him, taking him in as a brother to replace the one who'd turned on him. 

A feeling of genuine warmth and happiness spread through him.  Up until now, he realized, there'd been a part of him that was holding back. It was always possible that this relationship was one of those villainous alliances of convenience that he'd never needed to enter into because he was more powerful than anyone else, but that it had always entertained him to watch because of the glorious disharmony and backstabbing. Tirek could have been just using him, and sometimes he was so brusque or cold, Discord had almost been certain he probably was.  But this changed everything. This meant Tirek really did care. 

He reached out to the next window with his powers, and changed it to match how he felt right now. Now it now longer showed him playing puppets with the princesses, but himself and Tirek together against the world, Tirek wielding a sword while holding Discord around the middle, and Discord riding on his back, wielding a submarine sandwich that the Tirek in the image had just accidentally sliced the tip off of. With a broad grin, he gestured at the picture, showing it to Tirek.

Tirek laughed. "Amusing. But we have no time for such things. With the princesses out of the way, we can now– is this meant to be humorous?"

He'd stopped in front of the picture of Twilight's ascension. "Oh, no, I haven't touched that one yet."

"There's a fourth? And you did not tell me this?!"

"I just needed some assurance that you truly considered this a team effort," Discord said, and held up the amulet Tirek had given him.  "And now I have it."

"Then where can we find this fourth princess?" Tirek lunged forward, grabbing Discord by the neck. Which was somewhat uncomfortable, but he'd seen ponies engaging in rough monkeyplay with their friends, grabbing each other's hair or necks in frustration all the time; they just weren't as firm with their grip, given their lack of thumbs. "Where is her castle?"

That was simply hilarious. "Castle?" He laughed. "No, Princess Twilight lives above a library in Ponyville. Castle?" The thought of Twilight living in a castle made him giggle again.

Tirek slammed him down on the ground -- not being mindful of his strength, because that actually hurt, but the centaur had been growing in strength so rapidly he probably didn't have much idea how much force he was using. "Not for much longer," Tirek said, and strode off, the stained glass window of Twilight's ascension melting behind him.

That was ominous.

Discord teleported after him. Hovering a bit, because even though they were good friends who could monkey around and roughhouse with each other like Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie did with their friends sometimes, he still felt the need to reinforce that Tirek had only been able to pawhandle him like that because he'd allowed it. "What do you have planned?"

"She will give her magic to me, or she will be destroyed." Tirek smiled evilly, power crackling between his horns. "Or both."

"Now wait a minute here, I'm not at all sure that will work." Inside he was panicking. What if Twilight killed Tirek? What if Tirek killed Twilight? He didn't want either of them dead! Tirek was his good friend, and Twilight... Twilight had the potential to make as wonderful an enemy as Celestia and Luna had. He couldn't bear the thought of either of them killing or seriously hurting the other. Plus, Twilight with the raw power of four alicorns versus Tirek with the magic of almost every other pony in Equestria and his lack of finesse? Ponyville might be destroyed! He might be their enemy now, but he still couldn't allow that. "Twilight defeated Luna in her Nightmare Moon incarnation, when she was much more powerful and ruthless than she is today, and Twilight wasn't an alicorn at the time... she was a nerdy bookworm still in college. Also, she defeated me. You cannot underestimate her."

Tirek glared at him. "She is one puny pony. I have the power of nearly all the ponies of Equestria, and centuries of experience. What could she know of war, or conquest?"

"Absolutely nothing, but this isn't a war, it's a battle, and she knows all about those." Discord leaned down into Tirek's face, upside down. "She's a genius, you know. She ascended to alicornhood by solving a magical puzzle Star Swirl himself couldn't resolve, and wasn't he involved in capturing you?"

"Point taken," Tirek growled. "But I must have her magic. How am I to get it aside from fighting her?"

"Oh, I know the perfect way." The plan formed in his head even as he spoke. It was brilliant! Make those particular ponies valuable to Tirek beyond their magic, capture them quickly and cleanly and give them no chance to fight back so Tirek wouldn't hurt them, and Tirek would have the weapon he needed to make Twilight surrender without violence. Nopony needed to get hurt! Not Tirek, not Twilight, not any of his friends -- former friends, he amended. "You see, she may be an alicorn now, but even before that, she was one of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. As such... her power is fundamentally linked to the strength of her friendships. She'll do anything for her friends, quite literally." He landed on Tirek's back, draping his lower body and tail over the side like a biped in a dress riding a pony sidesaddle, and coiled his head around Tirek's front. "Take them hostage, and Twilight will surrender to you in a heartbeat to protect them. No muss, no fuss."

"Strange, I would think you would enjoy the chaos that comes from a good battle," Tirek said. He scowled. "Can it be you still have feelings for these ponies?"

Discord pretended to swoon, falling backward off Tirek, except of course he didn't actually fall, hovering in mid-swoon. "Perish the thought!" He straightened up, and said in an uncharacteristically serious tone, "I don't like death. I never have and I never will. That pony is entertaining, and I don't want you to kill her."

"It's always about entertainment with you!" Tirek threw up his hands in frustration. "You're soft, Discord! This is how you ended up turned to stone for a millennium! You don't have the stomach to kill your enemies!"

"The stomach?" Discord said softly. He began to grow, enlarging both himself and the space he and Tirek occupied, until he was as much bigger than Tirek as he'd been when they'd started this endeavor together... and beyond, growing larger and larger as he spoke. "Tirek. I am Chaos." He let the air behind him writhe with the hint of the non-Euclidean geometries of the raw heart of the multiverse. "With a thought, I could bring typhoons, hurricanes and tornados to tear Equestria apart." He bent light, making the shadows around him darken and the air itself dim, while he himself shone bright. "I could make the earth itself churn with rage, spitting its way through new volcanos to make ash and fire rain from the air, or tear itself into chasms." He let the sound of the hissing static of the universe's creation sizzle quietly in the air all around.  "I could make the water burn and the air liquify. If I wanted to make every single living creature in Equestra drop dead, right now... I could." This was not technically true. Twilight would survive it. Possibly Tirek himself as well. 

Tirek was staring at him in shock. Discord let the effects go and shrank himself back down to normal size. "But I don't. Because none of that is fun. My mandate is to spread Chaos. And when you take life, you do usually get a nice burst of chaos... for a minute or two as they thrash and die. But then they are motionless. They're still, they're unchanging. Death is eternal. Static. Dull. Only life causes self-perpetuating chaos. So I will not stand for killing, and if you truly feel the loyalty and gratitude you say you do, you will cooperate with me and avoid it."

Tirek was still glaring. "And if I don't?"

"Oh, I think you will," he said into Tirek's ear, where he hadn't been a moment ago. "You're much too powerful now to need to kill, Tirek. As soon as you realize that, you'll understand that I'm right. And you won't throw away our alliance just because you want to be able to kill ponies, when I'm offering you a strategy to achieve ultimate power bloodlessly. Without any significant effort on your part, and no risk to you."

"Very well. We'll try it your way. Your thoughts are... unconventional, Discord, and somewhat alien to me--"

"Well, duh."

"--but what you say has some wisdom to it. Let us go enact your plan."