“Discord!” Twilight tried not to move, despite her sudden burst of annoyance towards the irritating draconequus. Cold water was already dripping onto her back, and she tried to tilt her head forwards just a smidgen. “I’m trying to hold a conversation!”
“Looks to me like you’re trying to hold a tray of drinks.”
“Very funny!” She experimented with trying to kneel and place it onto the floor, but one of the cups fell over and spilled freezing liquid on her face; Twilight decided it would be best to just wait until she could find a table. “Look, I just want my horn back. You know my magic doesn’t affect you, anyway! There’s no reason to take it!”
Discord rearranged himself on the throne, lying sideways on it with his head and tail drooping upside-down over the sides.
“Oh, really. Where’s the fun in giving you what you want at the drop of the hat?”
“Rarity got to keep hers!”
“Rarity was using it. Surely you didn’t think my castle dusted itself?” He waved a hand lazily at the perfectly clean room. “Of course, if you pledge your allegiance to me…”
Twilight stamped her foot angrily, disregarding the splash of water that hit her neck at the sudden movement. “It’s not your castle, Discord - Rarity isn't doing it for you. And I’d never work for you either.”
“Naturally.” Discord waggled his eagle claw in her direction. The tray lifted into the air, then suddenly upturned on her head with a shockingly cold rush of water and the clatter of plastic cups. He smirked. “Now, ask me the other thing.”
Twilight shook herself quickly, stepping forwards and out of the pool of spilled water and speaking with gritted teeth. “…Other thing?”
He winked out with a flash of light. When he winked back in again, he was draped over the back of the throne, elbows resting on the seat and head resting on his hands. “You walked in here with two motives.” A snap of the fingers and there was a noise like a scratching record, then Twilight’s voice echoed around the room.
“I’ve got a couple of things to discuss with you, Discord!”
Twilight flinched. “Oh.” She shook water off her hind leg, momentarily sheepish. “I… didn’t really mean to bring this up yet. I guess it was a slip of the tongue.”
“Go on.”
She met his eyes. Discord looked vaguely amused for some reason. Well, he wouldn’t be so happy-go-lucky in a moment, Twilight was sure of it.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you sticking around here when you could be off messing with the rest of Equestria.” Discord blinked slowly, lazily. He didn’t seem to care as much as she’d thought. “You could be out there having fun. But you came back here and it doesn’t seem to be a quick visit.” Or maybe he just had a good poker face.
“You always were the smart one, Twilight Sparkle.” He warped to her side and slung his arm around her, wings beating a faint wind onto her mane and tail. The closeness was uncomfortable, but at least her hair was drying out. “You’ve figured some of it out already. Really, playing these guessing games with you isn’t so much fun as it is a formality.”
Twilight frowned. “So why are you still here?”
“Here – let me make it easier for you.” Discord landed beside her and took a few steps back, clearing his throat.
“A riddle for something unexpected and new
The first step is guessing – unexpected for who?
A stepping stone to help you decide what I mean
Would be to climb to the highest point you’ve ever been.”
Twilight mused on this for a moment. “The highest point…? Do you mean the tower?”
“Oh, and one more thing.” Discord snapped his fingers, and with four bursts of light, Twilight found herself wearing some kind of metal shoes on her feet. She tried lifting a hoof, and immediately had to let it drop to the floor with a loud ‘clank’. They were ridiculously heavy! “Good luck, Twilight Sparkle!”
With a giddy laugh, the draconequus vanished, leaving the unicorn mentally cursing.
Still, if he thought this important enough to turn into a game, maybe he was teasing her with the key to defeating him…? The best she could do was play along. Twilight dragged her heavy feet along the carpet that led out of the throne room. It was time to do some scouting.
An earth pony stood at the base of the tower, watching Twilight slowly approach but making no move to help her.
“Tangled with Discord, huh?”
The unicorn just rolled her eyes and kept walking.
“Y’ can’t be headin’ up the tower with those on y’ feet, Twi.”
“They won’t come off, and I can’t teleport without my horn,” she stated irritably. “Now leave me alone.”
Applejack flashed her an accusatory glance. “Y’know, this’d be a lot easier if’n you just admitted you were wrong. The fillies were countin’ on you to know what you were doin’, Twilight.”
Twilight stopped in her tracks, glaring hard at the floor beneath her iron-clad hooves. “I said I was sorry, Applejack. But I wasn’t wrong. That spell should never have reacted the way it did.”
The earth pony gave a disapproving frown, crossing her front hooves and leaning against the wall. “Y’ don’t try a spell like that on fillies in th’ first place. Even if they ask fer it. They don’t know any better, Twi, but you do.”
“It shouldn’t have gone wrong. I made sure of it!”
“So you were wrong! Just admit it!”
With renewed resolve, Twilight began climbing the tower staircase, leaving Applejack forlornly standing at the bottom. “I’ve said all there is for me to say, Applejack.”
When she finally reached the top, Twilight was exhausted. She all but collapsed on the stone floor of the tower's highest room, and it was only as she stood up a few minutes later after catching her breath that she realised the walls were missing.
"Yikes!" The unicorn held herself low to the ground, the sudden shock of realising the room was open to the air giving her shivers up her spine. "Ugh, that Discord...!"
Twilight steeled herself and shuffled forwards little by little, eventually making it to the frontmost edge of the flooring.
The view was, to say the least, spectacular. Discord had raised Canterlot to cloud level, and the cliffs below them had already given it a wonderful view over Equestria in the first place. But what really made it a sight was the vast assortment of colours and floating bits and pieces of architecture strewn across the landscape. Birds left glittering trails in the air, pink clouds of spun sugar rained chocolate milk on no particular schedule (and here she spared a thought for the weather team; surely they must be having fits by now); buildings sometimes rotated or flipped upside down at will, evacuated ponies leaping from floating terra to floating terra to try and find somewhere safe and relatively stable to rest.
Despite herself, Twilight couldn't help but find it an amazing view, even knowing that this chaos meant misery and endless problems for the ponies living amongst it. They'd lucked out, really, being stuck in Canterlot. It seemed to be the least affected place in Equestria.
Which, naturally, only made her question all that harder to solve. Why had Discord chosen to sit around in the castle when all of Equestria was his for the ruling? Surely he hadn't returned simply for the purpose of sitting on a throne...
"So why not go out there?" she mused, sitting back on her haunches to give her aching legs a rest. Twilight was getting sick of trying to figure it out with such a vague clue. "A riddle for something unexpected and new..."
Well, chaos in general was unexpected for just about everyone. Was that it?
"The first step is guessing..." Twilight cast her gaze out to the farthest reaches of Equestria, hoping to find some other hint at its borders. "...Unexpected for..."
And then it hit her. What if she'd been going about this all wrong? She had only been thinking in terms of ponies and Equestrian logic - what if, in that couplet at least, Discord had been referring to himself?
"But why would Discord find this unexpected? He lives chaos." She paused, scrutinising the landscape. Her eyes came to rest on a small family of ponies making their way to a trashed barn. They looked depressed, sorrowful. Mourning their old home, perhaps. A fresh pang of hatred for Discord swept through her, but she pushed it aside in favour of trying to work out the riddle.
A stallion lost his footing, slipping to the edge of the floating piece of earth upon which he was walking and scrambling to stay on. Another immediately came to his rescue, hauling him up by his saddle.
Twilight blinked. That was it.
Even through all of Discord's havoc and confusion, ponies were still going on the way they had before. They helped each other, stayed true to themselves, and… more or less disregarded the chaos around them to the extent where no one minded much about new surprises – because they all had each other.
Discord had returned to Canterlot because the rest of Equestria simply didn’t care.
"What fun is a game if nopony wants to play?"
Twilight whirled around, eyes drawn to the roof. The roof that had been floating in place without walls to support it since she'd entered the room. Suddenly, Twilight felt very silly.