//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12: Discord's Journal 
// Story: An Alien in Need, is a Friend Indeed 
// by Word Worthy 
//------------------------------//

	Trixie approached the door to her caravan and opened it nervously upon hearing a short series of gentle knocks. Despite having already admitted five others into her quaint travelling home mere minutes ago, the magician was still quite wary of visitors, and every bit of that fact showed on her face in the form of her widened violet eyes, as Trixie regarded the two chatting newcomers standing just beyond the threshold.
 
The pair seemed quite occupied in their discussion, delaying their reaction to Trixie’s appearance right in front of them. Trixie was relieved, at least, by the knowledge that there was only the shade of the Golden Oak Library’s canopy casted on the ground behind the duo, rather than the fearfully expected small mob with obligatory pitchfork and torch in hoof that would surely come for her any day, now.
 
“It was Princess Luna you saw, are you certain? Goodness, no wonder you were sleeping so well during the ride!” Rarity exclaimed. “The Princess of Dreams had your attention!”
 
“Indeed, it was Princess Celestia’s younger sister beyond a doubt. While I admit my initial misgivings for your rulers, she was beyond eloquent, and she even…oh, hello.” Chur’R-Yar ceased her conversation with Rarity when they finally noticed that the door had opened for them. Chur plastered a friendly smile on her avian-reptilian features, while her equine companion frowned with distrust to a mild degree.
 
“Good day, Trixie. Thank you for opening your home us,” Rarity said somewhat stolidly.
 
Trixie nodded meekly at them. “N-no trouble at all.” She observed Chur for a moment as she stood patiently, blinking back at her. “And you must be Chur? Greetings as well, erm, Trixie welcomes you. I assume you’re here about the journal, as well?” Trixie stepped aside to make room for them and gestured a foreleg to invite them in, her mind struggling to make up its mind over whether or not to continue maintaining her stage persona.
 
Chur entered with a grateful nod, and Rarity followed closely behind. “Quite so,” the latter replied.
 
“Those are some fine robes,” Trixie complimented Chur, appraising her blue and gold garb. “Which reminds me, Trixie’s…erm, my old robes and hat could use a bit of another redesign soon.” Rarity felt the makings of a smile creep onto her face, even though the compliment had not been directed at her.
 
“Many thanks. They are an example of my companion’s adept work,” Chur replied with a dainty sweep of the hand in Rarity’s direction.
 
The features on Rarity’s face finally brightened into a smile at that, and brightened even more so as she registered the presence of Trixie’s other guests while scanning the inside of the caravan.  Rarity found that it was a lot more spacious than the gypsy-like exterior gave it credit for.
 
“Chur, Rarity, you came here just in time! We were just about to finally take a look at Discord’s writings.” Twilight greeted from further inside.
 
With the exception of Fluttershy, Twilight was joined by all the girls, Dadab, and Spike, who were all comfortably seated on plush red cushions and the few chairs that Trixie owned around a miniature dining table. Lighter Than Some was above and behind Dadab; his faint bioluminescence cooperated with the sunlight from the caravan’s tiny windows and a couple lanterns to brighten the room significantly. They all nodded, waved, and whistled at Chur and Rarity.
 
“Just in time to lose our minds reading the scribblings of demented supernatural entities?” Chur’R-Yar quipped with a light, humour-filled squawk.
 
Twilight lifted her brow, but the Kig-Yar’s remark was also met with a chuckle from Applejack, who rubbed at her neck tenderly. “Ah sure hope not. Happened to us before when we first faced Discord down, but by different methods.”
 
“Sheesh, what a fiasco that was,” Spike said, turning as Dadab tapped him on the shoulder. Dadab whispered to the dragon and Lighter Than Some both conspiratorially, then the Huragok in turn whistled something at Chur with an interrogative rhythm while the other two snickered.
 
“No, I am not made of eggshells, gasbag,” Chur deadpanned, suspecting that the creature was refraining from using his voice synthesizer gizmo just to peeve her. Huragok communication had always been a massive challenge for her to grasp, and the reality that she could still understand an insult despite this fact irritated her greatly. She silently hoped that either Rainbow Dash or the Pink One will humiliate the gas sucker, the hatchling, and the gas bag each sometime in the foreseeable future.
 
Perhaps if she wished hard enough, Those Who Came Before would happily provide? Chur mentally snorted at such a religious notion.
 
“Thank goodness for us, the trains seemed to be running efficiently today. So, we got back here quickly for once, on top of making one smashing business transaction – 82,000 bits!” Rarity announced as Chur took a seat on a spare cushion next to Applejack and Spike, putting a stop to the latter’s conspiratorial snickering in an instant.
 
A congratulatory air swept through the whole group at Rarity’s words, and the unicorn blushed. She then turned her head and noticed Trixie was now tending to an iron kettle on the caravan’s little stove. “Oh, Trixie dear, let me help you with that tea.”
 
“Well, I…erm…” Trixie was so befuddled by Rarity’s sudden change in temperament towards her, that she made no attempt to assert her hospitality and decline the help.
 
“Uh, come to think of it, where’s Fluttershy, everyone?” Rarity asked, pausing.
 
“Fluttershy’s over at her place,” Rainbow Dash answered, inspecting the inner surface of one of her hooves. “She said Discord’s journal was too spooky to handle.”
 
“Hmm, well that’s quite unfortunate. I for one wonder what things, if any, Discord has to say about the fashion of other worlds,” Rarity murmured thoughtfully.
 
While the pair tended to the tea, there was a squeak of anticipation from Pinkie Pie as Twilight levitated up a single large hardcover tome from the small table and inspected its stylised golden Draconequus-decorated cover, before turning to look at Rarity, causing Pinkie’s excitement to waiver into a half-hearted pout. “So your business trip was a real success, you two? That’s great!” Rarity closed her eyes and smiled beside Trixie in response as they both began setting some cups out, and Twilight turned to Chur. “So, what did you think of my home town?”
 
“Canterlot is a fine, cosmopolitan place,” Chur answered. “Quite a bit like my native Tilu City back in the home system. The trade seems bountiful, the cuisine is masterful, and the nobility are insufferable.”
 
“Pft, swanks, am I right?” Rainbow Dash huffed in agreement.
 
Chur’s head plumage shifted a bit as she cracked a new, more boisterous smile. “Indeed. I was hatched into a whole family of them, but I terribly digress. Your home town is lovely, Twilight Sparkle. I look forward to future visits.” She and Twilight shared warm smiles before Pinkie Pie drew everyone’s attention to her with force nearly akin to a black hole’s gravity well.
 
“Journal, journal, journal! I wanna see what’s inside already!” Pinkie Pie urged excitedly as she bounced up and down on her cushion restlessly. “Who knows what kinds of forbidden arcane knowledge Discord has written down…think of all the dessert recipes from exotic chefs that could be in there!” She gasped. “Maybe even from other Pinkie Pies!”

There was a widening of the eyes on Twilight’s face at that. “Gods, no, not that again!” Dadab shot her a curious glance at both the lack of context, and the invocation of deities as of yet unknown to him, which Spike registered.
 
“Long story. Don’t worry, I can fill you in another time,” the dragon told him, earning Spike an enthusiastic nod from the former Covenant deacon.
 
“Right, about the journal; the long focus of study in my free time, and the…main reason you’re all here,” Trixie interjected with a nervous smile as she and Rarity started levitating silver cups full of steaming hot tea on little saucers out to everyone. She looked at Dadab, Chur’R-Yar, and Lighter Than Some in particular and chuckled. “Literally. Oh, and mind the heat, everyone.”
 
Dadab twiddled his fingers thoughtfully. “Long study, huh? Hmm…Ja eiro Ja kabonai qutashi ugedo ko’i urauli qutashi.” the grunt said to Trixie. His beady eyes had an excited flicker in them that hinted he was attempting to roughly evaluate how much knowledge she had gleaned from the journal before they began.
 
Trixie’s nerve-induced dismay grew when the other Equestrians turned to her expectantly as tea was smugly sipped by both Rainbow Dash and Chur. They were all curious as to both what Dadab had just said, and whether or not Trixie could translate any of it.
 
Not wanting to be terribly rude, Chur tried her best to stifle a giggle at their host’s obvious discomfort and pretended to itch furiously at her snout with both hands, setting her tea down.
 
Trixie’s voice came out quite sheepishly at first. “Well…” She reached back and scratched at her withers. “My grasp on Sangheili is beginner at best, but I believe you just said something about how you were surprised to be transported, ‘kabonai’…something strange, ‘qutashi’…erm, and something about a lump of wood, ‘urauli’?”
 
Chur spontaneously burst out laughing, causing Trixie to look downcast. Dadab and some of the others glared at her, while Rarity hissed her name reproachfully. The T’vaoan shrugged. “What? She just mistook the word for ‘world” and “ground” as the derogatory term the Elites use for the hairy hammer swingers, ‘Jir’a’ul.’”
 
“Ooh! You mean like,” Pinkie Pie finished her tea in a single gulp and mimicked the swinging of a gravity hammer as the tea cup remained in the air, then held one hoof aloft to signify something of tremendous height. “the Brute Captain guy?”
 
“Yep, Brute Captain Guy,” Dadab confirmed with a nod, eliciting a grin from Pinkie as he looked apologetically at Trixie. “No worries, Trixie, you got it mostly right! You must learn nearly as fast as a fellow Unggoy would, and we’re renowned linguists! What I said was: ‘I never could have expected I would be teleported and conveyed to a strange world in such a strange way.”
 
Crinkling her muzzle in befuddlement, Trixie eventually mustered an appreciative response. “That’s uh…thank you, Dadab. You and Chur’s presence here was entirely accidental, as you probably know.”
 
“You have yet to explain to me how such an accident was made possible during the process, Trixie,” Lighter Than Some said. After a week of seeing his compatriot shifting between her ordinary self and her more mystique-filled “Great and Powerful” stage persona with increasing frequency, Lighter himself had decided to revert back to normal Huragok mannerisms, both auditory and otherwise.
 
“Sorry. It was a result of my scrying and magical translocation efforts in that star system to retrieve you, or something like you. Any Huragok or Forerunner machine that could have helped. Elsewhere magic like Discord’s is powerful at best, and quite unpredictable at its worst. For the several hours the bound spells were active, they must have plucked random beings out of the system and deposited them in this one, and any number of other locations throughout the galaxy.” Trixie’s constantly apologetic and sheepish demeanor returned. “I shudder at whatever fate awaited anyone who ended up teleported into the void of space…”
 
“Right, about that,” Twilight interjected. “while we have gone over some of the specifics behind this entire occurrence, what we obviously have yet to do is investigate this journal. That is, the very thing that enabled you to perform such an impressive feat of unconventional magic.”
 
Trixie nodded and finally took a seat with everyone else. She made a point to push the weighty tome away from herself on the table and further towards Twilight, looking at it ruefully. “Yes, pretty much all of my magical power was expended at the time as a catalyst spark, but the translocation of our extra-terrestrial acquaintances was only made possible by the exotic magics the Draconequus had enchanted into this journal, here.”
 
“Yeah, because only in your dreams would you ever be ab-“ Rainbow Dash’s jibe was immediately rebuked with a newspaper to the back of the head, wielded by Rarity and courtesy of Pinkie Pie. “B-hey! You didn’t even know what I was gonna say!”
 
Rarity shot her friend a death glare when she noted Trixie’s growing dismay. “What Dash was actually going say was that only an alicorn could likely have pulled such a feat off on their own without Discord’s enchantments, assuming they possessed the necessary knowledge of course.”
 
“And Rainbow Dash, try to keep a lid on it, please? She’s already apologized at least a hundred times,” Applejack chided.
 
“Fine.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “At least I wasn’t the crazy that almost sparked a catastrophic war of worlds,” she added under her breath.
 
The apologetic gloom hanging above Trixie’s head disappeared briefly, to be replaced by worry. “Regarding those enchantments, remember that I did say they were unpredictable. I never experienced any magical threat while reading, but that does not make it any safer.”
 
“We all know that anything involving Discord is risky, but hopefully, learning the contents of his journal will give us a massive edge over him should he ever wind up free again. Okay, everypony ready? Like Trixie has been saying, I highly doubt this is just going to be some ordinary paper and text,” Twilight proclaimed, glancing at everyone else carefully, one by one. They each nodded or waved a tentacle affirmatively.
 
To everyone’s surprise, the Draconequus on the cover – a cartoonish depiction of Discord himself – also nodded its head and winked at any who happened to be glancing at him.
 
Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Typical Discord. Let’s get on with, already!” She reached towards the cover to flick it open before Twilight could do the honours.
 
“Finally!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
 
“Rainbow…hey!” Twilight protested.
 
“And cue the surge of destructive supernatural energy...” Chur’s sardonic remark trailed off as her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and her jaw fell. Everyone else present with a facial structure capable of it, mimicked her.
 
The enchanted journal, was now wide open and emanating a miniature maelstrom of swirling blue light as page after page rapidly flipped back and forth seemingly into infinity. A rather strong breeze shot out and was enough to tousle Rarity, Twilight, and Trixie’s manes, knock Applejack’s hat off and over onto Dadab’s head, and blow Lighter Than Some and Pinkie Pie towards the ceiling where they remained like loose party balloons. Pinkie started giggling with glee as she drifted in lazy circles around the engineer.
 
Everyone had to raise their voices a bit to be heard easily over the whistling air.
 
“Ah, crud! My gut told me this was gonna be a bad idea!” Spike lamented.
 
“Don’t worry, Spike,” Applejack reassured him. “Probably just some weird part of how this here journal works, Ah reckon. Oh, thanks sugarcube!” Dadab had returned her hat firmly by hand to avoid it getting away, having found that it wasn’t quite his style. The apple farmer patted him affectionately on the head.
 
“Applejack is right, actually. Pages are supposed to be read while floating aloft, for some reason. The magical air current is supposed to be ‘normal’ for this thing,” Trixie told them, suddenly becoming buoyant like Pinkie Pie. Lighter Than Some whistled in agreement, having spent several occasions with his unicorn compatriot floating quite like him while they studied the journal for the information they needed to construct Trixie’s ill-fated magic siphon. 
 
“Well, that explains why my body feels like it’s trying to float away,” Twilight mused. She let out a gasp as, sure enough, she began levitating gently the moment she relaxed her leg muscles. Moments later, everyone but Rainbow Dash and some of the lighter objects nearby were now floating in positon, forming a rough circle around the open journal, whose pages were still flipping back and forth in a possessed fashion.
 
One bunch of paper with glowing text jumped off and out of the journal and swirled idly in Chur’s direction, behaving much like an excited dog as Chur attempted to get used to the field of Draconequus magic that was making her feel nearly as weightless as her feathers. It affectionately licked her on the snout and bounded away. Her ruby eyes twitched in complete bafflement as her jaw fell.
 
Rainbow Dash giggled at her. “Hey Chur, I think the journal likes ya!” Chur let out a feeble squawk, completely at a loss for words. “Now, the weather pegasus part of my brain is saying that reading this is all too egghead, but the curiosity part is telling the other part to shut up.”
 
At least a dozen more pages emerged to float into the air while Pinkie Pie started going around everyone, practically eating rather than drinking the cup-shaped globules of tea that now drifted away from their cups. Meanwhile, Dash took to hovering, and grasped one of the small pieces of ethereal paper in her hoof.
 
“Where to begin?” Dadab wondered.
 
“Everywhere? Nowhere? Here? There? Nopony can tell!” Pinkie Pie said.
 
“I’m not sure,” Twilight responded to Dadab. She turned to Trixie. “Any ideas?”
 
“As you should expect, Discord set this thing to produce entries at apparently complete random to the reader. It was a wonder I was able to find the information I needed at all; I think the journal has a mind of its own beyond just the enchantments.”
 
Spike looked nervous. “W-what kind of mind?”
 
“A rather mischievous one, to be sure,” Lighter Than Some replied.
 
“…and with that said,” Trixie continued, “we shall have to go at random as well, if we wish to read.”
 
“Way ahead of ya!” Rainbow Dash interjected, clearing her throat to read the text on her page aloud. The talon writing (or paw writing) of Discord was strangely graceful, but almost seemed to want to turn upside down, or reverse itself. “Huh, it’s supposed to be a journey entry, but there’s no sign of any dates. It says: Dear Diary, there is more than one of everything. Everything plus one is more, and one can sometimes be more than…everything?” Rainbow’s voice trailed off. “Huh?”
 
“Discord.” Applejack muttered, rolling her eyes as she read a page. It was all the explanation that was needed, it seemed. “I wonder how my cousin in the Shivering Isles is faring with that whole Greymarch business. Perhaps cheese was the ultimate weapon, after all. Or at least, a great incentive tool with which to mount movements. The space hula-hoops are contenders for the former title.”
 
“Fun is infinite,” Chur read on another, narrowing her eyes. “but the fun to be had at the Cloud and Circus Pub on Codswallop Boulevard in Upside Downside is probably the greatest in that unregion of Elsewhere! I should go there sometime yesterday, I could use a break from that delightfully chaotic interregnum of mine in Equestria. I miss their infamous half-full drinks.”
 
“Here’s a head-scratcher!” Spike proclaimed. “Note  to self: beware of Rosalind and that brother of hers. Couple of smug smarty pants. Also, beware of that parallel dimension Equestria. ‘Imperial this, unity that, ugh.’ That parallel Discord is all buddy-buddy with the ponies, too. Luckily for moi, such a travesty will never befall me.”
 
Rainbow snorted and broke into a hearty chuckle. “Discord? Being friends with ponies? That’s nuts!”
 
Lighter Than Some gave out a Huragok giggle in the form of a purr-like whistle. Unlike the others, he seemed to be more interested in some of his technological doodads and old Equestrian tech elsewhere inside the caravan to pay much attention to the bits of magical paper floating hither and thither, but he was listening to Trixie’s visitors quite attentively nevertheless.
 
Twilight caught a page of her own in her telekinesis and peered at it inquisitively. “Hey, here’s a lengthy one. One of the more troublesome of my findings during my ongoing scholarly fad, is a parasitic race that could be described as nothing less than the parasprites’ older, misshapen half-brother. To even call the Flood a ‘race’ at all is a tenuous matter, for at their very root is nothing but an immutable and painfully dull desire for unity through…bleh, ‘the universal eradication of the chaotic individual down to the most fundamental threads of life,’ according to one of their leading minds, of whom I had a particularly memorable exchange with.” Twilight looked to Dadab, her muzzle scrunched with puzzlement. “Didn’t you mention the Flood being an ancient enemy of the Forerunners?”
 
Dadab nodded. “They were; unholy creatures meant to be conquered by those walking the Path of the Great Journey. May I read?” He reached out a stocky little hand questioningly.
 
“Of course!” Twilight levitated the page over to Dadab, who was aloft in a cross-legged fashion.
 
“Upon their attempted (and rather rudely so) assimilation of my meaty-squishy bits, my true form was granted access to their hive mind.” Dadab continued reading aloud with a growing mixture of both dismay and morbid fascination. “What followed was absolutely one of the most entertaining events in recent memory, I must say. As my mother Intrigue would have put it, ‘you never know what a true false-utopia is until the forces of chaos give it a vivisection from the inside out.’”
 
“Whatever the Flood truly are, I hope they’re long gone,” Twilight thought aloud. There was not even a hint of disagreement from the others.
 
Rarity gasped, and looked at Dadab and Twilight with widened eyes after reading another page to herself. “This one actually addresses that very thing, including the Forerunners! It says: probably the most abundant, and culturally dead of the mortal societies I encountered in the earlier eras of our Milky Way, the race known as the Forerunners ruled an empire that spanned almost an entire galaxy’s worth of real estate. Planets were like toys, and their armour even protected against aging. But despite all that advancement, those folks were nearly as dismal as the Flood. Was it any wonder that they had to fire the hula-hoop super weapons to defeat the latter, killing anything in the galaxy unlucky enough to have at least one nerve cell?”
 
“What, what, what?” Dadab sputtered. He shook his head in bafflement, looking at his own hands as if he didn’t even recognize them. “Super weapon? The Gods were ‘dismal’? I don’t understand.”
 
“This is the Spirit of Chaos we’re dealing with, here,” Rainbow Dash interjected. “I wouldn’t take what he wrote too seriously, if I were you. Not if you value your sanity, that is.”
 
“Rainbow Dash speaks wisely, Dadab,” Chur added, now narrowing her eyes at the glowing journal with a critical flare. “One of the risks of this journey: falling afoul of a God’s insanity.” The former shipmistress never considered herself a true believer of the Covenant’s religion, much like the rest of her race, but she could very well tell the significance of what the Draconequus had written. The Hierarchs would deem it heresy of the highest order. But there’s nothing in their power they could possibly do to punish the writer as such. For how could one call inquisition against a physical embodiment of chaos itself? Summon a legion of Arbiters?
 
Chur was now convinced that something like this Draconequus’ journal could very well mean the end of the Covenant Empire if it were to somehow fall in San’Shyuum or Sangheili hands. All the better that whomever had come looking for the engineer had apparently decided to give up their search.
 
“Umm, perhaps we should leave further reading to Trixie and Twilight in the near future?” Applejack suggested in a soft voice, noting Dadab’s uncomfortable confusion all too well. Rainbow Dash and Chur voiced their agreement, and Dadab nodded slowly as well. The others followed suit, looking at both unicorns expectantly.
 
“Oh hey, I just found a recipe for right-side up pineapple soufflé with chocolate chip cookie grease glaze!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, making an attempt to soften the mood. Drifting closer to the journal, Pinkie produced a butcher knife from her tail and cut the tension in half, then returned the knife to a safe place.
 
“Right-side up wut?” Rainbow asked with incredulity.
 
Trixie giggled in spite of herself at Pinkie pie’s shenanigans, and even Dadab felt a smile begin to creep in under his mask as Pinkie’s tactic achieved the desired effects.
 
“Only you would be able to make something like that, Pinkie Pie,” Dadab stated rather light-heartedly. “You and Trixie should maybe only read now, Boss.”
 
“I can assist in further readings,” Lighter Than Some offered, inspecting his gravity staff and rearranging its components into several different configurations.
 
Twilight looked to Trixie inquiringly as she considered it herself. Trixie nodded with a tentative smile, and the purple unicorn finally made up her mind on the matter, meeting everyone’s glances with a thoughtful expression. “Alright, but please stop calling me that.”
 
Dadab stood awkwardly. “Sorry.” Twilight smiled warmly at him, and his cheerful and energetic demeanour returned.
 
Acting off its own volition, Discord’s journal ceased its maelstrom and dropped everyone back onto the ground, then slammed firmly shut unexpectedly, leaving everyone caught by surprise. The quiet was short lived as a series of gentle knocks issued at Trixie’s door.
 
Trixie excused herself from the group momentarily to answer the knocks. She lifted a foreleg in surprise, still expecting that mythical angry mob to manifest. Instead, it was a lone pegasus. “Oh, hello Fluttershy.”
 
“Hi Trixie.” Fluttershy replied, her voice barely just above a whisper. “Um, are Twilight and the girls visiting with you? I need to talk to you all about something really, really important.”
 
“Yeah, they’re here, come right inside and…” Trixie trailed off as she saw something sticking out of Fluttershy’s satchel bag. It was the snubbed edge of a plasma pistol. “Oh…” Trixie’s eyes widened, and Fluttershy turned sheepish.

“I-I don’t think that monster with the hammer was the only alien left behind.” The pegasus gulped and  chuckled nervously. “I saw some in my kitchen this morning, but they ran from me before I could properly greet them. Um, it would appear Dadab isn’t the only Unggoy on our world anymore.”