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// Chapter Fifty-One 
// Story: A Journey Unthought Of 
// by Hustlin Tom 
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Lyra, come back to me.

Lyra’s eyes fluttered open, but she was not awake to the real world.  She was in a dark void, the only light in the strange collection of shadows coming from above, with the source of that light seemingly out of sight and out of reach.  She got to her hooves from the position she had been lying in, and she began to look around.  

That’s when she heard it; two beats, one being louder than the other by just the tiniest bit.  As it neared, she could discern that the louder of the two beats had an accompanying faint sound of metal striking a surface.  It wasn’t a pony that was for sure.  It walked with two beats, which meant two feet.  So it’s bipedal, but that could only mean..”Adam?”  Lyra called out with some uncertainty.  

The figure neared the light, and stood directly outside it, where the darkest shadows always seem to lie.  

“I’m afraid Adam won’t be joining us for this little conversation.  You see, I have some things I need to discuss with you, Miss Heartstrings.”  

Lyra’s eyes narrowed; she might be the tiniest bit afraid of whomever this was, but she wasn’t about to show it.  “What sort of things?”  

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that.  Some things from the present, some from the past.  But what sort of host would I be without offering company a drink?”  

There were some sounds of straining coming from the being before her, and then a pop, as if a wine bottle had just had its cork taken out.  Then there was a pouring sound.  The being stepped into the light; it was a man, a human being.  But rather than the charm she had experienced while in Adam’s presence, this one seemed to give off a low level aura of..Lyra couldn’t describe it, but being near this man made her aware of some..wrongness the man gave off, like his standing before her was a crime against nature, as if he were the walking monkey wrench wreaking havoc in the universe.  

The man was tall and gangly.  He wore a brown set of slacks with dark brown loafers to match.  He also wore a tan undershirt with a dark brown suit jacket that nearly matched the color of his slacks.  His hair was slicked back, the hair and accompanying beard were white, and his eyebrows were long and unkept.  His corneas almost looked white, but they also seemed to give off a slight yellow glow as well, and his irises were royal red.  In his left hand, he loosely held the end of a cane, which had been the source of the metal striking sound.  In his right hand, he offered Lyra a glass of brown thick liquid.  

“Would you care for a glass of chocolate milk?”  

The man smiled, and as he did, Lyra couldn’t help but look at the man’s right incisor, which was sharpened to a long point.  

She looked at him in shock, and half-whispered, “What are you?”  

The man leaned back, balancing his weight on his cane and downed the large glass of chocolate milk in a single gulp.  He then tossed the glass away, seemingly without a thought, and allowed it to shatter into hundreds of microscopic pieces all over the floor.  Then before Lyra’s awestruck eyes, the glass shards shuddered, flew towards the original point of impact, and reassembled themselves into a perfect replica of the glass that had hit the floor.  The glass was clean; not a sud of milk was left in the spotless glass.  

“It’s rather perceptive of you to ask, ‘What am I’, because technically I have no name.”  He straightened the grey bowtie he wore, “There were hundreds of cultures and languages that gave me names: to the Egyptians, I was Set.  To the Babylonians, I was Nergal.  To the Teutonic tribes, I was Loki. To scientists I am Entropy, Inefficiency, and Chaos.  I am the Serpent, and I am the craftiest of animals.  But I believe you know me by a different name.”  

The man made a retching sound, and bright, eerie red light spewed forth from his mouth, and primal energies burst forth from his mouth and eyes.  Lyra looked up in horror, but at the same time couldn’t look away from the spectacle before her.  The man’s shoes, feet, legs, cane, then torso and arms, and finally his head were consumed, or rather, released by the archaic fires that spewed from the man’s mouth and eyes.  Writhing above Lyra was a cloud of red and yellow energy, that slowly began to coalesce into a coherent form.  It was a flying serpent, made and wreathed in red fiery energy and flame.  It opened its mouth to roared silently, with what seemed a bizarre mix of triumph, sadness, and pain.  

The flaming dragon was pulled to the floor, seemingly by a force outside of its will, and began to physically materialize, each body part twitching and jerking as it appeared from the red miasma.  Its right leg formed into a reptilian hind leg, while it’s left leg took that of a goat.  It grew a long red tail with a collection of white fur on the end.  Its torso was morphed into a slender, almost serpentine form, which was covered in brown fur.  Its right hand formed into the paw of a lion, and the left into the grasping talons of an eagle.  On its back it sprouted one bat wing and the other an airy pegasus wing. A ridged spine of long tough hair ran the length of its back and gray neck, which led all the way up to its goat like head, complete with two floppy ears, a goat horn and the horn of stag, and a long bushy white beard.  Its eyes and tooth remained the same as in its human state.  

He raised his arms, “I am Discord!”  He offered his eagle hand to Lyra, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance!”