//------------------------------//
// How To Win Magical Items and Influence Dragons 
// Story: Not The Hero 
// by alarajrogers 
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Forgotten Sky turned out to be under a hill, very, very close to the Sidhe Gates. I guessed this meant they might have been one of the founding hives in Hayre. If many of the hives in Hayre descend from Forgotten Sky, this could also explain the fervor with which the Changelings at Honeycomb Hive tried to defend its location from me, I thought. I don't usually have to cover somepony with butter and cream cheese, threaten to drown their minions, put their home in a leather sack, take their horn and their nose, remove their head and dance with it, and turn their daughters into action figures to get them to comply with me. Maybe Queen Bee is a daughter of Forgotten Sky, or a granddaughter, or something.

Anyhoo. I didn't teleport straight in – the spells they use to hide themselves from ponies show up to me as magical beacons, but they still work to obfuscate the internal structure so I can't teleport in without risking ending up in a wall. Which is a lot less unpleasant for me than it is for unicorns who pull the same stunt, but since it's a cave, and therefore the walls are made of stone... brrr. I have... issues with being embedded in stone nowadays, even if I can easily get myself out with no harm done. If the walls were made of beeswax, or cheese, or whatever boring stuff it is that ponies make their walls out of, it wouldn't bother me much, but stone walls? No thank you.

So I snuck into the hive, and found it apparently abandoned.

This wasn't like with Chrysalis' hive, where it had fallen into ruined squalor. This was an empty hive. The lights were on, but noling was home. No captives in goo, no Changelings bustling about attending to hive business. I went down to the nursery, because I knew they couldn't move infant larvalings and elderly caretakers on short notice – I'd teleported here. Even if the Queen was powerful enough to teleport most of her hive out – and Celestia couldn't do that, so I doubted any Changeling Queen could – the larvalings and elderly would have required more care than that. Teleportation is hard on a body, and to safely teleport an infant, an elderly individual, or a sick or injured individual, you either have to create a gateway – which isn't any strain on a being's body, but requires that you can walk, fly or slither through it, and there wouldn't have been time – or you have to wrap them tightly in your aura. Ordinary Changelings don't have anything other than Changeling magic and the ability to fly, though if they impersonate unicorns or pegasi they can impersonate those races' magic as well – but not well. No ordinary Changeling impersonating a unicorn could teleport. Princes and Princesses naturally had full-on magical horns, as did Queens, so in theory any of them could teleport. But there couldn't possibly be enough Princes and Princesses to personally wrap all the larvalings and elderly in their auras and teleport them; the royal class of Changelings is rare, borne personally by Queens or Princesses in body, not laid from an egg. 

My first reaction was to think that Queen Bee had lied to me, and I considered going back, removing her head again and putting it on a spike outside her hive, while taking her body and hiding it in a museum in Albion. And then I remembered what I'd come here to find.

I relaxed and opened myself up completely to the magic within the caves. And there it was. A faint thread mixed in with the overwhelming ambience of Changeling magic, but I could indeed smell disharmony magic in there. My Element of Deception was being used. It was being used well – I couldn't find it, and I couldn't easily identify the spell it was amplifying and disrupt it. Deception, for obvious reasons, is very, very good at hiding itself and the effects it's causing. I could have sat there and meditated for hours to try to find the thing, and eventually I would probably have tracked it down, but I'm not that patient, and I had a better idea.

I stretched out my telekinesis to feel the walls. They felt like rock – rough, barely polished stone walls, exactly as I would have expected. But when I touched the walls, I felt an amorphous spike of disharmonious emotion that seemed to be coming from nowhere. Anxiety. Fear. Anger. Yum. Only one of the walls didn't seem to get upset when I fondled it.

"Nice hive," I said. "Too bad the previous owners seem to have left in such a hurry, but oh well! Mine now, I guess! Very considerate of them – how did they know I was looking for a new base of operations in Hayre? A little chaos to spruce the place up, and this could be great!" I put my paw to my chin, stroking my goatee. "This room could use a little more space, though," I said. "Hmm. How about this?"

I pointed my finger and blasted the phlegmatic wall to smithereens, opening up the space considerably. I felt the anxiety around me spike. Walls have feelings, apparently, and get worried when they see their fellow wall destroyed. Good to know! "Much better," I said, making a beach chair and reclining my full length in it, simultaneously manufacturing a swimming pool, a shining smiley face to serve me for a sun, and sunglasses because I look awesome in sunglasses. After a moment, I realized to my chagrin that I had forgotten my towel. I snapped one up tout suite. You should never forget your towel.

"Ah, yes, this is nice," I said. "But it's lacking something... I know! It needs an ice cream stand. I'll put one right over there." I sat up and pointed at the far wall. "Just need to blast that one out of the way, and—"

An elderly changeling materialized out of the wall, shaking. It bowed deeply. (Standard Changelings don't have gender. Also, they are not called drones. Everypony gets this wrong for some reason – drone is the correct term for a Prince, because it refers to a male insect whose only role in life is to sit around until it's time to mate with the Queen. It's not the term for sexless insect workers.) "L-lord Discord, sir, please forgive me for hiding from you, but the hive abandoned me and a small number of others when we heard you were coming," it said. "Please don't destroy the walls of our hive, please. There are other Changelings hiding in them, old and useless ones like me that the others left behind."

"Are there now," I said. "I don't believe you. You'd better all come out and show me, or I'll have to assume there's noling here but you."

Several other elderly Changelings appeared from the walls. I grinned. Now that I'd seen them shuck off the illusion spell, I could break it any time I wanted to. Changelings cannot, normally, impersonate part of the wall. That was my Element of Deception being used to bolster natural Changeling magic, with a big boost of queenly power behind it. "Oh, I see!" I said cheerfully. "You were pretending to be the walls!"

"Y-yes, sir," the one who'd spoken whimpered. All the others were bowed as far as they could go, practically prostrate on the ground.

"And you're the only lings in this hive? Where did the others go?"

"We don't know, sir. They left us behind because we're old and useless. We don't know anything."

"So they left you to my supposed wrath, after clearing out of here in a jiffy, because you're old? How terrible of them. But listen, there's plenty of room to go around. You don't have to leave the hive just because I've taken it over for my new home. Look, a heated pool with a miniature sun! Great for relaxing your muscles and supporting those poor old bones." I floated above the pool and cannonballed into the water, making sure to splash all of them. "Come on in, the water's great!"

"N-no, sir, we're too old to be able to swim very well. Changelings aren't good at swimming unless we're young and healthy," a different old Changeling said. 

"Oh, what a shame. But I'm sure you'll enjoy my ice cream stand!" I pointed my talon at the wall again.

"NO!" several of the oldsters screamed at once.

"Why not?" I asked. "Is there something so very wrong with ice cream?"

"We're Changelings, we can't eat ice cream," one of them whimpered.

"Oh! Right! I forgot! Well, I'll make sure that right next to the ice cream stand we'll have a stand for selling love on a stick, how about that?" I pointed my talon again.

"No, please don't destroy our walls! They're – they're the only reminder we have of the days when we were young and healthy!" the first oldster to appear said.

"Oh, don't be silly. I'll build new walls that look just like them. You'll never even know anything has changed, except there'll be more space for love on a stick! And bumper carts, I'll bet you old fellas would just love some bumper carts."

Once again I pointed my talon at the far wall. This time the elderly Changeling who'd first spoken to me threw itself in front of my talon, hovering as hard as its old wings could hover, while the others ranged themselves between me and the wall, some on the ground and some in the air. "We can't let you destroy that wall, sir! It's sacred to us!"

"All right, then, how about this wall?" I pointed at a different one.

"No! They're all sacred!"

"Oh, you Changelings need to grow up. Time I introduced you to the joy of chaos! There's nothing special about one wall or another." I manufactured small whirlwinds that picked the elderly Changelings up and pinned them, throwing them to the center of the vortex and boxing them in. They weren't strong enough to fight their way out, though some were trying. "Or... is there?" I made a great show of stroking my goatee again before snapping my main Changeling liaison into place in front of me, holding it there with my telekinesis. "Tell me, old fella. Is there a reason you don't want me to destroy those walls? Because unless you can come up with a very, very good reason, perhaps one that admits to me that you're lying to me about being alone in the hive, I am going to smash those walls into itsy, bitsy pieces. After all, no Changelings will be harmed if I do that! You're alone in the hive, so it's not like there are any other Changelings hiding on the walls, are there?"

A sound like a sob came out of the old Changeling, and it bowed its head. The walls shimmered, and showed themselves to be completely covered in larvalings, pinned to the walls with Changeling goo. Most of them were sleeping, because that's what larvalings do when cocooned up. A few were staring at me from within their cocoons, and some seemed to be trying to scream, except of course you can't do that in a Changeling cocoon. 

I slapped my forehead. "Oh, dear me! There were larvalings all over those walls! This must be an entire nursery worth! No wonder you didn't want me to destroy the walls! Oh goodness gracious, I would have accidentally killed all those poor sweet larvalings! I'm so glad you decided to come clean with me!"

"P-please, there's nothing here for you," the oldster said. "Just us, the old Changelings, and the babies the rest of the hive left behind because they couldn't flee in time. The hive is empty. Can't you just leave us in peace?"

"What? No, of course not. If there's noling else in the hive, then there's no reason I shouldn't start going out there—" I gestured to the door—"and replacing those walls with something nicer. Obviously I'll leave this nursery intact, though you can keep the swimming pool. But that just means I'll have to do my redecorating with the rest of the hive!" I skipped out the doorway and into the large hall-tunnel it was attached to. "Look at all this limestone. Boring! Seriously, a few good blasts and this place could be much more attractive. I could replace all this limestone with papier-maché! Maybe in a nice sky-blue color. Or a brilliant yellow! Get some bright colors into this place, liven it up! Just because you live in a cave is no reason why your hive has to be so dreary looking." I pointed at a random spot. "Why don't I start here?"

"NO!"

I looked down at the old Changeling, hard. "...Was there something you might perhaps have neglected to tell me about your hive? Something you'd like to share?"

The illusion dropped. Changelings were pressed up against the walls everywhere. Some hanging by their hooves, which were held by goo. Some clinging to stalactites in the ceiling. Some fully gooed to the wall. Some standing on each other, their legs trembling.

A Queen strode up to me. For a Changeling, she had it going on – her carapace was so polished it shone, with iridescent greens, blues and purples sliding across its surface. Her mane was silver and very, very thick and done up in an elaborate do, with strands of it hanging down to form a glittering fringe around the back and sides of her head. Glittering silver rings holding sapphires and diamonds were clasped through the holes in her legs, and her mane and tail were laced with strands of pearls. Her gloriously misshapen Queen-horn was the ivory color of bone, not the same color as her carapace, and small jewels on a strand of copper had been wound around it. She was hot, is what I'm saying. I bowed.

"Your Majesty, do I have the honor of addressing the Queen of Forgotten Sky Hive?" I asked her in my best imitation of a courtier. I took her forehoof and kissed it gently. She yanked it back from me. Changelings. I tell you, even the Queens have no manners.

"You do," she said. "I am Queen Fantasia, daughter of High Queen Elusine of Emain Ablach Hive."

I whistled. So yes indeedy, Forgotten Sky is a big deal among the Changelings. I hadn't known the name of the High Queen, but I'd known that in Hayre, there was one, and that Chrysalis' bid to take over Equestria was in part a stunt intended to get her declared High Queen of Equestria. Emain Ablach is an ancient name for the land beyond the Sidhe Gates; I doubted the High Queen of Hayre actually resided in the Land Beyond, considering that it is both ferociously dangerous (though, unlike Tartarus, very deceptively so, appearing to the average pony like a verdant paradise) and rather devoid of love. But she might be in a hive built into one of the hills that the Sidhe Gates actually resided within. If Forgotten Sky was a direct daughter hive of the High Queen's hive, then it was very, very powerful. Chrysalis had driven a great bargain for a Changeling who was half dead and no longer had much of a hive to speak of.

"Well, my Queen, I doubt I need to be introduced, as it seems someling's done it before me. But I wouldn't wish to be accused of lacking in the social graces. I am Discord, Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, and I believe you can guess why I'm here."

"I can guess," she said. "But I would prefer to hear it from your own mouth. Why did you torment Triskele Hive to learn where to find us, and what do you want with us?"

Triskele Hive? I liked my name for them better. "I wouldn't have had to torment Triskele Hive, but they were very stubborn," I said. "Really, all they needed to do was tell me and I'd have been out of their antennae right away."

"You have done them great harm," Fantasia said coldly. "Have you come to harm us as well?"

"Maybe." I floated up and coiled around, circling her, making her crane her head to look up at me. "Or maybe I've come to deliver a great boon. Chaos, you know, is very sensitive to initial conditions. Your dealings with me in the next few minutes will have a tremendous impact on whether your hive prospers, or whether all your Changelings end up turned into fish."

She breathed deeply. She'd tried to weave some sort of spell around herself to hide her emotions, but it's hard to hide disharmony from me. I could taste her fear, her anger and helplessness. I'd expected my words might leaven that with a bit of hope – a mind churning with both negative and positive emotion is more chaotic than one suffering from negativity alone – but so far, all I was feeling was negative. Which was still tasty, just a trifle blander than I prefer. "What do you want from us?"

"You know what I want." I dangled down and lifted my head, so my eyes were positioned just above hers, my face aligned to the same gravity as hers was. "I want my Element of Deception, Your Majesty. I am prepared to reward your hive handsomely for giving it back to me... and to break your heart, shatter your mind with despair and anguish and leave you broken, weeping and hating yourself if you refuse me. Which will it be?"

"Don't underestimate us, Spirit of Chaos," she said. "If it's a fight you want... it may not go the way you wish."

"Really." I pulled myself up more or less upright and then lowered my head to right above hers, where she had to tilt her head almost all the way back to see me. "That thing I said about breaking your heart and shattering you? I did that. To a dragon who was more than a canter long. Oh, wait, you Hayrish don't use trots and canters, do you. It's kilometers, isn't it? He was two and a half of them. And the last I saw, he was begging hysterically for me to give his hoard back to him, and then crying like an orphaned foal when I refused. And he had nearly every magic item you've ever heard of, because he'd held one of my Elements for centuries. You've had my Element of Deception what, a month? Two, tops?"

"We aren't dragons," Fantasia said. "If it were in our interest to capitulate, and give you what you've asked for, we'd do so. But the magical item you refer to as the Element of Deception is key to our continued survival here in Hayre. We cannot yield it."

"You've lived this long without it, why change now?"

"We know what happened to Chrysalis' hive." She turned her back on me, walking slowly away, infuriating me. But I held my temper, I was good. "It's emboldened the ponies here to hunt us. They've developed spells that can identify the source of a creature's magic. No Changeling can hide from such a spell... without the legendary Amulet of Illusion, that which you call the Element of Deception." She turned. "They've found most of the harvesters in Dapplin... and burned them alive."

I frowned. That was ugly. Equestrian justice was far kinder; there's no death penalty on the books for any crime, certainly not for simply being a Changeling. Although that might have been something Anon changed. I did know, however, that Hayre was home to cows and sheep, and just a short griffon's flight away from the Griffon Empire. Even with Albion and Agland as a buffer, cows and sheep in Hayre are far, far more willing to defend themselves with violence than they are in Equestria, where they're under the protection of the Sun Princess, or in the Griffin Empire, where they're decidedly third-class citizens and so beaten down and resigned to their fates, many of them volunteer for the slaughterhouses in hopes that the payout will give their families a better life. Ponies can't afford to be as gentle and harmonious when they share power with insecure and bloodthirsty prey animals who don't have wings, horns, earth pony strength, or the Princess of the Sun an ocean away being a member of their species. Predators who try to feed on any sapient citizen of Hayre generally end up put to death if they get caught. 

Still, murder by fire was gratuitous. There was no reason ponies couldn't execute the Changelings swiftly and cleanly, without pain. Burning them was intended to send a message, and apparently it had worked. Queen Fantasia was more afraid of the ponies and their Changeling-hunting spells than she was of me. Part of me was offended by this, but I recognized that this was more of Anon's work, indirectly. He was the one who'd destroyed Chrysalis' hive, personally slaughtered nearly every ling in it, and apparently that had given the ponies here the confidence to take on their own greatest predator. Griffons leave ponies alone, but Changelings prefer to feed on ponies because ponies have magic, and cows and sheep don't.

"I'm not wholly unmoved by your plight," I said. "But I need the Element of Deception to fight the creature that took Chrysalis' hive down. Surely you recognize that, rather than using it simply to conceal yourselves, it'd be better to attack the problem at its root, and destroy the one who destroyed her hive?"

"It wouldn't matter," Fantasia said. "Destroy one pony, and it means nothing. His actions have already taken place, and already led ponies to believe that they can, and that they should, destroy us all." So she didn't know the details – namely, that Anon wasn't a pony.

She was probably right – Hayre was most likely outside of Anon's influence. I hadn't checked the stallion-to-mare ratio, but Zebrica had seemed exactly as I expected – I hadn't known about Anon at the time, so maybe there was some subtlety I'd missed, but it looked to me more likely that Anon simply wasn't affecting anywhere in the world but Equestria. And probably the Crystal Empire, now. This didn't change the fact that it was my Element and had never been Chrysalis' to give away in the first place. "Well, I sympathize, I truly do. But the Element of Deception is mine, part of my office as Spirit of Disharmony, and if I want it back, you—"

Without any warning whatsoever there were what seemed like a hundred Changelings on top of me.

I never saw it coming, and I don't mean that to suggest that I failed at paying attention. When I know I'm in a hostile situation and I don't believe I've already won, I pay a great deal of attention, and my reaction time is excellent. The fact that one moment all the Changelings were ranged around me and the next they were on top of me, with no shift in magic large enough to indicate a mass teleportation, meant that Fantasia, or someling anyway, had just used my Element of Deception against me, again. The lings launching an attack on me had been hidden for a few crucial seconds, the gap between launching and landing. And now I had what seemed like every harvester ling in the place piled on top of me... draining my emotions.

You may have noticed that emotion is what drives me, moreso than most ponies. Chaos is all about randomness and following one's whims, and without emotion, one cannot have a whim. There are only two possible drivers of motivation, two things that can make anyone do whatever they do – emotion, and rules. Ponies can follow rules, like golems or robots, in the absence of emotion, but I cannot, because, well, I don't follow rules. Without my emotions, I have no motivation to do anything.

When I felt them draining me, when I felt my love of chaos and my fear and my anger bleeding out of my body and leaving me empty, I felt renewed fear... but they drained that as well. It's a myth that Changelings can only consume love. Love is what's best for them, but just as ponies can eat meat and paper and go rooting through the trash to eat garbage, Changelings can eat any emotion. Most negative emotions are fairly bad for them, and don't taste pleasant, although they do enjoy anger and jealousy as a delicious hot spice on their love, sometimes. These ones were determined; the Queen plainly knew my weakness. One Changeling couldn't have made a dent in me, but while I doubt there really were a hundred, I am fairly sure there were at least forty, all draining me as fast and hard as they could, and because I'd been given no chance to see them attacking before they did it, I'd had no chance to muster a defense. Turning myself to magic didn't help at all; magic is part of what Changelings drain. They weren't harming my body; it was my mind and my magic they were draining. I tried to teleport, but the Queen was blocking me, and ordinarily I could break a spell like that in moments, but I didn't have moments. 

Within seconds, all the frantic plans I'd come up with to defend myself seemed like much too much work to bother with. They bore me down to the ground, and I stared up at the ceiling, feeling too empty and apathetic to even try to push them away. Logically I knew what was happening, and I knew that I should be feeling emotion, and that I should be afraid, and that I should be fighting back... but logic and I, as I may have pointed out on multiple occasions, are not on good terms. 

In just a few minutes, though, they were full to bursting. As I said earlier, Changeling nutrition is a factor of the intensity of the emotion, the type of the emotion (they digest variants of love far more easily than other emotions), and the magical pool of the target. With my enormous magical pool, they didn't have to drain me deep before they filled up. 

I should explain here how Changeling emotipredation works. Every sentient creature has a deep, deep well of emotion that's a fundamental part of their personality and their psyche, and then a much shallower pool which is what they're feeling right now. Drain the shallow pool, and usually, it will replenish quickly from the deep wells of personality. Ponies, and other creatures, with a tendency toward depression may not recover so quickly, because they have problems keeping their pools full at the best of times, but most creatures will recover their emotional equilibrium from a Changeling attack fairly rapidly. When Changelings drain a pony completely dry, if that pony survives it, they generally suffer from severe depression for the rest of their lives, become sociopaths, or become severely depressed sociopaths, losing the ability to love or care for anyone and generally most of the rest of their emotions as well. That takes months, and rarely happens; usually the pony's magic runs out first, and then their life force depletes as well, and then they die. Most ponies have more emotion than magic.

I have so much of both I've never tried to compare the two, but because of that, every harvester in the hive, taking turns after I was incapacitated, couldn't significantly drain my magic, let alone my life force, and couldn't do more than skim the top off my well. They drained my emotional pool dry more than once (it kept trying to fill up with fear, because I knew this was bad and I should be afraid), but even after every Changeling in the hive had made themselves nauseous gorging on my emotions (which, let's not forget, have next to no love in them, if you don't count self-love... which probably should count! I personally think that my passionate love for the handsome and dashing Discord, Master of Chaos, should go down through history as one of the loveliest romances ever told. Not sure the Changelings would agree, though), they hadn't done more than temporarily incapacitate me. I was still perfectly healthy and full of magic, just much too tired and apathetic to want to try to fight them.

I might possibly have remained that way long enough for them to evacuate and flee, but that is not what Queen Fantasia decided to do. With me conscious but unmoving at her hooves, no emotion driving me to do much of anything at all... she decided to do the one thing that could undo that situation. She made the decision to dispose of me... and made a terrible, terrible mistake when she chose her method.

Fed by all of the emotion (most of it disgusting and hard to digest for Changelings, but it could still be converted into magic) her Changelings had taken from me, she unleashed a spell on me, at strength equal to Celestia's on a good day... to turn me to stone.

Now, alicorn-level spells are nothing to sneeze at. But there was a reason Celestia hadn't tried such a stunt herself, despite the fact that she most certainly knows petrification spells, and had instead relied on the Elements of Harmony, both times. An ordinary unicorn's casting would have dissolved against my natural field of chaos. An alicorn-level spell could actually get through, and work... and it did. I felt the familiar, terrible sensation of my limbs and body flaring with momentary pain, then going horribly numb and heavy, and I did what I think anyone who had spent over a thousand years in that state would have done. I panicked completely.

The only reason I hadn't reacted or fought back was that the Changelings had drained me of emotion. But turning me to stone – which is, if not the thing I am most afraid of, definitely up there in the top three – replenished my pool with raw animal terror, pretty much instantly. With emotion came motivation, aka get me out of this thing right now right now right NOW get me OUT! And while the Elements of Harmony have the ability to bind my magic, an alicorn-level petrification spell does not.

So I was free within a minute, maybe. Two, tops. And I was furious.

To get out of the stone, I'd started a spell that annihilated stone, reverting it to whatever it was before it was stone. In my case, I was a living draconequus first, but for most of the stone on Equestria, it was superheated gases before it was superheated liquefied stone, and since superheated gas tends to be bad for things that breathe, including me if I don't protect myself, I opened a thousand pinpoint wormholes to the ocean and let the gas flow through, where it would congeal back into rock near the bottom of the sea. Since we were in a cave, where there was plenty of rock, this was immediately noticeable. Changeling started screaming as the walls around them and the floor underneath them started evaporating, trails of visible black steam (did you think superheated gas that can turn into rock would be as transparent as air? It's not) disappearing into tiny holes in the air. Sunlight shone into the cave for probably the first time in millions of years, if ever.

"What are you doing? Stop!" Fantasia screamed, firing spell after spell at me. Changelings tried, gamely, to feed from me, to bring me down again, but this time I was prepared. I redirected Fantasia's spells at her Changelings, transforming the energy as I did so, so that spells intended to blast me to my component atoms instead morphed Changelings into living teddy bears, giant intelligent apples, fish with hooves, or screaming flowerpots. The Changelings who tried to drain my emotion got a focused pulse of my feelings for Anon. Remember that I said that emotions that aren't love aren't all that good for Changelings? Hate, in particular, tastes bitter and horrible to them, and with my magic amplifying it, every Changeling who tried to feed on my emotions got force-fed a huge heaping helping of pure willowbark extract covered in sulfur and battery alkaline, or the Changeling equivalent thereof. They choked, and vomited up green gooey magic, and collapsed retching on the rapidly disappearing floor of the cave. I'm not heartless; the larvalings and the elderly couldn't necessarily fly, so I was evaporating the rock beneath our feet in such a way as if it was water draining out of a bathtub, not the floor of an upper story vanishing, even though technically there had been open caverns below us.

"Stop! Stop it, please!" Fantasia shouted at me. "This is our home!"

By now we were essentially in a hollowed-out crater where there had once been a hill and caverns within it. I slapped my forehead. "Whoops! I can't believe how carried away I got with that rock erasing spell!" I said, grinning coldly. "Of course you changelings need some rock back. How about this?"

Large boulders, and marshmallows that looked exactly large boulders, began raining from the sky when I snapped. Changelings shrieked and flew about this way and that, trying to dodge. "Here you go! Rocks to build a new cave with, and marshmallows to help you glue them together!"

I heard Fantasia shouting at me, but since I'd replaced everything that came out of her mouth with the quacking of a duck, I couldn't tell what she was saying, and the chaos of Changelings desperately trying to evade objects that might be either rocks or marshmallows was just too delicious. I waved my conductor's baton as I floated over the orchestra of chaos, and laughed and laughed as Changelings panicked and tried to flee. I also manufactured a few fake Changelings to be squashed by rocks – Changelings tell each other apart by magical signals with their antennae, mostly. In this mayhem, noling would realize that the dead ones couldn't be identified as anyling from their hive at all, and by the time they figured out I'd faked them out, this would all be over.

See, I like fear. I like panic, I like cacophony, I like the sheer terror creatures feel when they're in fear for their lives and they flee and run into an invisible wall that seems to have no upper boundary. I love this stuff, in fact. But I have a little problem. If I actually kill anyone, then they're dead and they're not generating any more glorious terror and wreaking havoc in their escape attempts. But if I don't actually kill anyone, then my victims think I've gone soft, and they stop feeling quite as much fear.

So I faked the Changelings out. When I observed that a rock was actually going to fall on a Changeling, I swapped it out for a marshmallow. If a marshmallow was about to fall right next to a pinned and helpless Changeling, I occasionally swapped it for a rock. So rocks thudded into the ground next to Changelings, barely missing them; what actually hit them was marshmallows. However, if noling ended up squashed by a rock, they might possibly figure out I was pulling my punches. So I created fake, nonliving Changelings and had them stumble directly into the path of a falling rock, which promptly squished their head and made it impossible for anyling to tell they were fakes without a forensic analysis or a careful roll call, neither of which were possible at the moment. That way, each Changeling was certain that their life or death was a matter of random chance, or my personal whim, which aren't easily distinguishable to the naked eye; but the quantity of fear and the complexity of the chaos created by the panic didn't diminish.

When a good number of Changelings were stuck in marshmallows, struggling and crying as they awaited their expected grim fate, I turned back to the quacking queen, who was on her knees on the ground beneath me, sobbing. I landed en pointe, my dragon foot encased in a beautiful green and orange striped ballet slipper with pink ribbons. "Did you have something to say, queeny?" I inquired, restoring her ability to speak. "You look a little down in the dumps there!"

"Please," she sobbed, looking up at me. "I'll give you the Amulet of Illusion. I'll do anything. Please, please, stop killing my Changelings, please."

"I don't know," I said. "You tried to kill me. You did encase me in stone, however briefly. And stupidity like that really should be its own reward."

"Then spare them, and turn your wrath on me," she begged, prostrate in front of me. "I'm the one who gave the order. I'm responsible. Please, torment me if you must, but not them. Please."

While Fantasia had managed to royally torque me off by turning me to stone, she did get points for throwing herself in front of me and begging without being coached to do it. "I haven't actually heard an apology out of you," I said.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry we tried to hide from you, I'm sorry we defied you! I'm sorry! Here!" I hadn't seen the amulet around her neck until the moment she tore it free and tossed it on the bare rock at my feet. "Please, have mercy on my hive, please!"

I picked up my Element and pocketed it. "I'll think about it." I watched the chaos for a bit more, but the fear was starting to curdle and turn to despair. I don't like despair; it's the emotion of motionlessness, sometimes indistinguishable from apathy. Fear motivates; despair drains all motivation, because why bother to fight if you can't win? I'd had as much fun as I was going to get out of these Changelings. "Oh, all right." I snapped, and the rocks and marshmallows still in the air all vanished.

The air was still filled with sobbing as terrorized Changelings took stock and tried to help one another. What big babies. I knew for a fact that not a single one of them was physically harmed.

This included Fantasia, who was still weeping hysterically at my feet. "Oh, grow up," I said. "I took the rocks away. What are you crying about now?"

"You've doomed our hive," she choked out. "You've doomed all Changelingkind in Hayre. When Chrysalis called, I saw hope for a future, for the first time in a month. We could use the Amulet of Illusion to enhance our magic and hide all of our hives, all of our harvesters. We had some hope of safety when I thought it was hopeless. And now you've snatched that from us and left us to be murdered by the ponies of Hayre as soon as they find us."

"Ever considered laying low until the heat is off?"

"We have to eat! If I can't send harvesters out, we'll starve! Is that any sort of choice? Burn, or waste away of hunger?"

"And I might have been willing to work with you on that, if you hadn't jumped straight to trying to kill me." I twirled some of her mane around my talon. It had fallen out of her elaborate hairdo and was beautifully disheveled now. She flinched. "But just to show you that I can be the bigger draconequus and that I don't hold grudges, I will consider the possibility of helping you out with this. The being who's emboldened the ponies against you and who slaughtered Chrysalis' hive is my personal nemesis, and just to spit in his face I might consider aiding you. Maybe."

"What – what would you want? I'll do anything. Anything."

I twirled her mane tighter, pulling her closer in. "I am prepared," I murmured to her, "to send you to a new location for your hive in Northern Amaerica. The ancient Crystal Empire has returned, and is ruled over by the youngest alicorn, the legendary Princess of Love." It was unlikely that Chrysalis would have shared the full details of her ignominious defeat with her fellow queen. And in Hayre, at least, they remembered the Crystal Empire – a legend of a land of overflowing love and light, a place that drew a great deal of Changeling emigration from the old world of Neighropa, until an evil pony king plunged the land into fear and despair, and all the love, and the Changelings dependent on it, died. "The dark king has fallen." This wasn't actually true; I hadn't felt the magical shift that would signify Somby's destruction yet. But it was in the bag, considering that Anon and his I-get-to-be-the-big-hero reality warping powers were on the case. "I could place your hive in the mountains around the Crystal Empire, to bask in the love and the light of the long-lost Crystal Heart." 

"Our hive alone? We had intended to use the Amulet of Illusion to protect all the Changelings of Hayre..."

"I'm not taking sides in the war between predators and prey like that," I said. "Your hive only. If that's a problem, you're free to refuse the deal."

"Not a problem," she said hastily, trembling. "W-what would you want for this boon?" 

I pulled her much closer. "You," I whispered in her ear.

I let the entendre hang in the air for a moment, savoring the look of surprise and shock on her face (and just a bit of fear, which is honestly totally unfair considering what Changelings have been known to do for a meal), before clarifying. "And your hive. As my minions. You go about your little lives as usual, harvesting your love, laying your eggs, but when I have a mission to give a Changeling, you will give me a Changeling to do it. Without question. Even if it's a suicide mission."

"I – I could agree to that, yes," she said. "For the sake of—"

"Even if I ask for one of your daughters. Or for you. If I tell you I need a Queen, you come, personally."

Changeling carapaces hide any sort of color shift from emotion, but I can feel disharmony. I felt her fear spike. Had she been a pony, she'd have gone pale. "I... I understand."

"Your lives are mine, if I do this for you," I said with my face right up against hers. I wanted to sound terrifying, and dominant, and sexy in a kind of brutally villainous way, and judging from her reaction I was succeeding. Her emotional state was in a shambles. I'd just terrorized her entire hive, and as far as she knew, had murdered several of her Changelings; I'd taken what I wanted and made her beg; and now I was offering a chance of survival, magnanimous beyond anything she could have hoped for. She was humiliated, fearful, hopeful, and the part of her that evolution built to find the best possible mates from any species, to help her produce truly powerful daughters and sons so genetically desirable that other hives would be desperate to ally with her, had just identified me as the most mateworthy creature she'd ever met... much to her chagrin and deeper humiliation, because Changeling Queens are taught to rule and to dominate without question, not to find submission sexy. 

I didn't actually want her, except in the sense that I want pretty much any interesting creature I meet, especially the ones that are outstanding and unusual specimens of their respective species. But after what she'd just done to me, I needed her emotions to be in utter chaos when she thought of me... and I enjoy being wanted. Who doesn't? So with my talon tangled in her mane, pulling so hard I'd lifted her off the ground and she had to beat her wings to stay even with my head, I held her close enough to kiss and said, "Do you agree to my terms, or will you remain here in Hayre and die?"

"I... accept, my Lord," she said, trying to moisten dry lips, and oh, how she hated calling me that. Such a delicious cocktail of shame and rage and relief and desire. I almost wanted to take her then, to give her a chance to fight me on terrain that Changelings usually dominate on, and defeat her there as well. A mating with a Changeling Queen is a contest to see who can get the emotional upper paw on who, and by definition they almost always win... but I have a lot more experience in playing such games with Queens than Fantasia could have in playing them with avatars of Chaos, so I'd win.

Immediately I rejected the idea, though. I'd been out of the game for a long, long time, and I'd been noticing that my reactions, when I'd go to my xenophile club and engage in a bit of mutual fun with strangers, were much, much stronger than they used to be. Lock a guy up in a stone statue for a thousand years, unable to feel any tactile sensation at all, and maybe it was no surprise that sex lately was more intense than I remember it being since I was a teenager with a recently misplaced virginity. Not that I'm complaining, but it meant I might actually lose to a Changeling's manipulations. Better not to risk it. I liked making her think that I might, though.

I released her, letting her almost fall before she regained her equilibrium and managed to catch herself with her wings. "There's a good filly," I said, reaching out and patting her head in as patronizing a means as I could manage. "See? Was that so bad?"

I saw the outrage in her eyes. "So bad? You killed—" And then she was brought up short, because when she looked back at the battlefield to point at the poor mangled corpses of the Changelings I'd so cavalierly brained with giant rocks... there weren't any. While I'd been negotiating with her I'd vanished the fake dead Changelings.

"Killed who? My dear, you should know that I never kill if I can avoid it. Death is stasis; only life can produce change and chaos."

"But... I saw..."

"This has been very stressful for you, poor little queeny. You need a nice soak in a hot tub and a good long rest. Fortunately for you, I'll be setting you up practically next door to your old friend Chrysalis, and I'm sure the two of you can get together for lunch or something. It'll do you some good to be social for once."

"W-what?"

I grinned broadly. "Do say hi to her for me, will you?" And snapped my talon.

In Hayre, Fantasia was the daughter of the High Queen. In the Crystal Empire, she'd be an interloper; Chrysalis had the greatest possible claim to be High Queen of North Amaerica, given that most hives in Equestria are her daughters' hives. Of course, Chrysalis was extremely weak, and having taken in some of her Princesses, Fantasia would know that... but open conflict with Chrysalis would turn these new adopted daughters into dangerous moles within the hive, lings whose allegiance couldn't be fully predicted. Politically, I'd just dumped her into an even stickier situation than she'd been in before – albeit with much less chance of being slaughtered by ponies. Although, Cadance seems to have some serious PTSD, and I wouldn't put it past her to call Anon up to the Crystal Empire to do the slaughtering for her.

Any way you looked at it, there was going to be some glorious conflict, and it was going to be hilarious.





So. With my Element of Deception secure, it was time to pay a visit to Spikey-Wikey.

Twilight, adorably, had surrounded the Golden Oaks library with wards and alarms to keep me out. It was so gosh-darned cute how she thought a 20-something-year-old unicorn could best the same Lord of Chaos who'd broken the locks Celestia (and later Luna as well) had put on the Elements of Harmony... twice. I'll give her this, she spared no expense of research, time or magic. There were chaos-sensing fields, there were whitelist wards that kept out anyone except those on the authorized list, there were puzzle wards that were supposed to draw in the mind of any invader and make them spend hours trying to solve the puzzle, there were sensor webs for hostile intent. It just made me want to pinch her little cheeks and give her a big hug, and maybe a cookie. Her wards took me ten whole minutes to dismantle completely.

I found him in the kitchen, morosely binge-eating ice cream and potato chips. His color was a little dull, and his magical aura weaker than usual – looked to me as if Twilight had been neglecting her little assistant's dietary needs. Gems aren't just tasty to dragons, they're necessary for maintaining their magic, particularly in a growing dragon like this one. The deprivation wasn't going to kill him or even seriously harm him – Spike had, in the past, gotten a lot more gems than the average dragon whelp had by his age – but it could slow down his development if it went on too long. Plus, his body's probably gotten used to the high level of gems in his diet. So with more neglect from Twilight and less doting from Rarity, it was my guess that he was feeling physically drained, like a constant low-grade cold (which dragons don't actually get, fortunately, because can you imagine a dragon sneezing all the time? I'm all for chaos but even I think that's a bit much). I'm not concerned for his welfare personally – sure, I might have been horrified at the thought of killing him myself, but it's not as if I care what happens to the kid – but I added "child neglect" to the litany of crimes caused by Anon anyway.

Figuring that I could get his complete attention, under the circumstances, by feeding him, I popped a bowl of gems into existence. (Actually they were real gems, I just grabbed them from elsewhere. I could have made gems, but the last thing I want to do is feed my enemy's pet dragon Chaos magic, and Twilight will continue to be my enemy after Anon has been destroyed until I manage to persuade Celestia to tell her to stand down. Which I don't mind; Twilight at her full mental capacity is a fun enemy to have. Sure, she beat me the last time, but that's just going to make our next real contest more exciting.)

Spike's eyes widened. "Oh, wow!" He jumped up and looked around himself. "Twilight? Twilight, are you back? Princess Celestia, is that you?"

I materialized on all fours, wearing a Celestia wig (it might have been a little crooked, but come on, you try to balance that much mane on your head) and a hastily applied white paint job all over my body. "Yes, my faithful student's little dragon, it is I, Princess Cakelestia," I said in a high-pitched voice. I was wearing a cutie mark of Celestia's sun with a big grinning face on it and a slice of cake being stuffed into that face, and I'd reduced my horn count down to one, though admittedly my goat horn doesn't resemble Celestia's all that much and maybe I should have centered it. 

Somehow, Spike wasn't fooled. "Discord!" he shouted, and grabbed at a scroll that was sitting on the table next to his ice cream. He raised it to his mouth, pursing his lips to blow flame at it, but I grabbed it in my telekinesis and pulled it over to read it. Now I confess that I'm not the best at reading, but I was easily able to read this message; all it said was, "Dear Princess Celestia, I'm in the library. HELP! Spike."

"Give that back!" Spike shouted.

"Oh, of course. Pardon me, I do forget the social niceties sometimes. It's impolite to read other people's mail, isn't it." I hoofed it back to him (well, technically, I used my talon), waiting to see if he'd fire it off without reading it. Sadly, he didn't. He scowled at me as soon as he saw that I had changed the message to, "Dear Princess Celestia, I like big butts and I cannot lie. Will you marry me? Spike."

Spike dropped the note on the floor and started slowly backing away from me. "Twilight and Anon are just over at Sweet Apple Acres. They're supposed to be coming back any minute now," he said, his paw slowly reaching toward his side like he thought I couldn't see him do it, or more likely, like he thought I didn't know dragon whelps have pockets.

"That's funny, I could have sworn I saw them in the Crystal Empire just a few minutes ago," I said. "Ooh, more letters! Are any of them for me?" I pulled all the letters Spike was trying to get to out of his pocket and started reading them. "Dear Princess Celestia, I'm at Fluttershy's. Help. Dear Princess Celestia, I'm at Rarity's. Help. Dear Princess Celestia, I'm in Ponyville. Help. I'm detecting a pattern here. Were you expecting to be abducted everywhere?"

"I – I'm warning you," Spike said, his voice shaking. "I know Princess Celestia has somepony keeping an eye on me. If you hurt me you're going to end up in a world of trouble."

"Hurt you?" I teleported over to him and coiled around him, making him go rigid with terror. "My dear boy, whyever would I want to do that?"

"Uh, for whatever the reason was that you tried to kill me a couple of weeks ago?"

I laughed. Even terrified, the boy had some snark to him. "Oh, Spike, I'm so deeply sorry for that. I never meant to hurt you at all! I was going after Anon." I teleported over to the gems, sitting in the seat he'd vacated. "Consider this an apology gift," I said, pushing the bowl toward him as I tossed a particularly savory sapphire into my mouth. (I can't eat gems naturally like dragons can – I don't have either dragon teeth or a dragon digestive system – but with my powers, I can eat anything I want, and I'm dragon enough that I can taste the gem the way a dragon would have.) 

"If you were going after Anon, why did you threaten me in the first place?"

I wondered if the fact that Anon was so far away would allow me to actually explain what was going on. Well, small steps first. "Because she was supposed to pick him. I wanted him to suffer what he's made me suffer," I said. 

"Wait, what has Anon made you suffer?" Spike asked warily.

"He's—" made Celestia forget our past together. "—nearly killed me, more than once." Damn. It wasn't going to work. I couldn't say what I needed to say, to explain to Spike why I'd wanted Anon to suffer that way before he died, and without being able to explain it, I looked like I'd been pointlessly villainous. I decided to try to roll with it, see how far I could get from another angle. "I'm not much of a fan of death, but if I don't take him out, sooner or later he'll get me."

"Yeah, but why did you want Twilight to pick him to die, instead of just killing him?"

"She was supposed to pick him," I said, redirecting the subject. "You're the dragon she hatched and raised. You've been like a son, or at least a little brother, to her. You've been with her through thick and thin. Even when I broke her and made her believe friendship was worthless, she never questioned your loyalty. Anon is a fellow she just met a few months ago. Why did she pick you and not him? It's completely out of character."

Spike looked down morosely. "It's because I'm just a dumb sidekick and I can't do anything to help," he mumbled. "What do you even want, Discord? You just want to taunt me about how useless I am? Go on, I already know. You can't turn me into my opposite by telling me things I already know."

This was untrue, actually; I often get the best results from telling ponies things they already know but are desperately trying not to think about. But that was beside the point. I teleported him into the chair I'd been occupying, in front of the gems, and took a chair for myself next to him. "And since when have you been merely a 'dumb sidekick', Spike?"

"All my life." He pushed back his chair. "Why am I even talking to you?"

"Because you know instinctively that I'm here to help you?"

"Really." Oh, the deadpan snark of that little dragon. I love it. When he grows up he's going to put the "dragon" back in "sardonic", I just know it. 

"Really! Just because we're enemies doesn't mean I can't be outraged at the way you're being treated! I know just a bit of what it's like to be growing up around ponies when you're not one, so I can fully sympathize with the position you're in." Except for the part where, had I been in his position, by now I'd have thrown several temper tantrums, played half a dozen practical jokes on Anon in increasing levels of severity, and eventually have run away from home. 

"I'm not real big on taking advice from ponies who've tried to kill me."

"Ah yes, but I'm not a pony! And to be perfectly fair, I never tried to kill you. I pretended that I intended to kill you, but I actually never planned to do so, or even try."

"Right, so it's just a coincidence that Anon saved me when you were planning on letting me go anyhow."

"No, it's not a coincidence at all," I said sourly. "It's just not my coincidence. Anon didn't save you, he saved himself. He was the one I was going to kill; I was just trying to think of something suitably scathing to say to Twilight before I did it. Maybe something about how repulsive she was for even considering condemning her oldest and most loyal loved one to death." And telling her that I was killing Anon, instead of the one she'd chosen, to punish her for how disloyal she'd been to someone who loved her. Yes, that would have been good.

"Twilight did what she had to do," Spike said dully. "Anon is more important to Equestria. He's the Element of Protection. I'm just a dragon."

"Spike, no dragon is 'just' a dragon," I protested. "Besides, I happen to know that Anon's supposed importance to Equestria is all smoke and mirrors." Yes! I'd gotten that far, at least.

Spike scowled. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Well. I'm sure you're aware why it is that Anon knew all of you even before any of you met him, correct?"

"Uh, yeah. On his world they have these, like, short serial films, and one series is about us and our lives and adventures." And naturally, upon learning this shortly after meeting him, none of the ponies, nor the dragon, were afflicted with the sense of existential angst that I was, because even if they were deep enough thinkers to worry about the implications, Anon prevented them from doing so.

"Indeed it is. I've seen it."

"You – no way. How? It's only in Anon's world. We don't even have the equipment here to be able to see it..."

I gave him a Look. "Really, Spike, you're forgetting who you're talking to."

"Good point, and on that note, I really don't think I should be talking to you! If you really want to apologize to me for trying to kill me then maybe you should go somewhere else."

I lay back on the kitchen table. "But this table is so comfy."

While I was laying on the table, ostensibly not looking at him, Spike grabbed a scroll from the floor and one of the ubiquitous quills that were more or less everywhere in the library, and started writing with it. I let him get as far as "PRINCESS CELESTIA HEL" before making everything he wrote after that turn as he wrote it into "LO FROM PONYVILLE I NEED SOME ADVICE I AM TOO SEXY HOW DO I DEAL? SPIKE"

He dropped the paper in disgust, and I sat up. "I'm a kid. These jokes are gross," he complained.

"A kid who's been madly in lust with an adult pony for three years."

"Love! Not lust! And how do you know about that? And anyway that's all over now. She only wants Anon."

I rolled my eyes. "It always comes back to Anon, doesn't it." I sat up. "Are you really over Rarity, or is it just that you think you have no chance?"

Spike started ticking things off on his clawed digits. "He's tall. I'm short. He's handsome for his species. I'm a baby for mine. He's a big hero. I'm just a useless kid. He has the Element of Protection. I don't have anything but the ability to send messages."

I reached over him from above and started ticking more things off with his digits, making him yell "Hey!" I didn't let him interrupt, though. "You have native, inherent magic and are building up more and more over time. He doesn't. You have magic resistance. He doesn't. You have skin that's nearly impervious to attack; only diamond flechettes or another dragon's claws could generally get through. He doesn't. You have internal flame, giving you incredible cold resistance, and you're naturally resistant to heat up to the intensity of lava. He has less temperature resistance than a pony, which is why he needs to wear clothes all the time. You have claws that can rip through steel and teeth that can chomp through gems. He has fingernails that can rip through another human's skin, maybe, if he grows them some more, but are useless against creatures with coats, which is pretty much everything here in Equestria, and his teeth are actually weaker as weapons than pony teeth are because pony jaws are so much stronger, even though he does have meat-cutting teeth. You're likely to live a thousand years, maybe two thousand if you watch your health and don't get into pointless fights. He'll live another 60 at best. You're superior to him in nearly every way, Spike; you're just a child who hasn't grown into your power yet. Time is on your side."

"It doesn't feel that way."

"It never does, to children."

"He says humans killed all the dragons on his world."

"Magic faded from his world, which would have naturally killed any dragons alive at the time it happened. Humans did kill some of them, but mostly only while magic was fading. And even at that, dragons are much, much more famous for killing humans than the other way around. It would usually take a dozen heroes going after a dragon with the best weapons humans could muster at the time before one of them got lucky and took one out; the rest ended up as the dragon's lunch."

"Humans have built weapons that can destroy entire cities with a single bomb, and they can fly to their moon."

"Only twelve of them in their entire history ever did fly to the moon, and even though they have the capability to do it again, they don't want to spend the money. And the weapons you're talking about are widely believed by humans to be the thing that is going to wipe out their entire species, because they know that some of them are idiots and therefore none of them should be trusted with that kind of power. And either way, Anon can't build either a nuclear bomb or a spaceship." I hoped. I hoped his reality warping abilities couldn't go that far.

"It doesn't matter." Spike sagged again. "Even if what you're saying is true and I'm gonna grow up to be awesome... how long is that going to take? Fifty years? Rarity might be dead before I'm a grown dragon."

"Which is in your favor, because a grown dragon and a pony... don't work. Really. Matters of scale, you know. An adolescent dragon is what you want to be, if you want to romance a pony."

"Well, how long is that going to take? And that's not the point anyway! Rarity loves him! Anon says I'm a doormat for letting her use me and doing all the stuff I did to help her when she wasn't even in love with me, and he says that makes me a beta. Girls like guys who are strong and confident and do what they want, not guys who are nice to them."

I slapped myself in the forehead. "Spike. Do not take romantic advice from Anon. Seriously."

"Yeah, but he got the mare I love to love him back, and I didn't. And all of my friends are in love with him. So who else am I supposed to take advice from, you? You don't exactly have mares beating down your door."

"I've had mares beating down my door. It's just a little bit difficult to manage being out there for them to find your door when you're in hiding from a stupid human with a sword." I shook my head. "Anyway, your romantic life isn't really the point here. As I've said, I've seen the series Anon saw. Did you know that it continued past the point where Anon arrived here? That it showed the Changeling invasion, and the battle against King Sombra that's taking place right now? And Anon wasn't in it?"

"Wait... how could the series show the future? I thought it was chronicling our lives and adventures after they happened!"

"It's not. There's even more past that point, that Anon might have seen, though I haven't gotten around to it yet. It seems rather less relevant, given how much Anon has changed by being here. Would you like to know how the Changelings were defeated, in the version of our lives where Anon wasn't there?"

"Uh... um, I'm guessing Twilight and the others made it to the Elements of Harmony somehow?"

"Wrong. They were still defeated, they still couldn't get to the Elements, they were still all tied up in Changeling goo. But there was no Anon with a sword to suddenly go berserk and start slaughtering Changelings."

"Wait – Princess Luna! She was asleep through the whole thing! Maybe she woke up?"

"She did wake up, but no, she didn't save the day. Cadance and Shining Armor did."

Spike stared at me. "How? Chrysalis was powerful enough to take out Princess Celestia! Princess Cadance is powerful, but she's not that powerful."

"Oh, but she is. Chrysalis gained all that power from Shining Armor's love for Cadance. The real Cadance, being the Alicorn of Love, is just as capable of drawing power from love... but she had both Shining Armor's love for her and her own love for him to draw from, and her power doesn't consume the love within a pony. It uses what radiates outward, so it doesn't harm the pony or affect their ability to love. She and Shining Armor merged their magic, guided by their love for each other, and with Cadance's power amplified by that love, they cast a version of Shining Armor's shield that caught all the Changelings and flung them out of Canterlot, with great force."

Spike's eyes were the size of tea saucers. "Wow. They could do that?"

"They could. If Anon hadn't been there to steal their victory."

"Well... Anon didn't know that! He's a good guy! He just wanted to help, and when he saw his friends in danger—"

"He did know, Spike. He watched the same film series. He knew exactly what was supposed to happen, but he didn't like how bloodless the victory was. Shining Armor and Cadance probably killed some Changelings, but Changelings can fly. Being flung with great force into the sky around a mountaintop probably left most of them alive, and if it killed any, Anon never got to see their deaths. He wanted to hack Changelings up with a sword, because he likes blood and the suffering of his enemies." I thought of mentioning how he'd laughed while I bled and screamed and burned, and decided against it. Some things are too humiliating to talk about even if they'd be useful.

"You don't know that. You don't even know him!"

"I know what he did to me." That was as close as I needed to get to it, I figured. "Remember, I'm one of his enemies. You're not. You haven't seen the part of him that loves to bathe in his opponents' blood."

"I... guess that would give you a different perspective, wouldn't it..." He shook his head. "But Anon's our friend. He wants to protect us. He's a really nice person. Maybe he gets a little violent when his friends are threatened, but I can understand that."

"He's a really nice person who calls you a doormat? And a beta, whatever that is?" Beta being the second letter of the old Minosian alphabet, I assumed it meant "sidekick", as in a secondary character, but that chain of logic seemed a little advanced for Anon.

"I can't blame him for saying what everypony already knows," Spike said. "Anon's not the kind of guy who lies to make you feel better."

"No, he's the kind of guy who lies to make himself feel better. He's tried to convince you, and Twilight, and all her pony pals, that he's the hero your world needs." I knelt down on my haunches, looking right at the young dragon. "Isn't that why Twilight said she wanted to sacrifice you instead of Anon? Equestria needs Anon more than it needs you? Isn't that what she said?"

Spike's mouth worked as if he was trying to come up with something to say, and rejecting everything that came to mind. I took advantage. "Does that really seem like Twilight to you? Would she really have chosen to sacrifice you? She's spent what, ten years raising you?"

"Thirteen. I'm thirteen." Spike swallowed. "I told you already. I'm useless and Anon isn't."

"Spike, I am hardly the expert on parenting, particularly not pony parenting. But no one, not pony, not griffon, not dragon, sacrifices their child, or their younger sibling who is still a child, for being useless. Would Applejack do that to Apple Bud?"

"Apple Bloom."

"Whatever. Would Rarity sacrifice Sugar Belle?"

"Sweetie Belle, and it's different," Spike said, swallowing again. "I'm not a pony. I have to prove I'm useful or—"

"Or what? They'll send you away? You're still here, so that strongly suggests that either they won't send you away for being useless, or you're not useless. Who's been telling you that, anyway?" 

"Everyone knows it."

"So what you're saying is Anon is telling you this."

"Everypony else agrees with him!"

"Typical." I leaned forward. "Anon and the others are in the Crystal Empire, right now, fighting the shade of the Dark King Sombra, and given Anon's history I'm sure that they'll send him packing. But I've seen the Crystal Empire battle already, in that film series Anon has also seen. The one where he wasn't there. And they beat Sombra without Anon. Would you like to know who did it?"

"I already know. It would have been Twilight. Twilight beat everyone, before Anon came, but the Changelings... and no one believed her, and then it was too late, so she needed Anon..."

"Except she didn't. Had he not been there, she would have found and rescued Cadance herself, without his help. And then Cadance would have come to the rescue and saved you all. But no, Twilight's not the one who saved the Crystal Empire, in the timeline we should be in, the one where Anon isn't here."

"Then Princess Cadance and Shining Armor?"

"Half right, my boy. Cadance was instrumental. But there was a key piece she couldn't accomplish herself, something she needed someone else to do before she could save anyone, and Shining Armor couldn't do it. Twilight couldn't do it. Only one individual was in the right place, at the right time, to save the Crystal Empire. Guess who that was?"

"Pinkie Pie."

He was so dense. "You!" I said, exasperated. "It was you! If Anon hadn't been here, you would be there, saving the Crystal Empire, right now! And they'd build a statue in your honor, and hold a party, and feed you all the gems you could eat, and you'd be known as a great hero, the one who helped their Princess defeat their enslaver!"

Spike looked at me flatly. "You're lying. There's no way I could do that."

"Well, there's no way anymore, now that Anon has gotten his hooks into you and convinced you that you're useless. You could have been a hero, and you still could be, if you'd just dragon up and recognize that these feelings of worthlessness you're feeling are a crock of horsefeathers."

"But if it's not because I'm useless then why don't any of them care about me anymore?" he wailed. "And why am I even talking to you about this? Go away, Discord! You're not going to turn me against my friends, so don't even try!"

"Are they really your friends if none of them care about you anymore?"

"I said go away! I'm not listening to you!"

"But the truth is, Spike... the truth is, they are your friends." I whispered in his ear as he huddled in a ball on the floor, paws over his ears, trying to block me out, except that it was child's play for me to make my voice heard over any level of distortion. "They love you. All except one. Only one of them despises you. Only one of them thinks you're useless. And none of them started to believe that, or to ignore you the way they've been doing, until he showed up."

"They always ignored me! They always just told me, watch the library, Spike! Feed the animals, Spike! Do the chores, Spike!"

"Oh, what a horrifying existence. Told to do chores by the mare who's paying for your room and board, and educating you! I despise chores myself, so I fully sympathize. I wouldn't stand for that! I'd be saying, 'Go do your own chores, you horrible witch!' And then I'd run off to join the circus. Which I wouldn't recommend, by the way, it's a lot less fun than it looks from the outside."

"I don't mind doing chores, I just... I wanted to... I thought Twilight might start to treat me like an equal. Like I'm growing up, instead of just being the same baby I look like year in and year out."

"If you ever in your existence find a parent of anyone, dragon, pony, or flowerpot, who treats their adolescent child as an adult, run away. It's obviously an eldritch abomination. Or worse. Most of the eldritch abominations I have over for tea and monkey shadows are surprisingly strict with their teenage spawn."

"It doesn't matter anyway. I'm not her equal. I never will be. Or Anon's."

"Yes, but the greater than and less than are in different places. Do you remember what they look like? Because I can never keep them straight in my head. Something about the alligator wants to eat more fish?"

"What are you talking about?" He stared at me.

"You'll never be Twilight's equal because she's a mother or older sister to you, and even when she's old and grey and you're a young strong dragon, you'll see her as more than you. And you'll never be Anon's equal because at the age of thirteen, you are so far his superior that there's no way he could possibly ever catch up." I stood up. "He stole your place, Spike. He made all your friends love him, but they have to love him more than they love anything else, and that meant your friends couldn't love you anymore. He took your place on this trip to the Crystal Empire, and he'll take your spot as the hero. He is a despicable creature, far worse than I am."

Spike shook his head. "That's complete nonsense. Anon is nice, and besides, he doesn't have any powers besides the Element of Protection, so how could he make my friends do or feel anything?"

"That's what he wants you to think." To be fair, it was probably what Anon himself thought, but I wasn't inclined to be fair.

"This is stupid. You're just saying things you think I want to hear to turn me against Anon. He's a hero, and you're not fit to wipe his boots!"

"Check the census records, Spike. Go to Canterlot, or Manehattan. Look at the birth records. Or look up the archives of marriage announcements from the newspapers. But don't do it in Ponyville."

"Why not in Ponyville?"

"Too small."

"What would I even be looking for?"

"You'll know it when you see it. And when you do, you'll know I'm telling the truth that Anon is not what he seems."

"How do I know you didn't just fake some evidence for whatever it is you want to convince me of?"

I sighed. "I can't manipulate the records in every single city in Equestria, Spike. I'm good, but I'm not that good. Go somewhere I didn't tell you to go, or somewhere I did tell you to go if you think I'm trying to fake you out."

And then I left.

I don't know if any of what I said will sink in. I don't know if Spike is so thoroughly brainwashed by Anon that he can't question the human's supposed heroic credentials, even if it means thinking the worst of himself. But unlike the Bearers, who at least are presumably getting decent sex out of Anon's manipulations (I doubt he's actually any good, but sex has so much to do with what participants feel about what's happening, they probably think it's marvelous), Spike is getting nothing but depression and a feeling of worthlessness out of the role Anon's assigned to him. And Twilight's trained the kid in how to do research. So I have some hope that maybe, just maybe, I can pry him loose from Anon. 

He's right that he's a kid, and not able to do all that much, not yet. But his position of closeness to Twilight, the fact that he lives in the same house as Anon, means that if there's any chance whatsoever that I can recruit him to my cause, I've got to try. He'll be the hardest of my targets to convince, because of his proximity to Anon, but for the same reason he'd be the best ally to have. (Well, the best that I could possibly convince; Tia and Luna would be fantastic, but that's not going to happen.)