“First things first.” Discord read over the scroll. “Gosh, my handwriting truly is terrible. I think that says ‘unleash the currents of wild magic,’ but it might be part of my shopping list.”
He paused for a moment, full of genuine terror. I hope I got the right piece of paper.
“Well, might as well do as it says.” Discord snapped his claws, sending a black-and-white pulse of unrestricted sorcery flooding through the room, out the windows, and into the forest.
“Hmm. That doesn’t make sense. Not one bit. That’s not even a word!” His eyes tried to decipher his scribbles and failed. His handwriting could drive mortals permanently insane.
“Oh, silly me! The darn thing’s upside down!” A claw daintily flipped the page around. “No, still not right.” He flipped it again. “There we go.”
“Next step: conjure a siphon, blah blah blah, magic, blah blah eldritch horror, thousand years of chaos, and so on.” His fingers snapped in rhythm, artifacts and arcane apparatuses appearing around him.
Soon, a brass-and-rubber behemoth came together in the center of the room, assembled from summoned parts according to the crayon blueprint Discord held. Faint sparks of monochrome magic flittered around it, only to be sucked into funnels and ricocheted off mirrors.
To the untrained eye, it was a collection of random pipes and nozzles arranged in no logical order. To Discord, it was a collection of random pipes and nozzles arranged in no logical order that was also capable of killing him.
Discord couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he was missing, something, something… yellow? Butter, maybe? Butter sounded almost right. Whatever. For now, he had more pressing problems, like stopping that abominable snoring.
“Twilight. Wakey, wakey, princess.” His claw flicked her in the cheek, once, twice, a third time. She was a heavy sleeper, especially when she had Discord’s magic to thank for it.
Another flick. “Euggh? What?” She batted Discord’s hand away. “What happened? And why is there… so much butter?” Her hoof made a sucking sound as she pulled it free of a mound of soft dairy.
“Don’t know. Thought it might be important.” Discord waited as Twilight stretched her jaw into a massive yawn. “You must have dozed off again. I made biscuits to celebrate.” He slid a baking sheet of golden-brown pastries under her nose. “Well, I conjured biscuits. Technically, the forces of chaos made them as I bent them to my will, but, you know, po-tay-to po-tah-to.”
Twilight frowned.
“What? They’re still edible, as long as you aren’t allergic to dark magic.”
“Discord…” Both hooves rubbed her face. Her eyes were red and puffy, and lack of sleep was not the only reason.
“Oh. Sorry.” Stupid, stupid Discord, don’t you know she’s lost… someone? “Right, no jokes. I built a thing.” Twilight raised an eyebrow as she ran her horn’s aura over the device.
“It looks like a… magic extractor? But what are we going to extract from?”
“Ah, yes, that’s the interesting bit, yes, well, you see…” His voice trailed off to barely a whisper. This is going to hurt, isn’t it? He could have sworn a wing brushed his back. The soft feathers felt like a warm hug. But it’s worth it.
“Oh? Yes, yes, it drains the magic from those artifacts we gathered. Yes, that’s totally what it does.” Blood rushed to his ears as he lied, but his fur hid the evidence. Why was he lying to her?
“I see.” Twilight prodded the strange machine, trying to decode its inner workings. She failed. “Let me get this straight. We put power in, and we get my friends back?”
“That’s the idea, yes. Channel the energy from the extractor into that fancy resurrection spell you made, and I think Clover’s Law of Whatsit Conversation won’t give us any trouble.”
“Life-force Conservation,” she automatically corrected. “There’s really enough energy in those artifacts? I did the calculations, and that’s not even a tenth of a percent…”
“I’ll make it work. For now, I’m afraid I need your help with something rather challenging.” Discord’s face twisted into a grimace. “Math.”
“I took a stab at it, but I’m afraid algebra makes my eyes spin.”
“Mmhmm.” Twilight’s pencil jittered as she held it in her mouth. Three other quills circled her head, gripped in her lilac magic. “It looks like a destiny-alteration calculation, though the crayon does make it rather hard to read. Where did you say you found this?”
Discord shrugged his dissimilar shoulders. Draconequi had to keep some secrets. “It’s needed for the extractor to function, I know that much, but… you know me and numbers. Can’t tell a four from a nine.”
“I see.” The quills brushed their tips over three sheets of parchment, each one transcribing part of the equation. How Twilight could split her focus like that, Discord would never understand.
“Well, you certainly made a few errors. A lot of errors, actually. If we used these values in the spell, the world would end.” She kept scanning the paper, shuffling pages and color-coding her inks. “Discord, pass me that abacus.” Her eyes lit up as she slid the beads around, and Discord imagined this was what she looked like back in Celestia’s school. Just a filly, playing with numbers.
Discord sighed. He’d never been good with math; too many symbols, too many fiddly bits. Too much order. Chaos theory was all he really understood. But sometimes, a bit of calculus could make a world of difference.
“Discord, I need a logarithm table.” More frantic quill scratches. “Discord, can you conjure a compass and straightedge? I’ll need to draw some blueprints.” Swish, scribble, scratch. “Discord, I’m out of ink.”
He had never seen her so happy. It was true; she wasn’t strong enough. But she was smart enough.
“She really is a genius, isn’t she?” He saw the pegasus smile as he said it, flecks of blood dappling her yellow coat. “You sure know how to pick your friends…”
Twilight’s voice stopped his ramblings. “Discord? Who are you whispering to?”
Discord pointed a claw at the pegasus. “I was just talking to…” What pegasus? “Myself, I guess.”
Twilight fell back into her work, too busy to notice the flicker of confusion on Discord’s face.
He watched as drips of magic squeezed from the leaky pipes. “Almost done, Princess Smarty Pants?” He was always an impatient draconequus, even when waiting meant prolonging his life.
“Hmm? What does my doll have to do with this?” She looked up. “Oh, that was an insult.” A few more quill scratches. “I’ve had to invent two new kinds of geometry already. This could take some time.” A quill broke, was tossed aside, replaced. “Now that I’ve been working on it, it seems like it might be a variant of the spell I cast to mix up my friend’s cutie marks. The spell that made me a princess.”
She stopped writing. “I wish I never cast it.” Twilight sighed. “Then I could be wherever they are, instead of here, working on another equation.”
A deep breath. “But that’s set in stone, now.”
She was crying again. That would not do.
“Hey, I was set in stone for a thousand years, quite literally, I might add.” A conjured handkerchief scrubbed a tear from her face. “Look how I turned out.”
She grabbed the handkerchief and blew her snout, small sparks of magic flaring from her horn as she did so. Even princesses have drippy noses.
“You really think this is possible?”
“Twilight, I’ve done more impossible things than I can count.”
She forced a smile. “You’re right. Let’s get… let’s get back to work.”
“Discord, it’s not enough.” Another quill snapped in her aura. “I’ve gone over the math a dozen times, and the numbers don’t add up. We need more energy.”
She heard the crinkle of paper as Discord tossed his comic book aside. “All that work, and you still haven’t found a solution?”
“There is no solution, not unless you’ve got a bottomless magic battery on you.” Discord scratched his chest with an anxious claw. He didn’t, but he had the next best thing.
Twilight’s hooves rubbed her eyes again, as if maybe that would clear her vision and she’d miraculously see the answer.
“How much do we need?” asked Discord. She tossed a piece of scratch paper to him. He saw a seven, but his eyes glazed over once he got to the twentieth zero after it. Exactly as he predicted; not enough energy in all Equestria. “That bad, huh? You thought about using the stellar surge?” It won’t be enough, but it’ll give you a little hope.
Twilight opened the window blinds with her magic. She could see the constellations, looking almost as they did when Nightmare Moon returned, gearing up to splash a millennium's worth of magic energy on Equestria.. Every thousand years, the clockwork of the sky lined up perfectly… “That’s still not for another twenty-three years. Even then, I doubt it would be anywhere near enough energy to…”
She felt a slight shift as Discord snapped his fingers. “What did you do?”
“Fast-forwarded twenty-three years. What’s next?”
Twilight’s eyes grew as white as dinner plates. “You did what?”
“I told you, I…”
“We need to start now!” Another glance out the window told her what she needed to know. “The stars are right… Quick, throw these in the centrifuge!” She threw a trio of phials at him.
“What centrifuge!”
“Use the unicycle! It spins!”
Discord shouted over his shoulder as he slotted the phials into place. “I told you this would come in handy!”
“Gloat later!” Lilac lightning arced across the cottage, flinging wires into place. There was no time to worry about the impossibility of this task. And that was just the way Discord wanted it.
Discord dropped the artifacts around the extractor. They didn’t really matter, but at least they’d keep up appearances. He was getting very tired.
Twilight stole another glance at the sky. “Not much time if we want to harness the surge! Discord, get to safety, I’m going to flip the switch!”
You don’t have to do this. You can—Discord couldn’t shake the feeling that there was another pony in the room. I must do this.
Lilac magic merged with black-and-white. The extractor spun to life, slowly, but speeding up. The world looked like a melting wax sculpture as light began to bend inwards, towards the oblivion of the machine’s heart.
“Twilight, get behind me!” Discord had to shout over the maelstrom that formed. Tidal bores spiraled around the center, ripping spells into the extractor.
Discord heard Twilight yell out behind him. “The stars!” Bolts of white light surged down through the windows, terminating like everything else in the pulsing core of the extractor.
It didn’t stop.
Discord couldn’t hear her voice now, only feel the vibrations of her sobs as Twilight clung to him. He planted his feet against the storm and began to step forward.
It was time to die.
The winds whipped harder, sending shards of glass digging into his fur. His feet stumbled, lost their grip…
A yellow pegasus, with black thorns piercing her eyes. She was injured—he had injured her. He had to save her. His feet found purchase on the slippery ground.
But a lavender hoof held him back. Twilight knew what he was doing. There was only one thing left with enough energy to feed the machine.
“You know it has to be this way!” he howled.
She shook her head, winds stealing the tears from her eyes. Gales tangled her mane as she tried to shout over the storm.
“If you die, there’ll be no one to remember with me!”
“If I do this, you won’t have to remember.” Discord forced his way forward, shrugging off her hoof. He was going away. And his friends were coming back.
The machine was close now. He knew what he had to do.
Discord plunged his claws into his chest, ripping his scales open. Drops of blood flecked out like electric raindrops, sparking with magic. Still he sank his fingers into his flesh, pulling, ripping, tearing himself apart, exposing every shred of magic in his body.
Half-blinded by the storm, Twilight saw him make the last incision, splitting his rib cage and revealing his pure black heart, impossibly radiant with power. Then even the storm fell silent as the heart beat, stronger than it ever had before, releasing all its energy at once in a soundless spectacle of light and madness.
Twilight screamed, wordless. She screamed with a voice she used whenever she lost a friend.
Her legs compressed like springs, her muscles strained and popped as they passed their limits. Her body shot across the room, shot towards Discord.
Lavender wings stretched out over his open wounds, blood staining them black and red. It’s not too late, it’s not too late—
He grunted as he tried to throw her off his back, draconequus biology keeping him barely alive. “I need to save your friends!”
“You’re my friend!”
A dim flicker of rainbow magic sparked around them, only to be ripped into the machine’s maze of pipes.
Hooks of hard light dug into her wings, prying joints from their sockets. Still she held on, her nerves screaming as she struggled to save her last friend.
Her last friend didn’t want to be saved. He bucked like a bull, tossing her away.
Twilight shrieked as she fell through the air, the machine’s tendrils latched to her wings. She could feel them eroding her alicorn magic, annihilating her.
Two streams of fire fed the machine, one from Discord, the other from the princess. Two screams split the night.
Discord had thrown himself into the storm first, and he took the lion’s share of the pain. Black fire rocketed through his veins, exhausting every scrap of sorcery it could find and pouring it all into the machine. The cottage crumbled around him as wood and tile disintegrated.
Twilight watched as his body turned to ash, whipped in a thousand directions by the whirlwind of magic.
The stars slowly shifted out of alignment, and the storm spun to a stop.
“No!”
At first Twilight screamed at Discord, then at nature, then at herself. She could scarcely feel the holes in her back where her wings used to be. She was still alive, still far, far away from her friends.
“Another one… gone.” She collapsed, muscles releasing their tension.
Slowly, softly, in the ruins of another impossible experiment, Twilight Sparkle began to cry.
“Um, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not really sure if this is something I should be intruding on or maybe it’s a private moment, but…”
Twilight’s eyes wrenched open faster than the speed of light. I remember. That’s what it sounded like.
The unicorn pushed herself off the floor, and though every muscle in her body howled in pain, she leapt into Fluttershy’s waiting embrace.
Through eyes blurred by tears, she saw columns of light and freshly-formed bodies, still gleaming with magic.
“I reckon what Fluttershy meant to say is, are you alright, sugarcube?”
Applejack.
A monogrammed handkerchief—Twilight didn’t know how Rarity already had a monogrammed handkerchief, but she did—brushed away her tears, a cornflower blue aura holding it in a soft grip.
“You’re here? You’re all really here?”
“Well, of course we’re here, dummy! Where else would we be but with our bestest friend forever?” Twilight cried again as Pinkie tackled her in a bone-crushing hug. Somehow, Pinkie didn’t mind the blood soaking into her fur.
“Pinkie… my ribs…”
“Oh, sorry.” The pressure lessened. “Hey, what happened to the wings?” Pinkie nuzzled her cheek. “Don’t get me wrong, it means I can hug you even closer now!”
“Darling, let’s give her a little distance. I… don’t exactly know what happened, but it looks like it was very stressful for our dear Twilight. Perhaps some space is needed…”
“No!” The girls’ eyes widened at her shout. “No, I mean… don’t. I don’t want space, or distance. I never want to be far from you again!” Her forelegs tightened around the girls, one hoof reaching out to pull Applejack into their embrace.
“Hey, you know I’m not one for mushy stuff like this, but…” Twilight heard Rainbow’s voice coming from up above her. “I guess I can make an exception.” She glided down, her snout gently scrunching against Twilight’s head.
“Uh, shouldn’t there be a certain ridiculously-loyal dragon around here, too?”
Twilight pushed out of the group hug. “Spike! Oh my stars, Spike! Where are you!”
“I’m okay!” The girls heard a shuffling in the undergrowth as Spike, no larger than he was on his first day in Ponyville, popped out of a bush. “And I’m… small.” He cast a disdainful glance about his body, substantially less musclebound than he was used to.
“Oh, no, I think you’re just the right size.” Fluttershy flapped her wings over to him and scooped Spike up in her feathers for a hug, rocking him back and forth. Spike closed his eyes in happiness.
Twilight collapsed again when she saw her baby dragon alive. Applejack had to hold her up. “Spike, you’re alright!”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I’m not really sure what happened.” A bit reluctantly, Fluttershy set him down on solid ground. “Why wouldn’t I be alright?”
Explanations later. Hugs now.
Twilight drove herself into him, surrounding him in a vise grip of fur and snuggles. When it came to cuddling Spike, she could give even Pinkie’s breathtaking hugs a run for their money.
“Come on, Twi, even dragons need air!” He was only joking, but Twilight loosened her grip immediately. She could never hurt him again.
Spike levered himself to his feet with his tail. “Aw, you’re crying again.”
“Tears of joy, Spike. Tears of joy,” she answered. Rarity stepped forward, at the ready with her handkerchief.
The ancient dragon in a young body looked over the ruins of the cottage and the still-steaming crater where the extractor used to be, but his eyes quickly fixed on his friends. “I missed you, girls.”
“And I missed my Spikey-wikey!” The raspy voice came from above. Spike looked up to see Rainbow Dash doing her best impression of Rarity.
“Rainbow, stop teasing the poor dear!” Gently, Rarity brushed a pastern over Spike’s spines. “But I did miss you, darling.”
For a moment, everything was right with the world. Then Rainbow started talking again.
“Hey, why’s there a grave here that says Fluttershy?”
She couldn’t hide it anymore. Twilight’s eyes dimmed, her eyelids drooped, and her gait slowed. “Girls, Spike, there’s something you should know.” The six others gathered close. “You’re dead. Well, were dead. I don’t know if you remember it, I’m certain the spell interfered with your memories, but… Fluttershy is buried there. Was buried. But we brought her back, brought you all back. We meaning Discord and I. We used some kind of magic—probably draconequi?—to bring you back, though I don’t really understand how it works…” Her words came tumbling over each other as she tried to explain herself.
“Woah, there. Slow down, Twi. We’ve got time.” Applejack, always the reasonable one.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know what to do. It’s not in any books—I read them all!” Twilight’s legs spread as she slid to the forest floor, tall grass brushing against the dried blood on her wing wounds. “I don’t know if it was right to force you back here, or what this means for your souls, or anything, I just did it! I needed you! I was selfish but I needed you and I still need you and please don’t hate me!”
Spike stroked his small hand over her foreleg, just like he did when they were kids. Applejack came closer, extending one of her one farm-toughened hooves.
“There, now. I still don’t understand what it was you did, but if it’s tearing you up like this, I reckon it’s something you needed to do.”
Twilight coughed and sniffled as she nodded her head. “Thank you,” she managed to choke out.
“I’m… dead?” Fluttershy crooked her foreleg and brought a hoof to her heart, her usual response to a baffling situation.
Twilight nodded her head, then reconsidered and shook it. “It’s a long story. I promise, I’ll explain later.”
“So, what’s up with the trees? I’m not an egghead botanologician, but I’m pretty sure that’s not natural.”
“Botanist, Rainbow. And it’s not. Discord grew them, to keep… to keep Fluttershy’s grave safe. And her cottage, though I guess that part didn’t succeed.” She nudged a bit of burning hut with her hoof.
At the mention of Discord, Fluttershy perked up. “Oh, he’s such a sweetheart! I’ll have to thank him later.”
“We all need to thank him, but I’m afraid it’s too late for that. He poured everything into that spell, more magic than I’d ever seen before.”
“What do you mean?” Fluttershy squeaked, afraid of what she was going to hear.
“He gave himself up. He’s a creature of magic, and his magic just burned away.” Twilight had lost track of how many times she had collapsed, but she did it again anyway. “Discord’s gone,” she finally whispered, tears dribbling disgracefully down her snout.
This time, Twilight dragged Fluttershy into a hug. “He was a hero, Flutters. He was a hero.” For a moment, they stayed there, motionless, each pony’s fur soaking up the other’s tears.
Spike broke the silence. “So Discord made this place with his magic?”
“Yes, Spike. It was a memorial for Fluttershy, the best anyone could ever have.”
“And all Discord’s magic is gone now?”
“Yes, though I don’t know what… you… oh, no.” She ended her embrace with Fluttershy. “We need to—”
The cracking of trees finished her sentence for her. A million tons of lumber, held in place by chaotic magic, realized that there was no magic holding it anymore.
Twilight’s horn sputtered and flared as she tried to teleport them away. No good! She was lucky to still have a horn, let alone be able to cast a powerful spell so soon after her extractor ordeal.
Quakes split the earth as roots came free and branches tumbled down, separating the girls with impenetrable armored bark. Acting on instinct, Rarity hurled herself between Spike and the falling razor-sharp leaves, her body arched over him like a shield. Her magic, meant for needles and thread, struggled to deflect the wooden flechette.
She might die again, but she’d do her best to save her friend. “Spike, I…” A cracking log smashed her on the withers and knocked away her words. Surely this is the end, surely…
A boom, a crash, a rain of splinters.
Rarity kept her eyes closed.
“I never did a rainboom like that before.”
She opened them. Lingering rings of technicolor light pushed the trees away, clearing a safe space in the wreckage.
“Rainbow! You did it! You saved me! You saved Spike!” She finally pulled him into a hug, the first one she’d given him in five thousand years.
“Umm, Rarity? There’s something I need to tell you…” His voice was half-muffled by her chest fluff.
Her ears perked. “Yes? What is it, darling?”
“Your, um, your hoof’s on my tail, and it kinda hurts.”
She looked dazed for a moment, then quickly whipped her leg up. “Oh, of course. Yes. Hoof, tail, I see. Sorry, dear.”
More mulched wood pitter-pattered around the girls. Now that the big logs were gone, it felt almost like snowfall.
They stood there, together in the forest, a wingless princess and her closest friends. Until they heard another tree begin to fall.
“I think that’s our cue to leave, girls.” Like a mother wolf, Twilight grabbed Spike’s scruff in her mouth and flipped him over onto her back. He quickly nestled on her withers, his nose breathing in her mane’s scent. Somehow, she still smelled like musty old books. Like home.
“So, do you want to tell her, or should I?” Spike heard her and traced her line of sight to Rarity.
“You know what? I think we should let her figure it out for herself.”
So Spike and Twilight cantered out of the Everfree, little dragon on his big sister’s back, both giggling as they stared at the ugly mass of snot-colored tree sap that had ruined Rarity’s coiffured mane.