//------------------------------// // 6 - The Buried Beast // Story: Window Shopping // by Parallel Black //------------------------------// The sun had just passed its apex in the sky, and the heat was still emanating down upon the island. Most of Applejack’s purchases had been stashed away in the trunk of Doración’s car, and the two of them were now taking some time to relax after their strange start to the day. Applejack passed one of the crystal apples from hoof to hoof. She’d been unable to resist temptation and tested one of them. Sure enough, her teeth couldn’t make a scratch on it. She and Doración, whom she had taken to calling “Dora”, were sat in one of the park areas found throughout Pezulma. Both were in the shade, and looking a lot more comfortable for all the strangeness they had been through that morning. Dora was laid out on the grass, enjoying the sun, while Applejack rested against the trunk of an old, crystal-encrusted oak tree. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” Dora began all of a sudden. She sat up to look at Applejack. “when did you learn Cabérican? You speak it better than any foreigner I’ve ever met.” Applejack paused, as if unsure what to say. “Cabérican?” Dora nodded. Applejack raised an eyebrow. “... When did you learn to speak perfect Equestrian?” “Eh?” Dora frowned in confusion. “I don’t know any Equestrian…” Slowly, a smile spread over Applejack’s face. She looked up to the canopy of the oak tree and pointed Dora’s gaze to the large form of a draconequus sleeping above them. “Well… I might just have one convenience to thank Discord for after all. All I can hear comin’ out of your mouth is pure and seamless Equestrian. Is it the same from me?” For a moment, Dora looked taken off-guard at the sight of Discord. The only two previous times she’d seen him he had taken on a much more imposing demeanour, but now he was curled up just above them, if like a giant, sleeping dragon that was better left undisturbed. She looked back to Applejack with a curious smile. “Yes, you’ve only been speaking Cabérican. At least for me. Is this something he can do?” she asked, glancing at the draconequus. “Just… make ponies understand one another?” Applejack shrugged. “I guess so. Weird thing for the ‘Lord of All Chaos’ to do, huh?” A deep, guttural yawn from above them set their hackles on end. Discord stretched his arms and legs. “Did someone say my name?” he asked, bending his neck over backwards to take a look at them both. He was still wearing his magician’s top hat, glued to his head against gravity. Applejack’s smile took on a hint of awkwardness, brought on by having to speak to someone she didn’t have a good relationship with. “We were just talkin’ about… whatever you did, så vi kunne forstå... hinan…den...” Applejack trailed off as her words switched to perfect Maven. Discord smiled in return, a rather smug one. “Well of course, I can hardly just leave you to try and learn an entire language, can I? This was purely for the sake of convenience, really.” “Skift mig tilbage, tak,” Applejack deadpanned. Dora watched, finding herself mildly fascinated, as the exchange took place. While Applejack was speaking one language, it sounded as though Discord was speaking an entirely different one. One that wasn’t possible to mimic with a pony mouth that nipped at the insides of her ears. Soon though, they both switched back to normal with a click of the draconequus’ furred fingers. Applejack shifted the crystal apple over to Discord. “Now that that’s over I can show you what we got at the market. I’ve no idea how to make it grow, but I think it still counts as fruit.” Discord picked it up and whatever brief sign of interest he had quickly dropped from his face. “An apple?” he asked in a rather disappointed monotone. “Yeah? What’s wrong with an apple?” Discord rolled his eyes as he allowed the rest of his body to flop down onto the grass. “Nothing at all, Applejack! Of course you chose an apple, why would you pick anything else? It’s not as if the entire point of this journey is to bring back things that aren’t apples!” Amidst his sarcastic jeering he almost sounded exasperated. “Hey, it was a good deal, and I wasn’t tellin’ that guy what not to to give me!” Applejack retorted. The panic vanished from his tone. “Oh yes, how did you pay for it, anyway? I don’t suppose the seller was at all the suspicious type, considering Dora has the same amount of money as before?” Applejack and Dora paused. “He was a little bit… strange,” the nurse admitted. “I just used one of my scrunchies…” Applejack added. For a moment, Discord looked like he was going to take against that, but instead he just sighed and rubbed an eye. “One thing you should learn is, when dealing with item-for-item trading, to never give away things that are personal to you, Applejack.” Their questioning gazes were directed to his paw, above which he rematerialized the container of Dark Magic. “Not to worry either of you or anything, buuut… you may be in mortal peril.” That took them off guard. “... I’m sorry, what?” asked Applejack, looking understandably concerned. Dora, unused to these kinds of situations as she was, felt more inclined to doubt him. “How? Why would we be in danger?” Discord tossed the container onto the grass before them. “Because, and I can’t be absolutely sure just yet, the pony Applejack sold her scrunchie to may or may not have been a real pony at all. Or griffon, dog, minotaur, whatever. The point is, in all likelihood that thing was nothing more than a vessel for this ugly stuff; Dark Magic.” A thought occurred to him and he looked to the crystal apple he still held in his other hand. “In fact…” With a grip that must have been powerful enough to twist metal, Discord crushed the apple in his bare talons. From out of the various shards a tiny sprite of dark-purple coalesced, before the apple returned to its previous unblemished state. Without missing a beat he tossed the apple back to Applejack, before floating behind her and placing a hand atop her head to hold her in position. “H-hey now hold on, what’re you-” “Relax, Applejack; this won’t hurt.” Discord waved a hand across her front and Applejack winced as she felt portions of her surface layers - her skin, fur and teeth - being put through the same process as the apple. Out of their temporarily shattered remains came yet tinier spots of darkness that congregated into the whole. The cap of the container opened and in they went. Applejack shook herself and spluttered in disgust as Discord released her. Doración meanwhile found herself backing away as she watched. She had seen patients with nasty wounds plenty of times, but this was the suggestion of something completely different. There was no sign of blood or exposed nerve endings coming into contact with the air, the pieces simply “broke off” the larger shape that was Applejack, like shards of a broken window. If Discord wanted to, he could smash them both into tiny pieces and leave them that way, and they wouldn’t feel a thing. The draconequus turned its attention to her, but didn’t act. He grabbed the capsule and vanished it back to his pocket dimension, and his normal expression of calm smugness slowly returned. He rubbed his temples and looked again to Dora. “I’m sorry if I come across a tad threatening at times. Dealing with Dark Magic always tends to put me on edge,” he apologised. “I may be a god of chaos, but the particular brand of chaos Dark Magic leads to is never a good one. But aside from all that, how about we get acquainted once again, now that we’re in less of an abrupt situation?” Dora looked between him and the outstretched hand… and smiled. It was a small, cautious smile, but a polite one all the same. She could see he was only protecting them both. She placed her hoof in his paw and they shook, only to squeal as her entire forelimb broke into countless shards, a solid stream of darkness erupting from the stub of her shoulder joint. “Fwooogh! Seventy-two shades of black?!” Discord exclaimed as he lurched away. “What kind of patients have you been treating?” As Applejack tried to calm the panicking nurse back down, the Dark Magic that had come from her body swirled toward Discord. There was enough of it to create a perfect ring of energy around him, fluctuating and shrinking, as if in some kind of attempt at intimidation. Discord simply grabbed the stream directly and instantly transmuted it into a more solid, bouncy form. He couldn’t help but smirk at having turned such a vile substance into something that could be mistaken for a giant rubber band. With that in mind, he pulled it from one end and shot it through a portal to his pocket dimension. With that problem out of the way, the implications reared their ugly, multi-mouthed faces. There was obviously no way the Dark Magic had originated from Doración herself. Not on such a large scale, at least. Discord frowned to himself. How long has this been happening? How many of her patients have been infected and where are they now? Were they all actually patients, or were some of them mindless thralls? Why has this not been dealt with already? He knew that, whatever the case may be, he needed to act now and no later. Discord turned back to the two mares. Dora’s limb had pieced itself back together and its owner was feeling it with her other hoof to make sure that all was as it should be. Applejack sent him an unimpressed look, and Discord shrugged. “What? She would have exploded otherwise. You should be thanking me.” “Would you mind at least warnin’ us next time?” Applejack asked, one eyebrow raised. “I’m pretty sure you scared her half to death just now.” Discord twiddled his thumbs, unsure on what to say. “I should probably go now anyway. Lots more chaos to spread and such!” With that, he blinked out of the park and away, leaving the two of them to glare at the spot he’d just been standing in. “I really don’t like him…” Dora commented, a fearful wavering in her words. “I know. He’s not too bad… once you get used to him, at least,” Applejack replied. “Uhuh.” Dora looked back to her foreleg again. It looked and felt just as it always had, with not a trace of the unpredictable powers of chaos running through it. The image of a sown up wound came to mind and she grimaced as an odd feeling passed over her. Discord could do what no one else could, with apparently no effort. He could break apart and piece together to the greatest extent, and even handle dangerous magics with his bare hands. What she felt, if only for a few brief, nasty moments, was irrelevance. Discord could do the work of thousands of doctors and surgeons. “How did you even meet him?” Dora asked suddenly. Applejack looked surprised at the question, but then saw the look on the nurse’s face. She thought back to when Discord had first been released from his statue, and overtook Ponyville with his powers. That wasn’t exactly a good example of the two of them bonding. Then, she thought to the second time he’d appeared, just over three months ago. Fluttershy trusted him from the beginning, and everyone else had grown used to his presence over time. Applejack herself, however, had never been able to settle her suspicion. Unlike the others she couldn’t just “accept” his nature like she could with Pinkie Pie. She’d always gotten a sour feeling in her stomach whenever she looked at him. “A few months back,” Applejack chose. “At first he was just the same old chaos-this and chaos-that, but… well, hard as it may be to believe, he’s mellowed out a fair bit since then. I’m not callin’ him a friend, cus’ I still don’t trust the guy as far as I can throw him, but things could be a lot worse…” Dora frowned, still focused on her foreleg. She didn’t seem satisfied. “Yeah, but… how?” She looked back to Applejack. “Why are you friends with him, or he friends with you? What makes you so special that he feels the need to spend time around you?” Again, Applejack spent a moment in thought. Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that she was the one who didn’t trust him, or the easiest to annoy with his shenanigans. A source of amusement. But if that were the case, he wouldn’t have bothered taking her on this trip in the first place, would he? The thought of everything she’d seen so far being nothing more than the setup for some cruel joke entered her mind, but she quickly cast off the thought. Discord didn’t have the patience for that kind of thing. Perhaps it was the fact that she didn’t trust him. Perhaps he wanted to try and fix that by putting them both through strange situations, only to pull through in the end? Again, making up a story about Dark Magic seemed too methodical for him, and searching around for new examples of produce seemed like a fairly weak excuse to travel halfway around the world. “I have no idea,” Applejack replied honestly. “Out of me and my friends, I’m actually the one who doesn’t trust him. I’ve never really… felt right around him, you know? Like he’s some kind of wild animal that could suddenly turn around at any minute and claw someone’s face off. If it were up to me, I’d have him sealed back in stone again, but that would probably just be a straight-up selfish thing to do.” Doración still didn’t seem settled, but she accepted the answer nonetheless. “I get what you mean. He can do anything he wants. We’re only here right now because he wanted us to be. If he wanted to he could just leave you here and carry me away to another part of the world, just as far from home as you are now…” The conversation about kidnapping via teleportation came to Applejack’s mind again, reminding her of just how true Dora’s fears could be. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m here. I… shoulda probably mentioned this little fact a while ago, but… me and my friends are the ones who sealed Discord back into his statue in the first place. It was just later he was released and ‘reformed’.” Confusion crossed the other mare’s face. “How…?” Applejack began to look embarrassed. “The Elements o’ Harmony. You heard of them?”