The Twilight of the Crystal Heart

by WanderingPony

Chapter 11: A Discordant Interlude

The early pre-dawn morning hours of Ponyville are for very few ponies, though you probably think fondly of a few of them. Farm ponies, who tend to get to bed early and wake up early like the Apples or Carrots. Bakers, certainly. Pinkie Pie was raised on a farm, and it made that schedule of early-whirly-breakfast-swirly cooking natural, especially with Mr. Cake's fondness for a big ol' coffee brew (extra sugar, light on the bean juice and a hint of milk or baby formula, depending on how awake Mrs. Cake was and how awake the kids had been. The taste of the latter sorta grew on you.).

One that was NOT would be Discord. The combination of this with a certain morning pony would be a moment of destiny.

---

"You're sure this place is where the Princesses wanted us to go, kupo?", a nervous voice chirped. The flutter of batlike wings marked the speaker's position a few feet above the ground.

"Of course. The Princesses said to make you at home, this is my home, and mi casa es su casa, as the ponies say."

The bunny on the ground had something to say about all that, but Discord wasn't translating for Squeaky Mister Kill-Joy anyway.

"Now, where DID I put those keys..."

From mostly nowhere, six sparkling, magical keys appeared, neatly looped on a circle of wire. "No, wrong episode." *poof*

A lion-headed key appeared. "Not very useful." *poof* A second key, hawk-headed. "Wrong fantasy." *poof* A claw snap later, and a single black wing sprouted from Angel's back, sending him half-hopping and half-flapping through the air. "Wrong fantasy and wrong angel." *poof*

The furry meteor plummeted out of the air, de-winged and made a one-point landing on the doormat with his nose.

"Aha!", Angel's tormentor cries and pulls a slightly tarnished key out from under the stunned bun. "Under the mat. Thank you so much for pointing that out, Angel."

---

"Now, we'll just have you two over here and you two over there. No, don't worry. A little twisting of space-time and it'll be larger on the inside."

"OI! WOT are you doin' with Miss Fluttershy's cottage and lettin' all these monsters in here!"

A white object THWACKED the mismatched monstrosity, interrupting Discord's attempt at housewarming via dimensional manglement.

---

The defender of Fluttershy's property rights waved another newspaper with furious intent in it's teeth. A satchel full of more ammunition strapped across his back, Pip growled as menacingly as a small pinto colt can be assumed to manage and hammered the rolled up copy of the morning special repeatedly across a scaly foot.

"Oww-ooh! You are a feisty little fellow..."

...the colt vanished in a puff of smoke and found himself much smaller. And dog-like.

"...shall we see who's REALLY the bad dog here?", the suddenly enlarged (well, from Pip's point of view) and irritated chaos beast inquired. He smacked the discarded media missile against his paw.

Pip-puppy barked up a storm.

"Bother. I don't speak Yappanese." *snap*

"-and I challenge you to a duel, you jigsaw puzzle of perfidious-ness!"

"What's this? A duel? With such a dangerous pony? What will it be? What -deadly- weapons shall we contest with, which trials of our vigor? Knives? Swords? Children's card games?"

A fan of the offending objects switched with each twist of the clawed wrist, until he tossed the cards up into the ceiling, where they stuck like a royal flush of razors.

"Now, little Pip...you have come into my home, stained me with cheap ink, slandered my good name." Red pupils lit in yellowed eyes, drawing two little dots at Pipsqueak's feet. "I do believe I feel like a fight. If I win...you're going to be the newest pet for my darling little Fluttershy. I do hope you like kibble, because you're going to be eating it. For MONTHS!", the last word roared from the fanged maw.

"Choose. Your. Weapon."

The door shut behind Pipsqueak with the sound of finality. The dimness was lit only with the red, baleful glowing glare of Discord, reflecting off of two pairs of goblin eyes. A shivering pom-pom behind the sofa marked the hiding place of the other pair,

"C-c-c-c...", stammered Pip as he held up his hoof to point.

"Yeeeeeesssss?", hissed his opponent in anticipation...

"C...CANDY BOG!", the papercolt finally spat from beneath his teeth, pointing at a box on Fluttershy's table. Adorable (tooth-rottingly so) art work of colts and fillies dancing through a chocolate swamp towards a sparkling peppermint candy castle in the distance decorated the box.

The red glare shut off as the lamps came on. Discord gave a brief sigh.

"It's all I can get Fluttershy to play with me, too. Very well, then."

*snap*

The startled challenger found himself parked on a cushion before the board.

*snap*

With Discord sitting on the other side,

*snap*

And two startled goblins-

*snap*

-plus two moogles for a bit of balance on the other end.

"Of course, it takes four to play, Pip. So here's the deal. We play till I win, or you lose...because I am THE house undefeated champion at Candy Bog. When you lose, you're in the doghouse until I feel like telling Fluttershy what her new spotted hound really is. And if you even try to give it away, I'm making you into a goldfish."

"I'd never lose to a scoundrelous house-crasher like you-self, mister Discord!"

"That's about as true as you being a pirate last Nightmare Night, paper-swasher." A neatly folded nautical hat (of the morning edition, of course) popped onto Pip's head.

The quartet not involved in the repartee looked back and forth in utter confusion.

"Oh, don't you worry. The rules are quite simple, a small, demented child could learn them." *snap*

The game-piece sized Discord danced along the twisting trail to the Peppermint Princess Castle.

"You roll the dice and skip your merry little pony along the board until you arrive at the darling peppermint castle to win.. If you land on one of the taffy squares, you're stuck until you roll doubles to get out. But if you roll doubles three times in a row...well, into the chocolate swamp you go for galloping too fast." Discord pointed at the brown spot at the start.

The offending spot at the beginning of the board gave off a bubbly BLORP and a fudge-scented fountain of swamp gas for good measure.

"And then you're back to the start for being a foolish foal who ran into a muddy, messy end. I keep trying to convince Fluttershy they just sink in and never are heard from again, but she just won't change the rules to make them better. Tsk. Now roll to see who goes first."

Macguffnox dug into a pouch. "Dice? Ain't nothin' better."

The bronze, 100-sided die klonked to the table after a quick roll across the board, nearly squashing the diminutive player before coming to rest on...

"Hey! That's cheating!"

"House dice only? Lil' gobbet's ain't demented at all, Discord." The goblin picked up the die and rattled it a bit. "How'd you know I pulled out the fooler, kid?"

Pipsqueak blinked. "I...I just knew it was the bunk, um..."

"Macguffnox. The loverly lady's Macgyvix. And the two milksop flappers over dere are Kupollux and Kupofrieda. So, ya gonna roll dem ivories?"

---

Six games and hours later....

One pony, one mismatched melange of monster parts, and two moogles looked on in despair as the little green pony made it's way to the Peppermint Princess Castle. Again. Dawn had bled into morning, and morning nearly to lunch-time, though Discord had been good enough to make tea. It had tasted a bit funny with chocolate milk, but foals can't be beggars.

The two masked goblins gave each other a victory high-five.

"Nobody can do that. This time you didn't even hit one dashed taffy puddle. Not ONE!", Pipsqueak moaned.

"And not a drop of magic. Not that I'd imagine anyone would try casting anything on those dice...that would be cheating!", Discord paused to polish at a mote of dust that had dared land on his shining golden halo.

"Nobody would be so low as to cheat at a children's board game."

"Don't you know the old saying, kupo? Roll with a goblin, get blown away."

"Ain't my fault you don't practice your dice like a real gobbie....heh, heh, heh. This keeps up, maybe we can play for keeps...got any of them bits on ya, Discord?"

"You are a horrid, horrid killjoy to our epic duel, goblin."

"Well, since yer comin in last, Pipsquawker- youse gets to roll first this time. Make it count! *hssk* "

Taking the white and brown cubes in his mouth, Pipsqueak tossed the implements of fate across the board. Double twos, and the little red pony missed a puddle by one space. A hard eight put him a comfortable twelve spaces down the line, unmolested by candy.

The Moogles managed a completely average seven on their roll.

Discord rolled...a three. Straight into the very first puddle. "Aw, sh-"

..."-ortcake! Short. Cake."

"Shortcake Stream is on the other side of the board, kupo!"

"And I dearly wish I was there instead, my bat-winged brethern. Shortcake."

Macguffnox rolled an easy double fours and tagged the dice over to Macgyvix, who blew on them and added a pair of sixes on the next roll.

"Pair of scorpions, gals and gobbies! Six legs, six legs, read em and weep!" as the goblin-pony-piece marched past Strawberry Stream and over the bridge, already a third of the way to the castle at the end.

Pipsqueak barely blinked as he watched the goblins rolling merrily across the board. Something had clicked in his head at the word "cheat" again, and for all that the two were jovially playing, those rolls seemed to be precise as Time Turner setting his entire shop for noon.

As Macguffnox rolled his third time, one hoof jostled the table. Just a bit of a tweak as the dice landed.

One die rolled twice as far as the others, coming up on...a pair of threes. Bloop.

*SNORT* "What was that, yew doofus?", Macgyvix grumbled. "Ya rolled us straight into the swamp!", and she slapped their game piece back on the start.

Pipsqueak grinned and kept his hoof on the table.

---

The game trotted along at a breakneck pace. The occasional dry cough or eager lean from Pip left the goblin's precision game in the dumps, and if the two noticed, they didn't say a word- just plunged on at a bipolar pace that left them stuck in the taffy two turns running, only to make up most of it the next. Discord and the Moogles gradually outpaced them, with hardly a double but high rolling none the less. Pip himself narrowly escaped a triple-double swamp-out and although he couldn't roll much better than a six, they DID mostly end up doubles, so he found himself staring at the Peppermint Princess's castle only a space behind when his turn came up. Sixteen squares to victory, though you had to roll exactly to get on the castle...or you'd just end up going backwards the same number of spaces instead. The goblins were stuck in the taffy again behind him, and he'd just finished passing the guffawing gobs for the fifth time this game.

The moogles rolled themselves another seven squares into mediocrity. Ten to go. Discord spun the two cubes on his claws and let them bounce off the ceiling. A pair of fives put the jester's motley of a piece an easy roll away from the castle...

"I do believe this game is about to go to the dogs, everyone. Are you ready to howl at my victory?"

...and an eleven bounced the little lost pony back four spaces and into the last taffy swamp.

"Oh, f-. F- Ffffffff...iddlesticks! Flufflepuffs! FIG NEWTONS!"

Discord's last expletive sent squishy fruit cookie shrapnel flying in all directions, forcing the rest of the players to duck the confectionary cursing. Pipsqueak sampled one, found Discord to be obscenely delicious, and swept up a pile of the nearest naughty words to snack on later. Swallowing the crumbs with a mouthful of tea left his mouth open for another roll...

Double ones. Pip's pony crawled forward, but he had another roll- double ones, again. The peppermint and licorice drop stared at him like a pair of mismatched eyes as he slid the figure forward another apathetic pair of spaces. Twelve to go, and one more double would likely literally leave him in the doghouse with how Discord was playing...or having to play the goblins AGAIN.

...wait. There was one, slightly humiliating path to victory.

Pipsqueak rolled the dice around in his suddenly dry mouth as if trying to memorize the cubes with his tongue. A ghost of a long-dead scent of overlicked candy-flavoring on the dice hinted at mint and licorice to mix with the bits of fig stuck to his palate. Close your eyes, ignore the tingly feeling in your flanks and....

"PTOO!"

Bounce, bounce, spin....and....

Double ones. Yes!

Discord mock-pouted. "Oh, you poor little pony. Back to the swamp you g-"

"Nope!"

"...I don't think you have any say in the matter, Pipsquirt."

"And you ain't read the rules!"

"Well of course I didn't read the rulebook. Rulebooks are boring. I had Fluttershy tell me."

Pipsqueak pawed the tattered copy open and read:

"The Princess Rule: If a pony rolls double ones three times in a row, the Princesses have noticed the player and offered their aid! With a simple spell, the pony does not go to the Chocolate Swamp, but instead may go forward any number of spaces a normal roll would allow and ends their turn. And I choose...twelve!"

Pipsqueak triumphantly pushed his pony-pawn to the castle.

"And I win!"

Red lights suddenly flared and from absolutely nowhere came an horrible voice.

"Ah-ah-ah, Pipweasel...you didn't do the magic spell."

"But..."

"Do it, or I think we'll see how YOU do in a chocolate swamp."

"It's for silly fillies!"

"Magic words and spell. Or swamp."

"Aww...."

Pipsqueak hunkered down low and...

"Sunshine, sunshine! Ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves! *klonk klonk* and do a little shake!". Hey, feels a little funny back there...

"Oh, congratulations! Does the spell stick dice on you too, kupo?", Kupollux inquired.

"Dice, eh? Wut..."...and Pipsqueak looked back at his flank.

A pair of dice looked back!. Sweet biscuits, I got me cutie mark!

Board, tea, and figgy crumbs flew in all directions to escape the wildly gyrating, ecstatically bouncing blur that had been the winning player as the goblins ducked behind a couch to avoid the entertaining shrapnel and the moogles ended up hiding behind a ceiling beam, staring at the crazed colt who was doing his happy dance without a care for the world.

Discord, however was more of a sore loser.

"Fine, you little Pip. You win. You've eaten my words, so I'll eat mine too. You ARE going to be a little pirate for scallywagging your way out of being Fluttershy's pet!", his claws rubbed together with a *SNAP* -

And a riot of colored light washed through the windows to cover them all.