Half-Hour Horses

by HoofAndQuill

Good Intentions [Drama?]

(The prompt: Equestria gets off to a rocky start.)

(I know it's a bit long and the time marker is a bit too early in the story. But I thought it was a solid idea and just spent too much time milling around before the important part.)

Chancellor Smart Cookie found herself wishing, not for the first time, that the hiding cave where the ponies of the world had found the secret to fighting off the blizzard had been anywhere but the top of a mountain. There was no snow, seeing as it was mid-summer, but there was wind, and wind was always cold when a body was this far off the earth.

She looked back to her newly appointed secretary, Pie Chart. He seemed to be weathering the windy cold as well as could be expected, bundled up in a dozen thick coats. He was strange for an earth pony, with a head full of numbers and diagrams. If he was old enough for it to be possible, Smart Cookie might have thought he was half unicorn.

Not that most ponies would want to be thought of as half breeds nowadays.

Smart Cookie looked up and pointed with a hoof toward a dark opening in the cliffs up ahead. The two ponies trudged through the biting winds until they stepped across the threshold. Only a few steps into the cave, the wind seemed to die down, leaving the inside still and pleasingly calm, if a bit stifling. Smart Cookie didn't have the knowledge of how to look for it, but if she had to wager, it was magic.

After piling their belongings in with the already established pile, the two trotted their way into the main area of the cave. Smart Cookie smiled at the pegasus mare that had become so familiar over the years, and waved with a hoof. At the sound of the hoofsteps, the graying purple mare at the other side of the cave looked up, and gave a weary smile as well.

Clover the Clever, or more formally Her Royal Majesty's Personal Protege and Assistant, Clover the Clever of Canterlot, was sitting among a circle of a half-dozen books, pointing out a few passages for her young aspiring sorceress student. She left the other pony behind as she stood up and walked lightly over to where Smart Cookie and Pansy were talking.

"Hello, Chancellor, Lieutenant. I'm glad to see you again, though I wish it were under better circumstances."

Lieutenant Pansy bowed slightly. "Yes ma'am. As glad as I am to see the both of you, I wish we didn't have to meet here. Do you have any report on your people, Cookie?"

Smart Cookie chuckled at the shortened form of her name. It had taken ages to convince a pegasus, even a good friend, to drop the title and full name when speaking to her. "It's not so much a report, but there's still problems. Ponies say that the pegasi are favoring certain farms for rain, and the unicorns are making the growing season too short." She raised a hoof defensively. "Don't you start, I know it's not true. But you can't convince a herd of angry ponies, they won't listen."

Lieutenant Pansy's wings drooped a little, a sign of falling hope that the others were starting to recognize in their strange flying brethren. "Oh, I had really hoped that twenty years of peace would have been enough. But this summer is awfully cool, and even with more sunny days than normal, we can't get the temperature to rise again."

The three ponies looked to one another. They knew what this could mean, but nopony wanted to say it.

After a few moments, Smart Cookie shook her head. "We'll figure something out. Now I brought along my secretary, Pie Chart. He's been taking down notes these past few years on temperature, day length, weather, that sort of thing. Between two ponies as smart as him, your student, and you, Clover, I'm betting we can find a solution."

--

It was several hours later that Chancellor Cookie and Lieutenant Pansy had their casual discussion of ideal farm weather cut short by Clover's approach. The unicorn mare looked somehow older than just that morning. She sat down beside other two, and sighed. "It seems that I was correct. The pony tribes aren't working well together. I do not believe there is any high-level governmental ruling in this direction, but the discontent and racial tension of the lower classes seems to be causing rifts daily, in all three tribes."

Smart Cookie sighed and shook her head. "Not much else I can do about it, Clover. I've been trying to get them to talk to each other. They know there's good ponies everywhere, but they only remember the bad ones."

Pansy nodded her agreement, but bit her tongue.

Clover looked back toward her assistant as the white and pink filly chatted with the earth pony. She looked again to the floor of the cave in front of her. "There is... an option. A choice we can make."

Lieutenant Pansy looked up cautiously. "A choice?"

"We can magically compel our peoples toward peace. This cave has a certain crossing of magical lines... it's a kind of nexus. If we had been forced to stay any other place, we may never have become friends. But here, there's a type of magic that we can harness. It will be difficult, and I will need you both here."

Smart Cookie's eyes narrowed. "You're talking about mind controlling our people. Taking away their will and choices."

Clover the Clever shook her head quickly. "No, not at all. Just... making it easier to get along. We can pull away their distrust and their contempt, and remove the negative emotions that bind them into conflict. We won't be controlling them, exactly, but we will be making it easier for them to pick peace over conflict."

Smart Cookie looked into Clover's eyes, and then nodded after a second. "Alright, I trust you. But only because I'm out of options here. I've got foals at home, Clover, and I can't have them freezing to death in ten years."

--

Smart Cookie felt like her belly was full of ice and sharp rocks. 'Nervous' didn't even start to describe how she felt about being part of some huge, untested kind of magic in what she now knew to be some kind of special, magical hole in the mountain. It wasn't that she didn't like unicorns, but magic just never sat right.

Still, she was here. She looked at Clover and her assistant, Helia, as the two unicorns oh-so-carefully touched horns. There was a spark, and then the semi-familiar purple magic that always seemed to appear in this cave started to swirl around the whole group. Smart Cookie took a deep breath, and hooked her pastern around Pansy's. The pegasus looked toward her, and smiled.

Taking strength in her friend felt right just at the moment, and it brought her calm even as she felt the magic moving through her. Something was changing, she could feel it more than she could put into words. The multicolored magic swirling through the cavern passed through her body, and she could almost tell just the instant that her feelings changed.

(time)

That mistrust about magic... was still there, but it was harder to get mad about it. She was still a little jealous of the pegasus ponies' flight, but she could hardly begrudge them for being born what they were. It was hard to place, really, what had changed. But for some reason, that sort of thing just didn't bother her anymore.

She looked over to Clover again, and felt a bit alarmed at the sweat running down the mare's face. Helia seemed even worse for the strain on their magic, as the carefully woven magic strands around them wavered and moved out of their arranged shapes. The lights and darkness that the magic had been pulling in from outside of the cave faltered, and pulled away from their paths. The cavern went from hectic but full of controlled spellcasting, to absolute chaos as lines of magic and... feelings, or whatever those lights and shadows were, ricocheted and spun around uncontrolled.

"Agh!" Clover the Clever collapsed to the floor, and Smart Cookie galloped over to her, helping her up as best she was able. Clover's eyes widened as she looked at the uncontrolled magic flooding the chamber. "We have to get out of here! We must leave, I don't know what will happen!"

At that moment, everything happened.

A brilliant flash filled the room, and the mountain shook with the release of power. When the five ponies opened their eyes, they found a sixth person between them. A strange, brown, serpentine being, with a pony's face, but a body of a dozen animal's parts. He stood slowly, and looked around at the ponies before him.

They all stood, with mouths agape. After a moment, Clover took a few steps back. "No... we have to run, that... THING is something we created! He's made of all the malcontent and disharmony between the tribes, the feelings we removed!"

The creature lifted his eagle talon hand, and looked at it for a moment. He glanced toward Helia, and snapped his talons. The pony's pink mane suddenly changed to a strangely flowing green, blue, and pink. The creature smiled, and then snapped his talons again. Wings sprouted from the unicorn's back. He spoke lightly, as if completely assured of his own power. "Fly away home, little pony. There's nothing you can do here."

Helia looked back in panic at the wings on her back, but then darted forward and snatched something from the ground at the creature's feet. Smart Cookie caught just the quickest glance of some kind of large seed between her teeth as she half ran and half flew from the cavern.

The creature before them straightened up to his full height. "Well... it's only fair that I have a name, isn't it?"

The four remaining ponies all stepped backward nervously, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. He looked at them carefully, with a hint of malice in his eyes. "I'm made of distrust? Disharmony? Dis... Hm. Yes... Discord. That will do nicely."

He raised his talon again, smiled, and snapped. At that moment, Equestria's brightest and darkest age began.

Comments

[ArthurHucksake]

This is now my new head-canon regarding the origin of Discord.