Prologues

by Broken Phalanx

Interlude 4: The Discordant One

Being the embodiment of chaos isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be; oh, the onlookers may see a cackling demi-god of madness and conflict, but if they knew the amount of havoc his life was, simply on a day to day basis, those who claimed that he was ‘evil’ would likely silence themselves.

Probably with stitches, if the last pony to ‘hitch a ride with him’ with one of his teleports was any indication. And, honestly, Discord felt that being blamed for that one would be quite unjust; he had, in all fairness, warned the pony quite some time ago.

Of course, since his experience of time was just as disjointed as everything else he endured, he might’ve warned the pony to let go several years before the warning would prove needed, or several years afterwards; he had tried to coerce a prior self (future self?) to do the warning, but he didn’t have any recollection of the event from the other side, as it were, so he didn’t know if he had actually succeeded or not. And even if he had warned himself to do so, it wasn’t like he could actually make himself do it.

Because, seriously, that other guy is a jerk. Or was. Will be? Temporal chaos made tenses difficult.

And, of course, every day was a balancing act. Too little chaos and entropy and the second law of thermodynamics was little more than a suggestion, too much and he’d notice, several Big Bangs later, that perhaps he had made a mistake. And a boring one, at that; an entire universe of chaos was ultimately just as predictable as an entire universe of order, and if the eons had taught him anything, it’s that entertainment reigned supreme as the most desirable result.

And he couldn’t just make singularities out where no one could see them, either; oh, he could, and it would technically work just as well, but tending to the whole dreary business of chaos without even a single onlooker was simply too boring to comprehend. It would be akin to the universe spontaneously generating the most magnificent story only to have the only copy cratered deep within the moon; nothing, pony or otherwise, could appreciate it if that were to happen (and it had, all too frequently).

Not that he was appreciated anyway; all he ever got were ponies whining about how ‘the doors are stuck’ (pudding) or ‘what have you done with the mountains’ (copious amounts of pudding) or, perhaps the most common and honestly the most irksome complaint, ‘I don’t know which way is up’ (pudding avalanche, or perhaps it was ice-cream; honestly, by the end of that particular day, he couldn’t be bothered to care).

And then he found the humans, and for a brief shining moment thought he had found some company; they possessed, quite unlike the Equestrians, a chaotic disposition by and large. Not to the same extant that he himself had (nine-tenths of his total selves doubted the universe could spit out another creature half as insane as himself), but even something simply leaning towards an unhinged state of mind would’ve been a blessing.

It would’ve meant someone, something, could potentially share his insane thoughts, or at the very least appreciate them; at the least, he was certain he was no longer utterly so alone.

His first impressions were less than stellar; their initial leaders tended towards the rotund and forgettable, and frequently thought to impose rules and order upon their underlings. The next few generations of rulers were frankly overrated, and the populace as a whole seemed rather boring, leading lives of repetitive farming and overrated security. He hid himself away for the most part, as if their monotony was infectious, only appearing in infrequent circumstances to feed the spark of madness in the rare few who had potential: artists and madmen, he opened the door for them regardless. Though, if his own history was any indication, some other timeline must have been quite busy instilling discord elsewhere while he was busy dealing with the humans.

But then there was something interesting; the first remarkable occurrence, in his eyes, in a long time. One of them could use magic. With a degree of power as well, if the subtle warping of reality was any indication; of course, whoever it was wouldn’t likely to be good at it, without a teacher. Discord thought, for several subjective minutes, about who might be able to teach the human scamp; it was a long, long thought objectively, lasting several eons and across several different timelines as coherent moment was tied to coherent moment, but eventually one conclusion was reached.

Kid was out of luck, frankly. A shame; the fact the magical environment was beginning to have noticeable effects on the human’s evolution was a minor miracle, in more ways than one.

But still, it would be intriguing to see how his life would turn out, Discord reasoned to himself. So began his rather frequent visits to the human royals.

Any potential for friendship was utterly destroyed when Draconequus, quite jokingly in his first visit, told the magic human to ‘take his king-brother out with his favorite meal,’ possibly as a way to smooth their rather bumpy relationship; it would only be years after the initial uproar (which the magic-man decided, strangely, to keep secret from everyone else, even if it made explaining the new, impromptu sun roofs much more difficult) that Discord would learn that phrase has a far darker colloquial meaning than ‘have a delightful supper with your brother.’

Even gods have off days, apparently.

Still, compared to the ponies, the bipedal apes were a god-send; it was fun, yes, to play off the inherent insecurities of the Pegasus, Unicorn and Earth nobility, and while they had indeed created one hell (or Tartarus, if he was to use their lingo) of a web of intrigue strung together by innumerable lies of omission and well-intentioned duplicity (Discord was certain the various ruling ponies knew of his existence, and was sure the only reason he hadn’t actually been attacked with anything resembling an army was because, while he was a bit of a rogue agent in their governmental machinations, he was equally troublesome to their political foes), the humans had recently spawned an utterly sane man who, without any interference by Discord, had attacked his king with a roast duck.

Well, sane in that the man hadn’t been ‘Discorded’; the whole ‘frothing at the mouth and attacking the vast majority of tablecloths for sending his thoughts to world devouring planetoids’ parts indicated the man was hardly healthy.

Besides, the whole ‘Discording’ process worked different for the humans than it did for the ponies. Ponies would gain negative aspects, by and large; humans, however. . .

Humans were weird. Some would go utterly insane, but others would . . . also go utterly insane, but in a different way; they’d do things no one else would even think about, and while they would fail in whatever they tried nine out of ten times, the tenth time would work magnificently. And then the rest of the human society would have to play catch-up with this new discovery, like the idea of perhaps sterilizing equipment before using it to seal open wounds.

And best of all, most of the ones who were ‘insane’ didn’t even need ‘Discording’ in the first place. It was like a self-perpetuating machine of, well, chaos.

And they were certainly quite entertaining.

Author's Note:

And that's that! I felt Discord more than deserved an interlude of his own, and so he got one.

Hope you enjoyed, and if you did/didn't, please, feel free to leave a comment down below! I don't bite . . .

. . . much.