The Quandary of DisQord

by Kane Magus

Chapter 5

Several days had passed since the battle with Lord Uran-Ra, if you can even call it a battle at all, given how one-sided it was. Celestia had not returned to the statue garden even once since then, and had scarcely left her father's side. It was the same with Luna. Eventually, however, I knew that Celestia would have to try to sleep, despite her power, so each night I waited upon the balcony leading to her room.

Finally, after the tenth such day, she stumbled into her room and made her way toward her bed. I could tell that she was extremely exhausted. She didn't notice me standing out on the balcony at first, so I tapped on the glass with my eagle talon.

She turned to face me, frowned, and then walked slowly over and opened the glass door leading out to the balcony. "Tell me why I shouldn't call for the guards this very instant," she said darkly.

"Well, for one thing, it would be a futile gesture, as you well know," I said. "In any case, I am not here to antagonize you."

"Then why?" she said.

"I merely wish to talk with you. I sorely miss our conversations in the statue gallery," I said. "May I come inside?"

"No, Discord, you may not. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have been overjoyed, but now…? Don't you understand? Everything between us changed when you… sickened my father," she said. "Never again will I be able to think of you as I did before." There was a slight catch in her throat as she said the last. "How can you possibly expect it to be any different?"

This hurt me very much, though I had expected it. I only let the barest surface of that hurt show, however. "Please, my dear Celestia-"

"Don't call me that again," she said sharply.

"Have it your way," I said, sighing deeply. "All I want to say is that I am sorry. You were there. You saw how antagonistic your father was being with me."

Celestia lowered her head and looked down at the floor. "I've had time to reflect on that day during this past week. From what I recall, my father was merely being protective of me. Overly protective, true enough, but even so. You were the one baiting him and making him angrier. Discord, why? Even at the worst of Luna's barbs, most of which were far worse than what my father said to you, you never once became short with her. So, why did you attack my father?"

"Princess Luna is merely a child," I said. "But she is honest to a fault and… I admire that in her. As for your father, I would have thought that a ruler of an entire nation would be more, shall we say, diplomatic. Besides, as you saw, he attacked me first, with intent to kill!"

"Discord, this wasn't some sort of official business on my father's part. Put yourself in his place. He happened upon us just as we were about to..." she blushed deeply, despite herself "…kiss. For the first time." The blush deepened still more, and she struggled with her emotions, as furious with herself as much as she was with me. "Would you have acted any differently?" So she didn't know that her father was also aware that I was the cause of the… ailments that were afflicting the population, and that this had been the reason he had attacked me, rather than mere blind rage. Perhaps I could use this to my advantage.

"Would I have tried to flat out murder my very beautiful daughter's suitor? No, I don't believe I would have. Nor would I have raised my voice to my charming and intelligent daughter, as he did," I said. "I would have at least made a modicum of effort to see her side of things, and to see that she had been happy, before rashly trying to punish her and her beau."

Celestia looked back up at me, tears starting to form in her eyes. "Please, Discord. Even if he was entirely wrong, he doesn't deserve this. He has not moved from his bed once since this ordeal began. He hardly eats, and then only when we or the servants feed him by hoof or telekinesis. He is wasting away. It is agony for me to see him like this. I have sent a summons to my mother, but I don't know when she will be able to return, and even when she does, this will break her heart. I… I am not even sure her power will be able to help him. So I ask you again, please, remove this curse you have placed upon him. I know you have it in your power to do so. I…" The tears began to flow freely at this point. "I'm begging you, from the depths of my heart. I can't bear to see him this way. And please… stop what you are doing to the other ponies. For my sake, even if you don't care for them. If you still care about me at all, Discord, please…"

I was moved. The look on her face crushed me. I truly did not want to see Celestia in such a doleful state, so I made my decision. I loathed doing so, but I would do it for her. "Very well, Celestia, I-"

"YOU! HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR FACE AROUND HERE!" The enraged shout came from the still open doorway. Celestia spun around to face the door.

Standing there was Princess Luna, her horn already glowing in preparation for battle. Before Celestia could react (and before I could settle on exactly how I wanted to deal with this trivial interruption), Luna charged at me, a cone of power forming in front of her. For the briefest moment, I saw Celestia's horn had begun to glow as well. I will never be sure what she planned to do in that instant, whether to aid her sister's attack or to protect me from it, given what I had been about to say. In any event, she had no time to do either before Luna slammed into me.

Luna struck me with such a force that it sent me crashing through the stone railing on the balcony. As I started to fall, however, I looped my reptilian tail around Luna's torso and yanked her down with me. I could hear Celestia cry out as both of us tumbled toward the ground far below. As we both fell, Luna managed to extricate herself from my tail. Then she placed all four of her hooves squarely on my chest, tensed her legs, and then, with all of her strength, she kicked me straight downward. Her form became smaller in my eyes as her wings spread and she floated upward and away from me.

Less than a second later, I smashed directly into one of the statues in the garden below. It was the pony statue of victory, if that matters. A fine cloud of disintegrated plaster rose up around me, momentarily obscuring me from view. Luna circled above and waited to see what I would do, not wanting to charge in when her vision was obscured. For her part, Celestia was standing on the balcony, still in shock at the sudden battle that had erupted between her sister and me, especially since I had just conceded to make everything right again.

As the cloud finally settled down, I merely stood there and meticulously brushed myself off. I eventually deigned to look up at Luna. She had dared to attack me, physically attack me. Though I could feel the waves of fear emanating from her, given that she knew how much more powerful I was compared to her, I could also feel the determination to do what she felt must be done, regardless. I was impressed. You had to respect that, utterly foolhardy though it was. And, to be honest, this was somewhat exhilarating for me. Luna wanted a battle? Very well, I would give her one.

With a simple flick of one finger in her direction, I send a narrow blade of energy hurtling toward her. She had no chance of dodging it, though she tried, and the energy struck her in the left wing, numbing it into momentary uselessness. As Luna cried out and began to fall, Celestia suddenly leapt from the balcony and dove beneath her stricken sister. Celestia just managed to catch Luna just before she slammed into the ground. Celestia helped her to the ground, but Luna quickly rose to her feet and charged at me again, despite Celestia's shout for her to wait and listen.

I suppose I should spill the beans here. This was fun. This was the first real fight that I've had in millennia, and I had no intention of ending it prematurely. However, all three of us knew that Luna had no chance against me whatsoever. That said, despite everything, I strangely found myself not in the mood to actually harm the poor girl. Much, anyway. Despite being over a century old, as I had said to Celestia earlier, she was still little more than a child as far as Alicorn development is concerned, still the human equivalent of being in her late teens. For that matter, the same was true of Celestia as well, though as I have said before, she was wise far beyond her years of life. I decided that I would toy with Luna for a little while, and then I would put her in her place, and then I would resume my interrupted conversation with her sister, and everything would be okay again.

Just as Luna was about to slam into me again, I teleported out of the way. This time, it was Luna's turn to smash into one of the statues, though she didn't completely shatter it like I had. Commendably, she hardly missed a beat as she levitated the statue and hurled it directly at me. I simply let the statue (this one representing friendship) hit me and crumble to pieces, just like the previous one.

"Discord, please stop this!" cried out Celestia from behind me.

"Why should I?" I said, genuinely laughing. "I'm having the time of my life here. I haven't had an interesting fight in millennia!" The implication that my battle with their father hadn't been an "interesting fight" sank in. "And your sister obviously has some aggression she needs to work out. I'm happy to provide her with an outlet."

"Damn you!" yelled Luna. And finally, just as I had been hoping she would do, she unleashed her full power upon me.

I suddenly found myself floating in deep space. Whether this was an illusion spell, or I had been literally teleported into outer space, or I had been pulled into some sort of pocket dimension of some sort, it didn't matter. If I hadn't been a Q, this would have been the end of me. For a time, I just floated there in the vacuum, which would have been bad enough for a non-Q, but then the real attacks began. In fact, as soon as I had appeared there, the cosmic radiation had immediately started to build up to a critical state and beyond. I could feel it gathering around me, trying to boil me in my skin. And then the first of the asteroids arrived, smashing into me. Soon, it was raining asteroids and comets and small planets from all directions, all of them crashing into me. As the spectacle continued, I simply floated there, admiring it for a time. Very impressive, Luna. Very impressive, indeed.

Eventually, however, I grew bored. I held up my lion's paw. Suddenly, all of the blackness of space began to shrink and coalesce in my open paw. A few short seconds later, and I was once again floating in front of Luna and Celestia in the statue gallery, and in my paw now rested a small orb of dark purple energy. To say that Luna was shocked at this was an understatement. She made to charge again, but this time I stopped her in her tracks and lifted her off the ground, binding her wings with my power so that she couldn't fly away and binding her horn so that she couldn't magically attack me again.

"However, my patience is starting to grow thin, child," I said to Luna as she struggled to free herself from my power, continuing my earlier statement from before she had unleashed her power upon me. "I have endured your verbal barbs for the past century. And now, I intend for you to feel each of those barbs tenfold. Physically." From the direction of the hedge maze came a flurry of leaves. All of them had been sharpened into needle points. Luna struggled futilely against my hold as the leaves began to circle around her. A few of them darted in and nipped into her hide, leaving shallow pinpricks that caused her to gasp in pain. Blood began to trickle down her sides as more and more of the leaves darted in and left their marks.

"Tia, help me!" Luna managed to cry out, despite my tight grip on her.

"My dear Celestia," I said, "I have no desire whatsoever to harm you. Please stay out of this. I promise you that no lasting harm will come to your poor sister. I merely mean to teach her a lesson in humility."

"No, Discord! I won't let you hurt my sister!" said Celestia, and then I felt her unleash her own power on me. It's difficult to describe, but it felt almost as if a solar flare had erupted where I stood and was now enveloping me. It was a rather curious sensation, honestly, despite the fact that I've felt actual solar flares before and I know what they are like. And then, it felt as though I was being pulled into the surface of the sun itself. Deeper and deeper did I sink until I finally reached the core of the star. I stood in appreciation of Celestia's power for a bit before finally deciding that enough was enough. Taking a deep breath, and inhaling some of the solar plasma that churned around me (incredibly, it smelled like her), I held out my eagle's claw. Similar to the way I had handled Luna's power, I coalesced Celestia's attack down into a small glowing white ball in my hand. Celestia and Luna looked on in helpless shock and I smashed the two balls of energy together, one light and one dark, observed the result of the mixture for a moment, before simply tossing my head back, opening my mouth, and swallowing the whole thing as though it were a chocolate cream sandwich cookie. At that point, I finally let the cloud of needles dissipate, and whirled around to face Celestia. As I did so, I telekinetically flung Luna at her. The younger sister crashed into the older one and they both went down in a heap. As they struggled to untangle their limbs and regain their feet, I slowly advanced on them. I honestly wasn't quite sure yet what I planned to do to them, but then the decision was taken out of my hands.

"YOU WILL LEAVE MY DAUGHTERS BE, YOU MONSTER!" a sudden new voice shouted from somewhere behind me, using the Royal Voice of course, though it somehow sounded much more melodious than it had when Uran-Ra or even Luna had used it. I didn't even bother to turn around, since I already felt a presence sailing over my head. And then a new Alicorn was standing between me and the two sisters.

"Ah, this must be mommy dearest," I said, the smile on my face widening once again. In front of me stood a female Alicorn and I could tell at once where Celestia and Luna got their beauty from. Her fur was white with the slightest golden tint to it, but her mane and tail were a strange mix of the orange of dawn and the purple of dusk. It worked for her though, it really did. Her cutie mark was that of a spiral galaxy. "Lady Terra-Ki, I presume?"

"And you must be the creature known as Discord that my daughter informed me about in her summons," said the radiant Alicorn. "It seems I got here none too soon."

By this time, Celestia and Luna had managed to get to their feet and were now standing at their mother's side. Both of their horns were glowing with magic. However, Terra-Ki shook her head and motioned each of them back in turn.

"Mother?" asked Celestia. "What are you planning?"

"I'm going to use the Elements and put an end to this once and for all," said her mother. At this, both Celestia's and Luna's eyes widened.

"Does nopony but Celestia ever think to try to talk to me, rather than attack me on sight?" I muttered, mostly to myself.

"Mom, you can't!" said Luna.

"Without father, it won't-" began Celestia, but Terra-Ki held up a hoof.

"I will be fine, my beloveds. But regardless, I have to save my people… and my family. Now please, my little ponies, move aside."

"But-" said Luna, but was silenced with a stern but still loving look from her mother.

"Trust me, Luna," said Terra-Ki. Luna reluctantly stepped back, and I could see tears in both her and Celestia's eyes. They feared what was coming.

As for me, I merely crossed my arms and waited. Whatever was about to happen certainly didn't bode well for me, or so the majestic Alicorn believed, and I was simply interested to see what it might be. I have to admit, I was definitely not disappointed.

Lady Terra-Ki began to glow softly as six gem stones materialized around her. Red, orange, blue, green, purple, and pink. It was shaping up to be an impressive show. I found it all highly amusing… up until the point when she actually unleashed her power upon me, that is.

While Lady Terra-Ki was far more powerful than either of her two daughters, she didn't have quite as much raw power as her husband, Uran-Ra. However, with these artifacts in play, her power was magnified by several orders of magnitude. Of course, it still paled in comparison to the power of a Q. Or so I thought. As waves of pure energy washed over me, I looked down at myself and realized, with no small amount of shock and horror, that I was slowly turning to stone. What in the name of the Continuum was going on here? As the petrification slowly began to work its way up my body, I looked up sharply at the lady Alicorn, who was showing real signs of strain, due to my innate resistance.

"How are you doing this? It simply isn't possible!" I thundered, but she gave no answer, merely continuing to pour on the power. I believe that it shocked her that I was resisting almost as much as it shocked me that she was having any sort of effect on me in the slightest. It seemed that we had both underestimated the other. Finally, I decided that it was time to end this. I brought to bear my full might upon this poor, delicate pony.

"No!" she screamed as she realized what I meant to do, but it was far too late for her to do anything to try to counter me, not that she would have been successful, in any case.

It was over quickly, but not easily. With a terrible wrench, I forcibly sundered her connection with these artifacts and sent them flying in all directions. I sent them to the far corners of the world, where I knew it would take a very long time for them to be found and assembled again. The effect this had on Terra-Ki was immediate and dire. Her eyes widened and her pupils contracted to pinpricks as she buckled at the knees and then slowly collapsed. Celestia and Luna were at her side hardly before she had hit the ground. Terra-Ki's breathing was ragged as she feebly tried to stand up again, but the effort was futile. I knew she wasn't long for this world. I'm pretty sure the others knew it as well. A very, very tiny part of me very, very briefly considered using my power to heal her, but I very, very quickly squelched that part of me. No, this was the price one paid when challenging a member of the Q Continuum. Well, either that or a lifetime of madness or imprisonment.

"Mom! Please don't try to move," cried Luna. "You're badly hurt." Indeed, I could see the blood starting to flow from her nose and mouth.

"Celestia… Luna…" said Terra-Ki.

"Mother, Luna is right. Please don't speak," said Celestia urgently.

"Listen carefully…" said their mother, gasping for breath between every few words. "Y-you… were right. I should… never have tried to… use the Elements of Harmony… on my own." Her condition was quickly and clearly getting worse. "But…"

"You're going to be okay, mom!" said Luna frantically. "Please, just lie still and I'll go get help!" Before she could leave, however, Terra-Ki managed to rise up enough so that she could wrap each of her forelegs and wings around both Luna and Celestia.

"Please…" she said, pausing briefly to cough up a spatter of blood onto the ground. "You must… find the Elements again… only together can you…"

"Mother… m-mom, please stop exerting yourself!" cried Celestia. "Don't worry about the Elements right now. When you are well again, we can find them together! We can use them to heal father! We-"

There was another spasm of coughing and more blood spilling to the ground. With tears in her eyes she looked at each of her daughters in turn. "It is… too late… for me." Luna violently shook her head at this, the tears sprinkling in every direction. "Tia… Lulu… my dear… beautiful daughters… I… I… love…" And with that, before she could finish, her eyes glazed over, her head lowered to the ground, and her breathing came to a stop. She was gone.

"M-mom?" said Luna, her voice cracking. "MOM?"

Celestia couldn't even form words. The only sounds she made were choking sobs as the tears flowed freely down her face.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" came a tormented voice from far above us. All three of us looked up to see Lord Uran-Ra standing on a balcony adjacent to Celestia's own. He was still entirely dull gray in color. He was looking down on the scene with sorrow clearly imprinted on his face. "I-I should have helped you! I should have been able to h-help…" He struggled to climb over the railing of the balcony, as through he meant to fly down and face me in battle again or to simply be at his wife's side.

"Father! What are you doing?" screamed Celestia.

"I tried to get here sooner!" said Uran-Ra. "But I couldn't move! I heard you battling that demon, but I couldn't save you! I… I cannot survive… without you."

"Daddy, no! Stop!" shouted Luna. "You're-"

Before she could finish, Lord Uran-Ra tumbled over the railing. I'm not sure if I saw him feebly trying to flap his wings to right himself or not. I would like to think that he did, because otherwise, this was pure suicide. Luna and Celestia were still kneeling next to their fallen mother, wrapped in her embrace, and before they could even gain their feet, their father slammed into the ground. Normally, a fall such as that wouldn't have much harmed an Alicorn of Uran-Ra's stature, but in his weakened state, it was more than he could bear. He had landed badly and his neck was bent at an awkward angle, his wings crumpled around him. His horn had snapped in half on impact.

Celestia rushed to her father's side. Luna got about halfway between where her mother lay dead and where her father lay… also dead. She dropped to her knees, tears openly falling to the ground. "No," she said in a small voice.

Meanwhile, I was merely floating there, watching all of this unfold. I felt like the biggest villain in the entire universe, and at that point in time, I dare say that I probably was. This shouldn't have been getting to me, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I have seen and had been the cause of the deaths of more beings than there had ever been ponies living on this planet and I hadn't batted an eye at it… until now. I considered using my powers to bring them both back, but something deep and black and ugly inside of me prevented it with a vehemence that shocked me. It felt as though something inside me was beginning to crack. I honestly wanted to weep, at least for my dear Celestia if not the others, but I felt something else building up inside me instead. Something dark and very frightening, even for me.

"No," said Luna again, louder than before.

The cracking at the core of my essence widened. A demented grin slowly grew on my face. I began to chuckle.

"NO!" screamed Luna for a third time, rising shakily to her feet and turning to face me.

The chuckle became a laugh.

Celestia stood up and placed herself between Luna and myself.

The laugh became a full-throated cackle.

"DAMN YOU TO TARTARUS!" shrieked Luna, in the full force of the Royal Voice. I barely heard it.

The cackle became a full on belly busting guffaw.

I finally looked up and into the eyes of my dear Princess Celestia. There was absolutely nothing whatsoever in those eyes except for pure, cold wrath and hate. The cracking in my soul widened to a canyon. I could do nothing but hold my ribs and let the ragged laughter escape. It was almost painful in how strong it was.

Luna was trying to blindly charge at me again, but Celestia was holding her in check with her telekinetic power with an entirely unnatural calm about her, particularly given what had just happened. "Sister, we do not stand a chance against him at the moment. We have to flee."

Despite herself, Luna came to her senses when she heard this, though her rage and anguish still threatened to overtake her again. "You want us to RUN AWAY? Are you mad! We have to destroy this monster for what he did to m-mom and d-dad." She was on the verge of completely losing it again.

Celestia, in a coldly mechanical voice, simply said, "Yes, I agree. And we will. However, for now, we simply do not have the power to do so. We cannot help them now, nor can we afford to mourn them properly now. We have to do as mother said and seek out the Elements of Harmony again."

"GO!" I shouted, my own voice a dark parody of the Royal Voice. My eyes were a multicolored swirl of madness. "LEAVE THIS PLACE AND SEEK YOUR PRECIOUS ARTIFACTS! FLEE, BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND AND END YOUR PUNY EXISTENCE WHERE YOU STAND!" A tiny part of me was raging against these threats being made toward my dear Celestia, but I ignored it.

Celestia looked at me coldly and calmly. "We will return, and when we do, you will indeed pay dearly for what you have done this day and everyday before this."

"Muahahahahaahahahaaa!" was all I could say in return. Ignoring them utterly, I began to rise up into the air, and soon I was floating over the palace. The sky began to blacken and lightning began to fall everywhere around me. Oh, it was all so very melodramatic, but I was in a melodramatic mood. "ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA! LET IT BE KNOWN THAT FROM THIS MOMENT FORTH, THE AGE OF DISCORD HAS BEGUN! ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO CAN HEAR MY VOICE!" I looked down and saw that Celestia and Luna were nowhere to be seen. They had already fled to begin their search for the Elements. That was okay. They thought of me as the villain of the story now. So be it. If they wanted a villain, I would certainly do my best to oblige them.

---

"And that, I presume," said Q, "was when you started being, as the humans would say, a real dick, am I right?"

I was silent for several moments. "Q," I said slowly. "In your long existence, have you ever truly gone mad?"

"Nope, can't say that I have," Q replied amiably.

"Well, I have," I said. "To this day, I can't explain how or why it happened, but then I suppose that is the nature of madness, isn't it? It… it was a very unpleasant experience and one that I never care to repeat."

"Well… let's just say that the Continuum will see to it that that doesn't happen," said Q, somewhat ominously. "You were just very lucky that you contained your madness to that one planet.

I paused again, before continuing. "So, yes, as you said, I went bad. Or perhaps I should say worse. I went batshit, to use another human phrase. Or was that apeshit?"

"Probably both are accurate," said Q.

"You know the cotton candy clouds and the chocolate rain that I was using when you showed up?" I said.

"Yeah," said Q, "that was rather… weird, even for you."

"I started off with that the first time as well," I said. "That, the soapy streets, all of that infantile stuff. However, I very soon progressed far, far, worse than that, and mixed everything together. Imagine pink clouds raining down chocolate milk, filling up the screaming mouths of ponies that were submerged up to their chins in free-flowing lava. Imagine ponies slipping and sliding on soap bubbles, just before slamming right into walls filled with long shards of twisted, jagged glass and rusted metal, with no air around them to even scream this time. Imagine long-limbed lagomorphs chasing after ponies, impaling them upon vicious claws made of ice, which fried them to a crisp, or hitting them with gouts of flame from their mouths, which froze them to solid blocks of ice. Imagine a thousand similarly chaotic but all equally horrid fates befalling untold numbers of ponies. And that was merely the physical side of it all. The things I did to their minds were indescribably far worse. No pony was spared, be they adult, elderly, child, or even infant. Yes, even in their madness, a lot of them still tried to raise families, after a fashion. Any ponies that died during this time, save from sheer old age, I brought back to life. It occurred to me again that I could have easily brought back Celestia's mother and father as well and subject them to the same torment that I was inflicting upon their people, which for them would have lasted an eternity rather than merely a lifetime. But even at the time, when my madness was at its height, it seemed wrong to me. Instead, I merely tormented their subjects."

"Yeah, it was pretty bad," said Q simply.

"Occasionally, I left small groups of ponies sane, so that they could really appreciate what I was doing to the rest of them. Usually, I would let these ponies live their lives in full, never directly knowing the taint of madness that I inflicted upon their brothers and sisters, though occasionally I still physically tormented them even as I left their minds untouched. Sometimes, without warning, I would infect the whole lot of them with madness. Many of them went insane of their own accord anyway, with or without my direct intervention. Other times, I would take a group of ponies that I had been torturing for half of their natural lives, and suddenly remove the madness from them. But not the memories of it. Never the memories, Q."

"You were a real asshole. This is true," said Q with a nod.

I continued on, not really listening to him at this point. "Throughout it all, I never touched Celestia or Luna. They never once stopped their search for the Elements of Harmony that I had scattered throughout the lands. They hardly ate or slept except for the barest minimum that their bodies would allow, their hatred of me and their determination to end me sustaining them for the most part. At first, when they came upon ponies that had been affected by me, they tried to help them. Every single time, it broke Celestia's heart anew when she realized that there wasn't a single thing she could do to ease their suffering, so soon enough they stopped trying and started actively avoiding other ponies at all costs. They did nothing but scour the land for the artifacts that I had scattered, because they knew that this was ultimately the only way they could ever hope to save their people. Even so, it still took them many centuries to find what they sought. I had hid them that well. By that point, the whole world had long since been corrupted by my insanity."

"And when they finally found the Elements again?" said Q.

"That's when they returned to Everfree Forest, which I had fashioned into my own lair and to which I had paid extra special attention," I said.

Comments

[Paladin Redflare]

HahahahahaHAHAHA and then sadness

[Winter Storms]

well disord is dead