Year 1004, Celestial Era - 353 years ago
Discord watched as Twilight slumped down the hall, head low, wings hanging loosely at her sides. By Starswirl’s Beard, did she look like Tartarus. He snaked down the pillar he had been curled around and furrowed his brows, watching as she continued down the hall. Poor thing was really taking it hard.
He didn't even remember her looking that depressed when he had reversed her element and she had been trudging around all dull grey colored, with tears dripping down her face and landing on the ground in the shape of broken hearts. He had added that touch himself. Dear Celly had told him that he shouldn't be proud of any of his actions while messing with the lives of other ponies, but he had liked that one. Very poignant.
Now Twilight just resembled somepony who had just gotten into a particularly nasty run in with the bad end of a minotaur. It was positively depressing. Turns out having all your friends die can turn you into a real downer. Really, who'd have known?
Not that Discord was unsympathetic per se. He had just been around the block enough times to know that, inevitably, without fail, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would stay ponies from doing what they they did best. Dying.
Ponies died. It was a fact of life. No need to get all fussed about it. Honestly.
Sure, he had been close with Shy. She was a sweet little thing, nice to talk to, just about the only pony who would put up with him for any extended period of time. Though really it was probably because she had gotten so much practice putting up with that tiny monstrosity Angel Bunny. Never had a name been more unfitting. The point was though, she had been a good friend.
Then she died.
He would remember her, but anything more than that would be pointless. Wouldn't make her any less dead, at any rate. Besides, there was nothing he could have done. By the time he'd come into the picture, there had been no stopping Tia.
Twilight clearly didn't see things the way he did though, moping about like that. She would learn though. By the sixteenth or seventeenth dead friend she would hardly feel a thing. Being around the other princesses would help too. Gather enough immortals in one place, and eventually they'll start to resemble a group of vultures flocking around a decomposing body composed solely of cynicism. A feeding frenzy of ennui and disenchantment. Which is why Discord was leaving.
That kind of thinking was unhealthy for a long lived creature such as himself. That was the sort of thing that had lead to the downfall of the rest of the draconequui. Discord gave a little shudder from ears to tail-tip before putting it out of his mind. Suffice to say, the entire thing was about as cheery as a funeral...an analogy he could confirm very well, having been at one recently.
Sure, he had managed to keep his lively spark despite being older than than Sunbutt, Loudmouth, Bubblegum, and Miss.Crybaby over there combined, but he had found himself to be the exception when it came to that sort of thing. Enough time around this place Twilight would be as jaded as old Tia and Lulu in no time flat. Soon she'd be fake smiling and offering platitudes and slowly shriveling up inside and-
...And he didn't like that idea very much.
With a snap of his fingers, he blinked directly in front of Twilight. "Hello!"
The alicorn gave a squeak, plopping directly back onto her star emblazoned flank. She blinked up at him dully, mouth slightly open, face blank, without even the grace to look annoyed.
She closed her eyes, opened them slowly, took a moment to rearrange herself. She picked herself up into a scant approximation of standing, hunched, head barely lifted enough to look Discord. "Look, Discord..." her voice was tiredly flat "I really appreciate you saying hi, I just- I really need to be alone right now."
Discord grinned, "That's great! Because I'm leaving! And so are you!" With a deafening noise of about seventy three steamer trunks, twenty six duffel bags, three TSA compliant carry-on’s, and a fanny pack falling to earth, Discord was quickly was surrounded by a pile of luggage taller than himself and large enough to fit in a moderately sized tour van, which was convenient, as, after a short pause, one of those dropped from the ceiling too, rattling the entire hall. In another instant, a camera had slung itself about Discord’s neck, and his horns were stabbing neatly through the top of a baseball cap. Reaching into his fanny pack, he pulled out a bottle of sunscreen and sprayed a healthy amount onto himself, filling the palace with the smell of pools and beaches and miserable summer camping trips.
Twilight coughed violently, squinching up her eyes "I...Wait. What?"
"We're going to see the world, look at the sights! What's the point of immortality and wings if you don't use them to see the world? Ammirite?" An Equish to Griffonian dictionary appeared hovering in front of him, along with several others, and he made a show of paging busily through them "Better brush up on your languages Twily. How's your Saddle Arabian? Know what البرسيم و ذكي means?”
Twilight just stared at him, eyebrows furrowed, head tilted ever so slightly to the side like a bemused dog. Discord gave a dismissing wave of his claw “Well, best you don’t anyways. Innocent ears and all that...If any strange ponies in Tubuck start shouting that at your from across the street, just say no.”
"What?"
Discord had no delusions about being benevolent. He was not a good samaritan, or particularly altruistic. He was a nuisance at his best, dangerous at his worst, and usually had a penchant for causing trouble, even restricted as he was to mostly harmless trouble. Despite all that, he needed to get Twilight out of there.
Something about seeing the huffy, impatient, snarky, know-it-all reduced to a gluttonous buzzard of disillusionment and self-pity just didn't sit well with him. He grabbed Twilight, held her out at arm's length in front of him.
"Twilight, trust me on this one, you don't want to stay here." He shook his head emphatically, pulling her to his side and gesturing dramatically outward with his eagle claw. She wriggled out of his grasp, looking offput "No, it's best you leave to become a wandering nomad or something. Or maybe a cave hermit, dispensing out wise advice to anypony brave enough to climb up to her mountainous abode"
Hovering in the air with his limbs tucked in lotus position, and wearing an expression of the utmost inner peace, he gave his beard a quick tug, unrolling it to the floor like a parchment scroll. His low peaceful humming filled the room, only to be interrupted as he cracked open an eye and sniffed at Twilight’s offended look. Being a cave hermit wasn't a bad gig. He had done that for a couple thousand years, though his advice had proven to be less than stellar on several occasions.
King Silver's famous "Chicken Decree" had been a riot, though.
...Literally.
"I'm not going to go live in a cave, Discord!" Twilight glared at him "I have duties, responsibilities!"
"There's nothing here for you anymore, but duties and responsibilities."
Now she furrowed her brows "That's not true, I mean, after..." her voice wavered. "But I still have my family, I have Celestia, and Lun- What?"
"What?" He quickly composed his expression into a mask of neutrality.
Twilight recoiled slightly “What the hay is that?”
Discord removed the carved mask from his face and regarded it. It was a little creepy. A quick flick of the wrist threw it offscreen. “So anyways…”
Twilight wasn’t biting, she narrowed her eyes "You were making a face."
"No I wasn't."
"Yes you were, I was talking about Celestia and Luna and- there it was again!" Twilight pointed wildly.
"There what was again?" Discord gave her his best confused look.
"The face. You just made that face!"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Discord." Twilight took a step forward, voice lowering.
Discord looked away "I really shouldn't say."
"Tell me."
"No."
"Tell me."
"No."
"You tell me right now!" There was flare of light as Twilight's horn lit up threateningly.
""Okay! Alright." Discord raised his claws "All I'm saying is that, well..."
Twilight pursed her lips "Go on."
"In a court of law, one might consider that it was possible that Celestia could have been slightly involved in- the deaths of all of your friends" Discord gave a little wince, "Or, really, directly responsible for them, but-"
"What." Twilight cut him off, face expressionless.
"I mean, who'd have thunk it, eh?"
"Discord?" Twilight regarded him coolly, head tilted slightly to one side. "What is wrong with you?" her voice was flat, soft.
"Look, I know it probably sounds a bit crazy-"
"I lost the five ponies who meant the world to me this month, Discord." She said quietly, looking down at the ground "These past few weeks have been the worst of my entire life, and-" She stopped, the words catching, and Discord watched as she swallowed furiously past her trembling voice, hooves shuffling, wings fluffing at her sides "And now,” she finally continued, the words heavy “You. You have the gall to suggest that Celestia, the pony who practically raised me, mur-killed them."
Discord drew himself up, growling slightly “Well I figured it was something you would want to know” he said, annoyance tinging his voice. He was just trying to give her some important and honest information, but there she was blaming him for that. Maybe it had been a bit badly planned, maybe he wasn’t the best when it came to things like, well, tact, but he was just trying to help her. Honestly, she could be so unreasonab-
“You thought I'd want to know.” The words dripped with scorn as Twilight looked up at Discord, staring him straight in the eyes with utter contempt, her voice almost a whisper, but filled with venom "After all the years of being reformed” her laughter at the word was joyless “You still don’t understand a thing about how ponies work, do you?”
"I-" Discord took a few steps backwards, flinching slightly.
Twilight gave a small, choked sob.
"Do you think this is funny?" she screamed, the fur on her cheeks damp with tears. "Do you think this is some big joke?"
"Twilight, if you'd let me explain..."
"Just go, Discord." She slumped slightly, all the fire leaving her in one breath. "I don't care anymore, just go away"
Discord winced. That hadn’t gone as planned. No. He should have known that Twilight wouldn't believe a word of it. Not against Celestia, and certainly not from him. He flicked his tail. This was the exact reason he didn’t get into pony affairs. No, they just offed eachother and made eachother immortal and then dumped it all him. And Faust help you if you tried do something fun, like turn them into plants. This was why he stayed out of things. He raised up his claws in resigned defeat. “Alright, I’m going.”
Twilight gave no response, to busy in a valiant, but ultimately failing effort to cry quietly.
Poor girl. It would be an ugly scene when she found out the truth for herself. Discord sighed.
“Look. Just take this, okay?” He opened his paw and inside was a small wooden box. Cracking it open with his claws to show a small glass sphere, milky blue, with mist swirling gently inside. “I owe you. From back a while ago. With Tirek. If you ever need a Favor, just break this pretentious little glass thing,” Discord waved it around helpfully. “Dramatically, if possible." He gave a little grin. "I'll do what I can."
Twilight wouldn’t even look at him as he placed the box on the floor beside her. “I don’t want your favor.”
That made Discord smirk a little “I’d like to see you try to get rid of it.” His favors had a tendency to follow ponies around. Indefinitely. He made a big show of turning smartly on his heel before adding over his shoulder "And actually...it's Favor, with a capital "F." Sounds more formal that way."
"Go to Tartarus."
"Goodbye, Sparkle." Discord wasn't one for sympathy, but if Twilight had looked up at that moment she might have seen something like pity on his face.
There was no reply as he snapped his claws and disappeared from the hall.
Google Translate says that translates to "alfalfa and intelligent". Why would Celestia kill Twilight's friends?
4935466 It probably wasn't intentional, as it was perhaps something she felt the Elements needed to face.
Then again, I could never bring myself to watch another Pauly Shore movie.
As for البرسيم و ذكي
Yeah...google translate did the same thing. Must be a secret code word to ask if somepony's a prostitute in Saddle Arabia.
Not in favor of the flashback. I wanted to see more of what they are doing now.
i read it in discords voice so i thought you did fine!
Okay, so what's with the "Celestia's a murderous bitch" kick? This can only turn out two ways--- she's a murderous bitch, or she's got some half-arsed pseudorationalized reason for offing the mane six "for the greater good" or some other Nazi style utopian slogan.
4935466 I want to say it's because she didn't help them obtain immortality like she did with Twilight.
4935466
If I was to take a guess it would be to prepare Twilight for losing those she loved. I'm guessing, and I mean really guessing, that Celestia has lost friends in the past. Perhaps best friends, and I'm supposing even a husband or two, and each time it hurt. So, to prepare Twilight she figured it would be best to pull the bandaid off quickly. Sort of get it over with now and be done with it.
I know that Celestia fancies herself a chess player, but there are more than a few times that her plans backfire. Sure, Twilight is her greatest achievement, and she has even went on to become the savior of Equestria time and time again. Still, she had done this with the help of her friends. She wouldn't be where she is without them.
In this case Celestia's help has actually hurt Twilight more, and it has damaged something fragile and special. Honestly, I don't think that the bond between Celestia and Twilight will ever be repaired. I can only imagine that it will become more and more strained, and that in the end Celestia will answer for what she has done, and Twilight will pay for what she did to bring back her friends.
I'm viewing this as a tragedy, or perhaps a Greek Comedy which means only slightly fewer bad things and people dying than in a tragedy. I kind of wonder if it will have an ending similar to Hamlet. Where only a scholar and a soldier remain alive. It would make sense for that to happen. For the Alicorns to go to war. To watch death rain down from the heavens. The sun actually moving in closer destroying thousands in an attempt to subdue Twilight and bend her back to her former mentor's will.
I have a feeling that whatever ending we do end up with it will not be happy, it will not be light, but rather it will be painful, terrifying, and ugly. Faust save them.
4935518 yeah me too, although getting some context is nice.
..Are we about to be told that Twilight, despite her crazy necromancy plan and all that is actually right in doing this? That celestia is some evil chessmaster that's only there to coldheartedly break Twilight into something?
Damn you Celestia
It was good, not as good as the others chapters, but anyway nicely done.
I like where this story is going.
darn it I wish we could read that moment when she find out !!!! cliffs!!!!
4935591
Maybe it was something bigger than just Twilight and her friends, like having a full set of live, active Element Bearers for too long doing unpleasant things to the world with some sort of reverse-entropy effect.
She certainly didn't seem like she enjoyed their deaths.
My only problem with this chapter was that Discord doesn't actually tell Twilight how Celestia brought about the deaths of the rest of the mane 6.
Granted, I'm sure that will be revealed later... I'm curious NOW!
Well you have my attention
Well, Discord talking straight is better than him talking in circular mazes that shift and move with the exit moving from place to place. I liked this chapter, it's rare to see something that reveals a lot of the plot without it being just exposition.
This is interesting but I have to ask the valid question: what idiot added this fic to the Celestia is Best Pony group? Considering she's being shown as a murderer of some type, that doesn't seem like something that should belong in that group. Maybe I'm wrong but the irony is there to ridiculous levels.
I think the more intelligent translation would be "Alfalfa Monster"
4935466
At first I was a little confused until I realised that this was from the past.
Nice little chapter, in my opinion you wrote Discord well
4935909
You have to remember, there's an entire fandom of nubile young women who lust for a guy who turns people into sausages.
Actually, Hanniball in Equestria would be an interesting philosophical experiment...
4935466
Ah, but if you look at alternate translations for the words... The second possibility for Intellingent is "Clever", and the second possibility for Alfalfa is "Clover".
He's saying "Clover the Clever".
Just like 4936066 said, you'd be better off with "X years ago" than stating a date, because for all we know Celestia and Luna ruled more than one thousand years. It was a thousand years ago that shit hit the fan and everything bad happened, without much recollection of what was before.
So Twilight doesn't consider Spike to close to her or did you completely forgot about him this chapter?
I love this story the way you write it is just... Womderful. I like the way you've made Discord into a slightly more empathetic chara than he is in the series <3
Okay, so we're going to get more of an explanation on how Celestia killed 5 of the Mane 6 soon, in the next few chapters I guess.
What's interesting to me is the year posted in this chapter. 1007 Celestial Era. Assuming year 0 was the banishment of Nightmare Moon, then Twilight's friends were killed only very shortly after he became princess. As in, they did not die of old age. This would be supported by the dream in the first chapter, where Twilight is talking to Dream Celestia, saying a monster had killed them. To find out later that Celestia was responsible, that had to be shattering to Twilight.
So now I must ask a few questions: is this story going to get a dark tag? How were twilight's friends exactly replicated? What exactly did Celestia do to cause them to die?
can't help but thing, at least after the tirek incident, he would be a lot more shaken up over losing the first being, let alone pony, to ever care for him and accept him. used to death or not, it would probably be quite an impact. that or he was in denial of it to a point. shrugs
still that was a pretty nifty chapter.
Dammit, now I want to know what Discord meant in sayin that Celestia is responsible for the deaths of the other five.
Cant wait!!
im excited to learn what happens next i mean this is essencitaly is a look into the recent past for twilight will the next one involve her in her current pridacament
Yay! Discord being best character!
this is story is still not favorable for me yet, just gonna keep it in my read later list.
Oh no, I can feel it coming, it's Lines and Webs all over again. Even if Celestia isn't flat-out evil (I doubt it) this time, there's going to be Tartarus to pay indeed. The story is coming along nicely, and I'm interested to see what future Equestria is like and what Twilight will do to stop her friends from dying again.
Wait, what? Who died recently?
this was sick!!! dis6cord!!! (tech n9ne reference) I really loved it. definetly keep being amazing.
4937620
YES! You know. The meticulous plots, the web of lies, the devious deceptions. You've seen Celestia at her worst, everything a low blow, abusing of every advantage. God that was a good story and the first two chapters of this one had me thinking about L&W.
I agree that Celestia doesn't seem like a heartless bitch this time around. Though I'm sure she has a more rational reason than total and complete Order. I have no doubt Celestia will be paying, if she isn't already, for her actions. Unfortunately, Luna seems keen on helping in this one.
Twilight is talking about the rest of the mane6 that died that month; it's a flashback chapter.
Discord was written beautifully here, I loved it.
The only thing that bothered me was that Discord wasn't really sad that Flutters died. He was his FIRST EVER friend. He should at least feel a little different about her.
huh, now I want to write a fic on that...
Still leaving us hanging on the fact we don't know why Tia killed her friends...
A lot of people seem surprised to hear that Celestia was responsible for the death of Twilight's friends, which surprises me because this was stated earlier in this fic. That's why Twilight is so angry at and afraid of Celestia in the first chapters. The impression I got from said chapters is that Celestia sent the Elements to fight some danger, knowing that everyone but Twilight would die. I assume Celestia thought it was worth the cost or something, but when Twilight found out she never forgave Celestia for it.
An interesting chapter. It mostly reinforced what we already know or could infer, but seeing just how unsuspitious Twilight is is a little sad, even on top the sadness of the five dying. Speaking of death, I'm still dying to know what exactly happened, why Twilight blames Celestia, how exactly Celestia saved Twilight's life, what exactly Celestia meant by "how many times do they have to die?", and why Luna wound up forgiving Celestia (although the last might just be the result of several thousand years of sisterly love). You have given us questions, and now we beg for answers.
Also,
It's Favors, with a capital "F".
4937936 actually i think it is that it is shown that Discord was the one to sow the thought and give it more validity. originally it could have been seen as twilight being confused and mournful, but now it seems more likely.
aside for a surprising lack of emotion from discord, unless we are to infer he is in denial of his own feelings, this was an awesome chapter. it removes any doubt that tiwlight's belief and fear of celestia, while likely still uncertain, is not founded only in her unsettled mind.
4937889
I didn't notice it was a flashback chapter. I'm an idiot.
Oh Tia, why did she have to do it so suddenly and soon?
4935557 Guess you'll just have to follow the story to find out?
Just go with it, get out of your comfort zone and let your mind go
Ok, That Explained a lot...
Well, technically not a lot but it explained some things that I hadn't understood the last chapter.
But seriously, What is that thing with Celestia... I know she may not be the best princess in all Equestria (in All the World if you ask me) but she is not a murderer, maybe if you explain this more, I might understand that...
But for now... I'm Lost
What the heck? Discord, perhaps you oughta explain your accusations. Also, I want that orb for myself. It'd be awesome as all hell to have the power to call Dissy to my side.
4935561 Could be worse. Read it again, Discord wanted to make Fluttershy immortal or very long lived. But he couldn't. "Besides, there was nothing he could have done. By the time he'd come into the picture, there had been no stopping Tia." And the only difference when Discord showed up and before they met Twilight? They had the Elements of Harmony. I wonder if it's going onto the whole The elements made Twilight immortal by killing off the others. Wouldn't be the first story to do it.
Awww, as best he can, you have Discord trying to help Twilight. :(
It's Discord. If it switched, no one would've been surprised.
I'll just leave this here
4939277
He's probably blaming her for setting pony biological clocks to run out at 100 or something.
How is Discord fun to write?
4941050 no limits, no realism, no need to actually sound like you give a shit
4939289 Psst. It's a Dragon Ball.
"Faust help you" i found that part too funny for some reason.
4940880 Maybe... just maaaaaybe, Because for me that is the only Evil thing that Celestia could do
Or No?...