The 3rd Plague: Yarn
An ordinary morning at Canterlot University was shattered by a shout of urgent desperation.
"DISCORD!"
Ponies whipped their heads around as Princess Celestia burst into the lecture hall. At the front of the room, Discord, wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and smoking a pipe, stood behind a podium. The blackboard behind him had "CHAOS THEORY" written on it.
"Ah, hello, Princess Celestia. Come to sit in on my lecture?"
Celestia strode purposefully down the aisle, drawing excited murmurs and whispers. "Discord, there's an emergency down in Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle could use your help." She looked around at the startled faces of the students, then frowned. "Come with me, we should discuss this in private." In a golden flash, she was gone.
"Well, students, it appears you're going to have a free period," Discord said sadly. "For our next class, please read pages 327 through 243, in that order, in the textbooks I'll be giving you next Thursday." With that, he vanished, leaving a crowd of confused collegiates staring at each other and shrugging.
Discord found Celestia in the tower which once belonged to Twilight Sparkle. "And how may I be of assistance this fine day, Celestia?"
Celestia whipped around sharply. "What do you know of ancient Anugyptian curses?"
Discord blinked. "Anugyptian curses? You'll need to be more specific, I'm afraid. Every Anugyptian tribe had curses for everything from locusts to hangnails."
"The curse of Queen Neferkitti."
Discord's eyes fell out of his head. Then his head fell off his body. Then the rest of his mismatched parts fell apart. His eyes blinked up at Celestia. "Ne-Neferkitti?"
"Yes. Neferkitti."
Discord reassembled himself and shuddered. "Don't tell me some idiot actually brought her back from the dead."
"According to the report from Twilight Sparkle, that is precisely what has happened," Celestia said. "Already, all the water in Ponyville has turned into milk, and I've just received word that—"
"Cats, cats, yes, I know," Discord said distractedly. "And it's only going to get stranger from there." He chuckled. "They really knew how to party in those days."
Celestia groaned. "Discord...please, I'm asking you, go to Ponyville and—"
"Oh, I would love to, Your Highness, but I'm afraid I can't," Discord said.
Celestia frowned. "You would refuse me, after I have forgiven you time and again and you have yet to fully regain my trust?"
Discord sighed. "Look, Celie baby..." He put a paw around Celestia and leaned close. "Just between you and me...this is literally a problem I can't help with."
Celestia brushed his paw off and stepped aside, then glanced at him. "I'm afraid I don't understand," she said. "Is not chaos your area of expertise?"
Discord grimaced. "I know it sounds like chaos magic, which is right up my alley, and if it were that simple, I'd put Ponyville right in a heartbeat...well, maybe. If a certain purple pony princess asked nicely. But the thing is...I can't counteract anything Neferkitti does."
"And why is that?"
"Because Neferkitti's power comes from the one type of magic neither of us has any dominion over," Discord said. "The magic of death."
Celestia frowned in confusion. "I don't quite follow."
Discord began to pace, puffing on the pipe which had reappeared along with the tweed jacket. "You and Luna control the sun and the moon, both of which give life and nourishment, yes?"
Celestia nodded.
"And all you ponies that control the weather, the seasons, the animals...everything pony magic does is, in some way or another, ultimately tied to the very lifeforce of Equestria, am I right?"
"Yes, of course," Celestia agreed. "Even dark magic such as King Sombra's is, in its own way, part of the balance of nature."
"Which is why it's impossible to destroy dark magic altogether," Discord said. "Only suppress it." He blew a smoke ring shaped like a hawk eating a snake. "The same is true of chaos magic." He gave Celestia a sharp, piercing look. "Tell me, Celestia. In all the time you've known me, in all the quarrels we've had...during all that time I ruled Equestria and amused myself with all your precious little ponies..." He narrowed his eyes. "Did I ever once kill a single one of your subjects?"
Celestia blinked, her brow furrowing. "I...honestly don't know," she admitted. "I don't remember anypony ever actually dying back then, but things were very chaotic, and—"
"The answer is no," Discord interrupted. "I have never taken a life. Turned ponies upside down, brainwashed them, driven them insane, flung them into other dimensions, yes. And yes, those are terrible things and I assure you I'm quite ashamed of myself." He tossed his pipe into the air; it turned into a flying fish and swam through a wall. "But at no point in all my long years of life have I ever directly caused the death of another living being. And do you know why that is?"
"I'm almost afraid to ask," Celestia said, a faintly nauseated look on her face.
"Because death is the ultimate expression of order," Discord said. "Death is an absolute. It is the inescapable finality of life. It is the very antithesis of chaos." He cracked his back and let out a loud sigh.
Celestia blinked, her muzzle crinkling. "That...is very profound, actually," she said. "And makes quite a bit of sense. But I don't understand what it has to do with what is most assuredly chaos running loose in Ponyville."
Discord sighed. "Celestia, the dead coming back to life is...it's unnatural. It defies the order of the world. It spits in the face of an absolute law of existence." He gave Celestia the most solemn, serious look she'd ever seen on his face. "Life is chaos, Celestia. Life is chaos, and death is order. Now, given that, what do you think undeath is?"
Celestia frowned. "An abomination."
"An abomination," Discord repeated, "which will resist the magic of life in every form."
"Including yours," Celestia said, comprehension dawning. She shook her head. "So how can we stop Neferkitti, if the magic of life won't work against her or her curse?"
Discord sighed. "You just answered your own question," he said.
Celestia paused, tilting her head. As the answer came to her, she went pale, her ears and wings drooping.
* * * * *
The situation in Ponyville had deteriorated by lunchtime.
Despite their best efforts, Twilight Sparkle and her friends had completely failed to make any headway against the tidal wave of cats swarming through Ponyville. Other ponies were trying to help, but so many ponies had been clawed, scratched, or were suffering so severely from cat allergies that most of Ponyville had shut themselves up tight in their homes, occasionally expelling the odd hissing, spitting cat.
The cats were hiding everywhere, shredding things, tearing up flowerbeds, using the dirt roads as a giant litterbox, and making a terrible racket.
And then, just past noon...
"Twilight!" Rainbow Dash cried as she flew up to Twilight and Fluttershy, who were still rescuing ponies from the cats in the streets. "Somethin' REALLY weird's goin' on out by Fluttershy's cottage!"
"M-my cottage?" Fluttershy squeaked. "M-my safe place?"
"What's going on?" Twilight asked.
"You gotta see this for yourselves," Rainbow said. She led the way; Twilight and a panicking Fluttershy followed in her wake.
As they neared the stream at the edge of town, a ball of lime-green yarn whizzed past them. Twilight skidded to a halt, turning to stare. "What?!"
Fluttershy's irises shrank to pinpricks. "M-my..."
Twilight and Rainbow were blown aside as Fluttershy sped off to her cottage. They only had time to blink at each other before a horrified scream of rage shook Ponyville.
"MY YARN! MY KNITTING! YOU BAD, BAD KITTIES!"
A dozen cats ran back the way they'd come, bouncing unraveling balls of yarn between them. Fluttershy gave chase, screaming bloody murder.
As Twilight and Rainbow watched, another ball of yarn, maroon this time, flew past. Shaking herself, Twilight sped off to Fluttershy's cottage.
The inside was a mess. Fluttershy's animals were locked in combat with several cats, while several more were streaming in and out of a secret door hidden behind a bookcase. Every now and then, a ball of yarn bounced up the hidden stairs; a line of cats would bounce the yarn out the front door and send it flying into Ponyville.
Twilight frowned and teleported past the cats into the secret room below. She stared in astonishment at what she found.
Against all logic, against all reason, Fluttershy had a cavernous cellar, lit by a single bare electric bulb, which was full of knit crafts. Everywhere she looked, there were objects made from yarn—butterflies, bunnies, goblins, flowers, stars, moons, and even a giant crochet dragon.
There were also dozens of balls of yarn, and the cats were getting into it and making a mess. Even more cats were methodically tearing apart some of the knitcrafts and winding the loose yarn back into balls.
Twilight's ears wilted. "What..."
"Whoa!" Rainbow said from behind her. "Where'd all this come from?"
Twilight frowned. "Looks like Fluttershy has a secret hobby," she said.
Suddenly, three cats pounced on Rainbow, winding yarn around her wings and hooves. She cried out in alarm as she was suspended from the ceiling in a giant cat's cradle. "GAH! Get me down from here!" She flailed helplessly around, tail lashing wildly.
Twilight watched the cats prowl around her, mischievous grins on their faces. Her ears fell. In a burst of light, she and Rainbow Dash were outside the cottage, hovering over a yarn ball brigade of cats.
Angel Bunny was wound up tight in a ball of pink yarn, looking utterly put out. Many of Fluttershy's other critter friends were similarly ensnared.
"Oh boy," Twilight muttered.
* * * * *
Somehow—and try as she might, Applejack still couldn't figure out exactly how it had happened—she and Rarity had managed to get stranded on the roof of Sugar Cube Corner during the cat stampede. While Rarity was throwing a tantrum, Applejack had tried to find a safe way to get down without getting buried in scratching, hissing, angry cats.
And then things got worse.
Now, not only were they stranded on the roof of Sugar Cube Corner, they were also completely ensnared in dozens of strands of yarn. As far as the eye could see, dozens of colors of yarn had been woven into an intricate cat's cradle in which at least a dozen ponies were trapped. The enormous, complicated yarn construct left dozens more ponies at a loss, as between the cats, the yarn, and the general confusion, nopony was quite sure how to navigate the streets—or skies—of Ponyville anymore.
"Nggh!" Applejack grunted as she pulled a hoof free from one loop of yarn, only two find it ensnared in two more. "Consarnit! Ah can't get—GAH!—loose from this crazy cat's cradle!"
"We're positively going to die up here, alone and forgotten!" Rarity wailed.
"Dang it all, Rarity! You gotta have SOME kinda spell t' deal with this!"
Rarity sniffled. "I...I don't think so, darling! I have no knitting needles, and pulling on the yarn with my magic is just as ineffective as what you're doing...!"
"Can't you, Ah dunno, teleport us offa this roof?"
"Don't you think I'd have already done that if I could?" Rarity said, all traces of drama switched off like a light. "In all the time we've known each other, have you ever once known me to teleport?"
Applejack paused in her struggles. "Well...now that you mention it, no," she said. She scratched her head, which led to her ear getting tied up in a double knot of yarn. "Y'mean you can't?"
"Hardly," Rarity sniffed.
"Huh," Applejack said. "Ah jes' thought that was somethin' all unicorns could do. Seein' as Twilight does it all th' time an' all."
"In case you hadn't noticed, Applejack, I am not Twilight Sparkle," Rarity said acidly. "Her magic is on a level far beyond your ordinary unicorn. Even before she became an alicorn."
"Well, yeah, Ah know that an' all," Applejack said. "Ah jes'..." She sighed. "Forget it."
Rarity sighed. "I'm sorry, Applejack. I'm just a bit..."
"Ah know," Applejack said. "It's okay." A long, uncomfortable moment passed in silence. "So...is there anything you can do about all this?"
Rarity paused and tilted her head. "As a matter of fact, there is." Her horn lit up.
The yarn ensnaring Applejack turned mostly black, with lovely brown accents that matched her complexion.
"There," Rarity said. "At least now you're in fashion for fall."
"Swell," Applejack said with half-lidded eyes.
* * * * *
"GET BACK HERE, YOU—!" Fluttershy screeched as she flew after several yarn-bouncing cats.
By the side of the road, Lyra and Bon Bon hung upside-down from a lamppost, bound tail to hoof in bright yarn.
"Wonder what's got her so wound up?" Bon Bon wondered.
Lyra glared at her.
"And where's Princess Twilight?" Bon Bon asked. "Is she just off woolgathering while all of Ponyville is wrapped up in misery?"
"If we ever get down from here, I am going to bite you," Lyra seethed.
* * * * *
It had taken over a hour for Rosetta Stone and Amber Glow to fight their way through the chaos in the streets and make their way out to Princess Twilight's castle. Fortunately, none of the madness that had overtaken Ponyville had touched the castle, and Twilight's young dragon assistant Spike had shown them to the library. Between the ample volumes of information the princess had on her own shelves and the materials the two of them had brought with them, they had almost every scrap of data on Anugypt the EEHS library in Canterlot had.
Unfortunately, it still wasn't enough.
Two hours after they'd started searching, Spike rushed in. "Uhh, guys? Not that I wanna rush you or anything, but things are getting REALLY weird down in Ponyville..."
"I know I had something here in my...notes..." Rosetta Stone trailed off, his ears pinning back as he stared at a page of his notebook.
"Vell?" Amber Glow demanded. "Did you find something?"
Rosetta Stone turned to her, face drawn and pale. "W-well...there is one other reference...listed...r-reference on...on Anugyptian curses..."
"Und?" Amber Glow bit off impatiently. "Spit it out, dummkopf!"
Rosetta Stone floated his notes over to her shakily. She frowned and looked down at the page. Her own ears fell flat, her eyes wide and disbelieving. "But...nein..."
Twilight Sparkle appeared in a magenta flash. "Any luck?" she asked tiredly.
"W-well," Rosetta Stone said, swallowing heavily. "There...might be a way to stop all this," he said.
"Yes?" Twilight's wings fluttered. "What is it?"
The two unicorns exchanged a solemn glance. Rosetta coughed. "Umm...it...it might require a certain, umm...book..." He adjusted his glasses. "Which...which may or may not even exist, you understand, it's all very vague and...and..."
"SPIT IT OUT!" Amber Glow roared.
Rosetta Stone jumped in alarm, then turned sheepishly to Twilight. "It's, it's, well..." He took a deep breath. "There's a legend of a book that was sacred to the cats of Anugypt." He looked at Amber Glow, then back at Twilight. "It's called the Nekonomicon."
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It's hardly the most original of ideas, but it's a concept you can do a few interesting things with. Let's say, for example, that not even Naughtykitty can undo her magic - that milk will never be water again, in any way, ever. To do it, she killed every part of it that wasn't milk, and since dead things can never actually come back to life... boom, instant magic system that's actually meaningfully different.
I hate you so much.
...I thought my D&D crew just made that book up... On a lark... CURSE YOU NEFERKITTI! Oh, wait, that's what got us here in the first place... BLEEP YOU NEFERKITTI!
...the Nekonomicon?
So Twilight's going to fight Neferkitti with death magic?
6672279 Who said Twilight's going to be the one fighting her?
Oh boy.
6672279 You and my both, brother. I facehoofed when I read that…
My bits are on Rosetta Stone bring Nefekitti to heel. LOL, "heel!"
The Lyra puns were my favorite part of the chapter.
Really enjoying this! Like others have said, this seems to be a bit more than 'mildly annoying'.
Not really buying the reason for why Discord can't help though. He can create solid objects, so if he finds Neferkitti why can't he just snap a cage around her? I mean, unless the fact that the cage was made by chaos magic allows her to corrode it with her magic -
... she'd be able to do that couldn't she? Oooh boy. This is gonna be fun.
Oh, this is glorious. Fluttershy going insane when her secret knitting was disturbed was my favorite, Bon Bon is still doing puns, maybe that will be a running gag, and I was really surprised that Discord is apparently a professor and Celestia's school for gifted unicorns or somewhere at least. What's the next curse going to be, all the food in Ponyville turning into cat food like tunafish?
Oh Bonnie...
Love all the puns, cat related or otherwise. Great chapter!
6672358 Have you seen The Mummy? If you have, you'll know exactly why that wouldn't work. They'll try it sooner or later, of course.
6672375
... no.
The Nekonomicon needs to be absolutely adorable, though!
You got a like just for that pun!
Well fighting Death magic with Death magic this is going to be good, also Nekonomicon? When I read that a image of a cat-girl with a human skin book came to mind. Anyway one last thing, Welcome back Moth even though you never left :P
I must admit that I find Discords "life = chaos;death = order" theory very perplexing.
6672483 What's perplexing about it? All life is by definition chaos. Every action taken by living things impacts the world in unpredictable ways. Death, by contrast, is the one universal constant: all things die. As such, death is the ultimate expression of order: the one universal force that everything in nature must bow to.
It's pretty basic stuff, really.
6672279
6672399
As long as it is nothing like the Necronomicon we should be good.
I'll be honest, I thought that Celestia was about to accuse Discord for all the shenanigas at first.
I don't know about the yarn though. I mean, the water becoming milk and the sudden invasion of cats both seemed to happen from out of nowhere, while the all of the yarn came from a pre-existing source.
Unless, The only moment Neferkitty used her magic was to turn the water into milk, which in turn drew the cats, which in turn unraveled the entire yarn over Ponyville. That's an interesting idea actuall, that each plague causes the next one to appear.
Also... "Nekonomicon"? Seriously? "Neko" and "Necronomicon" aren't even related to actual egyptian culture! However...
WHY DO I LOVE THE NEKONOMICON SO MUCH?!
6672519 You on second thought, those concepts can be quite philosophical.
Additionally, did you use Fluttershy's secret hobby from the MLP comics? Because I still remember reading that one before.
...I almost feel sorry for anyone taking that class.
These don't seem like mild annoyances. More like severe annoyances.
Plague 1: Milk
Plague 2: Cats
Plague 3: Yarn
Plague 4: ???
Plague 5: ???
Plague 6: ???
Plague 7: ???
Plague 8: ???
Plague 9: ???
Plague 10: ???
Given how everything's cat-based, I predict some of the future plagues to involve Scratching Posts, Litter Boxes, Dingle Balls, Fleas, and Shedding (perhaps a plague to make ponies shed like cats).
I'm not sure I see how turning water to milk, summoning cats, or yarn counts as death magic, but Discord's assessment makes a lot of sense.
And poor Flutters...
6672519
And you could as well also put the other way around: Life creates structure and forms systems. Death is decay and the eventual breakdown of everything back into chaotic formlessness. It's not like this is some kind of common sense thing that can only be interpreted one way.
The... Nekomonicon. I think I'll borrow Lyra's comment. I am going to bite you for that.
6672706 Okay I have been seeing you everywhere I go. (Or at least your picture
)
6672741
I read the featured box a lot. Wouldn't surprise me.
I love the description of Discord falling apart when he hears about Neferkitti. It is so easy to picture.
Nekonomicon......
You gotta give it up for Oscar worthy wordplay like that.
6672551
That idea is also the main element of almost every attempt to give the Biblical Ten Plagues a scientific explanation.
6672519
That was one of Pratchett's ideas with the Auditors.
Of course, in reality, there is no such thing as 'order' in nature because of what is known as emergence. Everything obeys the same physical laws but those laws are compatible with life and with all of the chaos that we see (and not compatible with the specific types of chaos that we do not see but should otherwise expect to see). Life as we know it is supervenient on chemistry, its rules and processes emerging from the behaviour of molecules just as chemistry is supervenient on subatomic physics and societies are supervenient on life.
6672265
That idea reminds me of the roleplayer who tried to argue that he could bluff someone with his pickpocketing skill because truth was like a pocket of the mind...
Firstly, life is a process, not a substance, and even if it is associated with a unique life-substance, it relates a living thing to the corresponding dead thing. The idea of a special "death magic" is the inherently dualistic idea that death and only death has a particular physical significance and therefore a form of physical substance (physicists are good at formulating physical significance in terms of substance), implying that the processes of life have some special physical quality (feel free to call it elan vital) that their cessation has magical effects that necessarily cannot be effected by ending any non-life process (the evidence in the show is consistent with the existence of such a substance, but also with the nonexistence of such a substance). Essentially, remove the life-quality from a cow and you get a cow carcass; add life-quality to that carcass and you get the original cow.
Secondly, even if such a quality (and its associated magic field and magic particle) existed, it could not transmute one nonliving thing into another nonliving thing. A nonliving thing cannot be killed or resurrected. Death magic could reasonably explain the cats (created from the ghosts of the millions of cats who lived and died near what is now Ponyville over thousands of years), but not the milk. What we know from canon can transform one nonliving thing into another nonliving thing is the "normal" magic possessed by ponies and Discord.
6672519 I like this idea. Mind if I swipe it and use it somewhere else?
6672832
We all know, for example, that all milk is really 95% water. Therefore, let's say that all milk is, conceptually speaking, water in potentia. Since, by the mystical principle of "quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur" everything contains in its essence its own opposite. Therefore, water contains in principle conceptual not-water, some of which is milk. By killing and removing the water and all the other not-water, you are left with only the milk. Thus, transformation by death magic.
I have out-bullshitted you. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I feel I should join the hate train for the nekonomicon, but I am to busy trying to picture exactly what it looks like. Maybe bound in feathers, coat, and still living skin from a dozen or more sources, with a screaming face on one side, possibly from some pony or sphinx. I just hope they memorize the spell right or Neferkitty will be the least of their worries.
6672904
Hate train nothing, the idea is hilarious. The pun is what people are groaning about.
6672910 Puns don't get hate trains?
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah ...
6672874 Go for it.
They're going to need to get the jackal god of the dead... What exactly would be a good dog pun for Anubis?
So what's in the Nekonomicon, a dog whistle to call for Anubis and his jackal army?
6672483
Think of it like death as part of entropy (as in the overall tendancy for the universe to move to towards a state of inert uniformity). Can't get much more ordered and uniform that nothing ever moving again,
Nice looking fic so far.
6673379
You mean this army?
I Know who can help! Quick, somepony find Derpy!!
WE'RE TOO LATE!!!
The... Nekonomicon...?
.... oh dear....
I have this sudden mental image of Ponies possessed by Demon cats doing demon cat things.
6673107 Seth, Anubis, Seth!
Good boy!
6673475
The image you linked me to doesn't work, but if you are talking about this army.
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mummy/images/6/68/Mummy1.gif/revision/latest?cb=20071115010917
I was more thinking of a stampede of dogs, but this is a more awesome idea.
quick summon a Nekomancer
ufunk.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cat-man.jpg
Ooooooo... never say that with a scientist around.
Dead things undergo quite chaotic disorganization of their finely balanced biochemical structure.
If anything, death is the victory of chaos over the body's attempt to maintain itself in perfect working order, a little thing called 'homeostasis'. Life is the very epitome of balanced, ordered existence. Death is the return to disarray.
I would put it a different way for the terms of Discord's lack of premeditated murder. Dead things can't do anything anymore. They're very boring (unless you're one of those twisted necrophiliacs). You can't tease a dead pony or driven them crazy. They either decompose or fossilize. That's about it.
An entirely dead, frozen world might be more of a form of unchanging order. Something like our Moon, where an astronaut's footprint might remain for thousands of years before the very slow electrostatic movement of the lunar regolith and slight moonquakes erased it.
Chaos and order are hardly cut and dried things, and in the more philosophical cases depend almost entirely upon personal interpretations.
I don't know whether to applaud or strangle you for this pun... good job.
why is it that i don't understand the pun of Nekonomicon? am i stupid or is there something i haven't seen yet?
6674357 You pretty much have to be an anime fan (or speak Japanese or BE Japanese) to get this one. "Neko" is Japanese for "cat".