Window Shopping

by Parallel Black

7 - Extremely Intense Peace

Chaos was beginning to erupt in small pockets throughout Pezulma. News of what had happened at the Una Magnifico circus would make the headlines for days or even weeks to come, and a rich griffon had made a scene when she discovered two of the crystal statues she’d ordered had been shattered back into useless shards, when it was found that they were flawed. In a short tantrum she’d smashed up a number of tables at the adjacent cafe, earning a new entry on her criminal record, and the ire of everyone in town.

In a surprisingly orderly fashion, Discord was reading a list. With one of his glowing pens he had marked off his various goals for the day and added new ones as the situation called for it. Being completely ethereal in nature, the dull, grey hologram turned Discord’s chaotic thoughts into a tangible language that only he could understand. As his many eyes scanned the land below him, seeking thoughts, emotions, energies that seemed out of place, the lists updated as the information poured in. It was his own personal brand of omniscience.

He grinned as he felt the mild panic begin to swell over at the circus as the ringmaster’s absence drew on longer and longer, and marked off another goal. The white paint he’d sold to an unsuspecting homeowner was starting to turn back to its normal garish blue-pink-green combo just as he was finishing up his roof. He could almost hear the yell from across town. It was always nice to explore new methods of causing mayhem every once in a while.

Now, he looked to the biggest and most important item on his list. Ironically, it involved stopping more chaos than everything he’d done that day combined, but it needed to be done all the same: “Find and remove the source of Dark Magic”. In other words, find and, potentially, re-kill the necromancer. He’d scanned the entire town twice over and narrowed down the epicenter of Dark Magic to the poorer areas to the north.

Because of that, it had become home to some of the less friendly examples of Una Magna’s people. Streets were dirty, windows were smashed, homes were empty, plans were made and items were hoarded. Left to its own devices, Una Magna would have to deal with the infestation of crime for many years.

In that respect, it was better not to have a corpse-raising griffon stalking the streets as well, wasn’t it?

Discord stopped flying. It reeked. The dark magic signature was somewhere in these streets. He floated down, invisible to the naked eye, and began to search. If any of the homes here had still been inhabited, he knew they wouldn’t be anymore. Only dead things could be found here now. A bird sitting in a gutter pipe above him let out a slow, pained squawk. Its feathers were tattered and its eyes had gone glassy and blind. Even the local wildlife hadn’t been spared.

Upon command, the bird tried to fly down into the draconequus’ outstretched hand, but fell thanks to its uneasy legs. Discord clasped both hands over it, the talons to fix the damage and the paw to provide the warmth, and, with dull flash of cyan energy, released it once again. The bird unfurled its feather-filled wings and flew away, good as new. At the very least he could fix what hadn’t died yet.

A few houses down he felt it; a spike of energy. He de-mentalized his list and his mood took another dip as the dark magic washed over him. It was coming from a bungalow towards the end of the street. Rundown and overgrown, it had clearly been abandoned before the current situation drove most people out of this end of town. Whatever it once meant to its previous owner it would have to be burned to the ground to remove the vile energies. At least, that would be the case were Discord not there.

He held up a hand and the energies diverted around him, the nearby reality ceasing to recognize him as an object that could be moved through. His steps landed a centimetre above the old stone slabs that made up the pathway leading to the front door, and the door frame bent to allow the spot of emptiness through, before seamlessly shifting back to its normal appearance. To anyone who was capable of seeing such things, Discord was currently a big, black oval shaped hole moving slowly through space.

He came to a stop in the middle of the home. A few of the walls were starting to show holes and so was the ceiling, from which the darkness poured like liquid. With a grim look on his face he made his way upstairs. Behind him he left the dark magic, crystallized in mid air as he walked, to prevent it from spreading any further. All that stood between him and the practitioner was a single doorway, and the griffon didn’t seem to have noticed that his energies were no longer leaving the house. Then, Discord looked into the room, and got a surprise.

Discord made a double-take as he saw the wrong familiar face standing in a pentagram where the dark magic was at its strongest; Applejack. Or at least, an Applejack. A clone, presumably created from whatever tiny hairs the creator had managed to find on the real one’s scrunchie. She was a perfect recreation, visually, aside from missing a hat and a second scrunchie. Her eyes stared blankly ahead at nothing, the heart pumping both magic and blood, but everything beyond that was incomplete.

“A Body, Mind and Magic. The kiddo was halfway there,” Discord commented, his eyes lighting up with an odd mixture of anger and curiosity at the sight. “You must be trying to replace the real Applejack with this shoddy excuse for a Being. Necromancer you may be, but life-giver you are not.”

Letting down his space-time defenses, Discord tapped the vessel on its head, inserting an invisible presence that would serve as the thing’s Consciousness. In that instant, the Applejack’s eyes blinked as they filled with something akin to life. “A-er-a…” it spoke.

“Hello,” Discord greeted the clone.

“I-I’m Applejack,” the clone replied with all the emotion of a tape recorder. The voice was the same, but the complexity of a real personality was clearly lacking. It was looking at him now, likely because he was the only other person in the room. “I’m Applejack!” it repeated.

“Yes. Yes you are,” Discord grinned. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re an obstacle, sugarcube!”

His face lit up with joy. “Hehe! Right you are! Ohhh the fun I could have with a thing like you…” Looking over the copy in greater detail, Discord found an enchantment surrounding its legs; likely something to keep it in position after the “kill.applepony” command was installed. “Tell me.. would you like a shortcut to Applejack?” he asked.

“Yes! I need to kill the nurse!”

He frowned. The nurse? Why the nurse? “And why do you need to kill the nurse?”

The clone went silent.

Of course, Discord thought. He may have forgotten to give her the ability to actually get to Doración, but at least he remembered to keep his plans mostly a secret. He leaned back up and stuck his talon into the fabric of the air, and pulled open a portal. “You can find your target a lot faster if you take this route instead of having to move through physical space.”

With a click of his fingers the enchantment was broken, and the clone immediately leapt at him. A set of plant-munching teeth nipped and nabbed helplessly at his neck, and the clone’s hooves, strong as they were, did nothing to hurt the draconequus. Discord could only laugh as it happened, that a mere century-old individual thought he was strong enough to create something that could threaten him. He grabbed the Applejack by the scruff of her neck and tossed her headlong through the portal, and quickly dived in behind her.

The cottage vanished behind them and everything went black. Here, in this middle ground between dimensions, nothing existed but those who found themselves floating in it. Likewise, the need for things like air, sustenance and thought ceased to be. To any normal pony it would be absolutely and instantaneously deadly, but the half-being currently flailing around in confusion was not a normal pony. Good thing, too. It made the landing much easier to stomach.

The clone of Applejack Smith felt itself ripping apart and then springing back together again, like a wobbling, gelatinous mass that had transcended the third dimension and wanted to go right back where it knew it was safe. It felt a solid surface beneath its hooves, and the sensation of air, thoughts and time returned to it. Discord landed a few feet from it, looking a fair bit worse for wear. His fur had lost its colour and his arms, with which he gesticulated all of his emotions, had become thin and ragged. He looked less like the colourful lord of chaos and more like an angel of death.

The smile on his face and the amusement that was plain to see in his eyes showed he was still the same old fool as before. He scratched his chest with one set of arms and stretched the other, getting used to his other form once again. “I would apologise for the sudden change of appearance, but… eh, you’re barely capable of emotion as it is so I doubt you’re all that bothered.”

“Where is the nurse?” the clone predictably asked.

“Nowhere,” Discord replied. He motioned down the road they were stood on. Behind them the world fell away into the black void. “Come. Do you want to see the people you’ll be spending your time with from now on?”

The Applejack was about to repeat her demand, this time with more anger over being lied to, but something caught her attention first. A presence whom she was programmed to find familiar was coming closer to them. Looking down the road, she saw that the little world they’d landed in was not empty. In fact, considering the large complex of stone and steel floating ahead of them, it looked quite populated.

“You should consider yourself lucky, Applejack,” Discord stated. “This place is inaccessible to anything that possesses a Soul.” He glanced past her as a lavender figure came to a silent stop behind the newcomer.

“But that is my purpose. I am to kill the nurse and help Lord Skelebeak take over Equestria!”

He poked her on the nose. “And then you will cease to exist once he’s done with you.”

She stomped a hoof in a mimicry of emotion. “That isn’t true! I am to take control of the Element of Honesty and prepare for when the others will... “ She went silent again, realizing she was spilling the beans.

Discord grinned. “Something I find curious and sad about clones like you, is the fact that your creators have no idea how little it takes to create a living, breathing individual. They all seem to think of Golems as machines; mindless, emotionless creations that can be thrown out as soon as they start showing ‘oddities’ such as the one you just displayed.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I am nothing more than Lord Skelebeak’s creation. I only have the purpose he gave me!”

Discord’s smile changed to a glower and he leaned down to her. “You do know what I’m talking about, because that information is programmed into every Golem and half-Being as they come into existence.”

From behind the golem, a second copy watched with mild interest on her face. The Twilight, this one possessing a pair of wings and a mane that had a slight weightlessness to it, listened intently to every word the Applejack clone spoke. A subtle movement from Discord told her it was time to intervene. The Applejack was growing agitated, proving Discord’s words truer the louder it denied them.

As she felt a hoof on her shoulder, the clone twisted round and almost managed to connect a hoof with the alicorn’s face, only to be frozen in place within a perfect sphere of purple magic. The alicorn bowed to both of them.

“Welcome, Master Discord,” she spoke with a flat regality, like she had spent the day holding court for the nobles and their petty requests. “And welcome, Miss Smith.”

For a short while, the Applejack seemed confused. The pony before her was at once Twilight Sparkle, yet not. She was completely the wrong pony, and yet she had set off her senses anyway. “Who are you?” she asked.

Head still bowed, the Twilight responded. “I am a clone of Twilight Sparkle, created via the Haycartes’ Curse spell. I am the second leader of this place, after Master Discord.”

Discord began walking down the road with the two clones behind him. “This little pocket dimension is a refuge for those who don’t belong anywhere,” he explained. “Every once in a while I come across a clone of some description that has begun to transcend their original purpose and parameters. When I do, I bring them here to live together, and to find some other use for their existence.”

The Applejack realized what that meant. “But I need to carry out Lord Skelebeak’s will! I need to take Applejack’s place, and-”

“Not anymore you don’t,” Discord interrupted, twisting round to face her again. “From this moment forth you won’t have a purpose aside from whatever you find for yourself, assuming you grow to become complex enough for that.” He motioned to the alicorn. “For example, while Twilight here was created via Haycartes’ Curse for the sake of a mock celebrity appearance, she decided to travel down a different path compared to the real version, and continued her studies into magic.”

“This is an orphanage…?” Applejack asked.

Discord took note of the slight waver to the clone’s voice. “You could put it like that, yes. An orphanage for purposeless Golems and other such mortal Unbeings. Somewhere you can leave behind your shallow reason for existing, and find one that suits you more.”

She paused. “But… I have a purpose.”

“I know,” Discord replied. “But you also have potential, and that matters so much more.”