Discordian Revelations

by LemonDrizzle

Dark Paths Taken

Dark Paths Taken

Lightning and thunder and rain hurtled around the figures that wheeled and soared and erupted across the dark, grey skies. Below them, great waves of rain water coated the land, smothering and choking the green, luscious fields that should have been visible. The heads of trees could be seen, just the wilting, sickly green leaves poking out of the great flood of water, almost like a hand reaching out for salvation from its terrible fate. In the distance, a small cluster of bright, shining lights could be seen. Civilization. A small, quiet town, home to only those who wanted to escape from the hustle and bustle of the larger, cramped cities. Canterlot itself was one of these cities, ponies constantly mashed and crushed and squashed against each other as they would desperately try to get to their destination. Nay, this small content town had none of that. It was a quaint place, quiet and caring and neighbourly. Yet it was here that the battle was fought. Above a seemingly inconspicuous village, a village that would be surprised if they were to find that the rain had fallen minutes early or that the grass had grown an extra inch from the ordinary. The sight, the location of a battle that threatened to swallow up the calm town and leave it clawing for its sanity and its reason.

The three figures clashed together at once, lightning flaring up around them, illuminating them in a great flash of bold, yellow light. Oh, they were a sight to behold. First, the smallest of them, a midnight blue speck of an Alicorn was engulfed by the light, showing the quivering villagers below a brief glimpse of her glory. Dark ,deep blue wings sprouted from her side, feathers and plumage rustling softly even amidst the battling, tarnishing storm. A deep, sea blue coat that seemed to cast a holy glow across her body, as if the night sky itself had come down and wrapped itself around her form. Blue, billowing hair flowed from her head and her rump, what appeared to be tiny, inconceivable stars twinkling rapidly in her stunning mane. A crescent moon etched onto her flank, a symbol of the power and the bravery and the royalty that was the Lunar Princess. Ruler of the night, bringer of the moon, a shining star in the darkness of space.

The next figure to appear, nanoseconds after the smaller Alicorn, was a much larger, much more regal looking Alicorn. She had a bright, white coat that seemed to shine through the murky depths of the stormy clouds, almost brightening the sky itself. There was a tenseness to this one, a deep unbound weight that seemed to press her down, even from where the villagers were watching they could see it. She seemed to have the very sky resting down upon her back as she struggled with the task at hand, the task of taking Equestria from the claws of a monstrosity. Her mane was a vibrant, rainbow like colour, moving calmly even though the wind howled unreasonably around her. It flowed and floated and disobeyed the, as of yet unfounded, rules of gravity. Two glorious, majestic wings sprouted from her back, stretching metres upon metres apart until she seemed to take up half of the sky. The most distinguishable feature, however, was the sun mark that lay upon her flank. Tales had been said of the mare with the sun on her flank, how she battled and fought and protected the ponies from the dark god that had them trapped like rats in a maze. A goddess before her rise, a beacon of hope in the swirling dark void.

Finally, the last figure made himself known, the lightning blazing its path behind him as he reared back his head to laugh menacingly. The dark god himself, battling the embodiments of hope atop the blissfully boring town of Ponyville. The head of a pony had never looked quite so wrong, as if it had been crudely moulded like clay. Golden eyes shined gruesomely in the darkness, red pupils mere pinpricks in the endless sea of gold. A long, sharp snaggletooth hung from his upper lip, twisted and lion-esque in its imperfect form. Bushy, albino eyebrows and a small, carefully ungroomed beard sprouted from the face of chaos itself. A mane of pitch blackness ran down the length of his neck, none of the finesse and beauty that the Alicorns manes had shown was distinguishable in the dark depths of the fur. A blue goat horn sprouted from the left side of his head, mirrored imperfectly by the deer's horn that resided on the right side of his head. A dark brown, furry coat wrapped around most of his body. A brown that vaguely resembled the darkest chocolate known to pony kind. His right arm was a brutal looking lion's paw, white claws visible even in the storm. A pale yellow colour, almost ill looking, the lion paw was clenched tightly together resembling a fist. The left arm, the talons of an eagle, stretched and writhed in a brighter yellow complexion, glowing softly with an unholy light. A large, leathery bat wing hung from his back, tendrils and veins crawling across its dark surface as it beat up and down in an unnatural formation. On the other side, a sea blue pegasus wing stood tall and proud, flapping to keep in time with the unnaturally large bat wing.

His lower body was no less deformed then his upper body. A cloven, goat leg resided on the left side of his body. Once more, the colour of the body area was a caramelized brown colour, the hoof itself of deep black, almost like obsidian. His right leg, if you could call it that, resembled that of a dragons perfectly. Green the colour of bright, living leaves flickered across the scaled surface, the leg itself ending in a clawed, lethal foot. Further down though, the dark brown coat melded into scales of a glorious red colour as the tail of the beast came into view. The final medley of mismatched horror stretched behind him, the tail of a certain, venomous snake, the red menace twisted and curled through the air, occasionally whipping outwards as the flaps on the end caught the air and fluttered.

They clashed once more, the beast and the royalty. Swooping and zooming and shrieking towards one another in a disjointed dance. Bright, magical light flared around the twin sisters as they began to foolishly shoot great, arcing beams of magic from the long, pointed horns atop their heads. Spinning through the display of ignorance, the draconequus flew closer and closer. The bolts of pure magic began to increase in speed as the Alicorns began to realize that the monster was drawing closer and closer to them. Still he dodged and ducked and swum towards them across the sky. The older one, the magnificent solar mare, dropped out of the sky and flew low as she came to the realization that the creature was too close to continue the fruitless onslaught. Her younger sister however had no such indication. With a loud crack, the serpentine tail of the mismatched monster slammed into the blue Alicorn, sending her pin-wheeling across the sky as she started to fall rapidly towards the ground. The eldest sister had the horror of watching her sister fall closer and closer to the ground until she impacted with a thud that could be heard in the small village. The loud boom of laughter caught her attention once more as she spun to face the cruel, sadistic monster that had hurt her sister. She shrieked once in unrivalled anger, in unparalleled contempt as she erupted towards the chaotic demon that had attacked her and her sister.

Discord watched as she drew closer and closer, raising one of his death white eyebrows at her as she continued her approach. Slowly, he raised his cold taloned left arm before him and clenched it into a fist.

“Oh my, Celestia, now this is a mistake”

Discord cawed triumphantly as she felt the breath leave her body, her wings locking together as she began to fall. Faster and faster, the wind picking up, the tears streaming from her eyes as the ground drew closer and closer and clo-

[.]

Discord yawned softly, pulling his monstrous head out of the hazy memory that now swirled around his brain like the swirl of water vanishing down a sink. He could relive any memory he wanted now, being trapped in the vast expanse of his mind certainly had its benefits, be them only a few. It allowed him to remember aspects of his old life, to notice things he had failed to notice before. It allowed him to view from a new angle, a new aspect, a new way.

The snow had yet to clear from the surrounding grounds. Great bundles of the cold, fluffy coat lay scattered around the area, flakes of icy chill still falling stubbornly from the grey clouds above. The spring had yet to burst forth from the wintered world, desperately struggling against the bonds as the winter world squeezed and smothered the land of Equestria in a white blanket. His statue though had been cleared of the soft shroud of paleness that had coated it before. Celestia herself had seen to that, returning the day after her bewitching promise in order to “be able to see him properly”. As if she actually wanted to see him. Guilty she may feel but even that wouldn't stop the feel of vomit rising in her throat as she would look upon his deformed, twisted, warped body. Merely lying to him, she was and he knew it. No creature could bear the sight of him, so to put such an effort into displaying his form was most certainly her first step in relieving herself of the guilt and the sadness she was feeling towards him.

It had been a week since Celestia's haunting visit and her even more terrifying promise. The week, oh it had heralded only pain and misery for the petrified draconequus. Life without his beloved chaos, his calling card, his true talent, his beautifully crafted chaotic powers. It had eaten him up inside, like maggots devouring the inside of a long dead meal. He could feel his mind biting and fighting with itself as he tried to wrap himself around the idea of being...harmonious. Of being reborn as something that wasn't himself, having his image stripped away from him. He would no longer be Discord, were Celestia to rip his chaos forcefully out of him, he would have to find a new name for himself, a new life to live. A whole new name, a whole new life. The thought made him want to puke and cry and scream. It would be like dying, surrendering his life and his mind, and the very idea of death for an immortal being was a terrifying thought. Would it hurt, to have his dark side torn from him? Would he remember anything at all of his past self? Would he simply cease to be, his life now so entwined with chaos that the removal of it may remove him from this world as well.

These thoughts and so, so many more had been what was clawing and whirling around him, his sanity slowly slipping away as he had begun to feel the ever engulfing fear that was staining his mind and leading him to search for a way, anyway to keep himself and his beloved chaos together. The ways he would think of, the means of protection for himself, they would have caused grown stallions to weep and they would have caused the flowers to wilt and the skies to darken. There had been no ideas, no plans, no schemes that he could fall back on. At first he believed that perhaps, when the spell was cast mere resistance against it would be enough, just pushing all his will against the spell would surely halt it but the more he thought about it, the more he began to realize that Celestia would surely force it further upon him. Perhaps, he had thought to himself, she would release him from the stone prison in order to cast the spell and he could just vanish away in a shimmering, shining light, teleporting to the very edge of of Equestria. This ingenious plan soon shattered into segments however as he began to doubt his magical abilities. Being trapped in stone would surely leave him drained, a long range transportation spell out of his reach. Short range was useless, Celly herself could just track him down and follow his path were he to disappear and re-appear a measly couple of miles away. His thoughts had soon turned darker, the influence of his now endangered chaos twisting his plans into a menacing form.

Battle, it would whisper to him, fight and tear and scorch those who stand before you. Celestia herself would look particularly stunning as a lawn ornament.

Those thoughts, those darkening, ever encompassing thoughts had begun to form around his mind, begun to press further and further inwards as they desperately squirmed to be picked, to force Discord to choose the darkest possible path. Still though, still he kept to his promise. Still he chose to not endanger any of his ponies, seemingly agreeing to rather have his soul torn apart then to break his age old, cast in stone promise to himself. No matter what they did to him, no matter how hurt and worthless and broken they may make him feel, the path of righteous violence was not a path Discord was willing to take.

It was on an incredibly normal day, eight days after the promise that for a certain time Discord forgot all about his woes and his fears and his hurt. Because on this eighth day, something shocking happened. Something that, once more, he could never have expected to happen.

He was visited by the Lunar Princess.

At first he wasn't sure about the new figure that strode towards him, plowing through the snow and causing loud cracking noises to shake across the garden as the hooves came down heavily upon the ground. Never before had he felt the aura and the power of this new visitor. Unicorns remained relatively close to the magical potential that he had grown accustomed to from them, he could pick out a pegasus pony by the mere sounds of their wings, he could even detect the earth ponies by feeling the vibrations of the ground as they stomped around. This though, this was new. He could feel the wind whistling through feathers, the soft, unmistakeable rustling sound that only wings could make. The hooves were as earth pony as they got, the vibrations shaking the ground. So heavy they were, almost as if each time they impacted they would shake the very foundations of Equestria. The most mysterious feeling though was the almost cold magic that whisked and slid around this new arrival. It was freezing and lonely and sad and guilty but, most importantly, it was blue. The only other pony who could produce a colour spectrum of magic was Celestia herself.

Of course, being aeons old and having a millennia of wisdom and knowledge at his disposal, it only took Discord a couple of seconds to figure out the conundrum before him. And when he did figure it out, there was only one thing to do.

Lu-lu! He roared in his mind, a soft mischievous smile curling up the corners of his crooked mouth. How long has it been since I saw you last?

Discord continued to talk to himself, quite content in his mind to host an imaginary conversation with the startling mare before him. After all, it was probably not best to hold out for a conversation with the queen of coldness herself. How judgemental she could be, still keeping that petty grudge of hers.

“Hello beast”

Her voice was strong, stronger then he remembered it to be. It was weighed down with knowledge and wisdom and power. Also, maybe, just maybe, a smidgen of...guilt?

Discord chuckled softly to himself, quite prepared to deal with the thorned, barbed comments that Luna was sure to throw at him. On the bright side, he now knew that she hadn't forgiven him for the bubblegum-bubbles-foam experiment that he had pulled in her room.

“How the mighty fall. We remember thou when thou was at the height of thy's power”

Discord laid back in his mind, conjuring a soft cloud to lay upon as he braced himself for the verbal attack she was about to unleash upon him. Creating a box of popcorn, Discord sat back and chomped down on one of his favourite treats, completely content with her slanderous attacks on his oh so holy name.

“Where did thou go wrong dearest Discord? Ruler for centuries, turned to stone and forced to reside in the garden of the ponies that you so cruelly enslaved.

Did thou enjoy it? What thou did to them, our ponies. How they loathed thou, and for good reason apparently. Was it fun, to kill and maim and torture our citizens for thy's own sick pleasure. What a monster thou are, even now thou brings bile to our throat. Thou sickens us, thou sickens all that look upon you. Hideous, traitorous, corrupt, monstrous. Thou breeds only fear and nauseous. Oh, how far thou has fallen. Tell us, dear Discord, what is thy purpose now?”

Now Discord had been bracing himself for a tongue licking but this, this was beyond that. This was a kick in the teeth, this was a spit upon his face. A kick in the gut, a punch to his very soul. And without his consent, he began to grow increasingly angry.

“Tia reigns supreme, the land has never seen such happier days. Harmony is here, our ponies are finally joyous and free and pure. So, what is the point of thou?”

Her voice had diminished slightly as she began to finish her venomous speech.

“What is the point of thou?”

She repeated this once more, a simple whisper that held such anger, such hatred, such malice and contempt and sadness. Discord was simply destroyed. The god of chaos had been hurt in such a deep way by this spiteful, old mare, such a deep way. It felt as if a stake had been driven through his dark heart, again and again. He had grown used to the idea of being a monster but never before had someone attacked him so poisonously. A single, long tear trickled down his cheek, falling through the air and landing with a soft plop on the dark nether of his mind. His eyes, the old sad eyes hardened quite suddenly as his anger pulsed off of him in fat waves. He growled once, just once but it was such a horrible sound. It was the sound of every created creature, every being sentient or not, every monster that lurked in the darkness and every creature that soared in the light crying out in anger and hurt and indescribable malice. His mind pulsed from the void of seething blackness into a blood red complexion, strobing the now angered Discord in faint, crimson light.

“What has thou done to Tia!?”

Luna practically roared at him, the royal voice bouncing and shifting and echoing in the head of the spirit of chaos. Anger was immediately thrust away as dizzying confusion burst forth from the draconequus's mind. Had something happened to her? Was she ill, hurt, maimed, dying?

Once more, without his consent his heart began to spike rapidly in a pain that made him want to curl up and clutch his chest, just to lay there and simply stop. Stop being, stop playing, stop hating. Just to stop. Just stop, stop, stop!

“She barely pays us any attention, always with her head stuck in an old tome or book, constantly searching. Searching for things that she refuses to tell me, things she keeps hidden from even her sister. Ever since she began to visit thou”

Discord halted his rapid thought process, the worst of what he had imagined now sinking into an ocean of liquid calm. His questions answered in a split second from the hot headed Princess of the moon that stood before his statue. She wasn't hurt, she wasn't maimed or dying. No, she was doing something that was almost as bad.

She was keeping her promise.

Happiness and fear burst through his mental veins pumping feelings of such warmth and compassion around his created body, the knowledge exploding from his conscious like fireworks from a Hearth's Warming Eve night. She was alive, she was well. She wasn't hurt or wounded in anyway. Discord's heart leapt and bounded and danced in a blissful dance before the second wave of emotions rolled through him, flattening the vivid dancing of his twisted heart in seconds. She was helping him, finding out more and more. If she was ignoring Luna, Luna, her little sister, her pride and joy then things must have gotten very serious, very quickly. Now terror began to explode in his heart, the dance now morphing into a terrible, twisted ballet of adrenaline and horror as thoughts of her victory, her questions finally answered, her promise kept began to writhe around his mind.

No, no, no, no!

There was a pounding in his head, a whirring in his ears as the world seemed to halt around him. No longer could he feel the depths of Luna's power, no longer could he feel the snow around him or the wind whistling through the gloomy, slate-grey sky. No longer could he feel his chaos or his harmony, no longer could he feel his fast flying thoughts, the same fast flying thoughts that had swarmed around him for days. No, there was only one thing he could feel.

He could feel his end, his rebirth and his final goodbye approaching him as Celestia drew closer and closer and closer to discovery, to knowledge that should surely have stayed buried lest Discord lose his very reason to live.

Luna was still talking but he blanked it out, the keening, shrieking voice fading into the background of endless droning that he simply couldn't handle hearing right now. His worst dream, his nightmare was loping towards him. All this time, in his stone prison, in his head he had had his chaos to help him, to allow him to pull through so many hardships. His safety net from fear of failure. And now it was going to be yanked from underneath him. Discord was falling, further and further and faster and faster then he had ever fell before and, right now, he desperately needed that safety net. He needed it now more then ever.

He just heard Luna's final words, a faint sneer and a crippling rude goodbye before she marched off, the snow forming around her as she stalked towards the castle. He didn't care, she could do what she wanted. Right now, he had one priority. Only one.

Escape.

And then, slowly, the whispering influence of his chaos began to drift towards him. He heard his own voice, this time cold and devoid of all emotion speak to him. A faint call, an impart of twisted schemes and darkened knowledge.

Petrify, the soft, serpentine voice that he used to love so much, to adore even, whispered to him, she wishes to control you, to take your power for herself. You know what needs to happen. You know what we must do.

After all, the voice, his voice, said slyly, devilishly and yet with all the malice in the world, rules are made to be broken.

Discord turned slowly, rotating on his feet to spin one hundred and eighty degrees towards the direction of that manipulative voice. There, a throbbing, humming, pulsating spectrum of red and gold and black, blazed softly. It was dark and light, perfect and imperfect, harmonious and chaotic. The source of his rage and his anger and his dark, terrible visions. His chaotic influence just swirled around in a tight cloud of boiling emotions, longing to be free of this stony hell. Not once, not even once, had Discord spoke to nor entered his influential darker side, the area of his mind where only the most horrific and maddening things could be thought of. It was a dark place, a place that would seep into his mind and corrupt him were he to enter it. It would force his hand, make him do anything, anything, in order to escape.

Discord stared and stared for what felt like a millennia, his gaze locked into the seething mass of chaotic power that buzzed and fizzed and sparked at the very corner of his mind. All of his thoughts, of Celestia's sadistic promise, of Luna's intense burning hatred from him, of the ponies who had spat on him and turned away from him, even after he had sacrificed so much of himself to them, began to swirl around his mind, poisoning his judgement. Discord, the misunderstood, mismatched monster took a deep, shuddering, throat tickling breath and went through with one of the biggest mistakes in his immortal life. He plunged into the very heart of the squirming mess of chaos, losing himself in the crawling, howling madness.

And as the tendrils of chaos, as the whispers of power began to snake into his head he realized something.

Sometimes, rules must be broken.

Authors note: DUN DUN DUN!
Just so you know, I bloody love Luna but I needed somepony to play the big, bad, tormenting bully and she was just too perfect for the job.
Also, I know I said that Discord never harmed ponies and that in the very beginning of this he practically beats Luna and Celestia's flanks but there is a very good reasons for that, you just have to wait for the reveal.

Comments

[Reader Wolf]

Sympathy for the Discord. I thought I'd never see the day when I read it, and BELIEVED it.