FIENDship is Magic: Discord

by AlfRockatansky

Prologue

It was the heart of summer in the land of Equestria, and as Celestia's golden light shone warm and bright over all that was known, a foul wind rose on the outskirts of Ponyville.

The wind was an aberration; a tainted whip of frost that bore the undeniable stench of chaos. Everywhere the wind touched small things decayed and died. The sweeping grasslands to the west of town withered to a sickly mustard hue, and the orchards at Sweet Apple Acres shed both fruit and leaves, which tumbled to the earth in a rotten deluge. Even the decadent woodlands known as the Everfree Forest seemed to shy away from the infectious wind, sentient branches curling inwards and all the unholy critters scampering into burrows or fleeing into the deepest, darkest thickets.

Fluttershy didn't know where the wind had come from, but she knew it wasn’t natural.

She and all of her animal friends had come together for their rescheduled bookclub to discuss Wuthering Hooves. Their last gathering had been interrupted when Fluttershy's Cutie Mark had started glowing, summoning her to Twilight's Castle for an untimely adventure. A month had since passed, and after Countess Coloratura's concert in Ponyville, and the unprecedented return (and reparation) of Starlight Glimmer, only now had Fluttershy been able to secure a day with Angel Bunny, Harry the Bear and all of her other animal friends.

When the wind shook Fluttershy's Cottage—mere minutes into their bookclub—all of her animal friends scattered. Birds flew for the eaves. Squirrels and mice darted into dark openings. Harry tried to hide under Fluttershy's throw rug, and once his eyes were covered, he seemed totally oblivious that most of his bulking form still remained visible. Even Angel could sense the ominous miasma slamming into the cottage, and he hopped into Fluttershy's long, pink hair.

"Oh my, what's wrong?" Fluttershy gasped. She dropped her copy of Wuthering Hooves, and it hit the floorboards with a baleful thud. She spun around on the spot, seeking out the hiding places of her various animal friends. "What has you all frightened out of your wits?"

Angel pulled two lengths of her pink hair apart like a pair of drapes. He peaked his head through far enough so Fluttershy could spy him in her peripherals. His usual dominate facade was gone, replaced by a tentativeness Fluttershy had rarely seen on the rabbit. He communicated with wild gestures, motioning to the windows and making fluttering motions with his little paws.

"The wind?"

Angel Bunny nodded.

Fluttershy cocked her head and listened to the low howl that cascaded around her cottage. Now that she focused, she could definitely sense something strange lurking in the afternoon breeze. As for what that something was, she couldn't guess.

"You don't think the Everfree Forest is invading again, do you?" Fluttershy said, her tone dropping into disconcerted beats. She lowered her head and her ears drooped. She suddenly had an urge to duck under her bed and cover herself with a blanket until the wind faded.

Angel Bunny shook his head. He made more silent motions, and a burgeoning gesture like a sprouting flower.

"You think somepony is causing this wind?"

Angel Bunny nodded again, self-assured, then ducked back into the thick of her hair.

"But who would do that?"

For an instant Angel Bunny emerged, his ears erect and his face twisted into a cruel visage. Then he shrunk away, pulling Fluttershy's hair back into place.

"No! He wouldn't."

Fluttershy put a hoof to her muzzle. She was shocked. It couldn't be as Angel Bunny feared, it just couldn't! There had to be some other explanation ... but if Fluttershy had to put her bottom bit on a culprit, she would have to side with Angel Bunny. All of the evidence was around her.

She looked out her window and saw the verdant countryside paling before her eyes; the effervescent colours scarred by a monochromic tint. Even her garden suffered, her beautiful flowers wilting, shrivelling, dying.

A lump formed in her throat. If this precipitous decay was what Fluttershy feared, then she might be the only pony who could stop it. She would have to brace the wind and seek out her friend.

She would have to find Discord, and put a stop to whatever squalid sorcery he was conjuring before all of Equestria was tickled by the foul breath of the untameable beast.

---

She didn't have to search for long. Fluttershy found the towering draconequus on a nearby hillock, beneath a funnel of wind that had snared loose leaves, stray apples, enough branches to form three timberwolves, and what appeared to be half of Ponyville's daily mail. His slithering body was hunched over, and he rested his long, downtrodden face on a talon.

The wind grew more powerful the closer Fluttershy came to Discord. She had to claw her way through the spinning gale, which threatened to lift her off and toss her across town, but she dug her hooves into the dirt and held on, clenching her teeth and keeping her wings tucked into her back. She thanked herself lucky that she had forced Angel Bunny stay back at the cottage, or else he might have been whisked away. He hadn't wanted to stay behind, and she'd used the Stare on him three times without success, only prevailing once she informed her pet rabbit that she'd be going to deal with Discord directly.

She inched closer, climbing the small hill.

"Discord!" Fluttershy cried, though her demure voice was drowned out against the churning maelstrom.

Discord sat at the apex of the hill, uncaring and unchanged.

"Please, I need you to stop this!"

Once again the draconequus didn't respond.

Suddenly, a rare rage bubbled inside of Fluttershy. She thought of her animal friends cowering in her cottage, and all of the pets and critters of Ponyville that were no doubt terrified of this unnatural wind. Worst of all, she thought of those helpless creatures of the wild with no place to hide, and no one to hug them tight and tell them everything was going to be okay.

She planted her hooves in the ground, took a deep breath, and snapped.

"YOU'RE GOING TO STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, DISCOOOOOOORD!"

The sound of her voice, raw and volatile, cut through the wind and shattered the single funnel above Discord, who flinched and cast a worried gaze over his shoulder. Vagrant envelopes skipped lazily out of the sky as rotten apples splattered the hillside, one of which fell right for Fluttershy’s head.

She swatted the apple out of the way with a hasty slide of her hoof, expelling the last of her rage and immediately shifting back to her pleasant demeanour. She seemed surprised by her outburst, but not at all displeased with the results. If her tutorage under Iron Will had taught her one thing, it was that someponies deserved a teeny, tiny taste of an assertive tongue. It was certainly brutish, and totally unbecoming of everything that Fluttershy was, but she knew the power such outbursts could provide.

"Fluttershy!" Discord spat, gawking at the appearance of the lemon-coloured pony. "What are you doing here? Is Twilight too busy saving Equestria from some great evil again?" He raised his paw and talon and made all his digits dance rapidly in a mocking gesture.

"I came to you alone because I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself," Fluttershy said, her voice passive once more, almost pained. "What were you doing, Discord?"

Discord brushed Fluttershy away with a tiresome wave his paw. "I was having some alone time, tending to my thoughts, trying to make sense out of the great, existential weave that is my mind." He snapped his head back to her and glared. "Or has her Great Majesty Twilight decreed that such alleviating acts are now forbidden in her Kingdom?"

"Look at what you've done."

Fluttershy waved her hoof over the disheveled landscape, littered with debris. A few lingering envelopes still flitted along, and in the distance at Sweet Apple Acres, Fluttershy could witness her friend Applejack cursing and bouncing up-and-down before the ruined orchards.

"If you ask me, I'd say it's an improvement."

"You know better than this, Discord," Fluttershy said, her tone brimming with disappointment. "Why would you cause such a mess? It's not right."

Discord paused. He looked down at Fluttershy, frowned, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I suppose I should apologise."

"Yes. You should."

"I didn't mean to do this. I have a lot of magic, Fluttershy, and when I get ... emotional," he said distastefully, "things can get a bit unstable. I've never had to worry about it before because discord was my name. These days, however, I guess I need to be a bit more careful." He lowered his head. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay." Fluttershy hovered in mid-air so she could place a tender hoof on Discord's shoulder. "It was just a mistake, nothing that can't be fixed. If you're upset though, you know you can come talk to me."

"You were busy with your bookclub today. I marked it on my calendar, and I didn't want to disturb you."

Fluttershy offered him a tender smile. "I wouldn't have minded. If you need me, of course I'll understand."

Discord returned the smile.

"Now, tell me what was wrong."

Discord's eyes dilated and he quickly cast his gaze aside. "Oh, that little thing. Well. It, um ... I just, had a bad dream."

"Oh, you poor thing." Fluttershy lowered herself to the ground again and regarded Discord with a scrutiny that was all concern. "When I have a bad dream, I wake up miserable, too. You just have to remind yourself that what you see isn't real, and if it's too much to bare, Princess Luna is always watching over us, and she will help you if you ask."

"This wasn't something our Princess of the Night could conquer. No. She may control the fabric of our dreams, but this was more than just a dream. It was a memory."

"A memory? You know you're not like that anymore, Discord. You don't have to be afraid of who you used to be."

Discord remained silent. Tears glistened in his eyes, and although he tried to hide his sorrow, Fluttershy reached out and caught his face, holding it parrallel to her own.

"You're hurting. Discord, please, tell me so I can help you," Fluttershy begged. She shared the pain pulsing in her friend's heart, and her own tears began to well up and overflow.

"It was a memory from before. From long before. Before I knew the power of chaos."

"What do you mean before?"

Fluttershy was bewildered. As far as she had ever known, Discord had been born as a perverse creature, whose only cause was to distort the balance. His transition to the light had been strenuous, on both himself and all those around him, but she thought it had been done by showing him the magic of friendship. It seemed utterly absurd that there had been a time before, that perhaps Discord had known about the other side of the coin and had still chosen the darkness.

Discord stared at Fluttershy, and their tears bubbled and took flight, floating away on the feathers of his uncouth magic. "Maybe it would be better to show you."

He clicked his talon, and the two of them disappeared in a brief flash of light. All they left behind were the few bubbles of teardrops that bounced along without rhyme or reason.

---

Fluttershy squealed as she popped back into existence and scuttled close to Discord's side., where she gaped at her new surroundings, bewildered and unnerved by the desiccated landscape.

They were in an ancient stone courtyard littered with rubble. All the masonry from nearby walls and towers had cracked and crumbled. Nowhere stood a single edifice in its original, unmolested form. The song of war had destroyed this once noble city, and the hand of time had worn away at all of the edges that remained. There was no greenery though. Not a single plant or weed grew from any crevasse, and the tranquil skies of Equestria had been subsumed by a ghostly vortex of blood and ash.

"We're are we?" Fluttershy gasped. She wondered idly if any critters had taken up nest in this forgotten structure, but even Fluttershy couldn't ignore the overpowering pressure of emptiness that seemed to loom behind every jagged shadow.

"This is Coltstantinople," Discord revealed. He waved a paw over the ruined city, as if unveiling a brilliance only he could see. “And this is where I was born."

"Oh. I—I've never heard of it," Fluttershy said tentatively. "Twilight would probably know about it though."

"No, she wouldn't."

"Oh. I see."

"It may surprise you, my dear Fluttershy, but Twilight doesn't know half of what she thinks she does. She only sees fragments. She barely knows anything about me. She barely knows anything about her beloved mentor for that matter."

"Celestia? What do you mean?"

Discord blinked. He tilted his head and looked up at a high tower, the highest that stood in the broken city, like the skeleton of a tree that had been struck by bolt of lightening. "This is her home, too."

"You knew Celestia before?"

Discord shook his head. "I didn't know her. Not like this." He motioned to himself with paw and talon. He was maudlin, and the grimace on his face was not without remorse. "I was not born as Discord."

Fluttershy's eyes shot open and her ears pricked into the air. She was speechless.

Discord sighed, as if he had anticipated such a stunned reaction. "I want to tell you everything ... If you'll listen."

"You know I will," Fluttershy said. She gripped his paw with her hoof, though she was more timid that usual. "I'm your friend, and I will listen to everything—anything—you have to say. As long as you promise me one thing."

He didn't hesitate. "Anything."

"You tell me everything and you leave what happened behind you. I don't want you to blame yourself. You're not who you used to be, not anymore.”

Discord tried to smile, but it buckled and turned into a sullen frown. "I suppose I should start with my name."

"Your name?"

"I told you, I was not born as Discord. I was not always a draconequus. I was a unicorn, and the Court Jester of Coltstantinople, once the largest city in the world. My name was Diamond Iscariot, and the things I did may well be forgotten, but they can never be forgiven.”

Comments

[Comickook]

Hey there. Thanks greatly for getting this story started. I really appreciate you going to the effort. Splendid job, of course, on the exchanges, emotional content, action and future chapter set-up in all the right places. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing YOUR spin on Discord's origins.

[NotreallyaBrony]

This is canon, no matter what the Show, Comics or Hasbro Says.

[Oliver]

Ok, you got me intrigued, an origin story for Discord is not a very common thing.

Please continue. :)

[Iamsorry]

idk why but this story filled me with sadness
and i havent even read it yet! XD
i know why too! they skipped discords back story in that run! XD

[AlfRockatansky]

Thank you very much for all the kind feedback, guys and guylettes! It's very much appreciated. This is my first ever fan-fiction, so things might be a bit rocky as we move ahead as I find my feet in this new territory.

Any criticism is, of course, welcome. I'm putting significantly less effort into the syntax of this story than I usually would, simply because of a lack of time, so I hope you'll all forgive me on that front.

If all goes as planned, I hope to have one chapter written per week, but that's more of a guideline than a strict schedule.

Once again, thank you for the kind reception! I hope you'll all stick around for the next chapter, so the story can truly begin.

[CrystalDawn]

What a fantastic start to a story! I'm a huge Discord fan, and the interactions between him and Fluttershy that you wrote were spot on! It was so cute when he said that he didn't want to disturb her book club and that he noted it in his calendar. Thank you for penning this for us, and keep up the good work! I'm subscribed