Rip Off the Wings of a Butterfly

by LA Knight

The Chaos Lord and the Night Princess

Princess Luna headed for the long table in the currently empty Great Hall—empty, that was, save for her sister and liege-mare, Princess Celestia. The lamplight shone on the rainbow waterfall of her long mane as it tumbled about her shoulders and over her withers, reflected off the golden crown set above her spiraling ivory horn and the golden torque about her throat. The moment Luna's hoofsteps echoed off the smooth stone floor, Celestia turned to her sister with beseeching mauve eyes.

"Well?" The princess asked softly when the other alicorn settled onto the bench beside her. She reached out and touched Luna’s slender, midnight hoof with hers. "Did you learn anything? You two seemed to be growing so close; did he say anything to you?"

The princess bit back a sigh. Her sister and young Twilight Sparkle had asked her to take on the heavy task of spying on Discord in an attempt to discern something in regards to what Discord had done in Canterlot and before, in Ponyville, during Twilight’s time visiting the Crystal Empire. After receiving bizarre reports of the draconequus's behavior over the last few months, the four alicorn princesses—Celestia, Luna, Cadence, and Twilight—had deemed it prudent to discover more…if it was possible. So they had sent Luna, the one who had first convinced Celestia all those years ago to give Discord the same chance she had once been given.

"He…spoke to me," Luna murmured. Which was fairly astonishing in and of itself. Discord hadn't said a word to anyone in the nine months he'd been imprisoned in Celestia's dungeons, except to make a few innocuous requests of Lady Rarity, and only because the unicorn was—literally—the soul of generosity itself. "But the things he said…" Luna shook her head. It's Twilight’s fault, damn her! Hers and Celestia’s and yours…and mine…"I did not understand him."

Frowning, Celestia nuzzled her sister’s shoulder. "Tell me what happened, Sister. Perhaps I might be able to make sense of things."

Discord had once been close to Celestia, Luna acknowledged silently, before he’d turned against the royal sisters centuries past. Perhaps the ruler of Equestria had the right of it. Clearing her throat, Luna began, "I went to the dungeons as we'd agreed. All was silent, except for the sound of a pencil against paper…"

.

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

The gentle scrape of charcoal against parchment was the only sound in the vast corridor, save for the crackling of the torches in their wall sconces and the snap of flames in the hearth of one of the cells.

Most prisoners of Equestria's high princess couldn't lay claim to a fireplace, or a sumptuous bed draped in russet and gray, or a table with a blown-glass oil lamp giving off the softest rosy glow. Most prisoners weren't given books, sheaves of paper, bottles of ink, the finest quill pens, and sticks of charcoal to amuse themselves with during the long days of their captivity.

But then, most prisoners weren't Discord, former ally of the Princess of the Sun, the Princess of the Moon, and the Princess of Magic.

Luna watched Discord from the shadows beyond the torchlight. Her sister’s old friend bent industriously over the black-wood table, sketching something. Snow-white brows knitted together, fangs clenched, Discord worked almost feverishly at a drawing the midnight alicorn couldn't see. Golden lion claws grasped the stick of charcoal so forcefully Luna was surprised it didn't snap in his grip.

Discord leaned closer to the table, his shaggy pelt spilling like liquid dust over his shoulders and across his brow; the draconequus hadn’t allowed anyone to trim his fur in months. The alicorn noticed that Discord’s extra-long fang had sunk so hard into his lower lip with his concentration that a pearl of blood had risen up, dampening the hair.

Suddenly Discord stopped, jerking to a halt as if frozen. He stared down at the sketch, brow furrowed, face utterly bloodless. Lambent eyes blazed with something that might have been madness…or anguish. The charcoal pencil fell from his claws to hit the floor. He swallowed audibly; Luna heard it even from where she stood. A trembling claw-tip stretched out to caress down the length of the parchment in a strange pattern.

Luna frowned. The guards had spoken to Celestia and Luna about this odd behavior, and neither princess could account for it. Cadence, Twilight, Celestia, and even Lord Shining Armor had considered it Luna's duty—as the one closest to Discord—to investigate. So here she was, and the utter desolation on Discord's face astonished her. The guards had said nothing about that. What was the drawing of—what could it be of—that it moved Discord this way? Luna was about to open her mouth to call out to the draconequus, forgetting momentarily the need for silence and secrecy, when Discord lunged to his feet, snatched up the drawing, and making three quick strides to the hearth, cast it into the flames. Then he half-crouched, half-fell before the fireplace to watch the paper burn to ash and smoke.

"What do they know of darkness?" Discord rasped to the fire. One hand lay on his knee, gripping so tight the knuckles of his claws stood out stark against the scaly fingers. "What do they know of the choking blackness of the void? What do they know of isolation? Nothing." He bowed his head. A tremor shivered through his tall, twisting frame. "Nothing at all."

"Discord?" Luna could remain silent no longer. Stepping from the shadows of the prison corridor into the sienna light of the flickering torches, she approached the enchanted bars that separated the draconequus from the outside world.

Discord's head whipped around. Something savage flashed across the gaunt before he smoothed his features to careful blankness. He rose slowly to his feet. The patchy fur and stringy burgundy feathers covering his thin body made him seem even longer and leaner than normal. Almost sickly. Discord arched one knife-thin ivory brow at the princess.

"Come to keep me company, Your Highness?" A small smile played at the corner of Discord's mouth. "Come to ease my loneliness?"

Luna scowled. Any touch of sympathy or concern she'd felt evaporated like night mist in the morning sun at the draconequus’s words. "Do not mock me, Discord. I came merely to see what mischief you might be getting up to, what chaos you’re brewing."

Slender but powerful shoulders lifted in a nonchalant shrug. "Another coup, as you can plainly see," he replied with a familiar—and irritating—smirk. "Even within the walls of the stoutest prison, a draconquus can conquer the world." A shadow appeared to flit across golden eyes. Discord's arrogance seemed to falter, and the smirk wilted at the edges. "Yes…with loyalty and conviction, or even merely with desperation at his side…or perhaps madness…"

"Don't pretend you're being clever," Luna snapped. There was something about Discord's words that left her unsettled. She let that unease morph into anger buzzing like hornets in her blood. "What would you know of loyalty? After betraying us once and being given a second chance, you turned on us once more."

With another mercurial shift of temper, the chaos lord spun on his heel with a wordless snarl and paced the length of his cell. Every movement snapped and jerked with edgy tension. Luna suppressed another surge of unease. Until his incarceration here in Canterlot, Discord had never been so…changeable. So quick to spin from one mood to another. When rage had taken him in the past, there had always been a build-up, some signs of warning—during those rare instances where he even became truly angry, instead of treating the world around him like an amusing toy. There had never been this rabid fury that seemed to spring from nowhere.

Perhaps Twilight Sparkle had been right all those months ago when she'd claimed Discord had gone mad. Mayhap Discord had truly succumbed to actual madness…

Desperation…or perhaps madness…

"What do I know of loyalty?" Discord asked softly. Rage—and something else, something dark and cold and terrible, something Luna did not wish to examine too closely—gave the mild words a razor's edge. "When have I ever stolen something truly precious to you, Luna? To you or Celestia? To Cadence or that traitorous bitch, Twilight Sparkle?"

"You tried to kill us, Discord. I deem my life very precious, thank you."

To her amazement—and fury—Discord scoffed at the accusation.

"Let us say I did," Discord hissed, reminding Luna that the draconequus had never actually admitted that he'd tried to kill the princesses during his invasion of Canterlot. "What of it? It was a conflict betwixt the five of us, no one else."

Now it was Luna who scoffed. "So those innocent people whose homes you destroyed—"

Discord held up a sharp claw. "Homes, you said. Was anyone killed?"

Luna lifted her chin in challenge. "I was. Your little chaos-bomb broke my neck. If not for Twilight’s spells, I would have died. What say you to that?"

"I say that my point has been made: I attacked you alicorns, and no other pony.”

The princess bit back something savage. More than a year ago, after that day when the Guardians of Harmony had unlocked Discord’s stone prison and made him flesh once more, after he’d vanished from Equestria while Celestia’s attention was diverted…then he’d returned to Canterlot, at the head of a wave of darkness that had swept over the village of Ponyville before flooding the city of Canterlot.

Changelings. Discord had returned to Canterlot at the head of an army of changelings. Luna and Celestia had been certain after the royal wedding that they would never see the changelings again, that Chrysalis had been defeated. But they had come, wave upon torrential wave of buzzing empty blackness ready to suck up the love and magic of Canterlot’s people and twist it into darkness and evil. Riding at their head on the back of a night-manticore had been Discord himself, garbed for once in armor of chitinous black spikes, wielding a black staff glowing with the emerald-blue light of ravenous changeling magic.

If they’d had all six of the Guardians of Harmony there, the tide could’ve been turned with far less bloodshed. But one of their own had gone missing, and so Canterlot had been forced to rely on its princesses and the remaining four Guardians instead. And so too many ponies had died. Luna still remembered the aftermath of the battle, the corpses stacked in the streets like cordwood, blood running like water over the cobblestones. Her horn still bore a gouge taken by Chrysalis’s own spiked horn during the sorcerous duel between the changeling queen and the Night Princess.

“Your chaos creatures attacked the Guardians of Harmony—” Luna began.

“They only attacked the Guardians because they sought to interfere with them, which you allowed. I kept the combat between the five of us. I never killed someone in an attempt to get at you. I kept it between you princesses and me, involving no one else!"

"We involved no one else!" Luna protested.

"Liar!" Discord roared suddenly, with enough venom that Luna actually stepped back from him. The guards shifted restlessly. Luna tried to speak, but now whatever words had been festering inside the chaos lord spewed forth, and would not be halted by anything Luna could do.

"It's your fault, damn you! Your fault the Changelings…" Discord dropped back against the white stone wall of his prison and slumped to the floor, defeat etched in every line of his face, every angle of his body. "Your fault…Twilight and Celestia’s…and mine. The slaughter, the pain, all that innocent blood…all of it for nothing, and all because you couldn't just leave me alone."

Luna took a single step toward the draconequus. She locked her shaking legs before she threw aside sense and launched herself at the bars. Rage and disbelief twined together in a thorny tangle in her breast. "Leave you alone? Leave you alone?" Luna's voice shifted to a sepulchral snarl with every word. "Let you butcher helpless ponies, slaughter countless innocents, so that you, in your arrogance and callous disregard for life, could rule Equestria with Chrysalis at your side? I should have let you destroy an entire world, all so that you could be their king?"

"No!" Discord roared back, surging to his feet. Wild-eyed, the chaos lord yelled, "I was trying to save them!"

"Save who? The ponies of Canterlot and Ponyville? You mowed them down without a thought, without one regret!" Venom had been building up in Luna as well. She didn't know how long it had been fermenting inside her—since learning of Discord's betrayal? His attempt to steal the Equestrian throne? Since he'd murdered Zephyr Breeze?—but she would spill that poison now, and let Discord drink it to the dregs. "You're a liar, a murderer, a traitor! You attempted to save no one except yourself!" Discord jerked, recoiling as if he'd been stabbed. "Who were you trying to save, and for what?" Luna demanded, voice dripping derision. "Hmmm? Answer me if you can! And tell the truth for once!"

At first she thought Discord would fly at her, attempt to hurl some spell despite the shielding on the bars protecting her and dampening Discord's chaos magic. Twilight and Celestia had laid those spells themselves, but there was always a chance the magic could break. For several heartbeats, a twisted expression of half-mad—rage? Pain? Turmoil?—twisted Discord's face. His eyes burned scarlet as firelight through rubies at Luna. But he didn't try to attack the princess. Instead, he merely trudged back to the table and slumped heavily into the chair. He dropped his head into his claws. Sighed.

"Yes…I know I'm a murderer, Your Highness. Well I know it. Do I despise myself for it? Do I mourn the blood dripping from my claws?" Discord lifted his head, draping his arms across his thighs. His claws dangled limply between his knees. He scoffed softly at the Princess of the Night. "You've already decided that. What hope is there of changing your mind? I don’t think there is any. And a liar…so is Celestia, yet you don't hold it against her. As for treachery, well, my loyalty belongs to somepony else. That's all there is to it, I'm afraid."

"To who?" Luna demanded. "To Chrysalis?"

A bitter, humorless smile twisted Discord's mouth. "No. She will die one day, by my claws, for what she did to…" The anguished expression he'd worn when studying the burned drawing returned. Something cold pulsed like an ache in Luna's chest. What made Discord look like that? "…to them," Discord concluded in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

Baffled now, the anger draining away to leave her slightly numb and out of breath, the dark-maned princess demanded, "To who, Discord? Who are you talking about?"

When Discord lifted his head to look at Luna, Luna found herself speechless. The look of bitter, icy hate in the chaos lord’s eyes was like a blow to the belly. Even in the midst of their battles, there had never been this deathly-cold loathing in the draconequus’s eyes.

"Your ignorance is no excuse," Discord spat. "Their blood is still on your hooves. On the hooves of Chrysalis and her minions. And," here his voice dropped to a broken rasp, "and on my own claws." Turning from his bewildered audience, he added softly, "I know what my sins are. They’re carved into my flesh and bones. Go away, Luna. Stop torturing me and just go away."

"Discord…" But her old friend did not turn back. Feeling as if something vital was even now slipping from her grasp, Luna murmured, "I will be back to finish this later, Discord. I will expect an answer to my question." With an oddly heavy heart, the princess turned and walked away.

.

Bewildered, Celestia listened to her sister's recitation to the end. Shook her head.

"I…I don't know what he could mean, who he could mean." Tracing the silky smooth grain of the table with the edge of a hoof, frowning, she shook her head again. "I cannot fathom what Discord means, except that…perhaps he somehow blames you, us, for the deaths of the ponies during the conflict."

Luna scowled. "It was hardly our fault he decided to invade with an army of savage changelings ready to slaughter anyone they came across. He'd have to be mad to blame me for that."

In a voice as soft as falling snow, Celestia murmured, "Perhaps…perhaps he truly is mad."

The scowl melted from Luna's face and she sighed. Pressing her muzzle to her sister's shoulder in tender reassurance, she said, "Don't worry, Sister. I will go back to him tomorrow and see if he'll speak to me again. Maybe we can discover something."

"What hope is there for Discord, Luna?"

She didn't know. The only one who could’ve told them had vanished months ago, lost…somewhere. But if there was hope for her old friend, the draconequus who’d taught Luna so much of magic and midnight centuries ago…the Night Princess vowed silently that she would find it.

TBC

Author's Note:

So…that's my prologue. What do you guys think? Let me know! I love reviews/critiques, and I love to hear from my readers.

Some of you are probably wondering what's up with my other fanfic, To Wake the Stars at Twilight. I'm revamping it based on the latest seasons of MLP, but also life just got in the way. Work and such. I was pulling 45-70 hour work weeks for a while, blargh. But now I have some time on my hands because I got fired from my job (joy) for, of all the ridiculous things, being disabled and autistic. *sigh*

Also, don't worry. Unlike To Wake the Stars at Twilight, this fic is actually complete and I'll be updating on a schedule (2x a week - Monday and Friday) until the whole thing is up.

Check me out on Patreon for more neat stuff!