Chapter 26
Since the dawn of time, what has separated people of all shapes and sizes and species from mere animals has been their use of tools and intelligence to solve problems. A beast would fight a world it could not understand with tooth and claw, and a person would seek to understand it and find or craft the tools needed to tame the wild world.
The first tools were made of rock and bone and wood, and these were the same materials that Midnight had to work with today. Minus the bone and wood. The point was that she had a lot of rocks and there were problems that needed solving.
The most important problem, as far as she could tell, was that she was chained to some of those rocks.
Certainly the fact that she didn't know where she was, or why her magic wasn't working, were also problems. But she couldn't start to solve those problems until she'd solved the problem at hoof. Very directly at hoof, since the iron cuff was wrapped around it, the chain joining that to an iron ring set into a boulder too heavy for her to budge.
"Okay. Let's look at our options," Midnight said to herself. "I have a few rocks-" She looked at the pile she'd managed to gather from the rocky plateau around her. They ranged from the size of her head to pebbles. "And I need to escape from... this place."
She looked up. She couldn't see the sky. There was a distant suggestion of a roof overhead, so far in the distance it was lost to gloomy haze. The terrain around her was something like mountain peaks jutting out of a boulder field, the only flat ground provided by ledges of rock. She was chained halfway between the peak of one of those spires and the boulders below, on a ledge along a narrow path leading to the top.
"So!" She coughed, refocusing. "I can try to break this cuff, which seems difficult. I can try and find a weak link in the chain. I can try and pry the ring free from where it was hammered into the lock. Or I can break my leg."
Midnight considered all those options and immediately discarded the last one.
"I think I'll look for a weak link first." She tugged on the chain. Midnight wasn't entirely sure how one found the weakest link in a chain. Presumably there was some methodology she could use. If she had access to her magic she could scan them for flaws. Of course if she had access to her magic she could also have freed herself in seconds.
Midnight couldn't really see a difference between the links. She adjusted her glasses to get a better look and abruptly realized she had an additional tool at hoof.
"A little metal, some glass..." She muttered, thinking. She turned the cuff around until she found what she was looking for, an oblong hole, right next to a barely-visible seam in the dark iron of the cuff.
Midnight took off her glasses and sacrificed them for the greater good, snapping the arms off the frames to give herself two twists of wire. A few minutes work with the rocks, and they were somewhat flattened on one end. Picking a lock manually, with no use of magic at all even to hold the picks, wasn't something Midnight had ever tried to learn. Her only advantage was that she knew a few spells that would do the trick, and she'd learned a lot about locks as part of learning the spells themselves. One couldn't use Bastion's Bar Buster against a rotary pin lock, after all, and if you didn't know how an encapturment mechanism worked you'd never manage to master the most basic safecracking spells.
A few minutes of work turned into an hour, then a second, edging its way towards a third before Midnight finally managed to get the lock opened, more by brute force and luck than any sort of skill. Still, she was free, the cuff opening, a hidden hinge giving her enough freedom to get her hoof free.
"Well, that's the first part of my grand escape plan from..." She looked around. Without her glasses, now it was not only gloomy and grey, but blurry. "I have no idea where I am."
"Tartarus, unfortunately," Twilight said. She limped around a boulder. Her own cuff was still around her hoof, trailing a length of chain that dragged behind her with every step.
"I can get that," Midnight offered, waving her over. "How'd you get free?"
"The ring holding the chain to the rocks was poorly designed. It was just driven into the stone, and didn't go all the way through." Twilight turned her hoof to let Midnight work on the lock. "There was no way to really secure it, so I was able to get free with a little work."
"Mostly free," Midnight said. It was a lot less awkward working from this angle, and not having to hold one pick in her mouth. It still took almost a quarter of an hour to get Twilight free, the other unicorn rubbing her fetlock where the cuff had dug into her skin.
"Much better," Twilight said. "Thanks."
"So what's this about us being in Tartarus?" Midnight asked. "I don't remember us doing anything bad enough to end up there." She paused. "Unless freeing Nightmare Moon counts. It doesn't count, does it?"
"Trust me, I know Tartarus when I see it," Twilight noted, grimly. "I did a paper on Tartarus once. It's not a nice place. We're basically on the inside of a huge sphere. If you walk far enough in any one direction you end up back where you came from."
"What happens if you dig down?" Midnight asked, curious.
"Good question! If you dig far enough through the rock you come up again on the opposite side of the sphere where you started, assuming you went straight down. If you dig at an angle the effects vary as you'd expect, like the map of the sphere reverse-projected onto itself with an invariant distance between the surfaces."
Midnight considered that for a moment. "So no matter what angle you dig at, you can only go so far before you reach the other side."
"Right. There's a gravitational discontinuity, apparently. There haven't been a lot of scholarly studies. Mostly just from grad students really desperate to get funding."
"Can you use your magic?" Midnight asked.
"You think I'd have walked for an hour with fifty kilos of chain dragging from my hoof if I could use magic?" Twilight asked.
"I concede the point. So how do we get out of Tartarus?" Midnight asked. "You've clearly studied it more than I have."
"There are apparently two points that allow travel in and out of Tartarus-"
"The poles," Midnight guessed. Twilight nodded. "It's like a giant vector trap. All paths outwards bend back inside. But how does it stay stable- oh. Our magic." She sighed. "We can't use magic because the vector trap drains it. Very efficient."
"Put a few prisoners in and the prison fuels itself," Twilight agreed.
"Any idea how to find the poles?" Midnight asked.
"I was hoping you'd know," Twilight said.
"Listen for barking in three-part harmony?" Midnight offered.
"Okay, we can figure this out. We're the two smartest mares in this entire dimension, presumably. All we have to do is come up with a way to determine the polar nodes of a sphereoid from the inside with few or no tools."
Midnight stood up and started pacing. "Where's all the light coming from? There's no sun or moon, so it should be pitch black."
"Oh! That's a good starting point!" Twilight looked around. "I don't see a point source, but with the mist and gloom, it might just be difficult to determine, like when the sun shines through a thick layer of clouds."
"Right. Then things are still lit, but it's diffused so much that you can't tell where it's coming from." Midnight nodded.
"But what we can do is, we can follow the shadows," Twilight said.
"If nothing else, it should lead us somewhere," Midnight agreed.
"I remember reading that given average values for humidity and dust, the maximum distance we can see through the atmosphere is about twenty kilometers," Twilight noted. "Since we can just barely see the other side of the sphere, we could assume it's a sphere around that size."
"So if we're able to follow a straight path, it would be less than thirty two kilometers," Midnight muttered, thinking to herself. "Over very rough terrain. It could take days to get there!"
"Right, but on average it's more like half that distance," Twilight said. "We could triangulate the exact distance using our shadows..."
"Without a level. On the inside of a sphere with an unknown diameter. Where the light might not even be a point source and we don't have a compass." Midnight snorted. "Great plan, Twilight."
"Fine. I was hoping to have some idea of how far we'd have to go, but go ahead and shoot the messenger."
"There's an easier way," Midnight said. "The ratio of shadow length to body height. If the light is at the north pole, the shadow at the south pole is zero length because the light is directly overhead. At the equator, it will be exactly at the length of the occluding object's height."
"We'd need two objects with exactly the same size."
"Like us?" Midnight suggested. She got down on the ground next to Twilight and tried to mimic her pose as best she could. Twilight's shadow was slightly longer than she was tall.
"Ah! Lucky break!" Twilight said. "We're above the equator, then. Not really far above it, but that means we have less than a 16-kilometer trip."
"Granted, we're assuming the light is coming from the way out," Midnight noted while she stood. "It could be that the exit is at the south pole."
"Well, look at it this way," Twilight said. "The north pole is a little closer."
"How did you find me so quickly, anyway?" Midnight said, as she started walking, generally in the direction of the presumed light source and exit and more specifically in the direction of the nearest path through the broken rocks and spires of twisted stone, having to jump over a few gaps
"I could just feel you," Twilight said. "Even though we can't use magic, I guess we're still connected."
"That's going to be real awkward if either of us decides to start dating again."
"Not as awkward as Princess Cadance trying to manipulate us into dating," Twilight gagged.
"Pink Mom is like that," Midnight sighed. "She ships more than the entire royal post office."
"You know, we got free kinda easily, didn't we?" Twilight asked.
"Yeah," Midnight said, shrugging as she easily hopped a gap that her twin struggled to manage. Years of dance classes had made her light on her hooves.
"So, presumably..."
"Presumably there are a bunch of monsters running loose," Midnight said. "I know. I'm trying really hard not to think about that." She reached out a hoof and helped Twilight across a crack in the rock that led down into impenetrable darkness. It was probably just her imagination making her think she saw something moving in the shadows.
The ground shifted under them, the rock collapsing into mud. It didn’t even have the decency to crack or shatter like natural stone - one moment it was solid, and the next they were falling into a chasm because they were standing on mud that had decided to take them for a ride.
Midnight screamed. Twilight screamed. Several faceless things in the dark screamed. It was a bad time.
Most ponies would be satisfied that they were able to appreciate a landing at all after a fall into a dark, screaming chasm. It was understandable, though, that Twilight was still unhappy about landing relatively unharmed after finding that she’d fallen onto, and broken through, a thick crust of dust over oozing mud.
“Oh it just keeps getting worse,” Twilight said, sneezing. "Where are we?"
"Tartarus, I'm afraid," said a smooth voice from the darkness. "Still Tartarus. Even further from the light than you were before."
The clouds of dust were pushed aside as a goat's skull, skin pulled tight around it and the eyes empty sockets with dancing flames floating within, pushed through to look at Midnight and Twilight. It coughed, and bells rang from the array around its neck.
"You two must have been very naughty ponies to get sent here," it said.
"Who are you?" Twilight asked, backing away.
"You can call me Grogar," he said, grinning in the way only a skull can grin. "I'm so glad to have guests."
"Grogar?" Midnight whispered, hooves slipping in the mud covering the ground. "I read about you in the forbidden section of the archives. You're a necromancer."
"Was a necromancer," Grogar said, his voice hollow. With no lips or tongue to form the words, they just hung in the air. "The retirement plan does not involve gold watches and walks on the beach." He sneered at the two ponies, flickering flames looking between them.
"We don't want any trouble," Twilight said. With the river of slush at her back, all she could do was edge to the side, trying to circle around Grogar and hoping Midnight would follow.
"Then why did you come here with your disgusting flesh?" Grogar grumbled, the words slicing through the air like the constant, cold breeze, not quite enough to be a wind, just barely there, a whisper of chill to take any comfort away.
Grogar slammed a skeletal hoof down into the muck and pulled a pony out of the ground like a magician doing the rabbit trick. The pony was half-mummified, blackened and leathery like the peat mummies they occasionally found in Trottingham.
"This one..." Grogar sniffed. "Unicornian mage. Bathed in the blood of virgins as part of a ritual to grant herself eternal youth." He scoffed and twisted, tearing her apart, tossing her aside.
Midnight winced as the head landed at her feet, the eye moving slightly to follow her before it sank back into the muck and out of sight.
"She's still alive..." Midnight gasped.
"Immortal," Grogar corrected. "Disgusting. Death is clean. Flesh is... slow rot and decay."
“Look, we’re not supposed to be here,” Twilight said. “We just want to find the way out.”
"You don't belong," Grogar said. "Not with that hideous life. A constant roil of decay and growth and rot that only ends when you finally fall and the world strips you bare down to the clean, white bone." He stalked towards them, skeletal legs somehow staying on top of the dust, like the goat was no more than a ghost.
"I think it's time for the Sparkle Family secret maneuver," Twilight said.
"Gonna have to fill me in on that one," Midnight hissed. "Some kind of special Royal Guard training from your brother?"
"No, it's something my mom taught me. Whenever she was outmatched or outnumbered by an opponent, she'd use the same special technique to take care of it." Twilight braced herself, watching Grogar for a moment, then broke into a sprint. "Cheese it!"
Midnight chased after her, looking back over her shoulder at the goat as he stalked after them at a walking pace, soon vanishing into the grey shadows of the dust they were throwing up as they fled.
"How are we supposed to find the way out?" Midnight asked, as she loped after Twilight, quickly catching up with her slower twin. Mud splattered on their coats, covering them up nearly to their necks.
"I know!" Twilight snapped. "Tartarus is more complex than the abstracts suggested! It's not like I studied it in detail!" " Twilight huffed. "We can circle back around it and slip by! That thing wasn't going very quickly, so we can avoid him if we keep moving."
"Good plan," Midnight agreed.
“That looks safe,” Midnight said. The chasm helpfully ended in a cliff. Someone had been thoughtful enough to add a bridge. It was just slightly wider than her hoof, made of rocks fitted together without mortar, and covered in moss, mold, slime, lichen, and, generally speaking, disgusting and unsafe at the same time.
“Mm.” Twilight muttered. "Sarcasm is a big help, thank you."
"Now, I'm not an expert in interdimensional geography," Midnight said, looking down into the rushing waters below. "But I'm going to guess that's the Styx."
"Acheron, actually," Twilight corrected.
“Oh good, I always like to know just which river I’m trapped by. How many demons do you think are actually around here?”
"That's obvious," Twilight said. "We're assuming a sphere twenty kilometers across. If we're assuming the population density is the same throughout the sphere and that we have roughly a fifty meter radius where we would see anything approaching..."
Twilight drew in the dust on a boulder with her hoof.
"Surface area of the sphere is about... one thousand two hundred square kilometers, and we've gone maybe three kilometers and encountered one demon... there could be a population of between four and five thousand demons."
“I think I’d be happier not knowing that,” Midnight admitted.
"Hey!" Twilight called out, one hoof already on the bridge. "I'm going to go across! Get ready in case something goes wrong!"
"If you're lucky, it'll just be slippery and treacherous and threaten to send you screaming to your death on the rocks below," Midnight yelled back.
“Well don’t let that happen!”
"What do you expect me to do about it?" Midnight asked. "No magic, remember?"
"You're almost as smart as I am, so I expect you to figure something out!" Twilight snapped.
“I don’t know if I can, since I’m only almost as smart as you, the mare who thinks walking across that bridge is a good idea.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and started over the bridge, carefully putting one hoof in front of the other as she worked her way to the other side. Her hooves slipped on the slick stone, tripping and almost falling right off into the abyss, her back half hanging precariously over the drop.
"Hold on!" Midnight said, starting towards her. The bridge shook precariously, pebbles falling from the underside of the arch. "The bridge isn't strong enough for both of us!”
“It’s not strong enough for one of us! Do something!”
"You're no help at all," Midnight muttered, spotting dangling vines. She ran over and grabbed them with her teeth, wincing at the taste, something vile shooting into her mouth like popped blisters and pustules as the plant released a burning sap.
A long length of thick foliage tore down from the rock, and Midnight spat it out, then spit a few more times trying to get the taste out of her mouth.
"I could use some help!" Twilight yelled, slipping another inch.
“I know! I’m working on it!” Midnight tied the vines around her barrel, leaving one end anchored on the rock.
"The weight distribution is all wrong!" Twilight yelled, even as her hooves failed to find purchase. "You need to tie the knot differently!"
"Are you criticising my plan to save your life?" Midnight asked, incredulous. She started edging her way along the bridge, feeling it shift under her.
"It's not a plan if you don't actually do any planning!" Twilight snapped. "I studied several books of knots and-" She felt a hoof lose its grip entirely, and started sliding over the edge.
Midnight dove for her, the bridge crumbling under her hooves, grabbing her just as she plunged over the side, the momentum making her slide off, too. The knot around her waist held, the rope slipping to her hips as she swung down towards the cliff wall, almost popping free and even more narrowly avoiding dislocating her hip as they came to a sudden stop, dangling thirty feet down from the top, vine creaking and dripping with vile bile. Rocks cascaded down from the ruined bridge, the whole thing disintegrating until there was no sign it anything had spanned the chasm at all.
"Ow." Midnight winced.
"I was trying to say that a harness over the shoulders would be safer," Twilight said, quietly.
“Thank you for the feedback,” Midnight squeaked.
"And more comfortable," Twilight continued, looking at Midnight's pained expression. Midnight nodded, uncomfortably aware that her hips were the only thing keeping them from falling to their doom.
“Shut up and help me climb back up. We’ll find another bridge. A better one.”
"There has to be another way across,” Twilight said, for the third time. This time it was more to make herself believe it.
Midnight nodded and followed her along the edge of the river-worn rift until they spotted a bridge. As they got closer, Twilight slowed, letting her limping twin catch up.
"That's- that's the same bridge!" Twilight said, in a panic.
"It can't be the same bridge." Midnight rubbed at her face, her lips red and swollen from the stuff the vines had sprayed on her face and into her mouth.
"We've already proven that this place has nonstandard spacetime," Twilight replied, shaking her had. "It's possible, even likely, that the river just flows back in on itself in a circle. The chasm could act like a kind of containment net, fencing off part of Tartarus."
"I wonder..." Midnight muttered. "It's a pretty deep chasm. What if the river eroded the rock all the way to the other side?" She pointed. "I think some of those rocks are actually bobbing with the current. They must go all the way through to the other side!"
"It'd more or less orbit as a torus around the gravitational discontinuity," Twilight muttered, thinking. "But what about the rock inside the torus, cut off from the rest?"
"This whole thing is getting us nowhere," Midnight said. "I've got an idea."
Twilight stopped, taking a deep breath and composing herself. "Is it going to involve doing a great number of things without planning or thinking?"
"Yep." Midnight walked over to the edge of the chasm and peered down. "How far up do you think we are? Thirty or forty meters?"
"Thirty-seven," Twilight said. "I got a very good look when I was hanging over the abyss, thank you."
"I bet if we land in the water right, we wouldn't get hurt."
"No, we'd just be killed," Twilight snorted. "Even ten meters is almost certain to be a fatal fall, and this is three times that."
"Okay, but, consider the following," Midnight said. "We'd be landing in water, and the usual reason that's bad is because water isn't compressible and it's basically the same as hitting the bottom. However, this water probably goes all the way to the other side of the gravitational discontinuity, so the bottom is actually the top of the other side of the river."
"You realize the question as to if it's safe depends entirely on the question of how much water there actually is, and if the river has actually gone through the dimensional boundary?" Twilight frowned. "I can't even begin to calculate the odds."
"It's that or wait here until we starve," Midnight shrugged. "I'd rather take the chance. Cliff divers do forty meter dives all the time. We just have to keep good form."
"Oh great, so we've got..." Numbers danced in Twilight's head for a moment. "Two point eight seconds to learn on the way down."
"Think of it more like, um, the rest of our lives?" Midnight smiled sheepishly.
“We’re not jumping off the cliff,” Twilight said through clenched teeth.
“There you are!” Grogar hissed. Twilight and Midnight looked up. The skeletal goat was perched on the rocks overhead, standing at an impossible angle with no visible purchase for his hooves, as goats are wont to do.
He started skidding down the rocks towards them, pebbles hitting the narrow ledge Twilight and Midnight stood on.
"How did he catch us so quickly?!"
"You know what?" Twilight said. "I’m rapidly reappraising my decision regarding cliffs and jumping, and I’ve come down in favor."
"Just remember," Midnight said. "The best thing to do is go flank down, try and land with your back hooves together. Small profile, less landing shock. Should be..." She hesitated. "I'm sure we'll be fine."
"We'll go at the same time," Twilight said. "On three."
"One," Midnight tensed her legs, looking down.
"Two." Twilight stepped beside her.
"Three!" They jumped at the same time, the water rushing up to meet them and as warm as bathwater for a moment before up became down and left became right and the water was icy cold and--
They popped out of the other side like a cork.
Their momentum carried them a few dozen feet, and then they started plunging back down towards the river below.
"Right! How much do you know about hypersphere geometry? Because I'll be honest, I skipped those classes and went for the 400-level evocation course instead!" Midnight yelled.
"Fat lot of good that's doing you now that neither of us has magic!”
"Please. Like you didn't get a doctor's note to get you out of gym so you could attend the grad student lectures on abjurations and wardings. I bet you're really enjoying all those extra days spent on your flank instead of staying in shape like me!"
"And here I thought Tia and Lulu would be the ones doing the most fighting," Discord muttered, crunching popcorn. “I’m amazed this place isn’t freezing over!”
Twilight and Midnight spun around to look at him.
"Oh, don't mind me," he said. "In fact, I'd be much more concerned about what’s on the other side."
They hit the water hard.
Midnight grabbed Twilight and lunged to the side, pulling her away just as Grogar's cloven hoof swept through the air where her head had been.
"Why is Discord here?!” Twilight yelled.
“Focus! One thing at a time!” Midnight screamed. “Pretend there’s a checklist!”
“Uh, um, item one, don’t get killed by Grogar!”
They dropped back into the water
“Do you need a hand? Talon? Hoof? Tentacle?” Discord offered.
“Item two, don’t trust Discord!”
“Well, that’s just offensive.” He pulled his claw back just before Midnight could grab it.
“Why aren’t we stopping?!”
“We’re going to oscillate between the two sides until friction cancels out our momentum!” Twilight yelled.
“That should have happened already!”
“There might be some kind of anomalous effect from the discontinuity, depending on the structure of the vector trap! I’m not in a position to take precise measurements!”
“Death awaits you!” Grogar croaked, lunging for them, jumping from the rocks.
Twilight and Midnight screamed.
“That’s enough of that,” Discord said, catching Grogar before the skull could snap shut on the ponies, shoving him back into the water and snapping his fingers, freezing over the river with a sheet of ice.
Midnight and Twilight landed in a convenient pile of feathers.
“That should keep him busy,” Discord muttered. “I never did like that one. It’s one thing to be careless and break your toys, its another thing to pull them apart on purpose and play with the pieces.”
“What did you do?” Twilight asked, spitting out goose down.
“I saved your lives,” Discord said. “You could say thank you.”
Midnight and Twilight glared at him.
"It's not like I'm trying to kill you," Discord protested. "I've never killed a single pony. I learned very quickly that if you break all your toys, you stop having any fun."
"You put us in Tartarus!" Midnight yelled.
"Bluh bluh bluh bluh!" Discord folded his arms. "There are some ponies that would love to be in Tartarus. You should thank me."
"I find that hard to believe," Twilight muttered.
"You're only foals, you won't understand how much worse things could be -- you've never even worked retail!"
"That only happens if you don't get a degree," Twilight said.
"In this economy you'll be lucky to get a retail job, even with a doctorate in magical bupkiss. You need a thousand years of management experience if you want anything that isn't entry-level." Discord snapped his talons and a Hayburger Princess uniform appeared on Twilight.
"Let us out of here!" Midnight demanded. "We don't deserve to be in Tartarus!"
"I didn't deserve to be turned to stone and I didn't even get to complain about it," Discord huffed.
Twilight and Midnight looked at each other, sharing a thought.
"I challenge you to a contest!" Twilight said. "If I win, we go free!"
"A contest?" Discord chuckled. "You mean a fiddle of gold against your soul that says I'm better than you?"
"I..." Twilight tilted her head. "...maybe? But not a violin. I don't play."
"Chess?" Midnight suggested.
Discord gagged. "If I die of boredom we'll have to call it a draw. How about boxing? Tell you what - we’ll play chess between rounds and play to best of three checkmates or three knockouts.” Twilight slipped and fell as boxing gloves appeared on her hooves, though thankfully the one on her horn prevented a concussion.
“I’d prefer to avoid brain damage,” Twilight put in, from the ground.
“Fine, no boxing,” Discord sighed. The gloves vanished. “I suppose we’ll have to do something easier, then. I have other ponies to save from their lives of boredom, you know! I can’t spend all day giving you special attention or they’ll be jealous.”
“Tic-tac-toe,” Twilight said.
“Are you crazy?” Midnight hissed. “That’s a solved game! The only way you’d win is if he was an idiot!”
“It doesn’t matter what we pick, he’ll cheat anyway!” Twilight countered.
“She’s not wrong,” Discord admitted. “Cheating is half the game!”
“At least pick something we have a chance at!” Midnight yelled.
“Oh don’t be mad at her,” Discord said. “It’s better than Rock, Paper, Scissors. Ponies only ever seem to throw rock. Dreadfully boring how it always ends in ties.”
“Oubliettes and Ogres!”
“I misplaced my twenty-sided dice,” Discord snorted. “I’ll pick for you, since you’re being dull -- and don’t complain, because I don’t have to humor you with this at all. I’m only doing it because you two cause enough chaos to be interesting.”
He snapped his talons, and a felt table appeared between him and the twins, a deck of cards popping into existence a few moments after he started shuffling empty air, showing up mid-riffle. A half-dozen chips appeared on the table in front of each of them.
“The rules are simple. Five-card draw, and all you have to do is run me out of chips before you go bust.” Discord grinned. “How hard can it be?”
“We can do this,” Twilight whispered. “I know how to count cards.”
“He’s going to cheat, remember?” Midnight cautioned.
“We’ll just cut the deck after he shuffles,” Twilight said. “That’s fine, isn’t it?”
“Oh of course,” Discord said, putting the deck on the table. “Go ahead.”
Twilight smugly cut the deck, and Discord started dealing. Before they even looked at their cards, two of Twilight’s chips and one of Midnight’s rolled on their own to the center of the table.
“Wait, I didn’t make a bet yet!” Midnight yelled.
“Casino rules,” Discord said, mildly. “Don’t tell me you don’t even know about blinds? I’d give you a rulebook but then I’d have to penalize you for delay of game.”
“Is he right?” Midnight whispered.
“Unfortunately,” Twilight grumbled. “I read a book on card games before Orange’s birthday party.”
“So what’s the game?” Midnight asked. “And I don’t mean poker. What’s this all about?”
“I’m in a grand mood. I’m free! All-powerful! And I heard from a little bird that there’s nothing to worry about. When you’ve been blessed with such a surfeit of riches you can afford to be generous, non?” He smiled and dealt the cards.
Midnight looked at what she had and frowned.
“Did you shuffle right?”
“I shuffled with both left and right,” Discord corrected. “I’m not enough of a card shark to manage it one-handed yet.”
Twilight looked around.
“What?” Discord frowned.
“I was looking for a shark fin, or a joke about a bigger boat…”
“Good heavens, am I that predictable?” Discord sighed. “Get rid of the shark, we’re not using it!”
A half-dozen Discords, one of them in a shark costume, stepped out from behind the rocks and grumbled, wandering off.
“That’s going to get me in trouble with the union,” he sighed.
“I fold,” Midnight said, tossing her cards down.
“You’re a blind, don’t fold!” Twilight hissed. “You already have money in the pot, stupid!”
“It was a crap hand and he’s probably cheating anyway.”
“I’m not, and I am extremely offended you’d say that,” Discord said. “These are perfectly normal cards.”
Midnight’s discarded cards got up and walked around the table.
“Almost perfectly normal.”
Twilight grumbled when her own cards proved just as bad as Midnight’s, and Discord swept up the pot.
A few hands later, Twilight had learned two things. First, that Discord had absolutely no reliable tells. Second, she was terrible at poker.
Midnight still had five chips. She had one. Twilight watched it roll into the pot on its own.
“You know, this is getting rather dull,” Discord yawned. “I suppose I can’t leave you two here on your own or you’d end up breaking it trying to get out, and there are a few people, things, peoples-shaped things, and thing-shaped people that would be unhappy with me if they managed to get out.”
“You’re going to let us go?” Twilight’s ears perked up.
“I was hoping you two would cheat or some up with some kind of clever strategy,” Discord said, disappointed.
“Cheating is wrong,” Twilight muttered.
“I know you’ve done that friendship lesson already but I think even Sunbutt would tell you to make an exception when your life’s on the line.” Discord shrugged mildly. “She cheats all the time. Why, she even decided not to tell your duplicate where she comes from, just because it made it easier for her to keep Sunset Shimmer under hoof.”
“What?” Midnight dropped her cards.
“Oh, it’s true,” Discord said, grinning cruelly. “She knows exactly where you belong. So do I, of course, but we’ve only known each other for a few hours. She’s had years to tell you, and she keeps avoiding it.”
“Sunset already found out,” Midnight protested. “There was a spell and-”
“Spell nothing,” Discord said. “It’s much more tragic than that.” He shuffled the cards back together and ripple shuffled, the exposed cards showing, just for a moment, something just like Midnight’s occasional nightmares. A world with strange, two-legged creatures.
“Tell me,” Midnight said, quietly.
“Why? What’s in it for me?” Discord grinned.
“So you don’t know,” Midnight huffed, sitting down. “You’re just reading my mind or something and pretending you know!”
“If Princess Celestia knew where she came from, she’d send her back,” Twilight said.
“Would she?” Discord asked. “She’s ruthless in her own way. I’m sure she could justify it a dozen different ways. She’s probably spent hours making sure she had the perfect argument to use once you find out you’re not even a pony.”
“What?” Twilight gasped, looking at Midnight suspiciously.
“He’s lying!” Midnight yelled.
“I’ll make you a better offer than Celestia ever would,” Discord said. “I’ll wager the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Of course you’ll need to put something on the line to make it worth my time.”
“I’ve still got five chips.” Midnight shoved them into the middle of the table.
“Unfortunately, it looks like your better half doesn’t have anything to match your bet.” Discord looked at Twilight and smirked. “Unless she can think of something? Maybe a little… favor?”
Twilight blushed. “I’m not doing that!”
“Ew!” Discord recoiled. “You’re as bad as Cadance! Don’t you know girls have cooties? Not that kind of favor! I swear, you mares these days showing your ankles and cutie marks. I just mean some small, simple task.”
“What, like not using the Elements of Harmony against you?”
“You practically read my mind,” Discord said, grinning more widely than his face allowed, the edges stretching into the open air.
“No way,” Twilight said.
“If I was really worried about you using them, I’d just leave you here,” Discord motioned to the skeleton trapped in the ice. “I just like hedging my bets.”
“Twilight, come on,” Midnight hissed. “If he’s telling the truth…”
“If he’s telling the truth, you might find a way to be the only know-it-all in Canterlot,” Discord finished.
“But- Celestia said our talent was doing magic together! What if he’s just trying to separate us so we can’t help Nightmare Moon and your mom?”
Discord pulled a pencil from behind his ear and started writing on his palm. “...separate them… so they can’t help each other…” He tucked the pencil away and ripped off his palm, which thankfully seemed to be made of paper (not college-ruled, to Twilight’s horror), putting the note in a pocket. “That’s an excellent idea to keep for later.”
“Stop giving the evil chaos spirit ideas!” Midnight groaned.
“I’m not evil,” Discord scoffed. “Next you’ll say I’m not handsome!”
“You put us in Pony Hell.”
“That says more about you than about me.” Discord shuffled the deck. “So how about it? One last hand, double or nothing?”
“Yes!” Midnight said, instantly.
“N-nnnf.” Twilight growled. “Fine.”
Discord passed the deck over to Midnight. “Here. You shuffle. I do want this to be fair, after all. If the cards are in your hooves, how much fairer could it be?”
“Do you know how hard it is shuffling without magic?” Twilight complained.
“It’s no problem. I’m good with my hooves anyway,” Midnight said. “Besides, this is important.”
“Yes, that’s why I should be doing it,” Twilight grumbled.
“What, you don’t even trust me to shuffle cards?”
“Well apparently you’re not even a pony.”
Discord smirked.
Midnight glared at her and started shuffling. She’d never had to do it with her hooves before, the whole thing akin, to those with hands, of having to do everything with your good arm tied behind your back.
She dropped the deck, slapping Twilight’s hoof away when she tried to help her gather it back up.
And that was when Midnight saw three aces, upturned among the mess. She tried to look casual as she flipped cards over and put the deck back together, taking care to put those aces at the bottom.
“So, dealer, what’s the game?” Discord asked, apparently none the wiser as Midnight fake-shuffled a few more times.
“Five-card stud,” Twilight suggested. “It’s fast and I just want this over with.”
“Well, I can’t complain. I’m already a stud, after all.”
Midnight rolled her eyes and started dealing, the aces at the bottom of the deck making it seem heavier, somehow. She tried to seem casual as she dealt the cards out, her natural clumsiness with her hooves making it, she hoped, invisible when she pulled from the bottom for her own hand.
She looked up, and Discord was staring intently at his cards, deep in thought. He didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss.
“Well, since it’s five-card stud, the most boring of all variants of poker, it’s time for a show of hands,” Discord sighed. “I’ve got one here-” he showed his left talon. “One here-” right talon-” “A few in this bag-”
“Ew…” Midnight stuck her tongue out at the duffel bag full of disembodied paws. They waved.
“And in this hand, I have a pair of knaves.” Discord showed his cards.
“That beats my king high,” Twilight sighed, tossing her hand down.
“If you wanted a more exciting hand, you should have suggested something that actually required some kind of skill,” Midnight muttered. She glanced at her hand, making sure the three aces were still safely there.
“Well, that’s not true. There’s counting cards, and bluffing-”
“None of which applies with a new deck and no betting.”
“I just wanted to get it over with!” Twilight snapped.
“You’re just lucky I won.” Midnight smiled and spread her cards on the table.
Instead of the aces she expected, the cards were blank.
“What?” Midnight gasped in surprise.
“You know, it takes a lot of gall to try to cheat a god,” Discord said. “I’m proud of you. There aren’t nearly enough ponies with the cajones to try and deal from the bottom of the deck right in front of me.”
Midnight’s cheeks burned red.
“Unfortunately, that renders our little wager null and void,” Discord sighed. “I suppose that means you’ll have to keep begging Tia for the truth. It might be a while before she gets back from her vacation to the photosphere, so I wouldn’t wait up if I was you.”
“Wait, I didn’t cheat!” Twilight yelled. “What about-”
“Sorry, it’s double or nothing. Or in your case, double and nothing.” Discord shrugged. “I’m helpless before the rules. Oh well. Ta ta!”
He vanished in a flash of light, along with the table, chips, and most of the cards, except the five blank ones that had been Midnight’s hand, the cards fluttering down to the ground and vanishing in sparkles one by one as they settled.
And they were left alone in Tartarus.
“I can’t believe you!” Twilight yelled. “You cheated?!”
“I needed to win!” Midnight snapped. “What if Celestia really is keeping something from me?!”
“She keeps things from everypony, it would just mean you aren’t as special as you think!” Twilight retorted. “What does it matter?!”
“You just-” Midnight groaned. “You couldn’t understand.”
“Oh sure. I couldn’t understand. Mom always said that when a pony tells you that, it means they just don’t know how to explain it without sounding stupid, because they mean they don’t understand.” Twilight turned away, shaking her head. “I understand perfectly fine. You care more about yourself than you do about Equestria.”
“No I don’t!”
“Then how come you were willing to make that bet in the first place?”
“I just-- I--”
Midnight looked down, falling silent. She opened her mouth, trying to find the right words for an apology.
The ice cracked, and a skeletal hoof pushed out of the thawing river.
“Oh buck,” Midnight hissed.
“Wow, I nearly forgot!” Discord said, popping back in. He was wearing sunglasses and a floral shirt. “I went on my vacation and it just slipped my mind about sending you home.”
The ice cracked more, Grogar slowly freeing himself.
“Actually, give me a minute. I forgot my drink. You wouldn’t believe what they charge for a Baja Blast these days. Do I look like I’m made of bits? Don’t go anywhere.”
He vanished in a flash of light.
“Don’t look at me,” Twilight growled, glaring at Midnight. “He’s the one you apparently trust more than Celestia. Our teacher. Who rules Equestria.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Midnight muttered. “I was wrong.”
“At least you can admit that,” Twilight sighed. “When Grogar gets out of the ice, you go left, I’ll go right, and he can only chase one of us at a time.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“Not as bad a plan as cheating. Trust me, it never works out.”
Grogar pulled his front half free.
“Back!” Discord said, reappearing with half a coconut in one talon, sipping from a crazy straw that wound its way down and around a flock of tiny umbrellas decorating the drink. “You two should really hit up Trotuga sometime. Wonderful place.”
“Sounds good!” Midnight said. “Let’s go now!”
“I don’t think a cheater deserves a reward. Besides, you’d need to be a little older to really appreciate it.”
Grogar roared, one of his back legs popping out of joint as he freed himself, hop-limping towards them.
“What was I going to do…” Discord muttered. “There was something…” he took another sip of his drink as the undead horror charged at them.
Twilight screamed. Midnight screamed. Grogar screamed.
“Oh right! I was going to send you brats home.”
Discord snapped his talons and they vanished in a burst of light.
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Did Discord just... Do the right thing?
9024587
No.
9024587
If you mean sowing the seeds of discord (ba dun psh) in Stormageddon's heart, he did.
It's not like I studied it in detail!" " Twilight huffed. "We can circle back around it
1. Extra quotation mark.
9024661
What can we say? It's all in the cards.
I am really looking forward to Discord's comeuppance.
And Celestia had better have a VERY good explanation--wait, of course she doesn't. She's a useless idiot. Fuck her.
That was the card game of the century!
Oh that was some amazing trolling while not being too nasty. Great work.
Would have been better with motorcycles. Card-games are always better on motorcycles!
Is it really too much to ask for Midnight to catch a break? I thought we had a breakthrough with that whole monster hunting bit, but it looks like we're back to her being the perpetual screw up. It's bad enough that she knows for a fact that she's not a real pony, Twilight constantly lords the fact that she's "better" over her, and Celestia's flat out said that if she had to teach only one of them she'd pick Twilight instead. The only chapter where Midnight hasn't been blamed for whatever went wrong was the one where Twilight was the cheater, and that's mostly because Midnight barely showed up.
Wow. He's messing with them, but it's not actually as bad as in the show. I wonder if they can reform him right off...
By reform, I mean get him NOT to cause unholy things to time and space, and not so much "behave" or EoH brainwash, although those would still technically work.
so midnight feels out of place
not sorry
Ooh! Nice one. Midnight!
9025200
Yeah that is all i got out of this chapter was Twilight was good and better at everything with answer for everything and Midnight the screw up
9025200
Its important to note they would be screwed either way. Sure, Midnight Cheated....but not only is it likely Discord was cheating (he admitted as such) but even if he wasn't, Discord was the better player.
Twilight at best had maybe 2 rounds left....and Midnight had maybe 15 max....but eventually Discord would have taken all the chips. The outcome would have been the exact same regardless. Worse in fact, as when they lost all their chips they would be left in Tartarus.
The only concern is the POSSIBILITY that they can't use the Elements....but Discord said, their wager was "NULL and VOID," As such, they should still be able to use the Elements of Harmony, as both sides of the deal are canceled.
And because they were 'interesting' he pulled them out of Tartarus.
Despite Twilight's Rage, Midnight did the right thing. The way to beat Discord is to remain interesting long enough that he doesn't just say, "Your boring me....enjoy the other side of the world." And snap his fingers.
Seriously, he literally said,
Cheating was the right call.
9026064
Oh, for sure. They didn't have the skill to beat Discord legit, so cheating was really their only hope. Not that that was all that much more likely to succeed, but they had to at least try.
Oh, the ramifications of this one will be very interesting indeed. Midnight's been given just enough information to tantalize without understanding anything, and Twilight has an excuse to get on her high horse. A cunningly driven wedge; the question is how deeply it penetrated.
Also, fantastic Grogar. Also also, I have to wonder if Twilight Velvet ever fought vampires.
9024587
In the sense of following the one rule of sustainable chaos, yes. He didn't break his toys.
By any metric other than his own? Emphatically no.
I'm thinking that Discord may have sent them to Midnight's original home. Sort of thing he might do, after all.
9025200
This is going to be the tipping point, isn't it? When they finally see Celestia again and force her to admit everything, Sunset and Midnight will explode. Sunset will go Nightmare/demon (that apparition in the jail is obviously foreshadowing), Midnight will be right alongside her, and...you know what, they'll be absolutely right to, because by that point, they SHOULD be done with Celestia for stringing them along for years. And Cadance won't lift a hoof to help her aunt. She doesn't deserve it anymore.
9028486
Whoooa, man. I dunno that I'd go that far. I just want Midnight to actually be treated like Twilight's equal a bit more often instead of just her second-rate copy.
I mean, yeah, what Celestia did was terrible--Discord wasn't kidding when he called Midnight's history tragic--and there should definitely be consequences for that. But I don't know that that's enough to have Sunset completely turn her back on Celestia. Midnight maybe, but not Sunset. If the big reveal comes with a second one for why Celestia never gave Sunset the one thing she really wanted, maybe, but I don't think the reveal of Midnight's past alone would be enough.
Midnight and Twilight have a great dynamic.
Hey, this isn't a big deal but you keep writing "Oubliettes & Ogres" when it's actually the other way around? It sticks out to me every time.
Dang, Midnight and Twilight seemed to have gotten it far worse than Sunset and Cadance did. And poor Midnight, being toyed with the truth and losing out because Discord's chaos is just too OP and ruining her friendship with Twilight. Hopefully they'll be able to make amends.
This sounds almost like a line from a lovecraftian story.
Oh no did Celestia just become irredeemable? Please tell me she didn't actually know.
No, you were actually right.
9070771
Of course she does. But the mirror is broken, and in any case wouldn't have been open for some time.
D: "Oh, bother! Now I have to go get those back. They are my special talons, after all."
Discotd was the one that told them to cheat to start with.