The Discordian's Daughter

by Pumpkin Patch

Part 1, Chapter 2

The staircase was only wide enough to fit one pony at a time so Twilight, Spike, Pinkie Pie and Mrs. Cake traversed it single-file with Twilight leading the way. The opening didn’t leave much head room and all of them had to lower their heads to proceed. Spike was forced to dismount Twilight and join the others on the ground.

Their view quickly darkened as they descended. The light from the main floor only went so far and most of this lower room, whatever it was, was black as night. Twilight used her magic to illuminate it. Her horn worked better than any candle and soon everypony was able to see a majority of the room, though the back portion remained dark.

It was a small room, but nonetheless odd. The floor, the ceiling, and everything in between was coated in bright, clashing colors. Part of one of the walls was red, the next part orange, and the part beyond that pink. The stone floor was painted seemingly at random with streaks of blue, magenta, peach, neon green and various other shades. There was no clear pattern for anything. Colors simply started and stopped at whatever point they wished as if the room’s painter did his job blindfolded.

“Whoah!” said Spike as he took the sight in. “What is this place?”

Twilight looked around. The room was rectangular in shape, with bookshelves lining both of the longer walls. One of the bookshelves was toppled over. A few books were scattered around it on the floor. There were also small end tables placed beside each of the shelves. On these end tables were beakers, vials, and even burners. The shelves themselves also housed a few beakers in addition to their sparse population of books. Some of beakers even still had liquids in them.

“I think this was a lab,” Twilight said out loud.

“A lab?” said Mrs. Cake. “But Professor Voidsdale’s lab is upstairs just beyond the kitchen. It was the next part of the house I was going to show you.”

Twilight walked over to one of the books next to the collapsed shelf to examine it, but as she moved forward and the back of the room became illuminated by her horn, something else caught her attention, as well as Pinkie Pie’s.

“What is that?” shouted Pinkie.

Twilight didn’t have an immediate answer. On the back of the wall was large glass tube, twice as tall and wide as her. There was a large hole in it and shards of glass littered the surrounding floor.

“Was-was this where she came from?" Twilight questioned aloud. "She was trapped in a glass tube in the basement?”

“How horrible!” said Mrs. Cake. “Who would do something like that?”

Twilight turned to her former tour guide. “Mrs. Cake, do you know anything about the ponies who restored this house? Were they, you know, on-the-level?”

“They were approved by Princess Celestia herself,” answered Mrs. Cake, “and they were done very quickly. I don’t think they would’ve had time to build something like this.”

Spike started tugging on Twilight’s leg. “Um...Twilight?”

“What is it, Spike?” She asked him.

Spike pointed to a portrait hanging on the wall to the right of the fallen bookshelf and directly above one of the end tables a few hooves behind Mrs. Cake. Twilight’s eyes widened as she gasped. She had noticed the portrait when she first observed the room from the staircase, but she hadn’t paid attention to what it was a portrait of. Now, with her light shining directly on it, she couldn’t believe that she had missed it.

Despite it being a painting, it more resembled the artwork from the stained glass windows in the royal palace, in particular the window with that depicted a certain familiar creature. That same certain creature was portrayed here in the same caricatured style. It had the head of a pony, one antler of a ram and another antler of a deer, and a body made up of all sorts of other things.

And the onlookers knew this creature’s name all too well: Discord.

“I-I don’t believe it...” stammered Mrs. Cake.

“Professor Voidsdale was a Discordian!” exclaimed Twilight. Her astonishment was palpable. Everything she had learned about the professor suddenly felt irrelevant. Until now she had only thought of him as a genius and important figure in alchemy. She didn’t know what to think anymore.

“What’s a Disco-Dan?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“Discordian,” Spike said, correcting Pinkie. “He was a Discord worshiper!”

Pinkie covered her mouth with her hoof, trying to contain a gasp.

Twilight approached the picture. As she crept closer, she could see there was a small sign below it. It read:

There are no rules. Anywhere.

Her eyes lowered off the painting itself to see what was on the table below it. There were two items on it: a thick, heavily-worn book and a small framed picture. And as soon as she laid eyes on this smaller picture, she gasped again.

“What is it, Twilight?” said Spike, who was right beside her, but too short to see what she was seeing.

“But that’s not possible!” Twilight said as she picked up the picture and handed it to Spike.

Spike took the picture from Twilight and looked at it. There were two figures in the picture. One of them was Professor Nolan Voidsdale, looking very much like he did in the larger picture in the kitchen, though his timid smile was a little wider and more confident. In this picture, however, there was somepony else beside him. Standing next to the professor was a much younger female pony. Her body was aqua, her eyes were yellow, and her green, unkempt hair was streaming down both sides of her face.

“That’s her!” Spike exclaimed.

Pinkie Pie and Mrs. Cake walked closer to look at the picture. As soon as she saw it, Mrs. Cake’s eyes widened. “Oh my. It-it all makes sense now! That’s why she looked familiar!”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Cake?” asked Twilight.

“Her name is Willow,” Mrs. Cake answered, “Willow Merrymane Voidsdale. She was, er, she is the Professor’s daughter.”

“The one that disappeared?” Twilight asked.

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Cake. “I’ve never seen a picture of her before, but I read a book a long time ago that described what she looked like. She matches the description perfectly!”

“But...wouldn’t she be a really really really old mare by now?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“She certainly would,” Twilight said as she turned and focused her horn’s light once again on the shattered glass tube. “But I think this might explain why she isn’t. I think he sealed her in there, probably with some chemical he made to keep her preserved all this time.”

“Ooo! You mean like this one?” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

Twilight turned to Pinkie and saw she was holding a syringe with a strange blue liquid inside it. “Where did you get that?”

“From the chest next to the tubey thing!” Pinkie answered.

Twilight looked at the tube once again. Sitting open on the floor next to it was a small wooden chest. Placed next to the larger, much more prominent glass chamber, Twilight hadn’t noticed it until now.

She walked up to the chest and looked inside. The chest contained many more syringes like the one Pinkie Pie was holding, all of them with the same liquid inside them. It looked like a filly’s crayon box, except that all the crayons were blue and sharpened to a skin-piercing point.

Spike was looking in the box as well. “So he just took his own daughter, stuck her with a bunch of needles, stuffed her in a tube and just left her down here?” he huffed.

“I know, Spike," said Twilight flatly, "It makes me mad too. I really don’t know what to think of the Professor now. Why did he do this to her? What was going on down here?”

Twilight’s own words made her remember that there was a book on the table where she got the picture of Willow that might have been able to answer her question. She turned around and returned to the table, blew the dust off the old book and opened it. Flipping through the pages, she saw that the entire book was hoof-written. Every page was filled from beginning to end with writing and there were crude pictures and mathematical formulae scattered throughout. Several pages had dates listed on them. She decided to turn back to the first page and look at it more closely. She was able to confirm her suspicions on the very first line:

This is the journal of Professor Nolan Voidsdale, Alchemist and humble servant to the Lord of Chaos..

“Well,” Twilight said out loud, “it looks like we’ll be able to find out what he was up to. This is his journal.”

She turned to Mrs. Cake. “Would it be okay if I took this book and the picture home to do some research?”

“Well, once I tell management about this room, I’m sure they will want Equestria’s best scholars to study everything in it,” Mrs. Cake said. Then she smiled. “So I think you’re the perfect pony to start with! I’ll let them know. I’m sure they won’t mind if Twilight Sparkle takes a few things for research.”

Twilight blushed a little. “Thanks, Mrs. Cake.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything else you think you should take?” she asked.

Twilight looked around the room a little, then answered “The box of syringes.”

“Why do you want those?” asked Spike.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what they’re for,” Twilight explained, “but the fact that the box they were in was right next to the tube Willow came out of and in such large supply makes me think that maybe they’re something that she needs.”

“You might be right,” said Mrs. Cake. “Anything else you need?”

Twilight looked around again briefly and concluded, “I think that’ll be all for no—”

“Take this too!” Pinkie interrupted Twilight while shoving another book in her face.

“What is this, Pinkie?” said Twilight as she took the book from Pinkie. She looked at the cover. The title read Cooking with Chaos: Discordian Delicacies.

Twilight sighed. “A cookbook, Pinkie?”

“Yup!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. “It’s got tons of neat dessert recipes, like this one!” She yanked the book away from Twilight, flipped to a very specific page and showed it to her friend.

Twilight looked at the recipe on the page. “Discordian Pie?”

“It’s a pie that changes flavor every time you bite into it! So, like, the first bite may taste like cherries but then the second bite could be like pumpkin, and then the third bite like key lime! Oo! and then what if the next one was pecan, and the next one—”

“I see,” Twilight interrupted as politely as she could.

“Hmm...that does sound interesting, actually,” said Mrs. Cake. “Tell you what, I don’t want to take anything out of here if we don’t need to, but if you could copy down that recipe maybe we could—”

“Done!” shouted Pinkie Pie as she produced a piece of paper with the entire recipe meticulously copied onto it and showed it to a very surprised Mrs. Cake.

“Well I guess that’s settled,” said Twilight. “Anyway, now that we have everything I think we should catch up to Rainbow Dash at the hospital.” Her tone became more serious. “I hope Willow is alright.”

Comments

[Snowybee]

Where are all the comments?

Also, I like it so far, especially Mrs. Cake's role. Heck, all the characters here are a pretty good match together. I can't wait for more.

[Pumpkin Patch]

1877257

Thanks!

Yeah the story's page is a little out-of-whack. I took the story down and resubmitted it because I started it over and I guess that didn't set well.

[Snowybee]

1877433

It still is pretty wacky. This is the third story I favorited that had nonexistent unread chapters. Probably something like a double post.

[NebulaNyx]

Ill be honest, I didn't like this chapter as much as the first. ill keep reading before I judge the story itself yet though.

[ColdGoldLazarus]

Ooh, interesting.

I also like that Mrs. Cake is getting a big role for once.

[Dashie257]

Man, I would love that pie.

[sadron]

Did Discord work for Willy Wonka?

[TwilightPoopSparkle]

I need to eat that pie... :)

[TheGreatEater]

I know this story is complete but I so hope that they get that cook book. Also I wonder what would happen if they added Zapapples to that pie. A Magic fruit to a magic pie.

Interesting so far. *Goes onto the next chapter*

[Void Keeper]

I HATE PIES!! but a discordian pie sound pretty good

[That_One_Female_Brony]

Soarin is going to be really happy when he finds out about that pie!!!

[Deamon]

If you want in on the Discordian Society
then declare yourself what you wish
do what you like
and tell us about it
or
if you prefer
don't.