• Published 21st May 2019
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The Unique Properties of Dark Magic - Shadestyle



Stranded in Equestria's far past in the body of a unicorn without any magical knowledge, the self proclaimed "Weiss Noir" fights for survival in the Frozen North by indulging in sorcery most foul.

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(Past Chapter 41) Subtle Oddities

Weiss could sense it on the air. Disharmony, confusion...

Today was a day for Chaos.

"I believe I would do well to thank you, Lord Weiss, not only for accepting this meeting, but for all you've done. I have strived to make my subjects content, and indeed, I have heard all my life the contentment your own griffons have, ignoring their penchant towards the darker aspect of things, of course," King Gideon, the tenth in his line, said with a smile as he poured wine for himself and the sage.

Weiss smiled, his bland disposition towards the griffon and the meeting itself disguised flawlessly beneath his warm expression.

"Of course. The Shadow Realm welcomes all who embrace their innermost self, and those who express their outermost desires. What could I do but dote on my greedy little griffons?" he responded, as if he had anything to do with their prosperity.

Weiss made more appearances in public over the years, enough that people didn't consign him to myth, but in all honesty, he knew little of what went on in the day to day affairs of the Shadow Realm. The Arcana Liber, an enchanted network of magical computers that spanned the Shadow Realm, made it so that he was able to turn the population into their own rulers. Surveys, scans, votes, and of course requests all passed through the automated systems, with Weiss doing little more than occasionally looking at the results, and from time to time proposing his own queries towards them.

The advisors suggested things to pass to a vote. The Shadow Realm voted. The officers enacted the results of the votes. Weiss, for all his reputation as a wise, almost prescient leader, had spent the last few decades making his own presence as unnecessary as possible for actual governance.

All the better for him to have the time needed to pursue his true purpose. Beaten bloody in endless training, surgical and magical enhancements that would give any pony trauma at the sight of, and endless meditation upon new, darker emotions. All of these things were more important than trying to shape the Shadow Realm to some nebulous idea of what he believed it ought to be.

It was honestly a good thing King Gideon had no intention of actually critiquing any of Weiss's "decrees", considering he could hardly explain his thought process on a decision he took no part in.

"Well said, Lord Weiss. I can only hope to achieve some of your wisdom in my comparatively brief time as king," he responded, raising a glass to the Lord, who did the same automatically.

The wine was poisoned, of course, but when you're the Dark Lord of the Shadow Realm, a cesspit of violence and dark magic, such things were to be expected.

He had long since refused to create a Shadow Clone without a bevy of enhancements, magical and surgical, to quash such deadly trifles. Just because the poison wouldn't kill him didn't mean he had to tolerate his clone being dispersed every time a member of royalty or nobility invited him for a drink.

"Be at ease, your Highness, but I believe one of your staff has poisoned me. It would do well to be mindful of the threat such individuals pose. Well, to one who isn't me, of course," Weiss said, uncaring if it was the current ruler of Griffonia or some other nefarious individual.

Judging from Gideon's rapidly blueing face and the choked gasps he quietly emitted, it seemed to be the latter this time.

Weiss, rolled his eyes, and with a crack of his knuckles, began casting spells to purge the griffon ruler of the toxins.

Only once the griffon king lost consciousness at the cure's completion did Weiss speak his mind.

"Waste of my weekend. God damn it," he muttered, making faces to practice for the shocked expression he would have to make when guards burst into the room at his 'panicked screaming'.

He had greater things to investigate this decade, and this meeting was taking time away from that.


Weiss entered Chaos Cacophony Zone with a flourish, the doors opening to reveal a wall of noise.

This place, on the face of it, was an entire zone, practically a city, with the sole purpose of giving ponies, windego and griffons and others besides a place to do all things weird.

There was one major difference between this zone and several others. For one, this zone wasn't meant for habitation, of course, but it shared that with Wacky Workbench as well. Rather, the one thing that distinguished it was something incredibly simple.

There was no law against noise violations.

Thus, when Weiss entered, it was to an utterly massive cavern covered floor to floor with people making an uproar. Garage Bands blared out next to orchestras of odd ponies, and too many solo acts to count, like a music festival that hardly ever quieted down.

With a pinkie plugged into one ear, Weiss chuckled. "Either I'm getting too old, or this place gets louder every time I come here," he mused as he walked down the streets.

This zone needed more guards than many of the other zones, due to its purpose as a place for all things unacceptable in a quiet suburb. Pranks, shows, and of course the awful awful music were all scattered around the large dome-like area, all to a single purpose.

Weiss made his way into the center of Chaos Cacophony Zone, and down a guarded stairway that forbade any unauthorized access. A pair of living Longma Guards let him by with nary a word. The paranoia he once fielded for his secret projects had changed since Sombra's attack. Why trust guards, where magic and science worked oh so much better?

The signs outside of the stairway warned clearly, but he didn't heed them, as flames, radiation, poisons, crushing walls and piercing spikes all assailed whoever walked down, no matter their status, their position, or even their species.

Strength was the only metric by which one could be authorized to enter Weiss's hidden places in this era, the strength to survive traps designed to annihilate anything that couldn't simply reform from damage of any intensity.

It was here, at the bottom of the stairwell, that one of the Shadow Realm's better kept secrets was held, in a small chamber buried deep beneath the zone.

Weiss's claw trailed along the wall as he walked down the hall towards the chamber, small sparks flying free of the wall as his claw idly scraped against it.

He studied the seven gemstones that shone in a rainbow of colors. One of his experiments that had been cooking for a very long time indeed.

They were hardly their namesake, but Weiss still saw fit to give them an appropriate name.

"The Chaos Emeralds," he spoke.

It was an experiment that, if successful, could grant him another source of power and corruption to push himself closer to his destiny. If he could just figure out how to turn the confusion and chaos of an entire city's worth of ponies into magical power for himself...

It would be impressive, indeed.

Weiss frowned. He had come here to check on the emeralds due to a sickening sense that had been growing in the air as of late. A sense of the exact magic that had eluded him for over a century in these idle experiments.

The emeralds were designed to draw in the various emotions of Chaos Cacophony Zone, but despite having a small lake's worth of confusion, disharmony and, for lack of a better word, discord, Weiss found that they didn't have any unique magical properties. The gems were magic, but they weren't Chaos Magic. He could somehow just tell.

He could tell all the more now that an odd sensation had come over the planet lately, one of actual Chaos Magic.

"If not you, then what?" Weiss wondered, touching one of the magical gems with a curious expression.

He shook his head. "No matter. If this is what I think it is, then I need to keep my nose out of it."

With that, Weiss left Chaos Cacophony Zone, and returned to his chambers, allowing his Shadow Clone to collapse as he went to sleep.

'I've got nothing to worry about. I've got no beef with him, even if he is revealing himself to the world.'


Weiss's face scrunched up as he slowly woke up in his coffin. For some reason, it was hot and cramped, more-so than it typically was.

"Was it good for you too?" Discord said with an amused leer.

"FUCK!"

Weiss exploded, and the coffin did as well, fragments of molten metal splattering all over the room as it turned into a firestorm, Vancian Spells rocketing away from him in a panic.

As the dark lord breathed heavily, panting with adrenaline and shock intermixed with the confusion that only comes from a sudden and unpleasant awakening, Discord slowly dribbled down one of the walls, his body acting like an icky paint-like goop.

Eyes darted to the draconequis, the sage's fearful, panicked expression fading as Discord rose up out of his own muck, chortling softly.

"Well, don't blow up at me, gah," he joked, pinching a small flame out that had sprouted atop his fuzzy head.

Weiss schooled his expression. There was no chance of him doing anything more than annoying the draconequis, he could tell just by the overwhelming disparity in their magical powers.

"Of course, my apologies, Discord, Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony."

With that, Weiss inclined his head, something between a shallow nod and a bow acknowledging the gap between their strengths.

Little did Weiss know, of course, that Discord came for precisely that reason, not to be annoyed, sure that such a thing wasn't possible, but for the sage to attempt nonetheless.

"Ooh, what's this?" he said, reaching over to the Dream Crystal jutting from one of the walls.

"Please don't touch that. What reason do you have to come here? The Shadow Realm offers refuge to all visitors, of course," the sage responded with cold restraint.

Discord, perhaps explicitly to avoid heeding the request, plucked the crystal off the wall as if it were stuck there with suction cups, making faces into the polished facets of the crystal

"It's awfully shiny, isn't it?" he said, ignoring Weiss's reasonable greeting.

Planting it back on the wall, Discord cocks his hip to the side. "So, boring business. Always business with you. I come by for a little visit, and you're already trying to figure out how to foist me off. It's rude, you know."

A flash of something crossed Weiss's face.

"I'll admit, I would really rather you didn't turn my kingdom into an epileptic carnival of madness. Whatever your plans are, I hope I can offer you an embassy of sorts on our lands," he responded after mastering himself.

The draconequis sighed. "Yes, yes, you know all about the future. How dull. Go ahead, tell me why I would try to fit all of my wonderful worldwide chaos in your tiny little bubble."

Weiss shrugged "Chaos Cacophony Zone is hardly small. You would find individuals receptive to your humor, or lack thereof," he said, a hint of annoyance slipping into his tone.

Discord smirked. "What if I don't want them to be receptive? Singleminded yesmen are hardly chaotic. Even if I did, why would I want to hang about in some oversized rat maze for you to study me?"

"We both know you aren't required to cause suffering, merely chaos. Ponies like going to carnivals, they don't like living in one. Is it really acceptable to you to have mere suffering alone in the environment you want to make for yourself?" Weiss responded.

Discord was difficult to read, his emotions seemed to shift and ebb with a delay as he cast small spells of Chaos Magic. Was the draconequis disguising his emotions? It seemed to be the only explanation for why his emotions would change after casting a spell, rather than before.

The spirit seemed to ponder this for a moment, scratching his chin with a claw held in his claw that looked like the claw he was holding the claw that looked like his claw with.

"You're overthinking this, John Doe."



At the name, Weiss froze.

"Simply because I am chaos doesn't mean I'm some mindless automata that would try to ensure an even blend of everything good and evil. That would be far too predictable," he snarked.

"Don't call me that," the sage whispered.

Discord flourished the held chinscratcher, before placing it up to his ear as he fluttered his eyelids. "Don't call you what, John Doe? That is your name, isn't it?"

Weiss's eyes flashed an un-color. "That's not my name," he answered.

Discord rolled his eyes. "Don't get so bent out of shape. I was merely informing you that I'm hardly a philosophical conundrum for you to solve. I can be angered too, John, and I've heard all the arguments before. 'Oh, but you're a spirit of chaos, so that means you should do both good things and bad things!' 'You could use your powers for good, if you only tried!' 'Of course, Discord, chaos is an important part of the world around us, but it should be balanced with order, or it stops being chaos!'" he mocks.

The draconequis suddenly frowns, the first sign of displeasure since his arrival to Weiss's innermost sanctum.

"It's all pointless tripe meant to diminish me. To make me something predictable, less than I really am. I'm not a force of nature you can bully around like the wind or the trees. You can't explain me into doing whatever you wish, Mister John Doe; Former human jeweler-to-be, dead at age sixteen thanks to the De Beers Corporation, whatever that is, spirit and soul captured in a dark ritual and dragged into this boring winter wonderland promptly thereafter, confused and alone," he waves.

"That is not my name!" Weiss shouts, light disappearing into him as it touches his darkening form.

The draconequis smirked. "I know you better than you even think you know Chaos, much less how well you know yourself. So perhaps stop talking as if you're the one manipulating me."

Weiss took a deep breath, as a chill in the air seemed to grow, and his flames drew inward.

"Alright. How about instead of manipulating you, I do what I should have done from the start and threaten you?" the sage whispered.

He gestures around him. "Over a dozen different ways I could empty this entire country. Scatter every inhabitant over the planet in seconds. You can't stop them all, you're hardly omniscient, and some of the contingencies, even I don't remember. If I can't keep you from hurting the realm I care about, then I'll simply ensure there's no realm at all. No ponies to torment in one easy location, no oh-so-annoying Chaos Cacophony that I was willing to simply cede to you, not a damn thing but quiet empty ant tunnels."

He snarls.

"If you're going to be petty while you do whatever you damn well please, then I see no reason why I shouldn't spit in your face on the way out. You won't last anyway."

With that, Weiss seems to smile, and ice cracks along the floor.

"Oh, now that's just cruel. I've got a better idea. How about I just tell you the future? I've met with the fortune tellers who confirmed my own foresight long ago. You don't seem to know or care about what comes next. That's intentional, I'll bet. You can hardly have your fun if you already know how it's going to end."

He spreads his arms wide. "There. A suitable ultimatum for the god of the unpredictable. A prediction in full, if you don't leave us be."

At the end of the rant, Discord smiles at Weiss's cold fury at having his past flung in his face.

"Simply wonderful, you really are fun to enrage. I knew you'd be. Do come by Equestria sometime. It'll be a riot, once I've got things the way I like them there."

With that, Discord begins rolling himself up starting from the tail, body shrinking and twisting into nothing.

Before he disappears entirely, The Sage of Darkness offers one last ominous warning to the draconequis.

"Remember, Discord. The more things change..." he leers with cruel spite.

"...The more they stay the same."

Weiss only caught the last glimpse of Discord's displeased scowl at the philosophical remark, before every surface in the room erupted with flung pies. A last thumbing of his nose at the sage before he moved on to more entertaining subjects.

Ones that would put up even more of a fuss at his idea of fun.

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