2. Tower
In the future, long after Equestria's bittersweet end — when Discord will retreat to being an off-key note in the song of the stars — he will decide to headbutt a rude black hole which is wandering a little too closely to one of his nebula-collision art projects.
The resulting infinite gravity will be the most fascinating sensation he will ever possibly be able to experience. It will take him [undefined] time to figure out that his authoritative opinion on that matter is a consequence of falling afoul of relativity. He will realize that as his head approached the singularity, spaghettification caused his mind to become infinitely elongated, irreparably breaking his traditional spatiotemporal perception. Oops.
Fortunately, some time between the unpoint of contact and the end of the universe, he will have a moment of epiphany on how to repair that — and will resolve the infinite discontinuity in his consciousness by splitting himself into two distinct entities, one which ends before the unpoint and one which starts afterward.
Pre-black-hole Discord will escape the experience with only one significant consequence: a life full of occasional fragments of yromem that leap into his head after a particularly meaningful moment shakes something loose.
(The very first of these — long, long ago — was a withering lecture-by-proxy from the future self he will never be able to meet. Perhaps as a consequence, young Discord considered yromem weird and uncomfortable. He didn't enjoy that feeling. So he simply redefined weird until he no longer felt uncomfortable.)
A yromem, Twilight will one day remind him, is reverse-causal future knowledge. It's just a memory, she will say, except it's a thing you would know if you had lived backward in time from the Black Hole Incident until then. Then she will look him dead in the eye and open her mouth to warn him about something important.
Discord doesn't rebmemer the rest.
Neither does he know how to feel about the fact that Twilight Sparkle — the royal personification of obsessive-compulsive disorder; the toothpaste to the orange juice of his chaos; and such a stick-in-the-mud that her family tree has to be approached while wearing hip waders — will say those things while snuggling against his chest.
As Discord hurtles through the unspace of the portal — feeling the void lick lovingly around the Tootsie Roll center of his elongated, spiraling Tootsie-Pop-stick self — a wave of fresh yromem surges in. (Too much to parse all at once; he thrashes through the highlights.) Among the facts he will one day learn, three threaten to bite.
One: The mirror he hammered was actually a portal between Equestria and an odd world that lurks behind it like a shadow. But he's never seen a portal like it before. Existence within the mirror's frame doesn't actually exist, not the way it should. There's a gap in reality that somepony ripped open once upon a time, and the gap was caulked over with a world-bridge of pure elemental Order.
Which is why it was so impervious to his senses. And why, when he contacted the portal assembly, the reaction of opposites blew it up in poor Fluttershy's face — oh stars is she alright, wait, he rebmemers her, she survives, thank Fate.
Two: Star Swirl was a very naughty boy, once upon a time, when he tried to find a dumping ground more secure than Tartarus. The worlds linked by the portal simply shouldn't connect. Stinkybeard had to force his caulky-bridgy-thing to do some interesting rewriting of local reality to get the link between the worlds even occasionally stable. Unless something does that translation, travel fails — and travellers who force the issue arrive explosively misaligned with local physics.
Three: Oh, wait, right. The bridge of pure elemental Order — which Discord is utterly incapable of directly interacting with, and is currently shooting through like an Alka-Seltzer sabot through the barrel of an acid gun. But if it's incapable of properly aligning him with the exit world, then he should probably —
— take credit for the five-foot-deep blast crater he finds himself standing in, he thinks as he staggers upright and dusts himself off. How often do you get an opportunity for an introduction THAT dramatic?
"Ta-daaa!" he sings, spreading claw and paw and fluttering his one wing. Chunks of stone begin to slam down around him like hail. Okay, maybe a little too much, dial it ba—
— Ow. That one actually hurt.
Discord stares crossly at the traitorous rock as he rubs the new lump between his horns. Borderline boulder, really. A two-foot-wide marble of marble, smooth on one side and jagged on the rest. (Huh. Did he accidentally explode a statue?)
"Holy thunderbolts," an exceptionally Rainbow Dashy voice says from somewhere in the direction of a giant white building. "What is that thing?"
Discord turns, and nearly asks the same question. Humans, yromem helpfully supplies. They're so adorable, though! Giant bipedal furless-monkey versions of the six Elements of Harmony he knows and one-sixth loves. They wear clothes. Fluttershy has a thing for green. And Twilight … huh. She's gone all bacon-themed.
The rest look various flavors of puzzled. Bacon Twilight's eyes are wide with recognition.
A trembling finger levels at him. "D-d-discord," she whimpers.
A huge grin spreads across Discord's muzzle. He spreads eagle-claw to chest and gives her an exaggerated bow. "I see my reputation precedes me even here."
Bacon Twilight whirls to the others, eyes terrified. "Rainbow power, girls! NOW!"
Discord opens his mouth. Pauses. Slowly raises a lion-paw finger. "Point of disorder, my friend," he says. "Perhaps the bacon has scrambled the egg of your brain, but you and I, we're actually past the whole 'Blast Discord with the Elements of Harmony' thing."
Despite his ironclad logic, the girls begin to float in an ominously Harmonic way. They've grown suspiciously equine ears and tails. Some sort of background rock riff is stirring up on the wind. He begins to suspect that perhaps this dimension's Twilight wasn't CC:ed on the friendship memo.
Discord freezes. His voice ratchets up an octave. "Fluttershy! Back me up on this!"
She cracks glowing eyes open amid the friendship aurora. "Um," she says hesitantly, but it's drowned out in a surge of Harmony.
"Could we maybe n—" he shouts.
They fire.
"—nnnnnot again," he squeaks as the rainbow slams in.
Like most of reality, yromem has a love-hate relationship with Discord. Sometimes it gives him advance warning of upcoming chaos, so he knows exactly where to go to savor it. And sometimes it seems to relish waiting until it's too late. Those times, he has noted, are almost always the occasions when yromem would have been useful.
"I'm so sorry," Bacon Twilight — no, Sunset Shimmer — will say in the wake of the whole mess, not looking him in the eye. (It obviously will be quite some time after their initial encounter — they're in a house, not at a school.) "But how was I supposed to know? Twilight never mentioned you!"
"Never?" Discord's voice will get flat. "Seriously?"
"She didn't even mention Princess Luna's existence until I asked!" Sunset will protest. "We kind of avoided talking about Equestria. Uncomfortable memories and all that. She wanted to give me space to approach it at my own pace, and I … kind of never did."
"You did know about me, though."
"As a statue in the Royal Canterlot Garden! The legendary villain Princess Celestia once defeated who turned Equestria into a chaotic nightmare world!" Sunset will wince. "I figured, if you had come through the portal before Twilight could warn me through the journal, you must have freed yourself and taken over both Canterlot and Ponyville too fast for anypony to react. If a whole world full of ponies couldn't stop you, an immediate attack before you crippled us was our only chance."
He will frown. "Et tu, Fluttershy?"
"Um," Humanshy will say, fidgeting. "I try not to judge people by how they look, no matter how scary they might be. But you did kind of blow up the school statue to announce yourself."
Discord will grumble. "Quite a bloodthirsty world you've got here. My version of you stopped a Harmony launch in its tracks by wanting to give me a fair chance, but you hesitated when I called your name and then blasted me anyway."
"We rainbowed Sunset and then she became good," Humanshy will mumble. "Then we rainbowed our Twilight and she returned to being good. I figured that if you were actually good —"
" 'If'," Discord will caustically air-quote.
"— then it wouldn't do anything."
"Harmony's a kind force," Sunset will add. "It's just about setting things right."
Right now, he's right there — downright, outright down and out. Sprawled flat on the ground in the crater, eyes not quite open yet. And, he thinks, his unconscious body looks far less handsome than usual.
At least he's not a statue, thank Fate. But there is one catty-corner to the crater: a giant white marble horse (which Harmony has generously unexploded), with a crackling pink portal on one side of the base. The statue's rearing up as if to stomp on Discord's balding monkey head, right in between his giant white hornlike tufts of over-ear hair. Perhaps in an effort to splash some drops of actual color on his drab grey vest and black tie and brown slacks.
Apparently furless monkey is in fashion this season. Someone tell Rarity.
Discord's eyes flutter open. (Sweet Fate, they aren't even yellow!) He groans, sits up, and rubs spindly monkey fingers to scalp. The Rainbow Power Squad cautiously approaches.
"Did it work?" Applejack twangs.
Discord focuses on the voices, eyes half-tracking them, then coughs. "What's going on?" he mumbles. "Who are you kids?"
Before anyone has a chance to process that, the portal bulges and discolors. A second Fluttershy stumbles out (in a human body matching the first's), teetering and windmilling on unsteady legs. Her eyes widen. "Discord!" she wails, scrambling into the crater and lunging at him to cling in a tight hug. "Don't scare me like that!"
Monkey-world's Fluttershy freezes, mouth dropping open, looking vaguely ill.
"Fluttershy?!" the other girls chorus.
"Pff — buh — wha?" Sunset contributes.
Equestria Fluttershy glances up. Locks eyes with herself, and nearly gives in to curiosity. But the situation is a little too pressing. "What did you do?" she says to the group, tone bordering on accusation.
"We, uh," Sunset says, "saved our world from an invading villain with the magic of friendship?"
Even in human form, The Stare is enough to stop everyone in their tracks. "He's reformed," Fluttershy hisses.
"I'm sorry," Discord says, "what's going on?"
Fluttershy's rage instantly vanishes. "The mirror exploded when you touched it," she says tenderly. "I thought you'd be trapped here forever! But just as I was starting to really panic, something opened a portal up from this side."
The girls exchange unsteady glances. "That … was probably us," Sunset says. "The magic of Harmony must have stabilized the connection despite your mirror's destruction." Then Sunset looks over at the base of the statue, and her eyes widen. "Or not. That's not looking so great."
Everyone turns. The swirling pink circle is turning an ugly shade of mauve, throwing off black sparks. Space is starting to deform around it. A feeling like an impending lightning strike is tickling the back of everyone's neck.
Sunset makes another snap decision. "Go, go!" she shouts. "Get home before it collapses!"
"But —" Equestria Fluttershy starts.
"I'll sort this out with Twilight later!" Sunset shouts, leaping into the crater and hauling the pair toward the wavering portal. "I'd rather not do that with you both stranded here!"
Fluttershy eeps. She tightens her grip around Discord and lunges for the rip in space.
"What is happening!" Discord wails as they're both sucked in.
There's a loud snap as the portal finally gives out. A wave of energy blasts the girls back. The wibbly feel of thaumic buildup instantly blossoms out into the scent of ozone. An echo of the snap bounces back from the nearby building. Then there's a deafening silence.
Everyone slowly picks themselves up.
"Sweet stars," Rarity says.
Discord is curious why he's still seeing this. After all, he just watched himself go through the portal.
It finally occurs to him to wonder why he's been viewing the scene in third person.
Yromem: Useless. Drawing a blank.
Memory: Useless. He knows what he saw. He wants answers, not to play detective.
Magic: Probably useless. Far too fond of inane, cryptic tautologies. But as he reaches out with his senses for it, he realizes something: if he focuses his attention in a slightly different way, he can see and hear and smell Equestria through other-him's senses.
Other-him's staring at his fetchingly mismatched arms — against the backdrop of a frantic Fluttershy and a scorched castle basement — and screaming incoherently.
And that lets loose a flood of yromem:
"But didn't the Harmonic blast split you into two separate individuals?" Twilight will ask as he finishes catching her up in the wake of her vacation. "Like the black hole you mentioned?"
Discord will scoff. "You say that as though Harmony could stand the idea of a discontinuity. No, Harmony didn't cut me in half. I and —" he shudders, not quite able to suppress the thought of his duplicate — "He Who Must Not Be Named were still two linked parts of the same being."
Twilight will raise an eyebrow. "I don't understand why you hate him so much, either."
Discord will not think of all the things his other half doesn't deserve. He will think of Fluttershy, and how perfect she is. She's irreplaceable. Any version of Discord who could even think otherwise is beyond loathsome. End of discussion.
"Do you know what it feels like to have Harmony think of you as a problem to fix?" he will say instead, hoping it's a close enough answer to change the subject. "I arrived. Harmony got unleashed. It saw a problem to fix, and it fixed it."
Twilight will bite. "What problem? The Elements counteract power accumulated for selfish reasons. But that's not why you fought the others. Things would have turned out very differently if you had turned evil."
"Correct-o-mundo!" Discord will say (feeling an odd, momentary tingle of pride at her faith in him). "But Harmony did have a problem. Namely, that I glorped through Stinkybeard's portal without that wretched hack of elemental Order being able to properly insert me into the human world."
Twilight will think about that for a minute. "I understand why Harmony turned you into a human to fix that problem, then. But not why you ended up with two consciousnesses, or why it left the other half a disembodied spirit."
Discord will chortle and ruffle her mane in that special way he knows she almost tolerates. "Twilight. Sometimes you are the dumbest smart pony I know."
"Mmm," she will grunt, too curious to begrudge him the moment.
"Think, Miss Stick-In-The-Mud. What's the one thing that every visitor to the Land of Eternal Studentry has in common? More to the point, the thing every Equestrian has in common when you look at monkey-land?"
Twilight's face will twist in thought. "If you're referring to the fact that going through the portal transforms you into a form that fits the mirror world, that doesn't answer my question. If you're referring to the idea that everypony has a mirror duplicate, that's … not actually true."
"Aha!" Discord will crow. "But it's supposed to be."
"Not necessarily," Twilight will say. "Our leading theory is that our duplicates there are a reflection of us, but stripped of the drive that comes from ponykind's Cutie Marks. So our fundamental personalities are the same, except with no inherent focus. If that theory's true, beings without Cutie Marks would simply have no local equivalent."
Discord will raise an eyebrow. "First, you told me there's a second Spike. More importantly, if that were true, Harmony would have had no reason to create The Wimp Who Walks."
Twilight will fidget. "The theory's … a work in progress."
"Right." Discord will roll his eyes.
"So what did happen with Harmony, then?"
He will grumble and lay it out for her. "When I showed up, Order couldn't rearrange the world to duplicate me. That was the problem for which Harmony hacked together a sloppy patch job. It borrowed a clump of my mojo, set it slightly off to one side, and turned it into He Who Must Not Be Named. Then, to handle the fact that Order should have made Non-Worthless Me blend in, it slapped down a ban on showing off my natural, non-monkey beauty."
"That just raises more questions! How —" Twilight will stop. "Hang on, what do you mean 'rearrange the world' —"
It's a trivial fix once he realizes he's disembodied due to Harmony playing rent-a-cop for Order's stupid human-appearance requirement. Gather his willpower; decide he wants to look like the sad, drab monkey-thing Fluttershy dragged away; and visualize a claw-snap to make it so. One moment, there's no sign he exists; the next, he's simply there.
He appears directly behind the back of the six girls staring at the ex-portal. Even from this angle, he can tell Sunset is grimacing.
"Well," she says, "that sure could have gone better."
Discord can't resist. "Wonderful!" he crows, clapping his hands. "Maybe this means I am unlucky today!"
She yelps and spins, arms flailing. It's a thing of beauty.
Discord giggles, pulling a huge camera from a tiny vest pocket. "Would you mind doing that again? This is the sort of moment I should start a stained-glass collection to immortalize."
"Discord!" Sunset hisses, and for a moment, it feels like the good old bad old days when Celestia or Twilight or Commander Heroclix or whoever would stare at him with the self-righteous glare of somepony who couldn't take a joke. Her hand even leaps to the amulet on her chest, and it takes him a moment to remember that Fluttershy did tell her he had reformed, and the motion's clearly just reflex.
… Isn't it?
At the moment, that's not a chance he feels like taking. "Sorry, Sunnybuns," he says, briskly snapping his fingers. "But getting rainbowed twice in a row isn't on today's schedule."
There's a pregnant pause. Sunset blinks at him. He grins back. She tilts her head down to glance at her chest, where her fingers are still curled around the amulet. Then the corners of her lips begin to curl up in that beautiful, terrifying, ambiguously-ex-villainously way.
Discord's smile vanishes. He snaps at the amulet again. Nothing.
"Exit stage left, pursued by a baconhair!" he quips, and poses dramatically for a teleport snap. Of course, that won't work either, but at least it'll offer a moment of levity before he starts runni—
"Okay," Discord shouts at a birch tree in the middle of the nondescript woods he teleported to. "I'm getting slightly cross now."
The tree doesn't respond. Which is fine. He's not yelling at the tree so much as at Harmony. The symbolism fits and everything.
… Okay, it's not fine. Yelling is more satisfying if the target of his anger can whimper and apologize back. He snaps his fingers in an effort to give the tree lips. Nothing happens.
"Now I'm REALLY mildly peeved," he shouts. "It's bad enough I could be —" he stops and checks his Equestria-senses for a moment — "having a lovely nervous breakdown with Fluttershy and Applejack and Spike right now, but on TOP of that, you have to kidnap my magic? Party foul, tree." He leans in, putting on a police hat and shaking a ticket book. "Party foul."
He pauses. That shouldn't have worked.
Thinking cap time. Yromem? Anything? … No. Of course not.
But the thinking cap appeared. And so did the police gear. And the camera, earlier. And he did teleport, and shook off a large rock that would have pancaked most of the native monkeys. (Not to mention his explosive arrival.) So he can still both do, and create, tons of useful things with magic … just not by targeting anything besides himself.
Discord pulls a giant pair of lips from his pocket and affixes them to the birch. "Alright," he says. "Testing, testing, one two tree."
The lips leap into motion. "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees," they intone.
Bah. Magic. Full of inane, cryptic, useless tautologies. Still, it's something.
"Prithee thou thy blabest yon truth, o Bard of the Birch," Discord says with a mocking bow, then shakes his snapping fingers out. "Figures that it would get stuck on Shakes Pear. I'm going to have to get the settings on these things adjusted. Is that you, Harmony?"
"Though this be madness," the tree says, "yet there is method in't."
"Excellent. Stop messing with me. Okay? Okay. Great! Good chat." Discord pauses. Taps his chin. Then says: "So, while we're talking, what is the deal with this place?"
"A walking shadow," the tree says. "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
In the yromem that provokes, he will be strolling through a forest with alicorn Starlight Glimmer. It will be reminiscent in spirit of his current surroundings, but the trees will be spindly, angle-branched plants with disclike cyan leaves angling themselves toward the angry red sun on the horizon, ignoring the brighter, smaller blue sun casting shadows from above.
"And that," Discord will say, "was when I decided to destroy the world."
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"And forget about her brother. I only found out about him last week."
I would have gone with "premember" for the verb, but I do love the idea of Discord having such a causally confused existence. And boy did it get even more confused.
Also, it seems like human Twilight is missing if the girls have their pendants. Though there could well be a reason for that...
Huh, I don't think I've encountered this idea before. But now that you mention it, Twilight being close friends with Discord in the far future makes a surprising amount of sense - assuming Celestia and Luna (the princesses) leave by that time, as they're about to do in the show.
Let's see where this leads and if this is going to be explained the story!