15: "Fahrenheit 451"
“That favorite subject: myself.”
Luna cried out, then doubled-up. Without the Moon Stone, her wings were already beginning to collapse. But I couldn’t go to her—not now. Something greater was at stake.
I charged forward. “Discord!” I roared.
Discord turned to me, and looked faintly surprised. “Ah,” he said, “It’s you this time. Not what I would have expected in the least…”
“Don’t change the subject,” I snapped. “Give me the Elements!”
He stared at me a second, then smirked. “No,” he said, “No, I don’t think I will.”
I knew it was coming, but to hear him say it was still a shock. “You gave your word,” I hissed.
Discord cackled as he transferred the Moon Stone to his other claw, where it joined the complex orbits of the other Stones. “I did,” he said. “But there’s one thing, in all your plans, that you failed to account for.” He snapped his fingers, and all the stones disappeared in a twinkle. He smiled wickedly, then turned to me again, his eyes full of fire. “I am Discord—Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. I am bound by no laws, save those I consent to. That means,” he added with a snarl, “my word is worth exactly what I say it is. And, if it is in my best interests to convince you stupid ponies that I can be trusted to do what I say, then that’s what I’ll do. At least, until I can convince you to let me have exactly what I’ve been wanting all along.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed—then my face twisted into a snarl.
“Of course,” he continued, turning to look at Luna, “you’d think she would know better by now. This isn’t even the first time it’s worked on her.”
I glanced down at Luna, then cried out in surprise. She lay in a drift of loose feathers, ugly, fleshy scars over her shoulder blades where her wings had been—but gone, too, was her horn. Princess Luna lay before me, stripped of every sign of her Princesshood. Now, she was nothing more than an old earth pony with a few unfortunate scars.
Discord bent down and picked her up by the chin. I skittered backwards with a shriek, but he just grinned. “Isn’t that right, my sweet?” he said, his eyes locked on Luna.
Luna, her eyes still closed, just groaned.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Discord looked at me, a triumphant grin on his face. “She hasn’t told you yet?” he asked. “Well. She never was very good at fixing her mistakes.”
Discord drew himself up to his full height, then leered down at me. “You two are not the first Princesses I’ve tangled with, you know,” he said. “Your kind have been staving off entropy and disorder ever since you started rubbing sticks together to make fire. For thousands of years, I’ve been lurking in the shadows, waiting—setting a trap here, twisting a knife there, doing whatever needed to be done to keep life interesting—and to keep me strong.”
“Strong?” I repeated. I risked an uneasy glance over my shoulder. Every instinct in my body told me to keep Discord talking. Every second he was talking was another second the world had to live.
“Yes, strong,” Discord said. “I am a creature of chaos. I thrive on the stuff. As a force of nature, I cannot die—after all, even in the hard times, there’s enough particle decay in the universe to keep me going. But the more disorder, the more chaos there is in the world, the more powerful I become.” A snarl crossed his face. “At least that was the idea. Up until they found a way to imprison me.”
“You were imprisoned?” I asked.
“Yessss,” he hissed. “Imprisoned. By your ancestors, in point of fact. Which brings us back to dear old Lulu,” he spat, shooting a disdainful glance at Luna, who was starting to stir. “When she was young, I was at the height of my power. The world cowered before me—all of it, except for Equestria. You see, you ponies had a Queen to protect you—Queen Celestia, the last of your kind to take the title. Queen Celestia was powerful, indeed. She used the Cosmic Stone in her charge, not only to move the sun and the moon, but to keep me at bay. She had me beat, I must admit—until I remembered that she was not alone in that palace of hers. She had two daughters, one of which had a reputation for being a stupid, lovesick little tart.”
“I was fourteen,” Luna rasped. I whipped my gaze to her, only to find her struggling to her hooves, her legs shaking. “I was fourteen, and you promised—”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Discord snapped. “Poor widdle disadvantaged Woona. Younger twin of a popular princess, no hope of ever Succeeding in your mother’s place, cooped up aww awone in that big old castle of yours. You knew about all the defensive spells the Queen had put in place. You knew who I was, and what I wanted. And yet, you were so desperate for some attention that you were more than willing to leave open your bedroom window the second I promised I would visit you. And that single act of a lonely, lovesick heart let me slip right past all the best-laid defenses of generations of Queens.”
“You spent six. Months,” she growled, “pouring poison in my ears, telling me that the only thing keeping us apart was Mother. That, if I let you in my chambers, you would whisk me away—and I had the stupidity to—”
“Bah,” Discord countered with a dismissive wave of a claw. “Make all the excuses you want, Princess, but the fact remains that you were the one who let me into the Palace. You were the one that gave me the access I needed to your mothers’ bedchambers. It was your fault that I ambushed her as she slept—and it was your cries that woke her, just before I could wring her filthy neck.”
I stepped backwards. “You… you killed Queen Celestia?”
“Tried to, Dearie, tried to,” he sneered. “That was the only way to get the Cosmic Stone away from her, after all—she was too smart to be wheedled out of it like you lot. But, widdle Woona here woke her up, for all the good it did. Our battle was tremendous!” he roared, rearing up, a sudden fire in his eyes. “Legendary! A clash of titans! One for the history books, truly! In one corner,” he bellowed, gesturing, “one of the most powerful equines this planet has ever known, bolstered with an artifact that made Nature itself function. But, in the other…” An evil grin spread across his face. “A force of that same Nature. One that was powerful. One that was patient. And most importantly—one that could not be killed, no matter how hard his opponent tried.”
He clenched his claws reflexively. “Which is why it was so infuriating when Celestia found a loophole,” he spat. “She didn’t kill me. Instead, she sealed me away, in the gap between worlds—in the crawlspace of reality, if you will. I was not dead, because I could not die—but I was not alive, and thus, would pose no further harm to her precious kingdom,” he snarled.
But then, his snarl relaxed into an easy smile. “Oh, Celestia was good, of course, but not omnipotent. Not by a long shot. Her spells were powerful, but even the best magic unravels over time—and, eventually, some gaps began to show. Not large ones, by any means, but big enough for me to whisper through. It took some time, but my whispers found an ear—and those whispers bent that ear to my will.” He smirked. “It’s remarkable how easy those changelings were to persuade.”
My gut froze. “You’re responsible for the changelings?”
“Oh, I wish I could take credit for those wondrous little marvels of nature,” he said mildly. “But no. I can’t. I can’t even really take credit for the little…” he gestured vaguely “...disruption they caused at the Wedding. But I will admit that I gave them the idea to try something. I was hoping that they might be able to soften you up a little bit, maybe frighten a few of you—but I had no idea they would upend things so thoroughly as they did. Not that I’m complaining, of course—they were excellent little puppets—but they gave me the strength I needed to force open one of those little gaps your great-great-grandmother left.”
“So, you have freed yourself, then,” Luna interrupted. “What does that have to do with us?”
“Did I say I was free?” he snapped.
“You said—” I began.
He cut me off with a dismissive wave, his eyes still on Luna. “Luna, dear, please try to keep up. I detest having to explain myself to lesser beings, doubly so if they’re not paying attention.”
Luna snarled—but I suppressed a grim smile. He was proving rather long-winded for hating explanations—and every second he kept talking meant that he might, somehow, make a mistake...
“I am still imprisoned,” he continued. “Most of me, anyways. The form you see before you is but a sliver of my being that I squeezed through the cracks. Oh, believe me,” he added, “it’s wonderful to be able to stretch my wings a little after a thousand years—not to mention, my back, and legs, arms, and horns, and all the rest of me—but nothing compared to what I could be.” He shot me a sidelong glance. “It’s a good thing for you, at least, that I’m not. I doubt your little brain could hold all my majesty at once. The mere look of me in my glory would probably break your mind into little pieces… I think I even made somepony’s head explode, once…”
Beside me, Luna growled.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” Discord said quickly. “As I said: still a prisoner. But there’s a way out, you see. And for that, I need the power of Queen Celestia. My powers are incredible, even in this state—but I need the Cosmic Stone to actually break the chains she put on me.”
I blinked. “But the Cosmic Stone is gone,” I said.
He clicked his tongue at me. “Ah, Celestia… I know Twilight is more of the student of history than you, but I would have expected you to at least be able to keep up…” He grinned again. “You see, my battle with Queen Celestia ended rather badly for yours truly. But it wasn’t a total loss. After all, I managed to give the Queen a wound that would take her life. She had enough strength left to seal me away—but the Stone itself did not. It cracked under the strain, and split into two. One half became the Sun Stone—” he held up one claw, and the deep purple stone reappeared in a flash “—one became the Moon Stone—” he held up the other, and the silver-white stone flashed into being “—and the broken shards—” he brought his two stones close together, and, with six tiny flashes of light, the Elements of Harmony appeared.
Luna sucked in a breath, and I let out a little gasp.
“Ah, now you understand,” he purred. He plucked one of the Elements--the pink star that belonged to Twilight--out if its orbit, and danced it across the back of his fingers. “Rather poetic, isn’t it?” he continued. “Sun and moon, fire and ice, life and love—” he grinned wickedly “—and the ponies trapped in the middle.” He flexed his claws, drawing the Stones closer together. “And now, you understand, what glorious fools you all have been.”
“S-so what?” I stammered. “You can’t use them all—”
“Of course I can,” he snarled. “I have all the pieces of the Cosmic Stone, together for the first time in ten centuries. It will be child’s play to reassemble them—and, once reassembled, to shatter the spells that keep me bound. And then…?” He chuckled darkly. “Well. The Cosmic Stone is said to have the power to re-write the laws of reality itself. Maybe we’ll see how Equestria fares under a King, for once…”
“You cannot do this!” Luna cried, stepping forward. “You must not!”
“Of course I can,” he said, almost lazily. “But you’ve reminded me, dear Princess, of one, last thing I need to do before I take the throne. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a thousand years…”
Without warning, he raised his arm, then backhanded Luna across the face.
“No!” I shrieked.
Luna flew through the air, landed ten feet away, and rolled to a stop. I sprinted over to her and cradled her limp body in my arms.
“No,” I murmured, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing her to my chest. “No…”
She lay in my arms—so weak, so fragile, so deathly still—for a long moment. Then, slowly, she began to stir. My breath caught in my chest, and I opened my eyes—then very nearly dropped her. The mare I held in my arms had lost her beautiful navy-blue coat, and turned an awful shade of stone gray.
She opened her eyes and looked up at me, then twisted her face into a petulant grimace.
“I shan’t!” she cried. “I shan’t, and you can’t make me!”
Discord chuckled. “One of my favorite parts of the job, that,” he said. “Getting to see what the underside of someone’s soul looks like.”
I whipped my head around and glared at him. “Change her back,” I demanded.
“I would, pipsqueak,” he said, turning away, “but I have bigger fish to fry than you, now.”
Light shone from Discord’s claws, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I let Luna go, and she pushed away from me. I stood, turned to face Discord, and slowly walked backwards. Discord started to laugh—low in his throat at first, then building higher and higher, until I could hear his laughter echoing in my bones. The light grew so bright that I held my hoof up against it—grew so bright that I could see my bones of my arm through my flesh—
And then, the light went out.
I blinked stupidly in the sudden darkness. Before I could even register what had happened, a claw reached out and seized me around the throat. Discord hauled me up into the air, holding me snout-to-snout.
“What have you done with it?” he roared, spattering me with saliva, his eyes full of incoherent rage.
“I—I don’t—” I gasped.
Discord’s grip tightened, and I cried out.
“There’s a piece missing,” he snarled. “Where is it?”
My legs kicked feebly, and I pawed at his iron grip.
“I have waited ten thousand years for this,” he growled. “I have killed thousands. I will not be thwarted by a stupid little filly like you, not when I am so close at last.”
He squeezed tighter, and white-hot pain shot up my spine. I tried to scream, but no air came.
“Where is it?” he bellowed, shaking me like a rag doll. But blackness was already closing in. My eyes started to roll back into my head…
And suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of blue. Discord roared again—this time, in pain and surprise—then dropped me. I fell to the ground with a crash, and lay there, coughing.
When I finally raised my head, I stared.
“Soarin’?” I croaked, my voice hoarse.
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Again, a really good chapter. I have to admit, I kind of figured Discord wouldn't keep his word concerning the Elements, but - OUCH. Yeah, Discord's rant concerning the ORIGINAL Celestia and taunting Luna concerning details of their previous encounter were appropriately nerve-wracking. And Soarin' coming to Celly's rescue was beautiful stuff.
All in all, really good job on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places.
I'll certainly be looking forward to more (especially since they have to get back both the Sun AND Moon Stones AND the Elements [to save nothing of getting the Element bearers back to normal] in order to defeat Discord).
9932885
Cool, and thanks for responding so quickly!
So there's a missing piece of the Cosmic Stone.
And a planned sequel with Cadance.
I'm sure those facts are totally unrelated.
I've said it before (I think?), but I will do so once more: You are a genius. I bet if you became a professional writer, you'd be a famous one!
9933074
I have no idea what you're talking about.
So I wonder when the Stone was damaged and where that part went?
9932796
THIS is the Discord fans deserve: an unrepentant, manipulative, asshole, eldritch abomination hellbent about making the world his playground.
9934295
I agree. I think he was at his best in the very first two episodes he appeared in. While he was talking though the stained glass windows... the laugh when he appeared in front of the labyrinth... the manipulation that went within the maze. That was great. Menace and pure evil.
All of his later appearances, he was more of a goof.. Like the Genie from Aladdin.
The only exception would probably be the
bit.
And brokenimage321 shows this quite well I think.
9934214
Per google translate, "Mi Amore Cadenza" translates to "my love cadence" in Italian, with "cadance" meaning "rhythm" or "harmony", If I were to venture a guess, the writers were looking for a fancy-sounding name to hide her identity from Twilight, at least until she could berate Shiny for marrying someone she'd never heard of.
(IIRC, one of the MLP chapter books specifies that Cadance was born as a pegasus; hence, I would assume that her birth name is "Cadance," and "Mi Amore Cadenza" is actually either a nickname or title. In my various AUs, I've sourced the "Mi Amore Cadenza" as the name of a famous opera song important to her mother, as well as a title she picked up while travelling abroad.)
The "Fleur-de-Lis" (French: roughly "lily flower") is a French symbol, often associated with France itself [Wikipedia]. Fleur Dis Lee, the pony, has one as her cutie mark.
In either case, the names of the ponies are spelled slightly different than the actual term. The assumption is that these differences are to allow Hasbro to trademark them: you can't trademark "cadence," the general English term, but you can totally trademark "Cadance."
Hope that helps!
9934295
9934350
I completely agree! Discord is at his best as a villain, IMO, not as a goofy side-character. I generally like what they've done with him post-reformation, and yet, he's so much cooler when he's evil. Especially since it's possible to read his flipping of the m6's personalities as him pulling out the worst parts of them (as I've written here).
... Uh.
W h a t?????
9934407
I beg to differ. While I do enjoy discord as the definition of evil, he’s just so cliche here. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s not why I love discord. You could replace him here with a red and black secret seventh-element alicorn and it would still be mostly the same.
I must reiterate, it is so nice to have a villainous Discord again. It's just not fun to have him "on" the heroes' side. A lot of the tension is lost, since the rules (and thus stakes) can be arbitrarily changed in our heroes' favour. As you have proven, a villain who can ignore the rules remains a genuine threat.