• Published 3rd Sep 2021
  • 814 Views, 55 Comments

Kindness and the Fate of Shadow - Raven-Flight



An old threat is back, leading Fluttershy and Discord to confront their plans for the future. They've each been keeping secrets...

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Life was on its way back to normal. There was still a certain shadow stallion to be dealt with, but the Princess was back in Canterlot, Discord and Fluttershy were the affectionate couple everypony knew them to be again (if not even more affectionate), and Rainbow Dash resumed her post in the Wonderbolts. In fact, Rainbow Dash and Discord had just finished performing “The Fall of the Ursa Major” in the capital city, and for the first time in the whole five-years-and-counting run of the show, Fluttershy and Twilight were able to attend.

“Just wait ‘til you see it when Spitfire approves our modifications,” Discord boasted afterward in response to Twilight’s compliments, “‘Dragon’s Demise’ will be so spectacular, it’ll blow your pony minds!”

Rainbow Dash finished signing autographs and flew over to where her friends were waiting. “Alright Discord, what gives? First you go ham on the special effects so we can barely maintain formation, and then you change the ending so the bear just runs away instead of dying like you’re supposed to! Do you have any idea what kind of scolding Spitfire’ll have in store for us at the next practice? I bet she’ll threaten to pull the show!”

“Fear not, my little pony.” Discord gave Rainbow Dash a pat to the head. “I’m too valuable for that! Spitfire knows she can’t get rid of me.”

Rainbow Dash looked skeptical.

“And besides,” he went on, “killing Ursa Majors willy-nilly is cruel! I thought the poor creature ought to have a happier ending just this once, so Flutters here would be able to enjoy the show.”

“Oh, I get it! You were talking to her the whole time, weren’t you?”

“No, he wasn’t!” Fluttershy interjected.

“I absolutely was,” contradicted Discord. “And no, dearest, I assure you again it was no distraction. I’ve done this show ninety-seven times now and I could do my part with my eyes closed. The break from the monotony was a relief.

Rainbow Dash was shaking her head. “I’m through worrying on your behalf, Discord. How Spitfire chooses to deal with you is hardly my problem.” She lifted her wings. “Ready to hit the spa, Fluttershy?”

The specified pony raised her wings in answer. “Bye, Twilight.” She fluttered up to kiss Discord’s cheek. “See you this evening, my love.” Then Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were off.

“So,” Twilight turned to the draconequus beside her, “got anything going on this evening?”

“I was planning to go relieve Applejack and Pinkie Pie of foal duty. Why?”

“Well, I had hoped you might want to tell me more about the draconequui, and about your experience as the first conscious entity in existence. But that’s alright. I’ve got plenty of paperwork I need to get done anyway.”

“Paperwork? Blech! Talking about me would be much more fun! Maybe I can persuade Team ApplePie to fight the good fight with the twins a little longer. Or I could bring Fio and Corey along!”

It turned out that the twins were in the middle of their very first baking lesson, and Pinkie Pie shoved Discord out of the kitchen as soon as he arrived so he wouldn’t see the frightful mess (not that he'd have minded it). After being assured that he was not needed for now, and, by his thoroughly-entertained foals, not wanted, Discord relented and found Twilight in the castle library.

As Twilight’s quill scribbled furiously to keep up, Discord recounted again the blooming of nascent worlds, divulged some of his escapades as King of the draconequui, and fielded questions about primordial Equestria.

“So if you came from Limbo in the center of the multiverse, how come your physical form is comprised solely of creatures found in Equestria?

“Fluttershy asked the same question. The reason is that a young planet devoid of life is awfully lonely. I fashioned the first proto-organism out of the soup, and I may have had a paw in its evolutionary trajectory.”

Twilight’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “You mean you’re the reason we have dragons, lions, eagles..?”

Discord smirked. “And ponies.”

The ensuing meltdown had him cackling with delight.


“Good evening, Sombra. Let’s have a chat, shall we? I hope you’re in a more receptive humor today.”

“Yes, do let’s have a chat. Before you start teaching me about generosity, though, I have a few things I want to make clear to you about it.”


Three shoulder twitches in rapid succession, two-and-a-half flicks of the tail, and uncontrollable winking of the left eye. Pinkie Pie dropped the bag of chicken feed and galloped back into Fluttershy’s cottage. “APPLEJACK?”

The named mare emerged from the kitchen. “What’s ‘a matter, Pinkie? Are those chickens up to somethin’?”

“No, but I am! My Pinkie Sense is telling me I have to go bring a book to Twilight RIGHT NOW. I’ll be back in two shakes of a spider’s tail! You’ll be alright with Fio and Corey?”

“Sure thing, Pinkie.” A pan clattered loudly in the kitchen. “Just don’t dally, ya hear?”

Pinkie Pie saluted and sprinted out of the house.


Twilight finally recovered from her shock after nearly half an hour, whereupon Discord made a show of retrieving and returning to the shelves all the evolutionary history books she had dumped in the trash. Then Twilight went quiet.

“Um, hello, creator to creation, anypony in there?” Discord tapped her head, producing hollow echoes to accompany the action.

“Eternity’s a long time, isn’t it?” Twilight asked in a low monotone, eyes fixed on nothing.

“Come again?”

“You’ve seen the entire history of our kind, and untold years before even that. Will I have to bear witness to the rise of species, the fall of ponies, the tides of life and death in our world?”

Discord summoned a plush sofa, two porcelain cups, and a humming (because whistling would be too loud for the library) tea kettle. He poured out a portion of lavender lemon balm tea and handed it to Twilight with a honey spoon. Then he prepared another cup for himself. “Immortality’s not so bad, you know. I’ve done so much already in my many eons, and there’s still more I know I’m not going to have time left to do. I’m going to miss it—life, I mean—when the time comes for me to give it up.”

“You don’t think you’ll ever be able to make Fluttershy immortal, then.”

He took a long draft of his tea. “For now, no. I’ll always keep one eye open for miracles, but if I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that I want to be with my family as much as I can while I still have them. Besides, I don’t want to teach Fio and Corey to chase after immortality. They might seek it in their dark magic, and we all know no good can come of that. So for all intents and purposes, I am mortal.”

Twilight was thoughtful for a long time. She finished her tea, poured herself a second cup, and finished that one too. “I used to console myself that if I was fated to outlive all my other friends, at least I’d always have you to turn to. With your eternal friendship, maybe I would feel a little less lonely. But I guess I don’t even have that comfort to look forward to.”

The tea things went up in smoke and an avalanche of books spilled onto the cleared table. Upon investigation, Twilight realized that they were all completely blank.

“You’re the Princess of Friendship,” Discord reminded her. “You will always make new friends, and when you do, you will write about them in these books. And when you write about them, you will bring them to life. They’re enchanted—let me show you.” He picked up one of the empty books and began to write.

The most handsome being in the multiverse is was Discord, a draconequus made of chaos magic with body parts of a pony, deer, goat, snake, bat, lion, eagle, and dragon.”

As Discord wrote, a sketch of himself appeared on the page. It was animated, slithering about and using its simulated chaos magic to turn the words “pony, deer, goat,” and so on into animated images of the animals they indicated.

“The pictures can only do what you write them to do,” Discord explained, “but maybe it will help keep your memories alive.”

Twilight was welling up. “Thank you.”

Discord crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air to disguise his own crumbling emotional state. “I would have enjoyed getting on your nerves throughout all eternity, you know. Make sure to write that in one of those books so I can still tease you when I’m gone.”

The library door slammed open with maximum dramatic flair. “TWILIGHT? A word, if you please.” Rarity had intended to bluster in and get straight to her point with as much fury and consternation as she could muster, but instead she froze. Twilight and Discord were sitting side-by-side on a hideous sofa, both misty-eyed, with a mountain of books in front of them. Each of these elements separately would have made little impression on Rarity, but altogether it was a rather baffling scene.

Twilight, fortunately, recovered herself in seconds and trotted toward her friend. “What’s wrong, Rarity?”

She had already forgotten her whole script, and now all she had was all the rage and none of the elegance. She sputtered. “W-w-what’s wrong? HIM! That nasty, pretentious, foul-smelling ruffian!”

Dark apprehension settled on Twilight’s face. “I take it you mean Sombra. Did something happen in your lesson?”

“‘Did something happen,’” Rarity mocked. “Why, he finally showed me his true colors, that’s all. I never in all my life—”

Discord helpfully floated a cup of tea into the distressed pony’s face.


The room was empty. The room was empty.

“Sombra?” Pinkie Pie called.

The room was empty.

“Oh no,” she whispered, running to the vacant desk and picking up the first book she saw. Her hooves tingled, so she knew it was the right one.

Twilight would most likely be in the library, so Pinkie Pie set her hooves in that direction and galloped with all her might.


Rarity took the tea in her magic, but didn’t drink it. “You really ought to keep him locked up, Twilight. Put him back in that filthy cell, I say. Oh, if only you’d heard what he said, I bet you’d have sent him straight to Tartarus right then and there! I know I would!” Her exasperated gesticulation knocked the teacup out of her own magical hold and sprayed tea all over the carpet.

Nocreature paid any attention. “What did he say?” asked Twilight.

“He said he ‘decided,’” she made air-quotes for emphasis, “that generosity can’t work in all directions at once, because then it would cancel itself out! So if everypony can’t all be generous all over the place, they should all be generous in one direction, and that way it would accomplish something. He said it’s right for the weak rabble like me to be generous toward the ‘strong elite’ like him! Like HIM! Can you believe it? Then he said he won’t be needing generosity lessons anymore, and he pushed me out of the room. Oh, the horror, the indignity!” She ended by covering her face and collapsing onto the ugly sofa.

Twilight and Discord exchanged fearful looks.

And then, suddenly, déjà vu. The library doors slammed open. “TWILIGHT!”

This time the dramatic entrance was pink. And it carried a book.


“Ah, nothing like a good spa treatment with my oldest friend to loosen up after a show! Let’s do this again sometime!”

“I’d love to.”

Rainbow Dash hovered over the ground as she watched Fluttershy land in front of her cottage. “Welp, guess I’ll call it a night. See ya next time, Flutters!”

“Wait, Rainbow! Something’s wrong.”

Fluttershy was right. Rainbow Dash could feel it in her wings, like something about the atmosphere itself was off. “No kidding. I’m getting a really weird vibe. I’m gonna go grab Twilight to have a look. Be right back!”

She watched her friend fly off, and then Fluttershy cautiously poked her head into the front door. “Corey? Fio?”