Beyond My Grave: Exhumed

by AnnEldest

How Far?

“Spike!?”

It was all very sudden. One moment, Discord was facing the disembodied eyes of some unknown beast. The next, he was alone in some dead, desolate forest that looked like some great inferno had raged through it centuries ago, and it was just now recuperating itself. When Discord placed his foot on a fallen log, the entire thing broke under his weight. Not like wood, but it snapped like a long rod of glass, shattering at the spot where it broke.

“Oof. Petrification. I know how that feels,” Discord muttered.

He stepped carefully over the petrified log and carried on his way. Unknown to Discord, the shards of broken wood were sliding along the ground after him.

“Spike!?” Discord called again.

Not that he expected any answer. He had been wandering around and calling for longer than he wished to think. For all he knew, he was just making himself more lost than he was before. Then again, he didn’t even know how lost he was. All he knew was that he was back in that terrible place where his powers didn’t work and his life was in peril. If there was any sound of a shuffling step and the clack of a cane, or a hiss, or especially a shrill laugh, he was going to run as fast as he could away from it.

For a moment, Discord stepped into the shade of a tree, its ragged leaves just barely sheltering him from the heat of the sun above. He jumped when he heard something break in the branches above, and moved aside just as the branch over his head shattered in a hail of wood and leaves. One of the shards had cut Discord’s arm, making a small drop of blood trail its way towards his talon. As quickly as he could, Discord got out from underneath that tree, as the fallen leaves swirled around and trailed after him.

Discord’s eyes darted around, looking for any sign of any familiar face. But, no. He was alone. It was only him, the trees and the wind. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear a stream running its course. The more he walked, the louder it became. He was almost to the treeline, where he could see a bank rising up to meet him. The trees were growing sparser, but a vast expanse of sickly brown grass was spreading out before him. Just before he left the treeline, something silvery glinted at the top of the bank and in an instant it was gone.

“Hey!” Discord called.

He quickly ran after the silver gleam, unaware that he was being followed.

When he reached it, the bank was surprisingly steep. He struggled to climb up it, having to dig his fingers deep into the sun-baked soil. It was a long trip up, made longer by the anticipation of what he might have been following. The sounds of that flowing river became louder still. But, the closer he came the more Discord thought it sounded wrong. Like it was somehow choking itself, struggling to go along its course. After what felt like miles of upward ascent, Discord’s hand rose over the ridge of the bank and grasped onto level ground. His other hand grabbed onto something else, which he quickly examined and found it to be a stone with many concentric circles on it. After letting it roll down the hill behind him, he pulled himself up over the edge.

Sure enough, there was a river that flowed along. But, there was too much about it that was off. It was thick with mud and clouds of silt. More than a river that flowed so slowly should have. The water itself was churning up in places that Discord knew it shouldn’t be, as though a hundred different somethings of a hundred different sizes were surfacing up beneath it and going back down again. He watched the river flow, hesitant to cross it. Somehow, he knew that it was waiting for him to go across. Daring him to tread its filthy waters and see what new horrors awaited him within.

“Discord?”

A familiar voice called to him from across the stream. When he looked, he saw Silver Blitz standing on the opposite shore.

“Silver Blitz? How’d you get here?” Discord asked, feeling suddenly stupid for even bothering to wonder. Instead of waiting around, he stepped into the river at the very edge. “Stay there. I’m coming over.”

The first step into the river was made with a sickening plunge and a splash that only oozed outward, before it slowly enveloped Discord’s foot again. The second he put his foot in the flowing mire, he saw something else appear across the river. On the rocky shelf just behind Silver Blitz, a shadow appeared. One that was enormous, with powerful legs, wickedly large claws and a horned head that was low to the ground. Strangely, it appeared to be draped in many chains that hung above the ground. The shadow crept along the wall toward Silver Blitz, who watched unaware of the danger behind herself.

“Hey! Look out!” Discord shouted as he charged across the river toward her.

He fell suddenly downward when something wrapped itself around his ankle. Looking back, he saw the water itself had wrapped itself around him and was pulling him back. Discord swiped his tail at the water, releasing his foot and allowing him to carry onward. But, his aggressor wouldn’t let up.

The water swelled nearly up to his waist and lunged at him.

Discord dove ahead, narrowly avoiding the assault, until he noticed the river gradually getting deeper around him. The water rose quickly upward until it was almost reaching his knees. Shuddering loudly, Discord slogged onward through the water, which lapped up higher and higher onto his body, forcing him to push it back.

He reached a rock that was in the middle of the river as the water started enveloping him from his tail upward. Discord looked across the river and saw the shadow overtaking Silver Blitz, who was still watching unaware. The water rose up and pulled Discord downward. He resisted the water and pulled himself up, where he saw Silver Blitz had taken that horrible, mutilated visage he had seen so many times before. Still, she watched him as the thing approached her from behind.

With a surge of strength, Discord pulled himself up towards the top of the rock, until he saw something drop from above. It looked like it was a stone, but it had fallen from nowhere. When it rose back to the surface, it drifted next to another stone that was set above the water, and Discord saw many concentric rings on its surface. Shards of petrified wood rose up to the surface next and a gust of wind blew a rush of blackened leaves around them. With a little imagination, a face was almost seen. Something horrible that shouldn’t have been. A hellish visage that would never be seen in the world of the living.

“How far would you go?” a voice whispered.

“What?!” Discord said.

“What would you face?”

A swell of water erased the face from existence, and Discord was pulled further back down. Not about to be done in, he clawed his way back upward as the water snaked up to his shoulders.

“No! Silver Blitz…!” he strained to shout.

His claws began sliding down the surface of the rock, leaving deep scratches as he went lower and lower. When he looked around the side of the rock, he could see the leg of some beast rounding the rocky bend. Discord tried to shout, but it was no use. The water had swelled up over his snout and filled his mouth and nostrils, choking him from the inside out. The last of Discord’s strength gave out, and he let go of the rock. There was no time to see how quickly Discord was submerged. One moment, he was there. The next, he was gone.

Down Discord went, carried onward by the living current. He thrashed with all his might, unable to stop the unrelenting pull of the watery force. When he reached for the bottom, it seemed to somehow fall deeper. When he reached for the surface, it rose upward. Nothing could save him as he was plunged deeper in the darkness of those waters, never to return.

All of a sudden, Discord was able to scream as he fell through an endless void of darkness. Nothing was seen. Not even his flailing limbs in front of him as he fell. There was a solid thud, and Discord landed painfully onto solid ground. However long it was before he was able to get up, Discord couldn’t tell. When he lifted his head, he wished that he hadn’t.

He was surrounded by color. Churning, gurgling swirls of deep red and blue, which moved without pattern or purpose. Spiraling upward, stretching across the ground, swallowing one another in an infinite loop, dancing like partners at a grand ball and passing off their forms to one another. Looking further ahead, there was more to that terrible place.

Hanging from the ceiling, but jutting up from the floor as well was a sphere. A huge, technicolor globe of the same red and blue which rotated and remained motionless both at once, commanding the forces of everything around it. A nameless, shapeless, abstraction of everything Discord thought he knew to be true. A terrifying personification of anarchic glee and unchecked mayhem. The unknowable essence of disorder and complete disregard to harmony. It was then that Discord knew that he knew nothing of chaos. This was it. And it was terrifying to behold such pure pandemonium.

Discord froze, unable to accept his own existence in that instant. He was concrete. His own form was identifiable, and his antics, though abstract, had logic behind them all. Whatever he was, it wasn’t chaos. He was a cosmic clown who was given too much power. A jester too big for his own jingling hat. It shouldn’t have been any surprise that he was defeated not once, but twice. The only thing that kept him from being put away forever was the naive notion of one little pony and the equally naive uproar of a hundred thousand voices beyond the wall of the cosmos that said he was only doing his job. None of them knew a thing about him. Not even he knew.

“Discord…Help…”

“Huh?!” Discord said, snapping from his stupor.

“Help…”

It was coming from all around him. The cry for help was from a voice he knew, but couldn’t identify. He could hear the words. He knew what they meant. But, he couldn’t understand them.

From across the surface of the raging sphere drifted Silver Blitz, hung from an iron hook that gutted her through the middle. After her, Spike came into view, a hook jammed through the top of the inside of his mouth. He had no words, but he was calling for help. As was Luna when she rotated into view, a hook stuck through her neck, her eyes wide open and staring.

“Help…”

“Don’t worry! I’m coming!” Discord yelled, his words disappearing and bouncing back as if he said them from a great distance and walked suddenly closer, repeating over and over to his own ears.

The sphere roiled its colors, and a terrible howl filled the room like a great gust of wind. Whatever had just happened, Discord could feel his entire body struck as if he had fallen from a great height. As quickly as it had come, his pain subsided and he was able to keep running toward the sphere.

Whatever kept him running, he couldn’t tell. Nothing had made him feel the way he was before. Any emotion he thought he could feel in that place was completely unfamiliar. Whatever it was, it made him carry on toward that monument of mayhem. The images of the others swirled across the surface, melding into one another in a hideous, painful congealment that made them almost disappear.

There were more sounds from all around. A chattering, rattling whoosh that cut Discord’s entire body into a bloody mess. He staggered on, his eyes never leaving the others in their imprisonment. One of those whooshes dragged across Discord’s arm, flaying the skin from his limb, revealing a mess of blue that dripped with the red of his blood. He fell to his knees and crawled forth, as the skin was pulled off the rest of his body, revealing the mess of blue and red. His blood swirled around his body, blending him into the rest of the world around him. Still he crawled onward, reaching for the terrible sphere.

The image of the others drifted across the surface, nearly to the point that they disappeared around the side of the globe. A rush of blood spewed from Discord’s mouth as he crawled toward the sphere, staining the ground red before it was swallowed up and mixed into a swirl of blue. He looked up and Discord saw the others disappearing around the side.

“No…” he weakly called out.

It was too late. They were gone. The same howl as before bounded through the room, repeating over itself time and time again until the place was a symphony of gasps and screams. Including Discord’s own as he saw his own form start to darken from behind himself. He had seen the truth, and he couldn’t know it. His shadowy form began to drone a terrible chant, echoing his sorrow to all who would find him.

From the surface of the sphere, something reached out for him. An appendage of the same red and blue that grabbed him by his wrist and pulled him through the wall of the thing.

---

“Discord!! Come on!!”

As if a light had suddenly turned on, Discord saw a pair of green, slit-pupiled eyes before him as he dove forward with a loud scream. He continued screaming as he looked around himself, and saw that he was in a very different place than before. It was somewhere deep and dark with stone walls and only a torch on the wall that lit up a nearby staircase. On the ground before him was Spike, who was clutching his spellbook.

For the first time, Discord felt like he was glad the world was back to complete normalcy. Moreso, he almost thought that he was glad to see that Spike hadn’t been brained by a hook. And if he was okay, then surely the others…

But, he couldn’t think of that at the moment. He had more important things to ask about.

“Spike? Wh…What the living fuck…!?”

“I don’t know. I was looking for you for almost an hour, when I found this dungeon. And then, there you were in the mouth of that…thing!” Spike said.

Discord turned around and saw what Spike was pointing at. Mounted on the wall was the disembodied head of a great, chiropteran monster with metal skin, along with two misshapen hands on either side of it. The mouth of the thing was open wide, as if to swallow up anything that dared to step into its jaws. And the eyes. The horrible, familiar eyes that Discord swore he had seen just before. The sight of it made him shiver, before he turned around.

“Let’s get the hell out of here. Before that thing starts talking, or something,” Discord said.

“Amen to that,” Spike agreed, as he led the way out of the dungeon.

They hadn’t noticed that the thing on the wall disappeared the moment they were up the stairs. Nor had they noticed the light that snuffed out beneath them. Where they were going, light would do them no good.

Author's Note:

We are so close to the end. That is crazy. I hope you been enjoying it so far.

Till Next Time!!!

Comments

[wingdingaling]

This really is how Discord should have been depicted in the cartoons. An abstract of unknowable power that just kind of exists, can't be defeated, and does whatever the hell it wants. That would have been more memorable.