The Princesses' Quill

by AtrumVenator

Chapter 3: O Discordia

Chapter 3
O Discordia

---

I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us are. It's very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad.

---

For the first time in years, Gallant Quill slept dreamlessly. No memories of his past haunted him, no faces of the ponies he had to strike down. No accusatory faces of the loved ones of junkies. Nothing. It felt like pure bliss. Which is why, when he stepped outside of the Lunar Forge to find Equestria covered in cotton candy clouds and raining chocolate milk, he promptly turned to go back inside.

You know what, I don’t want to deal with this today. I'd thought, ya know, maybe for once, I'd have a normal nights sleep. But no. I get this. Well at least I'm aware. I mean, that's good right? Wait... I know how this works. I think it's all normal, it's all fine, and then out of nowhere, I meet someone and then they turn into a sludge monster and try to kill me. I'm just, I'm gonna go back to bed. Maybe I can hide there."

Unfortunately for the skeptical stallion, he ran directly into Princess Luna. “Gallant! Come with us quickly, we must hurry!” The urgency in the Princesses voice was interpreted by Gallant’s brain as being entirely unimportant, much like the Princess herself. She was most likely going to turn into a giant tentacle monster and try to eat hamsters or something along those lines.

Gallant simply stared at the Princess, waiting for her to change. As she walked away, obviously expecting him to follow, Gallant admired her body. He felt lucid and in control, unusual, but again, not entirely unheard of for him. He gave credit to his subconscious for construction such a beautiful replica of Luna, it was almost as if she were the real deal.

“Gallant! We do not have time for this! Thou must come now!” Again that urgency, why did she want him to move so badly? And why did her face show such a mixture of frustration and fear? Was she fearful of him? Gallant looked himself over. Everything seemed okay. In fact he seemed relatively normal compared to everything around him.

Luna stepped close to him, peering into his eyes, attempting to discern what the issue with him was. As she leaned into him, looking deep into his steel blue eyes, Gallant’s own gaze was drawn to her lips. Luna sighed, getting no sign of recognition from Gallant, who merely observed her as if she was a passing curiosity. She did not notice that their noses were nearly touching at this point. She did notice , however, when Gallant leaned a little closer to her and kissed her. She was surprised into allowing the kiss to continue for a few more seconds, before realizing what was happening. A series of emotions went through her: anger, hurt, outrage, and just slightly, a bit of pleasure. It had been more than a thousand years since any stallion had come near her in this way, after all. However, the instinct of keeping her distance from other ponies won out, and she backhoofed him through two walls.

That hurt... HOLY SHIT THAT HURT THIS ISN’T A DREAM, Gallant panicked when he realized what he had done. Before he had time to come to grips with the scope of what he had done, a chimeric beast appeared in front of him.

“Bahahaha, what a riot! You’re lucky I cushioned you there, kid. She hit you hard enough to throw you through two walls of this castle. You successfully caused more chaos for our pwecious wittle Woona than I ever could.” The draconequus continued his hysterical laughing, much to the chagrin of Gallant.

“What the hell did you do, what the buck is going on?” Rising shakily to his feet, Gallant stood to challenge the draconequus before him.

“Relax, I’m just having a bit of fun, why don’t you take seat?” A chair appeared from thin air and swept Gallant off his feet. “And have some fun! After all, you’re the most chaotic creature here, besides me that is!”

The gray unicorn could feel the bruising on his ribs from the collision with the walls as he struggled off the chair, “What, what do you mean by that?”

“Oh come now boy, don’t try to tell me you haven’t noticed! Your sister, your mother, dear old dad, all your schoolfriends, Thunder Flicker, and even now with Luna! You are a harbinger of chaos and discord, where you go, it follows! Isn’t it glorious?! Bwahahahah! Now go on, go pway with wittle Woona, I have an appointment in Ponyvillle to keep! Ta ta!” The draconequus seemed to swirl into his own eye, disappearing with a pop.

The fact that chimeric god-like being was gone, did not even register with Gallant Quill. He had fallen to his knees at the creature’s words. He spoke softly to himself, oblivious to the increasing chaos of the world around him, “Do I really bring discord to those around me? I can’t be... can I?”

“Gallant?!” Luna stepped through the hole in the wall that she had made. After recovering from the shock of the stallion’s kiss, she had attempted to reach the spot where he had been thrown. A barrier impeded her progress, and as she saw Discord appear before the fallen Gallant, she began a furious attempt to break the barrier, to no avail. When Discord had disappeared, so too had the barrier, finally letting Luna reach her friend.

“Praise our Mother, thou art safe.” Her smile faltered when she realized her words had no impact on the unicorn slumped before her. “Gallant?”

He finally acknowledged her presence, looking into her face. His normally steel blue eyes had dulled and grayed, and he looked like a foal lost in the market. “Am I really a harbinger of chaos? Everyone around me gets hurt... Is it really me? Luna tell me, is he right?”

“Why wouldst thou think him to be correct?” Words of comfort would do him no good, he needed to see the lies of Discord for himself to be free of them.

“Do you know what my dad said to me? Before he killed himself?” Luna shook her head, wishing for him to continue, “He said ‘Long you live and high you fly, And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry, And all you touch and all you see, Is all your life will ever be.’ Thats it. There’s no grand purpose to life. It simply is. Well I want a bucking purpose!” He rose to his feet in anger, ignoring the pain of the action.
“I want a reason to live, and here I’ve been for all these years just bucking up everyone’s life, and then I meet you. And you actually give me something bigger than myself. And you know what I do? I ruin it. Cause thats what I do. I ruin things. And as much as I want to believe he was wrong, he wasn’t. He bucking wasn’t. Life simply is. There is no grand purpose. It’s cause and effect, and my effects are to hurt EVERY. SINGLE. PONY. That I care about. So buck me right? Buck the poor fool who dared to want something more. Because even if I get that, I can’t hold on to it.” Luna was floored. The amount of anger and rage coming out of the normally stoic Gallant Quill was astounding. His rant didn’t entirely make sense, but she believed it was a side effect of the years of pent-up frustrations being released in one torrent.

“Thou did not hurt us.” Luna heard the words leave her mouth before she could consider them. She felt small next to the white-hot rage of the gray unicorn stallion. However, to her great surprise, she found that her words calmed the raging stallion slightly.

“What.” The flat response was not encouraging, but nonetheless, Luna continued.

“What happened between us, it did not hurt us, that was not thy doing in any case. The trickery of Discord blind thou to the world. Thou could not have known the consequences of thy actions. Perhaps, had we rejected thee entirely, we would not have come after thou. But consciously thou had no previous knowledge of our reaction. It was not thy doing. Thou did not hurt me.” By the time Luna had said her piece, Gallant’s anger had entirely subsided; however, his eyes were once again lit up, giving the impression of cold steel which Luna had grown familiar with.

“I am, I’m glad to hear that. I thought my actions would’ve driven you to do something rash, like throw me through a wall or something.” Luna had the propensity to look guilty at the thought, until she noticed the wry smile Gallant had on.

“Thy wit is nearly as dull as thy blade, Gallant Quill.” Luna could return the joke just as easily.

“Hey! My blade is perfectly fine, thanks. And besides, aren’t you my teacher? Where is my blade anyway?”

“We are thy teacher in magic and crafting, not in poor jokes. And we may reconsider that if our star pupil cannot even keep track of his blade.” Luna savored his downcast face, before relieving his anxiety, “We jest, we jest, we took thy blade and carved it with the traditional runes of the Lunar Guard. It is thy own decision what name the blade shall have, but the runes will protect it against dirt, rust, dulling, and damage. Though the metal thy used already did this, bear in mind that if things can go wrong, they will, and at the worst possible moment. These runes offer some sort of protection against that.”

“I am honored, Princess. Where is the blade now, if I may ask?” Gallant wanted to see it for himself.

She retrieved the blade from what to be a pocket dimension inside the pocket of her royal garb. “We have it here for thou, but thou should admire it later because we must travel... to... Ponyville... and......” Luna’s speech slowed down as the world around them returned to normality.

Gallant fixed her with a deadpan stare, “Job well done Princess, we should be proud of ourselves. To the bar to celebrate?”

Still somewhat stunned by the sudden change of events, Luna simply nodded, and allowed herself to be lead away by the gray stallion.

---

Luna had not had a drink in over a thousand years.

Gallant had been a very heavy drinker after the loss of his smuggling business.

Luna was a princess.

Gallant was a former criminal.

So when Gallant Quill found himself being completely obliterated by the sheer volume of alcohol that Luna took in, he was more than a little surprised. The mare, for all her mannerisms and customs left over for the past, could out drink him.

They passed the time telling stories of the past, Luna about her and her sister fighting monsters, saving ponies, and being pissed off at each other for various reasons. Gallant told about his smuggling days and the many times he had successfully outwitted the Royal Guard. Luna was amused by the ineptitude that Gallant’s account gave as picture of the Royal Guard. Few members, Shining Armor among them, treated the Princess of the Night with the same respect as her sister.

They drank well into the night, celebrating Discord’s defeat and toasting whenever they felt like it. It was a night of joy across all of Equestria. Leaving the bar, Luna leaned against Gallant as they clumsily walked down the street, trying to keep their bearings. After what seemed like an eternity of stumbling and laughing at various things for no reason in particular, the found themselves in front of Luna’s bedchambers. The two bat ponies who were guarding the doors looked at the pair with mild interest, but otherwise did not say a word.

Luna turned to face Gallant, “We wish, to thank thou.”

“What for?”

“For this, for today and this night. It may not seem like all that much to thou, but it is of great importance to us.” She leaned forward and kissed Gallant on the cheek. Smiling coyly, she disappeared into her room before the young stallion could react. He never did react, he simply stared in amazement for several minutes, until one of the door guards poked at him. He fell over, completely asleep and snoring loudly on the floor outside Luna’s bedchambers.

After a few moments:

“Dibs on not telling Celestia.”

“What? No aw come on don’t make me do that.”

“I got dibs.”

“I bucking hate you.”

“And I relish your hatred.”

Author's Note:

Discord's a prick isn't he?
Please feel free to comment below, if you liked it, tell me why, if you hated it, tell me why. I'm always looking to improve.

Comments

[ForgottenDragon]

First off, Discord's my favorite villain and I think what you did with him is amazing. Not only does he bend the laws of physics to his will and is a god-like being, but he plays mind games (which I love) with everypony. He doesn't have to use his powers, he just says the right thing to get inside your head and makes you helpless; What you did with Discord is utterly brilliant.

[Zepher]

I love that ending