A Journey Unthought Of: Revival of Chaos

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 62 - The Battle of Canterlot Part 6

Bunsen Burner opened his eyes with some small amount of hesitance. As he looked and took in his surroundings he recognized his estate back in Pferdshire. The mansion was behind him, the rolling hills to the west and mountains to the north were before him. The sun was shining beautifully across the countryside, with several small clouds offering their help to shade the land beneath them. On the edge of his property stood a tree, its branches reaching to the heavens with leaves that shook with excitement in the wind.

As he slowly approached it, he finally realized that there was a picnic blanket spread out beneath its shade, and a basket full of what was sure to be appetizing food was lying open waiting for him. A mare sat on the blanket, her face partially concealed by a book on horticulture. Her coat was crème colored, her mane was auburn with three streaks of grey hair that, rather than accentuating her age, magnified her feminine grace. Her Cutie Mark: a watering can that was lightly soaking the ground next to a blooming flower.

“Impossible,” he whispered.

Hearing the faint utterance, the mare looked up at him happily, “Hello, Bunsen.”

“Lily,” his voice broke a little, her warm smile melting him from the inside out in an instant.

“You haven’t kept me waiting too long,” she declared cheerfully, “I’d have gotten my glasses from inside otherwise. I don’t understand how you’ve lived with those things all these years: I can’t!”

“You’re…You’re here,” he declared in a wavering voice.

“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it back early from my trip to Seaddle Hospital. I thought it would take another three hours, but since I got home early I wanted to give you a nice surprise.”

Bunsen Burner slowly approached her, stepping around the picnic basket, and settled down on the blanket with her. He gently held his head to her cheek, and tears formed on his face.

“I missed you so much,” he said as his voice cracked again, and he wrapped his hooves around her side.

Surprised, Lily turned to give him her full attention, “It was just a day trip.”

“I know,” he nodded as he rocked the both of them a little, “but I had a dream: a horrid nightmare, really. I’d lost you, and suddenly that day trip had seemed like years.”

She smiled at him, and put her hoof around the cusp of his jaw, “Well, I’m certainly glad you’re awake now, because I’m here, and I won’t ever leave you.”

Bunsen Burner kissed her on the cheek gently.

“I love you,” he declared to the pile of rubble he held in his forelegs. Ponies screamed as they ran from monsters made from cotton candy. Changelings buzzed above as they fought their own confection demons off. “Tell me how your day went,” he smiled at the rock as he stroked it, “It feels like it’s been forever since I've asked you that.”

---

With a great roar Nightmare Moon barreled down on Discord from above, swinging her conjured sword down to slice through his asymmetrical skull. He didn't move a muscle to stop her or to save himself. The sword came down, but mere inches from the draconequus’ person he reached out with his power and pulled on the weak point of the sword’s structure, and it shattered into tiny pieces. The dark alicorn was thrust back into a staggered landing, but she recovered very quickly. Ripping up several cobble stones from the street, she launched them towards him, even while she was summoning chains to ensnare him.

“I must admit that I find your tenacity adorable,” Discord declared as the stones racing toward him transmuted into a sickeningly cute picture of his opponent.

Nightmare Moon growled, and the chains that began to constrict around her enemy grew thick spikes on each link.

“Is there really any point to this struggle of yours, though?” he continued as they surrounded him up to his arms, “Who exactly are you fighting for anyways, Loony Lu? These ponies? The ones who have feared and hated you for so long? I admired your decision to break from the fold all those centuries ago, but it looks like you’re hiding away in your sister’s ideals again.”

“You’re a menace, Discord,” she replied angrily.

“Flattery will get you nowhere with me,” he smiled as he gobbled through his chains like they were spaghetti noodles, “The last one who tried I turned into a tree.”

“Are you so egotistical that you think you have exclusive control over change,” Nightmare Moon asked as she backed up slowly as he advanced, “Ponies do it every day without you. Even I have changed! What’s the point of you then? We don’t need you!”

“Pardon me if I’m skeptical about your ‘reform’,” he fired back as he caused the terrain to become a taffy-like quick sand beneath her, “I think you simply can’t have someone else ruling your world. You can’t even lead your own herd, so what makes you think you can handle something so much bigger?”

Even as her wings became covered in the sticky trap and she began to sink, the dark alicorn glared defiantly up at the mad titan, “I've learned two things from you over my lifetime.”

Discord looked at her with genuine curiosity, and her descent stopped altogether, “Oh? What are those?”

She scanned the battlefield momentarily, and quickly found the one she was looking for. Twilight Sparkle looked down at the shattered pieces of the Elements of Harmony, her magic slowly picking through the larger shards, sifting through the dust. Her friends had joined her and looked down in despair at the broken artifacts. She looked back up at Discord, scoffed, and raised her voice to a shout, “That anything is possible, and that there’s no stopping those six ponies! Did you think you were the first to try and destroy the Elements?”

The six friends’ ears perked up as they realized who was speaking and what was being said.

Nightmare Moon looked straight into Twilight Sparkle’s eyes as she spoke, “The true power of the Elements was never really in those trinkets; it was in them!” She turned back toward Discord, who had begun to frown heavily, “Their friendship is their power, and not even you with all yours can change that!”

Discord sternly glared down at her, and had her entirely swallowed up by the taffy pit. Even as the last of her horn sunk beneath the surface, he felt a strange sensation jab at him from the inside. A miniature black hole had opened inside his belly, and his form twisted and contorted as it was sucked past the event horizon. When the last of him had disappeared into its dark depths, the hole widened for its mistress to exit.

“Reform the Elements! I’ll try to hold him off!” Nightmare Moon blurted to Twilight, before a door spontaneously grew in front of her. Out of it stepped Discord, and on the other side she could see another small point; a white hole.

“Action and Reaction, Loony Lu,” he said with not a trace of humor at all, “You’re not going to be rid of me that easily.”

As he was about to engage in actual combat with Nightmare Moon, Discord sensed a massive shift in the cosmic background of the universe. Something so incredibly alien was nearby that he could practically feel it breathing down his neck, and for the first time in his physical existence he was afraid. He whipped his head back and forth looking for the source of the unknown power.

Princess Cadence and her husband were wearing down even as their enemies increased: they had simply traded hellish insects for sugary demons. Prince Shining Armor sliced a carnivorous lollipop down its length, and the creature finally lay still when it fell to the ground. Drawing her aural bowstring back, Princess Cadence let fly an arrow. It flew along its path and pierced through one pretzel goblin’s head, dragged the creature along as it continued through the air, only for it to embed in another pretzel goblin’s chest. The arrow violently exploded on impact, launching cheesy bits of bread everywhere.

“This is frickin’ ridiculous!” the Prince yelled as he shield bashed a licorice creature away and sliced through its legs, “Why did the apocalypse have to be ‘candy land’ themed?”

“There’s no explaining Discord,” the Princess replied as she took a solitary breath between her last and next shot. She glanced in the direction she had seen Twilight last: her magic was enveloping the shards of the Elements, her friends gathered around her to literally offer their moral support. She then saw Nightmare Moon as she was flung through the air by a clearly distracted Discord, only for the alicorn to open a portal behind herself that led behind him, allowing her to try and slice at his back. “Whatever the case, I’d say he’s achieved what he always wanted: the world is going mad.” Her arrow left the string, zigzagging around the ponies in the area to hit Discord’s sick creations.

The creature made of taffy appendages with rock candy hide slowly turned its way towards the royal couple and lumbered towards them, its steps causing the surrounding area to quake.

“Everypony clear the area around that thing,” Prince Shining Armor called out as he raised a large magenta enclosure around it.

The creature slowly walked into the wall closest to them. Its mass colliding with the shield caused it to develop hairline cracks. Stupidly it probed the wall for a way out, and eventually it began to slam its tentacles against the wall.

The Prince grabbed the receiver of his backpack radio and broadcast on as many channels as he could reach, “All Arty units near Canterlot Square, lock onto the creature in my killbox and fire at will.”

“CLEAR THE AREA!” Princess Cadence shouted as loudly as she could, and she galloped away just behind her husband. All the ponies in the Square heard her and ran away from the large creature-holding box. The Changelings in turn followed after them, sensing that something they didn't necessarily want to be around for was about to happen. The candy abominations loitered longer than their enemies, and it sealed their destruction.

The tower cannons that had range enough to hit their target clanked into position on their clockwork platforms. Having gone unused for most of the battle because of the agility of the Changelings, the artillery brigade was quite ready for a chance to unleash their fury on something. Brass barrels locked onto the semi-amorphous rock candy abomination dumbly attempting to escape its prison and bellowed as they opened fire. Lead blasted straight through the shield and the creature’s hide, and the ground trembled as they impacted into the ground beneath it. After a full volley had occurred the guns paused. What remained of the creature wasn't much, as all that was left was taffy seeping into the damaged street below.

As the air cleared from the mixture of ground candy and cobblestone, Princess Cadence looked amongst the debris hoping to not see a single pony injured or worse. As she carefully made her way through the treacherous mish-mashed landscape of ruined marble and sugar, she saw a pony sitting in the rubble. There her godfather sat in the ashes, happily talking to a pile of rocks.

“How is our little girl doing?” he asked, “I’d heard she recently had an exhibition of her gallery at Canterlot Museum. Have you been in touch with her recently?”

“Bunsen Burner!” she yelled as she made her way to him as quickly as she could.

The very instant that she called out to him, Discord slowly looked in her direction.

A third alicorn.

“Of course,” he said to himself, and he vanished from the spot to appear in front of her.

The Princess stopped short when he appeared before her. “You’re powerful, I’ll give you that,” he declared, “but whatever you are, I’m not letting you spoil my fun.”

He snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened; not a flash, glimmer, or spark.

The Princess looked at him, her body braced for whatever he had planned, but it never came.

He looked at his fingers in surprise and snapped them again, and again. “This isn't funny,” he murmured, and he continued to snap his fingers, until he roared, “THIS ISN'T FUNNY!”

He looked back at her, enraged and afraid at the thoroughly confused pink pony princess, and then to his still enthralled slaves, “Kill her! Remove her! I don’t care how you do it, just kill her now!”

---

“Bunsen Burner,” a familiar voice called out to the stallion in question.

The sky and mountains seemed to quake with the exclamation. The tree under which he and Lily sat seemed to become fuzzy momentarily, and the landscape darkened and blurred.

“What was that?” he asked as a sudden weariness overtook him, and a great ringing entered his ears.

“Bunsen, look,” Lily pointed towards the side of the mansion, “the Princess has come to join us!”

The large white frame of the alicorn Princess of the Sun appeared, but something was decidedly wrong. At first her form shifted and blurred, and her coat appeared in a pink hue, only to shift back into its usual elegant whiteness. Her face seemed concealed even though it was in plain view, like the details were being sculpted out of half-formed clay overly full of moisture.

“I've come for your wife, Bunsen,” the equine abomination declared in a gurgly voice, it’s milky, dead eyes gazing down on him, “It cannot be any other way.”

“She’s trying to take me away from you, Bunsen,” he heard Lily’s voice say behind him, but it was Discord’s influence speaking through her lips, “You know there’s only one thing that will stop her from ever causing me harm.”

“Yes,” he replied, his mind possessed by only one desire, “I must kill her.”

“Removing her means we can be together happily ever after,” Discord said through his illusionary puppet, “Kill the Princess now!”

---

“I won’t let you,” the corrupted Bunsen Burner yelled as he galloped hard right at the startled Princess Cadence, intent on trampling her underneath his hooves, “You can’t take her from me again!”

Comments

[Alan Smithee]

So were the artillery positions manned in the expectation that they be able to hit tiny flying Changelings?

[Hustlin Tom]

4714485
Siege Mode was designed to defend Canterlot against a dragon attack after an incident that happened around 700 years ago. The usual offensive procedures weren't altered in time to account for many small fast targets: all that really mattered was that the civilian population was kept out of harm's way and that defensive positions were made.