Elements of Chaos
"Welcome to my humble abode."
There was no up or down in this place. There was no rhyme or reason. there was only chaos.
They were all standing on a small island floating in the middle of this mind boggling space. All around the five ponies their eyes tried to comprehend the swirling mass of purples, blacks, and blues that comprised of what they could only associate with a sky. No matter what direction they peered there was small chunks of jagged land with their own little echo systems. None of them were all that large, some of them barely qualified to be called a boulder. It was an expansive sea of disorienting color and noises. Applejack had to sit down and stare at the grassy bed to keep the vertigo from completely toppling her over, and the others weren't faring much better.
It didn't help that they had lost everything they had ever known and loved.
None of them said anything. None of them dared voice what had just happened.
Their whole world had just ended. They had been called on a simple mission by the the castle map to a disturbing village of equality. Twilight had been acting so strangely, and she had seemed to know what was going on better than the rest of them.
And then... And then she became a nightmare.
It was such a shocking and terrifying experience for them all to see it happen. Their happy and smiling companion they had known since she had moved into ponyville a year before had become a terrifying monster right in front of them. A cackling demon that held up the leader of the village -- Starlight Glimmer -- to her followers before leaving in a flash of her corrupted magic. It was only hours after that that the sun had become massive and red and the windegos had rolled into Equestria.
Now all they had left was this incomprehensible reality that lay before them after Discord had saved them. If he hadn't of shown up when he did, then they would of been wiped from existence just as surely as all the ones they loved.
"Maud...Marble....Limestone...Mom....Daddy..." Pinkie's mane was entirely deflated and her coat was nearly as muted as when she had been changed by Discord. Her bubbly energy seemed to of sapped out of her entirely as she had curled into a ball and shed tears for her lost family. Applejack took her into a hug, where Pinkie began to strain out sobs into the farm mare's shoulder. Her entire family was gone as well. Out of everypony there, the two earth ponies had the largest families of them all, but that didn't mean the others weren't hurting just as bad.
"It...It can't get away with this...." Dash said in a shaky voice as she tried to get her trembling lips under control "Tank....and little buddy were back there..."
"So you are looking for somepony to take you under their wing huh?"
The little filly nodded hopefully. She reminded Dash so much of herself when she was that age. With a gesture of her wing she brought the little pegasus into a warm embrace.
"Yeah, I might be up for something like that."
"REALLY!?" She sounded so happy when Dash had said that, pressing her little hooves against Rainbow's blue chest so she could look her right in the eyes with the biggest happiest smile she had made the whole camping trip. She really was a cute little thing.
"Just as long as you don't go falling into any more rivers in the middle of the night"
"Heh, Its a deal."
"No....No this isn't real.... please....I don't want this to be real...."
Rarity was just staring off in the distance as tears fell. The shock of the situation had sapped out all the dramatics out of her.
Fluttershy hadn't let Discord go since they entered the reality. Her tiny form was buried in his chest as she shook.
It had all been so sudden for them. The tree had just...taken everything away. Just like that it had rendered their entire world into a barren lifeless husk because it didn't approve of how the reality was going.
"Was... was there really nothin y'all could of done....nothin at all y'all could of done to stop this from happenin...?" Applejack asked in a quaking voice to Discord as she petted a sobbing Pinkie Pie in her hooves. "Yer Discord....yer the Spirit of Chaos...."
"Applejack I couldn't do anything against the elements of Harmony, much less the tree itself. The elements hold only the merest fraction of its true power. Speaking of which..."
He snapped his fingers. What he did didn't become apparent until Applejack saw Fluttershy that was within his embrace didn't have her cutie mark anymore. She looked down to her own flank and saw the same had been done to all of them. Discord had rendered them all into blank flanks.
"Wh...why...?"
"The longer the Tree's magic is in a given dimension, the more control it has over it. I've separated you all from the tree."
"What are y'all talkin about Discord...yer not makin a lick of sense..."
He conjured up a throne and sat on it with Fluttershy on his lap. He looked into the distance and thought about the best way to describe their situation.
"One thousand years ago in your reality, The tree coerced your Princesses to accept a pact with it in exchange for getting the Windegos to leave them alone and giving them the power to defend their kind from any threat that came against them. It was on that day that the tree's cutie marks became a part of pony kind, and it used those marks to shape your kinds decisions and ideals from that point forward. It made ponies the dominant species on the planet, but at the sacrifice of the majority of their free will in exchange for harmony."
Applejack couldn't say anything as she tried to wrap her mind around what Discord was saying. The others that had the wherewithal to listen weren't handling this information any better.
Rainbow Dash sped up to his face, blood shot eyes filled with rage as she pointed to where their portal had once been.
"Open it back up. I will destroy that thing myself."
"That's not possible." Discord simply stated.
"OPEN IT BACK UP NOW! IT KILLED SCOOTALOO! IT KILLED TANK! IT KILLED EVERYPONY I EVER CARED ABOUT! I WANT TO RIP IT OUT OF ITS ROOTS AND BASH IT INTO THE GROUND UNTIL THERE'S NOTHING LEFT!"
"That's not possible."
She raised a hoof to smack him but found herself frozen as he glowered at her.
"That's...not...possible...."
Her breathing quickened as tears fell from her eyes. She wanted revenge. She wanted to destroy that tree with such a blinding passionate rage that she could not quell it for anything.
"If you set hoof in one of its other realities as you all are now, you will instantly become nightmares. Once you are nightmares you won't be able to think clearly and will be dreadfully easy to manipulate and kill off. If you step hoof in your old reality it will just wipe it clean again. Anything you try to do against it on its playing field will ultimately fail because it already sees it coming."
He snapped his fingers and revealed a facsimile of the tree of harmony's physical form. While its majestic body and all its branches remained the same, its roots that normally was hidden below the earth were blackened and stretched on below where they were for miles.
"Its not like you Rainbow Dash... You experience time linearly while it experiences all of time at the same instance. This includes all the variations those times could possibly configure into."
"What are you even saying?! You aren't making any sense... Just let me back there!"
"I'm saying that trying to take it on in one of its dimensions is a suicide mission the second your hoof touches the air of any one of those realities. As you are right now you are entirely cut off from ever stepping hoof in Equestria again without it ending in your death."
Fluttershy pulled off from Discords chest and looked up to him from his lap. She was calm even though her eyes were just as bloodshot as the rest of them.
"I know what you are talking about... its what you offered me...isn't it..."
"That is what I'm getting at yes." Discord said calmly to her. None of them had ever seen him so put together and serious before. It was strange and foreign, but in light of what took place none of them were acting quite like themselves.
"Everypony..." Fluttershy said as she turned around on his lap and tried to get their attention. Rainbow Dash was placed on the floor by Discords magic and the others gradually turned their heads to look at Fluttershy.
She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again, revealing red glowing orbs where her soft irises had been and fangs that extended out of her mouth. Her wings had morphed almost imperceptibly from feathers into a bony membrane. They were all shocked at the sight.
"Sugarcube...I thought you were fixed from the fruit bat thing..."
"This isn't from the fruit bat Applejack... Discord had been giving me little bits of chaos magic without my knowledge before that happened. When I was hit by Twilight's spell it activated that magic. The same magic that lets him change his appearance and reality. I had confronted him about it and he stopped, so I only have a teeny tiny little bit of his magic in me."
Her eyes glowed a brighter shade of red. "He had offered to make me like him. He had offered to make me a Draconequus so I could live forever with him in his dimension."
She smiled softly to her friends, just barely revealing her fangs "I didn't want to at the time.... I like being a pony, I liked living with all of you guys...I liked the friendship we all have..." Fluttershy's smile faded as she looked down to the floor. "Its all different now. We don't have a home to go back too, and we can't live here as ponies for very long. It wasn't made for us. It was made for beings like Discord and all the creatures he made in this reality."
Rainbow was glowering at Discord. How dare he change Fluttershy like that. However she wasn't in a position to do anything with his magic holding her down.
"Why didn't you tell us this sugarcube, Discord shouldn't of been..."
Fluttershy raised a hoof to stop Applejack. "Its okay, it was when he was still learning and I've already forgiven him. It would of been silly to bring it up to you guys when the matter had already been settled...still...we may be dealing with some changes here shortly."
Discord spoke up. "I tell you ponies. Whether you want to do anything about the tree or not, you cannot do it while you remain as you are. In all the realities I am aware of I have never offered this to more than just Fluttershy."
The four ponies stared up at Discord and Fluttershy in dawning understanding of what they were implying as the yellow mare floated off his body and began to change.
"If you wish to live here...." Discord intoned as his magic worked its will onto the yellow mare. She didn't look quite as mismatched as discord, but her body grew longer and her forehooves shifted in her body, growing claws where her front hooves used to be. her mane became longer and more wild and her tail fanned out in tendrils of hair that seemed out have a life of its own. Before them floated an elegant looking monster a little shorter than the Spirit of Chaos with two massive scaly black wings dwarfing Discords tiny mismatched ones.
"...then you will need to be like us....and become Draconiquui, beings of chaos where harmony has no direct hold over."
Fluttershy opened her glowing red eyes once again. She lifted her new claw and drew out the chaos magic brimming inside her. Her new snake like tongue slithered out of her mouth experimentally before glancing down at Rainbow. "If you really want to do something about the Tree of Harmony Rainbow Dash...This is the only way to start..."
Dash looked down at the ground for a moment. Give up being a pony in exchange for revenge?
"R...Rainbow..." Applejack said nervously. This had all been going so fast. She didn't know if she wanted to stop being a pony.
Dash glared up at Discord with a determined expression.
"Sign me the buck up..."