Opposition, 3 PM
Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic and Order, approached Canterlot Palace for her thrice-weekly afternoon appointment with Princess Celestia. There was much to do today. Treaties with the buffalo needed to be signed and implemented since Twilight had demonstrated to the buffalo why it was inadvisable to challenge the Elements. The Elements of Opposition could be excellent friends and allies to those who approached them with Harmony. To those who wanted to enforce their own selfish desires, those that approached them with Disharmony, the Elements could be powerful and ruthless foes. The buffalo had seen the light of reason and agreed to yield their claim on the land they declared to be their ancient territory.
Sometimes Twilight considered returning to Canterlot to advise the princess full-time. Her friends in Ponyville would miss her, but Princess Celestia needed her, and missing a friend was an emotional weakness that was acceptable in peaceful times, but now, while Equestria was still rebuilding from the year of chaos, it was perhaps no longer appropriate to allow such emotional concerns to dictate her behavior. On the other hand, it was her presence in Ponyville that allowed her to maintain control over Equestria's most powerful weapon. Only the bonds of friendship between her and the other Bearers allowed them to use the Elements. Without her presence enforcing those ties, Fluttershy would retreat into her hermitage, viciously lashing out at any who dared disturb her; Rarity would allow her greed and ambition to get the better of her, and focus her sole attention on social climbing, self-promotion, and building her wealth; Rainbow Dash would probably leave them all behind permanently to pursue her career with the Wonderbolts, or her work as a motivational speaker, or whatever other plans had captured her fickle attention this week; and Pinkie Pie would probably kill innocent ponies. Only Applejack could be trusted to try to preserve friendships between the Bearers, and Applejack's manipulative ways sometimes backfired, now that her friends knew not to trust her completely.
Besides, right now she had her research on Discord to pursue. The Bearers had mutually agreed to carry the burden of training him to obedience themselves – except for Rainbow Dash, who enjoyed ordering him to punch himself in the face on occasion but had little patience and couldn't be bothered to help her friends with anything most days, and Pinkie Pie, who was far, far too enthusiastic about the notion of demonstrating to Discord the new perspective on humor that he had granted her. (Or, to be precise, his dead cognate had granted her. Twilight's research had confirmed, eventually, that the quantum signature of the Discord she held in custody was different than the one Spike had misguidedly killed.) In order to ensure that Discord's obedience training held firm under the control of any of the Bearers, it was necessary for the majority of them to participate. Thus, he was held prisoner in Ponyville, and thus, Twilight needed to be there to conduct her research.
She was quite enthused about it, and looking forward to telling Celestia her new discoveries, once they had settled the matters of state on today's agenda. The Diadem of Order had been far more active than the Element of Magic had ever been, whispering insights and new directions for research to Twilight, and with its guidance, Twilight was beginning to understand how it might be possible to shape reality.
Magic was chaos, at its fundament. Discord's power was so much greater than anypony's in part because he manipulated the raw force of magic, not channeled through the rules and structures that kept magic harmonized with the world. This allowed him to manipulate reality at a more fundamental level than magic was ordinarily capable of, because he did not need to maintain harmony with the existing structures of reality. But his manipulations could rarely be organized or permanent because by its nature chaos rejected organization and permanence.
Twilight's experiments had long ago revealed that chaotic and harmonic magic could be converted into each other, an obvious corollary to the proposition that all magic was fundamentally chaos. Under most circumstances, that conversion resulted in a great deal of waste energy, as the magic would drastically weaken once the strictures of harmony were placed on it. By extensive experimentation on Discord, however, Twilight was beginning to see how it would be possible to use the raw force of Chaos to permanently alter the shape of reality by imposing, not Harmony, but Order. Harmony maintained balance and kept everything in the same organizational structure, even if that structure was inefficient and non-optimal. Order had the power to reorganize, to reshape the very rules that reality was structured by, permanently; but at some point in the far distant past, Discord had destroyed the Order Avatar, scattering its power, so there was no longer one source of Orderly power great enough to change reality. Chaos sought impermanent change and Harmony sought to keep things going the way they had always gone; neither Discord nor the Elements had ever had any interest in permanent change.
The equation was altered now. With the Diadem of Order, Twilight Sparkle was now capable of seeing that the Harmony she had lived her prior life by was flawed. The preservation of an inefficient system that brought undue pain and strife to ponies was too high a price to pay for the peace and unity Harmony brought. It was time to truly bring Order to the world. And by using Discord's raw Chaos magic and filtering it, not through Harmony but through Order, Twilight proposed to use him to remake the world into a better, happier place. She had already forced him to take in the entropic imbalance caused by his predecessor's death, restoring the rate of decay to where it had been before Spike had destroyed the prior Discord. She believed she could force him to take in more of it, and then use his power to enforce a change on reality, such that all ponies would become immortal.
She was very close to a breakthrough; the major point of interference with her work now was that without control of his own magic, Discord was considerably more mortal and fragile than he had been. While his pain meant nothing to her, Twilight was not foolish enough to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs; should Discord die under the strain of the energies she was channeling through him as part of her research, it would be impossible to use him to achieve her goals. So she had adopted a measured approach. She performed her experiments twice weekly, allowing Discord several days to recover between experimental procedures, and she ceased experimentation as soon as her monitoring spells told her he was unacceptably close to death.
It was unfortunate. If he could only withstand more, she felt she could achieve her breakthrough much more quickly. Perhaps she should have words with Fluttershy about feeding him more often; as food was an important tool in his conditioning, his intake needed to be tightly rationed, but judging from how thin he had become and the fact that he was able to withstand less of her experimental protocol every time she worked with him, it was possibly rationed too low at the moment.
Yesterday had been his worst performance thus far; while heart arrhythmia was quite normal for Discord, he had gone into a rhythm so erratic it could better be described as sporadic random heartbeats within only a few minutes after the point where he'd begun begging for mercy. The begging was a metric of endurance; Discord was obviously aware that Twilight was entirely unmoved by his pain and that begging her to stop was an exercise in pointlessness, so he generally began their sessions with attempts at defiant posturing, bargaining, or, lately, complete resignation. To a certain point he would endure the experiments, screaming and writhing and otherwise responding to the pain in an expected fashion but with no attempt to persuade her to stop. Once he began begging, it was an indicator that what little reason he ever possessed had been overwhelmed entirely, and that he was no longer able to keep himself from engaging in activities he knew were futile.
Usually he could last for quite some time after the begging began, and in the past, she had been able to maintain experimental protocols through the point where the begging stopped again because Discord would lose the ability to construct any sort of coherent speech. Last night, though, it had been merely seven point six minutes after he'd begun begging before he had begun the pattern of losing consciousness from pain, then being revived by further application of pain, with periods of unconsciousness increasing in length each time, coupled with steadily increasing frequency of skipped heartbeats or extended diastole. This was usually Twilight's primary indicator that Discord was approaching his mortal limits, so she had brought the experiments to a close as soon as Discord had remained unconscious for three minutes under the continued applications of energies from the experimental apparatus.
He had attempted a new manipulation tactic as well. When she had ordered him to lie in the circle and position himself for emplacement of the restraints and magical conduits, he had not responded with sarcasm, dark humor, threats, attempts at persuasion or bargaining, or even the stoic silence coupled with heavy breathing that he had employed as of late. Instead he had begun crying. He hadn't begged – after the first two sessions he had plainly learned not to bother with begging while he was capable of consciously choosing to refrain, because it was wholly ineffectual – and he hadn't tried to resist, but he had cried, sobbing quietly the entire time that she had been preparing him for the evening's protocol. Of course, this attempt to manipulate her emotions and gain sympathy was as ineffective as every other such attempt. Twilight felt certain that with the aid of the Diadem to calm and control her emotions, she would be capable of carrying out experimentation on anyone who was not a personal friend if what was at stake was possible immortality for ponykind. And after all the other Discord had done, Twilight considered Discord's suffering during the experiments to be entirely just and fair.
All in all, it was regrettable that she couldn't be in two places at once. She needed to be here in Canterlot for Princess Celestia, but she needed to be in Ponyville for her research and to maintain the power of the Elements. Perhaps she should investigate the properties of the Mirror Pool more thoroughly...
She nodded to the guards as she entered. A familiar stallion intercepted her as she headed toward the throne room. "Twily!"
Twilight turned to face the Captain of the Royal Guard, her brother. "Shining. I would appreciate it if you would no longer call me by that foalish nickname."
Shining Armor sighed. "I know you don't like it anymore, but it feels like that's a symptom. Ever since you took on that thing you're wearing and defeated Discord with it... you've been so cold, Twilight. You can't be just a little tiny bit foalish with your old BBBFF anymore? Ever?"
She shook her head. "There's no place in my life for foalishness of any sort anymore, Shining. I have business with the Princess, so if there is nothing else we need to discuss..."
"I actually came to meet you so I could warn you. Her Highness is... not in good shape today."
Twilight's heart sank. "Is she looking at portraits of Princess Luna again?"
"That's how it started, after she raised the sun this morning. She cancelled court, again, to go through her portrait collection and eat cake for breakfast. Then she started drinking, around noon. The sommelier's under my orders to water her wine, but if it weren't for her healing powers she'd have drunk enough by now to be under the table." He looked solemn. "This isn't a good day, Twilight. If I were you, I'd consider rescheduling."
"No. If she's drunk and going through portraits of Luna again, she needs me more than usual. I will attend her for our regular meeting. If I have an opportunity, I have a sobering spell I can cast, though even when the Princess is... inebriated, she's skilled enough to block me most of the time."
"All right. I'll give orders for the guards to leave the two of you alone. If you need anything, just summon me."
Forewarned, Twilight entered the presence of the Princess of the Sun (some had taken to calling her, now, the Princess of the Sun and Moon, but never in Celestia's hearing if they knew what was good for them), and bowed. "Princess Celestia," she said.
The Princess was looking decidedly non-regal. She was in a chair at a table, her front hooves and upper body slumped over the table. A half-full wine glass and three empty bottles told part of a story; the chocolate smeared on her muzzle and the three full-size cake platters empty of anything but crumbs told another part; the portrait books open all over the table containing miniaturized magic-made copies of hundreds of paintings of Princess Luna, most probably painted by Celestia herself from memory because the portraits of a young Luna simply weren't old enough to have been painted from life, told the rest of it. If Shining Armor hadn't forewarned her, Twilight would still have known exactly what was happening.
Celestia lifted her head, her mane smeared with vanilla frosting. "Twilight?" she slurred. "You're here today?"
"Forgive me, Your Highness," Twilight said softly, and cast the sobriety spell. Celestia's horn lit up as her face registered alarm, but her drunkenness made her too slow to fully block the spell. She jerked in her seat.
"TWILIGHT!" she shouted. "How dare you! You overstep yourself!"
Twilight didn't back down. "Apologies, Princess Celestia, but if you wish to grieve for Princess Luna, the night is the appropriate time to do so. You have responsibilities during the day."
Celestia slumped. "I have responsibilities at night as well. I have to move the moon, now. I'll never sleep again. Ever."
"Let Chrysalis move the moon tonight."
"No. She wants... she wants..." Celestia's eyes welled with tears. "She wants to be Luna for me, and I want it, Twilight. I want her to devour me alive if she can give me a beautiful illusion that my sister is still with me. I can't. I want it too much. Luna would never... she'd never forgive me." A sob escaped her. "She'd never forgive me anyway, after I..."
"Princess Luna would understand. You did what you needed to," Twilight said.
"I killed her, Twilight. I killed my baby sister... I killed..."
Celestia began to sob. She'd plainly blocked some of the sobriety spell, even if she hadn't deflected it all. "I went for a thousand years without her, knowing what I'd done to her, and I was alone, I was all alone, but I knew she'd come back, I knew that someday it would end and either I would pay for what I'd done to her, or she would come back to me... and I had her back for less than two years, Twilight, less than two years and after what Discord did to her I couldn't call her back, I couldn't persuade her, and if we'd only had the Elements to purify her again but we didn't... less than two years, and now she's gone forever..." She pushed one of the portrait books with a hoof. "I can't do this anymore. All my strength is gone. I endured for a thousand years, I can't keep going, Twilight, I can't."
"Only a little while longer," Twilight said softly. "Just a little while, and my research will be completed. We'll make ponykind as immortal as you are, Princess. You'll never need to see a pony you love die again. And we'll use Discord to raise and lower the sun until we can train a team of unicorns in the old ways, so they can take the burden from you permanently. You only need to endure a little while longer, and then you can take a vacation. You can wear your Sunny Days disguise, and come to Ponyville with me, and live a normal life for as long as you want to. You just have to put up with the burdens of being Princess for a little while longer, Your Highness."
"It sounds so wonderful when you talk about it," Celestia said. "My faithful student. What would I do without you, Twilight?"
"You'll never need to find out," Twilight said. "I will always be ready to help and support you, my Princess, no matter what you need. I'll always be here for you."
"Thank you, thank you so much..." Celestia threw her hooves around Twilight and pulled her into a desperate hug, which gave Twilight the opportunity to cast the sobriety spell again. When Celestia finally released her, her eyes still glittered with unshed tears but her voice no longer shook, or slurred.
"My... apologies, Twilight. I... should be stronger than this." She pushed back from the table, getting out of her chair and standing on all fours. Her wings and mane were in disarray, unpreened and unbrushed. "I've tried to be stronger than this, but last night... I was moving the moon, and I couldn't stop thinking about Luna. And I knew that I can move the sun even if I'm impaired, so I knew I couldn't give into my grief at night. I had to wait until the daytime, when I'm stronger. Please forgive me."
"There's no need to ask forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive. I'm sure I would be in equally bad shape if I had to kill Shining." This wasn't true anymore. Twilight no longer felt much of anything for anypony except her Princess. Her friends were monsters, her dragon assistant was a perpetual disappointment, and her brother and her parents were always complaining about how cold and distant she'd become. It made her want to interact with them even less. "I had planned to go over the treaties with the buffalo with you today, but if you don't feel up to it, I could assist you with something else."
Celestia sighed. "I trust your judgement, Twilight. Just... read over the treaties and sign them for me if the terms seem acceptable." She lifted the cake platters and wine bottles off the table with her magic and dumped them in a chest, which she then closed. There was a family of raccoons whose job it was to clean up the detritus of the Princess' excesses, because servants weren't always the most discreet. Fluttershy had found the raccoons and talked them into taking the job. Actually they'd been thrilled enough about getting to work in the palace, with free and unhindered access to all the delightful food that ended up in the palace trash bins, that they'd willingly given up their oldest son to be Fluttershy's pet, as payment for her help in getting them this job. Twilight had ended up wiping the creature's mind and dumping him in the Everfree with amnesia after Fluttershy had come to her crying about how traumatized the raccoon had become from Fluttershy's "affection." She'd lied to Fluttershy and told her that she'd given the raccoon to a good home. The truth was, she didn't want any chance that the raccoon would recover his memories and be able to find an animal speaker somewhere to tell his experiences to. In the Everfree, either the raccoon would have ended up becoming lunch, or he would be fighting too hard for survival to worry about recovering traumatic memories.
Twilight was very glad that Fluttershy had Discord now. Unlike the innocent creatures that Fluttershy would weep over and threaten to kill herself because of what she'd done to them, Discord deserved the use Fluttershy was making of him, and apparently he satisfied her enough that she could be genuinely and cleanly caring to her innocent pets, without being compelled to take advantage of them.
She nodded. "All right, Princess. You can count on me. Is there anything else we should be going over today, or would you prefer that I get started on that?"
"Oh, there is one thing." Celestia frowned. "Did you let Discord send a letter to somepony?"
Twilight stared. "What?"
"Here. I got this from Spike last night." Celestia levitated a scroll over to Twilight. "It's very strange. It claims that Discord sent me a letter, but I never got anything."
Twilight opened the scroll and read it, growing coldly angry as she did so.
Dear Princess Celestia,
This is Spike, not Twilight. Did you get Discord's letter? I think he had some idea about how you could fix Twilight and the others. Sorry if it's too gross and hard to read, it was all crumpled up and bloody. I really hope it helps. – Your friend and subject Spike the dragon
Spike had been a terrible disappointment of late. First, he'd unleashed the acceleration of entropy by killing Discord, with a magical hammer he'd stolen from the palace, possibly from Celestia's private armory. He'd meant well by it, but it had been foolish. And now, he couldn't keep to a proper dining schedule, he actually stole gems from Rarity for snacking, his standards of cleanliness were merely acceptable by the standards she had held once and were wholly inadequate for what she required now... and apparently he was conspiring with Discord. Despite having killed the original. She felt cold rage as she read over the letter. As if anyone needed to fix her! Merging her Element with the Diadem of Order had perfected her. Yes, it would be preferable if she could undo what had been done to the others, but if she did, she would have to undo her own transformation, and that was simply unacceptable. The Diadem of Order had granted her clarity, made her more efficient, allowed her to strip away the emotional weaknesses that had dragged her down in the past. She felt very little fear or anxiety any more; she was confident and in control, all the time. Spike declaring that she needed to be "fixed" was a betrayal.
And Spike had allowed Discord to use him to send a letter? That was a far worse betrayal. And an idiotic one. The fact that Princess Celestia had never received the letter made it plain that it had been some sort of trick on Discord's part. A magical booby trap of some kind? Or did this version of Discord actually have allies he could summon?
"I see," she said, controlling her anger. It wouldn't do for Princess Celestia to know quite how enraged at Spike she was. "I'll need to question Discord about this later. Let me attend to the treaties today, and any other paperwork you need me to review." Tonight when she returned home, she would have a lengthy discussion with Spike on the topic of his idiocy and his betrayal. There would need to be punishment. Complete gem restriction, she thought. Spike could survive a week on a diet of pony food. He would hate it – gems were a comfort food for him, virtually the only thing he enjoyed eating, and if he was denied them for too long he would grow sick and weak, but seven days without gems would do him no permanent harm. She'd have to cast a spell to locate all the gems in his private hoards, stashed throughout the library. Taking his hoard from him would probably be as painful a punishment as being forbidden to eat gems, but he needed to be taught a lesson about who he should trust, and who he should not.
And then, she would contact Fluttershy to summon Discord, and question him.
But things needed to be done in the proper order. This was the time she had set aside to help Princess Celestia. She would not cut it short to go discipline her assistant. There would be time for that tonight.
"I suspect there's quite a lot of paperwork," Celestia said, a guilty note in her voice.
"There always is, Your Highness. We should really train some secretaries to take some of these administrative burdens off your hooves." Not that they were really on Celestia's hooves anymore. Mostly, it was Twilight handling the paperwork nowadays. A secretary for Celestia would free Twilight to do more useful things to assist her princess, but it would have to be an intelligent pony that Twilight could trust, and there were so few ponies Twilight felt she could trust any more. Even her brother was suspect. Shining Armor was willingly consorting with the Changeling Queen out of grief for his love, Twilight's old foalsitter Princess Cadance, who had died during one of the original Discord's attacks. According to Chrysalis, it had been Discord himself who had killed her. Twilight suspected it had in fact been Nightmare Moon, and that Chrysalis was lying to spare Celestia's feelings, since Discord had never to her knowledge directly killed anypony. The fact that her brother would feed a Changeling his love and take her to his bed for the sake of an illusion that his fiancee was still alive made Twilight think less of him. Princess Celestia had resisted a similar temptation that Chrysalis had offered, was still resisting it even today. Twilight supposed she couldn't blame Shining Armor for not being as steadfast as the Princess, but it still dismayed her that her brother whom she'd once seen as so strong was truly this weak.
"I'm sure you'll find someone," Princess Celestia said. "You're always such a help to me, Twilight."
"I live to serve you, Princess," Twilight said. It wasn't a polite cliché. The words struck her as painfully weak, given how often sycophants used that phrase without meaning it. But Twilight sincerely meant every word.
Harmony, 4 PM
"Um, how does it look?" Fluttershy asked.
"Oh, my dear, you look marvelous," Rarity said. "Nothing can compare to your natural beauty, of course, but I dare say Mane Attraction has done a magnificent job."
The hairdresser smiled brightly at the compliment. "Oh, it's hardly anything," she said. "Miss Fluttershy here is just a joy to work with. Her mane is so lovely. I almost feel it was sacrilegious to dye it."
"My turn! My turn!" Pinkie Pie said, bouncing. "I wanna be a blonde! Can I be a blonde? I want the curliest bounciest yellowest mane ever! But a bright blue tail!"
"Oh, Pinkie, your tail should match your mane!" Rarity said. "Why would you ever want them two different colors?"
"Because they won't match!"
"Why are you ladies getting your manes dyed today, anyway?" Mane Attraction asked. "Just a whim? Having a fillies' day out and thought you'd add some variety to your lives?"
"Um..."
"Why, yes, that's—"
"Actually because we're going to an alternate universe to fight evil versions of ourselves to rescue a friend of ours, so we want him to know how to tell the difference between good us and evil us!" Pinkie said. "And he likes things to be messed up and not matching so that's why I'm getting a blonde mane and a blue tail!"
Mane Attraction blinked. "Oh."
Rarity pulled her aside. "It's Pinkie Pie," she whispered. "Don't think about it too hard."
"Right." The hairdresser had been living in Ponyville long enough to know what every resident of Ponyville eventually figured out – don't question Pinkie Pie.
Nervously Fluttershy ran a hoof through her now-purple mane. "I hope the others are doing ok," she said.
"I am quite sure they're splendid," Rarity said. "Spike is with them, and if they should run into any troubles, he can contact Princess Celestia for help."
"But I wish we could have gone with them... the Everfree is so dangerous..."
"Yes, but dear, do remember. Applejack is the strongest of us, Rainbow Dash is the fastest, and Twilight is the most powerful. Our talents, while impressive, don't lend themselves quite so well to fighting the creatures of the Everfree. And—" Mane Attraction and Pinkie Pie had gone over to one of the hairdressing stations, Mane rinsing Pinkie's hair with a small hose and Pinkie giggling, announcing that it tickled. "It's important that we be able to reassure Discord that we are ourselves, and not those monstrous parodies who've been holding him prisoner, just as you suggested," she said softly. Discord was not exactly beloved in Ponyville, so the mares had decided not to let anypony know that their mission involved him. "Applejack doesn’t believe in dyeing her mane, Rainbow Dash was already in Cloudsdale and with a mane like hers, I would think it a crime to dye it – and the alternate Twilight is probably not an alicorn. And we cannot exactly dye Spike's scales. So the logical answer was that the three of us get the mane coloring while the rest of them go get a cutting from the Tree of Harmony. You know how vitally important it will be for Discord to be able to tell that you're the correct Fluttershy."
Fluttershy nodded. More than you know, she thought. Rarity hadn't read the letter and Princess Celestia hadn't taken her aside to explain who was doing what over there, so Rarity didn't know that the other Fluttershy was Discord's primary torturer. On the carriage ride back to Ponyville, Fluttershy had been wondering aloud how they could distinguish themselves from their counterparts, for Discord's sake – she hadn't said so to the others, but she wanted him to know, the moment he saw her, that he was being rescued, that she and her friends were his friends and not his tormentors. Rarity had suggested the mane dye, and after some discussion, it was agreed that Twilight would go catch up with Rainbow Dash and bring her back to the Everfree Forest so she could accompany Twilight and Applejack to go get a cutting from the Tree, while Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie got mane dye jobs. Twilight had asked Applejack if she was sure she didn't want to get hers done as well, given what Discord had said in the letter, but Applejack had pointed out that changing her appearance to distinguish herself from her alternate self was hardly honest, and that she'd just have to find a different way to do it.
Fluttershy really, really, really didn't want to read that letter, but she was beginning to think she needed to. Discord would need medical treatment and some kind of psychological support, and without knowing what Twilight and Applejack and Spike knew about what was happening to him, she wouldn't know what needed to be done. It wasn't very likely that Discord would tell her, or anypony. She was a little bit surprised he'd written such a long letter with as much detail as he apparently put in it; Twilight had said he was under an honesty spell that had compelled him to write more than he'd probably have preferred, but even so she would have thought he would try to keep it short.
She sighed. "It's just, I know the Everfree and I get along with most of the creatures there," she said. "I know Twilight and Rainbow and Applejack can fight, but if I was with them and there was a scary creature, maybe I could talk to it and make friends with it so nopony would have to fight. But, I know this is important. I want him to know I'm not her when he sees me, so I know I needed to do this. I just... worry." Fluttershy looked at Rarity. "Doesn't it feel a little, um, silly or wasteful or something to be getting our manes done when our friends might be in danger?"
"Oh no no, not at all! We're not doing this for frivolity's sake after all. Consider this. We're going on a rescue mission to save somepony – well, actually, he isn't a pony but you know what I meant – who's suffered terribly at the hooves of ponies who look identical to us. It's absolutely essential to the success of our mission that we have some means by which he can tell the difference." If it was really absolutely essential, Fluttershy thought, Twilight would have thought of it, not herself and Rarity... but on the other hand she did think it was important. "However, we may still need to use illusion spells to disguise ourselves as our counterparts, so having a professional job done that will easily tolerate a simple illusion spell is important. If we'd tried to use home dye kits we might have ended up with uneven or blotchy results, and we'd need more than a simple color spell, which might require Twilight to maintain. As it is, I can cast a spell to make your mane look its original color again." Rarity sighed. "I do wish Pinkie hadn't chosen two different colors, though. That will make matters complicated."
"She's doing it to make Discord feel better once we find him."
"I am aware of why she's doing it, and I can respect her wishes, but I would think he would be grateful to be rescued no matter what we look like, and I feel having a more consistent look would make it easier for me to maintain a color illusion spell if she needs to look like their Pinkie." She sighed again, deeply. "But, Pinkie will be Pinkie, I suppose. Now I must address the serious issue of what color to choose for my own mane. I'd considered a dark shade of purple, but after you chose such a charming lavender for your own mane, I certainly wouldn't want to look as if I was trying to infringe on your look."
"Rarity, any color you want to dye your mane is okay with me. I didn't do it to, um, have a special look or anything. Um, I'm not really all that into that whole thing? So if you want to be purple I, I think you would look really nice with purple and you should do it, um, if that's what you want to do."
She looked over at Pinkie Pie. The peroxide needed to wash the pink out of Pinkie's mane to make room for a lighter color had made the curly mane even frizzier, so it was now almost a cloud around Pinkie's head, an effect accentuated by how pale it had become. Pinkie was giggling wildly at herself in the mirror, pointing a hoof and declaring that all she needed now were hair clips decorated with little pegasi. "Then I'll really be an air head!" she said, laughing.
"Well, to really be an air head, wouldn't we have to dye your coat blue?" Mane Attraction asked.
"Oh, do you think—"
Rarity was instantly at the two mares' side. "No, Pinkie. Don't dye your coat! We don't have time." She turned to Mane Attraction. "By no means absolutely do not dye her coat right now. She can come back later if she wants to try it." She sighed deeply. "Although I am convinced it would be a perfect disaster."
Fluttershy turned away. Pinkie was being goofy and silly, Rarity was obsessing over looks. They were always like that, even when they were preparing for a serious mission. She wouldn't ever want them to change; they were her friends and this was how they were. It didn't mean they weren't taking this seriously.
But they didn't know what she knew. They hadn't read the letter either, and Princess Celestia hadn't taken them aside to give them more details, and neither of them had the burden of knowing that they could have kept Discord from putting himself in danger in the first place, and Fluttershy wasn't entirely certain Rarity even really cared except in the abstract. Of course Rarity wouldn't want to see anypony – or anyone – tortured, but she didn't personally like Discord, she didn't consider him a friend. It wasn't tearing her up inside that he was suffering. And Fluttershy was fairly sure that it was tearing at Pinkie, but Pinkie was so very good at hiding any negative emotions under her bubbleheaded façade. If it hadn't been for Pinkie's breakdown over never having had a chance to give Discord a party, Fluttershy wouldn't know this was bothering Pinkie at all.
She felt so isolated, and she didn't know why. Her friends were on her side, they were all going to go with her to save Discord. No one but Rainbow Dash had even had any reservations about it, and Rainbow's had disappeared as soon as Princess Celestia had explained Discord's history. But for them, it wasn't personal, or at least not nearly as personal as it was for her. And she couldn't tell any of them how personal it was for her. She'd only had the courage to tell Princess Celestia how she felt because the Princess had just admitted to having felt the same way herself, thousands of years ago. None of them liked Discord. How could she possibly explain to them how she felt about him, when he went out of his way to be considerably more disagreeable and obnoxious around them than he ever was when he was alone with her? They never saw the side of him she saw because he never let them see it. It wasn't their fault, and yet... it meant she couldn't imagine them understanding her, or sympathizing.
So for them, they were carrying out a mission of mercy, or acting on behalf of Princess Celestia. None of them were out to rescue someone they... really cared about. Usually when they all went on a mission together, Fluttershy felt as if her friends were on the same page she was, that they were not only united in common purpose but in common motive and common emotion as well. Right now... maybe it was just as well they no longer had the Elements of Harmony to use on this mission, because she didn't feel very harmonious right now.
"All right, you critters, listen up," Applejack said to Fluttershy's menagerie. "I know you understand me, even if I can't understand you, so pay attention. Fluttershy's going on a mission; I'm sure you're all familiar with her doing this kind of thing by now. So you're all gonna get in this here wagon, and I'm gonna take you over to my farm, where my Granny and my sister and brother are gonna take care of y'all until Fluttershy and I get back."
Behind her back, Big Mac and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were loading the chickens' coop onto a large flatbed wagon. "We're gonna bring your coops, and your hutches, and all that stuff you live in. Angel Bunny, I know you're a really smart little rabbit, so I'm expecting you to gather up all the stuff you want to bring that's important and bring it out here where we can load it up too." Angel Bunny glared at her. "Now don't you go trying to give me grief, I ain't Fluttershy and it's no never mind to me if I have to leave you here to fetch for yourself while she's gone. You can have my Granny to make you your meals and my little sis to brush your fur out like Fluttershy says you like, or you can live in an empty house and make do for yourself. Your choice." With a final glare, the rabbit hopped off into the house. Applejack was fairly sure he was going to go get his stuff.
Twilight had had to go fly to Cloudsdale to get Rainbow Dash so they could go together into the Everfree to get a cutting from the Tree, assuming the Tree would let them do that. The others were all in town getting their manes dyed, which Applejack was trying very, very hard not to consider a frivolous waste of time. Rarity and Fluttershy had had a good point about being able to tell the difference between them and their evil selves. She just couldn't bring herself to truck with the notion of going and getting a mane dye as an important part of preparing for a rescue mission. So instead, she'd gotten her brother, her sister, and her sisters' friends (who were contemplating the possibility of cutie marks in being movers) to help her gather up Fluttershy's pets and move them to Sweet Apple Acres. The farm had more room for animals and more ponies to help out with their care than any of the others had at their place. Twi and Rainbow ought to be back shortly, she hoped, and then they could go on their trip to the Everfree, and Fluttershy could get a good night's sleep tonight knowing her animal friends were all squared away and safe in their temporary home.
"Sis, are we bringing the bird feeders?" Apple Bloom called.
"Nope, don't think so. Those are to feed the wild birds that come outta the Everfree, I think. We just need to make sure the bird bath's topped off with water and all the feeders are full, and if we're gone longer'n a few days, you fillies could come out and check, right?"
"Sure thing."
Angel Bunny reappeared, dragging a blanket and a small bed, which he had filled with various toys, a brush, two bowls, a cup, and other paraphernalia. "Land sakes, rabbit, you got as much stuff there of your own as half the foals in this town," Applejack said. "I do dearly hope you treat Fluttershy with the respect and love she deserves, for all she does for you." The rabbit chittered, but unlike Fluttershy, Applejack wasn't an animal speaker and hadn't the vaguest idea what Angel had just said. "Sweetie Belle, think you could help this lil bunny load up his stuff?"
"Okay!" Sweetie Belle's control of her telekinesis was hardly perfect, but it was sufficient to gather up the bunny's belongings and load them into Applejack's cart.
"We all good here?" A chorus of animal sounds resounded. Applejack interpreted that as a "yes." "All right, then, here we go."
In the library, Spike ran down Twilight's checklist, gathering the library's portion of what had been on the list. "Spellbooks that Twilight listed here, check. Library closed, sign up, check. Owlowliscious, you know to go to Sweet Apple Acres tomorrow morning before you go to bed, right?"
The sleepy owl, annoyed at being woken so long before nighttime, responded with an exasperated "Whoooo."
"Okay, just checking. Hmm." Spike took a deep breath. "Well. I kind of don't want to do this, but... if he let Discord send that letter, and if his Rarity isn't generous anymore... then maybe he's not a bad guy like the ponies turned into, and maybe he's bribable." Another deep breath, and then before he could regret it, Spike bagged up several gems and stashed them with the growing pack of supplies. It violated every dragon instinct he possessed to willingly consider giving his gems away, even to another him, even for a good cause, but Spike had long known he'd need to fight his dragon instincts to be someone the ponies could respect as good.
"Anyway, Rarity will be proud of me for thinking of it," he mused to himself, which perked him up. Rarity's goodwill was a more valuable treasure to him than any number of gems. And if the other Rarity had turned selfish and greedy, then the other Spike might be short on gems, and maybe could be persuaded to help the party out in exchange. "Hopefully it won't come up. We're just supposed to go to Other Fluttershy's house, break into the basement, get Discord out and get home. But just in case. Twilight always says we should plan for contingencies." He wrote at the bottom of the list "Gems for possibly bribing Other Spike if needed" and checked it off.
"You gotta keep up, slowpoke!" Rainbow Dash taunted. "You've been flying a few weeks now, and you're a princess. You ought to be faster than this!"
"Faster... than... you?" Twilight gasped, wings beating harder and faster than they had since she'd flown with Spike from Canterlot to Ponyville while Discord's vines had been running riot. "Is... that... possible?"
"No way, course not! But I'm not going that fast. You ought to be able to keep up!"
"Rainbow... we're going... into... dangerous forest... to get... Tree of Harmony. I can't... be totally... wiped... when we get there."
"Yeah, but we want to get in and out before nightfall, and last time, we had to walk like an hour or something before we got to the Tree. It isn't like a short distance inside, and the Everfree being the Everfree, it's not like we can fly over and just drop down where we want to go, either."
"I'm... not... that fast."
"Well, you gotta practice more, slowpoke! I mean your wings are huge, it's not like you shouldn't be able to kick most pegasi's flank in the air."
"How... fast... were you... when your wings were... a few months old?"
"Hey, I'll have you know I was flying in day care."
"Sure... as a toddler. Bet... not... when you... were... few month old infant."
"Well, I could ask my dad, but it wasn't like I knew how to walk then either. Besides you're making excuses! I keep telling you to come out with me and practice."
"I've... barely mastered... not crashing!"
"And that's why you need more practice!"
Twilight sighed. Rainbow Dash was insufferable. But she was right. It was already four in the afternoon, and they had to get to the Everfree Forest, get in, get to the Tree, and get back out, before night fell around eight pm. "Maybe... I'll have Spike... ask Princess... Celestia... to extend... the sunset?"
"Maybe you could just fly faster instead of inconveniencing all of freaking Equestria just cause you're too slow?"
The really amazingly annoying thing about this, Twilight reflected, was that Rainbow Dash was laden down with a turtle, who'd be staying at Sweet Apple Acres with the other pets, two jars of wing rub, and a flight trophy she was wearing around her neck where she would once have carried her Element of Harmony, and she was still outpacing the exhausted Twilight without breaking a sweat, as nearly as Twilight could see.
"Fine." She pumped burning wing muscles faster, harder, pushing herself. "And when... I pass out... before I get there... you can do... any magic we need!"
"You're not gonna pass out. Come on. You can do it, Twilight. You can do anything you put your mind to, you know that. Now let's move!"
Opposition, 5 PM
Discord knelt on the ground in the apple orchard on all fours, head lowered, breathing deeply to try to control the terror building in him as Applejack raged at him at his inability to fill baskets of apples evenly. She kept picking things for him to do that required the ability to maintain order, to identify a pattern and follow it, and the few times Discord had tried to plead with her that he simply wasn't capable of doing those things, Applejack had said he was making excuses and beaten him before he even began the task, and then beat him again when, predictably, he'd failed to do it properly. He knew better now. The whole point to these tasks was to give him a job he couldn't possibly do well so he could be beaten for failing to do it. They wanted him to be terrified of failure, to throw himself body and soul into trying to complete any task they gave him however stupid and unsuited for him it was.
The fact that he knew what they were up to didn't change the fact that it was working, unfortunately.
"Wings flat and don't move," Applejack ordered. "Looks like you need another lesson in doin' a good job."
At this point he doubted he could make matters worse for himself. "I'd do a much better job if you gave me a job I was at all capable of doing," he said bitterly even as he obeyed, extending and then lowering his wings as if he were flapping them downward, because if he didn't obey his body would just do it and he hated that. "You just want an excuse to punish me, admit it."
"Well, it ain't no secret that I hate you, you lyin', treacherous piece of dung," Applejack said, "but if you could actually do the job I gave you, I'd be fair to ya. Twilight says you can't disobey, but sure as shootin' I reckon you can do a bad job on purpose, and I aim to break you of that."
"I'm not doing a bad job on purpose! What part of 'spirit of Chaos' makes you think I can fill baskets so they come out evenly? I tried! I just can't do it!"
"Well, tough for you, then," Applejack said. "Maybe you need to learn howta do a good job even when you don't like the work. Now shut up, I don't wanna hear any more of your excuses."
It wasn't that he didn't like the work, he thought angrily. He didn't, but that wasn't why he wasn't doing a good job. It was because he couldn't. And the task was utterly pointless anyway and there was no reason to have him doing this and it was just an excuse to—
Despite himself, Discord cried out in fear when he heard the whistling noise, even before the line of sharp-edged gems cracked against his back with full force. As the lash hit, his cry of fear turned into a scream of pain. He wasn't tied right now; he wanted desperately to get up and run, to flap his wings and fly, to do anything except lie here still for the blows, but he'd been ordered not to move, so he couldn't.
"You're gonna learn," Applejack said, and the whip came cracking down again, the gems that the rope was tied through cutting viciously into his flesh. He screamed again. "If I gotta take all the skin off your back, sooner or later you're gonna learn. You got a job to do, you do a good job, whether you want that job or not." Another blow, and another, and another, and all he could hear was the crack of the whip and the blood roaring in his ears and the sound of his own screams, and another, until he lost count, not that he was really all that good at counting in the first place. He put his head all the way down on the ground and put his paws over his face, whining like a dog, trying to shut out the world of pain, but the blows kept coming.
A sob broke free from his throat, finally. And then another after the next lash fell, and another, and then he was crying, his body racked with sobs between his screams, as the whip slashed against him again and again. He'd tried so hard to be strong, to resist the pain, not to give his tormentor the satisfaction of breaking him down like this, but he was helpless and he strongly suspected the point to this was to break him down, so that if he never started crying and begging, it would never end.
One of the lashes hit him in the upper part of his back, near his neck, where the skin under his fur had no protective scales at all and was entirely soft pony skin. There, even the rope itself was a stinging agony, and the gems embedded in it stabbed into him deeper and more painfully than on his draconic tail or in the lower regions of his back where his skin was protected by dragon scales under his fur. His neck arched up as he screamed, his muscles everywhere tensing as if he were about to leap away, but the motion couldn't complete because the obedience spell wouldn't let him leap or fly. "Please stop," he pleaded at last, pride broken and all ability to resist begging shattered by the pain. "Please, please stop, please...."
"You sorry yet?" Applejack grunted, swinging the whip down on him again.
"Yes! Yes, I'm sorry!"
This time she paused the beating for a moment. "You sorry because you screwed up the job, or you sorry that you got caught at it and you're gettin' punished?"
"I'm sorry I'm getting punished!" he howled, and cringed in renewed terror when he heard what had just come out of his mouth. The truth-telling spell wouldn't allow him to lie and say what she wanted to hear... and that meant there would be more pain, more of the relentless beating. But it was true. He wasn't sorry he'd screwed up the job, because he couldn't possibly do a good job at something so pointless and orderly as making the apple baskets evenly packed. It was in his nature, and he wasn't ashamed of his nature, he wasn't sorry for what he was, so how could he actually be sorry for failing to do something it was antithetical to his nature to do?
"I thought so, you piece of trash!" Applejack shouted at him, and renewed beating him with greater vigor. The whip slashed at his bat wing, tearing holes in the delicate skin and muscles; it tore at his back and his upper tail, leaving bloody slashes and cuts all over him. Discord dug his claws into the dirt as hard as he could, trying to endure, as he sobbed and screamed. Over and over he tried to move his muscles, summon magic, do anything to get away from this torture, and over and over he was reminded that he had no control. The obedience spell bound him as tightly as the spell that had turned him to stone once had; the order not to move overrode his every attempt to get control of his body back and flee or shield himself. At that he was lucky, he thought; the spell wasn't demanding total immobility from him, simply that he stay still and offer no resistance to the beating. He could still clench his fists, clutch at the dirt below him with his claws, grit his teeth, drive his fang through his bottom lip so the pain in his lip would blot the pain in his back for precious seconds. He could still cry, scream, beg. He just couldn't escape.
"You tell me you're sorry you screwed up those baskets, and you mean it, or so help me you creature I will whip you to bloody pieces!"
"I can't! I can't make baskets come out evenly! Consistency is the opposite of chaos, please, please, I tried, please, I can't! Please stop, please, I tried, I tried..."
"You gonna tell me you're sorry? Are ya?" The lash came down again and again, and it seemed to him that each blow was more vicious than the last, as she demanded something from him that the honesty spell binding him wouldn't permit him to give. He shrieked, and pleaded, and wept with agony, but nothing stopped her from bringing her whip down on him over and over.
Eventually something inside him broke, something shifted and for a moment he felt sick guilt and regret at what he was, that he was not like the ponies, not like practically any other creature on Equestria, that he had limitations they didn't share. That without his magic, his affiliation with Chaos crippled him in some ways, and even Pinkie Pie was better at getting by in a world of Order than he was. And in that moment of hating himself and wishing he was anything other than what he was, he could finally say the words Applejack wanted to hear, because he could finally sincerely mean them. "I'm sorry," he sobbed. "Please, I'll do better, I promise, please, I'm sorry ..."
"You really sorry now? You sorry you failed that job, not just that you got caught at it?"
"Yes! I'm sorry I failed, I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry, please stop, I'll do it right next time, I'm sorry, please..."
And Applejack finally put the whip down. "Well, that's better, sugarcube," she said, her rough voice almost kind. "Ain't no shame in failing, long as you did your best and you're genuinely sorry you couldn't do better."
He wanted to protest that he had done his best, except that that couldn't be true, he couldn't let that be true because if he had done his best and still failed he would fail every time and then there would never be an end to the beatings until he died, or until his Twilight Sparkle came to rescue him, which was basically impossible so it would be until he died, and he was technically immortal so even without his magic he wasn't 100% sure he could die. Well, they could murder him with that hammer the little dragon had killed his counterpart with, but why would they when they could just keep beating him bloody? "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he cried, brokenly. "I'll do better, I promise, please, I'm sorry..."
So much pain. He'd thought he knew pain. He'd been beaten as a child, but never this severely; he'd taken injuries in battle, before coming into the full power of his potential and in fights with creatures of his own power class, but he'd given better than he'd gotten and in the heat of combat, pain could be exhilarating; he'd been turned to stone, twice, but that had been moments of excruciating pain and then cold nothingness. Nothing like this.
"I'm proud of ya, finally recognizin' that you did bad," Applejack said. "You stay right here, I'm gonna get you something."
She left. Discord twisted his head around so he could see the extent of the damage. Dark red rivulets ran all over his back, and in some places, the skin hung loose and what was underneath was raw red meat. His bat wing was ruined, more holes in it than in a changeling's legs, all bleeding. He lowered his head again. Nothing he couldn't heal once they gave him permission to do it, but looking at the ruin they periodically left his body in made him shudder in horror and grief.
He closed his eyes, trying desperately to get control of himself, to stop crying. He was the avatar of chaos. He had destroyed the dragon empire, he had brought himself back from the dead more than once, he had ruled Equestria and done anything he wanted to do for nearly a thousand years. He had traveled the dimensional gates, he had walked in the land of the dead, he had changed the face of his world forever. He was not some weak, helpless little pony to cry because somepony was being mean to him. He was disharmony incarnate. He should be stronger than this.
But just as he'd been completely unable to break himself free from the stone as long as those who had bound him still held their Elements – it hadn't been until the Elements had transferred from Celestia to the new Bearers that the seal had broken and allowed him to start trying to work his way free – he was completely unable to break the spells that Twilight Sparkle had layered onto him via the transformed Elements of this timeline. He was fairly sure that the Elements of his home dimension couldn't even do this, that maybe they could have handled the spells of honesty and loyalty but the obedience spell was far, far too dark to funnel through the Elements that he knew. Except that he'd left behind the Elements that he knew to come here because he'd wanted to misbehave without Fluttershy getting angry with him. So he'd come to a dimension where his previous self was dead. And now he'd learned the hard way why his previous self was dead here, why someone – not somepony, it had been a baby dragon actually – had hated him enough to kill him.
His other self, the one who had belonged here, had changed the Elements, forced them to absorb their opposites. He wasn't entirely sure how that worked in Twilight's case; the Element of Magic had no inherent opposite. When he looked at her he kept thinking he knew what was wrong with her, but with his magic as limited as she'd made it he couldn't quite figure it out, only that being anywhere near her made his skin crawl and filled him with visceral horror, sometimes even brief horrifying hallucinations that he was turning to stone again. Flashbacks. His own Twilight didn't trigger flashbacks like that in him, and this one had started doing it from the moment he'd first encountered her, when he'd still had his powers and she hadn't defeated him yet, so it was something about her, not about the situation he was in. It didn't help that she tortured him in interrogations or experimentation on a regular basis, but that wasn't the original reason. But it hardly mattered; even if he knew exactly what was wrong with this world's Twilight, he couldn't fix it. She'd taken control of his magic from him.
The obedience spell constrained him as tightly as the stoning spell once had. The collar around his neck restrained his magic so that he could only use it when ordered to, but it was not what enforced his obedience. When he was given an order, he could choose to obey it more or less of his own volition, or he could choose to try to refuse, at which point the spell would take control of his muscles and move him like a puppet. It had limitations; the spell could only compel him to use his magic if he was given precise instructions about what exactly to do, because it couldn't compel him to think certain thoughts. Improperly worded instructions on how to use his magic could allow him far more freedom than the Elements of this world wanted him to have. So they rarely ordered him to use his magic, unless they were telling him to do something very specific.
Instead they used him as a slave, ordering him to perform tasks that he could use his physical body to do. That wasn't the endgame, he was sure. That was pointless. Maybe they were enjoying his enslavement as revenge – certainly Applejack seemed to enjoy beating him and ordering him around – but that wasn't the goal in and of itself, he was quite certain. The goal was to break him to the point where they could give him instructions and trust him to use his own intelligence and judgement to carry them out in exactly the way they wanted without him hunting for and finding loopholes, and then they'd be able to force him to use his magic.
He was hoping desperately he'd be dead before he got to that point, but there were days he felt so hopeless he wondered why he was even trying to resist. Maybe if he just gave in and let them break him it wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe they'd stop torturing him all the time if he stopped making sarcastic wisecracks and pleading with them and trying to fight his orders, if he just gave up and did whatever they wanted without resistance. But he couldn't do that. Resistance to authority was a fundamental part of his nature, an aspect of chaos and disharmony, and if he stopped resisting, he would stop being him. Not that he was really enjoying being himself right now, but the thought of being anything else still filled him with greater horror than the thought of being tortured... at least most of the time.
He squeezed his eyes even more tightly closed at the sudden burning rush of shame as he remembered. Not five minutes ago, he'd felt ashamed of who and what he was, he'd wanted to be something else, because what he was guaranteed him endless pain and just for a few moments, he'd broken and wanted to be something he was not. He'd thought only Fluttercruel could do that to him. If now Applejack was pushing him to that edge as well... how long before he fell over the side permanently and stayed there? How long before the desire to escape pain eclipsed the desire to be Discord, and he became what it was they wanted him to be?
He heard hoofsteps, and cringed. Tentatively he opened one eye, as if opening them both would make whatever terror he was faced with now more real. But Applejack was only carrying a tray in her mouth, not preparing to whip him again.
She set it down in front of him. There were four apples on the tray. Despite the pain he was in, Discord's mouth watered, his eyes fixed on the apples like they were lifebuoys and he was drowning. He was so hungry, all the time; even the agony in his back and his wing couldn't overwhelm the craving for food when something that would actually taste good was put in front of him. All he'd had to eat all day was a bowl of hay with hot sauce, and all he'd had to eat yesterday were things so disgusting they couldn't even be considered food and then he'd vomited them all up anyway. Fluttercruel never gave him enough to eat and none of it tasted good; when she wasn't deliberately feeding him things that were appallingly disgusting and forcing him to eat them to make him feel sick, she was feeding him a subsistence level of hay and oats and grass and other very, very basic, boring pony fare. Sometimes she gave him raw eggs because he needed high levels of dietary protein, unlike a pony; on occasion as a reward she gave him a bowl of milk. Not chocolate milk, regular milk, but it was the sweetest substance she allowed him to consume and when she let him have some, he actually felt pathetically grateful to her, even if she made him drink it from a bowl like a pet and not from a cup. He never got anything as nice as an apple.
When he'd had his powers and freedom, natural apples would have bored him. Now his gaze was riveted to them like a dragon to gems. He had been ordered not to eat any of the apples when he worked here, a torment that maddened him given how hungry he was and how delicious they looked in his desperate state... but why would she be putting them on a tray and laying them before him if she wasn't feeding them to him? Was this another trick? A game to torture him? Or did she really mean to feed him such wonderful sweet things?
Discord held himself still, trembling. Was this a trick? This version of Applejack did love to play cruel tricks on him, forcing him into no-win situations or presenting him with overwhelming temptations and then punishing him for succumbing. He wasn't going to give in this time. He wasn't going to let her trick him into earning another punishment. He would be good.
"Go ahead, hon," Applejack said. "These four are for you. You earned 'em bein' honest with me and acceptin' what you did was wrong. You can eat 'em."
He needed no other encouragement. Discord's head lunged forward and he devoured the apples whole, unconcerned with cores and seeds, chewing them just enough to release the delicious sweet flavor into his mouth. The first two, he was hungry enough to eat too quickly, barely getting to taste them before his hunger compelled him to swallow them down; the next two he savored, chewing and sucking until the flavor had all been extracted. They tasted so good. He was dehydrated from blood loss, tears, and working in the hot sun for hours, and the sweet liquid juices of the apple were so soothing and delicious and necessary he almost forgot the horrible pain in his back and wings. Almost.
When he was finished, when his belly was almost full enough to stop cramping in pain and his throat was almost quenched enough to not feel cracked and dry any longer, he realized, too late, what the apples had been about. Carrot and stick training. Applejack had beaten him until he'd twisted his very mind around to meet what she required of him, which was that he felt shame for what he was and wished he could change; and then she'd given him an extravagant reward, or at least extravagant in the context of his current hellish existence, to reinforce the conditioning.
Discord whimpered, recognizing the trap he'd just fallen into. He was the spirit of disharmony; he understood how torture and brainwashing worked, he'd used many of these techniques himself, since his mind control spells weren't permanent but proper conditioning could be. He'd never done anything to anypony as horrible as what was being done to him, but the principles were the same. Now that he'd received and accepted the reward, some part of his mind would associate giving in and hating himself with not just the end of pain but with the pleasure of delicious food... and food was a weakness of his anyway, he'd spent much of his childhood as a starving scavenger and even becoming nigh-omnipotent had never quite washed the obsession with food away. And the next time, that tiny part of his mind would betray him for the reward, and he would give in more easily. And so on until he was totally subservient.
And yet what was he supposed to do? He couldn't refuse food right now. He was too hungry and miserable. He didn't have the strength to refuse food that wasn't disgusting, let alone food that was actively delicious. How was he supposed to protect himself from this?
"Fluttershy's on her way to pick you up," Applejack said, and Discord cringed in terror again. "I told her you needed a whippin' today but you did good finally and owned up to your own wrongdoin'. She'll bandage you up."
She tied a rope around a tree and knotted the end of it through the loop in the back of his collar, leashing him. "Now, you don't go tryin' to get yourself free of that, mind," she said, and the dull horror took hold again as it had so many times before, the order sinking into him and denying him the ability to free himself. He wasn't sure what was worse, when he was tied paw and hoof and literally couldn't do anything to get free, or when he was left unbound or bound more lightly, with the physical capability of freeing himself, and the compulsion of the spell on him prevented him from using that capability no matter how badly he wanted to.
Applejack left him there. Discord wasn't allowed to untie himself from the tree, and he hurt too badly to move very much, but when he was sure she was gone, he nosed around the tree, dragging his injured body slowly, until he found a half-rotten apple that had fallen to the ground prematurely. With his talon, he sliced away the rotten parts, and then he stuffed the remainder in his mouth, savoring it as long as he dared. He found two more, one riddled with worms, which were protein and better than what Fluttercruel usually fed him for protein so he ate the entire wormy apple, and another mostly rotted one that had been lying on the orchard ground. Their actual taste wasn't nearly as delicious as the ripe, healthy ones Applejack had fed him, but the taste they left in his mind and soul was wonderful, much sweeter than his reward for breaking had been. He'd taken these for himself, despite the various restraints on him; he'd exercised his nature as a spirit of trickery and rule-breaking and strengthened himself against the torture the same way that Applejack's treats had weakened him. If he hadn't been so weak and in so much pain and so afraid of getting caught at this, he would have laughed heartily.
He used his tail to brush fallen leaves over the tracks his body had left, taking especial care to cover any bloodstains, so nopony would know he had moved... he hadn't been ordered not to, but he knew that if Applejack had guessed that he would crawl around looking for rotten apples to eat rather than depending entirely on her conditional "generosity", she would have ordered him not to. So he was getting away with something, which made him feel a savage happiness and triumph totally out of proportion to the size of the victory but also fear, because if he was getting away with something he could get caught. Then he settled himself back into the bloody depression in the fallen leaves that he'd been lying in after Applejack had beaten him, to wait for his cruel captor to come for him and do... whatever she was going to do.
It turned out that unpredictability in pony behavior was much, much less fun when the range of possible reactions he might get from the pony in question went from "soothing ointments and bandages and cooing words of comfort" to "vicious screaming, brutal torture and occasional violent rape with objects or animals." Maybe if Fluttercruel was always nothing but a sadistic tormentor, he could resist what she was doing to his mind better, but the fact that she was often gentle and sweet kept him unable to muster all of his necessary emotional defenses against her all the time. Who would have thought that he of all beings would ever crave predictability? He'd give a great deal to know what Fluttercruel was going to do to him before she did it.
He was tired, and weak, and he hurt so much, and the shade of the apple tree was soothing after he'd been forced to sort apples in the heat of the field, nothing to protect him from Celestia's brutal sunshine all day long. He wanted so much to sleep. It was horribly boring, lying here tied to the apple tree, nothing to do, unable to try to escape, and if he could sleep he could escape the pain and fear and boredom for at least a little while. But he was too afraid of what Fluttercruel would do when she got here; he couldn't bring himself to let go and drift off to sleep when she was coming and might do anything to him.
At least he'd stolen those three fallen apples. That counted for something. He clung to that. Maybe he had broken for a few minutes under the torture, but he hadn't stayed that way. He'd come back to himself. He was still totally disobedient and unruly in his heart, even if it was so very infrequently that he found a way to express it despite the spells binding him.
And maybe the real Twilight Sparkle, the one from his universe, had gotten the letter he'd sent yesterday and would muster up a rescue expedition and come and save him.
Yeah, as if.