Harmony, 6 PM
After checking in with Spike -- who had not only completed the checklist, but had actually brought himself to contemplate sacrificing some of his own gems to bribe the alternate Spike with, which had made Twilight want to hug him -- Twilight headed over to the meeting point by the Everfree. Spike, having woken up ridiculously early, was exhausted, so she gave him permission to go to bed; thus, he wasn't coming with her. That was probably a good thing. She could make much better time flying, and after that day with the plunder vines, Spike had been decidedly reluctant to fly with her.
Rainbow Dash was already there, leaning against a tree on her hind legs, forelegs folded, ostentatiously tapping her back hoof. "Finally one of you slowpokes shows up," she said.
Twilight sighed. "I had to make sure Spike was doing okay. Where's Applejack?"
"On her way. I passed her when I dropped Tank off at her place. So what's the plan? We just go in, get a cutting from the Tree, and get out?"
"Pretty much," Twilight agreed. "I do wish I had time to look for a spell that would let us communicate with the Tree. I don't feel right just taking a piece of it off. But Applejack knows trees better than I do, and she's as connected to it as any of the rest of us, so I suppose maybe she'll be able to, I don't know, tell the Tree why we need it or something."
"I've never seen Applejack talk to a tree," Rainbow Dash said. "Outside of 'you durned thing, leggo my apples now or so help me I'll buck you to next week', but I don't think that counts."
"I had Spike pack us climbing rope and pitons," Twilight said. "If we end up having to go to Canterlot, we might actually need such things. I mean, you and I probably wouldn't really, and Fluttershy, but if we needed to sneak into a palace window or something, the others would need some way to climb."
"Didja pack a canteen? Daring Do always packs a canteen."
"Eight of them. Including one for Discord when we find him."
"Y'all ready to go here?" Applejack said, trotting up to the two of them and panting slightly. "Figure we should get moving; we've only got about two hours of good daylight left."
"Right," Twilight said, and trotted forward, into the forest, her friends following her.
The Everfree Forest was much less dark and foreboding today than it had been the day with the plunder vines, but it was never a cheerful and friendly place. Still, there was good sunlight, which wasn't usually the case on most of her trips into the forest for some reason, and the two friends at her back were the ones Twilight trusted the most to handle themselves in a physical confrontation -- Rarity's martial arts were more effective on ponies than Everfree creatures, Pinkie was great in a fight when she wasn't distracted but entirely too distractible, and Fluttershy would be far better at convincing a wild animal not to attack them in the first place than she would be to fight it off. They made good time, and were about halfway to the Tree when a familiar zebra hailed them.
"My friends! Where are you going today? You look like mares who know their way."
"Hi, Zecora," Twilight said. "We're headed to the Tree of Harmony."
"That sounds like a very interesting quest. But I count three. Where are the rest?"
"In town, getting their manes done," Rainbow said with a half-snicker.
"Now you know as well as I do they've got good reasons," Applejack said. "We're on a mission, Zecora. Discord got his fool self stuck in some alternate universe thingummy where the six of us all got corrupted somehow and turned rotten. Our friends are gettin' their manes dyed so as to tell them apart from the bad seeds, while meantime we're gonna see if maybe we can get some kind of cutting from the Tree to try to re-harmonize our other selves or something like that."
"Discord? Oh dear. It's just as I feared," Zecora said. "I warned him this might come to be, but I expected he might not listen to me."
"You knew about this?" Rainbow Dash asked, surprised.
Zecora kept up with the three of them as they trotted through the forest. "I had a vision that a dire fate might befall Discord... but I warned him too late, or else he fell to his own disbelief. How did you learn that he had come to grief?"
"He sent us a letter," Twilight said. "He got the alternate version of Spike to send it, and cast some kind of spell on him to make it go to our Spike. Apparently he has very, very little access to his own magic, so it took him a couple of months to manage it. What did you see happening to him?"
"The future's not stone; it's something we make every day we're alive with the paths we do take. I saw many things, not a one of them certain; that's how often it is, when we draw back fate's curtain. But the sense of my visions I drew overall was that Discord's quest for chaos would cause him to fall. I saw him in pain, tormented for gain... by a mare harsh and cold, who looked just like you, of old." She looked directly at Twilight as she said it. "In... some of my visions, she used such brutality, his death came to be an eventuality."
"He... didn't say much about the alternate me," Twilight said. "He never mentioned if she was also an alicorn, so I'm guessing she's not. She's talented with magic, maybe even more than me in some ways; she's really cold and hard... he said she interrogates him, but mostly he talked about what the others were doing to him."
"If you were the one he was begging for aid, it makes sense he'd not focus on the suffering she made. Even Discord would probably prefer not to offend the one on whom his life and freedom depends." She sighed deeply. "I wish he had listened. If your rescue plan fails... I shudder to think of what that entails."
"Are you, um, friends with him or something?" Rainbow Dash asked. "I mean, we all want this rescue mission to work, but it sounds like you're kind of taking it personally."
Zecora laughed wryly. "No, it's safe to say that we don't get along," she said, pushing some low-hanging vines out of the way and holding them up for the other mares to pass underneath them. "But he has his place in Equestria's song. If he doesn't come back, there's a very real danger. Strangeness will fall in the hooves of a stranger."
"Sorry, I don't get your meaning," Applejack said. "'Strangeness will fall in the hooves of a stranger?' Can you explain that?"
"I will talk as we walk. The explanation is long. Many things that most think about Discord are wrong. He can certainly be a stink-encrusted plot, but Equestria needs him more than it does not."
Twilight had to control the inappropriate urge to giggle in shock at Zecora's crude insult. Somehow she had never expected Zecora, of all ponies, to call anyone a "stink-encrusted plot". "I, uh, sure! We'd be glad to listen!"
Rainbow Dash gave Twilight a "speak for yourself" eyeroll, but didn't contradict her.
Zecora began to speak as they walked, her voice taking on a sing-song cadence, almost as if she were reciting a poem. "The world by its nature contains avatars three: Chaos, Order and Harmony," she said. "Order is bedrock, the foundation of all. Without the laws made by Order, life would surely fall. Gravity, energy, our very reality; these are what Order has caused to be. But Order seeks a world that math can predict. Such a rule would place magic under its interdict. Order is rigid, unchanging, unkind; it seeks all to be ruled by strict laws, and not minds. If taken as far as its furthest ending, Order's like diamonds: beautiful, but unbending. Order is judgment, Order's control: it cannot allow for change. It has no soul."
"I've never heard of an avatar of Order," Twilight said. "Discord is chaos, and the Tree is harmony, so... what's order?"
"Be patient. In time I'll arrive at that rhyme," Zecora said, smiling. "To eliminate doubt, I shall lay it all out. I will tell you in turn of each power; it won't take that long, Rainbow, why a face so dour?"
"I just want to keep moving," Rainbow said. "I don't mind listening to your story but I don't want to slow down, and I'm worried if we get distracted, what if some animal comes after us?"
"Oh, if something comes for us, I'll be able to tell," Zecora said. "There's no creature here I can't detect from its smell."
"Just go on, Zecora," Applejack said. "Don't mind her, I figure we can all listen to you and look out for critters at the same time."
Zecora nodded, and resumed her chant. "Chaos brings change, both wondrous and strange. Raw magic is chaos, of that there's no doubt; the power that allows what's inside to come out. Chaos is art, creativity, life; it also brings madness, confusion and strife. Without chaos, all magic itself would end; but pure chaos finds no rules it'd rather not bend. Chaos is freedom, but there is a cost; with no bonds and no structure, all are anchorless, lost. Order and Chaos, both are needed to be; to mediate between them, we have Harmony.
"Harmony's power, you well understand. It is the power that founded this land. Harmony moderates the chaos of magic, with structures and rules to avoid outcomes tragic. At its essence, Harmony is working together, beings united by bonds that do tether so that each individual performs their own part of a goal indivisible. Neither pure freedom nor total control can govern those who hold Harmony as their goal. Harmony's order, but not order pure; it makes allowances, it can endure changes and difference and rules that can break, so that out of chaos order it can make.
"To stay balanced, the world needs all of the three. To lose one would cause a catastrophe."
That made sense. Twilight nodded to herself. She'd always thought the presentation of Chaos as the opposite of Harmony was... not wrong, but not complete somehow. Classically, the opposite of Chaos was Order; Harmony required Order but seemed more flexible. Anything that could select Pinkie Pie as one of its representatives couldn't truly be the opposite of Chaos, after all.
"So what you're saying is that if Discord dies, the whole world gets unbalanced and something bad happens to magic?" Applejack said.
"In principle, yes; in actuality, no," Zecora said. "That is not the way I expect things to go. Let me finish my tale and I'll explain in detail."
'The path's blocked," Rainbow said. "There's a big dead tree over here and a whole tangle of vines. Twi and I could fly over, but..."
"Yes, for those of us here on the ground, I suppose we will have to go around," Zecora said.
"Actually—" Twilight focused her magic. "I can get them out of the way." The lifeforms of the Everfree were resistant to magic, but not impervious. With a bit of effort, she pulled the tangle of vines out of the ground and tossed them to the side. "We can just step over the dead tree now without the vines in the way."
"Thing's mostly rotted," Applejack said. "I could buck a path right through it, easy."
"I didn't want to ask, but if you'll take on the task, it's a better idea to leave the path clear," Zecora said.
"I figured."
It took only a minute or two for Applejack to clear a path wide enough for the ponies to walk single file. Zecora continued her story as they walked through. "Now Order, Matrisse, was a mountain of crystal. When once long ago it attempted to distill the world from its magic, Discord did act; it was smashed into gems by his attack. No longer was Order a centralized tower; by smashing it, Discord scattered its power. But though scattered, the Order avatar is still here. Its power's reduced, it's no longer to fear, but it still does remain. The gems maintain the laws that form the shape of reality, weak enough to allow magic, strong enough to allow Harmony."
"Are you saying the Order avatar tried to destroy magic?" Twilight asked.
"Indeed. Magic and Order stand in opposition; presumably Matrisse didn't like its position. Discord's motives were selfish, you can certainly bet, but by shattering Matrisse he put us all in his debt. So the avatar of Order now is decentralized; it can preserve reality, but darker plans can't be realized."
"In opposition," Twilight breathed. "You said Discord turned Matrisse into gems? Are all gems part of Matrisse?"
"No, no. Most gems are just as they appear. To find a piece of Matrisse, you might search for a year."
"He didn't know how she managed to harmonize with the others," Twilight said. "The others were all combined somehow with their opposite principles, but what is the opposite of Magic? As long as she was only Magic and they were both their Elements and the opposite of their Elements, they wouldn't have been able to synchronize, so they couldn't harmonize; she'd have to have added to her Element the opposite of Magic... but if the opposite of Magic is Order and the power of Order is concentrated in crystals... I wonder if Sombra had any of the pieces of Matrisse?"
"What're you talking about, sugarcube?" Applejack asked, genuine curiosity in her tone.
"I think maybe I know how the other me managed to make herself harmonize with the other mixed-opposite Elements," Twilight said. "Maybe she got one of those pieces of Matrisse and she's using that."
"Perhaps it is so, I wouldn't know," Zecora said. "Of the other avatars, you do have some knowledge; but there are things I want to make sure you acknowledge."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," Twilight said. "Go on."
Zecora began to speak again. "The Chaos avatar is always a creature, for whom movement and thought are always a feature. There has been more than one in the fullness of time; one falls, and before long, a new one does climb. Should the world be without one, magic would falter, and some of what we depend on for life would halt, or so it is said, but there's no need for dread; that fear is the lesser. The power of Chaos will likely choose a successor." She sighed. "Discord's but the most recent. For a spirit of Chaos, he's been unusually decent. If he does not come home, we will all need to fear who will take up his mantle in the coming years."
"So if Discord dies, somepony else ends up with his powers?" Rainbow Dash said.
"Not likely some pony, but yes. A dragon or something, so I would guess."
"I ain't sure I like the sound of that," Applejack said. "Discord's the devil we know, at least."
"Indeed, that was my meaning when I spoke of the danger that strangeness would end up in the hooves of a stranger," Zecora said. "In the past, chaos avatars have brought death and despair. Discord's never sought harm; he just doesn't much care if his chaos causes sadness and mental distress, but even still, he's an improvement over the rest. If Discord is lost to us, then as I have said, we must fear that his heir might be truly quite deadly."
Twilight took a deep breath. "So this is even more important than we thought. Discord's friends with Fluttershy; we can keep him at least a little bit under control. If there was some... being with his powers, but who actually enjoyed killing and physically torturing ponies... and us without the Elements..."
"Yeah, that's bad," Rainbow agreed. "We'd have to take the Elements back... but would that even work, or would that kill the Tree?"
"When I think of that course, I feel fear and doubt," Zecora said. "So let us hope we never need to find out. If you're still willing to listen to me, I can tell you more about the Harmony Tree."
"Sure, go on," Applejack said. "Any little bit helps, I guess."
"Definitely. This is fascinating," Twilight said.
"The Harmony Tree is the one you well know. This avatar uses its power like so: it's a plant, made of crystal, that exerts all its force through partnership with animals, as a matter of course. Usually ponies, but they needn't be always; there have been times, in olden days, when zebras, buffalo and others held Elements. Any race with magic; that's common sense. Harmony's power's unmatched by either Order or Chaos, but its weakness, well-known, can often delay us from winning the day. Harmony cannot stay without hearts united. If too much strife is excited, the power of Harmony's bound to fail. You've all lived through that, I needn't give you details."
"Yup. Been there, done that, turned ugly gray," Rainbow said.
"That's how the other Discord tried to take the Elements out of commission permanently," Twilight said. "The ones that were mixed with their opposites couldn't unite with the one that was still pure. She had to make it impure, combine it with its opposite, or the Elements wouldn't work at all." Order shouldn't have made the other Twilight evil, though. But then... Zecora had said that the other Twilight was torturing Discord for gain, meaning there was something she expected to get as a result. Was it research? Was she trying to gain knowledge? Pure Order wouldn't have emotions, and without emotions, maybe the other Twilight couldn't feel sympathy for her victim... or maybe, because Chaos and Order were direct opposites, she couldn't have sympathy for Discord in particular.
Zecora continued softly. "If Discord should fall, a new Chaos will rise; but who, is the question before our eyes. If the power chooses a pony, that would be bad. Ponies who wield Chaos magic all go quite mad. The same can be said for zebras and buffalo; to none with harmonic magic should Chaos's power go."
"They go crazy?" Applejack said. "Crazier than Discord? I mean, he's pretty nuts himself..."
"There once was a pony named Brightest Star, who sought to take from Discord the position of avatar. Chaos devoured her mind, and left madness behind. She tried to bring all Equestria to a dire fate by performing a rite to open a gate to ancient powerful entities, incarnations of entropy. The princesses fought her, and even Discord assisted; the destruction of all things had never been listed among his desires. Only she so aspired, because she was mad. So you can see why I say the results would be bad."
"Um, yeah!" Rainbow said. "That does sound pretty bad! What's entropy?"
"Depends on who you ask," Twilight said. "Most of my textbooks define it as disorder, which makes it synonymous with chaos, but it's also a measure of energy running down or coming to equilibrium. Discord says it's specifically the disorder caused by energy running out, and he thinks that makes it different from the disorder caused by infusing energy into a system." At Rainbow Dash's blank look, she sighed. "It's death and destruction, basically. Chaos, but chaos caused by decay and ruin."
"If her plan had fully unfurled, the result would have been the end of the world," Zecora said. "So we can but hope the power won't choose a pony, or else the whole world might lose. But the problem remains then, who is left? For of creatures who can wield Chaos, the world's become quite bereft."
"Seems like there's a lot of chaotic creatures here in the Everfree," Applejack said.
"But the chaos avatar must be a creature with speech, or control of magic will be out of its reach. And if we look at the world, I think you'll agree: most speaking creatures prefer Harmony. Now dragons can easily align with Chaos; they're individualistic, and most would betray us as soon as befriend us. But a problem is there. Dragons who can wield magic have become very rare. Magic's inherent in dragons, it's true, but to use and control magic, now that is the issue."
"I didn't know there were any dragons who can wield magic," Twilight said.
"You will find that the dragons most ancient of days are the ones most likely to know the old ways. Young dragons know little, and their magic's but a piddle. So I have my doubt that the power would select a dragon, though I can't completely elect to rule it right out. And the others who once might have followed chaos's ways are far less likely a choice, in modern days. Goats were once chaotic; the avatar Pan was a goat of chaos who brought madness to the land. But goats living with ponies for many a year have become tamer and far less chaotic, I fear. Goats wielding magic have also become uncommon; nowadays one can barely find a goat shaman."
"Can't say I ever met a goat who could do magic, myself," Applejack said. "And I've known a few goats. They're a proud folk, they keep to themselves for the most part, but I wouldn't call them chaotic. Just not entirely friendly toward ponies, all the time."
Zecora nodded. "Many chaos avatars came from the draconequus race. But from this world they have been erased. Their time is past; Discord is the last. And gryphons, in main, don't wield magic at all. So one wonders, on whose shoulders would Chaos' power fall?"
A horrible thought occurred to Twilight. "Um... assuming that the power can't choose a full-grown ancient dragon, which I'm guessing you must mean because otherwise the fact that there are ancient dragons who know magic would make them the logical choice... although does it even make sense to worry about whether Chaos would choose something logical?"
"Even Chaos must follow certain laws, when it's not pure, but working through hooves or paws. And yes, an adult can't become the spirit of Chaos; else perhaps one could take the power and force it to obey us. Not unless the inclination is already there; only then could the burden of Chaos one bear. An ancient dragon, well-experienced with magic, couldn't suddenly switch to an avatar's power; if they were so bewitched, the results would be tragic, for them and the world. They would lose all control. So most likely a young creature will take the role."
"Right. So... if a dragon who can't do magic is nonetheless pretty well knowledgeable about it and understands it about as well as a non-mage can... would that make them a better candidate for the power?" Please say no. Please say no. Oh, Celestia, if we fail to rescue Discord and as a result I lose Spike... please say no!
"Hmm. I do not think that would matter at all. One's heart affects who'd answer chaos' call." Zecora turned around and looked at her. "Are you afraid for your young friend Spike? I wouldn't fear; he's not near enough like the ones drawn to Chaos. It's not your race that decides if you could be a chaos spirit, but your feelings inside. It's not enough to be a dragon; the power would need its wielder to be, well, chaotic. Spike's sole vice is greed."
Twilight sighed. "Oh, thank Celestia. I have every intention of saving Discord and not letting it come to that anyway, but it's a big relief that even if we fail, it's not going to go to Spike."
"Simply belonging to a chaotic race doesn't mean an individual could take Discord's place. No race is naught but chaotic, or it couldn't survive; only races with some harmony within them can thrive. The ill-famed dark mage of Tambelon, Grogar, was a goat, but an overlord strong-willed and ordered. His magic was dark, but it wasn't chaotic; his actions were evil, but weren't psychotic. And it's said that even the draconequui, before their last days, did embrace Harmony. Most races have within them much the same range of emotions as ponies, so it isn't that strange that even of the races most apt to wield Chaos, only a scant number can use it to dismay us."
"How'd they die out anyway?" Applejack said. "I always figured that if Discord had ever had a people, they'd have been too crazy and chaotic to last, but you just said they embraced Harmony. Wouldn't expect a race to die out right after that."
"That is, I fear, a common misconception; because Discord's been their sole example so long, ponies have the perception that draconequui were creatures of mix-matched pieces. Actually they were chimeras of two different species, Eastern dragons and unicorns. Discord is as he is because he is the one touched by Chaos's kiss. Any chaos avatar would take on a mixed-up form; for his species, Discord is far from the norm."
"Huh. In Daring Do and the Island of Mists, Daring Do goes to this ancient city where everything is oversized, but not big enough for dragons -- like the rooms are two or three times as big as rooms for ponies, except most of them are wrecked because it's ruins. And she finds the bones of unicorns mixed in with the bones of dragons, but she's looking for a tome of magic spells so she doesn't really have time to investigate it too much, but she thinks maybe it was a city where unicorns and dragons lived together because none of the bones have teeth marks on them. You think maybe that could have been one of their cities?"
"Isn't Daring Do fiction, Rainbow?" Twilight asked.
"Well, I guess so, but A. K. Yearling does a lot of research!"
She had a point. A. K. Yearling was an archaeologist and researcher of artifacts in real life, which was the reason Twilight figured that her books had so much verisimilitude. "But the city was full of bones, like everypony just died of a plague or something and no one was left to bury the bodies. Do you know what happened, Zecora?"
"To that city, no, but I can certainly guess that the fate which befell nearly every other draconequus affected them as well. Their race was a powerful one of old... but they were never built to survive in the cold. When the windigos came, most of them died. The few that remained were lost to their own pride."
"I didn't know the windigos affected the other races!" Twilight said. "I thought it was just ponies."
"No. The folly of ponies brought the windigos here, but the blizzards they brought caused all races to fear. Western dragons and griffons had the power to roam, and Eastern dragons were far away, safe in their home, but many a creature of another race died when the windigos came to this place."
"I guess Discord survived it because you can't just kill the spirit of chaos with it getting too cold, then?" Applejack said.
Zecora shook her head. "When his species passed on, Discord was but a child. He was left to survive by himself in the wild. The windigos were all gone by then, so it was possible for a child to fend for himself and survive, though hardly to thrive. He had some power back then, though he was just a pup, but his full power didn't come until he was grown up."
For a moment Twilight stood stock still, absorbing that.
She'd known Discord had had no friends. Princess Celestia had said that she and Luna were the closest thing he had to family. And she'd known that his species had died out long ago, though almost nothing was known about them. She'd known that at least on some level, he didn't trust ponies, and assumed that he would be disliked and unwanted; she'd known that he seemed to crave attention desperately when he was around ponies, but that as nearly as she could tell he spent most of his time off by himself. All of that was sad, though not quite an excuse for being as incredibly annoying as he was. But if his family, and in fact his entire species, had died out when he was a little child, and he'd had to fend for himself, living off nature... with no friends, no parents, nothing until he met Celestia and Luna and who knows how old he'd been by that time...
"Well, throw me in a turnip truck," Applejack said softly. "I had no idea. He never said anything about it."
"These are not matters of which he would speak; above all else, Discord doesn't like to seem weak." Zecora sighed. "He'd be easier to bear if he could recognize that others care."
"I wonder if Fluttershy knows anything about any of this," Rainbow Dash said. "She'll keep secrets to the grave, if a friend asks her to, so if he told her, and asked her not to tell us, she wouldn't have breathed a word of it."
The lip of the cavern where the Tree was hidden loomed into sight. "Zecora... do you... this might sound crazy, but can you talk to the Tree?" Twilight asked.
"All the time," Zecora said, smiling. "It appreciates a good rhyme."
"Well, but I mean... does it talk back?"
"Not... precisely. It is just a tree."
"What I mean is... we're here to get a cutting from it to take to the other universe, because we're hoping that could help us to re-harmonize the Elements of that universe. I'd really like to get the Tree's permission, if that's possible."
"The Tree knows of your quest, and approves. You may take a small cutting into your hooves."
"How do you know?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"The Tree does have its ways to communicate. But be quick; dark comes soon. You don't want to be late."
Rainbow flew down to the base. Twilight considered doing the same, but then she and Rainbow would outpace Applejack by a good deal. She elected to walk down the steps instead. "Are you coming with us, Zecora?"
"No, to join you this time wouldn't make sense. This task is best left to those who bear Elements. I have a few potions I need to churn, so back to my home I'd best return."
"Can you find Fluttershy and work with her to get a collection of potions that might help Discord? His letter suggests he might be hurt pretty badly, so you know, painkillers, antiseptics, any kind of healing reagent that would actually work on him..."
Zecora frowned. "Few healing magics can work with his chaos, but perhaps I can find something that will not much delay us. I'll meet up with Fluttershy, and then I will see what sort of potions she might need from me."
"Thanks."
She and Applejack went down the steps to the cavern as Zecora headed off. "I'm wonderin' where's the best place to take a cutting," Applejack said. "This ain't an apple tree, that's for sure. Can't really tell which parts will take root best if I take a cutting of them." She looked down at the tree and then back at Twilight. "Might be I could use your help, Twilight. An ordinary tree, you just listen for where the branch is gonna break just right, and then a real quick buck and you've got your cutting, but this ain't no ordinary tree. I could do with some magical help in breaking off a piece just right."
"It's too bad Rarity isn't here," Twilight said. "The Tree's made of crystal; her affinity with crystals might have helped us."
"I gotta reckon probably not," Applejack said. "Ordinary crystals aren't alive. You need to cut a crystal into a pretty gem, Rarity's your mare. You need to grow a crystal into a tree... well, you know who might have some surprising insight into this would've been Pinkie Pie. Mare did grow up on a rock farm, after all."
"Do they actually grow rocks on rock farms?" Twilight said skeptically.
"Rocks ain't alive, for the most part anyways," Applejack said. "They can't grow. But you treat 'em like a thing that grows, and what happens is, they fill up with a kinda, I dunno, I guess you could call it an earth pony magic. We don't usually call it magic; you unicorns and your flashy horns, that's what magic means to us. Feels more like bein' kind of kin to nature, feeling the way the world wants to grow and live. Pinkie brought me one of her family's rocks once; thing's like a giant boulder, but you put it out by trees which are sickly or where you're growing fallow so as to not make your fields turn barren, and what do you know but the trees and the grass and every living thing practically explodes, they grow so well. I shipped it out to Appleoosa, since my kin there struggle with raising apple trees in the desert. They got some low-moisture varietals good for drying and for tart or sour flavors, but the juicy kind we have out at Sweet Apple Acres just won't grow without moisture... till you put one of Pinkie's family's rocks out by it."
"That's really interesting. I never knew that." Note to self: study Earth Pony magic. They haven't written much down about it, or I'd have found books on the subject, so this will be original research!
"Are you two slowpokes gonna talk all day or are we doing this?" Rainbow called.
"Some of us would prefer as to not break our necks on these stairs," Applejack retorted. "Unless you and Twilight want to carry me down, I guess we're gonna go at my pace, not yours, speedster."
"I could totally carry you."
"That so? I've got a lot more muscle mass than you might be thinking."
"Applejack, do not challenge Rainbow Dash to carry you down the stairs. She'll do it, and then what if she can't hold onto you and you guys get hurt?" Twilight flapped off the last few steps, coming to land by Rainbow so the pegasus didn't get any silly ideas about speeding this up by grabbing Applejack. "Rainbow, you and I should fly around the tree and see if we see anything that looks like a good area to take our cutting from."
"Uh, I'm not a tree farmer. What are we even looking for?"
"I have no idea," Twilight said. "I'm kind of hoping the Tree has some way of communicating itself to us, since we're still Bearers of its Elements even if the Elements themselves are hanging back up."
Unfortunately, by the time Applejack reached the Tree a minute later, Twilight had seen no evidence whatsoever either that the Tree could communicate, or that any of the branches could be broken off and grafted or rooted elsewhere. Her attempts to investigate it magically were stymied. The Tree had something like a heartbeat, made of magic; waves of pure harmonic force came off of it in a gentle rhythm that disrupted every spell she tried to cast. Funny. Pure harmony, set to a different frequency that doesn't match what you're trying to do, is even more disruptive to a signal than pure chaos. Discord was hard to scan magically too, but nothing Discord did was rhythmic, and if you watched him carefully you could dart in during moments when his magical field ebbed or pooled in a different direction, and grab information... much of which came back scrambled and nonsensical (she was fairly sure that his heart was not in fact a baked potato, he didn't seem to actually have a kangaroo pouch with a purple earth pony filly hiding inside it, and despite what her magical scans told her, she could tell with her other senses that his horns were not really singing a blueberry-flavored song), but some of which seemed accurate. Twilight simply couldn't read the Tree at all because the eddies and waves caused by its magical pulses drowned her attempts to scan.
"I'm stumped, girls," Twilight said, realized what she'd just said, and facehooved. "Uh, no pun intended. I can't figure out how we'd go about getting a cutting without running the risk of accidentally taking something we shouldn't."
"Lemme try," Applejack said, and knelt down on the ground by the Tree in a strange position, her barrel pressed against the earth and her four hooves dug into the dirt, like she was trying to do a gymnastic split. It looked awkward and painful. She pressed her head to the dirt as well, on one side, ear flicking. Then she got up.
"What are you doing?" Rainbow asked.
"Getting the feel of the land," Applejack said. "Ain't spent near enough time out here to truly get a feel for it, and this is the Everfree. The Everfree itches me. But this part, right here? Feels like..." She seemed to struggle for an analogy. "So imagine you're sitting on an anthill, and ants are running every which way around you. And then there's a stream of water, running over you, drowning the ants... but the farther away from its source that the stream gets, the more the ants break it up. Somehow. This ain't coming out sounding like a thing that makes a durned bit of sense."
"No, it makes sense," Twilight said. "The Tree harmonizes magical energy. Earth ponies can feel out the magic in the earth, I'd guess; that's how your magic works, just like pegasi can feel the magic of the sky and the air. So in most places, earth pony magic just does whatever you guys are making it do. In the Everfree, the magic is... not drained, it's actually so powerful I can feel it for myself, but it feels... chaotic. Disorganized. Like... if I were going to try to pull on it... it would run through my grasp like flour through a sieve. Here, though... it runs straight and even, but it's so strong, you can't pull on it. So it has almost the same effect. You can't affect the magic of the earth here any more than you can in the rest of the Everfree, but for different reasons." A thought occurred to her. "Huh. You know... I've been in the Everfree so many times, but not that many since I became an alicorn. I didn't even notice this before."
"You think it's just you got so powerful since you became a princess that you can sense all kinds of magic now?" Rainbow asked.
"No... it's because I have earth pony magic now. Alicorns aren't just pegasus unicorns, we're actually a combination of all three pony races. I don't have any training in using my earth pony magic because it doesn't look like you guys ever write anything down about it."
"We don't even rightly think of it as magic, Twilight; we just feel it like that's the way the world is."
"The air feels the same way, kind of," Rainbow said. "Like, you find a really good, strong thermal, you pull at it to redirect the wind... and it's like rain running off your wing. You can't grab it. Is that what you're talking about, Twi?"
"Kind of. Can you feel the air here, Rainbow?"
Rainbow Dash opened her wings, and then cocked one ear as if she were listening to something. "Huh. Yeah, what I thought."
"What did you think?"
"The Tree is singing. I mean not singing singing, but there's music. Can you hear it?"
Pegasi didn't so much have better hearing than other ponies as they had excellent skills in filtering and separating different sources of sound, a vital ability when trying to communicate with air rushing past your ears. But as Twilight had just pointed out, she was part pegasus herself now. She ought to be able to do it. She opened her own wings.
With four hooves on the ground, with wings spread, she felt the pulse of Harmony in the air, in the ground, throughout the thaumic field. The magic in the earth, the magic in the air, ebbed and flowed in time with the pulse, the same as the magic of reality did. She held absolutely still, barely even breathing, and began to hear chimes. Like the wind whistling through the crystal branches, making them shake like wind chimes. Except there were no branches, and the chiming sound was too regular, too melodic, to be like wind chimes.
She began to hum, trying to catch the tune. After a moment Applejack joined in, humming beside her. Rainbow Dash couldn't do anything so uncool and mundane as hum; she joined in with whistling.
And as the three of them hummed (and whistled) in tune with the sound of Harmony, one of the small branches lit up, glowing brightly.
"That's her," Applejack said reverently. "That's our tuner. Twilight, can you get that branch to come off nice and clean?"
"I think so," Twilight said, and resumed humming. It was so much easier to match her magic to the pulse, to work in tune with the sound of Harmony, when she was humming the song. It was a gentle, peaceful tune that made her think of a sunny spring day, maybe in a glade by the Whitetail Woods with a running stream, or maybe out by Fluttershy's cottage.
With a single cutting slice, she sheared through the joint between the branch and its parent. The branch fell free, and Twilight caught it with her magic.
*take me*
"Wh-what? Did you girls hear something?"
"Reckon so," Applejack said. "It said to take it?"
"Girls, that wasn't a sound," Rainbow said. "I heard it too, but I can't tell where from, and I can always tell where from."
*take me with you to heal the sister*
"It's the branch," Rainbow said. "I don't hear it from anyplace, it's just... everywhere. But it's the branch."
"I know," Twilight said. "Applejack?"
Applejack sat on the ground and took the branch in her forehooves. "Baby Tree, if you can talk, can you tell me if my aim to keep you moist, with your bottom end firm in a bag of dirt, is the right way to grow you? Because I've never grown a Harmony Tree before, and I must admit to you, I'm eager to do right by you, but I'm not sure I know how."
*i am a tree*
"Sure, but you're a right strange tree. I wanna make sure I'm giving you the right sort of care."
*do what your heart tells you is right... i am a tree... care for me as you would a tree"
"So, what do we do with you when we get where we're going?" Twilight asked. "Just plant you?"
*no, the sister must be able to hear my song, but the children as well*
"I don't know what that means."
*chaos must smash chaos or the song cannot relay... plant me outside the everfree, where my song can reach ponies, but my song cannot cross the barrier to the sister... plant me inside the everfree, where i can sing to the sister, but then the ponies will not hear... chaos must smash chaos for the song to reach*
"What does that mean, chaos must smash chaos? How would that even work?"
*i am sleepy... i am only a very little tree... i will sleep now until you plant me, for i must save my strength for growing*
The branch stopped glowing. Twilight sighed. "I'm... gonna hope Discord will know what the tree means when it says chaos must smash chaos. It sounds like it will need him to do something before it can re-harmonize the Elements... I just hope he'll be in any condition to do it."
"That might be a tall order, Twi," Applejack said soberly.
"Oh, no, it'll be fine." Twilight helped Applejack get the tree branch into the little bag of moist dirt Applejack had brought. "We'll just need to get that collar off him."
"Collar?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Yes. They put a collar on him that blocks him from using his magic unless he's ordered to, but the collar itself isn't reinforced by the Elements. We might not be able to break the obedience spell on him, since we don't have our own Elements, though I suspect if we can re-harmonize their Elements that all of the spells using the, huh, what would you call them? Dark Elements? No, Princess Luna had a good point, dark and evil aren't synonyms..."
"Evil Elements," Rainbow Dash said.
"But they ain't. They're half and half, the good and the bad," Applejack said, while she and Twilight maneuvered the small bottom-bagged branch into a larger, protective bag, and hung that around Applejack's neck. "So sometimes those mares act just like us, and sometimes they're monsters, and I reckon in some ways that works out to be worse than if they were just bad all the time. Discord said in that letter of his that Fluttershy -- he calls her Fluttercruel so as to not confuse her with ours -- that her being nice and kind and sweet sometimes, and torturing him other times, is messing him up in the head something fierce, and I can see that. How could you ever predict what somepony would do and know what you're getting into when you have dealings with them, if sometimes they're themselves and sometimes they're the right opposite?"
"Elements of Opposition!" Twilight said triumphantly. "They're not Elements of Harmony, and they're not Elements of Disharmony, considering that they were able to get them to harmonize." Now she'd lost her train of thought. "What was I saying?"
"That we got our tree branch and it's time to get home before it gets dark?" Rainbow Dash said.
"Well, that's true, but that's not what I was thinking."
"You were talking about trying to break the spell on Discord," Applejack said, starting toward the stairs. "And Rainbow's right. Let's get a move on."
"Right. If we can re-harmonize the Elements of Opposition back into Elements of Harmony, I suspect all the spells cast with the Elements of Opposition will just end, like that. But if we can get Discord's collar off, he can use his powers as long as they didn't order him not to, and if they're using a collar to keep him from using his powers then why would they bother to order him not to? They wouldn't think they'd need to."
"He could be hurt bad, though," Applejack pointed out.
"Yeah, but couldn't he heal himself if he had his powers?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Probably," Twilight said. "So it should be okay. We go to Fluttershy's house, we break into the basement -- I can cast a sleep spell so the other Fluttershy doesn't wake up -- we get Discord's collar off him and at that point he can heal any of his injuries, and we get him to do this thing the Tree cutting is saying about chaos smashing chaos. Then we plant the Tree cutting, and we get out of there. This seems like it could go really smoothly."
"Why'd you have to say that?" Rainbow Dash demanded. "You know things are gonna be a mess now!"
"They were gonna be anyway," Applejack said. "This is Discord we're talking about. How could anything ever involving him possibly go smooth?"
"Well, it's not like he'd be disrupting a rescue operation on purpose. And until we get the collar off him, he won't have any magic."
"Pretty sure Discord can generate a whole lot of chaos using just his mouth, without even meaning to. We've got no idea what shape we'll find him in, sugarcube; best to be prepared for anything."
"I intend to," Twilight said. "Let's get back."
Fluttershy opened the door to the library. "Hello? Spike? Are you here?"
A few minutes of searching located the baby dragon, fast asleep in his little bed. Fluttershy smiled despite herself at the adorableness of it, before remembering why she was here and losing the smile.
Quietly she went back to Twilight's desk, rummaging through the papers there. None of them were in Discord's handwriting. She knew Discord's handwriting. Her thoughts went back to the letters she had at home, tied neatly in a velvet box with a sachet of lavender with them.
Dearest Fluttershy, I must confess to a lack of experience with this 'pen pal' phenomenon. It's so wonderfully splendid! After over two millennia, I thought I'd done virtually everything worth doing, so to find something new that I've never done is astonishing. But I can't recall ever sending anypony a letter before... perhaps because I never had anypony to send one too. Or perhaps because my hoofwriting is terrible. Actually it's handwriting, I'm certainly not doing it with a hoof. Can you read this? If you can't, simply tell me so and I'll have the letters recite themselves...
My dear little friend, how are you? How are your chickens? How is your evil rabbit? Yes, I know you prefer that I don't call names, but you've also asked me to practice my honesty and on this matter I cannot lie, your Angel is misnamed. The truth is I actually don't really care about your chickens, or your rabbit, except I suppose that if they weren't doing well that would make you unhappy, and I do so want you to be happy...
Darling Fluttershy, I hope you enjoyed the small snowstorm I included with this letter. Don't worry, it should melt away within a couple of hours, but you should take this opportunity to make a snowball and hit Rainbow Dash with it. You know that she's been pestering you to play a prank or two for some time, and I have to say, it's about the only thing that mare and I can agree on: you need to have more fun! Loosen up! Be less shy. Be Fluttersomewhatlessshy. Obviously if you completely changed your personality you'd be Flutterbold and then you'd have to update all your stationery and what a pain! So I don't suggest it. But I do suggest snowballs. Trust me, your pal Dashie will be thrilled if you hit her with a snowball...
Dear Fluttershy, I've found you the most wonderful present! No, I didn't make it, because if I had I would have to say I made it and not that I found it. I thought about enclosing it with this letter, but the truth is, giant dragonflies get quite irate if you try to stuff them into a letter! So I'll be bringing it the next time I visit. This one is one of the very rare, nearly extinct crystal dragonflies -- which you'd think would live in the Crystal Empire, but they absolutely do not...
Fluttershy, I have to confess, sometimes I am so mind-numbingly bored that I wonder what the point to any of this is. Here I am, performing incredibly tedious tasks at Celestia's behest (she has me sealing the dimensional borders. Possibly I shouldn't have told her how porous they are, but seriously, can't a unicorn do this? It's taking FOREVER! And at my age, I know how long forever takes!), wondering if this is actually better than being a statue... and then I get one of your letters, and it brightens my entire day. So now I am performing a mind-numbingly tedious task but getting to write a letter to you in response at the same time (yes, I can multi-task, quite good at it actually), and this is an enormous improvement over my previous situation...
Her eyes filled with tears, thinking of the silly rambling letters, the snowstorm enclosed in one, the platypus egg in another, the large stuffed mouse that had an entire family of baby mice and their mother sleeping inside it, the ones that had slideshows of the various places he was traveling around the world, the breathtakingly beautiful flowers that had sprouted all over one of them... Would he ever be able to send her one of those letters again? Would he ever be himself again? Would he still even want to be her friend after her alter ego had done such terrible things to him?
None of these papers were in his handwriting. She swallowed. Maybe the letter wasn't here. Maybe she wouldn't be able to read it! It wouldn't be her fault for not reading it if it wasn't even here, right? And all her friends would actually prefer she not read it, and it wasn't letting Discord down if she'd tried and she couldn't...
...no. She needed that information. She wasn't going to be able to help him unless she knew everything he'd been willing to tell anypony about his situation. She had to find it.
Everything here was in Spike's handwriting. Or Princess Celestia's. Or Twilight's. And then she remembered that Twilight had said, Spike had made a copy of the letter and then sent the original to Princess Celestia. Armed with that memory, she found the letter quickly.
I'm afraid I have to admit it, this is entirely my own fault. Now I'm told that many individuals in a situation such as the one I find myself in might engage in a bit of unproductive self-blame, such as "If only I'd been stronger" or "If only I'd noticed that my drink was spiked" or "If only I'd gone to the mountains and become a hermit, far far from any ponies anywhere," but rest assured, I'm not one for self-blame where it's nonsensical and unwarranted...
It wasn't his handwriting, but she'd know that style anywhere. She picked up the sheaves of paper in her forehooves and flew over to Twilight's chair, sitting down so she could use her hooves to turn the pages. It's not, it's not your fault, it's not, Fluttershy thought, ferocity and grief warring within her. I don't care what you did, this isn't your fault. It isn't.
She read the letter, forcing herself through some parts of it because she had to know. Her friends had tried to shield her, and she loved them for it and she appreciated how they all watched out for her but really, she was stronger than they thought she was. She could do what she had to, for a friend. There were points, many of them, where her vision blurred and she couldn't read until she wiped the tears out of her eyes with her foreleg, and there were some parts where she had to stuff her hoof into her mouth to stifle her own sobs, because she didn't want to wake Spike.
When she was done, she wobbled off, leaving the library behind, her movements shaky and her vision entirely obscured by tears that she couldn't wipe fast enough and still be able to walk. Instead of heading home, she headed for Sweet Apple Acres, where she knew Applejack was supposed to have brought her animals. She needed to spend the night surrounded by her small friends. And maybe in a house with some of her normal-sized friends.
Please hang on. Don't let her trick you. This isn't your fault, sweetie, you're right, you don't deserve this, no one could ever deserve this. She's lying to you. Please hold on.
We're coming for you, Discord. We'll save you, I promise. I promise.
Harmony, 9 PM
They all regrouped briefly at Sweet Apple Acres to go over the plan.
"We're getting up at 4 am," Twilight said. "Pinkie will have breakfast packed for all of us—"
"Does that include coffee?" Rarity, whose mane was now sky blue, asked. "Because I simply cannot face the notion of waking so early without coffee."
"Yuppers! I'll have triple extra strength espresso with sugar and cream, and I'll have Coltumbia dark roast black, and I'll have—"
"Tea, too, if you wouldn't mind," Twilight interrupted.
"Okie dokie lokie!"
"We'll meet at Fluttershy's cottage by 4:30, and head out to the portal." Quickly she outlined the strategy she'd suggested earlier.
"Um... I have the medical kit and some potions from Zecora... so if he's, um, if he can't... if he's too weak to do magic maybe we can get just enough energy into him that he can heal himself... so it should work..." Fluttershy's voice trailed off.
"The alternate strategy, if he's too weak to cast magic at all, is that we give up on the reharmonization plan, since it seems to require that Discord be able to do something, and we just get him to the other side of the portal. I ought to be able to levitate him without much trouble; he's big but he's not very heavy."
"And if we run into any of our other selves?" Applejack asked.
"Kick their behinds before they know what's going on," Rainbow Dash suggested.
"That would be mean!" Pinkie objected.
"Pinkie... they're mean. We have the element of surprise, and that's possibly the main advantage we have over them. We can't not take it," Twilight said.
"If we should be in the other world long enough for the sun to come up, I'll cast a simple color transformation spell to make all of us look like we did before," Rarity said. "And then drop it once we actually find Discord. That way anypony we run into will assume we're their versions."
"I'm leaving my hat," Applejack said. "Ain't no way I wanna risk losing it in another universe. I couldn't see my way to getting a mane dye, but I'll put it in a bun. I don't see much chance that the other me would be doing the same thing."
"You'll just have to tell which one is the real me by which one is awesomer," Rainbow Dash said, "because I'm not doing anything weird with my mane. But if you need to be able to tell me from her, we know Discord didn't reform in that world, so I'll talk about something from that day. Like the soup tureen spilling all over us."
"All right. I think we have a plan. Let's get some sleep and meet up in seven hours." Only seven hours to get some sleep, and she'd have to spend some of it walking home... no, wait, she could fly.
Opposition, 12 AM
"Discord. Wake up!"
He jerked violently, trying to come to a sitting position before he was even awake enough to know where he was, only to briefly strangle himself against his collar, which was hooked by a short chain to the bedpost at the foot of Fluttershy's bed. Gasping, he fell back to the floor. Fluttershy was standing over him -- no, no, it was Fluttercruel, he wouldn't be collared and chained if it was Fluttershy.
Memory came back. She'd lashed him with a razor-sharp wire whip until he'd nearly died from shock and blood loss, then ordered him to heal himself. After his body was repaired, more or less, he'd broken down crying in reaction, sobbing uncontrollably, and she'd held his head on her lap and petted him and let him cry himself to sleep. At least he assumed he'd fallen asleep; he didn't remember Fluttercruel leashing him to her bed, so he must have fallen asleep on the floor, right here, and she'd granted him the small mercy of not waking him up and dragging him down to his cell in the basement. He'd been bone-deep exhausted before the beating; he'd been woken early, after having suffered a horrific session with Twilight and her experiments the night before, and had been made to work in Applejack's orchard, sorting apples in the hot sun, all day. He'd been beaten badly by Applejack, and forced into sex with Fluttercruel after she'd tended his wounds, and he'd had little water and even less food, all day. And then Fluttercruel had almost killed him.
Discord had little ability to tell time accurately, but he knew he was much too tired to have had a full night's sleep, and when he looked out the window the moon was up. It was still nighttime. He was far too tired to deal with this, but he didn't have a choice. "It's still nighttime, isn't it?" he asked, pleadingly. "Please, mistress Fluttershy, I'm so tired..."
"I'm sure you are, but I'm afraid I can't give you any leeway right now," Fluttercruel said. She unhooked his collar from the chain on the bed, and hooked a leash to it instead. Against his better judgment, his paws clenched, watching her work. The clasps of the various chains and leashes they used to restrain him were simple, hoof-operable, and would be mindlessly easy for him to undo if they weren't frequently ordering him to never, ever touch the clasps on his collar or try to escape. "Twilight has called us. I have to take you over there."
Discord's eyes went wide, his breath catching in his chest. Oh no. No no no please no.
Twilight was the worst of all his tormentors. Not because she caused him the worst physical pain, although she did, but because she had no interest at all in his reaction to it. All of the others tortured him to get a reaction, to make him demonstrate fear or despair, to make him submit. Fluttercruel got a sexual thrill out of his pain, Applejack tortured him to teach him "lessons" about obedience and "doing a good job", Rarity got sadistic amusement out of using the obedience spell to make him suffer -- such as the time she'd freely allowed him to drink as much apple juice as he wanted, on a day when he was dehydrated and thirsty, and then refused to allow him to relieve the pressure in his bladder, all day, or the time she'd made him take an uncomfortable pose and then ordered him to hold completely still and left him that way for hours, hanging bolts of fabric on his arms and horns as she worked. Rainbow Dash was hardly ever around but when she was, she generally just wanted to get a bit of visceral revenge by ordering him to punch himself in the face or stand still while she bucked him in the head, and even Pinkie Pie had plainly wanted his pain and terror when she'd cheerfully dismembered him, giggling. So if he cried, begged, screamed his head off, prostrated himself and swore to obey, or in the case of Fluttercruel offered to sexually service her, he could, maybe, shorten his torture a bit. Give them what they wanted, show them how much he was suffering, and they'd be satisfied, and stop. He had some -- not control, but influence at least, over what they did to him.
But Twilight didn't care. Her experiments were to obtain some sort of information about how his magic worked, how he worked, how chaos and harmony interrelated, and secondarily, she seemed to be trying to use him and his control over chaos to lessen the ambient disorder of the world, to force him to pull back chaos that he didn't even make. It didn't matter to her that the experiments made him feel as if his whole body was on fire from the inside out. It wouldn't matter to her if they tickled or gave him orgasms or put him to sleep. He'd tried begging, he'd tried bargaining, he'd tried arguing, he'd tried reverse psychology, he'd tried as much stoic self-control as he could possibly muster up, but nothing made any difference at all. His reactions were completely irrelevant to her; he was a thing, an experimental subject, not a sentient being who could suffer. The only concession she made to his status as a living creature whatsoever was that she'd stop before he died, a fact that he'd found comforting in the beginning but was now honestly just an addition to the torment.
The only control he had at all, the only thing whatsoever he could cling to that would give him any way to deal with his utter helplessness in the face of the pain, was to keep track of the days. This Twilight was much, much more ordered and rigid than his Twilight, which was saying something. Her experimental sessions happened twice a week, on the same two days of the week, in a pattern of three days and then four days. Because he wasn't naturally good at telling time, he'd been scratching marks in the floor of his cell to count the days, so he would know what day was a Twilight day. While it had the downside of filling him with fear and dread all day long when he woke up and knew he was going to Twilight that night, it spared him the fear on the other five days of the week. No matter how horrible the day was going to be, no matter what he endured, he'd know, at least, that he wouldn't have to go to Twilight and suffer through her experiments.
It had been just last night that he'd last gone to Twilight, just last night that he'd talked Spike into sending the letter he'd been writing for three weeks, and maybe (though probably not) spurring a rescue operation from his Twilight. He was supposed to have three more days after this one before he had to see her again. Twilight couldn't be breaking her pattern; this Twilight never broke a pattern. "I, I was just at Twilight's last night!" Discord said desperately. "She can't want me back this early, she can't!"
"All I know is that she asked me to bring you over there, sweetie," Fluttercruel said, her tone gentle and false-understanding as if she had to give him a shot or unpleasant tasting medicine for his own good, rather than that she was bringing him to a torture session. "So we'd better get going, don't you think?"
The fact that he cried so often and so easily nowadays was generally a source of intense humiliation to Discord, and he generally tried to hold the tears back. He made no such attempt right now. Discord prostrated himself, eyes welling with tears, a sob breaking free of his throat. "Please, mistress, please don't, please, it's too early! She always does it only twice a week, three days and then four, this isn't the day I'm supposed to go to her, she can't want me after she just had me yesterday! Please, I'll do anything, mistress, please don't take me to Twilight, it's not the right day, please, please..." He was sobbing freely, his vision blurred with tears, but he didn't take his eyes off Fluttercruel, looking up at her from his position on the floor, despite the fact that she was nothing but a yellow blob now. "Please, please, anything but that, please..."
"Oh, sweetie, you've learned the importance of schedules!" Fluttercruel bent down and hugged him around the neck, pinning his prostrate form under her weight so he couldn't have lifted his head if he tried. At one point he'd have been strong enough to lift something of Fluttercruel's mass with just the muscles of his neck, without even using his magic, but he'd been systematically starved for two months and most of the physical strength of his body was gone as well. "I'm so proud of you! You finally get why things should happen at a certain time, and why it makes ponies so unhappy when they don't!"
Was this a test, then? Discord relaxed very slightly. Fluttercruel was always trying to "teach" him why chaos was a bad thing; was this just another lesson? He didn't agree with it, of course; making the sun and moon rise erratically or causing it to be winter when he felt like it and summer when he was bored with that couldn't be having nearly the impact on ponies that the thought of going to Twilight early was having on him. Ponies liked winter and summer, they liked day and night. They weren't barely clinging to what was left of their own sanity by studying the pattern of something awful that was inevitably going to happen to them and trying to predict when it would occur. But if this was just a cruel test, then if he acknowledged the lesson he wouldn't really have to go to Twilight. "Yes, yes, I understand now," he said, focusing entirely on his understanding of why the thought of having to go to Twilight early was breaking him. "Schedules are important, I see that now, mistress, I understand."
"Such a good colt. I'm so proud of you," Fluttercruel said, giving his neck an additional squeeze before getting up. "If it was under my control, I'd give you a reward for this. But, unfortunately, I really do have to take you to Twilight."
He put his paws over his face and wailed, wordlessly, his ears folding back. It wasn't just a test. She was really going to make him do this.
"Now come on. It can't be that bad."
"It is," he sobbed. "It's the worst thing, oh please, mistress, I'll do anything, please don't make me do this..."
"We have our orders, Discord," Fluttercruel said sharply. "You know that Twilight speaks with Princess Celestia's authority. If I didn't do what she said, I'd get in trouble. Do you want me to punish you for crying and begging like a baby?"
"You couldn't possibly do anything worse to me than she will," Discord moaned, some part of him aware that this might not be the most intelligent thing to say, but the truth spell and his level of distress didn't allow him to muster up enough control not to say it. "She doesn't even care..." What he'd meant to say after that dissolved into sobs.
"Oh, honey," Fluttercruel said. She knelt down next to him and kissed him on the top of his head, near his antler. "Oh, I had no idea how much it means to you that I care about you. I understand. You know that I only hurt you because I care about you and I want you to do better, right?"
That wasn't what he'd meant at all, and what she had just said was so ludicrously untrue that he didn't dare make any response to it whatsoever. But if Fluttercruel thought that he believed she cared about him and that that mattered to him, maybe she might show him mercy. Just a little bit. Maybe. "Please, mistress, I'll do anything for you but please don't make me go to Twilight, please..."
"I have no choice." She kissed him again, and kept doing it, on his tear-filled eyes, on his snout, on his nose, on his cheek. "But I'll make it up to you later. I'll make you feel good. You be a brave little colt for me and come with me to Twilight's, and I promise I'll make you happy afterward, all right?" She kissed his lips, running her tongue over them, then pulled his head back by pushing down on his antler, forcing his head to tilt up, so she could kiss him harder and more deeply. He responded, hopelessly, letting his tongue tangle with hers as she'd trained him to do, feeling despair shut down his emotions and start to dissociate him from what was happening. She'd just promised to rape him as a reward for enduring torture. He was the avatar of Chaos and yet his life was so much more impossibly absurd now than it had been when he'd wielded his power.
There was nothing he could do. What she was telling him she would do to him probably would feel good when she did it, even if right now the thought made him sick. It wouldn't even begin to make up for what he'd suffer at Twilight's hooves, but maybe he would pretend she was really Fluttershy and she was really trying to comfort him and please him, and maybe that fantasy would get him through it and even let it make him feel better. He couldn't do anything about it now anyway. Right now he had to face the immediate horror -- she would take him to Twilight for another torture session, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to get out of it.
Fluttercruel broke the kiss and backed away. "Come on, sweetie. We have to do this. Be strong for me."
Discord swallowed down the last of his sobs, and got up to all fours, shakily. "Will -- will you stay with me?" he whispered. If she saw how he was suffering under Twilight's protocols, either her old Kindness might kick in and make her pity him, or her new Cruelty might arouse her to the point where she'd try to get Twilight to release him early so she could make him satisfy the lusts his pain would have awakened in her. "When she does it? Please?"
Fluttercruel's face softened. "Oh, of course I will," she said. "If you want me there."
He nodded, miserably. He couldn't think what else to do. Fluttercruel thought he wanted her there for emotional support; he thought he was tricking her into being there because she responded to his pain, unlike Twilight, and might be able to save him from a little bit of it. But was part of him actually looking for emotional support? Was some part of him pleading for Fluttercruel to be there with him because he really did need a friend to help him deal with the torture, and she was the closest thing he had?
Discord felt as if he was teetering on the edge of something, maybe as if he was about to break. He wanted Fluttercruel there with him. He had perfectly rational, acceptably trickstery reasons why he had begged her to stay with him through the torture, but what he felt was an overwhelming craving to have someone there who'd feel any sympathy at all, someone who would hold him and comfort him afterward and touch him and make him feel loved. This was wrong, this was all wrong, he didn't want to be feeling these things, he wanted just to hate her and trick her into doing what he needed to have any hope of shortening his suffering. He didn't want to genuinely mean it that he wanted her there.
But he couldn't stop himself. He was too exhausted, too frightened, too deeply sunk in despairing misery. Twilight wouldn't care about his pain at all. He needed someone to be there who would. Even if the reason she cared was that she enjoyed his pain and it made her want to rape him, that still meant his pain mattered to her in some way. Being hurt by someone who literally didn't care, at all, who didn't even enjoy his pain but simply found it irrelevant, made it much worse than when someone was hurting him because they cared about getting a reaction from him.
When Fluttercruel pulled on his leash and began walking, he followed after her, head so low his beard would have been dragging on the ground if Fluttercruel hadn't shaved it off weeks ago to humiliate him. His whole body ached; he was hitting the limits of what he could do to heal himself, when they wouldn't let him perform a full-body transformation, and he was so tired and weak, and so afraid of what would happen at their destination. The thought occurred to him to lay down and refuse to move; the obedience spell would make him get up and walk, but at least he'd have the tiny satisfaction of knowing he wasn't cooperating with his own torment. But no. Being a puppet, his limbs moving in total disregard of his will by the obedience spell, was a torment in and of itself.
She brought him outside, and led him over to a tree at the edge of her property. "You ought to use the bathroom now, sweetie," Fluttercruel said. Which, if her words were taken at face value, was nonsensical, because the bathroom was inside the house, but he knew what she meant. She never actually let him use a bathroom; none of them did. Bathrooms were for ponies. They made him go outdoors, or in a small corner of his cell, like a non-speaking animal. Rarity was the only one who ever let him use a bathroom, because she was disgusted by the thought of anything else, but most of the time she just tormented him by ordering him to simply hold it all day. She only relented when her little sister was present; Applejack didn't seem to care if Apple Bloom saw her older sister torturing Discord, but Rarity was much less unkind to him when Sweetie Belle was around to witness it.
Discord obeyed, too miserable and broken to even feel humiliated by it anymore. He knew why she'd ordered him to do this, and the thought made him even sicker with fear and despair than he already was; once Twilight started, the pain and shock of Twilight's magic tearing through his body would make him lose anything in his bowels or bladder, and often his stomach. So Fluttercruel made him go ahead of time so that Spike wouldn't have to clean it up. Very considerate of her. He closed his eyes against a fresh wave of tears, trying to hold them back.
'What a good colt," Fluttercruel said, patting his head like he really was a pet animal. "You're so obedient. Go ahead and use your magic to clean up."
It might have filled him with horror that her praise actually made him feel a little bit better, except that he was so full of fear already there was no room for anything else. He leaned his head into Fluttercruel's strokes as if he were a cat and she was his owner, taking what tiny comfort he could from the gentle touch.
I'm starting to crack, he thought, and felt a surprising lack of emotion at the prospect. Apparently he no longer cared all that much if he broke or not. Or at least, in this moment he didn't particularly care.
He prolonged the cleanup as much as he could, making scrubbing bubbles appear all over the ground and the tree where he'd urinated, scouring and cleaning the area almost manually rather than simply snapping his talon to make his own wastes disintegrate. But there were limits. Fluttercruel stopped petting him. "All right, it looks like you've gotten it all nice and clean," she said. "Make those bubbles go away, and let's go to Twilight's."
No more stalling was possible. He obeyed, and followed Fluttercruel, feeling as if he was being led to his own execution. Though that would actually frighten him less than this did.