Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Chapter Ninety-Nine

"Evening, Twilight," said Discord.

She looked up from her desk, seeing him standing tall and leaning against a library shelf. "…Hi," she said awkwardly, still not entirely used to seeing him in her home.

He bowed his head to her. "So, how are you?" he asked. "Are you at all… stressed?"

"Stressed?" Twilight said in confusion. "…Maybe. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, just… you seem stressed," said Discord, shrugging.

"Well, I appreciate your concern, but I'm all right," said Twilight.

"Oh, I don't think you're all that all right," Discord said solemnly, walking toward her. "You're having trouble pretending that the world is totally normal. It clearly isn't, and that bothers you."

She stared at him apprehensively.

"There's me," he went on. "You can't tell me I don't stress you out, hehe. And you've got your ex-boyfriend on the loose, you don't know what he's planning…"

"Can we please stop referring to him as my ex-boyfriend?" Twilight said irritably.

"As you wish," he said cordially. "Then there's Mitgaeard. The goddesses say they have a handle on it, but you're not so sure… you're still worried. Right?"

"That's true," Twilight muttered.

"And then there's the changelings," Discord continued. "You're afraid that the king and queen reuniting might lead them to come back."

"Yeah, that about sums it up," said Twilight.

"Well, you can relax at least a little," he said gently, kneeling down at her side. "You don't have as many problems as you think. I happen to know that at least two of those problems I mentioned are in fact one and the same problem."

"…Sorry?"

Discord clasped his hands together and started drumming his fingers against each other. "Didn't Vorpal Blade tell you that he has a benefactor of some sort? The one who gave him the power of hate, who gave him a prophecy about his heist at the castle being a guaranteed success no matter the circumstances? Hasn't it been brought to your attention that Crusaders Mecha works differently for him than it's supposed to? And didn't Celestia say that he's a harbinger of something bigger? You are aware of all that, aren't you?"

"I am," said Twilight, staring at him tightly. "What's your point?"

"My point is that maybe it's time for me to stop concealing the identity of this benefactor," Discord said casually. "Perhaps I'm suddenly ready to spill a secret or two, as Celestia hoped I would."

Twilight glared. "It's you, isn't it? You're the one behind Vorpal Blade."

"What? No!" he said in alarm.

"Then say it!" Twilight snarled.

"I'm not Vorpal Blade's benefactor!" he insisted, holding up his hands.

Twilight calmed down and nodded. "Okay. Thank you. That's all I needed to hear."

"Of course, if I was the benefactor," Discord said thoughtfully, "I would probably be planning to betray him somewhere down the line, which would mean that I could honestly make the claim of not being his benefactor… but that's not the case either."

Twilight thought about that for a moment. "All right, that works for me," she decided. "So who is the benefactor?"

"What, you want me to just tell you?" Discord demanded, recoiling. "Oh, that's no fun at all…"

"Discord," she growled.

"Hey, the rules are that I have to obey you and I have to tell the truth. There's nothing in there about having to answer questions."

"Then I order you to answer my question," Twilight said calmly. "Who is—"

"WAIT!" Discord cried out. "No no no no no no no, please please please, don't make me answer that. Not yet. Okay?"

"I—"

"Bupbupbupbupbup, just trust me: not yet." He grinned at her desperately.

"Okay," she said in concern. "I… I trust that you know where you're going with this. So what do you want me to do?"

He stood up straight and smiled at her. "Just this: order me to show you who the benefactor is. And to bring all your friends with us so they can see it too."

She frowned at him uncertainly.

"Trust me," he said in a dark and sinister voice, grinning wickedly.

Twilight took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. "Do as you said: show us Vorpal Blade's benefactor."

"Excellent," he whispered.

A second later, Twilight looked upon a calm gray ocean, with huge chunks of ice floating all around. She and Discord were standing on the edge of a huge white iceberg, and her five friends were there with them.

"Oh!" Fluttershy exclaimed, standing up. "What… what's going on?"

"WHAT THE HECK?" Rainbow demanded, crouching down and her wings bristling. She looked around wildly and her gaze settled on Discord. "What did you do?" she growled.

The others were crying out in alarm as well, wispy clouds of vapor pouring out of their mouths with every syllable. Only Pinkie Pie seemed completely undisturbed, looking around at the sea of ice with interest.

"Discord!" Twilight said dangerously, shivering in the deathly cold. "What is this?"

"Calm yourselves, everypony," he said sweetly. "Twilight has asked me to reveal to you all the identity of the creature who has been sponsoring Vorpal Blade's criminal actions."

"Sponsoring…?" Rarity muttered.

"Shhh," Discord urged gently. "She's here. She's right here." He crept behind an outcropping of ice and ducked down, concealing himself from view. A second later, he popped back up and glared at them sternly. "You may want to follow my lead."

The ponies hastily galloped over and joined him in hiding behind the wall. They all peered over the top and sides, intently following Discord's gaze out into the sea.

Something was flying among the icebergs, something black and scaly… something massive. It was a snake, flying on four small flippers at the sides of its head, its seemingly endless body lined with white spikes.

"Sørmur dï Mitgaeard," Twilight breathed, flinching away in horror at the monster's proximity. The great serpent was flying mere feet away from the berg on which they were hiding. Her head passed by without noticing them, but her body continued trailing on behind her. "Look at that," Twilight marveled, impressed despite the gripping, chilling fear.

She turned to Discord and was surprised to see that his smug expression was gone: he looked just as horrorstruck and dumbfounded as she felt.

"It's her," he said in a tiny, pathetic voice.

"Discord, are you okay?" she demanded.

"No… no, I'm not okay," he mumbled, his eyes on each passing spike on Mitgaeard's back.

"Didn't you know that this is what you'd be showing us?" Twilight hissed.

He nodded rapidly, his claws grasping the icy wall tightly enough that it shattered. Caught by surprise, he stumbled, and the entire iceberg was jostled. Discord regained his grip on the wall, but the ponies all tumbled out from behind their hiding place, crying out in alarm as they did.

Mitgaeard slowly turned around, her furious blue eyes burning into them. Instantly, without a single second of hesitation, she opened her mouth wide and a huge green cloud of poison gas shot out from her throat, enveloping the six ponies. Painful blisters and sores started appearing on their skin, and they were reduced to fits of uncontrollable coughing. As soon as the cloud cleared, Mitgaeard herself charged through the air at horrifying speed, ramming the iceberg with her long snout, overturning it and sending Discord and all the ponies flying through the air.

Fluttershy and Applejack slammed into another iceberg headfirst. Fluttershy shook her head rapidly and moaned in pain. Applejack collected herself a bit better, looking over her shoulder to see that Twilight was hurling toward the same berg. She rolled to the side so that Twilight would land on her, cushioning the unicorn's fall.

Pinkie and Rarity landed in the icy water, sinking completely before bursting out, gasping and flailing about in blind panic. Rainbow swooped down to save them, diving under the water completely and grabbing them both around the middle, bursting out of the water and flying toward the piece of solid ice where the other three were regaining their footing. The three of them were soaked, and the water on their coats started freezing as they were exposed to the ice-cold air.

Mitgaeard lunged at them, her jaws wide open and her fangs exposed. Twilight's horn lit up, and she teleported all six of them to another iceberg, but they were scattered at this new location, some of them dangerously close to falling off the edge, others high up and slipping down the berg's steep sides.

Mitgaeard flew close to the surface of the water, opening her mouth and shooting a beam of heat at the iceberg's foundation. As the ice melted, it started crumbling, sending the ponies tumbling down toward the sea. Pinkie stumbled on stiff, frozen legs. Fluttershy grabbed her and attempted to fly away, but Mitgaeard swung her immense, shovel-shaped tail at the two of them, batting them out of the air.

Twilight found stable ground on the iceberg and ducked behind another outcropping. To her surprise, she saw that Discord had also found this same safe place, his back to the wall as he breathed heavily, his eyes wide.

"Discord, do something!" she cried frantically.

He was shaken out of his paralyzing fear by that statement, and smirked at her. "'Do something'?" he repeated. "Oh, my dear Twilight, that's the worst thing you could possibly say to me, 'do something'. Why, 'porting back to Ponyville all by myself and ordering takeout food would be 'doing something'. However, since I have a personal dog in this fight, I will intercede on your behalf, which, just for future reference, is what you should have told me to do."

"Whatever!" Twilight snarled. "Whatever you're going to do, just do it!"

"All right."

He stepped out into the open, where he saw that Mitgaeard was scanning the waters for the other ponies. Rainbow was stealthily creeping around the edges of one iceberg, trying to avoid being spotted so she could dart out into the open water and grab Rarity, who was treading water with just her snout above the surface to stay hidden herself.

Applejack swam to an iceberg and clambered up onto it, then started urging Fluttershy and Pinkie to swim toward her. She fell silent when she realized Mitgaeard's gaze had just found the three of them.

"Hello, Sørmur," said Discord.

She spun, holding her head high above the water. Far away from the ponies, Discord was levitating in empty air, his legs crossed and his hands in his lap.

The giant serpent's eyes narrowed. "Disssssssscord," she sneered.

"Yes, 'my lady'," he said condescendingly. "It's me. I've waited a long time for this. Hit me with your best shot."

Mitgaeard chuckled. "You don't dessserve my besssst ssssshot. I want to toy with you. I, too, have waited for thissss for a long time. At lassssst, you ssshall be put in your placcccce, sssssspawn of chaosssssss."

"You're welcome to try," said Discord. "But I don't think so, somehow."

She lunged at him, fangs bared, and snapped her jaws shut inches from him. He vanished and reappeared farther away, still hovering in his relaxed position. She kept pursuing him, but he only teleported farther and farther away, luring her away from the ponies.

"Fight back, damn you!" Mitgaeard spat.

Her immense coils were still hovering overhead, but Twilight took the chance and teleported to Applejack's side, starting to levitate the others one by one out of the water.

"Oh, I fully intend to," Discord replied. "I just had to set the stage properly." He extended his hands, and suddenly he was holding a pair of gigantic golden swords; their handles fit perfectly in his hands, but their exotically curved blades were like two huge sailing ships. "You should know I'm fighting to kill," he said casually.

Discord slashed at Mitgaeard's face with his two immense swords, but they simply sparked harmlessly against her tough black scales.

"Oh, no you're not," she chuckled. "Not even you could ssssssink sssssso low as to kill your own mother."

He growled angrily and attacked again with increased fury and force.

Rarity glanced up from her task of tending to a barely-conscious Pinkie Pie. "Did she just say…?"

"Yeah," Twilight said solemnly, watching the vicious battle taking place uncomfortably close by. "I think so."

"Au contraire, my lady," Discord snarled, crossing his swords in front of himself to deflect her oncoming fangs. "I've always wanted to kill you."

Mitgaeard clamped her jaws around the two swords and tore them out of his hands, snapping her mouth shut to rend the blades in two. Caught by surprise, Discord leapt back and dropped out of the air, ducking behind an iceberg.

"But you never could," Mitgaeard hissed, the pieces of the giant weapons dropping from her mouth into the ocean.

"Watch me!" he called back from his hiding place.

She circled the iceberg, searching for him. "You were alwaysssss too weak, my foul sssssssson."

"Now hang on," came his voice from a completely different direction; she lifted her head and started toward the new source of the voice. "'Too weak'—is that argument about our respective power levels, or is it about scruples? Because if it's about scruples, I can assure you, I don't have any. I'll have you know that if I'd only had the power, I would have killed you a hundred thousand years ago! Now if you'll excuse me: elbow rockets!"

He blasted out of a cave in the surface of an iceberg on huge jets of fire shooting out of his elbows, his fists slamming into Mitgaeard's chin and knocking her head back. He hovered high above her head, and she smirked at him.

"Oh, I find that unlikely," she said. "A hundred thoussssand yearsssss ago, you were ssssstill Accord, my good sssssssson."

"Accord," Discord scoffed. "I hate that guy. But fine, I refer to a date ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and forty-six years ago, the day I realized that hey, I'm a free-willed individual and my mother is a boring-as-hell, anal-retentive, world-destroying, pompous bitch!"

He held out a hand, and a spray of golden bullets shot out of the palm of his hand like a machine gun, bouncing off of her scaly snout.

"Twilight," Fluttershy whispered, tapping her shoulder. "Twilight, Pinkie just lost consciousness. We need to get out of here. This cold air and cold water, it's going to kill us."

"I know," Twilight said anxiously. "But I can't teleport us out of here. I don't know where we'd go, I don't even know where we are. But let me try something."

Her horn lit up, and her magic started surrounding each of their bodies one by one, warming their cores. After a few seconds, her magic sputtered out, sparking pitifully.

"What's wrong?" Rainbow demanded. "Is something messing with your magic?"

"It's cold, Rainbow," Twilight said simply, shivering. "It's just cold."

She turned back to the battle between Discord and Mitgaeard, as her ominous statement started sinking in for the others.

"What are thosssse trinketsssss on your back, my sssssssson?" Mitgaeard asked. "Artifactssss of orderlinessssssss?"

"Not your kind of orderliness," Discord growled. "These are the Elements of Harmony."

"There isss only one kind of harmony," Mitgaeard sneered. "My kind of harmony."

Discord's scaly red tail extended to a great length, and he wielded it like a whip, striking her between the eyes and driving her backward.

"You mean the kind where you're the only thing in the entire universe?" he retorted. "Yeah, that's a freakin' great M.O. to be sitting on for A MILLION FREAKIN' YEARS! I've lived generation after generation… among creatures who worrrrrship the concept of harmony, and none of them—NOT ONE OF THEM!—would call that a good idea!"

With a final crack of his tail-whip, he withdrew it back to its normal size and held the very tip of his tail in his mouth, curling into a wheel and rolling through the air toward Mitgaeard, slamming into her nose. She responded by attempting to snap him up in her mouth again, but he dodged away, slinking through the air like a snake.

She shot a sticky silver filament out of her mouth, snagging onto Discord's hind legs. He fell out of the sky and landed belly-first on an iceberg, and she started reeling him in.

"The Elements of Harmony are too special for you!" Discord roared. "You're not going to take them… they're MIIIIIINE! I'm! Meant! To protect them from you!"

He flipped onto his back, digging his talons into the ice in an attempt to hold himself in place, but she kept pulling.

"I never understood mortals' obsession with harmony," he said gravely. "I guess I'd spent too long associating the word with you. But I see it now. What you do isn't harmony. Harmony is the process that keeps everypony from thinking only about themselves. It builds strength… and… and respect…"

He pulled a house-size chunk of ice off of the berg he was hanging onto and hurled it at Mitgaeard's head. It shattered in her face, but she seemed entirely unfazed.

"Order got a bit of a raw deal," Discord continued, grabbing the topmost point of the berg before he could be pulled out of its reach. "The spirit of chaos is me, and I pull it off quite well. But the living personification of order isn't some heavenly beacon of harmony; it's you, the goddess of logic, of all things."

He gazed at the ponies. "I wonder…" he said in a whisper that managed to carry all the way over to them. "I bet it often comes as a shock to creatures to realize what it is you represent. I know my friends over there weren't too happy to discover that the Elements of Harmony would be useless against you, as you yourself are harmony. That had to shake a few lifelong convictions, eh? To realize that harmony does not always equal good."

He made eye contact with Twilight directly. "I wonder if it ever occurs to them, then, that perhaps chaos doesn't always equal evil."

Mitgaeard snapped her jaws shut in fury, severing the filament. Discord slid down the side of the iceberg, and she pinned him against its surface with her nose. "Of coursssse chaossss isss alwayssssss evil, you fool!" she screamed. "And all the world isss in chaossssss! Thissssss isss why it mussssst be sssssstopped… AND I MUSSSSSST SSSSSSSSSSSSTOP IT!"

She smiled. "And you've jussssst betrayed a mosssst chaotic weaknesssssss… the drive to protect your friendssssssss."

Mitgaeard turned toward the ponies and once again dove straight for them.

"NO!" Discord roared. "NO, DAMN YOU!" He clawed at the corner of her mouth, leaving a bleeding gash on the side of her face. Despite his comparatively diminutive size, he was apparently managing to hold her back, slowing her down as she came closer and closer to the ponies, then stopping her altogether, straining and groaning as he pulled.

Her massive head was some two dozen feet away from Twilight, and she extended her black forked tongue in an attempt to grab Twilight with it. Twilight stood there and faced her, unflinching, as Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash pulled the unconscious Pinkie Pie and barely-awake Rarity as far back as they could go. Rainbow was slowly succumbing to the cold as well; she involuntarily curled into a ball and shivered mightily.

"Friendship is no weakness of mine," Discord snarled, pulling Mitgaeard's head to the side. "It's a weakness that's been shoved into me by these things… and those things." He pointed irritably first to the Elements, then the ponies. "It's harmony! Real harmony! Your 'order' isn't harmony… it's oblivion. And I wouldn't wish that on anyone or anything. Well, except maybe you."

With a mighty heave, he slammed her face into the side of an iceberg.

"So you see, Mother, the weakness you found in me is one of harmony, not chaos… and certain ponies I admire would tell you it's no weakness at all. Now if it's the last thing I do, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE—TODAY!"

Mitgaeard opened her mouth wide and unleashed a piercing scream that made the air shimmer and quiver, broke massive chunks off of every iceberg in the sea, sending the ponies tumbling into the water once again and knocking Discord back as well.

Rarity, completely unconscious, floated at the surface, but Pinkie started sinking. Rainbow sleepily reached out for her, muttering, "Pinkie, no…" before nearly slipping into unconsciousness herself.

Discord and Twilight both found themselves grabbing onto the same floating chunk of ice. Mitgaeard was scanning the water, looking for something to strike at.

"I will have harmony!" she screeched. "I AM harmony! YOU WILL ALL SSSSSSSUFFER!"

"Discord," Twilight said rapidly, "do you think you could teleport the six of us and yourself safely back to Ponyville sometime in the next, say, three seconds?"

He shook his head, dazed and weak. "Um… no. No, I don't think I have that in me."

"Do it anyway," Twilight said promptly. "That's an order."

He grinned weakly and winked at her. "Yes, ma'am."

Discord zoomed around the sea of ice at a high speed, collecting all of the ponies and lifting them out of the water. Carrying the five of them in his arms, he skipped across the water back to Twilight and gathered her up as well.

His frantic darting around had caught Mitgaeard's attention, and she opened her jaws wide and lunged at them. Discord braced himself, hugging the six ponies tightly, and shut his eyes tight.

In a flash of light, they were back in Golden Oak Library. Discord let go of them, and they tumbled to the ground in a heap as he staggered toward the wall, leaning against the bookshelves, breathing heavily.

Twilight's horn sparked weakly, before finally attaining its true glow once again. She tapped her friends with her horn one at a time, waking them up and melting some of the ice covering them.

"You're not alone, you know," Pinkie mumbled, still seeming half-asleep. "Everypony thinks their mother is boring…"

"What?" Rainbow wondered through chattering teeth, looking concerned. "Come on, Pinkie, stay with us." She put a hoof on Pinkie's shoulder and shook her.

"How did I not see it?" Twilight demanded of herself, shaking her head in disbelief. "I'm so stupid. He's always going on and on about his mother, and Celestia said that he knows more than anypony else about Sørmur dï Mitgaeard and how to fight her. He's chaos, she's logic… it all just seems so obvious. Why didn't I put the pieces together? What other possibility was there?"

"What the hell are you babbling about?" Rainbow growled.

"Forgive me," Discord whispered.

Twilight's head snapped toward him. "What did you just say?" she said breathlessly.

He faced them, slumping exhaustedly. "I said forgive me. Please. I'm sorry. I only meant… I felt I owed you a glimpse of how everything was connected, an explanation of the mysteries you're facing. I had a plan: I'd take you to her, you'd see her and be terrified, and then I'd whisk you right back here, no harm done, where you'd be safe and you'd have learned something but you'd still be completely freaked out. I… I thought it would be funny. And it would have been, if I'd only done it right.

"But… seeing her again…" He opened his eyes and turned them toward the sky sadly, spreading his arms in helplessness. "I thought I had gotten over all she's done to me, I thought I'd have control over my emotions, but as soon as I saw her in person, it all came rushing back to me. I couldn't… I couldn't think… I froze up, I put us all in danger, and I'm so sorry. You have to believe that I meant no harm, I didn't mean for this to happen…"

"It's okay, Discord," Twilight said gently, approaching him. "Nopony can blame you for having an emotional response. Of course you did. She's your mother."

"Wait, what?" Rainbow demanded.

"You didn't hear?" said Rarity, raising her eyebrows.

"Hear what?"

"Mitgaeard and Discord are mother and son," said Rarity. "You didn't catch that?"

"You know, I was a little too busy freezing to death to listen in on their conversation, thanks!" Rainbow snarled. "I don't know how much prep time the rest of you got for this little adventure, but I was kind of in the middle of something!"

"No, none of us were prepared at all," Twilight whispered. "He said he was going to show us Vorpal Blade's benefactor, and I told him to go ahead and do it."

"Well, now you know his secret," Discord said solemnly, sitting down on the floor. "And… and you also know my secret." He hung his head. "That's the missing piece I was going to add to my story. When I was Accord, I was a serpent. A plain serpent, immortal but otherwise with no distinguishing characteristics to speak of, no feelings, no personality… a tool for helping Mitgaeard forge her flawless nothingness.

"When she was taken to Tartaros, on the very day that I was born, I was imprisoned alongside her. And so we stayed, for uncountable millennia, unaware of anything but the books they were constantly tossing into our cell. The books were the only thing keeping Mitgaeard there, you see. She could have escaped at any time if she didn't have the compulsion to read everything they gave her."

He stood up and started pacing around the library nervously. "Eventually, I was given a book about ponies. That's how I discovered them, how they inspired me before I'd ever even met one. And when I became what I am now… I thought she'd be proud of me. I was naïve. I didn't realize just how devoted to order she truly was. I should have expected… but I didn't. She froze me in a shell of her gray goo, she broke out of Tartaros, and she made me watch as she spent almost a thousand years turning a perfectly serviceable forest into her Matrix."

"This is fascinating," Rainbow said irritably, "but can we—"

"It's important to me that you know this!" Discord snapped. "It was the worst thing I've ever experienced! Having just learned to love the world so much, and here she was, trying to get rid of it! That's why imprisoning me in stone is the worst thing that anypony could POSSIBLY DO TO ME!"

He collapsed and pounded his fists against the floor, then rose up again, suddenly calm again. "But what's past is past," he said bitterly. "I'm grateful to be here with you as we attempt to stop her. I like that. I appreciate that I've been given the opportunity to maybe, just maybe, finally wipe that smug, condescending snaky smile off her face and shred her to pieces." He growled, a feral and animalistic sound, then put on a calm face once again and bowed deeply. "Permission to retire for the evening?"

"Granted," said Twilight. He started walking up the stairs. "Oh, but Discord?"

He turned to her. "Yes?"

"We're all in pretty bad shape," Twilight said. "Most of us have been poisoned, and all of us are kind of wiped out from, you know, the hypothermia and all. So, um… I think if there was a way to just instantly rid us of that problem, that would be… most helpful."

He frowned at her, bewildered. "Is that supposed to be an order?"

"Did it sound like an order?" Twilight countered.

"No."

"That's probably because it wasn't."

"All… right then," Discord muttered. Uncertainly, he slowly lifted a hand and snapped his fingers, and a wave washed over them, healing the frostbite and the sores from the poison gas, waking them up completely and gently lifting them back onto their hooves.

Discord pointed to Rainbow Dash. "You, I believe, were with Derpy in a hot tub on a beach in Applewood. She's concerned about you. I'll send you back to her." He snapped his fingers again, and she started to fade away.

"Thank you," Rainbow said sincerely as she slowly vanished. "I truly appreciate that. Really."

Discord skittered, lizard-like, back up to the top floor.

"You know, you done all right by him, Twilight," Applejack observed. "I guess that's why he's doin' right by you."

Twilight nodded. "You know… I'm glad Celestia sent him to me," she said. "It's crazy… but I'm glad. I'm glad that he's been here… and I'm glad that I've been with him."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Endnotes

I assume that I possess an intelligent readership who saw the whole "mother/son" thing coming. After all, as Twilight said, the hints were pretty glaring—who else could that mother he's always talking about have possibly been?

So it wasn't enough for me to just make that big reveal; it had to be emotional too. And boy, was it. I was shocked at how vulnerable Discord became when confronted with his origins… but hey, maternal issues do that to all of us. Even the best mothers mess up our brains, am I right?

This was a real pleasure to write. And, since some of you have asked, yes… with that final big spoiler out of the way, I suppose you are now free to start reading Legend of the Goddesses risk-free. It's currently at Chapter 30, which I always saw as a sort of "end of Act One" for that story. I would have liked to direct you to Legend when it was finished… I had hoped that Legend and Part Two would be finished at roughly the same time… but clearly, it ain't happenin'. I'm sure I'll make some real progress through Legend once Part Two is actually done.

And for those of you reading this in a future world where Legend actually is finished, here's a crazy idea: step out of this story for a moment, read Legend up to Chapter 30, come back to this story and finish Part Two, then read the rest of Legend. Just one of the many ways the whole "prequel" thing can be handled, this one based entirely on where my progress on both stories happens to be at this very moment.