Traitor

by alarajrogers

First published 7th of July, 2014

The story of "Twilight's Kingdom" from Discord's point of view.

The story of "Twilight's Kingdom" from Discord's point of view. Written as a prequel to "No Escape From Yourself."

Cover art from PonyChaos13's "7th Element Project", which predated "Twilight's Kingdom" but was shockingly prescient.

Seems Like A Good Idea At The Time

Author's Notes:

This is a retelling of "Twilight's Kingdom" from Discord's POV, so you already know the plot. It's not going to deviate from canon, it's a retelling.

It was supposed to be a short little prologue chapter to "No Escape From Yourself." Well, that didn't work.

I'm estimating 4-5 chapters, three of which are basically done, so I am hoping to make this one my first chaptered story that I actually finish. :-)

Discord's "Dead Ponies" song is taken from "Dead Puppies" from the Dr. Demento show.

Edited to add: Expanded the scene between Celestia and Discord. Yes, this places the story officially into "past-Dislestia" ship territory, but since I get so very tired of ship wars and ship-based butthurt, let me be clear: there are no present-day ships outside of friendshipping in this story. If anything develops it will be in the sequel, "No Escape From Yourself."

It wasn't as if he'd tracked down Tirek with the intention of betraying the ponies.

In fact, he'd been looking forward to it as a chance to prove himself, to do something useful that would remind Celestia, and inform the former Bearers, that he was an ally, that he could be called on to help. Since Celestia had asked Fluttershy to reform him, he'd spent most of the year bored out of his mind. Celestia had sent him on several long and tedious missions to seal the dimensional borders to prevent leakage to and from other realms -- which was all well and good, it was a job only he could do and to be brutally frank a lot of the leakage might possibly be his fault, from portals he'd created in days long gone, but sweet madness it was mind-numbingly boring. And when he hadn't been on boring missions to spend dull eons knitting the threads of reality back together and sealing them off, he'd had nothing much to do. Fluttershy wasn't actually available to spend a hundred percent of his free time with him, Twilight had conniptions every time he dropped in for a friendly visit, Pinkie was a workaholic -- seriously, how could a mare who was otherwise so much fun spend so much of her time doing things she insisted she had to do? Surely the world wouldn't come to end if a batch of cupcakes failed to be baked on occasion, and couldn't party supplies be purchased later when he wasn't around and in need of entertainment?

So when Celestia had a fun mission for him to go on, he jumped at the opportunity.

"Celestia! Long time no see! How's it going, girl? Your mane looks fabulous!" He teleported into her audience chamber wearing one of Rarity's more trendy creations (it was the actual dress, not a replica he'd made, which meant it didn't fit him even slightly, but if he'd made a replica he would have missed the opportunity to get his fur all over one of Rarity's dresses and annoy her), hugged her, and pretend-kissed the air by her cheek the way the annoying Canterlot and Manehatten fashion set did when they greeted each other.

Celestia did not even blink at him. "Discord, you were here yesterday morning, pretending to be starving to death and begging for cake."

"Really?" Discord frowned, teleporting the dress back onto Rarity's kitchen floor with a note thanking her for letting him borrow it. Since he hadn't even asked her, that was bound to rile her up some. The fact that he dropped it on her cat, more or less guaranteeing scratch damage before the day was through, just made it funnier. "Only yesterday? Oh my, time does drag on when you're bored out of your mind." He manufactured a comfy beanbag chair and flopped down onto it, soda ice cream in hand (this was a glass made of ice cream, full of soda.) "So! What is it this time? And I must warn you, if this is more of that hideously boring 'Discord, please go make sure eldritch extradimensional abominations stop coming over to borrow a cup of pony' kind of work--"

"It's not," Celestia said. "Tirek has returned."

Discord turned into an owl. "Whooo?"

Celestia made that exasperated face he loved to see her make. "Tirek. A centaur, with the power to steal magic. He came to Equestria with his brother Scorpan merely about twenty years after we had to seal you in stone, while we were still rebuilding. They attacked many unicorns, and eventually Tirek grew in power to the point where he could take magic from pegasi as well. But Starswirl had made friends with Scorpan--"

Discord was genuinely startled. "Starswirl? I'd thought he'd died centuries previously. Since when do unicorns live that long?"

Celestia's tone grew softer. "Oh. I'd forgotten, you couldn't have known. He never died, Discord. Well, he never died during your reign, in any case. He thought -- correctly, as it turns out -- that your chaos would devastate Equestrian knowledge and knock us back to the dark ages before the Founding." She glared at him. Discord smirked. "So he used phoenix feather and ouroborous scale in a potion--"

"--to turn himself back into a child? How was that supposed to help, exactly?"

"How did you know it turned him back into a child? It wasn't supposed to do that, it was supposed to make him young again."

Discord rolled his eyes. "Old fool must have gone senile by then. It's obvious what phoenix feather and ouroborous scale would do to a mortal."

"Well, his plan had been to remain in time lock until the chaos ended, then regenerate into a young stallion so he could help us rebuild, but yes, it turned him into an infant, so he was still quite young when Tirek came. So he befriended Scorpan--"

"We are talking about the same Starswirl, right? Mr. Grumpypants? Lord High Magister of Stop Bothering Me I'm Trying To Do Some Work Here? Commander of the I Don't Have Time For Friends army?" As he spoke, Discord turned himself into a replica of Starswirl, except with his own eyes, and imitated the unicorn mage's voice when he quoted Starswirl's frequent cranky antisocial pronouncements.

"Yes. Seeing what happened to you devastated him, you know. He felt that if he'd been better at making friends, he could have helped you learn how to do it, and then you would have had someone to turn to when Luna and I were gone." She sighed. "I didn't bring you here to hash over old history. Yes, in Starswirl's second life he put a priority on friendship, so he made friends with Scorpan and persuaded him to help us, and together the four of us defeated Tirek, returned his stolen magic and banished him to Tartarus. He's back."

"Immortal then, I take it."

"In his homeland, he was a great mage, a master of the powers of darkness. He made himself and his brother into immortals, but they were exiled. Probably for stealing magic, I'd imagine." She sighed. "Have you sensed anything lately?"

"I've sensed many things. I've sensed that you do not have nearly enough boysenberry pie in this castle. I've sensed that the pigeons in the garden are still up to their old tricks, and someone really ought to build them a Port-a-Potty. I've sensed that Twilight is going to continue to have a hissy about being the most useless princess until you give her something--"

"Discord. Enough."

Was that just the tiniest bit of anger in Tia's voice? Discord grinned. Oh, she tried so hard to pretend to perfect calm and serenity, all the time, but he knew better. "Oh! Do you mean have I sensed magic shifting?"

"Yes. It would be very helpful to know if you can sense Tirek's magic thefts."

"I had noticed some wobbly behavior in the thaumic field lately," he said, wiggling himself like a bowl of gelatin. "I might have gone to investigate it, but I was entirely too depressed from my recent levels of mind-crushing boredom." He sat himself on a replica of his statue plinth, hunched over, chin supported on his paw with his elbow leaning on the knee of his dragon leg. "All I do lately is sit around and think about chaos," he complained dramatically. "I never get to make any, I never even get to see any. Sometimes I feel like I was better off when I was a statue. At least then it wasn't something I was doing to myself."

Celestia cast her eyes skyward in a "give me strength" expression. "You know as well as I do what the consequences of extradimensional leakage could be."

"Yes, we could have an endless number of young male humans materializing unexpectedly in the Everfree Forest and coming to Ponyville to seduce young mares."

"That seems highly unlikely unless you caused it. I was more concerned with other entities. Don't you want to keep Fluttershy safe?"

"Obviously, but that doesn't mean I want to be so bored my brains fall out of my ears." He tilted his head sideways so that the brain falling out of his ear could have clearance to do so, then picked it up off the floor, brushed it off, removed the top of his skull and put it back in.

"Well, if you would stop constantly interrupting me, I'd have the opportunity to give you a less dull assignment," Celestia snapped.

"Oh yes! Please, Your Royal Highness, I live to serve the crown of Equestria! Please give your obedient slave an assignment!" He prostrated himself in front of Celestia in a costume appropriate to the occasion.

Celestia stared at him. "...Discord, please do not wear a saddle and a bridle in my presence ever again."

Discord smirked at her. "Gets you hot, does it?"

Now her voice was very tight, as if she was barely holding in her anger. "You and I have not been a couple in two thousand years. We are not likely to be a couple ever again. Therefore I will ask you to refrain from wearing suggestive outfits while you are here on official Court business."

Discord laughed out loud. "Oh, I still get you going, don't I? Two thousand years and you still blush like a schoolfilly when you think about me. Any particular raunchy fantasies you'd like to share?" He snapped up a psychiatrist costume, with Celestia lying on a couch in front of him and himself seated in a chair. "Tell me, Celestia, exactly how often do you have these perverse thoughts about Discord?" he asked in a parody of a stereotypical psychiatrist accent. "It's all right to share, I'm a doctor."

Celestia got off the couch and shoved it away with her magic, hard. "Discord! Behave appropriately!"

"Okay, okay." He snapped away the psychiatrist outfit and the couch... then turned himself small and teleported over to Celestia's ear, floating aside it. "But you know... even if you've decided for whatever silly reason that you don't want to touch anymore, I'm certainly not offended if you look."

She swatted him away with her magic, slamming him into the nearest wall, which would have possibly hurt if he hadn't shifted back to full size before he hit. He laughed uproariously. He'd gotten under Celestia's skin, provoked her to finally completely lose her composure and hit him, and confirmed that part of her still found him attractive. What a great day! He hadn't had this much fun in weeks.

"Are you quite done?" Celestia asked coldly.

"Hmmm.... maybe."

"I summoned you here to have you go after Tirek. Since you can sense shifts in the thaumic field when magic transfers from one entity to another, I believe you would be the best choice to track him down."

"Ooh. That does sound like fun." He grinned. "Shall I drag him back here for trial or transport him directly to Tartarus?"

"Back here; we will have to purge the stolen magic from him first." She took a deep breath. "I believe you should take Twilight with you."

"That little stick in the mud? Why, exactly, would that be a good idea?"

"Twilight has a great deal of experience in defeating the enemies of Equestria. Whereas it has been millennia since you did anything constructive with your power."

He scowled at her. "It's hard to do anything constructive with your power in stone, Celestia. I haven't forgotten how to fight."

"I'm sure you haven't. But Twilight could use the experience--"

"--You just said she has a great deal of experience."

"She does, but she has little experience working with you. It would be best for both of you if--"

"Horsefeathers. You just want her to go along as my babysitter, don't you?" He glared at her, and then spoke in a high-pitched imitation of her voice. "Oh, how will I ever make sure that Discord doesn't get distracted by something shiny? I know! I'll do what I do every single time I have any sort of problem nowadays! I'll send Twilight to do it! She'll bore him so thoroughly, he'll be sure to get the job done quickly so he can get away from her!"

"That isn't--"

"Has it ever occurred to you what a terrible idea it is to send the most inexperienced alicorn, the Element of Magic, up against a dark mage who steals magic?" Discord asked.

Celestia blinked. Apparently it hadn't occurred to her. "Tirek cannot yet possibly be strong enough to steal an alicorn's power."

"Do you know that? For certain? Would you bet Equestria on it?" He teleported over Celestia's head and leaned his neck down to speak in her ear. "Would you bet Twilight's life?"

"I must send someone. If it's dangerous for Twilight to go for fear of Tirek taking her magic, it's even more dangerous to send you. The devastation Tirek could wreak with your -- stop laughing, Discord!"

He was lying on his back in midair, laughing hysterically and kicking his legs. "Celestia! Celestia, when did you get such a sense of humor? Oh, the comic timing! The straight face! This is incredible! You must tell me where you picked up this skill; the last I saw you had no sense of humor whatsoever anymore! Did you grow it back?"

"Discord, I'm serious. What if Tirek took your power? Shouldn't you have backup with you to make sure that if Tirek attacks one of you, the other can stop him?"

Discord sat up, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "Wait, you're serious?" He goggled at her for a moment. "Let me laugh even harder, then!" He rolled over onto his stomach and pounded his fists against the completely nonexistent surface he was lying on in midair, curled into a ball and spun around several times, and finally came to a stop, still giggling. The expression on Celestia's face set him off again.

It wasn't really that funny, of course. He knew what Celestia was up to. She didn't trust him. She thought he'd fail, or that he'd get distracted and quit or lose track of what he was doing. So he had to make absolutely sure that Celestia knew what a remarkably stupid idea her plan was. "You -- you think Tirek could possibly drain my power?" He made himself stop snickering, finally. "Seriously?"

The look on Celestia's face was priceless. "If he could take Twilight's, why not yours?"

"Because nopony who wants to take over the world and rule as an evil overlord could possibly control chaos!"

"I seem to recall a certain draconequus taking over Equestria," Celestia snapped.

"Yes, but I ruled as an overlord of fun. You ponies just have no sense of humor."

"If having their lives and livelihoods disrupted constantly by endless chaos is fun, I would hate to see what you would consider an evil overlord."

Discord sighed. "Celestia. My power comes from elemental chaos, magic in its rawest form. I'm bound to chaos in ways you can't imagine, more deeply even than your and Loonie's bonds with the sun and moon... I'm not just a master of chaos, I'm the avatar of chaos. I'm one of the entities that keeps magic itself functioning in the world. Tirek couldn't possibly disrupt that. And he couldn't use my power, either; I know, I make it look like simplicity itself, but that's because I'm just that good. It's much, much harder to use chaos magic than it is to use ordinary harmonic magic, unless you're me. Tirek would get less out of me than he'd get out of a particularly powerful unicorn, and my connection to chaos gives me meta-magical abilities I can use to counter his." He landed, feet back on the ground again. "Dear little Twilight is connected to Magic itself, the way you're bound to the Sun... but Tirek eats magic. Everything she could use to counter him would simply feed him."

"I believe you greatly underestimate Twilight," Celestia said coldly.

"Perhaps I do. It wouldn't be the first time. I wouldn't even be surprised to learn that I'm wrong, and she's more than a match for him. But can you really afford to take the risk? With Twilight?"

Celestia looked at the floor. He was getting through to her, oh yes. "I... recognize that you may have a point," she said. "But that's why I would want her to accompany you, not to go on her own."

"Celestia." He took her chin in his paw and lifted her face up toward his, his own expression completely serious for once. "'Friendly chaos isn't.' Don't you remember the dragon war?"

"I... do, yes. Of course I do."

"I went alone into battle then because chaos doesn't work well in groups. If I lose control of the situation with Tirek -- not that I expect to, but chaos is all about the unexpected, so I do need to consider the possibility -- and Twilight is with me... well. You recall what happened the last time ponies tried to fight at my side, right?"

"You were barely out of childhood then. Are you telling me that in two thousand years you've learned nothing about how to protect your allies from your chaos?"

He'd actually learned quite a bit, and was fully confident of his control over his own power, but that would undermine the point he was making. "How many allies have I had in that time, Celestia? And it's a thousand years, anyway; the only thing I was able to learn during the next millennium is how to stay relatively sane in the face of mind destroying boredom."

She sighed. "You have a point, I suppose... Very well. You will go alone. But if you run into trouble I expect you to contact me and let me know, do you understand?"

"You're so bossy, Tia. Doesn't it ever get tiresome, pushing everyone around and telling them all what to do?"

"Not nearly as tiresome as dealing with you. You need to be off; there are ponies suffering, ponies who may face the loss of their magic every moment that Tirek is still free."

"Oh, of course, my dear Celestia," he said with complete insincerity. "I'll attend to the matter right away!"

So of course he made sure to take a few minutes ahead of time to stop in on his favorite little ponies, and also Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash, to give them some advice, because he was absolutely certain Tirek was no match for him but chaos meant nothing in the world was ever completely certain, and he'd survived two millennia by throwing lots and lots of potential backup plans into play. Discord wasn't a Machiavellian long-term planner -- he couldn't be, doing that would destroy his ability to be spontaneous -- but he occasionally played one on stage by setting into motion multiple potential plans, all of which had the possibility of ricocheting off each other to cause some interesting chaos. He and the Tree of Harmony had agreed to a sort of détente, at least for the moment, based on their mutual interest in protecting these particular ponies, and he had some idea what would happen once Twilight got her key to the box.

It was no fun to flat out tell her, of course, or for that matter to tell her how to get the key; he dropped some amusing hints, and then took off before the stiffness in his muscles from being too close to the Harmony Tree started to turn into a more permanent form of stiffness. Discord and the Tree might be in a state of détente, but there was only so much it could do to hold back the effects of so much concentrated Harmony on the body of Chaos, and only so much he could do to protect himself. Still, it would probably take an hour of proximity to the Tree before anything happened that he couldn't reverse, and he didn't want the girls to know that the Tree was still a weakness of his, so he made sure to walk straight up to it and even hang off a branch while clowning around. His paw was numb for the next half hour after that, but it was worth it.

After that, it was off on the hunt. This was fun. Playing a role, pretending to be a unicorn, moving in on his target while allowing Tirek to believe the opposite was happening. Being intimidating and dangerous again. He hadn't felt this way in... well, a year, basically. Oh, there were no shortage of ponies running from him in terror -- even if he'd managed to find a few who were willing to give him the time of day, like the restauranteur in Baltimare or the crippled stallion who sold copies of the lamp he'd made for Fluttershy, the majority of ponies were more likely to abandon their store and run from him in terror rather than let him buy something from them, and even the ones in Ponyville who'd gotten used enough to him that they didn't spook every time he appeared were plainly rigid with fear and barely able to stammer every time he approached them -- like the Cakes, for instance. Really, "is Pinkie in?" was hardly synonymous with "can I eviscerate you and feed you to your foals?"

But it wasn't fun, intimidating ponies when he didn't mean to or want to. He was trying to be good and they were still terrified of him. Whereas frightening someone deliberately... that felt good. He'd missed that feeling. So when he felt Tirek sneaking up on him, it was with great delight that he spun his head around, dropping the unicorn guise (for his head only) and practically purred, "Tirek, I prrresume?"

Unfortunately, Tirek didn't cooperate. He wasn't intimidated. After an initial double-take -- not even a horrified intake of breath, let alone the girly scream Discord had been hoping for -- he peered at Discord carefully and then said, in a shaky, old-fellow voice, "Discord. You're free?"

Discord turned into a giant toucan. "As a bird."

"I commend you on your escape," Tirek said, bowing.

Oh, now this was going to be fun. "I'm afraid the feeling isn't mutual," Discord said, in a hard voice, and snapped his talons. Chains manifested around Tirek's wrists, and Discord was dressed in the costume of a police officer from one of the parallels infested with mostly-hairless bipedal monkeys.

Tirek drew back his bound arms, an expression of fury on his face, and fired a bolt of magic at Discord's head. Discord simply divided his head in half, splitting down the center to avoid the bolt. He could probably have harmlessly absorbed it, he could have redirected it, but those were stunts a unicorn could pull. Discord had found that the quickest way to pacify his enemies and make them surrender was generally to warp his physical body, in a way they'd find horrifying and that most other magic users on the planet couldn't possibly do, in order to very quickly make them believe he was invincible.

Tirek wasn't horrified... but at least he was pacified. He backed down, saying bitterly, "Oh, I should have known you would want to have Equestria all to yourself."

Discord decided to rub it in. Tirek would understand Discord taking out a rival, but Discord willingly helping the ponies would utterly break his tiny little brain. "Oh, I'm not doing this for me," he said. "I'm doing it for my friends." Losing the police costume, he leaned forward and said in a half-whisper, "Just between the two of us, it's mostly for Fluttershy." He grinned, and couldn't quite stop himself from squeaking a bit in excitement at the thought of what she would think when he came home in triumph, dragging the dread terror of ponykind, Lord Tirek, behind him as his prisoner.

"Fluttershy? You're not saying you're friends with ponies?"

And here came the brain breakage. Discord leapt out of a cake that hadn't been there a second ago. "Surprise!"

"I am surprised that someone with your intellect does not see this 'friendship' is but a new form of imprisonment," Tirek said, entirely too calmly to be a centaur whose brain was breaking. "Clearly you've had to abandon your true nature to stay in their good graces."

Discord left off his show of innocent harp playing. "I have done nothing of the sort!" he said indignantly.

"Oh, please, I've seen this before," Tirek said in a world-weary tone, sounding like he was an elderly grandfather advising a foolish young colt, and nothing at all like he was a helpless prisoner chained by the Spirit of Chaos. "But he was always weak minded." Tirek stepped forward into Discord's personal space. "You are Discord, you are legend, you cannot fall into the same trap that claimed my brother!" He actually sounded as if he cared, as if it was personally important to him that the legendary Spirit of Chaos not fall for the same trick his brother had. "Help me to grow strong, and be rewarded with something far greater than friendship. Freedom!"

He shouldn't be listening to this. Tirek was obviously trying to talk him out of doing his job (job? The Spirit of Chaos had a job?), into failing the mission Celestia had sent him here to do (the mission she hadn't believed he could do, that she'd tried to send Twilight along on like he needed a chaperone?) But... freedom. It was the essence of Chaos. Losing his freedom meant losing an essential part of himself. He'd known, when he was trapped in stone, that he was in a prison. Was Tirek right? Was friendship another prison? Had he willingly imprisoned himself?

"Once I've stripped these ponies of their magic, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see their world turned upside down," Tirek said. "Who better to do so than the master of chaos himself?" He bowed to Discord again. No one had done that since the first time he'd been turned to stone, over a millennium ago. "Join me, Discord, and reclaim your greatness." Tirek sneered suddenly, leaning into Discord's face. "Unless, of course, 'pony errand boy' is the role you've always wanted to play in this world."

That hit home. A year free, and this was the first fun assignment he'd been given. He thought of the endless tedium, of Celestia's veiled threats as to how disappointed Fluttershy would be in him if he couldn't do what he'd been asked to do to protect Equestria. And really, he'd known all along that his friendship with Fluttershy was being used to manipulate him. Celestia had out and out admitted it when she'd asked Fluttershy to reform him; he'd just accepted it as the price to pay for not being completely alone.

Tirek's disdain for the ponies, and for him so long as he played errand foal for the princesses, was palpable, and Discord didn't care what anyone thought of him but he wanted to be respected. In particular he wanted Tirek to respect him. Here the centaur was in chains, weak, defeated, utterly outclassed, his most powerful attack as meaningful to Discord as a knife was to a river... and instead of pleading or cursing or trying to escape, he was making it very, very clear that he considered anyone who willingly served the ponies out of friendship despicable. But the bowing, and "You are legend," and the offer he'd made... he was showing that he could respect Discord, that he had respected the spirit of chaos up until the moment that Discord revealed his friendship with ponies... and Discord wanted that. Respect. He got plenty of terror from ponies, most of it totally unwarranted, and he got attitude from Celestia and Luna and most of Fluttershy's friends, and he got hugs and snuggles and tea parties from Fluttershy, which were sweet but hardly an indication of respect.

Nopony had respected him since he reformed. Even when they assumed he was up to no good, they still had no respect for him... unless they were terrified, but when he was trying to be friendly, their terror hurt. It sang with the drumbeat of the voice in the back of his brain, the one that said "ponies will never be your friends, ponies will never like you, ponies will never love you, ponies will never care about you..." the voice that had quieted since Fluttershy had befriended him, but had never truly gone silent.

Why was he trying to curry favor with princesses who disrespected him and ponies who hated and feared him when they had no good reason to? Just for Fluttershy? Could one friend possibly be worth all this?

He thought of -- and manifested, because he wasn't concentrating on not manifesting his thoughts -- the dresser in Fluttershy's bedroom, with the lamp he'd made her and a photograph of the two of them together, as if she truly did care about him so much she put her sentimental mementos of their friendship right next to her bed (or the more likely reason, he thought bitterly, that putting them in her bedroom kept her friends from seeing them and complaining about them, while still reassuring him of his importance to her.) She wasn't his friend just to manipulate him. He was sure of that. He'd taken her by surprise too many times, and even walked in her dreams just to be sure. But... she was manipulating him, regardless. It was her job, the assignment Celestia had given her.

Was it worth it? To be friends with someone who had made friends with him largely in order to be able to control him? Even if the friendship was sincere... Tirek was right, really, friendship was a kind of prison, and he'd put himself in it because it felt so much better than being free but alone.

Tirek offered him alliance. Respect. Mutuality. Friendship, by any other name, though neither of them were sappy enough to call it that. He could have that, with Tirek, and Tirek would appreciate his chaos, Tirek would be open to his more revolutionary ideas, Tirek wouldn't constantly be tsk-tsking at him that what he was doing wasn't nice. Tirek would revel in disharmony and conflict. Or he could have Fluttershy, and with her, have Celestia treating him like an annoying prankster, an irritating ex-boyfriend, or an errand boy, and he could have Rainbow Dash insulting him to his face while all of them pretended to be his friend and yet treated him like dirt, and he could have ponies running from him in fear...

No. The thought of giving up Fluttershy hurt; she was his first real friend, well, unless you counted Celestia, which he didn't. But she wasn't worth it. Not if there was another choice. Tirek's friendship could give him so much more of what he needed.

It wasn't truly about freedom. Ever since the Tree had taken back its Elements, nothing had been stopping him but the fear of losing Fluttershy's friendship. And even before that... he hadn't reformed out of fear of the Elements, and he had plenty of strategies in mind he could have used to take them out of commission. He could have had his freedom any time he wanted to be totally alone in the world again. Now, with Tirek, he didn't have to be alone, and that enabled him to free himself, and let Chaos run rampant.

"Oh, all right, you've sold me," he said, snapping his talon with a grin and making Tirek's chains disappear. "Where do we get started?"

Where they got started was, of course, with Chaos.

Though really, the work he was doing to help Tirek, it wasn't full-on rampant chaos. He wasn't doing whatever he wanted; he was doing things he wanted to do, but with the purpose of helping Tirek, rounding up ponies and delivering them to Tirek to have their magic drained en masse. It reminded him of fighting the dragons, a thought that struck him with simultaneous nostalgia and unease. He really didn't want to think about fighting on behalf of the ponies, and all he'd lost as a result. Better to just live in the moment, doing what he did best. He told himself it was better this way, better for the ponies even. Eventually Tirek would have built up enough power to go after ponies in large groups like this, but Tirek was a blunt instrument; eventually his magic would settle enough into him that he could do complex things with it, but right now, with it newly drained into him, he was able to do fireballs and telekinesis and largely that was it. Ponies would have ended up hurt or dead if Tirek had gone after them on his own. Discord could make sure that none of the ponies got hurt, beyond getting their magic drained anyway. It looked somewhat painful, or at least shocking, but they were all going to survive it, he'd make sure of that. Tirek was cavalier with the lives of his victims, but Discord was not. Dead ponies weren't any fun, after all.

Besides, in a sense Tirek had been right when he'd said that of course Discord would want Equestria for himself. Equestria had always been Discord's. He'd been born on some island or other, he wasn't really sure where, but he'd come to Equestria when he'd been too little to remember anything else, and his species was native here. The entire southern portion of Equestria from Canterlot on down had been built on top of the bones of draconequui; the ones who'd been physically here on this continent had died when the windigos came, which was why Discord had been born on an island, but it had been his kind's land before the cold. Centaurs, on the other hand, came from the other side of the world. Tirek was an interloper, Discord was native.

And while he had never precisely taken the throne -- he'd refused to call himself a king, kings weren't chaotic at all, preferring ridiculous titles like Grand High Poobah, Ham Sandwich, Big Banana, or the Dauphin du Pantalones -- he had ruled Equestria, or unruled it anyway, for nearly a millennium. The ponies of Equestria were his. His toys, maybe, but still his, and he had never tolerated any outsider tormenting them. They were for him to torment, and no one else.

He would let Tirek rule Equestria because personally he had no interest in actually ruling anything. What he wanted was to be able to do anything he wanted, when he wanted, with no one to stop him from making his every whim a reality. Let Tirek do all the boring work of actually ruling; all he needed to do was stay out of Discord's way when Discord wanted to do something. It bothered him, to let someone else play with his toys, to let Tirek torment the ponies that belonged to him... but he'd never had a friend to share the joys of tormenting ponies with before, either. Sharing was something you did with friends, wasn't it? You let your friends play with your toys. Tiny foals knew that.

He'd help Tirek take the ponies' magic, but he wouldn't let Tirek do them any harm. They were his, after all. When the Wonderbolts attacked, Discord held them motionless in the air for Tirek to take their magic, and then cushioned them, slightly, so that when they fell to the earth they didn't break any bones.

"You're too soft," Tirek said, looking down at the tiny drained bodies. "These ones were not helpless civilians, as you said of the last group. These were warriors, and they challenged us. They should die."

Discord pulled out a guitar and started strumming it, singing. "Dead ponies aren't very much fun," he sang. "They don't scream when they fall, they don't run away at all, dead ponies aren't very much fun..."

"Be serious for once! You think every creature around you is a toy to play with, but these are enemy soldiers! If they live--"

"If they die," Discord interrupted, "then quite aside from them being no fun, it tells all the ones who come after them that we thought they were SCARY! Dangerousssss. THREATENING!" On each word he adopted a different form -- a manticore, a sea serpent, and finally a full-size Western dragon, towering over Tirek. He quickly reverted to form before his point could be lost in Tirek actually possibly being intimidated, though really, Tirek still didn't look all that impressed. This time he wore a grandmotherly costume and spoke as if he were a trembling old mare. "Oooh, we had to kill them! They were enemy soldiers who could fly into us really hard! Some of them might have even had swords!"

"What. Is. Your. Point." It was probably a question, but Tirek's tone of voice was flat and exasperated.

"My point, my good centaur, is this. Kill them to keep them from being a threat in the future, or as a deterrent to others, and it tells others that they are a threat. That we are frightened. Whereas if we let them live, it sends the message that they're no threat at all! Which they're not. It doesn't matter how many flying wings of pegasus soldiers come for us; all they'll ever do is serve you magic meals on the wing. They're no threat at all, and it's best if we let them know it." He grinned. "Besides, I've always wanted to know how pegasi react to gravity games when they can't fly."

Tirek chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. "Well, you do have a point, my friend. Very well then, I grant you free reign. Do with these ponies what you will."

He left to vent some of the magic -- when he drew in a lot of it at a time, he often had to use a bit of it in destructive ways, blowing holes in sidewalks or target practice on squirrels (which bothered Discord, because squirrels were also no fun when they were dead, but he had his paws full protecting the ponies). Discord grinned to himself before the implications of what Tirek had just said hit him, and soured his mood a bit. "As if I need your permission," he muttered at Tirek's departing back.

But the now flightless pegasi were stirring awake, so there were more fun things to do than be resentful of what was now his only friend. "Oh goody, you're waking up! I've been so looking forward to this!"

He played with the pegasi for a bit, tossing them in the air, flipping gravity on them, making them spin helplessly in air, but the terrified shrieks from the mailmare bothered him more than he wanted to admit. The Wonderbolts themselves were being absurdly defiant to his face, even as he flung them up and down; they reminded him of Rainbow Dash. He could play with them forever. But the blonde pegasus with the gray mane and the crossed eyes would scream in fear and frantically beat her wings, uselessly, and it reminded him much too much of Fluttershy being afraid, and he lost his stomach for the game.

Anyway, he and Tirek had more ponies to catch. He left the drained pegasi back on the ground, and teleported over to Tirek.

Bestest Buddies

They collected Earth ponies in Appleoosa next, a bunch of Applejack's inbred kin from what he was able to tell. These ones were smart enough to run, not that it did them any good. Tirek breathed deeply of the dusty desert air as the magic settled into him. "Earth pony magic is underrated," he said, chuckling. "I can feel the life force of the earth itself under my hooves, ready to bend to my will."

Discord laughed. "It's too bad you can't farm the magic of farmers, or we could pen these up and milk them for magic indefinitely."

Tirek glanced at him. "What are you going on about?"

"Touchy, touchy, crankypuss. One would think I hadn't just helped you steal half a dozen ponies' magic."

Tirek took another deep breath. "Apologies, Discord. The magic... it fills me, it excites me, but it makes me irritable and impatient as well. What were you saying?"

"I was just saying it's too bad that pony magic doesn't regenerate, or we could pen up ponies like these in magic farms," Discord said, grinning. "You could harvest from them indefinitely. It'd be deliciously ironic, because they're farmers."

Tirek smiled, which Discord counted as a kind of triumph. Really, in some ways he was a bigger stick in the mud than Celestia, but he never told Discord what not to do, and that counted for a lot. "True. But unfortunately nothing in this world can regenerate its magic once it has lost it."

Discord giggled. "Au contraire, mon ami. There are, in fact, some things that regenerate magic. Just none of them would be useful to you... not as food sources, anyway."

"For the last time. I draw in magic through my mouth, but that does not mean I feed on it. I eat food, just as anyone else does."

"And you eat magic. Come on, Tirek, you open your mouth and you drink it down. Own it! Admit to it! Look at yourself in the mirror that you can't see yourself in any more and say to yourself, ‘I'm a magic vampire, and that's okay!'"

"I can see myself in... never mind. What sort of creatures regenerate their magic?"

"You're looking at one," Discord chortled. "As long as chaos exists -- and good luck with getting rid of it, even if you tried -- I can't actually permanently lose my power. I've run into a few magic vampires in my time, and let's just say I'm still around and they're not."

"But how is that possible? When I take the ponies' magic, I take their connection to whatever their special talent is as well. Yours does not work that way?"

"I don't have a connection to a special talent, Tirek. I'm Chaos. I've been to dimensions where there was no magic, and I needed to start arguments, knock over can displays in grocery stores, and drop jellybeans off tall buildings in order to build up my reserves enough that I could get back home, but even in a dimension without magic, there is still chaos. It's more fundamental a connection than magic itself." He wrapped himself around Tirek's barrel and bent his neck to murmur in the centaur's ear. "Don't go getting ideas, now," he said softly. "You couldn't even use my magic."

Tirek didn't shy away from him the way ponies typically did when he did something like this. "Why would I even think of such a thing?" Tirek said, looking him straight in the eyes. "We are allies. You help me, I help you. You're no weak and pathetic pony, no quivering prey creature; you're a predator. Like me. We hunt together."

Discord untangled himself and teleported to float above Tirek's head. "Good," he said. He descended to the ground, grabbed Tirek's paw, and raised it into the air. "All for one and one for all! Lord Tirek and Discord, the Spirit of Chaos, together against the world!"

"And we will win," Tirek said, smiling broadly at him.

"Of course we will! Who could doubt it?"

It didn't take very long. A few days. They burned through Equestria like a wildfire, devouring magic in their path. At one point Tirek got three city blocks' worth of ponies in Manehattan and became almost drunk on the power, firing bolts of destructive energy against the tall buildings, forcing Discord to rapidly create hordes of mobile trees to run in and throw themselves into supporting the things while the now-powerless ponies evacuated, at the same time grabbing Tirek and teleporting him to the Frozen North to let out the energy. After he was done melting the ice with fireballs, Discord offered him barbequed chicken and yams loaded with marshmallows. (It wasn't real chicken. Discord had never actually been able to bring himself to kill animals and eat them, or to eat animals that others had killed, aside from certain categories of extremely stupid animals like crabs and spiders. However, it was well within his power to copy a living thing but leave out the trait of "being alive", so the body he created had never actually been living and therefore he hadn't killed it. Biologically, he was a predator, moreso than Tirek in fact, and meat was tasty, and it bothered ponies terribly to watch him eat it since they didn't know he'd manufactured it with no harm done to any actual animals. Which had been a plus, until he met Fluttershy. He supposed it was going to be a plus again, and wondered why that thought made him sad.) Tirek ate heartily, complimented him on the meal, and even laughed at Discord's frilly pink "KISS THE CHEF" apron.

Later, as they were collecting more earth ponies, he sensed the shift in the balance of magic in the world, the same way he'd sensed Twilight's original awakening even while he'd been in stone, the same way he'd sensed new Bearers coming into play. Four distributed pillars had turned into one massive, thick, lumpy support for the metathaumic field of Equestria. He thought of telling Tirek, but decided against it. What had gone for the ponies went for Tirek as well; what was the fun of giving his friends all the information he held on a platter? Let Tirek find out for himself, it would probably be funnier that way.

Because the only thing Discord could think of that could explain the sudden massive and literal imbalance, as the weight of magic shifted from four to one, was that the alicorns had combined their power. Either the four of them had literally merged into one being (he hoped not, Twilight would be far less fun to tease if she was now also Celestia, Luna and Cadance -- and then he remembered he wasn't her friend anymore and the teasing would be in the context of enmity, and it made him hurt for a moment, but after all that was the relationship he'd had with all ponies most of his life, hadn't it been?) Or three had given their power to one. It was going to be fun to find out which it would be.

Taking Canterlot was very, very easy. Of course he hadn't expected otherwise. It had been very, very easy to take control of Canterlot when he'd broken free of his statue the first time, and the only thing that had stood in his way of taking over what had then been the capital back in the old days and slowed him down was that he'd been trying to do it with some legitimacy. Well, a few months of that and he'd learned his lesson. This takeover was as illegitimate as the one three years ago, and he preferred it that way. None of the Royal Guard were a match for him or Tirek.

He was surprised to find Shining Armor at the palace; wasn't he now like the king of the Crystal Empire or something? Or prince, right, Sombra had permanently tainted the title of king and that combined with Celestia's unwillingness to take precedence over her sister by calling herself a queen had made the titles of king and queen fall entirely out of favor in all Equestria. This implied Cadance was here. Well, of course Cadance was here, how could four alicorns have combined their power into one without the third alicorn being present?

Discord pulled two Royal Guards into the air for Tirek to grab, summoned Shining Armor's helmet onto his own head, and teleported next to the unicorn, a familiar arm around him. "Shining Armor, why, whatever are you doing here?"

Shining Armor shook Discord off and took a battle stance. "Back off, traitor!"

The clopping of Tirek's now-enormous hooves sounded on the battlement. Discord turned to see his ally dropping one of the Royal Guards Discord had just handed him a moment ago. "The only one Discord betrayed was himself. Abandoning his true nature to make friends with weak-minded equines who offer him nothing!"

Shining Armor fired a bolt of magic at Tirek, who caught it in his paw, rolled it into a ball, and swallowed it, laughing. He then grasped Armor's muzzle and drained the unicorn dry. Discord grinned maliciously, watching the soldier's knees wobble and finally buckle in a really funny way.

And then Shining Armor looked up at him, with the clouded eyes and the obvious weakness of the newly drained, and choked out, weakly, "How... could you... do this...?" before finally collapsing.

Something inside Discord twisted in sudden pain. Shining Armor wasn't his friend; he'd only ever even interacted with the stallion a few times, and at least one of them had centered around the typical "I hate you forever for hurting my baby sister" speech for what he'd done after breaking out of stone the first time. But Discord considered Twilight a friend, and after she had helped take care of him the day he'd gotten sick, he considered Cadance a friend -- or he had -- which made Shining Armor sort of a friend, by the commutative property of friendship. None of the ponies he'd given to Tirek up to now had been ponies he knew, let alone friends of friends. And Shining Armor was speaking as if he hadn't expected this, as if this was a true betrayal and not simply Discord reverting to his true nature.

He'd assumed all the ponies he met would understand immediately that this was his true self. That they should have expected this all along. And those who knew him, so far, had. Certainly the Wonderbolts hadn't been at all surprised by his change of heart. Why was Shining Armor surprised?

Had the stupid pony actually believed in him? Despite delivering that speech the first time they'd met after Discord's reform? Had Twilight and Cadance believed in him? He'd thought that Tirek was right, that he was betraying nothing by taking back his true nature, that the betrayal had been of himself in constraining himself for their sake... but if that was the case, why did Shining Armor's words make him feel guilty?

Tirek put a friendly arm around Discord's shoulder, driving out the doubts. "Why don't you go and have a little fun? I won't stand in your way."

Discord snickered to himself as he looked out over Canterlot, thinking of all the very amusing things he could do now that he had free reign. And then he realized that Tirek was going after the Princesses.

He didn't want to see them. He didn't want to go anywhere near them. Celestia had trusted him, enough to give him this assignment anyway, and okay, she was an idiot for trusting him but he didn't want to face the disappointment in her eyes. And Cadance had helped take care of him when he was sick. On the other hand... if one alicorn now had the power of four, a fight was going to break out. Tirek might need him... and if what Tirek encountered was powerless princesses, he might be enraged enough to kill them if Discord wasn't there to hold him back.

He wasn't going to face Celestia, but he'd stay in earshot. Discord morphed himself into one of the stained glass windows and proceeded to rearrange it, decorating it to his liking.

As he made one window over into a picture of his own face, smiling and giving a thumbs-up, he heard Tirek try and fail to take the Princesses' now non-existent magic, and chuckled quietly to himself. Tirek was his ally, but it was always hilarious seeing someone else get owned by a clever trick.

"Getting rid of your magic so that I cannot take it from you?" he heard Tirek rant. "That was your plan? How does it feel, knowing that soon, every Pegasus, unicorn and Earth pony will bow to my will, and that there is nothing you can do to stop it?"

This was too entertaining. Discord manifested down the hall slightly, pulling shadows around himself to be unnoticeable, and watched. And also turned the stained glass window of his defeat into an image of him successfully discording the Bearers, styled after the one that had him as a puppeteer, but it was almost an afterthought. Oh, Tia was being so proud, so calm. He was proud of her. He himself had a near-patented ability to get under her skin, and her battle with Luna had been very, very emotional for her; he'd rarely had a chance to see her shine like this. It was too bad they were on opposite sides again. "You will not prevail, Tirek," she said, and for a moment the certainty in her voice hurt, because she was wrong, Tirek would prevail... and Discord actually didn't want to see her face when she figured out how thoroughly she'd lost.

Tirek growled, "Give my regards to Cerberus." He fired a blast, tearing open a gate directly into Tartarus.

Wait, what? Discord stared in shock for a moment as Tirek lifted his three helpless, magicless prisoners, and flung them into Tartarus. Seriously? They were magicless, no threat at all, and he'd sent them to Tartarus?

Well, but wait. Tirek had been imprisoned in Tartarus himself for centuries. Having been through an extremely lengthy and uncomfortable imprisonment himself, Discord knew what it felt like to want a little revenge. He'd had all sorts of deliciously evil plans for Celestia and Luna when he'd broken out... none of which he'd enacted, because a tiny part of him still thought of them as his love and his sister-in-law in all but actual law, and he hadn't been able to bring himself to actually hurt them, so he'd contented himself with turning Celestia's mane to taffy and casting a sleep spell on the already-sleeping Luna so she wouldn't wake up, then putting her hoof in a bowl of water. But Tirek... well, Tirek was younger than Discord. More emotional, quicker to anger, more insecure, more raw. A silly prank wouldn't satisfy him, Discord could see that.

He redesigned the window that had him as a puppeteer, replacing the symbolic ponies in the images with images of Celestia, Luna and Cadance, and played puppets with the image, as he watched Tirek close the portal. Let Tirek have his revenge for a while; Discord would come back around, after Tirek had taken all the magic in Equestria and had had a chance to cool down, and retrieve the princesses. Cerberus was Luna's dog, he wasn't likely to let them come to harm, and the eerie spirit Wardens of Tartarus would recognize Celestia's authority. They'd be treated as well as any creature ever could be in Tartarus. Discord could afford to leave them there for a little while as a gift to his ally, before overriding his authority and pulling them back.

Which reminded him, Tirek seemed to be behaving awfully unilaterally. He hadn't even talked to Discord about his plan to throw the Princesses in Tartarus before doing it. "You meant our will, didn't you?" he said to Tirek, pointedly.

"Of course," Tirek said, and stepped forward. "Here, I want you to have something." He tore the amulet he wore off his neck and brought it over to Discord, tying it around Discord's neck. "This was given to me by someone very close to me. I give it to you as a sign of my gratitude and loyalty."

Discord was stunned. No one gave him gifts. (Well, except the time Celestia baked him an exploding marshmallow fluff cake for the anniversary of the day she had met him. And the pictures little Luna had drawn of him with her and Celestia, a long long time ago. And Fluttershy giving him blankets and a hoof-stitched scarf for Hearth's Warming. And Pinkie making half a dozen balloon animal versions of him by intertwining multiple balloons with each other.) Gifts were a symbol of friendship, or family. After Tirek's derisive words about friendship, he hadn't even begun to imagine that Tirek would ever consider him as close a friend as, say, Fluttershy had (don't think about Fluttershy don't think don't think about her). But Tirek was giving him a gift. Of sentimental value.

He held it up, smiling. "Oh, my! I do love a good accessory. I suppose that's Rarity's influence." No, don't bring up Rarity, don't think about them. Chaos was change and all that was in the past; he had a real friend now, or maybe more than that. Discord recognized the amulet, after all; he'd researched Tirek before setting out on this mission. It had belonged to Tirek's brother. By giving it to him, Tirek had just symbolically adopted him, taking him in as a brother to replace the one who'd turned on him.

A feeling of genuine warmth and happiness spread through him. Up until now, he realized, there'd been a part of him that was holding back. It was always possible that this relationship was one of those villainous alliances of convenience that he'd never needed to enter into because he was more powerful than anyone else, but that it had always entertained him to watch because of the glorious disharmony and backstabbing. Tirek could have been just using him, and sometimes he was so brusque or cold, Discord had almost been certain he probably was. But this changed everything. This meant Tirek really did care.

He reached out to the next window with his powers, and changed it to match how he felt right now. Now it now longer showed him playing puppets with the princesses, but himself and Tirek together against the world, Tirek wielding a sword while holding Discord around the middle, and Discord riding on his back, wielding a submarine sandwich that the Tirek in the image had just accidentally sliced the tip off of. With a broad grin, he gestured at the picture, showing it to Tirek.

Tirek laughed. "Amusing. But we have no time for such things. With the princesses out of the way, we can now– is this meant to be humorous?"

He'd stopped in front of the picture of Twilight's ascension. "Oh, no, I haven't touched that one yet."

"There's a fourth? And you did not tell me this?!"

"I just needed some assurance that you truly considered this a team effort," Discord said, and held up the amulet Tirek had given him. "And now I have it."

"Then where can we find this fourth princess?" Tirek lunged forward, grabbing Discord by the neck. Which was somewhat uncomfortable, but he'd seen ponies engaging in rough monkeyplay with their friends, grabbing each other's hair or necks in frustration all the time; they just weren't as firm with their grip, given their lack of thumbs. "Where is her castle?"

That was simply hilarious. "Castle?" He laughed. "No, Princess Twilight lives above a library in Ponyville. Castle?" The thought of Twilight living in a castle made him giggle again.

Tirek slammed him down on the ground -- not being mindful of his strength, because that actually hurt, but the centaur had been growing in strength so rapidly he probably didn't have much idea how much force he was using. "Not for much longer," Tirek said, and strode off, the stained glass window of Twilight's ascension melting behind him.

That was ominous.

Discord teleported after him. Hovering a bit, because even though they were good friends who could monkey around and roughhouse with each other like Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie did with their friends sometimes, he still felt the need to reinforce that Tirek had only been able to pawhandle him like that because he'd allowed it. "What do you have planned?"

"She will give her magic to me, or she will be destroyed." Tirek smiled evilly, power crackling between his horns. "Or both."

"Now wait a minute here, I'm not at all sure that will work." Inside he was panicking. What if Twilight killed Tirek? What if Tirek killed Twilight? He didn't want either of them dead! Tirek was his good friend, and Twilight... Twilight had the potential to make as wonderful an enemy as Celestia and Luna had. He couldn't bear the thought of either of them killing or seriously hurting the other. Plus, Twilight with the raw power of four alicorns versus Tirek with the magic of almost every other pony in Equestria and his lack of finesse? Ponyville might be destroyed! He might be their enemy now, but he still couldn't allow that. "Twilight defeated Luna in her Nightmare Moon incarnation, when she was much more powerful and ruthless than she is today, and Twilight wasn't an alicorn at the time... she was a nerdy bookworm still in college. Also, she defeated me. You cannot underestimate her."

Tirek glared at him. "She is one puny pony. I have the power of nearly all the ponies of Equestria, and centuries of experience. What could she know of war, or conquest?"

"Absolutely nothing, but this isn't a war, it's a battle, and she knows all about those." Discord leaned down into Tirek's face, upside down. "She's a genius, you know. She ascended to alicornhood by solving a magical puzzle Star Swirl himself couldn't resolve, and wasn't he involved in capturing you?"

"Point taken," Tirek growled. "But I must have her magic. How am I to get it aside from fighting her?"

"Oh, I know the perfect way." The plan formed in his head even as he spoke. It was brilliant! Make those particular ponies valuable to Tirek beyond their magic, capture them quickly and cleanly and give them no chance to fight back so Tirek wouldn't hurt them, and Tirek would have the weapon he needed to make Twilight surrender without violence. Nopony needed to get hurt! Not Tirek, not Twilight, not any of his friends -- former friends, he amended. "You see, she may be an alicorn now, but even before that, she was one of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. As such... her power is fundamentally linked to the strength of her friendships. She'll do anything for her friends, quite literally." He landed on Tirek's back, draping his lower body and tail over the side like a biped in a dress riding a pony sidesaddle, and coiled his head around Tirek's front. "Take them hostage, and Twilight will surrender to you in a heartbeat to protect them. No muss, no fuss."

"Strange, I would think you would enjoy the chaos that comes from a good battle," Tirek said. He scowled. "Can it be you still have feelings for these ponies?"

Discord pretended to swoon, falling backward off Tirek, except of course he didn't actually fall, hovering in mid-swoon. "Perish the thought!" He straightened up, and said in an uncharacteristically serious tone, "I don't like death. I never have and I never will. That pony is entertaining, and I don't want you to kill her."

"It's always about entertainment with you!" Tirek threw up his hands in frustration. "You're soft, Discord! This is how you ended up turned to stone for a millennium! You don't have the stomach to kill your enemies!"

"The stomach?" Discord said softly. He began to grow, enlarging both himself and the space he and Tirek occupied, until he was as much bigger than Tirek as he'd been when they'd started this endeavor together... and beyond, growing larger and larger as he spoke. "Tirek. I am Chaos." He let the air behind him writhe with the hint of the non-Euclidean geometries of the raw heart of the multiverse. "With a thought, I could bring typhoons, hurricanes and tornados to tear Equestria apart." He bent light, making the shadows around him darken and the air itself dim, while he himself shone bright. "I could make the earth itself churn with rage, spitting its way through new volcanos to make ash and fire rain from the air, or tear itself into chasms." He let the sound of the hissing static of the universe's creation sizzle quietly in the air all around. "I could make the water burn and the air liquify. If I wanted to make every single living creature in Equestra drop dead, right now... I could." This was not technically true. Twilight would survive it. Possibly Tirek himself as well.

Tirek was staring at him in shock. Discord let the effects go and shrank himself back down to normal size. "But I don't. Because none of that is fun. My mandate is to spread Chaos. And when you take life, you do usually get a nice burst of chaos... for a minute or two as they thrash and die. But then they are motionless. They're still, they're unchanging. Death is eternal. Static. Dull. Only life causes self-perpetuating chaos. So I will not stand for killing, and if you truly feel the loyalty and gratitude you say you do, you will cooperate with me and avoid it."

Tirek was still glaring. "And if I don't?"

"Oh, I think you will," he said into Tirek's ear, where he hadn't been a moment ago. "You're much too powerful now to need to kill, Tirek. As soon as you realize that, you'll understand that I'm right. And you won't throw away our alliance just because you want to be able to kill ponies, when I'm offering you a strategy to achieve ultimate power bloodlessly. Without any significant effort on your part, and no risk to you."

"Very well. We'll try it your way. Your thoughts are... unconventional, Discord, and somewhat alien to me--"

"Well, duh."

"--but what you say has some wisdom to it. Let us go enact your plan."

Author's Notes:

"Sister-in-law in all but actual law" -- Unless I explicitly state otherwise, I use for my backstory the "Last Draconequus" continuity I created when I write Discord. In my backstory, Discord and Celestia were lovers, but never got married. Discord thought of Luna as a sister, but he was taken in as a fosterling by the royal family when both he and Celestia were old enough that he never did really think of Celestia as a sister, and discovered when puberty hit that indeed, their feelings toward each other were not siblinglike in the slightest. :-) So in his head Celestia is his lover (well, ex, now) and Luna is his sister and this is not creepy or incesty at all because the reason Luna is his sister is that she was his lover's sister, and Discord does not acknowledge the legitimacy of marriage; in his head if you love someone that's all you need to adopt yourself into their family, no legalities or ceremony required.

"Pawhandle" -- I got stuck on ponifying "manhandle" because "handle" obviously has the word "hand" in it, but I was afraid that if I changed it to "hoofle" or something that no one would understand the word, and "ponyhandle" didn't work for me when we're talking about Tirek doing it. I could have just used "paw" but unfortunately the verb "to paw at someone", when used to describe the action of a sentient being, tends to have a sexual connotation (you paw at your girlfriend, you manhandle the jerk who is harassing her), so I went with "pawhandle". Also, "monkeyplay" is replacing "horseplay" because that's funny, and "monkey around" isn't being used quite in the usual English use of "play tricks/goof off" -- it's being used as "horseplay", ie, roughhousing playfully. (Which monkeys actually do, so it's legit.) Just like the French do not call French fries French fries, if humans are using an animal term and that animal happens to be a horse, but the thing being described isn't actually connected that strongly to horses, I am likely to replace "horse" with "monkey" in pony parlance.

Instant Karma

As he came into range he heard Fluttershy saying, "I'm sure Discord will catch Tirek and this will all be over soon."

Oh, she was so far behind the times. Hadn't Celestia notified anypony of what was really going on?

Rainbow Dash said, "I'll bet he takes his sweet time," in her usual abrasive tone, and Discord wouldn't normally have responded to it, but it made him angry. If he hadn't changed sides, he'd have taken Tirek down in moments. Who was she to question his competence?

He appeared on the ground in a flash of light. "Or perhaps these things just take time," he said snidely.

Fluttershy gasped, and threw herself at him, arms around him in a hug. "You're back! Did you bring the cucumber sandwiches?"

For a moment he smiled happily, as he always did when Fluttershy demonstrated affection to him. "I did," he said, summoning them into existence, and then remembered what he was really here for, and it drove the warmth he'd been feeling away instantly. "I imagine they'll be your last decent meal for quite some time."

He dropped the tray of sandwiches on the ground. As Fluttershy stared at the fallen food in confusion, he summoned a cage around the five ponies and the dragon, pinning them all in.

A cacophony of voices assaulted him. "What's going on?" "What are you doing?" Pinkie, shrieking in frustration. Normally a group of ponies all shouting angrily would amuse or excite him, feeding his need for disharmony and strife, but these ones... No. He was protecting them, even if they didn't realize it. Tirek was going to win, because he wanted Tirek to win, but he admitted, Tirek was a little too volatile and had to be managed around more fragile creatures like ponies. He was doing this so Tirek wouldn't hurt them, or Twilight... and also to help Tirek win, but really that was inevitable anyway, because Twilight wouldn't kill and Tirek would.

Tirek strode forward. "Ta-da!" Discord announced, gesturing at the cage.

"You've gathered up all of them?" Tirek asked, grinning.

"And her little dragon, too," Discord said, poking at Spike, who tried to bite him.

"Why are you doing this?" Fluttershy whimpered, tears welling in her eyes and spilling out. "I thought we were friends!"

He couldn't let the tears get to him. He couldn't. They were a manipulation tactic just like befriending him in the first place was. Even if they were sincere. "Oh, we were," he said, forcing a smile onto his face. "But Tirek offered me so much more than just tea parties. Surely you saw this coming?"

"I didn't. I really didn't," Fluttershy wept, finally breaking down into full-on crying, and his heart twisted in him again. The others were glaring at him as if they'd seen it coming -- even Pinkie -- but Fluttershy had believed him. Had trusted him.

What an idiot. It was her own fault, for trusting the Lord of Chaos to stay consistent.

But if it was her fault why did he feel so bad about it?

Tirek lifted the cage with his telekinesis, and suddenly Discord couldn't watch. He turned away as the ponies he'd called his friends for one brief year were brutally stripped of their magic, of everything that made them special and unique. He'd watched Tirek take the magic from so many other ponies but this time he couldn't look.

He heard and felt the cage crash to the ground, and turned, forcing composure on himself. They were all alive, dazed and weak from the loss but otherwise fine. Now they were no threat to himself and Tirek, and Tirek would have no motive to harm them, because they'd be valuable hostages.

"You really think she'd do anything for them?" Tirek asked.

Discord bowed, parodying Tirek's bow to him at the start of this adventure. "If Twilight has magic to give, it will be yours. Soon there won't be a Pegasus, Earth pony or unicorn who will be able to stand up against us."

"Us?" Tirek said in a derisive voice. Discord jerked his head up in shock to meet the centaur's eyes. "Who said anything about us?"

No. This wasn't happening. For a brief, horrible moment, a moment he could have used to teleport or attack, Discord, master of chaos and discombulation, creator of confusion and bemusement, could only stare upward in shock and say, "You did," as if this was some kind of mistake, as if pointing out that Tirek was being inconsistent was going to accomplish anything.

And then Tirek's magic grabbed him, and Discord felt all control over his own magic suddenly go numb. He'd wondered, idly, why nopony teleported away from Tirek or used telekinesis on him before their magic was sucked dry. Now he knew. His magic was still there, he could feel it, but he couldn't manipulate it. He couldn't use it.

Tirek pulled him into the air. "You've helped me grow strong. You've provided the means by which I can obtain Princess Twilight's magic." Discord looked down at the ground, at the ponies he'd just betrayed, in their cage, the guilt that had twisted in his gut earlier turning into sick fear and horror interlaced with a sense of how spectacularly he had just screwed everything up. "And now you are no longer of any use to me."

A wave of power slammed into him, and he felt sudden acute nausea, as if he were about to vomit. His mouth opened almost without volition, as if to let him retch, but instead of the contents of his stomach spewing out, it felt like the contents of his soul. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt like he was made of string and being unraveled, as if he were a stuffed animal with a vacuum hose pulling all his stuffing out -- he was emptying, his very essence being pulled out of him through his mouth, and it tasted like burnt cotton candy and broken glass and poison joke rotting and spoiled chocolate milk and everything, all the tastes he associated with chaos, burnt or ruined or spoiled and he still felt nauseous and it felt like he was throwing up but his throat muscles weren't moving. He was losing proprioception, losing any sense of where his body was, and up was down and vertigo enveloped him for the first time since he was a baby and there was nothing, nothing in the world but the burnt and spoiled flavor of Chaos in his mouth and too much magic pooled in his eyes to see anything but yellow light and the roaring in his ears drowning every sound there was and he was unwound, undone, going, going... gone.

He didn't quite even realize he was falling until he hit the ground, hard. Flexible bones bent, hard and painfully, maybe even ripping slightly in a few places, and he felt like his entire body was now one massive bruise, but nothing broke.

As Tirek stomped away, Discord struggled to his feet -- four of them, he felt much too weak and dizzy to stand up bipedally. He clutched the amulet. "But you said this was a sign of your gratitude and loyalty," he said, a pleading tone in his voice. The High Grand Poobah of Not Making Sense, begging for understanding because this situation didn't make any sense and somehow that wasn't fun at all. "A gift from someone close to you."

"My brother who betrayed me," Tirek growled, looking back and down at Discord. "It is as worthless as he is."

He stomped away, leaving Discord a broken shell. No magic. No ally. No friends.

"Surely you saw this comin'," Applejack said.

"I didn't," Discord said, barely able to make it louder than a whisper. "I truly didn't."

He closed his eyes, the sudden rush of grief and despair overwhelming him. Tirek. Tirek had been using him the whole time. He'd thought Tirek was his friend, he'd thought he could have both freedom and friendship, and he'd thrown away his one true friend for that. He'd betrayed Fluttershy, and then Tirek had betrayed him, and now he had nothing. The only pony who ever cared, and you threw her away. The only being who ever cared, and you traded her for a pile of lies and empty promises. No power, no allies, no friends. You betrayed the only creature who cared about you and now you have nothing. The voice in his head that always, always whispered at the back of his brain that he would never be loved, never be liked, overwhelmed him, and now it was all he could hear.

No power. No allies. No friends. You're nothing. You're a stupid fool, a terrible friend, a pathetic excuse for an avatar of chaos. Useless. Worthless. Only one pony cared, and now she hates you, and you deserve it. You deserve all of it.

No. The guilt didn't go away, the grief didn't dissipate, but both were buried under a sudden rush of anger. This was Tirek's fault. How dare Tirek. How dare he betray Discord like this! Anger gave him the strength to force himself up off the ground, even though he felt like a rag doll with the stuffing removed. He'd made that cage, he knew its weak points. He'd deliberately built it to have weak points that ponies couldn't take advantage of, because that introduced an element of unpredictability without significantly increasing the odds that he would lose.

Tirek was going off to challenge Twilight, to tell her he had hostages. Discord aimed to make sure he actually didn't. Because Tirek was volatile, Tirek could kill with ease, and that had made Discord uneasy when he thought of his particular, special ponies around Tirek when Discord had had the power to force Tirek to moderate his behavior. Now that he was completely powerless he was terrified -- not for himself, but for them. What if Tirek decided to kill one of them to demonstrate his resolve to Twilight and break her?

It didn't matter that they all hated him now. That, he deserved. They wouldn't forgive him; no creature could possibly forgive what he'd just done. But they hadn't deserved any of this. Both to spite Tirek, and to do whatever was left in his power to protect them and undo some of the consequences of his blind idiocy, he had to try to save them.

"Ain't you done enough?" Applejack asked bitterly as he came up to the cage and put his paws on the bars, wrapping his digits around them.

"A thousand plus zero is still a thousand, Applejack, unless we're using new math and I seem to have lost the textbook." He pushed, laterally and inward. Pony hooves could buck outward, but they couldn't pull in or to the sides with nearly as much strength as they could push out. Discord had thumbs and was on the outside. He'd made the cage to be strong, but he'd also made it weak against force hitting it in exactly this direction. "I need..." he panted, gasping for breath as he pushed, "...to apply... some negative numbers... to get back... to zero."

"Twilight isn't here to explain egghead language," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Say something that makes sense before I buck your face off, because you'd totally have that coming!"

Discord closed his eyes. "I totally would." They were budging, but only barely. The normal strength of his draconequus body, unenhanced by chaos magic, was primarily in the muscles running down his length and around him. He was incredibly flexible, and could support the weight of a half dozen ponies with his tail. His back limbs were also very powerful, short and close in to his body where they could take advantage of the leverage from his powerful torso, waist and tail muscles. But his front limbs were designed for precision work, or rapid motion, not for strength. They burned, his arm muscles aching like they were going to tear off his body, and they hadn't felt this way since he was young, never since he'd come into the full flower of his Chaos abilities. The type of motion the bars needed was one he wasn't actually particularly good at... he was just better than any pony could ever be. "You can... have a shot... later. If you... want. Once I... get these... bars... apart."

"You think that helping us now is going to make up for what you've done?" Rarity sniffed. "You betrayed us, and the only reason you're changing sides now is that Tirek just threw you away like garbage!"

"I'm not... trying... to win... redemption... just... get you... loose. You can... do what you... want to me. Later."

Pinkie strode over to the bars. "You. Made. Fluttershy. CRY."

Why weren't they pushing apart faster? He wasn't strong enough for this, he needed more time, more strength, he was going to fail at this too and then Twilight would surrender and all would be lost. "I know," he said, choking up, and no, he couldn't afford to actually cry in front of them, not now, not when he had to stay focused on this. "Beat me up... later. When I... get you... free."

"I can help," Spike said.

He squiggled his small body between the two bars Discord was trying to bend apart. They still wouldn't give clearance to his large head, so he couldn't escape yet, but he could brace against one of the bars and push against the other with his proportionately large dragon feet. Discord was breathing too hard to acknowledge him verbally, but he gave the small dragon a nod and a weak smile. Then the two draconic entities pushed against the bars for all they were worth.

"What do you think you're doing?" Tirek's voice boomed.

Discord's heart sank. Tirek wasn't any bigger than he'd become after taking Discord's magic, so he hadn't fought Twilight yet. But he was more than powerful enough to kill all of them without trouble. "What does... it look like?" he panted, trying to put as much sarcasm in his weak voice as he could. "Trying... to get... into the cage... for protection. When you... fight Twilight."

"Oh really!" Tirek chuckled. Discord felt himself being yanked free and levitated. The pull was so much stronger than he was now, it felt like the bars he was clinging to slipped right off his fingers. "I think you're lying."

"You'd be an expert... wouldn't you?" Discord said snidely.

"Hostage taking was your plan. And you're weak, Discord. Soft. I played you like a harp. A worthless trinket had you convinced that we were friends. Even after I warned you that friendship was a trap, you still fell. Just as easily as my idiot brother did."

Why was it he was too far above the cage to hear anything any of them were saying, but he could still hear Fluttershy crying? "And you're an insecure, pathetic creature who's so aware of how illegitimate and ephemeral his stolen power is, he thinks killing powerless mailmares is necessary to protect himself from threats," Discord snarled. "I'm soft? I'm weak? You're a liar and a trickster, I'll give you that, good enough to fool even me, but the only reason you aren't an ancient, decrepit half-corpse is me!"

"And that is why you're soft," Tirek said. "The thought occurs to me that your entire hostage taking plan was likely less about ensuring Twilight's easy defeat and more about ensuring that none of these worthless little ponies are harmed. I have your power now and the power of nearly every pony in Equestria. One puny little mare with power she doesn't understand and can't control can't possibly defeat me. So I don't need to keep any of these ponies alive."

"Oh yes you do," Discord snapped, his blood running cold. No. No, he couldn't let his betrayal lead to them being killed when he was helpless to protect them. He had no magic to intimidate Tirek with, he had only his mouth, but that had to be good enough. He had to make this work. "Kill any of her friends and Twilight Sparkle will kill you. This is no joke. They mean the world to her... and she'll sell out the world to protect them. But harm a single hair on any of their heads and there won't be enough left of you for even a closed casket funeral."

"Really! So confident you are in the talents of an unblooded little mare!"

"Listen to me, Tirek. That unblooded little mare defeated Nightmare Moon when she wasn't out of college yet and wasn't an alicorn. And alicorns are unstable, and she has the power of four of them within her. If you tip her over the edge into becoming a Nightmare like Luna did... she is brilliant, she knows every spell in that entire library, she knows how to invent new spells, she's read the works of every great tactician who ever wrote a book on tactics, and she will go berserk, except with all of her intelligence still at her command. And she will kill you."

"And why would you tell me this when I've taken your magic? Surely you no longer believe we're friends." Tirek chuckled derisively.

"For the obvious reason." Discord shrugged. "I don't want ponies dead. You, I could make an exception for, but I don't like the idea of what will happen to the world if Twilight goes insane and kills you. I'd rather deal with you ruling the world than Twilight going insane, even after what you just did to me... which should tell you how seriously I am taking this."

"Ha." Tirek smiled mirthlessly. "You underestimate me, Discord. I welcome a challenge. I don't need to achieve a bloodless victory over Twilight Sparkle... nor do I need to let her live. That quantity of magic will escape into the thaumic field as an explosion, and I can drain it directly that way. I could choose to kill you all, then kill her before she ever learns any of you are dead."

"Well, then if you're so very confident, how about a little wager?"

Tirek goggled at Discord. "What do you have to bet with?"

"Oh, I was thinking more of a friendly wager, even though we're no longer friends. You keep them alive, in reserve, and go fight Twilight. And if she kicks your oversized tuchis as thoroughly as I think she will, you'll be glad of having the hostages in reserve."

"I dislike 'friendly' wagers. They have no savor without stakes. And you have nothing to bet with."

"My life, then," Discord said. "If you defeat Twilight handily and you never needed to use the hostages, you can kill me. If she defeats you and you need hostages... you let me go. It's not like I'm of any use to you as a hostage, Twilight would probably prefer to see my ribs used to make a piano at this point."

Tirek's magic drew Discord so close, he could practically bite Discord in half, and for a terrified moment as Tirek bared his teeth Discord thought that was what he was going to do. Instead, Tirek murmured, as if sharing a confidence with him, "You don't have that to bet with, I'm afraid. I have to kill you anyway."

Discord's eyes went wide. "Why?" he asked, trying not to visibly cringe with the fear he felt.

"You told me yourself. Your magic regenerates. And while I intend to rule Equestria strictly and in perfect order, I'm well aware that I can't achieve that state without creating chaos. A great deal of chaos. Your magic will come back to you, and you'll come after me. I can't allow that."

So he'd lost. He'd been stupid, he'd been duped, and now he was going to lose not only his magic but his life. Discord swallowed. "Then as a last request. Play my friendly wager with me. I helped you, you could at least let me play one last game before-- before the end."

"Very well, I'll even put stakes into play," Tirek said, chuckling. "If Twilight defeats me, and I need to use hostages, and she surrenders to me as you say she will, I will release her and her friends. All of them may live on as slaves in my glorious Equestria." He laughed. "But if I defeat her, and take her magic without having to turn to these hostages, or if she refuses to surrender her magic to save them... then I will kill them all, and I will make you watch before you die."

Discord was breathing hard again. Would Twilight win? Could she win? When he'd been on Tirek's side, he'd assessed Tirek's chances against her as fair, even high; he'd come up with the hostage plan to save Twilight's life as well as to protect Tirek and help him win. But he'd assumed Tirek would have him on his side. Tirek hadn't grown any larger from taking Discord's magic as he had from taking the energy of the ponies and dragon in the cage below; Discord had been right, Tirek couldn't really use his magic. It had given him only a slight powerup. So now the smartest pony, and right now most experienced fighter of dire supernatural threats who still had her powers, had the power of four alicorns and the home turf advantage. Tirek had the power of nearly every pony in Equestria but no ability to use it with finesse. There was a good chance Twilight could win this.

He nodded and forced words out of his dry mouth, trying not to show weakness by swallowing again. "That-- that's fair enough stakes, I suppose." And it bought him time to try to figure out a way to escape, or free the others. Tirek couldn't kill him until after the battle with Twilight if the punishment he wanted to inflict on Discord for losing was to make him watch the death of the others.

Tirek raised an eyebrow. "You are that confident in this young princess."

"She beat me."

"So did I," Tirek said, and lifted the cage. Discord's heart broke when he saw that Spike was almost, almost able to get his head through. If he'd only been able to stall Tirek for a little while longer...

Tirek stuffed Discord into the space between the bars. Discord's head was longer and thinner than a pony's, so it actually fit. His body was wider than his head with his limbs on, and Tirek took no care to turn him sideways to make his limbs fit better, so it felt like the bars of the cage were going to rip his arms and legs off and shred his wings. Discord went limp, knowing that his body was highly compressible and his chance of surviving this without being maimed went up considerably if he relaxed himself completely. Also it would deny Tirek the satisfaction of watching him squirm and struggle.

When Discord was inside the cage, Tirek fixed it, bending the bars back into shape with ease... then dropped the cage again, making Discord's head knock so hard against the cage floor he was afraid for a moment that he'd lost his fang. He tasted blood. The next thing he knew was a brutal foreleg slam into his back, making him cry out in pain. "You traitor!" Rainbow Dash snarled, and pummeled him again. Even without her legendary speed, her hooves were very fast.

"Stop it!" Fluttershy screamed. "Stop it, stop hitting him!"

"He made you cry, Fluttershy. He sold you out! He sold all of us out!" She grabbed Discord's beard and yanked his head up. "What were you talking to Tirek about? Were you trying to tell him Twilight's secrets so he'd take you back as his ally? Huh?"

Discord wrenched his head free -- which hurt, without his chaos magic having his beard yanked painfully was actually agonizing, but he didn't want his head within punching range of Dash's hooves anymore-- and sat up as much as he could, coiling his body in the tiny cage to make more room. "I was trying to keep him from killing all of you!" he snapped. "And I think I succeeded. I hope. If Twilight beats him and he has to resort to using his hostages, he's going to let you all go once Twilight surrenders her magic."

"Twilight would never do that!" Dash retorted.

"To save the six of you? Oh, yes, she would, in a heartbeat."

Applejack shook her head. "It wouldn't be right, sacrificing all Equestria to that crazy centaur just on our account. I don't think Twi will surrender for any reason."

"Well, I'm personally hoping I'm right and not you, because if Tirek kills any of you, Twilight will go berserk, and a single-powered berserk alicorn is a terrible thing. One with the power of four alicorns... it will be much better for Twilight's sanity if she surrenders and then runs off and starts a resistance movement with you six backing her up than if she holds out nobly and has to see you die."

"How about a little help here?" Pinkie said. She and Spike were gamely trying to wrench the bars again, pulling them inward. Discord blinked. What Pinkie was doing shouldn't be possible; pony hooves simply didn't bend that way. And Pinkie had lost her magic, so how... nevermind.

"All right. Several of you sit on me to hold me in place and I'll pull," Discord said. "The bars can't bend outward, but they can bend in and sideways, so Spike and I can pull. Applejack, you're the strongest--"

"No Earth pony magic, remember?"

Discord rolled his eyes. "You work on a farm all day, you'd be the strongest even without magic. You should hold onto Spike so he can pull with his paws, since he can't get in there to push like he did before."

"Why are we listening to you exactly?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Because I built this cage, so I know its weak points. And if we can get it open... listen, Tirek is hunting for Twilight right now and if he defeats her he's going to kill you all. We've got to try to get the cage open. The only thing we can do to help Twilight is make sure Tirek doesn't have hostages."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you took us hostage," Applejack said sarcastically, but she braced two hind legs against two separate bars and sat with Spike wrapped in her forelimbs, leaving him free to use his opposable thumbs to yank at the bar with all the strength in his small body. Pinkie was kneeling in a half-reared position, almost bipedal -- if there had been clearance for her to stand on her hooves rather than on her back knees, Discord was sure she would be going bipedal -- pulling on the same bar, but over Spike's head, by hooking her front legs around it and pulling back with all her weight.

Discord himself wrapped his tail around a bar in the back, allowing him to brace himself with his strongest muscles as he pulled as hard as he could with the weaker ones in his arms. He couldn't breathe well. It was just as well that the other mares hadn't followed his instruction to sit on him; he could brace better with his tail than with their weight, and they'd have impaired his breathing. Did his circulatory system actually depend on magic? Was he going to have a heart attack or something? No, he'd been to dimensions where his magic didn't work and he'd lived. He must just be exhausted from the magic drain, he thought.

"So what exactly makes you think Tirek will let us free if Twilight defeats him and he has to use us as hostages?" Rarity asked.

"We... bet... on it."

Rarity sighed. "And of course he has proven his trustworthiness and truthfulness to you."

Discord shook his head. "It's... different. Betraying an ally... and taking their power is... expected. Normal. I... know the... Evil Overlord mindset."

"Takes one to know one?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"If you know it so well how come you never saw this coming?" Applejack demanded.

"Never... mind that. My point... is. Going back on a wager... when you really don't lose anything... if you lose... is... pathetic. It says... you can't even win... a game... without cheating. He'll... keep to... the bet. Once... Twilight's magic... is gone... he loses nothing... to let you go. But he... loses face... if he kills you anyway."

"What was the other half of the bet? What if he wins it? Huh?" Pinkie demanded. Unfairly, she was nowhere near as out of breath as either Discord or Spike.

"Then... he kills you all. So if Twilight wins and he has to use you as hostages, and she surrenders, you go free. If he defeats her and takes her magic... he'll kill her. And... all of you."

"What happens to you?" Fluttershy asked quietly.

"What... do you... mean?" he panted, pulling with all his strength. The bar was barely budging even after all this time.

"You've said that if Twilight wins, we all go free and if she loses we die, but you keep saying 'all of you', not 'we'. So, um, what happens to you?"

"Kills me... too... if I lose the bet."

"But if you win he lets you go too? Along with us?"

She sounded hopeful. Why did she sound hopeful? He'd betrayed her horribly, he'd made her cry. She should want him to die horribly. He opened his mouth to tell her that it didn't matter either way, and closed it again. He was a dead draconequus walking unless Twilight won against Tirek so thoroughly and completely that he didn't have time to use his hostages, but if Fluttershy actually cared about his fate, he couldn't hurt her by telling her there was no hope for him. "He's... not going to let me go. He's worried... I'll get my powers... back... so probably... he'll put me in a dungeon. Or... turn me... to stone." He shuddered at that thought. At least that wasn't actually likely to happen. Tirek would probably kill him swiftly, a fate he was less afraid of than centuries of paralysis again.

"Oh," Fluttershy whispered.

"Can't say you don't have it comin' to you, traitor," Applejack said.

"I... know."

"Well, if you know so much then why in tarnation did you do it?"

There was a distant explosion, and a column of smoke in the distance.

"Oh no," Spike said. "No no no no that was where our tree is no please..."

"Hey, it's gonna be okay," Pinkie said, still pulling. "Twilight's too smart for Tirek. No way could a big dumb meanie like him just take her out easy-peasy like that! She's still fighting, you can bet on it!"

"That's right," Rainbow Dash said. "Twilight's tough. She's gonna kick his flank, just you watch."

Discord held his tongue. Which was probably only possible because he was straining so hard to bend the bar in his paws that he could barely get enough air to breathe with, let alone talk. But he'd just flung himself into his task with even more desperation than before, because if Tirek had just killed Twilight... no, no, he couldn't let that happen, he couldn't let Tirek kill Fluttershy, or the others, he couldn't let his betrayal mean their deaths. Bad enough that he'd doomed himself, but... Applejack and Rainbow Dash were right. He deserved whatever Tirek did to him. His only hope for ameliorating any part of his crime, for making up for any part of his stupid, stupid mistake, was to make sure the others were saved.

Author's Notes:

I will be updating Chapter 1, fairly extensively, before Chapter 4 comes out. As I mentioned in a recent blog, I don't like how rushed the opening is; this story started as essentially a synopsis to set up Discord's perspective on the events of Twilight's Kingdom as a prologue to "No Escape From Yourself", and in the beginning of Chapter 1 it still shows. So watch for that; I'll be posting a blog to let folks know when that's been done.

Sources that inspired the events in this chapter: The Ultimate Alicorn by Cerulean Voice set me to wondering why Tirek would kill his hostages and yet would not have killed them after the surrender; and Hero by Cryssy-miu also has Discord attempting to break open the cage (I might have thought of it first, I can't remember, but just in case I didn't I'm crediting it).

True Friendship

He had no idea how long he spent straining at the bars. They were stronger this time; Tirek must have reinforced them, but Tirek had too little experience with this type of magic to have replaced them entirely or conjured braces for them, so they were still weak in the same direction as they'd been... just not as weak. At one point they got the opening wide enough that he was able to slip his head through the bars. He bent his head around to grasp the bar in his jaws -- pony jaws were actually among the most powerful muscles in their bodies, and his head was more or less a pony head, if exotically elongated -- and pushed from the outside inward, using the strength of his body itself rather than his significantly weaker limbs. The bar responded, bending inward under the pressure much less slowly than before.

"Um, Discord?"

He glanced at Fluttershy. She'd stopped crying, but there were tear streaks matting the light coat of her face. "Nnn?" With the bar in his mouth he couldn't actually do more than make an inquisitive noise.

"If, um, if Tirek is going to let us go if Twilight wins, but he's going to imprison you... and if he's going to kill you along with us otherwise... um, don't you think it would be a good idea if you escaped? You're, I mean, you have a lot of knowledge you could use to find ways to fight him, and, um, if you're really back on our side now I think maybe it would be better for us if you were free to fight back too than if you were in prison?"

For a moment he extricated the bar from his mouth. "Don't be silly, Fluttershy, how could I escape without the rest of you?"

"Because you've just gotten your head and neck through the bars," Fluttershy pointed out. "You could squeeze through there and run. It's not big enough for any of the rest of us yet."

"Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash snapped. "What're you doing telling him to run off for? He's the last one who deserves to get away!"

"But right now he's the only one who can. And, um, if Tirek's going to let the rest of us go but keep him a prisoner... this would be his only chance..."

For a moment the possibility dazzled him. Yes! Fluttershy didn't know that his magic would regenerate, but she was more right than she knew. If he escaped and fled into the Everfree, his magic would build back up, and he could come back after Tirek as soon as he was strong enough. Maybe recruit a horde of magicless dragonslayers from other universes to wear Tirek down until he was weak enough for Discord to deliver the coup de grace and save everyone from the consequences of his own terrible decision. He could be a hero and make up for what he'd done. He could live.

But... if he wasn't here when Tirek came back, then Tirek would have no reason to keep to the terms of his wager. He could drain Twilight's power, and then kill the six of them (seven if you counted Spike, who Tirek had no reason to kill, but Tirek didn't seem to need much in the way of reasons), just to spite Discord. It wasn't as if he could be trusted to keep his promises. Discord felt that he would honor the wager because it was a game, not a battle... and maybe Discord could lie to him and claim that the death of the Element Bearers would restore him enough power to escape Tirek, give Tirek a good reason to not want to kill them. But if Discord wasn't here...

No. Any other day, any other ponies, yes, he'd leave anyone else behind in a heartbeat to save himself. But not after he'd caused all this. Not after his blind desire to do whatever he wanted and live unrestrained had led them to this place.

If he got the cage open and they could all escape, well and good. But he wasn't going to leave them behind to save himself, not when doing so would probably ensure that Tirek would kill them.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Fluttershy," he said. "Tirek will only be bound by his wager if he feels as if I'm bound by my side of it. If Twilight surrenders and I'm not there to claim my win, Tirek may just kill you all once he has Twilight's magic. I'm..." He swallowed. "I'm not going to let that happen if I can help it."

"Yeah? Where was your concern when you were helping him, huh? You weren't worried about us then!" Rainbow Dash snarked.

"For your information, I saved your precious Wonderbolts," Discord snarled. "Tirek wanted to kill them. I convinced him that that would be a show of weakness. So he got their magic but they all lived. I've never wanted ponies to die during any of this, but I thought... I thought I'd always be powerful enough to keep Tirek under control so he wouldn't kill anypony."

Rainbow Dash drew back, blinking. "Huh."

"How about you quit jawing at each other and let Discord get back to work?" Applejack snapped. "That bar ain't gonna bend itself!"

"I think... the hole's almost... big enough," Spike said, panting. "Just... a little... more..."

"PULL!" Pinkie shouted, and she and Spike both yanked on their bar at the same time, with all their strength. "1, 2, 3, PULL!"

Discord ignored their chanting; he didn't do anything to anyone's rhythm, and using his mouth and body as he was doing meant that he was applying steady strong pressure, not bursts of it. His teeth ached, badly, and he felt like if he kept this up he might break them. His jaw might be a pony jaw, but his teeth weren't pony teeth; he was an omnivore, half his teeth designed for cutting rather than grinding, and grinding teeth were the kind that would help him here. Also, being the avatar of chaos, his teeth were mixed up throughout his mouth, rather than a sensible omnivore arrangement like having the grinding molars all together in the back.

And then he felt a sudden horrible sense of disorientation, and vertigo. He heard pony screams, and a little dragon yelling, "No! So close--", and then he found himself floating in a bubble of magic, suspended high in the air above Tirek.

The others -- the five mares and Spike -- were arrayed all around him in bubbles of their own, hovering above Tirek, who was faced off against a quite living and unbowed Twilight Sparkle. For a moment Discord felt a thrill of hope. She was alive, unhurt, and obviously still capable of fighting.

Then Tirek said, "Their release for all the Alicorn magic in Equestria!", obviously as a continuation of a conversation he was having with Twilight, and Discord's heart sank. This was the part he had arranged for, the part he had set up for Tirek and had bargained as hard as he could to get Tirek to follow through on, in order to keep Tirek from killing any of them. He'd won his wager, or he'd win it when Twilight inevitably took the deal. But it still meant Twilight would be powerless, Tirek would rule Equestria, and he himself... He swallowed. No, he wasn't going to think about that. It was what he deserved anyway.

The others erupted into shouts of protest. "No, Twilight!" "Don't do it!" "You can't!" They could save their breath, Discord thought. There was no chance at all that Twilight would abandon them to Tirek.

He had done his very best, years ago, to destroy Twilight Sparkle's faith in friendship, to turn her friends against her and make her feel hopeless and alone. He'd been sure it would work, because he knew Twilight; he'd felt her magical surge, he'd felt her practicing her magic right nearby at Celestia's school, and he'd known from the beginning she would be the next Element of Magic. He'd listened for her, extending his senses as far as he possibly could; when he'd slept in stone and his consciousness had drifted free to walk in dreams, he'd focused on hers, studying his opponent. Learning her weaknesses, in anticipation for the day when the Elements finally left Celestia's control for good and went to this young filly, the day when his primary binding would break and he'd be able to start collecting and focusing disharmony and turning it against his prison... and eventually, the day when he'd succeed and break free, when he'd fight her. He'd learned that she was practically Star Swirl Mark II, that she had no time for or patience for friendship, and deep down, no belief that anypony would ever share it with her because she was too weird and bright and nerdy and nopony cared about the things she cared about and what did she need friends for anyway when she had Spike and her BBBFF and her mentor Princess Celestia? Discord had known that if Twilight's friends turned on her and rejected her, her faith in friendship couldn't survive the experience. Friendship was too new to her, and he knew well (a little too well) how someone who was more powerful than the average pony, someone who didn't have the same interests, someone who most ponies would reject and fear or dislike or simply push away, would never be able to quite believe in friendship if they had it. He knew Twilight would break, and the bonds between the Elements of Harmony would shatter.

He'd known wrong.

She'd defeated him. Her belief in her friends, in the power of friendship itself, her love for them and her desire to have back the life that included them in it, was so powerful, she was able to overcome the worst he'd thrown at her. A targeted attack, aimed precisely at the weakness he'd been seeing in her for over a decade as he'd studied her, and she'd overcome it within a day.

Nothing would get between Twilight Sparkle and the love she had for her friends. Nothing at all. He'd given this plan to Tirek because he'd known it would work.

"What's it going to be, Princess?" Tirek shouted at her, a cruel, fierce grin in his voice. Discord couldn't actually see his face, but he knew Tirek. He'd heard him gloat at his enemies often enough over the past several days. He could hear the expression Tirek was wearing.

"Don't do it, Twilight!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

"We aren't worth it!" Fluttershy pleaded.

Discord's heart twisted. How could she possibly believe that? "Oh, but you are, Fluttershy," he said softly, knowing she could hear him, since she was floating next to him. "You're the pony that taught me that friendship is magic." He spread his paws. "I had magic, and friendship..." The shame and guilt boiled over. He shook his head, covering his eyes with his paws, as if he could negate this reality if he just denied it, if he just refused to look. "...and now I don't have either."

"Enough!" Tirek snarled. "I want an answer, and I want it now!"

There was a long pause, long enough for Discord to feel an entirely unwelcome unease. He'd been certain he knew what Twilight would do. But he'd been certain he had known what Twilight would do, when he'd fought her the first time and lost. What if he was wrong this time too? What if she felt that her loyalty to Equestria and the Princesses had to trump her loyalty to her friends, and she refused the deal? Tirek would kill Fluttershy, and all the others. Please, Twilight. Please save them. Please don't let my stupidity and selfishness get Fluttershy killed, please. Or the others, but especially Fluttershy. His paws clenched with anxiety. Please...

Finally, Twilight said, "I will give you my magic, in exchange for my friends."

The others gasped, or shouted "No!" Discord's eyes snapped wide, and he drew in a ragged, shaky breath, staring down at her. He'd been right. His faith in her had been justified all along.

Of course, now all the magic in Equestria would be lost, and Tirek would have won forever. But at least Fluttershy would live, and Twilight herself, and the others, and maybe they'd find some way to reverse it, one of these days. Maybe Twilight would teach someone a lesson in friendship and win the last key to that box; he was fairly certain the Tree was prepared to give the six of them an unprecedented level of access to the power of pure Harmony, a power Tirek wouldn't be able to touch. Maybe eventually they'd find a way to defeat Tirek.

It would be too late for him by then, of course, but he accepted that. His greatest regret, at this point, was that he wasn't going to be able to help them fight, and that he was never going to have an opportunity to tell Fluttershy how horribly sorry he was for what he'd done.

"As you wish," Tirek said, snapping the fingers of his paw, and all the bubbles broke but Discord's. He saw the six of them drop to the ground, alive and unhurt, and swallowed, turning his face away so they couldn't see him. The fear was starting to well up, despite his resignation and his belief that he deserved this, and grief as well. He'd been part of them, not exactly a well-beloved part, not a vital part, but someone they'd cared about at least enough to take care of him when he was sick (well, most of them, with the exception of Rainbow Dash)... and he'd thrown that away, and he'd never be part of anything ever again. Even if he somehow managed to trick Tirek into letting him live, he'd still never be part of anything ever again. One chance at friendship, and he'd blown it just as badly as he'd blown his relationships with Celestia and Luna. He'd had a love, and he threw her away. He'd had a little sister, and he threw her away. And he'd had a friend, with friends of her own who'd accepted him at least provisionally... and he'd thrown her away too.

"All of my friends," Twilight said.

Discord opened his eyes in shock, and sudden hope, before the despair claimed him again. Tirek wasn't going to accept that. He closed his eyes again. Twilight had just called him a friend? Asked for his release? It wasn't possible. And it wasn't even a good idea. It might ruin the deal, because Tirek had reasons why he felt he had to kill Discord, and if Twilight wouldn't surrender without him... no, she had to back down. For Fluttershy's sake. No matter how hard Discord's heart was pounding, how much part of him was desperately clinging to her words. She shouldn't demand his freedom. It could ruin everything and he didn't even deserve it.

He wanted to say so, but he couldn't. His voice was going to break if he tried to speak.

"After the way he has betrayed you, you still call him a 'friend'?" Tirek sneered.

Again Discord opened his eyes, hope trembling within him, and again closed them. Tirek was right, of course. He was no kind of friend. Twilight shouldn't save him.

"Release him!" Twilight shouted.

"If that's what you want," Tirek said.

He couldn't look. This was a trick, this was a setup, Tirek was never going to let him go. He felt himself falling, but couldn't bring himself to believe he was actually being set free until he landed, hard.

Discord opened his eyes, finally. He was on the ground, unfettered, none of the ponies (or the dragon) around him hurt beyond what he'd seen from above. Tirek had actually let him go, because Twilight had demanded it and Tirek wanted the alicorn magic more than he wanted Discord dead.

"Thank you, Twilight," Discord said. Part of him wanted to be histrionic about it, to fawn all over her with relief and gratitude, that she could even contemplate still calling him a friend, that she had just saved his life. But he was so tired, so broken, and he knew that from Twilight's perspective the worst was yet to come. Besides. Tirek would probably betray Twilight as well, and kill Discord after Tirek claimed her magic and she could no longer stop him. Discord could only hope that he'd stick to the terms of the wager and not kill the six ponies afterward. He himself had probably only gained a few minutes, and the opportunity to spend them with the ones he'd betrayed, the ones he'd thought he'd never have a chance to apologize to.

He turned to Fluttershy, who was lying a short distance from him. "I'm sorry," he whispered to her, not quite trusting his voice for anything louder. At least now if Tirek killed him, he'd had a chance to say it.

"I know," she murmured back, but she wouldn't look at him.

"Your turn," Tirek growled at Twilight.

Discord didn't want to look, but felt like he had to. This was his fault. Twilight had just saved his life, after doing what he'd been silently begging her to do by bargaining her magic for the life of her friends -- his friends, even if they wouldn't call him theirs anymore, the ponies he'd been prepared to gamble his own life away to save before Tirek had let him know that wasn't an option. He'd put her in this situation, where she had to give up her magic, betray the Princesses' trust, to save her friends, and she'd still saved his life, and called him a friend. He owed it to her to make himself watch.

She screamed as Tirek sucked away her magic. The sensation of guilt and shame twisted inside him again. She sounded as if she was actually in pain -- and she might be; the magic of four alicorns wasn't actually hers, and she was already unbalanced by it. Maybe tearing it back out of her was causing her physical pain. And then she dropped limp to the ground, and Tirek roared, the magic surging through him, his body expanding.

Abruptly Discord realized something. Tirek would have to release the magic -- this was more than he'd ever absorbed before. He'd need to vent it by blowing things up, and a small group of ponies, a dragon and a draconequus would actually be too small and close a target. It would be a few minutes before Tirek could actually focus on coming back and killing Discord, or taking them prisoner so they couldn't form some kind of resistance, or whatever it was Tirek planned to do.

Which meant that Discord had a few minutes to act. Maybe the only minutes he'd get. His paw clenched around the stupid amulet Tirek had given him, the only physical object in his possession. Remembering giving Twilight a silly amulet of a similar nature when she'd passed his "friendship test". That one had been made of chaos magic, and dissipated the moment the Tatzlwurm goo had made him ill and disrupted his powers. But this one was solid, not something of his creation, not a transient object of chaos that the Harmony Tree might not even be able to work with.

Over the sound of Tirek bellowing, "Yes! YES!", and the roar and crackle of the magic he'd absorbed, Discord could still hear the ponies around him murmuring in shock. He saw Spike run up to Twilight. "Twilight, what were you thinking?!"

She was thinking she was saving your life, little dragon, Discord thought, and got up onto two feet, aching. Physically he'd probably feel better if he stayed on four, but emotionally he needed the familiarity of his full height now. He approached the group, looking directly at Twilight.

"Tirek tricked me into believing that he could offer me something more valuable than friendship. But there is nothing worth more. I see that now," he said, not entirely willing to admit that what he'd thought he was getting from Tirek was friendship, beceause even composing the thought to himself in the privacy of his own head made him feel unbearably stupid. "He lied when he said that this medallion was given as a sign of gratitude and loyalty." He pulled the amulet off, and reached down to lower it around Twilight's neck, willing her to understand. To recognize what he was doing. He was afraid that if he admitted it out loud, the magic wouldn't work. The Tree wouldn't appreciate being gamed, but then again, it wasn't as if he hadn't learned an important lesson about friendship, either. Tirek had taught him he was an idiot for trusting Tirek, Fluttershy had shown him, viscerally, how much it hurt to betray a friend. But Twilight had taught him that he'd been wrong in the first place. He'd pulled his silly "friendship test" stunt on Twilight because she was always exasperated around him and he'd felt certain she actually couldn't stand him and he'd wanted her friendship, or something, after spending so many years studying her to fight her and she'd defeated him anyway. Also he'd been jealous of Cadance. He'd gotten the results he'd wanted -- she'd gone to the ends of Equestria for him, and then she'd gone out of her way to solve the riddle of his illness and cure him -- but he hadn't believed it, really. He'd thought the whole time that Twilight wasn't really his friend, that Twilight was lying to try to control him. That Fluttershy was his only friend, that he was trading one for one when he betrayed the ponies for Tirek. And it wasn't true. Because when Twilight had had the opportunity to leave him in the bed he'd made, to abandon him to Tirek, she'd called him a friend and insisted on his release.

"But when I say that it is a sign of our true friendship," he said, "I am telling the truth." And meant it. Even though he knew he wasn't giving her a mere token of friendship. She deserved far more than a silly medallion anyway. As did Fluttershy. He was giving them all the key to power, by giving it to Twilight. Please figure it out. Please. I can't say it out loud, I don't dare.

The medallion shone in the colors of the rainbow. Apparently the Tree itself was not beyond giving hints.

He saw her eyes clear, saw the realization hit her. It must have struck some of the others at the same time, because Applejack said, "You think that might be the last one we need?"

"We have to get to the chest," Twilight said.

They ran. In the distance Tirek was roaring, firing random blasts of destructive magic at the landscape. Discord stayed on two legs for the first few minutes of the trip, but dropped to four to match them. It was hard for him to run, either way -- normally, his mismatched limbs synchronized to each other magically when he needed them to, but that magic was gone as well, so he was off balance, forced to live with the physical consequences of his own asymmetry for the first time since he was a small child. His tail still worked, though, so when Spike fell behind, he picked up the little dragon, put on a burst of speed, and deposited him on Applejack's back -- she was still the strongest without magic, and therefore the best able to carry a rider. He didn't ask, but the look Applejack threw him was understanding, not exasperated. Neither he nor Spike needed to be with the six of them when they got to the chest, but he desperately wanted to, and assumed Spike felt the same way, judging from how hard the small dragon had been trying to run.

It was possibly the longest trip he'd made in his existence. Not literally, he'd flown or even run much greater distances before, but never with such a keen awareness that the difference between victory or death rested so precariously on whether or not they could get to their destination before Tirek remembered he wanted to kill Discord. If Tirek did come back for them, he resolved, he would run off in another direction and lure the centaur away. He was the one Tirek wanted to kill, because Tirek didn't know about the Harmony Tree or the chest. Tirek knew Discord would get his powers back eventually, he didn't know the mares were on their way to get power back immediately. But the resignation he'd felt before was gone. He had hope now, and that meant he desperately wanted to live through this. At least long enough to see Tirek defeated, if that was all he could get. But there were three princesses in Tartarus that didn't deserve to be there, and if the chest could defeat Tirek and restore the balance of magic -- if he got his own magic back, he could rescue Celestia and Luna and Cadance. It wouldn't make up for having stood by and done nothing as they were sent there, for having helped Tirek get to the point where he could send them there, but it would be something at least.

By the time they reached the cave, he was panting, out of breath. Oddly, the presence of the Harmony Tree didn't bother him the way it had the last time. Without all the chaos magic roiling within him, there was nothing for Harmony to try to control or organize, so he couldn't feel it impinging on him as it had when he'd been here a few days ago. He still had his connection to chaos, so possibly it would eventually start to harm him, and it would probably block him from recovering power, but it wasn't making his skin crawl or his extremities start to feel numb.

Discord came back up to two legs in time to see Twilight put the amulet against the chest. It spun, twisted, transformed into a key, and slid into place.

Then there was a violent rumble above, and the cavern shook. Discord looked up, and froze in fear. Tirek was very, very close. Still firing off his blasts of magic, venting, but at this range, if he saw them, he could fry them all with a single blast.

"Together!" Twilight said. "I think we have to do this together!"

The six mares stepped forward, each placing a hoof on a key, and turned them simultaneously. The box opened, and the blinding, glowing light of a rainbow soared out of the box. Discord, who had had far too many negative experiences with that rainbow, backed away, putting distance between himself and the Tree. He didn't think it would turn him to stone after he'd just given Twilight the last key... but détente or not, he didn't trust the Tree. In his current condition, it might be able to use the energies of Harmony to sever the connection between himself and Chaos entirely, turning him back into a mere draconequus with Chaos-focused magic rather than Chaos' avatar, and even think it was doing him a favor by doing so.

From what was probably not a safe distance, but without his magic he couldn't shift his eyes into eagle mode and he really wanted to see what was happening, he watched as the rainbow shot into the Tree, lit up the various Elements, then made the Tree itself sparkle so brightly he had to shield his eyes. Rays in six different colors shot out from the sparkling Tree and struck the six mares, making them float into the air, and when the rays dissipated enough that he could see the ponies themselves, each one had been transformed into a riotous mess of different sparkling colors, their manes (and wings, in the case of the three who had wings) noticeably grown.

He grinned to himself. The Tree liked sparkly, bright colors, like the kind a filly would color her artwork in. But normally the Tree's taste in color patterns was much more subdued. The wild riot of mismatched color would probably appall Rarity once she stopped being high on magic and started to see her surroundings properly again, but it delighted Discord. Is this me? Did you give them such chaotic colors because the last key was mine? Or did you always have this sort of chaos buried under your crystal bark someplace, old enemy, and you were just never willing to show that to me until we ended up on the same side?

A long, long time ago, when he and Celestia were barely out of their teens and Luna didn't even have her cutie mark yet, the three of them had found this cavern, with the Tree inside, and the Tree had spoken inside his head, without words. It had made him an offer, then, presenting him a choice. Give up Disharmony -- he hadn't been the chaos avatar then, but even then, he'd known Disharmony was part of his power as much as Chaos was -- and take up an Element. Or two. It had offered him Laughter and Loyalty -- which was funny now, considering all the betrayals he'd committed in his life, but at the time it had been appropriate enough. But he'd felt the effects of the Tree on his magic, making his Chaos sluggish and unresponsive, and he'd had visions he didn't understand of the Tree keeping ponies in a hazy dream of perfection where there was no conflict and nothing ever changed, and he'd been terrified. He'd tried to rescue Celestia and Luna from the Tree by dragging them away, which had irritated the two of them immensely because neither of them had seen anything but beauty and joy.

If he'd known the Tree was capable of embracing such chaos even in the midst of its harmony, maybe he would have made a different choice.

The six mares rose into the air within a ball of brilliant multicolored light, going up out of the cavern. Toward Tirek.

Discord saw Spike gazing upward longingly. "Hey, Spike. You want to go up and see what's going on?"

Spike nodded, but gestured at the wall. "I could climb that, but by the time I got to the top, it'd be all over."

"Yes, your legs are a trifle small. Perhaps you need someone taller to help you out with that."

He grabbed Spike with his tail, seated the dragon on his shoulders, and began to scale the wall rapidly. His hoof was almost completely useless on a straight vertical like this -- goats might be well-suited to climbing very steep inclines, but a vertical face was something else entirely -- but three of his limbs ended in claws and articulated digits. With those, plus his tail to grab onto outcroppings and haul himself up like the ropes that ponies used in their own mountaineering, he was able to scale the face very rapidly, even with Spike's arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that he had to keep telling the young dragon to ease up or he'd choke. It would have been better if Spike had been just a little taller, and could easily reach Discord's horns while sitting on his shoulder, but Discord's neck was almost as long as Spike was tall, so Spike couldn't reach the horns without Discord bending his neck, and on a cliff face, without his powers, Discord really preferred not to do that.

They got to the top in time to see Tirek trying, and failing, to blast the bubble of magic that the mares were in.

"How is this possible?!" Tirek screamed. "You have no magic!"

"You're wrong, Tirek!" Twilight shouted. "I may have given you my Alicorn magic, but I carry within me the most powerful magic of all!"

"Peanut butter," Discord whispered to Spike. "The most magical substance in the universe!"

Spike scowled at him. "She means friendship."

Discord rolled his eyes. "How silly of me. I could never have possibly figured that out."

Then the six blasted Tirek with the harmonic rainbow. Tirek screamed, his magic dispersing and his body shrinking.

Like a switch had been thrown, Discord suddenly felt energy bubbling and laughing and seething inside him. He took a deep breath, got to his feet, and grinned down at Spike. "Well, I'm back!" he said gleefully. "And I believe I have a trio of Princesses to rescue, now that I have the power to. Ta-ta!"

"Wait--" Spike started to shout, but Discord didn't hear the rest of it, because he'd already snapped his talon and teleported into Tartarus.

Author's Notes:

So this is gonna go to five chapters, I think. We're not quite done yet.

Aftermath

He had seen where Tirek had thrown the princesses, but they weren't there. Tirek himself was, being dragged away to a cage, screaming curses in his weak, elderly voice. Despite everything, Discord felt bad for him -- he knew what it was like to be imprisoned indefinitely, he knew what it was like to be returned to that prison after tasting freedom. Tirek deserved it but chaos had never been overly concerned with justice; as angry as he was with Tirek for betraying him and threatening his life, as much as he'd like to torment Tirek personally, the torment of eternal imprisonment was one that hit too close to home for Discord to ever feel good about any other creature being doomed to it.

But he wasn't there to torment Tirek. He teleported over to Cerberus, patting one of the giant dog's shaggy heads. "Kerby, old boy! Been a long time since I've seen you!" Cerberus licked Discord's paw. "Now, now, what did I tell you? That's ticklish! Don't do that. Can you show me to where Celly and Luna ended up? I'm here to get them out!"

"You're a little late," Celestia's voice said, behind him.

Discord whipped around. The three princesses stood behind him, powerful, free and unhurt... and most decidedly not in need of him to rescue them. "Oh. Well, I came as soon as I got my magic back!"

Luna's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to claim your ally there took your magic as well? After you laughed your foolish head to bits when my sister suggested he could do such a thing?"

"Um... I wouldn't have phrased it quite that way..."

"Because what I see is a creature whose ally was defeated, running to curry favor and pretend he had changed sides, again. Traitor, why would you come to rescue us when you let Tirek banish us to Tartarus in the first place?!" Her voice did not quite reach Royal Canterlot decibels, but all Tartarus echoed with her anger.

Discord's cheer at getting his powers back deflated. In a sense she was right. Maybe Twilight had called him a friend, maybe he'd given her the key that had allowed the six to defeat Tirek and restore Equestria's magic, but it didn't change the fact that he'd betrayed them all in the first place. "Look, I don't expect you to believe me, but you can ask Twilight. I helped them to defeat Tirek. I -- you're not wrong, I let Tirek banish you to Tartarus in the first place, that... I know that was a terrible thing to do, and I don't expect..." Neither Luna's expression of rage nor Celestia's expressionless mask had changed even slightly. And Cadance was doing a great job of mimicking her aunt; after an initial expression of surprise and anger, now she was doing the expressionless thing too. Discord slumped. "I came here to free you as soon as I got my power back because I knew it was wrong to let him send you to Tartarus, even when he did it," he said. "I was always going to come back and get you, after we'd won... I didn't expect Tirek to be able to take my magic. But it happened, and I told myself if I survived it, if the girls managed to beat Tirek and restore the magic, I would come get you, because I'm the only one besides Tirek who knows you're here."

"A likely story," Luna scoffed. "Sister, you cannot believe this snake, can you?"

"Why did you turn on us, Discord?" Celestia asked, sounding for all the world as if she was asking him whether he preferred lemon in his tea.

Her calm undid him. He knew how to handle Celestia's anger, Celestia's grief. It was when she went blank and emotionless that she drove him mad. Under most circumstances he'd taunt her until that blank shell cracked, but he couldn't do that now. He desperately wanted to know what she felt toward him -- was she enraged? Was she pushed beyond rage, to the point where she'd coldly execute him? Was she griefstricken? Was she prepared to forgive him? She was giving him no hints at all as to what it was.

"I-- I know it was wrong..."

"I did not ask if you knew it was wrong. I asked why you did it," Celestia said, still in an utterly calm and reasonable voice.

"I... wanted freedom," he mumbled. "I wanted... chaos... and I didn't want to be alone... I thought I wouldn't be alone, but he... I'm sorry, Celestia, I'm so sorry..." He crumpled under the weight of his emotions, literally, falling to his knees on the hard volcanic rock of Tartarus. Sweat matted his fur, not entirely from the heat. "I wanted to prove myself and instead I screwed everything up, I was so stupid... I'm sorry, I... look, if you want to just leave me here, because of what I've done, go ahead. I deserve it. I know that."

"That hardly seems like it would be effective," Celestia said. "Since you teleported here on your own power, and since Cerberus is friendly to you." As if to illustrate the point, one of the three giant doggy heads started licking the top of Discord's head, as if Cerberus sensed his distress and, without any better understanding of the reasons for it than any dog could have, was trying to comfort him. Not that hellhound slobber was all that comforting, but it was the thought that counted.

"You're a good boy, Cerberus," Discord said shakily, getting up enough that he could give the licking head a hug and a rough noogie. "Good boy." All three heads panted as Cerberus' tail wagged happily.

"Yes, Cerberus is a good boy," Luna said, reaching a hoof to pet one of her dog's other heads. "He took good care of us while he was here. Did you not, boy? Yes, you did!" The head Luna was petting licked her as well.

"We ought to talk to Twilight," Cadance said. "She can confirm Discord's story or not, don't you think?"

"Yes. Tartarus is hardly the place to be having this discussion." Celestia's expression cracked very very slightly, shifting from pure expressionlessness to cold, making Discord want to shiver despite the heat of Tartarus. "Discord. If you truly feel remorse, if you feel you deserve punishment, accompany us, and do not leave until I have had the opportunity to talk to the Bearers, and make a judgement. But expect no leniency at all if you leave us before I have told you my decision."

He swallowed. "That's... that's fair."

Possibly because they didn't want to risk that he would simply fail to teleport with them and then claim it wasn't his fault, they flew out of Tartarus instead of teleporting. It was tedious, but a big improvement over having to walk, he supposed.

As they gained altitude over the Everfree Forest, Discord was able to see that the sky was full of strange rainbow lights, like an aurora. He felt the flow of magic in the world rebalancing itself, falling back into the configuration it belonged in. "Every pony has their magic back now," he said. "I -- I thought you'd like to know."

"I do," Celestia said. "Thank you."

And then the ground below them exploded, right where the Tree of Harmony would be, some distance to the north within the Forest. What was quite obviously the box shot up on a rainbow arc and slammed into the ground in Ponyville. A truly atrocious sparkling purple monstrosity that looked like it belonged in Canterlot grew out of the ground. The three alicorns and Discord hesitated up in the air, staring at the thing.

"What in the name of the sun and the moon is that?" Celestia asked.

"Well, while I'm hardly an expert on matters of Harmony... I think the Tree just built a castle," Discord said. "Probably for Twilight, given that she's the local princess, and all."

"But... how?"

"Oh!" Cadance said. "You know, there's an ancient legend that the Crystal Heart actually built the Crystal Palace, to be the Palace of Love! I always thought it was a story, but... maybe it's true."

"Is there truly a connection between the Crystal Heart and the Tree of Harmony?" Luna asked.

"Oh, trust me, Luna, they are very closely related," Discord said. "I would know."

"Perhaps then the Tree is creating a Palace of Friendship," Celestia said. "Since Friendship is Twilight's domain, as Love is yours, Cadance."

"Did the tree build your palace, Celestia? Because this thing looks just as ridiculous as yours, only it's purple instead of white."

Celestia turned with a deceptively mild look. "Discord, do you really think now is an appropriate time for insults?"

He sighed. "No... sorry."

"There is Spike," Luna said, pointing a hoof below. "He can tell us what we need to know about the events we missed, most likely."

"Oh yes, Spike was there for all of it," Discord said, but inside his heart was sinking. Spike was a lot less likely to be sympathetic to him than Twilight.

The four of them landed. Spike came running up to them. "Princess Celestia! Princess Luna! Princess Cadance!"

"Hello, Spike." The contrast between the warmth in her voice as she addressed Spike and the utter lack of any emotion when she spoke to Discord was painful. "Since we were unfortunately unable to see most of the recent events, perhaps you can help us. Discord claims that Tirek took his magic and that he helped you to defeat Tirek afterward. Is that true?"

"Um, yeah, actually, it is," Spike said. "First he betrayed all of us and put us in a cage--"

"I was afraid that if Tirek and Twilight fought, Twilight might be killed, or Ponyville destroyed. I came up with the plan to take you hostage so that Twilight would just surrender without a fight," Discord said. "That way no one would get hurt. But it turned out Tirek wanted a fight."

Spike glared at him. "I think the Princess asked me, not you."

"Yes, but you don't know my motives."

"Don't care either, if you hadn't sold us out to Tirek in the first place we wouldn't have been in that position." Spike sighed. "So anyway, Tirek took his magic. Then he made some kind of bet with Tirek so Tirek would let us go if Twilight was winning and he had to use us as hostages, but he'd kill all of us if he beat Twilight."

"I tried to bet my own life," Discord said. "But I made the mistake of telling Tirek that my magic would rebuild itself in the presence of Chaos, when we were allies, so he believed he had to kill me. Our wager had to be about the lives of the others because that was the only way I could get him to agree not to kill them all right then."

"You told us Tirek was going to put you in a dungeon!"

"I lied. I didn't want to upset Fluttershy. Tirek was going to kill me either way."

Spike stared at him. "But when Fluttershy told you you should escape... you wouldn't do it. If you were going to die then why..."

Discord sighed. "I never wanted ponies to die, not during any of this," he said. "But most especially I couldn't bear it if Fluttershy died. Even after I betrayed her, I wanted to keep her safe... Tirek wanted her magic, but I thought I could at least protect her life. When... when he took my magic, and I realized I couldn't protect her, or any of you... I'm afraid I got a little bit single minded."

"So he did help to defeat Tirek?" Luna asked skeptically.

"Yeah, actually, he gave Twilight the last key. A gift from a friend who learned a lesson, to unlock the box. So they all turned into all weird rainbow colors and they fought Tirek and beat him. And I guess if Discord hadn't given Twilight an amulet, it wouldn't have happened."

"Did you mention the part where I was the one who made the six of them aware about the role of the keys in the first place, before I went off and stupidly listened to Tirek instead of dragging him off to Tartarus right away?"

"I think the princesses probably know about that already," Spike said. "'Cause I sent them a report about it after they summoned Twilight."

"And what lesson did you learn?" Celestia asked, still mildly.

"I..." He hung his head miserably. "I was wrong from the beginning. I thought, I have only one friend, and none of the others can stand me, and Tirek's offering to be my ally and let me have my freedom, so do I keep my good friend and lose chaos and I still only have one so I'm not getting much, and I'm playing errand boy and ponies hate and fear me when I don't want them to, or do I take a friend who's not nearly as good but I get chaos, and ponies will hate and fear me for good reasons? But I was wrong. I tested Twilight to see if she was really my friend, and she passed, and I still didn't believe her because she was never nice like Fluttershy, but I knew Twilight would do anything for her friends... I didn't realize she considered me one. Really. She told Tirek -- he'd released the others, and he was going to kill me but she didn't know that, she didn't know I'd been helping to try to pry the bars of the cage apart, she didn't even know how sorry I was -- but she told Tirek to let me go, because she'd bargained her magic for the freedom of her friends, and I was one of her friends. So it was never an even trade. I had at least two real friends and I didn't even know."

"But nothing about not betraying your friends?"

He rolled his eyes. "Celestia, I'm not stupid. I knew that was wrong when I did it. I just..." He sat down heavily. "I wanted freedom, but I didn't want to be alone. I thought Tirek was offering a way out of that. I was stupid, and I'm so sorry."

"You weren't merely stupid, Discord. Your betrayal was an evil act."

He looked down at the grass below his coils, not at Celestia's face. "The girls' Rainbow Power thingy could probably turn me back to stone," he said dully. "Maybe right now they'd even do it. I know Fluttershy promised me, but... she cried, Celestia. She cried because I betrayed her. If she doesn't want to keep her promise I'd understand."

"Um... I think he was sincere about the whole being sorry thing, though," Spike said. "Because before all this started, he put me in a soap bubble and made me float and if Rainbow hadn't been there to catch me--"

"I knew she was there, Spike, did you seriously think I meant you harm?"

"Maybe," Spike said. "But the point is, when the girls were all powered up and were gonna go fight Tirek... Discord carried me up to the top of the canyon that the Tree's in so I could see. He didn't have to do that. I could have climbed it myself, but I wouldn't have gotten to the top fast enough to see anything. So... uh, I mean, of course it's up to you, Princesses, but... Discord's never done anything that was just nice for no reason for anyone but Fluttershy before..."

"Why did you help Spike?" Celestia asked, still in the same neutral tone.

Discord looked down again. "I don't really know," he said. "It -- we were working together to try to open the cage... the one I put him and the Bearers in, and... it just seemed... natural. After we'd been trying to achieve the same goal, together."

"I think you may finally be starting to grasp the point to Harmony," Celestia said.

Discord looked up at her, shocked. Her expression was now a wan smile. "I regret that you are so stubborn, it takes something like this to begin to teach you. I never intended any of this either... I sent you because you could detect Tirek and I didn't think he could take your magic either. And I never thought you would betray us. But I see now... I placed too heavy a burden on you. I should have sent you with Twilight, regardless of your objections. I should have recognized that Tirek could find your weakness and play on it to destroy your resolve, and that you should have been accompanied by a friend. You told me, in so many words, that the lack of chaos in your life was causing you mental harm, and I put it down to your usual dramatics." She closed her eyes. "I asked too much of you, too soon. When Fluttershy befriended you... I was hoping to get the Discord of our youth back. I should have realized that two thousand years of you being lost to your chaos can't be undone within a year, and possibly never at all, but my hopes blinded me to the reality."

"Sister... don't you realize that was never a realistic hope to begin with?" Luna said. "He's not..."

"I had no realistic hope of getting you back, Luna," Celestia said. "I do not function on realistic hopes all the time, I'm afraid."

Cadance put a hoof on the back of Discord's head, gently. "If it helps with your decision, Auntie... I can sense love within him. His feelings are too --well, you know-- for me to be able to tell the kind of love precisely, or who it's for, but whether it's the love of friends or family or feelings for a special pony, love is love, and right now, it's strong. Perhaps that will change in time; chaos isn't known for constancy. But right now, he loves, and his regret is genuine."

"Someday I'm going to figure out how you keep doing that and work out how to stop you," Discord said, sighing. He looked up at her. "Why are you vouching for me? I stood there when Tirek ate your husband's magic, I stood there when he threw you in Tartarus. I didn't do anything to help you."

"You weren't the only one your punishment harmed," Cadance said. "I destroyed King Sombra, with Spike's help, and my husband, and our friends. I blasted Chrysalis, and if I didn't kill her, it wasn't because I was trying to show mercy. If you were remorseless, if I believed you were irredeemable, I'd find a way to destroy you before you could cause any more harm to the ponies I care about. But you have a heart, and you follow it. I think you only need to learn to listen to it more carefully, rather than to what chaos wants of you. And harming you will also cause harm to ponies I care about. So I'd rather see you redeemed than punished."

"It is time to meet with the Bearers," Celestia said. "Discord, stay with us, you have not been released."

He got up onto four feet, and saw the girls up ahead, in front of the castle, without their bizarre extra colors any longer. Spike and the three Princesses walked over to where the six mares were standing stupefied, looking up at the purple monstrosity. Discord followed behind them on four legs. He had his powers back, he had no reason why he couldn't stand up all the way, but the shame he felt dragged at him, making him feel strangely weary.

As they approached, he heard Twilight's voice, asking, "But... whose is it?"

"I believe it is yours, Princess Twilight," Celestia said warmly.

Suddenly Discord felt a rush of a strange happiness, bizarre in contrast to the weary regret that had been dragging him down. Twilight and the rest of them were all right. They had their powers back, but they hadn't been permanently transformed into entities barely recognizable as themselves. Everything was working out, despite what he'd done. He popped up to two legs and waved at the girls.

"Let's go inside," Luna said. "I was not there when Canterlot Palace was built, so this will be my first opportunity to see a newly built castle. I am very curious to see what's inside."

"Me too!" Pinkie said. "Because what kind of a castle would it be if it didn't have a kitchen? Do you think maybe the Tree made us a cake or something?"

Everyone laughed, and the group walked into the castle. Discord hesitated.

His powers were back, and the castle was a source of concentrated harmonics. It wasn't as bad as being near the Tree; he wasn't turning numb. But he could feel it interfering with his power. If he went in there, he wouldn't be powerless, but he would be weakened enough that Celestia and Luna could do anything they wanted to him, and there would be very little he could do to stop them.

He sighed, and followed the group. If he was going to be punished, maybe it would be better to get it over with quickly... and if he went in the palace and let his powers be choked down to a small trickle, if he made himself vulnerable to Celestia and Luna, then they wouldn't ask Fluttershy to break her promise, and he wouldn't have to learn if she would do so now or not. They'd be able to do whatever they were going to do to him directly, without involving Fluttershy. Or Twilight. Also, Celestia had told him to stay with the group if he hoped for any leniency at all, and he didn't think they'd accept "but the harmonics make my head hurt and interfere with my powers" as an excuse for him to stay outside.

"You've been wondering what you are meant to do as a princess," Celestia was saying. She and Twilight were in the lead, with the other princesses behind them, and the mares and Spike behind them. "Do you know now?"

"As princess, I believe I have the power to spread the magic of friendship across Equestria," Twilight pronounced. "That is the role I am meant to have in our world. The role I choose to have!" She certainly had the grandiose pronouncements part of being a princess down, Discord noted. There was a flash of light, and suddenly Twilight was behind the other princesses, directly within the group of her friends. "But I didn't defeat Tirek on my own – it took all of us to unlock the chest!" The others gathered around her in a spontaneous group hug.

"Then it is unlikely you are meant to take on this task alone," Celestia said, and used her magic to open a gigantic set of doors in front of her.

It was a throne room, with seven thrones, six of them marked with the Bearers' cutie marks and surrounding a round table with an inlaid six-pointed star similar to Twilight's cutie mark. The seventh throne was small and unmarked, and sat beside Twilight's. The girls oohed and aahed, and most of them, as well as Spike, promptly planted themselves in their new seats. "You are now Twilight Sparkle, the princess of friendship," Celestia said. "But what is the princess of friendship without her friends?"

The five mares and Spike quit testing their seats and surrounded Twilight. Another group hug coming, bleah, how droll. And yet he didn't feel bored, or overwhelmed with sap, or impatient, the way he would normally feel at watching soppy displays of affection and friendship.

He felt... left out.

He felt lonely.

His head drooped. He had no reason to feel sad, he told himself. It wasn't like the group had ever gone out of its way to include him, whyever would that change now after he'd betrayed them? It couldn't matter to them that his feelings were so raw, that for the first time since this friendship nonsense had started he felt an overwhelming desire to be with them, to protect them, to be liked by them... something he'd felt occasionally with Fluttershy, something he remembered years and years ago with Celestia and Luna, something that he'd spent most of his life never feeling at all. The desire to belong. The actual feeling of caring about others, not as an abstract but as something visceral, overwhelming him. They didn't know. They had no reason to believe he was any different than he'd always been.

None of them -- not the Bearers and Spike, not the group of princesses -- were looking at him. He could slink away, go pretend he was exploring the palace while they were having their friendship moment. Or pretend to have been bored to sleep and sprawl out here in the hallway to take a nap, or feign it anyway.

He started to turn away -- and to his great startlement, found magic gripping and lifting him. For a moment of panic he thought to snap away, but his powers were suppressed here, too weak for teleportation... and Twilight was smiling at him. It wasn't a malicious smile or a giddy smile or a crafty smile, just a happy smile. This didn't look like a prank or an attack.

She lowered him into the group, and he was overwhelmed. She had known how he was feeling. And, more importantly, she'd cared. Swiftly he stretched his arms out -- he had enough magic for that -- so he could encompass all six of the ponies, and hugged them. And against all reason, they smiled at him.

The moment passed, the flood of happiness and tenderness receding enough to let him realize he was on the verge of tears, and he was behaving in a ludicrously sappy way, and he couldn't allow this. All well and good to have friendship, to truly feel it, but he was still Discord. He looked around him and feigned sudden outrage. "Wait a minute, where's my throne?!"

He regretted it the moment he said it. It was supposed to be funny, but after all that had happened today, for a split second he was afraid that they were going to take him seriously. He should have picked some other joke to make.

But Fluttershy flew up to him, smiling broadly, obviously aware it was a joke, and delivered the world's cutest smackdown. "I don't think you're quite there yet," she said, teasingly.

Discord chuckled, slightly embarrassed. It wasn't often that he ever felt a joke to be inappropriate for the moment, but it was embarrassing on the rare occasions when it happened. "Yes, well, I suppose not," he said, covering for himself with a grin.

As Pinkie made arrangements for what she was declaring to be "the most stupenderrific welcome-to-Twilight's-new-castle party Ponyville has ever SEEN", and drafted the others, including the mare of the hour, to help her with the preparations, Celestia called Discord aside, into a private chamber she had found. "I've talked with the Bearers, and you know that I have also consulted Spike, Cadance and Luna."

His heart pounded. At least Luna wasn't here. If she was, he'd be fairly certain this was about to go very badly for him. Of course, the fact that she wasn't here didn't mean things were about to go well. "If you're going to turn me to stone or something, at least let me go to Pinkie's party. Please. She's asked me to help out..." He was trying to manage a light, humorous tone, but he wasn't so sure it was working.

"Nopony is going to turn you to stone," Celestia said. "Today."

"So in other words, make my spa appointment today so I'll look good for my petrification tomorrow?" he said dryly.

"No. In other words, you are getting one more chance. One. The Bearers agree that they believe you have sincerely learned a lesson, and since Spike and Cadance also concur, I am placing you on official probation. You are not to leave Ponyville unless you're accompanied by one of the Bearers, or a princess."

Discord blinked. "You do know I don't live in Ponyville, right?"

"You do now," Celestia said. "Pocket dimensions of chaos are not Ponyville; therefore, you're not to live there. You are to live among ponies, the same ponies you've harmed, and learn to get along with them."

He sighed. Well, this was basically a slap on the wrist, very much less than he deserved, so he should probably be happy about it, but he didn't actually have anywhere to live in Ponyville... he didn't even want to ask Fluttershy if he could crash at her place, not after today, and Celestia would probably not let him get away with declaring the Everfree to be essentially part of Ponyville. He supposed he'd sleep in Applejack's orchard or something; it would hardly be the first time he'd slept outdoors.

"Just out of curiosity, what happens if I screw this up again?"

Her eyes went very cold. "I'd strongly suggest that you don't do that," Celestia said. "As I said... one more chance."

So. If he messed this up again... petrification, death, or something else really unpleasant. Well. At least he knew. "All right," he said. "Under the circumstances, I suppose... I suppose that's more than fair." He lowered his head. "Thank you, Celestia."

She blinked at him. "For what?"

"For giving me one more chance. I... wasn't sure you would. I'm not... I'm not even sure you should." He looked at the floor. "I'll... I'll try to live up to it."

Without warning he felt her hooves wrap around him suddenly. Discord stared down at the rainbow-colored mane floating just below his head, and the alicorn inexplicably hugging him around the neck. "Celestia? What are you doing?"

She lifted her head and looked up at him. "You've never apologized. You've never acknowledged you ever did anything wrong. This is the first--" Her voice broke, and she leaned her head in against his neck again. "Please don't disappoint me again," she said softly. "I couldn't bear it."

"I... I'll try."

Celestia released him. "Well. You told Pinkie you would help her with the party preparations, and it's never a good idea to break a promise to Pinkie," she said. "Why don't you go do that. Luna and I will return to Canterlot, but we will be back to attend the party; we need to let the guard know all that's happened. Let Twilight know, please."

"All right."

Celestia vanished, and Discord wandered from the room, down the dim hallway, following the sounds of Pinkie mustering up a party. She'd never asked him to help out before. Maybe they were sincere. Maybe they did want him as part of them... as a friend.

The kitchen was full of bright lights, warmth, delicious smells, and busy mares (as well as a busy small dragon.) When he stood in the doorway, Pinkie, too busy using her mouth to hold baking utensils to actually say anything, waved at him wildly with a spatula in her hoof. Twilight apparently saw the moving spatula, followed the line of sight to find Discord in the doorway, and smiled at him. "Come on in! We could use the help!"

He grinned at her, and stepped through the doorway, into the warm light.

Author's Notes:

Yay! My first multi-chapter fic on FIMfiction that I can declare FINISHED! Woohoo!