Deep in the darkest cells of Canterlot...

Canterlot had depths. Beneath those it had more depths. Deep, dark dungeons where ponies - and one pony in particular - thought that things were safe, where they would never come to light if they were left there to rot.

Deep in the very deepest, darkest depths of Canterlot, in a cell filled with empty chains covered in wards that had proved useless and lined with warding runes and other spells etched into the rock that were utterly pointless, there sat a being. For the longest time he had been a God, or considered himself one. The truth was a little bit more complicated than that but it was essentially accurate. He was all but omnipotent, all but omniscient. He was not omnibenevolent - in truth, rather the opposite, or at least he could be rather the opposite if he felt like it - but then again, he had never considered being omnibenevolent to be a key factor in deciding whether one was a God or not. Really, it was more a case of deciding what kind of God you happened to be. Of course, he had turned out to be rather an impotent one, but... no. No. No point dwelling on what might have been and what definitely was not.

His name - well, his name was unpronounceable by any tongue devised by any mortal. Among his own kind he was most often called "Q", albeit only because they all were and really, that was only the mortal translation for ideas that were beyond mere naming conventions. Nonetheless, it was the name he had taken for when he was amongst the human race (which was surprisingly often). Amongst the creatures of Equestria, however, he had a different name, and a different form: Discord, the Draconequus and self-proclaimed Lord of Chaos. Not that he was causing much chaos or doing much lording right now.

He wasn't trapped here. Oh, you wouldn’t think it to look at him - he was sat in the cell, apparently perfectly content, and despite the fact that he wasn’t bound in the chains that surrounded him, one could easily believe just from looking at him that he was unable to escape the tiny little room. The truth was… altogether different.

He was not trapped. He couldn't have been trapped anywhere, for though there were so many things in this omniverse that were "powerful" in many different ways, very few things were more powerful than him. Even being stone was... well. Irrelevant for the most part. A diversion. Being trapped by those pesky Elements was irritating to be sure: it took a couple of millennia out of his life that he really would have rather spent doing something else, but at least it was only a couple of millennia - had it been a few million years… well, then he would have started getting… concerned. Or homicidal. Or omnicidal. He couldn’t have told you since it wasn’t an experience he had ever had and wasn’t one he ever wanted to have.

No… this was no imprisonment, no imposition on him from some external party (much as the pony who believed herself his captor would likely have told you otherwise). No, this was a self-imposed exile. He had deliberately chosen, under his own volition and by his own authority over himself (the only authority he had ever been inclined to recognise, small moments in his own personal history aside where others, more powerful than his captor, had brought him to heel).

After all, why shouldn’t he stay here? It was nice. It was quiet. Absolutely quiet. Nothing going wrong in here. No maniacs. No insanity. No death writ large. Why would he want to step outside the boundaries of this place? Why should he ever go beyond the walls of this prison when...

He sighed as the thoughts crossed his mind. Why should he ever leave here, when the horrors out there were so terrible that even his mind was left reeling at the sheer insanity of it all?

Not, of course, that he could truly have done anything about it had he decided not to remain here. There were some powers that were beyond even him, and that terrified him. That terror didn't really justify his inaction (or at least he was certain an old acquaintance of his who was very fond of making long, boring moral speeches would have said that it didn’t), but…

But though he was not held prisoner by the chains his supposed ‘captor’ had placed around the stone body, though he had forced his way from them after being saturated with more dark chaos energy than he thought he had ever felt in Equestria… he knew full well that if he had decided to go up against Princess Celestia, or rather Empress Solamina, the thing that had taken her place, he would have failed. There was more power within her than that which Celestia had laid claim to as an Alicorn Princess, and he knew exactly where it had come from… and that thought terrified him.

They could have done something, he supposed. Maybe. Truthfully, Discord didn’t know if They were powerful enough to take on that creature, but they could have done something - saved the humans. Stopped the Barrier. Had another interminable, boring meeting about how wrong it all was and yes of course they should do something about it…

Ha. Yeah, right. They never would.

He could go out of here, he supposed - flee to the other end of the galaxy, avoid all of this mess entirely, maybe have fun with some of his old test-things like he used to, or maybe side-step into a dimension where none of this ridiculousness was ever going to happen and never had (he had often spent time in one such dimension, a long time ago). But… no. No, he couldn’t do that, either.

As much as he could flee to the ends of the universe (and then to the ends of the one after it), the problem with omniscience was that one knew intimately about almost everything. Worse still… the problem with him was that he couldn’t very well ignore something he had - well, not “seen”, but been within such close proximity of. He couldn’t make himself forget it. Well, he could... but somehow, he felt that such a forgetting would be an insult to the memory of those who had suffered and died and, while he was not normally one to care for what he had once termed “lesser beings”... this… this insanity was on a different scale. It deserved to be remembered.

So he was left here, unable and unwilling to act against the thing and unwilling to simply leave. He could feel every iota of the hatred and terror out there... and at the same time, he didn't want to.

"It seems horribly dull down here," a new voice spoke suddenly. It sounded so horribly familiar to him that for a moment he thought it was one of Them, before he realised that They wouldn't dare to come here and risk provoking the thing. And the voice was too familiar.

A moment later, an identical Draconequus was standing in front of him, the same snaggle-toothed grin he had created and perfected himself beaming back at him.

"Hello," he said quietly, the grin not wavering. "How are you?"

Discord frowned at once at this being, knowing who he was as soon as he laid eyes on him - he was an alternative version of himself from another part of the multiverse, a parallel Q - or parallel Discord, given the form he had chosen to wear. Such things were... frowned upon, to say the least.

"You shouldn't be here," he said quickly. "They..."

"They wouldn't come with two billion light years of this place," the other him said at once. "You know that."

There was a pause as Discord accepted his alternate's point with a surly nod.

"So," the alternative Discord said, snapping his fingers and morphing into another of Discord's old forms. "What's up with the new place? Not exactly our style."

Discord was speechless, observing his alternate's form with a wide eyed expression of shock. It had been, for him, many years since he had taken the tall, vaguely handsome human form, and many more years since he had worn the red uniform with the black shoulders. He frowned.

"I can't just leave," he said simply. "And I can't interfere. They'd have my hide if I tried."

"You're so certain?" his alternate asked, the human eyes piercing him.

"Why wouldn't They?" Discord asked. "They were always so eager to stop me from interfering when it was just playing around with humans on one small ship. Why would helping the entire species somehow escape their notice?"

"Maybe because you and I both know this isn't how things are meant to be?" his alternate pointed out. "This is..."

"Don't try the 'this is a corruption of history' idea," Discord scowled. "They'll throw that one out as soon as look at me - or rather, as soon as look at you. 'Everything is meant to happen! it's just a matter of where you're standing', They'll say."

"Well then," his alternate said, "why not just leave? You don't owe the humans anything, and the ponies haven't gotten round to being anything more than an annoyance for you."

"What, and they're more to you?" Discord asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Believe it or not, they actually tried 'reforming' me," his alternate said with an amused expression. "Not that I really needed 'reforming' - the entire idea that we were downright 'evil' is ridiculous, but you know Celly could never stand to have a little fun..."

Discord scowled again at the mention of Celestia, but his alternate ignored it.

"... and believe it or not, Fluttershy of all ponies tried her darndest to actually be our friend," the other him finished with a wistful smile. "She truly surprised me, you know."

"Well she's not likely to do that here," Discord said sullenly. "Being as she has been decapitated and all. That tends to put a damper on any budding friendships."

"There are other ponies."

"I want nothing to do with ponies!" he snapped. "Never again. Not after this travesty."

"They're not all supporting the... thing, you know."

"They're not stopping it either."

"Perhaps," his alternate said with a shrug. "In any case, you owe the ponies nothing, you owe the humans nothing, so why stay?"

"Would you leave?" Discord asked simply. His alternate didn't answer. "Exactly."

"But you won't act."

"What would I do?"

"What could you do?"

Discord blinked at that. 'What could you do?' It seemed a simple question, and yet there was a lot behind that question that Discord could sense. The question wasn't just a question of what action he could take - it was a question of what he was willing to do, what he was able to do, what he could do that might actually help.

"I don't know," he said honestly. It was an admission he would only ever make to himself, fortunately, he was only admitting it to himself.

"Then look," his alternate suggested with a slight smile.

And so he did.

He saw what he had expected to see. He saw the humans slaughtered, he saw the so-called Equestrian Resistance battling alongside them but unable to win. He saw their Avatar - the battle between him and Pinkie Pie. The death of Captain Shining Armour.

And then he saw something else... a yellow Earth Pony who wasn't really an Earth Pony.

"Is that pony actually trying to create an interdimensional portal?" he asked, eyes wide.

"I don't know, is he?" his alternate asked.

But Discord had already realised what was happening. "They'll send him to Equestria, and he won't be able to do a thing to stop Solamina, will he?"

The question was rhetorical and his alternate knew it. Discord knew he shouldn't make any rash choices, but...

"Ah, the hell with it," he said, snapping his fingers.

He felt the portal open: he felt the flow of the between-spaces as the link was formed. It was a roundabout way of going about things, a risky and dangerous thing. No one would question it when it went wrong.

And maybe, Discord hoped, the human Avatar could get some help from a rather... unexpected source.

A moment later, it was done. Discord turned and grinned at his alternate.

"You knew that was going to happen," he said with a slightly wry grin.

"Well," his alternate replied smugly. "From my own perspective, it already did."

A moment later, the alternative-Discord disappeared, leaving Discord smiling on his own in the cell. It was quiet down here. He liked it. But he get the feeling that maybe - just maybe - he wouldn't have to stay in here much longer.