-A Change of Pace-

Gunfire and shouts filled the air in the distance, the flashes of light peppered out in suppressive fire in the dark trees. A fire had broken out in that direction, the smoke curled away into the snowy night sky. The bare winter trees howled and bowed under the weight of snow and shuddering as stray bullets pelted them.

A solitary grey speckled wolf fled through the deep snow, he glided over it on his wide paws and left a spray of snow in his wake. The bag wrapped around his neck made it difficult to breath, but clouds of steam billowed forth forcefully nonetheless. A ragged bullet wound bloodied his chest and left the smallest trail of red against insistent white.

The wolf knew that the gunmen could continue to litter the forest with bullets until they found him, if the footmen didn’t find him the trucks would supply them until they did. It would be the wolf’s last chance to flee them, hopefully for good this time. They’d chased him across the world and back, caught him more than once, but this time he would go where they could not follow.

The wolf could see the clearing he was looking for through the trees, the throb in his head grew all the more insistent the closer he got. He lept through the trees and willed himself to stand tall again. He took only a few moments to wrestle the bag from around his neck as his spine spasmed and he was able to stand fully once again. He was suddenly very cold, his fur fell away as he changed.

A muscled man stumbled into the clearing, naked save for the bag that he held close to the long scrape across his scarred chest. The brass rings around his arm glinted in the moonlight of the clearing and sweat glistened in his grey speckled hair. He panted as he examined the clearing, the throb behind his eyes confirmed it was in fact where he was supposed to be.

This place was far separated from its surroundings, nothing grew here and no snow had fallen within its borders. In its center an abnormally flat slab of stone sat smugly, covered in a fine layer of topsoil, too level and symmetrical for it to be natural. But what truly set it apart were the five crumbled pillars set evenly around the stone slab; each depicted a faded figure who stared infinitely toward the slab.

He flinched, clasped his head in his hands and growling, “Shut up!” He dropped the bag onto the bare earth and rummaged through the few items he owned until his hand found the severed pommel of an ancient sword. It was deceptively heavy in his hand, despite being no bigger than a doorknob. Only a single marking decorated the bottom of it, an old rune, while the other side was the jagged end where the hilt had once been.

He stumbled quickly to each pillar as he donned the bag over his shoulder and wiped a smear of his thick blood from the wound on his chest onto the face of each figure: A stag, whose horns surrounded his head in an intricate halo; three unicorns, two with wings that cupped their manes and one with a horn that stretched up the highest pillar; and finally a pegasus whose wings splayed back around the entire pillar.

When he was done, he stood before the stone slab. With one last look at the unseemly heavy pommel, he threw it in a tall arc over the center of the slab and listened to the throb in his skull all the while.

The pommel, as was its nature, did exactly as the man had not expected: it stopped. The pommel’s momentum was suddenly halted, hung impossibly in the air over the stone. The sound of gunfire and of men and their shouts abruptly stopped, and he was no longer alone in the clearing.

Standing behind each pillar, staring over its ruined remains, were the figures depicted on each. A noble stag stood resolutely at the opposite side of the stone circle, his crown of bones stretched skyward all around him. Two mares stood imposingly behind their own pillars on either side of the stag, horns held high and wings spread majestically. Closest to the man was the pegasus and the unicorn, each holding their respective features as if they would strike with them.

Five points of a star, five parts of a whole. And every one of them had their eyes aimed squarly at the man in the clearing. These were not creatures of the flesh, this world’s reality did not apply to them. These were spirits, fae, Guardians at the Gate.

The man stood completely still, the only sign that he hadn’t been instantly turned to stone were the clouds of vapor that steadily billowed out of his nose. The stag lifted its head, giving the man a decisive glare of warning. He only clenched his fists, leaned forward, and took the first step onto the stone slab.

The soil flowed away from his foot as it fell and rolled off the stone like water. The guardians reacted instantly, their stares intensifying. They began to sing as he slowly walked toward the pommel, their voices nearly halted him.

Their voices flowed seamlessly together in perfect symphony, beautiful and ominous all at once. Below every ancient word was a tone of warning, one that spoke to his bones and urged him to turn away. The man had to fight for every step to reach the center where the pommel stood, the dirt and dust cleared from the stone with each footfall to reveal the tiny carvings all across its surface.

He lifted his hand, held it over the pommel as if were to strike it from the air. The spirits paused and watched carefully. His arm fell atop the pommel like a hammerstrike, and the spirits’ sang with renewed and dangerous vigour. The man flinched, a wave of pressure descended upon him from their words. He shook visibly under their verbal assault, and fought to keep from being flattened to the ground by their will alone.

The pommel glowed with harsh golden light that dripped like water to flow through the carvings at the man’s feet. The spirits sung all the louder, their voices wailing and saddening. Sometimes it was a sirens song, and in the next instant it was a psalm that bore crippling grief into his soul. He watched the light desperately as it agonizingly slowly stretched across the entire surface of the stone, eventually building up underneath the pommel.

Painfully slowly, the blade of a sword began to form at his feet. It crawled upwards to meet the pommel. Again the spirits doubled their efforts, tossing their heads and wailing out those ancient words that held a meaning beyond language. The man’s hand twisted as the guard of the blade haltingly filled out, a wave of the spirits’ own power slipping off of him and striking one of the stag’s legs. It tumbled and the pressure around the man suddenly fell. His hand shot up to where the hilt was just coming into being.

The spirits’ singing suddenly rose, panicked. The force returned in full upon him, slammed down on the entirety of the slab and cracked it explosively down the middle. The man lifted on the sword the moment the hilt of light connected with the pommel, muscle rippled as he pulled with all his might even as the buck rejoined the singing.

With one final note of protest from the spirits, the man pulled the sword free from the grip of the slab. With a sound like ripping paper he pointed the spectral blade to the sky. In a flash of light intense enough to throw the entire forest into daylight again, he was gone.

The clearing was empty when the men in uniforms flooded out of the trees to look around the strange clearing in confusion. All that was there were some old pillars, and a dirt covered slab of rock. The snow slowly fell for the first time into the timeless grove.

From here, the world spread out below like a map- or an intricate, delicate toy. One that was often distastefully peaceful in the eyes of the creature that looked down at it now.

He smiled his jagged, lopsided smile, the one that he’d groomed over the millenium spent on this mudball. The foolish creatures that wallowed below had thought he was captured again, but they were so blissfully, deliciously wrong. Not even Luna and her all seeing dreamscape could find him, here he could pull his puppet’s strings unmolested.

But something suddenly broke the intense silence all around him, a chaotic shift in the balance of the world that called to him like a sweet wine. He turned to examine it and watched as cosmos shifted and another, abandoned bubble of dirt stretched toward this one. He hummed thoughtfully as he watched, fascinated. His yellowed eyes grew wider with his smile as he recognised the creature that rode the wave of power.

“Twinkle twinkle, little star,” he sang in his mocking voice, a fantastically constructed tone that he’d perfected over centuries just for his precious sister. “How I wonder what you are,” he flexed his eagles claw hungrily and reached out toward the northbound ball of energy. “Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky-” the stretch was about to reach its limit, he could see the fabrics of the world as they lost their hold on the bundle of arcane power, “-How I wonder who … you … ARE.”

The claw shot out as the equilibrium was overcome, snatching the tiny ball of power before it could dart to its intended destination in the world. He cackled merrily as he tossed the creature between his paw and his claw, deliciously chaotic thoughts bursting forth at this new plaything’s presence. He paused, the creature struggled and warped violently in his claws, ready to take on its more violent, true form.

He smiled devilishly, he knew exactly what to do with a rare creature such as this. It would be the perfect thing to spice up dreary old Canterlot, and he’d always hated his statue in the garden anyway.

Discord donned a pitcher’s uniform with a thought, wound up his claw as if it were a spring and sent the hurled the creature through the atmosphere toward the mountain city. He laughed merrily to himself at the thought of the intricate and even subtle chaos he had just set into motion, it would be beautifully distracting. Hopefully for an extended period of time.

“Oh,” he giggled in pure mirth as he fell into a theater chair and called forth a bucket of popcorn with extra butter that was more akin to a bowl of yellowed teeth. “This is going to be interesting.”

For Luna, if not for her meals with her sister and her night courts, her nights would all be exactly the same. Though her schedule was often considered strange or backwards to what is expected, she spent much of her free time as most nobles and intellectuals do: reading. She entertained herself by learning of new discoveries magical, historical, geographic and scientific, and studying the ones that intrigued her.

Though often her reading was extremely interesting, it was often dull and repetitive a schedule. Far too often she found herself comparing today’s Equestria with the war-torn and struggle filled past, not that she regretted how far the peace that she and her sister had sought for so long was so nearly complete.

But how could tax petitions compare to threats of Gryphon insurgents at the borders, or Diamond-Dog raids in mountain villages? How could the intricacies of politics compare to the raw power and grace of single combat, or the modern festivities compare to a tournament and its melees? Sometimes it seemed that no matter what intricacy or importance was involved, it couldn’t.

She often debated the values of this current era with the one she was familiar with on long nights when she was alone, such as this one. Her tower in the Lunar Wing of Canterlot Castle was often abandoned in the light of day, though at this hour late in the night her own ponies brought it back to life. From here in her seat upon her balcony she could see the dew dappled gardens and the city that hung on the mountain below her.

She looked over her stars, as she did most every night. She did it so often and with such frequency she had begun to feel the days and weeks blending together, a not uncommon feeling for somepony as old as she was. But for some reason this night felt different, a feeling she could not shake away.

She recalled the weather schedule with narrowed eyes, her regal wings tested the air. Too warm by her reckoning, and far too still if the pegasus teams were as capable as had been impressed upon her. She could make out the dark, silver lined absences of stars where clouds lay in rebellion to the clear skies on the schedule.

Bad portents when the earth and its weather pressed its superiority upon them.

But rather than feel threatened, Luna felt almost exhilarated. It was a break to the hungry pattern that had swallowed her, and she felt prepared to embrace it. Whatever this turn of events brought, if it should come and she had no doubts that it would, it promised to be extremely interesting.

She felt it build rapidly in the air, the tension around her turned to a palpable tingle of magic. It built until she could quite clearly feel in what direction the disturbance had come from, almost directly South of Canterlot.

And then it was there, an explosion across the sky in a streak of brilliant white fire. It curved out from the clouds, a ball of fire on an unnaturally shallow arc toward the hanging city. Luna eyed it carefully and admired the gentle and graceful movement of it. With a thought, her magic reached out and attempted to halt it but found that she could not keep a grip on it.

It was with widening eyes that Luna realized that this ‘meteor’ would not be swayed so easily as the shooting stars she so often herded. She squared her stance, put more and more power and concentration into taking hold of the projectile. Once she was able to grasp it through brute force, she was able to recognise the missile for what it was: alive.

She nearly lost it again when she realized it was not in fact a fiery ball of cosmic rock, it was someone or something that had lost control in a disastrous way. She wrestled with it, able to just slow its path as she contemplated what could possibly have caused such a brilliant display.

Could it be an injured dragon? No, there was too much momentum and it was too small. A pony perhaps? But what stunt could have possibly produced the condensed cone of slippery magic such as this?

Luna grunted, feeling her hooves sliding along the marble floor of the balcony as her magic slowly brought down the speed of the creature. She couldn’t stop it outright, the force of the stop could kill whoever was within. She would have to steer it into a controlled crash.

She didn’t have time to consider all of the options she might have, the ball of fire was too close now. She simply had to hope that the emergency personnel would be prepared to respond appropriately.

It rocketed past her with a wave of heat and sound and snapped her head back as her tether of magic continued to try to slow it. Through the whiplash she heard it hit the ground and tear through earth and sod.

She turned to look only to see smoke rise and debris fly away from the maze gardens. She bolted out of her study and barked orders at Lunar Guards as she passed. “EMERGENCY WITHIN THE GARDENS! CLOSE OFF THE PALACE GROUNDS!” she bellowed as she tore down the stairs. Her Lunar Guard of Thestral ponies jumped into action, all with a flinch into motion at the intensity and volume of her voice.

A group of Thestrals formed around her as she made her way through the Palace. A General at her side threw a glance her way, his throat worked underneath his gorget.

“If it is of your opinion that this is a matter my Sister should be aware of, then yes. Wake her and bring her to me posthaste!” Luna answered quickly, never breaking stride. The General broke away without any other word to her. Luna and her entourage raced through the castle, rousing as many ponies to help as they could on the way, until they finally made it to the doors leading to the gardens.

When she emerged onto the large decorative patio there were already firemares on the scene, barely able to hold back the fires that raged in the hedges away from the palace. It stank of old, broken magic. Everything was covered in smoking sod, every statue bench and decoration had been damaged. Luna looked out at it and cursed under her breath in a desperate hope that the crash hadn’t hurt anypony.

“Luna!” Celestia’s voice whipped through the air, quickly followed by the sound of hooves as they hit the ground hard. Celestia’s landing was rushed, she didn’t even have her regalia on. “What happened?” she asked immediately, looking out at the state of the maze gardens in shock.

“We think that somepony has crashed, disastrously so,” Luna explained.

“That was a crash?” she asked in disbelief and once again took in the fire and sod that had spread everywhere.

“We know little, but whomever was within that fireball was alive,” Luna confirmed. She jumped into motion as Celestia took a determined expression and started to walk toward the epicenter of the destruction.

They didn’t bother to follow what was left of the mazes, their magic bent away the hedges that were left until they could simply follow the destruction. The fires shied away from them, the Sisters’ natures let them counteract the fires with just their presences. The ground was horribly decimated, sod and the underlying soil was churned away and scorched by magical fire.

“There!” Luna shouted as she broke into a trot. The trail of destruction ended suddenly at an oblong crater, the furthest end hidden under a pile of rubble and debris. An abandoned satchel lay in its own crater atop the pile, mostly unharmed, but it was further evidence that it was indeed a pony that had fallen.

Celestia’s magic began to pull at the rubble on top of the pile. “They must have been buried!” she huffed as she lifted away huge clods of dirt and chunks of broken statues.

Luna joined her, her magic lifted away large portions of the pile. It only took a few minutes for any guards or emergency ponies to catch up to them and join in the search. After a few minutes more, somepony called out:

“Here!” a guard yelled as she started to dig with a renewed vigor. Luna was at her side in an instant to clear away dirt with a magical wind. In only a moment she could see thick grey fur, but as soon as its owner was revealed Luna and the guard were ripped away by a cloud of golden magic.

“Stand back!” Celestia bellowed, magical fire leapt along the long length of her horn. The other guards and personnel nearby reacted instantly, they jumped back and brought whatever weapons they had to bear. Luna and the guard were roughly dropped onto the hot earth behind Celestia, but the Solar alicorn barely noticed. There was a strange twitch to her ears.

Luna was on her hooves again instantly, she sputtered as she stared at the thing laying in the dirt in front of them. “That isn’t-”

“It is.” Celestia’s gaze never once wavered from the furry shoulders poking out of the rubble. “Come, we need both of us to destroy it,” she said, her voice shook with fear.

“Wait, we have not seen one of them in thousands of years!” Luna protested, a look of incredulity aimed at her sister.

“Its existence is dangerous.”

“Its young, and alone.”

“One was too many!”

“We’ve witnessed nothing but an accident tonight, it would be-”

“Did you forget?” Celestia whirled suddenly on her sister, a wild fury in her eyes. “The fires? The rivers of blood? What about the screams in the night as ponies were slaughtered?” Celestia’s voice shook dramatically now, enough that the guards gathered around could notice it. “Their sins are written in blood and bone and cannot be erased.”

Luna couldn’t believe the harshness of the words that came from her sister, they were incredibly unlike her. Luna’s face hardened into a grimace. “It was not so long ago that We had the same thoughts,” she said as she fought off tears, “about Ourself.”

That was able to knock Celestia back. “What would be done with it, then?” Celestia finally settled to say, though it seemed she struggled to find the clarity to do so.

“We understand your concerns, but let Us take care of it,” Luna said, her last attempt to appeal to Celestia. “Please, dear Sister. Let Us help it,” she said as she sidestepped around Celestia carefully.

A large white wing cut off Luna’s path with a loud snap. “No!” she barked as she stepped in Luna’s way protectively. “You are not to touch it, let the guards take it.” Her eyes shifted to the few well armed ponies around them nervously. “And keep it in the Goloid Cage.”

“That’s unkind,” Luna protested, but Celestia only shook her head.

“Kinder than letting it run wild through the streets.”

Author's Notes:

So it begins (again). A quick explanation: this is not a spur of the moment decision. I have been seething over how badly I wrote the original story for almost half a year and have been working on the rewrite for awhile (I already have five chapters written). But, I really did enjoy writing the first story, and now I have a better idea of what needs to be in the story and what doesn't and how to do it. The characters are being fine tuned, loopholes stitched shut, and various shit scraped away and replaced with proper developements. Also, if you may have noticed, nothings gonna just pop out of the blue: I know my protagonists and my antagonists, I know who betrays and who remains loyal, who fucks up and who gets fucked up. I'll be introducing the conflicts BEFORE they actually happen at varying levels of subtlety.

Several parts will be expanded on and the pace will be better monitored, so expect new scenes but no story breaking revelations. Discord is getting more evil and badass, and more will be revealed of his and the planet's origins.

Only good can come from this, not evil, I promise. And though I know I promised to finish version 1, the fact is that now that I've started this rewrite I simply don't have the drive to finish it anymore.

Also, Goloid is a gold-silver alloy, often called white gold.