At night she could still hear the steady clank of the chains as they rattled against the other, the constant drip from above that she foolishly thought was from some unseen leak high up in the rock ceiling. Everything was so quiet that day. Everything so still. The moment she set hoof in that dark and dingy place those delicate noises found her. She almost wished she never went to his cell, only heard what had happened through the words of others.

He never had a chance, she thought dourly. None of them had a chance.

Discord had been pacing outside her large throne room for several minutes already, mumbling behind closed doors while shuffling back and forth. She would give him as much time as he needed. He had been patient with her, as well.

Knock-knock-knock.

A hesitant rap on the door.

Since Discord had never been the type to knock and wait for admission, she only shut her eyes and slowed her breathing. He was going to make this hard, she knew. He was going to make this as hard as he could.

“Yes?” she finally asked the empty room, her voice echoing briefly in its emptiness.

“It’s me, Celestia,” Discord told her closed door. “I’d really like to talk to you, if you have a moment.”

She shut her eyes again.

As hard as he can, she repeated inside.

“Come in.”

A single one of her gold and white doors pushed inward and something baring the resemblance of Discord walked through. His long neck held his head closer to the ground than usual; his heavily darkened and lined eyes had sunken more so since the last time she’d seen him. He viewed the floor as he moved towards her throne, his jaw wordlessly working away on sentences that never bothered to take off or start.

Only once at the head of her marble steps did he stop and stare at her, both of his eyes bloodshot and already shimmering with tears. He hitched in a quick breath and curled up both hands.

“You need to help me, Celestia,” he told her thickly, all while some faint quiver touched the edges of each word. “You need to help me before it gets me.” He tightened his jaw. “It’s your duty as Princess to help those that are asking for assistance and now that is what I am doing!”

His last statement reverberated richly off the tall walls. She knew he was trying to be brave—she knew he was trying to be so much right then—but a creature of exaggerated movements and expressions as wide as his could rarely stay invisible for long.

With a hard lump in her throat, Celestia viewed the frightened draconequus and said to him the only thing that she rightfully could.

“I’m sorry, Discord, but I can’t. Not this time. There is still too much we don’t know about it.”

Feeling as cold as ice, Celestia could only watch as the tall Spirit of Chaos broke down into sobs on the floor.

It all came to light a year ago when both Princesses were hastily summoned to Tartarus. The message that had been sent to them was thin on detail but thick on urgency. Together they had gone and with bated breath awaited the news of one of their old foes busily laying havoc to their land. This was sadly not the case, as not a single one of Tartarus’ inmates had made it out of its walls.

Even its guardian, Cerberus, had been found near its entrance, its body broken and tossed against a wall hard enough to crack rock and break the poor thing to pieces.

Celestia had thought she had seen the worst when she first stepped hoof in there, but upon discovering the open cell of Tirek, she found she could suddenly hear her heartbeat clearly in her ears.

The thick bars that had made up his cell had been crumpled to allow access to something much larger than any pony. The chains that held the frail Tirek’s arms and legs still adhered tight to their shackles along the bars, as did the severed limbs still inside them.

The rock floor was a wash of red and Celestia dared not enter much deeper for fear of fainting where she stood. What remained of Tirek laid at its very center, his face horrifically locked in death’s embrace as he forever screamed a voiceless cry.

He had been ripped apart and had no way of defending himself. The rest of Tartarus’ inmates appeared close to the same. It was only upon exiting a few minutes later that Celestia made note of the small craters of shattered rock that led from the entrance of the place to the small islands of cells.

Something monstrous had laid waste to each of them as easily as tearing wings from a fly.

The next such grave find came only a week later, when some adventurous sort happened by a decimated field surrounded by the corpses of hundreds of insect-like beings. Even with that brief description Celestia had known what had happened.

The location of the Changling hive had always eluded her and truly she never sought it out with much contempt. Queen Chrysalis liked to trick and to steal the very essence of love from other beings, but that didn’t make her as much a notorious threat as others. But like the fate of Tirek, the same had been done to her and her entire army of like-minded drones.

Thousands, she contemplated on that dismal day, possibly more. Ripped from this life without pause or care.

Those same circled steps in the ground; cracking rocks and earth and destroying all that lay underneath. Yet still the monster evaded her. Anyone that had glimpsed its sight had been done away with and forever silenced.

A few weeks following the onslaught of an entire race came the news of a small crater some miles from the reaches of the Crystal Empire. A patch of land had been blackened and decimated until nothing but ash remained. Speaking with Princess Cadence soon after, they came to the hollow conclusion that some remains of King Sombra might have been tossed aside during his defeat. He could have been nothing more than a chunk of bone and yet the hulking creature had laid waste to him as well. It seemed every last bit of him needed to be ground to dust.

And now a pattern emerged.

“Find me Discord,” she had told her guards once back in Canterlot. “It is of the gravest of urgencies, so make haste.”

She should have known better than to utter his name and not expect a direct reply.

“You rang, Tia?” a bodiless voice questioned the room happily.

“We need to talk, Discord,” she shouted back.

From a stained-glass window the draconequus slithered out, arms crossed over his chest and a hidden smirk already waiting to make its debut.

“You’re right, we do,” he said. “I think your Elements of Harmony are going a little too hard on your enemies these days. Sure, they should be beaten systematically every few months just to be put back in their place, but now you’re just going overboard. I mean, come on! What did Sombra even do? Not dead enough for you!” He exhaled roughly. “And here I thought I was cold sometimes…”

Celestia felt a vein in her temple. “I had nothing to do with what befell my enemies. To even slight me like that is an injustice. And in no regard do I believe the Elements of Harmony to have had a single thing to do with those ghastly murders.” She swallowed dryly. “But since you’re here, now is a good time to talk.”

“About what?” Discord shot back, in the midst of changing the colors of the carpets to pink and orange polka dots. “You want to add me to your clean up crew? No thanks, Tia. Moping up the rotting guts of Equestria’s most wanted doesn’t exactly sound like the best way to spend a long weekend.”

Celestia tightened her jaw and honestly contemplated going through with what she wanted to speak with him about. But she should have been used to his banter by then—the pair had history, more history than most beings in existence.

She eventually said evenly, “I want to put you under the protection of the Royal Guard. I want you to stay here in Canterlot under supervision until we can figure out who—or what—is doing this to certain parties.” She paused. “It’s only for your own good, Discord.”

He finally turned away from his sickening color pallet choices. “Why would I ever stay cooped up in one location? You trying to start something again, Princess?” He raised a curious brow. “My dance card might be empty but that doesn’t mean I’m still looking to tango.”

I should have left him to the wolves, she told herself.

He deserves better, she reminded the rest of her.

She started slowly, “This unknown… thing… has laid claim to three of Equestria’s largest nemeses. Our… villains to cast them in a harsher light. We don’t know what it is but by the way it does away with its prey we can only surmise that it is far stronger than whatever it has faced so far. Somehow it knows just where each of these villains is, even while the rest of Equestria may not. It has taken out three of them in three weeks and I do not believe it is ready to stop just yet. Discord…”—she fixed her eyes to his mismatched set, each pupil shrinking by the tiniest of degrees—“…I believe your life is in very serious danger.”

Something hard entered the draconequus’ face as he sat on the ground; his head now level with hers. “But they were villains, Celestia. I’m not a villain anymore. You reformed me, remember?” He tried for a smile. “Sure, that Tirek thing was kinda’ bad, but we moved on from that. I’m a good guy now. Right?”

Celestia had to think for a moment. “I will agree that yes, you… seem to be on the path of good in the last little while, but whatever this thing is might not see it that way. If it knew of these villains and of their whereabouts, there is a good chance it would simply lump you with the rest of them. I’m sorry, Discord, but we need to take precautions now. As far as I can tell, you may be the last villain of worth in Equestria.”

Side to side Discord ground his teeth, his single fang escaping his tightly drawn upper lip. “So that’s just it? I sit and wait for you to protect me all because you suddenly view me as a villain again? That hurts, friend. But since we’re friends I guess I’ll forget it for the moment.” He got back to his hooves to stretch out his back. “If that’s the way you view me than I don’t want your help. I don’t need it either—I’m the Spirit of Chaos, for your sake! Unless it has an Elements of Harmony in its back pocket, I don’t think I have much to worry about.” He hovered his thin face towards her. “But do be careful cleaning up, Princess. I’d hate to see you stain your pretty, white coat with all that red.” He then snapped from the room.

For a long moment Celestia could only lean back in her hard seat, and wonder what type of monstrosity had somehow entered her land.

A little over eleven months had passed since that day and now that same draconequus that had scoffed as her little notion before was on his hands and knees near the steps of her throne. For the smallest of moments she wanted to console him—wrap him in a pair of legs and tell him everything was going to be fine, that everything was being handled as best as it could. But having known someone for thousands of years, Celestia knew he warranted something better.

No matter how bleak, Discord deserved the truth.

“We cannot interfere with what the creature is trying to accomplish, Discord.”

He spun his tearstained face to her. “You mean trying to kill me!”

She shuddered in her chair. “It is only doing what it must think is right. It wants to rid all of Equestria of villainy. It doesn’t care how it is done, but that seems to be its sole mission. It has worked its way down an unseen list and now you seem to be its next target, although you’ve evaded it far longer than most.”

“And you think that’s from lack of trying, Princess?” he spat at her. “For close to a year that thing has been hunting me. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop to rest. I need to look behind my head every few seconds just to make sure it’s not behind me.” He stopped for a second to listen to the silent room. When he heard nothing of worth he continued. “Every second I waste here is another step that thing takes in my direction. I can’t lose it, Princess! Everywhere I go it seems to know. Everything I do…” He took in a shaky breath. “Magic does not work on it, physical attacks do nothing to it, and it does not rest or stop or yield at all. It only continues on and destroys that which gets in its way. And now you are telling me you won’t help me!” He glared at her, eyes of red and yellow glowing like recently stirred fire. “I want the Elements, Celestia,” he said briskly. “I want them now. I want you to destroy this thing and I want to stop running away in fear of when it’ll catch me and tear me limb from limb like all the rest. I don’t know how it does it but it does. And now I want you to summon the Elements and defend me. You need to. You have you. Please Celestia, please! I want this to stop. I might be immortal but that does not mean I do not fear death, especially in the grasp of that metal behemoth.”

In silence the alicorn watched Discord’s little performance and couldn’t help but wonder about how little they had uncovered about the ‘being’ that had destroyed so much in such short time. After that first month—while three villains had been so forcefully removed from the world—Celestia had tasked the Wonderbolts to sweep every inch of the land for their creature of notoriety. It’s large, she told them. Its very steps break ground wherever it goes. They were not to try to stop it or interfere with it in any regard, only observe it from a distance.

Seventeen days later they found it steadily marching through a field, pummeling dirt below as each metallic limb came crashing down. It was bipedal in nature—a mammoth being of golden and bronze metals with the steady click of thousands of gears working away in the thickness of its hulking frame. Many of its ligaments were coated with patches of dirt and dried blood, leaving many to wonder if it had originally risen from the ground in search of its villains. To both sides of its torso were two immense arms with hooked claws at either ends. It must have been the instrument of its destruction, as it first found its prey before it broke it apart piece by piece.

The largest detail of all came from a series of smooth markings along the outside of its metal frame—a running set of red colored symbols that Celestia thought seemed oddly familiar. After a few closer inspections, she gave her findings to Princess Twilight for hasty decryption. What she uncovered sadly didn’t help to quell any unease.

In an ancient language it was written, far older than the Princess herself. In basic terms the small markings along the creature’s body meant “VILLAINY MUST NOT BE LEFT TO STAND”, repeated over and again along its humongous body.

Since then the facts of such a creature were scarcely knowledgeable at all. And what they did learn only came at a terrible price.

“You think what happened to that little blue magician was fair, Celestia? You think she deserved what happened to her?”

Discord was staring at her with wrath in both weary eyes, sucking in small batches of air down to his narrow chest.

“Or how about that one griffon or that one Wonderbolts cadet or that set of trades-ponies? Did they deserve the fate that slowly reached them? Would you have considered them villains? Villains that deserved to die in such a traumatic way?”

Along with the initial discovery of Tirek’s grotesque remains, the reminder of what had happened to each of those poor souls weighed heavily upon her. Those that had been near to them and tried to intervene had only met the same fate as the “villain” the creature of metal was after. Celestia had been glad Twilight and her friends had not been around a single one of them when it occured. They would have tried to help, of course they would, she thought. They would have tried and they would have—

“You need to stop this before it goes any further, Princess,” Discord warned. “Too many have died already. How long are you planning on sitting here and doing nothing?”

Celestia rubbed the leg rest on her chair. “The moment we interfere is the moment that ‘thing’ views us as a villain. The moment we help you or defend you changes how it sees us.”

“Then defeat it!” Discord screamed. “Use the Elements and destroy it!”

She found his burning eyes again. “And what if that’s not enough, Discord? So far no magic or blunt physical attack has swayed the creature in the slightest. What if we attack it with everything we have and it only continues down its list of villains? What if it then views all of Equestria as its villain, because we tried to destroy it? Such a thing could mark the end of everything… if we don’t proceed with care.”

A large chunk of rage seeped from the draconequus as he crumpled back to the floor. “So what then? Or are you only waiting for it to finish with me before trying something brash? Or do you think it will simply go away once it’s done with the ‘villains of worth?’”

She told him gently, “It might go away on its own, Discord. It might—”

“It’s been a year!” he roared. “A year of hiding and of being terrified every minute of every day! I’m sick of it! It’s not stopping, you fool, it’s only getting started. What do you think will happen once it’s done with me? Have you forgotten about your precious sister?”

“What does she have to do with anything?”

“Nightmare Moon,” he growled between clenched teeth. “If that thing still views me as a villain after everything that I’ve done then I have a pretty good notion that your little sister might just be next on its list. Is that when you’ll bust out the big stuff, Princess? When it’s blood relations and not just friends on the chopping block? That doesn’t seem like you.” He slithered a few steps up her tall chair, body bending to match each smooth curve in the steps. “And what happens once she’s done away with? Hmm? Maybe it’ll consider something you’ve done as villainous in nature. Maybe it’ll get so bad that a simple sneeze without acknowledgment will become all it takes for a painful death! No one is perfect in this world, Princess. If that ‘thing’ is only working down a list of severity then who is to say it’ll ever stop? Your world is already living in fear, Celestia. I’m living in fear, every second of every day.” His thin body swam closer to hers, his hurried breath warm on her body. “You need to make a decision before it’s too late, Celestia. You need to make a stand and stop quietly hoping it’ll all settle itself in due time.”

For a long while he stared into her eyes, trying to read what might lay underneath. She had had millennia to work on a composed expression so she gave him little to react to. It was only when a small rumble shook the room that most of the color left the tall draconequus’ face and his eyes began to water all over again.

Every few seconds the lights on each wall flickered on and off. The metallic grinding sound of spinning gears and unseen pistons rose with each heavy step on the ground.

It was coming.

“It’s found me again,” Discord whispered to her. “Please, Celestia.”

The alicorn finally had to look away from him. “You need to go, Discord. You do what you’ve been doing so far and we’ll come up with something, I promise. But too much is at risk if we continue without understanding what we’re dealing with first.”

“I’ve given you a year, Tia.”

“I know, but we need more—”

“I don’t want to live in fear anymore. I don’t want to run. If you will not help me today—right now—then that’ll be it. I will be torn to shreds and it’ll only move down its list.”

The thunderous sounds of metal and gears increased as a door inside the Canterlot castle was removed from its hinges with ease. Celestia only hoped none of her guards would try and delay its movements.

“Discord, please, you must go. I don’t want to see you die today.”

“Then help me.”

“I…” Celestia finally found his worn and weary face. The creature of jokes and chaos reduced to a shell of its former self. Now she was pressed with the hardest decision of her life. To help a friend and possibly doom them all, or let the unknown being have it way with him and hope that things would correct itself in time.

More tears left his reddened eyes. “If you will not help me then hold me, Tia. I’m sick of being hated everywhere I go because that ‘thing’ will only follow. I just want to feel wanted before I go.”

With an odd amount of ease Celestia wrapped both forelegs around the trembling draconequus, gripping him tight and fixing her gaze upon the shut door that led into the hall.

Each new mammoth step sent another item hung along the wall crashing to the floor. Every few seconds another door in the long corridor was thrashed to the side with little hesitation. Any moment now and it would find the villain it had been searching for. And this time he would let it finish its horrendous task.

A moment before it entered the room Celestia made her decision.

Perhaps some friends are worth dying for, she thought, as she held him close.

Author's Notes:

So this is probably one of the weirdest stories I ever thought about; one of those notions that finds you right before bed and seems to ask a hundred questions. There's no real "right" answer in this scenario. It's damn tricky stuff.
I was going to leave this more open-ended, with Celestia still thinking what which direction she'd go as the "It" marched into her room. But perhaps a slightly less bleak ending will do my soul some good.
See you next story.