The tense conversation between Twilight and I a few mere days ago should have pulled at each one of my thoughts like a hook. It was only when something that couldn’t reasonably be ignored came into view that I finally thought of something else.

I had been soaring in and out of clouds for close to a minute now, and had come to the conclusion that I was dreaming. No blackened wings miraculously flapped at my sides; no object or device allowed me such a sight. I was in the world of dreams and I was certain someone had created this for me. Created all of this for me.

It was nighttime and the moon was bright. A radiant light gave a haunting glow to each steadily drifting mound of cloud. The earth below was too far down to see, or make out a single speck. But that was all right. I knew I would not fall that night.

Someone was passing between the clouds—perhaps between the realms of dreams themselves. Someone I thought must be hiding for the sole purpose of being found. Was that a soft giggle in the breeze?

When I came awake the first thing I felt was something cold and something wet.

“Easy there, Sombra. You might fall in if you’re not careful.”

Spastically, I ripped the foreleg that had fallen in the water back to my chest; my eyes darting around, trying to adjust to where I’d been taken to.

What lay underneath me was not the soft and springy material of Fluttershy’s couch, but the hard wooden planks of some dingy brown rowboat. The only other occupant with me that night was the draconequus I had not glimpsed in several days. His two mismatched arms paddled two thin oars as our little vessel smoothly glided over the darkened waters. I tried to make out the nearest splotch of land or group of trees and came away with what might have been traces of fog. It must have been a very wide lake he had brought me to. Now I was only curious to know how deep its waters were.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked, the air drawn back into my lungs quickening in the smallest of degrees.

Discord paddled on as if none of this fazed him. “I wanted to talk, Sombra. You and I need to come to an agreement tonight, one way or another.”

“You could have waited until morning. Or, better yet, you could have forgone the kidnapping and instead stopped by for a chat.”

He giggled lightly as something as icy as the water surrounding us filled the bottom of my gut. “Kidnapping, Sombra? Is that what you’d call this? No. I don’t believe so. All I’ve done is taken you without your consent and placed you somewhere where you might… or might not want to be.”

I said thickly, “I believe that’s the definition of kidnapping.”

“Oh, you worry too much, Sombra ol’ chum! What could such a nice and gentle villain such as you possibly fear from the likes of me? Especially now that you’ve surrounded yourself with such good, forgiving friends!”

I was unnerved to watch the draconequus’ bizarre display. Craning his neck around to stare at the fresh waters we passed over, he tried to mask the deep bitterness that was causing his grin to crack around the corners. He was clearly trying his hardest to remain in control, even if every part of him was on the verge of becoming unhinged.

He turned to me abruptly. “Do you swim, perchance?”

I didn’t answer his question.

“That’s okay. We might not need to go down that road.”

A moment later he stopped rowing and let the paddles fall over the edges. I watched one disappear below the murky surface until it sank out from sight. The answer to my original question was deep. Very deep.

The draconequus rested his hands on his lap. “This should do. Right in the middle. A perfectly secluded spot for two friends to talk in peace. No one else need apply.”

I wanted to remind him about our lack of genuine friendship, but I thought it best to choose my words carefully over the next few moments.

I said, “Then say what you want to say and stop with your cryptic speeches. Your tricks never amused me to begin with.”

He smiled faintly. “All right, Sombra. How does this sound? I want you to go away. I want you to go away and never come back. I don’t care where you go and I don’t care how long you stay in that spot, I only want you gone from here.” He gritted his teeth. “You’ve… overstayed your welcome.”

“I thought you wanted me around?” I said. “I thought you saw me as some hard object to propel in the direction of others. ‘Chaos from a distance,’ as I think you called it.”

Discord’s many-lined face flipped into a scowl. His red and yellow eyes burned against the pitch black horizon like burning embers. “I know what I said, and believe you me, do I ever regret uttering each and every one of those words. You were supposed to fail and go away. You were supposed to grow tired of this place and travel somewhere else—some land away from my friends!”

Even in the face of such an unknowing threat, I somehow felt a modicum of pity for the creature. He was scared he would be swept aside when someone new joined his thin circle of friends. He had to know that had never been the idea.

“They are still your friends, Discord,” I told him carefully. “I only happen to be their friend as well. But that doesn’t mean we cannot all co-exist together.”

He stared out along the rippling water. “I would like to believe that. Really, I would. When I was first presented with the delicate art of friendship, I laughed at them. And then I laughed some more. It seemed silly and trivial to me. Useless. Something a creature like myself would never need. But I was wrong. And I’ve enjoyed my many visits with my friends, especially Fluttershy, as I’m sure you could tell.”

I added, “Then there’s no reason for that to end, Discord. I still don’t understand your hostility towards me.”

He continued as though he didn’t hear. “Fluttershy is the only one of them that invites me to spend time with her. The rest… I need to think of reasons for them to be with me.” He turned to me, clearly pained. “You know how much that hurts, Sombra? I say that they are my friends and they claim that they are mine, but do they really feel that way? Do they?”

“That’s because what you consider fun, they consider chaos. You shouldn’t need to trick your friends into being your friends.”

“But I know of no other way, Sombra. For my entire life, that’s all I’ve done. I am chaos, and I will remain as such. I only want my friends to enjoy it with me.”

“Where are we exactly?” I interrupted, in the small chance we were still close to Fluttershy’s.

“A lake,” he said plainly.

“Which lake?”

“The big one. But you’re getting me off track.”

Discord stood and turned his back to me, jostling the small boat until the edges dipped into the water. A few splashes fell inward to soak my resting legs.

“You’ve barely known my friends for over a week and already they consider you a better friend than I. They’ve invited you into their homes and to their places of work and over for dinner. Where was my invitation, Sombra? I was available. Of course I was. All I was doing during that time was study you from a distance. I had plenty of time!” He faced me again, once more rocking the boat. “You know what a crushing feeling that is? To know that your friends would rather spend their time with a dark beast that’s confessed to murder than someone that only wishes for a little chaos from time to time? It kills me.”

Placing a hoof on a seat, he lowered himself towards me. “To think that they consider you a better friend… I cannot allow that. That’s why you need to leave this place. What you’re doing is unfair and I won’t stand for it any longer. If you wish, take Twilight with you and do with her what you will. Here, I’ve already packed your bag for you.”

He snapped a large brown and sticker-covered suitcase to the middle of the boat. I had no idea what lay inside, although it appeared close to bursting.

I told him, “I don’t even wear clothes anymore.”

“That’s fine. This is full of train tickets and every other type of ticket to most destinations in the world. As well as a couple scarves, because you seemed like the type.”

He was right about the scarves, but I wasn’t about to let him know about such a thing.

I told him as delicately as I could, “I will not leave my friends, Discord. Not unless they want me to leave. At first, I considered them my key to Twilight Sparkle, but now that I’ve gotten to know them, I consider them much more than that.” I shook my head. “In no way do they consider me better than you, Discord. That is something that only you believe; an idea that you’ve created for yourself. They are still your friends, as long as you don’t do anything… irrational in the next little while.”

“Irrational?” he giggled out. “You think I plan on hurting you, Sombra? How could I? Now that you’ve got your powers back and all.”

“That’s right. I do, so—”

He was being sarcastic, wasn’t he?

I glared up and found my horn missing from my head. It was clearly something I should have noted earlier, yet that was during the time when the sudden sea of cold water to all sides of me demanded to be observed.

A renewed smile ate up Discord’s face. “How long have we known each other? A week? Two?”

“Close to six months.”

He waved it off. “Time sure does fly. That must make this our anniversary! And look, I brought you something!”

Discord snapped his bony fingers together and I felt something tight and metal roughly snap around my right back leg. I stared at the sudden gift and was not entirely taken aback to find a small anchor and chain attached to me, already digging in sharply.

“Perfect fit!” he trumpeted.

I glared at him with more anger than fear. “You plan on killing me tonight, dragon? Drowning me in this lake? I’ll have you know I am a near immortal!”

His eyes widened. “But there’s a large difference between immortal and near immortal, isn’t there?” He produced a bubbly guffaw. “And despite what others may have said of me, I do not kill, Sombra. I only cause well-orchestrated chaos and nothing more. And sometimes I place certain unnecessary individuals in places that may or may not be hazardous to their overall wellbeing.”

I said thickly, “I don’t want to get back into definitions with you, but that still sounds an awful lot like attempted murder… or something very near to it.”

Discord scrunched his lips into a pout. “And here it is that I got you a gift and all you can do is pooh pooh over everything. Maybe you’ve been right all along. Maybe we weren’t meant to be friends.” He lowered his head before quickly shooting back up, both arms raised over his head. “Oh no, Sombra! It looks like we’ve run out of gas!”

“This is a rowboat.”

He scratched his chin. “Did I say ‘gas’? I meant, we’ve sprung a leak! What a flimsy design this must have been! Every draconequus for themselves!”

Discord levitated into the air while I felt the first few inches of chilly water seep into the boat. I stood up abruptly and paced from side to side, unable to think coherently. As I almost overturned the boat with my hurried moves, I tried to find some bit of land I could potentially get to. Regretfully, I found not a single bit of earth in sight.

As the rising water made its way up my legs, I glared at the floating draconequus. He only appeared curious, given the grim situation he had placed me in.

“You really should have taken my offer,” he said, sounding close to bored.

I tried to stop my jaw from shaking. “You’re insane!”

“Well, duh!”

I peered around hastily one last time for some unseen savior. It was odd for a being such as me to be at the sudden mercy of someone else—to feel so helpless in the face of such vindictive power. That night, for what was the first time, I believe, I truly felt pity for what I had done to Sentry. What chance had he had against the likes of me? What chance did I have against the likes of Discord with no horn?

Well, I thought indifferently, if I’m going to die, I better make sure he remembers me.

I roared at him, “This will not be the end of me!”

He put a finger to his lips. “It might.”

I didn’t have my magic that night, but I still had my overabundance of strength. If I was going down, I would try my best to take him with me. Leaping off the slowly sinking boat, I caught Discord unawares, his eyes bulging and his fingers preparing to snap. A few seconds too late, though.

“AARRGHH! AHHHH! LET GO! LET GO!”

My razor sharp teeth clamped down around his single thin goat leg, tearing through flesh and fur with ease. I heard bone snap and couldn’t help but relish the fresh taste of raw animal. It was meat, after all.

Below me, I heard our boat sing its swansong as it quietly bubbled its way into the deep; the shackle clasped painfully around my leg, trying its best to reunite me with it. I was strong, yes. Strong enough to leap through the air and bite through animal flesh, but weighed down in the water, I doubted I would find my way back to the surface without aid.

Discord thrashed his wounded leg with me still attached, every move causing my teeth to sink in deeper. I tasted blood, marrow, but most of all, fear.

“I should have given you a muzzle instead, you lunatic!” he shouted above me. “Can’t you take a hint and just accept that you’ve lost? You were suicidal before! Why can’t you go back to that?”

He kicked me away one last time and I felt the chain around my leg beginning to pull me under. My jaw ached from the strain, and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought this might be the end. Such a pitiful way for a King to go, I thought.

“No…” I mumbled as I fell away, crashing into the deep waters below.

I watched the thin bits of light dancing along the surface become fainter and fainter until it was nothing but darkness above. The cold wrapped me in its icy embrace and I grew numb. At the sandy bottom, my anchor came to rest, and I settled down next to it. I hooked my teeth around the chain and attempted to chew through, grimacing from the pain. Then I used all four of my legs to try and pull the chain off the anchor, only to idiotically exhale what little oxygen I had left.

I might die tonight, I thought, although it would still be hours from then.

Maybe near-immortality isn’t as great as some would make it out to be.

Then I closed my eyes.

In my earlier journal—the one I left in Canterlot somewhere—I called death a blackened pit of nothing at all. I wasn’t lying, either. I’ve had enough experience with the place to keep from twisting the truth around it. But does that mean I can’t hope for something more? Something besides the darkness and the overwhelming absence of anything at all?

In the few hours that slowly ticked by at the bottom of the lake, I thought of everything that would happen once I passed on. Fluttershy and her friends would ask where I had gone. Of this, I had no doubt. Would they ask Discord, or would he tell them without prodding? Worst of all is that they would think I left them without a word—without even a parting goodbye. Twilight would undoubtedly think the same. Sombra gave up and left us alone, she would think. He couldn’t get what he wanted, so he went somewhere else. I was right all along.

On the Canterlot rooftops, ready to drop and fade away, I hadn’t cared what anyone would say about me when I was gone, just as long as I left the way I wanted to. Only now, in the very real face of one last death, did I care about what others would say, and more importantly what they would think.

I had friends. We may not have been as close as could be, yet there was room to grow. I felt warmth being with them and I felt the need to help them, as much as I might have struggled to adapt.

I did not want to go, and I did not want to leave them. Yet, it seemed the decision had been taken away from me.

When something small and purple crawled out from the darkness several meters in front of me, I knew I had finally succumbed. I could only think how odd it was to find not a world of darkness waiting for me, but an image I could only have dreamed of—Twilight Sparkle swimming through the water towards me, determination on her face. Had I been good enough this time around to warrant a less bleak afterlife? It was a nice thought, I will not lie. Maybe the creator above had as many laughs watching me fail as Discord had.

With a short blast from her horn, Twilight broke apart the chain holding me and I wavered in place. I could barely keep my eyes open; everything was so faint and so far. She cradled her legs around my shoulders and I was dragged back to the surface. The only question now was whether we’d stop once we broke through or continue to the stars? Already I was enjoying this afterlife more than the other one.

Someone’s lips pushed around mine and air was forced into my lungs. Each one of my numbed muscles and organs came alive from the welcome air, accepting it greedily. I shot up and found myself on a grassy bank, mane and fur soaked through as I dripped along the ground.

A similarly wet and panting Twilight Sparkle sat a few feet away, staring at me in equal parts fatigue and anger. “Why?” she croaked. “After everything I told you, why would you try this again?”

Barely comprehending how I was rescued from the water, her question sailed far and away from any coherent answer. “What do you mean?” Reminded of the draconequus, I perked up and briefly searched for him. Obviously, he was either gone or hiding. My horn had also been returned to me when I wasn’t aware.

Twilight could hardly keep her words from bunching together. “I told you there was more to life than what was in this town. I told you there was more than wanting to be my friend.” She paused to look away. “I don’t want you to die, Sombra. And the fact that you’re trying to kill yourself all over again… do you truly think there’s nothing left for you?”

The picture was becoming clearer, but she still had more to say.

Twilight shivered from the wind. “When Fluttershy came to me, saying that you had suddenly vanished, her first thought wasn’t that you’d left Ponyville, but that something had happened to you. Together, with everyone else, they came to me to try and help. Clearly, they care about you. You’ve either grown a sense of compassion since you left Canterlot, or your act has improved.”

I told her earnestly, “It is not an act, Twilight.”

She continued, “Seeing them as worried as they were—seeing them care about you, the same way as I had before, it brings up a lot of emotions, Sombra. A lot of things I wanted to leave behind me. When you attacked Flash Sentry, you showed me the honest cruelty that lay inside you. The moment Flash came to and could speak to me, he told me he never wanted to see me again. And could I honestly blame him for wanting that?”

Twilight hitched in a breath as she shed a few tears. “It was because of my connection to you that he was left in such a state; all because I had made you my friend. Flash was my first colt-friend and I thought that things would work between us because I believed that was the way things worked. I was naïve and once outside of our relationship, I can finally look back and know with certainty that things were far from perfect. But it was because of you that they ended as they did.”

She shivered again and I was tempted to comfort her, yet there was so much I did not understand that night.

“You have left me torn, Sombra,” she said slowly. “Flash is gone from my life because of you, and now I only want to move on to whatever comes next. And yet you remain: someone literally begging to be my friend again; someone that jumps in a lake when things don’t go their way. And now my friends tell me that you’ve changed and that you’re trying your best, but what’s stopping you from doing what you did before? Why should I set myself up only for you to destroy my life again?” She sighed. “I don’t wish you any ill will, Sombra. But more than anything, I don’t want to be hurt by you again.”

I stared at the small spot of grass below my head, tiny drops tumbling from my soaked mane. In such an emotional state, it was hard to look her in the eyes.

I said softly, “I am sorry, Twilight. For all the pain I’ve caused you. It doesn’t matter if I thought I was doing something right at the time; the ramifications should be enough to tell me it was wrong. I am sorry about Sentry. I did not mean it before, but my perspective on things has changed. He… deserved harsh words for the way he treated you and nothing more. I regret that I went as far as I did.

“I upended your life in a single night and I can understand your fear of ever speaking with me again. You gave me a chance and I spit it back at you—more than once. All I can ask now is that you give me one last chance, with the knowledge that I will never hurt you again. I don’t want to see you cry anymore. But only know that even if you reject me again tonight, that does not mean I will stop trying. You need to understand this is not all an act.”

Clearly winded, she got to her hooves and moved towards me. Not completely looking at me, she wrapped herself around my shoulders, her small bit of warmth causing my heart to race.

“Then I accept you as my friend, Sombra,” she told me. “With the promise that you will never hurt anyone again. I’m sick of feeling pulled in two directions and I’m sick of hating you for what you’ve done. That isn’t the type of pony I want to be. Only know that this will be the last chance I give you. My heart is more fragile than what it once was because of you.”

I didn’t wait for anything more. I didn’t care if it was all some trick of Discord’s or the rewards of some blissful afterlife. With her legs still wrapped around me, I returned the embrace and more than likely squeezed every last breath of air from her. It was something that couldn’t be helped. It was like that sensation from before—as though she might be taken from me at any moment. But the statement that found its way into my head above all was that I had my friend back.

“You will not regret this, Twilight Sparkle,” I told her. “I will do right by you and I promise things will be different. I will change for the better, you will see.” I whispered into her ear, “Thank you,” and soon after she teleported us away from that miserably cold and wet location.

Now the only thing I had to do was not break the newfound brittle bound between us.

And kill Discord, obviously.