I landed in the courtyard outside the castle entrance and expected a small mass of guards to escort me from the premises. Instead, only a few turned their heads in my direction before trudging along on their afternoon march. It appeared as though the great and intimidating Sombra had faded from memory in the past few weeks. I couldn’t blame them for not fearing me as much as they should. More and more, I was becoming a shell of my former self—closer to some buffoon off the streets than a villainous monster. But all that, I could handle. There were only a select few that I honestly cared what they thought about me. With that in mind, I teleported back into the castle.

If my memory of the place was correct (and it was, having been forced to work there for countless days and nights), I knew I could transport myself directly into the second floor washrooms. The only question remaining was if I’d be alone when I arrived.

Short answer: no.

I was lucky he had finished with the stalls when I surprised him.

“Sombra?” the armored guard croaked, already eyeing the door behind me. “I thought you were gone? I thought you weren’t allowed back in the castle?”

As tired as I was, I didn’t feel the need to explain rudimentary facts all over again. “I’m more than likely not allowed back in this place—and probably its washrooms, most of all—but I honestly don’t care right now. I need you to take off your gear.”

“My… gear?” He peeked around my head at the entrance again. I moved to the side to block his view. “What are you planning on doing to me?”

“Nothing. I only want your gear.” I thought for a moment. “Does everyone in this castle think I trap unsuspecting guards in places like these simply to pummel them into mush?”

The guard hesitated and didn’t answer my question. “But if I give you my gear, I’ll be naked.”

I opened my mouth to retort, then thought better of it. I wasn’t aware enough to properly comprehend this newfound level of stupidity. I waved my hoof in front of his eyes. “Sleep, simpleton guard. Go to Luna-land and stuff your rotten mouth with marshmallow clouds and milk-chocolate waterfalls.”

The guard swayed in place, both bulging eyes following my steady hoof with rapt attention. “I’m lactose intolerant.”

My vision flashed red, and that same hypnotizing hoof raised above his head to strike. A few inches above his incredibly crack-able skull, I wavered in place. As much as this one might have deserved it, I would not go back on my word so soon. I growled, “You are so lucky I promised not to hurt anyone.” I sighed. “If that’s the case, then dream whatever in Tartarus you want.”

I flicked my hoof towards his head and he crumpled to the ground, a soft symphony of snores filling the room soon after.

I stopped to admire my work. It had been a long time since I’d tried such a spell, and I knew in less than a minute I’d need to try a few more.

The guard’s armor was snug around nearly every part of me, but I knew it would help conceal a good portion of my dark coat. I wouldn’t need to go far to reach the next set of guards—I only had to be in striking distance to execute my next ruse. After trying three times to delicately slip my curved horn into the guard’s standard helmet, I gave up and drove it through, wrecking any possible future use. I was sure they had a bin of them somewhere in the basement.

Pushing open the washroom doors, I stuck my newly suited head out. Two unicorn guards covered the set of double doors at the end of the hall. The rest of the way looked clear.

Walking and wincing as each piece of cumbersome gear poked and prodded into my sides, I kept my head down and my eyes upward. I made it around a dozen steps in their direction before the guard talking quietly nudged the other one. It was still several seconds too late.

The one on the left screamed, “Stop or I’ll—”

I put my hoof to my lips as my horn began to glow in a light red aura, causing the guard to shut his mouth. His cohort likewise kept silent and returned his weapon to the floor. It was obvious I had their attention, as long I maintained control. Now I had to get them away from the area for as long as I could.

I turned to the left guard. “Tell me, guard, what is it you fear? And speak truthfully.”

The unicorn’s gaze widened as he looked deep inside himself. Before he spoke, his mouth began to tremble. “That something may happen to my family—something that I won’t be around to stop.”

I told him calmly, “Then if that’s the case, I’m afraid it’s happening right now, and you must go help them. And if someone asks how you know all this, it came to you in a vision.”

The guard did not waste another moment on words. Hastily scooping up his weapon with his horn, he noisily trotted down the hall and out from sight, smacking into a doorway as he rounded the corner.

I turned my attention to the remaining guard. “And now you—what is it you fear? Sickness? Death? Spiders and snakes? Things that go bump in the night?”

In my time as ruler of the Crystal Empire, I had used fear as a means to get what I had craved. I had the ability to pull back the delicate layers keeping more vital information inside the heads of those I wanted it from. When I had more time to spend on them, I discovered what they feared through trial and error. When I did not, I forwent such formalities and instead reached deep inside to learn what awaited them in the darkness. How odd it was to find my own image there from time to time.

I said, “Tell me what it is, unicorn.”

The remaining guard gulped dryly. “I’m afraid someone will take… will take my…”

“Yes.”

“That someone… will take my lunch while I’m on duty.”

No. I couldn’t have heard that right. “Are you sure you don’t mean your family or friends?”

“No. My lunch. It’s the one thing I look forward to all day and I bring it here from home. All I do all day, every day, is stand here and stare down a hall. It’s the one thing that keeps me going.”

Idiots, I thought dejectedly. Celestia has herself surrounded by idiots. How is it no one’s bested her again?

I closed my eyes and put a hoof to my temple. “Then, my friend, I’m afraid your lunch is in trouble.”

The guard actually whimpered. “Who? Who would do that?”

I couldn’t open my eyes, I was so exasperated. “I did. I’m doing it right now, downstairs. Sombra the Great Sandwich Eater. Now go. For your sake, get out of my leg’s reach before I start hitting you and can’t stop.”

His hurried hooves scraped against the marble floors and he was out of sight by the time I opened my eyes. Now all that was left before me was that set of double doors. How ironic it was to feel a bit of fear all my own as I pushed inside.

Flash Sentry occupied the closest bed to the door and was, in fact, the sole occupant of Canterlot’s recovery ward. I had thought of teleporting in once I found the correct room, but I thought any such flashy effects might only scare him more than I’d had already. This wasn’t the time to be menacing. This was the time for something very different for me.

He was asleep when I entered, so I sat in the chair by his bed and waited for him to stir. A single vase of flowers adorned his nightstand along with a few cards. Most of his face except for his heavily lined eyes had been hidden away behind tight rolls of gauze. It was indeed rare to stare at the aftermath of my own wrath—to look twice at something I had only wanted gone. To look again had always felt like a waste of time to me. Not that day.

Sentry shifted in bed and a lone eye crept open. It watched me for a moment before it must have relayed the message to the rest of him. Instead of jumping to the back of the bed as I thought he might, he surprised me by sitting up against his pillow, as if I were any ordinary visitor. Then he sighed as he looked me over.

He said coldly, “You look ridiculous.”

I glanced at my tight-fitting armor. “I know.”

“Have you come to finish me off, then? I had a feeling you’d come back. You never seemed like the type to leave something unfinished—even when you had no powers, I could tell.”

With a retching metallic sound, I unhooked the helmet from my head to place in my lap. “I came to talk and nothing more. Truth be told, I hadn’t meant to see you at all today, or perhaps ever. Yet things have happened to me recently that have given me pause to think.”

Sentry glanced down to his resting forelegs. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, wrapped up as he was. “Did you kill someone for that armor?”

“I didn’t and I don’t plan on killing anymore. The same goes for hurting others.” I had almost wanted to explain how these were Twilight’s wishes I was obeying, but the simple knowledge that this was the worst pony I could possibly tell that made me stop. (Even if he was the one that ended their relationship.)

Sentry snorted. “I guess it’s only too bad you made that rule for yourself right after me, isn’t it? Did you sprain your wrist breaking my face apart? Is that why you’re stopping now?” A trace of anger entered his voice. “A comedian, Sombra? Is that what you’ve become now?”

“No,” I said slowly, “and I did not come here to tell jokes or half-truths. A few days ago, I was at the mercy of a creature more powerful than I. A very real and very unpleasant death was staring me in the face, and at the last moment I was pulled away from it by another. I am thankful for that. I am thankful to be alive. But I find it’s also changed my perspective on things.”

I placed a single hoof on the side of his bed and tried to meet his stare. When I found nothing but malice, I instead lowered my head to the ground. “What I did to you was wrong, Sentry. What I did to you and Twilight was wrong. I acted on impulse and attacked you knowing full well you would never stand a chance against me. I sensed your overwhelming fear and rather than end it there, I continued on. That was the type of beast I was.”

“If Twilight hadn’t stopped you when she did, you would have killed me.”

“Yes.”

“So what is it you’re here to do, exactly, Sombra? Apologize? Make everything better somehow?”

I breathed out. “I am sorry for what I’ve done to you, Sentry.”

Sentry leaned across the bed and finally I found his eyes. He seemed more aware in that moment than all the hours I spent with him in Canterlot. “If you are looking for some speck of absolution or forgiveness, Sombra, you are wasting your time here. What you’ve done to me can never be undone, and the doctors have stopped even telling me when I might leave.” He exhaled through clenched teeth. “Being a guard in Celestia’s castle was all I ever wanted to do in life. And for a time, I had it. Now all I can do is sit in this bed and sleep and wait and sleep and hear every other able-bodied guard march right outside those doors.”

What I could see of his muzzle pulled into a scowl. “I hate you, Sombra. I will always hate you. And maybe now you’re trying to be good again—and maybe this time, you really mean it—but to me, none of that matters. You will never have my forgiveness and I want you to know that. To me you’re a monster and nothing you do can change that in my mind. What am I anymore, beside a living example of the way you deal with your problems?”

I had never felt so foolish as I did standing in that room—clad in someone else’s armor, speaking with someone who would live only to hate me. I told him, “Only know that I really am sorry, Sentry. And I guess that’s all you need to hear from me.”

He settled back against his pillow. “Fine. You’ve said what you’ve wanted to say. Now leave me alone.”

I stood and carefully placed every borrowed piece of armor on a table in the corner. Near the doorway, I asked him, “What is it you dream while you sleep, Sentry? You said you sleep a lot since you’ve been here.”

“I dream about nothing,” he shot back. “Almost as boring as the life I’m leading right now.”

“What is it you’d like to dream about?”

Sentry regarded me cautiously for a moment. He said, “I wouldn’t mind my old job again—perhaps a more interesting version, though.”

I held open the door. “I’ll talk to them and see that it gets done.”

“What do you mean?”

“Goodbye, Sentry. I’m sorry to have left you in such a state. And I can only hope in the future you can look at me as something other than the monster that attacked you. Sleep well.”

Then I turned and shut the door, honestly curious if I was indeed beyond redemption in the eyes of those I’d hurt.

Only a few days into Twilight’s services list and already its repetition had become mind numbing and trite. Most knew that I’d be coming by eventually, and with minimum words spoken, they pointed me in the direction of what needed fixing or who was in need of assistance. I had patched large fissures in the town damn, repaired gazebos complete with crude stick drawings on the inner ceilings, picked up trash in the Ponyville market, resealed the Ponyville town hall due to an infestation of some kind (although I couldn’t tell what), and, perhaps most perverse of all, I sat in as a fill-in judge for the town’s weekly “Best Pie Contest.” (I wish I was kidding. You would have thought once per millennia would have sufficed, but I guess I’m old fashioned like that.)

I found the blueberry to be fine, the cherry mediocre, and the peach so-so. Before the grand event, I had been hoofed a series of cards with the numbers one through ten on them. Since I never believed any true criticism could be fully embellished by some simple number system, I instead erased each card and set to it my honest opinion. I can only hope Applejack can forgive me after I labeled her sister’s apple pie as one of the “ADEQUATE” variety—ending in tears and snot and a well-earned second place ribbon.

Tired and yet hopeful of my morning’s work, I went back to Twilight’s castle with a nice-sized dent in my list. Ever the scrupulous pony, Twilight scanned my scroll and came away with nothing to inquire about. And best of all, not a single pony had complained about my work.

Perhaps they were too afraid.

“I’m pleased to see what you’ve done, Sombra,” she said, as she trotted away in the direction of one of her floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—one with only a few dozen tomes in its current skeletal state. “It’s pretty hot out there today, so if you want, you can take the rest of the day off. Go back to Fluttershy’s if you want.”

Twilight hastily scanned the spine of some book before she set it into the uppermost corner of the bookshelf with her horn. Without delay, she went to on to the next, and I took the opportunity to glance over the dozens and dozens of boxes worth of unsorted books littering the floor.

I said, “Maybe I could stay around here for a bit?”

“Sure, if you want.” She set another book away.

I paced around the entryway awkwardly. I could tell she was busy, but since adding her back to my list of friends, I had barely spent more than a few fractured minutes alone with her. While I had been busy with her list, she had been either revisiting with friends or sorting around the contents of her castle. It would be nice to have at least a few minutes together.

I sat down in one of the library’s cushy seats, mentally flicking through a list of inquires. “Can I ask you a question, Twilight?”

“Is it another Discord question?”

I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or somewhat curious.

I paused. “Sort of.”

“You can ask, but that doesn’t mean I’ll answer. You know I don’t want you hurting him, Sombra. Or anyone, for that matter.”

I feigned shock. “Me? Hurt that lovable rapscallion?”

Twilight turned to raise a brow. “That’s an odd choice of words…”

“No, Twilight. I only ask because I don’t want him to hurt me. You see… in the past, he’s removed my horn without my consent, and I don’t think that’s fair. Has he ever tried something like that to you?”

Twilight studied a trio of books before sending them off. She said eventually, “He has.”

“And what did you do about it?”

She sighed and turned, books forgotten in the meantime. “The only time he did it—the first time we all met him, actually—there was nothing I could do about it. He took my horn along with Rarity’s horn and my other friends’ wings.”

I said casually, “Makes you feel helpless, doesn’t it?”

She pursed her lips. “I would agree with that, but do you really think Discord would try and hurt you, Sombra?”

The notion of telling Twilight and her friends what had happened between the draconequus and I in that dingy rowboat had been wavering near the top of my thoughts since the moment I was dragged from those icy waters. For a good many reasons, I kept it to myself. For one, there was always the chance I would not be believed—that I was covering up my apparent botched suicide attempt by blaming someone else. For another—and to me the more important of the two—it was the event that finally brought Twilight and I back together. Because she thought I had given up on the world and my very existence in it, she saved me. Before that night, I had given her words and apologies and tiny pots of dirt, yet by nearly drowning at the bottom of a lake, it had unknowingly showed to her that she was my greatest reason to continue on. And that was something I didn’t dare poison with the truth.

And for a third, I wanted Discord all to myself.

No lessons would be learned when he died—no hugs would be exchanged.

Before he would shut his venomous eyes one last time, Discord the Draconequus would feel the wrath of a King, and with any luck it would be out of sight of everyone nearby.

“Are you okay, Sombra?”

Deep in my musings, I hadn’t noticed Twilight approach. She wore a pained expression.

I said, “I’m fine, Twilight. Only thinking is all. You know how much I used to do that behind my desk in Canterlot.” I tried for a smile. “It’s simply odd for me to find a creature with powers superior to mine. You live your whole life believing you’re the gifted one, and then in an instant someone takes away those gifts. You can’t help but feel powerless.”

She smiled back reassuringly, then sighed. “Since Discord only did it the once, I never got to actually test the spell, but I was actually working on one that would protect any object from being tampered with. If you honestly think Discord might try to take your horn again, I could teach it to you.”

“I would appreciate that, Twilight.”

She huffed. “But first I need to finish reorganizing this place.” She spun to glare at her boxes upon boxes of unsorted books, along with the stacks of library records that cluttered a nearby table, whose legs wobbled with the weight. “I spent so much time in Canterlot castle over the past while, I barely had a chance to sort out the new library. I would have gotten Spike to do it, but his organizational skills are a tad lacking.”

“I thought all your books were destroyed in your old home.”

“They were,” she said. “These are all donated ones from everyone and everywhere in Equestria.”

I stood from my seat and stretched out each leg, popping them at the knees. “Then I will help you in your organizing.”

Twilight gave me a quizzical expression. “Aren’t you tired, Sombra? You’ve been working pretty hard the last few days.”

“I’m not tired.” I was, actually. But that was a fact Twilight need not know. “And it could be fun, Twilight. I believe some of the best times you and I shared together were when we went looking around the Canterlot archives. And you always seem to forget that I ran a successful Empire for hundreds of years, meaning organization is my expertise.”

She grimaced. “You and I might differ on the term ‘successful’ Empire.”

I waved the notion aside. “You want me to help, Twilight?”

She thought for a moment, slowly regarding each wide and heavy box and each deep and empty shelf. “All right, Sombra. I’ll start with the A’s and you start with the Z’s and we’ll meet together in the middle.”

I told her, “Just don’t drop any books on my head this time, if you’d be so kind.”

Celestia’s ever-flourishing sun was about to dip below the horizon when I finally trotted back towards Fluttershy’s cottage. I could have teleported there in the blink of an eye, but I found the walk quite splendid. I was tired to the bone not only physically, but mentally as well. Twilight and I had sorted through hundreds of texts, cataloging each one. It was only a small amount of magic each time I moved something—what stole most of my energy was the conversations between the two of us. As I went to each new job in town, I had been steadily reading through her book of new culture, and together we discussed each and every change that had happened since my time. Most notable and unbelievable: the removal of the death penalty. Was that practice something only my kingdom had going for it? That talk would have to wait for another day.

As I opened the door to Fluttershy’s cottage, I caught the mare dancing in the air, clearing away dirt from the shelves with a duster. She even hummed a quiet lullaby. When I shut the door behind me, she spun and flew into my chest, small legs wrapped around my unyielding shoulders.

She shouted into my ears (which, to her, was still only a notch above room voice), “Sombra! I’m so happy you’re back! You wouldn’t believe what’s happened!”

I returned the hug and set her back down. Both of her wide eyes held a delicate shimmer, and her smile was on the verge of enveloping the rest of her face.

“What’s happened, Fluttershy?”

“Discord’s come back!”

All tiredness left my body as I instinctively lowered to the ground. My eyes darted to each corner of the room, searching for a single object that didn’t belong. I then ran a hoof along my horn, making sure it was still firmly attached.

Fluttershy appeared too excited to notice. She said absently, “He came by right out of the blue—like he usually does, I guess—and we had a nice chat, and then we—”

“Where is he now, Fluttershy?” I cut in.

Some of Fluttershy’s original joy ebbed away. “He left. He said he couldn’t stay long.”

I pushed around her and took a turn around the room. Everything appeared the same as when I had left, including this journal tucked underneath the couch. “Did he say anything else, Fluttershy? Anything that might have sounded a bit… odd, perhaps?”

She turned to the floor, perplexed. “Well, I don’t think so. He only wanted to know how I was doing, and how all my friends were doing. He did seem a little more… tense than usual.”

I lifted a drape covering the window. The road to her cottage looked clear—although I was reminded my enemy was the type that could appear anywhere with little to no warning. “Go on, Fluttershy.”

She thought for a moment. “I doubt it’s all that important, but he was very interested to know what I was planning on doing tomorrow night.”

“And what were you planning on doing?”

“Staying in. Helping with the animals, like I always do.”

Finished with my search, I came towards her. “And how did he take your answer?”

She nodded. “He said that was the best thing I could do. He hoped I would stay inside. You think he’s trying to warn me of some cold that’s going around, Sombra?”

I hesitated. “I… don’t think so, Fluttershy, but—”

Something in Fluttershy’s backyard caught my attention, but when I turned I found only her peaceful garden basking in the sinking rays of the sun. Still, I felt that someone must be waiting for me out there.

I turned to her, another false smile in play. “Fluttershy dear, if you wouldn’t mind, could you check to see if you have another blanket somewhere upstairs? I’m finding the nights much chillier than before.”

She put a hoof to her mouth. “Oh, gosh. I don’t know if I have another.”

“I’m sure I saw one. Just have a look around while I step outside for a moment. I shouldn’t be long.”

The door to Fluttershy’s garden creaked noisily as I tried to close it as gently as I could. With added delicacy I placed each hoof on the grass, muffling every step. I breathed in deep to try and sniff out what was nearby, and soon the faint scent of stale candy drifted towards me.

The setting sun cast each tree and bush in a mix of orange and black shadows and I tried to discern my opponent from the scenery. I only hoped invisibility wasn’t part of his arsenal.

As I approached the center of the small garden, I lowered and kept each limb as tight as wire. Discord liked to talk, so I would let him talk for as long as it took to retaliate. I wasn’t sure what I’d do after.

For sixty seconds, I listened to nothing at all until he made himself known.

In a flash of blinding white, he appeared before me. Already he was staring at his hands as his lion paw rubbed a file against his eagle’s claw.

Discord said, “You really should be thank—”

That was when a highly concentrated blast of red and black energy from my horn melted and obliterated each tiny bone and muscle in his head, leaving only a few bits of horn and antler that hovered outside the blast to fall to the grass. His busily working hands fell from their task as what remained of his neck pumped out one last batch of crimson red onto his shoulders. With lack of working brain, the draconequus’ knees buckled and the rest of him came toppling to the grass, staining a wide circle into the earth.

I watched all this from the other side of the garden, after I had rolled and galloped to a better attack position. For close to another minute, I waited for the punch line to the joke—for him to rise up and replace his head with a wide array of head-sized objects—only for nothing at all to follow.

“It can’t be…” I mumbled, as I circled the fallen creature. “It just can’t.”

I poked the headless being with a hoof more than a dozen times, preparing for some limb to try and grab me. I was almost disappointed this was how it all came to end. But, in a way, hadn’t it made sense? Most heroes this so-called “villain” faced in his prime had first tried to reason with him before discovering a lifetime in stone to be the only solution. How many had decided cutting him off midsentence was the best course of action? Could it be true that he lacked sufficient defensive spells while he mocked and chatted away?

Either way, he was dead. Either way, I had won and the draconequus was gone forever.

Now felt like a good time to laugh.

I chuckled deeply, “Hehehehehehahahahaha—”

“Sombra?”

I inhaled sharply. “Yes, Fluttershy?”

I turned to find her staring at me through the kitchen windows, one of them opened. From that angle I was almost certain Discord’s body must be hidden from view. Otherwise, I was sure she’d be behaving a whole lot differently.

She asked, “What are you laughing at?”

Friendship-face time. “Just a joke I heard earlier.”

“Can I hear it?”

I thought. “No. I don’t think you’d like it.”

“What’s it about?”

My mind ran blank. “Pegasi that can’t fly.”

She shook her head at me. “That sounds terrible, Sombra. You shouldn’t laugh at such things.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Fluttershy. Why don’t you go sit in the living room and I’ll join you in a minute?”

She viewed me hesitantly for a period. “You’re not hiding something from me, are you, Sombra?”

As Discord’s blood seeped under my hoofs, my smile faltered heavily. “No. Why would you think that? Now please go to the living room for a little while, Fluttershy.”

She glared at me as my hooves got stickier. “Okay, then.”

As she turned back inside, I wiped the sweat from my brow and gave the lifeless Discord another kick—hopefully in a place he could feel all the way wherever in Tartarus he’d wound up in. Then I got to work.

Unknowingly, Fluttershy helped quicken Discord’s burial by leaving out her shovel in the yard—planting tomato vines some afternoon or the like. Since I was sure I could crumple the draconequus into a tight little ball, the hole I created was deep but hardly long. Once it was done, I levitated his body to the least visited section of the backyard, off near the woods and in the deep shade of trees, though I never did mean for this to be his final resting place. When a more secluded area came to mind, I would move him to it posthaste.

The first mound of dirt covered his folded torso, and it almost felt like I was burying my anxiety along with him. By that point in the day and after everything I had borne witness to, I was beyond the point of exhaustion. So much so that Discord’s headless body started talking to me.

Pleasantly enough, it asked, “What are you doing?”

What a silly question, I thought sleepily, as I continued to shovel on the dirt. “I’m burying you. But stop talking. You’re dead.”

“Oh,” it answered. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized.”

“Well, you are. So be quiet. I don’t want Fluttershy to know what I’m doing.”

“She wouldn’t like this at all, would she?”

How can it even talk with no mouth?

I said, “Probably not. And explaining to her why I dug up her yard will be a tiresome enough chore on its own.”

“Do you want a hand, then?”

At the time, it made sense. “Sure.”

A very tall and very thin creature sidled up behind me and began tossing in small hills of dirt into the now empty hole. For some reason, I was so drained I simply continued with the task. No matter what, I was reminded, I’d need to patch up Fluttershy’s garden at some point.

When the job was complete, I sat next to the mound of earth and finally faced my enemy. The draconequus appeared no worse for wear.

Discord smiled at me, eyes more lined and tired than I’d ever seen them before. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”

I returned the grin to my worthy adversary. “For a little while, I did. So why did you pretend to be dead for so long?”

He said bluntly, “To give you hope.”

I nodded. “What now? Is this the part when you remove my horn and drop me into a volcano?”

He knelt close to me, sticking a claw to his temple. He contemplated, “I could, you know. I could snap my fingers and send you away for good this time. But I won’t. I’ve had a few new ideas in the past few days.”

I ignored the open question. “What were you going to say before I tried to kill you?”

“Forty-six thousand five-hundred and seven. It took so long. So very long.”

“What?”

“I tried to say that you should be thanking me—that I singlehandedly reunited you with your lost friend and no one’s the wiser about how it all came together. But I really don’t expect you to.”

I said through barred teeth, “You tried to kill me.”

He retorted, “Then you tried to kill me.” He paused. “But I’ll let that slide for now. I’ve thought of a brand new way of getting my friends back, and you don’t need to be away for it to happen.” He stared longingly at the fresh plot of earth. “I should have realized it sooner that all I had to do was show them the real you to get you out of my hair.”

I said carefully, “We need to end this, Discord—what’s happening between us. I fear something bad may happen to Twilight or one her friends if we can’t come to some agreement.”

He curled his lip above his single fang. “Since you just tried to blast a hole through my head, I doubt you really mean that. I think you’re only saying that now because you failed.”

“What are you planning on doing, Discord?”

He giggled, sounding forced. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Why did you ask Fluttershy those questions earlier?”

Discord’s smirk dropped from his lips as he growled at me. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

Then he snapped himself from the garden, leaving a dirt-covered ex-villain to ponder a great many things before the bright sun descended again.