Anna stared at Discord, her mind reeling so fast she barely registered Fluttershy's threat of petrification—let alone the draconequus's taken-aback look that stemmed as a result of said threat. Several emotions ran rampant, and her visage kept contorting in a subconscious effort to display them all. Her brow slanted one second, her eyes almost bugged out the next, and on the third second she went slack-jawed.

She stood there, continually staring, every fiber of her body frozen except for that of her rapidly-shifting face. She wanted to move, and willed her legs to budge, yet her limbs didn't comply in the slightest. Maria turned to the archer and saw her stuck in her trance, and she wiggled out of Pinkie's hooves before cantering over and using a claw to poke her on the foreleg. "Mommy, are you okay?" she asked, frowning when Anna's eyes widened again.

Anna blinked before the inquiry registered in her head. She jumped before backpedaling so fast she landed on her haunches, her still-wide eyes falling onto the foal. "Uh… no?" she managed, her throat quickly drying out in the span of seconds as her face stopped on the wide-eyed look and ceased changing through any more expressions. Her hooves flew around Maria as soon as she came closer, wrapping her in a tight embrace, as though their owner feared that Discord would stow the foal away to parts unknown.

Speaking of, Discord looked deflated—shoulders slumped, wings sagging, ears and mouth drooping, and much of his lengthy tail resting flat on the crystal floor. Fluttershy watched him, eyes still narrowed, like her turquoise gaze could slice through solid steel.

While Fluttershy kept the draconequus glued to the spot with her stare, Pinkie cantered over to Anna and smiled in greeting. "Discord's just having a relapse; he should be okie-dokie-lokie soon," she chirped.

"Okie-dokie-lokie?" Anna repeated in a high-pitched squeak, her voice raspy. She lifted one of her hooves from Maria and used it to gesture to Lance as she began to prattle, "H-he just hurt Lance—you call that a relapse?! Discord j-just guaranteed that Lance'll declare war! He guaranteed it, I swear! As soon as he wakes up, we're all going to die!"

Before the frightened unicorn could ramble any further, Pinkie simply jammed a hoof into her mouth, wincing as teeth clamped on it in an attempt to spit it out. "If Lance wants to declare war, trust me, Twilight, and the other girls to talk him out of it," she replied, a glint in her eyes.

"Who wants to declare what?" a masculine voice asked as another door swung open. Pinkie and Anna turned to the door to find that Matt just began to set hoof into the hall, unaware of the fact that his general was wounded and on the floor only a few feet away.

"Daddy got hurt," Maria answered for Matt before Pinkie could open her mouth to speak.

"Daddy?" Matt repeated, his brows raising. "I thou—"

Katie trotted over to the fuzzy unicorn and sighed in exasperation, quickly cutting his musings off. "She decided that General Boltwing is her new daddy," she groaned sarcastically, watching as Matt's eyes almost bugged out of their sockets instantly.

"W-w-wh…" Matt began mumbling incoherently, his brain scrambling to formulate a response. He dropped to the floor, his legs tucked under him as he shifted to be eye-level with Katie. "Y-you…"

"She's… not k-kidding," Anna piped up as soon as Pinkie removed the hoof from her mouth.

Matt stayed on the floor, eyes darting between Katie and Anna fervently. As soon as his mind stopped scrambling and started absorbing the intel, a grin cropped up on his face. Then he stood up and trotted over the wraith's form, making a beeline directly for the mares and foal. Ignoring Pinkie's presence for the moment, his smile widened before falling as soon as he noticed the look on Anna's face. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Anna lifted one of her hooves from Maria, and once again gestured to Discord with it in silence. Matt followed her limb and, upon seeing the draconequus, paled on the spot. Yet again his brain had shut down, refusing to process the mere sight of Discord in all of his chimerical glory, and as he stared his head began to hurt.

"What's this?" Discord asked, turning to Matt and finding himself engaged in a staring contest. He vanished in a flash of light before reappearing in front of the dumbstruck stallion, eyeing the horn on the Fantasian's head. "Sir, do you have a mutation or something? I ask not to offend, but because this is the first time I have seen a full-grown stallion with a smaller asset that… doesn't match the size of the body."

"I'm only half-unicorn," Matt grumbled, his face tightening the longer Discord stared at his horn. "Get away from my silver forehead-dagger, or I'll poke you with it," he threatened with narrowing eyes as the draconequus leaned closer, forcing his quarry to lean back.

Discord retracted and hummed thoughtfully, lifting his paw to stroke at his goatee. "Hrm… that might explain it. Still, I've seen half-unicorns with bigger horns," he stated, his remark causing one of Matt's eyes to start twitching.

"Oh, Discord, don't antagonize him," Pinkie called out, bouncing over to Matt's side in an instant. When Discord turned to her with a brow quirked, she stood up on her back legs and wrapped a foreleg around the half-Clydesdale's neck. "He's one of my friends—by default, he's your friend too."

"I'd think more along the lines of 'friend-I-just-met-today' than 'friend-I've-known-for-a-few-years,' if I went by your logic, Pinkie," Discord retorted, his paw retracting from the tuft of hair on his chin.

"But you also attacked my other friend, who's still on the floor," Pinkie countered, using her free hoof to gesture to the sprawled, still-unconscious heap on the floor that was Lance Boltwing.

Discord's irises shrunk. "No wonder Fluttershy got mad at me… why didn't you tell me you made friends with the flipping general sooner?" he asked.

"You never asked if I made friends with him or not," Pinkie answered, a slight frown on her face.

Discord slumped again when he heard the general moaning, and turned to find the sorry bastard hauling himself up on three hooves, with the fourth rubbing at the spot between his ears. "This is gonna be a long day, isn't it…" he groaned.

"Where is… that fucking goat-faced… chimera?" Lance groaned as he stood on three wobbly legs, a bit of color returning to his face. "I'm… gonna hit him… with my gunblade…" That declaration was followed by him collapsing to the floor again, the fourth hoof still on his head.

Twilight trotted up to the stallion who, if the hoof on his head and his pained voice were a set of indications, was still nursing a killer concussion. She put her hoof on his withers and sighed, garnering his attention. "Try as you might, with how shaky your legs are now, you might want to wait a bit," she warned.

Lance tried standing again, once more on three legs, as if in defiance of her suggestion. He managed to get up and stay up for a few more seconds prior to one leg slipping out from beneath him when he shifted slightly, which caused him to fall on his side. Twilight jumped back, ears folding against her skull as she heard a dampened clang of metal as the pegasus landed.

Pinkie and Fluttershy turned to the general, having also heard the noise. Both zipped over to him, though the former took care to remove her leg from Matt's neck beforehand. "What was that?" Twilight asked in disbelief, getting a wide-eyed look from Lance as an immediate response.

"Uh… m-my gunblade?" Lance stammered, paling like a deer caught in headlights. His ears fell back when the three mares who stared at him exchanged glances.

"Can we see?" Pinkie asked, garnering a rapid shaking of the head from the distraught general. "Why not?"

Twilight's horn lit up, and she grasped Lance in her magic. She lifted him up, and he began struggling vehemently, unintelligible words sounding more like keens of protest escaping his mouth as he momentarily forgot his facade and let his wings flail under their cloth coverings with reckless abandon. "I dunno about you girls," she began, glancing at Fluttershy and Pinkie, "but it seems like our Fantasian pegasus here has something to hide."

"Um, General Boltwing, if your wings are broken, then why're you madly flapping them?" Pinkie asked, her inquiry causing the flailing stallion's struggling to halt right in its tracks. Slowly, he turned to the three once more, the color draining from his face for a second time that day as he loudly gulped.

Discord came over via flash of light, vanishing and reappearing to start standing next to Fluttershy, with one brow raised high and the other threatening to overshadow the eye and lids below it. He reached out with his bird-hand, firmly gripping both the cloth wrapped around the floating pony's midsection, as well as the loose cloak above that. "May I?" he asked, garnering a shake of the head from Lance.

Twilight shared a look with the draconequus. "Go ahead—at this point, I'm inclined to think his wings aren't as busted up as he told me they were," she said. Discord obliged, tugging off all of the cloth so fast Lance performed barrel rolls in the magic that had him suspended thereafter. Twilight turned to the general and watched, and he twirled to the point that he was just a blur of burnt orange, dark crimson, and steel grey.

"I'm afraid I can't let you spin any longer, General," Twilight groaned after a full minute passed without a sign that the hapless stallion would cease rolling in one spot on his own. Her magic fully seized him at that point, forcing him to still immediately, though his head had enough leeway to sway for a bit before he let it drop with a pained groan.

As soon as the three mares and Discord laid eyes on his wings, they paled a little. Discord used his paw to grab one of the sorry bastard's wings and spread it slowly, then closed it before flexing it repeatedly. "Hrm… seems to still function, despite the metal belying otherwise," he murmured, using his talon to feel up the individual feathers. The runes lit up at his touch, softly glowing but otherwise not doing anything.

He released the wing, watching as the limb drooped like its owner's head, the runes fading after a few seconds ticked by. He turned to Twilight and inquired, "What, exactly, did he tell you?"

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Shining Armor sat in the front row of the auditorium, a pair of earmuffs to one side of him. He looked back at the double doors, seeing a pair of unicorn guards stationed on either side of the frame, with one a deep ocean blue and the other a slate gray. They also had earmuffs on their heads, and stared at their ruler intently. Shining nodded to them, and they used their magic to close the door and form a small bubble over themselves.

Then, the Emperor turned to the podium and saw a single music sheet stand with a small book opened upon it, with an overhead light shining down on it like a play was about to start. His ears twitched, enabling him to hear the soft echoing sounds of hooves hitting and claws scraping against the crystal. "The guards are ready, Lyregale," he called out.

He eyed the stage as, from behind and then around it, Sarah bumbled into view on her back legs with her harp in her claws. "Might as well take center stage while you're at it," he added, and sighed as she put one end of the instrument in her mouth before climbing onto the podium. He'd have made a remark about the oddity of her methods, if she still didn't have that accursed wing cast strapped on her like a neon blue sign that said 'I can't fly.'

Shining never took his eyes off of her, but as soon as she readied herself and wiped her harp on her wing cast, his hoof strayed to the pair of earmuffs in preparation. She flipped through the small book, enabling her one-pony audience to catch the barest of glimpses of music notes, before stopping and blinking. "These… these are spells," she murmured, turning to him with a brow raised in askance.

"Your sister had them. Take that up with her," Shining replied, waving the hoof that wasn't on the earmuffs dismissively.

"You're telling me my sister had a small grimoire?" Sarah inquired, garnering a nod from the Emperor. She sighed in exasperation and simply flipped through the book before settling on a random piece somewhere in the middle, eyeing a composition of primarily-high notes with some low notes scattered here and there. Her eyes widened, lighting up in a way that Shining thought they started reflecting the overhead light.

"Wait… this is the same one I tried when Chanson challenged me…" she murmured in thought, pupils shrinking for a moment. Then, her eyes darkened ever so slightly under the shadow of her bangs, and a smile came onto her face. "Maybe…" She continued to stare at the composition before her, absorbing the placements of the notes and letting her mind drift into a haze as her claws began tenderly plucking at the strings.

The notes rang throughout the auditorium, and as the first few strings were plucked, the harp and music sheet began glowing in soft green mana. Shining watched intently, a frown cropping up on his face as a distinctly green-tinted aura-like gale which wasn't in the expansive room before blew throughout.

It circled the room slowly, taking its sweet time to rustle his mane to let him know it now had a presence, enabling him to better see the trail of viridian as it came and went like a puff of smoke. A few feathers dislodged themselves from Sarah's good wing, floating about in the zephyr like flower petals. His eyes betrayed a spark of worry as one such feather drifted past him, its tip just barely tickling his nose as the glowing winds dragged it in a current that made it pirouette of its own accord.

As Sarah kept playing, the gale grew stronger. Shining's mane danced in the breeze, his frown deepening as he heard the tell-tale sound of a page being flipped, followed immediately by another. The harp kept glowing, at this rate pulsating with raw mana, and the lyrist playing it stared not at the music sheets as they kept turning—she lifted her gaze and stared straight ahead with a vacant expression.

The guards dropped their barrier and trotted over to their Emperor, with the blue one pulling off his earmuffs. "What's happening?" he asked, using a hoof to gesture to the still-playing hippogryph on stage.

"I'm not sure," Shining replied, rising from his seat and dropping his earmuffs as his front hooves connected with the floor. He nodded to the guards, a firm look on his face, and only when they silently nodded back did he make his move. He burst into a gallop and jumped on the stage, but as soon as his hooves connected with the podium the gale picked up in intensity. Sarah's claws started moving faster, plucking the strings in such a calculated and precise manner that the Captain began wondering just what had caused her to turn so distant all of a sudden.

The gale grew stronger yet, now with enough strength to send the entire music sheet booklet right off the stand, causing it to land and slide away on the podium. Wind was violently billowing right in his face and lifting his bangs clear off his forehead, forcing him to squint his eyes. Mana pulsated from the harp still, and this time its energy rippled all across Sarah's body as if it were a polished surface and nothing more.

Her eyes, he noticed, seemed cold and dull, a small frown forming on her face as she kept playing without any sign of stopping. Shining knew then that he had to stop her immediately, and his horn glowed and his magic grabbed the cause of her behavioral shift right at the source.

He tugged his head sharply back, like another pony decided to punch him in the face, and his aura responded accordingly. The harp was yanked out of Sarah's claws, and it soared up and up until it was well out of her reach. Shining turned back to the lyrist in question and watched her jolt straight back to awareness as the gale finally began to die down along with the vestiges of pulsing mana.

Her eyes went wide, and her ears fell back as a stray loose feather landed tenderly upon the very tip of her muzzle. She shook her head in disbelief, letting the feather drift to the floor. "Wh-wh—"

"I think that the harp began controlling you. It's okay—nopony got hurt," Shining assured her, trotting up to her and just letting her collapse onto him.

Sarah wrapped her claws around Shining's neck, her breathing rapidly hitching as his words sank in like lead weights. "C-controlling… m-me?" she squeaked in nothing short of pure horror. Shining mutely nodded, raising one of his hooves to embrace her tightly. "I… didn't… the high mages…"

"Rest assured, I'm going to have a long talk with them. I'll drop you and yours off in Ponyville, where Twilight can watch you while I address the high mages after the Crystal Faire," Shining murmured, his tone firm but gentle. "I know all too well how it is to be controlled… you can bet your wings I'll raise tartarus at the high mages as soon as I see them."

"Um… sir, the harp," the blue guard piped up from in front of the podium. Shining briefly lifted his hoof from Sarah to wave it dismissively.

"I'll have her sister secure it, and the music sheets," Shining replied, his horn still glowing. His magic picked up the sheets, and he let go of his guest after a minute had passed. She climbed on his back, and he looked at her before seeing her pale substantially. "Too shaken to walk?" he asked, garnering an immediate nod as his answer. "I understand. Would you like to see your sister?" Another nod gave him all the answer he needed.

Shining sent her a small smile. "Alright. Hang tight," he stated. When he felt claws wrap around his barrel tightly, he turned to the double doors and bounded off the podium, landing smoothly and briefly stopping to make sure that she wouldn't fall off and that he still had the harp and sheets in his magical grasp. When that was done, he galloped to the double doors, flung them open, and rushed out of the auditorium while leaving just two guards and a few loose feathers in his wake.

The two guards in question exchanged looks, with the blue one who took his muffs off early letting his eyes grow to the size of saucers and the other gray one immediately going slack-jawed. "That was… interesting," the wide-eyed guard murmured.

The gray one threw off his earmuffs and sighed. "Hey, at least we came prepared," he replied.

"Might as well start trotting around inside the palace with open umbrellas. The Emperor warned us of potential headaches, not wind manipulation via instrument!" the blue one barked, using a hoof to gesture to the discarded earmuffs. "I'm not sure if the Emperor has gone off his rocker or what!"

"At least he prevented that gale from becoming so strong we would've been swept off our hooves!" the gray guard retorted, firmly frowning at this point. "I for one would not want to know what that harp could do!"

"... point taken," the blue guard groaned, slowly nodding in agreement. He began trotting to the double doors, with his fellow coming up behind him. They assumed stoic faces, taking deep breaths to compose themselves as they went out into the hall, just barely catching the fading echo of galloping hooves. They glanced around, trying to find the source of the noise, but alas they found naught except themselves in that hall.

They exchanged glances upon noticing the emptiness of the crystal corridor. The blue guard spoke, "Do you think the Emperor took a detour, Solid Step?"

Solid Step shook his head. "Not unless he accidentally dropped the hippogryph. He's not one to take shortcuts, and you know that as well as I do, Aquamarine," he replied.

Aquamarine sighed and nodded. He began trotting again, down to one end of the hall before rounding a corner and vanishing from sight. Solid watched him disappear, pondering for a few minutes on end on whether or not he should stop standing still and make an effort to catch up to his companion. He remained entirely unaware that something rounded a bend from the other side of the hall, silent as a stalking cat and as slow and concise as a praying mantis.

When the figure slipped and made a noise not unlike a hoof hitting the floor, Solid whipped around, his head darting everywhere in an attempt to scope out the source. He saw nothing, and slowly turned back around before languidly trotting where Aquamarine had gone. Behind him, the form silently slipped out from behind a nearby crystal pillar and crept ever closer to the lone guard. Solid Step kept his back turned, his already-slow trot decelerating into a hoof-dragging walk.

Solid Step then stopped at the bend and took his sweet time to contemplate some more, but the poor bastard didn't get the chance to come to a decision, still blissfully ignorant to the presence that scoped him out and closed in without hesitation. Hooves flew around his neck from behind, gripping him in a firm chokehold before he realized what had happened, and his eyes went wide as the weight of the situation set in.

He tried to look at his attacker as he began struggling to break free, but he paled when all he could make out was a form wearing a cloak black as night that obscured all of their features. He felt his body weaken, his throat constricting and lungs begging for oxygen that was rapidly depleting.

He bucked, he reared, he pranced madly up and down the hall, even tried lifting the form from his neck with his magic—no matter what he did, nothing was able to shake the creature off. He felt something clamp down on his horn, and jolts went through his system, temporarily dazing him and taking any and all spells he had known straight out of the equation.

Even so, he regained his senses and began anew, throwing all of his strength into attempting to get the form off of him. He crashed side-first into a wall, tossed himself into a pillar, and even to the floor, but still the entity would not relent. As the minutes ticked by, his more physical attempts to throw the figure off were met with a tighter grip and a face turning a shade of blue, and every time he tried to cast a spell he got another shock running through his system.

His exertion, the shock treatment that came from his horn being repeatedly rendered useless, and the hooves around his neck just tired him out to the bitter end. "It's night-night time now," a hollow voice murmured, right as Solid's vision became white for the barest of seconds before turning black on the spot. The figure released its hold on the guard and let him drop to the floor, quiet but harsh wheezes leaving the mouth of the hapless unicorn as he lay there with a blue face.

"That was too easy," the figure hissed to itself, chortling lowly before silencing itself and languidly walking along the halls. If Solid were still awake then, he'd have seen that it swayed from one side to the next, its form ever-threatening to tip over only to swing in the opposite direction like a metronome. It slipped around the same bend that Aquamarine had taken moments ago, disappearing from sight almost like a shadowy afterimage.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

"You did what?" Shining growled. He was in one of the guest rooms, sitting at a table with Discord directly opposite of him. A naked Lance was also sitting to one side with a scowl in his face, and Fluttershy sitting across from said Fantasian.

Fluttershy spoke up, "Discord made an accordion and a potted plant land on his head." She used a hoof to gesture to Lance, who grumbled incoherently as soon as the limb fell in his direction.

Discord crossed his mismatched forelimbs, a frown so set into his face that it seemed the corners of his mouth were trying to leave their boundaries, which made it look like his muzzle was starting to melt. "I said I was sorry, and he accepted," he murmured.

"Forgiven, but not forgotten," Lance chimed in, ears flat against his head, his eyes darting up every few seconds like he was expecting an anvil to take a turn crashing on his skull.

Shining nodded, taking a scant few seconds out of the time of his day to let the triad of remarks sink in. He turned to Fluttershy and asked, "Are you going to punish him, or no?"

Fluttershy shook her head. "No; his apology was sincere. But I will keep a better eye on him," she replied, turning to the draconequus who mutely nodded when she sent him the briefest of glares.

"And is he aware that he could have caused something I think we'd all rather avoid?" Shining asked, garnering a nod from Fluttershy as she turned back to him.

Fluttershy remained silent, and Lance took that as his cue to answer for her, "Thoroughly." Two nods, one from Discord and one from the yellow pegasus, occurred simultaneously after the general's one-word utterance had left his mouth.

Shining let his shoulders slump, his eyes closing as a sigh of relief left his lips. "For a moment, I was worried I'd have to intervene. Again," he murmured. He opened his eyes and sent Lance an unreadable look. "So… how are things on your end?"

"Last few hours were confusing as fuck," Lance replied, taking a moment to throw his front hooves into the air to emphasize his claim.

"Having met Discord notwithstanding, what do you mean?" Shining asked, a brow quirked.

Lance gave Shining a serious look, his lips pulled into a tight frown. "I've become an adoptive father," he replied.

Shining doned a bemused grin. "C-come again?" he asked, his brow raising higher.

"It's true," Discord piped in, rolling his eyes in such a manner that resembled screws being twisted out of a wall. His paw rose, and he used it to scoop out his oculars right from their sockets without bleeding or even snapping his central retina veins or caverna sinuses in the process. Lance turned to him and jumped upon seeing the empty sockets, and the draconequus just casually shook his eyes in his paw before casting them unto the table like crude dice.

The eyes, upon hitting the table, proceeded to morph into a pair of cards that stood up for one minute, only to land backside-down and reveal a duet of pictures that somehow moved in their little frames. One was of a forest with wind billowing and rustling its branches, and the other a glistening moon in a night sky accompanied by several small stars, in addition to a shooting star that smoothly arced over the celestial body.

Shining, Lance, and Fluttershy all looked at the cards intently, then the stallions turned to Discord to find that his eyes just regrew in their sockets like it was nothing. Discord shrugged and gestured to the cards with his talon. "Twilight told me what she discovered about Starswirl last night," he said.

Shining and Lance shared a look, then yet again turned to the draconequus with hope glimmering in their eyes. "I'll admit, I was around during Starswirl's time," Discord began, watching as the dual glimmers brightened considerably. "But, I was just a child at the time—couldn't master any of my powers, and thus, could not go to and from Fantasia. Why, I was only made aware of this before I went to sleep," he said, frowning when the hope faded and got replaced by small flickers of worry.

"So, you hardly know jack shit…" Lance groaned, turning to Shining with a frown on his face. "Is it me, or is the boat getting crowded?"

"I'd like to think so, at this rate," Shining murmured, turning to Discord. "So… when were you petrified the first time?" he asked, hoping to glean another smidgen of useful information.

"After the barrier had been set up," Discord scoffed in reply. "I was planning on heading over to Fantasia, but as soon as I reached adulthood—which was millennia upon millennia ago—guess what prevented me from doing just that?"

Lance proceeded to let one of his hooves connect with his face. "That which broke weeks ago," he grumbled.

"Ding! We have a winner! Here, have a million bits!" Discord cheered, the digits of his talon snapping. A flash of light flared above Lance, and from it no more than a million bits materialized, rained down onto him, and covered him up so fast he couldn't protest. A hoof managed to raise up from the pile, swinging about uselessly for a few minutes before it found purchase on the table and the general managed to haul his front quarters out.

The pile of bits vanished as they had come, and Lance shook his head rapidly. He turned to Discord and sighed in annoyance. "Can you not suffocate me, please?" he asked, more in exasperation than anger.

"It's why I made the moolah vanish once you managed to emerge from the pile," Discord replied, grinning for the barest of instants. "In all seriousness," he began, his grin fading as he turned back to Shining, "I wish I had known what made the barrier break into tiny little pieces."

"I've been trying to find that out from the Empire's library myself," Shining groused, frowning himself. "But it's so big that even a small team of volunteers that are helping the librarian are having… a bit of trouble."

Discord rose a brow. "And what all have you managed to glean from the library here, thus far?" he inquired.

"A few spellbooks… and another book that translates ancient runes found in said books," Shining groaned, his head dropping. "And that was yesterday."

Discord's eyes widened. "How all is that mess sorted?" he murmured.

Shining lifted his head. "I haven't the foggiest," he answered, shaking his head and shrugging for emphasis. "To ask me to go through it on my lonesome, or even with Cadence helping me… you might as well ask me to assassinate Celestia and Luna with nothing more than a butter knife—I couldn't pull it off. No way, no how; not even time itself would be on my side."

"I've seen the massive clusterfuck," Lance added, waving a hoof dismissively.

Discord nodded and hummed thoughtfully. He then let his eyes dart between the Emperor and the general before deciding to ask, "Any books on bound wings and wing enchantments?"

Shining's brow rose. "Why?" he asked.

"Let me show you…" Discord trailed off, using his paw to grab one of Lance's wings. He stroked the copper feathers with his talon, and Shining's eyes went wide as the runes once more lit up in response.

"Yes, Shining, my ass is indeed enchanted ten ways to Sunday," Lance murmured, sighing in resignation as his eyes narrowed upon turning to the table. Bitterly, he added, "And I sincerely doubt the Empire has books on enchanted wings."

"If nothing else," Shining began, lifting a hoof and reaching over to pat Lance on the withers, "the other libraries in Equestria could have something about the topic."

Lance turned to look at Shining, doubt flickering in his eyes. "The high mages of Canterlot couldn't rectify this," he retorted, using a hoof to gesture to his wings. "Instead, they made an entire damn room blow up."

Shining's brow slanted, but only slightly. "Maybe the book that translates the ancient runes would help. The runes on your feathers looked… odd," he murmured.

Lance held his gaze, staring at Shining like he'd consumed an alcoholic cocktail laced with hallucinatory drugs. "What're the chances of that?" he asked in a low voice. "That book may well be useless, and who could look through it in an entire day to determine such? Besides, I don't even know what spell the unicorns who did this to me used. I'm gonna go on three legs and assume that book doesn't even have one rune that matches what's on my false feathers."

Shining's mouth twitched up into the smallest of smiles. "My sister," he answered tersely. "She can leaf through that book, and may find something useful."

"Really?" Lance asked, his pupils shrinking a bit.

"Yes. Spells and runes and books are Twilight's speciality," Fluttershy piped up, smiling when Lance jerked his gaze to her. Her smile fell as she added, "But… if even she can't disenchant you… I honestly don't know what will."