Shortly after I had delivered the letter to the coast via toucan, I climbed down from the huge silk cotton tree  to concentrate on my next mission.

I hadn't gone to the Amarezon just to annoy monkeys. After a few weeks of terrorizing the local wildlife, I decided to look up Xolotl, someone I used to know.

I am correct in saying Fluttershy is the first friend I've ever had. Though I knew Xolotl for a long time he wasn't really a friend, and he wasn't an enemy. What he actually was, at one point, was my lover.

Are you really that shocked? I've had my share of lovers. I am eons old after all. Actually I don't really know how I old I am. I just know that it was a very long time ago when I came into existence. The phrase that always gets bandied about (especially by Celestia) is “a thousand years ago” or “thousands of years ago.” The truth is we are all much older than that, and I am much older than Celestia and Luna both.

Xolotl was one of these ancient beings, like me. Dog-like and stocky with gnarled, twisted feet that pointed backwards, he came into existence as sickness and deformity while I of course manifested as chaos and randomness. It was really no surprise we found each other--Wherever disease and deformity goes, so does chance and chaos.

I thought he was beautiful, and I'm not just saying that because I look like taxidermy gone wrong.

Everyone and everything was afraid of him except me. How could I be afraid of someone who created such randomness? Deformity is genetic chance, and I was dazzled by it. On rainy evenings --and there were a lot of them in the Amarezon-- we'd retreat to a nearby cave and I'd nuzzle his deformed face, swat away mosquitoes and flies with my tail and tell him I loved him.

I don't think he ever loved me back, not really. He was just pleased that someone, anyone was interested in him that way, or at least came back for seconds, let alone thirds. It did help that sleeping with the manifestation of pestilence had no effect on me the way it had on others, by which I mean they left scratching their nether regions furiously.

Eventually Xolotl tired of me and pretty much told me so.

There's something I forgot to mention about the comet. It gave as good as it got, if not more so. I was pretty bedraggled when I decided to leave it. The action of rubbing my fur against an object comprised entirely of static electricity had left me frazzled and burnt. My ribs were rather visible through my skin and my eyes looked glazed.

My appearance was similar when I emerged from the Amarezon rainforest after being unceremoniously dumped by Xolotl. Though Xolotl's decay and disease had no effect on me, I had neglected myself to the point where I may as well have rolled in broken glass tipped with every plague known to ponykind.

I was much younger then and a bit stupid if I'm honest. However, it was my first lesson in how not to be so clingy and he was by no means my last.

Thousands of years later, I had a brief affair with Baast in ancient Anubgypt. In this case I think she was more into me than I was into her. In fact, I'm sure of it.

We had just started a riot in the streets of Anugypt and I was laughing with joy because there was so much chaos and shouting and I guess we were both caught up in the heat of the moment and she grabbed me and kissed me. Later on I realized what I had thought was simply an invitation to roll in the hay actually meant something more to her. I thought it had simply been an extension of the good time we were having. Not that we didn't have a good time. Baast--being a cat-- was rather loud, and what's more she liked to talk war in bed, which as you can imagine got yours truly's motor running something fierce.

“Anubis knows of your plan to...sack...the east pyramid...” she panted.

“Pssh let him squirm”, I said into her neck.

“It doesn't...ah... matter. They're coming for you.”

Then so was she.

AHEM. Where was I?

Oh yes, my point is I've had a love life, and just because I look the way I do does not mean no one was interested in moi.  My body was not a temple; it was a veritable amusement park. Yes, yes I know--Discord you dirty old dog, you horny old goat, you lascivious platypus, etcetera.

However, this time I wasn't seeking anything of the sort from Xolotl. I simply wanted to talk.

It took me a few days to track him down once I started looking. I picked up his scent near an eastern tributary of the river and followed it for a few hours, until I finally came to a place where the trees were mostly dead and rotten. The air was thicker with mosquitoes here and the water stagnant.

Xolotl's den was surrounded by bones from his last meal. Some of the bones looked deformed which means Xolotl had clearly been at work on them before eating their previous owner.

“Good morrow!” I called cheerfully.

There was a rustling from inside the den, then a crunching noise as something heavy smashed brittle bones underfoot.

Xolotl emerged from the darkness, looking as threatening and stocky as ever, his broad head and shoulders were huge and his paws were the size of  some of the nearby tree trunks in diameter.

He squinted, and then recognition surfaced on his face.

“Discord,” he said.  “Well I’ll be.”

He looked pleased to see me but I noted his tail wasn’t wagging.

He licked his lips lasciviously. “So, after all this time you’re back for more, eh? Well I suppose I could take time out of my busy schedule to accommodate you.”

I rolled my eyes at him. Xolotl had always been a massive letch. I suppose it comes with the territory when you are an unneutered dog-god.

“As stunningly attractive as I know I must be to you, I'm not here for anything of the sort. I simply need a moment of your time to...discuss something.”

Xolotl gave a non-committal snort.

I snapped my fingers and conjured up two pipes filled with Mapacho, a plant that was a hallucinogenic but that simply had a calming effect on beings such as Xolotl and myself in much the same way Poison Joke Weed does.

Xolotl took his gratefully and began to blow smoke rings.

I leaned against a log, put my paw behind my head and crossed my legs as I took a generous puff of my own pipe.

After a while Xolotl asked,“What’s that on your head?”

“Oh, this?” I said, pointing to my head gear. “It’s a pith helmet.”

“Ah yes. Last group of people I saw wearing those came through here a while back. I gobbled them up…HA HA.”

His laugh manifested as more of a bark, and ended with a dry coughing fit. I watched a spider shoot out of his throat and try to escape, dazed through the undergrowth. It was clear Xolotl hadn’t spoken to anyone in a while. Probably because he was too busy eating them.

“So,” he croaked, “if you're not here for some jollies, then what exactly is it that you want?”

“I just want to talk.”

“Talk?  There is no “just talking” with you. I can practically see the cogs turning in your head. You always were a smart one --Sometimes too smart for your own good. Oh no, I know you. You want something.”

“Hmmm, well” I mumbled while blowing green bubbles through my pipe and secretly enjoying the backhanded compliments about my intelligence, “I'll admit there is something I want, but before you get too excited, Xolly, I have to tell you it's simply information.”

“Information? And don't call me Xolly. I hate it when you do that.”

I nodded and made a mental note to call him that again in ten minutes.

“I wanted to ask you how you managed to cope with people not appreciating your work?”

Xolotl's expression darkened.

“Surely you know something of how it feels?”

“Oh, I do. But occasionally people DO appreciate chaos, even if they don't recognize it as such. For example, an oddly shaped pebble on the beach, or the fact that scientists noticed that all the finches on neighbouring islands had different shaped beaks- that sort of thing. Whereas I can't think of anyone that has ever appreciated disease and deformity.”

I smiled and let that sink in while I enjoyed my pipe.

Xolotl gave me a hard stare, but then he said “you learn not to care. Honestly, who cares what others think?”

I couldn't completely agree with this. Not because I can't be horribly callous and uncaring, but because the thought of having no audience annoyed me.

“But if someone DID appreciate your work, even though it's... shall we say a predilection that difficult to come by, and the only way you could return that appreciation was by doing less of it, and you obviously could not do that, what would be the best course of action?”

“Just WHY are you asking me this?” Xolotl growled. “It's not like you to give a damn about what others think? Who cares what they think. If it feels good, do it.”

“Sometimes I'm not so sure it always feels so good.”

Xolotl cocked an eyebrow at me then a horrible grin spread across his face.

“Wait, I get it. You've got some pretty little thing stashed away somewhere, haven't you? Goodness. When were you going to tell me? I could use a fresh meal, and maybe...other things.” He grinned, and looked almost skull-like.

I could vomit.

“I can assure you the only thing I have stashed away right now is my utter disdain for you so we can continue to have this conversation,” I snapped. “So stop wagging your tail because there are no table scraps going!”

My voice was actually edging on hysterical and I didn't know why.

I began to worry a bit. It wasn't like me to lose the upper hand in a conversation and get angry. Usually I'm the one making people angry.

“Alright, alright. Can't blame a guy for trying.”

“Don't know what you're talking about.”

“Right...”

I'd had enough. Screw trying to learn anything from this guy.  I stood up and started to take my leave, when all of a sudden a broad, twisted paw was around my throat and Xolotl's rows of sharp teeth were up against my face.

“I wouldn't leave just yet if I were you,” he said, his breath wafting over me and making me feel quite sick. “I don't think you've told me everything I want to know. You're hiding something, and you're not going anywhere until I know what...or who it is.”

“What’s it to you?”

“When you are up to something it’s always worth knowing what it is. You were always clever that way.  There might be something in it for me, and in case you haven’t noticed, pickings have been slim around here lately. I still think you’ve got someone hidden away that might make a change from the bones I’ve been gnawing on; A plump friend, perhaps? So tell me where they are, and I might let you go on your merry way.”

I snarled, extricated myself from his paw then suddenly noticed a slight movement above. The trees were beginning to decay before my eyes and I felt my ears flatten instinctively against my head from both growing fear and the blind rage that had welled up in me at the thought of Xolotl getting his filthy paws on my friend in Ponyville.

Xolotl was a magical being, like me. Unlike the clean and learned version of magic the ponies practiced, Xolotl and I possessed magical ability in its raw state, which were forces that had always existed. His domain was decay and all things rotten. Ponies don't like to think of death and decay as part of magic, but it is. If things never rotted, if things never changed or mutated, then the world would cease to be.

At the moment, however, I think Xolotl was trying to make me cease to be, and that wouldn't do at all. He couldn't kill me, any more than I could kill him, but he could make me feel pain and I definitely was not a fan of it.

When trees rot, they tend to hollow out and become lighter. However, these were huge rainforest trees and even in their decayed state they weighed tons. With no structural system to hold all that weight up they would soon fall to the ground, which was exactly what Xolotl intended.

Even though I had clocked what was happening, I wasn't fully prepared by how quickly and by how many of the trunks fell at once. Two massive trees plummeted towards me and I only just managed to get a force field up before they smashed against it, splintering everywhere and making my bones jar horribly. I barely had time to recover before Xolotl flung an entire tree trunk head on towards me. I lunged for the hollow part of the trunk and dove through it out the other side.

I rolled across the forest floor, quickly got to my feet and fired a group of tentacled potatoes at him. Before they even reached him they had wilted and fallen to the ground.

I thought fast, then made thousands of snapping turtles fall on him. An enraged howl escaped from his throat as the turtles began to live up to their namesake, but in an instant they had become shell and bone.

Porcupines, custard tarts, green elephants, they all rotted away before my eyes, so I opted for something sturdier and flung a boulder at him, which he dodged. The boulder crashed through the rainforest as the trees continued to smash everything on their way down. We wrecked entire acres of rainforest that day. Sorry, environment.

I tried sending another boulder his way, but Xolotl caught it in his mouth and smashed it easily between his teeth.

I turned his next missile into brightly coloured goo. The air was filled with the sounds of cracking and booming as the forest decayed around us.

“You were a lousy lay!” I managed to shriek as another tree trunk narrowly missed me by a hair's breadth and hit the ground with an earth shattering boom. A flock of startled macaws shot out of what was left of the tree's once rich canopy.

I was beginning to realize that no matter what I threw at him, it was going to disintegrate before me because I was dealing with a mage whose entire repertoire was the eventual disintegration of everything.

Then he charged straight towards me. In a last ditch effort, I turned the ground he was running on to ice, but this had the unfortunate and unintended side effect of having him slip TOWARDS me and the full weight of him crashed into me.

Then we were a blur of sharp teeth and claws as we tore, bit and scratched every which way we could. In a physical fight, however, Xolotl clearly had the advantage with his bulk and strength and he pinned me down against the hard ground as I felt the breath being forced out of my lungs.  

He pressed down on my shoulders as I squirmed. His breath stank. “Lousy lay was I?” he spat at my face. “Is that why you were a pathetic wreck at my door for days after I told you to get lost? The Great Discord, Master of Chaos, reduced to a snivelling mess, begging and crying for me to love you. I could snap you like a twig. A TWIG! But first...”

I felt his paw reach down.

I could have flung him off me using my magic, or melted him into a brightly coloured puddle of goo,  but in a blind panic I did the first thing that came to mind-- My knee shot up—hard—in between his legs.

Xolotl rolled off me with a howl as he instinctively grasped his now throbbing nether regions.

I got to my feet as steadily as I could muster and brushed myself off.

Xolotl was calling me a snake over and over as he writhed around on the ground.

“Well, thanks for your hospitality,” I said as soon as my breathing had returned to normal. “I would accept your offer of a return visit, but I think your dog house is a mite cramped what with that excessive ego of yours taking up all the room. Not that I blame you. I expect it’s the only company you’ll ever have again…Xolly.”

I teleported before I could hear the enraged howl I knew was imminent.

I decided I was going to wash my knee vigorously when I got back to base camp; with soap.

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