Meanwhile, back at the castle, Princess Celestia was making her way at speed to the castle sculpture gardens. She had a blanket wrapped around her torso, a hammer and chisel in her telekinetic grip, and bloody murder on her mind. She didn't bother with finding her way through the hedge maze to her target; she simply burned a path straight through and marched in over the still smouldering ashes. Under other circumstances she might have teleported or flown, but she was too distraught for the first and as for the second, the thought that someone below might look up and see under her makeshift skirt was enough to give her the staring horrors.

Ground bound or not, she soon made her way to her quarry. She stomped to a halt before the petrified form of the Avatar of Chaos, breathing heavily. "Discord! DISCORD!!" she all but shrieked, steam snorting from her nostrils. "I know you're in there, and I know you can hear me! I do not know how you've done this while still imprisoned and I don't care. But you'd better undo all this or I swear by all my ancestors that I will use this hammer and chisel and turn you into a rock garden!!"

There was no reply. Sputtering with rage, Celestia lit her horn, tweaking the spell holding Discord captive just the tiniest bit.

A moment passed. Celestia felt the sensation of eyes passing over her, regarding her with barely interested disdain. Discord's dry, snarky voice echoed in the ether from the depths of the stone. "Well hello to you too, Celestia," the chaos entity said.  "Something troubling you?"

"No more horseapples, Discord, I mean it," Celestia snarled. "Undo your chaos magic or we both get to find out how creative I am at stonecarving."

"Magic? Chaos magic? Mine? Honestly Celestia, perhaps you haven't noticed but I'm still imprisoned. As much as I'd love to take credit for whatever has gotten you into such a mood but hey hey hey hey what are you doing WAITAMINUTE CAN'T WE TALK THIS OVER??" Discord's ethereal voice rapidly climbed to a panicked shriek. As well it should; there was now a cold steel chisel pressed against his block and tackle. "Please, I need those!! Whatever it is, I swear I didn't do it!"

Celestia raised her hammer, ready to strike. "And why should I believe you?" She asked, her voice as cold and sharp as the chisel.

"I give you my word, I swear it by all the gods and imps of the Draconequus, it wasn't me! I haven't been able to so much as twitch my magical pinkie since you stuck me here! And how could it be me if I don't even know what it is you're talking about couldyouPLEASEmovethatchisel???" Scowling, Celestia let the chisel and hammer drop. There was a profound sigh of relief from the draconequus. "Now that you're willing to listen to reason," he said,  "what in Tartarus has got you this het up?"

"Someone, or some thing, has been making alterations," she growled. "To my kingdom. to my people. to me. Disgusting alterations. The kind that only your type of chaos could even conceive of, let alone create."

"What sort of alterations?" Discord asked. "Because really, other than your current bad mood I don't see any oh, my, gods." Even as he was speaking, Celestia stepped back and let the blanket wrapped around her barrel drop to the grass. She stood there letting the draconequus get an eyeful of the new non-standard feature now slung under her belly.  If she'd retained any doubt that Discord was innocent of this, it was dispelled; all that was coming from the imprisoned chaos god were gabbled broken sounds of shock. "...I... that..that is disgust--.... what in Creation?" He finally managed.

"I awoke this morning to find myself... like this," she said.

"And you thought I did it??" Discord said in outrage. "This sort of thing isn't my style! Good gods, Celestia, I'm a deranged half-mad demigod of chaos and anarchy but I thought you knew me better than that...!"

"This is not the worst of it," Celestia said. " There have been--"

"For Equestria's sake, could you cover that back up? I can't even blink here!"

The fuming princess complied. "As I was saying, this is not even the worst of it," she continued. "My bedroom looks like the aftermath of a booze-laden orgy. My closets and dressers have been filled with.... accoutrements and devices," she shuddered, "that I would rather not describe. All my photos and portraits that used to be of my friends and loved ones have been magically transformed. they now show me engaged in---disgusting acts with them..." she shuddered again, almost weeping at the sense of violation.

"That much I could still assume it was some prankster... sick, diseased, foul-minded prankster.... But the things I found elsewhere in the palace....

"I saw portraits and statues, easily hundreds of years old... portraits and statues of me crushing armies under my hoof, subjugating peasants, waging slaughter-- statues of me engaging in lewd acts with stallions and mares alike-- and with gryphons, dragons-- I think one had me with a group of diamond dogs---" she paused to gag. "the maids and servants, I saw some with iron collars... the maid uniforms had been recut to...." she made gestures with her hoof... "and--- fishnet stockings and--- .....everypony was afraid of me. Even the guards backed out of any room I entered, like they were afraid I would pounce on them from behind. I found an entire class of schoolchildren locked in my dungeon... schoolchildren! They claimed that I put them there after one of them told me that Luna was his favorite princess instead of me..."

"But every time I found anything that looked remotely normal, anypony that was remotely the same as I remembered them the day before.... I would try to show them what I'd just seen and it would be gone.... My own bloody castle has turned into a funhouse mirror maze. Who else would I think responsible but you?"

Discord listened quietly to the pony's manic tirade. He found himself gagging at the descriptions of some of the things she'd seen. Bright colorful mayhem was his thing, not.... this. "It certainly ISN'T me," he said.

"Then who? Or what? One of your kind or kin, then?"

"Perhaps. Maybe I can help you find out."

Celestia, canny old girl, was immediately suspicious. "How?" she asked.

"You'll have to undo the spells binding me a little more. Not much, just another notch or so. Just enough for me to 'look around' as it were."

"Why should I trust you?" Celestia demanded.

"Because you have no choice," Discord replied. "I'm your only option here. I can see things, sense things that you can't, that no other pony can. It's either let me take a look, or go on flailing around completely blind. Your call."

Celestia sighed. "So be it," she said. Her horn began to glow. "But be warned, Discord, try even one trick and---"

"And it's off to the rock garden with my nads, I know, I know," Discord said irritably. "Can we get on with this?"

Celestia closed her eyes and concentrated. What she was doing was not easy; it was the equivalent of opening the door to Discord's dungeon cell a tiny crack, just enough for him to see out, while leaning against it with all her strength to keep him from lunging for an escape. Eldritch light crept over the petrified Draconequus, seeping into the stone. The dungeon door cracked open....

"Close it, close it, close it up again!" Discord hissed.

Surprised, Celestia shut off the spell. The enchantment imprisoning Discord resumed its airtight seal. To her shock, Discord actually sighed in relief as the binding closed around him again. "That was a close one," he said.

"What was a close one?" Celestia said, her voice filled with dread.

"Dear gods and little green apples, Tia," Discord muttered. "This is no prank. This isn't even the work of a draconequus. Oh no no no, this is something far far worse."

"What is it?"

"Celestia," Discord said. His voice was sober and serious, which was more frightening than anything else that had happened that day. ".... I need to show you an example. That statue over there, the one holding the flag. Check it  over with your magic, like you did me."

Puzzled, Celestia stepped over to the statue. It was one of several dozen she had commissioned over the last few decades for the gardens; a simple nondescript pony statue, this one symbolizing patriotism. There was nothing extraordinary about it.

Or was there? Something was wrong. This couldn't be the same statue. She remembered seeing the sculptor at work on this piece, not twenty years past. But this statue was old, at least several hundred years old, her magic told her. She scanned deeper---

ohpleaseohpleaseletmeoutohpleaseohplease

Celestia started back with a cry of horror. "There's a pony in there!" she cried out. Without a second thought she undid the petrification spell. Cold stone turned to warm flesh, and a gray earth pony with a G clef cutie mark sprawled in the grass at her hooves.

The poor creature wailed in relief, gasping for air. She looked up and realized she was sprawled at the feet of one of the Princesses. She gave a shriek of fright and pulled herself into a groveling bow. "Oh thank you thank you your Highness, I swear I will never disrespect you ever again oh mercy please---"

"Who are you, my little pony?" Celestia gasped. "Who put you here like this?"

"Y-you did, your Highness," the pony quavered. "My name is Octavia. You turned me to stone five hundred years ago for disgracing your birthday celebration with my poor cello playing--- please, oh please, can I go home, please don't turn me back to stone..."

Celestia stepped forward, tried to think of something comforting to say. The musician only cried out and cowered lower as she approached. "You are free to go, Octavia," Celestia whispered.

The pony got to her hooves and ran as if the Devil himself were at her heels. She disappeared around a bend in the hedge maze, vanishing from sight.

Celestia staggered back, reeling. "How?" she said plaintively. "I never... I would never...."

"Never change a pony to stone?" Discord said dryly. " Ironically I believe you. Other than myself, I mean."

"You don't understand," Celestia said. "I know that pony. She performed at the last Grand Galloping Gala! And that statue, it was only two decades old if that! How could she have been imprisoned for five centuries in a statue only twenty years old?"

"You wanna have some real fun?" Discord asked. "Look at the statue."

"What stat---" Celestia cut herself off. The statue was back, right where it had been.

"Surprise," Discord said. "And no, it wasn't me THAT time, either." Celestia ignored him and stepped forward, quickly scanning the statue with her magic again. This time it was stone. Nothing but stone... .carved less than twenty years ago. "Oh, don't worry about Octavia by the way," Discord said. "She'll simply merge back together with her original self, or her real self, or her other self-- however you look at it-- and her little experience as a tyrant's lawn ornament will be nothing more than a passing unpleasant fancy."

Celestia wheeled about and faced the statue. "What is happening?" she demanded. "Who or what is causing this??"

"I don't know exactly," the draconequus clarified. "Not precisely. But it's something far more dreadful than any draconequus or Nightmare or changeling queen. Someone, or something, has basically gotten root access to the universe."

"Root..."

"Think of it as having a key to the very foundations of reality," Discord said. "The machinery under the machinery under the machinery. Someone--- a very petty, malicious, and trivial someone-- now has his her or its hands, hooves, claws or tentacles on the steering wheel to the world. Or one of the important wheels, anyway. They're mucking about where Draconequi dare not to go. They're retconning things."

"Ret..."

"Let me continue or this conversation is going to get very lopsided. Where was I? Oh yes, steering wheel to the world. Whoever is out there has somehow gotten control--- or partial control--- of everyone's backstory. Yours, mine, everyone in Equestria. They want to make changes in how things are, so they're changing our pasts."

"Rewriting history," Celestia breathed, her heart chilling.

"No, rewriting YOUR story," Discord corrected. "And rewriting Twilight Sparkle's story, and Luna's story, and MY story..." he paused and gulped, remembering what he'd seen. All those reinterpretations of Discord, hovering just outside his prison, waiting to pounce... "It's not like he's going into the past and, I dunno, shooting your grandmother's parlor maid. It's more akin to editing a book, one random paragraph at a time. Then trying to make all the random bits he's changed fit together again."

"If he's changing our pasts, our stories, then how do we know what's happening?"

"Because he's a ham-fisted clod who doesn't know what he's doing. He's just slapping patches down over top of what's already there. But they don't work right. They run contrary to the very fundamental nature of what Equestria is, so they peel off and fall away with just the slightest nudge by logic, by memory, by one's personality reasserting itself.... That's how you get a castle that alternates between Canterlot Castle and Celestia's Bondage Playhouse. How you wake up and find old family photos.... or your own anatomy.... are looking entirely different than you remember."

"How a pony musician barely in her majority can be trapped for five hundred years in a statue barely twenty years old," Celestia murmured. "Why are they doing this??"

"For their own petty amusement," Discord answered, cynically. "I could almost relate. But I like toying with the universe as it IS... not fundamentally breaking it.  I wanted to add a little chaos to your world, add a little FUN. This... creature... wants to take your sweet little sugar-bowl world and turn it into well, a CRAPHOLE."

Celestia regarded the petrified trickster, brooding. "Why are you helping me, Discord?"

"I'd think that'd be obvious. Look at what he's trying to do to you. He's trying to take you--- sweet noble goody-two-shoes Celestia, princess, ruler and mother figure to all the little ponies--- and rewrite you into..."

"A sadistic tyrannical hermaphrodite nymphomaniac," Celestia deadpanned.

"Tyrantlestia. Trollestia. Molestia?" she could almost hear the smirk in Discord's voice. "But if you think your revisions are horrific... feel free to ponder mine. Whoever-He-Is apparently doesn't think my crimes were horrific enough. One of the revisions he's got hovering in the wings for me is that I forced ponies to eat the roasted flesh of their own children."

Celestia gagged, horrified. "Can he... succeed in changing us?" she whispered.

"It's hard to say. Not likely, I don't think. Not the way he's doing it now. But even if he doesn't change Equestria permanently.... will it matter after he's driven everypony insane?"

Celestia had to admit the chaos god had a grim point. "So what can we do?"

"Nothing, pretty much," Discord said. " Draconequi don't know much about the whatever-they-are that do this sort of thing. Only thing I know is that the only one who can stop them--- and this is folklore, really---  is with someone who, and I quote, "got broken by the fourth wall. They're the only ones who can zero in on where this cosmic schmuck is hiding."

"Isn't that 'Broke the fourth wall?' " Celestia said.

"I said what I meant," Discord said grudgingly. "For now pretty much all you can do is handle things one at a time. If things are getting weird, don't just roll with it, point it out. That usually snaps things back. If that doesn't work? clop 'em on the head. "

Celestia turned to go. "Then farewell til this all ends, Discord," She said.

"Oh princess? BTW? Looks like Mr. Happy finally checked out." Celestia looked down, sighed in relief and dropped the blanket for good. A moment later she'd left the maze, running for the castle.

Discord pondered his fate. Here he was, stuck in a universe being imperiled by some unknown, cretinous boob with the aesthetics of an arsonist and the IQ of a toilet plunger, frozen in stone, locked away from all his power. Still helpless. Save for one tiny mistake on Celestia's part.

She'd forgotten to silence him again.

He considered the possibilities of this newfound freedom. If he was careful, and survived this new threat to Equestria, this might prove advantageous later on.

For now though, he was gonna scare the HELL out of some pigeons.