D27 moved through the darkness quickly, sprinting on his spindly legs over the surface of the desert, stopping only to absorb any organic material that he managed to find.

His conscious mind had almost completely returned, and he found it flooded with words and terms. Most of them, annoyingly, had to do with rocks, but that was apparently unavoidable. He had been incredibly surprised to find a monohorn wandering freely in the middle of a desert, and even more surprised when from a distance he had heard it speaking. He had not known monohorns were able to do that.

From the information he had accessed, though, they apparently had a rather complex language that was vastly different from what he was accustomed to. He had been able to access the monohorn’s mind with relative ease and taken knowledge of spoken language- -as well as a written one, something else he was surprised to find. Taking more would also have been possible, but removing more information risked permanent damage to the monohorn’s mind. Copying his knowledge of language simply rendered him unconscious, and would probably result in painful headaches.

That did pose a problem, though. D27 did not know anything about the world around him or the context he had awoken in. Even his own memories, for some reason, were jumbled. He could remember some things, even things that should have been difficult to recall, but not simple things, like his name, if he had ever even had one.

The situation was grim, though. In the sky, he could see one of the two celestial spheres partially illuminating a sky that had been painted with stars and astronomical bodies. The stars were mostly cosmetic; it was the other body, the so-called “moon”, that disturbed him. The fact that it had not been destroyed meant the war had never concluded.

Conversely, the fact that he had seen a monohorn and possibly something else indicated that the Finality Core had not yet been activated. That could mean that the other sphere had been successfully destroyed, but D27 doubted so.

Even more unnerving, the moon seemed to be moving, inching its way slowly across the sky. It was not supposed to do that; both spheres were supposed to be in the sky at the same time- -at least to the extent that there were supposed to be spheres, which there were not. D27 sensed some kind of distant magic; that meant that someone was actually moving the celestial spheres, which was just about the most preposterous thing he had ever even considered.

D27 was aware that he had been gone for a long time, but he did not know how long, or why he had gone to sleep originally, or what had woken him up. He did have a memory of a spark of magic, though, a type of magic that was not supposed to exist in Panbios. As such, he fully intended to find out what had happened.

He collapsed onto all fours, simultaneously sprouting a third pair of spindly arms from his back. In one of his claw-like hands, he held what he had unearthed from the desert, a cracked and weathered monohorn skull. It was damage and poorly preserved, but the spiral horn was still intact, and the magical energy had been enough for D27 to sense it, even beneath the earth. He would probably only get one use out of it, but that was all he needed.

D27 shifted his body, distorting it, forcing it to resemble something similar to a monohorn. Where his face had come to be, he separated the flesh, parting his liquid body apart, and inserted the skull into his head. He shifted it around for a moment, allowing his flesh to move over it, replicating the face of the creature that it once had long ago. D27 felt his triangular sensory organs shift to the eye sockets, and felt the teeth in his mouth.

He accessed the skull, and caused its horn to glow a dim yellow. He focused his mind on the spell that needed to be performed. Blue sparks projected from his own body, arcing toward the horn as he used his own magic, as weak as it was, to catalyze the monohorn spell.

With the sound of a tremendous explosion, he vanished from space in a blast of yellow light.

When D27 rematerialized in space, the horn in the skull he had collected instantly shattered. Since it was connected to his own mind and magic, he felt it go, and it was oddly painful.

“Coprolite!” he shouted, and then clapped his hoof-claw appendages over his mouth. He did not recall even thinking about making speech organs, and yet he had just spoke. It sounded purely bizarre, high pitched and shrill, like the monohorn had been, but also unique.

“Bloody Tartarus,” he said to himself as his skin separated, allowing him to vomit the steaming, useless skull on the grass below. That was when he froze, realizing that although he knew the word, he had no idea what grass actually was.

D27 looked up, and found himself in a forest. It was like none he had ever seen, before, though. Where there should have been conifers and cycads, there were strange leafy trees; the ferns were smaller, and surrounded by other plants that he did not recognize, including ones that were brightly colored for some reason.

It occurred to him that he had been unconscious for some time.

At about that time, he realized that he was being watched. He turned what remained of his “head” and saw a black and white-striped quadrupedal creature staring at him, the root of some unknown herb dangling from her open mouth. She was expertly obscured behind the foliage of the forest, and D27 had not seen her.

Being seen in his current state, D27 realized, was probably not a good thing. Based on the gold ornamentation of this particular specimen, she was probably sentient. Seeing a spindly, partially-formed version of her own genus vomit a skull onto the ground was probably somewhat traumatic.

D27 sprouted a long, accusatory arm from his back and pointed it at her.

“Striped female equine!” he shouted. “You saw nothing!” He then sprouted several more appendages, dividing the legs he had already formed, and scuttled quickly into the forest.

Zecora watched the creature before her leave, and then, slowly, her eyes drifted to the root in her mouth. She immediately spit it out, and stomped it into oblivion with perhaps excessive force.

“I was intending to go into town,” she said, “But now…I think I shall go home, and lie down.”

D27 moved the forest quickly, his shape adjusting as he went, automatically shifting to his surroundings. All around him were monsters, but they all kept their distance, as if they could sense his nature and what he truly was. They were all unfamiliar to D27, but they seemed somewhat lacking. The monstrosities of his own time had been somehow greater; their bodies larger, and their personalities far more savage and intelligent. The modern creatures hardly compared.

Still, the fauna of the strange forest was not of great concern to D27. The flora was much more interesting, and even that was minor. Of much greater concern was that the moon was setting, and the second sphere beginning to rise above the horizon, motivated by some unseen but gravely powerful force. D27’s memories of the spheres were only fragmentary, but he recalled that it had not nearly been so bright. The intense glow, even through the fog and trees, was painful to him, burning at his flesh with its intense radiation.

He ignored it, though. His own magic had been unusually potent when he had awoken, which was not necessarily a good thing- -it meant that he had either been inactive for so long that he had accumulated energy from the celestial spheres, or that the last moments of his previous life had been profoundly ripe with magical energy.

Long distance teleportation was a relatively easy spell, assuming that whatever was being moved could be condensed into a single point in space and survive interdimensional superheating. In addition, D27 had used an external sources of magic to power himself. Recharging could be accomplished the same way, but he was still too weak to attack a monohorn directly. There was an easier way.

The forest he had arrived in had been chosen because he had triangulated the magic that had awoken him to somewhere near it. Fortunately, it had also proven to be oddly rich in magical energy and far more permeable than D27 had expected was even possible.

Eventually, he found an adequate location, a clearing in the swampy ground. He stepped into the center, and moved his triangular organs to the center of his body. With a deep breath of the reeking oxygen atmosphere, he took a deep breath, and focused his energy.

His body distorted, propelled by the magic that began to flow around his body, and the fabric of the universe began to separate, his body becoming the catalyst for the portal to form.

Then, in a flash of unnatural blue sparks, the fractal portal opened. The sound was tremendous, bursting outward with enough force to tear the leaves off the surrounding trees. Space inverted, pulling in air as the universe vomited an arid, smoky gas from the other side, and in an instant D27 was sucked into the other side, and the portal closed, emitting another surge of blue, electric-like energy that scattered across the meadow, causing everything it touched to bubble and ripple with perfect hexagonal crystals.

Not far away, a powerful shiver ran up the spine of a draconaquus.

“Discord,” said Fluttershy, putting down her tea, an expression of surprise and deep concern on her face. “Oh, is something wrong? Did I make the tea to hot?”

“Oh, no, of course not, Fluttershy,” said Discord, forcing a smile and slithering past her surprisingly soft body, terrifying several of the small animals that found themselves unfortunate enough to be in his proximity. “It’s just that, I think I’m feeling a little…green, around the gills.” He lifted up a flap of skin on his neck, revealing a rather grotesque set of shark-like gills that were, in fact, quite green. “Why, I might even blow my cookies!”

Discord withdrew a small pink bubble wand, and blew through it, producing a set of bubbles that contained cookies. The bubbles popped, and the cookies fell onto a small plate he had also produced, landing neatly. He offered them to Fluttershy, who smiled but did not take one. Then the concerned expression returned to her face.

“Oh, I hope it wasn’t the food!” she squeaked. “Maybe an allergy? You aren’t allergic to walnuts, are you?”

“Perish the thought,” said Discord. He brought his narrow eagle-claw hand to his forehead, striking a dramatic pose. “Alas, I believe it may be the effect of having my magic stolen several days back. I just feel so deflated.” His body became gray and, with a squeaking sound of escaping gas, swirled through the air and fell awkwardly on the back of his chair. He chuckled. “Well, I suppose Applejack always did say I was full of hot air,” as he popped back into his normal shape and slid into the chair below- -or rather, as it slid upward to meet him.

“It was hard on all of us,” said Fluttershy, frowning. “But it must have been especially bad for you, seeing as how much you love to use your magic.”

“Indeed, it was!” A violin appeared in his hands, and he played it with what should have been a sad and slow tune but came out as something reminiscient of a screaming cat. Both Discord and Fluttershy winced. “But in time, I think I will be as fit as a fiddle once again!” The violin dropped from his hands, suddenly developing tremendously muscular arms and legs, and struck a body-building pose, making a sound reminiscent of a stringy and musical version of the albino Pegasus Bulk Bicep’s various grunts of approval. It then dashed off and began lifting Fluttershy’s ottoman, continuing with its series of enthusiastic sounds.

“Well, just to be safe, perhaps you should lie down.”

“I appreciate the thought,” said discord hurriedly, looking toward the door, “but it actually occurred to me that I have something rather important to deal with.”

“But what about the tea?” said Fluttershy, looking disappointed. A twinge of remorse pulled through Discord’s several various hearts. In the several millennia he had been alive, Fluttershy was the most adorable creature he had ever seen, and so very soft to boot.

“I’m afraid it was a rather important task,” said Discord, tossing the leather boot behind him. “Princess Luna assigned it to me herself.” He leaned in close to Fluttershy, a tight-fitting and highly familiar ornate helmet suddenly appearing on his head. “And you know how she gets when she gets angry.”

“Oh, Luna isn’t any more scary than you are,” said Fluttershy, wrapping Discord in a hug with her forelegs and wings.

Discord hugged back and disconnected, floating toward the door. “One of these days, you are going to need to tell me how you keep those wings so soft. Even though, you know, only one of mine has feathers.”

“I’d be glad to,” said Fluttershy, waving.

Discord waved back, and then teleported outside of her cottage. He immediately released the breath he had been holding, and broke out in a cold sweat. With a tremendous effort, he had managed to maintain his composure for Fluttershy's sake, but even the modicum of playful chaos he had produced had failed to lift his spirits.

He had sensed something, something that he had been feeling in the distance for several days. At first it had been mild, with only twinges that came with a vague sense of foreboding. Compared to those, the last burst had been a shockwave, filling his very soul with a sense of dread that he had never before known.

The worst part, though, was that he recognized the ripples of magic. Something deep inside him had felt them before, but he could not remember where.

“I think he ees starting to crack,” said a copy of Discord with thick, round glasses and a white coat.

“I’m fine,” sighed Discord, suddenly finding himself on a couch floating through the air, his clone listening from a chair beside. “But now that you mention it, when I was young, I always had this recurring dream about an immense chicken…I named her Scootaloo…”

“Zee problem is vith your mother,” said the Discord psychologist. “That vill be three hundred bits.”

“No,” said Discord, for once clearing his mind. The clones and the couch disappeared. For once, he needed a clear mind. He had begun to float over Ponyville, and drifted down to the ground and leaned against a lamppost. Then, suddenly, he smiled and had an idea.

The light in the next lamp post activated, causing a pink earth pony walking beneath it. She was then promptly concussed as the bulb fell out and smashed on her head.

Discord frowned. He was so out of sorts that he was even failing cliché visual gags. Still, he knew what he needed to do. With a pop, he apparently disappeared, leaving the disoriented earth pony to wander confused and dazed.

Discord floated through his home domain, the chaotic universe of the Discord Dimension, or, as he preferred to call it, Tony. The name was a misnomer, of course; it was not actually called Tony. Nor was it actually a “dimension”, but rather a representation of Discord’s own mind, making it an inherent paradox: his mind existed within him, and he existed within his mind, which was, in turn, inside him.

That, actually, was not true either: his mind was actually a distinct part of the Discord Dimension. Exactly where was not entirely apparent, of course; the incident with Lord Tirac had rendered Discord momentarily mortal, severing his connection to the magic that sustained this plane. As such, everything had moved. Then again, of course, it always moved. There was no point in having everything in the same spot.

In time, though, Discord did find it. It consisted of a dilapidated shed floating upon a tiny model of the moon barely big enough for it, on which Discord had painted a portrait of himself in broad brushstrokes. In other words, the place where the cheese was kept.

Discord pulled open the squeaky door and stepped inside. The place was dusty and smelled strange. Discord sighed; though he did not show it, he had always known that he had a dirty mind.

He pulled the chain to the light, and immediately illuminated the antechamber to the massive complex. Though the shed had been small, the inside was large, the opposite of the normal case- -which was, of course, because what appeared to be the “outside” of the shed was actually the inside, so to speak.

The whole center was bustling with activity. Having one’s soul forcibly ripped from one’s body was sure to cause mental damage, but in Discord’s case, the strain had been especially bad; numerous versions of himself were working hard rebuilding the delicate connections between the chaos magic and his own mind.

Discord walked past the other Discords, or, equally, was walked past by a single Discord, barely paying attention to the various tasks they were doing. One was scrubbing down the fleshy, pink parts of his mind, ensuring the brainwashing would be complete, all the time complaining about getting the wrinkles out. Another, apparently a carpenter, was engaged in a profound philosophical conversation with a large burlap sack that seemed to contain hammers about whether unicorns were, in fact, made of corn.

He passed down a scaffolder grand staircase, grimacing at the fact that he had only managed to apply the stares that went up so far, and passed a large glass bowl where several of his selves were attempting to drain a pool of pink milk that had resulted from his most recent brainstorm.

“Strawberry,” said Discord, tisk-tisking as a version of himself in a diving suit slogged through the bottom of the milk. “Have I really sunk so low?”

Discord realized that he had no idea where he was. He had, apparently, become lost in thought. To remedy this, he stopped before a massive directory. It indicated quite clearly that he was “here”.

“Very existential, but not helpful.” A Discord was walking past him, a hard-hat on his head, carrying one half of a very light an delicate pane of glass. “Excuse me, handsome construction worker?”

“Why yes, dashing and clearly brilliant stranger, how may I be of assistance?” said the other Discord.

“I need directions to the...” He put his claw to his hand and looked around, as if the others would hear him, “the Library.”

“Library?” said the other Discord, scratching his head. “There’s nothing in there but memories! And most are, well,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “rather bad.”

“I know. I just need to look something up.”

“Be sure to write it down.”

“But of course.”

“Well, you have to take the stairs down, until you get to the roof. Take a left at your last right- -that’s my right, not your right- -go past the carrot patch, dig straight down, then dig up, then grow up, go past the monkey house- -monkeys, mind you, not the madhouse- -stop for a lunch, then breakfast, then dinner, and you should see a pony down there trying to do the fishstick. Ignore him, if you see him, you’re in the wrong place anyway. Take the tram, you know, the one that doesn’t work, that one, past the place where that forest was that burned down before you were born, go through where the wild things are, get to the sidewalk’s end, and, at that point, take three lefts.”

“And that will get me to the library?” said the first Discord as the other walked away. Another Discord appeared, this one holding the other end of the plywood sheet and having great difficulty under the weight.

“No. That gets you right here. Library’s behind you.”

Discord turned to see a small wooden door with an immense sign over it saying “LIBRARY”.

“Oh,” he said.

Discord entered the library, and the noise of the construction outside immediately stopped. Of course, there never really had been noise, not in any real sense anyway, aside from the voices that always whispered in the distance no matter how hard Discord tried to suppress them.

The library was massive, but largely empty, and it smelled of books and ham. The only apparent occupant was a cartoonish version of a purple pony at the front desk, her eyes comically staring in different directions and tongue protruding from her mouth.

“I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I read books!” the image said, turning her head as if to a tune that only she could hear. “I sang for thirty minutes and became a princess! Nyx should be in this story!”

“Oh, Twilight,” said Discord, playfully, fully knowing that the thing he projected was just another part of the world. In a way, he actually felt bad for portraying one of his friends as such, but it was just too funny an opportunity to pass up. Discord turned to the fourth wall of the room, as if looking into a camera. “And I’m surprised Rainbow Dash is considered the annoying one!”

“Hey, it’s your mind,” said a rather realistic rendering of Spike as he walked by, toting at large pile of musty books. “You weirdo…”

Discord only smiled, and made his way to the stacks of books in the rear of the library. He looked up at the headings of the two wings: one was labeled as “Truths” and the other as “Truths”. Discord started toward the one labeled “Truths” but then skidded to a stop.

“Gets me every time,” he said as he turned toward the other section.

He continued down the path through the books, looking absentmindedly at the covers. They were not really books, after all, but rather physical representations of memories. Since they were his memories, they were categorized by no apparent knowable order. Most of them were not even facing the same direction; some were stacked on their sides, some upside down, and some with the pages facing out. It was nothing at all like the kind of library that the real Twilight Sparkle would have tolerated. Hers had a manicured and organized appearance, and reeked of order.

“Order…” said Discord, taking down one of the books. He flipped it open, and immediately turned quite red; he closed it, and it became apparent that the cover contained a portrait of Princess Celestia, smiling suggestively.

“It’s not what it looks like!” said Discord, defending himself from unseen accusatory glances. “I assure you, I only read it for the plot!” He broke into a wide grin with an adorable squeak sound effect.

That was clearly not the correct book, and he returned it to the shelf. Then, suddenly, he found himself in a different part of the library. One that was much older, and somehow cold.

Discord’s spirits dropped. Something made him nervous. He had been in his mind for far longer than even he would have liked, but he had never been to this part before, where the floor was ancient stone and the walls stood at odd and impossible angles.

“Twilight?” he said. He suddenly found himself wishing that he had not left Fluttershy’s house. He should have been drinking tea with her, making her house float, or just admiring her bodily softness.

The room contained no doors. It only contained a single, central post on which sat a massive black book. The voices were strong in this room, and though silent, they were deafening, screaming whispers in a language that Discord dared not understand.

Gingerly, he stepped forward, toward the book, only pausing as the shadows projected by the windows shifted. Discord gasped and looked away from the cage-wire windows; for some reason, he knew that if he looked through those ancient grates, he might see something that he was not truly meant to see.

Carefully, he touched the book. It felt somehow wrong, but he still opened it. Despite being thick, there was somehow only one page, and on that page there was a single word.

Discord found himself standing outside, alone, the chaos sky above him. The situation was far worse than even he had thought. He needed to get to the princesses quickly. He needed to warn them, before it was too late, and before he everything he had worked for crumbled around him at the hands of the name drawn in his own blood on that single, vast page.

That word, in rust-colored ,ancient letters, drawn out in perfect block printing, was “ORDER”.

Meanwhile, in the depths of Equestira, in a region that existed on no map and never had, a place where life itself had long given way to emptiness and death, a creature of indeterminate nature began to laugh silently.