Anger wasn’t strong enough a word to express his rage.

He was born to disrupt cycles, break patterns, upset order, end harmony. It was his entire purpose, his being, just to spread the beauty and wonder of chaos across all the lands that he could. Rain down chocolate, make trees dance, have days last minutes, or seconds, or years! He could twist minds, create matter, destroy energy, and replicate the impossible. There was nothing he couldn’t do.

Yet here he was, covered in stone, in a prison he had been in once and twice before. So now it was thrice, thrice he had been encased in a cell of rock, thrice he had been forced to watch the world move by him in perfect, unchallenged harmony. It sickened him beyond ways he thought possible, even for him. For every happy couple that cuddled in the garden, he felt bile rising in his immobile stomach. For every happy filly that ventured through the hedge maze, his ears rang for their silent prison. And for every touring group that labeled him a relic of the past, he felt his mind scream within its tomb.

This was not the way things were meant to work. His very existence should have ended this -- all of this. None of it should have begun again, not after he ended it last time. But it did. Not once, not twice, but thrice! First the alicorn sisters, then the elements of six ponies, followed by all eight of them together, and so easily that he barely had time for a song! What would be next? Would it happen again? If he broke free from this torturous prison yet again, would he be forced to endure another ill-fated stone jail?

The thought brought  terror to his immovable body.

If even he, the creature destined for such a fate saw it coming, why was he continuing to plot it? Did he hope the cycle would change? Hope for something so beyond the power of any creature that he simply believed in something he couldn’t control, couldn’t manipulate, couldn’t change? There was a word for this, a vile despicable word that made his once furred skin shiver and scales crawl. It was a word used so often by the princesses, even more by their students? And not any less than by the laborers.

It was a cycle, a twisted, demented, evil, vile, and unforgiveable cycle.

Even he, he, the very incarnation of chaos itself, felt the idea to be more repulsive than anything harmony had created, because it was a thing of order he had a part in. Cycles were a form of harmony, a measure of balance. If anything of an intelligent mind knew of the cycle - or saw the patterns, they could predict what would come, know what would happen, and plan for the future.  All of them, every last one of them, were things that could never exist within chaos. But here he was the spirit of chaos, its ruler, creator, maker and master, trapped in a prison, and cycle, that he had a hand in not only creating, but now enforcing.

How could it have come to this? Was he so ignorant to his actions that he failed to see their outcome? But was that not the very meaning of chaos, outcomes uncertain with actions beyond normal and immoral? Where was the line? Where did his chaos begin and the alicorns’ harmony begin? If this was a cycle, how could he end it? And that was the question. Not how he would escape again, not how he would exact revenge, not on what chaos truly was, or even what harmony grew from. There was only one dire question that circled all of his being, swallowing the God of Chaos in a torment of thoughts beyond even the boundaries of his disorder.

How did he end a cycle that depended on him?

If he left the cycle, left Equestria, to a land of his own creation, the balance of harmony would become permanent. Not a cycle, but a line, a permanent existence of concord given no reason or pause to end and every reason to exist. Peace would be eternal, fear would be a myth, and love and friendship would never end.

If he stayed within the cycle, then for every chance of freedom he grabbed, he would be defeated. For every chance of chaos he had to spread, he would watch harmony rise up and defeat him. And for every opportunity he had to end it all, something or somepony would appear to end him. It was the cycle that would demand it. No matter how long he struggled to hold his throne, no matter how well he destroyed the elements or hid them across the universe, they would be found, and he would be defeated. It was inevitable. It was, after all, a cycle.

What could be done? What could he do? What could be done to create end the cycle for a reign of chaos? Inexistence would delay it, action would start it again, but nothing in the realm of chaos could end it. No amount of corruption, deceit, treachery, lies, betrayal, or wrath could… could… co-o-u-uld….

Wrath…

Wrath was different than the rest of chaos… It didn’t change what already existed, it removed it. Removing the chance for them to change back. His alterations could be over-powered, or even reversed, but no amount of magic could replace a life that was lost. What is destroyed is gone, what ends cannot begin again, what is no more cannot reform.

It would be so easy for him to get rid of them, for all that he was and remained capable of, and they were nothing alone. No element of harmony separate from the rest could match the power of his chaos at its fullest. It would be so easy for him to remove them all. If there was nothing remaining, then his chaos could spread. He could inflict the young if the old could not teach, raise them to love the chaos the way their elders did harmony. He just had to get rid of the guardians, the wise, the ponies who knew about harmony. If they were gone, if they were all gone, then there wouldn’t be any need for the cycle. The cycle would be done, because he would be the only force left.

He just had to kill them all.

But it couldn’t be him.

He couldn’t inflict the wrath -- it would just be a part of the cycle. Anything he did within this cycle would ensure the survival of it. For any pony he killed, the others would replace. Maybe not quickly, maybe not wisely, but they would. And then through luck, will, or the cycle itself, it would end him, again and again and again.

He needed something, somepony, someone else to inflict the wrath, to begin the suffering, to ensure victory. A pony that could kill without regret, a soul that didn’t embrace the status quo, a being that yearned for things to be different than what they were, to be free from control or order. He needed to find souls that had such a yearning, such a gift, such a wish. But where?

Where in all of Equestria, where in the entire world, could such ponies exist? The few he had ever seen were things of his own creation, and they wouldn’t do. They were created by him, made by him, shaped by him, so they would be committing acts as if they were already him. It would be the same outcome. Murder, horror, acknowledgement, replacement, struggle, defeat. Defeat was not an option, struggle was only a variable. He had to remove them, though. There had to be murder, and murder brought horror, and horror brought fear. Then fear would bring the prize on a golden chariot. Fear would bring the chaos, and that would bring with it the end of Harmony.

But he was thinking too far ahead. He wasn’t used to planning like this, not in the least. A ploy, an act of deception, a spontaneous game, those were easy, those were fun. Those… those had been his downfall in the past. He needed a better method to end this, and it was just at the tip of his sharp marble tongue. There still remained work to be done. His next escape aside, he had to find the chaotic souls, beings with desire not far from his own, or at least with the capability to do so.

But where could he find them? Not in all Equestria, nor the world, did such a soul exist, and he had seen them all before when he took their precious balance away. There were no souls on Equestria that would be willing aid in such an act, and even if few did exist, not nearly enough to kill one of the precious ponies, let alone eight. He could not kill though, not so easily, not so flippantly. That was what began the cycle -- that was what started this predictable circle he had found himself within. He needed to be free, and if that meant finding a shred of order in his frozen mind to hatch plan, then it would be a sacrifice for the long run.

So from nowhere, in all of the land, could these beings come from. Now the question became what existed beyond this land. He already had the answer to that though. There were so many stars that lit the night, so many planets and lands beyond this one, so many worlds beyond Equestria. They could come from any of them, any land, time, or galaxy. They would have to be wicked in heart, cruel in nature, deceptive in thought, and cunning in action. He had time, plenty of time, endless amounts of time to search for them. They would listen to his words, fall into his traps or, if he was lucky, agree with his goal.

His goal was simple, sweet, though it was no easy feat. But now, it was just one step closer to being complete.

This cycle he had helped to create, this continuous pattern of freedom and confinement, of order and chaos, of yin and yang, would end. He would see the yin crushed, the order perish, and hope die as the ponies would embrace the beauty that was chaos.

He would free himself from this prison. He would travel to the galaxies of the universe and beyond. He would find his warriors of cycle-less existence. He would overthrow the harmonic circle of his own creation.

All cycles were meant to be broken.

Within his tomb of stone, Discord cackled in silence. Next Chapter: The Ploy Estimated time remaining: 9 Hours, 57 Minutes