Words of a trickster

   With only a few hours left for the arrival of the dreaded red planet, life in Equestria was paralyzed. No stores were opened, no foals were playing in the parks, and no letters were being delivered. Some ponies hid in their homes, decided to spent their last minutes with their loved ones. Others formed crowds in the cities and looked at the red planet, now so big that everypony could see its demonic blue eyes. They were afraid and worried, like everypony else, but they also had faith in their Princesses. They had said that somepony would come to save them.

   All of the colours of the world had disappeared, except for red, which now was everywhere. Suddenly, Equestria seemed to have lost all of its beauty and happiness, sucked away by that crimson light. Nature itself was affected by the proximity of the planet: the flowers had closed their buds, and the animals had took shelter all over the world.

   However, even if that red filter wasn’t there, Equestria would still look like a sad place for Twilight Sparkle. Since their return from the planet, she couldn’t look anywhere without thinking that everything she saw, from ponies to mere objects, were all fictional. The same happened to Luna and Dash. They were all in Canterlot, waiting for the inevitable. Pinkie, Celestia and the others were at the balcony, looking at the red planet and waiting for Francisco.

   The purple unicorn, the blue pegasus and the moon alicorn, on the other hand, were in the garden. Luna had convinced them to go there, to see the only creature who could know if the words of Adam and Eve were true or not.

   A creature trapped in stone.

   “I...” whispered Twilight. “I don’t know if we should...”

   “I want to know,” said Rainbow Dash. “If we’re going to die, I want to know. I we’re going to live, I want to know, too.”

   “Do not worry,” said Luna, while drawing a circle around the statue, using her horn. “This magic symbols will allow us to free just a small portion of Discord, more than enough for him to answer us.”

   Twilight looked at the red planet. To be honest, she also wanted to know.

   Luna finished the circle. Then, she stepped back, and her horn glowed. The drawings in the ground shone, too, and created a column of blue energy that surrounded the statue. Then, they heard a crack. And another one. And another one...

   Finally, the head of the draconequus became flesh again. Just the head.

   “Oh, my neck!” he groaned. “Just a year and a half trapped in stone, and my neck already hurts this much? Good Chaos, I don’t want to think of how much it will hurt in one century...” He looked at the three ponies. “Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and my beloved Luna. What can I do for you?”

   “Don’t try anything, Discord,” warned the alicorn. “The 90% of your body is still trapped in stone, and a powerful magic shield is around you. Your powers can do nothing.”

   “Yes, I can see that,” the draconequus looked around. “Why is there so much red? Oh, I can’t believe it! You were angry at me for painting all Canterlot in bright green, and now you do the same with other colour?! Shame on you!”, then, he looked up, and he saw it. “What has Celestia done to her sun?”

   “That is not the sun, you buffoon! It is a planet, and it is about to eat us.”

   “Oooh... I see. You want me to destroy it, right?” he smiled. “It will be a pleasure, my ladies. Just take me out of here, and I-”

   “We’d rather be swallowed by that monster than accepting your help, Discord!”

   “And we don’t need you, either,” said Rainbow Dash. “A friend of ours is going to blow up that planet anytime soon!”

   “Really?” Discord looked honestly surprised. “Oh, I would like to meet him.”

   “Enough!” shouted Luna, stomping. “We’ve freed you only to ask you a question!”

   “Very well, then. Ask.”

   “Do you promise to tell us the truth?”

   “Yeah, why not? After all, I’m going back to stone anyway, am I not?”

   “Yes. But first, the question,” the blue alicorn gulped. She looked at her companions, and they nodded. “Is it true... Is it true that we’re just a work of fiction?”

   The draconequus raised one of his gray eyebrows. Then, he bursted in laugh.

   “So, you’ve discovered it, haven’t you?” he asked. “Well, it was about damn time!”

   “Do you mean...” said Luna, with her lips trembling. “Is it true?”

   “Of course it is! Why do you think I am so crazy? Because I discovered the truth many, many years ago, and I became mad from the revelation!” and he kept laughing hysterically.

   The weak flames of hope that were left in the hearts of the three ponies were extinguished by a merciless cold wind. Their worst fears had turned out to be true. Their lives, their dreams, their friendship... all of that was nothing more than the vagaries of a screenwriter. And the unbearable laugh of the draconequus echoing in their ears wasn’t making things easier.

   “Who told you that?” asked Discord. “Nah, forget it, it doesn’t matter... I wish I could have seen your faces when you discovered the horrible reality! Oh, are you crying, Twilight Sparkle? Well, you should!”

   “Shut up!” shouted Rainbow Dash.

   “Did you know that the cartoon show started right in the moment Twilight Sparkle came to Ponyville? Do you know what that means? That everything that you remember that happened before that point actually never happened! They’re false memories brought up by flashbacks every time the director commands it! Hey, Rainbow Dash, do you remember your first Sonic Rainboom, when you were just a filly? You actually never did it, it was just a flashback of something that never happened!

   “Shut up, you...!”

   The pegasus tried to hit the laughing Discord in the face, but Luna stopped her. If Dash had gone through the magic shield, it would have broken, and the draconequus would have been sent free.

   Then, Twilight Sparkle ran away, crying. Rainbow Dash followed her. She may be just a fictional entity from a cartoon show, but she was still the Element of Loyalty. Princess Luna imprisoned Discord again. This time, the statue of the Spirit of Chaos had a deformed smile on its face.

***

   Rainbow Dash found Twilight curled in a corner, crying. The pegasus landed near her friend and put a friendly hoof on her shoulder.

   “I...” she started to say. However, she was as broken as the unicorn, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Desperate, almost wishing for the red planet to devour them as soon as possible, Dash curled too, in the grass.

   Luna found them, and she embraced them under her wings. The three ponies were lost, lost in their own world. They couldn’t tell the truth, nopony would believe them, and those who do, would become as miserable as them. Their lives had turned out to be a lie, and they could do nothing about it.

   Suddenly, Twilight Sparkle understood the point of view of Adam and Eve. She wanted to die...

   But she also realized about something:

   “Wait a second!” she shouted. “If that work of fiction started when I first got to Ponyville, and before that there was nothing, then how could Discord discover the truth many, many years ago?”

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   It was raining. Stones. From a red sky without clouds.

   A figure was walking through the still unfinished landscape, under a colorful umbrella to protect itself from the tiny round stones which were falling everywhere. He took one of them, and studied it. The stone studied him too, with a yellow eye.

   “Creepy”, said Discord, throwing the stone away. “What are they?”

   “Keys,” explained the drooling god, levitating several meters over the head of the draconequus. “I will use them to bring lesser beings from other worlds to my dimension. I will grant them their wishes, and I will share their happiness.”

    Discord made the umbrella disappear in a little flash of light. It wasn’t raining stones under the drooling god.

   “Why don’t you use your power to see all the possible futures?” asked the draconequus. “See in which of them you will be happier, and make it happen.”

   “Past and Future do not exist for me, only Present. I can only see the possible futures of other entities and worlds. But by doing that, I have discovered some curious things. For example...”

   The drooling god moved his tentacles, and two holes opened in the red sky. Discord could see a planet in each one of them, both blue and pretty similar, except for minor details. One of them was orbiting around a sun, while in the other, it was the inverse. The drooling god pointed at the latter and said:

   “In one of the possible futures of this young planet, which is most likely to happen, its surface will be populated by sentient candy-colored ponies.”

   “You’re making that up, aren’t you?” asked Discord.

   “And in one of the possible futures of the other planet, which is also most likely to happen, its surface will be populated by sentient hairless apes.”

   “Oh, you have to be making that one up. It’s impossible that something like that could happen naturally. Hairless apes... by the Chaos...”

    “But the most interesting thing is that, in one of the possible futures of the second planet, one of the apes will create a cartoon show which will be almost identical to the world of the ponies. What an amazing coincidence.”

   “Yeah, cool...” the draconequus was looking at the world which would be eventually known as Equestria, playing with his goatee.

   He was thinking that ponies would be much more fun to play with than apes.

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   When Discord’s head became flesh again, the draconequus kept laughing for a while. At first it was his typical sincere laugh, he was really having fun. Then, when he realized that Luna, Twilight and Rainbow were looking at him with very angry expressions on their faces, his laugh became a bit forced and lost strength. Eventually, he shut up.

   “So, you have realized, haven’t you?” he asked.

   “Discord!” roared Luna, so angry that her eyes were glowing in white. “You promised to tell us the truth!”

   “Hellooooo? I’m the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, I love lies and I don’t keep my promises. You three should know it by now.”

   “I’m tired of this!” growled Rainbow Dash. “We’ll ask it one more time, and this time, you will tell the truth!”

   Discord yawned.

   “You’re so boring...” he said, looking up. “Well, since it seems that we’re going to die soon... Equestria is real. Totally real, and so are all of you. And yes, all the things that you remember that happened in your past, did happen.”

   “Then, what about the cartoon show?” asked Luna.

   “Just a cosmic coincidence.”

   However, the alicorn wasn’t really convinced by that.

   “Hey, now I am telling the truth, I swear!” said Discord. “I assure you, it’s just a coincidence! And besides, the cartoon show is not even 100% identical to Equestria, there are small differences.”

   “But still...” mumbled Twilight. “That means lots of creatures watched us... or they watched images that were doing the same as us... that’s creepy...”

   “What’s the matter, Twilight Sparkle? Scared that a bunch of hairless apes may have watched you in the bathroom? Probably they didn’t, that cartoon show doesn’t replicate the 24 hours of your everyday life.”

   “Who cares if they did?” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, touching her cheeks with her hooves. She was crying again, but this time, of happiness. “We’re real! Good Celestia, we are real! And our friends are real, and the grass is real, and the clouds are real!”

   And she hugged Princess Luna without warning.

   “Uhm...” Discord looked at the red planet again. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get rid of that thing? It’s coming closer...”

   “Thank you for answering your questions, Discord,” smiled Luna. “I’ll remember this if someday Celestia tries to smash your statue,” and her horn glowed.

   “Oh, come on! At least let me adopt a more dignifying stan-!”

   And the head of the draconequus was stone again.

   The three ponies couldn’t help but to cheer in loud voices. They could feel the ground under their hooves and the wind in their manes, and it was wonderful, because all of it was real, and so they were.

   Then, everything started to tremble.

***

   The red planet was getting bigger and bigger, probably it had increased its speed again. Now it was covering a good portion of the sky, and the blue eyes were perfectly visible. They were looking at Equestria, hungry, avid.

   Earthquakes were happening all around the world of the ponies. The coasts were being hit by terrible waves, and violent winds howled all across the Everfree Forest, uprooting trees. The mountains started to die in avalanches, and some volcanoes were re-awakened. The proximity of the red planet had started to unbalance Nature itself.

   Luna, Twilight and Rainbow Dash reunited with Celestia and the others in the balcony. All of them looked up at the nightmarish eyes, all of them stared at their imminent doom.  

   Then, the planet removed its atmosphere, allowing everypony in Equestria to see its surface: bright red, pulsating and knurled, like a gigantic ball made of skinned muscles. It was alive, and it was hungry.

   It was time to eat.

   But then, a figure appeared out of nowhere and stood in the path of the red planet.

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Special thanks to Thepple for suggesting the idea that Discord could know about the drooling god.

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