Prologue:
“Basking in rage; reminiscing his lost glory; thoughts about family: a daughter and the Mimic.”
Darkness and silence stretched to infinity and beyond. There could be nothing else and while some would have called it a haven of peace and meditation, he never could bring himself to do so. In his eyes, this was an utter bore.
“Bugger me!” the insulting words echoed. There was no body to produce them, yet they carried a sense of direction. Following that would lead to the only anomaly present in this limitless space. A splash of white combined with a different shade of dark into a circle balancing the color and non-color perfectly.
It was Discord, or rather his essence and mind.
“I’ve been outdone by those… Those fillies!” he fumed in a shadow of his real voice. An entire millennium of planning, some of his finest, almost as good as back during the days of his reign, and it had all been for naught. Everything had fallen apart in a vain moment of pride and over-confidence. What were the odds that six of the most clueless ponies he had seen in a long time would manage to cast him back in his stone prison? That was the thing, though. Odds and chances, it was a part of what Discord represented.
Had it not implied starting the planning from scratch, the irony of it would have made him chuckle. And he would start planning anew. It was in his nature, he had little choice in the matter. Not right away, though. Now, he had a far more pressing task on his proverbial hands. A fiery cesspool of rage and frustration burned like a thousand suns in his essence, clouding his judgment. He had to relish in it while it was still fresh and vivid.
The reason for that was the nature of his prison. It was a space of nothing, a null-zone; it sucked away at his very being. Only two things could survive in it and divert him from the terrible drought of this solitary place: thoughts and feelings.
Discord had had plenty of time to stock on both before his first imprisonment but he had only enjoyed freedom for mere hours this time.
Although it shamed him deeply, he did not know if he would be able to endure. The draconequus took pride in not being crazy, even if the limit between madness and discordant genius was a fragile one. He had boldly believed this cruel prison could not shatter that defining barrier and it had tested that assumption in every possible way for a thousand years.
Amid all the emotion that boiled in his mind at the moment, determination flared to life, overtaking all the others in its glorious shine. He would not give in this time either. He would endure, plan for the future, and once the opportunity presented itself, leap on it for another round. If there was one thing he wasn’t, it was a sore loser.
The madness of solitude and ennui loomed forever close but his emotions burned bright, repelling its vicious talons. He let them, seeking refuge in their disharmonious embrace.
****
Discord had savored every bit of his lingering emotions for as long as he could. Although he lacked a body, he felt as if his breath should be hoarse, his throat parched. Already the pervasive emptiness of the place was pressing in on his sanity without the protective glow of anger. Unwilling to confront the nefarious influence of the place just yet, he turned to the only other occupation that held solace: thinking.
He navigated the torrent of digressing thoughts as best he could, keeping on top of the tidal wave. When you fancied yourself an embodiment of chaos, your mind started warping itself after a while. It was an inevitability that came along with the job description. Logical debate started losing its coherence and relevance, turning to an obsolete necessity that only held him back. What the draconequus needed was a clashing background to his thinking, and so he ran several very interesting yet irrelevant topics such as “Whose flank is cutest between Celestia and Luna’s” in guise of garniture for the main course of his cogitation.
That took him to a distant past. A period he lovingly called 'The Golden years of discord'.
It had been a glorious time, his reign. Much better than the unfortunate state of stagnation Equestria was mired in presently. Although Discord was the first to agree that his namesake was a hectic concept, it was the way forward: evolution. There was no doubt possible about it.
He had been a harsh tyrant, unlike Celestia, yet fair all the same. The only fault he had possibly incurred over the years was being unpredictable, but what could he do? Genius did not wait on the masses. The alicorn sisters had played on that to orchestrate his downfall. He had to give them grudging respect for that; it had been an uncharacteristically fine game of politics.
In the end, It all came down to one distinction: Celestia ruled benevolently, promoting cooperation and cohesion. Discord had played the other side of the coin. He had elevated himself to the office of a god and played his subjects in competition from the shadows. Plenty of wars had been had because of that, but that had made the ponies under him strong. Besides, periods of peace could also be observed through his reign. The fact that they were bordered with conflict only added to their value. Unlike Celestia’s omnipresent and undeserved peace, his had been a reward, one the ponies of his time had fought for and deserved. It was a stability they could be proud of.
As much as he hated to, Discord had to make one admission, however. Neither of them had the right of it. In fact, both he and Celestia were dead wrong. After years of ruminating on the matter of harmony and disharmony, he had come to understand the nature of his Mother a little better. With that came a deeper understanding too. The world was not a simple place, and while the two concepts the draconequus and Celestia stood for were complicated in nature, they were still only two faces on the coin of Pure Chaos. On their own, they were flawed. They could limp successfully for centuries, but they were bound to fail in the end. Only in a state of balance could they prevail.
His rule had cascaded into disaster because of the predominance of eristic energies, and the aneristic entities the alicorn sisters were had lashed out and beaten him into submission. The same would ultimately happen to them too. It was a vicious cycle. One that would continue spinning until Balance was achieved.
Of course, even if he had come to realize this, it was too late for him to change. Discord was an old entity and chaos was imprinted into his very bones, more important than breathing itself in some regards. He would not tear himself apart. Besides, he wasn't like Mother, despite having come to understand Her nature better. The draconequus did not care to forsake absolute disharmony in the hope of something better, it was where all the fun was at.
Perhaps if he had had that knowledge near the end of his reign, he could have averted his downfall, though he very much doubted that. Discord carried the bulk of his failings, but there had been other complications.
At an embryonic stage of his empire, he had taken an interest in a mare. He had observed her from afar and noticed delightful inconsistencies in her mysterious behavior. For starters, he couldn’t pin-point her origins. She simply didn’t seem to have any.
She always traveled, taking only sparse rests, and the second anomaly soon became apparent. She had been a driven pony, always seeming to follow one trail, a unique cause. The problem was that ever so often, she would completely disappear for a few weeks, before reappearing with a different name, personality and, more importantly, a different objective.
The last peculiar detail was that she had been around from the very beginning of his reign, and had lived through its entirety. That indicated that she had found a way to prolong her life, perhaps into immortality.
The mare had fascinated Discord no end.
Yet, as peculiar as these strange facts were, they paled in comparison to the last oddity the draconequus had studied. In her wake followed a trail of murder. She wasn’t the one behind them, though.
No, a shadowy creature had followed her very closely. It had been a mythical and much feared figure of that era: the Mimic. An unnatural killer that would take upon the Cutie Marks and personalities of his victims, continuing its rampage unhindered. And despite all the fear and grossly over exaggerated myths associated with the monster, it had acted as a guardian angel of sorts to the mare. On numerous occasions it had saved her from inescapable situations.
That too had roused Discord's curiosity. Not only finding the Mimic there after having lost track of that tormented creature for centuries, but also seeing it act in such an unfamiliar way. It had seemed the old boy had grown attached to the mare, his host. Quaint and ironic were two words that came to mind over the situation, but they were far too weak to convey it to its full extent.
In the end, Discord’s fascination grew into obsession and he decided to make contact. She had responded favorably and had become his little protégée. For some reason, that marked the end of her personality switches, though it couldn’t be courtesy of the draconequus. He couldn’t be somepony’s anchor to sanity, it was a laughable concept.
He started employing her as the muscle to his brains and soon realized with delight that she could keep up; unlike most other tools he used to directly influence the course of history. She matched his intellect in sheer efficiency. Not long after that realization, he had began fancying her his daughter.
And why wouldn't he, too? Him, Celestia and even the Mimic; they were all part of one big, tormented and conflicted family. Each had watched history in the making. Occasionally even helped shape it. Why not extend the courtesy to the Mimic's host?
That thought brought his mind to his father... The draconequus let tiny specks of anger bubble through his emotions, basking in their warmth, before stamping the recollection out with a mental snarl. Flaming fires of Janwen, but he did not want to reminisce over him. Discord despised everything about that vile, loathsome and despicable pony!
In any case, his decision to make the Mimic's host his daughter marked the end of his reign. As a God-Tyrant, Discord had always relied on cunning and politics to steer the world to his image. He seldom used violence; instead planting the idea of it in other’s heads and making them do it for him. Not taking a direct hand in wars and conflicts prevented the masses from seeing him as a threat, instead rallying him to the rank of an aloof ruler and incarnation of god in Equestria.
Having acquired main d’oeuvre that matched his genius had changed that. He had started wondering why he should keep hiding behind the scene. Discord had felt invincible in conjunction with his daughter. He forsook his earlier way of ruling, instead stepping into the game directly and bluntly. From that point onwards, the image he had worked so hard to craft had changed. Everypony could now see and judge him. They did not much like what they saw.
Worse still, some ponies had correlated the Mimic with his daughter. He more than suspected Celestia and her bastard sister to be behind that, as it was too much of a wild guess to come from mundane ponies. And a wrong guess, as they were both different entities working in symbiosis. Alas, fear and anger made the masses blind to such fine distinctions.
Celestia crystallized all the anger and focused it on him and his daughter, gaining support from the population in the process. That certainly smoothed over the transition into her rule. She had then proceeded to make demands of him, unreasonable and foolish ones.
There had been no way he could forsake his darling daughter or relinquish his power, and so they had fought. He had lost. Had he had shoulders, Discord would have shrugged. Life went on. He was anything but a sore loser. Other occasions would present themselves, and he’d have a grand rematch. He had an eternity to prepare for it.
Now what was the name of his daughter? He couldn’t for the life of him remember… Wretched prison taking its toll on his memory.
The draconequus did not start to plan for the future yet. What were the odds of an opportunity presenting itself anytime soon? After all, the first chance he had ever been granted had only waited a thousand years. His mind didn't even bother wandering over the last ditch efforts he had desperately planted before the alicorn sisters had instigated their rebellion. Those plans, while quite brilliant, had never come up during his first imprisonment... It was too late for them to work now, save perhaps one. Maybe Dirk, that crazy old hermit, could still somehow free him and his daughter, as was his mission. Discord didn't count on the happening, however, and Mother didn't have enough influence over the world to step in, not that'd she'd be willing to do so...
For an avatar of chaos, he underestimated the value of odds and chances altogether too much.
