Twilight looked up at the placard above the door, and swallowed nervously.
HALCYON VICTOR
DEAN OF HISTORY
She didn’t know why she was so nervous - she had been to Mr. Victor’s office hundreds of times during her years at Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Well, not this particular office. He hadn’t been Dean at the time - he hadn’t even had tenure - but he had always been more than willing to answer any questions Twilight had had. Which, she now realized in retrospect, may have been just a few more than was reasonable.
But today, she was not here as a student - Nor, she thought as she flexed the muscles in her wings, am I ever likely to be again. Today, she was here on one of her very first Royal Duties since her coronation. Thankfully, it was not going to be an unpleasant experience. She hoped.
Twilight took a deep breath, let it out, and knocked.
“Come in,” came a voice from the other side.
Twilight swung the door open gently, and entered. The room was nothing like Mr. Victor’s old office had been. It was bigger, for one - more of a study than an office. Most of the walls were covered in bookshelves, and the rest of the room’s wood paneling was plastered with diplomas, awards, and self-aggrandizing portraits of previous deans. A few leather sofas and side tables were arranged on the floor behind a monstrous, rectangular desk, behind which sat the stallion she had come to talk to.
“Hello, Mr. Victor!” she said, as brightly as she could manage.
Halcyon Victor finished scribbling a few more words on the sheet in front of him, then looked up.
“How can I help yoooOH!” His eyes went wide as he saw who had just entered his office, and he stammered uncharacteristically. “Y-Y-Your Majesty! I don’t - I didn’t know you were coming!”
“Oh. Right. I... guess I should have made an appointment.” Twilight laughed awkwardly. “I’m still getting used to this whole ‘Princess’ thing.”
“Oh, yes.” Halcyon cleared his throat, and managed to regain some of his composure. “Congratulations on your coronation, Your Highness. I was on hoof to record it, along with some of the other senior staff. It was an even more spectacular event than when Princess Cadance was crowned - and that’s saying something, considering that that was also the first coronation in almost a thousand years.”
“I... don’t remember Cadance’s coronation,” Twilight said with no small amount of embarrassment. “How long ago was it?”
“It was just after you were accepted to the School.” A slight smile came to Halcyon’s lips as he remembered an excited young lavender unicorn, bright and eager on her first day in his class. “You were very... engrossed in your studies at the time, as I recall.”
“Oh. Yeah,” Twilight giggled.
“So, as I was saying; is there anything I can help you with, Your Majesty?”
“Actually, the reason that I’m here is to ask how I can help you.”
The historian raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Pardon?”
“You submitted a formal complaint about a week ago. Regarding...”
“Discord.” The name dripped from Halcyon’s muzzle like venom. Twilight could have sworn she heard a distant peal of thunder, even though there were no storms scheduled near Canterlot for several more days. “May I speak freely, Your Highness?”
“Er... yes?”
“I come from a very long line of Victors, and all of them have been recorders of history. My grandfather was the stenographer when Princess Celestia and King Ferdinand wrote and ratified the Treaty of the Schwarzhaus. His grandfather was sending letters home from the field at the Battle of Amber Hill. But in all the long and storied lives of my ancestors, none of them have ever been faced with a more difficult task than the one I was given last month.”
“...Is he really that bad?” she asked quietly.
“And worse.” Halcyon’s horn lit bright yellow, and a large binder stuffed to bursting with papers freed itself from a bookshelf and floated it’s way over to his desk. A few of the looser sheets drifted like leaves to the floor. “It’s one thing to keep track of every conversation in a debate with over sixty participants, or to research the surnames of the griffons dropping grenades on your tent. It’s another thing entirely to be tasked with recording every single detail of a life millennia long, and have the subject be completely and utterly recalcitrant in his account!”
“Recalcitrant? What do you mean?”
Halcyon flipped the binder open, and laid a few of the sheaves of paper out in front of Twilight. “In our first session - where, as I understand it, it is traditional to start at the beginning - he began retelling the events of his escape and reimprisonment just last year. Then, the next day, he told the story of a woodcutter he had once met in a forest over a dozen centuries ago! The day after that, he spent the entire three hours ignoring every single question I asked, and attempting to convince me of the tonal and linguistic superiority of the words ‘veranda’ and ‘caribou’! And the worst part is that half the time, I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth!”
“You think he lies?” Twilight asked worriedly.
“I know he lies!” Another stack of notes landed in front of her. “Session 37. He began describing the court-martial of Mortar Stonewall - one of the most important military trials in Equestrian history, although it occurred while he was imprisoned, so who knows how he even knew about it in the first place - but then, at the point where the judge was supposed to deliver the guilty verdict, his version of the proceedings somehow devolved into a... a barbaric orgy!”
“What?”
“See for yourself!” Halcyon smacked the papers vengefully. “Your Highness, I’m honored to have been chosen for this task, but I cannot work with somepo - with something that refuses to work with me.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“...No. No, don’t be sorry. I... know better than most how much of a pain he can be.” Twilight cleared her throat, and held her head up high. “As Princess, I hereby officially relieve you of your duty as Discord’s biographer.”
Halcyon bowed respectfully, and breathed a barely-controlled sigh of relief. “Thank you, Your Highness. I’ll send what I have so far to the Archives, to be... well, burned, most likely. It’s practically worthless.”
At the word ‘burned’, Twilight’s hair stood on end as if she had been struck by lightning. Her mouth moved almost automatically. “Would you mind if I took it, instead?”
He paused halfway through, and looked up at her curiously.
“It’s just... I don’t want all of your hard work to go to waste,” she said, scraping her hoof against the floor awkwardly. “I’m sure I could find some use for it. My friend Pinkie Pie might get a laugh out of it, at least.”
He blinked a few times, contemplating, then nodded. The loose sheets floated themselves back into the binder with a golden glow, and the covers snapped smartly shut.
“It’s against protocol,” he said half-heartedly, pushing the binder across the desk. “But I suppose that you don’t have to follow protocols, now, do you?”
“...No,” said Twilight thoughtfully. “No, I suppose not.” She shook her head, then tucked the binder under her wing and smiled. “I’ll try not to make a habit out of it. Thank you for your time, Mr. Victor.”
“Good day, Your Highness.”
“...and then I said to him, I said, ‘Barry! Barry!’ I said, ‘Barry! Wot’re you planning on doing with that there egg, Barry?’”
Twilight sighed, and set aside yet another sheet of nonsense. Mr. Victor was right. These notes were worthless - all 376 pages of them. But perhaps...
Her gaze wandered out the window, towards the tower closest to her own. It stood out like a sore hoof among the rest of the Royal Castle’s gleaming spires, mostly due to the fact that its top floor and coned roof were disconnected from the rest of its body, hovering several feet above and rotating gently.
Perhaps she might have better luck? Besides Fluttershy, Discord respected her more than any other pony in Equestria. Which... wasn’t much, admittedly. But it might give her some sort of advantage.
Twilight stood, and stretched out her wings. She was still acclimating to using them, and she didn’t want to risk any accidents from not being properly warmed up, even on so short a flight. Once she had run through the seven basic stretches laid out by The Sportspony’s Guide for Intermediate Fliers, she figured she was ready enough, and hopped daintily out the window.
Discord had been ‘thoughtful’ enough to leave a section of spiral staircase dangling beneath his floating fortress of solitude, to act as a landing platform. Twilight had told him more times than she could count - well, actually, sixty-five times - that it wasn’t safe, but he had skillfully ignored her and left it the way it was. As she touched down gently on the gravity-defying stones, she made a mental note to remind him about it again.
The door was answered before she had even knocked, and salsa music blasted out at her from nowhere. Discord beamed out at her, gleefully rattling a maraca that suspiciously resembled his missing single fang.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite princess, Twilight!” he grinned. “What can I do for you on this spectacular day?”
“I’m your favorite?” she asked doubtfully, stepping in under his serpentine neck. “I’d have thought you enjoyed torturing Celestia more.”
The room had been thoroughly redecorated in the few weeks Discord had lived there. Gone was the clean, rectangular furniture that normally adorned guest rooms in the Castle, replaced with spherical dressers, sideways candelabras, and an overfilled waterbed in which several miniature sharks circled lazily.
“Hm... good point. Second favorite, then. No, wait - Luna is always a good laugh, too. Third? Oh, but Cadance has seniority.” Discord tapped the maraca against his chin thoughtfully. “Well, you’re definitely in my top five.”
“Uh-huh,” Twilight said dryly. “Listen, Discord. I’d like to ask you about something.”
“Of course!” His body flicked through the air lazily, wrapping around the twisted chandelier. “Fire away!”
“Where are you from?”
A nonexistent record scratched, and the jaunty music stopped short. There was silence for a moment as the two of them stared at each other, until Discord burst out into raucous laughter.
“Oh, my. That historian was really that frustrated? He had to send a princess to deal with the problem?”
“Actually, all he wanted was to be relieved of the duty. I chose to take it on myself.”
“Ah. I see,” he said with mock solemnity. “And since it’s you, you expect me to go along with it?”
“Yes!” Twilight said forcefully. “Yes, I do. Starting tomorrow, you’re going to tell me everything about you, starting from the very beginning.”
“Hmph,” he muttered. “As if I have anything better to do... Very well, then. Tomorrow it is. I’ll expect you bright and early.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So. The beginning, eh?”
“Yes,” said Twilight, taking a scroll from the pile next to her and flattening it on the floor. “The beginning.”
“Well, alright,” Discord said reluctantly. “I must warn you, though - it might be a bit hard to believe.”
“As long as you tell the truth, I’ll believe anything.”
“As you wish.” The draconequus cleared his throat dramatically, then began in a very theatrical tone, gesturing with his arms as though he were the narrator of a play. “‘Twas a dark and stormy night. The rocky slopes of Mount Harnessus were slick with precipitation, and the howling winds threatened to tear Castle Daedalon from its very foundations...”
“Wait,” Twilight interrupted. “Mount Harnessus? As in, the-tallest-mountain-in-Bulleotia Mount Harnessus?”
“No, the other Mount Harnessus.” Discord rolled his eyes. “Pay attention, will you? This is important. Now, where was I...”
Despite the fury of the storm, however, inside the walls, the roar of thunder was nearly drowned out by the deep, bone-rattling hums of the castle’s countless machines. Flashes of lightning cast ominous shadows throughout the darkened hallways, and the wind drove the rain against the windows like the fists and cries of an angry mob.
Silver Platter glanced around furtively, and prayed to whatever gods were nearby that a real mob wasn’t on its way.
The path to the laboratory was difficult, though it was no more so than the path to anywhere else in the castle. In all his years of servitude, and the travel around the lands of Minos that that had entailed, Silver had never been able to understand the needless complexity of the Minosian building aesthetic. There was always too much hallway, twisting left and right and every which way, and more often than not, leading to nothing but flat walls.
But in other labyrinths, the routes from place to place could, at least, be memorized. In the castle of Cracked Kettle, bringing dinner from the kitchen to the dining room was just as much of an ordeal as rushing from the servant quarters to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because Dr. Kettle, with his infinite ego and ingenuity, had designed his labyrinth to be able to change, and it always seemed to do so at the most inconvenient of times.
Like now, for instance. Here Silver was, trying to find the laboratory, with the handle of a metal ice-box gripped in his mouth - an ice-box which held, in Dr. Kettle’s own words, “an indescribably important piece” of the mad minotaur’s latest project, and in which the aforementioned ice was unavoidably melting - and the path from the secret passage behind the fireplace to the west antechamber had inexplicably disappeared, replaced by a circuitous route that had, after many false ends, brought him to the floor hatch of the second guest bedroom. When he had opened the main door, it had led to only a solid gray-brick wall.
And so, the next ten minutes had been spent laying on the bed, listening to the raging storm and watching fat drops of condensation roll lazily down the misted sides of the ice-box, waiting for the maze to begin shifting.
If it’s on the usual schedule, Silver thought, it should be happening right about...
The sudden sounds of clanking gears and grinding stone confirmed his suspicions. Silver hopped down to his hooves, picked up the ice-box, and waited patiently at the door. When the rumbling had settled, he opened it to reveal...
...another door. The door to the laboratory, in fact. How convenient.
The acrid odor of years of built-up chemical residue stung his nostrils as soon as he opened the door. Silver had tried to clean the laboratory only once before, and Dr. Kettle had rewarded him by using him as a guinea pig for a batch of experimental eyedrops. As a result, he could no longer see the color yellow (which thankfully only came up when he was trying to cook squash soup) - but on the bright side, he could now cut onions without shedding a single tear.
Silver set down the ice-box and cleared his throat emphatically. A triple-pierced nose and a pair of curved, oil-splotched horns emerged from around a corner, along with the crazed, wide-eyed face that owned them. A blood-splotched lab coat hung around his shoulders like a taut curtain, framing the naturally chiseled musculature his species was famous for.
“Ah, Silver!” Dr. Kettle shouted, in a voice that rivaled the thunder outside. “You’re back! What took you so long?”
“You sent me all the way to Hindia to collect tiger blood. How long did you expect me to take?”
“A few days, at most. That’s how long it took me to fly round-trip from Minos to Hindia, back in the day!”
“But you had a personal airship that I am strictly forbidden from operating,” Silver grumbled. “I had to call in a half-dozen favors from my friends in the Griffrancian air force. Then, once I was there, I had to trick the Virgata tribe into attacking the Corbetti as a distraction, so that I could spirit away their freshest concubine, and...”
Silver shivered as the muffled cries and wide, distressed eyes of the tigress came flooding back to him. Even with all he had done in his life, the atrocities he committed in Cracked Kettle’s name never failed to top them.
Dr. Kettle merely nodded in approval, entirely unphased. “Well done, Silver. Very resourceful.”
“Yeah, sure. Anyway, what were you doing while I was gone?”
“I made a quick trip down-range to see if that young dragon was still holed up in that cave on Mount Athamaneika." He picked up the icebox and slotted it into a nearby wall. Silver heard the sound of ice clattering, and a dark red liquid began dripping through the thin glass pipes that ran along the wall. "Luckily, he was, so I paralyzed him and amputated his leg. I’ve already attached it. Now that you’ve brought the blood...”
A sudden flash of lightning cast the shadow of a grotesque figure against the far wall, and the thunder that followed rumbled like the growl of some eldritch beast. The minotaur looked up to the skylight, and grinned manically.
"...I think this is the perfect night to complete it."
Hesitantly, Silver stepped around the corner, past his giggling master. He had seen many things in his life - wars, massacres, unimaginable tortures - but nothing could have prepared him for what currently lay on Dr. Kettle's blood-stained operating table.
It could be called nothing less than an abomination - a crime against every living species. A dragon's leg; a griffon's claw; a pony's head, studded with mismatched eyes and topped with mismatched horns; all linked haphazardly to a long, serpentine body that Silver feared to imagine the origins of. Another flash of lightning glinted menacingly off of a single, oversized fang, and he could have sworn that, somehow, the thing was smiling at him.
"It's... it's..."
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Dr. Kettle said, approaching his creation with nothing short of reverence. "This will be a triumph of my kind. Life is simple to create with magic. Your kind does it all the time, without even realizing it. Every tree that grows, every hummingbird that suckles nectar - even the sun and moon move at your beck and call. But never - NEVER - has life been guided by wires and gears. Never has a heart's beat been brought to speed by a machine." He ran his hand through the fur of the beast's paw, and smiled. "But today, all that will change. Today, life will be born, not from magic, but from the power of the mind."
"Shall I start the, uh..." Silver paused.
Next to the table, in the floorspace reserved for current projects, sat a hulking, jagged contraption that Silver couldn't have described the purpose of if he tried. The only part he understood was the tall, polished lightning rod that extended up through the ceiling.
"...shall I start the machine, sir?"
"Yeees," said Dr. Kettle, with an evil glint in his eye. "Throw the switch."
"Now hang on a minute!" Twilight shouted.
"What is it this time?"
"A castle in a storm? A machine with a lightning rod? A creature cobbled together from multiple animals?" The princess threw down her quill in disgust, and stood up. "I was willing to suspend my disbelief before, but now there's just too many similarities! You've stolen this plot straight from Frankenhind!"
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Discord said innocently. "Is that some sort of book?"
"You know very well what it is! Do you think I'm an idiot?" Twilight sighed in disgust, stuffed her scrolls roughly into her saddlebags, and turned to leave. "I'll be back tomorrow morning, Discord, and you'd better be honest with me this time!"
"Wait! Twilight!"
Twilight paused halfway through the door. His cry had sounded so... repentant. Hesitantly, she looked back. Was he really going to apologize?
But when he saw the glimmer of hope in her eyes, Discord only burst out into breathless laughter. "Oh, your face! I don't... I don't think I've ever..."
With a final howl of frustration, Twilight slammed the door, leaving an echoing cackle behind her.
