1: Conversation With Discord About His Fear
As many of you may know, after Princess Celestia and Princess Luna turned Discord into stone, they lived in a castle quite different from the one now in Canterlot. The old castle Princess Celestia supposedly abandoned because she couldn't cope with the loss of her sister after she sealed her away in the moon, and every moment she spent there she was reminded more and more of her. She let the Everfree forest grow around it and left it to ruin, as soon as Canterlot was first built.
Although this is probably the truth, I do not believe it is all of it.
Why do I have these suspicions, you ask? Because of Discord's Palace.
When Discord was a tyrant ruler over all of Equestria, he built (or rather he snapped his fingers and made appear) a palace chaotic enough to be a perfect dream home for him. And then, thirty years before his rule had ever come to a close, he abandoned it. He took to living in a random pony's home each day, causing chaos in their homes.
Nopony knows why he did this, and you can be damn sure he wouldn't tell anypony back then the real reason, either.
I became very interested in this story around the same time in which I saw an online blog about somepony's trip to the ruins of the castle of the royal sisters, and they had taken photographs of the remains of the place. Reading this pony's account, I became inclined to do the same thing, but for Discord's Palace. After all, despite what you'd think after being abandoned by somepony like him, it was still there.
The only question was: Where was there?
I searched everywhere for its location online and couldn't find it on any map anywhere. I would later find out that Discord cast a spell on the place, so that the only pony, who could actually plot it on a map, is himself. He even, after being released to be "reformed", he cast another spell removing all of the information on his palace from books and the internet. I guess he really didn't want any curious ponies going there.
But, of course, I didn't know this just yet.
I did know, however, that I had to go to Discord's Palace. It strangely never occurred to me to ask myself why I needed to go there.
One night, after a long work day and starting the weekend, I entered a bar in Canterlot, and found Discord to be there at the counter, drunkenly performing several chaotic pranks to the other patrons, and bartenders, too. I ordered a beer, and sat at an empty table, where I could watch the crazy antics.
I sat there, drinking, watching, contemplating whether or not to go up to him and ask him about the place I'd been searching for. He'd probably do something horrible to me for mentioning it to him. Even worse if I told him I wanted to go there.
I finished my beer, as he gave some poor mare a talking vagina. (Celestia, his pranks are obscene when he's drunk!) I had decided I would do it. I would go up there and talk to him.
I got up from my table and sat down in the seat to his right at the counter. I made a mental note that I was being either very brave or very foolish for doing so, as nopony was sitting next to him until then. I was only then having second thoughts.
He turned to me and said, "Well well, whoisdis?" He said the last three words with a drunken slur to the point in which they sounded like one word.
It was too late to turn back now, so I told him my name. I wish to remain anonymous, so I'll simply replace my name with the letter "H" for this narrative.
"Well Mr. H," he said (I am actually a mare, but he was drunk, so I let it slide), "what can I, the spirit of kaos and disrogomy, do for ya?"
"Well, I've come to ask you something," I said to him. But before I could get around to telling him what I wanted to ask him about, he interrupted.
"How many times do I have to tell you damn windowas? I will not haise your dead wives from teh grave. That would be a booring us of my powder."
"Um. No. Not that."
"Oh, goodizzle."
"I want to ask you about a certain place you created for yourself during your time ruling over Equestria. A palace, I believe."
Who would have imagined that those words would be the trick to quickly sober him up from a drunken state? He went from being a drunken idiot, to being a sober, if startled, pony, er, draconiquus. So startled in fact, that right after I said those magic words he fell backwards, bringing the stool down with him.
"Tell me you don't mean..." he began, quietly, in a tone strangely serious and quiet for him, "the abandoned one."
"Is there any other palaces you built that I'm unaware of?"
"No..." He paused for a moment, speaking in the same tone. "I'm really not... comfortable discussing it. Those memories... I don't like reliving them."
"I'm actually considering going there myself," I told him. "I'd like to document what the place is like now after it has been abandoned for so long."
“No! You mustn't!” He demanded.
"Discord," I asked him, "what happened there that is so horrible that you don't wish to discuss it?"
He looked around before answering, obviously hoping that somepony, anypony at all, would interrupt this conversation at this point so that he wouldn't have to respond. I could see a hint of remembrance in his eyes, of something unknown to me. Whatever it was that had happened there, it gave him some serious mental scars.
"Do you know the legend of Pandora's Box?" he asked me, in the same quiet tone as before. I was about to respond, but he interrupted. "Let me answer that for you. Of course you don't. That legend is only known on another world, but I believe it will make a good analogy. Somewhere in the universe there is a box that has been locked and chained because inside contained every evil thing that was once loose in the world trapped inside. A colt, named Pandora, came across this box, and, against the warnings of his elders, he opened the box and let all of the evil out. That palace is Pandora's Box. And if you go there, against my warning, you may find yourself letting loose everything evil out upon this land of Equestria. And I mean things so evil, that even I'm afraid of them.
"My advice to you, and I urge you to take it, is to just leave this be. Move on with your life. Perhaps, if you still want to know what happened, we can schedule to meet somewhere with less ponies listening in some other time, and I'll tell you everything I can. What do you say, H?"
I took a moment to contemplate what he's just told me. "Sounds good, but I'm still going," I said finally.
"Celestia damn it to tartarus! Why?" he exclaimed, in a brief moment of rage.
"Because I know that you are a liar! So how can I trust what you are telling me?"
Discord sighed in defeat. "Alright! You win!" He handed over a large road map of Equestria, with a red dot somewhere in the mountain range underneath Cloudsdale, reading "DISCORD'S PALACE" in permanent red marker. He also handed me a set of keys, each of them labeled for the front gate, the front door, the back door, and each of the individual rooms.
I had such a huge grin on my face at that moment, I just know it!
I was about to leave the bar for home, when Discord spun me around so that we were both looking each other directly in the eyes. "Promise me you won't unlock the door and go inside. You can document whatever you can from the outside, even on the other side of the gate, if you'd like. Just don't go in the palace. Can you promise me that?"
"I promise I won't go in the palace," I lied.
"If you do, it's your funeral," he said, letting go of me, ending the conversation with an ominous statement.
I exited the bar and went to my car, thinking I had won.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
He tried to warn me of the horrors that I would face there. If only I had bothered to listen.