Grand Aura had been hailed numerous times as one of the most powerful unicorns in history. He had invented more new spells than Starswirl the Bearded, including several that revolutionized the field of thaumaturgy.
He was recognized as the most powerful unicorn of his generation, and, arguably, as powerful as the regal sisters themselves. He'd single-hoofedly teleported all of Canterlot's citizens simultaneously. He'd even raised the sun once when Celestia slept in.
Grand Aura had a reputation for being extremely clever. He'd beaten all seven of Equestria's chess masters at once... In less than a minute. He'd solved hundreds of age-old puzzles in his first two years of school.
He knew spells so complex that whenever he tried to teach them, the pupil would either fail spectacularly or go insane completely. He'd researched non-stop ever since he earned his cutie mark at age 10 (first in his class) by inverting the entire school as an april foals' prank. He knew everything about everything. He'd dedicated his entire life to it.
Grand Aura was bored.
He wasn't the normal kind of bored, where ponies spend some time thinking about what to do, and, eventually, their inactivity drives them to do something. No, Grand Aura was the first and only pony in the History of Everything to be absolutely, truly, irreparably, bored.
He'd always had something to work towards. First, his schoolwork. Later, his magic studies. Then, his studies of the other pony races, and eventually, other species. In the end, even, he'd devoted years to cracking the greatest mysteries of the universe(s).
Now he knew everything that was, is, or might be, how it worked and exactly how to manipulate it.
So, Grand Aura was bored.
He listened to his breathing, his heartbeat, and watched another impossibly dull second tick off the clock.
Shortly, his apprentice would come into the room. In just three... two... Inked Scroll stepped into the room. "Good morning to thee master, I brought thou two cups of thy favorite tea, along with the text that thou requested." Grand Aura found himself mouthing the words along with her. He sighed wearily. "I thank thee, Ms. Scroll. Pray, go practice teleportation, pages 57-120. Thou needst the practice. I shall speak with thou when th'art finished." Inked scroll had ceased questioning how her mentor knew these things after he had accurately reproduced an image of her great-great-grandmother on the spot.
Grand Aura envied her. Maybe, just maybe, he should've taken his beloved research more slowly, drawn it out, savored it... He shook his head, trying to clear it. He knew the ways his story could end (for the future is never set in stone) and most of them ended with him being depressed and alone. What could you savor, if you'd already experienced everything 1000 times over? Though the world seemed to operate on the whims of some hidden power, or possibly at complete random, there were rules. and from rules emerged patterns; from those, predictability.
Another impossibly long breath drawn, another second ticked down.
Her story was... complicated. But by all accounts, it had a fairy tale ending, with a good amount of adventure in between. It had entertained him for a few minutes. His own was less interesting. Oh yes, things would happen, sometimes to him, but he knew all about them and what they might be in advance, as well as the various results. He'd memorized his own story in a few hours. The princesses' stories were long, but... uninteresting. Really, when he thought about it, everything was just so... obvious. When it came down to things, all of the world's surprises, pleasant or otherwise, were really just the results of patterns.
Grand Aura had started hating patterns. It made everything so predictable. If it could happen, it could be predicted, and its likeliness could be calculated down to the decimal. Really, once you knew how everything worked, the universe was... simple. Science was the art of figuring out what caused something else to happen, and, in a way, he'd achieved in a mere 30 years what teams of ponies slaved over for a lifetime. They really weren't missing much.
Another moment clicked past on the great wheel of time.
He'd considered obliterating his research, to prevent his torment from reaching another. But his worries haunted him: what if his research was needed? How could he justify destroying the only thing he'd ever done? How would he explain to the princesses? And, in the end, would it even help? What would it do to the field of science? or thaumaturgy? And even if he did, what would stop other ponies (or himself) from just borrowing them from another instance of Equestria? There were just too many things involved.
At least, that's what he told himself. He knew all too well that he was just making excuses to himself. He'd always been... indecisive, which had only grown worse in recent years, as he'd become more and more aware of exactly what each little decision would do, however he chose. It was only thanks to his insatiable desire for knowledge and the prodding of his teachers and peers that he got anywhere at all.
Another turn of the gears, another fragment of time measured off the endless span.
All of these thoughts of his, they'd all rattled around his head for some time. He felt like he was running circles in his own head. He'd thought all of these things before. What more was there to think? Sure, he could imagine something new; specific thoughts weren't set in stone, though they could generally be determined by the right set of rules. But what was the point? The only time he felt at all at home was in his dreams. Anything can happen in a world ruled by thoughts.
A new thought occurred to him. The patterns... dreams have no patterns. Perhaps... they could be... tweaked. Shivers ran down his spine just thinking about it. Maybe, with magic... And, without thought or focus, he added purple spots to the nearby coffee table. He grimaced, but it was tempered with a slight smile.
The patterns had changed.
Only slightly, but the change was there. Still, it was worth thinking about. If he could use spurts of magic... He shook his head. It seemed irresponsible, and yet..
The eternal, agonizing now.
He giggled and fired a random spurt of magic. The door turned upside down.
The giggle threatened to turn into a full blown laugh of relief.
I CAN CHANGE THEM! I CAN CHANGE THE PATTERNS!
He felt giddy.
I don't even need to fire random spurts of magic. maybe, if I just tug a little here and there...
And the office turned into a miniature jungle.
This time, the shift was far more pronounced.
Yes YES YES! If I just pull a little here and and a little there, the whole thing comes unraveled.
This time it was a full blown rolling-on-the-floor laugh, filled with power-drunk glee at having escaped the imprisonment of the inevitable.
As he laughed, the unraveling, the CHAOS began to spread, to grow more dramatic.
Inked Scroll came galloping in. "Master, art thou in poor health?"
Grand aura giggled madly to himself, his body twisting into a plethora of fauna in the space of a few seconds. "Oh, my dear, but I have never been BETTER!" which sent him into another gale of laughter.
Inked Scroll found herself suddenly a phoenix, and began squawking in alarm.
"Why the protest, my dear, you look so much BETTER this way!" Aura giggled with glee " Now I think I shall be going. There's SO much more to do. After all, the world won't change itself!"
A storm-gray guardspony raced through the marble halls of the Palace in the heart of the castle, gasping in exhaustion. "Your majesties! I must request an audience immediately! A dire situation of unknown cause and circumstance demands thy royal attention!" As he skidded into the throne room, he collapsed near the thrones, one of which was currently occupied by Princess Luna.
"Thy request to speak with us has been granted, Gleaming Lance. Pray tell, what is this terrible event of which thou speakst?"
"The thaumaturgic wing of thy castle is overrun with disturbances of unknown quality and kind. Thy subjects have been forced to flee. Thy head of guard, Whisper's Edge, shall be taking a count of heads as we speak."
"Peace, Gleaming Lance! Thou hath done right by seeking or aid in the matter." Turning to two of her escorts; "Thee and thee shall escort Gleaming Lance to Whisper's Edge, and allow him rest." She stood up, with the tempered and fierce determination of a protector marking her features. "We shall deal with this personally, before these disturbances cause undue disruption to others." With a gentle breeze and a brief burst of magic, she was gone.
Celestia found herself being woken. Her eyes snapped open, and began to focus. She gathered all her willpower to rise from her bed. There were only two ponies in the whole of equestria willing to wake her up: Whisper's Edge and her own sister. If either woke her, she knew that it had to be important.
The look on Luna's face that greeted her told her exactly how serious it was.
"Luna. What have you need of our aid for?"
"A most curious, and unfortunately hazardous situation, for which we shall require your aid to unravel. If we, or thee, can find the cause of this... outbreak, perhaps we can begin to remedy it."
"An outbreak?" Celestia replied in alarm. "Surely, it is not an instance of the dreaded Cutie Pox?"
"No, 'tis not. But to explain our position, we must show thee... in pony. I fear that it could be something far worse."
The two sisters surveyed what could be identified as the thaumaturgy wing of the castle only by virtue of location. It hurt to look at. It was a chaotic collage of many things, some real, some imagined, some not-quite-there, some completely impossible, and some that you couldn't look straight at without going cross-eyed. It was like a living migraine. The royal sisters had never looked so grim. Beside them stood Whisper's Edge, wearing a neutral mask that had been carefully sculpted over the years spent as the Princesses' personal escort.
Celestia spoke first: " Tell us, Whisper, thy head count- how many?"
" Your Majesty. All thy guards, of both sun and moon, which hath been guarding this wing, are accounted for. Of thy mages and scholars known to be in this wing of thy castle, all but one hath been accounted for."
"Dost thou know whom is the lost one?"
"Yes, your majesty. We have double-checked, with additional evidence in the form of an eyewitness account from one Inked Scroll."
Luna tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Pray, tell us, Whisper. Who is't that thou hast failed in thy duty to recover?"
"Mistress, if thou must know, the name thy seek is that of thy archancellor, Grand Aura."
Before Celestia could stop her, Luna lashed out." And thou failed to recover perhaps the greatest of us all?"
Whisper cowered briefly under her blazing glare. "Your majesties, I beg of you my pardon. Thy guards and I tried our hardest, however, Grand Aura was at the center of the chaos, and, as we tried in vain to evacuate him, he fled, and produced obstacles to prevent us from following."
The two sisters gave each other meaningful looks, and seemed to agree on something.
Celestia spoke for the two of them: "We request that thou bring Inked Scroll hither, for an audience with us."
Whisper's Edge nodded succinctly and galloped towards the building sheltering the mix of unicorns and guardsponies.
"... And then he galloped down thy halls, laughing madly of the disorder he had caused. To my eternal shame, I fled in abject terror of that which my master had perpetrated." Inked scroll finished and resumed weeping. Celestia stroked her gently with an outstretched wing. For the second time that day, Luna turned to her escorts and requested that they "return this courageous mare to the comfort of thy barracks." which was, at the moment, being used to house the growing number of those displaced by the spreading plague of disorder. Already, the chaos had encroached upon both guest wings of the castle, the gardens, and several watchtowers. Thankfully, it had yet to spread beyond the outer walls and the moat. The two sisters puzzled over the problem for several hours, but to no avail.
Often now, the Royal sisters would go for days without sleep, if you could call them that. Much of their wonderful land had been blanketed in a thick layer of cotton-candy clouds, and the rivers were flowing over with cherry soda. Day and night came sporadically, and nothing could be relied upon for sure. They'd gone to the ends of the earth and back to find a cure for this mysterious new magic, which carried neither the mana nor the aura typical of magic. No, it registered as completely natural. It was well known by now that the omniscient, semi-omnipotent unicorn Grand Aura had gone mad, twisted and warped in body and mind. Nopony knew for sure exactly what had caused him such mental disturbance, but it hardly mattered. He had gained some kind of ultimate power beyond the scope of any and all magic.
It had been Luna's idea to try an indirect thaumaturgic visualization spell. They'd tried scanning Grand Aura (or, as he now called himself, Discord.), but he'd shown up with his usual magic levels, and also, according to the results, he'd not used it since his conversion. However, this was different. It was an incredibly costly spell that allowed one to see the traces of magic as they flowed through the world. It would cost all of Luna's strength to keep it going. After a minute or two of intense concentration, she opened her eyes, and they were... glowing with power. She looked around. everything shone faintly. The places where the chaos was glowed a violent, writhing purple, and, in the distance, a large... hole. A mass of no magic at all, surrounded by twisted and shredded tendrils of many hues, dominated by a purple haze. She turned to her sister as the spell weakened- and closed her eyes as a blazing light shone from below, as bright as the sun itself. In her alarm, she dropped the spell and collapsed to the ground. Celestia sat down next to her and asked: "Sister, what have you seen with you vision? What of Disc- Grand Aura's doings?"
"He... is a void. He himself has no magic, or very little in comparison. His doings are the twistings of that which surrounds him."
"Then- the only way to rid him of his power..."
" Yes. We would have to rid Equestria of all magic."
" Nothing would survive. And, even then, his work would not be undone, merely... halted."
"Indeed. Perhaps we... we simply need to learn to live with this."
"I am sensing hesitation in you."
"... I saw... a great beacon of magic."
"We must investigate, or we have already lost. Tell me, where did you see this beacon?"
"Not but a few hundred yards yonder, behind the cliffside."
"Then let us go."
And so, the royal sisters discovered the elements of harmony. They used their power to defeat discord, and seal him in stone. However, the seeds of havoc had been sown, and shortly thereafter the princess of the night fell to the whispers of jealousy that echoed through her dreams. With the power of the alicorns diminished, and the elements dormant, Celestia abandon the hall of dark memories, and, to protect it's secrets, drained the chaos energy of all the land into latent mana, thus creating the Everfree Forest. Though wild with natural magic to this day, the Tree of Harmony keeps the forest's true power sleeping. Should it ever awaken...
