King Dainn of the Caribou Empire, former lord-master of the recently conquered kingdom of Equestria, huddled behind the shattered stone wall of his keep as siege spells rained down around him. Most of the Caribou body guards he had were dead. Most of his army was dead. He’d last seen his lieutenant—-an infamous giant stag renowned for his “bitch breaking” ways—being stabbed to death by three enraged mares while two minotaurs held him by his broken arms and legs. They hadn’t needed to as his limbs were shattered, but they had clearly wanted to. Worst thing was, Dainn couldn’t blame them. Ivar was a horrible stag with no compassion whatsoever who’d killed just as many slaves as he’d ever had, and more than a few male lovers.

There were many thoughts racing through Dainn’s head as he suddenly sprinted for the next bit of cover, retreating even though there was hardly any place left to retreat. How had it come to this? If he were another stag, he’d rage and blame everyone else, except he wasn’t delusional. He knew exactly how this had all happened. The mind control spell, the reworking of the Crystal Heart to broadcast it across Equestria, had never affected mares at all. He’d known this, and underestimated them, thinking they were like the braindead does his kind had created from the once intelligence Female Caribou population. Then the Changelings started assassinating officers and bombing barracks. Afterward, the Minotaur and Zebra coalition smashed the other invasion fleets from the homeland and killed or captured almost every stag to the last.

Honestly, the entire invasion was seeming like a bad idea. A continent of loot and possible glory that was little more than a honeyed badger’s den waiting to rip apart the unfortunate souls who reached for it. Even then, he could have likely handled it. He was a genius, and he had the most effective indoctrination spells imaginable. His enemy’s strength would be his, with time. Except as it turns out, no one fucking remembered sexually transmitted diseases were a thing. It hadn’t been an issue back home as those were easily cured, and it hadn’t shown up for six months. Even then, back home a STD would rarely cause more than an unpleasant rash. Except the local STDs apparently really liked Caribou, because they caused stags’ dicks to start rotting the fuck off.

A minotaur, its armor gleaming in the sunlight, stepped out from behind a crumbling stone wall with its gravity enhanced hammer raised to smash him into paste. Dainn, rather than run, flowed around the Minotaur. Its massive strike cratered the ground, but by that point he was already flipping over him. A magic rune, planted onto the Minotaur’s neck bracing, glowed before exploding. It fell to the ground, dead and missing most of its upper torso.

Dainn had developed the spell himself, after learning nothing fucking stopped enraged minotaurs other than dismemberment or total decapitation. And they had an instinctual blood rage that made mind control an unreliable prospect on the best of days. His forces had gotten a taste of it in the Minos Embassy siege when one Minotaur held off an entire platoon for half an hour as he set about demolishing the block, but it hadn’t sunk in until they tried invading the Minotaur homeland and found they were all like this—literally millions of beings who can bend steel with their bare hands, who had the largest industry base in this part of the world, and who all could go into a berserker fury at a moment’s notice. Losses were catastrophic against their forces, to say the least.

Dainn, seeing a Pegasus swooping at him from a broken skylight, lashed out with a runic chain wrapped around his arm. The Pegasus dodged back from its spear thrust, but the chain followed, wrapping around her. He then swung the thin mare into the already approaching Earth pony he knew was behind him. Whose presence alone meant everyone else in the fortress was dead. Lovely.

He had one chance out of this. This was his last citadel in Equestria. He’d been intending to escape by ship, but then the Minos blockade smashed that chance to pieces, although his ship had remained. But there was an experimental portal he’d been developing. Meant to get reinforcements from the homeland, it had turned out spectacularly useless due to power constraints, but if the rune masters had done their job, then it should have one charge in it to get him out of this death trap.

He ran past dozens of his own slain guards and slipped by patrols already eagerly setting his hidden citadel on fire. He’d be insulted they were ruining his hard work, but in all honesty he was impressed with their dedication to burning down a non-flammable structure. Two hours before it’d been a clear day. Now it was a hellish red glow and unbearable heat rolled everyway making him froth, but he couldn’t stop now.

Honestly, Dainn was a prodigy. He knew this. He had used his abilities and knowledge to take over Equestria, but even he was being pushed. A Unicorn teleported in front of him, half a dozen floating blades of ice rotating around him. Dainn calmly exploded the ground beneath him, obscuring the two of them as Dainn ran into the research building.

There, surrounded by dead guards, was the runic circle—his gateway out of here. Multiple ponies and zebra alchemist looked up in alarm at his entrance, probably more surprised he was alive than anything else. A smoke rune instantly disrupted their line of sight with Dainn. He was almost out of charge with his runic gauntlets, but he only needed to touch the runic circle to get out.

He leaped into the circle amidst alarmed cries, and then all was dark. Dainn breathed a sigh of relief, hoping beyond hoping it was over. It wasn’t, of course. The STDs ravaging his homeland likely had destroyed the culture he once knew, but that honestly didn’t bother him overly much. Caribou culture was stagnant, cruel, and overly sexualized. Even before realizing almost everything he knew was a lie, he’d known his culture was stupidly repressive.

He didn’t even like sexually touching others, although he had partaken occasionally to keep up appearances because not doing so was punishable by being turned into a damn doe to be used by those who would keep up appearances. As a king he could push this somewhat, but too much and he’d be stabbed in the back by his own subordinates, and then likely raped by them as was proper and forced to bear their bastards. The thought made him want to snarl at his own people’s utter stupidity. Back home they’d say an army of mares was impossible. Not only had he seen one here, he’d seen several slaughter his stags and would gladly have traded every one of his stags for those armies if given the chance.

His reluctance to partake in the culturally demanded orgies with slaves had likely kept him from being debilitated by the STD collectively known as Crotch Rot. If it wasn’t for how badly it destroyed his forces, he’d almost be fascinated with how the disease’s incubation period ensured almost every stag had caught it and been bed ridden within six months.

Still, back home he should be able to establish some order. Create a basic resistance that’d last until the Coalition came knocking to smash them down, but by that point he should have been able to disappear. Glory was gone, loot was too. He’d probably take to living in the ice flows of the far north, but it was better than nothing. As the darkness enveloped him, Dainn sighed in relief. It was over.

“Found you,” a demonic voice said in his ear, before he was suddenly hurled into the light. Wearing a chicken costume.

Scrambling, Dainn realized he was totally disarmed in his new apparel. And standing on a cloud. Before him, on a throne of chocolate, was a certain draconoquis. The other reason the Caribou had lost horribly.

If the STDs, the coalition of allied races—Minotaurs, Zebra, and Gryphons among several other minor factions—the famine caused by the mutilating of the female populace to have no notable abilities which led to catastrophic grain harvest failures across the continent were bad enough, then the Avatar of fucking Chaos had ensured his forces and the Caribou empire was screwed.

“There you are; I’ve been looking in every closet for you but you just weren’t there! Rude one, aren’t you?” he said, sipping ketchup. The snake like body hurt him to even look at, and the mismatched features hurt Dainn’s sense of aesthetics.

Dainn knew in that moment he had lost. It was oddly releasing, in a way knowing he had no hope of survival now.

Discord was not something he had planned for, nor with all the resources in the world could have planned for. Right when the Coalition touched down on Equestrian mainland leaving the shattered 2nd-10th fleets and expeditionary forces captured or dead, Discord had returned from his interdimensional vacation visiting eldritch relatives in the Warp. Dainn knew this because he had received a letter alongside the one he regularly got from Queen Chrysalis (which came with a high ranking officer’s decapitated head and a box of cheeses Every. Single. Time.) The letter had explained Discord was upset with the state of things. Then the elements of harmony disappeared from their cells. Then the Princesses. Then his personal escape ship that was hidden and cloaked in a secret harbor ended up in Canterlot crashed into the meeting hall and covered in fornicating chocolate bunnies that exploded into hydrochloric acid when any stag got too close.

Honestly, his remaining forces that might have held the Coalition off for a month were defeated within 24 hours with Discord turning their weapons to noodles or teleporting entire armies around. Apparently, the treatment of the Element of Kindness had irked Discord.

“So…I’ve lost. What now?” Dainn said, standing on a cloud only held stable by Discord’s magic, stripped of gear, in a chicken suit. The message was obvious; his life was in Discord’s hands.

“You know; I’ve thought about that. A lot. You see, you’ve annoyed me greatly. You trashed my home, you caused the unpleasant kind of Chaos, and then you tormented the princesses. I normally approve of the latter, but you went too far,” Discord said, idly looking at his teacup which started wiggling and trying to escape him. “You went and hurt dear Fluttershy.” The skies around him darkened with untold power and madness welled in his eyes, a madness enhanced by sheer, unyielding, unholy rage that made Dainn collapse to his knees from the sheer pressure alone.

Looking at it from a certain perspective, Dainn got it now. The Caribou culture never placed value in females beyond their ability to do work, please masters, and bear young, but after being in Equestria, he knew his kind’s culture was a piece of stupid shit. He’d thought it insane at first how the mares acted, but now he realized that’s because they were every bit as intelligent as males. It was his kind that had done this to their females, turned them into subservient fuck dolls that followed orders with no complex thought in their minds. How long had they been selectively bred that way until nothing was left? How long had his kind worked to warp half their damn race that should have been partners walking step in step into the future? Of course, that probably led to a deterioration in stags too, not that anyone noticed until him. In fact, Dainn was likely a spectacular aberration in normal Caribou thought patterns and intelligence.

This only meant he now understood what Discord was getting at. The princesses weren’t disobedient does, they were people. People he, to keep up appearances, had violated, tortured, and worse. Only for neither to never break. Luna, in fact, had successfully killed multiple stags who tried to have their way with her. Celestia hadn’t killed any, but had long left most feeling ashamed of themselves with even a look he still had trouble comprehending.

Dainn wouldn’t deny it. He was a monster, pure and simple. He’d let this happen. He could have turned this around, could have let the suffering end, but he’d taken too long to realize everything he knew was stupidly idiotic, that his entire life’s work was worth a wagonload of shit. The fact that his culture had embraced this insanity meant nothing to him because he was as much a part of it for letting it all happen.

“I thought about turning you into a fish and dropping you into a pin full of hungry megalo-krakens, tossing you into the nearest bottomless hole to let you starve or die of dehydration, to just take you before the nearest group of ponies and let them beat you to death, but...you realize you were beyond stupid, beyond cruel, haven’t you?’ Discord said. The tea cup escaped and jumped to its death far below.

Dainn nodded. He was not delusional and could put together the evidence. This entire venture, from beginning to end, had shown him so much—the idiocies of his own culture, how he had been so wrong about the world. Not only wrong, but everything he knew in his life, in his culture, in his people, was irreparably wrong that it’d take an act of the Gods to fix it by now, otherwise just burn it all and move forward. But it was over now. His crimes were numerous and any court in this part of the world would likely have him hung.

“I think I know what I’m going to do with you,” Discord said suddenly. Dainn stiffened.

“What would that be?” he said, with no emotion. He’d long lost rage, panic, fear, at this point. There was nothing left with him.

“You see; I know how things go beyond our walls. There’s eyes on the outside, watching us right now, judging us for everything we do. And let me tell you…they hate you. You are the embodiment of the Caribou, the rapist monsters with no logic to them or their actions beyond a need to fuck and dominate anything they don’t understand, to mutilate and torture and rape until everything is theirs; born from a sad twisted fantasy that should never have saw daylight. Those eyes want me to rip you apart, to shred you, to toss you in a volcano, to come up with every unimaginable torture…” Discord said, looking to the skies and waving at nothing. “But, I think I know the best way to handle this. To handle the abomination that is your story. Killing you just leaves a world devastated behind, mares, stallions, foals left traumatized by your people that will leave a scar for centuries on the magical kingdom once known as Equestria. But I can fix all of this, make it so everyone can have their happy ending.”

Something in Dainn froze, a fear he thought lost awakening. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s simple. I’m rewriting this story,” Discord said, and held up his eagle’s talon. In the light, the mismatched limb looked like the hand of a God holding up the sun. Then, he snapped his talon.

SNAP

Command Prompt

Delete_FoE_YearOfMiseryAndHope.exe

Initiate_Tea_Party.exe

Fluttershy blinked, feeling dazed for a moment as the light blinded her. All around her, birds sang joyously in the beautiful sunlight as lazy clouds slowly rolled by, fluffy like cotton candy.

“Oh my dear Fluttershy, are you alright?” Discord asked, putting down his cup of tea.

“Oh goodness me, I don’t know what just happened. It’s like I got lost in a dream all of a sudden,” Fluttershy said, blinking and scratching her head with her hoof. Wait, hoof? Why yes, she always had hooves. Why wouldn’t she?

“Oh it happens to the best of us. I get lost in a dream every night! Luna usually has to chase me out with a broom,” Discord said, chuckling. “Cucumber sandwich?” he offered her.

“Yes please,” Fluttershy said, taking the offered sandwich with a smile. Perhaps she was just feeling off today? That had to be it. But, at least she had a lovely tea party to continue with one of her best friends in the world.

Discord then looked at you. “Before you ask—yes, this is how it should have ended. Now, please, scoot. I want a little privacy here. The author’s note should be rambling enough for you if you want more, so go!” Discord said, before snapping his Talon and—

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Author's Note

First thing I've published in years, and it's this, huh?

Not even sure why I wrote this. I know it's not my usual quality, but I felt a need to cap this story off. So much anger went into this story, ideas I thought to express to show how disgusted I was with the Fall of Equestria setting, and yet...

It all faded. The Fall of Equestria stories are rotten husks now, left behind with most having moved on. I have too. Been writing original fiction, some fanfiction elsewhere, but this series has been far from my mind. But...I felt a need to finish this.

I thought of a lot of ways to end this. I'd originally intended an epic million word length story showing a believable Caribou empire occupying Equestria and how they were eventually kicked out through a year of attrition, warfare, tragedy, heroes, and more, but.... this series wasn't worth that. I'm not sure it was even worth what I wrote for it in this rushed chapter I'm throwing out.

I thought about killing Dainn in a lot of ways in this story. DIscord's rant is pretty much a reflection of my thoughts. In a Fall of Equestria story, there's no happy ending. Every single female character caught by the Caribou was violated, raped, and tortured repeatedly. Stallions were brainwashed. Thousands, hundreds of thousands-would have died, and then there's the question of what to do with such a toxic culture that has reduced its females to a barely sapient level in its fetishization of rape and domination.

There really weren't many ways to end this on a positive note. So I took the easy way out-a Discord fueled, fourth wall breaking Deus Ex Machina. It's not a great ending. But it's something to end my involvement in this series.

I might write another Sunset Shimmer story, might not. I have no idea.

I know this chapter probably isn't that great. But oh well. I have no desire to go back and revise a story like this when there are much worthier things to get out. But here it is. It's done.