One Last Chance

"It's amazing!" The now very much alert Twilight Sparkle was carefully scrutinising the strange pegasus that refused to move. It's almost like someone was standing right next to him, constantly supplying the spell, never letting him rest. It was remarkable, if not a little scary. A self-replenishing spell such as that took incredible skill and precision to get right. "Alright. I guess we're going to need some equipment." She said before taking off, eager to start testing the strange pony, which left the six friends to watch over him.

"It's very odd." A brown, chestnut-maned stallion at the front of the group said. "Who would want to seal this poor fellow in an endless prison? I mean, what could he possibly have done to warrant this kind of... torture?" A crease formed on his brow. He was obviously very troubled by the look of pain on the strange pony's face.

"Is that really the question?" a grey pegasus in the back asked. "A better question might be, how did he get here and why is he still frozen. I mean, look around us, there's no one. It's just us… and him." Her mind seemed to wander with those last words. Everyone else applauded her vocally for the very accurate inspection. It was indeed a mystery. After all, how could somepony keep him enchanted if they weren't there? It should be impossible. Her friends stood there and gawked at the recent discovery. It was true. If no one else was there then maybe the spell was self-replenishing. Perhaps Twilight Sparkle had missed something and the spell repaired itself? Odd, but stranger things had happened in Equestria before. A little freezing spell was nothing to worry about and a couple of them kind of lost interest, deciding to head back to their homes. The only ones that stayed were the mint unicorn, the grey pegasus, and the brown stallion. One too concerned, one too intrigued and one not really wanting to go back to her day-job.

Twilight sparkle was back soon enough with a strange mechanical device. "Hello everypony! The others really should've stayed for the show. I mean, I haven't seen magic like this since, well, actually I've never quite seen a spell like this." She shook these thoughts from her head and gestured with her hoof to the device. A hoof-held dial ranging from red to green. "This device I hold in my hoof measures magical presences in the area. I just point it around until it locks onto something. Green equals magic, red equals… not magic. As long as nopony uses their horn in the nearby area it should be able to track the aura back to where it's coming from. Anyway now I'll just point it at him." Twilight turned it towards the strange stallion, and the device made a beeping noise signalling that it had found the magic she was looking for. She then proceeded to walk around in circles for five minutes, shaking the device violently multiple times. "It's not working." She said, irritated with her homemade device's refusal to cooperate. She then proceeded to tamper with the machine for another ten minutes, and after all of that work ended up walking around in circles again. The device would pick up on the spell, but it always just led her right back to the frozen pegasus. "I guess maybe somepony imbued him with magic so the spell would just repeat itself?" Now that was powerful magic. In fact, she knew just about every spell in the book but she had no clue what this one was.

With this, Twilight Sparkle discarded the device and tried to prod him awake. Whispering to him and eventually yelling and shaking as she got more and more frustrated with the lack of response. She wasn't used to being so stumped and it drove her crazy. She refused to give up until she had won and strange magic had lost. Eventually, a particular grey pegasus got tired of this ridiculous rinse and repeat process. "Hey, has anypony ever wondered if maybe he's making the magic?" At this her friends along with Twilight turned to stare at her. "What? It's possible." Of course, everypony originally discarded the idea because he was a pegasus, it was anatomically impossible, however,

"Well, I'm no expert when it comes to magic, but anatomy I understand quite well." She chestnut stallion spoke up again, "Pony bodies can be used as vessels, for magic of all kinds, if required. All somepony would need to do is embed magic deep inside him that constantly resupplied this spell. Am I right, Twilight?" She thought about it for a second, and then nodded. An interesting concept. Now all the attention was back to him. Was he being imprisoned in broad daylight? Twilight picked back up the device and pointed it directly at him. The dial on her device was going as far as it could, and it looked like it wanted to go farther.

"I'm not sure if I know any unicorns powerful enough to give non-unicorns magical abilities. She took another second to think. The only way to remove such a spell would be to cut off the supplier and force the magic back into them. "Well, I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way and search all of Ponyville. There's no other way. We have to find the pony that did this to him and get them to undo it. They should give off the same magical signal as what I'm reading off of the shield." Twilight said. "I'll get my friends on it. We need to be quick about this. In all the rush to study him, I almost forgot that he's been lying here for two days and hasn't eaten or drank anything in all that time. Don't try to feed him, by the way, his mouth is sealed shut." With this, Twilight sprinted off, eager to get the search underway. "I'll be back soon!" she shouted back to the group as she bolted towards Carousel Boutique.

"Well I certainly didn't find anypony." said a dejected Rarity. Twilight had busted into her boutique in the middle of a long, dress making session. She was shouting about an emergency and Rarity had ended up spending the rest of the day searching the town for a 'powerful unicorn'. Unfortunately, Ponyville was a little sparse when it came to unicorns with exemplary abilities.

"Me neither, and I searched the neighbouring towns too!" was the response of the local speedster Rainbow Dash, who had taken the responsibility of asking around at nearby towns. They too were devoid of particularly strong unicorns, although she ran into a grey one that seemed above average, just based off the device Twilight had given her, but his magic didn't match the spell.

"Checked the shops, checked the park, checked all the roads. Nopony was matchin' the signal. The thing wasn't even movin'." stated Applejack. "Whoever did this, they could be on the other side of Equestria by now."

"The poor fellow. If he doesn't get something to drink soon he may very well not survive." said Fluttershy, sympathy and concern pouring out of her voice.

"Yeah. It's a real bummer, he would've really liked Ponyville, considering he's from out of town. Actually, I'm not sure if he's from any of the other towns either." Pinkie Pie said. At this everypony turned to look at her, confusion lining their faces. "Well I've never seen him before and I know just about everypony here in Ponyville, but that really wasn't enough so I started to learn the names of everypony nearby as well but then-"

"Alright Pinkie. We get it." Twilight interrupted, not letting Pinkie get too far into her rant. "So what do we do now?" Twilight was at a loss. There was nothing they could do but watch this poor stallion's health decline. Really, what could the six of them do? He was frozen. The culprit had imbued him with a self-replenishing spell the likes of which Twilight did not fully understand. They were completely powerless in the face of something so simple. Here he was. He was right in front of them and they couldn't do a thing to save him, nothing. Twilight sat, for several minutes, just thinking. The purple alicorn did not so much as utter a word for several minutes, refusing to give up on the suffering pony. "Alright. Well, if we can't do anything I guess we're going to have to bring in a specialist." she finally said. "Fluttershy, I need you to go get Discord. He's our best shot." She hated calling on Discord. It seemed every time that draconequus stepped foot in Ponyville there was some sort of calamity, but they needed him this time. Fluttershy was off in a second, as the colt laying before them had very few to spare.

Fluttershy and Discord were back relatively quickly. In fact Discord actually looked serious, very serious. It was almost scary. There were no clever jokes or witty banter as he approached the pegasus, he was like a doctor trying to save his patient kind of serious. "Alright. I don't have any time for goofing off today. What's the problem?" he said with no hint of sarcasm or humour. This wasn't usual for him, even when people's lives were at stake he was usually cracking jokes or at least messing with reality on a minor level, today he was completely focused, not so much as a smile lined his face. In fact, he was walking too. He never walked more than a few feet before he started to teleport or hover.

"Well, uh, h-he." Twilight took a second to clear her throat, astounded by Discord's icy demeanour. He didn't so much as blink. Twilight Regained her composure and resumed speaking. "He's right here. He can't move an inch. We've tried everything. He's been imbued with something, we can't fix it by ourselves." He looked at the stallion laying on the ground. Shock passed briefly over Discord's face before he returned to his passive demeanour. "I'll..." Discord drifted off. This simple task seemed to befuddle him. "Yeah, I'll fix him." He knelt down and pressed his mismatched paws against his patient. "Everypony stand back." He said. He sounded strained, like he had something caught in his throat. He took a deep breath, calming his nerves and pouring chaos magic into the stranger. There was a sickly, cracking sound and flakes of magical energy began pouring off of the mysterious stallion's body like mystical dandruff. There was a satisfying shattering sound and the spell that had been plaguing the stallion for over two days was finally gone, destroyed.

"Thanks so much for helping Discord." said Applejack, who was trying to slowly rouse their patient from his sleep-like state. "We gotta get this fella to the hospital."

"Yeah, thanks." Fluttershy reiterated to her friend. "Without your help, he might not have made it." Discord didn't say 'you're welcome' or make any kind of joke. He just began walking away, when all of a sudden the mysterious stallion opened his eyes for the first time in two days. The first thing his eyes fell upon was the rapidly retreating form of a draconequus, then looked at all of the ponies trying to help him up. He shrugged AJ off and staggered to his feet, which were very unstable from the look of things, he uttered his first word in several days, hostile and clear.

"You..." But he wasn't talking to any of his pony acquaintances, he was speaking to Discord.