Grab Bag of Harmony

“Oi, you big lug, nap time’s over. I know you can hear me, I was a statue too.” I lit my hand up, and knocked on the statue. The spot that I struck it began to crack, and break apart. The other various limbs of Discord began to crack as well, until finally the prison broke apart, and crumbled away revealing the trickster chimera himself.

“Oh, it’s you Blake. How’s it been, stuck in stone? Boring, isn’t it? So, what? You gonna enslave the world again, and you want my help to do just that?” He leaned down, and stared me in the eyes with a smile on his face.

“No. First, before I discuss anything with you, I want to see Finn, not Discord.” He glared at me, but returned to his normal form in a flash of light. “Thank you. I got something like a memory reboot while I was imprisoned. Made me reevaluate my life choices. I’m gonna be clearing Equestria of all the villains that the show has, one way or another. Then Celly is going to find us a way back to Earth, in our time.”

“Good for you. I happen to be enjoying my time here, and would rather stay. Besides, who knows if we’ll stay as Chaos and Harmony on Earth? Imagine the havoc that would cause. Actually now that I think about this, going home sounds so much more enjoy—OOF!”

His jaw was turned to the side, and he was staring at my outstretched fist in surprise. He blinked. “You punched me. Celestia never punched me!”

“Oh hush, we both know that a punch could never hurt either of us. You’re made of light, I’m made of ink. And good to know you still remember Star Trek. But seriously, Finn, you need to fix yourself. If Celly finds a way home, and you’re still hell-bent on being ‘Discord’, then I’m not going to take you. I’m sick of this, and I know you’re sick of this.”

Finn frowned at me. “Who says I need to be fixed? I am happy just the way I am, fictional deity or not. Not even Fluttershy and her tea parties will change that. I mean, how did that work in the show!? So what if Discord lost a friend, he could have just found the least friendly pony on the planet, and reverse their personality!”

I sighed, and charged magic into my hand. “Then, I do apologize for this, Finn. Maybe you can reorganize your head after I screw with it.” I pulled Finn close to me, and pressed my palm to his forehead. He struggled in my grasp, making various gasping sounds.

I pulled my hand back, and looked at the swirling ball of ghostly strands hovering there. Memory. I waited a few moments while Finn gagged, and blinked, then pressed the ball of light back into his head. He choked one last time, then his eyes rolled back, and he fell still.

I swung him over my shoulder without any effort, and opened a gate to the Aetheraenum, then to the bedroom. I rested him on the same white bed that he stayed in all those years ago, and cast a small spell. When he woke up, it would make a little sound in my head to indicate as such.

I had gone through this same sleep six years ago, though I didn’t know the cause still. One day I was angrily stewing in my prison, then I was 2000+ years younger. I walked back into the atrium, and made my way towards the library.

After spending a few hours planning, and reading old favorites, I found a book and pulled it from the shelf. ‘A Through Research of the Aether and It’s Power, by Blake Dunn.’ I tucked it under my arm, and looked for another book. ‘The Elements of Harmony; The Full Guide, by Blake Dunn.’ I nodded, and walked back to the atrium.

I made a gate to Ponyville, and shifted into Ink Blot. The two books hovered in my magical grasp, and I walked through the gate, depositing me in an alley between two buildings. I stepped out of it, and began my way towards the library.

Stopping at the door, I knocked on it with a hoof. Twilight opened it with a smile, but quickly frowned when she saw me. “Accord. What are you doing here? I thought you were going to hang with your ‘brother’?”

“I was, and I did. But the names Ink Blot when I’m like this. Anyways, I just wanted to donate a few books to your library. I recalled our discussion on aether from earlier, so I pulled out a book from a friend that might clear some things up. And since you’re an Element of Harmony, I also got you a book on the Elements from the same friend.”

I levitated the books to her, and saw her eyes slowly light up. “But— what? You would really give me these books? Aren’t you worried about what I’d do with them?”

“Not really. So long as you don’t go and force an entire town to fall in love with a toy doll with this knowledge, I trust you. Oh, and, theres a passage in the aether book, page 187, I think, that you may want to show Rainbow Dash. It’s on the subject of a Blake-Finn Explosion. You’ll see what I mean. You might also want to look at page 43 in detail. It’s about heartsongs, and how they function.”

She flipped through the books, and shook her head. “This… this is amazing! Just a few pages of either of these books could revolutionize magical science as we know it! If Equestria could create other sets of Elements, we could have an even deeper defense for the inevitable event of an evil pony attacking Equestria!”

“Yep! Just, let me make this clear to you. If I see you start to use these books in anyway other than the pursuit of knowledge, such as monetary gain, or creating instruments of destruction against any group, I can and will make your life an utter, absolute, complete Tartarus. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

I made the appropriate motions, and Twilight swallowed. “Don’t worry, I would never do anything of the sort. For any of the things I’ve learned.”

“Good. Oh, and tell the Elements that I’ve rebooted Discords memory so that he’ll become nice and cooperative like me! Ciao!” I became invisible, and walked back to my gate, whistling a merry tune as I shifted into my normal self.

I counted down on my fingers, smiling as my last finger closed, and a loud “WHAAAAAT” shook the streets. It sure was fun to mess with Twily like that.

——————

Celestia frowned from within her personal dimension. The magical screen in front of her showed a very surprised, and annoyed Twilight staring out her door. She didn’t expect Accord to do what he did, but she supposed it made sense. When she first met the brothers, Blake and Finn, they were much more… manageable than they were nowadays.

Though, his promise to Twilight was… disturbing. She doubted that her student would break that promise, but it still worried her. Celestia had seen what lengths Pinkie would go to make sure a broken Pinkie Promise was fixed.

“She really is a fun pony, isn’t she?” Celestia screamed, and sent out an involuntary pulse of magic that pushed Accord away from her. He floated there in literally her own space and let out a long laugh. “Hello, Celly. Good to see you too!”

“Ac— Accord how did you get here!? This realm is closed to all but myself, and those I allow! How did you enter it?” She charged up a spell, and grit her teeth.

“Easy, Celly. This place was constructed using unicorn magic, a subset of Harmony magic, which happens to be my area of expertise. I simply looked for your magical glow, and created a gate to it.” He reached his hand to the side, and it disappeared into thin air.

“So you’ve taken residence in the Aetheraenum again. For a while, I could never figure out how you created that space. Then I had a breakthrough, and here we are. A thanks should be given, I suppose.”

“Any day, Celly. So you never entered the Aetheraenum? Shame, really. It’s a beautiful place: lavender light fills the halls, causing the blue flakes in the black granite floor to shine. The whole ground shimmers. But, again, knowing you, you’d just sneak off to the Archive and grab what you could.”

Celestia nodded, then focused back to the screen, which showed Twilight reading my books. “Sounds like a lovely place. What’s in the Archive?”

“Enough dark magic to destroy the world several times over. Things from the old days, like the Rainbows of Light and Dark, a broken mirror that Starswirl made, Sombra’s amulet. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a small project of mine I desperately need to work on. See you later, Celly!” I turned around, and walked into the gate. Celestia looked around her, then teleported out of her realm.

I stepped through the gate, and almost immediately fell to the floor, turning to ink. I slowly stood back up, gasping, and pressed two blobs of ink hardly resembling hands to the gate, and shifted it’s exit location. I tumbled through, feeling extremely sluggish.

I was in an alleyway, in some dark corner of Manehatten. I got up, and heard hooves approaching. Something primal was burning inside of me, and I surged forwards. The earth pony hardly time to blink before I poured onto him, coating him, filling him. The glow in his hooves slowly pulled away onto my own self, and disappeared.

The pony gagged, and collapsed to the ground, shuddering. I pushed myself out of him, and reformed with a sigh. I had almost forgotten about my limits. I needed to feed off of magical energy in order to stay anything more than a puddle of ink. Same went for Finn.

I adjusted the cuff on my suit, and reached a tendril of ink behind me. It flowed into the open mouth of the pony, and his eyes became a solid black, before clearing up. I couldn’t have anypony complaining about a loss of magic, Celly would most likely link it to me. They could borrow some aether for now,

The tip of my tendril broke off, and the rest flowed back into me. I took a breath, and flexed my fingers. It felt good to do that, it was like measuring yourself, and discovering that you’d grown an inch. But, it was wrong. I promised Celly that I wouldn’t harm her ponies, yet…

But what harm was done? They can still use their magic, my little bit of ink can’t hurt them, and I didn’t assault them, no harm done! I nodded, and walked back through my gate, and back through. I was behind a certain blue alicorn that was staring over her city.

Turning to ink, I silently slid across the floor until I was right behind her. “Sure is a beautiful city.”

In a reaction not unlike her sister’s, she screamed, and let out a magical blast that through me a few feet backwards. “Accord! How did you get up here? This tower is locked to all but my sister and I!” Whew, deja vu much?

“Good to see you too, Luna. Same way I got into your sisters realm: I opened a gate to your location, and walked through.”

She glared at me with an open mouth, and facehoofed. “Of course. You got into your Aetheraenum again, didn’t you?” I nodded. “Of course. Just— do my sister and I a favor, and never do that again.”

I shifted into an ink-black raven, and held my head up high. “Quoth the raven, nevermore.” I shifted back, and smiled.

She raised a brow. “Really? Poetry, now?”

I shrugged. “Always was a fan of Poe. Have I ever told you what my favorite work of his was? The Cask of Amontillado. In the story, a man named Fortunado has done something to wrong the narrator, Montresor, but he doesn’t know what. Mont becomes blind with rage, and devises a plan to get rid of this man that dared to embarrass him. He tricks Fortunado, and takes him down to a series of catacombs below the city.

“Fortunado, the whole time, has no idea that his friend could be mad at him! He trusts him, follows him, even when Montresor  chains him to a wall in a deep, dark corner of the catacombs. Even when Montresor begins to build a wall, trapping Fortunado, he still believes that Montresor is just having a joke with him! It isn’t until the light starts to leave his face that he realizes his foolishness, and cries out, hoping that some god will hear him.

“You know what Montresor did? He screamed back, like a wild animal. He was completely consumed with rage, and didn’t stop enjoying it until he called out for Fortunado, and nobody responded. He still refused to believe that he was remorseful of what he had done, and blamed his nausea on the niter hanging from the ceiling.” I gave a cold look to Luna, who was tense, and frowning at me.

“Every time I remember that story I ask: Who am I? Montresor, the man that traps his friend in stone, and leaves him for dead? Or Fortunado, the poor, innocent fool that just wanted to have a good time with his friends? Think about it.” I patted Luna between the withers, causing her to flinch. I stepped back, and slowly became invisible as I smiled at her.

Being friends with somepony does not necessarily mean you have to forgive them, if what they did was bad enough.