The stallion looked ahead with glazed eyes, ignoring the stone statue of his former captor, the sisters, the chaos—his world seemed to consist of his mutterings and an inner world of his own creation.
Celestia kept an eye on him even as she continued the conversation with her sister.
"We will need a base of operations, Luna. The sooner the better."
"Here? At the center of the source of so much misery?" Luna glared, eyes narrowed and head thrust forward.
"It will be temporary, of course," Celestia said.
"We could set up a comparable palace in only weeks! We do not need something so large, nor so tainted. It is a certainty that somepony has spotted this place, and I would not have a single pony choosing to ignore us and instead fall off a cliff."
Celestia opened her mouth, but the stallion spoke.
"You have brought death."
He closed his eyes and sighed, and said nothing more.
"Us?" Luna's eyes were bright and angry. She struck a hoof out in the statue's direction. "Chaos! For...for a thousand years, at least. We stopped it, and you say—"
"Luna."
Luna stopped, transferring her gaze to Celestia.
"Think, Luna. At the center of chaos for so long, his mind is likely gone. We shall have to ignore his ravings, until we manage to build a civilization that can care for him."
Luna shook her head in defiance, then a took a breath and closed her eyes, falling quickly into sleep.
"Luna, no!" Celestia stretched out a hoof to wake her sister, knowing at the same time that if the stallion's mind was as tainted as she suspected it was already too late.
Luna's eyes snapped open, and Celestia took a step back, channeling a stream of power into the Elements she held as quickly as she could.
Her sister, instead of attacking or displaying any other symptoms of madness, shook her head.
"His mind was protected. I'd thought Discord's magic incapable of it, but it seems as long as the desire is there..." Luna trailed off, head tilted to the side in thought.
Celestia nudged her side. "Regardless, we must decide on what to do."
This was the crucial moment, and they needed to cement some sort of order before another, more natural sort of chaos formed. One made by ponies.
Luna nodded. "Of course."
"I believe your idea has more merit. We can make a temporary center of government without having to deal with any of this," Celestia said, waving a hoof at Discord, whose mouth was still open as if in song.
The stallion shifted, finally focusing on them. "Do you two know what starvation is?"
Celestia sighed as Luna faced him.
"Yes. With Discord gone, we shall finally be able to stamp it out.”
His eyes cleared, and he looked between the sisters with something approaching lucidity. “No! No, you will not. Think, you fools. You two will survive, but normal ponies need to eat. Discord kept his playthings alive. He can’t torment ponies if they’re dead. If you do not find a way to organize every single pony in Equestria and feed them all, they will die within weeks. Even if you do manage that, Discord has displaced everything from the environment it’s best suited to. Plants crushed under an island that no longer floats or located in underground caves cannot feed anyone. Animals that need them will themselves die, we among them. The carnivores will be the last, but eventually they too will be gone.”
Luna glanced at Celestia, uncertain. Celestia tilted her head, gazing at the strange stallion. “You make a salient point, but Harmony would not permit such ruin.”
He laughed. It was a hollow sound without any mirth in it. “Then why did Harmony allow this to happen in the first place? It’s only magic. It was created by smart ponies, yes, but it is not all-powerful. Why have your gems not simply healed the land, instead of dissolving all the chaos? I’m sure a pony was crushed by a dancing tree, or burned alive by a pit of lava that lost its ability to heal.”
Celestia winced, and looked away.
“What would you have us do, then? Luna challenged. “Return Discord to power? These will not work a second time, now that he is aware of them.”
“No, no. I will not tell you what to do. I just…want you to know, to—” he broke off in a fit of coughing, then cleared his throat and resumed. “My apologies. I am not accustomed to dealing with the consequences of age. Only know that your choice is not between Discord and freedom, but between chaos and entropy. In chaos, at least we live. With entropy, there’s nothing; though I suppose there is solace in oblivion.”
Celestia inclined her head toward the old stallion. “We thank you for this information. Without it, we surely would have failed. However, Luna and I are capable magicians. We will find another way.”
Luna’s voice rang out, its customary sharpness renewed. “Of course. If all else fails, we will unchain Discord. Perhaps we can even do it with stipulations, or use Harmony to only allow him to channel his power toward benevolent uses.”
“Yes, or use some sort of reforming spell. We will try to avoid using Discord at all, of course. I suggest we first try experimenting with the Elements. Perhaps if we merge our own magic with it, we can restore the natural balance from our own minds,” Celestia added.
It worked. Celestia stood on the balcony of their new palace and looked out onto rolling green fields filled with ponies going about the business of establishing a new order for themselves. The foundations for future houses had already sprung up in several places. Some wandered along the road toward the palace, seeking a meal from the unfathomably large stockpile of grain that filled the inside of what she and Luna had named Canterlot mountain. All of it had been created by the Elements.
Clink, clink, clink. Celestia knew that sound. Luna had taken to wearing the same regalia as the vaguely-remembered monarchs of their youth.
Celestia shifted aside, letting Luna take a place next to her. She stole a glance at her sister, and opened her mouth—then closed it again. They stood there in silence, until the time to move the sun was nearly upon them.
“What troubles you, Luna?” she said.
Luna smiled. “I can hide nothing from you, can I sister?”
Celestia chuckled. “You usually hide it a lot better. Out with it, you’ll feel better when you have another to share your burden.”
“I—” Luna stopped, and started over. “Do you ever wonder if we did more than just…put everything back? What if we recreated it all? And if we did…how would we know?”
Celestia waited as Luna put her thoughts into words. Speaking too soon would cause Luna to clam up for another week.
“What if we recreated not just everything, but everypony as well? And if we did…could we undo it? The Elements have gone dormant, but perhaps they will recharge, given enough time. Celestia… What if we have made a terrible mistake?” Luna looked at her, eyes wide and pleading for reassurance.
Celestia draped a wing over her sister’s shoulder. “It’s no use worrying about such things. What is done is done. If you truly are so concerned, we can have the Elements hidden.”
They stood in silence for a few moments more, and then Luna blurted out: “I found one of the ponies we saw. The one who drowned in the chocolate lake. She was fine. I asked her about it, and she—she looked so confused, and when I asked again she ran away.”
A chill swept through Celestia, one that bit through flesh that was never cooler than a forge, and struck bone. “We destroy the Elements. If it doesn’t work, we hide them. Propel them into space, or bury them deep within the ground. If what you say is true…”
She let the thought trail off into emptiness. The ponies wandering below the balcony gained a dark cast, as if made of shadow, something not entirely real. There hadn’t been one fight, not one. Celestia always had believed in the overall goodness of ponykind, but the fact that there hadn’t even been a scuffle when ponies all over Equestria had arrived to a place absent of chaos and apparently full of food…
Discord delighted in playing tricks. If Celestia had been one of the ponies below, she would not have believed this was anything more than a charade. She certainly wouldn’t have been building anything, not when chaos so delighted in letting you almost finish and then swept it away in some manner.
“We will never speak of this again.”
