Flurry Heart narrowed her eyes and squinted at the rock before her. It didn’t look like an especially flammable or destructible rock. It had the countenance of a rock that had hitherto spent its rocky life being neither flammable nor broken asunder and intended to keep up the good habits. It was, in short, perfect for what she needed.
She flapped up off the ground in the Royal Gardens to get a better look at it. When she glanced round at her dad, he gave her an encouraging smile. “Breathe in and out, Flurry,” Shining Armour said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Flurry breathed in and out. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. I’m totally ready. Born ready.” She’d use magic on the rock in a perfect and controlled way, and nothing would go wrong or explode. This time.
Her tongue stuck out one side of her mouth as the eleven-year-old alicorn tapped into her magic. Flurry summoned it up around her horn, a glimmer of yellow quickly building into a seething golden maelstrom, and grasped the rock. She focused hard on lifting it right up off the ground, the whole pony-sized mass of it, and squinted and strained and poured in magic, careful to maintain her grip, to not let it slip, to keep the direction and speed even. It slowly began to wobble up off the ground. An inch, and then another, and then a third, and stars above, she was doing it.
“Look!” she exclaimed, a laugh escaping her. “I’m doing it! Dad, look!”
“I see it, Flurry.” Dad sounded pleased, though when he spoke a second later, a nervous note had entered his voice. “Er, wind your magic in a little. Breathe in, breathe out, keep it controlled—”
Flurry Heart realised that the yellow glow of her magic was now practically flaming around the rock, seething wildly and bright beyond what it really ought to be. With a yelp, she tried to control and limit it all, wind the magic back in, reduce the intensity, stop it before it—
She saw a shield flash up before her, and the second after, there was a blinding flash of light and a dismayingly familiar exploding-rock sound.
When the smoke and light cleared away, Flurry Heart saw fragments of burning rock spread out over a wide area of garden, with a few bits of flaming shrapnel stuck in the crystalline trunks of the remaining trees, having hacked in a fresh batch of scars. The wind blowing through their branches sounded a lot like grumbling. She’d kept the Royal Gardeners busy, lately.
The shield flickered away. Flurry stared at a piece of smouldering rock that had pattered against the shield and landed on the ground under her hooves, and she was aware of her dad cantering up to her. “Flurry? Are you alright?”
There was a hot lump in her throat and her vision blurred briefly, and Flurry alighted on the ground and kicked the rock. Hard. “No.”
Her dad’s forehoof came down and tousled her mane, which Flurry sullenly accepted. “It’s okay, Flurry. Practise makes perfect. When I was your age, I couldn’t —”
“But I’ve been practising!” Flurry hunted about for another bit of rock to kick, and finding none, elected to slump down onto her hindquarters and pout at the world. “You’ve been helping me, and Mom’s been helping me, and, and Auntie Twilight taught me some breathing exercises and gave me tips for remaining focused, and, and so did Aunties Celestia and Luna and … and everypony! And I’m trying, and I can’t! I just want to use my magic!”
She stamped her forehoof on the ground several times to enunciate, and when she finished, she breathed deeply and rubbed her hoof across her eyes. “And I thought I had it that time as well.”
Dad patted her on the withers. She didn’t turn around to look. “You’re improving every time, even if you don’t feel like you are,” he said gently. “Do you want to try again?”
Flurry Heart shook her head. “No.”
Dad sighed. “Do you want some time to yourself in the gardens?”
Flurry Heart nodded.
“Alright. Remember that Auntie Twilight and her friends are coming up later today, to meet with your mom about affairs of state. That’ll make you feel better.”
It probably would, but Flurry Heart’s bad mood wasn’t inclined to give an inch. She stayed where she was, and soon, she heard Dad’s hoofsteps heading back towards the palace.
“Stupid rocks,” she muttered to herself, getting up on her hooves and looking around at the garden. The battered crystal trees and their glittering leaves chimed in the breeze. From around, the songs of birds who’d long since learned to hide behind the trunks and only re-emerge when Flurry was done practising her magic began to fill the air.
She glanced down at the ground and saw a fallen leaf. Dad and Mom had expressly forbidden her from trying to practise with anything that could produce shrapnel when they weren’t around. A leaf would probably be fine, and her sourness was curdling into pique. She’d show her magic and the leaf who was boss.
“Stupid magic as well,” she said to the empty garden as she subjected the leaf to the usual hard scrutiny. “Alicorns are meant to be the magicalest. What’s the point if I can’t do it? I can’t be a lousy alicorn. I can’t.”
Thus resolved, she summoned her magic, and as the birds hurriedly ceased singing and positioned themselves behind trunks, Flurry grasped the leaf.
The leaf said, “Excuse you.”
Flurry yelped a high C, leapt a foot into the air, and without much in the way of conscious thought, put a beam of magic right through the leaf. It vanished amidst a golden-tinted and thunderous explosion, and it and several square feet of the surrounding garden were reduced to a few fragments in a smoking crater.
Some of said leaf fragments grew little arms and claws to pull themselves back together, and a couple grew bright red-yellow eyes, and the whole of the leaf reassembled and reshaped itself, growing taller, longer, serpentine. The little arms and claws bundled themselves together to become bigger, mismatched limbs, and eventually, the creature’s long, goaty head looked down at Flurry with a peevish expression. “The youth of today. Honestly,” he said.
Flurry had the impression she ought to be screaming and/or fleeing and/or putting a few more magical blasts right through the creature, but something about him rang familiar, and he wasn’t doing anything that evil right that instant. “You’re …” she ventured, hunting for a name. “You’re …?”
“Discord, Spirit of Chaos, draconequus at large, and a poor sleepy elder who was most uncouthly awoken from their nap. Well, I say ‘nap’. Others might say ‘Lying in wait for Twilight Sparkle and her friends so I could prank them by jumping up unexpectedly and pulling scary faces and shouting ‘Bwooga’ a lot’ but never mind those hypothetical others. What woe is the world coming to?” He wiped away a theatrical tear, even as he leaned down closer to Flurry’s face, and he squinted. “Hmm, it’s been a while since I’ve been up here. And I say, I think I recognise you now. Horns, wings, small size, all clues. You’re Flurry-something, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Flurry carefully, taking in Discord’s face, from the prongs of his antler to the white tuft of hair jutting from his chin. Stories came to her then, of many of the adventures her mom and dad and Auntie Twilight and her friends had had. Discord came up a lot. “Flurry Heart. How do you know me?”
“Well, generally speaking, everyone knows the princesses. Hard to not,” Discord replied airily. “And specifically, I’ve had occasion to dandle you on whatever knees I grew for the purpose, make silly faces at you, and sing you songs. You might have been three the last time? Good songs too. Some of my very rudest limericks, and I’d have taught you all of them if Fluttershy hadn’t yelled at me to stop.”
Flurry dredged up the dimmest memory of that, and grinned. “I think I remember.”
“Glad you do! Having left an impression’s always a lovely compliment.” Discord floated up into the air and cut long, lazy S-shapes through it, one claw tugging thoughtfully at his goatee. “Speaking of impressions, I notice one in the ground where a rock used to be. Couldn’t help but witness a lot of that.”
The gloom returned to Flurry. “Kinda wish you hadn’t.”
“Don’t fuss about it. That rock probably well and truly deserved it. Why, the reports of its sins against its rock colleagues turned my hair whiter than it already was.” Discord still looked thoughtful. “Still though, this seems like a problem with your magic control. If I were to offer you a hand, claw, appendage, thingumy with that, would you keep word of my planned prank on the down-low?”
“I’ve had lots of help already.” Flurry’s hoof itched for a rock to kick. “From Dad and Mom and all my aunties. They’ve taught me exercises, tricks they use, meditation stuff, everything! I’m trying to focus, and I don’t think I can control my breathing anymore without fainting! I’ve tried everything they said!”
“Hmm.” Discord frowned. Then he seemed to realise something, and smiled and nodded. “That’s the problem.”
Flurry blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Disciplined unicorns and made alicorns, all of them. All of them growing into and having to assert control over their new power, every last one. Control worked for them, so no wonder they’ll try to impart it.” His red-yellow eyes glittered. “It mightn’t work for you.”
“What? Why not?”
“Look at you. A born alicorn. You’re not coming into your full magical power. And trust this, coming from someone of pure Chaos. It’s all already right there. Deeper than your thoughts, deep as your bones. You were born ready fit for purpose. Literally so.”
Flurry frowned up at him, and then glanced back round the garden. “But then what do I do?”
“Your magic knows what it’s about, deep-down, if you’ll just let it free. Try not focusing it. It just chafes, and gets confused, and erupts at any outlet it’s got. Don’t try to wrap it in iron bands of control or anything. Just … let it out. Let it flow. Feel, don’t think. Innate things don’t need honing. They just need intention.”
Flurry opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “That … that honestly sounds … well, dumb. Look what I’ve done to the garden. Again and again because I keep losing control. What if I do something even worse?”
Discord shrugged so hard his arms fell off, and he had to quickly dip down to the ground to retrieve them. “A lot of my great ideas sound dumb, granted. Maybe it’s something in my inflection. Maybe I should wear a labcoat more so I look and sound smarter. And you know, that’s a fair question. Here’s mine. Is my method at least worth trying?”
Silence then in the gardens, as Flurry Heart thought it through.
Discord looked like the absolute epitome of a being you ought not to trust. Both looked, and in a lot of the stories she’d heard, was. But in a lot of those same stories, he pulled through in the end. Auntie Twilight and all her friends were much too smart to be friends with someone who was really wicked, who couldn’t be relied on in the end.
Things could go wrong. But then again, they’d been going wrong so far, and if there was any chance for it to finally, at last, miraculously go right…
“Also, if you try my method, everypony else might come into the garden any moment and find me being unambiguously helpful,” Discord said. His grin sharpened. “Won’t they be shocked?”
Flurry Heart made her decision. “If something starts going wrong or exploding or whatever,” she said slowly, firmly, as a princess ought to, “do you promise you’ll step in?”
“On what I understand my word and honour to be, anything in the vein of an explosion or adverse event will be reduced to something much more fun and chaotic and, most saliently, harmless. Budgies. I’m thinking a flock of budgies.”
Flurry nodded grimly, and when her gaze fell back down away from Discord, a rock stood waiting.
She glanced suspiciously up at Discord. Discord whistled innocently. “Glacial erratic,” he said blithely. “You know how glaciers can sneak up like that. Ask your mother all about it.”
Flurry squinted at the rock. She breathed in—
—and then she stopped. She frowned. Above her, Discord made an encouraging motion.
“To heck with all that,” Flurry said, and she just lifted the rock.
No forethought, no breathing, just the deed. Magic built up and flashed forth from her horn in an eye’s blink, and as it passed through, it almost seemed to sing. It sounded like snowflakes tumbling, like the cheery roar of a burning hearth, like winter winds and bonfires and jangling icicles all at once, like the whole of the world tumbling in through her ear.
And when it passed the instant after, she found she was levitating the rock. It hovered in the air in a casual sort of way. With a flicker of thought, she floated it one way, then the other. It tumbled where she directed it, and when it flew through the air in the perfect figure-of-eight she wanted and didn’t explode into flaming shrapnel once, she giggled with pure delight.
“Born ready,” said Discord, grinning down at Equestria’s newest princess. “Egads, they’re going to be beyond shocked.”
Author's Note
The basic gist of Iron Author was as follows, in two hours, write a story that:
• Starred a secondary character (nae Mane Six, nae prominent princesses, nae background ponies that remained just background, nae OCs.)
• Was set at least ten years in the future.
Around the fifteen-minute mark, panicked brain cells unfused, and somehow this happened.
