Author's Note

This chapter is why this story is labeled "Violence". It's a bit gruesome.

23. I See A Darkness

His laughter shook my bones and reverberated around us until the cave walls began to crumble.

“Mom! Please get up!” Ruby cried somewhere beyond my cloudy eyes.

“Pinchy, no! We’re going now!” Minuette cried out near her.

“No! What about Mom?! Mom!”

I dragged myself towards the voices and tried to get my legs under me but stumbled. I was still disoriented and couldn’t tell which way was up. Someone caught me. I knew from the smell it was Comet Tail. I pulled myself around him and he held me.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Sssh,” Comet shushed and pressed a hoof against my muzzle.

“Well aren’t you an interesting family,” Discord spoke from every direction at once. “I got just the idea for you! Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.” He cleared his throat-

“Mom! Mom!” came an unexpected whisper. I was being shaken awake by hooves pushing and jabbing into my side. The rain on that tin roof told me exactly where I was. I opened my eyes expecting darkness and got the surprisingly well-lit face of my daughter leaning over me instead. She looked worried and I realized why.

The light was coming in from outside through the cracks in the barn’s wood. It was the dull yellow light of headlights on a wet night. Then it went out. There was still light outside though, erratic white flickers beyond the cracks.

“There’s a bunch of them!” Ruby whispered. People outside. The old couple sold us out.

“...okay,” I accepted and dragged myself to my hooves. Ruby’s green aura straightened out the sweater on my back, practically double-knotted the sleeves around my stomach and then when I saw her light dim I lowered myself down and she hopped onto me. She gripped onto the sweater and belt.

I headed for the barn door and just then heard the board wedged against the human-sized door groan and grind against the dirt.

“They locked it!” an unfamiliar man shouted from behind it.

“There’s no lock on the door: they barricaded it!” came another.

“I’ll get the front,” came Paul’s voice.

“Mom, head down,” Ruby told me. I lowered my head and the inside of the barn lit up green. There were shouts of alarm outside and dogs barking before I saw a brilliant beam of sizzling light shoot out over my head and straight into the space above the door. Ruby’s magic burned straight through and once it escaped into the night she cut it off. The shouts outside turned into screams and the dogs started barking louder. From the way the barking was spread out I thought there were at least three, maybe four dogs. I really didn’t like the idea of dogs. I could imagine their jaws were just level with my long neck now.

Ruby adjusted herself and then I saw the barn light up green again as she took aim and shot again: this time over the larger front door where the majority of the light was coming from. From the sounds of the running and shouting several people were outside taking cover. I felt Ruby carefully maneuver on my back and she fired again at the last door. I thought I heard a startled shout or two but definitely not many at least. I understood what my little filly was doing now. I lifted my head back up and raced towards the last door, the locked barn door that headed out to the pasture.

“Alright! My turn!” I warned Ruby. She gripped my neck and I raised onto my front legs to buck. Every muscle in my body contracted down until all the tension was in my fore hooves. Then I followed through from my fore hooves all the way out behind me out my hind legs and against the barn door. Compared to a metal cage, the old wooden door practically exploded into dust and splinters.

Without waiting, I barreled straight through the hole I made and galloped out into the dark, rainy fields. We didn’t get far until I heard the people behind us shouting and the dogs’ barking focus down on us. I heard engines start. More lights came on. A shotgun was fired, but up instead of at us.

I fumbled slightly but kept running. Instead of fighting the uneven ground I rolled across it, my hooves finding earth as they did and I somehow flowed across it with each leg of my gait. As soon as I noticed the gracefulness and tried to figure out how my hooves were doing it blindly, I found a gopher hole and tumbled.

Ruby and our bags were thrown off me. Ruby spat and her horn lit up green so we could find where everything went. We gathered the bags back up and Ruby climbed back onto me. The figures with the flashlights were definitely approaching us. The sound of the dogs coming in front of them. I saw cars turn onto the road adjacent to the field. The little caravan was led by a police car with its lights and siren on.

We were being hunted down.

“Run!” Ruby pleaded, shaking me back into action. I turned away from the car-lit road and ran deeper into the black fields, lit only by the light cast behind me by my daughter’s horn.

The fields were wet with night and rain. After too long running practically blind through empty fields I had just a moment to react to the wire mesh fence appearing in front of me. My momentum and the wet grass threw me against it anyway. Ruby gripped me tighter as she was jostled. I started running along the fence to look for some way out on this end of the field.

“Stop! I’ll cut it!” Ruby shouted from my back. I skidded to a muddy halt and Ruby hopped off my back. That intense white-hot light started. I heard the tell-tale sizzle and smelled burning metal as I stood guard.

There was a distant, metallic crunch and I peeked up to see one of the cars in the caravan had plowed straight through a gate leading onto the field. The humans were coming.

The hounds were getting close too. Too close. The vicious barking sliced right through the wet air. We were sitting ducks.

I looked up at the sizzling light of Ruby’s horn to check her progress. From the orange glow I saw she had scratched a line up from the bottom and was now tracing it across to turn her cut into an opening.

“I’ll take it from here!” I barely warned her and pulled her from her work. I grabbed at the still glowing wire with my forehooves. I dragged and yanked it down. The hot metal scratched around my pasterns and the fence resisted and strained against me. It gave though and the hole was torn further and faster before I climbed through it, in case there were sharp spots. Ruby quickly followed then hopped back onto me. We continued running in the direction we had been going: into the trees and cover.

If there was any remaining light left from the moon behind those rain clouds or even the headlights of the distant cars, the canopy of the woods smothered it out. I stumbled through the dark, wet foliage and weaved around trees. Ruby had to light the way as well as she could from over my side. Her dull green almost looked like night vision.

Over the endless, droning rain and my tiring breaths I heard one thing: the dogs. The dogs were getting closer. They could smell us. They could probably see Ruby’s light. It was the only light in this forest.

I kept thinking we were going to run into something. Every shadow stretched away forever from us and shifted as we moved the only light source; creating serpents, monsters, incomprehensible twisting things in the corner of my vision. They were just beyond the light. The darkness circled us, scurrying away as we moved. It waited for the light to fall. I was in a den of monsters. Or in the stomach of one really big one.

These were just normal woods, I told myself. They had to be filled with normal creatures... but I couldn’t hear anything but us and those dogs. How close were they now? I could hear their barks echoing and I was too scared to work out the distance.

The light intensified momentarily and I felt Ruby let out a burst of that beam spell behind us. Ruby saw the dogs.

I knew she had to see the dogs because there weren’t any other creatures around. Where were the deer? The possums, skunks, coyotes? The bears? There should be nocturnal creatures scurrying from the barking or the sleeping creatures fleeing from the ponies barreling through their homes. I hadn’t even heard as much as a bird call. It was raining but there should have been something, right? Where had everything gone? What did they know that we didn’t? Something about these woods felt off.

I came to a sudden steep hill and gathered momentum down it. There was a shallow creek at the bottom and I lost what momentum I gained as I crossed it. I heard the dogs hit the water when I was halfway through.

The light around us intensified again and Ruby fired that gem-cutting spell behind us again. Her green glow didn’t quite return to full intensity. I dragged my hooves up the muddy bank on the other side. The strain from running earlier today was starting to hit me hard. We had to keep moving though and I did as hard as ever.

As the dogs resumed running after us I could practically smell the wet dogs now. Their angry barks and snarls projected their ill intent very well. They were going to get us for their masters. We were their prey. And as long as they were on our trail, the humans could get us.

The ground went up and I bounded up the hill in large strides. Past slippery rocks and sliding dirt. I cleared a fallen tree half-submerged in one strained leap.

Across the flatlands on top of the hill I saw the green light around me grow brighter and took a chance to look behind me. Ruby fired off another shot. Despite my mad gallop I thought my back was relatively level; it made the weight not bounce around as much. And yet, Ruby’s shot landed oddly short of the dogs. They were so close too. The green light around us grew dimmer still. It practically flickered out like a candle light before it grew back.

Was she even aiming for the dogs?

“Ruby! What’re. You. Doing??” I shouted back at her between gasps for breath. I turned back to where we were going. I barely dodged a tree I had been running straight towards. The forest was getting denser.

“I don’t want... to hit them!” Ruby said back to me, over the rain, the barking dogs and her own frustration and exhaustion. She confirmed my suspicions: she wasn’t aiming for the dogs. I could only suspect she was trying to scare them off then. It wasn’t working.

“They’re not. Going To. Stop!” I panted. The green glow lighting the woods around us had grown smaller and weaker. Our circle of light was so small I was reacting more on instinct than sight. Ruby was getting tired. We were both getting tired.

After weeds and cobwebs we reached the top of another hill and began a descent down. I saw her light build around us again and then trail out behind us with the shot. Plunged into blindness I heard one of the dogs let out a startled whimper. She got one! But now I was in total blackness. I ran muzzle-first into something. A tree. My vision exploded with colored spots as I tried to agonizingly climb off and around the tree I hit.

As I blinked the spots away I saw the green light had returned, but dimly now. My face hurt and I could taste blood. But we had to keep going. There were dogs left. Maybe only three but still dogs. Dogs that weren’t much smaller than me at all and definitely larger than Ruby. I could imagine what their teeth could do.

My hooves found a bank of wet, slick rocks and I slid across them. I fumbled, caught myself, and twisted a hoof in the process. I didn’t slow. I stumbled forward blindly now, more on momentum than anything else.

The green glow around us grew stronger. Ruby’s light grew intense, almost as intense as before we entered the forest. But then, with a whimper and not a bang, it was extinguished. In total darkness I felt Ruby’s body go slack against mine. The only thing keeping her attached were her hooves tucked under the backpack straps.

“Ruby? Ruby!” I yelled into the void. There was no light to guide me now. We were plunged into black. I felt something bite at the end of my tail. Without time to process that though, my hoof found empty air and then the other three did as well. A terrifying, blind tumble in the dark ended with a plunge deep into a freezing, flowing body of water.

I breached the surface. I could feel Ruby and our bags dragging me down but I had to keep us afloat. The cold made the pain in the muzzle throb and radiate backwards.

I blindly paddled ‘across’ but the stream carried me downstream a lot faster than I could paddle. My legs were just too tired. When I finally dug into the silt and muck and hauled us onto the other side I hesitated to climb back onto all fours. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my probably-broken muzzle in front of me.

“Ruby? Ruby? Are you awake?” I nudged my soaked daughter on my back. Miraculously, she was breathing but she laid as limp as the bags. My ears keenly perked at the paddling coming from upstream. We weren’t out of the woods yet: the dogs could sniff us out still.

I climbed back onto all fours and stepped carefully through weeds and grass, keeping my aching face with my currently useless eyes down. The grass felt like it was getting taller. The telltale feeling of roots under the ground grew more distant. The rain was falling heavier on me. I was in a clearing, maybe even plains. I opened my eyes, not realizing I closed them, but didn’t notice a difference. I kept moving forward.

After some distance, I couldn’t tell in the dark, I felt the rain was getting lighter again and brushed against a tree: telling me the clearing was over. I continued straight.

A dog growled- not behind but to my left! I ran right. Was I snuck up on? Were they encircling me? The dog switched to vicious barking and I heard grass and foliage from that direction.

I panicked and trudged quickly the opposite direction. I got maybe ten steps until I tripped over a tree root. I tumbled forward and Ruby and everything slid off me. The side of my face found a bare patch of fresh mud. I pulled myself out of it and quickly gathered up my daughter again. She was all tangled up with the bags. Then I heard not that dog but a laugh.

That laugh.

“Hahaha! Oh you should have seen the look on your face!” he explained like it was a practical joke. My blood froze.

He couldn’t be here.

He wasn’t here, I told myself. I dug myself under Ruby until I could roll her unconscious form onto my back. She had to be okay. I wouldn’t accept a reality without her being okay. I tossed our bags onto her. I had to get us out of here.

“Where are you going,Brian?” the voice spoke again.

Nope. Nope.

It followed me, floating above me and somewhere to my left. I didn’t respond. I refused. I just kept slowly fumbling forward through the wet black. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happier to... see me!”

I started to make out the outline of grass and trees in front of me. I thought it was the trick of the light or my eyes adjusting. It wasn’t so much there was a light source again as much as the darkness seemed to recede and the outlines became easier to take in.

There was one thing very clear in the dark though. He was right there in front of me. Him. He was fully lit but casting no light, like he was standing in a well-lit room or outside on a summer afternoon.

Discord.

Exactly as I remembered him: the mismatched wings and horns. The claw and paw. The dragon tail and that oversized fang in that long horse face. Those red irises swimming in jaundiced eyes looking right down at me.

I screamed and ran.

Like the moon on a cloudless night he followed me though. I looked away, thinking he would stop being there if I looked away. After a few feet I saw him ahead of me. I turned and ran another direction but he was suddenly there too. I stopped and turned once more. Every direction I turned to go in he had already moved there.

He beckoned me towards him with a finger. I choked on my palpable feeling of impending doom. After he saw I wasn’t budging he approached me instead. I would have run again but when I looked I saw him elsewhere again, still approaching at that casual pace. Any direction I moved would just bring me closer to him.

“No!” I said as I looked up at my approaching predator. “You’re not real!”

“I’m very real, Brian. What’s gotten into you?” he questioned with a knowing grin.

“Nightmare Moon destroyed you! You’re not in my head anymore!” I denied him to his face. Discord looked confused for a moment and then began laughing like he just got the joke.

“Oh! That’s funny! That’s rich!” he said as he laughed a little longer at my confusion. “I’m not in your head; I’m in the air!” He explained. He took a deep breath to demonstrate and let it out with a satisfied sigh. “Can you smellit? Chaos!”

I couldn’t smell anything over the blood, snot and mud on my muzzle. But I understood now and it terrified me. This wasn’t a ‘stain’. The destroyer of Equestria, the cruel monster that cast us here twenty-five years ago, now stood before me.

I did all I could do facing a malevolent, all-powerful being and turned to fumble away. My hooves quickly found mud though. Mud that got deeper with every step. I pulled and struggled against it. I kept trying to get away and before I realized it I was swimming in it. It was up to my barrel and I continued to sink into it, the very solidity of the ground giving way.

Was Discord going to drown us?

“Leave us alone!” I begged this monster. I was too powerless to fight, my efforts to run amounting to flailing in this thick sludge.

“Oh I will,” Discord said dismissively. To my surprise the mud thickened, but in the right places for me to climb forward and up. I pulled and fought to dig back up to the surface. It was an effort and a huge strain but I climbed back through it until I found grass and regular mud again and laid on it, my legs fatigued. “You have something that’s not yours though.”

I looked back at this chimeric creature of chaos, confused at the comment. He seemed impatient and waiting for my response.

“...what?” I finally asked him.

“That composition book!” He explained with a pout. “That’s not yours! That was a present to a ‘business partner’ of mine and I’m just here to get it back for him.”

“...what?” I questioned again, still somewhat in shock that I was holding a conversation with him instead of just being turned into a frog or something.

“That notebook thing in that bag!” he grumbled and pointed his clawed hand to one of the bags on my back. I looked onto my back at Ruby’s unconscious form. I saw in whatever light we had now that her nose was bleeding too, but just a trickle. Was she going to be okay? She needed help. Help I couldn’t give. We were in the last place possible to get help.

“Well??” Discord broke my concentration on my daughter.

“Wh-What?” I asked, my sight pulled back to him. He wanted the notebook we took from the pony trafficker? He uncrossed his arms and threateningly aimed his clawed hand at me like a gun.

“Say ‘what’ again! Say ‘what’ again, I dare you! I double dare you!” he snarled angrily down at me. I flinched in terror and his anger quickly broke into a maddening smile that spread his face wider than what would be possible with normal flesh and bone. He somehow still had enough teeth to fill the whole space. “Ooh~. That was interesting. Was that from you? This is going to be fun.”

I didn’t understand what was going on exactly but I knew he wanted something I had and for some reason I was still alive and still had it.

I tried my luck, thinking I was dead anyway, and turned and ran again. I got maybe twenty feet until I felt the ground pull out under me and I slipped and fell flat onto my face. I saw white, searing pain and it radiated deeper into my face. Something was definitely broken in my muzzle. I felt renewed blood on my muzzle as I looked back at him. Discord had grabbed the grass like a carpet and yanked it out from underneath me.

He tossed the grass haphazardly back down onto the ground.

“I wait all this time to see how my little ponies are doing and what do they do? Run away!” He declared with exaggerated frustration. He pointed at me. “And you’re late too! It feels like you should’ve been here nearly eight months ago.” Discord exclaimed, borderline-nonsensically, and sighed. “Oh well.” He put his claw to his mouth and blew into it like a whistle. An oddly high-pitched whistle.

I watched numbly and waited, because nothing happened immediately. Then after a few seconds a dog came running up to him and stood obediently for his master’s instructions. I wondered if it was one of the dogs that had been chasing us. Discord looked at the dog and pointed at me. “Fetch,” he commanded.

The dog approached, ears pointed and tail down. I realized as it got closer it wasn’t coming for me though. It was going towards Ruby and the bags. I threw myself in front of her.

“Stay away from her, you-you bitch!” I snarled through spit and blood. To my relief the dog backed down.

Discord let out a boisterous laugh. “Is that what we’re doing now? Okay, okay, let’s have a little fun first!” He guffawed more at my expense. I kept an eye on the dog while I looked up at my former murderer toying with me. Discord was being disturbingly hospitable and I knew that could change on a dime.

“You… just want the composition book?” I asked him from my spot on the ground.

“I just want the composition book,” Discord repeated as he bent down and put his paw and claw onto his knees. His neck kept lowering until he was bent down all the way with his head just a foot off the ground, eye level with me. But he wasn’t in my face. He had kept his distance. I knew I shouldn’t, but something seemed off.

“Why… don’t you just take it?” I questioned this lord of chaos.

“I didn’t want to say anything but you reek of moon dust and sleep sand,” Discord said while he held the end of his muzzle in disgust. “Someone’s been having little nocturnal transmissions, haven’t they?”

I pulled myself to my legs and backed up until I found Ruby’s body. I held her. She shifted slightly but frowned and went limp again. I watched Discord and the dog warily and thought about what he had said. He could have turned me into a pile of cupcakes or teleported me into a volcano or something. But he didn’t. Everything had been indirect...

Moon dust and sleep sand...

“You... can’t touch us?” I said aloud in realization. Maybe Princess Luna did something to us when we met her, maybe a spell was on us.

Discord frowned angrily like I had just ruined a punchline. He stood up to his full height, or at least, stopped hunching over. He rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Well, if the kittens are out of the wet sack!” he grumbled as he became translucent, which, on this permeating, rainy night just made him look dimmer. “I actually haven’t moved in yet; just checking in. Seems like a nice neighborhood though.”

I slumped Ruby over my back and bit down on the belt holding our bags together. I ran again. In the darkness I didn’t realize until too late I ran right into a web hanging between two trees. I couldn’t barrel through it and I tried to pull away. It was incredibly sticky and thick. A spiderweb. A giant spider web with silk the thickness of rope and I was stuck in it now. I panicked and screamed when I turned and saw Discord approaching on eight legs.

“Those six really are the perfect bait,” Discord explained as he reared up and all six of his arms jumped from his body and climbed up the trees holding the web up. “You put a little ray of hope in the dark and all the moths are drawn to it: unaware of the web spun around it.”

If he was referring to the mane six then Princess Luna pointed us right into a trap. I struggled against the web again as the armless Discord smiled at me.

“Are... are you going to eat us?” I asked, knowing what spiders did to trapped flies.

“Eat you??” Discord spat incredulously. The web went slack and I fell back to the ground with Ruby and bags. The silk disintegrated around me as I watched his six limbs fall out of the trees and quickly rejoin his body, fusing and returning him to his regular, irregular four-limbed self.

“No no no, you’re going to help me redecorate!” he said with a slight sinister bite to his words. He suddenly seemed taller now. Even taller than the canopies encircling our clearing. His features sharpened and his scales grew rougher. His eyes most certainly glowed now. “I think we should make it more homey. You know, like Equestria. Remember Equestria?” he asked me. He didn’t wait for a response before he gave a dark chuckle. “Oh! Right… let me remind you then. We’ll start with something simple.”

Discord flicked his wrist towards the dog still standing with us in the clearing. The dog took a wide, pained stance and began howling as its limbs seemed to stretch and deform. Its bones began to lengthen but its fur and muscles didn’t. Instead its fur stretched over growing limbs until it let out one more pained whimper as its deforming skeleton tore clear through its fur. Bone sharpened and torefrom underneath, detaching from muscles until eventually its pelt fell off in chunks. Its muscle and organs underneath holding on by sinew and ligaments gave next, spilling from bones staining brown. The last to go were its eyes, melting like hot wax. A blasphemous green glow filled the place in its empty sockets. Its exposed, stained rib cage sharpened and grew unevenly in jagged, sharp juts while the spines along its back grew taller and into jagged, branching spikes ending with leaves. Its teeth spilled out of its angular skull and were replaced by rows of tall thorns. As its snout flattened out and simple leaves grew above both eyes I took in the jagged, dark brown monster that stood over twice my height now.

“Pop quiz, little pony: do you remember what this is?” Discord asked, giddy, as he went to pet its sharp spikes. The branches bent and gave under Discord’s petting hand like a mane. It let out a deep, sandy growl at the affection.

“W-what…” I mumbled in horror at the carnage.

“A timberwolf!” He slapped his knee. “I love a good pun.” Discord smiled proudly at the monstrosity he made. I kept glancing at the glistening deboned remains in front of me, unsure if I just watched something uncaringly sacrificed or transformed. “Anyway! What were we talking about?” he said to bring my attention back up to him. “Ah! That’s right...” he mocked remembering. He idly scratched into the wood under the timberwolf’s chin, leaving deep claw marks in its bark while he looked down at me. “Give me the composition book, and I’ll let you go. Otherwise… you’ll find out how much worse this tree’s bite is than its bark.”

I had no faith Discord would let us go. I was soaked to the bone though, tired, bleeding and cradling my unconscious daughter. I didn’t really have any choice to decline his offer: be ripped apart or give him what he wanted on the off-chance the creature that destroyed Equestria and ruined everyone’s lives would just let us go. I felt hot tears mix with the rain on my muzzle. This was hardly a real choice.

I didn’t understand the significance of that composition book anyway. Ruby had kept it but I didn’t know if it was important to her. Or to Princess Luna. Or if we were delivering it or just getting it away from its owner. I had no idea what was going on in the grand scheme of things or what my part was- if I had a part at all. I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted us to survive.

My biggest concern was, If I lived long enough to see Ruby awake again, if she would forgive me for giving him the book. If he was so adamant about this worn-out school book maybe we were keeping it away from him on purpose. Maybe giving it to him would doom everyone somehow. Or just keep us alive, on the off-chance Discord really would just poof away after I gave it to him.

“Well?” Discord asked me, getting impatient.

“You’re… you’re just going to kill us when I give you what you want,” I explained. Discord scowled down at me. He looked angry, sharper and more dragon-like.

“Oh? How do you know that?” he snapped at me. “Do you think you can predict what I’m going to do? Me? The Lord Of Chaos?!” I whimpered into the mud at his volume. He didn’t get quieter. “Do you take me for some LAZY TRICKSTER GOD?! I don’t care what happens to you, Brian.”

Discord pointed at me and the timberwolf stepped in front of me, between me and Discord. It lowered its jaw in front of me and bared its thorned mouth at me. Its mouth drooled some kind of pungent, metallic tree sap. I fell back from it and cradled my daughter away from the monster’s maw.

“Please! Just not her! Don’t hurt her!” I begged. Discord laughed at my words.

“Oh I’ll go through both of you,” he promised. “Those bags belong to you both, so I’ll need to rip and tear that little charm off you both.”

There was one more crazy thought bouncing around in my head: if Discord couldn’t hurt me, maybe the timberwolf couldn’t either. That was my third option: I wouldn’t have to commit and doom one or all of us that way. I could just run away again. I was good at running away and not dealing with things.

I dug into the earth under Ruby and rolled her onto my back. Discord just watched until I tossed the bags over me and immediately took off in a new random direction.

“Fetch!” Discord called out behind me. I heard some kind of snapping-tree bark noise. “What?” That noise happened again as I gained more distance. “Oh? Oh of course: Timberwolves are pack animals!”

I fumbled through the thick dark, my muzzle down, brushing against a tree here and there. I didn’t want to look back, not even when I heard what sounded like trees being uprooted and torn over and over again. I let that grow further behind me.

I got so far I started to wonder if maybe I made the right choice. Right until a horrible, rhythmic avalanche of trees started behind me: like the most terrifyingly large drum, like a forest tumbling end over end. I thought I got a good distance, but that noise was a lot quicker than me and pounded me into the ground.

It felt like a small tree fell on my rump and tackled me to the ground. Then it hauled me up in the air by my hind leg. Ruby and the bags fell out in front and below me.

As I was lifted by my leg, muscle was torn roughly in its grip. Instead of clean cuts it felt more like dozens of dull, short knives sawing into flesh. I screamed reflexively. Warm blood eagerly poured from my leg and mixed with the mud and rain in my coat.

“Drop it~!” Discord’s scolding voice approached.

I was dropped into the mud like a sack of potatoes. I collected my daughter onto my back and then tried to crawl away. The bag caught up on one leg was an afterthought. Ruby’s gray sweater once wrapped around me was lost somewhere in the mud now. I deposited my daughter and our possessions against a trunk and looked back to examine my leg.

I couldn’t see my blood over the wet, black mud but I could still feel the warmth pouring out of me and feel my leg screaming at me. Beyond my torn leg, I saw Discord standing there now with three timberwolves.

“Well? Should I let them finish?” he asked me. I looked back at my daughter’s unconscious form. This wasn’t worth it. No stupid notebook, no matter what it did or what was in it, was worth her.

“No! Please, I’ll give you the notebook!” I begged him over the throbbing, gushing pain in my leg. I took one more look at my daughter. “Just… please, whatever you do, don’t hurt her.”

“I won’t lay a hoof on her,” he said showing his two hands, which had turned into hooves. He looked at his wooden creatures. “...or tree.”

That would have to be enough, as empty as a promise from a draconequus could be. I dragged myself to Ruby’s bag. I could tell in the dark it was hers because the soaked, dirty Fluttershy plushie still poked its head out of it. I pulled it open and felt around inside past the stuffed animal. It was mostly clothes, art supplies and some toiletries. Some body wash and a loofah? There wasn’t anything book-shaped in her bag…

“Wrong bag,” Discord corrected as he pointed towards the other one. I didn’t know what kind of senses he had but they were apparently sharper than mine. Could he see through the bags? Could he feel the book?

“...sorry,” I apologized reflexively. I let her bag down and worked mine open instead.

Well, technically, it was Comet Tail’s, wasn’t it?

I stuck my hoof in it and the first thing my hoof hit was something tall and hard. A bottle? At first I was confused and then, feeling the curves and the cap, I recognized it.

The absinthe Nathan bought me the first night I stayed with him. He packed up everything he had bought for me and added it to my bags. Even that loofah… I felt the telltale ragged, hyperventilating of crying start in my chest.

Nathan… my friends... I didn’t think I would ever see them again. I was going to die here. I wouldn’t know what would happen to my daughter...

“What’s wrong, Brian? You look like you could use a drink,” Discord mocked my choking sobs. While I fought against my sense of defeat and shame a vinegary stench began filling the air. There were also… tannins. And grapes. It was actually pretty complex. Some of the rain got into my mouth and I realized what it was. Wine. It was raining wine. A really dry wine too. It stung my eyes.

“Taste familiar?” Discord asked expectantly. It did. I think I understood now why I didn’t care for wine that much anymore. I looked up at the sky above me. I saw no bottle to confirm the vintage. I saw no clouds either. Or the sky beyond that or the stars. It was just a suffocating nothingness.

I turned back to the bag and felt past the bottle. There were a few book-shaped things but the most worn and tattered one was the mysterious notebook Discord wanted. As soon as I turned it over to him, I was probably going to get mauled to death by some killer trees, wasn’t I? Its meaning or contents were still beyond me.

I looked back up at the sky, searching for answers. If I had to die like this, I wished I could see the stars one last time. Comet Tail liked the stars. I did too. They were calming: something so great and beyond me laid out like a giant tapestry. Nothing hidden, just not understood yet…

As my eyes drifted over the wine-raining sky a memory came to me. And with it, a smile. It wasn’t my smile but it was familiar and it spread across my face all the same. I felt the joy in it, that light, that hope she always had in her smiles. I looked at my daughter and saw that broken pocket watch around her neck still found some light to reflect.

“What’s the hold up?” Discord questioned me. I looked back up at the raining wine.

“Can’t... can’t see the stars tonight,” I quoted with a smile on my face. I saw Discord frown and look up for a moment before he turned back to me.

“Are you hoping for the ‘stars to aid in your escape’? I hate to break it to you, but Luna is fast asleep and no one will be joining us tonight. It’s just the two of us here.” He was referencing the legend about Nightmare Moon being freed by the stars. Princess Luna, Princess Celestia…

“No,” I said and shook my head. I looked at him more squarely as I explained, that borrowed smile not leaving my face. “It’s just... relaxing to me. To look up at the stars.” I took an easier breath and elaborated. “All that violent energy up there in the universe… and because we can look up at it and see it like a grand picture… it almost looks peaceful. Like it all makes sense. Like there’s sense to it all just because it’s happening so far away. Out there, looking back here, our little world probably looks the same. If we could just see everything, if we could just understand, we would see the order and our little world would make more sense.”

“Oh Brian… what fun is there in making sense?” Discord’s words dripped into my ears. I brushed them away though and felt that notebook and its dog-eared corners again. That was it then: I didn’t have to understand what was going on. I just had to do my part.

It’s a cold, dark world. Right, Carrot Top? And I was gifted so much love from my friends, that warmth. They cared and carried me so far when I didn’t deserve it. It was my turn to care and give it all back. There was no point to die with it, I had to give it all out.

It was time to burn down the world for that nightlight.

“You can’t have it!” I decided. I shakily closed the backpack back up and turned to face Discord. “Princess Luna won’t save me, but she’s not my higher power: it’s friendship!”

Discord looked around our wine rain-soaked clearing and laughed. “Well where are they? I don’t see any friends. Or do you just mean your unconscious foal?”

I got up off the ground. I stood to face him as square and as tall as I could with my torn-up leg. I felt that familiar smile on my face again. There was something welling up within me. Over the mud and wine and blood loss I felt warm. “They’re inside of me! They fill my thoughts; they remind me of who I am. They encourage me to keep going, they give me what I don’t deserve…” I stopped to look back at my foal and then back at Discord. “...and they make me want to be better!”

Discord laughed. It was a terrible, manic laugh that one didn’t make at a joke but at absurdity. It was so strong and boisterous I thought I broke him. Even the timberwolves started to laugh along and I thought I heard the trees around us begin to shudder before he finally stopped and with it everything else quickly followed suit. He wiped the tears from his eyes.

“Twenty-five years! Twenty-five years I made you all spend as chaos-causing, coatless bipedal-walking ‘humans’... and you still sound like ponies!” Discord explained with a sigh.

I sounded like a pony?

“Do you know what humans consider the definition of insanity?” Discord began then shook his head. “Oh, of course you do. I got a more interesting idea: do you want to see what a pack of timberwolves can do to a little pony full of ‘friendship’? Because I suddenly do. If the wine can’t get that blue stain out of you I’m sure your blood can!”

Discord snapped his claw and the timberwolves charged me. I galloped at them with my three good legs and went straight toward the leader. As it opened its mouth to bite my head off I struck it across the muzzle with all the strength I could put out with my foreleg. My hoof carried the strain of striking a solid tree cleanly through my body. It whined and I fumbled unbalanced past its jaw.

I felt the second timberwolf approach me from my side and wheeled to turn away from it. I raised onto my forelegs and aimed my buck high with my one good hind leg. It felt like I bucked a trunk that whimpered and flinched square on the nose.

The third timberwolf barreled down on top of me as its two friends started to recover. Out of reflex I tried to jump above its maw and for its ‘nose’ instead. I pounded it and tried to latch onto its face and around its jaw. A crunching growl escaped it, unfazed by my ‘punch’ apparently, and before I could consider going for the glowing eyes I felt its claws dig into my back. Valleys were carved into the flesh of my back with crude, wooden claws and the strength drained out of me, like rivers into an ocean. It batted my limp body off with a paw and I fell back into the wine-swelled mud that now stung my back.

Another one, or maybe it was the same timberwolf, bit down onto my barrel. My ribs threatened to crack under the tension of its jaw. I could feel thorns puncture my flesh as it tried to pick me up. It gave me a short shake before I heard a finger snap. I came loose in its mouth and was dropped back into the mud. I curled around the puncture wounds, several of its ‘teeth’ torn free inside of me. The deep grooves in my back bled freely. The mud around me was so warm, so much warmer than the coldness growing inside of me or the temperature of the vinegary rain.

I wanted the thorns out but couldn’t grip them. The holes in my hide didn’t feel any better and the cuts along my back were fresh, throbbing pain. I squirmed and got more mud and wine into my wounds. Everything stung. Some of my salty tears mixed with the vinegar already around my eyes.

“Aww, did my doggies play too rough with you?” Discord cooed and then laughed. “They just got you as a chew toy and you’re already broken?”

I looked back at that tree and saw Ruby still laying under it. No, I wasn’t broken yet. There was still life in me and I would give every last bit of it to keep her alive. Even for just a few more minutes. It didn’t matter if I was going to fail, I had to try; I had to give all the warmth I was given back in this world. Because I didn’t deserve it, right? I couldn’t keep it.

I sat up partially onto my forelegs and spat out some of the mud getting into my mouth. It tasted like... chocolate pudding. I looked at the mud I just spat out.

“It was that or my second idea. You smell terrible enough already though,” Discord explained, amused with himself. I nodded warily.

“Can you get up?” Discord asked, knowing fully well my physical state. His words echoed Carrot Top’s. I would try for her. She opened her home to us. She tried to nurse me back to health. She gave everything so freely and asked for nothing in return. I could get up, Carrot. I would give it back. I felt calm and hopeful… and could feel determination in my three good legs.

I got my forelegs more under me and pushed until I could get my hind legs under me. My vision briefly blacked out but I remained standing, just shaking, trying to take weight off my bad back leg.

“That’s the spirit!” Discord laughed and clapped his hands. “This is why I love dirt ponies. You take away a unicorn’s magic and they freeze up. You pluck a few feathers off a pegasus and they just curl up into a ball. But dirt ponies? You’re the hardest to break. You make the best toys.”

I tested my footing in the pudding-mud slurry: it was better than I thought it should be. I felt cold but my hooves felt… warm. Almost hot. I wondered if it was just from all my blood soaking into the mud and pudding around me.

“Just… leave her alone,” I begged as I thought of Ruby. “Only me; only hurt me.”

“Why do you think you get a say in the matter?” Discord questioned me. “I think that’s your problem. It’s the same problem these humans have: you think you matter. You think there’s any significance to you or your feelings, as if there’s even any significance to the lot of you at all.”

“I don’t,” I admitted through my tears. “I know I don’t matter. Just… please don’t.”

“You had your opportunity to give me what I wanted but then I got bored,” Discord explained like he was explaining to a child why they were being spanked.

“Why are you doing all this?” I questioned the draconequus. Discord just laughed and there was some kind of silent cue in it because the dogs charged me again.

Somehow I saw it and reacted. I threw myself into a kick against the first one but the second got its whole jaw around my middle and the third grabbed me by my good hind leg.

The second one let me go and I was transferred to hanging from the third’s jaw, its thorn-like teeth carving rows into the flesh and tendons in my leg. I screamed and tried to punch at it but I was too weak. Despite hanging upside down I felt light-headed.

“Oh Brian, you KILL me. ‘Why would I blow a speck of dust on a speck of dirt around’? For my entertainment!”

I knew I wasn’t anything but I couldn’t mistake it: I felt… warm now. At least on the surface. Almost fuzzy from it. I could only think about my friends, about their faces, pony and human ones. And the kindness they gave that I didn’t deserve: their warmth.

“...warmth,” I told him, almost feverish from it. He leaned in curiously to hear me repeat what Carrot Top told me. “The world is a cold, dark place. ...and we’re warmth.”

Discord smiled; there was a glee in his eye like a naughty child about to break something.

“‘Warmth’ is a temporary thing, Brian. Those stars you love will all burn out someday. In fact, most of them already are. It all goes away and it’s all meaningless.” I looked up past him at the blackness. I couldn’t see those stars anymore… maybe he was right? Maybe it was all meaningless. Fighting something you couldn’t defeat. It was silly… and then my vision refocused on what was in front of me: him. I had a question and I wondered if he would humor one more from me.

“...even you?” I asked. He grinned widely.

“I am beyond flesh,” he answered cryptically.

“Meaningless; you don't have any meaning either...” I told him. Discord frowned and the timberwolf holding me up dropped me. I crumpled back into the wine-slicked mud. There were puddles full of wine everywhere from the timberwolves’ tracks filling up with rain. The pudding didn’t seem particularly absorbent either.

“Do you really think I care about meaning?” Discord said with disgust.

I tried to reorientate myself. I wasn’t entirely sure I was right-side up anymore. I found Discord in time to see him reach out to me with his lion paw. I felt it gently press against my forehead and then he pushed me over. I fell back into the mud. He could touch me directly now; Luna’s magic had been worn off. I laid in the mud.

“Excellent! Now we can play!” he told me with a giddy grin overburdened with teeth. “Any final thoughts before I turn your brain into jam?”

I sat up partially using my good foreleg. I orientated which way was up with Discord’s face.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Oh, you’re fine; this has been fun! But this has run on far too long! I'm afraid I'm just beating a dead horse now,” he said with a laugh. He raised a claw tensed with a coming snap.

“No. I feel sorry for you,” I corrected the lord of chaos. He looked confused and a little insulted.

“Sorry for me?”

“You’re going to be alone for eternity... and we’ll burn out with our friends... for our friends... but you don’t have anyone to burn the world for… you don’t have any meaning either, do you?”

Discord scooped me up with one paw so fast I felt my neck whiplash a bit. He glowered at me, angry. “I’m going to turn your brain into a spread and you feel sorry for me? I am the embodiment of chaos! I don’t need friends. I don’t need a reason to watch the world burn. Meaning is something you creatures made up to justify your pain and misery. I am chaos! I am without meaning.”

So Discord just went from one distraction and pleasure to the next… forever. I knew what that life felt like: just getting to the next bottle, the next high, the next meal. It was a terrible existence. A lonely existence. If I didn’t have my relationships, my friends, I would have nothing. And Discord didn’t have those. If he was really beyond comprehension, if no one could understand him, then did that mean he couldn’t form meaningful relationships? If that was the case, then his life was as empty as Brian’s had been in those last years.

“I’m sorry you don’t have any friends,” I told my tormentor. He squeezed me tight and I coughed. The muscles around my barrel ached while the punctured holes and thorns stung violently. He tossed me down onto the ground. I didn’t even feel the impact. Maybe I was so coated with mud and so weighed down by my own body I couldn’t.

I coughed some more. Phlegm came up and I thought it tasted and felt oddly like grape jelly. I coughed up the gunk into one of those wine puddles. My coughing finally let up as I was rolled over onto my back. I opened my eyes and saw Discord had begun tracing drawings into my muddy stomach. There was a row of seven lines on my stomach and even a sun.

“You’re more broken than I thought you were...” Discord said with some disgust. “Pitying me! And all these metaphors about stars and heat!” He lifted his claw away and I tried to squirm away on my back.

“Fore!” Discord yelled and I felt something sharp wack violently into my side. My side exploded into pain that began radiating as I went flying and spinning up, up and away. I could swear I passed through a metal field goal and heard a crowd cheering all around me before I blacked out from the pain mid-flight.

I didn’t feel the ground. I was probably too out of it now. Too broken. The thing that roused me from unconsciousness was the delicate tug on my foreleg as I was pulled up by another jaw. I could feel it and it hurt but I was too numb anymore to react to it. I felt coated in mud and wondered how far I tumbled. My torn up hind legs dragged under me, gathering more mud as I was being carried back. Back to him.

The timberwolf dropped me unceremoniously before him, like a shot fowl. I tried to squirm again. I couldn’t stand but maybe I could still crawl, if the world would stop spinning. I wasn’t sure if I was making any progress.

“Look at you: a proper mud pony now!” Discord laughed. I felt a paw press me down into the ground. My barrel hurt. “Squirming in the dirt like a worm, like all you creatures: just mud, blood and suffering.”

I tried to squirm again, my legs kicking weakly.

“All of your efforts, all of your ‘friendship’ and see how far it gets you?” Discord asked me. I tried to orientate his voice to find him. I couldn’t tell if he was on top of me or if I was even on my back. I eventually did find his face though.

“It doesn’t matter… I have to try…” I explained, or thought I did. I wasn’t sure if I could speak loud enough to be heard. I squirmed under that paw again, thinking I was wiggling free. “Give it all… my friends… keep me going...” I thought I could make out Ruby’s outline against a tree. Which meant I had been carried back to the clearing. The paw pressing on my back pressed down harder and I could make out its toes through the mud I was caked in now: It was one of the timberwolf’s paws.

“What do you think, Willow?” Discord asked the tree monster pressing down onto me. “We could set up a lovely tea party: intestines for streamers, her bones and hide for the table. Her skull: the teapot!”

‘Willow’ made a noise like wood grinding against wood.

“Ooh~, that’s a clever idea: I said I wouldn’t lay a hoof on her daughter but I didn’t say anything about putting her hooves in her daughter! We’ll stuff her like a turkey with her mom!”

“No...” I begged and pushed against the mud. I couldn’t move out from under the foot. Discord seemed to regard me and his tone shifted into something more nasty.

“Oh, of course: you’ve been ‘fighting for your daughter’ this entire time, right? You just ‘knew’ I was going to hurt her, didn’t you? Just like how you ‘knew’ I wasn’t going to let you go if you gave me the notebook. Look at you! Predictor of Chaos, Mr. Peters!”

“My name... is Berry,” I corrected under that paw as I tried to squirm away from under it. It pressed down harder, pushing me deeper into the mud. Discord smiled, now with much sharper teeth.

My sluggish, blood-starved mind finally started to comprehend if I was on the ground and looking up at him then I was on my back. The wine getting into my mouth confirmed it. I tried to squirm again, to swim. Anything. I didn’t know how I was still awake but I would keep going. I got a few more inches, I could tell because my hoof hit one of those wine-filled puddles.

“Well then, Barry, how is this for ‘predictable’?” he said before he erected to his full height again. His two other timberwolves stood obediently before him. The third still stood on me, watching its master eagerly for instructions.

Discord gave them: “Step on her.”

I was stepped on. Instead of being crushed though, the soft, soaked mud around me gave and nearly swallowed me up. I tried to grasp for breath but couldn’t because the wine from nearby puddles pooled in around my face. He was going to try to drown me in wine again.

The panic and adrenaline gave me slightly more strength as I struggled in the mud and wine. I couldn’t get free, not with the weight of that timberwolf pressing me deep into the earth.

That was when I felt it shiver through my body. It felt like lightning and I heard thunder. The weight on my chest was violently thrown off. There was a terrific, earth-shattering explosion. I felt my mud-caked fur stand up on its end as I heard trees torn and destroyed over me like a tornado.

My racing heart powered my tired, drained body up out of the wine and I gasped.

The forest was on fire.

Something carved a huge hole through the woods, straight through where Discord and the timberwolves stood. There was a thick green mist in the air that tasted electric. There were green glowing sparkles dotted through the path of broken trees and fire, like green little stars embedded into the path the explosion took. Two of the strange pyres on the ground shifted and gave out their death rattles. A third timberwolf, only grazed by the explosion that shot over me and through them, was missing half of its body. Its remaining half was on fire. Its remaining eye shifted to me. It snarled and tried to claw towards me from its consuming fire.

Discord was nowhere to be seen. But what about...

“Ruby?” I turned and took in a horrible sight. Ruby still laid there under that tree where I left her with our bags but her forehead was glowing white-hot like the exploded barrel of a gun. I dragged myself towards her and blinked the wine out of my eyes. Where was the rest of her horn?

“No!” I pulled myself closer and tried to touch it. It singed the soft frog of my hoof but it confirmed to me that part of it was missing. It was rough and jagged. It exploded. “Ruby! Ruby?! What did you do??” I begged her and tried to jostle her awake.

Instead of Ruby answering I heard an angry, deformed growl behind me and I looked back at the monster. The last timberwolf wasn’t dying fast enough. It dragged itself towards me on its last paw, its backside still on fire. I felt real, cool rain fall on me. As it dragged itself into the clearing its flames were going out. It was still determined to kill us.

The green mist in the air, the still glowing specks of her horn scattered into the trees: this was Ruby’s magic. I had no idea how she could do this. I was crushed she would. Her magic! Her horn! It was gone. I didn’t deserve this!

The timberwolf’s remains gave a deformed growl that brought me back into focus. It was pulling itself towards me, anger burning hotter than the flames consuming it.

Ruby did this. Ruby saved me. I didn’t deserve this but I wouldn’t waste her sacrifice.

“You want to go?!” I tried to growl back at the monster. My lungs still burned from the running and exhaustion. My ribs ached. My limbs were numb. It answered back, clawing halfway through the clearing now. Its body was full of embers but the flames were indeed dying from the rain. I had just the thing.

I turned back to my bag, the bag that was really Comet Tail’s. I smiled as I stuffed my face in and bit down on its neck: absinthe, the green fairy. I turned back to the burning abomination. I wouldn’t let it near my daughter.

“Come on!” I said around the bottle as I dragged myself towards it. It growled at me and opened its jaw towards me.

Our broken bodies met in the middle. It couldn’t claw at me: it needed its last leg to pull itself forward. So instead it lowered its dripping, broken jaw down to bite at me. I crawled into its mouth with the bottle, the bottle that Nathan had given me. The timberwolf bit down on me and hauled me into the air, exactly as I wanted. It tried to lift me up, using gravity to feed me into its thorn-filled maw, down into its burning body. But as its teeth bit down to try and bite through me I jerked the bottle down into its insides as hard as I could.

The glass bottle shattered into its dried husk and the bottle’s contents coated its wood. The green fairy, Brian’s green muse, one hundred and thirty proof alcohol, vs a burning, wooden effigy: it didn’t stand a chance.

The wolf howled violently and I dropped from its maw to the ground. The flames went higher as alcohol-soaked wood was burned from the inside out.

And I swear as it burned the flames started a deep purple before shifting blue and then going through a longer green phase then into yellow. By the time the flames returned to normal the monster had long crumbled into a roaring bonfire.

I rolled onto my back and dragged myself towards my unconscious daughter. Her shattered horn still glowed, but it was a strange, soft blue color now.

“Ruby, we did it...” I whispered as I worked closer to her. My mounting exhaustion caught up to me as the adrenaline finished draining from my body.

My daughter was too far away now, but just feet away. I didn’t have the energy to get to her. Everything told me to sleep. I feared I wouldn’t wake up though. I wanted to get to her, to hold her one more time.

…but then I feared if I died on top of her, I’d trap her under me. So I laid down feet from her and embraced the darkness lulling me to sleep.