Death, Sacrifice, and the man in blue

Late couldn’t begin to describe the state at which Levi Cronell was unjustly hurled into disorder. Although, in spite of the journey of the unflagging clock hands stretching far into the ravishing Equestrian twilight, it wasn’t territory alien to the Man in Blue. He had christened himself a bona fide veteran night owl long ago, down in that ramshackle putrefied cavity of the universe God forsook known only as Roseville. Either with his eighth half-drank moonstone-colored bottle of alcohol begriped by his voracious palm or simply existing. In every way and contortion of the word, Levi opted to plainly live and breathe in the incomprehensibly sought-after sanctity of his one-window bedroom. A small spotless pane of glass he, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, smothered with onyx black-out curtains. A simple surefire method of keeping the discordant horrors and frights of Gary’s jury-built empire outside the innocuous arcadia of his own creation.

Now, in his favorable and elysian reality he craved for a time too long to be precisely recalled, he slept consistently facing a gaping window. Placing the splendiferous, quaint town he loved with every facet and inch of his golden heart and the vista beyond on a pedestal. Showcasing its boundless beauty cascaded by a comber of star-spangled indigo where, somewhere amidst the unbounded peerless grandeur, the Princess of the Night surfed its silky waves. Perusing the fantastical, unchained woolgatherings of Equestria’s unbounded populace. Residing in a placid dimension occupied solely by the exotic dreams and sterlings imaginariums. An existence likely envied and mammothly sought in the land of Equus, and a coveted occupation irrefutably yearned-for by the brunete. After all, spending elongated nights browsing and spectating the ceaseless compendium of the contrivances of sleeping minds sounded elysian. Being shackled to the title as the lionhearted Man in Blue paled in comparison to Luna’s endless duties prodigal with merriment and repose. Not having a legendary deceased warrior’s sword tethered to her thigh at all times. Not having the elephantine brunt that hundreds of thousands of innocent, inculpable lives spawned on a day-to-day basis. Not feeling the unmanageable craving to dart to foreign lands after a bottle of booze and threaten a pegasus. Needlessly provide her with an all-expenses-paid free trial for the upcoming carnage that was to befall her if her actions continue to stand unchanged.

Levi couldn’t quite recall the hazy nebulous mess of a dream, chock full of familiar faces and enigmatic events that rendered recollection nigh-impossible. There were a lot of things the Man in Blue had accomplished in his fresh valiant life that the world around him coined as impossible. Yet, try as he might, recalling the intricate descriptions and specifics of a measly dream was unfeasible. He could plummet from another dimension into the center of a forest and survive. He could save his hide from a blood-hungry murderer piloted by unmatchable lunacy. But recalling a dream? That was far afield from his skill set for perplexing reasons.

Minutes prior, Levi was tranquil. Drifting aimlessly amid the confineless stygian sea of slumber, relishing in the pacifying swaying of its smooth ginger waves. Eyes fastened with the singular method of prying them open being the omnipresence of Celestia’s gargantuan sun. Its ardent lustrous rays painting his stock-still visage. Piercing his unpresuming guiltless irises with its spear-like golden beams, sharper than a shark’s tooth. Presently, he was granted the harsh indubious reality that, in a world annexed entirely by distractions and unwelcomed discord, the sun wasn’t the only entity capable of such crimes. In all reality, a bounteous manifold of extraneous forces can begrip the man and displace him to the realm of the finite wakeful souls whenever they please. When certain earthly powers were the kernel of the conversation, it wasn’t a matter of attempting to forestall occurrences of this badgersome nature. Erect a soundless sanctuary shielding their impeccable sleep from the penniless sods who sought to disintegrate it. The subject that fell under conjecture was how exactly to handle it when it happened to materialize from the clear open blue. The only beings to occupy the cadaverous oblivion idling mutely above their heads night after night were the stars freckling it. That was the way it always was, and the way it always should be, bankrupt of exemptions from this mold the world followed. Yet, Equestria’s true indeterminable nature entered the fray once more. Proving to the entirety of its multifaceted population that it refuses to behave in accordance to its previous rules any longer.

A firm salvo of knocks against their front door discourteously stirred the halcyon pair. Basking in their merited respite meager inches from one another, both entangled in the swath of their bone-white blanket. Twilight Sparkle was the first to greet the domain of the unslept prematurely. Her dog-tired lavender optics springing open at the loathsome din, only for a comber of righteous annoyance to swallow them whole. Levi on the other hand was a vastly different case. The objectionable cacophony of hoof against wood had ravished the male from his assuaging recess. However, in austere contrast to the groggy unicorn on his right, the male took an honest stab at pretending the volley of knocks never existed. Combing the vast rolling terrain of his vaults of knowledge for any excuse or imaginary identity for the din. Any reason in any fashion, no matter how minute or jumbo, that would eliminate the imperative need to answer it. The house settling? A branch hammering against the hull of the Library? Some sort of animal? Or merely, as silly and undeniably farcical as it appeared, a fabulation of their weary, flagging minds. A figment of a brain so recently pilfered from the quitsome lake of surgless black their raddled minds lazed upon. A majority of the lazy endeavors at rationalizing his current state of wearisome affairs could hypothetically be truthified.

His psyche had snapped to consciousness faster than the strike of an arsonist’s match at the clamorous barrage. Eyes flicking open, his fatigued emeralds transformed into roiling ponds of unrefined fiery annoyance. He glanced around his side of the room and psychoanalyzed every nook, cranny, and dust-choked cavity his eyes held permission to search. The fruits of his half-hearted search followed his slothful predictions verbatim. Outside, everything yielded to the ordinary status quo Ponyville stuck to nightly. Inside, nothing fashioned by Levi was out of the standard position he assigned and habitually abided by. His clothing deftly folded into a tidy square of clothing at his bedside, next to it his maroon steel-toed boots placed side-by-side. Belt curled into a ring like a leather snake beside his outfit with the spotless silver buckle sparkling in the flowing moonlight. On the wall to the left of the broad unsullied window was an oak wooden hook, its curved end like an upside-down beak. Dangling from his was the hard-weathered, war-torn scabbard with its gilt-edged pristine hilt protruding from its leather orifice. Lying bifold across the interior windowsill was his stygian leather jacket, the stylized bold R stitched into the back painted in the most ravishing ray of moonlight.

He sealed his lids closed once more and nuzzled deeper into his opulent pillows, assaying falling back into quaint clutches of sleep once more. Only for his ventures and hopeless aspirations to be obliterated by a second brigade of knocks upon the front door. Twilight groaned beside him. A low rickety sound that, in the lively few weeks he’d been getting to know her, he arrived at the brisk conclusion that a groan from Twilight Sparkle was never a positive sign. Always an implicit herald of another all-too-possible chagrined tirade. Her frame shifted on the congenial mattress to face her beyond vexed housemate, obstinate to the knocking’s hard-and-fast orders for consciousness. Slumber was at the unequivocal apex of his priorities. No nameless equine at their front door in the dead of night could usurp that inviolable position. Even if the unflagging pony at the door was there to transmit news that doomsday had arrived with a thirst for ruination, it would be dwarfed by his pining for relaxation.

In spite of the cold indifference and unabashed ignoration, the equine was indefatigable. Another battery of knocks upon the door had ignited his core. Each rhythmic thud another enkindled match tossed into the pool of gasoline his heart dwelled in. Chained to the bed of that flaming pond of hellfire. Twilight’s frame shifted beside him and turned to face his tense back. Her voice chimed from the caliginous tranquil body of darkness engulfing the bedroom and its entirety.

“What time is it?”

Levi reached a hand to the top-right corner of his walnut wood nightstand. It was a black rectangular electronic alarm clock with the time of the ill-mannered awakening displayed in bold neon-green numbers. The male squinted at the garish, brazen screen.

“About three-o’clock.”

“Who could it possibly be at this hour?”

“Not sure,” Levi grumbled, chucking the blanket from his ireful frame. “I’m gonna go have a look. Go back to bed.”

He sat perched upon the edge of the mattress and swiped his royal blue button-down from the top of the clothes pile, fetching his dark denim jeans. A twain of lanky peg-legs filled the two flaccid sleeves and his weathered belt was fed through the loops. Levi rose from his cursory roost before striding to the wall. His spidery digits coiled around the frigid pearlescent hilt and unsheathed the keen holographic blade from its holey chasm of old leather.

“Is that really necessary?” Twilight yawned from the tenebrous behind him.

“Who knows who could be at the door. Just go back to sleep,“ He grumbled. “I got this under control, Twi.”

“Okay,” She tossed and turned back to face the opposite side of the bedroom. Unceasing fatigue braided within each and every word spoke from her aweary lips. “Goodnight, Levi.”

“Night, Twilight.”

He embarked on the exasperated journey to the bottom floor of the Golden Oak Library. A precarious vagabond down a singular ladder and a measly spiraling flight of stairs, where clandestine peril was stashed beneath every fortissimo creaky floorboard. Hazards pocketed in the antiquated hinges of the walnut door and each eloquently varnished step that spilled into the soundless bottom floor. A riskless haven of the loftiest caliber where, in the weeks of his indefinite sojourn within the hollow innards of a chiliads-old tree, he strode across the living room floor innumerably. The quantum of bothersome groans and wails from the flooring ultimately culminated into a consummate zero.

His white cotton socks greeted the pale birchen steps like satin pillows as quiet and anacoustic as a melancholic funeral. No vexatious clamor of any variety or degree of brashness bore the gumption to defy its sacred order. From the thin rectangular windows above the right catalog of bookshelves, a jet stream of milky divine moonshine breached the untainted slender glass. Spilling across the unsullied floorboards like a famished tide of wispy opal-white light that had long since grown jaded with the prospect of receding. If this was any run-of-the-mill night for the wrought-up Man in Blue, his tendencies to stave the roughshod armies of blissful slumber would be entirely actuated. If that night, unrecoverably ravaged by the pestiferous doing of whoever rapped upon his domicile, had followed anything bearing any semblances to the normative mold, he’d make the living room his palace. Lazing upon one of the squad of rangy chairs with his feet roosting upon another, indulging in one of two gratifying activities bereft of deviancy. Either luxuriating in the elysian moon-stained ambience of the placid kingdom of unbounded literature authored by the most esteemed of virtuosos. Or fishing one out of the colossal regiment of books and opening its covers. Peering through the encroaching hazy dusk and withstanding its unwavering vision-robbing nature.

Prismatic whetted sword at his side. Acute spear-tip bobbing up and down with every impatient stride undertaken by its owner yet continually aimed at the front door. Edges sharper than a cragged maw of shark teeth. Another torrent of knocks locked Levi’s heart in a sweltering furnace roaring with luminous hellfire. Shorter than the rest, lacking the final two knocks in its persistent pattern of five, yet equally as maddening.

“I’m coming!” Levi exclaimed.

The preeminent quietude Levi jacketed in the most acclaimed of honor in his eyes was already riven. Shattered beyond the cusp of repair and recognition. With every clobbering upon the wooden face, the pile of glittering routed shards was stomped upon. He ejected his left hand onto the gilded deadbolt and twisted before redirecting it to the doorknob. Amidst the iron maiden of red-hot glowing spikes of annoyance his frame was fettered in, a new mighty contender charged into the fray. Begetted by the unsympathetic sensation of frigid metal against his palm. Summoning an unrelenting question incapable of resting in the peace it required without a solid, incontestable answer, where the prospect of disputing was unexistent.

Who exactly, in all of Ponyville and the syndicated regions transcending far past its margins, would pay a library a visit at the dead of the night? Especially one dwelled and called home sweet home by the Man in Blue and Twilight Sparkle. Levi’s mind was blitzkrieged. Once a pasture of rivalless tranquility and serenity of the most prestigeful merit. Now it was a land of utter and unadulterated bedlam, a harried and hasty blightscape where anxiety and deep-seeded fear burst from the earth. At every arrow on the compass, its flagitious influence marred the placid backwater it barbarically intruded upon.

When he turned the knob and swung the lilliputian curved door towards him, he was far from oblivious of the potential horrors that could conceivably arrive to spell his doom. After all, the writing was on the wall for Gary Demonio to pay him a belated malignant visit. Would he happen upon a fleeting flash of vibrant turquoise and see the dark tunnel of a pistol barrel? Would it be the scintillating golden chestplate and pepful plumes of Royal Guards? Coming to deliver retribution for taking matters into his own hands at the Dashers’ compound? The possibilities were unbounded. Effortlessly trumping his ability to forecast and predict what would be standing behind the burnished wood. Part of him desired for the loathsome figure to remain forever enigmatic. Creeping silently back up the stairs and pray to the miraculous heavens above that the bastard would simply vanish. Trek back to whence he came and melt into the night.

But, like every portentous event that spawned in his path thus far, facing it was the only possible outcome that would bring an end or…whatever would come of the encounter.

He hurled the door towards him with his left hand, priming his blade for a skirmish.

“Do you have any idea what-!”

He froze.

He did more than freeze. Levi Cronell became one with the leviathanic shock and heart-rattling jubilation cascading over his astounded frame. Lincoln green eyes out on stalks, feelings as though miles upon miles of space separated his widened lids. The grip on his weapon dying along with his now baseless fear. Enjoying their final breath and moments of animation in Levi’s heart, perishing beneath the many eyes of the moon.

“I was hopin’ you could help me,” The human before him spoke. His voice was a dale of sugar and honey unstinting with that homey trademark twang of a thoroughbred Southern man. “I’m lookin’ for my brother.”

His voice fragmented and swiftly unraveled from the seams like a shoddy jerry-built suit. A drape of jovial tears coating his ice-blue optics. Tanned jungly arms filling the short sleeves of his stark white tee, his snug collar sodden with a dark bib of sweat. Stone-grey chino pants fit his legs cozily with his hems besmirched with a varnish of dried dirt and mud. Grass-stained tennis shoes almost darker than the lifeless abyss looking down upon the ecstatic pair. Untied shoelaces pooling in the soil surrounding his feet. His right hand collapsed into a fist and placed in his left palm, the male anxiously rubbing the pads of his fingertips against the top of his copper-colored hand.

Levi’s fingers gave out, his bones no longer piloted by the animalistic fright of the unknown. The hilt sneaked away from his grasp and dropped onto the floorboards with a hugeous thud. Its metallic clang akin to a ravel of silverware plummeting onto the sheet of wood.

“Al…Alan…?” Levi’s orbs donned their own blear of bottomless elation in liquid form. His arms fell to his side.

“He looks a lot like you, just a lot less ugly.” Alan choked with a diminutive grin, the absolute tiniest sliver of his incisors filling the gap between his lips. A tadpole-shaped spheroid dawned from his misty globe, meandering down his right cheek.

The Man in Blue pounced upon his comrade. Opening his arms wider than the mouth of a whale and crashing into his torso, pressing the right side of his face into his damp shoulder. Two bronzed arms returned the blitheful gesture and connected at the center of his upper spine, squeezing with the might of a brutish gladiator. Pressing the duo of starkly different bodies as tight as their mortal bones and muscle would permit. A bond that brought the incredibly coveted placidity and ataraxis of that gimcrack apartment in the armpit of Alabama. A miserably and tearfully pined-for moment that once was inept in its abilities to breach the demarcations of a fictional imaginarium. Forever imprisoned within the sorrowful confines of Levi’s hopes and aspirations, dreams for what he desired his life to look like. His desires for who he wanted in his new life as a prophesied warrior assigned the duties of shielding the lives of millions from an anonymous peril he’s yet to face.

Now, with his long-lost brother returned to his open merry arms, this new world of discordant fighting and warfaring that’s yet to come to fruition makes sense. The most precious currency Equestria could offer. Sense. A meaning to the mind-twisting madness. A lull beneath the roiling choppy waves of unintelligible chaos.

“We all thought y-you were d-dead.” He whinnied. “How did you get here?”

Alan sniffled and swiped a hand across his oozing nostrils before he spoke. “I got a story for you, brother.”

“Oh, you and your stories. Surprised I’ve been missing them.”

“I know a thing or two about surprises now.”

The expedition of the clock’s hands was tireless. Two brothers trekking unendingly across a blank slate of white bordered by onyx numbers and dashes. The longer of the pair now resting upon the mighty three, lazing upon the digit while his other half moiled. Minute after minute, second after second, the drudgery never staring down the barrel of a proper terminus. Cabined within a mundane world of black and white that knew only one sound. Rhythmic circadian ticking. And a humdrum realm with a singular activity to repeat endlessly until it's beyond trite and hackneyed. The drudgery of time’s limitless advances came at the cost of labor, but a price that was nothing short of a necessity.

The unabating clock gazed down upon the variegated triad seated at the dining table trammeled in the meshwork of a gratifying, long overdue conversation. On the right of the table sat Levi and Alan Sizemore side-by-side. Two brothers finally glorying in their mutual uber-enthused presence. Coiled by their digits and resting against their palms were two stemless glass wine cups, unflawed and speckless. Half-filled with rich, vibracious orange cider, straight from Sweet Apple Acres and into their cups. Twilight opted out of this indulgence and preferred with a lily-white ceramic coffee cup filled to the cusp. Strings of smoke rose like wavy spirits from its spruce-brown gulf.

“A wolf made out of wood?” Twilight inquired with a cocked brow. Her horn enkindled and raising the rim of her mug of caffeine to her lips with a vivacious lavender halo. The coffee was black and as austere as they could possibly become. The exact copybook method she fancied.

“Yep. Chased me from my camp onto this trail of crystals in the ground,” Alan explained. “Cracked it over the head with one of them giant gems in the dirt. It didn’t last long afterwards.”

“Pretty sure those are called Timberwolves. I’ve had my fair share.” Replied Levi. He positioned his chair to face his once deserted brother, his ankle resting upon his kneecap. Glass in hand and roosting on his right thigh. “Right at the entrance of the Everfree, too.”

“What is up with you two and your love for that forest?”

“I don’t love nothin’ but the inside of a house now.” Alan spoke with a chuckle.

“I hope you find yourself at home here. I doubt anywhere else can beat this.”

“Livin’ inside of a tree? You’ve moved up in the world, brother.”

“That I have.” He replied with a deep nod. Levi flushed a hearty draft of the sugared concoction of the pluperfect amount of cinnamon and pulverized apple. The heady brew slinked down his esophagus, leaving a tart trail in its wake. “I’m a sophisticated man now, Al. I finally found me a cause worth fighting for.”

Twilight smiled. “That reminds me, where did you end up after the Timberwolf attack?”

“Some place called the Crystal Empire. Some doctor found me when I passed out in the street. Violet Heart.”

“How’d you get here?” The inquisitive unicorn uttered. A minute sip of her coffee another one of her retinue of questions.

“Do I gotta story for you fine people.” Alan placed the cup on the table and shifted in his seat and held out two opened, widened hands with ample space between his fingers. “Ponies, too.” He corrected.

“What happened that was so mind-blowing?”

“I took a train outta the Empire at five yesterday, the junk broke down at seven. Walked for a few miles until this unicorn picked me up in her wagon.”

“A unicorn? Who?”

“Some popular magician from...wish I could remember the name. She rolled up in the middle of nowhere when I was walking through a field. Trixie, I think her name was.”

Alan took the tiniest sip possible, more likely than not sucking down a handful of atoms rather than liquid. His face twisted. Throat cowering from the bite of the ravenous cinnamon.

“I’ve heard of her a few times since I’ve been here. She doesn’t seem to be breaking the mold as far as I heard.” Twilight chimed.

“You never know though, Twi. She could be the best magician you’ve ever seen.” Levi said with a toothy grin. Crimped lips that were soon met by the glass rim of his glass, robbing another redolent swig.

“I haven’t seen enough to be the best judge.”

“Me neither, but she was a kind enough soul. The nicest thing I’ve met so far here until I came here.”

“Wait until you meet everyone in the morning. Rainbow is a treat.” Said Levi. “I feel like you and Spike will get along like peas in a pod.”

“Rainbow and Spike?” Alan questioned, bemused. “Lord have mercy on us all.”

“You’ll get used to the names, trust me. I’m trying my best.”

“Will I ever get used to you carryin’ that sword around?”

“I still haven’t. It’s pretty jarring, even as the Man in Blue.” Twilight responded.

“‘Jarring’,” Levi retorted playfully. “You all wouldn’t know jarring if it kicked you in the face.”

“You wouldn’t know jarrin’ if it stabbed you with that sword, brother.” Alan spoke with a communicable mirthful guffaw. Its infectious influence cascading upon the aggregate of the Library’s wakeful residents. Twilight giggled with her mouth against the brim of her cup.

There was something Levi adored about the pleasant becalmed scene he played a vital role in before him. Something he loved with every gallon of unadulterated, untainted love that flowed from every nook and crevice of his heart. Corner to corner, wall to wall, the man’s core was drained into a barren desiccated wasteland. Not for any impossibly grim reasons or a destitution of love, but for every sanguine impetus one could possibly imagine. A conduit frothing with endearment stemming from the navel of his frame to the entirety of the verveful Golden Oak Library. Bumbling with beatific mirth and animation, spiting the night’s dictatorial bidding for quietude and serenity. The uncensored truth was that only half of its invariable orders were heeded. Quietude was far from practiced and retained, yet the new freshly formed motley family exercised their own definition of tranquility. Seeking out a novel definition for the word and reaping the fruits of their untiring hunt.

Although, as gleeful and exultant as their riveting banter was, a dour, ghastly silence smothered the felicity and every vestige of it vamoosed in its wake. Levi was the first to observe the inexorable stern tone nonconsensually fostered by the ambience, and how swiftly its poison fanned out. Bringing an abundant retinue of its vile inclinations and the abominable desires of its putrefied heart. The venom transitioned from unsung peril to a caustic entity bearing its own system of autonomy.

Levi was the first to observe the byproduct of the pollutant. The stern gaze that unfurled over Alan’s stony visage. Twiddling of his digits practically thundering his perturbation.
Rangy stygian tentacles of hair dangled over his soulful irises, locks caked with dried sweat.

“Y’know, Levi, I…I was doin’ some thinkin’ on the way here.” He drummed his fingertips against the face of his glass. Ripples permeated the pale-tangerine-colored liquid within. “‘Bout some things we need to talk about.”

“I was waiting for you to mention it…” Levi placed his glass on the table.

Alan’s tongue froze for a spell. Encased in a rigid block of hesitative ice colder than the bony touch of the Reaper. His lips parted briefly, yet his maw stood stagnant and soundless. For several seconds, it seemed the world fell still. The only evidence the globe continued its cycle of twirling was the pacifying octet of boisterous crickets beyond the Library walls. Their entire lives from genesis to quietus devoted to the singular action they passionately repeated for hours without end. Fevered chirping to their heart’s content.

“Is there much to be said?”

“Course there is. I’d love to know how it all went down and where he scurried off to. I read the papers, Levi, I know what he’s been up to.”

“The hotel?” Twilight dovetailed into the conversation meek as a frightened animal.

“The forest, too,” He sat up in his chair. “Seems a bloodbath follows him wherever he goes.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“You got any other ways?” Alan replied. “I sure don’t.”

Levi shook his head.

His throat was a barbarous prison with zero regards or grievances towards the ill-starred soul trapped within. The walls of his esophagus transformed into grainy bulwarks of adust brick like a flame-grilled chimney. Scorched irreparably and contrived with the solitary objective to hamper the Man in Blue’s speech to the highest possible magnitude. Vocal cords savagely manhandled. A wrench lodged into each and every word uttered by the brunete. This inflexible conversation was a reality permanently and unwaveringly graven into Levi’s up-and-coming future. Regardless of his liking or vehement disdain towards the prospect, it remained fixed upon the crest of his horizon heedless to his feelings. Irrespective to his fervent hopes and frameless dreams for it to depart from the vista and gallivant to greener pastures far afield from the Man in Blue. However, as things often did in this bemusing world of equines and hasslesome resurrections, this very exchange of fear-laden words sought him. And it marched shameless and sodden head-to-foot in perspiration. Long-lasting evidence of the arduous toils and hoops he bounded through to vagabond there.

“Uhm…” Twilight squeaked before her voice climbed a dozen rungs in the decibel ladder. “Levi told me about the story, and yours too by extension. How he died and…came back to life.”

“I’ve been reading a lot during these past couple nights. Magic books, sorcery, history, you name it and I checked it. Nothing like this has ever happened in history.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Levi tapped a finger against his kneecap. Digits bedeviled by a faint yet all the more badgersome quiver. “I…couldn’t find a thing.”

“Seems we’re alone on this one, brother.”

“I wouldn’t say that. My brother, Shining Armor, is the captain of the Royal Guard and I got a letter yesterday about the Gary debacle.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“I was going to if you weren’t busy boot shopping.” She retorted.

Levi scoffed. “That’s besides the damn point, Twilight.” He rejoindered with words whetted like the sword of an untamed centurion. “What’s the Royal Guard doing?”

“Apparently, they're sending search parties all across Equestria, every road and forest, looking for him. So far, it’s been fruitless.”

“I ain’t surprised a bit.” Alan replied deadpan. His visage secreted by a blank inscrutable mask of sorrowful static and virgin fear, undiminished by the words of the lavender unicorn. “He’s a snake. Always has been. Somehow knows his way around everywhere.”

“Ponyville isn’t a large town by any stretch of the imagination. The Everfree Forest is the only place he could be hiding, and even then the Guard is bound to find him.”

“Bound?” Asked a dubious Levi. “What about the Surly Gang? Any updates on them? If they’re truly the best of the best, there’s gotta be something. Surely.”

“I heard about them. Bounty hunters? We’re trustin’ the life of a mass killer in the hands of bounty hunters? Even America weren’t like that.”

“I haven’t heard anything but I can only assume they haven’t found much, otherwise we’d be hearing from them.” Twilight took an anxious sip.

Levi seized his glass from the table and brought it to a rest atop his knee. “This is ridiculous. I’m the Element of Protection, I should be out there looking for him! Not Mortimer or some soldiers.” He exclaimed.

“Element of Protection?”

“We’ll get to that later, Alan.”

“What if one of them dies, Twilight? What if the Royal Guard doesn’t stand a chance?”

Twilight paused and gazed absentmindedly at the table for a split-second, shucking off a thought she regretted pondering. “It’s better to be optimistic and be happy where you are, Levi. There’s not more you can do.”

“Oh, but there is. I could be out there helping to put an end to this. Bring back peace. Damn it!”

Alan leaned back in his chair and watched the volatile bonfire of harbored chagrin and hellacious guilt assume the vague form of his younger brother. A sight he’d grown accustomed to during his sinful tenure in Alabama, and a sight he reckoned he’d witness day-in and day-out. After all, with a demented infernal mass killer immune to the elephantine brawn of guilt, becoming awash with enough guilt to drive a planet to lunacy was a fate where no escape was extant.

While never being locked in the crosshairs of an igneous tempered rampage, his words scorching the ground like a skiff of sultry brimstone, whichever ill-omened soul happened to be the victim had to lean on divine intervention. Prayer was the only thing that bore any morsel of luck towards their survival. And with a keen crystalline sword at his hip eager to swill the blood of its prey, the possibilities plumbed the fathoms of unintelligible horror.

“Levi, calm down, it’s gonna be okay-”

“Nothing about any of this is ever gonna be okay!” Levi snapped as his arched foot bounced apace with the balls of it pressed firmly onto the wood. He cupped his hands over his plaintive countenance and spoke through a muzzle of shaky flesh. “I didn’t trust them from the start, I knew I should’ve been out there myself. I knew it!”

“Don’t say all that, brother. Blamin’ yourself won’t fix nothin’. I’m sure these people need you right about now.”

Levi’s hands dropped into his lap with soulful globes trained at the ceiling. He glided his tongue against the rigid ends of his incisors thoughtfully, stopping at his arrowhead canines. Seconds advanced tardily. Marching like an amputee stampeding through a lake of quicksand.

“Maybe…Maybe I’m not as fit for this role as I thought.” He inhaled deeply before he resumed his rueful monologue. “Damn it all to Hell.” Levi muttered beneath his breath, envenomed.

The glass rim of his cup was returned to a familiar place. The voracious lips of Levi Cronell, abducting the final draft of cider and reeling it down his tightened esophagus. An entire half-glass of the brew of vaulting cinnamon and intoxicating sweetness gone in an instant. Reduced to a meager smear of orange droplets and residue at the bottom of his cup. Ceasing to exist in a matter of a moments-long gulp faster than the strike of a match. An errorless ring of condensation was deserted in its wake.

“Damn it all…” He placed the glass on the table and stood before sliding his chair underneath the table. Utterly careless towards the nettling grating of its slender legs against the floor.

“Damn it…”

“It’s gonna work out, Levi. Promise.” Alan reassured. “Now that I’m back, he ain’t gonna be alive much longer.”

“Sure. I’m going to bed.”

Bereft of another muttered word or from either party that constituted the trifecta, Levi swiveled on his cotton-clad feet and walked to the stairs. Wearily hoisting his encumbered frame, each step was comparable to scaling Mount Olympus. Numerous laggard steps later, the pensive Man in Blue retired to the murky tenebrosity flooding his anacoustic bedroom. Dodging an arduous conversation in the most coward, lily-livered way imaginable, all for another quaff of disconcerted wistful slumber. Whether the grueling discussion about his murderous nemesis persevered against fatigue’s wolfish forces, long forsaking the ignominious concept of ruth. The solitary monarch in the vast kingdom of past and present enemies who lusted for the demise of Levi Cronell. His adversary with a blackened heart darker than the inkiest of starless nights. An all-expenses-paid lodge for a broad compendium of despicable muses, paying little heed to the ruinous ramifications they unfettered. The way it appeared to the Man in Blue, Gary Demonio was bestowed full unbridled reign over these craggy polyfaceted lands. And by extension, unstoppable sovereignty over the unsuspected population breathing life into the vivacious verdant foliage and leviathanic mountains.

Inculpable ponies glorying in blissfully incognisant to the imponderable peril they all were in. Regardless of any outside factors or entity, no exemptions to his roughshod interminable rampage were anchored in reality. Their roots ingrained into the soil of their most figmental dreams, fictitious and inconceivable. A wool fastened tautly over the eyes of the sprawling majority, with a select few lionhearted souls living day-by-day with naked optics. Bearing witness to the boundless, ineffable carnage that would wontedly forburst the minds of Equus’ run-of-the-mill residents. Living out common lives bereft of a morsel of exotic character or idiosyncratic flair. Anything at all that would differentiate it and place it upon a pedestal, injecting it with a hearty dose inquiry. In the grand scheme of things, they were far from a remarkable singularity with no equals. Just a pony milling down a lengthy unending line of uniformity without a terminus. Accomplishing banal tasks, taking the opportune amenities of everyday lenient life for granted. Indubious to the untellable slurry of jeopardy their trite existences festered in.

Words drifted from the mouths of the final two souls at the kitchen table unharked by the male. Long gone and materialized into the tuneless ether beyond the curve of the stairway. His mind was a blinding white oblivion. A lacuna deprived of a means or a grandiose purpose to its mind-warping maddening vacivity. The mystifying vastness of the flat unbordered universe, where no concepts of emotions or abstract thought of any variety bore a position. Pure and untarnished vacuity, in every definition and interpretation of the phrase. One thing, a singular iota of conscious autonomous thought, was hosteled in that dream-esque scape. A bubble of thought stained the deepest coat of red and going by one individual name. Fear. Ungoverned, feral, primal fear of the most towering of calibers.

Levi returned to square one. Roosting upon the edge of the bed and desheating his frame from the confines of his attire. The idea of folding his getup for whatever shenanigans awaited him in the morning was denied entry to his psyche. That stark white oblivion knowing nothing harboring a semblance to form or dimension. Just raw animalistic fear and a pining for slumber. A desire tranquilized by Alan’s unpredicted arrival, yet invigorated by the sensation of the downy mattress upon his flesh. Levi’s head crashed onto the pillow while two mammoth urges were absorbed into a barbaric fray. A bone-crunching scrimmage between two warring yearnings. The miserable longing to rove down the flaxen steps and indulge in the splendid art of conversation once again. In the other corner, it was lambasted by the incogitable fright of morose events yet to make their debut into the real conscious world. Failing to liberate themselves from the boundaries of Levi’s nightmares that stir him in the night, wrenching him from the snoozing world in a bath of frigid sweat. Heart fought against the chains that bound it to dart to the lower floor. His mind, as it often was, had a starkly different idea pinballing off the paries of his skull.

He settled his cranium into the mold embedded in the silky pillow. Doleful optics level with the comely topography of triangular smooth roofs and smoking chimneys. Phantom-like ribbons of ash-grey floated and vanished into the onyx airscape. Melting in the vacant paths between the stars.

As the Man in Blue drew the curtains of his leaden eyelids, elated to be adopted by that sable ocean of slumber for the final time that night, a flash of turquoise stabbed the darkness. And an impossibly dismal guffaw he knew far too well echoed down unseen chasms in his head. That robustious laugh a herald for doom far past the brink of comprehension to every last one of these ponies.

Ponies who had not a clue what was in store.

“‘A few miles’, he said. ‘Not too far from here’, he said.” Gary Demonio muttered through chapped arid lips. His inflamed words exiting through a desiccated throat drier than a sun-baked skeleton.

“Being inside of a head doesn’t help my estimation skills, Gary,” Discord spoke, dodging the cumbersome guilt for their inhospitable state of affairs. “I’m surprised you never took my words with a grain of salt.”

“I thought there wasn’t a lying prick living in my head but I couldn’t be more fucking wrong.”

His voice stained the placid yet irrefutable unnerved ambience of the Everfree Forest with its gravely cacophony. Neck-deep in the labyrinth of centuries-old trees glowering down at the flagrant miscreant and rhythmic snapping of branches. Sporadically forsook by the oak and sycamore obelisks they formerly called their unsubstitutable home. A welcoming domicile who uttered few rebuttals towards the prospect of their unforeseen departure. Not due to the machinations of a blithe cold-shoulder to its eudemonia and well-being, but the deprivation of the pivotal autonomy required to halt the process. The only option that remained on the pint-sized table was to sorrowfully idle and woefully stare upon the process of nature. Unable to appropriately wretch and cower in a septic puddle of mortified anguish. To the shock of no person alive, the mass slaughter of branches against the indurate rubber treads of boots wasn’t the only terror they were forced to stand and observe. Listless and stock-still, not of their own volition. The trees observed with hearts perforated by glacial daggers of dread, rapid-fire stabs hasty enough to make Hermes shed an envious tear.

They stood stirless as the notorious, inimical Gary Demonio tottered through the Gordian unending labyrinth of trees belonging to all species and breeds. No duplicates toting a coveted position in that nightmarish Forest that, at least to the bastard in turquoise, seemed to be hellbent on burying his corpse beneath the roots. Sending every apparatus of nigh-insurmountable calamity to hurl a rusted wrench into his plans. After all, the noirette’s journey in this wooded purgatory began in a cadaverous deceased orchard. Propped against a tree under the shrewd calculating scowl of the torrid sun, awaiting his stark droughty throat to claim his otiose life. Only beckoned to locomote to the only incredibly slender chance of blissful salvation by the sole being in these lands able to trump his notoriety. The God of Chaos, who bathed him in beatified salvation himself not too long prior.

Now, he lumbered with an implacable objective stamped onto his moldering psyche. Dead-eyes huddled beneath a canopy of knitted brows, trained like a starved hawk on the gilded beaming horizon. Endowed with a feverish hankering to locate that desiderated deliverance from the barbed throes of self-imposed detriment. Not to wreath his covetous digits around and bleed it dry of all of its worth. But to bring the incarnation of Hell’s sultry wrath to the lackless world above. Char the lush fruitful expanse of tranquility and prosperous contentment. Bring that sanctuary constructed out of glass to its languishing knees. As above, so below. A phrase Gary seldom harked back in the untethered scape of hackneyed strife and bedlam known only as the United States. Yet, it was a phrase that ne’er came close to migrating to the caliginous chasm of forgotten memories. Callously deserted by his mind and cast into the darkness, forever exiled from sight and mind until the end of his days. Presently, that phrase never held true untarnished truth until the past few days of his sojourn in Equus. Life breathed into his parched arteries and stone-cold bones and dropped from the sky in the dead of night. Leaping back into the limelight with the ineffable revulsions of the land of brimstone and reckoning dragging behind him. Bounding from the hellfire like an infernal jackal.

Discord gasped in his head as Gary weaved between the mastodonic sprawling net of rangy trees and branches hanging at obnoxious lows. Coming parallel with his neck, hammering chest, and sweat-studded forehead more instances than the human brain was able to keep track of. And every repetition of this noisome chiseling of his jury-rigged vat of patience all concluded identically with no existing deviants to the monotony. He’d coil his wrathful digits around its minute girth and tear it from the trunk, slinging it onto the forest bed. Frush auburn leaves were jettisoned from the mass of root-like smaller branches and wafted to the forest bed. Swaying gently like nature’s unremarked pendulum.

Discord gasped as Gary was subjected to another unpassable encounter with another chest-high branch. Bumping into his sternum with the selfsame foolish gumption its brethren lived and died by.

“I’m a lot of things but a liar?! How preposterous.”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Gary rumbled, viciously plucking another branch from the stocky trunk and chucking it into the foliage on his left without a glance. “This sure as shit doesn’t feel like the ‘few miles’ I was promised.”

“Don’t twist my words, my friend. I never promised, I simply told.”

“Word it however you want. Bottom line is this is a lot fucking longer than what you said.” Gary whinged. “What am I even looking for anyway?”

“What do you mean, Gary?”

“I mean, what does this museum look like? I’m working off jackshit.”

“A huge hedge maze with an old stone building and a lot of statues out front. Expect a crowd. For some reason, ponies are attracted to the likeness of milksops out of stone.”

“Hell, maybe they’ll make me out of stone one day. Why the fuck not?”

“They make statues upon their defeat. Or death. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’m not anticipating it.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

The path Gary trail blazed off the weather-worn primary trail, freighted with peril wherever the eyes could reach, was what he unworthily coined as a “shortcut.” One that he vehemently defended to the Draconequus imprisoned within his cranium. The very same that, after being pelted with the full-throated support of the idea, yielded to his persistence. As if he possessed any choice in the matter to begin with. They winded endlessly through a rambling catacombs of rugged bald sycamores and oak gourmands. Whiskey-colored leaves dangled from the thick limbs like gimcrack ornaments, crisp and brittle akin to the discarded exoskeleton of a cicada. Attempting to conjure the ceaseless frights and brutish clashes of nature these long-in-the-tooth towers of wood witnessed was insufferable. Living in a rambling forest where Manticores and Timberwolves mingled on a daily basis, it was no surprise the trauma endured by them was arduous to fully fathom every facet of it.

The soil his boots tattooed with the indecipherable pattern of his rubber soles like hieroglyphics had long since recovered from the rife rainfall. Fully returning to the stiff unmoving dirt that set the groundwork for the entirety of Equestria’s unbounded terrains. Grass was an uncommon commodity in the male’s ramshackle endeavor at dicing the walking time. Vibrant Lincoln green blanketed the ground for the first mile or so but, after the moon furtively slinked back to the unknown underneath the horizon, the ground was altered. Not due to the rotation of the mammoth celestial bodies above, but for reasons enigmatic to the man piloted by vile ambitions. Paying little heed to the stark contrasts and even less for the constants that accompanied him the whole journey. That being the tawny and maple-syrup-colored leaves polka-dotting the scarred forest floor and forlorn branches strewn haphazardly. Waiting with bated agonized breath for a foot or paw to seal their fate and end their ceaseless sentence. Resplendent shafts of sunlight blasted down upon the makeshift path. Frigid winds galloped through the trees and kissed his bare begrimed skin with its gelid lips.

The pair fell silent for minutes. No sound dared to object to the quietude encompassing the Everfree’s plethora of untouched avenues. All bar the rupturing of branches beneath the boots of the savage man, its brazen temerity on full unabashed display once more. The rhythmic crunch of coppery leaves matching the beat of a heart far steadier than Gary’s.

“You know a lot about death?”

“Excuse me?”

“Death. I take it you’re familiar. Perhaps too familiar.”

“I know a thing or two.” Gary replied. A foul iota of pride braided within his words. “I’m guessing you do, too?”

“Not a bit, believe it or not.” Discord responded. “I always avoided taking lives. It was never my intention when I took Celestia’s throne all those centuries ago. I wanted chaos, not bloodshed. There’s a clear difference in my eyes.”

“Your eyes are outta there damned mind. Bloodshed gives birth to chaos, end of story.” A branch butted him in his Adam’s apple and, flooded by scalding dudgeon, ravished the branch from the tree. He dropped it on his boots and resumed his traipsing.

“Spilling blood is your profession. Chaos is mine. I know far more than you.”

“I don’t doubt it but, where I came from, chaos was the blood. It’s all it was and all it ever will be. Even with me gone, people still die. They still kill each other. Chaos still exists.”

“Do you believe those hunters back there birthed chaos?”

“I like to think so, Discord. You think different?”

“You bet I do.” Discord quipped. “What was the purpose of ending their lives?”

“Don’t preach to me about being good or sparing people. If I just walked outta there with the bounty on my head I would’ve been full of lead in three seconds.” Gary snapped, his ire staining every syllable. “You gotta think about what could happen. Worry about the close ass future.”

“I have been. And I’m debating where you stand in my plans.”

Gary halted. “What’d you say?”

“I want chaos. You want a massacre. All of that is clear to me now.”

“I want Levi,” Gary spoke. His striding began again. “If any other bastards wanna get in my way, then so be it. They can die with him.”

“Those hunters probably didn’t even know Levi. We’re a long ways away from him by now.”

Gary slithered through the motionless chiliads of wooden spires both wider than an elephant’s leg and as svelte as a wasp-waisted ballerina. The threadbare mahogany-brown leather bandolier resting sloped across his chest. Running from his robust right shoulder to a few inches beneath his left armpit. The twin convex barrels of his pilfered bespoke shotgun pointed towards the thickly clouded azure sky. The second machination of his covetous hands was the gunmetal-blue Schofield slid into his left jacket pocket.

“Most hunters don’t like their shit being stolen, Discord. If I walked outta there with their guns over my back I’d be six feet under.”

“I’ve searched your memories for any inkling you're not the human I took you for after that nonsense at the hotel. But it’s all showing the same thing. Needless killings, over and over. Seems to be the only thing in here.”

“If you don’t like it I could turn around,” Gary snarled. “Find some shelter and shack up for a while and you can be with me a whole lot longer. Would that be fun?”

Discord paused. His head was empty for seconds before the otherworldly beast chimed, disgruntled and doubtlessly vexed beyond belief.

“I fear our plans will converge, Gary. You and I want vastly different things for Equestria.”

“I want Levi, you want chaos. Not a lot of people have to die for that to happen, Discord. I can’t read the future and tell you what you wanna fucking hear.”

“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“We will.”

That conversation was a merestone in the toilsome odyssey to the expansive keeper of their king-sized goals. The Ponyville Museum. A location he’d only seen slovenly illustrated in the worn book he discarded back at the crimson-stained hotel in the emotionally mangled town. A hamlet that, once upon a time, had been merrily subservient to the trademark peerless peace. Impeccably content with the comitatus of auspicious benefits that placid walk of life brought in tow. An austere dearth of small-town drama and vicious yet ultimately vacuous bar fights in the glacious hours of the Autumn nights. A dire scarcity of barbarous conflict between townspeople or ferocious skirmishes in the booths of citizens crying and marketing their wares. Begriped into a farcical conflict by a shameless cheapskate staring down the barrel of an ever-so-slightly inconvenient price or some variety of that loathsome event. The most frightening of nightmares breaching the demarcations of the waking world for those eating and breathing from the trinkets and commodities they ruthlessly publicize. All in all, every aspect of Ponyville was pluperfect bereft of an angle where hideous blemishes secreted by a facade were present. Or an underhand snake oscillating through the tall grass that would callously divulge the town’s starkest secrets. Seize it from some unseen, undiscussed coffer buried miles below Ponyville’s trodden soil. When any encapsulated society situated smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, clandestine skeletons in the closet were designed to be enrolled into the dirt without a second to spare.

Ponyville was sanguinely omitted from every last one of those shadowy categories. Passing the test to see if its helm as “one of the calmest places in Equestria” was truly and unfeignedly warranted. Or merely a propagated bias blindly believed eyeless sheep. The blithesome allegories encompassing the town and all of its diminutive population were all as veracious and blatant as the sunlight painting the rugged back of Gary Demonio. The same cutthroat sod who sauntered into Ponyville when the moon’s kingdom was torn from the weeds and given invigorating dominion over the nation. Underneath the lake of indigo beaded by heaven-white stars and incomplete constellations, Gary flagitiously ambled into that graceful, unanticipated village and rocked it to its confectionery core. A dour reminder of the unsympathetic mortality they all possess and harbor a tendency to blank out while they mill mindlessly. Strolling about their everyday lives negligent and heedless to the prospective peril that lie primed and eager to pounce just beyond the horizon. In their case, and in the case of the ill-starred Royal Guards and hunters slaughtered by the unbenevolent raven-haired man, that untold hazard prowled mere feet beyond their margins. And it thundered within with a big iron tucked snug against his back and calloused hands frantic with verve to draw the curtain on as many lives as he can reach. Five down, countless to go.

For a relationship fabricated in the crucible of carmine-stained conquest and inevitable turmoil, riveting conversation was at the absolute depths of their priorities. A fact needlessly aggravated by the gratuitous expulsion of life from the robust and timeworn bodies of his victims. Torturesome happenings where Discord was granted a non consensual front-row seat to the crimsoned action, sitting courtside while carnage unobserved by Equestria for millenia unfolded.

The sobering drought of gratifying banter persisted until Gary’s bone-tired legs halted. Red-hot wires of scorching fatigue and anoetic agony wreathed his weary tibias, strangling his bones without a scant morsel of ruth. Outspent feet encased in rigid, unforgiving blocks of wrenchful lead. Haggard high-top boots and besmirched shoelaces, encrusted by a chipped shell of dried mud, transformed into dungeons of sweat and incomprehensible anguish. The harmonious rhythm of split branches and demolished leaves ceased for a good reason. In Gary’s flagging amber irises, to call the esteemed discovery simply “good” was the emperor of all understatements. Utterly exemplary and magnificent to the bastard and his discontent partner-in-crime, yet undeniably ruinous to every facet of Equus.

He stopped at a flimsy leafless palisade of trees that stood as a futile border between the unfettered scourges of the Everfree Forest and civilization, unprepared to collide head-first with the foes within. However, as time would soon show these indubious equines, not all adversaries respected the border between the long-warring lands. It was a seemingly endless wall of rangy trees with a sinuous network of slender, sylphlike branches broadening in all directions. Some reaching towards the delectable elixir of the tepid daylight, others reaching out to the left and right for motives perplexing to the man. The space between the lissom totems of sycamore was inconsistent beyond belief. Certain points held a gracious chunk of distance between one another, like the space before Gary, while others were separated by paltry centimeters or inches. Not enough to fit the girth of a fully grown man with a loaded shotgun across his back, except for the aperture in front. Through the crannies in the trees, Gary Demonio laid his fatigued eyes upon the key to Discord’s soon-to-be helter-skelter reawakening and discharge from his aching skull.

A lofty verdant wall of expertly groomed and kempt hedges stretched for almost fifteen-feet to the right. Without a grain of doubt its identity being the bizarrely located maze forecasted by the God of Chaos. The intricate design and serpentine twisting paths braiding together was invisible from his position. But he was almost keen on the prospect that, in a few minutes' time, that exotic labyrinth of shevelled foliage would be fully exposed to him. To what extent it could be employed for his despicable ambitions was unbeknownst to him. To the left of the maze’s wall was a gaggle of earth ponies and unicorns with a sparse select few pegasi dotting the bountiful crowd. Some clad appropriately for the bone-chilling weather and the bite of Fall’s razor-sharp maw, while others chose to brave it for one reason or another.

Eight adeptly chiseled stone statues stood high and mighty upon embellished square bases, ornamented with a small rectangular silver plaque detailing the identity and significance of the likeness. Arranged uniformly in rows of four with about a half-foot of space between each smoke-grey sculpture, with a second row of four stationed about a foot adjacent to the first. In the top left corner of the sprawly menagerie of historical effigies of brazen mongrels and the kafkaesque above-ground warren was a mighty structure. Created exclusively from the greyest of smooth stone gorgeously sanded to the absolute utmost, following the relative mold of an august, awe-striking courthouse. One where, let this unchained mayhem of Homeric proportions be set on a backdrop of America, Gary would undoubtedly be sauntering into with an acrimonious lawyer at his hip and trammeled in shackles. Burly calves and maltreated ankles connected by gleaming chain-links from the sheeniest bona fide silver money could buy. Wrists charted by bellying iridescent veins, flaming conduits for his ineffable unmitigated wrath towards his inopportune state of affairs. While cumbersome and destitute of the slightest of shreds of fortune or divine intervention, it was far afield from the conjecture of whether it was righteous or the reverse opposite.

“I’ll be fucking damned…” Gary whispered with widened travel-weary optics and a grim, macabre beam.

“We’ve found the holy grail, Gary.” Discord chimed in a voice deprived of the nettled concern present mere minutes prior. “Feast your eyes, my friend.”

“‘We’ve’,” Gary scoffed. “The hell have you done to get here.”

“Be a pleasant companion.”

Gary rolled the lethargic eyes he shared with the magnate of all things chaotic and discordant. He gazed and squinted at the mighty prodigious building at the far end of the Museum grounds, astronomic and behemothic like a Greek temple pledged to a fictitious god of one of nature’s versatile elements.

The building was a titanic box of veritable stone sitting upon a broader base, bordered by Greek-style monolithic pillars uniting as one to support the angular beautifully designed roof. Embellished by a bewildering pattern of small squares residing in the confines of bigger squares, over and over. A puzzling template that, even if it was to save his life, couldn’t beat the location of where he laid eyes upon this similar pattern in his old world out of his brain. He scoured endlessly and tore the wrinkled walls of his psyche asunder, yet emerged from his laborious dearthful undertaking with zero fruits to show for it. At the front of the base the box sat upon was a mighty fifteen-foot wide staircase that fed into a gaping boxed mouth. Beyond the yawning titanic copper doors forever agog for the thronging channel of visitors was the second half of the Museum. A glorified flea market of prehistoric bric-and-brac and unmeaning, dust-choked trinkets imprisoned within glass cages. While unseen by Gary with his less-than-optimal angle and distance from the legions of ganders, his predictions were meager inches from the realm of veritability.

“What’s that over there?” Gary inquired, jutting a jungly arm out of the broken rampart of trees and pointed a begrimed index finger at the temple.

“That’s where they keep all the knick-knacks and toys from ponies in history. I perused it the last time I was free, bored me nearly to death.”

Gary chuckled. “I never liked museums.”

“Something we can agree on, I hope.”

“Keep hoping.”

A twain of stupendous rugged hands, akin to the paws of a nomadic mountain hermit galaxies away from society, stretched from the caliginous bounds of the Everfree. His palm and the top of his wrist were stippled with pea-sized dots of glum, morose carmine. The final vestiges of the hunters’ existence upon the craggy face of the earth, sans the deserted corpses miles back at their desolate campsite. Likely to be untouched by the fingers of man or hooves of this befuddling equine species. Marooned in an endless perilous ocean of austere blackened trees and sporadically sprinkled grass. Left to become the early Thanksgiving dinner of the voracious buzzards and edacious rats and whatever breed of vermin marauders cared to dine.

Gary parted the trees and swung a heavy foot fixed to the bottom of a quivering leg into the sun-kissed pepful scape, his soon-to-be cataclysmic presence unbeknown to the star-crossed sightseers. The living and unfathomably vigorous incarnation of doomsday sauntered towards the plenteous plethora of equines. Hands jammed in his purloined khaki jacket pockets. Lily-white hat fastened to his sodden quagmire of a scalp, like remnants of a detested stomach-roiling mire slathered across the crown of his head. The effervescent cobalt plume wedged into the ribbon of his hat twitched and jerked in the unmerciful jagged maw of the glacial winds. Gingerly whistling past the gelid shell of his ear like the old quaint tune of a geriatric’s eroded windpipe. Absent-mindedly gazing across the vista with pursed lips and refining the glut of oxygen in his drawn lungs into a harmonious, angelic tune. Proudly fostered by the breeze as gentle as the birdsong from his throat and freighted down sinuous straits and unending dales. See-sawing back and forth on an outmoded birchen rocking chair upon a venerable back porch. Unseen by the direfully unabating forces of nature like the wolfish Gary Demonio. A vanguard deployed by the iron fist and sin-packed heart of Tartarus’ boundless forces to remind the world of the living that mortality, in spite of its lack of mention, was concrete. The sole mobilized enforcer of the natural order of the ceaseless ouroboros of life and death, journey from birth to expiry. Gary was the closest thing to the commander of Hell’s barbaric brigades.

“So, Mister Chaos, what’s the plan when I get up there? What’s gonna free you and let us move the fuck on to bigger things?”

“One word, my dear friend. Chaos.” Discord replied with a mirthful chuckle akin to the squeak of vociferous hinges.

“I thought I didn’t know a damn thing about chaos?”

The restive Draconequus sighed, the exasperation bisected into two factions. One half was camouflage vexation, the other was ample gallons of impatience eddying around Gary’s skull.

“Bring it in whatever way you see fit. Just…Well, I’m not sure what to tell you exactly. Just don’t get carried away. Do you remember my words?”

“Of course I do,” His heart’s vastest desire chiseled a manic smile chock-full of marble-white teeth onto his stony visage. Dominant fingers avidly winding around the stygian grip of his Schofield, wringing it with a force that could invoke the raging flames of envy within Zeus. Invite a covetous spirit to pilfer the unintelligible brawn possessed by the unbenignant bastard.

“I got an idea of my own.” Gary’s words smirked in their horrific, stony-hearted fashion. A scragged thumb itched the revolver’s hammer.

The noirette strode ever-closer and was mere feet from the octet of statues, individually smothered by their own personalized wealth of tacitly chinwagging earth ponies. Infatuated with the dexterously chiseled identicality of the gold-coated fabled hero of old legend or, on the stark contrary, the malignant adversary of the entirety of the Equestrian population. Disdained and accorded their title for whatever despicable imposition they attempted to callously enforce by any means their aberrant mind could conjure. Conjuring the ideas of policing their ideals was always one thing, but keeping them extant until it all falls trite and hackneyed was always where the brunt of the crimes stemmed from.

Gary was a foot from the first statute out of the row of four. Hands engulfing the Schofield’s immaculate unflawed grip. Cold gunmetal frame bereft of any loathsome defects or flaws practically devoured by the fabric. Heart-splitting elation igniting the elongated gas trail of his veins. Enkindling the never-ending streams of rich irony ichor into smoldering creeks of luminous magma. Garnished by a roaring sheet of tempestuous flame biting endlessly at the air. All leading to the marrow of the hellish phenomenon. His jubilated heart. A spewing frothing fountain of verve and fervor for the up-and-coming task he almost found unfeasible to wait any longer.

His bones were alight as he stood with planted boots and a hand encumbered by a slight exultant tremble. A toothy beam threatened to circumnavigate the entire width of his head, stretching from one side to the other. Mandible quivering while gazing at the uneven lake of heads he waited at the flange of. Skulls all turned to face the demon housing a vessel of flesh and muscle. Their craniums optimal domiciles for the sextet of rounds in his revolver’s cylinder.

On his sharp left, herded around an effigy of a pony clad in star-patterned garbs and a wizard’s hat, was a family of three. A tough-as-teak bearded father with two miniscule daughters in matching pigtails. The one on the father’s left chirped. “Is that-”

“Yes, honey,” He spluttered. “Come on, we have to get home.”

The patriarch and his pride and joy darted out of his peripheral. Materializing into the vacant oblivion beyond the margins of his eyesight.

The sod flickered his eyes across the crowd, all petrified deer in the glaring spotlight of his blood-starved vision. A feeble earth pony stood shakily before the extravagant, zany stone colossus of Discord’s coveted statue. Clad in a forest-green-and-brown checkered flannel jacket buttoned to the penultimate round black button. Donning an oak-brown flat cap over a thinny sinewy pate of sand-blonde hair with conspicuous arteries of iron. Two gibbous hazel eyes displayed in sooty frames of quarter-sized eyebags, far from the sole emblem of age’s roughshod, barbarous influence. Unyielding to the elder’s pleas and plights for youth and limitless vigor he possessed in times long passed. Gary honed his irises. Brows sewn together by furrowed optics.

The man chuckled and sweeped his tongue across the face of his teeth.

He was ready.

He was more than ready.

Discord was not.

“Stay still!” He exclaimed with bounties of pride and ardor in his timbre. The crowd jumped. “This won’t take long.”

TIme defected from its meaning and rudimentary laws. The ticking of the clock slowed, the smoldering fists of fervor walloping his heart followed suit. In a singular motion, intractable to the world’s undertakings at correcting the primordial chronometer, Gary tore the Schofield from his jacket pocket. A modicum of the velvety flaxen interior snagging onto the hammer before it fully embraced the idyllic sunshine from the cyan airscape above. He straightened his arm, caged the senior’s forehead in his vermillion iron sights, and with a thrillful tug of his index, the hammer plowed into the cylinder.

BLAM!

A sweltering cylinder with a hankering as voracious as the man who fired it launched from the slender barrel. Barreling into the top-left corner of the geriatric’s wrinkled papery forehead. Eyelids parachuting. Laying his bewildered, panic-struck orbs bare to the obdurate abundance of gut-trundling carnage. Eyes that flickered with a fulgent ignus fatuus of concentrated undepurated fright, pumped straight from his stormish heart to his globes with zero gratuitous processes to adulterate it. His head sprung back like a visceral spring rider and his felt hat catapulted from his scalp and flipped in the open air. Landing topside upon the trimmed grass a foot behind Discord’s graven uncanny image. A thick, ink-like ribbon of aglitter crimson sparkling in the pudgy fingers of sunlight as though adorned with a rhinestone crust. Scintillating before it varnished the left leg of the statute, scandalizing the convex knee of his dragon’s appendage. A wispy silver-grey smoky phantom slithered from the barrel and drifted into the cloud-speckled sky, unseen amidst the vivacious backdrop of pepful cyan. Cessation claimed ironclad dominion over his willowy bewrinkled frame and the cadaver fell onto its left side. Torrents of scarlet disgorged from the dime-sized tunnel bore into his cranium.

Discord shuddered. The vandalism of his cement prison impaling a heart he was entirely unaware could still be assailed by emotion.

Molten vials of hellacious primordial wrath tipped and what poured from the short hooked spout was unlike any savage extravaganza ever spectated by a pony in recorded history. After all, making a name for himself as vile and depraved as humanly possibly was his second secreted objective. A mission where the hulking prospect of a brutish demise wasn’t recognized, and would doubtlessly be refuted if it reared its hideous head.

Ineffable, unutterable chaos that surpassed the capabilities of description by a living being poured from its tormentuous vials. Brawny, herculean tentacles of aberrant pandemonium scrabbled from the molten fathoms of Hell. Bursting forth from its plaguy confines of soil and bedrock, rupturing its innate manacles binding it to its own dimension where its behavior was hallowed and tolerated. Far afield from the earthly realm where astute unicorns who slept and lived in libraries could exist in peace. Each elemental force of spurious anarchy and candid brutality could reside in its own world, unregarding to the blissful beings above.

Like every sanguineous affair where Gary Demonio was a centric organ, unbending laws and the very prospect of its frivolous existence plummeted into a vacuum of nullity. Shirked and belittled, its superfluous sojourn in Equestria and the soon-to-be mangled Museum lost to time’s shifting tides and reeled into the eye of the void.

“You all ready to see some real fun! I’m here to show you!” Gary thundered.

A vicious cacophonous monsoon of Babelic sights and sounds. Planet-struck shrieks stridulent enough to bisect the Earth erupted from their obstreperous throats. The influence of their gutshot sentiments perhaps loud enough to split the moon in two and slice the oceans apart. Awaken even the most groggy and dog-tired of hibernating creatures stowed away in their intimate sanctuaries. Tucked away comfortably in their own cavity of the universe.

Ponies dashed towards every arrow on the compass. Paths interconnecting and bodies colliding as exits from the upcoming acapella of gunfire were deafened. Struck nebulous and nigh on chimeric in the thick ineluctable fog of bodies and pounding hooves. Loose manes flapping frantically like flags in a hurricane.

Gary vociferously sniggered. “How was that for some fucking entertainment, huh!?” Shouted the inhuman beast donning the skin of a man.

With a vertical arm and the click of a hammer, he assumed aim once more. Scarlet sights perusing the riotous bounties of angst-ridden souls scuttling every which way like ants fleeing their irreversibly marred hill. A tranquil superlative domicile forever razed by goblets of wrath.

Seconds of scouring the skittering glut of glorified clay pigeons, Gary located his second victim. A female earth pony that jutted like a pictorial pearl in a sea of lank stygian. Endowed with a stunning pastel pink coat and satiny mint-green locks bound in a messy bun like a gibbous lump of faded emerald. His crosshairs followed her head as she ran for the hills. Arm bedeviled by a rabid quake of jubilation.

BLAM!

The hapless pony seized her rhythmic gallops. Limbs freezing and movement becoming an alien concept in the mare’s figure. She crumbled to the soil and her jaw dug into the dirt and scooped a hearty chink of turf with her chin. The remainder of her frame crumpled in a shambolic cadaverous pile like a heap of lorn branches.

“It’s that fucking easy?” He bellowed. “Is it really that easy to kill you worthless cocksuckers? Are you kidding me? Do you think a bounty is gonna stop me!?”

Gary beveled the hammer and rotated the cylinder to the next receptacle of unbridled misery and ruination. He took aim at his next target. A mustang with a short-trimmed royal blue mane and scintillating cerulean mane scrambling towards arcadian safety.

BLAM!

The round crashed into his left temple and slung his head before wadding into a mess of hooves and limbs upon the ground. Rivulets of ichor puked from the wound onto the grass.

“You think a few fucking dollars is gonna take me down? I’ll shove it down your fucking throat, you annoying sons of bitches! Send your fucking worst!”

The crowd had vastly waxed. Countless darted towards town, flushed by the barbaric onset of gunsmoke and envenomed ridicules towards the dead. A modicum of pitiable stallions resided within the jury-rigged warzone. Resided within the capabilities of Gary’s Argus-eyed sharpshooting.

Discord shuddered in the butcher’s head as he gazed through the eyes of the infernal monster of his own creation. In the peripheral of Gary’s shared vision, towering over the gushing corpse of the inculpable elder, slain without a herald towards the reckoning coming his way, stood the God of Chaos’ statue. And upon his coarse visage perpetually masked by an unwarranted mirth towards a victory he foolishly believed was in his talons, a fissure shot across his gaping countenance.

Gary screeched incessantly. The overzealous disciple to a savage, brutish faith of his own creation, where his heart’s abominable muses were the hallowed relic, bellowed to no end. Shouting curses and combinations of uncouth vulgarities that would halt the heart of a feeble elder of the Christian faith. Some words formerly unharked by the Draconequus, others were discerned from the pandemonious ravel of his hell-roaring prey to his unbounded madness. The nefarious profanities plucked from the dissonant sour ensemble of screams and horror-struck howls.

Another round was fired and a broadside of embittered gleeful jeering ensured, unrecognized by Discord as he stared with a heart routinely skipping beats at the cracks in the stone. Gazing merrily awash with jubilation at the triumphant sight. And there, within an ardent infernal fishbowl pregnant with hypervivid recollections of innocent souls tactlessly dying to his hands, Discord defied the odds and smiled. A disembodied wisp among the unending teeming congeries of memories washed in a spring of ichor. Grinning amidst the unsalvageable bedlam scorching the corpses of the fractional quantities of tranquility and serenity.

Equestria would know his name once again.

Equestria would kneel to the herculean brassbound fist of chaos.

Beautiful, ravishing, exhilarating chaos.