The unnamed child gaped, gasping at the void for a first breath that wasn't there. A muscle twitched in the first of many movements. Birth wasn't new to him.
A paw and talon worked in unspoken cooperation, pushing the surface below him. The child's body lifted, separating from the metallic bedrock of reality. It connected each horizon, stretching unapologetically far. The silver basis was as cold as always, and scratched in every direction simultaneously. No smooth patch could be found, as if fine claws had carved the universe itself out of its matter, one sliver at a time. No stars twinkled in the original void. A pair of mismatched eyes pioneered a gaze into the cosmic primordium.
With as much warning as it was honour bound to give, a great rush ripped across the surface. In airless substance, somehow, a divine tempest adopted the newborn draconequus. Almighty winds roared like a dying universe screaming in agony, buffeting the fabric of space, threatening to part at the seams. The aether's hurricane tossed the newborn's body - a blinding blur of ground and void rapidly traded dominance of child's vision, as he careened across infinity. A lack of landmarks forbid any estimation of velocity, and distance carried no meaning.
Eons passed, before momentum yielded to friction in the battle of attrition. He scraped to a halt, lost in an alien stillness. The child's body bore no wounds. He couldn't argue he was anywhere other than where he started. Returning to cloven hoof and claw, the child stood, daring his eyes upwards towards the source of the spacial tide.
An almighty stone tree hung from the universe itself. The arboreal pendulum swung away from me, dragging reality with it, leaving him behind on the steeled bedrock of meaning. Ancient detail spun a fractal across the bark, carved from stone older than time, stretching upward without limit. Individual grooves in the wizened epidermis ranged from planetary to galactic in proportion. Each a resplendent canyon, humbled by the duty of comprising the great tree. Nothing impeded his vision. He simply watched, awestruck by a god too grand for such a title. The petrified timekeeper hung upside-down from an infinite trunk, yet swung as if affixed to a singular point.
The tree's crown bore uncountable leaves, each crafted without flaw, carved by perfect masons. Timeless detail shrank as the tree swung further than light could ever travel, enacting the next oscillation, a performance contracted by fate. This didn't matter. He knew the tree with intimate familiarity. It was a promise, fulfilled exactly. Any soul tasked with envisioning the perfect tree will unknowingly picture this one, the concordant dendroid, in perfect detail. The child needed no visual aid to comprehend that which grew atop the primal universe.
Blasphemous questions crept into his mind. What if it cracked? What if it stopped swinging? Could this hammer shatter creation itself? Is there a force within measure that could rival it?
He didn't fight the thoughts. It proved his nature as a draconequus. It was the very nature that would bestow upon him a name; a title. He was plucked from the slope of time this specific obligation.
He was ready.
A voice spoke out, mortal in ways that only mattered here. "It is your turn now, child." He spoke out in a patient drawl, his life flickering from the utterance. "I have carried my title to you. I am not you, but I am Discord. Do you know who you are?"
"I am Discord," the child spoke. The motion of that vocalisation came effortlessly. It was a practiced motion; a line he had said before, so many times that its memory burned a scar into his throat muscles.
"Good," the elder draconequus droned, continuing the succession without resistance. "The bearers of your counterpart will change many times before you return here," he informed. The fading body of an ancient chimera pulsed around Discord. His title bestowed upon him the right to be the rot that consumes his father's corpse. "Oh," he added with a smirk, "And they will be ponies, this time."
The old god heaved, nearing complete transparency. "We will not be revered," the former chaos god sputtered. "We will not be understood. We will be hated," he informed, without a hint of animosity. "And yet we are needed," he coughed, "Harmony is to be balanced in equal part. Nothing exists in absolutes." His draconic voice echoed acceptance. "Nothing, but Concord and yourself."
"I understand," Discord acknowledged.
The old Discord collapsed, fading across the cosmic absolute. His essence pooled, collecting over an eternity into a single point, an epsilon of light, becoming a solid seed. As of that instant, he never existed.
Discord made no attempts to pay respect. This wasn't a sadness, nor a joy. This wasn't even a moment. The spurious deceased was that of chaos. Absence was its natural state. Discord, now in adulthood, stood in defiance of the natural order. He stood in defiance of order itself.
The seed, shining from its infinite point, fell to the ground. It rung out a singular note across the universe. The great tree loomed in the firmament, preparing to swing back towards Discord, as it promised to an eternity ago. Did it hear? Did it know?
Might as well start.
He snapped his fingers. From nothing, a pebble. Discord floated the pebble before his eyes, inspecting it. Rolling it over with careful indifference, he scrutinized every facet of it. No imperfections.
He snapped his fingers again. An hourglass materialised, framed in a golden square trim. It was laced with floral decor, a butterfly engraved on one face, and four metallic vines connecting the length of each corner. Discord sat down, leaving the perfect pebble floating above him. With no need to hurry, he spent years similarly inspecting the hourglass. When he was satisfied, he inverted it, before setting it on the ground.
A single intrepid grain of sand lead the charge. Each grain fell in slow motion. Discord watched it fall, ready to assess its performance. When the first grain of sand landed, the pebble doubled in size. He relaxed, laying down with pride. With each grain of sand that fell, it again doubled. The pebble expanded to a planet before the hourglass was half empty, continuing its growth.
As it grew, Discord floated it further and further away, its spherical form locked entirely within his sights. Its size became meaningless. The object was so distant it melted into the background, like an artist painting the canvas of the void with its circular likeness.
Discord once again snapped his fingers, bringing into existence another identical hourglass. He repeated his methodical inspection with equal care to the first. This hourglass was no less deserving. Upon passing the test of his scrutinising gaze, he set the hourglass down, beside the first. It behaved identically to its twin. Sand fell with no sense of urgency. As grains impacted the base, the sphere resumed doubling.
For the next eternity, this was Discord's world. He stacked hourglasses side by side like bricks, forming an ever-growing cube of gold and glass. Discord made no attempt to count them. They wouldn't be here when he returned.
The ancient tree kept the promise made at Discord's birth. An omnipotent roar sounded across the frozen plane, as the stone pendulum returned overhead. A godly ripple ripped Discord off his disparate feet, and tossed his serpentine body into infinity. The hurricane obliterated the neatly stacked tower of hourglasses. Denied the dignity of becoming dust, they were stricken from existence.
For the second time since his birth, all time had passed. Discord ground to a stop against the scratched metal. He stood up. After spending an era tossed in cosmic wind, bouncing at impossible speeds across an unbreakable land, standing was a long overdue sensation.
Essence was of the time. Discord returned to his feet, and summoned an hourglass with a snap; the first brick in another cube. His pattern continued. Hourglass, inspect, wait, all the while multiplying the size of the distant sphere exponentially.
Discord had watched the grey tree swing many trillions of times now. Each pass hurling his body like dust caught in a tornado's fury, cast aside with the care of a crying toddler's rejected toy. He never assumed malice, or considered animosity for his treatment. Each swing of the indifferent pendulum brought with it the destruction of its own hourglass skyscraper, and heralded a new cycle. Discord, however, would not build another.
He was ready.
With a snap of his fingers, a red and black checkered shirt garnished his body. Discord looked to the distant horizon, his unfathomable stone sphere buckling the edges of infinity. He had long since forgotten that it was once a pebble before his eyes.
Harnessing magic bestowed by name, Discord lifted the stone sphere, and began morphing its shape. It contorted and buckled, grunting in pain. The stone ground against itself in a perfect cacophony, a thunder that could extinguish stars. Discord's hands mimed his will, moulding the stone into the shape he desired. He closed his eyes. Discord was one with his sculpture, connecting to the sphere's circulation with each hand.
Stone impossibilities repositioned into a tool. A weapon. An axe.
Discord braced himself, prepared for the heat of a newborn universe. Its fiery tantrum ready to erupt the moment it left the timeless comfort of womb. There was no choice to be made.
With a heavy heart, a draconequus once again lifted an illimitable weapon to the heavens, aligning it with the metronome it matched in size. At a timescale invisible to mortal souls, the axe swung. A reality deafening scream echoed across the primordium as the giant blade connected. The stone tree ached and pained, its infinite trunk wounded at the base. Its fractal bark buckled and splintered, casting shards of its creation in all directions. The axe exploded against its core, slaying the giant.
The tree was dying, and every atom in the universe sung its elegy. An unquenchable sadness drowned space, and shards of the great tree exploded outwards, suspended by time. Each splinter of the tree, each uncountable fragment of Discord's cardinal crime, was lit in harsh contrast by the blinding white pith.
With breathless silence, the tree died. Its crown fell. A seed, somewhere, sprouted. Discord vanished. Time began.
Does it make a sound?
