Dungeons and Discords

“Let’s split up,” said Applejack. “That way we can cover more ground.”

“Sure!” said Pinkie. “I’ll take this side, you do the other side!”

Applejack nodded, and turned right.

If I was Discord, where would I be?

Inside that suspiciously old house?

Applejack nodded to herself, and pushed the door open. It creaked on its hinges. There was a sudden ominous piano number.

“Discord!”

Applejack started towards Discord, who was dressed old-timey, with a red shirt with frills.

The door slammed.

Discord was playing a spooky piano number.

“Now look here, Discord,” Applejack started, but at that moment three bouncing pumpkins bounced around the piano, and surrounded Applejack. There were fuses on top of the pumpkins, burning slowly.

“What in the hay–” Applejack started, when Discord finished his piece with a flourish.

“Did you like it?” asked Discord. “I call it ‘Spooky-Kooky-Chaos.’”

“That has got ta’ be the worst name for the most generic music ah’v ever heard! Now give me back Apple Bloom, or ah’ll buck yer head off!”

“No need to be hasty,” said Discord.

“There is when–.” Applejack broke off realizing that her words were incorrect.

“Let her go!” she said finally.

“I’m not keeping her hostage,” said Discord cheerfully. “I told you, she’s just getting some exercise!”

“No she ain’t ya crazy–.” Applejack started, but broke off when Discord switched into a costume of the grim reaper (that Applejack had to admit was a little spooky) with a snap of his claws.

Applejack gulped, then noticed some spears laying against a wall.

“Hey Discord,” she asked. “Just how authentic is this place?”

“One-hundred-percent,” he replied.

Applejack burst away from the pumpkin-bombs, which bounced after her, and grabbed a spear. She threw it at Discord, who simply split his head apart, to allow for it to pass through, before making his cranium whole again.

Applejack seized another spear in her teeth, and swatted the pumpkin bombs away. Two went rolling, but the third had reached the end of its fuze. It exploded into smoke with a boom.

Applejack was coughing. “What are those things?”

“Smoking Pumpkins!” Discord said. “Cool, aren’t they?”

“Not at all!”

Discord’s smile vanished, as Applejack charged out of the fog, spear raised. Discord spun around like a ballet dancer, swinging his scythe like a maniac, and forcing Applejack to slide across the ground. He obliterated the wooden support beams as if they were popsicle sticks, and the second floor wobbled. Discord casually snapped his claws, and the roof immediately stopped creaking.

Applejack ducked another swing of Discord’s scythe, and jabbed at him with the spear. The spear tip snapped off upon touching Discord.

“What the–.”

Discord threw the scythe hard at Applejack, who rolled as the blade impaled itself into the floor besides her.

Discord waved his paw around, and was soon holding a round red Hearth’s Warming bauble. “Never too early to have Hearth's Warming for Nightmare Night!” he crowed, tossing the ornament at Applejack.

Applejack tried to jump out of the way, but the ornament struck her directly in the snout. She froze, as her entire body was encased with ice.

Discord waved his paw again, and in it this time, was a small winged creature that looked an awful lot like a chicken.

Applejack tried to ignore the numbness spreading through her body, as she focused on the creature. Hadn’t Fluttershy told her about something that looked like a chicken?

A cockatrice, Applejack thought, before the numbness became absolute.

Pinkie gasped. Standing before her was–.

A cake. A single layer, undecorated cake. With white frosting.

Pinkie winced at the cake, just as an old shaking voice whispered behind her, “Do you like my cake deary?”

“Oh!” said Pinkie turning around to see an elderly draconequus with a hunched back standing there.

“Well…” said Pinkie. “It could be more decorated I guess? But it's still really good!”

“Try a piece,” said the old draconequus. “You’ll like it.”

“You’re offering me cake?” said Pinkie. “Can’t say no to that!”

She pulled a cake knife out of her mane, and cut a fat slice of the cake.

“Mmm,” she said. “Wow, that’s good. A bit of….” Pinkie’s eyes suddenly started swirling. “Raw sugarcane, nice touch. And–vinegar, yum yum. Oh and paper! Mmm, paper… and glass! You shouldn’t have!”

Discord summoned his cockatrice.

Pinkie suddenly started gagging, and spit out all of her cake.

“Ew, ew, ew! What was that? Glass, paper, and VINEGAR?!?!?! You dare put VINEGAR in a cake?! You evil draconequus!” She cut a slice of the cake with her knife, and hurled it at the old draconequus.

Discord suddenly dropped his disguise, and with a snap, made the cake loose all its velocity, so it splatted to the floor, covering the cockatrice’s eyes in frosting

“Discord?!” Pinkie gasped. “It was you the whole time? You were the old draconequus?!”

“Yes I was!” Discord said with an evil laugh, before a flying piece of cake splattered on his face.

“Hey!” he growled, and snapped his claws, cleaning himself while also changing into a police outfit. He pulled out a megaphone. “You are under arrest!” he said. “For throwing cake at me, I sentence you to four-thousand years on the moon!”

“Hey,” said Pinkie, “I thought the judge was the one who gave out sentences?”

“Huh?” said Discord. “Oh right.” he snapped his claws, and his outfit became a brown suit. He also had a curly white wig on, for whatever reason.

Discord cleared his throat. “You are now under arrest for–.”

“But arresting ponies is what the police do!” said Pinkie.

“Whatever!” snapped Discord, and he pulled out his gavel. With a quick snap of his claws, it was sixteen times bigger.

“Uh-oh!” said Pinkie, jumping out of the way, as Discord tried to whack her with the hammer.

“Over here!” she called from under the table. “You missed me! That wasn’t even close! Your score’s got to be negative!”

With a frustrated yell, Discord whacked down so hard, that the head snapped off his gavel, and that the table and Pinke were flipped over.

“He-he,” said Pinkie weakly.

“No more of this!” Discord snapped. “As judge, I sentence you to being turned to stone!”

The cockatrice rubbed the frosting out of its eyes.

“Help!” Pinkie yelled. “Police! There’s a phony judge! I want a lawyer!”

And then Pinkie Pie was stone, and all was quiet.

Discord smiled to himself. If I can ambush Fluttershy at the library, then all the Mane six will be stone!

Discord looked up at the sky, as lighting randomly flashed. And no one will be able to stop me!

Fluttershy burst into the Golden Oak Library. It was a mess. Books were haphazardly piled up in towers, and more were thrown in piles. Fluttershy moved towards the back of the library, towards the section on animals. Thankfully, whoever’d ruined the front part of the library hadn’t touched the section on animals.

Fluttershy grabbed a book on mystic animals, and flipped to the page on cockatrices.

The Cockatrice is a rather small monster that has the head of a white chicken and the body of a teal dragon. The Cockatrice is capable of flight and has a frightening stare that can turn any who look directly into its eyes to stone.

This was it. The creature that had been petrifying everypony! The only problem was that Fluttershy didn’t know where the cockatrice could be found.

She sighed. “Where in Equestria could that cockatrice be?”

“Glad you asked,” said a voice from behind her.

Fluttershy spun around to see a draconequus standing in the aisle next to her.

She gasped.

“No?” said the draconequus. “That’s it? No ‘why hello Discord, Lord of Chaos,’ or anything?”

“Well I don’t know who you are,” said Fluttershy. “Maybe you could tell me that?”

“Oh yes, I’m Discord! Lord of Chaos!”

“I’m Fluttershy.”

Discord scratched his head with his one clawed hand. “And?‘

“Just Fluttershy.”

“Well Fluttershy, Just Fluttershy, let me show you a magic performance!” Discord exclaimed, giving her a silver ticket. The ticket had a Discord face in the middle.

“Ticket?”

Fluttershy looked up to see a whole magic stage set up. Discord was dressed up in a tuxedo, asking her, “May I see your ticket, Fluttershy, Just Fluttershy?”

“Um, okay?” She handed Discord the ticket.

“I’m afraid your ticket is invalid,” said Discord.

“Oh that’s okay,” said Fluttershy, “I was busy anyways.” She turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” asked Discord. “Shouldn’t you be going towards the stage?”

“But you said my ticket was invalid–.”

“Yes, yes, of course! What did you expect me to say? Now, hurry along, the show starts in fifteen years!”

“Fifteen years?” Fluttershy started to say, but Discord snapped his claws, and a treadmill began moving Fluttershy towards the stage.

“Time’s-a-ticking!” Discord said, showing Fluttershy a big gold pocket watch. There were (to Fluttershy’s count) thirteen hands, each a different color, spinning around in different directions at different speeds.

The conveyor belt stopped in front of a seat. Fluttershy got into it.

Discord snapped his claws again, and he was teleported to the stage, now outfitted in a magicians outfit. “Come one, come all!” he said dramatically. “To Discordant Magic!”

Laughter and applause came out of nowhere, and Fluttershy added a soft, “yay!” into the mix.

“Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind!” said Discord. “For my first trick, I will pull a killer rabbit out of my hat!”

“A killer rabbit?!” said Fluttershy, horrified.

Discord waved his wand around, pulled off his hat, and tapped it. The hat exploded, as hundreds of crazy white rabbits went flying everywhere. They had red eyes.

Fluttershy gasped.

The rabbits were tearing the whole library apart. Paper and book spines went flying everywhere, casualties of the killer rabbits rampage.

“Stop!” said Fluttershy.

The insane rabbits halted.

“I know how you must feel, after being packed into that tiny hat for so long,” she continued. “But is destroying the library really the right way to vent your stress?”

The rabbits all suddenly exploded.

Fluttershy screamed.

“Oh don’t worry,” said Discord. “There’s a seventeen to the negative four power over sixteen-point three percent chance the rabbits all explode. Now they’ll live forever happily, in a world of chaos.”

“That–” Fluttershy started, but Discord cut her off.

“For my next trick, we will be turning apple cider into liquid nitroglycerin!” Discord exclaimed, dramatizing it way too much.

“First,” said Discord, “the cider.” He reached his paw towards his claws, and they seemed to pass through a portal or something similar, just cutting off. He drew his paw back quickly, and a trail of cider followed it. Discord clicked his claws, and time froze.

“You froze time?” asked Fluttershy.

“Do not break my focus!” Discord exclaimed. He summoned a glass cup out of thin air, and caught all the cider in it. Then he snapped his claws and time unfroze.

The glass hit the stage and shattered, spilling cider all over.

“Excellent!” said Discord. He then pulled his wand out, twirled it around, and said, “Abra-cadabra! Hocus-pocus! Bipity, boppity boo!”

The spilled cider yellowed slightly.

Discord hovered his claws over the shattered glass. The cup reformed, and the cider poured back into it.

“And there you have it!” Discord exclaimed. “Nitroglycerin! A literal bomb!” Discord threw the cup at the ground.

The whole Golden Oak Library was instantly incinerated. Fluttershy put her hooves to her soot covered face.

The books were all charred or destroyed. The top was gone, nowhere to be seen. There was nothing left besides the stage and seating.

“What have you done!?” Fluttershy gasped.

Discord ignored her. “For my final trick, I will be transforming a chicken into a dangerous beast!”

Fluttershy growled, and started towards Discord, but he waved his paw, and Fluttershy was buckled into her chair with a five-point seat belt.

“For your own safety,” said Discord. He snapped his claws (Fluttershy was starting to get annoyed by the repeated clicking) and a fancy wagon was dragged across the burned up detritus of the library. It tipped over, and a business pony jumped out of it and scampered away, before the wagon exploded into fireworks.

“See?” said Discord. “You never know when having a seat belt on could save your life!”

“But if that pony had been wearing his, he would have been seriously injured by those fireworks!”

“Exactly!” Discord exclaimed. “Now do you want to see the rest of the magic show or not?”

“Not,” said Fluttershy defiantly.

“Fine!” harrumphed Discord. “Time for you to go then!” He waved his paw, and his hat reappeared. He reached into it.

And pulled out a blindfolded cockatrice.

Fluttershy gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

Discord chuckled. “I’m afraid so. Bu-bye!”

Fluttershy squirmed out of her seatbelt, and rushed for the exit. Discord shot something at her.

“Is that a missile?!” Fluttershy gasped.

The missile triggered early, and pineapple-bombs went flying out. They rolled all over the place, exploding when they hit something, and sending out pineapple slices.

“Ack!” Fluttershy yelped as one slice hit her. She was almost at the perimeter.

Snap.

Balloons floated up, pulling bouncy walls up.

Fluttershy hit the wall and bounced comically back.

“No!” she said softly.

Discord snapped his fingers, and his outfit changed to a general’s. He took out a sniper rifle, and started taking shots at Fluttershy.

Fluttershy rolled, as the “bullet” hit the ground, and burst apart into Nightmare Night candy.

“Fluttershy, Just Fluttershy, stop moving so much!” Discord said.

Fluttershy grabbed a book spine that wasn’t too charred, and poked the bouncy wall. It popped, sending bits of rubber everywhere.

“Hey!” Discord growled, shooting at her.

The cockatrice, disturbed by the loud bangs, suddenly took off, and the blindfold slipped off.

“Come back!” Discord wailed.

The cockatrice had no interest in listening to Discord, and instead sprinted into the Everfree Forest.

Fluttershy changed direction, towards the forest. She stopped at the entrance.

Fluttershy had recently entered the Everfree Forest, heading to Zecora’s after Rainbow had gotten hurt.

That time she’d had a distraction.

That time she’d had a location to head to.

This time she was alone.

But if she ever wanted to change that, she’d have to get the cockatrice.

So Fluttershy took the first step.