The Darkness Within Us All

Prologue: One is Many, Many are One

"All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work."

-Thomas J. Watson

It has been three years since the defeat of the changelings, and all of Equestria is at peace. At a whole mind you. There still is all those bad things happening in the world: greed, revenge, hate, murder, theft, but they were few and far between. Ponies are very friendly and trusting to others, sometimes to a fault. But nothing really has brought the world to a halt like Discord, Nightmare Moon or even Queen Chrysalis did. Even so, there were the Elements of Harmony to stop them. If anything like that were to happen again, they would step in and beat it, encasing it in stone or sending it TO THE MOON! The world was at peace and everything was fine at the moment.

One of Elements of Harmony, Twilight Sparkle, was at her house in Ponyville at 1 o’clock in the morning. The others, mind you, were also at their homes but we’re going to focus on this particular moment right now. Twilight was busy reading the next issue of Daring Doo (before Rainbow Dash ‘borrows it’ and is never seen again) when Spike, her dragon roommate/assistant/pet, walked up the stairs into the room.

“Hey Twilight,” Spike said exhausted, “I’m done sorting the card sorting system for the books. Can I go to bed now?”

“Not yet Spike,” the unicorn answered, “we still have to sort all the books now alphabetically.” Spike groaned, having to do more work this late. He then remembered this was Twilight, and if she didn’t have the place completely organized, she would turn into what the other ponies call, “Psycho Twilight”, obsessing over every last detail, and he REALLY didn’t want to deal with that this late. So they went downstairs into the library and started sorting the books, from A to B to C and so on and so on.

When to the E’s Twilight grabbed book with her telekinesis and started lifting it up to the shelf, but suddenly stops.“Hey Twilight, what are you doing?” Spike asked.

“Nothing Spike,” she replies, "Just feeling up on the nostalgia. I can’t believe that without this book, Equestria would have been covered in night, chaos, and changlings forever.”

“What are you talking about?” Spike walks up to Twilight to see what she’s talking about. It was Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. “How did this book help you do that?!” he asked confused.

“Don’t you remember Spike,” she tells him, “this was the book that told us about the Elements of Harmony and told us how to beat Nightmare Moon. It was also where the Elements were when Discord took them.”

“Oh yeah! You know, I never understood one thing about Discord.”

“One thing? Even after he broke the laws of physics and Celestia knows what?”

“Okay besides that. You know how Discord represents the spirit of Chaos?”

“Of course.”

“Well, why is it that there is one Element of Chaos, and six Elements of Harmony? And also remember that Discord represents the spirit of Chaos, not the element.”

“Spike, you’re overthinking it. The spirit of Chaos is the same thing as the Element of Disharmony.”

“No Twilight. The spirit would represent the whole physical embodiment of it, whereas an element would only be a piece of it. Like, per se, wouldn’t the spirit of Harmony be Celestia? Because she is the embodiment of it, wouldn’t-”

“Spike, you’re too young to understand. Trust me, when you’re older, you’ll realise that no pony would ever want to or could be an Element of Chaos and therefore there wouldn’t be the Elements of Chaos. It’s very late, we should get to bed.”

They both were going upstairs to go to bed, but Spike was still thinking about it. If no pony would ever do something like that, what about something that’s not a pony. “Twilight... could something that’s not a pony be one?” the young dragon asked.

Twilight sighed, either out of tiredness or frustration, “ Theoretically... yes a non-pony could be an ‘Element of Disharmony’, but that would be near impossible.”

Spike, wondering why, then asks, “How so?”

“Well, a dragon couldn’t do it because of its greed. Yes, greed is a part of disharmony, but a dragon would be too self-obsessed with itself to care whether or not he would do it. Besides, it could always say no and that would be that because no pony would stand up against a dragon unless they were Screwball crazy. An animal like a sheep or a cow wouldn’t do it because its too weak/soft. Almost anything could easily beat it. A griffon wouldn’t because its not loyal enough. It wouldn’t care what you said and it would just do whatever it wanted to do. And if you tried enforcing it’d probably kick your flank and leave. A manticore or any monster in the Everfree wouldn’t do its too barbaric, cruel, and quite instinctive. It wouldn’t understand what you said and would probably just rip you apart and eat you as a solution for all of its problems. And a diamond dog wouldn’t do it because its too dumb. You could tell it something, it would understand it, but it would be too dumb to come up with an idea to do it.” Spike started to say something but Twilight interrupted him, her tiredness getting to her, “And if you can name a creature that is weak enough to be told what to do, strong enough to fight, and smart enough to understand and complete the problem or situation, we would have probably turned it to stone.”

Spike seemed shocked at this. “But why would you turn it to stone?!”

“Because it would be too much of a threat to Equestria and therefore would be turned to stone.” Twilight said. She then gave a full five-second yawned. “Spike it's one in the morning  at night lets go to bed.”

“Alright Twilight,” Spike said walking up the stairs, still speculating that there could be a ‘Elements of Chaos’.

But what Twilight and Spike don’t know, and what nopony else knew, and what Princess Celestia and Luna had forgotten, is that there IS a creature like that. Everypony, that is, except Discord. After all, they are his Elements of Chaos.