[[ Ummmm, I did a thing. I-I hope you like it, thecuriousfool… Your work inspires me and I love it… ]]
She watched him as he crumpled to the ground, his body thumping against the sand beneath the shore, the water just shallow enough to keep him from drowning to death.
That is, if he wasn’t dead already.
The others reached towards her, shouting as they tried to stop her, but her hooves nor her heart would listen as she broke into a gallop towards the gray water of the lake. Her eyes zeroed in on the broken Draconequus, the true Lord of Chaos.
She completely ignored the imposter that stood before them–the pony who had made him fall.
At least, he had been a pony, once. Just moments before he had been a mere Unicorn, the leader of a cult that worshipped chaos magic. The cult had once worshipped Discord as well.
But that was before Discord had reformed himself. Now…
Now they had a new leader. His name was Power Play.
Power Play had killed Tirek. He had somehow snuck into Tartarus, had killed him savagely in his weakened state, and had turned Tirek’s two powerful horns into a fine powder. Mixing the powder with Tirek’s blood and a drop of potion, he drank it, which transferred Tirek’s powers onto himself.
The catch? The potion he had used was limited. He could only steal the magic of one individual. His body didn’t have the full capabilities that Tirek’s body had.
But one was enough, and of course, he had set his sights on his former object of worship: the Lord of Chaos himself.
And then once he had Discord’s powers, the world would be his.
Now, he no longer looked like a pony. Now, he looked like some… some twisted amalgamation of a pony and a Draconequus. He had a sinuous body with two legs and arms, like a Draconequus, but his heads…
Yes. Heads. If you could call the second one a head. The first one looked like Discord’s, with a horribly slanted jaw and a nose that looked like it had been broken multiple times. The second head was more like a large pony-head-shaped bump fused to the the right side of his neck, with tiny eyes and a tiny mouth. And while Discord’s body looked like an assortment of different animals sewn together, Power Play’s Draconequus(?) form looked like a clump of muscle, molting feathers, and fur mashed into the shape of a body. Even his fur didn’t cover his entire body; some of it showed bare skin with scabs and lesions, as if he had mange.
Yet he didn’t seem displeased. In fact, he looked rather ecstatic as he laughed over Discord’s fallen body, feeling the chaos magic flow through his blood.
But his laughing came to a halt as he saw the tiny yellow Pegasus race towards her lover.
“Discord! Discord!” She slid to a sudden stop and gently lifted his head up. “Discord, wake up! Everything’s going to be okay, I’m here now…!” Tears pooled in her eyes and ran down her face, distorting her vision. She tried to look for any sign of life on him, but struggled to find any.
Power Play snickered, amused by the pathetic pony’s delusions. “So you’re Fluttershy, then.”
Fluttershy’s body stiffened at her foe’s voice. Both heads spoke in tandem. She didn’t look at him, but her ears perked towards his direction.
“A shame that the cause of Discord’s fall is a pathetic, unremarkable pony such as yourself. Had you been a more powerful creature–an alicorn, perhaps–then maybe I’d be able to a little more understanding. But you?” Another laugh. “How a god like Discord ever allowed himself to fall for a weakling like you is beyond me! Then again…”
She heard him take a step towards them. “Perhaps weakness attracts weakness. And he was obviously weak to begin with…”
Fluttershy felt her throat tighten as she grit her teeth together. Already, she could feel two of her teeth start to morph and reshape themselves…
Steady, Fluttershy. Remember, take it slow, and it won’t overwhelm you. You’re the one in control, not the spell. Don’t change all at once. Remember what Discord taught you…
Just thinking his name brought a sharp pain into her heart. She looked back down on him. The worst part was his face. Even in this state, he looked defeated. Like he had failed. Again.
Why…? she thought, trembling. Why must everypony try to break you when you’re always trying so hard…?
But her transformations weren’t apparent yet, and Power Play still kept talking. “After all, he chose to let stupid sentiments such as friendship and kindness and love soften him into the sad, pathetic lump that he is now.”
She tried to hold back her mounting anger.
One part at a time, Fluttershy. A little at a time…
She positioned herself so that she stood over Discord’s chest, breathing in, out, in, out…
Memories of Discord flooded into in her mind’s vision. She saw him belting out his hearty laugh, turning her cottage into a world of his chaotic imagination, teasing Twilight over something completely unimportant just to see her reaction, diving into one of Pinkie Pie’s cakes in full scuba-diving gear, gossiping with Rarity as she gave him a manicure, playing with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, pulling out Fluttershy’s chair for her, staring at her from across the room when she thought she wasn’t looking, whispering to her that she looked nice before going out to see her friends, pulling her behind a curtain during the Grand Galloping Gala to kiss her during a slow song…
…Telling her and the others to go on ahead to Canterlot while he held Power Play back and tried to stop him.
She was brought back into real time as Power Play leaned forward towards her. With a twisted and bent tail, he forced Fluttershy to look at him.
“You took a powerful god and turned him into a frail, pitiful waste of a creature. A creature that didn’t deserve his powers or the right to live. A creature…like you.”
And with that, her concentration shattered.
“A creature like me, you say…?” she murmured.
She opened her eyes and felt a small triumph at watching her foe widen his gaze on her. One of her eyes was now blood red, and her fangs were in full view now. Her wings slowly began to molt, the membrane underneath morphing into a more leathery texture. One by one, her butterflies took on a more batty appearance.
“In that case, I have a question for you…” she growled, meeting him in the eyes. Was it him, or was her mane growing as wild as her eyes at this point?
“If loving others, either in friendship or something more, makes creatures weak and pathetic, then why is it that I only want to fight when the ones I care about are threatened?!?”
Power Play didn’t like where this conversation was going. He wasn’t expecting this. Not the smallest, weakest pony challenging him, not this transformation, and especially not the deadly gleam in her eyes.
“Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, you have it wrong, and it’s the other way around? That perhaps it is those very things–love, friendship, kindness, understanding–that give us the strength to fight creatures that are so pathetic that the only way they know how to find value in themselves is to beat down those around them? Creatures…”
She licked her fangs slowly until they gleamed.
Power Play’s heads growled in fury. “You think just because you have friends and a dead lover, that that makes you more powerful than I? I, who have taken down two of Equestria’s most powerful foes single-hoofedly, weaker than you? Than him? Than all of you?”
Some of Fluttershy’s raw fury seemed to calm at that point, as her eyes drifted back down to the body she stood above.
“One…” she whispered. “You took down one of Equestria’s most powerful foes. Discord isn’t a foe. He never was. But you…”
Suddenly she spread her wings and hovered over him in no time at all.
“You took him away from us! Away from me! The one I love! You took him away from me, and you plan on taking everypony else I love away from me too! But that’s not going to happen!”
She rose up higher, higher, higher, until the moon was an orange halo behind her.
“You think you’re a god? Because if doing all this makes you a god, then I guess that makes me…”
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