Not the Hero (rest of chp 26) (Patreon)

I headed up to Chrysalis’ hive with a present for her, but for some reason, didn’t manage to teleport into the hive, but some distance from it. This was definitely unusual and worth investigation. I tried riding a construct giant spider into the area, but the spider disappeared, leaving me to fall hard on my poor tuchis. I still had all the magic I normally have in my body, but the moment I tried to use it, nada. I actually tried snapping my fingers a few times, the way you might shake a jar of crystallized honey to try to make it liquefy, despite the fact that that is not going to happen and you know it.

Since no one could see me, I went to four legs, and zipped in and out of the barrier, identifying exactly where it was. It wasn’t actually suppressing my magic, whatever it was; it was just eating it the second I tried to use it. Eventually I found that there were half a dozen large black rocks situated in a circle around the hive, which seemed to be fantastically absorbent to magic… except for changeling magic, which they were reflective to.

These were big, heavy black rocks. I’m strong, but I’m not that strong. There was no way I was moving those rocks, and within the circle they described, any magic I tried to use would just disappear into them. It’s why I hadn’t noticed them before; something that suppressed my magic would have been obvious, but something that just ate my magic as fast as I generated it left me frighteningly helpless. 

So I backed away, and concentrated on the land under the rocks, describing a semicircle around the hive. I reached down, down into the dirt, down into the rock, until I was working at a level that was far enough below the offending rocks that my powers worked. 

My first thought was to break the rock, to create a chasm that the dirt and rock and the six black stones would fall into, but firstly, that would generate an earthquake powerful enough that a lot of the crystals that everything in the Crystal Empire was made of might shatter, and secondly, there were Umbra trapped down there in the rock and I didn’t want to risk either freeing or killing them. So instead, I turned it to water. As the bedrock sank into the water, it too was far enough away that I could work with it, and I kept it up until there was a moat around the hive and the magic-absorbing rocks had fallen to the bottom, allowing me to turn a lot of the water on the top back into rock and dirt… which fell to the bottom of the moat, blocking in the magic-absorbing rocks.

Then I teleported into the hive, wearing a red winter coat with white trim and reindeer antlers, impersonating the legendary flying reindeer Klaus, who supposedly brings presents to all the good children of Neighropa. (He actually has a team that does that, and they operate on the principle that all kids are good kids, so they aren’t really spying on the behavior of foals and griffin chicks and lambs and all the other young creatures that live in Neighropa.) “Ho ho ho!” I bellowed, making it snow in the hive. “Hearth’s Warming greetings to all!” Yes, technically Yule, a Neighropan holiday, is not Hearth’s Warming, but come on, they’re generally within a week of each other and a lot of the celebratory traditions are the same or similar. 

Changelings screamed and scattered, morphing into the walls to hide from me or running away. I kept up the performance until Chrysalis showed up. It had been less than a week since I’d last seen her, or maybe just over a week, who can keep track of the time? Not me! So she wasn’t much more recovered than she’d been, although a good bit more of her carapace had healed; she must be getting plenty of love. Good.

“Discord. What are you playing at?”

“Ho ho ho! I came to bring you a Yule present, Chryssie!” I showed her a fancy decorated box with plenty of wrapping paper and ribbons. I held it out in my hands toward her, but when she tried to take it, I snatched it back. “Except it seems that someone has been a bad girl!” I transformed, the red coat vanishing to display me in all my furry glory, holding a bag of screaming foals and larvalings that kept sticking hooves or heads out of the bag and yelling things like “I’ll be good! I’m sorry!” This was the (hopefully entirely fictional) dark mirror to Klaus, the Krampus, who supposedly steals and eats bad children of all races. Most Changelings come from Neighropa so I thought there was a good chance Chryssie would get the reference.

“What are you talking about?” This queen was made of stern stuff; she didn’t even blink at my bag of screaming children. 

“You tried to block my magic,” I said in a dark tone, leaning down into her face. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”

Changelings can’t go pale with shock, but her eyes widened. “That’s—what did you do with the defense barrier? Find what he did to the barrier!” she yelled out to her changelings, who could probably hear her despite having run away and hidden from me. Changelings communicate by voice because it’s an easy way to compose and focus their thoughts, but they’re actually projecting communication via their horns, which in the ordinary drones don’t work to cast magic unless they’re impersonating a unicorn.

“Your barrier did not entertain me,” I said in my best cat-stroking Imposing Supervillain voice. “And when things don’t entertain me… I dispose of them.”

“That was our protection against the ponies! You sent our hive to the caves around the Crystal Empire! The alicorn who has most reason to hate us and the most paranoia about us rules this place!”

“And whose fault was that? You didn’t need to kidnap her and take her place.”

“I wouldn’t have any concern, but the hive is still not back to full strength. We needed that barrier!”

“And I need to be able to teleport into your hive and come chat with you, and it blocked my teleportation.” I wasn’t going to admit that it blocked all of my powers. “So I’m afraid those rocks are at the bottom of a new moat now. On the plus side, your moat is very, very deep and if you stock it with piranha, only pegasi will be able to attack you! Well, except in the one area where I left it contiguous with the land around here, they could come that way, but still, it’s a strategic advantage! You should be thanking me.”

“And you don’t think ponies are going to be shocked by the appearance of a ring-shaped body of water that appeared out of nothing?!”

“Given that I gave you meat trees to feed your dogs with, I think if ponies are up here looking at the surroundings of your hive, you’re already in trouble.”

“Pegasi flying over can’t see the meat trees, but they can see a moat!”

“Oh, stop whining, Chryssie.” I turned back into Klaus. “I brought you a present! Remember?”

This time I let her take it. She ripped the wrapping paper off the box, to find that it was actually a cube made of wrapping paper. I snickered as she had to tear through reams of wrapping paper to finally get to the amulet. “This… is for me?”

The Element of Hatred is an obsidian pony-shape surrounded by stylized flames of gold and copper and dotted with tiny red gems, because hatred turns ponies dark and sets the world on fire… I guess. Honestly I don’t know what Eris was thinking when she made these things, they’re so over the top sometimes. “Yes,” I said. “The thing you had before that you tragically misused, what you called the Amulet of Illusion, was my Element of Deception and I’ve given it to someone who’s so much better at using it than you are, it’d make you cry with envy to watch. This is another of the Elements of Disharmony – the Element of Hatred.”

Chrysalis made a face. “Changelings feed on love. Hatred is putrid to us. Why would you give me something with powers related to hatred?”

“For exactly that reason.” I dropped the Klaus costume, and floated above Chrysalis’ head, looking down at her from a sphinx-like position. “You hate Anon, don’t you?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then you can use it. But you won’t overuse it and tear pony society apart and send mobs to attack each other, because so much hatred would sicken your Changelings.” I leaned back. “If you’re smart, you’ll figure out a way to use it against our mutual enemy. If you’re stupid, which you might possibly be, I’ll probably end up having to take it away from you because you’ll make yourself and your Changelings sick.”

She stared at it. “What does it do?”

“Well, for starters, it makes you stronger when you’re feeling hate. Physically, magically, mentally. It helps you resist mind control, which might help if Anon uses his powers to make you stupid – well, stupider than usual. It makes it easier for you to find weaknesses in anyone you hate, and it makes it easier for you to inspire and direct hatred. Sombra used it to tear the Crystal Empire apart before taking it over.”

“I thought he just mind-controlled everyone.”

“He didn’t develop that technology until nearly the end of his reign. It was the mind-control helmets and mind-control spells that led Celestia and Luna to decide his flank needed a good kicking.” You’d have thought they’d have taken action when he murdered Princess Amore, but in the dear girls’ defense, I may sort have been still around and kicking and causing major interference in communications, so it’s quite likely they didn’t even know about Amore until they heard about the mind control and investigated. Sombra was smart enough not to implement mind control anything while I was still unruling Equestria; he knew me well enough to know that the kind of mind control that destroys free will and makes a person into a puppet is anathema to me. Much as I enjoy the vision ponies had of me as a master puppeteer, I work by manipulating ponies’ emotions so they want to do the things I want them to do, and I don’t directly control exactly how they do them. “He used the Element of Hatred to make the pegasus and earth pony populations turn on the unicorns, and support his rise to power over Amore despite his looking like a unicorn, and then he used it to set them against each other, and then he used the resulting hatred and conflict to fuel his dark magic.”

I twirled in air around her, slowly. “Make no mistake, Chrysalis. This is dangerous. Misuse it, and you could end up stirring up a pogrom against Changelings… or cause ponies to be so distrustful of each other, your harvesters can no longer safely function. But if you choose to be an authorized Bearer, you will have the power you need to get revenge on Anon, take over Forgotten Sky hive or at the least dominate them, and protect yourself from the crystal ponies and their pretty pink princess.” I mock, but I’ve seen what Cadance would have been, in the other timeline. She and Shining Armor flung the changelings into the distance, possibly killing a large number of them (or possibly not, they can fly, but they didn’t come back for a rematch in the third season), and then she and Spike worked together to destroy Sombra. She can be absolutely ruthless. Chrysalis was right to be wary of her.

“You say ‘your’ Element. Do I become your slave, then? Your minion?” She glared a challenge up at me.

“Mmm, ‘minion’ is a better word than ‘slave’. You’re working for me, and I can take your power back if I don’t like the job you’re doing… but I’m not a fan of micromanaging. I won’t tell you what to do or when to do it; you’ll cause more chaos if you’re independent of me.” I manifested a cheerleader outfit and pom-poms. “You and the rest of Team Disharmony all despise Anon for your own reasons, and I can trust all of you to work toward his destruction. I want to cheer you from the sidelines, not coach you.”

“Do I have to work with these others, then? The way Twilight Sparkle and Anon and their insipid little friends need to work together for their power to activate?”

I laughed. “What part of ‘disharmony’ says ‘yay, friendship?!’” She continued to glare. “No. In fact Bearers of Disharmony can’t work together. If you met one of the others, you’d probably despise them and feud with them for no particularly good reason, because that’s what happens when Bearers of Disharmony try to work in each other’s proximity, let alone together.”

Chrysalis smiled. “Oh, well then. If I have full autonomy to do as I like with this bauble, as long as I’m targeting Anon… then yes. I’m happy to be the Bearer for your Element of Hatred.” She made a hissing sound. “There’s no shortage of hatred in my heart for Anon.”

“Don’t kill any of the other Bearers. Then the Elements of Harmony would reset and I’d have to go to all the trouble of figuring out who the new ones are and watching my back. But if you can kill Anon, go for it! I doubt you can pull it off, but if you succeed I’ll throw you a party.”

“I don’t need a party, I need your lack of interference. If I kill Anon, will I keep this Element?”

“Mmmmaaaaaaybe,” I said, meaning no. Once Anon’s dead I won’t need to have Disharmony Bearers anymore; I can take back all my Elements, and probably destroy and remake them or something. New names and powers, definitely. “Hatred” and “Deception”, so passé. I’d go for the Element of Mean Girls and the Element of Passing Notes In Class and the Element of Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful, Hate Me Because I’m Better Than You and so forth.

“Then I accept.”

She put the amulet around her neck. Immediately the copper turned green, the gold turned white, and the shape of an obsidian pony changed to the shape of a Changeling queen, holes in legs and all. I whistled. “Nice! It likes you!” Now the flames looked like the fire of a Changeling transformation.

“Will you get rid of that moat?”

“Oh, picky picky. You know, some ponies would sell their own mothers for waterfront property.” I manifested a rocket jetpack. “Toodles!” The rocket fired as if it was about to take off, but then I teleported.

***

So. All Elements disposed of! Job well done, me! I’m taking the rest of the day off to show Gilda some seriously bad monster movies from the human world. 

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash came up with a plan to sneak out of Trixie’s “force shield”, which of course is actually an illusion that makes you think you are walking in the opposite direction; Fluttershy got some beavers to bring in a hollow log. No one seems to have noticed that if beavers can walk straight through the shield without bumping into anything, it plainly means there isn’t really a shield. I don’t know whether that’s Anon-related stupidity—Trixie’s his Designated Villain for this matchup, so nopony can just defeat her – or Trixie’s nifty use of her Element. Either way, they put the log straight through the force shield and had Rainbow crawl through, and Rainbow headed to Canterlot. 

I suspect very strongly that Anon’s going to be here tomorrow. Can’t wait to watch the show!