He arrived without warning, something Tirek didn’t expect. If anything could be expected of a creature like Discord, it was some degree of showmanship: swirling smoke, crackling fire, the sting of ozone clawing at your nose. Instead, he simply was, where a moment before nothing had been.

“Have you come to gloat?” Tirek asked him. A rasping cough chased his question, itching in his throat before he swallowed it back. Enfeebled though he was, he still had his pride. So, it seemed, did Discord.

“I doubt it.” The draconequus raised a yellow-scaled claw, considering each talon with pantomimed disinterest. “Seems an awful waste of a trip to come all the way down here for that. It’s such a nightmare traveling through Tartarus this time of year. You wouldn’t [i]believe[i/] the traffic.”

Tirek wasn’t surprised. Even for Discord, reaching this place was no simple task. His cage had rusted away in time, but the veil of unnatural darkness around him remained, absolute and impenetrable in every direction. Only the cold stone beneath his hooves tethered him to reality, its unblemished chill his only anchor to what felt like an echo of life. His visitor’s identity notwithstanding, he couldn’t help but relish the change in scenery.

“The Princesses sent you.”

Discord shrugged, a pillar of rock rising behind him with the motion. His arm fell to his side when he sat down, but his claw stayed where it was, rotating in midair so he could examine its opposite side. “In perfect honesty, it was my idea.” As his talons rejoined his body, a hint of a smile played across his lips. “Ironically, they thought I might… talk sense into you.”

Tirek laughed: a gravelly, knowing sound. “What fun is there in making sense?”

Discord chuckled as well. “What fun, indeed.”

Tirek sighed, for himself and Discord both. How low his former ally had sunk, and how completely this time. He’d been right to leave him behind, and wrong to show him mercy. The next time he was able, he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

“I was a fool to betray you,” Tirek began. “You’re more powerful than I ever was.”

“I am,” Discord replied. “And you were.”

“They trust you. Even after you double-crossed them. They’ve allowed you into my chamber. You could get me out.”

Discord dipped his chin, a thoughtful spark gleaming in his eyes. “I could.”

“Then let me help you! I’ll join you this time, follow your every command! Together, we could destroy the Elements, make the Princesses bow before us, take Equestria for oursel--”

A wheeze snuffed out the fire in his promise, and the hacking that followed made the rest of it moot. When Tirek straightened up again, Discord stood with him, his face expressionless, his eyes naked and dull.

“Lying doesn’t flatter you, Tirek,” he said, his brow taking on a judgmental tilt. “And trust me, you need all the help you can get.”

A scoff scratched at Tirek’s aching throat. “You’re one to talk,” he rasped. “What have you ever been but a liar?”

“Oh, many things,” Discord replied, counting off each answer on his golden-furred toes. “Joker, grinner, lover, sinner… and more than anything, a fool like you.”

So used to solitude as he was, Tirek found himself tongue-tied. Silence persisted for a moment, then Discord leaned forward and smiled again. “Do you know what I admire about ponies? They’re consistent. No matter how much they suffer, under your hoof or anything else’s, they don’t break. They stay precisely the same: honest, humble, hardworking… merciful. Good.”

“Consistent?” Tirek’s outrage gave him breath enough to voice it. “You’re Discord! The spirit of chaos! The last thing you should admire is consistency!”

“Is it?” Discord shot back. “Chaos is consistency, Tirek. Everything pointing the wrong way, everyone in their improper place… why, unpredictability is the most predictable thing there is! Now deception, dishonesty, betrayal… saying one thing and meaning another. That is inconsistent. That is what you are, Tirek.” Discord’s grin grew wider--toothier. “And what I was for trusting you.”

Tirek’s anger grew cold in his chest. “The Princesses… you said they told you to reform me!”

His visitor took one step forward, then a longer one. “No,” Discord murmured, “I didn’t.”

There was nowhere for Tirek to hide. The darkness around his cell held him quivering in place. “Wh-what is this? What did you come here for?"

Discord towered over him. His claws were clenched. His smile was gone.

“Something a pony wouldn't do.”