We continue the journey into one of the darkest chapters of the entire series. Think about that for a minute. We already know that this is Cadence’s final battle and that she, as the Changeling Queen and the last symbol of hope in this world, will die. Even after all this time Cadence still greets Twilight with the chant of their Secret Handshake, trying to get her to remember the time they spent together. It doesn’t work. Meanwhile Avalon the beautiful kingdom of Changelings that resisted Discord for 500 years is burning to the ground. It was once known as the Everfree Forest before Cadence was able to control it. The Queen is determined to heal Twilight, to make her remember the joyful childhood they had spent together. She actually doesn’t have a connection to the other corrupted, since the events of the Canterlot Wedding never happened. And ironically in this battle the immortality and healing factor of the fallen heroes works against them, since Cadence doesn’t have to hold back. As Fluttercruel tries a surprise attack she is knocked out of the sky by three Changelings disguised as Spike and caught by the still loyal Rainbow Dash. Discord is watching this entire battle from the back of the real Spike and is too much of a coward to engage the Alicorn of Harmony in a normal battle. Even his attacks the flaming meteors are long distance attacks, after all these years he is still afraid of Harmony. The three Changelings (Lady Bug, Sting and Morning Glow) are the last ones left; the others did either evacuate or were killed. They are here at the side of their beloved queen against her orders and the Elements react accordingly to their new characters. Twilight tells them to never question an order, Rainbow Dash tells them to abandon their queen to save themselves, Rarity just talks about hording more stuff, Applejack lies about their beliefs being dark and gloomy and Angry Pie in an uncharacteristically talkative mood claims they are the same parasites they were before. Cadence tells her subjects that not a ruler or the place but the people are what make a country what it is. The Changelings did really become something else and were able to change (irony) from parasites to symbionts. Cadence made Avalon into a safe heaven for everyone and all they had to do in return was to love her subjects. It was a great symbiosis that ends now with Avalon burning to the ground. But what really hurts the Queen is to see that Twilight seems to have lost her curiosity that always motivated her to learn new things. Rainbow tries to convince her to give up but Discord immediately ensures the Queen that she will be tortured horribly if she will do that. She criticizes the corrupted for replacing their hearts with the Elements of Chaos and only Rainbow Dash and Applejack feel shame at hearing this. The others are too far gone to care. Twilight tells her that the Changelings will return to their old ways without her but since this is a flashback we already know that she is wrong. Even 500 years later the Changelings are still fighting against Discord and remembering Queen Cadence.

Then we get a brief flashback to how Cadence became the Queen of Changelings. She went to the Changelings to look for help against Discord and was attacked. But Cadence was able to defeat the already weakened Chrysalis. A world ruled by Discord doesn’t have enough love to feed the swarm. Now after the battle the old Queen is falling apart. Cadence notices that there is something different in her eyes compared to old queens she saw on pictures. Maybe this Queen had developed a sense of self the others lacked. This would have led her to attack Canterlot at the Wedding to build her own nation and this did motivate her to rather fall in battle than to slowly perish in this horrible world. Instead of one final attack Chrysalis embraces Cadence and leaves the Changelings to her. The shock makes Cadence remember her forgotten life and the horrible war. She recalls how Rota Fortuna lost her wings to Discord’s torture and how Currus sacrificed himself to Justitia instead of being eaten by the insane Havoc. Then the Goddess drops her barriers and introduces herself to the swarm. We also learn Chrysalis’s full name: Chrysalis Kipepeo Linsila AVALON. Now this name is really something, Kipepeo is another term for butterfly and Avalon is the legendary island from the Arthurian legend and also the name of the future kingdom of Changelings. Cadence still named her kingdom after the Queen that attacked her. The love of the new Queen is enough to sustain the Changelings for now and they begin to become something different.

In the present Cadence is still proud on the development of the Changelings and it is very likely that something similar would never happen if Discord didn’t have taken control of the world. She talks about how destruction can be a new start which is extremely ironic, since in an alternate universe written by Kendell2 this was exactly what happened to this world. With Twilight’s magic it destroyed itself by changing the flow of events and became something else. You know you are in a hellish world where the entire world vanishing and being reborn as something different is still considered by the inhabitants to be an improvement. Both Angry Pie and Fluttercruel just want to continue their slaughter but Discord holds them back to get enjoy more suffering. He will regret that in ten seconds. The Queen orders her three loyal subjects to assume her form and tells Lady Bug that her name is now Princess Mi Amore Cadenza Equestria Avalon, the new mother and future Queen of the Changelings. The new Princess’s magic begins to change as well. The reactions of the corrupted are rather telling. Twilight and Rarity are confused, Rainbow and Applejack understand and Fluttercruel and Angry Pie don’t care at all. The pragmatic Cadence did leave a heritage behind to ensure the development of the Changelings and we know that this will work. As the three Changelings teleport away Rainbow Dash holds back Fluttercruel and Applejack stops Angry Pie. Rainbow’s logic is especially entertaining, she claims to be just following Discord’s orders. But Fluttercruel will have a horrible revenge later. When Discord realises his error and gives them the order to attack it is already too late to stop the three from escaping. In all these years he didn’t get any better in cutting loose ends. He always manages to disappoint in one way or another. Twilight follows his orders, Rarity sees it as an opportunity to collect more “treasure”, Fluttercruel and Angry Pie just enjoy the following violence and Applejack and Rainbow Dash openly ignore these orders. Discord has to remind AJ that Rarity and Twilight would be crushed by the realisation what they did and it is very noticeable that he leaves Fluttercruel and Angry Pie out. These two are too far gone. The Draconequus reminds Rainbow that he would need to replace them by corrupting six other ponies to take their place and if he would be defeated as well Sky Ocean would crash into the ground, taking every new Seapony with it. Now the way he talks about them really shows how much he really cares about his daughter or his singing pets.

The following battle shows how powerful the corrupted six truly are. But the irony is that this kind of power is completely wasted in such a world, where there is almost no dangerous opposition. They don’t really need these powers to take down the normal rebels but then the cowardly Discord would have to take on the more powerful threats that appear from time to time like the alien invasion or the Nightmare from another dimension. So it makes perfect sense for him to let them have all these powers, so that once a dangerous battle comes he can hide at the sideline like the coward he is.

Angry Pie is the first one to attack Cadence but the Alicorn evades her easily. The Queen even begins to sing in this battle and the song seems to confuse and weaken the corrupted. Angry Pie is completely lacking the Pinkie Sense and is surprised and punched into the ground. When Cadence uses the orpotunity to cast a memory spell it seemingly leaves the butcher braindead. There seems to be nothing left of her former self. Then Fluttercruel interrupts with a storm of sharp weapons but the Alicorn counters it with a wind spell. When she comes in contact with Harmony she doesn’t just feel pain, she gets turned to stone just like her father. This makes sense since Harmony almost erased the other Fluttercruel as well, even after all her character growth and her willingness to sacrifice herself. Only the reawakened Fluttershy was able to safe her. But this Fluttercruel had none of this. Twilight reawakens Angry Pie with her magic and as thanks she gets a punch from the mad butcher. Rainbow Dash tries her signature move, the Sonic Darkboom but Cadence defends herself with a barrier spell and telekinesis. Both have an aerial battle that is too fast to be seen but it gets soon interrupted. Applejack has apparently gained the ability to shape shift and makes Cadence think for a moment that one of her loyal subjects needs help, only do a surprise attack the first chance she gets. That kind of ability with someone that is a master of manipulation and lies would normally be very unnerving. But since Applejack is easily the most likeable of the corrupted and the seemingly the sanest one of them, it is much more likely that she could use her disguises to sabotage the other corrupted. Twilight did support Applejack in this attack with a teleport. Strange after all this time she is still helping her former friends. Rainbow Dash uses this chance to attack the occupied Alicorn from behind and rams her into the ground. But Cadence again uses Harmony and not only launches Rainbow into the air but also causes the pegasus a breakdown from the realisation of how many innocents she killed. The Queen has to shield herself against magic attacks from Twilight and Rarity, blades from Fluttercruel and raw physical attacks from Angry Pie. Meanwhile Applejack tries to help Rainbow Dash recover from the last attack. Cadence uses her magic to grow trees around her as protection against all these attacks and impales Angry Pie with one. Only a copied version of her own spell forces her to teleport somewhere else. Twilight strangely still has her powerful magic and her ability to copy spells of others just after seeing them cast it. This is really odd since those abilities were said to be linked to her Element of Magic/Friendship. Her ability to copy and reverse spells makes her extremely dangerous but Cadence points out that this also means that she is still learning things not dictated from Discord. Rarity has gained incredible telekinetic powers and uses them to shape worthless rocks into golems to aid her in battle. Her insanity has gotten worse and worse and now she does not only think of these stones as precious treasures but also as her family. She names them like a mother would name her children. After Cadence blasts one of these golems to bits, Rarity calls back her golems and speaks to them. Twilight intentionally didn’t attack at this moment or Rarity would have turned against her for hurting her children. Fluttercruel attacks her by ripping out her own feathers and turning them into weapons. This manages to surprise the Queen since she thought this was another illusion. Fluttercruel manages to have an ability that manages to be dangerous, unique, fitting for her sadistic character and disappointing all at the same time. This contradictory ability shows that this Fluttercruel is truly the daughter of Discord, more on that later. Twilight fires another copy of Cadence’s spell and the Alicorn teleports aside. But Fluttercruel is able to track down the pieces of herself, even when they are teleported to a different location. So she launches another cowardly attack on the wounded side of Cadence. But the Alicorn simply uses strong lighting to fry her attacker thanks to all the metal weapons she is carrying. Then the Queen blasts her with Harmony at point blank rage and this would have likely completely turned Fluttercruel into a statue if Rarity’s golems didn’t interrupt the Goddess. Their movements are nearly perfect copies of the Wonderbolts. Cadence notices that this is likely a sign that Rarity tries to replace what she truly cared about with these things. Fluttercruel and Angry Pie prepare to team up against the Queen but Discord calls his child back. This sudden worry about her is hard to believe since at the beginning of the battle he casually talked about replacing them all with random ponies. Luckily for Cadence she is prepared when Twilight tries to teleport inside her. Unlike the inexperienced just awakened Celestia in her battle against Strife the Queen doesn’t fall for this trick. Just like everyone else Twilight has trouble to concentrate as the harmonic song echoes around the battlefield, but she finds a surprisingly mundane solution in the form of earplugs. Twilight prepares to use the distraction of the stone Wonderbolts to teleport Angry Pie above Cadence for a crushing attack. But suddenly Rarity calls the rock golems back to “talk” to them. She even shapes two to resemble Filthy Rich and Fancy Pants and the Queen is impressed how strong her telekinesis did become. And while Rarity is in complete and total denial about what she is doing, she is extremely honest about other things like planning to steal Diamond Tiara and Golden Tiara from Discord to reunite them with what she thinks is “Filthy Rich”. Then Twilight distracts her with three spells before teleporting Angry Pie above her. But again the Alicorn counters every attack and asks the mad butcher why she is assisting Discord. The answer is very strange. At first Angry Pie claims that there is no reason and then she says that this is the world without laughter she wished for. Twilight forces the Queen to drop the butcher with a series of exploding stones teleported next to her. But in an impressive display of multitasking the experienced Alicorn is able to evade, to heal herself and finally counter the attack by unleashing a powerful lightning attack on Twilight. Now that the powerful unicorn is unconscious Cadence traps Angry Pie in harmonic chains. Then she flies right at the cowardly Discord and Fluttercruel but to her surprise he doesn’t throw Fluttercruel at her but the enormous Spike. Again she is rammed into the ground and all Rarity cares for are that the Queens jewellery might be damaged. There is no love for Spike left. Now Rarity unleashes her full power and shapes a huge armor for herself out of rocks. By now she is twice as big as Cadence. She tries to talk to the insane unicorn but of course doesn’t get a clear answer. But even with this armor Rarity is no match for the Goddess and she calmly talks about the fallen heroes.

Applejack confuses all truths for hurtful truths and all deception for mercy and the love for her friends that she still feels. Rainbow Dash is terrified of decisions, values everything equal and runs away from the inevitable loss. Pinkie Pie is completely consumed by her anger and unable to see happiness as anything else but a sign of weakness. Fluttershy had to witness Fluttercruel using her body to torture and murder and now just wants to die so that this monster won’t hurt anybody else. Rarity in her obsession with worthless treasure is unable to see what really matters. Cadence tells Spike to look after the insane Rarity before talking about the final corrupted. Twilight was just beginning to open herself to friendship and when she first experienced the loss of her friends to Discord’s corruption she wasn’t able to handle it. Then she casts the memory spell on Twilight to remind the unicorn what really matters. In the end Cadence actually manages to reach Twilight and heal her. It is no trick, after 500 years she manages to reach her childhood friend. They hug, talk and do their Secret Handshake. And just in this one moment of distraction Discord makes his move and kills her. For a moment he considers to make her a statue just like the other two Alicorns but then he decides to kill her like Galaxia. And just to twist the knife he makes the purple unicorn think that all this was her fault for distracting her. Before she dies, Cadence tries to desperately convince her that this is not true. Twilight is absolutely broken to helpless to do anything, to be forced to see this and the mockeries her former friends have become. This time she doesn’t even resist it when Discord turns her back into his slave. The death of all hope is the darkest hour.

And just after Cadence is dead Fluttercruel starts to devour her remains and even force feeds Rainbow some of the flesh as revenge for her earlier intervention. She only stops when she sees that Rainbow isn’t suffering enough, since in her self-loathing the pegasus convinced herself that she deserves this as punishment. It is easily one of the most disgusting acts ever committed in this Series and makes Fluttercruel easily the second most vile and unlikeable character in the entire series so far. Only Discord himself surpasses her now. The third place goes to the mad butcher Angry Pie who went from killing others, who she thought laughed at her, to killing ponies just to show them that this is a world without laughter. Both may have started as victims themselves but now there is simply nothing even remotely good or likeable left. Since Fluttercruel is a different person from Fluttershy she had absolutely no connection to the others and in all the years they had to spend together this didn’t change, she just got worse. Even the counterpart of Angry Pie in the other world was a complete monster that no one missed when it was forcefully reabsorbed by Pinkie Pie. Both sadists like to team up to bring more suffering over their victims. And the other four ponies show that being infected by Chaos is no excuse for being such monsters, even the insane Rarity is more sympathetic then those two. Twilight does not feel anger or sadness at hearing this horrible story but her body reacts like something within her is in horrible pain.

Then we end this dark chapter with Discord’s thoughts about the corrupted. The weird thing is that these arrogant and hateful opinions would have been a new low for any other villain but for Discord that is completely normal. He did already fall as far as possible when he ruled the world for 1000 years in the past. He tortured the ponies he grew up with, he tortured and ate his own kind personality, he committed genocides just because she could, he corrupted the mother that still loved him into a weapon and he killed Celestia’s and Luna’s caretaker and sister before their eyes and offered Celestia sex after that one. There is no more line to cross; no more act of evil to commit that would be worse than what he already did. For the rest of eternity no matter what vile act he does, it is just more of the same. He quite literally already did everything he ever could do as an evil overlord. And he is not really happy with how the corrupted six turned out to be. He is frustrated that Applejack instead of using lies to hurt others like the Draconequus does, tries to use them to lessen their pain and support Twilight, Rarity and Rainbow Dash. She knows better than to try this on Angry Pie and Fluttercruel. And just like Rainbow Dash she is actually brave enough to stand up to Discord. He is frustrated that Angry Pie is a laughter hating lunatic that would just attack him as well instead of the random and chaotic pony he knew and once saved from Luna. He had already plans to make a chaotic family with her but has given up on that for quite some time. That is a bit strange, since the solution, at least in the past, would have been very easy: Just put Twilight and Angry Pie in the same room, turn Twilight back into her old self, let her cast an memory spell on Angry Pie to cure her, turn Twilight back and then corrupt Pinkie Pie into something different. To be honest now it is much too late for this but if he had tried at all to corrupt Pinkie Pie in a different way, he could have the chaotic family he wanted. And this is the second time he did this mistake; he also turned Surprise into a depressed rock farmer. He really did learn nothing. He is frustrated that Rarity is now just greedy and nothing else and that she started to steal his property. But one the other hand unlike the other she really specialized herself at what she did and became incredible powerful with telekinesis to hold up the illusion of her own family. Discord is even impressed that Rarity came up with this idea. He begins to make plans to breed her together with Spike to either kill the dragon in a horrible way by the hoofs of the person he loved (only the Element is immortal) or to create a race of dragon-ponies. He is frustrated that Rainbow Dash still hasn’t given up yet and still tries to save lives in this broken world. No matter how often she is presented with a sadistic choice, she recovers eventually and continues to try to minimize losses. That Rainbow Dash never broke completely in all those years of Chaos speaks volumes for her character and strength of will. He is frustrated that Twilight is still in perfect order, instead of being as chaotic as she was in the Smarty Pants incident. The Draconequus knows that she can be chaotic but he just can’t unlock this personality. And she keeps removing the flaws in his Chaos; she can do that for all eternity since this Chaos is so poorly created. Discord actually made a promise to his Elders to end the suffering of Derpy once she does enough rounds around his castle but the number of required rounds is ridiculous high (seven quadrillion). He will give her back her child and then both can run around the place to free the other one from transformation. And after that they will be all forced to be his clowns for the rest of eternity. He is frustrated with Fluttercruel’s lack of progress as well. But the irony is that she is his perfect daughter. She is cruel, sadistic and an incredible slow learner. So it took her nearly forever to learn to use her chaotic powers and even after that they are very limited to only one trick. She is the daughter of Chaos itself, she should be much more versatile. And while her ability to turn parts of herself into weapons fits her sadistic character perfectly and is extremely dangerous, it also reflects that this is quite literally all she is. Without her ability to regenerate, which all the other corrupted also have, this one unique ability would cripple her in seconds. That she doesn’t develop any other chaotic abilities really disappoints Discord. He doesn’t realize the irony that deep down he is just as predictable. He still does the same old chocolate rain trick and the same old day and night switch. She shows all his flaws very obviously and he is still unable to truly understand that.

At this point two questions remain: Who is interviewing Discord? It is likely not Twilight since he also talks about her like she isn’t in the same room and he never did that before. But the bigger question is: How is it possible that after ruling this world for hundreds of years and corrupting the heroes for all this time he still isn’t happy with at least one of them? They are all failures; nobody of them is like Discord wanted them to be. How could he fail in a world ruled by Chaos? How can his Chaos be so stagnant and predictable that he needs Twilight to micromanage it? This is the kind of situation Entropy would consider a good joke. He failed at the one thing that should be impossible for him to fail. He failed at Chaos. The personification of Chaos failed at living up to what should be his very nature. Celestia and Luna are more than the Perfect Day and the Perfect Night, they both had very interesting character development and became rulers of the land when they had to take this position. But Discord is actually much less than the Perfect Chaos. Failing at Chaos should be impossible for him and he did that anyway. That is truly an achievement nobody would want. Maybe a more fitting title for him would be the Perfect Nonsense or the Eternal Repetition.

Overall while we already knew that Cadence would die but she surely didn’t went down without a fight. Until the end she managed to dominate the battle. And it least Twilight didn’t kill her in her corruption like she murdered so many others. But the really sad thing about Cadenc’s brave last stand is that she actually could have won if she had different priorities. If she would have concentrated on immobilising the corrupted and then went directly for Discord she could have won. Discord was extremely vulnerable against her powers. Only after that should she have tried to cast memory spells on the fallen heroes. But she can hardly be blamed for wanting to heal her childhood friend as soon as possible. And it would be unfair to criticise her lack of reasonable thinking after she just had to watch her kingdom burn to the ground and countless of her beloved subjects died in the inferno. It also seems clear that both Fluttercruel and Angry Pie will go down with Chaos. We already saw in Truth in AJ’s dreams that they will turn against the others in the critical moment and at the picnic in the final chapter of Mind Games! the interviewers, who are implied to be connected to Twilight from this world, hinted that both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were already dead.