Testing, testing, three, ninety-seven, pi r square, gorgonzola, is this thing on?

Hahaha! It works! It�s live! LIVE!

So you may have noticed that this document has abruptly changed from my lovely and graceful pawwriting to something that looks far more mechanical and less creative. {Editor�s Note: No, you won�t, because I�ve recopied the whole thing so it�s all in my pawwriting, which is a lot easier to read than Discord�s, trust me. �ed} The thought occurred to me that the structure of this document has a certain unfortunate degree of a likelihood of failure built into it. If I cannot write about a conflict I�ve encountered until after it�s over and I�ve survived it� well, if the worst happens, and I do fall in battle, I won�t have any opportunity to explain exactly what defeated me, which strictly speaking ought to be the most important thing I could possibly convey to a potential successor.

Well, I�ve at least partially solved the problem. Admittedly if I�m strolling along picking poison joke and minding my own business and Anon leaps out of the bushes and slices my head off before I have a chance to react, it�s still not going to help. (Dear me, I have such a morbid imagination lately. I need to think happy thoughts! Flying rowboats covered with chocolate crustaceans utterly stuffed with broiled banana pudding laced with jalapeno peppers, marzipan, and antique brass. Mmm. More of a delicious thought than a happy one, per se, but I�ll take it.) My solution is more useful for a conflict I see coming, I confess. But at least it�s something.

I�ve etched a magical sigil onto my fang that, when I activate it, takes what I say and converts it to text in the pages of this document. This was not a trivial exercise, believe me; chaos doesn�t handle symbolic magic very well, and if I hadn�t had such extensive experience with casting spells that convert text to speech and read books to me, I might not have been able to manage it. The sigil�s actually quite an attractive accoutrement if I do say so myself; it�s etched in gold, and in order to get around the difficulty chaos has with static symbols, it actually changes as I speak, matching the pattern of my voice. I�ve spared you all the embarrassment of finding yourselves staring as if hypnotized at my gorgeous body art, however, and turned it invisible. Can�t have Twilight Sparkle reverse engineering my sigil and figuring out how to eavesdrop on me, after all.

It won�t just automatically pick up my speech and start randomly transcribing it; I do have to consciously turn it on. Since I have to compensate for the possibility that I won�t have access to my magic, I�ve made it so that I can turn it on with magic, a paw, my tongue, or my lip; after all, if I don�t have access to my tongue or lips, it�s not as if I�m going to be able to speak anyway. It does seem to be working remarkably well. Not the best at punctuation, but, well, you may already have recognized that that isn�t my strong suit either. {Editor�s Note: If you�re reading this copy, you won�t have seen that because I put the punctuation back in, but Discord generally writes like capitalization and punctuation are optional and maybe just a way of adding emphasis. �ed}

Sadly, I have to confess that this particular revelation was not apropos of nothing. Yes, I�ve had another narrow escape, and barely avoided becoming draconequus cutlets, once again. Hopefully this will be the last time I need to regale you with the tale of how I dodged death by the barest of margins after it�s all already over; admittedly it might not be advisable to try to narrate while I�m fighting for my life, but at the very least it might be helpful to whoever comes after me to know who I was fighting, if I fall.

�Do you have any idea how depressing it is to have to have contingencies for my own destruction? I�ve never needed such things before; quite aside from the unlikelihood that anything bad should have happened to me, why would I care about what happens after I�m dead or gone? Being turned to stone twice has something to do with why I�ve changed my philosophy in this regard, I admit. I�ve had it proven to me both that I can be defeated and that I can be in a position to care about what happens after my defeat. If I�d just planted those vines a day earlier, for instance, they�d have almost certainly sprouted up and attacked the Tree a short while after I was turned to stone, freeing me; the only reason they didn�t work is that I was turned to stone the same day I planted them and they had no chance to take hold (I�m guessing. They worked fine in the lab.)

I�d love to have something like that now � a deadpony�s switch, a bomb that will go off if I don�t keep shutting it down, vines that will actually bother to grow. Anything. Instead I have a document, a noble stallion, and a griffon. Not a lot to pin my hopes on there, and if I actually die then it�s not going to do me any good at all even if Anon�s defeated. I mean, I�m quite fond of the fantasy of everypony snapping back to their true selves after I�m dead and realizing how I was heroically trying to protect them from Anon and weeping over my grave, but realistically I�m well aware that no such thing will happen. No one mourns the villain, and even if I go down fighting a greater villain, that still doesn�t earn me the accolades a hero gets. Only four ponies were ever willing to consider me any kind of hero, and two of them are dead and two of them locked me in stone for a thousand years, so that�s that. And what good does it do me to be honored after my death anyway?

It�s the desire for revenge that keeps me going, you know. I want Anon to lose. Even if I die, I don�t want him to reap the rewards of killing me. He�s the one that forced this conflict, he�s the one that closed the dimensional gates so I can�t run. He�s the one who wanted to be a big hero and defeat the Big Bad. There are moments � flickering things, the single pulse of a reverse firefly wiping out the light in my heart for a second or two � when I almost wish I could just give up, when I�m so tired of being afraid all the time that I think about going out in a blaze of glory and letting it end, because frankly we all know that�s how it�s going to end anyway and my situation is hopeless. I mean, I�m putting all this effort into coming up with an elaborate distraction; none of my plans even come close to a means of actually stopping Anon. All I�m trying to do is distract him, and he still keeps coming dangerously close to killing me. Why am I trying so hard? Why not face reality and just give up?

Well, firstly, because facing reality is something I prefer to avoid at all costs anyway, and secondly, because I�m not going to let him win. Yes, I�m probably going to end up dead. Or in stone. And no one will mourn me, and I�ll be forgotten, and he�ll continue to parade around being a big hero and warping everything he touches, and no. I refuse to allow that. I can�t.

So. Now the odds that I�ll be able to tell all of you exactly what brought me down in the moments before my destruction are considerably improved, and hopefully that will make it more likely that one of you ponies will be able to learn from whatever mistake took me out, and actually defeat him.

�Oh, I�m being so morbid! Come now, life is too much fun to waste it moaning and groaning over the thought of impending doom. Particularly now that my immortality has been rendered moot and I might well be looking at a finite span, it�s even more important to spend whatever�s left to me having fun!

Too bad there is nothing fun on my current agenda. I need to finish writing this, and then� ugh� I have to spar with Gilda. I really don�t see the point to this; even without my magic I�m three times her size and I�ve got all the same claws she does, but she�s gotten it into her head that I of all creatures need to learn some fighting techniques that don�t rely on magic. I�m only humoring her because she saved my life, if not my dignity.

I am promising myself some fun-time after this, I swear. First I�m going to get revenge on Applejack. Kick the stuffing out of me, will you, Apple Pony? Bet you won�t like it when your entire crop turns into balloons and floats off! And then, I�ll turn them back into apples� as soon as they�re all floating above Rainbow Dash�s house while she�s sleeping. How are you gonna like them apples, Rainbow? The kind that pelt down on you like delicious missiles and batter your home and your body until you�re covered with bruises and your cloud home is peppered with more holes than Swiss cheese? Then just for good measure, I�ll make it so that the moment a pony touches them, they explode into super-thick gooey ooze. No, I�m not the sort to send a pony to the glue factory, but I will be more than happy to bring the glue to the ponies.

Or I�ll come up with something completely different, because planning too much in advance is a thing I prefer to avoid.

In any case, I suppose I need to tell you all about my humiliating experience du jour. I do so dearly hope this is the last time I have to slink home with my tail between my legs to write about how something terrible happened to me. Next time at the very least I�ll be able to avoid the whole slinking home first part.