Chapter 1
As many hours as I had spent treading the pages of magical treatises and existential hypotheses in the Crystal Archives it was not until I had returned to the Castle of the Two Sisters that I would say my quest had truly begun. The moon was high and full and the Court of Night, with their masks and lofty countenances, filled the throneroom. Starry tapestries hung between vaulted windows and vinegrown columns whose pale growth shone with with the moon's same radiance. What ponies had managed to attend gathered and conversed here and there in small pockets, whilst upon her nocturnal throne Luna sat watching contentedly, if quietly, over all. Her eyes fell upon me as I neared, and I offered a deep bow.
"Moon's majesty."
"Arise," she said, her voice resounding off the walls with its power. I obeyed. "We thy dress and decorum recall. Thou'rt of the Crystal Empire, northron blood but equine all the same. Wherefore camest thou hither, good stallion?"
"I seek aid to weave a complex sorcery," said I. "Mine understanding 'tis that hither gather the greatest of scholars and unicorns, and I would be remiss not to plead thine approval in seeking their assistance, wont as I am not to lure them from affairs of greater import, Princess."
Luna nodded regally. "Wethinks 'twould thee delight to learn our scholars and sorcerers are let to pursue whither they will. Thou shalt their aid hath, if it please them."
I bowed again in gratitude. "I thank thee, fair and just Princess of the Night, and bid thy leave to part on my pursuit if thou wilt."
"Hmm." Luna tilted her head inquisitively. "Permit Us a question ere goest thou. What, pray, is this sorcery thou wishest cast?"
I rose to my hooves again and answered her as best I might without telling all. "'Tis a gift, Princess. For mine heart of hearts."
Luna gave a silky sigh, her eyes took on an enchanted quality, dreamy, lost. They found themselves as they fell again upon me, and I caught in their stare a recognition that almost shook me. "Ah, the lengths to which infatuation will go to prove itself love." She lowered her voice as whispers passed amongst her gathered nobility. What she said next was heard only by me. "No secret is secret from Us. We know who thou'rt, and We have thine heart seen. 'Tis a precious thing thou seekest, as much to thyself as 'tis to Us. Pray thou breakest it not, and We will pray thou dost not lose thyself in the effort."
I bowed mechanically, and she again bade me rise. I did, and I looked at her, mine eyes shaking and heart palpitating. I managed a quiet, "Princess...", and hasted from the court.
Of course she would know. Princess of the Night she was, but also the Princess of Dreams, and I had dreamed much. Of castles and courtship, of meadow walks and days lost gazing twin pools of magenta.
We had met but once, and as an arrow to the heart I was that swiftly smote. Why she entertained my stammering speech and fumbled formalities I dared not question, nor her frequent half-lidded stares nor smiles, nor the earnest laughter at my pale attempts at humor. I doubted mine heart to the last moment when parting she pressed her sun-warm lips to mine, and then I knew.
No normal gift would do, I thought. So I had toiled, and later sought the aid of Canterlot's most learned minds. They would not know until the last, when the calculations and arcane mathematics had dried their share of inkwells, when the candles burned to pools of wax and 'neath every bleary eye were bags. When at length together we found, we thought, the spell I'd make my gift.
A simply furnished room of the Crystal Keep had been our proof of concept. The spell had been cast, and we beheld in amazement the shadows of every object recede. Light remained where darkness fled. In that room disparity had been dispelled. It had worked. All that needed be done, then, was to expand its scope, and to turn it toward banishing something more ethereal.
Months we toiled together in that spire, reaching up from the realms of science and magic known to equinity to heights as yet untouched. We pealed back the fabric of reality and glimpsed many a chilling truth, but our excellent pedigree fortified us against them as well as the unexpected losses we suffered along the way.
Most had perished from exhaustion, laying their heads down to sleep in whatever tome or scroll they had been delving, never to wake again. The less fortunate were taken, swallowed by some thing summoned by the inaccurate transcription of a sigil or a broken salt circle.
I shiver reflecting upon that time, for the first thoughts which had crossed my mind were not of sympathy for the fate of my fellow unicorns but glee that their sacrifice had revealed to me where our designs had erred. I should have known by then I'd gone too far, delved too deep, yet the soul-deep fire within me urged me ever on.
I was the last. The runes were drawn, the salt was poured. All that remained was for the spell to be cast.
Alone I stood, withered and frail. Yet my spirit, strengthened by the dream of a gift worthy of my beloved, blazed. I ignited my horn, and poured into the space above the runes what malice and hatred and ire was resident in me. And I waited.
We had found that it was folly to try and summon up the concentrated evils of the world unaided, for like attracts like. What I had pulled from myself was a lure. The runes over which I had placed it were a trap.
I was too exhausted to carry on any further at that moment. I could barely stand, barely think. I laid my head down, curled up on my hooves. Siren sleep sang me away then, and I dreamed of meeting my love in the new world I will have helped create. A world of peace and of harmony, where of evil no thought can even be formed.
I soon awoke to agony. My bones ached, my joins cracked, my stomach howled and knotted. I huddled silently on the floor for a moment. Then remembered. Where I was. What I was doing. Adrenaline surged.
I looked up. Where a small cloud of darkness had been ere I slept a roiling black storm spread over the whole of the ceiling. Too much. I had let it grown too long. Far more had gathered than the parameters laid out in our spellwork could account for.
But I had to try.
I struggled to my hooves, clenching my teeth, screwing my eyes against the pain. My horn flared to life. I reached out to the thin veil which strained to contain the raw malevolence gathered, to begin its banishment. But in my weakness I stumbled and fell, a front hoof slipping forward and marring the salt circle so painstakingly wrought.
Time froze before me, allowed me to take in my folly. I think I screamed then, but ringing panic had deafened my ears. I tried to flee, I know, but managed only to scrape the floor with wild kicks.
When the circle was broken, the vile, dark mass spilled from its confines and flooded the relatively small space. Invaded every nook and cranny, every crook and corner. It washed over me slowly, oily and slick. I felt it claw its way into my nostrils, pry open my mouth and muffle my cries. Tears poured down my cheeks, up which it traveled to slip behind my eyes, to worm its way into my brain.
No part of me was left inviolate. The more I resisted the harder it pressed, further and further. It felt as if a tumor was growing and spreading over every inch of my insides. And as I lay there, ruined by the manifest darkness of the world, hideous thoughts flashed across my mind; scenes of violence, visions of brutality, slaughter and mayhem and all glimpsed from mine own eyes. Despite myself I wept again, fresh tracks up which the shadow would travel to despoil the seat of my equinity.
I felt myself failing, falling into an abyss whence there was no return. Worse yet I could not bring myself to care. If anything I was angry. Furious. At myself. At the Canterlotian magi for quitting the field. Had they but stayed, had I but been stronger, this would not have happened.
Yet in my dire mood and straits a sliver of light showed. Her face, her eyes, her scintillant mane. Gentle wings, warm lips against mine own. Memories now years distant, yet sense impacts fresh as Spring. I clung to them as I fell, further and further, sank deeper and deeper, as all the ichor that had slunk from the far corners of the world to settle within me.
I stood once more, overcome with rage. I slammed my hooves down, dark crystals erupting from the floor. Upon one of them was a smooth, reflective plane wherein I saw the thing I had become. Red of eyes, black of mane and tail, coat the gray of falling ash. Fangs slavering in razor maw, grotesque forked tongue, the bones and musculature of my face twisted in eternal rage.
Every fiber of my being wanted to lash out and strike down that lifeless rock. Only with the whole of my effort could I stay my hoof, could I force myself to think and consider what had occurred. As if to mock mine efforts my mind was flooded with violent fantasies that bear no repeating in even the worst company. I panted, striving to keep my mind mine own, to stay in control, shivering. I wondered what I could do. Wondered if there was anything that could even be done to fix this, to return to myself again.
Heinous was the cackle on the periphery of my consciousness. Mocking, ghoulish the manifold tongues in which I hear it hurl mock and insult. I could but stare meekly into my new reflection. I sobbed, and no tears came.
I could ill contain this evil from the start. I might stay its hoof in one direction, but that would merely free it to commit villainy in another. Keep it from killing the former regency of the Crystal Empire, it turns the Princess to stone and takes her crown; bar it from killing the populace and consuming their innate magic wholesale, it shackles them one and all to serve in deathly hard labor; hold it back from thrusting prima nocta upon the populace, it takes an unwilling harem to do with as its twisted mind pleases; ten thousand attempts, ten thousand failures. And through them all I could but watch.
It plied mine own knowledge against me, plumbed the depths of my psyche for ways in which to express its newfound autonomy. Memories turned to ash before my eyes. Birds whose songs I'd known by rote were hunted and killed for sport, their wasted bodies fodder for the grand hearth of the Crystal Tower. The archives had been despoiled, its sweet elder librarian reduced to shimmering crystal rubble. My friends, my family, impaled by mine own hoof upon those jagged black crystals, sobbing their last as I railed against the confines of my consciousness.
There was but one thing I managed to keep from it in all these years. One room in the tower. One space in my mind. One hole in my heart. However hard it dug, however madly it raved, however fiercely it tried, never had it pried from me the knowledge of Celestia, nor of pony civilizations beyond the Crystal Empire's borders. Oh, it could learn, I knew, as it had from those disparate degenerates whom had to its brand of foulness flocked with ever more devious means of control. But not from me. Never from me.
And not for naught. Though our meetings had been few I knew from history the nature of the sisters. Theirs were honest hearts and minds, souls sensitive to the plight of others. They would not let this injustice stand. But they would need time to prepare. Time I hope I would give them.
I no longer fear for myself. I no longer believe there can be from this Tartarus an escape, and reflecting upon the madness that lead me hither I fear I deserve it. But I do worry what would happen should this evil's corporeal form be destroyed. Would it fall in a burst of energy, blast my home to ruin as one final mark of my failure? Would it simply assume again this hateful form from its material smoke? My hope is that it will simply fade, and I, laden with my regrets, will slip this mortal coil never to vex another with my folly again.