//------------------------------//
// Chapter 29: In the Time When Shadows Still Wept 
// Story: Favorable Alignment 
// by Ice Star 
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Sombra:


I used to cry often, but only when I was sure I was alone. I wasn't always sure if Onyx was just hiding that he was still lingering in my mind with me.

It was an absolutely horrifying feeling. Sometimes I wished he was some sort of physical parasite that I could just cut out of me, no matter how deep I had to drive the blade. He was already trying to tear me apart, so why would he care if I did it myself?

It's because I was the irreplaceable weapon, bound to the one who wielded me. That knowledge was as everyday for me as the sight of a throne is for you, Luna.

There really wasn't much for me to do in that castle when he wasn't using me during the day. One of Onyx's favorite things was to get me during the few times of the day when I was still conscious, but was not in complete control. All my actions would be puppetted by him, and he would be the one speaking. From there he would prove to me that he could rip ponies apart from the inside out.

He used my magic and my name to do it. He used me to do it, and that's one of the things that made me furious - which was something he loved dearly.

Usually, I would be active at night. I had the whole night to myself for disposing of whatever I found around the castle, creating hidden rooms almost as suffocating as the rest of the place felt, and always watching my back for the ghost mare who haunted certain parts of the castle this insomniac happened to pass by.

Or maybe the old queen was just a ghost my sleepless mind thought up, at least some nights.

There were already dozens of them, and I was an illiterate fifteen year old out of his mind. I was bound to see some things that weren't there.

I was terrified of sleeping. Because of Onyx. Because of the crystal ponies. Because of the ghosts.

More than anything, it was because I was never sure if I would wake up myself. 

The spells I used to keep myself awake then weren't very good. Being illiterate is horrible when you have the inclination to experiment with spellcraft that I do. Some of the spells to get rid of the ghosts had the opposite effect. They made me hallucinate more than ever and turned my senses against me. On those nights the castle was my tomb more than anything else.

I would run away from things that weren't there, attack things that couldn't be, and be injured by things that weren't what they seemed.

It felt like everything was after me, and I would often lock myself in closets - the closest thing to 'safe' places - and cry, screaming for things that I saw to go away until I passed out on my own, or until I tried to make myself black out.

I sill remember those times clearly.

One night, somewhere around the time I turned sixteen... I don't know what my birthday would be, but I could guess. I had locked myself in what I thought was one of the closest.

It was a small library and some place that Onyx would never bother to go, and that he would hate. Since I had nothing better to do and I was intrigued, I sat down and pulled out the biggest book I could find. I found that it was filled with pictures as well. I learned later that it was an atlas. I stayed up all night poring over a single page, staring at keys and names I couldn't read for hours upon hours, until I knew it would be best to leave my small haven.

From then on, I would return to that library each night. Teaching myself to read wasn't much as of a problem as I thought it would be. I was no foal who had to be taught the basics of language. While I couldn't read language, I could speak it. I knew that all these symbols meant something. Such basic knowledge went a long way, and I was already a genius. It didn't take much for me to have my muzzle buried in thousand-plus page tomes of gods, history, and magic. I learned to read quickly, and then I learned to read correctly too. Soon, I was knowing every word and wanting more with each cover I closed.

I realized that I was meant to read, but I think everypony is. Every word stayed stuck in my mind, like a library within me. I could recite entire equations without error and recall entire volumes as time went on, and it felt natural.

Luna, one of the things I've left out about myself is what I came from.

Shoved far away from the eyes of any who bothered to look was a book of dark magic in Starswirl's possession. He had no knowledge of what power it held, but this book - the Book - could ensnare minds like Onyx's without any trouble.

It knew things. It would give you everything you ever wanted at the cost of everything you were and could be, until you lived a life that would be everything you never wanted.

The Book certainly wasn't from the time of the tribes, some other time, I'll tell you what became of it. You can remind me, if you want to.

If you ask me, it was beyond a monstrosity. I came from the power it held, and have a copy of the forever-changing eldritch knowledge burned into my mind. That copy was something Onyx didn't know of, and never found out about.

I'm living eldritch knowledge even without the copy.

But back when I first learned to read, I was always in need of a more ambitious pursuit when it came to knowledge.

After all, knowledge beats power, and it always had a price. By amounting so much of it I was priceless. 

I also wanted to know what the phantom tome in my mind said. Compared to the straightforward nature of most books, I knew that this one would be more difficult to unravel.

Of course, I was right. If all other volumes were straight paths from the start to the end, then the Book was a labyrinth that even I had some difficulties navigating. Each spell was never as it seemed and each intention more deceitful, malicious, and genius than the last. I was still able to see what was going on and that there was more magic for me to learn, and of course it wouldn't be hard for me to master more magic. I had already taught myself dead languages, and magic wasn't something I had ever been horrible at. Now, I had more wealth than a literal mountain of gold could compare to.

My magic began to grow to what it is today, the circumstance of my acquired knowledge blending almost perfectly with my power that increased with age. These were the same powers that Onyx took more and more pleasure in abusing. This was the same power that only bound me to the Crystal Empire with each passing year, and all but ensured my worsening treatment.

When I first found the spell that created me, I saw that was no race-changing spell at all. Instead, it was just another trick to create a being like myself. He had never seen through it, or second guessed anything told to him by magic that filled his head. I shouldn't have expected him to, and while it wasn't surprising, the exact nature of the spell that created me always bothered me.

I didn't need to ask who would try and devastate themselves - and to an extent, me - like this. I had more than the answer and the proof of the former. I had Onyx himself and everything he had ever thought as testament to this. Questions never had much of a point to me when all I had to do was simply look or listen to find an answer; the picture was always worth more than the frame.

At this point, when I was almost seventeen, I didn't even need a reason to hate Onyx, but I had hundreds. All of them were familiar and clear to me. Why wouldn't they be? Still, knowing what he agreed to, and all the things he never knew in order to create the perfect monster, only served to deepen the hatred that I still carry for him. As our time in the Crystal Empire wore on, I hated him for creating me.

And that meant that I hated living.

Like the Book, there is always another meaning or some other thought behind what I say. Though, you know I'm far more honest. Everything I do is centered around me, to some extent, and it branches out from there.

Speaking is no different. With it, I can define myself, assert myself, twist things, illuminate things, and hide things. With words I can also fight, and I fought him with a constant war of words that were an extent of the only rebellion I had: my own self. He tried to tear me apart, and there was no way I was going to go out without burning in the first place.

By the time I was seventeen, I was all rebellion in a war that would take us both. My mind was sharper than any knife he could take to me, but I was still able to bleed. Do you remember the boots and cape I had to wear all those years ago?There was a good deal of scars beneath them. They're gone now, regenerating takes care of that. I hate those kind of scars simply because I find them constant and unsightly above all else.

They aren't something to be proud of.

I don't miss them.

Sometimes, I shifted parts of me - mostly my legs and sides - to shadow in order to stop the bleeding. Where do you think I first learned to do that and why? It was for self preservation. Everything was.

But then, I think I would have wanted to stay silent most of all and draw myself deeper into my own mind and the infinite despise that scorched Onyx like the fire that I had to use-

Never mind. Maybe I'll recount that part some other time.

Trust me when I say that you don't want to hear it. Probably not ever. It'll be a long time before I want to.

Don't ask again, I'm getting off track, Luna.

I continued to waste away during my seventeenth year, where the only proof a larger world were your stars, era upon era of distant lands, and everything else found in the libraries that Onyx never bothered to touch in this well-preserved Empire. My desire to rip through page upon page of whatever I could get my hooves on increased.

Being from knowledge - and not a pony - as well as treated like an object made me want to be around those books more and more, not simply for what lay between the covers and scrawled between the rolled-up shapes of scrolls. I liked them in the way the smallest foal likes to drift between their parents and older family when surrounded by strangers at a party.

They weren't alive, I knew that. I wasn't treated like I could think most of the time unless it could be used to hurt me. Books weren't ponies, and neither was I. They couldn't say anything stupid or hurt me. I liked their silent company and because of our similar natures, mostly in origin, that is. Books have been the closest thing I have ever had to kin, or something similar to me, as impossible as that is.

Only in the Empire was Onyx able to rule me as he ruled the crystal ponies with dark magic, myself, and the endless jealousy he has for all that is better than him. Were I to be outside of the Empire in what I judged as a lost world - I knew of only two gods who lived - I would end up dead within a week due to the duel nature of my existence with Onyx, unless we were to usurp something again.

With this knowledge, I began the futile hunt for the exact nature of my bond with Onyx and the magic that tied us together while continuing to learn what I could. Demons weren't exactly prominent even in those texts, and at least not by name. What little there was on them - or other similar creatures - in a world where the gods still walked among other equines and empires flourished were fleeting references in epics and other sagas that offered little insight to my nature. Even the Book was not something I could dabble extensively in.

I had to change the way I searched, scouring tomes for things that normal magic couldn't do by educating myself on everything it could do in order to draw up what I could of the other side of magic. There was much cross referencing of obscure texts and passages from sources that were long forgotten, even at the time these things were written.

With the limited time I had for such activities, I had to be even more creative. Onyx liked to raid the crystal ponies the way any imbecile of a thief would chose to plunder gold instead of knowledge or some other practical good. He still presumed that I could not read or that I could simply read very little. Every time I gained enough control, I could hide or preserve as many written sources as I could, sometimes for me to retrieve later.

I read through the diaries, journals of independent research, folklore of many of the ponies Onyx and I killed to the point where I could write more accurate biographies of themselves than their autobiographies could ever aim to be. I only found flat tales of monsters and all the things that would be yelled at me put on paper, among tall tales of ancestors' deeds and half-remembered legends of gods.

You can imagine just how horribly I took the frustration. 

Still, I refused to give up - as if I could in my situation.

While the intended purpose of my activities was to know my nature, by gaining knowledge on what could never be I learned something else: the greater details of the dead worlds.

I knew that I was mortal, but I never really cared about mortality. I was surrounded by it. Little about death had an impact on me. Even when I gave the dead worlds a fleeting thought, I knew that there might as well only be one for me, and it was no different from the world I lived in.

If there was no difference in either Tartarus, then what would be the point in staying?

I could be separated from Onyx if I died; we were two souls in one body, after all. For the first time in my short life since my dreams of travel and seclusion had been robbed from me, I wanted to do something.

I was seventeen years old, and I wanted nothing more than to die.

There was no way I was going to wait around for my death to occur. I was going to die myself, and by my own terms.

On the idealistic side, it would be one last rebellion, at least in life.

I'd make it the most painful one yet. For the both of us.

I'd love any chance to make him suffer when I saw his face when he realized we both stood on Tartarus' threshold and I could try and give him everything and more of what he did to me, before trying to escape into the hellish desolation we would spend eternity in. Perhaps I could have my wish to be alone. Forever miserable, but still alone. Life had always tried me, but it's not like I could complain even if I cared enough to. He would suffer enough on his own because I could always survive when he had always needed me.

Like the great snake of legend, I would consume myself.

And my efforts would go down in flames.

I know this is a grim tale, Luna, but I don't lie when I say that I've never felt much of anything that could be called happiness in those years. They were the greatest years of Onyx's life, which meant that they were only ever going to be the worst of mine.

The night I had everything planned, I broke down in tears over the book I was reading in the corner of the library I always backed myself into for reading. I had the knife - a large, nasty thing - I was planning to use under my cloak. I just needed to be ready, as if that was something that could come easily or one could prepare for. Instead, I kept crying. This was the thing I wanted to do most with my life now - end it - and I was too busy trying to refrain from curling into a ball on the floor.

To say I wasn't scared would be lying, but fear wasn't what I felt most then. I wasn't going to miss anything that anypony would ever stop to consider: the books in the libraries, the dark sky at night, the way clouds looked in the day, the light of the stars, the taste of snow, the look of words, the color green, the way light reflects in ice, and anything that amounted to the few things I liked about the world.

I would miss being alive, as much as I wanted to be dead.

I wanted to go to all the places I had read about and see places that I had never even heard of. I wanted to see if there was any food that actually tasted good. I wanted to steal things and read more.

I wanted an adventure.

I also wanted to die, because even if I used to always want to live, I hated living almost as much as I hated Onyx himself and what I was put through and everything that was in my head because of him.

When I couldn't stop crying, I had to try to force myself to try and concentrate on that and that alone, which caused me to sink deeper into distress until I was screaming at myself to get it together.

Onyx rarely paid attention to me at night. A few times, in the earliest days of his reign, he had caught me wandering the castle and tormented me along with the ghosts and visions of things that weren't there. The only other times he had caught me was when he needed me - who he would never admit was the superior, smarter one - to construct another hidden room, something he never had the skill to do properly. 

Even though I had never had anything external of myself then, this room - a secret to him and a testament to everything I had been up to - had been mine. And I knew that everything was going to be worse when the phantom feeling - something like a brief burning headache for me - that marked his oncoming presence faded. For a brief moment, I was able to return to what I had been here for beyond contemplating my own death: bringing about those events.

I had to think of something coherent in that desperate panic, and my mind naturally thought of something almost instantaneously. I quickly scrambled past - or rather, through, shelves since I sometimes found myself dissolving into shadow when I was panicking - and face the far wall with the knife aimed at my own chest. Only the glow of my horn lit the gray room that I had never even risked a candle in. I needed to hear his voice to show him what I was about to do, that he would be coming with me to Tartarus - and how horrified he would be when there wasn't anypony to hurt any more - but I wasn't going to protest this.

Tartarus and the Crystal Empire were different names to describe the same place.

The same world.

If I could be free, I could do anything I wanted in Tartarus, since I wasn't one to be trifled with. A mad shadow who was gone just as quickly as he came, but burned worse than any flame is exactly what I would be there. If I really wanted to, if I disregarded all of my nature, then I could even be the monster they wanted to be. I could never do that, and I wouldn't humor them. Not now. Not ever.

Of the many thoughts racing through my head, one of them was how if I didn't succeed and everything went wrong...

The rest of my life would be worse. Far, far worse no matter how many rebellions.

The chance that I might lose myself would become even greater.

I barely saw the sun now, due of my nocturnal existence in the Crystal Palace. On rare occasions, I had watched the sun set over the world that I would never get to see, but I had never witnessed daybreak over the Empire.

Here I was now, near begging and wishing fruitlessly that tomorrow would come.

I didn't plan on doing this quickly or cleanly. At that time, I had very little skill in changing my chest into shadow - an ax would have killed me fairly easily if I let it. This was to my advantage then - stabbing myself in the heart would have been a horrible way to do things. My mind could conjure up far worse ends for myself without much trouble even if I hadn't endured and witnessed literal torture on a day to day basis.

I was going to stick this knife as deep as possible in my chest until it couldn't be removed and force myself to start reforming around that. I would tear myself apart more slowly and painfully than Onyx ever could, and I would focus all my mental energy into making sure my reformation was as botched, painful, and hurried as possible leaving only enough time for Onyx and I to exchange a few words.

This was my only chance. I would never get to do anything like this again because I'd either be dead or suffering some far worse mortal torment. I didn't want to leave anything left for the crystal ponies and this purposely botched reformation would ensure that there would be little recognizable as me even if I was found within a few days.

Reforming this fast and terribly would put so much strain on myself - as I intended, however gruesome it would be - that I would explode. Yes, literally explode. They'd be scraping splatters of me off the walls and cleaning a messy, soupy gunk made of all sort of parts of me, now unrecognizable off of the walls. I can only guess what they'd have done to me if I had succeeded and chosen something less grisly...

Gah, Luna! It was a long time ago, you don't have to hold onto me so tightly, alright? For the sake of both of us, I'd never do that again. I don't have to go through all of things again, and if I do encounter something similar I have plenty of ways to escape - and more patience - then I did then.

Sometimes I'm even happy, you know when and why. I promise. You don't have to shed so many tears over me or make various attempts to crush my rib cage after tackling me to the ground.

Luna, I swear by the same stars that you do and the same love that you made an oath by, that I'm no longer in the same state of mind that led me to make those decisions. I've seen to much of the world to want to leave it, even if I could. I've met you.

I'm going to finish. Are you sure you want to stay and hear this all the way to the end? You will?

...I'm going to greatly omit parts then, partly because I don't want you to be crying much more. Luna, you've cried enough since we left Equestria, and been managing more than you should. I can't let you have all the glory can I? When do I get my share of soul-crippling depression and unnecessary stress? Why are you hogging it?

Stop laughing, if you aren't going to be generous with it! That is one of your Elements of Harmony, so why don't you live up to it!

Oh? It was your sister's? That's your excuse for being so unbearably selfish? Do you know how much that hurts coming from my...

No, Luna I was not going to say 'lover'!

What's this about co-captains? Fine. We're co-captains. Now may I continue? I'd really like to wrap this up.

Yes, I know the rain stopped. No, I think the sky looked nicer when it was raining.

No Luna, I am not annoyed. May I just finish? This isn't something I'm ever going to tell to anypony again. I want to tell it to you in full - or at least as full as it needs to be - now.

Onyx appeared in my mind and he saw before him everything he never wanted and what he had been up to. For years. He saw part of the reason behind my power and just another reason I fought on. Books he had overlooked on shelves of crystal. Some of the shelves had been tipped over in my scramble and spilled the tomes I had come to care just a bit for onto the floor. He noted how I winced slightly at some of the pages that had crumpled in the fall. When it came to my discomfort and the suffering he had perception almost as good as ours, Luna.

He could see the knife. By slowly starting to slip into my mind, he could feel the hot tears coursing down my face and tell that I had been crying. That I could cry. Next, Onyx gave me his biggest smile just to let me know that I wasn't in control any more. That I couldn't keep secrets from him and that I was never alone.

He wrestled memories of this place - or at least as many as he could from me - and learned of how much I cried here.

He liked that.

He liked it far too much.

We fought with the other in between my screams. Having your mind invaded, something he could rarely do then, and did poorly hurt. He also focused primarily on making the experience painful for me, which meant he didn't concentrate and could only access so much even if I didn't resist. Onyx was furious when he found out the full extent of my plan, and of how I was going to bring us both to Tartarus and leave the Empire in anarchy. 

He wanted to make me pay.

And unfortunately, I now had things he could take from me.

Remember when I said I was going to leave out details at certain points?

This is where that applies. I'll just be skipping to the results of his actions instead.

All those books, utterly priceless and filled with knowledge that wars would be fought over today and revolutionize many fields of academia? That taught me about Alicorns? That held generations worth of history and magic that hadn't been seen by the Tribesponies in eras, and would be the most tantalizing pieces of information to any modern scholar who could even realize that a single paragraph was worth more than their entire existence?

He made me...

...burn...

...I'm so sorry...

...each...

...Luna, I didn't want to. Really, I would never...

...No Luna, I'm not crying. I don't do that any more.

He made me burn each and every one.

Onyx puppetted my actions by allowing me just enough control to feel how painful it was to have him move me, so I could cry all I wanted, and wield the fire that he wasn't as naturally inclined to as I was.

The first and last time I ever begged in my life was for him not to make me do this between sobs and curses. I pleaded for him 'not to kill the books'.

I sounded like a gods-damned child. For the first time in my wretched life, I had sounded innocent. That made me so furious. I acted like those books were alive. 'Kill'.

He told me that I would. That it would be all my fault.

Then when that massacre was over, he said he had a lesson of his own to teach me, since I was so smart and had somehow managed to learn to read. 

He was going to teach me how to write.

Not really, of course. This was Onyx and he lied constantly to me when I never lied to him. Even when keeping secrets from him I never needed to lie like he did.

He had never called me smart before. I... I know he could not have meant it, but that scared me so damn much.

One thing Onyx loved about me - as much as his sadistic perversion of the feeling could manage - was that I could do much more then take a hit and weave proper spells to remove the need for sleep. I could bleed more than a pony and not come out worse for wear in comparison. So, he snatched control again, more forcefully than even he usually did and recovered the knife I had used in my attempt, reminding me that the other libraries would be needing my attention - at least in any of the wings I liked - tomorrow.

Because, much to my ever-increasing dread, tomorrow was coming.

After that, the rest of my forever-miserable life where 'escape' would only mean something I could never do, and I would spend whatever waking moments I had trying to poison myself or do something, anything really...

I mentioned earlier in this damned awful tale that under the armor and cape of the king - at least at the time - I had an array of scars.

Scars might not be the best definition for them. They were mostly just wounds that Onyx liked to re-open at a whim, just when if felt like they might heal as best as they could. I wanted them to be nothing but memories, but he never let them stay that way.

How didn't it hurt him too, Luna? That's simple, really. Even though Onyx was an unwanted guest in my mind he could still feel some things through my nerves. This was an ability he stopped using for all but some of the most basic things after a while. Since I wasn't the one who was a parasite, I'm not sure if I'd know or be able to explain all the intricacies of that perspective. There was another option I know he could use and did understand. Due to his nature as a parasite who was even more unwanted then usual, he could control me without the need to feel anything physical via my body, leaving only a mental imprint at times to alert me of him. This 'helped' further my paranoia and suspicion of almost anything around me.

This enabled him to hurt me to his heart's content with little direct consequence to him. He told me that if I thought of myself as a book so much, then why was I so blank? He tried to make this sound evil or like an interesting joke - I can't quite capture his stupidity so briefly here - by adding a few remarks about 'all books being boring' so it was fitting that I considered myself one.

He forced me to stay conscious and be able to feel everything that came after.

After taking the knife to an exposed part of my wither, he began to laugh a bit when it drew blood. I wanted to look away.

'Hey, Sombra, look! Sombra look! Ink! You really are a book!'

This event became the reason why Onyx had the king wear a chestplate later on, and he liked to remind me why. 

This kid was either sadistically stupid or sadistically sinister, and usually if he was the former he'd be the latter shortly. That had been the smoke. Now, I only had to wait for the flame to burn me.

Onyx started opening as many nicks and cuts as possible until I ran red with dozens upon dozens of scarlet rivulets and my legs had trails of blood on them. Both of us began to feel dizzy, but I was in pain and he wasn't. Leave it to Onyx to not know that irony isn't something you can smelt, but know all the different ways to dissect a pony and drag on torture as long as possible like most foals know the alphabet and comic characters.

I know how to do so as well, but unlike him I don't show that I know those things until I require them. I hope I don't.

No, I didn't actually learn to write. You know that, but he allowed me enough control to feel that those actions - the ones he forced - were not entirely his. With my own blood-coated hoof, I had to write three words on that wall with shaking, broad, and sloppy  strokes that were determined by him.

"You can't win.'

All were in big, capital letters that danced into darkness every time I threatened to blink.

I would never let those words be true.

I would always win, eventually.

I would always defy anything I never saw fit to follow.

I still do, Luna.

I was so exhausted when all this was over and he slipped out of my mind and on his merry way that I collapsed into the ashes of what might as well be the closest thing I had to friends. Each word written in those books was worth more than the lives a thousand crystal ponies and more.

I don't think I can tell you just how much I wanted to cry then, to not feel like I wasn't dissolving in unreleased poison from the inside out.

I don't think I want to.

All these years later, I still don't have it in me to cry. I wish I would, but that was the only part of me Onyx was able to take. I doubt I'll ever get it back. I've accepted that, at least. We don't always get what we want. That's why something isn't there any more.

...And there you have it.

Your silence isn't surprising, but I'm not sure what to make of this look you're giving me, Luna. Don't you realize that there aren't many stories I have about my early life that aren't inherently macabre or dismal?

Was this story too upsetting for you? You did tell me that-

What...? Why did you just pull me back down to the deck? It's not as if I were going to hit my head or anything. I want to go back to my cabin now that you've raised the moon and get some reading done, since I'm going to need it after everything I just told you. Would you mind helping me back belowdeck?

'Don't go'? Luna, why-

You're worried about me? Luna, I swear-

The dream of mine you visited? What abo-

Oh.

Fine.

I'll stay under your wing, but do I really appear that tired to you?

I do? Are you sure it isn't that you just can't take your eyes off me?

Ooh, you aren't denying it? I'm that irresistible to you? Am I perhaps, irresistible enough for you to give me an answer tomorrow on what we're going to being doing about the fact that I still can't feel my right-

Tomorrow afternoon? Well, wake me up then and before I forget. Nothing we said to the other will be told to anypony else, correct? This will stay between us, all of it?

Thanks, Luna.

'Good night, Sombra'? That's certainly one I've never heard before...