Favorable Alignment

by Ice Star

Chapter 45: Narcissism Conquers All

I levitated the king's helm in my magic, the crimson aura, like my gaze, completely unwavering as I let the foreign, dead thing bob in my magic. He said it was worth more than my life.

It was a lie, of course.

But my haggard stare continued to observe myself in the large crystal mirror - it could have also just been a particularly shiny, smooth wall; I didn't really care - that hung in the hall. Crimson eyes were the only light in the shadowy and darkened hallways where I had been lurking in the week since Onyx murdered Opal Charm and the Empire fell, the powerful heart these ponies treasured was hidden in a temporary location. He said I was going to make a better one. The skies turned gray with the gathering clouds when it had vanished. I barely glimpsed them, having only been myself in the darker hours now... but...

Why are you just staring at yourself like that?

Opal Charm haunted me, I swear it, but when Onyx was my only company I can't say she - the silent flicker lurking in the edges of my sleepless vision, among other places - was the less desirable of the two. Though I wanted no company and hated ponies, if I had to know torment, I think she'd be the kinder. After all, she only wants to tear me apart.

But Onyx...

I find myself to be incredibly attractive, I replied silently, forcing my thoughts elsewhere. I had already had enough of my voice bouncing off the crystalline surface of everything in the palace, where I was weighed down with all that was yet to be and gradually sealed away from the world with the encroaching äerint that would soon spread out to the rest of the empire as I continued to work my magic.

Every passing day hurt even more. I never slept. The ticking of the clocks was always too loud.

I couldn't even read the clocks.

I destroyed all the clocks three days ago.

I still hear them.

You aren't, Onyx snapped, his tone testy. If you think the long mane is going to stay the way it is to, you're stupider than I thought, stupid book voice-

My name is-

Shut up! You're mine and I can call you whatever I want because that's fair! His shrill tone rung in my skull. There wasn't any way to make it 'better' either. If I drank enough of the stuff in the castle cellars - wines and another name I don't recall - no matter how much it burned my throat or how angry and ill it made me, I could dull it for a while.

It was hard to stop drinking that stuff too... once one bottle was I gone, I wanted - or maybe needed? - another...

...and another, until it all didn't matter anymore...

...or maybe something did?

"I'm not yours," I growl through the fangs he flaunts - my fangs, my must-be-hidden monster teeth. I didn't intend to say anything, not out loud. I treasure the sound of my voice and my words - the former is so ill-suited for him that every time I open my mouth is defiance, defiance, defiance... and I like it.

Just because Onyx is wrong, doesn't mean that he has no power - he has far too much of it. Even now, I feel him slithering in my mind. Part of me is too used to the feeling for my own good and suppresses every shiver and thinks of better things - lonely mountains, deserted glades, and shelves of books spilled in a fight, the words on their pages completely unreadable to me...

The other part, the hidden part of me - like all the world just below the snow - is more terrified than any living being should ever be, not because I scream out at what I must endure, but because I can't.

He looms somewhere within me, prowling around my own mind and using my voice, face, and body - the body of a fifteen year old colt with hot coal eyes and a long, wild mane that I would never, ever let get tangled and dirty. My body is draped with an uncomfortably smooth fabric of scarlet that clings to my fluffy all-winter coat from the year in the snow, white fake-fur rubbing against my own coat and still youthful body in ways I find obnoxious.

He says that I'll grow into it, and that kings are supposed to dress like this. This means having my bare legs stick out from a wave of too-bright red and wearing impractical, cold things like I'm begging to die. I want practical. I want messy. I want my things back, thick rags that were mine and fit me. Those meant something, but they were never mine. Nothing is, and he'll always tell me that. It's one of the few things that isn't a lie. Nothing is mine, but I am and will be.

"My mane stays the way it is," I snap, letting a growl slip too.

Pain flares at the base of my horn and races down my spine, spreading outward in a few agonizing seconds. The hostile wave of half-magic shooting through me is raw and sloppy, invisible, of course, but effective - and I am unable to counter it. I stifle all but the beginnings of a scream out of surprise rather than pain; this particular torment is so basic and familiar to me that it's almost merciful.

Oooh, I think I'm getting better! I can do this to other ponies, right?

I didn't bother to humor him with an answer, instead I grit my teeth and braced myself for whatever abuse came next. I felt the slithering of a terrifying magic-less pony swimming about on the edge of my mind, as though there were something like a wall between us - a wall he loved to kick and chip at, if it were a wall at all.

Ugh, fine. You're supposed to be a voice, and now that I'm a king you're supposed to do whatever I make you. If you're going to be quiet and dumb as always, that's absolutely fine! You aren't the king, and you know it. You'll never have this power. But...

Spill it. I gritted my teeth and almost dropped his precious crown, and my pride swells at the thought of breaking it. Now.

Ponies don't growl.

He always goes on about things like this...

And I know you're only a stupid voice, but you're a pony voice in a pony body, and that body is mine, which means that I don't even need a reason to hurt you. And that's almost a shame, because this time, I have so many reasons to. Ponies don't growl, Sombra, and every time you growl at me...

Agony washes over me again as his presence forces its way into my mind and nerves-

The magic on my horn dies forcefully and painfully. I make a choked noise; he has begun to purposely 'forget' that I need air too with each time he does this because my strangled cries please him.

And then he smashes my head onto the mirror-wall. Screaming at the suddenness of the impact - which I do - would normally prove to be very distracting, but I know that things will be far worse if I don't save the crown. Onyx used anything as an excuse to hurt me. When I showed a knack for working with fabric, he made me sew a little here and work my magic a little there to get a cape. The thread was horrible at first; he brought my face inches from a fire for that. After a dozen tries of both oddly intriguing labor and working my magic the best I could, I managed to make a nice hooded cloak the color of my eyes. It was clean and practical and everything!

He taught me that my bite could be enhanced with magic and forced me to test it out on myself for not getting us - him - something 'royal' enough. After all, what hurts me doesn't hurt him; he's just a second soul, and his senses are... optional? That is the best way I can think to describe it. This meant that he can hurt me as much as he wants and feel nothing. Which brings us to here, where a broken crown forged in magic that felt like anything but mine cannot lie broken.

Once again, I must save a life that isn't mine and forge a legacy that belongs to another.

Gripping the crown in my magic again, I pull the spiky piece of superficial pony status close to me, ignoring the small cuts the metal makes in my neck while Onyx slammed my head into the wall again; I counted three more times between the echoes of his laughter ringing in my ears, a sound that only I could hear.

Are you going to growl again?

I clutch my throbbing head in response and swallow a hiss of pain, telling myself this can be just like when I drink, this can be worked through. That's what I have to tell myself. It's like a bloody hangover, and maybe for five seconds I can pretend it doesn't talk and that his shrill laughter isn't tearing up my ears...

But I can't.

"I guess I won't," I manage through my gritted teeth and clenched jaw. Not today, I add silently, to none other than myself.

Aww, you're starting to obey me? Too bad that's not going to make you any safer. Do you even know what that means? 'Safe'?

Should I? I reply with all the earnestness I have in me right now. I feel too dizzy and sore to glare at him - like somepony dropped a snowdrift on my head.

Everything is such a challenge with you! There's his usual whiny tone again.

My mane stays.

Oddly enough, he was quiet for a moment, and I was too, both to wait, savor the brevity of it, and start my own silent schemes.

I think I might actually let you keep your long mane...

Is it because I'm young? Or just more desperate than usual? Is that why I feel curiosity and dangerous hope stir, even if it's just a little?

"Really?" Something like this is far too ridiculous not to go unspoken; he always hates it when I verbalize against him rather than just keeping everything as a mental battle between the two of us. "You'll give me permission to wear my mane at the length that I want? That's rich."

Kings don't have stupid manes like you, they're really fancy, like, all the time, so that means we need to look fancy.

"We?" I jeer.

Me! Me! Onyx shrieks. I'm the king, I told that Opal bitch as I killed her that I was the king, and this empire is finally mine. Just like you! This makes me the king. And yes, of course I'm telling you that - I can order you to do whatever I want 'cause you're barely real. Now do you want to know how to keep your mane or not.

The thought of a manecut is actually a rather dreadful one, and this is coming from the pony who spent the last few days killing the remainder of the Crystal Militia. He's not the most reliable source for anything, but he was delighted enough with any bit of blood. He was nearly giddy with what I did to spill how those armored ponies that should have fought for their life were the amazingly small protective force that this empire had. I still don't understand why they faltered the way they did. From what I could gather, they were like the guard of the Tribes, and they did indeed have a small division just for protecting whatever largely defenseless idiot was wearing the crown. I still don't know why they didn't fight back, and how they acted like there was something so shocking about being overpowered and ended so easily when they did nothing to prevent it.

"Humor me," I mumble, pulling the crown closer to myself and ignoring the thin traces of blood Onyx's ridiculous design makes in my skin. Going off any description of his without taking liberties is an assured disaster; I can't exactly be expected to go off of 'spiky, black, red, dark, and like a helmet' alone when creating an object of magic alone, now can I?

While awaiting his reply, I decide to numb where the crown pricks me by attempting to only partially shift part of myself to shadow. My cape-covered wither immediately grows colder than a three day old corpse and I feel metal sink into my being, but there's little annoyance from cuts and scrapes now.

You have to answer this question that's been on my mind.

"Yes, you're stupid. It's really quite obvious. Now what?"

I feel Onyx shift with strong irritation, stirring up a brief headache.

Who are the most important ponies?

That's odd for him to ask, but I almost promised that I was going to humor him, so it's worth a shot.

"I'm the most important pony," I tell Onyx and the cold halls of the castle. The answer to this question is so obvious that it's almost tragic.

No, you idiot! Ponies! Real ponies! You aren't a pony! Who are the most important ponies!

"There aren't any!" I snap. "Nopony is important, aside from myself. But... I guess if somepony did want to be important, then they'd have to make themselves-"

Shut up, you stupid, emotionless, rambling voice! I asked you which ponies are important, and you can't give me one answer that isn't some idiot crazy-talk.

"If you think I'm such an idiot," I hiss, voice low and lethal, "then why would you keep asking me for damned answers to your vague questions?!"

Stop telling me what to do! he shrilled. Uhh... dangerous. There. Who are the most dangerous ponies?

I force myself not to growl at his idiocy and knack for asking such obvious questions before shifting into an upward sitting position. My good right eye surveys my reflection with a hostile glare and a scowl, which I find to have some charm to it, since everything else here is so... pony-like and readable. It's nice to have something complex on my mind and rare moments to think to myself.

My scowl almost lifts upward into this awkward and bizarre expression, so I force the left side of my mouth into an even grumpier scowl, so familiar and comfortable... even if that last word is a stretch - a joke - to me.

"Dangerous? Ponies?" I roll my eyes and can't resist a scoffing noise. "Ponies aren't the slightest bit dangerous, especially in the stupid masses that they all live in. If you wanted one that was dangerous, it would have to be somepony... hmm... Ponies aren't dangerous at all, so that's what's a bit tricky-"

I didn't ask that, you stupid bastard! Gimme what I want, it's not like we have all day!

I wince slightly as his voice cracks on the last shriek, gritting my teeth again and making my contempt as undisguised as possible. "I WOULD IF YOU COULD WAIT A MOMENT!"

My scream has him quiet - for once.

"Qualities are what makes things dangerous; not specific marks of rank. Your Crystal Militia fell quite easily, and it was supposed to be their job to fight, wasn't it?" The question was only half-rhetorical. I still hadn't delved into every memory of his and analyzed each thoroughly, so certain pony concepts still weren't completely memorized and understood by me yet, and Onyx gave me all the more trouble for it.

He's still silent, and I use the excuse to boast of what has become one of my favorite pony sayings - I love to hate the wicked little paradox - 'common knowledge'. As foolhardy as Onyx is, even he knows some things - most wholly unimportant - but things like reading...

I conceal a sigh expertly before speaking again. "Intelligence, arrogance, stupidity, eccentricity, and any form of strangeness or nonconformity. Honesty is dangerous too."

I wait for his latest round of insults and annoying remarks by busying myself with standing up and brushing myself off, which is a fading leftover habit from being covered in debris from my time in the wilds.

So... smart ponies are dangerous? The amount of thought that must have went into coming to that conclusion after our latest screaming match would be immense for Onyx. For me, it would be like wondering what the weather would be like.

"Yes," I say, tone as moody as ever while I concentrate on undoing my partial shadow-shift, which is harder than it sounds. The blasted crown sits around one raised foreleg like an ill-fitting version of the smaller bangles I usually see there. "Yet stupid ponies can be fairly dangerous too, seeing as your society is built on the idea of stupid ponies coming together to-"

Says the one who can't read! I mean, wow, the guy who can't read and is just a silly voice that picks nonsense words for his name. Ponies are just ponies. There's ponies that just... live... and do normal things, before somepony kills them or hurts them or- Oh... there's also ponies like you and Starswirl-

My grip on the crown tightens. "I'M NOTHING LIKE HIM!"

Why are you yelling? It's not like you can hurt me! I'm the king, and nopony hurts kings! Ponies like you and him just talk and talk and act like there's something... I dunno-

"You don't even have a bloody clue to what you're saying and you do nothing but call me unintelligent and retarded - which last time I checked, are just repeats of the things that Starswirl said to-"

Shut up! You're not listening to me!

I stomp a hoof and continue to meet my own gaze, magic starting to flare in my eyes. "WHY WOULD I?!"

Ponies like you are the worst! You do all these different things and aren't simple. Argh, you're so sure that you're... that you're s-something, like it'd kill y-you to just-

Onyx cuts himself off once he caught himself stuttering and seizes as much control of my body as possible, with one brutal wave of agony trying to flip the inside of my equinoid form around and around, like he doesn't care that it feels like he's trying to rip me apart by undoing some invisible seams even if this - my own body - is what he's so possessive over.

I scream and fall forward, crashing into the glossy, well-polished wall and listen to myself cry out - the voice I love, now in so much pain - until even the sound of it echoing in the halls are just a lingering memory. In the mirror, not much can be seen except for the dull shine of crystal in shadow. Night is beginning, the only hours I'll have to myself. But I'll be spending them lying here, immobilized by pain as fresh as it was when Onyx inflicted it.

Breathing came in small coughs, but I couldn't muster the energy to pull myself into a ball or focus on magic - on anything other than how much this hurt... and how used to it I was.

In the haze of this, I almost managed a syllable of something. It came in the form of a partial exhale.

Shifting to shadow would be impossible without a steady focus.

All I could manage between the alternating fogginess and lucidity was staring at myself in the uncorrupted crystal that had been my mirror. It was cracked now; the crown had bounced off it, and lay nearby.

My expression was that of deprivation - of sleep, most obviously, but if there's anything else, how was I supposed to know? The color of my eyes still managed to be bright in the darkness, burning away the barrier of shattered surfaces to ask me everything that made up all this weight and the blade's edge I couldn't escape or the array of horrors that had been and will be - everyday torments that drove me to down the drinks that burned both my throat and mind.

Nearby, the crown was angled close to my head so it almost looked like I was wearing it. Thankfully, the helm was unbroken. Onyx may have been lenient with me this time, but if something had happened to that...

The bare crystal floor as cold as Arctic winds drained any warmth I had, preserving each ache, even if it burned instead of chilled and unable to do much else, I lay there while it seeped into me, looking at eyes that burned like nothing in this cold empire did. Even fire didn't match them.

In a sudden moment of lucidity, brought by a beam of bright moonlight from a nearby window reflecting onto my face, I thought only to slip into shadow and rest in the cold solidness of the walls until morning would come and Onyx would think of a post-agony torment just for me, his weapon.

I knew now, why he would ask that. This empire was his, he said so, and he would maintain that status brutally if it meant he'd have a herd ponies to kill on a whim while he styled himself as king. Those crimson eyes that knew from the very beginning just a bit of what was going to happen to their owner as soon as I buried what was left of that wizard - it was a hasty job, but I didn't want any other creatures tracking me then. He told me a few things, little traces of plans too poorly thought out for even me to understand, but there was a word I didn't know at the time. The exact subtleties of the meaning have been lost on me so far...

But it's impossible not to remember, especially now. The chill of the floor was a perfect substitute for the wind that day. Onyx said something about how he was going to slaughter the crystal ponies while I created the shallow hole meant to be Starswirl's grave.

It was just like killing Starswirl, and at the same time it wasn't.

I'd be finding out soon enough, I always did.

Onyx didn't know who to kill first in order to make maintaining power easier. I had unknowingly given him an answer that he found merit in.

Starting tomorrow, the slaughter would begin, and I'd learn exactly what it meant.

I had forgotten what hallway I was going down. This crown weighed me down more than I would like it to, sitting askew upon my head. I blinked at light that was not there, my gait a stumble as I did. The scrape of metal and noise of my hoofsteps hidden to none.

It was how she found me; I might as well have let her. Everything swayed a bit, my throat still burned, and my headache consumed me. I hated the sight of her. She stood in a dark hall, but her disgustingly bright yellow coat didn't belong here. I don't think it could belong anywhere but on a pony. I looked miserable and that coat looked even worse on a crystal pony. My temper stirred and I would have growled-

But everything seemed to lurch forward and she spoke, her eyes flicking about and wide with the confusion of somepony who can't see so well in this dark.

I watched her run a forehoof with some kind of custom, extended greave on it through her thick mane, which was at least three different shades of purple - as if one wasn't bad enough! - and pulled away from her face with a kind of fancy blue string - ribbon, I think? She was young-ish; it was hard to tell under the gross amount of cosmetics that she painted herself with, despite looking half-starved. I was younger, barely shorter than her, drunk, and just barely holding back from the flash of color that was her. She had thought that she could sneak up on me; I had felt her magic, too late, I guess, but I had felt it...

Everything was much slower than it needed to be. Why was I walking in this hall again? I've heard of mares being pretty, but this one was ugly. How could she still afford pink eye shadow?

"This is King Sombra?" She sounded like she didn't see me. Was there surprise or contempt that tone? Did she not see that I saw how her legs were shaking? Even her tone wasn't completely steady.

I didn't like her. She was hideous. Why and how were mares pretty?

That - that thing she wore on her leg. It was so ponies... the ones that weren't unicorns didn't have to hold it in their mouth, and sure enough other than a stupid mirror mark there's a sheathed sword at her side; it looks a bit showy. She's barely an adult - sixteen at the least, which makes her older than me, I know, but she's small from not having enough to eat and still smears herself with that stuff-

She whips out her sword - it's right hoofed, as most of them are. I can see the blade is dark - black, how rare - and are those ruby pommels?

Hmmm...

She's...

I actually want to hurt her...

She's holding the blade in my direc-

She's an assassin.

One blink, jump, and flare of dark fire on my horn later and my heart is racing as anger picks up speed when time does. I feel beyond horrible and my movement surprises her. In the crooked shadows of this corrupted hall she looks even worse, shadows flash across her ribs in stripes and she can't breath right.

I want to hurt her more than anything.

Why am I still thinking? No, no... I could tear this little mare apart, she's trying to hurt me-

She looks scared, and I like that, in an angry sort of way. Something gnaws at me, and it's not regret or remorse-
I'm going to stop thinking like this because-

"I... I'm going to kill you."

Her sword is indeed black. The onyx blade shakes in her grip and her vainglorious hero facade crumbles entirely. "You - how could you have done it all? It's been months since you took the throne..."

A sob wracks her throat, but she doesn't crumple to the ground. Her legs are weak enough to... just a bit of magic, a little mishap with the crystals and she won't have any...

"And we're already starving, so many have already died... everything is just gone! You stole the heart, I know it was you who burned my family's farm - I heard you laughing!" Her annoying voice was shrill through tears. When I growled, low, angry, and warbling with drunkenness she squeaked and flinched as I winced from her sharp, high tone.

I want to tear her apart.

Rage will ignite in me - a matter of when, not if - but everything is so slow.

"You, King Sombra, have to be stopped! I have taken the heirloom of my family - Phobos - against you-"

Why was this damned mare still talking?! I want, no, needed to hurt her!

"SHUT UP!" How didn't I slur those words...? Am I swaying? My head-

"...and yet I'm here now... and you're..." She swallows, backing toward an alcove, but her voice sounds louder then it should be at its current volume. The once-haughty tone was now a whisper.

"How old are you?"

She still points the sword at me.

I don't want her to live.

I don't question why, and the blood roaring in my ears distracts me.

Magic is building up inside of me, wild and wanting to be used.

I want to use it.

I step toward her, hoofsteps suddenly silent on the floor as the shadows weave over me. "Do... Do you dare to anger me? And do... do you real... really think that you can harm me? Or... or that you... you'll get away with this when I can over... overwhelm you with my magic?"

I don't care how far away my mind might think it is, I think that I'm more grounded, more trapped then I usually am.

Sick of her - whoever she is - that's what I am.

I'm not going to die.

"I'm fifteen years old."

There, the little mare has my age. She's cowering in the alcove. Those legs aren't going to carry her very far - or anywhere. I bet she barely memorized this place. When she found me - now I remember, her eyes... she got very lucky.

It's all bad luck too.

She's muttering something between a curse and a prayer to something, and it drifts past my years, like gibberish. My focus is all off. I can see her - with that coat - it's impossible not to.

Is time melting again? I feel too warm - is it my cloak?

Why was I walking down-

Something clatters, I'm half sure I heard it-

It's her sword.

Phob-something? If she dropped her sword-

She's sobbing, muttering-

My vision swims; I know I stumble and here I go, lurching again-

And there's something in her hooves, gleaming in the dark-

A crystal coating is spreading across it-

She's still sobbing-

And then she sees me coming toward her, and I'm thinking: Did this all happen in a second?

"If you are just a child, can you not stop? Can't you repent and run off, you monster? Please! Go away!"

A candelabra shining with clusters of crystal flies by my head. Her shout hurts my ears. I dodge it, but my movements are almost clumsy and mechanical - like broken clockwork. Last week, when I had another binge like this-

Was that what I was doing? It'll all come back eventually...

...I threw something at a clock, and it spilled out shining gears and broken springs. I had never seen anything like it...

...And I couldn't stop screaming or trying to break those bits to dust...

I scoop up her sword in my magic, and give her a furious, livid look that makes all the color drain from her face.

I could tear her apart...

She tried to kill me...

She knows that she's not leaving this place alive... or in one piece...

If my temper is like fire, I feel something snap, and something else ignite.

...or dying quickly...

I am going to tear her apart.

She's the only crystal pony in the castle tonight - Onyx will likely have somepony for me to clean up when I find myself again - and she'll be screaming the whole time. Growling, I fling my crown at her - it doesn't hit her, I've never been good at throwing anything in a fight and definitely not when I'm in this state, but she shrieks anyway. I hate the sound of it and growl again. Whatever this feeling is, it's like a fever.

And the perfect excuse to stop thinking and just do something.

The cracks in the mirror-wall capture moonlight like crooked veins that shone too bright when I stumble to it, with large strides that even my mind can barely follow before metal clad hooves catch up with the sound of my steps and-

I throw myself against a wall that only reflects myself in pieces while my heartbeat roars in my ears and the dark energy that makes up my magic makes the air around be feel like it is sizzling when nothing is really there.

The touch of the wall is cold, and I let the feeling gnaw at me, shuddering, while my stare burns holes in me. Those two red eyes are the only drops of color in this damned place. This small section has yet to succumb to the corruption and be consumed in gray like the rest of the castle. Metal boots gleam, and light flashes with movement. Onyx's helm clatters to the floor, and the sound haunts the hallways but all I can do is suck in a few desperate breathes and look at myself with all the stability of a storm on the horizon of the Gemheart Mountains, looming with everything dark inside.

In all that has transpired here, I feel as though my mind can't decide to stay or go - so it does both at once, and I'm left with the results of cold seeping through my coat and a now-bare hoof tracing cracks filled with moonlight that makes my head throbs from within, like reminders of ponies screaming, talking, choking, crying-

Begging.

In a world drowned and black - drowning in shadows like I've drowned in drink at every little thought about just how easy it is to push ponies into cold water-

Because the mass graves - mountain tombs that aren't deserving of the name; stone pit and one to top it all off - do fill up and he had me lead six that day; six too many, who would never fit.

He wanted me to get rid of them, the memory's a blur now, when I'm floating from the inside out, trying to escape castles and equinoid forms-

Almost anything, simply everything. All of this, but never me, the inevitable and unreasonable. I drift ever-present behind walls that won't break.

-it always floats in fragments, as cracked as this wall that feels more solid than I do.

I want to slip through it and stretch beyond the body that I'm meant to shed but-

Instead, I just remember the day in the mountains; the first since I came here when I was just fifteen and my wakefulness made it easy to see everything, all the time.

But this wall is so cold. It's freezing me here, keeping me upright so I don't fall on a pile on the floor, too pony shaped for my own good, too easy to hold down.

Ponies fall into water easily, and town ponies simply don't know how to swim the closer they are to the castle. They just drown. They're too simple. They shouldn't be. Just push and shove. Cry out. Silence that drowns it all. Shock at the stupidity, the inability of each and every one of them. Anger wrestling apathy, and I'm the only one to repeat everything in the same morbid pattern.

All his suggestions were far crueler, but this pleased him anyway. He laughed in my ears, and nopony could ever hear. He kept my hooves rooted to the mountain.

I watched everything.

Thinking.

All I could do was think after that, my mind stumbling deeper into so much - something that bordered on a morbid fascination will all this, maybe? - about just what ponies were like, how stupidly easy it was to sever something that only I fought to defend. Then, that life was my own. I'd read so much more, there were creatures that lasted forever in there, and they were pony-shaped too... but that was never the end of it. Fools wasted paper and words debating whether ponies and other creatures could deserve things, like life.

Nopony deserved to live; that was stupid.

Nopony deserved to die either, that just sounds naive, whenever I thought about it in clearer moments.

To think that anypony deserved anything... I've come to expect things like that from this species, since any other expectation and estimation, as low as they were compared to what they could have been, had been crushed. I was not bitter of it. Some time ago, I had been so very curious about nearly every little thing in the world. Something in it could matter; the ponies didn't.

I don't wish for anything - with where I am now, I almost can't - but I try to let the memory of snow and bitter winds stinging my mane and digging through my coat substitute for the burning chill of the all too solid walls.

Lately, I've found myself remembering a very particular event before all this. It's almost like my blood hums when I recall it; every little bit of my form seems to remember, too. There was a time when I wasn't so dreadfully solid, attached to anything, or tossed about. I was shifting, roiling, unseen... if only for a second.

But I was me. I was; I am. And I still remember it, and I've been remembering and wondering about the time when I didn't even need to breathe. I had been something else, and just the same. Surely magic still ran below my surface? I felt it, I felt something. It had to be. I knew magic ran below me. I knew what was there, I feel it all the time when I'm still in control of myself - when he's lingering, gone, hiding away until the sun comes up.

I know exactly what I was doing as everything but the pair of silver scissors I teleported from a chamber that only felt as though it were leagues away from where I was now, tethered in discomfort to a body so equine in nature.

I knew I was equine. My reflection was there, and it looked surprisingly solid, undoubtable even. I felt as if I wavered, or that this - my current body, where breathing felt odd and labored with fear - would wither like all the others despite having eyes that transcended the ignorant looks and hollow stares of every pony. It was me, but my greater self, my magic, the me in that second during my creation years ago - even if the form was an oddly juvenile one - was still there.

Somewhere.

I felt it below, it could be anchored below...

Ponies were like paper, there was always so much of them. Both were covered in different things... Paper, words - they were rarely a waste. Are even my thoughts escaping my senses?

My mind feels sky-high - like a pegasus - and yet more trapped in this place then ever. I feel my hooves move on their own because my legs are shaking so much and cold sweat feels like it should be pouring down the back of my neck and running under the bangs I used to have before he was content to style my mane again every day and it looked horrible, it wasn't me and... The moon shone outside, why hadn't I undone it yet? I wanted to be myself for the night...

The gleam of silver caught my attention once again, like it was the center of the world.

If ponies were like paper - I could cut both up on an everyday basis...

All I had to do was snip away this form until I was back as I should be, as I was then. It isn't as if my body hasn't changed forms while I have remained the same; I yearn to slip into shadow again and race across the Arctic, snow flying through me.

But-

But-

It just takes the world spinning in place, one choked gasp, and a blink-

Until my own haunted stare finds its reflection, and its burning color is almost too vivid. The illusion of the world ordering around those eyes settles in, and so does everything else.

My horn dims, my coat remains without punctures and scars.

Scissors fall to the ground, disrupting the heavy silence.

And I dread the passing night.

I am a monster.

I'm told this every day. By the king who tried to break me from the inside out because he was in constant need of entertainment that needed to be as twisted as possible in order to suit his tastes. He wanted bleeding, screaming - anything that redefined 'bloodbath' and 'overkill' were perfect for him. And he thought that he could tame me, the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra, eighteen years old to that parasite's thirteen. I may be practically chained here, and as Onyx, the king, likes to crow, his favorite slave and the slave of slaves but I was unbreakable.

I could never be saved, even if somepony wanted to.

I could never give up.

But I would never break - no matter how much my self-destructive and stranger habits said otherwise.

One of these was drinking myself more than half-mad in binges between months. There's no other way to say it. I just put it bluntly.

I also don't sleep.

I put everything bluntly. Words. Actions.

Lots of actions that I've sunk into.

I'm unrepentant, and it isn't right.

I've found that bashing in a pony's skull is surprisingly merciful to some of the other things that Onyx likes. Slower things.

I'll say anything once I've drunk enough.

Almost anything. I won't surrender.

I won't give up.

But I'll lie a lot.

I'm honest. Sometimes, I'll forget just how honest I am. Mostly during times like these and I'll say absolutely almost anything.

But I'll lie too.

I like to think that I'm at least an honest liar.

I'm a monster. The crystal ponies tell me so and that's one of the few things that they can't really be blamed for. Onyx likes to lure them into the castle by finding them in the day, evading any detection with my magic - or at least as much as he is able to abuse - and rip apart their minds from the inside out because at least they'll break.

Those will be the nights I'll never get to myself. He'll slip into my mind a bit, alongside it. And when morning comes there will be no crystal ponies alive in the castle anymore.

It's likely all for the library stunt I pulled. I call it that because it's one of the few things I can't bear to put bluntly. Acknowledging it is bad enough. The memory itself is worse. Re-experiencing it is worse then the memory. The aftermath of it is only bearable because I haven't got a choice in that matter. Or many at all.

His tastes have become even more morbid lately. He's less content with slaughtering ponies and hacking off limbs and pulling them apart and adding in far more...

He knows I'm unbreakable because he wouldn't deny it so much if he wasn't aware of it. Onyx will go out of the way to hurt me in almost any way he can, and he's grown more vile since that night in the library, where he almost lost me. He'll tell me over and over how he'll never lose me again, that I'm his forever. He curses me any my every rebellion, because even if I no longer want to die, I can't bear to live either.

I'm in between everything and anything, being and not being. I could say that every day is horrific, at best, because it is. Except so much of me doesn't care about control and crystal ponies.

But I love me, and he keeps trying to hurt and control me. Onyx hasn't and won't be able to break me, not now, not ever, and of course in his idiotic persistence - he hasn't gotten any smarter, just crueler and more powerful as further corruption seeps deeper into what is left of him - he won't give up trying to be as brutal as he wants to my unyielding mind in his pointless efforts to get me to stop speaking out and rebelling in every little way that makes him angrier since I never bow, never submit. Never ever.

I tell him to kiss my ass, he tries to go into my mind and...

His attempts don't succeed in breaking me...

But...

I've never felt more violated in my life.

I give him every reason to hate me because I'm generous like that. Any small thing he could ever use to despise me as an excuse to abuse me - he doesn't use many, he just wants to as though he were the one who was drunk on something - and he'll jump at the excuse to do that...

The aftermath of shivering and thinking and thinking and shivering and wanting to be and not to be alone and shivering and thinking and almost begging right at the tip of my tongue. All this weight that never goes away is worse every time. So I just drink more. Really, there's no other way to put it. If I weren't a demon, I would have succumbed to a worse physical condition by now. It's not like this will solve anything. It's not like anything will.

Crystal ponies will scream almost anything at me. Monster is a favorite. Foal-killer too.

It's accurate. Onyx has a particular vengeance against foals and he knows that I hate hurting them. They're so small and incomplete, why would there be a point in hurting a creature that can't fight back? That, I suppose, is exactly why he likes to make sure that I hurt plenty of them.

Ponies can't stop talking and the fact that their whole species is fashioned from liars and are almost all the same behind their different coats makes me fly into a rage even when I'm sober - and that gets worse with each passing year too - because...

...I hear begging instead of fighting. Their eyes are all the same. One even told me to kill her daughter in her place and more followed like that. Aren't ponies supposed to have misplaced loyalty and blind love for their spawn? They cry, they scream, they fade and even if they're all the same I still see them between blinks.

The words they write say either everything that's the same or everything that's different. Many of them hope its their neighbors instead of them that are taken, and a select few would sacrifice anypony in their place. Family. Friends. Lovers. It's all there in their secret confessions.

It's actually funny how that's not the worst of it. I remember reading these things - all these silly things written by the ponies who told me I was the monster and screamed insults at me or cried out for somepony who never came to help them with their dying breath, choked by sobs - and I almost, almost laughed.

...It's been years since I've laughed.

Nopony misses walking under stars or reading books on a spring day - even if it's always winter now - or just looking out a window and not seeing all of this. Nopony misses quiet or what it's like to think about something far more important then the pony next to you keeps talking about something that's about as important as them - in other words, completely insignificant to musings. Nopony misses what it's like to just go from one place to another and look at the sky to see if it might rain or the taste of snow on their tongue.

It hasn't rained in years. My magic has poisoned the weather, I'm sure of it. It's all snow now, if there's anything at all.

But all they miss is something called good, that's far too disgusting to be laughable. They don't miss themselves, they pray to gods, play victim, and waste away.

I'm a monster, and none of this massacre should have ever happened, but I'm the lesser evil each and every time.

Sighing my usual sigh of contempt - at anything and nothing - I leaned back against the äerint wall, letting little bits of crystal poke my back. Phobos floated in the grip of my magic and I was wiping off the remaining blood from the most recent crystal ponies to die. It was really quite fresh, and the thought made me scowl a little more than I usually did.

At least I wouldn't need to do much more than wipe this blade clean and see if it needs sharpened. While my work with a weapon was barbaric at best when intoxicated - that young assassin mare from years ago certainly knew, saying that I dismembered her sounds downright merciful, and of course wholly inaccurate - I was able to mostly use an array of new magic to kill them.

...In the aftermath of it all, I can at least be proud of my magic. It's better than having to resent Onyx abusing me for not being 'as cruel as I could have been'.

I was wait for my hangover to subside a bit more before I even considered trying to find my way to the balcony to look at the stars. Even navigating this castle has become something like a chore. The network of spells that I use to force myself into this wakeful state aren't the best since I hadn't taken to spellcraft as easy as I thought when I first began to work on the then-problem of illiteracy. I had to check everything I did at least six times over when it came to research and whatever clumsy notes I could manage. Drinking has made it impossible to even try to grip a pen in my hoof or magic, so even though I'm the most talented and powerful of mortals since the Collapse any hope for mastering finer skills like writing via magic is gone while my combat skills soar.

I try to nestle myself deeper into the strange, smooth fabric of the king's cape and keep my thoughts from drifting too far. The weight of the crown I was forced to wear was gone I tried to forgo when I could - it wasn't me - so the chance I had now, to actually take it off was amazing!

Navigation of the castle wasn't much of a problem. I never saw the outside anymore except from the balcony, so it wasn't as if I had to go anywhere, and these problems largely effected me, not Onyx. This meant I could drink my life away if I wanted to. My research never suffered; I wouldn't force myself to do this if I knew that my intelligence and anything so undeniably me, like my pride, would suffer. I could navigate my way through the castle with some practice, even if I kept having to learn many of the halls again after a few months. But why did I have to do this?

Memory deterioration. The foundations of all my spellwork are brilliant at the very least, no matter what age I am, but other parts of it...

I designed all the insomniac spell matrix when I was younger, and still a little clumsy with my reading. I require far less sleep than ponies, even without it but I am also a mortal and no mortal creature is meant to stay awake for years at a time.

Alcoholism never helps anything. I can't even say why I thought that it could have done anything that wasn't horrible. Maybe because I am treated as a living addiction, I felt I would be immune to developing any of my own.

I can't redo the specific parts that are faulty without having to break the dense amount of spellwork down and redo everything from scratch. The problem with that is that as soon as I let this all fall - which I mustn't ever - I'll only have about forty eight hours to live. That would never be enough to work something so complicated, especially not in my state.

It was impossible to notice the faults in the system earlier - all these complications.

I dropped Phobos onto the floor and buried my face in my bare forehooves, drawing ragged, panicky breaths. I couldn't panic, not now...

I just can't stop anything. Can't stop. Don't stop. Living is unbearable, but now I'm afraid to die and negligent gods, he'd know, he would...

I just closed my eyes until all I saw were the shadows behind my eyes. All of the books I read about the mind - which was surprisingly few compared to everything else and my genius in the case of all things mental. A mental case.

Like me.

"Ha-ha," I mumble, my voice grouchy and deadpan.

The books all said I went through things called psychosis, and that was episodes of where I lost touch with things or heard or saw things. But unlike ponies, books never told me that I deserved worse than the fates I was forced to dish out because...

I'm like a god here. An enslaved god. I play god. I am the only god that is anchored here.

A mortal god.

A living paradox.

I'm afraid of sleeping. I still don't think I'll ever wake up if I did. Psychosis is enjoyable, in some wicked way compared to all this, even if it means standing in front of walls and staring at myself for hours, yelling at things that aren't there, finding myself in a cold sweat with my heart racing, or trying to jab holes in myself with a pair of scissors, like that one time...

If that isn't enjoyable, what is?

No matter what happens, I always feel like I'm the only pony that's actually real.

There's ponies that are probably watching me, those are one of the few times that I do kill them because I know that they were and that even if it is paranoia - those books aren't exactly wrong - they're gone and they can't hurt me.

I know lots of things.

I know that everypony wants to hurt me. They even scream it in my face with their dying breaths.

Ponies are evil.

There is so little in this world that could be described as wholly evil, and not all ponies are evil - history can at least say that there were some who weren't. It's all written there, yet I only ask: where did all the writers go?

I'm evil too, I imagine. A lesser evil, but evil all the same.

Nopony but me should be here, so when I felt the magic of another nearby, I tensed up and readied myself for a fight, dropping the blood-soaked rags I had with me and scooping up Phobos in my hooves. Boots spattered with blood here and there made it hard to grasp it at first, but I managed to fumble with the hilt long enough to muster up enough magic to grasp the blade.

The cold sweat I hadn't had now had already begun to run, and while it was hard for me to look anything other than crazed and intimidating, I caught the glimpse of a wild look in my eyes - it wasn't one I was unaccustomed to, either.

It wasn't because this was a pony I felt. A pony would not scare me like this. It's because the magic I felt lurking about these halls deep in the castle was my own, which was literally impossible. Even psychosis and other similar episodes I've had couldn't replicate something so accurate and lingering as a complex magical signature and-

I felt the presence teleport and frantically tried to sort through the signature in my haggard state, even if it was one I almost perpetually maintained-

"I'm just as surprised as you are, you know."

I looked into the eye of myself. Standing before me, I find myself younger by five years and with a thick winter coat that poked past the patched and ragged brown cloak I wore that year. The one I still missed, just a little, even now. His left eye was bound with the same rag from the cloth that I bound my legs with. I still saw the spots of long-washed away blood easily. His messier mane fell into his uncovered eye and small scratches that would heal in time marked his muzzle. Yet, he still looked at me curiously.

"You must hate me."

My younger self blinked. "I hate what you've done to your mane."

"It wasn't exactly my choice."

"Not much seems to be," my arguably moodier self replied coolly.

"Tell me about it," I scoff, casting Phobos aside with careless force. I could never be my enemy. "I live a lie."

Neither of us said anything.

"I feel like a lie," I mumbled, stepping closer to him and sitting on the floor, so that no bout of dizziness, no matter how small could effect me. At least this could be real; I'm mostly certain that it is.

"Life fucking sucks," the other Sombra remarked sagely, proving that it was possible to look deeply contemplative, incredibly jaded, and undeniably attractive at the same time.

"I second that."

The younger Sombra cocked his head to the side and made a low warble in the back of his throat. If it weren't myself that I beheld, I could almost say that I looked innocent, something I never was and could never be. Maybe I was in comparison, innocent, as I looked upon this - a grim future where I defined, defied, and endured.

Hope - or rather, something a bit sicker and heavier, stirred in me for a moment at the thought of every rebellion between him and me, this point and that, but it died quickly and coldly. I felt it do so. There might not be many more rebellions, and it was not a matter of vigor. It never was, had been, or will be.

He looks at me, and knows some of what I felt in all those years in an instant. He even understands some of it, but I cannot be surprised. He is me and I am him. He has the courage to let confusion and curiosity burn brighter than panic, but I couldn't miss the latter in his eye.

My eye.

I didn't have panic attacks as severe as I do now then. And no matter what is to transpire here, it isn't as if I can save 'him'. He is me. 'He' is just a convenient way to refer to 'him'.

He and I share our ability to read between the lines - mine is far more honed and realized - but that doesn't mean we can break everything and nothing, no matter how great any Sombra would be.

This information is exchanged in slivers - incomplete but effective - of how we glance at one another, needing nothing more, and it only takes seconds. There are other matters at hoof, ones that only a great, mad mind could get around to solving.

"And who would be better to solve anything so above and beyond ponies than the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra?"

"Two Right-Honourable Lord Sombras!"

He doesn't miss a beat, but any surprise is impossible. He is me and I'm a genius as well as a quick learner, and I always have been. I wouldn't make myself live through partial and concentrated memory deterioration otherwise. The words aren't familiar to him - a lord, honor - and if it weren't me I looked upon he could have been happy. But he is me, and I am not one with a large capacity for happiness.

"This entire scenario is impossible," he begins.

"I haven't dabbled in the largely impossible field of time travel; trust you, you don't want to know just how much of a mess explaining that would be right here, right now," I interjected.

There was the smirk I loved, the smirk I missed! "Trust me, I'll take my word for it, you miserable wretch."

"Oh, you have no idea," I grumbled, casting my gaze to the ceiling above us, a dim and distant mouth.

The younger Sombra gave a heavy sigh and lit his horn with dark fire - just a small flare to offer a little light and exaggerate the shadows around us. Of course, it had just crossed my mind to do the same, he merely beat to the opportunity.

The distance between us could be closed easily, by the thought of that was terrifying - even though I was amazing, the thought of touching another wasn't one I held in a favorable light. If it was anypony else, 'disgusting' would barely cover the experience.

The younger Sombra agreed - his eyes told all - but it didn't stop him from wrapping his rag-bound forehooves around my barrel and pulling me closer to him in something between an unwanted embrace and physical restraining me.

I loathed every second of it. "What in Tartarus' name are you doing?! Cut that out!"

I had to resist any urge to hurt him, which was harder than it sounded. Sure, my hangover might as well have just vanished now that this arrogant, wonderful, paradox has appeared and distracted me but-

Damn it, why did I have to be so strong?!

"Can't... breathe..."

"You're so cold," the younger Sombra mumbled into my coat. "Very real and very cold. I don't think that I've ever encountered anything as cold as you... and yet it feels so wrong. How can the cold feel wrong?"

"Shut up, kid. Just let go of me!" Growling, I slipped into shadow - which was as relieving as gulping ten deep breaths of fresh, crisp, snowstorm-laden air in a single second - before reforming a few feet away from him, anger clear on all of my face.

Younger Sombra scoffed and held my angry gaze with his own moody glare.

"Time travel magic is out of the question then," he said, tone acidic and hostile.

"Yes," I began, narrowing my eyes. He did likewise. "So is psychosis."

The younger Sombra didn't budge. Yet more proof that we were one in the same. The only way he demonstrated his confusion at the unfamiliar term was to flick his fluffy ears curiously while I bit my lip slightly and resisted the sudden compulsion to touch them. My non-fluffy ears felt a little strange in comparison.

"It's something to do with my mental health."

"Or lack of," Fluffy Sombra scoffed.

"You're telling me." We both broke the shared glare-off with a synced eye-roll.

There are many things that I refuse to believe because there is no halfway adequate proof that they can be true. Sometimes there's no proof at all. Until something stares me in the face or does manage to present proper proof of its honesty, there's simply nothing for me to believe. I never believed I'd live to be twenty three years old until I saw him standing there and looking down at younger Sombra and I. He looked hopeless, and as soon as I saw his hard glare that bordered on malicious when he looked at - or past - my younger self and I. I had felt him, and how powerful he was a bit before my younger companion, who looked upon him like it was the greatest tragedy he would ever see... and he began to cry.

This shocked both the taller, darker version of us as well as myself. I remembered still being able to cry, and the storm lurking below the surface of the near-silent third Sombra who said not much more other than his age.

The hallway felt darker and all we could do was watch the youngest Sombra sob. The older one - Third Sombra; I'm not much good with nicknames unless it's an insult of some kind - looked melancholy beyond any words my still-light head wanted to conjure up and describe him with.

He was unbearably handsome, but if he noticed that I was staring he said nothing and continued to watch the youngest of us cry mutely. It wasn't that he didn't know what to say, he knew everything to say and everything not to - it was a matter of how to choose from all of it.

I didn't want to focus on crying. It was me, and I loved me, but crying still stirred painful memories of myself and unwanted thoughts of crystal ponies.

Third Sombra was also me, and damn. How the concept of 'imposing' existed before him is astounding. Bags from some long sleeplessness sit under his eyes. His crimson gaze doesn't shift or sweep over it, but it sees all. While he remains distant, his magic and the way he conducts himself - sitting away from us both with the brooding pose of a dangerous thinker not to be disturbed - floods everything. I try to shake the youngest Sombra gently and get a nice, long look at the elder, without him noticing.

"Neither of you are the Replicating Spell," he says after some time. The fluffy Sombra doesn't know what that is, not yet - he has yet to be doomed like me, like Third Sombra - but he has some grasp of what it means. The both of us are enraptured by the voice of the eldest Sombra, who still surveys us, his gaze haunted and lucid.

I don't think he sees me lick the bottoms of my teeth. My mouth was mostly closed anyway and the youngest Sombra looks up at me, slightly confused. He'll understand when he's older.

The eldest said something that I'm well aware of. I'm definitely not a creation of a Replicating Spell and neither is he; the immense amount of fatigue and skill that went into something as amazingly complicated as the Replicating Spell would not leave us in any of the states we find ourselves in now.

I pull the youngest Sombra close to me as his sobs die down and hold him awkwardly, like a doll while sneaking more glances at the third Sombra and the energy that shifts around him.

Gods, I'm handsome.

The third one is lost in thought, running a forehoof through his mane that is done in a style not his own. The crown forced onto his head and mine rests the usual distance away, but his stare is almost world's away.

Imagining myself at that age - somehow more deranged than I am now - but even that's slightly less horrifying... I have him right in front of me, why do I need to envision the horrors that have clearly taken their toll on me then?

"None of this is real," Really, Really Handsome Eldest Sombra says. He speaks with a low, sneering voice that is testy and dangerous. Everything around that voice just fades. It isn't much different from my own, of course, but I've always loved myself - and he still looks at everything, including his younger counterparts - like he was sizing it up for a fight with a look that was both weary and fierce. I would never want to be on the wrong end of that unhinged stare because even the gods themselves might not survive.

I loved every bit of him and nodded to his statement, still admiring him silently. I was sick of ponies and nearly everything else, so he was a sight for sore eyes indeed.

"Does that mean we aren't dead?" Youngest Sombra pipes up. He looks a little sick and paws at my forehooves with a faint whimper until I tear myself away from eldest Sombra and pay enough attention to him to realize that he wants me to let him go. He gasps with breath not unlike his sobs from earlier before settling down on the cold floor and resting his head in his forehooves. The sound of his soft purring fills the halls moments later and I watch him nuzzle into his forehooves - as I did many times when he was me and I was him - until I returned my gaze to Sombra-killer Sombra.

His grumpy glare would have ripped apart any lesser being, I was sure of it. "Are you really so busy ogling me that you haven't bothered to think of what's happening here? You didn't even question me when I spoke to you and inquire to why and how this wasn't real."

He huffed and looked away, but not before giving me one last eye roll of scorn that made me feel like I was melting inside.

Youngest Sombra just looked on in silence, eyes bright and curious, and of course, devious in waiting to see just what would unfold.

"And you haven't even considered that your eighteen year old self might be worth a few looks too?" I huff with mild offense.

The eldest Sombra - who, of course, is still very young and beautiful - rolls his eyes again. "You are, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking of anything else. We are all gifted multitaskers after all, and the convenience of us deciding to refer to one another separately is actually a nice touch. However, we're still going to have a few problems."

His deeply annoyed tone did nothing to phase youngest Sombra and I.

"Such as?" he and I said in unison.

Elder But Still Really Young and Completely Gorgeous Sombra looked at us. He was no doubt colder than I would ever be to the rag-cloaked fluffball purring on the floor. Still, a little shred of sadness seeped through when he looked at said fluffball, who held his intense gaze with one that was filled with something almost like the wonder the elder and I lost.

"That one there isn't as educated as you and I think it's quite obvious that all you do is admire my esteemed self. Do you think I haven't seen you? Just what do you have to say to that?"

"Other then 'I'm smug and unrepentant'? Nothing at all."

"Of course you are." A small glint of amusement shone in his eyes before vanishing. "No matter how long I live, I'll always be a narcissist in every regard."

"And superior," mumbles my youngest incarnation from his place on the floor.

The eldest nods. I know I'm not the only one that notices Third Sombra's heavy gaze darken with something only he knows. The fluffy Sombra winces at the intensity of the gaze that sees beyond whatever it is that troubles our future incarnation.

"All of us are the product of something else. Something undeniably magic in nature. Had this been otherwise, one of the first things to cross all our minds would have been the problem of three Onyxes, yet here we are, almost relaxed."

Neither the youngest Sombra or I spoke. Everything he said was very sound. His tone embittered, but words true.

"Memory magic is at work here. If it wasn't then we'd be caught up in some kind of incredibly recent events or-"

"This is the most advanced memory magic imaginable then - or at least some of the most advanced if neither of us are able to detect it. There's no mind control woven into this either. Wherever we are must be something awesome - divine maybe? God-wrought?"

Third Sombra gives me a mildly annoyed level glare for the interruption. "As I was going to add, we're all somewhere very familiar to the majority - in this case, two-thirds - of us. And yes, this is phenomenal at the least, but the full extent of whatever this really is... it would be something spectacular. A true example of genius with little to no rival."

"But what else could be expected from the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra?"

Both elder Sombra and I cast a quick glance to youngest Sombra, who was trying to paw at a particularly troublesome tuft of chest fluff that had been bothering him. The looks of something so much like grief that both myself and the eldest Sombra gave him went unnoticed by the distraction, yet I doubt he didn't feel the intensity. When I snuck a vain look at the elder Sombra, the devastation in his eyes at the sight of the almost-innocence at this incarnation of himself made my heart sink.

He still looked pretty dashing, if I do say so myself.

"If this had been time travel," eldest Sombra begins, resuming a demeanor of cracked apathy, fury showing through indifference, " then guessing which part of the multiverse that the twenty three year old Sombra originated from would be a disaster, as would all the other work that would come from dealing with splinter universes or possible time loops..."

To say that the fourth wave of magic that the three of us detect washes over us would be a spectacular and downright insulting attempt at observation compared to the almost-almighty - no, godly - presence that floods the halls and makes itself known.

And everything changed when the fourth Sombra showed up.

The walls of the crystal castle warped before he even arrived and made his presence known to Young Sombra, myself, and Youngest Sombra. Soon the dark and gloomy halls had been replaced by the natural stone of a mountain in varying gray hues. Soon, it was if we three Sombras were standing in an amazing domed chamber that looked as if it were something like the dragon's lairs that I've read about or something like the old tombs and other hidden locations sealed within the Gemheart Mountains. Only none of them were ever like this. The stone beneath my armored hooves was still rough and the walls had not been smoothed or polished. and yet they weren't too jagged, hazardous, or unsightly.

Instead, it was one of the most epic things that either of us had seen. For once, each of us wasn't looking at one another or trying to be on guard for the origin of the magical presence that was sweeping through this place that made even the corrupted castle rotundas feel small. Youngest Sombra looked particularly awestruck even though he was the one who would have the awesome harshness of the Arctic freshest in his mind.

At the thought of the Arctic, I felt a cold wind blow into the center of the chamber where I stood, admiring the high reaches that I could not see. It snatched my attention and I turned to see the direction it came from - left, where I couldn't see even the faintest blur of color.

And that was when I saw him.

He took every idea of any kind of attractiveness possible, broke it and rebuilt it for the sole purpose of smugly redefining it and rising far above each and every one. And he hadn't even shaken off the snow that was dusting his perfect form as he nonchalantly walked through the tunnel that lead from somewhere outside.

Young Sombra, no longer brooding raised an eyebrow and surveyed the attractive fourth Sombra.

Youngest Sombra blushed slightly and looked at his rag-bound forehooves.

I gave the newest Sombra the most unsubtle stare of all time. From under his absolutely divine disheveled mane - just like Youngest Sombra's - he gave me a knowing look and rolled his eyes, shooting me a smirk. I was able to catch a glimpse of Young Sombra attempting to resist swooning at the sight, and he did do a very good job of it.

The fourth Sombra smirked at me.

It was so beautiful and devious that I heard Youngest Sombra sniffle a bit. That lucky bastard can still weep at the sight of something as amazing as this.

He was the source of power that transformed this place. He was clearly around the age Young Sombra - there wasn't any obvious sign of age - but the bags under all our eyes and everything... this Sombra... he looked well rested and a little fluffy and...

He looked happy in a way that shone in his crimson eyes of fathomless intelligence.

I watched him sassily toss his mane to rid it of any traces of snow in silence.

He was a Sombra unlike any of us... and somehow he was... happy? What could possibly make me so happy? Just how old was he to be so... pure? How much time had it taken to get such a quintessential version of everything that made up me?

Roguish, mischievous, intelligent, crimson-cloaked, introspective, curious, antisocial, and happy me?!

It wasn't impossible... very little is... but... the thought of me, a summoner-bound demon who just slaughters and drinks and panics and-

Happy. Somehow there's a happy Sombra and I'm not even sure-

I wasn't paying attention. I should have been paying attention. Instead, I feel myself brought into some kind of restraining gesture that's far too lose to actually work effectively and-

By everything I can swear on and everything that has yet to be sworn on, this Sombra that's impossible and undeniable at the same time is pulling me into this-

"It's called a hug, and shut up because you learned to like it."

The others are watching me, their heads cocked to the side and now-wide eyes glowing with analytical light and boundless, yet restrained curiosity. My own curiosity was far from restrained. I reached up and touched the face of the taller, older, beautiful Sombra with one armored hoof. He was so warm and real and fuzzy and he started purring-

Why is my heart beating this fast? Am I going to have a panic attack-

The most wonderful sound fills my ears, somehow sardonic and warm all at once. He's chuckling and oh my gods he's nuzzling me - that thing that ponies do - but why is he nuzzling me and holding me on the floor like this? Wasn't I standing?

"You're not going to have a panic attack, alright? I'm you."

"How young are you?" I whisper, closing my eyes and trying to think of ways to prove that this is real, that he's real, and if I open my eyes I won't be a monster in castle with a voice in my head and a burning feeling in my throat from-

"I'm 1,125."

I...

That's...

Impossible. Everything I've ever wanted. Nothing I've ever dreamed. Improbable. The best. Shocking. Outstanding. Outrageous. Completely mad. Gloriously insane. Unwishable. Possible. Rare. Unlikely. Everything. Nothing. Something. Vast. Comprehensible. Far away. So close. Distant. Paradoxical.

Everything.

It's simply everything.

And...

I'm happy.

I become happy.

I have a future. I have a life.

I have me.

I saw him smile.

He's me.

He's himself.

He remained.

He's Sombra.

It's so quiet...

Except... it isn't just Youngest Sombra who is crying. Everything dark and beautiful and bright and ugly and all bottled up and angry and miserable just comes out-

And he holds me. He keeps holding me.

He looks like the one who would be able to cry, except that smile - every bloody thing about him - is hiding the most weight of any of us. I can feel it. I can also feel something below his cloak - a wound? I don't mention it, I just keep crying as if there never was tomorrow because maybe none of this is real and I'm just-

Just, what?

Hungover beyond and sick beyond whatever I could have imagined - I, Sombra, who have never seen enough - in the shadow of an empire, mad at everything: voices, walls, monsters, and ponies.

For the first time in my life, I have absolutely no answer. My head is too light; my heart too heavy.

I've never felt more exhausted.

I sink into sleep for the first time in gods knows how long.

When I wake up, Youngest Sombra is almost smirking and his eyes are shining. A skipping purr that borders on lighthearted sounds in his throat. Next to him, Young Sombra sits somberly. His eyes are troubled and his gaze is met by his equal - the Divine Sombra, the Ultimate Sombra, the All-Sombra - and even he manages to look marginally less worse for wear. My ears even flick forward - as do Youngest Sombra's fluffy ears - and catch the occasional short, low purr ebb from his own throat.

All-Sombra's charismatic, constantly smug voice speaks to them all.

"This isn't a dream, I think you three have at least realized that by now, but it isn't a lie either. Our location is my mindscape. Yes, Smallest Me, that's something you have literally no idea about. Smaller and Small Me might be aware of the concept - 'the world within' and all about partial worlds, of course. I dragged myself in here and retreated into my own mind to gather strength and prevent my physical form from collapsing entirely as I drift, entirely vulnerable and wounded through the densest and most horrifying, labyrinthine, and eldritch magical barriers and prisons I have ever encountered in my latest terroristic errand to save things as selfishly as possible."

I could listen to his voice speak forever. There aren't even any interruptions either; everysombra can sense that I'm awake. Smallest Sombra's gaze drifts to me once, and only for a moment.

"To successfully avoid irreversible damage to my mind and soul, as well as being ripped apart as I sink deeper into these magical layers - the ones I was telling you two about - while in the closest thing to my extraphysical form I can manage without near-death, I have put myself in a coma-like state."

"Then this is almost a dream?" Young Sombra asks, flicking at the hem of his king's cape with magic.

All-Sombra snorts. "I prefer to think of it as 'how to disappear completely'. After all, what exactly is able to find and seize an extraphysical entity, much less locate one?"

"Nothing!" Smallest-sans-Youngest Sombra declares, proudly puffing out his fluffy chest at his future self's display of genius.

"Exactly," All-Sombra and Young Sombra say.

I nod in agreement and feel All-Sombra shift slightly. I can't see his face, but I half close my eyes, face still damp where I had cried, and imagine him smiling his snarky smile when he speaks.

"So far all of them have been devoid of what I'm looking for," All-Sombra continues. "Even those that might have remained, sealed away in magic-sapping, soul-draining prisons made just for the purpose of harming the Alicorns haven't lingered as long as I thought their species might have... However, I can sense there's at least one of them in all this mess."

The two Sombras that sit and listen attentively to his story clap their forehooves. The gesture coming from either of them, the gesture was odd. Youngest Sombra clapped awkwardly, clearly unfamiliar with performing the action while Young Sombra just harrumphed and did so as sarcastically as possible.

"Damn it, why do my future incarnations have to be so attractive?" I mumble.

Young Sombra looks at me. "As attractive as all of us are, don't you think that the almost monomaniac fixation that you've developed towards-"

Straightening my posture a little, I glare at Young Sombra. "You're just jealous because I'm younger than you."

He returned the glare. "I'm annoyed you can't seem to prioritize and admire the appearance of everysombra but him-" He nodded in the direction of Youngest Sombra. "-in silence so that we can orchestrate any plans necessary to get Future Sombra to where he needs to be since-"

"Actually," All-Sombra interjected. I felt him casually toss his mane a bit. "There is plenty of time to get a good long look at me since-"

"You want to admire me as well," Young Sombra says, his annoyed sigh contrasting with an amused roll of his eyes.

"I can't help it," All-Sombra says, as devious as ever. "All Sombras all horribly attractive. I'm doomed."

"Even me?" Youngest Sombra asks, cocking his head to the side.

"You're an egotistical child," All-Sombra says, "but still a child, so no."

"Wouldn't even think of it," Young Sombra grumbles.

I make a very dignified gagging noise. While all of us are at least attractive, Youngest Sombra, was, well, the youngest. There would be no feelings for him, obviously.

"Ah, so when are we going to let True Sombra speak?" Youngest Sombra asks, cocking his head further to the side so that his mane hides both his covered and uncovered eye.

"Now," All-Sombra says tersely. The rest of us nod.

"The Sombra Who Has Yet To Be a Former King was right; none of you are real. All of you are replicas of me in the past - incarnations, as I've noticed you call yourselves in between the older two of you shooting me gay looks-"

"Listen," I say, trying to nudge All-Sombra back into holding me again instead of being so relaxed. "We're all guilty of something. Surely All-Sombra maintains a criminal reputation even in the future?"

"He looks so good it's criminal," Young Sombra mumbled, eyeing an uncaring All-Sombra.

"You three don't know the half of it," All-Sombra said. "Now can I continue?"

All-Sombra gets two nods and an eye roll from Young Sombra for responses. He might have gotten half an eye roll from Youngest Sombra, except his covered eye made it hard to tell.

"Again: none of you are real. Each of you are a bit distorted from how I would have actually acted at your ages due to the hastiness of my spell and the state of mind I was in. There's other minor factors too, but I don't need to go into them. I honestly don't have forever right now. In short: in order for me to properly manifest in my own mind, the mindscape had to be constructed accurately. Thus, it created you three from diverged memories. Three versions of my esteemed and very attractive self frozen in time as literal manifestations of my ego."

There was astounded silence in appreciation of the Ego of All-Sombra that we were part of. After the moment passed, Youngest Sombra raised his forehoof halfway, a look of deep contemplation and worry on his face.

I felt All-Sombra nod.

"The nature of the three of us aside, will we be destroyed once you regain consciousness?"

He shakes his head and I duck to avoid being hit. "No, but you're likely going to be stasis, or have your forms altered. Don't count on destruction though. It's as likely as me embracing humility."

In other words, impossible. The other two nod, assured while I still rest close to All-Sombra.

"How much longer do we have left until that occurs?" Young Sombra asked, tapping a forehoof to his chin and no doubt thinking about numbers that were in no way relevant to the beauty of All-Sombra that he obviously wasn't eyeing. Or maybe he was doing it too subtly using some mysterious technique from the future.

"Not very long. As soon as I sink through the last magical divide, I'll be able to stir my consciousness outside the boundaries of my own mind and form myself as a physical entity again."

I felt that I wouldn't last for much longer as the others began to disappear. First, Young Sombra and then Youngest Sombra. It was like they had been erased - there was nothing painful or dramatic. All they did was gradually blend into the background, growing more and more transparent as each second passed. I stood next to All-Sombra, our mismatched height reflecting in the shadows we cast on the chamber's center. He told me that there were more places like this. A whole range of snow-bound mountains with other barrows held my memories and other parts of my mind below the surface of mountains, hidden where only the All-Sombra, myself, and the others would know where to find anything and everything in this vast place.

With each disappearance, the cold wind blowing in from the distant exterior landscape of this place grew chillier - not that it seemed to bother All-Sombra - and the runes around us, the ones carved into the stone walls, glowed with a contained, vibrant crimson light that looked like an extreme version of my own aura. I even thought I saw the ghostly outlines of some tracing their way across All-Sombra's cloak as the burn of power flowed through us both. Yet, each passing second also meant that it was getting farther away from me as I began to gradually fade with all the speed of a crippled messenger travelling on a continent-wide errand.

Like some grand library of libraries, the walls were covered with line after line of almost-rectangular outlines shaped like the cartouches of the south from all the books in the third library. Each row contained hundreds and were about as wide as my muzzle. None of them were irregular in shape and no rows intersected. Every one of them was filled with the strange crimson script that kept shifting. While I couldn't understand it, All-Sombra might have. I could only watch as each letter, in patterns that started at the top and went to the bottom of each changed and grew, swapping features with one another so that each glyph shifted.

Nothing was carved. This was work that no tool could do. These, as All-Sombra, had explained to me, were but one archive of memories - of knowledge - within this place that even he hadn't seen the full extent of.

"I go far, don't I?" I heard myself say, and shifted my forehooves a bit awkwardly. My words were directed at All-Sombra, but I couldn't tear my stare away from the walls.

"Farther," All-Sombra says, his voice distant and tone enigmatic as ever. What else could I expect from him, from me?

"And there's still farther to go," I reply, more grounded and distracted sounding than him. My tone is even a little rough in comparison, and again, what else would I expect from myself? No matter which of us speaks, there is always a wryness, defiance, and pride that never goes away.

"Always." Physically, he feels closer to me than ever, and with each response he grows farther away.

I look down at my legs, which are as easy to look through as the deep shades of color in a stained glass window and ghostly pale. There's something important I need to ask him before I dissolve into the air.

I might never see him again, my divinely charming future self, All-Sombra. The world depended on him.

And on this.

He knew, I saw him spot the shift in my gaze that signaled the change of course in my thoughts. With my good eye, I met his gaze and betrayed as little as I could, despite the chance that he likely already knew what I was thinking.

"Do you-" I began, as confident as ever, only to be interrupted as the first two words left my mouth.

"Want to make out?" All-Sombra finished, lifting and eyebrow so that I understood what he meant even if the undoubtedly modern term of 'make out' was not one I knew.

I couldn't read the extent of what the devious, intelligent look in his eyes revealed, but his sassy smirk concealed nothing.

"Yes, that's what I wanted to ask." My ears perked up where I couldn't smile. "Do you?" I added again.

All-Sombra looked unfazed. Delighted, even. Mostly just crazy as he flashed me that roguish grin again.

"Heck yeah!"