Strands of her hair clung to her face as the queen pushed herself up from her pillow. The sky through the glass pane was bathed in the predawn gloom, the star speckled indigo that heralded the coming day providing just enough light for her to discern nearby objects within the dark of the bedchamber. Her immediate waking thoughts were of her king and the woeful tale he had shared with her. She directed her gaze to her sleeping husband, his large barrel chest slowly rising and falling. She noticed upon examining him that a stir and a grimace would frequently interrupt the rhythm of his breathing. Another nightmare? she guessed. It made her heart feel heavy to witness her husband's suffering; even in his dreams he could find no reprieve from his suffering. Fluttershy caressed his cheek to free him from the hell of his unconsciousness. His silent snoring crescendoed to a startled snort. His eyes, like slashes of blood on polished jade, opened. He looked as if he wasn't quite sure what to say. No doubt that the events that had transpired the night before were upon his waking mind as well.
"Morning," Fluttershy greeted him with a sweet smile.
Sombra looked away from her, as if he was distracting himself with a wrinkle or stray thread on his pillow. "Yes, I suppose it is," he agreed, his dark grey muzzle reddening. The image of a blushing Sombra had Fluttershy covering her mouth to conceal her smile. His eyes snapped back to her with an icy glare that could set a wendigo to shivering. "Am I amusing you?"
Now that Fluttershy had gotten to take a peak under that impenetrable mask of venom and malice, his snarls and sneers just seemed to lack the potency they had once possessed. "Kinda," she chirped playfully.
"What in buggering tartarus is so bloody funny?" the king bristled, the red lines in his muzzle becoming more prominent.
"My king," Fluttershy said, "you don't have to be ashamed of your vulnerability. Not with me."
The king seethed upon the very mention of the V word. It was an insult to someone with as much pride as him. "You are to never speak of this to anyone!" he demanded hotly. "Do you understand?"
Fluttershy responded by nuzzling her way into his arms like an affectionately insistent feline. It was there against his chest where she had finally chipped away at the remainder of his defenses. The king returned the embrace, his long, powerful arms taking her tenderly. "Why must you strip me of what dignity I have left?" he sighed, trying to sound irritated about the situation.
"Dignity?" Fluttershy scoffed, though in a playful sort of way. She looked up at him and cupped his face in her hooves. "You're not allowed to be dignified when we're alone."
"Oh?" mocked Sombra. "Then what privileges wouldst thou grant me in our intimacy? Please, enlighten me before I presume once more."
"Well, if you think you can stop being snide for two seconds, I just might let you kiss me."
Sombra waited for exactly two seconds to go by before he replied, "How gracious of you."
"See?" Fluttershy quipped. "I knew you could do it." She placed her hooves against his chest and kissed him, just as she had promised to do. It was a kiss that was originally intended to be a playful peck, but, the sensation of his warm lips over hers, her wings extending in delight as he massaged them, their tails intertwining, the heat of their passion intensifying by the second, it lasted longer than she expected. Overwhelmed with desire, the queen bit his bottom lip and pulled him on top of her.
The first rays of east light cascaded down on them through the glass as the morning sun was just beginning to peek over the snowy crags. Fluttershy and her king cuddled in the twisted, tangled nest of sheets their passion had upturned like a farming plow dragged through a pebble garden. The queen craned her neck to kiss him before she turned over to face the window, and they watched the sunrise together.
The feasting hall was bustling with laughter and lively conversations when the king and queen arrived. Servants and workers would smile and shout greetings to them from their seats, or lift a mug to their health as they passed them by. Fluttershy preferred this laid back atmosphere over the cacophony of panic and terror the feasting hall had once been. She smiled and waved and did her absolute best to return every polite greeting with one of her own, but the shower of praise was getting hard to keep up with. She looked to her husband, who merely regarded a few of his subjects with a slight nod and nothing more. "Isn't this nice?" she said as they came upon the steps of the dais, Ethey leading the way with her clipboard hugged tightly under her foreleg.
The king glanced down at her. "Is what nice?"
"They like you," the queen explained. "Doesn't this feel so much better than having them fear you?"
"They feel about the same," Sombra replied. "Though, I have learned that a kingdom governed through fear is doomed to fail. I intend to keep my subjects happier this time around."
"Our subjects," Fluttershy corrected him before she hugged onto his arm. She half expected him to ignore her, or reclaim his arm in irritation, or at the very least reply with nothing more than a curt hum of acknowledgement. He instead looked down at her, smiled in that slight, barely noticeable way he did from time to time, and repeated the corrected version of his previous statement.
Fluttershy liked that roguish grin of his. He had done a lot of things that morning that she liked. She liked the way he kissed her. She liked the way he whispered her name in her ear as they made love. She liked the way he held her as they watched the sunrise from their bed, the way he nuzzled up to her neck, the way he made her giggle with delight when he lightly nibbled on her ear. The affection he showered over her made her feel so special. Yet, there was a part of her that was unhappy. All the doting in the world couldn't seem to alleviate her of the longing feeling lingering in her heart.
When they reached the top of the dais, Sombra helped his bride into her seat before taking his own. Fluttershy nestled herself into her comfortable chair and reflected upon her feelings as she waited for her meal to be brought to her. Even though she had come to love her husband, she couldn't help but pine for what was. She closed her eyes and thought of her friends.
"Little dove?"
Fluttershy opened her eyes. Her king was giving her a concerned look.
"Are you well?"
"I am," the queen fibbed.
The young steward was laying out the first course before them, a massive omelette heaping with green peppers, mushrooms, fried potatoes, and cheese. It smelled delicious, but Sombra didn't even seem to notice it. "Something bothers you," he persisted. "Tell me the truth of this."
Fluttershy carefully selected her words. "My king," she made herself say, "if I were... Wanting to leave... Would I be permitted to?"
"You wish to leave?" said the king, cutting away a large portion of the omelette for himself. "Where is it that you wish to go?"
Fluttershy gauged his reaction carefully. "The Crystal Empire."
Sombra was about to fork a piece of omelette into his mouth, but upon his bride's request he lowered the utensil to give her an incredulous look.
"I miss my friends," Fluttershy explained as succinctly as possible before she could be denied or interrupted.
"That is just what Celestia would want," Sombra said. "You'd have me walk into an ambush."
"But my friends are probably worried sick about me!" Fluttershy pleaded. "They don't know you how I know you, and I... Just..." She trailed off as the gears in her mind proceeded to grind out an idea. "What if my friends were to come here instead? No Celestia, no Luna, no Cadence, no risks of an ambush or devious plots. Just my friends. I'm sure they'd love to meet you. The real you, I mean."
The steward was filling a large mug with ale from a tapped barrel preemptively set beside the king's seat. He placed the mug on the table, where Sombra immediately wrapped the cleft of his free foreleg around its handle and drank, nearly depleting its contents in three thoughtful swallows. Fluttershy eagerly watched as he set his mug aside and wiped the froth from his mouth. His reply was, "Yes, well, I'm sure they'd love to plant a dagger between my shoulders as well."
That almost sounded like a no, but Fluttershy wouldn't be discouraged. This was one issue that she was prepared to strain to its absolute limit. She glanced at the barrel beside her king's chair. Perhaps she could find a way to entice his thirst, then try him again when he was a little deeper in his cups. Her husband was always a lot warmer and a lot happier with a belly full of ale. She liked the idea at first, but the thought of weaponizing her husband's alcohol to serve her means felt a bit sleazy. She instead decided to switch her tactics. "If not for a few days, we could at least have them over for dinner. I just want my friends and my husband to get to know each other, is that such a bad thing?" Fluttershy briefly allowed herself to be entertained by the thought of Rainbow Dash and Sombra at the dinner table together. Rainbow would no doubt feel the need to challenge her husband to a drinking contest. 'Twenty bits says I can drink you under the table,' she would say to him. She would lose - horribly - but the thought of those two chumming it up made her smile.
The queen noticed Ethey nibbling away at one of those cream cheese pumpkin rolls Nevermore had prepared. It was obvious from her silence that she was listening in on their conversation. Fluttershy hoped the little adviser may offer some kind of incentive to her argument. "Ethey, you must have ran into one of my friends before, as much as we've all been to the Crystal Empire. What do you think of them?"
Ethey swallowed her bite and washed it down with a gulp of milk before she replied. "I think I have. The erratic pink one, is she one of those friends of yours? I've seen her with you a few times."
"Yes! That's Pinkie Pie. She's seems like a blast to be around, doesn't she?" Her hopeful eyes snapped back to her king.
"Yeah, I remember her. She mistook me for a child. She stopped me one time to give me candy while I was on an errand for Cadence. I just played along with it. It was a degrading experience, but hey, free candy." She punctuated the end of her sentence with a shrug.
"Your friends will try to kill me the second I let my guard down," Sombra interjected. "Never forget that they are Celestia's creatures."
"I promise I won't let them hurt you," Fluttershy insisted.
The king waved his hoof. "Oh, I know they won't hurt me. It's them trying to, and me being forced to kill them is what I'm trying to avoid." He lifted his mug to his lips, his words echoed in his cup before he swigged down its remnants. "I doubt you'd be able to find it in your heart to forgive me, should such an event occur."
"So, you're not afraid of my friends?" Fluttershy gathered. "You're afraid of how I would feel if something bad were to happen?"
The king handed his mug off to his steward for a refill. When it came back to him, he looked down into the cup and said, "My love, I want nothing more than to make you happy - but I cannot allow this. As much as it pains me to compliment that sun sow, Celestia is cunning and infinitely more cruel than she would ever allow you to believe. I guarantee that she will take advantage of any opportunity that is given to her, and those friends of yours would most likely be the center piece to any plot she devises.
"But... My king--
Sombra raised his hoof and gestured for silence. "We shall speak no more of this, little dove."
Fluttershy pouted. "So, you won't allow me to see my friends, and that's just the way it's going to be? Am I your queen, or am your slave? I seem to have forgotten."
"You've never been a slave," Sombra said, "and you should be thankful that you'll never know what it's like to be one."
"You're making me feel like one right now."
"And yet you suffer not the lash for your insolence, nor the searing bite of a branding iron. I suggest you count your blessings before making such ludicrous claims."
"Well, if I'm not a slave, then I'm a prisoner!" Fluttershy fired back. "You come and take me away from my friends, and now you say you won't let me see them. They don't know what's happening to me right now. They probably think you have me chained up starving to death in some dungeon."
Sombra's irritation was becoming palpable through his expression. "And why would any of them think that?"
"Because you haven't given them a reason not to!" Sombra was about to respond but Fluttershy spoke over him. "They don't know you. They don't know what you're trying to do - your goals, your ambitions, they know nothing about you. All they know is that you've taken me from them, and none of them have heard from me since--
"Be silent," Sombra suddenly cut her off. His expression went blank, as if he had entered some kind of hyper-focused trance, his eyes searching, his ears twitching. "Something's coming."
"Something's coming?" Fluttershy echoed. Then she frowned. "You're not trying to change the subject, are you?"
Sombra ignored her. "Ethey, do you hear that?"
"Hear?" the little unicorn mumbled through a mouth full of pumpkin roll, oblivious as oblivious could be.
"Yes, hear. Can you enhance your senses?"
Ethey swallowed her bite. "I'd be lying if I said I could," she admitted. "Other than some illumination and levitation spells, I'm utterly hopeless when it comes to magic. Especially sensory magic."
"What's going on?" Fluttershy asked. "What do you hear?"
"Sounds like hissing. Almost like a--" Sombra's eyes widened, as if startled by his conclusion. He shot up from his seat quicker than a snapped bowstring and shouted, "Everyone, take cover!" Silence and startled looks were the only responses his order had garnered. "Fools!" he cursed as he loosed a spell from his horn, a rippling ball of blurred air that produced a blast of pure psycho kinetic energy upon impact. It struck the eastern wall just above the center table, and all the servants and subjects breaking their fasts within the radius of the blast were propelled to the opposite end of the room.
The spry among those who had taken their seats on the west side of the feasting hall were able to catch some of them, but others crashed against the floor or were hurled down the lengthy tables like a rag doll in a spin dryer. Half-eaten Food items were crushed. Dishes and platters were sent clattering to the floor. The pregnant mare Fluttershy had noticed on her first night in the mansion ducked her head and curled her arms protectively over her belly as a thrashing earth pony bowled passed her.
Fluttershy turned to her husband to demand an explanation, but he wasn't in his seat. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye directed her gaze to the steps of the dais, where she noticed a dark shadow sailing across the polished marble like an apparition in flight. It moved so quickly that she would have missed it rematerializing into her husband at the center of the feasting hall if she had blinked. At that point there was no time to ask him anything. There was a loud blast. The wall on the east side of the feasting hall collapsed inward. Heavy pieces of mortared stone came crashing down on the tables that Sombra had evacuated.
He saved them, Fluttershy realized, looking at the battered and confused ponies who had been blasted away from the danger zone. They may have suffered some bumps and bruises, but that was preferable to what that shower of heavy stones would have done to them.
Sombra stood motionless, his eyes cold as death, as he glared at the figure approaching through the veil of dust and debris that had once been his wall.
"Ah, you must be the king!" exclaimed a deep, dark voice. The creature stepped into the clearing: A Minotaur, large, even by Minotaur standards. He hefted a massive cannon on his shoulder with the name "Patty" scrawled across it in red paint. The massive bull chewed a cigar in the corner of his yellow, smoke stained grin. He blew two thick plumes of smoke out through his nostrils as a group of stallions, armed and armored, were joining him through the improvised entrance behind him. The bull lovingly stroked his patty as if it was his pet and said, "My, they weren't bull shittin' when they said you were one big bastard!" The battle-hardened stallions surrounding him chuckled.
Sombra's cold eyes did not so much as narrow or blink when he said, "I'm going to kill you." It was a message that was conveyed in such a chillingly matter of fact sort of way, it didn't even sound like a threat. It was stated as if it was simply a thing that was going to occur, like, I'm going to the store. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to kill you.
The Minotaur cackled as a tiny griffin boy stepped forward from the group of marauders, a cloth sack clutched tightly in his grasp. The bovine exhaled another thick cloud of smoke and said, "That's just what these three little birds said they were going to do to me." The young griffin, taking his master's hint, heaved with all his strength and flung the sack. It hit the ground with a loud, metallic clatter and slid the rest of its way to Sombra's hooves. "That was of course before I put them in their place, but, you know, before I croaked em, these three little birds sang me the most interesting song. Something about a king who has taken it upon himself to lay claim to my territory. My hat's off to you, your majesty; that takes some serious balls."
Sombra undid the rope on the sack cloth and peaked inside. If whatever was inside that sack was supposed to illicit some sort of reaction from him, it didn't seem to work. He simply looked up and said, "A thoughtful gift, but I will require one more in order to have a full set." The king scratched the stubble of his chin in a contemplative manner. "Me thinks yours should do."
"Damn, that's cold!" The Minotaur threw his head back and guffawed while his bandits thundered in a raucous fit of laughter. "He's almost as cold as you, Tauren," Roared a stout-looking earth pony from under a crudely dented iron skull cap. "Nah, he's not," bellowed the Minotaur named Tauren. "Not even close, but I'll give the little shit stain some credit."
Sombra, amid his foes' merriment, stood so still, so silent and unresponsive, one might have thought he was a statue.
"You know," the Minotaur said amidst the dwindling laughter, "I feel bad that I have to kill you. You really do entertain the shit out of me."
"I wish I could say the same to you," Sombra replied, his voice cool with contempt.
Tauren wiped a tear of mirth from his eye, dug into a satchel he had slung around his shoulder, and poured a sack of small iron balls down the barrel of his cannon. "Well," he said, "it was nice chatting with you, but you're starting to piss me off. We've an entire mansion's worth of pillaging ahead of us. There are slaves to be taken, spoils to be plundered, and hey, don't think I didn't notice all the fine looking mares you have in here. You can bet your happy ass my lads here are just dying to make their acquaintances. It feels selfish to keep them waiting, so let's just bite the bit and get this nasty bit of business over with." He hefted the canon onto his shoulder and took aim toward the king. "Any last words, shit stain?"
"Don't miss," Sombra advised.
"Hell of a line to go out on!" Tauren roared with approval. "I'll be sure to piss it in the snow after I bury you." He lit the fuse on his cannon with the tip of his cigar.
Fluttershy, Ethey, and the terrified subjects down on the floor watched in horror as the hissing fuse grew shorter. For that moment it was the only sound in existence. Until the cannon finally thundered. The king's horn erupted with black energy. The cluster of grapeshot slowed to a stop, and it was there they remained, suspended motionlessly in the king's invisible barrier.
Tauron scratched his head. "That... Doesn't usually happen..."
The balls ignited with an ominous black aura. "Nor does this, I'm willing to wager." The volley was then returned to their sender. An anguished roar, some spittle, and his cigar came flying from the Minotaur's gaping mouth when the black, crackling balls severed his legs from under him. The grapeshot that did not strike him peppered his reinforcements. Screams of pain were now echoing off all the corners of the feasting hall. Sombra started his advance at a sauntering pace. "Oh, please," he scoffed. "All I did was cut off your legs."
A Pegasus that managed to evade Sombra's counter attack sallied forth with an axe. Others who were uninjured or were still able to fight fell in beside him. The hatchet wielding berserker opened his wings and charged, but he was brained when Sombra struck him down with a steel-clad hoof. Another Pegasus descended upon him with a downthrust spear, but he suddenly found himself trapped in the king's telekinetic snare. He thrashed in a fruitless attempt to free himself before an invisible force of unimaginable strength folded him in half backwards with a loud, sickening snap. He opened his mouth to scream before he died, but all that came out was a silent gasp. Sombra released his body, allowing it to flop lifelessly on the ground before he turned around and let loose with a rapid succession of black projectiles that felled five more.
The reserves of the attack force considered their priorities as they watched the mayhem unfold. They dropped their weapons and turned to retreat, but before they could make any meaningful progress Sombra's shadow extended across the floor to give chase. The silhouette forked, branching off in the directions of each runner, then took substance and extended from the ground to impale them.
The last able-bodied fighter was a unicorn, his eyes wide with desperation as he backed into a corner and fired wave after wave of arcane missiles. Sombra batted them away with a hoof as he closed in on him. "Pathetic," he sneered, "your spells lack even the intensity to melt steel or pierce armor. What do you practice on, scarecrows? On second thought, don't answer that; you probably do." His horn glowed in preparation to return fire. "Allow me to show you how a true wizard does battle." A beam of light shot from his horn, punching through the unicorn's breastplate and painting the wall behind him with a bone fragment strewn mist. The bandit died too quick to let out so much as a yelp.
Sombra twisted around to survey the Minotaur, who was making a pitiful attempt to crawl away, his stumps smearing two sticky red trails to mark what little progress he had made. Sombra approached him. "How now, mad cow?"
Tauren, weak from blood loss, collapsed in a pool of his own spit, panting and sobbing. "Mercy," he whimpered.
"You're not laughing, laughing man?" Sombra asked. "You were laughing so much in the beginning. You laughed at me. You laughed at my claim to what used to be your territory. You laughed as you made your intentions clear to kill me, to rob me, to rape and enslave my subjects. I ask you, why are you no longer laughing? I certainly hope I didn't do or say anything to offend you."
The Minotaur murmured something.
"I didn't hear you." Sombra crushed his hand with a hard stomp. "It's rude to mutter under your breath when someone is speaking to you."
"Gods!" Tauren whined.
Sombra sat on his back and grasped a horn in each foreleg. "I know not what deities you are praying to, but if it was in their plan for you to cross paths with me, rest assured, they've no love for you." Sombra gripped the horns tight and twisted his head violently. The Minotaur roared. Another twist sent the bovine into a fit of gasping and choking as his body convulsed. Then Sombra twisted again, only much harder. Tauren's body finally went limp as the feasting hall echoed with a loud, grotesque crack. Sombra twisted again, then again, and again, and again, until the Minotaur's head was at last liberated from his body.
Fluttershy looked away, shuddering. So much death. So much pain. It was madness. Ethey took her in an embrace to calm her. "The king has done a noble thing," she insisted.
"Noble?" Fluttershy repeated incredulously.
"We could have ended up dead today, or dragged away to live out the rest of our lives as slaves. My point is that the king did what he had to do to protect you. To protect all of us."
The adviser had a point, but... "Still, he was begging for mercy. He couldn't even fight anymore."
"How many terrified and defenseless victims do you think those bandits have claimed? Did you see how excited they all were at the prospect of rape and murder? What was the king supposed to do, politely ask them to leave?"
Fluttershy could not think of a response to that.
Sombra stared into the dead eyes of his vanquished foe. "I am of the mind that an eye for an eye makes us blind, but he brought this on himself." He dropped the head on the ground with a wet smack, then turned his attention to the rough spun bag that was thrown to him just before the massacre began. "Where is Clash? Has anyone seen him?"
Ethey adjusted her glasses and said, "I, uh, I think the master-at-arms is out on his morning PT run. May I ask why you're inquiring about him, my king?"
"He's going to want to know about this." Sombra upended the bag, and the hall resonated with a collective gasp as the three golden helmets of Cadence's royal guard clattered to the floor, with the heads of the young guards still inside of them.
Ethey looked as if she had just been punched in the stomach. "Clash told them not to leave. He warned them that this would happen!" She broke down into tears. "They were jerks, but they didn't deserve this!"
Watching her cry made Fluttershy want to cry. The little adviser really did look like a helpless child at that moment. As the queen took Ethey in her arms, she looked down from the dais, at the heads of the guards. Then she looked at the lifeless body of the monster who so cruelly and so proudly snuffed out their lives. Was her husband justified in what he had done?
Her glistening eyes narrowed in outrage. It wasn't for her to judge who deserves to live or who deserves to die, but one thing was for sure: Her husband insured that those monsters would never be able to hurt anyone again.