I'm going to tell you a story.
Some of it is about me, the best creature there is.
Some of it is about my wife, the brightest one I have known.
And some of it is about Macavallo, who does not even have the decency to be alive anymore.
Macavallo was a stallion who lived far away from the Eastern continents where Equestria is situated; he was a mortal unicorn who lived centuries before Celestia was content to do more than trade with the Western nations across the vast Barren Sea in the time after my Luna was banished. An Istallion historian and philosopher, he witnessed the House of Maredici tear his nation apart with more cunning than Tribal Era ponies ever managed and an openness that Celestia is too passive to attempt. Istallia had no gods outside of its sky-reaching basilicas, no stability, and only mortals to bloody the throne — but Macavallo was rightly ambitious, something I can't cease to admire.
He was a writer and a reader too. I know there's little difference between the two, but Macavallo might as well have flaunted both in a time when having one of those abilities was already a luxury. If he did so, he has my intrigue — any who know me well enough are aware I'm not the sort to admire anyone.
Macavallo read the histories of the faraway East, where I'm from — if it could be said I'm from anywhere, in the conventional sense. Like many Westerners, the Istallions, the Neighponese, and other nations — equine and otherwise — were hooked on the history of the faraway lands filled with gods, foreign magic, and lost kingdoms. The residents of the West found themselves enthralled by the myth craze sweeping through them. These lands were caught between wars and feuding clans on a scale that the East wasn't, organizing great armies led by mortal rulers and dynasties that fell as easily as their borders and were replaced, who had little knowledge of ancient stirrings despite walking among the divine, and cities that had never reclaimed the full glory of pre-Collapse civilization.
The few middle-way islands thrown across the vast Barren Sea — the Kingdom of the Isle of Mares, Shetland Islands, Boara-Boara, the Isle of Albionian Mutant-Boar, Shirdal Island — were no longer of interest to the West's powerful, politically refined empires. The burros of Brayzil, Neighpon, yeti of Mirkaysia, minotaurs of Arcadia and its archipelagos, Qilin, Ibexian Caliphate all had reason to take up an interest in the pony-majority lands of the East for trade. Even the monstrously sized Sibearian Tsardom — the land of ursine creatures, ice orgs, lava orgs, and countless ancient dragons — was willing to consider communications with smaller nations, like Equestria. Macavallo's home nation was just one of many pony-dominated lands in the East — like Saddle Lanka, Andalusia, and Trampylvania — to be interested in contact without conquest.
While not dystopian in the darker sense, if you toss out things like Elements of Harmony, gods, magic of friendship, or even the notion that a nation could last as it is for centuries and prosper, you'd be telling most of the Western lands something that's barely fictional at best. The immaturity of the East had limited attraction once trade agreements were made and myths were exhausted. Talk of the most influential zebra traders, war elephant clans, and other traditions and creatures of the West would resume, all of which would be more believable than anything like the half-stability in Eastern nations.
The one-thousand-year reign of Celestia Galaxia, alone? To the creatures there, that would be unthinkable — and enviable, once the inconceivable facet was digested. Even to this day, the West knows nothing of stability like that of the Eastern empires and kingdoms. Most Western-born immigrants to Eastern nations fled from wars and were born in war — and the peace of nations over here is sweet and tempting to drink — as well as preserve at any cost.
One of the historical events that ponies like Macavallo read through was the disappearance of the most infamous dark magic user, a mortal who sealed an entire empire in time and stood up to some of the most powerful gods.
Yours truly.
The pony nations, zebra tribes, griffon homeland of Shirdal, and various other species found out about Celestia and Luna, who they accepted as distant gods. War may ravage and redraw these lands, but their texts survive and show how these creatures were even more awed at the celestial routine the Two Sisters maintained. Neptune — it's not what I'd like to call him, but Sombra forbid that anypony gets called what he sees fit — and Aquastria, with a particular fixation on the city of Atlantis, were each marveled at. Every word translated into their languages is one that exudes the excitement of unearthed secrets.
Most importantly, there was a story of three things among the hundreds that made their way across the seas. One that featured a king, a crystal kingdom, and Sombra — myself.
Even the West viewed the slaughter of the crystal ponies with horror; war may have been as bloody common for them as market gossip and general fools, but it wasn't particularly reveled in any more than anypony would revel in a damn plague.
Nopony censored war in the West, and it'd be hard to — all you had to do was wait a couple of generations and all those skirmishes would send ships sailing and blood to bathe streets and city walls again. You might as well bet money on how quickly it takes for violence to take a cousin, neighbor, friend — or to find a declaration printed in a headline. And maybe you did not bother to read something like that at all and tossed the paper into the cobblestone street, where it was carried on the deep songs of a war-horn from eyrie to eyrie — where you would fly after them.
The West is familiar with war. The standing armies of the East, meddling about in peace-times and border skirmishes aren't all that much to their legions, but they fear our gods — which I find quite flattering.
To Westerners, a mortal king with magic they knew nothing of staving off gods and warping time and shadows was something to make war over. It was not a war of blades and spells, of legions and the young recruits shaking in their uniforms and armor alike — this was deadly because it was a war of words. Philosophers gathered against the history they had been given, charging into battle against one another to rip the inky guts of these 'legends' and fling all the gore about in patterns sharp enough to shock one another like the stab of a bayonet or the burn of a spell.
This was writing at its best, and Macavallo was one such writer. He did not eye the history and writings of the goddess that was my sister-in-law with much regard, and the then-dubious existence of my wife was little to him. There were many in the Western lands who wrote of my Luna — speculating on her meanings and relation to the world, staining parchment with rows of cramped black writing of hoof, horn, and claw that were the dark feathers on wings of war. She was given a second existence as an enduring literary enigma, one that was never 'solved' despite lifetimes of effort. Though, looking over all those writings and how far from the truth every creature spiraled, I can't help but think that the whole body produced in this time is one of the most excellent microcosms for mortal folly possible.
He was one of the surprisingly many scholars who cared not for the king under the sea, or celestial sisters, and the divine rulers of the afterlife.
Macavallo developed a fascination with me as history knew me then — which was not much since I was not myself in any tale to fall in their hooves. Everypony knew exactly what Celestia wrote and not much more, since the armies to be marched against me never got to take their first hoofsteps. What exactly did Celestia write, you might ask? For a mare obsessed with moral purity, she managed to spin a detailed, harrowing account of events that never occurred during the eight years I spent in the Crystal Empire. I doubt she was without the help of a ghostwriter, but Celestia made what would have been the extinction of the crystal ponies — had I lasted as long as Onyx wanted — into something even grislier with a single-hoofed effort. Only I knew what went on in full there, so how did she get the facts to fill the history books that were distributed among the Equestrians and Westerners alike?
She didn't. Luna was the only soul able to scout the Crystal Empire only briefly before my banishment, and while she gathered facts, she gathered fantasy as well from the mouths of tortured liars who needed bigger monsters to make their victimhood greater than it already was. They had no other way to cope with how little they understood the world and what brought their lives to the point of fish in a barrel targetted by a cat and spear-clutching colt poised to kill. Luna has admitted she could not disprove all she was told in the time she had, but she did not willingly further the fantasies of angry, broken ponies. With my solar enemy at a loss to understanding her defeat, living in a nation of ponies whose Tribal Era roots still showed, and the truth buried in ice and shadow, would she dare try to tell a single shred of what really happened?
Never.
The image of a sadistic, bloodthirsty, cannibal — to repeat the least of the lies spoken about me — shocked Western readers. Unlike the creatures of the East, who accepted what they were fed uncritically, they jumped at the chance to examine a figure they believed so cruel and that a goddess condemned as a monster.
The mysterious king — I'll just call him that, since he is not me — was a cruel tyrant, and appeared to be a pony of great might but no intellect, and whose active politics across his land were a distinct lack of politics, but expertise in torture, bravado, and intent to harm all under his rule with great prejudice. The king's reign was a mystery in terms of mechanics and witnesses. How had he stayed so powerful — and for what purpose? The Western nations were no strangers to warlordism, but the localized and single-hoofed brutality of this tyrant was as unanticipated as his magic.
In an attempt to explain and shed light on the subject of this king and his ruling style, Macavallo wrote his magnum opus, The Prince. In its pages, he observed the actions that lead to the deaths of many and all that transpired within the Empire's borders. Nothing nearly so morbid to them as the systematic enslavement, torture, and murder of hundreds of crystal ponies had ever crossed their minds. Now, a detailed examination of it was sweeping nations and was able to sit in their hooves of anypony literate and able to spare a few coins. If the West was a stretch of snow, my story was tar that had irreversibly blotted out part of it, and the whole sequence of events was so foreign and bizarre... but unshakable in the public attention span. The whole damned kingdom of Andalusia was so fixated on my story that they mistranslated my name and gradually adopted it as a word — to them, Sombra came to mean 'shadow' and waxed and waned as a popular as mare's name.
What Macavallo read were the accounts of a brutal, merciless, and sadistic individual who was said to rule the Crystal Empire. In those pages, he observed the barbaric reputation that was tacked onto the figure who wore the crown; he was reminded of the tortures he experienced firsthoof in local wars, only magnified in malice and personal sadism. Then the power and skill the king had, as well as the magical feats that were attributed to him... well, Macavallo was one of the few who saw some kind of divergence here. He noted where things had to be more than meets the eye where generations both before, during, and since his lifetimes died without ever questioning what whispers left the Empire's borders.
Unfortunately, he never lived long enough to know he was right. However, his 'idea' led to a revolutionary philosophy — one not exactly found abundantly in Equestria's borders, even if the Sun allowed its power to flourish here.
The King was an entity that ruled through fear and brutality, the face to be met on the throne with an affinity for cruelty as ornate as any regalia or typical Crystalline decorations found throughout the palace halls. Strength and bloodshed got him his position, and helped keep him there regardless of what forces thought to challenge him and earn his ire. Friendship and likeability aren't exactly things that cause anypony to rise to a position of leadership — and maintain it, but that didn't make what was plain to everypony, that there was a genocide within the Empire's borders, acceptable in any way.
But Macavallo was not a fool, his mind was almost as sharp as my tongue, and I'm allowing the exaggeration of the former as a compliment only. There are only a few minds in each millennium that can see past strings and social currency as means to rise up in this world, that grander methods have always been waiting for use or in need of invention. Today, I suppose, I can be a little generous with any amount of praise because finally there is somepony worth mentioning who has earned it.
He recognized enough of what went unsaid in the Crystal Empire. Macavallo could spot things like the way the citizens were really controlled, the pattern of which demographics were targeted first in attacks, who was first to fall in the earliest of massacres among the crystal ponies, the way labor was done, and the great magic that kept so many blinded with awe and fear. Even Equestrian propaganda could never take something like that from me. My magic, like myself, is not quick to fade or be forgotten — not where it matters most. Even after all those who remembered those years of terror are dead and buried, nothing can revive the orchards of family trees that were rendered extinct by my powers or the strangling webs of generational trauma that will plague the crystal ponies as a race many hundreds of years into the future.
Macavallo saw something there. Even in the words that twisted and with the truth clawed from them, because I know firsthoof that the light of the Sun is for blinding. There were little of my magical exploits that were known in all the books that Macavallo would obtain, at least, compared to what actually happened — but only I know that. Onyx knows that far too well, and Luna knows much of it too. Cadance — if I wanted to count her, knows little in comparison to the previous two, but she knows something beyond the gold-wrapped lies and shining bile that the crystal ponies are so content with.
Macavallo knew something too: the King could have maintained no power through force alone, and his might meant nothing. In the course of history, as it is now and it will be, there will be few souls that can succeed in claiming power through force alone long enough to be remembered and fewer still who can maintain it with that particular method. The actions of the King were an even more elusive third position of the plethora available for securing sovereignty over one's inferiors, and this is primarily because they were done with so little support. Nopony could have known what really happened there, in the Crystal Empire. They had no idea about the dual minds that were there, the summoner and I, the demon. To them, the 'King Sombra' of history was just a single entity, and in the eyes of all those Western scholars, he — only as they knew him — was fascinating and revolting in equal measure.
Of all the actions that even I thought could be lost to shadow and shrouded in the passing of history, furthered only by the ignorance of ponies, it was a stallion named Macavallo who was the second to see the tip of some of the secrets that had been part of who I am, what I had been, and all that was around me before I had ice claim the Empire. He said that what really was able to keep one mortal on the throne of a secret empire that was no more than a shadow in a storm to the rest of the world was a brilliant mind, and absolutely nothing less. It wasn't social connections. It wasn't money. Tartarus knows it wasn't the military. The wants of working ponies and ordinary creatures are what rots empires, so it certainly was not the reason that the Crystal Empire stayed in the regime I kept it under. Macavallo dismissed every notion that there was some second pony — at the least — or network of underlings that even the gods couldn't see, and that shocked more than a few souls among his contemporaries.
Yet, why should it? I had nopony as a lover, or whatever bastardization of the concept — living or dead, willing or not — that Onyx could have wanted at the time. Luna's stars know that I couldn't have — wouldn't have — attempted to keep one of my own. I am without blood-kin. Friends were not possible, and even if they were, it is not friendship that the world depends on for accomplishments to make history, lasting or otherwise.
The thoughts of collectivism and other lies didn't permeate the minds of these creatures so strongly as they did Equestrians, so the idea wasn't set in stone, even if the hallowed, staunch individualism so strongly exemplified by Alicornkind was dormant. That didn't make Macavallo's idea any less terrifying. He struck three great fears with the picture he painted by telling the story of somepony powerful. Then, he made them an individual apart from the herd, and lastly, he made the 'King Sombra' in his vision smart.
It's flattering and terrifying, and I love it.
He wrote of a shadow — my words, not his — to the figure of the king. That was the role of an aggressor, the bloodthirsty, and brutal personality that ponies' eyes caught in bursts of face-to-face encounters, the kind marked by when Onyx spoke on the castle's balcony or when the crystal ponies met their violent ends. Following the king Macavallo described was the true ruler: a dangerous mind who knew to be ruthless, to be cunning, to be tricky, to work fear itself, and manipulate whatever was needed in order to achieve something admirable and selfish.
He called this ambitious part of a being 'the prince' not because he was genuinely lesser, only seen less, if the prince was somepony that could be seen at all.
It was his metaphor, and it was his bloody title too.
Long after I was banished, there was a book that was very nearly about me, about the Prince and what he stood for, and it was written by a stallion who wished to meet me with every word he wrote. I've seen it, as his work has floated in my magic, and honestly, I might have liked to see this stallion too. His voice lingers like a ghost in what he has left behind. There are times when I like to think that I can almost hear what he would have sounded like with how unusually earnest his writings were in an era that had been marked by the first gulps of Celestian saccharinity and deceit finally reaching foreign shores like Istallia. The balanced maturity of his welcome cynicism is only sulky and half-grown to those who crassly and ceaselessly force their isolated wants and delusions upon a wider world that has never reflected them, such as a certain nagging, blinding light.
He's dead.
I'm not surprised. I can't be. There was nothing else I could have expected with how much time has passed.
He's been dead for enough time to have become history. If he wasn't, then, I honestly would not have minded standing before him, looking him right in his brown eyes to see the exile written there, knowing it is something we have varying familiarity with. I would tell him that the Prince was far more real than he knew, that he was right enough, and most importantly, that it was me.
Why?
Today, and hereafter, I really am a prince.
...
I looked at Luna, trying to catch as much of her expression as possible in the night's light. Even in the dark, shadows of leaves still dappled her dark-coated body, and I could catch sight of them just enough in the dark. Her eyes were fixated solely on me, and rushing with a storm of emotions so clear in the blue. Worry danced in her eyes with pinpricks of moonlight and reflected the sparkles of her mane, letting me see the way that the night shifted her eyes, her feline pupils standing out in the varying shadows that colored the world. Even the flow of her mane was off, the long fluid strokes not constant with small signs only I knew how to spot beyond something as obvious as the nervous flicks of her tail and rustle of her feathers.
"This is so much..." she whispered, breathless. "Sombra... I..." Looking down at the ground and kicking at the grass, which was slightly slick with dew, Luna pinned her ears down nervously, clearly having too much on her mind.
I didn't blame her.
Drawing in a tired breath, I leaned over and nuzzled her wither. "Luna, do you want to talk about this another time?"
"No," she says with all the firmness I expect of her, "We need to talk about this now..." she gulps, "...because our future is important, beyond the light of stars and lives of mortals."
I stopped in silent acknowledgment and let the feel of her silky coat, warm body, and rich magical presence fill my senses.
"I didn't plan on staying in Canterlot forever."
"I know," she whispers back, standing against a cool night breeze.
"Only my Princess Charming has kept me here, for the most part." I nip one of her ears gently to lighten the mood, but even a few notes of my rumbling purr aren't comforting Luna right now.
But I stand with her, and it's enough, in a stubborn way — and I love that. The way she relaxes against me completely erases the distant note of stoicism she has when around mortal creatures. It has always made them look like washed-out figments of a half-ignored painting, and that they're somehow unable to see that despite the vague coldness she can't shake around them, Luna is the only light, all of the world, and the sole living being among their static. I don't know whether that is Luna being herself, her divinity, or the two of them mingling, but it's automatic — and gone around me.
"...I-I know... Sombra, is that really what you desire, though? Stars, it feels like your ambition has fallen on me."
Resting my neck across her back, I nosed through the thick locks of her mane when they flowed past, purring curiously and softly on the occasion where it might cheer her up. Even if it is just a little, and on the inside, I will always take the least I can do over nothing at all when it comes to Luna's happiness. I know she would do the same for me.
"We're beings of ambition and emotion surrounded by ponies who wrongly believe that they're anywhere near as great as I am."
"Ah," Luna murmured, "I see you only left out 'egotistical' since you only have that in excess?"
Experience tells me she might be choking back the tiniest of snorts, and the way her form tenses just right is in silent agreement with my observation.
"Correct." I nibble a bit of her mane for emphasis, sitting with Luna when I feel her move. "Undoubtedly, it was a lot to take in."
"...I am unsure."
Sitting up, I watch her ears twitch, leaning forward to nuzzle her cheek. Making sure our eyes meet and that she knows that it isn't Canterlot lit below — the citadel illuminated in the distance, or the endless sky all around us, the wind that she's always told me smells like stars and fallen leaves — it's her and I talking right here that matters.
"Staying in Canterlot like this was never going to be long-term, Luna. As for my job?" I make a disdainful tch noise and enjoy the feeling of autumn grass under me. "Being a mercenary is only as long-term as I want it to be..."
"...And you wish that my position as a Princess of Equestria was viewed as the same... as imminently and flexible as your own desire to live an adventurous life."
Another deep breath. "Yes, Luna."
She fiddles with her mane, forehooves I know to be blue combing through it in the dark. "Princesshood is really only so as long as I want it, and the same goes for my sister... if she would actually admit to such a truth. Were the want to become great enough, and I simply stepped onto my balcony and flew away, I would still be every bit a goddess, if not a rightful princess to a nation with no other truer heirs than her and I..." Her pause was all the signal I needed to know that her eyes were on the stars, and her voice plunged into wistfulness when she continued, "Suppose, one morning I strode out into Canterlot, no crown upon my head, walked the quieter roads until I found you, love, and we... went off into the world. No border could hold us, all solitude could be shared, and there would be no company we would have to bear but our own, to be with you, only you and nopony else— "
"Living off only the roads less traveled," I interject slyly.
"'Twould be like living among ghosts, for who would do much more than pass us by unless we were to let them?"
I lightly began to toy with a few of her feathers, letting the sound of our voices encourage her, waiting until she realizes how much I understand. "Our choices would be paramount in our survival, and all law our own... this love of ours was going to be 'us against the world' from the start, as much as I can only wish it wasn't, for your sake."
"Us against the world," Luna said, exhaling deeply and toying with each syllable in a familiar lively, thoughtful way, like when I eased her from one of her favorite novels or daydreams. Each word really danced upon her tongue, and hearing her speak so whimsically had the smallest hints of a smile working their way onto my muzzle. "Oh Sombra, I love that. I really do — the two of us! Life is an adventure, and only you wish to experience it with me, I-I..."
Nuzzling her neck again, I watched as she turned to me, eyes wide and nervous. "S-Sombra, I said all of that... and... oh..." She moved a forehoof to her mouth to stop a gasp that wasn't there.
"There's hardly anything keeping you a princess, and if you weren't a princess, I doubt you would travel as little as you do in comparison to if you were—"
"T-To elope with y-you?" Tears are starting to form in her eyes as if her voice catching wasn't enough, and she looks right at me.
"Do you really think that this situation is like that?" I ask levelly, resting one forehoof over hers.
She swallows slowly, and I feel her feathers rustling again.
"Luna, I want to share my life with you too," I begin, offering her a nuzzle that I want her to find even half as comforting as the ones she offers me. "Commitment hasn't been an issue."
A steady dip of her head is all the agreement that I need.
"I don't want to live in a pocket realm all the time, and living among ponies would be Tartarus for me, one with no exit. Staying in one place almost all of the time, year after year would be a non-issue if I could fully accept where I was living... I just don't have a real place to call my own, and..."
"You have never stopped wanting to see the world," comes the low, melodic whisper of the voice I've managed to lure back to me.
I hide nothing in my brusque nod and let Luna light her horn and toy with my bangs in her magic's grasp when I've completed the motion. Letting her adjust to having my steady gaze fall upon her when she's in such close proximity to me, I continue. "Waking up somewhere new would feel good. Traveling again, under the starry sky your night reveals or day in any corner foreign land would be invigorating to me, and I think it would be for you too. I'm not bored, lost, or restrained. Look at me. Do I look like I've been radiating ennui with every hour of my existence?"
Her expression softened just enough and Luna tilted her head to the side, eyes cloudy with thought as she carefully took in my expression through the shadows between us. "Perhaps not."
"Perhaps not," I said, narrowing my eyes to let her know just what I thought of her answer as if the agitation in my tone wasn't enough. "To give me an answer like that, you must be extremely upset."
She chuckled weakly.
I glared at her.
She bit her lip and pushed out a sigh. "Sombra, since knowing you I have been rather skeptical of how vanity could predate an entity as esteemed as yourself, for there was little to warrant such a quality, since the more foolishly vain think themselves good-looking when they have clearly never laid eyes upon you."
Chuckling dryly, I gave her a light headbutt and was rewarded with a real, soft whisper of a giggle that I had drawn out of her so very successfully."We'll keep talking, then? This is important, and I'm not just going to brush the matter of our future aside, but if you want to talk about it later..." I look at her carefully, "...unless this is something that is going to get to you... then, that is something I can accept."
If reluctantly, I leave unsaid, knowing my concern was enough to speak for what I have chosen not to tell her.
She clasps my hoof tighter and that is enough. I didn't need her tiny nod, but I'm glad for it. She knows I am.
"With your spirit, I can't imagine that you think that just staying in Canterlot until its time is done is what you want. You're Luna before you were ever a princess." Using my aura, I bat gently at her bangs a few times.
"Still, I want be a princess..." she looked like she wanted to say something else, but stopped.
I gave her a firm, concerned look. "You can always tell me what's on your mind," I reminded her because there were times when the look in her eyes made it clear she needed it.
"Y-You are right... I don't want to be a princess forever... though, for now, I want it to be my job, as that was all it was ever meant to be, at the end of things. Dreamwalking needs no crown to be done, wisdom no station... and every day I want to see Equestria be better than it was, full of magic and dreamers..." she poked at the ground with a forehoof, disturbing the grass. "The ponies in it feel cloudy, Sombra, like they have blocked some substance and are only content with cycling into one another, bleeding into a herd that should not be. When a pony has a nightmare, they want nothing more for it to stop, though that is rarely what is needed." Her gentle gaze rests on me, her eyes filled with understanding. "In sleep, even you fight battles, Sombra, and you are not alone in your ordeals. So many other creatures need assistance in unraveling and understanding their traumas through the mind as it is known only in sleep. That is needed more than any pure terror or waking start — what all of you need is an intervention that can offer insight, a highly individualistic trait that I fear dies more in this nation than anywhere else."
"Equestria doesn't know what it needs," I whisper into her coat as I nuzzle her again, taking in how warm her coat feels, "and that would be because it's not alive, which is hardly the case with an entity as fine as myself."
"Mmm," she sighed in enjoyment, "The princess that everypony would expect me to be is not the princess I shall strive and work toward being." I glanced up at her, watching as her gaze met mine in the dark, sparkling with an unspoken addition: You will help me, will you not?
My eyes said agreed, the smallest curl of a fond smirk tugging at the left corner of my mouth making it a clear 'As you wish' and that little gesture teased a silent 'Princess Charming' at the end.
She continued, the split-second exchanged absorbed by the both of us, understood, and leaving our conversation unbroken, and she sounded happier as I made myself comfortable, enjoying myself very much when Luna took the time to rest a wing around me, draping me in feathers and stroking my coat with them from time to time. With every word, she cuddled a little closer to me.
"Ponies think of princesses so foolishly, aye?"
I shift in acknowledgment.
"A princess is not an ornament to sit about—"
"Throne-warmer," I mumbled, and she snorts.
"Yes, yes, the throne-warmer. Though, I am no ornament, and neither are any of the princesses of Equestria. We are not to sit about, smile, and simply do our duties. Diplomacy is not the only weaker excuse for a defense that we ought to limit ourselves to, either. We are absolutely not going to live our lives purely as Equestrians see fit, treating hobbies, loves, family, passions, and all that is part of my life as though it is up to their dictation. Unfit rulers can be usurped or changed, but living my own life and shedding expectations are hardly things that constitute bad, they are all needed and the slights of measly mortals should not be of limitation if I stray from mere wants. My judgment is unconventional, but 'tyranny' is not a factor of it, these fools do not know a true and proper thing like autocracy from real tyranny."
Luna sighed. "An active, assertive ruler would do Equestria much good, and I think I can be that..." A forehoof tussles my mane where her voice grows quiet, picking up again when she was done stroking and teasing the locks and my bangs with her hoof. "I know you can help me. A strong second opinion from somepony I trust would be wonderful—"
"Luna," I interrupt clearly, moving her hoof away, "what are you getting at?" I shoot her a questioning sideways look, clear with the small amount of suspicion, pulling away and letting night shadows float between us.
Luna doesn't blink or swallow. There's a peculiar way to how she holds her jaw and the current clench of it that I know to be hesitation. Opening her mouth to say something doesn't even yield a sound; her eyes were focused on all the thoughts in her head. Behind those lovely blue eyes of hers, I knew all sorts of thoughts were brewing like a storm. Sometimes they just hung lazily and cast shadows, heavy and waiting — I know this because she has told me. Other times, I've seen the storms come out, and all the things that they can do.
"Luna?" I prod, waiting for an answer I know will come anyway. I just want to ease that nervous look in her eyes.
"...I want you to stay," she says quietly. "I have always wanted you to stay."
"I stay for you," I reminded her. My voice is low and steady. "I always stayed here for us."
Every way she looked at me told me that she never doubted that.
"I know," she affirmed softly, planting a kiss on one of my ears. "And Sombra? For what the words are worth to you, I am terribly sorry. To keep you from a life we both yearn to lead one day, and to have compelled you to stay in this citadel, where you have been slandered, mobbed, and..." She bites her lip. "I truly had no idea you felt this way."
Grumbling and lighting my horn, I give her mane a short tug, causing her to yelp. "You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. Canterlot is far from the worst place I've been, and ponies aside, it's not a bad place to be. You're here, too, and that's why I remain. You know that if it had been a problem for me to stay here, I wouldn't have. Not unless I could have worked something out with you."
Having nothing she could decide upon saying, Luna nods, mane swaying in the cool cloak of shadows.
"And being the God of Knowledge that I am, I, the confident and concerned Right-Honourable Lord Sombra have noticed that you haven't really told me why it is you want me to stay." I meet her eyes again, and she doesn't hesitate to meet mine. "Or why you want to."
Mouth struggling not to dip into a pout, Luna gives me a stink-eye, huffing about the smug coltfriend that dares to worry about her when she's fretting. I don't even mind that she refers to me as a coltfriend, of every soul in the world, she is the only one I am comfortable hearing that from — and it's always been superior to something as robbed of depth and worthlessly ambiguous as partner is.
The only reason I'm restraining myself and not flashing her a smirk is because in this dark, she would know where to strike at the sight of it, no matter how feigned her shot. I can hear her voice crying 'insolent' already but she was never mad. I always loved it when she did that. Her laugh followed more often than not, and it was strong and hearty compared to other mares; utterly jubilant. Mine was dry in comparison. Sarcastic. Mocking. She told me it could be glamorous, and I believed her because I heard it too.
I'd dodge her every time, her forehoof still continued to seek me out, no matter what was in the sky. She punched as a form of affection, and sometimes I had a bruise on my withers my cloak would hide, and I've had far worse to mind as we chased one another around the mountain. Puddles could litter the grass, but it never stopped it, and snow would only fuel our battle. Even without the ability to sense magic, to know it in ways other creatures couldn't, I think I could still find her in the dark. She would always find me.
None of that was for today; I looked at her and I knew.
"History has never had a princess quite like me." Her hooves returned to fiddling with her mane. "There have been rulers whose philosophy was not all that convention dictates, who were memorable. I do not admire the passive, nor do I loathe them... I want to be a just ruler, Sombra. History is quite plain when it reminds gods that ponies cannot rule themselves competently. I never asked to be a princess, and here I am anyway; I think I shall try."
Whimpering, she rolls away from me and flops onto her back, breathing in and out with deep breaths that shake her chest a little. "I know not how else to say it to you. Staying here is hard, oh so hard for me too, and for you, it must be nothing short of treacherous at the worst of times. Always, Som, I have longed for you to be safe. You understand, do you not?"
I prick my ears to better hear both the nighttime sounds and her urgent words while Luna continues to splay her long limbs out on the damp grass, letting its shadows frame her darkened form. Reading my silence was simple for her, and a skill we both shared.
"Sombra... do you understand why I want to stay? While nopony is aware of how they tug their own strings and seek to push me down, I wish to do what they have no want of but every need of and continue ruling. More importantly, Canterlot is where Tia is and I want to spend so much more time with her. A thousand years without her still brings an ache to my chest... ugh, and sometimes a few days without you can be rather maddening! Send me more little scrawls of things as the provisions I must have in long meetings, will you? I swear, that this time, I might ration the precious sass you see fit to bestow upon me, for the sake of my own survival."
"Are faking modesty in an attempt to try and get me to write you more extremely insolent things out of spite?"
"Bah!" she spits, horn lighting up the dark as she pulls a few blades of grass to toss in the air, letting them rain back down on her. "Modesty is not worth faking! However, your most eloquent remarks about how I should deal with dignitaries and the amount of time I should spend implying intimate relations with their mothers and fathers are worth more than many of their words, though I have little in the way of love for the supposedly fairer gender, to begin with. Yet I wonder, Sombra, if you take me for a harlot of old, willing to jump into any bed for suggesting such a thing of me?"
With those eyes of her, Luna catches my withering look with ease. "It was a joke, Luna," I deadpan, catching the mischievous curl of her mouth just so.
"Ppht."
I continue offering a flat stare. "Now who's the insolent one?"
"Shh, Huffypants. That was a joke!" She giggles into her hooves and dares to throw grass at my unamused, disgusted, and shocked face.
"Never call me 'Huffypants' again." My stern tone would be a short threat to anypony else, but Luna is never, ever in any danger. As my lover, why would she be? I would never hurt her. The press of Equestria tries to tear her apart more than I ever could if I was a monster, and I'm the one deemed sadistic despite never so much as yelling at her.
"Ppht. Fine, Som. Your grumbling is noted."
I make an irritated huffing noise and roll my eyes. "Your words have truly wounded me so horribly that I'll be enacting revenge."
"Ah, so I shall expect you to cuddle me mercilessly?"
"...Maybe," I grumble, knowing my aura will never hide the smallest cracks in my stoicism while I play with a bit of my mane.
"Absolutely."
She snickers, so I rip up the grass and fling it at her to see how she likes it, while the splashes of water sound behind us with a certain fish jumping up to eat a few moths.
I feed the damn creature enough chips, pizza crusts, and other garbage that he shouldn't be trying to go for bugs so often — I've even been generous enough to pour a sack or two of spiders in there for him. Sometimes he won't even touch them, and I go through the trouble of stealing alchemical ingredients — bloody sacks of spiders — and the damned fish ignores them like that.
He's lucky that Luna coos over him like a child and gets Fish to jump through hoops.
"There's still something you haven't told me," I say, watching Luna as she stops laughing. "Are you ready to tell me now?"
"I..." She pauses and takes a deep breath. "Yes, Sombra, I am. There is much night left and I think I have a lot to tell you..."
Letting out a small chuckle, I give her a small smirk, one of the ones she calls 'warm', since I know that she will be able to see it. "I can't promise anything on how I react, but I promise to listen. What is it?"
"...Do you remember when I asked you what you thought about foals?"
...
'A monarch is supposed to rule, never should they be ruled. Though, I doubt you will have any difficulty remembering that, Sombra. You should repeat this and meld it into your will. My stars know that it is tougher than any material of this world. You shall need it as much as I.'
That was one of the many things she had told me on that particular night; we talked until dawn and she talked me through much more than I thought I would be hearing.
I never knew that she wanted a foal of her own. Tartarus, I didn't know if I could even have one — it wasn't like I had ever tried. I hadn't even cared — for most of my life, I had guessed I was infertile, and never had a reason to reconsider or doubt that or care until Luna and I began our relationship. It had never been a problem — before Luna, I was more than comfortable with the thought of remaining celibate my entire life. Not only did it have its own, extremely underrated merits, but the repulsiveness of other creatures was also more than enough to make it the only attractive option.
Every way she looked at me said 'I trust you' and 'I love you' because, from Luna, there was little difference between those words. She wanted a foal of hers to be our foal more than anything, a half-breed with our eternal lifespan to raise... the part about raising sounded interesting. Would a foal like reading? Could I teach them if they didn't know how? What if they already did?
Teaching another what I always wished I had always known was something that was difficult not to look forward to. I wanted to be the one who held a book in front of my spawn — could there really be any other names for half-demon creatures that were born? — and helped them through every paragraph and guided them through the letters that spelled out magic, jokes, and journeys.
Luna told me that was wonderful and then tried to break most of my ribs. As revenge, I told her that if she hugged our child like that — sometimes those words are frightening on my tongue, once you get past how terrible they sound whenever I say them — I would not 'let' her steal the pineapple off my pizza any longer. She pouted, in her infinite cruelty, knowing I couldn't ever resist the damned gesture.
For her, I would do so much, and for her, in Canterlot I would remain. We had an eternity to an adventure, and if I really must point it out, an eternity to start a family as well.
She consoled me every time I admitted I was worried, and every time that I had something on my mind. Whenever there was doubt, second guesses, dozens of questions, and anything else I could think to articulate, she would be there with the reassurance that I struggled to even realize I may have needed. Luna would answer every single one of those. Every doubt she managed to lessen enough with discussions that were equal parts clever and caring; she was always telling me that it didn't have to be now, I still had to learn things, that I wouldn't be an abusive or bad parent, and should never think that I would. Or, she would be there to tell me that it was fine if it took me a while to love a creature that took a long time to grow and had the nerve to not talk to me for years like an entitled brat, just as long as I was patient. Luna even told me how there were ponies who could answer my darker thoughts on the matter.
Those kinds of ponies could tell me that any spawn of mine wouldn't be guaranteed to have my temper, that anxiety wasn't going to damn my line as I thought, and most importantly: any child of mine would be unlikely to have to go through the panic attacks that gripped me, and none were likely to be bad as mine just because of the predisposition I was created never knowing that I had. After that, I could threaten those professionals into secrecy even though Luna's oaths and talk of patient confidentiality were 'enough' as she was quick to put it. But she never stopped me during any of those confrontations — she just stayed behind for a few minutes longer to say some things I never felt the need to stick around and listen to. I trust her too much to think she would be saying anything negative, too.
After that, all I had to do was substitute sleep with staring up at the ceiling of our bedroom and try to map out an answer to the hardest question to work its way into my mind: Would any child of mine even love me? Could they?
I never had to say that question. She had asked me, eventually. It wasn't direct. That didn't do anything to change how the weight of the world was displaced from my withers before I had to be tasked with figuring out how to ask something like that. Luna told me I didn't have to explain the Crystal Empire to them. I never had to tell any spawn of mine why I was a bloody madpony, why the world as I knew it seemed to disappear sometimes, why I would be waking up screaming for a long, long time, or how above all, that I would have to tell them two things: Somepony abused me and I am not innocent.
I tried to practice for this whole notion of having a family, as bizarre as such a concept is, and it was admittedly fairly fun. Pink One liked having me as a foalsitter for Skyla. Luna and her could always offer up advice. Skyla was worth the trouble and is surprisingly patient when it comes to listening to me try to explain the complexities of Luna's affinity for realpolitik and other theories the kid ought to brush up on. When she starts crying, I bit back growls and tried to pry my way through familiar sudden waves of dread and searing agitation so I could brusquely dump the wailing brat into their hooves. Then, I could find a cool corner and try to get myself under control and my mind feeling less fractured.
Pink One and Shiny Sprinkle barely talk to Skyla, but they both coo over her often. Luna's eyes light up in a way I haven't quite seen them do whenever she got to hold Skyla. The filly doesn't have any friends. She's always excited to see me. I'm the one who reads her something that isn't made up of pictures. Mac keeps telling me that Skyla is 'too young' to understand any of the books I'm reading her — every time, I dismiss her. She's never too young to get a headstart on politics instead of ending up functionally lobotomized.
Skyla is one of the few ponies who looks at me like I'm anything but a demon. Of course I would keep reading to her! Does Mac think I've been reading one of my damned philosophy books to her? No, even I know she's too young for those. Studies in Pessimism isn't for fillies. I've been reading Skyla foal's books instead. They barely have any pictures and are about this unicorn colt with a slight chip in his horn, who goes to a fantastical all-unicorn magic school, and the adventures he and his two friends have. Skyla hasn't told me her favorite character yet, and she's not very good at guiding me through what kind of voices she wants for the characters, but I think that I do a great impression of what the potions professor sounds like.
Maybe my son or daughter would like these books too.
My son... or daughter... I...
Whenever I ask Mac about how I've been handling Skyla, she's mostly pure smiles to my stoicism, chirping away what I did well. She'll then add this and that about foals until I can manage to get some criticism out of her. This was the mare that had Skyla inside of her for eleven months and did nothing but act grouchy, tired, devouring ice cream and pickles in bizarre and decently unnerving ways. I knew she should know something about what I should be expecting when Luna goes through this.
...Eventually.
I have to say, her throwing beauty magazines in my vague direction and shrieking that I'm a 'typical male incapable of the slightest flattery' had been a new development. And what was it over? All of it was for calling her a variety of things largely about her noticeable weight gain, which I helpfully reminded her about. Her prodigious size was solely because of the little filly growing inside her, one whose magic and soul I could start sensing towards the first moments of brain activity beginning. I felt those, even as I backed away from her fits of poor attempts at insults and rapid-fire Istallion curses I couldn't understand. I was always rolling my eyes and hiding a wicked grin behind my annoyed frown.
Luckily, the way to any pregnant mare's heart and stomach is to get her ice cream, sorbet, and pickles while offering a noncommital shrug in reply to any question about the gesture being remotely apologetic. Of course, I only got her some after she had sobbed out how tragic this incident is to her husband. All I had to do was wait, and watch her disgustingly ravenous cravings prove to be her downfall, and the feedback loop resume. It was absolutely and totally worth it. Does she think her habit of dancercise can save her even now? Admittedly, chasing after Skyla is enough of a struggle for Glimmer Spangle and Pink One; she's getting slimmer each time I see her.
She's still the same demigod princess with an Equestrian colony to rule and a nationally admired 'good' husband at her side, though I still have plenty of disagreement on what about him is good. (I'm not speaking from jealousy, either, it's a foreign emotion to me and pretty-boy types are rarely as pretty as they look and are less of my type than other stallions — and saying that I have types is the only way I can crush how I work into something oversimplified enough.) When ponies talk about love, and who they feel embodies it, Pink One and Spangle Shine come to mind, and not just because they're Equestria's first married royals. Or they might think of Purple Eyesore and her wife as another example of the ideal Equestrian family, and the picturesque, naive idea of 'goodness' pulled from their collective illusions. All of them are such good ponies after all — the latter pair are good fodder for my gag reflex. None of them really know what it's about, anyway.
Scoffing, I look out over the side of the balcony, where some five years prior, little Purple Eyesore stood gleefully waving as she flapped her purple chicken wings about. I have seen the newspaper archives of how her smile was bright and sunshiny as Luna stood by her with only a faint, not-at-all earnest crescent touch of her real smiles. The photograph is still plastered as a reprint in newspapers from time to time. All I can focus on in those is knowing that Luna didn't pick that dress out, that her eyes were light that day, but she told me where her thoughts really were — elsewhere — while Celestia stood next to her little purple pet project.
Whenever ponies decide to tell their foals to 'marry right' they told them to do as Pink One and Purple Eyesore did. Every time they wanted to caution a foal against 'the wrong pony' or anything of the sort, there were whispers of how they needed to avoid being like 'Sombra's wife' — because Luna apparently can't have her own name anymore. All these damned ponies see her as 'Sombra's wife' and before that, she was 'Celestia's sister' — as if that captures anything meaningful about her.
In front of me, Luna tutted and her horn flared testily as I let her tug at the lapels and sash of my reddish coronation suit. Every bit of it was dull reds, golds, and silver. The silvery cape was the only say I had gotten in the design of this absolutely ridiculous overly formal and expensive piece of garbage, other than how it had been designed so that there was a pair of trousers to hide my scarred, blank flank. Celestia had ordered it and presided over the design against my every protest. I wanted something far simpler, more alluring, and green and silver. She ignored me other than to 'remind' me about being 'stately' and that she has been the decider of every coronation's clothing choices as long as her nation has stood.
I'm going to try to be a prince for Luna's sake, not mine. Being a prince is only one way of having power. Celestia doesn't believe me when I say that. She would never believe the way Luna looked at me, how despondent she had been as she told me she needed me to be a prince and that she craved my equality in every way — as her spouse and as a prince of Equestria. A ruling prince for a reigning couple.
I hadn't even wanted the ceremonial role of a typical consort that dresses nicely and gets a spot in the history books and family trees, neat and tidy beside their spouse. I only wanted to marry Luna.
Months after our wedding and being plummeted into the debates of Luna and her sister, who are both for me and against me taking on this role, respectively... it became clear things would not play out that way. Luna is far too persuasive for her own good — otherwise, I would have sided with her sister, if Luna hadn't poured her heart out on the matter over and over... until I agreed. Celestia eventually relented, making me the future Prince — Equestria's one and only — of paperwork until further notice. Many of the talks with Celestia were private, with Luna pulling her older sister behind doors and warding rooms because she knew I was pacing right outside. Like an illusionist's sleight of hoof tricks, Celestia would step out each time with something in her eyes softened just a bit, and whatever wall she was made of — the one I saw in her face so much — was chipped away just enough by Luna's determination to get such an unexpected reaction from the mare who might as well try to snap my legs by looking at them.
Tartarus knows I might make Celestia's every fear come true — dog-eared pages and crease marks brought about my wicked and oh-so-evil dark magic that will plague all of Equestria. Jaywalking will reign across the nation. Smiling will happen less. Worst of all, somepony might dare to say something slightly sarcastic. Royal or not, I'll still be doing what appears to be office work, something that's still as foreign to me as subtlety is to the draconequus, but at least I'll put my best effort into being properly condescending while doing so.
Luna picks up on my ragged sigh and pulls the balcony's curtain in front of us as an obvious, silent taunt to he— our subjects. As if I needed a blatant reminder that I was always their superior. Our subjects, who will not be able to see from where they are below me that I'm about to receive a gesture of her affection behind this momentary wall of privacy. Two forelegs wrap around my neck and pull me into a strong embrace. Magic plays with little strands of my mane, twirling the locks whose style I refused to have altered in any way, and I meet Luna halfway as she offers me a comforting nuzzle that softens some of my worries. Purring softly into her wonderful hug, I try to indirectly convince her not to break our shared contact; to have her hold onto me as long as possible.
Just outside is the circlet I did have a say in. The piece is resting on a pillow while Celestia prepares for a speech that most of Equestria is waiting for. Far more ponies showed up than the coronation of a lavender demigod from years ago, and many of them are angry in a stony, pointless way not unlike the brattiness better suited to school-foals. Following Celestia's speech is one from me that everypony but Luna waits fearfully for.
Those ponies are a sea of indistinct pastel washing against the castle's courtyard, distinguished only by names that I have no care of ever knowing. I caught enough glimpses of them to know that they swell and chatter mindlessly. Even though they are distant in comparison to the tower's high balcony, I can see that even the pegasi are grounded. Mares will be twisting with their fancy necklaces, stallions will have their jaws set somberly, and every smile will be nervous and forced as gossip is flung like manure in the herd-mind. Nopony brought their foals, and the Royal Guards sternly walk sternly among everypony to quell what might even look like a disturbance.
The whole lot of them form a tense and unsteady, relying on the fragmented whispers of heresy to try and piece together anything that has a fraction of the confirmations they seek to cement in their ceaseless chatter. The majority are ever unaware of how futile their every effort is, and that even the reek of their magical presences largely blends together into a muddy and intangible mess of sensations that has to be unraveled like a bundle of yarn: one weak strand at a time.
That is what lurks below, clogging up the castle grounds, and it reminds me of the ocean. If I closed my eyes as I stood out there in the swirling summer air, what would I be able to unravel if I were patient enough, focusing on their many different impressions? Would anything be different if there wasn't repulsion crawling through my coat at even this proximity? I'd be so above it all that it would feel like there's no end to them.
I didn't know where the ocean ended when I first looked out at its waters, examining the distance for any hint of another shore. Only, that was at a period in my life where I was between two well-blended contradictions — having never been much of anywhere at all, and yet, I'd traveled a fair deal within the more remote parts of Equestria and its southern borders. The ocean was far more desolate on the surface. No matter how much of a second world was teeming below, I was always alone there. All the emptiness aside, I miss that. I've only ever missed Luna before; in all other times, the heavy sense of life offered by remote places is downright addicting.
I hear the sound of somepony I don't need to bother naming clearing her throat and rustling her feathers. This is obviously in an attempt to disturb Luna without creating awkwardness that fails miserably. Luna and I loosen our embrace. My purring had already ceased when she began to approach us.
Glaring at the mare of shorter stature, I pierce a question in her direction — What do you want? — with my hawkish stare until she ducks her purple eyes, magenta horn lighting to tuck a strand of pink-striped mane back into her bun. That manestyle has become her signature and the pointy little crown that sits there. Bangs bobbing, she sighs quietly and shuffles faintly. Her dress looks like evening candlelight is soft and flimsy, following her movements.
"Princess Luna?" her voice still oozes this insufferable overall inexperience in something I almost want to guess at. Purple Eyesore not looking directly at Luna only makes it very obvious as to who she finds awkward.
Me.
She twists the diamond pendant at her neck. The little mare is unable to hide sneaking glances at my wife as Luna gracefully unwinds herself fully from how well we fit together, the contours of our bodies no longer touching.
"Ah," Luna says with the flatness of the Mustangian plains. "What is it that you require my attention for, Princess Twilight Sparkle?" Every word is spoken without kindness, ill will, and without malice. Luna is ever able to pull off a cadence that is neutral and dignified in every way, while her tone is chilly as wind over the Trottish highlands. "Might it be something important?" She looks directly at Purple Eyesore, stance unfriendly but without any kind of cruelty — it was purely professional, and Luna hasn't called her anything but 'Princess Twilight Sparkle' since before we began our relationship.
Purple Eyesore readjusted the collar of her dress awkwardly. "It's almost time for him to be c-crowned." She clearly couldn't believe the words she was saying, leading to an extra boost of bitter ego for me.
She looked at Luna's dress more closely, flushing faintly. Whether because of the sight of Luna in her dress or because of my unrelenting glare that followed her every movement, I'm not sure.
My eyes followed hers and looked at Luna's dress for the nth time today. The extremely generous mare who had ordered all this attire from Purple Eyesore's absent dressmaker wife decided that the dusky dress of deep oranges, yellows, and some wine-colored hue that clung in some very eye-catching places for a young mare would look alluring on her little former student. Many other ponies were sure to ogle and admire this clash of sunrise shades. I just grumbled and rolled my eyes.
There wasn't a problem with that. Yes, fashion that dress just a bit differently with the needed alterations and I would clearly look much better in it — I'm talented like that. Androgyny isn't something that I'm entirely incapable of, and honestly, if more ponies paid the right types attention to me, they would see I had been putting some effort into that the entire time. Celestia has some vendetta against my clothing choices, since she didn't let me wear a dress to my own wedding. Luna hadn't wanted to wear one, so what would be the problem with me wearing one and Luna wearing the suit? I looked majestic in them, and Luna's whole face lights up in the most gorgeous way when she's given a sleek mare's suit, tailcoat, and all.
I ended up stuck in a suit anyway. I still have it, packed away in my old pocket realm.
The problem was that Luna was wearing a dress that matched the Eyesore's.
Disgust was obvious in my eyes, watching how Luna was poised with discomfort. Celestia never forced her to wear these things, but Luna's huffy dislike for any formal wear that wasn't a crisp suit couldn't be more apparent. Sticking salmon in a pillowcase and tossing it out onto a ballroom floor to flop about in its dying moments would look more natural — and of course, I told Luna this earlier, she's my wife. For that very reason, I also half-expected her to chase after me with lightning bolts for saying that. Instead, she just sighed and told me she felt that out of place in her gown too.
Luna's skirt swayed solemnly around her and her usual thoughtful, neutral expression adorned her face. I watched her eyes and how they glistened mysteriously with all the emotions that I read best.
"That is true, and Sombra will have plenty of time to give his speech when my sister is through with hers. However, I need no reminder from you. As... thoughtful as it was, perhaps you might want to seat yourself next to your wife and the fellow Element Bearers within the crowd. I am certain there is still time for you to join them." Sighing, she added something far more earnest. "It is a shame that Cadance and Shining Armor are not here too. The Crystal Ponies have proved extremely vocal on the matter of my husband's coronation, hmm?"
Purple Eyesore swallowed visibly. Few clearer ways to communicate 'We are not friends' came to mind.
Shooting the demigod a cool look, Luna offered Purple Eyesore one last frosty glance. "Is that all?"
"Yes," she whispered, ducking her head slightly and avoiding eye contact as she trotted away, wings folded tightly at her sides.
Letting out a relieved sigh, Luna wasted no time in pulling me into another hug and her muzzle met mine in a kiss I gladly returned. Her right forehoof wove its way into my mane, toying with it and curling around a lock of my mane and clutching it tightly.
And at the edge of where the hall turned, I felt the waver of magic I needed no guess to know who was lingering. Cracking open one eye momentarily, I watched as two purple eyes stopped just long enough to watch Luna and I, growing visibly frightened when they saw me. Before she would let any tears fall, Purple Eyesore was already gone, her steps surprisingly quiet.
Is this spiteful of me? Maybe. Spite is under-utilized and well worth a silent serving here. Even if I had the barest trace of sympathy for the immature little blight, Celestia always managed to find that little purple scrap, since they were drawn to one another like magnets. Once she did that, Purple Eyesore could have her tears all mopped up in time for her favorite teacher's non-stop twittering to crowd her skull. She smiles at Celestia with a fraction of the way that she wishes that she could look at Luna... and wishes that Luna would look at her.
Purring into Luna's kiss, I let the thought of anypony but her and I melt away, for just a short while. As long as Luna was with me, nearly anywhere would be better than here.
Equestria can wait just a bit; they're lucky I showed up to my own coronation at all.
...
"Five years ago, I stood beside my dear student, your Princess Twilight Sparkle, and you welcomed her. My little ponies, what none of you know is that the Princess of Friendship once spent so much of her time with barely any friends. She had me, she had her brother, and Twilight had Cadance. Few fillies wished to speak with a filly who always had her muzzle buried in the pages of the latest book, whether my private student was given one for study or leisure alike!" Celestia flashed a practiced smile, chiseled into her face just enough to be natural, but not so that it looked truly earnest to my eyes or was in any way too attention-grabbing.
With that smile on her face and her gaze sweeping over everpony that stood below her, she waved a bit mechanically and stared down too severely at them. A crown that was far more ornate than I was used to seeing on her sat on Celestia's head, and a dress of pink and yellow fabric that was inferior to my formal wear cloaked her. The languid flow of her mane and tail obscured enough of her smile and expression to give her some deceitful look with how she unintentionally hid herself from my view. A good many steps from where Celestia stood, I was slightly behind her. My gaze flicked to the horizon, to Celestia herself, and to nowhere at all.
Almost entirely hidden by Celestia's tail was a white unicorn mare with a name I haven't learned to date. Her coat was a fragile white and in her unremarkable magic, she levitated the red velvet pillow that had my circlet resting on it.
Luna never called her by name, at least not that I had ever heard. She held a faint disregard and casual distrust for the mare, offering her little attention or serious consideration. Despite how this mare reduced herself to something of a living end table, she followed Celestia almost everywhere she went with unsubtle eagerness, like a damned obedient dog. 'Celestia's dog' is exactly how I've been thinking of her since they're rarely apart and I have no better name for a creature that is ever at the heels of another so thoughtlessly. With her pale coat, oversized glasses, and a pen and inkwell mark that is hidden by her light blue dress, she could pass for a duller figure in a classical painting — the ones that always struck me as a painter's afterthought when they might only want space to fill.
Her dark mane was the closest thing she had to a feature that helped her with standing out, or it would have been if it weren't so mousy. That was really the only word to describe anything about this mare who somehow made submission and humility into even more repulsive traits than they already were. The little secretary who shivered when my gaze fell on her avoided me in the most obvious ways, and she was always whispering this or that in Celestia's ear. More often than not, she hid her brown eyes behind a scroll.
She was a little sneaky in the sense that her magic was weak and she wasn't often noticed.
Aside from being a well-groomed mare that was a bit of a nuisance and one of the few ponies around here that knew how to manage Celestia's phoenix, this mare was on the young side — far too young to hold the position she did. The little dog had to be around Cadance's age. All the records and portraits of her predecessors that hung in one of the many corridors of this castle depicted mares and stallions who were middle-aged at the least upon being hired and their customary portraits painted.
What this one did to be so special is beyond me.
She must sense me giving her a bit of a glare, though, because my pricked ears catch a faint squeak escaping her, and she shuffles closer toward Celestia. Doing so has her flushing almost as red as the pillow she is levitating when she finally does so. Before she begins the next part of her speech, Celestia meets her secretary's gaze and smiles just a little. Then, she continues, her voice carrying down toward the crowd of ponies gathered.
Her subjects.
Luna's subjects.
...And my subjects.
"From me, Twilight Sparkle learned of math, studied magic, and was taught the values of Harmony that every one of you, my little ponies, have held close to you from your first breaths. Before she was your princess, Twilight Sparkle was a mare who knew Harmony but never lived it." Celestia sighed happily. "And then she moved to Ponyville."
Just barely teary-eyed, Celestia smiles and gives a quick glance to Luna, who lingers in the threshold of the balcony's doorway. My wife was lurking near a curtain and cloaked in midday shadows that dance across her form while she frowned and tugged at her dress. I know she wished she was in anything else. Luna saw her sister looking at her for a split second, and a lopsided little smile flashed on her face. Her bluish eyes met Celestia's in cool acknowledgment.
Bored, I shifted my gaze back to Celestia, my horn glowing softly as I fidgeted with Fate's pommel idly, liking the small noises of the movements made by the sword and sheath. My wedding band rested warmly against my chest. Usually, I would pass it around in my aura when I sought a trinket to toy with, but Fate was equally familiar to me, as were the magical presences of both.
She continued her speech. I know that she wants it to be some kind of jab that she's holding off with mentioning me, who this day is meant to be about. Her efforts to undermine are transparent.
Though, I'm flattered that she'll be saving the best for last.
"Because of the efforts of the magnificent mare that is your Princess Twilight Sparkle, the Elements of Harmony are once again known to ponykind. With them, and through the efforts of their Bearers, Equestria is truly at peace. Your Princess Luna has returned, and is ready to be your friend and ruler."
Behind me, I heard a snort and wasted no time in rolling my eyes as the Equestrians below hung on every word. The whole mass of them was utterly worthless, but a few notable names were among their ranks: Purple Eyesore and Company, Discord, the families of the Bearers, and Duke Blueblood. I was informed that even a few of Equestria's allies — Prance, Maretonia, Saddle Arabia, all sent a representative to sit among the ponies of Equestria and witness me. Aquastria reluctantly sent somepony — or more accurately King Fishcakes caved into enough passive-aggressive requests from his cousin — and even the griffin colony of Griffonstone had elected somepony to come.
None of them are Pink One...
They will only be attending the initial crowning; I won't have to come face to face with revolting carnivores.
"Tirek has been sealed in Tartarus once in for all, an evil with no more chances for escape in the course of eternity. The Crystal Empire has miraculously been returned to the world. Discord—"
Narrowing my eyes, I watch a small burst of dranconequus magic from the endling of that particular species shoot up from the crowd. Bright bits of paper and glittery things — now those had my attention — are just barely visible above the mosaic of coats, manes, and grass. He's around there somewhere. Canterlot, Ponyville, and a few other regional areas are frequented by the draconequus, but his presence comes in fickle bursts. His visits could be just as frequent. I didn't talk to him much — he was hyperactive and easy to trick, but never did anything that concerned me. I kept more distance than usual. Celestia and Discord certainly got along, so I let them.
To my mild surprise, Celestia smiles something other than that polite, pasted-on look that always plucked some irritated thing in me when I saw it. She hides it with her hoof quickly, and then that usual pasted look is back for the speech and her tone is measured as she speaks to ponies that I'm not sure could ever be anything but hers.
While she busies herself with that, my gaze traces the runes carefully concealed by the balcony, carved just under it and preserved in the marble for many centuries. The pulse of the magic tells me that this is meant to amplify the voice of whoever probes the crevices with a spell prior to giving a speech like this. Despite this addition, her voice sounded unaltered to me. Purple Eyesore no doubt used this to speak at her own coronation. Obviously, Celestia's magic are the most recent traces that I can sense there.
Stoically, I concentrate on the magic flows, musing over the traces that hang in the air, and note that Celestia's isn't particularly strong. No surprise there. She's not one to frequent her magic for anything beyond Celestia manipulation and basic tasks, and while I've never witnessed her moving the sun up close, I know full well that she charges things very weakly compared to most magic-users — immortal or mortal. She also doesn't practice, study, or really immerse herself in the arcane like Luna and I do. Lately, it's been even harder than usual to forgo any of the tomes and grimoires tucked away from public eyes in the castle's many archives. Even Luna has to put a little bit of effort into pulling me away from the latest artifact that she's introduced to me. I've long grown accustomed to the irony in a mare famed for being a teacher not practicing what she preaches to the students she grooms.
When I'm among all those texts, in a shady part of the numerous archive-wings with a mug of coffee, I get more than some peace and quiet. Everything is far too vivid and important to be some cheap escapism — the familiarity of history and knowledge all around me is an authentic, addictive setting. Adding to that is the promise of learning something new... and, of course, the company of my lovely wife... how was it that I could not want to stay?
Before all of this unnecessary grandeur, Celestia had looked at me and told me that she would do the opening speech for me. I know it's because of something that Luna must have told her; a hint and nothing more than that. Celestia simply decided to heed, to an extent. I told her I didn't want to make both the opening and my own speech. I didn't tell her why. I was surprised when she agreed to rearrange at least one aspect of this mess.
"Discord who was once another shade of legend in your minds has embraced Friendship and Love. He stands among all of you, and he was able to see that he too, is as good as you are, my little ponies. While he has created chaos in the past, and ponies have been harmed by his actions, everypony — Discord especially — and I have learned that not all who have stormed Equestria in these recent years, like legends awoken, are wholly unforgivable."
Her words fill my ears, but my mind still stays on magic. Everyone and everything is surrounded by it, but to be what I am — made from magic — and to walk among all the divine, to see tomes stashed away, and histories tucked out of sight, that is something well beyond anything mortals could ever achieve. Experiments tease themselves into the forefront of my thoughts, and to have a mind like mine — it becomes difficult to think of other things, at least for now, when I'm surrounded by Celestia's moralistic droning.
Stifling, smothering, and otherwise binding magic in any way was never a good thing to do. At worst, the effort was dangerous, and in a mortal, fatal. Even as she adjusts her wings right now, the entirety of her feels so thick, static, and dull. Trying to get a reading on what her magic tells me for a long time is fairly difficult.
Celestia did just that. She did it like the archaic subculture of pegasus-earth pony mixed-bloods I read about recently. Centuries, ago when Equestria was young, they tied the wings of those who expressed pegasus traits dominantly in place for everything except exercise and ceremonies. Physically, they were far from fine, but they were not goddesses. Their muscles were atrophied and their limbs were generally malformed. Celestia is actually physically fine — for the most part. Alicorns aren't pegasi, and they're certainly not ponies. No matter how much stronger they are, there's a far different magic to them, and magic is more deeply entwined with their being beyond being a mere necessity like it is for all mortal creatures. Mentally, those mixed ponies weren't sound; their adherence to tradition resulted in unfounded superstitions crippling them. They deprived themselves of something, and their little cult collapsed. The mind and soul without the right magic are worse than lungs without air or a heart without blood.
Why Celestia does this to herself isn't concrete to me. If I prick and pry in all the right places, I can build an answer...
I loathe her in every way, but she's always been Luna's sister, and that only means something to me because she means something to Luna. She is not guaranteed to injure herself, but lessening things would do her good — to the extent that I can feel, her mental state shouldn't be too compromised beyond her being her usual unbearable self. I'll warn her and wait. Give her some advice, even.
She could hurt Luna, I think, letting my glare bore into her from where I stand.
Fate clinks under the idle movements of my aura. I toy with thoughts of the hilt, knowing just how quickly I could whip it from its sheath and have a blade gleaming and soaring in the air. What a morbid spectacle that would be — a parallel to how often she looks at me with thoughts of an axe dancing quickly above my neck. I know she looks at me so. I live with her, and she always looks at me like I am the lesser of us, and I am a monster — sometimes worse. She tucks razors in her every polite syllable and in her cheek when she maintains that plaster smile, occasionally tossing out little things that Luna won't be bothered by, the types of cues that she knows her younger sister won't pick up on. In private, she always has more open disgust for me and I have the tempers she tries to twist out of me. I admit, it nearly works sometimes; she rubs me all of the wrong ways and 'suggests' so many things about me. When nopony is around we'll pull out darker things to say to one another.
Sometimes I have to be angry with whoever is shuffled among the deck of my foes. It bubbles up. If my intelligence is a shadow, it can stretch to many dark places — I have known this and lived this well before being sealed in ice. I'm not wanton with my loathing; I sort my vendettas well, and this is a mare that has tried to murder me twice, at the very least. Who knows what else she could have done that I don't already know of? Harsh words are a mercy compared to the more extreme things I am capable of, and it isn't like they aren't true.
I don't call her tyrant any longer. I've called her plenty of similar terms right under it because there are still those undeniable qualities of hers. Some things I don't dig for or try for in our sparring matches. She's closer to telling Luna about these things when she thinks she has me in her wrong, glaring light. But I hold so much back because she matters so much to Luna... and I do have tact in me. Enough of it. I suppose it's as selective as compassion is with me, not that I would alter that about myself, or that I even want to.
Celestia is a spotlight that casts wrong shadows upon you and thrusts her hideous distortion of you to the world. All the while, she loathes how your crooked shadows will not dissolve in her light. You panic, you writhe inside, and her audience jeers at you. This result is purely because she's the one who looks at you as though you're the villain. She needs her hero-queen image — and her colonies and cronies — to rest on you being beaten... she wants to dig up everything about me, too.
Deep down her eyes will tell me that I won't tell Luna, and I don't — I've been through far worse. Why would this matter in the grand scheme of things? The bits of verbal venom Celestia and I trade is a secret.
If this were my usual cloak, the proper pocket-sigils would be right under it too... My thought trails off to the last couple of books that I had been reading, all stashed in the pockets those hidden sigils reached into. Had that cloak been on my back, I could yank my hood over my head to shadow some of this abominable sunlight with some comfort. Then I could whip out something smart to pass the time, flicking through pages until she gets to the important part — me — and her subjects no longer need to be buttered up for the occasion.
Her subjects. Luna's subjects.
My subjects...
"Of all you might note about the nature of good, it is that good stands together. I stand by my sister's side—"
You didn't always.
"—and she, by mine. The princesses of Equestria are all friends with one another."
Luna's snort is louder this time, not that anypony other than Celestia and I could hear it.
"While there are the lonely, and there are the lost; nopony should ever have to be misunderstood so greatly that they are mistaken for evil. Of the two natures we all know, as black and white as the classic chessboard, there have been mistakes. You all thought that Nightmare Moon was wholly evil. Now, all of Equestria knows the truth: Princess Luna was under that dark guise. Discord too, you all thought a monster, but he stands now as Equestria's friend..." she smiles warmly, "and somepony very dear to me."
"What does this mean?" she asks rhetorically, and more loudly than before, resting a gold-clad hoof on the balcony's edge. "It means that the workings of those that are evil are always the product of those who are alone, and they always will be in the end. Harmony and good are powerful because they are united like the collective links of the finest chainmail, and because friendship is the most powerful magic there is."
Gritting my teeth, I draw an angry breath and allow my gaze to reduce Celestia's backside to tatters with my glare. She shifts, just a little, under it. She knows. The damn mare knows. Of the many lies and few truths of Equestria, one of the greatest is the 'friendship is magic' craze across all of Equestria and how appalling the misinterpretations of it are. Is it powerful? Almost. ‘Friendship magic’ isn’t actually real, not in the woefully way she does it — a way not even worthy of being described as reductionist. Instead, it is one of the grossest possible misunderstandings of light magic. To insist on what Celestia has pushed for generations would be on par with the highest legal officials in the plant to assert that the so-called Golden Rule was an actual law one could be charged with breaking.
The Elements of Harmony are what should really be praised, but ponies must have their heroes, and so it became 'friendship' without any of the nuances that should be. All footnotes have been swept under a saccharine and ignorant claim so unbearably false that every magic user that ever was should be writhing in their resting place. How Luna sits through all this with a straight face, I don't know. A minor cultural fallacy she isn't immune to, perhaps? Ponies of the Tribal Age were as good with magic as fish are with drowning, but to have this mindset trickling into so many facets of this country... and that it ended up being seriously applied to many societal and cultural keystones long before Purple Eyesore ever moved to Ponyville is hardly good news.
What I do know is that saying 'friendship is magic' is like claiming that green — even better, that a single shade of green — is the only color, shall be the only color, and has been the only color that ever existed. 'Friendship' can be magic... sometimes.
Love can be magic, too, and is wonderfully powerful when this is true — it doesn't take Pink One being my friend to know that. Wrath can be devastating. Despair is more than potent enough for magic. Certain emotions are always inherently corrupting when applied to magic — lust, envy, dishonesty, for example — and others can fail because of circumstance. Love will not always win, nor will anger. Friendship can fail. Spells without emotional basis aren't any likelier to do better just because of things like good intentions or...
Sighing raggedly, I bite back a growl. Things won't be like that forever. Real magic and outstanding magical education across this nation could cause so much to flourish. Knowledge surpasses power, and to witness a proper revival instead of what is little more than a lies-to-foals catchphrase at best slapped onto everywhere it need not be is a depressing grate on me.
With everything I've seen and known in life, being crowned the prince of a nation of utter fools says far too much about the state of the world. I've lived through so much. Yet, all Celestia, Purple Eyesore, and these Equestrians do is slather black and white onto everything, and then call me their monster...
He called me his monster, his creation, his slave-of-slaves, his damned pet... I hide a swallow and feel panic inching into my mind... and anger too. He still managed worse things. Worse names.
G-Gods.
It slips into my mind as a leftover instinct. A mortal one, and I know it will fade eventually.
These ponies... they hang falsehoods like garlands, smother things with sweetness, cast aside all who don't align, and lock everything into their happy ending. Their happy ending. Those words burn into my mind like a brand with memories flashing in every ember because I have seen their damned happy endings! 'Happy' in an artificial sense. 'Happy' for them. Always for them. Happy but never better.
Happyhappyhappy.
Celestia wrote my speech because she said my words were cruel and controversial. I can feel the burning weight of its paper in my breast pocket.
"Equestria, I have seen you grow from the frontier, and as your princess, I love all of my good little ponies."
Equestria, I loathe you.
I want magic to be magic again. With my efforts and Luna's support, that could happen. I'm stubborn and an improved result from the present is nearly inevitable. If I were to close my eyes, I would see the crisp pages of a new magic textbook bursting with classical and modern knowledge made new once more — all part of the gradual progress to having magic as it should be taught.
A sun-shaped obstacle, her little purple pet, and the parasitic anocracy made to bow to the will of the former are all of the things that try to bar me.
"Today, I want you all to witness that good will always triumph. A living example is standing here today."
To say I didn't feel slightly humiliated would be a lie.
"Once known to all as King Sombra of the Crystal Empire, who thought himself better than anything..."
I'm certainly better than you.
"...is the recently-returned Sombra. In the past, he has been given the title of a duke, though without any land or claim, for aiding Princess Cadance in the protection of the Crystal Empire. How could such an event be treated without some optimism and caution on my part?"
You sent spies after me when I went to see the world... and admittedly, 'live off the land' as I would prefer to call it. There is still a bandit problem around the southern borders and prairie, O Laughable Sun Goddess.
Chase shadows, and you will find them. Attempt to catch shadows, and they will always escape you, Celestia.
It is really no wonder that you and your ponies couldn't find me. Especially your ponies.
"His path is a crooked one, and it is still in him today. Yet, my little ponies, we have all struggled with such things. Pride and stubbornness can be transformed into greater things. When we cannot guide ourselves, there are heroes there for us, and those heroes can be six brave mares, one very special dragon, or one of you."
She coddles these damned blokes far too much.
"To be a true ruler instead of a tyrant doomed to fail, one must know the obligation of kindness, to give instead of take, and that strength comes from allies and principles." Celestia surprised me somewhat with a sudden, big smile. "Camaraderie has brought the greatest of us together, steered the most splendid of changes, and shone a light into some of the most dreadful kinds of darkness. Sombra has now been pulled away from that darkness by none other than my sister, who knows of its painful lure herself."
My horn lights up, and I toy with my bangs boredly. Is she ever going to stop rubbing salt in Luna's wounds?
"Sombra is a pony who has yet to learn these things. His road to being a true member of Equestria's royal family is a long one, and it shall be marked by the service, humility, and herd-values that this nation prizes. All the things that you, my little ponies, take for granted are lessons that Sombra will learn over time as your prince. He is now divine, but his magic will be used for the unselfish."
No, it won't. Never would I let something so horrible happen; my magic is mine and mine alone, to be used as selfishly as I please.
And I will never be used again.
'Your actions are undeniable, your reputation cannot be erased, and what went on in the Crystal Empire is beyond all atonement.'
Those words echoed in my mind. They were one of the most direct things I had ever gotten Celestia to say to me during our fights... and they stuck with me when my nerves were like this, sometimes. To Equestria, she will say that I can learn differently, but inside I know she doesn't believe it.
And those words stay long enough to chill me after a while, an unneeded and redundant 'reminder' of something I've always tried to distance myself from.
'Your actions are undeniable, your reputation cannot be erased, and what went on in the Crystal Empire is beyond all atonement.'
Shutupshutupshutupshutup, my mind offered as I choked back a shuddering breath. Behind me, I could feel Luna become a bit colder, a bit less readable to all those who would never know her well.
Luna knew her sister in ways that I could not. She would have seen the drafts of Celestia's speeches and heard of her every black-and-white thought before she spoke them. I can only imagine how uncomfortable that was, to be the stranger in everything and to watch everypony eat shit this up with a spoon and... she's told me a lot, and yet that's never enough to make some part of Celestia feel any more lost in a crowd and stone-cold than how she already is. Luna would have gotten a speech of her own, like this one, upon her return. I never asked what it was like; she certainly didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it.
Once she told me, in a teary and nervous moment, the words whispered into my ear and pulled out between pauses and dripping with nerves, that sometimes Celestia was just 'a little bit' of a stranger to Luna. She wasn't talking about her uptight morals either. I don't think she's ever known Celestia to act any differently in that regard. Luna says she was a terrible sister before, but knowing Celestia, I don't know how much it hurts Luna to look at her sister sometimes and have to see the idol everypony else does cement over the mare drowning in a thick fossil-case of glue. She's tried to tell me, and I've tried to understand.
Whispers in Canterlot, in Equestria, and on the tongues of ponies is how the humble, remarkable, and heroic little mare known to them as Twilight Sparkle lived up to her name: the twilight to unite the day and night. The whole deal was as simple and insipid as any fairytale devised primarily from the gutter-waters of cultural tropes along with myths and truths, washed out to the point of being uninspiring.
I don't think anypony has yet realized that the twilight is also what divides them.
"Sombra is going to change," Celestia says with the assurance of a fool.
I am not.
Here she goes with the 'ponies change' concept again, though none of us ever do.
I blink away a memory of the Book that was such a key in bringing me into this world, and how its pages still flick behind my eyes. Nopony and nothing changes. Nopony can. Not without darker devices...
"Despite his past actions, Sombra is here to start on a very different road. He stands before you today, not as a tyrant, a criminal, or anything that might come to mind so quickly. Please, banish the thoughts, my little ponies, because they will never come to pass. He has been granted a chance, of sorts, to start from the bottom, where he has been — no matter the deeds that have tainted his name. With Cadance's efforts and my dear sister's great kindness, Sombra has learned to love. He is imperfect, but plenty willing to show you all that his work will maintain Harmony, and will help you all. Things have been near catastrophic these past few years, and Equestria has seen much change. My nation has seen the redeemable and the irredeemable. It has seen reformation and heroes. Most importantly, it has seen good, and how it will always beat back the evil that threatens us."
I let it echo in my mind, that falsehood she had just spoken that stands out so sharply, like the frog of one's hoof stepping on a blade.
She needs how many other ways to think that I'm a monster incapable of love, at this point?
I loved Luna first.
I...
Honestly... Honestly, it hurts just as much as any blade would, too, to be called a loveless monster in Celestia's extra-special way. Luna just feels used to this, regarding it with a weighty apathy, hearing a truth pruned into something 'more fitting for ponies' ears' or whatever Celestia sees fit to call it when she says these things, I don't know...
Anger and a sharp spark of anguish cut through my thoughts and dance about — loveless, she thinks me — and echo through the rest of me.
I think of my papers, specifically the dozens and dozens that I had written my own versions of my speech on. All that I could say was how every word would feel as it sizzled in my mind, and how it would taste when the last syllable of every single word left my mouth. Each one was so utterly me. As I sat, writing furiously in my incomplete study by the light of my magic alone, I was awash in my own rich narcissism and adored it. Writing is meant to be a selfish thing, and I wrote across varying hours of the day, noon, and night just absolutely basking in myself, each scraped and crumpled piece alone containing more wealth than what something as pathetic as a king could ever have.
Luna would interrupt often. Her eyes lit up when she saw me and stayed like that when I asked her to read over what I had written. In between my lovely wife being my lovely partner in speech writing, we always managed either a wealth of conversation or a treasure of silence, where we would have the chance to exchange affections peacefully in one another's company. Her magic scratching behind my ears and under my chin got me through particularly stressful revisions. Chats about things I wanted to have in my study, and I saw how carefully Luna watched when I boasted about the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and large work tables that I just had to have. She told me I was animated and — I'll always protest this — adorable with every way those gorgeous turquoise eyes followed me.
Celestia was a snake, and she slithered around any time I argued that I wanted to speak my own words. We agreed on this: I am controversial. But I didn't win, even though I never lose, not as long as I've learned something. Everything I wanted to say was too much of everything she loathed. She told me the words were too selfish, too proud, too rebellious, too rude, and too likely to induce violence...
Too bad.
...I ended up not being able to have a speech at all. Celestia wrote something abominable for me and stuck it in my pocket with a smile that I never struck off her face as I pleased for the sole reason of Luna loving Celestia.
I end up missing a part of her speech, hearing only:
"...and it is with that same caution, and all-too-prevalent optimism—" Curse her smile. "—that I would like to welcome Equestria's newest royal; Prince Sombra, please step forward!"
A few brusque steps of my usual, often unshakable saunter later, and I looked out at Equestria in full with unmasked disdain clear on my face.
Celestia smiled and waved at her subjects. Truthfully, I wasn't sure if she meant it, or was doing it for the sake of ceremony and all the conventions she chained herself in. She looked happy, and while nothing about her was particularly sincere, I didn't doubt the smile she was giving her ponies as much.
Nopony knows that I am supposed to speak, except Luna, Celestia, and I. What a trio we make.
The Goddess of Hope — she's so much more than the moon goddess now — and the God of Knowledge. We work remarkably well together and are still finding ways that we complement one another that I hadn't expected. Then, there is the Goddess of the Sun, whose existence begins and ends with what few scraps she has to build something approaching an identity. She's tried so little, hasn't she? I can't even say she has plateaued in divine development attempts because I do not know if she has ever tried at all. In our pair, she's the odd one out, and we the outcasts fit together — the whole of it is rather lovely, actually.
Nopony knows.
I wear my current stoicism better than my usual cloak. My disdain softens to the apathy that is equally familiar to me — and those who often behold me. I light my horn with a moderate amount of my usual crimson aura.
Celestia's discreet look is too easy for me to read: do not disobey.
Her eyes make it plain that she wants to read me before she finds the brief interlocking of our gazes to be too uncomfortable and averts her eyes almost submissively. I feel her own magic fade from the balcony's spell with it. She joins her little dog, beckons her forward, and that small mare gulps. My glare of undisguised scrutiny falls upon her casually, and while she gulps and sees the glow of my aura as I tease the balcony's spellwork; she's a few shades paler and looks like she wants to scream. Celestia manages a competent defensive look and aims at my esteemed and unmoved self.
I lift an eyebrow, and she no doubt spots sass in the gesture. It's me, isn't it? How is she surprised? She is fully aware that if I open my undeniably smart mouth, the matrice I'm toying with could backfire terribly, and we don't need all of Equestria hearing ear-aching distortions of our fighting. Luna is here too; I refuse to do anything like that with her around.
And yes, sometimes there's guilt all tied up in the aftermath of temper from my fights with her sister...
Don't hurt her is what Celestia's face says, or maybe Don't scare her and I am doing nothing threatening that would warrant such a reaction from this coward, or why Celestia acts like she is of any worth.
The particular matrice that I weave my own magic through is tricky only in the sense that it is clunky. While Canterlot Castle has many astounding instances of magic about it that impress me, some are ill-maintained and in need of work.
As a prince, I would want to remedy this.
As a prince... My stomach twists.
My aura dies down. Celestia takes this as a sign for my speech to begin soon. I do not confirm it.
With a closed-mouth smile that might as well have been cut out of a photograph and taped over her muzzle for how thoroughly convincing I found it, Celestia stands above me, at her full height. The sunlight catches her form. Her white coat becomes too bright and stands out too much. Her dress is an attack on my eyes. Her size feels more obstructive than anything else. The very act of standing next to her is displeasing.
Celestia's horn glows softly, she grasps the circlet meant for me in her magic as her little dog presents it to her.
I am resolute and silent. After I am crowned, they will want my speech to begin.
The small piece is a sort of dark gold and does not have the warmth or luster of Celestia's regalia, and while striking, the piece does not look cold. At the center is a large emerald, with its own proud gleam. To the side of it are two smaller vibrant bits of green. The ring of it, which most of my mane will mask, is braided, and the only touch or anything ornate I allowed. This would really be mine. I wanted to give myself just a couple of reasons to hate it a little less. In many respects, a crown was hardly different than a slave's collar. I just don't want this coronation to hurt as much as I think it will...
I'm doing this for Luna, too. We're to be equals in every way. I am without peers, aside from her... and we talked this over so much...
I agreed.
Celestia finally sits the circlet upon my head. My ears swivel back at the feeling of it. I swallow the breath I had been holding, and my chest remains tight.
I want the earth under my hooves. I want the wind in my mane, and for snow to get caught in it because I love the look. I want to wake up somewhere new each day.
I want Luna to know it all with me.
If the circlet's metal is cold, I do not feel it. My ears remained pinned back, and I do not conceal how sullen I look. Horn lit, I reach into my suit's breast pocket and Celestia steps back. Everypony is waiting for my speech. Wordlessly, with only my fierce red eyes to stare out at everypony, I toss the ashes of the paper containing the speech Celestia had written for me down below. Before anypony else has the chance to react, I turn and gallop away at full speed, my magic disconnecting from the balcony and my cape cutting the air behind me.
It feels like I am running for my life. My hooves know enough of this castle that I can let them find their way; the barest bits of my magic sensing guide them along the turns. The castle corridors bleed by me, until I find an empty room, my vision shaking as I let it adjust and my breaths coming in anxious heaves.
Celestia took away my words, and I would not let something like that slide without at least some vindictive reaction against a mare who falsely believes she is my superior.
Everypony heard Celestia's words, but it is my silence that they will remember.
A distant thought springs to the forefront of my mind momentarily; Luna will be trying to find me soon, and Celestia will want control if the situation got out of hoof.
My crimson aura sheds a light in this shady room that I know to be some meeting chamber. All the lights are off, and the cool shadows are soothing. A large table and chairs of polished wood and other materials expected from such prosperous royalty make themselves known in the dark. The ghosts of paintings are on the walls as dark spots that I can't glimpse the contents of.
Seizing my brand new circlet, still new and unenchanted, from its skewed position, I rip it from where it sits on my head and fling it against the far wall. One loud impact later, there is a hideous gash of a dent in the wall, the echo of it in my ears, and my circlet clatters to the ground with a loud din.
I slump against the wall unceremoniously, tug my cape around me and work my magic, hurriedly ripping open the topmost buttons of this unbearable suit. It brings further disarray to my appearance, but I don't feel nearly as strangled. I bring my forehooves to my face, covering everything in an attempt to plunge myself into shadow. Every bit of my body is shaking and I can't make it stop.
Strangled noises somewhere close to sobs sound in my throat, and because I am alone, I let them. My throat is wet and mucus-y, my eyes are damp, and I want nothing more than to have the sky over my head instead of these cold walls. I want to feel the grass under my body and the wind against my coat. I wish that Luna could be there too. I wish I could be sharing ketchup chips with Pink One and reading to Skyla, or teaching my bubbly pink niece about magic. I wish I had something to read, something to prevent my hooves from quivering and pages to flip, and enough words to keep some of my mind busy.
The sound of my circlet hitting the wall won't leave my ears.
My eyes are wet but I cannot cry.
Being caught up in this is terrible. I am a prince and it is terrible. I wake up a prince tomorrow. I start being a prince tomorrow.
The two redeeming things in all this are that I will always be Luna's husband too, and that above all else, I can always be Sombra.
'All this' I have yet to unravel, but there is dread in my stomach. I can only predict that somepony will be hurt in this horrid sequence of things that Luna and I are so tangled up in. I can never stay caught forever, but the bloody string's going to be a pain to unravel. A mess of a story is what this will be. As the God of Knowledge, I know that though I will play this game, and Luna will drag me along — sometimes I need it — as our mutual stubbornness leads us somewhere. In the center of this is an ivory mare with a mask she will not discard.
One mare who I will always be able to say is an enemy of mine.