Twilight Sparkle was reading late into the night, unable to look away from the ancient tome she had laid out on her bed. What she was reading was riveting information that had been forgotten for generations of ponies, something that was supposedly from the early years of Celestia and Luna’s reign. Supposedly, shortly after the defeat of Discord, an even older evil reared its head to face the Princesses. This evil, as Twilight had come to understand it, was known as Grogar, ruler of the city of Tambelon.
“Twilight,” Spike groaned from his basket, “Go to bed. I can’t sleep with that light on.” Twilight sighed in annoyance, though she knew it was probably best to go to sleep as she had a busy day tomorrow. The unicorn closed the book, sending a small cloud of dust fly from its pages. She set it on her bedstand, and blew the candle out. As the room was overcome with darkness, she thought about the city of Tambelon and its tyrannical ruler. Of course most it was legend, as nopony had seen Tambelon or Grogar for centuries. Even if it wasn’t true, it was still an interesting story.
Grogar, the embodiment of evil in the form of a goat necromancer and sworn enemy of all things good, paced tiredly back and forth in his dim, dank room, his mind pondering to its farthest extent the meaning of his existence and purpose. He let out a quiet growl as circled the long, ornately carved table that was laid out with platters of wilting vegetables and mildewed bread. Sitting and watching him pace was his minion Bray. The gangly donkey looked somewhat nervous with his master’s restlessness, but was more or less preoccupied with the browned onion he was gnawing on.
Grogar thought about his most recent attack on Equestria, which had been so long ago that it seemed more like a dream. It had been only one of the many events in his life that he considered to be failures. But by far, his biggest regret was being trapped in his own city, condemned to remain within the realm of shadows to emerge once every five hundred years to gain the victory he had failed to attain the first time. For some years now Grogar was reaching the conclusion that his mission was forfeit from the beginning. He had several opportunities to reach his goal, but each time was met with failure as it somehow slipped out of his iron grasp at the last moment.
“I should have cast my self into the furnace the moment I was banished,” he thought aloud. Bray, being somewhat of a sycophant, took fear in hearing his only source of praise utter a death wish, though it only a mild fear as Grogar often made these sort of comments.
“Master, don’t speak like that,” the donkey said through a mouthful of rotting onion. Grogar didn’t seem to hear, as he was currently preoccupied with the dark realization he was having.
“What have I done, Bray?” he rasped, though he didn’t expect an answer as he already knew the truth of the matter. He knew perfectly well how he reacted to being banished, which was to counter the spell with a curse of his own, anchoring his city to Equestria so that it would return from the shadow realm at regular intervals. For this he loathed himself as much as he loathed everything else he lay his eyes upon.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve done,” growled the disgruntled goat, “I’ve cursed myself to participate in an absurd and eternal war. Now I waste my life waiting for inevitable failure.” By this point Bray was concentrating on swallowing the onion, but was having difficulty getting past his gag reflex.
Grogar turned to look at the strange clock affixed to his wall. It had long ago been broken by the fizzled spell he had last used in an attempt to expel the ponies from their home, and its hands were stuck at midnight in a monument to the victory that almost occurred.
“What is time, Bray?” pondered the dark manifestation, “Why do we bother trying to put increments on something that it endless?” The goat looked over to the model of Tambelon he had constructed in the middle of his chambers, as though he might find the answers hidden among the miniature streets and windows. “It never works for us, does it, Bray?” His glowing eyes narrowed as his face contorted in rage.
“Master…?” mumbled Bray as he shrank nervously rose from his chair, “I’ll, uh, I’ll fix you some dinner.”
“Master?” rumbled Grogar, “Master of what? We’re prisoners, Bray!” He snarled noisily as he stomped down the length of the table, sneering at the ruined food. “Oh, I hate eating this filth, and I hate living in this flawed body, and I hate living in Tambelon, and I hate, I hate, I HATE EQUESTRIA!”
The necromancer sent a bolt of energy into the wall, blackening it with soot. He then trotted over to his window and stared out into the ruined, crumbling city that he ruled. His gaze was dull and glassy, as if the dark brilliance that lay behind them had been extinguished. In reality, a new and miraculous idea was dragging itself from the deepest abyss of his mind,
“Bray…” he muttered as he stared into space, “Bray, I’ve just had a sublime vision…” Bray looked up, gnawing at a celery stick with his yellowed teeth. “All these years of thinking, of planning this endless conquest…They’re not individual failures. They’re part of a single grand failure, a failure that I have been creating from the moment of my birth…an epiphany…”
“Epihi-what?” asked Bray. The donkey’s ears stiffened as he saw Grogar smile. Grogar rarely smiled, and when he did it was usually a malicious, evil smile that reflected his true darkness. This was a sheepish smile, a smile of humble defeat, something that Bray had never seen before.
“My life is over…” said Grogar.
“Does…does that mean you lost your appetite?”
“Yes,” Grogar, replied with a nod, “Goodbye.” Bray watched as the ancient goat trotted over to his armory.
“Wha-…Are you getting dramatic?” called out the equine as he left the premises of the table, following his master for a short distance. He paused, however, as Grogar returned clutching a strange device in his cloven hoof. It appeared to be some kind of metal, tubular object affixed to a handle, decorated with sinister symbols. This particular weapon was something Grogar had created during his alchemy experiments.
“This is it, Bray,” said the goat as he held the end of the tube to the side of his head, “Don’t make a move, not a step. My finger’s on the trigger. Don’t try to stop me, Bray!”
“Oh, not again,” said Bray, a mildly concerned frown on his muzzle.
“This is it,” said Grogar as he pressed the barrel against his head, “Don’t try to stop me, Bray. Don’t try to stop me this time, Bray, don’t you dare try to stop me this time--Bray, try to stop me. Bray, get up off your ass and stop me, GET OVER HERE BRAY!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming!” cried the donkey as he rushed to his master’s side.
“Stop me!” roared the goat as he and his servant began wrestling for the weapon, “This is not a joke! I’m committing…suicide!” The weapon suddenly went off, firing a blast of green energy at Grogar’s model of Tambelon, causing the replica of his castle to go up in flames. There was a brief moment of silence before Grogar turned back to Bray.
“Don’t ever frighten me like that again,” he growled accusingly.
“I’m sorry!” muttered Bray as he dropped the firearm.
“What are you, some kind of sadist?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” reassured Bray, “Are you okay?” Grogar let out a wistful sigh and looked up at the ceiling.
“I want to die, Bray.”
“Oh, come on now, Master,” said Bray as he followed Grogar to his throne, “It’s not that bad.”
“My career is over,” grumbled the necromancer as he sat down in the ancient stone chair. He sat hunched over dejectedly, his red eyes staring ahead as his miniature castle collapsed in on itself. He seemed to be gazing past the physical world, as if he were projecting his mind outside of his head and searching it for some kind of answer to his problems.
“Why don’t we do something tomorrow to take your mind off of things?” said Bray as he shuffled over to where Grogar kept his finest grog, “We can blast some Troggles from the top of the tower.”
“I’m tired of killing Troggles,” grunted Grogar, “I’ve been killing them most of my life.” He put his face in his hoof as Bray began pouring a strong-smelling grog into a pair of goblets. As the equine set down the bottle, a strange look came across his drooping features. He turned back to face his master, a smile plastered on his muzzle.
“I’ve just had an apostrophe,” he beamed.
“I think you mean an epiphany,” Grogar said flatly, not looking up from his hoof. Bray walked towards his master, still grinning stupidly.
“Lightning...has just struck my brain…” he said as he touched his oily-maned head.
“Well, that must hurt.”
“No, Master,” Bray said as he quickly ran up to the throne, “I’ve got an idea…” Grogar looked through his hoof at his servant, who seemed to have regained the zeal he once held.
“Well, what is it?” sighed the goat as Bray hovered giddily before him.
“Remember how I swore allegiance to you all those years ago,” said the ecstatic donkey, “And in return you gave me eternal life?” Grogar remembered this, as it was one of the last things he had done before declaring war on all Equestria.
“Yes,” he grumbled, “What of it?”
“Well Master,” continued Bray, “You are the tempter of darkness. You’ve promised Troggles with power and made them work for you. Why not try it with ponies?” Grogar gave his bumbling servant a flat look.
“No, Bray,” he muttered, “They will never abandon their precious princesses.”
“Master, that is the point!” cried Bray, “That is the ultimate revenge! When Celestia and Luna see their subjects standing beside you, the greatest evil ever to plague Equestria, they’ll be so filled with doubt and fear that they’ll shake their crowns off!”
“Yes, I see,” murmured Grogar as he stroked his beard, considering the donkey’s proposition. Perhaps Bray was right. Perhaps he had lost touch with his roots as the great deceiver of mortals. Maybe, just maybe, he would need to rely on his old tricks to accomplish what brute force couldn’t. It was then that he realized how easy it would be. Ponies were enormously stupid, as most mortals were, and therefore would easily trade their lives for something as trivial as power or money.
“Yes,” Grogar restated, an evil smile spreading across his muzzle, “I like it. I love it. Oh, what a brilliant idea I’ve just had, Bray!” A twisted fire returned to his eyes as he stood up from his throne, “When we return to Equestria, I’m going to tempt the ponies with whatever their idiotic little hearts desire! They’ll want power, they’ll want wealth, and I’ll give it to them!” His wicked smile grew wider, “I’ll give it to them, alright.” He broke off into an unspeakably evil laugh that echoed throughout all of Tambelon.