The Blue Knight burst into the main hall with such force that the rapidly opening doors flung the thrall guards most of the way across the room. He was clad in his full armor, with his sword drawn.
“I have heard that the princess is in danger! I came as quickly as I could!”
“Though the princess has been spared a dire fate, you, Blue Knight, have arrived far too late.”
Zither removed his helmet and glared at Crozea. She was one of several who had arrived to address Sombra on the situation. Beside her stood Buttonhooks the Mad, who had been the nearest unit otherwise unoccupied, as well as Thirteen, clad in her own armor. Unlike Zither, she never seemed to remove hers. Nor did she eat or sleep.
“My king.” The Blue Knight bowed. “It is of endless relief that the princess is unharmed.”
“Which is no thanks to you, my knight.”
“My king.” Zither bowed more deeply. “There is no way I can atone for this oversight.”
“My master, there was nothing he could have done,” said Buttonhooks, slowly. His voice was badly distorted from the metal screws embedded in his vocal cords, but it was clear and deep, maintaining his Old Trottingham accent perfectly. “This event is not of his failure.”
“I understand that. This was a failure on the part of many, myself included.”
“It was a concerted mental attack from Nightmare Moon,” explained Eternity. Her voice was soft; she knew that of those who had failed, she had failed the most severely.
“And is the alicorn injured?”
“Penumbra was badly shaken, but by the grace of the spirits her life not taken.”
“Is she secure?”
“To that task, we have entrusted her to the mask.”
“Nightmare Moon is a dangerous foe.” Sombra eyed his lieutenants closely, especially Thirteen. “There is no telling what horrors she might have shown my weapon. There is a risk of contamination, and that cannot be tolerated.”
“I have checked her primary programming,” said Eternity. “There isn’t really that much of it, and I made all of it.”
“And?”
“It is not how I left it. Not at all. But I don’t think it was Nightmare Moon. Nothing in the princess’s head reeks like moon-cheese.”
Sombra glared at Crozea. “Then these...aberrations. They are due to your mismanagement of your task. Perhaps I ought to have entrusted Luciferian with her growth instead.”
“The anomalies are a result of her pre-adult growth, and I shall correct them, you have my oath.”
“Nevertheless,” said Buttonhooks, slowly, turning his permanently wide eyes from Crozea to Sombra. “Crozea’s report, correlated poetically as always, noted deep ligature marks on the princess's neck and limbs. Scarlet Mist has confirmed this. Nightmare Moon does not have the magical potential to interact with the physical world in that way. Not normally, based on any known records.”
“Implying?”
“Implying nothing concrete, without further evidence, save for the fact that this was an assassination attempt.”
“And yet when I entered, my lord, I found this one standing over my ward.” Crozea pointed at Thirteen, who stared back blankly. “And at the nurse’s demand for her to yield, she did not even try to drop her shield.”
“YOU.” The Blue Knight drew his sword and in a swift motion was across the room, holding it at Thirteen’s throat. “So it was YOU! Do not protest! You were found at the scene of this heinous attempt, standing over the fair damsel! Explain yourself!”
Thirteen looked up at him. Her horn glowed, and a portal appeared, sliding over his sword to the hilt. The blade of the sword emerged from a portal across the room, poking a thrall smartly.
“Foul witch!” snapped the Blue Knight, trying unsuccessfully to free his sword from the portal. “Stop thinking with portals and allow me to threaten you PROPERLY!”
“Thirteen’s reaction was within protocol and, in my opinion, wise.” Buttonhooks addressed Sombra directly, stepping forward and dragging his withered pelvis behind him. “It is within protocol. She produced a shield to defend the princess from both Nightmare Moon and any potential conspirators among the help. She waited until zebra-Crozea arrived.” He turned his gaze to her. “And when you arrived, she allowed you in.”
“To protect the Penumbra, I do what I must, and this masked mage I no longer trust.”
“The princess’s own account suggests that Thirteen saved her.”
“Perhaps as false labor, meant to curry the king’s favor.”
“That is an off-rhyme indeed,” said Zither, finally managing to free his sword and sheathing it. “This has indeed affected you, lady zebra. Recall that the princess is well and safe. And that you are in the presence of our king.”
Sombra had been watching patiently. “Eternity. What did you see?”
“Nightmare Moon had forced me back by trying to dig into the part of my brain where I keep my prophecies.”
“Seeking something, perhaps?”
Eternity paused. “I don’t think so. It’s the most secure part of my brain. I think she knew that I would try my hardest to keep those secret. It’s the same reason equals-sign-butt can’t tell us what SHE saw. That part of us, it destroys things. Very hard.”
“The princess described the attack as a mass of organic tendrils, but could not describe it further from the darkness and from the strain of the events.”
“Autonomous tendrils suggest magic,” said Sombra. “Either pure biomancy or herbic manipulation.”
“The latter of which Crozea is an expert at,” noted Zither, turning his amber eyes toward the zebra.
Enraged, Crozea tore off her mask. “You pompous sack of rotting burl! You dare to accuse me of trying to harm the girl?!”
“You are the only one with access to her bedchamber.”
“Though I have not a hasty oath like thine, I have raised that girl as if she were mine! You have dealt me great insult, push further and you will receive a terrible result!”
“If that is how you would treat your own daughter? Then you would be a terrible mother. If that cursed body were not entirely barren, of course.”
“HOW DARE- -”
“This is not productive,” growled Buttonhooks, interposing himself between the two of them as Crozea reached for her chemicals and spell-scrolls while the Blue Knight drew his sword. “Fighting brings us no closer to uncovering true evidence and acting swiftly. My disciples already search the halls: if an intruder is found, there will be pain.” His lips twitched, trying to smile against the hooks that bound them. “He or she will speak...and then scream.”
“There is no one here,” said Eternity. “And any trace of whatever spell it was is gone now. Thirteen’s spell erased it.”
“A destruction of evidence, then.”
Buttonhooks sighed. “If you are going to make baseless accusations, half-unicorn-Zither, at least keep your accusations consistent.”
“Call me that again, and I shall give you the poke.”
“With your sword? Indeed. I would greatly enjoy it. If only I still had the backs of my knees. But I digress, and that will need to wait until later.”
“Yes,” said Sombra, his voice causing silence to fall over the others and throughout the room. “Search the area again. All of you. Find Al’Hrabnaz, and see what insight he can offer. But contact no others.”
“My lord,” said Zither, “as much as I hate to admit it, this may be a task to which Luciferian is best suited.”
Sombra turned sharply. “Did I not speak clearly, Knight?”
Zither bowed. “No, my lord.”
“You are a tracker. Apply your skills. And leave Twilight out of this. He will have other duties, I assure you.” He paused. “Meaning you are dismissed. Leave me. NOW.”
They all bowed to him and departed, save for Thirteen. She lingered for a moment, staring at Sombra, before vanishing in a flash of magic. For reasons he could not explain, Sombra found Thirteen increasingly disturbing.
He began to walk through his silent and empty complex, the areas where none were brave enough to enter alone in the night. He did not need to return to bed, as he had neither slept nor eaten in centuries.
“It was close,” said Eternity, who could never be dismissed. “The Nameless One. It intervened.”
“Oh?” Sombra did not break pace, nor did he speak. He replied in Eternity’s own language, using his mind alone. “You saw it?”
“No, but I felt it. It’s like...as if a great big shark poked the very tip of its fin through the surface of the water, then went back under without a ripple...but was big enough to overturn an entire armada. It hurt. It hurt so bad...”
“Are you any closer to understanding what, exactly, it is?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. I don’t think we’re meant to.” She paused. “It saved the princess.”
“Which is curious in itself. Nor can we count on it in the future. It appears loyal to me, but I suspect it is only on a whim.” Sombra looked up and ahead of him. He had entered an arcade of arrow-slits, and across from them flew the tattered remnants of ancient sable flags. They no longer had meaning, but glimmered strangely in the light of the full moon.
“We were lucky. And I detest trusting my fortune to luck. Attacks from the Dark Goddess are not uncommon, nor unexpected. She always finds a way in. It is why I never sleep. But you need to be more careful. If the alicorn had been ruined...”
“I understand my failure.”
“No. I do not think you do. Do you think there is nothing I can take from you, without a body? If I so chose, I could plate your chamber with dimeritium.”
“I am tactically critical! You if you did that- -”
“Isolated in your own mind, you would see across time, as you meant to when you gave everything you could control in exchange for everything you could not. A mere minute, and you would experience ETERNITY.”
“NO. No. No!” Eternity began cackling manically. “No. I can’t. Please. That isn’t good. Not a good idea. I hate me. I hate me SO MUCH. Can't be alone...can't..."
“Then perhaps if I dump ants onto your glass again.”
“If you must know! I was distracted. Very busy. With something I think you would like.”
“Apart from defending my weapon?”
“A weapon that doesn’t, you know, work. No. I have something better. But you’re not going to like it.”
“My day is already passing poorly. But such is the duty of a king.”
“The other day, while I was watching Penumbra- -closely, I might add- -I lost sight of her.”
Sombra stopped. “You what?” he said, now verbally.
Thin laughter came from deep within Eternity’s mind. “She was there one moment, and then gone.”
“That is impossible. You see everything.”
“I know. But it wasn’t just her. One Gxurab’s birds did the same thing. Dissipated, and came back. In the same place as the princess.”
“Where?”
“An abandoned storage room. Who knows what Gxurab’s ‘exmoori ancients’ used it for, but now it’s just full of old junk. There is nothing special about it. But I sent thralls to investigate.”
Sombra reverted to mental communication. He sensed that this was something not to be spoken of aloud. “What did they find?”
“A powerful spell. More advanced than anything I’ve ever seen. It must have taken years to install, piece by piece, brought in packed and unfolded. Really carefully.”
“Twilight.”
“Yes. He is the only one other than you who could have made such a spell. And from the look on your face, I don’t think it was you.”
“What was he hiding?”
“Like I said. Junk. Nobody’s been in that room for decades. It never changes. That’s what the spell does. It feeds me the image of the room.”
“Then what was in the room but not in the image?”
Eternity smiled, at least mentally. “A mirror. An enchanted one. And it smells like his magic.”
“A portal.” Sombra frowned. “Which is not inconceivable, nor is it unknown to us. He retreats to his ancestral home. We now simply know one of the mechanisms of such transport.” Sombra paused. “But why was the alicorn there?”
“That’s not even the best part. The thralls found traces of unicorn genetic material.”
Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of genetic material?”
“The silvery kind.”
“Luciferian’s?”
“No. I traced it back to one of the expert crystal processing technicians. I found him sealed in a wall. Badly anemic, but alive and uninjured. Turns out, he has no memory of what happened to him- -but can’t account for a case of five majestic-purity crystals from the refinery center.”
“And this mage. What color was he?”
Eternity paused. “The color? I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“What. COLOR.”
“White,” she said. “He is a white unicorn with a blue mane.”
Sombra’s brow furrowed at the realization. “The fool. So he’s finally succumbed to it.”
“King?”
“Purebloods of his race have a very distinct trait, one passed from their Queen. More of a habit, really. But it bodes very, very poorly.” He sighed. “As does the theft of those crystals. Just one could power ten artillery units, or a bomber zeppelin for over a century. In the possession of a mage of his caliber, their potential is...intriguing.”
“Should I find him? Maybe strip search him?”
“No. He is making his move against me, or will soon. This was not unanticipated. There is a reason why he is the one I keep closest. But the alicorn must be watched ceaselessly. Twilight is not sentimental, but may still try to use her against me.”
“That wouldn’t work.”
“I trust he will find a way.”
“King Sombra?”
Sombra turned, almost surprised by the sound of spoken words. Standing at the far end of the hallway was his daughter, clad completely in dark-iron armor and full makeup. She bowed deeply.
“I formally request an audience.”
Sombra stared at her for a moment. “Your request is granted.” He turned, his cape swishing as he faced away from her. He pointed to his side. “Walk with me.”
Penumbra bowed again, and bounded forward to her father’s side. She fell into step just behind him, her etiquette exacting and precise. When she walked, she made no sound.
She was a thin, even gaunt girl, pale and almost sickly in appearance. The extensive makeup she wore did not assist with that image. Sombra found himself reminded of his mortal enemies, of the giant and immortal Twins. Like Penumbra, they were unnaturally thin and terrifyingly hideous.
Yet she moved with exacting grace. Sombra tried his best to find even the slightest glint of her mother within her, but discovered none. This girl’s gaze was blank, but no longer empty, exactly, and the calculated expression she wore on her face was not one of true and open kindness but one of defiance. Not against her father, of course, but of the resistance of the world to her will.
Sombra sought Hope within his daughter, but found none of her. Instead, he found only himself.
“I suppose you are afraid to sleep.” It was a baited question. Had she felt even the slightest hint of fear, Sombra would have smelled it before she even entered his chamber.
“No. Now that I know her trickery, if she challenges me again I shall be prepared.”
“Then why are you here? And, more importantly, why are you not with Scarlet Mist as ordered?”
Penumbra averted her eyes. “Lady Mist’s body is aging rapidly. It fell asleep. So I left, to find you.” She looked up. “I wish to make my report personally, with your permission, detailing my failures?”
“Such a report would be unduly long. Permission is denied.”
Penumbra faulted, but only for a moment. “Of course, my king.”
“That said. To withstand an attack from the Dark Goddess is not unimpressive.”
Penumbra nearly gasped. “It is?”
“It confirms that she fears you, and the potential she believes you have.” Sombra looked down at the pony that was supposedly his daughter. “But with that said. I doubt you have come here to make a report alone.”
Penumbra stopped. Sombra took a few more steps before stopping as well. “She showed me...things. And now I have questions.”
Sombra turned his head slowly. “If your loyalty has faltered, child, then your service will end here and now. My judgment will be quick, but it will be final. So choose your words carefully.”
Penumbra stood defiantly and looked at her father in the eyes. She did not falter, and Sombra felt no fear from her. “I am Penumbra Heartbreak, daughter of the Eternal Witchking Sombra! If any but you yourself had suggested that I would betray my king, then I would break their face!”
Sombra stared at her for a moment, and nodded. “So be it.” He began walking again, and Penumbra fell into step. “The quest for knowledge is, ultimately, the purpose of my Empire. So I will indulge you. You may ask, and I may answer.”
“Thank you, my king.” Penumbra bowed, then looked up. For a moment she looked like a child, even though Sombra knew that she never would be. “The dark alicorn, she said something that bothers me deeply. That freedom and slavery make a paradox. And she showed me images...showed me that your kingdom hurts your subjects, and badly. I saw them and I...” She paused, as if not sure to continue. “I felt bad. As in, I was not in pain, but they were...and so was I.”
“What you speak of is called empathy.”
“Empathy?”
Sombra nodded. “It represents the ability for one to understand the emotions of another.”
“Is it a good thing?”
“It is something that I, as a king, and you, as a living weapon, must overcome. For it does not serve us except to bring pain.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sombra stopped, and put his hoof on Penumbra’s shoulder. Despite his apparent vitality, his skin was cold, and Penumbra shivered. Somehow, he felt so very frail.
He led her out onto a balcony. When Penumbra saw the view, she gasped. The kingdom lay before her. The night was clear, and she could see for crystal towers and houses for endless miles, built on the broad streets of the kingdoms. Night sentries cast tiny lights as they searched for dissent, and the next shift of ponies was being led to their workplaces in chains while the night crew was dragged back to their barracks. From high above, the whole of the world was silent save for the wind.
Deeper in her mind, Penumbra realized that a certain piece of the dream Nightmare Moon had given her had just come to fruition, and it terrified her.
Sombra sensed it, and found it disconcerting. Yet he continued. “I come here to think. And to see what I have accomplished. Look carefully, alicorn. When the day comes for you to fight, this is the kingdom you fight to preserve.”
“I fight to preserve you, my king.”
“But without this kingdom I am nothing. In more ways than one.” He took a deep breath of the frigid night air. “Nightmare Moon showed you a vision of my ponies in pain. And they are, I assure you. But what she did not show you is that this is necessary. That logic must overcome empathy.”
“But fear, and pain...” Penumbra felt the deep marks on her neck. “Those things hurt. How can it be good to make ponies feel like that?”
“Because slavery and freedom are not antithetical. They are one and the same.” Penumbra looked up at her father, confused. Sombra continued. “My crystal slaves. Are they not free from hunger? Does the medicine I provide not make them free from disease, or injury? Does my shield not free them from the threat of war, and violence?”
Penumbra looked up at the shield. To her dismay, she could see stars through it- -but they were hazy and distant, distorted by the perpetual dome of magic. “I...I guess that’s true.”
“I protect them. From famine, war, and plague. But I have also freed them from the shackles of decision.” He looked down at his daughter. “They, like you, understand their purpose. They do not agonize over seeking it, and they do not risk choosing the wrong path and failing. When it is present, uncertainty erodes the minds of lesser ponies, gnawing at them continuously. I have removed it from them, completely and utterly.”
“And that is freedom?”
“I suppose I could rule like Celestia does,” mused Sombra. “I could allow my ponies to be free to fail, to choose paths that lead only to pain. To experience wants of every kind, to live a short and pointless life that benefits no one at all. That is also freedom. The concept has duality.”
“But which one is better, then?”
“I believe you already know. Look out at the kingdom before you, and you will understand.”
Penumbra looked out, and she did understand. Or at least she did in her mind. In her heart, though, she felt only emptiness and sadness at what she saw before her.
“Emeth told me that you are going to give the city to him. To the golems. And that the ponies aren’t going to have to work anymore.”
“Emeth is proud of his vision. And I have acquiesced to parts of it, as I have understood that they are the best possible path I am able to take.” Sombra gestured outward. “You see these ponies, these slaves, working endlessly to power my Empire. But soon, it will not be necessary. Golems will see to that, in exchange for my protection.”
“And the ponies?”
“They will be wired permanently to Scarlet Mist’s most advanced thrall masks. Their bodies will be manipulated with a spell to put them in a state of constant, endless fear. And they will finally truly be free.”
“Free of what?”
“Of hunger. Of work. Of want, of any kind. Of dissent. They will no longer toil, but be provided with everything they could ever require, in exchange for feeding me what I require. Scarlet Mist’s preliminary reports from her prototypes suggest that the system will even extend their lifetimes. A crystal pony might live twenty centuries when before he had barely twenty decades.”
“But why? Why do all that?”
“Attempt to answer the question yourself.”
Penumbra’s brow furrowed. “For power?”
Sombra smiled, though only slightly. “No. I am not like the Goddesses. I do not seek power for its own sake, or to impose my vision upon the world. Power is only a means toward an end. If one cannot define that end, then power is a needless and fatal burden.”
“Then what is your end?”
“I have already told you. To create a civilization driven by the search for truth. To build a place where scientists, engineers, occultists, and wizards can come together and practice freely without the limitations of Celesta’s vision of propriety and forced-harmony.”
“But knowledge is just a form of power. It’s just a means too.”
Sombra paused. “Perhaps. So perhaps it is hypocritical of me to desire it. But that is why I came here in the first place. I was an old stallion, one of the last of my kind, an ancient sorcerer. My race was afflicted by a curse, you see. It rendered us unable to foal.”
Penumbra winced. “Like me.”
“Yes, I suppose. Though I am now sure that our curse was brought to us by at least one of the Goddesses. Regardless, I survived. I came here, to this Citadel, and began my research. And I realized its power.” He extended a strong, youthful hoof. “And I realized something incredible. That what even a unicorn can learn in one lifetime is so very short. That there are more worlds than this one. Worlds bound by doors that must be opened slowly, and with greatest care- -and of course some doors that must NEVER be opened.” He sighed. “Alas, with just one lifetime, the secrets of those worlds are forever out of reach. There is not enough time.”
“You seek immortality.”
Sombra smiled. “I seek to progress forward alongside science and magic, growing as they do until I can no longer differentiate myself from the knowledge I contain. This kingdom, this power? They are all means toward this end. As are you.”
Penumbra swelled with pride, her mind still reeling from the gravity of her father’s dream. “I will do my best so you can see that day. But...”
“Is there something else?”
Penumbra nodded. “Emeth said something else. That I will not survive to see that day.”
Sombra was silent for a long moment. “As things stand,” he said at last, “that will be the case.”
“But does it have to be? I do not want to go.”
“War is coming, Penumbra. Coming upon us quickly. I do not fear it, because I am incapable of fear, but I do foresee it. One does not need the gift of prophecy to see that I do not fit into Celestia’s vision for worldwide harmony. She will come, and as it stands, I am not strong enough to defeat her.”
“That isn’t true! You’re the strongest pony in the whole world!”
“Perhaps. But I am not a god, as you are.” His eyes turned downward, to Penumbra. In the moonlight, his pupils were wide and not nearly so harsh as the slits they formed during daylight. “Nightmare Moon came for you because they fear you. What you represent. A being like them, but opposed to their defiance of the freedom I bring.”
“I am not as strong as they are.”
“At least you are honest, if redundant. I am well aware that you are weak. Which is why you are in danger. As you are now, you stand no chance against them. And they will not allow you to continue to exist as you are now.”
“I refuse them. I will always refuse them!”
“It is easy to say now, alicorn.” Sombra stared out at his kingdom- -and beyond it. “I had considered Twilight Luciferian’s proposal. To treat you as a symbol, but as nothing more. As the princesses of the fool-kings I conquer are treated.”
“If it is the only good I can do for the kingdom- -for you- -I will do it without hesitation.”
“But is it? Is that really the extent of your potential? Is the most I can use you for to send you off to marry one of Celestia’s white purebloods, to galvanize a meaningless temporary alliance?” he looked down at his daughter, and put his hoof on her shoulder. Then, much to Penumbra’s surprise, he knelt beside her so that their faces were level with one another. “I refuse to believe that. But there may be another way.”
“My king? F...father?”
“When you were born, I nearly had you executed for fear of you rising as a usurper. It was only by Crozea’s wisdom that you were spared. But I am increasingly aware that I must not tie the fate of this Empire so closely to my own goal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have no use for a princess, and you are useless as a weapon. But you may yet find a role as a queen.”
Penumbra gasped, unable to control it. “You mean- -”
“To rule beside me, as my daughter and as one of royal blood. To rise from weakness not by birthright but by your own effort, as I did so long ago. To wield armies and slaves instead of magic and spells. And to take my place, should it come to that.”
“I could never live up to what you have become, my king.”
“Not at the moment, no. Not even in the next century. But unlike me, you are truly and wholly immortal. There will be time to learn, and time to understand. For now, you will continue to focus on your magic, as you will need a basic understanding of it at least a basic understanding of it.” He stood. “And I expect you to be at my side for the military parade. That will commence the start of your training as an administrative position.”
Penumbra looked up, her eye as big as saucers. “Thank you, my king.” She awkwardly reached forward and hugged her father’s legs. “I will not displease you!”
She stepped back and regained her composure. She bowed. “My king. You have answered my questions, and more. My mind has been set at ease. I now request to return to my teacher, so that I might rest before tomorrow’s training.”
“This permission is granted. You are excused.”
Penumbra straightened and smiled, and silently padded off down the long dark hall.
Sombra watched him go. Then he turned his attention to what seemed to be an enormous blue-winged dragonfly perched on the edge of the balcony.
“And?”
The dragonfly flashed green, and in its place stood a small violet pony with a half-shaved head. The Infiltrator did not bow, for her rank equaled that of her king “You are aa superb liar, my king. You rival even me. That was hilarious.”
“Not everything I do must be motivated by violence and fear. You of all beings should know, there are other ways to properly condition a pawn.”