His arrival was always relief and terror. A warm greeting, a drink of water, precious moments of companionship—of a sort—to make the endless hours pass faster. Sombra brought all these things. But he also brought questions, dread, nightmares, and greedy, greedy eyes. Sometimes he brought food. Always he brought fear.
Fluttershy felt the telltale spark before the flames burst from the corners of her eyes. The magic did not knock her unconscious into dreams this time, instead inducing hallucinations while she was still painfully awake and aware. The lamp seemed to turn a searing red. The walls all tilted and bent inward. Chunks of the floor fell away and left Fluttershy stranded on a wobbling pillar of stone, surrounded by a chasm the black depths of which she could not fathom. She couldn’t fly; her wing feathers had been falling out from severe malnourishment over the last days, so she was left to lean back and forth to keep her last piece of floor in balance. It didn’t help that her icy blood made her legs numb. It didn’t help that her rapid, shallow breaths made her dizzy. It didn’t help that the dim red light seemed to just barely illuminate the contours of horrible, grotesque monsters writhing around her pillar far, far below…
Just as the edges of her vision grew dark and her body tumbled sideways, the door opened and Sombra’s face appeared.
Fluttershy felt the impact of her body on the ground and opened her foggy eyes. The floor was back. The walls were straight. The light was white.
“Hello, my dear little subject! Did I catch you in a nap?” His smile was soft and sweet and his eyes wore sincerity.
Fluttershy could see right through this mask of innocence. He asked questions as usual but she gave him nothing. And he gave her nothing, to eat or drink.
Or to protect her from the floor falling away under her hooves again.
Until her captor’s next return, Fluttershy spent her days pacing the perimeter of the room, gingerly testing the stability of every square inch of floor and barely catching the odd hour or two of sleep whenever her body could hold up her consciousness no longer.
“Fluttershy!” The door burst open and the King marched in. “You’ve had nothing to eat or drink in a little while. I thought I’d bring you something nice to refresh your spirit. The bed appeared in the room with what looked like a picnic blanket laid over the duvet. Sombra levitated in a wicker basket. Once he’d sat himself on the bed, he motioned for Fluttershy to sit across from him. She obeyed.
“Let’s start you with this.” A glass of water appeared. Fluttershy drank deeply until it was all gone as Sombra laid out the contents of his basket between them. “Strawberries, cucumber sandwiches, macaroons, and best of all...” A porcelain cup and saucer floated out of the basket and landed in front of each of them, and last came a tea kettle, already steaming. “Ginseng,” Sombra smiled.
Fluttershy froze, even as her mouth watered and her stomach howled. Her eyes were fixed on the cucumber sandwiches. Somewhere deep in her mind, she could feel an important memory stirring. But what was it?
“Something wrong?” Sombra gazed into her magenta eyes with concern. He made no mention of the faint wisps of purple flame streaming across her cheeks.
“No, I...” Fluttershy’s thought perished when a snap sounded in her ears. She glanced around frantically but saw no source for the noise. That sounded just like…
Before her mind could produce the name “Discord”, the haggard pony froze again, this time staring at the wall. It was oozing blood, gobs of it, thick and dark. A single broad fang gleamed in a corner of the room and became stained in the gruesome drizzle.
“Fluttershy. Look at me.”
In a stupor, she obeyed. Her mind was blank and screaming at her with a fervor she couldn’t understand. Then she saw Sombra, sleek mane flowing as gracefully as wisps of smoke, ruby eyes wide with care, a halo of clear, brilliant air surrounding his image and rendering invisible the bleeding walls behind it. Her stupor became peace, and all the tension in her muscles melted away.
“I’m all you need, Fluttershy; don’t worry about looking anywhere else.”
She held his gaze and breathed “Okay.”
“Good. I brought some of our favorites because I know they always help you relax. Won’t you have a bite?” He levitated a cucumber sandwich before her face and she took it and started to eat.
“Now, you were going to teach me about Equestrian diplomacy today. Tell me, I’m quite interested to learn about Celestia’s allies! Which ones are her favorites?”
Fluttershy swallowed and took a sip of tea, her gently burning eyes never leaving Sombra’s. Then she started the lesson.
They had been sitting side-by-side on the bed, Sombra laughing at the story he was telling and Fluttershy quietly munching hooffull after hooffull of sweet pineapple chunks. Apparently, the looks on the Royal Guard members’ faces as they scoured the razed Whinnyapolis and found no survivors had sent King Sombra into such a fit of laughter that he almost exposed his hideout in an abandoned warehouse. He had been mind-cleansing a storeroom full of captives to convert them into joining his army. If the Gaurd ponies had discovered him, he’d have had to quickly recruit them too!
“Soon enough, those rebels will learn not to stand in the way of a good cause,” Sombra stated, turning serious. Fluttershy did not question him, for she was too busy eating as much pineapple as she could.
Then Sombra smiled at her. “Well, this has been nice, but it’s time I got going. I might be gone a bit longer this time, so here’s some food to hold you and some extra water.” The bowls appeared as described and the bed teleported away. Suddenly, “Sweet dreams!” and he took Fluttershy in his magic and hurled her into a wall.
Winded and dazed, Fluttershy forced an eye open to see, rather than hear, the King laugh as he exited and slammed the door behind him. Her whole body screeched in pain, and worse, her eyes were burning again. She forced them closed and tried to prepare her mind for the nightmares that would soon come to torment her.
She didn’t know what was real anymore.
Finally, the enchanted flames went out when the door opened again. As Sombra walked in, Fluttershy saw the bloodshot eye that had been staring at her from a hole in the wall for she didn’t know how long blink shut and the wall became intact again.
“Oh, King!” Fluttershy jumped up despite the ache in her joints and ran forward, wrapping the shadow pony in her hooves and clinging to him for all she was worth. “It felt like you’d never come back! I was so afraid!”
Once he’d gotten over his surprise, Sombra draped a front leg over Fluttershy in return. “Of course I was coming back. I can’t go too long without seeing your pretty little face, you know!” He then pushed her back a little so he could look into those adorable fuschia eyes. Fluttershy responded with the softest, daintiest giggle.
“Your water is all gone, I see, but you never touched your food.” Sombra quickly teleported away the rotten fruits and vegetables. “Are you alright?”
“I am now! I was just feeling too scared to be hungry.”
“I see. Well, I’m here now, and you are perfectly safe. Shall we have a meal together?”
“Oh, yes! I would like that very much.”
Soon they were picnicking on the bed again, this time with kiwi, grapes, and starfruit, celery sticks with peanut butter, cream cheese, and ranch dressing for dipping options, and raspberry hoofprints and chocolate cherry cordials. The cucumber sandwiches and ginseng tea were the same.
Sombra described his most recent adventure recovering an ancient artifact called Yksler’s Helm from a school that was carelessly displaying it where all the grubby children could touch and ruin it. Fluttershy listened to the story initially, but with every sip of tea she felt thirstier, and with every bite of sandwich she felt hungrier, so much so that her mind finally sharpened enough for her to remember her circumstances. She stopped partaking in the picnic and stared blankly at the boasting King, horrified at how he had been manipulating her. After a few more sentences, Sombra stopped and interrupted himself.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she lied, and waited for the familiar singe at her eyes. It didn’t come.
“No really,” Sombra cocked his head, “what’s wrong?”
For a few more moments, Fluttershy stared. Then she picked up a cucumber sandwich and sighed. “It’s this.” She picked up her teacup. “And this.”
“What about them?”
“These were Discord’s favorites. He brought them all the time to our tea parties.”
“Discord...” Sombra stiffened. He looked hard at Fluttershy, up and down, taking in all the changes in her body. Noting especially that the black line starting at the infected hole in her left ear had traced her veins all the way down to the base of her throat, by now only a few inches from her heart. “You must be mistaken,” he finally resumed. “Discord used to come to your tea parties, but he never brought anything. He is too selfish a creature. The cucumber sandwiches and ginseng tea are what I bring to you.”
Fluttershy’s faced scrunched up and her mind clouded. “I don’t...” But she thought back. She remembered having tea parties with Discord. But she remembered seeing him fly off into the night when she asked him for help getting home. Then she recalled the last time she’d had cucumber sandwiches and ginseng tea. It was Discord who was with her! No, it was Discord’s blood dripping from the walls. Sombra was the one who cared. As Fluttershy waded through murky thoughts and memories, she began to nod dumbly at Sombra. A grin spread across the King’s face, exposing his fangs.
He was pushing the boulder away from what looked like a cave entrance when suddenly he fell through it. Then he stood back up and glanced down at his body, but it looked like he was sprouting out of the stone.
“This can’t be good.”
“You’re still half-starved,” Sombra pointed out. “Eat some more and clear your head.”
Fluttershy obeyed.
“I don’t like bringing this up, but I need to talk to you about something hard. About those friends of yours.”
The fuschia eyes met his as Fluttershy continued to eat.
“I know you were very close with them, but once I brought you here, they never took the trouble to come get you. You know this already. What you don’t know is what they’ve been doing without the Element of Kindness there to temper them. They’ve been writing powerful spells, practicing their attacks, sharpening their weapons. Do you understand?”
Fluttershy shook her head.
“They’re rallying their forces against me, prepared to do harm and to kill. And for what? They want to defend Equestria from me, to defend Celestia’s Equestria. It’s hypocritical!”
“What do you mean?” Now she stopped eating to give the King her full attention.
“I mean Celestia’s Equestria is a land of strict order and enforced harmony. Somehow, the Princess has convinced your friends and most of her citizens that her idea of perfectly idyllic peace is worth doing violence to protect! Does that not sound a little backwards to you?”
“I suppose it does, but… I don’t think you’re casting it in the right light.”
“Of course I’m not. What you’re calling the ‘right light’, it’s Celestia’s light. She tried to steal your mind too, but I know you’re smarter than that. Celestia is the Princess of the sun—she’s all about light, all the time, everywhere, but can’t you see that light is blinding? She uses it to stifle individuality! She uses it to see everything that doesn’t conform to her tastes and to squash that seed of variance before it can grow and bloom.”
“Oh my! But what about Princess Luna? Her night is nice and dark!”
“Luna’s night is merely Celestia’s allowance to her sister and her subjects, there to provide contrast and increase the citizens’ yearning for the light of her day when each night inevitably ends. Better neither day nor night.”
“What do you propose, then?”
“Shadows, my dear...” Passion glinted in Sombra’s eyes and his smoky black mane flowed with more enthusiasm. “Where there are shadows, you can have light when and where you want it. And when you don’t want it, you can retreat to your darkness and have the freedom to be whatever you long to be. Your friends fight me because they don’t understand it, but my reign will bring to Equestria a kind of liberation!”
“Oh, that… that kind of makes sense…”
He tried to teleport home, but he could not. His mind raced to think what he could do to heal himself without becoming exposed. What he still had the power left to do. He was sprinting through a forest trying to trip on a root, crash into a tree, trying to get his body to feel something, anything! Trying to find some creature who could help…
But then, as he ran straight through tree after tree, he noticed the trees were getting taller. No, he was getting shorter. He looked down and realized he was sinking into the ground. He couldn’t fly. He couldn’t jump. He couldn’t grab onto anything to pull himself up. In another moment, he was underground.
He watched layers of dirt, then strata of rock pass as he continued to descend. He had failed. He was going to be lost and she was going to be lost and they all were going to be lost. The tears he shed as the earth consumed him soaked into cracks in the rocks.
One day, many millennia hence, sparkling, colorful gemstones might grow in those tiny pockets of water.
“I guess I’m better off staying with you than going back to them, huh?” Fluttershy grinned at the King and he appreciated the new sharpness in her canine teeth.
“Perhaps it is best that way. But you mustn’t regret all that time you spent with them, for you too were deceived and it was not your fault.” Sombra levitated a cherry cordial up to Fluttershy’s mouth and fed it to her.
“You are good to me,” she remarked after she swallowed the candy.
“I care about you, Fluttershy. Now, I want to know about Discord. He has a different kind of magic, I think. Could you describe it for me?”
“Oh, well, um, I’m not sure how much I remember… Discord uses chaos magic, if that helps, and it usually causes all kinds of destruction and hurt. I’d be happy to tell you more if it comes to mind, but maybe for now you could tell me more about shadows?”
Those wide, fuschia eyes were simply irresistible and Sombra could hardly help but smile. “Of course.” As he began to speak, Fluttershy moved around the picnic blanket until she was leaning against Sombra’s side. He leaned into her too, and took the opportunity to stroke the dusky quartz of her mane.