Heh heh heh…
King Sombra continued snickering to himself in thought, musing over his plans written in the book.
“Prepare yourself, Twilight…” he said in thought before he finally opened the doors to the throne room with magic, the waiter behind him following with the cart. “The same kindness you used to destroy me is now coming for you…”
Spike and the guards, despite still feeling nervous from their discussion with Sombra, immediately perked up upon hearing the doors open behind them. The guards in front of the door had moved out of the way while the doors had slowly opened, allowing Sombra and the waiter to escort themselves in.
“Princess Twilight!” Spike exclaimed.
“Your Majesty!” the guards called out to her formally.
“We hope you had a good brunch Twilight,” said Spike politely despite his unsettlement, “but there’s something you should know about Sombra. He’s-”
“Behaving differently?” Sombra blithely interjected, smiling, surprising Spike, the guards, and Twilight.
“Um…yeah.” Spike replied bemusedly. “How did you know?”
“I overheard everything from behind the doors.” Sombra answered. “Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help it, given the situation. One of Equestria’s greatest villains has returned for a reason we are all none the wiser to, and Celestia only knows what he could be saying to influence my subjects while I’m away.”
“…What is he up to?” an instantly suspicious Twilight thought with a grimace on her face.
“It’s not so much what he’s saying that worries me…” Snow Sentinel interjected. “It’s the way he’s saying it. It’s obvious he doesn’t fear us. He’s admitting his vulnerabilities to us in a jovial manner, presumably because he’s just that confident in his belief that we’re vulnerable.”
“Oh, I heard it all…” Sombra replied in a sickly sweet tone.
“You pathetic weakling…” he said in thought, remembering how Snow slighted him earlier. “By way of revenge, I’m going to make ponies like you a LOT weaker…”
“But don’t worry.” he continued, pretending to comfort him and the others. “Later today, I intend to discuss with Princess Flurry Heart my plans on how to protect you and all of my loyal subjects from this odious beast.”
“The vile beast you’re referring to has ears.” an unamused Twilight interjected with a rejoinder. “Regardless, I’ll assume you’re not so stupid as to divulge your plans to your subjects in front of me and instead, ask why you’ve chosen to imprison me rather than kill me.”
“Watch out, Twilight!” Spike cried out in way of warning. “He can read minds now!”
“So I’ve heard.” Twilight responded nonchalantly, going along with the charade, seeing it as a benefit to her plans. “But fear not, for I have already cast a magic spell on myself to protect my mind from his influences. No mean to spoil what I have in store, but I’ll give you a clue that the way I intend to defend Equestria from this menace is to…endow them with such magic…”
Sombra’s grin widened as he saw Twilight’s unamused look become a concerned look.
“You already know now why I’m keeping you alive, ha ha ha…”
“You already have a plan to protect us?!” Spike exclaimed in pleasant astonishment. “You’re a genius! What would we ever do without you?”
“Nothing of monumental consequence, I assure you.” Sombra answered pompously, leading Spike and the guards to give him looks of unpleasant astonishment. “I jest, I jest, but you must appreciate the fact that without a benevolent ruler such as I to watch over you, you’d be doomed.”
“Of course, we appreciate everything you do for us…” Spike replied hesitantly. “But we also need to be able to take care of ourselves.”
“Those who do not work do not deserve to eat, the saying goes.” Sombra quoted an old-fashioned adage to divert their attention away from his tasteless pleasantry and toward the cart of food. “But I feel that after what you lot have had to go through today, the stress of coping with a dangerous villain’s return, you’ve earned yourself a spot of lunch, no?”
Sombra then waved his front leg to direct the waiter, who had previously been checking a timer in his pocket, to take the gray lids off the plates of food and reveal what the kitchen had prepared.
“Woah…” Spike and the guards reacted in awe as they stared at all the delicacies.
The cart of food had everything they could’ve dreamed of sinking their teeth into sitting right in front of them, including rolls of fresh bread, hors d’oeuvres like vegan deviled eggs, premium salads and soups, fresh fruit, hay burgers, vegetarian pot roast, vegetarian seafood, and freshly baked pastries like eclairs.
“All this is just from brunch?!” Snow cried in amazement.
“Today is a day of a special meeting, so I may have gone a little bit overboard with my orders to the kitchen, ho ho.” Sombra explained with a chuckle. “I was thinking of my loyal servants then too, how they don’t usually get to indulge in such an exquisite cuisine. I also knew, of course, that they wouldn’t want me to hoard a big buffet like this to myself and grow fat.”
“How long did it take to make all this?” one guard asked.
“Not long, with my good staff hard at work.” Sombra gave a compliment that led the waiter to bow. “Still, pardon me for not returning sooner. I know you always want more of me, but I didn’t come with fries and a drink.”
This pleasantry of Sombra’s went much better with Spike and the guards, leading them to laugh.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” they chortled.
“Don’t worry, I don’t mind the hay burgers by themselves!” one guard exclaimed, not getting the joke.
Twilight, by contrast, was not amused by the joke in the first place.
“Is he actually trying to call me fat?” she thought in frustration. “Or imply that my subjects are only interested in food?”
“She likely doesn’t know…” Sombra thought, judging from Twilight’s appearance of disapproval. “But the way I intend to humiliate her here is not by acting as if she and the princesses are literally corpulent, rather by exposing the excess they could easily part with at the benefit of their feeble-minded servants. Of course, that’s only part of my intention. Oh, I’m all too ready to serve her the main course…”
“I believe you asked me earlier about why I am keeping you alive.” he told her. “I’m sure you already have guessed, considering the way our last encounter went, that it is not out of clemency. Depending on how my discussion with Flurry Heart goes, this may very well be the last meal you witness.”
“What?!” Twilight cried in shock.
“…” Spike and the guards silently looked at the two in surprise.
“Just be grateful I’m at least going to talk things over and get a second opinion before obliterating you completely.” he said with a smile and a wink. “It’s only a possibility we’ll come up with a way to vanquish you for good this time. For now…”
Sombra levitated one of the hay burgers with magic before walking towards the throne, sitting on it and putting his hind legs up on Twilight’s cage.
“Enjoy my servants partaking in a meal fit for a real king.” he derided her, taking a bite out of the burger. “Because it just might be your last meal. Granted, it’s one you don’t get to actually have, but at least it will allow you to dream…bwa ha ha!”
“P-princess…” Snow interjected. “Doesn’t this strike you as a bit too…cruel?”
“How is this crueler than burning him alive?” Sombra immediately retorted with a stern frown.
“Swift death to evil is entirely different than torture…” Snow answered.
“Not to mention that you’re acting like you’re enjoying this…” Spike interjected, growing even more suspicious of this uncharacteristic behavior. “You always told me that you wished the best for Sombra no matter what happened to him…”
“Pfft.” Sombra responded dismissively, even as he knew he couldn’t break character despite his disbelief. “That doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with him…”
He couldn’t deny though, the fact that when he overheard Spike say this to a similar effect earlier, part of him wanted to believe it…
He also noticed that it was not just Spike and Snow objecting verbally, none of the guards had touched the food. Every single one of his subjects, including the waiter, was giving him a glance of either confusion, displeasure, or both.
“This is…unprecedented…” Sombra thought in puzzlement. “Why is it that not a single one of them desires to experience joy at the expense of one they hate?”
Knowing that he had to change up his strategy, Sombra put the hay burger down on one of the throne handles.
“Alright.” he said begrudgingly. “I’ll offer him some bread.”
He then levitated a roll of bread with his magic and hovered it above Twilight’s cage. He then gave Twilight, who was blankly staring at him, an admonishing look.
“Aren’t you going to beg me for this?”
“You know I’m too prideful for that.” Twilight answered solemnly. “This brings back painful memories from when I was a colt, a time when I would have to sometimes go without food.”
Everyone in the room was shocked by her words, especially Sombra.
“How…how did you know…?” he thought, dismayed.
“It seems he doesn’t realize that I have my resources, most notably a helpful sister-in-law who showed me some old journal entries of his…” Twilight thought, happy she had done her homework.
“Why so surprised?” she then asked. “Have any of you ever considered the possibility that maybe…there’s a reason why I’m like this?”
“Of…of course I…” Sombra tried to answer, but found getting the words out difficult, for he had been put in an unexpectedly difficult spot.
“I didn’t foresee this…” he thought worriedly. “If I tell her that I have, it will make my subjects suspect my true intentions for treating them to that buffet even more. But if I deny it, that dragon will find it inconsistent with what she supposedly told him about wishing the best for me. Either way, I’m going to look suspicious, and I need their full trust for my plan! Come on, think, think…”
In a haste, Sombra thought up a lie, realizing exactly what he needed for his next act of chicanery. A mix of a yes answer and a no answer…
“Of course, I’ve thought about it once or twice in the past…” he finally continued. “I just never expected you, of all villains, to be the kind that had to grow up knowing what it was like to be hungry. That’s more what I expected from an evildoer like Queen Chrysalis.”
“It is indeed uncanny, considering the kind of body I possess now.” Twilight replied. “I enjoy the taste of food, but I do not need it to survive now, being made of shadow. Regardless, even offering me freshly peeled grapes and a slice of cake would hardly be due recompense for how you loathsome princesses neglected starving orphans like myself.”
Once again, all else in the room were taken aback by her words. Sombra was stunned, hating to admit that he was impressed by how well Twilight actually understood what inspired him to feign an expression of charity in the form of food, while Spike and the guards were disconcerted and horrified by what had been suggested.
“That’s a lie!” Snow Sentinel exclaimed defensively. “No princess would ever do such a thing, not even one from a darker time in the past!”
“Twilight, don’t tell me you’re just going to sit there and take that!” Spike proclaimed angrily. “You have to tell him off for that! You have to tell him that’s not true!”
“Gah! Are you kidding me?!” Sombra thought furiously. “This is an even worse position I’ve been put in than earlier! They’re definitely going to doubt me if I don’t call something like THAT a lie! The repulsive behavior of these self-serving elites, I have to pretend it isn’t real, what made me who I am! Blast you, Twilight Sparkle!”
“I…I…” Sombra stumbled over his words, struggling to control his emotions.
He remembered being an unloved colt, a memory flashing through his mind of a time where he was sitting in a grassy field by himself with nothing to eat and no friends to talk to. He then remembered how Twilight was the princess of friendship, never knowing what it was like to be denied nourishment or having to be alone. At that point, he couldn’t take it anymore, not when sorrow began mingling with his anger. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he lost his temper.
“I’VE HAD IT!” he shouted, slamming his front hooves down on the cage. “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE-”
Just then, he was interrupted by the sound of a timer in the waiter’s pocket going off. The startled servant quickly grabbed the timer and stopped it.
“Please pardon me, Your Majesty.” the waiter interjected politely, still maintaining courtesy even as he was worried by Twilight’s outburst. “But I must return to the kitchen immediately. Not only need I maintain promptitude, but I do not wish for a late lunch to contribute to your mounting distress on top of your important meeting.”
Upset as he was, Sombra knew he had to regain his composure and apologize.
“No, it is I who should ask to be pardoned.” he said remorsefully. “Excuse me for overreacting, all of you. I just need to be alone right now.”
He anxiously got up from the throne and left to head for Twilight’s room, while the waiter returned to the kitchen. He had left the cart of food for Spike and the guards, planning to use another one for the lunch course, but Spike and the guards had no clue how they could muster an appetite after that.
“Is this…really Twilight?” Spike asked, more concerned than ever now.
“Spike…” Snow then attempted to comfort the dragon with a nervous smile on his face. “I’m…sure it’s just stress gradually built up from everything going on today like the waiter mentioned. I wouldn’t presume that she’s acting this way because she’s hiding something from us…”
“Denial…” Twilight interjected, shaking her head in disappointment. “Tyranny is only possible if a corrupt despot’s subjects allow it, becoming complicit in deceiving themselves and others.”
“You would know…” Snow appropriately retorted.
“Of course I do.” Twilight took the comeback she anticipated. “I was nothing but cruel to my slaves, for all I knew was cruelty. The only ones who were ever truly nice to me, they left my life. There’s a reason why I’ve been able to handle this all so calmly…”
Snow and Spike would previously have assumed the reason was because he had a plan to escape and conquer Equestria again, but once they saw Twilight shed a tear in the cage, they began to believe otherwise…
“It’s because even if I die here…” Twilight continued as that tear touched the ground. “I’ll get to see my friends again…”
Spike and all of the guards felt a transient moment of pity for the one they thought to be Sombra, and a sense of understanding that would stick with them. Evil as Sombra was, they knew for certain now that even he longed for friendship. This sense of understanding would forever be with Twilight too, now that she fully comprehended the extent of his solitude…
“I miss them…” she said somberly in thought, thinking of the stars in the sky her five closest friends had become. “However, this is part of the punishment I brought on myself for not appreciating what I had…I didn’t appreciate my friends enough before they left me…and now I know what it’s like to be a pony who has been without a friend for a thousand years…”
Twilight also knew from the journal her sister-in-law showed her that Sombra only had one close friend, a heliotrope mare with blue hair that Sombra had been thinking about in Twilight’s room. He hadn’t forgotten Radiant Hope…or what he had written in his journal from the past…
However, as that image of his journal flashed through his mind, it was quickly replaced by an image of his new journal from the present, the one where his plans were transcribed. He made the brown book appear on Twilight’s bed with magic and began flipping through the pages, in which he had not only written his plans, but made two drawings. One drawing depicted the Crystal Heart shining in its pedestal with Sombra in the center of a crowd of crystal ponies and a pair of green eyes ominously floating in the sky. The other one depicted Sombra as an alicorn, surrounded by five lights and grinning evilly as he blasted a magical beam at an agonized Twilight…
“There’s no turning back at this point…” he said in a dark tone of voice. “Twilight’s destiny is to experience both of my demises for herself, just as it is now my destiny to experience her divine bestowals for myself. Soon, I shall ascend. Soon, I shall be the one passing judgment on her. And in the end, I shall finally know true bliss as I bask in my most glorious victory…”
Meanwhile, in a realm belonging to the star that had brought Twilight and Sombra to this dimension…
“To win in the end…” the star mused solemnly. “What does that truly mean? What good is it to triumph over your adversary if you haven’t first conquered yourself?”
The star asked this question with full sincerity, reminiscing over his time as a pony in a realm where King Sombra won in the end, defeating Twilight and her friends.
“Fail to conquer yourself,” continued the star, “and no matter what the outcome of the battle, you will lose the war once you collapse in on yourself. And after that, it is only the grace of a friend that can save you, revive you again. That friend who truly cared about you…is part of her destiny now too…”
A cloaked pony walked through the streets of the Crystal Empire forebodingly…
“That star called me here from a dimension where I saved Sombra from the darkness along with the help of the princesses…” she thought. “And now that he has enhanced the power of my light magic with dark magic, it is my duty to save him once again, on my own…”
This pony knew who Sombra and Twilight were now…and she also knew something the star had not disclosed to either of them…a shocking truth that would change both of their views of reality for eternity…