//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassaflash // by Dromicosuchus //------------------------------// The early morning Sun flashed off late-season patches of snow in blinding whites and blues. It had only set for a few scant hours that night, and when it did unseasonal stars could have been seen whirling above the northern horizon of the tundra, uniting the summer and winter night skies in a single shining, alien array. Now the long, cold day, twice as long as the night, had begun. Gleaming under the low-slung Sun, the tiny trail of color that was the Friendship Express crept across the broad gray-green Hippoborean waste, a determined speck of meaning adrift in a vast expanse of meaninglessness. A muffled shaking rumbled through the train's beams and planks, and in her blanketed nest in an upper bunk of one of the sleeper cars, the Dark Lord Sassaflash hissed in irritation and angled a forelimb over the open pages of the book spread in front of her, corralling a number of flattened clay beads in the crook of her hoof. After waiting a moment for the train's motion to steady, the pegasus nudged the beads back to the center of the outspread page and began to paint again. Her brush danced across the clay, scribing out strange symbols and relating them to one another. The fourth sigil of the tree, encircling the Black Goat's roots, and bound with a descending node to the John Sun... She should have done this ages ago. Unlink the watchful crescent, and set it contingent upon the slantwise truth of the Understar proposition. Carrying the breaks around in her mouth was far too haphazard, and relied on foresight to an unacceptable degree. Test against Clover the Clever's eighth lemma. It had worked against her sister, of course, but that had never been a fair fight in the first place. Poor foal, venturing into realms she didn't understand--that she didn't even know that she didn't understand. The pegasus' brow furrowed, and as she sent the brush tip twirling through a complex mesh of lines and loops with a few deft twitches of her teeth, she wondered whether Starshade had been seen through the Elder Sign before the worrywort had blotted it from her mind. Not that she could do anything now if she had, of course. But she did wonder. And, perhaps, fear. Another jolt shook through the train, and Sassaflash, caught unawares, let the brush slip, dragging a messy red line across the dried, brownish markings on the clay. She winced back with a sharp intake of breath, scrabbling after the edge of the blanket before throwing it over her head and clenching it around herself like a young filly hiding from a monster in her closet. For a moment nothing happened, and then, with a sharp retort, the bead buckled in on itself, its flat edges cracking inward and folding over into a quivering speck of grit. Dusky rays flared out from the shattered charm, raking the inside of the little sleeper car with bolts of burning darkness that set steam hissing up from the ice glazing the inside of the car's windows. By degrees, the searing not-light faded. At length the Dark Lord risked a cautious peek out from under her blanket, and then threw it back off her head, scowling. Her nose wrinkling at the scent of scorched wool, she peered over the edge of her bed at the bunk where the Mule lay, still sleeping soundly. The upper bunk had shielded him from the blast, then. Good. She didn’t need her minion chafing with spellburn all the way across Hippoborea. Still scowling, the turquoise pegasus extended her wing and brushed a new, unpainted bead out of a little satchel by her side. It had been foolish of her to allow herself to become distracted; carelessness was not a luxury she could afford now. Picking up the brush, she muttered a quick sterilization spell and dipped it into a small incision on her left fetlock, moistening the tip with blood before beginning to scribe a new set of symbols on to the blank disc of clay. Carelessness was not a luxury she could ever afford. ----- Far away, smoke and steam drifted up from the receding speck of the Friendship Express as it crawled away across the broad, rocky outwash plain--a sandur, sprawled lazily out beneath the far-off glacial moraines. Gazing after it with a contemplative expression on his long, bony face, the Mule muttered, “That’s that, then.” He turned to his employer, currently shading her eyes with her hoof as she peered off across the rubble-strewn wash at a distant darkish speck, situated in the very center of the great plain. “Miss Sassaflash? Shouldn’t we ought to get a move on?” The pegasus looked back, a necklace of disc-shaped clay beads clinking around her neck. “Patience, Mr. Mule, is a virtue. But yes, we should begin. I would like to reach the ice sheet by nightfall. Follow me.” Pulling her hood over her head, the Dark Lord clambered off the train platform and started out over the sandur. With a shrug, the Mule ambled after her, the supplies and equipment tied to his back swaying gently to and fro. Rock, stones, boulders, mountains, and far away a distant, blindingly bright mote of glacial ice, all spread out under a powder blue sky. It was an emptiness too big to be wholesome. There was nothing else to compare oneself with; no trees, no shrubs, not even any moss. Just rock, bare and bitterly cold. The Mule shivered. Hurrying forward to Sassaflash‘s side, he asked, “Ain’t there no growing things in this place?” The Dark Lord gave a slow shake of her head. “Not that I am aware. I have never traveled in Hippoborea before, although I have of course read much of it. What we see now matches the descriptions. That said, there are old stories that tell of a time when it was green and alive, watched over and tended by an unusual race of ponies.” She came to a halt, gazing out over the expanse of rock and rubble. “If that was ever true, though, it has obviously been a long, long time since they lived here. I don’t know precisely what happened to them.” “Ain’t there something other’n rock stones, though?” pressed the Mule. “Even some snow, for to cover the ground?” A grim chuckle. “You would not wish to travel here at times when the snow is thick. Cold as it is now, the winter months are far, far colder. In any case, we will be seeing plenty of snow soon enough, once we reach the ice.” She paused. “But there is one landmark we should be coming to, soon enough. You see that object there, like a standing stone in the center of the plain? The going should be easier near it, and we will be passing quite close. In these times it is called the Somber Gate. There are amusing legends concerning it.” Her minion squinted off into the distance. It didn’t look particularly amusing. Just bleak and lonesome and forbidding, like the rest of the place. “Amusing?” “Yes. A mad unicorn despot, an ancient tragedy, the enslavement of a civilization...you know. Amusing.” She turned and trotted off across the pebbled shingle, and the Mule ambled after her, filled with a sudden longing for pink hearts, pastel colors, and small, adorable, comforting things. They made good time, and after splashing across several meandering branches of a braided outflow current winding its way across the plain, they found themselves at the perimeter of a vast basin, filled with finer stones than much of the rest of the sandur and free of the hulking erratics that reared up at irregular intervals elsewhere, tall and black. In its very center was the archway that the Dark Lord had called the Somber Gate. As they drew nearer the Mule was able to make out more details of the thing. It was, quite simply, a door, arched and gothic, built of thick slabs of some deep black material bound together with iron bars. There was a solid, brutish appearance to it, and the shattered edges of the crystalline frame in which it was set hinted at its having once been part of some much grander structure, long since destroyed. Its solid black face and sharp, gleaming frame held none of the flourishes and decorations common in pony architecture, and it seemed filled with a belligerent defiance, as though daring the universe to try to tear it down. All around it, wild and lonesome and utterly devoid of any sign of life, stretched the empty wastes of Hippoborea. The Mule looked at Sassaflash, who was staring at the incongruous doorway with a pensive expression on her pinched face, and murmured, “But what’s it for?” Without taking her eyes off the gate, the pegasus answered, simply, “I don’t know.” A pause. “You don’t?” “I don’t.” The Mule digested this for a bit. At length, he ventured, “You’re sure?” “Yes, Mr. Mule, I am quite certain. The history and purpose of the Somber Gate has been wrapped in legend and mystery for at least a thousand years, and possibly longer. On this subject, your guess is as good as mine.” She paused, considering. “Well, no, actually, not as good as mine. My guess is likely to be significantly better than yours. My point, though, is that it would still just be a guess. I would not do that if I were you,” she added, as the bony animal began to shuffle towards the door to get a closer look. Rolling to a halt, he looked back at his employer. “Ain’t it safe?” She shook her head. “Decidedly not. There is an ancient curse laid upon this place--not just the Gate, although it is strongest here, but upon this entire basin. Something happened here, long ago…” Looking up, Sassaflash gazed out over the sandur, her mane waving in the dry, cold wind, and drew her cloak more tightly about herself. “We should go.” The Sun slid across the sky, low and cold and slow, and after many hours and many leagues of travel, the hoofsore wanderers finally found themselves in the shadow of a great glacial tongue, looming squat and immense over their heads. Their first attempt at staking out a campsite was foiled when a katabatic gale came screaming down off the ice sheet, ripping their tents off the ground and sending them billowing and flapping across the sandur, but after an exhausting trek back out across the plain to retrieve their wind-stolen supplies they managed to patch together an intact camp in the lee of a hulking boulder, sheltered from the intermittent winds. The two travelers broke camp early that next morning, beginning what was to be an exhausting but--for the most part--uneventful day. They spent several difficult hours trying to find a way up on to the ice sheet, frustrated by unstable columns of half-melted glacial ice and crumbling walls lining the perimeter of the glacier, but after a particularly tricky traversal of the crumbling forefront of a moraine slope, they finally managed to attain the ice surface. The going was painfully slow; deep cracks riddled the ice, and the surface had folded and buckled under the immense stresses imposed by the glacier’s inexorable creep. As they ventured onward, climbing higher and higher away from the glacial terminus, the texture of the frozen mass beneath their hooves changed; the silt and stones that had been so common at lower elevations began to thin, and in places where it was exposed by fissures in the glacier’s surface or by puddled pools of meltwater, the ice took on a deep blue hue, rarefied and pure. It was a little past midday when they encountered their first crevasse field. They had settled into a dull, mind-numbing routine of motion--left forehoof, right hindhoof, right forehoof, left hindhoof, left forehoof, right hindhoof--and neither the Mule nor the Dark Lord noticed the changes in the ice sheet’s surface at first. It was only when they had been blithely walking through the field for some ten minutes that the Mule stumbled to a halt, bags swaying on his back, and said, “Tread careful, Miss Sassaflash, and tread light. They ain’t no ice up under that ice.” The pegasus, a few steps ahead, turned to look back at her minion with a peeved expression on her face. “What in Equestria are you talking about? Of course there’s…” She trailed off, noticing--too late--the long, linear depression in the snow’s surface into which she had wandered, and the telltale trace of deeper blue in the ice under her hooves. “Oh. Oh.” A pause. Then, in quite a different tone of voice, the pegasus said, “When you were working in the mountains, Mr. Mule, did you encounter glaciers like--that is, did ponies who wandered into--” She hesitated again. “As a matter of some personal interest, Mr. Mule, am I going to die?” “Seeing as how you got wings, I reckon not. Why don’t you just fly on back over here?” “Because,” snapped the Dark Lord, unfolding her wings and giving them a weak flap or two, “I can’t fly.” The Mule’s eye’s widened. “Oh miss, I’m real sorry; I didn’t mean no offense. I didn’t know you was a cripple.” “A cripple? I am not--do you have any idea how insulting that term--” She swished her tail in irritation. “Nevermind. Just--just tell me what I should do.” "Now don't you fret none. Just step real careful-like, and come on back over here. Easy does it. You is gon' be just fine. Careful, don't step there." Bit by bit, under the Mule’s direction, Sassaflash inched her way back off the snowcapped crevasse, breathing in short, shallow gulps as if she were afraid that if she filled her lungs the extra weight would be too much for the thin crust of ice and snow. Finally, after what seemed like years, her hooves thudded against solid ice. The Dark Lord allowed herself to breathe again. Turning to her minion, she said, "Thank you, Mr. Mule. Now, fetch me a rope out of the bag. From now on we go tied together. I would prefer not to have to undergo that again." "Yes, Miss Sassaflash." The Mule began rummaging through his pack. "Why didn't you tell me that you was a--that you was lame?" "I am not lame," sniffed the Dark Lord. "Nor am I crippled, ptericapped, or whatever other term you may wish to choose. The condition is temporary and self-inflicted, not congenital. Yes, alright, I'll explain," she snapped, as the Mule opened his mouth to ask the first of what would no doubt have been a long line of questions. "I need magic to fly. All pegasi do; do you honestly suppose we could lift ourselves off the ground, unaided, with nothing but these pathetic things?" She gave her wings a demonstrative flap. "During the past several months I have been working extensively with various magic-draining charms and experiments, and that has taken its inevitable toll." "You done did it to yourself, then?" "Yes, that is what 'self-inflicted' means. Well done." She glared fiercely at him, and then her scowl slowly softened. Somewhat hesitantly, she muttered, "My apologies. You did just save my life. It's just, well...mortal peril makes me cranky. No offense, Mr. Mule?" "None taken, Miss Sassaflash." ----- Dusk fell, and a cruel chill began to filter down from the reddening sky overhead as the Dark Lord and her minion huddled around a little spirit lamp, flickering fitfully outside their two tents. The Mule shuffled closer to the guttering lamp, clutching a wrap around his knobbly limbs, and looked through the wobbling, heated air at his employer, fidgeting on her side of the flame as she waited for her tea kettle to boil. He coughed once or twice. “Mighty cold, ain't it, miss?” The Dark Lord gave him an appropriately frigid look. “I had observed that fact, thank you, Mr. Mule.” “It always this cold?” “No.” She raised an eyebrow. “It is often much colder.” “You don’t say.” A pause. “Sure is cold, though. Real cold. Why, I reckon,” he continued, warming to his subject, “I ain’t never been no place so cold as this in all my born days. Even when I was working up atop them eyries o’ the griffons--on a mead hall o’ theirn, you know--they wasn’t a day there that weren’t warmer nor--” Ice scraped as Sassaflash rose to her hooves. “Mr. Mule, what is this about?” “Beg pardon?” “The blather. The mindless yammering. If there is something on your mind, I would appreciate it if you would just spit it out.” The old animal blinked once or twice, and then nodded. “Alrighty then. Only I been wondering: Why is we here? Why is we heading to this here Voormi's Address--” “Voormithadreth.” “Right, that. Why is we heading on up over there?” The Dark Lord gave him a cool, even stare. “We are here to kill a God. Beyond that, I prefer to keep my schemes to myself, thank you. You know some of what my plans require, and you know my ultimate goal: global domination. The rest is mere detail, and not something that it is necessary you be familiar with. Kindly pass me a sheaf of worrywort,” she added, as the kettle atop the flame began to whistle. “But that ain't what I meant,” protested the Mule, unhooking a small bundle of dried leaves from the pile of baggage by her side and tossing it across to the pegasus. “Why do you want for to take over the world in the first place? I don't see as how the Princesses is doing that bad a job o' taking care o' things. Leastwise, I been happy enough, living here in Equestria.” At first Sassaflash made no response, watching as the dried worrywort leaves softened and sank in her cup. Then she raised her head and asked, “Have you, though?” “I reckon.” “Mm.” A strange softness crept into the turquoise pegasus’ voice. “Do you miss your wife, Mr. Mule?” Her minion looked up, eyes wide. “What kind o’ question is that!?” The Dark Lord waved her hoof. “Calm yourself. I meant no offense. You are not the only one who has lost somepony dear to them. I know that pain.” She paused for a moment, swirling the leaves to and fro in her tea. Then her eyes flashed, and she spat, “And it is pain. It hurts, and no matter how much time passes it just goes on hurting, and hurting, and hurting. And they could stop it, if they only dared to!” “They?” The Mule cocked his head, long ears flopping to one side. “Celestia. Luna.” She hissed the names as though they were obscenities. “The ‘Princesses,’ as they call themselves. ‘Princesses?’ Hah! They once titled themselves queens, did you know? And before that it was Sol Invicta and Luna Imperatrix, and before that, before Luna’s...’birth,’ I suppose it must be called, there was only the Ouranocaust, the Sky-Scorcher. Princesses, indeed! They hide behind that title. They are Gods, with all the power that that entails--but too cowardly to use the strength that is their birthright. Too cowardly to undo mischance, to rewrite reality in a kinder mold, to raise the dead…” Sassaflash frowned, her ears flattened back against her head. “I intend to remind them of their responsibilities--to show them how that strength should be used.” Her companion made no answer to this at first, mulling over the Dark Lord's words with his head bowed. Eventually he looked up, the light of the spirit lamp dancing in his eyes. "That's as may be, Miss Sassaflash, that's as may be. But the Princesses--even if they's as strong as you says, they ain't bad ponies. Equestria could be a whole lot worser'n it is, you know. When bad things happen, it's 'cause they ain't done something good, not 'cause they done something bad. Don't you reckon maybe they got reasons for holding back?" Sassaflash glared. "'Celestia works in mysterious ways,' is that it? You may cling to that, if you like, but I have no patience for excuses and suppositions. The world is broken, they could fix it--and they don't. That is all that matters." The Mule’s brow wrinkled. “Begging your pardon, I’m sure, but...well, what can you do about that? You ain’t got no powers like they does." “Powers?” An indignant sniff. “Bite your tongue! My powers are considerable. I, the Dark Lord Sassaflash, am the greatest necromancer the world has ever known!” She paused, considering. “The greatest it has known recently, at least. The greatest living necromancer. Most likely.” The Dark Lord shook her head, as though to shoo away an irritating fly. “The point is, I am far from powerless.” “You ain’t no alicorn, though,” her minion pointed out. He almost added a reflexive “begging your pardon” to the statement, but decided, on consideration, that he really didn’t need to beg the Dark Lord’s pardon for observing that she was not, in fact, divine. Sassaflash merely smiled. “Not yet, Mr. Mule.” She hooked her hoof into the little tin cup’s handle and took a long, slow draught of her worrywort tea, watching as whorls of steam swept up into the frigid evening air. “Not yet.” -----