//------------------------------// // By moonlight // Story: Crystal heart // by A pensive Squirrel //------------------------------// He had been wronged. Salem knew he was out of options. He crawled, expecting nothing, into the sight of a guard. He was carried to safety as worried citizens rushed towards him. A tyrant like Elijah would be kicked, stoned and trampled for his rule was through fear. Not Sombra however, for he lead with spirit and honesty. His benevolence was not best received among the deistic watchers of the world. At least his people took notice of his polite and sensitive behaviour. When back in the courtyard of his palace, he could still hear the concerned cries of the masses. He tried to ignore them. He had a terrible truth to tell. They didn’t know that they would never be able to leave the kingdom. There was ample space and trade could easily cease without anyone really taking note. The issue was the wondering eye, the fact that ponies migrate for many reasons, many unavoidable. Salem understood their plight, the one they were yet to be informed of. They would be prisoners because of his selfish deed. Was that what he wanted to be remembered for? The king was unsure, and for the first time during his reign, clemency wouldn’t solve this. He woke in his chamber, his bedazzling wife still watching the world as is played out before her. He was deflowered of his usual red cape and showy armour plates, dressed snugly in his silky pyjamas. He heard her crystal toes clink as she returned to the boudoir. Her breath had a somewhat cooling quality to it, as if it remedied everything. Sombra turned to face his queen. He thought to break the news to her but somewhere, in his warring mind, he knew that she had him figured. They were connected. No secrets could be kept. She probably sussed out the verdict by the sweat running down her King’s clammy cheek, by the straw like rigidity of his usually soft mane, and the unmistakably fake snoring he made. She knew he wasn’t asleep. Even without stirring him, she knew he was wide awake. She didn’t stir him, didn’t make a peep. She watched as he tossed and turned and she imagined what it would be like to sleep. Her kind was not appreciated by the empresses upon the high rise citadel. Luna could check up on every subject’s dreams except for the crystal ponies. Sappheire left her King to feign slumber on the four poster bed while she ventured back to the balcony. She gazed into the distance, the very same view she usually enjoyed, but there wasn’t something amiss, something not quite right. There was an error in the landscape. It looked like the pieces didn’t perfectly fit together. It would serve no use to force the pieces into order. It would seem as if the realm was out of alignment with the rest of reality. The cold wind from the open balcony doors forced Salem to stop his false snoring and he made himself walk to the balcony, joining his beloved thereon. He inspected the streets still partially milling with the concerned paupers, merchants, and clerks. He shook his head, held his brow in his bare hoof and sighed into the night. “Why do they worry for me, my love? I am their protectorate, not the other way around. They must know. I cannot keep this concealed…” “If it burdens you, then make it known. How did the peacetime talks…?” Sombra turned in anger but softened quickly as he noticed how misdirected it was. He looked down, avoiding the reflection of fear in his beloved’s eyes, and tapped his hoof in frustration. “They speak of peace? I saw none. I heard only vile excuses for genocide. I will not side with that intolerable stallion, I simply will not!” “I trust this was pertaining to the merging of our kingdoms. Is that the reason for all this discretion?” “No, no discretion. This is biding time. I’m just trying to get used to it myself.” “What are you referring to, my sweet?!” His queen requested in her sweetest of voices. “I have doomed us all. I rejected the merger.” “Any sane pony would have done the same.” “No, I’m not dealing with sane ponies. I have been begging for freedom, for my right to govern my own kingdom, so that my people are not sent into the pointless wars that the emperor wages. We are outcast, forgotten. My love, I have sent us all to Tartarus.” “Don’t be silly. Tia and Luna must applaud your independent style of governance. They probably admire your perspicacity, your doggedness, and your policies of care rather than cursing.” Sombra brought his hoof down a little harder and caught the edge of the crystal queen’s shining foot with it. It splintered, and the very tip shattered, and the sleepless mare reared back. “Come tomorrow, the people will know. You think they gave me a pardon, a certificate of achievement? No, for my disobedience, I have made us ghosts.” “We are to die, by the order of royalty?” “We are trapped, my love. There is no means of escape. We are sealed magically within the borders of this kingdom. I fear they may return when they think my will has broken. They will be disappointed, just as they disappointed me.” Sappheire raised her hoof at mystically the shards peppering the brickwork formed back into her scooping toe. She pulled her King it towards her and embraced him warmly, as warm as a living breathing precious stone can embrace a withered soul. “We will tell them in the morning. We, not just you, not by gossip, we will tell them all in a rally, in an assembly, we will tell them that we have achieved independence and now we must hoe and ted the fields, excavate the mines, and; if needs be, raise the banner of war.” Salem staggered back to his inviting quilt, his duck down mattress, and left his shimmering wife to gaze into the pitch blackness that fell over the silver capped towers and the crenulations. His worries would not go away in sleep however. There was a presence, he felt it as soon as his head moulded into the soft pillow. He was beaten by the day and his magic whined, his resolve waned, and he let the heavy lids rest. A few images, like photographs, flashed up in a stream of strobe-like adularescence. They were fragments of his foalhood, his trifling in the heraldic sports of yore. He heard his infectious giggle from when he was still nursing. He felt something breathing on him. It was his mother. She had long since passed. It was a miracle Salem was born at all. His mother, Seraphim, was declared barren by the local sawbones yet somehow she gave birth to her beautiful baby colt. However, she was old when this divine joy accoutred. She didn’t live to see him grow. He remembered her eyes clearly, and the lullabies she used to sing. She wore a veil of limpid fur. He missed her more each day. This made him enraptured. He had accepted the death of his mother a long time ago, thousands of years back. Salem was also of an ancient breed, they were like unicorns but their longevity gave them the reputation of being vampires. It was a silly rumour and one few acted upon. If you were to compare a modern unicorn, and Salem, there would be only negligible differences. In the dream, he looked into the hypnotising gold eyes of his mother and watched as they turned to tar and poured onto his sensitive face. He leaped backwards, and covered his face. Tears leaked from the sunken-in dead eyes of his mother. The eyes shone white and the brightness caused Salem’s younger self to look away. He was no longer in the drawing room. The paintings had vanished. The furniture had evaporated also. He was left in utter emptiness, with darkness infinitely stretching in all directions. “Your first day of independence tomorrow, oh, I wonder how it will go. We’ll all be rooting for you. She died in the sad thought that you were a little miracle. It makes me sick. You are no miracle; Sombra, you and your encrypted queen should have both been taken care of long ago.” Salem dared to look back at the figure that once sung sweetly to him. She had been replaced by the younger royal. She would not just watch. She wanted to take part. From where he lay, she looked far away. The world started to shrink, constricting tighter and tighter until they were snout to snout. “Don’t be nasty to my mommy!” The young Salem tried to defend. Luna revealed a bubble of sorts, the effervescent curtain that kept the king’s men and the kinsmen under wraps. It flared with the same violent violet that burned at the tip of Luna’s horn. “Your mommy’s dead. You made her die. She was so disappointed with the mess she had created that she couldn’t bear to see another day.” “You don’t say that. My mommy loved me! She was trying for so long.” Salem was regaining control of the scape. His older self was piercing through the limelight the insidious veil of Luna’s trickery. “Why deny the truth, little Salem? You can’t change anything.” “She would never.” “How do you know?” “I just do. I know my mother would never give up. She fought for everything. She fought for me. She’s no quitter.” Luna assumed the form of Seraphim again. She wretched and curled over in agony only to intimidate the dreamer, for there was no real pain. “I looked into her head.” “These things should be private! I don’t want to…” “A year after you were born, she dreamed of drowning you, tying a brick to your fetlock and getting rid of you for good. I heard her speaking to herself, heard her losing her mind, saying that her foal was pure evil…” “None of this is true!” Salem protested. He fell to his knees, now looking like his adult self, and wept silently into the infinite hopelessness below. “She was so distraught that she removed the horn from her head and drove it through her chest, through her heart!” Salem alighted on the bed, smashing his skull against the headrest. He rubbed his eyes and plumped the pillow behind him. He wasn’t ready to get up yet. Dawn had barely broken. His queen remained on the balcony, like she always did, never moving a muscle, never losing focus. He was about to call to her when the invader appeared between them, her wicked translucent tail dragging one if the curtains until the moon was in sight. “There will be fear. Your people will break apart. Their loyalties will be tested and they all will fail. By my sister’s decree I must let you live, for now, but that doesn’t stop me from negotiating now does it?” The king was speechless. He rubbed his eyes again and pulled the quilt over his cold hooves. Now she was right beside him, in the bed where his beloved should be. She stroked his tufty chin with her sparkly shoe and pecked him briefly on the lips. “I’d like to see how you manage this situation. I’m here in bed, with you, and your wife is gormlessly standing around. If it wasn’t for how preposterous this whole thing was, it would be something of a scandal. The papers will go mad for this stuff.” She began to fade into the dimmest shadows of the room and as she did she whispered so that only the King could hear. “There’s more than one reason I want her gone…”