It had been hours since the committee had disbanded. Salem was at the midpoint of his amble home and his spirits were inexplicably high.
He had buried his head in a few more antiquated texts in the library basement before heading for home. The information they obtained was invaluable. His reason for gaining such a wealth of knowledge was entirely disingenuous. Ingrained in his mind was the scripture so valid for the moment his world could be turned gruesome and squalid. It was near, this moment, the moment when he would have to put his study into practice.
He reached the tavern. The moon was full. It looked heavy in the sky. Salem stopped before opening the door. He was a monster, no denying it. His face was misshapen. His horn was an aberration on his skull. He hadn’t bothered stripping off his new outfit either. He would look like a total stranger. Even he didn’t recognise the stallion that stared back from behind the mirror.
It was for the good of the many. He enthused himself with this lie and opened the door.
Inside the carousing of patrons was precocious, and unwelcome. Spirited nags necked cider as they leered at the serving mares. One patron was at the throat of the landlady, arguing that his tab was settled. He chucked bits at her and made a real scene. Salem tried to hide his most telling face behind the invagination of his cape. He was noticed all the quicker though.
“Celestia help, it’s a freak!”
One yelped.
Salem soldiered on. He thought to himself that he would see the belittlers were crucified for their ill-will. He moved towards the bar and a rather irate mare gestured at his cowl.
“Take it off. We don’t serve shady stallions here.”
“Please, have a heart.”
Salem defended. He pulled his hood down only further and tried to ignore the prattling wench.
“Are you hard of hearing? Hey, I said ARE YOU HARD OF HEARING? Bucking creep, get your mopey maw out of here.”
Salem slammed his hoof on the table top and looked deeply into the scowling eyes of the serving mare with his iridescent globes. She wasn’t a spring chicken, the mare. She looked about middle-age and her cosmetically engineered eye makeup was smeared down her cheek. Had she been crying? Once Salem would have stuck his neck out, made a point to coddle the victim. However, this was no longer Salem. The gloomy-eyed stallion that made the densely packed public house evacuate was someone else entirely.
“Mister, off with the hood? You got a goddam death wish, wisenheimer?”
Salem was in the right mind to sweep the glistening shot glasses to his right and pummel the unstifled oaf to his left, but he did neither. He held in his innermost desires.
“I am the head of the household, I’m Sombra.”
“Another late night, is it? Most nights we don’t see you. You got another mare on the go or what?”
“With a face like this, I very much doubt it. I have not been canoodling with common tramps. I want to see my family, you harridan!”
One of the shots disappeared beside Salem and the hoof that returned was adorned with feathers silver. It was Sierra.
“Oh, you want to see us now do you? What if we don’t want you back?”
“Don’t speak of such things. Your best interests were always my first thought. You never left my mind. I couldn’t risk…”
“Couldn’t risk what? Feeling vulnerable is natural. That’s something you’ve been regressing from for months now. Tiger’s upstairs, as is his blushing bride…”
Salem’s ambivalent gaze became twisted and cold. He swung his head around to see his daughter but in the process his concealing cowl fell off, coating his neck like a deflated balloon.
“Repeat yourself!”
Sierra looked at the scarred visage of her father. He seemed so distant to her. He had been neglecting sleep for days and days yet his face didn’t demonstrate that wear.
“What, what are you? Who are you?”
Salem faced his daughter no matter how much it pained him to do so. Any semblance of his former self was absent; his soul felt like it was writhing and growing weak. Its struggle was futile.
“I did this for the Kingdom.”
“What is ‘this’? What have you done? Mum needs to know!”
“She will only panic. You are the smartest of my herd; can you not see the damage this news will bring?”
“There’s intelligence, father, and then there is emotional disconnection. Why do you want to hide this, this, mutilation from mother?”
“This is not as bad as it looks!”
Salem barked in response. Before he could think of other ways to save himself, he was doused in stale cider and shoved from the bar.
The distraction was enough for Martingale to drag the ardent innkeeper from behind the bar. He successfully landed a volley of punches to the terrified mare’s jaw before he was tackled by the sickly sweet-smelling shadow of Salem.
They fell to the floor and Vincent tried for Salem’s throat in the heat of the moment. Salem’s armour covered most of his body, his flank, tail, croup, neck and chest. Vincent’s hooves could gain no purchase. Salem wrestled the other to the ground and straddled him. He was about to out his lights for good but a last ditched protest foiled him.
“This isn’t you, Salem! I was scared okay. I’m not drunk. I haven’t had a drink in weeks.”
Salem applied substantial force to the commander’s throat and hissed until drool dripped from his sharp predatory fangs.
“I’ve been busy. You’ve been utterly useless. Do you want to quietly die again? I was trying to contact you, to tell you to thin the guard detail of the mines. Why have you disobeyed me?”
“I had no choice! I’m just a placeholder. Empyrean makes all the decisions! You hear that? It’s him, he’s the one throwing you out of your houses, forcing you to beg in the streets or starve. They called this better? I can only laugh!”
“Why did he not delegate work to you? Who tipped him off?”
“Luna! It was her. She had visited my dream the night before. She made me promise…”
“You can break a promise.”
“She made a compelling argument.”
“She does. I’m sorry.”
Salem removed his bulk from the other stallion and settled on his rump against the caparisoned rack of saddles.
“I haven’t been sleeping, can’t risk my plans getting out…”
Vincent cleared his throat and joined Salem on the floor. He produced a smoking pipe from his leatherette waistcoat.
“You’re not in this alone, Sire. There are those who still believe. The reason I was harassing the staff was because I was looking for you. I’ve been worried sick. I thought you had been abducted.”
“Why hit a mare?”
“That was careless on my part. Shan’t happen again, my word as a soldier…”
“You don’t raise a hoof to mares.”
“I was being irrational.”
Salem climbed from the fixture and stretched his caning torso.
“Too right you were. Think before you act. I don’t want to be seen mothering you, but it seems I don’t have any other course of action. Can you speak to my daughter? Just tell her I’ll explain everything once I’ve put my hooves up, can you do that for me?”
Vincent gave a perfunctory nod and shimmied along the counter to sierra, who was busy ordering a replacement phial of poison for the one her father thoughtlessly launched.
There was a dialogue of mumbles but before too many heads turned, Sierra was skipping over to her pater and leading him towards the dormitories upstairs. She must have assumed he was drunk for his ponderous gait. Soon they were out of the public eye and the crystal-detailed mare prised open the doors.
“Salem? It is you. Where have you been?”
“Where is Amber? Her concubine, where doeth he slumber?”
“You really are an outmoded thing, aren’t you? They are sharing the same bed. We haven’t been able to reach you for weeks, my love, what in Equestria have you been doing with your time?”
“Questions, questions, what purpose do they serve? Come on, I’m famished; I’ll see what I can rustle up from the pantry. You gals stay put here. I won’t be a moment.”
Salem was reserved, some might say withdrawn in his method of coping. He avoided the suspicion on the faces of his loved ones and trotted into the kitchenette. He stood in the galley kitchen, a sore thumb amongst the chromic touches and festoonery. There was he, a grotesque relic coated in arms of slattern mock steel, and then there was the shined, reflective stove and cupboards. His oddness was fathomed and challenged far too quickly for his liking.
Sappheire eased around the arced roof of the kitchen and shut a shroud of beads behind her.
“I do find your new style refreshing and funny, but why the medieval apparel? It’s modern and new out there. Perhaps you wouldn’t garner so much female attention if you just tried to blend in.”
“These are a symbol of status.”
“I’m not too fussed about the clothing, really. Your face, my koala, you’re all different.”
“I want only to explain this once. Where is my eldest and her stallion? I will not replay this. Fetch them.”
“Are you going to make dinner? It’s just; I do still have to run a household and raise a family and keep our affairs in order… Do you know how much work it takes to keep on top of this?”
“Umm, I’d hazard a guess at…”
“That was rhetorical!”
She harshly whispered.
“I still have to face the people you let down. I have been rejected from the mothers group since rumours of your philandering broke out. My problems can wait, just as they always do. I’ll be an attentive, subservient wife that you want me to be. They’ll be down momentarily.”
With that, Sappheire left her gobsmacked husband to loom. She rammed through the beaded curtain and walked the narrow hallway to where the newlyweds lay recumbent. She never let him down. She had roused and prepared the wallowing honeymooners and sat them in the sitting room. It was a small, constricting setup and the carpet was skinny, the termite hollowed boards peeking through the gaps.
Amber, her sister, and her lover were ready and waiting on the sofa and a second later, Salem had been turfed out of the kitchen to join them.
“I’ll get dinner as per usual, my love. Be sure to speak loudly so I can hear you while I keep the family fed and…”
She didn’t finish speaking. Salem just edited it out. It was all white noise anyway. He stood in the strangely damp middle of the room and cleared his throat. Sierra drew the blinds and dimmed the lights. She did this partly for atmosphere, but mostly to ward-off curious ears, and adventurous eyes.
In the sepia unsettling tone of the room, now could be seen Salem’s eyes enviously green. From the corners the smoke purple leaked in whispers, swallowed by the darkness that had become the father’s soul. When once he was modest, now he would boast. His body yearned for idolisation.
“Sitting comfortably? It’s so very nice, that’s a good word for it, nice. It’s nice to see you two again. As for you, you spunky spineless excuse for an heir, I’m not convinced. I don’t want you to know. This is none of your business, just like my daughter.”
“But I thought you were cool with…”
“I beg your pardon? I am neither cool nor lukewarm with any such topic! Leave my home this instant lest you are willing to be used as cannon fodder!”
The strikingly handsome yet frightfully weedy stallion accepted his novice position at the family table and decided to leave without a fight. Amber tried to reconcile him and gave chase but Salem soon netted her and allowed her to flump back onto the unforgiving sofa.
“Have you ever heard of Starswirl the bearded? He was a reverential figure in the world of thaumaturgy. He wrote many inspiring tomes, most of which have been boiled down and diluted for the tutelage of today’s unlettered halfwits. One of his obscurer works was written in a dialect no longer spoken. Sure there are some experts, but who can find them?”
Salem’s enchantingly gifted wife poked her head around the corner. Her prismatic skin refracted and redirected the light in a stunning array. The greens and purples and reds as well swirled in a torrential downpour of brilliance.
“Does this story have a point to it? I know who the bearded druid is. Just get to the bit where you explain your facial changes, okay?”
Salem mimicked the nagging of his wife, pretending his metal-plated hoof were a sock puppet of her.
“Before I was so rudely interrupted… His pioneering work in the occult had mostly been unnoticed. It spoke of a spell, an old incantation, older than the mountains of the north. It is a rite of blood. He wrote extensively on the theorem of immolation and how one being can harness the essence of many. That is my explanation. I have taught myself, trained myself in his unspoken art and the results have been outstanding.”
At this point Sappheire left her stewing greens and stormed into the sitting room. She pinched the cracked skin beneath Salem’s eye and dragged it earthward. It broke under her mere touch. She backed away, horror showing deep in her eyes. She was so downhearted her normal effervescence failed. She plunged the room into darkness. The eyes were the only way to see, those nightmarish jealous apparitions.
Then she spoke.
“I should have stopped you. You have taken this too far. The spells of life, giving and taking away, I have seen him abuse them all. When you use the texts to take life, you stain your soul. When you used it to revive you gave up part of your soul. Your father isn’t there, children. He died along with his spirit.”
“This is nonsense!”
Salem growled. He gnashed his fangs and gleaming white canines together. It was animalistic, primal.
“You will all love me as you did come tomorrow. I will have my kingdom back even if I have to ensnare and impale every last bureaucrat that scuttles and skitters through my homeland! It will be an event of biblical proportions. I will be the foundation of religions. Cults will worship me! Pacts will be made to me. Soon I will transcend logic and I will make every sleeping fool dream of me!”
Sierra jumped up and lit the room with a tremendous spark of her near transparent magic. She went to the blinds and tweaked a slat, looking out into the damask of dusk.
“How many have died in aid of this? You’ve been sacrificing the innocents of this state, but how many?”
Salem cheekily looked at his daughters. He put a hoof on his chin and stroked the black scar tissue that enveloped his craggy hide.
“Don’t go to the library. I always say, the quill is mightier than the sword. Now for sleep, see you all very soon…”
His voice fizzled out as he transported from the sitting room to the master bedroom. He needn’t eat, for there was no corporeal necessity for it.