Falling to sleep was harder than usual. Sappheire hadn’t come to rest beside him. Rather she had bunked with Sierra. Without this warm thing beside him, Salem was frigidly cold and his spin rattled from his feverish convulsions. It hurt also to close the bawling energy from his eyes. It burnt him and his skin wouldn’t heal.
He tossed and turned on what might as well have been a bed of nails. Each head drilled into his ribcage as he tried to sleep on his side, milking him of his darkest blood. It was almost prophetic, how his nights of slaving, poring over the writings of prehistoric philosophers were coming to a climax. His meddling in the forbidden science of necromancy and mysticism would culminate in that one night.
His sleep was more the beginning roar of battle than the entry to serenity. He would struggle with the savoir faire crooning of the nightmare. He would tussle with her overbearing magical wit and tenacity. Her venom would be swift if it prevailed. It would debilitate, emasculate and finally castrate any bitten.
These worries only proved a hindrance for the foretold king of the land. He breathed deeply and clung onto his downy pillow for comfort and security. He missed the warm mass dearly. He missed the debacles and constant vindication she ignited. It was a level playing field in the respect of domestic dispute, but in his eyes, she was usually the one with little inhibition.
Through the cold and loneliness, there was this slim hope that he would taste victory and be the king he knew he was fated to be. He was no-one’s footstool. Abdication was a rash decision, it was clear now. Hindsight however was pointless, for he hadn’t the means to thread the weave of time.
He had of course read up on the subject. He was diligent in matters of academia. He was a vacuum devoid of lustre and beauty, but he was still a brilliant tactician and leader. There were risks involved in time travel. It was a backwater branch of magic and its used was quite understandably taboo among the unicorn authorities and so on and so forth.
He didn’t dwell on the past all that much anymore. His mind was focused forward, on the quiet before the storm.
The worries niggled less and finally the king slept. Before his consciousness completely went, Salem could smell the most repugnant scent. It was deadly nightshade, or at least the aroma of it. It had been applied liberally.
He was not alone in the room.
Deep inside his disjointed dreamscape, Salem saw only random colour, strands of glistening blood reds and puss greens stretching across the abysmal cataclysm that was now his mind. There was no plot piloting the escapade. There were fractured memories interspersed in the spectrum of dancing nothingness, times when Salem was young and his mother’s sentiment was unloving, regretful.
Eventually a williwaw of Luna’s night guardsmen filled the sky and the spasmodic assortment of colour was replaced with a jagged misty skyline, mountains dark azure and light ebony thrusting into the sky as if to purify it of unknown sin. Amidst the chaos, Luna manifested herself as a gargantuan dragoness, with golden epaulets across her sharply pointed wings, and volcanic scars running down her sweeping back and tail.
“Long time no…”
She was cut off, not by interruption, but by a sudden shift in the world around her, the hypnotising brew of her malevolent magical and mental agility.
She was not a dragon for long. She was a mare once more and her fortifications of vitiated vampires were expunged in an engirding veil of thick tarry darkness.
And that is all that remained. Luna fought for stability in the world not of her own simulation. She faced the malfeasant monster and she gulped. She was afraid. This nutrient quenched the begging hunger in the sleeping stallion’s mind. It brought him succour.
“…this isn’t right…”
Luna shrieked after some delay. She tried to flee, to bold, to hide, but she could not move away. All she could see, in every direction, was the stoic expression that Salem made.
“I… This is my sole talent! No one else can have it!”
She scanned the isolated darkness for something, a silver lining. She was never given one. The light was created by the very thing she didn’t want to see.
“This… It isn’t fair. You tricked me sister! You knew, didn’t you? Help me! I don’t know what to do.”
Salem leapt from the bed with Luna’s ample frame embraced in his muscular chest. He threw her into the dresser, the cabinet, and finally through the wall where she came to an unceremonious landing in the crumpled remains of the sofa.
Sappheire jumped up into the air, nearly taking the light fixing with her, and haphazardly hid in the beads of the kitchen veil.
“What in the…?”
She didn’t finish her statement. She couldn’t believe her eyes. An alicorn was pinned against the mangled springs and raptured cushions of her second-hoof sofa. Her continuation balanced on Salem showing mercy, something of late he rarely exercised.
His purple eye shadow was darker and more distinct than ever. His irises were a permanent green, a limey saturation to never return to the normal white. He hammered the mare into the musky carpet, spitting with each successive blow.
And disgustingly his words followed.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news… Actually, I kind of love it. I think I understand why you torment and trick us in the night. It’s fun. It’s ever so satisfying. I have unquestioned power over you. You have no one to turn to. Such a shame…”
His warped horn shone rays of darkest amethyst as he dragged his crystalline wife through the wall. He sat her on the unscathed armchair and held her there for a spell.
“You wanted her gone and I know why. You know, the more I delve into your territory, I have been gaining greater insight into you, how you tick, how you get your kicks. I’m rather specific with my niches, my vices.”
“Let me go, you nutcase! I’m warning you. If my sister ever…”
“Firstly, she’ll never become privy to this meeting, because who would that serve? She doesn’t care about you or your night. She is vastly more impressive in her taming of the sun, of her conducting of the day. There is no longer any chemistry…”
Sappheire’s stunted breathing turned to hysteric sobbing and she heaved her body over and hid her head in the creases therein the chair.
“Your chemistry, trouble in paradise I assume?”
“Paradise would entail happiness, something neither of us has been able to feel for decades, centuries. No. My ephemeral courtship with Sappheire has been eating away at me for ages. She is dull. She fixed me in more ways than one. I felt being at her side I was a eunuch, no gonads, no gumption, no compunction to function. I’ve been coasting but no more. We’re too different, two artistic pallets so to speak. We are quite alike though, you and I…”
Luna squirmed and tried to avoid the salacious way Salem stared at her. She tried to counteract the paralysing spell she was under but she couldn’t. She was stuck.
She decided on a new attack, duplicity. She took the stallion’s hoof in hers and let it travel across her divinely tailored velvety coat. Before his hoof could go too far, she kissed him on the snout and smiled warmly, lustfully.
“So you don’t love her? I’m no-one’s second pick. I can be your mistress if you like but how can I make love to you if I am unable to move?”
“Good point. Ever heard of necrophilia? It would be something along those lines.”
Salem throttled the mare against the glass of the scuppered coffee table and in the thickened glass thereupon it he saw his most ghastly features. They were severed into sections augured by the uneven and erratic array of shards.
Again his spit made contact with her pleading lips. He’d seen through her ploy. In seeing his horribly disfigured maw, he knew all too well that the loving undertone of the scene was a mirage. He scoffed.
“It would be perfect. Yes, it might’ve been. Only, I have given myself a face that not even a blind mother could love. My motive is simple. I have you here enchained, when do you think your soulful sister will come to your rescue? No answer? Thought as much, typical of the egotist.”
“Nay, she will botch your flimsy plans and be home for tea! That’s not considering my stature. I am the second in command of Equestria! Harming, nay keeping us here is heathenism…”
She was quietened by Salem’s cruellest chinked shoe. She tried to speak some more but her rant only betrayed as spluttering and muffled inaudibility as she sucked upon the hoof, polishing it. He let her jaw loose and snatched his leg away before her teeth could clash upon it. His horn shone a dreary dark purple and a pebbling of arcane scabs began to grow along Luna’s royal horn.
“What is the meaning of thi…?”
She just about garbled. She was smothered with the sunken cushion from the sofa. She had the prowess to dissolve it into dust, to transport it heavenwards or sideways from her person, to scatter it amid the stars, but she was too weak to make it shiver.
There was the sound of a door closing behind and two shadows stretched across the room. One belonged to the elder daughter, her coat mild taupe blushing and bare. It wasn’t always a must to wear clothes in the safety of home, but the dashing young colt was there as well.
Salem turned on a penny and stared straight through the unsolicited houseguest.
“Master Lotus, I believe I bayed you leave?”
The smaller stallion tugged at his bowtie, loosely slung over his neck, and took a stride backwards towards the door. Amber hooked her leg around his and dragged him back into the limelight, foisting him meanly centre stage.
“Our family meeting ended. And he is my lover, my one true love, and I want him to be included whether you like it or not!”
“Amber, it’s fine, I’m overstepping the mark as it is.”
He muttered. His confidence decisively knocked.
“Stand up for yourself, Tiger. He’s just barking, barking mad if you ask me. If you are to be my betrothed then present yourself as such. I will not do as you order, father. Tiger is my future.”
Tiger busied himself with the fiddly task of his tie. He had the bow straight and true when Salem thieved him from Amber’s stern pastern and plonked him on the floor before the front door.
“You besmirch my good name. You are a common colt, nobody, accepting you would be like signing my Amber’s release to a whorehouse where her virtue will be raped in the name of vanity and avarice! I give you one chance. Leave. Leave or suffer.”
The trembling colt steadily got to his hooves and bore his teeth at Salem. He snorted to show his chagrin and adroitly removed the cushy blockade from Luna’s face.
“You don’t have a leg to stand on, sir. You renounced your royalty, decreed this kingdom become a sovereign state. The chief breadwinner here is your lovely, beautiful daughter, and she lets you skulk here for no rent…”
“I’m her father. I am otherwise disposed. I cannot work. How positively beggarly would it be for a stallion such as I to lower himself to such a degree that he works for nothing in an unrewarding, under stimulating packhorse role?!”
Tiger’s sigh filled the room. He however was not a sufferer of hubris. He reached to the knob and opened the door. He took one last look at his beloved and pulled the door open.
Salem cracked. He mashed the colt’s hoof in the door with but a fraction of his magic before brashly dragging him inside. He placed him next to the wheezing mare. She was spent. On her belly she tried to slither to the minimal crack of solace in the doorframe. She made it no two yards before her body shook intensely and her horn sparked effetely with showy streams of light. It was as if she had blown a fuse.
Salem gently kicked her away from freedom and hauled the whimpering whelk onto his back. He deposited Tiger on the sofa by the writhing nightmare and conjured an acrid smelling starter into his hooves. He set the bowl down and lifted Tiger up by his nostrils, flared due to his rage.
“This is a peace offering, son. Take a bite.”
Salem chortled as he tugged the snout of the stallion painfully towards his poll.
Tiger forced his eyes open and the moment the noxious perfume reached his snout he teetered on the edge of passing out.
“That… That’s ragwort. This is prohibited. How did you get this?”
“Never mind how I came about attaining this. It’s a healthy nutritious meal, from me to you. Now, don’t be an ungrateful guest and finish your greens!”
Tiger arched his back and craned his neck to get as much distance between him and the pernicious weed as possible. He closed his mouth and folded his top lip over his chin, hoping to block any of the frilly; yellow-flowered leafs from entering him.
“Why are you doing this, Mr Sombra?”
Salem didn’t reply. He took the entire rancid plant in the hand of his magic and jostled it into Tiger’s mouth, near enough bypassing the teeth altogether.
It wouldn’t take effect straight away. Salem threw his hoof towards the door and just intently sandblasted the colt with his eyes.
“I gave you a choice.”
Amber was distraught. Salem clutched the enfeebled alicorn by the ear and dragged her towards his bedroom. She was still restrained by the disabling spell cast by the stallion. She had never known such wild, unrefined talent.
He didn’t check to see if his wife was alright. He didn’t care for the comfort and nurture of his daughters either. He was transfixed. As he closed his eyes to sleep, he wrapped his arm around his lucid hot water bottle and snuggled deeply into her firm ethereal mane.