You know, some folks ask me if, back during the bad old days, if I'd ever, you know, considered throwing in the towel. Giving up, running off, and abandoning Equestria to its eventual destruction. I suppose I can't blame them: Even after the end of the second day, with two fiends dead and gone, the odds were still stacked pretty heavily against us. Diretusk still had his fiends, Grogar had his plans going on, the other fiends were still going crazy, and while we had the advantages of two alicorns and a floating fortress, that simply meant that we'd be the underdogs of this fight, rather than being hopelessly outmatched like we might have been at the beginning.
I'll admit, there were some low points later on, some bad enough to bring me to despair. Things did look pretty damned bleak a few times, bad enough that cutting our losses and running for it looked, if not like a good option, then at least preferable to our complete defeat. We'll get to those later. However, the first time I considered quitting was for the most ridiculous reasons imaginable...
It had taken a short time to get the unicorn I'd rescued seen to, and to assure the mares that they were safe. I'd taken a peek inside the cart, and saw the young filly, but while I'd asked Sombra about the strong family resemblence, he'd remained closed-mouthed about any details, save that he repeated his intention of getting answers once the fiends were gone. Afterwards, I began questioning the mares about the reason for braving the harsh winter snows. Thier reason blew my fucking mind.
"You mean to tell me that King Charlatan and Lavan are using their magic powers to turn crystal ponies completely into crystal... and then are crushing them into dust and snorting them?"
Chestnut Falls, the leader of the group of mares who had fled the Crystal Empire and in addition, according to King Sombra, to being the mare who had run the orphanage that the former tyrant had been raised in and the closest thing that he had ever had to a real mother, nodded her head and admitted, "Yes, your majesty. That is what we witnessed." While she didn't seem to recognize me, the fact that I was an alicorn was sufficient to grant me the honorifics. Sombra seemed... torn about that. But I had other things on my mind at the moment...
'Done.'
*Ambrose...*
'DONE!!! Dammit Sombra, how can you expect me to take any of this shit seriously anymore? I mean, the canned hams I could accept, and the giant evil cloud monster, and even the most metal centaur ever, but this? My next opponents are going to be a pair of evil magical tweakers? Fuck Magic Pony Land, man, I cannot take this shit! I'm done!'
*Ambrose! Stop griping and pay attention for a minute!*
'Hmph. Fine.'
*The crystal ponies are among the most innately magical ponies in Equestria. While the fiends may be experiencing some measure of euphoria through using their subjects in this manner, the main threat is that they're absorbing the magical energy of their victims. If they're not stopped, they'll be stronger than all the fiends put together by the time they've finished with half of their subjects. Worse, however, is the fact that whatever artifact that the two are using is keeping their subjects loyal, naive, and unquestioning, even as their numbers slowly dwindle. They're lambs in a slaughterhouse, all of them simply waiting for the axe, and they won't lift a hoof to defend themselves.*
'But why were these mares unaffected?'
*...I used magic to dominate the minds of my subjects once before, but I could not bring myself to do so to Chestnut, so I placed an enchantment upon her, one that would prevent me from controlling her mind, even by accident. She pleaded with me, begged me to do the same for the other orphans, and I did so, for old time's sake. I may have died, but the enchantment remains, strong enough to keep them from being controlled.*
'But why only the mares?'
*I cast it on the stallions as well, but like many young stallions one year ago, they all likely marched off with Commander Hurricane's ill-fated attempt to stop the fiends, and are no longer among the living.*
'Oh...'
Chestnut Falls was studying my face intently, confusion written large upon her features. Puzzled, she asked, "Have we met somewhere before, your majesty? You seem familiar."
*I'd ask you to lie to her, but we both know that the fiction would last only minutes at best. Tell her.*
'Alright.'
I paused, then said, "You'll be allowed one slap, but only one, so make it count."
Even more confused than before, she asked, "What?"
"We have met before, Miss Falls," I said, solemnly, "but I don't blame you for not recognizing me: It's been an eventful year, and I've changed a great deal."
She studied me a moment longer, and her eyes widened in recognition. "Sombra..." she whispered, seemingly unable to believe what her eyes were telling her.
I closed my eyes and braced myself for what I was certain would be a slap of epic proportions: The little earth pony fillies had proven strong enough to to be able to cut the circulation off of a grown stallion's limbs. While a mare, Chestnut Falls was still an adult earth pony, so her slap could potentially shatter my jaw...
So imagine my surprise when, instead of a vicious, well-deserved (Well, to Sombra, at least, not me) slap, I felt a tender touch upon my cheek.
I opened my eyes, and was surprised to see that the older pony was smiling, and had tears forming in her eyes. "I always knew," she said softly, "that there was a good pony inside of you, just waiting for a chance to shine." She then clutched me tightly in an embrace that, in spite of being incredibly strong (Earth pony, remember?), it was equally tender.
It is funny how memories come back to you in the strangest of moments. I would never have expected a hug from the surrogate mother of an evil overlord to bring to mind Miss Mont Blanc, one of the ladies who ran the orphanage I was raised in. A kind, caring woman cursed with the inability to have children of her own, and yet blessed with love enough for every child who came to her door, and with plenty extra to spare...
It hurts to think that I'd not thought of her for years, in spite of how much she meant to me. She'd put up with some of my craziest pranks, and my wildest stunts, without complaint...
...And she was one of the people who helped pull me out of the deep funk I'd fallen into when I'd discovered the truth about my birth.
That's... that's a private story, and I don't think the readers would be all that interested. I don't want to waste your time.
You're sure they'll want to hear it? Alright. I found this out when I was in my early teens, but I'll spare you the details of how right now. Here's the scoop.
My... parents were paid an awful lot of money by a wealthy couple to allow my mother to bear their child to term via in vitro fertilization, since the wife of the pair was too weak to give birth a second time. By birth, I was the child of the Rey family, a somewhat poor but mostly good and kindhearted family of Mexican descent. By genetics, I was born the offspring of a pair of very wealthy stockbrokers. I was the second child of their line, the first having a terrible ailment that was causing systemic damage to various internal organs. I don't have the exact name for the condition, but it was terrible, incurable, and would require their first-born son to receive repeated organ and bone marrow transplants in order to live past his twelfth birthday. Even with the best in medical technology available, and all the organs needed to replace his failing ones, he'd be expected to die by his eighteenth birthday. Since even with such treatment, my brother's death was assured, he was put on the ass-end of the organ transplant list: Why waste perfectly good organs on a child who would die before he could even vote, when those same organs could save dozens of children? Children who had a chance to live to their sixties with proper care, or longer? So, with no chance of getting those organs legally, my parents decided they'd have a second child, and use me as an organ farm.
Don't look so shocked: While compatible organs can, with sufficient wealth, be purchased off of the black market, along with a doctor to perform the transplant, bone marrow is much, much harder to obtain. Parents rarely match their offspring, you might be surprised to hear, so instead, it often falls to the siblings to provide the material, hence my birth. It is a sad fact that some families will harvest the organs of a perfectly healthy child, or even children, in order to extend the life of a sickly one, even if that extension might only be measured in months. My... brother was doomed to die, his body eventually losing the fight against the disease, but until then my biological parents were going to squeeze every bit of life out of me that they could, and dump it into him.
As you can guess, things went awry.
What's the antonym for a miracle? A disaster? Well, my biological parents could see my birth no other way: My blood type was determined to be completely incompatible with that of my brother. Bone marrow, too, although that wasn't confirmed until years after my birth. That meant that my organs would be completely useless. A one in a million outcome...
Now, let me tell you just how fucking terrible my parents are: They now had two children, one of whom, their first, was going to die. That was certain, and nothing, asides from perhaps a miracle big enough to spawn twenty religions dedicated just to it, was going to stop that. Here, though, they had a healthy child, guaranteed to live a long, fruitful life, barring an unfortunate accident. Smart, rational, and above all, 'good' people would say that, while tragic, they'd make sure that their first child received plenty of love, and made his passing as easy and painless as possible. And then, they still had a second child, and would give said child all the love and affection they could. Given that my brother died a few weeks after my birth, they could just call me a 'happy accident', and it would still be the best outcome for all parties involved: The Reys would be paid, my biological parents would have a son, and I'd never be the child that no one wanted.
...Instead...
My biological parents denied all claim to me, leaving me with the Rey family. They refused to pay the hospital bills for everything from the process of transplanting a fertilized embryo into my birth-mother's womb to the delivery and various testing needed to ensure I was healthy and compatible, and instead hired a lawyer, one slimy enough and crafty enough to legally stick my birth parents the bill. He also devised a means to get back the money originally paid for the arrangement between the two families through a legal loophole. The Reys were left with a bill they would never be able to pay, due to their dire financial circumstances, and when my birth mother caught ill a few weeks later, there wasn't any way to pay to see a doctor, let alone buy the medicine needed to treat her illness. She died of influenza. Not swine flu, or bird flu, but the regular old flu that most people get over in about a week, provided that there's medicine to treat it.
My father, the man I'll always consider my real father, did what he could to raise me, in spite of being hounded by creditors demanding money he had no way of paying, and after one too many bad bets, bets he only made because of those absurdly large payments my biological parents demanded, he was murdered and his organs harvested for sale on the black market.
To cap it all off, when Miss Mont Blanc discovered that my biological parents were alive, she approached them about taking me in. Within thirty seconds of her suggestion, they declined, and not even remotely politely. When Miss Mont Blanc tried to convince them, they threatened a law suit against the orphanage if anyone even mentioned my connections to my biological parents, sufficient to close down the orphanage and put dozens of little tots out on the street. Apparently, they didn't want their new daughter to ever know she had an older brother still among the living.
So yeah, fuck my biological parents. They were terrible people, end of story. Let's get back to a story people will actually want to hear about.
Where was I? The hug? Yes, the hug...
Chestnut Falls' hug reminded me of the kinds of hugs that Miss Mont Blanc gave me, and reminded me that I'd not written to her, spoke to her, or even thought of her in two years, and that now I never could. I would never see one of the most important people in my life again, not even to say goodbye...
*Ambrose...*
'What?'
*Feel free to apologize to her for me. Because I can't... as much as I would like to.*
He didn't need to ask me twice. I admit, tears were shed as I hugged her back, giving her the hug I would have given Miss MB if she were there, and said, "I'm so sorry. For everything I put you through." I won't even try to say that those tears were manly. They might have been, or they might not have been, but I promise you, they were genuine tears, regardless of their testosterone content, or the lack thereof.
"You can't change the past," Chestnut Falls said, gently. "All you can do is try to be better in the future."
"I will," I whispered. "I swear to you, I will."
I saw, over Chestnut's shoulders, the other mares of the Crystal Empire were looking at me, with an expression of...
The best way I can describe it is, 'I hate you, and am not likely to ever forgive you for the things you've done, but I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and act as if you've really changed because Chestnut Falls seems to think you're not as tremendous an asshole as everyone knows you are and I don't have the heart to try and convince her otherwise.' Yeah, it was that kind of look.
After another warm, hug-filled moment, Chestnut disengaged from me and said, "There's something I need to show you." She promptly dragged me over to the cart, and gently pulled the sleeping filly out where I could see her clearly. "She turned up a week ago, just outside the Crystal Empire, half-frozen to death. I didn't know what to make of her, especially with the fiends having arrived just a few days earlier. We'd tried to keep her warm, but even with the warming stones around her, her recovery is going slowly, especially with our having to leave the city after we learned what the fiends were doing." Blushing a little with embarrassment, she admitted, "We were hoping that, with time, she might grow to be as strong as you are, but with enough love and care, she'd be nicer, and willing to help liberate Equestria from the fiends."
I gave a smile, and said, "Well, with Arabus done in yesterday, and Tirek gone now, I'm hoping that at the rate we're going, the fiends will be gone long before she gets that old."
Stunned, Chestnut and the other crystal mares looked at me in something akin to awe. "Two fiends?" one of the other mares asked in shock.
I chuckled, then said, "Yes, two. It would have been more, but I have to pace myself, given that I've only been back from the dead for two days."
After a moment of dropped jaws and profound silence, I said, good-naturedly, "How about I walk you all over to the dining area: Breakfast was still being served before we stumbled upon you, and I'm sure all of you would enjoy a hot meal. I'll explain what all has happened over waffles."
------------------------------------
Upon my return to the dining area, mares and filly in tow, I was almost deafened by the sound of applause. Let me tell you, no one can clap quite like a pony can: Those hooves give their salutations quite the volume. I honestly wondered if the mares could have been heard outside of Sanctuary...
"Quite the... following you have here," commented one of the mares behind me.
"The spell that revived me," I stated, "required the blood of one hundred and eight virgin mares. The gathering was done by Clover the Clever's last student, Sparkling Sunset." Noticing that the mare in question seemed to be trying to spot her, I added, "She asked that she be allowed to watch over the unicorn who'd engaged Tirek in combat earlier. She has a number of questions to ask him, in regards to the spells that he was using. She'd never seen anything like them." Admittedly, I had a number of questions to ask him myself: He was the first stallion I'd seen since I'd arrived in Equestria, and a powerful wizard to boot. I had a feeling that he had a story to tell, and I'd like a chance to meet someone who wasn't a prepubescent and, I hoped, didn't want my Rod Of Lordly Might.
I cleared my throat, and asked, "Acorn, are you here?"
"Right behind you, your majesty," came the immediate reply, followed by several startled yelps from the crystal mares. Don't ask me how she did that: She moved in mysterious ways that I cannot possibly explain, even knowing what I know now.
I turned towards Acorn, and asked, "Would you mind getting something for these new arrivals to eat? I'm sorry to say that I'm not sure where the food's kept."
With a bow, she replied, "Provender has been arranged, your majesty, and will be brought out promptly."
I nodded, and said, "Good. Have it brought to my table, along with my own. I promised these ladies that I'd bring them up to speed, and I intend to do so."
-----------------------------------
And twenty minutes later...
One of the mares, Amber Waves, a purple earth pony with a blonde mane and wheat for a cutie mark, was the first to speak. "So, you've taken down two fiends, are in the middle of negotiating an alliance with Discord, and are currently engaged to be wed?"
Storm Cloud, who had joined us at the table (I won't even begin to describe the fuss that the arrival of a second alicorn had raised), nodded, and said, "Aye, and set Diretusk's elite fleeing like scalded dogs in the bargain. I doubt that we've seen the last of them, but the Boarcs suffered a blow yesterday that they'll need time to recover from..."
Chestnut Falls took a long pull from a cup of hot tea, and said, "I'm... surprised to hear that you're planning on wedding so soon, and to a mare you barely know." She gave a sigh, and added, "I'd expected you to marry Radiant Hope, and nopony else, honestly."
'Sombra?'
*I'd... killed Princess Amore right in front of Hope, transforming the royal into crystal and shattering her to pieces. When I last saw Hope, she called me a monster, and fled the Crystal Empire, to tell Celestia and Luna of my actions. Even if I knew where she was, I doubt that she'd ever forgive me for what I've done.*
'Oh...'
Taking a sorrowful expression I didn't need much effort to fake, I said, "After what I've done, I doubt that she'd ever want to see me again." I hung my head in shame, even if it was Sombra's shame, not my own...
"Pbbbt."
Surprised, I looked up at the noise, surprised to see the fluffy pony, looking at me with a heartrendingly sad face, sufficient to make me cry tears made of pure diebeetus. Before I could say anything, the fluffiest of ponies pounced on me, giving me the most epic glomp ever given. I suddenly found myself smothered in the plushiest fur in all of Equestria...
Within seconds, I was submerged, and unable to see or feel anything other than the almighty flufflepocalypse that had claimed me. I don't know how long I traversed beneath that limitless ocean of adorability: Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Eons? I have no idea, and am afraid, even now, to ask. What I do know is that someone placed something in my hoof just before I found myself ejected out of the mistress of all that is fluffy, cute, and adorable. And yes, the legends are true: I came in through the front, but left through the back.
Genuinely confused beyond all measure, I asked, "What just happened?"
Rosy Sunrise, with the sort of gleeful innocence only a child can manage, exclaimed, "Miss Fluffy Pants' fur ate you, and then pooped you out!"
Critical Hit! Multi-Blow! 9999, 9999, 9999, 9999, 9999, 9999!!! King Sombra's pride and dignity hath been slain!
As the entire room erupted into laughter, I noticed the thing that was now in my hoof...
It was a letter, bright pink with a red heart sealing it. Curious, I opened it, and read it, before quickly closing it and hiding it away, before anyone could see it.
*What did it say?*
'You didn't see it?'
*You hid it too quickly.*
'Oh. It, um, said...'
*Yes?*
'It said, 'Tell the real Sombra that I'm not angry with him anymore, and that I'll forgive him if he can bring Princess Amore back.''
*...*
'Sombra?'
*I knew she'd gone into hiding after my death, but I never thought she'd hide herself inside of a fluffy pony's fur. No wonder I couldn't locate her...*
I stood, shook myself to dislodge any magical fur that might have stuck to me, and then stretched.
'Can you bring the princess back?'
*It would require a mighty spell to do so, but yes, I think so: I hid her remains, but they're preserved as crystals. Over time, she might revive herself on her own, but I can accelerate the process. However...*
'However?'
*A spell that strong will bring a lot of attention our way. Diretusk, Grogar, and the other fiends aren't likely to know where we are at the moment, but once that spell is cast, any being of power on the continent will know exactly where we are, and will doubtless come for us with all speed, and while some of the fiends are limited in mobility, Grogar, Somnabula, Catrina, and Diretusk can teleport.*
'And we'll likely be exhausted from the spell, and be unable to fight back.'
*Exactly. So before we revive the princess, we'd better have a plan ready.*
'Understood.'
I turned towards the crystal mares, who, unlike the other ponies, were staring at me as if they half-expected me to turn the room into a bloodbath. Given Sombra's rep, I suppose I couldn't blame them...
I cleared my throat, bringing total silence to the room, and said, "Well, I believe that I was told there would be a party tonight, to celebrate our victory?"
Suddenly my sight was taken up by a vision of pink on pink, with blue eyes and a smile so large it was fit to frighten small children. The grinning mare exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a thousand happy puppies on a sugar rush and a simultaneous cocaine high, "Yup yup yup, there's gonna be a big party tonight, your majestiness! We've almost got everything ready, just a couple more hours and we'll be ready to party all night long!"
Suddenly on the receiving end of such... happiness, I could only say, "Um... good. I, um, don't remember seeing you before. Who are you?"
"I'm Pinky Pie, silly!" she exclaimed again. I was beginning to wonder if this might be her natural state, and if so, I shuddered to think of what she might be like when she REALLY gets going. She abruptly smelled the air, and said, "Oh, oh, oh, the cake is almost done, gotta go, bye-bye!"
And with that, she pronked off, hopping energetically towards the kitchen.
*What in the world was that?*
'I don't know, and I get the feeling that if I start questioning where she came from, I'll only get the kinds of answers that might make my head explode.'
*Agreed.*