King Sombra V, son of the late Queen Luna (Wise Ones rest her soul) and King Sombra IV (good riddance) walked down the hallways of the Crystal Spire, flanked by his guards.
His Brilliance was in his late twenties and still quite handsome. Most ponies said that Sombra was the spitting image of Father, but Sombra himself disagreed. He had inherited more than a little of Mother’s grace: he stood a little taller than most, with long, slender legs, and a gentle curve to his neck. His coat, too, bore her mark; it was steely, like Father’s, but the steel bore a tinge of blue from Mother. And, on good days, Sombra thought that he caught a faint sparkle of stars in his mane...
But, though he clearly had Mother’s blood in him, Sombra, just as clearly, was a creature of Father’s line--that is, he had inherited Father’s horn, but not Mother’s wings. Most visiting dignitaries knew not to mention this, and those few servants that whispered curiously about it were prone to suddenly leaving on extended vacations, never to be seen again. It didn’t matter too much, of course: though he was only the second-oldest child, his sister’s desertion had ensured that the Crystal Crown would pass to him—as, indeed, it had done. Very few were willing to challenge the power of the holder of the Crystal Heart, be he an alicorn or no, a fact Sombra leveraged for all it was worth.
As his mind drifted across his family, he found his thoughts dragged, inevitably, towards the map he kept in his study—the map that was to be constantly updated by his aides when they caught the merest whiff of movement—the map that had not changed in months: the location of every known alicorn on the planet. It was ambitious, but necessary—the presence or absence of an alicorn meant so much, to anything he did, that the map was among his highest priorities. Mentally, he ran down the list: Cadance, eldest sister: vanished, her figure placed off to the side. Lux and Umbra, twins, third and fourth sisters, respectively, ruled their separate kingdoms from the old summer palace and the Saddlehorn by the western shores. Stella, fifth sister, had carved out a kingdom of the southern provinces. And Amare, technically controlling the northeast part of the former Alliance, actually under the hoof of a regent who would rule in her stead until she was of age--or, at least, that’s what he said--was sister number seven.
(Sisters, sisters, always sisters—whatever magic made them Alicorns was reserved only for females. Sombra was more keenly aware of this fact than he liked to admit.)
Of course, the figure representing Auntie still sat quietly off to the side; she, too, had vanished, but the sun had kept moving, so, wherever she was, his aides were fairly certain that she wasn’t dead. It was speculated that, wherever she had gone, she had taken Cadance with her, and that the two of them plotted quietly, looking for a gap in his armor.
And then, of course, there was Philia…
Sombra pushed open the door to his throne room and froze. Philia, the sister just younger than him, a her coat a beautiful lilac, lay on her back, sideways, across his throne. Her flank bore no cutie mark as of yet, though she was in her late twenties. This was of no surprise to those that knew her.
Sombra smelled it before he saw it: at her hooves lay a stallion, wearing crystal armor, his body twisted and broken, lying in a pool of his own blood.
Sombra took a half-step backwards in disgust—then looked up at his sister. “Blood and fire, Philia,” he growled, “How many times to I have to tell you—the guards are not your private playthings.”
Philia lolled her head around and stared at him with uncomprehending eyes. “Things flings dings,” she said, in a faint, sing-song cadence. She swiveled her head back around, and, with her magic, lifted one of her knives—a long, wicked, curved thing, dripping with blood—and licked it. “King brings wing things,” she added.
Sombra shuddered as he watched her hold out a wing, then wipe the blade on it. King brings wing things, she had said. The phrase lodged itself in his mind. Well, that was the hope, at least, he found himself thinking.
Philia was, well… disadvantaged, might be the polite way to say it—and, she being not only an alicorn, but a proper Crystal Princess, “polite” was about the only way to say it. She had her moments of clarity, but those were few and far between (the fact that one of her babblings had come out almost coherent seemed to hint that another episode was coming on), but, for the most part, she just wandered the palace, muttering to herself and indulging in whatever fantasies she desired.
Overwhelmingly, these seemed to be of the incredibly violent sort.
But, for all her liabilities, she was an alicorn, which meant that he couldn’t just dispose of her—after all, a single alicorn could scour a battlefield clean of a conventional foe, and the only way to even fight an alicorn was with one of your own—though such battles left scars across half the countryside. Those few that would not respond to the threat of the Crystal Heart would fear an alicorn, unhinged or no. He had tried his best to keep Philia’s condition a secret, but, at this point, it was openly whispered in the streets.
Well. There was more to fear from a crazed alicorn than a sane one. So, perhaps that counted for something.
“Philia,” Sombra said, his voice stern, but his eyes afraid. “The throne is my chair, remember? I need it.”
She turned to look at him, and he flinched. He had the sudden mental image of her lunching at him, glittering steel at his throat—
“Chair,” she repeated. “Chair nowhere. Chair bare air.”
And yet, she rolled off the throne and landed lightly on her hooves. She shook herself and tucked her knife into a dragon-leather sheath she kept hidden under her wing, already holding a half-dozen others. She turned and descended the few steps to the floor, then walked down the carpet towards Sombra—heedless of the gore and viscera she tracked through. As she passed Sombra, she turned to stare at him, the faintest glimmer of understanding flickering in her eyes.
“Brother,” she said. “Other smother mother. But—” She swallowed, and her head jerked twitchily to one side. “I kept the raiment of them that slew him,” she finished, quoting from some old book he’d doubtless never heard of before.
She did that a lot.
Sombra watched her go, watched as she paused, then practically skipped out the door, a chill running down his spine. He sighed, then walked to this throne, carefully stepping around the dead guard, trying not to notice the almost-artistic thoroughness with which he had been dispatched. He climbed to his throne, sat, and rested his forehead on one hoof.
“Steward,” he called into the emptiness—and, suddenly, the steward was there, standing at the side of his throne. He was very good at that.
Sombra looked down at him. “Get someone to keep an eye on Philia,” he said. “I think she’s coming around again.”
The steward bowed imperceptibly.
“And get someone in here to clean this up,” he said, gesturing at the dead guard. “I can’t run my kingdom with a corpse in my throne room.”