Half-Hour Horses

by HoofAndQuill

Crystal [Sad]

(The Prompt: She dumped me!)

She was everything to me, once. In this time of war and famine, she remains everything good in my life. Telling, then, that she has become so empty of the goodness I once saw in her.

Crystal. That was her name, and her mother's, and her mother's before her. They all deserved it, as they shared the beauty of the stones. Her coat shone, her wings glimmered in the sunlight, and her horn glowed with the alluring shade of moonlight on dew. You may find it strange to hear me use such poetic terms. It is the nature of love to change a stallion.

When I was young, I knew that I must have her. She was royalty, however, the soon to be crowned Crystal Princess, and just who was I? A nopony, a clerk in the castle staff. I was skilled with magic, yes, and my schooling had focused on artifact creation, as well as alchemy. It wasn't surprising then, with a few rare ingredients gathered from the flying warrior tribes to the south, that I could fashion a potion to win her heart.

It worked. It worked very well.

It was effortless to get the audience, the Princess was always eager to meet with ponies below her station. You may think it was simply a ploy to appear more caring, but she genuinely loved all the ponies under her rule. So yes, a clerk managed to meet privately with the Princess, and she trusted all of her subjects, so she drank the wine with him. In that moment, the mare I loved was destroyed, and replaced with a love-sick shell. Then again, so was the simple clerk.

In days, the clerk was a prince. Our love was deep, passionate, and as true as any other love. I may have brought it about through artifice, but we both knew it in a way that few ponies are lucky enough to understand. Our love was all-encompassing, we had time for little but one another.

Soon, her meetings with her people slowed to a stop. More and more of our royal duties were shunted off to advisers and nobles. Useless sycophants when around us, and petty tyrants when alone with their lessers. We didn't see that until much later, however. For a time, our lives were perfect. We woke together, we ate together, we strolled through the perfect royal gardens, we watched performances of plays and concerts of the finest symphonies, and we retired to bed together each and every night.

Nothing last forever, at least nothing good. The potion worked, as I've stated, but there were problems. Over time, she began to notice that her subjects no longer looked at her the same way. The Crystal Kingdom had fallen on hard times, without our central leadership. As we ate and drank and made merry, the ponies of our Kingdom had toiled and slaved under a series of petty tyrants and barons, each using their granted royal powers to further their own goals and hedonism. As we slept together, warm and secure, our subjects barred their doors from bandits, and from their own rulers.

That was when I began to notice the changes.

Her lustrous crystalline coat was dulling, turning darker. Mine was as well. As went the Crystal Kingdom, so went its rulers. She missed the adoration and endless fawning of her subjects, but she no longer understood their plight. She wanted their love and praise; she demanded it. Myself, well, I had always wanted more. I wanted more power, so I had studied magic creation and alchemy. I wanted my princess, so I had taken her. Now, I wanted her kingdom.

I took it.

It wasn't hard, in hindsight. She would do anything for me. She always seemed to sense when anything she did offended me, and she avoided such things as though they burned her. When I asked to strip the nobles of their power, it was done without hesitation. When I asked for control of the military, to quash the rebellious barons and dukes, she gave the speech to the masses praising the new Prince-General. When I declared myself King, and her my subordinate, she bit her tongue and bowed to me, so as not to defy me in front of the masses.

But I saw, even then, what was happening. She was fading from the public eye. As I gained power and influence, as I stole these things from this mare that I so loved, the ponies that once cared for her turned away. Soon, she was only a figurehead in her own castle, and she looked out over the darkened, brown fields of my Empire, and she saw no eyes turned up towards her, she heard no songs about the fair Princess that ruled the land.

By now, I was a dark gray. My horn was curved and glowed constantly from my alchemical and crystal increased magic. Few ponies in the world could match my raw power. She rarely left her room anymore, except to please me, and always kept her body covered when she did. She had changed, her coat had fallen out, revealing a hardened, black shell. Her body had rotted, there were holes in her hooves and her horn was a gnarled, twisted thing. Her greed for love and adoration, and her desperation for loyal, loving subjects had changed her. She had even changed her name, corrupting the old Crystal as I had corrupted the Crystal Kingdom.

The worst night in my life was the night that she left me.

Chrysalis claimed that she saw the writing on the wall, that she knew something was coming. The nation to the south wouldn't bear my feints and skirmishes forever, and she knew that they had more power than they showed. The castle servants, many of them beginning to take on aspects of her new appearance, stood with her. In my throne room we faced one another, she with her mindless, loving slaves, and me with my disciplined, loyal cadre of personal bodyguards, worth a dozen pegasus soldiers or griffon mercenaries each.

There, in front of everypony, in the very room where we were wed, she dissolved our marriage, and our love. Whatever good was left in me, whatever good was left in her, and whatever life was left in my Empire... these were all destroyed, that day.

My scouts tell me that something is coming from the south. Entire regiments of troops have vanished, scouting outposts and castles have been destroyed to the foundations. The sole surviving pony to return to us tells a story of two demon mares with unstoppable power and burning eyes. I know it is my destiny to face these conquerors.

However, tonight I write this letter, this biography, this... confession. I sit here with my wine, and with a locket from years ago, showing her old face and mine.

Crystal, wherever you are, if you are still alive or if you are dead, I love you... and I am sorry.

Comments

[TheDoktor]

This was a very inspired idea... now I'm sad the show killed Sombra off. Would be interesting to see Chrysalis' side of this story, too.

[Esle Ynopemos]

This is the story that made me decide to go back and read the rest of your 30-minute entries. This is an incredible story. I love how it ties together so many different parts of the lore in a way that makes so much sense that I just wish it could be canon. And it casts Sombra's simplistic villainy from the show in such a complex light. I love it.