Daughter of the First Reign

by LegionPothIX

Act 3 | Ring Fitting

The morning air had a chill to it, even more so than usual, and it seemed to amplify as Treeling cast a cold gaze to the heavens. She knew that today the sun would stop, and the clouds would weep again; just like the day her mother died. Except that today there would be even more deaths, and the tears shed over those graves would help put out the fires. She just hadn't expected it to happen so early in the morning. Her eyes broke from the bleeding clouds to inspect her two companions. Of the pair, Nurse Clarity's mind was nearly gone, and Sombra's was occupied devising a plan for their reentry.

His thoughts were written all over his face as his mind raced with the possible outcomes of their early return. He schemed how best to approach the Queen without the trio being arrested on sight. "Treeling," he finally said, "I want you to try as hard as you can to look as tired as Nurse Clarity. Can you do that?" The filly nodded with a smile before she let her eyes droop, her gait slow, and introduced an intermittent stagger. "Good," Sombra said, "If anyone asks: we found Discord and we need to report to the Queen right away."

Treeling slowly reached down to her chalkboard, with quivering lips she fumbled with the chalk as she drew it from its magnetized position, and slowly drug it against the board only to drop it in the snow.

"Oh, right," Sombra said, as he levitated the chalk back into position, "I'll do the talking."

They continued on for another hour in pensive silence until that was exactly what occurred. A city patrol spotted the three dissonant unicorns entering the city. While Sombra talked them down Treeling flopped "tiredly" to the ground and closed her eyes. Playing up the drama she rag-dolled when the guards tried to lift her upright. Seeing that both Sombra and the nurse were too "exhausted" to carry her, Treeling was flung over the shoulder of an officer, and lay limply there until they were outside the castle.

"We can manage from here," Sombra insisted. Though the guards refused to be dissuaded from their duty they found it difficult to argue through a crystalline encasement. "Idiots," Sombra added after the fact.

He turned his attention to the Queen's one remaining ace: the Crystal Heart. If he could steal it away before the alarm was raised, then he could be certain that negotiations between the two of them were more amicable. However, he didn't have a place to hide it. The alternative was far more risky, but was also something he spent five years setting up. If he rebounded a pacification spell through his crystal pylons that masqueraded as apartment complexes then the Queen wouldn't be able to activate the heart to full effect. To do that he needed to get to the height of the crystal spire they were in.

All he wanted was to go in peace. He wasn't going to hurt anypony and he was even willing to sacrifice Treeling to the queen's ambitions if that meant she wouldn't seek retribution. That was their initial agreement, and he wanted it to be honored, but somehow he had gotten wrapped up as a disposable pawn in her game with Discord. Though, he couldn't tell the filly left to his charge this detail, he just wanted his own daughter back, and the irony of his rationalizations didn't fully set in they reached the first set of stiars.

As they rushed through stairwell after stairwell the two crystal casters were more than enough to overpower the odd patrols. What was a gleeful game of Simon Says for Treeling was an act of treacherous sedition for Sombra.

The first steps out onto the sky-bound veranda were filled with uncertainty. Sombra began to prepare his behavior modification spell when Crystal Clarity spoke suddenly and for the first time since the night before. "We're going to die today," she said. Her words were shaky at first but they as grew firm as her belief of that fact, "All of us."

"No," Sombra said in a reassuring tone as he discharged the spell. His words were cautious as he assessed her mental state. She seemed detached from her detachment to the world, free of it, and of the filly she cowered from last night. "We just need to convince the Queen–"

"I... I can't keep doing this," Crystal Clarity said as she backed against the edge.

"Please C.C. Come away from there," Sombra beckoned.

"No!" Nurse Clarity screamed, "Don't you get it!? I don't know who that is!" The nurse directed her hoof at Treeling. "That thing hollowed me out, and then filled me up with lies. I'm not me anymore. I tried. I really did..." a short pause broke up her sentence as tears began to stream down her face. It was the first time she had cried in a week. "But I'm not, and I'm not even her. I'm nopony."

A gentle breeze rolled across the floor. It ruffled their manes and brought with it the sweet scent of crystal berries from the plains. Crystal Clarity smiled as she leaned into the wind, she used to love crystal berry tea, and with that thought—that moment alone with her true self—she let herself be carried over the edge with the scent.

"NO!" Sombra shouted. With a half step forward he reached out with his magic to catch her. Telekinesis, crystals, anything! A faint shadowy aura briefly enshrouded the mare before collapsing. The filly standing behind him had ripped his magic from the mare, and allowed Crystal Clarity to finish what she started.

He continued to reach for her magically only to have his grasping attempts slapped away by the filly. The long wait for crunch on the street below was accompanied by the inaudible patter of teardrops that were shed, and filled with unbearable tension between two fiddlers on the roof. The first silhouette had toppled and aptly struck the second.

Sombra spun in place to confront Treeling his hoof landing in the pool of tears that had streamed from his own face. "Why!? I could have saved her!"

Treeling sadly shook her head to indicate that he was mistaken and that she could not be saved. The filly reached for her chalk and board to explain that Crystal Clarity did not want to be a captive of her doubts any longer but Sombra slapped it out of her hooves before she could.

"There's no excuse for what you've done."

The filly tapped her horn, then the side of her head, before bringing her hoof down in a heavy war stomp atop her slate. The slate shattered in the same manner that Crystal Clarity's mind had been magically sundered. But now, with with her "voice" silenced, she couldn't tell him that she was only getting started.

Sombra's eyes grew green, his crystal mist flowed from his body, and in his wrath he remained centered. To him, the thirty-mane melee had made her complacent, while he had pushed himself even harder. He knew that her trump card was built from his spell... a spell that he had perfected, and mastered to the point of being able to counter-spell it from her. He could feel her feeling out his magic, as the mist became a cloud of darkness, but she wasn't drawing it out of him as he expected. Perhaps she knew what he knew– that he would just counter it.

He grinned triumphantly as he also knew that she was still able to be the subject of mind magic and the behavior modification spell that he had for the city could just as easily work on her. He could feel the power surge in his horn as he prepared the spell and he knew that it would be more powerful than even the crystal blast that she emitted from his house. The reminder of the event nearly caused Sombra to lose his nerve. The filly closed her eyes and bobbed her head with the waves of energy he was putting out as the the gold gilt came into plain view.

That incident was the key to Sombra's understanding of how she had tricked him and before he could abort the spell she ripped it from his head. Her eyes shown a brilliant vermilion that radiated with all the force that was in his body and, just as before, the spell echoed out across the whole of the Crystal Empire. His spell. The one Sombra had cast on her the day before the event was so focused on. His mind magic built to induce the subject's worst nightmares and it was still bound directly to the amplifying crystal mist that grew in the minds of all those the spell could reach; just like the initial test on her on that fateful field. A test she passed but he never bothered to study for.

The advent of a cacophonous chorus of bells washed through Treeling's mind as her stolen spell reverberated through the empire. As quickly as it began, it was put to an end when she frantically pulled out the strand of Luna's magic from her mane, along with a hoof-full of regular hair. Though it was her last direct link to Asheveld, she let it go so that the roar of ringing would continue to jingle elsewhere, knowing that she wouldn't need it anymore. With Asheveld transplanted, Crystal Clarity gone, Sombra dispossessed, and Luna being otherwise occupied she was truly alone.

"The Crystal Queen..." Sombra began, "Kept me prisoner for five years... told my family I was dead... used me... and threw me away..."

"My crystals will give me the strength to beat her..." he added in a hypnotic stupor as he drifted down the long stair well.

"My crystals can protect my home... My daughter..." he continued, each word punctuated by the sound of hoof on stone in the resonant spiral staircase.

"Crystals..."

Treeling followed her curiosity while watching quite intently as the mist clouded his eyes and put a fog in his mind. The black army was on its way to confront the red army: the King of Shadows versus the Queen of Hearts, and even now they were both ants beneath her hooves.

On the path to the courtyard the crystals that had encased the guards had shattered with Sombra's mind but they were now trapped in his stolen spell. Some spoke in their waking nightmares while others did not. Having cast the spell only the child remained free of its influence. With the population pacified Sombra's goal was achieved and the Crystal Heart couldn't be activated. Now all that remained was for him to take his revenge.

From the grand hall where they exited the tower only a final short set of stairs to the throne room stood between Sombra and that vengeance. He stood hesitantly looking up the stairs from the landing and Treeling could feel the wobble of the second silhouette. She leaned in and prodded him in the cutiemark with her horn. He looked down to her before looking back to the stairs. In a few quiet moments Sombra drew out the remainder of his reserves of magical energy. The small haze that grew into a cloud was now a thick rolling mist as it flowed up the stairs.

"You!" The Crystal Queen grasped for control of the situation as she blinked the mist from her eyes. "You did this to us! I won't let you take my kingdom from me!" The filly happily skipped up the steps. With each word another step until she was at the top landing looking in. The Queen was filled to brimming with a dark and ominous force, her emotions, and that dark force-of-will had been empowered through the Crystal Heart's neutrality. Treeling knew that the two would have been on equal ground were it not for the pegasus's inexperience with magic.

"I won't let you take your sick vendetta to my home– to my people. I will protect them!" Sombra antagonistically retaliated.

With a burst of crystalline force the door slammed shut and Treeling's mouth opened into her jagged jack-tooth grin. The second silhouette had been tipped and they wouldn't stop until all had fallen.

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