The tyrant of fear and hate

by Askre

Chapter 11. The study.

Chapter 11

Private watched the mares leave the room, they had finally decided to allow him a little privacy and rest after events this morning. Once they were gone, the stallion lay down on the bed and stretched his legs. He had to admit that although primitive, the bath had been rather relaxing although the unicorn would have preferred bathing on his own.

One thing kept him from fully relaxing and that was the castle’s owner. It was probably only a question of time before the king would have him go to work. The unicorn was still unsure how he was supposed to help unseal a book. His knowledge of history didn’t really cover breaking magical locks.

The unicorn tried to think back to the book he had seen, doing his best to ignore the painful memories that followed. The book had looked very old and then there were those demonic figures carved into it. Private frowned, now that he thought it over, it felt familiar.

Why did he lie about the name? he wondered. Then again it was probably just all part of the ploy to trick me into his service.

With a sigh the unicorn closed his eyes, wanting to try to nap a little. His eyelids had hardly come down when the pony found himself standing right before King Sombra. The dark unicorn looked much bigger and in the darkness around them a whole lot more menacing.

“You are pathetic, Private,” the king growled and stepped closer to the covering stallion. “Barely any magic in you, can’t even admit your true feelings to that mare, outshined by your brother. It’s almost fitting that you are now enslaved to me.”

“Because what other purpose do you have? Dusty old tomes in a museum where you hide and call work? You’re nothing, you’re utterly forgettable,” he continued with a sneer.

Private had cringed at first and looked away but then it hit him. Sombra had mentioned the museum he worked in back in Fillydelphia. The unicorn had so far not told the king where he worked, just that his interest lay in history. It dawned on him that he was just dreaming, having clearly been so exhausted he had fallen asleep instantly.

Having realized this was a dream seemed to vaporize the king and now the unicorn stood alone in the darkness, it started slowly to be replaced by a green field and a sunny sky. Private frowned, he knew it was possible to have a lucid dream where you were aware of it and could even control it, but it had never happened to him before as far as he knew.

“Private Iceland!” A voice shouted.

Private looked around but saw nobody. However, that voice had been familiar. The unicorn grunted when everything started to fade away. He could hear the voice shout again and thought he saw a silhouette of a pony but then his eyes opened and the stallion became aware that someone was shaking him.

“Wake up!” King Sombra growled and removed his hoof when seeing that the unicorn was complying.

“What… huh?” Private looked up and silently groaned when seeing the king stand by his bed with an impatient look. Great, time for the real nightmare.

“Time to get to work, rise and follow me!” the dark unicorn snorted and turned around. The compulsion spell kicked in, forcing his prisoner to stand up and go after him.

“Ugh… how long was out?” Private wondered, talking more to himself than Sombra.

“It is evening, you will be brought food in the study,” the king said without looking at him.

“So what do you exactly expect me to do? You know my magic is pathetic and history knowledge can only bring you so much,” the smaller unicorn wondered as they began once again to walk through many corridors and halls.

“Haven’t you gotten it through your thick head already. I don’t need you to unseal any book. I was tricking you into my servitude.” King Sombra looked back at Private and grinned sadistically. “Like I said, the Crystal Deal Spell doesn’t care much about details. It only thinks I need you to break a seal. You never said you would help me break the seal of a book if I allowed you to see the Doctor.”

“What?” Private’s jaw dropped and he felt cold suddenly. The king laughed mockingly.

“It was all done just to make the Doctor suffer, give him a headache and a pointless riddle, now he will worry that I’m opening some pathetic book to enhance my powers and have forced one of his dear friends to open it,” Sombra said shaking his head, his muzzle still carrying that sadistic grin. “Honestly, Private, I thought the Doctor would have chosen smarter friends than that.”

“S-so… what are we going to do?” his prisoner whispered, he was starting to become really frightened.

“Have you forgotten already?” the king glanced at him again. “I told you when we first met, I’ve been dying to study an Equestrian unicorn.”

Private gulped but couldn’t do much but follow. This actually did make more sense, why would a powerful being like Sombra need a magically pathetic unicorn to unseal a book he couldn’t unseal himself.

“And you should just see what I have in store for your mare friends,” the king chuckled but deep down was frowning a little, realizing too well that he had less time than he would have liked and had to speed things up. The tyrant expected the Princesses to attack within days.

The smaller unicorn sighed, worrying about the mares now. Considering what Sombra did to him, the stallion shuddered over thinking what he would do to them.

“So what was that book anyway that I saw?” Private asked, might as well unravel that mystery.

“Hm? Oh just an old spell book I’ve owned for years; some were written by some of the greatest mages of the dark ponies.” Sombra smiled more genuinely as if he was reliving a happy memory.

“The Tambelon Codex?” Private asked as the name just suddenly hit him. The king glanced back at him curiously. “Never read it, but seen it in the Canterlot Museum of Magic. You can’t even get access to it unless you’re a certified historian or archeologist or a high mage working for Princess Celestia.”

“Are you telling me that my spell book is going to end up in the Canterlot Museum? Unless it is another copy, I know there are few.” Sombra frowned a little but then shrugged it off as not important.

“Something like that,” the smaller unicorn grunted. He realized where they were going after walking for a little while more, the room where he had seen the book.

Private gulped as the vivid memories came back to him, the knife cutting into his cheek, the dark magic being forced into him. The pony didn’t want to walk any further but he was still under control of the compulsion spell thus force to walk after the king. As they came closer the stallion was starting to sweat a bit from fear.

King Sombra stopped his walk, causing his prisoner to stop too. The dark unicorn glanced back, then backed up so he was standing beside Private. The king had an uncanny smile as he regarded the stallion with hungry eyes. The smaller pony shivered, feeling extremely uncomfortable and even more frightened at the sudden attention.

“There is that delicious fear again,” Sombra purred, reaching up with a hoof and touched the spot on the cheek where he had cut Private with the knife and started to gently caress it.

“Ah, I can’t have enough of it. It’s like the sweetest wine. The uncertain fear that you might die. Now you’re being dragged back to the room, where for a fleeting moment you feared that was it, you were going to perish. It’s primal, the fear of death, even lesser animals have it,” he continued to speak in a soft voice, moving his head closer so his muzzle was mere inches away from Private’s other cheek.

Private felt ill, the warm breath from Sombra’s mouth didn’t help. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what would happen next. Thus he was rather surprised when the king stopped caressing his cheek and moved his head away. The unicorn carefully opened one eye, Sombra still stood next to him, smirking.

“But we mustn’t get distracted, right now we have other things to do,” the king murmured and gestured for Private to go on.

Hesitantly Private started to move, this time on his own. It seemed the compulsion spell had some sort of a limit, perhaps because it thought he had followed Sombra’s order fully by following him and then stopping when the king did. He didn’t really care, just felt mildly relieved to be moving on his own right now.

They finally arrived in the room, it was still only illuminated by the blue crystal on the ceiling but the table and the book where gone. Once Sombra was inside he lit up his horn using his regular magic instead of his usual dark magic, it was blood red much like his eyes. Several crystal torches on the wall lit up the whole room due to the spell the king was casting.

Are those statues? Private frowned when seeing what looked like three ponies made entirely out of dark crystal further inside the room. Other things also caught his attention, there was a long table or a counter that was loaded with various alchemy equipment and what looked like proto-chemistry tools. There were also few shelves lining up against the walls with books and scrolls. This had all been previously concealed by the dark.

The unicorn’s jaw dropped, mostly at the sight of the equipment on the table. He had seen some of these before in less than ideal condition in his father’s office while being identified after a dig or in the museum he worked in. Seeing these in somewhat pristine, albeit slightly used by now, condition was amazing to him.

This hadn’t escaped the attention of the king who raised an eyebrow in mild amusement. However, Private soon remembered that this was no time to gawk and that he was currently in the company of a tyrant who stabbed him in this very room. The unicorn glanced at the statues and suddenly realized that they were see-through.

“Are… wait… are there ponies inside there?” Private whispered and started to approach them.

“Yes indeed.” Sombra smirked and allowed his prisoner examine the statues. He especially awaited his reaction to one of them.

Private grimaced as he took a closer look, one pony was a mare, the other two were stallions. All had it in common that on their flank was an hourglass as a cutie-mark. Then the unicorn realized that one of them looked awfully familiar.

Doctor? The unicorn cringed when recognizing the Doctor.

“The other two are time ponies I captured some time ago, had to put them in stasis after studying them for a while, they kept regenerating into new forms after some of the tortures I put them under,” the king grunted as if this was some minor annoyance for him.

“But it served its purpose, I was able to be ready for him.” Sombra glared at the encased Doctor.

Great, that means Foxy is going down to the dungeon for no reason and I can’t warn her. Private glanced at the other ponies and felt a little nauseous, the mare looked like she was in horrendous pain and the other stallion had a horrified expression frozen on him. Only the Doctor had a defiant look on him.

“I thought you wanted him to suffer, how will this make him suffer?” Private slowly turned to face the king.

“Oh he knows you’re in the room now, he can hear and he can see, but he can’t do anything,” Sombra chuckled and approached the long table, already he was levitating jars and bottles, pouring the contents into a bowl.

“He will be hearing and seeing everything I’ll be doing too you and being unable to help you.” The king smiled wickedly as he turned away from the table, using his own magic to heat up the bowl he levitated in front of him.

Private could only gulp and let out a small whimper. He would have backed away but found that he was unable to move, his legs were frozen in place. Sombra approached with the bowl of now steaming liquid.

“Drink!” King Sombra ordered and presented the container to the prisoner.

The compulsion spell kicked in and Private grabbed the bowl with his magic and put it to his lips. With a grimace he then swallowed the content of it, not stopping even if the hot liquid scalded the inside of his mouth. He wanted to cry out in pain but the spell forced him to continue to drink until every last drop was inside. Then the unicorn finally dropped the bowl gasping and sobbing, he would have screamed but now his throat just hurt too much from the burns inside of him.

Sombra just watched and appeared to be waiting for something to happen. Private could only wonder for what, so far all he could feel was the burn in his throat and mouth. Suddenly he noticed a glow from his horn, straining his eyes upwards the unicorn saw it were the circle like indents on it that were slowly beginning to emit a silver colored light. It started from the tip of his horn and then went down the circles towards his head. Once the line of light reached is forehead it began spreading across his head in several directions like small veins, going down towards his neck and from there spreading across his body until it reached his cutie mark.

“W-what?” Private could only say, his voice hoarser and whispery than normal due to his burned throat.

The king said nothing, instead he started to walk in circles around the smaller unicorn, examining the glowing vein like lines with his eyes. He didn’t look too impressed though and at one time snorted in disappointment.

“I’m starting to think that the only use I have for you at this point is a hostage against the Princesses,” Sombra grunted. “Your lay lines are in a pathetic shape.”

Gee, it’s not like I didn’t tell you that I was pathetic at magic. Oh wait, I did. Private held back his own grunt, not daring to repeat this out loud. The light began to dim and few seconds later it was gone from his body.

If only I had more time, but the Princesses could come any day now and I must be prepared for them as well, the king thought and stepped in front of his prisoner.

“Even with some of my magic infused into you it doesn’t seem to have made much difference, then again for all I know it’s because of my magic that we saw the lines at all,” Sombra said and started to prepare a spell with his horn.

Private didn’t bother to respond and shivered when dark magic aura began enveloping him. It felt oddly cold to the touch. Then the pain started, it was like thousands of needles were being jammed into him all over his body. The unicorn cried out and tried to struggle but found that his body was held firmly in place with the dark magic.

Sombra ignored the sobs coming now from his prisoner and kept the spell going, a thoughtful frown was on his face as he watched Private’s reaction to it. After several minutes he finally let up and deactivated the magic, the king also removed the spell that kept the unicorn in place. Private dropped down to the floor in a crying heap.

“From what I could gather, your magic seems mainly linked to your talent, fascinating,” Sombra murmured and rubbed his muzzle with a hoof. “You Equestrians do seem rather obsessed with these flank pictures you call cutie marks and your destinies. What did you say your talent was again? History?”

“Oh right.” The king looked down at the sobbing pile that was Private, remembering that his prisoner was hardly in any condition to really speak.

“I do need to attend to few things before we continue, that should give you enough time to recover.” Sombra shrugged and started to walk to the door. Just before he left, the dark unicorn glanced back. Using his magic, he lengthened one of the chains on Private’s collar and linked it to the floor, the king then disappeared out of the room.

It took few more minutes before Private managed to quiet his sobs and dared to look up. With a painful groan he slowly rose to his feet and glanced at the chain, then he turned his attention to the three crystal encased ponies.

Well… so much for trying to keep him in the room, he thought and tried to ignore the pain in his throat.

Now I wonder if I can get him out. Private looked at the Doctor. Hesitantly he glanced back before activating his horn and started to feel the crystal with his magic. The unicorn could already sense that this was just a shell that didn’t go all the way through.

My magic is maybe pathetic but having magic talent linked to archeology can have its uses. The unicorn allowed himself to smile a little. His passion was history and what better way to study history but through archeology like his parents. Due to this, Private’s main magical ability was being able to handle things, especially fragile things, with the utter most care as the layers of rock and dirt were removed from it.

When seeing the crystal encased ponies, Private had entertained the idea that maybe he could get them out of it. He just knew that wasn’t possible with Sombra in the room. So the unicorn did what he knew the Doctor would do, wait and see how things played out. He already knew by now that the king wasn’t after information from him. Sombra wanted to study him and had already said he wasn’t going to kill the only Equestrian unicorn he currently had access too.

The only thing Private hadn’t anticipated was how much the study session would hurt. He really lucked out that King Sombra wanted him to recover and just left to attend whatever it was he wanted to attend to. The unicorn just hoped it wouldn’t involve the mares.

Here goes nothing. Private braced himself, ignoring the pain and started to concentrate his magic around the Doctor’s head, wanting to free that first. He slowly started to chip away at the crystal, using just enough forceful burst of magic to crack it then slowly widening the crack. The unicorn would have preferred to have tools to do this, but there were none around and in a pinch, just pure magic would do.

Ugh, using just magic takes forever, how does dad have patience to do this like that, the unicorn grunted, the crack was widening very slowly.

Private really didn’t like how much time this was taking, Sombra could return at any time. The unicorn just wasn’t strong enough to do it faster and he was using a spell his father had taught him. Private didn’t use it that often after he graduated and stopped helping on digs, he was more in the handling ancient relics carefully department.

Finally, the crack encircled the crystal covered muzzle of the Doctor. Using magic to push into the faults, he managed to pull the crystal chunk off. Private dropped the crystal piece to the floor since he wanted to continue to free the rest of the head.

“Private, before you continue, don’t remove the crystal on top of my head, leave a good chunk behind. Believe it or not, this thing is actually blocking that suppression spell Sombra has going. Guess he figured I was harmless all encased in crystal like this. Say wasn’t he controlling you earlier today?” The Doctor began speaking now that his muzzle was free.

“He’s still controlling me, he just doesn’t have that mind control spell on me active,” Private whispered and winched a little, it still hurt to talk.

“Figures,” the time pony said and blinked his eyes a bit when they were finally free. The unicorn began working on the rest of the body. “Always knew that archeology spell of yours would be useful. Leave it to Sombra to think your magic is pathetic and useless just because it’s not on his power level. Guys like that only respect power.”

Private just nodded, rather glad right now that his default mode was not to talk too much. The Doctor wouldn’t be expecting him to respond vocally every time and could usually read his expressions well enough.

“Well the good news is, Celestia knows about us and is intending to come with Luna and use the Elements of Harmony on Sombra, the bad news is, Sombra knows of that plan so he’ll probably be ready for it or is making himself ready for it,” the Doctor said as he watched Private work on his crystal prison, one leg was now free. “Uh, what’s the status on the ladies?”

“Foxy is going to try and sneak into the dungeon to find you, we didn’t know you had been moved here. I don’t know what Dew is planning, she didn’t tell us,” Private whispered and with a grunt freed the second leg.

“That’s possibly bad or possibly good. I know Apple Core, the mare you saw down in the dungeon, should still be free. Maybe Foxy can help her instead. Possibly bad because for all I know Apple Core has been recaptured already and executed or is long gone,” the brown pony tapped his muzzle with a hoof as he considered this. “That leaves Dew, you’re certain you don’t know?”

The unicorn shook his head, but then he reconsidered when remembering Dew’s return from her exploration yesterday. He proceeded to tell the Doctor about that. In the meantime, Private managed to free another leg.

“Hm, she clearly was doing something before she returned. She must have wanted to go back to that, knowing Dew she probably didn’t want to worry either of you about it. That girl has a bad habit of trying to do things on her own,” the Doctor grunted and started to stretch his legs once all four were free. The rest of crystal around his body started crumbling easily away leaving only the chunk on his head.

“Right, you’re free, Sombra will know I freed you, now what?” Private asked and sat down, he glanced at the other ponies. “I should I try freeing them?”

“No don’t bother…” The Doctor sighed and reached to gently pat one of the crystal encased time ponies. “I’m afraid they are no longer with us. One thing Sombra hasn’t figured out, is that we actually can die and I mean die and no regeneration. They have probably already used up all their regeneration energy during their torturous stay with him and were probably on their last limb when he encased them. Even if they were still alive, their minds are probably too far gone. You’ve noticed yourself that King Sombra is not a gentle host.”

“So we just leave them?” the unicorn inquired with a sad sigh of his own.

“I’m afraid we have no choice, now let’s see about getting that collar off you.” The Doctor ran over to the table and started to look over everything on it, then he seemed to realize something and slapped his forehead.

“Stupid, it’s a magic collar, it can’t just be burned off. We’ll just have to unfasten the chain on the floor for now.” The time pony started to gather jars and bottles, carefully inspecting the ingredients before pouring them into a bowl.

Private waited anxiously, knowing that the king could return at any moment. The Doctor finished mixing and balancing the bowl on his back, he ran over to where the chain was fastened to the floor. The unicorn watched when his friend poured the contents of the bowl onto the chain and the link. There was a loud hiss and steam rose up from the liquid as it met metal and crystal.

“Alright, let’s put this earth pony body to good use,” the Doctor chuckled, wrapped a part of the chain around one leg before pulling as hard as he could. The end of the chain snapped loose from the floor, freeing Private.

“What did you do?” the unicorn asked confused and rose up, he didn’t get an answer right away since the Doctor was already hurrying to the door.

“Have to give Sombra this, he’s very well stocked, he had a lot of ingredients that could make various useful acids if you just know how.” The brown pony smiled and carefully opened the door and peeked out of the room.

“Can you make your way back to where you and the ladies are being kept?” he then asked and looked at the unicorn who nodded.

“Great, lead the way then,” The Doctor smiled and gestured for Private to go out first, with him quickly following from behind.

End Chapter 11