Why?
The moment that the blast from the Crystal Heart hit King Sombra the rest of his life was pain. Then, he died.
When King Sombra woke up he stood, confused as to how he was alive. When he looked around he realized, he wasn't. He was standing at the banks of a blackened river surrounded by tar colored sand. He then looked up and saw that there were no clouds, no sky even, just black as far as the eye could see and beyond.
He was not thirsty, he was not cold, he was not hungry, all he felt was empty.
An all consuming emptiness, a void that could not and would not be described through mortal concepts.
Sombra, in a daze, uttered the first words of his coming unlife "Where am I?" The Pale Mare appeared next to him and simply replied "It's time for your walk" And started down a path that was not there previously. King Sombra, still reeling from his revelations just started walking beside The Pale Mare. "I have but one question that I want you to answer on this long and dreary path," The Pale Mare said.
Why?
This one word was spoken softly and at the same time with enough force enough that King Sombra knew he could not refuse to answer lest he face the wrath of The Pale Mare. He also knew the unspoken words The Pale Mare had used with a single syllable 'Why did you decide that a happy place like the Crystal Kingdom deserved a tyrant?' Sombra replied with a sorrow filled utterance "Love."
At the word The Pale Mare, seemingly unsatisfied, said "Explain." and Sombra did.
5 years before the banishment of the Crystal Empire
Somber Heart was in love with the mare of his dreams and Quartz Shine loved him back.
She was dying and there was nothing Somber could do about it.
She accepted it; he didn't
Somber Heart started to research all different schools of magic to try to find a solution. He couldn't find one, at least not ones that were acceptable to the morals of Quartz or the rest of the Kingdom. So he started to research into the forbidden art of dark magic. With him being a natural light mage the self taught dark magic started to corrupt him. He thought himself fine, he was going to save his love and they were going to be happy for the rest of their lives!
His beloved noticed Somber Heart's changing personality so she decided to look around and found his research notes. She was devastated that her love could be using such vile magics so she confronted him about it. It did not go well. He experienced his first Dark Rage when his beloved confronted him and when he awoke, his beloved was taking her own walk.
4 Years before the banishment of the Crystal Empire
After the events the year before Somber Heart started letting his hatred build up. He hated Queen Amore for keeping the cure away from his beloved, He hated the mages for banning the teachings of dark magics, he hated the guards for locking him in the tiny cell he now resided in, he hated himself for killing his beloved Quartz Shine. Then he got an idea, one that was so simple and easy. He would claim the Crystal Kingdom for himself.
So he did. In a single day the Crystal Kingdom became the Crystal Empire and Somber Heart became King Sombra, the tyrant.
1 Year before the banishment of the Crystal Empire
Contrary to what most outside of the Empire thought, King Sombra was fair to his ponies. Everypony was treated as equals by one another because not one pony was given more than another. Everypony was fed the same amount, even King Sombra himself ate the same things as his ponies. Everypony had to work the mines and fields for a certain amount of time. Nopony was happy, but at the same time nopony was miserable. All but King Sombra, he was working with almost all of the Empires resources to find a way to get Quartz Shine back.
1 Week before the banishment of the Crystal Empire
King Sombra made a mistake. He had sent a letter to the Equestrian leadership asking for books on necromancy and soul magic. He had forgotten that outside of his Empire such things were condemned and vilified. The reply came as a full scale invasion of the Crystal Empire. At the time of the invasion all of his ponies were working in the mines or fields, So King Sombra fought the impending army single handedly. Thinking that his Empire was to be razed by Equestria, He 'saved' his ponies by displacing them in time seconds before being sealed away in ice for his crimes against equinity.
Back in the afterlife
The Pale Mare said to Somber "So, you're telling me you did it all to try to save Quartz Shine?" Somber looked back at The Pale Mare and replies "Yes, all of the pain and suffering I've caused was to try and bring back the one I loved and I don't regret a single part of it." The Pale Mare looked at Somber and his determined face and smiled "Good, good because this is the end of the path for you Somber Heart enjoy your afterlife. I have a feeling you will find love again." Somber, with a sad smile on his face, says "The only love I'll ever have is my beloved Quartz Shine, She is the one I have pledged my heart to and even after all these years I hope I can find her again"
The Pale Mare nods at this and says "I see." Before pointing Somber Heart towards a town that had appeared off of the path they were on. The Pale Mare had one last parting sentence as the cloak she wore faded away "The path is not always short and sometimes there is heartache. Soon you may be asked to guide another down the path to the afterlife." Somber was in tears because as the cloak faded Quartz Shine, in all of her beauty, was now standing before Somber Heart.
The End
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- HiddenUnderACouch · 200k words · 218 10 · 4k views
- Cora Zone Unicorn · 2.4k words · 148 19 · 11k views
- canonkiller · 3.8k words · 141 4 · 2k views
- RadBunny · 40k words · 429 6 · 9.9k views
- The Psychopath · 46k words · 118 11 · 3.1k views
- Jack of a Few Trades · 65k words · 47 5 · 1.5k views
- Impossible Numbers · 4.6k words · 21 1 · 1k views
- Azreale · 5.6k words · 15 0 · 798 views
Stats
Page generated in 0.108 seconds
Total duration
1,129 users online
1,759,811 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Yo, this is Ice Star in case ya wanted to know who's looking at your story. Here's my critique:
This part here isn't doing the story flow any favors. If you go with the 'King Sombra is dead' deal then we know it's the Heart that killed him. Removing this would help.
Your scenery is nice but your sentence variation could use work. The first two start with 'When' and could be combined into one with some work. You'll also notice some words I bolded - those are errors! Make the letters lowercase. Try to work on complex sentences if you want to be a writer. Starting with the same word over and over again like this is not a good way to get readers. While none of these errors are bad, they might draw some away from your story.
I would merge this with the previous paragraph.
Try 'And Sombra did.'
This would look nice in italics and help make this stand out from your story.
'She accepted it; he didn't.' This is only your first story so the capitalization errors will be easy to fix. It's nothing to fret about though - I made plenty of mistakes early in my own writing.
Please put these in italics.
Those Ts ought to be lowercase.
Italics.
Conclusion: The italics must be doubled, fix a few errors and show don't tell all the time. You were able to find cover art so that was good but your story is best described with only the Sad/Romance tags so I would reduce the number to just that. You don't need the (First story) note on the front either - it's more fitting for an A/N. Add your story to groups to get it more attention and writing help but don't stop writing!
7722577 What he said.
7722577
7722582
Errors fixed and considerations considered, thank you for the feedback.
Also, the first part was meant to put a little comedic effect into the story.
7722627 Sure thing.
Just be sure to only spam relevant groups.
good job FTW
The idea behind this is cliche as hell but lord knows I love me a cliche romanced villain plot. The general outline of the story is really nice but honestly in the format that it is now it is really cropped and a bit like it is being rushed out of the gates. I tell you this because I genuinely believe that if you expand this, go into detail about the events of somber heart, more in line with letting us experience snapshots of the events as they went down as apposed to the quick recap memory format that it is in now. Seriously this could be an amazing AUstory about Sombra. You would need to show us about Queen Amore and how she actually denies Quartz Shine the cure instead of just telling us that she did. You feel me? Stuff like actually painting us the picture you want to show us instead of describing it to us as a third party. Overall I like the idea, even enough to review it which I rarely bother doing. I would give it a 7/11 for what you have now.
7732697 I did write the story on a whim in about 2 hours, so I know that it's rushed and could be expanded into something amazing, I may do a new story that expands the AU elements of it.
There is more emotion packed into this short than in almost any chapter of any longer story I have ever told, including my non-pony stuff. Bravo! I wish I could learn how you did this.
Dammit Who you made me cry....
8082771 That was kinda the plan :P
So, seeing as you asked for feedback and I'm snooping on your profile...
The characterization of this is weak, especially considering they came out with a much more robust backstory for him in the comic books before you wrote this. You did well to give Sombra a sympathetic story, but there's a difference in the level of extremes between the things that happened to him and the things he did. The snippets you showed to tell his story were good for brevity, but not for actually setting a tone or giving the details that would really sell this: you needed to elaborate on it, perhaps it would've been much better as a monologue, where you could have him raving about what he did and why it was all justified and why he wasn't a tyrant but a fair ruler who's people were no less happy than he was.
This isn't bad, but this is about the amount of detail and tone I would put into an outline, not a completed work. If I wrote this I would have rewritten it to have a stronger tone or something before releasing it.