4. King
And that was that. The summoning was done.
Paint closed his eyes as he spat the final syllable out, sinking into a sea of vertigo. Cruel shadows whirled and spun. Dark whispers mocked him, just past the edge of hearing. He felt cold breath on the back of his neck, and went rigid — and then the wind stirred again, and he squeezed his eyes tighter shut and hovered at the knife's edge of tension, waiting.
What was it going to feel like, to have his love eaten? Would she drain it the way one drained energy from a spell, leaving him hollow and writhing in the agony of incompleteness? Would she sink her fangs into his throat, causing the rest of him to bleed out into the final darkness of oblivion? Would she be merciful, and make that sharpened love just vanish as if it had never been? Or would she be cruel, and taunt him over his naivete as he begged for release?
… Why was she holding back?
Paint took a shuddering breath, vomit rising as the possibilities grew darker and darker. This was just torture, now. And the worst part was that regardless of everything he had done to reinvent himself, he was going to meet his end while waiting. In the end, that was the true horror of the dark: there was no way to escape himself.
Well, not if he could help it.
Paint clenched his teeth so hard his jaw trembled. He lit his horn, drawing from that cold and bitter spiky place, letting everything else dissolve away.
The shadows had fangs.
He should have been afraid of that. But two could play at that game.
Sombra drew in a deep breath, then let out a defiant roar, eyes snapping open.
He glanced wildly around. His roar died away. The energy dissipated from his horn.
He was alone in a chilly schoolyard.
When Sombra yanked the trap door open and stalked down the stairs, The Loveless was empty in more ways than one.
Instead of the ghost-blue magelights that shone in a part of the spectrum which eyes couldn't see, the wall sconces had been filled with normal lights, warmer and brighter. The paint on the walls was a dull and dingy black rather than the shadow of infinite space, and the skulls on the wall were yellowed and cracked rather than a bleached shining white. Without the exotic lighting, the furniture was faded — and even stained with old spilled drinks. The bar to one side of the room was a dark-stained brown wood, and the stone floor was a muted grey matching Sombra's new coat.
It felt so strange to see colors here.
Sombra glanced around the room. A wet mop was propped against one of the tables, next to a bucket of dingy grey water, and a section of the floor gleamed with moisture. And the room wasn't wholly empty: near the bucket, a black-coated earth pony sat calmly on a lumpy sofa, blending in with its dark upholstery, watching him with piercing eyes and a flat expression.
He shoved a table out of the way and took some slow steps straight toward her. "Bring me Loveless," he growled.
"You speak to her," the pony said in a subdued voice matching the decor.
Sombra advanced, towering over the pony. "Don't test me. I know what I saw when we met."
The pony closed her eyes for a moment — and then space distorted around her with a sickly green glow, and she grew insectile and hard-edged, with a bleached-grey faceplate.
"If you prefer," she purred in a familiar tone now out of place.
Sombra was still for a moment, then his face curled with rage. "You. Lied."
Loveless stared into his eyes before answering, calm and even. "Of course I did, child. I am a performer. It is my life and livelihood to lie so that ponies feel good about themselves."
"Do I look like I feel good?"
"Would you be here if you did?" Loveless countered. She leaned back into the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. "I can help, child, but not when your emotions are such a tempest. Let us speak of what happened to poison your love."
Sombra's rage simmered over. He lit his horn to seize a stool from the floor near the bar, whipping it to the floor with a sudden crack that left him brandishing a jagged length of wood. "You lied," he growled, "is what happened."
Loveless shot to her hooves and scrambled back frantically, hinds slamming into the wall behind her and sliding down to the floor. Sombra stalked forward, watching her eyes track the point of the makeshift spear.
For the first time, fear edged into her voice, and her words quickened. "Yes, Drying Paint. I lied about your link to the alicorn. Every being wishes to hear that their love is unique — the substance of legends. But it was never about her — for either of us. I told you what you needed to hear to become the pony you wished to be."
He lifted the spear. Loveless flinched. Then, faintly: "Please, Paint."
"Unbelievable," Sombra snarled. "This is just a game to you. Maybe I shouldn't have expected any better from a princess who's never had to care about anyone not on her level — but you? Do you think you can put on the darkness like a cloak and take it off when the sun rises?"
Loveless raised a trembling hoof. "But that's what the darkness is. Many ponies can't embrace their pain without permission to explore it. The lie of the shadows provides that permission, and a safe place to connect with others similarly incomplete." She turned pleading eyes up to him. "But there's no reason to cling to a lie that rips you apart. I can feel your hurt, Paint; it nourishes me not at all and you even less. Set the lie aside and let me help you."
He was still for a moment. The spear trembled in his horngrip.
Then, softly:
"You had that chance," Sombra said. "You broke your oath."
Storm clouds were casting the Empire into shadow as Sombra walked back up the stairs and out of The Loveless.
He paused in the doorway, feeling the wind nip at his skin. He glanced down at the glow spilling out over the threshold. In front of him, darkness and ice. Behind, light and warmth.
He snorted at the symbolism. Useless. As if there was some sort of choice to be made. As if there was a reason to go back.
He did, however, pause for a moment to look back down the stairs. The flames were cheerfully growing now, their red glow dancing madly into the hallway. Acrid black smoke billowed out from the trapdoor, filling the ground-floor room and beginning to escape into the world outside.
He smiled, shouldered his cloak, and stepped outside.
"Well," Sombra whispered as he left, "everyone walks into the darkness alone."
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First comment reserved for spoiler-free author's notes.
I don't have a whole lot to say at 8 am of a workday after pulling an all-nighter to get the final edits done, but after you've finished reading, my (spoilerriffic!) meltdown when the original version scored a Writeoff silver might prove entertaining.
I've added nearly 4,000 words since then, fixing many of the problems of the original story, and hopefully smoothing out enough of the rest that I can feel good about the finished product. I owe large debts of gratitude to GaPJaxie and Haze for their prereading efforts and excellent analysis; I was spending a lot of time flailing unproductively at the story and at least half of the improvements here are a direct result of one of their suggestions.
And now, I'm very much uncertain whether I love or hate this ending. Probably a bit of both? But I got to repeat myself: this is not the way I was expecting this story to unfold. And... I really do think this is a unique take on Sombra's backstory.
… oh.
Of Clubs.
I don't know why I didn't see that at first.
Not bad, I am lookiing forward to reading the rest
Wow. Took you long enough to get this over here...
Now I, uh, just gotta read it...
8661013
Glad you enjoyed it!
Though, uh, you're commenting on the end of Chapter 4, and that's the end of the story.
8661036
Oh! Whoops!
Exquisite. This is at once brilliantly thought out, beautifully tragic... and weirdly hilarious. To think, one of the greatest monsters in the history of Equestria spawned from a high school dweeb with a crush desperately trying to get the hot goth transfer student to notice him. I can only imagine what Luna thought when the time came to confront him for the last time. And what Moon Shot thought of what his friend had become.
Hmm. Actually, Moon Shot might have been instrumental to any resistance against Sombra. If it took a miracle to defeat him...
In any case, fantastic work. Thank you for it.
8661112
You think so? That pic is what brought me here!
~Skeeter The Lurker
hello darkness my old friend
help i think i might fall in love with a horizon story again
8660981
The response to the original Writeoff version was very polarized; everyone seemed to like the ideas, and "not sure if I like where it went with them" was pretty rampant in a way that I don't think this was ever going to 100% escape.
I'll take "unique."
The entire fourth chapter, among other bits, is new, and a direct attempt to narrow the story's thematic focus in the direction that I hoped would give it the most coherence.
Thank you for reading, and your kind comments!
8661003
Now, if you really want your mind blown, ask yourself who the title refers to.
8661023
I look forward to your thoughts when you do!
8661071
Thank you!
I had not even considered that, and I am perfectly okay with that worming its way into my head as dangling sequel bait.
8661344
No worries — my other stories are pretty chill about sharing.
Very, very, very strange. And odd. I'll be thinking about this one a while.
I give this story: 🍆🍆🍆🍆🥒🥒🥒
8661365
I would like my mind blown please
8661454
I choose to believe that you normally rate stories from 1-5 🌽 and I have completely destroyed your rating scale.
8661615
Actually, I don't rate stories with any real rating system, so the joke's on you! You've gotta figure out exactly what that rating means, if anything, because my bookshelf notification won't tell you much. All the contest stories have gone in the same shelf thus far! Mwahahaha!
And that's a very corny suggestion on how to rate stories.
8661619
If it was a WriteOff story, i probably haven't read it unless it's been posted here, but I've read some stuff, yo. Out of the three thousand some stories I've read, this is by far Weirdest Historical Fic.
Wear it with pride:🌟
"What was it going to feel like, to have his love eaten?" feels out of place. We have no indication that Paint understand who Loveless actually is, so the word "eaten" feels out of place. I'd go with "taken away" or some such.
And I don't understand the motivation of Paint in the second to last scene at all, which throws off suspension of disbelief for me. I don't understand what "You. Lied." is supposed to refer to, and why is he so angry with Loveless, and... well, pretty much the entire conversation. My only guess is that he's angry about Loveless not showing up when summoned, but that doesn't make much sense.
Oh, and what the hell "You broke your oath." is supposed to refer to?
My only guess is that Paint could be mad about Luna and the entire affair and taking it out on Loveless, and the phrase is just a meaningless statement for extra pathos and/or a justification of his action to himself that he knows to be untrue, but that explanation feels like a stretch. If that's the case, it should have been communicated more clearly.
But, all of that could be due to me missing something obvious and/or just being unable to imagine Paint's mindset at that moment. So, uh, feel free to disregard this, I guess. Also, I've read the original Writeoff version and my perception can be colored by that.
I liked the original Writeoff version, by the way, and the edits done to the first three chapters improved it even more.
8661771
Thanks for the feedback!
1) "eaten" was never explicitly communicated but it was pretty heavily implied back when Loveless was initially establishing the offer: she did straight-up stop talking for a moment to run her tongue over her fangs. Still, yeah, that could be stronger. (And I can't really edit it right now due to having submitted this as a contest entry and the entry deadline having passed; I think contest ethics would require me not to stealth-edit the story in between entry and judging. But I'll take it under advisement.)
2) You guessed correctly that he was upset about the previous scene, where he invoked Loveless' clause to free her of her oath (back in Chapter 2, where she backed him up to the wall and swore she wouldn't eat his love unless he asked her to) so she would show up and eat the love that was hurting him so much after Luna's disappearance — and then Loveless did absolutely nothing, and he was not only stuck with a painful, bitter love that had never really been requited, but he also put himself through a totally unnecessary freak-out waiting for her to appear. Hopefully that gives a little more context for why he'd be so upset about it?
"You broke your oath" is a callback to that, so it's not quite so meaningless as you suggest, but it's worth noting that it's also true that Paint is putting more weight on it than the situation actually justifies. Loveless never did actually promise to do anything in the eating-unwanted-love department, she just swore she wouldn't unless he hit the escape button.
And, yeah, if it has to be explained in comments instead of being clear in the story, that's a problem with the story. I blame deadline pressures on the new material. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Still, I'm glad to hear that this is an improvement over the Writeoff version! That was the goal of the edits and I'm grateful they largely worked.
8661803
That is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone's ever going to say about this story.
8661830
Well, this is what Loveless actually said:
Which is rather vague. So I can totally see him wondering what "lifting the burden of his passion wholly and irrevocably" even meant, especially after seeing those fangs. After all, fangs are generally used to inflict physical damage; the thing that could affect emotions - magic - is typically channeled through horns. Given that, a wording as specific as "What was it going to feel like, to have his love eaten?" is unexpected.
So, all the right concerns for all the wrong reasons
Well, see above what Loveless actually said. She pretty much promises to do it - not in the oath, but still. My problem with this is that Paint says the words in a school hoofball field, and gets really angry at Loveless when it doesn't work. If I were him, I'd just feel really stupid after the scare - of course she's not omnipresent, nobody is, so of course she didn't hear him. The words were never implied to be a spell, and he didn't cast any distant communication spells either. The obvious next step is seeking out Loveless and saying the same thing to her face. What's worse, his final decision seems to hinge on the assumption that simply saying those words anywhere would do something, and I just can't see where he got that notion.
I guess Paint's irrational behavior after the scare could be explained by him being mad with grief or some such, but if that's the case, it should be communicated a lot more clearly.
That's probably the case. Admittedly, I feel that right now the story is stronger with just 3 chapters instead of 4.
This whole thing felt kinda school shootery. Like Sombra's just that one edgy kid in school who actually buys all the 'dark and brooding' stuff she hears. I guess my main thing is that he went from 0-60 pretty quickly. Was it the ritual that made him go that far in the end or did he always have that in him? Still, good story though.
8662112
Yeah, that's a reasonable take. The whole thing is villain backstory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well now. That went sideways, then careened downhill, then exploded.
Really unique origin story.
8664104
Well put! And thank you.
8661615
Which of your stories would you rate highly on the corny scale?
That was thoroughly enjoyable! You did a lot of very clever and sneaky things in this story, and I love that sort of thing. Echoing/reinforcing Paint's disillusionment with the appearance of the club during off-hours, was a particularly cool thing.
This goes on my favorites shelf!
My favorite part is the part I helped on!
Ah yes, this reminds me of my dyed black youth.
You captured the bombastic emotion driven life of a besotted teenager perfectly.
8695621
Thank you! Glad it was enjoyable.
Awww yeeaaaah!
This new ending is magnificent. It does a more satisfying job of wrapping up Loveless’ involvement in the story, and it helps cement the changes Paint experienced by making him a much more active participant in his fate.
8712651
Glad you (re-)enjoyed!
Okay my friend, this isn astounding. I absolutely adore it. It's such a good background for Sombra, even if it's a little funny when broken down. For about a third of the story I was like...what's with Paint? Is he going to fight Sombra? But nah, of course not. he becomes Sombra.
And your characters beyond Sombra and Luna were amazing and we'll rounded and just...I dunno.
Again, I just really like this alot. I hope you do really well in the contest.
Well, this is it. Your story is the final story of my reading for the Lunabra contest, and I have one word to say about what I just read. Fuck. Holy fuck. That... Is two words, but I don't care. I absolutely loved this. It enthralled me. It gripped me. It brought me to the edge of my metaphorical seat for a whole 20 minutes. What you've crafted is incredible, and deserves far more attention than it has.
I thank you for submitting this, and I wish you luck in the contest, my friend.
I wish I could like this more than once, lol.
What a silly, strange, stupendous story this is.
The sheer oddness of it makes me just... really love it. It just has this certain energy, this delightful charm, and yet it packs so much emotional weight into such a neatly contained peace. It's wonderfully pony-esque.
I dig this a lot. It's exactly as off-kilter as I was expecting when I found it, and these are exactly the kinds of stories that I enjoy finding. Great work, my dude.
That’s a very clever title.
8777108
Thank you!
Oh my god.
Pretty good story. Getting some Mexican Day of the Dead vibes here.
8793694
That's probably mostly a factor of the cover art, which is Dia de los Muertos artwork. I wanted something that incorporated the major themes/characters of the story — Luna, the gothic/death/skull aesthetic, and Loveless' club costume — and while the art isn't accurate as to who's which part of that, it nailed the feel I wanted.
Thanks for reading/enjoying!
8786182
Best comments.
(This is p. much exactly the reaction I was going for.)
As South Park has said, burn down, burn down Hot Topic.
8805508
Obligatory Bloodhound Gang. ^..^
I can’t believe how calmly and smoothly this jumps between amusing and shocking, mundane and insane. In answer to your closing comment on the write off thread: how could this not win a medal?
8832048
See, my problem was, I wouldn't have thought that would be a compliment. Shows what I know.
Thanks!
The moment she is focused on you makes you feel alive
And after she is through, you hope you only just survive--
Not unlike being stung by ev'ry bee inside the hive!...
8823566
I tried to make some sense of it all.
But I could see it made no sense at all.
By far my favorite from Seattle's Angels Round 136 Particularly the fleeting glimpses of celestia and lunas relationship, This is defiantly my head cannon for Sombra now. I love the unexpected hammer blow right into the "love" story you might have been expecting, and the whole aesthetic of the bar. More rebellious luna Please.
You realize, of course, this is only missing two things until it reaches true god-status... a PaulAsaran review, and an RCL feature...
Though, I don't think the latter could happen
Seriously though, this has been in so many things
I have to say, the ending to this didn’t quite sit right with me. While I really appreciated how harshly real it was for love at first sight to not quite go both ways, I didn’t feel like Paint had done enough to deserve a cruel ending like that, which, combined with Sombra’s eventual apparent death in canon, made this a bit bleaker than I would’ve liked. Which I think was what it was trying to do (Dark tag and all that), but I guess that just wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
The Loveless, though. Wow. I cannot remember the last time I’ve read a scene being set so vividly, to the point where just the bits of the second and third chapters that take place there made the whole thing totally worth reading. And, as others have said, the contrast between how it’s so overwhelming and alluring when Paint first goes there and so underwhelming and desolate at the end was a beautiful touch.
Thanks for writing this! While bits weren’t quite my cup of tea, I really liked a lot of it.