The Life of Penumbra Heartbreak

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 42: Immortality

Time had run short, and yet, in its last minutes, it felt so very long. A pony who had come to be called Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz sat alone in what the surface-dwellers supposedly called darkness, although even though the blackened corundum optics of his mask he could see perfectly. The dim light of above pouring down through the dust, forming blinding beams that dotted his laboratory and the machines he had built within it. Yet it was not the light of the Crystal Empire, nor the light of the sun. It was new and terrible, and in a way, Al’Hrabnaz was glad that he could not see it clearly.

As he sat, he slowly turned the thin vellum pages of a great book bound in a curios sort of leather sewn from many multicolored pieces. It was one of many, but perhaps his greatest, the sum total of this machine’s secrets, the nature of the soul, and many things that no mortal pony was meant to know- -but yet that he had managed to discover.

The ancients had known. His own people, perhaps, before they had been forced to retreat into the depths of the planet countless millennia ago- -but the Exmoori for sure. The ponies whose ruins Al’Hrabnaz had dedicated his life to, who had built the Crystal Citadel and first harnessed the power of the Heart of Darkness. What purpose it had served them the morlock knew not, but knew that while his own kind had survived the Exmoori had vanished long ago, destroyed by their own hubris.

In nineteen years, he had come so very far. Reassembling what was lost. Rebuilding the knowledge of technology that had been purged from the land in ancient times had been his goal- -but his work had moved beyond that. Much to his own horror, he had reached far beyond simple delineations, into realms of mathematics that transcended reality and penetrated unspeakable planes at ghastly angles. The horrible conclusion- -the irony of his existence- -was that there was no difference. No difference at all.

Perhaps, if he had cause to, he would have understood the young princess far better than any others could. For his kind, only the nobility were permitted a childhood. One had to grow fast, especially a male, lest he become a meal for his sisters. He had been assigned a destiny, yet chosen a different one. In a different time and in a different place, they might have been friends. But it was too late for both. Especially Al’Hrabnaz.

He set the great volume down and sighed, taking a deep breath of the same air he had been breathing and re-breathing for nearly two decades. One of his birds landed beside him and he stroked it gently, unable to feel its feathers through the steel of the suit that kept him alive.

“This,” he said in his native clicking, chittering language, still stroking the bird as more landed around him, “is what must be done.”

He stood, leaving his book behind, wondering who might look upon his writings- -and what they might think. Perhaps they would call him mad. Yet he knew everything he had ever written to be true, and that thought made him more afraid than anything else in the world. There were so many doors, and each was more terrible than the last.

At the far end of the room were several large cages. The subjects within whimpered and cried out as their master approached, retreating to the back of the cages. Al’Hrabnaz stopped at one of them, and he slowly turned his head to look in. A mare of the crystal-race, and a younger filly. They were not related, yet they were holding one another as if they were mother and daughter. Seeing them like that, Al’Hrabnaz hated them- -and yet thought of Sombra. He ruminated on this only for a moment, and it steeled his resolve. That this must be done.

The dial in his chestplate clicked to the side, and the mechanism of the cage door clicked and rotated in unison. Then the door unlatched and opened. The ponies inside were weeping by this point.

“Please!” pleaded the mare, “she’s just a little girl!”

“Go,” said Al’Hrabnaz, speaking in their language instead of his own.

They stared at him, confused.

“Go,” he repeated, his dial continuing to turn as the other cages sprung open. “All of you hideous primitives, leave me. NOW. Unless you want your last sight to be the beaks of my birds.”

“But...but where do we go?”

“I don’t care. It does not matter anyway. I no longer have a use for you.” He paused. “Please...just leave me alone.”

The crystal ponies did not need to be told again. They stood up and stumbled through the dark toward the exits. Only the filly among them paused. She had been raised in the darkness, and could see. She turned back to Al’Hrabnaz, and the look in her eyes made him hate her even more. She, the slave, the prisoner, the experimental subject- -she pitied him. Perhaps she knew. Or, more terribly, perhaps not.

Then Gxurab was left all alone, with his crows, about to in turn be alone forever. But it had to be done.

He approached his machine. It was hideously silent. How he wished it would tick or hum, but it did not. There was only silence and dust as he picked up the largest of its cables and connected it to his technetium dial. There was pain. It was bad, but he expected it.

Several internal mechanisms activated within Al’Hrabnaz’s armor, and a warning bell sounded inside his helmet. He ignored it as the plates of his armor ejected and dropped away, revealing the gray flesh beneath. As the air touched his skin, Al’Hrabnaz suppressed a scream. It was so very cold.

His heating system began to shut down as his dial began to roar withing, the tiny gears spinning so fast that they almost felt as though they would not hold together- -and yet they would. Al’Hrabnaz knew they would.

The cold was terrible. He felt it in every inch of his skin, down to his bones. He began to collapse to the ground, unable to stand. Not that it mattered. He simply knelt on the crystal floor, slowly becoming numb.

Then he reached for his helmet. With several shaking motions as he shivered, he disconnected the holding seals and pulled it off. The light nearly blinded him instantly, but he no longer cared. He took a deep breath and felt as the tissue inside his lungs froze instantly. It was agonizing, but it was the first new air he had inhaled since he had left the city where he was born. This was the air of the Crystal Empire. The air of his home.

He stared into the machine, into the singularity that made its core. The ravens surrounded him, waiting and watching. As if they knew, and had taken their place by conscious choice instead of by instinct.

The dial began counting down. Al’Hrabnaz tried to take another breath, but found he could not. He had only been permitted one. But it had been enough.

“Hail the Witchking,” he said, expending his last bit of air. “Hail Sombra...for eternity.”

The dial fired, and its central crystal was propelled through his chest. As it did, the machine engaged. In its hideous silence, the only sound was Al’Hrabnaz’s scream. It had been a terrible sound, but none had been around to hear it. And it had been mercifully brief.

Comments

[alamais]

Oh hai, Flock.