Embers of an Empire

by Beware The Carpenter

5 - Heroes of Legend

The next week went slowly, too slowly for Daring’s taste but there was nothing she could do. Pearl’s body had been exhausted before fighting for her life and having Somnambula magically conjure her tattoos apparently took a dangerous amount of effort. For two days Somnambula rested while Daring recovered what was left of Pearl’s camp and foraging food for both of them.

After that Somnambula had had enough of camping in a tent and decided it was time to move to a hotel, specifically the most expensive hotel in the area. Daring tried suggesting something cheaper and got a light smack and reminder that once they had Sombra back money wouldn’t be an object, so they did what she wanted.

At night when they slept with the amulet wrapped around both their fetlocks so Sombra could visit them he always chose to make love to her first but the dreams lasted long enough for Daring to eventually get her turn, so she guessed it was OK. During the day they took mostly even turns in holding the amulet and hearing Sombra whisper in their heads, and that was when Daring felt most special.

When they were alone Sombra would let his facade of impenetrable dignity and endless power fall and let himself be vulnerable with Daring in a way he never did when Somnambula was present. The story of deliberately getting thrown into the lake as part of some clever ploy to escape Celestia’s agents, knowing help was on the way was false. The reality was a much more embarrassing story of being stuck with a lunatic stallion who when Sombra offered him a life free of Celestia’s tyranny and do the things he’d always wanted responded by peeing in a communal swimming pool and things had only gotten weirder from there.

Jeopardy had cradled him, letting him vent his frustrations which were mostly with himself that he’d attempted melding with such an ill-suited host and soon the two of them were laughing at the oddity of it all. She was the only person Sombra had known since becoming king who he could ever talk to like this.

Welkin?

No, not Welkin. Welkin could be compassionate, she could relate to Sombra in ways that only another alpha unicorn could and she never berated for ‘unkingly weaknesses’ like Somnambula would, but her unpredictability and dark sense of humor made it impossible to truly be vulnerable with her.

While Sombra loved all three of his wives, marrying Somnambula and Welkin both had political angles making Jeopardy stand out as being the only one he married simply because he wanted to. It made her special and that made Somnambula jealous whether she would admit it or not.

Somnambula had worked incredibly hard to earn the privileges of adult royalty; she was a prodigy shaman, apex flier, decent administrator, freakishly good at extracting information from prisoners and was deadly in a fight so long as she didn’t start showing off or ‘savoring’ her victory. Daring also knew without being told that Somnambula was hotter than she was and didn’t want to force Sombra to say it. But underneath it all, despite being a hundred miles off spoiled, she was still always going to be a palace brat who would never understand what it meant to come from nothing like Sombra and Jeopardy had done.

When Jeopardy had shown up at the crystal empire after fleeing murder charges in her own eyrie with nothing but two coppers, a rusted knife and a helmet to her name. She pledged to serve seven years in the army for citizenship and a small patch of land and through skill, hard work, and some calculated gambles she became one of the most powerful mares of the empire.

When there was evidence of an assassination plot against her life, Somnambula had been very creative imagining how someone might try to kill her and how to defend herself. The fact that all her scenarios involved the assassin being an apex flier with shamanic tattoos who would slavishly obey ancient codes of chivalry to the letter while exploiting obscure loopholes based on changes in language over the centuries did not seem to bother her. When Sombra chose Jeopardy to be her bodyguard, Jeopardy had been able to gather the few clues they had on the killer to build a psychological profile of the assassin, put herself in their shoes, and ultimately arrested the earth pony janitor who Somnambula never looked twice at.

While Somnambula might have been a better administrator, Sombra wouldn’t have left her in charge alone. Jeopardy had had been one of the rare few who would have understood the plight of the poor and would have had the courage to stand up to Somnambula without fighting her over every little detail so that nothing ever got done. Together they actually made a pretty good team until Mistmane came along and was a better administrator than Jeopardy, Somnambula and Sombra combined.

When it was Somnambula’s turn to hold Sombra, Daring would practice talking with Jeopardy. Daring still couldn’t hear ‘words’ like she could with Sombra and Somnambula, something about Jeopardy never having had magical abilities made it difficult for her to ‘talk’ so it was more like an incredibly talented miming librarian pointing her to the right chapters from Jeopardy ’s memories.

When holding Somnambula’s phylactery the memories she saw had been only of Sombra and were almost exclusively sensual. At first, Daring had Somnambula treasured the physical highlights but now she suspected it was because that was all that their marriage ever had going for it. With Jeopardy the memories had been less dramatic but more meaningful. She remembered conversations she had had with Sombra ranging from political to philosophical to personal, breakfasts they’d shared on open balconies as they watched the sun rise. He’d come to her when he was feeling low and needed a pickup and she’d come to him when she was happy and wanted someone to celebrate with. Jeopardy and Sombra had been made for each other and he was not the only person that Jeopardy had fond memories of.

From what they could piece together from Jeopardy ’s memories and Daring’s history lessons, after Celestia conquered the crystal empire she placated the crystal ponies by taking away their history. Most of their heroes were kept mostly the same, albeit with minor changes but Sombra was recast entirely as the ruthless tyrant Celestia had rescued them from while his accomplishments and actions were attributed to a mostly fictitious wizard named Starswirl the Bearded.

The real Starswirl was nothing but a slimy old politician who had drafted the charter granting Celestia emergency powers over all Equestria’s armed forces. Powers she was supposed to give up once the war was over but seemed to have kept and expanded upon in the centuries since the war. The spells he was attributed with inventing were the work of Clover the Clever and Mistmane and the great deeds had been mostly Sombra.

Mistmane? Chancellor Mistmane was the granddaughter of the great archmage Clover the Cleaver. Magic had skipped over her mother’s generation, so Clover was the only one who ever really got her and had unofficially apprenticed her from when she was just five years old. She spent her entire childhood and early adult years in Canterlot helping her grandfather invent spells for the betterment of all ponykind. Mistmane barely tolerated their work being attributed to Starswirl to boost his credibility but everything fell apart when Clover died and Celestia took everything.

Bit and pieces were dolled out to the masses in standardized spell books but the real magic she hoarded for herself. Sometimes she shared a little more with the lackeys whom she indoctrinated from childhood and even then she only gave a select few ‘forbidden’ spells to each one so no individual had enough power to challenge her.

Scrying wasn’t hard but but if everyone could do it people would learn how to ward against it and then Celestia couldn’t spy on whoever she wanted so it became dark magic for a trusted few. Did necromancy drive people insane? No, why would it? That made no sense except that Celestia never had even a flicker of ability for it would weaken her power if a comprehensive education required teachers other than herself.

Mistmane was given a simple ultimatum to cooperate as a teacher in Celestia’s school, teaching only what deemed appropriate or leave with nothing. She chose the latter, wandering for years before returning, starving, desperate and humiliated into Celestia’s ‘forgiving’ arms. She never told Celestia where she’d been but her inveigle flattery won over Celestia’s trust nonetheless.

That winter Mistmane ‘liberated’ every book, parchment and artifact from the Starswirl The Bearded archive in one night, right from under the noses of a platoon of royal guards and a hundred protective wardings. She loaded everything, including herself into a flotilla of barrels and navigated it straight down the five hundred yard waterfall out of Canterlot.

Sombra was there to catch her, as agreed, with a trade caravan which had already been leaving Canterlot to return to the Crystal Empire where Mistmane donated the entire collection to the local library on the condition it remain available to anyone willing to take the risks of spell casting. Did she blow herself up testing some of her advanced experiments, horrifically scarring her for life? Hell Yes. But that was the risk which she chose to take pursuing her passion; she’d needed no one’s permission and she had no regrets.

Did Sombra like her? Everyone liked Mistmane. She had a way of even getting along with Somnambula. Romantically? They’d been engaged but after her skin became a swamp of puss filled sores that never healed Sombra wasn’t nearly polite enough to pretend he was attracted to her anymore.

It was surprising how much Celestia had exaggerated Sombra’s power level, but in hindsight it made sense. A single heart twisted by mindless cruelty into an engine of elemental destruction and all ponykind being united in love and friendship against it made convenient story. Thousands of ponies with thousands of personal reasons opposing Celestia and her army which was also held together by a myriad of reasons begged for more context and questions Celestia didn't’ want to answer.

Yes, Sombra was powerful, but a platoon of competent soldiers could have taken him down and if Celestia had ever had the courage to come out from her ivory walls she’d have also been killed by a platoon.

The book had only spoken twice. Once when it requested it be sat on whenever possible and later to remind Somna that she owed her seven young buffalo from some wager they’d made over something that made Somna blush and sit harder, muffling it’s voice.

Somnambula spent the first days doing very little except bossing her around and going to the spa to get her coat and mane dyed to match their original colors. Daring tried suggesting keeping a low profile meant wearing a cloak but Somnambula absolutely refused to hide or even speak about her tattoos and scowled at anyone who stared too much. Daring was going to press the issue until Jeopardy shows her images of camping with windigos as Celestia hid the sun with even Rockhoof bundled under heavy furs while Somnambula ordered pairs of unicorns to follow her around in shifts, feeding energy into the glyphs she used to cast heat spells so she wouldn’t freeze to death.

Eventually, Daring came back from a shopping trip having finally found the caviar Somnambula wanted to see her sitting in front of the silver mirror she’d had delivered and was… sewing the glass? Without speaking Somnambula gestured for Daring to sit next to her on Welkin’s grimoire and with a gesture, the mirror seemed to ignite with scolding flames.

When it cleared there was a brilliant amaranth and amber unicorn and a cutie-mark of a blazing sun. She reared determinedly in a vast stone room surrounded by several layers of wide pillars, throwing spells out of her horn, arms and even her tail at four… maybe five orbs flying erratically around her. Every time she struck one of the orbs it changed color and after a minute a pattern emerged of blasting them with either telekinesis, fire or a mixture of both depending on what color the orb was.

Daring guessed it was some kind of training exercise as more and more orbs flew into the room, orbiting around other orbs of different colors at high speeds and weaving behind the stone pillars forcing. Daring had to admit the mare was doing a flaming good job and even Somnambula hummed in approval as the pyromage ricocheted a meteor off one pillar to strike an orb that was hiding behind another. Welkin started making exaggerated snoring sounds and then a loud yawn, “Bored!”.

Somnambula hesitated a moment then waved her hoof across the mirror to a scene of a blue unicorn wearing a frilly pink dress having a tea party with two tiny fillies and four stuffed bears causing Welkin to burst out into retching sounds until Somnambula swiped them away. Next came a cream unicorn with a purple moon cutie-mark, thick glasses and a business suit who seemed to be presenting some batch of charts to a board room. They couldn’t hear what was being said but her face showed the hope in her voice and then withering disappointment of rejection as someone they couldn’t see followed by her desperate attempts to suck up to whatever boss or investor was rejecting her proposal. Welkin made several suggestions for the mare to use that big magic to melt some heads but once it was clear the meeting wasn’t going to turn into an all out mage brawl Welkin lost patience, “For someone who looks like they don’t get any flank they sure know how to suck. Find me someone neurotic!”

Somnambula seemed to be weaving invisible strands together then turned the mirror again. This time the mage was purple with a starburst cutie-mark who seemed to be talking to herself which pleased Welkin immensely but got disappointed when it turned out she was talking to a baby dragon in the corner. She lasted longer than any of the others but when Somnambula adjusted the view to get a better look at the room there was a large framed picture of the mare hugging Celestia with a look of adoring trust and Somnambula passed on her with the silent agreement of Welkin and Daring.

The last image was… dark. Daring assumed that whoever was there must be sleeping with heavy curtains drawn but there was a pony-shaped silhouette moving in front of the mirror. She turned to put out the lights and waited for her eyes to adjust but before she could see more than a basic shape Welkin whooped, “That one! I want that one!”

Comments

[Beware The Carpenter]

Stories for all the other pillars will be in in the extended version.

Yes, that first candidate was Sunset Shimmer. She exists in my cannon but the porthole to Canterlot High does not.