Chapter 1
Once upon a time within the frozen wasteland that made up large portions of the Crystal Empire, a patrol found a coal-black unicorn colt abandoned in the snow. Despite his lack of clothing, he seemed unbothered by the cold, and there was no sign of how he had come to be alone in the middle of nowhere, nor would he respond to any questions. Not knowing what else to do, they brought him back to the capital city (confusingly also called the Crystal Empire, as no other city in the empire mattered according to the crystal ponies) so they could make him somepony higher-ranked’s problem.
In the capital, after some time and a few sweet treats, he was coaxed into giving some answers, but only in the form of a single nonsense word: “sombra.” The decision was reached that he was not a sign of any threat to the Empire, clearly not a crystal pony, and probably brain-damaged, and therefore he should be thrown out of the city and forgotten. However, before this plan could be carried out, the Crystal Empress showed up, having apparently heard about this mystery colt, and decreed that she would take him in, and additionally nopony was to speak of this under any circumstances. And so it was done, and nopony dared ask why.
Sombra, as the Empress named him, got in a certain sense the finest childhood money could buy. He received only the finest material possessions, whatever he might ask for, and he had the best tutors in all the empire to teach him, first simply to speak Equish and then to understand all the topics a well-rounded colt ought to know. And yet, as such stories always go, he was sad, for he was lonely. His adoptive mother did seem to love him, and his happiest moments were those when she could play with him or read him a bedtime story, but most of her time was occupied by ruling, and even when she was at home she would only show him affection if they were completely alone. And beyond her, he had only his tutors and the palace servants for company, as he was never allowed to leave the palace or even be seen by anypony who didn’t need to be aware of his existence.
So, naturally, eventually he snuck out to see the city. He wandered without destination for over an hour, marveling at the shining crystal buildings, until he was abruptly brought back to street level in a most unpleasant manner.
“Gimme your valuables,” demanded the dirty crystal colt he was only now noticing in front of him.
“And don’t even think about fighting back,” added another voice behind Sombra.
It was at this point that Sombra realized he had been walking through a maze of narrow, dirty alleys for the past ten minutes, and even if he could get past these ponies he probably couldn’t remember how to get out of this area. “I don’t have—” he started to say, before he was interrupted by an enraged scream.
The scream turned out to be coming from a filly who had just come around the corner behind Sombra. Although she was a unicorn, she charged the pony behind Sombra and simply tackled him and began pummeling him with all four hooves. By this point, the other colt was already running, and soon her victim broke free and similarly fled.
“AND DON’T COME BACK!” she screamed at his retreating form. “Celestia, I hate those two. They think they own this place.”
“Thank you for. . . um . . . saving me?” Sombra said, a little stunned by the sudden display of violence.
“What? Oh. I guess I did. You’re welcome. My name’s Blinding Truth, by the way.”
“I’m Sombra. I’m glad you showed up when you did; I think they were going to hurt me.”
“Those two?” Truth laughed. “I’m not sure they have the guts to back up their threats.”
Sombra thanked Truth another four times before she got him to stop. Then she led him to a plaza where they played tag until they collapsed from exhaustion. Once it started to get late, he got her to promise to meet him there in a few days, the next time he knew he could sneak out unnoticed, and went home.
Over the next few months, they met up many more times. They never talked about their lives outside of their playdates, but Sombra noticed three things: that Truth didn’t seem to be on good terms with a single pony in the area where he had first met her, that she was often hungry, and that she got angry if he mentioned either of those observations (although she would accept food he brought from the palace as long as he didn’t say why he had brought it). Sombra got ever better at sneaking out so he could see Truth more often, and nopony in the palace seemed to suspect a thing.
Then it came time for the Crysteia, an annual festival where the crystal ponies celebrated their empire with patriotic displays and general revelry. It was the biggest event of the year, and there would be fireworks, food, carnival games, and enough ceremonial duties for the Empress to keep her from noticing if Sombra disappeared for the entire day. Plus the Crystal Heart would be on display, and Truth assured him it would be extremely sparkly and could probably predict the future.
On the morning of the Crysteia, Sombra rose before the sun, grabbed enough bits to play hundreds of rigged games and then buy his body weight in cotton candy, and left the palace as soon as he could see the street. Truth was already waiting in their favorite plaza by the time he got there, and they couldn’t help but run to the fairgrounds even though none of the stalls would be open this early. Just wandering around getting excited over all the things being set up (and getting yelled at by the adults who were trying to work around them) was plenty to keep them occupied. By the time the Crysteia officially started, they’d already picked out half a dozen giant stuffed animals they intended to win and eaten an entire deep-fried hayburger each from a food vendor who opened early.
Soon after, however, Sombra began to feel sick. At first he just thought the hayburger was disagreeing with him and tried to just push through it, but before long he was sweating, shivering, and having trouble walking. Truth had to help him out of the fairgrounds to find an alley where he could lie down without being stepped on. It was well past sunset before he felt able to walk home, and the whole time Truth stayed with him and glared at everypony who came anywhere near the alley.
The next day, Sombra felt fine, and with his mysterious illness gone he and Truth soon forgot about it. Next year, they went to the Crysteia, just as excited as last year, and once again Sombra ended up suffering on the ground. The year after that they hoped desperately that the previous two Crysteias had been coincidences, but before long Sombra felt even worse than before. After that, they stopped going to the Crysteia, but no matter how far they stayed from the fairgrounds, Sombra never felt any better. Finally he gave up and decided he’d rather be sick in his own bed rather than out in the street, even if it meant being alone.
The morning of the Crysteia came, and Sombra waited in bed for the sickness to come. Hours passed and Sombra expected to be in agony as usual, but nothing happened. Finally he decided that he must have become immune, or something like that, and he went out to find Truth and finally enjoy the Crysteia.
A few minutes after he left the palace, though, the pain started. All the usual symptoms came over him with alarming rapidity, and no sooner had he realized he ought to go back home than he found himself on the ground and unable to go anywhere at all. And this time he wasn’t hiding in an alley; this close to the palace, all the streets were large and heavily trafficked, even during a holiday.
Now, under most circumstances the crystal ponies in the street would ignore Sombra; he was clearly not one of them, so they wouldn’t deign to acknowledge his presence. But an outsider lying in the street, moaning in pain? That was something interesting enough to notice. It didn’t take long to draw a crowd speculating about where he had come from and whether he was going to die.
Of course, the crowd wasn’t content forever with simply staring. Before long ponies were poking him with whatever was available, to watch him react, and after a while of that somepony decided to step things up to kicking. That first pony didn’t kick very hard, just enough to make Sombra flinch and try to defend himself, but once a couple of other ponies joined in, they were less restrained.
It was at this point that Sombra heard a familiar scream. He couldn’t see much from the ground, but between the multicolored flashes of light, the concussive THUMPs, and the ponies running or being thrown away, it wasn’t hard to tell what was going on. Sombra had never seen Truth use any but the most basic spells, but she had to be the one driving these ponies away; that was her scream of rage, and she was the only pony he knew who would try to fight an entire crowd on her own without a second thought.
“Are you alright?” Truth bent down in front of Sombra, looking worried.
“Your . . . flank,” Sombra wheezed, seeing that she had apparently just earned her cutie mark: three colorful explosions.
She glanced backwards only momentarily. “There’s no time for that. Are you alright? What can I do?”
“Help me to . . . the palace.”
Truth helped Sombra to his hooves and started to half-carry him down the street as he did his best to contribute to the walking. They moved in silence until he felt strong enough to slowly ask “Why aren’t you at the Crysteia? You love the Crysteia.”
“I loved it when I was a filly. I don’t get excited over caramel apples anymore . . . Besides, it didn’t feel right after all these years, being there like nothing’s wrong.”
“Lucky for me you were here instead.” Sombra tried to laugh, but it ended up as more of a cough.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
They lapsed back into silence until they got to the palace, at which point Sombra taught Truth how to get into the palace unseen so she could help him do it. As soon as they got inside, he started to feel better; he still had his developing bruises, but all the symptoms of his sickness were rapidly fading. He promised Truth he’d be okay, convinced her that she didn’t want to risk being seen as a trespasser, sent her back out of the palace, and went up to his room to rest.
It was several days before Sombra could sneak out again. (Fortunately, a black coat does an excellent job of concealing bruises, so during this time he didn’t have to explain to anypony what had happened to him.) As soon as he could, though, he went to see Truth, and quickly learned that she had a question she was itching to ask.
“So you live in the palace? What do your parents do? Are they cooks?”
“Actually, my mom is the Empress.”
Truth laughed. “Good one! But seriously, they’re cooks, right?”
“No, really! The Empress adopted me when I was little.”
Truth fixed him with an intense stare. “Are you serious? Do you swear to me that, no jokes and no lies, the Empress is your mother?”
“I swear! It’s true.”
“So you’re telling me that you could ask the Empress for basically anything, whenever you like, and you never did anything for me?!”
“What?” For a moment Sombra couldn’t think of any words. “I, uh, I bring you food . . .”
“That’s right. You bring me food. How could I forget? I sleep on the street, I eat out of trash cans regularly, I HAVE TO MAKE PONIES AFRAID OF ME SO THEY WON’T KILL ME IN CASE I HAVE SOMETHING WORTH STEALING, and you could change that, but it’s all okay because you bring me lunch occasionally.”
“I . . . I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what? You didn’t care? You didn’t help? You didn’t anything!”
“I—”
“But maybe you couldn’t! Maybe the Empress doesn’t actually care, because you’re not her real son! You’re not even a crystal pony! Is that it? Is your whole life a joke that’s gone on too long? Do you even know? Did you ever even TRY?!”
“I—”
“THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU!” Truth pointed her horn at Sombra, then seemed to think twice. “Just go before I do something I’ll regret.”
Sombra wasn’t in the mood to go home after the fight. On some level, he’d known that Truth had a hard life, hadn’t he? Maybe he didn’t deserve a home, since he hadn’t helped his only friend get one. And maybe he didn’t really have a home anyway; he thought the Empress loved him, but what if Truth was right? It would explain why the Empress didn’t make more time for him, and why she hid him as if she were ashamed of him.
Eventually, he found himself at the edge of the city. He hadn’t been out to the tundra since he was first found alone there, but now it felt right to keep going. He walked for hours, until he could barely see the spires of the city when he looked back, and then he came across a tiny, simple village. He walked through it and found it apparently deserted.
“Why have you come back here?” A voice like the whistling of the wind came from behind Sombra.
Turning around, Sombra was surprised to find that the speaker was a dark, vaguely equinoid cloud. “What are you? And how do you know me?”
“I am an umbrum, a being of shadows. You are as well, though we disguised you.” The cloud sighed. “We wanted you to have a better life. Did it not work?”
“Better than what?”
“The umbra have been enslaved by the Crystal Empire for many centuries. The rest of the village is out working. I am only here because I am weak and soon to die. We did not wish for this to be your life.”
“I did get a better life . . . but what about you? I can’t simply leave the umbra enslaved and pretend I don’t know. Can’t you all escape like I did?”
“It is impossible. It would take the power of all the umbra in the entire empire to hide the umbrum nature of an adult, and such a gathering could never be arranged. Undisguised, we could never blend in enough to escape. Nor could we rise up for our freedom, not so long as the Crystal Heart exists.”
“The Crystal Heart? What does that have to do with anything?”
“The Crystal Heart is a weapon created to subjugate us, powerful enough to destroy an army of umbra in an instant. We can’t even get near it safely. Any rebellion would be crushed as soon as the Empress knew it had started.”
“What if I took the Crystal Heart? I’m sure it’s kept somewhere in the palace, and I live in the palace. I could get to it.”
“Maybe . . . but I would need to unlock a portion of your umbrum magic so you could destroy the Heart, and then the Heart would also have the power to destroy you. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“The rest of the umbra need my help, so I want to help.”
“Then stand still.” The other umbrum walked towards and then through Sombra, and he felt like a muscle he didn’t know he had suddenly relaxed. “And good luck.”
By the time Sombra got back to the palace, it was late into the night and all the servants were asleep. He could feel the Crystal Heart now, as if it were radiating heat, and it didn’t take long to track it down to the throne room, where it was hidden inside a secret compartment in the throne. Just as he got the compartment open, he heard a door open.
“Sombra?” The Empress was standing in the doorway to her private chambers. “Where have you been? I was . . .” She stopped as she noticed what he was doing. “Sombra, get away from that! It could hurt you.”
Indeed, being this close to the Crystal Heart felt like standing at the edge of a bonfire, and Sombra instinctively complied. “Wait, you knew the Crystal Heart would hurt me?”
The Empress walked into the room to stand between Sombra and the Crystal Heart. “Of course I knew. That’s why I made sure the palace would keep you safe. I created the Crystal Heart, so—”
“You made the Heart?! You made a weapon to destroy me?!”
“Not you! I would never hurt you! We needed it to control the umbra.”
“You mean enslave!” Black clouds began to leak from Sombra’s eyes and horn as he started to shout directly in the Empress’s face. “You didn’t need it! You just wanted power!”
“Sombra, calm—”
“I’M NOT YOUR SLAVE!” The black clouds were pouring out now.
Suddenly, the Crystal Heart flashed, blowing the clouds away and knocking Sombra to the ground.
“Dear, please, calm down! The Crystal Heart is reacting, and I—”
“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” Truth galloped into the room and, seeing Sombra prone at the Empress’s hooves, knocked her across the room with a blast of magic. “Sombra, are you okay?! I snuck in to apologize, but then I heard shouting, and I saw somepony hurting you, and . . .”
Sombra ignored Truth. “Mom?” he called, receiving no reply. He pushed himself to his hooves, calling “Mom?” again as he trotted to where the Empress had landed. There was blood smeared on the wall below where she had hit it, and he realized she didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Oops.” Truth approached her handiwork.
“Oops?!” Sombra spun to face Truth. “Is that all you have to say after—” Sombra saw the Crystal Heart and remembered what it had done a minute ago. He forced himself to speak slowly and evenly, hoping that would be good enough to keep his emotions in check. “You killed my mom.”
“Well I didn’t mean to. And I didn’t realize she was your mom when I was running into the room.” Truth half-shrugged. “Hey, does this mean you’re the emperor now?”
Sombra could only stare. She didn’t care. She had just killed a pony, the Empress, his mother, and she didn’t even care.
“Oh, it’s going to be sweet being the emperor’s friend.” She looked down at the Empress’s body. “I guess we’ll need to do something about this, though.”
That was enough to break Sombra out of his paralysis. He couldn’t be here anymore. He grabbed the Crystal Heart with unicorn magic and ran. Carrying the Heart burned as if he were using his horn to stir molten lead, but he was past caring. Truth tried to follow, but she didn’t know the palace like he did, and he had lost her by the time he reached the street.
He didn’t stop running until he tripped over a rock somewhere outside the city and collapsed crying in the snow. He lay there for a long time, wishing a snowstorm would come and bury the entire world. Eventually he remembered why he had taken the Crystal Heart and, acting purely on instinct, he cast some form of umbrum magic on it. Darkness engulfed it, and although Sombra could feel it fighting back, before long the darkness dissipated to reveal that nothing was left. His promise fulfilled, Sombra fell into an uneasy sleep.
In the morning, the Crystal Empire was gone. There was simply bare tundra where it used to be, its lack of snow the last transient sign that a city had ever existed there. Turning away, Sombra began to walk south, deviating from his course only to ensure he avoided the umbrum village.
He never returned to the Frozen North.