With a bright flash of light and the crackle of lightning, Dark King Oblivion appeared in the air a few feet above the ground and fell down. He immediately squinted his eyes shut and hissed at the direct sunlight, scurrying desperately for the shade of the nearest tree. One of his hands became entangled in his flowing, blood-red cloak and he fell forward onto his face, rewarding him with a mouthful of warm soil. He spat desperately, trying to expel the dirt even as he rolled across the ground towards the tree.
The second he felt the sun’s searing rays leave his pasty skin, he rolled onto his back and slowly sat up, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He opened his glowing red eyes and his lips curled into a snarl. “Yes,” he growled slowly, his voice gravelly and deep. A few flecks of saliva-drenched mud spilled onto his chin. “The cold embrace of the shadows is my dark mistress, her icy hands stroking across my skin as she whispers the sweet nothings of oblivion into the deepest abysses of my terrifying mind.” He listlessly drew the staff of bone from his back, and pushed himself off the ground with it as he continued his monologue. “For I, the ruler of all things darkness and abyssal, am but a handmaiden of the evening before her chilling, final embrace.” He rested his hand atop the human skull that adorned the business end of his pale staff. “I am but a simple mistress waiting for the caress of finality’s lips against my own, consummating our marriage of darkness and wailing with a final kiss of death. I am one with her oblivion.”
He gazed out hatefully across the revolting green landscape, cursing the sunlight as he raised a vengeful fist to the sky, finally using it to wipe the oily black locks of hair from in front of his eyes. He forgot to open his hand before doing so, and his fist smacked dully against his own face as he struggled to clear his vision of his own hair. Whether it was the physical jostling or the bi-annual, dull spark of oft-ignored thought, only the gods knew. However, eventually, mighty, rusty cogs began to groan in the gaping abyss of his evil mind as he seemed to finally realize something. “This...is not Lion’s Arch. Hmph. No matter. Those here shall taste the depths of my depravity. All shall know true power and weep!” His voice boomed. “Soon, all shall bow before me, and know the horror of the Dark Ki-”
“Who are you even talking to, anyway?” A child’s voice had interrupted his monologue. No one interrupts his monologues. He spun quickly, taking great care to whip his dark red cape behind him as dramatically as possible. He looked rapidly to either side, searching for the puny child who would dare interrupt him.
“Down here?” His red eyes glowed with fury as he slowly brought his stony face lower to the ground. What right do children have to be so small as to avoid his dark gaze like that? His dark gaze found no child. What he saw instead was a small white unicorn with a curly mane of violet and pink. Atop her back bounced a small blue gnome wearing what appeared to be a tricorn made out of tortillas.
“My name’s Sweetie Belle, and this is my friend Gumdrops McHappysparkles! What’s your name?”
“To even pronounce one syllable of what has been forgotten to the yawning mists of time, consumed by the great abyss of dark power, would drive one such as you to the depths of madness, screeching and tearing at your eyes that you may unsee that which is unseen. There is power in names, puny mortal. And mine is the greatest power of them all, for I am...” He paused for dramatic effect, and because he almost forgot what they were talking about. “DARK KING OBLIVION!” He raised his hands to the sky, bony white claws, and began cackling demonically.
“Well, nice to meetcha, Mr. Dark King Oblivion!” she squeaked out happily, smiling brightly up at the weird, deeply confused man in dark clothing before her. “We were just on our way to a tea party! Would you like to come?” As he was absorbed with the thought required for maniacal laughter, he only caught the word ‘party’. He dropped his gaze slowly, back towards the filly.
“As if the Dark King Oblivion would deign to party with the likes of puny ponies like you!” He spat, leveling his bone staff at the small unicorn. He drew from his well of mana, summoning the most devastating attack that his mind had pulled from the dusty old tome his master had given him. He particularly liked the pretty pictures in it. As his spell focused, the eyes in the skull at the tip of his staff began to glow as red as his own, and he unleashed the vile water magic at the pathetic creature before him.
Instead of a hail of ice shards to her grinning face, a stream of brightly colored, smiling butterflies shot forth, fluttering around Sweetie Belle as she began to giggle. “That tickles!” she complained half-heartedly.
Dark King Oblivion’s eyes widened with rage as he fell to his knees, gazing skyward. “No! NOOOO!!! What sorcery is this?!”
“Why, it’s the power of friendship, silly!” The tiny blue smurf finally piped up in his goofy, high-pitched voice. “It’s all around us here in Tortilla Land!” He spread his arms wide, and a sparkly rainbow arched over his head from palm to palm. He giggled happily.
“Where is Tortilla Land?!” The dark elementalist demanded. “You will take me there, and the head of this land’s leader shall be a gravy bowl upon my black dinner table in my obsidian castle! Or perhaps used to hold paper clips and assorted knicknacks! Dark paper clips and evil knicknacks!”
“Okay!” the filly chirped happily, turning and leaving the shade of the tree. Dark King Oblivion trudged behind her, his maroon cloak flowing out behind him. He looked so cool right now. He paused at the threshold of the tree’s shadow.
“Cease, pathetic equine child!” he shouted. She turned and gave him a confused look. “A creature born of darkness, despair, and evil such as I can no more survive in direct sunlight than can a Twilight fan usurp their loyalty to the delirious, intoxicating curves of the wolf-boy, Jacob! Its rays are naught but anathema upon our dreadful form of naught.”
“Uh...”
“My pale skin,” he said, drawing his thin lips back in a snarl and clenching a pale fist, “sunburns easily.”
“No problem! I’ll be right back.”
Dark King Oblivion was no stranger to waiting. He tapped his foot drably against the ground, seeing the endless stretch of infinite wastes before him and welcoming its cold arms around his deep, twisted mind. The sun would rise and fall, rise and fall, once, twice, maybe even as often as twelve times, which is the highest he had learned to count. But eventually, the eternity of almost two weeks would weep before his feet, as all things do before their Dark King Oblivion. His eyes smoldered as he awaited that final day of judgment. Yes, he was no stranger to waiting. He hoped he got to unleash his apocalyptic wrath upon the mewling form of time itself sometime before the next week. But for now, he waited, a tiny blue smurf joyously hugging his twitching leg.
Sweetie Belle returned after a couple minutes.
“There ya’ go, mister!” she squeaked happily, tossing an umbrella to Dark King Oblivion with her mouth.
The trio headed towards the nearby settlement as Sweetie Belle and Gumdrops Mchappysparkles danced and pranced gaily around the thudding boots of the demonic sorcerer. “Take me to Tortilla Land!” their voices rang out in song. “Take me to Tortilla Land!” They repeated the same five words again. And again. And again.
The ashen staff of bone adorned his mighty wizard back yet again, and he woodenly clenched the handle of the umbrella–parasol, really, comprised as it was of bright pink lace and decorated with bejeweled purple hearts–as he trudged towards Ponyville. Dark King Oblivion stared straight ahead hatefully, ignoring the gaiety of the two dashing around his thundering footfalls. He was concentrating too hard on holding up the umbrella to be able to hear their words or see things, but somehow a single thought lurched to the front of the yawning void of his mind, a solitary bubble that suddenly popped on the surface of a lurching mass of nigh-immutable molasses.
Butterflies can’t smile.
The revelation almost made him lose his concentration on holding up the umbrella, but he was a lord of powers the likes of which the world had long since forgotten, and his mastery over fire, air, earth, and water were nothing compared to the mental exertions he used to level out his pretty pink parasol. He continued staring straight ahead, a small dribble of drool coming out of between his pale lips, as they entered the town proper.
* * * * *
“Ohmigosh, you’re new here, aren’t you? I would know because I know everypony in Ponyville and I’ve never seen you before! My name’s Pinkie Pie, what’s yours?” A bright pink mare with a dark pink explosion of a mane chirruped and hopped up and down in front of the dread lord of all uncreation. He glared down at the pink mare bouncing before him, and opened his mouth. He stopped. He turned his glare to the hand clutching desperately at his pink parasol. Then back to the pink pony. And back to the umbrella.
“I-” he started. He immediately lost his grip on the lacy, pink parasol and screamed as sunlight impacted his pale face. “NOOOOOOO!” He dove for the shadows of the nearest building, breathing a despairing sigh of relief as cool darkness found his skin yet again.
“Yes,” he growled slowly. “The cold embrace of the shadows is my dark mistress, her icy hands stroking across my skin as she whispers the sweet nothings of oblivion into the deepest abysses of my terrifying mind.” He listlessly drew the staff of bone from his back, and pushed himself off the ground as he continued his monologue. “For I-”
“Ooh, ooh, are you talking to yourself? I love talking to myself! Wanna be my friend?”
“You...you...YOU INTERRUPTED MY MONOLOGUE!” he bellowed at Pinkie Pie. “My ministrations of darkly divine violence upon thee will shatter the starry heavens with the force of the paradigm shift of pain my unholy power will bring down atop your smiling head! And when you approach the gaping void at the end of your torture, that I shall make last for days, maybe even almost two weeks before I have to end all existence, you will look within, see the broken shell of a horse-thing you have become, and you. Will. Know. Oblivion!” He raised his fists towards the sky. “For I am...” His eyes glazed over and he began to drool.
“Uh...” Pinkie prodded at him with a hoof. The red glow in his eyes seemed to flicker, but his mouth just gaped wider as it wheezed out an incoherent grunt. “I think I may have broken it. Let’s get it to Twilight so she can fix it!” She plopped the demon king over one shoulder and zipped towards the large tree in the center of town.
* * * * *
“Uh, so a strange being suddenly appeared in town, threatened you with horrors beyond imagining-”
“Yeppers!” Pinkie assented joyfully.
“-and you want to throw him a party?” Twilight Sparkle continued, her voice flat.
“Abso-rootly-tutely!”
Dark King Oblivion stared dully, oblivious to the conversation. His head slowly began to fall to one side before his breath shuddered and he righted it. He went back to staring emptily into the distance. A small pool of his own saliva puddled at his feet.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just get him to, err, an institution?” the lavender unicorn asked, regarding the man dubiously.
“Well of course we should, Twilight! But not before I throw him a party!”
“Is that really the best idea, Pinkie?”
“Of course it is, silly-filly! You know the Ponyville Mental Ward won’t let me throw a party for a patient after what happened with Screwball!”
Twilight Sparkle pressed a purple hoof thoughtfully to her chin. “Hmm. I’m more curious as to how Applejack hasn’t noticed Winona 2.” Her eyes widened fearfully and she grabbed the pink earth pony by her shoulders. “She hasn’t asked you about-”
“Relaaax, Twilight!” Pinkie’s smile glowed. “She suspects nothing, and she’ll never find out I buried her first dog at the old Buffalo Burial Grounds.”
The purple unicorn let out a sigh of relief, before looking back to the darkly clothed biped. “I guess I could try and fix him with magic.”
Dark King Oblivion sniffed in sharply through his nose, and his cold glower focused on Twilight. “Magic?” he said arrogantly. “I was practicing arcane arts lost to the storied annals of time before time yet existed. All creation is a wildfire that burns through my veins, existence a meager impediment on my steady march towards final oblivion for all that the eye can see.”
“I...see,” Twilight said, glancing at him sideways. “So, you like magic?”
“I like nothing, and nothing will become everything in my vile warpath towards my bride of absolute emptiness. She will wear a dainty black dress, and lift her prim hand to me to kiss before we consummate our marriage in the ultimate destruction of all that is light, and shiny, and happy.”
“That’s certainly something,” she said, shooting a glare towards Pinkie. “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll show you some, uh, magic tomes that contain powerful spells that can be used to,” Twilight snickered momentarily before she caught herself, “to end everything.”
“Of course! Not that a being as dark and powerful as I requires the assistance of a puny pony, but I am nothing if not a warrior-poet, and part of being a poet necessitates a voracious hunger for the detestable things known as words. Show me your pathetic spells, horse!”
Twilight led him over to a section of books in one corner of her library. A bronze plaque beneath the shelves read ‘Children’s Stories’. With a flourish of her hoof, she said, “Behold, the knowledge that you may become–snkkkt haha–the harbinger of evil doom.”
“Very good. I mean bad. I mean good-bad. Now leave me to my devious research!” He glowered down at the unicorn. Her face was buried in her purple hooves, and her chest heaved. No doubt holding back the sobs over her imminent doom.
“I’ll g-get,” she snorted and shot a hoof to her mouth, “I mean, I’ll get right on that.” She stumbled away, her chest heaving in what was no doubt despair.
Dark King Oblivion glared at the collection of books before him, and shot out a bony hand. It clasped around the binding of a bright blue book, and he dragged it through the cool, empty air before him as he righted it and stared harshly at its cover. He looked at the title.
“S- suh- suheeeeee-”
“‘See Spot Run’,” the purple mare’s voice cried out from behind him before she was overtaken by peals of screaming laughter. Yes, driven to madness, no doubt. His dark aura spread madness seemingly without effort, driving those around him to descend into the laughing revery of insanity to escape the full effect of the despair he carried in his wake, as part of his very being.
He hummed ‘Take Me To Tortilla Land’ under his breath, having forgotten the words to the song, as he flipped through the pages of this magical tome, absorbing without effort the magics he would require to brandish his evil powers to their full effect.
The book had very pretty pictures.
* * * * *
Several months later, Dark King Oblivion loomed ominously over a counter, his hands resting wide on the flat surface as his glowing red eyes coldly regarded the room before him. The red accents of his mystical dark robes glowed dully, coordinating beautifully with the red and white striped apron that now rested upon his evilly hallowed person. He knew full well the symbolism behind the apron when it was gifted to him–the stripes of red were the spilling of blood to bar and imprison the vile purity of the white. He approved of this garment. It hung loosely around his neck, acting as he did: as a predator in wait for final retribution. His pink parasol was propped up in the corner behind him.
"Soon." His voice rumbled in a low tone. "Soon..."
A bell tingled lightly, the harbinger of warning that another new soul had come to him for consumption. He scowled, his face painted with rage as he gazed down his nose at the intruders.
“Welcome to Sugar Cube Corner,” he said with the same throaty growl. “I love you.”
“Now Obly, we’ve been over this. I’m not a customer.”
“You will be custom to the endless death I will rain upon this world.” He paused. “Mr. Cake.”
“I...yes, of course. But even if I will, we’ve been over this, Obly. You have to greet every customer with a smile.”
“What is this smile that boldly escapes your lips in my presence, arrogantly challenging my supreme knowledge of all that was, all that is, and all that nothinged?”
“You know, a smile?” The earth pony sighed. This was the third time he was having this conversation this week. “That thing ponies do when they’re happy?”
“I was forged in the dark, dancing flames of the nothingness that grows from the abyss outside of all known time and space, the humanity of my soul rent from me as I abandoned myself to the twin succubi of eternal darkness and abyssal oblivion, and when I emerged from this Hellish forge, I did so with a new purpose, a new name! And that name is-”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Mr. Cake said blandly, rubbing his forehead with one hoof. “‘Dark King Oblivion’.”
“Yes. Yeeees. As of this ‘happiness’ of which you sometimes blather...” The demonic emperor’s features wavered slightly, and his gaze became muddled. “That is something which...that is...beyond the...” he stammered out.
Mr. Cake’s eyes widened as he realized he was losing the poor, touched lad, and he hastily waved his hooves in front of the creature’s glowing red eyes. “Whoa now, eyes here, eyes here!” He drew a hoof from the being’s eyes to his own. The man seemed to almost focus on the pony proprietor. That was good. They were making progress.
“I do not make happy, Mr. Cake,” he shuddered out, barely containing his infinite rage.
“Look, Obly, this really is sort of a last-chance job for you, especially after what happened at Fluttershy’s cottage last month.”
Something murky flitted behind Dark King Oblivion’s hateful gaze and he furrowed his brow at the stallion before him. “You mean the bright yellow pegasus pony with the soft pink hair?”
“Yes, Obly, yes! Very good.” Mr. Cake was met by a blank stare before the blood-clad elementalist began droning in monotone.
“We might remember such a pony if remembrance were a luxury afforded to one such as us, stuck here as we are beyond the boundaries of loneliness and woefully incapable of being ever truly understood.” Mr. Cake sighed and rested his face on the counter. “However, at the time a deep, yearning voraciousness tore at the very core of my being, driving me to depraved depths that even I thought were beyond my reach. This gnawing sensation I, in my great and terrible wisdom, christened ‘hunger’.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Cake replied miserably.
“And to Fluttershy’s many pet animals, I ascribed the title ‘deliciousness’.”
“I’m well-aware. She still refuses to come here after that incident.” Mr. Cake sighed to himself again. Conversations with Dark King Oblivion were wont to lead one to hyperventilation without careful pacing of one’s sighs. “Look, if someone walks through that door over there, can you-”
“Welcome to Sugar Cube Corner. I love you,” the man stated robotically, recentering his focus on something past the bakery’s bright walls.
“Yes, that, but can you also do this?” The edges of the stallions lips turned up in a wide smile, and he punctuated the upward turn on each side with both hooves.
Dark King Oblivion’s eyes widened fiercely and glowed with an endless inferno of hate, rage, and despair as he stared back down at Mr. Cake. He held the gaze for a long time, and after a minute Mr. Cake feared he might have to retreat back to the library to check out ‘See Spot Run’ for the fourth time this week. However, slowly but surely, change seemed to alter the demon sorcerer’s features. First, one of his cheeks twitched. Then, laboriously, his thin lips wavered as they drew back slowly from his teeth, first one side, then the other. The cords of muscle in the man’s neck knotted thickly as he forced his teeth into the light of the world.
“Lahk dis?” he asked.
The bell above the door chimed melodiously, and he quickly turned towards the sound, his face a frozen death rictus.
“Welkahn tah Sugahcuh Cahnah, ah luh oo!” Dark King Oblivion garbled excitedly, every word punctuated by the clacking of his bared teeth snapping closed, never dropping the awkward snarl of a mask that had become his face.
Mr. Cake shook his head sadly, muttering, “Close enough,” before he retreated to the kitchen, leaving whatever poor customer had entered to their fate at the hands of the all-powerful demon emperor Pinkie Pie had roped him into employing as a cashier.
Thankfully, nothing they sold cost more than 12 bits.
* * * * *
“Take me to tortilla land! Take me to tortilla land!” Gumdrops McHappysparkles sang, his diminutive blue form performing cartwheels around the dull hammer of Dark King Oblivion’s black-booted feet. With great effort, the all-powerful eater of worlds ceased his forward march, and he hesitantly levitated a fist to rest on his hip as his blood-red cloak flowed behind him epically in the wind. With hitching starts, he managed to turn his head towards the cartwheeling smurf at his feet.
“Punitive creature of deepest azure, I have tread thy lands for longer than time dares draw breath in my unending presence.”
“I know, Obly! Time flies when you’re having fun, and you’ve only been here a coupla months!” The tiny smurf’s white smile reflected too much of the sun's horrifying light, and Dark King Oblivion shielded his eyes from the unholy purity that assaulted his dark form.
“And yet, a thought occurs to me...” he mused.
“It was bound to happen eventually! We’re all so proud of you!” The smurf pressed his tortilladorned head deeply into the man’s black pant legs, wrapping his arms proudly around the human’s lower leg.
“Why have you not taken me to this...Tortilla Land? Where is Tortilla Land?”
The smurf giggled happily. “Silly, it’s not a place you can go to! It’s that warm, doughy, homemade feeling you get deep inside when you’re among friends and they make you happy!” The blue gnome’s pupils shrunk and his features seemed consumed by terror for an instant. “Or when they hold you down and put it inside.”
“Wait, what was that last part? I was distracted by holding up my parasol to hide my demonic visage from the uncaring, timeful rays of the sun’s light, rays that I shall surely vanquish when I crush the ever-present march of time beneath my feet, as timelessness murders timefulness.”
The smurf tittered nervously, his eyes scanning the clearing to make sure the two were alone before his mirth returned to its previous, annoying levels of cheerfulness. “Silly, you can’t go there. Everyone already has a piece of Tortilla Land in their hearts!”
Dark King Oblivion stared down at the happy smurf with the hateful, glowing red orbs he had traded for his eyes when he got his last makeover to better appeal to the yawning shadows of the abyss. He regretted not getting Lasik for them, as the pathetic blue creature was little more than a blue smudge that shimmered through his mostly cosmetic eyes. The smurf, however, noted the confusion of the evil demon emperor with the horrifying power to end all existence sometime next week as soon as he could get the countdown for his world-ending magic down. Gumdrop smiled up warmly at the evil death-king, and clambered up the man’s flowing, dark robes. He placed a tiny hand on Obly’s chest, over his tiny, quivering black heart.
“Ohana means- err, wait, I mean Tortilla Land is right HERE.” He poked at where the demon-god-retard’s heart should probably be for emphasis.
Something shifted deeply with the dark-haired man’s body. Was it the words of his diminutive companion? The chirping of the birds he could barely register while struggling to hold up his pink parasol? The overabundance of fiber in his diet since he had arrived at this place...where was he again?
His bushy eyebrows furrowed deeply as he tried to remember. In a miracle of epic proportions, the third thought of the year wafted forward to his consciousness.
’You’re in...Tortilla Land.’
At the revelation, his harsh facade began to crack, and he discovered he still maintained great control over the water element, as he was using his great powers to summon warm cataracts of water from the orbs in his face that could no longer really see without puny glasses. His tears spilled out across his cheeks and he even forgot to hold up his pink parasol. He wrapped his arms around Gumdrop McHappysparkles as his lips retracted from around his teeth in a ‘smile’.
“Fuh-friend?”
The smurf’s eye’s widened in shock and happiness, but mostly shock. “You learned a new word, Obly!”
“Can we have a happy picnic with sunlight, butterflies, and shiny bubbles...friend?” Dark King Oblivion asked the smurf tentatively.
“Of course we can!” The smurf dropped from his embrace and stared up at the queer man in a woman’s red, velvet robes snarling warmly down at him. He extended a tiny blue hand and took the dark being’s pinkie in his grasp, and the two faced towards the orange light of the sunset as they began skipping through the flowery meadow they were in, towards the oncoming picnic at the speed of friendship.
* * * *
Ruben winced as the setting sun’s light caught him directly in the eyes. Shit hurt like a motherfucker. One second he’s out with some family, kicking back with a Tecate, next thing he knows some punk banger wants to scrap. He had the pussy, too. He had missed the four friends that came to the little fucker’s aid. He had blacked out shortly after they brought out the 2x4s. Fuckin’ pussies.
He ran one hand through his short-cropped, black hair, and slowly raised to his full height. He was in a clearing with a lot of flowers. Why the fuck was he in a meadow? And...was that some skinny ass goth-looking Ren Fair motherfucker skipping through it next to a fuckin’ smurf? His cheeks wet with tears and his lips curled back in a snarl, singing “Welcome to Tortilla Land!” over and over again?
“What. The. Fuck?” Ruben mouthed soundlessly. The pair ceased their gay revery and looked at him through shimmering, joy-filled eyes.
“Ho, stranger!” The smurf cried out. “We were on our way to a picnic together!” The pasty white bastard’s lips peeled back a little further. Was he smiling? “Would you like to frolic through fields of flowers and butterflies with us for a time?” Ruben stared dully at the smurf for a few seconds, before a wide smile appeared on his face and he gave an enthusiastic nod.
“Absolutely-” Gumdrop McHappysparkle’s innocent eyes widened and his smile extended from ear to ear at the large Mexican’s words.
“Ya-!” the blue ball of optimism started to exclaim shortly before his head exploded in a shower of azure gore.
Ruben stared down the smoking barrel of his Glock 9mm, holding the gun sideways, as the smurf’s corpse thudded lifelessly to the ground. His smile remained steady as he arched his eyebrows.
“-not.”
Dark King Oblivion looked down at the headless corpse of his tiny blue friend, and addressed the twitching body.
“Dear fuh-friend, our powers are vast, extending far beyond the range of mere mortals such that we possess the very furnace of the universe at our fingertips. If thou tired of our blissful reveries, you needed only to ask and I would have happily carried you.” The smurf corpse twitched in response.
Ruben just shook his head at the exchange, stuffing the gun into his waistband and walking away, muttering something about “crazy fucking white people” under his breath.
Dark King Oblivion nudged the now-stilled corpse of the smurf with his black boot, his neck and face muscles straining wildly as he tried his best to expose more of his teeth.
“Friend?”
Author's Note
I don't even wanna know how many dislikes I'm gonna get for this. The look on my buddy's face after he reads it should be payment enough for the morning I spent on it.
At the very least, I did try to make it at least slightly humorous to those that can't catch the in-jokes.
