Last Speech Before the Terminus
Year 347 of the Crystal Kingdom,
Diary entry 952,
“He, who sees evil everywhere, surely carries evil inside”
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As I lay those words on this parchment, my heart pounds wildly in my chest. The flickering light of a nearby candle is just strong enough to light up my dull, tired face. I try to fight it, that void in my chest feeding on my fear for my suffering citizens. I can’t even sleep. It brings me down… beats me down. I want my words to have a goal, but a goal, as I’ve found so painfully, may hold no meaning. I’ve begged the princesses –they just don’t deserve the capital letter anymore– and I still try to reach them with my emissaries, but they’ve refused to send me help. They’ve simply… waved me away, along with my poor citizens.
Both sisters have gathered their armies. Something is brewing between those two reckless immortals. I know it and —I guarantee it— it’s not going to end well. When the South itself is going south at a relentless speed, what can we do, we, the isolated crystal ponies trapped up in the North? Last time I’ve seen Luna, I felt utter jealousy roaring like a maelstrom in her heart. Corruption had pierced through her hide and made its lair into her souls. When she put her eyes on me… I still get shivers down my hooves and spin from thinking about it.
The princesses are going to wage a long, atrocious war against each other. It will be there soon, and nopony in Equestria seems to care. Ponies just… idle around, unaware of the danger lurking from the North. A danger that we, crystal ponies, are the first to fight. We are a sacrificed and forgotten frontline, and nopony seems to care about them… Who would mind about a poor, helpless unicorn king battling for the survival of his short-lasting ponies? Who cares about the frozen, forlorn North while Equestria, a bright pearl in the filth, is still shining? Nopony. Nothing else matters when the bead is still shining in its own hubris.
This means war.
Celestia and Luna have forgotten that windigos breed and wallow in conflicts, blood, and enmities… They both have forgotten these unholy creatures, and their origin: The North. They are coming, guided by greed and a starvation they haven’t quenched for too long… My kingdom is just the first on the list, and we’re all going to die. The worst in this plight is that I’d have put up a glorious fight before any of this would end.
However, windigos can be killed, even though such feat has a price: a bloody, crippling, devastating cost. They’ve come with minions, summoned from the frozen underworld and already ravaging my domains as I write those very words. They feed on the darkness growing in the South, called to and by it like by a dark presence bulging out of its hatching egg, yearning for its first meal. The crystal kingdom is just a mere obstacle on the road to annihilation, and I cannot let them do freely. This seems so stupid, like a bad fairy tale… But I see the fire in the horizon, the end… and I’m not ready at all.
I am already too late. The first villages have fallen silent to our call. Darkness has engulfed them all. When I received the obscene news, I was at a large rally in the capital to celebrate another anniversary of peace throughout the kingdom. The courier and what he had brought to me had struck me as a really bad joke. But as he drifted his eyes away from mine, rubbing his quivering leg, surprise and awkward silence changed into pure humiliation. I feared that the many eyes that had riveted on me would trickle with accusations. ‘False King’, ‘murderer’, ‘coward’ were all that I dreaded. But as the herald added that no pony had survived… I understood all the weight of the kingship duty and felt it crack down on my shoulders. Stares were pleading for guidance. Foals were crying without knowing why. Elders and women wanted to know who the ponies who were to be drafted would be. Should I be the one forcing their husbands to never come back? Representation, the curse of the kingship. We’re no ponies, we’re all embodiments of bigger things: nations, hope, trust, justice. We cannot falter. But I had wanted —ready to give everything for this freedom— to weep with them.
I kept silent, though I was just a fuzz ball of fear. I asked to be given two days to think, and now I have one hour left…
I am… a king. I have the power to coalesce minds and ponies together. I can create this “esprit de corps” that would make us one army, one body, one devouring will. Though, it is a power I have been bestowed upon by my father, which he had received from his father, and on and on. History have always mentioned this power. What happened before history started to be kept in annals are just legends. This power? I have no idea where it comes from. Is it even a pony creation? It’s stupid, I know, but when I look at that ebony box I locked away in the basement of the castle, I feel an immense power crawling within. I opened it once, against my father’s order when he was still a king, still alive. It was pathetic. A simple black crystal kept in a crimson silk fabric. And yet, now that I am thinking about it, I cannot deny it had a certain attraction, a kind of magical power. I hadn’t been sure, and I still am not.
I catch myself looking at my cutie mark, a white crystal on my white fur. I am not fit for battle. I was frail and thin, and looking at my sunken face every morning in the mirror hurts. If only I have more power, more courage. Maybe… maybe my father was wrong.
I get up, startling the two guards that had been standing in the dark of my room for two days straight, unwavering.
“Call the chamberlain. I need to see something. Then, appoint all citizen to my castle so forth,” I say after a long hesitation. “I will do a public announcement.”
They nod and go away through my massive door, leaving me alone with the echo of their horseshoes clattering on the tiled floor. I let my face drop on the parchment blanketing my desk and my eyes close.
“Yes, my Lord,” the chamberlain says, smooth-walking in with a candle in his hooves.
I jerk my head away from my workbench.
“Don my armour, friend,” I ask. “I have to make good impression.”
“Is that all, Sir?”
“Then you will open father’s safe room.”
He pauses, looks at me, his eyes betraying questions he will never ask. “Is that all, Majesty?”
“Yes, friend.”
My armour done, we go down to the deepest basement of the castle. There, between one large metal door lies a single box left to rot under the dust on a black marble pedestal. The box is still there waiting. Waiting for me.
My chamberlain takes a step back as I snatch open the box and reveal between its ebony frame a miserable piece of obsidian.
“Is… is that all?” he wonders.
“Yeees,” I hiss, my eyes transfixed by the dull reflects crawling over that stupid little piece of crystal.
How could such powers be attributed to such… thing? It is to be loathed at. Disgusting and black, too alien to the brightness and peacefulness of my kingdom.
Today, all those grim creatures will know that I, King Sombra, run the night. It was time to play the game, my own personal game.
I take the crystal with me and walked away, my chamberlain trotting forth behind me, mumbling at me my father’s word. He is sticking to his role until the end. I will reward him for his unwavering support.
As I stand before the front gate that leads to the balcony where I shall announce the future of my race, I look back. With the black crystal held tight in my hoof, I look at my trustful friend as he scrunches up his face, keeping himself from asking me anything. Stress marks the traits of the guards I passed by.
“Don’t worry,” I say, trying not to choke on my own words. “Everything will be fine.”
As I turn away, hiding it with a swing of the cape that accompanies my armour, I bring the crystal to my lips and swallow. Weirdly, I just feel a tearing pain as its sharp sides bore at my insides. I wince, then bring my two hooves to the dark crystal gate and push.
The hinges end creaking when I finally reach the end of the balcony. My whole and dear city awaits a a couple of yards below. Everypony’s attention rivets on me, hope and wonder beaming of their pleading eyes. I gulp. After years of practice, I still hate that… the waiting, when everypony yearns at my very words, for they could mean life or death for too many.
I close my eyes, take a deep, long breath, and then stare back at the crowd. Stripping my feelings away, taking on the hood of the king, I feel confidence growing stronger within me.
“We stand on the precipice of the end. The steep is high, the path cunning and dangerous, so easy to hurtle down only to smash our bones and skulls at its bottom. We walk legs-deep in the blood of our comrades, washing down our once groomed and shiny furs and manes that are now grey, scrapped, and dull. We breathe with unease while the longing whispers of our foregone families rise from the mass graves, so many outside our cities. The stench of our hooves ill with gangrene blurs our crying eyes. It inflicts atrocious pain, striking deep in our heart and souls. The air fills our lungs with the scent of war, sour, acrid and heady like a tasteless yet intoxicating wine.
I face the enemy, my hooves glued to the dusty ground with fear trying to stripe me off of my strength. I see it rumbling in the horizon. I won’t say I’m not afraid as I foreshadow a machine that will swallow us or tear us all to pieces. I stare straight at the dead of the night, at the darkness in their eyes, and see through those dark veiled orbs rats that claim they can burn us to ashes. I despise the oblivion that beckons over our shoulders like a gargantuan maw, thrilled at the future carnage. And I scream my curses to a fate that abandoned us when we needed it the most. And none answered. Nopony at all.
I have seen our foals’ throats sliced open. I have watched the tears running down our streets like endless rivers. I have cried as I foresaw the ineffable screams of the mares, children, and elders wiped off the scrolls of history. I have dug the trenches and nameless graves where I will bury my kin, my friends, and my subjects. I have blamed the sky that will soon welcome the eternal night, for even the stars turned their gazes away. I have rejected the gods who’ve forsaken us, poor beings living in a land where the soil never thaws. I have trodden in the oneiric lands of the limbo and caught a brief glimpse of Tartarus and saw the darkness lurking down there. And I have lost faith as, for the aeons to come, we will be cast away, alone against the annihilation.
I have tasted your pain and terror. I have felt your hatred and anger. I have understood your rage and despair. I have augured our starvation and our fall. I have cursed the sky and the earth. I have howled to a murderous sky that will soon rain with fire. I have seen myself looking through the tainted glasses of my destroyed realm, only to see my disfigured reflection.
I have seen myself murdering my own essence, erasing my own spirit, sweeping off my own mind for the sake of my kingdom’s well-being. I have damned my soul. I have thrown away what made me a pony. And as I feel my sanity drift away, I can say that I have envisioned no byway. Houses burnt to their underpinnings. Ponies eviscerated alive. Fellow soldiers eaten away by the creatures lying before our eyes. A once scarred but lively ground scorched to coal dust by the flames of our enemies’ eyes. Our skulls piled up into spires to reach the black clouds over us.
As a king who makes a beast of himself, I get rid of my angst and sorrow, only to flood my senses with anger and rage. I bestow my allegiance upon you as your sovereign, and for my enemies I will have no more pity.
As we stand, ready to move through the threshold of Tartarus we, the innocents, will fight, kill, cry, scream, murder, bite, and destroy those who dared defy us. Do you hear?! We will stand still. And steady on our hooves we will rise once again!
Ride to the war, my vassals! Ride to death, my subjects! Ride to glory! And this day, running towards the Crystal Empire’s ending will be marked in history with a monolith of blood and death.
Souls will be crushed to the point they cannot be mended! The rusty edges will slice the flesh and shed soiled blood! Sharp arrows shall fly and whistle through the air! Blades and spears will blow to bits! Bones will be shattered! And this battle, which will be written into ungodly scrolls, will make sure that everypony know… that we fought here on that very day!”
I have never found such words in my vocabulary before. I have never been so eager to scream my will and thirst to fight. And somehow, it feels good, insanely good. I laugh.
The crowd howl with me with a call at arms. I feel it, that will, those minds thriving for a fight, for a place in the scrolls of history. My subjects bring back their wives and foals into the safe houses. The husbands sweep the dust away from the weapons of yore. It is a wonderful feeling, making them all start turning like cogwheels with me as a conductor, holding the levers with which my whims become acts.
King is being a slave to the subjects of the kingdom. Sometimes, however, should it be reciprocal? Yes, sometimes it should. Yes. It shall.
From my position on the balcony, they all look like ants, minion. I turn back at my chamberlain.
“My sword,” I bark. “Bring it to me.”
Jumping on his hooves, he scampers away to my antechamber. It feels good indeed. I bring my hoof to my eyes, thinking that a move of this one could bring any army into order. It feels grandiose! But, why was it all black? Why are my guards were trembling? Maybe… just maybe… was I wrong?
Rubbish! Father was wrong, and I AM RIGHT!
