You there. Yes, you. I look into your eyes and I can see that you have a love of adventure and a natural curiosity, am I right? Well, if I am, there is something you must know; not every tale has a happy end. Oh, yes, we all love a story where the brave hero confronts the villain in his dark fortress, and with his righteous fury saves the girl of his dreams and all the good at heart live happily ever after. That is simply what they are though: stories. Make believe. It’s like a warm and cheery fire to distract you from the winter outside your home, which you use to escape the harsh winds and cold, predatory fingers of death. You think I’m just a dreary old stallion, who wouldn’t know the first thing about adventure? I went on an adventure once, and there were enough nightmares come from it that will last me until my death, when the worms take my body for their property, thank the stars. You don’t believe me? Sit down, and heed my life’s story, for it is your only warning.
It was when I was a young colt that our story begins. I hadn’t yet discovered my talent, and I yearned for any chance to remove the bareness of my flank. I’d heard of an expedition headed for the North, amid the frozen tundra. My heart yearned for adventure as yours does, and the crew was willing to have me, as my size could help me get into small places to find any potential artifacts. The head researcher was a great professor of archaeology, Sandy Trowel. He had made a recent discovery in Canterlot’s vast libraries, and that was the location of a tomb. It was not just any tomb, however. It was the tomb of one of the great kings of the Crystal Empire, from the time before Equestria was even formed. I had been exhilarated to have struck onto such a wonderful journey!
The trek to our destination was long, a full week’s journey past our northernmost border. To the north of the Red Wastes where the Buffalo nomads live, and to the West of the Griffon kingdoms, lay what we sought. It had seemed that some providential force had come to our aid before we had even asked for it: the entrance to the tomb was only partially buried by rocks and ice, and a recent avalanche had exposed the tomb itself to the open air.
Under normal circumstances if such a thing had occurred, Sandy Trowel would have been furious, as this act of nature would have exposed the tomb to potential contamination. Instead he was pleased. “Excavating the tomb should take less time than we had expected,” he said with a smile, “Besides, no moisture or creatures in this natural environment means that there’s less risk of damage to the site.”
We had set up camp immediately after our arrival, and our crew of one dozen mares and stallions lay down for the night. It was the winter months for this region, which meant that even though we started at nine in the morning the sky was still dark, and the moon was sitting on the southwestern horizon. By one in the afternoon when we had finished excavating the larger rubble around the doorway, the sun finally began to come up.
The doors were made of stormy grey colored crystals, which were themselves covered in ornate carvings of the proto-equine race. At the crest of the door was the shape of a crown with four jagged horns, and it was dark grey and obsidian colored.
“Incredible,” Sandy Trowel’s student breathed, “Professor, the carvings are exquisite! Have we stumbled onto the tomb of who I think we have?”
There was a twinkle in the archaeologist’s eye, “I think so, dear lass!”
“Whose grave is this?” the bat pony Hypnos, one of the hired muscle for both digging and protection, asked.
“This is the tomb of Umbra Rex,” Sandy Trowel said in a hushed tone, “but he was more commonly known as King Sombra, the last ruler of the Crystal Empire.”
Nearly the entire crew shuddered at the mentioned of the name, but I did not understand.
At dinner that night, Hypnos explained the camp’s newly acquired uneasiness, “Old King Sombra was as corrupt and sinful of a king as there ever was. He took that name when he ascended to power, so the stories say, because he wished to contact the malevolent powers beyond this world, so that he could attain the title of the Ruler of all Darkness. He drove the shining Crystal Empire to its breaking point by enslaving the herd, and he was eventually killed by his own subjects.” The bat pony ruffled his wings, and his ears began to nervously twitch, “The story goes on, saying that before he died he had prepared for his death, and that whatever happened to him, he would return. Once he was gone, the entire Crystal City was left abandoned, its citizens forced to die with their ruler by the evil forces he worshipped, and the Empire was no more.”
“Bah, hogwash!” Dusty Trowel said as he passed when he heard what Hypnos was saying, “You needn’t concern the lad with fanciful old tales made by superstitious ponies of yore! If you wish to know what the real King Sombra was like, come help me with the beginning of the inner chamber’s excavation tomorrow.”
I barely slept that night out of both fright at the tales I’d heard and the excitement of helping the head archaeologist directly with his work. The next morning, Dusty Trowel and I came to realize just how large the burial chambers of this menacing king would be. The antechamber that had led outside had a rocky staircase that descended further into the earth. The Professor was excited to no end, “We must be the first ones in almost a thousand years to have stepped hoof into these chambers!”
When I questioned him further about King Sombra, he sat me down and we each took a swig out of our canteens. “You’ll always be better off looking for the scientific and historical evidence rather than listening to old fairy tales. Umbra Rex was a very harsh king. That is undeniable. In this kind of place, with the constant blizzards and freezing temperatures, mercy does nopony any benefit. The choices are limited to what allows you to live, and what kills you. Perhaps Umbra Rex realized early on that only the strong survive, and he had to do his part to make sure his people could endure the rigors of sub-arctic life. Is there any merit to the stories of his magic? Perhaps. One thing I’ve learned from my studies is that only the living lie, while the dead always tell the truth.”
That night there was a freak blizzard that threatened to sweep our entire encampment out onto the frozen plains. Our Quartermaster decided that it would be in everyone’s best interests to move our shelter into the tomb’s antechamber, which the Professor protested against because of the potential contamination of the site. The other members of the team were loath to do it as well, but they saw no other choice with the severity of the weather outside.
The digging was easy from that point on, as the entirety of the tomb was intact and incredibly preserved. Despite the Professor’s occupational skepticism, I could not help but begin to feel as Hypnos had: this barrow made me uneasy like nothing ever had before. It was only three days later that we had made enough progress restoring the rest of the chambers below that we found our way to the centerpiece itself, the Sepulcher of King Sombra.
The chamber was closed up by two heavy iron doors, but they were eventually cast open by the stronger stallions on the team. In the center of the expansive room sat a large black as night sarcophagus in the shape of an elongated hexagon. On each side of the stony coffin was a message carved in relief. It was in some kind of written language only the linguist could understand, but after spending hours deciphering its words, this is what he translated:
All things bow to the power of fear. Peasants lie down as if dead before it, knights run from it and pretend to know it not, whole armies pause in respect of it, and even kings and queens kneel before it. All living things know fear, but so few understand its purpose. Fear is our guide and companion spirit. Even when all things leave us, whether sense or reason, chaos or madness, or even magic itself, only fear remains. Those few who have the mettle and capacity to master it, as I have, will know its great might. Armies, knights, and kings have all fallen before me. My name is spoken in trembling and whispers. I am now more than just the master of fear. I am become Fear; fettered by nothing, known by all.
Umbra Rex
“Well,” Dusty Trowel said with a smirk, “We know at least that he was a humble soul.” The Professor than got right to work on the studying of the sarcophagus, and with the help of the unicorns among us began to check for any booby traps.
Hypnos took me off to the side, and spoke to me in private. “Listen here, boy,” he said in a hush, “the Professor would never believe me, but now that we’re here in this chamber, I feel as if this were too easy. Finding the tomb half-unburied, the blizzard outside; I can’t help but think we’re being lured into some kind of net that’s silently pulling tight around us.” He then offered me a map and a compass, “Take these, and keep your saddle bags near you at all times.” The bat pony had been good to me all the expedition, and despite what others may think of their race, I hold them in the highest respect now because of the kindness of that stallion.
As I went up to the encampment from the burial chamber that night, my curiosity stopped me near an adjoining chamber which the rest of the crew had overlooked. Taking what few tools I had at my disposal, I began to investigate the room with my small pick and brush. There was one small gap between two bricks in the floor, something which was out of place compared to the uniformity of the rest of the tomb. I grew tired and decided to leave the investigation of this mystery for the next day.
The excitement of the Professor was palatable. Hypnos’ anxiety was equally obvious. The burial chamber was fully cataloged, save one place: the inside of the coffin itself. It took much of both the physical strength of the earth ponies and pegasi, and the mental exertion of the unicorns, but the black lid finally yielded as it was slowly lifted off and placed on the nearby dais.
“What a miracle, Professor,” the archaeology student gushed to her teacher, “Look at how well the body is preserved! The Cutie Mark is even intact! The embalming techniques back in the time of the Crystal Empire must have been incredibly advanced for their period.”
I almost didn’t dare to look, but my wish to have a fantastic story to tell the other children in my hometown goaded me on.
I peeked into the coffin.
The corpse was lying on its back with its forehooves held tightly across its chest, as if it was shivering from the cold just as we were. The Cutie Mark on his hip region was a picture of a sharp four pointed crown, which was itself adorned with chains. The body was covered by a ragged and faded robe that must have been blood red when it was worn in his life. The corpse itself was nothing but skin spread thinly over its bones. The places where its eyes, ears, and nose should have been were bare, and its face was totally desiccated.
“Those are the first organs to go during the decomposition process,” Sandy Trowel explained, “The eyes and anything with cartilage rots away within the first three years after burial. It is odd that he was buried in this position, since most species prefer burial with their stomachs to the floor.” As he thought, the Professor began to stroke his chin, “And another thing; if Umbra Rex was as despised as the historical and folklore accounts made him out to be, why did they take the time to bury him so well?”
The Professor let me go about my business, as the team would be leaving the dig site in a few days to return to Equestria to find more ponies to help bring back everything from the tomb to be further studied in Canterlot. I decided to finally satiate all of my curiosity by continuing the digging in the area I had discovered the day previous.
The gap that I found remained exactly where it was, but now I was unsettled by its presence. Why would such a perfectly cobbled floor have this one gap? I began to dreadfully remove the bricks from the floor one at a time, and the sight that I saw relieved me, all that was beneath the brick was a dark brown paste.
Then my young brain began to realize something: the mortar should be crumbling from age, but it was damp like it was new. Then I saw the angular pieces of white sticking out of the paste. Unable to look away or act otherwise, I brushed away the muck with my tools.
It was a rib bone.
This was a tomb built on the dead itself, but if the Professor was right, the Crystal Empire fell over a thousand years ago, which meant this grave was fresh, dug sometime within the last few years.
The world suddenly lost all color but grey and black, as if all the color created by natural light had been sucked out of the air, out of my very eyes.
Then I heard the stillness of the sepulcher. There was no sound of the clink of hammers or picks, no rustling and jostling of the other team members. There was no sound of life of any kind, not even of my own breath.
Then there was a sound.
It was that of a rattling deep throat, followed by a heavy exhalation full of fluid, and it was directly behind me.
By Celestia I did not want to turn, but the fear inside of me commanded me to turn, and so I did.
What I saw once I looked was Fear itself. It stood on heavy hooves shod in the darkest of irons. Its legs were wiry, or rather there was next to no muscle beneath the dark grey skin that held it together. Its rib cage was lying just beneath the skin surrounding its chest, and within that robe draped chest I could see a dark green and pale purple light.
All these things struck no terror in me at all compared to its face.
The necromancer king’s face, for it was indeed the corpse of Sombra animated by a perverted mockery of life, oozed a bile-like substance from its mouth, the ichor dripping slowing from his gapping toothless maw. The wisps of dark hair that I had seen on the corpse not but a few hours ago were now full locks of jet black.
The eyes! Merciful Celestia, those hellish eyes! No viscous balls of liquid sat within the sockets on his face. Twin fogs of dark purple smoke trailed from empty holes, and sitting inside those two dark voids pierced out twin points of green light. No predator of nature, no demon in Tartarus itself could match the lifeless, hungry eyes that my young self gazed up into.
His dark horn was lit up with the same sort of power that I had glimpsed in his chest cavity, and I felt my life begin to leave me, and darkness take me.
Suddenly, the sensation stopped as a figure shoved the sorcerer king’s eyes away from mine.
“Run you damn foal,” Hypnos screamed to me as he struggled against the lich, “Run for your life!”
I galloped out of the room, jumping over the bodies of other members of the team, knowing that everypony else was dead.
I burst out of the tomb’s entrance, and saw that the blizzard had subsided. The moon was rising on the horizon to start another early and long night. I ran out and away from the gorge where the tomb sat, and I made it up onto the now calm but icy plains above.
A madness came over me, and I turned to look over my shoulder.
A dense black fog was racing towards me over the unforgiving ice, and from out of it jumped the sorcerer king, barreling down on me to take my life.
His eyes stopped me stone dead.
I screamed, cowered, and wished for my mother.
Suddenly, there was a bright flashing light: a beautiful melding of gold and silver.
I looked up to see the dark tyrant standing but six feet away from me, his progress stopped by a gigantic dome of light. No shadow of his passed through it; he could not even touch it!
As I looked at him anew, I realized that King Sombra was now different. His body was now more covered in muscle, his chest was full, and I realized that he had sharp incisors and a pair of cat-like pupils. My heart sank to an even deeper abyss, and I vomited.
The necromancer’s craving for eternal life knew no measure of mercy or decency. To prolong his unlife, I realized, he had lured other historians and scholars to his tomb. Whether they sought knowledge, wisdom, or power, it didn’t matter: he would harvest their life force and their organs to maintain his own body and existence for years to come. I ran once again, and the lich watched me until I could no longer see him. The shield that kept him away from me, whether it was placed by the denizens of the Crystal Empire or someone else, contained his evil unmeasured from plaguing the world at large. He could afford to wait as long as he needed too though, when luring others to come to him past the protective barrier; he had the patience of death itself.
I almost died on the way back to Equestria. At first when I returned, no one believed my tale. They thought me to be a foolish but imaginative weaver of dark tales. Soon, though, the state realized that Dusty Trowel and his team had gone missing, and as the months continued by with no sign or word from anypony else but me, the more ponies came to realize that what I was saying was the truth.
You are now the latest recipient of my story. Heed my warnings; not all stories end in happiness. Some long untrodden paths should be forgotten. Most of all, be very careful of what you dig up: you have no idea what unintended evils you may unleash, and no amount of innocence, strength, or courage may be enough to save you.
Sweet Celestia, those eyes.
Those eyes.
