A leader without a people...

The earth was round.

On its own, this sentence was a simple, measurable, straightforward declaration of fact. A fact that had changed the world in its day and led to great advancement and progress.

Today that statement was taking on the aspects of a proverb, a phrase promising the beginning of great wisdom.

That was because today, for King Sombra, that statement reminded him: there was more to the world than just Equestria.

The Crystal Empire lay at the top of the earth, at or as near to the north pole as one could get. The current map of Equestria, of course, wasn't made including the Crystal Empire: past the last valley to the Frozen North, surrounded by the Crystal Mountains.

This could be forgiven because the Empire had been struck from history, literally and figuratively, but that still didn't mean Equestria's globe was otherwise complete. The fact was there were landscapes on the other side of the world as well, with ponies very different from those living along the Galloping Gorge and the great cities of Vanhoover and Manehatten. They were the igloo-builders and the cave-dwellers and the ponies who went out to open frozen seas and feasted upon murdered seal.

Many different tribes lay around and beyond the Crystal Mountains and as far as King Sombra could tell none of them had spared their interest in the great glowing city that appeared where once there was nothing but barren ice. It attracted them.

At first they came as conquerors, seeing in the great city an increase in their standards in living, but they soon found the monster of the Crystal beacon was a beast not easily slain. The Nhorse were strong but the Nhorse were also wise.

And on this particular occasion their wives and daughters weren't standing behind them to stab them if they fled.

Enemies willing to engage in strategic withdrawals weren't the only evolution in Sombra's growing guerilla war: The Nhorse whitemanes quickly learned that while their foe was mighty he was still just one stallion and the city of crystal was, if not the source of his power, at the very least a weakness to be exploited.

And so the cycle began. Sombra sat in his palace watching hungrily, waiting, and the Nhorse would strike again. All Sombra could do was listen for the sound of the screams.

All ponies gallop, and none gallop faster than a pony in danger. Of the two tragedies that played out daily in the streets and houses of the Crystal Empire the least tragedy was that the swiftness of a group of ponies in chains was, like said chains, only as strong as its weakest link.

The second and greater tragedy was that the Nhorse were there to pillage and they saw no value in taking slaves.

A fire broke out in the market district where raiders smashed in doors to houses and helped themselves to the food and drink stores of the terrified occupants before rushing out with whatever their worn saddlebags could carry while their leaders stood by to pronounce judgement.

A stallion ran, abandoning his home with his wife chained to his side and both his foals riding on his back. That alone proved he was stronger and smarter than many of the slaves the whitemane had seen.

The whitemane took a throwing axe and lobbed it in a perfect arc; the weapon bit deep into the stallion’s barrel, dropping him and his children to the ground. His wife came to a sudden stop almost as quickly as he did, yanked by the neck by the chain attached to her husband’s dead weight. For all that she recovered quickly, lifting the forehoof on his uninjured side over her neck and trying to coerce him to keep moving forward. Their children caught the fur of his back legs in their teeth, trying to drag him forward from there as well.

The whitemane paid them no mind. The stallion was dead, or soon would be. He walked over to the family slowly, keeping an eye around him for signs of trouble, and stamped his hoof down over the stallion’s tail.

It was when the mare’s screams were the loudest that Sombra found them.

His mist form did not encourage the raiders to stand their ground and fight, nor did it do anything to prevent the Nhorse’s escape, so Sombra dropped to the earth in the body of a unicorn with teeth bared.

The whitemane grinned back as eagerly, an eldritch rune glowing in each of his teeth.

Sombra wasted no time on ego or skill: the ground burst with dark crystal spines and the whitemane was impaled. Lightning struck from the clear sky again and Sombra was ready for it… but then he realized nopony had hacked apart the whitemane's corpse.

He looked about him to find a dozen raiders leaping from ambush with their weapons held high. The lightning arced from the dead whitemane to each of the staves topping their weapons like spears.

As one they swung their weapons down and their lightning shot forward. Sombra reacted with great speed, turning himself to mist. He managed to dodge a few of the lightning bolts but as before the magical energy of the ones that hit affected him even as mist.

He fell to the ground, knocked back into his physical body. When he rose to four hooves the raiders had gone, leaving the whitemane’s corpse but not his weapon behind.

There was a sound like sniveling and Sombra’s curiosity and self-preservation got the best of him. He turned round on the slave mare and found her shaking in fear, her eyes tearing up uncontrollably. “King Sombra.” She said.

Before he could react, his reflexes dull from his injury, she threw herself at his hooves and pressed her lips to his armored greaves.

She… the mare was thanking him.

Of all the sights King Sombra had seen in the week since the Empire had returned this was the least plausible, the last thing he expected.

He backed away, far enough that the mare’s chains kept her from approaching him again and she and her foals huddled around their fallen stallion. Sombra watched on as a new group of chained slaves hurried to this part of the city, several carrying buckets in their mouths to put out fires. When they noticed the wounded family they stopped in their tracks and called out names Sombra wasn’t familiar with.

Not that he was familiar with any names actually. The identities, the very lives of his subjects had never meant anything to him.

More ponies arrived including a pair lugging a long set of poles with a tarmac. They unfurled the white cloth to quickly assemble a tent around the injured pony, with his family moving off to the other side. The chains joining their necks dragged under the newly erected ‘wall’.

The doctor arrived soon after and he began his craft immediately. It was a magic the likes of which Sombra hadn’t seen before: slowly, stonework cutting tools were produced and incisions were made. Fire was ‘snatched’ from the ruins of the still burning buildings and the doctor spoke to the family in brief and quick orders.

The wounded stallion’s mane and tail were lopped off by the stone blades and put to the fire. On the other side of the surgery tent his wife and foals were both doing the same. All the while the doctor made careful cuts, shaving the victim's fur around the wound, and waited.

The bustle of busy assistants came to a stop and several tubs of water, now hot, were at his disposal. The doctor’s breathing was steady and he seemed firm, ready to throw himself into something. Sombra noticed the horsehair of an entire family had been reduced to ash.

The doctor was ready: he made two incisions along the wound and the throwing axe was removed and carried aside while attendants poured water into the stallion's barrel and rinsed his wound clean. The doctor moved quickly, identifying organs as best he could before slowing the bleeding with ash and pressing needles in. Horsehair sutures appeared and were tied into ragged knots before he bit the ends and tightened them closed.

Mercifully the patient had passed out long before the doctor had arrived. The staff held him down all the same, especially when the doctor shook his head, took a stone poker from the fire and pressed it a particularly bad area to cauterize part of the wound.

They held the stallion down and on the opposite side of the tent his wife cried and tried to speak words of encouragement. To him, to herself or to their children, Sombra couldn't tell.

King Sombra sat and watched, enraptured for what felt like hours by what the crystal ponies before him had just accomplished. It was then he realized that it had indeed been hours.

A scream rose in the distance and Sombra knew it was the same or a similar warband. He’d caught his breath; his body still ached from the lightning but his vision was fine. He could hear again and his ears no longer rang from the crash of thunder.

It was then he noticed the surgeon speaking to him. Sombra turned and gave the slave his attention only to find the old stallion averting his gaze with his head bowed low.

“Your majesty… we… you have our infinite gratitude. If I may, please… So much is going on and th-there is so much we need to tell you. “

Sombra turned his tail on the surgeon. He could see all that was happening for himself.

The surgeon stopped talking and similarly Sombra stopped his step. He looked at the doctor and found the same chain around his neck, the same chain around the necks of all his assistants as well. He noticed a new detail: their chains were long and looped and all the ponies, each and every one of them, wore ragged saddlebags bulging with their heavy weights.

Sombra's conclusion was obvious: the slaves hadn't broken free of their chains and had been forced to drag them along even after freeing the broken body parts of their deceased companions from them.

For ponies to be alone, when each of those chains originally linked a dozen ponies together, meant the Nhorse were decimating the Crystal Empire’s slave population.

‘The earth is round’ his inner voice monologued, his thoughts as private as he could hope they could be.

‘And a king with no country, a land with no resources, a ruler without a people…’

“Is nothing at all.” He spoke quietly.

“Your highness?” The surgeon asked, genuinely disbelieving that he’d heard anything from his monarch that wasn’t about crystals, slaves or some manner of angered growl.

Sombra didn’t bother to answer. Instead he became one with the shadow again and began to rise, casting a backwards glance on the surgeon and all the slaves in attendance.

In harmony all the shackles around their hooves and necks fell open.

Unwilling to waste further time on them Sombra hurried on his way toward the next incursion, mindful of a sobering truth: his crystal slaves feared these Nhorse more than they feared him.

Author's Note

For the record: The surgery and medicine is based on my experience with traditional Chinese medicine. It is presented as an example of methods available to the primitive and desperate and I do not suggest or advocate the use of similar during proper emergencies.