Equestria Divided: The Crystal Dominion

by Duskrunner

Rating: mature
Tags: Tragedy, Dark, Alternate Universe, Sad, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Adventure, King Sombra
Length: 11004

Set in the Equestria Divided alternate timeline, King Sombra awakens from his thousand-year banishment to find a completely different world than the one he left behind. A world ready to be conquered... and just as ready to kill him.

The timeline has been altered. Celestia and Luna are gone, the Elements of Harmony are inert and the Element bearers have fractured, dispersed to follow their own beliefs, their own agendas, and avenge their own betrayals.
And none of that has a damn thing to do with the Crystal Empire.
King Sombra has emerged, unchallenged, to find himself in a world completely different from the one he remembered. A world that is dark, a world that is savage, a world that is unforgiving. A world he thought opposite to all the qualities he represented and now seeks to outdo all he ever accomplished.
The dark tyrant is not pleased, but the dark tyrant has bigger problems to deal with; with Celestia gone nopony remembers him, nopony knows him, and in that ignorance nopony fears him.
Other powers have arisen, kingdoms with their own myths, their own beliefs, their own tyrants and their own monsters...

Published 2014-11-19 09:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-07-31 14:14:56 UTC

The Return of the King.

It began, like all stories are wont to do, with darkness. Lack. The total and absolute lack of everything. It was dark, it was cold, it was empty, and it was silent.

And then there was light.

With the light there contrast to the darkness and with the contrast came the possibility for distinction.

From that distinction came observation and in the mind that observed were born thoughts. Thoughts gave way immediately to memories, memories of a time long ago, a time where there also was light and darkness, where there was warmth and cold, where sounds rang through the distance and echoed back and where there were 'things'.

Things to touch, things to hold, things to cast aside… and things to conquer.

Conquer; at that word a complex web of memories came back, some simple and some jumbled and he – he remembered he was a ‘he’ now – he realized that his current condition was a consequence, a result of his actions. It didn't matter if he was the one who’d caused this non-life to begin or if his fate had been imposed on him like a punishment from on high, from somepony more powerful.

Somepony? Yes. He realized he was a pony. He was a ‘he’ and he was a ‘pony’ but he was something more, so much more than either of those things.

King. He was a King. This was his kingdom, he had been ‘deposed’, dealt with by a pair of shining stars. Celestial bodies had fallen from on high to remind him that he was merely mortal and that he had a place within the natural order of things, their divinity was something he could never aspire to match.

Or so they would have him believe.

He was a ruler, thousands of ponies who were in theory his ‘equal’ surrounded him and in the name of becoming that 'ruler' he had ground those thousands beneath his hoof. His first decree, the first lesson he had imparted to the vanquished, was a proclamation that nopony could ever rise from their dregs and become a match for him.

In the absolute that was not true, but the truth did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that that ‘truth’ had successfully dissuaded many who might one day try to usurp his power the same way he had stolen it from the hooves of everypony. How many of those who had believed him might have been strong enough to prevail? He'd never know.

He wouldn't be the stallion to surrender what he'd stolen so easily, however. So he looked to these two Celestial bodies, these shining stars, and in the end he dared to raise his voice with the challenge: “Prove it!”

They were, of course, proven right. He was defeated, banished… but not deposed. He took back his original assessment because a King once is a King forever, everywhere. And while he could not prevent them from removing him from their skies, they had no power to remove him from his earth. As he sunk beneath the ice he unleashed his curse upon the Empire and brought it down with him. It was meant to last until the end of time…

Instead, he realized his curse had only suspended time.

The Crystal Empire was restored and he and his subjects awoke as if from a long slumber but nothing had changed. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand years could have past and while he and his peasants’ life forces were bound intact it was ludicrous to expect the same of the kingdom. He expected to find marble crumbled, crystals growing, crops and livestock decaying but everything had been preserved.

Only the 'incorrect' placement of the stars convinced him that his curse had worked and that he woke from a temporal rift and not just another long night. He roamed his palace, taking ancient textbooks from his libraries. Once the star charts been consulted and calculations made he deduced a thousand years had passed.

As with chronology few answers to his many questions were readily available to him. His curse's end confused him: did he really only have enough power to remove the Empire from time and space for a mere thousand years, or had somepony else broken his spell? The facts eluded him but King Sombra was not one to look a messenger bearing good news in the mouth to assure himself his tongue spoke the truth. He wasn't going to deny the truth, he was going to explore it.

He'd been freed so he left the Empire in its own hooves to tend to its own devices, much as he’d always done during his rule, while he explored the confines and limits of his own kingdom. This wasn't merely stretched his legs, the heavenly bodies had beaten him before and while his body was strong his magic was weak from the centuries. He had to scout for their presence and infuriating as it was, if necessary, hide.

For three days he watched the earth, trying to regain a sense for the lay of the land in the frozen tundra. He found many things, including the railway system. The station was gone. The rail line itself was frozen, pock-marked and brittle.

Nopony had used the train in months at the least. This fresh mystery confused him now that he remembered the wisdom of the first Celestial Body. Celestia. That was her name. Whatever else his ancient, timeless nemesis had been Celestia had always been thorough: a garrison, a watchtower, a sentry post, something should have been in place there to announce the presence of the Kingdom that had conquered his lands and lay watching for his return.

Surely Celestia hadn't thought his curse to be a doomsday spell that atomized it all, had she?

No, that wasn't her. Something was clearly wrong.

He followed the tracks south and what he found was surprising: a vehicles graveyard. Trains, all of them destroyed, left like waystone markers where they fell. He searched for further signs of life and in time he found one further north, a campfire left burning, mares and children left to huddle in their tents.

Scared of the dark.

He grinned and decided to attack this first new ponies from this new era. All light and heat was extinguished in the presence of his darkness form.

The mares grabbed their foals, “Forao’!!” on their lips.

And then somepony came up, a whitemane of strong flesh with long braids in his beard and not a single tooth in his head. Sombra arched his brow in amusement.

“VER VERA NHORSE!”

Against all odds the pony surprised him. The whitemane charged at him wielding a massive axe in his gums. At the last moment the Whitemane spat the weapon from his mouth, took it in both hooves and swung it about.

Sombra didn’t bother with him. With but a though, crystals burst from the ground smashing the whitemane back and knocking the iron weapon out of his hooves.

Sombra appeared satisfied but then a youngster approached the whitemane and took up the old stallion's axe.

‘A stubborn folk,’ Sombra thought to himself ‘they will make hardy workers in the mines.”

But instead of attacking him the young stallion raised the whitemane’s axe on high and chopped the whitemane’s head from his neck with one swing.

For the second time that night Sombra was surprised.

“VER. VERA. NHORSE!!”

Lightning fell from the sky and struck the great axe. A dozen other colts and young stallions, too young to be out in the tundra alone, pushed away from their mothers’ sides to take a sword or spear or axe from their family’s tent and went to the whitemane’s corpse to further desecrate the body until it was hacked to bits.

All the while chanting “Ver vera Nhorse!”

“Ver vera Nhorse!” “We are Nhorse!” Sombra began to understand.

With each hack new strikes of lightning fell from clear skies, no clouds hung overhead, only the faint glow of the Crystal Borealis marred the otherwise perfect starry darkness. Each time new lightning struck and a youngster found himself with glowing eyes and lightning-touched iron.

A runt, impatient, charged at Sombra with a dagger and the same fate occurred. Only instead of knocking him aside Sombra punched the jagged crystals through him.

Another child, a foal not much older or larger than the one impaled, turned tail dropping his dagger and running back to the safety of his mother. Sombra grinned.

The colt stopped, squealed and gasped and sputtered before dropping to the ground. His mother held up a dagger of her own, an ordinary dagger, stained crimson with his blood. She screamed “We are Nhorse!”

The group chanted again and Sombra realized his translation wasn’t so accurate. It didn’t just mean ‘we are the Nhorse people’, it was a warcry, a challenge, a warning.

A threat.

‘We are Nhorse: Nopony fucks with us. We are Nhorse: you’re dead. We are Nhorse: Run!”

Sombra wasn’t going to run, even as he realized something astonishing was happening in his absence as the colts turned upon the coward and stamped his corpse with their hooves until a fine red mist hovered about the ground before them.

The children roared. The sacrifice of the elder in combat had given them lightning. The destruction and punishment of the coward had given them rage. Rage and power. The blood mist rose around them and as it did the colts became larger, stronger, their muscles bulked with pronounced veins. They stood between him and their mares: their mothers, sisters and now, it was obvious, their one-day future brides. Like wolves the swarmed, surrounding him, and he stamped them out two at a time until one pony he misjudged dodged his attacks and got close. The lightning from his knife tore at his shadow and Sombra bled darkness as if from a wound.

For the third time Sombra felt surprise but this time there was something more: a taste of his own mortality, a taste of his old fears. All amusement vanished, and with it the King was done playing games.

When his anger left him Sombra emerged from the bloodrage to find himself surrounded by a crystal forest, the dead buried under a fine layer of rock and snow, encased within crystal pylons or strung up on said like so many trophies. None had been spared.

At the edge of the forest, where the mares had held their ground and forced their colts that none may retreat, an old crone still breathed. Breathed and more; the old hag cackled and Sombra was angered to his core. He was wounded but that didn’t matter: he was ignorant, a stranger in a land with ponies that acted nothing like the ponies he remembered but this hag's reaction was beyond even that.

He approached the old hag, ready to silence her personally but as he did he realized neither her head nor her eyes followed him. She kept looking on, looking beyond him.

He caused a sudden growth and she bothered him no more. He'd decided she was just a foolish, blind mare laughing at the meaningless death of herself and her tribe.

And yet she troubled him. The mares were of all sorts from newborn foals to young and middle-aged and old. But the stallions, only the whitemane and colts were there.

With grim realization Sombra rose as mist to the height of the crystal-encased corpse and looked out in the direction the old hag had been staring at. He saw nothing but a hill so he rose further.

In the distance, shining under the borealis like a glowing beacon, stood the Crystal Empire. And Sombra knew where the stallions had gone.

A leader without a people...

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.

The ones who chased the Darkness and the Stars.

In the vast expanse of skies above the north pole the night wasn’t simply alive, it danced. Unhindered by the glow of Celestia’s sun, untouched by the growing cloud of pollutants that began to pour from House Earthborn industries, and unclouded by the efforts of local pegasi, the starlight shined for everypony.

But on the third week the light had gone. The positive energy of the returned crystal ponies had died away entirely and in its place only darkness lingered, darkness with a force and presence of its own beyond the simple lack of a light that shined. It was a darkness that cast its own shadow across the land and drew dark forces to it.

At that moment, in the dead of night, fifteen dark comets streaked across the sky towards the heart of the Crystal Empire. Nhorse soothsayers cursed them as dark omens as they passed overhead and the majority of crystal ponies shuddered in their pits and prisons, whispering tales of how the Dark Lord was drawing all evil to him.

The first comets struck the dark palace’s balcony revealing the bodies of ponies. Not pegasi or unicorns: furry-eared, sharp-toothed, bat-winged ponies. To some they were known as the Thestrals and they wore their heraldry with pride, the emblem of the crescent moon.

One-by-one, they each entered the throne room from the balcony, unsurprised to see a dark cloud with glowing eyes rise to greet them. One by one they fell into low bows as their leader proclaimed his intentions.

“All hail the Dark Mistress of the Night! There were many of us and we had doubts but low we are here and we are vindicated: Princess Celestia is gone, banished from this realm and vanished without a trace. Whether it is you who was the victor of a great conflict or whether you were merely the only one to survive is meaningless: Equestria tears itself apart, its warring factions harvest chaos. It is no longer war between the tribes that we fear, it is a conflict with all dark forces and all magic creatures long forgotten. We come to you with our heads bowed in supplication. We pledge our lives to your cause and beg thee return to your people, take back your crown and put an end to this conflict once and for all. All hail Princess Luna, all hail Nightmare Moon!”

There was silence and then the darkness answered. “Interesting.”

The shadows coalesced into a single creature and King Sombra stood before the astonished bat-ponies.

“But I am not the Princess you were looking for.”

The crystal pony slaves of the dark palace had not been so busy in years. Their guests, visitors from faraway lands by the look of them, had needs to tend to and those needs were compounded hourly by each new arrival. Such strange ponies dedicated, devoted even, to the darkness.

As one crystal slave took hot water and bandages to a wounded pegasus , the victim of some armed scuffle from the looks of her, she nevertheless managed to find the time and energy to voice the question on everypony’s mind:

“Why was King Sombra receiving these refugees as guests?”

Inside the war room, sitting on a throne cushion with thousands of jagged dark crystals for its back, Sombra looked on. Most of the talking was handled by his secretary, a bespectacled cream-colored mare with violet eyes and a straight pink mane and tail.

“His Majesty wishes to know more. Beginning with why you came here in particular.”

The leader, a stallion by the name of Adamantine, chose to not break eye-contact with the secretary –lest he incur King Sombra’s wrath by looking at him directly – and answered.

“In the last year the great stellar event occurred. Princess Luna, banished to the moon for a thousand years, returned from her imprisonment. Few are aware of this, but when she returned she banished her Sister, imprisoning Princess Celestia within the sun.”

“And you believed this dark magic of – Nightmare Moon was it? - to be the same in nature as His Majesty’s?”

“We had no knowledge of anything. Concentrations of dark magic have flared across the globe. Tartarus is in chaos. His… His Majesty’s magic was the strongest and purest concentration of pure dark magic we've ever felt in a single pony. We were convinced it must be Princess Luna, once more in the guise of Nightmare Moon. We consulted with all lore and expert opinions and when we realized where this magic was, here in the frozen north, we were certain it must be her.”

“With respect, you do not strike me as ponies who would willingly follow a monster. If you believed it was Luna why seek her out?”

Adamantine exchanged glances with his companions before weakly answering “All the reports we received from the return concurred on a single message. ‘The night would last forever.’ We opposed Nightmare Moon when she returned from her banishment because we believed eternal night to be the worst fate Equestria could endure.”

He grit his teeth.

“We have since been proven wrong.”

The secretary turned to King Sombra, looking expectantly. The dark king made no move, no reaction. She turned to Adamantine. “His Majesty would have you speak at greater length about the significance of the North Pole. In particular, why it made sense to you that Princess Luna would come here?”

“We entertained two or three primary scenarios. The first was that a great conflict took place, one that saw both the Sisters vanish. Whether this was a schism or a battle against an outside force we could not say. The main possibility was that Nightmare Moon, defeated a second time but not banished, retreated beyond Equestria’s limits to heal her wounds and restore her magic. When our experts reported on the re-appearance of the Crystal Empire and the legend of the dark power- I mean, His Majesty - that once existed here we realized a bastion of dark magic would be just the place to which she might retreat. In particular now that the Everfree Forest serves a new mistress and the Royal Sister’s former castle is lost to any who would dare to seek its secrets.”

The secretary nodded. Whether Princess Luna escaped her foiled coup d’état or escaped whatever fight it was that took her and Princess Celestia this would have been a place to regroup. I see no flaws in your theory, however there is one more thing I must ask: what was the third possibility?”

“With the war we thought she might come north to deal with another threat. And that is a question best answered with a legend older than either that of Nightmare Night or your Sovereign.”

It was a legend older than either indeed: long before the reign of Celestia, back when the wizard Starswirl the Bearded walked the land, back when the three tribes were in conflict, back when unicorns held sway over the sun and moon.

Back when all the tribes were imperiled by an age of ice.

It was a legend Sombra knew well, the legend of the Hearth’s Warming Eve. A trifling, heart-warming tale meant for foals and the simple-minded, a tale nopony would believe in for the many ways it failed to live up to historical review. There were far too many inconsistencies in the narrative, its iconography and the ponies involved in it.

No, that was not the reason Sombra knew the story.

Sombra knew the tale well because when the three tribes emigrated from their original lands on the other side of the planet they crossed through the previously mild tundra of the Crystal Empire. They’d crossed by, failing - as they failed at everything – to establish any real permanent settlement or create any lasting farm or industries.

They went by on their merry way until they reached the fertile land of Equestria to the south and founded a great kingdom.

And when they found the way to banish the monsters of winter, the monsters that had driven them from their original homes into the tundra, it was to the tundra to which the monsters returned.

King Sombra prowled the skies, a ghost of shadow and mist, in the company of Adamantine and every bat-pony and Pegasus that could come with them. They had searched for the signs and found the lairs; forests of frozen Nhorse statues greeted their approach as pale warnings of the fate awaiting them.

As expected the main path to the nests was treacherous but unconcealed, a tunnel bored deep into the rock, down into the great crystal caves. With a nod Sombra and the flight dropped to the earth and everypony extinguished their torches. Sombra cast a spell over the Pegasi and their eyes glowed with dark smoke, enabling them to see in the dark. The bat-ponies shrugged off such 'gifts'; between their natural affinities for low-light and echolocation they'd manage fine. They went in and soon found what they were looking for: the nest of the windigoes.

Adamantine was shocked at what he saw. “When… when they made re-enactments at Canterlot castle the unicorns responsible for special effects only ever made three of the creatures. Look at them, there must be hundreds of them.”

Sombra nodded in agreement. However, one detail did not escape him: while the greatest windigoes were massive creatures, at least five times a pony’s size, the common windigo brood were not much larger than a regular stallion, though they were incredibly numerous.

Regardless, Sombra knew better than to order a head-on attack. It wasn’t just that Adamantine’s forces were vastly outnumbered, it was also the windigoes unique nature. The pegasi tribes had always been warlike and if a simple frontal assault could strike down their foes Equestria would never have been founded. No, the creatures had to be defeated completely this time and in a way that didn't involve ‘love magic’.

And it needed to be done soon. The rest of Adamantine’s council’s fears had proven correct: for over a thousand years the windigo had known nothing but famine. Conflict was so rare and short-lived the creatures had chosen to stay dormant. Now that full-blown war threatened Equestria, a conflict the likes of which had never been seen before, the end of all life on the planet was a distinct possibility.

And yet, even now Sombra saw opportunity. “Tell me, Adamantine: Are you here to save everypony’s life, or your own?”

Adamantine hesitated, not knowing what to answer. Looking over his closest friends, comrades in arms and the survivors of the tragedies of the last few months he answered. “I want to live. We all do. We want our foals and the Equestria we remember to survive. Isn’t that what everypony wants?”

Isn’t it indeed? Sombra thought amused. His pupils vanished as his eyes glowed with the green light of dark magic and he unleashed his curse upon each one of the Lunar Guards. Their armor shimmered with darklight, no longer reflective of any light sources, and the icon of Luna’s eye glowed with dark magic. He ignored their protests and commanded: “Fight off the calves and distract the larger ones while you can. I will attempt to deal with the brood mother.”

Sombra leapt into action and chose his first target wisely. The windigoes slept and tossed fitfully but only the largest one remained awake to watch over the herd. Spectral, with shaped indistinguishable from each other at first glance, Sombra wondered briefly if 'brood mother' was the proper term. Might they as spirits be beyond such distinctions?

Such existential questions were quickly forgotten when the great glowing eyes turned upon his shadow. He dropped to the floor, resuming pony shape to focus the entirety of his magic on the windigo and encased it within a crystal spire.

It’s whinny echoed across the crystal caverns and its progeny stirred, awakening to the sight of enemies in their midst. The windigo foals rose into the air and surrounded their prey, feeding off their anger and hatred. All the same the cold did little to stymie Adamantine and his Thestrals. Sombra's army took to the air as well, maneuvering expertly in the caves. The pegasi held their own but it was the bat-ponies, creatures born to the dark and cloistered environments, that really showed their mettle.

As far as Adamantine and his ponies were concerned for all the power the windigoes leeched it was nothing to the love that pushed them onward, love for the families they left behind them and the world they refused to admit was coming to an end. Perhaps they were right. Between their natural magic and Sombra’s dark mark upon their chests the Thestrals were protected and their hoof-claws bit into windigo essence.

Still the battle was not over. The greatest beast burst from Sombra’s crystal prison. Like a ghost, Sombra had expected it might perhaps simply phase through. Instead it had used physical strength and Sombra tried o find a way to exploit its apparent weakness.

The creature’s eyes bore down on his, so unlike their typical method of attack encircling and area like sharks and freezing everything within, and Sombra met its challenge. But unlike the other ponies in the cave Sombra had nothing within him keeping his heart warm. Ice formed around his hooves, spreading up his legs and armor to his royal cloak. His neck guard was covered and his mane froze and he growled at his opponent in panicked rage.

“NO! Not again! Not… for another lifetime!”

His eyes flared and a beam of dark energy tore into the windigo. The creature whinnied in pain as the beam of light piercing through it, leaving a gap at its core. It reformed its body and the ice around Sombra’s hooves weakened and he broke free. He again engaged the creature in a contest of wills, his eyes bearing down on the wounded windigo. This time his illusion spell pierced into the heart of the beast and he saw what lay at its heart.

With a bestial roar Sombra unleashed a curse before he bit into the windigo's neck. His fanged teeth broke the skin and with a final cry the creature vanished in a vortex of energy.

With the knowledge gained from the brood mother Sombra turned upon the other windigo adults and his dark magic took a spectral-physical form. The air filled with dark chains and the first adult was caught in their twisting net. It was pulled to the ground, crying out and struggling until coils wrapped around its muzzle and throat silencing it.

Since its reappearance the Crystal Empire had been fighting for its very survival. Now, Sombra realized, it had taken its first step toward something more. Plans formed in the back of his mind as he brought down the second adult and then the third…

“Words will never begin to express our gratitude, Your Highness.”

Adamantine was sincere. They had suffered losses in the crystal caverns. Significant, but few: most of the ponies taken by the frost had thawed when the brood mother had been destroyed. It was more than the Night Guard had dared hope for: the whole of Equestria was saved, their greatest imminent threat destroyed before it could fully awaken.

Now they had other worries to attend to.

“Will you remain?” Sombra’s secretary asked. “There is still so much we don’t know about this new world. Surely we could gain much from each other?”

Adamantine was hesitant. “We… came here for our princess. We did not expect this.”

Sombra made a noise. His secretary apologized profusely and spent the next few minutes getting everypony other than herself and Adamantine out of the audience hall.

When they were alone again it was Sombra who spoke. “I have seen into your mind, Adamantine. I have seen your greatest fear and I know it is not a distant shadow. Your fears are flesh, and they await you in Canterlot. You have nowhere to which you may return.”

“Your Majesty?” His secretary asked, confused.

“He is correct.” Adamantine said, weak. “We’re not simple sojourners, and we’re not exiles either. The Arch-Magister turned on the pegasi race after the death of her parents. That meant the death of most of our followers’ families. When House Moon and Star was created and the cults of Celestia and Luna were founded as formal institutions across the land, we servants of Luna were suddenly… replaced. We bat-ponies did not know what to do, only that we could not remain.”

“I believe you.” Sombra answered. “And I believe you when you say Princess Luna may yet return. Dark times loom over the land. I do not know if Celestia might endure… but I have no reason to believe She would not return, the same way I have.”

Sombra took his throne. “I wish for you and your ponies to stay, Adamantine: I can offer you and your people safe refuge, and I will need you to intercede for me on the day that Luna indeed returns.”

“We are a free people, Your Highness. There are things we… cannot, accept.”

Sombra knew what he meant without looking. Not too far in the distance, waiting in the wings, the palace slaves remained within earshot for whatever might be the tyrant’s pleasure. The Thestrals would never be at peace serving a slave-master. Still...

“Come, do not worry yourself with the affairs of another stallion’s state. It has been a long night. Stay. Eat, rest and see to your wounded. We can speak at length again tonight.”

Adamantine understood his dismissal and bowed before exiting Sombra’s presence.

“Majesty.” The secretary continued, producing a pointer and highlighting areas of the city map. “There are many other issues that require your attention. Damages to the city’s infrastructures here, here, here and here. Underproduction at the city’s farms here, here and here. And sudden silence suggesting Nhorse incursions along this line here made worse by rumor of disappearances all along the-“

“Silence.”

The secretary waited, trembling lightly but waiting obediently. Her meekness disarmed Sombra’s irritation almost immediately. "I will attend to these matters as well as the others at sundown. Leave me.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

She left the room and the doors slammed closed, all of them. The scurry of crystal slaves died away entirely, leaving Sombra with nothing but the sound of his breathing echoing across the empty throne room.

Sombra collapsed into his throne’s cushion and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

That night he awoke undisturbed and summoned his attendants. Alongside them his secretary appeared. “Your majesty, I bring you word from Adamantine.”

As his coat was brushed and his mane groomed he grunted his approval and she continued speaking. “The Lunar Guard, the refugees and their families have petitioned, formally, to be allowed to stay as your allies and guests. His ponies have chosen him as their leader and given him the title Field Marshal. As a symbol of his friendship, he gifts to you this prized relic.”

Sombra watched on curiously as a pair of slaves brought in a strange crate. The side was opened and when the wooden lid and protective padding fell away he stood facing a great mirror. Something about it caught his eye, kept him staring at the reflective surface. Somehow he knew it was a gift worthy of the princesses but he couldn't place how he knew that or why.

“Do you know how to make an appropriate response?” he asked, walking past the mirror.

“It’s… beyond my formal training Sire. But the Field Marshal is an understanding pony. I think he will accept the message regardless of its proper formality.”

“That will do. Give him one.”

“I apologize, in the affirmative or a refusal your Highness?”

“Grant his request. Have quarters built within the city to accommodate his tribe, set them along the Equestrian border.” He paused. “Give them warning about the Nhorse. Tell him I will consider it a sign of friendship if he and his Thestrals assist in our ‘problem’.”

“Yes Sire. Am I to go now?”

“After one last thing.”

Sombra grunted and his grooming slaves rushed away. Once they were gone he walked off the throne and cast his energy into the room. Shadows formed and an alternate-reality passageway appeared on the floor before them. He walked down the steps and his assistant hurried to follow him. They didn't get too far down before Sombra formed a door and a secret chamber opened.

“Tell me” Sombra began “about our more recent guest.”

The secretary cleared her throat and tried to decide what to tell him. A female, a caribou in metal armor with runes on her clothing, similar in style but distinct from the Nhorse, looked on in wonder at her new captor after having been freed the night before from the windigo ice.

A Land of Refugees

Certainties?
Young filly let me tell you one thing: in my day the only certainties were death and taxes. Now death, I can tell you, is the certain conclusion of life and there's no reason to question why it's unavoidable but taxes... taxes are taxes because at one point in time some pony up and said 'everypony has the obligation to give a little of themselves to contribute to the common good'. And it's happened with many kings and queens and empresses and princesses before: one pony disagrees with just how much their contribution should be. And if that disagreement isn't settled quickly you'll soon find yourself facing a third certainty, the natural offspring of the marriage of death and taxes:

War."

-Attributed to the third volume of the epistles of Starswirl the Bearded

High, high in the sky - so far from the ground there wasn't a visible speck of it in the dead of night and so far higher than the other clouds that no pegasi could be fooled into thinking it would form there naturally - a single dark cloud-cave rumbled with a magical fury in its core. At its hollow center two pegasi struggled to keep the light and the noise contained: The light of lightning bolts contained within bottles and the noise of a mare screaming.

"I need help. I need help." She kept crying, piteously. Her belly was huge: she was with child.

"I'm sorry honey, I'm so sorry. Just try, just keep trying. We're almost there."

Her labor had been difficult, for the better part of two days she'd been nest-bound within their secreted cloud with nothing but rainwater tapped from their ceiling and her husband for comfort. The situation was dire, they were low on food and now-

"I can see the head." he exclaimed too loudly. "You're almost there honey. Push."

Instead of crying she screamed, horribly. Cotton Clouds got up to take his wife's head in his hooves and tried to get her to react. "Honey? Honey speak to me. Don't let go, don't you dare let go of me."

Lemon Snaps came too and despite the pain and the sweating she smiled. "I did it sweety."

"No, not-" Cotton was stopped before he finished saying 'not yet'. He looked down to her nethers and didn't see what he was supposed to. There was no foal in sight.

"No. no no NO!" he cried and with an instinctive pounce he dove into the cloud floor and fell right through it.

It was dark, so dark. Even with the twinkle of distant stars overhead Cotton couldn't see anything. But that was fine, he didn't need to: he could hear. In the distance a newborn's scream pierced his ears and tore at his heart pushing all other thoughts from his mind.

He'd forgotten something.

He dove towards the sound, not knowing or thinking about how far he fell or how long until the earth hit them. All his focus was on that one sound and keeping his hooves straight and his head tucked, slicing through the sky like a knife. Seconds later he caught him, the little tike was in his hooves. He held him close and tried to bundle him tight against his fur. "It's ok. Daddy's got you."

It was then Cotton realized: he didn't have wings anymore.

He held his newborn tight, never wanting to let the little one go. "It's ok little treasure. You're going to be fine."

Cotton started turning, aiming his back toward the ground. Maybe if he took the brunt of the landing the little one would make it...

"I got you!" A voice in his ear deafened him. It was Lemon. "I've got you. Tell me you've got him!"

"I've got him!" Cotton yelled back.

With a gentle tug and a lot of skill she wrapped both sets of hooves around his barrel and spread her wings wide, changing her fall into a glide and taking them all down.

Cotton and Lemon had hoped they were past the worst of it. Life it seemed, seemed bound and determined to inform them that in this new world strife only began at birth.

"Where are you from?" The hoplite demanded.

"We're from Ponyville." Lemon answered. The pair of border guards were especially vicious to Cotton and the last thing she wanted was for them to hurt him. He'd suffered enough at the hooves of the Pegasus tribe...

"Ponyville was flooded almost a year ago."

"I-I knew that. I didn't realize it's been so long but I knew that. We've been forced to rough it for so long we just lost track of everything."
Lemon swallowed hard, praying to Celestia her fear would be interpreted as fear and not deceit.
"We had a foal and it was bad, we couldn't travel. Please, he's just a newborn yet to be weaned, anypony can see that."

"And you're lost, too? Do you have any idea where you are?" The second hoplite asked incredulously.

"No. I mean, we have some idea but it's not really important. We're not heading anywhere in Equestria, we're just passing through on our way north."

"And just where do you think you're going, galloping north?"

Lemon swallowed hard. "To the lands of the first ponies."

"What?"

"The first mares from the story of the first Hearth's Warming Eve. The three pony tribes fled their frozen homes and discovered a new land, they founded a new nation and called it Equestria. That story wasn't just about Pegasi: unicorns and earth ponies crossed too and there's a great ocean to the east and a great ocean to the west. The only place they could have come from was either the deep south or the far north."

"There's nothing past the far north."

"No. The earth is round. Past the far north and south down the other side there's gotta be something, the land ponies first came from. The windigoes followed the three tribes to Equestria and were banished here. After thousands of years without ponies in conflict the old lands should have recovered. They have to." Lemon pleaded.

The hoplites looked unconvinced, but then that wasn't the craziest story they'd heard from ponies looking to flee the war-torn continent. The pegasus sounded manic but then everypony that believed in a silly mythic tale's salvation sounded the same.

And there were more and more of them every day.

She pleaded. "Please. please let us go. We don't have anything you'd want and we don't mean you any harm. We just want a fresh start, and we want to get away, away from this stupid war. Please. Let us go."

"We're no slave-masters. You're free to go where you will. But first, there's one thing we need to know. His cutie mark. Show us."

Lemon balked. "He's got no mark."

The hoplites pointed their spears at them.

"He was a slave of Moon and Star when we met. He ran away. He never did anything, they just locked him up because he's an earth pony."

"A likely story. I smell a deserter. Fallen."

"He's not a pegasus, I am. He's an earth pony. Look, please. Look at our son!"

The guard turned from Cotton and looked over the foal. Sure enough the colt had no wings. He was such a tiny thing, obviously a newborn. No mother would be so crazy as to clip the wings of an infant, not alone in the middle of nowhere. And if the kid was an earth pony then somepony else in his family had to be an earth pony also.

The lead hoplite shrugged and put up his spear. He got into the air gesturing that he and his partner should resume their patrol. "Let's go."

"But centurion-"

"I said let's go. The kid's an earth pony and as far as I can tell so's the father. I'm not going to waste the tribune's time making him look over a nopony in the hopes it's some deserter fallen."

"Sir, we've our orders regarding Oathbreakers."

"And we've orders about wasting our superior's time. I'm in command and it's my judgement. If you feel so strongly about it that you want to hoof-stamp a dissenting opinion be my guest. We'll be challenging on it in the weeks and months to come."

He relented. "I'm not so sure, and I don't feel that strongly about it."

"Then we're done. On your way then." He said to the family and without so much as a backwards glance they were off.

And then, as a casual courtesy he yelled after them: "Go a day's travel North by North-west! You'll find the others like you."

Cotton Clouds and Lemon Snaps could only wonder what they hay that could mean as they galloped out of the last tract of Stormwing land and into the tundra.

A wise horse once said "Patience is the burden of Kings." The history and full lesson behind this simple quip was one passed on through generations to all the pony tribes, one of the many tales that formed part of the formal education for those destined to rule.

But Sombra's kingship hadn't been destined and so tales like it never reached his table. As the months dragged on he found the lessons in cruelty and dark magic that led him to take the throne were not the ones he needed to preserve the kingdom, a reality that began to bear down on him as 'his ponies' struggled, froze and starved. It was beyond his power to affect change; and yet his personal power grew by the hour and soon his magic would be as strong as it was in the days of old. The Crystal Heart was in his grasp, uncontested.

Faced with strength it had been easy for Sombra to make it heel. Now, in the face of weakness, he faltered.

The farms were barren, their planted crops frostbitten before harvest. There were no clouds in the sky and the bright daylight left ponies snowblind and easy prey to Nhorse ambush. He measured the stars and the length of the day to determine the season - by Sombra's calculations there should have been a current of warm winds from the south. For weeks he'd waited and still the warm front never came. He wondered what might be the cause of the dleay when it hit him: it was the pegasi's fault. They were the stewards of the weather and clearly they'd cut the Crystal Empire off.

He growled in anger even as he realized the sense of it. Like the abandoned train station, nopony had cause to come north in a thousand years. Why would the pegasi bother to keep the weather pattern for an empire that was no longer there?

Was that the major change? Had Celestia and Luna accepted the idea that the Crystal Empire was lost to them, vanished from the world never to return? And in doing so had they left the frozen north abandoned, open to be taken over by whatever band of barbarians might come along?

It seemed like a reasonable explanation but it didn't feel right to Sombra. The Celestia he knew would never allow such savagery in her kingdom anymore that she would suffer his rule. Her disappearance was reported only a few short years ago. He couldn't believe that a kingdom that had stood for a thousand years would devolve so radically overnight. Something was amiss, something big and it nagged at Sombra that he could neither intuit what it was nor spare the resources to find out. Not the way things were now.

It was a sobering experience: For too long he'd been little more than a thief, a parasite leeching off the prosperity and magic of Celestia's rule. The thought angered Sombra because he didn't style himself a usurper, he was a conqueror. He brought the Crystal Empire low by force of magic, silenced all who opposed him and remade the capital in his image.

No, Sombra hadn't been born and bred to rule a kingdom, he was born to be an apex predator and ironically in this new Equestria he awoke to this path would teach him all the same lessons. For that reason and all the rest Sombra sat in his throneroom as his assistant brought forward five individuals to speak... and for once, be heard.

At his invitation, the first two were Sombra's guests: Adamantine, current Marshal of the Thestrals, and Silver Spear, a pegasus. At first impression everypony might have assumed that Silver was Adamantine's #2 but that was far from the truth. King Sombra had in fact requested the presence of Adamantine and whomever his highest ranked pegasus officer was. Despite their presumed years of service shared one got the impression Adamantine wasn't entirely content to have Silver with him.

The first of the Empire's citizens present, and for that reason already infinitely less important than any of Sombra's actual allies, was the doctor Sombra had seen performing field surgery. He was concerned that the King had sent for him personally, by reputation since Sombra hadn't actually asked for his name nor made a description of his cutie-mark, but his highness had freed him and his immediate assistants from their chains and that alone was promising. The second was an old mare the doctor recognized. At first he thought she might be the old librarian but getting a look at her mark he realized she was actually the wife of the farmer's headstallion. Why she was there exactly he couldn't surmise but she looked out of place with a shawl on her head and a sack over he saddle.

The last stallion present was, in the doctor's eyes, the lowest of the low. He was unremarkable in every way: slim build, ordinary eyes, no apparent great strength nor talent apparent. But he stood out, oh how he stood out, because this stallion alone out of everypony in the room had a glow born from the ordinary light that reflected off his crystal coat.

He was a crystal pony and he was complete.

Which meant he was content, and nothing was more disturbing to any true denizen of the Empire.

Sombra broke the silence: "You are here because you represent those from whom I receive, or would like to receive, the most vital information about the Empire. Stallion, I'll begin with you."

The crystal stallion rose and the other crystal ponies' eyes narrowed. "Ironlock, your majesty. I thank you for your mercy and attention."

Sombra waved a hoof impatiently, compartmentalizing the detail that Ironlock was addressing him... strangely, for another time.

"At this time I and my fellow bullyboys have rounded up twelve press-gangs around the city, mostly along the blocks where we settle."

Sombra turned to his secretary and she produced a map of the city whereupon a dozen icons appeared representing Ironlock's gangs.

"The gangs are maybe ten strong each, armed with rocks or clubs. We've held off a dozen incursions since yesterday."

"My liege -" The doctor interrupted "the press-gangs are an abomination."

Sombra growled and the doctor became quiet. Sombra asked "You held the Nhorse off?"

"We did." He beamed proudly.

Sombra saw the doctor bristle and he made a gesture with his head that encouraged him to speak. "They did, and only two out of every 5 survived. The city is full of my camps tending to the wounded and dying."

The king's attention on him again Ironlock merely shrugged. "They're slaves. I think nothing of it."

"They're completely outmatched against the Nhorse. At the very least they should have their chains removed!" The doctor said angrily.

"The chains keep them in line." Ironlock retorted. "But I'll agree they're fodder." He turned to Sombra. "Real weapons would make a difference."

Sombra nodded. "That will be enough, slave. Doctor: what of the census?"

The doctor was crestfallen. "Dozens have been slaughtered in the districts I tend to. Hundred are wounded. I can't say how many have disappeared, carried off by the Nhorse. I'd hope they've merely run away."

Sombra nodded to him as well. "Enough." He turned to the mare. "I commanded the representative of the farms to appear. You are not whom I was told to expect."

"My husband is dead. I am the only one who can speak for him."

Ironlock got close and tapped her barrel brisquely. She yelped at his angry face as he gestured silently towards Sombra."

"M'lord." She added.

It wasn't the proper title but Ironlock appeared satisfied.

"Speak." Sombra said, rushing her.

"The Nhorse raid the farms and steal the seed crop for themselves. Without it we've little to plant and despite our experience what little we have sewn hasn't made signs of progress. We've used up alchemical stores as well to no avail, nothing makes the seeds grow - accelerated or otherwise. The season isn't what it should be."

Sombra nodded and turned to Silver Spear. "Pegasus, I believe you will explain."

Silver Spear looked afraid now that he understood why he was there. He swallowed hard and answered "My... king. When the princesses disappeared the natural order was supposed to come to an end. Instead the sun and moon still rose and fell and the clouds and seasons moved all on their own."

Sombra nodded. "Yes, this is the root of the 'heresy' speculation I've heard rumors about. You and your fellows gossip quite a lot."

He flushed, embarrassed, but agreed. "As you say. The weather goes on but it's not the weather we've always had. With the winds and rains changed the soil's affected too I guess. And... well, it's not for me to say what you winter and summer were supposed to be like in the first place."

Sombra nodded. "You will be educated." heavily implying what role the pegasi would play in the foreseeable future.

Finally he turned to Adamantine who quickly declared. "I've nothing to say that isn't redundant. In light of current trends I'd advise deploying the Night Guard to garrison near the farms, if only until the first harvest."

Sombra nodded and signaled his assistant directly whom began to speak. "There is another matter of some discretion that needs be addressed, fillies and gentlecolts. Our guest."

Sombra made the floor at the center vanish and the crystal ponies all shot a step backwards for fear they might fall. Sombra's 'guest', the female caribou, was dragged out by chains of solid night.

Sombra waited, expectantly.

Adamantine and Silver Spear looked confused and appeared to consult silently with each other before Adamantine answered "Sorry, we've never seen her like before."

Sombra didn't hide the disappointment from his face. He'd expected the outsiders to provide some intelligence on this creature. Of his own people he didn't expect much more.

Ironlock looked her over. He got close and ripped her foreleg armor straight off her hoof. "Looks Nhorse." To make his point clear he emphasized. "We're not friends of the Nhorse"

She spat on the crystal throneroom's floor. "Pfff. Nhorse. Ponykin. There more than just ponykin in the snow."

"My liege, please." The assistant began but Sombra had heard enough.

His levitation turned the caribou on the spot and now, since apparently nopony else would speak to her or her species' intentions Sombra gazed deep into her eyes and unleashed his mental spell on her.

The caribou lay in a heap on the floor. Her shadow chains melted away, Sombra had apparently decided she wouldn't need them anymore.

The secretary approached Sombra but all he said was "The enemy of my enemy."

Cryptic. She couldn't tell if he made a description or just reference to the idiom so she let it go.

"Leave." He commanded them all, and they all turned to go save the farmer's wife.

"M'lord, there is one more thing I must say."

Ironlock looked angered and approached her. Silver looked offended but Adamantine held out a hoof keeping him from passing past and interfering. Sombra arced a brow.

The four stood waiting for the king's reaction.

Sombra gestured with his hoof at the mare that she'd best hurry. With her teeth she pulled the sack off her secured saddlebags and opened its mouth. "As the doctor said there have been more than just raids and killings: there've been disappearances as well. We thought nothing of it, hoping those who'd ran had just moved to another part of the city."

She paused.

"Then we'd found other things."

From the sack she pulled out a length of fluff with a stick at the end. After looking at it for a few seconds the ponies realized it wasn't a bolt of cotton, they were looking at the leg of an ewe.

"My husband suffered the same. All we found was a leg. If it hadn't been for his cutie-mark we'd a never known it was him."

Ironlock scoffed. "Nhorse then, what of it."

She shook her head. "No, the flesh was stripped from his bones. We knew that once we could the rest of him, once we knew what to look for. When we found the severed limbs, ell... look at the wound."

Sombra levitated the limb and inspected the end closer, pulling off the tufts of fluff. Sure enough there was a sharp edge but the wound was clean, neat like it had been done with a single blow. And there was something else about the indentations where the leg appeared to be cut at both sides unevenly.

This was a mystery.