With Eyes Like the Heads of Nails
Sombra stepped outside.
It was a cloudy day that day. Every day in his empire was cloudy, as the sun offended him greatly. It had burned his skin too often, had caused it to peel and tear from flesh one too many times. He had banned it hundred, if not thousands, of years ago, had barred those insolent mares who controlled it from the gates of his nation. With no sun, the lands he resided in were cold; the snow never melted, and even continued to pile up upon the faded houses and huts that stretched beyond the horizon. The clouds above him were grey, laden with even more snow, the small, fragile little bunches of crystals wafting through the air lazily. This too, offended him, as laziness in even the smallest things in the presence of his magnificence was a truly mortal sin of the highest caliber. But one could not whip the clouds, no, nor could one shout at them to work. They were mindless beasts that shrouded the skies, and blanketed his kingdom in darkness. Glorious, comforting darkness.
He thought about those he had cast from his kingdom. About something that they had said to him, all those many years ago. He thought about how stupid it had sounded, how weak and powerless it had seemed. Sombra disliked the weak and powerless. He would have gotten rid of them if he could have, but it would have seemed such a waste. They could do nothing to him. They had no power over him, represented no threat, and they knew that it was only his insurmountable mercy that kept them alive. He should have forgotten what they had said. Somehow, it still stuck, in the back of his head, like a minstrel’s song on endless repeat, and it irritated him greatly that he was forced to remember such idiocy.
He reared up onto the railing of his balcony, looking down upon the ponies below. Some were in chains, being driven through the streets, marched through snows that came up to their knees on their way to the crystal mines. Others were dressed in armor, carrying whips in their mouths or in gently shrouded magical grips, giving the occasional crack to a pathetic weakling who was holding back the rest of the line. Still others were unchained, opening up their paltry shops, hoping to earn some meager coins from his emaciated workforce, irritating little fillies and colts following them closely, quietly, their heads down. There were maybe thousands of ponies below, but only a few voices caressed his ears. Gruff, short shouts from the soldiers, gentle, whispered words between the weaklings in chains, small admonitions from parents to their children as they got themselves ready to face the day. The rest were silent. Amazingly, lovingly, fearfully silent, and Sombra felt a small amount of pride in what he had done.
There was no wind. The dim lights of the streetlamps flickered over the dirty, gray-stained snow. The naked, dead branches of the trees were completely still. Sombra was struck with a distinct feeling of solitude, and it felt incredible. It felt amazing, to be alone and yet surrounded by the insignificant lives of all those little slaves, to be by himself in spirit and soul, to have killed and destroyed the imaginations of everypony beneath him, to turn them into things. Things that were his. Countless, impossible amounts of his own property. This made him feel strong. It made him feel determined, to feel impossibly powerful. He took a deep, long breath, filling every single inch of his blackened lungs with the brittle coldness of the air, and let it out in a long, pleasant sigh. Today, he decided, would be a day of revelry for him. Perhaps he would get drunk. Sombra wanted to get drunk. He was already intoxicated with the sensation of his impossible-seeming power, anyhow. He didn’t always feel like this, and to feel this way was something to be celebrated. The drunkards in his life had always been powerful over the weak and spineless.
Sombra frowned, and took another breath, swallowing down unpleasant sensations. More memories. More things that he had to forget. For now, at this moment, the King was without his cape, his armor, nor his crown, in his natural element. He had no need to bathe. The power that he felt made him feel clean. It made him feel almost giddy in a way, to be the way that he was. His eyes scanned the crowds, scanned the thousands of faces below. Most faced the ground, too terrified to look upwards. Others were shrouded by helmets or caps, their expressions neutral, unreadable. This was good. Their faces said all that he needed to know. Their misery was a fitting punishment for their lack of strength.
His eyes scanned further still, glazing over the glazed-over faces of his populus. Then they saw an anomaly, and focused, and narrowed. There was a particular streetlamp shining brighter than they usually did, and underneath it was a family. A stallion, a mare, and a colt. Sitting in the snow, unmoving, their heads turned upwards towards Sombra’s castle, and it soon occurred to him that they were staring upon him, emotionless and motionless. Even from the great distance they were away from one another, Sombra could feel their eyes locked upon his. The mare, her powder blue coat ragged, her silvery mane falling over her face, occasionally brushing it away. The stallion, his grey coat bristling, his charcoal mane cut close to his skull and neck, his body leaning slightly against the mare. The filly, held behind one of the stallion’s forelegs, huddling against her parents in the cold, her dark blue coat somehow well-groomed and her white mane held in a bun. All three of them with a pair of bright blue eyes, that stared deeply into Sombra’s red-tinged irises, that seemed to be searching for something.
Sombra suddenly felt very uncomfortable. He felt something boiling in his belly. He narrowed his eyes and tried to yank them away from the little family beneath the light, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stop staring. He couldn’t stop his heart from beating faster, from his breath growing deeper and darker, from jealousy to fill his mind and twist his formerly pleased expression into an unhappy scowl. Their faces remained neutral, remained somehow pleasant, and yet Sombra could feel them trying to burrow something into his consciousness.
He huffed, his hooves gripping the alabaster railing tighter. Memories. Unpleasant ones, yes, rising in his chest. He was like them once. He was weak. He didn’t want to think about it, and it made his blood run red hot in his veins to do so. It wasn’t who he was. He was always the strong one. His brothers and sisters all died from the cold, but he was the strong one, and he survived. No, he couldn’t think of them. He couldn’t think of the past. It wasn’t who he was. He was a King now, and he would continue to be a King until time itself had ended, and even after that, he would rule the world in it’s peaceful loneliness, he would have everything in the world to himself and not have to share it. He had made such progress from where he had been when he had been that filly.
Sombra growled, shaking his head, trying to look away. He had been weak once. His father was more in love with the bottle than he ever was to his mother. Their home had one room, a few beds, no furnace, no way to keep himself warm except to lay against his mother, except to bask in his father’s tepid, heated breath. Sometimes he didn’t have a chance. Their home only had one room, and that one room forced him to watch his father, to watch that powerful stallion take what was his. His mother couldn’t complain. It wasn’t allowed. His father had beaten them both, but he mostly beat his mother, for she was the weaker of the two of them. Once he had struck her with a bottle, and she didn’t move, and when Sombra came to take warmth from her body there was none to be found. They buried her in the ground under which their hovel had been built upon, and his father got drunk more often after that. And at nights, Sombra couldn’t sleep, for his father would shake, and sob in the darkness, and one day his father had left and never came back, and Sombra was alone.
That didn’t matter now. This was where he was. And yet now, he could feel envy as the family stared. They were unhappy, yes. He had made sure of that. But they were together. The father loved his child and his wife. The wife loved her husband and her child. The child loved her parents, always had them to protect her from the worst of his soldiers. Sombra knew what their stares meant. They spoke of amusement, of evasion, of contempt. They were so distant, and yet filled with such malice that he could no longer bear to see them, and yet he was compelled to stare deeply into their eyes, to see what he had wrought, and Sombra felt no more pride. No, now he only felt anger. Now he only felt incredible, powerful anger. No longer did Sombra desire revelry. No longer did he feel the desire to dance to the songs the minstrels would sing. No, now he only felt anger.
He howled into the night, bellowing into it with rage. The family sat, unmoved. He screamed, and cried, and laughed with the madness and the anger that they brewed in his breast. He raised himself up further and attempted to piss on them, desperate to do anything stop their staring, but found that he couldn’t do any such thing. He beat against the railing with such force that bits and pieces of it fell upon the ponies below. He felt angry now. At himself, yes, but Sombra refused to admit that. He felt angry at them, for making him angry, for making him remember where he had come from, how he had been raised. They made him jealous of what little happiness that they had, they made him realize that he couldn’t take that away from them, no, and that made him more powerless than he could ever imagine.
He left the railing, braying, bucking his hips and snorting and whinnying with rage. He screamed so hard that his throat stung, he shut his eyes tightly and wished that he were blind. He soon forgot what had made him so angry, what had prompted this rage, and was flailing out blindly, knowing only his emotions. Grief. Sadness. Despair. Complete and utter loneliness. He was swimming underwater in darkness. He was walking through an empty house, speaking to an imaginary audience. He went back inside, beating at things, screaming at nothing, smashing his head into a mirror and causing it to shatter, the glass breaking into several pieces and falling to the floor beneath his hooves, and he stomped upon it, crushing it, shards of it digging into them. He felt no pain. he only felt anger. Deep, powerful anger and endless despair.
Sombra fell to the floor, panting, feeling powerless, drifting back into slumber.
When he awoke, Sombra felt nothing. His tears had long since dried against his cheeks. His breathing had slowed to a comfortable pace. His bloodied hooves had long since dried, and small puddles of brown laid where he had fallen. He didn’t know what time it was. The clouds blocked out the sun. He remembered what the mares had said, how stupid it had seemed, and told himself, over and over, that that was what it was. Stupid. Sentiments made by weaklings. He had been weak once, but no longer would he have to be.
Sombra sat up. He looked at the morning before. He knew what had to be done, yes. No more families. No more happiness in the midst of his despair. He looked in the mirror, and his heart skipped a beat, for in that brief moment he had mistaken the reflection for his father. But no. All he saw was himself. A ruler. A King. A master of many, lord of all that he could survey. He was responsible for their despair, and he had let his own go on for too far.
He smiled. Today was to be a day of revelry for him. He wished he was drunk, so drunk he would be. He would be happy, he would be pleased with all that he had done, for he had done it. He had become strong.
Sombra stood, and took a deep breath. All he had to do now was face the day.
Author's Note
