Queen of Clubs

Chapters

1. Ace
2. Deuce
3. Queen
4. King

1. Ace

When the dark alicorn introduced herself to the Imperial Academy by making a rude hoof gesture at the entire class, Drying Paint knew it was love at first sight.

He leaned over to Moon Shot while Professor Professor was shouting at the newcomers — Luna defiantly glaring at nothing in particular, Celestia cringing and waving at the class with an apologetic smile. "I want to ask her out," Paint whispered.

Both of Shot's eyebrows quirked up. "You're crazy," he whispered back, a dubious expression on his clay-colored muzzle. "And that's me saying that."

Paint glanced down at his magical theory text, white cheeks flushing red, as Luna's withering gaze swept the room and the rest of the class began whispering and snickering in a way that felt all too familiar. "Probably," Paint muttered, and returned to staring as Professor Professor shouted something about detention and the dark alicorn whirled and stomped toward the door. "But I'm serious."

"Do you realize who she —" Shot hissed, then abruptly shut up and flipped a page in his textbook as the professor turned back around. Celestia sighed deeply, running her hoof through her vibrant pink mane, and trudged past them to sit down.

Shot's eyes followed her down the aisle. Paint's didn't. When Luna bucked the classroom door shut with a slam like an explosion, his eyes remained locked on it. He listened to the sounds of stomping recede down the hall, a vision lingering of taut muscles tracing the curve of Luna's dark hips.

"As I was saying," Shot said as they walked home through the Crystal Empire's gleaming streets, "maybe you somehow failed all day long to notice the wings and horn, but she's an alicorn. Two, maybe you also failed to notice the bearded stallion who walked them in, or how Professor Professor bowed to him as if it was Queen Amore coming into the room —"

"Star Swirl the Bearded, yes, I know," Paint said distantly. He'd been wondering all day why the Equestrian regent had brought the fillies all the way to the Crystal Empire. Probably wanted them to get some magical education in a place where they might fit in, he'd thought at first, but a single glance around the gleaming gemstone hides of three-quarters of the class had been enough to shoot that idea down — never mind their wings.

"Yeah," Shot said. "You might as well ask out her tiara. At least that won't tell you no."

Paint blinked, then bristled. "Ex-cuse me? Even you, Shot? I thought you were better than those insincere snobs and their petty social games, but if you're implying she's out of my league —"

"What? No no no." Shot hurriedly held a placating hoof up. "You're too good for her — "

"I'm not a fan of empty flattery, either."

Shot swallowed, but pressed on. "What I mean is, you'd have to lower yourself to petty social games to even get her attention. She's a princess, Paint — that's all she does. She doesn't have problems. Her life is a game."

Paint frowned. "She is a princess, yes. But that's not what it looked like."

"How badly did the lecture distract you? Within five minutes after she sat down, she was whispering back and forth with the hoofball captain and giggling —"

"What are you talking about? She was in detention all day."

Shot paused, and then his eyebrows shot up. "Wait. You want to ask out Luna?"

Paint rolled his eyes. "Come on. Why would you even assume I meant Little Miss Popular?"

"Well. I mean. Celestia turned the head of everypony in the class." Shot's cheeks flushed, and he turned his head away. "Even if some of us know better than to chase nobility."

Paint abruptly stopped walking, a scowl curling his muzzle. Shot took a few more steps, then stopped as well, looking back over his shoulder with one eyebrow still arched.

"I can't believe it." Paint roughly swatted Shot's mark — a silhouette of a bow and arrow over a lunar crescent — making the colt jump. "You're abandoning me on this? The colt with the mark about hitting impossible targets? After all the times you've told me the legend of The Stallion Who Shot The Moon?"

"Paint!" Shot said pleadingly. "Please, buddy, you know I've got your back. It's just …"

"Just what?" Paint snapped — and then, at the look in Shot's eyes, forced himself to take a deep breath and step backward. "Sorry. I … sorry."

Shot stayed frozen for several seconds, then gradually untensed as Paint calmed, letting out a long sigh. "Paint, they're everything we hate," Shot finally said. "Just because something's hard doesn't automatically make it worthwhile."

"This is," Paint said quietly.

"Uh-huh," Shot said, one eyebrow raising.

"… You don't believe me."

"It's just … can I be blunt?" Shot paused for a moment, waiting for Paint's nod. "Luna's not just shallow nobility, she's also a psychotic juvenile delinquent that everypony's whispering about. She's the one pony in school that we'll get bullied more for talking to. By the Heart, what could you possibly see in her that's worth the trouble from Gilt Edge?"

Paint felt his cheeks redden. He thought back to the fire in her eyes as she flipped a frog to the class. Her iron self-assurance as the students' titters and the professor's shouts had washed over her. Her unbowed pride as she had stalked away.

And the sway of her hinds. Oh, stars, those hinds.

He swallowed and licked suddenly-dry lips. The strength I've never had, Paint didn't say. Not giving a single care about what other ponies think of her. Not needing to.

"Does it matter?" he said instead. "It's love, Shot. I look at her and my heart quickens. You don't ignore that. You know what they say — 'When the heart speaks its deepest truths, the whole Empire listens.'"

Shot rolled his eyes. "They also say, 'It's called a crush because that's what happens to your heart when you chase it.'"

Paint snorted — trying to tamp down the doubts suddenly churning in his gut. "Look. The point is, I'm talking to her tomorrow. Are you gonna help me or not?"

"Tomorrow?" Shot opened and closed his mouth, then sighed. "Look, buddy, love I'll help with — show me you've got the tiniest chance and I'll figure out how to make it happen. But this is just madness, and you don't need my talent to get your heart flattened into paste."

His heart was a knot in his chest. His hooves were shaking. His head was swimming, and sweat was beading at his brow. Paint had known it was going to be bad, but not this bad.

Luna took a half-step forward, eyes locked to his like a snake's to a rabbit's. The sky-blue of her mane was smooth and silky, almost ethereal, yet had managed to impossibly bunch and mat where it pooled over her whipcord withers. One of her wings was still scuffed, feathers lopsided, from where she'd clocked a mouthy classmate with the elbow while Professor Professor's back was turned. Her Academy uniform still smelled faintly of starch and dye, and its fabric was rack-stiff, yet in less than 24 hours it had developed two different rips.

He'd scripted this. Planned where to intercept her that would attract the least attention. Rehearsed it dozens of times. The words were seared into his brain like a brand, and yet they refused to make the leap to his muzzle. Hello, Luna. My name is Drying Paint, in third-year with you. I'm sorry to bother you, but it looks like you haven't had a great introduction to the Academy yet, and I thought you might want someone to show you around …

She snorted, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her exhalation. Paint flinched, but held his ground. "Stop blocking the hall," she growled.

A deeper panic strangled the panic choking the life out of Paint, easing the pressure for a moment. I'm losing my chance! he thought, and frantically forced words through a numb muzzle: "H-h-hello, i-i, i-i'm — s-sorry to b-bother, ac-cademmhnh. Hhhh." He swallowed and tried again. "Th-thought y-you w-want, s-someone, a-around —"

Luna snorted again. Paint's throat locked up. She took another step forward, and with a casual shoulder-nudge sent him staggering sideways into the wall. He hit with a skull-rattling thump, air wheezing from his lungs.

She stalked past him without another word. Paint gasped for breath. A corner of his brain suddenly reminded him how, after getting out of detention the previous afternoon, she'd supposedly confronted a mouthy earth pony, wrestled him into submission, and almost made good on an anatomically impossible threat. Not only did that suddenly feel all too plausible, but he had to count himself very, very lucky that she'd decided to apply her formidable strength with such restraint.

"Hah!" a jeering voice brayed from behind him as Paint numbly watched Luna tromp away — and an entirely new panic flooded in.

Gilt Edge — the Academy's cruelest bully.

Oh no. Where had HE come from?

"What have we here?" the fifth-year said as he strutted toward Paint, a cruel smile on his muzzle. "Was the loser making a move on the psycho —"

Without turning around, without even breaking stride. Luna's horn lit. Gilt's eyes widened as a blue field encircled him, and he yelped, hooves flailing, as he was wrenched from the floor. Off to one side, a refuse bin's lid shot off as if flicked by a dragon's claw, and Gilt sailed into the bin face-first with a wet squelch. The momentum of the impact sent him somersaulting down the hallway, garbage flinging everywhere.

Paint's mouth opened and closed. He glanced around helplessly.

The few ponies in eyeshot — and a cluster of others attracted by the noise — were staring in shocked silence. At the retreating Luna. At the moaning pony in the garbage can. At him.

It was all too much.

He bolted.

Drying Paint lay awake most of the night, thoughts whirling as he stared at the ceiling.

He was good at that, he mused bitterly. Staring. Waiting. Thinking. Freezing up when others were watching. Choking, like he'd choked that day, in the iron grip of self-consciousness.

In his own way, a dark little voice whispered, he was as bad as the hoofball players and the nobles and the nattering cliques — they spent their lives preening to uphold their reputation, and he spent his life avoiding one.

Oh, the things he could do if he no longer cared! But that was Luna's thing, and he was no alicorn. He wasn't, he glumly reflected, even a particularly good pony. He felt like a shadow, flitting around the edges of a life he could fit into if he just gave up and let himself get hammered into the shape the world wanted him to be.

Paint's mind kept chasing its tail in smaller and smaller spirals, until finally he arrived at the center with a mute sort of resignation: Moon Shot was right. Luna is out of my league.

It hurt, but it was a good sort of hurt. Instead of his heart leaping into his throat when he thought about the alicorn, there was just an achy sort of distance. And, he realized from that new calm remove, he owed her a thank-you for saving him from Gilt. It felt like it would be good closure to give that to her and then let her swing out into her distant, independent orbit.

When Paint shuffled out of first class after Luna the next morning, that eerie calm hadn't left him. He fell into pace beside her, ignoring her icy glare, feeling little more than an unsettled gut despite his lack of memorized words.

"Hey," Paint said.

Luna ignored him entirely.

"I … um." Despite his mind going blank, it was marvelous how much easier the words flowed when he wasn't terrified of getting it wrong. "Do you remember me from yesterday? We talked in the hall?"

At that, Luna snorted. "Yeah, I do," she said, with a touch of venom at the edge of her tone. "And if you think you can sweet-talk me into introducing you to my sister, throw yourself in the trash now and save me the trouble."

Paint recoiled, visions dancing in his head of a grinning Celestia breezing back and forth between all the cliques that made his life so miserable. "What? Ew! Are you kidding?"

At that, Luna turned her head. The sharp doubt on her muzzle softened with one look at Paint's features, and curved into a brief … smile? No, smirk … before slowly resettling into a milder and more neutral distrust. "Hmmh," she grunted, refocusing on the hallway as they walked.

"I — I just …" Paint faltered as thoughts intruded: Why am I doing this? He steadied himself, banishing that voice to the back of his head, and pressed on: "Wanted to thank you for saving me from Gilt yesterday."

"Whatever," Luna said neutrally.

Paint rubbed the back of his head with a hoof, as if to massage out his doubts. "It was … um. Pretty awesome, actually. To see that. You were pretty awesome."

Luna said nothing. But for the first time since she'd arrived at the Imperial Academy, she smiled. Really, this time, smiled. It was faint, and guarded, but unmistakable.

Paint's heart leapt, and fluttered, and the adrenaline began to tickle at his throat again.

Then her smile vanished like noonday dew, and her iron wall clamped back in.

"It's all anyone here deserves," Luna snarled. "Including you. Buck off."

Her tone lacked its earlier venom. Regardless, Paint did.

2. Deuce

Another gust of icy night wind blasted Paint in the face, and he wrapped his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders. They'd crossed the official border of the Crystal Empire several minutes ago, and were trotting down an old stone road whose heat-enchantments were barely sufficient to keep the cobbles from getting buried under drifts of fresh snowfall.

"Alright, Shot," Paint grumbled. "When are you going to tell me what this is about?"

Shot grinned knowingly. "Just a little farther, my friend, and all shall be revealed."

"… I can't feel my hooves. I'm going home."

Paint turned around into Shot's outstretched hoof.

"Whoah, hoss. You'll want to see this." Shot waggled his eyebrows. "I found out where your special somepony hangs out when she vanishes on the weekends."

Paint's breath caught for a moment — Luna? — but he forced his emotions down. No. Calm down. There's no chance. "Okay," he said, trying not to think about her smile, "first of all, she's not my special somepony."

Shot grinned and elbowed him in the chest. "Not with that attitude, she isn't."

"I mean, I gave up. You were right. She's out of my league." It was getting harder and harder to ignore the weird little heart-flutter that was unfolding with the conversation. "Besides, I thought you said you weren't gonna help me."

"I wasn't. But then I heard about Gilt getting thrown in a trash can." Shot's smile doubled in intensity. "It's long past time somepony did something about that jerk. And to hear it was her? Clearly I've been overestimating her shallowness."

"You have, yeah — but that doesn't make the idea less stupid," Paint said with more conviction than he felt.

"On the contrary," Shot said. "It means you're chasing her for the right reasons, which makes all the difference. She's still a psycho, sure. It would take a miracle for you to talk to her again without ending up in a hospital. But miracles? That's exactly the sort of crazy that's in my wheelhouse." He smirked and swatted the cloak over his Mark. "I'm never gonna get a better chance to put my talent to work."

Shot's intensity was actually beginning to worry Paint a little. "Look," he said, "I appreciate the thought … but even if Luna didn't hate the entire universe, that doesn't change what you told me back at the beginning. She's out of my league. She hobnobs with Equestrian royalty, and my talent is being the most boring pony alive."

"One, I never said she was out of your league. Two, the part about you isn't true. Your talent is tenacity — enduring everything, once you've got a goal to accomplish — and I see a friend whose opportunity has finally fallen into his saddlebags. And three, even if what you said was true, it just makes my job more interesting." Shot adjusted his cloak and started walking into the darkness again. "Now, come on. Let's figure out how to get you that date."

Paint sighed. This was madness. On the other hoof, it was his friend's special sort of madness, one he'd seen unfold into impossible beauty before. On the third hoof, he knew he had no chance at all with Luna … no matter what that smile might have meant. On the fourth hoof … if even friendship with the sullen young alicorn was such an impossibility, what did he have to lose when Shot's plan went wrong?

Might as well humor him, Paint thought. At least until he comes to his senses.

"Okay," he said. "I'll give this a shot."

Paint stopped dead in the doorway, unable to believe his eyes.

They had turned off the road at a small, nondescript stone building half-buried by snow. "THE LOVELESS," a faded sign read over the door, and when Shot knocked, they were quickly ushered in by a surly gryphon bundled up in several layers against the shack's unheated air. Then the doorgryph had pulled up on a trapdoor, and a blast of merely cool air had thawed them out, and they had stumbled down a dark staircase into a different world.

Black. So much black, like he'd walked into a yawning hungry light-eating chasm. Flickering blue-white magelights burned around the edges of the room, highlighting glaring-white skulls of a dozen different races hanging on the walls, casting shadows he could barely make out against the charcoal paint. There were glimpses of pastel here and there — ponies, even gem ponies — but they were all swaddled in clothes whose shades ran the range from onyx to ebony. Both the ponies and a smorgasbord of other races (all of whom dressed similarly) shuffled around the room or reclined in black pillows, murmuring to each other in low tones and drinking sickly tinted cocktails.

Paint adjusted his collar and shrank back into his deep-brown cloak, seeing the room's eerie light illuminate his leg like a shining white beacon, feeling hilariously out of place.

The room curled like a morbid croissant around a low stage at the far end. Two earth ponies, one shiny black … bug pony? … thing and one two-legged scaly dragonhorse thing stood on the stage playing instruments, and their music somehow managed to beat the decor in sheer creep factor. The bugpony had his jaws open, and from it, an ominous bass drone lurched around the scale in a way that would have given Paint's foalhood clavichord tutor a heart attack. One of the ponies scraped a bow across a fiddle's strings, drawing forth a chord that sounded like the caterwaul of dying beasts; the other was whacking his hooves to a set of drums to produce an irregular heartbeat-like rhythm. The dragon-thing, meanwhile, was speaking … singing? … in a sub-bass growling register that sounded more like an earthquake than any equinely possible noise, except that once in a while his muzzle would contort and he would enunciate something clearly enough for Paint to catch a word of Ancient Imperial.

"Welcome to my club," a sultry mare's voice said to Paint's side. "Drinks?" He glanced over automatically, and nearly leapt out of his skin when his eyes met those of a hovering equine skull.

Infinite relief flooded his paralyzed body a moment later when the skull blinked. Paint realized that it was another one of those insect-ponies. The surface of her body was a dully gleaming dark chitin rather than the matte bristle of a pelt, and was nearly invisible against the room's dark background — except for her head, which she'd bleached a shocking, unnatural white that gleamed in the magelight like bone. She'd caked an additional layer of shadow-dark makeup around her eyes, ears, and lower jaw to complete the effect.

The bug-mare twitched an ear-membrane at him, eyes curious. Paint remembered to breathe.

"Y-you … um … you don't want our IDs?" he blurted out as his brain was unlocking.

The bug-mare laughed, sweet and throaty. "You trotted out of the Empire, miles into the wasteland, here, to ask me to check your papers? You are crazier than most."

Paint's muzzle reddened. "No! I mean … um. We're just looking for a friend —"

Shot shouldered him, clearing his throat and speaking in an artificially deepened voice. "Two ice-wines, on the rocks." He gave the bug-mare a wink.

She stared at him silently for a few seconds, then shook her head and sighed. "Life is too short to make drink choices that poor, child. I shall return with some amasynthe — on the house. Drink it or don't."

"What was that about?" Paint whispered as the bug-mare meandered toward the discreet bar in one corner of the room.

"Don't blow our cover!" Shot hissed. "Don't tell anyone about Luna. Do you want her knowing you're here before you figure out how to make a good impression? This is reconnaissance — let's stay in the shadows while we watch."

"I'm pretty sure that's, um, anywhere," Paint whispered, head craning around. He froze at a flash of white from the dance floor in front of the stage, then nudged Shot and pointed with a tilt of his muzzle. "Wait. There she is."

And there she was — unmistakably so. A lithe deep-purple alicorn, wings half-spread, was rocking back and forth amid a group of swaying ponies at the edge of the stage, staring reverently up at the band. Luna was one of the only figures in the room not wholly wreathed in black, using it instead as an accent to her already midnight-dark pelt. She had on a saddle and peytral of black leather (leather!), with her mane and feathertips all dyed to match — the latter of which revealed hypnotic patterns of color and shadow as her wings swayed back and forth. She was wearing leggings that looked as if she'd murdered a fishing net dipped in octopus-ink, but somehow the diamond pattern just accented the sway of her hips and the muscles of her hinds and the pale glow of her moon Mark. She turned her head for a moment to talk to one of her fellow dancers, and Paint saw that she'd thickly outlined her eyes in black mascara, with streaks underneath that made it look as if she was weeping.

But, for only the second time since she'd walked into Paint's life, she was smiling.

A prod at his side from the bug-pony broke him out of his reverie, and Paint blinked what he belatedly realized was several minutes of dancing out of his eyes. "Where did your friend go, child?" the bug-pony said.

"I … um?" Paint glanced around, searching his memory. Ah: Shot had sidled off while saying something about scoping out the place and telling him not to go anywhere. "Around. Sorry. He's no trouble, I promise."

"There's no need for an oath. If he had desired to start trouble, I would have known it when he walked in." A glowing slime-green aura hovered an equally slime-green mouthful of thin liquid in a scratched shot glass over to Paint. "I brought you some amasynthe. Try a sip — the average pony finds it an acquired taste." The bug-pony smiled. "Not what you expected when he dragged you here, hm?"

"No, ma'am," Paint said, taking the glass in his own field and giving it a sniff. His nose crinkled. It was a touch sweet, along with a sharper undertone he guessed was alcohol, but mostly smelled of something approaching liquorice.

"None of that, child. I'm not your professor. I'm Loveless." Her muzzle curled back, exposing gleaming fangs in a gesture that Paint expected to find more threatening than he actually did. "Or Loveless, to my friends."

"… Drying Paint."

"Hm." Loveless looked up and down his body in a way that made Paint feel uncomfortably like a sheep at auction, then nodded. "You are a sweet little thing, aren't you? Welcome to my club."

Paint nodded back and experimentally sipped, and the drink floated down his throat, leaving a gentle tingling heat along the way. "Hmh," he said, and gulped the rest down. "That's really good."

"See what you think in a few minutes when it truly kicks in."

Paint stared into Loveless' eyes, sudden unease gnawing at his gut, but there was no malice in her gaze. "So," he said, trying to shed his discomfort, "what's with this place?"

"It is the home of the lost. The misunderstood." Loveless settled in on some cushions alongside Paint, and before he quite knew it he was sitting down alongside her. She casually draped a chitinous leg around his withers, and it was at once wholly comfortable and disturbingly devoid of the warmth of equine skin. "In this age, with peace between the Tribes, most ponies live in the light and think that is all there is to life. But we, here, know that is an illusion. We realize life is a blind stumble through the cruel and painful shadows, and to embrace that allows us to fully savor the fleeting and bittersweet joys when they come."

Paint blinked several times and bit his lip. "That's. Um."

"Morbid?"

"… Frightening?" he said diplomatically.

Loveless laughed, her muzzle curling back to reveal the glinting points of her fangs. "Good."

But her amusement receded at the look flitting across Paint's muzzle, and her tone softened. "Peace, sweet-thing. I forget sometimes how foreign this is to the average pony, and in truth I cannot blame them for flinching. If this sits poorly within you, then know none shall harm you in this room. Listen to the music until your friend comes back, and then leave and forget we exist, and live a long and happy life."

Paint slowly looked around, something he couldn't quite name gnawing at him beneath the unease.

"Mmm?" Loveless prompted.

"I think," he said slowly, "maybe it's good this place is frightening." He rubbed his forehooves together uncertainly.

Loveless silently turned her head to him, and for a moment as he blinked, all he saw was the skull, staring at him in silent judgment.

Paint cleared his throat and turned away, craning his head to look around the various clusters of ponies and people in the room. "But …" He swallowed and went for broke. "Why would anyone stay here, if it's so scary and you just let them leave?"

"Ah, the real question." Loveless' voice remained gentle, but Paint's heart stirred as he thought he caught a note of pride in it.

"Maybe I want it to be scary," he said, and he wasn't quite certain why he phrased it that way; he just knew it made his heart beat faster. "Maybe I want to be the sort of pony who can stand up to that."

Fangs flashed as the skull leered its jaws in a smile.

"I know," Loveless said.

"Is the drink kicking in?" Paint murmured, pulling his eyes back away. "I feel like the drink should be kicking in."

Loveless shifted against his side, ignoring his question. "In the traditional sense, the shadows are not a path of comfort — but they are a path of power, and there is a different sort of comfort in that. They are about casting off your shackles to embrace who you truly are, the light and dark aspects alike. They are about the freedom to remake yourself and seize the happiness the world has not offered." She leaned even closer in, muzzle nearly touching his ear, voice dripping honey behind her fangs. "And you? Is there anything the world cannot give you, sweet thing?"

Yes, Paint thought, a flush spreading to his muzzle, but the moment overwhelmed him and his eyes dropped to his hooves.

Loveless paused, and when he said nothing more, straightened back up and pulled away. Fear and thrill surged in Paint's gut in equal measure, and for a moment before Loveless opened her mouth again, he started panicking that he'd screwed up with silence again.

"Earlier you mentioned a friend," Loveless said, and again she was merely the gentle matron at his side, and her calmness seemed to surround him like a hug to the hindbrain. "If you wish to walk through the darkness with someone —" her hoof swept around the room — "this place is your best chance to find them."

Paint's eyes strayed back to where Luna was swaying along with the music, and locked onto her.

"But be warned," Loveless added almost casually. "Everyone must walk into the darkness alone."

He felt Loveless shift beside him, and saw her work her jaw out of the corner of his eye. She lifted a long, smooth leg to the corner of her mouth, dabbing something away with a black handkerchief.

"My, my," Loveless said. "That one. You love her."

The word "love" jolted him back into focus, and a flush spread across his muzzle. "I guess," Paint said, forcing his gaze from Luna's flanks down to his hooves.

Loveless abruptly stood. "That wasn't a question, sweet-thing." She snatched the empty shot glass back from Paint, made a noise deep in her throat, and spat a mouthful of thin slime-green saliva into it. Paint blinked several times, then felt his own bile rise as it clicked. He shot to his hooves and scrambled back frantically, hinds slamming into the wall behind him and sliding down to the floor.

Loveless whirled to face him, and he froze. Her eyes pinned him like a spear as she stalked in, and he stared in open-mouthed terror as she leaned in muzzle-to-muzzle, close enough for him to taste the liquorice on her breath.

"Calm, sweet-thing," she whispered, and his eyes fell into the swirling infinite of hers. His heart hammered to the erratic rhythm of the drummer, and the droning of the bug-singer itched and squirmed in the deep darkness of his brain, and some soothing voice in the back of his brain told him that all he had ever wanted to do was reach this moment and listen.

"Mark well my words," Loveless whispered. "You are in possession of a rare love, pure and intense and entire. It is not a thing to be squandered nor diluted — and I will not sully it, nor you, by savoring it in any less than its full measure. And so you shall not see me when next you return here, nor shall my daughters feed upon you in the world of snows. This I swear upon the shadows of the heartless throne." She pressed a hard hoof to Paint's chest, squeezing his lungs in, and the calm broke and his fear flooded back in and his entire attention refocused on the way her gleaming fangs shaped her words.

"But should you ever decide to be rid of your love," she said, "speak my name three times. It shall release me from my oath, and I shall lift the burden of your passion —" she paused to slowly run her tongue slowly over a mouthful of glistening fangs — "wholly and irrevocably."

Paint stared helplessly into Loveless' eyes. His blood pulsed in his ears. The stage-dragon growled. The skulls on the wall leered at him. The dying fiddle wails mingled with the laughter and murmurs of the crowd.

Then Loveless kissed him on the nose, and the room swam, and

— the next thing he knew, he was stumbling down a dark and icy stone road, leaning heavily on Moon Shot's shoulder, his heart still beating to the song of the shadows.

"What do you mean, you want to go back?" Shot shouted over the howl of the midnight snowstorm.

"That's where I can do it," Paint heard himself shout back, and a thrill rippled through his blood. "Embrace myself. Impress her with me."

Part of him wondered who in Tartarus this pony was who spoke through his lips. Another part knew, with glorious certainty, that it was simply the Paint who always should have been.

"No," Shot shouted. "I do crazy, not stupid. We've had this talk."

Paint shoved Shot roughly, which sent Shot's hooves sliding on the icy road, bringing them both to the ground.

"Ow!" Shot said as he struggled back upright. "What was that for?"

Paint lurched to his hooves and leaned in, frowning. "What's stupid about it?"

"I lost you for an hour and then suddenly just found you lying on a couch by the entrance mumbling something about the 'real you'."

"And?" Paint said. "You were fine."

Shot opened and closed his mouth — then winced as a wave of snow blasted into them, and returned to Paint's side, shouldering him down the road. "Look. We got out of there. Mission accomplished. Now that we've figured out more about her, we'll find a way to impress her at the Academy."

"It won't work," Paint said with softer certainty. "She doesn't live there." The image of Luna's smiling muzzle under mascara-streaked cheeks ghosted behind his eyelids.

"… I don't understand."

"I do," Paint said. "I understand her now, Shot." The way his pulse quickened at the thought of returning to the club she frequented — the excitement he vibrated with at the thought of meeting her there — was proof enough of that. "Look, it's simple. I want to make her happy, and she's never smiled anywhere else."

Shot looked dubious, then shook his head. "If you say so."

"I do."

"But I can't —" Shot winced as the wind screamed and nearly took the cloaks from their shoulders —"can't go back there with you. That place is scary, Paint."

The wind vanished mid-step as they stepped through the barrier of the Crystal Empire. Shot staggered several steps before catching his balance. Paint squinted against the soft glow of the streetlights, lifting a leg to shield his eyes while they readjusted.

"Well," he said quietly, his ears still ringing with the storm outside. "Everyone walks into the darkness alone."

3. Queen

Luna shuffled through the scrolls she'd brought with her to The Loveless, trying to restrain her fidgeting as she waited her turn. In the world's most ridiculous irony, Sun-days were now her favorite night of the week — partially because her stupid older sister was too busy to keep her from sneaking out, but mostly because it was Open Stage Night at the club, and some of the regulars had even complimented her a time or two on her poetry.

There was a smattering of tepid hoofbeats and claw-snaps as the Diamond Dog before her finished the mournful, howling ballad celebrating some stupid lover lost in some meaningless war or something. Luna tried not to judge. Everyone had their own darkness; that was this place's point. But, well, some darknesses were pettier than others.

The Diamond Dog spread her arms, soaking up the last of the applause, and then loped off the stage. Luna smiled — some butterflies making an exploratory journey through her innards — and selected one of the scrolls almost at random. The club quieted as she stepped onto the comparatively harsh glow of center stage and cleared her throat.

"They say we be sisters," she read, in the Equestrian-accented Old Imperial she'd had drilled into her head with numbing hours of Classics. When your heart carried silent burdens you couldn't speak, nothing freed your tongue quite like using a dead language which only lurked in the shadows of academia.

Then she took a breath to steady herself, and her face contorted:

"They say we be sisters.
Bonded by blood,
The thickest chain."

(She narrowed her eyes, pointing out accusingly into the darkness of the audience, her face a feral snarl.)

"Whose blood?"

"Whose blood?" (She'd only written the line once, but she repeated it for emphasis.)

Luna stamped her hoof, then jabbed it into her chest, wings flaring out.

"Mine own," she growled, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Thou think'st thy friends cut me not,
With their whispers and false smiles?
But when you drag me to their parties —" (She nearly spat the word.)

"Whose blood is the chain that binds me to thee?
Thine, sister?
I say thee NAY!"

She let the sudden shout echo around the silent room for a moment.

"Thou wilt never, in a thousand years,
Feel the life leak from thee,
To bind thee to the sister thou loves —
If even thou lovest me
In the way I love thee,
To bleed for thee, and bleed, and bleed."

Luna swung her head from one end of the room to the other, staring out into the scattered figures huddled in the embracing darkness.

"And I hope," she whispered as the applause began, "thou never wilt."

The audience's stamps and snaps were polite and scattered, but Luna basked in them regardless. Sure, they might have been tepid by some objective measure (some annoying part of her brain said mockingly), but that didn't matter. They meant she'd been heard, and that softened the ache.

She relinquished the stage — already thinking about which poem she'd read next time her turn came around — and a young stallion, with jet-black legs under a nondescript off-black cloak, stood up from the pillows a few rows behind hers. Huh, she thought as he stepped past her. He looks kind of familiar. But I know I'd remember if I'd seen him before — that's an awfully distinctive coat color for the North.

The pony leapt up onto the stage, deliberated for a moment, then grabbed his cloak in his teeth and jerked it off with a single motion, sending it fluttering to one side of the stage. He was a unicorn, maybe Luna's age, with a body on the thin side (maybe cute in a coltish sort of way, she decided) — and he'd just doubled down on the black thing. His pelt was barely distinguishable from the charcoal-black leg-wraps and shirt that clung to his form. On top of those was a black leather chestplate and pastern-guards that, judging from their stiffness, had probably started the morning at a gryphon armorer's. The only hint of color anywhere in the silhouette of his form was his piercing red eyes.

(She made a mental note to suggest metal accents to him if they talked — his aesthetic seemed to be dull, giant swaths of a single color, and while virtually anything would work to break that up, iron might enhance the quasi-martial look he wasn't quite pulling off. And maybe an accessory to match the eyes? Yes, more red, for certain.)

The colt drew in a breath, legs trembling a bit. He glanced down at his hooves, then in her direction, and their eyes met for a moment. He froze. Then he closed his eyes, turned away, and breathed out, and his posture gradually straightened.

"There is a love in my heart," he said, projecting his voice in a firm and artificially deep tone like the professors kept trying to teach her to do in the Academy's ritual magic classes. His eyes swept over the audience, and his gaze fixed on Luna for another lingering moment before he returned his stare to the empty wall at the back of the room.

"A love in my heart," (he repeated,)
"Pure and intense and entire,
A love that drives me
Through storms and fear,
And I don't know why."

An odd flutter squeezed at Luna's heart. He understands! she thought wildly, and straightened up, her full attention on the stage.

Then Luna realized he had no notes, and her breath caught. Is he composing this on the fly?!

"She doesn't know," (the colt said,)
"What I've done
For her and her alone.
How can I make her understand
What burns in my heart,
What binds us together?"

Luna listened, rapt, an old and familiar ache flaring to life and burning for once with somepony else's flame. Oh, Celestia.

"So I turn to the shadows.
This is my sacrifice,
To walk this dark road.
To endure any change, any truth,
For the sake of my love.
And thereby set things right."

As the mysterious colt began backing off the stage, Luna whooped, stomping enthusiastically — not caring a whit for the glares the other clubbers gave her as they went through the formality of their own applause. She circled around toward him, wingtips quivering, and zeroed in on him as he took a moment for himself after the performance.

"That was amazing!" Luna whispered, doing a very un-dark-and-gloomy hooftip dance. "That really spoke to me!" The colt visibly started, and some part of Luna noted that he'd been staring blankly at the wall, legs trembling, breath coming in shallow gasps. Stage fright hits all of us, I guess.

The colt stared at her, frozen, and some sensible inner voice told Luna to tune it down. She coughed into her hoof, refolded her wings, and put the mask back on — the detached, worldly persona she had immediately come to admire about everyone in The Loveless. "But I'm sure you figured that out from my own poem," she said. "I haven't seen you around before, though."

"U-unh, n-no," the colt said, and Luna embarrassedly took that as her cue to dial it back even more. Enthusiasm was one of the few sins of the shadows, and hers had been a doozy.

She drew in a deep breath, stood a little straighter, and self-consciously ran a hoof through the mane she had blackened with an alteration spell. (It never hurt to make sure — even with alicorn levels of magic, it took constant vigilance to keep the effect going.) "They call me Queen Nightmare here," she said detachedly. "And you are?"

"P-pain —" he stammered, then froze, mouth snapping shut.

Luna wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "Pardon?" she said neutrally.

The colt's eyes darted around for a moment, then settled on his hooves. He took a long breath, closing his eyes — and then, when he opened them back up again, he stood a little straighter, brushing a wrinkle out of his black shirt.

"Pain," he said, slipping back into his deep stage voice (which, Luna realized, got her heart fluttering anew). "There is pain in names, is there not? History. Within this place, we cast off the shackles of history to embrace who we truly are. We are freed to remake ourselves into our authentic selves, that we may seize what we need to survive in the shadows."

Luna suppressed an inner squeal, nodding thoughtfully. He was not only on her wavelength, he was so profound.

"And so if we are to share names," the colt intoned, "let mine be …" There was a moment of what Luna at first thought might have been hesitation, but decided was more like a pause for emphasis. "Let it come from the shadows in which we find solace. Sombra. Sombra Darkshade."

Luna felt the moment entirely overcome her. "Sombra," she said, rolling the flavor of the name on her tongue, and then lunged in and clamped her lips to his.

"Mmmf!" he snorted, staggering back as her weight pressed him to the wall, and for a terrifying moment she knew she'd gone too far. Then he inhaled through his nose, hooves fumbling for her barrel as his breathing restarted, and soon they'd sank to the floor and their tongues were wrestling with the same urgency as their bodies.

(Right up until the doorgryph roughly kicked them, and motioned toward the stairs with a scowl.)

The wind stirred, and cold crept in around the edges of the thin cloak, and Paint opened his eyes to the icy glitter of stars. Atop him, Luna mumbled and shifted her wings, causing the cloak to lift even further. Paint shivered and flailed for the edges of the fabric through their tangle of limbs.

"Pfft," Luna said, pausing for a moment to bite at his bruised neck again, digging her canines in not quite hard enough to break the skin. "Cold? Really?"

Paint stifled a whimper at her gnawing, running a hoof lightly down her side, and cleared his throat to deepen his voice again. "It is nothing worse than the ice of unkindness which freezes the hearts of ponykind against those such as us," he said, casting a brief yet longing glance toward the nearby shelter of The Loveless. "However, alas, the spirit of burning shadows which sustains me against the world is still trapped within mere unicorn flesh."

Luna shifted against him in a rather distracting way. "I'll mere unicorn flesh you," she murmured sultrily, then giggled. "If you stop shivering. That's pretty distracting."

"Then this one would kindly inveigh upon you to cease pulling the cloak away with your wings."

"You're right," Luna murmured into his throat. "I've got better things to do with them."

"I would look forward to that — but perhaps we can lie here for a bit first?" Paint murmured back, wrapping his hooves around her back and pulling her body heat in closer. "As you said, the shivering is rather distracting."

Luna nodded and folded her wings down to cover his sides. Paint closed his eyes, feeling the numbness recede, then let himself savor the slow pressure of her breathing against his chest.

"There's no way Celestia's having this much fun tonight," she said out of nowhere.

Paint opened his eyes again. "Excuse me?"

"Celestia," Luna said. "My sister."

"No, I know who she is. I'm just wondering why you're mentioning her."

"Why shouldn't I?" Luna said. "She's everything I'm here to avoid."

"... My point exactly?"

Luna sat up abruptly, peeling the cloak away. "My point is, you doofus, I'm trying to say how much more fun we're having." Acid crept into her tone. "But if you'd rather be at one of her stupid parties, by all means let me help you track her down."

"Don't be ridiculous," Paint said.

"It's not ridiculous in the slightest. Literally every pony on the planet likes her more than me."

Paint sat up too, bumping his muzzle to Luna's and giving her a stern look. "Don't give me that. You know that's not true."

"Mmmh," Luna grunted, turning her head away, but Paint thought he caught a smile flitting past her lips.

He lowered his muzzle, tentatively nibbling at her throat, feeling her tense and then fractionally relax into it. "Maybe you need some more convincing of the fact?" he murmured.

Suddenly, Luna shrugged her shoulder to his, pushing Paint back, and turned her head away. "Could we not talk about her now?"

Paint blinked. "Huh? But I didn't ..." He frowned. "What's the problem?"

"Sorry. Never mind. Sorry." Luna pressed a hoof to the bridge of her nose and sighed. "You're right. She's been on my mind too much."

"It's alright. Let's —"

"But I hate her! Nnngh!" Luna shot a hoof out past Paint's shoulder too fast for him to even flinch, and there was a sharp crunch as the stone wall buckled and cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact point. "And I hate that I hate her! She's my sister, we're supposed to do everything together ... but. Gah! It's like my entire life revolves around her, and I would be okay with that if it went both ways, but it's always me making sacrifices! Do you even know how we ended up in the Crystal Empire? That was all her! I wake up one morning and suddenly it's 'pack your bags, Luna' and the next morning I'm freezing my butt off!"

Paint paused for a few moments to make sure she was done, then tentatively touched a hoof to Luna's shoulder. "That's horrible," he said. His face darkened. "What gives her the right?"

"I know, right? Thank the stars I found this place. At least somepony understands me here."

Paint chewed his lip for a few moments, curiosity building. "I don't get it," he finally said. "Why didn't you say anything to her? That's ..." not like you, he didn't quite say. "Disappointing."

Luna blinked, then roughly shoved him back, eyes flashing. "Excuse me?"

Paint flinched. "I mean — that is — you're so strong." As the snarl on Luna's muzzle receded into doubt, he swallowed and pressed on. "Why are you letting her push you around like that? Everypony at school knows not to mess with you. She should, too. If I were you I'd march up to her and give her a piece of my mind."

Luna narrowed her eyes at him, one eyebrow raising, and his heart froze. Oh, buck. I mentioned school. Why did I mention school, she's going to recognize me —

"Yeah," she said contemplatively. "Maybe I will."

The ink wouldn't wash out.

Paint, crouched over the sink, stared at his legs with slowly growing horror. Sure, he'd asked that seedy old pegasus for something that wouldn't bleed out of his pelt while he was making his move at the club, but he hadn't expected it to be permanent. And yet, four different soaps and two bleaches and three hours of scrubbing later, his once-white coat refused to lighten beyond a deep muddy grey. And classes were about to start.

He took a breath. Slowly lowered the shampoo he had been about to retry. Looked at the pony in his mirror. Really looked.

Grey, he thought. Caught between darkness and light.

He stared into the red of his eyes, his mind replaying the secret shadows he and Luna had explored in each other.

"Well," he said, lowering his voice into the stage intonation that had helped liberate his tongue, "it is my sacrifice to walk a darker road."

He grinned and shouldered his saddlebags, then quickly brushed his still-black mane (none of that dye had lightened) and stared back into the mirror again. "Sombra," he said experimentally, then rolled it the same way Luna had. "Sombra."

Paint smirked, then wheeled around and trotted to school, darkened head held high.

The whispers started when he walked into class. Professor Professor, eyebrows raised, watched in silence as Paint took his seat. Paint casually set his textbook down, passed his homework forward, and began taking notes from the blackboard as if nothing had changed. The professor opened his mouth, thought about it for a moment, then shook his head and began his lecture.

Paint ignored the whispers and the giggles and the stares. He was above that now. He did allow himself two glances over the course of the class: one to Shot (who nodded back with a shocked sort of respect), and one to Luna (who was staring at him when he glanced her way, but quickly averted her eyes with an inscrutable expression).

It felt so strange seeing Luna in purples and blues. Like she was naked, kind of. But more that it was like looking at her with her skin stripped away.

Paint was entirely unsurprised when a mocking voice carried down the hall in between classes. "Well, well," Gilt Edge purred, backed up by a wave of snickers rippling through the hallway. "Look who decided to go for that promotion from loser to freak."

Paint slowed to a stop. Carefully closed the textbook in his hoof and stowed it in his saddlebag.

He heard hoofsteps close in behind him, and a note of menace shaded into the bully's voice. "You think that makes you too good to talk to your old friend Gilt, huh?"

Paint closed his eyes for a moment.

Sombra slowly turned around.

"Well, you're gonna —" Gilt started.

Sombra lit his horn without a word.

A nearby rubbish bin rattled. Then its lid shot off as if flicked by a dragon's claw, spanging off the ceiling and flipping crazily between them before noisily settling to a halt a few body-lengths away.

The hallway went dead silent.

Sombra took a single step forward. Lit his horn. Smiled.

Gilt Edge — and half the crowd — yelped and bolted.

Luna was waiting outside the door to second class when Paint walked up. She was leaning against the wall, one wing half-lifted to brace herself at a comfortable angle, casually inspecting the frog of one forehoof. Without so much as looking at Paint, she nodded at him, gave him a little jerk of her head, and started walking down the hallway.

His heart fluttered and soared. Without so much as breaking stride, Paint swerved away from the classroom and followed her.

The two of them walked side-by-side to the building exit. Paint stayed silent — at first figuring she was waiting to say anything until they were outside, and then trying to give her the courtesy of starting the conversation, and then holding back out of a creeping fear that he'd done something wrong and to speak up would make it worse. She simply walked, face hidden behind that blank mask, wingtips quivering with some repressed emotion.

Paint followed a still-silent Luna to the edge of the school grounds, feeling the tension gradually thicken. She squirmed through a hole in the fence around the hoofball field, trotted into the shadow of the bleachers, and hopped up onto the squat stone structure of a campus leystation, settling in on her stomach with her forehooves dangling over the edge.

Paint hoisted himself up, grunting a bit, and settled in alongside her, a respectful few hoofwidths away. His heart was beginning to hammer in his chest, and he felt heat rise to his muzzle as memories of the previous night began to surge through his anxiety.

"Hey, you," Luna finally said, eyes fixed on the ground.

"… Hey," Paint said, emotions swirling in a muddled mess.

Her eyes didn't move. "I thought you looked familiar."

The tension finally coalesced into something concrete. Paint chewed his lip. Okay. She's disappointed at the reality of the colt behind the mask. That's not the end of the world.

Paint cleared his throat and dropped into his stage-voice. "I'm not the stammering colt you met a few weeks ago," he said with quiet confidence that — to his surprise — he didn't have to fake. "This doesn't change anything."

"It doesn't," Luna agreed, and Paint's gut unclenched. He reached a hoof toward her, and was opening his mouth to reply, when she added: "But I was hoping I wouldn't see you again."

Paint's heart squeezed into a little ball, and kept squeezing.

"W-what?" he managed, voice contorting back upward.

Luna sighed heavily. "I thought about what you said last night, and woke Celestia up to confront her when I got home," she said, and for the first time since Paint had met her, the unquenchable fire in her voice was out. "So we had a long talk. A really long talk. And it turns out I've been wrong about everything."

Paint stared, feeling a floaty numbness spread out from his chest.

"She brought us north in the first place because … well, I never took to being groomed for nobility the way Celestia did. I'd developed a reputation at nearly every school in Everfree. Behind my back, Celestia begged the Everfree Council to send us out to the edge of pony lands — where everypony would treat us as curiosities rather than princesses-to-be, and we had the room to just be ourselves. I never would have had the freedom before to visit anywhere like The Loveless, and if I'd known that's why she arranged it I would have been thrilled … but I never quite got filled in on that plan. And when I saw all our new freedom and interpreted it as Celestia pushing me away except for when she wanted to drag me to her things, I got … well. Even more bitter. About-to-do-something-I'd-regret bitter."

"B-but last night," Paint said helplessly.

Luna touched his shoulder and gave him a pained smile. "Was pretty fun. Thanks. But our talk made Celestia realize that I was just as miserable here as I'd been in Everfree — and as much of a butt as she can be, once she realizes I'm hurting, she moves the heavens to fix it. She apologized and mentioned that Star Swirl had agreed to tutor us personally for a while if this didn't work out, and entirely aside from hearing Celestia apologize, that's a dream come true for me." Her voice softened. "So we're leaving right after school. I figured it would be easier if we just vanished — then you could have some good memories, and wouldn't blame yourself for my departure. Sorry it didn't work out that way. And thank you for being one of the things which made the Empire almost tolerable."

"One" of the things, Paint's mind echoed mockingly. "Almost" tolerable.

"But the club!" Paint said, desperately retreating for solid ground which didn't exist. "What you said to me! And your poem! I heard that pain! That was real!"

"It was … at the time," Luna said. "But then I realized I was wrong about the mare I loved. The mare I'd do anything for." She smiled gently. "You should understand that better than anypony. I mean, I heard your poem. You've got a special sister, too."

All Paint could muster to that was a deflated kind of squeak.

Luna leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the nose, then stood up and hopped down to the ground. "Dream well, Sombra," she said as she trotted away. "Hey, maybe I'll see you if I ever visit this frozen dung-hole again."

Paint stood. Reached out toward the mocking sway of her retreating hips. Opened his mouth. But there was nothing to say.

His vision began to blur as the alicorn disappeared in the distance. His legs began to tremble — and not, he slowly realized, with fear. Stormy emotions were raging and swirling through the cavern of his chest; the love that had once swelled to fill it whenever Luna walked by was small and hard and cold now, a crystal tossed by the winds.

"One" of the things. "Almost" tolerable.

And, worse, he could feel it growing jagged as it tumbled — leaving little stabbing pains in his ribs and lungs and gut every time he breathed.

"Loveless," Paint hissed through clenched teeth, feeling the first tears cascade down his cheeks. "Loveless. Loveless."

4. King

And that was that. The summoning was done.

Paint closed his eyes as he spat the final syllable out, sinking into a sea of vertigo. Cruel shadows whirled and spun. Dark whispers mocked him, just past the edge of hearing. He felt cold breath on the back of his neck, and went rigid — and then the wind stirred again, and he squeezed his eyes tighter shut and hovered at the knife's edge of tension, waiting.

What was it going to feel like, to have his love eaten? Would she drain it the way one drained energy from a spell, leaving him hollow and writhing in the agony of incompleteness? Would she sink her fangs into his throat, causing the rest of him to bleed out into the final darkness of oblivion? Would she be merciful, and make that sharpened love just vanish as if it had never been? Or would she be cruel, and taunt him over his naivete as he begged for release?

… Why was she holding back?

Paint took a shuddering breath, vomit rising as the possibilities grew darker and darker. This was just torture, now. And the worst part was that regardless of everything he had done to reinvent himself, he was going to meet his end while waiting. In the end, that was the true horror of the dark: there was no way to escape himself.

Well, not if he could help it.

Paint clenched his teeth so hard his jaw trembled. He lit his horn, drawing from that cold and bitter spiky place, letting everything else dissolve away.

The shadows had fangs.

He should have been afraid of that. But two could play at that game.

Sombra drew in a deep breath, then let out a defiant roar, eyes snapping open.

He glanced wildly around. His roar died away. The energy dissipated from his horn.

He was alone in a chilly schoolyard.

When Sombra yanked the trap door open and stalked down the stairs, The Loveless was empty in more ways than one.

Instead of the ghost-blue magelights that shone in a part of the spectrum which eyes couldn't see, the wall sconces had been filled with normal lights, warmer and brighter. The paint on the walls was a dull and dingy black rather than the shadow of infinite space, and the skulls on the wall were yellowed and cracked rather than a bleached shining white. Without the exotic lighting, the furniture was faded — and even stained with old spilled drinks. The bar to one side of the room was a dark-stained brown wood, and the stone floor was a muted grey matching Sombra's new coat.

It felt so strange to see colors here.

Sombra glanced around the room. A wet mop was propped against one of the tables, next to a bucket of dingy grey water, and a section of the floor gleamed with moisture. And the room wasn't wholly empty: near the bucket, a black-coated earth pony sat calmly on a lumpy sofa, blending in with its dark upholstery, watching him with piercing eyes and a flat expression.

He shoved a table out of the way and took some slow steps straight toward her. "Bring me Loveless," he growled.

"You speak to her," the pony said in a subdued voice matching the decor.

Sombra advanced, towering over the pony. "Don't test me. I know what I saw when we met."

The pony closed her eyes for a moment — and then space distorted around her with a sickly green glow, and she grew insectile and hard-edged, with a bleached-grey faceplate.

"If you prefer," she purred in a familiar tone now out of place.

Sombra was still for a moment, then his face curled with rage. "You. Lied."

Loveless stared into his eyes before answering, calm and even. "Of course I did, child. I am a performer. It is my life and livelihood to lie so that ponies feel good about themselves."

"Do I look like I feel good?"

"Would you be here if you did?" Loveless countered. She leaned back into the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. "I can help, child, but not when your emotions are such a tempest. Let us speak of what happened to poison your love."

Sombra's rage simmered over. He lit his horn to seize a stool from the floor near the bar, whipping it to the floor with a sudden crack that left him brandishing a jagged length of wood. "You lied," he growled, "is what happened."

Loveless shot to her hooves and scrambled back frantically, hinds slamming into the wall behind her and sliding down to the floor. Sombra stalked forward, watching her eyes track the point of the makeshift spear.

For the first time, fear edged into her voice, and her words quickened. "Yes, Drying Paint. I lied about your link to the alicorn. Every being wishes to hear that their love is unique — the substance of legends. But it was never about her — for either of us. I told you what you needed to hear to become the pony you wished to be."

He lifted the spear. Loveless flinched. Then, faintly: "Please, Paint."

"Unbelievable," Sombra snarled. "This is just a game to you. Maybe I shouldn't have expected any better from a princess who's never had to care about anyone not on her level — but you? Do you think you can put on the darkness like a cloak and take it off when the sun rises?"

Loveless raised a trembling hoof. "But that's what the darkness is. Many ponies can't embrace their pain without permission to explore it. The lie of the shadows provides that permission, and a safe place to connect with others similarly incomplete." She turned pleading eyes up to him. "But there's no reason to cling to a lie that rips you apart. I can feel your hurt, Paint; it nourishes me not at all and you even less. Set the lie aside and let me help you."

He was still for a moment. The spear trembled in his horngrip.

Then, softly:

"You had that chance," Sombra said. "You broke your oath."

Storm clouds were casting the Empire into shadow as Sombra walked back up the stairs and out of The Loveless.

He paused in the doorway, feeling the wind nip at his skin. He glanced down at the glow spilling out over the threshold. In front of him, darkness and ice. Behind, light and warmth.

He snorted at the symbolism. Useless. As if there was some sort of choice to be made. As if there was a reason to go back.

He did, however, pause for a moment to look back down the stairs. The flames were cheerfully growing now, their red glow dancing madly into the hallway. Acrid black smoke billowed out from the trapdoor, filling the ground-floor room and beginning to escape into the world outside.

He smiled, shouldered his cloak, and stepped outside.

"Well," Sombra whispered as he left, "everyone walks into the darkness alone."