King in the North

Chapter Three: Desperation

The embassy from Equestria couldn’t simply leave because Luna had broken off her engagement with Boreal, and neither could the processes that the emperor had set into motion be suddenly stopped. He had to send out new instructions and letters to his courtiers, subjects, vassals, and the clergy. Most of them were in the dark as to what exactly Emperor Boreal had been planning, but the few who did know the whole story spread the word of the almost-bliss that Boreal had been denied. Nopony in the Crystal Empire doubted that their sovereign hadn’t been the one to call off the wedding plans.

Meanwhile, Celestia, Luna, and their retinue continued to stay at the manor outside of the Crystal City, a constant reminder whenever the emperor strolled though the castle and gazed in that direction, though he wasn’t in the mood for much strolling these days. Many of the celebrations that had been planned for the Equestrian embassy’s visit were cancelled, reducing the time that he had to be around Luna as much as possible. Meetings still had to be held in order to discuss treaties and relations between the two largest realms in Equestria, but Celestia often took the lead in these meetings on the Equestrian side, explaining that Luna was not feeling well. This, at least, gave Boreal some hope, that perhaps she still had feelings for him—that she couldn’t stand to see him again not out of revulsion, but out of fear that seeing him would only make the broken engagement pierce her heart more deeply. He felt much the same, though they couldn’t continue avoiding each other forever.

Emperor Boreal, in grief, tortured himself with questions of what might have been and what still might be, if only something changed. What that something was, though, kept coming back to the same thing. She was an alicorn and he was not, and Celestia had convinced Luna that this difference was insurmountable. The solution seemed simple at first—become an alicorn—but Boreal was not confident that it was possible. He’d already attempted the alicornification ritual multiple times, and each time had been a failure. Besides, who was to say that that would be enough to satisfy Celestia? That was how he framed things now. Luna was still the mare he loved, but Celestia exerted an influence over her sister that meant he’d need her approval in order to marry his beloved. Boreal felt a disturbing anger toward Celestia as he blamed her for tearing him and Luna apart; in his darker moments, he wished to remove her from the picture as a means of reconciling himself to Luna. These thoughts came to nothing, of course. Luna loved her sister, maybe more than she loved Boreal, and doing anything to the sun queen would jeopardize his relationship with the moon queen even more than allowing Celestia to go on whispering poison in Luna’s ear. With potential regicide ruled out, Boreal seemed to have only one option before him if he wanted to reunite with the sovereign of the night.

He pulled down a tome from his library that he hadn’t touched in decades. His skill with sorcery had improved somewhat since the last time he’d attempted the alicornification ritual, but would it be enough for him to ascend? As he’d done before, he took the instructions laid out in detail in the tome and tailored them to his own personal flavor of magic. Magical relics and materials were fetched and placed meticulously around his laboratory in their assigned places atop the runes and magic circle he’d drawn on the crystal floor. Servants and guards were ordered to stay out of his chambers and bar the doors until the process was completed, for their own safety. Boreal was terrified of what might happen if the ritual failed … but one look at the portrait of Luna she’d sent him steadied his nerves and reminded him why he was doing this. Erring on the side of caution, he removed the portrait from the laboratory before starting the ritual.

The emperor of the Crystal Empire stepped into the center of the magic circle, the web of enchantments he’d spent the last few days weaving surrounded him. No turning back now. He began the ritual, reaching out with his magic and etching glowing runes in the air. Energy crackled through the air as the spell encircled and penetrated him. It took on a visible form, swirling around Boreal as a tempest of power, threating to tear him apart, skin, muscle, bone, and all. His hooves lifted off the floor as he rose into the air, the glowing storm centering around him. Boreal was infused with the magic that would allow him to ascend from sorcerer to alicorn, and this was where he’d always failed before. He pressed on with effort, and it seemed he might actually succeed, a tingle rising in his insides as coils of magic wrapped around his organs in preparation or their transformation. Then, suddenly, he hit a wall of resistance.

No! Not this time! I can’t fail this time! Boreal poured more magic energy into the spell, trying to force his way past the block, and he could sense the enchantment straining and resisting his efforts. With a snap strong enough to be audible, the resistance shattered, and the ritual poured forth. The cost of his actions wasn’t evident until a few seconds after he’d broken through. Everything seemed to be progressing as expected, but Boreal had lost control of small parts of the spell, pieces of the enchantment damaged by his forcing it, and it all began to unravel. Organs liquefied or shifted, as they were supposed to; concerningly, however, they didn’t reconstitute properly or didn’t move in sync and collided catastrophically with each other. Boreal vomited blood, and his eyes bulged as he experienced a pain he had never imagined was possible. The skin on his back split as his wings grew haphazardly, bones shattering and flesh stripping off them with gore-tainted feathers clinging on. Blood stained his snow-white cloak clean through as the wings trained and failed to grow and heal themselves. The tempest of magic had been dangerous before, but it had been an ordered chaos. This time it was truly feral, and winds roared around the laboratory, splintering tables and chairs and knocking over bookcases. The emperor’s horn was shattered as a storm of crystal shards flew by, some of them embedding themselves in his skull.

Boreal fell to the floor as the chaotic force of the ritual continued to decimate his laboratory. The Crystal Castle was built firmly enough to withstand it and nothing else would be damaged, but he’d failed. Tears poured from his eyes, both from the immense pain he was in and the thought that he would never be with Luna now. Now, thanks to his desperation, would never even be able to see her as a normal unicorn. He was alive only because the ritual was keeping him alive; as soon as it burned itself out, he would die, a terribly malformed wreck like so many other sorcerers and sorceresses before him who’d tried and failed to become alicorns. He’d been fortunate to survive his other failed attempts, but his luck had run out. His desperation to be with Luna had ruined him, though he knew that he would still do anything to be with her.

Books tumbled around the room in the tempest, and one fell open in front of Boreal, the pages whipping by. He recognized it from long ago, a book that he hadn’t brought to the Crystal Castle with him but had already been here before his time. The cover was pitch black, crafted from leather made from the hide of ponies. The Black Book of K’Rhûr! This was the grimoire that Rap’stuk had once owned and used to craft a means of corrupting the Crystal Heart—an ancient and cursed tome filled with dark spells and black magics. Boreal had tried to destroy the tome, but nothing seemed to affect its cursed pages. Rather than trying to dispose of it in an ocean or volcano only for it to survive somehow and another warlock to find it, he’d decided to safeguard it here, where nopony would dare use it. Nopony would dare cast the black spells within, especially not Emperor Boreal …

Or so he’d thought. Now, lying on the floor in agonizing pain, desperate to rejoin Luna at whatever cost, Boreal dared. It was the only way to survive this, the only way to become an alicorn … the only way to regain Luna’s love. The Black Book of K’Rhûr had flipped open to a page on how to summon an agent of darkness that could grant one’s desires. All it required was a magic circle drawn in blood. Boreal had plenty of that, and after memorizing the design, he dragged himself around the magic circle already drawn on the floor, altering it with his blood until it matched the configuration in the book. Nothing happened, and Boreal collapsed in defeat.

“My, my, my, you’ve certainly gotten yourself into a tight spot, haven’t you?” a voice spoke clearly, and Boreal looked up.

Standing amid the whirlwind of magic, completely unfazed by it all, stood a pony who looked incredibly like Boreal. He was nearly identical to how Boreal had looked before attempting the alicornification ritual, except for the purple mist that drifted from the outer edges of his eyes. As he smiled, Boreal was horrified to see that the Boreal-that-wasn’t had pointed canines. Boreal wasn’t really staring at himself—the voice was different, and when the other moved around, he could sometimes catch glimpses of something behind the coat and skin; rather, it was something pretending to be him.

“Who are you?” Boreal asked, amazed that he was able to speak in his present condition.

“I’m the one you called,” the stranger said nonchalantly.

“Who are you really?” Boreal demanded.

“You want to see my true form, do you?” the Boreal-that-wasn’t sighed, “Very well.”

The transformation was instantaneous as the guise was stripped away. An alicorn loomed over Boreal, taller even then Celestia or Luna, purple mist still drifting from his eyes. There were also four wings on his back instead of two. He must have looked truly majestic and awe-inspiring once, but now he was only terrifying. Severe burns covered the entirety of his body, and the few feathers that still clung to protrusions that had once been wings were blackened or broken one and all. A Sundered! A daemon! Boreal stood before one of the Holy Chargers that had once rebelled against Faust under the leadership of Ruthus and been expelled from the heavens for their treachery. That is, if this really was the stranger’s true form, and everything truly was as the Church of One taught; but for Boreal, there was no other explanation.

“You haven’t got much time left,” the Sundered said idly as the room tore itself apart, “What is it that you want? I can guess, but it’s better to hear it from your own lips so there’s no confusion.”

Could Boreal go though with this? Of course, he’d expected something terrible by going through the Black Book of K’Rhûr, but nothing could have prepared him for being in the presence of a Sundered and asked to make a request. If he didn’t make a deal with this daemon, then he would die and never see Luna again … but was that worse than the consequences of making this deal?

Anything for Luna. Anything. Anything!

“I want to be an alicorn,” Boreal said.

“Good,” the Sundered said, trotting over to Boreal’s broken body, “I will make you into an alicorn, a process you so thoroughly botched yourself. Will you accept this contract?”

“What are the terms?” Boreal panted.

“I don’t think that really matters, do you?” the Sundered whispered in his ear as he bent down; Boreal realized that he was right, or mostly so, “They don’t involve your beloved, if that eases your mind.” It did.

“I accept,” Boreal sobbed, “Save me!”

When he opened his eyes, the broken stallion lying on the floor saw that his cry for salvation seemed to have gone unheard. The Sundered was nowhere to be seen, and Boreal cursed him for his tricks and cruelty, playing with a desperate pony in his last moments before death. His words made no intelligible sounds, his speech taken from him again now that the cursed visitor was gone.

He could still scream and cry out in pain, and he did so when his body was suddenly hoisted up into the air by an invisible force. Boreal realized belatedly that the ritual magic was flowing into him again. The tempest of energy had taken on a purple tint, like the haze that had drifted from the Sundered’s eyes, and dark flames burst up around the edges of the magic circle. Boreal’s organs reformed properly, and he heaved deep breaths as newly-healthy lungs filled with air. His horn rebuilt itself, and the shattered excuses for wings on his back snapped off, flesh and bone sloughing away and falling to the floor in wide splatters of blood. New wings covered in pristine onyx feathers burst from his back, brushing against the ceiling. Gently, Boreal lowered to the floor, where he promptly stumbled and collapsed.

The ritual concluded and faded away, and as Boreal stood up, he cast a gaze around the room. Everything seemed untouched, as if nothing had gone awry during the ritual at all. There was no blood circle on the floor; it had vanished, along with Boreal’s discarded wings and the remains of his horn. He checked, and the Black Book of K’Rhûr was still hidden away behind one of his bookcases, covered in dust and spiderwebs as if it hadn’t been removed in decades. Did I hallucinate it all? Was it just part of the ritual? Nothing in the book had mentioned anything about hallucinations, but it also said that every alicorn’s experience had been different.

No looking glasses were in the laboratory, and he hurried out into his chambers to get a look at his new form. He could feel the wings and sense that vast magical potential now at his disposal, but it wouldn’t seem real until he could see it for himself. Boreal found a looking glass and examined his image in it. Indeed, he could see the wings, and he struggled to get them under control and tuck them against his body. As they moved out of the way, he could see his cloak was bloodstained; now it was completely crimson, instead of snow-white. Well, that would have to go, although he did like the look of the color on him. Had it gotten bloodstained when his wings had failed to grow in properly? Or had they grown properly after all, and there was just bloodshed that he hadn’t anticipated? It wouldn’t surprise him if growing new wings would cause some damage. It was a troubling but not definitive sign that he had made that deal with a Sundered after all.

Boreal’s horn was also changed. Instead of the grooved cone he’d had before, it was now smoothed and slightly curved, like that of the rhinoceroses found in the Zebrikaanian Empire. Gone also was the thin layer of skin and downy hair over the bony protrusion that matched its color to his coat; this horn was entirely bone. It was also red, which he was sure his bones shouldn’t be. However, this also wasn’t conclusive proof that anything untoward had happened during his ascension. There had only been one other alicorn stallion in history, and Nostracom the Wise wasn’t around to share if he’d noticed any oddities after his own transformation.

Perhaps these signs were just coincidences. There were certainly plenty of other signs that pointed to the encounter with the Sundered just being a hallucination. The important thing was that Boreal was now an alicorn. Although, if everything he’d experienced really had happened, what was the cost?