King in the North

Chapter Four: King Sombra

Will she come? Emperor Boreal paced nervously in his chambers. He hadn’t left them since his transformation, and only a few servants sworn to secrecy had seen his new majestic form. He would have preferred nopony to know that he had achieved alicornhood before Luna, but he also couldn’t just pop into the manor outside of the Crystal City unannounced. He needed a messenger to bring her word that he wished to speak with her. Also, Boreal was in need of new clothes tailored for his alicorn body. He’d only had one tunic to accommodate his wings, and it’d been rendered unsalvageable by bloodstains during his transformation. The tainted cloak would also have to go, but he asked the imperial tailor to add some crimson cloaks to his requested list of garments.

Consequently, Boreal had disappeared from public life for several days. The last time he’d seen anypony other than a servant or the tailor had been just before he’d undertaken the alicornification ritual, and ponies in the street were beginning to speculate what had become of their emperor. Unsurprisingly, much of the blame was laid at the hooves of the visiting queens. It was practically public knowledge by now what had happened between Boreal and Luna, and how the Equestrian queen had been the one to break off the engagement before it could even begin. Things had been decidedly tense between the emperor and the Equestrian embassy for days now, but it was only in the last few days that Boreal had cancelled all meetings and events with them. Clearly, their emperor was so overcome by grief that he’d decided to seclude himself. While not entirely untrue, they would be in for a big surprise when he finally emerged from his isolation.

“Emperor Boreal,” Luna said formally as she entered his chambers and a guard shut the door behind her, “I hope that my actions have not spoiled any future relations between our two realms.”

Oh, Luna! How I want to run to you, but alas, I must wait until you are ready to receive me again. With great effort, Boreal had managed to tuck his wings beneath his cloak so that, to Luna, he appeared just the same as before. His horn, of course, posed a problem, but he’d had some alterations made to his crown that would cover it up. Luna looked anxiously around the room, shocked that there was nopony else here. His letter had invited her here in a very formal manner, and she must have assumed that it wouldn’t be just the two of them. That had been Boreal’s intent, for he’d feared she wouldn’t have come otherwise.

“Perhaps I should go,” Luna said and began back toward the door.

“Please, don’t go,” Boreal said, and Luna paused, “I do not blame you for what you’ve done. Though I couldn’t accept it at the time, you were wise to shun union with one who could only give you a small piece of their life and would consume all of yours. So, I have remedied the problem.”

Boreal’s crimson cloak fluttered as he unfurled his wings, and Luna gasped. Recently, Luna had been through much, and her emotions felt knotted up from the twisting and turning, risings and fallings of her life. She’d joyfully accepted Boreal’s proposal, only to soon reject it and mourn that decision … but now, it seemed that what could have been before could be again. If he was an alicorn, then what reason was there that they should not be wed? The voices in Luna’s head she’d created in order to keep from running back to him before screamed out that it wasn’t possible, but she silenced them.

“I … can it be?” Luna asked.

“It can,” Boreal said as he hesitantly moved toward her, still mindful of the distance their separation had caused, “I am an alicorn now, Luna, the same as you. All the barriers have been broken down! There is no reason we cannot be together!”

“Yes, yes,” Luna said, only half-believing that all this was really happening but wanting so desperately to believe it.

“Does that mean …” Boreal said, and stopped, “Does that mean you will marry me?”

“I … I want to say yes, but everything has changed so suddenly. I don’t want to be hasty. I think … in time … yes,” Luna said, dreamlike.

“Of course, take your time,” Boreal said as he embraced her and sighed contentedly as she not only didn’t back away, but also reciprocated, “We have all the time we need now.”

Warm smiles adorned the faces of the two alicorns, reunited again. In the nearby looking glass, Boreal’s reflection smiled as well, though this smile had sharp teeth and purple mist drifted from the corners of its eyes.

***

Talks resumed with the Equestrian delegation almost immediately. Celestia was unhappy that her sister and Emperor Boreal had resumed their relationship and still cautioned her sister against commitment, but that advice now mostly fell on deaf ears. The subjects of the Crystal Empire were overjoyed that their emperor and his beloved were together again, and they were possibly even more ecstatic that their sovereign was now an alicorn. In their eyes, one more difference between their empire and the Kingdom of Equestria was gone.

That wasn’t the only change with Boreal at its source that made them more like their southern neighbor, though. Talks with the southern queens led to sweeping changes in the structure of the realm to make it more like Equestria, which the emperor claimed to be in preparation for a joining of the realms. Both the changes and the reason he’d given for them did not sit well with many of the powerful nobles in the Crystal Empire. Their influence at court and power in their own lands were diminished by these measures, and they didn’t like the new titles and styles they were given to be more like the southern kingdom. Gone were doukes and jaarls, replaced by dukes and earls, and with these changes in titles also came a change in power. Boreal increasingly centralized the empire—a process that some might see as inevitable given how long he would reign, but which he tried to accomplish not in centuries or decades but in weeks and months. Still, Emperor Boreal had always been a good and fair ruler, a sorcerer endowed with great power and wisdom, so the complaints of the nobility were limited to words only … at least at first.

There was great outrage when Emperor Boreal introduced his most radical reform yet. Citing the relatively small size of the Crystal Empire when compared to the Kingdom of Equestria, he wanted to demote the realm’s status and also his own title. He wished to create a Kingdom of the North, with Boreal as its king, not its emperor. It was mostly a means of securing equal rank with Luna; he hoped that it would make an equal wedding easier if he was a king and she a queen, so there would be no suggestion that his future bride was his inferior. Whatever had motivated the emperor, this was something that the empire’s nobles could not stand for. When protest was ignored, some rose in open rebellion against the emperor to convince him to see sense. It was like the early reign of Celestia and Luna, when the lords and ladies of Equestria believed their armies were a match for alicorns. They’d learned their lesson, and soon the nobles of the Crystal Empire would, too. Their armies were destroyed, their titles were seized; the other nobles were too cowed to think about opposing the emperor, so he got his wish. The Crystal Empire would become the Kingdom of the North. Boreal would be crowned king, but not until the coronation ceremony—something that the surviving nobles ensured would remain postponed indefinitely. Even Archbishop Fethrus assisted with the plot, coming up with more and more elaborate reasons to delay.

Throughout these ominous proceedings, Luna began to worry about her beloved. While some of his reforms still embodied good governance, many seemed to ring uncomfortably of tyranny, even if they did parallel some of the developments the Kingdom of Equestria had itself undergone. He seemed to be going about things quite the wrong way, roughly forcing his people to change more and more every day. She cautioned Boreal to be patient in his reforms, but any assurances he gave her that he would slow down seemed forgotten the moment she’d left his presence. It didn’t help that many of his reforms seemed directed at trying to please her, in whatever roundabout way they might, especially his plans to dissolve the Crystal Empire and create a new kingdom. Could he still be worried that she’d never marry him and so was desperately trying to make himself and his realm more acceptable to her? When she’d asked, he’d seemed completely unaware of any underlying thread in his reforms that might buy her affections when she’d asked, but was he being truthful? Perhaps she ought to just marry him before any more damage was done (and any more rebellious nobles’ heads rolled).

Something else seemed to have changed about Boreal after his ascension to alicornhood, though. While he was still the stallion she’d fallen in love with, sometimes he seemed a different pony entirely. Without warning, his attitude would change, or he’d make contradictory claims and decisions, only for him to return to his old self a moment later. He was a paradox—a ruler who cared greatly for the well-being of his realm and his subjects, while seeming entirely unconcerned about the difficulties he was putting them through with his reforms. Boreal also appeared completely unfazed by dark rumors of cruelty that claimed to have come from the far reaches of his realm. There was some talk, unfounded or otherwise, of peasants and townsponies alike being rounded up and marched off like slaves to the mines to unearth vast quantities of ore. Luna expected Boreal to squash these rumors before they got out of control, but he seemed not to care.

She was worried that something had happened during his alicornification to change him. (Maybe it had just been her rejection of his proposal that had done it, but it was easier to live with the first supposition.) The process of becoming an alicorn was a dangerous one, and Boreal had already failed several times before succeeding. Perhaps it hadn’t gone entirely according to plan; she had some proof of that already. He’d shown her how his horn had changed, hoping she knew something about alicornification that he didn’t and could explain it. She hadn’t, and nothing in the records about Yliiena the First or Nostracom the Wise suggested they’d had anything other than normal (albeit longer than usual) unicorn horns. He’d seemed concerned when he’d asked, but by the time Luna had an answer for him, he no longer seemed concerned. Perhaps there’d been some damage to his mind, but there were no records on anything like that ever happening before either. Anypony who’d failed the alicornification ritual had either died, or been horribly mangled and usually died shortly thereafter. There were no records of somepony actually becoming an alicorn and having something wrong with them. Perhaps Boreal was fine, but Luna still worried, and her concern grew greater as the Crystal Empire continued to experience a rapid decline.

Across the Agate Ocean, the Styrgran possessions of the Crystal Empire refused to suffer any more of the emperor’s reforms. Srkeskia’s population rose in revolt, proclaiming their independence from the empire. It was independence that likely wouldn’t last long with hungry neighboring Stygran realms, but the inhabitants still preferred it to remaining under an emperor who seemed bent on changing everything about his domain. Emperor Boreal received no support from his Equestrian vassals in putting down the rebellion, all of them just as outraged at the reforms he’d been forcing upon them, and so he traveled to Srkeskia himself. Not a single Srkeskian, stallion, mare, or foal, survived the emperor’s retribution. With his newly acquired alicorn magic, Boreal wiped out all life in Srkeskia and razed all towns and villages to the ground. Thousands were slaughtered; the emperor’s only concern was that the Crystal Empire had no more overseas possessions, making the path to becoming a kingdom easier. dead, the emperor’s only concern was that the Crystal Empire had no more overseas possessions and the path to becoming a kingdom would be easier.

“Tell me it isn’t true!” Luna demanded as she burst into his chambers.

Smoke rose from the emperor’s map table, marking where he’d just burned away Srkeskia to match reality. The emperor himself was hunched over nearby with a defeated expression. His eyes were wide and unblinking and tears marred his coat, some of them sparkling a deep purple from certain angles. He didn’t look like a pony who’d recently delighted in a massacre, but that didn’t match what Luna had heard. Could she have been wrong? But, Srkeskia certainly was gone, and what could have provoked Boreal to wipe it out? There was no explanation she could think of that would justify such a massacre.

“It’s true,” Boreal said hollowly, “What have I done? How could this have happened? Is this the price I must pay?”

“You’re not talking sense,” Luna said as she trotted over beside him, “Why? Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t want to, but … I’m not in control. He is!”

“Who?” Luna asked.

“I should have told you the truth, but I didn’t believe it myself. I couldn’t believe it!” Boreal said, “I failed the alicornification ritual.”

“What are you talking about? You’re an alicorn, aren’t you?” Luna asked.

“I don’t know what I am. I was dying, and then … I saw a way out,” Boreal said as he straightened his back, revealing the book he’d been hunched over, a heavy tome bound in black leather, “I used black magic to summon a Sundered and asked him to make me an alicorn, but he’s enacted a terrible price. I’m becoming a monster. I don’t have control. I often don’t remember what I’ve done or why I’ve done it. I-I’m coming apart!”

“A … Sundered?” Luna said skeptically, though Boreal clearly wasn’t in his right mind. Perhaps he was telling the truth, or perhaps it was all madness. Either way, something had gone wrong with his alicornification.

“Believe me or not, but I beg you to do one thing for me. This is the Black Book of K’Rhûr. Take it!” Boreal commanded, holding out the book, “Destroy it if you can, as I was unable to do. If you cannot, then you must hide it and keep it from me so that I am not tempted to use any more of the dark spells that Rap’stuk once used. I can feel the draw already!”

Luna took the book from him, intending to give it a look-over to determine just what was contained within that could have shaken Boreal so much. Perhaps there was some way to reverse whatever had gone wrong with his alicornification, but the answer likely wouldn’t come from this book. Don’t worry, Boreal. I’ll find a way to fix everything. I’ll save you, my heart.

***

Luna attempted to discover what could have gone wrong with Boreal’s alicornification, but she was at a loss, the same as when she’d searched for a reason behind his erratic behavior before learning his account. She still doubted that he really had spoken to one of the daemons the Church of One warned about, but it was becoming clearer by the day that something evil had taken over Boreal’s mind. More rumors of brutality reached the empire’s capital every day, as well as word that the iron harvested by slave labor was being used to build up the realm’s military. It could have been meant to help put down the riots and rebellions that were becoming more frequent, but it was more likely that Boreal was planning an invasion, and the Kingdom of Equestria was the only likely target. Celestia rarely met with Boreal anymore, and Luna never did so in an official capacity, more concerned with scouring the Crystal City’s archives for anything that might help her cure his body and soul. mind. Rumors of brutality reached the empire’s capital more frequently, as well as word that the iron being harvested by slave labor was being used to build up the realm’s military. It could have been meant to help put down the riots and rebellions that were becoming more frequent, but it was more likely that Boreal was planning an invasion, and the Kingdom of Equestria was the only likely target. Celestia rarely met with Boreal anymore, and Luna never did so in an official capacity, more concerned with scouring the Crystal City’s archives for anything that might help her cure Boreal.

She realized that Boreal had only pushed himself to become an alicorn because of her, often causing Luna to blame herself for what had happened. She wasn’t the most frequent target of her own guilt and anger, though. If only Celestia hadn’t meddled and planted the ideas in Luna’s head that she and Boreal couldn’t be together, none of this would have happened. Life would have been so much happier, and Luna was beginning to think that even losing Boreal one day to his mortality couldn’t be worse than this. There were arguments, sometimes heated, but Luna wasn't able to let all the blame lie on her sister for long. She hadn’t forced Luna to heed her advice to break things off with Boreal.

Luna wasn’t the only one placing the blame on herself and her sister for the increasingly despotic nature of Emperor Boreal. The subjects of the Crystal Empire were suffering, and in their suffering, they looked for somepony to blame. The foreign queens made excellent targets. Boreal had ruled justly and peacefully for seventy-seven years, and less than two years had passed since Celestia and Luna arrived. Directly related or not, they were targeted by many for the change that had come over their emperor. The Equestrian embassy’s camp around the manor became increasingly fortress-like; ponies rarely left it, and never without a large contingent of guards who didn’t always return at full strength. No longer welcomed by the ponies of the empire and very seldomly consulted by Emperor Boreal, who was consumed in his plans to reshape the Crystal Empire (and sometimes all of Equestria, it seemed) in his own image, the embassy left the North.

Things continued to worsen after their departure. Fear and strength of arms were used to keep Boreal’s subjects in line. It was shortly after the Equestrian queens had left that Boreal finally had his coronation and the Crystal Empire ceased to be, except for in the hearts of those who despised their new king. It was nothing like his first coronation, when the lords and ladies of the empire had joyfully assembled, and the archbishop of the Crystal City had placed the crown on his head and anointed him. Sick of the stalling of his nobles and Archbishop Fethrus, Boreal had ordered all his vassals to come to the Crystal City on pain of death and forfeiture of titles, and had crowned himself in the Crystal Castle’s throne room with not a single cleric of the Church of One in attendance. At his coronation, he’d also taken a new name: Sombra. This earned him the moniker of Shadow King in the North by some, and he took no measures to stop such usage of the title.

Back in the Three Palaces of the Two Queens, Luna continued to search for a way to reverse Emperor Boreal’s—now King Sombra’s—destructive path. She consulted all the knowledge and wisdom of Equestria and came up empty. Nothing like this had ever happened before, as far as the records were concerned. Luna continued to search for some way to save Sombra, but she began to feel it was a hopeless task and fell into despair. Before, she’d abandoned her duties from her love of Boreal, and now she abandoned them out of the love she still had for who he’d been—and the fear of what he had become.

Celestia insisted that Luna take recesses from her search for a solution, and Luna had to agree that it as a good idea. If things went on as they had, buried in her research with no solution in sight, she was liable to go mad. She began to attend court again, alongside Celestia, though she did little but sit on her throne and stare blankly with bloodshot eyes. She was present, though, and was there to witness when the refugees arrived.

A great horde of desperate ponies had traveled down from the North together, making the long trek to beseech the queens of Equestria for aid. Many had either fled to escape the terror that was now sweeping across the Crystal Empire or been expelled from the realm on the orders of King Sombra. There was a large contingent of clergy that fell into the latter group, as King Sombra had grown tired of Archbishop Fethrus and the others challenging him and decided to banish the Church of One from his lands. It was Archbishop Fethrus, wearing makeshift vestments cobbled together from rags after the Church had had all its possessions stripped by the king, who addressed Celestia, Luna and the lords and ladies of Equestria in the Royal Court. , wearing makeshift vestments cobbled together from rags after the Church had had all its possessions stripped by the king, who addressed Celestia, Luna and the lords and ladies of Equestria in the Royal Court.

“Boreal has become a tyrant, as bad as or worse than Rap’stuk before him. Thousands are executed for minor offences, ponies are dragged off to the mines or taken for profane sacrifices, and all of the Crystal Empire groans beneath the burden that the Shadow King imposes on us,” Fethrus spoke as the crowd of battered ponies behind her shifted listlessly, “Emperor Boreal—no, King Sombra—must be stopped! Please, in the name of all that is good and righteous, and for the sake of the Crystal Empire’s subjects, I beseech you, Queens Celestia and Luna, to save us from this tyrant! If you do, we will gladly become your subjects.”

Immediately after Fethrus’s plea was spoken, the nobility of Equestria began to whisper amongst themselves. When the refugees had arrived, they’d hoped Celestia and Luna would send them off, maybe with some food to mollify them and prevent a riot, but their attitudes had changed. King Sombra wasn’t seen as an immediate threat, so they hadn’t really cared about what went on in the North. Even the nobles who’d accompanied Celestia and Luna on their most recent embassy were indifferent to their neighboring realm tearing itself apart. Now, there was the promise of new lands added to the Kingdom of Equestria, and Celestia and Luna would need somepony to administer those lands. Although many parts of the North were currently struggling, the nobles seen before just how fertile those lands could be, and they desired them for themselves. This could be a good opportunity for them to expand their own holdings. Soon, much of the court began calling for the queens to intervene. To be fair, some truly were outraged by the tale that Fethrus, and some of the other leaders of the refugees before her, had told, and they too lent their voices to the call. The Royal Court went silent as Celestia stood.

“It is clear that your people are suffering greatly, and I am glad you have brought word to us about this injustice,” Celestia said smoothly, “We must be prudent in our response. Luna, you know Sombra better than I. What course of action would you suggest to redress his crimes?”

Luna had been in a daze ever since she’d learned that an army of refugees had traveled all the way from the North to the Everfree Forest. The stories they’d brought of Sombra’s cruelty had horrified her. It’s not him doing it, she told herself, but she was beginning to see that Boreal might really be gone. There was no way to reverse what had befallen him or release him from the grip of evil, so he may as well have been dead. Sombra had replaced Boreal, and she might never truly see her beloved again. The different names made it somewhat easier to think about, but in her heart, she knew they were still the same pony. Boreal existed within Sombra somewhere, but could she unearth him? If everything she had heard was true, she feared not.

“It must be war,” Luna said as everypony in the hall strained to hear her, “I did not wish to believe it, but the evil has consumed him. There will be no peace possible with King Sombra.”

“Then it’s settled! Call up every levy and assemble the royal army! We march for the North!” Celestia announced as tears streaked down Luna’s cheeks.