My Disappointment is Immeasurable, and the Day is Saved
I am Lord Shadow Lock, of the Hinnysmouth Locks. I’m aware how pretentious that makes me sound in this day and age, but Mother insisted that a noblepony leads with their family, that they might best represent them. Some things stick with you no matter how much you try to extract them. Others…
I once heard, though I can no longer recall from whom, that the more one regrets one’s past actions, the more one has grown since performing them. By that metric, I have grown significantly in the past several moons.
It began less than two years ago, though it seems like another era, in the process of cleaning out the family castle—more of a manor, but Mother’s influence again—left to me by my parents after they retired to Somnambula. When I finally reached the attic, I stumbled upon records of an ancient evil lurking a millennium deep in my family tree. After that first horrific revelation, the Pony of Shadows seemed to look back at me wherever I turned: Histories of the Pre-Celestial Era, earth pony folklore, even comic books. The leering visage of my twisted ancestor, the threat of that same corruption coming for me in turn, it nearly drove me to madness.
Given how I decided to fight back, perhaps “nearly” is being too generous.
I devoted myself to studying the magic of text: mastering Haycartes’s Method, inverting it to bring fiction into reality, and even devising my own spell of perfect redaction. It erases not only a book, but also all the knowledge ponies have learned from it. I intended to erase the Pony of Shadows from recorded history. After all, if he weren’t remembered, none would know of him to try to beckon him back into this world, and so he would truly be banished from Equestria once and for all.
It sounds insane now, of course, but as I said, I’ve grown much since.
I might have even succeeded in that foolish endeavor if my fervor hadn’t driven me to raid the personal library of Princess Twilight Sparkle. The resulting chase stretched across much of Equestria, until she and her friends finally cornered me in the Canterlot Museum and confronted me with the consequences of my own reckless actions: In erasing so much, I had wiped out the means by which that ancient evil had been defeated, even from my own mind. If the Pony of Shadows did somehow return, I had sentenced Equestria to the very doom I was trying to prevent.
I stood down, and we left the museum as friends. The Bearers shared some of the skeletons in their own family closets. Fluttershy even asked me about obliterating still-living relatives, and given what she said of her brother, I can hardly blame her.
Also, several of them took me aside and confessed amazement that Twilight so readily forgave me after an assault on what she treasured most. In hindsight, and especially after my ongoing correspondence with the princess, I have to agree.
With my wayward path corrected, I refocused my efforts on restoring what I’d erased, part of me fearing that I was personally responsible for Equestria’s horrendous historical literacy. My memory assured me it had always been that bad among the layponies, yes, but had it always been that bad a few years ago?
Then one day, during a routine visit to the town’s bookstore, it all came crashing down…
“Oh, Lord Lock! Something special came in for you,” said Aged Vellum, a bookseller with the typical “Hinnysmouth look” of flyaway mane, narrow muzzle, and oddly sharp forehooves shared by many of the residents. The port town had once been a trading post with Mount Aris after all, some three or four retreats to and from the sea ago. Even now, the town boasted more pegasi than any other tribe.
Hippogriff history could, perhaps uncharitably, be seen as a sort of protracted tidal cycle of hiding in the ocean from some threat on the surface, only to do the opposite a century later.
“Lord Lock?”
Shadow blinked and shook his head. “Apologies, Ms. Vellum. Wandering mind and all.” His redaction spell had hit his own mind more than anypony else’s, and some days the effects were worse than others. “What was it you had for me?”
She flew up to the special reserve shelves near the rafters. “Well, I know you’ve had a special interest in the Pony of Shadows for a while now, so when this came in, I immediately thought of you.”
“Indeed? I hadn’t realized I’d missed something.” Relief swept through Shadow at the thought of something being spared from his foolish crusade.
“Well, nopony can blame you for it," Ms. Vellum said as she glided back down. "It’s a new release.”
Shadow blinked. “A what?”
“Oh yes. Biographical drama." Ms. Vellum held out the book in question. Shadow took it in his magic reflexively. "Outside of your usual tastes, but I think you’ll still enjoy it.”
The cover featured several familiar figures from myth and history set in two columns of three behind a unicorn stallion, one with an undeniable resemblance to Shadow Lock himself. And above all of them, glaring into Shadow's very soul, loomed the other the warped monstrosity that had haunted his dreams for moons. “The Base of the Pillars,” he said distantly, “by Stygian of Nova Scoltia. Well then. I do believe this will be helpful in my research. Thank you, Ms. Vellum.”
She ruffled her wings, concern plain on her face. “Are you alright, Lord Lock?”
“Fine, fine," he said as he counted out bits. "Or I will be shortly.”
The book was equal parts fascinating and horrifying. A text written by the Pony of Shadows himself, yet somehow permitted onto shelves outside dear old Miskatrotic. I devoured it in a night, taking in the quest for heroes to vanquish the insidious sirens, the assembled heroes gradually shifting their attention and respect to Star Swirl the Bearded rather than Stygian, the desperate attempt to stand with his allies that backfired so disastrously.
And then I reached the point where a desperate Stygian turned to the darkness beyond worlds, the one thing that would never reject him.
As the narrative had continued, I had held onto a thin, desperate hope that this was some manner of coincidence, some strikingly similar tale to the one that had bound me in obsession. But no, it was as I feared. He had returned from his long banishment. The ancestral shame of my family walked the earth once more. He had… become an author.
That one surreal detail was my sole mouth-grip on sanity. I admit, I skimmed the next part, though it was only a few pages of vague impressions and whispered empty promises. The timelessness of Limbo does not lend itself to much usable material for an autobiography. The final chapters focused instead on the reconciliation between the Pillars of Equestria, all seven of them, mediated by the same mares who had saved me.
Also Starlight Glimmer. From what I understand, she was out of town during my rampage.
Stygian himself soon became the focus of my research, my materials shifting from ancient tomes to modern periodicals. The Base of the Pillars was a bestseller, especially in the wake of the Bearers publishing their friendship journal and Equestria's resulting hunger for more on them. I could have reached out to my ancestor by post, but buried as he no doubt was in fan mail, I doubted he could or would spare a second for such wild genealogical claims.
But fortune was still with me, for I caught wind of an impending signing tour, one that would be stopping nearby at Rainbow Falls. My affairs well in order, all I had to do was wait.
In theory, a bestselling author should have been cool, confident, and ready to meet his many adoring fans.
Stygian just kept going through the half-remembered breathing exercises Somnambula had shown him so long ago (surely just last year) and tried to stay calm. Going from the overlooked strategist of the Pillars to widely recognized and respected in his own right so quickly was at times overwhelming.
A hoof on his withers nearly made him gallop for the double doors of the bookstore, only the crowd pressing their muzzles against the glass holding him back. “Breathe, Styggy,” said Loose Leaf, his literary agent. The earth mare had all the colors of autumn in her, and vastly more social acumen than Stygian ever did. “The ponies love you. This’ll be a cakewalk, just like last time.”
He hazarded a smile. Leaf maintained her own grin, but the way her ears splayed him out told him how well his attempt had gone. “I’ve no doubt of that in my mind,” he answered, “but in my heart… I’ve faced down manticores with less fear than I feel now. Still a good amount, but less.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said with another pat on his withers. “Sign some books, endure a few dumb questions, and you’ll make a few hundred ponies’ days.”
Stygian sighed. The sheer quantity of shelves, the unthinkable wealth of tomes around him, it should have been paradise. Up until he considered what he had to do there, sitting behind a folding table creaking with copies of his life's story. “Yes. The same few foolish questions repeated a hundred times each. I don’t suppose you can get some manner of explanatory pamphlet printed out?”
“Ha!" Leaf shook her head, snickering to herself. "Believe me, I wouldn’t let anypony set hoof in here without reading the thing if I could make ‘em even glance at it. That goes for all my clients.”
“More’s the pity,” said Stygian, a more sincere smile on his muzzle.
“There's my rising star. You good?”
A deep breath. Bracing for the moment when his plan met the unknown and inevitably shattered. It was almost reassuring in its familiarity. “As I’ll ever be. Let them in.”
A few clerks held back the tide of equinity on pain of expulsion from the store. They herded the masses through a maze of velvet ropes, and the first eventually made his way to Stygian, one of the hollow-eyed youths who thought they’d rather get their books signed by the Pony of Shadows, as if they’d survive such an encounter.
“Hey,” said the young pegasus, setting a copy of The Base of the Pillars on the table. “Your book was alright.” He spoke with the sort of forced disinterest that Stygian had learned spoke of excitement that the reader dared not express in public.
(“I had a ‘Dying Leaves’ phase,” Loose Leaf had admitted after the Manehattan signing. “It’s more common than ponies like to admit.”)
“Thank you,” Stygian said sincerely, for even that was more recognition than the Pillars had given him in the moons before his grave mistake. Indeed, this sort of demonstrative tepidness was easier for him to handle than the gushing enthusiasm some had inflicted on him. To think, he had once thought Pinkie Pie a unique anomaly…
He focused back on the present; the youth hadn’t seemed to notice the slip. “To whom should I make it out?”
“YOU!”
All eyes turned to a figure in the entryway silhouetted by the… ten-in-the-morning sun? That couldn’t be right. Yet there reared a unicorn, cloak billowing dramatically and eyes aglow beneath his hood. It was a thoroughly impressive entrance, and long acquaintance with Flash Magnus had Stygian wondering how long it had taken him to perfect it.
The stallion galloped around the corralled readers, to much complaining. “After years of obsessive study, we meet at last!” As he approached, Stygian was better able to see into his drawn hood. There was something eerily familiar in the shade of his coat, the set of his jaw. Even the scar slashing across the top of his muzzle resembled a nasty paper cut on the back of Stygian’s own pastern.
“Impossible,” Stygian muttered.
“Only very unlikely,” the stallion boomed out, “but fate has decreed it so! For I—”
And at that point, several burly earth pony security guards tackled him.
“So yeah,” said the teenager who had waited his turn, “if you could make it out to ’Sootfeather’…”
“In hindsight, I suppose waiting three weeks made me build up the encounter in my mind,” Shadow Lock finished, holding an ice pack to his swelling eye. “Enough that I forgot that I wasn't dealing with the Pony of Shadows. They say obsession runs in the family.”
“I see,” Stygian said from the other side of the table, a blush spreading across his cheeks. “To think my seeking comfort with a mare of… negotiable affection prior to seeking that of the darkness could have led to one of Equestria’s noble houses…" He shook his head. "It boggles the mind.”
“Ennobled in 428, when Captain Tidal Lock negotiated peace with hippogriff corsairs on the eastern shores of the Celestial Ocean, and founded the trading post of Hinnysmouth with them.” Shadow recited that in the singsong tones of rote memorization.
"Your mother?"
"Indeed."
“Odd, though," said Stygian. "With a name like that, I’d expect a donkey was involved in the founding somewhere.”
Shadow glanced away. “Well, some of the primary sources suggest his jennyservant Ethel did most of the talking at the negotiation table.”
A cleared throat brought both stallions’ attention to the earth stallion in the police uniform sitting by Stygian’s side. “Not that this hasn’t been fascinating,” grumbled Officer First Offense of the Rainbow Falls police department, “but we need the interrogation room back some time today. Mr. Stygian, are you pressing charges?”
Stygian reeled back as though struck. “On my own flesh and blood, however distant? Certainly not!”
“Great. Lord Lock, between the royal pardon for the whole ‘erasing books’ thing and the public disturbance getting exaggerated by those mall cops, you’re free to go. We will need the ice pack back, though”
“Fair enough,” said Shadow, setting it on the table.
“Feel free to continue the conversation somewhere else,” said Officer Offense, ending the conversation as surely as if he'd punched both of them in the muzzle.
The two of them walked out of the police station side by side, sharing an awkwardness that transcended generations.
"Uh—"
"So—"
"You first."
"No, by all means—"
Before Shadow could continue, his view was filled by angry orange eyes. "Okay, buster, I don't care if you're my client's lots-of-greats-grandson, you—"
"Leaf, it's alright."
The earth mare glared down at Stygian. Shadow took the opportunity to take a few steps back. "He looked ready to zap you to ash!"
"Yes. Going by past experience, that seems to a trend in our family," Stygian said blithely. "Besides, you did insist I finish the book signing before coming here to give a statement."
Loose Leaf threw her hooves into the air. "Do you know how much we'd throw off the tour if we had to reschedule here?"
"Yes, but we didn't and now it's past six. I have generations of descendants I never knew about. I'd like to try being a grandfather for a short while." Stygian moved to Shadow's side. It might have been heartwarming if Shadow weren't a head taller than the little stallion.
Leaf rolled her eyes. "Fine." She jabbed a hoof at Shadow. "But you'd better bring him back the way you found him, buddy. We've got twelve more cities to hit."
Stygian shuddered. "Stars above, we do, don't we?"
Shadow offered his most sincere bow from a wide variety of maternally provided options. "Your client is safe with me, Miss Leaf."
She narrowed her eyes at him, needing a few seconds before she nodded. "See that he is." With that, she trotted off.
As they watched her go, Stygian said, "I must confess, I have no idea how to go about being a grandfather."
Shadow shrugged. "I've had few opportunities to be a grandson. For now, I think friends will suffice."
That got a nod. "In that case, where to, friend?"
"I was hoping we could discuss your book," Shadow said, picking a direction at random that just happened to be directly away from Loose Leaf.
Stygian winced as he followed. "You do?"
"Yes." Shadow glanced back at him and grinned. "Specifically the parts that aren't about the Pony of Shadows."
The author perked up and returned the expression. "I would love nothing more."
Author's Note
One bit I had to cut was the details of the Bearers' black sheep, which didn't work nearly as well when I shifted some parts to first-person. But I liked them enough to preserve them here:
Twilight herself noted the many dark mages in her lineage, and that of most Canterlotters; many of the capitol’s gentlepony clubs began as shadowy cabals to overthrow Celestia, as had several of its grocery stores and at least one daycare. A shame-faced Applejack had told of the pre-Unification inquisitor Malus Maleficarum, for whom being a unicorn was a capital crime. Fluttershy had spoken of Zephyr Breeze, and while her brother wasn’t the sort of evil who made future generations tremble, she freely admitted that she would erase all records of being related to him were she able.
We did see one of Stygian's books on the show, but that was his third hit novel. So I went with the Dune joke, even if he never had any dealings with the Bene Sediment.
Shadow Lock really is a Lovecraft protagonist brought into Equestria, what with discovering the ancestral taint that drives him to the brink of madness and foul sorcery. And that's before considering the time he summoned Cthulhu.
As for the chapter title, at least there was no subpar shrimp involved.
