The sun is mighty and powerful, and thus its rising rays had no difficulty piercing the closed eyes of the stallion, slowly pushing him toward wakefulness with its steady, burning glow.

“Five more minutes,” he sleepily murmured, rolling to turn his face away from the sun.

“I can think of more fun things to do for five minutes,” replied a gentle voice that was followed by an equally soft stroke along his groin.

The voice and the touch, which began to be steadily repeated, began to bring the once thestral to full awareness. By the time he was fully awake, his bedmate had used her snowy white feathers to bring him to nearly full arousal as well.

“Good morning, my King,” the bridled mare said to him. “It seems you are ready to use your ‘Staff of Office’ on this poor, broken mare.”

“My Conquered Sun,” Candor responded, noting with approval the sleek lines of the former ruler of Equestria. A regular program of diet and exercise had done wonders to remove the extra weight the mare who had once ruled Equestria had carried. A burden he himself found himself fighting against now.

Even now, the siren call of a soft bed, a willing mare, and a late breakfast tried to weave their spell around him. Sadly for all concerned, King Candor of Equestria hadn’t driven his way to the throne by being lazy, indulgent, or weak of mind.

“Why are you here and not your sister?” Candor asked, pulling away from the mare. There was just enough steel in his voice to break Sunny out of her attempt to seduce him and send her to her knees, an especially good trick on a soft and uneven surface.

“My sister offered to raise the sun for me this morning so that I could give you a special wake up,” answered the mare, bowing her head low enough that he could see where the straps of the bridle that had broken her will pressed into the back of her head. “I am sorry if I’ve displeased you, Master.”

“Your sister was supposed to be here,” King Candor growled, ruffling his bat-like wings into place while giving his bed mussed mane a toss. He was not truly angry with his Sunny, but discipline had to be maintained, after all.

“Yes Master. Should I fetch the whip?” the alicorn asked, eyes downcast.

“Not this time,” the stallion replied, using the tip of one wing to lift his slave’s chin. “You ensured that your duties were covered, and it was done to please me, but you will inform me of such a swap in the future.”

“Yes Master,” Sunny replied, continuing to hold position. “What would you have of me today?”

Candor took a breath to organize his thoughts. Many ponies, himself included back when he was a simple batpony, had thought the life of a ruler was one of cakes, parties, and looking glamorous. In reality, it was an endless grind of paperwork, one crisis after another, while dealing with a constant stream of petty nobles vying for either his favor or status amongst themselves.

It was a large part of why Celestia had carried those extra pounds when she had sat the throne. The chains of office had literally kept her shackled to an endless stream of parties, receptions, diplomatic meetings and holding court. None of which were noted for their fat burning capabilities.

“You will go to the Wonderbolts training facility, in full tack,” Candor ordered, smirking slightly at the thought of the sensation she would make. “Once there, you will run twenty laps around their track, followed by ten runs of the aerial course, then another five laps before doing fifty wing ups.”

“Once done, you will bathe, dress yourself properly, and meet with me in time to receive Fire Lord Ember’s emissary,” he continued, adding, “The meeting is set for before lunch. If you are late I will use that whip on you. One stroke for every minute I have to wait for your presence at my hooves. Am I clear?”

“Yes Master!” Sunny responded, rising and giving a curtsey before running out of the room.

“Your Majesty?” asked a voice, almost instantly in the wake of Sunny’s tail passing out through his bedroom door. Candor tried not to express frustration as Kibitz poked his head into the room. The unicorn had been Celestia’s majordomo and one of the first ponies he had enthralled during his bloodless conquest of Equestria.

The pony had a strong sense of duty and served the realm with an efficiency that was almost supernatural.

“I’ll take breakfast on the terrace in ten minutes. I already know about the meeting with the Dragonlord’s emissary before lunch, but you can bring me the rest of the day’s schedule after I eat,” King Candor responded, grabbing some tools to groom himself for the day.

Yes, he could have had an array of servants groom and dress him. Yes, he could have had either of the Sisters do it for him while the other serviced him pleasurably, but the iron discipline that had carried him through everything up until now demanded that there were some things he had to do himself. No matter how enjoyable the alternatives were.

A quick and cold shower, followed by a bit of magic to dry his fur, and a brief but effective currying of his mane and tail found him walking through the palace on his way toward breakfast and musing pleasantly on how he managed to become what he was now. Master of three alicorn mares, Tyrant of Equestria, and feared Overlord of Zebrica and Saddle Arabia.

He had been a simple porter on the Crystal Express, and as such, had been among the ponies carrying the bags and baggage of Twilight Sparkle and her friends as they had rushed to the Crystal Empire, in a desperate bid to keep King Sombra from reasserting his rule over that time tossed land.

He’d cheered along with the others as Twilight, her brother, and Princess Cadance had defeated the evil being following a protracted struggle, shattering him into dozens of pieces.

None of those ponies had noticed one of the shards burying itself into Candor, the porter. Nor had they seen the distinctive green smoke coming from his eyes as the dark magic inherent in the fragment of King Sombra tried to remake the mind of the simple batpony into that of Sombra himself. A mystical failsafe in the event of his defeat.

For hours Candor’s body had lain supine inside an abandoned building, while his mind fought against the wicked influence of the Dark Lord, and to the shocked amazement of the fragment it found itself on the losing end of the struggle. For while Candor may have been just a train porter, he had a disciplined mind that was empowered by a will of iron that enabled him to not only hold his own, but to prevail over the corrupting influence.

It was well after nightfall that Candor arose from that dusty floor, as a changed stallion. Where once he had been on the slim side, his body now rippled with power and strength, easily three or four times his former capability. What’s more, his wings were now dark expanses that promised feats of aerial endurance to rival that of the Wonderbolts.

The most potent changes however, were with the horn he found himself carrying on his head, and its ability to channel both regular magic and the dark, mind manipulating crystal magic of King Sombra. A legacy of the soul fragment that had tried to take his mind as its own.

One glance in a mirror and Candor had known what his fate would be were he to reveal himself openly. Jail and a long series of examinations, if he was lucky. Eternal exile or execution if not.

Luckily, Sombra’s shard had not only come with the power of dark magic, but also with the knowledge of a wide variety of spells, along with the locations of various caches of equipment and supplies. Thus it had been child’s play for him to alter his appearance with a disguise spell while gathering the tools that he would need to take down his first target.

“Good morning, Master,” said the mare in question, serendipitously greeting him as he emerged on the terrace for breakfast. The bowing of her head caused the numerous bells attached to her own bridle to ring out a cheery song of greeting as well.

“Good morning, Twilight. How is my slave to magic today?” Candor asked, as he sat down to a spartan breakfast of dry toast, grapefruit halves, and a glass of his sole indulgence, a large serving of mango juice.

“Well, my Lord and Master,” Twilight replied, raising her head. “There are no new issues to report, other than another request from Princess Cadance and her Royal Consort that I be allowed to visit them in the Crystal Empire.”

“Still trying to undo the lock I put on your mind, are they?” Candor asked with a chuckle. “Inform them that you will visit them next month. Unless you have a problem with that?”

“As my Lord and Master desires,” Twilight answered, bells chiming again as she lowered her head submissively. “I have no will, but what you allow.”

“True,” the king admitted, before asking, “Remind me again, how did I come to enslave your mind and your body with it?”

“My friends and I were on our way back to Equestria from the Crystal Empire, after having defeated King Sombra,” Twilight recounted, keeping her eyes on the ground. “I couldn’t sleep that night on the train, and was watching the landscape pass from the observation car.”

“Go on, and you may look at me,” Candor commanded, taking the opportunity to start on his breakfast.

“I didn’t even know you were there until you put the magic blocking ring over my horn and wrapped a rope noose around my throat,” Twilight continued, involuntarily touching her neck with a hoof. “I tried to fight back, but without my magic and my air cut off, you were able to ride me to the floor and subdue me in barely a minute.”

Only then did the purple unicorn in front of him raise her eyes to his.

“Only when you allowed me some air again did I sense the dark magic in you and realize what you were about to do to me,” Twilight recounted, voice steady. “That’s when I offered you the chance to make me what I am now.”

“Which is?” Candor asked, checking the mare before him for any sign that his hold on her was weakening. It was not.

“Your willingly obedient slave,” Twilight instantly replied, lowering her head again. “In exchange for never touching Spike or my parents with your power, I offered you myself as your willing tool. To do with whatever you chose.”

“I’ve often wondered why you didn’t include your friends, Shining Armor, or the other princesses in that offer,” Candor mused.

“All of them would have fought you, no matter what,” his slave said, touching her nose to the ground. “But I didn’t realize at the time that I was the key to Equestria.”

“Not entirely,” Candor admitted, taking a pull of his juice and savoring its rich flavor before continuing. “I already knew about Sombra’s ultimate weapons against Celestia and Luna, and that he’d never had a chance to use them.”

“True enough, Master,” Twilight replied, her voice slightly muffled by the floor. “But even I didn’t know that Celestia had already shown me the vault where the ‘Conquered Sun’ and ‘Chained Moon’ bridles were kept, sealing away that information in my mind until such time as they might be needed.”

“A wise enough precaution, even if those weapons were meant to instantly and completely break two strong willed alicorns into willing and wanton broodmares,” Candor answered, pausing for a moment as he sensed a disturbance in the clean lines of obedient thought in Twilight’s mind.

A momentary flash of power was all that was needed to erase the traces of guilt and responsibility in the mind of his slave. She had been Celestia’s stored tool in case either she or her sister had succumbed to madness or worse, and it wasn’t Twilight’s fault that he had used her before Celestia could, nor was he about to let what was his feel pain from somepony else's actions.

“The rest you know, Master,” Twilight continued, her head coming back up as the last traces of guilt over what she had done were washed from her mind. “Once you knew where the bridles were, you unleashed them on the Sisters. Celestia tried to hold hers off, but as it was literally made from a piece of her soul that Sombra had stolen, it easily punched through her every defense until it caught her.”

“And Luna was taken in her sleep,” King Candor finished, smiling in satisfaction. “She went to bed as a diarch, and woke up wanting nothing more than to please me as a member of my harem. It was almost anti-climactic.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” confirmed Twilight, getting back up to her hooves at the slight touch of Candor’s mind on hers again. “With the Diarchy fallen, and myself as your thrall, there was almost no resistance to your conquest.”

“Almost none,” Candor corrected, before crunching down the last bite of his breakfast. “Your friends Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie turned out to be quite the irritants for months afterwards.”

Twilight said nothing, except to pass over the day’s schedule, which she had likely obtained from Kibitz on her way to the terrace. Candor’s eyes raised slightly as he noticed the slight shakiness in the characters that read out the meeting with the Dragon Lord’s emissary. There was always a devil in the details.

“It’s Spike, isn’t it?” Candor asked.

He could have easily lifted the information from Twilight’s mind, but this was something even he had to tread carefully around. It was one thing to break the mind of a pony into willing obedience, but quite another to keep them there without turning them into some sort of mindless drone.

That had been Sombra’s mistake, and along with his desire to use his power on every pony around him, was ultimately what led to his downfall. Candor had no intention of falling into the trap of being the absolute authority in every facet of every pony’s life, which meant allowing his possessions and the free minded ponies around him some degree of autonomy.

In this case it meant acknowledging and dealing with Twilight’s connection to a creature who was in many ways, her son.

“Yes Master,” Twilight admitted, and again the smooth lines of her thoughts knotted and tangled. “I am… sorry.”

Breakfast done, the Tyrant of Equestria got up from the table and walked out from the door, with Twilight silently falling into place a body width to his left and behind. The place of an obedient pet following at heel.

“Once I have concluded my business with him, you may spend until dinner in his company,” the king stated, smiling to himself as Twilight’s mind jumped in joy before returning to the organized lines he had set for it. “Oh, and arrange for the maids Tight Lines and Fluffer to join me for lunch.”

“Master?” Twilight asked.

“I feel the need for an expansion of my personal staff, and if memory serves neither of them have encountered me before,” Candor commented, mentally savouring the taste of pleasures to come.

The feeling of a mind falling under his power was so delicious it was almost an addictive intoxicant, and gave him nearly as much satisfaction as bedding one of his alicorns, but as both Sombra and Celestia had demonstrated in the past, too much of a good thing could become a liability which had the possibility of ultimately leading to his own undoing. Far better to control his intake of those sweetest of pleasures with an iron discipline than become either fat or mentally lazy.

“Tight Lines prefers to wear a latex bodysuit under her maid uniform, and Fluffer has been known to wear silk stockings while at work,” Twilight noted, as she trailed in her lord’s wake. “Neither of which are part of the approved uniform, but not expressly forbidden either. Should I ensure that they are correctly garbed before… meeting with you?”

After this long serving under him, Twilight knew her master’s proclivities well.

“No,” Candor replied, “but remind both her and Fluffer that bridles are required wear for the meeting. Perhaps a blue latex one for Tight Lines and something in silk for Fluffer.”

“I’ll take them to Rarity for a fitting while you meet with Fancy Pants and the other nobles,” Twilight said, the slight initiative demonstrating anew that leaving an enthralled pony some free will was a good thing.

“It is good to be the King,” Candor stated, pausing just before the door to the meeting room. After the coming discussion about taxes and building codes he was going to need the stress relief that Celestia, and later Tight Lines and Fluffer were going to provide.

“It is good to be the King’s,” was Twilight’s reply.

Author's Note

I have to admit, I really enjoyed playing in the AU and given the chance I'd love to do so again. A few notes on how I see King Candor:
He is evil, but he is also competent, having read the Evil Overlord List.
He has appetites, and he satisfies them, but not wantonly.
He can be cruel, but he is not capricious.

Anyway, I hope you all have enjoyed this peek into a darker Equestria...

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