Winter Lilack blanched with surprise when she opened the door to her subterranean laboratory. The only sources of light were but a few candles lit here and there, lending the apparition lurking within her domain a shadowy appearance. "Sire?" she said, blinking.

The King's dark figure loomed over the husk of The Princess, looking down at her with eyes that betrayed no expression. "Are you here to treat them?" said he, not moving his eyes from Twilight Sparkle -- who stirred where she lay, a weak sigh escaping between her lips as she turned her head.

The apothecary goggled incredulously as she approached the inexplicably animate body lain out on the slab. "Did... Did she just--"

"Yes," said The King, as if he had anticipated the question. His eyes went from Twilight Sparkle to Moon Dancer. "The antipotion is beginning to take effect; soon they shall awaken."

"You're waking them?" Winter eyed a dagger protruding from Sunset Shimmer's bed, mere inches from her head. The thrust behind the blow had been so fierce the blade had been buried into the steel beneath the thick exterior layer of padding. He was going to kill her, she deduced. Something stayed his hoof at the very last second. "You're sparing your attempted regicides?"

"Aye."

"Why?"

Sombra's eyes flicked to her. "Why do you care?"

"I don't," was Winter's brusque answer. She grasped the dagger and levered it from side-to-side until she was able to wrench it free from its metallic pedestal. When she inspected it, she saw that the tip was badly bent and the edge was chipped. "Just curious is all. They tried to kill you, didn't they?"

"Aye."

"I've always taken you for the methodical type." The apothecary brought the dagger to her work table, where she laid it next to her elaborate assembly of retorts and bulbous flasks. "How do you know they're not just going to try to kill you again?"

"I don't, I suppose," Sombra admitted. He pulled Twilight Sparkle's blanket up to her chin when he noticed she was shivering. The candlelight caught his features when he lifted his gaze to look at Winter Lilac. It was there, in the scant illumination, that she could see how drawn his face was, his eyes red and raw as open wounds. Winter Lilac had never seen her king in such a forlorn comportment before. She had seen him roaring and blustering in his fits of rage, and he was oft brooding in his silence. She had seen him smile on a few occasions, always when he was in the presence of his wife. She had even heard him laugh, when the ale flowed, and The Queen would whisper bawdy suggestions into his ear as they supped together at their high table. Sombra was broody as often as not, quick to rage, and just as quick to forgive, but he had never been melancholy.

"I will leave you to your work," Sombra suddenly said. "They will be in a fragile state when they awaken, frightened and confused. They may panic if they were to witness me upon opening their eyes."

"My... My work, sire?" Winter stammered. "If you're waking them, what would be the point of me treating them?"

"The stimulant," Sombra said, with an icy patience.

"Oh..." The apothecary suddenly felt like a fool. Seeing The King in the state he was in had flummoxed her beyond the ability to reason. She looked away from him, chagrined. "Yes, I--I suppose they'll be needing it, won't they? I'll get right to work on that, then."

"I will leave you to it, then," Sombra announced as he made for the door. "I will send someone down to collect them within the hour. I will be sure to have a place for them at my table. The Queen should like that."

"You're breaking fast with your assassins?" A flabbergasted Winter Lilac said to the back of The King's head. Sombra gave no answer as he let the door shut behind him, leaving the apothecary to ponder over his strange behavior. Winter Lilac had never been so baffled in her life. She looked down at the body of The Princess ponderously, then shrugged. Orders are orders, I suppose...

The frigid wind was a razor. It tussled The King's dark hair, it snapped his crimson cape. It beat at his muzzle as he gazed down upon his kingdom from the lofty ramparts of his palace, the land the gods had abandoned. When he closed his eyes he relived the countless horrors he had witnessed as a roaming phantom. He could still hear the way the mare choked on her broken teeth as her attackers used her for their pleasure over and over again, the frantic cries of the filly as she was dragged from the cart, the way her screams escalated to a crescendo when the bandit through her down in the snow and mounted her, laughing. They all laughed, and jested, some of them had decided to take another turn with the mare they had captured, before they leashed the two with lengths of hempen rope and dragged them away, possibly to sell them, or to take them back to their keep, where an entire garrison of eager stallions would be waiting.

Other horrors and more flooded his mind. He tried to push the horrific thoughts out, but it was as if his memories had all colluded to break him of the tenuous grasp he had on his sanity. One horrific event led to the next, his experiences in the north as a phantom, then as a child. The first time he was forced to kill, the bandit's lifeless eyes looking up at him as the snow beneath him eagerly drank his blood. He felt his half brother's crossbow bolt pierce his heart. And he heard those awful words that had finally destroyed his mind. After ten years of struggling in the frozen wastes, fighting and killing, every day a desperate bid for survival, after realizing his father's betrayal, after getting shot through the heart, it was those words that had broken him. 'You are no son of mine, and you will never be king.'

When Sombra opened his eyes, he noticed the mortared stone of one of the cobbled battlements was crushed into gravel under his massive steelshod hoof, his ragged breath billowing in plumes as he wept. He looked skyward and noticed forms racing toward him, leonine phantoms armed with cutlasses, spears and crossbows. The palace beneath him shifted as an earth rattling explosion shattered the sky. And when Sombra looked down at the fletching protruding from his chest, he realized he had been shot.