Episode 16: The Dark King

Now then, I think that it's time I told you the story of how I became who I am today from the beginning…

Everything started after Noimman had finished her latest experiment on me, transforming me into her successor, No. Uel, and taking in my power, she saw that there was no more need for me to linger in the human world. She wanted to not only have influence in Adrian Bruce's world, but also in this world, the world of the heralds. Thus, she sent me here to be born as the child of Terra, Captain Leo of the Jaeger Raid's wife, and the destined earth mother of the children of the Trinity. And so, I came into this world as Nero, the son of Noimman, alongside my sister, Spira, the daughter of Fluttershy.

"Ready, set, go!" Terra exclaimed, sending a toy racecar forward on the floor. She was playing with her kids, encouraging Nero to have fun with his racecars while Spira was building a toy castle out of Legos. Yes, my childhood wasn't all bad. Terra was really nice to both of us and always knew how to make us smile. However…

Once I got older, after I started to understand better why she spent so much time with us, everything changed. Not only was it part of her duty to bring us up right, she wanted a substitute for Leo. It was all just part of her obligation to fulfill our needs as a mother, as well as fulfill her own emotional needs…

"Stop it." Spira told Nero, who was wearing a menacing scowl on his face. "That's absurd. Not everything beautiful in this world has a cynical explanation. Our mother loves us, that's all there is to it. There's no way to cynically explain true love."

"Hmm?" Terra went as she overheard her kids having an argument in the same room they had played in when they were young.

"Please…" Nero replied sarcastically, shooting his sister an intimidating glare, his body glowing with dark energy and his eyes emitting a purple haze reminiscent of King Sombra. "I'm not trying to "cynically explain" true love. I'm just telling you the truth that it isn't real."

"...No…" Terra said to herself in fear. "It's begun…and both of them still have no idea!"

"I can't believe what you're saying to me…" Spira said, trembling in terror in response to her brother's words, as well as the dark aura she felt coming from him. "Who told you this slander? I refuse to buy that you've always believed something so unscrupulous!"

"Really?" Nero retorted. "You can't accept the fact that your brother has always been a monster? You lap up everything they say at church, yet you deny the existence of demons? And that we are just as evil as they are? If what they say is true, how can you still believe that I have a soul?"

…..

"Appear before us and show us the way…" Spira responded with a prayer as she closed her eyes.

Nero...Spira...this is where their tale begins…through remembrance of prayer and song…

The Eternal King

Heed the call of who catches the stars

Cease every conflict and every farce

Be deaf to the devil's call to sin

Renounce the evil that rests within

Revive that weary, restless soul

Come to the father who makes us whole

Before our loving, eternal king

Hell's tolling bell will never ring

Terra, Spira, and even Nero were smiling as the worship song concluded.

"I always feel good after I hear a hymn like that." Nero thought to himself. "Easily the highlight of the service. But if even I'm happy…"

Nero looked around at the ponies who were sitting in the benches adjacent to them. He noticed the dull, lifeless expressions on their faces. These were the bored looks of ponies who bore a striking resemblance to…

...Maud Pie.

Nero always wondered why his family never seemed to care that so much of the congregation was made up of clones of Maud Pie. However...

"Let us go to our father in prayer!" the song leader, revealed to be Pinkie Pie, dressed in the white robe of a priest, exclaimed happily.

Despite this being the case for many of the members in the church, the leaders of the church were made up of clones of Pinkie Pie. Unlike the Maud clones, they always had a look of joy on their faces every time they went up to the stage to say something at the podium. However, this was even more confusing to Nero than the lack of enthusiasm from the members. If the leaders were genuinely happy to come to church, why wasn't their cheerful attitude rubbing off on the members? As the members in the church were led to pray, Nero kept his eyes open and looked around to see how many ponies obeyed the call. He saw that most of them knelt their heads and closed their eyes, but a few of them kept their heads up and looked over at him.

"Glad I'm not the only one." Nero said to himself in thought. "Then again, I can't tell if they're thinking what I'm thinking, or if they're just serious busybodies…"

"Hey, put your head down, kid!" a Pinkie Pie clone in the back commanded. "Have some respect!"

"Rrrggghhh…" Nero grunted, still thinking to himself as he knelt his head and shut his eyes in begrudging compliance. "I think I got my answer…"

Ha ha ha...so you think you're finally starting to see the true nature of the house of God? You've seen nothing yet…

"Huh?" Nero said to himself out loud, thinking it was someone in the church. "Who said that?"

"No talking either!" the same Pinkie Pie clone ordered. "What's wrong with kids today? No manners whatsoever!"

"WOULD YOU MIND YOUR OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS?!" Nero yelled in thought, clutching his forelegs in anger. Sensing that something wasn't right, Spira opened her eyes and looked over at Nero.

"Nero, what's wrong?" she asked in concern, looking at her brother's hate-filled eyes just before a new turn of dark events unfolded…

"ULP...BLEAAGGHH!" the Pinkie Pie clone who had called Nero out earlier suddenly threw up a pile of black goop on the floor, which caught the attention of the rest of the church, including the prayer leader.

"Gracious lord." the Maud Pie clones reacted in the most concerned way possible for them as some of them came over to aid the sick Pinkie clone. "What has happened."

Terra and Spira gazed at the scene from behind in fright before they turned back to Nero, whose frustration had turned to worry as he turned his head the other way and shut his eyes with a nervous look on his face.

You already know the truth by instinct. But instinctive knowledge isn't always confirmed right away by the dissenting opinions of those around us. And this is where the mind games shall begin…

The prayer leader had her right foreleg held to her mouth to hide the ugly sneer she had on her face as she watched Nero's expression of guilt.

"The time has come to begin his test…" the prayer leader thought as she went away to convene with the other leaders in the back room. "...for the demonic power we sealed within him is finally starting to manifest…"

Soon, another Pinkie Pie clone, the minister who was giving the sermon, came up to the stage and set some papers on the podium.

"Good morning, church!" she proclaimed in an unsettlingly happy tone of voice.

"Good morning." the church responded in the apathetic monotone of Maud Pie.

"Now I know a lot of you might be confused with the recent turn of events," the preacher commented as she gestured to the sudden illness of the Pinkie clone, "but I assure you that it is only a sign that the Lord is with us today. Whether in sickness or in pain, or even in death, we must never forget the Lord's ever-enduring influence in our lives."

"Amen." the church responded in the same monotone as before.

Terra and Spira smiled at the preacher's attempt to remain optimistic in the face of an ill omen, while Nero frowned, his mind already beginning to find cracks in the preacher's mentality.

"How in the hell is a guy puking ooze from hell a sign from the Lord?!" he questioned the faulty logic in his mind.

You say that like these people who claim to be speakers of the Lord's word don't project ooze from hell on a regular basis.

"..." Nero didn't make the same mistake of saying anything out loud in response to the voice that was saying this in his head...but instead began to pay more attention to what this preacher was saying.

"When we see signs like this," the preacher continued, "our instincts like to tell us that they're the work of "evil spirits" or "demons" sent here by the devil in an attempt to fill us with doubt. But I will tell you that the truth of the matter is that God has more power than the devil, and will never allow him to directly harm us in such a way. When such things happen, we must remember that they are only a test of our faith."

"...That makes no sense." Nero said to himself in thought, growing not only frustrated, but concerned for this blatant disregard for reason being used as a platform to promote blind faith. "If the devil didn't cause that guy to vomit supernatural ooze and the devil's minions didn't either, then what did cause it?!"

She knows it was you, but she'd never tell the congregation that. Not out of altruism, but out of unwillingness to own up to allowing a child with demonic power such as yourself to harm someone in the church. After all, that wouldn't just be their mistake...that would also be God's mistake…

"So they're deliberately lying to cover things up…" Nero replied to the voice, growing angrier as his eyes began to glow red.

Hey, calm down. We're not even at the main event yet. The next thing that you'll hear will blow more than just your mind…

"When we see these signs," declared the preacher, "we like to worry for our souls in our lack of faith. But I will tell you church, that not only is this worrying not right in the sight of God completely irrational from a faith-driven perspective, but it is also completely irrational from a logical perspective. Our "souls" are not what we think they are. The immortality of the soul is not a teaching of the Lord, but rather a pagan teaching passed down through mythology. If our faith is in the eternal life of our "souls", then our faith is in the wrong place. Where our faith should be is in our heavenly father, who will come to wake up our "souls" after death. And only through that faith, church, is our resurrection possible."

"...Are you fucking kidding me?" Nero responded in his mind, unable to comprehend how this preacher had come around to saying something like this. "So we're just meatbags...being left to rot...before God comes to "wake us up". Wake what up? Our decomposed brains?! This is why we come here every week?! To just be reminded that we're a weak body and mind that's just waiting to be reborn as that pitiful creature again?! THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO SALVATION?! Who in their right mind would buy into this garbage?!"

Most everyone in the church apparently, as many of the members applauded the preacher by clapping their hooves together. Nero was mortified...especially when he saw that these members included Terra and Spira.

Take a good, long look, kid. This is what organized religion is really about. They don't want rationality and reasoning, even within their own realm of logic. They don't want the truth. They just want to preach something simple and convenient for the masses who aren't in their right mind…

"...Okay." Nero despondently replied in his mind, heartbroken. "...Whatever works for them. But what about me? What do I believe in now? On what grounds do I believe that "me" is even real? How will I ever again believe...in my soul?"

Terra and Spira then looked over at Nero and immediately knew something wasn't right. Their smiles quickly turned to looks of concern as they saw the anger...and the sorrow that was conveyed by the expression on his face. The preacher noticed this too, and even more…she gave an evil smirk as she saw who was saying those words in Nero's mind...she saw the ghost of a familiar foe hovering over Nero, giving him a malignant stare. She had eyes just like his…

...only his could only contain so much of the evil, allowing the rest to escape and manifest into a purple haze…

Looking into those eyes was like looking into a spiral that continued forever and ever in an endless descent towards the infinite darkness. The darkness that was free from time, separating not the past from the present and future as we do, and taking us back to where Spira and Nero stood now. After Spira had finished praying, she continued to keep her eyes shut, not wanting to be caught within that spiral…

"Nero, you have the right to be upset." Spira sympathized, attempting to put aside as much of her own emotion as she possibly could. "God's men can make mistakes and choose careless words. I know you're not just overreacting to one sermon you heard that you didn't like. I know these feelings must have been building up inside of you over the course of many things. But no matter what's going on with you, you can't allow the darkness inside of you to distrust God and the love he has given to us."

"Show it to me." Nero retorted.

"Huh?" Spira reacted by opening her eyes when she felt the dark energy receding, and saw the purple haze fade from Nero's eyes momentarily.

"Show me God's love." Nero gave her his challenge. "Words mean nothing to me. The only thing that will make me trust in God ever again is if he can take the love he's supposedly given me and show it to me. I want him to actually reach inside of me, take my soul, and show me the love right there in his hand."

Spira instantly caught on to her brother's scheme. Anyone's first instinctive reply would be, "That's impossible.". But with Nero not willing to listen to words, the only other alternative was action. In admitting that such a thing was impossible, she'd be saying that God was either powerless to stop him from losing his faith or deliberately allowing it by ignoring this chance to help him. Nero was trying to force her to surrender with this lock effect…

"God is not to be tested by anyone…" Spira said to herself, beginning to grow nervous as her face showed her tension. "But I don't believe in a god who values his pride more than his people…"

"You know you're fucked…" Nero responded to his sister's worry in his mind. "Even if you could somehow answer to my challenge, you'd only be rewarding me with the assurance I want. And even after you give your unavoidable surrender and walk away, I'll still get another kind of assurance that's even more gratifying…"

"...THE ASSURANCE THAT THE DEVIL'S POWER IS GREATER THAN GOD'S."

What could Spira do?

As Spira realized that God had not answered her prayer to appear before them, she knew there was only one thing she could do…

"I'm sorry, Nero." she apologized as she knelt her head. "Though I strongly disagree with you, I accept that I can't stop you from believing what you believe. Let's just agree to disagree and move on."

In response, Nero kept up his scowl, giving Spira a glance that appeared to show that he was disappointed. However...he soon abruptly smiled.

"Great!" he exclaimed in a sickly sweet voice. "That's perfectly fine with me. I'm glad you knew when to throw in the towel. It takes courage to be the better person. I'll be honest, I'm totally fine with accepting the reality of "true love"..."

"...?" Spira responded as she looked up, confused about Nero's sudden change of tune. "What are you…"

She then gasped as she saw him smile the most malicious smile she had ever seen...before she saw the devilish grin of an apparition that appeared beside him…

...the apparition of his late mother, Noimman, who spoke through Nero as he finished what he was saying in a demonic tone of voice…

"...BECAUSE I COULDN'T CARE LESS EITHER WAY. IT IS NOT TRUTH AND LOVE THAT RULE THIS WORLD, BUT CONVENIENT LIES THAT PROMOTE FALSE LOVE FOR OUR WORTHLESS, NIHILISTIC BELIEFS AND HATE FOR ANYTHING OR ANYONE WHO DARES TO CHALLENGE THEM. THIS IS WHERE OUR WEAKNESS COMES FROM. AND ONLY THE DEVIL IS WILLING TO GIVE US THE POWER TO COMPENSATE FOR THAT WEAKNESS."

Spira started crying as she realized that from the start, Nero had no hope that she would dispel his doubts. He had already made up his mind that God was no longer worth bothering with. He had already decided to walk the path of darkness, and wanted to prove its power to her. And even worse, she also realized that the reason Nero had come to accept these horrifying ideas as truths...was because God had allowed an evil spirit to take hold of him.

"NNNNNOOOOO!" Spira cried. "GOD, WHY HAVE YOU HUMILIATED ME?! WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME AND MY FAMILY SO?!"

"Don't ask why he's forsaken us…" Nero retorted. "ASK WHY HE'S FORSAKEN ALL OF THE WORLD! MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

Upon overhearing this, Terra was terrified, and immediately went to her room.

"I have to get that containment crystal ready…" she said to herself. "...NOW! He's already been completely brainwashed by Noimman, even after everything I did to try and bring him up right! But I won't let him stray off the path of good! I refuse to dishonor you...I refuse to dishonor your memory, Leo!"

"...It won't just be on you...I'm still here, Terra…" the ghost of Leo could be heard from inside an area of darkness...