Kiss of the Dark Pt. 2

1

Twilight Sparkle, newly christened Queen of Shadows, did not know she could smash through windows as otherwise intangible mist. Such was her first thought as she did just that, exiting Sombra’s castle in the most dramatic fashion possible. Rarity would have been proud had she been there, but she was likely back in Ponyville, worrying about her with the rest of her friends. Sombra probably would have been proud too, but he was a little too dead at the moment.

It hit her then, really hit her as the cold mountain winds tried to pull her little cloud of molecules apart. Sombra was dead. Her Sombra, the love of her life, the King to the Queen, and dead by Celestia’s hoof. And for that, she would have her revenge.

She paused as she crested one of the ridges surrounding the valley. Where from Tartarus had that thought come from!? Celestia was her mentor, and almost a second mother to her, and she’d wanted to-

Oh dear, her mother and father must be taking this especially hard, what had Celestia told them? What about Shiny? Did he know? Did everypony in Equestria know? She’d been going… somewhere, but if things had gotten so bad that Celestia had lead a strike team to kill them both…

She may not have had a home to go back to.

She certainly couldn’t go anywhere near Canterlot. That was right out of the question. Ponyville couldn’t be any better, because Twilight just knew that of all the ponies in Equestria, Celestia would’ve at least told her friends before she went to kill her. What would they do if she showed up in Ponyville? Would they hate her? Would they also try to kill her? Would they even care that she was likely pregnant now?

Speaking of which, was being in mist form hurting the foal? It very well could be. She had no idea how the spell even worked. Maybe if she got back to the library, she mused as she shifted back into a solid, she could research it and adapt it so- holy buck it was cold up here!

She hadn’t noticed in her mist form, as there was nothing for the temperature to freeze, but holy crap was it cold atop this cliff! It had been cold outside the castle before, but this was so cold she almost couldn’t think- no, Twilight. She could do this. She could fight past it.

Concentrate. Basic heat spell. Center it on her heart. Follow the veins, spread through the capillaries, back through the arteries. The feeling of having hooves, and those hooves being in pain, returned to her. She did her best to ignore it. Frostbite could wait. She had to make sure she hadn’t hurt her foal.

She took a deep breath, and began to magically inspect her privates on a near-microscopic level. She… couldn’t feel anything. It had been barely a day, if that, so it might just be that the foal was still too small and she couldn’t find it? Or… she had already…

She shook her head, trying to get rid of those awful, awful ideas. She hoped to… whoever she was supposed to now, as Celestia didn’t feel right anymore, that it was the former. Either way, she didn’t want to risk-

“Wait, is that seriously- OPEN FIRE!” As several bolts of multicoloured combat magic sliced past her, she decided that she could, in fact, risk it. She promptly disappeared into a cloud of mist, barely avoiding an on angry orange blur that fizzled through where her head had been a split second ago. She idly tested how much magic had been contained in the shot, and almost recoiled at how much sheer power had been in it. More than enough to kill her dead. They were very definitely shooting to kill.

After that, she let the wind take her, only using enough magic to keep her little cloud of purple together.

She had to-

She had-

She couldn’t con-

She couldn’t think, dammit! Every time she tried, tried to concentrate on something, thoughts of Sombra, of Celestia, all of them snuck in and made themselves the center of attention!

She stopped all thought, save what she needed to keep herself vaporous and coherent.

Go back to the beginning. Follow the chain of events, just Celestia’s lessons. This whole mess had started a little while after her coronation, after everypony had calmed down for the most part, when she’d gotten a mysterious note from “Forest Rain”. She met him deep in the Everfree, where he gave her a book of dark magic written by Starswirl himself. She could tell that from even a cursory glance.

She’d even managed to practice a spell or two later, destroying a bunch of target dummies, and an innocent tree in the park when she lost control of it. That had been the first time. Later on, she’d met “Forest Rain” again, learning a little about him. Of course, she still hadn’t quite been told the truth, but…

…But nothing he’d said was actually a lie, was it? He’d just neglected to mention one little detail. Later, she’d even taken him with her to the Crystal Empire, and immediately after, a proper date in the park. By that point, she realized, she was completely infatuated with him. She loved him.

And then it had all gone sideways.

He revealed himself to really be King Sombra, the same unicorn who had enslaved the Crystal Empire so long ago. The disguise had been a necessary deception, she knew. She would have never trusted him if he’d been Sombra from the very beginning. And she had been completely at his mercy, too conflicted to do anything. It would have been foal’s play to kill her then and there, just another pawn in his plan.

But he let her go. She could’ve easily gotten her friends, gotten Celestia, and she would’ve been justified in doing so. But she wouldn’t. He trusted her not to, and because of that, she trusted him. She loved him.

Even when she’d been invited to Canterlot, to discuss her home, he’d trusted her not to tell Celestia. And then the dark magic had gotten out of her control again, had kicked against her will, and killed those guards.

After that, she had to run. So she ran to Sombra. He had protected her as best he could, had made her his Queen of Shadows, had made love to her.

But he hadn’t protected her well enough, because Celestia, Luna, and their personal strike team had still found them. They had attacked, killing Sombra.

They had… killed… Sombra…

They’d told her lies, such pretty lies that she couldn’t deny were incredibly convincing, and the worst part was? She thought back to everything that had happened, and replayed it in her head, and realized how obvious it was sometimes that Sombra had been influencing it at least partly. How much he’d discretely controlled, how much he’d changed in his favor, how he’d played her like a fiddle.

But she’d thrown a wrench in his plans, she saw that in his eyes as Celestia killed him, she had wrecked his plan. Because he had actually fallen in love with her too. She saw his love for her in his eyes as they faded.

Or was that just more manipulation? What was real? What had been changed in her mind to suit him? And with that, she was back in this loop.

She stopped once more, this time landing on a plateau near the top of a mountain. Where was she? Her eyes searched the valley below for landmarks. A river wound through the valley before her, curling around a small village, and fed by a lake to the northeast. Past the lake was Canterhorn mountain, and Canterlot perched upon it like a giant marble birds’ nest.

A massive forest, more akin to a jungle really, covered the north half of the valley, spilling out past the gaps in the mountains around it and into the surrounding plains. That couldn’t be anything but the Everfree. That meant that the little village in the center of the valley had to be… Ponyville! She started, before trying to triangulate where she was from that.

If Applejack’s orchards were west of the town, and northwest of this mountain, than this had to be.. Ah! This had been the mountain that Dragon had settled in before trying to smoke out Ponyville. And that meant…

She slowly turned around, confirming her suspicions as she found exactly what she expected. Eeyup. Massive creepy cave. Still smelled kinda smoky.

Well, nothing to it. She needed a home, and while it was no Golden Oaks, it had safely and comfortably housed a Dragon and his hoard. As she began to walk closer, she passed something she recognized. The rock that had been split down the middle right before Fluttershy stood up to the Dragon.

The day played itself back out in her head. That had been one heck of a morning. Scary, to be sure, but at the end, they’d all been better for it. Especially Fluttershy.

Fluttershy. She’d take the news particularly hard, if she hadn’t already. Learning what had happened would hurt them all, but she was fragile. Like… well, like a butterfly.

If she tried, Twilight could just make out her cottage on the edge of the Everfree, and the tiny trail of smoke curling away from it. Using every ounce of her willpower, Twilight yanked herself away from the valley and back towards the cave. She took the last ten paces slowly, and deliberately, before entering the mouth of the cave. How did one measure the mouth of a cave, anyway? Celestia had never taught- Distraction. Stop it.

The cave itself seemed to be roughly a hundred paces tall, and nearly that width-wise. The cave floor she stood on seemed to continue for the next twenty or so paces, before sloping downwards into a bowl in the back of the cave, which was about eighty paces wide. It was almost uniform in it’s smoothness, and had probably been a water basin until the Dragon had cleared it out so he could put his horde there. A small pool of water, fed by the occasional drip from a stalactite above, confirmed this. It’s uniformity was only broken by a small cluster of rocks halfway up the back slope.

Not a single piece of gold, jewels, or anything valuable remained. The dragon had been thorough when he cleared it all out.

The day had been an exhausting one, and Twilight only had the slightest reservations before taking off her clothes and bundling them together into a pillow. She placed it on the flat part of the cave a safe distance from the mouth, and laid down.

She was now homeless, friendless, and loveless. Just before she fell into a dreamless sleep, she started feeling her eyes getting wet, and let the tears from the days events flow freely as she slipped away.

Author's Note

Welp, here it is. Sorry it took so long, sorry, it's kinda crap, but I can only really promise that the next chapters will be better and longer. Possibly in that order. If the author of the original Kiss of the Dark wants me to take this story down, I will, but it's their loss. Commacazy, you've stuck with me this long on vague promises and hope. This is for you, mate, to show that even if I procrastinate and take my goddamn time as much as possible, I still get my shit done.