From the Shadows

The world came back into existence after a few moments of nothingness, and Sombra re-entered the tangible world as he stepped out of the portal. He breathed deeply, not a hint of remorse or hesitation in his heart; rather, he only felt... free.

Free of the north, free of the shackles imposed on him by a thousand year curse, free of the road-block the elements of harmony had presented, free to take back what was his.

He turned his gaze to the distance, and the high-rising, ivory towers of Canterlot Palace. His crimson eyes locked onto the castle, and, ever so slightly, his oculars began glowing green to match his malicious thoughts.

Now was his chance, the chance he had waited so long for. Now was his opportunity to retake his throne, the throne that had been taken from him in the first place. Now was his chance for vengeance, for redemption. He would not let it pass. There was nothing stopping him now; no elements of harmony, no lack of a body, no exile, no magical barriers keeping him at bay.

He was free.

Sombra took a step forwards, forgetting everything, except for his royal target, locked in his sight. This was the moment he'd been fighting for, the chance he'd been waiting on; he would not miss it. His eyes glowed verdant, his irises taking on a color akin to the blood he'd recently spilled, and his horn began to glow, as with each step, memories came flooding back. Memories of his scorn, memories of his exile, memories of the home, the life, he'd had taken from him, memories of the two that had taken everything from him, and with each passing moment, Sombra's rage only grew.

It gave him power, it gave him strength, acquired from the rage, the wrath, the fear, shamelessly reaped from others. Nothing else mattered, save for his target, the source and cause of his wrath, his anger, his rage. And as the feet he covered turned into miles, his power only grew more intense, the ground before him literally beginning to quake with his hoof falls. His essence vibrated with an energetic hum, and the night air around him was filled with static. A prisoner, an inferior, a scourge; he was these no longer.

He was free.

And he would make sure he would continue to be so, or he would die trying.

He broke into a trot, and as his eyes shifted over to complete green, an ivory smile spread across his face, a glare of determination doing the same on his brow as he drank in the anticipation of justice, however cruel. It was his to take, to make, to make a reality rather than a dream, all because of one pressing, recently made reality.

The ground shook harder now, each step reverberating through the Earth's crust with increasing power.

He was back, he was strong again. He had a body, muscle and bone and blood. He was a presence once again, but, most importantly...

He was free.

****************

Celestia was asleep in her bed, her eyes sealed in peaceful serenity. The night was still and quiet, and her role in the kingdom's maintenance, governing the day, was over a short while. The night was still young, and Luna's moon, like a silver dollar in the sky, shined down on the terrestrial world below, reflecting beautifully off of the ivory exteriors of the palace, sending subtle, white light into her bedroom through an expansive window.

It had been a stressful few days of late, and the Princess of the Sun now enjoyed a bit of hard earned rest. She'd just returned from her search across the kingdom with her sister, trying to uncover the source of the darkness in Equestria and the Crystal Empire. They'd found nothing to blame for the nightmares, nothing to attribute the roots of greed and hatred to, yet.

She still clung to her confidence in her student, Twilight, and, despite her instincts, wanted to give the young princess a chance to handle Sombra on her own. She knew, in the king's diminished state, being a shadow, a fragment of his former self, he was manageable, even to a young alicorn, and that, with the aide of the elements of harmony, his escapade would be halted quickly. And, once he was reeled in, it was only a matter of time before he, just like Discord, would be reformed for the better. Then, once his aide was used to unlock the mysteries of dark magic, the darkness could be routed entirely, and everything would be normal again in Equestria.

Yet, it concerned her that she hadn't yet received a letter confirming that Sombra had been reigned in. The last one sent from her student had confirmed that he had escaped temporarily, but had also urged her to refrain from intervening, and that the issue was in control. She was confident that Twilight and the others could handle it, and, again, despite her instincts, she'd found respite from constant physical and intellectual searching for the cause of the darkness in Equestria in her chambers.

Suddenly, the alicorn was jolted awake, and her eyes darted open as she sat up suddenly. It felt like her mattress had been shaken; an earthquake perhaps? No, it had been too small. A tremor maybe?

It happened again, stronger this time, and more persistent, and the floor began to shake. Celestia staggered as she tried both to keep her balance as well as make sense of what was going on. Definitely an earthquake, she thought to herself, but, in the center of Canterlot, nowhere near seismic centers or fault lines?

Another wave hit the castle, the most violent thus far, and the furniture shook its adornments onto the floor, those made of glass shattering on impact. Celestia grew more concerned; she needed to figure out what this was. It was definitely not an earthquake; it was something much different, much more concentrated, much more...controlled.

She stumbled to her window, a massive, single plane of glass the size of a regular home's wall, and looked outside to try and spot anything of significance. She did, far beneath her, in between her tower, the western one, and the one of her sister, to the east of the courtyards.

On the ground, hundreds of feet below her, a black essence was spreading across the palace lawn in rhythmic sessions coinciding with each passing tremor. The shaking grew stronger, the ebony plague on the ground doing the same, until it began to rise, climbing upwards in increments of violent expansion. It took three more tremors until a mountain of crystals now rivaled the towers of the palace in height. But, the mountain, with a vicious lurch, decided to eliminate some of its competition.

The ebony, crystalline behemoth shot through the eastern tower with a seemingly targeted thrust, cutting the expansive pillar in two. In slow motion, the lower half of the tower toppled, while the upper half fell earthwards, the massive turret diminished to crumbling rubble and dust in mere seconds.

"Luna," whispered the princess, shock and horror taking root in her heart.

Suddenly, her door was thrown open, and a panicked voice made its presence known.

"Your Majesty! We're under attack!" yelled the guard, frantic and obviously afraid, "We need to get you to the throne room, now! We're setting up defenses, but our outer line has already fallen. The throne room is closest to the armory, and where we're concentrating our forces for a defense. You'll be safest there."

"Alright," said the princess after a pause, turning away regretfully from the window, but not before swallowing a lingering, bitter tear.

"Let's Go."

Another tremor knocked the equine's gate off balance, and the tower as a whole shook as a distant, enraged roar drifted through the halls of the palace.

"Celestia!"

The alicorn froze, looking off to where the sound had come from, her coral eyes growing wider as she heard the familiar sound. It was unfeeling, feral...cold, and very, very angry.

"Princess," said the guard urgently, and Celestia was shaken from the trance.

She turned to leave, and sprinted out of her bedroom doors, an escort of guards joining her in the halls.

They galloped through the hallways of the palace, the floor's quaking growing more intense as each volley of tremors came to pass. The group, consisting of the princess and four guards, the crests on their helmets running horizontally across their crowns instead of vertically, signifying their elite rank, came to the throne room, a large congregation of guards already present outside the vaulted room's massive doors.

A phalanx of spears and armor parted to form a path for the princess and her guards, and Celestia entered her throne room, only to push through another formation of armored stallions, finally ascending the steps to arrive at her regal throne. She stood before it, two guards on her left, two on her right, and turned to face the entrance to the chamber.

The shaking grew more violent, now causing the guards in formation to stumble with each quake, and the walls of the palace began to form small cracks.

Celestia turned to her guard in between the shaking, and said, "Shall we arm ourselves?"

The guard nodded, and darted from her side and through a door at the back of the throne room, promptly returning with five spears; four were normal, made from steel and wood, the royal crest hung on small banners beneath the blades' bases, but the fifth was an elegant weapon. A golden trident, the prongs coming together to form a gilded point, with an aqua colored sapphire nestled in a cradle where the shaft and blades met. The four he distributed among the guards, but the golden weapon, he gave to Celestia, which she held in a telekinetic grip at her side, the point rising to the ceiling

Another tremor shook the palace, this time, accompanied by the echoing of blades meeting, somewhere in a distant corner of the hallways. And, another yell, closer this time, and more enraged, drifted through the palace interior.

"Celestia!"

From outside the throne room, the excited voice of a guard updated the princess and her protectors.

"Contact, in the Main Hall!"

Another voice, frantic, young and high pitched, added its weight to the otherwise silent echelon of guards.

"The castle's been breached!"

"All of you," yelled one of Celestia's guards, looking stoically down to the stallions still within the throne room, "Outside now!"

The formation shuffled out the doors, forming up in a defensive position just outside the throne room's threshold, their phalanx now well over one-hundred strong.

"Seal the doors!" yelled the same guard, and the others were locked outside the protection of the throne room with a resounding slam of the massive double doors.

And, suddenly, the chamber was silent. An interruption of the quiet came with another ground tearing tremor, dust falling from the recently formed cracks in the ceiling as the entire palace swayed. The rumbling, as quickly as it had come, stopped, and again, the throne room was completely, utterly silent, nothing making a sound other than the quickening breaths of the princess and her quartet of armored escorts.

Then, quietly, almost, but not quite silently, a brittle, crackling sound began within the throne room, and a small area on the floor came to host a small group of sprouting ebony crystals, pushing themselves up straight through the floor. They stopped growing when they reached four feet or so in height, and then, the silence resumed.

There was no sound at all in the palace. No crickets out tonight. No words shared among the castle's residents. Silence was the ear's solitary companion.

Then, from the other side of the doors, chaos suddenly erupted. It began with a deafening roar, wild and strong, enraged, and very, very close.

"CELESTIA!"

It was followed by an excited shout of an equine, its words' volume not hindered by the wood of the massive doors.

"Brace for contact!" it yelled, and the simultaneous sound of spears being leveled rattled in through the barrier.

More of the brittle sound came to be, and more crystals sprouted on the walls and grew down from the ceiling, while outside, another roar sounded, this time, accompanied by the metallic clanging of metal meeting metal. Screams began coming from the other side of the doors; painful screams, but, perhaps more frightening, the weak whimpers of mortality, and ever-so-slightly, Celestia leaned back, away from the doors, with her eyes growing wider in fear.

The sounds of battle continued, wet spilling sounds and savage roars intermingling with vicious snapping and bone-crushing cracks. The screams, high pitched and terrified, grew more common, reaching a peak, then becoming more rare, until, the sounds of battle, all-together, stopped.

A low growling came from the other side of the door, as well as a frightened whimper, and the sounds of reverberating footsteps came nearer the doors.

There were two distinct sets of hooves walking around out of sight; one was heavy, lethargic and paced, but the other was frantic, quick, and light, slowly coming back to the opposite sides of the doors. The footsteps stopped, and the sound of a wooden spear shaft hitting the ground clattered into the throne room. Another whimper, followed by a moment of silence, until the slight thud of something soft hit the far side of the doors.

More silence, followed by a low, rumbling growl.

Then, the door gave in slightly amidst a panicked choking sound, and the tip of a gnarled, crimson horn pushed through the wood of the door, showing itself, as well as the thick blood it had adorned, to the throne room's occupants. The horn was pulled back out of sight, and something heavy hit the ground outside, while a stream of blood flowed in beneath the door.

What would have been silence was corrupted by the sound of heavy, adrenaline permeated breathing from the princess and her guards, and the brittle sound of a row of crystals growing from under the door to advance slowly towards the throne, stopping at the steps' beginning.

Another growl floated through the wood of the door, before the massive barriers were blown inwards and off their massive hinges as if they weighed no more than a few pounds, to reveal a blood-covered Sombra, amidst hundreds of the motionless bodies of dead guards at his feet, their blood turning the ivory tiles crimson.

"Celestia," he said calmly, kindly, as if he was happy to see her.

The king looked up to the throne, glaring and panting, his ivory fangs corrupted pink by recent use, and, after inhaling deeply and running a crimson tainted hoof through his mane, he coolly asked, "Any others?"

The four guards leveled their spears at him, lining up shoulder to shoulder between him and the princess.

"Very well."

Sombra's horn glowed with a newfound radiance, and at his side, a crystalline column his own height rose through the floor. He kicked the pillar without averting his eyes from his opponents, and it shattered precisely, revealing a black, limpid weapon amidst the brittle shards of broken crystal. He took the opaque, ebony saber in his magic, raising another crystal on his opposite side, repeating the action to create a limpid, black war axe.

The four guards came closer, and Sombra twirled his weapons in anticipation as an eager smile spread beneath his scowling brow. The four charged, side by side, and Sombra, too quickly for eyes to gauge, killed three of them, sending them to the floor with opened throats or smashed skulls.

His obsidian blades were colored with red blotches now, and with them in his magical hold, he held the final living guard from behind in his hooves. He turned the guard to face Celestia, making sure the two's frightened eyes met before he spoke.

"How many more lambs," he said, looking down into the wide eyes of the guard he held in a gripping hold in front of him, his obsidian hoof over his mouth, "will be sent to the wolf..."

With a savage twist, Sombra snapped the guard's neck, his gilded helmet clattering to the floor, followed closely by the heavy thud of his limp body coming to a final rest on the palace floor.

"Before the shepherd comes out to make a stand?"

Sombra, blood drunk and in obvious ecstasy, set his crimson eyes in Celestia's gaze, and smiled. The princess was in a defensive stance, her spear leveled at him, and her wings flared up at her sides as she tried to hide her terror behind a determined glare.

Sombra stepped over the body of the guard, and came closer to the throne as he dropped his bloodstained blades, letting them rattle to a rest on the floor. He shook his head sarcastically as he held his hooves out, beckoning the princess for a challenge.

"Did you miss me, princess?!" he called up to her in between breaths.

He let the silence of the palace sink in for a moment before continuing.

"Find the source of that darkness yet?"

"Silence! I will not tolerate your insolence, you murderer! You will pay for what you've done today."

"If only you knew the extent of it, princess,"

Celestia froze, and tried, to no avail, to suppress the rising sense of despair in her throat, and tried to tell herself her assumptions of the king's words weren't right.

"for I've sent far more than just your pathetic guards and your infernal sibling to the gates of Hell today."

The king's smile bore into the heart of the alicorn, and he felt the sweet essence of fear rising from within her, giving him all the more determination, all the more strength.

"You thought you were so clever didn't you..." he said mockingly, "leaving a diminished evil in the care of an inexperienced pupil, in the hopes that she would undoubtedly learn a lesson from teaching me the value of the straight and narrow, conveniently killing two birds with one stone. But, for all your wisdom, all your power, you were blind."

The king reached the steps, and began cautiously, behind a mask of confidence, ascending them one at a time, using the opportunity created by the princess's self-doubt to press on for an opportunity at a rare moment of weakness.

"Too blind to see what you had created," he said, gesturing to himself, "too blind to see that your benevolent 'wisdom' would be your followers' downfall."

Celestia shook any lingering concerns from her head, and with a new found confidence, stepped forward menacingly, extending her spear at the king.

"Silence!"

The king stopped his advance, but continued talking.

"What's the matter? I thought you preached honesty and tolerance to your subjects."

"You are the farthest thing from honest, Sombra! you are a dark, evil, twisted creature, and I will not succumb to your treachery."

"You already have," he said with a grin.

"Sombra, I'm warning you," she said as he stepped closer.

"You think I'm afraid of you?" he scoffed, laughing a bit, "You've created an illusion for yourself, in which you and your forces of good reign supreme. But it is only that; an illusion, much like the one that dictated your choice to try and reform me."

"What are you saying?" asked the princess, allowing her focus to slip, and her spear lowered ever so slightly.

"Did you think for a moment that you took me into your kingdom under your own accord? Did you think, even for a second, that the darkness in Equestria and the Crystal Empire came to be by coincidence?"

"Your blindness, your ignorance, has cost this kingdom countless lives today, and the blood is on my hooves. But, this is all your fault. I have the credit, but you take the blame, for the fall of the elements of harmony."

"You didn't..." the princess stuttered, "you're bluffing."

"No," the king iterated intensely, his Slavic tongue adding a misplaced sense romance to his words, "not this time. And not just the mares, the entire town, all burned to ash and soot, because you fouled up. Your blindness accounts for their deaths."

Celestia's spear touched the ground as her concentration began to fail, horror corrupting her heart, and the king came to within reach.

"You know, I thought the famous elements of harmony would have put up more of a struggle, or at least have died with some honor," he said as he looked deep into the coral eyes of the alicorn, "They all squealed like pigs."

The king suddenly reared up, and with a swift backhand, struck the princess on the side of her face, sending her sprawling through the air across the throne room. She struck the wall, causing a large split to form, and her spear clattered to the ground at her side. She spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground as she stood up; fight or flight had kicked in, and her stunned expression was gone. Now, she was ready for a brawl, and her horn glowed white hot as the king came stalking down the stairs towards her.

She formed a magic sphere around his being. This had worked in the north; surely, it would work again. The blue encasing surrounded the king, but he kept coming. His horn glowed crimson, and with a deafening boom, a surge of power blew outwards from his core, shattering the barrier into shards of blue, dissipating into the energetically buzzing atmosphere of the throne room.

The spell had failed, but how?

"So you did really believe that you overpowered me in the north?!" Sombra challenged, his eyes shifting back to green as his horn radiated hate.

"Did you also think that I was not the architect of the hate in Equestria?! Did you think I was a bystander, watching passively from my exile?!"

Celestia got back to her feet, but again, the king, with a savage kick to her ribs, sent her skidding across the palace floor.

"All it took was a seed. A simple spark in the hearts of the citizens of the Crystal Empire, and all those who stood before my glory and power when the Crystal Heart was wrenched from my hooves a year ago came to be tinder for the fires of fear, which have grown into the blaze of hate and rage and wrath. And here you thought I was not responsible. I allowed you to take me into this kingdom. I planned everything, and you played your role flawlessly, your highness. Because you...Are...BLIND!"

He fired a scalding bolt of magic from his scimitar of a horn as he finished, but the princess blocked the incoming ray with the shaft of her spear. The weapon went skidding across the floor in the opposite direction her body flew, and Sombra leisurely picked up the gilded lance.

"The spear from all those centuries ago," he crooned nostalgically, "just as sharp as it was when you stabbed me in the back with it, and cast me into that forsaken wasteland. This is the weapon that stole my body, my life, my throne..."

He glared up at the alicorn, struggling to her hooves, as he finished, then threw the spear like a javelin, embedding it into the wall adjacent to the princess. As she looked at the weapon, still vibrating within the wall, a pillar of crystal rose in the middle of the floor, next to Sombra. He kicked the column, as he did before, and retrieved a massive battle-axe, gruesome and imperfect in design, from the shards.

He pointed the weapon, held in a blood-red aura, at the shaft of the spear, still embedded in the ivory wall.

"Fight me," he ordered as he paced back and forth, twirling his weapon as he breathed heavily through his flared nostrils.

Celestia weakly yanked the spear from the wall, and held it at her side with a glowing horn as she came out to meet the king. Her ribs felt broken, her mind and vision were blurred, all results of the king's abuse, but she was not about to back down. Everything was at stake.

Sombra charged her as soon as she retrieved her weapon, slashing in a wide arcing blow, but the princess dodged the swing. She ducked the incoming blade, and countered with a thrust, only to have it blocked by a side swipe by the king's ragged axe. In a fluid motion, he brought the axe around again, and Celestia tried, in vain, to drop-step the blow. The obsidian blade caught her under the eye, opening a scarlet gash on her alabaster cheek.

She staggered back, shaking her head, and Sombra nonchalantly inspected the recent nick in his new weapon's blade.

"Do you feel that?" he asked coolly, "The cold sensation right below your heart."

He looked back to her, raising his axe far over his head.

"That is what makes me superior."

He brought the blade down, and Celestia met it with the shaft of the spear. She staggered under the blow, but Sombra kept coming.

"That is what makes you weak," he said, striking again, his opponent narrowly avoiding being cleaved in two.

"It is what makes me strong."

Celestia took to the air, hovering out of reach of the king's weapon, and he glared up at her as his silhouette began to grow hazy and obscure amidst an energetic, static hum.

"It is fear. None are immune to its sting." he said as his horn and voice found a new level of fire, "Least of all, you!"

He fired a bolt of magic at Celestia, a focused ray that evaporated the moisture in the air as it flashed through the atmosphere. The princess rolled out of the way of the shot, pumping her wings as hard as she could to have a few feathers, rather than her entire being, singed by the beam. Her ceiling, however, wasn't as fortunate, and a massive hole was blown in the structure above them to reveal the oily night sky.

Celestia recovered from the maneuver, and looked down, panting at the king, scowling up at her with fangs born. She circled him once, looking for a weakness, until she tested his defense. She dove on him, leading with her blade, but Sombra, with an angry roar deflected her spear with a swing of his axe.

She circled around to come in again, and achieved the same result, only succeeding in making Sombra angrier.

"Come down here and fight!"

She ignored him, staying airborne and out of his blade's reach.

"You are a coward, unworthy of royalty!"

She hovered dozens of feet above him, returning her opponent's glare from the safety of the air, until she again took the offensive. She concentrated every ounce of courage left within her, and fired a bolt of blue magic down at Sombra. But, with animal-like reflexes, he rolled out of the way of the beam, leaving behind a patch of scorched floor where he previously stood.

"You haven't changed in the least, your highness," he jeered, "Prove me wrong and fight like the regal you are supposed to be! Come here!"

Celestia stayed where she was.

"I do not take orders from you!"

She fired another barrage of magic downwards, but Sombra, with a sideways sweep of his obsidian axe, deflected the beam into the wall, opening another gaping hole in the palace's architecture. He responded by sparking another glow from his horn, and as his eyes were taken over by a verdant radiance, he whipped his head forwards, lashing out with a whip-like coil of magic connected to his horn.

"I said COME HERE!"

The whip of tangible magic, created from hate and will-power, coiled around Celestia's neck, strangling her as it constricted around her throat tightly. Sombra yanked his head back and down violently, thrashing Celestia to the ground with a staggering impact. Dust and rubble was thrown upwards as the alicorn missile created a crater in the floor, and as the debris settled, her spear came clattering down at the crater's edge. Celestia tried to regain her footing and abandon the crater for anywhere else, as anywhere else would be safer.

But, as she lifted her head and shook off the effects of whiplash, she found her vision obscured by the dusty haze created by her impact. And, frantic as she tried to climb out of the crater, she saw a dark silhouette barreling towards her through the foggy rubble. She pumped her wings downwards as she tried to take to the air again, but Sombra leapt, tackling her out of the air and throwing her savagely back into the center of the crater, sending up more dust, as well as a bit of crimson blood.

Celestia, again, tried to stand, sitting up from her back, but again, Sombra was on top of her before she could go anywhere. He pounced on her, pinning her back to the bottom of the floor's indent, and with one hoof on her skull, the other on her chest, slammed her head into the floor over and over again, picking up her torso while keeping her abdomen and legs pinned. The back of her head shifted from ivory to red, and her beautiful, flowing mane, was corrupted by scarlet traces of her own blood.

He continued beating her, the princess screaming the entire time, until her eyes began to haze over with tears of pain. Then, he released her head, and grabbed her left wing in his hooves. With one limb he pulled, and with the other he pushed, snapping the base of the wing's bone in his hooves with a sickening crack.

The princess screamed, struggling to get away and crawl out from under the king. But, as she scrambled for the lip of the crater, going for her spear, dragging her broken wing helplessly behind her, Sombra grabbed her rear leg, and pulled her back for more.

"Get back here!"

She turned, rolling on her back, and with her free hind leg, landed a brutal kick on the king's jaw. His head snapped back, but he quickly recovered, again, apparently only having been made angrier by her resistance.

Celestia went for another kick, but Sombra dodged the blow. He leaned ever so slightly so that her gilded horse-shoe overshot his face, and, still keeping Celestia's other leg imprisoned, he turned and bit down hard on the alicorn's achilles.

Again, she screamed, blood running down her leg as Sombra shook his head back and forth, tearing through her flesh with predatory fangs, until the limb was crimson and mangled to contrast the rest of the alicorn's once majestic body. Sombra's eyes, burning now in both intensity and something much more sinister, flashed back to the face of the alicorn, on her back in the bottom of the crater, screaming in agony, and again, he pounced.

He straddled the princess, and pressed one hoof into her throat, and with the other, silenced her scream with a vicious blow. His armored shins hit off of her jaw with a brutal ringing sound, and her painful scream was silenced by a soft gurgling as she began bleeding from the cuts within her mouth, caused by trauma and her own teeth.

Again and again, Sombra landed punishing blows on her face and chest, each one driving her downwards into the crater, making it deeper and deeper until only a few inches of material separated the floor of the throne room from the ceiling of the room below it.

Then, with a final blow, the king reared back, and blew the princess downwards through the floor with a vicious curb-stomp. She fell through the air of the story below, and landed with a nauseating impact on the ground below. Sombra jumped down through the same hole, landing on braced knees a few feet from the princess, crippled on the ground in a mangled heap, and the gilded spear followed him down, landing a few feet from Celestia's side, just out of reach.

Dust drifted through the air, and blood coated the floor, but the king was as calm as ever. He'd recomposed himself, and now was an articulate regal again, not the vicious beast he was a few moments prior. He brushed a bloody hoof through his mane as he closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and turned lazily to face the princess, choking on her own blood as she struggled for breath in a crippled mass on the ground.

He prowled over to her side, and knelt by her struggling chest.

"Not too bad for a 'dark, twisted creature' eh?"

He stood back up, towering over her with the muscles in his neck bulging and pulsating with his elevated heart rate.

"How does it feel to be on the receiving end of regicide?" he taunted.

"This... isn't... over," Celestia answered, struggling with each syllable, "Your kind...can't win. Your kind...is evil. Good...will...prevail."

"You will be pleased to know that your student believed that as well. At least, she used to. She was as blind as you until I...opened her eyes."

"Twilight would...never..."

Sombra turned away from the struggling alicorn.

"She already has. None are immune to the decay of hate, or the bite of fear, and her benevolent heart has been tainted by the shadow of obscurity. Her fate has yet to be decided, but I assure you, it will end with her in my likeness."

Celestia turned her eyes from the king, seeing her spear, just a few feet away. If she could just summon the strength...

"I am tempted to keep you alive, and make you endure torture as I have for the next thousand years. But we both know only one of us can live through this night."

The princess swallowed hard, trying to be as quiet as possible as she summoned the meager strength left in her shattered body.

"Before you die, I want you to know that you brought this on yourself. You brought this on Equestria. You unleashed me, and you failed your kingdom."

Celestia, silently, rose from behind the back of the king, and quietly limped, nursing her broken ribs, vertebrae and limbs, towards her spear.

"But, perhaps, in your moment of mortality, you will find some comfort in this. Princess Twilight's greatest fear was losing you; I know, as I've seen the darkest recesses of her mind. Which is why I had to make her fear a reality."

Celestia stooped, and rose again without noise behind the king's back with her spear in a telekinetic grip, her breath ever so slightly quickening.

"You and I both know she is the most powerful of any of us. She will make an excellent student to me, as she has to you."

Celestia tip toed closer to the king's backside.

"But, with your death, she will be without direction, her mind will be vulnerable. And I've already planted the seeds of dark magic in her young mind."

Sombra sighed, and Celestia lifted the spear higher.

"Perhaps one day, she and I will rule together."

"You'll never get the chance," declared Celestia weakly, and as Sombra spun around, she buried the spear's blade into his chest.

Sombra looked down blankly, neither blood nor any fluid flowing from the wound, and as Celestia began tugging on the weapon's shaft, she found it stuck fast within the being of the king. His eyes went back to green, and his horn glowed as his body grew hazy and electric with energy.

"How can you kill what does not bleed?" he said, chuckling.

"What are you," whispered Celestia, horror in her tone.

"I am more than just flesh. I am a presence that lingers in the night, and is a part of every living thing in this world. My spirit is fear; my soul is immortal. I am a feeling, and feelings are immortal. I will never die, Celestia. I can only be born again. We both know this. But, can the same be said for you?"

With that, Sombra launched the princess back with another burst of obsidian magic, smashing her into the wall, while the spear remained in his chest. He yanked the weapon from his flesh, and stalked towards the princess, brandishing the blade while he licked his lips.

"I am the darkness you have sought to destroy with your light of hope and love. But, darkness is nothing more than the absence of light. And therefore, you must be extinguished."

He rose up over her, and smiled.

"You took everything from me with this spear," he said, holding it up, "Almost poetic; as now, at the end of your chapter, I do the same to you, with the same tool. Darkness and light..."

Sombra plunged the spear's blade into Celestia's throat before another moment passed, cutting off her breath, as well as her life, instantly. Her blood flowed forth onto the tiles, and her eyes went blank.

"But the darkness prevails."

Sombra yanked the blade back, releasing it from Celestia's trachea with a sickening spilling sound, and threw it to the ground. His lips darted out of his mouth to lick at the foreign blood that caked his body, and again, he found himself laughing.

He'd done it. The crown was his again. No longer dethroned; now, he was the rightful king again, as he always was.

Sombra stooped to Celestia's still corpse, and wrenched the crown from her head. Then, after spitting on her body, he turned, and went back upstairs to christen his reign.