From the Shadows

The dark lord leaned into Shining Armor, pressing his scimitar of a horn against his forehead, creating a small indent in his white hide, but not drawing blood.

Shining's eyes glossed over and averted to the cieling as his consciousness descended into the recesses of his mind, all due to Sombra's curse, now actively coursing through his veins and corrupting his soul.

The menace bridged the gap between his state of being and his victim's, preparing to leech off of his negative emotions; all he had to do now was find a way to bring those emotions forth. Sombra contemplated over how to go through the session; he'd already fed on the guard earlier, but this host had much more to give. His fear would give strength, his rage would be transferred; all of his flaws would add to the king's growing power.

Sombra's eyes were overtaken by green, his irises and pupils disappearing in a lime hued glow as he himself entered the trance he had bestowed on the prince. His horn cast a crimson essence on the otherwise dark room, and he entered the delusion he had so non-graciously given to Shining, reality twisting itself into nothingness while he crossed the threshold into his victim's subconscious.

Sombra, the master of the dream, knew that to be most beneficial, he must make the fear last. He led into the nightmare he orchestrated with the simplest and most primal of fears; darkness.

The king of shadows knew, from experience and past deeds, that this fear was common. He knew that none, though they professed it as a coming of age, ever fully relinquished the fear of the dark. The fear was always there, lingering; it was instinctual and inescapable, and therefore, benevolent to wielders of dark magic, if they knew how to command it. An old stand by, darkness was the perfect way to lead into what was to come; strong enough to bring forth fear, but not potent enough to cause full fledged terror.

He watched from the shadows as Shining Armor stood in the darkness of the void he had created. The real stallion was back in the room the real Sombra occupied; these were mere duplicates, conjured up from memory and emotion. It felt as if it were reality; all dreams do, but only Sombra was aware that they occupied a dream, his own creation, planted within Shining's mind.

Darkness; it permeated the creation, as planned. Shining was visible, but everything else was obscured by shadow and the absence of light, as if a spotlight had focused on the unicorn from somewhere beyond the dead of night. Sombra remained invisible, pulling the strings of the nightmare as one with the darkness.

Shining's head snapped from side to side, staring intently into void, searching for what it may conceal. Sombra felt the stallion's anticipation and anxiety build, a surge flowing through his being as he tasted the first hints of his host's fear.

He let the stallion grow more nervous, not quite fearful yet, but coming closer every moment the darkness closed in. When it reached a summit, Sombra upped the ante.

He focused on the fibers of the nightmare, warping them to fit his needs. He created new entities from will, bending the reality of the dream to create something else in the darkness, controlling everything from a distance as he watched the frightened reactions of his unfortunate victim.

A shadow flashed by, barely acknowledging its existence as it danced around Shining Armor, hinting at its existence as it teased into the light, retreating back into the darkness in a moment's notice.

Sombra felt another influx of power as Shining grew more afraid, the nightmare having grown from primal discomfort to immediate fear. But that wasn't enough.

He changed the lucid threat from a visual one to an audio one, and he again seized the reins of the dream to create dread.

Sombra smiled as Shining whipped around at the sound of a menacing growl, modeled after his own; even if the stallion didn't remember this nightmare afterwards, its events would for ever be instilled in his subconscious mind. He would associate certain traits and places with fear, making future feedings all the more yielding.

The white stallion backed away from the low, rumbling sound, the only sound in the dark abyss, and Sombra felt yet another wave of strength come over him; Shining was growing more and more afraid with each passing moment, and Sombra felt the tingling of life beginning to flow through him once again.

Sombra stepped the fear up again; time to reveal what the darkness hid. This next fear couldn't be primal or instinctual; it had to be personal.

In an instant, Sombra pulled away the darkness of the nightmare, exposing to Shining Armor a new environment. The stallion now stood on a precipice, a stone column ascending into the clouds overlooking an expansive valley on all sides below; nestled in between the mountains, was home.

The Crystal Empire in front of him, Equestria to his rear, ablaze.

A gush of power hit Sombra like a wave, causing him to recoil from its sheer force, and he felt its cold, biting sensation filling his being as Shining's heart spilled over with horror.

The white unicorn's eyes grew wide, filling with tears and terror as he saw the tall, glistening towers of the Crystal Empire in flames, an immense cloud of black smoke corrupting the once pristine air above. The magnificent splendor of the Empire's capital was gone, turned to ash and smoke and coals. His heart stopped when he saw his own home, the palace, turned orange by fire, the flames jumping to touch the darkened skies; the entirety of the crystalline castle was burning. He couldn't move down from the immense stone column; it was simply too high, so he tried a spell to try and extinguish the flames, but his horn fizzled out weakly when he tried to stimulate it, only a trickle of smoke being produced as his helpless pain grew stronger.

"No," whispered Shining, trying to step back, away from the dismay of his burning home.

His hoof slipped on the edge, and rocks fell to the terrestrial world below. He could go nowhere; the vertical piece of rock he occupied offered no possibility for movement in any direction.

Shining tried to turn away from the Crystal Empire, the limpid pride of the kingdom melting in the intense heat of the flames, but he only found himself looking at Equestria, yet another home to him; it was also an inferno. The golden wheat fields, the thatched roofed houses, the great cities of Baltimare and Fillydelphia in the distance, the infinite forests, the boundless grasslands and the jewel of Canterlot were all engulfed in fires, indiscriminately burning everything and anything into small white flakes drifting through the atmosphere like snow.

Sombra felt another surge of power as Shining began to break down, the horror of the atrocity of his burning home being too much. The stallion's knees grew weak, and he eventually gave in, falling heavily to the cold, stony platform he occupied.

A gust of sudden wind blew the smoke from the pair of ignited kingdoms into his face, again surrounding him in a black, ominous cloud of nothingness, and Sombra tweaked the environment of the dream once more.

The smoke receded, placing Shining in another environment amidst the flames. Through watering eyes and choking smoke, the prince saw the cause of the destruction.

The kingdoms had been invaded, something he had been tasked to prevent. Black ponies, ponies with red eyes and featureless faces, darted back and forth in front of him, pursuing fleeing citizens, setting fire to buildings, and striking down guards indiscriminately. They were emotionless; nothing was off limits, and Shining witnessed the atrocities of genocide, arson, and all degrees of assault being committed before his eyes.

Yet the fear hadn't reached its peak.

A familiar guard, a lieutenant and friend, was drawn by a pair of the attackers, emotionless and robotic as they secured him. A third stepped before the guard, brandishing his long, curving, sabre-like horn.

Shining tried to move to help him as the guard's eyes grew wide, the attacker's monochromatic blade rising above his victim's head, but he couldn't; his hooves were sealed to the ground, a dark, shadowlike entity coiled around his ankles, and no matter how hard he tried, his legs would not come undone from the ground.

The invader's horn descended in a swift strike, and as the blood of the guard spilled onto the street, Sombra again tore at the fabric of the nightmare, using a bit of the immense power he had accumulated from Shining's helpless rage and boundless dread.

A pair of the dark assailants drew him, seizing him by his forelimbs, and dragged him through the ash and smoke of the burning buildings. They passed mounds of corpses, consisting of stallions, mares and foals alike, the city's ditches having been turned into mass graves filled with the stench of decay, seared flesh and blood. Flies had taken to calling the bloated bodies home, and Sombra felt the strongest influx yet as Shining's stomach nearly wrenched in horror as they passed through the streets, flanked by the innumerable remains of ponies it had been his job to protect.

Sombra, still orchestrating the nightmare from a distance, recalled the power he had acquired after the event, and realized he had found one of Shining's greatest fears; failure. By exposing him to the consequences of failure to protect a kingdom, Sombra discovered the greatest of Shining's terrors. He would not forget it. Yet, there were greater fears deeper within the prince's mind; Sombra could feel it.

The dark lord directed Shining's captors to the edge of the kingdom, the lively countryside turned bleak and grey by corrupting ash. It fell like snow, creating an environment akin to fog. One could not see more than a few dozen feet in any direction. Shining was dragged through the cloud of burnt tranquility, farther and farther from the chaos of the besieged city, the two on either side of him not saying a word as they mechanically pulled him through the accumulating flakes, which had turned his coat from the purest white to sullen grey.

Slowly, the frantic cries of terror and the clashing of blades intermingling with the crackling fires faded away, and were replaced with silence. Dead, all-encompassing, uncorrupted silence; yet another primal weapon in Sombra's arsenal of fears to call on.

Shining still couldn't move. Even for all his power in reality, in the dream, he was helpless, and it terrified him. Strength flowed into Sombra like a trickle as the progression advanced into the endless cloud of grey, but he wanted more. So, again, not caring whether or not his victim would be able to handle the dread, he raised the fear factor.

It was time to find the greatest of Shining's fears.

Something began to take form in the distance, and Shining looked up to see a shape coming closer as he was pulled, pushed, and drawn towards it by the silent pair. The form, after tedious moments, became a tree, an immense oak with wide, endless, branching limbs standing in solitude in the drifting soot.

However, as he came nearer, Shining realized that it was more than a tree. From its branches were suspended silhouettes, still unrecognizable in the haze. He reached the trunk, looked up into its cold, all-encompassing arms, and his heart, at least a part of it, died; the tree was a gallows.

Ten bodies were hung by the neck from the tree's branches, their identities hidden by ash but their features alluding to loved ones, and Sombra fought the urge to release a yell of ecstasy as the raw power of Shining's horror hit him.

Shining gaped up at the tree from his knees, tears starting to flow as he began to realize who he was seeing.

Sombra, from somewhere in the haze, symphonized the nightmare, drawing back the fog ever so slowly to reveal the identities of those suspended lifelessly from the tree, but not before tormenting his victim a bit longer.

Slowly, a glow began from each of the inert shadows among the branches, slowly progressing to become sources of light. For a moment, Shining saw clearly the sources of the radiance, and his eyes spilled over as he heaved, sobbing in desolate solitude at the base of the tree; an orange apple here, a six-pronged magenta star there, a pink butterfly below those, a royal purple gem above, and many more.

The haze retreated methodically, finally revealing Sombra's morbid masterpiece. The dark lord teased his host with horror, not wanting to spoil the coup de grâce of his laboriously, but flawlessly created nightmare.

Above him in the oak's cold grips, Shining saw the cold, decayed body of Celestia, swinging limply from her neck by a cord of wire, her crown resting skewed on her scalp above her once, but no longer, splendid mane, which had grown dull in death. Next was Princess Luna, also a dear friend, the bones of her broken spine bulging from within her rotting neck as dark blood trickled forth from her mouth. More friends became visible as the haze was stripped away; first, Fluttershy, then Applejack, followed by Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and...Shining's stomach emptied itself when he saw the small, innocent form of Spike in death's grips, hovering from a thin piece of rope secured to a dead branch a few feet above his drooping, colorless spines.

Sombra had accumulated more power than he had ever before from a single session; Shining Armor was a perfect host. So many fears to tap, so much power to be gained, but even though Sombra had more power than he knew what to do with, he didn't stop. The nightmare continued.

The haze was drawn back inch by inch, slowly revealing the final, and most devastating, of the gallows' occupants.

"No," sobbed Shining, trembling, as his sister was shown to him, dead as the others, the flesh of her jaw eaten away by the bite of decay.

And finally, a crushing blow. Sombra showed the last of the ten to Shining, not allowing the stallion to avert his eyes as his wife, Cadence, her coat dull and dirty and her eyes rolled back in their sockets, became visible.

Shining Armor screamed a bloodcurdling cry of pain and horror, and Sombra relished in its taste.

The unicorn couldn't look away from the rotting, bloody, bloated, lifeless bodies of his friends and family, suspended by wire and cord in front of his face. They each wore their jewels. The bearers, their elements, the princesses, their crowns. Symbols of the kingdoms, dead, murdered by evil.

Sombra, seeking more from his victim, had the pair that dragged Shining to the site fasten a noose around Shining's neck, but the motion prompted no sweet sensation of fear to the king; Shining did not fear death.

Odd, but the king was cunning. Rather than ending the stallion's suffering with death, normally the greatest fear of an equine, he kept him alive in front of the oak, unable to leave and unable to look away, and Sombra again felt the flow of anger, sorrow and horror.

He could feel Shining fading; he had sucked him dry, and he was weak in flesh and spirit, possibly near death. Unwilling to let him go, Sombra devised a way to get the last drops of fear from the prince.

He came forth from the fog, materializing from shadow and darkness at Shining's side, and slowly, leaned into him.

"This," whispered the king, his low, rumbling voice breaking the quiet, ending the sound of the branches' creaking's reign, "is what is to come."

The seed was planted.

"You could have prevented this, Shining," serenaded the king, "but you failed. You cannot save them from me now."

Sombra felt the last influx of strength from Shining's fear as the dream began to swirl into darkness again; his host was finished.

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

Sombra gasped as he came out of the dream, his eyes losing some of their radiance as his irises returned. He was high from the power harvested from the nightmare, but he swallowed it down. He looked to his hooves to see Shining Armor, his eyes bloodshot and his mouth agape, trembling weakly. Sombra felt the sweet sensation of victory, conquering his hated successor after so long, but he had to stifle a joyous chuckle as he heard the door creak open.

A feminine voice shouted from the doorway.

"What is going on! What did you do to him?"

Sombra wiped the proud look from his face in an instant, and looked to the doorway to see the owner of the home had awoken. The lavender alicorn was staring him down, switching her expression from concern for her brother and accusation for the king.

Sombra didn't move as she came in, kneeling to her brother's side. She couldn't know the truth; attacking her would give away his guilt, and there were no witnesses to what he had done to Shining.

He only asked in his gentlest voice, "How long has he been awake?"