From the Shadows

Darkness; it was all around. It was not inability to see, as the alicorn could see her own hooves in front of her face, but beyond herself, there was only darkness. Nothing was out there; not light, not sound, nothing.

"Hello," Twilight called weakly.

No response.

"Hello!" she cried, stronger this time.

Again, there seemed to be nothing in the void beyond herself. But, though she was alone, she felt the hair on the back of her neck tingling as if something was watching her. She began to step backwards, leaving the nothingness in front of her for the darkness at her rear. She was nervous; not afraid, but nervous, and becoming more so each moment.

"Hello!" she cried a third time, the loudest yet, "Is anypony out there?!"

Not even an echo replied.

The alicorn stepped back farther, her hoof falls making no noise as they struck the black surface below her. She drew in a breath, preparing to let out another call, but her breath failed her, and she gasped out of surprise rather than for purpose as she felt something at her hooves.

Something coiled around her ankles, something wet and cold and muscular, and a frightened shriek escaped her lungs. She jumped up, freeing her limbs from the thing that had seized them, and spinning around midair, saw something dark and large retreating into the darkness away from her, and out of sight. It never showed itself as it danced away; it hadn't hurt her, but it had made an attempt on her. Either she scared it away, or it was toying with her, hunting her as a cat to a mouse.

Frightened now, she tried to spark a light from her horn, but her magic failed her; she simply couldn't, and she remained in the dark.

A slight sound reported behind her, and she spun around as the sound of hoof falls receded into the darkness, their producer invisible in the void.

"Who's there?!" she yelled, hyperventilating and afraid.

When she received no response, she summoned her waning courage, and began to approach the distant clapping sound of enamel hitting cobblestone, when at last, she heard a voice, and a familiar one at that.

"Don't!" it yelled, seeming to come from miles in the distance and right next to her ear at the same time.

"Rainbow?" Twilight shouted to the unseen speaker, "Is that you?!"

She was not answered until she tried to take a few more steps forward again.

"Don't come any closer!" yelled the voice, raspy and panicked.

"What's wrong?!" yelled Twilight, frantically searching the abyss around her for a sign of her friend.

Silence ensued for a period, until the voice, static and stuttering now, responded. It started as a whisper, again, coming from the distance and her side at once, until it evolved into words.

"h-h-h-he's-e's ou-He's out here!"

"Who?!" yelled Twilight, frantic and panicked now, "Who's out there?!"

A new voice came through the darkness now, stuttering and humming as it started low and grew audible as seconds passed.

"f-f-fe-Fear."

"Fluttershy?" asked the alicorn aloud, "Is that you?"

"d-dou-Doubt."

"Pinkie?"

"r-ra Rage."

"Rainbow, is that you again?"

"h-h-ha-Hate."

"Rarity? You too?"

"p-pri-Pride."

"Applejack?"

Twilight was spinning in place now, rotating around as she tried, desperate and frightened, to find her friends, somewhere out there in the darkness, not themselves and in trouble by the sounds of their voices.

"What's going on?!" she yelled; she was confused, and ashamed by it, but above that, afraid.

"What's wrong? Tell me; I'll help you! I always have! Who's out there!? Who?!"

She heard a collection of five familiar voices hiss beyond her vision, something low and inaudible.

"What?!"

"ss-sss..." came the voices, saying the same prolonged syllable together, but not in unison.

Silence followed the second volley of whispers, and Twilight's fear gained a new level of frustration as well.

"What are you saying?! Who's out there?!"

Suddenly, the whispers transformed into a collective shout, booming, all-encompassing, and very, very nearby.

"SOMBRA!" yelled the voices of her friends, electric and strong from somewhere out of sight.

Twilight's ears flattened against her head as she heard the word, and she began to take a step away from the voices. The voices were her friends', but she knew her friends weren't speaking them. This was something else, something unlike her companions, something terrifying and foreign, and something she wanted to get away from.

Five voices joined together in another roar that resonated through the darkness.

"FEAR!"

Twilight turned and ran, anxiety and horror causing tears to well up in her eyes and cloud her vision as she pushed deeper into the darkness, away from the voices. But, before she escaped, they sounded again, in front of her, as if she hadn't moved at all.

"DOUBT!"

Twilight wheeled around, and took off, panting and gasping, in the opposite direction, but again, the voices shouted in her face mid-sprint.

"RAGE!"

Again, she turned and ran away, but she was unable to escape the thunderous boom of the words.

"HATE!"

Sobbing, she closed her eyes and ran again, not caring where she went anymore. She didn't want to be anywhere in particular; she just didn't want to be there anymore. But, she simply couldn't get away, and she was blown onto her flanks by the force of the voices as it hit her a fifth time.

"PRIDE!"

Twilight, sitting on her haunches unable to get up, frozen by fear, did the only thing left to do. She covered her ears and sealed her swelling eyes shut, trying to block out the voices as they began reciting the words again and again in a disembodied, demonic chant, but to no avail. She heard every syllable as clearly as before.

"FEAR! DOUBT! RAGE! HATE! PRIDE! FEAR! DOUBT! RAGE! HATE! PRIDE! FEAR! DOUBT! RAGE! HATE! PRIDE..."

Suddenly, the voices stopped. Twilight removed her hooves from her ears, and opened her eyes. She could see nothing more than before, but she heard even less. The silence following the thunderous chorus was deafening in itself. She looked around; nothing. Her ears twitched as they tried to detect anything, but they failed to do so.

Then, as suddenly as the chant had stopped, it picked up again, somehow, even louder.

"BE AFRAID!"

The voices in this shout were more than five; there were thousands of them, an army of them, all shouting the same warning in unison. Twilight's ears were still ringing, and her tears still flowing, when they spoke a second time.

"BE AFRAID!"

Twilight lurched from sheer terror; the silence between each roar was as bad as the roar itself. But she couldn't anticipate what happened next.

A third report from the voices, shouting "BE AFRAID!", only this time the sound was accompanied by a sight.

A pair of humongous, green and red eyes came to be in the darkness in front of and above her. She craned her neck to look up and see the slit pupils and lavender tails emanating from their tear ducts, clear even through her moist eyes. The eyes glared down at her; no body, no brow, but the eyes were glaring nonetheless.

The monstrous oculars drew nearer and nearer, to the point where they were overwhelmingly large.

"BE AFRAID!"

Deafened by the bellow, Twilight gaped in horror as a set of fangs materialized from the darkness below the eyes. They forged themselves into a smile, wicked and evil, but the eyes kept glaring.

"BE AFRAID!"

The fangs stayed in a smile; the eyes kept glaring, and together, silently, they drew nearer.

"BE AFRAID!"

The eyes were within feet of her.

"BE AFRAID!"

Within reach now.

"BE AFRAID!"

Right next to her.

"BE AFRAID!"

In her ear now, she closed her eyes as she waited for the inevitable, but no harm fell on her as the voices boomed again and again.

"BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID!"

The voices chanted again and again, until suddenly, they stopped completely, leaving her in silence with her company, the fanged, glaring entity she refused to look at. Then in her ear, a whisper; a crooning, deep and Slavic voice, the words rolling off the tongue that wasn't there and hot breath blowing into her face from the shadow's nonexistent lungs.

"Be very afraid..."

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

Twilight gasped as she shot upright, and her head drifted to and fro as, slowly, she came to. Her head hurt; so did her ribs. Her vision was clouded and her ears were ringing. Her memory trickled back methodically, and she realized that the last minute's reality was in fact nothing more than a bad dream; yet, no matter how hard she tried to forget, it lingered, unlike petty nightmares of the past.

The rest of her recollection flooded back as consciousness once again became hers.

Pinkie Pie, Sombra, Rainbow Dash, firing a bolt of magic, the pulse...the pulse. Twilight, suddenly completely alive again, shot to her hooves to find a wave of vertigo waiting for her. She reacquired her balance after a generous period of time, and finally, inspected her surroundings.

It looked like a bomb had gone off within the back room of the bakery. Every window, vase and picture frame was shattered, the remnants of their panes strewn on the floor in tiny fragments. The furniture was thrown into the walls, and their impacts were marked by absent paint where they had struck and blown through the dry wall. Tables, chairs, even a couch topping a few hundred pounds, were lying askew within the room, propped up against the dry wall and wooden barriers they had slammed into as a result of the king's release of power.

The epicenter of the blast was obvious enough. In the center of the room, the floor was scorched and marked by a ring of obsidian crystals, two to three feet in height. A trail of the stones led off to the room's doorway, smaller than some of the other crystals in the room, yet still prominent.

Then, Twilight heard a groan, and her head snapped to a yellow mare lying prostrate in the corner.

"Fluttershy!"

The alicorn rushed to her friend's side, kneeling beside her, and helped her off the ground and into a sitting position.

"Are you okay?"

A moment passed while the mare recollected herself.

"I think so," she choked, shaken up.

Twilight gave a quick inspection of the Pegasus; her body was fine except for a small red mark on her back, likely from where she had struck the wall. She was more hurt by the fact that somepony had just willingly attacked her and her friends than she was physically.

"Good," Twilight comforted, embracing Fluttershy, "That's all that matters."

She looked up at the rest of the room. Rainbow Dash had gotten herself up from the floor, and apart from an already yellow bruise on her ribs and a red mark around her neck, she was intact; however, she was still shaking off the effects of being telekinetically choked out, crushed, and terrified all at once.

Only one pony was missing.

"Where's Pinkie Pie?" asked Twilight, searching the room for signs of the absent mare.

"I'm out here," came the immediate response, and Twilight looked out the glassless window to see a raised pink forelimb and the tops of two ears amidst a vibrant curly mane.

She had been blown out the window.

"Are you alright Pinkie?" inquired Rainbow.

"Yeah," she replied, less cheery than normal.

"Well come on back inside."

The four quickly congregated, and Twilight felt a feeling of relief that they were all okay; the same could not be said for the rest of the room. The only things still standing were the dark grey crystals.

The crystals.

Twilight remembered the trail of them leading outside, and how they sprouted wherever Sombra went involuntarily.

"He's escaped," she cried, hope abandoning her eyes, "Sombra's gone."

"Well what do we do?" asked Dash, her confidence baring no resemblance to the horror on the others' faces.

Twilight hesitated; she was a princess, and it was her responsibility to take control of the situation, but which action was the right one? She thought for too long.

"Twilight?" asked Rainbow Dash a second time, and this time, received a response.

"We go after him."

Eyes widened in response.

"Get your elements and the others as well, and hurry. We can follow him by the trail he leaves. I don't think he can keep himself from leaving crystals behind. In the meantime, I'll let Celestia know. We'll have to reign him in before he does something we'll regret."

Those around her now hesitated for a moment too long.

"Go, now!"

And hoof beats sounded as the four ran out the door.