To Be The King

Chapters

Sombra: Crossing Over
Twilight: Meeting Danger
Sombra: Seeking Power

Sombra: Crossing Over

I don’t say this to threaten anyone, but sometimes I just feel the world would be a better place if certain people were on fire.

Like that asshole who got me fired.

Got me fired, he’d be on fire. It would be like karma. I think the world owes me that much, at least.

I work at your typical soulless big box store – worked, I mean – and I was stocking whatever junk is popular right now in the Electronics department. This included a handful of the new PS4s, which were incredibly hard to find around here because my home town sucked. Our store was probably the biggest local employer, and everyone else was on welfare. So the welfare people came to our store and spent their welfare checks, then our company paid us just enough for us to not be on welfare, allowing the government to tax our pay and use that to provide our customers with their welfare. Then we took what was left of our pay after the welfare families got their share, and spent it at our own store.

It was a perfect little incestuous microcosm of failure.

Anyway, so I was stocking these things, and find what seemed to be an empty shelf section for them. I put a few in the case, then got pulled away to handle something else, because despite our criminally low wages, we were still always understaffed. I came back a few minutes later, and this guy wanted one. Okay, sure. I pulled one out and walked him over to ring him up.

“$399”, I read off of the machine (or whatever the price was).

“But the sign said $199.”

‘Bullshit!’ I could have said, ‘You speak naught but lies, for there is no sign there!’

But the customer is always right, so instead I said, “Sir, I just stocked those, and I don’t think there was a sign over there.”

“Yeah, there was. I can show you.”

So he led us over and pointed it out. Sure enough, there was a price tag underneath the place I’d put the PS4s, and it indeed read ‘$199.00’. Thing is, the PS4s were in a locked security cabinet behind a sliding glass door. The tag was on the open shelf, and clearly for the older PS3s instead. I couldn’t even see it standing up, because the security case hung over the edge a bit.

“Sir, this tag is clearly for the PS3s. The PS4 is $399 almost everywhere.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know that much about video games. All I know is this tag says it’s $199.”

‘Bullshit continues to flow from thy mouth!’ I could have said, ‘No honest man wears such a shit-eating grin!’

Instead, it came out. “That’s half the price, sir. I can’t sell it for that.”

And then he spoke the dread invocation wielded by every entitled asshole to ever set foot within a retail establishment.

“Could you get me your manager?”

Shit. Ranting aside, my stomach dropped out at that one.

I‘d been warned about this kind of thing before, after quoting the wrong price over the phone. My company really, really hates having to take the hit for pricing errors like that. Customer’s always right, so if they say they were told $20 for a $50 item, then it’s $20, and someone’s suffering for the lost profits there.

I was the one who put the systems there, which meant I was about to cost the company $200.

I could easily be leaving the ranks of the employed over this.

“Okay, give me a just a minute to find someone, and I’ll hope I don’t get fired.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble,” Entitlement Whore said, his grin never becoming any less shit-eating. “But I still want to speak to your manager.”

I groaned, hopefully not so loudly that he could hear it. Not that I was afraid of causing offense. It’s just that this guy seemed like such a cock that I thought he might enjoy knowing he was causing some lowly retail worker pain. Considering how the rest of the day went, he probably heard it.

It was almost as much fun as going to find one of my managers for this guy. Allow me to explain Pete and Wanda. Simply put, Pete doesn’t give a shit. About his workers, his customers, actually performing his job in any fashion whatsoever… Pete just kind of rolls with it. On the other hand, Wanda hates me. I have no idea why. All I know is that, for some reason, she insists on treating me as if I was suffering from some kind of mild mental retardation. So, of course, I go to Pete, on the grounds that caring neither for the customer nor the employee means I’ll have a 50/50 chance of walking away from this with a job.

And upon hearing my explanation of what happened, Pete made his decision.

“Well, if there was a price tag there, I’ll have to give it to him for that.”

Fuck.

Well, I honestly should have expected that.

I was reprimanded for pricing errors, and let go due to “a history of these incidents”. Wanda had this smug grin the entire time. I wanted to tell her off; let her know that she was an awful manager and not one person in our department respected her. That she was really just a bully who destroyed morale and was responsible for most of our department’s problems. That I’m not fucking mentally challenged and acting like I am is so childish it hurts.

I’d also love to have called Pete out on being lazy and generally worthless, told him that every employee we’ve lost who wasn’t pushed away by Wanda’s attitude quit because Pete doesn’t work with anyone when he schedules things.

That’s the funny part, actually. I would have probably wound up losing my job anyway, and it still would have been Pete’s fault. There’s this convention coming up for a certain tiny-equine-themed cartoon, and I was planning on going.

Yeah, I’m one of those guys.

I had already gotten my tickets and everything, all of it was paid for, and I put in for time off to go.

A week later, my time off hadn’t been confirmed, so I talked to Pete about it. He said to remind him and he’d look into it.

Soon after, I checked again, and it still wasn’t confirmed. I talked to Wanda, and she said I had to go through Pete. She even said it really loudly and slowly, while exaggerating her words and making hand gestures, because she’s a bitch. It took me the rest of the week, but I caught Pete. He said he’d get right on it.

When the schedule went up, I was scheduled for those days. So I went and found Pete again. He said he’d fix it before he left.

A few days later, it still hadn’t changed. I found Pete. Again. He said he’d just gotten done with it, and if I went and refreshed my schedule on the website, I’d see the changes. I went and tried it, only to discover that nothing had been done, and Pete had left for the day while I was occupied with that.

Finally, I cornered him and asked him what was going on. He admitted that he’d only just then gotten around to checking the time off requests, including vacation time requests from four months ago. Turns out, Donna and Lita had already both requested that week off for vacations, which normally isn’t allowed. In this case, it just meant there was absolutely no way I was getting that time off.

Tickets being non-refundable, and the total cost of my tickets plus my costume being more than I’d make working those three days, there was no way in hell I’d be showing up to work. I planned on just calling in all three days, since Justin and Chase get away with that shit constantly, but with my luck that probably would have gotten me fired anyway. So, I guess in the end it didn’t matter that I got fired, because I wasn’t going to be long in that job anyway.

Still would have loved to have left thermite on top of the vat the deli stores their old fryer oil in. An 80-gallon grease fire would have been a nice note to end my retail career on, instead of the smug looks, angry glares, and awkward silence I got.

Yeah, I didn’t actually do any of those things. Not even the legal ones like telling Wanda off. There’s plenty of reasons. Referrals. No burning bridges. Being kind of intimidated by authority (and for some reason thinking those two had any real authority). That my entire 16 years of education mostly served to teach me that I’m not allowed to talk back. That arson is a felony and you go to jail for way longer than you would expect for it.

Still, I tried to look on the bright side – getting fired two days before I left for the con meant I had two days to finish up my costume. I was doing a humanized character, in part because I saw some absolutely awesome fanart for him online, and in part because people who do fursuit cosplay honestly kind of creep me out.

I had pretty much everything together already – red cloak from an old halloween costume, pants and assorted other bits I put together with help from either friends or my mother, and armor courtesy a friend in the SCA. Only thing I was missing was a crown. I had a fallback plan in case I couldn’t find one, but after paying $200 for a set of armor, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of getting a cheap plastic one and coating it in silver spray paint.

I had been digging through the local thrift stores the past few weeks, hoping to find something a bit more impressive, maybe from someone else’s old costume or something, but was having no luck. That’s when a friend in the theater program at the local college suggested asking their props and costumes people. That’s when I struck gold – or spiky, jeweled steel, anyway. There was this crown sitting on top of a shelf in their props room, and it was perfect. A steel band, lined with spikes, and set with a large red gem in the center of the forehead.

I was totally prepared to beg for this crown, but it turns out nobody knew where it had come from or how it had gotten in there. Nor could they think of any performances they had coming up which could make use of it. Which meant that I could have it, for free. First good news in this entire process. They even let me have this long, curly black wig as well. Good thing, since the one I had was kind of cheap garbage.

The next day, I was supposed to leave early in the morning. Of course, due to staying up “looking for a new job” (or “sucking at Team Fortress”), I’d only slept about four hours. I got my stuff together without much difficulty, and by the time I was getting into my car, I felt fine. It was looking to be a good trip. I’d even gone ahead and put the costume on – in part because I wanted to walk into the con already in-costume, and part to screw with workers at the fast food places and toll booths I’d be driving through.

But despite that good start, things to snack on, and more Mountain Dew than is probably reasonable, I started getting a bit tired after the first hour of the drive. I gave myself a couple light slaps to wake up – which I regretted after remembering the gauntlets I was wearing – and turned the radio up. Just another 15 miles to the next rest area. I figured I could pull that off.

Hitting the gravel at the side of the road woke me up. Oversteering on said gravel flipped me into an embankment.

At first, I thought I must have been out for hours. When I came to, the sun was directly overhead. It took me a few minutes of trying to process this through the worst spike-driven-into-my-skull headache ever before it occurred to me that I was no longer in my car.

Looking around as best I could without moving, I realized my car was nowhere to be found. Nor was the highway. In fact, I seemed to be deep in a forest. I groaned and pushed myself to my feet for a better look at my surroundings, figuring I’d been thrown from the car and somehow landed unscathed past the treeline. Though with nothing but ever-deeper forest in all directions and no sound of cars passing on the freeway, it became pretty obvious that something weird was going on.

So, as a rational person, my first thoughts were pretty normal.

“Oh god, this is like in The Last Battle, isn’t it? I died in that crash and now I’m in Narnia.”

I hold that talking to oneself in the middle of a forest after inexplicably surviving a car crash is perfectly reasonable behavior. It also drew my attention to the fact that my voice didn’t sound right at all.

I stumbled over to a nearby pond (okay, more like a largish puddle, but it was clear enough to be reflective, so it works) and got a good look at myself. And then, in stark contrast to the regal image I presented, I promptly fell back on my ass.

I was my costume.

No, seriously. The cloak looked like actual velvet and furs. The armor looked like it could stop a bullet, not to mention a sword. The long black hair looked natural, and a quick pull confirmed that to be the case. And more importantly, I looked something like 20 years older. In short, exactly like the fanart I’d based my outfit on.

I was just coming to terms with the prospect of spending eternity looking like a dark wizard when I saw a faint red glow out of the corner of my eye.

A curved red object was embedded in a tree nearby, like something had driven it into the wood. Something about it drew my focus entirely. As I watched, what seemed to be a small black flower at the base of the tree grew up towards it, the petals curving outwards and opening like a mouth full of sharp teeth. The vine creature stretched upwards and clamped its jaw around the base of the red object, but was only able to try to pull it away for a few moments before the red glow dimmed, and shifted to a violet tone. A sort of mist in the same color flowed down the vine from the red thing, wrapping around it like ribbons.

The vine snapped where it met the ground while the red object finally fell from the tree. Now that I could see it clearly, I recognized the object for what it was – a broken horn. The vine and horn seemed to be bound together, and undergoing some kind of transformation. The horn changed shape, taking on a jewel-like appearance, which looked a lot like the one currently sitting on my forehead as part of the crown. At the same time, the vine straightened, becoming a staff of black wood.

It wasn’t long before the completed staff lay there in front of me. I could feel a pull from it, like I was supposed to pick it up. I sat there, debating with myself as to whether that would be wise. I was pretty sure I knew exactly what that horn was. And considering my costume, it was probably even meant for me. I don’t know how it could have been meant for me, but no other explanation made any sense. Not that any of this made sense.

On the one hand, this thing probably had a lot of power, and that power was probably very dark. On the other, who said I had to use it for evil?

I shook my head. It seemed like something… Nevermind. I reached for the staff. After all, why not see just how far this rabbit hole goes?

As my fingers wrapped around the staff, it felt like my arm was numb and tingling with energy at the same time. It felt like the staff was electrified, and I could feel the power flowing from it.

This would be awesome.

Or I’d fall into some kind of destructive spiral of dark magic use, either-or.

Staff in hand, I finally stood again, only to hear a growl from behind me. I turned slowly, hoping to make the move look intimidating in case whatever had found me was intelligent, only to discover a diamond dog.

Okay, apparently I’m not in Narnia at all. I’m in Equestria. Which means it isn’t quite as much like The Last Battle as I’d originally thought, even if Celestia does make a good stand-in for Aslan.

Also, holy shit I’m in Equestria best afterlife ever! Minus the dark wizard angle. I’d probably have to play this carefully to avoid being blasted by the princesses, or fighting the royal guard, or getting zapped with the Elements or something.

I suppressed my first instinct to cheer and clap my hands at the whole idea, and only let out a smile that I hoped was grim and menacing. I turned my attention back to the diamond dog, which I now saw had glowing green eyes, like a timberwolf.

“You seek to intimidate me?” I asked, feeling appropriately badass.

“You gives us the horn,” it growled back.

“It is mine,” I answered, suspecting this was literally true. “What use would one such as you have for this?”

So sue me, I was talking as much like a D&D wizard as I could. It only felt right to play the part, after all.

“Give us the horn so he comes back.”

I pointed the staff at the dog, guessing what was going on here. “He already has.”

Of course, the epic one-liner was ruined by the fact that I didn’t actually know how to use magic. The diamond dog growled again and charged me, dropping to all fours in a loping run. I braced myself, hoping the armor–

Suddenly, my mind was filled with images of spells taking shape and magic being used, in so many different forms. And everything seemed so simple, so obvious. All it needed was my own will. All I had to do was will it and…

A slight violet tint arose at the corners of my vision. I suspect it was more of the smoke, coming from my eyes now that I was using the power. I became steadier in my stance, leveling the staff at the diamond dog and pushing my will into the red gem. A swirl of black and purple energy appeared around the end of the staff, then erupted into a lance of the same energy. The blast of magic tore across the clearing, bisecting a few trees, including the one I’d gotten the staff from. However, the diamond dog seemed to have escaped, as I saw no sign or it or its body.

There was, however, a largish hole in the dirt nearby.

Damn. I knew the things could pop up anywhere, and I didn’t want to spend too long trying to pin the dog down to finish it off. I kept a careful watch on the ground for a minute before a thought occurred to me. I smiled as I recalled more of the magic I now held. The staff regained its glow as I held it overhead, but this time I focused my power into the earth.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of crystals erupted from the ground all around me. Each one was only a few inches thick and razor-sharp. I made sure they all began their rise from deep beneath the soil.

I only needed a brief glance at the crystal spikes to locate a handful clustered together, streaked with red blood. I smiled at how easy it had been to defeat the creature. This was some impressive power.

However, my gloating was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a hazy, shadowy shape rising from the ground where I’d killed the diamond dog. I raised the staff, ready to defend myself. But instead of attacking me or running off, the shadow thing was drawn along a spiraling path into the crystal at the tip, which glowed briefly once again before going quiet once more. I felt a tingle in my fingers, as if power was flowing from the staff again.

Visions filled my head again. This time, I saw through the eyes of creatures throughout Equestria. Sometimes I saw the violet haze in the corners of my vision. Sometimes everything I saw was tinged with green.

I recalled the green glowing eyes I saw on the diamond dog, and it clicked.

That shadowy thing was drawn into the staff – or, more accurately, the horn – because it was the same power as what was inside the horn. They were the broken pieces of a larger whole, and they were scattered all across the land. Judging by the diamond dog’s behavior and a few glimpses I saw during the vision, it seemed as though the pieces wanted to reunite the whole.

But if I could use the horn to capture them, maybe there was a way they could be contained or destroyed permanently. I even had some ideas as to how. I mean, granted, eventually the dark magic was going to tempt me into turning to evil because of course it would. I’d seen Star Wars; I knew how this story went. But if I already knew it was evil, why would I ever choose it?

With a goal now in mind, I drew on my magic again, calling up a spell that would lead me to my destination. No matter what was going on, I knew the problem would eventually rear its head in one particular place.

Everything happens in Ponyville eventually.

Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to miss an opportunity to meet the Mane Six.

It was a surprisingly short trek to Ponyville. I arrived at the edges of the town just as the day was passing into evening, Sweet Apple Acres visible off to one side of the path. As I came up the path, I couldn’t help but wonder how the ponies would react to me. A faint noise overhead drew my eyes upward, and the vanishing sight of a rainbow streak through the sky suggested that I’d have my answer soon enough. As I reached the fork in the path where the approach to Sweet Apple Acres split off from the road to the Everfree forest (which I’d apparently been walking through), I decided the least threatening option would be to simply sit down and wait for the inevitable.

I sat, cross-legged, in the middle of the road for about half an hour before the ponies arrived. Well, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie, anyway.

“See!” Rainbow Dash said. “Just like the things you told us about on the other side of the mirror.”

“Oh! Is that what they look like? Oh wow, I was thinking of something totally different.” Pinkie zipped around me, examining me from every angle as she bounced from place to place. “They don’t look like squirrels at all!”

Dash cocked her head at Pinkie. “Squirrels? Why the hay would you think they looked like squirrels? Spike even drew us a picture of mirror-Rarity.”

“Well, when Twilight was telling us all about them she said they had little grabby hands kind of like Spike’s, except they weren’t scaly and didn’t have claws because they weren’t dragons, and when I tried to think of things that had little grabby hands like Spike’s that weren’t dragons, all I could think of were squirrels!” Pinkie paused. “Or raccoons, but that would be ridiculous.”

“Yeah? Well, what about diamond dogs? Or minotaurs like Iron Will?”

Pinkie waved a hoof at that. “Come on, Rainbow Dash. If they looked like diamond dogs or minotaurs, Twilight would have just called them that.”

My joy at seeing this happening right in front of me, in what seemed to be real life, was offset slightly by the confirmation that Equestria Girls was canon.

Oh god, I hope this doesn’t mean FlashLight is a thing, too.

“Girls,” Twilight interrupted, “Would you mind not having this argument in front of a, um… guest?”

“Oh yeah. Right.” Dash tuned to me. “Sorry.”

Pinkie opened her mouth to say something, only for Dash to put her hoof in it.

“Pinkie’s sorry, too.”

“You have not disturbed me,” I said, keeping up the wizard character. I stood, and all three ponies’ eyes widened at the sight.

Sitting, I’d been at eye level with them. If I had to guess, I’d say the ponies were actually about the same size as humans, maybe a bit smaller. But because they walked on all fours, they seemed a lot smaller. Even in my normal body, the ponies would have been closer to waist-high. I was at least 6’6” in this body, and powerfully built. I probably looked like I could crush them bare-handed.

Twilight visibly swallowed. “Sorry, but you aren’t from beyond the mirror, are you?”

I shook my head and tried to devise an explanation.

“No,” I said at last. “I would be as alien to that world as I am to this one, though I suspect it may, in a sense, lie between our worlds.”

“Mhs mhn mhmnhn!” Pinkie said around Dash’s hoof, as she pointed a shaky one of her own at me. “Mhs mhn mhmnhn!”

I ignored her and carried on.

“I’ve come here for a reason. I’ve seen evidence of a dark power manipulating creatures here. Are you familiar with such a thing?”

Twilight gasped and nodded. “You know something about that?”

“Indeed. I may even have an answer to the problem, if you'd care to hear it”

“I'll take any help you think you can give us, but first, I think introductions are in order.” Twilight gestured to herself, and then the other two ponies. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, and these are Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.”

I looked between the three of them as Dash and Pinkie waved at me as they were pointed out, and decided how to play this.

“I am called Sombra,” I said at last.

Twilight: Meeting Danger

I groaned and let the quill drop from my magic.

Another report from a guardspony, and another apology sent out. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help or didn’t feel capable. Princess Celestia assigned me this task—okay, she asked nicely and suggested that it was befitting my talents, but that’s practically the same thing—and I wasn’t going to let her down.

Despite my determination, though, I didn’t exactly have much to go on. Royal Guard squads had been running all over Equestria for the past few weeks, chasing down every hint of unusual activity they could find. Ponies who had seemingly gone mad, animals behaving aggressively, and creatures normally found only in places like the Everfree attacking towns and villages. It was almost like low-scale chaos was overrunning the entire land.

However, we had already ruled out Discord. He said it wasn’t his “style” and then swapped my feathers with my mane and tail. It took an hour of arguing and multiple transformations before he put me back to normal.

As a personal note, I catalogued that entire incident in my journal on chaos magic. I recorded the type and duration of each change, as well as precisely how much each one annoyed me. For the record, the worst—at an irritation score of 10 and lasting 7 minutes and 16 seconds—was when he turned my horn into a bouquet of poison joke, and my wings into parasprites. Please don’t try to imagine what that felt like.

Turning from my writing table, I looked across all the reference tomes that Spike had gathered for me when all of this started. I sighed, for once not looking forward to doing research. After all, I'd already been through most of those books at least twice and had yet to come up with any solid answers.

"Spike!" I called out towards the kitchen. "Have we tried Wea—"

"Weather Wax's Hexes and Hauntings?" he replied without looking around the corner. "Three times. The last time, you declared it 'outdated hogwash written by a miserable old hag', end quote."

"Oh. Well." I ruffled my wings for a moment. "I stand by that. The outdated part, anyway. Okay, what about Rides—”

“You’ve double-checked the calculations in Rides Winds’ Expeditious Retreat twice now. You still teleport faster than any spell he developed.”

“And I couldn’t cover the distances involved in the necessary time, either.” I rested my head against the table. “Well, then bring me—”

“And if you bring up Ponder Stabling’s Applied Arithmetical Thaumaturgy one more time, I’m leaving you to this and going to Rarity’s for the day.”

I groaned again. “I feel like we’re galloping in circles, Spike. The only magic I’ve ever seen like this was Sombra’s at the Crystal Empire, but we’ve already hit a dead end on covering the distances involved. The only other option is a mind-control spell cast over a massive area, but I pushed the limits of that with the want it, need it spell. This is deeper and more complex than that, which would require exponentially more power. Stabling’s formulae showed how much power would go into covering Equestria with a spell like that, and if Sombra had that much power, Celestia and Luna wouldn’t have stood a chance against him a thousand years ago! Never mind you and Cadance destroyed him with the Crystal Heart, so he’s a dead—”

I stopped as I felt small, scaly arms wrapped around my barrel. I looked down to see Spike looking up at me with a frown.

“Oh, I brought up Ponder Stabling again, didn’t I? I’m sorry, Spike, it’s just—”

“Calm down, Twilight,” he said, not letting go. “You’re getting too wound up about this, that’s all.”

“But it’s—”

“For the princess?”

I nodded.

“It’s okay. You’re not going to help anypony by having a fit.”

“I was not having a fit.”

Spiked stepped back, crossed his arms, and gave me a level glare.

“Okay, maybe I was, but only a little one.”

“Not going to help anypony by having a fit,” he repeated. “And you’re not going to let her down by taking a break to go spend time with your friends.”

“But—” I stopped myself from arguing. After all, what had obsessing over these things accomplished in the past? Putting the entire town under the want it, need it spell? Wasting a time travel spell on my own anxieties? Turning my first Winter Wrap-Up into a royal disaster? Spike was right. I took a breath using Cadance’s breathing exercise. “Okay, you win. I’ll go see what Applejack is up to.”

“Good. And while you’re at it, learn to take credit for the Sombra thing.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “What? For leaving my friends behind, falling under hypnosis, and then getting captured? You got the Heart to Cadance in time.”

“I tripped and dropped it. Cadance had the good timing to catch it. You’re the one who got us to that point.”

“Well then, it was a masterfully-executed trip and drop.” I smiled at his own eye-roll and headed for the door. “And I know I need a break, but while I’m gone, could you—”

“I’ll be sending Celestia a scroll to pass on to old Mustang Redcollar at the Canterlot Archives,” he said, already pulling a blank paper from the desk. “If there’s anything useful in the uncatalogued books, he’ll know where to find it.”

“Thanks, Spike. Still my number one— AH!” I opened the door and recoiled at what seemed to be a foal’s mobile composed entirely of mirrors hanging in front of my face. It took a moment to register the pink mane in the center of the cloud of mirrors. “Pinkie?”

“Oh, hi—ow—Twilight.” Pinkie slipped past me, limping slightly as she entered the library. I had to duck as the mirror contraption swung over my head, which drew my eyes back to her completely-flat mane—generally a bad sign.

“Are you okay?” I stepped cautiously around her. I couldn’t imagine what this particular combination of oddities resulted from.

“No, I am not.” She blew some strands of mane out of her face. “I am very disappointed. It turns out ice cream baths don’t help anything. They’re just cold and make your coat all sticky.”

“Ice cream baths?” I stared at her a moment before closing the door and following her back in. “Why in Equestria were you taking an ice cream bath? And does it have anything to do with your mane?”

“Oh, no, that came later. I had an ice cream bath cause of my pinchy knee.”

“Pinchy knee? Was that—”

“Something scary is going to happen,” Spike offered. “So, something scary happened and you got so upset your mane went flat?”

“What?” Pinkie turned to him and blinked. “No, why would being upset make my mane go flat? That’s silly, Spike.” She lifted some limp strands with one hoof. “This is from my shower. I had to use a lot of stuff to get the ice cream out, and now all the poof is gone. Hey, do you have any pepper?”

“But why…?” Spike sighed, rubbed his temples, and then walked off to the kitchen, muttering something about ‘crazy mares.’

“So, why did you take a bath in ice cream, again?”

“Cause of my pinchy knee, like I said.”

“Okay, Pinkie, go ahead and walk me through this entire process, from ‘pinchy knee’ to ‘washing ice cream from your mane’.” I pulled out the notebook, prepared to create a flow chart if it just became too Pinkie to follow.

“Oh, that’s simple. I’ve had a pinchy knee all morning, and it was so pinchy it hurt, so Mrs. Cake suggested putting ice on it. So I tried that, and it wasn’t helping much, so I got some ice cream so I’d at least feel better. Oh, thanks, Spike.” Pinkie took the pepper shaker Spike had just brought her between her front hooves and gave it a solid shake right at her own face. “Ah—ah—CHOO!”

Pinkie’s sneeze knocked her back onto her haunches and set her hanging-mirror-hat-thing jingling like a wind chime, but also somehow popped her mane back out into its normal curly mass. “Oh, wow, much better!”

Spike cautiously took the pepper shaker back from her. “You’re welcome, I guess….”

“Uh-huh.” I jotted that one down. I didn’t even pretend the Pinkamena Pie Research Journal was actually for research anymore. But it was helpful, sometimes, to have a reference point for what constituted ‘normal’ Pinkie Pie behavior. Just then, I saw her ear twitch, followed by a quiver in her hind leg, and a rapid blink. I flipped back to the earliest pages of the notebook. “Hm… Ear, knee, eye… A beautiful rainbow?”

“No, no, no,” Pinkie said, standing again. “That’s an ear flop, knee twitch, and eye flutter. This was an itchy twitch in my ear and a wobble in my back hoof. And it was on the left, so it means I’m going to meet an old friend again. I’ve been having that one all day, too, but it’s been really faint, so I’m not sure if it’s cause it’s somepony I didn’t know that well, or if they weren’t actually a very good friend.”

“And the eye flutter?”

“Just a bit of leftover pepper.”

“So no rainbows, then?”

“Sorry, Twilight, not seeing any rainbows anytime soon. Just something scary and—”

“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash suddenly slammed through my door and landed solidly on all four hooves right behind Pinkie, who shrieked and dove under the couch. Dash stopped and crouched down to look under after her. “Oh, hey, Pinkie. What are you doing here?”

“Rainbow, we’ve talked about how to properly use a door before.” I bent down to peer under the couch as well. “Was that your scary thing, Pinkie?”

“No, I don’t—ow—think so. Not even close to scary enough.” She wriggled her way back out from under the couch.

“Pinkie, what are you—” Rainbow stopped and hit herself in the head with a hoof. “Wait, never mind, this is more important. Twilight! Something just came out of the Everfree Forest!”

That got me up and onto my hooves. “What? A timberwolf? A cragadile? A hydra?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s one of those things you saw beyond the mirror! You know, the thing you turned into.”

Pinkie gasped and sprung up from the couch, setting her headgear to jingling again. “I’ve always wanted to meet one of those! Ooh, maybe that’s what my Pinkie sense was about! Maybe it’s so faint because it’s a mirror-pony version of one of us!”

Dash shook her head. “It didn’t look like any of us. It actually looked kinda stallion-y if you ask me.”

“I have no idea how something could have possibly come from the mirror world without anypony noticing—not that I’m saying they didn’t,” I added as Rainbow opened her mouth to object. “No matter what it is or where it came from, we should investigate. Come on.” I headed out the door, Dash and Pinkie just behind me.

“Hey Pinkie,” Dash began as we walked. “Why are you wearing that thing on your head, anyway?”

“For constant vigilance, Dashie.”

“Is that why you smell like pepper, too?”

“Oh, no, that was to get the poof back into my mane.”

I sighed as Dash and Pinkie began to rehash the entire convoluted explanation of Pinkie’s morning. We were already past the last houses when they finally got to a point I hadn’t heard yet.

“So anyway, then I thought, why not combine them both, and just have an ice—oh, hey, is that it?” Pinkie pointed a hoof towards the split in the road between Sweet Apple Acres and the Everfree Forest.

“Yeah, it is.” Dash squinted up the road at the lone figure, who was sitting at the split. “Why’s it just sitting there?”

“Maybe it doesn’t know which way to go?”

“Not likely, Pinkie. The town would be clearly visible from there.” I paused for a moment. “Maybe it’s waiting for something?”

The three of us continued our approach at a slower pace than we’d kept through the town, hoping to avoid seeming aggressive. As we got nearer, and its features became more visible, though, Dash jumped ahead of Pinkie and I.

“See!” Rainbow Dash said, pointing a hoof at it. “Just like the things you told us about on the other side of the mirror.”

“Oh! Is that what they look like? Oh wow, I was thinking of something totally different.” Pinkie said as she bounced around, studying the creature from every angle. “They don’t look like squirrels at all!”

I tuned this one out, too. There was something familiar about this creature, certainly, but I knew I’d never met somepony like him beyond the mirror. From the spiked crown, to the red cloak, to the simply massive build, this guy would have been impossible to miss. He was closer to Iron Will in size than the mirror creatures.

I glanced over and realized Pinkie and Dash had gotten into another argument.

“Girls,” I said, “Would you mind not having this argument in front of a, um… guest?”

“Oh yeah. Right.” Dash turned to the creature. “Sorry.”

Pinkie opened her mouth to say something as well, but Dash immediately put a hoof in the way before she could be excessively Pinkie at him.

“Pinkie’s sorry, too,” Dash added.

“You have not disturbed me,” the creature said in a rumbling voice that again struck a familiar chord with me. There was no way I could have met this thing before, was there?

I gulped at a sudden nervousness that overtook me. Not just at his size, but something about his entire presence. “Sorry, but you aren’t from beyond the mirror, are you?”

He shook his head and seemed lost in thought for a moment. “No,” he said at last. “I would be as alien to that world as I am to this one, though I suspect it may, in a sense, lie between our worlds.”

“Mhs mhn mhmnhn!” Pinkie tried to shout around Dash’s hoof. “Mhs mhn mhmnhn!”

“I’ve come here for a reason,” the creature said. “I’ve seen evidence of a dark power manipulating creatures here. Are you familiar with such a thing?”

I gasped and nodded. This might be my first chance at a real breakthrough on this crisis! “You know something about that?”

“Indeed. I may even have an answer to the problem, if you'd care to hear it.”

“I'll take any help you think you can give us, but first, I think introductions are in order.” I held a hoof to my own chest. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, and this is Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.” I pointed to each of the others in turn.

The creature stood in silence for a time, once again seeming lost in his own thoughts. Finally, he spoke, saying what may have been the last words I expected to hear: “I am called Sombra.”

I froze. A glance to the side showed that Rainbow and Pinkie were having nearly the same reaction as me. Hearing that name… The red cloak, like a royal cape. The jagged crown, with a red horn in place of the gem. The tangled black hair as a tangled black mane.

I don’t know how I missed it.

“Sombra!” I shouted, and jumped back, spreading my wings as I lit my horn. Beside me, Pinkie took a couple steps back as Rainbow prepared to take off into the sky. “What are you doing here?! How are you in that form?!”

Sombra simply held up a hand in a placating gesture, though I saw a faint glow around the tip of the staff he carried and felt the power flow through it. It was the same as before: the dark magic that sealed my brother’s magic, trapped Spike and I in our greatest fears, and warped the Crystal Empire into a nightmare of jagged, blackened crystal.

But he wasn’t drawing on it, instead allowing it to remain idle.

“I have done nothing to harm you or your friends, Princess Twilight,” he said. “I am not the Sombra of your world. Do not lay his crimes upon me.”

I stared at him for a moment. It seemed like such a huge coincidence—too huge. Under the other hoof, though... Sombra shouldn’t have any way of knowing about the mirror world creatures. This person hadn’t been aggressive and had even waited for us past the borders of Ponyville. He’d seemingly been going out of his way to avoid conflict. And, after all, he could very well be the breakthrough we’d been waiting for.

I took a breath and relaxed my wings, letting the charge in my horn fade down to below a visible level. I still had enough magic ready for a short teleport or a small and temporary shield, though. I’m all for trust and openness, but after Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra—our Sombra, anyway—and Sunset Shimmer, I’m all for reasonable caution, too.

“Okay,” I said. “You make a good point. You’ve done nothing to earn my distrust yet. I should respect that.” Another steadying breath. “You said you thought you could help us?”

Before he could answer, there was a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey Twilight, can we borrow you for a second?” Rainbow Dash dragged me back towards Pinkie, who sat at the edge of the road a short distance away, staring at her hoof. Once we were a comfortable distance from mirror-Sombra, she turned back to me. “You really think we can trust him?”

“I… I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I don’t really want to, just because he’s, well, Sombra. But like he said—he isn’t from our world, and he does seem willing to help. I’m just afraid this is too good, somehow.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. If this sort of character turned up in Daring Do, I’d put bits on finding out he worked for Ahuizotl or was him in disguise or something.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely, but if he’s being honest with us, his help could be invaluable.” I looked over to Pinkie. “What’s wrong, Pinkie? The pinchy knee still?”

Dash turned to her as well. “You mean finding out that mirror-Sombra was in Ponyville wasn’t scary?”

Pinkie shook her head. “Oh, nonono. He is scary. But he wasn’t giving me a pinchy knee. The wobbly hoof stopped, so I guess he was the old friend—and wow, that’s a stretch, Pinkie Sense—but we’ve still got something scary coming up.”

I sighed. “Which means the day is probably going to somehow get worse before it gets better.”

And right on cue, all of our heads turned towards Sweet Apple Acres as howls sounded, followed shortly by a cacophony of crashes and bangs, like somepony was kicking around an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans.

“You know what? I’m just going to stop talking.”

Dash was up in the air instantly. “Timber wolves? I didn’t think they’d come this far out of the forest except at night!”

“Dashie? What’s going on?” Pinkie hopped up on the fence and then on top of the farm’s gate, bouncing around and craning her neck for a better look.

“I was right, it’s timber wolves!” Dash called down. “Three of them, but they’re not headed for the farmhouse. I think they’re coming this way!”

I saw movement from the corner of my eye and turned to see Sombra standing and holding his staff outright in front of himself. He held the stance for a moment and then a look of confusion crossed his face. He lowered the staff slightly, and his face regained that distant look I’d seen when he’d hesitated in answering us earlier.

“Twilight!” Dash’s shout snapped my attention back to her. “I said look out!”

I looked back up towards the farm just in time to see a pair of timber wolves barrelling down on me. Dash swooped down and kicked one in the head, which only drew its attention away from me and towards her. The wolf, apparently angrier at her assault than afraid of whatever had sent it towards the town, took off after her.

I finally released the magical charge I’d been holding, teleporting aside from the second timber wolf’s charge and firing a blast of magic into its side. Not enough to cause much damage, but I got its attention. I didn’t know if this was Dash’s goal, but better they chase us back into the forest than run wild in Ponyville. A glance in Pinkie’s direction showed she was being pursued by the third, which was covered in confetti and a few burn marks.

I assumed she had the same idea as me.

I started galloping towards the forest, still preferring the ground over using my wings. The timber wolf was in close pursuit, but the occasional teleport kept me ahead. I could see Pinkie wasn’t doing so well, however; for all her surprising speed and agility, Pinkie sense, and random tricks she pulled out of I-don’t-know-where, the wolf was gaining on her.

“Fourth!” Dash called from above, and I looked ahead to see yet another timber wolf heading our way from the forest, even bigger than the three after us. It was still a long way off, though, and I was more worried about Pinkie. I looked back at the wolf closing in on her, and was about to try to help her when the wolf at her hooves suddenly exploded in a gout of black flames.

I stumbled and stared in shock as pieces of broken wood rained down around us. Turning to see where the blast had come from, my vision was filled with the sight of jagged wooden teeth. I shrieked and teleported randomly to get away from the timber wolf I’d completely forgotten about in my shock, reappearing near Sombra and nearly collapsing on the spot from the sheer pressure of his magic. Centuries-old traps were nothing compared to actually standing in the presence of that much dark magic.

Regaining my balance, I looked at him. His expression had hardened, and even across the species divide, his state of mind was clear. Anger, hatred, spite… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pony with such a terrible look on their face. Purple energy flowed from the corners of his eyes, while green and black magic swirled around the crystal on his staff. He touched the whirling energy and drew his hand back wreathed in black flames, which he threw towards the timber wolf that had been chasing me. It streaked forward with the same speed as my own energy bolts and erupted in another explosion of magical energy as it struck the wolf, tearing the creature to pieces. The one following Rainbow Dash met a similar end.

Dash landed at my side, and Pinkie popped up from wherever it was she’d gone to take shelter from the explosion. The three of us watched as Sombra strode purposefully towards the last and largest timber wolf, which had slowed its pace as it reached the broken remains of the others. He held his hand away from the staff, the dark magic flowing from it into the palm of his open hand, forming into an ever-growing black flame. As he drew close, the timber wolf crouched down and opened its maw to roar at him, only for Sombra to casually throw the flame directly into its jaws.

The magic detonated directly in front of the beast’s face, but, rather than blasting it apart like all the others, the fireball raged in front of it for a moment, while black smoke sprayed outward, concealing its body from us. I thought it was simply a different spell he used to destroy this one, at first, until I noticed all the broken pieces of the first three being enveloped by black and green glows and flying towards it.

Then the fireball grew small enough, and the smoke clear enough, that we could see what was really happening. The timber wolf wasn’t roaring at all. It was sucking a breath inwards, and with it, all of the magical flame that Sombra had struck it with—I could even feel it absorbing the magic itself!

As the timber wolf took in the new material, and the new magic, it grew larger. Soon, it was bigger than any timber wolf I’d ever seen, even bigger than the one that Applejack and Spike fought last year. Worse, thin streams of purple energy began flowing from the corners of its eyes, in a perfect match for the ones Sombra himself had.

Now the timber wolf roared and swept a massive clawed paw at Sombra, who thrust his staff upward and raised a crystalline barrier between himself and the wolf. Unfortunately for him, the beast smashed through the crystal wall like it was a pane of glass, and the impact sent him flying backwards, until he slammed into the ground and tumbled to a stop behind us.

Suddenly, Pinkie screamed, and I turned towards her just in time to see the timber wolf, mid-leap and jaws open, heading straight for us. I threw up the strongest shield I could manage, but the impact of the wolf against my barrier still forced a pained cry from me and drove me to my knees. Pinkie and Dash helped me to my hooves, despite both of them trembling, as the wolf roared and tried to crush my shield in its jaws.

Dash was the first to start coughing at the beast’s fetid breath.

“Twilight, can’t you—cough—block those fumes?”

“If I—cough—block out the fumes, I—cough—cut off our air.”

Dash glared out at the rampaging wolf, while Pinkie remained pressed close against me. She was still shaking. I guess it’s one thing to ‘giggle at the ghosty’, and another thing entirely when your imminent doom has teeth the size of your leg and is only inches away from tearing you to pieces. I looked back at Sombra, who was lying still on the ground, and out at the empty fields and sky around us.

No way to call for help, and no help coming.

My back leg began trembling from fatigue as maintaining such a powerful shield took its toll.

I didn’t know how long I could protect them.

Sombra: Seeking Power

I wasn’t sure why I said that.

Revealing who I was—who I was being, anyway—couldn’t have been the smartest move. Maybe I was just getting too into it. Maybe it was some sort of subconscious thing. Maybe…

I had no idea. Maybe there was some chance it would prevent more trouble later on somehow. Maybe it would be better to announce that from the start instead of Twilight figuring it out on her own later and assuming I was trying to trick them.

Maybe those thoughts could wait until later, because those noises sounded a lot like timber wolves.

Off to the side, Rainbow Dash flew up from where the three mares had been talking, and called back, “I was right, it’s timber wolves!”

I turned my attention from them and focused on the direction the howls were coming from—across the fields in between one of the farm’s orchards and the road to the Everfree. I raised my staff towards the sounds and drew upon the magic within.

And I felt nothing.

I gripped the staff tighter and focused all my will upon it. Any other wood would have splintered under the strength of my new body, and I was certain the magic in the staff was the only thing keeping it from that fate. But still, I felt nothing from it.

Seriously? I get to visit Equestria, gain ridiculous magical firepower, get handed an invitation to go adventuring with the Mane Six, and suddenly the magic quits working?

If this wasn’t the most unfair bullshit I ever—

I felt a tingle up my arm, and it seemed that a faint glow shimmered over the surface of the staff, but then it was gone. I then had a moment of realization as the ponies lead the timber wolves back towards the forest.

This thing was powered by negative emotions. It ran on anger; hate.

So all I had to do was think about things I hated, and it should work, right?

Okay. I could do that.

Let’s start with every time I talked about what I wanted to do with my life, and my mother would remind me that dreams are fine, but everybody needs a backup plan, before handing me an application to the nearest fast food or retail joint.

Speaking of jobs, how about every person who treated me like I was somehow subhuman because of the job I had? Every person who noticed the classism and laughed at it? Every person who made unreasonable demands because the system is designed to produce entitlement. Every supervisor who talked down to me just because they got off on that tiny little power trip. Every boss who ignored me because employees are the last of their concerns. Every time I gave more than the bare minimum and got absolutely nothing in return. Every time I tried to advance myself and got kicked back to the bottom for my trouble.

Every time I let it slide and took the abuse because I couldn't afford to risk my job.

All the years of dealing with this bullshit which left me with nothing but pocket change and a deep-seated fear of authority.

Maybe I was actually dead. Maybe this was some kind of dream. Maybe, at that moment, I was lying at the side of a freeway, imagining all of these great things while I bled out in the twisted remains of my cheap-ass car.

Real or not, this was a place where none of those things existed. None of them had sway over me, here. No parents to please, customers to placate, or job to protect. And more importantly, here, I had power.

And what good was power if you didn’t use it?

Maybe I couldn’t torch my old store or toss my old managers around like Saruman fighting Gandalf.

But there were some monsters chasing people I liked, and that worked just as well.

Ponies I liked.

Whatever.

I raised the staff again, the corners of my vision tinged with violet light. Grinning, I hoped I looked suitably feral for the scenario. I could feel the power from the staff now. It wasn’t a tingle up my arm anymore. It was… It was like cold air washing over me. Or hot air. I couldn’t tell, honestly. But I could feel something, and dark energy was swirling around the end of the staff again.

I think I’d throw Pete… No, I’d throw Wanda through a window. With the staff like Saruman, or just force choke her?

Touching two fingers to the swirl of energy, I let it flow over my hand. I willed the magic to take shape as I drew my hand back, pointing it towards the ponies and timber wolves. I aimed for the one behind Twilight—but her attention was on Pinkie Pie, who I soon saw was quickly losing ground to her wolf.

I switched targets as I felt Twilight begin to draw on her own magic, pointing towards the wolf chasing Pinkie. The magic took shape as I had willed it, forming into a bolt of black fire as it shot from my fingertips. Almost instantly, it struck the timber wolf that had been at Pinkie’s hooves and blasted it apart in a fiery explosion, along with much of the soil around it.

Twilight and Pinkie both stumbled to a stop. Pinkie fell as she did, rolling and vanishing somewhere amid the chaos. Trusting her to survive by just being too Pinkie Pie for death, I turned my attention back to Twilight.

Her pause gave the timber wolf ample time to catch up, and for a moment I was afraid she’d frozen for too long. But she screamed and vanished in a burst of white and purple light. Reappearing next to me, she just as quickly skittered away from the aura of my power.

I’m not sure about Pete. Toss him down the hill at the back of the store? Maybe find a spell to summon some sort of monsters to chase him back up, only to knock him down again. Like Sisyphus, but fatter.

I touched the swirling energy again and drew out another fireball. This time, I pointed it towards the wolf that had nearly caught Twilight. The spell shot forth and struck the monster just as it looked up in confusion from its jaws closing around nothing. It was blown to pieces in just as satisfying a manner as the first one.

And then… well, I’ve always wanted to smash all those display TVs. Sick of dusting them, sick of the 24-hour commercial feed they play. Instead of taking a hammer to them, why not just slam crystal spikes through them all at once?

I destroyed the one pursuing Rainbow Dash as easily as the first two. Before the embers and broken wood hit the ground, I was moving towards the last of them. It was big, yes; maybe even bigger than the one from that Spike episode. But I wasn’t intimidated by size. The first three fell easily enough, and I could put far more force into my magic than I had on those. Given enough power, I could take on anything Equestria had to offer—and I had power to spare.

As I passed between the timber wolves I'd already slain, I couldn't help but notice they smelled like a burning slaughterhouse. Funny. You’d have thought they would just smell like a wood fire.

I put the question of what burning monsters were supposed to smell like out of my mind, and continued on towards the final, largest timber wolf. I held out the staff and drew on the magic swirling around it. Following my will, it flowed from the staff to my upturned hand, gathering into a larger and larger mass of dark magic which began taking the form of another, even larger, fireball.

I wonder if there’d be a spell to set off all the oil in the vat at the same time?

The timber wolf closed the distance, stopped and crouched down to roar at me or try to eat me or something. As it opened its jaws, I calmly tossed the fireball into its face. I turned my attention back to the spell memories in the staff as the fires raged in front of it.

Huh. So there is.

I was distracted from my fantasies, however, by the realization that the spell I’d intended to be an explosive blast was instead still burning in the same place. It wasn't supposed to do that.

The broken pieces of the other timber wolves also weren't supposed to be floating through the air towards it surrounded in green auras. And I definitely shouldn't be feeling my magic draining away.

The roaring fire in front of the wolf was gradually shrinking away, and I finally saw what was really happening—it wasn't getting ready to roar at me, it was sucking in my spell. Between absorbing the power of my spell and the bodies of the other timber wolves, the beast had grown to truly massive proportions, dwarfing any timber wolf I'd ever seen on the show, and most buildings in Ponyville.

Then it roared at me, pulling one paw back above its head. I thrust my staff upward in front of me, raising a thick barrier of crystals between it and myself. It swang the clawed limb down at me, smashing through my barrier with the sound of breaking glass, and—

My everything hurt.

I rolled over, pushing myself up on my knees. Point against this being a dream, at least. If pinching could wake you up, I'm pretty sure being knocked on your ass and—judging from the ringing in my ears—given a mild concussion would definitely do the trick.

I coughed, and at first I thought I might have hurt my lungs. The pain of the cough spoke to damage in my ribs, at the very least, but that hit should have killed me. I guess this body was tougher than normal, too.

I coughed again, and couldn't miss the reason this time. It smelled like a slaughterhouse.

The ringing in my ears died down, and I could hear what was happening around me. Growling. The crackle of energy. Rainbow Dash's voice shouting something.

I could work out the details later. This sounded bad.

I pushed myself up to my feet, the pain of the wolf’s hit and my rough landing already fading.

Just ahead of me, the ponies were under a magenta barrier. Twilight was on her knees in the center, her face twisted with pain and her horn glowing red and beginning to spark from exertion. Pinkie was clinging to Twilight's neck, her face buried in Twilight's mane. I couldn't guess if she was terrified and clinging to her, or doing her best to keep Twilight's hopes up in the face of imminent death.

That imminent death was taking the form of the giant dark-magic timber wolf, which was furiously attacking Twilight’s barrier to reach the ponies inside it.

Rainbow Dash was standing in the barrier as well, between Twilight and the wolf, wings spread in challenge and looking for all the world like the barrier was the only thing keeping her from giving the wolf a solid ass-kicking.

All told, it was high time to lay my vengeance down upon this wooden bitch.

I held out my left hand and my staff flew into my grip without my needing to even look for it. I let the magic flow into my right hand and drew it back in a fist by my side. It drank up my magic last time, so I thought something a bit more solid was in order. Besides, one good hit deserved another.

I swung my fist upward and channeled the staff’s magic in the same way I’d done to impale the diamond dog or create my short-lived shield. The ground shook around us as crystal took shape following my motions, and a giant crystalline fist erupted from the ground beneath the timber wolf, driving into its chest and flinging it backward, away from the ponies. It didn’t fly nearly as far as I had, but it got the monster off of Twilight’s barrier.

“Choke on it,” I spat, and started towards the wolf that was already struggling back to its feet, allowing the crystal form to crumble away into dust as I walked.

Twilight let her shield drop and fell to the ground with a groan. Rainbow Dash joined Pinkie at her side in an instant, but once they were each assured the others were in one piece, their eyes went back to me and the timber wolf.

I grinned. Not only had I gotten her in time, but I’d just had a great idea for how to put this creature down for the count.

I gathered magic in my hand in the same way I’d just used it before. But this time, rather than making a fist, I kept an open hand.

“Mil fleur,” I said to myself under my breath, because there are some things a self-respecting geek, unfathomable dark powers or not, simply can’t pass up.

I swept my hand upward, fingers curled into claws. Again, the ground shook as a crystal form copied my movements. A second giant hand tore from the earth at the wolf’s paws, but rather than strike him, this one closed its fingers around the wolf’s throat. A second followed suit, grabbing it from the other side. A third grabbed it around the chest. By the time I was in front of the creature, there were half a dozen clawed crystalline hands holding it immobile, from snout to tail. Together, they looked like a solid mass of crystal.

I stood in front of the wolf for a moment. It kept its eyes on me and growled a challenge.

“Clutch,” I said aloud, and clenched my hand into a fist.

The crystals constricted inwards, slamming together and crushing the timber wolf into sawdust. The noise was an absolute cacophony. Imagine a thousand kitchens’ worth of plates and silverware being crushed in a trash compactor and you have some idea of what it sounded like.

“TWILIGHT!”

I turned upon hearing the name shouted in Applejack’s distinctive accent. She was bolting from the gate of Sweet Apple Acres towards her friends, leaving Big McIntosh standing there, staring at the destruction. Considering what she must have been seeing, I can only imagine Mac was holding her back from rushing to her friends’ sides the entire time.

As she joined the other three in the only tiny circle of grass that wasn’t utterly destroyed by the fighting, I felt something tugging at my attention. Turning back towards the heap of crumbling crystals, I held my staff up. Another black, shadowy swirl of energy rose from the shards and dust. I brought my will to bear on it, and it was drawn into the staff, just as the diamond dog’s had been.

My arm tingled with the addition of the new power as I turned and strode back towards the group of ponies. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie were stumbling over one another in their attempts to tell Applejack everything that had happened, but Twilight was still watching me, questions clearly in her eyes.

“What was—”

I held up a hand and interrupted her. “Part of what I wished to—”

“And who or what in Equestria is that?” Applejack said, interrupting me in turn, with a hoof pointed my direction.

“That’s Sombra from another dimension,” Dash explained.

“Wait, Sombra?!” Applejack leapt to her hooves, taking a defensive pose between her friends and me.

Dash rolled her eyes. “No, AJ, from another dimension. He’s a—”

“Girls! Are you alright?” Rarity’s voice came from just down the path, as she made her way towards the group at a quick trot. “When the howling began, I started getting everyone indoors to safety, only to realize I wasn’t seeing any of you! I came as soon as those blasts stopped, and…” She finally seemed to notice me. Despite me being the size of a minotaur. “And what in Equestria is that?”

“Sombra,” Applejack growled.

“What?!” she shrieked, lighting her horn.

“Sombra from another dimension,” Dash corrected. “He’s cool.”

I sighed and turned back to Twilight. “I don’t suppose we could continue this somewhere more comfortable and less conspicuous? I may as well explain the matter to all of you.”

Twilight nodded, and groaned as she pushed herself to her feet. “Right. Everypony, back to the library. I’m sure we’ll all get our answers there.” She threw me a glance at the last part.

“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie Pie bounced up in front of Twilight. “All of us? Cause I have some good ones I’ve been looking for. Like if I cut off my own leg and ate it, would I still weigh the same? Does everypony see the same colors I see? How does a blind pony know when to stop—”

Twilight plugged Pinkie’s mouth with a hoof. “Most of us will be getting answers. Good to see you back to normal, Pinkie.”

We started back towards the library, with me in the center of the group. I felt disconcertingly like a prisoner being escorted to his cell. However, thanks to Rarity getting all of the ponies indoors, our walk back to the library was uneventful, beyond me hitting my head on the doorframe. Now I know what Gandalf felt like in Bag End.

Oh, and I gave Spike a bit of a panic attack when Twilight revealed who I was. Eventually, Rarity had to go upstairs and coax him out from under Twilight’s bed. He sat nestled between her and Twilight in the circle our group formed, and beyond the suspicious glare he always gave me, seemed content with all in the world.

As for the rest of the group, they were more focused on Dash and Pinkie’s enthusiastic retelling of our earlier encounter with the timber wolves.

“—and then it went crash! and smashed the timber wolf into little bits!” Pinkie said, clapping her front hooves together at the appropriate moment.

“As the resident expert on awesome things, I have to say, it was pretty awesome,” Dash said, and then smirked. “Which isn’t to say I couldn’t have handled it. Hay, I’d probably have taken it down faster. Resident expert on speed, after all. But Twilight had her shield thing up, so I decided to let the new guy take care of it.”

Rarity gave her a sidelong glance. “But I thought you were the resident expert on ‘awesome things’. Which is it?”

“Speed is an awesome thing,” Dash said, rolling her eyes and crossing her forelegs. “Duh.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “If that’s settled, I’d like to get to finding answers.” She turned to me. “I saw something come out of the timber wolf when you crushed it. You pulled it into your staff. What was it?”

“A fragment of dark magic,” I said, doing my best to give an explanation that was mostly guesswork on my part in the first place. “I found something similar in the creature that attacked me in the forest when I first arrived here. It… resonates with my own magic, and I am able to manipulate it to some extent. I believe the fragments are manipulating the creatures that bear them.”

“Now, just a second,” Applejack said, fixing me with a gaze. “Now, I may not understand much about all this magic hooey, but it seems to me that if them bits of darkness are controlling anypony who carries ‘em, and you go and pull ‘em out, wouldn’t they be in control of you now?”

I shook my head and laid the staff down in front of me. “I draw the magic into the staff. That keeps it separate from me, and free of its influence.”

Twilight groaned and clapped a hoof to her forehead. “Of course!” All eyes were on her when she looked up. “He’s Sombra from an alternate world. What kind of magic would resonate with his but the magic of the Sombra from this world?”

Spike bolted upright. “But Sombra was destroyed! Blown to pieces by the Crystal Heart! We all saw it!”

“Yes, Spike, blasted into fragments,” Twilight said. “He could take the form of a cloud of pure dark magic. If he reverted to that form when the energy wave struck him, it could have scattered pieces of his magic all over Equestria. No wonder we were seeing problems arise in such a huge area. But if that's true, why haven't they overwhelmed us yet?”

“What sort of problems?” Applejack asked. “This the mess that’s been keeping you holed up in the library the past couple weeks?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, it is. The Royal Guard have been crisscrossing Equestria chasing down every report we get of strange events. I’ve been trying to coordinate their efforts, looking for patterns, and researching possible causes. And now that we know the cause, it’s just a matter of deciding how to fix it.”

“I believe I made an offer on that point,” I said, and all eyes were on me. “It’s simple.” I stopped myself from continuing with ‘We kill the Batman.’ “We seek out the fragments, and I draw them into my staff. Once we have gathered them all, we purge the staff.”

Twilight rubbed her chin. “That… that should work, I think. It would take some time to gather them all, but once we do, the Crystal Heart should be able to purify your staff. It shattered Sombra, so I’m sure that with no escape route, it could wipe that magic out entirely.”

Applejack sighed. “Well, I suppose my brother can handle the farm himself for a couple weeks…”

“And all of my current deadlines are open to extension,” Rarity added.

“And all I need to do is not sleep tonight and get twenty hours of work done in the eight hours that saves me, and all of my party preparations would pan out for the ponies whose parties I was planning!” Pinkie said cheerfully, then paused, frowned, and started trying to do math on her hoof.

I couldn’t tell how much progress she was making, given that using hooves left her with four to work with at best.

“Girls, we don’t have to all go,” Twilight said. “In fact, with how things have been happening everywhere, I’d prefer knowing that there’s somepony staying behind to keep an eye on Ponyville.”

“Are you sure, Twi?” Applejack put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “We’ve had each other’s backs ever since we found the Elements.”

“I know, Applejack, but now that we’ve given them up, it doesn’t make sense for all of us to go” Twilight said. “And besides, even if we did still have them, Fluttershy’s away on that trip, so we wouldn’t have been able to use them anyway.”

Wait, what? They’ve lost the Elements? When… how did that happen? Is this the same Equestria from the show? Can I even trust my knowledge of it to be reliable at this point? I close my eyes and take a breath. Fortunately, when I open them again, nopony seems to have noticed. Their attention is one one another, not me. Still, losing them as a backup plan…

Applejack sighed. “I know, I know. It’s just… I’d feel better knowing you had somepony looking out for you.”

“She’ll have me looking out for her,” Dash said, swooping over and landing next to Twilight. “I’ve got nothing tying me down here, and who else could get her out of trouble faster than me?”

“What about the weather?” Rarity asked.

Dash shrugged. “Eh, nothing big coming up. Thunderlane and the twins can take care of it.”

“I figure you’re more likely to get all of y’all into trouble than out of it, but you better make sure she’s alright.” Applejack gave Dash a glare that lacked any of the chill in the ones she’d directed towards me. This one felt more like friendly banter than the suspicion I warranted.

“Don’t worry, AJ, I’ve got this.” Dash made a show of crossing her arms and rolling her eyes, but the two still tapped their hooves together and shared a nod afterward.

“Alright then,” Twilight said cheerfully. I guess knowing for certain she’d have a friend along was doing a lot for her spirits. “Then if that’s settled, all that’s left is to send a message to Celestia telling her the plan.”

I coughed, and all eyes turned to me.

“Would that be wise?” I asked. “Imagine how the princess would take the news of Sombra arriving from another world, regardless of the offers of aid.”

“But… I can’t just not tell her,” Twilight said. “I may be in charge of the actual investigation into what’s causing all of this, but she still needs to know what’s going on.”

“Be that as it may, I fear that drawing her attention to me will only serve to take it away from the actual crisis,” I said. “I would also prefer to avoid defending myself against someone as powerful as Celestia if she assumes I’m an enemy.”

“He may have a point, Twilight.” Surprisingly, it was Rarity who spoke in my defense. “If he isn’t a threat, perhaps it would be best if he remain unknown. Perhaps if you just left him out of the report?”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Applejack said. “This is the sorta thing I warn our sisters about! Like I tell them, as soon as ‘don’t let the grown-ups know’ becomes part of the plan, you get a new plan. No good ever comes from them goin’ behind our backs, and no good’s goin’ to come from us goin’ behind Princess Celestia’s.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Applejack. We’re not trying to cut her out of the loop entirely. We’re just not going to provide her with a meaningless distraction during a crisis.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, nodding. “Like Rares said, we just leave out the bits about this guy. We’re not hiding anything we’re doing from her.”

“I still don’t like it,” Applejack said. “Look, ya’ll can tell me off about it later if it turns out I’m just bein’ hardheaded again, but for now, I ain’t too keen on picking him over the Princess." She glanced my way again. "Sorry.”

“He did save our lives,” Pinkie said. “I think that earns one little favor like not telling on him being here.”

"For the record, while Rarity makes a good argument, I'm still going with telling Celestia everything," Spike said, glancing at Rarity and cringing.

Rarity patted a hoof on his head. "It's perfectly fine to have your own opinions, Spike."

He relaxed at that.

"So, that's three to tell and four to not." Twilight groaned and rubbed a hoof against the opposite leg. "I guess Spike and I can come up with something to tell her about attempting a new method to contain the problem…" She looked back up at me. "But if things get worse, I'm going to be telling her whatever I need to, alright?"

I nodded. "Fair enough. Do we set out immediately?"

She shook her head. "No, Spike and I still need to write what we can to Celestia, and I'd like to go out well-rested and prepared, at the very least." She glanced out the window to the darkening sky. "It's getting late. How about we meet back here in the morning, everypony?"

The others all sounded their agreement and farewells, and soon it was just myself, Twilight, and Spike left in the library.

"You can stay here for the night, if you'd like," Twilight said to me. "Feel free to read anything on the shelves if you aren't quite tired yet. I have a letter to write, and then it's bed for me. You're too tall for any bed I could offer you, but there are spare blankets in that closet."

"I'm sure I can find a way to make do," I said.

After wishing me a good night, Twilight went up to her room, leaving me alone in the library's first floor. While I was excited enough about the chance to read Twilight's books, I was still wondering about the loss of the Elements of Harmony. What else was going to be different here?

How many more surprises did Equestria have in store for me?

Author's Note

Fun facts from Rinnaul's world: Timber wolves are, in essence, carnivorous plants, just like venus flytraps, pitcher plants, and sundews. They rely on the nutrients from their prey for sustenance because they don't put roots into the ground. The meat from their prey is held in an internal cavity, analogous to an animal's stomach, where it quickly begins to decompose. This is the source of both the timber wolf's nutrients, and its notoriously foul breath.

There's a delay between "real" Equestria and "show" Equestria. For the human, this is set just after Equestria Girls came out. For the ponies, it's set in the middle of Season 4. So he was unaware of the loss of the Elements of Harmony.

The "twins" Dash refers to are Flitter and Cloudchaser. If the conversation hadn't moved on, this would have lead to an argument with Rarity, who would point out that while they are sisters, they're not actually twins.

I have no idea where the comics fit into things, so we're going with everypony being unaware that Celestia's initial reaction to news of "non-evil Sombra from another world" would actually be a very positive one—at first.

If anyone was wondering, the parts that held me up were the human's rant when his magic stops working, and the conversation at the end.

From here on out, the Sombra and Twilight chapters are going to have less overlap.