The Dark Empire
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The Dark Empire

Feb. 27th, 1019

Seeing somepony die in person is very, very different than any type of movie, show, or video game. You see their eyes look at you, with a fire that once beheld the stars within their grasp gone, extinguished, never to be seen again. You can't bring it back, you can't save it...it's..gone.

It's a shame that the plan to advance unto the Crystal Empire had fallen apart so horribly, so fast..

The cold had withered our supplies down until we had begun starving, fighting not a war with magic or spears, but one of survival against the most basic elements of the world.

Our mission was to move through the vast snowy tundras leading to the hellhole some corrupted unicorn king named Sombra had claimed as his empire, and to take that bucker out. He ~~was accused~~ committed murder, rape, torture, and just about ever other irredeemable act of crime there is to be.

I suppose I should write about why we're getting the bastard, huh? Well I guess I should start by saying that at one point the bastard was actually a nice guy, but the only reason he was out here was because his great-whatever-pony had some feud with Celestia and decided to move and make a settlement as far from Equestria as he could.

Which, of course, meant a blistering cold and nothing but darkness and snow for as far as the eye could see to reach there.

Because of this, the settlement had to use magic to create a shield from the harsh environment, so that they could grow their own crops and cattle and such. Because of the shield, the settlement grew and grew and the populations natality increased, and it eventually grew into a great nation with some of the most promising unicorns gifted in shield magic being born there, helping reinforce the shield against the cold.

However, a Necromancer long lost to the Crusades of Celestia, had escaped to the north long before any mortal pony had set foot there. Necromancy was an art banned, for it uses dark magic to maintain the hold on another living being, and never came without cost to the user. However, many were purged as a result as an order sent from Celestia to cleanse all known areas in the world of them, ensuring that they would never harm another pony again. However, it seemed as this one survived her onslaught, and took to hiding within the depth of the frozen wasteland as a place of solitude.

It did not like anyone to intrude on it's territory.

As the settlement slowly turned from a simple village into a prospering Kingdom, the Necromancer had began increasing his ever-growing legions of warriors fallen to the rubble of time, as well as increasing the ever-present danger of the environment that would batter the shield, causing it to weaken. No matter how strong or how many unicorns there were helping keep the shield up, their strength would always decline to the Necromancer's strength, and over the generations, the line of family that kept order in the kingdom realized that there would eventually be the breaking point in which the shield would not be able to resist the powers of Dark Magic mixed with an already harsh environment, and at that point began to take action and creating his army.

The King who decided to do so, was named Sombra.

And so he amassed his forced, while the threat of the shield breaking at any moment causing more stress with each waking second. Day after day, the king would gaze into the darkness into a hostile world, where he knew there was a force attempting to destroy the sovereignty of his people.

Finally, the day arrived, where Sombra had an army ready for the assault on the dark magician ravaging his people.

They trekked through the cold and darkness, meeting the corpses of long lost creatures and foul spirits that were under the control of the Necromancer, deterring their path, attempting to make them fold, to make them submit...

But Sombra's troops held, their convictions stronger than the darkness invading. They marched fourth, suffering casualties from creatures born from the depths of the abysmal prison of Tartaurs, seeing the ponies around them go mad from diseases that made them go so mad they would claw their own eyes out to blind themselves from what they thought they saw, the harsh cold and constant hunger that haunted them in their every move, and so much more...

But alas, after traveling far and wide, they discovered the epicenter, the creator of their despair...the Necromancer.

They say that Sombra, after endless weeks of worrying about his troops, enduring the fog of war that he could not see his brave soldiers that had ventured into the unknown, into the darkness in the name of his Kingdom, had uttered a scream that shook the foundations of his palace, when he looked out the shield and found his legion...in the form of the undead, staring at him as if to cast their despair upon him. And there they stood for weeks.

The Necromancer had wiped out his force and turned them into his restless servants, and had sent them to Sombra's kingdom of a sign of victory, as to laugh at his face and to tell him he had failed. To show the families of any that saw that he could not be killed. That he would not stop. That he would make every last stallion, mare, and foal a mindless servant of the eternal darkness they faced.

They stood outside, unwavering against the cold sting of the elements, mocking him and his glorious city, making every eye that caught them fear their fate.

Sombra eventually, against his better judgement, turned to Dark Magic. The forbidden art. The shadow of an answer. The last resort. He ordered all of his librarians, his unicorns, and his scientists to start researching the black art. Time was short, the shield was on the edge of breaking. His army was nothing but in shatters, staring back at him as a failure to look at. And his people were losing faith, going mad from the constant fear of death.

Finally, after weeks of experimentation and failure, Sombra had discovered the one secret to Dark Magic that would turn the fate of his Kingdom, for better or worse...

Dark Magic required the blood of people mixed with an alchemy powered by magic to be used by any Unicorn, and in doing so, would grant them an immense power boost at the cost of corruption to their soul, making them cynical and bitter while forcing an addiction to casting the foul magic.

Faced with his kingdom's destruction, Sombra had no choice but to indulge in Dark Magic and, in secret, had begun to use the blood of his people to gather power to stop the Necromancer, as well as to sate his never ending descent into addiction that cost him more lives than he could ever count. Eventually, he stopped trying to count, and even went as to far as to announce to his people that he had been dabbling in the dark art; of course, his people could do nothing to stop him as he was not only king, he was now the most powerful being in their kingdom.

He used his power to hold the shield, but every time he looked out his shield and saw his army, which by now was a rotten pile of tatters drifting through the snow with only the barebones of whoever was left lying there, he gathered a more and more powerful taste for revenge, and with each passing citizen he used, he thought more and more about it. Eventually, he had become so vain that he thought he had the power to destroy the Necromancer haunting his land.

Because of this, the king ordered a mass execution of all the ponies he thought could stand against him or hold a threat to his power, under the official reason of 'needing the power to defeat the Necromancer', even though he very well could do what he liked and have almost no one to stop him. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't need to take risks, and had proved this through the blood shed by all the pegasus, unicorns, and anyone that he suspected of uprising against him.

With the heinous deed over, and almost certainly enough power to destroy the Necromancer, Sombra set out on a journey to find a kill the one who had tormented him and his people for so long.

He found him. After only a few short days, the king was able to locate the Necromancer using tracking spells altered by dark magic, making the process of tracking him down significantly easier than his previous army. Any creature that stood in his way was annihilated, any disease that stood in his path dispelled, and any cold or hunger quenched.

As he made his way toward his way toward it's lair, it almost seemed...peaceful. The blizzard regressed into a light snowstorm. The howling moans of whatever lived, or unlived, out there ceased. Almost like the Necromancer knew it was not going to survive, like it knew it's reign of terror was over...and Sombra's had just started.

And so Sombra let himself into the vast cave, filled to the brim with tomes, crystals, and strange trinkets. And upon the epicenter, sat a throne with an old pony with black skin and dark grey hair. He simply grinned at Sombra, seeing that the Dark Magic had spread, had survived through him and into Sombra. Without saying a word, he accepted his defeat without a fight as he knew he could not stand against Sombra, and closed his eyes as Sombra ended his existence with a spell long since banished.

And as Sombra returned to his kingdom, he looked upon his people with a grin, as he knew that Celestia would sense the change of power in the North, and he knew she would send her armies to fight him.

But as he redoubled the blizzard's force, and began summoning creatures borne of darkness, he would only laugh at his own creations, at his people's suffering, and how he knew he had extinguished the flame of any hope within his veil of darkness.

Or at least that's how most of the folks here tell it. I'm sure there's bound to be some sorta flaws in the story, but what the fuck ever. My current issue was that my platoon has stumbled across the bodies of what seemed like a scouting party, and the smell of the bodies was enough to make me gag. But that wasn't the worst part; the worst part being the fact that the stallion I was looking at seemed to stare at me, never blinking, never breathing...

It was, in short, fucking creepy. I kinda don't want to see that shit again, but that's what I get for being a soldier, right? Anyways, to make matters worse, was that my friends had been brought to different parts of the operation, so all of us were in different areas dealing with our own problems. Although, a couple of them were in infantry divisions, just like me...hopefully I see them again soon.

But whatever, we're setting up camp right now and it seems like we're not running into anything too big yet, but if those bodies were any indication of anything, it's that there are definitely things out here to kill us...

Author's Note

Well, as one of my first pieces of fiction (Or of any type of writing, for that matter) I've done in a VERY long time. I'm planning on starting to write the action in the next chapter for Sombra's arc, but please leave criticism in the comments.
Proofreaders needed, mail me if you're interested.
Thanks for reading the first (Actual first, not an intro chapter) of many chapters to come!