Accursed Union

The royal guard had finally managed to clean up the last of Discord's Smooze from the ballroom, the draconian troublemaker floated on his wings off the floor as Tree Hugger and Fluttershy gave him stink eye looks that screamed, "You are so lucky we're friends mister!" She angrily but only half heartily said, as her wings flapped allowing her to be fly beside him. She knew her stare couldn't affect him but she still kept him under her hoof even now. He gave her an equally innocent look and said.

"Who me? Please Fluttershy, you know me don't you? still prone to being a little on the mischievous side but you know my heart's in the right place...I can prove it too!" He said as he opened his chest like it was a metal flap. The both of them reviled in horror because he had indeed just lifted a bit of his lion like chest and showed them his innards, organs and blood leaking onto the floor, Discord instantly closed the lifted flap and surprisingly gave a look of horror at what just happened himself. Fluttershy could see it in is eyes; the way he instantly felt along his chest where he had "opened himself" to make sure the patch had sealed almost as if he was afraid it would fall open again, it wasn't like the discord she had grown to know. He was for a brief moment genuinely terrified at what he had done to himself.

"OH! I...I swear that wasn't supposed to happen like that!" He yelped frantically as he took a tiny vacuum from seemingly nowhere and cleaned up the blood from the titles. "I swear that was supposed to more...humorous, I..I mean it would have shown my heart like a drawing a little one did and made of metal...I didn't mean to actually maim myself like that...will you excuse me please." He said as he could hear Fluttershy yelling a loud,

"That wasn't funny and low even for you Discord." As he made his way down the dark and lesser used passages of the castle he hoped to his old rival that what he thought was happening, wasn't happening.

Meanwhile

There was a long dead valley Five hundred and two thousand miles from Canterlot; This valley had once been a beautiful and peaceful place, but now it was the last place anypony or any living creature for that matter would want to be let alone live in. The once green and soft rolling meadows of grass had died ages ago, now dry and black from many years of neglect. The Trees fared no better; as they had turned to shriveled and dead husks of the mighty oaks and pines they had once been, lost in the twisted and tangling mass of death was a long rotten and fallen sign, just barley visible after so long was the only clue that life had indeed been here once; weathered away but still just hardly readable was one word, maybe two depending on how you look at it, Dream valley.

`There where three patches of grass in the valley that were ever so slightly different than the rest of dream valley's dead grass; for under these patches where the final infernal resting places of the volcano of gloom witches, Hydia and her daughters Reeka and Draggle, the original brewers of the smooze. The patches of grass that marked where they had been laid to rest where deep purple, the color of their version of the stuff; and under a shallow covering of soil lay the moldy ancient bones of the witches, un-moving clad in the attire they died in, the details of how known only to them and the long dead ponies that once lived here. In the dead Dream Valley the wind stopped blowing sour through the tree husks; the few sounds still heard in it had given away to dead silence, and the patches of soil began to stir.

The old bones below the graves began to at long last stir and move, as if some macabre puppeteer had taken control of the strings and made the bones of the arms flail and struggle at the three feet of loose soil that had been thrown in the holes, there where no coffins to claw out of. Slowly ragged chunks of grey flesh began to form on the bones, the decay process in reverse as lungs then hearts reshaped in the chest as did the other organs. The faces of the three came back but their where still exposed bits of cheek bones and ragged chunks missing in places on the witches faces, as well as exposed bone on their limbs where the flesh didn't yet grow back. The eldest witch Hydia; finally free from her burial plot, stood up and looked around. She adjusted her ragged dress as her daughter the one who usually wore a cook pan on her head reached down to help her sister from the grave.

"Mama!" She cried out as she dug Reeka from the soil, her voice scratchy and gruff as she spat up dirt from her throat but also from having only half her vocal cords back. "What happened? where we just?...dead?" She asked finally getting her sister out the ground. The eldest witch looked at her still fish-belly white and grey rotted skin, yes they had been dead.

"Stupid girl of course we were dead, we just crawled out of the ground didn't we?"

"But mama the last I remember was....the tree coming down toward us then the next thing I know...Draggle is digging me out the ground."

"You mean you don't remember seeing anything...after the tree flattened us?" The eldest said in almost a gasp of horror.

"No mama," Reeka replied. "There was nothing on the other side...for us."

"maybe this is the other side." Figured Draggle looking down at her bony (literally) hands.

Memories

His clawed hand flipped through the pages of the ancient photos; he never had any intentions too show anyone these pictures, they where part of a life he wanted to forget. "Hmmm, It can't be happening, that was...so long ago even old sun-butt wasn't around for this." He said turning the photo album's page to a a portrait of a handsome prince and a blonde twelve year old girl that had been taken when they returned to dream valley after that long night at Midnight Castle. She was on the back of a vaguely familiar orange pony with three apples on her side, she wasn't the same as the one he knew now though, but the relation was very uncanny.

"Still...the idea of those old ghosts still being out there trying to get me back...I better make sure Celestia's got Tirek under lock and key." He snapped the book closed and locked it, before making his way to cells in the dungeons.

Midnight Castle

King Sombra looked at the ebony female that stepped off the carriage, he had heard of her. The self proclaimed Queen of the Changelings Chrysalis. "Your Majesty, It is an honor to meet you at last." He said bowing respectfully to her, she was the only one in all the world worthy of such a display from the great and terrible King Sombra. The ebony queen actually blushed but managed to hide it as she offered the king a hoof to his, He took it and softly kissed it and rose looking Chrysalis in her sea foam green eyes.

"It is I who should be honored to finally me you Sire, For I had though the stories of you where...not true." This slightly angered the king as she said this his eyes burned a bit as his lips pursed into a grimace.

"You doubt the power of the Great King Sombra, Chrysalis?" He asked using his horn to lift the carriage she stepped off a few feet in the air.

"No sire please don't take my words as such, They where merely the lies woven by non believers who refuse the crown of thine own claim to royalty, please belay your anger unto me." She said in an almost...begging tone. It was enough to calm Sombra down; he lowered the carriage to the ground and turned with a flutter of his cape.

"This way my Queen, lord Tirek awaits." and he trotted past the arching gateway into the dark depths of midnight castle, Chrysalis was relived, she adjusted her own regalia and followed suite inside. her changelings right behind her. "These...children of yours...are they...strong fighters?" Sombra asked as he took note of the pony sized creatures darting too and fro in the dark halls.

"Yes my lord, I've raised them well in many arts from deception to disguise but when the need calls for it they are a hive mind that swarms the enemy and fights tooth and pincer until the're is nothing left. for if we can't be feed on love and emotion...we feed on flesh and blood." She sneered as two of them used their acidic venom to melt a rusty suit of centaur armor to liquid metal. "We changelings posses many...flavors of toxic venom, ranging from aphrodisiac if discretion is needed...or acid if force is needed."

"I only ask your..."children" be format-able fighters Chrysalis, I've no need for discretion and sneaks when the time for war draws near." Sombra gruffly said as eyed two more moving to melt a portrait of him hanging on the wall his fiery eyed gaze made them back off from the portrait and they got close to their queen's sides shivering slightly.

"shhh my children, it's okay, your queen is here." she shushed them and covered them with her tattered wings softly.

"Chrysalis, if you want them to be MY army I advise you stop mollycoddling them, I want my soldiers to be strong and merciless when I claim my place as the King of all Equestria."

"And who says I'll let them be your soldiers Sombra? I can just as easily turn around and..."

"And what?" He interrupted shoving his face to her's. "Go back to your little "exodus" in the desert rummaging for scraps and starving? Chrysalis I don't know just what I think of you just yet, but let's face it you need me more than I need you." he snapped at Chrysalis smirking in joy.

"And who'll be your army if I take my children and leave Sombra, we may die but at least we die knowing we had the last laugh on you." She retorted back at him hissing as her wings buzzed. neither royal said anything further nor did they notice the three green creature with ugly faces and bony clawed hands, (goblins) wheeling a flatbed on a rope down the hall beside them; on the flatbed was a wooden box object, it had in its day been highly polished with brass locks and fixtures of gilded bronze and gold. On the lid was a metal brass plate, engraved in the plate in fancy scrawl was a single name, this was a coffin the goblin like little creatures had recently exhumed.

The name plate read as follows:

Catrina Von Drusilda.

Saved from an addiction that consumed her

may she know peace at last.

R.I.P