Floating in dark magic in her own throne room, Princess Celestia, co-ruler of Equestria, struggled to break free of the darkness binding her to the air. The figure controlling such a vile form of magic, Sombra, wore his regal red cape and steel gauntlets. He gloated as his dark magic held her steadfast in it's dark embrace, wrapping her in a cocoon of black mist.
"You didn't think that your sunlight would ever come close to being able to touch me, did you?" Sombra asked, stepping forwards to greet his struggling opponent in great strides, his metal gauntlets clanging on the ground with each step. "You leave your kingdom so easy to take, so ripe for the picking..." Sombra finally reached Celestia, and used his tentacle-esque mist to pull her down to him. "Your ponies will make for such fine slaves..." He whispered in her ear.
Celestia shuddered. "You will do NO such thing, Sombra! The elements will stop you once again!" she yelled, only causing Sombra to guffaw in a deep voice, reverberating throughout the room.
"The Elements will arrive far too late for you, my dear. You see, they're i-" Sombra was cut off as a blue blur slammed into his side, causing him to fly into the wall at the side of the room, slamming into wall so hard a pile of rubble was formed and a dust cloud settled. This caused his magic to release Celestia, who immediately called down a ray of golden light, cleansing and dressing her wounds. To her left stood her sister, Luna, the other Princess of Equestria.
"Fear not, sister, as we have come to aid thee in our fight against thou foe!" She exclaimed, raising a spear in excitement. Celestia put her hoof on Luna's shoulder with a look of seriousness on her face.
"Sombra cannot be defeated by conventional means, sister. We must stall him long enough for Twilight and her friends to get here." Luna acknowledged this with a nod of her head and looked towards where the smoke of where Sombra had been thrown, and heard his all-too-familiar sound of his deep laughter.
"Finally, a challenge!" He yelled, as several spikes dark as night, lashed from the dust giving Luna just barely enough time for her to drop to the ground. Unfortunately, Celestia was a a millisecond too slow, and one of the many spikes scratched her across her cheek, causing blood to be visible. "And they say gods don't bleed..." He said, his emerald eyes shining through the mist as his red horn began to charge a spell that was heard cackling like lightning.
"Scatter!" Celestia yelled, barely shouting it in time for Luna and Celestia to start to gallop in separate directions before red miasma of bolts shot from his horn at where they were just moments ago.
As Celestia ran to the right, a black shadow stretched beneath her hooves and all around her, allowing spikes twice as big as her to shoot up from wherever the darkness was, forcing her to move in a random order so Sombra could not predict where to launch the spikes from next. However, each spike never went down, and massive thorns the size of her head would form on the sides and continue to grow in length, causing her to have to jump and roll under some.
Luna sprinted left, as Sombra fired red lightning at her, zapping the ground beneath her and just barely missing her body by just hair's lengths away. Luna took to the sky, doing barrel roles and spins to try and shake Sombra's aim off of her, but he stayed true to his target. Luna continued to fly, doing everything she could to not get hit, but eventually, one of her wings received glance shot and her entire body arched in red electricity, making her shout in pain and fall to the ground.
As Luna hit the floor with a dull thud, Celestia's concentration was broken for just a moment, allowing Sombra to trap her in his dark embrace once more. However, Sombra took Luna's limp body in his magic, and held it in front of Celestia.
"If you move or attempt to escape from my hold, your sister will die." Sombra warned. Truth be told, Luna already looked dead. Her body was still twitching and spasming, as visible lines of red static raced across her body. She was covered in black electrical burns, and the area she was hit looked like it was burned to a crisp. "Now, with Chyrsalis capturing the last of your Royal Guard as we speak, and Discord occupying your..."Sombra narrowed his eyes and showed his in-equine canines."...dissapointing protege and her pathetic friends, I believe you and I can work out a sort of...treaty for surrender, wouldn't you think?" he emphasized by moving a dark silhouette of a blade across Luna's neck.
"You will lose, Sombra. You and your coalition will fall to the power of Twilight's friendshi-" she was cut off by Sombra sealing her mouth with a veil of dark magic.
"If you were going to say friendship, let's look at where that landed you, shall we?" Sombra stroked his chin, as any pompous noble would do when contemplating any kind of serious question. "In over the thousand years you had to rule over your kingdom, you have achieved no progress socially or technologically. Do you honestly believe your friendship is beneficial to your nation's 'progress'"? He used his hoof to quote the word. "After all, the only reason I want your kingdom is be remembered as the one who brought progress to your halted world. To own the ponies that became the most advanced society, able to surpass every other nation on the world. This may take some...adjustments, but I think that your ponies would gladly agree to my terms, knowing what prosperity I will bring them." he smiled, while removingthe magic covering Celestia's mouth allowing her to speak.
"By creating slaves for your empire, Sombra? How is that an advancement?" He growled in response.
"Only they had to be pacified for their backwords way of thinking, serving me and anyone else who knew the true path. They still believed in the power of your petty friendship!" Sombra's face flashed a gaze of anger. "But I would have eventually created a democracy allowing the people freedom in my country, unlike your biased and corrupted courts." He replied, the sins of his past evident on his expression.
"You're fooling yourself if you tell yourself that's the reason you had for slaves, Sombra. You deceived yourself and your people, causing their eventual uprising...you brought it upon yourself." Celestia told him, glaring back with just as much intensity.
"You tell yourself that your kingdom is the one of perfection, of peace and harmony. Yet you tell me, Celestia, what has your country done? How has it helped any other struggling countries in all your years of ruling?" Celestia only scowled in response. "You think that just because your people do not suffer means that it does not exist in our world. You have stockpiles of excess food while the Griffons to your south have hatchlings dying in their sleep because of their lack of food. The minotaurs to the far east, battling against each other for nothing more than petty honor and pride." Sombra used his magic to ascend himself above Celestia, and gazed upon her with a look of disgust.
"You have no mercy, no apathy for others in need. All you care about is your own country, and not the world as a whole. You ignored my people when they screamed for help as the winter made them starve and die, and all you did was watch from your pedestal." His look turned one of disgust into an icy glare. "And yet you judge me for dabbling in Black Arts to save them? How dare you judge me, with your undignified, thinly veiled communistic way of government."
Before Celestia was able to respond, another figure walked into the room. "The guards have been neutralized," a metallic voice said. "They're being kept elsewhere, so they will not have to chance to take back their homes. We do have uses for them, instead of simply killing them off and discarding their bodies."
Celestia turned to look, and found none other than her insectoid enemy, Chysalis. Clad in dark green armour, her wings had been formed to produce sharp pikes at the end of each vein, only protected by a thin sheet of a glistening organic substance. However, every other part of her body, excluding her head, was covered in a dark green carapace.
She walked towards Celestia, head turned in curiosity but with a smile of deviousness. "My, my, what a wonderful catch! The Princess of the Sun herself, Celestia." Her grin grew as she turned her head to see Luna still unconscious, suspended in Sombra's magic. "And her sister as well, who seems to have become too tired to fight, hm?" She chuckled in laughter as she stepped closer to Sombra.
"With the guards out of the picture and the princess practically; oh wait, literally, dangling in our grasp, we only have to worry about the purple one and her friends, right?" She asked, poking Luna.
"Yes, and then we discuss our terms of surrender, with the Elements present, in chains. I do not want them scheming behind our backs, so we will see to it they will not disrupt our negotiations." Sombra formed a cage across the room on the wall with his magic. "We'll keep them there, where we can personally keep our eyes on them. Then we'll place a mute spell," he looked at Celestia. "Let the proper diplomacy begin." He smiled with a malicious grin.
"And now, all we have to do is wait for Discord to bring the purple one and her friends here, and then we can start!" Chyrsalis said, laughing at the end.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the double doors opening to the room slammed open.
"It's over! Give it up before we don't give you a choice!" Yelled a Shining armour, in his ceremonial golden armor. Beside him stood Twilight and the rest of the elements, with an army of guards formed behind him.
"What?! What happened to Disc-" Chrysalis began, before realizing that it was simply a balloon with a speaker. In fact, all of them were.
"What is the meaning of this?" Asked Sombra, confused as what was happening. Directly after asking, however, he got his answer in that the balloons of the Elements and Shining popped, reveling the real ones within. They dropped to the ground, all bruised and coughing.
"How's that for a welcome home?" asked a playful voice besides Sombra's shoulder.
Sombra and Chysalis turned to where the voice came from and discovered Discord had appeared behind them without them knowing it. Sombra bared his teeth while Chrysalis giggled. Discord, however, looked far from anything funny. While his form as a draconequus was already enough to give nightmares, his torso and legs were jet black, and he wore a helmet that protected his neck and scalp that shone a ruby red against the darkness, with his horns ending in dark red tips. "Let's get this show started, shall we?" He asked.
Author's Note
After a series of either scrapped or non-motivating stories that I wrote, I decided to take an idea I had in a shower and just do it. Hence, this. PLEASE give feedback, I don't have an editor or really anyone willing to read this, so any comments could be helpful.
If interested in helping me make this story progress or improve in any way, please PM me because if I'm gonna try and bring this story in for the long haul, I'm gonna need it.