The Rise and Fall of Nightmare Moon

Now, Princess Luna is 15 years old, Princess Celestia is now 23 years old, and Grey Shade is 18 years old, now, and he has a tornado-shaped cutie mark that he gained, somehow, when he was thirteen. Princess Luna and Princess Celestia now have an eight-year-old alicorn sister named Princess Dawn.

So one day, Princess Luna and Princess Celestia were playing with Princess Dawn, who always loved to play with her older sisters.

Then, Grey Shade arrived.

"Hello, Princess Celestia. Hello, Princess Luna" Grey Shade said.

Luna looked at Grey Shade, smiled, and said "Grey Shade, you don't have to call us Princess Luna and Princess Celestia. We're close friends, you can just call us Luna and Celestia."

"Grey Shade" Celestia said "It's been a month since we last seen each other, how have you been?"

"I've been doing fine." Grey Shade responded.

"So Grey Shade" Celestia said "Just curious, what ever happened to your cousin, Sombra. He's probably grown by now, but we haven't seen him in a while."

"Who's Sombra?" Princess Dawn asked.

Grey Shade looked down, with a serious and upset face.

"I haven't told you" he said "have I?"

Luna and Celestia shook their heads.

So Grey Shade sighed. "Remember that day when my uncle Seros asked your parents to look after me for a week when I was eight years old?"

"Yes, I remember" Luna said.

"Well, he told me the reason why he did that."

So now a flashback begins as Grey Shade tells Luna and Celestia his story.

So Seros took his nephew, Grey Shade, home from Princess Alouette's castle.

"My nephew" Seros said "I have something to tell you."

"What's that?" Grey Shade asked.

"You may never see your cousin, Sombra, again."

"What!? Why not!?"

"I sent him away."

"What!?"

"About two weeks after Catrina fought with Princess Alouette and Prince Orion at the dinner table. I got in a fight with my own. I was eavesdropping on your aunt, who's also Sombra's mother and my wife."

So now a flashback inside of a flashback beings as Seros tells young Grey Shade his story.

Seros was walking towards Sombra's nursery, when he heard his wife talking.

He started to eavesdrop on her.

She said "yes, my son. Soon you will realize your true destiny. Oh how I've always hated Equestria, because I was exiled from it long ago. I've always wanted revenge, to return to the Crystal Empire and claim it as my own! That's when I met that fool, Seros. I tricked him into thinking we were husband and wife, and we had you, my son. Soon, you will go to the Crystal Empire located in Equestria, destroy the Crystal Heart, and release the umbrum army trapped below it! For you are not only half-unicorn on your father's side, but also half-umbrum on my side."

"Honey" Seros said as he entered. "I heard the whole thing! What is an umbrum!?"

"An umbrum" the mare said "is a living shadow. Also, I'm not the mare you think I am."

Then the mare transforms into a floating red crystal and says "I am Kreesto, a red shape-shifting crystal filled with dark magic."

"You won't get away with this!" Seros shouted "Sombra is my son, too, and I won't let this be his destiny!"

"You fool" Kreesto said "You have no control! Soon this will be his fate!"

So Kreesto shot magical beams at Seros, but Seros dodged the beams. Then she chased him outside, where they continued their fight.

The two shot magical beams at each other, but they both missed.

Until finally, Kreesto successfully shot Seros in the chest, and he was weakened.

"That's it" Kreesto said. "We're done!"

So later, Seros came into the house when Kreesto wasn't looking, and he snuck into Sombra's nursery, where he took Sombra.

Then he snuck into Grey Shade's bedroom, where he found Grey Shade already awake due to the sound of the fight. He shushed him so he wouldn't make a sound.

"Follow me" he whispered to Grey Shade.

So Seros snuck out of the house with baby Sombra and Grey Shade.

Seros took Grey Shade to Princess Alouette, where he asked her to take care of Grey Shade while he's gone. Alouette agreed to take care of Grey Shade.

So when Seros left with baby Sombra, he made a long journey to an arctic wasteland, where he met a family of Eskimo ponies.

"Sombra" Seros said to Sombra, with tears rolling down Seros' cheeks "I'm afraid this is goodbye, my son. I'm sorry to do this, but this is for the best."

So Seros went to the Eskimo ponies.

"This is my son" he said. "His name is Sombra. I'd like you to take good care of him."

"Of course, sir" the female Eskimo pony said as she took the basket carrying baby Sombra.

Then Seros left to return home.

Now the flashback inside of the flashback ends

"After that" Seros told Grey Shade "I never saw Sombra again. I told your aunt of what I did when I got back, and she left me in order to find Sombra."

Young Grey Shade stared at his uncle with tears in his eyes. Then his uncle hugged him, and he cried a little in his uncle's arms.

"Don't worry, my nephew" Seros told Grey Shade "it will be okay. Sombra's in good hooves now."

This is where the flashbacks end.

"Ever since then" present-day Grey Shade told present-day Luna and Present-day Celestia "I never saw my aunt or Sombra again."

"I'm sorry to hear that" Luna told Grey Shade.

However, little did they know that there was more to Sombra's story:

When Sombra lived with the eskimos, he was always afraid of them. He thought they were strangers, so he cowered in fear away from them, even thought they were trying to be nice to him.

One day, when he was a little older, but still a colt, he ran away from them, but they chased after him. They kept shouting "Sombra" as they chased him.

But Sombra outran them. Then he said his first word after remembering the Eskimo-ponies call his name. "Sombra."

Then, Sombra was the only word he knew how to say.

But then, Kreesto was spying on Colt Sombra, and she shape-shifted back into a normal red crystal, where she hid in the snow.

Thus the story of Sombra begins here.

Sombra would eventually be known as the evil King Sombra, the tyrannical ruler of the Crystal Empire.

TO BE CONTINUED ...