Divine Move

Chapters

一 (Mending What Has Broken)
三 (Enter Silver Lining)
四 (Where Evil Is Born)
五 (The Ace of Diamonds)
六 (No Escape From Reality)
七 (A Second Chance)
八 (Children Are Evil)
九 (Totally Casual Banter)
十 (Life is Suffering and Sombra Knows it)
十一 (He's Not That Old)
十二 (The Castle Within a Castle)
十三 (House of the Gods)
十四 (Something Really Matters)
十五 (Nothing Changes)
十六 (The Chess Master)
十匕 (Mistaken Identity)
十八 (She Won't Let Him Go)
十九 (At Least There's Pizza)
二十 (Epilogue)
二 (It's Always the Tall Grass)

一 (Mending What Has Broken)

Sombra,

I'm not sure if this letter will reach you, since I put it in a dead-end alley of all places, where I last saw you. I noticed after the argument we had (I am still upset at you for hurting Twilight) you dropped a parcel that you probably didn't want anypony to see. I picked it up, yes and looked inside, and brought it home to the empire, where after months of research (which was not helped by the fact that I had only a name and date to work off of), archive browsing, and carrying out the duties of the Crystal Empire (we princesses do have lives as well as responsibilities) I was able to find all the information you seemed to have been searching for.

I am also writing (in hopes that you receive this, and maybe read it, you know? Not lighting things on a fire is something you should try) to tell you I'm sorry. I had no idea that

I will I should have asked you what happened with this Onyx and you except that you might have tried to kill me

I know now that your past is extremely unsettling as opposed to something you refused to tell others for the fun of it. Once again coming back to the subject of this letter: if you get this letter at all, and accept my apology and the information I have for you, please show up at the Crystal Empire within three days of the date written on the inside of the envelope or just spam me with mail, I guess. You know where I live.

Please don't spam me with mail that most likely will consist of cursed ink or some kind of poison, if you're still angry with me, that is.

Sincerely,

Cadance, a.k.a Pink One

P.S. Please avoid committing any capitol offenses on the way to the Empire, you don't exactly have amnesty.

...

I remembered exactly where the Pink One wanted to meet, even if she apparently decided to get amnesia and skip something she placed such importance on. She also had the nerve to claim she had an existence that was meaningful, as always I'll be the judge of that. Being judgmental is a specialty of mine.

I don't care if she doesn't show up since it doesn't affect me much, I can always just devise a way to steal what she found out, assuming she wrote it down. If that isn't so I can make her write it out for me. I can't believe she of all ponies was the one to say that even though she proposed an alliance. While not entirely incompetent like a certain Purple Eyesore she is occasionally dense and rather wimpy - there's even a special word they have for this particular kind: pacifistic.

Yet however much I hate this place, the ponies in it, and all that's happened here, I'm pleased nopony else is around. The same was true of Canterlot's train station, one of those obnoxious, wide-spread social gatherings must have been occurring, it explains the collective departure of the equally bothersome citizens in both locations.

While it was harder to tell here, due to the different seasonal patterns, Canterlot's weather was shifting and becoming somewhat warmer. I didn't mind the weather, either way. It was nice on my side of the mountain, the only cause for venturing into the city was when I wanted to steal things - like books, always books - and that was rare. It was on one of these infrequent trips that I found the letter wedged under a barrel where I last saw the pink one. It was only a day old.

I tilted my head back to continue looking at the clouds, which seemed silent and still, barely moving at all. I proceeded to get lost in thoughts for a short while.

Could she really have found out where he came from? Was there anything left of wherever that was?

Towards my left I picked up a familiar emission of magic followed by a set of hoofsteps. I turned so I could see the pink princess. "You're late," I said automatically, there wasn't a hint of emotion in my voice. I think I should have her meet Phobos, the two were never formally introduced.

She smiled slightly, her magic fiddling with the fastener on her saddlepack, even though I'm very good at reading emotions and noting the smallest details she made it so obvious she felt awkward, somewhat doubtful, and the most easily observable: nervous. There wasn't anything deeper, everything was on the surface. Even though she wasn't quite as bland as those around her, she seemed like it in this moment.

"I see I'm getting the monotone treatment from you," she began, "and did you really need to turn around to face me, I was right there-" She points a hoof towards a spot I hadn't been able to see before for a very good reason. I most certainly won't tell her, I won't tell anypony. There isn't anypony that needs to know.

She continued to exist and I continued to be cold and unexpressive.

"Have I ever mentioned that virtually everypony that isn't me is just another vexation in my life?"

"Listen, I said-"

"Wrote, actually and don't try to command me." Try it again, I dare you.

"What I'm trying to say," she continued cautiously, "is can you forgive me?"

"I don't know, can I?"

She looked at me, her expression somewhat sad. I glared at her and she looked away just as quickly and still continued to speak. "I was hoping you could, but anyway about what I learned-"

I interrupted her just as she pulled a small note out of her saddlepack. "...What are you sorry for?"

"Sombra, didn't you read the letter?"

"Yes," I said flatly. Would she get the point I was trying to make? Out of the two of them, she is the least dense but that isn't saying much.

"And...?"

"I proceeded to burn it when you wouldn't show up on time."

"Sombra, I've been checking this station every few hours for the past day. I didn't list a time for you to show up, just a date."

"You should have shown up three hours ago."

This was news to her. "Why?"

"Because I said so Amore Cadenza."

Her muzzle crinkled. "It's Mi Amore Cadenza."

Why does she say 'me Amore Cadenza' like that? It makes her sound almost as stupid as the purple one. "So, once again: What are you sorry for?"

"I'm sorry for calling you a demon-"

"But I am a demon from a technical standpoint... in a way..." Except I'm not, or at least not completely, and I'm obviously not quite a pony either. I've always been, and will always be Sombra because even though they call me a demon and I'm superior to them, I am still much closer to them than they realize, as are the Alicorns. Or at least the ones that are left...

"I'm sorry for... calling you Onyx?" She tried, "As well as refusing to let you explain yourself."

"Well done, although you don't win a single thing."

Pink One's eyes went down to read the note she held in her magic. "Anyway, do you have an interest in the information? I mean I imagine that if you agree it will be your way of saying that you forgive me."

I like this one, sometimes she gets things right. This happens to be one such time. It's such a shame she had to be Celestia's apprentice when she could have been mine.

"So, Sombra is it a deal?" She holds her pink hoof out, her gold shoe gleaming despite the overcast sky.

I smirk a little. "Careful there, Pink One, making a deal with a demon."

Pink One laughs a little and nods to her hoof. "Well then, is it a deal?"

I hold out my own gray hoof, the redesigned silver metal boots shunned by the light, and shake hers. "Very much so."

"Good, I'm glad to hear you aren't secretly trying to kill me. Anything else you have to say?" Oh, but how would you know?

"Of course I have something to say, I'm me or in the few seconds that you last mentioned me by name have you managed to forget?"

Exasperated, she stared up at the sky but kept her tone level. "And that is?"

"Remember that offer you made in Gildentundra?"

I can tell by the look in her eyes that she knows exactly what I'm talking about. "Yes, what about it?"

"I accept your offer, you may count me among your friends."

She smiled so wide, it almost reminded me of him... but genuine, this mare couldn't hurt a daisy, while Onyx would hurt anypony who had so much as looked at it. Pink One also couldn't aim a dagger to save her life.

"Although I still have something to add: make me any sort of token of camaraderie and I'll choke you with it."

Pink One waved her hoof over in another direction. "It's nice to see you're marginally less grumpy, now let's go."

...

The pink one is trotting a few paces ahead of me. We're traveling - which is quite the exaggeration for merely walking - on an out of the way road in the Empire. I know so because all the major roads are made out of purple crystal but this one is a path of loose dirt. I recall traveling these only once or twice and never during... well, it really isn't worth mentioning.

There aren't a lot of ponies who live out here, this close to the mountains. The few that did were farmers, or just not particularly wealthy.

"Hey Sombra, there is a question I wanted to ask you - it's about dark magic."

I jerk up the hood on my cloak. I don't want to have to deal with the annoyances that come with being recognized by these particular ponies. I won't let his deeds become my legacy.

"Is it about dark magic or is it about me?" I may be narcissistic but you think with the first few outbursts regarding questions centered around me they would have learned. I think these silly princesses have already asked everything they can bother to come up with. What next?

My favorite color? It's green.

My favorite food? Umm... I guess I'd have to get back them on that one - or at least to Pink One here, I'm not on speaking terms with Purple Plebeian. In fact, I'm surprised such a primitive life form such as herself can speak at all. She can't be much higher than an amoeba. Despite being made up of more then one cell she is a rather simple creature.

Okay then, how about a favorite book? My current favorite is Div, Grad, Curl, and All That: An Informal Text on Vector Calculus by: H.M. Hay.

"Well, both," she replies somewhat sheepishly.

There go any potential calculus discussions I could have had with you, Pink One. Do you hear them being silenced, every last voice? I blame you for their demise.

I fix my gaze on a lone tree in a field of grain that I noticed out of the corner of my good eye. There are dark pinkish crystals creeping up the trunk. I always wished this place had more trees, the Crystal Empire has always felt so empty, even more so now that I've seen more of the world.

I sigh slightly. A few seconds have passed and Pink One's gaze clearly states that she is waiting for my answer, that is if I'll give her one.

"Go ahead. Ask."

We continue to walk. "Well, I was wondering why dark magic doesn't hurt or corrupt you when you use it."

"I am dark magic, or rather it is my origin. I cannot be corrupted by my own self, or rather what I am. If that were true I wouldn't be able to exist. There is no magic eating at my mind," I state frankly, continuing to watch the hills and fields. Some have ponies in them but they are too far away to see the pink one and myself. I'd rather not have to come here ever again. Sure, I could have just wiped some average pony's weak excuse for a mind so they would obey my every wish but there are reasons both logical and personal that I don't use that kind of magic often.

I don't tear my eyes away from the landscape. "How much did you find out?"

...And how much did you regret ever learning? Even though you know very little about Onyx, and I intend to keep it that way, I imagine you still have your own limited perspective on the matter.

"Well, I found a birth certificate with the bits you had figured out, from that I learned his parent's names as well as his family residence and..."

She doesn't pause, although her actions tell me that she is nervous. "Sombra, this Onyx has living relatives."

I don't shift in any way but my gaze travels to her. "Is that so? You'd think with a record like his, Onyx would have gotten them all."

Hear that? You missed a few. Isn't it such a pity? Are you going to whine?

Of course not. You can't.

I can't hear you and you can't hear me.

Not anymore.

Never again. I can't feel you any more then you can feel me, you little megalomaniac.

Your spell may have sealed us once, but the spell that sealed us for a second time weakened it, even when I pieced myself back together.

It is not the total separation I could have wished for but-

Pink One and I keep walking, it seems she's forgotten I'm there. There are traces of a recent layer of snow on the ground, more fascinating than any crystal. It doesn't matter that only one of them works, there's still quite a lot to see, once you look past all the annoying ponies.

-this is one thing I've always wanted.

三 (Enter Silver Lining)

"Hello?" The single word is spoken by a low, timid voice in the background, as I still continue to look over the quiet scenery. Soon it was followed by something along the lines of "What can I do for you, Princess Cadance?"

I wasn't paying attention to what she said, I had turned around and was trying to spot a resemblance between the two. Who was she to that monster?

She was about thirty with a coat like Starswirl's, but with a soft grayer look unlike Onyx's soot colored one. Her eyes were a gloomy dark purple, widened and frozen as they stared at me. Does she think I won't notice? I can see that her mark is sunlight peeking through silvery clouds. Gods I hope she isn't as upbeat as he is. The mare's mane and tail were streaked dark blue and gray-purple like marble and were cut short and like most crystal ponies had silly gold jewelry in it.

She thinks I don't notice that her hoof which holds the door is shaking; she wants to slam the door shut. I know, okay? I'm staring straight at you and still you think I can't see anything, you stupid, stupid mare. You have that in common with him and every other pony.

"What is he doing here?"

There's fear in that tone.

Oh it's nice to know you recognize me, of course. Don't mind me, I'm just the new weatherpony, you can tell by the wings on my back - wait! Wings on my back? I'm finally a princess?! See, I knew it! Purple Eyesore is proof that just anypony can be one. Bow before me mere mortals, all my evil plans have been fulfilled, woe is you!

Pink One is talking to her, I don't see a point in listening since I know that she's just explaining enough so this soft-voiced mare won't scream. Does she secretly have a shrill and grating voice like Onyx? I don't have the patience for that.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find out exactly who she is in relation to him. Onyx was born twenty-three years ago, so he's technically the one who is 1,123. In truth I'm only 1,110 if I remember correctly, I've always used his age as my own since it makes more sense to explain it that way and we really do share a date of birth, I suppose since I started off at fourteen and kept aging as he would have if he had never cast that spell even if I was still a bit older, he was almost fourteen when he had made the decision. He never aged again and I only stopped when the two Alicorn sisters sealed Onyx and I in ice as a shadow, stuck in some arctic niche that was probably as close to an otherworldly void as I'll ever know. That's over now, and I can still age, and have continued to do so.

But back to this mare, if she's thirty now – which doesn't really matter – she'd obviously have been seven whenever Onyx was born so she's probably a sibling or cousin.

I can't say I ever gave thought to what his family would have been like, but that's not to say I believe that he just sprang into existence like myself. Onyx had no supernatural beginnings. None of the most corrupt or vile creatures ever had special beginnings. The greatest monsters have always walked among the crowds of the blind under the guises of equally sightless eveyponies if they even bother to hide at all.

It seems that the pink one has stopped talking and is coming over here. She had better say something interesting.

"Sombra? Can I talk to you for a minute."

"Only a minute? Surely, I'm worth more attention than that!"

She stares at me dumbfounded for all of these ponies are nothing compared to the sheer power of my ego. "Umm... alright then, so yes Sombra, about a minute."

Yes, I know. You just said that. Is she the only one that can come close to responding coherently and undaunted to anything I say? Where is the wit in these ponies?! They haven't come close to improving anything but food and some of the sciences since I've returned. Alas, it seems pizza is the only creation that isn't completely moronic along with swiveling chairs and trains. All other objects I have encountered aren't really worth mentioning.

Such a sorry list.

"Well what is it? I know that you're as colorful as one of those squawking birds but I don't think I have to command you to speak like one, now do I?"

"No Sombra, I'm not a parrot. All I wanted to say is that Silver Lining was rather reluctant when I brought up that you wanted to talk to her."

"Pink One you truly need to work on your rhetoric, clearly she is petrified and I don't want to talk to her so much as I briefly want to interrogate her."

She shakes her head. "Well that isn't going to be able to happen, I have no idea what your original plan was-"

"Well, my first idea was for you to show up in a top hat and monocle bearing tea and sparkling cider as I belt out the national anthem of Equestria – despite not being able to sing and not knowing the words – as this damned Empire burns. Meanwhile, half the idiotic population of Equestria will be attending the wedding of Princess Lilac Lack-Wit and the King of the Cacti. Years later they will have an entire slew of smaller spine covered purple monstrosities which I will then purge from this world. This will result in me being crowned emperor of all known universes, which makes me His Imperial Highness, the Right-Honorable Lord Sombra the Forever Sarcastic, Duke of Nothing, Emperor of Almost All, Hero of Equestria and Slayer of the Purple Plague and Every Freaking Cactus to Ever Exist. Celestia will explode due to the sheer power of my arrogance and knowing that I have usurped her. The magic from this will somehow create an entirely new color spectrum – don't ask me how the sound of my ego blocks out the speech of all lesser beings – this of course will be eldritch in its own right and sparkle constantly for more reasons that I have no need to specify."

The pink princess gulped. "Sombra, please do me a favor: stay away from soap boxes."

"Perhaps. So what is the current plan?"

She paused and turned around for a moment to see if Silver Lining was there. She was standing outside now, although she still looked flighty when she noticed me. After noting this, Pink One continued talking. "Well, you aren't going to like this-"

"If I'm not going to like it then why are you bothering to tell me? Are you trying to imitate Purple Eyesore?"

"Well you could just listen to me-"

"You're right, I could..."

She's beginning to get visibly frustrated - she breaks eye contact to tuck a bit of her mane behind her ear. "I know you enjoy messing with me and ponies in general but for the next hour or so could you stop?"

"Maybe."

"Ugh, I suppose that's the best I'll be getting from you."

"You are correct."

"Yes, it seems that this is one of those rare occasions that you aren't choosing to be particularly condescending-" She shoots me a skeptical look to which I offer no visible response- "-at least I think so... for now. So what you wouldn't like is that Silver Lining has requested that I stay here as well to act as a mediator-"

"Because it went so well last time? After all, Purple Eyesore and I just became the best of friends."

I'm beginning to wonder just how many times she is going to put her hoof to her face. "Just how often do you plan to remind me of how you almost killed my sister-in-law?"

"As often as I want."

Pink One attempts to glare at me. "Well do you agree with what I can offer?"

"Until further notice."

She continues in her pitiful attempt to angrily glare at me. "Alright then."

After she receives no response - of which I'm often quite generous in - she trots over to the pony known as Silver Lining, most likely to inform her of this. They talk briefly but I'm not close enough to hear. Soon my newest ally waves me over as Silver Lining goes to open her front door. She silently extends a hoof in welcome to Pink One but quite reasonably does not do so for me; I hate such needless extravagances anyway. I hope this goes quickly, time is passing.

Time is running out.

四 (Where Evil Is Born)

The interior of Silver Lining's house was small enough to the point where I wondered if I should call it a cottage instead. It was neither warm nor cold, which was irritating, especially since it was always pretty stuffy in these crystal buildings.

On the walls were various images of fruit or flowers, they weren't quite tapestries or patchwork since the stitches were too obvious. I could count every one of them if I weren't repulsed by the gaudiness of these pointless baubles. Whoever made these should never be allowed to even think of themselves as a craftspony.

I know how to sew, after all. Cloaks don't patch themselves and this isn't sewing, it's somepony asking me to set these on fire and end their misery. It's just too tempting... in fact I wonder just how many delayed response enchantments I could place on these. Perhaps I could set each one to be consumed with a fire at a different time? Or use different fire for each? Small objects are positively fascinating.

Silver Lining is attempting to avoid coming too close to me and look discreet in doing so. It isn't working and I'm not sure how she thought it would. This idiot mare takes me for even more of a fool than she is.

Wow, Onyx, I haven't even heard her excuse for a story and already I can see the family resemblance.

Pink One is being ushered into a parlor where four chairs surround a small, low table. Two are leaning against the wall where a shelf hangs above them, a few knickknacks covering its surface, the shinier ones catching bits of sunlight coming through the window.

Pink One selects a chair in a manner more cheerily than I thought possible. Silver Lining tries not to look at me but gestures ever so slightly with her head to everything in front of me as if I were bli - couldn't see for myself.

I glare at her until she decides to sit down before leaning against a nearby wall, which causes Pink One to shoot me a questioning look. When she gets no response from me she simply sighs and then turns to face Silver, who looks less nervous now that she believes I'm a safe distance away from her.

Ha, I should be the one to be glad to be a safe distance from her. Ponies should realize that I'll only hurt them if they irritate me enough, and to irritate me, they generally have to be pretty close to me, now don't they? All she has to do is stay away from me. What a grandiose and convoluted concept.

"So Pink One, I presume you'll do the talking until I decide to narcissistically butt in or my peaceful and tranquil demeanor is required in an attempt to coerce information from-"

"Sombra, for the last time, this isn't an interrogation!"

I gave her a flat stare. "It isn't an interrogation yet."

She tried to give an even flatter stare but was overcome by the superiority of mine, so she just chose to stare at the ceiling in exasperation while her gaze spoke only of the sweet mercy that death would bring.

Pink One loves me, deep down inside within that black and twisted soul of hers, she remains my biggest fan whom I can degrade at any moment, as with the rest of this nation's population.

She ends up sighing and turns to Silver Lining. "Is is alright if I call you 'Silver'?" she asks and receives a nod.

I guess I'll call her that until I bother to come up with something else to call her, provided she's worthy of course. Otherwise, she will remain as nameless as most of the other faces I've had the misfortune of encountering.

For now, I'll listen.

...

"So Silver, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? I don't want to be so rude as to not know more about you," Pink One asks with a sickeningly sweet smile.

So Pink One, can you see me making gagging motions with my hoof? Wait... you're looking in my direction... yes, you see the beauty of my pantomime! Wow... you aren't the Princess of Glaring. Very ineffective, Pink One.

She somehow manages to ignore me - or at least pretend to - and listen to Silver's response after the Crystalline mare's puzzled gaze is no longer on me.

If there's anything I remember about this place, it's that a resident - especially a crystal pony one - is called Crystalline, as are many of their other cultural elements. Part of me hates myself for remembering that.

"Well," Silver punctuates this with a nervous swallow and it's no secret as to who it's for, "I'm a baker. I've been one for years before... I, umm, Princess I'm not sure I should say anything since he's right over-"

"Since I'm right over here and can hear everything? Yes, of course that's just the most inopportune moment to mention what you believe to be my tyrannical overthrow of your queen and the murder of countless citizens of a broken empire. Please, I've heard it all before and perhaps if you can manage the near unachievable feat of wording something eloquently I'll let you get away with such an insult, but just this once."

"Umm... maybe I'll just skip that part then," she says, looking at me like I'm something that fell from the sky, "and move onto something else right... err, what should I call you?"

"My name is Sombra. Just Sombra, no titles in front of it, I'm not fond of them."

Silver appears slightly less tense after I say that. "Alright then... S-Sombra."

I said slightly.

The sometimes helpful Pink One decides to take over once it becomes clear that I'm not going to talk much right now.

Really, I know she's Celestia's student but how?! Lavender Loudmouth clearly has 'Product of Celestia' written all over her but Pink One is almost endearing at times.

"Silver could you tell Sombra and I about your life? Just give us some family background and biography."

"I'm sorry, Princess, but why do you want me to tell you this? It doesn't seem to be very important."

"Trust me, this is something very important we need to hear and then we have something to tell you, or rather Sombra has something to tell you."

I honestly hope not, I don't want to tell her anything. This is going to be like the Magicspire all over again.

...

"Well, I was born in this house nineteen years before-"

"Okay, I get it! you're twenty eight years old! I don't need a reminder!"

Pink One's hooves are really fond of her face. "Sombra..."

"Fine, I'll stop. But only until my next interruption." Which will most likely be soon.

Silver Lining clears her throat. "As I was saying, I was born in this house which has undergone many renovations since I was a little filly."

I still think your house is awful but it really must have been quite the hole-in-the-ground before. What could it have been like here before? Did you build the walls out of manure? Did you dwell in your own filth and ignorance for your entire foalhood?

"I didn't have any elder siblings, just my parents. My mother was named Swan Song and she was a bard. My father, Melanite, owned a flugelhorn and played that to make money. They both came from very poor backgrounds, and became even more so once they married. It didn't help that times were hard and even Queen Opal Charm couldn't do much to help. But they were happy and despite their quiet natures they only cared about making others happy. I don't know if we had any other family although I think Mother mentioned having a sister who lived even farther in the mountains. She was married but I don't know what happened to her."

She suspects I had something to do with it. Silver might not be wrong either, but even I'm not sure. Perhaps she notes this and continues on with her story or maybe she doesn't. Anyway, she continues to speak.

"Mother would sing beautifully and Father would would play pieces he had memorized to go with her voice. As I grew older it became clear I was meant to sing as well, so Mother began to teach me."

From her chair Princess Amore is gushing over this like a little filly.

Not endearing at all, Pink One.

"When I was three I learned that I was going to be a big sister."

Wait, what?! My ears perked up at this because I didn't see any other pony here.

Unless... was I the reason for that? Let's see... if she was four when her sibling was born...

"Eleven months later, I was a big sister... but my mother didn't make it... Father wouldn't let me in the room, but I knew. I was supposed to go get a midwife from the city but the mountain was too hard for her to climb, and she slipped so we were too late when we got back to the house."

I stop just long enough to listen to her and glimpse Pink One's expression of sympathy. She's got enough for five ponies.

"It was June 20th when he was born. I had a little brother."

Wait... a brother.

She's twenty eight...

He'd be...

H-Her brother is... he's Onyx.

I...

Her brother's Onyx...

Silver Lining continues to speak but I think I'm the only one who noticed that the temperature in the room had just dropped drastically.

"And after all that, Father said we couldn't keep him. With Mother gone there wouldn't be anypony to work, he said he wasn't going to make me work since I was too young. If we kept my brother, we'd all be starving by winter."

Onyx doesn't know when he was born, or at least not an exact date. Not all the foals he grew up with knew their exact birth dates so those two mares who ran the place where he spent the first eight years of his life decided to celebrate these birth anniversaries of the unknown on four different days: one for each season.

All Onyx knew is that he was born in summer.

Now I know when he was born, but yet I still have no idea of when I was created. Not that I want to celebrate it, that is.

"Father knew of a place where foals, no matter what kind of home they came from, would be cared for. It was run by two mares in the city, which was quite the commute for us then since there weren't any roads through the mountains then. They were reputed to teach all sorts of things as well, like reading and writing which my parents had never learned. I only learned recently," she adds that last part with a sheepish but sad smile.

"Go on, Silver," Amore encourages, her eyes growing wider with each part she hears.

Silver Lining nods solemnly. "My father and I made our way into the city I kept begging him to not go ahead with this, I wanted to keep my baby brother so much. Before Mother died we had even set up a swing in front of the house for him, it's still there too. When we arrived at the building Father still refused to listen to me. I wanted to keep him, I really did. He said I could name him, that was it. 'Give him a good name and then say good-bye, Silvey.' It seemed so cruel. So I named him Onyx for his gray coat."

I always thought he was named Onyx because nopony could figure out how many O's to put in 'Ooops'.

Pink One levitates one of the trinkets from the shelf down. Two frames. "Are these them?"

A nod.

Pink One passes them to me. Silver continues to talk and I think it's getting colder by the minute...

"We left," she says bitterly, "and I got this."

She points to her mark. The clouds and sunlight.

"I vowed that I would come back when I had enough to take care of a third family member."

The first picture is of a plain grayish purple stallion. The paint is cheap and has flaked quite a bit but I can still see that his coat looks like slush after it snows but his eyes have faded too much for me to see what color they were. I also can't see what his mark his since it appears that both paintings are only from the neck up.

"When I was seven years old I did all sorts of things to gain food: odd errands on the farms, selling all of Mother's pots and pans, selling preserved flowers in winter time. I did it all so I could get my brother back as well as feed Father and myself. Since Mother's death, father had become almost catatonic. He barely ate or moved. His eyes were glassy. When he spoke it was when he thought I couldn't hear. He was always a mild stallion, good-humored and easy going so you can imagine my shock when I could hear him cursing young Onyx - who we didn't even know - like he was King Stolas of Tartarus. He blamed Onyx for mother's death. He blamed everypony but me. Soon he stopped talking all together; I wasn't that worried since he'd long since stopped playing, that had worried me far more since it had been his pride and joy."

I examined the second portrait, it was the mare, Swan Song. She had a long mane that was pinned straight and fitted with a cheap looking jeweled headband - probably copper and paste. Her coat was a frosty silver with dull blue mixed in, especially in her mane. She had a small smile, as if she so foolishly believed nothing could ever go wrong. Her eyes were a glittering brown but still looked as dead as diamonds to me.

Suffice to say I did not find this mare to be 'pretty'.

"By this time I was an apprentice baker slowly working my way into the heart of the city to where my brother was. One day I came home... and Father was simply gone. I looked all over the house for him but he wasn't there. I would have gone to the nearest farmer for help but that night I was snowed in and the next morning nopony could find any trace of him. They told me he was probably dead."

Pink One brought her forehooves to her face again but not for the same reason as she had before.

Silver Lining moves to sit next to her, and continues to tell her story from there.

"I moved in with the baker I worked for and lived with his family, a wife, son, and two little fillies. They could never replace the family I had lost, but I still loved them. The house in which we sit right now - at the time it was closed and all the belongings packed away - would be mine once again when I was old enough to live on my own. Since I no longer had to pay for the care and maintenance of property, I was able to save more and in the year my little Onyx would have been twelve I finally had enough to care for him as well... only to find out that somepony had already beat me to adopting him. and they didn't even live in the Empire! Light and Clarity told me he was adopted by a wizard who was going to teach him magic."

He didn't quite learn magic, Silver, but... he did perform quite a feat.

Pink One's hooves are no longer surrounding her face and her eyes are a bit red. "Then what?"

Silver draws a deep breath. "I was nineteen that day. I left the house of my adopted family with a wagonload of supplies since I was moving back into this old place. They laughed and told me I had enough supplies to feed an army for a tiny mare such as myself."

Another deep breath. "I left early, and was working on unloading things in the cellar when the shadow came...I think y-you both know what happened next."

I know what happened all too well.

It wasn't me, at least not that day.

"I had enough to feed a small army after all, so foe eight years I hid in the cellar. Eight years turned into one thousand one-hundred and eight... again, you both know what came next. Once the Heart was restored I was happy for a short while... except that I learned later that my adopted family was dead, and the orphanage that housed all records on my brother was destroyed. Once again, the ponies there were dead as well."

She's looking at me, I don't react nor do I feel anything towards this mare.

"What is it you wanted to tell me?"

Both Silver and myself received an almost apprehensive look from Pink One.

"I knew your brother."

Silver Lining shrieks.

五 (The Ace of Diamonds)

Pink One catches the mare right before she falls over. She looks slightly apprehensive since she hasn't heard this story either. All Pink One knows about Onyx is that he was a worthless brat that was very fond of bloodshed and was the caster of the spell that created me. Luckily, she seems to be able to put two and two together from there so I don't have to tell her anything else.

Silver Lining, on the other hoof knows nothing about what happened to Onyx past the day that he was born.

I watch as Pink One steadies Silver Lining who has recovered just enough to sit up on her own.

"What happened to him?" Silver asks nervously.

Ahh, the inevitable question. How I despise you so.

As decently uncomfortable as this is I still decide to tell her the story.

But only part of it.

Silver Lining, who couldn't even attempt to win a staring contest against against a flower with that shifty, nervous gaze of hers and Pink One, who knew much more than this Silver would ever know listened with an expression of thinly masked shock. She couldn't hold my gaze either and her forehooves located a strand of her suspiciously colorful mane to twirl.

I left out many parts that didn't directly pertain to why her brother is the worst thing in the world, followed only by cacti, and a few things of dwindling importance. I did not tell of Starswirl's temperament for he wasn't worth mentioning and is too trivial for me allot a satisfying amount of wrath to. I didn't mention Onyx by name either or who Starswirl's other apprentices are, merely that they existed.

As I went on Silver Lining's expression showed more and more confusion. I had gotten to somewhere around when Onyx was ten when she had the nerve to interrupt me.

"I don't get it," her voice was somewhat shaky. I don't think she quite gets the fact that her brother is an idiotic sociopath and sadistic megalomaniac who is the root of his own misery and horrors I refuse to mention on my part.

"Well here's some advice, try listening," I snap.

The gaze of the pink one travels between us both. She's wondering if she should intervene before I kill one of her subjects but Silver Lining, a shining example that stupidity does run in Onyx's family, interrupts. Again. If she does this a third time I really will kill her no matter what Pink One over there tries.

"I just don't understand, you said you knew him yet you don't seem to appear in any of these awful tales. I would have guessed that you were one of the other apprentices but you mentioned many anecdotes of Onyx's foalhood where you describe what he was thinking, something you wouldn't know unless he told you, right?"

...right?

"Just shut up."

Pink One catches on to something and sits up, eyes alert. "Sombra, are you alright?"

...Right?

"I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE JUST LIKE HIM! NEITHER OF YOU LISTEN TO ANYTHING AROUND YOU! THE SAME, YOU'RE ALL THE SAME!"

'At least he can't rise to Starswirl levels of awful, right?'

"JUST SHUT UP! YOU'RE WORSE THAN HE WAS!"

I unsheathe Phobos and everything is focused around Onyx's sister. She's the center of it all. There can't be another one of him, I can't live that again, I don't want to!

"I'M BETTER! I AM, SHUT UP ONYX!"

I won't ever go back to that castle because Onyx is right here and I'm going to kill him.

I've almost got the perfect opening before there's a blast of blue light everywhere.

...

The pink one is admittedly decent when it comes to creating magical barriers, which is what happened back in his sister's house.

I tried to kill her.

I'm not sorry.

Pink One said I mistook his sister for him, I've never done that before. I'm always focused, I know what I'm doing and who's around me. Every time this happened it's simply because I'm sick and tired of the antics of somepony else, and lo and behold their stupidity typically reaches its climax as they trigger my irritability and laughably short patience for the last time.

I'm never sorry, either. It doesn't worry me, I have no reason to be sorry to just another face who has done that.

She didn't manage things that well, but then again I'm known for being unmanageable but Amore was able to get me out of there while she explained the last bit of my story to his sister.

I burned down his sister's tree. She was crying and I didn't care because he doesn't deserve everything and she needs to move as far away from him as possible because she still can. Nopony will think of her as his sister when they see her, they won't define her by that by judging her unfairly even though I think she might deserve it. But every time somepony looks at me all they can see is what happened at the Empire.

I'm their scapegoat. I was his.

It's ponies like Pink One who don't make me a demon that adults use to frighten foals with. They can't see me, but she's observant enough to realize that I'm me, I'm Sombra and I'm bigger than what everpony thinks I am.

I'm so wonderfully superior to all these stereotypes that simply can't hold up. They should be scared of me because I have every right to hurt ponies for what they've done.

Ponies can keep their lies, they don't have to reflect upon anything if they even have the ability to.

But, hey, I don't have to let them live if they make me mad, now do I?

They are muted lies who don't even remember themselves.

I'm Sombra. I'm not the king, nor was I ever.

I'm cold and honest and if it's up to me, which it is I'm just getting started.

Outside of me there is only silence as I watch the hills roll by. Snow sticks to the windows of the train as I head back towards Canterlot. Soon enough those tiny crystals will melt when they meet the Equestrian summer.

The color of my hooves is not gray this time, and I only resemble what one could expect if they knew me, and few do. When it comes to boarding trains I always travel in disguise.

I smirk because I've become quite partial to this one. A unicorn stallion with a white coat and my shaggy black mane still there, bangs falling over green eyes. Fake marks, such a those gained from certain illnesses are not convincing or a smart choice but a mark that is an illusion's product will work well enough if casted by somepony who knows what they are doing.

So I bear the mark of a few playing cards: a pink ace of hearts that comes in handy from time to time. That one is oddly faithful. Next is the purple ace of cloves, as necessary as it is for a win it is utterly obnoxious. The only one left is the gold ace of diamonds, as amusingly dense as she is, it is still a card required for the win I desire. I wonder how much I'll be able to boast once I get to pocket that one.

After all, it is my current pursuit.

Author's Note

If a few things in this chapter don't make sense to you (mostly the whole thing with 'right?') then you probably haven't read Through The Snow.

六 (No Escape From Reality)

I had made it. Finally, I was back in Canterlot. Or rather I was on the mountain Canterlot was built into. The city was still visible below. I could see the gold spires shining beneath the starlight, which was reflected by the rivers that flowed through the city. On the borders of those rivers were the faintest outlines of various flora, which were much more plentiful up here on the unfrequented territory closer to the summit.

It's great up here where I'm the only thing that isn't a flower of some kind, and I can see everything, and there was never a space between the earth and the sky. I can hear everything but ponies as well: wind, water, and sky. I don't care if somepony tells me I'm a stupid romantic and that the sky can't make any sound, because it can and I've heard it. That's all the proof I need, and who knows, maybe I am a romantic and at least I don't care what might be said about that.

I don't want to lose this.

I live near the top of this mountain, where the plants still are able to grow. There are these small ones that grow all over this place. They grow close to the ground in clumps and possess three or four leaves. I'm not a botanist but I don't ever recall hearing a formal name for these plants. The closest I've heard is calling it 'clover' like the old errand filly of Starswirl's, but I don't see much of a connection between the two.

I don't do much during the day, those trips I went on with Amore and the unmentionable disaster that results when you combine blue, red, and ignorance before stirring generously were the only real exceptions. Really, who wants to be up playing foalsitter with the sun shining in their eyes all the time? Not me.

At least the pink one could feed herself, I had to poison the other one to get her to shut up.

I look up to the stars and shake my head before continuing on my hike. Sometimes there is no need for words.

...

It took me a while but I'm here. If there's one thing I don't mind about travelling, it's being able to have both a journey and a destination.
Anypony who found this place wouldn't think to stop here, which is why I enjoy it here. It is a place to breathe of all things. You can't find those in a train or a city street.

I reside in this clearing. There's a few small trees that grow towards the mountain. A decent coat of grass grows across the ground but pebbles and other small rocky debris still manage to find their way through the green. Only a few steps away is an outlook where I can stand and see all of Canterlot without them ever knowing. It's very vulnerable to the wind which when I stand there with nothing around me I wonder if that's what flying feelings like. Personally, I don't want to do anything close to flying the very idea of hanging in the sky like that makes my stomach sick. There aren't any buildings here, I don't stay in such common things if I can help it. Since the first portion of my life was spent outside, before I was trapped, I prefer to stay in places like this. Most buildings feel like boxes if anything. I don't consider myself to be claustrophobic, I simply don't enjoy being in a place that I can't leave easily. I find it to be very irksome.

Where I do stay is not in any earthly location. My horn glows with a generous cloud of shimmering crimson and the air in front of me starts to shift and waver as a patch of gray becomes more and more prominent. As the spell goes on longer, the interior of the pocket dimension becomes more focused. Everything inside is in various shades of dark gray that are muted and blends together at points. It is somewhat dim for somepony who isn't used to or inclined to low lighting.

There are äerint gleaming inside, clusters of varying shapes and sizes have grown in many locations and the outlines of a good deal of books can be seen lining the stalks as if it were a shelf. Some don't fit on it or can't be balanced right and since I don't care who enchanted them, those books simply ended up being stacked at the crystals' bases. There's a few other things in there as well but most of the objects in here are just magic treatises, non-magic treatises, recorded history on what happened while I was gone, and maths books.

I toss Phobos and its sheath in there with my magic and turn around, listening for the telltale fizzling sign that the gate I opened had closed behind me. A few twigs snapped beneath my hooves as I trotted to the outcrop and sat down.

I levitate my saddlebags next to me and unfasten the buttons that fasten them shut with magic. The fact that those buttons are made of onyx stone is purely a coincidence. I withdraw a needle and thread, levitating the thin piece of metal within the translucent crimson. I then hold up the edge of my cloak which has a rather nasty tear in it from events earlier in the day. It won't need to be patched, which is good. This cloak has seen quite a bit of wear, the hem no longer exists as it only goes midway down my leg since I tore it to look so, months ago. The hood is still intact but the fabric has faded somewhat so the crimson isn’t quite as strong, I quite like that. Patches of earthy colors, many which are indistinguishable from one another are sewn all over in random spaces where a hole happened to be.

I start working on the tear, after all I don't want it to become a liability later.

So many ponies would try to fill the quiet with wasted words, as meaningless as I find their only lives. It is times like these that I treasure most. No juvenile princesses to bother me is always a plus.

There's only quiet so as long as you don't listen.

I'm not immortal, and I won't say I am because I'm quite a few things, but I'm not a liar. I've only lied, what three... maybe five times in my entire life.

I'm going to die.

I pieced myself back together once but the Crystal Heart sure as Tartarus didn't kill me, it didn't even come close to that.

I'm going to die because I'm not an immortal, nor was I ever. The same spell that banished me was powerful enough to tie a knot in the thread that keeps me connected to Onyx, and it is that very spell that is killing me. I said something like this to Amore Cadenza, probably just me paraphrasing the full information.

You can't take the soul of a mortal, even one as exceptional as myself, lock it away in a form that is barely physical for slightly over a millennium and then have that same creature appear forward in time without any negative effects. Were I an ordinary pony of any kind, I probably would have been reduced to a raving mad mess, destroyed by my own thoughts and the mental effects of time itself before the first five centuries were over. I'm very lucky to be so superior to the common sort.

Technically, I should be dead. I have only lasted this long because of my magic.

I've done everything I can to keep that from happening, which has descended into me using my own magic to keep myself alive. This of course, stunts the amount of magic I can use at certain times and restricts courses of action that I can take, but means I must try to keep my magic as stable as possible if needed by not using it in excess.

I possessed the purple princess for this reason. She has vast amounts of magic radiating from her but a highly unstable mind that just needed to be chipped away a bit. The teleportation I did from the desert to Canterlot while fully within my potential and necessary to save time was probably the biggest move that wasn't in my favor.

See, there isn't anything that makes everlasting life that I know of or have access to. It wouldn't exist, at least not on this plane. I wage a war of my own just to keep myself alive. Many years ago, a younger and much more naive me thought of how boring ponies are. To him, the world itself had so much more potential even if the ponies were worthless.

As usual, I was right. The thing is now, I've seen a bit more of this world and it's great. I want to stay here, I want to go places and read things. I even want to talk to the one friend that I have even if it is just to remind her that I'm an arrogant jerk with a superiority complex.

But I can't do that if I'm dead. I spent most of my life as a prisoner to the cruelest creature that could be and then to a purgatory of ice and darkness that wasn't as bad as it seems. To me there's only two things that separate this world from the Tartarus I'll end up in and one of those is freedom.

Never again do I want to be a prisoner, but even worse I don't want to be a weapon again or even see him after all he's done even if death is the only thing that would truly separate us. The second thing, if you can really call it that, is what truly separates them, the single factor that I care about and it makes all the difference. Like night and day, they take place in the same sky but could they be any more different? They are to me, and that's what matters.

I don't want to die before I ever got a chance to live.

七 (A Second Chance)

A few months earlier.

I stretched out my foreleg to make sure it still worked and that I had put everything back together right. So far everything felt fine although I don't think there was quite as much feeling in there compared to what I remember.

Oh well, it shouldn't prove to be too much a problem if I forgot to properly connect a few nerves in my left foreleg. I can fix that later, anyway. I'm more concerned with the fact that I'm alive.

Perhaps the most important part of all is that I'm me, and only me. That heart the crystal ponies loved so much may have blown up my body and expelled me from the Empire's borders but it would be laughable to think that such a thing could kill me. In fact, I think it may of helped me instead, just like the spell of the two Alicorn sisters.

Suffice to say, I know exactly why that heart didn't kill me.

Hmm, laughable... could I still laugh? I tried to and it just ended up sounding more like a hoarse cough instead. I'm still not used to having my voice as it truly is back. That spell Onyx used to make it sound so... well, laughably villainous would be the right term I suppose... wasn't exactly strain-free on my part but why would he care about that when he can be off playing tyrant?

I let out another cough. Unfortunately, there are still some traces of it in my voice but not too much, thank goodness. It should wear off soon, maybe in a day or two? It's a bit hard to tell with all this disorienting light. I'm not sure if it is the light of the sun or the moon since I'm out here in a blizzard. I can barely make out the Gemheart Mountains in the distance. I'm knee-deep in snow but it doesn't feel cold at all.

After being trapped in a cold lightless void for so long, snow is warm. But that might be just a temporary occurrence as well.

It would be awfully nice to know if it was day or night right now under all the snow being whipped about by the howling wind but I don't know any spells designed for adjusting weather without being detected.

I should get moving now since I won't last much longer out here...

I stop walking and squint at the horizon and shield my eyes from the snow with my bare hoof. Those aren't the mountains in the distance... I'm standing right in their shadow.

This is just great, I can barely see anything so what's left of my vision must not have been fixed as well. I need more time, but as if that isn't enough I'm stuck in the Empire of all places, which like myself still hasn't fully regenerated enough to take up the entirety of the vale.

So, right now I must be standing in what could soon be foothills. Lovely.

I doubt I'll have enough time to leave the borders that the mountains make up and even so, I wouldn't have anywhere to go. It has been one thousand and one hundred years after all and there's bound to be peasants everywhere. I don't know any places outside of the Empire and a few areas up north that are considerably more frozen.

I don't want to go there anyway. There is nothing I want up there, all my chances lie to the south, assuming wherever it was that those two Alicorns ruled still exists.

I wrangle the hood of the plain cloak I conjured and yank the crimson fabric over my head. Maybe it isn't such a bad thing being stuck here. Sure, my magic may be maladjusted for now but with enough time I can fix that. Nopony here goes in the mountains and there's bound to be some individual that thinks I survived and I can't let them know without a grand entrance now can I? So what else can I do but regenerate right under their muzzles?

That new pink princess that they stuck on the throne can't be much more than a puppet any way. I ought to test her since she could prove to be quite the toy later on for whatever crazy ideas I have in the future. Really, she's got to be a toy those colors can't be natural.

She looks like candy.

Behind me is the faint silhouette of what I now know are the mountains themselves. If I remember correctly this one had abandoned mines, so it would be a good place to stay and wait until my magic is what it should be.

As I head that way my hoof catches on something hard in the snow and I stumble a bit. I brush of the many layers of snow covering the object, which I can see is frozen so I levitate the chunk of ice from the snow with my magic. Through the red glow and the snow I can see what appears to be some kind of stones. Oddly enough they radiate magic of some kind, my senses are still a bit garbled but I can feel a few basic enchantments laid in there. Nothing harmful but the traces are a quite dull now. What could they be?

Keeping in mind that the objects inside this chunk of ice I have yanked from the ground might not be stones or something that can take damage well I do my best to keep the dark fire I use as controlled as possible as well as minding the position of each bit as the ice begins to melt. It's not as easy as I would like to say since the aura on my horn threatens to die multiple times since it has been quite a while since I've done this.

Soon, one stone finds it's way to the ground and hits the snow with a faint hiss.

Then there's another, and another. It continues until I've defrosted each piece.

Now I know that they are silver fragments, a few are a bit warped around the edges from where I wasn't careful enough with my flame.

With my personal magic, that has the aura that is same crimson as my eyes, I lift the shards of what was once a very familiar weapon out of the snow and tuck them into a small interior pocket in my cloak, which aside from the hood is the only 'luxury' to it. It is only now that I really head towards the mountain.

Don't worry, I still remember.

八 (Children Are Evil)

I don't know why I did what I did, but I ended up falling asleep on the mountain outcropping of all places. Worst of all the sun is up, trying to burn out my eyes.

It's too damn early for this. I should still be asleep.

It's too damn early for everything.

It doesn't matter now, I'm awake when I'm awake. Bloody stupid sunlight. I get up and pick a few leaves out of my mane before slinging my saddlebags across my back. I'm no sundial but I can do the job of one very well, thank you very much. It's just another thing I've learned since I've got to tell time somehow.

I don't need any annoying mechanical device to tell me it's still too early to be doing anything. Even the Purple Plebeian was able to realize I'm not diurnal. I'm not even sure if I need to sleep since I'm no normal equine and I've gotten away with such things before.

Leaning forward a bit, I am able to glimpse Canterlot if I peer below. For a city I don't possess an extreme hatred for it is awfully crowded but that won't matter since this works in my favor.

A rather peculiar rumor happened to be overheard by none other than a certain rather magnificent and arrogant unicorn. It concerned some kind of amulet that was brought to a village sometime before I truly re-appeared. It was no ordinary amulet either. All I have to go off of is that the village is within a few days of Canterlot and that it messed with the mind of the unicorn who wielded it.

I have to get to that amulet. Somepony in this city must know of it so I'll just have to go back and see what else I can find out.

A few spells later and Phobos is at my side, my cloak has turned brown for the sake of a disguise, and I now resemble the same unicorn as I did on the train here.

I really need to find a fitting name to assume for when I'm like this. I'm quite partial to Wild Card but something I didn't come up with off the top of my head is preferable.

I want to find that dreaded amulet before anypony else does because so far nothing about it sounds good. I'll do this without talking to anypony either because it's still too early, especially to be associating with peasants. The Right-Honourable Lord Sombra, Duke of Nothing is above such trivial matters.

...

Canterlot is best at night when ponies have the decency to stay indoors where I won't be sickened at the sight of them. It's almost clever for lowly beings such as them. However since it's only about noon or so there are ponies everywhere.

The stone streets are overwhelmed with the sound of hooves, mindless conversation, and a few vendors. The only things safe from the onslaught of ponies swarming the ground are the lamp posts and buildings of white, gold, and purple that rise from the ground.

I don't think I'll try figuring out anything here. There are too many possibilities that things are going to go wrong, and by wrong I mean that some air head is going to annoy me to the point of anger. Asking around for an amulet that may corrupt the minds of ponies is not the best idea either. Even if I did want to waste my time creating a plethora of disguises along with marks to go with each I'd still have to come up with a spell to disguise my voice for each and every one. While only a few ponies know my voice there's still no proof that somepony won't recognize me... somehow... and then once that happens I'll have an annoying mob.

After all what could be better than getting attention? Having every single pony know your name and face memorized.

What could be greater than being unjustly hated by millions who don't even know you? Surely, being blamed for the deaths of hundreds even though it wasn't your fault is everypony's dream?

Who wants to have their name stolen from them and flaunted by their worst enemy like a trophy? Who wants to be sealed away knowing that the sick confinement that they experienced there was the closest they had to true freedom?

Who wants to be everypony's scapegoat, everypony's demon? Do you want your face to be known by all because surely you don't have a story that ever mattered, after all you aren't even considered to be alive? Yes, who wants attention? Who wants to be thrust into the future to be given the faintest chance of happiness possible, torn between the mess I inherited and the few things I ever wanted?

After all, isn't attention what I always wanted?

No.

It was merely inevitable.

...

My thoughts are interrupted by a voice behind me. At first that is all I know, I do not know who the voice could belong to except that it is nopony I know. I've turned quite a few streets since arriving in Canterlot, going from tavern to tavern skillfully asking for any news about this trinket.

I turn to face whoever that is that dares to pester me, and find that instead of some drunken fool staring at me with bleary eyes I am looking down at a young pegasus colt with a bright green coat, shock white mane, and a nervous tic. He has saddlebags of his own and they are overstuffed with various materials that I cannot distinguish from one another.

What is a foal who is probably no more than ten years old doing in this district of the city?

The afternoon sun shines down through the roofs and the colt twitches slightly. He doesn't look scared, in fact he smiles.

I just hope this foal doesn't turn out to be a sociopath like the last one I had the misfortune of dealing with.

九 (Totally Casual Banter)

"Hi!" he calls, "I'm Firefly, what's your name?"

"Don't you have a mundane and pointless existence to participate in until the supposed mercy of death comes to release my ears from your ruckus?"

"Woah, that sounds cool!"

How is this one still alive? How are any of them still alive?! Is it because these ponies are all hivemind entities of some kind?

"You must be really smart but you're also really grumpy. So does that make you... umm, they're called Stoics, right? Ponies who don't waste words or smile a lot?"

"Congratulations, small, annoying mortal, you have vaguely managed to define a word in a slightly less asinine way than everypony else. Celestia applauds your effort, may you bring your fellow morons out of ignorance and slay the purple scourge that dares to pass itself off as intelligent. But to do all this, you have to leave me alone, a foreign and difficult task for many of your kind that has eluded their minds for centuries."

All this does is make Mayfly laugh and smile more. He takes a few steps closer to me until I get the urge to poke him with a stick until this creature leaves me alone.

"So what's your name?"

"Currently unsaid."

"How are you?"

"Dissatisfied with your existence."

"You like magic right?"

"More than I like you."

"Cool! So you were asking about an amulet right? A few streets back you went into a diner where I was eating, you called it a tavern and started asking for information real discreetly but you didn't get any."

"What's your point?" I really don't see why a child would be following me around. They have nothing to gain from doing so.

Mayfly doesn't answer, instead he sees the metal boots I wear.

"Those are so cool!" he exclaims and tries to yank the one on my left foreleg off but to no avail. All he manages to make me do is consider kicking him very hard since that is the boot I keep on the leg I broke at the Magicspire. Sure, I tricked somepony into healing it but I also have some runes etched in the metal's interior to create a sort of brace if needed since I can't heal myself. It really does bother me, as does this foal.

I push him away because I've already let him talk to me for long enough. Mayfly frowns. "What was that for?"

"Existing, now either get to the point of what you are following me for or I'll introduce you to the point of this sword," I say calmly gesturing to Phobos with a forehoof.

"Well, you wanted to know what happened in Ponyville, didn't you?"

"Is Ponyville the village where the incident happened?"

He bobs his head in a nod before twitching again. "Yeah. So are you ever going to tell me your name? Or why you want some magic necklace of all things?"

Again with these pointless questions. Does this child really expect me to answer him? "My name is none of your business and I want that necklace, or more properly, that amulet so that I might confirm my suspicions of it."

"But then what should I call you?"

"You wouldn't like my name if you knew it."

Mayfly laughs again. "It can't be that bad of a name."

I sigh because this parasite didn't deserve that much of an explanation. "It's not that my name is bad, it's what others associate with it."

To my surprise, Mayfly simply nodded. "Alright. So do you want a map or something? For when you go to find this thing, that is."

I have been needing a map of all the cities here now that I abandoned my desert residence. Even when I was there, I only had a few regional maps but none detailing this area or surrounding cities. "Do you happen to have one?"

Mayfly started rummaging through his saddlebags and pulled out a crumpled map, before he tossed it to me. I caught it in my magic and watched as he began scooping up other objects that had fallen out: more maps, gold coins, various small foodstuffs, and colorful booklets of somepony in a cape and bold letters that puzzled me. He snatched those back up rather quickly as if he thought I'd steal something so cheaply made and boring.

"So, what are you, a runaway?" I suspected as much when I saw everything in his saddlebags. There's at least a week's worth of food in there if he were to stretch it and the look in his eyes when I say this tells me that once again I am right about something.

"Y-You aren't going to tell anypony?"

"Why are you under the impression that I care? You are but a mayfly to me," I reply coolly.

"But there's probably going to be a reward and-"

"I don't care. Money is disgusting and useless to me. I can take mundane objects and manipulate others enough into thinking they have an actual value, but that doesn't mean whatever trinket I've decided to use really has any."

"Huh?"

I bring my hoof to my face. "I just said that I completely disregard the denominational value of the small chunks of gold you exchange for more practical objects."

"I still don't get it."

"Apparently whatever education system you have here doesn't either. You know if I cared, I could probably make this entire country mine in a fortnight."

Mayfly just blinks and shakes his head as if that might clear the dazed look in his eyes. "You're weird."

"A very sound observation, let me know when you write the thesis. Now, I would like to know exactly where you are going since if it's something illegal that spites Celestia, I want in."

Mayfly's eyes go wide with what appears to be shock. He unfolds his wings and in one short burst of speed he flies and lands almost directly in front of me because that's a surefire way to make me sympathetic to your meaningless existence. Everypony in this city must have a deathwish.

It doesn't help that this pathetic foal starts to talk very fast with lovely sentences only slightly longer than his attention span and how long I project he will live.

"You're a mercenary! That's so cool! But you're a mercenary that doesn't take coin?! You're really cool! Please be my friend!"

"I already have a friend."

"Make more friends!"

"I'll have to dispose of the one I already have."

"You're messing with me aren't you?" Mayfly says, squinting at me with suspicion.

"Really? How could I mess with somepony, I am the epitome of sincerity and scoff at such a cruel accusation from an unruly foal! You hurt me so, I weep on the inside for my soul has been wounded by your malice," I proclaim, a forehoof raised dramatically for effect with as much of a falsetto as I care to muster at the moment.

It also appears I have rendered this child speechless. His expression says that he has now begun to question everything in the universe, perhaps even the universe itself? It seems that my magnificence has given birth to a skeptic! From here on after his soul will beg to be saved from the cruel existence which he has entered now that he is marginally less ignorant since he has been gifted with my presence.

Mayfly twitches once more, as if he were shocked by something and to my dismay, the existential horror I've induced in this foal has vanished.

"You're hired," he says, smiling brightly.

I have agreed to no such condition. If this one turns out anything like the last fool of a youth that 'hired' me, I can guarantee that the results will involve this Mayfly getting crushed.

"D'ya have anything else to say?"

"Could you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Burst into flames and die."

十 (Life is Suffering and Sombra Knows it)

Ponies are fond of conversation that they believe will add meaning to their lives. It stops being funny until somepony decides to say something ironic, but most of the time they just talk on and on until the air is cluttered with their meaningless garbage and ill-chosen phrases. Most of the time I can get somepony to stop talking by screaming at them and threatening their lives.

Other than that, I don't pay them any attention. There is no reason to. I'm not a nihilist. The lives of ponies are quite meaningless. There is no reason for them to be here.

So yes, life is meaningless. Unless you're me. End of story.

As Pest leads the way through the streets of Canterlot that lead closer to the castle, he won't stop talking.

Most of what he says has no point. I don't care that he came from Whinneyapolis to return to Canterlot where he was born or that he survived being struck by lightning when he was younger. I simply wait for him to get to the point where he explains what he thinks I'll be so helpful for. I'm surprised that he thinks I won't ditch him if I find out this isn't interesting.

He's still going on, right now it's something about that cloud city, well at least the one around these parts, I've been to the smaller one in the south. Weather magic is still something I don't have much knowledge on so I wasn't sure how that city was constructed. I did know that I am unlikely to ever visit one again considering how much I-

"Are you even listening to me?"

"No."

"Well, I was about to tell you what I needed you to do."

"Finally! I've always been one for killing time but your attempt at banter is what really causes it to die. It suffers because of ponies like you."

Mayfly mutters something I also don't care to listen to and bows his head slightly. "Well anyway we're here now."

Since this section of city is too close to the castle for my tastes, I don't know it very well. It seems that Mayfly has lead me to the borders of the castle gardens themselves. There are flowers of all kinds growing on neatly trimmed plants that surround Canterhorn Mountain. A waterfall pours down the cliff face and a river stems away from this spot. I can't see where it goes past a few trees but it must be the same river that I saw winding its way under a few bridges back in the more populated areas of the city. Luckily there aren't any ponies here.

Just flowers. Too many flowers.

What exactly does he want me to do, though? Pick flowers? Become a gardener?! What is it that this child could possibly want me to do?

"Eerr... Mister Mercenary, are you okay?"

"I want to light everything in the immediate vicinity on fire."

"I think that's normal...?"

"Also, I will simply mention this now and then if you persist in such behaviours I will threaten you like everypony else: Do not refer to me with any form of polite, gender specific titles, only myself and ponies I have no desire to harm are allowed to do so, but only if I grant them permission. You have no permission to do such things. Keep this in mind. I am not Mister, Missus, Lord, Lady, Duke, Duchess or any variation to you."

This greatly confuses Mayfly. "But I don't know your name, so what am I supposed to call you if I don't know your that?"

I peer over the hedge that separates the garden from the empty back road that we're on. That's one of the conveniences of Canterlot. Some sections are always traveled frequently while others, like this one, remain unfrequented often. I turn back to this little pest.

"You do realize I can be referred to through context alone? I don't need to be called any sort of name. All you do have to do is give the implication that you're talking to me."

"Oh. Alright then, anyway do you wanna hear what I'd like you to do?"

"Humor me."

"Well, you were listening to what I said on the way here weren't you?"

"Absolutely not."

A brief glance in the direction of Mayfly confirms, much to my horror, that he will speak again.

...

It seems that history has repeated itself. It may not be history to me but am I some sort of magnet for annoying and possibly delusional foals?

According to Mayfly, the weather accident that should have fried him and spared me this pointless errand also altered his senses in some way. He began to see things shown in fire, or so his tale goes if I bothered to listen to every ramble he went on.

Mayfly saw things and places he had never seen before reflected in the flames and not long after that they began to come true.

The last pony I knew who saw things envisioned a crown on his head and blood on his hooves.

He speaks of how he saw a cave behind this waterfall.

Only now does he tell what he requests of me.

"Basically," begins Mayfly, "I want you to use a spell to help us sneak behind that waterfall. Maybe there's a treasure there, I mean why else would a place be shown to me?"

Perhaps it's so I can dispatch of you for wasting my time.

My name is Sombra, as of late I'm using my own finite magic to keep myself alive. I'm 1,123 years old and apparently some see it fit to make me an errand pony and I'm entirely sure that if this keeps up my life will fully descend into suffering.

十一 (He's Not That Old)

"Whoa, look at that!" called Mayfly. His voice rang throughout the small cave, but it was drowned out by the roar of the waterfall and hoof points to something I can't see unless I turn my head to the right a little bit.

It really isn't much of a cave since I had to duck and hold back part of the waterfall to get in here, although it did open up a bit when we got inside to the point where I don't have to duck my head. Water has worn most of the walls smooth and it looks like somepony might have caused parts of the stone in here to shift and conceal most of the entrance. It might be some kind of disruption from when they were building the city.

Something has been carved into the stone that made up the back wall. Since I'm actually intrigued on what it could be, I do the sensible thing of utterly ignoring the witless child nearby and walk up to the strange carvings. The metal boots I wear caused pebbles underhoof to crunch.

I light my horn enough to properly illuminate the stone. It is not a mural, since I don't see any traces of paint, but whatever art I have found is very colorful with reds, grays, and other hues that shouldn't be in this particular type of stone. A quick tap of my hoof reveals that not only is this covered in a fine layer of debris - which isn't important - but that there are some fragments of dully gleaming stones embedded inside which lets me know this was the work of a geomancer. That could prove to be useful later.

"Look at all the weird colors! What do you think this does?"

Mayfly is not useful. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."

None of these colors are the results of natural magic, especially now that I've concluded that a geomancer took direct action to make this. I don't know much about geomancy since äerint crystals don't fit into it at all even if the basic concept of them seems similar at first. In fact, I'm entirely sure that äerint isn't a mineral at all but I haven't been successful in trying to break the structure down or isolate whatever components could be in it. That was how I tossed my theory that they were a combination of a variety of gems that were corrupted and fused together. It really didn't work and that was one of my earliest theories, so I'm not very proud of it since I ended up realizing that if it were true, äerint would be remarkably similar to what I've seen of crystallokinesis, which is a magic I don't use or know. It's a somewhat similar situation here, after all I doubt I'll find out anything by trying to gather knowledge I don't retain so I'll just work with what I have.

Geomancy manifests in two forms, one kind for earth ponies and one for unicorns. Since I'm not an expert, that's all the background knowledge that I have. Blame the library of the crystal palace for not having enough materials to educate me on that particular field. Pyromancers like myself are better anyway.

However, geomancy is often used to conceal and preserve objects and because of that and my adequate knowledge of geomancy I know that this is some kind of puzzle. Perhaps a secret compartment where somepony hid their last work or the tomb of a monarch. I do recall reading that deep beneath the city of Canterlot are the remains of another city, which was called Canterlote, and its cave system. I have no idea how old this structure but it is best if I examine it up close and carefully at that, after all I already blew up part of an archive.

"Umm, are you just gonna stand there and judge that weird wall all day?"

Lo and behold! Fate once again tries to remind me that I am within the vicinity of an annoying child! It's as if some cosmic force that believes it can exceed me wants me to blow something else. I turn to face the mere insect without a shred of experience to their name.

"Listen to me, you stupid brat, you just picked me off the streets to help you sneak into this cave, and you already gave me everything I wanted, so I could just stroll out of here and you'd never find me again, but you've got me interested enough in this so the least you could do is not interrupt me when I'm technically trying to help you, even if it is indirectly. Or so my name isn't Sombra, the Duke of-"

"Wait, you're King Sombra?!" Mayfly calls. He's standing about midway between myself and the exit.

If he slips those saddlebags off, he'll be able to fly much faster and if I can't come up with a spell in time... well that's unlikely to happen.

The light on my horn dies. Crap. "What would you have done if I had told you?"

He doesn't run yet but he does look nervous and makes no effort to conceal it. He's the type that wears his heart on the outside but the problem he has is that I can figure out exactly what anypony like him is feeling so as long as I can see what guides them.

Mayfly swallows slightly, "Well I would understand why you didn't want to tell me your name. It scares a lot of ponies and is pretty ugly."

"Like your mother?"

A perplexed blink from the fool. "What? How would you know my mother?"

The naivety is so painfully strong with this one that I'm tempted to go for a few more low blows just to see his various reactions. "Well, I'm older than I look."

He blinks stupidly again, "Alright, but it's not like I'm going to tell Princess Celestia or anything."

"Is it because you'll tell your mother instead?"

"No, my mother's dead and you seem really nice anyway."

Oh my gods, forever and always I shall remember this moment of extreme density. Are all foals like this? How is that even possible? They can mass produce written materials unlike the extremely limited copies of the Tribal Era. Who else but the most foolish of all proverbial peasants would trust somepony just because they 'seem' nice? There is nothing definite about the assumption and it hardly has a steady foundation to go off of. Clearly this colt is trying to get himself killed and is doing a bloody splendid job as well. "So, now that you know my name, which I will point out is not ugly, what exactly are you and I going to do?"

His hoof points at me and I feel my eye twitch slightly because it almost looks like he's trying to accuse me of something. The crystal ponies did this often. "We should figure out what that is."

"Yes, and who will be interrupting me every few minutes?"

"Nopony!" He adds cheerily.

"Correct. Now that you have finally answered a question correctly in your miserable life, but only because of me of course, can you tell me how exactly we're going to do this? Me conjuring a proper werelight would be too noticeable, as would a fire."

"I glow!"

"Not really," I say with a yawn, "you're actually quite dim."

"That's 'cause I'm not glowing right now!"

"It's quite obvious."

"No, just watch. I can glow, I promise, " Mayfly says and he just stands very still and crosses his eyes as if that is how one like him would believe the secrets of the universe are discovered.

"Listen, you pathetic lifeform, if you wish to explode so badly I don't disapprove but simply and kindly request that you do it elsewhere so I won't have to clean up the mess, otherwise I will kill you myself."

"I... will... glow...!"

"You're going to turn purple any minute now, and let me just say that I'm not fond of that color but I do encourage you to seek your death where I won't be blamed or tasked with disposing of anything, because it's not like I haven't had to do enough of that in my life."

Apparently if you threaten this kid enough, he does in fact glow. A faint sheen of whitish light has surrounded his form, and I'm entirely sure that this isn't natural but then again neither am I. It isn't enough to alert anypony outside or bounce of the waterfall in the background, but it is still brighter than the controlled reddish aura I had been using.

...

I had originally thought that the alterations left behind by by the anonymous geomancer was a tomb's entrance for some long-lost mortal king or queen.

It isn't.

If Firefly and I exchange places, so he's close enough to shine light on the mural and I stand where he was just moments ago, I can see the bigger picture. Each whorl of color bends to form the outlines of various landforms that I don't recognize. The swirls are indistinguishable up close but far away each blends together to show what might be a very stylized map of the Equestrian nation's place on the continent.

Everything starts with Canterhorn Mountain. From there I can see that each landform is just a piece of the outline of an Alicorn. The mountain is the horn, forests make up the feathers, and the contours of the hills and rivers outline the faint image of a body. This predates all my guesses on when this was made, so I know that this is more than what it seems just by origin alone.

It doesn't take long for me to spot something intriguing, the rocky canyons near the bottom form legs and hooves. When I drifted south and stayed there before returning to the Magicspire I met some curious creatures called buffalo. They alerted me of a few bandit locations and didn't care what I did from there or how I did it. Buffalo don't ask many questions either, so I wasn't on horrid terms with them even if there weren't exactly keen on my history they were alright with me.

The buffalo didn't tell me much about themselves, but one of the things they showed me was a small structure they were quite protective of. According to what they told me, it was built by a pony called the First Sage. That was never elaborated on but they went on to say how the place was called the Sage's Gate, and it helped guide the replacement for this individual known as the First Sage to wherever it was they were supposed to go. Even more amusing is that the buffalo said that the successor - who was usually one of their own - was 'chosen by the sky' and that was how the gate worked as well.

All of that is just a way to say that lightning had something to do with everything. I don't know how to summon or control lightning, although I do know one who can, since it does tie in with certain very specialized fields of magic I know nothing of. However, with the colt's strange ability to glow - which does make some sense now - and the pyromancy I lean towards I think that I'll be able to open this, and perhaps even discreetly too.

After all, this has buffalo written all over it. I can see how one of the mural Alicorn's 'hooves' is raised so it creates a space that looks very much like a switch of some kind.

This may be quite the relic, but it really can't compare to me.

十二 (The Castle Within a Castle)

The Alicorn Amulet. That's what he called it. Mayfly said that's what the corrupting trinket was called.

I blink and see the image of a page behind my eyes. It isn't flat like it would be if I were looking at the one in the Book.

A copy of that thing is in my head, but it isn't dangerous like the printed version I've kept out of sight. On this page is the illustration of an amulet in thin strokes of ink without any stray marks to be seen, which is slightly unnerving if you assume this was made through normal means. The amulet isn't very conservative in appearance and looks more like a proper addition to armor, it's made of two parts, one of which is fashioned to look like an Alicorn. This most likely led to the very creative name it's been given. I don't know what color it is but it's appearance is distinguishable enough.

Everything written does suggest it isn't very powerful since it seems to enhance magic that already existed, and of course that would make it dependant on the caster's ability. I imagine this would be worrisome if it fell into the hooves of Pink One, but otherwise I can't imagine it doing to much otherwise.

I look down at the map I'm holding again. After a few hours on a train I've managed to make it to what should be the edge of the Everfree Forest. This should be the same Everfree as the lost kingdom I read about in the library's' books as well.

If I don't find a clue there, I might at least find the amulet. I sigh and put the map away, glad to have been able loop around the town that was nearby. The edge of the forest is now in sight, and it looks very interesting to say the least: feral and shady. I doubt there are many ponies there, if there are any at all, which means that this place was meant for me.

I smirk and push a overhanging branch out of the way with Phobos’ pommel.

There's got to be something left. I already have the book, but that didn't give any answers; the Crystal Empire only had books on the past, and since that was when Onyx was still king, that information is even more outdated; the two Gates aren't enough; and Alicorns don't just fall from the sky.

...

The Everfree Forest was even better on the inside. Plants grew everywhere and there was so much to hear. The sun hardly poked through the leaves and the flora itself was a testament to all sorts of skirmishes, some natural as seen by the marks of magic left behind, others weren't since various marks of a blade could be seen. Somepony did live here but they only appeared to harvest plants, many of which I'd never seen before.

This place may not be as rugged or snowy as the Arctic but it certainly was wild, and I'd be thrilled to spend more time here if...

...Well if I...

I lose focus for a moment and almost walk into a tree on my left side.

...If I survive long enough.

Who knows how much longer I'm going to last on my magic?

Answering myself would be pointless so I just frown and walk on.

It's ironic really that for somepony like me who wanted to live so badly, I've spent most of my time hating life, mostly because of the king and all I do is exchange one prison for another. The castle, the ice, and soon I'll finally get to see what Tartarus looks like.

I'll get to be there forever.

How much time have I wasted? Couldn't there have been some point where I cut corners just a little bit more or stacked just one more card in my favor? Now here I am with a knife to my own throat all because I must have done something wrong. I work alone, so of course there's nopony to blame but myself because I'm sure I could have done so much more if I just did something else...

The only thing I can do now is keep going and just let more play out. I'll skip a few turns, but I can't leave the table.

The right move requires the right opportunity so all I have to do is save myself and from there I can salvage everything.

...

A branch nearly whacks me in my face, I grit my teeth and step aside just in time as I am not the lowly sort to allow a tree to best me. Although, I really shouldn't be gritting my teeth. Getting hit by a tree would be annoying to me to embarrassing to others. My teeth are embarrassing, not because they turn into fangs when I use certain amounts of dark magic but because they are fangs that I turn into teeth, only to revoke the minor enchantment I put upon them when angry or happy. It took a while to figure this out, for even I believed that it was the other way around.

I'm still as embarrassed about my teeth as I was then, and the habit I've picked up doesn't help.

They really do make me feel like a demon because of course I need a reminder of this. I have to be reminded that everypony finds me to be a monstrosity simply for existing.

I'm their scapegoat. I'm a paradox, an impossibility.

I've reached the clearing I've been searching for. Before me stands the ruins of a castle in a style that looks to be reminiscent of the Tribal Era except that the style feels off and certain implements are too advanced to have existed at the time. The decaying form of this beast that looms in the sunlight is sprawled across an island of stone, with only a small rope bridge to hang over the gap that separates where I am from this mess.

The gap looks like a moat, if you don't bother to check again. When I walk up to the rim I am able to confirm that this was carved with magic. The stone was either carved out and used to build the castle, like scooping mud from a bowl, or it was simply vaporized where it was. You would have to know some combination of pyromancy and light magic to this. Oh sure, there's a few other ways to get the same results but hardly at this magnitude with the proper containment.

So, a certain mare with a very sunny personality was the cause of all this, after all she's the only individual who specializes with fire like this. I still think the most curious part about all this is that this created a moat like structure, which means that she would have been blasting around something, but if this is the end result it wouldn't be for the sake of destruction for destruction's sake.

Celestia was trying to wipe out the defining features of whatever she built this castle upon.

...

My magic grips the handle of the door and pulls it open.

I've seen the interior before and because of what I saw, I nearly set a pink princess on fire. Of course I knew that everything shown in there was going to be real. I just didn't know that I was going to witness the events that I had selected to view. All I knew was that the date listed was important but never why.

I'm honestly glad that even by some odd twist I ended up being sealed first. If that hadn't been so, then who knows what kind of state I would have been in upon seeing the sky.

The 'what-ifs' are merely dismissed, I have the past to get lost in and it's a past that doesn't belong to me.

...

I stand in the shadows and look over the floor which is strewn with rubble that sits baking in the sun's light. This castle varies greatly from the Empire's which was built to soar upward while the castle here was built so it sprawls outward.

Carefully, I lift up a few chunks of the old ceiling. Each of them is at least thrice the size of me. They hang there in the air as I inspect the floor for any signs of where a passage or trapdoor could be. For all I know there's regular traps in here as well.

Frowning, I set the stones down and dust off my cloak. Before I continue anything I should try to find a diagram of more than just this throne room and main hall.

Celestia and Luna used to live here so there must be a library, or at least what's left of one somewhere around here.

I try my luck and pick a hallway to check at random.

It wouldn't be any other library either, I thought.

Most libraries, civilian or royal, placed enchantments on their materials to prevent damage caused by aging, such as yellowing pages. Royal libraries were especially fond of this enchantment and had much more powerful versions that let the books last longer than the ponies who tended to them.

Sure I might find a squashed scroll or two but there shouldn't be any that have suffered from exposure or water damage.

Strangely enough, they are rarely ever guarded against fire and of course I'd know.

I know too well.

...

This is the perfect place to hide the Alicorn Amulet. I haven't found a map yet, but I located something that surpasses it: the remains of a library. The shelves were taller than those in the Archives had been and many were crumbling and cleaved in half by statues that were probably younger than I am.

I walk up to a shelf and begin to pluck off a few books which look remarkably intact even with any preservation spells factored in. Even if none of them held any maps, it would still be interesting to see what was inside them. Most of these books would have been written immediately after the founding of First Equestria when things were still a triarchy ruled by the idiots who had only recently arrived from the north. That much was merely clarified upon checking a 'history' book. After that? Well part of it is very simple: the Two Sisters learned of the Crystal Empire and I know full well what happened there, for that is where all my immediate knowledge ends.

Next, some creature under the name of Discord overthrew the last remains of First Equestria before Celestia and Luna got rid of this Discord as well using some kind of powerful magic that I care absolutely nothing about. After using this they got to truly rule Equestria instead of just being influential nobility in a forest that was decoupled entirely from the workings of whatever petty Tribal government still remained.

So, in short well done, Celestia, Luna, and Discord. We're all usurpers here.

I roll my eyes. The irony presented in technicalities has always been rather amusing. I grasp the last book within range in my magic and pull it, only for it to stay there and simply tilt back to reveal that it is a hinge.

Well, I can't believe I'm thinking this but forget the books, this should prove to be quite interesting.

Author's Note

So there's more than one of those things?

十三 (House of the Gods)

The small reading room revealed by the lever disguised like a book is much more intact than the library, and based off of the tracks in the dust and the faint traces of fresh magic here, I'd say that they're from a few months to a year ago. However, it is hard to tell because I know for sure that I'm not the only one who has been poking around these ruins.

The only thing that really proves to be interesting is the lectern in the room's center. I'm used to seeing things in relatively low light so I don't have to step on in immediately to know that the base is made of a different material, which is promising. My inspection of the lectern itself does turn up something: close to the base is a seam of sorts, a single line cut straight though but not with any specific kind of magic. I'm more concerned about what would happen if I removed the spell that is keeping this upright. My horn ignites with crimson aura before finding the enchantment and twisting it a bit to grasp the extent of what it does. I then proceeded with prying it off and feeling it dissolve within my own power.

Obviously, it isn't meant to guard much since this room wasn't even guarded with enchantments. They weren't even strong or complex enough for me to have any fun with, but I'm still curious on why somepony would enchant a lectern on what appears to be the ground level of this castle. One swift kick from my metal boots and the lectern's top half simply fell over... but not entirely. It was still attached by another spell I hadn't cared about, but only barely. The section that was the base displayed what looked to be a cross between a key and a switch embedded in the center, having been concealed by the previous spells.

Consider me intrigued.

Crimson briefly envelops the switch before the aura dissolves after I pull it. Seams in the stone base that were previously concealed then open. The lectern was merely a trap door that doesn't look like it has been opened for a very long time. It appears that this castle was built on top of some other structure. I can glimpse warped stonework below this well-like hole. Old burn marks are still present before the charred streaks across the melted rock descend into the darkness.

I kick a loose stone into the opening and watch it vanish into the darkness. There is a scuffing noise from the metal of my boots. It is a while before I hear the telltale sound of it hitting another floor far below. I'd probably dropped the thing about four stories below, at least. I'm not even slightly afraid, nor do I blink as I casually take one step forward, followed by another. My form dissolves into shadow, which is just as familiar to me as hooves and magic.

Then I fall.

...

It has always been natrual to slip into shadow like this and the knowledge that ponies can't do this has always been mildly disturbing. They really are as flat as drawings, aren't they? How could ponies just walk around every day without feeling even emptier or trapped? It's like how I can sense magic and read it. Every living creature can at least feel magic or else they might as well be dead. But being magic, I've always been able to do more than that, and the thought of not being able to makes me feel ill.

My hooves hit the floor in the time it takes to blink. The only disturbance I made was the faint whoosh of air that echoes faintly.

I feel like there should be frost down here since it feels cool enough but I can't see anything in front of me. A crimson werelight fixes that, and I soon see that while the old stone corridors, which are severely burned and forsaken, are bare of frost, an exhale from me shows that in the werelight's glow I can see my own breath.

The red glow that my werelight casts trembles as it bobs about the long forgotten hall. The ceilings are so high that the light does not shine brightly enough to reach its highest vaults. Everything here is dead. There is no cloth, nor any dust to cling to it. The gaping hallway is naught but cold stone. I'm looking at the skeleton of an empire.

Whoever sealed this with the other castle did a good job, since the air is too stale for me to see any spider webs and the very atmosphere feels foul and empty, the only thing close to movement being faint stirring up above, where I came from. I look down the hallway. My gaze doesn't waver as I step away from what little light remains. This is a tomb, and the architecture is of a language I do not speak. I don't know who's buried here. This place might as well not exist because I'm not sure if there are any alive who can connect to this place and I keep having to remind myself that I'm here from somewhere in the back of my mind.

Every feature finds its way into my memory but I don't know any of them. It's not as if I'm somewhere I shouldn't be, but I feel like that exact significance of this place eludes me.

There's such strange magic lingering here, trickling from the walls and all else but I don't know much else since it's muddled and strange. The closest I can come to describing this would be if I knew absolutely everything about somepony, with the exception of their own thoughts, name, and appearance. Now throw me in a crowd, I'd have to find them based on that alone. It's oddly jarring at first but not impossible even if there is still the vague impression of confusion drifting through the air long after.

I'm inspecting what I see when something crunches beneath my hoof. When I look down, I find that whatever it was had been long broken before I stepped on what was left. I'm not sure what it is, so I automatically locate all the pieces before I sit down, right in the middle of the floor to analyze them.

Shattered pieces of an unearthly material with a likeness to glass resting on the long-deserted ground. They've faded somewhat and were the subject to an Alicorn's fury so that the dawn purple color is distorted and the flecks of light that faintly glimmer in it are gone. I've never seen anything quite like it, the closest I've seen to the craftsmanship are the intact parts of this castle.

Whatever it is isn't worth paying attention to, my werelight has found more shattered pieces lying about the decaying stone. I rise and follow the scattered and haphazard remains, connecting the shards in a mental trail. Gaping doorways taller than the nag who brings about the dreadful sun linger in the edges of the dim red glow projected by my magic.

Each shard beneath my hooves is like a scream that nopony but me could hear.

...

This place used to matter. There's nothing here anymore, or at least nothing I can understand. What isn't lost on me doesn't exactly tell me anything new. All it does is confirm whatever knowledge I already possess on this subject. Unlike that broken trinket I'm sure that with enough effort I could piece everything back together since I'm the only one who seems to know anything at this point, about what happened.

These hallways are a grave of twists and turns that have been waiting for somepony to find them and here I am, werelight still aglow looking at a fresco of everything that came before. It takes up the entire wall of a dead end in one of the halls and is painted in the somewhat simplistic and concise style that one might find in a storybook. The fresco depicts a map of the world as it once was.

Cities that are lost under the hooves of the present.

Borders blurred once all had fallen.

Land that no longer exists.

Empires that were betrayed by memories and blood.

Does anypony remember their names? None are listed here since it is a stylized map, after all. Yet even so, each city while faded was drawn with great care.

Terrain that used to be something other than what it is now was depicted, such as whatever country once stood next to the old desert empire to the southwest of the Everfree Kingdom. Over to the southeast is a country whose borders have hardly changed. On current maps it is clearly shown that this country is the flattest grassland to ever exist and is riddled with large lakes. Here it is shown as mountains that few could ever hope to climb without a lake in sight.

However the most interesting trait of this mural would be the small, simplified caricatures of Alicorns that dot each capital. Some are in pairs and others in families of varying size. Dotted lines connect a few groups to designate who is related to who. Right over the castle within a castle that I'm in are two Alicorns, a mare and a stallion.

Everything is bathed in red light so that colors are meaningless. There's just red and shadow, creating an ominous atmosphere.

Where did all of you go?

十四 (Something Really Matters)

I swatted a branch away with my magic, watching the flames of green and violet consume it and the ashes drop the ground where they would soon be buried by leaves and other debris and be buried beneath something far more vast just as that castle was.

There wasn't even any Alicorn Amulet there. I couldn't find a single trace of dark magic within the old castle. In the ruined one I first entered I was able to feel the barest traces of dark magic, but whatever artifact - possibly the amulet - was the source that was removed

I didn't however bother to try and figure out if it was the amulet or not since I doubt I'd be that lucky and I'm not sure why Celestia would want it. Luck has never been something I played with, I have skills that would put such an idea like 'luck' to shame.

It would also be foolish to meddle with such a fickle thing. Just ask Onyx. He got everything he ever wanted, and nothing he bargained for. After all, luck was on his side the whole time, and it turned on him as well. Nothing will stay by your side if you lie to it, use it, torture it, and abuse it. Of course, somepony like him wouldn't understand that. I've seen what's in his mind and know things about him that I don't think he'll ever learn about himself.

One of those things is that he killed other creatures, equine or other, because he knew nopony loved him, but of course he'd never admit to that. It's safe to say he doesn't realize it either. He had a head but he sure didn't use it and I do have copies of all his memories to access as I please, so I didn't even have to try to poke around the deepest depths of the deranged subconscious that belonged to that unbearable brat.

...

There are many things I question, and even more that I judge. I'll criticize anything and anypony. Nothing is free from the inevitable conclusions that I will make. I can tear apart the life choices and entire existence of somepony in five minutes if I'm feeling lazy, and I can doubt any philosophy back to the paper and ink it sprang from.

It appears that I'm the alicorn princess of judgement. I simply have yet to earn my wings.

Currently, I'm judging what is either a tree... or a house... I'm not entirely sure how I found this place. Should I pull out the map Mayfly gave me?

The air around here smells of strange plants coming from inside the tree. Does the creature who live here do some kind of plant rearranging? I don't see any gardens or space that would be devoted to farmland. I'm more interested in what could be inside since I don't sense anypony besides me here.

I have got to be the world's oldest petty criminal.

...

Whoever lives here probably has more issues than Canterlot's newspaper which can still trace its roots back to before this Discord. So technically it's older than me. I'm not the only book from a bygone era but at least newspapers usually don't die of time displacement. Still, the door should have been locked, charmed, or something. Just because you live in an enchanted forest doesn't mean that you'll be forgiven for leaving your door unlocked.

Now that I can view the interior, the presence of the many different plant scents are explainable. This... tree-house? Is there a technical name for these structures?

I suppose I'll just think of it as..., I levitate an open book over so I'm able to read the label pasted inside the front cover, 'Zecora's' house.

"May I never have to pronounce that aloud," I mumble, closing the book and putting it down right where I had found it. This small and unusual dwelling belonged to an apothecary or perhaps some kind of botanist.

Many trinkets are lying about, hardly any of them are Equestrian in style. I poke a large mask with my hoof. It looks mostly decorative in nature and I can't see any sign that it should be used for wear. The only objects that lie about that I am familiar with are various books, some of which lie open to various pages featuring illustrations of exotic looking flora as well as small tears and even a few signs that something was spilled on one or two of them at some point in time.

It doesn't take long for me to feel it: the unmistakable steady pulse of strong magic.

No, not just magic itself, a source.

This is improbable.

It isn't exactly passive magic either.

Unlikely.

It rises from the floor, I can feel the energy best in my hooves.

Coincidence.

Whatever this is is simply waiting for a pony to come along and find it.

And it's only improbable.

My eyes scan the cabin hungrily until I'm sure that I've got the exact condition and location of every single object memorized.

Overwhelming. That's what this energy has become now that I have found something similar in make to myself, or rather it has found me. It's unbelievable but then again, whose beliefs are we going off of?

In less than a minute I have this place torn apart.

There's a searing hole in the floor.

There's a chest inside that hole.

I found the magic.

The Alicorn Amulet is mine.

The interior is reconstructed in an instant and everything is replaced as it was except the prize I have just acquired and the hole in the floor sealed without a trace. I slip away just as quickly as I had entered. My tracks are cleverly covered up just as they should be. Some think it's wise to hide any trace of their presence as soon as they know somepony will be looking for them. That has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have heard to date because by then it will be too late. If anypony were to attempt to do anything properly they would cover up their tracks before anypony even considered looking for them.

For me, it's as simple as dissolving into shadows.

...

I only inspect the amulet once I can guarantee that I'm not being followed and I have safely slipped into a forest clearing free of any other creatures that would think to spy on me. A quiet breeze finds its way through the trees and it was oddly cool for what I had seen of Equestrian summers thus far.

Metal meets metal as I lean against the trunk of a tree balancing the amulet on my forehooves, I can still feel the magic it has drifting about the air as it rests on top of the cold soles.

It was in the Book, and that was enough for me to want this trinket. I don't know the history it went through before it came to where it is now, nor could it possibly know how I have arrived here.

I'm not an object and the amulet is not a pony but there is an undeniable connection between it and myself, but there are even more divides. It is not my equal, my superior, or like nearly all I have encountered, my inferior. How is such an object comparable to me?

I slump against the tree and sink to the ground where I set the amulet beside me, not bothering to cast another look at the dull hunk of metal or push away the few strands of my mane that have found their way in front of my eyes.

I could destroy it. It cannot corrupt me for I am magic as well.

The breeze has returned and a few leaves are stirred. Up north there was never much of a summer, just winter and not-quite-as-cold-passable-as-spring-so-who-even-cares-at-this-point winter. I never loathed the cold as Onyx did but it was still interesting to see how seasons shift wherever I happened to be, even if I personally prefer the cold.

Cold can preserve things, some physical, others hardly even visible and yet more powerful than most could possibly dream of.

Memories are clearer than the crystal city.

Hatred that will never consume wantonly, but gradually cripple with careful calculation before one is buried with all they have ever loved drowned out as malice is packed around them, numbing their victim to everything but the poison that was so carefully crafted for them.

So many things can be preserved by cold and though as fond of hatred as I am, its opposite has become my favorite. They really aren't as dissimilar as most ponies would think.

Their natures are even more varied than coat colors and a thousand times more personal. Both can bring about one's downfall, or become a saving grace. With little effort on the part of a manipulator and time itself they can transform into one another. Destruction, salvation or something else entirely, perhaps much more simple in nature can be achieved with these powers. Each one is an infatuation of some kind that can be mistaken for one another.

Out come the silver fragments, like a fallen star. They tumble out onto the grass landing with a soft thud, each falling from the grip of my magic where I coolly watch their brief course.

Destruction is not mandatory, I need not break this amulet, but I can still twist it into whatever I please by tapping into the artifact's magic and altering it with my own in order to mend what has been broken.

Bright red is quickly overwhelmed by crimson as the silver stars re-arrange themselves in the incomplete shape of what was. I ignore the missing pieces, that's what my magic is for and what the amulet will aid in.

I'm no weaponsmith and I've never been fond of doing anything through the most conventional means since most tasks, such as this, are hardly any fun without some kind of experimentation.

The glow I've been controlling up till now swells until ruby light bathes the clearing as I wrap up the last bit of the spell. As it fades I am able to see what I have created.

Resting on the grass is a sword none but myself have ever laid eyes upon before. The blade is a sharp, thin tempered silver with all sorts of renewed enchantments. Compared to Phobos, a plain broadsword, the shape of this blade was that of a scimitar which was a type of sword with a curved blade that comes from some of the other southern countries. While I've never seen the land where the kind of sword comes from, I had seen and even held one of the blades in my magic before. Crawling across the the silver colored metal as vines creep across a trellis were crooked veins of red crystal that avoided forming near the edge of the blade.

The pommel was marked by a silver jewel with the qualities of a pearl even though I had never seen such a gem before. This unearthly gem led to the hilt of dull red metal, a swirling pattern cleanly etched in it and from there the crossguard of dull black. It was still in the recognizable shape as the amulet, minus the miniature Alicorn sculpture. The red gem still rested in the center gleaming with the light of the nearby veins of the blade, unlike those this gem was embedded in the metal... I remember when metal used to feel cold, like ice did but that was some time ago.

Silence, in name only, until the air is punctuated with a sigh from myself and another whisper of the breeze, both a minute apart. My gaze is drawn to the silver crescent-like claws that adorn the ends of the crossguard. Each grasp their own pearl-like gem like that of the pommel and they are the color of moonlight.

Sun scorches the leaves and grass as I reside in shade.

Moonlight.

A single word that echoes with a heavy heart throughout my mind. Another half-hearted sigh from myself as I get up, not bothering to brush the grass from my coat. Magic, mine of course, grabs the new sword while pulling Phobos from the sheath it had know throughout its run. As I stick the black blade in the ground, and wedge it in as best I can, I feel myself stumble and my vision blurs.

A minute later I'm almost crumpled to the ground, heart hammering in my chest and gasping for breath. Blood roars in my ears and I can feel the smooth coolness of Phobos’ dark blade through the cold sweat.

Running out... I'm running out of magic... I-

My mind falters for words, there's no point in trying not to cry anymore because I know I can't. I open my mouth to say something, to apologize, utter anything, but only manage something in between a choked gulp and a dry heave before the wind resumes, clearly having much more to say.

There's so much to say but nopony to say them to.

Everything around me is screaming. Somewhere inside, I'm screaming too.

After a while there's a dull flicker from my horn and I manage to stand up, my legs are shaking. I still hold the new sword in my forehooves, but after much effort I'm able to slip into the battered sheath it will now call home. The shape's a bit off but maybe if I have the time... if I have the time... I can alter that.

It's a simple exchange.

Fear for Fate.

Now I wield Fate.

Author's Note

Here's a picture of a sword that is both pretty and similar in shape/style to Fate.

十五 (Nothing Changes)

The spires of Canterlot Castle cast their long shadows across the city they guarded. Ponies no longer lingered in the streets since what was an overly warm afternoon had boiled over into a unbearably sweltering evening, even for a pony like myself who had been to the desert. Clouds did nothing to aid this and seemed weighted to their positions in the sky. Not even the wind was blowing. Rays of sunlight in the pink streaked sky were caught by the city's buildings which were mostly white in color.

Mercy on my good eye, because between being exposed to new shades of purple, other ponies who dare live in the same universe as me, and all these unbearably sunny days I fear for it more and more. Especially since the glare caused from certain objects is almost as bad as how the Empire must've looked on days like this before...

I look over to the Equestrian Royal guards that I have humored into thinking they can escort me. Perhaps I should have properly checked and of course, double-checked the disguise I used. Nopony but me has red eyes. Out of everything that could have gone wrong I simply ended up forgetting to re-color my eyes and attracted the attention of two of Celestia's soldiers or whatever they are. I was bored enough so I decided to pull a nice joke and go with them because surely there's a few more minor offenses I can add to the list of mine that I use to keep track of the less unfortunate part of my 'career'. I guess if I were in the mood I could put a humorous spin on it but for now I'll stick with messing with Straight Face and Straight Once-Removed.

Like the guards of the Crystal Empire their armor is wrought with small disguising charms to hide most distinguishing features and alter coat colors among other things that are to novice to interest me. Both are unicorns so the only way I can tell them apart is by their individual magic impression and the labels I have so kindly given them in yet another benevolent act of the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra.

I pause briefly and fully resume my expression of stoic disdain. For now I have stopped listing parts of my most recent exploits.

From my left, Straight Face eyes me in a pathetic attempt to seem like he knows what he's doing. All I figured out was that he was the older of the two, probably somewhere in his mid-thirties yet he seemed to treat me as one would treat a slightly more dangerous version of these 'university students' he goes on grumbling about when he thinks nopony else is listening. Ever since I've started talking he's stopped telling the few lingering idiots to stop lollygagging and whispered reverently to drown his sorrows and retire, probably in that order.

He may treat me like one might other ponies my age but his body language - which he also thinks I don't notice even though I've been carefully making sure that I can still glimpse all his movements despite his location - but his gaze clearly says otherwise. He believes he has caught a monster. I can hear how heartless he believes me to be. He does such a poor job of hiding it, in fact he's spoken better of his allegedly 'crazy' former wife than me. How unfortunate things would be if he knew I heard every word he spoke so far... how if he inches any closer to my bad side, I won't 'snap' for I will willingly hurt this stallion as coldly and simply as possible...

"Do you realize you have just confessed to at least eighty counts of theft, and in some kind of code as well?"

I scoff at his errors. "First of all it's called iambic pentameter and I wasn't confessing."

His eyes narrow in a stupid, slow-witted squint as we near the castle, which has considerably more activity than this morning. More of their kind walk about the place and stroll through the streets with a relatively calm demeanor. "Well then, what was it?"

"Boasting."

"Are you sassing me?"

"Not yet, and I'm sure you wouldn't know if I was being but lowly spawn when standing next to me. I think the gold in your armor really brings out the red in my eyes, wouldn't you say?"

Straight face scowls and looks like he'd honestly considering hitting me. That's right, me, the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra, Duke of Nothing. Who would ever even think of such a thing? What could I have possibly done to deserve such a thing?

MY GODS, WHAT ENTERTAINMENT I FIND IN THIS!

"Despicable bastard."

Oh, ho ho! Are you sure a mere colt like yourself should be using such words? "Well now, I can't exactly say I am the product of anypony's lawful union."

Straight Face acts like this revelation alone, which of course he took too literally being nothing but an ignorant fool, confirms that I am unforgivable and that my existence alone is a cri-

Well... that isn't so different from normal. Better he thinks I'm some illegitimate noble with a false sense of grandeur that lead to shallow and awful deeds than know what I really am, which is when things would get ugly and I really begin to snap.

I turn to face Once-Removed, a forced falsetto-like lilt finding its way into my tone to show the slightest shreds of just how thin my patience is at times. "What exactly have you thought of this little chat, hmm?"

Out of the two of them Straight Once-Removed is the one who is clearly less experienced... and he doesn't even try to hide his lack of control, when it comes to his emotions this is strongest and I can get whatever reaction I want from him and then some. It was only mere minutes earlier, before the boasting poetry that I jokingly - although that was unknown to him, I am good at deceiving others when I need to - talked him into ditching the mare he's been with. The sheer existential horror he went through was only intensified when I managed to convince him to ditch her for me. He honestly thinks I'm interested.

How pathetic.

Oh, and he's looking at me right now and he still believes it! I know his view of me isn't drastically different from Straight Face's either. His future is not only going to be incredibly awkward but probably similar enough to the one Straight Face imagined.

I didn't even have to use magic on him either, I rarely use mind altering magic if I can help it and it is useful to have the skill with words I do but it really does say something that I can convince a pony I don't think I've even known for an entire day to marry me.

Once-Removed's eyes cloud with all the possible stupid things he could utter, but instead he just gulps and stutters out a few syllables before returning to silence.

My frown deepens. I really need to find some new toys, these ones break too easily. I sigh loudly and look up at the castle. As far as they go I think this one is actually somewhat nice. It looks like there's all sorts of room for deserted hallways and it looks easy to get lost in, which is even better. I was so lost in thought that I didn't see the rude look that Straight Face gave me, and the sudden movement over to my left causes me to jump slightly.

I try not to kill him for laughing, I really do.

"I know, Straight Face, that you must think yourself to be so clever. You 'caught' a monster after all! A witless monster and I bet that you'll be telling your equally ignorant comrades about your grand feat. Oh, how happy you'd be to know that I'm a demon as well. Did your simpleton mother try to scare you with tales about those awful creatures? Surely, they can't think or even realize what is happening around them! Why, I must be positively stupid, but if I'm such a stupid demon who probably gobbles up foals then why is it such an accomplishment to catch me?"

His face darkens at my words before a look of embarrassment takes over when his nearby colleagues hear part of what I say and start to laugh a bit.

The condescending smile I give him earns me a kick in the side.

"Really, with a temper like that is it any wonder your wife left you?"

He's staring at me slack-jawed and looks utterly infuriated since I know I've hit a mark with a single educated guess and well-timed insult. Once-Removed is barely holding him back from whatever he thinks he'll be able to do to me and he ends up having to call over a few more guards to try to reign in this screaming stallion. Really? I'm almost surprised it takes this much force. His conduct and attempted fighting form is inferior to even an intoxicated pony's.

I'm just standing here and watching when a cloak of gold light separates each guard and holds Straight Face, who no longer lives up to his name, in place. No words need to be said on the part of the guards when the shadow of an Alicorn is cast over me.

"All I required was King Sombra be brought here," a familiar voice began in a calm tone, "but somehow that simple order has lead to this."

I stand as still as the guards, but not out of respect for the mare behind me. As always, I need to pay careful attention to my surroundings unlike these blokes.

The shadow of Celestia turns to where Straight Face is. "Stoic Bulwark, you are usually such a controlled stallion, what happened to allow this pandemonium?"

"Well Princess," he says, comrades still standing next to him, "It was the King..."

Apparently that's all the explanation Celestia needs.

"Very well then, I will discuss this issue with you later until then, King Sombra, follow me."

A moment of silence passes in which I know she wants me to follow her but I'm not know for obeying orders. She clears her throat loudly but I still don't move.

"Look at me," she orders, her voice steely.

I turn around to look at the dogmatic and irrational Alicorn mare.

"How things have changed," Celestia says coolly, "you no longer have your crown." She thinks the last part is a passable insult and I refrain from rolling my eyes, just for now. Sass is not wanton or artless.

"Things have changed, especially you, Celestia."

She doesn't flinch at my dry, level tone or find the latter to be suspicious for me. "In what way have I changed?"

"You've put on weight."

Ponies never change. The world doesn't change. Gods don't change.

十六 (The Chess Master)

The inside of Canterlot castle is airy and bright and the floor feels pleasantly cool under my hooves. Knowing Celestia, I expected there to be heavier ornamentation inside and the pointless baubles of a vain mare like herself smothering every surface.

She's got the most authoritative look possible on her face but I imagine that she looks much more like somepony's stern mother since there's absolutely nothing frightening about Celestia. I imagine that all she's going to do is remind me to say 'please' before I take the life of her purple student and 'thank you' afterwards.

The architecture, which isn't an eyesore like the crabby goddess that storms through it, is actually quite tasteful and done in the same colors as the outside, although I think it could use some green here and there since purple really is a dreadful shade of almost anything. I've only ever seen it pulled off once.

Right now, it isn't the castle that I'm that amused with, it's just a relief to find something around here that isn't boring. Celestia is who I'd like to play with here, since you can learn a good deal about a pony or an Alicorn simply based on their magic. And even if you don't, it is always useful to know.

She's a smothered flame, a pointless wall of her own creation surrounds herself as she chokes her own ability. Maybe in a long fight she could draw out a steady stream of power, but I don't think she could control it well, much less work around whatever mental block is also altering her energy. If I were to get a short burst of raw power, something so sheer and only controllable enough for me to properly aim, then I imagine she could be overwhelmed.

Whatever she's locking in there must be doing more harm than good since she feels like a wall: unmoving and still. Flexibility, in a general sense in magic, isn't admirable either. But to be so rigid that she'd break at the first real hit isn't even a preferable alternative. A wall is hardly a proper obstacle since all will go through, over, or under it.

Walls are weak, they wear and fall. She's naturally burning with raw power that even in this state feels like its shaking the halls. This twisted barrier isn't right and that self-imposed wall should crash down so she finally can realize just how much of a fool she must have been. She hasn't hobbled herself, she crippled her own form and cut the lame flesh that remained as if she feared it could heal of its own accord.

Any lesser sort, a regular unicorn perhaps, who tries this would most likely make a mistake and end up killing themselves. All creatures have magic, and while it can be hidden it can't be smothered without consequences.

But Celestia? All those lingering prejudices are attacking her and she doesn't even try to stop it. If I could make somepony else feel this, I don't think they could bear the power. I only met her face to face once and we stood across a throne room then, her eyes were glowing and I could barely focus, because...

I'm jerked out of the only good memory I can say I've ever had before I picked up the pieces, even if it took a while to realize it. There's no sadness, no melancholy, no anger, hopelessness or tears that lurk in there, all obvious signs of misery have not found their way into this one cherished thought. There's so much that happened after, it's really quite a mixed bag but that one moment...

There's a sigh caught in my throat and the harsh gleam of a gold shoe points to a door brimming with a mix of enchantments that I can't discern from one another without feeling like I'm grasping at straws before retreating back into my own mind, utterly confused. This isn't typical and not being able to sense things like this makes me feel numb.

The lovely company I've got looming over me scowls somewhat, as if that'll make me take her seriously before she opens the door with a quick burst of magic.

I tuck the memory of that corrupted crystalline hallway away and prepare to simply hope I can pass the latest obstacle soon enough to bridge the distance between us and return the favor somepony did so long ago, even though it really doesn't feel like that when you've lived as long as I have.

I look away, so even her mane is no longer within my field of vision even if her presence still makes my skin crawl from the light magic she possesses. That stuff can burn, or rather it will if I come in direct contact with too much of it. Even without being hit by a nasty blast of the stuff it still makes me vaguely nauseous to be around somepony who just has this wave gushing from them without a care of what they're doing. The room, whose contents I have trouble seeing since they're on my left side and I don't quite care, hums with different magic, no doubt cast by Celestia herself, that doesn't feel so disgusting.

I know I'm going to have to step in there anyway if I'm going to topple the order she so foolishly thinks she can maintain over me by pulling apart her wall brick by brick, and so it is that I cross the threshold.

The feeling changes and the magic turns in the air, warping around me so even when I pause briefly it feels like I'm still moving. Something's not right, I can feel something twist. There's now a click of the door behind me. I see her horn glow and there should be more magic around me, but now I can't-

...

I rubbed my eyes and surveyed the room's interior. Did the windows have to be so big? They let in too much light. The room Celestia had set up was circular with no furnishings or anything that decorated the clean white walls other than small flourishes that could be found on the rest of the castle's halls. Everything else was bare too except for a small table and two chairs. As I stated before, the windows were large and were probably cleaned recently. Sunlight poured through their panes, as bright, obnoxious, and glaring as the princess who controlled it. Gold aura, belonging to none other than the princess herself, cloaked the clear glass, tinging what could be seen of the spires with the same hue.

At least it isn't purple, I thought with a sneer.

I plopped into the chair that would allow me to turn my back to the light. She takes the other chair across from me, her posture makes statues look natural and her gaze disapproving. She wraps her hooves possessively around the teacup that sits out. Curls of steam come from it, showing that the beverage is partially cooled. The pot it came from is not far away, although when she poured herself a cup she appeared to spill some, since a few drops have found their way onto the cream colored folders she just picked up with her magic.

Celestia’s horn was still glowing from closing the door, only now it holds a folder open and a pen that was lying about.

I can't see what's inside but I see that the most chaotic thing in this room is the vaguely shuffled folders, which there are a couple of, and the papers in them. My head is propped up with my hoof and I glare at Celestia dead-on, who tries to act like she's too good to notice me.

There's everything between us.

She scrawls something down. Since her pen wasn't in contact with the paper's surface long, I'm going to presume it was my name.

"How old are you?"

Such a professional tone. I bet it's as dead as the rest of her since she's nothing more than that crown and a few prejudices to go with an uptight demeanor that just makes me want to-

"Don't roll your eyes at me like a foal, I asked you how old you are."

"Aleph-null," I reply with a flat tone and without hesitation.

She almost drops her pen. "What?!"

"Somepony hasn't read up on their set theory."

I'm promptly ignored as she takes a sip of her tea.

"You're very dense you know. I think I can see the light bend around you."

"Just what do you think you're doing other than taunting me?"

"Well, for starters I'm bored as Tartarus since my latest toy has proven that she's just as pompous as she always has been, but I think I'll manage. Outside of that, well isn't it obvious? I'm just sitting here rattling things off in an utterly eloquent and dramatic fashion, since unlike you I tell it as it is. In the back of my mind I wonder if it's going to rain anytime this week. Such profound thoughts when compared to yours. I'm also propping myself up with my right forehoof so I can give you this perfect scowl and hard stare that is absolutely tired of your crap. Just look at this poise! If you were to ask me, and of course assume that I won't add in my own feedback anyway, I think I look pretty damn sexy while doing so."

Celestia just scowls, her eyes angry as predicted. "You're nothing more than a vain tyrant with no understanding outside of their petty and vile existence. Oh, and I will note this for you since your own cruel ignorance towards anything but your own delusions seems to block out everything else: few ponies understand some of the profanities you speak, as they are from a bygone age and have only found their way into a few parts of modern society."

"Really? Do you think you're one to talk, Celestia? In my 1,123 years never have I met somepony who spoke their own faults onto another as much as you do. You do not speak of the true nature that is the Right-Honourable Sombra as you'll find I'm far from petty in every way you can imagine, and then some. I'm hardly delusional, and whatever you think my nature is remains unspoken since you haven't specified a single accusation against me."

After hearing what my age is, the pen moves once more before hanging back in the air. "I cannot believe my own niece vouches for you, a monster of the worst kind. I need not hear your brutal justifications of somepony who has never loved and bears few traces of equinity. You're nearly a demon."

Wait a moment... 'nearly'? What's she going for here?

"You still refuse to tell me why I'm so awful, in your opinion. Just because I'm out of your league doesn't mean you need to get all worked up since I'm sure there's closed-minded beings worth less the lowest filth that even the light of your sun does not touch somewhere."

The pen resumes its angry scribblings and Celestia's gaze drops to meet her paper since I have yet to find anypony who can look me in the eye for long. "You're a brutal killer who has ended hundreds without losing even a wink of sleep as you dwelled within a stolen castle and sat on a stolen throne. You'll steal the most precious things from any creature as if they were nothing, and laugh as you do it. You do not obey any kind of order and treat the laws and customs of any land as though they were optional. The only emotion you have within you is a sadistic and perverse delight that you get from twisting the knife, as it is called. Emotion does not matter to you, and I doubt you have any understanding of it. You waste no time in hurting others in any way through lies and betrayal to get what you want as if such a bloodlust could be satisfied. It is you who refuses to acknowledge others as anything but your inferiors as you believe you can get away with anything. I trusted Cadance in thinking that you could be altered so you could be made to view your own flaws and accept humility and own up to everything you have done, if only to acknowledge it was all your fault. What you did to Twilight Sparkle showed otherwise, and I've let you run free and commit petty crimes for long enough."

I don't swallow my growing rage, but I refuse to show it. I've only ever heard more lies from the one who called himself the king. She knows nothing, and as with everypony else she hasn't and cannot change. She seems to think that my silence equals defeat as well, even though the strongest pony I know is the one who hardly speaks.

"You are the most obdurate creature to ever walk this world," Celestia hisses, "I offer you one last chance to save your profane existence."

'Last' chance? She does realize that I can still fight her quite easily, correct? Apparently not. Knowing her, she's probably just going to assume she can use those stunted god-powers of her and pontificate everything to me as I bleed out. Power is nothing, and neither is a physical weapon since form and intellect are the true victors, and I imagine she'll be speechless when she finds out that I still have some raw power on the side. "What could this possibly be?"

A twisted brand of pointless, unearned gloating shines within the flat purple of her eyes. Her mouth curls into the slightest traces of a haughty smile around the edges and not a word is exchanged between us.

She's so foalish. Gods, it looks like she wants somepony to give her a medal along with a whole wreath of roses, but only after she's got the monument and the town criers record her name for ages to come. And what might it be for? Nothing! She's allowing herself to feel vague traces of victory over absolutely nothing. Is she attempting arrogance? If that is the case, then she isn't doing it right since there is nothing to warrant her even fancying herself as such. My arrogance is completely warranted, after all I am the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra and I can back up every claim to those who even have the nerve to doubt me, and that would only be for my amusement as well. Me, petty? Unbelievable. "What might this latest attempt to humor me be?"

"I will be generous enough to offer you reformation if you own up to all you crimes and rid yourself of dark magic as much as possible and surrender yourself to those higher than you so that you might be taught how things really are. I have yet to select your main teacher, but they will be chosen from Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle who you will have-"

"Are you kidding me? This is the biggest load of-"

Celestia tries to look somewhat threatening here but just comes across as stern and disapproving but not much else. "I'd watch what you speak next since I've already been patient enough so far, and I will not tolerate any more attempts at corruption to my little ponies. Just what is it that you think you say most of the time?"

"Well," I begin while tapping one of my left forehoof lightly on the table's surface, "I alternate between golden wit, the truth, a healthy amount of threats that I will go through with if pushed hard enough, plenty of snark, and ironic humor that is not grasped by weak minds like yourself. I bet that mane occupies the space where your brain would be."

Her pen won't stop scribbling whatever notes she's been scrawling so angrily and she still won't meet my gaze for more than a few moments. "Do you hear yourself? You're no different from your time on the throne, and even before that. I'll have you know that after my sister's banishment-"

That's what she's chosen to call the events that the potion revealed to me? A 'banishment'?! How professional of her.

"-I returned to that valley, finally with an understanding of what I'd done, especially when I found the old journals we had left there. They gave me insight into my own flaws, my sister's sadness, and your heartless cruelty. Since nopony could read them, I gave the artifacts to the museum you visited under Twilight Sparkle's guidance, which was newly established at the time."

I know where this was going. It's a lie, it's always lies with her and I know that if I want to survive this ordeal I can neither say that anything isn't so or that it is, because that really would be the filthiest lie of all.

I'm Sombra, the demon summoned by the stupid servant of Starswirl the Bearded. But if there's anypony that would hate demons, that is an unforgiving and spoiled monster it's her, the royal nag that sits before me. This disgusting leech might snap and end me, and maybe even an entire wing of this castle in her carelessness, on the spot. She can't handle any kind of truth because she's a weak and vile thing who glorifies herself and the mindless ponies that she holds like precious gems. She may not harm them or show them cruelty but her deeds make her tyrant to me and that's all the word I need.

Because of her I can feel bile rising in my throat at the thought of just having to pretend I'm him, the other tyrant of this matter. They're both disgusting, merciless equines that only seek to wear those wretched crowns. Everything because of those, stupid, worthless jewels that are as dead as the one that wears them! They seek power and I saw what it did to Onyx, how it took a mindless twit and allowed him to... to... Well, I hope power does the same to her as well!

"I know you're a heartless creature, equinity is lost on you," She goes on and on, in that tone.

Why does she pretend to know anything? I'm not heartless, nor will I ever be. I know more than most what it means to have a heart and a small part of me, the artless little voice that never gets its way but nonetheless can be quite vocal in certain matters, wants to just scream it now and see how it affects her, even though she'll probably twist it to suit her and further make me out to be everything I'm not.

"You're a heartless, violent, and insolent unstable mess of an equine shell. You might as well be a weapon for how much you kill, and how much you relish in it all, Onyx."

I stop playing her game, everything that's been built up gets to show in my eyes, my fangs, the mane that has a smoky quality to it. She's so oblivious, the pen no longer scrawls it's nonsense and papers fall to the floor, a few sprinkles of crimson dance on each. Through it all I can see that despite those red spots, the name she wrote stands out clearly...

Onyx 'King Sombra' 'Kawblance'

1,123

It goes on and on like she does, attempting to list everything I've done, some of the 'offenses' are recent while others are what I'm despised for in the Crystal Empire even though she counted wrong, or her source was false since there's about twenty missing deaths that should be tallied there.

Fate is no longer in its sheath, the cold blend of steel and platinum along with whatever was in the Alicorn Amulet rests at her neck, the curve of the scimitar blade is covered in a faint sheen of blood. A few specks even landed on the red veins of crystal that creep across the cold metal.

"Call me Onyx one more time and you'll see just how insolent I can be, Little 'Lara. We'll see if you're still fit to play princess after."

The magic on her horn dies and the golden light cannot save the pen from falling to the ground. Once the last shreds of light are gone, she smiles warmly at me as my own magic goes with hers, but not of my own accord.

No, no, no, no...

After all that vanishes I can feel everything and know exactly what she's done. I feel the panic rising in my throat, and everything else... my horn won't light...

...my horn won't light...

...she keeps smiling...

...my horn won't light, I thought I tripped... that stupid smile...

...I should have felt it, shouldn't I?!

...I would have...

I gulp hard, since each breath is shaky now. On the papers I can see a date neatly written in the corner of the first page: June 20th.

That's today's date.

June 20th. June 20th. June 20th.

...MY HORN WON'T LIGHT!

十匕 (Mistaken Identity)

One of the things about Onyx that used to scare me in the first few months I knew him was that he felt dead.

No. Not even that, he simply felt like he didn't exist. I can feel the magic of anypony, including myself and even dead ponies have a feel around them that shows that they were once alive. Necromancy wouldn't be possible if the dead were without magic, nor does it just leave when one has died. Even rocks have magic. But Onyx? Well, I'm not sure if this always persisted since I can't feel magic through his memories for the obvious reason that he couldn't do so.

Onyx was horrifying because he didn't feel like this. He felt like nothing. He could sneak up on me, he could set me on edge like nopony else could, he could scare me. He was hollow.

If a normal pony, no matter the race, is like a jar filled with anything and properly sealed, Onyx was an empty jar that was painted so I couldn't stare through this little abyss with a lid of his own to prevent anything from going inside. Sure, he could use a little bit of magic but that was only arcane magic which even a tree could use. Magic stays around things, it's personal, it leaves trails. For Onyx? It was fleeting, even magic hated him. It never wanted to stay and I could hear it whisper to me too.

I imagine it told me to leave too.

Believe me, I wanted to. I'm not going to justify anything. How can I?

You could say he was shallow. Nopony knows. Nopony but me knows how I wish he was shallow but I didn't even get that mercy of him being just a shallow flicker. He was nothing, and oddly enough a few of the other crystal ponies felt like this too, but I wasn't afraid of them since they didn't do what he did. They were just faces and none of them ever made it. Onyx was deranged, like he knew about this hollowness but not why it existed. Still, I felt like he knew what it was and wanted to fill it the only way he knew how.

Me. A crown. So much blood. Why was it that even though I screamed the loudest only they were ever heard? Do I even have to pretend not to know?

He didn't exist. He shouldn't have, but I could still feel that creeping emptiness and remember how awful it was, even when I was reduced to screaming and shaking in a corner all because there was a little voice in my head...

It's like that now, I can't pull myself off the floor, I want to run and I think the room is getting smaller. I'm not sure if I'm breathing right, my heartbeat can't be what it should. I want to crawl somewhere and hide. I want to stay and fight. I want to live. I want to hurt whoever did this. I know that it was Celestia. That smile is still there. How much time has passed? It feels like longer down here on this nice cold floor but it can't have been more than a few seconds.

She made me feel like Onyx. I can't use my magic. I can't feel it in me. It's like she found a small switch in my head and turned everything off... a-and now I-I can't find it again.

I try to hug myself because even I'm not sure if I'm here and there's sweat forming underneath my forelock and I'm here, I'm not hollow, the lights are too bright but somehow I'm still here...

Celestia's smile vanishes. She tells me to stop acting, to get up.

I bring one of my forehooves to my mouth and everything stops for a moment but the next thing I know is my hoof is bloody and my throat is too, and that can only mean one thing.

She turned off all the magic...

...She's trying to kill me.

When I look at her now, when I see that face that acts like it can do no wrong, a hint of the smile returns and she knows I know.

"This is justice, Onyx."

No. No. No. No. No.

"As a villain, it's what you deserve."

She's calm and cool and I want to scream so much. Nopony deserves anything ever. You can find things, you can take them, you can manipulate everything right into your hoof, you can ask for something... but nopony deserves anything by default.

Fate lies nearby and I grab the hilt in my mouth, so the sword is clutched in my fangs, and push myself up as fast as I can, and hurl myself at her, papers now covered in my own blood scatter from the move, and I'll get her even if my magic's drained... I'll get out of here, I have to.

A moment later, my head hurts and my vision is blurry in my good eye. Fate lies on the ground and I feel like I'm too heavy to stand, there's more blood in my throat and on the ground. Spatters are on the floor, a few drops are on Celestia's shoe.

"You... did you really just try to attack me for disabling you magic? I take a measure to make sure you don't hurt anypon-"

"SHUT UP, CELESTIA! JUST SHUT UP! YOU KNEW THAT-"

I start coughing again and it's getting harder to stand. My voice doesn't sound the best when I speak next and I'm surprised I still have the energy to shake.

"You knew that I wouldn't last too long after the spell wore off."

Celestia's expression is still composed, but no longer calm. "I did, but I don't see how that would cause the initial reaction. I expected you to be angry but not this."

She says the last word with disgust, as if all of this were my fault and I'm about to talk back to her but my vision's at it again, I feel faint and almost fall over when one of my legs nearly gives out. Part of it is trying to dissolve into shadow while the rest of me just feels heavy and feverish and I'm not sure if I'm going to las-

I almost fall over, and can feel my eyelids flutter. There's a small glimmer of light that darts towards my left side and in an instant it's gone and I'm not falling anymore since something is holding me up and I open my eyes again, the light still hurts, I tilt my head so I can see and...

...oh gods...

Celestia. She's standing right there so close to me that I want to hurt her. She doesn't look as severe anymore but she's hardly at ease. One hoof is on one of my withers and the other vile thing is on my left cheek so my face is tilted up slightly enough to see that wretched face of hers.

...gods, just make it stop, I hate her...

"You could at least sit down and cut the drama, perhaps even clean up a bit before you go, since I don't want to have to clean up this mess all on my own. Every minute this drags on is a minute I could be spending helping ponies who deserve it."

...oh, would you just be quiet...

Even under my cloak, and through the gold that she wears, I can feel my skin crawl and as soon as a spark of clear conscious lights itself I immediately shove her away and am pleased to say I twisted one of her forehooves badly in doing so. I back away, somewhat clumsily due to my condition and part of me has to reassure the rest of my mind that I'm still here. I back into one of the chairs and crash into the table.

"Don't touch me," I growl.

She isn't listening.

"I SAID DON'T EVER TOUCH ME YOU-"

"You may stop screaming now."

Oh, that gods-awful professional tone of hers. This is somepony who's either never suffered a thing or hasn't suffered enough.

There's no way out of here.

I can't run.

I can't run far.

I've never made the best with what I've had because that's just blind, foolish acceptance. I know what I want, and I'll get it.

...Even if the circumstance is less than ideal, then again, 'less than ideal' is all I've ever known.

She's getting impatient. "Well? What is it going to be?"

You're careless when your impatient, Celestia. I have a feeling you only wait for something if you have to and there is no other choice.

"What do you mean?" I genuinely don't know what she's talking about at this point and am surprised that I'm still this conscious without proper stores of magic.

"Either I will dispose of you with much more mercy than you deserve or I shall wait outside while you do the deed yourself with that blade of yours. Once that matter is through with, I will personally take your soul to the dead world since this is too big a job for the Reaper, if you ask me. From there you will no doubt be going to Tartarus since there isn't a single quality or deed that could get you anything else."

My hooves find Fate once again and sheathe the blade, before I turn to concentrate on Celestia as much as I can.

Does she really think that I'll pick an option from something that she dictates? She keeps picking options that result in my death... even when it seems inevitable at this point... but I wonder... what if I change one technicality? Alter a single factor that could spell ruin for either one of us.

Would I take the gamble? Would I take the risk to gain another win to my name, to reverse all my luck, drag out time and get a new playing field? If only for a small, unknown chance?

I am the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra, Duke of Nowhere and Nothing, General Exploiter of the Ignorant and many other things. I am Sombra of No House, Sombra the demon, Sombra the incredibly sassy.

I've done many things in my life, but there's one thing I will never allow on my record.

I don't lose.

"Make up your mind."

"I have, Celestia."

"And?"

"I pick neither."

She's getting visibly riled up now, shifting her wings and such. "Explain."

"I'm not going to last too much longer so I'll make this quick. You said yourself that you don't want to clean up a mess, and believe me that if I take Fate here and attempt anything without magic then I will make nothing but a mess. I'm not going to do that for the reason that I'm just going to openly and defiantly refuse your oh-so-kind offer that I just end myself right here. If you were to end me it would take more time. And Celestia, I doubt that you approve directly of killing ponies in random rooms of your own castle, especially if that pony happens to be the friend of your niece. That's a horribly guilty conscious I just saved you from. So you know what you're going to do instead? Since it won't matter in a few hours, or so I predict, you're just going to take me as I am and since don't think that I wouldn't be in any kind of abnormal mental state from picking either of your proposals."

I see the slight raise of an eyebrow but nothing else.

"Really, do you think I want this face to have a nasty scar forever? See, we both benefit from this: I get to keep my pretty face and you don't get your own family to hate you."

"Are you going to kiss my boots next?"

"Pfft, no can do. My tongue is too sharp."

"Well you aren't flattering me, that's for sure. Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

"After this is over I'd very much appreciate if you took a cactus and-"

Her horn lights up gold and Canterlot castle disappears before I can finish.

十八 (She Won't Let Him Go)

Even through the pillars, the first thing my eyes were drawn to was the sky. The entirety of it was tinged purple, some areas were lighter or darker but the whole sky was almost the exact shade of purple as a certain mistake. I didn't see a single cloud either, which was disheartening. My other surroundings would quickly prove that I was no longer in Equestria or any of the neighboring lands, but the most obvious indicator was that there was not a single star in the sky. It was an ugly lavender with nothing to take my eyes away from the soft hue except for the sun and the moon, each dividing the twilight between them like an overly symmetrical picture.

A frown tugs at my lips. I hate it when things are so... neat, and everything appears right on the surface, when things are easy. I like flaws, small changes, quirks, and puzzles. In other words, I like it when things look somewhat natural instead of having each and every aspect of one's life sorted into rows like it's an accomplishment. This sky was like that, it felt like either one of us didn't belong.

Celestia stood close enough to me, and I could see that neither her nor me were translucent as I thought would happen, even if it were only to one instead of the other. Thankfully, I could feel the faintest stir of my own magic once again; I was here.

Everything, Celestia included, emitted magic again. Well, they hadn't stopped, I'd just been unable to feel it.

In an almost ironic twist, I stood in her shadow with Fate at my side. She had teleported... no, that wasn’t the right word, her magic had taken the both of us... oh, how I loathe to use that word to describe Celestia and myself... to this place but had bypassed something to get here. I could feel it, but just barely since my senses were still somewhat blurred, even now.

'This place' was a pavilion of some kind that looked to float somewhere in this twilight because I couldn't see any land nearby and it feels drafty up here. I've never seen architecture in this style whole before, the closest would have to be the ruins under the Castle of the Two Sisters, but of course the only wreck I've seen worse than that would be tied between Onyx and Purple Eyesore's mind.

It did have a bit of a Crystalline feel to it as well, I decided as I took a few steps away from Celestia. There were two crystal thrones with a peculiar hour glass between them. I wanted to investigate it since this structure was only about twenty paces across and I doubt that Celestia was going to flip out but another voice interrupted by another voice calling to Celestia.

I didn't catch what they said but I did almost fall into this pool that I somehow didn't manage to see even though it looked like it was made of liquified supernovas.

Yeah, forget the hourglass. I'm tempted to find out if drinking this will harm me and then actually trying if it doesn't. I just hope it doesn't taste like cactus since there will be consequences if it does.

"Onyx," Celestia calls, "There's somepony you need to talk to."

"First, quit calling me that, and second, quit acting like you've got an ego like mine since we both know the only thing big about you is your rear."

"Sombra, will you quit being rude for at least five minutes?!"

"I don't think so, and if you're so fixated on getting me over there, why don't you get your fat-"

I turn around and see a Celestia with a face that would put tomatoes to shame looming over me.

"NOW."

"I'm not sorry, but you get to scream in my face but I can't tell the truth?" I whine in a wounded falsetto as I toss my mane to the side, adding a scoff for good measure. "Although Celestia, I must really admit that your vocabulary has improved since the last time I've heard from you."

She looks like she wants to set me on fire. I'd like to see her try.

"Famous last words," she hisses, as if trying to yell while whispering could make her appear any less sillier to me.

"Actually, I think my last words, if I were to allow such a concept of 'last' from yours truly would be something along the lines of 'Kiss my flank you throne warmer' but, hey it's still a work in-"

Another blink of the horn and one teleportation later I'm looking up at an Alicorn with a glowing gold mane and inky eyes. Her coat matches the sky and a wreath of plants balances on her head.

"So this is King Sombra?" She has an accent I do not know and even though her voice is higher than Celestia's she is definitely older and sounds like she's seen much, much more.

"Elysium, his real name is-"

"My name is Sombra. I'm not a king and I want to kick Celestia's face in at least twice a month."

Elysium doesn't seem to care what either of us are saying. She's facing front so I can't see what her mark is but I almost want it to be kicking puppies over rainbows since she's yet another equine I'm not going to take too seriously. Or rather, I don't respect her just like I don't respect pretty much everypony else.

Her tone isn't like Celestia's professional one but she doesn't seem to treat Celestia like most and bow to her every wish like she's a spoiled child. She definitely knows Celestia or something about her. I can tell they've met before based on how they're interacting.

"Since there seems to be unnecessary confusion over who you are, just answer this simple question: Have you ever at least gone under the name Sombra?"

"Yes."

"Are you 1,124 years old?"

"Well, I guess I am now."

"Are you from the Crystal Empire?"

"No."

I see can Celestia look as if she's about to call out before looking to something she imagined in the corner.

"Did you ever kill anypony in the Crystal Empire?'

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"During the King's rule."

"Did you occupy the castle for eight years?"

"...Yes."

"Celestia, you have the right pony, from what I can tell. If he's lying it will show up when I read his memories," Elysium adds tersely before her own horn lights up.

Looking at memories? I don't even need to dwell on that.

It's mind magic.

The vision doors don't work on me, but there are oh-so-many types and I know them all.

But I hardly ever used them.

Mind magic.

When it's the dark magic kind, it's worse.

It's all bad magic.

It's horror, it's panic, but sometimes you don't need it because after six months you realized something and after two years you couldn't even cry anymore.

It's screaming in the corner and I want to disappear magic.

Why?

Because all he does is want you to hurt everypony and he wants you to feel it too.

He's generous like that.

And when he's done with them he'll be bored soon enough, and you're the one he can't kill.

It's Celestia pulling you off of Elysium and trying to make you stop screaming while the lavender one tries to get the sword away from you. It's that kind of magic because after a while you don't even need the magic part of more because he sure didn't.

It's a really complicated mess magic. It's Celestia screaming because you only missed her eye by this much with that sword and it won't stop bleeding magic.

It's I just want to be alone magic because they pushed you too far and I, I won't let it happen again. It should be history. I want it to be history. This is history that I'm only in because of one mistake, and it wasn't even mine.

I'm the mistake of some kid's twisted fantasy and he never let me hear the end of it.

I can't be calmed down but they end up getting me to stand off to the side. I've taken the least amount of damage, coming out with only a few bruises on the sides of one of my foreleg. Celestia conjured a bandage for her eye and the gashes on her chest are already healing. Elysium dodged the sword a bit faster so her cuts are much more slight but she's a deeper shade of purple in places but even that vanishes before my eyes.

"Something is wrong with him," Elysium says even though a very angry, eyes-darting-from-goddess-to-goddess him can hear everything you say. She ignores me when I spit at her hooves.

"What do you mean?"

"How did this one die?"

"Well he was suffering from time displacement and-"

"Yes, that much to me is clear but what was his final moment? How did you come by him? Celestia, he seems too lucid, too defiant for a recently departed soul."

Celestia clears her throat smoothly. "I had him brought over to the castle since he's been out on his spree long enough and shouldn't have been allowed to go free no matter how much Cadance-"

"Cadance?" Elysium questions.

"Mi Amore Cadenza, Crystal Empress and Princess of Love, Wife of Shining Armor of the House of Mortals-"

"Alongside Twilight Sparkle, Spark of Magic, Prophet of Harmonia, and Princess of Friendship? Yes, Celestia I know the full titles of your successful students but not their pet names."

"That's just it!" Celestia's nearly screaming and my chest lurches as a sharp, accusing hoof finds me once again. "I let him go the first time around, oh Ellie you should have seen what happened to Twilight Sparkle. I had him brought to the castle as soon as I could pinpoint his whereabouts which did take longer than I initially expected since this one hardly even bothered to fancy himself as intelligent in youth."

"Please it speed it up a bit. We may live forever, little daughter of Lu-"

Am I the only one who saw hints of a scowl in Celestia from that remark? Apparently, I wasn't, since Elysium tsks a few times before muttering something about forgiveness.

Celestia's mask resumes and she goes on. "When it came down to it, he showed a single moment of reason in getting me to bring him here."

"So he was still alive? I taught you that spell for a reason, Celestia, and while you've used it well so far, have you ever heard of ‘picking the fruit before it is ripe’? There is no harm done, but make sur-"

"Elysium, he was already dying when it happened-"

"WHAT? CELESTIA DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!"

...

What ensued was me standing right in the shadows, utterly forgotten by the bickering gods for now.

I heard everything and there was quite a bit to learn.

In fact some of it is remarkably simple: a seal both natural and one created by Elysium and somepony else named Stolas to keep wandering souls from getting in and allowing somepony called the Reaper, themselves, and others who knew the spell to be the only ones to filter this place. Only three kinds of creatures can enter. The dead can enter easily, as can immortals. The living will explode a few minutes after arrival. Lastly is the theoretical, and that would be the dying.

They are neither living or dead, oh sure they're more living... but living things can expire and the dying are expiring.

What happens next had not been proven before. The dying are something else.

So are immortals.

There is no mistake in this, just an upgrade if you will, a small alteration to something that already is.

Celestia made a mistake, she failed her game because she was only a piece in mine, and she was a piece that I won in a gamble.

Everything that tried to kill me only made me want to live even more, and did she really think that I was going to let her of all ponies take that away?

No.

She made a mistake, or rather she made me immortal.

Everything was worth it. Everypony I had to twist and hurt and risk like her and the one pony, the ace of hearts who has proved she is still a piece, but one I won't treat like the other two that I have acquired.

The gold diamond is mine.

I've gotten more than I bargained for. The last card is hardly a flat piece or a win to be coveted. She's something special, above any token or inferior.

I did it, I built my bridge, it took so many years but I've known who I'm searching for.

I'm Sombra and once again, because of somepony else's mistake I've won so much and I'm grateful for every bit of it. I'm everlasting, and this has been my latest move, and it happens to be a divine one at that.

十九 (At Least There's Pizza)

Two days ago there had hardly been any great escape. I disappeared the first chance I got, when my magic returned enough for a teleportation spell as soon as Celestia, speechless and seething, returned to Canterlot with me.

Nopony knew what to do with me, the wild card. Within a blink of the sun princess' eyes I was gone, the last she's seen of me so far would be my smug face.

It's hardly going to be the last time she sees me either, I think we both know that. However, I think our paths will merely be parallel the next time around since we have no mutual goals.

She's given me quite a gift, even if it was only a mistake on her part. I'd say it's the second best I've gotten, although it does pale in comparison to the first.

I'll be lasting just as long as you, Celestia.

I think I have much more of a shot now because if I last forever I can try time and time again. There's time to pursue so much more as well. The world is going to be seeing so much more of me in time because her students are just ages, kingdoms that rise and fall and are as temporary as a storm. They'll pass and who will be left in our playing field? Mortals are hardly an adequate barrier between us.

Even if we were playing your game all along, Celestia, when will we finally accept that there's a new player?

From my mountain below me, Canterlot only offers a small breeze in response before I'm called away by another presence working its way up the mountain. I know exactly who it is but am unsure why her of all ponies would be here.

Soon her voice joins her magic and her pink coat appears as she works her way up the mountain. She looks tired and a few leaves have found their way into her ruffled mane. Her horn is alight and she carries a box along with a map.

"Sombra!"

"Umm... Pink One...?"

She finally gets within a few steps of me and sets the box down, folding the map on top but still needs time to catch her breath, and when she speaks again she doesn't seem to notice that I'm looking at the box instead of her.

"You live on a mountain!"

"Yes."

"But Sombra... even with the tracking spell... I mean, I knew you lived somewhere around Canterlot so that helped since ponies don't exactly go looking for you... but oh my gods! It took me hours to get up here! Hours!"

"It's a mountain, Pink One. Why are you here? I didn't exactly summon you."

"You can't write well, so of course you weren't going to summon me."

"Shut up."

"Yes, it's nice to see you too. But I thought I'd try to come by since it was kinda sorta, well I'm not quite sure, but there was a birthday on the 20th as you should remember and it's associated with you, and since you've probably never had a birthday before, and a ton happened apparently - I won't go into Auntie Celestia's letters and the like - I decided to find you and throw you a little party so at least for like, an hour you're a bit less of an antisocial weirdo and that's what friends-"

"Shut up and give me that pizza sitting right there."

"Well! I never, Sombra. That really hurts," Pink One said, obviously faking wounded emotions, "Also, you like pizza?"

"Pizza is a god."

"Well it looks like I made a good guess since I can't picture you eating a cake. It's still warm, thanks to a spell I used but anyway-"

"Give me the pizza now or I will raze your empire within a fortnight."

"Gosh," she mutters while flipping open the box with a hoof, "You could at least say thank you."

"No."

A sigh spills from her, but it doesn't sound sad. "What kind of toppings do you like? I got a whole bunch."

"Green peppers and pineapple."

"Well, lucky for you that's Shining Armor's favorite as well and I got a quarter of the pizza like that. Me, I like black olives."

"I call heresy on that," I say pulling up a bit of grass and tossing it at her as she levitates two slices from the rest. She giggles a bit as the grass gets in her already messy mane.

I take my slice from her and we sit down and look out at Canterlot. She tries to uproot some grass and throw it at me but I draw my hood in the sun and light the remaining bits on fire.

"So," she asks in between bites, "The last time we saw each other you weren't doing so well. You seem alright now, though."

"I am."

"Wait... did you just eat that entire slice in the three seconds I wasn't looking at you?"

"It was twelve seconds."

She passes me another slice. "You are so lucky I got an extra large pizza."

"What did you do after I saw you?"

"I trespassed repeatedly."

"Ah... sounds fun? Hey, you did some work on the sword I gave you!"

"You didn't give it to me, I just refused to give it back, and this is a new sword. I made it."

When she isn't paying attention I grab the entire box from her side.

"You could always ask for a third slice."

"Just because I could doesn't mean I will."

"Happy 1,124th birthday, Sombra," Pink One adds with a smile.

"I'm seriously considering murdering you for making a quarter of this thing black olives."

"It's nice to know that you and I are such good friends that we can talk about murdering each other freely."

"Even if you had a plan to murder me it won't work now since you'll be putting up with me for the rest of your life."

Pink One drops one of the remains of one of heresy slices and brings her forehooves to her face but I can still hear her muffled plea.

"Save me from this pizza existence."

...

She is saved from her pizza existence by none other than me since I eat all except the quarter with black olives, those are eaten by her with the exception of the slice that I threw in her face when I thought she was trying to tell me that my mane was too long.

I didn't talk too much but she sure did. I half listened to everything she said and lit the empty box on fire.

Pink One told me that after I left the Empire she continued to talk with Silver Lining more and they were on very friendly terms with each other.

Silver Lining told Pink One more about Onyx and about crystallokinesis, the natural magic possessed by many crystal ponies that allows them to control and produce crystals, as well as, so I learned from Pink One, to survive many days without food since they developed in the Arctic.

She also said that Silver told her that it's impossible to tell if a crystal pony has this or not until a foal is a little over two years old and that ponies without the ability aren't loathed even though they can't be scried or detected with magic they can become very good in jobs that require stealth, if the Empire were in need of such individuals. About of the quarter of the Empire's natural population doesn't have crystallokinesis according to most of the records that Pink One found.

That explains the hollow ponies like Onyx.

Pink One continued to hang about the mountain with me for a few hours, although I wouldn't let her in my pocket dimension. After a while she asked me to tell her the time using the sun, and I did. She'd been here for about three hours and was only slightly bored with the fact that I didn't talk much.

Before she had to go to catch her train she asked me a final question.

"Sombra, you realize that if future events go as you wish that... well you know how Celestia is like my aunt, and the same with Luna? You've heard me call them that, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Would you let me call you Uncle?"

She twitches a little bit when I don't answer.

"S-Sombra, would you let me be your niece?"

"Pink One, you'd be my favorite niece."

二十 (Epilogue)

A day after Pink One left, it began to rain. Thick masses of silver and gray blurred together so it was pointless to separate the two as they rolled in, bringing cool breezes with them. The sky rumbled for hours before the first drops fell and even though I smelled it coming for miles up here on my side of the mountain, I was somewhat surprised when a bit of water fell onto the page of one of the books I had been reading under the clouds.

I stayed to watch the lightning that flashed up there, where it must be so savage above the clouds. I managed to put the book away before it really began to pour. When that happened, I sat out and watched the turmoil on the horizon since Canterlot is so small compared to all this.

Through the unrelenting weather I didn't flinch or blink. The light was smothered and the winds caused what little flora there is here to ripple in waves. I think I even caught a few of the standards that flew from the towers in Canterlot whip about.

Even when my mane was drenched to the point where all it could do was hang in my eyes since the wind could no longer move it, still I wouldn't move.

My ears twitched at the latest round of lightning in this storm of half a day and I remembered the mare who wielded lightning similar to this, her eyes flashing with power that was most likely small compared to what she could do now.

There's other mountains in the horizon, the storm hasn't blotted out all of them. Where will I meet her? It won't be under the same circumstances as last time, at least not for me. Does she think of us as enemies still?

From here there's no path, no restraints, absolutely nothing can bar me from an immortal. I may not be an Alicorn, but I'm as eternal as they are.

After a while I lay on the grass, which is as drenched as everything else, including my cloak. I stare up at the still raging sky, which is much more peaceful than any dreaded sunshine can be.

How long will it take for us to meet again? Will it be weeks, months, centuries, or longer?

Will she remember me? What did she think after our initial meeting? Did she loathe me as her sister did once the Empire vanished?

I continue to lay like this for hours, still thinking but it is no longer in simple questions that I care to put into words since I know what they mean.

The sun is still hiding even as the wind clears the sky and I blink back some of the rain and only sit up once I've caught the last drops on my tongue.

Now there is only everything left to say and one princess to say it to.

Author's Note

Link to the sequel

Stories that acted as side-stories to this one:

The Encore Of Clover The Clever

Of Fever Dreams And Falling Stars

Spare Him His Life

二 (It's Always the Tall Grass)

I have only ever been in the mountains here three times and it was never in a part where ponies lived. The Pink One led me here to the foot of one of the mountains, one that I don't think I ever caught the name of. The fields were gone, there was only gray stone and light flurries of snow, or so she says.

She has been trying to engage in banter the entire time only for me to remain silent, especially since she wasn't saying anything of importance right now and I honestly didn't care. I'm not one for wasting words.

However, if she paid more attention she could see that there was still grass here. We were not that far up the mountain yet. If she happened to be as observant as I was, then she might also be able to see the roughly-made stone stairs among the blades.

Pink One ceased walking, her brow was furrowed. "Okay there's supposed to be a house right here... somewhere... Sombra, do you see a house anywhere?"

I continue to stare at the stepping stones 'hidden' in the grassy slope. "I don't see a house, Pink One."

She sighs and starts to walk in poorly defined circles, all the while looking throughout most of the clearing for a house which she may or may not expect to outright fall out of the sky. As much as I don't hate this one I won't be sticking around to clean up the mess if a house does happen to fall on her.

Instead, I am wondering if the stepping stones have glass – or crystal – beads embedded in them. I saw that at a shop in Canterlot where glass was embedded in the stone to form a picture. I'd like to know how it was done but didn't know the name for the process, which made it difficult to steal a book on the subject. And I didn't want to take it apart since I wouldn't have the slightest idea on how to put it back toget–oh, hey it looks like she's still mumbling about that house and hasn't noticed that I'm staring at the very thing she's looking for.

I was more aware of detail when sealed in an ice-void then she is right now... and she is still muttering about finding that house. Truly brilliant, Pink One. Your navigation skills are rivaling master cartographer, and here I am having never been here before and yet I still managed to locate what you are so desperately searching for but also observing yet another example of silly princesses being incompetent.

You know, Pink One, if you don't figure out anything soon vines are going to sprout up from the ground and grow around your face.

I snort at the thought.

Hilarious.

"Hey, Sombra you've been staring at that patch of tall grass for a few minutes now and it's concerning-"

"Really? Are you sure that your atrocious navigation isn't what we should be worried about?"

She trotted over to where I was. "Wait, what do you mean?" Then she sees the stepping stones and proceeds to facehoof. "Why didn't you point that out before?"

"Is there something wrong with your eyes?"

"Err... why...?"

Oh, don't act so confused, you aren't that dense compared to your acquaintances. "You weren't able to spot those stairs."

"Do you have to nitpick the behavior of others and judge them so insanely?"

"Always."

Once more her hoof met her face. "Let's go, I think I've had enough of your craziness for just a little while."

"Welcome to my insanity, Pink One."

"Can I leave now?" Pink One starts to walk towards wherever this path leads.

"Never," I reply heading after her. The stairs lead up a grassy slope that would be steep to anypony who has never climbed a real mountain and instead decided to accept that the only obstacles to scale around here are the Gemheart Mountains.

Novices.

...

The path lead further away from the city to the last grassy slopes before the mountains rose up to their full height and no grass would grow on the rocky banks. It was too hilly to farm and I wasn't sure a creature that usually had strong social inclinations, like a pony would, want to live here among the occasional tree that made up the Gemheart Mountains' tame excuse for a timberline. Just go over the mountains and through the snow – the difference is remarkable. Most would die after a few hours straying north, probably not even in that much time unless they headed west to Trotland.

Pink One mentions that we should find this house soon. The path has been overtaken by grass and I can see that it has been used recently, but is not heavily traveled. I hope that the residents here don't talk much, I also hope they aren't obnoxious purple-hued brats.

From up here, even as I walk I can see the entire city and I loathe it. It doesn't matter whether it's the green fields, their borders outlined with small groves of trees or the thin streams that weave a path of their own down the windy mountains, I despise every bit of this place. It was never my choice to come here.

The castle is the worst offender: it catches the light of both the sun, the moon, and even the stars, tossing it everywhere and shooting the tri-colored light as if its presence wasn't obvious enough.

I know what happened in there, and the last thing I want is a reminder of how he used me as a weapon to hurt ponies I cared nothing about while he took as much as he could from me and even assumed my name, leaving me to be lost under the surface of that disaster as if I was the one who never should have been there. IT WAS HIM!

All somepony had to do was take a closer look, even it wouldn't have helped.

But ponies are never good at that sort of thing, now are they?

The castle and the city are no longer in my sight, but the house finally is. It is located on a well concealed rocky outcropping on the mountainside and is very small compared to the main city's houses. It couldn't have been more than two stories tall, and didn't look like it would contain more then six rooms. The crystal used to build it is a rough blue gray with very little luster, as if somepony had tried to build a tiny house out of an overcast sky, and not even a nice one at that, as if it were possible for the sky to look awful.

A nearby tree sways in the breeze. For some reason there were twin ropes tied to one of the branches. They hung parallel to each other and were joined by a wooden board that hung at the bottom. Pink One hasn't noticed that I've stopped walking and proceeds to the door.
What was it? I almost feel like such an object is familiar but am entirely sure that I have never seen one before, much less heard of one since I have no recollection of a possible name.

What does it do? Is it some kind of crude pulley? I don't see the wheel, and the ropes aren't positioned right, but what else could it be? Why would you put a pulley system in a tree anyway? Maybe to send supplies up into the boughs? Why would you send supplies up into a tree unless you were scouting something – I'd know, I've been in trees before and unless you have magic or wings or are injured in some way it can be difficult to hoist such objects into this choice of shelter, so establishing a pulley system would make sense if you knew how to make it right!

Nopony here seems to build anything that exceeds four stories with the exception of the castle – which has one ridiculously long staircase where something much more interesting could have been constructed - and that's probably for the better. Basic engineering is a lost art to these ponies.

I hear Pink Princess knock on the door.

Yeah, welcome to my insanity alright.