The hatred of the shadow

Rising was sitting in his room in Canterlot and meditated. The curtains were blocking the light of the sun out of his room and he had summoned a dim magical light.

Suddenly he felt something far away. It was a great darkness and Risings head began to hurt as he tried to look at it. He was thrown out of his peace and opened his eyes in surprise.

The light had vanished so Rising stood up and opened the curtains. It was already noon and the sun shined directly from above. Rising began looked over the land of Equestria and took a deep breath to clear his mind.

After his head felt better he looked out of the window a bit longer but as he looked towards the north, towards the crystal empire, he could see black clouds blocking any possible view on the empire. He could see red light flashing inside of the clouds and fear struck into Rising heart.

In this moment a guards slammed his door open and ran inside. He was breathing heavily and was struggling to stay on his hooves. "Archmage Rising Light, I am sorry for bothering you like that but the princesses called you because of..."

Rising lifted his hoof to stop the guards. "I already know why. I will immediately meet with the princesses." The guard nodded unable to talk anymore and after Rising walked past him the guard took a deep breath and left the room too.

Rising walked through the castle with quick steps and his white cloak was fluttering behind him. On the way towards the throne room Rising puzzled about what could have caused something like these clouds.

Soon he reached the doors to the throne room and without any hesitation he pushed them open. Inside he saw the princesses sitting on their thrones and they were talking to a guard in front of them.

As Rising stepped closer the guard bowed and walked away. Rising took another step forward and bowed. "You asked me to come here?"

Celestia nodded. "Yes Rising. A great darkness surrounds the Crystal Empire and every attempt to sent magical letters fails."

Risings expression turned worried. "Do we have any idea what it could have caused?"

Luna looked down at him with sympathy. "We can't say anything for sure but the hunters said that the aura of the darkness is similar to the aura of Malonex but they are not completely sure."

Rising looked at the ground for a moment. "If he, or whoever else, managed to take over the empire, we can't know what else he can do. We have to sent massages to all of Equestria. We have to warn the guards in every city and we have to sent the hunters to guard the borders towards the empire. The cities close to the empire have to be secured by hunters and guards."

Celestia nodded. "We already came to that conclusion but the problem is we can't sent massages their either and the train hasn't returned from the empire which means that it will take a few days till they get the massages. Now we can only hope that they see what is happening and defend themselves. We can't sent hunters because they are all on missions and we are unable to communicate with them."

Now Luna spoke up. "Rising you have to tell the other members of the council about what happened. A few of the should be still in Canterlot."

Rising nodded and bowed again. "I will immediately talk to them."

The princesses nodded back and Rising turned around and left the throne room. As the doors closed behind him he immediately made his way towards the room of the council. 'Maybe I can reach Formulas in Manehattan with the crystal and warn him.'

Soon he reached to room and slammed the door open and quickly walked to his seat. After he sat down he began to concentrate his magic and quickly afterwards the blue crystal was released. Rising saw that Malonexs cutie mark was still there but now the crystal was glowing in his normal blue again. 'Please work!'

He reached out with his hoof, closed his eyes and touched the crystal. He let his magic connect with the crystal but as the crystal started let his magic reach over all of Equestira to reach the others the crystal stopped suddenly. Rising felt a sudden pain in his hoof and it began to spread everywhere in his body.

Rising screamed in pain as he took his hoof away from the crystal. He opened his eye and saw that it started to glow more and more. Rising reacted as fast as he could and summoned a barrier around the crystal. Only a moment later it exploded in a magical shockwave but Rising was able to contain it inside of the barrier.

As everything was quiet again he deactivated the barrier and looked on the table. Where once the crystal stood was now nothing more than a burn and a few cracks in the table. Rising let out a disappointed sigh and used his magic to let the place where the crystal stood back inside of the table. After that everything looked like before and there was no sign of the destruction of the crystal.

For a moment Rising thought he had himself under control but then the frustration won over him and he used his magic to aim at Malonexs old seat and shot a light bolt against it. The bolt collided with the backrest and it destroyed parts of it.

For a moment Rising was just standing there looking at the destroyed seat till he finally calmed down and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and concentrated himself on fighting back his anger and frustration.

As he opened his eyes again he decided to talk with Ice Eruption again, so he made his way to the outside of Canterlot to the closest park.

As he wandered through Canterlot he began to curse himself for taking the cloak with him because the ponies could recognize him. While he walked they began to ask him what these dark cloud over the empire mean and why somepony they know doesn't return from the empire.

Every time he answered that he doesn't know and that he will make every information he get public. But there were also those who just wanted to talk with him because he was the archmage. For these ponies Rising just used a quick spell to shove them aside and told them to not bother him with unnecessary conversations.

After some time he reached the park he searched for and there he happily noticed that nearly nopony was there and those who were there seemed to be uninterested in him. Rising began to walk a little bit slower through the park and looked a bit around.

The park was a big area with a few stone paths between fields of grass. Some benches were standing at the way. Different kinds of flowers and trees were planted on the grass.

Rising walked around for some time looking for Ice Eruption. He knew that Eruption still hasn't left Canterlot and that he was in the park most of the time. but he didn't knew where exactly and what he is doing there, so he had to walk through the whole park.

Suddenly he heard a voice form above him. "Greetings archmage."

Rising looked up and saw that Eruption was levitating himself over the trees. A moment later the levitation stopped and Eruption landed on the ground in front of Rising and bowed down. "How can I aid you?"

Rising smiled a bit. "Stop the bowing, I am here to ask you a favor not to give you a task."

Eruption stood up and ask. "And what kind of favor might that be?"

Rising and Eruption walked to a bench and sat down. Rising looked a bit at the quiet nature before he answered. "Something dark is happening in the Crystal Empire."

Eruptions expression turned even more serious than usually. "I know, I sensed it while I meditated."

Rising sighed. "I fear that Fallen has somehow managed to take over the empire and that he plans to do the same with other cities. We might have to fight and I fear that we are not ready for that. We have many soldiers in Equestira but our number of ponies who can challenge him is extremely small."

"You want me to train a group of ponies to be ready to fight against him?" Erpuption asked, already knowing Risings plan.

Rising looked at his old friend. "Yes, we need an elite to finally get him under control. We can't let him go on like this or we will reach the point where it is impossible to stop him."

Eruption nodded. "I will do as you command. I already have a few ponies all over Equestia that could be trained. I will gather them and start with their training."

Rising was relived as he heard that Eruption already had a few candidates but he had to say one last thing. "I also need you to train a few extra ponies. The first is the princess Twilight Sparkle and the other is her friend Rainbow Dash, they already have a bit experience and both already have fought against him. The best would be if you go to Ponyville and look for some more candidates. Some of them are tougher than they look like."

Eruption thought of it for a moment but then answered. "I will sent out my students from Canterlot to get the others and I will take a look in Ponyville. I will see if there are possible candidates or not and don't worry, I can see if a pony has potential or not."

Rising smiled and got off the bench. "That is good to hear but you have to keep all this a secret. I don't want to cause panic all over Equestria. If it hasn't starting to spread already."

Ice Eruption nodded and they both bowed before each other and walked different paths. Eruption made his way to call all his students in Canterlot together, to sent them on their ways while Rising walked back to the castle.

On his way back he looked a bit around to see if there were signs of panic or fear in the ponies. To his relive most of the ponies were just curious of what is happening but except that they were all calm.

As he reached the castle one of the guards talked to him. "Archmage, I have a massage for you."

Rising just nodded as a sign for him to speak and the guards said. "The high mage Rain Bringer wants to talk with you in the meeting room of the council."

Rising was surprised for a moment but then just nodded. He entered the castle and made his way to the meeting room.

As he opened the door he saw that Rain was looking at the destroyed seat. Rising closed the door of the room and began to talk. "You wanted to speak with me?"

Rain turned surprised around. "What? Oh I haven't seen you enter. Yes I wanted to speak with you but first, what happened here?"

She pointed at the destroyed seat. Rising had to think for a moment. He didn't wanted to admit that he did this in frustration so he thought of something else. He walked to his seat and opened the place where the crystal once was. Rain was shocked as she saw that the crystal was destroyed "I tried to use the crystal but something stopped it and so it exploded. I tried to contain it but some of the energy was set free and it hit the seat."

Rain looked at the empty place for a moment. "That explains why my crystal turned gray and lost all its magic. I guess the reason why the crystal exploded has to do with my reason to call you here."

Rising already knew what this reason was. "That comes from the dark clouds over the crystal empire. It seems like they block any kind of magic communication. "

Rain sighed. "I already assumed that. I already talked with a few of my weather mages and they are trying to make sense of these clouds. The things I already could find out are, first the obvious, they are magical and contain strong amounts of dark magic, second the clouds have seemed to have more abilities than just blocking communication. I don't know what he can do with them but I know that he can use them for spells."

Rising slammed his hoof on the ground. "I already guessed that but I hoped I was wrong. How could he do something like this? He managed to take over the empire with the most efficient weapon against him without me noticing. It is my fault, I should have never let him escape."

Rain walked up to him and pet his shoulder. "It is not your fault that he escaped. He had help from another pony. That is another thing I wanted to tell you, I have done a few investigations and found out that only one pony has bought a ticket to Ponyville and he never returned. After some time I found out the name of this pony, it is Lock Changer, the pony Malonex rescued two years ago."

Rising looked at her and began to think. "I have heard about that. The pony was under a mind control spell casted by prince Blueblood and was forced to steal something from Fallen. On his way the pony was attacked by monsters and heavily injured. Fallen scared the monsters away and rescued Lock by giving him crystal body parts. But what reason could he have to help Fallen and break the law?"

Rain expressions darkened. "You can probably thank the hunters for that. He never was in any way a criminal and was a honest pony but two years ago he was thrown out of his house by his wife and wanted to talk with the princesses to give him the right to raise his daughter. But the request for this audience never reached the princesses, instead it was intercepted by the magic hunters. They created a trap to get him and threw him into prison. There he was kept for months without any real evidence that he had done anything and as he was freed again he had lost his job. His neighbors told me that he acted more and more strange."

'So much about our disciplined elite.' Rising asked. "Who were these hunters who did this? I want to speak with them!"

Rain sighed. "That isn't possible, the group that did this died on one of their missions a long time ago."

Rising growled and then sighed. "Well, thank you for telling me all this. Maybe it can help us somehow to stop him."

Rain nodded and bowed. "You are welcome. I will go now back to my studies to find a way to stop the clouds from spreading. I wish you a good day archmage."

Rising nodded. "Good day to you too Rain Bringer, and say Storm hello for me."

Rain nodded with a smile and left the room. Rising walked to the window in the room that faced directly towards north. He looked at the black clouds that still covered the entire sky over the empire. The red light flashed had stopped but it seemed like the clouds had already spread a bit over the borders of the empire. Rising felt a pain in his heart and sighed. 'What are you doing there Fallen? Why couldn't you just escape and flee into another land.'

He looked out of the window for some time and took a deep breath. He looked into a dark distance and knew that that this darkness will not be tamed as easily as he had hoped years ago.