The hatred of the shadow

King Sombra sat in the throne of the crystal empire. The now darker clouds dimmed the already weak light from the outside and there were only two dark flame torches in the whole throne room.

In the room were only he, Malonex, queen Chrysalis and a few of her Changelings. Sombra looked down on the changeling queen who asked. "What is the next step of our plan?"

Sombra looked down at her with a smile. "This world belongs to me, so I will take it and you should stay out of my way!"

Chrysalis eyes widened at him. "What? What is that suppose to mean?"

He looked down at her with an evil grin. "That means you are no longer needed! You will leave this empire till noon or you will regret it!"

"That is a betrayal!" claimed Chrysalis with a stomp on the ground.

In that moment Sombra grabbed his nearest guard at the throat and stared him into the eyes. The guard began to scream with pain but no pony could see the cause of that. in the next moment the pony turned into a changeling and dropped a knife on the ground.

Sombra threw the now dead changeling to the hoofs of his queen. "It seems like I wasn't the only one with that idea!"

The queen looked back at Sombra and said."And what makes you think I will just leave without a fight."

Sombra began to laugh. "One of mine once managed to kill hundreds of your soldiers without a problem and what do you think will millions of my kind do to your little hive? Admit it, you are no race of warriors, you are infiltrators and that part is done."

Chrysalis began to grumble something and Sombra spoke to her again. "If you still think you would have a chance, I will give you one last warning. It would be foolish of you to fight me in my own domain. If you dare to attack your kind will be wiped from this land in an instant."

Malonex, who thought Chrysalis might still attack began to channel his magic, which cased his eyes to turn black. As the red mist appeared around his eyes, thunder began to echo into the room.

Chrysalis growled in anger but accepted her defeat. "Fine! We will leave for now! But this is far from over!"

Sombra leaned back into his throne and smiled. "I am already waiting for the day we meet again. Now go, your little bug army should already be waiting at the edge of the empire!"

And with that the queen of the changelings left the empire with her army but on the way swearing that she will have her vengeance for this betrayal.

As they were gone Malonex turned to his king. "Is there anything you need me for my king?"

Sombra shook his head. "Not now Malonex. For now you should concentrate on your studies again and get the dark mages under control."

Malonex nodded. "I don't think that I need to get them under control anymore after the ritual. They fear me too much to disobey me."

His king nodded pleased and Malonex left the throne room after he bowed before his king.

After that was done Malonex made his way towards his room in the now darker castle. He wanted to begin reading the information Venae had brought him about the mages.

On the way he noticed that he was followed by somepony and as he turned around he saw that it was Venae. Malonex raised his eyebrow at her. "Why are you following me? If you have nothing better to do use the time to study dark magic."

Venae nodded. "I would do that master but the problem is that there is nothing to study for me, everything I know about magic came from my old master and every book our kind brought to Equestria seemed to be destroyed."

Malonex looked at her the lifted his hoof to his chin. "If that is the case... I want you to get me somepony who can copy books in a short time and bring him to me. I want that my books will be used for the future training of our mages. When you finished that wait for me in front of the castle. I will meet you there and we will look for a place to start you first lesson."

Venae nodded and bowed down. "I will do as you command master."

Malonex already turning around spoke to her again. "Drop this act. I can tell that you lie and it is not going to help you either."

She growled a bit but before could walk away Venae stopped him again. "I almost forgot, Gladius wanted me to tell you that he is training Tacit and Lock. He said that he knew that you won't have the time to train them."

Malonex just nodded slightly and walked away. He quickly walked to his room and entered it. There he sat down in front of his desk and took a few of the books from a shelf. He began to quickly look over the pages to see which of these books should be copied.

A while later somepony knocked against the door and entered. "You asked for somepony to copy the books, lord Malonex?"

Malonex stood up from the seat and levitated the books to the shadow pony in front of him. "Yes, these book need to be copied, you should make around one hundred copies for the start. When you are done give the copies to the pony responsible for teaching the new mages."

The pony looked concentrated for a moment like he was calculating something and then he answered. "My team and I will begin immediately! But this will take some time, maybe a few weeks if we find a printing press, without one it might take a few months."

The shadow pony put the books into a bag and Malonex nodded. "Then you should better hurry. It is important that these books are finished as fast as possible."

The Umbrum bowed down. "Yes my lord!"

He turned around and left the room with quick steps. Malonex watched him leave and then made his own way out of the castle too. He left the castle through the doors and like he ordered Venae was waiting there for him.

She was sitting in the place where once the crystal heart was. She sat there with closed eyes an Malonex knew that she was concentrated on her magic. A few drops of blood circled around her and bit of purple mist left her closed eyes.

Malonex walked up to her and spoke up. "So your old master taught you about meditation and you still can't control your emotions."

Venae opened her eyes and the blood flew into her necklace. She turned to her master and shrugged. "My master always said that control would just waste my time."

Malonex looked at her with displease but then began to look around a bit. "We will talk a about this a bit more later, now tell me if you know a place for your lessons. The best would be a place where you can perform your spells without harming anypony."

Venae nodded and pointed in the direction of one of the streets. "Down this street Gladuis had started to train other warriors. There it should be possible to train magic without any problems."

Malonex nodded and they began to walk down the street. He noticed that there were much less ponies on the street since the changelings were thrown out of the empire.

Since Malonex summoned the dark clouds the snowfall in the empire has stopped but without the crystal heart the cold winds could enter the empire. The clouds still blocked the light of the sun for the most part and the dark streets were only lightened by the dim light of dark flames that have been placed everywhere now.

Venae looked around too and said. "It is so much better since these ugly bugs are gone."

Malonex looked at the mare and slightly nodded. "I have to agree that I can't stand them. Their kind is weak and unnatural and should be whipped from this land. Once I had the opportunity to kill the queen and most of her hive."

She looked surprised at him. "If you despite them so much why did you let them life then?"

Malonex began to grin a bit. "Seems like you have more to learn than just magic. Hate may be the source of our power but that doesn't mean we should let it control our actions. If I would have killed them back then I wouldn't have been able to invade the empire and free you all."

Venae nodded slightly and began to look around again while they walked towards their goal. Malonex noticed that many shadow ponies have began to get ready for the war. Most of them were carrying weapons from one point to another and others were training with their weapons.

Soon they reached the place Venae meant. It was a area out of the empire with a few weapon stands close to it. Malonex saw that there were many different shadow ponies teaching other fighting or fighting against each other for training.

Everywhere was the sound of metal clashing against metal and battle cries echoed over the field. Malonex noticed that the number of unicorns was rather small and the few unicorns that were there didn't used much besides normal levitation to move their weapons.

Malonex already knew that the number of powerful mages was very small but this was a disappointing picture for him. They walked a bit between the others and walked to an empty area a bit away from the rest.

Malonex told Venae to stop and sit down. He began to walk around her and looked at her with his magic. He stopped in front of her and reached out with his crystal hoof. "Give me your necklace."

Venae looked a bit surprised and hesitated to give it. As Malonex noticed her hesitation he asked again now with a sinister tone in his voice. "Give it to me now!"

This convinced Venae and she took it off to give it to him. He looked closer at it and said. "This blood crystal is forged well. There are not many ponies with the ability to use blood magic and only a few of them managed to use it on your level," Venae began to smile with pried as he said this but he wasn't finished. "but you are still far away from being a master."

The smile vanished from her face and Malonex continued to go one. "When I started my studies about dark magic I also learn a bit about blood magic. Since it isn't possible to study it without doing a bit harm to other ponies or yourself, most of my studies where completely theoretically," His horn began to glow with magic and a few drops of blood began to fly out of the red gem, "but it seems that I wasn't so far off with my information."

He gave the necklace back to her and she immediately put it back on. "Earlier you told me that your old master taught you that you just need your emotions to be there and control is not important. Well let me tell you that, if I would meet this pony, I would cut him his horn off so he could never again use magic and after that I would cut his tongue out so he could never again teach somepony such foolish ideas. If he would hear him say it, I probably would burn him to ash right on the spot without any hesitation."

Veane looked shocked at Malonex, she knew that he seemed to be against out of control emotions but she didn't thought that it would get that far. "What is the big problem. My master always said that if you lose control you become powerful and unpredictable."

Malonex groaned at this respond. "It seems like you had the worst dark mage as teacher that ever existed. First of all, if you lose control you may become unpredictable for your enemy but if you are a master of dark magic you don't need to lose control over yourself for that. Now let's go to the bigger problem, if you lose control not even you can predict what you will do. You could kill all your enemies but you could also kill your allies or yourself. For example, if I lose control over myself these clouds would start shooting with lightning everywhere. They would destroy everything and in the end I gained nothing from it."

Venae nodded without any other respond, so Malonex took this as answer that she understood what he said. "Your first task is to summon all your anger and hatred. Keep it under control and use the power to create a blood statue. Then you will immediately push your emotions away again."

As Venae heard the instructions she raised an eyebrow at Malonex. "Why should I push my emotions away if I have full control?"

Malonex looked a bit surprised, he didn't expected that she would come to that conclusion. "I think you misunderstand the way your emotions strengthen you magic. The emotions themselves are of no other use than to be a source of power for your magic. When a pony uses magic he slowly drains his energy till he is completely exhausted and there is the advantage of dark magic. Through your emotions you can work against this drain. But I noticed that you seem to lack the ability to use your magic and summon your emotions at the same time." That confused her even more and Malonex began to get impatient about her cluelessness.

Before she could asked he gave her the answer. "The reason why I want you to push the emotions away again is because you don't need to have them in your mind all the time You just need to learn to control them when you summon them to strengthen your magic. No pony can hold his hatred and anger forever, if you would try that now you would lose control sooner or later and I can tell you that it would be very unpleasant for you to lose control over your blood magic. And now stop asking question and begin!"

Venae closed her eyes and began to concentrate. Malonex felt how her dark power was getting stronger and stronger. Streams of blood began to flow out of the necklace and began to circle around her.

Malonex saw how the purple mist began to come from her eyes and the blood began to pulsate. As Malonex noticed that the blood started to fly faster and it took the shape of spikes. He knew that she was losing the control and shot a wave of small red lightning at her. From the sudden pain she was thrown out of her concentration and the blood fell to the ground. Malonex stopped the lightning and Venae fell to the ground.

Malonex looked disapproving in his now in shook heavily breathing apprentice. "I said keep it under control! Try again!"

Venae growled and go up from the ground. She sat back down and began to concentrate again.

This time she didn't lose control. She managed to create a statue of herself and pushed her emotions away. She got up and smiled at her master. "I did it. I wasn't archmage without a reason."

Malonex took a closer look at the statue and after a while he shot a energy bolt at the statue and it immediately exploded. "You managed to keep yourself under control that is true, yet your first attempted was closer to the goal than this!"

Venae looked confused at him and began to contradict. "What? That doesn't make any sense! I managed to summon my emotions, controlled them, created a statue with their power and then push them away again!"

Malonex nodded and responded. "But that wasn't the task. I wanted that you summon ALL your anger and hatred, not only enough to use your magic. Try again and this time use all of you power!"

"But why should I do that. If I know how much I can control I can just leave it at this point." asked Venae still not happy with his explanation.

Malonex chuckled a bit. "That is a possibility but I thought you desire power. If you just stay in your limits you will never achieve anything. Do you think I could have freed you if I stayed in my limits? No, a dark mage always has to strive for more. If I would only summons so little emotion to gain power I would have never been able to gain enough magic to create these clouds. Now try again!"

Venae nodded and closed her eyes again. As Venae began to concentrate again Malonex only party watched her. He mostly concentrated on a complex rune he began to draw around her. He create dark crystal that dug through the ground to make to rune lasting.

He only really turned to her when he sensed that she was losing control again and the only thing he did was shocking her with a little bit of lightning and then telling her to concentrate more.

After he was done with the rune, an area of over ten steps in each direction was covered in crystal lines. One side the rune had one extra line leading a bit away. The line ended a few steps away in a small hollow in the ground, it was not even a hoof deep but still noticeable.

Malonex looked at this finished rune and began to concentrate his magic again. He created a big circle made of crystal pillars in a big area around the two mages. The pillars were curved so they slightly pointed to the middle of the rune where Venae was sitting. In the space between the pillars Malonex created walls of dark fire, making the area unable to be entered without flying. If somepony was standing outside, he wouldn't be able to see if somepony was inside the area.

As he was done he sat down in front of Venae again and began to watch her. After a few more attempts to control herself Malonex told her to stop and open the eyes. She was a bit surprised as she saw that the area now looked like the preparation for some kind of ritual.

Before she could ask any questions Malonex already answered her. "This is where I will teach you dark magic. These pillars will absorb any magic that will leave this area and the flame walls will keep unwanted guests away. These runes will help me teach you in the future but for today your lesson is over, we are probably already here for some time."

Malonex realized that he didn't knew the actual time and he couldn't see it in the sky either, because of the clouds. 'Next time I will take my pocket watch with me.'

Malonex stood up and Venae did the same. The walls of fire lowered so they could step over them without a problem. After the wall rose up again behind them Malonex spoke to Venae again. "Since I am the new archmage I can't teach you every day. I expect you to study in the library of the empire form morning till at least 5pm ask, ask the ponies who are in charge of the books to give you the first copy. I expect to find you there! You will not even come close to this area or try to practice you control without me. And don't go around and tell your friends about this place!"

Venae looked a bit depressed to the ground. "I don't have any friends."

Malonex responded. "Well, that is a good way to start."