The hatred of the shadow

On another area in the training ground Gladius was watching Tacit and Lock fighting against crystal monsters he had created. He stood a few steps away from them in his black armor and his purple cape floated in the wind.

His normal eye was closed while his black eye was wide open. The purple mist inside of it was swirling around more than usual.

He watched them as they struggled to defeat the things he created. After a while they managed to win and took a break. They both sat down and began to eat the last sandwiches Lock still had with him from the journey. Gladius walked up to them and spoke to them. "I am quite impressed. You are more skilled than I expected. I think I can teach you to become powerful fighters."

As he said so, Lock quickly responded. "I am sorry that I have to reject your offer but I don't think I will continue my training. I don't think fighting is something for me, I will rather stay at what I can, the making and breaking locks."

Gladius nodded slightly. "It is your choice young one. What about you Tacit?"

Tacit just smiled. "Of course I will continue. After everything my father had told me about you I was super exited thati would meet you and am more than happy to accept your offer."

Gladius smiled slightly and pointed a bit away from them. "Then let's go to your next test. You will fight a group of enemies alone."

Tacit nodded and rushed to the area he pointed. A second later she was surrounded by crystal creations and began to fight them. Meanwhile Gladius and Lock watched her till Lock spoke to the old master again. "You know Gladius, I thought about you shadow ponies for some time now and there are a few questions that came into my mind."

The old master turned to him and told him to sit down in front of him. As they sat on the ground Gladius spoke up. "Then go ahead and ask me. I will tell you everything I can."

Lock turned his head surprised to the still fighting Tacit. "Don't you have to watch her."

Gladius smiled a bit. "Oh I am watching her without any problems. My eye allows me to see everything through the crystal I create. That is why I don't use shadows for training like most other teachers do. Now what are these questions?"

Lock nodded and said. "Well, I hope the first one doesn't sounds rude but how old are you?"

Gladius began to think for a moment and after he while he gave the answer. "Something around three thousand years. I stopped counting the exact year after we were imprisoned. I am the last shadow pony that was at the first attack on the crystal empire."

Lock nodded but in his head began new questions to form. "What about your king? I know that he was responsible for the disappearance of the empire thousand years ago , so how old is he and for that matter, why is he missing his cutie mark?"

"He is not much older than thousand years," responded Gladius, "but he is not missing he cutie mark. The fact is he doesn't have one because he can't have one. You have to understand that unlike normal shadow ponies, he is a direct son of the darkness. He may be called a shadow pony but in reality he isn't a pony. The darkness created him to be our leader and king."

Lock first nodded but then another question came into his mind. "Wait if he is the only one who comes directly from the darkness, where are did you all came from then?"

Gladius expression turned serious. "This is a long and dark story you ask to hear. Don't expect anything cheerful."

Lock just leaned back a bit and waited for Gladius to begin. "Very well. This tale begins a long time ago, before the founding of Equestria...

The tension between the three tribes was big and many ponies assumed that a war would come soon. Nopony noticed that the borders began to freeze. They were too busy to argue about foolish things to see the cold that they carried into their lands.

But there was a group of ponies from all three tribes that saw that death began to reach out for their land and family. They exchanged secret messages and talked about their plans to leave behind their homes before the cold death would come.

Soon they created a organization of the most determined and wisest ponies. They called themselves the fourth tribe. They were united under a pair of ponies who were only called the king and the queen. There is no knowledge left about them after all these years. No names, no titles and not even what tribe they originally came from.

As the frost reached the first city of the old land, the king and queen called out for their kind and before anypony noticed it they were gone with a fleet of ships. While they left their home in the opposite direction from where Equestria will be found, they watched as the first snow fell down of the land and how the cold clouds of the Windigos began to spread over the land.

They traveled over the ocean for a long time till they finally saw their new home, the island Unitas. This land was filled with harmony and peace. The ground was perfect to plant and harvest, the animals where peaceful and welcoming and the island was well guarded by its only intelligent inhabitants.

These inhabitants weren't ponies or any kind of creature that exists today. There were two big monoliths in the center of the island. One that created a guarding and warming light in the night and one that spread a shadow over the island that hide it for attackers and held the wild under control. Light and darkness themselves lived on that island and they welcomed the fourth tribe with hope, the hop that the kind of ponies wasn't doomed to die in cold.

The king and queen walked to the monoliths and promised to create a domain of peace and harmony on this island. Light and darkness agreed and allowed them to build their kingdom around the monoliths.

And so the fourth tribe began to build their own kingdom of peace. They began to build a big city and a castle and created temple around the monoliths.

The future for the tribe looked perfect and the royal pair looked at their subjects with joy as they saw what they managed to do for these ponies.

The years went on and is seems like the peace would never stop till one day a fight between light and darkness began, to this day nopony knows what had brought them to do so but clear is, that it was a catastrophe for the tribe. They could only watch how their land suffered from their fight.

Their food began to decay, their old and young ones became sick and their city began to fall apart. Plagues raged over the island and killed most of the wild. Storms began to devour the land and destroy the houses of the ponies. Earthquakes shock the island and turned the city into a stone tomb for many ponies.

As the chaos finally stopped and the ponies dared to leave their homes they saw what happened to their land. The normally kind royal pair turned furious and stepped into the temple of light and darkness. They asked the existences why they created war in this place they promised to guard in peace.

The answer of the both sides were the same. They told them that it was in their nature to fight each other. For the years of peace light and darkness existed next to each other, their hate for each other would grow and had to be freed one day. It was the only way peace could exist on the island.

They told them that they are always in war with each other and that their will created a eternal conflict in the whole world. Till one day, one of them would finally overthrow the other and claim the power of the other.

As the king and queen realized that their own guardians where a threat to their kind they began to worry. They asked them to give them a vision of their future on the island.

Darkness refused to do so by saying that seeing into the future was like listening to mysterious whispers, it is always a danger to do and never are the information set into stone. If it looked into the future it could see something completely different a second later because future is always changing.

Light whoever agreed, it wanted to know if its conflict with darkness would harm their creation of harmony. So it looked into the future and saw what it never expected to see and in its shock a blinding light waved over the empire.

A second later the light monolith as turned gray and the royal pair felt a betrayal. They left the temple puzzling what the wave of light meant.

Only a day later their fear of betrayal was confirmed. A poison began to spread over their kingdom. As the royal pair saw their kind dying. They rushed to the temple and bowed down to the gray monolith and plead for help. They wished for the light to stop but it was of no use. The light would never again speak to the fourth tribe. It has seen them becoming the kind of darkness and now it strived to destroy them.

The king and queen plead for days never leaving the temple and never stopping begging, till one day the queen was affected by the poison and she fell down on the ground. This struck the king in the heart.

He touched her hoof and felt a cold, the cold of death which he tried to rescue them all from, the cold that the light promised to defend them from. The cold began to creep from the body of his wife directly into the heart of the king closing the wound light had brought with hate and a thirst for vengeance.

It was in this moment that the darkness called out for his ponies. They gathered in the temple and the king bowed down with tears of sadness and frustration running down his face.

Darkness saw the despair of the ponies and made an offer. It could remove the poisoning curse that the light had placed on them but to do so the ponies had to become its servants. They had to turn away from the light forever and become creatures of the darkness. Their lives would be bound to the darkness forever.

After they knew that the light had doomed them they didn't needed much time to decided. So the king agreed to the conditions of the darkness.

As the pact was made the darkness spread itself over the whole island. Destroying every bit of live besides the ponies. It covered the sky of the island with a gigantic shadow, ensuring that never again the light of the sun, moon or stars could reach the island.

The hearts of the ponies began to fill with hate for the light and dark magic began to fill every part of their bodies. Their coats turned gray and their manes darkened. Fangs grew in their mouths and their eye began to glow with energy.

The new born fourth tribe rose up again and looked up to their king. The king was no pony anymore, he had turned into a living shadow. He was bound more to the darkness than anypony else and from there one he was known as the first son of the darkness and his subjects were now the first generation of the umbrum.

The darkness commanded his new kind to get ready for their war against the light. With hatred inside of their hearts they began to build an army.

For years they trained to fight the light, knowing that the light will get ready to face them too. One day the king felt that his time has come to an end.

He called his subjects to the temple of darkness and told them that it was time for their kind to return to the rest of the world. It was time to conquer the world and banish the light. But the kind told them that he couldn't lead them there. His time on the world was over and now another pony has to become king.

He asked that the umbrum that thought he would be worthy should step forward and the king would decided if he would be the king.

But no umbrum dared to step forward. Even though many viewed themselves as the most powerful and wise under them, they knew that none of them could live up to a son of the darkness.

As no pony stepped forward the kings heart fill with sadness. Without a leader their kind would fall apart and they would die before they really lived. Then suddenly one stepped forward and bowed down before the king. It was a young unicorn warrior with the heart of a true leader.

It was Tenobris, Malonexs father. He stood up again and spoke to his kind and to the darkness. He said that he knows that he isn't worthy of being their king. But he said that he would be their leader and warlord till the next son of the darkness would rise.

The kind accepted him and with this the first son of the darkness was called back to his creator. Darkness then sent out his army to finally make the first strike against the light. Tenobris followed the orders and they left the island with their fleet.

They didn't turn back to their home. Not even as the cold fire of darkness began to devour the island. As the darkness vanished for the first time in years . The light of the sun fell on the place where the island once was but there was nothing left. The complete island was gone forever, taken away from the world by the darkness it was surrounded in for years.

The army soon reached the fist land. This was around the time when I was born. I was there when Tenobris left the rest to spy on Equestria alone. He left us under the rule of his friend Insidius and traveled over the land of Equestria.

He watched as the cities to rise and he began to study the magic of the land. He created many spells and looked for our first goal. As he returned years had passed and I was already the sword master of the Umbrum.

He called us to the frozen land of the north. There we got ready for the fight that would nearly doom our kind.

... This is our story." Gladius looked at Lock and waited for a respond.

Lock needed a moment to think before he asked. "Does that mean the darkness changed you to become its servants."

Gladius shock his head. "Not completely, the darkness gave us its power and removed the light inside of us but that doesn't mean we are its minions. We have chosen to do what it asks us to do because we think that it is the right thing, not because we are forced to. If we would want we could stop."

Lock nodded understanding. "Did your kind ever regret that you made this pack with the darkness."

Gladius shook his head. "I never did. The darkness gives us live and it taught us to survive in a world that is ruled by the greatest enemy of our kind but there were some who decided to forgive what the light tried to do to us. They left the rest and went on a journey, to find their light again as they said, but they never returned."

Lock nodded slightly and looked into the black clouds in the sky. "Do you think that the umbrum are ready to march into war again?"

Gladius sighed. "I don't know. Soon my son will return and then we will see if they are ready to fight. But this time they will fight with more spirit than ever before. Your friend Malonex has inspired them."