"CELESTIA!" Twilight screeched, panic overwhelming her being, as she saw a concentrated ray of pure dark magic piercing the air; bounding it's way like a bullet towards the princess. Twilight cast a powerful beam of her own, in an attempt to negate the attack, only for it to be too late. The dark beam contacted the princess; twilight's own ray cutting it short, mid way through the attack. Though the damage was apparent. A sickening cry echoed out across the great plains; both shadow pony and that of the light momentaranly stopping battle, all equally shocked by the sight. The sun visibly quivered and appeared to be darkening, as Celestia fell to the ground. Motionless.

Twilight remained in the sky. No words could be uttered or even thought. Shock. Just pure shock.

The mare gazed around at the sight before her. Hundreds of that of the shadow and that of the light fighting to the death, with nothing but pain and sorrow to show for it. Just as Twilight began to comprehend the situation, far off in the distance the sun drifted downwards slowly; giving way to a twilight that consumed the land. Covering it like a blanket of lavender and blue.

Suddenly, Twilight felt a surge of power well up within her, as her fear and sorrow broke and corrupted into anger and pain that consumed her very being, was converted into pure magical energy. Her horn a-lit and the blinding purple light began to send shockwaves throughout the atmousphere, reverberating on a low-pitched monotone that shook the ear-drums of anypony on the battle field. Twilights eyes glew with white light, as the energy consumed her, with her mane and tail taking on a slight ethereal composition. Then it was released. The immense, concentrated death-ray immediately caused the air to become plasma all around it, as waves after waves of immensely compressed air where sent outwards, akin to that of sonic rainbooms. All the ponys on the ground looked on in dispair, as fear shook their souls. twilight, coming to her senses; still grasping this power, had charged up a large scale teleportation and, in the instant of which her beam connected with the ground, each pony appeared once again at canterlot. The shadow did not recieve the same treatment. The explosion discharged upon the ground, eviscerating everything in its path. It was an unrelenting demon that swept through the shadows with ease; removing everything from existence.

In the distance, the ponys looked on in horror at the event. Their eye contact only being broken as the shockwave reached them, from miles away, like a sythe on a path to kill. But it finally relented.

Silence falling upon the army. Within their minds. Within their souls. And on the battlefield.

The shadow war began, 3 years ago to this very day...

"Hmmmmmm." Twilight mused to herself, very clearly perplexed in thought. She had been researching types of magic and how power is coalesced for months on end and this was very apparent, with dozens of books scattered across the smooth crystaline flooring, in a manner of which appered to be rather chaotic, but upon closer inspection, it was rather obvious that each volume of work was in fact turned to specific pages that all somehow lay connected by some great puzzle. It was at this time Twilight started to think about the villans of her past and the strange connection each of them had to each other. Princess Luna taken by the darkness after being overwhelmed by envy, King Sombra physically becoming one with the shadow or smoke due to his greed and wrath, "Perhaps the strongest incarnation of this magical essence." Twilight thought, and then there was Stigian who was overwhelmed by sorrow and perhaps envy of the ones he bought together.

As twilight pondered this, she decided to hone in on the seemingly erie connections between these ponies. The synonyms of darkness and shadow all relating to the same thing and the obvious presence of dark or deadly emotion is what drove these ponies to change.

"Its almost like the mirror image of our magic of friendship." she thought outloud, with a slight grimace adorning her face.

"And yet there is something more..."

She quickly levitated a knew notebook towards her desk, quick to remove all current books in a hurry (But still into a neat pile of course) and began to jot down her notes:

It appears that with me and the other element bearers that when we use our magic of harmony it is done through our own will and friendship to power the magic. It was obvious this was its own form of magic, different from the usual mana that all ponies use and possess and this was obvious, as we were able to defeat Tirek with it. I called this emotional mana, as it appears to work in a similar way to usual mana but can only be accessed by strong positive emotion in the presence of others doing the exact same. It never occured to me that there could perhaps be an equal and opposite force (Although this does make sense) that thrives off of negative emotion and, quite obviously, appears when that one is feeling that emotion alone and in solitude. However, when I use emotional mana it is someting that I can wield consciously, but, when it comes to Stigian and the others it takes them over completely, regardless of weather they will it or not. Perhaps, this is just a result of the magic being so powerful, but we can-not dismiss the possibility that this magic, in of itself, has a certain degree of sentience to it. After all, in the case of Stigian this "shadow" had grown to such a strength that it appered to be seperate to Stigian, almost as though it where becoming detatched from his being. What disturbs me is that it could have potentially left him completely as its own being. Furthermore, whenever we have purged these ponies of their shadow, there is no indication as to where it has gone, after all immense magical energy will leave traces behind. If this is the case then either the entity did become seperate in that moment and escaped, or it was being stored somewh...

In that moment, the large double doors swung open at great speed and, as Twilights head whipped around in fright, a young purple scaled and green spined dragon sprant in. Fear was written into his eyes as he looked at Twilight, panic clearly grasping him to the point of suffocation.

"Twilight! Its the elements... There. There cracking and theres something in them." spike said, panting as he did so.

Something had clearly disturbed the dragon. Perhaps a creature or feeling or... Both. As Twilight suddenly realised the link in her notes to that of the prospect posed by the young dragon, a panic began to well up wthin her, but before she could even have a chance to think, the ground began to shake and crack prefusely. Twilight sprant out into the hallway to see a darkness spreading across the ground. It was like an unyielding infection causing the crystal to decay and it was spreading and spreading fast. Without the time to dwell on the elements she grasped spike in her magical aura, as well as, as many notebooks as possible that could perhaps help her. She then swiftly teleported them all to outside of the castles boundaries. She now stood with an assortment of items and a fainted dragon now laying on a dirt ground. Ponies had clearly sensed the disruption and came out to view what had occured. All where equally entransed by the looming castle. As Twilight looked up, her eyes widened in horror at the sight. It was difficult to tell, but it appeared that it was a tenticled creature made up of pure black; this was the only way to describe it. It did not appear to have a physical form; it looked as if wherever it was there was a void, a nothingness. The only way you could tell it was there was becuase of the lack of anything there. Even light.

Coming to her senses, she used all of the power within her to create a magical barrier that began to spread its way around the castle; encircling this darkness and hoping to contain it. As the spell touched down on the ground and completed, it shimmered and reflected off of the sunlight. As it did so, Twilight noticed an earthpony mare stood within the confines of the spell; having very clearly gone to far. Before Twilight could react to this, the mare was touched by the shadow. As quickly as it happened it was over. The shadow spread all around her body; encompasing it in its entirety. Twilight could see as it seeped into her mouth and into her eyes as if it were a tangible liquid, as the pupil colour shifted from yellow to black. Before Twilight could do anything, the entire inside of the force field had been encompased by the shadow, leaving a pure void like blackness as a stain on the side of ponyville.

It was quickly discovered that the shadow had achieved its full size and was in fact not growing, but de-compressing. This was made clear when Twilights spell broke 4 days later. The ony way this entity could gain power was by consuming ponies and converting their dark emotions into its power.It didn't take long to amass an army and after the first battle at las-pagasis it was also discovered that the shadow operated as a hive mind. A controller of sorts.

Author's Note

This certainly was a fun chapter to make. I needed to come up with a premice to the story that made sense and didn't seem forced or inplausible and this was when the idea of having the villans be connected some how and after I started writing the flashback, the ideas just flowed.

Anyways, hoped you enjoyed this chapter. Next one will be back to the present and entirely focused on Celestia I think. I'm not sure if I can make it a long chapter and so I may be able to complete it tommorow.

Thanks for reading.