Pain.
Everything the filly could've possibly felt was washed away in a sea of pain and misery. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and she had not only failed utterly to impress the judges, but her pitiful display of magic had somehow spiraled out of control into something beyond anything she could've ever imagined.
And the unending, indescribable pain.
It was too much to bear for the little filly, and she couldn't do anything about it other than to scream and writhe in agony. The filly could've sworn she heard somepony screaming her name, but the sound was blotted out by the roar of raw magic echoing throughout the room.
The filly barely took any notice as the world around her began to fade, and before it disappeared completely, she finally did hear a voice... but it was not one she recognized.
It was deep, rumbling, and scary.
You poor child... so much potential, wasted by your imminent death...
The filly would've gasped in shock if she had the wherewithal to do so. Instead she just continued to scream herself hoarse even as she listened to the scary voice in her head.
So much power in one so young... I must have it for myself...
There was a deep and sinister chuckle.
If I could cultivate this much raw magic... my return would be all but assured... all I'd need is...
The voice seemed to pause, almost as if in thought.
Hmm... what say you, filly... do you want me to save you from this agony?
It was impossible for the filly to respond with words, so instead she screamed her thoughts at the voice. Scary voice or no, the filly would do anything to end the seemingly endless agony the release of her powerful magic had caused.
The voice heard the filly's wordless plea and chuckled once more—the sound holding just the smallest hint of triumph.
Very well, filly... I shall end your torment... on one condition.
The filly had no objections.
You will be mine. You will stay with me, train under me, learn the darkest and most arcane of the magical arts, and when the time is right... you shall release me from my prison.
Another sinister chuckle.
Together, we will return to the Land of Light and tear the throne of Equestria away from the wretched alicorn that sits upon it... will you join me, filly? Will you stay by my side and become the most powerful Dark Mage in existence?
The filly didn't understand a lot of what the scary voice was talking about, but if it would get her away from all of this pain, then she would do it, whatever it was. Dark laughter told the filly the scary voice had heard her answer, and the scary voice spoke once more, the triumph all the more evident in his next words.
Good! Very good! Now then, child... in order for me to save you, I need you to do one thing...
The filly could feel her strength draining away with every second that passed and her sight had already left her some time ago. She could no longer see the ponies she had affected with her surge, nor could she see how much damage she had caused.
The only thing left was the pain, and even that was slowly starting to give way to a sort of calm numbness she had never experienced before. As she slowly began to fade away, the scary voice spoke one more time.
I need you... to let go... Twilight Sparkle.
And Twilight Sparkle let go, allowing the darkness to wrap her in its comforting embrace—the unceasing agony finally coming to an end.
In the middle of a dark grey throne room, lit only by a few sconces and bereft of any life save for a single soul, a pillar of ebony flame suddenly rose from the floor until it reached all the way to the very ceiling itself.
After a few moments, the howling black flames began to die down and a little lavender filly could be seen gently touching down onto the regal carpet below. The filly looked peaceful, her eyes closed and a serene expression adorning her features as she alighted upon the ground beneath her.
That peace was not meant to last.
Twilight's eyes snapped open and she desperately sucked in several lungfuls of air—or at least that was the plan. Instead her breath caught in her throat and the filly coughed violently.
A few moments passed and the coughing fit finally ended, allowing Twilight to catch her breath. The first thing the filly noticed was the smell. The stench was acrid and reminded her of burning fur.
Looking around her immediate area she saw that she had been sitting in the middle of a small ring of black flame that was dying down to mere embers even as she watched, leaving a scorched black ring in the dark violet carpet she was standing on.
The second thing the filly became aware of was the dark red collar around her neck. The collar held a single small silver bell, and looking closer, she could see several odd markings engraved into the sides of the bell. The symbols glowed a soft violet color, and for a moment, Twilight forgot about everything else as she gazed upon it.
The deep clear tone of another bell somewhere ahead of her caught the filly's attention and her eyes widened as a sudden shiver ran down her spine. Slowly, her eyes followed the line of carpet to a throne further ahead.
The throne itself was made of some kind of dark grey stone and seemed to be perpetually shrouded in shadow, making it hard to see who—or what—was sitting upon it.
The only things Twilight could make out were a golden bell that rang once more with a clear yet ominous tone, the silhouette of two large, curling horns, and two smoldering red eyes that froze the filly where she stood.
She didn't even get a chance to truly see where she had wound up before she heard a familiar dark chuckle.
"So nice to see that you've taken me up on my offer, little one," the creature cooed, "I'd be sorely disappointed if you had chosen oblivion over the chance to live again."
"W-Wha... what are you?" Twilight squeaked as she backed away in terror, "where am I? Wh... where's mommy and daddy? What happ—"
"SILENCE!"
Twilight snapped her mouth shut with a small whimper. The creature went quiet, trying to collect itself before speaking again.
"All will be explained in due time, filly," he said in a more measured tone, "but first, I believe introductions are in order..."
The creature rose from the dark grey throne and trotted out of the shadow, allowing Twilight to see the creature for what it was. She gasped and stumbled backwards as the creature—a large, dark blue ram with burning red eyes and an elaborate red collar adorned with several golden bells—stepped forward.
The ram stopped a few hoof-lengths away from the cowering filly and smiled a toothy smile. His teeth were unnervingly sharp, with two particularly large canine teeth jutting out from the bottom jaw.
"I am Grogar," the ram exclaimed, "your savior, your master, your tutor, and your father."
The last line derailed the filly's fear and she frowned even as she shivered.
"F-Father?"
Grogar smirked and trotted around the filly as he spoke.
"Oh yes, little Twilight," he explained, "you see, I didn't quite save you from death. You very much died in that classroom, and you took a good bit of the ponies with you... including your parents. It was I that brought you back, remade your body after it destroyed itself... I essentially created you anew using all the power I had at my disposal."
Twilight's eyes widened and she fell to her haunches in shock. Regardless of the tears beginning to build up in her eyes, Grogar continued his explanation as he trotted about the filly.
"Rather than let your prodigious talent for magic go to waste, I... well, I guess you could say I redirected the path your soul took," Grogar stopped a moment before trotting back over to his throne, "that bell around your neck? I'd take real good care of it, girl."
Desperate for any kind of distraction, Twilight looked at the bell around her neck, once again transfixed by it's soft violet glow. Just looking at it seemed to calm her frantic and jumbled thoughts.
"That's what's left of you, filly," Grogar said, "I've bound your wayward soul to that bell, and by that bell are you bound to me in turn," he sat back down in his throne and gave the filly an appraising look, "while the bell cannot be destroyed by any mundane means, or most magical means for that matter, it is terribly susceptible to Light Magic."
"But... but why?"
Grogar raised a bushy white eyebrow at the filly.
"Why what?"
Twilight looked back up at the expectant ram, confusion and dismay shining in her bright amethyst eyes.
"Why did you call me?" Twilight looked around the dark throne room, before resting her eyes back on Grogar, "where is this place? A-And who are you?"
Grogar hummed to himself as he stroked his goatee. The demonic ram considered his answer for a few moments and eventually sighed before rising from the throne once again.
"Come with me, little one," he commanded as he trotted towards the entrance to the throne room, "I want to show you something."
Twilight meekly obeyed the ram, quickly trotting after him as he made his way to the large embroidered ebony double doors. His eyes flashed briefly and the doors swiftly opened of their own accord.
"Take heed, Twilight Sparkle," Grogar said as he stepped through the doorway and into the hallway outside the room, "what you are about to see may shock and terrify you, but you need not be afraid, for I am the master of this realm—this... Shadow World."
"Shadow World?" Twilight asked, her curiosity getting the better of her, "where is that? I've never heard of this Shadow World," her eyes suddenly widened and she stopped in her tracks, "is... is this place like Tartarus?"
At that, Grogar let out a deep, booming laugh.
"Child, this place makes Tartarus look like an amusement park," Grogar replied with a snort, "no, Twilight Sparkle, this place is far older, and you'd do well not to take it lightly."
Twilight frowned and looked at her bell once again before resuming her trot. She took a moment to observe the hallways and shivered slightly at what she saw. The hallway was dimly lit by sconces that lined both sides of the grey stone walls. She didn't see any other doors save for the one at the far end of the hall, and was about to ask why that was, when Grogar spoke again.
"You asked me why I called on you," he began, "a fair question with a very simple answer, child," he turned and gave Twilight a small smirk, "I see potential in you. I see in you the promise of something powerful, something unlike anything I've ever seen in my long, long life... but most importantly... I see a chance to finally escape this Realm of Eternal Darkness."
His eyes flashed again and the large door at the end of the hall was thrown open. The two trotted into the room and Twilight's eyes immediately wandered to the ceiling above. The room was small and circular with several torches on tall stands surrounding a large, wide circular raised platform in the center of the floor.
The torches were alight with a black fire that seemed to make no noise even as it visibly crackled and popped. What caught Twilight's attention was the bright light shining down on the platform from above, and when she looked, she could see that there was a large hole in the ceiling that let what she assumed was moonlight into the room.
She looked back to Grogar with a questioning expression, to which Grogar simply nodded towards the raised platform. Swallowing nervously, Twilight slowly made her way over to the steps leading up to the platform and with one last look back at the ram, she stepped onto the platform itself.
As soon as her hooves made contact, the entire platform lit up. She looked down and her mouth dropped open at the sight of several glowing, interweaving lines and mysterious sigils that came together to form some kind of complex magic circle.
Before Twilight could even try to make sense of it all, Grogar stepped up next to her and together, they vanished in a flash of white light. An instant later, the two of them reappeared on solid ground, and Twilight, who had snapped her eyes shut on reflex, reopened them hesitantly at first, but much more quickly when she saw where they had appeared.
Once more, Twilight's attention was immediately drawn skyward.
She had been wrong about the moonlight, because there was in fact, no moon. There was no sun, there were no stars, and the only thing she could see were large swirling violet spirals of something that weaved in and out of existence in the otherwise pitch black void that was the sky.
What the filly found particularly odd, was that she had no problem seeing her surroundings in this all encompassing darkness.
If there was no moon, then where did that light come from, and how could she see so well? Twilight didn't have an answer, and before she could ponder the matter for too long, she was distracted by Grogar's voice.
"Behold, Twilight Sparkle," Grogar announced, waving a cloven hoof dramatically, "this is the once great Kingdom of Tambelon."
The two now stood on the precipice of a high cliff overlooking what the filly could only describe as a dead land. The ground was a rough and coarse brown, the trees were withered and black, and the air was thick and had the slight scent of something rotten lingering about it.
Looking a bit further, she could see a large town in the distance, but there was something... off about it. Twilight tried to put a hoof on what it was as she stepped forward and narrowed her eyes.
The buildings all looked incredibly old and worn. Some of them were reduced to nothing but crumbling ruins, and others still stood tall, but were in terrible condition nonetheless. As Twilight observed the town, she finally figured out what it was that bothered her, aside from the state of the town itself.
"Where is everypony? And why do all the buildings look so... old?" Twilight asked, as she turned to Grogar, "everything is old and... dirty and... and..."
"Decrepit, decayed, destitute," Grogar continued with a bitter laugh, "this is what my kingdom has been reduced to, child," he nodded towards a point behind the filly, "just look at what's become of my poor castle."
Twilight followed his gaze and, sure enough, she saw that they were indeed standing only a few yards away from a large gothic castle. The structure looked just as bad as the rest of the town below.
The gates that surrounded the castle were gnarled and twisted, and the castle walls were chipped and crumbling in many areas. Several of the towers were completely missing and those that weren't had massive cracks in the sides.
It took a second for Twilight to realize they had actually been standing in front of the castle entrance. The reason she hadn't noticed before was because the metal gate had collapsed under a pile of dark grey stone, making entry all but impossible.
"This is what I wanted to show you, filly."
Twilight turned back to face Grogar, who was staring down at the ruins below with a solemn, almost wistful expression. For some reason his gaze made the filly's heart ache.
"If you want to know where the citizens are... well..." he smiled a humorless, knowing smile, "perhaps you'll meet them... in time," his smile fell and was replaced with a grimace, "I was a king, Twilight Sparkle, a great one, one that cared for his people... but that was... millennia ago."
He stepped away from the cliff and turned to fully face the filly before him.
"To tell you of myself and my past in its entirety would take literal ages, filly," he continued, "but I suppose I could indulge your curiosity a bit..."
He nodded once and trotted past Twilight, making his way to the stone pathway that led down the cliff and towards the town itself. Twilight watched him go for a moment before hurrying after the ram.
"Come, child," Grogar called from up ahead, "I shall tell you a tale of a land that existed long before Equestria, a land that I once ruled over, and a land that was torn from me in a vicious and bloody coup enacted by your own equine ancestors."
Her mind was still trying to process everything that had happened to her, and how she had even come to be here, but there was one thing the lavender filly was beginning to see plain as the pitch black sky above her.
Grogar was lonely.
Maybe that was the real reason the ram had brought her here—in fact, Twilight was almost sure of it. She may have been a mere filly, but even she could see that deep beneath the shadows, the sinister countenance, and the menacing aura, Grogar just wanted some company.
Seeing the state Grogar's old kingdom was in, Twilight had no doubt the demonic ram would try to make good on his claim of leaving this place and taking over Equestria, but even then, Twilight still felt sorry for the ram.
She lost her chance to enter Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, she lost her family, and she had apparently lost her life... but if there were two things she still did have, it was her passion for knowledge and the compassion that all ponies possessed.
The filly decided then and there, that if she was going to be bonded to Grogar anyway, she might as well do everything she could to make the ram smile. She'd support him no matter what he intended to do, after all, he had spent so long trapped in this abysmal place.
Didn't he deserve a little happiness?
Twilight nodded to herself and returned her focus to Grogar as he began to speak, never once noticing the increased glow of the bell around her neck or the odd shine in her eyes.
Author's Note
Welp, this is my 'villain adopts a lavender filly' story. Hope you guys enjoyed reading it, I know I enjoyed writing it. 
