"Talking"
'Thinking'

It was taking longer than I would have liked to free myself from the grateful ponies so with a flex of my magic I transformed into my smoke form and started flowing over the ponies towards what I hoped was the center of the castle and the throne room.

Surprisingly the ponies who saw me were awed instead of terrified, I thought I would remind them of Sombra in this form but either his smoke form came after he was defeated, or adding stars to my own was more effective than I imagined.

Suddenly an idea popped into my head, why didn't I just fly to the top?

Plan set I flew out of the nearest window and started my ascent but when I reached the clouds I wasn't able to break through, it took me a moment to realize this was probably due to some spell of Sombra's.

While in normal circumstances it would have taken some effort on my part with Sombra dead the spell couldn't hold itself together so it would only take a simple pulse of my magic to break it hell it would probably dissipate by itself in some time.

Looking down I could see that the city didn't look as packed as before so some ponies must have gone to their homes in the countryside, from the ones that were still in the city most ponies were celebrating some had seen my ascent and were looking at me, within a minute everyone in the ground was cheering towards me.

'Let's hope all this positiveness powers the heart.' I thought to myself and with a push, the spell broke and I was through the clouds, once I reached the top of the tower there it was, floating in the middle of the roof was the crystal heart.

Turning corporeal once again I approached it and was about to grab it with my hooves before I slapped myself for even considering the idea 'Why would I use my hooves when the last thing I need is for it to break I'll just grab it with my magic, it's safer and besides Cadance grabbed it with her magic and nothing happened' thinking this I poured my magic into the heart.

What I didn't know at the time was that there is a very big difference between making your magic telekinetically grab something and just pouring your magic into it.

The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was a flash of light.

-Third person pov-

While our protagonist was flying up the tower the citizens of the crystal empire celebrated. While many returned to their homes in the countryside along with their families the city was still filled to the brim with cheering ponies.

When some of the ponies below saw their savior flying out a window they quickly told the ones closest to them, in less than a minute everypony was looking towards the sky and cheering.

While some ponies were wondering what his reasons for saving them were and others were suspicious, they all shared the same feeling, gratefulness.

When they saw him fly past the clouds they were confused at what he was doing until suddenly a wave of blue energy expanded from the top of the tower and in just a second covered the entire empire.

When the ponies could see again the clouds were no more and the crystal shine had returned to the empire and its citizens.

When ponies saw that they had regained their forms previous to Sombra's reign a new wave of cheering exploded around the empire.

A minute later somepony noticed a light descending from the tower and pointing up yelled to the others nearby "look, at the top of the tower."

It quickly spread through the crowd and soon everyone was looking at the light slowly descending towards them, the closer it got to them the more of its form they could see until they realized it was their savior.

His body and eyes shining with an inner light and with a cloak made of stars covering him it looked like a god had descended to Equis as if that wasn't enough they could see the crystal heart floating in front of his chest, many ponies simply burst into tears of joy at seeing the empire's sacred artifact had returned.

A moment later the heart gave a pulse and started to shine more and more until it simply looked like a heart-shaped piece of light.

The ponies stared transfixed as the heart changed its shape before their very eyes slowly twisting and shrinking before turning into a small crystal bell with a heart-shaped clapper which proceeded to attach itself to the front of his collar, then the bell gave a final ring which instead of being a small light one was an echoing gong that was heard across the empire.

Then with a final flash of light, their savior fell unconscious to the ground, instantly many rushed towards him and started carrying him towards the castle amidst the cheering of thousands.

First person pov.

An indeterminate amount of time later.

Once again I awoke with a groan.

As I groggily opened my eyes I realized I was in bed, taking a moment to shake the sleepiness off I got out of the bed and looked for the bathroom.

Reaching the door I went in to find what looked like a toilet to the side and in front of me, there was a basin of water with a mirror hanging from the wall above it.

My sleep-addled brain had ignored the completely unfamiliar room and bathroom and the fact that everything but the mattress and the sheets was made of crystal.

When I walked up to the basin and splashed water on my face I looked into the mirror and blinked slowly.

Staring back at me from the reflection was what looked like some kind of goat with red slitted eyes and purple grey fur. A moment later I looked at my hands a realized they weren't hands at all but hooves.

'Interesting' I thought to myself as I stared at what I now knew to be my reflection.

After a minute of staring my memories of what I had done rushed into my head.

My eyes widening I rushed to the toilet and started dry heaving into it. ' What happened to me, why did everything feel so normal' I thought as tears gathered at the corners of my eyes at the realization of what happened.

'I looked at him right in the eye and then sent him to his death, I can justify that he deserved to die but if that was the case why did I not just kill him earlier, I was right in front of his face and he couldn't detect me it would have been easy to kill him but for some reason I didn't, no instead I just stretched it out and made it painful.' at that point, I had stopped heaving and was simply in shock.

' And even earlier why did I not panic when I woke up in a different body, I turned into a goat for fuck's sake and why was magic the first thing that came to mind when I tried moving the warmth inside me it could have been anything.' I was starting to panic when I heard a voice.

"Pathetic." I stepped away from the toilet and looked around for the source of the voice, looking outside the bathroom, and at the room, I frowned as I saw it was empty.

"Who's there," I asked only to hear a snort from behind me, turning around I was only met with an empty bathroom and my reflection.

I was looking around trying to find whoever spoke when I looked at the mirror and realized it wasn't my reflection at all.

Staring at me from the mirror was a smoky form not dissimilar from my own but where mine looked like a starlit night he was a pure black that seemed to suck up the light around it.

The other difference was that was my horns were short and pointy his were massive and twisted backward and slightly forward at the end.

"Who are you," I asked him.

"I'm what you were supposed to be" his answer didn't do anything to calm my nerves.

"W-what do you mean" I stuttered out.

The shadow only gave an aggravated sigh before speaking "It means that if everything had gone according to plan I would be standing there and YOU would be nothing but another lost soul wandering limbo for eternity."

"Wait, were you the one who sent me here," I asked with some anger "Why, what do I have that made you pick me instead of someone else, what makes me so special" I demanded.

He just scoffed "Don't flatter yourself, there was nothing special about you, you were just the closest one to me when I was ready to return." That just brought a new wave of anger from me.

"So what" I roared "You just tore me away from my life because it was FUCKING CONVENIENT."

He just ignored my answer and stated "What life, you mean the one you can't even remember most of." His words froze me in place as they registered.

After a moment I realized he was right. 'Come on come on THINK' I told myself 'Your name, what's your name or your mother's.'

I started to hyperventilate when I couldn't remember. 'I remember finishing high school, I remember I had a mother, I loved her with all my heart and I just wanted to make her proud but I just can't remember her face or even her name.'

I grabbed my head as I forced myself to think 'Come on what about your friends or the school you went to or even just your name THINK.' But no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't remember.

"Why can't I remember" I muttered to myself.

"Stop your whining, besides even if you could remember it wouldn't matter." Hearing that I remembered I had company. "What do you mean."

"Didn't you hear me earlier boy, I didn't mention limbo for no reason." He said to me "You were in limbo for a reason, think."

His words caused a cold feeling to crawl up my back.

"I was dead wasn't I" I finally said after a minute of silence.

"Yes you were, and the reason for your memory loss is the fact that you were about to be reincarnated before I interrupted it." He told me.

"What was your plan," I asked still reeling from the revelation.

"I guess there's no point in hiding it seeing as in a few minutes I'll be gone and your mistake of existence will keep going". I was confused by that and asked what he meant.

"If you let me finish" I don't know how a shadow can give you a pointed look but he managed it, I stayed quiet and let him continue.

"Back in the very beginnings of Equestria when the three pony tribes had yet to unite and were still living in huts and small villages I decided I would conquer all and declare myself emperor of the known world" I listened attentively as he continued.

"At the time I created many monsters and creatures that would have drowned Equestria in an endless epoch of evil and darkness" His voice turned angry as he continued "And I would have achieved it if that pest of a unicorn called gusty the great hadn't stolen my bewitching bell and hidden it under a barrier somewhere I couldn't find it." I suddenly realized the one I was speaking to was Grogar Father of all monsters.

"Since I had foolishly stored most of my magic and essence on it when I was separated from it I had been incredibly weakened." He paused for a moment before continuing "At the time I believed the optimistic fool would simply jail me or banish me to some other realm."

He snorted "It honestly caught me by surprise that when she found me again she didn't hesitate to kill me."

"Then how are you here then," I asked him.

"I'm Grogar, something as simple as losing my physical form would not normally inconvenience me, but weakened as I was I wasn't capable of resisting the pull of the afterlife, it took whatever power I had left to anchor myself to limbo." Grogar then seemed to pull himself from the mirror and floated out of the bathroom over to the window.

"And so I waited for thousands of years but no matter how much magic I accumulated I couldn't break the barrier between limbo and Equestria to send myself through." He then started looking out the window.

"You see during my time in limbo I noticed that when the reincarnation process finished "cleansing" a soul a small opening appeared to let the soul through to Equestria, I tried to go through but I was never able to, for some time it felt like the world was mocking me by waving an open door in my face but around two centuries ago I found a way to use the reincarnation process to my advantage." He then turned from the window back to me.

"The plan was that the next time a soul started the reincarnation process I would push it aside in a way and take its place and move through the opening created for it." He sighed "What I didn't expect was for some kind of energy foreign to Equestria to be protecting you so when we came into contact instead of you being pushed aside we started fusing instead."

"Apparently whatever that foreign energy was it was meant to protect you against the cleansing process but my interference caused it to destabilize resulting in the loss of most of your memories." I frowned in confusion.

"But then shouldn't have been reborn into a random newborn or something," I asked him.

"That would be the case normally but the reincarnation process was meant to simply select a random soul to cleanse it then send it to Equestria to be born once again, it wasn't meant to handle two souls in the middle of fusing along with unstable foreign energy, so the result was that we ended up as a soul floating in the middle of nowhere and with nothing to anchor us to the physical world we would be treated as a recently deceased being and be pulled into the afterlife once again." Grogar then turned to look back out the window.

"How did we get this body then," I asked.

Without turning to look at me he continued "Knowing that without a body all of my efforts would be in vain I decided to use the last of my magic to create one final creature, sometime after I finished making it and put us in it you awoke and I was left as nothing but a fragment in the back of your mind."

"Still, I thought to myself that I could work with this, after all, I was able to manipulate your subconscious to an extent, if I hadn't you would have spent hours just learning how to walk and I wouldn't have it."

"I will admit that when I connected you to your magic I was surprised at its ease of use but it just meant more advantages for me later on".

"So the reason I didn't almost react to anything even when I attacked Sombra was that you were controlling me," I asked him.

"I couldn't control you, just nudge what was already there and give you some of my knowledge, the idea of killing Sombra was already on your mind I just made you take your time with him."

"What were you going to do eventually and earlier why did you say you were going to be gone," I asked.

"My plan was to eventually nudge you into searching for my bell, and if you found it I would have been able to use the magic and essence I had stored in it to erase you and take complete control." He sighed.

"But I didn't expect you to simply bond yourself with a magical artifact without knowing what would happen."

"What do you mean I bonded to a magical artifact" I shouted.

When Grogar simply pointed down I looked at my chest and noticed for the first time that I had what looked to be a small bell made of silvery crystal hanging from the middle of my collar.

"W-what is this," I asked.

"That is what you called the crystal heart" His answer shocked me.

"But, how did I bond with it"

"You bonded with it because you were STUPID enough to not differentiate between telekinesis and just pouring your magic into something." He shouted at me.

He suddenly grunted and his form started flickering.

"What's happening to you," I asked him.

"When you bonded to that blasted trinket it immediately cut off any control I had over you, and now it's simply erasing me completely."

"But won't you just go to the afterlife then?"

"Didn't I just explain what happened, our souls fused with one another and now I'm just a piece of consciousness being slowly erased, when it finishes I will simply cease to exist." As he spoke his form deteriorated more and more until only a semi-transparent blob of shadow remained.

"But then who am I, what is my name," I asked him.

He simply chuckled and answered "As my last creation I would call you Greema, use it or not I don't care". And with those last words, Grogar completely disappeared.

I was left standing to stare at the window and I would stay like that until a knock was heard coming from the door.

"Excuse me your Majesty are you awake." Asked a voice from the other side.

I inhaled and exhaled deeply before answering "Yes, come in."

And so the doors to my new life opened.

Author's Note

Ok first off I want to thank every single person who liked followed or watched this story, you don't know how surprised I was when my first story got into the featured list withing 4 hours of posting it, and I was even MORE surprised when I woke up the next day to it on the first place of the featured list.
On another note I want to apologize to those who I told grogar wouldn't make an appereance but a comment sparked the idea in my mind and it evolved into this chapter.
I also invite you to read the first chapter again, I went over it and fixed the grammar mistakes along with adding some more space to it so that there wouldn't be so many walls of text.
Now it seems that most complains were about the pacing so I hope this chapter has a better pace.
Again if you notice any grammar mistakes I may have missed point them out and I will fix them.
I am not the best at explaining things so if there's some part you didn't understand please tell me.