Wild did his best to appear calm and collected, but he wasn’t sure he managed to accomplish that. Artful, he knew, wasn’t really any better. No surprise, that, considering their knowledge.

Wild could say that he had more experience fighting against powerful foes than Artful, but he couldn’t say he was particularly good at it. The Changeling Princess nearly crushed him, and it was only luck that kept him alive and relatively unharmed. He still remembered the pressure she had put on his mind, trying to make him submit, trying to learn everything she wanted to know about him, and... perhaps other things, things he shuddered to think about. She was perhaps the most unpleasant person he had ever had the unfortunate displeasure of fighting against even if the harm she had done to him was, all in all, short-lived.

However, to think that it didn't have far-reaching consequences would be wrong, and Wild was well-aware of it. Before then, he was under the impression that his mind would always be his own, something that no one could truly take away from him. Unfortunately, magic had proven him wrong, throwing that certainty out of the window, shattering the sense of security he had once had. At least now he knew to be vigilant, to expect such attacks, as well as how to defend himself against them. Still, he would have preferred if he never had a need of it.

Then, of course, was the Nightmare. A powerful spirit, but it was one he managed to defeat without too much trouble, in the end. However, he had to consider luck, and it was mostly luck that helped him then as well. His circumstances helped him avoid dying, and the surprise of his return attack was enough for him to overwhelm the Nightmare, tear them apart, and, somehow, to gain power from them, integrating their pieces into his own being.

He had known before that luck had much to do with everything that had happened to him, everything that had allowed him to live for this long. He was lucky he didn't die young from an accident, he was lucky he managed to escape from his tormentors, he was lucky he was able to kill them, and he was, once again, lucky to have lived after he had taken his life and its ending into his own hands.

Perhaps someone in the universe was laughing at him, throwing all those challenges in his way to amuse themselves. He didn't believe in anything supernatural, certainly not like most people believed back on Earth, but how could he think that there wasn't more to the universe than what he had once known after he had experienced all that he had?

An existential crisis was something he tried not to think much of. There were concerns closer to him, concerns that needed his attention there and then, and his place in the universe wasn't something he wanted to spend much time ruminating.

Unfortunately, he didn’t believe luck would help him much with Sombra. Sombra was awake, alert, and prepared for battle, and not just any battle, but a battle against alicorns. Wild was fairly certain his own magical might was somewhat close to an alicorn’s, but his lack of practical experience would seriously hinder him should he try to fight Sombra head-on. No, it was not an approach that he could take.

Wild and Artful made their way to the communal tent for their batch of volunteers. It consisted of a bunch of bunk beds, the upper ones reserved for the pegasi. There was some storage allocated to each person, but overall everything had the look of military barracks. Purely utilitarian, though not without decent comforts as far as he could tell. There was also a separate toilet section and another tent with communal showers. It was crowded, though not so much that moving around was difficult, and it seemed that they would have to forget about any serious privacy for now.

“Alright, everyone, you’re probably wondering why we're staying in this tents,” a guard told them during the initial meeting, “But these accommodations have a good reason to exist. The city’s not safe for habitation for now, and we did the best we could with what he had in order to house all of you as well as the entirety of the Crystal Empire. No small feat, I tell you, so y’all have to make do with sharing space until things are better. And they will get better, especially if everyone does their job and does it well. Now, any questions?”

Neither Wild nor Artful did, though they received some clarifying points. The Crystal Empire was currently deemed unstable because of a large chaotic network of tunnels underneath, tunnels that were dug with barely any concern for the safety of anyone above or inside them. Work to stabilize those tunnels were underway, but it was not projected to be completed quickly, especially if more tunnels were discovered.

This made Wild worry that Sombra would take the opportunity to destroy the Crystal Empire that way, burying everyone he could get in rubble. That was something he hoped Luna was aware of.

“Sombra is powerful,” she told him once he met her after settling in, “However, what he lacks is skill and the mind for the cleverer tricks. Dark Magic manages to make up for that lack in part, and his own emotions feed his power, which then feeds his emotions, and this vicious cycle makes him a difficult opponent to defeat. And yet, he had once been defeated, and it can be done again.”

Wild nodded with some uncertainty, putting more hope into her words than he probably should have.

“Your own power does not trump his, yet it is great nonetheless,” Luna continued, “It will prove to be a boon if utilized properly. First of all, I have noticed that you have grown skilled with the lightning bolt spell. I want you to remember this.”

Wild nodded, solidly this time. Something about shooting a lightning just made sense.

It was also fun.

“For all that Sombra is strong, he is focused on attacking, not on defending himself,” she explained, “He meets force with force. In terms of swordsmanship, he meets your strike with a strike of his own, hoping to score a hit because of his strength overpowering your own. This tactic is not foolproof. The coming fight will not be a duel - it will be a battle. He would not be attacked from just one direction - we will strike from as many as possible.

“His main targets, undoubtedly, will be myself and young Cadenza. So, while he is distracted, you will charge up your lightning strike and wait for an opportunity to shoot him. Do not be afraid to put as much power behind the spell as possible.”

“Even if it kills him?” Wild couldn’t help but ask. He had no issues with killing someone like him, but he needed to see if Luna was at all against the idea of killing him.

“Yes,” she nodded in response, “As much as it pains me to say this, killing him is a viable option. He has shown himself to be dangerous and unhinged, and the sooner he is dealt with, the better,” she looked him in the eyes, “Killing, I know, is not easy. It is not something that should come easy. But sometimes, it is necessary to take a life. If Sombra wanted to be reasoned with, I believe he would have shown it long ago. Even then, perhaps he is desperate, perhaps the usage of Dark Magic is clouding his mind, and so perhaps there is something that can be done to stop him without killing him.

“However, his actions have consequences, and it is clear that he endangers many, many lives, and it would not be right for me to do everything possible to save one life that has, by choice or otherwise, turned to evil when I could save many by killing him. Perhaps this is a decision that I will come to regret in hindsight, but we can never truly prepare for that. And so, I give you my blessing to use whatever force you deem necessary to stop Sombra.”

Luna sighed then, a deep and tired sound, and for a moment she appeared as old as she truly was.

“Perhaps I should not ask this of you,” she said, “But I believe you understand why I did so anyway.”

Wild nodded, and not long after he exited Luna’s tent, his thoughts heavy with the possibility of killing. It was not like he believed much in the sanctity of life - he had killed, he had not regretted it, for all that he had once seen himself as guilty in other ways. Still, he hoped that it would not come to it, for he didn’t truly have a real desire to kill Sombra. To stop him, to make him suffer for what he did, yes, he wanted it. He couldn’t deny the fact that he would not mind it at all if Sombra had to be hurt in order to be brought down, all the better if he cried out in pain because of it. Sombra was firmly in the ‘awful people’ category for him, and in his mind, awful people deserved to suffer, and he would certainly enjoy it if it came down to that.

Fortunately for him, such thoughts were put to the back of his mind once he returned to his volunteer group. Finally, everyone was being put to work, separated and directed to where they would be most useful after everyone got a small interview to explain their skills and abilities. Artful got drafted to do air delivery of various things, alone or with a group of other pegasi, while Wild was to use his magic to move rubble out of the way. After exchanging a kiss, the two of them went their ways to do the best they could to help the people of the Crystal Empire.

Wild found moving heavy things easy, not even breaking a sweat. He moved boulders and rocks and pieces of buildings out of the way, then moved steel beams and such that would then be used to support buildings that still stood as well as underground tunnels. On one occasion, he kept a platform steady so that ponies standing on it could bolt things together without the fear of something collapsing under them.

“Well shit, you sure can lift a lot,” a unicorn stallion a couple of years older than him commented, “What’s your lifting routine?”

“I just move things,” Wild shrugged. He couldn’t exactly tell him the truth, after all.

“Yeah, but how do you do that?” the stallion asked, “You’re, what, fifteen? Taking any magic-enhancing potions for this?”

“...no, but that’s close,” Wild decided to say, “I got some... boosts.”

“Fair enough.”

Conversation stalled out a bit when Wild and a bunch of other unicorns had to focus on keeping a building steady while a different group was working under it to reinforce the basement. Wild felt like he was doing most of the job, but he decided not to test by hypothesis by letting go. He was not exactly willing to see if the building would come down if he wasn't supporting it anymore, and so he steadily held on. It wasn’t the magical hands he used but the more amorphous way of telekinesis, an aura of his color joining the auras of others, blending together into a weird sort of multicolored bubble that enveloped the building in ways that almost hurt to look at, somewhat representing an oddly-shaped soap bubble shone on in just the right way to reveal the rainbow of colors.

It took almost an hour for the support group to climb up from under the buildings, giving the go-ahead to everyone else.

“Alright, now ease off everyone, slowly!”

Bit by bit, the magical support was removed from the building, everyone standing at a respectable distance just in case. Wild felt his eyebrows itch under the safety glasses, but he waited until it was safe to scratch it. He checked the hardhat he was wearing, then readjusted the safety vest. The hardhat was oddly shaped compared to what he had seen before, covering not just the top of his head but also the top of his muzzle and extending past the back of his head to cover some of his neck, which did make some sense. The safety vest was bright orange with yellow-green bright reflective stripes, though it also had a hard carapace-like protection for the top where the spine was, the whole piece resembling the hardhat. It was surprisingly light for how protective it was, though. And, to some amusement, it made Wild look like a knight of the Construction Table. He could almost imagine himself jousting with pieces of rebar and dueling with sledgehammers. However, weren’t the two essentially the same thing since he was a horse-like creature? He knew that jousting was about one person riding right at the other, except the two were on different lanes, and used long lances to try to unseat the other from their horse. How that would work with ponies, he had no idea.

He spotted the storm raging beyond the edge of the climate control bubble, and his good mood evaporated. Sombra had yet to make his move, but, in Wild’s opinion, it was clear that he was very close to it. He hoped Princess Luna had a proper plan how to deal with that, because he sure didn’t aside from hitting Sombra as hard as possible so that he would go down before anyone could be seriously hurt or killed. He had no idea why Sombra was doing what he did, but then it didn’t matter much to him. Sombra chose his own path, Wild picked his, and the two were now enemies. Sombra would want to destroy everything Wild wanted to remain, and so the two were at irreconcilable odds.

***

Princess Luna wished she had more time, more resources, more people. What they currently had was simply not enough, and while she did send a letter to her sister about the urgency of the situation, Celestia was still many hours away. Of course, she could do a series of teleportations that would have resulted in her appearing in the Crystal Empire in barely half an hour, but it would leave her drained and far from the best condition to fight. Not to mention that her appearance would undoubtedly give away the fact that Luna knew about what was to come.

Luna remembered the first time the two of them moved against Sombra. First, they got the Elements of Harmony from the vault where they were stored, and then they had a squad of pegasi pull a carriage across the sky, hauling it from one outpost to another where a fresh squad was always present to ensure there was as little delay as possible. It still had taken them days to arrive, days that let Sombra run free, days that he had used to create his curse. Had they been faster...

Nowadays, for the purposes of emergency, a series of portal doorways was erected across Equestria. It was a power-hungry application of magic, which meant that the said doorways had a recharge time of over half a week, and so they were not used very frequently. Due to the tremendous price of their construction as well as the drain on resources for their upkeep, not many were in existence, and new ones had not been constructed since the last time Equestria had to fight off hostile forces a number of centuries ago. It was a miracle that some idiot didn’t pocket the upkeep and maintenance money and let the doorways crumble to ruin since then. Despite the rarity of these doorways, however, one was close enough to the Crystal Empire to cut the emergency travel time by more than a half. Even then, however, Princess Celestia would need to fly her way over as close to the Crystal Empire as possible before teleporting inside using Luna’s magical beacon. This way, hopefully Sombra would be surprised by her arrival and perhaps reconsider his attack while Celestia was still obviously energized and ready for battle. While giving him more time to prepare wasn’t ideal, he was still but one pony, and not a very smart one at that. With Celestia present, time would only be on the side of the Crystal Empire.

The Bearers of the Elements of Harmony would certainly be on their way as well, though Luna feared that their young age would work against them, and that didn't even take into account their lack of battle experience. In addition, none of them were skilled battle mages, not even Twilight Sparkle.

Most important currently was the fact that Princess Celestia had yet to arrive, so it was up to Princess Luna to make it seem like things were proceeding as usual as not to tip Sombra off. However, the need for secrecy didn’t necessitate that she did nothing. Instead, she made sure that the efforts were focused on rescuing people from down below and bringing them to the temporary refugee camp. If a tent collapsed on someone, it wouldn’t really be a huge deal. However, if a building were to fall on someone, they would most likely be dead or wishing they were. The further everyone was away from the danger zone, the better off everyone would be despite the fact that they would then be congregated in one spot that was not very defensible at all. However, the only defense that could stand against a powerful sorcerer wielding Dark Magic were magical shields as well as praying that the said shields were strong enough to withstand the fury of the attack. The more ponies were close together, the better chances they had of pooling their magic and, with the help of experienced unicorns, propping up a shield strong enough to block at least a couple of magical blows. While someone like Shining Armor, whose talent it was to create powerful magical defenses, could easily create a shield as strong or stronger than a hundred regular unicorns could make, such ponies were rare, and Shining Armor himself would be better used protecting Cadance. Cadance, for all that she was not trained in combat, could produce powerful and destructive attacks if she let herself loose. Then, of course, was the power of love, though Luna was not particularly hopeful about it affecting Sombra. Perhaps he would have once been affected by it, but nowadays it seemed like the void where his heart was supposed to be was big enough to consume any blast of such magic and not even break a sweat. After all, Radiant Hope loved him in her own way, though whether it was romantic or otherwise was unclear to Luna, and yet this love failed to prevent Sombra from becoming who he was.

Princess Luna still cursed her lack of foresight. While there were plenty of powerful and skillful unicorns present in the Crystal Empire, nearly all of them had talents only in non-combat areas such as construction, repairs, digging, and so on and so forth. Perhaps they could construct a ballista or even a cannon, but she doubted their talents lay that way, and, besides that, there wasn’t time. At least their magical power could be used to add strength to the common shield that would hopefully be cast when Sombra started presenting a direct and current danger to ponies but before he actually struck.

She could feel it deep within, the time to fight was soon. She could only pray that it would go well.

Author's Note

The story is now complete on my Boosty. I'll continue posting here as usual, of course, until the very last chapter when I can mark the story complete.

I won't make a long post here about it, but I'm going to say that I'm taking a break from writing for a good while after all this. Recharge, do something else. Though, I will touch up the chapters as I post them here, so don't worry about that.