Author's Note

Hope you enjoy my story

of course any criticisms are welcomed in order to improve my skills as a writer :)

Prologue: Rise from the ashes

(1st person-???)

Sometimes I wish that day was a bad dream, so I could wake from it and be with them again.

That day was like any other snowy day in the north, snow falling from the sky and temperatures so cold your hooves would freeze right off without protection. unfortunately it was time to get firewood for the house and because of my fathers had a bad knee, that means all the wood collecting is left to me.

My village was sizable and a place mostly populated by, including me, earth ponies, and hoof full of unicorns and pegasi, located pretty far away from the border of the famed Crystal empire. I wished to visit it someday but I didn't have a reason too

‘Maybe I could bring sis there for her birthday next winter, she goes crazy over that place’ I think to myself with a quiet chuckle. My family was mostly filled with explorers. Father used to be a traveler, trekking miles of unknown and undiscovered lands for a multitude of reasons. Mother still goes out looking for new flora from time to time, even taught how to make special remedies using specific plants. Sis wasn’t as wide-eyed as my parents, mostly wanting to ‘see the sights’ as the ponies say now. Me…I just wanted a quiet life, to settle down and be at peace for a while, I never really cared about exploring or finding new things, much to the annoyance of my father.

Eventually I stopped reminiscing about my family, reaching a good spot not too far into the forest, and setting down an old wicker basket, and raised an axe near to the base of a tree with my mouth, and I swung. After a couple of moments the tree came crashing down and I got to work chopping it into pieces. These trees were thinner than most trees ,from what I heard from my mother, so I spent the next couple of minutes chopping down a few more, soon placing the result of my hard work into the basket. Whipping the cold sweat from my forehead with my hoof, I picked up my basket and start walking back when my ears perked up to a distant sound that, soon, shook me to my core.

There were sounds of loud explosions and the agonizing cries of ponies in the distance. Hearing this I dropped the basket and ran as fast as my legs would let me, ignoring the cuts and scraping from branches and forest floor rocks. My mind raced a million miles per hour trying to figure out what was going on. I eventually reached the origins of the horrifying sounds and my eyes grew to the size of dinner plates at what I saw.

My village, my friends, my FAMILY were all burning before me.

My body was moving before I could realize it, and I sped through the smoldering town that was once my home and as I ran, I looked around at my surrounding. Ponies were trapped under rubble, some already either burned to a crisp or bleed out from injuries, an Injured foal crying out for their crushed parents to wake up, or wounded residents trying to flee the inferno. All of that didn’t matter to me then, my family was a part of this too and I needed to hurry.

I soon rounded the final corner and stopped at my ,mostly intact, but still burning house, and I ran inside. When I got in through the door, I heard the crying of my sister could be heard. But before I could proceed, I saw the trapped corpses of my mother and father, crushed under broken ceiling beams. I clenched my eyes to fight back tears, before opening them and following the sounds of my sister's wails. Reaching her room quickly, I spotted the form of my sister under her bed sopping her eyes out calling out for me and our, now dead, parents. The ceiling in her room was about to collapse on us, so I quickly grabbed my young sister and jumped through a nearby window, protecting her from any glass shards.

Soon the sound of a loud crash was heard behind us as I landed my back into the soft snow, soon rolling on my haunches, holding my young sister in my hooves. When I was done taking a couple of breaths, I looked down at my sister and froze. She was in a bad state to say the least, half of her upper body was badly burnt to the point some bone was showing, multiple gashes with splinters, spewing out blood, and her throat was probably raw from the screaming and crying. The edges of my vision were going dark at the sight of my beloved sister as she looked up at me with pain filled eyes and a low whimpering noise coming from her mouth.

Tears poured down my lowered face as I held my dying sister in my arms, saying “please don't go, please don’t go, PLEASE DON’T GO!” over and over again. I was suddenly interrupted when a big, golden colored, ball of intense magic came slammed into the earth nearby and causing an explosion, sending me and my sister flying in opposite directions.

The heat from the blast burned the flesh of the upper half of my face and I felt an intense pain in both my eyes as My body crashed into some rubble, knocking me unconscious . The last thing I saw in the distance, was an alicorn flying off.

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I soon came too and the first thing that I noticed was an intense pain flaring in my entire body. I opened my eyes but rubbed them in a dazed confusion, everything i saw was mostly black but there were out lines of, what I guessed, was were burnt buildings and debris. The outlines were very hazy, like somepony tried to draw a picture with solid white mist.

Seeing this, I thought my vision was messed up due to the blast, but that idea was debunked after a couple of seconds of waiting. I started to panic about it but the memory of my parents and, especially my sister, came back to me and I set off searching for my sister.

My vision was not helping me in the slightest as I searched around the nearby ruins where my sister flew off into but the vile smell of burnt flesh and the outline of my sister came into view and I ran up to her still form. I tried shaking her shoulder carefully and in a vain attempt to wake her up but soon found out she would be coming too.

At that point my mind snapped and I sat there in front of my sister's corpse with a wide eyed,1000 mile stare. It could have been minutes, a couple of hours, but to me, it felt like a lifetime of me just blankly staring at the charred corpse I called a sister. The sound of multiple hooves somewhat snapped me out of my trance as I slowly raised my head to see what looked like a small legion of armored ponies trotting down the street. A couple of guards broke off at random times, going down different streets for a reason unknown to me, with two of those same guards coming up to me.

“We got a live one here, what should we do with him?” the guard on the left asked her partner on the right.

“I say we kill him right now, poor bastard probably should have been dead a while ago, considering what this shithole of a town went through” the right guard said with a snarky tone to his voice.

“Are you sure I mean-” The left guard began, but was stopped when the right guard, presumably, gave his partner a look. “-y-you’re probably right” she said with a lowered voice.

I look back at the right guard's silhouette to see him raise what looked like a spear above his head. I closed my eyes and waited for my demise, what was the point of trying to resist. if I tried to fight back, my vision and lack of fighting experience wouldn’t get me far, and besides, I had no one to go back to now. I waited for death to come and release me from my sorrow but it never came.

“Stand down! This is the one I have been searching for” A strong and powerful voice said, causing me to open my damaged eyes.

There, surrounded by guards, was a stallion and at first sight even with my current vision, I could tell he wasn't any normal stallion. His aura alone poured out the overwhelming feeling of power, and his appearance complemented that. He was above average in height for a stallion with muscles that appeared to be carved of stone. His attire consisted of armor pieces around his hooves, barrel, neck, with a crown on top of his head, with a cape covering his back. The most most eye-catching feature about him was the curved horn on top of his head that looked like it could pierce a pony clean through.

Then mysterious stallion trotted up and stopped in front of me and looked down at my pitiful form and he cleared his throat to get my attention. “My name is King Sombra, the Future and rightful ruler of the crystal empire. May I know what yours is young one?’ The mysterious stallion, now named King Sombra, asked in a commanding tone. At first I tried to reply, but the mix of anxiety and my sanity on the brink of collapsing, nothing came out.

King Sombra sighed at my silence and ordered some of his guards to scout out the area for supplies and any survivors, leaving us alone. After doing so, he sat in front of me and the aura of understanding came off of him as he began to speak. “I understand that despair in your heart, the overwhelming feeling of sadness of everything being ripped away from you. we feel the same way…because of her" Sombras voice went low at the end, as his head lowered slightly.

“W-who…” I said in a low and ominous tone.

King Sombra looked up with a raised eyebrow and ,unknown to him, a faint smirk. ”What did you say?” he said with a hint of curiosity.

“I said WHO!" I quietly shouted quietly, my voice shaking and my eyes watering with barely restrained anger.

“I wouldn’t want to say it in order to keep your mind from not breaking. But you know her very, very well” he said with a sinister chuckle.

“princess…Celestia “

Did… I hear him right? I don’t think I did? There is no way he just said HER name. The ruler of the sun and day, the goddess amongst mortals, the one who PROTECTS us from dark forces. There is no way it was her.

“Y-You’re lying to me” I said in a shaky and disbelieving tone. “W-why then, WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE!” I shouted accusingly at his face. The tears from my eye where once coming out again as my mind tried to rationalize everything i had been told.

King Sombras face turned grim and strained with anger as he looked away. “I wish I was, but sadly, I am not. She is the reason everypony, including your dear old family, is dead.". King sombra stood once again and turned his head towards me with the same look of anger on it "I shall explain everything to you."

“Me and a legion of my soldiers were liberating a nearby town closer to the crystal empire when Celestia soon interrupted us. I tried talking sense into her and explain my actions but she wouldn’t listen and so we began to battle. I attempted to deflect her attacks away for my safety, but more importantly, the town I was trying to free. Unfortunately some of her more powerful attacks strayed away from our fight, and resulted in your home being destroyed. The wench didn’t even realize what she did to you, and after my legion and I ran her off, we noticed your town burning and came over to save any survivors”. Sombra finished his speech with a sigh as his look of anger turned into one of sorrow and regret. “You are the only one left…I am sorry”

That was the reason, that was the reason my family is dead, because of some misunderstanding…

My body visibly trembled with rage and my already messed up vision got worse as a result, but that was the issue here. That BITCH did this to my community, MY FAMILY, and did jack shit to help. I wanted to scream, flail my body on the ground, punch Celestia in the face, but I knew that wouldn't do anything. So I did the only thing I could think and threw myself at Sombra, locking him in tight hug as I cried my heart out

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(King Sombra-1st person)

As the Navy blue coated, black maned, earth pony clung to me and wailed like a newborn foal, I resisted the urge to obliterate him then and there. But I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a bit pity for the young colt, but I wasn't here to comfort a foal, I was here to recruit a warrior.

A couple of months ago, a unicorn spy of mine, from the small village far outside the borders of the crystal empire, reported a strange young colt. At first I was going to have the spy punished for wasting my time with some child, but they explained to me something that stopped them from getting a painful demise. From what they saw, the colt had the strange ability to seemingly absorb magic, which was surprising considering he was an earth pony. This caught my interest so I instructed the same spy and to continue observing the colt. Over the next couple of months they went on to say the colt had unique qualities such as heightened stamina, strength, and senses.

Before, I was interested, but then I was hooked and went to work planning on how I was going to get this colt in my ranks. At first I was going to have the colt kidnapped and forced to work for me, but I heard from a source out in Canterlot that Celestia was coming for me and I saw an opportunity. Some of my council members said it was crazy, that it wouldn’t work, but with a hoof full of threats and a a couple of unfortunate disappearances I got them in line and my plan was set in motion.

I tore myself away from my musings and put my attention on the now silent colt clung to my body, most likely getting Celestia knows what on my cape. 'I'm going have to get these washed yet again because of this brat, but it's nothing in the end' I thought in annoyance to myself.

"Now, I'll ask again" I said as I slowly and gently pulled him away from me and held his shoulders in my hooves. "what is your name?" I finish with a devilish grin. The colt wiped away the tears from his burnt face, wincing a little as he did so.

“Cold stone.” The colt answered with a cold and monotone voice.