Among the wild shrubbery that surrounded Maretime Bay, a stallion looked at his armored hooves with an expression of utter befuddlement.

He was quite a tall individual, surpassing a few centimeters of your average pony's height. At a glance, he might have appeared to be a unicorn, but on a closer inspection, one could see many differences that would set him apart from the formerly magically-attuned tribe.

The first and most striking characteristic was his horn. Instead of a conical protrusion of magically infused keratin, it was a curved, knife-like construct of potent dark magic. It glowed a faint, yet still strikingly red light.

His mane flowed in an unseen wind, channeling the overflowing dark energy from within. Each individual hair so dark that it blended into one another, making it seem like a billowing void.

Most of his ash-grey coat was covered by a magnificent red cape, lined with pristine ermine, along with overlapping plates of armor along his neck and hooves.

"Well... at least I'm not a mare."

The human-turned-former King Sombra then turned his head towards the nearby seaside town with a recognizable facility looming over it.

"One hell of a way to start the new year..."

He shook his head and sighed, "Of all the possible eras, it's the one where everyone is dead. Oh well..."

And to think, just a few hours ago, he was writing another fanfic, on new year's eve, all by himself, cooped in his dingy little apartment...

Well, looks like those random guys on the internet can go shove it up where the sun don't shine, because he's King-freakin'-Sombra now!

"Heh, hail to the King..." the former human muttered.

He stood up and began to take a few steps. To his surprise, he was able to move rather easily, despite what most fan content had taught him.

Sombra went from trotting, to cantering, to galloping as a means to test out his mobility. And for once, in his admittedly monotonous life, he felt genuinely free.

The former human let out a laugh as he ran across the green fields that surrounded Maretime Bay. He shouted in glee, reveling in his situation.

"I'm a pony, baby! Woo!"

After a few minutes of running around like a toddler, he threw himself down on to the soft yet prickly grass in exhaustion. Sombra panted and wiped the sweat off of his forehead before he let out a sigh of satisfaction.

He may not be in the correct era, but at least he was still here, in Equestria, the land of friendship and magical shenanigans! A world rich with history and culture! A world that he held close to his heart.

He frowned at the reminder. Thinking it over once more, practically every character that he knew and liked were probably nothing more than bones in long forgotten graves now...

It... certainly wasn't a comforting thought.

The former human got up to his hooves and looked back to the distant sight of Maretime Bay to clear his mind. His eyes widened when he noticed a familiar orange figure excitedly making its way down the lighthouse. Sombra turned his gaze towards the town proper, and realized that he could only see earth ponies walking along its streets.

Not even a pegasus or unicorn in sight.

"Huh... so that means..."

Another moving figure in the distance caught his eye. This time, it was a shade of purple. He quickly put two and two together, before feeling something click in his mind, and...

"Oh... ohoho... I think I've got an idea~!"

A smile began to spread across his face. If it wasn't for his intimidating visage, it would have looked cheeky instead of devious.

"But first..."

Sombra looked around his immediate area, gathering any small object that he could find. It took him a moment, considering the lack of fingers, but he managed to collect a small stack of stones and twigs in small pile.

The former human then pointed his horn towards said pile.

"Alright... now how do I-"

As if reading his mind, his blade-like horn crackled with purple energy, followed by purple wisps emerging from the corners of his eyes. The pile was engulfed in his dark magic and began to levitate, moving along wherever he willed it to go.

Sombra looked at the floating pile in disbelief, "That easy? Surely not."

He continued to practice his magic by manipulating each item in the pile. It didn't take him long to start levitating each stone and twig separately, having them orbit around him in a ring.

After a while, he gently placed the objects back on the ground. The transformed human held a look of genuine awe.

"Ooookay then... good at levitation."

He tapped his chin in thought, if he can float around things that easily, would that also apply to the real Sombra's other abilities as well? Could he actually...

Sombra braced himself and executed the same exact procedure with his levitation by focusing his thoughts on the specific task he wanted to do.

At first, it was subtle. He felt like he was being submerged in slightly colder water. Strange, but not too uncomfortable. Then, his hooves started to dematerialize, followed by his legs, torso, and head. The entire process took place in less than a second, leaving the former human dazed after his transformation.

"Okay, okay! Good! Nothing too bad..."

Sombra looked over his form. It writhed and billowed with each movement he made. It was surreal to see your own body act like a cloud of smoke, yet still fully capable of sensing everything around himself like usual.

He tried to move forward, and found that his smog-like form move whenever he thought of walking. Sombra felt it was just like walking and running, just without feeling the effort required to do so.

"So if want go up, does that mean..."

He thought about jumping, and sure enough, his smoky form ascended accordingly.

"What about going upstairs, or... climbing?"

With another thought, his entire form steadily ascended whilst moving forward. Sombra then thought of going down a flight of stairs, and began a slow, forward descent. Slower than thinking of falling, he soon found out as well. Good to know that the controls weren't all that sophisticated. Simple, but bears the potential of being highly versatile if he had the time to fiddle with it more.

"Great, great. Going to assume it's the same way if I want to..."

Another thought, and his smog coalesced back into a solid form without much issue, barring some disorientation. He would need to be careful, then. Thinking of transforming back mid-air could be a pretty big issue.

Sombra gave himself a once-over and, after confirming he had all of his body parts intact, nodded to himself in satisfaction.

"All good here."

For a moment, he thought about experimenting with more specialized magic, but soon disregarded it. He won't be needing that until much, much later.

Not that he won't be practicing it in his spare time, that is.

Another glance at the accumulating ponies near the towering form of the Canterlogic facility, and he was off in a sweeping burst of shadows. Eager to tamper with the strands of fate.

"Operation Legacy is a go!"

"Where the hell are those two?"

Sombra muttered to himself as he trotted along an alleyway in the earth pony town. He had hoped to encounter Izzy right before she made her presence known and caused mass hysteria.

Unfortunately, it seemed like luck simply wasn't on his side, as he had been searching for the energetic unicorn for exactly two hours, according to a nearby clocktower.

"I swear, they should be-"

"AAAHHH!"

His ears swiveled towards the sound of screaming in the distance. The former human held back the urge to facehoof, and opted to groan instead.

"Welp, plan B it is..."

He was engulfed by shadows once again, and zipped towards all the ruckus. This time, it didn't take him too long to find the familiar sight of two ponies from differing tribes meeting each other for the first time in what was likely a very long time.

"There you are."

He hesitated for a moment, observing the shocked and fearful looks of the crowd surrounding them. Should he reveal himself now, and revel in their reaction to magic, or should he wait until they return to the lighthouse? Showing up now would surely cause even more panic than Izzy would with just her presence, and Sunny would likely be too dumbfounded by his magic to react properly.

But then again... it would make a pretty sweet entrance.

"Choices, choices..."

Sombra paused in thought. He needed to make up his mind quickly, as he could see Sunny slowly recovering from her tumble.

"Ah, fuck it."

She couldn't believe her eyes.

There, right in front of her, an actual, real-life unicorn! After all these years...

Sunny Starscout quickly got up to her hooves. eyes locked onto the unicor- Izzy's pointed horn. She wrangled her thoughts together to mutter a single word.

"U-u-unic-"

Just then, right beside the purple unicorn, a mass of... shadows? Fell straight from the sky, before merging together into the form of yet another unicorn. But this one... this one seemed a lot more intimidating. Oddly similar to the way unicorns are generally depicted around town.

Izzy turned to the second unicorn with a smile.

"Oh! Hello there! Are you also here to find a friend?" she asked cheerfully.

The second unicorn had an unreadable expression on his face as he seemingly examined the two of them. All Sunny could think of at that moment was-

"M-magic? Did you just do magic?!"

He snapped his gaze to her, his red eyes seemingly boring through her soul. Sunny flinched backwards, feeling a chill go down her spine. 'Intimidating'? Make that 'terrifying'.

To her relief, the dark unicorn instead gave her a smile, letting his sharp canines peek from the corners of his mouth. Unfortunately for the three of them, this was the last straw for the rest of the citizens.

Immediately, everypony who wasn't a unicorn or Sunny Starscout went into hysterics, frantically scrambling to their hooves and galloping away to Harmony knows where, trying to avoid the quickly multiplying unicorn attack.

Hitch and Sprout, hearing the sudden commotion, barged through the doors of the town's sheriff station, The sheriff quickly caught the sight of the two unicorns in his gaze and swiftly pressed the emergency alarm button on the station's wall.

"Unicorn attack! This is not a drill! I repeat, this is NOT. A. DRILL!"

Seeing the unicorn traps emerging from the ground, the second unicorn... sighed? And finally addressed her verbally.

"Let's pick this up back at your place." he said before turning back into smoke and engulfing her along with the other unicorn in complete darkness. It all happened so fast that Sunny didn't even get to reply. One minute everything was dark, the next, she was zooming through Maretime Bay, along with two unicorns, while being caught in—presumably—a magical spell.

The poor mare didn't know if she should faint out of sheer excitement, or out of absolute terror.

Author's Note

HAIL TO THE KING! HUZZAH!

Get ready for another adventure with yet another eccentric human! This time, we're dealing with, you already know this but I'll say it again anyway, King Sombra! Yaaay!

Just like my other multi-chapter Human-to-Pony stories of the Green God-Multiverse, this story will be filled with our characters getting into shenanigans as our dear Sombra vehemently tries to guide the new Harmony's Chosen towards more... archaeological endeavors, let's just say.

If you want to share ideas on how this story should go, consider commenting!

Corrections and criticisms are more than welcome, I can't improve without those now, can I?
Have a good existence!
:)

"Remembered forever, the land of Equestria"