The night is dark, and full of terrors.

Chapters

The dark place.
Learning a few things.
A tour
Revelations and explanations.
The rival before you.
Open the gate, close your eyes.
Under the castle(I may not have good titles in the future, sorry)
I don’t know why

The dark place.

The young lavender Unicorn groaned as she tried to cover herself further with her cloak and failed, the wind too strong and relentless, yet she again realized that she was not imagining it. It was all completely and infuriatingly real.
Up ahead on a heightened elevation along on the road there was a large building, not that far away. It looked like some form of old castle, and she quickly realized that if she hurried she could make it inside.

She had been on the road for too long now, about three weeks and four days to be a bit precise, and still hadn’t found her destination yet. She was in search of The Golden Pillars Library, an ancient source of knowledge that the Princess had told her about, one which held a special collection of ancient and forgotten secrets.
But so far, she hasn’t seen mane or tail of that fabled place. Twilight was getting desperate, and this crazy weather was not helping.

At all.

Without any more choices(unless she decided to just randomly teleport somewhere far away), the Unicorn continued onward to the stone structure, fighting to keep her coat closed with a Spell and to keep her head covered with a foreleg. Fortunately, her Magic was strong enough to keep her traveling garment from blowing right off.
The shadows of the approaching night appeared about her slowly, but Twilight could still see the last light from the Sun.

Once, she had flown using Telekineses and covered a whole lot of distance in record time.
She was proud of that achievement.
She had taught it to herself, no need for any teachers doing that or anything!

Yet the stupid wind came and now made it too darn hard to fly now. Twilight thought maybe it was for the best. With this wind, she was going to crash into something sooner or later, she wasn’t stupid enough to face a force of nature like this head on.
She frowned and whimpered, remembering how when she had been a foal, she had tried to best the wind and ended up stuck on top of a particularly high tree halfway across town, some of the other foals preferring to laugh at her than to get help.
She lost her first streak of youthful independence that day.

After several incidents where her Magic had gotten too much for her teachers to handle, that had been the last straw and it wouldn’t be until YEARS later that she was permitted to try any sort of advanced Spells again, and only with heavy supervision.

As Twilight walked across a rather large and admittedly well-made bridge, she noticed that the dark castle showed signs of abandonment, but there was something in it….like a glamour or something like that, a certain sort of mysterious and mystical affect to it.
She couldn’t trust her eyes at this moment. She was barely able to use them properly anyway, with cold air hellbent on blinding her.
Unfortunately, her caution would simply have to wait until she got inside. If it was some kind of trap or an illusion, she wasn’t able to tell at all.
Her instincts were telling her she had to be careful, however. Question was: careful about the castle or about this really strange weather?

Wait, what if the castle itself was causing the weather?
That thought died as soon as it was born. She was a prodigy in Magic, and would have been able to sense a Curse or a Medium being used for certain Spells. There was nothing like that here.
The lavender bookworm had finally reached the door, latched on for dear life with one hoof, and let go her hood up and felt the freezing air upon her face, her deep purple mane beginning to fly furiously. She struck the door several times, only for it to open and reveal an open courtyard.

“Oh, come on…!” Twilight shouted.
She continued struggling onward until she hit another door, almost as big as the other one, and hit it harder.
“HELLO?!”
A big leaf hit her in the face.

“Ugh!” the Unicorn smacked it off “IS THERE ANYPONY HOME???!”
The wind roared, pulling and pushing her all over the place.
When Twilight didn’t have to grab onto the door, she continued to knock and scream, yet no response came at all.
The sun was setting, she was losing light quickly. There was no time for her to look around for another entrance, and she really didn’t want to continue fighting against this wind; so she dug into her magical reserves, and the door handle glowed her signature purple Magic glow.

The lock remained strong, but she cast her Spell again!
“Come on! OPEN!”

The door seemed to shudder for a moment, then it creaked heavily and moved just enough for her to squeeze in. And as soon as she got in, the door slammed, leaving a loud echo inside a very much obscured room.
The mare took a deep breath and sighed just a bit loudly, relieved that nothing was hitting her anymore.

She suddenly felt cold…

There was also some humidity in the air, as if she was in the bottom of a well.

With a blink of her eyes, her horn brightened up, and now she could have an aura of light extending along the entire horn. Twilight moved her head around and found, surprisingly, that the foyer she was currently in actually some showed signs of recent care.
The place had no trace of leaves (at least, not besides the ones she let in with her clearly unexpected arrival), no tree visible roots, no holes on the roof, it had a clean crimson carpet and portraits of various figures hanging off the walls.
This place screamed of royalty. Of power. Greatness.

There was nothing humble about this castle.

“Woah” the Unicorn gasped as she took her first steps inside, the normal clacks of her hooves now muffled by the carpet.
It was so fluffy it made Twilight smile a bit. This definitely beat needing to trek through mud and leaves and over hard cobblestone roads.
The young mare slowly walked, with one hoof she used for the obvious task of moving and with the other one she tried to swat and pulls off everything that had gotten stuck in her mane, leaving a small trail as she walked around.

“Uh….hello??”
The echo was not as terrifying as she thought it would be.
“Sorry, but I had to let myself in. I….I..yeah, this weather is horrible. Seems like a mid-level hurricane is out there. Definitely a good thing that there’s no rain, though. Oh Goddess, that would have truly sucked, hehe, fortunately that was not the case, it was just the wind. Really bad wind, y’know.”

She continued to walk deeper into the place.
“Really…..bad…..wind….and, I saw this place and took the only chance I had since I needed some shelter. I knocked, but there was no answer and I really needed to get inside and….and…now I’m talking to myself. Great job, Twilight.”

The Unicorn chuckled.
“Are you asleep? Are you home? Sorry to bother you if that’s the case!”

Twilight expanded the range of her light, hoping to see something.

Nothing moved.

Nothing came.

Nothing happened.

She then hummed.
Surprisingly, the place was not creepy, it was just… eerie. Like, somepony had left to go and buy some stuff and just forgot to leave the lights on.
The pony noticed there were torches, but they haven’t been used in a while, still clean, though, no webs or anything at all over them. They were well-maintained for sure.
She saw some doors here and there, but preferred to use the big stairs in front of the main door and go upwards, steps still muffled thanks to the carpet she was walking on.

“Dunno if I should even try being stealthy at all here. My big voice has definitely given me away…”
She muttered to herself softly.

What was really starting to get to Twilight more and more was the fact that there was NO sound at all. Not even from the wind outside. She would have thought that she would have heard some dripping noises, maybe rat feet hurling here and there, but there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

As she reached the end of the stairs, the young lavender mare found herself with two options: going to her right or to her left.

Aside from the red carpeted floor and non-burning torches, it seemed that both were identical.
“Decisions, decisions, decisions…”
She moved the light from one side to the other.
“Eine meenie meini moe, steal an Earth-Pony’s favorite hoe. If they near you, throw it back. Or they’ll grab and break your back.”

And so, the Unicorn chose the path on the left and slowly walked down it.

Twilight wasn’t sure how much she had walked now, the place was seriously more massive on the inside than it was on the outside! So, there was decently advanced usage of Spatial Magic here, meaning whoever lived in this place was a genuinely proficient Spell-Caster who may or may not be hostile or friendly.
She’d cross that bridge when she got to it. But now was not the time.

She was thankful that the carpet was cushioning her steps, it was really helping not making her hooves hurt (more). But she had to admit she was getting tired of just walking around and not finding anything…..
Or anypony.

“Hellooo…?” Twilight called out again.
Again, only the echo of her own voice. Nothing else. This was starting to feel just a bit too much like one of those ghost stories where nothing happens until the last moment.
As she made her way through the long hallway and finally exited it, she found herself in one very long aisle with huge windows that allowed her to see outside. Approaching it and almost smushing her face to the glass, she found to her disappointment the night had completely set in and it was almost pitch black out there, but the wind was evidently still raging.
Twilight directed the light of her horn to the outside and saw the poor trees thrashing about under the fury of the storm, but… there was still no noise whatsoever.

That was truly when the lavender mare realized that something was truly wrong with this place. Much more so than she had originally anticipated.
This kind of wind would make strong whooshing sounds, and the kind of haunting moans that she would have made as a foal when she put a sheet over herself and pretended to be a ghost.
But there was no sound at all, as if there was a complete stillness in this place and she was the only thing moving. The only thing LIVING.

And this was increasingly terrifying her.

Looking away from the outer darkness, Twilight stood stock-still for a few good moments, trying to collect her thoughts and ponder on what to do next.
“I… I’m already this far inside and the storm out there isn’t gonna let up anytime soon. Sooooo… I might as well keep going. Maybe I’ll find SOMETHING worthwhile and someplace remotely safe to rest in. If I can even close my eyes here for a second…”

Slowly, and with a feeling of fear that didn’t allow her to look outside anymore, the nervous Unicorn made her way down the aisle towards the other doorway on the other side from where she’d entered.
Getting to it at last, she telekinetically began to open the door while looking back down the way she’d come.

As if on cue, lightning struck and a flash of light illuminated the hallway, enough for Twilight to notice a large dark form at the end of the aisle, right next to the door she’d come through to enter it!
The shuddering mare gasped and speedily flowed her light towards where she saw the figure, only to find a large suit of armor.
She froze on the spot, counted the seconds until the crash of thunder came….
But it never did.

The furs on Twilight stood and she felt goosebumps on her limbs and barrel. How had that armor been there that whole time and she herself had never seen it?
“Uh….hello?”
Nothing. She lit up the entire aisle, still found nothing.
“Look, I’m sorry to intrude, but I swear that I had no choice. There was nothing around outside for hours, and I needed shelter. Sorry if I am trespassing, I did knock, I really did. If…..”
The poor pony gulped.
“If you want me to leave, please, just say so, OK? Give me a sign or something…?”
Now she held her breath perfectly, heart pounding on her ears, expecting to hear a slam, a door closing, something to hit her, but nothing happened!

“……pretty please…?”
The Unicorn whimpered, both in sadness and in growing panic.
After this event with the armor, she needed to decide to either go back the way she came from or proceed further in.
Ultimately, she decided to keep heading inside… but to go back and take the right side hallway back at the stairs. Her gut was contradicting itself, telling her both to run away and yet that she couldn’t because the weather outside was too dangerous.

The castle layout as she had explored was overall pretty straight forward, but because of the situation she now found herself in, the poor mare basically found herself scared half-witless by the very real possibility that she might have gotten herself into a hellish maze.
And so, she decided not to open any doors whatsoever as long as she could help it, growing more and more fearful that doing so may unleash something unspeakable or start a chain reaction that would end in her becoming an insane prisoner of this place on her own.

But it was already too late for that.

As Twilight reached the foyer and this time chose the path of the right, she started to feel something else odd happening to her by the minute: her powers were either getting weaker, or the darkness was more oppressive. She touched her horn and found that she wasn’t imagining it. She had to pour more energy into her Spell to keep a decent amount of space around her lit up, but it did not do enough to allow her to see that far ahead at all.
She found herself getting more confused and fearful by the fact she could even see her own breath coming out of her mouth, and this knowledge came with a chill in the air. Wait, when did it suddenly get this cold?
“Crabapples….” The young pony cursed.

As she continued walking, she started to hear sounds now. Too bad she was already freaking out before that, but no she heard something.
Something was following her!
Now nearly in full-panic mode, the Unicorn could feel her heart beating as fast as a champion pony racer sprinting at full speed across the finish line and her brow starting to become slick with sweat.
Her breathing was starting to become difficult, and her limbs shuddered with every step.

The sounds now were like the sound of… breathing. Like somepony was exhaling on the back of her neck.

Right now!

With a sharp cry of alarm and fear, the terrified Unicorn spun around and let loose an instinctive blast of bright purple mystical fire down the length of the hall! The burst of magical energy sailed down the same way she’d just come, but to her initial confusion and rapidly rising horror, it just… disappeared, after a single moment of being visible. As if the shadows themselves had swallowed it up, ambient noise and all.
She didn’t even hear it strike a wall or the floor or ANYTHING. The sound of her blast disappeared just as swiftly the Spell itself.

And now she finally realized it: the shadows themselves were not natural in the slightest. The darkness itself was what she’d been feeling this whole time, pure and utter blackness that snuffed out any and all noise and left her with only her own breathing and walking and occasionally speaking to listen to.
This sensation, she understood it now. She had been watched, stalked, HUNTED by whatever the hay it was that was now following her and closing in on her.
And now it was right here. All around her, she could feel it. Like the razor-sharp fangs of a Timber Wolf nipping at her tendons, the pincers of a thousand ants that were covering her back and flank, limbs and neck.

“P-p-please, wh-whatever you are… d-don’t kill me…”
Twilight didn’t need to see clearly to know that the tears were running down her cheeks as she desperately made her plea to the surrounding blackness, her own horn barely keeping up even a little sparkle in this overwhelming place of despair that was now clawing at her mercilessly.

A grunt, no, a GROWL. A deep and guttural rasping sound that was everywhere and nowhere, unnatural and not at all equine in it’s entirety.
It was in the walls to her sides and in the floor under her hooves. In front of her face and right in her ear, directly behind her and above her head.

“…p-please…”
She gasped and sobbed out as her voice quivered like a chair in the midst of an earthquake. Her body was as stiff as a stone, yet her legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

Her fur started to become damp with sweat. Her tears had already been falling to the floor at her hooves, her voice thick and flooded with emotion as she tried and prayed for any sort of mercy from the hopelessness that closed in on her little light that faded more and more with every second as the shadows grew impossibly thicker around her.
Urine trickled down her shaking legs and pooled on the floor, her stomach feeling like her organs were suddenly stiffening up and her bowels becoming uncontrollable.

Her long coat may as well have been lost. It provided no warmth or comfort for her at all anymore.

Twilight shook in helpless terror, her legs buckling beneath her as they lost all strength. She fell on top of them as they folded in on themselves, her head lowered now as she shut her eyes and sobbed openly in despair.
It was as if the shadows themselves were pressing her down, she could almost feel them physically covering every inch of her in their sadistic violating touch. Her heartbreaking sobbing was like a foal that had been abandoned by cruel unloving parents, her snot dripping down her nose and her hot tears pouring down her anguished face in a never-ending stream.

She suddenly felt an irresistible urge enter her mind. She could feel the presence, the solid presence, of something real. Right in front of her! Even filled with tears, her purple eyes could make out, with increasingly clarity, the large and dark shapes of some sort of fierce hooves that had somehow appeared in front of her where she was on the now-cold ground. The darkness was standing before her, and it was giving an order to her own mind.
And she knew what the thought was, that foolish and yet overwhelming order that she NEEDED to obey:

Look up.

With a sound from her throat that was a mix of a gasp and a bawling moan, she slowly raised her trembling head and looked up… straight into the eyes of fear itself, blazing in all its monstrous glory with unholy green and blood-red fire that burnt in those sockets or leapt up from them into the air as if attempting to escape this mortal place and go beyond the veil.
The Unicorn gasped, immediately feeling her body turn ice-cold, a fresh horrified shudder speeding through her as she took in the face of the nightmarish horror that was now in front of her within the inky blackness of this place of shadows. Her heart simultaneously nearly exploded in her chest and went completely still.

And everything went dark.

Author's Note

No idea how long this one will be, but we’ll see!

Learning a few things.

The Unicorn mare heard voices, neither of which were familiar to her dizzied senses. She breathed heavily and began to slowly try to move, but then realized she was lying on the floor. She rose her head, blinking the dizziness away, and saw a blurred figure a number of hooves away.

“See, she’s awake now, you overdid it.”
Said the feminine voice, pleasant in a way. It was youthful and had a slight rasp to it.

“I did no such thing.”

This new masculine one sounded like a mix of deeply raspy, growling, strong, and with a frightful echoing effect that combined all to send a fresh shudder through Twilight’s body. It was like this voice was used to command and all must obey without question.
The lavender pony swallowed thickly and tried to get up, but found her limbs were fastened to the ground.

Immediately she was wide awake, pulling the restraints as the fear began to return, and soon saw that she was now uncovered, her coat having apparently been taken away and leaving her in her natural state.
Taking a few deep breathes to try and calm herself, Twilight turned her head and her eyes scanned forward.
In moments, she saw what she realized must have been the same terrifying creature she had seen just before she passed out from the shock and fear, but now she could get a clearer look at it.

Said creature was a stallion. An exceptionally large stallion with sharp canine fangs that were just visible below his lip line, and he had a stern and serious face.

His eyes were a combination of acidic green and blood red, the pupils not as thin as they were just a moment ago, and looking like a pair of mirrors that promised to lead the mare into her deepest nightmares if she stared into them for too long.
The stallion was dark and had a pure black mane that was. Or at all styled and instead set loose, flowing to his right side like it was in the currents of an invisible wind that only he could feel the effects of. It was almost like small strands of the mane were breaking off from the source, little ashes of darkness that floated off and rejoined in seconds with the ether.

He was wearing a pair of greaves of his forelegs and, presumably, his hind legs as well, and he wore what looked like a breastplate composed multiple well-forged sheets of metal.
These armor pieces across his noticeably strong body were all gray too, but a lighter tone than his fur which itself was like a type of very dark stone. On his head was a crown, dark colored like the fur with several sharp points.

But that wasn’t what truly caught her eye. It was his horn.
It was the most frightening horn she had ever seen or even imagined. Curved it was, more like a saber than an actual Unicorn’s horn, and the top half was also itself crimson in color. It almost seemed to have a sort of ethereal glow to it, not enough to be considered bright and yet still giving off enough magical light to not be considered dark and lifeless either.

Twilight gulped at the sight, and she quickly realized that this mysterious and frightening stallion in front of her was both annoyed and yet seemingly interested to some degree in her.
He was supporting his head with the back of his left hoof, the other one was not so much resting on as it was GRIPPING the foreleg rest of his chair/seat with visible force.
It was then that the young mare realized that she was in a large room with enough candles and torches to illuminate every corner of it. She realized that just above her was a huge chandelier filled to the brim with candles, candles that seemed to be burning a bit more brightly than they would naturally be unless they were enchanted.
The sheer size of the chair that her ‘host’ was sitting on…. It was more of a throne, and it was an incredibly elaborate construct of metal, but what surprised her the most was that it seemed to be constructed out of SWORDS, or at least the top area above his head looked like an AWFUL lot of sword handles and even some blades!

“He-hello?” She stuttered out, his hard eyes looking like they were piercing through her to her very soul. She had to look away, she just couldn’t look long at him.
“Please don’t ki-“

Twilight was interrupted when a familiar voice came from behind her, walking around her bound form until it came into her view. And now she gasped in surprise as the voice was coming from what seemed to be another pony.
Not only that, but it was the most… unusual? Flamboyant, maybe? Whatever she was, she certainly was a one-of-a-kind Pegasus, that was for sure! Her mane and tail were streaked with all the colors of the rainbow, and her fur was a cyan-type blue.

“How’re ya feeling?” Asked the Pegasus.
“Did we scare ya? We’re kinda sorry about that.”

“Don’t speak for me in this case.” the dark stallion sentenced.

“Don’t mind Sombra, he just watchful over his domain and a bit grumpy because he had to awaken early.”
The Pegasus smiled.

His name is Sombra? The Unicorn thought.

The creature, Sombra, stood from the intimidating throne and slowly walked toward the lavender pony, even his hoof-steps themselves sounding strong and in control somehow.
“I am ‘grumpy’ because she has intruded into our home, Rainbow Dash.” He enunciated each word slowly and deeply.
“My home.”

“A-a-and I-I am truly sorry about that, I swe-“ Twilight began.

“SILENCE.”

The poor pony softly yelped and froze on the spot, her mouth shutting instantly. She did not freeze literally, quite fortunately, but she did feel herself get smaller under the other towering entity’s piercing gaze.

“I’m only going to ask you each question once, so pay VERY close attention. Who do you work for?”
He demanded.

“Work for? I-I-I don’t work for anypony! For anyone at all!”

“Then, why are you here? And don’t even think trying to lie to me, or it will be your last act in this world.” The deathly presence promised.
By now, he had reached where the shuddering Twilight was lying, his dark pupils swiftly becoming thinner by the second, and was currently towering over her.

“I… I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Then why did you?”

“I had no choice!”
Twilight confessed, heart beating at a million miles an hour as she explained herself.

“I was traveling along the road when this sudden massive hurricane-force wind came out of nowhere! I had to get to any kind of shelter I could find, then somehow I came across your castle, I knocked… And I-I was able to get in-“

“How?”

“With….my Magic?”
The young Unicorn squeaked fearfully and innocently. The prismatic Pegasus gasped with wide eyes.

“So that’s how you broke the seal…”
Sombra’s eyes blinked once and slightly wondered, his face letting go of his hostile expression for a second.

“The…seal?”
Twilight inquired, but immediately regretted it as the shadowy stallion returned his gaze to her, his blazing eyes not as hard this time, though.
Twilight thought she could even glimpse something else….was that some kind of hope visible in his eyes?

“Hey Sombra sir, does this mean that-” The Pegasus, Rainbow Dash, began.

“This does not mean anything.” The dark stallion stated, eying the bound mare closely.
“….not yet, at least.”
He then smirked, and the sight of that made a fresh chill run down Twilight’s spine. Her mind raced with the amount of implications that were suggested by the exchange that just happened.
She remembered how isolated the castle was from the outside, how she could not open any of the windows, or even hear the intense wind or the bangs of the tree branches hitting the glass.
This dark and horrifying creature was trapped here.
And if she remotely wanted to stay alive… she may have set it free.

“Your line of thought is reasonable, is it not?”

Twilight gasped and stared in fresh fear up at her captor. He’d been able to read her mind so easily? But she didn’t even see or hear him cast any sort of Spell! Just how astronomically advanced was his Magic compared to hers?! Because every second, it was looking like the ‘gap’ between them was widening to be more equivalent to the distance between Canterlot and Cloudsdale!

Of course, she didn’t think of the possibility that he simply saw the thoughtful look on her face and the realization dawning on her to deduce her thoughts. Maybe he DID have immense telepathic Magic, or maybe he was very observant.
Either way, the result was the same.

“You said you found this place…..just like that?”
Sombra, if he could really read her mind, ignored her current train of thought and instead just questioned aloud.

“Yes, I swear it.”
Twilight didn’t hesitate to respond this time.

The creature smirked again and interchanged a look with the other mare. Twilight followed his gaze and saw the excitement in those pinkish-red eyes.

“You were led here, it seems.”
Sombra stated.

When Twilight turned back to face him, she realized the armor-clad stallion was now again sitting on the throne, having moved with incredible silence despite being larger than most ponies in general and having his hooves uncovered with no muffling.
His pupils were still the same un-equine slits more akin to a number of venomous reptiles, looking less like a pony and more like…..something else.

“So you were on the road….going where, exactly?”
He questioned, his voice having just a bit less of that ghostly growling echo.

“Anywhere, really. I really wasn’t sure.” Twilight confessed.

“Oh?”

“Yes, I promise.”
And she seemed to lose much of her nervousness as she went into her explaining mode.
“I am a Unicorn who, uh… I decided to try my luck at seeking out the fabled Golden Pillars Library. From what I could gather thanks to my research, it would be up here in the more northern climes. I have spent a few weeks traveling and doubt that I am any closer to figuring out the riddles associated with the search itself.”

“I see.”

“But it also depends on who you ask, as that is what I’m told. Yet I also heard from a close friend that part of the lesson during this whole expedition is to prove ourselves. See if we can learn anything worthwhile from the act of helping others while we travel!”

“Really?”
Sombra asked, and Twilight did not miss when his expression darkened ever so slightly. It was clear that he wasn’t buying this story: she was losing any favor she had with him!

“Yes, it’s true. They are sending us out to other villages and cities, so that if help is needed then we’re there for them.”
The young mare claimed, her voice rising ever so slightly as she tried to keep her fear in check.

“And what do you believe yourself, then?”

Here, she decided to tell them her own name, since she already knew his. It was just common courtesy, after all.
“Twilight, just to let you know. My name is-“

“You try my patience, Twilight. I did not request to know your name.”
His voice was back to that unnatural, omnipresent tone that nearly stopped her heart and made her blood turn to ice. Her breathing became labored again, and she felt the sting of fresh tears at her eyes. It was like this dark shadowy being in the shape of a Unicorn stallion radiated pure fear and malice whenever he wished to.
She had overstepped her boundaries. She’d gotten the SLIGHTEST bit comfortable, and now she could feel him making it perfectly clear what the pecking order was.

He said nothing, but did not act in any way against her either. Twilight was starting to shake again, sweat already starting to mingle in her fur as she shudder, shackled and helpless on the now super-cold floor.
She didn’t fully see when Rainbow turned her head slightly towards Sombra, his own eyes flicked to her as a signal, and then the former turned to their prisoner.

“Twily, what do YOU believe about to all this stuff so far?”

Taking a few daring seconds to catch her breath before answering, Twilight locked her fearful purple eyes with much calmer pink ones. Using the smile of the mare before her and that upbeat, cutely raspy, and chipper voice to ground herself again, she answered.

“I believe that I was sent out, partially, because I was too troublesome.”
And now she sighed.
“I have plenty of skills, I have a lot of power, but…..I keep getting myself into trouble. My parents sent me to a special school to learn Magic better after I did some accidental damage, but that was quite a few years ago and I was kinda stuck dealing with some old mare that I prefer not to remember, and also who does not like foals.”

“And just how old exactly are ya, Twi?”

“I’m 20.”

A snort came from the young Pegasus.
“WAY too old to be a foal, y’know…”

“Hey, ponies like her never liked me, not then and certainly not now. I can say the feeling is completely mutual.”
Twilight instinctively tried to cross her forelegs at least a bit out of habit, but was unable to since she was still bound.

“So, you are a Magic apprentice who is causes all manners of trouble and had set out to look for a legendary lost location while trying to convince your teacher that you are not a waste of time and space?”
The stallion resumed, and his vice was just a little bit less menacing. Not that it did much for Twilight’s struggling nerves.

“Yes. B-but if I may, I wouldn’t say th-th-that I’m j-just a troublemaker. I just have seen to have some r-really bad luck.”
She stuttered, trying more and more fearfully to be respectful and not let herself get too comfortable.

“I can see that.”
Sombra stated as he rose again from his throne and walked -this time, with some actual sound- towards his prisoner.
“What do you think, Rainbow?”

“I think we should keep her. I like the idea of having somepony else to talk to.”
She smiled as she looked at Twilight. For some reason, Twilight knew that she should have been wary of this Pegasus. If she was associated with THAT nightmare, Sombra, then she couldn’t be good news. And yet, the Unicorn found that she actually… liked, seeing her smile.

Sombra himself grunted once deeply and then let out an intimidating chuckle. “Very well then, little miss Twilight. I have… a proposition for you.”
He stood still, with his burning eyes fixed on her intently.

“O-ok. Uh… can you release me, first? I’ll be good, I promise.”
She struggled a bit, but didn’t even budge one of the cuffs in the slightest.

“Not just yet.”

She sighed softly.

“I am capable of adding greatly to your never-ending training. I may not be like you, with a fancy education in all the modern arts or having any sort of monstrously natural talent in all types of usage in the mystic arts, but I still know far more than you would likely believe possible.”
He slowly approached his captive as he spoke in that same regal, fear-inducing way, the shadows moving upward around him slowly like black flames and smoke.

“There is much I can teach you, and you may yet find what it is you are searching for. You also may stay here as well, provided you simply do not disturb my rest. Again.”
He now lowered his head slowly to look into her eyes. Understandably, the shaking little Unicorn mare turned her head away and closed her eyes, desperately not wanting to have to see his face again up close like this.
She could feel her bowels being loosened once more and could only hope against hope that she wouldn’t wet herself again right in front of him. She truly feared… the worst.

“O-o-ok….an-and…w-w-what d-do you w-w-want from me?”

“You have two things that I desire. One of them you may have already performed, but I want you to do it again.”
He now moved his face down to hers so close that she inwardly swore that she could FEEL his frontal fangs grazing just a little on the left cheek of her turned-away face. At this point, she was g wetting drenched in her own sweat, was having trouble breathing at all, and was just about to urinate uncontrollably again.

“You opened the door of my home. If it is now closed again, I want you to open it once more, and this time we will make sure it stays that way.”

Sombra slightly raised his head and began circling around the bound mare, his hoofsteps slow and his flaming eyes no longer fixed on her, yet she could FEEL his gaze somehow still fixed on her. Focused on her every movement.
Twilight felt more afraid by the second about what it could mean to potentially unleash this…stallion….on the world.

“W-what if… what if I said no?”
She made the incredibly terrible mistake of somehow wondering those words out loud, even wrapped with fear as she was.
The dark stallion chuckled deeply, and she trembled heavily and just slightly forced herself to crack open an eye. Through her emerging tears she saw a blurry whip of pure black stream off over her face and towards the wall aimlessly, along with a few others moving over her as well… like worms squirming about in the mud near a carcass, waiting for the birds to leave so that they too may begin their own feast.

“Then I shall take the second part regardless, and you won’t be able to stop me.”
He whispered into her upturned right ear. He was no standing directly over her trapped body, and she truly didn’t know how she hadn’t urinated on herself again by now.

The truth was, she’d already let it all out earlier in the hallway.

“But….what is….”
Twilight swallowed thickly, her breath coming in fast shallow gasps as she felt her death looming over her, his own breath cold against her face.
“…that second thing…?”

“Your. Blood.”

And young Twilight Sparkle finally realized just what kind of monster she was dealing with.
Sombra with one hoof pushed her head upwards and straightened out a bit, and his jaws opened and crunched down onto her soft, vulnerable, sensitive, delicate throat.

Twilight screamed, feeling her lifeblood being forcibly pulled out from her body with unnatural force and her strength fleeing her. Fresh tears of horrified agony and utter despair flooded her heart and mind, coming out her eyes and down her cheeks until she was left too weak to scream anymore or even keep her eyes open.

The monster’s head was large enough in comparison to her own so that his jaws nearly engulfed her entire throat as he held his bloody grip with those knife-like fangs, and the poor little Unicorn felt her body go completely limp as the pain soon started to completely fade as well as her consciousness.
The vampiric stallion swallowed down her life essence deeply yet doing it slowly. He could taste it all like always he’d done to withers.
Her fears, her sources of anger, her hopes, her dreams for her own future, her Magic itself.
It was her very life, so warm, so filling, so ALIVE. So very exquisite indeed.

Finally, just as Twilight has consigned herself to her lonely and hopeless death, Sombra released his living, still breathing prey and looked down at her twitching body as he savored the aftertaste.
Sure, Rainbow Dash had wanted to keep this mare alive, but he’d made the decision himself already before she had even made the request. This particular mare… she was exceptional, she was unusual, she was not commonplace. Not only was she able to break through the divine seal that had bound him here, but now he felt as if he’d just fed on a dozen prime Unicorns, not a single one who had just recently reached adulthood.

With a blink, he magically released the restraints and thus let his charge move forward quickly and take up the limp body in her hooves. The Unicorn’s eyes were glazed over and unseeing, her breathing almost nonexistent.
Rainbow brushed the purple bangs away from the other mare’s forehead and smiled softly at her, choosing not to look at the dark presence beside them both.

“You know I don’t like it when you do that, Lord Sombra.”
She sadly stated. The deadly vampire let out a sound that was between a snort and a growl.
“I am what I am, Dash, and I make no apologies for it.”

Making a daring decision, the Pegasus turned her head to the right and looked up, her pinkish eyes meeting the flaming green and red ones of the dark creature who held her life in is hooves.
“You could have done it just… a bit more gently.”
She bravely insisted. He glared at her for a tense moment before she looked away with a sigh. But his reply was unusually soft, at least for him.
“That’s just how things are. In the end, that WAS as gentle as I can be, or else I would have ripped her head from her shoulders.”
Rainbow resisted the urge to snap her head up to look at him in surprise, and felt him now turn away and head further back into the darkness of his abode.

“I leave her in your care, Dash. Make sure that she is healthy enough to think and talk when I come to speak with her again.”

“…I will do as you wish, my Lord.”
Her respectful response was accompanied by a deep lowering of her head towards him. He said nothing more and soon disappeared.

The Pegasus mare picked up Twilight, bridal style, and started flying away towards her own room.
“I hope you end up choosing wisely, Twi.” She said with a reassuring tone and a sad smile.

A tour

Twilight moaned and turned, her body feeling so very heavy. She hadn’t slept like that in a very long time. Her sleep had been deep and dreamless, as if she had been hibernating.
She slowly stretched and both felt and heard her bones pop with a cracking sensation, and it truly was so very relieving.

The young Unicorn smiled and turned again, this time to be on her back and softly moaned happily. She stretched herself like this and continued to do so until she felt all of her limbs free of their heaviness after a short period of rest.
By Celestia, that felt good. The fact that the bed she was on was so spacious definitely played a part in her feeling this great.

Slowly, Twilight opened here eyes.
“Hmm?” she wondered aloud. “Where am I?”

She blinked a few times and looked around, finding herself in a large room, with a pink wallpaper and painted flowers, the bed she was in was maybe the best bed she had ever rested in. There was a chimney in one of the corners, a triangular window on her left side which showed the night sky, and right in front of her she saw her robe and at the side a desk with her bag.

“Oh! There you are!”
She happily exclaimed, not yet fully remembering just what had happened to her overall just yet.
But the sound of some shuffling caught her ears, and she turned her head quickly.
When she looked to her right, she found the Pegasus mare with a smile, standing next to her bed and looking at her with a slight tilt of the head.

Twilight gasped with wide eyes. And then she remembered.

Immediately a hoof flew to her now suddenly sensitive throat, expecting to find painfully unhealed gashes, vicious scars or literally ANYTHING like that.
But instead, all she felt was smooth skin and soft thin fur, like nothing had ever happened to her in the first place.

“Don’t worry about that, he allowed his bites to heal up nice and fast, but I made sure that they would anyway. They have to, if he is to keep feeding at a later date.”
Rainbow casually commented with a little shrug.

The Unicorn paled.
“Later on?”
She repeated.

“Well yes, you’re the first one that has ever managed to come in here through that or any door really. There ARE other far more complex ways to do it, but you’re certainly special. And honestly, I don’t think he going to take any chance of you getting out, not until he himself can get out. And me too, hopefully for me.

“Ge-get out?”
Twilight repeated, but now remembered that she heard the vampire and Rainbow Dash talking about her ‘breaking a seal’.

“But I think we never managed to get a chance to get properly introduced: I am Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer you will ever meet and the only real servant, in a way, of Lord Sombra!”
She exclaimed with pride in her voice, and yet some small bit of melancholy that the mare in bed managed to catch, but decided not to try prying just yet.
She remembered that, shortly before she was… bitten and knocked out, she’d spoken out of turn to the dark stallion and he turned openly hostile again. She didn’t really think that this pony would be the same, but she didn’t want to take chances, either.

“Rainbow…um uh…hi.”
She raised a hoof in greeting. “You’re…..a Pegasus, and you are….alive in here?”

“No! I mean yes! I mean… oh whatever!”

“What do... wait, did SOMBRA make you?”

“What, no! I’m me, I’m just, uh… well, a little different from how I used to be.”

“Um, ok, sure…”

“Look Twily, I’m basically a nicer version of the vampire that he is. I’m still a totally awesome Pegasus, OK? That’s why I’m not all dark or raggedy and don’t have a mouthful of big sharp teeth. See?”
She opened her mouth, and the scholarly pony saw that while her two canine teeth were sharp and more akin to those of a wolf, the rest of them were flat and like any other pony’s.

Twilight shrugged and shook her head to clear it, but had one last question, at least for now.
“So um uhh, HOW did you become like this?”

The Pegasus shrugged casually.
“Oh, Sombra turned me himself.”

This got a real reaction out of Twilight.

“B-b-but how? When?”

“I don’t remember EVERYTHING, but it sure was quite a long while ago for sure. I’m… I’m pretty sure my original family are all dead.”
She now had to look away, Twilight quickly noticing how this was a vulnerable subject for her, and so she decided to drop it for now. Rainbow noticed this, and turned back to her with a smile.

“Yes, so I suppose that I’m basically here to keep him company, and I get to do lots of stuff while he’s sleeping.”

The Unicorn turned to the window, and saw how the curtains were wide open, allowing what little light out there to come in.
“Like….right now?” She wondered.

“Yes, so you and I have a lot we can do in the meanwhile!”
Rainbow’s excitement was palpable.

“Riiiight….like what?”

“Well DUH, I can show you around! There are a lot of things here!”

“Umm….okay.” Twilight felt like this was some sort of trap.
She could try to just walk out of the place but…wondered what Rainbow Dash would do if she did. She seemed nice, but Twilight was always taught that appearances can be deceiving.
Plus, she had a sinking feeling about Sombra. She could just FEEL the dark presence of the vampire, observing her every move from every shadow.

Twilight realized again that her personal belongings were in the room with her, and instinctively turned to look at them again.

“Yeah, Sombra did want you to know that you are welcome to stay.” Dash informed.

“Yeah, so he can… keep feeding on me.”
“Yep.” The Pegasus casually agreed.The Unicorn now could feel a vein pumping on the side of her forehead until a growl could be heard all over the room.

Rainbow lowered his eyes to look at Twilight’s midsection.
“Darn….” The latter whimpered, putting a hand over her stomach.

“My keen understanding of the anatomy of a mare tells me that… you’re hungry!”
Rainbow said in a comedically sarcastic analytical voice.
“Here,” she flew to a beside table and took a large chalice filled with water, speeding back and hoofing it to the suddenly-thirsty mare.

“Oh!...uh..thanks?”
She could not resist and gulped it all down in a single chug, sighing deeply.
“Oh goddess that was so refreshing! The taste…”
She took a long look to the cup and an image came to her head.

“This came from a river?”

“How do you know?” Dash gasped, looked surprised and fascinated.

“Intuition.” Twilight stated, looking at the cup almost studiously.

“Well, you got it right. Now, I’m gonna assume that you wanna eat, so come on! Sombra hasn’t gone to the kitchen in centuries, but I occasionally go on down there when I feel a bit peckish, so I’m sure there still may be something edible for you as well.”

“CENTURIES?!”
Twilight nearly cried out in surprise.
“Wait, does that mean YOU have been in here for centuries, with HIM?”

“Technically, yeah! Isn’t it awesome?”
Rainbow’s ridiculously optimistic attitude now did not waver.

“Oh yes, it sure is.” The lavender mare deadpanned.

“Oh don’t be such a spoilsport. Now, come on!”
The prismatic Pegasus hovered excitedly in the air and grabbed Twilight’s hooves with her own as she began to pull her toward the door.

“Wait wait, I lemme get my things!”
Twilight then used her Magic to telekinetically grab her bag and sling it over her shoulder before putting her coat back on, and as soon as she was done Rainbow resumed pulling and escorting her out of the room and down the hallway.

The Unicorn took in everything more clearly now, and personally noted that she was in a different area of the castle. While still quite dark, the hallway was more illuminated by many other torches and fires in small oddly-placed fireplaces, and she let out a surprised exclamation as she realized this particular place was actually quite nice looking and not so very eerie as it did when she’d arrived last night, and instead it now looked more homey and peaceful. It brought a sense of warmth.
She did not feel the same invasive cold she felt last night, either.

The place continued to be and feel big, but it was now just a bit cozy, maybe even more or less welcoming.

What a little more light can do, unlike last night.
Last… night…

Twilight nearly stumbled as she suddenly felt her face turn cold. Rainbow noticed her sudden lack of enthusiasm.
“Hey, you ok there, Twi?”
She landed now and turned to look at Twilight more closely. She took the latter’s face in her hooves and got so close they were almost nuzzling.

“Um..Rainbow Dash?”

“What is it, Twily? Just say it and I’ll do what I can.”

“… Do you know for how long I slept?”

“Yeah. It was three days.”
She pulled back now and removed a hoof… but kept one on one of Twilight’s cheeks anyway, her touch as gentle as she could manage it in a comforting way. The Unicorn was a bit too distraught to really care at the moment.

“Oh gosh…” The bookworm moaned. “I lost three days…”

“Why worry? It’s not as if you got anything important to do, do ya?”

“Well, no..but…” Twilight let out a soft whimper, and then unexpectedly leaned more into Rainbow’s hoof, one of her own coming up to hold it too, almost as if for security. It could be considered as quite an intimate moment, though the two of them didn’t really notice.

Dash now made another bold move, and brought her own face forward to properly nuzzle the now truly saddened Unicorn. Both ponies closed their eyes for several seconds.
“Are you here for more than just to find some big important Library, Twily? This thing is really affecting you, isn’t it?”
She nuzzled her again gently and looked into her eyes.

Twilight did not resist any of it, and let herself be touched in this manner. She really did need some sort of affection and comfort at this moment, far more than she probably even knew.
“It’s just…I’ve never seen anypony return from this particular journey. They….” The poor mare sniffled, as she remembered “We…leave saying we would be back soon enough after finding it, with souvenirs and with new tools and knowledge, but I’ve never seen anypony come back.”

A stray tear appeared in one eye and trickled down her cheek, and Dash stayed silent and let the Unicorn speak at her own pace.

“I thought, I hoped… that if I managed to find it after studying for years every last bit of knowledge about it, over and over again… I’d just… I’d find it at last and nopony else would… lose their lives looking for it. But now?”

She now uncontrollably snuggled into the Pegasus, who froze up for a moment before slowly wrapping her forelegs around the distraught mare and slowly starting to rub her back. Her wings did the same thing instinctively, wrapping the Unicorn in a multi-limb hug.

“What if I myself now will not make it back?”
She continued “What if…What if something happened to them, like it has happened to me? “Wha-“

Rainbow pulled back a little and put one of her hooves on the other mare’s lips.
“Hey, calm down. Listen to yourself. All of what you’ve said? It’s pure speculation, Twi! You don’t really know any of this. Everything you just said may be true, but can also be so many things! What if instead, they decide NOT to return?”

She now faced smiled at young Unicorn.
“What if they found somepony special, and started their own families instead?”

She chuckled a little and hugged Twilight again.
“What if they found something else that needed to be done, something of importance, and whatever that is has kept them busy enough to stay where they are?”

“What if they never finished their journey because they never found it? Because they found not their callings, but their deaths?”
Twilight said again, twilighting once more.

“Yeah, that could be something too.”
Dash agreed.
“But out there, in the world, there is an endless sea of possibilities!”
She left the Unicorn after a few more seconds and turned to take some steps and open a foreleg widely towards the window.

“There is so much that can happen, y’know?”

“Like getting stuck inside a castle with two vampires, one of whom has rainbow hair?”
Twilight smugly said.

“Yes, exactly.”
Dash chuckled, turning again toward the other pony and taking her hoof to continue pulling her to a lower level of the castle. She was again back in the air.
“And in that sea of possibilities, of being inside a castle with a terrifying old vampire and a younger awesome one, you may find out what you gotta do.”
Twilight sighed, but couldn’t help but smile.
“We shall see.”

And as the two mares made their way towards the kitchen, a multitude of blood-red and emerald-green eyes lit up from the darkness along the wall and ceiling, following their progress silently.

The mares reached one of the kitchens, and after searching everywhere for something edible the Unicorn found that nothing could be eaten anymore, at least not by her. Dashie, on the other hoof, thought that the old stuff available was quite delectable, but she herself wouldn’t need to eat until a bit later when she felt peckish again.
So, with a disturbed sigh, Twilight cleaned one of the tables and small furnaces.

“What are you going to do?”
The Pegasus questioned, watching the other mare curiously.

“I’ll need to try my hoof at summoning up some food, I guess.”

“Wait, you can CREATE your own food!?”

“Yessir. Now, let me see for a minute…”
Her horn glowed and a number of strange items that Dashie had vague memories of began to pop out of thin air.

“Since there’s nothing here, I’ll need to give myself a soup.”
The Unicorn said as she finished gathering the ingredients, tools and firewood for her meal. A minute of super-fast preparation later, she was happily gobbling it all down.
She had to make another one though, because Dash suddenly decided that she was peckish RIGHT NOW and practically begged for a bite… or three!

After eating their overdue meal, Twilight followed Dash around as she took her through the inside of the castle. The place was MASSIVE, with lots and lots of space, rooms she had never seen elsewhere were here. Twilight also found that the home had several entrances and exits to the outside, but all of them were sealed shut by an unseen force.

“It’s part of why Sombra and I have been stuck in here. He’s a REALLY awesomely powerful sorcerer and stuff, but he’s just unable to break the seal, for some odd reason. But your presence here may change that, and we will finally be able to go outside!”
Rainbow gleamed while the Unicorn wondered how and why they were all unable to be opened.

“Why did you two got locked in here, Rainbow Dash?”

The latter slowed her flying just a little bit suddenly, and Twilight was fast to realize there was more to what happened.

“His story is not mine to tell, Twilight.”

“Did he….kill anypony, or anyone?”
She pressed just a little harder.

“...Twi?”

“Yes, Rainbow?”

“I told you: I’m not going to be the one to tell you anything about him. It’s..it’s just not my place to do that.”
She now lowered her head slightly and was back on her hooves, and they both had not even noticed that they weren’t moving forward anymore, the stone halls and ceiling above them now seeming so much larger and the darkness so much worse.
“He’s the Master of this place, not me, OK? Please, just… don’t start asking me to tell you about him. Unless I personally get direct permission, I’m not to speak much of him.”

Twilight’s mouth hung ever so slightly open. If Sombra wasn’t already completely frightening enough, Rainbow was apparently unwilling to say a word about him unless he gave her permission?
But Rainbow went on and concluded her statement.
“All that I CAN say at this moment is that he was already a vampire before he turned me, and that… I made the choice to join him in immortality and becoming a monster… and we’re NOT romantic, either!”
She finished with a small reddening of her cheeks, knowing how her admission likely sounded. Twilight laughed a bit uncomfortably, but soon it became more genuine.

“OK, I’ll drop the subject. I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable after everything you’ve done for me already.“
They both chuckled and giggled a bit, the tension becoming weaker, and soon they were both just laughing for no real reason.
Eventually, the duo resumed their walk through the Castle.

“So, it’s really been a long time since you came here, huh?”
The Unicorn asked.

“It has, yeah.”
The Pegasus concluded. And they walked together out of the current dark hallway and into a more well-lit one, where the floors were carpeted and the walls more elaborate. It was overall more welcoming, and Twilight felt just a bit more relaxed as Rainbow Dash led her in this tour of the truly immense Magic structure.

Rainbow took her companion along towards the doors that would lead to the ancient gardens and another foyer, but the one that impressed the wide-eyed Unicorn the most was one door that was almost as massive as the main gate, broad dark-tinted windows at its sides revealing what the cerulean Pegasus said was the back part of the castle that would lead to the main gardens.
The entire place just seemed to keep getting bigger and more spectacular the more she saw of it!

“Gee, was Sombra some kind of Prince or something?”
She wondered aloud, since this was waaay too much majestic work and scale of dark splendor, even for an ancient vampire. The sheer size of this mysterious place, the fact that it was on a rather low rising area instead of hidden away in the top of a mountain or in the depths of a deep forest.
All these accommodations where not meant for a small family, or even for a Royal Court. This place was meant for many dozens of ponies, if not rounded off to maybe a hundred or more. The ball room and the fact there was a throne room spoke volumes already.

“He was not a prince, he was the King.”
Rainbow Dash revealed, her voice taking on a more respectful tone.

“That…explains a lot.”
Twilight ruminated on that fact.
From what little she had seen of the vampire, it not only screamed of the predatory smoothness she had learned that vampires were known to often handle themselves with, it revealed nobility, if not outright royalty.
Question was: of what or of whom?

“Now, come on! I have left the best rooms for last.”
Rainbow hurried to pull Twilight again as she headed for their next destination.

“YOU GUYS HAVE A LAB?!?”
Twilight pretty much screamed as she entered the room.
“Oh my gods and goddesses, I know lots of Unicorns who would kill for a place like this!”
The excited mare beamed as she trotted around marveling at the devices, installation, furniture and glassware. There were ones she had seen personally and some others that she’d only ever only read about!

“Wait, is that…?”
She asked as she came close a massive metal construction that had spanned up until the roof of the rather tall room, her purple eyes widening steadily with recognition. She tilted her head cutely as she saw that on the roof there was a white square drawn upon the stones and there was a sort of dish facing it.

“Amazing…”

“Oh, that’s… uhh, one of the projects I thought up… for when we can get out.”
The Pegasus stated as she landed and slowly walked towards her companion.
“I was… I had a theory where if I could catch a lightning bolt, I’d be able to let it loose and race it in the sky.”

“You want to race the lightning?”

“Uh, YEAH. It’s gonna be awesome, too.”

Twilight giggled at the adorable blush that the other mare tried and failed to hide.
“And you made all the calculations for how to properly achieve this goal of capturing lightning itself?”

“Uhmm, not… really. At least it technically. Well, maybe I DID need to do a little bit of brainstorming and stuff…”

“Oh so you’re also a scientist, eh?”

The miserably cute blushing face that Dash gave her had Twilight laughing again. Oh, the excitable little athlete was embarrassed to let it be known that she was also an experimenting scholar?
“Come on Rainbow, being an ‘egghead’ is nothing to be upset about! Look at me!”
She puffed out her breast while pounding it cutely with one hoof.

“Let’s just say that I’ve had lots of free time in here to occupy my boredom.”
Rainbow grunted in one last show of embarrassment as she flew to one of the corners of the room, heading towards a large set of double doors.
“Now, this room, I just get the feeling you’ll really like.”

“Why’s that?”
Twilight walked, catching up to her friend.

“Because it will be like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Rainbow opened the big twin doors dramatically and with a smile… and Twilight entered the biggest library she had ever seen in her life.

“….”
The little pony took small steps as she took in the numerous floors filled with books, all sizes and colors, large windows letting the surprisingly large amount of light from the night in.
There was a huge thick stone chimney and a number of couches of big sizes and richly darkened colors, large well-built desks obviously meant to have lab equipment along with books.

Twilight eagerly walked towards one of the smaller book stands and took a random one, she flipped the pages and let the smell reach her nose. She took a deep breath. It smelled of elder days, of fine wood, of several preserved herbs…and…a very specific scent.

“This is one of the books you read, Rainbow. You read it recently, or maybe often?”
She turned to look at Rainbow inquisitively. The Pegasus looked sheepish again and rubbed one leg with a hoof.
Twilight smiled and closed the book to take a look at the title:

The Amethyst Bolt.

The intricate design of the titular lightning bolt beneath the title brought a smile upon the bookworm’s face as she felt the carving with a hoof. She then slowly put the book down and turned again to see the vast and beautiful library.

“This place is amazing.”
She breathed out.

“I’m hoping this will help you decide to stay here.”
Dash said, quietly.

“Dash,” the Unicorn sighed.
“I can’t stay here. Eventually I’ll need to get going.”

“Sombra DID offer to train you; I hope you’ll accept that offer after… after you have opened the gates again.”
The Pegasus requested, her face lowered once again.

Twilight wondered on that carefully for a few long seconds. She slowly walked towards what she thought was the center of the place, and looked up, taking in once more her surroundings with the rays of moonlight.
Rows and rows of books in a Library that was several stories high, all so neatly arrayed from what she could see.

Where will I ever find a library this big?
The book-lover thought.

The amount of knowledge here…How much is there? I don’t have to be a scholar to know that in here are books that do many of my peers have long since thought lost. Books of legend. Of many untold things…

Twilight turned her head to look to the door she came from, still open, showing the glorious laboratory and all the impressive tools and equipment there, waiting for her.

Just how much can I learn here? Would it be that bad if it means needing to live with being in the same place as… King Sombra?

The egghead continued to wonder.

How many experiments can I run? How many Spells can I rediscover and restore to the fold?

Her mind wondered back to the vampire. To Sombra.

I can’t trust him, I just know it.

She frowned, that familiar fear creeping into her heart.

I’m just a means to an end for him. And eventually, just food.

“Hey.”
Rainbow came to her side and tapped her.
“It’s ok, you don’t have to make a choice right now, y’know? We’ve all got plenty of time.”

Twilight sighed and looked at the other mare as she thought that she would need to leave the castle eventually, whether she wanted it or not.
Even though she could just conjure up more food and such, Unicorns could not do so indefinitely. Eventually, they WOULD have to eat something that they didn’t just create for themselves, and she was no different.
Bur the thought of needing or cooperate and thus unleashing this monster upon the world troubled her greatly.

Twilight Sparkle was well-aware of the ancient Poman phrase Damnatio Memoriae, translating into modern Ponish as “Condemnation of memory.”

This was the infamous act of completing erasing all memory of somepony or someone in general from the historical record, essentially condemning them to be removed from memory in all the countless centuries yet to be.
It was considered to be a truly harsh punishment, and had long been despised in many cultures across Equus and beyond.

But in this case, involving the vampire known apparently as King Sombra, what did she have to work with?
He was a vampire of immense power and considerable age, trapped away forever with his apparent apprentice in a Castle that was not on any map, himself and even any mention of whatever realm he ruled having been so removed from the pages of history that even the extremely well-read Twilight could not for the life of her remember ANY mention of him anywhere.
Twilight herself had enjoyed reading history, loving the old lore of both Equestria itself and the wider world. Heck, she’d even helped with the rediscovery of the legendary civilization of Troy, written about by the ancient historian Horser who’d also wrote about many other places and legends.

But she had NEVER heard the name or rank of King Sombra or any realm in this region that he may have ruled, or even about the Pegasus Rainbow Dash herself.
There was not only ONE account of a pony with a rainbow mane and tail, for that matter, but with the name and sex never being mentioned.
It was as if EVERYTHING relating to the vampire had just disappeared, destroyed and cast away into the mists of time…

What had he done?! What terrible things could have happened that any mention of him and his was practically nonexistent in any and all records?
She began to find it just a bit hard to breathe…

“Twily?”
A voice, very familiar, was heard to her left and a hoof was now resting gently on her back.
She took several more deep breathes, doing all she could to force away the multitude of troubled thoughts from clogging up her head.

“I’m, uh, not very good at this kinda stuff. But I read, well I HEARD, that’s it good for you to breathe slowly and deeply and try to focus on calm stuff. So you do that…”
Rainbow was not exactly a great therapist or anything else like that, but her genuine concern and presence was like a sort of anchor for Twilight. She focused on Rainbow’s voice, on the feel of her hoof in on her back, and slowly began to feel her panic start to recede.
Thoughts about the fact that she was in the forgotten Castle of ancient vampires so evil that his very name was stricken from the books continued to swirl in her mind, but she forced them back bit by bit.

But just as she was about to regain her control, something else popped up: Rainbow Dash herself.
The Unicorn’s mind had now wondered unto Dash and whatever her true purpose might be… she herself stated ‘she was Sombra’s apprentice and protege’, but Twilight’s gut was telling her there was more to that… although it clearly wasn’t some twisted love story as the Pegasus had made clear.

What would happen if she suddenly decided to make a run for it, at noon, when the two vampires would be at their weakest?

What would Dash do? Could she even really do anything at all?
Or would she do something… horrible?

What if SOMBRA caught her?!

Suddenly, her freshly racing thoughts were halted by that same voice.
“Wat’cha thinking?”
Rainbow asked, curious.

“…Way too many things, I’m afraid”
Twilight sighed, again, and now turned to look at the vampiric Pegasus.

“Sombra would tell me to not worry about the future. His own past olus being stuck here taught him that. You just need to live in the present, just make it through each day or night, one thought at a time, one step, then another, and things would go to where they need to, or something like that.”

“One day at a time…” the Unicorn repeated.

“And so, that way you would be able to do the next best thing!” Dash concluded.

“Sombra actually said that?”

“Oh, yeah he did. But that was, like, a long time ago.”

“Hmm…”
Twilight wondered if that was really accurate.

“Now, we should get going, I think you may be thirsty, maybe you’ll want some tea before we go meet him again.”
The Pegasus suggested as she started flying to what seemed was the main door.

“Maybe something a little stronger…”
Twilight thought out loud nervously.

“We do have some wine and bourbon stashed out”

“Oh, thank Celestia…”

In a dark room, one filled with naught but shadows and bones and echoes of those departed… a pair of blazing eyes shot open.

“What? Dash, you OK?”

Rainbow looked her companion dead in the eye, all mirth lost from her gaze and her voice now carried a tone of concern.

“Twilight, don’t you… EVER say that name again in this place. It’s for your own good, you understand me?”
Everything about her now was pure tension and even fear, and the purple pony was at a loss for words and actually stumbled back a few steps. Her purple eyes were wide and her heart beginning to beat swiftly.

It echoed in Rainbow’s ears.

He growled and sighed deeply, and stared into the surrounding darkness that was his domain and the bones of fallen victims who’d tried to stand against him.
And failed horribly.

At his current level of dark and terrible power, he barely had any true opponents anymore. All were nothing more than victims, no matter how strong and cleave they seemed at first glance.
Except for the one who bore THAT NAME. Her, and her fierce younger sister.

Ignoring the familiar rage for now, his mind instead wondered to the events of the other night, as he could feel the young Unicorn’s presence around his home, easily pinpointing exactly where she was right now.

He had a visitor.

When was the last time that he’d had a new visitor?

When was the last time he was so swiftly pulled out of his…..hibernation?
He had not stopped counting the years. 1,016 was quite a decently long in time for anyone really, but it might as well a day and night in the endless life of an immortal.
Soon he would be free from this entrapment and the world would remember his name once more.

But then what would happen to Rainbow Dash? She was not as devoted to the darkness as he himself was, and she could still find a way to become mortal again and be free of his hold over her.
That is, if she chose to ever move against him. So far, she was as loyal as she had been the day he’d sired her… and that both pleased and angered him.

His mighty power flaired out around him in midnight black, deep purple, crimson red, and sickly green, slashing up into the air like living flames that took the forms of terrible serpents and slithered along the floors and walls and ceiling.
Other bursts of it were like weaving bonfire that was contained around him and yet seemed to spread endlessly in all directions, his room itself completely defying the laws of Space as it seemed to ever expand and be filled with hundreds and hundreds of twisted figures and dealt shapes.
His eyes cast a wicked fiery glow, the shadows being lit up all around and yet clinging to him like limpets to a boulder in the midst of crashing waves upon the shore.

He could do as he wished to the younger vampire, and that included killing her at a moment’s notice. But not now.
He knew that she had always wanted to see the outside world again after having been so long without it.
He knew that Dash had lived to fly and be free, and he had kept her bound to his will for all this time and forced to simply fly as best she could in the confines of their shared prison.

It had been too long, he had observed, for her memory to retain the same vividness of the life she’d lost.
She no longer could remember the feeling of stepping on soft grass.
To feel the wind flowing over her face and through her mane.
To feel the coldness of the river water as she dove into it.

And yet through it all, she had still not given up. She still clung to the hope of finding freedom again, of escaping this confinement in darkness and spread her wings out to the sky once more.
He enjoyed the unfading spark within her as much as he wanted to snuff it out forever.

But enough about that filly, he had more important matters that demanded his attention. Like what he might do once he was free from here, and who he’d pay his first visit to in over a millennium. The thought brought a twisted smile to his face and a dangerous glint to his eyes.

And truly, what exactly would he DO after being freed?
Would he lay waste to every city, gather an infinite army of mindless slaves, and create a new empire of cold and dark?

Would Rainbow Dash be faithfully by his side as he did so?
Or would she scream and cry, and press her head down to the grass and earth beneath her as she felt the Sun slowly burn her away to ash?

Like Tartarus she would do that. She was HIS, and she would die only when he decreed it!

And speaking of Twilight…
Since leaving her in the hooves of his fledgling, he’d also been considering what he would first do when meeting with her again.

And the truth was something that simultaneously amused and irritated him. He was quite the basket of contradictions, wasn’t he? An amusing thought, indeed.

But anyway, the truth was that he didn’t really know.
Maybe he’d lie and tell her an abridged story about his past and such. Or maybe he’d be honest about why he was here for all these years and then force her somehow to break the seal anyway.

With a sighing grunt, she materialized again and with slow steps he walked until she reached the curtains.
With a mere thought, he opened the walls before him, telekinetically moved the curtains aside, and let the moonlight in.
Today was a full moon and was mostly a clear night, with some large clouds here and there.
With his immortal eyes, she could see everything beyond the glass. But it was not the same.

The vampire, with a few more steps, reached the window itself, and saw his own lack of a deathly reflection in the crystal.

“…”

It was as if the night out there was calling to him. He reached his left hoof and pressed it to the strong crystal glass, and felt a sudden rush of heat and cold course through his physical form.
The creature grinned fiercely, showing off his fangs to the Moon in mockery and defiance. He would be freed soon, alright!

His dark power flared up again in excitement, but he restrained it this time. He would not celebrate until AFTER he was free once again, not before.

With a last glare at the moon and smirk at the window, Sombra turned towards his bed and his horn glowed slightly as he prepared his garb for the upcoming meeting.

His outfit was the same as it had been before when he first spoke to his captive guest, but now he opted for his older cloak rather than the Royal one.
The same piece of rugged cloth that he had worn in a hundred past battles and that had been tattered and faded during its faithful service on the battlefield.
This warrior’s cloak, and his larger and more intimidating black crown which had a number of black spikes on the edges and contrasted perfectly with his crimson horn.
And lastly, he wore the strong armor pieces on his legs and torso as before.

With his preparations complete, the dark King turned towards the door and readied himself to appear to the two mares when the time was just right.
After all, he had an entrance to make.

Author's Note

Lemme what whatcha think, and point out any grammar mistakes! Tank you!

Revelations and explanations.

Twilight and her low-flying companion made it now to what she assumed was the throne room, the torches and mystical light set ablaze, the Unicorn assumed, only for her own convenience.

Vampires could see in the dark, after all.

What surprised and confused her was that upon returning here, the castle and this very room did not feel as cold as it felt that other night, there was not even a real lingering feeling of winter at all.
She still wondered how that was actually possible. A vampire with true elemental powers, instead of simply using shadows and occasionally smoking fire or even of Rot itself.

These creatures of the night had a variety of powers and abilities, often being stronger than Unicorns themselves in terms of raw power.
But a vampire being able to legitimately alter the very weather like that, an ability typically only thought possible to Pegasi and a certain few other magical entities? Such was a thing she had never heard about before, not even from the legends or encyclopedias.

After enjoying her tea with MAYBE a bit too much wine, Twilight went along with Rainbow to the throne room, chatting about random subjects and generally enjoying the other’s presence. Twilight needed all the help she could get to help her prepare for this meeting.

Soon, they came to the big doors again, and Dash opened them. They entered, with the candles and torches magically lighting up, bringing the room from total darkness into some decent light.
Rainbow, noticing Twilight’s increased nervousness, asked about her family to pass the time. The result was the other mare started rambling about how her parents both were responsible Magic-users and she occasionally got scolded in Magic School because she tended to perform her Spells too advanced and thus caused trouble.

That’s how she and Miss Sourpuss got to meet and detest each other.

The lavender Unicorn continued to ramble on to the light blue half-listening Pegasus until she felt a sudden cold and noticed that the light in the room had seemed to diminish.
It was similar to what she had seen and felt before, and that could only mean one thing:

Sombra, or rather KING SOMBRA, had arrived.

First, it felt like the room was getting colder, a feeling one would at first notice but wouldn’t care about.
But that’s when the temperature plummeted, and she could swear that the light sources themselves looked like they were being DIMMED, and the shadows overhead seemed to almost come alive with the way they subtly churned about.
She felt her heart racing soon enough, and her legs began to wobble. The fear was coming back with a vengeance, and the poor pony tried again to catch her breath and get her body back under her own control.

Just then, she felt something rather soft suddenly drape itself across her back, and simultaneously something else soft gently nuzzled her left cheek. A small wave of something else came over her, seemingly setting itself against the oppressive dark that weighed down on her and offering a sense of relief and comfort.
Twilight felt her heart rate slowly down ever so slightly, and actually a feeling of WARMTH seemed to come from the softness on her face. The corner of her eyes easily saw the light blue face and the bangs composed of many other colors on top of it, and she felt her own mouth twitching upwards into a smile as she did her best to ignore the source of her distress and focus on her comforter.

Slowly, Twilight closed her eyes and willed herself to breathe in as deeply as possible, and then let it all out with a sigh. She did this again, and was subconsciously grateful that Dash did not pull away from hugging or nuzzling her, and so found the strength to continue just a bit more. Steadily, moment by moment, she got her panic under reasonable control.

Opening her eyes at last, Twilight felt calm enough to turn her head to look at Rainbow, but she had seriously miscalculated when the latter would pull away from her. In the act of turning her own head, she discovered that the Pegasus hadn’t started pulling back at all… and so a pair of lavender lips brushed against cerulean blue ones!

The duo’s faces burnt slightly and they locked eyes for a few embarrassed moments, but this was quickly forgotten when the ground itself shuddered and made cracking sounds and several tall dark objects rose.
They were black crystals, jagged and sharp, and there were several of them. The two ponies now ignored their little incident for a later time and stared forward.

Neither one of them had felt like this perhaps ever, or in Rainbow’s case it had been so long she’d pretty much forgotten.
But all that would have to wait. HE was here.

Ahead of them, the darkness was now swirling like a whirlwind, and a current of air circling around the whole room until gathering more thickly in front of them near to the icy throne, and in this air funnel the Unicorn also noticed with Dash that there were even a lot of snowflakes… but they looked off, somehow. Twilight herself couldn’t explain how, but it didn’t look like SNOW she was seeing fly around before her eyes.

The dark storm condensed into a small swirling mass of inky blackness, and Twilight was reminded of the sea snakes that were crowded together while swimming in a glass water tank back at a laboratory in Canterlot.
This frightening display continued along with the green fire and electricity covering the floor and cracking through the air, until the deathly source of it all himself materialized and everything else proceeded to vanish like smoke into the ether.

Despite the reassurance and comfort she had received and was still receiving from Rainbow, Twilight still felt a chill run down her spine and swallowed thickly at the sight of the dark creature standing before her, flanked by the tall crystal blades, his eyes burning like fire while his mane and tail seemed to be carried on the currents of an invisible wind.

“Greetings, Twilight Sparkle.”
The dark entity’s voice was heard, a frightful smile upon his face as those same fangs that tore into her throat were on full display.

“…Good evening.”
The Unicorn mare could not help it as her voice quivered slightly. She couldn’t stop herself from doing so when she saw the dark stallion again.
The last time she’d seem him, she saw an incredibly annoyed and frightening individual, but now, she could swear she was standing n the presence of a king. The air around the Unicorn stallion, the terrible aura he had, the way he now presented himself… was he partially made of shadow?? And his mane and tail…

“Hmm…”, The vampire’s grin only grew. “Are you frightened, little mare?”

“I-yes! Very much so, I-I-I’m not t-too proud to admit it.”

The King of shadows laughed, and the sound thereof was terrible.
“That’s good, to be honest with me.”
His cape, Twilight quickly saw, was also floating just a little bit to the side. It wasn’t as much as his mane, but it was clearly being affected by the same supernatural force as it.
He then moved down on his throne and sat on his haunches upon it, and watched with an unreadable expression as Twilight lowered her gaze to keep from looking him in the eye.

Rainbow Dash was feeling more content. The elder vampire was so far in a good mood.

“Evening, Rainbow. It’s not often that I see you face to face so often in such a short time.”

“The same goes for, My Master.”
Dash bowed her head low and her voice was again a deeply respectful tone.

“I trust you found the tour interesting? What do you think of my home?”
Sombra extended one foreleg upward.

“Yes, this place… th-this is legitimately incredible, honestly! And it really is beautiful.”
Twilight happily confirmed.

Just like it’s lone Pegasus, I have to confess…
The egghead thought.

Wait, what? No, Twilight, focus! They’re both vampires!

…She didn’t notice the knowing glint in the eyes of the dark creature, and he also knew that she didn’t.

“I’m pleased to hear you say that.”

Twilight could not help but nervously smile again.

“I will need to apologize, though, for the lack of food.”
He said, although both the mares could tell he didn’t mean it at all and was simply saying it because he could.
“As you can see, this place does not have any other ponies staff besides Rainbow Dash, and the last visitor we ever had came long ago. And I don’t much enjoy normal pony food anyway.”
His two main frontal fangs now seemed to glint in the dark as he bared them more prominently.

“Hehe…”
Twilight uncomfortably laughed, bringing a hoof toward her throat and rubbing it. She could feel the phantom pain returning.
“Riiight, I sorta got that…”

“Now,” He got up and started to walk towards the two ponies, his hoofsteps silent yet echoed in Twilight’s ears.
“I trust that you have food for yourself?”

“What? Oh, yes! I still have a supply I can conjure, not to worry about that. But it won’t last forever, obviously.”
Twilight lamented, which brought her to that matter…

“Then let us not waste any more time, and discuss the main issue in the room.”
Sombra’s face was calm, or at least as calm as it could possibly look at this point, in Twilight’s opinion. At this, she frowned. This was already happening and it was too soon, and the Unicorn felt alarmed.
“I… I’m not sure that is a good idea.”

“And why exactly is it not?”
Sombra had now reached the duo’s position and peered down at the little Unicorn.
“Oh, let me guess: you are afraid of what I shall do to the world.”

Gulp “…That obvious, huh?”

The vampire then turned to his apprentice.
“How much did you tell her?”

“Only what she needed to know. She doesn’t know anything about you, but you already are aware of that.”
Dash stated with a sigh. Sombra blinked once.
“You have my thanks for remembering that.”

“Hmm.”
The Pegasus nodded, and Sombra’s green-red eyes returned to the Unicorn.
“Walk with me.” He said as he moved past them and headed outside.

“Wha-?”
When Twilight turned, the vampire was halfway out, leaving no ground to discuss, the other mare trailing not far behind. “Uh…okay?”

The castle now had more candles and torches lit, and it seemed as if it was inhabited by more people than just the ancient creature and his young creation.
There was something that the vampire was not letting her know. There was definitely more to his story. Maybe he was going to show it now?

But if that was the case, just what exactly was he going to reveal? Or tell? Would Twilight believe it? Had she any reason to? Where were they going in the first place?
There were some rooms that Rainbow did not want to show her, like the basement and the “dungeon”.

…Was there a torture room or something?

Twilight groaned.

Seriously, if worst comes to worst, I may be able to hold him off for a few moments if I go all-out from the get go.

The problem was Rainbow, she too was a vampire and apparently may be extremely fast too.
The Unicorn was so caught up in her worries and creating contingencies that she didn’t notice where they were until she heard him speak.
“We’re here.”

“Hmm?”
She was taken out from her thoughts suddenly as Sombra opened the door to the library.
“The library? Why are we here?” Twilight asked.

The vampire ignored her question and turned around to face her.
“Before we proceed, there is something I will ask you.”

“Y-yes?”

“You are afraid of what I’ll do to the world, once you set me free.”

“Umm… IF I set you fr-“

“WHEN you do.”
The creature stated firmly, leaving no room to discussion. Twilight gulped.

“If I told you… that I don’t care for it, would you believe me?”

“Wait…what?”
The Unicorn blinked.
“N-No!”
She tried to put some conviction into her voice, but all she managed was a squeak.

“I didn’t think so.”
Sombra went to one of the many bookstands and eyed the books, then raised a hoof and a massive book moved slowly towards him.
He lowered his foreleg and took the book to one of the massive desks where he set it down and opened it, flipping the pages until he found what she was looking for.
He then set the book down and pushed it towards Twilight, who was just arriving at the other side.

“What is this?”
She was looking at some kind of old map.

“Where I’ve come from.”
Sombra revealed.

The book smelled old, and the pages had some colors faded but other than that it seemed like it was still new, new as in, never used.
She touched the print and felt the relief, and it felt as if the book was just made. The lexicon, this was a genuinely older language. But she was able to read some of this because she’d seen the modern version of it, and among many words, one in particular came quite clearly:

“…The Dominion of Crystalia.”
Twilight translated.

“That is correct.”

“But…how? I mean…this….”
Twilight carefully trailed the map and its contents, places marked, and how there was a castle drawn in. The mare turned the pages to find similar maps, but the information they had was severely out of date.

“This can’t be.”

“Why not?”
The tall stallion asked.

“The Crystalia Dominion doesn’t exist!”

“…what?” Rainbow’s expression faltered.

“Just…how old..?”
Twilight turned the book, went back to the beginning to check information.
“Holy Crabapples, this…this book is 1,069 hundred years old!”
She then looked at both vampires with a shocked face.

“Just how old are you..?”

“1,030 years, to be precise.”
The elder quietly answered, and had both mares look at him in surprise.

“That is how old you are, and you’ve been in here with me for 1,011 years as you were sired when you were 19. You were unable to fully keep counting properly,” he said, to Rainbow. “That does not go the same for me. I have always known how long you and I were trapped here.”

Twilight’s mouth opened and closed a few times as she tried to comprehend this, but her eyes were then drawn to Rainbow Dash.
The Pegasus has set both front hooves upon the table, and looked down.

Shocked at the revelation.

“A th-th-thousand years….” The ‘young’ vampire repeated. How had she not been able to know this? How had she been so disconnected from her own life, from her own passage through time!?

A hundred different questions began to swarm through the Unicorn’s mind as she continued to stare at the prismatic pony in front of her, her eyes following the figure as she retreated to the main window, unable to even muster the strength to use her wings like she normally did.
Twilight watched as Dash slowly reached the window and looked at the outside world, the moon and the faint stars high above, looking down upon and mocking her. So close, and yet, so very out of her reach.

Among the questions that went around Twilight’s head, there was one that was coming out the most, the one that was both worrying and intriguing her the most, and most likely, was the key to understand what the Tartarus was going on. And so she finally asked it:

“What happened to you?”

Rainbow didn’t respond at first, just staring blankly outside at the world she’d been kept from for more than an entire millennia. But just as Twilight was about to either ask again or stay silent, Rainbow closed her eyes and sighed deeply.
Then she turned to face their visitor and she could see the confusion on her cute little face, as she, the proud and cocky Pegasus vampire mare… was struggling to keep from crying. Her eyes went away from the other mare, looking now behind her.
Twilight followed her gaze and turned her head, and realized that Sombra was standing behind her and she hadn’t even heard him move.
He nodded his head curtly once, and now Dash was crying softly, hugging herself with her own wings and forelegs as she plopped down on her hindquarters.

“You-you may wanna sit down too.” She suggested.
Twilight felt a pang in her heart as she saw the sad creature, and she nodded and made her way toward one of the couches.
She was still very much aware of Sombra standing close by, coldly watching everything that transpired. Despite her own sadness and attention being directed towards Rainbow Dash, she still felt that same chilling aura of fear that he seemed to outright emanate.
He certainly knows all of whatever Dash is about to tell me, and so much more too. That much is certain.

The vampiric Pegasus thought hard on this subject. This Unicorn wanted to know the truth. This mortal creature… this… meal.

But this meal was her only hope of getting out of this prison.

She remembered how she had laughed a long time ago of when dreaming of being outside during summer again and feeling the warm air as she swam through it and let it wash over her from head to hoof, how she wanted to feel the true beauty of winter and not the dark frigidness that her Sire was capable of creating.
She had promised she would do everything in her power to break free, to free them both, even as King Sombra simply glared at her with disdain and told her that her dreams were those of a foolish little foal who didn’t want to grow up. But she hadn’t given up, and she could feel that her Sire was somehow proud of her for not doing so.
Just like she ultimately been unable to keep counting the months, the years, the decades, King Sombra had always been doing so.

Twilight Sparkle. This sweet mortal mare, this curious and kind-hearted, and beautiful, young visitor, she very much was the key to everything.
But would she even really care? Why should she? Could Rainbow trust her?

This was her only shot.

She had to convince Twilight to open the barrier by herself and not force Sombra to resort to using force to make her do it.
Rainbow had only known this visitor for a few hours, but she already knew that she simply could not bare the thought of the Unicorn being forced to endure the horrendous and unnatural tortures that the elder vampire was capable of.

Rainbow needed to convince her. But for that…

She looked one last time to her master and Sire, and an unspoken conversation between them passed, and she then looked back to their visitor.
The light blue Pegasus walked slowly towards the couch until she was in front of Twilight and then sat down in the e floor in front of her, and she took a deep breath as she steeled herself.

“My full name is Rainbow ‘Dashie’ Dash. I was born then,” she glanced at Sombra, “one thousand and 30 years ago. I…I was not a normal foal. I…was born like this.”
She used one front hoof and looked at a hoof-full of her rainbow mane.

“Turns out, one way or another I was born after some really weird shenanigans involving the weather and the Sun and Moon. My mom wasn’t exactly exceptional when it came to being a Pegasus nor my dad for that matter. But still, I was born like this. Both my parents were regular Pegasi. I was born and seemed like any other foal of my age, but there were always differences to be noted. I had these colors that none other else had,” she gestured to her wings and tail, “and I was able to fly before I could crawl.”

She spread her wings.

“For all my foalhood, I was a SOMEWHAT normal filly, or as normal as I could be with this stuff. I grew to be proud of my unique qualities and abilities, and I was able to eat like any other old pony. I was basically normal, even though whenever I went to the medical ponies they always said that I had the highest amount of ‘Spectra’ in my body. You know what Spectra is, right?”

“Hmm? Oh… oh yeah, it’s that special substance found in Pegasi bodies that is believed to come from their vey souls and that gives them their own special abilities and colors.”

“Exactly, my own supply of it has always been REALLY really high But anyway, everything eventually changed. Instead of my nosy through the regular stuff that growing mares go through, I started getting these surges of power where….I could hear literally everything, smell everything, FEEL everything, food started making me sick because I could no longer digest it. My body was rejecting and I was getting sick.”
She spoke with a bit of pain in her voice, and Twilight felt her heart aching already.

“I started falling asleep during the day and stayed up during the night. The Sun started to wear me out, to slowly even begin to burn me. And that is where all hay broke loose.”
She sighed deeply at this part.

“My vampiric powers began to manifest somehow. And with them, my… thirst.”
Her eyes glinted before she looked down, and the Unicorn unconsciously again put a hoof to her own soft sensitive throat where Sombra had torn into her, only a few days ago.

“At the beginning, it was not an issue because… well, the really bad criminals sentenced to death were sent to me, instead. But when the criminals stopped coming in as reforms were made steadily, and we ran our do food for me, the problems really began.”

The youthful vampire’s eyes looked heavier and heavier.

“My parents… even though they loved me, they…were getting scared of me, of my bloody nature. They feared that my power was too big for the kingdom. I had been conditioned to try to ignore it n any way possible, to control it and not let it grow anymore. They tried to raise me still as any other good little mare. During the day, I would wear sports clothes and other stuff that covered me everywhere and make me look about 20% more awesome as well, and I would need to wear a pair of special goggles with the excuse being that my eyes were very sensitive and vulnerable to bright light and stuff like that…”

Twilight could sense something terrible was coming, and she was not wrong.

“All of this, relatively worked, for another few years. Until one day, I snapped.”

The little vampire lamented, her voice becoming more strangled.

“It was only a matter of time, really, and I was barely a fully-grown mare…In the end, it didn’t matter. My true nature was revealed to the public. My powers, my vicious and bloodthirsty nature, the whole shebang. And for some strange reason, I was spared. Many thought me worse than a witch or sorceress, they thought me a legit DEMON.”
Dash sadly told, looking anywhere but Twilight herself.

“Then, there came…. That day.”

The creature took a long pause in between words here, and looked especially conflicted.
Her right hoof shot up and clenched where her heart was and she gritted her teeth with righty shut eyes.
Twilight could see the pain in her expression, but the Pegasus forced herself to keep talking before Twilight could stop her.

“Where my parents stopped trying to make me stay up during daylight. They stopped trying to make me eat their food. I had learned to relatively control my thirst. But in the end, it didn’t matter.”

“One day, I woke up, and found my house totally empty. Nopony was alive, they were all gone.”
Rainbow revealed.

“They were… killed?”
Twilight inquired with slightly widened eyes.

Dash slowly nodded.
“Days before, I started having nightmares. Bad ones. I know the…” she sighed, “…the stories of Princess Luna whose job it always was to stop nightmares, but she never showed up for me. My mind began to unravel and I soon couldn’t really tell what was real and what was me just dreaming. But eventually, I started to see red, so to speak y’know, more and more. I spent whole nights entertaining thr murderous ideas because I… I was too mad at being feared and hated to keep ignoring them, eventually. And if I started telling my parents that I was having visions of… of killing them and stuff… well, whatever.”

She now had tears in her eyes, and she bit her lower lip so tightly that the Unicorn saw blood start to trickle down. Her own vision started to blur too now, but she knew that she couldn’t interrupt. She knew that Rainbow NEEDED to get it all out. The poor Pegasus now had tears streaming down her own face, and she tried weakly to wipe them away.

“They, my parents and… my uncles and one aunt, just all… disappeared two days after that. When I finally awoke out of my… my bucking bloody rage, they… had all been killed. By…”

A thick swallow.

“… by ME!”

A pure sob tore through her, and she slapped a hoof over her mouth to keep others from coming out too. Her eyes were so very tightly shut, and Twilight could barely look at her, her own grief threatening to overwhelm.
After a painfully long few minutes or so, Rainbow Dash resumed speaking.

“Not long after, I broke out into the town as my grief overwhelmed me and I just couldn’t stay in that house anymore. The townsfolk, after seeing my state, just… they all just all turned on me. And so… I butchered them all too.”
Her body was shuddering like a leaf in the wind, her tears dropping to the floor, drop by drop.
“I tried to talk to them, I begged them to stop before I… I lose control again! I did EVERYTHING I could do and say… but nopony ever stopped, nopony ever listened!”
She had by now sunk to the floor, her legs all gathered under her and her head lowered enough that Twilight only saw her mane and nothing else. Her unrestrained sobs were heartbreakingly loud and painfully raw, and the Unicorn’s heart had by now been shattered.
Sure, Rainbow Dash had just pretty much stated that she’d slaughtered her entire town, but right here and now, Twilight could see the pain in the poor Pegasus. She could see it all in her actions, hear it in her sobs and her cries.

The regret.

The suffering.

The torment.

And before she knew what she was doing, the young Unicorn had leapt from the couch and crossed the distance to the vampire Pegasus, wrapping her forelegs around her in a tight and almost desperate embrace.
One hoof gently rubbed the cerulean pony’s back in a soothing manner, and she felt the latter bury her head into her shoulder.

“Then came the black winter. The winter, that I created.”
The echoing voice of King Sombra, as cold as ice, made itself heard. Upon hearing him, Dash sniffled a little bit and then sloppy repositioned her head so that her chin was on Twilight’s shoulder, allowing herself to keep speaking.

“One night, when I was 19 and was on the verge of starving myself to true death… it was then that King Sombra came by and found me. He was also a vampire already, and had sensed me from afar. He brought with him a frigid blizzard that would have taken the very best Pegasi working together to have any hope of clearing up, and he took me under his wing, so to speak.”
Rainbow now seemed to stiffen up ever so slightly and she slowly, reluctantly, pulled away from Twilight. Pinkish eyes looked deeply into purple ones for a few seconds as both mares didn’t say a word, but then Rainbow blinked and looked away again with a pained sigh.

“I can’t say much about everything that we said to each other, but he gave me a purpose and a reason to keep on going rather than trying to end my own undead life, and I’ve been loyal to him for that ever since.”
Now she looked over at the elder vampire, and Twilight saw that the smile the light blue pony wore had some life in it, a bit of meaning and authenticity even if it was pained.

“We came into contact, and then conflict, with The Two Sisters of Equestria. Those two didn’t like the idea of a pair of vampires running and flying around freely while causing the weather to act up, and the fact that vampires are by nature very ambitious also fed their fears about us trying to take over the land. They couldn’t live with the threat of more vampiric expansion,
especially not with one as strong as King Sombra. Tracking us both to this castle, they set up a really complex Magic barrier outside of here in order to contain us, and our powers. They completely locked us in. They made it so that none of us could not get out. Only somepony that was REALLY good with Magic AND was neither Sombra nor me could open it, and it had to be done from the outside.”

Twilight blinked curiously and looked away to hide her blush as she listened. She had been able to open the Seal pretty easily, legit. She didn’t think she was THAT strong, but the evidence spoke for itself.

“They now sure that anything which could give us the ability to open the doors, or undo those seals, were gone.”

“How do you know this?”
Twilight thought out loud.

Sombra spoke now with a dark smirk.
“Being well-versed in all forms of archaic sorcery and being shut in with the biggest library available in the region at your disposal, a pony is bound to learn a number of things.”

“Oh.”
Twilight blinked again. It made sense.

“The world cared not at all for us, and trapped us forever when we wouldn’t die so easily. Why should I care for the world? All of it can rot for all I care.”
Sombra bitterly spat with a growl, his cape becoming more lively and making him all the more intimidating.
“Think about this as well, Sparkle.”

“Y-yes?”

“Yes. If you free us, you’ll have my thanks, and FAVOR. It is wise to have someone like me at your side. Not to mention you’ve already developed something of a bond with my fledgling.”

The towering dark stallion closed in to the much smaller mare, who instinctively lowered herself and soon was kneeling with all four legs crossed under her, before she even knew what she was doing. Twilight would normally feel unsettled by somepony or someone making her do this, she didn’t need any Spell or command from Sombra to kneel. Her own instincts forced her to do so, like a little pack wolf bowing to the Alpha, a small beast submitting to a superior predator.

He stopped in front of her, and her wide eyes were fixed n his large dark hooves. They were much larger and more rugged than her own, and she swore could even see some lingering traces of shadowy smoke coming from beneath them.
She could feel his gaze upon her from above, piercing through her as if he knew very thought she had.

But then, she heard movement happening to her side, and then felt Rainbow Dash come and settle down beside her. And drape a wing over her barrel, almost protectively.
“I promise that you will not be killed or cast off alone after freeing the two of us, that much is guaranteed.”

She didn’t dare to raise her head and look any higher then his hooves, and so she missed the silent communication the Sire and the Fledgling, both looking at each other for a second and nodding once.
Instead, the frightened Unicorn found herself bound under the mighty entity’s flaming eyes.
Rainbow’s close presence and show of affection and comfort with her wing had a minor influence to help Twilight calm down, but it was only a little bit. King Sombra’s overwhelming presence was not be to pushed back so easily.
This monster… he could just force her under the weight of his power to open the Seal again. She could feel his Magic compared to her own… he was like a lake compared to her, a bucket!

So why try to convince me at all?
The young Unicorn wondered deep down.

“If you don’t care for the world, then… why go to it?”
She quietly asked.

“The question tells me you have never been imprisoned.”
The stallion muttered with a small hiss.

“No..I-I…” The poor mare was caught off guard.

“Rainbow Dash.”
He grunted, his voice having that deep and echoey effect to it again.
“You have never gone outside, since you became like this. All you’ve known for so long is this castle and what is inside it.”

“Yeah, it’s true.” She nodded.

He smirked.
“Why do you want to go outside?”

Rainbow smiled and began to reply.
To the other two’s surprise and amusement, she suddenly started to list off all the totally awesome things that she wanted to do in the warmth of Summer. The more the Pegasus expressed, the more Twilight started to become worried. Dash was so passionate about wanting to be free at least after 1,000 years of dark imprisonment.

After the long-overdue conclusion , Sombra wore a very amused look while Twilight had a grimace.
“Ok, so…you would like to see the summer more than anything else.”

“Totally!”

Mud bricks!
Twilight had screwed up.

“Yes, Sparkle. Now tell us, why won’t you let her?”
Sombra fixed the nervous mare with a steady, intimidating gaze. Rainbow was looking up and thinking about able to zoom in the skies freely again. She seemed to have hearts in her eyes.

“I-because….I….”

Rainbow looked at her with a big smile, her eyes full of yearning. Twilight could see the hope and excitement at the prospect of being free again, and felt her own resistance being battered way by the millisecond the more she looked into this hopeful eyes.
And yet, Twilight was also very much aware that freeing her meant also freeing King Sombra. The mysterious, terror-inducing creature of the night that had been erased entirely from history with all mention of his kingdom and his servants, like Rainbow Dash herself. She’d never even heard of Crystalia until tonight, in a history book she’d never seen either.

Another thing too: this Library had access to lost knowledge! who knows how much she could learn that had been forgotten by the rest of the world?

“My deal still stands, Twilight.”
The dark creature reminded her.
“And you can even look it this way. It is said that my kind are bound to their word if they ever give it. I intend to keep doing that.”
The vampire started walking around the Unicorn Pony, who slowly turned as well in a circle in an attempt to keep him in her sight at all times. She was not willing to have him behind her if she could help it.
“You can even try to watch over me if you wish. You’ll be welcome here in this place, and may come and go as you please. Despite the fact that you are no match for me, who knows? With hard work and dedication, one day…you might be.”
Sombra finished, standing right in front of Twilight again.

“And so, the time has finally come to make a choice.”

Twilight gulped heavily.

Sooner or later, this was going to happen. If she was ever going to get out, she would eventually need to try to open the doors.
And the moment that happened, Sombra and likely Rainbow would definitely appear in order to get out as well. With how the castle felt, there was no way he wouldn’t know about the Seal being broken again and not he right there or exploit it.
If she refused at such a time… there would be Tartarus to pay.

And also, she knew truly that Sombra was absolutely right:
She was no match for him. Not here, not now, and not for a very long time

The Unicorn could feel herself sweating just a little as how Sombra grinned a grin that displayed a muzzle-full of sharp knife-like fangs and his eyes bore into her more than usual.
“Do we have a deal?”

If worse came to worst, she’d be offering her blood in exchange of knowledge and power.
Twilight left a single “heh” as she remembered her lessons on how it was told that some Unicorns of old actually gained some of their immense arcane knowledge and power that way, conducting certain rituals and participating in actions that were of a give-and-take sort of relationship.
But it was from other sources of power and other ancient creatures. It definitely was not done with vampires.

Still, she wasn’t doing anything her kind didn’t do before.
And if the need truly ever arose, the young Magic expert knew that she needed to get stronger in order to overcome this vampire, or others, if needed be.
She was in need of more strength than she currently had, and needed to stay alive long enough to gain it.

Maybe she could forge some sort of alliance with his apprentice. Despite her loyalty to him, she already felt a certain kinship with Rainbow Dash, and the younger vampire’s actions that were made repeatedly to the Unicorn’s benefit and comfort, along with her genuine display of real equine emotions, were enough for Twilight to conclude that the Pegasus was worthy of her trust, at least partially.
Sure, her thirst for blood would need to be dealt with, but in this case, Twilight would leave tomorrow’s problem for tomorrow’s Twilight.

Either way, she had no choice. She never did. Her fate had been decided the moment she set a hoof into this place and awakened the beast that resided within.
A single step was taken forward, and a pair of bright young purple eyes met with cold ancient green and crimson ones, the mare’s head giving a single solid nod as she gave her answer.

“We have a deal.”

The elder vampire’s eyes burnt brightly as well again, this time with delight.

“Splendid.”

The rival before you.

The skeletal Griffons stood as resolute and alert as always by the door, their eyes alight with a familiar and recognizable green fire. They did looked at the Pegasus as she landed in front of the great doors guarded with unshakable watchfulness, but before she could speak or they do anything, all heard a dark, malevolent voice that echoed from behind the great doors.

“Guards… leave us.”

Without a second’s hesitation, the two piles of necromantic workstallionship simply turned to either side of the mysterious entry and walked off, their uncovered paws and claws making it a clacking sound as they walked away.

He’s been getting better at controlling his strength while in there, the same as me.

Rainbow pondered this information for a few moments, but snapped back to attention as the doors began to open to the room.
The two huge slabs of stone moved open with a loud groaning and grating, scraping on the similarly stone floor with no small amount of noise.
Above them, the icy blue Wards of power still shone as brightly as ever before, their power as un-waning as the Moon and Stars in their positions up in the sky every night.

Once they were fully finished, the mare stepped forward into the enormous room, which itself was quite lit up by the large mystical bonfire to the right that covered everything with a light bluish tint.
She immediately felt the drainage effect on her body, sapping her magical reserves and making her feel, for lack of a better term, somewhat mortal again. As in, vulnerable and not the immortal warrior that she had become over time.

Walking to the center of the room, Rainbow Dash did as was her custom to do automatically when summoned to her master’s presence, sitting down on her haunches and lowering her head in submission(For some reason, the elder vampire did not see it necessary for her to sit on all four legs in absolute submission).
She did not take the authority to speak first. She knew her place.

A few steps away from where she sat, King Sombra stood tall and silent as a statue, his gaze seemingly fixed on the great bonfire. The small sword that was strapped to a belt and was on Rainbow’s right side felt heavier than usual at this moment, as if sensing the sheer level of dark power being unleashed at this very moment.

The strange fire itself was a mixture of both his own Magic and the enchantment of the room itself. It was an impressive display of his level of might, considering he standing in this place that affected him far more than it did her.
Many times both vampires had come here to grow their power through hard training, and then to practice their control over their abilities as best they could.
Both could be honest in saying that they had grown their strength as time passed from training like this.
Rainbow was also correct to boast that her own growth had been greater than Sombra’s. It was a fact that they both knew to be true.

The tense stillness of the room was broken when Sombra’s voice made itself heard.
“You are quite distressed, my young friend.”
His voice, always so deeply growling and coming from everywhere at once, held within it a note of softness. One that he only used a tiny hoof-full of times, and it was never very good.

“I am fine, my master.”
Rainbow spoke firmly yet tactfully, leaving no disrespect in her voice or words. This was something serious, she felt, and now was not the time to accidentally touch a nerve.
The phantom pain from countless hours of beatings that had crushed and tore into her over the centuries, courtesy of him, made itself known and she couldn’t stop the shudder as dark memories appeared for a moment and then vanished.

The dark stallion turned to face her, silhouetted by the flames as he slowly approached the sitting Pegasus.
“Are you, truly?”
He now stood a limbs length away from her, his great shadow covering her like a blanket.

“A bloody cloud of anger, of fury, is swirling before my eyes, and the outer wisps of it seek to pull me into its malevolent depths. And at the very center of this whirlwind, at the eye of the storm…”
He now raised his right foreleg, and placed a powerful hoof on her shoulders.
“…Is you.”

Rainbow didn’t bother trying to fully control her breathing, and her shoulders heaved just the slightest amount as his hoof, with deceptive gentleness, rested on her.
She knew that if he chose to push down, then she likely would become as flat as the floor beneath her.

“This malice radiates from you like a tornado that tears up whole forests by the roots and reduces a city to rubble, yet it is unfocused…”
Suddenly something about his aura seemed to change ever so slightly, as if he’d just realized something deeply important.
“No, not unfocused. Hidden…”

Dash kept her eyes on the floor a few steps ahead of her, but her normally undead heart was close to bursting with how hard it pounding in her chest, like an avalanche falling off a cliff and crashing to the ground.
She could feel

“You are trying to hide your rage from me.”
His voice was just ever so slightly different, more curious and interested now. She turned her lowered head slightly to the left, her face liking further away from him.

“Why?”
It was almost like he seemed to know exactly the reason for her anger, yet also did not.

“Perhaps the truth is truly the most obvious answer.”
And with those words of his, she could feel just the barest touch on her mind as his will flowed over her own. She didn’t resist, at least not consciously, and it was gone as soon as it appeared.

“Ooooh, I see.”
He said surprisingly softly, but this was even more fear-inducing than if he had been shouting at her. It was moments like these that she never knew what to expect next from the enigmatic monster that she served.
Sometimes, he gave her a compliment and let her leave to go back to whatever she was doing earlier after their training session was finished.

At other times…she would regret ever living and curse the day she was born.

What came next was not what she’d expected or feared. Instead of doing nothing or using his devastating power on her, the stallion turned away from her.
“Then what is your hesitation, Rainbow Dash? Give in to the anger that demands your freedom!”

Now facing the fire and standing up on his muscular hind legs, Sombra stretched out his forelegs to either side in what was the most completely open and vulnerable position she had ever seen him in.

“Strike me down!”

Rainbow’s answer was almost immediate, the Pegasus not daring to even move her head to look at him directly.
“I have no such wish, master.”

The fire suddenly burnt brighter and hotter, and in the span of blink the Sire whirled himself about with a snarl and one hoof skillfully yanked the mare’s weapon from it’s scabbard and pressed the sharpened end of the blade to her throat.

“Pathetic and idiotic!”
He did not hide his own anger from her, and she kept her head lowered even as the tip of the blade cut ever so gently into her skin and blood appeared.
“A mighty Pegasi vampire, a millennia in age and training endlessly each day and night, filled with such wrath and hate and yet so utterly crippled by melancholy and indecision! All of it due to the sudden and foolish attachment to a mortal mare.”

She raised her head slightly now, and her voice was stronger than she thought it would be.
“There is no melancholy or indecision in this choice. Twilight Sparkle is strong in some ways, but also naive and weak in others. Lingering on the past made me weak too, I moved on from that.”

“Do you say so? Yet Sparkle’s potential DWARFS yours.”
Rainbow’s head snapped up and she locked eyes with him.

“Does it not?”

She answered him nothing, but her head would not lower or look away, nor did her eyes.

“No?”
He questioned one last time.

“So what if it does?”
Her voice carried just a bit of bitterness in it. She still had no response to the cut in her throat he’d made.

The blade slowly pulled away from her, and he now carried it in his hoof.
“Rise, Rainbow Dash.”
His voice was stern. The Pegasus rose to her hooves, her neck wound not quite healing just yet due to the effect of the room.
Slowly, Sombra walked now in front of her, the brilliant blue flame having gone back to its original power and brightness.

“It’s is the way of our kind, the way of the Apex Predator, to destroy all who stand against us in our climb to the pinnacle of power in any form it takes. To eliminate our rivals and throw off the chains that hold us back, is it not?”
He stood a few steps from Rainbow and he held his right foreleg forward holding the blade itself, offering her the handle. She looked down at it for a moment and realized what it was the elder creature was saying.

“Who stands in your way, Dash? Who holds YOU back?”

Slowly, her own foreleg rose, and she took hold of the weapon’s handle firmly. His voice, meanwhile, became more powerful and probing.
“Who is it that made you into what you now are, and is responsible for you being imprisoned in darkness all these centuries? Who is it who has held you back from the sky you have always loved so well?”
And now he stepped forward, till the tip of the blade was directly in her where his black heart was.

“Anyone at all?”
He said, towering over her as he stood again on his hind legs and using a foreleg to raise her weapon until the tip was touching his chest, and now he stretched his forelegs to either side of himself.

“If so, only your ability to act on any advantage you have can save you from their continued domination.”
His flaming eyes dove into her dimmer ones, his voice strong and unshaken.
“Use it, especially now when in a position and location that affects them more than it does yourself.”

Rainbow Dash’s entire body was stiff with unreleased energy, the blade twitching ever so gently.
He was right, after all. Even though he was still greater than her in this specific location, he would also be more easily exhausted than she would be, and it wasn’t like he was telling her to attack him from a distance.
Here and now, her sword’s tip was right above his heart, and he was in a precariously disadvantageous position. His horn wasn’t even glowing either!
This was it. This was her chance for freedom from his cruel regime and merciless control!

And yet, the strength and willingness to just push the blade forward and end his existence…was simply nowhere to be found.

He was evil, but King Sombra was still her Sire. He was still the only sapient companion she’d had for possibly ten or so generations.
He’d been her tormentor and her trainer, and even the closest thing she’d had to a father, an uncle, a friend, for much longer than she ever would have lived as a mortal pony.
Sure, he had changed her life and destiny and stolen so much from her, yet he also was the one who’d trained her to master the dark powers and also her given her a goal to work toward besides simply trying to escape from this massive dungeon.
And it was for those reasons, and more, that ultimately…
“I… I cannot, my master.”
She lowered the blade.

The dark vampiric stallion shook his head for a second and let out a heavy grunt that sounded like a growl of a lesser beast before he came back down to his hooves.
“And this is why my disappointment with you grows by the second.”
He said more loudly than usual, clenching his jaw. Placing a hoof on her shoulder again, he looked her in the eye while his voice took on something equivalent to a mentor-like tone.
“Don’t be bogged down by the choices of the past, both yours and mine. Simply accept them, REVEL in them even. And seeing as how you are striking a kinship with our guest, pursue it.”
He leaned in closer and spoke a little bit lower.
“Only then, can you escape the shadow of your regretful past.”

Then he pulled away from the slightly-surprised Pegasus and turned away, walking slowly to the other side of the room where there was a sort of makeshift stone throne.

“You detest me, more than you have for a great while, for making you tell so very many lies to the Unicorn. Good. Use that for your motivation. But that is not the only reason why I have called you here, my young apprentice.”
He sat down on the throne and several tendrils of shadow came from his body and began to slowly crawl up the walls like snakes.
“Something far more important at this moment has truly occurred.”

Rainbow’s interest was immediately piqued, and she stood to her full height(on all fours, not bipedal). Her eyes were somewhat wide, as the one who sired her never talked like this unless something REALLY awesome was happening or had happened.

“You do remember that one night, approximately 20 years ago, when I summoned you with a source of highly important news?”
Rainbow thought back hard, but nothing was fast in coming up. She clenched her jaw as she tried hard, shoving her way through memories uncounted to try and pinpoint the exact the elder vampire was referring to.

But alas, she failed to-WAIT!

“Yeah! Yeah, I remember now! It was-it was the birth of somepony that was so great even in here we both felt it… or something that?”

“Precisely, my apprentice. Or more precisely, it was birth of a very unique and exceptional Unicorn pony. One who possessed an extraordinarily powerful intrinsic link to the Ley Lines that run along and below the entire length and breadth of Equestria itself.”
His voice, having a minor sort of dark echoing effect even in this Magic-draining room, took on an almost regal tone that sent a shiver down Rainbow’s spine.

“Not only that, but it was as if even the stars themselves felt a great excitement the moment she came forth into the world.
On that night, we both saw through the windows how the Moon was full and the color of blood, the sky was clear, and a great host of falling stars were scene in the nightly heavens. The birth of this one special Unicorn was the beginning of a great many things, both of light darkness, that would soon begin to thus occur.”

Dash unconsciously bit her lip. What did that awesomely sweet event have to do with today/tonight? Was there something else that she was not aware of that had happened, or would soon enough?

“The fact also is this: when this pony was born, I was able to push my senses to their absolute limit and realized that the same years bloom of Roses, Lilies, Orchids, Peonies, Cherry Blossoms, and Sunflowers were at their greatest in many years. This showed to me that apparently this pony is not a stallion, but rather a mare.”

Dash was growing more intrigued by the moment. She was well-aware of just how deep King Sombra’s knowledge was of all forms of the supernatural, but he never ceased to amaze her whenever he demonstrated it firsthoof. Like right now.

“A mare, master?”
For Dash, who had learned during her fillyhood that she was the kind of pony who was attracted to both mares and stallions, the news that this cool and unusual new pony who could do all these amazing awesome things was in fact a mare really made her wonder, for the millionth time now, if she really has grown over the centuries to prefer mares in general.
The fact that her only sentient companion was freaking KING SOMBRA, who to say he had never been gentle to her was the understatement of the millennia, really helped push her in that direction, to be perfectly honest!

“This special Unicorn shall be the one who can break the barrier between realms and bring forth a new age of Magic upon this world in particular. What that new age shall itself be aligned with…is anypony’s guess.”

Hmm, so the world itself would be changed by this mysterious new pony who was literal out born a world-shaker? AND it was a mare?
Sheesh, only her being a Pegasus would have made this super-special pony even cooler in Rainbow’a eyes!
Dash had been listening carefully to everything her master and Sire had been telling her thus far, but she could never have expected the bomb he dropped with his next set of words.
“You already know who that chosen mare will be, Rainbow Dash: for her Magic is Amethyst in color.”

THAT got a real reaction from the Pegasus.
“W-w-what? You-you mean…Twilight?”
She stuttered and then just stared at him, dumbfounded and confused.

“Yes. That little pony, Twilight Sparkle… she is the one. The only pony alive who can perform this.”

“How is that… possible?”

“Power. That is how.”

Sombra’s voice was like a stern teacher again.
“And as you and I both are now aware, via her managing to gain magical entry to a place that was sealed off by the goddess’s of Day and Night themselves, this young Unicorn already wields a great deal of it.”
He now leaned forward, and his voice took on a far more menacing intensity as he fixed his vicious eyes on Rainbow’s own.

“There is indeed one little detail that I have not forgotten, little one. For over a thousand years we have been imprisoned together in this place. I have not been a gentle master at all, and never once have I hesitated to remind you of your station whenever you started to become too overconfident.”

Rainbow didn’t try to stop the shudder that ran through her, the memories of countless beatings coming back again. But she forced herself to burn through it and continue listening.

“Yet never once have you attempted to kill or seize control over me. No matter what I did to you that would make anypony else hate me exceedingly and want nothing more than to seek my end…you remain steadfast and loyal regardless of it all, and always tell me the truth without ever trying to find a way to tell an uncatchable lie.”
He shifted slightly, and looked legitimately to the closest he ever could get to seeming outright baffled while still suspicious.
“What I want to know is, why? Why are you taking so very long to do anything, and only now appear to have the rage that you should have had centuries ago… a rage that only fully appeared after I ordered you to take the blame for what I myself did and bear it yourself.”

He eyes her with a most frightening curiosity, unnaturally powerful eyes scanning her for any sign of weakness to exploit, any sort of tell that he would use to make her reveal her secrets.
But before he could pick her apart piece by piece, the Pegasus fully straightened up and met his gaze perfectly.

“I simply never really saw an opportunity to take you down, King Sombra. You’ve always been stronger, smarter, tougher, overall just more awesome than I ever could be. I never had a chance, and I knew it.”

Sombra was not exactly stunned by that revelation, as he always knew that the mare was much smarter than she let on. But he was taken aback just a little, regardless. Not only was his apprentice more clever than she looked, but she was by far vastly more patient than he’d ever seriously anticipated.
Patience was never Rainbow Dash’s greatest gift, and he’d seen her coming close to cracking many times over. But she always found some way to distract herself from getting too bored and reckless, and proceeded to quickly bounce back each time.

Now, her eyes became grimmer, and she let just a tad of the venom she held within her heart out into her voice.
“But now… things are different. There is another else here now with me, and I mean besides you and all the monsters you can make or call up from Tartarus or whatever. A pony who can break a super awesome Divine Seal and has your acknowledgment of having a connection to Magic unlike anything or anypony neither you nor me have seen or ever even heard of before. I finally have a chance now!”
She spoke now with full conviction, no more doubt or nervousness or fear of the consequences remaining in her voice, eyes, or stance. He watched her in silence, and with another grin on his darkening face.

“You have Sired me, trained me, and showed me how to focus on a single goal for not just years, but also for decades, even centuries! You are the one responsible for me being the mare I am today, and for that I am eternally grateful. But I have never forgotten the fact that…that you stole my original life in doing so, and just tonight you’ve forced me deceive the only other living pony I have seen since my foalhood, and likely made me look like a vile, uncontrollable lunatic…just so that…so that you’ll be able to convince her to let you go free and not just let you rot here with me for eternity.”

Her face morphed into a pained scowl as she forced the words out, and she had to swallow a few times.
“And even then, she still didn’t look at me or treat me like I’m the monster here. She did not judge me simply because of what I said. You set me on a road that I couldn’t get off of, but now, with Twilight’s arrival…”

She looked down at the floor for a second here and brushed the me foreleg against the other, before raising her head again and looking him in the eye once more.
“There is another that has made itself visible to me. And I intend to…take it.”

Sombra had never looked so… proud, since she’d first set eyes on him more than a thousand years ago, and Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but freeze up right there. She just didn’t know how to respond to the look he was now giving her.
Slowly he lifted himself from the fake throne, and crossed the distance between them, his hoof steps heavy yet much lighter sounding than before.

“Indeed. Pledge yourself to this new path that lies before you, Rainbow Dash of Cloudsdale. Relish in the gifts you have possessed since your first flight, as well as in those I have bestowed upon you.”
He put one hoof on her left shoulder again, and turned her with him as he walked her to the door, his voice both strong and still keeping that teacher-esque manner.

“Nurture the bond you’ve already established with the young Spell Caster, and let it grow endlessly.”
She kept staring up at the massive stallion as they both walked, her eyes slightly wide with some form of excitement and curiosity as he spoke to her this way.

“Only then will you be able to cast off the shackles that hold you down, and uncover a power beyond imagination.”
Now he removed his hoof and stood still as she took an another few steps forward and turned to face him one last time before leaving the room.

“Only then will you be able to destroy…the rival before you.”
And he held one hoof up again, and vaguely gestured to himself once more, with his head dominantly raised a little higher than usual.

Rainbow Dash swallowed and nodded before she spoke and bowed one last time respectfully,
“And I will not fail you in this, my master.”
And she turned away, and marched out the enormous door.

Her master’s eyes followed her closely, and his deadly fangs were bared in a fierce grin as the sound of the massive stone constructs closing and the haunting confidence of her words echoed through the room.

Oh, I know you won’t.

Author's Note

Sorry if this one feels a bit rushed at the end.

Open the gate, close your eyes.

Twilight stood before the great main door, watching it silently with concentration etched on her face and in her eyes, her horn having a very light glow.
“It’s not a matter of strength or might to open this door, Twilight Sparkle.”
The dark voice of the large deathly stallion was heard all around her.

“I…I understand that. If it was, you would have gotten out long ago.”

“Exactly. Take your time.”

Rainbow Dash stood beside her master, watching in silence and trying to figure out what Twilight was doing exactly. What hadn’t the Unicorn just cast a Spell on the huge constructs and opened them, like she did before?

“Not trying to interrupt here or anything like that, but how did you get inside here in the first place? I mean, if this is so complicated for you right now, how was it the first time?”
Her voice sounded a little annoyed already. The Unicorn sighed softly in turn at the vampire’s words, making said being bite her lip with a minor grin.

“Please,” she said, “I need to focus right now. The weaving of the Seal is far more complex in here than it was outside. It’s like it has adapted to what I did and is now trying its darnedest to keep me from escaping. Now, let me see…”

Another few moments passed as Twilight carefully scanned and prodded the power of the Seal with her own Magic, feeling it inside and out and slowly cracking down on each weak point for better control and exploitation.
Finally, the last link was broken, and she grunted out in effort,
“OK, now just OPEN!”

There was a brief glow of light along her whole length of the doors now, and a crackling brightness of blue in-between them. Then the door creaked and complained, seemingly moving until it finally open just enough to let the moonlight in.

Twilight sighed and her frontal body sagged in relief, but then everything happened at once.

A thunderous crushing pain exploded through her body, originating from her right side, and she found herself flying through the air one moment then crashing into something else solid and unyielding the next, the sound and sensation of horribly loud cracking almost deafening her ears.

Her head wasn’t merely swimming, it was DROWNING in a twirling mess of blurry stars and colors, and it all too agonizingly slow for her to eventually realize that she was lying on the hard, cold ground, on her right side, as limp as a broken doll. Her entire body was numb, and she couldn’t move even a single hoof.

Yet somehow, her incredible mind had apparently resorted to a sort of calm, logical approach and explanation to her current shattered physical condition.

The numbness told her that her nerves were so heavily affected by the unseen attack that they had stopped working, most likely due to something in her brain, AKA head trauma.
The inability to move told her that her nervous system, again, was not working at all. Her body was disconnected from its internal control system.
The numb dizziness and inability to properly see anymore told her that she’d just sustained extreme head trauma.

The hard metallic scent and taste in her nostrils and mouth told her she was bleeding from her orifices…
The blurry heat in her eyes told her that she was crying. Crying warm salty water, mingled with something deep red.

Rainbow Dash watched as Twilight worked on the Seal, and the Magic was visible easily due to her enhanced vampiric eyesight.
She could feel her undead heart racing in her breast for the first time in countless years, and somehow it felt both painful and awesome! She was about to be free at last, she was going to be able to soar through the fresh clean air and kiss the sky with all the power in her wings again!

She was so excited as those accursed and massive doors began to open… that she didn’t feel her master’s power suddenly spike up rapidly until the first blow was already struck and it was too late.

She heard the sudden strike, the crunching sound of flesh and bone being well-nigh obliterated by an absurdly powerful force striking it.
She knew that sound well. She’d been the one whose body had made it repeatedly during her ‘training’ sessions with her master.

“Wha-?!”

A storm of hundreds of tendrils composed of pure blackness speeding for her were all she saw when she snapped her head to the left, eclipsing her entire field of vision.
The battle was short and one-sided. Despite her inferior strength and experience to her master, Rainbow Dash was still a prodigious athlete, and she skillfully bobbed and weaved at lightning fast speeds, leaving behind sharp whips of wind and powerful mini-explosions in midair as she tried to avoid his attacks.
But it was not enough in this limited space. She was still just a beginner compared to the much older vampire, and with a swift and unseen pillar of black crystal from beneath a wall of blackness, the mare was sent crashing through the stone wall and into one of the gate’s towers with a thunderous crash.

Even as she was swiftly up and lunging out through the hole she’d just made, Dash saw the last tail ends of the shadowy mass disappearing through the crack in the doors, just before they closed again with a resounding boom.

Her despair at losing her chance for freedom, rapidly rising into her mind, was suddenly erased as soon as it had appeared when, by chance, her gaze traveled to look in front of her… and she saw the broken body of the young Unicorn mare.

“Oh no! Please, NO!! Twilight! Please don’t die!”
She rushed to the limp form, and did not know what to do. She tried to pick up the poor Unicorn, but one touch and she realized just how BROKEN she actually was.

“Please, Twilight… I just met you a few days ago and all that…(sniffle) but I just, I don’t know… I just CANT lose you!”

Rainbow Dash leaned over the bloody broken body of the gentle, kind-hearted… beautiful, young Unicorn, and began to sob.

Outside, barely complete, the vast cloud of nightmarish darkness circled around the large castle like a living sandstorm, traversing all over it, even shooting up high into the sky as a black mass of malevolent shade.
It swirled around in the air above the castle like a gargantuan whirlpool, and somehow began sucking in all the real clouds around it like a black hole with a howling, moaning noise like the winds that are heard in the heights of winter in the mountain.
Great storm clouds that had covered mountains and forests and had been ready to unleash their vast holdings of rainwater upon the earth were suddenly being reeled in like a fish on a hook and swallowed down into the dark mass, the same way that apple cider would be drunken down from a mug by another version of Rainbow Dash in another, better world.

The dark unnatural cloud swarmed over the cliffs and the woods and the mountain highway that had brought Twilight here in the first place, but soon it returned to the deathly castle that had been his prison for just over a millennia.

The inky smoky blackness, with ghastly images of numerous creatures crying out with mournfully contorted faces and reaching out in vain trying to escape the swirling void before disappearing back into it, circled over the great castle again before finally descending.
It fell down in long streams, like blood pouring down from a freshly killed carcass that was hung up and gutted, and condensing around itself until the large dark-colored stallion materialized, the tattered remnants of his warriors cloak blowing in the now very real wind along with his midnight black mane and tail.
Behind him, the shadows were fully visible, looking like smoke from a great fire while also being the fire itself.

Casting his vision upwards toward the heavens, Sombra grinned fierce and terrible, his nostrils filling with one thousand different scents and sorting through each of them in the time it takes a pony to take a breath.
The weather had suddenly grown both colder and dryer by now, and already numerous dead leaves were being caught up in the wind and gathered together in little tornadoes that were forming nearby.

The dark Unicorn creature closed his eyes and turned his head in the direction of the moon, now revealed as the clouds had all moved away from hiding it or been absorbed by the terrible shadows, and it shone down upon him with what could only be described as cold disdain.

He opened his eyes now and saw the bright light, and even if it was bothering to look at directly, he grinned even more menacingly.
It was the first time in centuries he could see it directly with his own two eyes, not in a vision or with a barrier in between.
He then looked beyond and saw the stars….the worlds, even the vast gatherings of worlds and stars uncounted that were referred to as ‘galaxies’ beyond with his vastly advanced eyesight.
The mighty vampire looked around and found that almost everything still looked exactly the same as he had remembered it before his corruption of Rainbow Dash and their shared imprisonment.
Now, there was something right in front of him.

Another door.

Sombra chuckled darkly and narrowed his eyes. That was the last thing standing in his way to walking back into the outside world.
He raised a single hoof, slamming it down to the ground hard and saw a current of dark purple crystal travel swiftly to the door, springing up like blood from a sliced artery and covered it completely with hundreds of little spiky vine-like pieces of itself. The vampire felt his horrid power invading every single fiber of the metal and wood.
And it was so very wonderful.

He calmly blinked once and watched as the altered door collapsed on itself and was dust before it even hit the ground, showing a long stone bridge beyond it.
He chuckled and smirked triumphantly.

Somewhere nearby, he heard and felt the sensation of mortal grief. It was… a pony crying.

“Hmm?”
He turned and focused more for one seconds on the sound he had just heard by now. He knew that voice, there was only one pony who had a voice of that exact frequency and had a heart that devoted.

He laughed, and the air shivered from the sound that he made.

Well, I suppose that it has been long enough. It is now time to fulfill my end of this deal.

He tapped his hoof to the ground now, more calmly this time, and saw the crystal take over the huge doors now. But this time, they could only force it open somehow.
The Magic Seal was still upon them, refusing to be fully purged from their place of enchantment.
But just then, he felt something in himself. It was like… a minor warning, a tingling sensation growth that was somewhere else. He forced the doors back open and entered them physically with his own body.

Inside, Dash was kneeling over the body of the unmoving Unicorn, and her jaws were upon that poor throat.
The blood of Twilight was nowhere to be seen, either.

“I see that you have turned to the only solution you could think of to save your dear little friend.”
He hissed out, walking up to the Pegasus mare whom he could also now sense was overflowing with hate and fear that she didn’t even bother trying to hide anymore.

“But you won’t be enough on your own.”

As soon as Dash gently pulled her fangs away from the body, he brought one of his own hooves up to his jaws and bit into it violently. His own black blood, if it even could be called that anymore, oozed and spilled down his foreleg.
He moved closer while Rainbow Dash moved back reluctantly, and he telekinetically raised his blood and circled it into the air above Twilight’s broken head, then let it fall down and form a perfect black circle around her crumpled form which immediately burnt the stone floor, raising a thin stream of amber-colored smoke.

“She’s as good as dead, Dash,”
He growled, already knowing what his Fledgling was thinking,
“Being gentle will just waste more time. Besides…”
And now he turned to grin at her, “Don’t forget who she is and what she is capable of. She will be fine.”

Twilight was in darkness. Pure, utter darkness. She could feel her own body, and it was one word: helpless.
She could feel fear, and wondered if she was still crying out there in the physical world.

The despair was also crushing down on her, and the sheer pointlessness of it all was at the forefront of her thoughts.
All she’d wanted was to free her new friend from an eternity of imprisonment in darkness, and now here she was, dying helpless and alone, her last action having been to instead free an ancient horror upon the world.
A monster that had manipulated and tricked her into letting him out and had now killed her.

But just recently, she’d felt something odd, like it was biting into her. And she could feel something going down into her… body, maybe? Either way, it was something, and it made her feel. Feel like some of the energy that she had completely lost was being slowly returned to her, but in a different sense.

She suddenly became more acutely aware of her own physical presence now, and she didn’t know how or why.
And she felt… an odd feeling. Like there were strange strings, and they were wrapped around her limbs. Wait, did she have limbs? If she did, then she supposed that THIS was how it felt to have them tied with something thin and strong.

The strange sensation pulled lightly, or something like that, and so she pulled back… and was met with utter weariness again.

How am I tired? I don’t even have a body right now, it feels like Limbo! Wait, I am in Limbo? If so, how do I feel..?
Get it together, Twilight. Just… focus on what you can feel for real, and panic later. That’s it, panic later.

But it mattered not! She forced herself to pull on it again, and again. Each time it became easier, and she felt her energy returning in waves.

Sombra and Rainbow watched as the broken, heavily bloodied body of the young Unicorn began to shift as the bloody black circle somehow glowed, and her horribly mangled, practically CAVED-IN ribcage began to fill out again, the cracking sounds of bones being reattached and forcing themselves back into place.
Her gashed skin began to pull itself back together along with her muscle, and they could both see and HEAR her partially-crushed skull *POP* itself back into its proper shape and size.
Her broken legs snapped back into place, and countless little twitches along her whole body were going off, indicating her nervous system was being reconnected and realigned with itself across all corners of her form.

This…did not make sense. Why was her body not being encased in any sort of light or shadow, but instead was healing physically?

But Sombra forced any doubts from his own mind and waited for a few seconds longer, then he pulled away, the bite wound on his hoof healing up in seconds as shadowy energy emanated from the stump and grew fully into another complete hoof.
His sword-like horn flashed once and his circle was completely undone before he stepped forward and towered over the newly revived mare as she slowly began to stand, and Rainbow silently came up and stood beside him.

Twilight felt herself, along with the sky above her head and the world beneath her hooves.
Her body… it was healed, it was rejuvenated. But how?
She felt strange, but quickly chalked it up to still being in a state of shock and not fully grasping just WHAT had happened to her just yet.
She had died, and now had been revived in some way.

Slowly breathing in and out as she felt the last of her grievous wounds fading away, she opened her eyes and looked up, right into the eyes of the monster that had killed her and was apparently responsible for her resurrection.
He grinned down at her something dark and foreboding, and the stars behind his head only added to the deathly aura that rolled off him as naturally as reverence and respect emanated from the Princesses.

“Hello again, Twilight.”
The vampire greeted.

Twilight did not move or reply, but what happened next she did not expect, and blinks rapidly as if she woke up from a dream. The reason? Rainbow had dashed forwards and was now hugging her!
“Twilight! Oh Twilight, you’re okay…”

After recovering from the surprise, the Unicorn slowly hugged back. She couldn’t believe she was actually hugging a vampire, but she did.
Her mind was still just a bit confused by the last few minutes of pain and death and now resurrection, but she felt that this hug was welcome and enjoyable.

For a few special minutes they just stood there in their hug, and Sombra actually did not disturb them.
Eventually though, they both gently pulled away from the other’s embrace, surprised at how legitimately comfortable it had felt. But they quickly snapped to attention as the unmistakable sound of the elder vampire approaching them made itself clear.
For Twilight especially, the fear was slowly starting to return in force. He had just KILLED her, but then brought her back. Why?

She began to shudder again as the shock was starting to wear off far too soon and now the phantom pain was starting to appear, the agony of her body being shattered by his unseen blow and her last moments of life being spent realizing that she’d made a horrid mistake and couldn’t fix it flooding her awareness.
Yet before everything could strike fully, her face was suddenly being held in a pair of light blue hooves and she opened her purple eyes(when did she shut them?) and find herself staring into dark pinkish ones.

-I legit don’t know the exact color of Rainbow’s eyes, sorry-

“Shhh, it’s OK now, Twily. Please believe me, OK? I’m here now.”
Rainbow said desperately, trying to calm down the poor mare before she could freak out and possibly invite the wrath of the nightmarish beast nearby who was watching them and clearly running out of patience.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Twilight’s and closed her eyes, just doing whatever she could think of to try and induce some sense of peace and calm in the near-outright panicking Unicorn.

Dash rubbed the other pony’s cheeks gently with her hooves, she nuzzled her softly, and she even resorted to using a hoof to brush the purple bangs from the front of the other’s face.
She didn’t know how, but a multitude of memories had come by now into her mind’s eye. Memories of seeing other ponies doing these things to each other when one was fearful and needed to be comforted.
Memories of seeing her father doing this to comfort her mother all those years ago…

Rainbow Dash did not know when she herself had started to cry.

Slowly, second by second, breath by breath, Twilight could feel her heart rate steadily dropping. Eventually, her mind slowly stopped racing with images of terror and pain, she was soon able to overcome her hyperventilation, and her eyes stopped streaming so that she could finally see clearly again.
Clearly enough to see the Pegasus in front of her, eyes shut and tears streaming down her own cheeks as she pressed her forehead against Twilight’s and was cupping the latter’s face in her hooves.

What? Why is she… wait, is she crying out of concern for me?
The young Unicorn thought to herself.
Rainbow Dash, the 1,000+ year old vampire Pegasus, upon seeing her starting to panic and hyperventilating, could have done anything. She could have let the panic attack run its course, or she could have just spoken loudly and forced the traumatized Unicorn to focus or else.
But what had she done? She had held Twilight close and began crying…because she cared about her that much? So soon, too?

Alas, just as the Unicorn opened her mouth to speak and was slowly raising a hoof of her own, their tender moment was finally interrupted.

“Follow me, both of you.”

Came the black commanding voice, and then to Twilight’s even greater confusion and uncertainty, the creature of the night walked past them and began to move deeper into the castle itself rather than leave through the now-open gate.

Back into the castle? But didn’t he just-?

Twilight didn’t move for a moment, but when she heard a sharp SHING and then looked down to see a razor-sharp spike of black crystal just next to her ribs and under her barrel, she jumped up and away it with a strangled gasp and began to follow the terrifying stallion.

“C-coming sir!”
She stuttered out fearfully, but still keeping a reasonable distance from him. She knew now at this point it was useless, since if he wanted to hurt/KILL her again, then she would not have a chance of stopping him. But it felt just a teensy weensy bit better to be further away from him than closer.

She knew that she had to hold her panic down, lest she annoy him. She could restrain it properly and then let it all out later when she was alone.
What had she done to warrant him even striking her so violently, anyway? But now she heard the Pegasus come up next to her, and she felt the smallest bit more calm.
And when she felt the other pony nuzzle her cheek softly and then put a wing on her back in a comforting gesture, she couldn’t help herself and turned to look at Dash with a grateful smile on her face.

“Thanks, Rainbow.”
She whispered as she leaned forward to briefly nuzzle the other pony, and they both walked closely side by side to follow the dark master back into the shadowy depths of his dreadful castle.

Under the castle(I may not have good titles in the future, sorry)

The Unicorn could not help the shudder that overtook and stayed with her as Sombra led them deeper into the bowels of the castle.
He did not take the directions left or right at the top of the stairway the way she had, but instead he simply focused on the wall directly in front of them for approximately two seconds as his horn glowed bright red.

Twilight watched in surprise and fascination as the seemingly blank wall started to blur, the effect instantly being recognized by the lavender Unicorn as a ‘Glamour’, a Spell that was used for extremely powerful illusions, some of which could in fact interact with reality as if the Spellcaster was strong or skilled enough.
So apparently, King Sombra had a Glamour right here, at the top of the first set of stairs in his castle, which concealed… wait, what a big door!

Indeed, the Magic Illusion dissipated and what was once a simple wall was revealed to in fact be a large set of well-made wooden doors. They looked like something from the really old days of royalty, which made sense considering how gosh darn old this castle and its two sole inhabitants really were!
The images of several monstrous pony-like creatures were carved or painted into the main frame, and frightful illustrations of sharp-fanged serpents were slithering up the edges of the gold-colored door.

Why this one in particular was so elaborate compared to the others which were all overall good-looking, but not super fancy, was beyond Twilight’s ability to understand at this moment. Maybe it hid something important.

The two magnificent doors were unlocked by Sombra’s own unspoken will, the lavender mare could tell as she heard the inner unbolting mechanisms working despite the elder vampire having not even cast a Spell… At least, not one she saw or heard him cast.
Walking through without a word, the shadowy stallion was almost lost to the Unicorn mare’s eyes as he seemed to be blending in so perfectly with the shadows that it was as if he was indeed one with them. Rainbow Dash hurried forward while gently pushing Twilight to do the same via the wing on the latter’s back.

“Cmon Twily, we can’t waste time taking it all in.”

The Unicorn shook her head and sped up too, and soon they both were in the shadows as well, where Twilight found that now Sombra was more easily visible when they were in here with him.
How peculiar and interesting…

Deeper and deeper the two vampires led Twilight into the mysterious subterranean realm that existed beneath the castle itself. Twilight was quick to recognize the usage of Spatial Dimension Magic, but it was on a level that she had never seen before or scarcely even imagined. She had suspected that this sort of power was being applied to this castle which would be the only real explanation for it being larger on the inside, but this scale was just… unheard of.

The hallway Sombra was leading them down led to another unblocked doorway, which itself seemed to be walled off by pure darkness like a solid barrier.
He didn’t slow down and walked right on through it like it wasn’t even there. (Dark Souls boss room, amiright?)

“What the? Rainbow, have you-?”

“Yeah Twi, I’ve been down here before. Only twice, but I’ve seen this all, OK?”
Rainbow’s wing softly rubbed up and down on Twilight’s back, the Pegasus doing her best to make Twilight feel safe and reassuring.
“It’s alright. Now let’s go, we don’t wanna keep him waiting.”
Her voice had a level of intensity that reminded the lavender mare of the seriousness of their situation. She also got another quick flashback to her own apparent murder and swiftly concluded that she didn’t want to go through that again, ESPECIALLY if the monster decided to keep her alive to legitimately punish her…

With a mutual nod, the two ponies stepped together into the black wall… and Twilight’s eyes shot open so wide that they’d register as “comedy anime girl eyes” in another world.

The hallway now gave way to a bridge… a bridge that lead across a VAST subterranean space that was both very dark and yet somehow well-lit by light sources Twilight could not see.
The construct they were all treading upon was wide enough for a dozen stallion knights to march abreast, and it had no railing on the sides. Plus all around it, the area looked like some kind of gargantuan cave.

She walked closer to the edge on her left and peered down over it, but she felt a sudden case of dizziness hitting her. Pulling back and taking a few moments to catch her breath, she then began to look around her, left and right and up, hoping deep down that she could at least get a read on the sheer size of this place.

Casting her eyes around as analytically as she could, the Unicorn soon came to the inescapable conclusion that they were surrounded by over a thousand yards of open space, and the fact that there was a sort of fog hanging far beneath them left her with the inability to remotely gauge their height from the bottom of the abyss…

If it had a bottom at all, that is.

The ceiling of this cavelike realm was a dull faded gray, and Twilight thought that she could see a sort of fogginess up there too, and there were also long thin swordlike spikes of stone and dark Crystal hanging down from up there in the distance, with a few even protruding up from the foggy clouds below.
The air itself felt…bad, for lack of a better word to describe it. It was not still or unmoving, there WAS a wind down here. But it felt unwelcoming to her, deathly and eerie.

“What is this place?”
She finally had to ask aloud, albeit in a low voice. She didn’t receive any real answer, just a, “Dunno much myself…” from Dash.

As they walked along the long bridge pathway, Twilight soon caught sight of some unusual vegetation that was growing or clinging to the edge of the structure, like vines up a wall.
But when she looked more closely at them, she realized that they were in fact flowers. More specifically, they were dead flowers, a few of which she could vaguely identify as daisies and roses.

They were more akin to fungal growths at this point than actual healthy flora, and several larger roses had a small thin trail of gray fumes slowly trickling upwards from their wilted petals.
The Unicorn looked everywhere with uncertainty and morbid curiosity, and pulled just a bit closer to Rainbow Dash to keep from getting too close to some of the more dreadful flowers that somehow were still standing. There was definitely some sort of foul Black Magic at play, no doubt about that.
These ghastly gray things… maybe the scholarly side of her would be willing to study them at all, but only with extended breaks in between each session!

From out of nowhere, as she scanned the vast area all around her, Twilight suddenly caught sight of a door. It was a dark wooden door, and was just floating in the air. It reminded her of one of those older security doors, designed to hold in prisoners when metal bars were not available. It looked sturdy and strong.

“What’s that? A doorway to another secret place?” She whispered to Dash.

“Yeah..” came the reply, “there are a lot of those around here. I’ve personally only been inside a few of them, and never really understood much of what was so important or anything else like that.”

Twilight had so many new questions, but the atmosphere of their current location convinced her to keep them to herself.
She let herself gaze at the mysterious floating door before turning to look forward again, and saw that they still had a long way to go. She sighed.

The walk continued in relative silence, and Twilight saw a total of two more doors magically appear in the air as well higher up, and they too looked old and heavily reinforced with metal bolts.
Whatever the purpose of these strange magical devices, Twilight was certain that there was something exceptionally valuable hidden behind them. She could just FEEL it the longer she looked at each time, it was almost like they were beckoning her to make her way to and open them when she could.
The bookworm made a mental note that if-no, WHEN she got back here somehow, she would find a way to gain access to those mysterious portals. Yeah, she was certain of it now: those were portals to some great and fascinating secret.

Eventually, the trio crossed the cold bridge and were now walking on the other side of those cavernous realm, where the Unicorn mare noticed that thee were now other beings here, and in great numbers.
They were… ponies? But something felt really off about them, too.
“Hey wait, what are those..?”

“Master Sombra and I call ‘em ‘Shadow Ponies’. Don’t mess with them unless you want sparring sessions the way I did a lot, they are scared of and only listen to him. Stay close, Twily…”

Twilight quickly noticed the oddities about these creatures. They were pure black, like Sombra’s mane and tail, and had tiny pieces of themselves flaking off and dissipating into the air like ashes. Their eyes were like orbs of shifting blood with very little detail, just various shades of red within them.
They also had fangs which she could see somewhat of, but she had to look away after that, the reason being that the creatures glared at her with such pure malevolence, looking like they were just aching to attack and rip her to pieces given half the chance, yet she also noticed how several of them looked at Rainbow with even fiercer aggression and yet all cowered away when Sombra got close or simply even turned his head in their direction.

They are terrified of him. At least we have something in common.

On the other hoof, Dash mentally noted that, thankfully, Twilight was not trying to pull away from her or anything. That was good, since it meant that the newcomer wasn’t getting at all comfortable with this place and so likely wouldn’t make any costly mistakes in the near future.

As they walked past the rows and ranks of the dark bloody-eyed creatures that popped in and out of the many shadows all around, Twilight was soon to notice that the fog was slowly pouring down from the higher up areas like waterfalls, and she caught a quick glimpse behind one such ‘fog-fall’.
It was another dark-colored entrance, but it wasn’t made of wood. It was a door set made of jagged black and dark purple crystal, akin to ice in how cold it was. It was a pair of doors, she could tell, by the shape, the size, and the way there was a small line directly in the middle, indicating separation like how it was with normal ones.
She could only assume that perhaps each fog-fall hid an entry to some other secret chamber as well.

She continued to observe the desolate places they kept coming into, the current one being another hallway that was lined with more dead flowers and grass.
One serious question in particular had by now solidified itself in Twilight’s mind: how exactly was it that she even came here?

She had not really been all that lost when she came upon this accursed castle. She was quite sure of where she came from and where she was at that time, which was an overall uninhabited area of diverse rock types and rugged forests known as The Howling Mountains.

This castle should have been visible from far off and yet it had not been. Surely, other ponies would have eventually found it sooner or later and brought back reports of it and the mapped-out area. The famous adventurer Derring Do had come to this same region years ago, but hadn’t returned with any report of an abandoned castle that did not appear on any maps or in no historical records.
And the most interesting fact about THAT, was that she was the ONLY known pony who had gone exploring this deeply into the treacherous depths of The Howling Mountains and had somehow returned alive and safe.
After all, this was where the fabled Golden Library was built according to legend and many had come in search of it, Twilight herself being one of them.

Whatever happened to all those other ponies, anyway? They couldn’t have gotten in here, Rainbow Dash and Sombra have both repeatedly told me that I’m the first one to break the unbreakable Divine Seal and gain access to the castle.

She tossed ideas in her head as she pondered the latest new mystery about this dangerous and unknown place and its deadly inhabitants.

They could not have been killed by him or Rainbow in the courtyard either since these two were eagerly anticipating me letting them get out there in the starlight from under the roof. If a stranger came to this place, there wouldn’t be any contact due to the Seal. Hmmm, so many questions…

She peeked back at the occasional shadow pony that still crawled out of a dark spot on the floor and walls all around them now and then.
What if the shadow ponies themselves are not bound to this place, and are actually out there in the mountains? Oh dear, what if!?

She inhaled sharply at that thought, but shook her head to try and make sense of it.
No, it doesn’t make any sense. They would’ve spread far and wide if they wanted to, and I doubt that they’re as strong as Sombra or Rainbow Dash, so they can’t just bypass the Seal.
The egghead carefully pondered, using her intellect to distract herself from the long and tedious walk.

The trio continued to travel through the hidden realm under the castle, barren open spaces and sharp rocky terrain being all there was to see, until they finally seemed to arrive at a border or something similar.
It was a river, a stream more specifically. A stream of the blackest water that Twilight, or anypony else really, could have imagined ever seeing in the waking world or in their nightmares. It was like if there was enough ink in this place to make a small river, only the blackness that was on the dark sandy shores wasn’t wet. Rather, it was more akin to a dust covering, as there wasn’t any wetness when Sombra stepped forward and planted his hooves on the overall narrow shoreline.
The ‘water’ had thin wisps of it rising and dissipating into the air, and it did not sound like flowing water does. It somehow instead gave off a very faint sort of ECHO effect, an echo of ancient winds with the movement of mountains and the despair of the helpless and hopeless.

Sombra stood still over the shadowy River, not moving a muscle and looking for all the world like he was either contemplating jumping right in.
But then, the silence as broken…

“Your reprieve is over.”

Twilight was startled due to his growling raspy voice sounding even more invasive and omnipresent than usual, echoing heavily in her mind and yet being crystal clear in wording.

“It will soon be time to come and see her….”
The vampire looked upwards, to the ceiling which was out of sight due to the fog, and sheer height. Twilight’s eyes were wide as she didn’t remember it getting so massive in here. This Magic…how could he expand the space down here so easily!?!

“They are always here, always…they always have been, you know.”
The elder said.

“Who?”
Twilight suddenly inquired without thinking.

Next to her, Rainbow’s face contorted in anguish ever so slightly for several seconds, the mare beside her unable to notice due to her attention being held by witnessing Sombra’s effortless demonstrations of sheer power.

The demonic voice of the Unicorn stallion snarled deeply in the mind of the Pegasus mare,
Say one word to her on the true nature is this River, and I will send your parents some new company.

“My…my parents…after I killed them.”
Now the voice of the Pegasus spoke, and her voice was choked and thick. Twilight felt some strange instinct to hug her and decided to just do so, and she was deeply relieved when Dash not only didn’t push her away, but returned the hug wholly.

“After I slaughtered them all…their ghosts were unable to bucking leave. They wanted…payback…but that was when, when Sombra…he found me, and…”
It was hard for her to speak, and the hug was tight as she forced each word out.

Twilight had no idea, but the vampiric pony’s eyes were alight with emotion. Negative emotion, of a hateful nature, directed solely at the large, dark stallion who had now moved silently behind Twilight and was looking emotionlessly and quietly into the furious, hate-filled eyes of the pony he’d enslaved hundreds of years ago and was now being forced to lie about his true nature and her own actions.
The younger vampire’s words were filled with barely-restrained feelings of pure rage and open hatred for him that she was not even trying to hide anymore. Not since earlier tonight, when he killed the young Unicorn and attempted to turn her… the same way he’d turned Rainbow Dash herself.

That was also one question that came up in both their heads repeatedly: how had Twilight not become a vampire when she was resurrected? Sombra had pretty much performed the Rite of Passage as he had done with Rainbow, so why didn’t it work?

Her hug around Twilight’s upper body, so very gentle yet also tight, was not because of a need for comfort out of grief, as Twilight supposed. It was to anchor her. It was for…restraint.

“When Sombra found me, he used his Magic, and…and he BOUND my parent’s souls here, to this stream…and it became black.”
Twilight was shocked, and her gasp made it perfectly clear. But Rainbow continued, desperate to get this lie out of her way as soon as possible.
“Yeah, I…come down here on rare occasions…to see them.”

“I’m…I’m so sorry.”
The Unicorn sadly said, one hoof rubbing up and down Rainbow’s back in a soothing manner, and she mistook the tension there for sadness.
She had no idea how much this was actually helping Dash stay in control of herself.

The dark stallion let the mares have their hug for a few minutes longer, then turned and walked away from the black stream and off to the right. Breaking apart a moment later, they both followed him down this path which led them along the stream.

As they traveled further into the huge cave system, Twilight noticed more and more how many savage eyes burning in the darkness were watching them, and how it felt like the very shadows themselves were alive and just waiting for their chance to devour the intruders. She was understandably afraid, of course. This whole place felt anathema to her. It was a land of the dead, and she was never meant to trod here.

“Um, uh….R-Rainbow?”

“Yeah?”

“I…I don’t know, but… I don’t think I should be here.”

“Yeah, I also thought as much. You’re alive and so it feels wrong to be here, right?”

“Y-y-yeah, it feels wrong, thats right. Hehe…”
She giggled weakly at her own poor joke.

“But really though, you’re gonna be alright, ok? Just stay close to me.”
She reinforced her words with a slight tug on Twilight using her wing, so that she was practically rubbing her flank against the Unicorn’s with every step she took as they both walked.
The Unicorn looked away with a blush at the close contact.

At some point, they came to a set of rough stone stairs, and Twilight’s eyes widened when she saw a number of old battered helmets and armor and even a few weapons here and there. It looked like there had been a battle here, but there were no bones at all.

Then a harsh wind came screaming around them, it split out of the way for Sombra as if not even daring to touch him and instead whirled around Twilight and Rainbow Dash in a mini-tornado.
The cold effect in the air bit at Twilight and chilled her down to her very bones, so much so her teeth were shattering loudly and she practically threw herself against Rainbow to try and get some amount of warmth with increasing desperation, her mind too busy to think clearly and so she was unable to simply access the kind of Spell perfect for this exact situation.
Rainbow bore her fangs at the wind and hugged Twilight closely, before a thought came to her head.
“Hey Twily, hold up! Can’t you just use some awesome Spell to warm yourself?”

Teeth chattering, the Unicorn looked confused for another few seconds but her expression soon shone as she took in the thought, “Y-y-yeah, I-I-I co-c-could!”
Immediately her horn shined brightly, and soon her teeth stopped chattering and she could pull away from her friend, smiling brightly at her.
“Th-thanks for reminding me, Rainbow. Seriously.”

Rainbow smiled back, but before she could reply, an unnatural howling sound came on the wind. The younger mare froze up for a second, but she soon pulled back a bit closer to Rainbow again and looked around fearfully. The Pegasus scoffed,
“Don’t worry about that, that’s just the Shadow Ponies calling to each other and announcing their anger since they aren’t allowed to get you. Ignore them, they won’t approach us.”

“R-right.”
Twilight wasn’t wholly assured, but felt just a bit better since she was still under Rainbow’s wing, literally, and so she silently promised herself for the thousandth time that she would never leave from it until they were out of this subterranean Tartarus-hole.

Sombra soon led them into a sort of pass, the trail now being flanked by cliffs being several dozen yards up and a grayish blue on color.
As they walked through it, Twilight felt the sensation of eyes being on her, and she hesitantly looked up to see a shadow pony at the top of the cliff on her right. Or at least, it LOOKED like a Shadow Pony, with the exception of it being FAR bigger than any other she’d seen yet.
It was easily the size of a fully grown dragon, and she saw that its gaping mouth was lined with numerous flesh-tearing fangs. This was all she could bear to see of it, because she had to dart her head down and get her breathing under control.
She had been in a state of neat-constant fear, sometimes greater and sometimes lesser, since she’d been killed and revived by the elder vampire and was wondering by now if she’d ever not be afraid again.

Seeming to sense her again heightened distress, Rainbow turned to Twilight and took a moment to fully gather her nerve before pressing forward and nuzzling the other’s cheek as best she could. Twilight was too scared to flinch or do anything like that this time around, and so Dash was able to keep doing what she could to comfort the Unicorn while also keeping one eye on the trail to make sure that they did not start veering off course and risk stumbling, which would likely invite a chastisement from the monster leading them.

She also was fully aware of the enormous Shadow Pony that was lurking far above, but also knew that it wouldn’t dare make a move on them…not while Sombra was present.

Thankfully, they pressed on without any further incident, but Twilight shuddered again as they had to go past an enormous cave to their left, the height and width being great enough to easily hold a small Library, like the famed Golden Oaks Library she’d heard about in the small city of Ponyville, the town that Princess Celestia had stated that she wished to send Twilight shortly before the latter had embarked on this journey.

Maybe I should I have just obeyed her wishes and went to Ponyville…

The ground quaked as a loud noise could be heard just as they finally walked out from between the cliff sides, and Twilight turned around as she saw a colossal entity, looking like some kind of pony with massive spikes sticking out of it’s back, walking out of the huge cave. The entirety of it initially looked the color of pale stone, but a second later Twilight was shocked again to see that those weren’t sticks or stones.
Those were bones. Massive bones…no, massive NUMBERS of bones that were somehow all linked together and forming into a single, moving creature.

“The dead are restless down here, in the endless depths of this great tomb.”
Sombra’s voice echoed again from everywhere, and he now turned his head to look over his shoulder to where the two mares were standing together.
“They say that every empire, every kingdom, every city is built on the bodies and bones its enemies and its citizenry. After I bound Rainbow Dash’s parents to the underground spring, I noticed that this mysterious realm was one where all the dead of this land walk and where wraiths such as Shadow Ponies forever linger.”

Now they came to a rather wide open space, completely circular and looking like it had been built by skilled ponies for important occasions. It was approximately 200 meters wide in all directions.
The elder vampire kept walking until he passed over the very center of it where a raised section of perfectly round and smooth light-colored stone was erected, about three hooves high by the normal Equestrian standard of measurement.

Now he turned himself about to face them, “You stand there, in the very center of this room,” he gestured to Twilight and then pointed down once at the raised circular formation.
She hesitated for a second, feeling initially reluctant to pull away from Rainbow Dash who’d been her only real source of comfort and security down in this dreadful place, but the latter then pulled her own wing back from covering the frightened Unicorn’s back and smiled sadly at her while gestured with her head for her to do as she was told.
“Just…let’s just get it over with, Twi, ok?”

The youngest pony in the room looked back at Sombra and the table-like stone that divided them. Then she slowly walked forward, feeling even smaller and colder now that she no longer had the other mare by her side.

“I told you that I could teach you about Magic and show you interesting things, did I not?”

“…Y-yes, you did.”
She now stepped up and stood up on the smooth stone, her posture slightly slouched in a submissive manner and her head lowered, her face hidden. She looked more like a fearful slave at an auction right now than a curious young scholar who had been searching for something amazing.
And indeed, she may as well have been.

“And now I shall.”

The towering vampire, somehow still taller than Twilight even though she stood on raised ground, approached her.
“Answer me honestly, and do NOT try to leave or get me to cease what I am doing or saying. It will not be well for you to interrupt me, Twilight Sparkle.”

She gulped slowly and nodded, not being under any illusions of freedom or having a choice in this matter in any way. She knew that she was his prisoner, and that the only thing she could do now to survive was cooperate with the vampire and hope that he would have mercy, unlikely as it seemed.

His curved horn now glowed and began to burn with a mix of black and deep purple flame, and the walls on all sides started to be climbed slowly by dark crystals of the same colors, moving and waving almost like serpents across flat ground.
This was accompanied by cracking echos, as if the moving Crystal was constantly in the process of cracking and re-cracking as it continued to change its shape while its tendrils kept up the slow and steady climbing-slither.

Sombra’s horn stopped its burning and returned to its normal red hue, and he now began to walk around the fearful mare, his hoof falls heavy and powerful.
It didn’t help that he was in his predatory state, as Twilight could see the vampire’s eyes were thin skits like a dragon again and also were burning like fire, thin wisps of toxic green and bloody red leaving a small steadily dissipating trail behind his head as he walked, while his face itself was somehow more fear-inducing with his vicious fangs being displayed more as he spoke.
“Are you afraid?”

“Y-yes.”

“Are you afraid?”

“I am.”

“Are. You. Afraid?”

“Yes, I am. I…I am terrified.”
Twilight did not hesitate to tell the utmost truth.

“Good, you should be. For the night is dark, and full of terrors,”
His voice was deep and clear, yet echoed from everywhere, “full of images, shadows and illusions. You may see, but you do not feel. It is in the night, in the dark, where you find your true self. Your true nature, your truest thoughts and truest intentions. The blinding purity or drowning blackness of your own soul.”

Twilight felt that even if Sombra was in front of her, speaking, he was also behind her. At her left. At her right. In her ear. Under her nose.
She couldn’t stop the shudder and the need to shut her eyes as she tried to get her breathing under control, her legs feeling weak beneath her.

“As The Hermit finds himself alone and isolated, there are only two possible outcomes: he will be driven to madness by his own thoughts and desires, or he will learn and draw strength from it. Many Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns cannot bear to face their own darkness, cannot be isolated for so long, because they know that if they were to gaze upon their heart’s true shadow, it would swallow them whole.”
His voice was a cross between a sadistic mocker and a stern teacher.

“You are taught not to fear the darkness. Why? Of course, because you are stronger than it. HA!”
The vampire let out a single, hollow laugh.

“Yet the fact is, you are NOTHING in it. I was born an Elemental, Twilight. I have not made myself into one. A young pony dove into the blackness an eternity ago and was forever lost…and I am what emerged from the abyss.”
He hissed and grunted and growled and chuckled, his voice as smooth as that of a seducer and as vicious as that of a destroyer.

“I am born of shadows, strung together and molded into shape by them. Yet, I gave myself a form, and hoof-crafted my own power. I’ve spent time untold with my own shadow, with my own darkness, and yet here I am, right here with my apprentice and with you, and not waging a bloody war upon the world, which had you so very afraid. I have me, Twilight, and I am my darkness.”
He now appeared before her as a mass of smoke and shadows, only his head fully shaped along with his face and horn.

“I know what I am capable of.”
He leaned/hovered forward, and held the increasingly frightened mare in place with tendrils of dark from the ground beneath her hooves, her fur starting to glisten with sweat.

“I know what I want to do.”
He leaned his much larger head against hers, his narrowed and cruel eyes burning into her wide, tearful ones.

“And I know what I am willing and unwilling to do.”

The night creature stopped and mystically leaned back, his mini cloud of midnight black moving back a few hooves as if it were dust blown back from her by a gentle wind.
“You want to explore this world, to learn. You have deep within yourself this endless need to understand, first in every corner of what is inside of books and then to eventually do the same to the outside.”

The mare had closed her eyes by now, and she felt cold hooves with sharp edges traveling upon her neck, and playfully rubbed on all of it as she became covered with goosebumps, then they moved through her mane and she even felt cool breaths upon her.
She shivered, not only from the cold, and her legs gave out from under her when she thought she felt him pressing her down. She managed to fold them under herself and stayed like that, her head lowered, as he continued.
“You are taught not to fear the darkness. But hear, when I tell you: Be afraid. The night, the dark… it is full of countless horrors.”
She felt one powerful hoof on her head, slowly stroking down her mane and to her spine. Twilight began to feel his hooves on more than just her neck and back, and she felt almost…weary.

“I am the greatest one you will ever encounter in the darkest depths, the one that does not hide in it, but who instead rules those live in it.”
Twilight, as she listened to his words, found herself feeling more and more drowsy and uncertain about what she was doing and was going to do, so to speak. His voice floated through her head like smoke.

“The dark ways are a doorway to capabilities and prowess that some ponies would consider to be…”
She was slowly leaning her head back by now, feeling an unexplainable urge to do so. Her breathing was light and she herself was increasingly breathless.
“Unnatural.”

She shivered, and almost felt strangely weightless. The sensation of movement was felt, but she could not legitimately focus on it, or even on who was moving.
“I can teach you to dive into the darkness, to swim, and not drown. To use the darkness to cloak you and hide you, from others like yourself.”
Now she found herself lying on her back upon the smooth surface of the great stone, her head laid angled against it with the tip of her horn presumably a few inches from touching the surface as well, this position completely exposing the entirety of her vulnerable throat.

“To hide from others that are similar to me, and from others that you cannot yet see. To be one with the darkness, and ultimately use it to destroy those who would do you harm. To hold it, to channel it, so that you may use its gifts.”
She could suddenly feel coldness, deathly and dark. She gasped almost huskily as she truly felt his presence looming directly over her, his terribly sharp fangs moving slowly against her soft flesh, so close to biting down and ripping her sensitive throat out if he so wished.

“To succumb to the darkness is to understand it like no other.”
She was breathing slowly and tensely, her eyes closed and herself staying perfectly still. But then, something happened…

“To know is to do, Twilight Sparkle.”
He concluded.

She did not know when or how or why it occurred, but suddenly her head felt strangely clear of the supernatural haziness that had been filling it, clouding her judgement and weakening her resolve.
But now, she was very subtly shaking and sweating on the stone, her heart rate rising to almost unbearable levels and her own body was so very little compared to his. But her mind was her own right now, mysteriously in some unexplainable way, and she needed to say something while she still could.
So she did.

“No.”

The entire room stood still.

Rainbow Dash was frozen to her spot, her jaw dropping and her eyes wide. She could not believe what she had just heard.
Even the elder vampire seemed did not respond for an incredibly tense moment, nor moving or speaking. Then…

“Is that so?”

“…It is.”
The mare confirmed, her voice still small and weak, yet saying the words none would have expected her to be capable of speaking at this moment.

The night creature suddenly snarled, his charismatic voice and seductively dark aura vanishing in an instant. His eyes were blazing with dark fury as he dissipated into shadows, and suddenly a pair of phantom jaws seized Twilight by by throat and hoisted her up effortlessly.
“By all the fires of the Black Pit, I could rip your soul from your body in the blink of an eye and you wouldn’t even realize it until you’re on the other side!”
His voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere, and the young pony choked and felt her panic trying to rise to blinding levels. But to her merit, she did not lose her mind or give in to the overwhelming pressure to submit. She had no idea where this sudden amount of courage to speak out came from.

“I am…terrified of you, but…I will not…accept your gift.”
She forced out hoarsely, all too aware of how helpless she was, hanging like this while being held by a phantom that would rip out her jugular if it was allowed to become physical.

“Then, tell me, young Twilight…why will you not accept it? Have you forgotten already what I am capable of?”
A flash of memories came flooding back to her. Memories of her own broken body lying in a pool of her own blood and Rainbow Dash begging her not to die, then finding herself alive again and looking up into his grinning face.

“I am more afraid….of what I’d become…if I serve you.”
The Unicorn truthfully whispered.

“…Good.”

Suddenly, she was released and dropped to the ground, at the hooves of the now very physical stallion.

“Very good.”

He raised a hoof and put it under her chin, slowly raising her to her hooves with a surprising amount of restraint, nowhere near as rough as he’d just been.

“Let this same fear ground you, but not control you. Use it, harness it. Remember: Fear is what can keep you alive. Use it to wage war on your foes minds and let it restrain you when it must.”
He removed his hoof from her…and his head was no longer there, but had transformed into a mass of red and black smoke floating upwards.

“Yet it can paralyze and kill you, if let roam free. If you meet somepony or someone else in the wild and allow your fear to seize control, you will die at best. At worst…you will be taken alive.”

Twilight had read enough books and had felt enough terror of this towering creature to be able to perfectly visualize just what he meant by that.
She forced her voice to be steady.
“I understand.”

The dark creature gazed down at her as his eyes were faintly visible in the mass of shadow that was where his head used to be, and they were ice-cold and yet burning hot, then he stepped forward and walked past her and stepped off the raised stone, his head reforming in an instant.
He now walked slowly up to Rainbow Dash, who had been rooted to her own spot, albeit with great difficulty in her desire to intervene yet also knowing better.

“So let it be done, here, in the presence of the shadows and the dead…”
The entire realm seemed to tremble for a moment,
“That you, Rainbow Dash of Cloudsdale, will now take your own apprentice”
The Pegasus in question widened her eyes slightly at these words, but stood silent and still. She herself was thinking back to their meeting in the power-draining room, and her eyes now began to shine with understanding.

Sombra walked past her, and the two mares noticed properly now that the crackling noise of the climbing crystal was absent, and they saw that the entirety of the stone walls all around them had been completely covered in dark Crystal.
The elder vampire continued to walk away from them, but then stopped and turned his head one last time, his eyes burning again.

“By the way, Twilight Sparkle…I am very much aware that you came here searching for the Golden Library.”

Twilight was nervous upon hearing him speak to her again, but now she felt a surge of interest.
“That…that is correct.”

He chuckled, the sound making the ground rumble beneath their hooves.
“You will find it somewhere within my castle.”

The egghead did not move, for a second. But her eyes suddenly shot wide, and she began to stutter.
“Wha-how? W-w-when d-d-did-?! I-it’s really here!?!”

But he ignored her Twilighting and looked at his own apprentice.
“Why don’t you tell her what REALLY happened, Rainbow Dash? What it was, that caused me to be erased from the memory of the world?”

Twilight was busy Twilighting in a positive manner at the revelation that the prize of her and so many other ponies journeys was indeed so very near. But at that final sentence from the ancient vampire, all enthusiasm died like a campfire doused by a bucket of ice water.

But by the time she shook had gulped down her confusion and was about to ask what he meant, there was only Rainbow standing there before her.
And as the two mares quickly noticed that Shadow Ponies were starting to spawn from the shadows surrounding them at frightful speed and rushing at them with murderous intent, the shadowy form of King Sombra reappeared and reassembled at the front gate of the castle.

On the outside, that is.

The King of Shadows was again in his physical form, but his cape was not the royal one that still looked as fresh and clean as the day he’d defiled it by putting it upon his own dark and wicked body.
No, it was the tattered one that had seen countless battles and blew in an unnatural wind along with his mane and tail, and on his head he wore a scarred, dark gray battle helmet from the past.
The shadows danced behind and around him like black fire waiting eagerly for something to burn, the ground burnt with green magical fire that devoured soil and rock as easily as leaves and grass, and his glowing eyes turned their attention to the full moon in the sky, so very bright and unyielding.

“The night will never end, Princess. That pleases you, does it not?”
He spoke with a mocking voice as his power spread out from him, beginning to wash over and corrupt the trees and boulders that surrounded the castle and digging deep into the ground.
And all around the dark king, the ground began to rumble…and then a single foreleg and hoof tore out from it, followed by another.
An undead pony emerged, more bones than flesh, and its eye sockets shining with a sickly green light.

And then several more dug their way to the surface, hissing and snarling.

And then came hundreds…

And then thousands…

And for a split second, the moon flashed in silver flames, as if in rebuke.

Author's Note

Sorry if this story is not as totally awesome as many others, especially some of those REALLY epic ones. I’m just bad at dialogue, and I know that dialogue is extremely important for these characters. I’m really sorry if the pacing is too fast and the characterization is not as good as it could/should be. Really.

I don’t know why

The devastating aftermath of the battle had inexorably altered the scenery: the formerly lush radiance of the valley was now replaced by the putrescent and unsettling miasma of death.
Numerous bodies, or at least what REMAINED of them, decorated the area, giving the sight a further unpleasant and utterly dreary feeling.
The once sweet beauty of the entire Pineapple Forest was virtually nonexistent, reduced to bone-dry stumps and piles of splinters and ash. The once clear sky and fresh air was marred by dust and smoke, the sky obscured by a thin layer of gray and brown.

The Sun was now red and setting, as if deciding to hide its face from all of this misery, the reddish rays completing the bleak picture.

A small group shambled about in exhaustion and tried to piece together the remains of a few of the dead bodies that rested on the ground as best as they could; but the conditions of some were so disastrous that they left no choice, but to bury the little that remained, to give them at least some semblance of dignity.
On the furthest corner of the main scene, a young white mare was kneeling on the ground while her right hoof tenderly held that of one of the fallen victims left in the area.
Bitter tears bathed what remained of her dear friend as her mane, as pink as cotton candy, fell tousled over her shoulders.
A chaste kiss was placed on the forehead as a final sign of farewell.

The mare was shadowed by a larger and more majestic presence bathed in a pure white light with shining golden borders. Its form was so breathtaking that it overshadowed the landscape itself with its sheer radiance.

This being was partially covered with shining memorabilia of purest gold.
The lovely light that came from it reflected the greatest of early morning sunlight, giving rise to a prismatic effect that blessed the dreary surroundings with its colors.
Her shape and characteristics were indeed those of an exceptionally large pony. But there was something regal and divine about her, her features screaming of true royalty and greatest magnificence, regalia of a long bygone Era whose perfection had been lost and was only now remembered within her own all-powerful mind and the pages of history books.

Attached to her shimmering body, a pair of majestic wings were raised proudly. Their size was far greater than that of any Pegasus that had ever lived, and were capable of carrying their bearer to greater velocity than most could even imagine.

Before the first books, when myths were passed down only in song, when the world emitted its first wails and the beating of the first hearts began, her kind had watched over creation, unwavering guardians of ancient truths and custodians of lost knowledge.
And with that incredible position had come countless burdens. Like this one right now…

The Alicorn looked at the mare and the body lying beside her. More than once she tried to open her own mouth to try to emit a sound, anything to end the painful silence, but failed to do so. Her breath could be a hurricane, but now nothing could be heard. Her presence was as the Sun itself, and the suffering air continued to be soothed by her continuous light.

The silence became more and more unbearable, placing an invisible wall between the two.
In the end, it was the mortal Earth Pony who spoke first,
“It's useless, Princess! Keen Edge had suffered too much already by the time I got here. It seems that the weight of responsibility that he carried with himself was too great…" a muffled groan placed a halt to the mare’s voice.
She forced herself to keep it together, for she could not afford to lose her cool now, not she there was still work to be done. Keen Edge would have wanted it that way.
"Even for him. I hope the Captain has finally found the peace he has sought in performing his duties to you and his homeland, at least."

The Alicorn uttered a soft lament, the sound of which could have been mistaken for the weeping of the land itself in every heart. An ancestral noise, the intensity of which covered with its sorrow the very essence of life and death. Her royal horn glowed with a silver heavenly light, and a thin ray of pure Magic alighted from it onto the unmoving body of the stallion.

Keen Edge’s body was enveloped in a mysterious light, momentarily beginning to glow with a gentle intensity. Then, it began to slowly disappear, turning steadily into ten thousand ashes of gold leaves, and the mare watched in silence and a small bit of awe as they slowly began to float away.
She slowly stood up and watched as they all moved in soft gentle order, carried by a small breeze to the South.

She saw, out of the corner of her eye, other streams of gold. The other bodies of their friends and comrades who’d fallen here this day.
“What? Where are they…?”

“Back to their homes, to their friends and families.”
The Alicorn spoke, her voice grave.
“They’ll be able to bury or scatter the ashes as they wish. It’s the least I could do for them.”

There was a further delay in speaking, the immortal Princess and the mortal nurse standing there in silence.

Then the silence was broken.

"It's all my fault, Redheart!"
Princess Celestia watched as the final gift she could give to the noble and heroic Captain and the other brave ponies got more and more out of sight, and now her tears began to appear.
“If only I had been honest with you all from the very start, none of this would have ever happened. Equestria and Equis have lost one of their greatest mortal protectors, and all because of…because of my inability to reveal what I knew!"

Princess Celestia of the Sun looked up to the sky, as the setting Star slowly was lowered to disappear into the horizon.
“I have… I have always had to do something. Anything! Why? Why? Why is it always that I cannot do anything that can change these things?"

Regret. Could an immortal have such a feeling that has always been thought to be beyond them? Or was it only an imitation of what lurked inside the hearts of those who fought for her?
Redheart already knew the answer to such a worthless and nihilistic question. She would not accept those words. No, it would have been more correct to say that she utterly rejected them with all her being.

"You have absolutely NOTHING to do with what had happened here, and I'm sure he too would agree with me; please don't tear your soul apart for what we've witnessed. That demon, that damned filthy parasite, had nothing in common with you, Princess Celestia!”

She whirled around and faced the anguished Alicorn. How could anypony compare that affront to all that was holy and wonderful, to the Princess herself?
"I beg you, stop this torment!" Redheart continued, heartbroken but firm in her conviction, as she approached her Monarch and leaned as high up as she could without standing on her hind legs.
"I have already lost too many friends and companions today; I will not let another one drown in despair!”

Tears suddenly came copiously out of her own eyes. They would wait no longer for the poor mare to put an end to her own holding back, and were now pouring down her face, finally free. And she did something that she never had down before and never truly thought that she ever would; she leaned forward and pressed her head against the taller pony’s chest, closing her eyes and letting herself cry.

A long and silver-white foreleg slowly came up and rested around her shoulders, and the nurse shook more as she raised her own forelegs and wrapped them as much as she could around the mighty mare’s own upper body as best she could, burying her face into Celestia’s chest and soaking it in unnumbered tears as she let herself sob outright.

The Princess held her close, like a mother holds her foal, and one hoof gently ran down her messy mane in a soothing manner as the poor nurse pony finally let out all her pent-up pain in the loving embrace of the immortal ruler. Minutes passed by until the sobbing had slowly been reduced to the occasional whimper and shudder.

"Yet Captain Keen Edge and his fellow soldiers would not have died if it wasn't for the foes from my past and my own procrastination."
The towering mare remonstrated. Shame. This was what Redheart heard in her voice. A guilt that fell on her dear Monarch, and which nothing, she by now realized, would be able to alleviate.

"And not only them! Even the Yaks of The Horned Spires and the Mammoths of the Mammonex Tundra would have certainly had far better fates and maybe even a peaceful resolution to their own disputes and struggles, if it were not for yet another reemerging Changeling Hive or otherworldly spirit emerging from their resting places in the past and spreading havoc.”

The huge mare tiredly nuzzled the smaller one’s mane as she spoke, letting herself seek out some little amount of comfort from the similarly grieving nurse pony in this moment.

“Eventually, these innocent ponies found themselves catapulted into an unbeatable position against the insatiable hatred of my own foes and their unquenchable lust for power and revenge, not just against me and my sister, but against all Alicorns and what they stand for. Time and time again, even if I try with utter sincerity, I have left things unfinished one way or another and the world has suffered for it."

Redheart now slowly pulled away from Celestia and took a little time to collect her thoughts; what would have been the best thing to do? Try to console her? Tell the Princess that her past enemies resurrections and the endless cruelties that came with them weren’t her fault because she didn’t commit them? Would it even have any real meaning at that point?

Changelings. Centaurs. Dragons. Windigos. Evil ponies. Vengeful spirits. And so many more…everything was a blur in her mind at this point, and many details still did not fit properly together.
She was not that big of a reader of lost lore and history, she was a Battle Medic and a Doctor. An elite one of exceptional talent and courage, yeah, but still hardly the stuff of legend. The only thing she knew for sure right here and now, the only thing that she also could not accept, was that Keen Edge was dead. And with him went part of her.

In the depths of her heart, she was indeed just a bit upset that Celestia had not been more open to them about their foes and her own history.
Yet, Nurse Redheart herself had personal secrets that she would not tell anypony unless she really had no choice, and she ultimately couldn’t judge the Princess for not just laying it all bare and run the risk of demoralizing them all.

'Keen Edge, how did you always know the best thing to say when it came to things like morale and encouragement? The Princess relied on you, and so have I. Why do I feel so lost without you here to help us?'
The whirlwind of those thoughts collided with the harsh and bitter realization of reality. Had it been a dream, or a nightmare, the awakening would have been evermore sweet.

But Redheart knew in herself that at the dawn that was to follow, nothing would be fixed by waking up to it. The sky would seem less a bit blue, the food a little less tasty, any drink slightly less refreshing or inebriating. Something had been torn away, and trying to stitch the pieces back together was just no longer possible.

"Here," the Alicorn magically lifted and gave her old friend’s axe to the nurse, taking the care not to risk dropping it prematurely or dirtying it unnecessarily.
"Take care of it for me. You can return it to his family or keep it for yourself, but please, don’t sell it or throw it away.”

"I will honor his memory for the rest of my days," the Earth Pony replied resolutely.
"He will live on. Just…not in the way we wish."

It was time now for their goodbyes and, however difficult, it would not be sorrow that would accompany them in those final moments.
The Captain was a legend now. And legends had no place among them, but high above, in the sky, running in eternal fields or soaring above the firmament with their ancestors. Whenever night would fall, Nurse Redheart would be able to see Captain Keen Edge again among the stars. And she knew he would look down at them all.
The thought filled her with a small sense of peace, and she had a smile on her tired face. The first since this day had begun.

At the same time, another figure approached them, speaking low words full of grief.
“If…if only you had engaged with the enemy with your true strength from the start. If only Keen Edge hadn't sacrificed himself for us. If only I could have done something, anything. If only... if only... Only this remains for me, while my comrades lie here, alone."

Normally tall and proud, Prince Blueblood now had his head lowered and his steps were heavy, his eyes were looking a thousand yards ahead and yet only a few hooves in front of him.
He had once been mocked as being a brat and all talk. After all, his arrogant behavior at parties and the way he conducted himself on average didn’t do him any favors.

But after his courage in the face of death here on this bloody day, after he stood his ground even when facing a living tide of carnage-hungry Changelings bearing down on him…no such insults would ever be whispered of him again.

"It wasn't your deception that hurts me. It wasn't your choice of such that has done this. To be strong, to hold such dangerous truths close from friends as much as enemies... I truly understand that."
He wiped away tears, which now started to flow down his dusty, battle-scarred face.
“I understand why you did all this. I really understand it. And yet... and yet I just cannot see why. I understand, but I do not want to. It’s just too…too…wrong."

The voice was filled with frustration, confusion, and anger. Anger at the immortal Princess for joining this battle in earnest when everything, by then, was simply too late.
But especially it was directed at himself. For his own worthlessness, his inability to truly be able to assist somepony else enough for them to keep their lives.
A feeling Redheart knew all too well.

"My hooves are stained with blood. Blood that is not mine…" Blueblood continued rubbing his own hooves and wrists, until the skin was raw and his own blood was starting to seep through.
“Whose blood is this, then? Is it even a pony’s?”

Another pony, a talented young Unicorn mare with a very light purple coat and sporting a deep purple mane and tail with a light blue stripe on each, came slowly next to him and took his hooves in hers as she steadily healed them as best she could with her Magic, before she tiredly turned to the Princess.

“Princess Celestia Solaris, who are you? I thought of you as my master’s older sister and also another great teacher. I thought of you as my comrade. I thought of you as my friend. Was it all false? Or was it all true? I don't know what would hurt more."
The other survivors had gathered around them both. In all, only five of them remained, including Redheart.
The other two were a cream-colored Earth Pony mare with her pink and grayish-blue mane and tail, and the other was a light gray Pegasus mare with cream-colored mane and tail and a pair of normally unfocused eyes that were currently very well focused.
They were now standing silently together with the two Unicorns. They didn’t say anything. But their gaze made it clear to the Alicorn that they shared the same pained feelings.

"I was your friend, I was your comrade."
Celestia replied.
“But most of all, I was myself. I will not attempt to justify what I’ve done and should have done, for there are no suitable words to do so."
Her body was always a form of immeasurable beauty, yet one whose toughness surpassed the purest adamantine and whose luster was more sparkling than any diamond. Even now, in her grief, she was still a wondrous sight of grace and loveliness.
“Supreme Monarch of Equestria, Princess of the Sun, Protector of all Ponykind…what a fools joke!"

Her self-deprecating words and harsh hollow voice actually made all of them flinch.
The moonlight, which timidly began to make its appearance, covered her face, which appeared shattered and was again streaked by diamond streams from her Amethyst eyes.

"The sins of parents in the past fall upon the present foals. And I have utterly failed in all my responsibilities for too long a time. I cannot hope to fix what happened here on this dark day, but I can at least make sure it will never happen again.”
Her majestic wings now slowly rose to the sky, silver and golden feathers enhanced in their beauty by the light of the moon.

“The time has come to put an end to this horrid cycle of suffering and destruction. I know not if it will work forever, but I will do my own part in it and leave the completion to those who are destined to finish it."

There was... peace in her words. The kind of peace that none of her companions and champions had ever thought of hearing from her.

“Princess, what do you mean?”

“It is exactly what I have said, my friends. I have done much in my long ages of life, both right and wrong, but now…my part in this tale is over.”

They all seemed to come to the same realization together at once, and several gasps were heard.

“Princess…wait, what are you going to do?"
Redheart suddenly said loudly, trying to keep her gaze on the figure already slowly taking flight. The cloud of dust and magical light particles that was beginning to spread from the beating of the Alicorn’s wings concealed her being from view as she rose higher and began to leave.

"Princess, no! Please! Don’t let the pain win! Please!”
The cream-colored mare cried, rushing forward a few steps and holding out a hoof up to her.
“Just like Redheart said! We can't lose you too! ESPECIALLY not you!”

“C-cmon Celestia, there’s gotta be a better way. I know there is, I’ll find one! We all will!”
The light purple Starlight Glimmer tried to reason with her friend and teacher, but it was too late, for the decision had already been made.

"If there is anything that you all have reminded me, it is to never give up hope for the future and to trust in your true friends and family, no matter what the consequences seem to be.”
High in the air, Celestia shone with a newfound glow. The divine sumptuousness of her figure would have brought envy even to the stars in the sky.

“Please Celestia, there has to be another way! Don’t abandon your sister and me, or all of us!”
Starlight cried out with tears, and Redheart had to hold the distraught pony in her arms/forelegs as she herself felt more tears of her own starting to stream down her face.
“I’m begging you, don’t go!”
Starlight sobbed as she cried those heartbreaking words out.

The cream-colored Bon Bon, AKA Agent Sweet Drops, stood stiffly as her years of training and experience finally cracked and broke as she too began to cry.
The Princess whom she’d served faithfully for so long out of loyalty and respect and love…was going to die of her own accord and leave the safety of all in the hooves of her younger sister. Princess Luna was certainly capable in all ways, of course, but still…

“I’m truly sorry, my little ponies. But if an Alicorn helped to start the Black Cycle, then an Alicorn must also end it. I cannot allow ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ to return as well, lest he gather all evil to him and bring an end to this Age.”

He Who Must Not Be Named.

The First Emperor of Equestria.

The Father of Monsters.

Grogar.

All knew of the monster who bore that name and the evil that he brought. It had been he who truly defined evil as ponies knew it, and the mention of his potential return shot pain and ever more grief into the hearts of the brave ponies here. Princess Celestia was going to find some way to stop him from returning?

"B-b-but Princess Celestia…What will become of you?"
A vice gripped Redheart’s throat. "Do not confuse martyrdom with hope, I beg you."

Blueblood also did not know how to respond, tears in his own eyes.
“Stop…please…" he tried to say. But the stallion’s voice was weak and weary, and Celestia was not slowing down as she was already making some distance between herself and them.

"...I just don’t know what went wrong..." Muttered the light gray Derpy sadly, and her eyes became derped again as she gazed as best she could after the increasingly far figure of the glorious Princess.

"Celestia, please don’t go…” the crying Starlight Glimmer repeated those words as Nurse Redheart held her in her forelegs, with nopony able to repeat those words with her out loud yet all saying them in their sorrowful hearts.
The Prince merely lowered his head, remaining silent. Bon Bon sunk to the ground as well, biting her lower lip as the tears continued to come and she lay open her legs.
Derpy sat on her haunches between Bon Bon and Blueblood and her face was also down, a stream of tears trickling down her muzzle and dripping off her nose to the dry ground below as she reached out and rested her foreleg hooves on their shoulders in the most comforting way she could.

But then, they all heard the Princess’s voice echoing clearly across the valley.
"Do not make this farewell sad, no more than it already is. My friends, my little ponies, I give you one last task: protect Equis! Don't let our people and all others fall to the darkness. The Storm King, along with King Sombra and likely others, shall soon be upon you, and all must be ready to do what they can and must to unsure that the light does not fade from this world.”

Her heavenly light shone down upon them more strongly, bathing her beloved friends in her glorious Magic.

“Support my sister as she ascends to the Throne as the Monarch of Equestria, and do all you can to keep the ponies together and allow Keen Edge’s dream to live on. Our enemies all around shall make their attempts on these favored lands, but rally the tribes and prepare them for the war that will soon come.”

"…Will we ever meet again?"
Redheart asked after a moment of silence.

"Yes, my little ponies. I know that we shall see each other again someday, no matter how long it may be from this one. Deep down in my heart, I am relieved to know that I leave this world in your hooves."
The great Alicorn gave them a final greeting as a warm feeling reminiscent of kindness emanated from her voice.
"And when that time comes, we shall find ourselves among the heavens, where there will be no more suffering and no more misery.”
Her figure had now almost completely disappeared.
"Goodbye, my little ponies. Take care of yourselves and each other. Love this world as I have loved it!"

And with these words, she took off in a glorious flash of gold and silver like the most beautiful lightning bolt anypony had ever seen, and what remained of the brave heroes remained motionless and silent, honoring their fallen friends for the last time.

Author's Note

Yeah I know, this chapter was quite rushed compared to the others and I’m sorry. Really, I just guess I didn’t know how to make it better and more expanded. But don’t worry, I am planning to use these characters in the future as well, even if I’m limited at being able to write a lot about them and their own adventures.
I WILL expand the cast for this story beyond just Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but not too much and onto enough that I find it fun to write about without detracting from our two main heroes and their adventures. Like I said before, if it’s not fun for me to do, I won’t do it.)

See y’all next time!