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.