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.