Chapters The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
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.
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.
Once, she had flown using Telekineses and covered a whole lot of distance in record time.
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.
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.
Wait, what if the castle itself was causing the weather?
“Oh, come on…!” Twilight shouted.
“Ugh!” the Unicorn smacked it off “IS THERE ANYPONY HOME???!”
The lock remained strong, but she cast her Spell again!
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.
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.
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.
“Uh….hello??”
She continued to walk deeper into the place.
The Unicorn chuckled.
Twilight expanded the range of her light, hoping to see something.
Nothing moved.
Nothing came.
Nothing happened.
She then hummed.
“Dunno if I should even try being stealthy at all here. My big voice has definitely given me away…”
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.
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 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…..
“Hellooo…?” Twilight called out again.
That was truly when the lavender mare realized that something was truly wrong with this place. Much more so than she had originally anticipated.
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.
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.
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 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?
“……pretty please…?”
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.
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.
As she continued walking, she started to hear sounds now. Too bad she was already freaking out before that, but no she heard something.
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.
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.
“P-p-please, wh-whatever you are… d-don’t kill me…”
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.
“…p-please…”
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.
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.
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.
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.
And everything went dark.
Author's Note
No idea how long this one will be, but we’ll see!
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.”
“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.
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.
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.
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.
But that wasn’t what truly caught her eye. It was his horn.
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-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.
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.
“How’re ya feeling?” Asked the Pegasus.
“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.”
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.
“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?”
“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.
“I… I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Then why did you?”
“I had no choice!”
“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?”
“So that’s how you broke the seal…”
“The…seal?”
“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.
“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.
“You said you found this place…..just like that?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
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.”
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.
“So you were on the road….going where, exactly?”
“Anywhere, really. I really wasn’t sure.” Twilight confessed.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.
“You try my patience, Twilight . I did not request to know your name.”
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.
“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 just how old exactly are ya, Twi?”
“I’m 20.”
A snort came from the young Pegasus.
“Hey, ponies like her never liked me, not then and certainly not now. I can say the feeling is completely mutual.”
“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?”
“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.”
“I can see that.”
“I think we should keep her. I like the idea of having somepony else to talk to.”
Sombra himself grunted once deeply and then let out an intimidating chuckle. “Very well then, little miss Twilight. I have… a proposition for you.”
“O-ok. Uh… can you release me, first? I’ll be good, I promise.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
“W-what if… what if I said no?”
“Then I shall take the second part regardless, and you won’t be able to stop me.”
The truth was, she’d already let it all out earlier in the hallway.
“But….what is….”
“Your. Blood.”
And young Twilight Sparkle finally realized just what kind of monster she was dealing with.
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.
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.
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.
“You know I don’t like it when you do that, Lord Sombra.”
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.
“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.”
The Pegasus mare picked up Twilight, bridal style, and started flying away towards her own room.
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
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.
Slowly, Twilight opened here eyes.
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!”
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.
“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.”
The Unicorn paled.
“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?”
“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!”
“Rainbow…um uh…hi.”
“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?”
Twilight shrugged and shook her head to clear it, but had one last question, at least for now.
The Pegasus shrugged casually.
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.”
“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.
“Yes, so you and I have a lot we can do in the meanwhile!”
“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.
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.”
Rainbow lowered his eyes to look at Twilight’s midsection.
“My keen understanding of the anatomy of a mare tells me that… you’re hungry!”
“Oh!...uh..thanks?”
“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?!”
“Technically, yeah! Isn’t it awesome?”
“Oh yes, it sure is.” The lavender mare deadpanned.
“Oh don’t be such a spoilsport. Now, come on!”
“Wait wait, I lemme get my things!”
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.
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.
Twilight nearly stumbled as she suddenly felt her face turn cold. Rainbow noticed her sudden lack of enthusiasm.
“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.”
“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.
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.
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?”
Rainbow pulled back a little and put one of her hooves on the other mare’s lips.
She now faced smiled at young Unicorn.
She chuckled a little and hugged Twilight again.
“What if they never finished their journey because they never found it? Because they found not their callings, but their deaths?”
“Yeah, that could be something too.”
“There is so much that can happen, y’know?”
“Like getting stuck inside a castle with two vampires, one of whom has rainbow hair?”
“Yes, exactly.”
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.
“What are you going to do?”
“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…”
“Since there’s nothing here, I’ll need to give myself a soup.”
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!”
“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?”
“...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.”
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?
“OK, I’ll drop the subject. I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable after everything you’ve done for me already.“
“So, it’s really been a long time since you came here, huh?”
“It has, yeah.”
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.
“Gee, was Sombra some kind of Prince or something?”
“He was not a prince, he was the King.”
“That…explains a lot.”
“Now, come on! I have left the best rooms for last.”
-
“YOU GUYS HAVE A LAB?!?”
“Wait, is that…?”
“Amazing…”
“Oh, that’s… uhh, one of the projects I thought up… for when we can get out.”
“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.
“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?
“Let’s just say that I’ve had lots of free time in here to occupy my boredom.”
“Why’s that?”
“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.
“….”
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?”
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.”
“I’m hoping this will help you decide to stay here.”
“Dash,” the Unicorn sighed.
“Sombra DID offer to train you; I hope you’ll accept that offer after… after you have opened the gates 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.
Where will I ever find a library this big?
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.”
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.
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.
But in this case, involving the vampire known apparently as King Sombra, what did she have to work with?
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.
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?
“Twily?”
“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…”
But just as she was about to regain her control, something else popped up: Rainbow Dash herself.
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?
What if SOMBRA caught her?!
Suddenly, her freshly racing thoughts were halted by that same voice.
“…Way too many things, I’m afraid”
“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…”
“Now, we should get going, I think you may be thirsty, maybe you’ll want some tea before we go meet him again.”
“Maybe something a little stronger…”
“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?”
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
He could do as he wished to the younger vampire, and that included killing her at a moment’s notice. But not now.
It had been too long, he had observed, for her memory to retain the same vividness of the life she’d lost.
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.
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 Rainbow Dash be faithfully by his side as he did so?
Like Tartarus she would do that. She was HIS, and she would die only when he decreed it!
And speaking of Twilight…
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.
With a sighing grunt, she materialized again and with slow steps he walked until she reached the curtains.
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.
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.
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.
Author's Note
Lemme what whatcha think, and point out any grammar mistakes! Tank you!
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
These creatures of the night had a variety of powers and abilities, often being stronger than Unicorns themselves in terms of raw power.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
“…Good evening.”
“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.
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.”
“I trust you found the tour interesting? What do you think of my home?”
“Yes, this place… th-this is legitimately incredible, honestly! And it really is beautiful.”
Just like it’s lone Pegasus, I have to confess…
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.”
“Hehe…”
“Now,” He got up and started to walk towards the two ponies, his hoofsteps silent yet echoed in Twilight’s ears.
“What? Oh, yes! I still have a supply I can conjure, not to worry about that. But it won’t last forever, obviously.”
“Then let us not waste any more time, and discuss the main issue in the room.”
“And why exactly is it not?”
Gulp “…That obvious, huh?”
The vampire then turned to his apprentice.
“Only what she needed to know. She doesn’t know anything about you, but you already are aware of that.”
“Hmm.”
“Wha-?”
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.
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?
…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.
“Hmm?”
The vampire ignored her question and turned around to face her.
“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.”
“If I told you… that I don’t care for it, would you believe me?”
“Wait…what?”
“I didn’t think so.”
“What is this?”
“Where I’ve come from.”
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.
“…The Dominion of Crystalia.”
“That is correct.”
“But…how? I mean…this….”
“This can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“The Crystalia Dominion doesn’t exist!”
“…what?” Rainbow’s expression faltered.
“Just…how old..?”
“Just how old are you..?”
“1,030 years, to be precise.”
“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.
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.
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.
“You-you may wanna sit down too.” She suggested.
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.
Twilight Sparkle. This sweet mortal mare, this curious and kind-hearted, and beautiful, young visitor, she very much was the key to everything.
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 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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“My vampiric powers began to manifest somehow. And with them, my… thirst.”
“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.”
“Then, there came…. That day.”
The creature took a long pause in between words here, and looked especially conflicted.
“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.”
“They were… killed?”
Dash slowly nodded.
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.
“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.”
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.
“Then came the black winter. The winter, that I created.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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,
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?”
Sombra spoke now with a dark smirk.
“Oh.”
“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.”
“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.
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.
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.
So why try to convince me at all?
“If you don’t care for the world, then… why go to it?”
“The question tells me you have never been imprisoned.”
“No..I-I…” The poor mare was caught off guard.
“Rainbow Dash.”
“Yeah, it’s true.” She nodded.
He smirked.
Rainbow smiled and began to reply.
After the long-overdue conclusion , Sombra wore a very amused look while Twilight had a grimace.
“Totally!”
Mud bricks!
“Yes, Sparkle. Now tell us, why won’t you let her?”
“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.
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.”
“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 also, she knew truly that Sombra was absolutely right:
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.
If worse came to worst, she’d be offering her blood in exchange of knowledge and power.
Still, she wasn’t doing anything her kind didn’t do before.
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.
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.
“We have a deal.”
The elder vampire’s eyes burnt brightly as well again, this time with delight.
“Splendid.”
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
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.
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).
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.
The tense stillness of the room was broken when Sombra’s voice made itself heard.
“I am fine, my master.”
The dark stallion turned to face her, silhouetted by the flames as he slowly approached the sitting Pegasus.
“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…”
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.
“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…”
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.
“You are trying to hide your rage from me.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps the truth is truly the most obvious answer.”
“Ooooh, I see.”
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.
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.
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!”
She raised her head slightly now, and her voice was stronger than she thought it would be.
“Do you say so? Yet Sparkle’s potential DWARFS yours.”
“Does it not?”
She answered him nothing, but her head would not lower or look away, nor did her eyes.
“No?”
“So what if it does?”
The blade slowly pulled away from her, and he now carried it in his hoof.
“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?”
“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.
“Anyone at all?”
“If so, only your ability to act on any advantage you have can save you from their continued domination.”
Rainbow Dash’s entire body was stiff with unreleased energy, the blade twitching ever so gently.
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
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.”
“Not only that, but it was as if even the stars themselves felt a great excitement the moment she came forth into the world.
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?”
“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?
THAT got a real reaction from the Pegasus.
“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.
“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 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.
“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.
Now, her eyes became grimmer, and she let just a tad of the venom she held within her heart out into her voice.
“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.
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.
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.
“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.”
“Nurture the bond you’ve already established with the young Spell Caster, and let it grow endlessly.”
“Only then will you be able to cast off the shackles that hold you down, and uncover a power beyond imagination.”
“Only then will you be able to destroy…the rival before you.”
Rainbow Dash swallowed and nodded before she spoke and bowed one last time respectfully,
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.
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
“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?”
“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.
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 hard metallic scent and taste in her nostrils and mouth told her she was bleeding from her orifices…
-
Rainbow Dash watched as Twilight worked on the Seal, and the Magic was visible easily due to her enhanced vampiric eyesight.
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.
“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.
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!”
“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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Somewhere nearby, he heard and felt the sensation of mortal grief. It was… a pony crying.
“Hmm?”
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.
Inside, Dash was kneeling over the body of the unmoving Unicorn, and her jaws were upon that poor throat.
“I see that you have turned to the only solution you could think of to save your dear little friend.”
“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.
“She’s as good as dead, Dash,”
-
Twilight was in darkness. Pure, utter darkness. She could feel her own body, and it was one word: helpless.
The despair was also crushing down on her, and the sheer pointlessness of it all was at the forefront of her thoughts.
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.
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.
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.
Twilight felt herself, along with the sky above her head and the world beneath her hooves.
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.
“Hello again, Twilight.”
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!
After recovering from the surprise, the Unicorn slowly hugged back. She couldn’t believe she was actually hugging a vampire, but she did.
For a few special minutes they just stood there in their hug, and Sombra actually did not disturb them.
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.
-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.”
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.
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.
What? Why is she… wait, is she crying out of concern for me?
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 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.
“Thanks, Rainbow.”
View Online
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
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.
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!
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.
“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.
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.
“What the? Rainbow, have you-?”
“Yeah Twi, I’ve been down here before. Only twice, but I’ve seen this all, OK?”
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.
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.
“What is this place?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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 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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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….”
“They are always here, always…they always have been, you know.”
“Who?”
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.”
“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…”
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.
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.”
“I’m…I’m so sorry.”
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…”
“But really though, you’re gonna be alright, ok? Just stay close to me.”
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.
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!”
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,
“R-right.”
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.
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.
“The dead are restless down here, in the endless depths of this great tomb.”
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.
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.
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.”
“And now I shall.”
The towering vampire, somehow still taller than Twilight even though she stood on raised ground, approached her.
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.
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.
“Y-yes.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I am.”
“Are. You. Afraid?”
“Yes, I am. I…I am terrified.”
“Good, you should be. For the night is dark, and full of terrors,”
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.
“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.”
“You are taught not to fear the darkness. Why? Of course, because you are stronger than it. HA!”
“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.”
“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.”
“I know what I am capable of.”
“I know what I want to do.”
“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.
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.
“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.”
“The dark ways are a doorway to capabilities and prowess that some ponies would consider to be…”“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.
“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.”
“To succumb to the darkness is to understand it like no other.”
“To know is to do, Twilight Sparkle.”
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.
“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.
“Is that so?”
“…It is.”
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.
“I am…terrified of you, but…I will not…accept your gift.”
“Then, tell me, young Twilight…why will you not accept it? Have you forgotten already what I am capable of?”
“I am more afraid….of what I’d become…if I serve you.”
“…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.”
“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.
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.
“So let it be done, here, in the presence of the shadows and the dead…”
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.
“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.
He chuckled, the sound making the ground rumble beneath their hooves.
The egghead did not move, for a second. But her eyes suddenly shot wide, and she began to stutter.
But he ignored her Twilighting and looked at his own apprentice.
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.
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.
“The night will never end, Princess. That pleases you, does it not?”
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.
The night is dark, and full of terrors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
“Back to their homes, to their friends and families.”
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 of the Sun looked up to the sky, as the setting Star slowly was lowered to disappear into the horizon.
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?
"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?
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."
"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.
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.
'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?'
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.
"I will honor his memory for the rest of my days," the Earth Pony replied resolutely.
It was time now for their goodbyes and, however difficult, it would not be sorrow that would accompany them in those final moments.
At the same time, another figure approached them, speaking low words full of grief.
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.
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."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.
"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.
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."
"I was your friend, I was your comrade."
Her self-deprecating words and harsh hollow voice actually made all of them flinch.
"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.”
“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?"
"Princess, no! Please! Don’t let the pain win! Please!”
“C-cmon Celestia, there’s gotta be a better way. I know there is, I’ll find one! We all will!”
"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.”
“Please Celestia, there has to be another way! Don’t abandon your sister and me, or all of us!”
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.
“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?"
Blueblood also did not know how to respond, tears in his own eyes.
"...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.
But then, they all heard the Princess’s voice echoing clearly across the valley.
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?"
"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."
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.
See y’all next time!
