Learning By Example

Twilight trudged through the halls of the palace, sweat covering every inch of her body. She'd done an entire lap of Canterlot city in under an hour. At one point the guards were called on the suspicion she was a thief. She'd been unable to help stop herself from yelling at the group that stopped her for wasting her precious time. The only thing that saved her from getting arrested is the fact that she was Celestia's student; the very same student who was prone to throwing fits when something fell out of schedule.

The guards plus a couple of near collisions were the only thing Twilight encountered on her trip. Now that the doors to Luna's room were in sight Twilight relaxed some. She realized that despite sweating from head to hoof, she wasn't actually all that tired. No more so than when she'd started her frantic trip.

Before she could enter Luna's room the two guards Twilight chose not to take notice of previously, stepped in front of her.

"Princess Luna said, 'If I am disturbed once more today I am going to bring the moon upon whoever is responsible.'" One of the stallions spoke up.

"But-" Twilight started to say.

A voice in her head whispered, No buts. It prevented her from speaking for a moment before she remembered she still had limited time.

Clock is ticking, Twilight.

"The clock is ticking." Twilight growled at the two guards. They froze.

With an instinct she shouldn't posses, Twilight moved past the two guards and pushed the door open without a second thought.

Luna didn't stir when Twilight entered. There was a strange satisfaction in Twilight's mind that everything had stopped for her, just to make sure she was on time. Sombra would never know, nobody would.

The oh-so-clever unicorn's smile faded when she made it to the balcony to find Sombra wasn't there. In his place was a note that read "If you're reading this then you obviously didn't hear what I said about coming to find me when you got back to the palace. I never said I would be in the same place, learn to plan ahead. Come find me in the dining hall."

Twilight was trembling with rage, she always planned ahead. She hadn't planned for King Sombra not being dead. Her blood turned to ice when the wish for him to simply be dead crossed her mind. It would've been nice if Celestia had just let him fall, but she remembered the smug look on his face; he knew for a fact that Celestia would help him no matter what her sister did.

While lost in thought Twilight was vaguely aware that time had resumed. In the back of her mind the birds chirping clued her in. Regardless she'd had enough of the enormous pain that had been more or less forced upon her.

"Sombra" Twilight bellowed, her magically augmented voice seemed to visibly shake the air around her.

The called pony appeared before Twilight in an instant. His legs bound in shadowy chains, splaying his body out.

A fork with a bit of lettuce clattered to the ground. Sombra stared at it a moment before looking up into the glaring face above him.

"Are you sure you haven't been studying dark magic? I mean really, a perfect binding spell?" Sombra said as casually as possible testing the tightness of the chains holding him.

Now that the object of her frustration was present, Twilight felt a resurgence of animosity. As the feelings welled up anew the chains pulling his legs in four directions grew tauter, threatening to pull all four legs from their sockets.

Sombra acted as though these details eluded him, "How many times did you level half the Palace when you were studying under Celestia?"

Twilight remembered very vividly her entrance exam, and how much of a disaster it had started out to be. After the initial failures, she'd accidentally caused a hatchling Spike to grow about one-hundred times his size. There'd been a hole in the roof, but that was the worst of it as far as destruction went. She'd gotten her cutie mark that day. With a sigh Twilight relaxed, unconsciously freeing Sombra as she did.

"What are you thinking about right now?" Sombra asked, standing up and making sure he was still in one piece.

"The day I got my cutie mark, why?"

"I don't particularly care how you got from my question to that, but I do have something to tell you." He resumed his wicked grin from less than an hour ago.

"What?" Twilight felt certain some sort of revenge was coming swiftly.

"You used magic, so you failed." Sombra said shortly. The look of devastation in the young unicorn's eyes made him chuckle.

"But, I didn't mean to." The once perfect student pleaded.

Sombra gave her words no thought.

"You'll just have to do better and control yourself next time, won't you?"

"You're supposed to teach me how to, and then I fail my first stupid assignment because you have yet to give me any kind of proper lesson. That's not fair!" Twilight was shaking with rage. The lap she'd been forced to do had left her body aching, but such pains were pushed aside and their memory served to feed her mounting anger.

"What?" Twilight said, the feeling of being less real coming over her.

"Did you know you're floating?"

"I am." Twilight looked down to find her hooves were not in fact touching the alabaster balcony. She was instead standing in the air, small black clouds covered her hooves keeping her held aloft.

"I swear you're like a foal who can't control her magic." Sombra spouted as Twilight flailed in an attempt to keep her balance. It was considerably easier when she wasn't aware of the spell effecting her hooves.

"How do I stop this?" She grumped.

"Stop letting emotions run around in your body."

"But I'm not-"

"Which one of us is the teacher?"

"You are." Twilight hated that fact, but Princess Celestia had insisted this was the best way. Twilight would, unfortunately in this case, always defer to the princess's wisdom.

So her "lesson" continued, Sombra would provoke her to varying degrees of anger which would cause an accidental flux of magic from the flustered unicorn. The unintentional spell would in turn prompt more teasing from Sombra. Twilight once read a book on the various teaching methods employed throughout the ages, this wasn't any of them.

"Tell me," Sombra began, ignoring the tension in the air, "What do you hate most right now?"

Sombra Someone or something said. It was the voice Twilight had largely ignored in her head before, but now the named pony seemed to hear it to.

Before he could comment, his body suddenly burst into flames. Twilight looked on in horror as he tried to roll on the flat, marble balcony to little effect.

Once the initial horror drained from her, Twilight conjured a bucket of water and poured it over him. A now damp, ash grey ball laid still on the balcony panting heavily. Twilight's look of horror turned to one of astonishment when she realized that Sombra hadn't actually been burnt by the flames. There were no patches of charred flesh, his coat was left completely untouched by the eldritch fire.

Sombra picked himself up and with a deep breath said, "I think you should be sedated before we continue. I've just realized how much danger this palace and everyone in it is in while you are around." His voice lost its cruel and mocking quality while the shock of being set on fire washed over him.

"I'm sorry?" Twilight said hesitantly. She didn't know if she was exactly sorry for doing something that'd been increasingly justified over the past few hours. "Why aren't you more- Crispy?"

"It was a precaution I took long ago." He grumbled walking past her. "Go report your lessons today to Princess Celestia. I am going to write out a lesson plan and find some incense in case I need to mellow you out. Oh, and if you see Luna later tell her '...Twice.'"

Twilight had no intention of bringing up Sombra anywhere near Princess Luna, especially since it wasn't part of her lesson. Today had been more than a little disjointed to Twilight, and before she could make a comment Sombra had wondered somewhere into the palace. She took a few deep breaths of her own as she teleported to Celestia's balcony to re enter the palace. How Sombra had gotten away with walking back through Luna's room she could only guess at, but Twilight got the feeling she wouldn't be so lucky.

As it had in the past the day court would take up most of Celestia's time, her report would have to wait for a while. So with little to do Twilight made her way to the library to pick where she'd left off before moving to Ponyville.