//------------------------------// // Darkness // Story: Behind the Broken Horn // by SasayakiYoru //------------------------------// “My dear beloved Princess… you are starting to annoy me.” Inside the throne room said Princess was barely alive and there was only one reason why she wasn’t dead after what she had through; she was an alicorn. Sadly, her wings would never allow her to soar through the air as they were broken beyond repair, the pieces scattered on the floor as if a crystal vase had been broken. All of that just because of a creature known as Noche wanted to see her scream in pain. Instead of the screams he was waiting for she was now just quietly sobbing in the floor of her castle, her back injuries sending jolts of pain but no blood from them showing how deep her Crystal Pony heritage was. “Oh, come on Amore, just say something, you know how much I love your voice. Tell me, where is your hope now?” She looked at Noche, crying, hopeless, with no reason to continue fighting against the monster that wanted full control of Equestria. Suddenly, she felt her body get up from the floor and start levitating to the ceiling. Noche’s magic around her body moved her there and dark chains twisted around Amore’s body until she was secured to the ceiling as a glorified chandelier. “You are a bother Amore,” Noche said as he destroyed the remaining pieces of the princess’ wings “but I’m not going to kill you, you see, I’m just going to wait until my son arrives, then he will torture you and will kill his friends! I’m going to take every ounce of hope that you and the rest of what’s left of your mighty kingdom and I will shatter it! After that, well, I will tear you apart piece by piece. Now, don’t go anywhere, the best part is going to start!” And like that, the Umbrum disappeared, leaving Amore broken mentally and physically, looking at the crystal cell on the throne room and what was left of the pony she loved the most in the world thrown inside; turned into a nightmare, a monster without a mind and she began to cry anew. Storm clouds continued to advance through all of Equestria, but there was a supernatural silence coming from all cardinal points; nothing could be heard, not even the whispers of the wind or a cricket’s song, only the crumbling wood that the six ponies had used to ignite a small campfire. Those six were probably the craziest ponies in Equestria to try camping inside The Everfree Forest, close to a cliff waiting for some kind of divine sign to stop what seemed to be the end of Equestria. With what they had to live through they had forgotten the crystals inside the box Sorrow had given to them not too long ago. Inside the box they continued pulsing as they were part of a heart, except one, one that showed no sign of being activated. “Oh come on! Somepony say something! I think I’m going to go insane if no one starts talking!” The small crystal pony all but screamed while she threw several berries into the fire. This time nopony answered to her, her voice was not powerful enough to make them stop thinking about what had happened and how useless their actions so far had been in stopping Noche. “He’s coming, I can feel him” the dark pony sitting in front of the fire said while holding his head. “Midnight, are you alright?” Whisper asked seeing his reaction while the eyes of Midnight began to glow with green power behind them. He didn’t even react to her words as he turned his head to the dark horizon. He could hear nothing except the dark whispers of voices coming from his head. “I think we lost him” the earth pony said still feeling as if something was watching them but surely that was only his imagination. “Oh, of course you lost him, I mean, there is no such thing as blood magic or filial bonds, right Midnight?” A voice that made the fur of every single pony stand up resonated through the forest as everypony excepting Midnight began to watch around in search of the Umbrum as the darkness began to creep more and more around them “although, in this case, it would be dark ties.” “Midnight, if you are going to use that creepy weird magic this is the moment!” Quetzal screamed as the shadows made a circle around them trapping them around the campfire. Even after his father’s arrival, Midnight stayed on his own world, trying not to listen to the voices and their promises of power. Noche appeared out of nowhere from inside the darkness, the figure barely visible as it surrounded the ponies, only the dark green eyes served and what seemed like a mouth full of serrated teeth made up his face. Whisper, the only other unicorn in the group, held the box containing the crystals close to his chest. “You will never win Noche, we will stop you!” he said trying to fight back the terror he felt at the instant “Oh, please my Little pony, saying those things knowing full well that everything is lost already, noteven with the words of ‘Broken Horn’ you could findan answer. By the way, how’s old Sorrow these days?” As he continued talking with Whisper, a dark magic tendril carefully touched Whisper’s back making the unicorn jump in fright, one more amusing show to the Umbrum. “We will not fall to your tricks Noche, we know you fear our combined power” The brace pegasus Quetzal said trying to shoo away the shadows on his own tail. “Excuse me, I just need to confirm this part, did you just say fear?” The shadow tendrils suddenly grew spines and dark chains shot from the ground with such strength and speed that the poor pegasus was pinned to the ground. “You know what’s my favorite game? ‘Pluck the wings form the pegasus’, is so simple to play; whoever makes the pegasus scream the hardest wins, let’s practice shall we?” Noche said with everypony not knowing if Noche was using his usual jokes or he was serious this time “but not today, after all, I don’t want to dirty my hooves with blood.” “But you don’t have hooves…or legs… or body… or anything really, I mean, you are just a floating ball of gas that flies around as if it were a helium balloon” Said the most irritating voice in Noche’s opinion making him look in the pony’s direction. Meanwhile Iron tried to help Quetzal get free from those chains. Behind him Whisper and Zenith were caught as dark crystals appearing form the ground made a jail cell around them and Midnight… he was still not reacting. “You know what? I’ll make an exception with you” Noche said holding up Jade with one of tendrils “Your voice is so annoying, from the first moment I met you, even with my older corporeal body it was so impossibly annoying!” Noche screamed as one tendril reshaped itself into a long needle. “And you are just a big fart!” The small crystal pony was completely terrified but more than anything she felt pity for Noche, knowing that inside him there was only a dark and rooted wish to destroy everything around him. A voice began to grow in intensity as all the ponies -and Umbrum- turned around on its direction. Midnight had finally reacted and Jade smiled, then a flash and Jade fell to the floor. Midnight’s eyes glowed with dark green energy, his pelt, once spotted was now completely darkand his horn became twisted like dead tree. “Well, I need to be sincere; I didn’t see this coming so soon. My own son taking his first life, I could cry in joy and pride… if I had tear conducts that is. He even killed a Crystal Pony first, I’m pretty sure that is almost a rule at this point. Now finish the rest, just, slower this time, I need to watch this and enjoy it.” “Shut… UP!” The whispers and voices kept becoming stronger inside his head “SHUT UP EVERYPONY!” Zenith used Noche being distracted to get out from his prison and got closer to Jade’s body, and then he felt relief. “She is alive.” The words from the pony made Noche rage. At that moment the box opened up and six crystals felt upon the ground; each of them shining brightly with power inside them, but one was cracked. “If I must fall into the shadows to defeat you father… then I will pay that price a thousand times!” Midnight kept on walking in Noche’s direction, his head bleeding from the exertion of using so much dark magic and directing it through his new horn. His eyes were filled with so much darkness and rage that they were the exact copy to those of the Umbrum “if only darkness can beat darkness, then so be it” Around midnight the rest of his friends began to react. Jade woke up and she was helped up by Zenith; Whisper and iron stood watching in shock while Quetzal wasn’t sure of how things had turned so dire as the dark chains retreated from around his body. “You are such a fool my boy, you are truly selling your soul to dark magic because you want to destroy me? Are you going to throw away the chance that I’m giving you to turn Equestria into our own playground?!” “Equestria? I don’t care about Equestria! I just want to beat you! This land be damned, there is no place for the two of us in here!” Midnight screamed but as the six ponies were ready to activate the crystals floating around them, the voice of the now dark pony seemed to come from far beyond, as if someone else was talking through his voice. Unbeknown to them, only one creature witnessed the battle; one that under its white hood knew that the world as everypony knew would never be the same after the battle.