Chapter 3: A Dark History
Trixie grew tired of waiting and starring at this mysterious thorn giving off its own dark magic. Using her magic, she levitated the thorn closer to her face. She inspected the questionable object when it gave off a powerful magical backlash that used Trixie’s own magic to attack her horn. It knocked Trixie to the ground.
Holding her hoof to her head to ease the pain, she started to hear an evil laughter. It was at first faint, but grew slowly louder.
“YES, very good,” said the voice of the Stranger Trixie had meet back in Shetland. “You have come here as I had suggested, you shall be greatly rewarded with power and glory for this, as you had desired.”
“What‽ Where are you, show yourself to Trixie,” she said in a panic, looking around in every direction trying to find the source of the voice.
“Hehehe, I am right here. What is left of my physical form is being held in your aura as we speak. If it’s the location of my voice that bothers you, I am transmitting my words as thoughts into your head. Only you can hear me.”
“You can’t control Trixie’s body or anything like that, can you?”
“No, if I could do that I would have done so already.”
“Ok, so this Thorn was a part of your body?”
“It is not a thorn, it was my Horn”
“This is a horn‽ But horns are supposed to be spiraled and strait.” Trixie said with pain in her voice, imagining the pain untwisting a horn and bending it would cause.
“Well, years of black magic will do that. It’s also the reason it’s red, to save you that question,” he said nonchalantly.
“Ok well how about these, who are you and what is your horn doing all the way out here?”
“Both excellent questions, but to answer them will take time. Perhaps we should start walking back to the city, and I will explain on the way,” The strange voice said with an amused hum in his tone.
“Very well, Trixie doesn’t want to be out here any longer anyway.” Trixie then turned around and went the direction she thinks is the right way to go. “You better get talking then.”
“As you wish, I am the rightful ruler of the Crystal Empire, King Sombra. I ruled the crystal ponies with an iron hoof until the day over one thousand years ago Celestia and her sister came and imprisoned me within a glacier. Recently I was able to escape that frozen tome at the price of my body turning me into a fog like form until I could reestablish myself. When I went to reclaim my empire, there were those who could repel me, but they could not keep me away forever, and as I was finally able to break in they had found the crystal heart. The heart’s aura was able to restore my body but as Princess Cadenza used its power with the rest of the crystal ponies, my body was destroyed yet again, but this time only my horn survived and landed out here in the snowy wasteland.”
“Interesting,” Trixie responded. “But, you yourself are not a crystal pony Trixie believes, so tell Trixie more about yourself.”
“I was born in a city called Canterlot to a moderately rich noble family, but I was disgraced and banished from there for my so called “radical” beliefs, and my studies into dark magics. I couldn’t stand living in those miserable valleys with those disgusting Mud ponies, so I ventured north to try and find the ancient home of the Noble Unicorn tribe and reestablish it. Along my travels I had heard legends of a two other tribes one who lived even farther north who were made of the most beautiful crystal and whose magic was powerful, and the other to the far south called the Flutter Ponies who has a powder that could clean any impurity. ”
“Having caught my interest in powerful magic, I decided to look for these ‘crystal ponies’ instead, and traveled throw the frozen north farther then any unicorn explorer had ever gone. I eventually found it, the crystal city. Its warmth and beauty amazed me, and my desire to posses it for myself only grew. When I entered the city I loved the architecture of the buildings more then anything else, and I couldn’t wait to improve it. You could only imagine my great disappointment when I discovered the locals were all of the mud pony variety, beautiful crystal yes, but mud ponies all the same. I couldn’t find even one glorious crystal unicorn there.
“Fortunately for me I was able to keep my mouth closed, and since they had never seen a unicorn before, it was easy for me to earn their trust and amaze them with only but a few easy tricks. It didn’t take long at all to convince them to crown me their rightful King--as it should be, for any unicorn is far superior to a mud pony, even a crystal one.”
It was around now that even Trixie was feeling uncomfortable. She had been around tribalist ponies before, but this guy was so bad that he almost made the PPP look like a civil rights group. But she couldn’t stop him here because the story was getting interesting, and Trixie always hated it when ponies interrupted her monologing, so she was going to let him finish.
“Once as I was their king, I was able to practice as much black magic as I wanted and to develop spells nopony had ever dreamed of before. I was even able to combine my dark magic with the natural crystals around to form my black crystals which once covered every square inch of the empire. HAHAHAAH!”
And that was the cue that the monologue was over. Trixie crossed over a snow bank to finally see the City again, relieving all fears of being lost out in the tundra. “So inform Trixie how it is you’re going to deliver all this power and glory you promised Trixie, otherwise Trixie will leave your horn behind right here.”
“Heh, very smart not to trust me completely, but I am a pony of my word and I will deliver. The ultimate power and glory you desire is to become an Alicorn yes?”
“Alicorn? We are talking about beings of unbelievable magical power strong enough to move the sun and moon right?”
“Yes, the very same. Using the powerful crystals around this area that can hold and even generate magic, I was able to build a device that could turn a normal unicorn into an Alicorn,” he said with a smirk that Trixie couldn’t see, but felt.
“How can Trixie trust you? How can Trixie trust anything you even say?”
“Well since I no longer have a body to speak of, I also lack certain mental filters most ponies take for granted. Like the ability to lie or conceal information, so all you have to do is ask me a question and I will have to answer it honestly.”
“Okay, but how can Trixie trust that that statement in and of itself isn’t a lie?”
“Well you see I...” King Sombra trailed off and gave a facial expression that was completely dumfounded that once again Trixie couldn’t see but felt.
“I don’t know,” he said very slowly.
“Ok, let’s say Trixie believes you. How can Trixie know that this device even works? You weren’t an Alicorn,” Trixie said as she started walking again toward the City.
“Fair point, I know the device works because I tested it, just not on myself. You see when I built it I was concerned about my lineage, or at least my recent failed attempts, so I started seeking immortality like Starswirl The Bearded. It’s why I built the device in the first place. However when I was done, I was afraid to use it unknowing what would happen. As far as I knew, it would turn me into a monster just like Starswirl had become (according to rumors), and there were no other unicorns I could test it on, or even trust with that kind of power should it work.
“So, I decided to leave it as a last resort before my death bed kind of thing. Until of course the day my third wife gave birth to my daughter, who was not crystalline like I had wanted, but she was a unicorn at least. Bright pink and the most adorable thing I had ever seen, it was the first time my blackened heart felt love for another living being so much that I wanted to give her the world. So I tested the device out on her and it worked! She became an Alicorn.
“And I lorded it over the ponies like you wouldn’t believe, telling them she had been born that way, and it was a sign that I still had the right to rule being that my seed had made a goddess. My popularity at that point had decreased greatly by then.”
“So if you know that it worked, why didn’t you use it on yourself afterwards?”
“Because the device required the Crystal Heart to power it—the only crystal my dark magic couldn’t corrupt. The transformation used up over half of its power and it could only be recharged with the love of the ponies, who at the time only knew fear. So even if I wanted to, I couldn’t use the device on myself. But the heart is recharged now, so we can use it on you.”
By this time Trixie had reached the edge to the barrier of the city. “That sounds good enough for Trixie. Should Trixie assume your horn can’t go throw this wall?”
“Yes, but as long as you cover it with your magic and cape, it should be fine.”
With that Trixie put the horn in a pocket in her cape. With it still covered in her magical aura, she walked through the barrier back to the warm paradise that was the crystal empire. The hour was late now, and the sun was going down as it made way for Luna’s night. “Well, now what?”
“Now take me to the Crystal Heart.”