Gloom gazed at the Crystal Empire in the distance. The beautiful aurora streaming from the tall crystal palace in the center would have captivated most beings, but to Gloom it was more like mockery. He could come no closer without risk. The love and happiness radiating from the crystal heart was not enough to destroy him at the moment, but it would weaken him greatly. The empire was surrounded by a huge, flat plain and there was not way he could approach without being seen. The Crystal Empire's guard was much better than Canterlot's. They had been trained in a different time, 1000 years ago, when monsters roamed the land outside the forests and the three pony tribes still warred. They had only only been beaten 3 times and those were against enemies that could not be fought by normal means. Sombra had conquered them from within and before that a mighty dragon penetrated their defense long enough to steal the crystal heart. The very first to overpower the empire was Gloom himself, but he had been at his strongest for that, he had less to work with in the present. He could see guards patrolling around the city, ready to sound the alarm at the appearance of any threat. He could handle the ponies, but once the alarm was sounded it was likely that Cadence would have her subjects activate the heart as they had against Sombra, which would have a similar outcome for Gloom. He needed a way to get close without anyone seeing or suspecting, to quickly neutralize the heart. As Gloom pondered this he saw a train in the distance, heading towards the empire. The old memories that Gloom had stolen suggested that the train tracks stopped on the edge of the plain, but closer observation revealed a newly laid track that went right into the empire. The train was likely occupied by only a few late night passengers and the crew and it was not yet close enough to be seen from the empire. Gloom's body converted to liquid and sped off to intercept.
Miles away, another part of Gloom stood on the edge of Ponyville. The town was fast asleep, peaceful and unsuspecting. Gloom felt his other selves make their moves and began to enact his own part. Ponyville was different than the other 2 cities. The other Glooms were targeting 2 princesses and one object, this Gloom had to quickly take out 6 ponies that all lived in different parts of town. Gloom's answer was to cast a spell over the whole town at once. He would be spread dangerously thin, but Gloom had confidence that no ponies there had the will to resist him. Gloom's mouth slowly opened and a black mist began to cascade from it. The smoke thickened and fell to the ground like a dense fog. The fog expanded outward from Gloom and entered the town, seeping into the houses through every crack. Tendrils of foul mist stretched out from the central cloud towards houses that were separate from the main town, including a farm, a cottage, and a white cloudhome. Gloom continued feeding the cloud as it slowly but surely blanketed everything. He could already feel some ponies giving in to despair, further fueling his power. Once all three Gloom's were done with their parts and sufficiently empowered, they would recombine and begin part four, the assault on the Tree of Harmony. The cloud surrounded the castle at the center of town.
Twilight poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen. She finished and lifted the glass with her magic to take a drink. Suddenly her horn glowed brightly and the glass shattered under the force of her grip. Twilight stepped back in surprise, then sighed and cast a quick repair spell to reform the glass. With a thought, she once again decreased her magical output. Things like this were becoming a regular occurrence for Twilight ever since Tirek's defeat. She sometimes felt that she would never be able to control her own power, no matter how much she studied. It was the one secret that she had kept from her friends, only she and Celestia were aware of it, even Spike didn't know. She felt it would make everyone worry and Celestia had advised her to keep it a secret because such a thing would gain unwanted attention from all kinds of villains. Even normal ponies may fear her if they found out. Everyone knew that Twilight was a the element of magic, a child prodigy when it came to spells, and that her ability surpassed that of unicorns twice her age even before she became an alicorn. However, the secret she had kept was that her magic was constantly growing. The power within her, the same awesome power that had hatched Spike all those years ago, was still there, only now it was a thousand times stronger and still increasing. Twilight and Celestia had discovered it when she was just a filly shortly after she began her studies. The growth was slow, but steady and after some tests Celestia determined that Twilight's magic was adaptive. Whenever Twilight was exposed to foreign magic, her own magic incorporated a fraction of the outside energy into itself and increased in power. The more powerful the magic she was near, the greater and faster the increase. Simply being near Celestia had more than doubled Twilight's power within a year. Celestia had never seen anything like this and it worried her. Celestia herself could draw incredible power from the sun, but that required time and conscious effort. Twilight's magic strengthened itself naturally without any interference from her. There was no way Twilight's body could handle that kind of might.
To compensate, Celestia taught her a suppression spell that would allow her to keep most of her magic dormant and adjust how much energy she could use at will. As Twilight's skills improved, she could utilize more and more of her magic safely. When it was discovered that she was the element of magic it partially explained her ability, after all, she was connected to magic itself. However, that only increased her problems as ever since then she had been exposed to the strongest magics in the world. Every time she used the elements of harmony her dormant power increased exponentially. Worse, Discord's chaos magic, Sombra's dark magic, and Chrysalis's power had also affected her. That magic not only increased her strength, it affected her mind. With Discord, in less than a day she went from her strongest spell being useless against him to being able to shield her friends from his power and undo some of his chaos. A week later, she had a mental breakdown and nearly plunged Ponyville into chaos over a doll. Later analysis showed that her magic had gained some aspects of chaos energy. She had also become disturbingly skilled in dark magic ever since meeting Sombra. She shuddered as she remembered the shadowy glow that radiated from her eyes whenever she used it. Some changling magic had seeped into her as well, she had used a modified version of it to change her friends into breezies. Her transformation into an alicorn provided further increases but also raised the amount of power her body could handle. Finally, Tirek's magic, the combined power of the princesses, and rainbow power had made Twilight a walking bomb.
She just couldn't keep up, her power was increasing faster than she could learn to control it. True, she could confidently wield over a hundred times more magic than she could when she first came to Ponyville, back then her strongest spell was simple teleportation, now she could easily reverse gravity. However, now her suppression spell needed to keep over 99% of her total energy in check. If she were to ever release it all at once she would explode and take Ponyville with her. She had tried to test her limits before and ended up cracking her horn at just 2%. She was thankful for the suppression spell, it was an incredible work of magic, yet so simple. It gave her no strain and could be adjusted at will. It kept her power so well hidden that Tirek had passed over the dormant part when he drained her. Her fight against him had been the only time she had used that much of her might, and only because Celestia, Luna, and Cadences' magic was more stable and she used it as a structure by which to channel her own unstable energy. Even with that she still was unable to wield all of it. It was even greater now that rainbow power was added. She had shown strain before when casting spells, but that had been due to her struggle to control her energy rather than to make more, she had all the power she could ever need for a spell.
Twilight wasn't even sure of the extent of her magic now, only that she was afraid of it. She had discussed it with Celestia and the only solution they could think of was to continue to use the suppression spell and improve her control through practice. Twilight preferred not to think about it, she could keep the energy dormant indefinitely and there was no reason she would ever need that much energy. As she stood, staring at the glass and deep in thought, she noticed a thin, dark mist entering through a window.