//------------------------------//
// Darkness 
// Story: Reaper: Requiem's Reflection 
// by Ise no Kami 
//------------------------------//

	In a cloud of dark shadow, Faris materialized in Sombra's throne room. "It appears things have gone smoothly," he noted.
"Not smoothly enough," Sombra corrected with his back turned, giving a stern look to some point in the distance. "It appears Alex has overstepped his bounds."
"Oh, so that wuss has finally done it," Faris mentioned, a wry smile creeping over his face. "Shall I tear him apart for you, master?"
"Don't bother. He's in the wind," Sombra replied. "If he shows up again, I will deal with him personally...and shorten his leash to the point of nonexistance."
"I look forward to seeing that," Faris mentioned with a dark grin. His expression changed as his mind switched subjects. "If I may, master, I would like to make a request."
"Well spit it out, then," Sombra snapped.
"You see," Faris began, "while looking for something to do in this world, I caught wind of an artifact of extraordinary dark power. I would like permission to retrieve and use it."
"Let me guess," Sombra replied, rolling his eyes. "It's under lock and key in some godforsaken corner of the world."
"Quite the opposite, actually," Faris corrected, his smile turning mad.
"Well, no need to ask," Sombra answered, smiling for the first time in the conversation. "Go fetch your treasure."
Just then, two guards burst into the room. "Your Majesty, the barrier is-" Both guards froze in place, their pupils minimizing in response to the scene that lay before them.
"Leave us," Sombra ordered harshly, finally turning his head to the room.
"Y-your Majesty," one of the guards stuttered in fear, "what is the meaning of this?"
In a burst of dark power, that guard was thrown into the air, lingering a moment before crashing to the ground, dead. His comrade's ears drooped as he looked up at his ruler, who now wore a dark grin of sick sadistic pleasure.
"I said leave." The guard disappeared, finding speed to rival Rainbow Dash in his terror.
Sombra summoned his twisted scythe. "I shouldn't get myself down over minor setbacks," he noted. "Today is a glorious day! With just the smallest bit of effort, our plan has reached the point of no return. Now is the time to celebrate!"
He lowered his muzzle and scythe, darkening his face even further. "And what better place to start than by paying fellow royalty a little visit."





The violent winds whipped through the mighty trees of the Everfree Forest with enough force to make them bend. Daniel fought against these powerful gales as he rushed to the center of the forest. The princess of the night that he knew was still in the other world, but one look at the storm above, the violent spasms of the dimensional boundary, told him that little detail no longer mattered.
Sadly, he didn't make too much progress. The unholy storm spat out bolt after bolt of sickly green lightning, spawning a Riftspawn where each one touched down. As a pack of green wolves surrounded Daniel, they were accompanied by monsters of a different kind altogether, though they shared the eldritch abominations' bloodlust.
Guess these things are the natives, Daniel thought. They look pretty pissed to see me.
Daniel crouched into a fighting stance, summoning his scythe. As the green wolves pounced, he sliced through each one in turn. Right as the last Riftspawn fell, a manticore rushed him from behind, hoping to take him by surprise. Instead, Daniel whipped around, effortlessly separating the manticore's head and left foreleg from its body. He noticed another wolf, made entirely out of tree branches, pouncing at him, and responded with a powerful roundhouse kick that sent it flying. It crashed into a nearby tree and broke apart. He turned his attention to the last monster, another manticore, and sliced it in two. He relaxed and prepared to move forward, only to feel fangs sink into his leg. The timberwolf had reformed, and attacked him once more. Angered, Daniel sent a surge of dark power down his leg, reducing the branches in the timberwolf's head to splinters. The body fell apart, this time for good.
Daniel rushed forward again, dead set on his objective. Suddenly, he was nearly blown off his feet by a blast of magic power, forcing him to stop and brace himself against the force. Slowly, he fought against the power to look up at what was going on. What he saw was...strange. The dark forest blurred away, to be replaced with a beautiful garden that he knew well. The image before him kept alternating between the Everfree Forest and the garden that stood there in the other world...as if his eyes couldn't decide which one was correct. Not good. The worlds were starting to overlap. With great effort, he fought against the violent winds of the storm and the great magic force of this dimensional spasm to keep moving forward. Finally, the world settled on the dark shadow of the Everfree, leaving him in front of a large tree.
No.... He was left in front of a hut. The outside was decorated with tribal masks, all with deep gashes cut out of them, some split clean in two. Beyond the broken window panes was what appeared to be the remains of a witch's abode. A cauldron lay overturned on the floor, and hundreds of bottles lay shattered on the floor. Their contents had mixed on the floor, coating it in a dark purple liquid that was probably lethal. A small box lay broken in the corner of the room, its contents plundered. The door had been reduced to splinters, which now coated the disaster area. The candles that once lit the room had fallen to the floor, thankfully put out by the deadly liquid. A small ways away from the house lay a zebra, deep red gashes and trails of blood accompanying her black and white stripes.
Daniel rushed to the injured zebra, pulling her out of the pool of blood that had formed underneath her. She was still breathing, and appeared to be in better shape than Twilight was in after her fight with Alex. Good. Daniel could save her, for real this time. He called forth his dark powers to patch her up. As he was closing the wounds, Twilight arrived at the scene, her eyes widening at the horror that lay before her.
"Sweet Celestia!" she exclaimed. "What the hay happened here!?"
"We're about to find out," Daniel replied. He had finished healing the zebra, and she was starting to regain consciousness.
"Are you alright, Zecora?" Twilight asked out of concern, reaching a hoof out to the zebra. Zecora. So that was her name.
"I appear to be fine, as you can see," Zecora replied. "I would worry more about you than me."
"Wait, what do you mean?" Daniel inquired. "What happened here?"
"A visitor came to my home, to take a power that was not his own." Zecora pointed a hoof to the sorry-looking box in her wreck of a home. Daniel's face went flat with bemusement, his mind getting hung up as he realized this zebra was going to rhyme everything she said. Twilight, meanwhile, went wide-eyed with terror.
"The Alicorn Amulet!" she exclaimed, opening her wings to check on the box.
"Whoa now, don't go in there," Daniel advised, putting out a hand to stop her. "I don't trust that...stuff on the ground. Anyway, what's this amulet we were talking about?"
"It is an artifact of great dark power," Zecora answered. "I fear this may be our final hour."
"It grants the wearer tremendous dark power, but it corrupts them at the same time," Twilight explained. "A pony named Trixie tried to use it to get revenge on me, and went a little insane in the process. My friends and I managed to trick her into giving it up, and Zecora's been holding onto it ever since."
"Okay, hold up," Daniel requested, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his head as he grimaced. "You managed to get ahold of this ancient artifact of dark power, and artifact that's known to turn people evil...and you just held onto it. You didn't even have the excuse of getting corrupted yourselves. You just...kept it." Twilight and Zecora remained silent; they had no counter to that.
"Well, you were just asking for this," Daniel finished flatly, before speeding off deeper into the Everfree.
Daniel raced through the dark forest, cutting down any monsters that got in his way without even slowing down. Soon, he came across his destination, as the trees thinned out to make room for a great chasm, with a ruined castle on the other side. He ran to the rickety rope bridge that crossed the expanse, and sped across it. Just as he neared the other side, however, a bolt of red lightning tore through the air from the castle gate. It would have taken Daniel's head off if he hadn't had quick enough reflexes to duck in time. As it was, the shockwave from the bolt just going off near the bridge splintered it. Thinking fast, Daniel summoned his scythe and swung forward, burying the blade in the edge of the cliff. He climbed up the pole to see...basically what he expected at this point.
"You just won't lay down and die, will you?"
Standing in front of the castle was Faris, his right arm pointing ahead, his hand crackling with blood red energy. A black amulet, with features resembling wings and a unicorn's head, along with a blood red jewel, hung from his neck. It seemed to ooze sinister power. A crooked, sadistic smile darkened Faris' face. His purple eyes flashed red.
"Nice little trinket you got there," Daniel noted.
"You have no idea," Faris replied. "Unfortunately for you, we no longer need you anymore, so I'm free to use all of this new power to kill you."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Look above you," Faris answered, a sadistic smile still covering his face. "The worlds will begin to merge soon, and when they do, they will tear each other apart. What took my master centuries in our world is coming together in a single short week here, all thanks to you. And for your reward..." He loosed two knife chain flails, and sent sinister red energy running through them. "You get to suffer the most painful death I can give you!"
"Yeah, have fun with that," Daniel shot back coyly, before rushing at Faris.
Faris responded by shooting his chains toward Daniel like snakes. Familiar with his methods, Daniel weaved through the chains with ease, and continued his assault. Thinking he was safe for a few seconds, he didn't notice the Amulet's red power bend the chains back toward him. As he lifted his scythe to strike, the knives pierced his arm and torso, their angle of entry causing them to hook into his flesh. A feeling of dread spread through his body, and a sickening smile spread across Faris' face, before the chains were pulled back, throwing Daniel backward before violently ripping the knives from his body. He got back up, and rushed Faris once more, making sure to be more careful. Faris sent chain after power-filled chain at the grim reaper, but his heightened awareness allowed him to dodge most of them. Those chains he didn't dodge, he blocked with walls of dark power, letting the chain ends shatter into knives as they bounced off. As he approached Faris once more, he put all of his power into his swing, intending to end the fight with this one blow. In doing so, he left himself open. Pain shot through his body as a knife chain forced its way through his abdomen, free to pierce his flesh as he had concentrated on his own attack. Using the Amulet's power, Faris lifted him into the air on the chain, before releasing several more to skewer him in almost the exact same spot from numerous different angles.
"You don't understand the glorious power the Alicorn Amulet has given me," Faris taunted mockingly. "I have become suffering itself! I want to see you writhe in pure agony as you die a slow, painful death!"
With a single thought and a red flash of his eyes, Faris sent the dark power of the Amulet through his knife chains, directly into Daniel's body. His world turned blood red, and he coughed up a large puddle of blood from the sheer pain that was coursing through his body. A lesser being would have died right there from the sheer shock. Even for Daniel, this was the closest he'd come to dying himself. The pain was so great that he barely noticed when the knife chains were violently pulled from his torso, leaving him to fall to the ground with a massive bleeding hole in his torso. Slowly and painfully, he lifted his head from its prone position to stare once more at his enemy. He looked like little more than a series of black outlines in a sea of red. So did everything, actually.
"Still alive, are you?" Faris noted. "Hmph. You're harder to kill than we are. Oh well. That just makes this so much more fun."
The Amulet. Daniel had to destroy that Amulet, or Faris would kill him; if not here, then somewhere later down the line. He let his head fall back to the ground, half because he'd hit his pain threshold...half because he had a plan. As he expected, Faris moved to his bleeding body, wanting to make the finishing blows more...intimate.
"That's it. Let yourself drown in the pain," Faris..."reassured" him. "Just a bit more, and it will all go away...."
Now was his chance. Gripping his scythe, fighting against the searing pain that still coursed through his body, Daniel rose, swinging his scythe in an upward arc as he did so. He sliced right through Faris, "killing" him for certain, pulling the blade toward the Amulet to cleave it in two as well. Except...it didn't break. His scythe just stopped when it touched the black metal. As red wisps of shadow poured off Faris' body, the surprise in his eyes from Daniel's attack quickly reverted back to sick glee. His eyes flashed red once more as he let out a sick laugh.
"Sorry, but no dice," he taunted, before bursting into blood red petals of shadow, taking the Alicorn Amulet with him.
Broken and battered, Daniel fell to the ground, losing consciousness as he continued to bleed out.





Back at Canterlot Castle, Celestia-Equestria's Celestia-looked out upon her land with despair. The boundary between dimensions had been torn so badly that it would take a miracle to repair it again. In its pain, the rift between the dimensions had brought ferocious monsters to the land. Now the two worlds were overlapping once more, with far more violence than during the last crisis. Her people were going to pay the price for this disaster...and she could do nothing to help them.
"Do not look so depressed, dear sister." Celestia turned to see her sister Luna join her at the window. "There is still time. We may find a way to mitigate the damage of this catastrophe yet."
"Do you truly believe that?" Celestia asked somberly. "We were saved from this fate last time by nothing short of a miracle. As things stand now, I fear even that is too much to hope for."
"We have to hope," Luna replied. "If we abandon hope, our world will fall with us."
They turned toward the foreboding image of the green sky above, swirling in turmoil, as they contemplated their options and the bleakness of the situation. Suddenly, Celestia was blown backward, as if struck by a powerful invisible force. In a panic, Luna rushed to her older sister. Despite having no visible injuries, Celestia appeared to be struggling to remain conscious against the weight of a terrible pain. Luna's eyes widened even further than they already were, her being filling with dread as she realized what was happening. Something had happened to the other Celestia...and from the looks of the one before her, her injuries very quite serious indeed.
"T-the castle..." Celestia stuttered through her pain. "Take me to...our old castle...."