Tactical Shorts By Request

by TacticalRainboom

Friendship: The Gathering

“Crystal.. pony... slaves.”

Twilight closed her eyes, resting her head against the side of her prison of black stone. She had failed, but Spike would not. The power of the Crystal Heart would drive the darkness away from the Empire, and that was all that mattered.

Oblivion was closing in all around, an ever-growing chill of hate and corruption pressing against her tiny unicorn mind. She felt despair powerful enough to oppress the crystal ponies for a thousand years, malice patient enough to wear down the magic of an alicorn and her unicorn lover. Twilight opened her eyes again, and she felt her heart stand still as she stared up at a sky that was black with evil. Sombra might have been called King, but he had the power of a God.

It had been too long, Twilight realized. Spike should have reached heart of the castle by now. With every moment, Twilight imagined more desperately: Maybe there would be an explosion of light tearing the sky asunder and spreading light across the world again. Maybe Cadance’s magic would bloom forth and shield the kingdom with love. Maybe the crystal ponies themselves would join together to drive away their oppressor. Maybe the Rainbow of Light would streak across the sky, slicing through the fear and sorrow...

Salvation did not come. Twilight thought she heard faint screams from far below as King Sombra’s glowering visage rose, victorious, over the Crystal Empire. A shock of horror shot through Twilight's gut as she imagined something else: Her five friends standing back to back in the throne room, placing themselves between Cadence and the oncoming darkness, defiant to the last even as their end crept in under the door and through the windows...

In the last moments before the sun was blotted out forever, Twilight saw something she would never forget. Sombra’s black-on-grey unicorn head suddenly, ever so briefly, changed. Even as the icy grip of madness closed in on her mind, Twilight knew that what she saw was no figment of her imagination. The word that came to Twilight’s mind described the form that Sombra took, though the simple name was woefully inadequate: Dragon. A dragon whose wings spanned the horizon, whose eyes burned with unspeakable, unknowable power not of this world.

At that moment, as darkness claimed final victory over the Crystal Empire, Twilight’s planeswalker spark ignited.

Author's Note:

I really want to write this. It would be hard. I have other stuff to write. But this is so cool.