Possession in the Crystal Empire

by Askre

Chapter 11. Where do you think he’ll go?

Chapter 11

Flash Sentry entered Shining Armor’s office. He was a little tired after straining to keep up with the train and feeling slightly miffed at having been called back. Still he had obeyed the order and returned to the city, hoping though he could get an explanation for it.

The white Unicorn sat behind his desk and beside it was Cadance, having insisted on being there when Flash returned even if her husband had suggested she go and rest. They both looked at the newly arrived Pegasus, the princess smiled but the prince had a more serious expression.

“Sorry for calling you back from your chase, Flash Sentry, I do commend you on your initiative but I’m afraid that if Sombra had spotted you, we would probably not be talking right now,” Shining Armor said.

“Sombra? As in King Sombra?” Flash gasped when both royals nodded.

“You’re a good guard, but you wouldn’t have stood a chance against him alone. But yes, King Sombra is back, he’s been possessing Private Iceland. That’s why he was so inconsistent in behavior and uncooperative,” Shining explained to him.

That does indeed explain a lot, the guard thought and furrowed his brow.

“We’ve sent telegrams to all the stations that the express stops at and asked them to be on the lookout for two dark gray unicorns that might step off it. That doesn’t rule out that they might jump off the train before it reaches a station though,” Cadance said.

Flash nodded in response, he hoped he would be allowed to help with the search. The Pegasus felt a little bad for the gaff at the hospital that allowed Sombra to escape. It was not his call though.

“We also feel that the parents of the twins should be notified, after all one of their sons is possessed and the other has been taken hostage by the same spirit. They have a right to know what is happening,” Shining Armor pointed out. Flash felt his heart sink a little, it was obvious who he was sending to tell them by how he looked at the guard.

“But sir, they are all the way down in the San Palomino Desert on an archeological dig,” the Pegasus tried to weakly protest.

“According to the Canterlot Science Society, the San Palomino dig is happening two-hour flight away south of Los Pegasus,” the Unicorn informed him and gave him a piece of paper where the location of the dig was.

“Should I try and find the roommates too? They are in Los Pegasus on vacation.” Flash Sentry held back a grumble when seeing that there was no use protesting, he was going west whether he liked it or not.

“If you can find them do that.” Cadance nodded. Flash saluted and left the office, intending to take the next train immediately.

Shining Armor watched him go and once the door shut after the Pegasus the Unicorn looked down and sighed. He glanced up when Cadance put a supporting hoof on his back, the stallion smiled weakly.

“I just keep thinking about everypony that creep could have possibly possessed, this Private was the first to come but somepony else could just as well have arrived first. What if it had been somepony we knew? Then I feel awful for feeling lucky that no one I know had this happening to them, because how must Barricade be feeling seeing his brother like that, how will their parents be feeling knowing their son is being controlled by a vicious tyrant.” Shining shook his head. “I can only imagine how my parents would feel if this was me or Twily.”

“You’re a good compassionate pony, Shiny, one of the many reasons I married you,” Cadance smiled and reached to give him a hug, her husband returned the embrace.

“Speaking of your parents, good thing we remembered to send them a note to postpone the visit until we have this sorted out,” the princess then said once they parted, the stallion nodded in agreement and rose from his desk.

Shining walked over to a wall where on hung a map that showed the entire Crystal Empire and its surrounding area, it even named some of the mountains. Sombra’s Maw was high up in the north western corner almost out of view. Cadance rose up and followed him.

“Right, if Sombra plans to keep close to the Emprie but still out of reach of the Heart’s blast he’ll have to jump the train,” he said, lightning up his horn he grabbed a quill and used it to trace after the line on the map representing the train tracks going west.

“But if he does, where do you think he’ll go?” his wife wondered, north, south or west, there was a lot of area for two ponies to disappear in.

“That is the million-bit question.” Shining Amor sighed as he regarded the map. “If he goes north of the tracks, there are at least three inns he could stop at, Mountain Rest, the Rowdy Crystal Wolf and the most recently opened the Crystal Ale. I mean even if he’s a spirit his hostages need to eat and rest, of course he might not care about that.”

“There are many more places to go if he goes south but that’s because then he would be heading straight into Equestria proper,” Cadance said and rubbed her muzzle thoughtfully. “You know, I have a feeling Sombra would try and avoid going further into Equestria in his current state.”

“Yeah, plus he is probably more focused on the Crystal Empire.” Shining nodded in agreement as he marked on the map where the three inns where, they were well apart from one another. The Crystal Ale was the closest to the tracks and the Rowdy Crystal Wolf was much further northeast. “I should send guards to the three inns and see if the find something or somepony who has seen something.”

“If Sombra even left the train,” the princess sighed a little, hating a bit to only have guess work to go on. All they knew right now was that their enemy had gone with the westbound train.

“Then hopefully they in Vanhoover see something when the train stops there,” Shining told her reassuringly and put the quill away. He looked at his wife and became a little worried when seeing she was rubbing her head and looked to be in mild pain.

“Seriously, Cady, maybe you should lie down for a little while,” he suggested and put a leg around her. “He did hit you pretty hard.”

“He knew who had the spells that work on him, I’m fine, it’s just that bump on my head, still bothers me a little,” the princess smiled and leaned on her head on her husband.

“Yeah, had I known beforehoof that it was Sombra, I would have asked you to strengthen Twily’s shield.” Shining Armor shook his head. “Still can’t believe that jerk can counter it, I mean Chrysalis at least had to drain me for it to crack.”

Cadance tried not to chuckle at the pouting tone in the Unicorn’s voice, knowing hurt pride when hearing it. When they first came to the empire, it had of course been Shining’s first instinct to immediately envelope the city with his shield spell. Seeing Sombra smash it almost immediately afterwards had been a quite a metaphorical punch to his gut. Fortunately, Cadance’s quick thinking of using a similar but the far more exhausting love and light shield spell had kept the Shadow King out before the Crystal Ponies realized he was back.

Then if that hadn’t been bad enough, after Twilight and her friends arrived, Sombra disabled his magic completely. To his credit, Shining had taken all of this in stride and instead focused on supporting Cadance’s effort to maintain her shield.

“Well at least Sombra did it in a stallion to stallion fight,” he would just say if ponies asked.

“Finding Sombra again is one thing though, containing him again is another,” Shining mentioned and glanced back at the map. “This guy plans ahead, we probably need to do so as well.”

“We know he draws his powers from fear and hate, my spells can counter his, so I’ll probably need to do that,” Cadance said, ignoring the concerned look she received from her husband. “I’m sure I’ll be in form again by the time we know where to go look.”

“He has two hostages, one which we can’t get away from him seeing that Sombra is inside of him.” The Unicorn reluctantly pushed his worries about his wife’s condition aside and frowned. “We have a nightmare of a hostage situation; he might put us in a spot where we might have to save Barricade at the cost of Private.”

Shining Armor let go of his wife and went back to his desk. Cadance stayed by the map, still studying it. The Unicorn started to look through the desk for some paper, once he found a blank piece he returned to the map, he grabbed the quill again and started writing the observations the two of them had already made.

“I hate to say this but if we have to take down Private to stop Sombra, we are going to have to do it,” he muttered.

“As an absolute last resort.” Cadance cringed at the thought that they might have to go that far to stop their enemy. Her husband nodded in agreement, not relishing that thought either.

“Maybe Twily will have some ideas when she comes back,” Shining suggested sounding absolutely certain, remembering how her sister had helped last time.

---

“I have absolutely no idea how we are going to do this,” Twilight complained as she nervously paced back and forth on the train station platform in Canterlot.

She had finished informing the Princesses of the situation about King Sombra’s return. The purple Alicorn was now going to take the next train to the Crystal Empire, she was too tired to fly again or teleport such a vast distance.

“What? It’s just King Sombra, I’m sure we can handle him,” Spike the baby dragon said confidently. He had arrived with the last train from Ponyville after Twilight had sent him a letter, telling him to ask their friends to keep a close eye on the town just in case Sombra made his move there. The young dragon, however, had decided to head to Canterlot on his own to help the princess any way he could.

“Spike, last time we had all the Crystal Ponies to activate the Crystal Heart and him close enough to be blasted with it. Even if that hadn’t worked, we could still have fallen back to Canterlot to get the Elements of Harmony.” Twilight stopped pacing and now stared at her assistant. “We don’t have the Elements of Harmony now, Sombra is smart enough to stay out of reach of the Crystal Heart this time around and he has two ponies in his grasp, one of which he can just kill from the inside if he wants to.”

“Um, good point,” Spike relented, he didn’t want to show his unease. It was though easy to be confident that they would fix this while still so far away from the main problem. The dragon also never liked to admit it but if Cadance hadn’t caught him that fateful day, he would just have plummeted to his doom and the dark king would have caught the Heart.

Twilight groaned and finally sat down. She had also contacted Ponyville Hospital, but there was no visible pattern to the wake ups except that they happened every hour and the ponies always said the same. She was growing more and more convinced that Sombra had been telling the truth that they were just to spread some panic for his amusement.

“So who got possessed, anypony we know?” Spike wondered.

“Not directly no, Derpy and Time Turner know him though. It’s Dinky’s uncle,” Twilight told him.

“Dinky has an uncle?” The dragon knew who Dinky was but hadn’t heard before she had many male relations except her grandfather.

“On her father’s side, he’s sometimes came with Dinky’s half-sister for visits,” Twilight explained and eyed up when hearing a train whistle. “Derpy and Time Turner learned of them during the time they got together and had to settle some matters with Dinky’s father.”

“Ah.” Spike had actually no idea when that happened, though he had noticed the two of them suddenly being together few months ago. Twilight did notice the confusion on her little dragon and thus continued.

“It happened shortly before we got sent to the Crystal Empire the first time. Derpy got a false claim against her to be investigated by her daugther’s father, Barricade. The Fillydelphia social service which handles cases in Ponyville sent two social workers, to do the investigation who happened to be familiar with Barricade as well.” Twilight rose up as the train came to stop in front of them, she and Spike entered and found seats in the car.

“It’s a long story what happened next, Applejack couldn’t tell me all the details about it, but the social workers, Foxy Stripes and Dew Doe, were friends with Barricade’s twin brother Private Iceland and they apparently have a long history with interfering with Barricade. To put it in short, Barricade was doing the false claim to see if they interfered with him again and when they seemed to be doing exactly that, he decided to try and scare them off by surrounding them with few of his thugs and pretend he was going to harm them if they didn’t stop,” the princess finished, Spike arched his brow.

“That sounds overly convoluted and rather stupid,” the baby dragon remarked dryly.

“It certainly wasn’t a smart move on his part, especially since it got Derpy and Time Turner involved in a feud they didn’t need to be a part of. Anyway, they became friends with Private, Foxy and Dew. Foxy had previously been in a relationship with Barricade and they had a daughter named Coal, she sometimes comes to visit her sister Dinky now,” Twilight said as she gave two tickets to the conductor.

Which makes me wonder why Barricade was there at the hospital, maybe he feels sorry for what he did, she mused to herself. He certainly sounded concerned, wanting Sombra out of his brother.

---

“Are you feeling better?” Sombra asked when Barricade returned to their table.

“As if you care,” Barricade snorted and sat down, glaring at his possessed brother. “How long were you watching?”

“You honestly think for one second that while you are in my company that I trust you well enough to not keep an eye on you?” the Dark Unicorn snorted.

Barricade grunted, grabbed his jug with levitation and drank from it. It wasn’t like anything had happened, despite his reputation in Manehattan, the stallion respected it that Spicy Hot had not been interested. So all they did was share more of the Mountain Spring and talk a bit.

“I suppose no…” Barricade frowned and looked around, he first now noticed how eerily silent it was. He looked at his brother, the eyes were glowing green and purple smoke emitted from the corners.

Why is nopony moving? He thought as he now noticed that just about every patron in the inn sat strangely hunched over their tables. There was no sign of Strong Horn the innkeeper.

“So much delicious fear and hate,” a whispering voice caused him to snap his head back to Sombra, who was smiling devilishly.

“Are they dead?” Barriacade half rose up wanting to inspect the nearest patron who was a big burly minotaur. The Unicorn noticed that his eyes were glowing green as well and he had a horrified expression frozen on his face. To his relief he confirmed the guest to still be alive.

“What are you doing?” He whispered, still keeping an eye on all the other patrons. He could only assume they were in the same state and the minotaur.

“Draining them off their fears and hate,” Sombra answered simply.

“Like you did with Private?” Barricade slowly looked back at him.

“Indeed, your brother is still too weak after last time I drained him and since we are here,” the dark king confirmed with an evil chuckle.

“Strong Horn?”

Barricade quickly looked over to the bar. Spicy Hot had just come out of the break room and was looking behind the counter, indicating where the innkeeper now probably lay in the same state as the rest of his customers. The mare frowned in worry and went there.

Crap. The stallion cringed and looked at King Sombra, except he was no longer in his seat. Barricade eyes bulged out and then he looked back to the counter, seeing his possessed brother appear out of the shadows right behind Spicy.

This hadn’t gone unnoticed by the mare, she jumped when noticing the dark looking Unicorn and turned around to face him. Spicy was unnerved by the strange look he was giving her and the malicious grin on his muzzle. She slowly started to back away as he approached.

“I must say, my dear, that cut of meat you delivered me was quite exquisite, I haven’t had such a meal in a very long time,” Sombra purred softly and licked his lips greedily. “But you want to know what is even tastier?”

“Who in Tartarus are you?” Spicy whispered and found herself cornered at the end of the counter, she started to glance frightened around. She saw Barricade who was debating with himself what he should do.

“Your fear is…” Sombra was cut short when a large bottle of ale was slammed into him. In a desperate move Spicy had grabbed the nearest one with her magic and hammered it on the Unicorn’s head.

Ow, Private is going to be feeling that. Barricade grimaced since this had actually knocked his possessed brother down but clearly not out. Spicy jumped over the counter and made a mad dash for the exit just as the Dark Unicorn was rising up growling in rage.

Sombra leaped over the counter now half in shadow form, clearly intending to head straight after the mare. Barricade sighed, knowing he would be regretting what he was about to do. The Unicorn rushed from his table and tackled the body of his brother down, allowing Spicy to escape out of the inn. The next thing Barricade knew was him being tossed towards the ceiling by the enraged dark king. Then everything went black.

King Sombra growled as he watched the limp body of his host’s brother come crashing back to the floor. He glared to the exit, contemplating if he should try and resume his chase, Spicy would be easily trackable in the snow.

No, I have no time, the fun is over, time to head to the mountain. Sombra turned to the back of the inn and found his way to the backroom. He found a saddle bag and began stashing it with food and other supplies. When he returned, Barricade was coming to.

“You try something like this again, worm, I will make sure your brother suffers badly,” the dark king hissed as he glared down at the disoriented Unicorn.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Barricade said trying to uncross his eyes and shake the dizziness out of his head as he slowly rose up.

Sombra snorted and headed out of the inn with Barricade unsteadily following him. Outside the dark king already spotted the hoof prints from Spicy, noting that she had run off in the eastern direction. The dark king grunted and figured the time he had was now cut even shorter than he liked. With a grunt Sombra started heading northwest.

“Say, what about all the ponies and uh others in the inn?” Barricade asked, remembering in what state the patrons and the innkeeper had been in.

“They will wake up eventually, or if somepony rouses them,” Sombra shrugged, never looking back.

“Now get moving, thanks to you, that mare will have plenty of time to let somepony know about us and it won’t take long for them to figure out where we are going. I intend to get to the mountain by the next day,” the Dark Unicorn then ordered sharply.

Happy to help. Barricade allowed himself to smirk since the dark king wasn’t looking. Although this hadn’t actually been planned, the fact that now ponies would soon know where to look for them and it was thanks to him, gave him some relief. The Unicorn doubted he could delay their trek to the mountain, but at least now help should be on the way.

End chapter 11

Author's Note:

I don't think a bottle of ale is one of Sombra's weaknesses but Spicy must use what is at hand... err hoof.

The end was actually much darker but then I decided that it was a little too much, last chapter already had a pretty dark ending.

And Spike is a natural choice to use when you want to poke fun of your own stories.