The Goat's Bells Ring
The ringing of bells is often assumed to be a happy sound, the ringing of small bells doubly so. Images of Hearth's Warming, or of those noble creatures of ethereal magic, the reindeer, are conjured up by the ting-a-ling-a-ling of bells on a harness. We often consider that the only kind of bell that can be sad or scary is the large bell, the church bells that toll out funerals. But those are the same bells that ring out at weddings and on days of great worship and pride. Church bells can be heard from miles away, but a jingle bell can only be heard from a few feet away.
If you heard a church bell while stumbling lost through a snowstorm, you would run towards it, because the bell would mean life and other people who could save you. But in the same snowstorm, if all of a sudden you heard the ringing of thirty harness bells, you would leap out of the way of wherever the bells are coming from. In that moment, those bells mean death, mean that you're about to be trampled underhoof.
Sombra had never been any good at knowing where sounds were coming from, especially when he was close to blind. When he heard the bells, he started looking around the dark blizzard, trying to make out any hint of a shape in the snow. In one moment, the bells seemed to be coming from his left, then from his right, then right at him, then just off to the side. He couldn't tell if it was the wind, or if there was a herd, or if it was just some kind of spell they were assaulting him with.
"They, eh? And who's they, little one?"
The bells had stopped. Sombra was suddenly very aware of something enormous behind him, and he felt a presence in his mind urging him not to turn around.
"You come from the Crystal Empire, don't you?"
Sombra ground his teeth together, and rounded on the thing. With a tinkling of bells, it vanished, moving behind him once again. "I was," he growled. "Not anymore."
"Ah, yes. You are weak, and they will not tolerate it?"
Sombra felt the dark power bubble up inside of him. "They didn't chase me out! I left!"
"Of your own free will?" The bells tinkled in tandem with a laugh, a bloodthirsty rumbling that drowned out the wind.
Sombra turned to glare at the thing, but it moved again. "Yes," he lied. "I hated it there."
"You hate the Crystal Empire?" The snowflakes began to sparkle with blue fire, the reflection of the thing's magical aura. "More likely, you love it, more than you know you should."
"No, no I don't! I hate it! I hate the ponies, I hate the buildings, I hate the whole blasted thing!"
The world flashed blue. Sombra fell to his knees, and he felt suddenly, overwhelmingly weak.
"They say that the Crystal Heart shows the reflections of our soul. Everything we are destined to be, everything we have been, and sometimes a vision of what will happen to change us from the present self to the future self." The shadow of the thing loomed in Sombra's vision. "And not more than a day ago, they held the Crystal Faire."
Sombra tried to tell the creature to shut up, but he could not summon the strength to open his mouth.
"You have looked into the Crystal Heart, and seen a pony you are afraid of becoming. You know that you can't run from the future that the Crystal Heart has shown you, but you try anyway."
"Not running. From the future." Every word was a struggle for the foal. "Running from. The ponies I'd hurt."
"An admirable goal, but we both know you won't keep to it." The air glowed blue, and the blizzard seemed to shift. It didn't die down or grow quiet in any way, but it began to fold away from the two of them like parting curtains. "If you saw yourself hurting them in the heart, then there'll be no outrunning that."
Sombra forced himself onto his feet, but there was another flash of blue and his strength abandoned him. He fell back into the snow, and he cursed with all of his might.
"Temper, temper. Getting angry won't change your fate, little one."
The dark power wanted so very much to be free. Sombra could feel it struggling, thrashing and flailing and trying to break through him.
"Oh, wait. There's an idea." The creature started laughing, and Sombra almost choked on the spike in power within his horn.
"What idea?" he grumbled, sneezing on snow as he did.
"Well, you can't hurt the ones you love if they're already dead." The snow parted completely, and Sombra got a good look at the creature. He was a goat, enormous and built like a house. His skin was as blue as the night sky, his teeth were like sharpened knives, and he had horns so huge that it looked like he could carry an entire pony between them. His eyes were blood-red, and the weird squished pupil only made him seem less like a person and more like an animal.
Sombra had heard of this goat. Everypony had. There wasn't a pony alive who didn't know the name of the Dream-Eater, the Deadmaker, the one they called Grogar.
"So, what do you say, kid? You want to be free of that troublesome destiny of yours?"
Sombra's blood was pumping so hard, his heartbeat was drowning out all other sounds in his head. He couldn't be sure that anything he was hearing was real. "Did you just say... that you'll kill everyone I know and love... just so that I don't have to?"
"Yep." Grogar smiled, or at the very least made sure that Sombra could see all of his teeth. "Sounds like a pretty good plan, if I do say so myself. Hell, I was on my way to tear down the Crystal Empire anyways. Wouldn't even be out of my way. You just tell me what they look like, and I'll be sure to tear them a--"
Sombra had never needed to learn magic. To his eyes, the spells cast by unicorns were a collection of laughably simple symbols, and the dark power had always taken care of any energy needs that a given spell had. It was the work of a moment's thought to assemble Grogar's spell, and as some of the symbols he was setting seemed blurry, Sombra took the opportunity to straighten them. When he unleashed the spell, it hit about four times harder than anything Grogar had thrown at him. The giant stumbled, then he fell. Sombra got to his feet.
The dark power wanted to be free. Sombra provided it with an exit path. "The Crystal Empire is mine."
Yeah, Grogar was cycling Death Pulse. Why?
Mostly because at his age, Sombra would be lucky to be statted as a 1/3. And also because Grogar was trying to find a card.
Let's see if anyone can guess the card.
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Yeah, in this franchise, goats and bells mean only one thing, and it isn't very nice. (And there's something wonderfully appropriate in a necromancer digging for something, even if it's in his deck. I think I know what it was, for that matter...)
In any case, a well-executed display of dark nobility.
7644327 Grogar easily outstats Sombra as a child. No, he's looking for a spell to deal with the Crystal Empire.
7644349 Knowing Grogar he probably planned on using mortify or worse...
Megrim...
7644443 Doesn't target enough people at once. Also, white mana.
7644457 SOMETHING LIKE THAT IS TRIVIAL TO THE OVERGOAT!!!!
7644457
A black spell that deals with a large number of indiscriminate targets?
I'd say Damnation, or any of the various "All creatures get -X/-X" spells.
7644482 Grogar isn't necessarily mono-black.
7644494
So? Nothing stopping him from utilising pure Black magic if he has to.
7644580 You guys are never going to guess it.
7644596
Depending on how crystal ponies work, Shatterstorm could prove truly devastating to the Empire.
7644792 Well, you got the mana color right.
Vandalblast? Beauty is in the eye of the exploder, after all.
Or maybe it was Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction?
7645019 Actually, it was Anarchy. But now that you bring up Blasphemous Act, that's a much better pick.
I love how fucking close to canon this is three years later. :D