This story is a sequel to Possession in the Crystal Empire
When he returned to life and escaped from his enemies after possessing Private Iceland. King Sombra seemed to drop off the radar, only leaving vague sightings and hints of where he might be. So what was the former tyrant of the Crystal Empire doing before he struck again?
Sulking in a corner? Cooking up wild revenge schemes in a dark cave? Terrorizing the wilderness and any unlucky passerby? Gambling and living in luxury in Las Pegasus?
This story lightly touches on some of the things he was up to between his resurrection and his eventual return.
Special disclaimer: Mild implication of sex in the early part. Dark tag also on because of some mild dark elements.
This story is part of The Equestria Tales series.
Side-story in "Return of The Dark Ponies" story arc.
This story happens between the events of Possession in the Crystal Empire and The Last of the Dark Ponies, around mid season 5. It's not strictly necessary to have read either story.
Hail King Sombra provided some additional insight on the story and helped me with the tags.
I liked the details about ancient armor (normally it's the pegasus ponies that get portrayed as Spartan-like, so this was a change), how food choices show differing diets between these dark ponies and normal ones, and Sombra having an obvious one-sided (presumably one-sided?) attraction to Celestia.
There's also a lot of lines like this that I thought I should mention. This story does read like it needs something of a proofreading clean-up, or at least some comma donors. That way, it would flow and look much better. An example would be:
*You might've meant 'the king' too. I'm not sure.
9617441
Yeah, I always felt the Pegasus ponies were more inspired by Athens in terms of Ancient Greek, they never felt Spartan to me. So when I created the Spartacorns as a ancient nation Private was a history expert on, I actually made them earth ponies who put steel horns on their helmets.
And yes at this point Sombra's attraction is very much one-sided.
You are also not wrong about the proofing. I did my best to fix things up, Hail King Sombra only glanced at it to help me figure out the tags (I can be bad at tags) but I have been giving her a break from editing, so there are few stories here published that probably could look better.
I have fixed that one point you mentioned, and I will see about if I can't fix more later.
9617784
I think you might want to get yourself checked for brain-worms, stat.