Sonata de Equestria

by MyHobby

First Movement: Part 7- A Song From The Heart

A Song From The Heart

Sunlight shone through the tent’s thin fabric, waking Twilight out of her restless sleep. The day had come. Twilight attempted to remain motionless for a moment longer, but some ponies were actually excited for the new day.

“Twilight!” a certain minty green unicorn all but shouted in her ear. “Time to waaake uuup! The day is heeere!”

Twilight was by no means a mean pony, but she was also not a morning pony. Her angry gaze burned holes in Lyra’s head as she stood, disheveled mane piled up around her head in a halo of hair. “Patience is virtuous. Indoor voices are virtuous. Beauty sleep is godlike!”

“You gotta get up sometime,” Lyra shrugged.

Twilight grabbed a brush out of her suitcase and began brushing her hair. She noticed that Lyra’s mane was already groomed. “How long have you been up?”

“I like to get up just before the sunrise,” the greenish pony replied. “The rising and setting of the sun just… it inspires me, you know?”

The magic-oriented unicorn nodded. “Yeah, I guess. If anypony asks, I’ll just say that I only watch the sunrise occasionally, just to keep it special.” And certainly not because I’m up studying until the wee hours of the morning.

Lyra tuned her small harp, a gentle “twang, twang” accompanying each test. “What, does spending time with your friends become less special if you do it every day?”

“I hardly think that’s the same thing.” Twilight carefully eased a knot out of her crazy morning mane. “Or, are you trying to say that you’re friends with the sun?”

Lyra looked up from her activity. “Aren’t you?”

“What? No!” Twilight winced as she got her brush stuck in her hair. “Being the personal student of the princess who raises the sun is not the same thing as being friends with the sun.”

“But you are kinda friends with her,” Lyra explained. “You know her better than any pony alive, besides Luna, don’t you?”

“Well…” Twilight rubbed the back of her neck as she dislodged the tangled brush. “Yeah, but she’s not the sun, not even technically.”

“So don’t think about it technically.” Lyra placed her lyre in a saddlebag. “Think about it broadly. You know Celestia better than anyone; Celestia knows the sun better than anyone…” She smiled warmly, but with a heap of mischief in her eyes. “You’re best buddies with the sun, maybe you ought to spend more time with it.”

As Twilight mused at this, Rainbow Dash poked her head through the tent flap. “C’mon slowpokes, breakfast is getting cold!”

Twilight turned, half of her mane still out of sorts. “Just gimme a minute.” She lowered an eyebrow. “Wait, where’ve you been all morning?”

“Morning jog, duh!” Rainbow brushed a lock of red hair out of her eyes. “Exercise and mane-styling all in one go. You should try it, Twilight.”

“My mane’s a completely different animal than yours, Rainbow Dash.” The purple mare got rid of a particularly nasty tangle. “I’m not fond of the ‘wind-swept puffball’ look.”

Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Your loss.” She trotted off to join the mess-line, bowl balanced on one hoof.

---

Twilight joined Rainbow Dash and Lyra at their table some time later. She had just started into her porridge when Gilded Wing strode up with Martial Paw in tow.

“I wish for the excursion to begin no later than eleven o’clock.” He looked up and pointed out the dark, looming clouds on the horizon. “Those storm clouds will arrive around one o’clock, and I’d rather not be in the temple when the sky goes dark.”

Martial pulled a list out from under his wing. “The team shall consist of Lord Wing, Crested Barbary, Twilight Sparkle, and anyone you decide to bring.”

Rainbow looked up from her bowl, mouth full of porridge. “Yow naw coming?”

Martial clicked his beak hesitantly. “I’m the messenger; I have to be ready to move out fast.” He gave Rainbow a lopsided smile. “I get to stand at the entrance and peek inside, though.”

While the two flyers were talking, Lyra gave Twilight a doe-eyed expression, lips puckering. Twilight did her best to ignore the jesting unicorn.

“So…” the purple mare spoke up. “I know that Rainbow Dash is coming along…”

“You bet I am!”

“But I’m not sure about Lyra.”

Lyra stood up, the golden glow of her magic carrying her empty dishes behind her. “What, you think I wanna come on an adventure and miss the climax? Not a chance.”

“Then I believe it is settled,” Gilded Wing said. “I suggest you use this time wisely.”

The two griffons walked off, leaving Twilight to her own devices. The librarian turned to the blue pegasus beside her. “So, what are you going to do to get ready?”

Rainbow Dash grinned. “I’m gonna nap. Keep myself fresh, you know?” She nudged Twilight Sparkle with an elbow. “Just in case…”

---

The three ponies stood beside the three griffons, staring into the maw of what looked very much like a natural cave. The snowstorms over the ages had covered up any evidence of ponycraft, and the icicles hanging in the entrance hid the intricate crystal-work inside. Crested Barbary reached out with his javelin and knocked a few low-hanging stalactites to the ground. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

Twilight took a few tentative steps forward, Gilded Wing close behind. She ducked under a particularly sharp-looking icicle and entered the temple.

“Those are… are those carved crystal bricks!?” She shouted, her voice echoing down the corridors. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made from solid rectangular blocks, carved not out of stone, but from purest purple crystal. “An expert gem-cutter had to have carved each block individually! It would have taken…” She did the calculations in her head. “Um… several lifetimes!”

“Indeed, though I can’t say for sure who carved them.” Gilded stepped beside her. “I doubt that it was Sombra.”

Rainbow Dash gave a low whistle as she entered the temple. “Commissioned it, huh?”

Lyra’s eyes were wide they darted to-and-fro around the hall. “It’s like I’m back in the Crystal Empire. Except that in the city everything looked…”

Twilight looked at her face perfectly reflected off of one translucent purple block. “Everything looked like it was grown.”

The minty unicorn nodded. “Yeah, it did look like it was grown, instead of built. But this…” She waved a hoof at their surroundings. “This took a lot of hard labor.”

Twilight stopped in her tracks. “Yeah. A lot of hard labor. Like, several thousand ponies of hard labor.”

Rainbow looked as though she had smelled something rotten. “You mean… Sombra’s slaves built this?”

“This is his place of safekeeping, isn’t it?” Twilight continued down the corridor. “This is probably the first thing he put together.”

Rainbow Dash gazed around her with a newfound hate. “Disgusting.”

“Slavery is how the cruel and lazy get things done.” Everyone turned to watch Barbary walk into the hallway. “Not since the time of Moshe the Hippogriff was there a slaver so vile.” He sighed wearily. "And here we are, years later, and we are only just learning about Sombra."

Lyra walked alongside him. “I’m not familiar with that legend, what about Moshe was so terrible?”

“It’s not a legend, it's history.” Crested shook his head. “And Moshe wasn’t the tyrant. It was the griffon king who oppressed ponykind until Moshe, a person belonging to both and neither species, rose up against him.”

Gilded Wing looked at the mercenary, feathers ruffling. "I hardly think that now is the proper time for a history lesson."

Barbary shrugged and moved on. "Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it, i'd like to think we could avoid another 'Sombra' in the future."

“Well, learn from your mistakes and try to live better, right?” Rainbow Dash fluttered up to the ceiling to inspect an odd tile. “That’s all we can-”

“GET DOWN!” Crested Barbary leaped up and grabbed Rainbow by the tail, dragging her to the floor. Just as she landed, a giant crystalline axe fell from the tile and embedded itself into the wall. Crested got up off of the surprised pegasus and admonished her. “Didn’t we tell you no flying!? That’s how Keythong lost his pinions!”

“Nopony told me anything!” Rainbow Dash shouted back. “Who’s job was it to tell me!? I’m gonna rip him to shreds!”

“Assigning blame can wait for later!” Gilded Wing strode onwards. “There’s still another trap to get past.”

The five creatures stood before a checkered floor, odd symbols decorating each section. On the walls were holes pointing across the hallway.

Rainbow Dash sneered. “Standard pressure-plate/blowgun trap. Did Sombra have any original ideas?” She picked a small pebble out of her saddlebag, collected for just such an occasion, and lobbed it out of the floor. As expected, every tile that the stone touched let loose a flurry of deadly arrows.

“So we just gotta find the tiles that don’t set off the trap, right?” Lyra asked nervously. “And then it’s perfectly safe to cross, right?”

“Just one problem,” Twilight spoke with horn glowing. “If I’m reading this right, the entire trap is powered with ancient magic, and every single tile is connected to a dart-gun.” She turned to Gilded Wing. “How did you get past this trap before?”

He grimaced. “We didn’t, actually. We were able to take another corridor before someone set off a door-locking mechanism.”

Twilight gritted her teeth. “Sombra’s unoriginal, but at least he’s consistent.” She set her legs at an equal distance apart to brace herself. “Stand back, I’m not sure if this will work.”

Twilight’s horn began to glow, and arcane electricity filled the air in the narrow hallway. The unicorn’s hair began to blow in an unseen wind as she gathered energy in a large ball of light. The others didn’t notice at first, but each crystal block lining the floor began to glow. A final flash of purple concluded her spell, and Twilight smiled at her handiwork. “The failsafe spell rarely fails!”

She confidently walked across the deadly tiles, shocked chokes sounding off behind her. “All I needed to do was find Sombra’s original positive-charged enchantment and hit it with enough negative-charged magic to short it out. Works like a charm!”

Rainbow Dash followed behind her powerful friend. “Wow, I’ve never seen a failsafe spell work before. That was pretty cool.”

Twilight blushed. “Well, yes you did. During the, ahem, Smarty Pants incident.”

“Oh, you mean Celestia…” At Twilight’s nod, Rainbow smiled. “Huh, how about that?”

Another thought crossed the blue pegasus’ mind as she trotted towards a darkened door. “Then how come it didn’t work on Discord’s spells?”

“Frankly, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said as she finally encountered the door. “Discord works on a whole other level than I do.”

The giant stone door was dark, standing out against the crystalline walls like a burnt-out candle on a birthday cake. It was as large as four ponies across, and as tall as a draconequus standing up straight. On its top sat a diamond-shaped purple crystal, with a smaller diamond cut out of the lower half.

“The door to Sombra’s inner sanctum,” Twilight gulped. It was time to see what she was made of. She felt the comforting presence of Rainbow Dash’s hoof on her back, and relaxed slightly. With everything in readiness, she began the dark spell.

She strained with all of her might as her horn began to glow, not with the warm purple it was used to, but a dark, shadowy cloud of magic. Rainbow gasped as the same wicked glow began to seep out of Twilight’s eyelids. Green sparks jumped around the unicorn’s horn as the spell grew in strength. Gritting her teeth, Twilight let the magic build until she could no longer hold it, and then opened her eyes.

Lyra only just held back the scream that formed in her throat when she saw Twilight’s eyes. Her irises glowed red and her whites were now the sickliest of green. The purple unicorn’s face held a look of strained anger, and she gnashed her teeth at her stony enemy.

“By the power vested in me by the Royal Pony Sisters of Equestria, I command you to open!” A dark beam shot out of her horn and contacted the crystal, causing a black-lit glow to encompass the room. The door creaked, and a burst of light shot through it. The sound of thunder rumbled as the stone door was split clean in half by the dark magic pouring through it.

Even more anger rose up in Twilight Sparkle’s eyes as she continued the spell. “I said OPEN!”

The mighty stone door, the monolith that had stood silent and immobile for a thousand years, shattered into microscopic shards.

The dark glow ceased, and everyone let out a breath that they didn’t know they were holding. Even Lord Wing was visibly shaken by what he had just seen. “Perhaps, Twilight Sparkle, it would be best for you and me to carry on and give the others an opportunity to rest?”

Twilight looked around, biting her lip. Lyra was curled up in a corner, looking near tears. Crested Barbary was clutching a javelin in one talon, feathers ruffled and fur standing on end. Rainbow Dash’s look of disapproval was, perhaps, the deepest-cutting expression in the group.

Twilight trotted up to her blue friend and started to speak, but the pegasus interrupted her. “I’ll take care of Lyra. You go.” She kept her eyes on her hooves as she walked away from Twilight. “Do what you need to, then let’s get out.”

Twilight wanted to apologize, or argue, or something. She hated it when her friends were unhappy, and she hated it even more when it was her fault. Instead, she followed Gilded’s lead and entered Sombra’s inner sanctum.

---

It was a large chamber, built out of carved crystal like the rest of the temple. What was different here were the six large statues that lined the walls.

Each statue seemed to be of the same species; large, leathery wings protruded from their backs, and their pointed snouts seemed to suggest that they were a type of dragon, but their body-types seemed to be more ape-like.

“They look like they’re carved out of a single crystal,” Twilight mused. “That’s… that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“What do your own eyes tell you, Miss Sparkle?” The griffon lord strutted forwards with a purpose, barely paying the six monstrous statues any mind. They soon came in view of the far end of the hall, where a seventh statue stood.

Much like the others, the statue was a simian/reptilian winged thing. It seemed to be slightly larger than the others, and stood with a regal pose, rather than a feral one. Its right hand clutched a small, glowing object, as if it was debating on giving the object or keeping it for itself.

Gilded Wing gazed at the object intently. “Can you retrieve that relic, Miss Sparkle?”

Twilight closed her eyes and picked out the magical core of the stature; though it was a single piece of crystal, it was mobile. “I think so.”

She reached out with Sombra’s dark magic once again, this time not building up as much charge. Her red-and-green eyes blazed as she focused on moving the statue’s arm.

The creature moved slowly and smoothly, lowering its hand and extending its fingers until the object was in plain view. Twilight gripped it with her normal telekinesis and brought it close. It was a dark-purple crystalline heart, perhaps half of the size of the relic protecting the Crystal Empire.

And it was throbbing.

Twilight’s eyes glazed over as she stared into the crystal. In her mind’s eye, its glowing purple magic collected into the form of King Sombra himself.

"Greetings, young Twilight Sparkle
It’s good to finally meet
Face to face
Yet perhaps some worlds away

"Your friends are soon to find
That I’m anything but kind
After all
That you have done to end my days

"Within my masterful tomb it starts
Right here inside my bitter heart
My power shall set me above
And never will ponykind know love"

Twilight backed away from the heart, a deep rush of anxiety flowing through her. She bumped into the enormous chest of Lord Gilded Wing. He spoke softly, gently, to her. “Thank you so much, Miss Twilight Sparkle. Without you, none of this would be possible.”

She was about to reply when a heavy weight slammed into the back of her head, knocking her off balance and onto the hard floor below. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was Gilded Wing slipping the heart into his satchel and shouting. “Someone help! Twilight’s fallen! Help!”

---

Princess Celestia enjoyed sharing tea with her sister quite a bit. It never happened very often before the “incident” with Nightmare Moon, but now Luna wished to do anything in her power to spend time with the princess of the sun. It was just after the sunrise, and Luna was drinking a hefty cup of chamomile tea in preparation for a well-deserved day’s sleep.

They had spent the morning in silence until Princess Luna piped up. “It will be a relief to have all of this bad business behind us.”

Celestia took a dainty sip and smiled. “You mean about Sombra?”

Luna nodded. “I was… unsure that Twilight was up to the task, but she has handled it with flying colors.” She set her cup down and poured more tea. “Now that Sombra is gone for good, we can eliminate every last trace of his influence.”

Celestia looked out the window, peering at the cold mountains in the distance. “My faithful student should be inside the tomb by now.” She smiled. “By the end of the day, his dark heart shall no longer beat.”

Luna shook her head sadly. “I knew him better than anypony, but he still manages to shock me to this day.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation-” Celestia’s comment was broken off as a small, green puff of smoke floated in, transmogrifying into a small sheet of parchment before her eyes. “Ah, Another letter from Spike.” She unrolled the letter and began to read. “Perhaps one of Twilight’s Ponyville friends has learned a new lesson about…”

Celestia’s eyes grew wide, she was certain that what she was reading could not be true. Not now, not when they were so close. Luna peaked around the letter with a smile on her face. “Well, did Applejack finally learn her lesson about pride?”

Seeing her sister’s distress, Luna asked for the letter. As she read it, her face grew dark. “So, is this true? Could this be the work of a pretender?”

“It’s… not likely, my dearest sister.”

Luna looked back at the letter and reread the contents. An expression of pure fury exploded over her features. She tore the letter asunder and flung the bits to the far reaches of the room. “NO! It shall not end this way!”

She turned to the doorway and shouted in the Royal Canterlot Voice, gaining the guards’ instant attention. “Bring me Captain Stonewall!”

Celestia attempted to reign-in her sister’s temper. “Now is not the time to be hasty.”

“Hasty!?” Luna shouted in a volume just under “heart-stopping.” “You read the letter yourself! Sombra is not dead, he has allies, and an attempted kidnapping has already taken place!” She stormed out of the dining room, only slightly slowed by her calming tea. “Now truly is the time for haste! Before it is too late!”

Author's Note:

Phenomenal Cosmic Powers are pretty fun to write about.

Revision: Quick clarification as to who Moshe is in relation to Crested Barbary's brief story.

Comments

[Metool Bard]

Hmm. The griffon history and culture is still compelling, but I'm not sure what it's building up to, if anything. The story about Moshe the Hippogriff just seems to come out of nowhere, and the only relationship with Sombra is how they were both slavers. I mean, if you have plans for this later, that's great (wonderful, even). I'm just confused as to what those plans might be.

Also, where did that heavy weight come from, and why didn't anyone else see it? If it was an invisible force that hit Twilight (or something unseen), then I would probably reword that. Otherwise, great cliffhanger. I'm certainly looking forward to more.

[MyHobby]

2089105

The story about Moshe the Hippogriff just seems to come out of nowhere,

Ooh, that's fair. Though short of deleting the whole conversation any sort of fix would require a bit more exposition.
Which will be handled at a later date/chapter/thing.

and the only relationship with Sombra is how they were both slavers.

I've revised the conversation to be a little more clear that Moshe wasn't the slaver. One word and two commas make a world of difference.

I'm just confused as to what those plans might be.

To be as fair with you as you are with me, I have a problem with "too much info" and "keep it stupid, simple."
Yes, it's leading up to something, something coolish and fun.
Maaaybe it could have waited. Que sera sera.

Also, where did that heavy weight come from, and why didn't anyone else see it?

A: The audience only know what Twi knows.
B: No one followed them into he room, yet, as indicated just before the second-to-last break.

Your thoughts are much appreciated!

[kd7sov]

Ape-type bodies, pointed snouts, and leathery wings? But why would Sombra have statues of Scorpan...?