He stood unmoving upon the vast, empty plains of the Frozen North. Except for the thrush-like whisper of wind against its few sculpted hills and mountains, no sound disturbed it. It was to all appearances empty, yet a ghost-like feel of something there was ever-present, sending a shiver and a need to hurry on through the bones of the bat pony observing this deity-forsaken landscape.
He got the distinct feeling he was surrounded by the echoes of life once there, the feel of slightly smoother ground under his hooves, as if standing on long-gone paved roads. No sound disturbed this part of the Frozen North, yet Dark Watch could swear he heard the bustle of an empire alive with fillies and colts, stallions and mares, the rattle of chains, the click of hooves, if even only in his head.
It was there. It was not. It was unnerving.
Slitted eyes scanned the surrounding horizon before him. A mountain chain was far off in the distance, looking small and unimportant, but two independent peaks were much closer - one large, one smaller than its neighbor. The taller peak was hooked at the top and had a series of jagged, tooth-like protrusions.
Some deeper part of Dark Watch recognized the peak, though he had never seen it in his life. “That’s - Sombra’s maw!” he breathed, at once comforted by its sight and confused as to how he knew this. “But if that’s the Maw, then where is…” Watch tried to turn around, to scan for the city he now knew would be nearby, but he found he couldn’t move. “What?” he snarled, finding his muscles would not even tense.
Feeling the laws of magic and time shift, clicking as if a great, galactic clock had turned a key, the landscape shimmered under the cold Northern sun showing weakly above the plains. With that shift, he found he was now able to move his eyes and head just barely, but enough.
One instant the plains of the Frozen North were empty. The next instant it was filled to overflowing and the bat pony’s paralysis was temporarily forgotten in the stunning wake of what was he now stood in front of.
Where there was once nothing, a city - an empire appeared – vast, alive, a HUGE, towering castle of shining dark crystal reigning over all at its center. As the sun above touched the top spires of the castle below for the first time in a millennia, the darkness bled out of the crystal, falling downward, washing it clean and pure of corruption, casting the evil taint of dark, shadowy magic back to earth.
From there the purifying light spread out across everything, banishing the darkness from the tower and the city. It fled, as if a living thing, seeking asylum in a great fissure in a northeastern glacier rift, at the base of Sombra’s Maw. Faster than the blink of an eye, the corruption was sucked down the crevasse, screaming in anger at the brilliance of Celestia's sun, the unearthly howl channeled through the larger mountain, back up and out, forced through its natural opening at its top to send its rage and pain back towards the city it had been cast out of.
A tiny wisp of that darkness, however, resembling living smoke, sought refuge not in the glacier, but turned in the direction of the single stallion who still stood stock still and frozen on the plain nearby. “Uh…” he stuttered, an uneasy feeling rising in his chest. “Don’t cast your gaze upon me, foul thing!” he warned it, surprised when the words actually came out of his mouth. Knowing he was utterly unable to defend himself, ice formed in the pit of his stomach at its presence.
Yet again, something was so familiar...
Sensing his fear, the airborne taint crossed the distance to the bat pony, pulled by the intensity of emotion, as if hunting and seeking out a source of food in this wasteland. In seconds it was upon him.
The stallion could only suck in a breath of fear as it flowed into his body. Watch’s eyes turned green, purple mists trailing like something alive at their edges.
Through the green haze, Luna’s guard was suddenly aware of how familiar this felt to some part of him so deep it was unreachable, refusing to give up its secret as to why it should be so. The haze, or mist, or magic just as suddenly opened his eyes to others around him - hundreds - maybe even a thousand soldiers inclusive of earth and unicorn ponies on the ground and pegasai flying above. All were adorned in the armor of two armies - he was on the side of a steel-clad legion and was facing the golden-shod armies of what he instantly recognized as Princess Celestia’s troops.
But where was Princess Luna and her - his legion? And why was HE there...wait, he was on the wrong side?!?
The same galactic time clock Dark Watch had sensed earlier unfroze the scene, completing the downward swipe of a great, iron sword, finishing its arc begun a thousand years previously, burying itself in the shoulder of a guard from Canterlot. The gleaming gold armor, hit at the right angle, was no match for the weight and sheer brute force of its assailant and split and cracked, along with the shoulder bone of its wearer.
Even as the sword hit the ground, the bat pony knew he normally had not the strength to carry such a huge, cumbersome weapon, that it couldn’t possibly have been wielded by him with such ease! The job finished, much to his horror, Dark Watch looked up, confused, as did all his fellow stallions, and those of their enemy who were still alive.
“Commander!” a fellow soldier at his side lowered his sword as well, addressing him. The bat pony turned to see a slightly smaller but stockier male the color of wheat. Why, if they were fighting side by side, couldn't he remember the soldier's name?
Everypony on both sides stopped whatever they were doing, lowering their weapons. Vaguely he heard somepony on the other side ask where their leaders were and the question would have been the same one he would have asked if he had not first caught his reflection in the polished iron sword he brought level with his eyes...
Dark Watch woke with a gasp, finding himself upon the floor of a field he only vaguely recalled from what seemed a few moments ago. Hadn’t he been here with somepony else? But who had it been? He checked the color of his coat, glancing down at his legs and sighed in relief. Normal, thank Luna.
The fragments of the intense dream slipped away as his attention turned to scan the room, seeing nopony else around. He fought to remember why he was there, but the details seemed just out of reach. Then he saw the large, uniquely wrought sword buried in the grass nearby. Trotting over to it, he caught sight - just for an instant - of a peculiar purple glow around its hilt that rapidly faded as he neared. His attention was so focused on it he completely missed the strange shadows next to the field's entrance. They appeared to regard him for a moment, then melted down the walls, seeping out the crack between the door, floor and walls to slip quietly into the Tardis corridors.
The memory of his fight with King Sombra came back to Dark Watch in an instant. Baring his teeth in a snarl, he snorted. “Tartarus!” and ran as fast as he could back out into the corridors…
Outside, he stopped a moment to get his bearings, or tried to. The corridors all looked the same, and as the bat pony came slowly to discover, the Tardis had decided to indulge in her peculiar habit of moving rooms about, seemingly at random. After going in a direction he believed was always away from the battle room for several minutes, he ended up running past it twice more.
As he ran, he went over the details of their fight and the strange dream he had come out of, but found to his horror that he no longer recalled the dream with as much clarity as a moment prior. He paused, leaning against the wall, reciting key points about what he had learned of his formidable opponent before the dream. “Sombra...Shadow...he wields temporal magics...Kajeiri…” Their recall brought up something else, a truth he had seen in the King of Shadows red, crystal eyes. It was so horrible he couldn’t forget it, but couldn’t bear to recall it, either.
“I can’t be…” he snarled, gritting his teeth, slowing until he slumped against the nearest wall. “Ngrhhhh...NO!!!”
It had been several hours later after Derpy had eaten and taken a nap, leaving the Doctor to himself, that she returned to the console room to check up on him. He was at the ship’s console, one hoof on the controls, making minute adjustments as he checked his settings against an open book and several display readouts. Each time he adjusted his dials he waited a moment, frowned and went back to re-calibrating coordinates in his head. After watching him do this a dozen times, the mail pony concluded he wasn’t having much success.
“This should be working,” he muttered, oblivious, or so it seemed, to her approach. He glanced at the tall column before him, concerned. “You want them off the - well off you as badly as I do, so why am I getting the distinct impression you are not exactly cooperating with me?” He then caught sight of his companion. “Hello Derpy.”
“Hello Doctor,” she returned the greeting. “I take it somepony isn’t listening to you today?”
“She isn’t a pony, my dear Derps,” he said, frowning at the machine’s controls. “But she is the stubbornest mare I have ever encountered in all my - “
An angry beep and a screen coming on in front of them stopped what he would have said. “Hello, what’s this?” The earth pony and pegasus peered closer. To the grey mail pony it was simply a map with bright, fuzzy spots that flickered in and out, appearing and disappearing in different, random places. To the Doctor, it apparently meant much more.
His expression fell flat, even chagrined. “Ah well, that would complicate things.” He looked over at Derpy. “A lot.” He waited expectantly for her to ask what he was talking about. She merely stared at him. “Well?” he asked, unable to stand her silent stare any longer.
“You tell me, Doc,” she shrugged.
“Please don’t call me Doc and what do you mean, ‘you tell me’?”
“Since when have you objected to me calling you ‘Doc’?” she frowned.
He pursed his lips. “Since this infer - machine,” he caught himself before sticking his hoof in his mouth. “Has aged me a hundred years in the last hour withholding information.”
“Oh, c’mon, Doc,” Derpy shook her head, forgetting his request. “You know she usually tells you - us, what we want to know, but in her own good time.”
Shooting his companion a glare of annoyance, his expression changed radically, her words sinking in. “Maybe that’s why,” he breathed. “It just isn’t the right time yet.”
“Makes sense. It’s about the only thing around here sometimes that does,” she shrugged. Her gaze traveled back to the screen with the fuzzy blotches of energy patterns. “Does that makes sense?” She inclined her head towards the time/space map.
“Considering the amount of temporal messing about these local spacial coordinates have suffered recently, I shouldn’t be surprised,” he admitted. “Between Sombra’s mucking about with time stasis spells, our arrival and Nyx’s time hopping,” he paused, peering closer. “Plus some tiny inter dimensional tears in the local fabric of space no bigger than a mouse, it would take a high-level time mage to repair the damage - and they don’t exist anymore.”
“Doc?”
“Yes, Derpy?”
“Where do you suppose our Nyx went?”
He paused what he was doing, rubbed his eyes tiredly from the stress of having poured over the readouts and temporal nav charts for the past hour. “Remember, Derp, when we hit that pocket of instability before we landed?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, remember before that when we had TWO Nyx’s on board?”
She appeared thoughtful for a moment. “That’s kinda hard to forget Doc - Doctor,” she corrected herself.
“I know what you mean. She’s confusing enough talking to us, but to herself? I couldn’t follow her to save our lives!” The brown pony shook his head at the thought. “But think about it, Derpy. That second Nyx had to come from somewhere.”
“You mean, now?” she asked. “Our now?”
“Not exactly right now, no,” he shook his head, but pleased she could wrap her head around the concept. It wasn’t something most ponies found easy to understand, but then, Derpy was not most ponies. “In our future further still, I believe.”
“Where do you think she is now, Doc?” came the inevitable question. “I mean, she was only there in the past with us a few minutes and it’s already been hours for us here, now.”
“She has been gone quite a while according to our perception of time in the here and now as far as we are concerned,” he agreed. “She might have been caught in an eddy of time and shunted somewhere else.” The Doctor peered at the chart. Something occurred to him then. “Oh….”
“What, Doctor?”
“That is probably, most likely, yes, quite probably, why the Tardis is stalling. She doesn’t want two Nyx’s in the same place again, so is waiting until we get rid of our present Nyx to bring our time-proper Nyx back!”
Derpy wrinkled her nose. “That’s kind of rude, Doctor. ‘Get rid of’?”
“Yes, right, sorry,” he apologized. “If there’s anypony I’d rather apply that term to right now, it would be our royal guest, King Sombra.”
The mail mare shivered. “I agree. He’s - so - ” she trailed off, words failing her. The Doctor looked at her, curious.
“‘So..’?”
“I - don’t want to think about it, Doc,” she lapsed back into his nickname. “It’s too weird - and, well, I don’t think you’d understand.”
Intrigued, he leaned against the console, which had settled back down to a series of soft background noises, seemingly more content now that the TimePony was not trying to push her into actions the flow of time around them was not yet ready to accommodate.
His attentions made the grey mare shift uncomfortably, yet there was an itch in the forefront of her emotions that made her want to tell him - even though she didn’t completely understand why she was feeling what she felt.
“Promise you won’t, well, judge me if I tell you?” she said in a quieter voice.
“When have I ever judged you, Derpy?” he asked, surprised.
She shifted in discomfort again, almost sorry she had brought the subject up. “You don’t so much judge as well, look at me disapprovingly sometimes, or like you’re from another planet and you can’t figure me out.”
“That’s just around all mares,” he replied. “I have a hard time figuring any of them out.”
“You don’t do it around Nyx,” she pointed out.
“She just annoys and exasperates me. Totally different,” the Doctor defended, his voice speeding up and raising slightly in excitement.
“I guess,” she shrugged. “Okay well, it’s like that, then. You’re having a different reaction to her, which you didn’t expect, but you know why you’re having it.” Her discomfort at the discussion and the distant look in her eyes had her turning her back to him, shifting away so she wasn’t meeting his curious gaze.
The TimePony thought he realized what she was getting at, but didn’t want to presume he knew for certain and waited to let her finish her thought.
“I am,” she began again, slowly, thoughtfully. “Having a different reaction than I should be having to his Highness.”
The Doctor managed to frown and raise his eyebrows at the same time. “‘His Highness’?” he repeated. “Not ‘Sombra’ or ‘King Sombra’?”
“What’s the difference?” she shrugged again, turning back to him. “It’s just a title.”
“Maybe. Perhaps. I’m not quite sure about that,” he pondered.
He went over to where she stood and placed a hoof on her withers. “What reaction do you think you should have to him that you aren't having?” he asked softly. She looked down, not wanting to answer. “Derpy?”
“Fear,” she said simply.
That was as unexpected an answer as he could have imagined he would receive, truly not expecting it. “You don’t fear him?”
“I do, but not - I mean - “ She waved a hoof in the air and drew back enough his hoof dropped back down to his side. “Doesn’t fear usually make you, well, want to run?”
“Usually, yes. There is a definite fight or flight scenario that plays out,” it was his turn to trail off. “You don’t feel either of those?” he asked her softly.
She turned her head side-to-side slowly.
He cocked his head, partly curious, partly confused. “Well, perhaps it isn’t true fear, then.”
She shook her head. “No, Doctor. It’s fear all right, but just not strong enough to want to run from him.”
The TimePony shook his head in turn. “I’m sorry, Derpy, I am afraid I don’t quite understand, then.”
Her face blushed slightly. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget I said anything.”
“If that’s what you want,” he nodded. “You will tell me when you do figure it out then?”
She seemed to relax. “You’ll be the first, well the second pony to know,” she smiled.
“Good, because I think I would feel better if - “
At that moment, one of the entrances to the control room opened and Dark Watch staggered in, looking sweaty and pale. “Doctor, Derpy, we have a very large, very bad problem!”