In the dark of the night Sombra’s ears twitched to a distant disturbance in the room. Grumbling tiredly he lifted his neck for his eyes to find a lone mirror.
Curiously Sombra got off his bed and made his way over to it. It was arched with a single green crystal framing; a continuous solid mass of rock with no blemishes or cuts. A beautiful crystal.
Sombra lifted his hoof to touch the reflective surface of glass. The mirror responded the touch and sound with a watery rippling. The surface crinkled with the ripples.
In the mirror an image formed like looking through water with eyes open at first but then sharpened like the water was being pushed away.
It revealed the empire from a bird’s eye view that dusk. A golden brown to dark purple coloured the sky. It was quiet and unmoving with not a soul stirring in the approaching dark. The crystal structures lit each other and the empire up with the fading sunlight.
From the west a dark ominous cloud was rolling towards the empire. It came from the horizon like a rising star.
Shifting stiffly, the picture changed. In a home two ponies rested side by side, slumbering peacefully, their chests slowly falling and rising with dreamy expressions on their faces.
The only movement was the slow crawl along the carpet as the golden light of day trailed out of the room by the window sill. When it had completely left moonlight flooded in, basking the room in a spongy soft white glow of the moon.
Sombra, in the corner of his eye, saw the moonlight reflect off of a solid dark mass. He hadn’t noticed it there before, situated in the shadow of a dressing drawers, but it stood out now in the coming night. Sombra breathed anxiously seeing the familiar item.
Two large helmets laid discarded on the floor next to one another. Each bore the red fang like insignia coming out of metal opal shaped centerpiece on the helmet. The pot-shaped helmet otherwise was large enough to easily accommodate someone's head inside, with the user’s ears and horn allowing to freely pop out of the container. They aimed towards the two still and quiet bodies.
A green gas snaked out of the the small opening for the eyes. It covered the floor of the room. Slowly building up as outside the room the night got darker. It crested the bed top and the occupants breathed it in. The gaseous substance drew into the bodies with a single inhale. As the room darkened the eyes of the helmets glowed green.
Shifting vividly, the architecture changed from the home to a familiar sight. Inside the Crystal Empire's largest standing watch tower. The safest place to observe the surrounding area. It’s crystal dome ceiling shining down on the rooms central piece, the Crystal Heart. It lonely spun in the room by itself.
The room was open to the air, large arching columns holding the roof up. A green smokey substance wafted and drifted into the room like a slow tide. It spilled across the floor towards its centre where it broke against an invisible barrier. The mist settled calmly.
From outside the sun was continuing to move behind the horizon.
The sun catapulted across the sky and disappeared when Sombra couldn't see it because of the tower roof. Before initial shock set in, instead of plummeting ruthlessly into darkness the world had changed lifeless gray, turning shock into trepidation. The only thing alive was the shimmering blue Crystal Heart that turned heavily with each rotation, trying to keep itself in motion.
While the crystal proceeded, many scars, deep and winding, grew throughout its surface. Sombra watched still, breathing anxiously.
Just as it looked like the deepest crack was about to split the heart the sound of a stiff exhaling of air caught his attention.
Creepy tendrils slowly sprung from the boggy mist, bouncing up and falling down again like boiling water. The several streams launched over the hearts height and fell back down on top of it. The streams stayed where they fell and a fluorescent light glowed at the surface of the mist before being pulled through the tendrils towards the heart. The heart glowed the same ghostly green. The finger like stalks slipped into the cracks filling the crevasses with green light. The mist then settled before altogether fading away.
The heart emitted a special aura, one unseen by ponies except for Sombra. It glowed a dark richness, strong and powerful.
Just in the peripheral of the mirror a white pony approached the Crystal Heart.
Sombra fell into the mirror's surface and quickly found himself in the watch tower. Princess Celestia of the Day Court didn’t pay his appearance any initially mind.
She turned her horn, aglow with sun-blinding light and Sombra braced himself as his pupils shrunk. The light erupted and briefly obscured his view of Celestia till it was nothing more than a blank canvas but not before Sombra saw the heart breaking, chips of the heart falling away.
In the neverending plain of empty nothingness Princess Luna of the Night Court landed. Horn aglow with a swallowing night’s darkness Sombra braced himself as his eyes dilated and all he could see was a canvas of charcoal black.
Sparkling lights flared and crackled throughout the dark like a carnival escapade. Dancing energetically to unheard music that only it could hear. A snapping of rock against rock echoed inside Sombra’s ears making them quiver and his nose wrinkle.
He forcefully blinked the tickling sensation out of his body. Eyes open and back in his room the mirror in front of him reflected the empire from a high hanging cloud. Below, marching in two and down the street, two ponies stepped rhythmically, almost in adjacent unison. They both wore the familiar headpiece and their eyes glowed green.
Down the stretching street two larger than life ponies waited on the two guards. The sister alicorns stood menacingly against the night, auras around their horns. With a single step both sisters cast a spell simultaneously. The helmets on the two small ponies exploded into fine dust.
From there a rainbow light rippled outwards from the two small ponies.
An ear erupting crack split the mirror in half, not sparing the beautiful crystal frame it was laid into.
On the left, ponies ran through the streets of the empire and noiselessly were cheering with a wide variety of lips turned upwards. On the right, ponies dragged the hooves with a solitary unmoving expression on their faces, a look of distance and glassiness to their eyes. Sombra’s hoof laid in the middle of the divided glass.
Sombra felt a pressure underneath his hoof like the two pieces of glass were pulling themselves away from one another. Sombra pressed his hoof down trying to hold them together.
With gritted teeth he stood on his hindlegs trying to assist himself as much as he could while keeping the pieces together. The gap widened.
Snarling Sombra’s horn spoked and a purple flame aura enveloped his ebony horn. Along the edge of the divided surfaces a trickle of magical light emanated. Sombra tried to pull the two purple lights together aided by two hooves.
The two distance lands didn’t move anymore closer to one another and didn’t move any further apart.
The aura of Sombra’s horn touched the room’s ceiling. His eyes burned green with purple smoke. The heightening pressure on Sombra’s back became a comfortable ache. He worried his hooves would slip off of the glass.
However hard he tried and whatever fiery determination his conscious said the two pieces remained not getting any closer. He could feel ghostly movements underneath his hooves but the shattered pieces of the mirror remained in place.
As Sombra tried to carefully stretch his stiff neck the pictures drained of colour. Sombra yelled at the mirror and the hair of his tail and mane billowed like a loose mast in a wild windswept sea.
When the ponies had lost all their colours, now just grey hues, the mirror cracked again suddenly. Hairline fractures, too many to count, decimated the once pristine glass. The sound of thousands of pieces of glass cracking ringed in his ears.
A thrumming from his chest reached from his chest to his head till they synchronised to a dull ache. A pressure he didn’t know he had ignored until just then. It felt as though the pressure was about to burst out of his chest.
Two ponies caught Sombra attention suddenly. They stood in the same room listlessly as Sombra stared in shock.
Pitch and Sabre’s coat were greyed beyond their normal colouration. While they had normally grey fur their bodies didn’t feel as they were entirely there. Sombra noticed that there feet were sunk into the floor.
The mirror begun to disappear below the surface of the room. Panicked with a sense of urgency Sombra tried to pull the mirror out, the faces of ponies frozen in the shattered state still in the mirror. No matter the effort the mirror wouldn’t budge.
Pitch and Sabre followed after the mirror. Pupils shrunk and shaking Sombra leaped to his two grandsons. Stretching his forelegs around each of the necks, trying to keep their heads above water.
They slipped out of his grasp easily.
Alone in the expanse of his empty room there was only Sombra. He stared silently at the floor as his unkempt mane fell over his eyes.
His chest bumped. He sneezed and shook the tickling from his muzzle.
A smokey ghostly pony stood in the room with him, standing pink against the deep cerulean blue to black gradient of the room. The pony walked towards him but made distance like it was running or that the room pushed him towards it. Sombra felt his blood rush.
From the body two wing like appendages lifted out in presentation. When they reached their apex the feathers broke off, drifting in a unfelt wind and disappearing along with the rest of the wing. The ponies indistinguishable head flitted in motion. A horn like paraphernalia grew from its head. It reached an average unicorn length before cleaning breaking off at the base with the skull. It went the way of the wings and disappeared.
Sombra got to his legs and a rush of vertigo took over his senses. He slammed on the ground.
The room brightened. The mysterious ghost stayed looking down at Sombra till it blended into the room.
“Ah!” Sombra pulled back his injured hoof that had just struck the wall behind his head. He was awake effectively and rubbed his hoof as he looked across the room to a nearby mirror. A beautiful, no cuts, green crystal framing, housed a sleek unblemished surface of reflective glass.
Squinting his eyes Sombra put his hoof on his chest and pressed it into his fur. A brief spell casted and he pulled his hoof out in front of him to inspect the small mote of pink that wiggled above his hoof like a worm.
It danced like a ballerina, its tail swirling underneath it as the head curled up and around itself it a rhythmic motion.
He grumbled.
On three legs, the fourth holding the mote, he got out of bed and he called his cape from the standing coat rack. It landed to rest familiarly across his back and around his neck, clasped together with a crystal button.
“Magic mirror in the crystal…” he sung softly as he approached the mirror. He saw himself as if looking from behind.
With his free forehoof he lifted away the back of his mane from his neck and took the little pink mote and put in the back of the necklace. It slipped, as if being sucked through a straw, from his hoof to where a small crystal laid deeply hidden underneath his shaggy fur.
He licked his lips from the dryness of sleep and closed his eyes to form a spell in his mind.
A shimmering light rippled behind the glass. As the wave reached the edge of the crystal frame a clear picture formed on its surface.
The pink alicorn rested on top of the bed, snoozing quietly.
Sombra inspected the alicorn and as he watched her the latent magic surrounded her moved slowly. The cotten appearance and pink hue made Sombra’s breath catch in his throat. Before he could choke on it his lungs ached and he slowly drew the air out and another renewed one in.
Cadance stirred and looked around her room as if being disturbed by a sudden noise. Her gaze slowly drifted upward till her eyes were looking into Sombras. A small smile played on her lips. Cadance shuffled and nestled her legs underneath herself and rested her head on top of them, careful that the chain on the front of the collar didn’t catch underneath herself.
Sombra’s hoof went back the ground.
“Alicorns always surprise.” He muttered, his tail kicked behind him.
He pulled at his necklace but stopped when a jolt of pressure shot through his neck, forgetting to soak the necklace in his dark magic to allow it to stretch freely. A brief spell casted and he was able to control the necklace willingly. He breathed evenly as he looked at the small jagged crystal. His face contorted around the facets of the uneven rock.
He stared not entirely at himself or the dark blue crystal. He stayed still so he was purposely unmoving, letting thoughts and images flicker in his imagination.
Images of ponies came and went through the vacuum of his mind. Thoughts of crystals passed in the moment that were thought up of. An alicorn, then alicorns all, took his attention; white, blue, purple, and pink.
Absentmindedly Sombra lifted his head from looking at crystal to the mirror. In the mirror Twilight laid in her room soundlessly. No expression passed over Sombra as he watched the small alicorn sleep. Her body spasmed and face revealed pain before she burst awake in a silent scream. Sombra remained motionless though he watched her with soft thoughtfulness. Twilight looked from herself to outside the room.
Sombra expelled all his breath at once in a single gruff snort. Looking away from the mirror the image disappeared.
To the other side of the room a cobalt blue curtain hung across one wall of the room. Sombra pulled one side of the curtain across. Revealing one side of a large double door and three simple arched windows. He pulled a window open.
At a snail's pace he trotted over, opened the door, and stood outside in the brisk night air. He went to the railing to look to the northern side of the castle. Past the castle courtyard and within the open space underneath its tower the Crystal Heart was involved in its twirling dance.
A small but genuine smile graced his lips, his brows softened and slightly raised. His shoulder dipped and he closed his eyes to feel his steady breathing and beating chest.
He turned his attention westerly to the rest of the empire. The Frozen North snowed outside the borders unable to pass through the protective arcs that shielded the area.
Lifting his muzzle an inch, just above the rooftops of homes, Sombra gleamed a different magical, more personal, barrier in the dark; the one he had assembled there. It was spotted with splashes of greys.
The sky was unclouded and only a first quarter moon hung in the sky.
He drifted back to the crystal necklace in his hoof.
“It’ll happen, I’ll take care of everything.” He surveyed his empire, announcing to all the empire but really only himself. “This is just the dark before the dawn,” he whispered.
He stepped back inside his room his steps heavy on the stone balcony to the carpet floor. Looking out the window Sombra grumbled ponderously to himself. “The dark before the dawn.” Grunting, her returned to the mattress that promised sleep.