Sombra:
All monsters are alike at their core: there isn't any of them left there, or there was never anything there to begin with. There are no exceptions to this rule, for it determines what makes a monster. Umbra is no different from the all the others; there's nothing beneath the surface, but that only serves to make him far more disturbing than dispel any fear.
He doesn't fight to preserve his life, to preserve another, for the preservation of superficial loyalty, or for selfish reasons that I could have some appreciation for. Umbra fights solely to hurt me and nothing more.
I don't bother to remove Fate from its sheath. This is a real fight, and fighting is quite literally what I was made for. Combat has always been ingrained into me and the will to fight always came naturally, it was only a matter if I comprehend the instinct I had found myself with and go above and beyond in how I applied it, making it my own.
Growling, I bared my fangs and stood proudly, making it known that I was ready for a fight as my horn glowed with crimson light that bathed the chamber in its sinister glow. I sensed the first move before he made it, the äerint to my right curling as his magic yanked it and warped it, thinking that I wouldn't be fast enough to dodge.
Unfortunately for him, my right side is where my vision is strongest, after having to make up for my left eye's disability for most of my life. As long as he doesn't attack my left side too much and my senses stay sharp, I can work out just what his spells will do, this will be far easier than anticipated. Unlike me, he doesn't even bother to keep his magic aura unfocused so that no specific forms of spellwork and magical intentions could be detected by our shared ability to sense magic. The wild, crackling aura would be far too unstable for most ponies too be able to control, but I was used to charging my horn with wild amounts of energy like this.
Umbra's äerint-coated feather tips flicked, clinking together as the swirling dark aura around them became far less thin and flowed more aggressively. The soles of my boots pulsed crimson and I finally detached the spells I had been weaving from my horn so that the glow was independent of all the attacks I would need to charge. Rage bristled through me, and the familiar, growing heat only aided in clearing my senses to help me dissect every detail of us and our surroundings. He won't be attacking me from below, but since when am I one to get careless?
Noting my always-vigilant poise and battle ready gaze, Umbra leered at me, every shred of conscious that even the worst ponies I've seen that should lingered was absent, as I had anticipated.
I lifted my lip into a snarl, finally able to show of the fangs that I've always dreaded. The display of disrespect stirs something in Umbra. Every shred of hollowness he has maintained so far crumbles to reveal a sudden expression of malice so deeply etched into him, even I was skeptical of how he hid something like that...
...and it gave me chills.
Flaring my horn with instinctual defense, I let fire fly.
Umbra sidestepped my fireball, the roaring sphere of green and violet soaring right past him and hitting the wall, where it dispersed with a shriek - it wasn't as if I hadn't sloppily charged it with some of my anger. Still, I couldn't help but find the vicious light so easily conjured by me as admirable in its brief display, no matter how much or little effort something so simple for me was.
"You disgust me," Umbra hissed through gritted teeth, trying to pull me apart with a gaze that even I thought decently intimidating.
"And this is coming from the xenocidal maniac who needs centuries of dental work?"
Umbra snarled at me and I simply rolled my eyes and returned with a growl of my own. My body bristled with nothing but aggression and wrath just begging to be let loose. Running my tongue over my fangs, I debated all the ways I could hurt him...
A low purr, brief and dripping with malice of my own pours from my throat, rumbling like distant thunder and sounding somewhere between sick delight and a low warning growl. Both Umbra and I stand carefully, the ground underhoof trembling with magic and the distant shakes of Niflhel's halls.
"How did you do that?" he says, tone forceful and filled with the peculiar brand of authoritarian anger that royalty seems to have a knack for pulling off.
My response is to allow a part of my foreleg that is visible despite my cloak to slip into shadow even smokier than my long mane is now, hanging about my withers and flowing quietly while still bearing obvious signs of its usual messy look. A small bit of shock, however mechanical it looks, the display is still surprising for Umbra, shows on his face.
"That is your power? Odd." He finishes by snorting in disgust, to which I growl again.
"Look at you, Sombra," he says, voice riddled with traces of contempt as he indicates me with a disgusted flick of his feathers. "With your origin, you could have been a perfect disaster as I have been. You would have been as you should be, pinned under rage and misery both your own and of the others that should have been. Instead, the disgusting existence that you lead is independent and defiant. There is nothing more revolting than the sense of complete and utter cruelty and despair that should have been embedded in your for the rest of your life being absent. Everything about you is a disappointment. Like me, you should have been a monster, and instead-"
He gives me a second-long scowl of disgust, but the expression is flat and lifeless. "You, Sombra, are practically destiny's own bastard. A false god as well. If only my masterpiece were not lost, for I could make something so much better than you if the corruption that it bestowed was placed in the right hooves."
With something that sounds like half a sigh, his äerint-coated feathers glow with turbulent dark aura again. I watch silently, calculating and observing every little thing in his stance that I could use against him while trying to swallow another growl. My merciless gaze, filled with all the fire I'm going to show him, isn't the only part of me that radiates impressive hostility. Every part of me is fixed with stubborn and imposing signs that I am, without a doubt, dangerous. Once spotted, even Umbra's gaze is unable to ignore me as I make myself distinct from his shadow.
Nothing can touch me.
Umbra's look tells me he wants that to be otherwise as silence presses down on us once more.
I know that no matter how sensible he thinks he is or how rational he appears to be, that Umbra is just corruption with a mask he wants you to focus on, as though I could focus on anything but what I sense beneath it all. I'll always know better, but I also know that he knows that neither of us is susceptible to the same corruption that could hurt the ones I care about. If any of them had been the ones to end up here in my place, he'd use anything and everything against them to get the results he pleases. For him, it'd be automatic to jump moral boundaries that even Onyx had intact, and admitting that about the monster that has hurt me is not something I can do lightly.
Finally, I speak, the last words before things really begin belonging only to me.
"'Destiny's Bastard'? That's certainly a new one."
The last smirk that I'll make for a long while plays across my lips, and my irises flash red.
"I like it."
...
The walls tremble and the world is bathed in red through my eyes. A multitude of scarlet and crimsons tint every surface. Not even the shadows of this place were not spared from the effect of my power - even Umbra and I are seen through my red eyes. His lighter coat certainly does not look flattering in this light.
But at this moment, I really can't care about that. My focus is never in one place for long anymore. The surface of everything - Umbra and I excepted - is alive with the same mysterious runes parading across each surface, spelling on out details only I can read before their flickering, deeper red forms vanish, fading into the rest of the red-washed world.
While I can't possibly read all of them - and I'm not sure if I ever will be able to; only about half of them have burned their meanings into my mind - I'm able to make out half-formed descriptions of magical feats that I could do. There are a few others that are simple enough tricks that I had yet to try. All of them are arranged in half formed battle plans in haphazard fragments for me to glance over in attempts to pick and chose from the red-cut runes before they faded back into haze.
I currently was in no position to pay attention to them and let the strange scrawled magic text fade each time I turned or moved myself out of the way of Umbra's liberal warping of äerint. With neither of us able to use dark magic against the other and triumph, I delved into the magic of my godhood, letting the power feed into the anger that had built up for so very long and he continued to onslaught with dark magic, if only to attempt to intimidate me and overwhelm me with power.
His almost opaque aura enveloped the jagged äerint walls, roughly ripping and warping the crystal-like structure and trying to block my sure-hoofed movements. I have always been quicker than I looked - having to outrun visions of crystal ponies, maneuver in corrupted crystalline halls, and perform many other physical feats of physical strength throughout my life have always ensured that even in non-magical and unarmed combat. I'm still as lethal as can be even if I do look more like a dangerous wanderer than a mad genius with near-unrivaled combat skill.
My eyes quickly locate a spot on Umbra's latest strike with äerint. This time he decided to have the stuff spiral towards me, swarming across the walls like a serpent with a rush of noise like the outermost part of Niflhel. My focus narrows on the small flash of the whirling dark aura right before it crystallizes.
I quickly light my own horn and sidestep out of the way of the oncoming crystal. It wasn't as if I had been standing still; Umbra was slow in movement, but his magic and eyesight were not. He made up for being virtually unable to move with his towering form and clockwork pace by using magic liberally in a surprisingly futile attempt to mentally overwhelm me. With an opponent like him, I was always moving; it didn't matter that Umbra's lack of a horn restricted his magic - he was old. For an Alicorn, 'old' was a guarantee that they were capable and extremely powerful. If one ever had to fight an Alicorn and didn't have the skill that I had in reading creatures or the ability to sense magic, picking the youngest out of a theoretical line up was one way to attempt to save your worthless ass.
Striking that spot with my deeper red aura, I watched my magic infect the grayish black crystal, veins of red running throughout the surface and cracks and fissures spreading rapidly. Heat poured from beneath the surface as it began to crumble from within, and I felt the air brush my coat. Unlike everything else here, I still held the warmth my body heat, adrenaline, and the outside world marked me with, so this sensation had no effect on me. The air was already alive with bursts of changing magical pressures from our attacks. I moved around too much, with so much force, darting about and leaping - making myself known and showing that I will be the survivor, not him - so that heat was everywhere.
Once the crystalline surface falls away, my signature multi-hued inferno is revealed, burning and roaring as it breaks free from the prison that he thought could trap it. My heart beats faster in exhilaration as I watch, utterly entranced by my more than addictive power, as it engulfs the äerint remains like they were the skeleton of a ship that the crystal ponies of older times would burn their dead in, when mountain crypts had not been thought of. It spirals up hungrily - almost as hungry as my unwavering, wide-eyed stare - and it spirals upward, the spaces between the violent light filled with crooked shadows that cut their way across the now-red world. Blood and the sound of sparks leaping about and falling to the ground like northern snow filled my ears.
I loved this. My expression may be fierce and grim but I love every bit of this. There is almost always glory in revenge and being able to feel this - blood, magic, and know that the look in my eyes is a mad one. In the light of all these sparks and the hellfire spiraling around this place, it's impossible for me to not look mad, to not burn brightly and dwarf the very presence of the inferno that frames me.
This is the moment Umbra lunges for me, when hot air buffets my cloak and the metal at my hooves gleams with wild red power, runes sliding across the metal surface in their frantic dance before bubbling away.
And in that moment, I feel the äerint shift beneath my hooves; I sense his magic forming a spire as he dives for me, thinking he can win. Right then and there, I dissolve in an instant. Crystal erupts from the ground and I can feel the crystalline structure pierce through my body, now a shadow. Senses work differently in this form but something passing through me like that and disrupting the same space my flowing body now occupies is like invisible ice chilling me from the inside out with the sudden icy rush of pouring ice water down somepony's back on a hot day.
Holding my form like this when objects passed through me usually felt like this - a physical obstruction like this wasn't a problem. Umbra was. If he passed through me I could accidentally possess him or lose focus and manifest myself half-formed between shadow equinoid. With no time to move anywhere else, I sank myself into the äerint, burying myself into it as forcefully as possible. The echoes of crystal splitting under pressure sounded somewhere nearby as I shifted my form to accommodate and hold the structure together, bracing myself for Umbra's attack. This position was like if you had one of those dumpster cats and a cardboard box. Put the cat in a box, tape the box shut, and slowly push the box towards a staircase.
That was me right now. Trying to force myself to stay in something solid rather than just warping my form into something similar and holding it with the aid of transformation magics was not a comfortable position. Anchoring myself in a living creature - like a pony or an Alicorn - was different. Everypony and their mind felt different and I could either encourage or outright force any physical alterations that I needed.
I felt Umbra strike the crystal, barreling into it at full speed. I even felt him stumble - likely because the sight of me breaking into a shadow had finally registered to him, since time would feel slower to him.
Keeping myself from slipping out of the reverberating space I had wedged myself into, I unleashed a wave of ominous vibrations - the only vocalizations I could manage in this form without a proper mental link to somepony.
Even if Umbra did manage to translate them to speech he could understand, I doubt he'd be familiar with every profanity and the vast array of non-magical curses I have at my disposal for situations like this.
Going with the shaking of the crystal, I take a few moments to work the interior makeup and extract magic from it before tumbling out and re-manifesting in equinoid form as Umbra's magical presence and mine had distance put between them from the movement.
I feel hooves and metal, mane and cloak, and my fuzzy coat once more. Seconds pass because I allow myself a brief stretch to fool him into thinking that I'm vulnerable. Luring him over to me is no problem at all. I feel his magic shift when he thinks that I can be overpowered from behind as his body shifts into a lunge-
I pivot around faster than he ever guessed I could, using my ability to regulate how much I weigh so that when I kick; I weigh much less in order to give myself the speed I needed to fool him twice. Right before my back leg connects with what I know to be his ugly face my horn glows again and I reverse the effect. Physically, I look no different, but the surprised guttural, spitting hiss from Umbra tells me otherwise. That, and the delightfully sickening crunch that I relish in as I drive my back hooves further into his excuse for a face by grinding the metal soles into it before lighting my horn for a third time to change my weight back to normal and buck him before I lunge forward and whirl around to survey my latest disaster with smug cruelty mixed with contempt showing clearly on my face.
Now that I've let my god magic dim, the dark shades of Niflhel's äerint halls had return. It didn't matter - my fire still burned and I stood out or blended in on a whim, and right now Umbra was not going to ignore me.
My pride swells at the sight of his face. His black mane has spilled forward into his face, and Umbra looks more irritated by this than the fact that I've all but kicked the left side of his face in. The full extent of the damage my strikes did are hidden under his mane, but it isn't as if I haven't inflicted far more gruesome injuries to know exactly what I did.
I doubt that he has anything too recognizable as an eye underneath his mane, which manages to obscure most of the damage. I'm still able to see a bloody mixture running down his face. His muzzle is clearly broken, and he bares his fangs in as much of a snarl he can manage. Broken fragments of what were once some of his teeth sit at his forehooves, and his white coat is spotted with drops of blood. Scratches from metal mark his face, each unintentionally highlighting that his remaining eye has swollen to the point where his hollow gaze is all but erased by the damage.
I shift myself to ready for another attack, horn flaring with light he can no longer see. I'd be a fool to act like he's not dangerous any more. Fighting while visually impaired will be nothing with the ability we have. Will it make up for his lack of sight completely? No, never; but it certainly will allow him to defend himself.
"You," Umbra hisses, his word muffled by a mouthful of blood. "You are going to wish that you were still mortal when I get my hooves on you."
My expression has returned to that of grim fury and I let a low, steady, and unusually soft growl fill the pause. "I've never wished for much of anything, and I'm not about to start."
There isn't a point in trying any further taunts since I've got him right where I want to. Like me, Umbra now starts to display some of the more twisted aspects of his nature. I glower at him and he shivers with anger. The feeling of power radiates from him, pushing outward while both his mane and tail lash aggressively. The äerint coating on his feather tips clink together with his movement. Neither of us can heal ourselves and such a scarring injury - one that, unlike his horn - that could be fixed if either of us had the ability does nothing but anger him further.
Barely a second passes and the äerint glows with dark aura once again. The glow is thickest around the crystal and rapidly begins to spread - and thin - so that his lower half is hidden by a hazy cloud of pure dark magic that dwarfs the ever-present feel of magic that only we could sense.
My response is to let out a scream of everything I've been covering up for centuries and break into shadow, which only makes my enraged cry deafening as the walls shake before I surge forward, flinging myself at him. My eyes burn with bloodlust and focus sharpens my determination and desperation so that I don't have to worry about possessing him, even by mistake.
I don't have to worry about anything at all because when I reform again, my forehooves slam into Umbra and knock him to the ground, stunning him and knocking the wind out of him. The extra force I apply causes something to crack under the gore-coated soles of my boots and I can feel my temper spike at the disappointment of the injury not being as severe as I would have liked.
Before Umbra can even come to his senses I look him in what's left of his face and spit in his face, growling. The sound is low and dangerous - he recognizes this even if he shows no fear. It doesn't matter if he can't see me - he'll hear everything I want him to and feel whatever it is I make him feel.
And I'll get all the sadistic satisfaction in the world from this because-
I rear up, another wordless scream of unbridled fury tearing through my throat as I let so much that I've been holding back show as I bring my forehooves down on his chest again and again and again. I want him to feel all this weight and I can communicate even a tenth of what the Crystal Empire felt like.
Once that's done, my breathes come in heaves of anger and the sound is mixed with repeated low growls that can be heard between each one as I bare my fangs, no longer feeling the need to hide them or tell the small lie of them being an effect of dark magic rather than the true appearance of my teeth.
Umbra attempts to draw a breath, but his attempt only yields a quiet, gurgling wheeze. He twitches as if to rearrange himself. I'm far too fast, catching on to what the creature so revolting that he cannot even cry out in pain thinks I will be unable to notice in my rage. Magic flaring to life once more, I whip out Fate, whose blade gleams with silver in the firelight. Not willing to stop there, I dismantled my my metal boots, reducing them to to the fragments I had used in my duel with Luna. Without my boots, my hooves touch a coat hiding broken bones and mottled with bruises.
It isn't going to be white for much longer.
Umbra makes a choked gasp, surprise - but not pain - actually making its way across his face in an abrupt burst as I drive the makeshift knives into his wings, pinning them out and watching as blood starts to show, mingling a bit with the burns on his lower wings.
For now, with his wings spread away from his horn and hindquarters, magic is beyond him. Drops of molten äerint from my, which still rages on the crystalline walls, land on him and sear holes in his feathers. Fate looms above him; both are my inferior, but the former was named for things like this. I bring it down once, lost in the lucidity I have from marveling in what I was literally made for.
"THIS IS FOR ALL THOSE YOU'VE KILLED!"
I remain unflinching as a wave blood spatter, warm and familiar, lands on me. How could I? All this - blood running on crystalline floors in some foreign and unforgiving place - would have been nostalgic had I favored the conditions the first time around and enjoyed all the horrible things that I had done.
Without hesitation, I poise Fate for a second strike, the wonderful rush of all my wrath spreading running through me as my innermost thoughts rearranged themselves so that all they did was egg me on, urging me to do more and more. That too, isn't an entirely unfamiliar sensation. Two differences might be in that I am willing to carry out this and that the voice that screams for more is mine alone.
"THIS IS FOR EVERY EMPIRE YOU TOPPLED!"
Fate finds its way into Umbra's flesh again. He may be divine but one wrong strike might end my vengeance far sooner than I would like. His heart and head - the latter especially - are to be avoided for as long as possible if I'm going to draw this out for as long as I'd like. Unlike every other Alicorn I've encountered, he doesn't feel.
For somepony who fights, both physically and magically as much as I do, I rarely exert myself and haven't pushed my limits since teleporting from the desert to Canterlot while keeping myself alive, before immortality, before godhood, before all this...
But now I will. There are few lines I won't cross in expending power and pushing myself to do as I will here.
"AND THIS IS FOR EVERY GOD YOU BROKE!"
I bring down Fate in a rapid succession, too angry to note each strike, but I feel myself count them for later. My throat burns with each word, but I do not thirst. I feel like I'm on fire with power; I am magic. I am not power, because I am beyond it.
I feel myself burning, screaming back at him, but there's no words in my rage. Sweat runs down my forehead and mixes with the gore that has practically blanketed my front, leaving only my eyes and teeth to stand out against the mess that blots out the black of my mane and gray of my coat. Beneath my hooves, I feel a wet mush that could never be mud as I stand upon Umbra and simply don't stop my rampage.
I just keep going. Sometimes there's nothing to say, just everything to show and I don't even to egg myself onward but my voice - the sound of my voice telling me all these things, reminding me of every horrible deed I can do and have done in what could have been a sick practice for all this... it just doesn't stop.
I don't want it to.
I can't bear to will it to.
I'm screaming, and sometimes it sounds as if I'm being the one hurt with each strike.
But this is foul healing more than everything else.
It's taken so long.
I've always wanted revenge for something at nearly every point in time. Luna wants revenge too. I've also sought love, where she's only recently pursued it - with me. I couldn't pick just one. I love revenge and my acts of love towards Luna - utterly sincere and caring in every way - are also their own kind of revenge. Against Onyx. Against Umbra. Against being a weapon. A demon. A monster. Against anything and everything I want.
In this lucid state where I continue to bury Fate in every bit of Umbra in front of me, I can feel sweat in my mane and blood on my coat and cloak, anchoring my mind here - not that I've ever wanted, or even when I wanted to, had the ability to leave these situations before - and for the first time since all this has ever happened.
Since Mac kept my secret, and in doing so became more than my friend.
Since Luna brought me happiness and loved me back.
Since my Luna - with her mysterious forgiveness and a chance that was purely serendipity that none of us could have anticipated - sent me to the void with the aid of her sister and I was able to put so much back together and plan everything, thus escaping the downward spiral that had been my life in that cold, isolated, and utterly uplifting darkness.
Since I took that first step into everything and for an entire year, walked through the snow.
I hear myself laughing like I haven't in centuries. I've never been innocent since the second before everything, but even then I wasn't able to laugh, nor did I have knowledge of enough to be giddy at anything. I did laugh before the Crystal Empire. I laughed when I was alone and how, if I lay on my back with my stomach toward the sky when it snowed, it looked like the stars were falling and that I lay in a pile of them, their icy coolness prickling my coat. Tartarus' flames, sometimes I'd even giggle. After all, I was fourteen years old and even if I never had the luxury or understanding of numerous traits of the children of any species, there was a quiet grasp of fun about me, and on rare occasions I did find myself laughing alone in the snow.
Those times made it feel like everything that was going to go wrong later could at least wait a little while longer. While I've never considered those memories particularly dear to me, I know that they're significant. And yet, I don't feel surprised at all when I'm laughing like that again - Luna has slowly gotten me to laugh again, but it's still not quite the same - in the middle of all this. I no longer sound the same - but I'd recognize the sound of my own voice, however changed it is, anywhere.
Levitating the soaked blade of Fate, whose crystal veins drip with the blood of the magic-born, above the mangled and mutilated form of Umbra, who shakes with every attempt to draw breath.
This is for his worst crime of all.
"THIS IS FOR CREATING ME!"
I bring down Fate again, striking anywhere and everywhere I see, avenging just a bit of everything I had to go endure to bring me here, to see Luna again, and to just live. Sweat pours down my face, but I've never felt more powerful in my life.
Once I have both allowed and managed to reign my temper in a bit, I glower at the barely-breathing mass of what was once Umbra and the wings that I left intact, now as blood-drenched as I was, feathers liberally covered in the stuff. The only sound is my heaving breaths, but that doesn't mean there isn't much to see - everything I see is through a cloak of aura that flows around me like a crimson flame, bathing my body in the same power that still glows on my horn, but that flare is lost in the rune-studded energy around me that ripples and flows across every part of me.
I look like the coal in the heart of a flame, my eyes the embers. Only the strange runes that fade quickly, hiding in the folds of magic somewhere between transparent and translucent, betray its true nature. I am magic, at my core, and that makes me extremely different from a pony, though I may be equine our origins differ spectacularly. They can have surges when they use too much magic, but it can also stop their heart and do other things. I have had surges of my own; they're the hallmark of developing magic, particularly magical talent, so of course I had them - but none have ever been quite like this, with so much emotion and power running rampant through me that I feel feverish.
But never in my life have I 'sweat' so much excess magic in order to stabilize myself that I've ended up cloaked my own power. The exhilaration I got from this was nearly unbelievable as my magic, emotion, and mental strength fed into one another almost endlessly.
Are you finished? Umbra's disembodied voice asked, no longer coming from a physical form that couldn't speak, but from the dim glow of dark magic clinging to his bound feather tips. The small workings of magic projected his voice outward from a body too broken to manage any vocalizations anymore.
The disembodied and impersonal chill that this state exemplified suited him far too well for my liking.
"Never," I growl, ripping out each bit of metal inserted into his wings as slowly and painfully as I knew how to, tearing flesh and breaking feathers purposely with each one I withdrew, assembling them into boots once more as my magic continued to engulf me.
"You and I both know that the two of us are beings of power and ambition. There is nothing you won't do to get what you want, no matter how badly you'll lose to me."
...And do you think that you can simply refuse everything?
"I think whatever I want, and if I want something, I'll scheme to obtain it. If you think much of anything could deter me from my goals, you couldn't be more wrong, Umbra. After all..."
Teleporting myself away from his body to prepare for whatever came next, I did a quick survey of my surroundings as soon as I wiped the some of the gore from my eyes, horn still flared and divine aura from my surge still shaking with anger that had yet to be expressed. The shadows of the chamber trembled in the firelight.
"...We could do this forever."
...
My inferno melted too much of the crystals jutting from the ceiling and crowning the empty space looming above me that it had caused large portions to become unstable and large portions, still blazing with magic red fire, to fall to the ground. I was able to dodge them easily, teleporting and darting between the rubble falling despite essentially being a beacon of crimson power. Umbra managed to escape any damage other than burn marks, his ability to sense magic and the fact that his sense of hearing was second the most intact of the six were the only things that kept him from being pinned beneath the äerint.
I glared at him from where I stood across from him, smoldering äerint rubble the only thing separating us. He knew where I was and that my focus and my steadily burning, immense power was only concentrated in what could only be my location.
He spread his broken wings and lept after me. In vain attempts to soar, he tried to maneuver his towering form over the burning crystalline obstacles that blocked his path, no matter how horrible the condition of his body was. His wings were no longer able to lift him and the left could barely move and only hung limply when he wasn't putting all his effort into trying to get the äerint-coated feathers to angle themselves properly. I wasn't even sure if he had flown in all the centuries he'd been here; part of me doubted he had quit entirely until enough time had passed that his thoughts turned to indulging in the tortures of those he had trapped here and nothing more.
However, I wasn't going to stick around to find out as this horrifying sight barreled toward me. I came here for more than one reason, and I wasn't going to get a chance to look for any potentially unbroken Alicorns if I wasn't able to immobilize him for a longer amount of time.
He was bulky, barely able to move except in exaggerated and awkward limps, had less control of himself, and led me somewhere where he thought I could be overpowered in the open and would be belligerent enough to continuously assault him without bothering to plan anything. Umbra only thought me a crude and faulty mistake that wouldn't be able to make any remotely successful attempt to overpower him and let my temper get in the way of every decision that I make.
He couldn't be more wrong.
The reason I'm here now and I've survived so much isn't because I've tossed intelligence to the wind once I had enough power that I felt I could get whatever I desired easily, but because I'm stubborn, prideful, and willingly to defy and outsmart whoever it is that thinks that they can take anything or anypony from me. The conditions I've had to pull myself through can be described as 'abysmal' at best, but even when I was at my most powerless, I always sought every little victory I could through sheer arrogance, knowledge, and a bit of luck.
As the excess magic cloaking me began to dim and fall, I felt my stomach drop with it and the start of fatigue begin to wash over me. This wasn't as bad as it would be for most other creatures - I was used to feeling drained - but in this fight? I would be needing power and excess. There was no way in Tartarus I was going to push beyond any limits I might be nearing by expending even more power for short term gain. It's about who wins the war, not who triumphs in the battle.
So I ran, galloping at full speed down the nearest hallway I could find before Umbra could get too close. I needed him to think that with my magic dropping and my sudden mad dash for an 'escape' that I was weaker than I appeared; it is what he's been thinking about me up until I displayed any sign of divinity.
...
Niflhel's halls were expansive. Crooked corridors turned every way that a hallway possibly could. Some even looked as though they had been blasted into the crystallized, both recently and long ago. I didn't exactly stop to check latent magic traces - they were just that; traces, which meant I would be no closer to any Alicorns by following them.
My hooves take long strides, striking the crystalline ground and causing sparks to fly backward, sizzling as they made contact with the cold äerint. Growling, I lit my horn and turned my gaze to the rapidly changing corridors again while minding the sensation of trembling beneath my hooves. I had lived long enough in deathly quiet places like this to tell the rippling vibrations of both hoofsteps and other kinds of movement. While I was in no way bothered by being able to feel the shifting hallways in the distance, Umbra's hoofsteps were alarming. Quickly reducing my weight to allow myself to run at higher speeds, the sound of metal scraping crystal growing louder with each stride. My breathing was not labored, but even I knew the signs that I couldn't run forever and that this was not an endless world.
Perhaps it was because I had come skidding to a stop in a dead end, pulling back just enough so that my face didn't meet the cold surface that fragmented my reflection even more than my sweat-drenched mane did when it hung in my eyes.
And I backed right into an obstruction that wasn't there before. Fate rustled in its sheath as I sucked in a deep breath, unable to mask the sensation of creeping horror. A breathing, solid obstruction that still ran with blood and felt like shredded flesh that sent my heart racing and my mind rampaging with whatever I could possibly do because...
Hello, Sombra, said the hollow voice creeping on the crystal surface of the dead end hallway.
...Now there's nowhere left to run.
...
Umbra lowers what's left of his wings to the ground. The äerint that encases his feathers like amber still glows with aura that pulsates aggressively, and I feel my heartbeat quicken. Reading the magic with the considerable amount of focus I can muster in situations like these confirms that while it isn't going to form any kind of spell for attacking me - but it is aimed at me. He wants me to try and run, to distract me from any attempt at getting my thoughts together, and it's not going to work.
Damn if he isn't creepy either way. I watch our dim reflections in the äerint wall and the unmistakable snarl that the remains of Umbra's teeth are bared in, while I stand in front of him - and in his shadow - with a few smears of his blood on the rear of my cloak and liberal amounts of gore all over the front of me and in my my mane. Through it, how pale I look is on full display; I make no attempt to hide my fear, only control it.
Tearing my intense, horrified gaze away from that of my reflection is almost impossible. I needed to focus on something, to rein in my breathing just a bit more as I felt his magic creep up me. I didn't even try to refrain from shuddering, and he flashed me that same disturbing leer again - the one that sent chills down my spine - and his feather tips glowed more furiously.
Knowing I could read the spell, he only smiled wider when he caught my eyes continue to fixate on my reflected self, using the distorted image of he and I to watch as the crudely formed walls began to inch toward me... and it was no illusion. The ground beneath my hooves shook with them and each second that passed was another few inches closer to closing the both of us into the dead end.
Well, Little Shadow, are you going to attempt to escape me again? Or will you submit to your destiny and perish here - endlessly?
Despite my fear, a confident, rude laugh burst from me, my rough tone drowning out the noise of the walls while my legs still shook. "Destiny? Perhaps there's something like it, sure. And though it's weak, even if such a concept were strong here, I'd am and will always be above it. After all, wasn't it you who decided to call me Destiny's Bastard?"
My arrogance and honesty displeases Umbra and he lets out a low, gurgling hiss. I feel more blood spatter find its way onto my cloak and saw myself twitch slightly before stoicism returned. And then I laughed, as defiant as ever, so I laguhed with a demon-may-care flair. I laughed to the reflected face of the world-eater who thought he could defeat me just because he toppled empires, distorted land, and broke gods.
It surprised him, and I thought of the memory of his hollow eyes with their slit pupils that were cold at their most merciful widening. Instead all I caught was a gasp and a blood-filled cough.
The walls closed in faster and I darted away, whirling around to face him, and though I felt a twinge of sourness at having to relinquish my vanity, I faced him with desperation turned to determination and all the stubbornness one could imagine and more. I glowered at him, carrying myself as the god I was and one could look at me then and say that I looked like a king if they were a damned fool. I'm no king, and even if I'm a god, there's still something better than that.
I'm Sombra.
A growl sounded in my throat but I quelled it and stared through every part of him instead with a silent look of contempt on my face as I surveyed the grotesque form of Umbra. "What's surprising about you, Umber-"
Umbra, he interrupts rudely, umber is a color.
"And you're about as much use to me as the damned color," I snap, "but you're right about there being only one demon-"
Shadow-
"SHUT UP! IF I WANT TO SLANDER MY OWN SPECIES, I WILL!" I roar.
Silence lasts for a split second before I bump myself back to center stage again.
"And that demon will be me, Sombra, because if you think that a fool like you can end any of this - and mess with me and get away with it, you couldn't be more wrong. You can end billions of lives, destroy entire landscapes, end civilizations, and break gods but if you think that you can actually fuck with me and end up as the victor - especially when you look like you've been through eight meat grinders - then you couldn't have been more wrong."
He tilts his head and the last bit of his left ear falls to the ground. I can't exactly say that I'm surprised since there's plenty of Umber to scrape up the floor elsewhere.
You spoke as if you had interest in the gods - the Alicorns - and yet you dismiss them as well as the surprising amount of caution you displayed to the wind so easily. What makes you think arrogance can win? Do you think I have not seen it before? That you are unbreakable?
My irises flash crimson again, and the world with it. "I know I'm unbreakable, and if you think I can lose then you're among the greatest fools I've come across," I snarl.
Heart pounding wildly and magic still not the best, I don't bother with any showy displays as I stand steadfast and glare him down, completely undaunted.
He bares his remaining teeth - which I loathe to say, are still quite numerous - at me, dripping with blood, saliva, and all sorts of things that remind of the surprising amount of lethal uses a toothbrush has and only give me further reason to want be the sole survivor of my own species. But I certainly cannot say that the gesture - or rather, the thought of what teeth like that can do - is at least somewhat unnerving as the walls close in around me, narrowing my chance of escape bit by bit-
Just like a castle, so far away, surrounded by a ring of mountains; and somehow - somehow despite it all - those walls and mortal folly and everything and anything-
Just everything, everything that makes me gasp for this breath in this moment-
The Crystal Empire-
I look up with as much self-control as I can muster and focus as much as I can on whatever isn't a memory from that damnable time: him.
Umber is smiling, truly smiling because he saw something he liked... he caught a glimpse of panics, cracks, half-thoughts and-
So, Sombra ,the pesky and disgustingly individualistic and arrogant knowledge-seeker, would you like to know what happened to the high queen, Lumina Galaxia?
Before I can even think to reply, Umbra lunges.
...
Pain tears through me with each mad scramble I make, my armored hooves pounding the crystalline ground in a mad stumble while my lungs burn with each choked and heaving breath. It feels like my heart is trying to force its way up my throat. I know that can't actually happen, but right now all that matters is that I keep running and I do everything to force myself to gallop faster even though each stride in my abnormal gait only makes it easier to feel flesh tearing.
I don't turn around. I don't cast any magic. I don't look anywhere, I just gallop forward as fear and pain grips me and my sides ache. Fate jangles in its sheath, which is still strapped to my left side despite what happened. Every time I flinch at something that lurks in the left side of my vision, I keep forcing myself to go faster yet again no matter how feverish I feel. A cold sweat runs down my gore matted coat as I try to head anywhere far away from him...
Blood runs down the left side of my hindquarters where he-
I shiver wildly at the thought and keep going, knowing I have a more than generous head start thanks to my surge after he-
I can still feel his teeth drawing blood and-
My heart leaps in my chest, but I resist the urge to cry out for now, and gasp instead as I keep going, but it's hard to hear the distinction in between my heaves.
I can feel them buried in me, tearing farther in with each stride-
I only focus on going faster and dashing through each and every hall. He'll be able to trace my magic. While the thought of being trapped again is terrifying - my legs are still shaking as I run, forcing myself not to limp along as I let my wound worsen for the sake of self preservation - I let my wide-eyed and lucid stare pick out halls that will be too difficult for him to travel easily, altering äerint where I can to make my progression easier and his far more difficult.
I can still smell his flesh burning... and it had already been so raw. First there was the familiar divine aura, filled with runes slipping over me, and then fire-
My thoughts cease again and I shift all focus to the deafening noise of my heartbeat and the dryness in my throat that makes even gasping difficult as my mind tries not to-
Lumina... He... I thought I'd never have to know-
My legs give out beneath me and I let them. At this point, where my thoughts race so far ahead of me and return in fragments that I don't dare try to recollect, hoping that the painful hammering of my heart will at least be a somewhat capable distraction. An ache grows in my head alongside terror that I haven't known since the Crystal Empire.
It really isn't working.
Sides heaving with each and every breath as ragged and broken as the flesh of my hindquarters, I let my head fall to the floor, unable to hold it up. Breathing is painful and comes out in coughs at best - terrible, dry coughs that rack my limp form as I lay with my right side to the cold ground. My cloak is plastered to my side with warm blood that runs down my side in rivulets that itch once they flow and leave the rest of me feeling almost cold as the warm liquid runs down my gray coat and onto my boots. Some of it is on the ground, too but it isn't like I had time to clean up a trail.
How much have I lost?
...Enough for the part of the fabric that wasn't torn to be plastered to my torn flesh with an uncomfortable and slick seal of blood...
Gasping and coughing, I managed to pull my head up just enough to lean to one side, the black dots in my vision dancing as I kept my swimming head steady enough to avoid throwing up on myself. Reeling at the rancid, warm, and vile mix that forced its way up my throat, I turned what fading attention I had left away from the sharp smell of the bile, whose foul taste still stings my throat and lit my horn, relieved to know that I could still focus enough magic to withdraw Fate from its sheath and grasp the hilt in my aura.
Tearing away my blood-slick cloak had to be done with my magic as well, since I would have toppled over, lost focus, and dropped Fate if I had done so with my hooves in the condition that I was in. Unable to muster a true gasp, I let out something between a whimper and an exhale at the sight of my hindquarters.
It isn't that I hadn't seen things worse than this before, and I knew the injury was going to be horrific... but this was me! This was going to leave a scar... a scar on me. Honestly, this looked even more painful than it felt, which was certainly saying something!
His teeth had done damage that made my stomach churn and magic waver, and then flare suddenly, causing the crimson grip on Fate's hilt to shake.
I thought that when I reconstructed myself, there wouldn't be any more scars. Now I'll have to wait until I get blown up again to erase something like this...
I admit, this is mostly a matter of vanity. I also didn't want to risk an infection and all the running I did had only driven the teeth that had broken off when I had struggled, kicked, and spat in the remainder of his eye, screaming in fury and pain. Now, those teeth were buried far deeper in me then they had initially been.
And he was searching for me... to say that he wouldn't find me was impossible - he would, but it was just a matter of when. I couldn't control the former, but the latter? It just might be fair game. This particular hallway was just an empty, dead end route alright. I couldn't stay here forever, and I wouldn't.
Niflhel, like me, was far more than meets the eye. Yes, it may be crudely made for a magical otherworld and I did find it to not be a very favorable aesthetic, since he had three thousand years to design this place and still thought 'just crystallize shit' was a good approach. But, just because you make a shitty looking and eldritch deathtrap of a pocket dimension doesn't mean there can't be other features.
The reason Umbra wants to lure any major threats here is because most of his power is drawn from this place. Since äerint is dark magic aura that flows so wildly it crystallizes easily, it means that power can be drawn from it. I was able to lay out very large enchantments over a distance in the Crystal Empire because of this as well as amplify my magic senses to some degree... of course, I was also unaware of this at the time and with many other factors like this one, the latter ended up contributing to the episodes of psychosis I had has a youth and worsening those ones, which I had alongside my natural episodes.
That wasn't what interested me. No, it was that this äerint housed magical prisons built from dark magic and pocket dimensions... all sorts of fun things for me that were difficult to sense unless I ran blindly and began to collect bits and pieces of the magical signatures forming them - again, a gross oversimplification on my part but... Damn him, my head!
I was laying on top of one. I was in no condition to go much of anywhere, but I was laying on top of a prison housing an Alicorn of unknown mental soundness that I could break into, with great difficulty. The whole goal of this thing would be to keep the one inside from using magic, and while there would be no way around that for the Alicorn inside - over the rainbow or not, they'll be drastically weakened magically - as a demon and a god, as well as one of the few magical geniuses the world had left - as well as a knack for breaking and entering, of course - I might as well have been given a key.
I wasn't ready to go in just yet. My physical condition was a poor one and needed to be improved somewhat to try what I was thinking, as well as improve my mental condition in any way possible during the long run. Infections from his disgusting bite had to be avoided at all costs...
Letting out a ragged breath that seemed far too loud for the silence of the towering hallway, I poised Fate over my wounded flank and focused my fogging mind as much as possible. Gritting my teeth, I clenched my jaw and drew a thin, shaky breath as my vision swam in the dim place where the walls stretched so far above me, looming like a threat all their own.
Then I plunged Fate into my flesh and scream.