Shards of Darkness
01 - Pushing up Blueberries
“PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE Momma?” begged Fluffy Cotton, having practically adhered herself to her mother’s foreleg. “I wanna play Space Pirate Mito and everypony knows you can’t be a famous pirate without a treasure!”
“Oh, alright, fine,” surrendered the semi-exasperated Blueberry Lemonade. Her leg was falling asleep and at the rate her daughter was refusing to let go, those bills were never going to pay themselves.
“YAAAAYY!” exclaimed the filly.
“Just wait right here while I get some treasure for my little pirate swashbuckler,” Lemonade said, trotting off to her bedroom and pulling out her jewelry box from its hiding spot. Given the last time her daughter had played space pirate pony, she had to be careful with her precious stones. Fortunately, after a recent examination of her stock, Lemonade just so happened to know she had a couple of low quality gems of various kinds. She couldn’t recall where she’d gotten them, but they’d been cheap, if she remembered correctly.
Judging from the joyous expression on her daughter’s face, the fact they were garbage gems was of no consequence. Hopefully she didn’t bury them in a place where she’d lose them since they were, in the end, still gems.
But knowing her daughter? Well, she couldn’t be trusted with valuable gems for a reason. And indeed, later that day when Cotton got bored of fighting Buck Reigns of the Future Police, the borrowed gems were lost to the back yard. And it had started raining so any hope of recovering them was lost.
The real horror, though, was when the next morning, Fluffy came bursting into the master bedroom excitedly exclaiming that the gems had “sprouted into a crystal tree.” She was insistent on that fact despite gems not being seeds, and dragged her mother out to the backyard.
Blueberry Lemonade fainted on the spot at the sight of the new dark crystal tree haphazardly jutting out of most of what had been her carefully manicured backyard, especially given that it had uprooted and ruined her prized blueberry bushes.
It was with concern that Twilight Sparkle noted her companion looked somewhat tired, leaning her head on the ledge of the rail coach’s windows. They’d left Ponyville only an hour ago with half of one left to go, but the normally vociferous unicorn hadn’t really said a word since they’d left.
“So, Coltumbus,” said Twilight, “You ever come through there before?”
“Yeah, I didn’t spend long there but I remember that town,” replied Raspberry Beryl, in a tone that indicated she didn’t want to talk about it. That got Twilight’s attention, namely because of the alarm bells that set off in her head.
Raspberry Beryl was a pony with a checkered past, to put it mildly: one bad enough that when she’d first come to Ponyville, she’d been almost as bad a case of wallflower as Fluttershy, but fearful of making any major connections purely because she wanted to keep herself able to flee when the truth got out. Twilight knew the worst of it: complications from her birth had claimed her mother, driving her father into a drunken abuser who had gone so far as to forcefully remove Razz’s original horn with a hacksaw, which in turn had led to Razz partially succumbing to her dark heritage and gaining a monstrous visage with powers to match. Things had continued to go downhill as she’d killed her father at the same time, her rage from abuse exploding violently, and a trail of destruction in her immediate escape from Lonesome Dove.
Alone, Razz had then been forced to sell counterfeit gems, disguised dark crystal, roaming from town to town while trying to hide her true appearance which had already acquired a reputation of being the “return of King Sombra” as her moment of revenge on her father had granted her a similar curved horn, granting her a potential mastery of the dark forces of the left hoof path, but at the cost of any light-affiliated magic being beyond her ability. Her legacy of mishaps followed her from town to town all the same, culminating in her handiwork accidently nearly claiming the life of Twilight’s beloved assistant and little brother Spike the Dragon when he tried to eat a diamond that was really dark crystal.
It was only through the perseverance of Apple Bloom’s belief that Razz was a good pony at heart that had Razz decide she was done running. And after a major disaster at the national trial where Razz nearly repeated her mistake in a fit of dark magic rage, Apple Bloom once again helped Razz ultimately avoid making things worse for herself as well as everypony else. The final tragedy was when, in the final battle against the resurrected monster known as Fair Vista, she consciously prevented her healing magic from curing the devastating wound sustained to her leg in order to have enough power to finally vanquish the ghostly werewolf for good. But ever since, despite her magical and physical handicaps, Raspberry had proven to finally become strong enough to put her dark past behind her, even going back to Lonesome Dove to bury her dark origin once and for all.
So at this point, after everything had come to light, with Razz even relying on Twilight as a confidant when it had come to going back to Lonesome Dove, Twilight had thought something as comparatively minor as a town freaking out over Razz’s secret being revealed would be almost “who gives a damn anymore” territory between them.
“Before you go and overthink it,” said Razz, interrupting Twilight’s train of thought, “It isn’t anything world-ending like you and the rest of the girls face every other week. It’s just that Coltumbus was one of the first places I went to after everything went to shit in Lonesome Dove.”
Twilight gave her friend a sympathetic smile. “How long ago?”
Razz chuckled. “Pre-dates my meeting Heliodor, that’s how early.” Razz then turned to rub the back of her pet emerald phoenix, who had spent the entire trip asleep and seemed to be nowhere near waking up. “Long story short, I was still getting my ‘act’ together so to speak, particularly my normal guise. Having to keep it up all day is actually great exercise for magical stamina, as I’m sure you’re aware, Twi, but back then I was just a teenage filly trying to understand the dark curse and my ‘gift’ in how I would survive. I wasn’t as strong then as I was even when I first came to Ponyville.”
“So you’re saying your guise dropped in public?” Twi asked, concerned.
“High noon, right in the middle of town. Everypony was screaming, the guard was scrambling to deal with the ‘dark pony’ that was ‘attacking the town’ or something…it was too much like the townsponies back in Lonesome Dove surrounding the burning house. It’s one big personal embarrassment, hence why I’m not too eager to go back.” She sighed, then straightened her posture. “But I guess when you’ve traveled most of Equestria and every time you’ve moved, it’s because of basically that happening all over again and again, you gotta face the music at some point. Especially when you’re the Archmagus of Darkness and dealing with that shit is the only reason you aren’t dead in the eyes of Equestria’s archaic laws.”
“Uh, your title is ‘of Dark Magic’, not ‘Darkness’ for the record.”
“Yeah, I know, but one of the colts – Pipsqueak, I think? The spotted transplant from Trottingham – was talking about how the ‘darkest pony since Nightmare Moon vanquished the evil cloud over Everfree’ and as much as I try to not associate with anything even remotely evil sounding, the moniker gives me a chuckle in private.”
Twilight couldn’t help but giggle. “Well, I’m sure Coltumbus isn’t going to be Lonesome Dove Part 2.”
Razz nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, I don’t think anypony wants to live through that episode again.”
The town of Coltumbus was very much one of those ironically named towns. It had been named after an old Unicornia explorer who was trying to prove the world was shaped like a pear, and that by marching across the Unicornia Plains you would reach the ocean. Turned out, that wasn’t the case, and while future generations of ponies laughed at Coltumbus’ insanity, the name was kept.
As for the town itself, it was centrally located in Equestria and was home to one of the most verdant plains in the land. This gave Coltumbus its other claim to fame: it was one of the few farmlands that didn’t have Apples connected to it. In fact, the Carrot family was the big player here, with Cavendish Carrot, the uncle of Golden Harvest, being the mayor of Coltumbus.
Razz looked around the town as they walked down the main road, away from the train station. “Made running away real easy back then,” commented Razz, who despite being a far more confident-in-herself mare than she had been almost a decade prior, still seemed to walk with trepidation in her form. She was not to be faulted for that, as going down the main route of town to the site of the dark magic outbreak, several of the townsponies looked at her with glares of suspicion. They remembered both her own little mistake years ago, despite nopony having been hurt, as well as the incident at the trial when somepony in particular almost got what he deserved but at a cost Razz ultimately would not pay.
“Well, you were right about Coltumbus being a major farming town,” said Twilight, trotting abreast her friend. “Frankly, I think if she saw the land, Applejack would be completely jealous.”
“Probably,” Razz replied as she looked at the contingent of guards that had come with them Right now, they were divided into two groups, with the first keeping the super energetic foals and fillies from swarming Razz to ask her about that foreign looking bird roosting on her forehead; and the second group doing the actual guard duty for the alicorn princess. Nevermind that Twilight didn’t need the guard protection, given that she was literally magic personified, or the fact that Razz herself was likely the most dangerous individual alive…when she so chose to be.
Putting such cheery thoughts aside, the small delegation soon approached a house blocked off with classic DO NOT CROSS police tape and two of the few officers of the Coltumbus Police Department.
“Ah, finally,” said the older of the two, probably the sergeant if not chief of the CPD. “Chief Copper Badge, at your service. Wasn’t expecting the honor of a princess coming here.”
“I am here by request of Archmagus Beryl,” said Twilight.
“Yes, Ms. Beryl, I remember her,” Badge said with a tinge of disgust. “Pretty sure much of the town knows about her from what she did back then.”
“You mean don a lifelike Nightmare Night costume, get yelled at, and run the hell out of town without harming a fly?” countered Razz right off the cuff. “Because if I did anything worse than that, please let me know.”
“Well, I, uh…”
“Thought so. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
The backyard of Blueberry Lemonade’s home had largely vanished under the massive onyx monstrosity that had erupted from the ground like some kind of evil volcano. Fortunately, whatever happened, or whatever caused its growth, only fueled it very briefly so the only damage was a completely ruined backyard.
“So, you’re the dark magic expert of Equestria?” asked Blueberry. “I know everypony talks about how you apparently freaked them out years ago, but I only moved here five years ago so I don’t know what the hubbub is about.” She cautiously looked over to where her daughter Cotton was playing with Razz’s pet phoenix.
“Frankly, I don’t think the ponies who think they have a problem know what they’re on about, either,” grunted Razz. “But please, how much do you know about what happened here?”
As Blueberry recapped her daughter’s space pirate treasure leading into an inexplicable evil crystal growth, alarm bells immediately went off in Razz’s head. The rain couldn’t have played a part in this, crystals aren’t organic like seeds, she thought, but no question it was the gems. Could they possibly be…?
“Here, let me check something,” said Razz, as both ponies were now standing in the small patch of grass left between the house and the crystal growth. Her horn lit up in purple and green miasma – which Blueberry couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of, let alone be anywhere near – and subsequently the entire crystal tree was encased in a black aura.
“Pardon me for asking, but…” started Lemonade, “why is your horn lighting up in a different color to whatever you’re doing to that abomination?”
“Nature of the beast, so to speak,” explained Razz nonchalantly. “Dark magic is inherently more unstable than normal magic, so the green and purple you’re seeing is raw magic flow – trying to contain that kind of power in as refined a manner as conventional magic is no different than effectively mounting a time bomb on your forehead. At the same time, exposure to such raw power uncontained while simultaneously coursing through a cranial extremity is what makes dark magic so corruptive to the minds of anypony who uses it.”
“Anypony except you, that is,” the other pony noted.
“Yeah, I’m the one exception, given my special talent for it gives me an immunity to its mental corruptive effects…at the cost of being able to do anything else, magic-wise.” A second later, Razz thought to add, “And I swear to Celestia don’t you dare call me a one-trick pony!”
“I, uh, wasn’t even thinking about that.” Blueberry seemed to be willing to just take her daughter and go somewhere else, away from this mess she wanted no part of. “So, uh, what are you doing with the tree?”
Razz then stopped her magic flow, whatever she had been doing evidently now being done. “I was testing how unstable the magic absorption rate is of the crystal mass. Just because it isn’t still growing doesn’t mean it’s dead or even inert. Even for me, the de jure expert of dark magic in Equestria – by virtue of being the only expert in any capacity – I have to be careful around these things. Fortunately, this one only exploded in growth overnight because of the seeded power in whatever spawned it. Essentially this is what happens if you try to contain dark magic as much as light magic.”
“That’s great…can you get rid of it? I’m just glad this happened the week after the town’s flower judging competition had my flowers earn third place.”
Razz nodded. “Yeah, but even with my expertise and Twilight’s high power magic, taking down dark crystal or even outright destroying it is a real hassle. Is there an inn where you and your daughter could stay for tonight? If Twi and I work through the night, we should have your land back to you – the crown will pick up the tab.” She then grimaced as she added, “Can’t say the same for your flowers, though: dark magic really isn’t good for trying to keep plant growth down to a manicured and non-carnivorous state.”
Blueberry blanched, “You’ve actually done that kind of stuff?!”
“Pff, no!” exclaimed Razz. “But as the only one who can read King Sombra’s grimoires and not go insane in the process, let’s just say I’ve read some shit I have no intention of verifying.”
“Ah, right, yes, well…” Blueberry gulped. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer of the free stay at the inn tonight.” Hurriedly, lest she learn more about the left hoof path than a simple mare should know, the mother turned to fetch her child. “Cotton, dear, we need to go pack up!”
That night, the small group of guards stood outside the house, which looked strange with the bright lights radiating from the back. In reality, however, the light was just two super-powerful, magically charged spotlights focused on the crystal tree. Working in unison, Razz was carefully snapping off sections of the mass before letting Twilight destroy them with ample amounts of alicorn powered magic. They’d been at it since that late afternoon, stopping only for a brief dinner and to catch their breath. It was proving to be harder than Razz had thought, citing unforeseen instability in how the crystal had grown in such a rapid manner.
“How does this make it any different than the comparatively ‘controlled’ growth shown simply by being around Sombra when he was still in his shadow form?” asked Twilight, firing off a beam that shattered a ‘branch’ into nothing.
“My best guess is because after a thousand years of sustaining himself in shadow form through dark magic, he pretty much was more dark magic than pony at that point.” Replied Razz, breaking off a large piece of the trunk. “The crystal was therefore more an extension of himself and thus, incidentally, easier for him to control. Even though I can do shadow form, it isn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world and even with my inherited power from him, I still have to actively resist giving into emotions because I know full well what happens when I don’t. Sombra, on the other hoof, embraced the power despite how far it twisted him.”
“Every time you go into detailing your predecessor, I get more and more disgusted at what a monster he was, and how glad I am he’s dead.”
“Oh, please, I’m the one who has to learn about the worst shit he’d done – believe me, there are things I haven’t told you because I don’t want to burden you with the nightmares. Luna has her hooves full dealing with mine sometimes.” After a few more minutes of crystal obliteration, Razz sighed in relief. “Alright, that should do it for the parts of the tree that need obliteration.”
Twilight looked at what was left – the stump. “Uh, Razz? I think we still need to get to the root of the problem here?”
“Of course, but simply destroying this would leave us without knowledge of how to stop it from happening again.”
“How do you know it will happen again?”
In reply, Razz re-ignited her magic and ripped the stump out of the ground. She then rotated it 90 degrees away such that the full bottom of the stump could be seen by the unicorn and the alicorn. There, within the core of the onyx crystalline mass, were several tarnished gemstones of varying kinds. “Because those are some of the earliest counterfeit gems – pure dark crystal with the color change and solid encasement spells layered on top of them. As opposed to my later ones which I’d figured out how to weave in the color change and protective spells inside the crystal, making them impossible to break short of a dragon eating them as we all learned the hard way.”
“Yeah, we already know about your counterfeiting operations back in the day, but you didn’t make them like bombs!”
Razz sighed. “I was desperate for money and didn’t know as much about dark magic as I do now. But looking back on it, selling the early ones was a mistake. The spells on top of the crystals fail over time, even succumbing to weathering like heavy rains. And because the dark crystal wasn’t properly sealed, keeping it bottled up causes a chain reaction where it comes out violently, as I already explained to Blueberry Lemonade earlier.” She pointed at the massive crystalline structure floating in the air. “What we have here, Twilight, is a real situation we need to get on top of if we don’t want ponies thinking Sombra is in the rain or something and crystal exploding everywhere.”
“Yeah, I can see how that’s a problem, but still – why the stump?”
Razz chuckled. “The only original gems of mine we know are now in our possession. If there’s a way to re-seal them, even temporarily before I can properly dispose of them, then this is our only ticket. I’d also suggest that you have a national investigation of ponies with low quality gems they may have gotten on the cheap – try to corral as many as we can before disaster strikes again. Remind me when we get back to the hotel and I’ll give you a list of my aliases, as well as descriptions.”
The alicorn gave her friend an odd look. “Aliases?”
“Yes, not something I’m proud of,” the mulberry unicorn admitted, “but sometimes, when you’re on the run and word gets to the next town, it’s better to be a lime green unicorn with pink hair than my coloration. And believe me, in some places? It’s probably the only reason I’m still alive.”