//------------------------------// // The Return // Story: Kindness and the Heart of Shadow // by Raven-Flight //------------------------------// The door clicked. Fluttershy lifted her head. “Oh Fluttershy, my pet! I have a treat for you!” “My King! Welcome back!” The gaunt mare heaved herself up to her hooves and then glided down from the bed and into Sombra’s waiting arms. Glided, for all the feathers had finally dropped from her wings and left in their place broad, membranous limbs like the wings of a bat. After breaking from the embrace, King Sombra shed his armor and garments, climbed onto the bed, and set up the picnic blanket and basket. Fluttershy meant to join him when he patted the bed to summon her, but it was too high. She tried lying her torso on the bed and hopping her back legs up, but she didn’t have the strength to jump. Even flapping her new wings didn’t help, for she couldn’t seem to flap them fast enough to generate lift. Watching her struggle and sweat, Sombra mercifully lifted her in his magic and placed the defeated pony in his lap so he could hold her up. “Thank you, oh King,” Fluttershy smiled. The King responded by reaching down to kiss her forehead, noticing how the corners of her mouth pushed her cheeks up around her drooping eyes, and how her ears fell winsomely to either side of her head. “You seem tired, dearest. Allow me to revive you with a drink and a tale.” He lifted a darkened bottle out of the basket, followed by two glasses. As he poured deep purple liquid into each glass in turn, Fluttershy watched it seem to swirl with life and glow from within like embers. Her mouth watered in anticipation. One of the glasses levitated up to her lips and tilted a sip of the drink into her mouth. She swallowed, then gagged. “It burns my throat!” “Shh, do not fret. It is a purifying tonic that burns because it is working. The process is nearly complete.” Now the Shadow King took a sip from his own glass, maintaining a neutral expression. “Drink it slowly, and I will distract you with my story.” “As you wish, your Highness.” “Yesterday evening, it came to my attention that a band of dissenters was so afraid of the truth, they tried to flee my impending reign on a ship in the night. The ocean is such a dangerous place, and foreign shores can be even more dangerous, so I knew I had to go rescue those poor, misguided ponies right away. I boarded their vessel in stealth and took control of it before they even realized what was happening!” Fluttershy finished choking down another sip of her drink. “And were you able to convert all of them and bring them back to shore?” “Why, my dear little pony, do you realize who you’re talking to? Of course I had them all swearing their allegiance to me in no time at all! As they piloted the ship back to a secret bay I knew about, I sat on the deck and watched millions upon millions of stars turn overhead. But when I took in all that beauty around me, do you know what I kept seeing in my mind’s eye?” “What?” “Those brilliant ruby eyes of yours.” “Oh my.” Fluttershy was too flattered even to smile, but she managed to tilt her head straight up to meet Sombra’s gaze with those brilliant eyes of hers. “Oh my!” She startled. “Ruby? Have my eyes turned red, oh my King?” “Yes, they have. Do not worry; it becomes you.” “I—thank you, good King—I think this has happened before. I mean,” she finished her sentence by looking down at her cutie mark, three bats where once three butterflies had been, and unfolding one of her membranous wings. Sombra narrowed his eyes and levitated Fluttershy to the other end of the bed where he could look at her. She blushed under the scrutiny. Then he observed dryly, “You have changed much since I brought you here. Why is that?” Now the mare scrutinized herself too. The fur on her neck and shoulders, around her throat, and down her spine was longer and almost woolly, as if to protect her frail body from chill. There were large cracks in her untended hooves. And the black line under her skin now connected all the way to her heart, which felt swollen and labored beneath her ribs. A pair of fangs protruded from her lips. Fluttershy’s eye color was really the only change she hadn’t already noticed. She shrugged and sat. “I think it has to do with the magic of Kindness. For a long time, I’ve suspected that my body, for whatever reason, changes to mirror those with whom I share a deep connection. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered if my ears have gotten longer to look more like my pet Angel Bunny’s,” Fluttershy laughed. Sombra chuckled too, and then used his magic to unfold one of Fluttershy’s wings again. “But what of these? Did your bunny also have bat wings?” The image Sombra suggested sent Fluttershy into a fit of giggles. “No, no! These wings, this cutie mark, the fangs and the red eyes, all of this came from an incident with my former friends a long time ago...” Sombra listened with mild interest as Fluttershy told the story of being accidentally transformed into a vampire fruit bat-pony hybrid, and how even after Twilight reversed the spell, some of the bat traits would occasionally show up again whenever she was stressed or sick. “It’s that connection, like I said. Ever since the fruit bats’ thoughts and desires, all the nonphysical things that make the fruit bats fruit bats—ever since they were transferred to me, it’s like my body gained some of the physical things that make them what they are too, and it never really forgot those things.” “How peculiar.” Sombra wore an indulgent smile. “Have another drink of that tonic.” “Right,” Fluttershy agreed and downed the rest of the drink. After a brief coughing fit, she concluded her explanation. “So you see, since I have so much kindness for you, my King, it only makes sense that my body would also change to suit yours.” Now the King’s eyes finally perked up. “Is that so? Well, I’m in need of some good relaxation after yesterday. Shall we see just how well-suited we have become?” As Fluttershy blushed again, he teleported away the picnic setup and magically pulled the mare up in front of himself. Then he leaned forward until he was lying on top of her and began tickling her chin with kisses. Fluttershy giggled, taking pleasure in her King’s pleasure. She awoke when she felt the weight of Sombra’s body abruptly lift off her chest. The stallion was hurtling through the air, and Fluttershy had opened her eyes just in time to see him hit the wall. “I’ve found you at last, you miserable hunk of meat,” a strange voice bellowed. “How…?” Sombra started to rise to his hooves. There was the sound of a snap, and ghostly white arms of every size and shape grew out of the wall, seizing the Shadow King and holding him in place. He fired magic at the arms, but it passed right through them. He fired magic at the attacker, still hidden in a shadow, but there was another snap and the magic fell to the floor as confetti. He tried struggling, but the arms only forced him upright onto his hind legs where he would be least powerful and most vulnerable. The attacker now took a step forward and the dim lamplight illuminated half of his tall, serpentine body. “Where is Fluttershy?” Hearing her name finally roused the mare from her groggy stupor. “No! My King!” She leaped off the bed with strength she didn’t think she still had and flew up to Sombra, trying desperately to pull him away from the wall. “F-Fluttershy?” She landed and whirled around to face the invader. “Leave him alone!” As the bat-pony stood bristling, her knees wobbling but her will too strong to let herself collapse, Discord gawked. Was this walking corpse really Fluttershy? Her coat was yellow and her mane was pink, but they were dull, and wispy like smoke at the ends. Her eyes were wide and adorable, but sunken and red, and there were burn scars at the outside corners. Her body was skeletal. Her hooves, cloven. Worst of all, this strange, familiar mare bore a black blood infection that ran from a gruesome, festering puncture in her ear all the way down into her heart. This was Fluttershy indeed, but Sombra had infected her. She was fast turning into a shadow pony like him. Discord had hardly finished processing his shock when he felt the magical ripples of a teleportation. “What is going on here?” It was an angry blue goat. “I don’t have time for this!” Discord shouted. He picked up his pony and magically hurtled the newcomer into Sombra before Grogar had a chance to fire his magic. The impact was so great that both he and Sombra broke through the stone wall and fell in a heap of rubble in the next cell over. Fluttershy wailed “Sombra!” and tried to kick free from her captor’s grasp. Her body gave out at that moment. She fell unconscious in Discord’s arms, and the fear did not leave the draconequus’s face as he snapped his fingers and teleported them both away.