Spike’s POV
“I’m sorry Princess, but can you say that again please.” Twilight asked, forcing a chuckle as she did. I couldn’t really blame her either, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. And from the looks of the other girls' faces, they were thinking the same thing.
“Angelus Sombra is of the same race that King Sombra was, and from what my sister and I have seen, shares magic that resembles his.” Princess Luna repeated, watching us carefully to see our reactions.
“Yeah, I thought you said that.” Twilight chuckled, once again forcing it from her throat. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, wiping her hands along her skirt. Taking one more breath, she opened her mouth to say something.
“What do you mean that Angelus is the same race as King Sombra!?” Rainbow shouted before Twilight could get a word out. Her statement was followed by the other girls asking questions of their own, all revolving around the mysterious teen. I was about to open my mouth to ask a question of my own, until the princess raised her hand to silence us.
“I will answer your questions, but I can’t answer them at once.” She said, lowering her hand, she looked at Rainbow Dash. “To answer your question Rainbow Dash, I mean exactly what I say. Angelus is a descendant of the nearly extinct race, the Umbrum.”
“Who was the Umbrum, Princess?” Twilight asked, her voice laced with both anxiety and excitement. “I’ve read almost every history book that was in the library, both at Canterlot and Ponyvile and they never once showed up. And any book that mentioned the Dark Mage never mentioned his race.”
“That does make sense, as the history of the Umbrum has nearly been wiped completely.” There was a round of gasps as she finished that sentence, but before any of us could ask why, she continued. “Not much is known about the Umbrum, not even my sister or I know enough about them to give a complete description. We don’t have much knowledge about them, but we will share what we know. I will start with how King Sombra came to be and I will ask you to save your question to the end please.” She looked at us as she waited for a response. We all nodded, she did as well and used her magic to pull a chair close to her. We all followed her example and grabbed chairs. When we were all sitting down, the princess waved her hand and a purple mist came out of it. As the mist took shape, mountains began to form in them along with multiple buildings, and then her story began.
“More than 1,000 years ago, the Umbrum used to live in the frigid mountains of the far north. They were a race of warriors that had complete mastery of the shadows and illusion magic that showed one's true fears to them.” Two people appeared in the village, one had shadows crawling around their feet and the other had a sinister face behind them. “They alway kept to themselves, and because of that, not much was known about them. There were more rumors than fact, the main rumor was that their entire race was just living shadow. But even with all the rumors, the one thing that was known was that they took great pride in their strength and magic. So much so that any of their race that was seen as weak would be shunned and castaway.” She paused and looked at us, making sure that she still had everyone’s attention. Everyone was looking at her show and barely breathing, even Pinkie sat quietly as she told the story. “Among the Umbrum, there was a split in their race. The split was caused by them arguing over which aspects of their magic was stronger, their power over the shadows, or their power over terrors.” More people appeared in the village, all of them taking a side next to the two figures in the beginning. All except for one, a child that looked like he was lost. He looked back and forth trying to go to either side of the tribes, each time he was pushed to the side. “Among the two tribes, there was a boy who both the tribes saw as worthless, as he was not proficient in either of the tribes' magic. That boy was Sombra. Though they still took care of Sombra, it was obvious that no one wanted him there. This caused Sombra to seek out power by any means necessary. The search continued on until he was nearly an adult. But eventually, Sombra did find that power in the form of a crystal.” Sombra was shown to be surrounded by trees and snow, walking through the harsh weather with no more than a thin blanket. A red crystal appeared and the teen kneeled to it. “The crystal had offered Sombra limitless power and acceptance of his tribe should he take that power. So he accepted it-”
“Why would he do such a thing? It was obviously a trap!” Pinkie blurted, popcorn suddenly in her hands and shock clearly written on her face.
“PINKIE!” We shouted in unison, causing her to mumble an apology and look back to the show. The image showed the teen surrounded by his people, displaying his magic and its power. The princess cleared her throat and continued.
“As I was saying, he accepted the power and gained only half of what he wished for. As when he returned back to the village and showed sudden mastery of his magic. He was still hated, only for different reasons. The reasons being that the Umbrum knew that the magic he had was nothing of their races. They said it was only shadow magic that's been corrupted by dark magic. The illusions could only work with the aid of an object, instead of evoked by his magic. This of course made Sombra furious, enough so that he began to attack.” All the figures broke out into a fight, all of them attacking Sombra with everything they could. But it wasn’t long before the image showed the outcome of the battle “Now, Sombra was not even an adult, so he should not have even stood a chance against a race of warriors. But the crystal gave him more power than he could ever imagine, giving him an advantage that no one else could match up to. He won the battle, but he did not kill the entire tribe, as some masters and civilians were able to escape. Sombra spent the rest of his years searching for what remained, and for more power. That search had eventually brought him to the crystal empire. Though it is not confirmed, we believe that it is the crystal that is urging him to take over the Crystal Heart to gain more power. This led to him eventually trying to take it over and Celestia and I had to intervene, he was the first of the Umburm that we ever came in contact with, so we were unprepared at first, but with the elements of harmony, we eventually beat him back.” The story finished with the shadowy figure of Sombra looming over the Crystal Empire, waiting for his chance to strike. As the story ended, the princess looked at us.
“Now, do any of you have questions?” She asked, the others, forgetting that we were not in a classroom, raised their hands to try and asked first. The princess gave a small smile at the display and went along with it, pointing to Twilight.
“Why is this history never talked about in any of the books that I’ve read.” She looked as though she just had a revelation with the new knowledge that she received. “I’ve been looking for information about Sombra since the day we fought him and I couldn’t find anything. Not his history, not his magic, not his reasoning, nothing.”
“The reason that the information is not public is because, once again, there is hardly any information on the Umbrum. All the records that we have about them can be put in a single book, and that includes their magic.” She explained, snapping her fingers and producing a leather bound book. The book wasn’t thick, just a couple inches thick, but Twilight looked at it as though it held the secrets to magic itself. “This book specifically, the reason it’s not available to the public is because Umbral magic is a power that can only be used and controlled by the Umbrum. If attempted by anyone else the result can be very bad.”
“How bad can they be?” I asked, pausing as I realized I had said that out loud, though everybody was thinking it.
“There was a group of mages that wanted to attempt using Umbral magic when this book was put together 100 years ago. You all are aware of Sombra’s ability to travel through the shadows, yes?” We all nodded to her question. “Well, a normal mage tried to do the exact same thing. After multiple attempts he succeeded, but he was dead when he came out, with black sludge coming out of every hole known to the human body.” I recoiled at the thought of that happening to someone. “There was another who avoided the shadow aspect of the magic and tried to conjure nightmares. He succeeded, but it affected everyone in the room, and they were all trapped in their own heads. It only took thirty seconds for them to lose their sanity, most killed themselves after a minute, the ones who didn’t begged for it all to end. Putting them to their deaths was a mercy.” She said, solemnly shaking her head as she remembered the horrible memories. And I shuddered at the thought, this power was used on us, and I could only wonder why we didn’t end up like them.
“How was all of this knowledge gained princess?” Rarity asked, adjusting herself on her seat and wiping at cold sweat. “The way you describe it, there should have been hardly anyone left to write it down.”
“If I’m being honest, pure luck. A traveling merchant brought it to the grand library 100 years after the attack to see if the book was worth anything. That merchant got more bits in that one sale than he did after two years of selling.” She chuckled, waving the book in the air. Using her magic, she gave the book to Twilight, and she reached out for it like a baby would a bottle, she even made the grabbing motion. When she finally got it in her hands, she tore into it like a starving wolf to meat.
“I wonder if you’ll ever break out of that habit.” I thought, watching Twilight for a second, before returning to the princess.
“Celestia and I have decided that we will allow you all this knowledge under one condition, Twilight.” Luna said, lifting a finger to indicate the favor. Twilight reluctantly lifted her head from the book, a silent confirmation that she was listening. “That condition is that you must help Angelus Sombra learn his magic.”
No one said anything when they heard that favor. Everyone had different expressions of shock, none compared to Twilight.
“What?!” she yelled, and I couldn’t really blame her. I’ve seen what Sombra could do, and to teach that to someone else so they could do that, it made me nervous. Would it change Angelus and make him like the Shadow Mage, would he stay the same? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to risk finding out.
“In exchange for this knowledge.” She pointed to the book. “We want you to teach Sombra the magic of his race.”
“That's not the issue princess Luna!” Twilight screeched, shooting up to her feet. “Why should we teach him magic at all Princess? All of us have seen the power that King Sombra has achieved with his magic. Angelus is of the same race, has the same magic, he even shares the same name, and you want me to teach him that very same magic?” I nodded my agreement, and so did the others, with the exception of Pinkie Pie.
“No Twilight, I’m telling you to teach Angelus Umbral magic.” She answered simply. That didn’t really comfort me, and from the looks of it, it didn’t comfort Twilight.
“What's the difference?” Applejack asked. “The way you described it princess, they almost seem the same to me.”
“The difference, Applejack, is that Sombra’s magic was not Umbral magic. As I had said in the story, Sombra’s magic was made different because of the Dark magic he gained from the crystal. Angelus has not been corrupted by dark magic, or any magic if what we heard was true.” She explained, we all nodded along with her, and Twilight finally sat down and took a deep breath.
“How do you know they’re different types of magic princesses?” Fluttershy asked, her soft voice barely making it across the space between Princess Luna and us.
“When I first felt this magic, I thought that King Sombra had returned and he was striking Ponyvile to get to you all. But when we saw the power and felt it, we knew for a fact that this was completely different than Sombra’s.” She looked over to Twilight. “I’m sure you felt the magic surge as well as the sudden darkness that befell Ponyvile yesterday.”
“We all saw the darkness Princess, but we didn’t know what was causing it at the time, we thought it was the storm.” I said, and it was true. Yesterday’s darkness did catch us off guard, but we didn’t really give it much thought. That was until Twilight had started to warn us to get under something. We all listened to her, but we didn’t know what was going on, and neither did she. “We only realized it was magical when we tried to turn on a light. Nothing would brighten the room, not Twilight's magic, my fire, or Applejack’s matches.”
“I expected that,” She said, nodding her head when I finished. “That darkness was caused by Angelus’s magic after he finally released his power. It’s also what confirms that Angelus’s magic is different from King Sombra’s. What Angelus did is mentioned in that book, it is a nearly forgotten spell that I only know because of this book. It is called an eclipse aura, and it is unique to only Umbral mages. It snuffs out any and all light so that the shadows inside the ellipse can be even stronger than they would be on their own.”
As she described it, Twilight opened the book and went to the pages that described their magic and how to use them. She turned the ancient pages carefully so as to not rip them. When she found it, she angled it so that we could all get a view of it.
Eclipse Aura
A spell that affects the world around the mage, casting the area of it into complete darkness. The area of effect depends on the mage that casts this spell, though if a mage is capable of casting this spell, it's almost guaranteed that they will have a large area. Any Umbral magic that is cast in this eclipse will have its strength nearly doubled, and terrors evoked will be harder to break. Any light that is in the eclipse will be absorbed into the darkness (fire will continue to burn, but it’s light will be absorbed).
To cast an eclipse aura, the mage must…
That was as far as I got before Twilight closed the book, and we all brought our attention to the princess.
“Okay, so I’m more comfortable with the idea about teaching him.” She admitted, setting the book on her lap as she spoke. “But I want to ask why we shouldn’t just give him this book and let him learn on his own, and also why me. Why can’t you or Princess Celestia teach him?”
“Celestia nor I can teach him for the same reason that Celestia can’t teach every student at her school of magic. We have too much to do in our everyday lives to focus on teaching an entirely new and foregin magic. Though, don’t get us wrong though, Celestia and I wanted nothing more than to help him learn magic so that we can study it.” She gave a small smile as she said that, showing that she truly meant what she said. “As for why we can’t let him try to learn on his own, we think that letting him learn on his own can be...dangerous.” She looked like she bit into a lemon as she said this.
“Well how dangerous can it be?” Rainbow asked, and I had to agree with her. Sure, when I helped Twilight with her magic, crazy things could happen, but I wouldn’t say they were truly dangerous...most of the time.
She just stared at Rainbow Dash as she said that, before sighing and standing up.
“Allow me to show you how dangerous it can be.”
Twilight POV
We all stayed quiet as we walked down the hospital halls, all of us focusing on not interrupting or bumping into the staff as we tried to keep up with the princess.
“What do you think she’s going to show us?” Pinkie whispered, somehow dodging a nurse she wasn’t looking at as she walked next to us.
“I don’t know Pinkie.” I shrugged, speeding up as Princess Luna turned a corner.
“Maybe she’s going to show us records of how people got hurt with similar magic.” Rarity said, yelping as she quickly jumped out of the way of another nurse's way. “I would make sense, as Umbral magic is supposedly similar to shadow magic.” I agreed with her, but something told me that wasn’t what was happening.
“She is actually close.” I heard Luna say, I faced forward and nearly ran face first into her breasts. Luckly, I managed to stop myself and the others before we had such an embarrassing accident. “As I’m sure you're all aware, the reason that Angelus is here is because he got into a fight with the Diamond Dogs, yes?” She turned around as she asked, walking and talking. We didn’t answer before she continued. “Well, when he released his magic, it showed both my sister and I why that magic belonged to a race of warriors. Umbral magic is almost purely combative magic in the way shadows and terror is used.” We came to a stop at a room that had two guards waiting. They saluted us as Princess Luna stopped at the door, she turned to us and looked down at Spike.
“Is something wrong Princess?”
“I want you to wait out here while we go inside Spike.” She pointed to a seat that was next to one of the guards. He tilted his head in confusion when she said this.
“Why Princess?”
“The people beyond this door have injuries that made some of the nurses here squirm at the sight of them. I believe that one as young as yourself should never see something so horrible and gruesome.” She took a deep breath after she said this, nothing came out of Spike's mouth as he moved to the seat.
I began to get nervous as the Princess turned around, looking to the other girls to see what they were thinking. They looked just as nervous as I was, Rainbow and Applejack looked to be steeling themselves to see what lay beyond the door. Fluttershy was shivering slightly as looked at Luna’s back, Pinkie looked serious as she got ready to step through the door, and Rarity was like me, nervously moving her hand and pulling at her skirt.
“Let us go.” Was all Luna said before she opened the door to the room, we all followed after her. In the room, there were two more guards, all of them standing at attention as the Princess entered. The hospital room looked the same as the last two that we had entered. Only difference being that there was a large curtain in the center. In the room there were three people on beds with handcuffs. All of them had bad injuries, two of them had bandages wrapped around their faces, while the other looked had a large bandage on the back of his head and a cast on his leg. The two with bandaged faces were awake and looked at us, stiffening as they saw the Princess. I relaxed as I saw them, they did have bad injuries, but I expected so much worse.
“Um...Princess” Rainbow started, looking at all the teens in the beds. I could already tell what Rainbow was going to say, and so did everyone else from the looks of it, including the Princess.
“I know what you all are thinking, but before you say anything, why don’t you ask them what happened to them.” She gestured to the two boys that were awake. We all looked at each other, wondering which of us would ask the two injured boys. It seemed Rainbow and Applejack were the only ones willing to ask, walking to the teen at the far end of the room.
“Hey bub,” Rainbow said in a low voice. “Tell us what happened to you.”
“Is she really trying to intimidate him?” I almost wanted to laugh when I heard that, Rainbow Dash standing next to a chained teen. Almost looking like a child next to the hospital bed. I managed to hold it in though, thinking about the situation and how serious it was. The teen glared at Rainbow.
“Suck my-”
“You will answer her question.” Luna interrupted, her tone so icy it made the hair on the back of my neck stand. “If you don’t I will make sure that you never get a wink of peaceful sleep while you are in our prison. I will make them send you back to your little ‘gang’ where they will do with you as they please.”
The threat didn’t sound like much, but it seemed to work on the teen, as he bit down on his pride and opened his mouth.
“That fucking kid is what happened to ushh.” he sneered, his word sounding slurred from his swollen mouth. “He kicked all of our assthes.”
“Did he use magic on you?” Applejack questioned, but the teen shook his head.
“No, he didn’t, he beat all of us with only his fists. That fucker broke all of my teeth with a kick.”
“He hit me with a brick.” the teen on the other side chimed in, wincing as the words left him.
“He also broke Jinx’s leg and skull, he hasn’t woken up since yesterday.” the first teen said, pointing to the unconscious teen. I wondered what Angelus really was capable of now that I’ve seen what he would do to people. Sure, he fought timber wolves out in the forest, but the difference was that he was fighting mindless beasts that had no real thought other than to hunt and eat. Even though he didn’t kill these three teens, something in the back of my mind told me that if he really wanted to, he could do so without a second thought. It was honestly scary.
We looked to Luna, and she looked back at us. She walked towards the curtain in the center of the room. Her magic grabbed one end as she turned towards us.
“This is what Angelus was able to do without magic. Now I will ask you now, are you ready to see what he is capable of when he does have magic? If not, I will allow you to leave right now.” She warned, waiting for any of us to leave at the opportunity. We didn’t move, but the nervousness returned. I looked over to Fluttershy, worried about how she was taking this. She was gripping Applejack's hand like a vice, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The princess took our silence as our answer, and began to move the curtain. “Very well, remember, it was not Angelus that did this, it was his magic that did this.” She said ominously, before quickly tearing the curtain back.
We all gasped, and one of us even screamed, but I didn’t acknowledge who did it. I was too busy staring at what was in front of me to even think about it.
There were three beds on the other side, all of them holding bodies. The bodies were nearly covered in bandages, most of them were stained with blood. All of them had tubes going down their throats and IVs attached to their arms though from the look of their bodies, it was probably the only thing keeping them alive. The skin that was visible was either black and blue from a bruise or had stitches and staples. With so many cuts, I had to wonder how they were even alive. One of the teens' faces was visible and had a bandage covering his left eye and a long cut from his scalp to his chin that was stitched back together. Another was missing a leg completely, along with three of his fingers on one of his hands. And the last one had both of his legs filled with bone nails that had a metal ring circling the ends of them. And that wasn’t even mentioning all of the lacerations that covered his entire body. It made me sick to see what had happened to them, but the thought of how they even lived long enough to make it to the hospital raced through my mind.
Luna pulled the curtain back after a minute, and everyone relaxed. Or they relaxed as best we could, it was really hard to do that after what we saw. Luna walked back in front of us and got all of our attention.
“That is what can happen if Angelus loses control of his magic, or tries to teach himself.” She said solemnly. “ I know that this will be scary, and there are risks that you might not be ready for. Neither Celestia nor I know anything about Angelus, that is why we chained him when we got here, we were not sure what kind of person he was. After seeing these bodies, we were expecting a murder in disguise, hiding his true intentions. Come to find out that he's only a child who lost the only person who cared for him.”
“The way you talked about him earlier,” Fluttershy started, a small amount of anger in her voice. “You talked about him like he was a test subject. And now you talk about him like he’s actually a person.”
It was surprising to hear Fluttershy talk like that, and especially to a Princess. Everyone was surprised by it, including herself, as when the word left her mouth she immediately covered it. Though she did look embarrassed, she didn’t look like she regretted it.
“I-I” Even the princess was shocked by her words, but she composed herself quickly and sighed. “I suppose that I did speak like that about him. I apologise for that, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was only interested in his magic. I was only excited at the thought of new magic, it’s a rare occurrence to find new magic even in my long lifetime.” She sighed once again and tucked a piece of her mystical hair behind her ear, before looking at all of us. “But I promise you that Celestia and I only want what's best for Sombra. If he continues as he is, he may end up causing an accident that is even worse than what happened to these boys.” She looked like she was going to continue, but a dark chuckle caught all of our attention. We turned around and saw the teen who was kicked in the face chuckling, but it soon turned to laughing.
“Is something funny, young man?” Luna asked, her tone demanding an answer. When he finished laughing, he looked at her.
“I just think that the irony in this situation is funny.” he smirked at her, snickering at Luna's questioning gaze. “Well I was thinking that had that been me in the same situation, magic going out of control and injuring people, I wouldn’t even get a word out before I was locked up. But when someone is important enough, they get off scot free.”
“You know nothing of this situation, boy.” Luna spat those words out, and lumed over the teen. But he didn’t even flinch, he just kept going.
“I know that what happened definitely wasn’t an accident, that kid your protecting and plan to ‘help’ is a fucking monster. Look at what he did to my people” He sneered, pointing at the three behind the curtain. “This isn’t his first time doing something like this, I can tell. He’s definitely killed someone before, maybe even more than one. I saw how he looked at us before he knocked me out. I don’t even know why we’re still alive.” He kept going on, talking about how he would kill more. I began to get nervous as he kept talking.
“SpearMint,” Luna called, and the guard near the door saluted. “Please get a doctor and tell them to please check this boy, there may be something wrong with him.”
“Right away Princess!” SpearMint replied, before leaving the room to fetch a doctor.
“Let's leave as well, Celestia should almost be done talking to Sombra and convincing him to take your lessons.” She turned to the door and we all made to follow. Doctors rushed in soon after and the teen still kept rambling as we left. Most of it wasn’t making sense anymore, but the last thing that I heard from him before the door shut stuck with me.
“That kid is a fucking demon! He’s got a monster in his head that is just waiting to come out. It’s going to kill you all if you give him more power!”