The only problem with being trapped in prison for thousands of years, unable to move, and then being released again, other than the fact that all of your primary enemies are dead, is that you’re really sore afterward.
Grogar snarled as he stretched his legs and shook his horns, breathing in air for the first time in… why, it must have been centuries! Who knew how long it had been, really? After the first decade or so, one gets bored of watching the earth down below, and he must have been asleep for at least half the time, if not more, while the other was spent, not paying attention to what was going on below, but what he would do to that upstart unicorn and her friends if he ever got his hooves on her… not that he would be able to now.
But his anger at the so-called ‘Gusty the Great’ was too great to just let it go because the mare herself wasn’t present. He had been paying attention enough to know that she had descendants in this land - and there was nothing he loved more than overdue revenge.
Shaking his head one more time to try and clear it of fatigue, Grogar looked around, trying to decide where he was - and where he should go first.
He was standing at the edge of a massive crack in the earth - it must have been several hundred meters long, and so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom - just darkness. The land around the crack had been pushed upwards and out, old stone ruins poking out beneath the shifted earth. Turning to the right, he could see the massive mountain jutting into the sky, and to the left, he could just barely see a glimmer between two mountains - like a massive gemstone.
Or a city made of gemstones.
He had a vague recollection of a crystal city appearing, and then disappearing, and then appearing again, but really, he hadn’t paid much attention. That King Sombra fellow - pah! Show him a real villain. That shadow pony could barely deal with a pink pony and her fancy crystal, let alone any real struggles. He didn’t deserve to win. What had he conquered?
Grogar, on the other hoof, had conquered plenty. He had taken a rag-tag group of pony farms and turned it into a massive empire, built upon darkness. And where had the darkness come from? He’d had to fight for that power - and he had won. After so many eons of coaxing the darkness, pleasing it, working with it, then slowly, bit by bit, taking control, waging war upon it, and finally gaining complete power, he could manipulate the shadows, create monsters, and, most importantly of all, suck up a pony’s very essence, using it to grow his own power.
But the darkness was not made to be controlled - it was made to control. Grogar knew this, and he couldn’t risk the shadows breaking free and exacting their revenge on him - he knew that he would never return from it. He had felt it growing stronger, and decided that it was time to put the darkness’ power in certain artifacts, so as not to endanger himself.
So he made his bell, giving it the power to suck away ponies and creatures’ essence and release it back to him. The darkness did not like being trapped in the bell, and every time it was used, the shadows screamed in rage and fury.
But they were trapped. And they quieted down after that.
So Grogar was safe… until that idiot unicorn Gusty had shown up and ruined everything.
He could still remember her face, her expression as she shot him up into the stars, trapped in oblivion. It was so proud, so smug, but she even had the audacity to look like she pitied him.
Aargh. Grogar growled and smashed a rock underneath his hoof until it was a bunch of smithereens, imagining it was that upstart’s face. He took a deep breath and collected himself. Gusty may be gone - she may have escaped his vengeance - but he would find what she had left behind and destroy it. And he would make sure to tell them, before he trapped them in the stars for five thousand years, that it was their ancestor’s fault. She left them in this mess.
Ah, yes. Lies and trickery to get the ones she loved most to hate her with their final dying breaths. It was one of his favorite ways of getting revenge. If she were here, he would make her watch as he destroyed this entire world, watch as her friends turned their backs on her, glared at her, made her know their hate. She would scream and cry until she was exhausted, and when she was, and everything was done, he would give her to the darkness to satisfy it, and that stupid mare would never bother him again.
Shame she was gone. If he didn’t know better, he would say that he almost missed her.
Grogar really wished he could go back in time and find her and do that to her… and her idiot boyfriend, and that other unicorn she was always hanging out with, and that pegasus that brought reinforcements so that he lost… He ground his hoof into the dirt.
Go back in time… that was the answer! He didn’t need the past, but he did need to get all of those so-called heroes out of the way so that he could take over Equestria without them trying to defeat him like they always do. He could trap them, trap the ones who might pose any sort of threat, in a place that they would never return from. Leaving the rest of the way to victory wide open. He would take this land’s leaders - all of them - leaving their citizens scattered, weak, and vulnerable - just the kind of thing he liked. He would destroy everything… turn it all over to the darkness…
And before it all vanished… he would find her. He would find Gusty and her descendants and torture them, one by one, and possibly keep them alive longer just so he could torture them even more, and make them see what he had done to the world…
Revenge was tasting oh-so-sweet on his tongue. This world wouldn’t stand a chance.
But the first thing to do was get his bell back. He needed the shadows if he was going to destroy everything, and he didn’t have any of his magic left to create his monstrous army. Of course, some of his old ones might have survived…
And the battlefield needed to be assessed. He had no idea who was supposedly protecting this realm at this time, where the monsters were, what kind of magic was left. And so he set off. To collect his bell, to find what little remained of his former glory days.
After all… how much could a land change in all that time?
Chrysalis was freezing, and she hated it.
It reminded her of when she was in the Crystal Empire, fighting Sunny Starscout’s friends, when the mare of the hour herself dropped in with a dozen other creatures - including a changeling - to heroically save the day.
Being reminded of her humiliation was not what she needed right then.
The former changeling queen was in the northeastern part of Equestria, not quite in the mountains, deep within the forest at the base of Foal Mountain. There might have been some battle between Twilight Sparkle and her friends and the forces of evil here - something that Cozy Glow had mentioned once. Chrysalis never paid attention whenever that filly started spouting all the things she’d learned in school.
She didn’t know much about this region, but she assumed that these kinds of freezing temperatures were not customary for the region.
Sure, the Crystal Mountains were in view whenever she got above the treetops, and it was much further north than she was used to, but when she had briefly passed through here when she and Tirek and Cozy Glow were heading to the Crystal Empire to intersect Sunny Starscout and her friends, she specifically remembered complaining that it was too warm and muggy, and certainly not freezing.
She scowled outside as she stood just inside one of the abandoned buildings that littered the landscape. According to a broken old sign outside the town limits, this place used to be called Hollow Shades. Chrysalis didn’t care. She had no fondness for Ancient Equestria or what the land used to be like - she only wanted the Equestria that she saw, the one where all the changelings reverted back to their old ways and followed her as they hunted for love they could feed on, and there were no stupid friendship ponies to get in her way.
The only thing about Hollow Shades that even remotely intrigued her was the massive opening in the center of the town, a giant hole that led down into darkness. She had never gone down there - every time she had stood on the edge, her rage boiling, she would feel something, a kind of chill that made her wings shiver down to the tips, that told her that something very, very wrong was down there.
“Get yourself together,” she snapped to herself. She turned around and glared at the old wooden chairs, where she had drawn pictures of her old subjects with her horn. “You are the most dangerous creature in this world - the only evil one left in this world. You cower from no one, never!”
She whirled around and stomped out of the house, all the way to the center of town, where the massive hole yawned open. She paused on the rim as that feeling of wrongness washed over her again. She vaguely considered turning around and going back to continue to plan her revenge, and the strange feeling encouraged that. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, the freezing wind blowing her mane, before she mentally slapped herself.
“You will rule this world one day,” she reminded herself. “You will control everything. Not friendship. Not love. Don’t feel. Don’t feel.”
Taking a deep breath, she took a step back… then ran forward and leaped into the darkness.
The hole was actually much shallower than she had previously thought, and she landed roughly on a large pile of shattered stone. Stumbling, she landed on her face, sending chunks of stone skittering into the darkness.
Growling, Chrysalis stood up and lit her horn, pushing the darkness back and bathing everything in a sickly green light. She took a step forward and hissed - she’d stepped on a particularly sharp stone. Shaking her head, she continued into the darkness. The surroundings slowly revealed themselves to her: stone pillars and arches creating a hallway that ended at a bronze image of a massive shadowy pony.
“Huh.” She rapped the image smartly with her hoof, and the stone temple around her suddenly began to rumble. As Chrysalis hurriedly backed away from the picture, small chunks of stone rained down and cracks appeared in the columns and arches.
A dark, low, sinister laughter began to fill the chamber, slowly growing louder and louder as dark tendrils of shadow began to gather around the bronze image, slowly taking the form of a shadowy wolf as dark as midnight, with piercing white eyes that seem to stare into Chrysalis’ very soul.
A wave of fear washed over her, but she firmly batted it down. This strange being was nothing to be afraid of!
…Right?
“What do you want?” she snapped at the creature. The wolf tilted its head at her. And when it spoke, it did not open its mouth - its words were sent directly to her mind. The feeling of leeching hopelessness and darkness that it brought just made Chrysalis feel worse, and she shook herself, as if she could rid herself of its presence.
We seek our master, who is awake.
“Who?” Chrysalis demanded, making her horn glow brighter and spreading her wings, trying to look threatening to force this creature into submission. “Speak, or I shall blast you to bits.”
We seek our master, the master of all shadows. We seek the one who created us, who nourished us, who gave us purpose. We seek the Master of Darkness.
“Who is this ‘Master of Darkness’?” Chrysalis stepped forward, snarling. She grabbed the wolf and yanked it towards her, expecting it to yelp and cower in fear. The shadow wolf disappointed. Nevertheless, she glared into its sinisterly glowing white eyes. “I want,” she growled, “a name. Who is your master?”
The one who created the shadows.
“AARGH!” Chrysalis spun and whirled the wolf at a pillar, but before it even made contact with the stone, it disappeared into shadow and reformed in front of her.
You cannot destroy us, shapeshifter. You are not our master. Our master controls the darkness, and when he returns, he will destroy everything good in this world until there is nothing left but shadow and stone, the wolf said.
Chrysalis paled. All that was good… Love was good. She and her subjects needed to feed on it to survive - this ‘Master of Darkness’ was going to destroy her kingdom!
The wolf suddenly tilted its head up at the sky. My brethren! it called. Our master is awake! He calls us now! Finally, we shall have our revenge!
Chrysalis leaped back with a yelp, because dozens - no, hundreds - no, thousands of shadow wolves were pouring out of the wall, leaping up and out of the hole, howling as they went. Soon, Chrysalis was alone…
She stepped under the circle of moonlight that fell into the hole and looked up at the sky. She didn’t want to destroy this world, only to rule it. This new threat wasn’t just a threat to those stupid friendship ponies - it was a threat to her as well. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that… But there was one thing she knew for certain.
For the first time, Chrysalis felt a wave of fear - not for herself, but for the ponies she hated, because of what they were going to face.
Termite scowled at the sky. He glared up at the glowing rainbow splitting the sky in two, showering the land below it with glorious colors, wishing with all his might that it would go away, or that he could find some way to destroy it.
He knew what the rainbow was - after days of it not fading or disappearing, he had followed it to its end, where, instead of a pot of gold, like he had been slightly hoping, he found a massive crystal lighthouse that also just so happened to be the home of Sunny Starscout and her stupid pony friends.
It had taken every ounce of self-control that he possessed to leave it intact.
He had then retreated as far north as he could possibly go, trying to leave the rainbow - and the reminder of his failure - behind, but it had most annoyingly followed. Then he discovered that he couldn’t go any further, because of the massive crystal city blocking the only route he could find into the mountains, which just so happened to be the home of one of Sunny Starscout’s other friends. Two of them, in fact - the alicorn and that earth pony with the weird moon necklace.
So then he tried going back to the changeling kingdom - perhaps announcing that he had bravely fought off the ponies and returned home to help the changelings fight them, and he would be welcomed as a hero and given emergency power and he could still get everything he ever wanted - only to find that Imara - that annoying creature - had somehow bewitched Queen Monarch into believing that the ponies wanted to be friends with the changelings - as if! - and that none of the changelings even wanted to fight the ponies anymore. Friendship seemed like a much better option to them.
Which led Termite to where he was now - wandering around Equestria, lost, confused, angry, and waiting for a chance to get his long-awaited revenge.
He wouldn’t mind going to jail for it forever - all of his dreams of power and glory and leading the changelings to a successful future by taking over everywhere else could be put on hold permanently if it meant that he could give Sunny Starscout and Imara and all of their friends what they deserved.
Now, if only he could find a way to do that…
Perhaps he could. One of his secret skills that he never told anyone was being able to detect magic - dark magic. He never told anyone about this, because they would probably all expect him to be all selfless and kind and wonderful and find the dark magic to vanquish it forever, but Termite had learned that it was better to work with the dark magic than to destroy it. Dark magic had certain powers that light magic didn’t.
And right now, he was sensing a lot of dark magic to the north. Past the Crystal Empire, even. It appeared to be mostly coming from the tallest mountain in the distance - Mount Everhoof. He had picked up a little Equestrian geography during his time cosplaying as Helios back in Zephyr Heights.
Perhaps it had to do with the sudden disappearance of the swirling clouds that used to revolve around the tip of the mountain, along with the shrieking figures within it. Perhaps it had to do with the shuddering roar of pure rage that he thought he had heard coming from the mountain, or the massive rockslide that came after that.
Or all of them.
Nevertheless, he was getting very bad feels about this - this wasn’t the kind of magic he could partner with. Quite on the contrary, this magic was already partnered with someone - or was independent - he wasn’t sure. He was getting lots of feedback. Perhaps there were multiple magics - yes, that would clear up a few things! But he did know that his time to deliver revenge was limited - his days may as well be numbered. He had to act quick.
Or else everything would be lost. Not just his dreams, but this world, his kingdom, his species would be changed far beyond any recognition.
Sunny Starscout and her friends wouldn’t know what had hit them… not until it was far too late.