Shards of Hatred

by ChaoticHarmony

Culmination

“Sombra!” Twilight’s bolt of magic was easily deflected into a wall, where it then bounced back and landed neatly between her two front hooves; hooves that then lifted into the air as she reared up in surprise away from the smoldering hole in the carpet. Despite her initial shock, she readily charged her horn again and sent two more purple spears of light into the cloud only to have them disappear without a trace. Cruel laughter filled the hallway; the kind of laughter that sent chills of fear down her spine and made her body yearn to gallop away as fast as it could.

“Why hello my ever-irritating pests, it’s lovely to have you all as my guests today!” Sombra’s laughter echoed around the hall as his eyes leaned in to stare at them. “Or rather, pest.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Twilight shook her head and stepped back, looking side to side at her friends before glaring back up at the black presence with resolve. “Nevermind, it doesn’t matter. Come on girls, let’s do this!” Twilight Sparkle braced herself for the magical feeling of the Elements taking control of her magic, but it never came. A few seconds of silence was all it took to get Twilight to turn and look at her friends with concern. What flooded through her body next was absolute shock. "N-No…”

Her scream was louder than any laugh that Sombra could have mustered, her body recoiling away from the crystallized forms of the mares that were her friends. For a few moments the entire world seemed to freeze as she stared at their glittering bodies, their mouths all half-open with the shouts of alarm they had been about to release before Sombra’s spell had imprisoned them. “Oh calm down, they’re still alive, for now.” A magical grip closed around her throat and lifted her into the air, barely loose enough to allow her a chance to breathe. “They can see everything and hear everything going on around them, so they’ll even get to experience the lovely pain of watching somepony they care for die!”

For a second she was flying through the air, though with the next tick of the clock she had thudded onto the hard floor, pain and confusion fighting for control in her mind. After a few more seconds of blinking away the stars in her vision, Twilight stood up on unsteady legs and stared up at the cloud with a mixture of disgust and anger. “Sombra!” Her magical bolts were simply deflected again as she sent them one after the other into the darkness, the tears rolling down her cheeks growing in number at each one she let fly. Suddenly she winced as a dagger of pain jabbed into her horn, and her mind caught up enough to realize that it was beginning to smoke and crackle with the heat of her spell-casting. “SOMBRA!” Her near-scream of rage was silenced by yet another magical force closing her throat and throwing her across the room, though this time she was ready and landed on her hooves instead of her face.

“Yes yes, I’m sure that we both know each other’s names, Twilight Sparkle.” The cloud convulsed a little as Twilight took a few more swipes at it with magic, the laughter filling the corridor once more. “Come now, Twilight, I know you’re smart enough to realize that doing things like that won’t work.” Her next few attacks only spurred the laughter on to further heights. “Stubborn, just like that old whorse you call a mentor.”

Shudders of anger ran up and down her body as she looked down at the blood-red carpet, fires of her own anger as red as that crimson flaring up and licking along her body. “How… dare you.” A few seconds passed before she looked up from the ground again, her eyes finding the hateful eyes of the cruel stallion that were embedded in the puffs of smoke he was made of. “How dare you!”

“Oh come now, I bet she actually thought this little plan of hers would work too, am I correct? Did she assure all of her little ponies that there wasn’t a way that it could possibly fail provided everypony played their little pony parts?” A cruel smile flashed in the darkness before vanishing again. “Oh don’t act so surprised, Twilight; of course I know about the plan of you using the Elements of Harmony against me like those idiotic, self-proclaimed ‘princesses’ did so many ages ago.” The cloud swirled a little before forming something that looked like Twilight’s own face, though grotesquely morphed with tendrils of purple coming out of its eyes and mouth. “I am in your head, after all.”

The words sent another splash of confusion into her emotional mix, her real face filled with a hint of anger as she jumped back from a snapping whip of black. “No, you’re wrong Sombra! You’re not a part of me anymore.”

For a few seconds, the cloud of smoke just floated there, though it swiftly began to swirl and coalesce into a denser sort of darkness as deafening laughter shook through Twilight’s very being; it was the kind of black that sucked the light away from the air around it. Just as suddenly as it had started up, the laughter ceased and the dark mass suddenly slammed down right in front of her, giving way for the scowling face of a stallion who she had thought was gone from the world just a week ago. “Do you really believe that I, Sombra, would have lost control over you to a mere memory spell, cast by a pitiful wench?” A hoof came from nowhere to strike her, though she brought up a magical wall to block it just in time. As it was, her mind was severely shaken from the force of the blow. “Do you think that I, Lord of the Crystal Empire, would have been so foolish as to not leave any defenses in my castle?” Another hoof came from the other direction, this one breaking straight through her hasty shield to send her sprawling across the floor, though Twilight did her best to blink away to stars in her vision and stand once more. “Do you think that I, Vanquisher of Love, am too weak to defend myself against the so-called Elements of Harmony? Against six fillies who fight their battles with friendship?”

Twilight looked up just in time to see another hoof stopping just short of smashing into her again, its owner glaring down at her and breathing heavily. After a heartbeat, nothing happened. After two more, Sombra had lowered his hoof and turned away, walking over towards her friends in their crystalline forms. “D-D-Don’t touch them!” Despite the anger she tried to put in her words, Sombra only laughed at the pitiful, trembling voice that she directed at him.

“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle, did you really believe that by driving me out you would be free of me?” The stallion ignored her completely as he circled Pinkie Pie, looking her body up and down as if he were admiring something on sale, as if the pink pony were nothing more than an ornament. “I mean, really, I am the embodiment of hatred and despair. I’m already part of every single creature’s life on the deepest, most fundamental.” He glanced back at her with a smirk as he gently reached out a hoof to pat Pinkie’s frozen-in-place mane. “This one in particular knew of those things very well.”

A spike of pain jabbed into her mind from Pinkie’s portion of the mind link spell before it faded away again, barely there. “G-g-get away from them!”

“Ah ah aaah, Twilight, let’s not get hasty shall we? There’s so much to discuss! So many curiosities to uncover.” Sombra slowly trotted over to Rainbow Dash, lifting a hoof to touch her wing and roll it along until it came to a rest on her friend’s flank. “I mean, this mare here is responsible for all of you finding your… Cutie Marks, correct?” He tapped the hard surface none-too-gently, laughing harshly as Twilight squirmed from yet another dagger of pain digging into her mind.

“S-S-Stop!” Her cry was simply ignored as the one who held her captive with fear easily sauntered over to the next pony in the semi-circle, Fluttershy.

“Stop? No no no, that would never do. You see, my dear, it is often the duty of despair to remove from the world those who live on it like a plague, on the verge of death and unwilling to do anything productive at all!” Fluttershy’s hooves were roughly kicked at three times, Twilight crying out as the third mind link sparked with magical fire inside of her head. “This pony here did that duty many times, with her sick little animal friends who she knew she couldn’t help.” The way Sombra’s voice became sickeningly soft and cooing made something inside Twilight crack.

“Stay… away…” She began to push herself up, grinding her teeth against the painful throbbing inside of her head.

“Ah, and we can’t forget your other friend too.” He chuckled to himself as he approached Rarity from behind, his front hooves lifting up to rest on the unicorn’s white back as if he were about to mount her. “Such beauty… such… grace.” The words came out as mere hisses, oil coating every syllable. “Truly a nice embodiment for hate, after all she is rather fond of being jealous of ponies, and I know better than anyone how quickly that can turn to darker things.” He smiled over at Twilight, whose glare was flashing in the light of the torches. “After all, Luna did show you our little bout of history together, didn’t she?” He chuckled and looked back down at his prize, looking over it like a stallion would a mare in the middle of a brothel. “Shame that her coat’s white, though. No matter, that’s easily fixed with enough dirt and grime.”

“Stay away from them!” She was on her hooves now, her horn flickering slightly as she prepared to sear the very air with her magic. Her efforts were for naught, however, as a wave of black smoke shoved her back down into the ground and held her there too, clamping down over her horn like a vice.

“What’s that? Are you telling me to stay away from my new statues? Oh no, that won’t do at all.” Sombra bared his fangs as he slowly, agonizingly slowly, made his way over to Applejack and stood with his back to the frozen pony’s face. “Oh my… that won’t do one bit. I feel myself… I feel a little bit of rage coming on.” His hind hooves rose up as he tensed up his muscles. “I think I might just have to… kick something.”

“No!” The magic that had been trying to force her down was practically non-existent as she galloped madly towards the target of her anger, her horn brightening before its light enveloped her with a spell. In the next instant, she was behind the stallion, her hooves reaching forward to collide directly with his helmet and leaving two dents where they connected. “Leave. Them. Alone!” She didn’t give him any time to react, her next spell sending a lance of lavender light through the air directly at his chest.

The next second blurred into forever as she watched Sombra dodge to the side just in time to avoid the magic, casting his own spell just as quickly as Twilight had. In the light of the magical bolts, Sombra could see both Twilight’s tiara shining brightly with white whilst an amulet around her neck shone purple. The meaning of such a thing was lost on him, as he was forced to dodge another attack as his own seemingly disappeared into the mare’s chest.

Though each second crawled past like they were hours in their minds, each one was filled with fear and anger. For Sombra, the former of these emotions was gaining more and more prominence as each of his attacks proved useless against one he thought he could easily defeat alone. “Why. Won’t. You. Die!?” They were dancing now, their hooves spinning circles and forming ridges on the carpet as they wove around each other as well as the spells that heated the air around them. Each time one of them dodged, they simply spun around and cast their own spell in retaltiation. They were dancing a dance of death.

And was a dance that was over with just one mistake.

Suddenly Sombra's hoof caught on the thick rug, sending him tumbling to the ground. In the next second, he felt a hoof at his throat and looked up to see a horn shining with a sickly purple directly between his eyes.

“Because I am better than you.”

“Ah yes, I see it now. You’ve given in to it, haven’t you? Just like I did those many years ago.” Sombra couldn’t help but smile up at the bringer of his fate, knowing in his own twisted heart that his work would carry on in the one who defeated him. “It’s so… powerful, isn’t it?”

“You misunderstand strength, Sombra.” The hoof pressed down harder on his neck, making him gasp for the little air he’d have left before his end. “Strength without direction will never be as powerful. Blind hatred only serves to make you weak.”

“They are… one and… the same, for hate. The power… it will… always… be stronger.” He chuckled weakly, though it came out as a weak sort of rasping noise.

“No, it won’t.” Twilight’s horn bloomed with a thread of white magic, its brilliance eating away at the violet sickness until none remained. “Unlike you, I will willingly let go of my hate. Even now I do not hate you, Sombra.” After a flash of light, Twilight Sparkle stood alone in the room with the now-awakening ponies that she called her friends and companions. She reached up with a hoof and yanked the necklace away, staring down at the weakly flickering crystal that it held. It was almost like a heart giving its last beats of life before it met an end like its creator’s. She hesitated, thinking of Sombra’s last words for a few seconds. She would be unstoppable with this magic, not even Celestia herself would be able to stand up to the Element of Magic wielding the strongest of arcane magic in existence. "I do not hate you." In the next moment, she angled her hoof so that it would slip away and plummet to the ground, the faceted gemstone shattering into a thousand different shards of hatred; shards that, with a little time and luck, would vanish from their world forever.

“I pity you.”