The shadows that were cast onto him from the trees fit his mood perfectly as a single pony stared at the sea, having been there from when the sun had gone down to when it had come back up, never once moving. He had stared at the sea with silent hope, although he knew that it was a futile wish, and that those who had submerged were gone for good.
'I shouldn't be here,' Sombra thought to himself as he continued to gaze at the sea. 'I should move on in case the sea ponies surface to come after me. They probably have learned from Trixie that I am still alive and won't rest until they hunt me down. So why do I stay here and wait, when I know what has happened? Why do my hooves stay rooted?'
'Because you care.' Sombra spun around and fired his magic towards whatever was standing behind him, only to watch his spell hit a barrier of silver and vanish instantly. His eyes narrowed as he spied a silver pony standing behind the shield, which slowly lowered as it advanced towards him. 'Because you are not the same pony you were when you first came back to life. Or the second one for that matter.'
"Who the hell are you?" Sombra snarled as his horn began to glow crimson, taking up a fighting stance. "Wait a moment, silver...you're the being responsible for saving us back when Chrysalis tried to kill us, aren't you?"
'The one and the same,' she said with a nod, while Sombra tried to figure out what she was. He could feel the magic radiating from her, but it was different from most other magics he had felt. While not destructive, he could still feel the power coming from her and knew she was trouble. Not that he cared. He fired another bolt of red energy at her, only to snarl again when she deflected the spell. 'Do not bother, only Billy and Teth's magic are stronger than mine, and one of them is my ally. You cannot hope to best me.'
"So many have said, yet here I stand," he snarled in reply as he began another spell, causing the silver mare to sigh and shake her hooded head.
'You can still save them.' Sombra stopped his spell with a look and stood up slightly, not sure what she meant. 'You can still stop them from suffering from the same fate that befell the sea ponies all those centuries ago. But you will have to do it soon.'
"And why the hell would I do that?" Sombra snarled back with what he hoped was rage. "Those guys have been nothing but trouble for me, even if they did help me out once. I was forced to sleep on the ground and was constantly hit and attacked. Not to mention, due to me knowing what's down there, that gives me zero incentive to go down. So I ask again, oh shiny one, why the hell would I do that?" The silver mare did not respond right away, but instead looked to the sea with memories of her own.
'Because your lies do not work on me,' she said with a smile under her hood as she looked back to him. 'I was friends with the Element of Honesty and have picked up a few of her tricks. And I know that despite that all you say about them, that you do care.'
"Prove it," Sombra shot back with a smug smile, which quickly vanished once the silver mare's eyes glowed with power and seemed to look into his soul.
'For what other reason would you put yourself in danger by waiting for hours by the edge of the sea, with your past?' she asked him. 'For what reason would you spare them once you had gotten your powers back, if you did not feel some emotional connection to those whom you say you hate? For what reason would the 'mighty' King Sombra teach a small foal his greatest spell, unless he felt connected to them?'
"You've been spying on us?" he asked as he backed away a bit, before shaking his head under her gaze. "Alright, I'll admit that they weren't that bad and...maybe I did enjoy being around them at times...but there is nothing I can do. Not with that thing still down there."
'And what 'thing' would that be?' she asked him, sighing when he didn't answer. 'Every second you spend being silent is another second that they spend getting closer to their deaths. I must know what is going on if I wish to help you.'
"So what do you want to do, go through my memories?" he asked her with a laugh, which stopped once she nodded her head in response. He closed his eyes and tried to think of all the reasons this was a bad idea...but then the memoires of what happened to him came back and the thought of that same thing happening to the others won out. "Fine, but I want to see something private of yours in return. Deal?" This time it was the silver mare who hesitated, but for only a moment before she agreed with a nod. Sombra swallowed his pride and his nerves as she started up a spell that cast the both of them in silver, allowing her to see into his memories.
'Come on everypony, the exit is over here!' The Sombra of the past yelled to a number of armored troops as they followed him through the halls of Atlantis, the silver mare noticing that there was a small bundle on his back as he ran. Before she could take in this sight entirely, a massive tentacle burst through one of the walls and crushed a number of the soldiers behind Sombra, who was thrown through the air and just barely managed to land on his hooves. He snarled as more tentacles burst through the walls, letting in water as they all began to move towards Sombra.
'You think that you can steal from us?!' a voice roared in Sombra's memory, and in turn inside the silver mare's head, causing Sombra to flinch as he looked back up at the tentacles. 'You think yourself a god?! Well down here is what you can call hell! Return what you have stolen!'
'Like hell I will!' Sombra yelled back as he fired a bolt of magic into one of the tentacles, slicing it off and causing whatever had been speaking to roar in pain, as Sombra turned around to run as fast as he could. 'I will discover whatever this foal's secrets hold and why they are so powerful! And nothing can stop me!' He entered a massive room when he had said this, looking around before spotting a giant golden door that he blasted off its hinges before running inside, coming to a stop by what he saw. It was a massive beast that looked like a squid, but much more terrifying as it roared at him.
'You will give me my sacrifice!' It roared as more tentacles came flying towards Sombra, who threw up a barrier of fire to protect himself. The creature roared as its limbs slammed into the fire, giving Sombra the chance to try and flee for his life. However, even more tentacles erupted from the ground and wrapped him within their grasp, slowly bringing the struggling king towards the face of the hideous beast, which seemed to smile as he got close.
'You will not escape me this time,' it said with venom in its voice as a number of smaller tentacles moved towards Sombra, wrapping themselves around his face. 'And you will be mine to control!' The silver mare could hear the muffled screams of Sombra through the tentacles as the beast laughed, before placing him on the ground with a smile as a number of guards in sea armor came in. 'Now then, give the filly to the guards and then go drown yourself,' it said to Sombra, who shakily began to move, causing the creature to laugh. 'You believe you can resist me? I control you.'
'N-nopony...controls...Sombra!' he roared as a massive blast of magic came from his horn, knocking away the tentacles and the guards. The beast roared as Sombra began one of his strongest spell, while another hundred of the creature's tentacles began to come towards him again, wrapping him in a cocoon of sorts.
'If you will not be mine to control, then you will be mine to torture for eternity!' The beast roared as a powerful magic began to flow through its tentacles, cursing Sombra before one of the tentacles removed the foal from his back and handed it to a guard, then began wrapping themselves around Sombra once again. 'And now that you are as eternal as me...' it began as the mare began to hear Sombra's bones crack. 'There will be no escape...' As the beast said those words, the silver mare was flung from the memory, but not before she knew why he was so afraid of returning to face the beast.
/T\
Sombra backed away in terror even though a small part of his brain told him that these images weren't real, but they were real enough to tell him to be backing away from whatever the creature in front of him was, even though it was slowly advancing towards the silver mare. He could see he was Somewhere in Canterlot, but the exact location was lost to him.
'You do not understand!' the silver mare pleaded as the creature walked towards her. 'I must gather the six champions, or else all of Equestria will fall to a force more dangerous than anything throughout the galaxy. Please listen to me, Teth!'
"I am not to be called by that name!" the bi-pedal creature with the golden lightning bolt on its chest snarled as it raised both hands, lightning crackling through them. "And I have also seen your said prophecy, but I know the truth. I know that your six champions will overthrow the queen and send Equestria into a war. And I cannot allow that."
'Teth please...' the silver mare begged before a blast of lightning threw her across the room.
"I said to not call me that," he growled as he lifted a bolt of lightning in his hands. "I am Black Adam!" the memory went black as the bolt of lightning was thrown and Sombra found himself standing on the seashore next to the silver mare, who looked to him with sympathy in her silver eyes.
'I understand now,' she said as Sombra tried to get his senses back. 'But that will not sway my opinion. You must go help them.'
"After what happened last time?!" Sombra roared, not caring about what he had just seen. "That damned beast made me immortal and then proceeded to destroy me in every way it thought possible! For six months I was its own personal play thing, constantly drowned or ripped apart as it saw fit! Do you know what that is like?! What that does to a psyche!?"
'I cannot say that I do,' the silver mare admitted before glaring into Sombra's soul again with her eyes. 'But if your fear of this creature is greater than your care for those who will face the same fate, then run. I will not stop you.' She stepped to the side as she said this, and allowed Sombra to see the path that would take him far away from the sea. 'But if you do, I want to ask you this. What is the point of having an immortal life if there is nopony there to help you live it?' Sombra snarled at her as he walked past her to leave...only to stop dead in his tracks as memories of what he went through popped back into his mind, and how the thought of the others falling to the same fate sickened him.
"I really hate you, you know that?" he asked her with a snarl, never seeing the smile under her hood as he turned to where the teleporter stood. "And I know that I have to go back. But not for you," he made clear with a snarl. "But only because I owe a certain mare for saving my life."
'Then allow me to help,' the silver mare said as a portal of silver appeared in front of Sombra, who backed away for a moment as a pair of saddle bags that he had been given re-appeared on him.
"Why did you take the time to convince me to do this? With your power you should be able to stop the kraken and rescue the others without my aid," he said with suspicion. "Why use me?"
'Because you are different from all the other 'you's' I have come across,' she replied. 'All those Sombra's either wanted total rule over everypony or complete destruction of their enemies, no matter who got in their way. But not you. Why is that?' It was Sombra's turn to give her a mysterious smile as he turned back to the portal.
"Because a certain somepony showed me that there is more to life than just castles and slaves," he replied. "A somepony that taught me how to care." He jumped into the portal as he said this, leaving the silver mare alone to smile.
'Once again I am shown to be wrong, even when all the odds are against it,' she thought before vanishing into the air. 'But I sense something terrible about to happen with Scootaloo and I must warn her. Fortunately, her allies will be safe. At least, I hope they will be.'
/T\
Trixie and the others walked through the halls with impressed faces as Aquarius talked about just what a bit of sunlight did to the halls at the bottom of the ocean. With just a hint of sunlight, all of the hallways were brighter and more cheerful looking, making Trixie wonder how they looked when they were back on the surface.
"This feature is the pride and joy of the architects down here," Aquarius said with a smile as he looked at the glowing golden halls. "But I think that I've prattled on enough about just how cool and amazing this place looks. If we don't hurry along, we'll be late for the meeting with the king and nopony wins when that happens. Come on now."
"This place really looks cool," Starshine said as he looked around, Armora nodding her head in agreement.
"Almost makes me wish I could see again," Bark said as they walked along, Trixie able to see the giant golden doors farther down the hall they were in. But to her left she noticed a door that she hadn't seen the day before, one that gave her chills to look at as she passed it by.
"What is down there?" she asked Aquarius, who looked to the door with a frown when she pointed to it.
"That's where we keep our prisoners from the war," he said with a snarl as he walked by, saluting the two guards in the sea-based armor that stood outside of the door. "The worst of the worst are down there, ponies that you definitely don't want to meet." Trixie raised her eyebrow at this and wondered if there were still ponies down there, even though it had been a thousand years since the Atlantians had last seen the surface. "But let's not focus on the negative and instead focus on the positive. Let me be the first to introduce you to his high and mightiness...KING TRITON!" The doors swung open as he said this to reveal a majestic throne room with gold lacing every inch of it, reflecting off a mirror-like pool on the ground that added to the affect.
"So this is the king of Atlantis," Trixie said to herself as she and the others looked up at the throne to see a red-ish sea pony sitting on the throne, a trident in one hoof and a crown on his head. Trixie narrowed her eyes at the trident and with a smile saw that the trident in his hoof fit the one that she had read about.
"Greetings, surface dwellers," Triton said with a smile as the group approached him. "It is so rare to have a visit from you these days. We were almost beginning to think that the world up there had forgotten about us."
"Trust me, when I say that to this day there are ponies that still learn as much as they can about this city," Trixie responded as she bowed to the king, the others following her lead. "We are grateful to just be able to see this city."
"So it seems, but my old eyes can tell me that there is something else you want," Triton said with a smile as he looked down at her. "Well, I'll never know what it is if you don't speak up." Trixie sighed to relax before she walked forward.
"I would like to borrow the trident you hold," she said, gaining her a gasp from everypony in the room. "I need it to open the final temple of Star-Swirl the Bearded, but if you do me the huge honor of granting it to me, I promise that I will return it to you."
"Um, Trixie?" Aquarius asked. "I don't know how things work up there, but down here we don't ask the king for something that has been in his family for generations." The king looked from her to his trident as Trixie waited nervously, but after a minute he let out a sigh and smiled again.
"Alright, I will lend it to you. It doesn't really do anything beside gather dust anyway," he said with another laugh as he held it out to her. "Besides, it was to be a sign of good faith between surface dwellers and ourselves, so I suppose that this is the purpose it was given to us. Please come and get it." Trixie sighed in relief as he said this, glad that she wouldn't have to fight out of the sunken city. She had barely taken a step before a bolt of red shot by her and struck the king in his chest, knocking him off his throne and down the stairs. Trixie and the others spun to see who had done this, with amazement dawning as they saw the familiar pony.
"Sombra?" Trixie asked with sheer disbelief in her voice. All of the sea ponies in the room gasped as the black and grey unicorn walked into the room, horn glowing a crimson red with a number of words on the tip of his tongue. All that was differnet was that he had a saddle bag on, filled with the crystals that he had gathered back in the maze. "What are you doing here? And why in Faust's name would you attack the king?!"
"Because, Trixie," Sombra began as Aquarius gave the order to attack, watching as all the ponies rushed him. "You needed my help." He fired a blast of red from his horn that consumed everypony in its light. When Trixie and the others could see again, they were horrified to see that Atlantis was no longer the same glowing paradise that it had been only a moment before. Everything was now black and falling apart, with the entire room looking like no pony had taken care of it in a thousand years. And then to Trixie's horror she saw that the change hadn't just been for Atlantis, but the ponies as well. they now looked like black skeletal structures of their formers selves and all of them had glowing red eyes. They let out moans of rage at Sombra, who stood defiant among them.
"W-what happened?" Starshine asked in fear as he stood behind Trixie, while Armora and Bark each prepared to fight the creatures. "Where did the sea ponies go?"
"They all died off a thousand of years ago," Sombra said with a frown as he blasted one of them into dust as it attacked him. "Trixie, you know the story of how the kraken was sent after me after I tried to steal a foal from the sea ponies. What you didn't know was that after I escaped, the creature turned its rage upon those who had summoned it, taking control of them for all eternity. This is their fate." Trixie looked around with terror in her eyes as she saw those who only a moment before were the smiling citizens of a great empire.
"Wait, you said the kraken?" Starshine asked before a swarm of tentacles burst from the ground around Sombra, while a voice hissed with rage and delight at the same time.
'Sombra! So you finally return to the city that you killed!' The voice roared though their minds, causing all to shiver except Sombra. 'Have you finally come back to return what you stole from me? Or are you seeking another round of torture and pain?'
"Neither, you piece of trash!" Sombra roared back as he fired off another spell that shattered the throne room, revealing a passage way that had been hidden underneath the throne. The sea ponies that hadn't been blown away by this attack moaned and rushed him all at once, but once again Sombra used his magic to blast them back. He began to walk forward to the passage way before he was stopped by Trixie.
"Sombra...what has happened?" she asked him in confusion, not able to wrap her mind around these events. "Why does everypony look like this. And why are you here?" She then looked to the sea pony that she had known as Aquarius, who moaned in rage and rushed towards them with his trident outstretched.
"Ne Bego," Sombra muttered, blasting apart the sea pony into dust, much to Trixie's horror. "This is the curse of being made a slave by the kraken. You remain under his servitude as long as he sees fit. You are stripped of your mind, but what remains of your life is made immortal by the beast. After the first few times I blew up, I've gotten good at putting myself back together. You asked how I became immortal, here is your answer. It was only my rage and stubbornness that allowed me to hold onto my sanity." A tidal wave of questions came to Trixie's mind, but there was only one she could get out of her mouth.
"Why did you come back? I thought-"
"Because...I couldn't let any of you suffer the same fate that I and these sea ponies had to endure," Sombra said as he closed his eyes and lowered his head. "That, and I owed you for saving my life all those days ago. You should all leave," he said as he walked towards the passage again. "Once this is over, either the kraken will have me...or Atlantis will finally become the sunken city ponies say it is. Gone to the depths."
"Wait, why are you going alone?" Starshine asked as he ran between Sombra and the passage, stopping the former king. "You have us. We can help!"
"No, my student, this is something that I must do alone," he said with a shake of his head. "Everything that happened to these ponies, everything the kraken has done...is by my mistakes. I may not be the greatest pony by far...but even I know when I have gone too far. I must set this right." As he said this, he started up a teleportation spell that he used on the four of them, looking from Starshine to Trixie before looking at the old dog.
"You knew I would do this?" he asked.
"I suspected," Bark said with a smile.
"You don't have to do this," Trixie said, but Sombra shook his head with a smile.
"No, but a certain annoying pony showed me that no matter how one has messed up in their past, that doesn't mean they can't try and fix it," he said. "And I have to make up for my mistakes, and what the kraken has done is because of me. So I will be the one to fix it." He turned away just as the spell finished, getting rid of the group. Sombra sighed and walked down the passage, knowing that he was heading to his death...or worse. But just like the king he was, he kept his head high as he entered a massive coliseum-like room, with a number of platforms floating in the water that took up most of the space. "KRAKEN! I AM HERE!" The water erupted as hundreds of tentacles burst from the ground, followed by a giant red beast that took up a third of the water. Its eyes glared at Sombra with hatred and it roared as it surfaced.
'SO, HAVE YOU COME TO RETURN TO YOUR FATE?!' It asked as its tentacles all shot towards him. "OR TO BEG FOR MERCY AND A SWIFT DEATH?!'
"Neither, you overgrown pile of crap," he growled as he knocked the tentacles back, both his horn and eyes glowing as he looked towards the beast. "I've come to finish this. One way or another."