Things went by quickly after the discovery that Sombra was inside the barrier. We had to move fast if we wanted to stop him before he wrecked house. To that end, I went to investigate the crystal inside the shield, while Twilight went to find the Crystal Heart.
On the way to my destination, I did some thinking. When I went against Sombra earlier, it had kicked my ass in a way that I hadn’t thought possible till that moment. The fact that it just froze me, and proceeded to torture me was a scary thing, especially knowing that I had the means to fight back, but not the know-how. He had pinned me to the spot, and, while I could of gotten out, I didn’t know how to. the pain at the time had stopped me from being able to do much, and even if it wasn’t there, the ice would have just come with me if I teleported.
That ice was something to note as well. magic can do a lot of thing, sure, but you can’t really do something that your magic isn’t designed to do. You can’t call up a firestorm if your magic is attune with blizzards. And that was the exact case here. Sombra could call up black ice to encase my legs. By that observation, it can’t do anything in relation with fire, or at least anything massive. It was a being of cold. That might also explain the constant blizzard outside the shield.
I finally got to the black crystal that jutted out of the ground. It was a simple thing. A small little crystal that seemed to absorb any light that touched it, rather than reflect it. Inside the crystal, I could see small swirls of grey clouds, circling around each other in some unknowable pattern. I then proceeded to commence in the ritual that would tell me if it were an immediate danger. A ritual that the ancient Romans used when in need. Something so ancient and sacred, that if I were to fuck it up, Hell itself would take pity on my soul.
I poked it.
Yeah, admittedly, that joke was a bit strung out, but that’s what I did. I poked the crystal to see what would happen, and as it turns out, not much. It was could to the touch, which it shouldn’t have been, given the amount of time it has had in the sun. The texture was smooth, not a blemish on it. It looked and felt like an ordinary rock, but given it’s positioning, no-one could miss that this thing wasn’t natural. It felt too wrong.
Not its physical feeling. Its aura, its presence. The thing just felt wrong, the way that graveyards do. Something is just off about it, and while you know that you have nothing to fear, you can’t help but feel uneasy in its presence.
I felt uneasy around this thing. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I found myself unconsciously looking around for some unseen predator that might have been stalking me. The thing put me on edge, and I really didn’t want to see what the thing was made of.
Damn shame I didn’t have many other options.
I gulped, and put the palm of my hand on the top of the crystal.
When I sent my mind into the crystal, I didn’t find anything at first. When one pushes their mind out of their body and into another space, such as an open room, you usually get the ambient feel of the room. The essential presence of what kind of stuff happens in that space. If a bunch of bad things, like murder, happen in that room, you get a feeling of the room like you would get around a particularly hungry tiger. The feeling of Fight-or-Flight ready to kick in. It’s a warning that that room is somewhere that you don’t want to be. But if that room had good things happen in it, such as weddings and parties, then you get the feeling of happiness that you get on Christmas eve when you’re a kid. It tells you that this is a place that you might want to hang around in. It a really useful ability to have, though not a practical one. It isn’t something that you’ll be doing while sprinting from room to room. It requires a lot of focus, and most everyday things can disrupt the kind of focus that you would need.
When I pushed my mind into that crystal, I didn’t get anything at first. I felt nothing, which had never happened before. You always feel something, even if its the energy of the things around you. For the first few seconds, that crystal was empty of energy, of life, of anything. That, by itself, is a scary thought. Everything needs energy to live and exist. This thing had none.
But then the crystal seemed to take notice of the fact that it was being observed. When it did, there was a feeling of intense cold, colder than any of the arctic blasts that were whipping around outside the shield. This cold was deeper than that, stronger than that. It sucked the energy out of me, making myself weaker, and itself stronger.
Startled, I thrust myself back into my own body, and stumbled away from the crystal.
That little thing had power. Not a whole Hell of a lot, but still enough to be dangerous. And whatever touched it, the crystal drew the power away from it to power itself. It was self-powered, and by the amount that it was taking in, it was probably going to start expanding at some point.
The cold presence of the thing was a little disturbing though. Everything that had Sombras mark on it was cold. Simply and unendingly cold. It made me start to doubt what I knew about the thing.
I started to shake with nerves. I really didn’t want to fight this thing again. Last time I tried it kicked my ass.
I shook my head, closed my eyes, and tried to calm myself.
Stop. This thing is big, yeah, but not unbeatable. You need to calm down. Look at the facts.
Reason has always been a way to get rid of fear. Or at least make sure that it’s justified. So I looked at what I knew.
Fact one: Time was running out. Twilight needed to find the Crystal Heart soon, and I needed to buy her time, otherwise Sombra will be able to get in and wreck house. Which would be bad.
Fact two: Sombra had tried to take me out near day one of my time in Equestria. When he sent Cerberus to attack, it was probably under the hope that it would kill me, and if not, it would give it a good distraction to set things up.
Fact three: When I cast out the small part of Sombra in Cerberus’ head, it left me a message before it left. ‘Winter will come, Guardian.’
Fact four: When I faced Sombra earlier, it didn’t make an attempt to kill me outright. That was probably due it arrogance, and the need to cause pain. It trapped me in black ice, and tortured me as much as it could.
Fact five: Sombra was a being from Non-Existence. If it wanted to, it could get through the shield Cadence put up, strong magic or not. Yeah, the fact that Cadence made the shield out of magical love would definitely give it trouble, but it could certainly get through.
Fact six: Sombra hasn’t gotten through the shield. The little crystal jutting out of the ground nearby was a part of him, sure, but it only got there because he put it through in the moments when the shield was flickering. Sombra, for whatever reason, wasn’t going through the shield that he could most certainly pass through.
Fact seven: When ever we see Sombra, it’s always in a winter setting. That might seem insignificant, but it is still a fact.
Fact eight: The snow of the tundra outside wasn’t passing through the shield. If me and the girls could pass through it without trouble, then the snow should too. The shield was meant to keep things of evil and hate out, but for some reason, the snow couldn’t get in, even if snow isn’t inherently evil.
Fact nine: I may not have done much to harm Sombra, but what I did do seemed damn effective at stopping him. That gout of fire I threw seemed to stop him cold.
And finally, fact ten: No matter what the situation, I was designed to have the power to stop Sombra, and his kind. I have the means. I just need to know how to apply them.
All those facts helped me calm down. It made me analyze the situation, and come the the conclusion that things weren’t totally hopeless.
I thought about what I knew, trying to piece together every little fact I had, in order find a weakness or loophole that I could use. What I found down the chains of logic, gave me something to work with.
In some realities, such as this one, there are beings called deities. These deities are the physical representation of what they control. Celestia, for example, is a deity. She is the physical representation of the sun. Luna is too. Discord was deity of chaos and madness, when he lost his marbles. Even I was one. I was the physical being of existence. Reality incarnate. I represented this universe.
Deities have the ability to control their domains. Celestia can move the sun. Luna, the moon. I can alter reality because of it.
And Sombra could control the winter.
He was a being of pure, cold hatred. That’s why it used black ice to trap me. I was in its domain, its center of power. Sombra is a being of winter, and if he were to leave that setting, his power would be greatly reduced. That’s why the snow isn’t getting through the shield. It came from the deity of winter, who happened to be something that wanted to destroy all of existence.
Sombra was the King of Winter. He probably got the job by being around for so long. He uses winter magic, grows his power, and just assumes the role. Anyone can do it, it just isn’t that easy. Hell, Twilight could become the deity of magic, though that would be pretty weird.
The point is, that Sombra was the deity of winter, and if you want to fight winter, you do it with summer.
Being a Guardian gives you a lot of power. Generally speaking, I was the most powerful being in this reality. I didn’t really know how to use all that power, given that I haven’t had it for very long, relatively speaking. I knew how to do a lot of stuff, but some of my power has still been unused. It’s why I don’t teleport around and act as careless with my magic as Discord did. I was still unused to it. It would be like getting an extra limb. Its there, you just need to find the muscles to use it.
What power I did know how to use was awesome. I have said this many times before. Dimensional manipulation, gravitational shifts, summoning and spawning matter, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Another power that I found out that I had was being able to change the essence of something.
Someones essence was what they were at a base level. Twilight, as an example, had an essence of magic. Most ponies had the essence of what their special talent is. Sometimes it gets a little more complex than that, but for ponies, it’s relatively straight forward. For deities, its also very simple.
We are what we represent. Celestia is warmth and passion. Luna is calm and mystery. Sombra is cold and desolation. I, on the other hand, am a little bit different.
I am reality. It’s a weird thing to say, I know, but that is what I represent. Continued existence. Discord represented the same thing, but eventually developed an addition to his essence, which was chaos.
Me? I haven’t developed any such addition. I haven’t been alive long enough to. I could, however, temporarily change the essence of something. I could make Twilight a being of air, thus changing what she specialises in. It would be temporary, but if she needed to perform air magic that she couldn’t normally do, it would give her the power to do it. When she completed the spell, she would revert back to what she originally was. It isn’t without consequence, though.
The process isn’t exactly pleasant. I tried it on a squirrel once, and the thing howled in pain for about five minutes. It also changes you permanently, to a small degree. The bulk of what you are is reverted back, but a small part of you is changed, or you get a new addition. Either part of your essence is permanently changed, or you get a new part of your essence that is what you changed your original essence into. Personality changes are one of the side effects, among many other things.
I could change myself to be better equipped to fight Sombra by changing my essence from one of existence, to that of summer. I would be Sombras perfect opposite, in the best position to fight him, but I would scar myself in the process. It might not be a significant scar, but there is still the change that it might be huge.
At the end of the day, the question was what I was willing to do to do my job.
The answer? Anything.
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The cloud that was Sombra seemed amused that I came to face him again.
“Child Guardian, have you not learnt your lesson?” it rasped.
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m nothing if not determined. How about we make this simple? Go away, and I won’t have to force you out.”
It growled. “Little child, you think that you might stand against me? Even after I have shown you just how useless you are? Do you truly think you stand a chance?”
“I think that someone has to do something. You might be powerful, but you are also limited. Winter has an opposite, you know.”
A rusty laugh played across the air. “Finally found that out, did you? Yes, I control the snow around us, but without Summer here, there is little that you can do.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Who says Summer isn’t here already?” And then I threw fire right at the center of the cloud.
The effect was immediate. Sombra howled in pain and was pushed back. I focused my energy into the flames, and surrounded Sombra in fire. The blaze that covered it served two purposes. First, to actually hurt it. The second, to push it as close together as possible, in an attempt to make it an easier target for any follow-up attacks.
The fire that blanketed it suddenly erupted into mist, and was thrown away from Sombra in a gust of arctic wind. Where the dark cloud had been, now stood a unicorn. This must have been what Sombra used to look like, before Celestia and Luna turned him into shadow.
Sombra roared in rage, levitated snow off the ground in front of him, condensed it into ice, and shot it straight at me. I jumped back to get some room, and swept my hand in a wide gesture. A wall of fire burst from the ground, melting the spears of ice on contact.
In a howl of cold air, a hole was created in the wall, and Sombra jumped through it. He shot more ice at me, and I hunched back, away from him, making the remaining firewall slink over to me, and create a blanket around my body. I felt the barrage of ice stop for a moment, and shot another gout of flame at Sombra. He tried to call wind to divert the flame away from him, but he only got a bit of it, and was burned by the rest.
He flinched and fell back a little. When he opened his eyes again, they went a little wide with surprise when he looked at me.
I shot a quick glance around me, and noticed what happened to the fire that I used as a shield. It had formed into wings of fire that sprouted from my back, in a twenty foot wingspan. Why I had instinctively done that, I have no clue, but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
I used my new wings to shoot forward, a ball of fire in my hand. I would have smashed the ball in Sombras face, but he jumped to the side, and I flew past him.
I landed, and quickly spun around, to find that Sombra had launched an icicle at me. I quickly hopped to the left, and was hit by a gust of wind that threw me farther into the tundra.
Sombra was trying to force me farther into the cold. It was trying to get me farther away from help, and closer to the center of its power.
My fiery wings flapped in an attempt to orientate myself, but I slammed into the ground before they could be much help. I got to my feet as quickly as I could, and on instinct shot a small pillar of fire out of the ground. There was a sizzling sound, and I looked up to see mist come from where the flame had met the ice Sombra had shot at me.
I needed to get closer to the city. The farther away from it I got, the more powerful Sombra got.
In hopes of pushing Sombra back, I shot a rapid stream of fire out at the demon. He blocked it with ice and wind, but had to take a step back every time he did. He shot a glance behind him, and seemed to notice how close to the shield he was.
With a shout, and shot a gust of icy wind at me, causing me to stumble. I recovered, and got out of the way just in time to dodge Sombra, who had shot forward in an attempt to skewer me with his horn.
When he was turning to face me, trying to stab me again, I brought a fist down onto him, forcing him to fall to the ground.
I was about to hit him while he was down, but another gust of wind threw me away from him. He threw me through the shield that surrounded the city, and I tumbled across the grass.
I got up, and was about to charge back into the fight, when a spike of crystal shot out of the shield. The shield shattered, and the arctic winds raged into the area.
The crystal spike grew out of the ground, charging toward my chest. The farther away from the base the tip got, the wide the base seemed to get.
The spike got close to gouging my heart out, but I quickly flapped my wings, and jumped onto the spike. The spike kept on expanding, getting closer and closer to the castle in the city.
Sombra stood on the base of the crystal, though as the crystal expanded, he got farther away from it without having to move.
It howled, and threw another spike of ice at me, which I met with a fireball. It continued to throw spike after spike at me, and I continued to block each with a gout of flame.
Sombra walked forward as we did this, trying to get close enough to do some physical damage.
When he got close enough, he jabbed his horn at me, which I had to block, instead of dodge. There wasn’t enough room for me to do a roll. He continued his jabs, while I blocked him, occasionally throwing in a punch or two when I saw the opportunity.
I was getting sick of this little routine, so I brought my foot up to stomp on his head. It landed, and I used my foot placement to push myself off him, twist in the air, and land behind him.
He quickly got up, and threw more wind at me. I had to block it with my fire wings, wrapping them around me as I had done before.
Sombra looked like he was about to throw in another attack, be was interrupted by a sudden screaming.
We both looked up to see Spike falling from the castle tower, a heart made of crystal in his hands. Sombra looked between me and Spike quickly, gauging distances. He seemed to come to a decision, and turned his full attention onto Spike, probably trying to catch him and get the Heart.
He never got the chance, though, because Shining Armour intervened. By throwing his wife.
Wait, what?
Cadence shot threw the air, propelled by Shinings throw. Before Spike got into Sombras grasp, she flew in, grabbing Spike just in time. She then made a quick turn, flew threw the faire grounds, and into the courtyard under the castle, where the Crystal Heart shot forward, onto a pedestal. A light seemed to emit from the crystal, slowly getting brighter and brighter.
Sombras eyes went wide with panic, and he shot a glance over at me.
My manic smile told him all he needed to know.
I shot a last torrent of fire at the unicorn, pushing him toward the point of the crystal we stood on. He was trying his hardest to fight back, but the light from the Heart, in addition to the fire that hit him, was too much for him to handle.
It’s around here that things went a little strange.
Sombra seemed to consider something in his mind, then closed his eyes solemnly. When he opened them again, they had started to glow bright white light. He threw his head back, shouted out a word in a tongue I didn’t understand, and suddenly exploded in a wave of power.
The power shot out of where he had once stood, cascading through the landscape, and beyond the borders of reality. I knew that last bit, because I could feel it go through the barrier.
Sombra, in a last ditch effort, had shot out all his power across this reality, and into a different part of existence. What the effect was, I had no idea, but it could guess that it probably wasn’t benevolent.
The fabric of reality didn’t explode immediately, so i had to guess that whatever he had done, it would come into play later.
Hopefully, I’ll be ready for whatever it was.
But in the mean time, I had things to take care of.
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As it turns out, the Crystal Heart was in the tower of the castle, and no-one had bothered to look there.
Suffice to say, I felt satisfied in know that I called it.
Twilight had passed her test, though for me, that seemed a secondary thing. Yeah, I was happy for my friend, but saving an entire empire is a bit more important than her grades.
We made our way back to Ponyville from Canterlot after a pretty awesome reprise, and I was recounting the tale of my battle between me and Sombra.
“-and then he just exploded. HE sent some sort of power surge out across the entire universe, and into some other one. I felt some of his power pass the border of this reality. If I had to guess, he sent it to another one.” I said.
The ponies all had different reactions to the story. Fluttershy and Rarity were scared and worried for me, making sure that I was fine. Twilight was thinking about the surge of power that I brought up at the end. Pinkie and Rainbow we gushing over how awesome the fight was, and Applejack agreed with them, though to a lesser extent.
The train arrived at Ponyville station, and we all got out onto the platform.
“Well, that was quite the adventure we had, but I simply must get home. I am in need of some dire beauty sleep.” Rarity said. She stopped and considered for a moment. “And perhaps a bath.”
Everyone chuckled at that. “Sure thing, S’mores.” I said to her. “You go and have fun.”
She smiled and walked off.
“Well, I reckon that I aught to get goin’ too. Sleep sound right to me too, and Granny’s probably wonderin’ where I went off too.” AJ said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty tired too.” Rainbow agreed. “Gotta get up early for weather detail tomorrow, and I’m pretty beat. See you guys later.” The two of them walked off.
Pinkie and Fluttershy said their goodbyes too, and walked off, leaving me and Twilight standing around.
I looked up at the sky. “It’s about five. wonder why they’re going to sleep so early.”
Twilight shrugged. “It’s been a long couple of days. I’m pretty tired myself. Think I’ll head back to the library, read a book, get clean, and call it a night early. What about you?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I still have some things to take care of. Might as well get them done now, before I forget about them.”
Twilight nodded. “Well, see you around Connor.” I waved goodbye.
I sighed. A nap and a hot shower sounded heavenly right now, but I did have things I needed to do. So, I soldiered on, and went about my business. I needed to make sure that something like Sombra doesn’t happen again. I needed to create spirits of magical energy that were specifically designed to control the seasons, so that some other monster couldn’t master them. I was hedging my bets, you know?
I went off to the Whitetail Woods, and gathered the power that I needed.
When this was over, I was going home, and getting on with my normal, antics filled, life.
Wonder what’ll happen next?