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// 9) A way of Thinking: Part III 
// Story: Lost into Shadow 
// by Lucidenn 
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As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
~Henry David Thoreau

Everything hurt. Every bone, every fiber, every single hair throbbed with a deep ache. Am I dead? No, being dead shouldn't hurt this much, should it? A soft moan escaped her lips as a cool, damp cloth was placed across her forehead and wrapped around her horn.  As the initial shock of the cold contact wore off, the pain pounding in her head numbed down enough to allow her room for thought. She was expecting cold granite, instead she felt something soft and warm beneath her, like a giant pillow. Barely above her ears was a low whispering voice. She could not understand the words, but they filled her like a warm hug calms and soothes a filly. The deep cadence calmed her heartbeat, and she all but forgot the pain coursing through her as she simply lay there listening. Slowly she creaked open a single eyelid. She found herself staring into the deep ruby of Sombra's eyes, his horn aglow with a crimson nimbus that she'd never seen him use before. Though his attention was focused intently somewhere on her back, he apparently still noticed her newfound consciousness.

"You're very lucky to be alive, Princess", he said, stopping the strange lullaby he'd been singing to the mare.

"mwha, wha apennd." She croaked out.

"You gathered a very large amount of dark energy, but your spell lacked control, and so it backfired on you." She whimpered in pain as he reset the left wing back into its socket, having finished knitting the metacarpals back together.

Her socket now receding to a dull ache, Twilight asked the next thing on her mind, "Why is your magic signature red?"

Sombra chuckled at this, and proceeded to slowly encourage the ripped and stressed muscles of her left hind-leg to reconnect. "Dark magic for all it's greatness is very lacking in the field of medicine, unless you are as deeply intertwined with its power as I am. Therefore I must resort to normal magic to heal anypony other than myself."

Twilight knew that fact shouldn't be come as a surprise, after all she the personal student of Celestia was dabbling with dark magic, but she found her mouth gaping in confusion anyways.

"Is it so strange that I would know and be able to use the other side of magic as well?"

"N-no," she stammered out, "but you yourself said that you spent thousands of years practicing nothing but hatred. Positive energy must come to you with as much difficulty as negative does to me."

"You summoned quite a lot of it before injuring yourself remember?"

"Well, yes, but that was only after I followed your advice and used the power of love t...." Her sentence trailed off as the implications hit her. Sombra was using love to power his healing spell. She felt a rush of blood to her cheeks, and an odd clenching in her chest as if the air was sticking on its passage through her lungs. She shook her head and quickly reasoned that Sombra must be using the memory of his family to power the spell. Sombra in the meantime had not responded to her truncated sentence, a slight frown and furrow in his eyebrows as he seemed to be contemplating something even he did not fully grasp.

The moment passed, and Sombra continued "You are, a very interesting pony Twilight." Her heart beat just a little bit faster now. "Even as an alicorn, you are not hardened by the centuries like Luna or Celestia. While such a blast would be an inconvenience to them, you should have been pushed at least to the very edge of death."

The work in her leg finished, he now turned his full attention to her eyes, staring straight into her as if trying to examine her soul. "When I approached your unconscious body, I ran into a surprisingly strong shield of ionized particles just inches away from you. It wasn't a spell, you definitely wouldn't have had time to erect a magical shielding. It would seem instead that when the dark magic exploded around you, it energized the cavern air causing it to become ionized. You must have reflexively grabbed as many particles as possible with your magic and packed them tightly around your body; the stripped electrons forming a magnetic barrier on the outside surface that doubled as a conduit for energy around your body, instead of blasting straight through it. This is what kept you alive in the initial blast, and what kept your spine from snapping like a twig when you cracked the stone wall with your impact."

Twilight could only lie there in disbelief. It was difficult to conceive that she had done such a thing, and in what must have been milliseconds at that!

Sombra's expression softened from his previous intense scrutiny, speaking as softly as his lullaby before. "You have a talent that, though I hate to admit it, rivals my own. For now though, simply remember my next words. You were consumed today because your anger was hot. When your anger runs cold, you will be able to use it. While it is hot, it will use you instead. Now rest, your body must finish the healing that I have started."

His horn glowed red once more, and a blanket appeared from behind him to tuck her into what she now noticed to be a large circular cushion much like the one in Celestia's personal room. Before she could question where these items had come from, Sombra had gently laid her head back down to rest, and then turned away from her to start a cozy fire out of thin air. It had no visible fuel, yet there it happily danced on its designated section of rocky floor. She could not help but to stare into the flame as Sombra's strange lullaby began again, coaxing her back to sleep. As she closed her eyes and drifted into the land of dreams, her thoughts still dwelt on those strange words, and on the fire, now blue and hotter than ever, dancing across her dreamscape.

Twilight awoke with a start, and looked around her. The fire was gone, and all the torches that had lit the pit that was now her basement were snuffed out, leaving her in near total darkness. To her right, a couple of meters away, she could just make out Sombra's powerful chest; rising and falling in the slow rhythm of slumber. She guessed that several hours must have passed already. Quickly rising from her bed(cushion?) she ignored the protest of her wings and flapped over to the cavern holding the target range. She did not want to awaken Sombra, and she simply could not wait till morning to try out her sudden insight.

Touching down inside the range, she quickly lit the torches along the walls with a simple pyrotechnic spell, briefly noticing that the cavern had been reset since her last attempt, and was once again ready for further attempts. Her dreams had held sudden inspiration for her, her anger was like the fire, which burned hot and if not careful, would spread without control. When fire turns blue however, it could be used to precisely slice the most stubborn of elements such as stone and steel. How funny it was that the color blue usually meant cold, yet when applied to fire it meant that it was more focused and hotter than ever.

Twilight now turned her attention to the targets in front of her. She took each one, its pose, its shape, its location, and slowly reconstructed it as a mental picture. Finally, when she had internalized the entire practice range, she closed her eyes and began to slowly breath in, and out. At the same time she released the same fear and pain as before, allowing it to grow into the same rage; at the same time she kept her focus on the her breathing, and added to her mental image of the firing range an orange fire where she was standing. Her emotions were raging just like before now, threatening to leap out of control, yet she forced them to keep in time with the fire in her mental eye. Each inhale brought the flame higher and stronger. Each exhale forced it to shrink and compress. Ever so slowly, the fire grew in average size, and ever so slowly, its color began to change until the orange and red was fully replaced by a fierce blue sharpened by an edge of indigo. She could still feel the hatred raging in her mind, but now it had purpose, now she was giving it shape and direction.

One by one, a thin beam of black and purple magic lanced from her horn to connect to each target in turn. Still she focused on her breathing, feeding the power she had gathered. So enraptured in her focus, Twilight failed to notice the pair of ruby eyes watching her from the cavern entrance; watching as the aura of black magic around her horn swelled to more than twice the size of the alicorn, growing and shrinking in time with the rhythm of her breaths. Now that she was connected to each statue by the strings of darkness, she focused on them alone and their structure. The floor and the walls faded away until all that was left were the targets and the now enormous blue flame. She was ready. Her eyes opened wide, now pure green, the pupils gone and purple energy wafting from them to join the crackling aura around her horn. With a spear-like thrust of her horn the energy was released. 25 bolts of immense power flew directly down the paths of the beams that had connected her to each statue, and simultaneously each statue had its molecules torn asunder from the shear power of the blast.

Twilight was surprised that she was not blinded by the light of the explosions, nor had she been troubled by the force of the explosion, all except for her hair, which fluttered violently at the wall of air that was pushed past. The cavern became quiet and calm once more, and before her was an empty room, not even a scar on the floor where the statues had stood, as if they had quite simply never existed in the first place. It had worked! It had actually worked! She failed to notice that underneath her elation, she felt a satisfaction that was much more sinister. She had wielded such terrible and destructive power, and it had felt good.

"Well done Twilight, you have passed the first stage of your training, and dare I say with the mental acuity of a master."

Twilight positively glowed at the praise, too happy to even be surprised that Sombra had sneakily witnessed the entire event. "What's next Sombra? I'm ready for it."

Sombra grinned slyly. "Yes, indeed you are. I suppose you're far too awake to rest now, so proceed to the black crystal formation in the floor of the main shaft. Your next challenge is to simply reach the next cavern, to traverse the crystal and come out at the next cavern."

Gleefully, the purple alicorn had to stop herself from skipping out of the cavern in triumph. Sombra watched her walk away with barely controlled enthusiasm and smirked to himself once more. He hadn't mentioned it, but her violet pupils were surrounded by green instead of white, and small streams of purple energy were still wafting from the corner of her eyes. It was perfectly normal for this to happen while casting a spell of black magic, but for the effect to still be lingering afterwards, well...

Sombra chuckled to himself one last time and followed the mare outside and into the main shaft; things were coming along much better than he had expected.

Meanwhile at the Crystal Empire

The black crystal blazed furiously, the green and purple flames warping the air with waves of heat. Each time a shadow reached down to the floor to attempt escape, magical lighting from each Alicorn struck it apart simultaneously. Each Princess was strong and resolute, for they had each other, working together harmoniously.

"Keep it up Luna, Cadence! We almost have it pinned! Just a little more!"

"We shall not fail sister! No shadow can escape our combined light!"

"With nowhere to hide, our love will keep the evil at bay!"

All together now, they chanted, voices ringing like bells of righteousness over the howling of the crystal's inferno.

"Princeps ardentem solem, et lunam, et stellas. Simul et tueri amorem Lux ministrare. Verum absit natura mali umbras ostenderet. Sic ut ad mortalitatem percutiebam liga eam semper!"

As they repeated the chant over and over again, their magic solidified into buttresses of pure light. These yellow, pink, and blue beams arched between the crystal and the quarantine circle of the Triquetra. With an electric hum the circle glowed bright and pure, and like a sail being hoisted along a mast, it began to creep up along the princesses's magical constructs. The crystal inferno blazed higher than ever before now, desperately throwing itself against the containment field trying to escape. It would find no weakness this time, no way out. Soon it was hidden from sight as the dome of light creeped toward its apex, and with one final screech, was completely enshrined with blinding light.

When the light finally dimmed, the princesses could finally see the fruit of their labour. There in the center of the Triquetra the crystal had become as transparent as diamond, glimmering in the dim lighting of the room and casting rainbows on the walls. At its very heart however the inferno of green and purple that had consumed it was now suspended inside, like a bug trapped in amber.

"Congratulations." Cheered Celestia. "We've succeeded. Now that it is trapped, we can begin writing new magic." She looked at the other two princesses, soaked through with perspiration and breathing heavily. They'd been at this for hours on end, perhaps even days without rest now. "Let us rest and regain our strength. We will need to be at our very best for what is still to come." Cadence seemed especially pleased by this, she was still a relatively young alicorn and must be missing her husband dearly. One by one they filed out, and only till Celestia was alone in her guest room did she allow her weariness to have its voice. Legs buckling, the sun princess collapsed to the floor and welcomed rejuvenating sleep to her overworked mind and body. Just before drifting into the dream realm, her final thought filled her with sadness and dread. Sombra would be millions of times more potent than the dark magic spark she had instilled in the testing crystal. Twilight is doomed to fail on her own, even with the elements of harmony. I can only hope we are ready before that happens.