The Student of Sun and Shadow

by Journey Blue


Prerequisites - Light and Ice


A soft blue light.

It consumes the heavens and earth. A sphere that becomes a wall, infinitely wide, infinitely tall. It is without contrast, obliterating every shadow. It is absolute, conquering all sight.

The Light is blinding.

It blinds, not as does the sun, but as does an object of true beauty. Staring into the light, all else dissolves away, fading into that soft blue.

He has failed. When hope had shown, it had shown brightly.

~

With the power of the Sun and Moon, the Two Sisters split the ice of the Arctic North to its greatest depth. All two and a half miles. And when the Two Sisters sealed King Sombra under the ice, they sealed him under all of it. No magic was needed to keep Sombra trapped, not with the entire ice shelf as his prison.

Yet with the end of Sombra’s tyranny, came the end of the Crystal Empire. Without the Empire’s protection, Chaos ruled the land. The Two Sisters played their gambit, only to lose more than they could ever image.

The Age of Crystal ends, and The Age of Chaos begins. The past is lost to the sands of time as the pages of history burn. But under the ice, in the absolute dark, the past is preserved.

For more than a thousand years Sombra remains in the darkness, sealed beneath the Arctic ice. For more than a thousand years, he stands on the threshold of oblivion and insanity.

But it does not claim him—cannot claim him.

He endures.

Under the ice, in the cold and the dark, he endures, fighting off madness, resisting death’s chilling touch. His physical body deteriorates, as the darkness and his being become one and the same.

Time has lost all meaning to him. With nothing to see, nothing to hear, to smell, to taste, and nothing to feel but the unrelenting cold, there is no means by which to judge the passage of time. Thus, time ceases to be. He lives in a single moment that lasts for an eternity, a single memory of cold and absolute darkness, a single thought sustaining him.

The darkness does not acknowledge the passage of time. A millennium passes in the dark as softly as the turning of a page.

Then the Crystal Empire returns, and the darkness ends.

Into a once lifeless expanse of snow and ice now exists lush meadows, quartz paved paths, and towering crystal edifices. A massive surge of mass and magic spreads far, wide, and deep. Deep enough to send a fissure—a hairline fracture, really—through the entire ice shelf, to the very bottom. Through this crack radiates the faintest trace of the Empire’s magic. Magic that provides the most minuscule warmth and light to where such things have not existed for more than a millennium.

For Sombra it is like watching the sun rise, and he remembers that he is still alive.

Blessed are the cracked, for they let the light in, and the darkness out.

Sombra, now a shadow—what remained of his original body, a frozen, forgotten, husk—seizes the opportunity that the light heralds. He syphons his essence through the labyrinth of cracks, slipping and forcing his way between the massive sheets of ice, moving upwards, always upwards, towards the surface. Away from the dark depths and towards the light. But not away from the darkness itself. As he rises to the surface, the darkness rises with him.

They are one and the same now.

He approaches the surface; he begins to regain his power. He begins to remember who he is and why he has been trapped. He sees the light above him grow brighter and the pulse of the Empire’s magic grow stronger; he remembers why he has endured.

A black geyser erupts from beneath the ice as King Sombra’s being surges forth.

He has returned.

Once more he will rule the Crystal Empire. This time as a far greater king than ever before. He will rule over the Empire as no mortal could, for King Sombra has transcended death. He is undying.

And the Two Sisters, if they are still alive, will not be able to imprison him as they had done before. Darkness will never hold him again, for it is now his domain. With the magic of the Crystal Empire once again under his control, his powers will not simply match that of the Two Sisters this time. He will surpass them.

He is the darkness that neither the Sun nor Moon could ever hope to light.

Then the Light shines.

A light of neither Sun nor Moon, but the united heart of an empire.

It does not merely defeat him.

No.

It takes everything from him: what power he possessed, what greatness he could achieve.
 
Gone.
 
What anger, frustration, what rage he should have felt, extinguishes. The Light of the Crystal Ponies’ combined will purges even that from him. All that he can feel now is what the Light leaves him with.
 
Feelings he would detest if only he still had the capacity to hate.
 
Something he had discarded so long ago because it was no use to him is returned: a heart.
 
It is the heart that makes one weak, that makes one susceptible, to guilt, to sorrow, to loss, to pain. It makes one vulnerable. And nothing makes one more vulnerable than loneliness. Yet, even a thousand years of solitude is bearable when one has no heart.
 
But he, he who has lived so long without a heart, could never bear its burden—a heavy heart weighs quite a lot. His heart, beating now with a light that is both joy and suffering, crushes him.

The Light is Love.

It spreads through him, warming his soul, setting it ablaze. A wildfire that cleanses his very essence. Burning away his hate, his rage, his fear. Destroying his very nature, his very identity.
 
Spiderwebs of light spread across his body as his very being begins to fracture.

The Light is Agony.
 
 
It is pain that only Love can wrought.