Darkness surged through his entire body. Sombra grinned and allowed it to take over completely, pulses of corrupted magic emanating form his horn.
This was it. He would have another chance.
Ripping through the ice, he burst into maniacal laughter. Only a few meters away was the lovely green meadows surrounding the Empire. He stretched out a bit. It had been a while since he'd been in his actual body for longer than five seconds, and he'd been counting: as of now, he'd been there for a whole fifteen seconds. Make that sixteen. No, seventeen. Whatever.
The dark stallion trotted around for a bit to get his bearings. He did a little galloping, reared up onto his hind legs a few times, bucked in different directions, used his horn to clear a path in the snow, flexed his ridiculously long tongue a bit and tried speaking.
"I, King Sombra, your rightful ruler, have returned! Surrender now!"
"Gee, Twist, who d'you think that guy is?"
"I dunno, but he'th really acting weird."
Sombra spun around to find himself face-to-face with a couple of foals. One of them was a cream-colored filly with purple glasses and a curly red mane. The other was a white colt mottled with brown. He had rather small eyes.
He glared at them and, curling his lips into a snarl, asked them what they were doing.
"Well, we're here to rethearch the hithtory of the Crythtal Empire," the curly-maned filly replied. "But the train broke down, and we had to walk."
"And then we had a snowball fight," the colt added.
"We're thtill having it. Wanna play with uth?" The filly picked up a tightly packed snowball.
"A... snowball fight? You mean, you create small balls out of the Wendigo's rain? Surly they do not last long."
"Wendigo's...? Sir, this is snow." The colt picked up a large chunk of the icy stuff, formed a ball with it, and threw it at the former king. It exploded into tiny shards on impact, leaving a small wet stain and a few crystals of snow behind on Sombra's chestplate.
Mildly curious, he looked down at what was left of the ball, then looked back at the children, clearly confused. "But these balls are destroyed with a single use. How could that possibly be efficient?"
"It'th not thuppothed to be effithent, it'th thuppothed to be fun!" The lisping little one threw her ball at Sombra, striking him in the face.
The king stepped back a few paces, surprised by the force of the ball. Apparently, the filly was stronger than she looked. or perhaps he was still weak from being cooped up as an intangible spirit for so many years. Either way, it was startling. He wiped the bits of snow off his face while the foals giggled. "You call this... snow?"
"Well, yeah. What do you call it?" The colt was making more snowballs as he spoke.
"It has been deemed the Wendigo's Rain, for it is wet, but not rain, and appears only when they are present."
"That'th not true," the curly-mane said. "Thnow is also brought by pegathi during winter. What'th a wed-ni-go, anywayth?"
"Wendigo," Sombra corrected. "They are supernatural beings that are present when enough hatred has formed in one area. Hatred itself is a spirit, one that grows stronger off of the absence of other spirits. The Wendigos feed upon this, and in return create their frozen rain."
"So... snow is Wendigo poop?"
"Yes."
"Huh." The colt looked around. "Well... wanna play with us?"
"Most certainly not! I have an empire to claim!" King Sombra turned away and regally trotted off.
"But, mithter," the filly cried, clinging onto his leg, "we need you for our... uh... thchool athignment!"
The colt followed suit. "Please, sir! You're King Sombra, aren't you? Please, we need to ace this test!"
Sombra paused for a moment, sitting on his haunches(which would've crushed the foals had they kept hanging on) and tapping his chin. "Very well then, but in exchange for this... information, I demand that you find the Crystal Heart and destroy it." Certainly, it was a lot to ask from a couple of foals, but anypony could to such a simple task. He would've done it long ago himself if it didn't contain such high levels of that L-word.
The foals exchanged confused glances, but nodded and sat down beside him, Twist pulling out two pads of paper and two pencils from her mane.
"Tell us about... tell us how you became King in the first place!" The colt snatched a pad and pencil from the filly's hooves and looked at Sombra with pleading eyes.
He stared at them blankly. "My father died. That's how everypony becomes a king or queen."
"Not nethetharily," the filly argued. "Thome ponieth overthrow the current ruler tho they can be king or queen. And thometimes, if no thuitable heir ith available, one of the noblethtallionth taketh the ruler'th plathe."
Using his magic, Sombra picked up one of the snowballs the colt had made and pelted the curly-mane with it. "Any other questions?"
"When did you become evil?" The filly picked up her pencil, ready to write despite the melting ice crystals on the paper.
"I was never evil! I'm not evil! I just... use different forms of magic. Yes, that's it. Different forms of magic."
"But if you aren't evil, why thuck the love from everypony?"
Sombra stuck his muzzle into the air. "Because love is gross."
The two foals began tittering.
"What? It is! Do you have any idea how infuriating it was to see my favorite character from an action play become infatuated with some whiny mare?! 'Oh, Kara, I can't live without you!' 'Oh, Mallin, you're the only one for me!' It's disgusting! To see the heroes who had fiercely kicked butt become wimps just to please their marefriends..." Sombra gagged and pointed down his throat. "Even as a wee little colt, I already knew I wanted to abolish love from my glorious Empire!"
"But your mommy loves you. Is that gross, too?"
"Well... no... especially not MY mother. But sacrifices must be made for the greater good of all ponies. Even if it means no more pajamas heated in the oven during winter."
"Ooh! My mom doeth that too!" the filly exclaimed.
"I- what? You didn't hear that." Sombra's face turned bright red. "Anyways, where was I?"
"You were talking about how gross love was," the colt reminded him.
"What do you mean, 'was'? It's still gross a thousand years later!" Sombra scowled.
The colt raised an eyebrow at him. "Gee, you're really... childish. Have you ever met Discord?"
Sombra shuddered. "Please never say his name ever again. Ever."
"Why didn't you jutht become a hermit?" the filly asked.
I'm tired of just describing them. Can you please say your names aloud so I can identify you to the audience?
"Who said that?!" Sombra whipped his head back and forth.
"The lazy author, who's running out of ways to describe us and is tired of referring to us as 'the colt and the filly'." Pipsqueak glared at the author. Wait, you can't see me! Stop that!
Twist rolled her eyes. "Weirdo."
"Stop that! You're scaring me! What is this sorcery? I have dabbled in every form of dark magic, and I have never-"
"It's called breaking the fourth wall," Pinkie said scornfully. "Duh."
The dark stallion stared at Pinkie Pie for a good ten seconds. "Okay, enough of this wall-breaking, please."
Pinkie disappeared.
Pipsqueak rubbed his chin with his hoof. "Okay... but if all you wanted to do was get rid of love, why did you force them to mine crystals for you?"
"Well, they all seemed really bored, so I gave them all jobs. I thought it'd improve morale, but apparently I was wrong. I told my prime minister that the collars were probably chafing their necks and that was why, but he insisted that they didn't like working eighteen-hour days in the mines. I did what any reasonable pony would do and forced him to mine crystals for me." Sombra thought for a moment, then added, "I tried to replace the iron collars with pleather ones, but it was really high-quality and they all thought it was the real thing, which made me look like a psychopath. I had to put the iron collars back into place."
Twist rolled her eyes. "Why didn't you jutht uthe a lower-quality pleather?"
Sombra's jaw dropped. "I- I- that's a wonderful idea! You're a genius! When I regain my throne, I insist that you become my royal advisor!"
"What kind of benefitth do I get?"
"Twist," Pipsqueak hissed, "he's evil. Don't try to negotiate job offers with him!"
"It'th not my fault you're not thinking of the future," Twist replied in a voice filled with scorn.
"Don't be ridiculous! Everypony knows evil bosses turn their backs on you! First, it'll be unpaid overtime, then less vacations, and then BAM! Working in the jewel mines!" Pipsqueak's tiny eyes grew huge as he spoke.
Twist put a hoof on her cheek. "You're right."
"I can hear you!" Sombra scowled at them.
"That'th okay," Twist said calmly.
Pipsqueak tugged on his weird shadowy mane. "Mister Sombra, why don't you try being reformed?"
"Yeah, like Dithcord?"
"I said to never say that name again," the dark stallion barked. In a calmer tone, he added, "Reformation is for sissies. And it's hard."
"It is not!" Pipsqueak hugged him. "I bet we could make you a nice pony right now!"
"Yeah!" Twist hugged him too. Sombra was now the meat of a hug sandwich, and he didn't like it one little bit.
"Get off! Get off!" He frantically tried to shove them away, but to no avail.
"Hug uth back," Twist said.
They both began to chant, "Hug us back! Hug us back! Hug us back!"
Sombra winced. "Do I have to?"
"We'll help you take over the Crystal Empire," the mottled colt offered.
Sombra sighed, rolled his eyes and slowly stretched his forelegs out. At a leisurely pace, he began to close his forelegs around the joyous foals.
"WHAT IN ALL OF EQUESTRIA ARE YOU DOING?!"
A Crystal Pony with glasses on a chain charged over, pulled the foals away before Sombra could hug them and slapped the stallion multiple times. And then some more. And some more.
"You get back into your icy prison right this second or else!" She scowled, her muzzle just centimeters away from the former king's.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is scarier than a mare protecting children, whether or not they're hers. He scrambled to his hooves, opened the ice back up, and jumped in.
"There goeth my future job," Twist grumbled.