//------------------------------//
// Chapter 18: The Story's All Off 
// Story: The Company We Keep 
// by Ice Star 
//------------------------------//

I found him in a peacefully empty Canterlot street a few hours after visiting Twilight. One of his legs, his left foreleg to be more specific. I had so much I had to ask him, as well as needing to shout at him for hurting Twilight.

"Sombra!" I called even though I knew he was already aware of my presence, I saw his ears twitch in response and watched as he turned around.

"What is it Princess Amore?" I couldn't read his expression well, but his eyes had a fiery look in them and there were the remains of a triumphant looking smirk on his face.

"What did you do to Twilight?!" I had no idea what was keeping me from wiping that look off his face. Patience, yes that's it.

"Traumatize her, probably," he said with a shrug.

"Why?!"

"She pried too much and she got a tiny taste of what she had coming, such treatment was inevitable if she was going to keep doing what she found so thrilling."

"Do you know how sick you are?!"

He frowned slightly, now appearing to be bored. "She's alive isn't she? If you want I can fix that."

"NO!" I screamed, "Why don't you just listen to me?!"

"Well? What is it, Princess Amore? I'm standing here, maybe I'll listen to whatever it is you want to tell me, although I would advise you to choose your words very carefully."

"Oh, don't you tell me that, I know full well what your like when your angry, I activated that cloning spell-"

"Replicating Spell," he interjected.

I continued to go on, "-of yours, and you showed your true colors!"

He taps a hoof to his muzzle and smirked. "Let me guess they were gray, black, and crimson, no?"

"Oh, stop it! You even gave me this book." To prove my point I held up that very book with my magic. "Most of it was ruined in some sort of fire but everything I needed was in there, I bet you caused the fire as well, since you do love to burn things, the Archives are a perfect example of this!"

He blinked. "I didn't burn that book," Sombra mumbled.

I ignored him and kept going. "Everything said makes sense now, all the things you said, or at least the parts I'm willing to believe."

Sombra scowled. "Really, you think I'm a liar? I'm nopony's idea of kind, but don't you think you're venting at this point?"

"No! I think you need to listen to me-"

"I am, although rather half-heartedly and refuse to take you seriously."

"Well maybe I shouldn't take you seriously either! You aren't even one pony, if you were even a pony at all!"

He glared at me with the same maliciousness he must have shown Twi. "Pick your next words very carefully..."

"So which one did I trust back there in Gildentundra, was it Sombra or Onyx?"

"It was me, I swear it was-"

"Yes, but who is 'me'? Don't think I don't know which one I'm dealing with."

"You've only ever-"

"STOP TALKING! I know what happened with you know, I figured out who Onyx is, Twi told me a bit and I get it now!"

"Tell me what you learned, " he said through gritted teeth. His ears were pinned back as well and I could see that if I continued to push him any farther he might loose it, based on the creeping green tint in his eyes.

I forced myself to swallow and bit my tongue trying to calm down just enough so he wouldn't flip out. I couldn't meet his eyes and looked at the cobbled streets instead, grateful that this was such a quiet part of the city.

"Well," I started with a shaky voice, "it all started with Starswirl the Bearded. He had an apprentice."

I quickly glanced up at Sombra and was relieved that I couldn't tell what he was feeling, so I decided to continue.

"His apprentice, a young colt, didn't know who his family was. He - the apprentice, not Starswirl - was malicious and cruel as well as highly ambitious and self-absorbed. He wanted power, and lots of it. One day he found an artifact of some kind, and without a second thought he sealed his fate, I'm not entirely sure what happened next but he cast a powerful, and completely taboo spell. It gave him the power he wanted but it came with the cost of himself, he was driven mad and was no longer alone."

I still refused to look at him, did I really want to see his face? The face of a pony who had violated the biggest taboo in magic for the sake of greed.

"With their mind completely shattered, the sorcerer and his demon-"

Wait a moment, did I just see him flinch? That can't be right, this is his life story.

"-traveled to the nearest place they could find in attempts to satisfy their lust for cruelty, yet secretly one of them, who still had some of his animal nature in him was able to regain some of his mind at some point, however lost most of him was to the monster inside, who constantly tormented him... well that is until he decided to piece himself back together in a very literal sense, turn up at the castle... w-well, you know the rest... but..."

"But what?" he questioned, voice distant.

"Why'd you do it?" I asked unable to stay calm, "Why?! You knew exactly what would happen, and you still went along with it! How could you do such a thing?! Surely, beneath all that pride there was true empathy of some kind? I've seen you show it before!" I had finished the story and met his eyes with those last words.

"Why did I do what, Pink One? Tell me that."

"Why did you cast the spell? You seem smart, so how could you do something like that and create a Shadow - that's what the few readable bits of that book said they were called. How could you be such an impulsive apprentice?"

He continued to maintain the aloof demeanor. "Why do you think I was the one who cast the spell?"

Why did he continue to mess with me like this?!

"It's because you aren't a monster, Sombra! Onyx is the demon! It's a lesson drilled into us all since foalhood: artificially created souls are unnatural and wrong, doomed to be evil, creating such a creature isn't like creating a construct, who have no souls, and are just that: constructs, not real life. Only dark magic can do this and you should know this better than-"

"Have you ever met a Shadow, as you call them?"

"Well, you..."

"No, I meant the demon." Every word he spoke was surprisingly and terrifyingly calm for Sombra.

"Well, then how would you know?"

"Sombra, everypony knows that demons - you obviously know, the 'ponies' from nothing - should be avoided."

"So you've never met one? Talked to one? Anything?"

"I already told you: no."

Sombra glared at me with even more barely controlled fury then in his youth, and spat through a venomous smile: "Haven't you?!"

He turned away and before I knew it was walking away, clearly fuming. "You can forget that silly offer of your friendship as well!"

I galloped after him, turning street corners as fast as I could in an attempt to catch up with him.

"Sombra!"

I turned another narrow and deserted side-street.

"Sombra, wait!"

Was that a crimson cloak I saw? I headed in that direction.

"What do you mean, 'haven't you?'"

Ah-ha! I think I had him on this one, I swear I saw Sombra.

I turned the corner.

It was a dead end.

Sombra was gone.

He wouldn't be found unless he wanted to be.

I turned around and almost tripped over something: a hastily wrapped parcel that seemed quite light in weight. It must have fallen out of his saddlebags because when I tried to unwrap it, a piece of paper fell out. It was covered with writing that was barely legible.

There was a name and a roughly calculated date.

Nothing more.

I put the paper back, lifted the parcel onto my back, and headed towards the train station where I would meet Shining Armor and return to the Crystal Empire. When I thought of that my already active magic glowed white for a brief moment and faded just as quickly.

I looked down at the newly acquired package, in the corner a small cluster of of blue, pink, and purple crystals had formed.

I was making progress. It was the last thing I remember thinking before falling asleep on the train ride home.



...



Haven't you?!

“Life is full of disappointments.”

Because you've been through a lot, and you aren't exactly an optimist, Sombra.

"I see how it is."

You think that others doubt your existence and you hate that.

"-and my authority."

You're stubborn and willful - probably by whatever nature created you - but most of your life choices may have not really been yours.

"After all," he added flatly. "I'm supposed to be a king... supposed to..."

It's what he wanted you to be, isn't it?

"I was going to say that it was impossible to pity a heartless tyrant like you!"

I shouldn't have called you that when you aren't the heartless one. I'm sorry.

"Really? I'm just a terrible critic? I'm not a tyrant, a Tartarus-bound monstrosity, a freak of nature, a pariah, or the sort who makes sadists look like pacifists, just to name a few. Actually, I think I'll go on, it's not like you can stop me. So what else am I not: am I not a monster? A usurper?! An uncontrollable ball of wrath?! You think I don't know this? I know what everypony thinks about me, and hardly a word of it's true, for the most part."

You know that others know exactly what you are, even though you don't care for the most part.

"Onyx did. It's nice that you want to blame your life problems on me, but we both know somepony else is far gultier than I am of that particular offense."

Did he use you as a scapegoat? I believe you on this one, that smile couldn't have been yours, right?

"It's simple: I don't smile, grin, laugh, smirk, half-smile, of my own free will..."


It's because you were so miserable there.

"...Although I shout quite often."

Because you felt trapped?

"You think I enjoy any of this?! Do you think I ever had a choice?!"

No, you never did.

"... most of the time he smiled so happily as he carried out his deeds and was completely lost behind a veil of madness. He talked joyfully to those that did not exist, to himself. He liked it when my ponies screamed."

That was Onyx, wasn't it?

"...sometimes he acted stranger, a violent mess of anger, a horrifying and mysterious mix of fire and cold, who locked himself away from everything and screamed just as much as anypony else did..."


That must have been you, Sombra.

"Don't ever refer to me as 'king' again, I'm not a king, I'm not a ruler, and I never wanted to be."

You kept telling me this and I never listened...

"The assumption that books only have one page and everything is going to be given to you without even the slightest hint of a challenge."

You must hate me for that, don't you?

"I don't have any family members."

It's why you don't know them - because you never had any to begin with.

"...they don't emit the same magic."

Of, course, you're magic so you would know... but it could also just be because you are weird.

"I'm a spell."

Which is why you can detect magic - at least I think that's why - and it explains why you have no family.

Haven't you?

Haven't you?!

HAVEN'T YOU?!