If I hadn’t cast the noise canceling spell everypony in the hall would have heard his shouting.
I fumbled around, since my eyes were still adjusting to the dim light, then I stumbled through the aisles of antiques. Finally, I located Sombra - eyes glowing with the pure light of powerful magics, purple smoke flowing out of his eyes, and teeth changing into fangs. I was frozen in place, not sure what to do. This couldn't be good, but why was he screaming? What was happening? Didn't he know how to use the potion? What could he be seeing right now that would scare him? I didn't know how to stop this. If I went to fetch somepony my quest would be over and I don't want that either.
Sombra began to rise shakily from his sitting position and turned to a bookshelf nearby. I watched in confusion. He was talking… but it wasn’t to me. With his eyes still glowing, he glared maliciously at a bookshelf.
“YOU VILE BITCH!” he screamed.
What should I do? This was starting to scare me and his behavior was alarming. Was he possessed? Why else would he be screaming at the archaic chemistry journals of past mages? Was this a sick joke of his?
“Lene! What is wrong with you? What are you?!” His horn lit up to join his glowing eyes and he backed into a bookshelf and I could only watch in fear as it toppled. What was happening here?
Sombra was startled by his own movements and blasted the bookshelf with the magic on his horn, blowing it to bits.
I was still frozen. All those priceless relics... gone.
Cadance, why are you such a coward?
Tears poked my eyes a bit. Maybe the saying was true, 'you are your own greatest obstacle'. Whenever something like this happened, I froze. It was instinct, and my instinct was quickly proving to be terrible.
“LARA, YOU MONSTER!” Sombra blasted another bookshelf. Unlike the first, this one caught fire.
Fire. Burning hot flame in a room filled mostly with wood, canvas, and paper. My tears were flowing freely now from the smoke and my throat began to feel dry.
I was scared. Terrified. Petrified!
I'm the worst Princess… frozen in fear, unable to do anything.
I cursed myself for still standing. I was going to die! Why couldn’t I move? Why wouldn’t I move? The smoke was overwhelming me. Sombra jerked his head to the side where I could now see his eyes more clearly. I could see through the smoke a bit and his eyes appeared to be watering as well... or was he crying? Was it a trick of my eyes or was it from the smoke being dense?
What happened next I can only wish was fake.
Sombra's aura began to change into a whitish color matching his glowing eyes. A peculiar kind of compass rose emerged beneath him, its bright white light piercing through the smoke. Then came more screaming, but this time I understood even less of what he said since I don't even think he was speaking Equestrian this time. At this point I had worked up enough ability to slip Lore of Yore into my saddle pack.
What is this magic? I thought, watching in horror; as helpless as ever, my mind as frozen as my body.
I tried to decipher what he was screaming as quickly as possible. That was when I noticed that one of the things he said, ‘ignis’, sounded like ‘ignite’... which means to explode in flames.
...Explode.
Explode?
Explode?!
He was going to blow up the Archives!
Not wanting to become ashes, I leapt into the strange compass-like circle just as flames licked the spot where I was previously standing, and I quickly tackled him just as he finished whatever spell he had just cast.
“Sweet Elysium take me, if Celestia fails to save me.” I muttered, just as the Archives blew up.
The only that kept us from plummeting to our death, many stories below, was the fact I could fly and was not knocked unconscious at the time of these events. Unfurling my wings, which was difficult with singed feathers, I grabbed the falling Sombra by the back of his cloak, and as I swooped back up, I saw the full extent of our damage.
The tall tower of the Archives was being supported hurriedly by the combined magic of more unicorns than I could count quickly. Pegasi were dousing the smoldering ruins with rainclouds. The other Princesses would find out soon, if they hadn’t yet. Guards, distinguishable by their armor, also rushed to the scene aiding in any way they could, with the unicorn troops being the most helpful due to their slightly stronger magic.
I turned around, not wanting to look anymore, and then I noticed something odd. Despite the fact that I mostly escaped the flames untouched, Sombra’s cloak was singed around the edges and I could see that he had no cutie mark.
I was shocked - I thought that he would have a particularly tell-tale mark - but landed quietly in an empty, and thankfully clean alley hoping this bizarre errand might end. We had been in the alley for a few hours, when I saw him start to shift, and my breathing calmed.
“Why don’t you have a cutie mark?” I asked when he came to.
“What is a cutie mark?” he asked. “Do you mean the marking equines have?”
His face contorted into a minor scowl as he turned to inspect the damage of his cloak.
I nodded awkwardly - his reply was weird. “Yes…”
He made series of annoyed mumbles that I could only make a few words out of: “…wasn’t supposed to know…”
Didn’t he know I was right here? Out of awkwardness, I cleared my throat.
He immediately looked up. “What?” he inquired, as if I were inconveniencing a schedule of his.
I dragged a hoof on the stones in random patterns. I have a question, but should I say it? A stroke of luck occurred as he stared at my hoof before raising his gaze, a mildly disdainful look on his face.
“I suppose you want to know ‘why’, huh?”
He guessed it. Slowly, I gave a small nod.
He took a deep breath. More lectures? Was he secretly hiding a purple mane?
"In most cases, dark magic is an irreversible transformation of some kind, and I was, umm, certainly young when... when I..."
"First discovered it?"
"Yeah, something like that," he muttered with a snort. I earned a glare for interrupting him. "Even if I had a symbol when I began it would have taken it from me. Since you don’t seem to understand much, I might as well explain a bit more. You see, dark magic creates… let's just call it a 'personality', unless I decide to explain anything else to you. Dark magic creates these personalities, as I've elected to call them, so the caster will no longer exist as themselves. As for your Princess Celestia,” he said, spitting her name out like it was poison, “she knows one or two of the spells but she did not truly go into it like...”
"Like you did?"
"Shut up," he snapped.
There was quiet for a bit.
“Now, does that satisfy you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, feeling a bit paranoid about the whole 'being in an alley’ thing especially since Sombra just admitted that he's even less mentally stable than before, “but are you just a jumble of personalities?”
He grumbled for a moment, and sighed. “No, I am Sombra and while I have a different incarnation in the past as I imagine you would say, I am not an unstable mess.”
I nodded - so he's just a spell caster who messed with something he shouldn't have, which must have messed with his head. “Can we go now?”
He looked around and shrugged.
“But just so you know, we will need some disguises after what happened in the Royal Archives.” I added.
He looked at me blankly, so I told him what happened.
When I finished he slammed his head against a nearby wall.
“Yes, we can go. But could I make the disguises?”
Make?
...
From behind an alley in Canterlot, two ponies stepped out. One was a white pegasus mare with a green, yellow, and orange mane; her yellow eyes blinked, and then she drew up the hood of her ragged cloak. A typical looking unicorn stallion emerged behind her. He was dark blue with a red and orange mane. Purple eyes gleamed impatiently.
“Come on,” he hissed.
The mare looked up from a puddle. She seemed nervous.
“Uhh... yes, coming.”
She quickly scuttled away much to the annoyance of her blue companion, who adjusted a matching cloak and shifted his aloof yet paranoid gaze over the square.
If one looked closely they might have seen the cloaks shimmer.
As if the garments should have looked different and the ponies who wore them weren’t quite what they seemed.
But expert level illusions are rather rare… aren’t they?
…
When we arrived at the Canterlot Train Station, I was still in shock over my new look; it flickered closely when I looked at it but nopony else seemed to notice this. This also happened with Sombra: when I looked at him the disguise flickered, but when any other pony did there was no reaction, leading me to believe that the disguise was seamless. Or was it that because he made both our disguises we could both somewhat see each other? I wasn’t too sure, not being as learned when it came to illusion spells.
Worse, when Sombra and I reached the platform where we got off earlier, I realized that the train, a speedy passenger engine that we used to get from the Empire to here, was…
Gone.
In all the ‘drama’ that happened, we must have gone off schedule.
Fretting, I turned to Sombra. “W-what do we do? Neither of us brought any money and if we try to book a new train we might have to show identification or we might get delayed trying if we don't have to show identification and what if-”
Sombra put his hoof in my mouth to cut me off, left eye twitching slightly.
I guess nervous breakdowns annoyed him. That was made clearer by the fact that his hoof, which obviously did not taste good with those iron shoes on, was in my mouth. Blegh.
He nodded over to a train that had just pulled up. An overloaded cargo train. An old overloaded cargo train. An old overloaded cargo train that was unbelievably slow. This train would turn what was a brief trip on a fast passenger train into a month long trek to the Empire, presuming that that was where it was going. I looked at the painted logo on one of the crates being loaded on. A crystal heart. There was no doubt of where it was heading now.
He was not thinking of...
Sombra's twitch turned into an unbelievably smug smirk. “Looks like we got lucky, now all you need is your royal escort, Princess.”
He was.
My ‘royal escort’ snuck the both of me onto a train car. At sword point.
How was this going to play out? I thought as Sombra lit a lantern by the foot of a crate.
As the train pulled away I reluctantly closed the door, shutting out all natural light. As he sulked over to a corner of his own, realization hit me.
I'm on an adventure.