• Published 30th Jul 2013
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Sombra's Crucible, Twilight's Corruption - Dusk Raven



Guess what? Spike didn't deliver the crystal heart in time after all. And now, Sombra has Twilight in his clutches...

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I: Sowing

Twilight Sparkle knew what had to be done. With absolute determination on her face, she said, “You have to be the one to bring the Crystal Heart to the fair!”

“Me?” Spike glanced at the wave of black crystals advancing towards him. “But Twilight-“

“Go.”

“-But-“

“GOOOOOOOOO!”

With a look of desperate panic, Spike seized the Crystal Heart, jumping away as crystals sprouted beneath his feet, diving out the keep as it erupted with jagged spikes, leaving Twilight trapped inside.

She continued to try and escape. She tried firing a magical blast at the crystal barrier, but it reflected her attack, and she only narrowly dodged her own blast. She attempted to use dark magic to affect the crystals in some way, but just tapping into that power caused a foul, gnawing feeling inside her, and in the brief time before she couldn’t bear to use it anymore, she was unable to affect the crystals. At last she sat back on her haunches and waited.

And then, the darkness came.

It swirled around her, blinding her and sending a chill across her body. It infiltrated her lungs and made her cough as though it were smoke. It clung to her coat and made her feel filthy in an instant.

And then, before her, the face of the Dark King Sombra appeared, dark, fearsome, and looking more like the face of a predator than a pony. His most striking feature was his eyes, green with red irises, with contrails of purple magic seeping out from them.

Twilight’s eyes went wide and, with a shriek, she tried to back away, but the darkness solidified behind her and pressed into her. It forced her forward towards Sombra’s grinning face.

He spoke with a deep, dark, husky voice. “So… this is the unicorn who’s proven so resourceful…” He licked his teeth as beads of sweat dripped down Twilight’s face. “…The one who almost took my precious Crystal Heart away from me…”

“A-Almost?!” Twilight stammered nervously.

From within the darkness emerged the Crystal Heart, wrapped in the dark aura of Sombra’s magic. Twilight’s own heart sank into her stomach at the sight. Sombra grinned at her. “I’ll be back for you soon… first I must restore my empire, and deal with your friends... I suggest you make yourself comfortable.”

And with that, Sombra and the heart vanished. But it was a while before the shadows dispersed.

Twilight gulped, hoping her friends would be all right… as well as the Crystal Empire and all of Equestria…

...

Twilight had renewed her attempts to break through the black crystal barricade, with no success. The crystals either resisted her attempts to shatter them or simply regrew. Besides, even if she could escape them, such as with teleportation, a force would pull her back inside the barrier.

It had been hours, it seemed, since Sombra had last visited her. At first she hoped that her friends had found a way, that somehow somepony had found a way to vanquish him. But the hours seemed like years, and despair took her once more. At last, she came to a terrible conclusion. There was one thing she hadn't yet tried... or rather, she had tried it, but was too afraid of the consequences...

She was in the middle of retrying a form of magical blast when darkness enveloped her once more, making her shudder with its chilling caress.

“You know,” Sombra said, his voice echoing around the crystal prison. “You remind me of a mare I knew once. She was interesting. I think you’d have liked her – she was dedicated, studious, magically powerful, and strong of will. Until I took an interest in her. Then I broke her. And you know what? It turned out, inside, she wasn’t so interesting after all.”

“You monster,” was all Twilight could manage, turning to face the sound of the voice. Sombra's visage was obscured behind a mass of shadow, but she could still see his glowing eyes and make out a grin.

“Mm, the words she used were slightly different, but that was the gist of what she tried to say to me. Speaking of mares, I thought you might like to know how your friends fared against my power.”

Twilight gulped.

“The orange one was quite strong… but ultimately helpless. Brute force means nothing against me. She'll make a fine slave, a splendid workhorse.”

Twilight tried to avoid the mental image of Applejack, helplessly bucking at a mass of shadow as it enveloped her.

“The pink one was resourceful, I must say… completely confounding to fight. But sheer randomness can only hold out so long. I made sure she won’t have any space to pull tricks out of her sleeve…”

Twilight’s ears folded back, and she lowered her head to the ground and tried to cover her ears with her hooves. She didn’t want to hear any more. “Stop it.”

“The white mare… too insignificant to even mention. She is a lovely one, though…”

“SHUT UP!”

Sombra licked his lips. “Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. The yellow one… haha, she didn’t even tried to fight. She simply fled, as she should have, as soon as she saw how futile it was to fight me. But it was just as futile to run from me. Oh, you should have heard how she begged for mercy… almost worked, too.”

Twilight looked back up at Sombra, the faintest of a grin on your face. The gesture was more for show, more to reassure herself, than to indicate her actual feelings. “You’re lying. Fluttershy’s stronger than that. She wouldn’t abandon her friends, or give up if they were in danger.”

Sombra laughed, closing his eyes as he did so. “Believe what you like. Oh, and the rainbow-maned one… she gave me a lot of trouble with her speed. You can believe that, can’t you?” He looked at her, a grin on his face.

“I’ll bet. Rainbow Dash is-“

“-Dead. I had to kill her. A shame, I would have enjoyed breaking her immensely.”

Twilight sat in silence for a few moments, mentally refusing to accept the word spoken to her. “I think you’re making all this up to mess with me.”

“If that’s true, then why are you still here? Why haven’t I been vanquished and the Crystal Empire under the rule of that pathetic pink alicorn?”

“Don’t talk about Cadence that way!” Twilight jumped up, glaring at Sombra, before a tendril of tangible shadow encircled her neck and yanked her to the ground in a bow.

Sombra’s grin didn’t fade. “I’ll talk about my slaves however I like… speaking of slaves,” he glanced to the side, presumably out towards the Crystal Empire. “…Some of them seem to have the idea that death is preferable to life under my rule, the foals. I must go out and deal with this problem.” The tendril withdrew from Twilight’s neck, caressing the underside of her chin as it left.

“But first… something to remember your blue pegasus friend by.” A tuft of rainbow-colored tail appeared from the shadows and fell to the ground. Twilight stared at it in horror and incredulity as Sombra faded into the shadows and the shadows faded away… but his laughter lingered a moment longer.

Twilight spent the next moments staring at the rainbow-colored hairs on the ground. She wondered if there was any truth to what Sombra had said, if her friends and family were now slaves to a cruel and terrible ruler. She tried not to imagine what Sombra would put them through - or what he would put the entire empire through. Celestia had mercifully spared her those details - the visions of somber chain-gangs of crystal ponies was foreboding enough. Twilight knew what she had to do. She had to break free, no matter what, and find or rescue her friends, her brother, and her sister-in-law.

And the only way she could think of to do that was with black magic.

Author's Note:

And thus my second first story begins. Stay tuned, the real fun comes when black magic comes into play...