Missing Pages & Scrawled Footnotes

by Ice Star

Pleading Child [Unfinished] [Scrapped]

Author's Note:

An old one shot that I loved developing and writing, but had to get scrapped. Contains spoilers for some Sombra stuff. This one was made and attempted sometime late in 2016, post-Divine Move, when FA was finally getting in the works and Enemy of Mine was still getting final kinks worked out of its outline and stuff like that. I love writing Sombra and Cadance, and this was meant to be an example of that.

In the historical pre-Sombra empire, it was stated that Onyx had an aunt and uncle he never met. Well, one idea I toyed with was having his cousin be Cadance, born to the Crystalline sister of Swan Song and mixed-heritage pegasus father who lived in the empire, on the edge of the mountains. Then, she was known as Skylark, but only knew a few words, and her nickname - 'Skyla'.

In this story, young Sombra encounters the cabin they have in the Gemheart Mountains and he promptly slays Cady's parents. It's survival for the youth, and he knows that within a small range of days (a week/three days) Onyx will claim his body and begin his part in first taking the Empire. Sombra is scared, angry, and has just had his first encounter with ponies, and must camp out on this woodsy and remote area, with a cabin hiding the bodies of the couple he just killed (and are unknowingly Onyx's family). He stays outside, and the poor guy is pretty hurt. He's left with his mind racing on what could begin to happen to him and his struggle for freedom, as well as how underfed and fairly scruffy he is.

It doesn't take long (literally like the evening after he kills 'Skylark's' parents) to find that there is somepony else with him: a young (she's seriously like three) child who spent all day playing and is eager to see her mommy and daddy... and who's Sombra?

Sombra doesn't like Skyla one bit, and is confused and infuriated by some of her childish behavior that she can't help. Still, he refuses to hurt her and stubbornly keeps her out of her own home, but he absolutely will not have her camping with him. Obviously, she's fit to take care of herself. (She totally isn't.)

Little Skyla needs someone to look after her, and though young Sombra lashes out at her and yells and growls at her (things he regrets within hours) he does try to feed her and keep her from the cold, not fully understanding why Skyla's parents loathed and tried to fight him off initially, since he's a demon, but Skyla (who is a small pure bean) doesn't fear him outright or hate him. (She even wants to play with him, which confuses the poor cat demon considerably!) He still looks at her knowing that she's likely to die no matter how not-terrible-maybe she might be, and that no matter what, Onyx will likely hurt her even more upon a) knowing she's a survivor and b) Sombra likes her.

With that in his mind, Sombra tries to plan a way to save little Skyla, who he moodily tolerates when she pulls on his mane, and tries to hug him clumsily and play with his kitty face. He even allows her to stay close to him for warmth, despite being incredibly uncomfortable with contact from another pony.

On the final day he has with Skyla, Sombra decides to work his magic - literally - and use his äerint to try and entrap her in a kind of protective seal with as much of his power as he can possibly manage to surge at the time. He funnels it and tries to teleport her somewhere he feels would be safe, where he imagines a peaceful forest that he's never been to, but thinks that if Skyla ended up in any place like that, she could be safe and lead a better life, since any fate left for her in the Empire could only be a cruel one. Alone and upset, Sombra waits for what little time he has left to run out, just hoping Skyla might survive, despite him always knowing the reality that he'll never see her again... or so he thinks.

In an epilogue/second chapter, an Istallion couple walking in the woods outside the village of Wispgrove find strange soil and a filly with magical burns. She says little, but 'Skyla' and 'Sabba' (a childish attempt at 'Sombra' that certainly would have brought some mixed feelings to the poor youth hearing it) and is lost, scared, and confused.

...There's no family that can be tracked down for obvious reasons. Not a trace can be found. She's adopted and named Cadenza, with Skyla being something like a sound from memory to her, perhaps an imaginary friend.

The impact this would have had on future stories, had this been canon, would be that Sombra finally realizes Cady is Skylark when she tells him she nicknamed her daughter 'Skyla' because it simply sounded right to her. Obviously having known 'Skylark and 'Cadance' both, he'd be happy to know he gets to see her again and that she's alive and well. She'd be even more of family to him. However, he'd never want to tell her about her birth family and about what only he remembers.

There were a couple ideas that could have sprouted from this that never really became as set in stone or as clear, and I never even had a final title for this. I just put the working title here.

What brought this story down as the sort of killing blow (other than a few other minor things) was how canonically, time displacement kills ponies. Or anything. It happens in Divine Move with Sombra. Unless Cadance was undead, she'd have been actual dead. Oops. How silly of me to forget an important part of my own lore aaaaa.

Enjoy!

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Pleading Child

Teen|Dark|Sad|Drama|Gore

He stands in what was once the peaceful living room to a cottage. The walls of were a subdued shade of magenta crystal with round windows,snugly shut with painted wooden shutters that muffled all the sound. The inside was dusty and sparsely furnished by somewhat sad, worn, wooden furniture draped with patchy blankets that probably couldn't handle being passed down another generation. Bright and shiny glass vases held fresh mountain flowers that nodded against the air that slipped through the shutters, as if they wanted to go home and once again be rooted in soil.

A fuzzy woolen rug was kicked at an odd angle in the brief and futile struggle. It was pierced with holes that were occupied by dully shining black crystals.

Everything was splattered with blood, there were flecks on the walls and large pools everywhere. They seeped out of two ponies lying on the ground, their forms were not yet cold.

A mare with a silver coat and pale rose mane and a mark of some sort of grey bird perched among mountain flowers. Mockingbird had been gardening at dawn today, now here she was. Her coat, like the pony next to hers had dulled with her life force. She no longer had a throat to sing lullabies with.

Next to her was her husband, till death do they part. He was a pegasus, although now it was hard to tell since the side pressed to the floor had been savagely torn by the crystals, severing one of his wings. He was pale blue and had a limp mane and tail of yellow. Had he really been down in the pastures tending his flocks just mere hours earlier? Had Azurite? I'm sure if you could have asked him now even he wouldn't believe you.

Azurite lay closer to the hearth, where a silent fire flickered as if all was well. That was how he found this place., the smoke from the chimney led him right to this simple little hovel in the mountains. It was so easy. There were no neighbors to speak of unless you counted the garden he saw in the distance. It was positively bursting with color.

The crimson aura encircling Sombra's curved horn dulled and the crystals stilled. Despite his youth there were dark circles under his eyes, which were a more vibrant shade then his magic, and a somewhat tired look to him. Even so he had a silent and aggresive way he carried himself that any thief would fear.