Late one night

Twilight Sparkle was up late into the night, studying, as she often was. Recently, however, she found that it wasn't for the same reasons as it used to be. Once upon a time, she would dive eagerly into her books with an innocent ambition for knowledge that would serve in her endeavors to better the lives of her friends and family, or impress her mentor in ever new ways, and it would keep her up into the wee hours of the morning.

Now, though, she couldn't sleep if she wanted to. She glared sourly at the moonbeams shining through her window, dark bags hanging under her eyes. Her wings shuffled on her back, the feathers in disarray. Her new body was always finding ways to bother her in some way or another, keeping her from her sleep and studies. Her bones ached and her wings needed preening, but she had her mind on other things, lately. Especially with this new shipment of books from the Crystal Empire.

She once might have been ecstatic to receive the ancient tomes, but she sighed wearily as she stood to sort through the bookshelves lining the walls of the Golden Oak Library. Her hoof trailed softly over a row of spines, eyes idly tracing the letters as her thoughts drifted.

The Crystal Empire. It wasn't so long ago that the Empire had returned, and yet it seemed like it had been years. The populace was still adjusting to the world around them. Twilight could only imagine how things must have changed for those ponies.

She stopped at a particular book, bound in blue with gold filigree along the spine, and pulled it out. A cluster of three crystals of various shades, ranging from bright to dark, was the only mark on the cover. She lifted it out of her hooves with her magic and walked almost lethargically back to her desk. Sitting down, she set the book in front of her, the light of the candles casting soft shadows around the room as Twilight sighed and reached up to rub at her neck, as if bothered by some discomfort. Her mind, once more, drifted back to the recent events up north.

Sombra.

The name still made her shiver. It had been a close call, and it seemed that only chance and pure luck had led to their success against the evil king. At the thought of him, Twilight frowned and closed her eyes. Just to check...to see if it was still there. As her eyelids descended, cutting out the light in the room, she felt it. Deep inside of her, deeper than her heart and her mind and her magic, there was a growing darkness. A shadow on her soul that was steadily expanding, reaching, pressing.

She opened her eyes, wincing at the light of the moon and the candles that cast their shadows across her desk. She wasn't particularly bothered. It had been there ever since Sombra's defeat, festering in the depths of her very being, growing every time she closed her eyes to sleep. It was there, even in her happiest moments and warmest dreams, a haze around the edge of her vision that never quite obscured the view of her smiling friends. It was a subtle shadow that warranted no worry or fear, not unlike the shadows cast by her candles. And its growing was like the growing shadows at dawn and dusk. Natural, simple, easy to understand.

Easy to understand, quite unlike this new magic she had learned to use. The purple alicorn opened the book, quickly finding a page depicting an illustration of a pony standing above three others, dark magic bubbling from his horn as he was worshiped by those around him. It was the magic that Sombra had used. The magic that she had used to defeat him. But something was missing.

It was a dark subject, to be sure, but it ignited a curiosity within her that burned like the sun. There was something out of place, something that separated Sombra's magic from her own, made it into something else entirely, that she simply had to find. She was perfectly aware that this was an area of study that she would usually not dare to tread, and she realized that it was that strange darkness inside that spurred her to seek it out. If this curiosity was a harness, however, pulling at her mind and playing at her desire to find out more, than it was an awful nice one. Because it worked.

Twilight read the words on the page tiredly, though carefully, as she had done many times before. It detailed the use of the magic, and while she wasn't about to go out and try it on the ponies of Ponyville, she had found that there were other ways to experiment with it. She closed her eyes, and felt the darkness within start to grow again. Her horn lit up, not with it's usual purple glow, but with a surge of dark magic, like the shadow within her was reaching outwards through her horn, pressing against the confines of her flesh in an attempt to escape. The magic bubbled and grugled as she held it there, studying it. Such a simple thing, she had found, to force the shadow into submission. She found exerting her power over it to be very cathartic. Even still, as she did so, she could hear, in the back of her mind, a screaming voice, calling out in fear and pain. It was her own voice, crying out at some atrocity or other, warning something away. She winced at the sound, but ignored it, returning her focus to the expanding darkness.

It was nothing to worry about.

It wasn't a problem.

She recalled a door in the cavern under the throne room that had had a similar effect. It had been uncontrollable, at first, refusing to offer it's simple function until she had used her newfound power to force it to stay still. But the door had contained a different enchantment, more of Sombra's dark magic, that had showed her her greatest fear in more than just a vision. She had been transported to a fantasy world, though a vile one.

But how? She needed more information. Luckily, she had plenty of time. As she opened her eyes, and a trail of green and purple magic faded from the corners, she smiled, tiredly, for the first time that night. She had time.

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