(Past Chapter 33) Darkest Hour (Part 2)
Iron Diamond bucked away another one of the Changelings trying to break into the palace. They seemed to know where all the more dangerous weapons were kept, and he couldn't afford to try and make a break for one of them if it meant leaving the others open to being attacked, or worse, somehow subverted.
Unfortunately for these changelings, Iron Diamond was never without a weapon, ever since he lost his leg fighting alongside Weiss during the last invasion.
"Take this!" he roars, throwing up the bluntly clawed metal limb attached to him. The three changelings that tried to go through him to get into the palace run straight into a jet of flaming oil that flew out of his mechanized leg, sending them flying away with a chittering shriek as they scramble into one of the fountains nearby.
Sadly, where there's three, there's a dozen. Glancing at the rest of the Shadow Guard, it doesn't look good. He spots Helmsplitter with his massive axe, swinging it at the flying bugs fruitlessly.
The other guards aren't doing well either, Materia, Golem-powered weapons and raw brute strength somehow failing against the unnatural stamina of their opponents, and the burning touch of their love-coated bodies. One soldier tackles a changeling out of the air, only to be blasted off of them by two others.
He grimaces when he notices the three he just ignited climbing out of the pool, ready for round two.
"You want some? Come get some you little ash-wipes!" he shouts, charging towards them and leaping into the air, crystal spears flying from the open chamber in his mechanical hoof and raining down onto them.
He grunts painfully as a changeling tackles him out of the air, its hole-filled hoof shapeshifting into a long wicked blade.
Gritting his teeth as his coat burns on contact with the love-charged creature straddling him, he tries to fend it off as it stabs at the ground several times, missing his head by inches. With one final strike, the changeling is interrupted as a blast of yellow and red flames wash over the entire area, blasting it off of him.
"Captain Diamond! I'll take care of this, get everypony to the evacuation zone!" Eclipse Flash shouts, standing next to Glitter Miss Priss, the two of them standing with all the regal fury of an alicorn as their enchanted armor hisses with hate-filled steam and fire.
He drags himself to his hooves and salutes to the mares. "Got it," he nods, galloping away to rally the guards.
As he does, he watches the two lay into the changeling army with unparalleled fury, bucking and blasting entire swathes of the bugs away as they fight.
"We might just be able to win this thing," he mutters, hopping off a chunk of crystal rubble over Helmsplitter.
"We need to get to the evac point! Get the guard together, we're moving out now!" he shouts, prepared to fight his way there.
Meanwhile, Dr. Absolutely Real Homeopathy is scrambling to do as Lord Weiss demanded in one of his more paranoid fits.
"Dad why are you smashing everything up, we gotta go!" Ruby shouted in an uncharacteristically complete sentence as he scrabbled and ran into the lab, Padparadscha under his arm like a football.
"Science can be rediscovered but it can't be undiscovered son, we can't leave anything behind! Help me!" he shouts, leaning up onto his hindhooves and sweeping a row of crystals onto the floor where they shatter.
"We don't have time, they're gonna be here any minute!" Padparadscha says with tears of fear in his eyes.
It takes only a moment for the doctor to make the decision when he realizes the danger. "Alright, alright!"
As the three run out into the hall, they spot a band of changelings rushing down it towards them, and bolt in the opposite direction!
"Ruby, where's Sapphire?!" Dr. Real shouts, galloping behind the two dragons and periodically kicking at buttons on the walls that cause a variety of odd effects behind them.
"He was in one of the game rooms at Crystal Egg!" the dragon responds, leaping over a bleeping trapped floor that encases four changelings in a giant mass of ice.
"I'll find him, get to safety, both of you!" he shouts, skidding around a corner as they both keep running.
"Dad, wait!" Ruby shouts, skidding to a halt as he tries to run back to Dr. Real, who waves them off frantically as he slams buttons on a nearby wall, triggering Wacky Workbench's lockdown procedures.
"I'll be fine! Go now!" he shouts as thick metal hatches slam shut, locking him in the hall with a hoard of changelings flying, crawling, and running towards him.
"H-here goes nothing," Dr. Real mutters nervously, dropping down onto his belly with his hooves over his head.
The changelings skid to a halt, cautious and curious at the seemingly surrendering pony.
Behind them, a loud wet smack echoes out behind them, and the changelings turn in unison, blasting a yellow chunk of gelatinous goop with beams of deadly magic
As they do, however, they hear more and more noises, hatches in the walls opening to reveal Wacky Workbench Zone's Boss.
Fearfully, the changelings continue trying to blast the yellow masses of goop as they pour out of the walls and begin forming together, combining into a gigantic yellow creature with a single gigantic eye.
Due to the potential danger of the experiments that took place in the R&D-dedicated section of the Shadow Realm, the boss had to be able to restrain and deal with all manner of hostilities. Thus, Weiss had given the lab boys an inspiration for an ideal defense system.
The changelings began to back away fearfully, several of them shapeshifting into copies of Dr. Real in an attempt to confuse the mass of liquid-like golems.
Unfortunately, it seems they didn't read the safety documentation that Dr. Real himself had helped to author, as Yellow Devil was designed to subdue and take down anything that didn't immediately lay down to await transport.
Silently absorbing the various deadly attacks, the mass of shapeshifting biocrystaline goop began to fire chunks of itself at the changelings, charging forwards as it did with hulking gigantic fists.
One of the changelings shrieked, scrabbling at the door behind Dr. Real as its brethren were being absorbed into the abomination, turning fearfully towards the monster when it became clear that nothing would let it escape from the enchanted mass.
Ds Dr. Real dropped out through a portal that snapped shut before the last changeling could leap through it as well, a small speaker on the Yellow Devil offered a helpful bit of advice.
"ASSUME THE POSITION"
The changeling screamed.
Glitter Bomb had been in the mines when the alerts began to blare out, and after a quick portal-assisted trip to the evacuation shelter, he searched desperately for his wife, Whittle Miss Priss.
"Whittle!" he shouted, muscling through the crowd of frightened Longma, his flames flaring bright with worry.
With a gasp of relief, he saw her, and the two embraced briefly before their emotions returned to worry.
"Where's Glitter?" he asked, looking at her with concern that she matched and surpassed.
"She's aboveground, fighting those horrible monsters," Whittle managed tearfully.
He grit his teeth. A pony shouldn't be caught up in something like this, as young as she is. If he were a few years younger, just a few, maybe he could be up there trying to help her.
"Attention everypony! Remain calm, and be prepared to go through the Equestrian Portals marked at the four exits!" a pony shouted into a voice-amplifying crystal. At the same time, arrows began to point out Arcana Janus gateways, ones that were normally used by the Equestrian Embassy above this bunker in order to pass quickly from place to place.
As if to mock the pony who just pointed them out, the crowd gasped as four loud pops marked the detonation of explosives hidden at the portal gateways, and, lacking magic to sustain them without a physical binding to hold them open, they began to snap shut.
The result was utter cacophany, Longma screaming in panic at the sight of Changelings beginning to flood in through portals of their own.
The nearby Shadow Guards burst into action, spears flying as they flung the weapons through the air at the buzzing foes, while other guards practically flew to where the changelings were pouring in, combining their energies to summon up thick crystal walls in an attempt to stem the flow.
Backing away from a changeling drone that got entirely too close before being slammed to the ground by a guard, Glitter Bomb suddenly felt his legs buckle, Whittle holding him up as he coughed violently.
"What's wrong?!" she shouted, pulling him back deeper into the bunker where guards were beckoning to the crowd to go.
"I don't know," he said with a cough, the scent of the changeling making him feel ill.
With a torturous groan of metal and crystal, the guards managed to block off the portals, and seal the exits, pinning Changelings to the ground with a combination of spears and crystal magic.
Through one of the holographic screens, Glitter could see something building in the center of the Crystal Egg Zone outside, as Celestia and Luna fought some kind of gigantic queen bug in a desperate struggle.
High in the sky, unknown to the fighters below, he saw the faint image of a heart floating over the empire, one that was slowly filling up with a bright light that made his teeth itch.
Celestia and Luna glanced at each other, dozens of half-formed thoughts and words passing between them through their subtle expressions. Among them, one thought seemed to reign supreme between the sisters.
"This is bad," Celestia said, watching as the Changeling Queen seemed to be growing more aware of the power she currently held over the two alicorns, something that was not at all helped by the various wounds the two princesses were taking with every failed dodge or breached barrier.
"She can't be Tireless, can she?" Luna muttered in response, disturbed at the possibility that they might be facing a fellow immortal.
Celestia shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We have to hold her off as long as we can."
Chrysalis decided to laugh. She felt she had earned it, upon realizing just how powerful she was! The Crystal Heart had allowed her to refine far more love from her hive's usual feeding, but this? This threw all of her thoughts out of the water, it was exhilarating!
And then she was smashed aside by a pillar of unexpected water as Priss and Eclipse.
"Princesses!" Eclipse shouted, sliding towards them on a thin growing rail of crystal that sprouted beneath her hooves as she rode forwards.
Priss, at the same time, landed with a heavy stomp, rearing back and bucking a changeling nearby through a building.
"We'll hold this one off, you need to get to Weiss!" Priss shouted, standing between them and the briefly dazed queen as Eclipse runs into a nearby building.
"You do realize she's stronger than both of us together? You cannot defeat her, I can assure you!" Luna exclaimed worriedly.
Priss shakes her head. "No offense princess, but we've been trained to fight ponies stronger than us. You, however, clearly haven't. Weiss needs you now. He's got a plan, but he can't do it with Sombra up his ass," she explained quickly, stomping the ground and dropping all three of them into a small chasm as Chrysalis blasted up a huge chunk of land with an enraged beam of magic.
"We don't have time, go now!" she shouted, already leaping out of the pit and firing off what looks suspiciously like a water-propelled missile at the queen from a slot on the shoulder of her armor. The projectile exploded as it hit the changeling, erupting into a massive pillar of spikes and fire.
With a single shared look, the twin alicorns nodded, and took flight towards where they could sense vast amounts of dark magic being unleashed.
My fighting, previously somewhat vigorous, even without access to my hatred, had turned sluggish and desperate.
As I rolled over on the ground to avoid a thin spear of lightning-coated crystal thrown by Sombra, I hoped the message had gotten across.
'We're kind of busy on our end, Weiss, didn't you say you were going to fight him yourself?' Priss had said frantically, dodging attacks.
'Yeah, and I changed my fucking mind! Just get someone over here, I can't keep this up much longer with the damn Kingdom Heart gone!' I remembers shouting desperately through the communicator link.
"Come now, Weiss. This is unbecoming of you," Sombra said casually as he floated to the ground, walking towards me without a care in the world as I leapt up, ignoring the soot clinging to my white coat and trying to create a crystal sword to protect myself with.
"You're acting like a scared animal without your precious little bonfire to vent to. Pun not intended, of course," he laughs as my horn sparks and sputters painfully, the dark magic failing to obey me in the thick pink fog.
I frown. There's nothing, I can't think of any Vancian spells I have left in my kit that I can cast in my current state. Another one of my arms has already melted off from the hate building inside me, and the fires had already started erupting from my body again as my own hate began to well up from inside me, mingling with my greed.
It wouldn't be long before the other Longma started to notice it as well. The Kingdom Heart was more than just a giant black fire, it was feeding on the hatred of the entire Longma race, and now it isn't. Without something to drain that emotion, I could easily see it building up in every single pony here, until they were as bad off as I am.
Grimacing as I resisted the urge to try and pat out the fire burning on my side, i realized that I likely wouldn't survive long enough to witness it get that bad.
"I'll figure a way out of this little game, Sombra. I always do," I retort bitterly, resorting to a feint as I galloped towards him, sliding under his reactionary blast of magic and snatching the dead crystal spear he left embedded in the ashen ground, whipping around and cracking him across the head with it.
I was forced to leap away with a grimace as he suddenly unleashed a pulse of dark energy that seemed to yank everything around him to the ground.
As I throw the spear at him, he catches it in his telekinesis, throwing it aside without a care.
"You should stop acting so desperate, Weiss. If you can't fight me with magic anymore, then you know your defeat is inevitable. By now, the princesses have likely fallen to Chrysalis, and soon, the rest of your precious Shadow Realm will fall as well."
As I try to catch my breath, Sombra suddenly pauses, thinking about what he just said. "Hmm, perhaps... Ahh, yes."
He looks at me with a self-satisfied smile. "There's no point in being afraid of the inevitable."
I sense something before he does, and take a deep breath to calm my nerves.
"Yeah. You're right," I admit as I leap back and watch as a miniature sun falls down where we were standing, the sphere of plasma ripping through the ground and growing to a vastly larger size as Sombra darts away with a pained scream.
Luna lands first, catching me before I can collapse. "What is the plan?" she says quickly as Sombra's wounds begin to heal rapidly, something in the pink mist proving suitable to repair his body.
"The Kingdom Heart formed because a lot of hate was shoved into one spot. If it happened once, it can happen again, but I need time. Keep him off of me," I hiss, grabbing at a spot on my leg that turns completely to ashes from love poisoning.
Luna looks at me with quiet tension. "Bringing that much dark magic into your body could kill you, or worse."
I glance at the princess sardonically as Celestia leaps out of the way of a blast of vivid green energy from Sombra, who is flying through the air trying to fight her.
"So could this, so get over yourself and don't let me get shot. I know protection missions suck ass, but at least you don't need to escort me," I mutter.
With a huff, Luna smacks me with her wing. "Very well. If you die, however, be forewarned that I will find a way to smack you in Elysium for it. she jokes to hide the nervousness she has at my asinine plan.
I smirk as she flies off to harry Sombra, who seems to be growing larger as he activates something in his twisted body.
I sigh, getting ready to do something incredibly stupid. With a snap of my fingers, I manage to summon a tiny golem via portal, and shakily punch in the long code to send a message to everyone.
Every single Longma that can receive a message, all at once.
"Sombra has extinguished the Kingdom Heart."
Dr. Real hears from the PA system as he drags Sapphire into one of the nearby safe-rooms. Something inside him feels bitter, bitter towards the changelings, but also towards himself. If only he could have done more, then maybe his poor child wouldn't be like this right now.
The burning inside him is painful, but he pushes it aside, and focuses on his lord's words.
"Changelings have invaded the Shadow Realm."
Glitter Bomb leans up from the cot he's been stuck in by one of the medics, the fever under his skin grows as he hears Weiss Noir's words. He knows that they've invaded, damn it!
And now his own daughter is stuck fighting the queen of those damn bugs, and she's losing!
The medic tries to hold him down, but he's getting angrier by the minute, he feels like he's on fire with frustration.
"To all of you who are afraid, for yourselves, for your families, for your friends and neighbors, I'm asking you to put it aside!"
Ruby is taciturn as he huddles together with Padparadscha in the bunker with the others. Where is Dr. Real? Where's Sapphire and Cadence?
"I want my dad," Paddy says sniffling.
"He'll be here. Be strong," Ruby says, holding his brother tight as he feels tense and ready to protect his little bro from anything that tries to break in here. For dragons, pain is a constant. Pain is fire, and fire is pain.
It makes sense to Ruby, in that moment, why dragons breathe fire. They do it to gain, to steal treasure, but much more importantly...
They do it to burn those who take what is theirs.
"Without the heart, you must feel it, the growing agony of hate inside you! Please, push through that pain! Let it grow, and unleash it!"
Priss hisses as she listens to her armor's communicator belt out one of Weiss's long winded monologues.
She's flagging, hard.
"Hahahahaha! This is incredible! With power like this, my precious changelings will never again live in the dark! We will take over this land, and there's nothing you or any other pony can do about it!" Chrysalis laughs.
Priss forces herself to move, pistons hissing as she dodges out of the way of another magical blast, responding to it with a large smokebomb that covers the area.
"Eclipse, do you have that damn thing working yet?" She screams back into the building where her friend is trying to trigger all the defenses at once.
This whole damn mess is annoying to the extreme. Her limbs feel like they're burning from exhaustion, but she ignores it. After all, that's what the armor is for.
"My followers... Who roam the world! Give me the power-"
Eclipse hears her teacher exclaim dramatically, stumbling as a splatter of her own blood sprays across the console, making it light up in an eerie glow.
She frantically begins to recite the poem that Weiss taught her. He told her to never repeat it to anyone, as it was apparently a critical part of her coronation to come next year.
"When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say." she begins, watching as all around the Crystal Egg Zone, gigantic machines begin to rise up out of the ground, eyes and cameras alike glowing red as several of them manage to shrug off the effects of the love poisoning by sheer virtue of the variety in their designs and power sources.
As she frantically continues reciting the poem, she senses something growing above the Crystal Egg Zone, a spell that burns her skin as she feels its light radiating in through the window.
She prays Weiss isn't too late.
"-Of all your hatred!" I say into the golem, steeling myself for the agony to come.
It starts slow, as I feel wisps of black begin to arrive from the Crystal Egg Zone.
The wisps flow into my body, and I feel the burn as hatred that was never meant to be mine sears its way through me.
As they increase, I feel myself locked in place, helpless as the wisps turn into a torrent. Motes of hatred begin to arrive not just from the Crystal Egg Zone, not just from the Shadow Realm even.
I feel the hatred of the Longma rip its way through me, as even the ones all around the world, and the friends they've told about the message all share their hatred, pouring it out into a deadly cocktail that I would be screaming in pain at, if not for my paralized body.
The love in the air is a distant memory as I watch the sphere of roiling blackness begin to grow. The mist is being banished by the sheer volume and density of the dark sun above, but it's not without consequences.
I feel panic rising up as veins of charcoal are literally burnt through me, the path of least resistance forming pillars of burnt carbon as even my immunity to flame as a Longma pales in comparison to the energy I so foolishly made myself a conduit to.
Sombra is holding his own admirably against the two princesses, who play their role well as he keeps looking at me with fear in his eyes, only for another blast of godlike magic from the two force him away from me, or counter a spell he fires my way.
I know if I black out now, I'll die, but I can already feel the darkness creeping at the edges of my vision as more hatred than any pony had ever been meant to house rips through my mind and body.
When I can take no more, when I feel more hatred than any other emotion I had ever felt before coursing through my ragged, torn-wide-open mind, I watch Sombra, who finally manages to shake off the alicorn sisters, flying at me with a silent scream, his horn charging a spell meant to put me down permenantly.
I throw my arms down.
"Revenge Death Ball!"
Sombra watches in stark horror as the sphere begins to fall. It wasn't at its full strength, but that meant nothing now, as it began to fall towards him.
Desperately, he fired every spell he knew, Fear, Obsession, Loathing and Pain, his horn blasted out every vile hex, every dark curse he could throw at it, as the massive sphere began to fall towards him.
When it hit, it was oblivion, the agony of a thousand thousand souls all wishing for his torment, and recieving it.
He thought his very soul would be torn ascunder, something that had never before happened to any living thing in possession of one, such was the pain he felt as the Revenge Death Ball crashed into him.
He felt the sphere explode, and he sensed as the roiling ball of pure hatred ripped its way across the entirety of the Frozen North.
If even a single changeling survived the blast, he was certain they would be dead soonafter.
His body, of course, was obliderated in an instant. His shadowy self, erased in the next.
And yet, even as the sphere consumed him, he felt some small core of himself remain, some part of himself among which no single Longma desired the harm of.
It was only by this quirk, this idiotic quirk of magic, by the bond he had with that blasted sage, that even the barest wisp of himself remained, his agonized, obliderated form floating down in front of the wounded sage, whose body looked to be equal parts fire and ashes as he glared down with a smug expression at the specter in front of him, as he watched the specter look longingly towards the former Crystal Empire, one last time.
"I win."
I felt something snap inside me as I heard Sombra say those words.
"What are you talking about," I mutter, feeling the slow, irregular beat of my heart quicken as Sombra verbally claims victory.
The spirit, because that's all he was now, smiles at me as he stares at the Crystal Egg Zone. "I won. You were too late. Chrysalis, the pawn that she was, managed to keep the Crystal Heart there long enough to complete my spell."
I look to where he's staring, and at long last see the spell that had been forming over the city. A gigantic blue heart that radiated mercy and love, so strong that it burned my skin, even from here.
"The spell was already complete... by the time you threw your little attack," he wheezes.
"And now you get to watch your kingdom disappear."
Eclipse didn't breathe as the power of the Revenge Death Ball washed through the land, and sent Queen Chrysalis and her minions flying away off through the horizon, instead, she stared up at the mass of Love and Mercy that hovered over the city like the sword of damocles. The only love magic that had survived the blast.
"Eclipse, what is that thing, what's happening?" Priss whispers, feeling her coat burning as if she were facing an open oven before her fateful transformation into a member of the Longma.
"It's... It's love. A spell of pure love, meant to give mercy to an entire kingdom." Eclipse whispers in horror.
"Weiss told me... He told me that Love and Hate cancel each other out, that you can't mix the two together. Is this thing gonna kill us?" Priss asks, even as the light of the heart begins to grow brighter and brighter, and the pain begins to consume her entire body.
Eclipse Flash sobs, staring up as the heart rapidly expands, chunks of the empire disappearing into nothing around them as everything begins to float into the air.
She always thought, she always believed that love and hate could co-exist, she wanted so dearly to think that one day, she could find some way prove it to Weiss, that he was wrong, that the world wasn't as black and white as he wanted her to believe. She wished so dearly to find proof that hate and love did not need to destroy one another, but now, as the pain grew to be unbearable, she only felt afraid. Afraid that he was right.
"I don't know."
As I watch the Crystal Egg Zone rise into the air, breaking apart as a pillar of pure love spears into the heavens, I feel everything fall out from under me. I feel everything slipping away as I fail to sense even the slightest trace of anything left as the Curse of the Crystal Empire rips through it, erasing all the hate within its path, dissolving the entirety of it to bedrock.
I knew, and Sombra knew too, that the nature of the spell didn't matter. Against the Longma, against my people, the vanishing curse he had bound to the Crystal Empire, the spell he crafted to twist the Love of the Crystal Heart through Fear to cast it into the future, against creatures of hate, it would only cast them into oblivion.
As I sensed all of the darkness disappear into the pillar of light, I felt my own life slipping away.
"Why," I said, my face buried in the ashes as the wind howled around us.
Sombra placed a solid hoof on the ground as I felt my body ignite with white fire.
"It was you, my pale shadow. You finally taught me the error of my ways," he said, walking towards me, and kneeling on the ground next to me.
I can feel my life slipping away. I channeled too much hatred, and now, facing the consequences of what I caused, it turns on me. I hate myself, and my magic demanded that what I hate be destroyed.
Sombra smiles. "I thought for so long, that fear was the strongest power in the world. I believed that it was stronger than love, and perhaps I was right. But you, you! Above all the trickery you employed! Above all the imaginitive things you created! Even above my defeats at your hooves, I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand how you were able to do what even I couldn't do! How you could defeat even me, your better! But now I know."
He looks me in the eyes as I feel my entire body consuming itself with hate-fire.
"You taught me how to-" he says, before twin beams of magic rip through his body, and he lets out a brief scream of agony before I watch as his dark essence is scattered for miles and miles around, the ice of the north greedily dragging his screaming spirit into itself.
I don't care anymore.
Luna landed next to Weiss, letting out a scream at the sight of the sage's body.
She watched as he cried openly, white fire burning his body to the point where blackened bones were revealed by the ashes pouring off of him.
It was self-hatred, she could sense it radiating off of him, mixed with the grief and despair he felt. She could feel as the bond between him and Sombra was beginning to fray, even as his life force poured across it into the dark tyrant.
"Weiss! Don't give in to despair! Please! Not all of the Longma are gone! Some yet live, I swear it to you! You must not abandon them now, in their hour of need!" she begs, grabbing his body gingerly as one of his arms fell apart.
He shook his head. "Everyone I cared for was there." he retorts in an empty tone.
Gritting her teeth as tears poured out of her eyes, she desperately scraped at the ground, as if she could simply shovel the ashes back into her best friend's body.
"No they weren't! I'm still here! Please, don't leave me!" she begs, but Weiss doesn't even respond, so consumed by grief.
Celestia stands near the pair, openly sobbing, but knowing for herself that there is nothing she can do.
Luna wracked her brain, trying to think of something, anything that could save her friend.
In desperation, she cried out the only thing her foolish mind could devise.
"Revenge!" she shouted, and for a moment, the wind stopped howling, and Weiss's burning form froze solid, the flames themselves stock still as if paused.
He turned to her with a blank look. "Revenge?" Weiss said, uncomprehending.
The poor fool that she was, Luna suddenly felt a phrase rise into her mind, one Weiss himself had once said. The phrase rose into her mind without warning, and a chill ran through her at the thought of it. 'A deal with the devil,' she thought for only a moment before taking the plunge.
"If you will not live for them... And you will not live for me, then live for revenge! Endure the ages, if only to take from him what he took from you! His essence yet remains merely banished to the ice of the north! When he returns, who will slay him? Who will make him pay!?" she screamed desperately, giving him the only thing she could. The only thing she could possibly give to her friend that would keep him from passing on to the family he lost for even a moment longer.
A purpose.
In Weiss's own mind, a quote rose up unbidden as the link between him and Sombra had been reforged, as his despair shattered like glass in the face of this new feeling he felt.
'Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him—a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood… It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for,' his memories recalled in perfect clarity.
The burning form of Weiss Noir began to collapse in on itself, as flame and ash became flesh once more, the heat only intensified, until he shone with an unlight that seemed to burn the eyes like the sight of an eclipse. Luna watched in naked fear as Weiss Noir threw his head to the heavens and screamed, erupting with black fire so vast, so dark, that everything went black.
"SOMBRAAAA!"
On that fateful day, Luna had planted a seed within the vulnerable Weiss Noir, she had awoken something within him that could never be put to rest. A single foolish, desperate mistake that she would spend the next thousand years regretting in her heart of hearts,
In the coming years, Princess Luna would struggle desperately to undo her greatest mistake, doomed to fail, time and time again as her mistake only grew greater, and more tragic with each failure.
In the coming decades, Weiss Noir would cleave from himself everything that stood in the way of his revenge. His past, his future, his very light. He would reveal secrets of the nature of the heart that none before had dared to attempt plumbing, secrets of magic that were best left undiscovered until the end of days.
In the coming centuries, history would soon know the name of the Pluck Night Pony, the Sage of Darkness, the Dragon Mouse. They would know him by many names that he would earn through his use of the dark arts, through the madness that grew inside him as he trod his path of hatred to its only end.
In the coming millenia, a single griffon suffering at the loss of her single friend would unleash a squirming evil, a sleepy, unformed thing that would create in its brief moment of clarity the tools of its escape, and a single zebra suffering at the loss of her single friend would unleash the creature that was born on this fateful day.
But for now, Weiss Noir screamed, and the world around him burned as he learned a new lesson, one that marked his mastery over the darkness. He had learned what a pony could throw away when they felt that they had lost everything. What could be bought from magic itself, in return for his humanity.
A bargain to carve out his heart in exchange for the revenge he craved, a deal with the devil that was only possible through...
The Unique Properties of Dark Magic.
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... bit late in the game for a title drop, isn't it? XD
As for what was said in the AN: I'm generally fine with mid-story links to music. I don't use them, since I do most of my fic reading on my phone, and it can't be in the fic and a YouTube page at the same time. I think you'd have to embed the music into the story if you wanted people like me to listen and read at the same time.
Welp, they are bucked
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Oh? But this is just the beginning.
Sombra is going to regret everything when he will be smashed into atoms and tortured until the universe dies.
I'm getting emotional whiplash over here! This is awesome and I need more!
(and propably a side by side comparrison what's actually different between the old SoD and the 'current' SoD.
Or do they only appear so similar because he wasn't 'actually' there, still trapped and 'guided' by the elements?
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If you mean the difference between Weiss when he was in the lamp and Weiss when he was freed from the lamp, one is a confusing anti-hero who can't seem to decide whether he wants to interfere with the show or just mess around and do shenanagans, and the other one is a violent sociopath.
When Weiss was trapped inside the lamp, and Gilda "freed" him by letting him sneak out a Shadow Clone, he was still asleep inside the lamp. His Shadow Clone let him interact with the world, but it was in a way that left his thoughts cloudy, and his grip on reality loose at best.
Now that he's truly freed in the present, however, you all are seeing what he "really" is.
If you're talking about why Pre-Freedom Present Weiss and Past Weiss are so alike, yeah, it's because he was trapped inside the lamp by the Elements of Harmony, in a dreamlike slumber enforced by the elements in an attempt to calm his emotions. He was "As close to" his past self as the elements could make him while he was using the shadow clone.
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Eh, it’s like the half way point.
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Thanks for the fast reply.
Sooooooo things are going to get sooooo much worse?
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I suppose we'll just have to find out, won't we?
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Write faster then and take this chokolate milk and this double super-tasytylicious cookie for motivation!
And on that day Weiss became the first true Equine member of the Angry Marines.
1d4chan.org/images/d/d6/Angrymotivator.jpg
does cadence know this? if she does then i dont think she would be happy with luna
hopeful/foolish theory/prediction
all Longma survived love sealing
while its true that love and hate can't coexist it is also true that love cant be used for killing
"Yes Weiss, it's not like I had to run with tail between my legs and beg for help in order to defeat you."
Cheaty villains be cheaty.
Weiss is going to smear Sombra the moment he shows his ugly mug.
Wow i honestly hope Chrysalis does not get a second chance for this.
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Is that true though? Eclipse is pretty clearly smarter than Weiss and what is rivalry if not someone you love to hate?
I’m down for mid-chapter links. If they’d be disruptive I just wouldn’t click on them immediately and having background music while I’m reading can be cool. In that spirit, my Song of the Day is Evacuation from Emily Axford’s album Doomsday Diaries. Here’s a verse by verse analysis of why:
General evacuation theme.
Weiss leaving behind his memories of the good parts to hyper focus on revenge.
The loss of hope as all his friends die.
The Kingdom Heart went out and Weiss “made his peace” in the sense that he was ready to die (even if not particularly peaceful about it) but he found resolve to live in the form of vengeance.
This sounds optimistic but is much more tragic if “endings are also beginnings you see” is that the end of the Shadow Realm was the beginning of his quest for vengeance and “dusk becomes dawn if you wait patiently” is a reference to waiting millennia to enact his vengeance.
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totally I hope she's one of Weiss's first targets and that she is made to suffer unending unbearable agony the likes of which would horrify literally everyone in either our world or theirs, she deserves nothing less.
Woah. Guess I was wrong then 🙂. Well. That repaints past events in a clearer light.
There is still kindness in his soul, though perhaps only yet extant in the subconscious mind, a desire for people to be happy, to live full lives denied to him and his people. But awake, he knows none of this. Only the purest hatred of himself and a thousand now dead souls. The hatred that sustains him, becoming alike perhaps to Sombra in the nature of his form, a shadow that must ever be kept from the light and filled with deepest malice to carry on. Maybe he could take a changeling body of his own, if it would not be destroyed by his very presence, something to insulate him from love and even let him feel it again without it being as a hot poker in his being.
I think links are fine
Wow. What a banger of a chapter. Excellent work. As far as mid chapter links go, I’m more of a 2 myself.
I wonder what exactly Chrysalis regrets.
The creation of a pure incarnation of Hatred.
Having her people marked and known as willing collaborators of genocide.
Her natural Empathy telling her exactly how much she messed up.
The losses her people took at the end of this fiasco.
Weiss circulating anti-Changeling measures to other nations.
The poisonous hatred of the Longma no longer just passively harmful but actively hostile now.
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One thing I would like to point out, in case the chapter didn't make it abundantly clear, of all the huge fuckups Chrysalis made, consenting to killing off an entire population wasn't on that list. She had no idea what the spell was doing, and Sombra made damn sure she would be too busy fighting to snoop around and find out during the invasion.
Death of the author and all that, but that's important enough for me to at least elaborate a bit.
Oh no, why did he have to phrase it this way. D:
Great chapter its always satisfying to see plot points resolved especially when they have been hinted to the whole time.
And now we know how Noir became what he is.
I am really getting invested in Sombrero too. It seems like he was a human once or maybe he is getting the memories from Noir?
Oh. Damn. Also, I'm crying now.
The Party Escort Submission Position? =D