Shrouded in Fear

by TinnyPiano26

Defeat Inside, Darkness Outside

As Twilight sat at her window and looked out over the land before her, she couldn't stop thinking about her latest nightmare. The Dark One had said that by the end of all this, she would learn that friendship always winning was far from the truth.

Are there any points in history when friendship didn't win? she thought to herself.

Taking a history textbook from her vast collection of reading material, Twilight began to look for any events in history where evil was the triumphant one. She found many wars and political fights where a friendship was created, but there was also a fair share of events in which an area of Equestria was utterly destroyed, nothing left but small remains of what once was. One such battle depicted an event where 5,000 acres of land were destroyed by jungle warriors from the Everfree Forest, a battle so brutal that it took days afterwards to clean up all the body parts. This site was about 1 mile away, and it seemed to Twilight to be the perfect place where the Dark One would like to hide out in.

Then I'll go there, find the Dark One, and stop whatever he's planning, she decided.

Taking a day's worth of supplies, Twilight set out for the battle site to find the Dark One and stop him.

3 Hours Later...

Finally arriving at her destination, Twilight decided to stop for a moment and eat lunch. She took off her saddlebags, pulled out a dandelion sandwich, and started eating. She was about halfway done with her food when she heard a soft chuckle off to her left, relatively close by. She put down her sandwich and turned around, finding nothing but a long expanse of grassland. She was about to continue with her lunch when she heard another chuckle, closer this time. She whirled around as she kept hearing chuckling, looking for a source, but to no avail.

I can't take this anymore, she thought to herself.

She stopped and laid down, catching her breath as the chuckles continued getting closer and closer, louder and louder, until it was so close and loud that her eardrum was about to burst. She whirled around one last time, catching a glimpse of black as it hid behind a pile of rocks. She ran to the rocks to confront the source of the ear-shattering chuckles, but instead found a doll of Princess Luna. More specifically, Nightmare Moon. She levitated the doll to eye level and looked at it, trying to find anything out of place about it.

"Hmm, there doesn't seem to be anything... Wait, what's this?" she thought aloud.

On the doll was a small purple patch right above the zipper, as if something spilled out of it. She pulled the zipper down and looked inside, finding plenty of stuffing and...

"A doll of ME?!"

Inside the Nightmare Moon doll was an extremely accurate doll of Twilight as she was now, from her stance to the facial expression she was currently wearing. The doll turned it's head to her and began speaking.

"Greetings, Twilight Sparkle," it greeted her.

She dropped the doll and backed away. It had the exact same voice as the Dark One.

"Uh, hello?" she replied.

"The Dark One needs your evil."

"My... My evil?" Twilight responded with a wide-eyed expression.

"Yes, your evil. Without it, he cannot come forth into your realm."

Twilight shook her head and stared at the doll.

"I'm not evil, you must be mistaken."

"If I'm mistaken, then why did I use your name?"

"I'm not evil!"

The doll seemed to smile at her as it stood up and trotted over to her.

"Every being has a dark side, Miss Sparkle."

Twilight yelped as a dark magical aura pinned her hooves to the ground, preventing her from moving. The doll stopped in front of her and turned into a dark smoke, flying up and entering Twilight's muzzle. An excruciating pain shot through her body as the smoke travelled into her very soul and extracted all the evil essence it could find. The smoke began to clump together and form a physical form. Twilight's head shot back as a large, black mass forced itself out through her mouth. The mass landed on the ground and stretched it's arms, looking around at the vast expanse of grass and trees. It turned around and kneeled down in front of Twilight and addressed her.

"Hello, Twilight. Good to see you again. And this time..." it said as it held her head up to look into it's eyes.

"You're not dreaming."

"Hello again, Dark One," she said grimly.

"Aw, come on, cheer up. You're the first being on this entire planet," he gestured with his arm, "to see my physical form. You should be thankful."

The Dark One released his grip on Twilight and began walking in the direction of Ponyville.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dimension to destroy."

He turned into a dark smoke and flew off, leaving Twilight to lay there, panting and thinking,

This is not good.