“Crysstalsssssss….”

Luna’s eyes widened in shock, throwing herself back and up into the air in a flurry of feathers as she shouted, “How can this be!? You were killed nearly a year ago!”

The dark spectre chuckled malevolently and flexed its claws. “You should know that true evil can never die, Luna. And… I made a friend.”

The Princess of the Moon flapped over to Crow’s position slowly, gingerly cradling her wounded side as she kept an eye on Sombra’s seemingly undead form. “And what foul beast would make a contract with such a being as you?”

“Search your feelings, Luna, you know they never lie.”

“That’s–! That’s impossible! The Nightmare was sealed away, never to return!”

A smoky, unnatural mist filled the air as Sombra’s Nightmare-corrupted form dematerialized, a horrifying feeling of death and despair penetrating Luna’s mental defences as if they weren’t there– and considering who Sombra had struck a deal with, they might as well have not been.

She shrank back into herself, desperately trying to shake Crow back into alertness. “Sir Cameron! Cameron! Please, wake up!” she cried, throwing up weak glimmers of moonlight to fight back the encroaching mist.

With a weak and weary groan, Crow shook himself awake and into a sitting position. “Th’fuck hit me?”

Luna sighed in relief and pulled him close, eyes darting from side to side as the shadowy mist darkened and seemingly grew claws.

“Oh. That’s what hit me.” Crow shook his head to clear out the cobwebs and grabbed Luna around the waist, standing and dragging them both out of existence in a swirl of feathers as the claws in the mist finally coalesced and slammed into their previous position just a second after they’d teleported.

Atop the castle, Luna spilled onto the crystal surface with a groan and a cloud of feathers, Crow popping out right behind her and taking up a vigil on the edge of a nearby railing. He spoke quietly to the recovering ex-princess, trying to keep unnoticed by the malevolent entity circling around the base of the castle.

“Okay, I know that that surge of dark magic woke up Celestia and Her Majesty, probably, so we should get some backup soon. We just need to hold off that thing until they get here.” He muttered darkly to himself, scanning and pacing while Luna slowly recovered from her nausea. As she did so, she shot a half-hearted glare at his back, slowly standing with a hand to her head.

“As much as I appreciate the save, Sir Cameron, I must respectfully ask you to never do that… abomination of a teleport again on me, unless you absolutely have to,” she groaned, barely able to concentrate enough to cast a quick hangover relief spell.

Crow paid her no mind, instead continuing to pace along the edge of the rooftop, sending down exploding feathers here and there to drive back the shadows surrounding and circling the castle proper.

Inside, Twilight’s room light clicked on as the Queen’s voice rang out in Crow’s ear.

“Crow what in the name of Tartarus is happening out there!? What was that surge of dark magic!?”

“Not sure, Majesty, seems to be a shadowy demon. Princess Luna, do you know who this is?” The assassin looked over at Luna, who was currently staring down at Sombra’s form with a concerned frown upon her face.

She spoke, the barest hint of a tremble in her tone, “Tis an old enemy of mine and my sister’s… Sombra, the Mad King of the Crystal Empire. And… he has teamed up with the Nightmare.”

Crow’s eyes briefly widened behind his visor as he asked, “You guys got that? Sombra and the Nightmare, if you didn’t. This is, as they say on Earth, baaaaad juju.”

“... Crow, I swear to Faust, please, please, be kidding.”

He looked over to Luna, then over the balcony to where Sombra still stood, cloaked in billowing shadows and grinning like a shark. “.... I’m gonna have to say… not kidding.”

“..... Well, there goes my night of sleep,” Twilight muttered from over the communicator. A brief burst of sound accompanied a hasty teleport spell as said lavender alicorn appeared on the roof in a burst of light. Accompanying her were the still slightly sleep-addled forms of Celestia, Cadence, and Chrysalis, each one clad in their respective sleepwear.

“Crow, what’s the situation?” Twilight asked, already charging a spell of some sort.

Crow blinked and stared over the edge of the railing once more, “Well, it looks like Sombra’s kinda just… standing there and looking all menacing.”

Just as he finished his sentence, the castle shook at its foundations and the entire structure began tilting. “Nevermind! He did something!” Crow grabbed all four alicorns plus one changeling queen and teleported off the castle’s collapsing base, reappearing some fifty feet away from Sombra’s grinning shadowy form. Said shadow-pony grinned and snapped his fingers, the unnatural mist around him swirling and receding as his eyes flashed a brilliant teal color.

Twilight shook herself and tried to dispel her nausea, the groaning forms of the other former princesses and current changeling queen falling to the ground behind her. Crow at least had the good grace to look sheepish for half a second before refocusing on the more pertinent matter.

Immediately, Crow disappeared, the air around Sombra flickering as bursts of shadows and feathers erupted from hundreds of different areas all around the mad king’s body. With a flickering of displaced air and feathers, Crow reappeared right beside Twilight even as Sombra laughed, the demonic sound tearing from his throat like a chainsaw revving in a tunnel.

“Physical attacks ineffective, don’t have anything beyond explosives. This situation sucks.” Crow’s words were punctuated by a massive groaning and crashing as Twilight’s castle finally finished its strangely slow descent, collapsing to the ground and sending splinters of crystal flying for hundreds of meters, impaling houses and tearing up the road.

Crow flickered around the battlefield, reappearing in random places as he was pelted by shrapnel and dodging out of the way of larger chunks. Twilight, meanwhile, had thrown up a bubble shield around the princesses and Chrysalis, fending off the storm with almost negligent ease. As the debris finally settled, the scene resembled something akin to a ruined and snow-less Crystal Empire, the various belongings and corpses strewn about adding to the tragedy.

Twilight glanced about, hot tears of despair and rage filling her eyes. Celestia and Luna recovered enough from their nausea to glare at Sombra while Cadence only stared about in abject horror. Chrysalis, meanwhile, was already charging an orb of verdant energy, the neon green ball of magic pulsing with heat and fury.

Crow flittered around Sombra once more, distracting the mad king while the mares behind him shook off their shock and joined the fight. Around the very edges of the battlefield, the panicked citizens alternately gaped in shock or ran away, five more prominent citizens running in the opposite direction; directly toward the fight.

Rainbow Dash arrived first, sliding to a halt behind Twilight, still dressed in the t-shirt and boxers she wore to bed. “What the hay’s happening, Twi!? What happened to the castle!?” As the rest of the former Elements of Harmony arrived, the all gaped at the ruins of the crystalline palace and just barely took notice of the one responsible for the destruction.

Rarity was the first to speak up, pointing a manicured nail at Sombra’s billowing form, “I-is that… who I think it is, darling?”

Twilight nodded, a resolute expression setting itself on her face. “Yes. And he’s the one who destroyed my castle, killed so many of my staff, and damaged so much of the surrounding area. He’s also made a pact with the Nightmare, so be careful girls, I don’t want any of you getting hurt.”

All six girls stood ready, Twilight leading, even as the other three princesses and Chrysalis formed up beside them.

“Gah-fuck!” Crow’s cry of pain echoed through the air as the assassin flew backwards, tumbling to a halt at Twilight’s feet, bleeding slightly from his mouth, chest, and nose. Shaking his head, he gathered his wits and rose to a shaky kneel. “Careful, Twilight, he’s got some sort of shockwave– couldn’t see it clearly, got hit before I could do anything.”

Twilight rested a hand on his shoulder and spoke, not taking her eyes off of Sombra’s still stationary form, “Crow, you’ve done enough. I know you want to help, but at this point, you’re not doing anything, so please just stay back and be safe, alright?” Sombra continued standing where he was idly examining his claw-like nails in casual arrogance.

Crow relaxed slightly, jumping backwards and landing behind a large chunk of crystal to bandage his chest wound. As soon as Sombra’s head turned to follow Crow’s movement, Chrysalis launched her orb of magic at Sombra, the green ball of fury tearing across open air and slamming home into a shield of purest obsidian and obliterating it completely. Sombra growled, immediately homing in on the source of aggression.

“Bad move.”

Chrysalis’ response was to throw another orb, prompting Celestia and Luna to both launch their attacks, poisonous green mingling with sunfire and moonbeams to shred away the cloak of shadows that surrounded Sombra. Twilight took this distraction to join hands with her friends, the six of them standing in a circle and allowing their emotions to surface, a brilliant corona of rainbows forming around them and changing them.

The Nightmare drew back from the source of the light, hissing in pain even as it pumped more power into Sombra. The mad king lashed out, knocking Celestia, Luna, and Chrysalis back with a whip of shadow before attempting to impale the six ex-Elements with spires of dark crystal.

Cadence charged up her own spell, a magenta bubble of Love magic spreading from her form and impacting the forming crystals, shattering them before they even came close to the steadily growing orb of light.

Sombra growled again and split his focus, shadowy doppelgangers forming behind him and spreading out to attack each opponent directly. Celestia and Luna immediately went on the defensive, almost forgotten melee skills coming back into the fray as they grappled with the shadowy constructs. Celestia incanted a single line, “Sol Eternus,” and drew a sword of fire from the air, the light coming from it driving back Sombra’s clone. Luna herself merely punched her opponent with a fistful of concentrated moonlight, the cold, silver light extending out and forming into an ornate lance.

Twirling the lance around and taking up a defensive position at her elder sister’s back, she belatedly announced the name of her weapon, “Argento Mors.”

Nearer to the ruined entrance, Cadence and Chrysalis stood back to back, Cadence’s shield preventing the both of them from being eviscerated while Chrysalis’ magic beams drove back both doppelgangers.

The real Sombra, meanwhile, had charged forth at the sphere of rainbow light, launching crystals and bolts of dark magic at it, hoping to either disrupt or corrupt the pulsating orb. Unfortunately for him, the sheer amount of Harmony magic saturating the air around the orb kept the Nightmare weakened and unable to aide him, thus returning him to his normal, though still powerful, levels of magic.

Still, he pressed his assault, noticing that his spears and shards of obsidian never actually reached the orb of light, and that, strangely enough, there were feathers all over the place, littering the ground with fractured chunks of obsidian nestled between them.

And then Sombra’s world turned to black fire as every feather around him detonated in a fiery conflagration large enough to completely obliterate much of the surrounding area. As the inferno raged, Twilight gathered the energy flowing through her and her friends, shaping it and channeling it into a spell, allowing it to charge and take form, albeit slowly.

Crow stood under the orb as it pulsed and bulged where Twilight had gathered the majority of its energies, tired but grinning a most wicked smirk. Twilight released the spell, casting a massive beam of rainbow light over the battlefield and smothering the flames and lighting up the night like an artificial sun.

The Nightmare hissed and shrieked in pain as it burned away, its last death rattle echoing in Sombra’s scream of fury and agony. Sombra began burning as well, starting from his feet upwards, his body dissolved into charcoal colored dust that drifted away into the rainbow of friendship.

When the disintegration reached his head, Sombra screamed one last defiant cry and struck out at the one being he could harm with any sort of result: Crow. A single tendril of shadow, weakened and nearly invisible, lashed out from Sombra’s horn and pierced through the rainbow. Crow, visor removed so as to not be blinded by the sight of the rainbow, didn’t notice the shadow until he felt the sudden stab of pain in his chest, followed by a deathly cold chill.

“Hurk!” Crow choked, blood dribbling down his chin once more as he clasped his hand over the wound. The shadowy tentacle jerked upwards and sideways, slashing through the rest of his heard and scoring a line through his lungs and spine. The tentacle had already burst through his back, and with one last twitch of willpower, Crow was thrown backwards into the crystal outcropping he had hidden behind earlier.

And thusly did Sombra die for the second time.

‘I… what happened?’

‘There was that rainbow… and then… pain?’

‘God I’m tired...’

“Crow! Crow answer me!”

‘Is… is that Twilight? Heh… sorry, Majesty, looks like this bird just got his wings clipped...’

“Crow! Please! Wake up!”

“Sir Cameron, we implore you!”

“Sir Crow, please!”

“Twilight, I can’t heal him!”

“What do you mean you can’t heal him!?”

“The… the damage is too much, and it’s full of Dark Magic… I’m sorry, Twilight.”

‘Heh… I guess this is what death is like… it’s getting dark...’

‘Maybe… maybe I’ll see Rachel again...’

‘The moon looks… so pretty… so big… like I could… just touch it...’

Crow’s arm twitched, slowly, shakily rising and touching Luna’s cheek and giving it the barest of strokes as he whispered one final sentence.

“S-so… b-beautiful…”

“Sir Cameron!? Sir Cameron! Cameron! Crow! CROW!”

Of all those that mourned for Crow that night, Luna’s sobs were the loudest.

Author's Notes:

Yes, I just did that. No, this story isn't over.

What happens next, you ask?

Well, you'll find out.