If I hadn’t cast the noise canceling spell everypony in the hall would have heard his shouting.

  I fumbled around since my eyes were still adjusting to the dim light once more. I stumbled through the aisles of antiques. Finally I located Sombra eyes glowing with the pure light of powerful magics and purple smoke flowing out of his eyes and teeth changing into fangs. I was frozen in place not sure what to do. This couldn't be good, but why was he screaming? What was happening? I didn't know how to stop this. If I went to fetch somepony my quest would be over.

  Sombra began to rise shakily from his sitting position and turned to a bookshelf nearby.I watched in confusion. He was talking…but it wasn’t to me. With his eyes still glowing he glared maliciously at a bookshelf.

“YOU SHE-DEMON!” he bellowed.

  What should I do? This was starting to scare me and the…shock was alarming. Was he possessed? Why else would he be screaming at the archaic chemistry journals of Clover the Clever? Was this a sick joke of his?

“'LENE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU…WHAT ARE YOU?!”  His horn lit up to join his glowing eyes and he backed into a bookshelf and I could only watch in fear as it toppled.

  Sombra was startled and blasted the bookshelf with the magic on his horn, blowing the shelf to bits.

I was still frozen. All…the priceless relics.

Cadance, why are you such a coward?

Tears poked my eyes a bit. Maybe it was true, 'you are your own greatest obstacle'.

“'LARA YOU DEMON!!!” Sombra blasted another bookshelf, unlike the first this one caught fire.

Fire. Burning hot flame in a room filled mostly with wood and paper. My tears were flowing freely now from the smoke and my throat began to feel dry.

I'm scared. Terrified. Petrified!

I'm the worst Princess…frozen in fear.

I cursed myself for still standing. I was going to die! Why couldn’t I move? Why wouldn’t I move? The smoke was overwhelming me.Sombra jerked his head to the side where I could now see his eyes more clearly. I could see through the smoke a bit and his eyes appeared to be…watering. Or was he crying? Was it a trick of my eyes or was it from the smoke being dense?

What happened next I can only wish was fake.

   Sombra's aura began to change into a whitish color matching his glowing eyes. A peculiar kind of compass rose emerged beneath him, piercing through the smoke. Then came weird chanting. At this point I had worked up enough ability to slip Lore of Yore into my saddle pack.

What was this magic? I thought, watching in horror; as helpless as ever.

“Inclusum nune adultum regione,” he began eyes glowing furious white, “et ignis occidere hoste mando tibi ad occidendum Seraph quibius Aurorae finis est…”

I tried to decipher what he was screaming as quickly as possible. That was when I noticed that ‘ignis’ sounded like ‘ignite’. Which means to explode in flames.

Explode.

Explode?

Explode!

Explode?!

He was going to blow up the Archives!

“…arcanum est famulus et omnes dominum tuum…”

Not wanting to become ashes I lept into the compass circle just as flames licked the spot where I was previously standing.

Quickly I tackled him just as he finished the spell: “…in protege.”

“Sweet Elysium take me if Celestia fails to save me.” I muttered.

Which was just when the Archives blew up.

  The only that kept us from plummeting to our death hundreds of stories below was the fact I could fly and was not knocked unconscious at the time.  Unfurling my wings, which was hard with flaming feathers, I grabbed the falling Sombra by the back of his cloak.

  As I swooped back up I saw the full extent of our damage. The 300 story tower was being sustained hurriedly by more unicorns (through magic of course) than I could count. Pegasai were dousing the smoldering ruins with rainclouds. The other Princesses would find out soon, if they hadn’t yet. Guards distinguishable by their armor also rushed to the scene aiding in any way they could with the unicorn troops being the most helpful due to their slightly stronger magic.

I turned around not wanting to look anymore and then I noticed something.Despite the fact that I mostly escaped the flames Sombra’s cloak was singed around the edges.He had no cutie mark.

I was shocked but landed quietly in on alley hoping this may end.We had been in the alley for a few hours. It was a simple stone alley in a quiet part of Canterlot.

“Why don’t you have a cutie mark?” I asked when he came to.

“What is a cutie mark?” he asked. “Do you mean a marking?”

His face contorted into a minor scowl as he turned to inspect the damage of his cloak.

I nodded slowly. “Yes…”

He made series of annoyed mumbles that I could only make a few words out of: “…wasn’t supposed to know…”

Didn’t he know I was right here? Out of the awkwardness I cleared my throat.

He immediately looked up. “What?” he inquired as if I was inconveniencing a schedule of his.

I dragged a hoof on the stones in random patterns. I had a question but should I say it? A stroke of luck occurred as he stared at my hoof before raising his gaze, a mildly disdainful look on his face.

“I suppose you want to know ‘why’, huh?”

He guessed it, slowly I gave a small nod.

He took a deep breath. More lectures? Was he secretly hiding a purple mane?

  “When I first started using dark magic I didn’t have one, dark magic is an irreversible transformation in most cases. Even if I had a symbol when I began it would have taken it from me.  Since you don’t seem to understand much, I might as well explain a bit more. You see, dark magic creates… almost a new personality for you so you exist as two, or three at once. As well, your Princess Celestia,” he said, spitting her name out like it was poison, “knows one or two of the spells but she did not truly go into it like I did.”

There was quiet for a bit.

“Does that satisfy you?”

“Yes,” I whispered, feeling a bit paranoid about the whole 'being in an alley’ thing, “but are you just a jumble of personalities?”

He grumbled for a moment, and sighed. “No, I am Sombra and while I have a different me in the past as you would say, I am NOT just an unstable mess.”

I nodded. “Can we go now?”

He looked around and shrugged.

“But just so you know, we will need some disguises after what happened in the Royal Archives.” I added.

He looked at me blankly, so I told him what happened.

When I finished he slammed his head against a wall.

“Yes we can go. But I can make the disguises?”

Make?

  From behind an alley in Canterlot, two ponies stepped out. One was a white pegasus mare with a green, yellow, and orange mane; her yellow eyes blinked and then another appeared behind her before she drew the hood of her ragged cloak up. Then a typical looking unicorn stallion emerged behind her. He was dark blue with a red and orange mane. Purple eyes gleamed impatiently.

“Come on,” he hissed.

The mare looked up from a puddle. She seemed nervous.

“Uhh... yes, coming.”

She quickly scuttled away much to the annoyance of her blue companion, who adjusted a matching cloak and shifted his aloof yet paranoid gaze over the square.

If one looked closely they might have seen the cloaks shimmer.

As if the garments should have looked different and the ponies who wore them weren’t quite what they seemed.

But expert level illusions are rather rare…aren’t they?

  When we arrived at the Canterlot Train Station I was still in shock over my new look, which flickered closely when I looked at it (nopony else seemed to notice this). This also happened with Sombra: when I looked at him the disguise flickered but when any other pony did there was no reaction, leading me to believe that the disguise was seamless. Or was it that because he made both our disguises we could both somewhat see each other? I wasn’t too sure not being an expert on illusion spells.

Worse, when Sombra and I (still disguised of course) reached the platform where we got off earlier I realized that the train, a speedy passenger engine, that we used to get from the Empire to here…was….

Gone.

In all the ‘drama’ that happened we must have gone off schedule.

Fretting I turned to Sombra, “W-what do we do? Neither of us brought any money and if we try to book a new train we might have to show identification or we might get delayed trying if we don't have to show identification and what if-”

Sombra put his hoof in my mouth to cut me off, left eye twitching slightly.

I guess nervous breakdowns annoyed him or was it the fact his hoof (which did not taste good with those iron shoes on) was in my mouth.

He nodded over to a train that had just pulled up. An overloaded cargo train. An old overloaded cargo train. An old overloaded cargo train that was unbelievably slow. This train would turn what was a four hour to two day trip on a fast passenger train into a month long trek to the Empire, presuming that was where it was going. I looked at the painted logo on one of the crates being loaded on.

Sombra's twitch turned into a smirk. “Looks like we got lucky, now all you need is your royal escort Princess.”

My ‘royal escort’ snuck the both of us onto a train car.

At sword point.

How was this going to play out? I thought as Sombra lit a lantern by the foot of a crate.

As the train pulled away I reluctantly closed the door, shutting out all natural light. As he sulked over to a corner, realization hit me.

I'm on an adventure.

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