The Temple of the Moon stood on the lone bluff overlooking a cold, windy section of bay just north of the Marazon's current campaign. Princess Luna had never condoned the warrior mares calling it a temple, nor dedicating it to her, but there was little she could do to change their stubborn minds and let them be as long as there was no attempt to outright worship her within its gleaming marble walls.

Inside, one other Marazon maiden watched their seeress pace back and forth with worried eyes. “Nyx, you are quite restless. Why don't you get some sleep while you still can?”

The black mare turned a cold-eyed gaze to her. It was not intentional, but her soulless, all black eyes always gave the impression she could look straight through ponies talking to her. “Rest?” she echoed. “Rest is done. No more, not ever again,” she muttered. She paused to look out over the waters of the turbulent ocean to their west.

Something occurred to her once she was back in her right mind and had both hooves again in the physical realm. “Physical? Did you mean physical rest?” she asked the temple attendant. “Oh,” she laughed. “Well, there will be plenty of time for that...plenty doing that...waiting for my King in his chambers as he conducts the day-to-day torture of his subjects.” Whimpering, Nyx crouched down on the window sill, putting her hooves over her head, as if she could shut out the futures that kept flickering behind her eyes.

Shuddering, she looked too long, too attentively at the ocean, Luna's reflection to her moonlit skies above. Celestia probably didn't even know her sister ruled them as well as night, if the dense Princess of the Sun's apathy towards her younger sibling's abilities and potential were any indication!

“I so weary of waiting for my destiny to catch up to me, Charon,” she said wistfully. She might as well have been talking to the wall for all the Lower Priestess of the temple listened, but she went on anyway, finding it a way to settle her thoughts and put them in order. “I weary of walking between the physical and ethereal worlds, never having a solid grip nor link to either.”

If only they would let her end it! Her eyes glancing down longingly at the thousand foot drop to the jagged rocks below. If she could only keep the visions and pull to the Other Side at bay long enough...focus her thoughts on what she wanted to accomplish here as her last act of physical existence...

“No!” she snarled as the attendant dragged her back away from the window with powerful magics. “DAMN YOU CHARON!” she cursed out the Marazon who kept stopping Nyx from ending herself before the futures she always saw could claim her. The seeress ended up in a heap at Charon's hooves. Giving her an acid look of contempt before the mare walked away, Nyx spat after her. “You BITCH! If you saw what I do - “

“Yes, I probably would do the same,” Charon admitted, turning back around to face her, the chestnut mare agreed settling on her haunches, back against a far wall. “But I am tasked with stopping you no matter what.” She indicated the open balcony. “You walk so much between here and the Other Side, Nyx, you forget that I placed a field over the balcony to keep you from jumping to your death, but you would find a way to get past it and die anyway, don't think I do not know that.” She snorted. “Neris thinks it a disgrace if word got out a Marazon committed suicide.”

Nyx couldn't believe her ears! She stood, stamping the ground, snorting her displeasure. “The King of Shadows comes for us – FOR ME, not caring who He kills to get to me and that nasty, EVIL old nag worries about our reputation?!?” Nyx yelled, furious. “And since when does a councilmare – a peon like her actually get a say above the Queen's?!?”

Charon swirled the thin layer of sand on the floor in front of her into little rune patterns, unfazed by her companion's outburst. She and Nyx watched the sparks of magic that glittered at their forming and destruction as they were erased over by the attendant's hoof. “There is much wrong with the current system of government,” Charon muttered. “I never said it was fair, but it is not our Queen's fault.”

“Damn right.” Nyx sniped, moving back towards her and away from the balcony. “I never said it - “ Hit by a wave of nausea, she tensed, watching her front-left hoof go slightly transparent, then got hit by a wave of pain as if it were being crushed by a stallion's overpowering strength. She gasped, thrown and pinned to the wall next to the window, caught in the grip of a burning green and purple-tinged field of dark magics.

Charon looked over with a spasm of fear at this newest fit of Nyx's. Most of them had been mild in comparison, but none had actually, physically thrown her about like this one. Then she saw the aura. Rising, she watched stunned as the Seeress struggled and gasped, fighting to breathe.

Nyx reached out a hoof to Charon, motioning her to stay away, but the temple attendant misread her, thinking she was asking for help. She shook her head violently as the chestnut mare cautiously approached. “No, get away, Charon!” she gasped, the pressure of the future vision letting up on her lungs enough she could vocalize a warning to her.

Then -

"That is HIS story - " a stallion's dark-tinged, hollowed voice seethed around them. "Prince Sombra's. NOT MINE!"

“Tartarus!” the attendant yelped, cowering back. Never before had the Seeress's insane rants included speaking in another's voice, especially one so saturated with such a burning evil in its whispery inflections – like a thousand trapped, angry pony shades screaming to escape their vile prison bonds. And, unlike the others that had actually issued from Nyx herself, this one seemed to come from the air around them as if the room itself was bleeding future visions into their reality that could no longer be contained!

As much as it scared Charon, she approached Nyx, who was still pinned, frozen in fear, gazing at something or someone directly in front of her. Her hooves were pressed up against her breastbone, the flesh actually compressed by an unseen force.

“Goddess! Nyx, can you hear me?” a hoof ventured out to the black mare's shoulder. If she could touch her, perhaps the grounding in the present would break whatever unseen creature had her trapped...

The room's light dimmed, the coastal fog creeping over the balcony, coiling thickly at their hooves, turned into smoky darkness.

It noticed Charon.

Charon ignored it, horrified as Nyx's whimpers increased, her breathing again labored as if her heart were hammering inside her chest, trying to break free as if to flee its fate.

“Time Witch, Time Witch, Time Witch...” The attendant's head pounded, the feeling of reality and time warping so strong around her mad companion trapped in her vision-walking desolation, Charon could actually feel it!

“Take care...your next words...” the stallion's voice echoed from the marble floors, the walls, its presence becoming too strong to ignore.

Tears filled Nyx's eyes as the pressure let up, the hoof pain faded short of snapping the bone. “Goodbye Charon,” she whispered. “I will sing your funeral dirge in the enemy's camp as the Tyrant of the Crystal Empire holds my chains to His chest.”

Charon stepped back, ears flattening in fear. Nyx's predictions always came tr -

The coiling darkness in the fog grabbed the mare by the ankle, hoisting her violently off her hooves. She would have screamed if the sickening, evil cloud had not silenced her by stuffing a portion of itself down her throat. With deadly aim and in eerie silence, it threw the hapless mare out of the temple, off the balcony, shattering the protection field, plunging her to her death a thousand feet below onto the sharp ocean rocks.

The Marazon witch woke to an eerie silence and a terrible pain in her mind. Experience with other visions had taught her never to get up too fast once they released their grip on her. So she opted for merely turning her head as a movement across the room at the balcony caught her eye.

Pain nearly made her black out again as even that simple movement pinched a nerve in her neck, adding to her misery. She had ridden out some bad visions before, but this one was the end-all-be-all of the worst she had ever had in her life!

“Charon?” she asked weakly, thinking the blurry motion at the veranda was her Marazon sister. She sighed, closing her eyes again. Maybe she had not spoken loud enough for her to hear. Either way, the seeress was too tired and disoriented to care to repeat the question.

After a moment, when the sickness and weakness lifted enough she could stay conscious, Nyx felt her hoof gingerly. “Not broken,” she said aloud, relieved. “I'll just stay here, if you don't mind, Charon.” Her eyes closed again as she focused internally, trying to realign herself to the reality of where her body and mind were now. At the moment, even though she was in hiding, it was the more preferable place to be, since it was not threatening to break her limbs.

The swirling, dark essence of the Tyrant King's consciousness paused on the veranda, confused. The great distance was limiting His power and clarity of the surroundings. Two sources of fear, feminine fear, had brought Him to this area far flung from their current assault.

Both sources had held a delicious, attractive fear of the Shadow Pony himself, but one had seemingly phased out of existence, leaving Him extremely puzzled – and hungry for its taste in His mind again.

The second fear lingered behind, had been so enticing, so seemingly focused on HIM, it had made Him lose control, grabbing it, gorging itself on the deliciousness of the terrified mare's mind. And in doing so, His actions had heightened her fear to such an extent, He had nearly gone mad with the sheer joy of what it was feeding Him in power. No, He HAD gone into a frenzy of ecstasy and His dark magic had sated itself, then tossed its/his victim over the edge of the cliff where it had continued to enrich Him until Charon's death had put a sudden end to the feast.

Oh well. That's how they went, He sighed. Sometimes like a fire as bright as the sun. Those were the briefest kills to be certain, but never the most satisfying in the long run.

So now His Shadow slowed and searched. Where had that other fear gone? The thick, coiling shadows wondered if He had been incorrect in their number.

Perhaps. The fear of mares usually had a uniqueness all its own, sometimes stronger than a stallion's, sometimes merely on a different “wave” length. Certain that the Marazon's warrior-disciplined minds would not register the same as other mares, Sombra had allowed this faint, strange signal to nudge Him this direction up the coast, following the hunch without question. To His inborn hungers, it had been similar to following the smell of food without knowing whether the food was what He was craving at the moment.

The further He traveled and the closer He got, something deeper inside Him whispered that He was on the correct trail and for the first time in His life, if asked, He could not have vocalized what it was He had sensed.

Her gift. Yes, that must have been it.

The Shadow that was Sombra's extension of consciousness settled down, opting for patience, melting into its fellow shadows at the corners of the room, waiting for another scent of food.