Trash of the Royal Castle

"You're not going to kill him."

Walking in circles over the magical web designed to trap Sombra for Plan B, I closed my eyes and tried to relax my mind.

"Of course I'm gonna kill him," I told the ghost who kept talking to me, "Why wouldn't I kill him?" I turned to look at the bastard, "Do you want me to just hope that the others find the Crystal Heart in time? You know that prayer doesn't work, when something is troubling me I just need to fix it myself, because lately, it seems like I'm the only one who's doing anything about it!" I opened my eyes and glared at him, his red feathers and his stupid beak, at those annoying eyes that seem to be looking down on me.

With pity.

The bastard...

"That's not what I mean and you know it," Macaw said, still staring at me with those infuriating eyes, "Killing Sombra is unquestionably the best choice right now. What I'm saying is that you're not going to kill him, you're going to fight him."

"...Are you going to explain to me what the fuck you're talking about or are you still going to be a major pain in my ass?"

Macaw rolled his eyes at my question, his body gliding over the grass like the ghost he was until he floated beside me, his Harpy body levitating half a meter off the ground, "Killing him is easy, just grab his internal organs with a careful use of telekinesis and rupture them. It's quick, it's clean, and it's over in a few seconds." He explained, "You're not going to do that though, you're not going to kill him so easily, because that's not fun. You're going to fight him, like you did with Chrysalis, You're going to put the lives of everyone around in danger just for a little drop of excitement. You say you won't, but we both know you will."

I stared at the red bird person, patiently waiting for him to continue.

"Do you not get- Ugh, of course you don't." He groaned, "Can't you see Kingfisher? It's this excitement, this danger, this game with death that you play, you're still a slave to it-" His beak froze as a blue aura shone around his head.

"Don't you ever call me that again..." I whispered loudly to the bird before I squeezed, his head popping like a grape before his body disappeared like mist, his voice still echoing around me.

"You can't keep running away from the truth, Kingfisher, we both know this~"

"...Son of a bi-"

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It was only thanks to Princess Celestia's demonstration, that Twilight managed to figure out how to reveal the true castle that Sombra used.

Using the crystal's power of reflection in conjuncture with Sombra's dark magic, A pit formed in the middle of the throne room, with a staircase winding down deep and far into the hole that should not exist.

"It's a magnificent work of spatial magic..." Twilight noted to herself in her mind as she walked down the stairs, "The Crystal Castle is a tower, the Throne Room sits elevated above the ground. If a hole were to form on the floor, it would lead to the plaza outside. But instead, it's leading deep into the ground, skipping the space that makes up the floors beneath it..."

It was such a small thing, a display of magic like this. many ponies wouldn't even understand the depth of knowledge needed to stitch space in this way. Twilight doubted if she herself could do something like this without months of preparation...

"Sombra really is dangerous..."

"Can you see what's down there yet?" Up in the throne room, Spike the Dragon yelled down, wanting to know how Twilight's search was going.

"Not yet! I can't even tell how far down this goes!" Twilight yelled back before ripping a small crystal from a wall and dropping it down the hole to see how long it would take to fall.

And then she waited.

And waited some more.

Then she checked her ears to see if nothing was plugging them.

And then she looked down at the hole again.

And then she finally heard the clang, fifteen seconds after she dropped the crystal from the wall.

"Spike?" Twilight called up to her little brother, Worry on her face as she tried to calculate how long it would take to explore this darkened section of the castle, "Can you see outside?"

"Just a sec!" Spike yelled over before he went to the window to take a look. The barrier that surrounded the Empire fizzled and wavered, changing from the blue bubble to the dark clouds on the other side, like a device running out of batteries, warning that it was going to run empty soon.

"It's not good! Cadance's magic must be fading faster than before!" Spike yelled back.

Fearing the constraints of time, Twilight started dashing down the stairs, only for her hoof to step on a crumbling step, causing her body to tumble down the stairs. Luckily she managed to cast a basic protection spell the moment she noticed her face coming close to the step, protecting her from any lasting injuries that could have been caused by her long fall down the stairs.

But just because she wasn't hurt, doesn't mean she didn't feel it.

Her leg was supposed to break, her neck snapped to the side, her ribs cracking, the skin on her knees would stretch and tear, and a sharp crystal protruding from the floor would stab at her abdomen.

Physically, Twilight Sparkle was fine. But her body was feeling pain that she didn't know she could feel.

The closest she got to feeling such pain, was when Chrysalis kicked her down on the floor before teleporting her away.

As her body experienced the pain of injuries that weren't there, she managed to reach the bottom of the stairs, her body heaving tiredly, her breath thin and frail, as if afraid any movement might open the injuries up.

"Twilight! Are you okay?!" Spike yelled down to her from the top of the stairs, unable to see Twilight all the way at the bottom.

"Yes..." Twilight managed to say back, her voice likely not loud enough to reach the top of the stairs, but Twilight didn't care.

She almost died.

Not by getting caught by one of Sombra's traps, or fighting the wizard himself, but by falling down the stairs.

Clearing her head, Twilight looked at the only door that was down there.

With her horn glowing, she tried to open the door, only for the door to slide away from her.

"What in the?" Twilight tried to open the door again, only for the door to seemingly climb up the wall and away from her before repositioning itself behind her.

"Grr!" Twilight growled as she tried to catch the door, once again failing to open the moving pathway.

"Open!" She yelled, her horn glowing purple and black with the Dark Magic she copied from Celestia's presentation, the beam of dark magic impacting the gem above the door, holding it in place with no issues.

"It seems everything here responds to dark magic..." Twilight noted to herself as the door opened, revealing a blinding white light.

"Spike!" She called up to her brother, "I think it's here!" And without waiting, Twilight Sparkle ran into the light.

Searching for the Crystal Heart.

-------------------------------------------------

At the foot of the barrier, Crystals of Dark Magic collected and grew, sprouting out of each other like a tumorous growth, spreading lines of shadow and darkness along the ground.

On the other side of the Barrier, King Sombra, Little more than a cloud of dark smoke, was all but crashing his head against the blue barrier of love as he focused on his collection of crystals.

"Open... For me..." He whispered, his mind still in the process of re-acclimating to the world outside of his prison, not yet fully legible in his words. His crystals grow taller, spreading and connecting to one another like scaffolding, building upwards like a spire ready to pierce the Barrier from the inside.

His smile spread across his face as the Crystals crashed against the Barrier, "Stay There... Stay There...!" He roared at the crystals as they speared through the inside of the barrier, cutting a hole through it.

An entrance for him to enter.

"Yes... YES!" Sombra didn't bother holding himself back, his smoky body twisting and shrinking to fit into the hole in the barrier, his dark magical crystals holding it open like the hands of a surgeon, the barrier shaking as it started crushing the crystals in an attempt to close the hole.

The crystals shattered, unable to hold the barrier open, even in its weakened state.

But it was too late...

"Hehehe... Hehahahaha... My Crystal Empire... My Slaves..." Sombra whispered as his body formed atop the green grass inside the barrier.

"My Amore..."

As Sombra started levitating in the air, his body turning back into smoke, he felt something latch onto his leg.

"Hey Jackass!"

Sombra turned to look below him, seeing a golden rope wrapped around his left hind leg, extending from what seemed to be a large magical circle in the shape of a spiderweb etched onto the ground, and a White Stallion with eyes like arctic glaciers staring up at him.

"Did I give you permission to ignore me?!"

"Who are-" Sombra tried to ask the Stallion that stood on top of the magical circle calling out to him, only for the wind to blow out of his lungs as he quickly found his body dragged into the golden web, the rope around his leg pulling him in, his body refusing to turn into smoke.

Dragged along the ground by the rope as his body hit the floor, Sombra struggled to pull free of the golden rope, his body refusing to transform. With a yell of anger, a beam of dark magic escaped his horn, trying to cut the rope, only to fizzle out as the web below him shone with a bright golden light.

Finally, he stopped dragging on the ground as he reached the White Stallion. With a yell, Sombra fired a beam of magic at him.

Only for his magic to fizzle away before even leaving his horn.

"What in the-" Sombra was cut off as a hoof hit him in the face, courtesy of the white Stallion.

"Did I give you permission to attack me?!" The white stallion's smile grew wider, his ice-blue almost glowing with excitement as he looked down at Sombra.

"Hello, Fuckface~"

Seeing the eyes on that Stallion, Sombra knew that taking back his Empire wouldn't be as easy as he thought.