CHAPTER 5

Sorry for being late with this chapter, readers. Life and stuff. Actually, I want to take a moment and talk about life...I've thought a great deal about it lately, and I've come to a realization that life is a painful and debilitating disease. At least it has been for me. And I find myself finally conquered by the illness...bedridden by the cancer of living that has destroyed me slowly over the last 31 years. I am ill, but I have not yet died, no matter how much I now want to. I have lost so much, and suffered so greatly, and always kept my optimism. No longer. There is no light at the end of that tunnel...no silver lining in the clouds that gather on the horizon, the inevitability is all I have left. Love, and hope, and happiness have left me, and all I have left to do is to wait for the illness called life to kill me, unless I one day have the nerve to do as Hemingway did...

Just a rant...ignore me, I'm losing my mind. Here's the chapter. -Drake

"You find anything?" I asked as I looked over an old book on the history of the Crystal Empire. Across the small room, Daring Do lowered another book and cocked her head.

"Listen to this..." She said. "Apparently Sombra crowned himself king after he...well, I would say overthrew the princess of the kingdom...but it's more like turned her into crystal and obliterated her."

"That's pretty damned harsh." I commented. "Lemme guess...he was some low-ranking royal or a general or something, and wanted what all ponies with power want."

"Actually, I don't see anything in here about him from before he took over..." Daring answered, flipping through some pages. "And this thing covers all the royalty and stuff from way back."

"Huh." I mused. I looked back at my book. My research was going nowhere. I started pulling parchments off of a tall shelf, and unrolling them one by one. After I had already made a pile of the scrolls on the table, I paused when I saw Sombra's name. "Wait...I think I found something...yeah, this was written a while after Sombra got his ass kicked the first time." I read the passage, then reread it out loud.

"Though Sombra enslaved the crystal ponies with his wrath and dark magics, there were those who willingly and loyally followed their master. They carried on their fealty long after their king was defeated and destroyed by Princess Celestia, and hope still for the return of the king..." I looked up. "Some ponies never give up, huh?" Daring shrugged, and opened another book as I wandered over to a large bust of the evil overlord. "This is him, huh?" I remarked. He appeared to be a strong and regal-looking stallion, but if there was any doubt about his nature, the fangs, scowl and demonic crown dispelled any thoughts of him being a nice guy. Plus he had sideburns. Any pony with sideburns like that had to be evil.

"Huh? Yeah, that's Sombra." Daring Do stated, distracted by the volume she was flipping through.

"He looks the part, I'll give him that..." I muttered. I stared at the statue a few moments more, then moved on to another large bust of the king. This one depicted his horn a good deal larger than the last. No doubt something he'd ordered the sculptor to do. "Compensating for something, your lordship?" I said mockingly.

"Are you talking to statues?" Daring asked wryly.

"Just trying to get to know my enemy..." I returned. I reached up and touched the horn. To my surprise, it seemed to move a little. I pulled my hoof away, hoping I hadn't broken a priceless artifact. Instead, it looked like the horn had receded into the bust's head a little. I curiously pushed on it again, and sure enough, it slid into the statue. There was a click, and a compartment in the base of the bust popped open.

"Do you always have to touch everything?" Daring complained, joining me in front of the statue. "What if that thing was boobytrapped?!"

"Eh...never happened to me before..." I replied with a shrug. I pulled a folded up piece of yellowed parchment from the small space and unfolded it carefully. "Besides, I think I found something kind of interesting."

"What is it?"

"Well...um...I think this is Sombra's hoofwriting."

"What?!" The adventurer exclaimed.

"And it looks like it was torn out of some book or journal or something." I added. "See the tearing on the edge? And it's written front and back. Ponies usually only do that in diaries and notebooks and stuff."

"You seriously found a page of Sombra's journal?!" Daring asked in astonishment. I grinned triumphantly.

"Guess I'm a pretty good treasure hunter too." I remarked. She scoffed.

"You got lucky." She shot back.

"Alright...lessee what this says..." I began to read the page, and my mood deflated more and more the further I got in the passage. By the time I had finished the back of the journal entry, I was fairly certain that if I had any pleasant feelings about this mission, they were now gone for good.

"What does it say?" Daring Do questioned. I folded up the paper.

"Nothing...just a bunch of rambling on about how good it is to be king and stuff." I said. "Bastard could have at least hidden away something useful." I stuck the page in my saddlebag. "Still, I'm gonna give this to Princess Cadence when I get the time. She might be happy we found it." I looked around the room. "Let's see if we can find anything else that can help us."

From Rainbow Dash's Personal Memoirs:

They were in separate rooms. Actually, I had found two small offices, each one had a desk and a couple chairs in it, and we had the guards bring one of the prisoners to each one. They were cuffed and shackled, with bags over their heads, and I had to think of a good way to go about doing this. Drake wanted me and Budder to interrogate these guys, and I wanted to play it up a little, make the two stallions sweat a little. I walked into the first room, and jerked the bag off of the brown stallion's head, and sat down across from him at the desk.

"Who are you?" He asked defiantly.

"It don't matter who I am." I said back to him. "I'm nopony, and you're gonna answer my questions. Understand?"

"Get mounted." He growled. I stood and slapped him across the face with a velvet pouch filled with sand I had under the desk. He let out a grunt, and moved his lower jaw around, recovering from the hit.

"Okay...question one..." I said. "How are your friends gonna bring Sombra back from the dead?" He immediately straightened up and looked into my eyes.

"King Sombra is returning?" He asked in surprise, then cocked his head. "Or are you just messin' with me?"

"I didn't say he was coming back." I replied. "I asked you how your little cult or whatever plans on trying to bring him back."

"Hahahahaha!" He laughed. "You pathetic little worm. You can't even mask the fact that King Sombra's return is at hoof. You're gonna suffer along with the rest of all the other worthless ponies that..." I cut him off with a blow from the bag that split it open, causing the sand to shower the stallion. He fell over in his chair, and still tied to it, lay on his side, coughing on the cloud of sand.

"I asked you a simple little question, pal." I said, getting really angry at the guy. "Tell me how the cult is planning to bring your dead hero back to life...NOW!"

"Or what?" He asked back.

"Or I'm getting my assistant to come in here and ask you again. And you ain't gonna like my assistant."

"Piss off." He said boredly.

"Fine...have it your way. I'm gonna go beat on your buddy in the next room. I'll be back with my assistant in a few minutes." I warned him before leaving the room. Budder was waiting in the hall, looking at me like she was asking how it went.

"Well?" Drake's sister asked.

"He wouldn't talk." I said. "Need a more...heavy duty bag for the sand. Mine broke when I clobbered that idiot with it. Alright, I'm gonna go talk to the other pony now. You wanna come?"

"Sure." She answered. We threw open the door to the room, making sure it banged against the wall, making a lot of noise. Budder slammed it shut behind her, and I pulled the bag off of the gray stallion's head. He looked around, probably still confused about what was going on.

"Where am I?" He asked. "Who are you?" He looked between me and Budder. "Who's the kid...and what is this?"

"We'll ask the questions here." I said. "We know that you helped Sombra when he came back."

"No shit." He replied. "So what?"

"So, that means you're in a position to answer some questions we got about your dead master." I shot back. "You answer 'em, you go back to your cell. You don't, you ain't goin' anywhere ever again."

"You...you don't scare me with that..." He said. "And I don't know what a couple of girls are..." Before he could finish, Budder had jumped over the desk, and dove onto the stallion, sending him onto his back. "OH SHIT!" He called out. Budder was on top of him, holding onto the collar of his prison shirt with both hooves. "AH...you broke my FUCKING ARMS!"

"Answer our questions." Budder said, sounding very serious. "How is the cult gonna bring Sombra back?"

"A spell, alright?" He answered.

"We knew that." I said. "Be a little more specific!"

"Get this little bitch off of me!" He yelled back.

"What did you call me?" Budder asked through clenched teeth. She punched the stallion in the jaw.

"Budder...stop." I said. Drake's little sister was getting fired up, and it was starting to make me a little nervous.

"Budder, huh?" The stallion asked. "Kinda like you, Budder."

"The heck does that mean?!" She demanded.

"I ain't had a filly in over a year." He answered. Budder looked confused for a moment, then she realized what the stallion was saying, and there was no time for me to jump over the table to stop her. The next thing I knew, Drake's sister was beating the guy with both forehooves like a crazy pony.

"Fuckyoufuckfuckingfuckerfuckingkillyoufuckingkillyou!" She screamed. "Fucking say that to me, you sick fucking fuck!" I finally managed to tackle her to the floor, probably saving the stallion's life. His face was hardly recognizable anymore, and he coughed and spit out a couple of teeth.

"Budder...calm down..." I said. "Just...cool it, okay?" She nodded, took a deep breath and sat up. The teenager looked at the battered stallion, then back to me.

"Did I really do that?" She asked, sounding shocked.

"Yeah, you did..." I replied. She looked at the blood on her forehooves.

"I...I don't feel bad about it, Dashie..." She whispered. "He deserved it...didn't he?"

"Yeah, he did." I said.

"Um...don't tell bub I cussed like that..." She muttered. That filly...she'd just beaten a stallion within an inch of his life, and she was worried about the fact that she'd dropped an F-bomb.

"Well...let's go work on the other guy a while..." I sighed. "Maybe he'll spill now."

From Drake's Biography

Daring and I looked at the page in the book that lay open before us. I'm certain we both felt the same as we read the words written a thousand years ago. I probably understood it better, having read the journal page that now rested in my saddlebag, and on my mind. The book was a collection of writings taken from diaries, letters and reports, and covered the time of Sombra's ascension to the throne. We found a couple of interesting letters from ponies who knew the king before he became an almighty warlord. From what we could glean, Sombra had been found in the frozen wasteland, not far from the Crystal Empire when he was just a foal. He was placed in an orphanage, and nopony that knew him thought he would ever do anything like he did. Why, they didn't say, but from what I deduced, he was probably either so meek or so nondescript that he was the last pony his old classmates suspected would one day rise up and enslave them.

We finished up in the room, and left to see if Dash and Budder had uncovered anything from interrogating the traitors in the prison. Before we left the museum, I felt compelled to read the journal page one more time. I excused myself, and walked into the bathroom near the entrance of the large museum where I pulled the letter from my bag. I unfolded it, and read it for the second time:

'I now know that I must embrace the prophecy shown to me. I have fought my true nature for years, but I can no longer. A pony must find their reason to exist, their own destiny. All else I have tried is in vain, save for that vision which was given to me that day at the Crystal Fair. I have been a failure at everything I have attempted to become. Including having a friend. I truly SCRIBBLED OUT nt Hope. I trusted her. This is the weakness of fools, I see that now. Friendship and love have left me destitute and forsaken. I am the despised son of a world that pretends to love whilst all the while taking for their own ends. All are monsters, and the greatest of the monsters are the ones who can set the board and win the game. I shall be king of the monsters.

Mother has given me the truth. I know now why I am so different, why I have never belonged among the crystal ponies. They despised me and cast me out. Now, as I grow stronger by the day, I know they shall soon ten-fold feel the pain that they visited upon me. I have never felt such power as I now possess. Soon, I shall become strong enough to seize the Crystal Throne and my destiny shall be fulfilled.

I do not know any longer if I would go back and change my destiny if I had the chance. For an opportunity to be truly happy, I think I would trade the world. But there is no true happiness in the world, so I will settle for the world instead. I will rule the monsters as king of them all.

I love you, SCRIBBLED OUT . You gave me strength when I was weak. Now you are my weakness. I regret only what I have to do to you.'

I folded up the yellowed page, and stuck it back in my saddlebag. I was starting to realize that this Sombra wasn't a run-of-the-mill sociopath. In psychoanalyzing the criminal mind, you learn that there are born monsters, and there are those that are made. What had made King Sombra the way he was? I pushed those thoughts from my mind as I rejoined Daring by the front door of the museum.

"Let's get to the prison and check on Rainbow Dash and my sister...see if they found out anything useful from those prisoners." I said.

Daring and I walked down the hall where Dashie and Budder stood waiting, two Crystal Guards standing at the end of the hall, placed there by Cadence in case something went wrong."You get anything out of those guys?" I asked.

"Not much." Dashie answered. "We've been in each room a couple times. They're seriously loyal to Sombra, and I don't think they're gonna roll on him or the cult anytime soon." She sighed. "It was worth a shot, right?"

"They still in there?" I asked, nodding toward the rooms.

"Yeah, I was waiting on you like you wanted..." Dash replied.

"Sis...can I borrow your scalpels?" I asked. She pulled the pouch out of her bag and nervously handed it to me. Dash noticed the look on my face.

"Drake?"

"Which one's the worst offender?" I inquired.

"The one in that room." Dash pointed to one of the doors. "Drake?"

"Give me a few minutes." I walked into the room, where a brown stallion sat, cuffed to a chair, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. I felt a funny feeling, almost like I was outside my own mind watching my actions.

"Rough day, huh?" I asked. He shot me a death glare.

"You here to ask me more questions?" The stallion questioned angrily. "I already told the two little tramps that I ain't saying anything."

"Oh..." I mused. Tramps...this lowlife not only had information I needed, but he'd just called my marefriend and my little sister tramps. I slowly slid one of the scalpels from the pouch, and walked around behind the prisoner. My mouth felt dry, and there was a slight throbbing in the back of my head, as if I was getting one of my famous migraines.

"I don't care about askin' you questions." I stated. "I'm just gonna kill you."

"What?" He exclaimed. "You can't do that...by law, somepony has to be executed by a legal officer, and only by order of..." I gave him a hard punch in the back of the head to shut him up.

"You're a servant of a damned tyrant, and you're gonna sit there and preach the law to me?!" I shouted. I walked to the door, and locked it. "For your information, this is a matter of national security, and you've been given over to my authority. Vis a vis that very open and liberal order, your ass belongs to me. You had the chance to talk a while ago." I walked back over to the stallion, and slid the scalpel down his right foreleg.

"OH HELL that hurts!" He screamed.

"I'm gonna carve you up like a jack o lantern." I stated grimly. "Any information that falls out of that mouth of yours might stop me, or it might not. I don't give a shit which..."

"AHHHH!" He cried out as I sliced deeply into the muscle tissue of his shoulder. I must have hit a major artery, because a stream of blood spurted out onto my forelegs.

"Your lord and master ain't coming back." I advised him. "I'm gonna stop your little cultist friends and grind Sombra's horn into powder!" I slid the scalpel into his chest, being careful to keep it away from the lung. "And if they do revive the asshole, I don't care what kind of mojo he's got, I'm gonna take him apart. Don't believe me?" I shoved the blade further in, and the stallion cried out again. "Tell me where the fuck they're gonna do their little ritual!"

"NO!" He yelled. I pulled the scalpel out of his shoulder, and stabbed it back in again. "AHH! You're gonna die! King Sombra will come back, and he'll kill you..." I narrowed my eyes at him. "But not before he kills your whole family...slowly...and makes you watch." I lost control. In anger, I jerked the blade from his shoulder, and slid it roughly across his abdomen. I didn't know it would do what it did. I wouldn't have gone that far if I had. The scalpel was sharper than I thought, and when I drew it across his belly, it created a deep wound that allowed part of his intestines to fall out. I stopped, snapped back into reality by the shock of my own actions, and stepped back, my body trembling. He looked down at the damage I'd done.

"You killed me...you killed me..." He gasped. I watched him, not sure what to do, or if I could do anything. He arched back in the chair, and the rest of his innards spilled out onto his lap, and the floor. He began convulsing, and after a few moments, stopped moving altogether. I looked down at the blood on my forelegs. I felt slightly nauseous, and couldn't believe what I had just done. I hadn't meant to kill him, criminal or not, and it hit me in the gut like a punch. I still had to find information, and I thought of a way to do it.

I slipped out of the room, careful not to open the door enough to let the others see into the room at what I had done. I didn't even look either of them in the eye as I walked into the next room. The gray stallion in the chair was beaten pretty badly, and I assumed that he had mouthed off to Dashie or something equally as serious. He stared at me, probably wondering what new Hell was coming now.

"Hey." I began. "I want to know where the cult is gonna perform their little ritual, and I wanna know right now." He looked away. "Alright, have it your way." I growled. I grabbed him by the top of his mane, and jerked him over sideways onto the floor, then began dragging him to the door, chair and all. The stallion yelled in anger, fear and pain the entire time as I threw open the door, and laboriously lugged the criminal down to the other door.

"Look away." I ordered Dash, Budder and Daring. "I said look away, alright?!" They fearfully turned away, and I shoved open the door, dragged the stallion inside and shut it. "Alright, you see that?!" I hollered, gesturing to the dead stallion. "You think this is a game?!"

"Wha...you...no, don't kill me!" He stammered. "Please...you're fuckin' crazy."

"Yeah...I'm crazy! I'm losing my everlovin' mind, and if you don't wanna end up like your comrade there, you'll tell me what I want to KNOW!"

"Okay, okay...the ritual can only be done in the crystal cavern underneath the ruins in the wasteland!" The stallion exclaimed. "That's the place, I swear! Don't kill me!"

"I ain't gonna kill you." I returned. I stepped back out of the room. "Guards?!" The two blue, shimmering crystal guards moved up, nervously glancing at the blood spattered on my white fur.

"Sir?" One of them replied.

"There's uh...one for the infirmary...and one for the undertaker..." I stated. They nodded, and I motioned for Dash, Budder and Daring to follow me before the guards dragged out the two prisoners. "Some ruins out in the wasteland." I stated. "That's where the cult is, and that's where we're going."

"Bubby?" My sister said meekly, trotting up beside me. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah...no...I dunno..." I answered, not meeting her gaze.

"Did you...did you kill them?" She squeaked. I swallowed hard, and kept walking.

"One...one of them." I whispered. She pressed her head against my shoulder.

"I love you..." She said, sounding almost afraid to hear what I would say back.

"I love you too, sis." I said softly. "It'll be okay, angel. I promise."

"Mmhm..." She sounded.

"Drake?" Daring called.

"Yeah."

"Listen...you good? I mean...you good to do this?"

"I'm game." I answered. "Let's get to the wasteland."

Fairly long chapter, and Drake showed his dark side for the first time since Volume Two. Spoiler...it gets worse. I'll try to have the next chapter up tomorrow if I ain't dead in a ditch somewhere, so keep checking back if you actually like this story. Drake out.