//------------------------------//
// Ice Crystals 
// Story: Fall of Empire 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

“Doctor? I didn’t find a jacket, but I did find this old sweater.”
The Time Lord glanced up from the console at last, surprised. After a moment, a smile split his face. He snorted, biting at his lower lip. “What?” asked Sweetie Belle, decked out in red question marks and jagged blue lines.
“Nothing, nothing,” the Doctor chuckled. “Bit big for you, isn’t it?”
Sweetie shrugged. “I guess. Cozy, though.”
The Doctor smiled slightly. “Well, alright then. Shall we away?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Sweetie shouted, bouncing in place. “Ooh, I can’t wait to see the Crystal Empire! It’s so bright and shiny and lovely and — ”
The doors swung open, bringing along a rush of icy wind and dirty snow and slush. Sweetie fell silent. She looked at the Doctor. The Doctor looked back. They both stared outside. Far from being in a bustling city, they had landed in a desolate snowy tundra at twilight. The wind howled cruelly over the plains. The Time Lord coughed and rubbed at the back of his head. “I… suppose I might have overshot in the confusion?” He sniffed at the air. “Let’s see. Mm… Well, we’re certainly in the Frozen North… Yes, we’re in the right place…”
“There, over by those mountains,” Sweetie said, waving a hoof to the west. “That must be it.”
The two surveyed the Crystal Empire silently. It was oddly dark and very, very quiet. “...Maybe everypony’s asleep?” Sweetie suggested.
“Might be,” the Doctor said, rubbing his jaw with a hoof. “Could very well… Well, whatever’s going on, we need to get in there in order to get our crystal. We’ll deal with whatever problems arise as they come.”
“...Alright,” Sweetie replied dubiously, following the Doctor out the door. “Won’t you be cold?”
“What, me? Nah, I’ll be right. Time Lords have a few genetic advantages over ponies, and earth pony magic just makes me that much hardier. Still, we’d best hurry.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Sweetie agreed, closing the TARDIS door tight behind her. “Brrr.”

The duo set off at a brisk trot over the frozen ground. Nevertheless, the deep drifts and frequent flurries made for slow going. “So!” the Doctor said brightly. “Ever been out to the Empire before?”
Sweetie smiled slightly. “Once,” she replied. “With the other Crusaders and Spike. We didn’t get to see much, though, we were… a little busy at the time. It didn’t look anything like this, though.” She paused. “Have you ever been here?”
“Once or twice. Apparently a few more times in my personal future, if you want to believe — Well, never mind that now.”
They trudged onward in silence for a few more minutes before Sweetie spoke again. “Doctor, what exactly happened in the TARDIS? Exactly.”
“Like I said, drift compensator burned out,” the Doctor replied, staring straight ahead. “Essentially, it’s what keeps the ship on course in time. What we experienced was literally the collapsing of time and its relative dimensions.”
There was a long silence. “So, like, if that was what was keeping us on course for the right time, how do we know we arrived when we think we did?”
“I checked the TARDIS readouts,” the Doctor replied lightly. “Never led me wrong. Well, right, maybe once. A few times. Okay, several times, but only under very special circumstances.”
Sweetie raised an eyebrow. “I just… you’ve got to trust the TARDIS,” the Doctor continued. “She’s the one who’s really in charge. If you don’t trust her, you can’t do anything or travel anywhere.”
“I guess that’s true…” Sweetie conceded. “It just really doesn’t seem like the whole place could’ve just changed this much without anypony hearing about it.”
The Doctor merely shrugged. “Well, we’ve certainly faced stranger things, haven’t we? Is this more or less believable than a living cloud, or an army of mind-stealing robot crabs?”
Sweetie gnawed at her lower lip. “More, I guess…”
“Well, there you go,” the Doctor said with satisfaction. “There’s probably some kind of explanation for this. We’ll find out when — ”
The Time Lord was suddenly cut off as a massive explosion shook the earth. He and Sweetie both fell heavily to the ground. “What the heck?” Sweetie asked, looking toward the horizon. Before her eyes, she saw a brilliant light illuminate the snowy ground, followed by an enormous snowball hurtling toward the crystal structures. At the last possible moment, the projectile was struck by another light and promptly exploded.
The two travelers stared, astonished, at the scene as more snowballs and arcane projectiles met in the sky over the empire. “I’m sure that there’s… some sort of explanation,” the Doctor repeated.
“Well, that makes one of us,” Sweetie said, shaking the snow out of her curls. “How sure are you that the TARDIS got the right date?”
“I tuned her instruments myself!”
“That neither answers my question nor makes me feel any better about this situation,” Sweetie Belle said flatly.
“Oi!”
Another explosion shook the ground, and the two promptly found themselves tail over head once more. The Doctor lifted up his head just in time to see another snowball fly at the empire. There was something unusual about that one, but for the life of him, he couldn’t see what it was.
Another snowball crashed to the ground not twenty meters away. Oh, that was it. These snowballs were coming from directly behind them. Wait. That was a problem. “Sweetie Belle! Run!”
The young unicorn was leaving hoofprints before he’d stopped talking, and the Time Lord quickly decided that it was in his best interests to follow her. Snow and bolts of magic lightning battled overhead, showering the travelers with ice and freezing slush. The eastern gate was drawing closer, but not quickly enough. The snowballs were also flying increasingly near the time travelers. One particularly close call sent snow and ice flying up in a fine mist that stung their eyes and skin. Fifty meters away, now.
“Open up!” Sweetie screamed. “Sanctuary!” A bolt of magic rocked the frozen ground, sending the mare tripping over her own long legs. Thirty-five meters now.
The Doctor hauled his companion back to her hooves, and together they stumbled towards the massive gates like some kind of demented crab. Twenty meters now.
Another explosion, closer this time, it seemed. Clouds of frost and ice shook off from the crystal archway ahead of them. Ten meters.
A whistling noise cut through the air, followed by a muffled hiss and crunch. The Doctor glanced up. His eyes went wide and he shoved Sweetie toward the safety of the archway. Five meters left.
For the Doctor, everything went white for a moment, a light that was bright and mercilessly cold. Then everything faded to a comforting, warm black.




The Time Lord took a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes flew open. Like a restless insect his gaze zipped around the room, taking in every aspect of it. Pure white. Familiar, but not. Comforting, but not. Home, but not.
The Doctor sat up, rubbing absently at the side of his head where the snowball — snow cannonball, more like — had smacked him. The walls were an austere white, inlaid with uniform circular holes. The floor and ceiling were even less decorative. In the center of the room sat a large console of buttons and switches. As he had originally thought, he was in the TARDIS. But it wasn’t his TARDIS.
Not anymore, a cold voice said.
The Doctor spun around, eyes blazing. “Who’s there? Who said that?”
Who, if it comes to it, are you?
“I am the Doctor. This is my ship. I say again, who are you?”
Tsk. Don’t you know that talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity?
The Doctor spun around again. “You again. Who are you, then? All these years, you’ve been popping up in my dreams, but you’ve never introduced yourself. Very rude, I must say…”
“Haven’t I? Oh my, you are slow, aren’t you? Have I not left enough clues? Do you not recall a potential future amalgamation of all of your darkest qualities? One called — “
The Doctor paused and turned around. A paper-white stallion with a cropped black mane and red eyes grinned back at him. “The Valeyard?”
“...Seriously? That’s… that’s the best I could do?”
The Valeyard’s wicked grin melted. “The best — the best you could do?”
“Mm, yes,” the Doctor agreed, trotting around the interloper to look at him from all sides. “I mean, this is obviously a dream. I couldn’t imagine up the Master, or Davros, or maybe even Rassilon? I got you?”
“Me! Your worst enemy of all, yourself!”
The Doctor paused for a moment and shrugged. “Well, perhaps. I mean, you’re obviously just a bit of moldy cheese anyway. Some fermented vinegar. A few crumbs of baked bads, interacting with whatever concussion I’ve gotten myself,” he said cavalierly. “Nothing more than a fever dream without a temperature, a drunken hallucination without the hangover.”
The Valeyard glared, rendered impotent by shock and affront. “Very well, Doctor. Believe what you will, but know this. Someday, this dream will come true, and I will be the one to make it happen!” He exploded with a bright red light that left the Doctor blinking.
“Funny,” he murmured. “Doesn’t seem such a bad dream to me. Where are we, I wonder? Post-apocalyptic Ponyville? Celestia’s deathbed? The end of the universe?” He glanced over the displays. Slowly, his brow wrinkled. Every instrument was off. Every readout was blank.
His eyes crept up toward the wall at a glacial pace. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no…”
The TARDIS had no door.




The Doctor sat up with a choked gasp, his eyes flying open. He blinked, adjusting to the dim light of the room. It was small and somewhat cramped, scarcely more spacious than a walk-in closet. It was sparsely furnished with the cot which he had been resting on and a small table. “Sweetie Belle?” he called, glancing around.
Beside him, a furry lump in a question-mark jumper grunted indistinctly and rolled over, muttering in her sleep. He stared for a moment in surprise, then poked her in the tummy.
“Ackpth!” Sweetie jerked up. “I don’t even like bananas!”
The Doctor frowned. “Oh, c’mon, bananas are good.”
Sweetie blinked in the light, or lack thereof. “Doctor?”
“Morning.”
“Evening, I think. Or, maybe really early morning. You’re okay?”
“Mph. Feels like I lost a fight with a snowpony. What happened?”
The unicorn fidgeted, pushing herself up from the cot that the two ponies had apparently been sharing. “Well, um, after you got hit by the snowball, I sort of hauled you under the archway and yelled for help.You were as cold as ice, so I tried to stay as close as I could to share body heat. That’s a survival thing, right? Not just something from a video game. Button told me, so I really don’t know. Anyway, nopony came out. So, I just sort of stood there, because what else am I gonna do, right?”
“...Right…”
“And then, um, I guess I got a little… overwhelmed…” Sweetie trailed off. “It was like I didn’t know what I was doing! I just felt so… so…” She inhaled. “It was like everything I ever did wrong was pushing down on me, and every time I ever got even a little annoyed was pushing back out, and I just, I just…”
“Exploded?” the Doctor guessed, his expression guarded.
“Exactly! All my magic just sort of surged up, and the next thing I knew, a bunch of guards were hauling us in through the gates. I don’t know how it happened, or why, or… Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“We aren’t when we thought we were, are we?” Her open face was anxious, her eyes wide and her voice pleading to be corrected.
The Doctor let out a prolonged, slow breath. “What gave it away?”
Sweetie glanced down. “What happened to me?” she asked quietly.
The Time Lord frowned, but decided to let his question go in face of the more pressing issue. “Crystal is a sort of emotional sponge and amplifier. It takes in strong emotions and captures them, plays ‘em back like a CD.”
“A what?”
“Sorry, a cassette.” She still looked blank. The Doctor sighed. “A record.”
“Oh, right.”
“You were feeling stressed, probably a bit angry, right? The presence of so much  crystal just amplified that into a massive explosion. But that doesn’t make sense!”
Sweetie stared, head cocked to one side at the exact angle to maximize endearment. She probably didn’t consciously realize it, the Doctor thought absently, picking up his recorder and spinning it around idly. “The crystals need more time, more emotion than that to work so dramatically. Think about the Alicorn Amulet, right? Crystal. It took Trixie’s desire for revenge, her anger, her inferiority complex, and channeled it all through crystal, blotting out all of her positive emotions. That was only because the crystals were already infused with massive negative energy.”
“It was full of bad vibes?”
“If you like, sure. If it had been around more positive sources, Trixie wouldn’t’ve ended up so megalomaniacal. Crystal is naturally neutral. It just reflects what it’s already been around. For the gate to have such an impact on you, the sorrow and fury in the empire must be massive, and that’s impossible because of the Crystal Heart putting out, well, good vibrations! It doesn’t make…” He trailed off, staring at Sweetie.
The unicorn bit her lip and became very interested in the crystal structure of the ground. “Sweetie Belle, what aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you tell me when we’ve landed?”
The unicorn continued to stare down at the ground. The Doctor’s jaw set. “Sweetie Belle,” he growled.
“I didn’t want you to feel guilty!” the mare shouted, tears in her eyes.
The Doctor stopped. He felt the tension he’d been holding, hadn’t realized he’d been holding, suddenly release. Oh, that was bad. That was very very not good. The negative resonance of the empire was affecting him as well, and if his rage broke loose… he knew all too well what would happen. “Why would I feel guilty?” he asked levelly.
Why wouldn’t you feel guilty? A devilish voice murmured at the back of his head. It sounded terribly familiar. Think of all the lives you’ve ruined. Donna, Astrid, Jack —
Shut up, he thought back. Working.
Adric! the little voice shouted. Katarina! Kamelion! Charley! Fitz! Evelyn!
“I said SHUT UP!” the Doctor shouted, breathing heavily.
Sweetie Belle blinked, rearing back, ears flat. The Doctor caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective wall; his mane was wild and frazzled, his eyes bloodshot, and he was all but frothing at the mouth. Just for an instant, he thought he saw a lime green pony with a frizzy blond mane and a clown-vomit coat staring back at him from the reflection, but then it was gone. Only his current face remained, as crazed and distressing as it had been before.“Sorry! Not you, talking to myself,” the Doctor said quickly. “Keep talking, why am I feeling guilty?”
“Because of when we ended up,” Sweetie Belle said, wretchedly. “Doctor, we’re over one thousand years in the past, before the Crystal Empire disappeared.”
The Doctor’s breath caught in his throat, his pulses quickening. “Please tell me that that doesn’t mean what I think it means…”
The door to the dimly-lit room swung open, revealing the imposing figure of a guard clad in stygian armor, her coat a dull shade of gunmetal blue. “His Highness King Sombra will see you now,” she said.
The Doctor let out a hollow moan and let his head fall against the crystal wall. Sweetie winced and pulled away. The guard, hollow-eyed and motionless, stood stiffly at attention like a good soldier.




They were spared shackles, at least, as the unnamed guard marched down the hall ahead of them. There wasn’t even a rear guard to watch them from behind. The back of the Doctor’s mane prickled under unseen and likely nonexistent eyes, and he internally rankled at the apparent underestimation of his capabilities. He could run, escape without so much as a second thought. But then what? Run forever in a maze of shining surfaces and bottled feelings? You’d end up lost or insane, probably both.
He shook himself out of the stupor. Beside him, Sweetie Belle blinked herself out of her own reverie, her eyes wide and vague. “So,” she said quietly. “You’ve never been here before?”
“Not at this time, no,” the Doctor murmured. “I mainly visited after its return. It was… not like this.”
Sweetie stared around the corridor. The only adjective for it was ‘gloomy.’ The crystal walls had faded from bright and shined surfaces to dull, cloudy greys which filtered out much of the natural light. Torches were intermittent and smoky, giving off barely enough light to see five meters ahead. Their hoofsteps echoed throughout the halls, a hollow, shadowy mockery that soon faded into muffled silence.
“It feels… so sad…” she whispered.
“Not surprising,” the Doctor replied. “We’ve arrived in the middle of the Equestrian war with Sombra’s empire. He’s been in power for at least six years by now, but it might be as many as eleven. The Crystal Empire’s been brought pretty low, all told.”
“You can say that again,” Sweetie said, glancing around. “This place would depress even Pinkie.”
The Doctor hesitated a moment before nodding. “Try to remember that,” he said. “Whatever you’re feeling, remember that it’s being influenced by the crystal structure. Remember who you really are, that’s very important.”
“Um,” said Sweetie, biting at her lower lip. “But what if —”
She cut herself off as they turned the corner and found themselves blinded by a dazzling white light.