//------------------------------//
// Hewn from the Living Rock 
// Story: Fall of Empire 
// by Sixes_And_Sevens 
//------------------------------//

The target of the princess’s misguided wrath was, at present, in no state to fight her. As a matter of fact, had Celestia appeared before Sombra at that moment, he might have simply rolled over, spread his limbs, and let her destroy him. He wouldn’t even have needed to take the extra step of laying down. He was flat on his belly against cold, hard, rock-bottom, literally and metaphorically, his head resting on a crossed pair of still-armored forehooves. To summate, he was sulking. Not, it must be said, without good reason, given that his entire kingdom was falling to pieces around him.
Sombra growled irritably and let his head slip from their resting place onto the cold stone. His crown fell from his head, the colorless stones glowing with a faint reddish hue as they drew closer to the green section of wall. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Once more, he ran his tongue along his teeth, as he had done almost constantly for the last seven years, when the fangs had come in. Starswirl’s sweet cinnamon nuts, he was never going to get used to them. Intellectually, he knew that he could now eat meat. He also knew that he had, in the past, eaten meat. He further knew that he really, really liked the taste of meat.
...Starswirl’s sweet cinnamon nuts, he was screwed up inside.
“Grrraghh…”
Eating meat? Fangs? Flaming eyes? It was like he wasn’t even a pony anymore!
“Ssslavesssss….”
What was next? Would his tongue become forked? His hide armored? Perhaps he would turn crystal after all, like the so-called purity that he had always preached when under the influence of the
“Cryssstalsss…”
Sombra blinked and looked up. “Oh, bucking buck me,” he groaned.
For there, out of the crown that had fallen to the ground, had sprung a specter. Its eyes were glowing, its mouth fanged. The bridge of its snout looked like it had been constructed out of iron. And yes, that was a forked tongue slipping out from between its lips. He hadn’t supposed that he would turn into some kind of ghost, though.
“CRYSSSTAL SSSLAVESSS….”
Nor had he supposed that he would turn into such a nincompoop. The crown levitated up and landed on the phantom’s head, fusing with the mass of shaggy-styled mane into a sort of terrible spiky helmet, centered on the bright red horn in the middle of his forehead. From nowhere sprung a flowing dramatic, blood red cloak trimmed with— was that PONY fur trimming the edges?
Sombra stood up abruptly as he felt his remaining armor unlatch. It positively flew off him, zipping towards his doppelganger where each and every piece latched perfectly into place. The coal dust spectre reared back and laughed maniacally. Sombra cringed, leaning in on himself. Was this, then, his future? Was this his fate? Was he to be destroyed, at long last, by himself?
He waited with bated breath, ready at any moment to feel jaws around his neck or hooves battering his head. He waited some more.
He waited a little bit impatiently.
He opened an eye.
The spirit hovered there before him, a hole in space, glowing menacingly. But that’s all that it was doing. Sombra frowned. Hesitantly, he reached out a hoof and poked the spirit in the chest. It growled, baring its teeth, and a wave of despair washed over the ex-king.
He pulled back the hoof, staring down at it. Then, he stared up at the ghost. Then back at his hoof. Then, he let out a small wheeze of laughter.
The phantom stared at its double. “Graghhh?”
The wheeze grew into a giggle grew into a chuckle. “Really?” he gasped. “That’s it? You make ponies feel bad? And, and you thought that would stop me?”
The specter snarled and began to glow with a negative light. The sense of depression grew greater and greater. Sombra laughed harder. “I have been dealing with this for the last ten rutting years. Do you think that you’re actually going to do worse than what’s already been done?”
The phantasm shrunk away from Sombra’s slightly mad laughter. Literally. Its misty form began to dissipate around the edges, evaporating. The dwindling figure gaped at its shrinking body. “GGRRRRAAAAGGHHH! CRYSSSTALSSS! SSSLAVES!! SSSTAIRSSS!!!” His aura of negative energy now took up more space than the entity itself, and Sombra— the real and present Sombra, he now recognized— was laughing harder than he had in his entire life.
Peals of laughter faded to faint giggles. Sombra’s sides hurt from laughing so hard, but he couldn’t have cared less. He felt good. The illusion was now slightly larger than a mouse, still screaming at the top of its tiny little lungs. “GRRRAAAAAAAAAAGHHH! CRYSSSTALSSS! SSSLA— URK!”
That last was uttered when, with a single, fluid motion, Sombra scooped up his diminutive double, still grinning broadly. “You know,” he said almost conversationally, “I could just leave you for the roaches.”
The tiny illusion quieted, but its eyes glinted with violet in a way that was almost too small to be seen. Almost. Sombra shook his head. “But I think not.”
The little being flew into a fury once more, screaming and shaking fit to explode. Sombra studied it minutely. The face, the form, the color… all almost right, but in no part of it could he see himself. “Ha, ha,” he whispered.
The figure froze, then exploded in a shower of colorless crystal, falling down around a hunk of twisted metal that had once comprised a crown and ceremonial armor. Sombra set down his hoof and breathed out, his face settling back into its normal solemn grimace. Then he glanced at the melded slagheap on the floor, and his lips twitched up into a faint grin. He bent back a hoof, and smacked it into the wall, cracking the crystal and sending shards flying in all directions. He nodded. Good riddance.
He turned back to the plain rock behind him, aiming to sit down once again, but paused in midstride. He glanced at the doorway in the crystal. They certainly had been a long time up there. The tower wasn’t that tall, was it?
A pit of dread opened up in his stomach. In an instant, he was charging the door, his horn glowing bright. It slid smoothly out of his way as he passed through, and slammed shut behind him as his hooves pounded up the stairs.
For a long moment, the hall was still. Then, with a sudden, fierce motion, the crystal wall reformed where the armor had cracked it, shaping itself around the slag metal, absorbing it completely.




Celestia glanced back at her passenger. “What does yellow signify?”
“Fear, your highness.”
“Hm. And orange?”
“Lust and desire.”
“Doable, doable… How about puce?”
“Mild nausea.”
“We’ll go with that one,” Celestia decided,  circling down toward the large spatter of brownish-violet below. Before her hooves had even touched down, she felt an unpleasant, muddy burble in her stomach. She did her best to ignore it.
Gold-covered hooves touched putrefying puce crystal, and a green body tumbled off of white swan wings. “Bleah,” Jade groaned, trying to recover herself. “Ugh. Um, thanks for the save, your majesty.”
“Please, Majesty is a villainously insane reality-warper who tried to conquer the universe in the name of joy and fluff,” the alicorn said briskly. “Call me Celestia.”
Jade blinked. “Er. Right. Jade Corona, political advisor.”
“Yes, I know who you are,” Celestia replied. “We’ve met before. At the coronation ceremony for… well. You know.”
“Oh. Yes. Right.” Jade coughed. “Didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“I remember everypony I think might be important,” Celestia said absently, staring at the boundaries of the colored crystals.
“Oh. And I was one of them?”
“Most beings are.”
“...Oh.”
Celestia turned to look at Jade once more. “How are you freed?”
“Sorry?”
“From the spell of the empire. My soldiers, my sister, my sister’s soldiers, they almost all fell into a fury at the sight of the red explosion. How is it that you are spared?”
“I… well, I wasn’t, at first,” Jade said. “I was affected, too. I nearly… nearly…” she cut off, suddenly overcome. “I would have killed her,” she whispered.
Celestia watched impassively as the mare broke down in front of her. “And was it some moment of clarity that brought you back?” she asked.
“I-in a way,” Jade muttered. “She… talked me down. Told me that I didn’t have to be angry. And then her friend knocked me away. I think he was under the influence, too, but she talked him down as well. A-and, he said that the Empire would be, would be, g-gone by sunrise.”
Celestia paused. “This… friend, what was his name?”
“I don’t know. He calls himself the Doctor.”
Celestia looked toward the east, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Gone by sunrise,” she mused.
Jade’s eyes went wide. “B-but, your maj— Celestia,” she hastily corrected. “You can’t — you mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t I?” Celestia asked. “Why not?”
“Well, because we’re still inside the Empire, for one thing,” Jade said hotly. “And so is everypony else.”
The princess of the sun hesitated. “True,” she conceded, lowering her head. “Very well, good Corona, what other plans have you?”
Jade’s jaw fell open. “Y-you’re asking me?”
“Well, yes. You know this landscape better than I, do you not?”
The green mare opened her mouth. Then, she closed it again, thoughtful. “Heartshaven,” she said. “The Crystal Heart was removed some time ago. It’s gotten… really, really disgusting. Emotion is at the center of this mess, and I’ll bet that’s where the core of the problem lies.”
Celestia nodded. “Well thought. Climb back on.”
Jade grimaced. “Can we walk?”
Celestia raised a brow and glanced at the ground around them. The puce was quickly being consumed by deep, sickly red. “Not unless you want something far worse than a stomachache.”
Jade followed her line of sight and swallowed hard. “Right. Okay, up we get…”
Celestia spread her wings and took off. Moments later, the puce was completely swallowed up by red. It wasn’t the red of blood or rubies. It was the raw, screaming shade of muscle and skin, ripped asunder, nerves exposed to the air, flesh bitten raw in the cold and burnt crispy in the sun— Oh.
Pardon your humble narrator. I appear to have stumbled into a patch of ivory. But, yeah, that red crystal is bad news, and it looks disgusting. Seriously. Yuck.




Sweetie Belle sat in a darkened room, alone save for a radio whose dials glowed like radium.
The Doctor sat in the TARDIS, white walls and a mint green console, illuminated by a faint green glow..
She gazed at a photograph of younger ponies, huddled together and laughing.
He buried his face in a stuffed panda that he had found on the chair he was currently sitting on.
Both of those absolute idiots would have realized that this was all an illusion if they had even once looked up and seen the other sitting across from them in the shared dreamscape. But they didn’t. Absolute walnuts.
The Doctor sniffled and buried his head deeper in the panda’s fur.
Sweetie blinked back tears as she stared at the young faces in the picture.
There was a great deal of angst in the air.
And between them, relaxing on a dreamed-up lawn chair in an equally nonexistent garden, lounged a white alicorn stallion, red eyes flickering with wicked amusement under black bangs.
They all sat perfectly still, lost in their own emotions.
And then a big black charger came roaring in.
…
The Valeyard adjusted his sunglasses and yawned, peering at the bewildered king. A flicker of disgust crossed his muzzle. “Hmph. No, I don’t think I can have you in here, your lowness. Can’t have you ruining my fun just yet, little antibody-resistant germ.”
Sombra glanced around in astonishment. “What—”
Before he could finish that thought, a wall of glowing yellow-green rose up before him, sending the king skittering backwards out of the pocket reality. A moment later, the wall faded away to empty blackness. The Valeyard tutted once again, glancing between the other two inhabitants of the shared consciousness. “Well, that’s this ruined. Ah, well, it was a pleasant diversion while it lasted. Good-bye, Sweetie! Ta-ta for now, Doctor! I’ll be seeing you soon.”
He gave a Cheshire Cat grin, and faded into aether, along with his garden and lawn chair.
The Doctor sighed.
Sweetie sniffled.




Sombra stumbled several steps backwards. He shook his head violently as though to clear his ears of a ringing. To be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened. One second, crystal stairwell. Next second, mysterious set of… rooms? Or something?
Hesitantly, he looked at the prone forms lying on either side of the stairs. He prodded at the stallion. The Doctor rolled over, muttering something that sounded like “Cameca,” or possibly “Katarina.”
The unicorn frowned and poked him again, harder this time. The Doctor growled something that sounded like, “You can stay with me forever, but I can’t do the same for you. It’s the curse of the Time Lords.” On the other hoof, it might have been, “Mmmwaffles.”
Sombra sighed. Then he drew back a hoof and kicked the Doctor rather hard in the flank. The dun stallion’s eyes shot open. “Ow! What? Who?”
He blinked. “Oh. S’you.”
Sweetie’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment, she just stared at the other ponies. “Oh, good. It was just a dream,” she sighed, relieved.
“Yes, quite,” the Doctor agreed quickly. “Must be some kind of soporific at work here. Good job you came and woke us up, eh, Sombry?”
“It was more than a dream,” Sombra said somberly.
Silence rung in much the same manner that a bell didn’t. “What,” said the Doctor, “do you mean by that, exactly?”
“It was a nightmare,” Sombra replied. “It showed what it thought you would most fear.” A pause. “It came for me as well.”
Nopony spoke. It is a difficult thing, even in the light of day, to face up to your nightmares. Here, it was all but impossible. “Right,” said the Doctor firmly. “Well, we can’t turn back now. Come on, both of you, let’s go save the world.”
He marched up the stairs, not turning around to see if the others were following. His hoofsteps echoed in the empty space, scaring away the silence.




Celestia scanned the ground, searching for any kind of safe harbor. It wasn’t easy. Raw-nerve red and mind-numbing white were all spiraled across the ground, like some sort of disastrous peppermint. “There,” said Jade, at length, “A spot of— no, never mind, just got swallowed.”
“Hm,” Celestia frowned. She could see mobs of ponies down below, flooding toward city center. From up here, they looked like ants. But they were not. They were ponies, some of whom she had met, some she had known well, and one of whom was her sister. They were all converging towards a massive spire, scraping the sky with a long talon. Jade had been right. It did look disgusting. It looked organically disgusting, no less, like a massive clogged artery, or a shard of bloodied bone sticking through the flesh of the—
I really should get out of this patch of ivory.
The alicorn let out a huff of breath, the air stinging at her lungs. “Right. We’re going to land on a patch of white. It’s the lesser of two evils.”
Jade opened her mouth to object, then shut it again. “Alright. I’m more susceptible to it, now, so if I start acting odd…”
“I’ll take you and fly,” Celestia said with a nod. “Yes. Now, where can we land without being seen?”
They ended up on a balcony overlooking the square, sufficiently walled to keep from being seen. With a fizzle of magic, Celestia pulled back her mane and tucked it up into a bun at the back of her head. Then, carefully, she peered over the edge.
A great crowd, eyes all glowing red, had come up apparently out of nowhere. Each of them had fallen absolutely silent, but from this vantage, Celestia could see that each and every one of them wore the same expression. Etched into their faces was silent fury, hatred, fear, loathing, emotions that Celestia had seen many times before. She had never once hoped that she wouldn’t see them again. That would have been insane. Ponies, and all other creatures, had anger in them, and fear, and thousands of other negative emotions. To get rid of those would be as bad as removing every ounce of joy from their hearts.
And that seemed to be exactly what had been done here. Nothing but rage spewed up from the square below. “I’ve seen enough,” Celestia said quietly. “Jade, we’re going.”
“Are— we— Maj—est—y?” The voice was dry and forced, like silk rubbing amber.
Celestia closed her eyes. “Geld absolutely everything,” she muttered. She didn’t even have to turn around to know what she would see, but morbid curiosity compelled her to. The green mare’s eyes were glowing red. Her expression was a furious, insane grin. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Celestia made to take to the skies, but found that she couldn’t move. She looked down. A small whimper escaped her mouth. Her legs had been consumed, transfixed by climbing towers of crystal beneath her. Jade trotted over and leaned in close. Her breath stank of ozone, and her red-lit eyes flickered, desperate for release. “Just watch,” she breathed. “It’s gonna be a show…”