Fall of Empire

by Sixes_And_Sevens

Lullaby for an Empire

“Whoa.” said Sweetie. The word echoed for several seconds around the cavernous sphere. It was, unsurprisingly, made of a certain translucent, well-organized type of mineral of which Sweetie was starting to become thoroughly sick.
Somewhat more surprising was the colossal sphere of light in the center of the room. It was strange to look at, at once the size of a pony and the size of a planet. And it was beating like a heart. “What is this place?” she asked, and as she spoke, she could hear a strange, musical buzz in her words, carried back to her by the powerful echo of the chamber.
“An analogy,” the Doctor said simply. “This place is nothing but emotion and imagination.”
The sphere convulsed angrily, and the two ponies flinched back. “Not that that’s a bad thing to be,” the Doctor added quickly. “You’re a very lovely construct, honestly.”
The sphere appeared to be mollified, and shrunk back slightly, resuming its steady beat. “So are we just going to pay it compliments and hope it cheers up?” Sweetie murmured.
“Have you a better plan?”
“Well, no.”
“Right.” The Doctor turned to the glowing orb. “That’s a beautiful shade of red!” he called.
“It accentuates your curves!” Sweetie added helpfully.
“You’re looking extremely bright!”
“And shiny!”
“...”
“I really like your… I got nothing.”
The orb twitched slightly, an arrhythmia in its steady beat. Then, without any further warning, it fired a bolt of lightning straight at the duo.

Sombra had perhaps been something of a bookish child. He certainly was not overly endowed with great practice in the physical arts. In his teenage years, he had been coerced into taking fencing lessons up until his father’s death had left him with more important matters, and in more recent years, he had performed a great deal of physical training from an admittedly regrettable trainer. He was, however, not remotely skilled in the arts of fighting.
Sombra’s readings in anatomy and some of the more descriptive tales of bloodshed had done for the first couple of attackers. Surprise had also been helpful in that regard. A few deft blows to the back of the neck, and four guards were down for the count. After that, it had been a matter of using his size and natural strength to his advantage. It would perhaps have gone better for him had he still possessed his armor, but in the heat of battle, he found himself doing remarkably well. Worryingly so, a small part of his brain commented, but it was quickly overridden by pure unadulterated adrenaline.
All he knew at this moment in time was that the two ponies currently on the floor, dead to the world, represented his kingdom’s last gasp of hope. More importantly, they represented the only line of defence between this twisted crime and the rest of the world. Most importantly of all, they represented the only friendship he had had since… ever.
And so he fought on, not out of fear, nor out of rage. He fought out of hope. He was not a fool. He had heard them speak of ‘going back’ to undo what had been wrought. They were of a different time, a future time. A better time that would someday come to be. Resplendent in this knowledge, he sank to the floor, a lump on his head, lacerations across his flesh, and a smile on his face.

Celestia met her sister’s red, glowing eyes evenly. Then her head bowed. “Make it quick,” she murmured. “I will not hurt her.”
“As I thought,” the thestral sneered. “Weak to the last, like all of your subjects. She didn’t even last as long as Sombra, you know. Maybe I should stretch this out, see how far I can make her go…”
Celestia looked up to glare at him. “Even you can’t be so sadistic as to force me to listen to your blather before I die,” she bit out.
“Harsh. Very well. Luna, kill.”
Celestia closed her eyes as she heard the air rent with a powerful spell. It was not death she feared to face. Only that last betrayal.
There was the sound of a very powerful spell being fired.
Celestia waited to feel either intensest pain or nothing at all. She waited for several seconds. Then, slowly, she lifted her head. The elderly thestral lay on the ground in several places. Of Luna, there was no sign. Then there was a massive explosion from overhead. Celestia looked up. “Ohhh, dear,” she murmured, and even she wasn’t sure if she meant it or not.

Sweetie’s coat smelled singed, but she didn’t waste time looking back. She was running, bolts of energy flying all around her. The Doctor had scarpered, too, though she couldn’t see him any more. It was probably best not to wonder where he had gone, considering the impossible nature of the room as it already existed.
It was funny, but though she was running for her life, she felt oddly giddy. Possibly it was a flawed coping mechanism to the imminent threat of death. On the other hoof, from what she had seen, emotion was power in this world. So, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Resounding silence filled the room. “Well,” she said. “That worked, I suppose.”
“I guess it did,” a voice replied.
Sweetie turned. “Button?”
The brown colt grinned guilelessly at her. “After a fashion, yeah. That's what you conjured me up to be.”
Sweetie studied the apparition more closely. It… was not Button. She wasn't even sure it was a colt. Or a pony. She stared into burning red eyes. “Is this a trick?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.” Sweetie was silent. “Okay, so, who are you, then? Who are you really?”
The thing that looked almost like Button shrugged. “Another dream, I expect. A shared one. I could change, if you like.”
“Yes, please.” Sweetie glanced up. She was not entirely surprised to see that the massive red ball was no longer there. The Doctor was currently racing with a curious bipedal gait along the surface of the hollow space, dodging objects that only he could see. “You’re the Empire.”
“Not quite, I’m afraid. Close enough for government work, though,” the dream-thing said with a slight grin. True to its word, it had changed shape into the friendly other Doctor that she had met in that nightmare TARDIS.
“Can you…” Sweetie gestured toward the Doctor, and the other’s smile faded.
“I’m afraid that this is a problem whose solution lies solely in the mind of any given individual. He’ll be fine so long as he doesn't imagine what getting hit would do to him.”
“Oh.” Sweetie’s eyes lit up. “Oh! This is some sort of… mind palace. The hallways connected every mind in the empire. This does the same thing, right?”
“Very astute!” the apparition crowed, clapping its hands together. “I see that at least my taste in companions has remained as sharp as ever, even if my dress sense is failing.”
“So… you must be the one that can get us the Crystal Heart!”
The smile was gone as quickly as it had come. “I fear not. I’m merely... well, you might think of me as the interface. The heart and all of its power come from a very different source. I'm sure you can puzzle out what that might be?”
“The empire,” Sweetie sighed, deflating. “We’re back to square one, then. Unless we can snap the whole empire out of it, we're stuck. Again!”
“Mm,” the apparition raised a brow. “Are you indeed? I believe the solution to be obvious, myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself; snap the whole empire out of it. If you can do that, give manumission to their minds, I should be able to recreate not only the heart, but the crystal you need for your ship. A fair bargain, if I do say so myself.”
Sweetie shut her eyes tight. “But HOW?” she asked, swallowing back the urge to… do something. Not yell or cry or scream, but some other uncontrollable desire was welling up inside her.“I can't even talk to the whole empire at once, let alone cheer them all up. I don't know what to…” she trailed off. The interface was gone. The vast, burning red orb glowed bright overhead. The vast, burning orb comprised of every mind in the empire. It blinked briefly, or maybe winked.
“Oh.”

Another guard rushed out of the crowd, a grey-coated mare. One of Celestia's own. “What is this? What have you done?” she snarled.
Celestia gave her a thin-lipped smile. “I have done nothing,” she said shortly. “You did this, all of it, to yourself.”
“Explain!”
“You sought to bring rage,” Celestia said simply. “Pure, mad rage. Directionless rage. No matter how my sister may feel about my actions, I have no doubt that her anger at you is more powerful than her anger at me.”
As if to punctuate her point, a massive explosion echoed overhead, and the cloud-Sombra stumbled back as a berserk blue mare came at it like a hornet, shrieking like a banshee. The sun princess shook her head. “She may destroy us all, but you, at least, will fall first.”
“No! No, this cannot be!” The guard’s face was suffused with red. “I will destroy you! I will destroy you and your sister both!” Her horn began to glow.
And then a wave of blue hit.

The soldiers gathered around Sombra, Sweetie, and the Doctor, weapons raised. And then a wave of blue hit.

Jade stared up at the vast, red spire, a blank expression on her face and a mad, straining protest behind her eyes. Thousands of others surrounded her, doing the exact same thing. And then a wave of blue hit.

The Doctor was still running like a stallion possessed, dodging blasts which might or might not have been imaginary. Sweetie sighed, and as her friend passed by, she stuck a hoof beneath his red sneakers, tripping him up. “Ow! What was that for?”
“The lightning stopped,” the young mare said bluntly. Now wasn’t the time for beating around the bush.
The Time Lord blinked and glanced up. “So it has. Why? What's it trying to do?”
“I asked it very nicely to stop,” Sweetie said neatly. “Doctor, do you still have your recorder?”
The Time Lord frowned and scrabbled around before producing the instrument. “Yes, I suppose I do. Nopony ever actually searched me before throwing me in the dungeon. Pity I broke the sonic…”
“Good,” Sweetie said, glancing up at the pulsating red orb in the center of the room. Only the belief they had that they wouldn’t be hurt was preventing their immediate death, and that could only last for so long. “We need it.”
“What, the sonic? Like I said, it’s broken.”
“No, your recorder. Just follow my lead.”
“Sweetie, I think we’ve managed to establish that I very much cannot carry a tune on this thing,” the Doctor warned, holding the instrument to his lips.
“I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that too much,” Sweetie said with a small smile. “I believe in you.” Then, as the first sweet notes began to trickle out of the end of the pipe, she tilted back her head and allowed the tune that she had been suppressing to bubble up out of her throat.

The guards around the ponies suddenly dropped their weapons, hooves suddenly too heavy to hold up the pike staves and axes. Throughout the room, blooms of blue positively exploded against the walls.

“No!” the possessed guard wailed. “No, no, no! This isn’t the way it ends! My empire! My glory! My dreams of conqueszzz…”
The ruddy glow vanished from her eyes moments before they snapped shut, her legs giving way beneath her.

The light, sleepy blue color swept over the square, sending ponies of all nationalities and backgrounds to their knees, and shortly thereafter to dreamland. Slowly, it began to climb even the colossal spire, deadening the sparks of fury and blood red glow.

As her name was mentioned, Luna’s furious attack on the clouds faltered, her wings slipping into a glide as she floated downward, fighting sleep. The monstrous image laughed in derision for a moment, but then choked on nothing. A faint blue glow began to shine from deep inside of it, and the phantasm began to dissolve from the inside out, swirling into inky lumps that fell from the sky like rain, running into crevasses in the crystal.

The King himself lay peacefully on the ground, his horn cooled to obsidian black. For the first time in years, his sleep was completely undisturbed.

Luna spiraled to the ground like a whirligig seed, joining the crowd of snoozing ponies. Celestia smiled faintly and let the waves of exhilarating exhaustion overcome her as well. As she fell to the ground, the crystals holding her horn and hooves crumbed away, as if the empire itself was too exhausted to carry on holding her.

As the last notes of the song faded, the crystal walls pulsed with a faint spark of energy, disgorging a pair of objects, one in the shape of a heart. The other crystal was, as promised, exactly the shape needed for the TARDIS to take off again. For a moment, the shape of an animalistic face could be seen traced in the wall, its eyes fluttering closed. In the next moment, it was gone, no more than a trick of the light that no one was awake to see.
The Doctor blinked awake, finding himself on cold crystal once more. Beside him, Sweetie sat up abruptly. “Did it work?”
Below, the city had fallen silent, the snow muffling any sounds that might yet remain. Soldiers lay around them, snoozing, as dangerous as kittens. Sombra’s head lolled, his eyes closed and an expression of perfect angelic peace over his features. “Well,” the Doctor said softly. “You’ve managed to get inside the collective consciousness of everypony in the city and sing them all to sleep. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
Sweetie shook her head. “Not yet. We still have to finish de-corrupting the empire, right? Is de-corrupt a word? Purify? Un-evil-ate?”
“Not actually what I meant,” the Doctor said, a small smile tracing over his face. “Look at your flank.”
Sweetie froze. Slowly, almost glacially, she turned her head around towards her tail. A big blue eighth note was emblazoned on her hindquarters. Her eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth— only for the Doctor to jam a hoof into it. “Shhh!” he hissed, gesturing at the sleeping forms around them.
The mare blushed. “Yay,” she whispered. “But Doctor, the city?”
The Time Lord scratched at his chin. “Good point,” he agreed. “You’ve driven the actual sentient part of the problem out of the city, which should help things get cleared up. But the problem of the present damage…”
There was a faint groan from the floor. An obsidian forehoof bicycled weakly in the air. “Five more minutes,” Sombra muttered, rolling over onto his side.
Sweetie gently prodded the stallion in the side. “Wake up. We won!” She poked him again, this time in a different spot.
The large stallion sat bolt upright, stifling a shriek. “Tender,” he wheezed. “Very tender.”
“Oops!” Sweetie blushed. “Sorry.”
“Hm,” the other unicorn rumbled, grinning faintly. “Quite alright. We won, you said?”
The Doctor nodded out the window. “See for yourself.”
Sombra glanced at the guards instead, and his eyes went wide. “No. No, tell me I did not…”
He fell back, pupils like pinpricks. The Doctor blinked, confused, but Sweetie got it immediately. “Shh, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re not dead, they aren’t dead. They’re just sleeping, see?”
Hesitantly, the large stallion reached out a dinner-plate hoof and touched one of the soldiers on the chest. Slowly, his face regained its color. “Alive,” he breathed. “They are alive?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Doctor, finally catching up. “Everypony lives today, Sombra. Everypony lives!”
—Are you sure about that, Doctor?| The voice was at once inaudible and omnipresent, like the doubt that nags at the back of your mind three hours after the conversation is over and the parties have gone their separate ways.
Sweetie threw her hooves up into the air. “Are you serious right now?” she shouted at the room in general.
—Very much so,| the room in general responded. —Did you really think that sending them all to sleep would be enough to stop me? Their dreams may be happy for now, but I am still here! Influencing their minds! Altering their emotions! You will never root me out of the Empire, for I AM the Empire!|
Sombra drew back from the walls, a strangled sob escaping his throat. The Doctor, however, stepped forwards. “No, you aren’t. You’re a parasite, leeching off of it. The Crystal Empire isn’t buildings and streets, it’s made of the ponies living here, living in fear and hatred of you.” He snatched the Crystal Heart from the floor and brandished it. “You see this? Concentrated love and hope! Gathered from all over the Empire! How d’ya like that? How are going to stand up to that?”
—How do you intend to use it?|
The Doctor faltered. “Ah.” He turned to Sombra. “Thoughts?”
The ex-tyrant stared mutely back. “Right…” The Doctor sighed. “So it’s stalemate. We can’t banish you, you can’t kill us.”
—Oh, can’t I?|
Slowly, the walls began to shift from blue to meaty red, not even passing through purple along the way. Sweetie yelped and jumped back. “Ow!”
Sombra quickly rose from the floor. The unconscious guards began to wail and gnash their teeth in their sleep, pulling their limbs in tight like dying insects. The Doctor could feel it now, too, like burning needles stabbing through his hooves. —Drop the Heart, Doctor. Let it fall to the ground, and the pain will stop.|
“Oh, and I suppose you’ll let us go free?” the tan stallion asked, gritting his teeth through the pain. “I suppose that’ll be the end of it?”
—No, I’m still going to kill you, but it will be much quicker. And if you don’t fear for yourself, consider your companions.|
The Doctor glanced back. Sweetie Belle was curled up on the ground, weeping silently. Sombra was faring rather better, but he didn’t exactly look great either. The Time Lord stared at the Heart for a long moment. He tightened his jaw. —Have you the strength to watch your friends writhe in torment, Doctor? Have you will enough to do that? How devoted are you to the greater good when a child lies in pain?|
The heart fell to the floor. It never made it. The Doctor blinked. “Sombra? What are you doing?”
Green eyes met brown. “It is us or the world, Doctor. Either way, we lose. This way, all else wins.”
—Let it drop! Die!|
Sombra gazed at the wall. “I will not.” In his hooves, the Heart began to vibrate slightly.
—If you do not, you will suffer!|
“I will.” The Heart began to glow a faint blue. The Doctor’s eyes went wide.
“I will suffer with you, and gladly,” the Time Lord said. The Heart went even brighter, and began to hum.
—You will all suffer!|
“We will,” Sweetie said, making a concerted effort to rise from the floor, but falling back on her flanks. “Together.”
In Sombra’s hooves, the Heart lit like a fire, humming like mad. It rose into the air.  —No! NO! You will never escape me! You will never|
And then it was gone. The room was a pale, translucent blue again. The Crystal Heart fell back into Sombra’s outstretched hooves. The charcoal unicorn grinned broadly. Then his eyes crossed, and he collapsed to the ground.