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// The Barrier 
// Story: The Song Of Death Is Sweet And Endless 
// by AnchorsAway 
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If you are hearing this, you're probably wondering what has happened. 
To put it simply — we failed; I failed. 
The Crystal Empire, it did exactly what we designed it to do. Only I was too late. And I will live with that burden, believe me. I'm the only one left to carry it.
If you have returned to the Continent, to the Empire in search of survivors — there are none. The Continent holds only ghosts now. 
My advice — leave this place. Leave and chart out new lands, someplace untouched to start again. There is nothing for you here, only relics of what was built. What we built to survive. Yet, only I remain to guard over it, alone, and I've come to terms with that.
I guess what this really is, is that I want somepony to know. That is why I am leaving these messages. I want them to know that we did not go into that nothingness that lies beyond without a fight.
We fought. We tried, we really did. I tried.
Which makes it all the harder to let you know that I could not stop it. I sit before the greatest project, the greatest idea, ever created. 
The Crystal Empire, it was all our creation, one last attempt to push them back, to save our lands. Forged by the best and brightest the Continent had to offer. And it will remain here for many hundreds of years to come, maybe more, as a testament to her builders' foresight. And why only I remain, her lonely king.
King. It has a ring to it. 
Can you imagine that, Seres? Me, a king?
What king would want this? An empire of ghosts and memories.
Sombra, ruler of nothing and lord of the Crystal Empire. Behold, and take pity on this creature, for none else will. Destined to preside till even he follows his fellows that went before him into the cold, empty nothingness that lies beyond this mortal plane.
Maybe a bit melodramatic, but it's as it should be. 
The song of death is sweet and endless after all, sister. Maybe even I will get to sing it one day with you. —S



When did we know the end had come?
Was it when the Shadows first emerged from whatever cave those scientists ventured into? 
Or was it when the nightmare apparitions swallowed entire towns and their citizens in the blink of an eye, their screams heard across the Continent? 
Maybe it was when the Capital fell. I had an inkling in the months, and even years after that — that we might not be strong enough to drive them back, that the Crystal Empire, what we created her to do, wouldn't work.
But for me personally, I knew the day had finally arrived when they broke through the Barrier.
Measuring two-thousand hooves tall and spanning the width of the Continent, the Barrier was the only thing holding back the Shadows. Its design was rushed, and it was never meant to hold them back forever.  But it could buy us the time we needed to finish building the Empire. Without it, we would never have stood a chance.
The Barrier was all we had between us and a continent consumed by the spectral creatures. And when I heard the sirens and stepped from our research outpost, I knew — all of at the station knew — that the time had finally arrived. The Barrier was failing.
The siren, it was like the shrill cry of a dying animal as I stepped into the cloudy evening, my ears vibrating with their intensity. Everywhere I looked, ponies were spilling out of buildings around the compound. A low wind was picking up across the highland, bringing with it a deep chill from the Artic that gnawed at our bones.
My colleagues, they stood in the muddy makeshift courtyard, necks craning as they gazed up the crackling wall of arcanic energy. It pulsated, it's power fluctuating lower and lower. The everpresent hum that had buzzed in the back of everypony's skulls from being station so close to the Barrier was winding down, and everypony could feel it, even me. 
The Barrier was weakening, and behind it — a sea — an ocean of swirling blackness that had ceaselessly tried for years to penetrate it. We had studied them from our side, gained what insight we could from the apparations while they endlessly swirled against the Barrier, always searching for a way inside. Hunger burned in the eyes that split and shifted through the dense mass of blackness that writhed and agitated, ever-moving, always changing.
"Empire Control. This is research station Bravo, are you reading me?" I said, activating my ear fob. My eyes were locked on the enormous wall of blackness that swirled behind the massive shield wall, and I could feel its cold presence waiting to wash over us, to consume us all. I could feel the emptiness, the hunger that radiated off of them like the rays of a black sun. "Is anypony there? We have a situation here!" 
"Sombra?" a familiar voice replied in my ear fob. "What's going on over there? I'm reading multiple anomalies with the primary Barrier. Power is fluctuation all across the board at Empire Control."
"It's happening, Pyre Wood," I warned him. "The Shadows — they're breaking through!" I relayed, scanning the courtyard. The other researchers had spilled out of the haphazard collection of quonset huts we had come to call home. I knew their eyes were on me. They always were.
"Pyre?" I asked again, wondering if I had lost him.
The pause on the other end of the connection continued for several precious seconds before Pyre Wood finally returned. "Sweet stars, I see it, Sombra. The readings are coming in from the substation. We're showing the Barrier at less than fifty-percent integrity," his hissed through the ear fob, his words rising in intensity. "She's not going to hold," he warned. "We need to evacuate you and the rest of the staff behind the secondary Barrier."
"How long?" I asked, my hooves pacing the courtyard, cold mud swishing around my hooves. The highland wind was picking up, the slapdash flagpole of timber somepony had put up several months back creaking and shifting in the soft earth. 
Pyre was mumbling to his usual self, crunching the numbers. "Twenty minutes," he finally answered.
I still remember how coldly calculated those words were: two digits that had sealed our fate. It was like being struck by a lance. Twenty? That's all? We had come so far only to have it amount to twenty minutes.
"Maybe thirty if we boost the Barrier's power," Pyre abruptly added as if an extra ten minutes would be enough.
"Not enough," I stammered, shielding my ear fob from the wind with the corner of my coat. "We have over a thousand souls spread between this installation and half a dozen others, Pyre. We need more time."
"I'm doing all I can from this end, my friend. But the reaction has already started. The Barrier will fall, and soon." 
There was only one other pony I trusted on the Continent more than Pyre Wood, and she was deep in the Artic, far to the North of the Empire. If Pyre said thirty minutes, it wouldn't be a second more
I stomped my hoof, a spray of mud staining my permanently dirty coat. It wasn't fair! "Pyre, we have five years of data here," I reminded him. "Years of studying these things on the other side of that shield. Are you telling me it's all lost?"
"Look," Pyre simmered. "I have four airships twenty minutes out. More are heading to the other outposts, but others are further away. We need to focus on evacuating as many as we can. You're no good to everypony dead, Sombra. You've gotten us this far without the data, we can continue without it."
"I'm not leaving all of the data here behind, Pyre." I turned to the others that surrounded me, their faces tired and scared — faces I had grown to know — ponies I had come to regard as family. "We've worked too hard here for it to be for nothing."
"Then why are you still talking to me," Pyre simmered on the other end. "Those airships are eighteen minutes out right now. Just be on them," he said before the connection ended abruptly.
I was left standing before everypony, ear fob hanging in my hoof. Their eyes were wide, tired, bearing many sleepless nights. Their work had been constant, the accommodations sparse or nonexistent. Many were dirty and sported tangled mats of mane that hung over stained lab coats. They had given me everything to be here. I wouldn't let it all have been for nothing.
"Airships are inbound," I tried to speak calmly, but there would be no hiding my anticipation. "We're evacuating behind the secondary Barrier," I told them, trying to assure them everything would be alright, though everypony knew the stakes at play.
"But, we're not leaving here empty-hoofed." I was already pushing through the crowd for the lab. "We need the data — all of it. Dump everything to the data cores: every terminal, every computer, every instrument, and project," I instructed, ponies already running to gather what they needed. "Everything: we need to grab as much as we can carry."
"We're going to need every last scrap of data if we're going to get the Crystal Empire to work," I breathed as I hurried through the throngs of ponies, desperate to save the last five years of my life.
If only I had been able to save my peers.
Or you.
—S