It was cold. Far too cold.
“Which one of those twerps left the AC on again…?” Sunset mewled to herself, quietly whining out half formed thoughts in her barely conscious state. “Not even having a real winter this year. Ugh, or did the heat pump brake again…?”
Only when her hooves reached out for some non-existent blanket did she jerk awake. Sunset abruptly realised just how hard the floor was compared to any reasonable sleeping place, just how unusually frigid the air was and how the last time she had fallen asleep with hooves had been five years ago. The seemingly impermeable darkness surrounding her certainly didn’t help her keep her panic in check.
Sunset Shimmer scrambled to her hooves, standing as fast as she could - which in retrospect caused her to stumble and slow far more than if she had done so more slowly. Gulping down a breath she forcefully steadied her breathing. Sunset ignited her horn to bring light to her situation, only to immediately start spasming in eye watering pain.
“Ahhhggg! What in Bucking Tartarus?!” she shrieked out in shock, reeling from the sensation of what felt like iron splinters lancing through her horn. Pain sharp enough that her forelegs buckled and she collapsed in a painful twitching heap, once more becoming reacquainted with the cold hard crystalline floor.
Heaving deeply she hoisted herself back onto her hooves once again even as the memories of her fight came rushing back to her. One hoof reached up to gently stroke her horn, to check for the dreaded prospect of damage to the precious keratin spiral. The soft frog of her hoof was not met with smooth keratin however, but a sharp glassy spike. Her breath hitched as she gently felt around further, finding her horn encrusted with small prickly growths of crystal that put an uncomfortable weight in her stomach.
“Shit, this is bad… fucking horn rot bad!” she exclaimed to herself as she desperately tackled with an oncoming panic attack over her most valued appendage being crippled.
Eventually a little calm breathing was enough to bring it under control. With it came calmer thinking… and a bitter but satisfied smirk. Her bags and cloak had been taken, her horn – hopefully temporarily – incapacitated, but they wouldn’t think to remove what was hidden inside her, not when Equestria had never seen the likes of such technology. She closed her eyes and opened them once again a second later to a seemingly far better lit room. Though the colours were washed out, the enhanced night vision held true. What it revealed to her though was more than a little disturbing.
She had to edge closer to be sure, but inside a translucent block of bluish crystal was the form of a pony, sitting on its haunches with its head dipped and looking rather sorry for itself. The longer she looked the more she realised there was no way this was some illusion or sculpture. This was an actual pony trapped inside the crystal.
More chillingly, it was not the only one. There had to be dozens, maybe a hundred or more of the crystal lumps in the cavernous room, and many large enough to easily hold more than one pony.
It was eerie and disturbing walking among them; wondering why they were there, if they were dead or maybe fully conscious and aware of her echoing hoof steps as she meandered among them. Some were clustered together in families, others were standing alone, some sobbing, others standing tall and resolute and a few even appeared to be guards dressed in some sort of crystalline patterned armour, which made sense as the last place she was, was some sort of palace.
“What is it with these ponies and crystals?” she idly wondered before moving on from the guard pony.
All had their eyes closed she noted, but one thing she didn’t see however was panic or outright fear. Distress maybe, but all were holding still, as if they had accepted this fate. It only unnerved her further. These ponies were hopeless, or at least resigned to some sort of hardship.
Eventually she came to the largest crystal, one big enough it could have been a moderately sized hut. Inside eleven grown ponies crowded around an object she soon realised was a crib. Six were just the same uniformed guards she had seen smattered among the other crystal blocks, stoically standing outwards at attention around what Sunset assumed were the VIPs of the group. But there was a seventh guard, a pegasus in what looked like the more familiar golden plated Equestrian Royal Guard armour, a curious anomaly. There was also a tall, white furred and honestly rather handsome unicorn decked out in a fancy officer’s dress uniform. Then another unicorn; one with glasses, a goatee, a cloak of some sort and an interesting set of fur markings that seemed vaguely familiar to Sunset. The next figure was almost indescribable; Sunset had certainly never seen anything like the creature. It was vaguely pony shaped but bore fangs, with insectoid features like black chitin in place of a fur coat and disturbingly holes running clean through its lower legs.
The last adult was the most interesting, an alicorn mare and a very familiar one to Sunset. She was taller and more mature than Sunset remembered, but none the less familiar.
“Cadence,” she murmured quietly to herself in surprise, gazing up at the morose pink mare.
She found herself unconsciously raising a hoof as if to reach out and rouse her but it only found itself resting against cold hard crystal.
“What happened to you? And how did you even get here?” she wondered to herself, examining the familiar forlorn face for any clue. She found none, but a more suspicious detail did come to mind, “And why was the mirror here with you for that matter?”
Finally her eyes wandered to the crib. Sunset found she had to rear up and lean on the block of crystal to get a look inside but the effort was well worth the view. It was one that made her eyes go wide and her mouth hang agape with the astonishment of it. Resting in the crib, fast asleep was a chubby infant alicorn. The idea, the mere notion made Sunset… deeply uncomfortable. Indignantly so. It lit an all too familiar simmering jealousy in the pit of her heart that she knew would not be so easily dispelled as when it previously flared up.
She found herself turning her head to once more stare searchingly at the more familiar, fully grown princess.
“Yours, I take it?” she asked the entombed pony rather bitterly. “Well congrats I guess. Cute kid. Wings a little on the freakishly large side though.”
From this vantage point something else became clear. In Cadence’s forehoof, clutched to her chest and mostly obscured by her wing was an object. Something roughly shaped like a heart, angularly cut and glowing dimly. Looking at it she couldn’t shake the feeling it was something important. The fact it pulsed with light, seemingly aware of her gaze only vindicated that feeling.
“What is that I wonder?”
“The Crystal Heart.”
With a sharp gasp she spun around on the spot and brought her horn to bear… only for it to spark painfully once more as the stunner she instinctively cast failed to so much as start charging.
“I would not attempt to call on your magic if I were you,” the deep masculine yet scratchy voice chided with amusement. It was a voice that conveyed an arrogant sense of strength and superiority, even though it seemed to ebb and flow like a sand storm. “You might do some permanent damage to that honestly quite marvellous horn of yours. I would be quite disappointed if we could not duel again because you went and crippled yourself, and at such a pitifully young age at that.”
She quickly regained her composure and levelled a venomous glare at the animate cloud of smoke and the two scarlet eyes peering down at her from above. The performance did a fine job of projecting the courage and self certainty Sunset did not so keenly feel as her mind desperately tried to think out a plan of action.
“Undo whatever the hell you did to my horn and I’ll be happy to oblige,” she spat back at him, whoever - or whatever - he was.
“No,” the shadow said simply as it sank to the floor, petering out for a moment before blooming back up.
Its eyes came to rest just above level with her own and it condensed into a form vaguely resembling that of a stallion, though far too vaporous to be real.
“Your presence here risks unwanted and quite dangerous attention,” it explained with condescending slowness. “Too much activity exacerbates the risk and I doubt these few words will sway you into inaction if I gave you the option not to listen to your betters.”
Sunset sat back on her hunches and raised her snout just so she could look down her muzzle at the disembodied stallion with the most imperious sneer she could muster. “So you attacked me out of fear? Fear of some other bigger badder monster? All the more reason to let me loose. I might be rusty but I’m more than a match for any opponent. Even Celestia was afraid of me!”
The cloud barked in laughter, clearly enjoying her angry tirade to the contrary of what she intended. “You’re feisty I will grant you that! But Celestia was afraid of so very many things, including myself as well! It would be a curious coincidence we happened across each other, except it is no overly great achievement to scare the so called unconquerable sun. These invaders however, have proven they can do more than simply scare, and come in great enough numbers to deter any army our world has seen before. You would be quite foalish to try and fight them all alone.”
The news sent the gears in her head spinning wildly out of control with less mundane possibilities given what she knew. Her time away had opened her to many ideas she used to think flights of fantasy before departing Equestria, let alone concepts no pony had imagined, period.
“Invaders? What are you even talking about? There’s not a nation on the planet that dares challenge Equestria,” she asked in a less harsh tone, relaxing her posture a touch as morbid curiosity took over.
“Highly debatable,” the stallion shaped cloud huffed indignantly and stuck its nose into the air, only briefly though, his tone softening thereafter. “But also irrelevant. These invaders… they were not from here. They came from the sky, or rather the void beyond it in great metal air ships the likes of which neither I nor the Princess here have ever seen before,” he explained with a gesture towards the entombed alicorn.
“What did they do? And what did they look like?” she demanded abruptly, thoughts running frantic.
The Smokey form rose up, expanding merely so the disembodied eyes could peer down at her with suspicion. “You know something… yet are also entirely ignorant of the situation. Where have you been hiding little unicorn?”
The amber mare wasn’t impressed by the crude intimidation tactic and made that clear with a steely gaze and firm words. “Nothing I’m telling you until I’m certain! Now what did they do? Kill everyone? Take over? Because wherever that was out there it looked pretty abandoned.”
“You don’t even know where you are?! Now I’m particularly interested in knowing where you have been and how you got here,” he said, drifting closer, examining her with hungry eyes before retreating once more. “But very well, it is not like giving away that information hurts me. Quite the contrary perhaps. When they came they took measures not to kill anyone, though they did not hesitate to use force against those who resisted. That might not be a mercy however, for they rounded them all up, forced them onto their ships and flew them away into the endless night above. For what reason and to what fate they were sent, I do not know.”
Sunset could only frown as she mulled over the dispassionately delivered news, the potential scale of the crime as astounding as it was disgusting. “And they did this across all of Equestria? That’s millions of ponies, easily…”
“All of the world I believe,” he said ponderously with a shrug. “But I cannot say for sure. I have only seen what happened within the bounds of My Empire and the skies above it. So very many false shooting stars marred the skies night and day for months after their first arrival.”
“So no clue how they got by Celestia then,” she concluded. “I know for a fact she could spear any ship with her magic, metal or not.”
“Probably through the use of hostages and living shields - she is quite susceptible to such tactics - but not for sure, no,” he amended casually as his form continued to drift and swirl at random, distorting in a seemingly invisible wind before correcting back to a more equine shape.
Sunset snorted irritably at his tone. “Who even are you anyway? And what’s with your collection of equine popsicles?”
The smoky stallion shrugged dismissively and made to pace his way around Sunset in an unnerving manner, gazing at the collection of ponies centred around Princess Cadence. Sunset made sure to start edging carefully outside of the circle of smoke he was creating incidentally, or as Sunset feared, intentionally.
“They are here to hide. We made a deal; I would preserve them down here suspended in cold crystal while I would feed off their ambient magic and the Heart. Like this we might eke out a living for some centuries, maybe even millennia waiting for the right time to emerge,” he explained simply. “As for who I am… I am King Sombra, rightful ruler of the Crystal Empire. Though the insufferable pink one and her entourage would debate that now moot point.”
The young mare found herself blinking in astonishment as her mind processed and placed that information. “THE Crystal Empire… the one that has been missing for over a thousand years? The one cursed into oblivion by well, you?!”
Sombra chuckled deep in response, looking back to her with a smug smile. “Yes, the one in the same. I’ll admit I even impressed myself when I found out just how long my hornwork held up. Well over a thousand years… still, ultimately it was time put to waste,” he boasted, voice turning sour at remembering his defeat soon after.
“Explains why everything is made of crystals I suppose, never thought the name was so excessively literal. Congratulations on landing a gig running your own little country Cadenza” she muttered to herself, glancing back towards Princess Cadance. Shaking off her astonishment she levelled a calculating glare at the smoky form of the deposed king. “Well, what happens now? If you were going to add me to your little collection you would have done it while I was nicely asleep.”
“Actually that is exactly what will happen young mare,” he said drifting closer and inflating to loom over her with a sharkish grin that had Sunset backing up until her rump bumped into the cold hard crystal behind her. “Soon I will have indulged my curiosity for too long a time; the invaders come for every living pony eventually and I doubt they will make an exception for you. Well, that or you starve to death, or perhaps the cold would leave you a stiffened corpse first.”
Sunset found herself snarling at the somehow smug cloud of smog, as he nonchalantly shared his opinion of her inevitable end.
“Yeah… Not. Happening.” she declared before diving to the side and scrabbling around the nearest crystallised pony to block his line of sight and continue her retreat.
“Bah! Stubborn filly,” he spoke, irritated by her refusal, casually wafting around to keep pace with the fleeing mare in a dementedly lackadaisical game of cat and mouse. “There’s no point in running. There’s nowhere to hide down here and I have sealed this chamber quite tightly.”
She simply snorted as she continued to work her way around the cavern and away from him, searching for any possible advantage. Of course the magically warped tyrant would want her to think that regardless of if it were true or not. There was no way she was taking his ultimatum laying down. Hiding out here was a move of both desperation and inaction. She might have been familiar with the former but she was as good as deathly allergic to the latter. It certainly didn’t help Sombra’s case that she knew what circles of dark magic he dealt in and if he could feed passively off the ponies that had been sealed away he could definitely sap a lot more if he felt threatened, likely doing permanent damage in the process to his pony shaped batteries.
“You are a risk to us all little unicorn,” he called out tauntingly as he snaked through the maze after her. “If you would just join the dear princess and her little cohort here, your safety would be guaranteed and the magic you would add to mine would keep us all alive a little longer should it come to that.”
“Such lovely honeyed words,” Sunset muttered to herself with a sneer. Switching tactics she called out in an attempt to keep him talking and thus at least a little distracted, “You seem a little paranoid about just me running around! If it was really that easy for these invaders to find one live pony how come they haven’t yet huh?”
“I have watched them from long enough from the shadows, long enough to know they should not be underestimated,” he replied, patience clearly starting to strain. “They come for every pony sooner or later, the more that are gathered the sooner they are swept away. Perhaps there are stragglers hiding among the wilds of the world but they will never achieve much I wager, not without attracting the invaders attention, as you eventually will here.”
The unexpected answer gave Sunset a surprising moat of insight. An answer as to why it worked that way wasn’t hard to imagine given what she knew from her time away from Equestria.
“Sooner or later… but not immediately?” she asked, risking a momentary pause to look back and do so.
Sombra’s disembodied eyes looked on at her suspiciously. “They may not be omniscient, but they and their machines are extraordinarily perceptive even when so far away one cannot see them. I do not pretend to know how,” he admitted grudgingly. “What do you mean to say Mare? Speak plainly if you wish to buy yourself a few more moments of consciousness.”
“It sounds like they’re using infrared to track people down. Which is good because I happen to have – or at least had – a cloak that could hide that,” she called out pointedly, not giving a moment of thought to his threatening.
Sombra billowed larger as he closed in so he could pear down at her sceptically, a position he seemed fond of. “What do you speak of mare? No mere cloak, no matter the illusions applied to it could hide one so easily. Yours was in fact quite poor at it.”
She snorted back at him, jumping up on top of the nearest crystal block so she stare back at him at eye level. As far as Sunset was concerned she could give as good as she got, fighting his indignation with her own.
“All heat sources emit light. Usually it takes a lot of heat or special materials for it to become visible to pony eyes but even a little gives off infrared light which we can’t see but a handful of animals can. It’s also possible to make machines and weave spells that will let you detect it, the latter a little invention of yours truly,” she explained as condescendingly as possible, which was considerably so for her. “The more ponies there are together, the more heat they create. If they make a campfire that’s a lot more heat plus whatever left over heat is in the smoke it gives off. In buildings or underground eventually heat can accumulate and show to the outside world but there are limits. It’s one of the easiest and quickest ways to find something alive somewhere out in the open. The only place it’s not so useful is where you’re looking for a specific life form in a place already full of life like a jungle where it could just as easily be wildlife as someone. That, or if they’ve got a lot of material between them and whoever’s looking, so deep underground, like we are now.”
The stallion stood there giving her an unamused glare as she lectured him in her patented condescending, snooty tone. He clearly did not appreciate it one bit. Something she privately relished.
“I fail to see how this is relevant. All you have done is explain the exact reason why you remaining here is either a danger to me or implausible for you. You need food and warmth and water. Unless you plan to join me in the shadows that is not changing any time soon,” he said bluntly. However a thoughtful, almost wistful look overtook him for a moment before he murmured something further, “Though if the idea does appeal to you I certainly would appreciate the company. The books I first learnt from are still hidden away here; training an apprentice would be an interesting experience to pass the time.”
She had to give herself a moment to re-evaluate the shadowy pony. He wasn’t what she expected from a deposed tyrant. He didn’t seem bitter nor angry. Just morose for the moment.
“At an earlier time in my life I might have said yes, though with the caveat of sudden and inevitable betrayal somewhere down the line,” she admitted with a half-hearted smirk. “Yours or mine that is.”
Even Sombra seemed amused by the thought, chuckling deeply. But Sunset didn’t let the banter distract her and kept up her initiative, stepping forward on her perch to emphasise her next point.
“Fortunately I have a better plan in mind, with a lot more mutual benefit and lack of back stabbing. We - all of us that is,” she said gesturing at the surrounding collection of crystallised ponies, “leave the same way I came in. Take refuge where I’ve been living, a long way from Equestria, this planet and the invaders.”
He went quiet for a moment, clearly thinking over the proposition, seriously considering her words. That, was a victory Sunset knew she could work with.
“An intriguing prospect, I certainly see the benefit of a secure place to retreat to, to recoup our strength before returning to strike out. However you are decidedly sparse on the details,” Sombra admitted to her while maintaining a scrutinising gaze. “One does not live as long as I have without watching out for the catch in any deal.”
Sunset nodded contently, perfectly ready to tip a card or two to reel him in. “True, quite true. In this case the catch is we only have a couple of days to decide and when we do we’ll be cut off on whichever side of the portal we’re on for two and a half years. That and you’re going to free me and let me retrieve as much as I can of value before I tell you anything else.”
The shadow pony scrutinised her intensely for that last comment. “You want something, and searching for that something brought you here of all places, the Crystal Empire, a place which you have little to no knowledge of instead of wherever you expected to arrive. Your irreverence displayed little respect for the wishes of your venerated princesses, your admitted willingness to explore the darkest depths of magic as pony kind knows it reveals your amoral attitude. Yet in spite of that, instead of offering to turn tail and run, to disappear into thin air the same way you arrived, you instead propose we work together towards some nebulous goal of – I assume – striking back against these invaders within moments of learning of them. That is, even after learning my infamous identity, that I have a number of your friends held captive and acknowledging the likelihood I might betray you in any future collaboration. So, with that in mind, why should I trust you? Why should I let you frolic around my Empire to take what you want and potentially disappear just as my adversaries close in? Why should I comply when I am expecting you to act against me, either for your own interests or preemptively against some perceived duplicity on my part? What is it you have to gain from this?”
For a moment she worked through her thoughts on the matter, a glance back at the miserable pink alicorn she both loathed and sympathised with actually made her wonder to herself why she wanted to step in. She didn’t exactly want Equestria to suffer, but did she really care all that much if it did? After it collectively chewed her up and spat her out like an unpleasant tasting piece of spoilt fruit?
Then she shrugged, stitching together the most plausible reason she could come up with, even if she wasn’t sure it was entirely true. “I want a lot of things; knowledge, power, glory, magical resources, my rightfully due recognition… and as regrettable as its happening is, this invasion is my opportunity for getting most of what I want. If I set this right, no one will ever forget my name and no one will dare ignore me again. Helping you and these ponies here is just the first step. As for the trust issues, I need you on my side. Not just to free the Princess but as an ally to get rid of these invaders. That fight will be no easy task, no matter what assets I’ve got on my side already. Once that is done, we can sort out our differences.”
He continued to study her carefully, gaze not letting up. “And what guarantee can you offer me your solution is real?”
Sunset groaned and wrung out an exaggeratedly exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe this, throw a drowning man a life line and he complains it won’t hold,” she griped aloud to herself before locking him with an irritable glare. “What do you want, huh? To be stuck indefinitely drifting about an empty castle until time grinds it to dust around you or these aliens take a closer look and finally notice you and your living batteries are hiding here? I am offering you a way out! A chance to recoup your strength and come back to actually do whatever it is you want to do instead of rotting in a cave for millennia! I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, or comfortable, but it’s something! Are you going to take that opportunity or not and ruin both of us?”
Sombra stared down at the snarling mare in bemusement for a moment. Then he started to chuckle, a chuckle that grew to a hearty laugh.
“Very well young sorceress. You have made a rather impassioned plea. I am convinced you speak honestly, if maybe not knowledgeably. You say you have a way to somewhere safe and I... believe that you believe that,” he spoke smoothly, starting to whisper around her in a snake like trail. “But if I am to leave this place I need something first. Something you will retrieve.”
“Right. I offer to do you a favour and you ask a favour in payment. Because that’s how things work,” she said with a strong dose of sarcasm and a roll of her eyes. “Why can’t you get it yourself? I mean you certainly pack a punch magically and you moved me down here somehow.”
Sombra frowned like he was sucking a particularly sour lemon - or at least did as much as a nebulous cloud of pony shaped smoke could – before offering a very reluctant explanation, “Unfortunately I cannot venture far from here. I am tied to these ponies for now. Without them I would soon dissipate into near nothingness and they would slowly die without me to maintain the spell work holding them. Naturally what I need happens to be beyond my range.”
“Is this really necessary?” she asked with a strained voice.
“Yes,” was his unflinching reply.
She sighed and slumped in defeat. “Fine. I’ll do your little fetch quest. But I need to know what I’m looking for and where to find it.”
Sombra’s gaze drifted for a moment in thought. “It is to the south of here, somewhere not far from the rail line to Equestria but…”
A glint of light reached his eyes as he reached some small epiphany. Darkness seeped into the crystal floor; an act reminiscent of their earlier fight, causing Sunset to edge back a touch. Sure enough just like then black jagged crystals began to grow from the floor, though this time in a short singular column rather than a wall. At its apex grew a new crystal, a long shard the same crimson colour as Sombra’s eyes. It separated from the column and hovered there above it.
“Take it. Hold it in your hoof and it shall point to what I need much like a compass needle,” he explained simply.
Hesitantly she took it in the crux of her hoof and released it. The shard lifted from the frog of her hoof and gently spun to point off in some direction, presumably south.
“Neat,” she said dismissively. “Now hurry up and undo whatever you did to my horn so I can get on with this.”
Sombra seemed to meander around on the spot for a moment, sporting a smile and a mockingly fake expression of thoughtfulness. “Hmmm. No. I think not.”
Her eyes bulged and for a brief moment she only saw red as rage took over. “WHAT?! You want me to go marching out there in freezing weather conditions with hostile aliens possibly running around without my greatest asset?! If you want me dead there are easier ways you know!”
“You do not need your magic for this task,” Sombra declared dismissively, maintaining his smug look of superiority. “The aliens have not visited this place in many months, not since they sniffed out some gathering stragglers hiding in the outskirts. Besides, think of it as an incentive not to delay in your task, or run off for that matter. To be quite honest I have not experimented with this particular creation of mine and how it reacts to magical forms of travel. Though I expect the results to be quite visceral.”
She sat there, glaring and fuming and seething at the not-quite-alive, debatably-not-a-pony stallion shaped cloud in front of her. He was technically right, any magic to help combat the environment would risk drawing attention so she couldn’t use much anyway and anything less would likely be superfluous in this climate. But it did not mean it would not be useful, and she hated giving it up again with her visits to Equestria being as infrequent as they were. More than that, Sunset in no way trusted him not to continue holding it over her after this.
However, for the time being she had little choice.
“Fine. But I’m definitely not going out there without my cloak and my supplies!” she replied firmly. “Where did you leave them?”
“I would not deprive you of something that will ensure both our safeties, in spite of my curiosity for your intriguing artefact. Now follow. I will return your possessions and show you the quickest path to the southern outskirts.”
She merely grunted in acknowledgment and fell in behind the smoky amorphous pony. Or she did, until he stopped in his tracks and turned to look back at her.
“What?” she asked with a deadpan tone.
“It has just occurred to me, while I have introduced myself to you, you have not returned the courtesy. What is your name, young sorcerer? From whence do you hail?” he asked, ponderously appraising the mare once more.
She snorted indignantly at him but obliged with a smirk.
“Sunset Shimmer. Most gifted Unicorn of the century, protégé and apprentice to the Princess of the sun herself, bane of stuffy nobles, monster hunter, professional finder of artefacts, Canterlot orphan gutter trash, future saviour of Equestria, and as of today would be challenger of kings.”
Sombra’s chuckle rang true as he drifted back into motion. “Yes, you will be competent help, and possibly a most dangerous ally. The orphans that survive always are. I would know, yes I would…”
Sunset merely followed on in silence, cyan-green eyes staring hard at the back of the deranged king’s head. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, today was going to be a very long, very cold day.