Sugar's eyes opened with a few blinks, when she managed to keep them open her vision was incredibly blurry damn forced teleportation she thought as she sat up. She could see that the others were already awake but none of them said a word to her, they all just stood there with troubled expressions on their faces, even her grandfather. She got up and walked over to them "What's the problem?" she asked.
They turned towards her and looked at each other, with a sigh Doctor Hooves walked over to his granddaughter and whispered "Sugar, I'm afraid that Discord has sent us all the way to the Crystal Empire." She understood at that point why he had whispered, none of the guards nor the princesses even knew this place existed until they were sent here and Doctor Hooves had to be cautious about giving away that they knew of places under such tyrannical rule in Equestria.
Doctor Hooves turns back to everyone and says "I think we'd best leave this place now, the sooner we get back to end Discord's rule the better."
Everyone looked at him, the princesses looking confused "Why are you so eager to leave, should we not help put things right for this place?" Princess Luna asked, noting how he had gotten surprisingly jumpy when he saw the city before them. Its buildings were dark and dusty, almost falling apart and they could sense that there was incredibly strong dark magic at work here. They would have to enter the city to see the damage that it had done to the population. One thing that stood out to everyone though was the fact that the palace at the centre of the city (and possibly the buildings) was made of pure crystal.
"We are going in to assess the situation." Princess Celestia announced.
Doctor Hooves and Sugar looked at each other worriedly, Doctor Hooves then let Sugar climb onto his back "It'll be alright," he said "just as long as we stick together we should be able to escape if things go wrong." Sugar smiled at him and he turned his head around and began to walk off with the others.
***
When they got to the front of this 'crystal city' they were only half surprised to find no pony there. They began to walk through the streets, determined to find and help the ponies of this city to end whatever plight they found themselves in. After a while of walking they were about to give up, they couldn't see any way in which the city could be this empty unless it was completely unpopulated, then they came to the palace. It looked like everypony in the city had gathered outside that one huge building, the travellers were shocked to see that they were all in shackles. They appeared to be carting around huge chunks of metal, someone had them working on something but the ponies themselves didn't look to happy to be doing this work.
They were all dirty to the point where it was impossible to tell what the natural colour of their coats were, they had the most depressing looks on their faces that any of them had ever seen and they were shaking from all of the work. They were all so transfixed on the scene in front of them that no one, not even the princesses noticed a guard sneaking off to the side to get a better look, after a while they all ducked behind a nearby building. They didn't know why but they felt that they needed to stay out of sight.
They looked out upon the slaves for a few moments more before they heard a deafening roar coming from the top of the crystal palace, there was a ball of dark magic in the middle of the town and the slaves stopped work, clearly nervous. When the dark magic vanished a unicorn stepped forward, a large male unicorn with a coat as black as the insides of tartarus itself, he had a set of thick metal armour and his horn matched his eyes... red as blood. He wore a snarl on his face as he clearly knew something was wrong in his city and he was going to take care of it.
He began teleporting around the area, thankfully not noticing any of the group peaking out from behind a building and screaming at his slaves "Where are they!? I can sense them in here, where are the intruders!?"
He would always be responded to by his slaves with "No King Sombra, I'm sorry King Sombra." as they cowered in fear of him.
He was seriously angry with this, intruders meant somebody had found him "Intruders are not tolerated in the Crystal Empire, surrender yourselves now and you will be spared." he shouted.
It was at this point that the guard that had sneaked off for a closer look tried to sneak back, unluckily for him it was at the same moment that Sombra turned towards him. With another ball of dark magic Sombra teleported towards him, his red horn glowing fiercely and sent a red beam of magic into the guard. They could hear the guards screams as he was reduced to nothing but dust "Clean him up!" Sombra shouted to his slaves.
After about ten more minutes of searching with no luck Sombra shouted again "I will find you! Discord let me have this city and I intend to take the rest of Equestria. I will find you and you will die unless you surrender now."
Hearing his plans the travellers decided right then and there that Discord could wait, they had a king with plans of conquering the country to deal with first.
Princess Celestia whispered to them "We have to stop him but the Elements of Harmony are a last resort, understood?" They all nodded, none of them were going to argue about this. "Good, then we'd better start planning hadn't we?"