//------------------------------// // And It Goes From Bad To Worse // Story: Stop Thinking For A Minute // by ThatBlueScreenGuy //------------------------------// “Ow.” That’s how I woke up. In pain. To be expected, really. I did just get the shit beaten out of me. “Oh! Your awake!” A female voice said. I heard the clopping of hooves, and the the voice saying, “Don’t move, Connor. I’ll go get the others.” Not moving sounded like a great idea, so I did that. Shit, that thing took it out of me. I mean, yeah, I was essentially just tortured, but I didn’t expect it to hurt quite this bad afterwards. My muscles ached, my brain felt fried, and my bones felt like they would snap under the iron grip of the blanket on top of me. All in all, not the best way to wake up. The clopping of hooves sounded off again, this time with more sets. The more the sound played, the more I realised that the noise hurt my head. Not really sure how I didn’t notice before, but the pain only just registered, and I cringed away from it, trying to get the blanket between me and the agony in my ears. When I moved to pick up the blanket, my body screamed at me that this was a monumentally stupid idea, and that I should cease and desist at once. My body is generally smart about these things, and the pain in my muscles and bones was worse than that in my ears, so I stopped. In the face of one pain or the other, I admit that I took the lesser of the two. The clopping of hooves stopped, and voices started to talk. All at once. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, but I recognised the sound of the voices. The girls were all shouting at me for one reason or another, and my ears bled in response. “Girls!” Fluttershy’s soft voice said over the shouting. “Calm down. Can’t you see all the noise is bothering him?” There was a moment of silence, then a unanimous apology that made me cringe again. I opened my eyes, and glared at them. We were in a bed room. A guest room in a castle by the looks of it. The walls were made of a bright blue crystalline material, the roof the same. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, emitting a warm, candle light that light the room surprisingly well. All the furniture were made a pinkish crystal, of a similar texture of the walls. In total, I would guess that we were in a guest room in the Crystal Empire’s castle. I continued to glower at the girls, and croaked, “Can’t a guy get any sleep around here? I just got my ass handed to me, and all you want to do is bitch and complain at me? Let me get a drink of water first, at least.” The girls, except Fluttershy, all flushed with embarrassment, and Rarity levitated a glass of water to me. I grabbed it, took a long drink, and handed it back to her, where she put it back on the end table she got it from. “Now,” I said, my voice slightly stronger. “What’s going on?” They all opened their mouths to speak, but I cut them off. “One at a time! Just one of you tell me what happened. I don’t think my ears can take much more punishment like that.” Twilight stepped up. “When we got into the shield, I was still shocked that you stayed behind. Shining Armor noticed that you were gone, and asked where you were. I told him that you stayed behind, and he said that we should leave you their, that you could take care of yourself. I got into an argument with him about it, and the rest of the girls took sides. Eventually, we started to hear you scream. Shining ran into the tundra to get you, then came back about a minute later, black crystals growing from his horn, and you behind him. You passed out, and we took you to the castle. After that, we decided to wait until you woke up before we asked about the situation.” I took in her words, and asked, “Shining wanted to leave me there?” Twilight sighed, but nodded. “Yes. He said that you were tough enough to take care of yourself, and that you wouldn’t want us to waste time if it meant that other people could be helped.” I nodded. “He’s right.” Twilight blinked. “What?” I shrugged, and winced at the pain. “Yeah,” I said, my teeth clenched. “If it were a choice between me and other, innocent people, I would want it to be me that got left behind. Staying loyal to your friends is important, but staying loyal to what is right is more important.” Twilight frowned at that, but nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But anyway, we were waiting for you to become lucid before we talked to whoever is in charge around here.” “Who is in charge around here, anyway?” Twilight was about to tell me that she had no idea, but the rooms door opened, and Shining Armor and Cadence walked in. “That would be me.” Cadence said. She looked like utter shit. I mean, she looked bad when I found her and Twilight in the caverns during the Canterlot wedding, but now she looked worse. Her mane was bedraggled, and in dire need of a brush. The purple bags under her eyes made a subtle contrast to the dulled pink of her coat. Her horn was glowing a faint blue, faint enough to make me think that she was running out of juice. She walked with a kind of weight in her step, as though each movement drove her closer to passing out. All in all, she looked like shit. “Christ,” I said to her. “You look like shit.” She gave me a less-than-amused look. “You’re one to talk. At least I’m not bedridden.” I snorted. “I wouldn’t say that. By the look of it, you’re about ready to pass out.” Cadence laughed weakly, but cringed in pain, her horn flickering out for a second. Shining put a hoof on his wife’s shoulder. “Cadance has been able to use her magic to spread love and light. That seems to be what is protecting it. But she hasn't slept, barely eats. I want to help her, but my protection spell has been countered by King Sombra.” I grunted. “Yeah, makes sense. That blast of magic at the very end, there? That was probably to disable you. Take one of his enemies out, and most likely disable the other.” Shining looked a this wife, worriedly. “She can't go on like this forever, and if her magic were to fade... Well, you saw what's out there waiting for that to happen.” I shivered, and a phantom pain shot through my body at the memory. The rest of the girls nodded. “That's why we're here.” Twilight said. Applejack stepped up. “Why we're all here.” The rest of the girls nodded their agreement. “Well, with Cadence putting all her strength into keeping her spell going, and me trying to keep an eye on signs of trouble in the arctic, we haven't been able to gather much information from the Crystal Ponies.” Shining explained. Rarity lost her shit. “Crystal Ponies?! Hahaha, there are Crystal Ponies?!” We all stared at her. “Um, ahem. Please continue.” She gave us an awkward smile. Good to know that I’m not the only one that gets stared at like a I’m a moron. Shining continued. “But we have to believe one of them knows how we can protect the Empire without having to use Cadance's magic.” “Yeah, that seems likely.” I agreed. “I mean, the taffy pony over there hasn’t always been around, so there has to be something. Just got to find out what it is, and where to find it.” Twilight perked up. “A research paper!” I blinked at her. “Uh, what?” “That must be part of my test – to gather information from the Crystal Ponies and deliver it to you! This is gonna be great! I love research papers!” Rainbow Dash snorted. “Yeah, who doesn't?” Pinkie’s hoof shot up. “Oh-oh-oh! Lemme guess! Is it Spike? Nono, Fluttershy! Rarity?” Rainbow sighed, and didn’t respond to her pink friend. “Don't worry, big brother.” Twilight said. “I am really good at this sort of thing.” Shining nodded. “I know you are. Good luck.” With that, he and Cadence left. “Welp,” I said. “No time like the present. Lets go.” I then started to get up, pushing through the aches and pains, of which, there were many. All the girls immediately shouted their disagreement. They all moved to my bedside, and pushed me back into the bed. When they noticed that I wasn’t struggling against them, Twilight, still holding me down, said,” Connor! You can’t! You’re still injured! You should at least get a days worth of rest. Let us do this, and you relax.” I considered her word, then thought for a moment, considering my response. Finally, I said, my voice sharp and frank, “Twilight, you don’t have the right to stop me. I may be injured, I may be sore, tired, hungry, and weary as all Hell, but this is literally what I was made to do. This is my job. This is what I was brought to this reality to do, to protect those of this reality, even if it meant that I gave my own life to do it. With all due respect Twilight, this is, quite literally, none of your business, your test be damned. You don’t get to tell me if I can or cannot come, because, if anything, you’re tagging along with me. Not the other way around. Now let me up.” The girls were silent for a moment, either shocked that I fought back so fiercely, or shocked that I said to Hell with Celestia’s test. You can guess who was thinking what. After the moment passed, Pinkie said, “You know, he’s right.” The other girls looked at her. She shrugged, and got off the bed. “I mean, it is his business. It wouldn’t be very nice of use to stop him from doing what he has to. If one of you came into SugarCube Corner’s kitchen, and told me to get out, that I wasn’t allowed to do my job, I wouldn’t be too happy. If Connor wants to come along, then he can.” The others stared at Pinkie, contemplating her words. Slowly, the rest of the girls got off of me, until only Twilight held me down. She looked conflicted, as though she wanted to let me up, but something in her mind was giving her pause. Probably the whole test thing. “Twilight.” I said, getting her attention. “Just let me up. You can still finish your test, only now, you’ll have my help. What do you have to lose?” She sighed, and got off me. “Fine. But I’M going to be the one who saves the Empire. I have to, if I want to pass. Now let’s get searching.” Then, she, and the others, left to get information. I got out of the bed, my muscles screaming at me to stop moving so much. I ignored them, and followed after the girls. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ “Nothing? You remember nothing of the time?” I asked, completely mystified. The crystal pony shook her head. “No, nothing. If there was something before Sombra, I don’t remember it.” She shuddered. “The most I do remember is that there was something new when he came. Something cold.” The pony shook her head. “I’m… Sorry, but you have to go now.” I nodded. “I understand. Thank you for your time.” Then I left the pony’s house. It was odd, asking so many questions, but getting little in the way of answers. It seemed as though Sombra had cast a curse over the entire Empire, to make them forget of the time before it showed up. The last bit from that pony was the most I had gotten. ‘Something new. Something cold.’ What the Hell did that mean? That could mean anything from the tundra outside, to her leaving the AC on for too long. I shook my head, and sat on a nearby bench, rubbing my aching legs. If Sombra did cast a spell that big, then it meant that there was something to hide after all. Not really useful info, but it does tell us that we’re going in the right direction. Maybe there’s something that we can find, not a person we can ask. Maybe a book, or journal or something, with the info that we need. Sombra seems the egotistical type that would keep its weakness conveniently placed somewhere that was perfectly obvious in retrospect, but no one bother to look. Well, what ever the case may be, I needed to go to the girls and tell them my findings. I made my way to our meeting spot, the courtyard right underneath the castle. When I got there, all the others were already there, talking. “Hey girls.” I said, drawing their attention. “Couldn’t find anything useful.” Twilight sighed. “Yeah, none of us could find anything either.” AJ scrunched up her nose. “These crystal ponies seem to have some kinda collective amnesia or somethin'. Only thing I was able to get out of 'em was somethin' about a library.” Twi’s eyes went wide. “A library? Well, why didn't you say so?!” She then zoomed off in a random direction, seemingly given some kind of divine knowledge on where the library was. Or maybe all librarians have some kind of sixth sense for that kind of thing. I groaned. “I just get here, and we’re leaving already? Confound you ponies. You’ll drive me to arthritis.” AJ shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Con, but you were the one who insisted ya’ll come along.” I nodded. “I know what I signed up for. At this point, I’m just complaining for the sake of complaining. Helps me deal with the aches.” “Makes sense.” She looked over at the rest of the group, who had started after Twilight. “Well, we best go after them. Don’t wanna get left behind, now do we?” “Yeah.” So, AJ and I followed after the group, us staying a bit behind, because of my aching legs. The pains had withered down a considerable amount, but I had been walking ever since I got out of bed, the only time for rest at that bench. “So,” AJ said, breaking the silence. “Ya’ll didn’t find anythang?” I shook my head. “Nothing useful. The most I found was someone saying that when Sombra came around, something new came with him. Something cold. To Hell if I know what it means.” AJ’s brow furrowed. “Somethin’ cold? That don’t make a right lick of sense. Maybe we’ll find something at the library.” “Maybe so. We can only hope, really. At this point, we’re just floundering around, looking for anything to go on.” AJ nodded her agreement. “We need somethin’ soon, or else we might be too late.” The last bit put a bullet through that conversation. We lapsed into a thoughtful silence, where I thought about anything and everything that that pony might of meant when she said ‘something cold’. We arrived at the library a few minutes later, and found Twilight just staring around the place, her jaw dropped open, clearly in awe. “I just... I don't even know what to... There are no words.” She stammered. I walked up next to her, and said, “‘Wow’ might be a good place to start.” She nodded her head, dully. “Wow.” Someone cleared their throat from nearby, trying to get our attention. It was another crystal pony, the librarian most likely. “May I help you?” She asked. Twilight, still in awe of her surroundings, said, “Yes. We're looking for a book.” “We have plenty of those.” the crystal librarian said. “You do. You really do.” AJ stepped up next to Twilight. “We're lookin' for a history book. Somethin' that might tell us how the Empire might've protected itself from danger back in the day.” The librarian thought for a moment, then said, “Yes. Of course. History, history... Ah, yes.” There was a moment of silence, where everyone stared at the crystal pony. “Well?” I asked. “Where is it?” The crystal pony got a look of confusion on her face. “ I... I can't seem to remember. I'm not sure I actually work here.” Might as well have said that she forgot how to eat too. “Of course. Because you remembering would have made things easy, and that might have broken something.” I complained. The girls all gave me an arch look. I scowled at them. “What? I’m dealing with the pain.” They rolled their eyes, and Twilight said to the librarian, “Well, can we look around to see if we can find what we’re looking for?” The crystal pony nodded. “Go ahead. Just put everything back when you’re done.” And so, we started our search for who-knew-what. To make the process go by faster, we decided to split up and cover sections of the library individually, working our way toward the middle. Everyone went to their respective corners, and the search began. It took a while for any real kind of progress to be made, but eventually, I found something interesting. I was searching through a bunch of record book, stuff like seismic activity, magical fluxuation, shit like that. Records of patterns in the area. During my search, I had been thinking about what that crystal pony had told me. Whatever it was, it had to be significant in someway, if it got through Sombra’s mental compulsion. Or maybe that means that it would be utterly worthless. I had no idea, but I felt the need to investigate. While searching through the books, I came across a record of all the weather patterns for the last one hundred years. Given that the city had been disappeared for the last 1000 years, that meant that the last 100 years was relative to them. While sifting through the book, I started to notice something. The more recent the recorded average, the colder the weather was. It was odd, like global warming, but in reverse, and super accelerated. At some point the weather went from an average of 80 degrees fahrenheit, to about 50. From that point, the temperature only went down. Sure, some days would be hotter than others, but on average? It was similar to cooling a red hot piece of metal in a water trough. Spontaneous and radical temperature changes. I frowned over the questions this info brought up. Why the Hell had the temperature changed so suddenly? How had it changed so suddenly? And why was the temperature cold back then, but warm right now? You’d think that weather changes like that would stick with the city, but it must have been about 70 degrees outside. From what the records say, the year of the cities disappearance, the average temperature was about -20 degrees. What had changed the weather? My thoughts were interrupted by Twilight shouting, “Yes! ‘History of the Crystal Empire’!” I’m sure that the librarian didn’t appreciate Twilight shouting. I followed the voice, and made my way over to where the rest of the girls were gathered around. “We found it?” I asked. Twilight nodded, her eyes never leaving the book in front of her. “Yes! What we’re looking for is called a ‘Crystal Faire’. According to this book, it was established by their first queen and became their most important tradition. The Faire was held every year to ‘renew the spirit of love and unity in the empire so they could protect it from harm’.” I nodded. “Well, we know what we need to do. Let’s get to it.” So, we left the library to get started on the whole ‘Crystal Faire’. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ After an extremely catch tune about what the Crystal Faire needed to be successful, we found ourselves around the base of the castle, putting up the finishing touches on anything that needed them. I was helping Rarity put a tarp roof on one of the stands, where they would sell cotton candy or something. “I still don’t understand,” Rarity was telling me, “How Cadence is keeping that dreadful unicorn out. If he is what you say he is, then wouldn’t he be able to just go through the shield?” I shook my head, adjusting my footing on the ladder. “Not unless he’s being held out by his opposite.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, if he was being kept out by the thing that specifically isn’t him, then he couldn’t get in. Sombra is inherently a being of hate. A being of cold, wintery hate. And Cadence is the princess of love, or something like that. The exact opposite of hate is love, so she made a shield out of love, or at least the magical equivalent. Sombra can’t get through because he’s being stopped by something that hurts him. It’d be like me using a waterfall of lava to try and keep ponies out of my house. It would hurt you just to be in close proximity. If you were to touch it? That shit would kill you. It’s the same for him.” Rarity nodded in understanding. “I see. He can’t come through because he is a being of hate, being stopped by love. If he were to touch the shield, it would hurt him.” “Yeah.” I frowned, a thought coming into my head. “But that’s not what worries me.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? And what is?” “Why isn’t the snow falling through the shield?” “What do you mean?” “I mean that snow isn’t a bad thing, generally speaking. It’s just cold. It isn’t evil, or bad, or hateful. So it should be able to go through the shield just fine, like we did. But it isn’t. It’s staying out. Why?” Rarity shook her head. “ I can’t say that I know, dear. Perhaps it is one of those things that we may never know.” I frowned, my brain trying to follow the chains of logic that were presented. I had a hunch as to why the snow was staying out, but that’s all it was. A hunch. Not really anything to move on. Not yet. The rest of the preparations went without incident, and the fair was up and running in no time. There was to be a huge opening ceremony, to make the official statement of it’s beginning, and me, Twilight, and Pinkie, accompanied Shining and Cadence out into the balcony over the city. Pinkie, with her new flugelhorn, made the intro trumpeteering sounds. When they ended, Twilight stepped forward. “Hear ye, hear y-” she started, but was interrupted by a certain pink pony, and her annoying horn. Eventually, Pinkie ran herself ragged, and slumped to the floor, allowing Twilight to continue. “Hear ye, hear ye! Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor do cordially invite you to attend the Crystal Faire!” And then, the ponies around went about their business, doing whatever it was that pleased them. “Good job, Twilight.” I said from next to her. “Now all we need to do is wait for the Crystal Heart to charge up, then we can kick Sombra back into the dark little hole he came from.” She nodded. “And it’s a good thing that we found the book. Otherwise, we might not have found out about the heart in time.” Suffice to say, things went downhill from there. Rainbow Dash charged up behind us, yelling, “Twilight!” The purple pony turned to her friend, concern playing on her face from Rainbow’s tone. “What? What is it?” “We have a problem! Turns out that the Crystal Heart thingy ‘s been hidden since Sombra was kicked out! We don’t have the real thing, and I doubt that fake one you made will work very well!” Twilight’s eyes widened, and she ran down a castle corridor, looking for her room. When she got there, she immediately slammed open the door, searched around hurriedly, found the history book she was looking for, and threw it on the table, where she began vigorously searching through it. When she got to the end of the book, she found that the last few pages had been ripped out. She stared at the empty page spots in shock, as though hoping that they would magically reappear. And while that is technically possible, the pages remained torn out, and Twilight turned to face Rainbow and I where we stood in the doorway. “What is it?” I asked. “The… Back pages are gone.” She seemed to get more frightened and worried the more she thought about it. “How did I possibly miss that? Something like overlooking missing pages just doesn’t happen to me!” She started to hyperventilate. I walked up to her, got to her eye level, and forced her to look me in the eye. “Twilight.” I said in a firm voice. She focused on me, still panting. “You need to calm down. You need to not panic. Panic will get you killed. It will get everyone else killed. If you panic, you’ll be too unstable to do much of anything. So, for the sake of everyone else’s lives, take a deep breath, and calm down.” She did, and started to get calm, though I could still see fleeting strikes of hysteria in her eyes. I narrowed my eyes. “Do you think that Celestia would want to see you like this? That she would find this panic, this anxiety, in her star student? For that matter, do you think that you’d be able to pass her test if you’re like this? You of all people know that if you want to pass a test, you need to stay calm.” That seemed to put some steel into her spine. She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and when she reopened her eyes, there was a hard resolve inside them. It just goes to show just how high of a pedestal Twilight put Celestia on, if the threat of the deaths of hundreds of innocent people didn’t get her to calm down. With anyone else, I would say it’s shallow, but I’m not in the business of insulting my friends. Anyway, when Twilight calmed herself, she began to think about just what we were going to do. “So, we need to find the real Crystal Heart before this Faire ends, otherwise we miss the window of opportunity to defeat him. From the flickering I saw in the shield earlier, Sombra is going to be making his way into the city very soon. That gives us an incredibly small window to find the thing that we thought we found, but didn’t, then stopped looking for, due to our ignorance. Since we stopped looking for it, we lost a lot a lot of valuable time that we could have spent searching for the real thing, but that’s irrelevant now. Now, we need to find the Crystal Heart within an increasingly smaller time frame, or otherwise the entire city is doomed, Equestria along with it.” I waited for a second, to see if she was really done. Then I nodded. “Yeah, that seems to be the scuttlebut. But the problem isn’t only about finding the Crystal Heart.” Twilight tilted her head at me. “Another problem,” I said, walking over to a window. “Is that.” I pointed out into the lands that surrounded the city. Around the area where we came into the Empire, was a small black crystal that was slowly spreading into larger, jagged forms of itself. Twilight, Rainbow, who had been quiet until this point, and I stared out at the rapidly forming spikes. “Well,” Rainbow said. “Horseapples.” I nodded. “Yeah. Fuck.”