44. Yesteryear
Admiral Biscuit
King Sombra was tired. All day long it had been one crisis after another. It seemed the Crystal Empire always had problems. His guards had caught a group of mares trying to find the Crystal Heart—that was how his day had begun.
They'd given him trouble before, and he’d spent a couple hours trying to figure out how they’d gotten out of their shackles, but none of the guards knew. He finally settled on picking a guard at random to throw into the dungeons, to serve as an inspiration to the rest. As for the mares, he chained them back together, and ordered them be put into the crystal mines.
Sure, he had his amulet, but that was no reason to be complacent. And who knew? His sages were always using crystals for new spells and enchantments as quickly as they could be mined; with the power he now grasped in his hooves, he could—he looked up at the sun—well, maybe not that. Not yet.
He covered a yawn as he looked over a report from his treasurer. It wasn’t great news, but it wasn’t terrible, either. He could just raise taxes a little bit, maybe a percent or two. Nothing too harsh. And if a pony couldn’t pay? Well, there was always room for more in the crystal mines.
Yes, things were moving along nicely. That upstart Celestia was ensconced in her southern country, too scared to leave the warmth of the southlands to challenge his empire; even if she did come north, her troops wouldn’t last in the cold.
Sombra picked up a mallet and brushed it against a crystal gong. Before the noise had faded from the giant hall, a pony was at his side.
“Yes, master?”
“I wish a draught of ambrosia, and for my carriage to be prepared. I shall be retiring to my vacation house for a little break.”
“Very good, sire.” The servant bowed, and scurried off to comply. Sombra watched her with a smirk. It was good to be king.
King Sombra settled into the feather bed at his vacation home. He pulled the covers up to his chin, rolled over onto his side, and embraced his favorite stuffie in his hooves, the silky push warm against his skin. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought again, it’s good to be king.
Unbeknownst to King Sombra, his alarm clock, while the finest example of crystal pony construction, suffered from a fatal flaw. Vain as he was, he’d ordered all the workings to be made of crystal—an impossible task—and dozens of clock-makers now labored in the crystal mines for failure to produce.
But one pony, smarter than all his predecessors, had realized that Sombra had no idea how a clock actually worked, and had simply assembled an ordinary clock, dusting each part with a fine crystal powder. As can be imagined, this was quite abrasive, and dramatically shortened the clock's life.
King Sombra knew none of this, and he drifted off to sleep with his alarm clock ticking reassuringly. He did not notice that the tics were slow and the tocs kind of gritty, and he was sound asleep when the mainspring gave one final spronk as the clock cast its withers.
He was a heavy sleeper—always had been—and the stress of ruling an empire and creating ever more powerful artifacts had taken their toll. He slept through the afternoon, and the night, and the day after that, and the next night, and so on.
It was not too long before his kingdom dissolved into chaos. Without their leader, the crystal ponies simply could not manage their own affairs—that was the consensus of Sombra’s advisors, who uneasily watched the gathering mobs below their great tower.
Since Sombra’s iron-shod rule had not permitted a second-in-command, a hasty conference was held in which Sombra’s successor was chosen, and therefore all responsibility of the whole empire fell into the hooves of the lowliest chambermare, who handled her promotion with a considerable degree of stoicism—she fainted.
When she came to, she did the only thing she could think of—summoned the court mages to find a solution posthaste.
Spellbooks were drawn forth, and presently a spell was discovered which would freeze everything in the empire until Sombra returned. Without even bothering to read the pages of disclaimers and warnings, the mages drew forth all their considerable powers and cast the spell.
With a quiet sproink—just the same noise that the clock’s mainspring had made, in fact—the entire Crystal Empire vanished.
King Sombra yawned, feeling the warm sunshine across his face. He felt amazing—it was by far the most refreshing nap he’d ever taken.
His whole body felt light. He bounced to his hooves, not noticing that he was smokier than he’d been when he went to bed. All his aches and pains were gone—a beneficial side-effect to being largely incorporeal.
He looked out the window at his glorious kingdom glittering off in the distance. Something seemed a little off—there was a faint blue glow around it where there hadn’t been before.
Now feeling the first twinges of unease, Sombra galloped into his lavish sitting room, shouting for his servants. Of course, they were all long gone, having fled south after he failed to wake.
His daughter had stayed for the longest, but she, too, had eventually given up, as the ice advanced and the food ran out. She went on to marry a nice stallion, forgot about the Crystal Empire, and many many many generations later, her great-great-great . . . grandfilly ascended to alicornhood when—but that’s a story for a different time.
It should not be surprising that this very grandfilly, in fact, was sitting on what had been Sombra’s crystal throne, but he knew none of this. All he knew was that his servants were all gone, and when he went to enter his lavish Crystal City, his way was blocked by a forcefield.
The rest of the story? Well, everypony knows that. There’s even a stained glass window in Canterlot with a picture of Spike the Dragon, boldly holding the Crystal Heart high above his head.