//------------------------------// // Recovering the Stolen Jewels // Story: Split Second // by wille179 //------------------------------// Princess Celestia trotted to the throne room with grace and dignity. Her gait was measured, and, with her centuries of combat and dance practice, each step was exactly the same length. With it, she had practically become the standard of grace and beauty for all ponykind. That same deliberate stride also served to help conceal the stress she was feeling. When parliament had dissolved, she had taken over the duties of lawmaking as well as her original duties. The royal alicorn thanked the maker that her sister had returned now, and that Cadance had joined the ruling family. Between the alicorn trio, the nightmarish workload was a bit more manageable. A good surprise had come from the economic reforms in the form of a lower turnout in both Day and Night Court. Where once dozens of petitioners sought the highest court in the land, now the number had dwindled to perhaps four. The thought of a falling workload made Celestia’s trip to the throne room for Court that much easier. She trotted up to her royal cushion and daintily sat down. Her assistant - the wonderfully helpful, if abrasive, Kibitz - was already there waiting for her with the day’s agenda. “Who do we have first, Kibitz, and are they ready to present?” Kibitz looked upon his scroll and read, “The first petitioner is... one Sparkle, head of the Noble House of Twilight.” Celestia raised an eyebrow. Sparkle wanted an audience with her in an official fashion? Interesting... Unaware of his Princess’s inner thoughts, Kibitz continued reading uninterrupted. “Her petition is for... the use of a contingent of Royal Guards as escorts for an expedition up to the Frozen North, north of the Crystal Mountain Outpost.” Cadance had mentioned to Celestia that Sparkle had gone up north for a few days. Why did she need to go up again, and why did she need a guard? “Send her in,” the curious princess commanded. When the doors opened, Sparkle marched right up to Celestia and practically shoved a scroll into Celestia’s face. The princess took it and opened it up, revealing a very complex spell array. “I’m going to bring back the Crystal Empire, and that’s how,” Sparkle stated. Celestia’s eyes shot back down to the scroll, quickly scanning the spells within. “This... this could work!” Genuinely excited, the princess looked back once more at Sparkle. “How soon could you have this ready?” “I’ve already built it; I could fire it the moment I get up there. In fact, I planned to head up there first thing tomorrow morning,” Sparkle explained. “I don’t really need guards; I just figured that you’d want to know, and that you’d probably send some guards and an embassador up there anyway. I figured that we could at least travel together.” “This is... KIBITZ! Fetch me Princess Cadance, and then clear our schedules for the next few days, and get Princess Luna, too. Guards! Bring me Captain Shining Armor at once!” Celestia ordered. The assistant and the ever-present guards saluted and hurried off. Then, the solar princess pulled out a blank scroll, a quill, and some ink. Quickly, she wrote out a letter in her perfect horn writing and sent it off with a pulse of magic. Then, turning her attention to the necromancer before her. “Sparkle, what you have here is an amazing piece of magic, and I cannot thank you enough for creating this. But know that when the Crystal Empire returns, so will its tyrant ruler: King Sombra.” “I know who he is,” Sparkle replied, “and I know it took both you and Princess Luna to seal him away the last time. However, I have something particularly nasty in store for him if he shows up.” And she did; that much was the truth. What Sparkle wasn’t saying was that she was counting on Sombra showing up. “Then you are aware of the danger. Good. Although, before things become too hectic, may I ask why you felt the need to rescue a long-lost empire?” She replied to the solar princess’s inquiry with a question of her own. “Would you believe that I wanted to find a book?” Hectic was an understatement. This was a rescue mission mounted by one of the most social creatures on the planet; of course it would be a flurry of action as everypony scrambled to get things done as fast as possible. Guards scrambled to get organized, castle staff ran about at a breakneck pace, and of course, the nobles bitched and whined when Princess Celestia refused to see to their oh so important problems. Sparkle, for her part, simply had to show up at the Canterlot train station the next morning with the Yagalone stone in tow. Although she did mention to Celestia that it was literally a boulder three times the height of the average pony, the Yagalone stone caused a bit of a spectacle as she levitated the light-devouring monolith into the train station. The mare couldn’t put it into her pocket space without damaging it, and so she was forced to carry it. Sparkle trotted up to the Princess’s personal train, the Ultraviolet. A marvel of modern magical engineering, it currently held the land speed record for any vehicle in the world. The necromancer increased her pace to a steady canter and made her way towards the freight car. She nodded to the guard standing nearby as she floated the Yagalone into the car and followed in behind it. Once the stone was secured in place with several straps, she made her way to the first passenger car behind the engine. There, she stepped on board and found her seat. No more than five minutes later, Sparkle spotted six mare approaching the train car. Sparkle's shoulders slumped slightly when she recognized who they were. "Oh, Darling, can you imagine it? A whole empire made entirely of crystals! I bet it's simply divine~!" Rarity stepped through the open door of the train car and paused when she noticed who she was going to be sharing the car with. "Oh... Sparkle. I didn't expect to see you here." "Sparkle? Sparkle is here?" Trixie said from behind Rarity. "What is she doing here?" "Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing," Sparkle replied as the six Element Bearers boarded. "I have a good reason to be on this train; why are you all here?" "Princess Celestia asked us to help retrieve the Crystal Heart when the Empire is restored," Trixie replied. "Hmm... Well, stay out of my way, then," Sparkle grunted. The whistle of the Ultraviolet pierced the air while the engine lurched forward. The other mares took their seat. "What about you?" a suspicious Rainbow Dash interrogated Sparkle. "Why are you here?" "I'm the one bringing the empire back." The moment the group of twenty guards and their captain, an alicorn princess, six Element Bearers, and a necromancer crossed into the valley, they could all feel that this was the site of foul magic. Every tribe could feel magic to some extent. Earth ponies could sense the magic that was touching them or anything they touched, including the nearby ground; to them, it was akin to being poked with needles until they went numb. Pegasi could feel the magic in the air with their wings, although they perceived it in a way similar to, but not quite, sound; Fluttershy flinched at the horrible shriek of the magic. And unicorns could sense magic with their horn in a way that wasn’t like any other sense; the guards, Trixie, Rarity, and Cadance all scowled at the feeling of void in the air. Sparkle, however, had the most profound sensory experience when it came to the Crystal Empire’s valley, though she had already seen it once before. There, emerging from the center of the valley, was a crack in space and time, though it had long since been sealed mostly shut. And although Sparkle couldn’t see the crack itself, it being so utterly abstract, she could see the light of the souls of the empire’s ponies glowing faintly behind it. The glow also seemed to radiate out in thin lines, each no bigger than a third of a hoof-length, that pointed to various locations around the valley. Sparkle could only assume that they were trails left as the ponies were pulled into the void, and where they’d reappear when the city returned. Thus, with a fairly accurate gauge of how big the city would be, Sparkle ordered toe group to stop on the outskirts. “Hey, why are we stopping?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Tell me, what’s out there?” Sparkle replied, waving her mechanical hoof towards the center of the valley. “Err, nothing,” Dash answered, confused. “Exactly. Now, what will be out there soon?” “The empire, duh.” Sparkle grinned. “So tell me, Rainbow Dash, if you are out there, and a city appears out of thin air, what happens to you?” “I dunno,” Dash replied. “Have you ever heard of a unicorn getting splinched when they teleport?” Sparkle asked. Immediately, the more magic-savvy of the group turned various shades of green. “Think of it this way: What if you are standing where a wall should be the moment that wall reappears? Obviously, you’d be cut in half. Now do you see why I wanted you to stop?” “Gah! Ok, ok, I get it. No going in until the city is back,” Rainbow Dash agreed. Sparkle nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be off.” And with that, Sparkle, with her floating boulder, galloped down the slope. Shining Armor watched her go, worried for his sister after what she had just described. Now though, all he could do was wait. His sister’s slow gallop would get her to the center of the valley within ten minutes, and then it would take another two minutes to arm the stone and teleport back. Then, hopefully, they would have the Crystal Empire. Cadance moved closer to her fiancé and draped her gradient wing across his snow-white back. “You ready, Shiny?” “Of course,” he half-lied. “Me too,” Cadance replied, though it was also only partially true. Seconds passed, and then minutes. Within the group, the suspense was building. With no way of knowing exactly when it was going to go off, they could only sit and wait. Then, without warning, a plume of black smoke erupted within the center of the group and swiftly compressed itself into Sparkle’s form. “Everything’s in place,” Sparkle announced. “Good,” Shining Armor replied. “When will it go off?” Instead of immediately answering, Sparkle conjured a black orb of magic from her horn. “This is the detonator. Hit it with raw magic, and we get a city un-destroyed. Shining, could you put a shield around us first?” “Oh, sure!” The pink bubble promptly materialized around them. “And Cadance, would you like to do the honors?” Cadance smiled. “I’d love to.” The alicorn gathered blue magic at the tip of her horn. “Good morning, Crystal Empire! I hope you enjoyed sleeping in!” The alicorn’s magic struck the orb. At that instant, a black speck appeared several hundred hoof-lengths above the ground. And, an instant later, it explosively expanded in a sphere of black magic that rapidly filled most of the valley in a fraction of a second. A blast of wind slammed into Shining’s shield, but he alone barely noticed the impact; his shield protected the entire group perfectly. When the magic and windstorm faded, the Crystal Empire stood before them, majestic and gleaming. Oohs and Aahs erupted from the gathered ponies. One of the guards started stomping his hooves in approval, and soon, the group had broken out into full applause for Sparkle, who, being so unused to the mass praise, was blushing furiously. “Thanks, everypony,” she said bashfully. “Come on, everypony. Let’s go see how the empire is doing,” Princess Cadance suggested. While the Princess lead the group onward, Sparkle held her brother back. “Shiny, I’m going after Sombra. I know he’s alive and probably working his way out of the ice even as we speak. I’m going after him.” “Sparks, no! It’s too dangerous. At least let me come with you!” the Royal Guard Captain insisted. “Shiny... no. I need to do this alone,” she replied, turning away from him. “Sparkle, I can help.” “I know, Shiny. But you being there will... complicate things. Look, I know that you can make a shield big enough to cover the empire, especially with Cadance helping you. Why don’t you go help her defend the city, since Sombra will be out here. Don’t let any dark magic in, and I’ll knock when it’s safe to come out, alright?” His heart wanted to protest badly, but his mind knew that this was the right thing to do. He had twenty seven Equestrian citizens, including a princess and six heroes, and a whole empire of people to protect. In the face of those numbers, the correct choice was obvious, if excruciatingly painful to make. “Stay safe, LSBFF.” “You too, BBBFF.” They hugged. Then, after releasing his sister, Shining Armor galloped to rejoin the rest of the group. Sparkle, meanwhile, darkened her horn in an attempt to divine the location of the sealed King Sombra. It took a minute, but she eventually found him. Her body dissolved into smoke and vanished. She reappeared on top of a seemingly random patch of glacier ice. She inhaled deeply and then conjured a small but very real flame inside her open mouth. She roared, exhaling a torrential stream of dragonfire at the ice, liquefying a large portion of it. By the end of the blast, her roar had warped into a scream of agony as her lips were cooked alive. Cutting off the stream, she focused her magic and repaired the damaged flesh. Unfortunately for Sparkle, dragonfire was the only flame magic that she knew that was hot enough for the job, save for the nearly uncontrollable curse fire. The problem with her using dragon fire was that, while she may have had dragon magic at her disposal, she did not have a dragon’s fireproof physiology. Again, she roar-screamed; again, ice melted; and again, she healed her lips and mouth. Seeing that the deep hole she had bored wasn’t quite deep enough, she repeated the cycle once more. As her lips healed the final time, black smoke started billowing up from the hole. As it grew larger and larger, only one feature was distinguishable: Sombra’s head. If that was the only thing he could yet manifest, it said a ton to Sparkle about what had happened back then; the princesses had not turned him to Shadow, as they claimed, but instead had mortally wounded him. His current form - or lack thereof - was his attempt at recovering without being immediately killed by his injured body. Genius. Sparkle made a mental note to look into that for herself. <> she spoke in old unicornian. For Sombra, however, it would be chronologically correct. <> Sombra’s head focused on Sparkle. <> As he spoke, his body was becoming more solid and compact by the second. <> Sparkle asked. Sombra finished resolidifying his torso and forelegs. Sparkle was surprised to note that he was younger than she expected, likely somewhere between her age and Shining Armor’s. <> Sparkle nodded in reply. <> Sombra looked at the empire in the distance, noticing the pink bubble shield around it for the first time. He roared, <> <> Sparkle replied. <> At that moment, Sparkle hurled a particularly nasty curse at Sombra. He dodged it, allowing it to pass harmlessly through his smokey body. Then, he returned fire. Sparkle dodged it in the same way. This surprised Sombra greatly. <> Sparkle didn’t reply; instead, she launched another volley of debilitating curses his way. He deflected them and countered with an eruption of black crystals near her hooves. <> she shouted. Having teleported behind him and left a illusioned specter in her place to confuse him, King Sombra was caught completely off-guard as Sparkle’s mechanical hoof plowed into his head at high speed. The hoof, now separate from her body, had been launched like a missile by Sparkle’s magic. And, once separated from her body, it activated a curse that she had laid on it the day she had acquired it. From the point of impact, Sombra’s skin - and only his skin - rapidly began to petrify, spreading out across his body. In seconds, he was encased in stone, stone that was now slowly and painfully working its way into his body. Sparkle appeared before him, opened her mouth wide, and then fired her soul’s magic harpoon. Red light, Sombra’s normal magic, erupted from his horn and drained into Sparkle’s open maw. She swallowed. For a moment, her fur glowed orange like Tirek’s had, but she didn’t grow. Over in the Crystal Palace, several security enchantments fell as their connection to their creator was broken. While Sparkle didn’t know the specifics of what fell, she knew that the death of a caster - or the loss of his magic - would end an enchantment. Thus, her brother would now be safer from magical traps in the castle. Then, satisfied with the boost of magic, Sparkle hobbled up to Sombra’s petrified form. Meanwhile, in a parallel timeline, Twilight spontaneously glowed orange. She squeaked in surprise, more from the accompanying magic surge than the random glowing. High above them, one of the migrating dragons spotted the orange glow and the pony it came from, and playfully blew a jet of fire at them, causing the ponies to scream and run. The dragon chuckled and resumed his forward progress. Back in the other timeline, Sparkle quickly undid her curse. The stallion collapsed to the ground and the illusions he had around himself shattered like glass. Gone was the smooth, handsome, blemish free face. In its place, Sparkle saw crystals protruding from his skin. Small crystals on his lips gave the impression of an unzipped zipper, while black crystals pointing down from his jaw line gave the appearance of a beard. The crown on his head turned out not to be a crown at all, but a line of curved, gray crystals in the general shape of a crown. On his legs and neck, thousands of small, black crystals fit together like dragon scales. Sparkle realized that none of his regalia actually was regalia in the first place. There was no cutie mark on his muscular flanks, but that was because the King had no magic for his soul to project it with. Although the irises stayed red, his sclera returned to white and his eyes stopped oozing purple mist. <> Sombra gasped. He tried to stand up, but the residual pain from the curse caused him to collapse back into the snow. A hiss escaped from between his fangs. <> Sparkle replied. She levitated the prosthetic leg back to her side and carefully reattached it to her body. Her magic was drawn in, causing it to go rigid momentarily as sensation returned to it. <> Sombra spoke. <> <> Sparkle replied. <> With a flick of her magic, Sombra’s horn snapped clean off, just above where the last nerves were. <> <> Sombra’s hoof felt around where his horn used to be. <> Sparkle answered, waving the severed horn at him. <> <> <> Sparkle proudly replied. <> Sparkle smiled. <> The dethroned king smirked. <> <> Sparkle replied. Sparkle then focused on a spot in front of her. There, a sphere of distorted space appeared and expanded until it was large enough for a pony to fit comfortably inside. Through it, a misty, distorted area bathed in omnidirectional light could be seen. <> Sombra would have taken time to marvel at the fantastic magical creation, but he knew that he had no power to argue with her. So, without complaint or hesitation, he stepped inside. And as he went, he didn't notice Sparkle's specter stealthily slip under his skin. The three-dimensional portal vanished silently, leaving nothing but a suddenly-terminating set of hoof prints to indicate that the king had ever been there. Sparkle eyed the severed horn in her grasp. It looked remarkably similar to her own, save for the color. As she looked at it, she decided that she really liked Tirek’s ex-weapon; it made thing so much simpler than killing a pony and eating their soul. Now she had a living-but-helpless magical genius in her grasp, and nopony ever needed to know! She teleported to the edge of the barrier around the city. Readying a very tiny portion of her magic, she formed it into a severely underpowered shield-buster curse. When it struck her brother’s spell, it rang like a gong, causing ripples to spread out from the point of impact. A second later, the shield disengaged, popping like a soap bubble. Had her curse actually broken it, the dome would have shattered like glass instead. With the path clear, the victorious mare trotted inside. With her illusions up and her conscious suppression of her magic, the crystal ponies she passed paid her no mind. The crystal ponies themselves were interesting to Sparkle. She knew that Sombra had written much in the way of mind magic, and she could see the spells breaking by watching the expressions on their faces. Every few seconds, a pony would freeze, their eyes would unfocus and refocus, and then they'd break down as buried memories surged forward. Galloping onwards, Sparkle swiftly made her way to the crystal palace at the center of the city. If Sombra had a lab or library anywhere, it would be there.