Cutiemark Crusaders 10k: The fourth deity

by The Psychopath

You're stuck in the underground

Crystalestia sat in her room in Canterlot Castle: an empty bowel of crystal devoid of anything but the reflections of light and Sombra's sight, but someone else was watching through them and staring at a wide-eyed alicorn staring at the blue floor. She was clearly horrified, and no pony would enter the room for fear of being destroyed right then and there, and yet...

Crystalestia heard a low hum and looked up to see that a familiar, faint white light was staring at her from every facet of the crystals, and looking around proved it. Her breathing became erratic and she bared her teeth while focusing the magic in her horn.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" she bellowed.

She let loose several crescent-shaped beams of magic from her horn; crescents easily capable of cutting anything in two, but these were Sombra's crystals, and they were only bouncing off of them with nary a dent in their forms.

"Having a temper tantrum, former princess?" somepony asked. Crystalestia spun around to find she was face-to-face with a disappointed Celestia. "Look at you," she spat. "Absolutely pathetic."

"Shut up!" Crystalestia shouted. "You're just the remains of my weak past. With this power I'm stronger than anypony!" Her magic flared up and made the room tremble.

"But power comes with a cost, and the stronger you become, the more expensive the pay."

"Shut up!" Crystalestia threw another crescent of magic at Celestia, but the missed. It curved upwards to the right and hit the roof.

"See? You can't even hurt me because you're afraid."

"Afraid of what? You? I'm better than ever."

Celestia scoffed. "Do you really think I would believe you? Now you're openly lying! Are you going through the stages of grief? What's next, depression? Anger?"

"I would only go through those stages if I had anything to feel them."

"But you do, and I'm proof of this."

Crystalestia spoke in a calm manner. "No! You're just a spell used by that crystalline creature to psychologically torment me." She walked towards Celestia. "But if I approach you and attempt to touch your muzzle," she explained when she stretched a hoof to the alicorn in front of her. "then I will see that...that..."

Celestia's muzzle was as solid as could be, and no matter how much Crystalestia patted her, the solidity wouldn't fade. Crystalestia felt a new sensation of terror boil up inside her.

"You will that what? That I'm real?"

"Not...true..."

"You're the imposter here, born from the twisted magics of Sombra."

In the mighty throne room of King Sombra, Crystance and Crystal Armor both noticed the cloudy form of their ruler in his crystal turning and twisting about.

"Graaaah!"he roared.

"What is, my king?" Crystance asked.

"I cannot see Crystalestia any longer, and I have attempted to recontact her for two hours."

"What?" Armor said.

"Every facet is corrupted. Controlled, by something else, and it dares to try and defy my will!"

"But how is that possible? You have absolute control over all things crystal."

"Go in there and take her out. I can't lose that valuable asset," Sombra ordered.

Crystance and Crystal Armor both hurried to the door of Celestia further in the castle and saw that a large group of crystal ponies had already been trying to blow down the doors to her room with magic and brute force, and they were failing.

"You've come to help?" one of them asked.

Crystance ignored the pony's question and looked at the crystalline door. "Why isn't this destroyed yet?"

The crystal pony fumbled with their hooves. "Well...we're trying, but we can't get through it. The crystals won't break, let alone the door!"

Crystal Armor put his ears to the wall and could hear Crystalestia yelling at someone. "Has she been like this for long?"

"Yes, sir. She's been talking to herself for two hours now."

"Hm. That's as long as King Sombra said."

Back in the room, Crystalestia had been unleashing torrent after torrent of magical spells at Celestia and missing them all. She was slouched on the floor and gasping for air.

"Are you done with your tantrum?" Celestia sighed. Crystalestia didn't answer. "This is pretty much all you do nowadays. When something doesn't follow what you want, you have a tantrum, like when the crystal couple stomped on your face when you recently became this..." she gestured to the crystal alicorn's form. "thing. You thought you had so much power, but when the mind is corrupt, there is no power, only poison." She looked outside the window to see a familiar pathway on the castle walls. "Why, I recall when you sacrificed yourself to save your sister, but-" She picked up a piece of broken crystal and analyzed it. "-the second you became surrounded in a sheet of minerals, you tried to kill her."

"Because she defied my Lord Sombra's will!"

"At least SOMEONE here has a will," Celestia taunted.

"I HAVE MY OWN WILL!"

Celestia shook her head and spoke with a very low-tone voice. "Pfff. I've yet to see that."

"I--"

"And because you couldn't maintain your own mind, your sister was forced to become corrupted by the nightmare within her, further tainting and destroying the land." She stepped forward and pointed at Crystalestia. "All because of your weakness, fear, and incompetence. You clearly weren't fit to be a ruler if you couldn't stop a simple bit of corruption, and if you can't rule Equestria anymore, then you can't be trusted with your link to the sun."

Celestia reached into Crystalestia's chest and started to pull something she got her hoof on. Crystalestia started howling in pain and tried to get Celestia off of her, but the alicorn was too strong. With a final tug, a white orb emerged from the crystal mare and stayed in the hoof of the alicorn.

Crystalestia stared at it in awe. "What is that?"

"What I was given to control the sun. It's what connects ME to that celestial object."

"But I can't control the sun anymore."

"Of course not. You lost that privilege when you gave you in to the crystal jerk. You lost it when you lost your identity and rejected your sister and tried to kill her." Celestia bared her teeth at Crystalestia and spat at her. "You're no pony. You're just some animated golem of crystal, and I WILL recover MY birthright for my people, something you never did."

The room entrance blew open, ejecting crystal shards everywhere and letting Crystance and her husband to enter the room and try to discern the issues.

"Who were you talking to, Crystalestia?" Crystal Armor asked.

The crystal alicorn didn't answer and patted her chest. "I feel...empty..." she thought.

Crystal Armor grabbed her mane aggressively and pulled her to his face. "I ASKED you a QUESTION!" he bellowed.

In the city, right next to the chrsyanthemium, Abstract had been keeping to himself while the creature jittered in place. Everyone around avoided him as much as possible, and not many were still in the streets what with it being sleeping time soon, but everyone gasped when they were blinded by the bright light coming from Abstract. More specifically, he was holding a white orb whose surface slowly shifted like ink in water.

The crystallion stared at it for quite a long time and ignored Sweetie Belle focusing and guiding strands of magic with her forelegs to contain the light and alleviate the pain everyone's eyes were getting.

"What are you doing? What is that?" She pointed.

The light of Abstract's right 'eye' moved to the right of his face to look at the pony. "Using your bizarre machinery again, pony? Your kind standing on two legs is a strange sight."

"You're technically a pony too," she rebutted.

"It is not because a snake has scales that it is related to the fish."

Sweetie Belle rubbed her temples and groaned. "Okay, what is that?" she asked.

Abstract twirled the orb above his hoof. "This is a large portion of what Celestia had that linked her to the sun. 'Solar Essence', as some would say."

"Solar...So, if we had it all--"

"We could control the sun and break the bubble of darkness surrounding your world."

"How did you even get a hold of that?"

Abstract surrounded the orb with a crystal and fused the two together, created a pure white gem with an undulating surface. "The same way I'll get the rest of it."