Fall of Empire

by Sixes_And_Sevens

A Waking Nightmare

“Sweetie Belle!” the Doctor shouted. “Wake up! Wake up, quick!”

Silence from the other side of the door. The Time Lord pounded more fiercely. “Sweetie Belle, wake up!” he repeated. “Your conscious mind has a better chance of fighting back than your unconscious mind in the long term! Sweetie—” the door swung open, sending the Doctor sprawling onto his face.

The green-yellow room was silent, the bedsheets left in a tangle on the floor. The Time Lord stepped in, and his hoof connected with something cylindrical and plastic. His recorder. The Doctor’s guts twisted. She was gone.

---

The corridors were a technicolor blur, like rainbow vomit or a circus in a tornado. Sweetie stumbled along, half-blind with tears and half-drunk on emotion. He hadn’t been there. The Doctor had left her, just like Luna had, like her friends had, like her parents had. Nopony ever stayed.

The deep, murky blue faded to a greyer shade, and the unicorn’s stomach lurched. Tar seemed to coat her insides. None of them cared about her, not really. Why would they? She was just a blank-flanked loser, a useless, pitiable, magic-less unicorn, always in the shadow of her sister.

She turned down a red hallway, and suddenly the tar began to smolder. Always in the shadow of her famous sister, the element of generosity. Generosity? Yeah, right. Generosity meant you had to actually care about others. It meant that you had to look after more than just your stupid ambitions of being nobility, or famous in Canterlot.

She stormed into a green atrium. I could be the element of generosity. I’d be way better at it than Rarity ever was. She stopped and stared blankly at the fountain in the middle of the room, whose water glowed with a faint greyish-yellow hue. Waves of guilt swept her. What had she been thinking? She didn’t know the first thing about being an element. And lashing out at her poor sister, who’d been forced to take her in time and again…

Sweetie shook her head, dazed after the emotional roller coaster, and stumbled out into a pale grey hall. Almost immediately, it was as though everything had been washed out, a powerful relief after the onslaught of strong emotions. The young mare let out a breath of profound satisfaction, and she let herself relax, focusing on the dull passage before her. It was profoundly uninteresting. Anything she tried to look at redirected her attention away, like raindrops sliding off an umbrella. It was practically designed to be as tedious as possible, and Sweetie, perhaps paradoxically, found that rather curious. Boredom didn’t really come naturally to her. There was always something to think about, no matter the circumstances. She peered closely at the walls. If you looked closely at them, you could see veins running through the clouded grey crystal, faint jagged lines like lightning shooting through clouds. It was actually quite pretty. Sweetie’s lips curled up into a faint smile.

Unnoticed by her, a small section of crystal beneath her hooves discolored to a clear, bright blue.

---

“I’m telling you, you have to let me go look for my friend!” the Doctor said, his brow creased with fury. “I always tell them, don’t wander off, but do they ever listen? No! Next thing you know, she’ll be falling through the Howling or causing the extinction of the dinosaurs or getting mind-controlled by a computer in a post office. Seriously, how rubbish was that as a way to go? She never even said goodbye.”

The two guards stared at him vacantly. It was quite uncanny. The Doctor was used to people thinking that he was talking nonsense, but not to people that didn’t register that he was talking at all. If a tree falls in the forest, and these two were around, would it even bother making a sound? Well, obviously, conservation of energy, but still. He became aware that he was rambling to himself and cut off.

The green one opened his mouth. “Your friend will be located, Doctor. There is nothing for you to do.”

“Obey curfew,” the blue one growled. “The rules must be maintained.”

The Doctor exhaled, long and slow, through his nostrils. “That’s the fifth time you’ve said that,” he said. “Word perfect, sans emotion. You should be in pictures. Applewood is calling.”

“Your friend will be located, Doctor. There is nothing for you to do.”

“Obey curfew. The rules must be maintained.”

The Time Lord gave a sigh of frustration and scowled at the duo. For once, he was at a loss for words. Most of the time, guards could be spoken to, if not reasoned with. In certain circumstances, they could even be a source of accidental information. If nothing else, it could be rewarding to watch them struggle to remain composed. This lot, though… it was like they were brainwashed, all capability of independent thought scrubbed from their minds.

As he continued to consider this, he failed to notice the third guard coming up the hall until he was right behind him. “Pardon,” the new guard — violet, this one — said to the Doctor before turning to his fellow soldiers. “His highness has requested excess patrols on the ramparts. All guards not currently in a post are to report there immediately.”

“This succeeds other postings?” green asked. “Dungeon shift is due in half an hour.”

“All other assignments are overruled.”

“Understood,” said blue. She and green turned swiftly and trotted away. Purple followed suit a moment later. As he did so, a loose paper fell from his saddlebags, falling near the Doctor’s forehooves.

The Time Lord watched them go. He was suspicious. He was conflicted. Most of all, though, he was worried. Worse still, he didn’t know which ones he was actually experiencing and which ones were induced artificially. He picked up the paper and scanned it causally. Then he read it again, his eyes wide. Then he took off like a shot down the hall, leaving the paper on the floor, writing-up. Let us peer over and see what it said.

Doctor,

Only just today have we met, but I feel that you are trustworthy. Plain to say, there is more happening in this kingdom than meets the eye. Stone Circle in Emerald Gardens at midnight. Will you hear what I have to say? Keep to the shadows. You must not be seen. Safe travels.

—Jade Corona.

PS, Don’t touch the art.

It was written in hoofwriting which was not Jade’s own, though the Doctor had no way of knowing this at the time. In fact, at this time, Jade had no idea that the letter which has caused the Time Lord such alarm even existed. Before the night was over, however, it would seal her fate.

---

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Sombra pondered as he trotted down the deep blue-grey corridor. It was a good color for introspection. Well, it was a good color for terrible, nagging doubts and crushing guilt, the grist mills of angst and regret working overtime. On the other hoof, what did he have to regret? Everything was precisely as he desired. He had complete and total command of this body, this empire, and soon this world.

Blue crystal glowed red under his hooves, giving the impression that his iron regalia was hot as a forge, that the king himself was lit with a fierce inner fire. Well. If the impression was almost accurate, then so much the better. Blue cooled the furious inner fires of rage and conquest, pride and supremacy, but it did not extinguish them.

In his mind, the red, red needles had faded, allowing him a moment of clarity that was, well, crystal. He chuckled at that for a moment before sobering. The Doctor was here. Many years had passed for him since their paths had last crossed. More for the Doctor. Even in this new form, recognition was to be expected. Yet, there was scarcely a blink from his enemy. So much the better. How much sweeter the reveal would be when it finally came.

The plan was falling into place. The trap would soon be ready. Those puny, pathetic princesses had never even realized that they had fallen into his trap. They constantly mewled about ‘friendship’ and ‘love’ and what those magics could achieve, yet never considered that the darker emotions could be spread just as easily, perhaps more easily. The Empire was a mirror of the citizens. With a city full of soldiers… well. The crystal in Heartshaven Square had turned from clear blue to a hideous, opaque red shade, the light of the Empire turning sickly and grim. Honestly, Sombra didn’t really know what that meant, but he could only imagine that it would be nothing good for his enemies.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. He turned that thought over in his head, vaguely wondering where it had sprung from. A remnant of free will, possibly. Still, it was worth considering. His head didn’t feel particularly heavy. Nor, for that matter, did his heart. He felt better than he ever had before the passing of his father. The two were, of course, connected for more than one reason.

His father had never found the crown to be particularly weighty either, as Sombra recalled.

There was only one reasonable explanation. It was not the crown that weighed heavily upon the head, not the power, but the responsibility. Over three thousand lives pressing down on one hapless ruler. Sombra grinned, baring shark-like teeth. When one looked at it from that angle, he was almost doing those alicorns a favor in taking the weight away from them.

He turned abruptly to face a statue that sat atop a plinth set into the wall and shoved its head backward. The hall illuminated, if illuminated is the word for it. The shadows seemed to stretch over the light, becoming more of a presence than an absence. There was a gentle click as the bust slid into place, and a section of the wall spun around, opening into a dark tunnel. Sombra slipped inside, seeming almost to disappear in the dark shadows of the stone hallway.

His shoulders went slack and his head fell forward, his regalia suddenly feeling as heavy as stone. The crown fell from his head and clattered along the floor, and his cloak dragged him down alongside it. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” he intoned.

With aching, wobbling hooves, he rose up once more to stumble down the corridor, with only the painful red glow of his horn to light the darkness, a dreadful reminder of his constant companion’s power. He paused for a moment to gravely contemplate the crown lying on the floor, half-thinking to kick it, smash it into the wall, dent it into oblivion. But it would accomplish nothing. Another one would already have been made, placed on his head the moment he left the stone corridor. His leash would be tightened for the act of rebellion, his moments of clarity even more limited. The catharsis would hurt more than it helped.

He bowed his head, picking up the crown in his teeth. He would not use magic. He would rebel that much, at least. And slowly, but not too slowly, he made his way down the hall, quietly weeping for the destruction that he had brought to his Empire.

---

The way to Emerald Gardens was, thankfully, almost completely devoid of guards, which the Doctor supposed was probably related to the audible fighting from outside. The crystal deepened and began to take on more shades of green as the Time Lord trotted on down the streets of the empire. Crystal was virtually everywhere. The buildings were crystal, as were the roads and streetlamps, all glowing with ethereal green light. I wish the TARDIS looked more like this, the Doctor thought, staring at the beautiful walls of unnaturally sculpted crystal.

He blinked and shook himself sharply. Envy. Or perhaps jealousy. Greed? Well, something like that, anyway. It was, he noticed, a very tidy neighborhood, perhaps due to its proximity to the castle. On the other hoof, it might be due to the emotional manipulation of the crystal, keeping up with the Joneses and that. On the third hoof, it might be the cause of the emotional manipulation to begin with. The Time Lord frowned. “There’s a thought,” he muttered, stepping closer to the wall. “Which begat which? The chicken or the egg?” He ran a hoof over the cold, smooth surface, and a ripple of his metacrisis self’s time with Rose his eighth self’s innocence his seventh self’s cunning his third self’s ability to pull off a velvet cape and ruff his sixth’s self’s confidence nondirectional envy swept through him and he quickly retracted the hoof. Thoughtfully, he pulled out the recorder and tootled it quietly, though the sour notes helped him think barely a whit.

The spread of this corruption was fantastic. It wasn’t impossible to believe that the entire empire, massive though it was, could be completely consumed by emotion on this level, but it wasn’t very likely, either. It had to connect to Sombra’s ascension to power somehow, but how? He furrowed his brow at the unnatural green, almost pulsating in its brightness, seeming to fluoresce with its own ethereal light. There were far more questions than answers in this mystery. Hopefully, Jade would be more loose-tongued this time ‘round.

He tucked away his recorder and started off down the street once more. From the shadows, an unnoticed obsidian-colored guard watched him trot along. As he moved into the sharp, cold moonlight, the white crystal on his helmet glistened like a blind eye. Behind him, the green wall pulsed slightly, suffused with a faint red glow, steadily pumping out an unnatural glow that suffused the tableau, the players, the entire empire in a bloody light.

---

The stone circle was, more or less, exactly what it sounded like. The Doctor was vaguely disappointed. He’d rather expected a sort of Stonehenge structure. What he got instead was a kind of rock garden, which he supposed was really the only sort of garden you could get in this weather. It was, at the least, fairly pretty, and he began to wonder vaguely about putting one in the TARDIS. Then he shook his head firmly to clear it of the corrupting influence of the green lights and stepped into the large patch of stone. This was promptly followed by… something. It was like a muffled buzzing in his ears, as though a noise that he had been tuning out had just stopped.

He frowned and stepped back into the green. The buzzing stopped again. He stepped onto the rocks and looked at a statue across the way. Very pretty. Wonder who it’s of?

He stepped into the green again and looked at another statue. That would look better in my garden.

“Interesting,” he murmured, stepping off the green once more. “The influence of the crystal is massive, but not in here. Why not, what’s different?”

An issue for later, he decided, turning around to canter toward the center of the circle. Clandestine meetings first. Mysterious energy later. The glowing walls had sat around for the last decade or so. The Doctor doubted that Jade would be willing to wait that long. It was already five ‘til.

The stone circle was a bit of a pain to walk through; not only was the ground lumpy, it was also icy cold and covered in slick snow, still clean and unbroken by hoofprint. Nopony came here, these days, and the Doctor doubted that it could be blamed entirely on the weather. It was actually quite beautiful, in a cold sort of way, with a frozen stream in the center of the rockery, a cute little hoofbridge crossing over it. Well, it might have been cute once, before years of neglect and disuse had left it wizened and crooked. The Doctor trotted over the ice instead. He didn’t trust the bridge to hold his weight.

The wind kicked up slightly, and the Doctor squinted as it kicked snow up into his face. There, was that a silhouette? The figure moved and the Doctor raised a hoof in greeting, cantering towards it. As the two drew closer, the Time Lord saw the dim green sparkle of the other’s coat. “Hello, Jade,” he said cordially.

The crystal mare nodded tersely. “Doctor.” She glanced over her shoulder, as though she expected at any moment that Sombra himself would rise out of the shadows. “I must be crazy. You must be crazy.”

“For some time now,” he agreed cheerfully.

Jade let out a strangled half-snort of laughter, the sort which conveys panic more than any sort of humor. “Well. We’re here. It’s cold and we’re probably going to get thrown in the dungeons for this, so we may as well see this through. You had information for me?”

The Doctor opened his mouth, then promptly snapped it shut, staring at the mare oddly. “I have information for you? You have information for me. You wrote me a letter about it.”

Jade turned her head to brace against the cutting wind. “No, you wrote a letter to me, telling me to… it’s a trap.”

“Split up,” the Doctor said shortly. “Run, fast as you can, I’ll try to head them off. Find Sweetie Belle, if you can.”

“Ah… another rat on the run, I take it?” The voice was silk and steel, snow and susurration. Sombra. Suddenly standing where he had always been standing, just slightly away from the view of the duo, shielded by his coat, almost invisible in the shadows. “Never mind,” he sighed. “We’ll soon catch her out, too.”

“Y-Your highness! This isn’t what it looks like, I swear!” Jade gabbled.

“This isn’t what I’d call pleasant weather for a walk,” Sombra returned.

“Funny,” said the Doctor coldly. “I could say the same thing to you.”

There was a sharp glint in the king’s eye as he rounded on the Doctor. For the first time, the Time Lord noticed something very odd about the king's face. The expressions were… off, somehow, as though the king were an actor trying to replicate emotions as best he could. The eyes, that was it. They didn’t match the rest of the face.

That train of thought was abruptly interrupted when the king made an abrupt motion with his neck. “Take them,” he ordered, and suddenly the circle was awash with guards.

Jade backed away in horror, then spun and galloped away. The Doctor merely sighed and sat down, a small frown on his face as one armored hoof connected with the back of his head. Then, everything went white.

---

The Doctor winced, clutching at his head. The bright white room was not doing his hoof-induced headache any favors. Where was he?

Console. Round things. White. Ah.

“This dream again?” he wondered aloud. “Is this going to happen every time I get knocked out? That could get tedious.”

He glanced up. There was still no door to the outside world. On the other hoof, this was only a dream.

Only a dream, Doctor?

The Time Lord rolled his eyes. “Oh, get Grandfathered,” he said flatly. “You didn’t get me in my sixth incarnation, and you certainly can’t mold me into your image in the one regeneration you’ve got left. Don’t you get it? You’ve lost. All you can do is meddle in my dreams, and you’re even more hopeless at that than you were at law. You’re lost potential, a cut chapter, regeneration-X.” He felt immensely satisfied with that pun. “I don’t plan to go up in golden flame again anytime soon, but when I do, it won’t be to turn into you, Scrapyard. Leave my mind before I make you leave.”

The white stallion appeared out of nowhere, not quite popping into existence, but rather suddenly allowing himself to be seen where the Doctor realized that he had been standing all along. He was a pegasus, this time. “Dreams, Doctor, are far more than phantasmic imaginings. They are, rather, a window into the psyche, a—”

“Don’t care.”

The Valeyard’s smile faded slightly. “Dreams can open doors to the most unimaginable, unbearable—”

“Still don’t care.’

The white pegasus scowled. “This is not a dream! It is a nightmare, Doctor. Your worst nightmare!”

The Doctor looked decidedly unimpressed. “You know, you haven’t got any less dramatic since the trial?”

The TARDIS suddenly flickered and faded, leaving the two in near-perfect darkness. “Odd coincidence, isn’t it,” the Valeyard murmured. “Your precious box has been misfiring more and more often, lately, leaving you stranded in dreadful situations quite away from where you had intended. At the same time, a certain Time Lord foe turns up to meddle with your mind. I wonder what the connection might be?”

The Doctor stiffened. “What did you do to my ship.”

The Valeyard’s scowl twisted into a smirk. “My ship as well, I think you’ll find. Tricky to get her to do anything, really, but I’ll manage in the end.”

“That turbulence.”

“All me, yes.”

“The burnt out crystal was you as well.”

“Quite.”

“Why? If I die, that’s the end of you as well.”

“If you die, yes. But, oh, Doctor, your weak point has always been so very very obvious. I don’t want to kill you. Your companions, on the other hand… beg pardon, other hoof.”

The Doctor’s face froze. “Don’t you dare.” His voice was the north wind.

The Valeyard’s smirk bloomed. “Or what? You’ll kill me? Destroy me, annihilate my planet? Exterminate? What, Doctor? What will you do to me that you haven’t already done to yourself, and oh so many others? Go on, I’m genuinely curious.”

The tan stallion said nothing, merely glaring at his alter-ego. The Valeyard smiled. “I’ll see you soon, Doctor. You and your friends.” And then he was gone, leaving the Doctor alone in the void.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Huh. Catharsis therapy. Sort of like primal scream, but with a wider variety of emotions. And something positive managed to come out of it and feed back into the crystal. Most fascinating...

In fact, at this time, Jade had no idea that the letter which has caused the Time Lord such alarm even existed. Before the night was over, however, it would seal her fate.

Well, that's ominous.

Honestly, Sombra didn’t really know what that meant, but he could only imagine that it would be nothing good for his enemies.

There's a dangerous line of thinking. "I don't know what this means. I'll just point one end at my enemies and hope it hurts them more than me." Though even that implies more willingness to acknowledge one's own vulnerability than the monologuer likely possesses.

And... yeah, the thing about your shadow archetype is that he really knows how to hit you where it hurts. There are many battles in many wars going concurrently here. I can only imagine what a mess the collision will make.

[Sixes_And_Sevens]

10162583
I keep wanting to reply to your comments, but I hardly know what to say that won't give away the game. Suffice to say, they've brought me no shortage of delight and the occasional maniacal chuckle, so thank you for that!

[Shilic]

Something about the Doctor being jealous of his third incarnation's ability to look good in a cape is just perfect to me. (He's not wrong though)

Looks like the Valeyard is getting serious. That is, if it is the Valeyard. Something about this still feels off to me... (also, I can't help but wonder if "get Grandfathered" is a reference to Grandfather Paradox, founder of the Faction Paradox and so called "Ghost of Christmas Cancelled")