In the end, they called me Monster. If only they knew of the danger we had worked so hard to prevent from consuming us. Of the marvel we had foolishly built to protect us — of the Crystal Empire. —S
In the end, they called me Monster. If only they knew of the danger we had worked so hard to prevent from consuming us. Of the marvel we had foolishly built to protect us — of the Crystal Empire. —S
Like every tragic tale, mine begins here, in darkness. —S.
The darkness was absolute.
It shifted in the nothingness, a trembling blanket of black that swallowed all around it. Patiently, it waited — waited for someone to pierce the veil of shadows.
And from the void came a sound, rising from the depths of the emptiness.
Rap! Tap! Tap!
It echoed, the distant reverberations slithering through the perpetual black that consumed all, growing closer.
Tap! Rap!
The darkness swirled, disturbed from its eternal slumber. Blackness yawned, and shade shifted and stretched, awakened by the arrival of their unannounced visitor.
Suddenly, a crack pierced the eclipse, the darkness rent by a gushing, alien entity that burst into the twilight realm.
Light!
The beam pierced the darkness, the tip the flashlight poking through the hole in the cavern.
"It's here, Maud!" an excited voice proclaimed, wide eyes painted with the reflected light peering inside. The clatter of a steel pickaxe rang through the walls of coarse rock. "Sweet stars, this is it! Quick! Help me move these rocks."
The dark cavern reverberated with the scraping of rocks and exertive grunts. Piece by piece, the barrier of stone pulled away, the grey mare that accompanied shifting them aside as if they were light as pillows. In short time a passage widened enough for the two intruders to pass.
The older stallion took the lead, his worn helmet, marked by years of scrapes and dents, brushing the overhang as he stepped into the chamber. "Watch your step, Maud," he warned cautiously. "We don't need a twisted hoof this deep down."
"I was more concerned with you, Professor," the mare acclaimed in a perpetual monotone that matched her spelunking attire. She ducked inside, stopping to shine the light atop her helmet upward.
The paltry beam which had struggled to cut through the darkness radiated off the enormous crystals and filled the cavern with brilliant light. The space was awash with prismatic reflections of deep purple and amethyst.
"It's very — bright," the monotonous mare said with a slight upturn, her eyelids lifting ever so higher. "This is what you were searching for, Professor?" she wondered, transfixed by the enormous crystal that snaked through the rock as if it were a massive burrowing root.
It was enormous, the main trunk of the crystal greater in diameter than the tallest trees. It protruded from the rocky face of the cavern, smaller vines of dark glass erupting from the main body and stabbing into the walls. Maud followed the formation with her headlamp, the structure disappearing into impenetrable bedrock on the far side of the cavern.
"It's exactly like the other sites," the grey stallion remarked, quickly brushing dust from his spectacles and whipping out a dirty notebook. He flipped open the stained pages, unfurling a map and tracing lines with a stubby pencil. "First Fillydelphia, and then the site discovered past Appleousa." He tapped the page feverously, pointing for his female apprentice. "Manehattan, Rainbow Falls, even the Canterlot mountain range. The formations dot the entire continent."
He shifted his glasses on his muzzle, angling his headlamp up at the colossal formation, his eyes taking in the crystalline beauty. "And now another site to add to the map. Right where I predicted!" he exclaimed with a sharp laugh. "There is a pattern," he then drew in and whispered.
"I've never seen a mineral formation like this." Maud stepped toward one of the croppings of crystal, laying a hoof against its cold surface. It was delicately smooth, its surface a mirror. Kneeling, she gazed into the mysterious mineral, probing its depths.
She closed her eyes, calmly meditating against the crystal instead. Her lips rubbed.
"It feels — alive," she murmured.
"It's a junction. One of many." The Professor continued to furiously scribble in his tattered notebook, the withered pencil in his teeth growing shorter with each line. "Not alive," he corrected, talking around the piece of timber and graphite. "Only dormant."
"How far do they go?" the mare wondered.
"Based off the other sites—" the Professor muttered, only pausing to start a new page. "—they stretch near across the entirety of the Equestrian continent. Crystal connections that predate the arrival of ponies to the continent. Each one a tight interlace of linear crystalline formations."
"Professor," Maud shook her head, "there's not a geological process that could explain the formation of these structures. They're too perfect, even for crystal."
"Not formed, Maud," the Professor corrected on a whim. "Grown." He rustled the offending dust from his mane. "Or laid, or built; I'm still not entirely sure. But definitely artificial in design."
"You said these were old, Professor: dormant. Who would have made these? And so long ago?"
The Professor drew the last line in his notebook, revealing the answer. "Every one of these sites, all leading back to one place."
Maud glanced at the crudely drawn map of Equestria, the sites pinpointed, each line converging. "They all lead north," Maud claimed. "Each junction leading back to—"
The Professor tapped the convergence of the tracks. "The Crystal Empire."
We sit here, boiling in the nothingness, our mind a fabric of cloth riding the hot winds that contain this place. Nothingness — pure, unadulterated, nothing. That is all that is left of my world, and I preside over this domain as a kernel of the pony I once was. As a King... —S
Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, ruler of the Crystal Empire, beloved by the crystal citizens, stood before her throne and waited to die.
The breath was caught in her throat, a burning that crept into her core. Her eyes shivered in their sockets, twitching like squirming creatures as she stared at what was brought before her.
The guard approached the gilded throne, his helm of polished crystal tucked under his foreleg. An object wrapped in white cloth lay in his hoof. He held it softly, reverently, yet kept it outstretched, away from his breast.
The throne room withered and writhed in deafening silence; the bustle of the Crystal Empire outside was muffled by the impenetrable walls of the castle.
Finally, the monarch moved, slowly stepping down from the raised throne. Her hooves echoed heavy hoofsteps as if her shimmering horseshoes were made of lead.
She stopped before the guard, their eyes passing each other briefly before falling on the wrapped object together. Cadence gingerly lifted a hoof, reaching for the satin cloth. It trembled ever so slightly and she steadied herself.
Her hoof froze, another of soft lavender holding it back in a firm grip despite its owner's small stature.
Twilight Sparkle slinked forward, the alicorn's voice timid yet forcefully, her words dripping with hidden burden that lay just below the surface.
"Are you sure?" she asked, holding her sister-in-law's hoof tight. It wavered in her grip. "You don't have to."
Cadence nodded firmly, eyes transfixed on the white cloth in the guard's hoof. "I'm sure," she breathed, her tender nostrils flaring. Gingerly, Twilight's hoof let go, the young princess somberly taking a step back.
Cadence lifted her hoof once more, reaching for the cloth before catching herself. She paused, exhaled, and lowered it for a final time. "Show me," she gulped, her voice stern yet cracking.
Obediently, the guard carefully pulled the cloth back, the item delicately cradled in the palm of his hoof. What peeked from beneath the starkly-white cloth: a dull-red horn, sharp like a curved thorn.
"A citizen discovered it beyond the outer boundary, out in the ice fields," the guard spoke, eyes fixated on the remnant. "I was told to bring it directly to you, your Highness."
"Out there," Cadence spoke softly, rewrapping the horn and taking it in her hooves, her hesitation lifting like a curtain. "Waiting for somepony to stumble upon it."
"Your Highness?"
"That will be all," she answered, holding the parcel close as if a newborn foal. "Dismissed," she granted with hardly a furtive glance.
The door to the throne room slid closed with an echoing thud behind him, the stained glass reverberating around the two alicorns. The air buzzed in the presence of the warped object that lay between them, the dancing light of the sun streaming through the colored glass dazzling the relic in a mesmerizing wash of light.
"Is it really his?" Twilight finally spoke. "The Crystal Heart — we watched it destroyed him, annihilate every last atom. How did this survive?"
"It would appear that some pieces are persistent." Cadence slid the cloth away before picking the severed horn up in her bare hoof. She held it to the light, the crystal beams of sunlight reflecting off it like a jewel. A long scar embellished in bright red etched its smooth surface.
Twilight stepped closer, peering at the dismembered horn. "What are you going to do with it?"
Cadence looked from the horn to the floor, her shodden hoof lightly stroking the polished crystal. "I have an idea, something I have to show you, Twilight," she spoke suggestively.
The walls of the castle squeezed around Twilight as the two descended deeper into the subterranean depths, the ancient foundations like silent guardians of a forbidden realm. Their hornlight was feeble against the omnipresent darkness; it smothered them in the gloom, weighing them down with each step they took down into the bowels of the timeworn fortress.
Twilight shivered, hurrying to keep up with Cadence. "I've seen these passages before," she said, remembering adventures and battles of the past. "But I've never been this deep before. Somepony could get lost down here."
"There are many corridors and passages hidden away within the castle, within even the Empire itself," Cadence sighed, running her hoof along the smooth crystal walls. "And with many locked doors. The castle is old Twilight, ages-old, ancient," she revealed. "Legends and tales speak of it sheltering the first settlers of this land, that it was already here when the three tribes arrived on the continent."
"Like it was waiting for somepony to come along and find it," Twilight breathed, her breath cloudy in the frigid air.
"Waiting until the day Sombra would emerge." Cadence paused long enough to show her pity that she wore. "The citizens of the Empire have suffered enough from the vileness of King Sombra," she spoke somberly. "I cannot sit idly, Twilight. Sombra's secrets still remain locked away down here," she said, twisting her head about the crystal walls. "Those secrets lie down here — somewhere."
"Do you think Sombra knew of all these passages?" Twilight wondered, diligently following.
"I don't think he just knew about them, Twilight," she answered, stopping before a slab of crystal that blocked their path. Cadence felt along the seams of the massive slab with her hoof, eyes searching for a way in. "I think he was the one who locked them all away."
Taking a step forward, Twilight grabbed her hoof. "If it's true, should we really be trying to unlock these doors. Maybe he locked them for a reason."
Cadence paused, producing the horn once more. She turned it over in her hooves, studying it. "That may be true, Twilight. But we must know what he was doing down here. The Empire and her citizen already suffered a thousand years of exile at the hooves of Sombra. I cannot allow it to have been for nothing."
Cadence reached out, touching the horn to the crystal doorway.
"All I needed was the key."
From beneath them, the crystal depths rumbled in acknowledgment. Twilight stumbled back as the slab slid upward without a squeak, the hundreds of tonnes of crystal disappearing into its recess.
Cadence was already stepping inside.
"Wait!" Twilight called out, running after her.
The two found themselves in a chamber that reached far overhead. Though it was dark, and she couldn't see her hoof in front of her face, Twilight could feel it; the room stretched far above them. She looked around but couldn't see anything. "This place," she whispered. "Is it a tomb?"
Suddenly, a light from above.
Twilight shielded her eyes with a hoof, the beam a portal of intense light that burned at her retinas. What she wasn't expecting was a heart of aquacrystal to descend upon them.
"Is that what I think it is?" Twilight gasped.
"The Crystal Heart," Cadence confirmed. "We must be right below the castle square."
Like a shining jewel, the artifact, an heirloom and source of power for the Empire, slowly spiraled down. Light from the castle square, where it regularly presided for all citizens to partake in its glory, beamed off the Heart's facets. Light erupted around the room, sweeping away the darkness. Things were beginning to stand out.
"This place. There is something here," Twilight breathed.
The Heart arrived at the bottom, pulled by whatever invisible force as the light of the square above disappeared. The Heart spun slowly, supplemented by its own glow.
"This is it," Cadence backed up, eyes searching the darkness. "Here, Twilight. It's all here."
The glow from the Crystal Heart spread, spilling like water down its pedestal and flowing over the floor. It lit up beneath their hooves creeping up the walls, and the rumble returned as if the castle was awakening around them. Faster, the Heart spun, the deep whine below them increasing with every revolution. The room came alive around them, banks of crystal monitors alighted in orderly banks, strings of texts and numbers flying across the mirrored mineral screens. That's when they first heard her.
It was a mare, her words crisp and emphasized, as if they were disjoined.
"Hello — Director — Sombra."
Twilight spun wildly, trying to pinpoint the source. "Who's there?" she called. "Show yourself!"
Her horn throbbed with dangerous energy.
"Request recognized," the voice spoke softly, clearer as if waking up from a long sleep. It drifted from overhead to their ears, sliding down the confines of the room. "I am the operator of this facility. A controller of tightly interlaced crystalline connections. It has been a while since your last report, Director."
"Facility?" Cadence stepped forward to the center of the room. Slowly she paced around the Heart, studying its aura of energy. It had never seemed so alive since her accession to the throne, her rightful place after freeing the citizens from the clutches of the mad king.
"Of course, Sombra. The Empire," the female voice replied from the Crystal Heart. "This round of queries is unusual, Director. Are you feeling any better?"
Cadence shifted a wary eye toward her sister-in-law. "Of course, I feel fine," she played along with the strange voice that emanated from the crystal but also all around them. "Just a little disorientated. Maybe you can help."
"Of course," the voice chirped gladly, as if eager to help. "Perhaps we should run some more tests, see how the effects are progressing."
"Maybe later." Cadence moved to the banks of terminals, the numbers and blinking lights meaningless to her. "Perhaps you can help refresh my memory."
"Checking," the Heart replied serendipitously. "Personal logs partially corrupted. Earliest intact status report stretches back five-thousand eight-hundred twenty-six years, four months, six days. Would you like me to bring it up, Sombra?"
Twilight's hoof appeared on Cadence's shoulder. Her eyes were wide and glistened. She shook her head, tugging at the alicorn to pull her away. Don't, she mouthed.
Cadence studied the dismembered horn in her hoof once more, studying it in the glow of the Heart. "Do it," she ordered the Heart.
The featureless wall before the banks of crystal calculators flickered as the light was drawn from around the room, reformed. It was pulled together before them, materializing, shifting into an image that moved and danced across the smooth crystal.
And a voice that sent shivers up the alicorn's spines echoed around them. It was a deep, serpentous voice that conjected images of a swirling red cape, polished black armor, wicked fangs, and a stallion with a curved horn as red as fire.
"From the Darkness, we are born, and to the Darkness, we shall return," the voice lamented somberly. "Do you remember how Mom always used to tell us that, Seres?" He chuckled. But not a menacing gesture, this was different. The image was clearing.
The pony cast in light before them bore little resemblance to the mad king that had once enslaved the entire Empire beneath his steel horseshoe. A voluptuous dark mane flowed down his neck and over his squared shoulders in tangled, unwashed strands. He rubbed a hoof under his eyes, deep purple bags hanging beneath them like sandbags. Dark stubble speckled his bleary face, and eyes drained of life shifted tiredly. A curved dark horn devoid of red save for a deep red scar protruded from the mess of mane.
He could have looked like anypony.
"I remember when she used to tell us that every night as she tucked us in bed," the replayed image continued, lip wavering. "I guess, now, you can tell her that she was right." He stopped, running his dirty hooves down his face and burying into them. "I'm not even sure who I am leaving this for," he whimpered softly, the shell of a pony heaving beneath an unseen weight.
He looked up and off-screen. "Maybe the ships were able to escape the Continent," he sniffed. "Maybe, one day, long after I'm gone, they'll come back to find this," he croaked, surveying his surroundings, a mirror of the chamber. "Maybe that's why I'm leaving this," he nodded to himself, wiping the wetness from his runny eyes. "Or maybe I'm just leaving it for you — to let you know that I tried, I really did. Perhaps then, you won't see me for what I see myself," he wept quietly, staring into his cracked hooves.
If you are hearing this, you're probably wondering what has happened.
To put it simply — we failed; I failed.
The Crystal Empire, it did exactly what we designed it to do. Only I was too late. And I will live with that burden, believe me. I'm the only one left to carry it.
If you have returned to the Continent, to the Empire in search of survivors — there are none. The Continent holds only ghosts now.
My advice — leave this place. Leave and chart out new lands, someplace untouched to start again. There is nothing for you here, only relics of what was built. What we built to survive. Yet, only I remain to guard over it, alone, and I've come to terms with that.
I guess what this really is, is that I want somepony to know. That is why I am leaving these messages. I want them to know that we did not go into that nothingness that lies beyond without a fight.
We fought. We tried, we really did. I tried.
Which makes it all the harder to let you know that I could not stop it. I sit before the greatest project, the greatest idea, ever created.
The Crystal Empire, it was all our creation, one last attempt to push them back, to save our lands. Forged by the best and brightest the Continent had to offer. And it will remain here for many hundreds of years to come, maybe more, as a testament to her builders' foresight. And why only I remain, her lonely king.
King. It has a ring to it.
Can you imagine that, Seres? Me, a king?
What king would want this? An empire of ghosts and memories.
Sombra, ruler of nothing and lord of the Crystal Empire. Behold, and take pity on this creature, for none else will. Destined to preside till even he follows his fellows that went before him into the cold, empty nothingness that lies beyond this mortal plane.
Maybe a bit melodramatic, but it's as it should be.
The song of death is sweet and endless after all, sister. Maybe even I will get to sing it one day with you. —S
When did we know the end had come?
Was it when the Shadows first emerged from whatever cave those scientists ventured into?
Or was it when the nightmare apparitions swallowed entire towns and their citizens in the blink of an eye, their screams heard across the Continent?
Maybe it was when the Capital fell. I had an inkling in the months, and even years after that — that we might not be strong enough to drive them back, that the Crystal Empire, what we created her to do, wouldn't work.
But for me personally, I knew the day had finally arrived when they broke through the Barrier.
Measuring two-thousand hooves tall and spanning the width of the Continent, the Barrier was the only thing holding back the Shadows. Its design was rushed, and it was never meant to hold them back forever. But it could buy us the time we needed to finish building the Empire. Without it, we would never have stood a chance.
The Barrier was all we had between us and a continent consumed by the spectral creatures. And when I heard the sirens and stepped from our research outpost, I knew — all of at the station knew — that the time had finally arrived. The Barrier was failing.
The siren, it was like the shrill cry of a dying animal as I stepped into the cloudy evening, my ears vibrating with their intensity. Everywhere I looked, ponies were spilling out of buildings around the compound. A low wind was picking up across the highland, bringing with it a deep chill from the Artic that gnawed at our bones.
My colleagues, they stood in the muddy makeshift courtyard, necks craning as they gazed up the crackling wall of arcanic energy. It pulsated, it's power fluctuating lower and lower. The everpresent hum that had buzzed in the back of everypony's skulls from being station so close to the Barrier was winding down, and everypony could feel it, even me.
The Barrier was weakening, and behind it — a sea — an ocean of swirling blackness that had ceaselessly tried for years to penetrate it. We had studied them from our side, gained what insight we could from the apparations while they endlessly swirled against the Barrier, always searching for a way inside. Hunger burned in the eyes that split and shifted through the dense mass of blackness that writhed and agitated, ever-moving, always changing.
"Empire Control. This is research station Bravo, are you reading me?" I said, activating my ear fob. My eyes were locked on the enormous wall of blackness that swirled behind the massive shield wall, and I could feel its cold presence waiting to wash over us, to consume us all. I could feel the emptiness, the hunger that radiated off of them like the rays of a black sun. "Is anypony there? We have a situation here!"
"Sombra?" a familiar voice replied in my ear fob. "What's going on over there? I'm reading multiple anomalies with the primary Barrier. Power is fluctuation all across the board at Empire Control."
"It's happening, Pyre Wood," I warned him. "The Shadows — they're breaking through!" I relayed, scanning the courtyard. The other researchers had spilled out of the haphazard collection of quonset huts we had come to call home. I knew their eyes were on me. They always were.
"Pyre?" I asked again, wondering if I had lost him.
The pause on the other end of the connection continued for several precious seconds before Pyre Wood finally returned. "Sweet stars, I see it, Sombra. The readings are coming in from the substation. We're showing the Barrier at less than fifty-percent integrity," his hissed through the ear fob, his words rising in intensity. "She's not going to hold," he warned. "We need to evacuate you and the rest of the staff behind the secondary Barrier."
"How long?" I asked, my hooves pacing the courtyard, cold mud swishing around my hooves. The highland wind was picking up, the slapdash flagpole of timber somepony had put up several months back creaking and shifting in the soft earth.
Pyre was mumbling to his usual self, crunching the numbers. "Twenty minutes," he finally answered.
I still remember how coldly calculated those words were: two digits that had sealed our fate. It was like being struck by a lance. Twenty? That's all? We had come so far only to have it amount to twenty minutes.
"Maybe thirty if we boost the Barrier's power," Pyre abruptly added as if an extra ten minutes would be enough.
"Not enough," I stammered, shielding my ear fob from the wind with the corner of my coat. "We have over a thousand souls spread between this installation and half a dozen others, Pyre. We need more time."
"I'm doing all I can from this end, my friend. But the reaction has already started. The Barrier will fall, and soon."
There was only one other pony I trusted on the Continent more than Pyre Wood, and she was deep in the Artic, far to the North of the Empire. If Pyre said thirty minutes, it wouldn't be a second more
I stomped my hoof, a spray of mud staining my permanently dirty coat. It wasn't fair! "Pyre, we have five years of data here," I reminded him. "Years of studying these things on the other side of that shield. Are you telling me it's all lost?"
"Look," Pyre simmered. "I have four airships twenty minutes out. More are heading to the other outposts, but others are further away. We need to focus on evacuating as many as we can. You're no good to everypony dead, Sombra. You've gotten us this far without the data, we can continue without it."
"I'm not leaving all of the data here behind, Pyre." I turned to the others that surrounded me, their faces tired and scared — faces I had grown to know — ponies I had come to regard as family. "We've worked too hard here for it to be for nothing."
"Then why are you still talking to me," Pyre simmered on the other end. "Those airships are eighteen minutes out right now. Just be on them," he said before the connection ended abruptly.
I was left standing before everypony, ear fob hanging in my hoof. Their eyes were wide, tired, bearing many sleepless nights. Their work had been constant, the accommodations sparse or nonexistent. Many were dirty and sported tangled mats of mane that hung over stained lab coats. They had given me everything to be here. I wouldn't let it all have been for nothing.
"Airships are inbound," I tried to speak calmly, but there would be no hiding my anticipation. "We're evacuating behind the secondary Barrier," I told them, trying to assure them everything would be alright, though everypony knew the stakes at play.
"But, we're not leaving here empty-hoofed." I was already pushing through the crowd for the lab. "We need the data — all of it. Dump everything to the data cores: every terminal, every computer, every instrument, and project," I instructed, ponies already running to gather what they needed. "Everything: we need to grab as much as we can carry."
"We're going to need every last scrap of data if we're going to get the Crystal Empire to work," I breathed as I hurried through the throngs of ponies, desperate to save the last five years of my life.
