"No! NO!" Sombra panicked as he felt the crystal hearts power turn against him. Time seemed to slow, He had long ago set a plan in place in the event he was ever going to die. As the energy from the Crystal Heart began to ripe him apart he enacted it. his body, overcharged with magic energy as it was, had no problem casting a spell to create a pseudo-dimension. the second spell he cast was a cloning spell, the unicorn on top of his tower was an obvious target. he used her connection to her friends to drag them into the spell as-well. The last spell he cast brought him and his clones into his pseudo-dimension. As he teliported the Crystal Heart pulsed one final time, the sudden energy surge did two things, It ripped his clones away from him so that he barely held onto them long enough to get them to safety, and it cleared the darkness from him. He had lost control of his own thoughts a long time ago, to suddenly have them back left him in confusion.
He lay in utter exhaustion in the dimension he had created wondering when he had become a tyrant and how.
It had been so long ago, that he had cloned a few ponies and brought them to another dimension to raise safe from the dangers of the world. From his children he had created the first crystal ponies.
When had he started hurting them?
Eventually a young crystal pony had risen as queen and banished him.
He had needed to be banished of course, he under stood that now. At some point his heart had turned cold... he just didn't know when.
For generations after that he'd fought to regain control of the Crystal Empire. his Empire, and when he'd finally had it back Luna and Celestia had challenged him and won. Sombra had, in a last ditched attempt to regain control, brought the Empire out of phase like the pseudo-dimension he was in now, the same way it had been in its creation, however when he had first brought the Crystal Empire to Equestria so many years before, it had been because he couldn't hold a dimension he'd created together for long without it collapsing around him, eventually he'd had to bring the empire back to Equestria again, and Celestia had been waiting for him. He resolved not to make the same mistakes twice.
He had made so many mistakes.
A shadow had overtaken his mind but the joy in the Crystal Heart had cleared it again. He would have to start over.
