It was as quiet as a tomb, the only sound the harsh whistle of winds spilling into the depth of the empty crystalline structure. No life was to be seen or heard, only the meagre messy remains showing that it was once there. Formerly the centre of a bustling metropolis and the chaotic bureaucracy of a country still steadily reviving from its thousand year disappearance from the surface of the world, the Citadel of the Crystal Empire was empty in a way it should never have been.

That was until - tucked away in a lonely side room - a tall ornate mirror flashed to life. The jewels set into its horse shoe shaped frame sparked with an other-worldly energy that rippled out from the frame, spreading across its surface in an instant. It was left glowing so brightly with swirling, pulsing colour that it seemed white hot like the sun and would have been similarly hard to look at had anyone been watching it. A moment later a form stumbled out from the swirling vortex, briefly standing tall on two legs, forelegs flailing in mid-air before the cloaked figure fell forward onto all fours. Gasping breaths the mare steadied herself, looking about so far as to ensure she was alone before taking a moment to relax.

“I swear I’ll never get used to that damned thing,” she muttered irritably under her breath while stretched out her legs and rolled her joins. “Starswirl may have had skill but he clearly knew nothing about comfortable travel arrangements.”

With a sigh she took account of her surroundings and found herself stunned at just how untidy the unfamiliar room was. Objects lay scattered and discarded; there was an overturned book case, papers littering the floor, what looked like a smashed clock, some broken glass and most notably a spear just lying there, alluding to a missing guard. Stranger still to her were the cold blue walls of solid crystal.

“Where in Tartarus did you move the mirror to Celestia?” she asked quietly to herself, a slither of fear working into her voice at the thought that this might actually be the mentioned prison dimension. “The caves under Canterlot maybe? A garbage dump in the caves under Canterlot!?” she continued asking to herself incredulously.

In the midst of looking around she caught sight of movement, sending her flinching back for a moment before realising it was simply her reflection in the mirror she had arrived through. It was however, subtly unfamiliar.

“Oh… wow. I’m taller,” she said, a grin plastering across her face as she slid back the hood of her odd, scaly black cloak and her vibrant gold and red mane bloomed around her face.

The amber unicorn stared back at herself gleefully as she swept more of her cloak aside to get a better look at her body. It was only an inch or two but she knew she was now at least a little above average and boasted a set of lean mussels. Her horn even seemed a bit longer and sharper though she couldn’t be sure given the lack of light.

“Ha! Looking good Sunset… but I wonder,” she murmured before shutting her eyes for a moment, her grin resurfacing once more as she opened them.

In the mirror Sunset Shimmer’s teal-green eyes now boasted a slight light behind them, much like a cat’s. To her, the room now seemed brighter and clearer, the dark a little less pervasive even if the colour was still washed out. Sunset’s grin quickly grew more vicious at the response.

“So they did survive the trip. This is going to be too easy,” Sunset said with a chuckle, before with but a thought her cloak simmered to life.

Instantly it began changing colour and blending with the surrounds. It wasn’t perfect by any means, given its ability to adapt lagged a little behind the wearer’s movement. A trait that made it obvious even when moving with any haste, erratically shimmering as it struggled to keep up. But when moving through the darkened hall ways with steady caution she knew it would hide her well enough.

Taking care to tread lightly Sunset slipped through the ajar doors, emerging into a long corridor carved out of yet more crystal. Glancing back and forth for a moment she turned and scampered off to her left, following the distant sound of howling winds. She reasoned that if she could get outside, she might be able to find out just where in Equestria she was.

Sunset’s ears twitched under the hood each step of the way, unconsciously trying to pick up on whatever sounds she could that might be someone or something missed by her nervous darting eyes. The place - wherever it was - had been abandoned and in a hurry by the looks of it. Debris were scattered all over just like the room the mirror was in. After stepping over a fallen podium that once held an expensive looking vase that now lay smashed across the floor, Sunset caught sight of a discarded newspaper. Its header proudly proclaimed it was the First Free Empire Press which she had never heard of before but bore a date that wasn’t too long ago. She levitated it into her saddlebag hidden under her cloak for a closer look later.

As she made her way through the hall way towards the sound of rushing wind it began to get colder. Not that it hadn’t been cold before but the winds were noticeably sapping any warmth from the air.

“Maybe this is some place high up on mount Canterhorn, above Canterlot,” Sunset wondered to herself quietly, memories of walking mountain-trails and the occasional climbing or camping trip coming back to her. “Some place only the Princes knows how to get to I bet. Would make sense if she’s figured out I’ve been paying her uninvited visits.”

Eventually her steady and stealthy pursuit of the sounds of the outside world - and hopefully a landmark to determine her location – ended with a gaping doorway. She looked on at the sight with concern; the doors had been bashed inwards with such force as to sheer one of them clean off its hinges. The balcony beyond them however beckoned forth to her ever insatiable curiosity.

Beyond cold winds howled as a light blizzard danced across the view. Edging out to peer through the haze of airborne snow she soon found she wasn’t nearly as high up as she had though. Much to her astonishment an unfamiliar city lay sprawled before her, blanketed with a good few feet of snow. Its construction mirrored the building she was currently in; each house, hall and shop wrought out of crystal of one soft shade or another.

She turned back to look around and up at the towering structure she was now in. Bellow an archway which her current balcony sat centred atop before tapering up at a steep curve to three towers far above her that easily surpassed some of Canterlot Castle’s tallest.

The sight was a bleak one doused in the muting fog of snow and devoid of the living or any sign of their recent activity.

“Again… where in bucking Tartarus am I!?” she exclaimed slightly more panicked. “This isn’t anywhere in Equestria. Did the Princess seriously just banish the place I’d been banished to!?”

The idea was outrageously childish but seemed to somehow be true, and the only forthcoming explanation for the mirror’s presence in this frozen hell hole.

Her contemplation of the empty city was broken with a change in the wind. A sound similar enough to almost blend in with the wind but alien enough to make her ear twitch from its enhanced hearing and set off alarm bells in her head.

Sunset immediately spun about and dropped into a defensive posture; letting old instincts take hold to find herself ready with her horn lit. She wasn’t a moment too soon as an ominously prehensile cloud of black smoke appeared from the depths of the palace, surging towards her. With a vicious grin she let lose a teal stream of concentrated cutting magic, something that could leave a nasty but clean hole right through a pony. The smoke however simply growled and split in twain at the point the beam would have made contact.

Thinking fast she let lose another spell, an unstably charged dispersal spell; the sort meant to drain a pony’s magic or cancel out the effects of an already active spell. As intended it spat forth like a shotgun blast, showering the smoky entity with smaller charges of the spell. It reeled with an unpony like howl as its form was disrupted but only for a moment.

Unfortunately it seemed it wasn’t enough, that whatever this thing was, it had been holding back in the name of stealth. It swelled upwards and around her, a towering figure that threatened to come crashing down upon her as two crimson red eyes manifested in the depths of the living shadow.

Sunset Shimmer knew when she was in a poor position to fight however, and so flight became priority. In a flash of light she vanished, reappearing a split second later back down the corridor she had approached from, quickly braking out into a gallop back towards the mirror room.

She didn’t want to leave so soon but she wouldn’t take an unnecessary risk fighting this unknown, so Sunset took the smaller victory of outmanoeuvring whatever monster this was in stride. Her victorious smirk was shattered when a sharp shadow seemed to spread through the floor below her before a number of jet black crystals sprouted in her path, forcing her to skid to an abrupt halt. Unperturbed she simply lit her horn once more to teleport past them.

Only as soon as she did, she felt something wrap and contract around her horn like a thorny vine, digging into it. She only caught a glimpse of the doorway and the mirror beyond it before her spell was inverted and she was violently catapulted back beyond the wall of crystals and into the waiting cloud of smoke.

Sunset simply snarled back at it. “Fine, we fight! I’m not out of tricks yet anyway!”

A wave of fire washed out from around her, driving back the shadow long enough for her to gallop in the other direction, back down the hall way. Unfortunately the creature or whatever it was simply repeated its action, filling the opposite end of the hallway with a barricade of jagged crystals that sparked with dark energy.

Turning about she threw out another unstable blast of a disruption spell that shredded through the creature’s form. It howled and climbed into the air while sweeping around her sides once more, planning to envelop her as it first had. In an act of last ditch desperation she projected a bubble shield around herself as it congealed around her and blocked out the light leaving her only illuminated by the teal glow of her magic.

She felt the pressure pressing in on her and grit her teeth. “I’ve come too far. It won’t end like this! Not to some demented cloud of smog!” Sunset declared loudly, more for herself then whatever dwelt beyond.

Her magic had always been strong; Sunset Shimmer knew she could boast being the strongest Unicorn in Equestria even if she had been replaced as Celestia’s student. This thing was sapping her strength fast though, she had to act before she lacked the energy to do so. Remembering how it had reacted to her earlier display, with a spark of magic she modified her bubble shield, setting it alight with fire. The trick worked well and she breathed easy for a moment as the shadows were burnt away with a pained hiss allowing her to recoup her strength.

The respite only lasted a moment though. From around her smaller black crystals with an ominously dark purple aura began to slowly grow around her. Sunset had a unsettling feeling they would pop her shield like a balloon if she just sat there.

Eyes darting about desperately Sunset searched for any avenue of escape but the only thing she could see was the faint light from the top of the hall way where the crystal wall hadn’t quite reached yet. A split second later she realised that was all she needed to see.

The spell she wanted was tricky and duel casting it while holding her shield even trickier but it was do or die and Sunset Shimmer had no intentions of dying. Ever. In an instant she felt her stomach lurch as she began to fall… upwards.

She nearly crashed into the ceiling and would have had the spell not included the action of reorienting her to the new direction of gravity. In spite of the shock Sunset wasted no time in throwing herself forward, galloping along the ceiling, over the wall of crystals and straight into a barricade of similarly black, thinner crystals pointed right at her like a cluster of spears.

Sunset screeched in pain as she impaled her own shield on them instantly forcing magical feedback through her body. The shock instantly caused her spells to fail, shield shattering as gravity returned to normal harshly yanking her downward into the waiting cloud and its smug red eyes.

Sunset never reached the ground, instead she tumbled endlessly within the thick shadow smoke, forcing her to breath it in as she gasped for breath and hack it back out in coughing fits.

“No! No…” was all Sunset’s strangled voice managed to work out as a few meagre sparks of fire spurted weakly from her horn. The enveloping cloud cared little for the fast fading struggle she put out, fighting futilely as her strength was sapped.

Sunset felt her magic fade.

The world around her dimmed too.

Soon, so did her last desperate thoughts.

She fell limp, her consciousness snuffed out.

But to what would have been to her surprise had she been conscious, she was not discarded on the cold hard floor or run through with a lance of black crystal. Instead the shadows made to cushion her and steadily carry her away, black crystals crumbling into dust around them now they served their use to their creator.

An amused chuckle filled the empty halls, accompanied by a deep but wispy voice. “A worthy opponent after all these years. Unfortunate I had seen that particular trick before; if only you had time to properly prepare you might have stood a chance. I do so relish a fighting spirit instead of those cowards who rely on artefacts to fight for them.”

The cloud of shadows swept along, caressing the mare almost soothingly as it and its captive crept into the throne room. She only whined in subconscious fear, adrenalin driving nightmares in her unnatural unconsciousness.

“Fear not brave little unicorn, this will not be your end,” it whispered in a mocking imitation of comforting care as his dark shadow sunk into the floor. “I do hate wasting true talent, and we have much to discuss regardless.”

The floor beneath them seemed to crumble in on itself as it fell away revealing a shaft and staircase through solid rock and impossibly the thin air beneath the Crystal Palace. Swiftly the shadow thing and its captive descended, before the floor remade itself, crystals weaving shut like a set of jagged teeth closing shut and swallowing them whole.

The cold crystalline citadel was once more, left as quiet as a tomb.

Author's Note

Okay! So, first story I've actually put out in a while. Not going to lie, mostly putting this out as a trial to see how people react. Wanted to build up a nice big backlog of chapters first but my perseverance failed me and the story been sitting stagnant for a while. Fingers crossed actually publishing something will help reinvigorate me a bit.

Well, I hoped you enjoyed this little start to the adventure. Do please leave a comment if you did. Likes are nice but feed back is so much more satisfying. Plus I like to engage with my readers, get their perspective on things.