Trials of a Crystalline Heart's; Songs of a New Era

Chapters

Unexpected Wildcard
Accidentel Coup d'État d’un seul homme
First day in "Office"

Unexpected Wildcard

“Son, take dog for a night walk.”

I grumbled and put her into the leash alongside putting on my light winter clothing before walking out of door. I decided to take a longer lap then I usually did. Walk wasn’t nice due to ever-present wet ice that covered streets alongside strong darkness and dog’s unfortunately frequent habit of pulling hard on the leash. As I stated approaching midpoint, I noticed that water vapor had begun to suddenly reach rather high levels alongside wind speed, until I heard unmistakable sound of thunder.

‘Great, sudden storm with this crappy weather’. A strong pull then took my attention, “Tilda, No!”

I began resisting her now relentless pulling towards our home while standing on a wet icy road. She was seriously freaking out due to thunder, like she often did when nearby army base started practice firing artillery rounds with their guns, while she was taken for a walk.

Suddenly I detected a thunder bolt going off extremely close in front of us, then I previously ever had in my life. We both froze and that was the moment when I was finally starting to get seriously alarmed by this unexpected development, until rapid succession of thunder bolts followed around within less than hundred meters. It was the moment she finally lost her shit, literally. She started pulling on the leash like she had never before. I resisted but slippery surface below my boots had other ideas and I started sliding downhill within the street we were standing on, while she dragged me ever onwards.

Sliding with no breaks. I resulted in attempting to break collide with a small pile of hard snow at the bottom of the slope, while crescendo of lighting began to dance around us. It was the moment when my right leg took support from a small snow pile, then I kind of lost my balance. I put my hands below me to brace for the incoming impact, but I only briefly saw an extremely powerful flash of light from my upper peripheral vision.

It was cold, really cold with a numb feeling spreading within my back. I opened my eyes and saw no light but only the darkened sides of narrow open-air corridor on my both sides. I grunted in mild pain and got up with groggy series of steps to look around.

’Was I robbed and moved elsewhere?’, 'No.'

I didn’t recognize this sort of alleyway existing anywhere nearby where I lived and the darkness didn’t help, plus I was starting to seriously freak out. I began heading toward alleyway opening until I noticed lack of any snow or ice within the smooth stone hard surface I was standing on. Even more peculiarly it was also slightly reflective alongside the ground being coated with very thin surface covering of frozen water vapor.

‘Strange, where is the snow or the water if temperature is slightly above freezing.’, Despite this disturbing wake up, I started heading towards the alleyway opening with new degree of caution.

I carefully peaked out to the street as my paranoia meter was now running on its highest levels, like it hadn’t previously. I detected a ‘lantern light?’ on my right about two hundred meters distance in middle of some four-crossing junction. I nearly had heart attack as I saw a back of ‘’something’’ dressed in metal coverings, which certainly wasn’t human due to its tail bush and four-legged stance looking to same general air direction I was. This sight filled me with sudden dread and very strong feeling of not being spotted willingly by these things.

I eyed it for brief moment before quickly heading left of the alleyway as silently as possible to build up distance. I moved close of half kilometer before spotting some crates in other alleyway, that permitted me to actually climb on top of a building and building next to that and another next to that, which were built with connecting walls.

I barely managed to do the required sledge grabs on sides of every building’s roof with small running start and aid of some smaller crates within the cold darkness of the night. It took about fifteen minutes until I reached on the topmost building, which was one of the tallest around.

Roof was almost completely flat with only a small top stair doorway blocking further immediate view forwards. I breathed in relief and looked behind me on top of a about seven story building that seemed to be made of the very same material as the street.

What I saw made my heart drop ‘Where in the hell am I?’ as I was met by a sight of nothing but endless urban sprawl that stretched onwards for at least several kilometers, which I could see thanks to their slightly reflective surfaces making them visible in moon light as small glimpses of light from cloud cover made them visible. As I rapidly tried to decipher what was going on, I suddenly heard loud clop like sounds approaching from the very same street I had walked on.

I carefully peaked over building ledge and saw something that would scar my psyche forever. I saw four armored lantern carrying figures dressed in full plate armor, which own aesthetics wouldn’t be out of place in Sauron’s army and accompanying them was a chained group quadrupeds that were connected to each other. This group was moving forwards without a sound and their heads low, whose members were medium to large dog sized… ‘’Ponies?!?’’?’

I instantly pulled back and laid on the cold ground as group continued moving on without knowing of my presence while my heart was suddenly pumping mile a minute constantly as I wondered if I had finally jumped the shark and gone into a full-on psychotic trip because the thing, I just saw went against everything I had ever believed at!

Group passed on and I got up due to feeling of needing to do something. Only to get proper look behind roof’s stairway door, which previously was blocking the view. I saw a very tall ominously spiked Eiffel-like tower in the distance.

I finally realized where I was, ‘This was Sombra’s Crystal Empire’ and it made me sick.

I sat on the roof contemplating my massive newly awakened existential crisis with heavy breaths, as apparently, I was within the world of my little pony, and all tests I did to myself only pointed towards, what I was experiencing being actually real. Such a extremely disturbing revelation made me wonder if I was just some story character, but my ability to engage with higher thinking and ability to even entertain such thoughts alongside my coherent memory of my past made me adopt a stance that I had actually been transferred from an ancestor simulation, namely real-life to a wrong server within simulating computer accidentally, namely to MLP, which as an stance I had adopted for sake of my own mental health.

As I solved my newly awakened internal crisis for now with cold sweat dropping from my head. I began then contemplating my possible options for next courses of action while remaining within the oppressive cold and near breezeless weather. Concluding that I had only three real and possible courses of action available to me:

1. Escape the Empire: Near certainly would fail due to large distance to reach city limits, lack of clothing, lacking ability to generate warmth in the cold, lack of supplies and no real directions and if I made it somehow there was still a big chance, I would be either killed or imprisoned/disappeared by new locals for ‘‘reasons’’.

2. Wait out Sombra: Arguably worse option due to those ponies seemed to be been severely malnourished, which meant a serious lack of food and thus any possible good Samaritans for monstrous alien thing, which would most likely end up me having to murder an entire family or even several to steal their house and food to wait out Sombra and then after that dogging imprisonment, which would likely be more difficult than within the first option despite the morally questionable murder approach being used or not.

3. Assassinate Sombra: Truly bleak chances of success, but slightly better than previous ones, because crystal heart should be able to kill him, and post-survival aftermath would be by far the most desirable one, although if I was caught in middle of it, then death would be most probable outcome.

4. This left the last possibly of being captured, which was essentially failure outcome for previous ones and would either result in death (likely vivisection) or being brainwashed/imprisoned (less than a coinflip chance for being able survive Empires liberation), alongside likely resulting in suboptimal personal outcome afterwards.

Epiphany of having only truly awful options available to me almost caused me to nearly fully flip out. I soon started crying silently for a few minutes. After sniffing rather pathetically, I got up mainly because surrounding cold made tears within the surface of my skin start to become painful. I steadied myself and looked at the tower, which was slightly over three kilometers away and thought ‘I could go to check out castle perimeter and its guards in effort to evaluate feasibly of third option’ due to escape being virtual no go and it being relatively easy.

I silently and slowly began moving of the rooftop and came back within the street where one could barely see anything due to buildings blocking most of the incoming moonlight. I then began silently sneak running/jogging towards the castle while my hearing stayed on maximum alert for smallest of sounds.

I ended up encountering two groups of sentries that were guarding four-way cross junctions like the first one I had seen. It took some creative thinking to get past them, namely using rooftops and my best MGS crawling impression, but their helmets with only a very narrow pair of eye slits made them kind of subpar sentries and thus sneaking feasible with the darkness of the city.

I observed the basis of the castle after reaching observation range and saw random dark crystal protrusions pointing from the ground alongside spotting two doorways being within support pillars for the upper structure, plus two pairs of armored guards standing in front of both of those doors.

‘Sombra seems to have pretty lacking security, maybe option three is actually feasible’, which I hadn’t believed to be even a genuine possibility. As I thought of this, one of the guards suddenly went in.

‘Okay, I don’t really have anything to lose at this point and I could raid the kitchens as backup game plan.’ I swiftly pulled out two coins from my pocket and covertly reached behind a castle pilar, which had door on the opposite side alongside the remaining guard pair. I then threw one of my coins towards a direction of a sideways pilar from both entrances.

Statue like guards predictably tensed and began looking towards that side pilar, then another coin was thrown further within the blind area of the same castle pillar. This fully sparked them into action as I had hoped, with three guards beginning to take steps towards the that pilar. I alarmingly saw one guards stop within that one remaining pair of guards, which I was sharing the same pillar with.

Lone guard remained standing still, while he looked towards the coin distraction as two other guards were approaching it. I decided to take this slim and likely my only opportunity and came from the opposite side of the pillar where pair of guards had been. That one guard that had stopped, was literally standing only 10 meters away from me as I grabbed the handle of the door, which thankfully was extremely silent in it noises alongside feeling intense feeling of terror of a likely now imminent failure of my gamble and then went in.

‘I don’t think any of them realized I came in’ but decided to swiftly move into the upstairs anyways.

I had certainly gone past point of no return now, which would now mean guaranteed death if I was caught while moving through thankfully dimly lit stairs and hallways, with my senses being at maximum alert in the effort to desperately spot someone before they could spot me. I wandered the halls that ware thankfully almost completely empty, while I sneaked onwards attempting to find anything of use, as I personally doubted that any normal methods would work at killing Sombra.

After hiding behind some curtains and corners to allow three different ponies to pass, I found strangely heavily fortified door in the upper ('right?') wing of the castle that had more locks I had ever seen in one door that was also clearly extremely reinforced. I looked out of a nearby window and saw that door seemingly led to one of the two junior towers of the castle and realized that crystal heart was likely in there. I noticed any apparent lack of glass or iron bar in it, ‘That small window in the side of the tower is large enough that I could barely squeeze myself through’ and ‘maybe I had double digit chances of success now’.

Kitchen was almost empty except four sleeping staff members residing in the floor in their likely places of work, I swiftly proceeded to grab some food and a knife. I quickly ate some food, what would likely be my last meal within a nearby storage room like a death row convict and then grabbed some rope, satchel, and duo of very long planks from there.

Window thankfully opened with some wiggling from the knife and soon I positioned pair of six-meter-long planks between the almost as wide gap between the two windows. I looked below as my feet touched the wooden bottom of the window frame and realized if I fell from this height, which was well above a ten-floor drop, it would mean near instant death, plus my fear of heights certainly didn’t help.

‘Damned if you do or don’t.’ I briefly thought as only the fear of the alternative was now pushing me onwards at this point.

My balancing skills were putt to their ultimate test as I crossed the horror inducing gap and reached the other side devoid of any real handholds. I conformed that the seriously tight window was very strangely devoid of anything blocking my sort of move, while such a window stood right next a such heavily fortified door. I noticed some black powdery substance residing in the lower frame of the window opening as I inserted my legs into in an incredibly risky balancing maneuver.

Soon my new satchel followed them as I proceeded to wiggle the planks below me very awkwardly into the window to make the needed space to get in. I was dressed down only to my t-shirt and underwear as I began to squeeze myself through sideways in a nearly impossibly tight window opening, with a numbing body from the strong cold that wasn’t meant to deal with it.

Almost didn’t get through as I nearly snapped my spine, neck, and shoulder blades alongside nearly dislocating my own waist, plus my shirt was seriously torn with extensive light skin tears with two very small bleeding wounds, which thankfully almost immediately closed off by itself. Half smacking myself into the new stair way, I breathed in sight of relief for quarter minute before I remembered very real threat of hypothermia within the dark rotating stairway completely devoid of heat insulation.

Clothes were quickly put back on from the satchel as I pondered my situation ‘That door indicated that no one really comes here at all so I could theoretically hide at least two days here but first I need check what else is here’ while the now opposite side residing main corridor window was half-closed with a plank. Then my seriously arching human body proceeded walk up relatively lengthy stairs with only natural lighting coming from similar glassless windows until I reached the top. ‘Talk about the devil and he will appear’ as sight of floating heart met me. ‘Okay inventory and options first’ as I pulled the satchel open.

Rope wouldn’t work as I had feared due this place lacking any anchoring places for it or any large enough openings to me even get through because top floor didn’t actually have any real windows, but only large one-way magical windows that looked like large windowless openings. ‘I was trapped here’ as I couldn’t rope myself out of here anymore. ‘Okay, okay, option two now kind of mandatory but what to do with the heart.’, which I hadn’t approached yet. ‘If he comes then it might be good idea have the heart immediately available, maybe it can do something?’ I thought as began planning on how to extract it.

I was savvy enough to know that obvious floor color dilation around the heart and rest of the tower was likely some sort of step on alert trigger area, so I began preparing ropes. After using my ropes to make a catching net on the planks, I proceeded to carefully maneuver closer to hovering heart. ‘This will likely end up horribly, but without it slight (‘warmth?’) it’s radiating I likely couldn’t make it past more than a few nights here, even if could begin collecting the melting water moisture from the walls.

Plank tugged it side and it fell towards rope net as I had hoped ‘Yes, no change of weight alert!’.

Heart entered my grasp that strangely weighted less than a soda bottle, but I certainly wasn’t complaining due to even getting this far being kind of a miracle as I proceeded to admire this truly priceless gemstone.

Sudden sensation of pressure to my mind caused me to wake up in the middle of the night. ‘Wait, did… the Crystal Heart shift its position?’, ‘I need to be sure.’

‘Life has quite the funny way of playing it cards, maybe I could…’ Sound of a door opening from the very same stairway where I had come from made my heart to instantly skip a beat and be filled with utter terror ‘I’m going to die’. I looked towards the staircase opening and saw entity like a dark cloud entering quickly into the room with rather unmistakable face, another heartbeat was skipped.

‘’What, what is this… thing?” a deep voice of strong surprise filled the room, which were also the first words I had head until now, but Sombras facial expression changed that of alarm immediately when he saw what my hands were holding.

He swiftly launched green sickly bolt at me, which I dogged immediately by sidestepping as the heart began to emit a slight glow. Rather surprised by this act of agility on my behalf in terms of avoiding his attack. Sombra launched successive bolt quickly, which I dodged as well because my life literally depended on it. Even more surprised by this as the heart stated to glow with clarity, likely due to presence of active dark magic.

Sombra then changed his tactics and began charging his horn as I internally panicked about my now imminent grisly demise. Sombra unleashed a far faster beam from his horn and I short circuited, I put the crystal heart between him and myself. Move that I thought wouldn’t just doom myself, but the entire population of the empire with me, instead resulted in something unexpected, heart acted. As sombra’s beam was about to touch, the heart unleashed a smaller beam at his direction that prevented Sombra’s beam impacting the heart, he was caught off guard by this and increased his magical output, but heart was faster. Hearts beams size rapidly increased and within seconds Sombra’s death beam was overwhelmed with a flash of light.

“Nooooo…”, his horrified scream was cut short as Sombra’s very being was utterly disintegrated by all-encompassing light beam. The completely blinding light was seriously hard to even watch, and my closed eyelids did very little to help. I opened pair of semi-blinded eyes and observed nothing but nightcap residing in the floor, ‘I… I LIVE!’

I quickly reminded myself not to celebrate too early before looking around for hypothetically still alive Sombra, but all I saw was two dark crystal protrusions within the ground behind me that obviously weren’t there before, ‘If I had been hit, then most likely would have experienced horrid fate of having crystals literary growing inside my body’ such an idea was extremely disturbing one as weight of what I had done fully set in.

‘I actually killed Sombra!’ which as an possibility I had thought nothing but a complete pipedream until now.

‘What the hell was I even thinking!’ as the weight of the utter stupidity in my actions fully set in.

‘’I might have underestimated the power of my subconsciousness over me’’ until I noticed my hands being somewhat translucent and crystal heart starting to emit ‘uhm… Good feelings of approval?’, ‘was it sentient or something?’

Biological impossibly aside as my hands started thankfully visibly turn back to normal and comprehensive thinking started on how I had even gotten to this point.

‘Do I have a soul if I’m apparently magically compatible?’

That line of thought was interrupted, when I heard a sound coming from the very same stairway and realized I had essentially been standing still nearly a half hour. Heightened heartbeat followed when unmistakable clop of hooves approached.

‘He likely didn’t close the door’ I realized. ‘And first impressions can only be made once, what the heck do I even do now.’, I then prayed whoever showed up didn’t immediately attack me as figure finally came behind the corner.

Pony’s front section peaked around the corner and immediately retracted in fright upon seeing me.

“You know that you can come here, because I kind of need to talk to somepony.” in a tone one would use to call out other from being just unreasonable.

Guard was out of sight a half dozen seconds until he looked around the corner again tentatively and saw the crystal heart. This apparently granted him enough courage to come out and slowly approach me as his other until now hidden fellow came after him behind corner as well.

‘’What are you?’’, his question held clear undertone of fear as I answered “Somebody who kind of killed Sombra a moment a go and needs to explain current situation to somepony in charge” I retorted dryly as I had understood the necessity of explaining myself to some authority figure so I wouldn’t treated as an monster by the local guards.

Duo looked me incredulously but realized that utter lack of mind control influencing them and heart in my possession, I wasn’t BS:ing them. “You Actually Killed The King?!?”.

“Well, yeah” I answered, due to it being kind of true even if was the heart who did all the heavy lifting.

They looked utterly stunned and then tensed after a moment if remembering something, before they quickly proceeded to bow “Uhm… Yes, my lord, what do you... need?” I internally scoffed at such a gesture but decided to play along for now, due to its benefits.

“Could you take me to the one who oversees the Guards”.

Answer was almost immediate, “Y- Yes!”.

“Then lead the way”.

Guard duo swiftly tuned around and began walking towards the stairs with me following in tow.

Author's Note

I have written several chapters already in advance for this story (First arc/act) and next one will be released by the next week.
I'm planning on writing a very long story with preplanned story plotline mostly in place, which will be written if this story catches enough attention. Commenting is appreciated.
I have fairly unique writing style so feedback is appreciated. If you think grammar is janky, then you haven't seen anything yet. Plus, the writing/grammar quality wasn’t as good as I had hoped for so expect improvements.
Edit log: (Grammar: 25.02.2024), (Very minor formatting:28.02.2024)

Accidentel Coup d'État d’un seul homme

During the walk towards the Guard chief's quarters, I learned the names of the now helmetless guards in armor. Their names were Amethyst Flower, because of a blue-furred and mint-green maned stallion of older age who did most of the talking, and his junior partner Dusk Sight, who was clearly a young stallion with dim orange fur and a dim blue mane. They had been Sombra’s bedroom guards semi-surprisingly and had gone investigating when his mind control had been suddenly dispelled soon after Sombra abruptly left his personal bedroom in a hurry.

On that, I had found out that ponies were apparently about the size of large dogs, with heights clearly less than a meter and with lanky tin-can diameter legs that were noticeably taller than their barrels were long, alongside absurdly large eyes that were several times larger than any earth animal, but thankfully weren’t nearly as big as in the show. This unnatural sight certainly disturbed me greatly, but I didn’t let it show noticeably in my facial expressions even though part of my mind was being seriously unsettled by the mere fact that I was having literal conversations with non-human entities.

We arrived at the door of the chief of guards named Emerald Spear. Amethyst Flower knocked at the door after a cue and soon after, the resident opened the door to see the guard duo.

‘’What are you doing here at this hour- ‘’ when his eyes noticed a rather large and looming figure behind them.

‘’What is going on?!’’ was quite a loud response of alarm.

I stepped in and said the following statement in a very precise manner; ‘’I have come here to inform you about the fatal demise of King Sombra, and I personally wish you told the other castle guards they wouldn't come after me. I also request that you start gathering the highest government members for an official meeting to inform them about the current situation as well’’.

I said this because I had realized I would probably have to eventually show up in front of a government panel anyways, so they could receive a factual recount of what had happened, plus they would know what I looked like then. It was the type of move that I felt mostly comfortable at doing due to having strong doubts about anyone here being truly willing to take revenge on Sombra’s behalf, alongside my semi-inability to just leave the castle in favor of the streets.

Emerald Spear's eyes looked on with disbelief and replied, "Have I gone mad!?", but Amethyst's thankfully stepped in "Sir, King Somb-… That monster is now actually dead, and I think we should do as he said!", a very strong undertone of urgency and fear lay within Amethyst voice, which as a vibe his junior partner seemed to be strongly sharing as well.

Emerald Spear looked at us now with completely wide eyes and was seriously unsettled by the utter left-field absurdity of the whole situation. After half a minute, he looked at me ‘’Uhm… What’s your… name, creature?’’.

A question about my name caught me a bit off guard because the guard duo had not asked it before, and I almost immediately shared it until I remembered something.

‘These ponies speak English´ and thought back on some previous conversations in the English language, which I personally held in the past with some foreign people who, for most of the time, were unable to immediately say my name after hearing it and virtually always horribly mispronounced it. After a few seconds, I chose to settle for a compromise and translated my name into a more easily pronounceable version for these anglophone equines.

‘’My name is… Isaac, Isaac Swamp.’’ I said that and saw their ears visibly erecting upwards.

Emerald Spear then semi-calmly stated the following with an unreadable expression to me, ‘’I will then gather the council members you asked for, it will take about fifteen minutes’’, Emerald said, and then looked on for a sign of approval, which I granted using a nod, and he soon proceeded to trot towards the nearest main stairway.

‘I think Amethyst's testimony and the sight of the heart compelled him to believe us and do what was asked’, I thought and was relieved that the military chief didn’t seem to be very likely to desire my death clearly or covertly, as I had seriously feared and prepared some limited plans to make a run for it if things suddenly went ugly.

The guard duo and I moved to different section of the castle and waited in silence about a quarter of an hour while I thought about what to say to them, before breaking the silence, ‘’Where is the conference room?’’

‘’Fourth top floor!’’ was maybe too quick of a reply by them.

“Lead the way then.”, ‘Again!’.

Amethyst did, and we started moving towards our new destination while I personally eyed for signs of a potentially prepared ambush. Thankfully, such a thing didn’t seem to have been arranged, and we arrived at a large door whose frame’s sides were illuminated by bright light within the room.

I was extremely nervous about what was about to occur next as Amethyst opened the door. The guard duo went in first, and I stepped after them. I was very briefly blinded for a duration of half a second by the lights of the first properly lit room since coming here and saw several freshly stiffening ponies who were looking at me with completely focused stares and majorly dilated pupils within their eyes, except Emerald’s own being that of a bit lesser degree.

I stood still to better evaluate the mood within the room, which was now filled with a great amount of tension, and half-interestingly observed none of them committing any actions besides that. I was somewhat relieved internally, that this meeting didn’t immediately start horribly, and then I started looking for a personal seat.

I noticed the conference table literally being only a quarter meter in height and ponies residing on chairs that were just pillow cushions elevated off the ground by a few centimeters. I spotted an empty miniature throne-like seat residing at the end of the conference table and decided that it was the only real sitting option available to me. I walked towards the new seat of choice and sat down on the seat, whose height only reached halfway up to my knees from the ground (including its cushion) and saw the audience immediately flinching and retracting in fear in an almost exaggerated manner.

‘Okay, that might not have been the best move’ and I couldn’t help but start feeling that this sort of treatment would be awfully common anywhere I went within my time over here.

This constant unbroken silence was seriously starting to unnerve me as nobody had said anything after I sat down, and I realized that I would have to start this meeting myself, which held very serious personal future consequences for me.

‘’Greetings, my name is Isaac Swamp and you have been gathered here for important announcement that concerns the entire Empire’s future’’ they were listening like hawks now.

‘’For those who are uninitiated about the current situation, I inform you that the previous head of the Empire known as King Sombra no longer resides within the books of the living, ..., King Sombra has been confirmed to have died.’’… I was now seriously on edge about their next reaction due to doubting my personal capability of being very successful at escaping if I suddenly needed to fight my way out of this room due the already tense situation detonated into sudden violence.

‘’Impossible!!!, how could he possibly have died!!!’’, was the hysterical shout of one of the table members, whose attitude was that of complete personal worldview breaking levels of disbelief, which then spread to others at the table and, surprisingly after hearing it, two people literally fainted in conjunction.

Amethyst stepped in once more and calmly said the following, ‘’What he has said is true. We found him while looking for King Somb- THAT MONSTER and found him inside the top of the western junior tower. We also found Sombra’s own personal nightcap nearby, which we had seen him run off with from his bedroom due to us being made to guard it.’’

Oppressive silence dominated the room as council members' own brains apparently couldn’t even start processing what they had just heard. Silence continued for two dozen seconds until the gray stallion who had first spoken to me turned to look at me.

‘’It simply can’t b-‘’. Those words died in his throat as he saw the Crystal Heart lying in my lap, which I had just pulled out of the repurposed satchel during the silence, mainly because I had forgotten it was stored there during the meeting, which had been put there during the conference wait for a more comfortable holding. I also realized it might be a good idea to show it as proof of Sombra’s demise and to help calm down the group of now hysterical ponies. His and other’s eyes massively dilated as truth fully set in, and they froze, especially the gray stallion.

I determined I should do the following thing as more ponies gained their senses: "I will go outside the room to give you some time to discuss this between yourselves and out of my presence, thank you!", I rose up and walked towards the door with no one thankfully attempting to stop me.

I stood next to the door trying to listen to the sounds from the room for how long, but realized there was some sort of sound suppression/blocking going on with the room and I could barely make out anything but undecipherable shouts and what might have been sounds from acts of violence, but I chose not to enter until all audible sounds ceased. After about five minutes of silence, I speedily knocked at the door and quickly reentered the conference room.

What I saw was pretty shocking to me, as there were several silently weeping ponies with several just staring into space and on top of it all, a corpse, and I certainly knew that pony was dead because his bowels and bladder had been emptied to the floor! The body was nearly unrecognizable pulp from an utterly savage beating that he must have taken and realized a second later it was the very same gray stallion that had talked to me.

Witnessing this unexpected murder scene ended up greatly disturbing me as I could possibly be next, and then I turned towards the ponies with a very demanding tone, ‘’Who was he and why was he killed!?’’.

This caught the attention of Emerald Spear, who seemed to be the only one willing to answer from the group of very scared ponies who actively employed several attention-avoiding techniques to not be noticed, ‘’He was Misty Evening, Sombra's own personal spymaster who was constantly spying on us all for any sign of anything unwanted, like disloyalty.’’

I nearly facepalmed from the realization that the now deceased stallion named Misty Evening was basically the head of Sombra’s own secret police, and they had enacted lethal payback as their revenge for his deeds under Sombra.

‘Wait, why would he need a secret police officer?’ I realized alongside potentially alarming implications and continued after the situation in the room had normalized somewhat more.

‘’I thought Sombra did not permit any real amount of freewill under him. What was going on with your own mind control then?’’

Emerald Spear hesitated briefly and answered, ‘’He needed some autonomous agents to be able to effectively administrate his own Empire on his behalf and used a special variant of his dark spell on us. The spell dulled some of our independence but allowed most of our thinking faculties and free will to remain, so we could be useful. He forced us to work for him as his higher administrative branch for his legion of mindless puppets and killed anyone that displeased him at the slightest.’’ Emerald and others shuddered particularly at that last part of his speech.

I determined that they had likely been forced to unwillingly partake in some truly horrific actions, like some sort of mass purge of Sombra’s own enemies.

‘’Question: Are any of you from the original administration before Sombra?’’, Emerald and several others turned their heads, with some immediately breaking down in tears. Alarmed, I asked any of them to raise their hoof if yes, none did. 'Okay, this certainly did not bode well for future political stability for the locals alongside my own situation as well.'

I asked if any of them were nobles, and it was the same reaction but a lot worse.

‘They were literally nobodies, I think this country might be utterly fucked now’, I thought.

‘Okay, I need a breathing break from this roller coaster of insanity during these last few hours’, I concluded.

‘’Amethyst and Dusk, please clean up and remove Misty’s body from the room, its smell is starting to get rather unbearable.’’

Both stallions immediately tensed, ‘’Dusk go get some cleaning equipment! I shall remove the corpse.’’

Dusk swiftly left the room and Amethyst began to drag Misty’s body through the door until Dusk arrived with an utterly terrified maid in tow who then cleaned up the excrement and liquid mess at the most impressive speed of any cleaning act I had personally witnessed. Now Misty's body was taken care of for now, during which nobody had decided to say anything.

Turning to look at the council members, I realized I kind of accidentally ended up being the chief speaker for this ‘interim government, uh... provincial council?’ meeting.

‘’I think we should start discussing about the succession of the Empire and who will be in charge due to Sombra being off the throne now.’’ I said that and received only extremely nervous glances.

‘’I would like to know if there exists any nearby register of empire nobles, so we could start looking for a candidate for the next in line for the monarchy’’ that particular line resulted in them giving a look that I could only interpret if I had said one of the worst things of all time.

‘’W- what, going with the nobility then!?’’, I said in alarm.

A new pony with Azur fur and with an indigo-colored mane answered with a voice of strong distress ‘’They are all dead, all dead!!!’’

‘’What!?’’

She continued ‘’THAT abomination exterminated them all, and then actively kept hunting down for all the remaining survivors!’’

‘’What about the younglings!?’’

She gave a look that signaled that she had just been hunted by something from the past ‘’He did not spare any, not even the… foals’’, was the answer provided by her now disquieting voice.

‘Wau, just Wau!’, I personally thought Sombra had certainly committed some truly depraved acts, but nothing of this caliber. This statement seemed to be a new revelation to some and once more they broke down in tears, which had already been mostly exhausted of their energy beforehand.

‘Am I at the epicenter of a civilizational collapse within a nation that is about to disintegrate utterly?’ I thought, and it certainly did not sit well with me.

She continued almost two minutes later, ‘’How did that demon even die, actually?’’

‘’Oh, it was me’’ I retorted without really thinking about it.

Many grasped ‘’You killed the King Sombra?!?’’

‘’Well, yes.’’, I could easily argue about the details, but I think it might have been seriously detrimental to my own safety if I did. I could not help but notice that their acclimation to my presence also suddenly decreased.

The same mare nervously touched her collar and gulped ‘’As you have personally dealt with king Sombra. I ask what you need, uhm… Sir Isaac?’’

I visibly frowned at the gesture and Azur one immediately retracted in major fright.

‘’Sorry about causing displeasure, Your highness!’’

‘Okay, time to call out this farce.’

‘’So, you are saying I’m now The king?’’. They all flinched, and all quickly answered within a unison of a series of Yes’s, which I sensed not being truly sincere due to the fear of finding out what happens to the first pony among them when one decides to say ‘No’.

I called them out, ‘’What are you thinking!? I have no real legitimacy to rule or-‘’ that sentence was cut short as an invasive sound entered my head ‘Yes, you have now’.

I looked down and saw the Crystal Heart having generated a glowing pulse of light, ‘Is it self-aware and did it just seriously ask me to become the king’. The heart pulsed once more, ‘Yes’.

‘’Uh… Please conform if you really wish me to become the reigning... King. Two pulses for Yes and one for No!’’

The heart produced two flashes in quick succession. I looked up and saw the flabbergasted expression on everyone’s faces.

I wasn’t sure what to do now until the Azur pony broke the ice, ‘’The Crystal Heart talked to you personally!?’’

I was silent as she continued, ‘’The heart has only ever to have known to have talked like that to the members of a royal family!’’

I stooped down to look at the heart and asked in an almost convincing fake bored tone ‘’I’m I now legitimately the king?’’ I deeply dreaded the coming answer.

‘’Heart wills it! So, you undoubtedly are now!’’, was a voice of strong enthusiasm that was, however, briefly cut off for a moment by her remembering my non-pony status alongside some others table members.

‘’Well, due to lacking other eligible candidates for the throne and nothing else to do personally, I will then be head of this new government for now.’’ Mare almost beamed with joy and some others gave expressions of relief.

I screamed within my own mind about the whole situation, but my own expression reflected the tried and tested situational philosophy; ‘Don’t show any weakness!’.

‘’What should we do now, uh... King Isaac?’’ said the mare.

‘I must get out’ was the only immediate idea I could think of, ‘’Considering that it’s still before midnight, and we are all obviously exhausted from our day. I think we should start discussing the Empire’s future tomorrow morning. So, we are all at our peak performance for tomorrow’s day!’’ Thankfully there were nods and only silence.

The Azur mare was the first pony to speak, ‘’Actually, what species are you? Your highness.’’.

I seriously wanted this to be over already, ‘’I’m a human. The scientific term is Homo sapiens, and I’m a man or, in other words, a human male.

‘’Oh…’’ was one of the noises of the mare and some other council members while the rest of the council were keenly listening.

‘Abort, before this gets out of hand’. ‘’I think we should get on the sleeping now, before we exhaust too many hours. We have a very long day tomorrow, so you can go now!’’, it was almost a plea.

The ponies then tensed for half a second until a few seconds later they got up and began heading towards the door. I saw the mare and Emerald in a similar mood about having their day made, while on the contrary, I noticed one council member looking not too happy, ‘certainly something to remember and keep an eye on.’

Council members vacated the conference room and until only the guard duo remained. ‘’Amethyst and Dusk, what are your opinion on this more than strange situation?’’

Both were caught off guard and stuttered ‘’I think it’s wonderful, Sir. Undoubtedly a huge improvement over the last few hours. I have all my faith in you, if the heart also has, King Isaac!’’.

I wasn’t sure what to even make out of such a statement, but his slight smile on his muzzle showed he might actually be genuine, as hard as it was to believe, or they had become very talented at deception under Sombra.

‘’I will say the same, Sir’’ said Dusk, with a similar smile.

‘’Then we can retire for the night.’’

‘What the hell have I gotten myself into? Like seriously a king? Only this is no less absurd than some black guy managing to become the King of Cambodia by killing a super-powered Pol Pot.’ I thought in a barely fitting bed, which was meant for a yak.

I couldn’t stop worrying about how to even pull off such an insanely harebrained scheme that I personally couldn’t interpret as anything else than complete madness! ‘Like what is the heart possible thinking process for me or the situation if it genuinely decided to back a non-pony of all beings for the throne?’ Unlike someone more reasonable choice, like Emerald Spear.

I looked sideways towards the satchel with the Crystal Heart in it.

I then remembered my lightly arching body, plus the injuries. Sleep eventually came to me surprisingly fast (despite my mind storming about these events), because of those scrapes alongside extreme mental and physical fatigue, which even enabled my mind to fall asleep in such an anxious situation.

‘I hope Amethyst wakes me up tomorrow morning or better. This was just a dream.’

Author's Note

Ponies in this story look like they are drawn by a (Derpibooru; artist: mrscroup) due to most of the easily visible artwork for the mod coming from him, plus there is consensus among EaW artists that ponies look like that. Pony height comes from his EaW 2022 Christmas picture featuring Richard Nixon.
I don’t personally enjoy making OC and prefer to use others' own, but due to lack of information about this period, I had to create some and plan them to have character arcs. Note: That OC’s may be subject to change later within the story.
I know this chapter has been published a lot rawer than most authors (to the point of starting to damage my credibility as an author), so I certainly must perform fairly through editing for the sake of quality control after the first arch is fully published.
Expect the next chapter to come out in two or three weeks.
Edit log: (Major rewrites and Grammar: 4.3.2024), (Minor rewrites and Grammar: 5.3.2024)

First day in "Office"

I woke up to the sound of a loud knock. ‘Wait, this isn’t my bed, how… oh god, it wasn’t a dream, was it!’

Another knock followed, and I swiftly stood up from the bed with full clothes on. I hadn’t dared to take them off, due to fear of having to make a run for it if some malevolent group suddenly decided to burst through a door. I looked at the self-barricaded door with focused eyes and touched a dagger strapped to my right thigh. Dagger was actually a pony equivalent of a short sword, which I had reappropriated from the armory before going to sleep. As I simply couldn’t escape the paranoia that some group of Sombra loyalists or, alternatively motivated group of ponies wanted me dead and would then storm my room to hack me to pieces at middle of the night like Basil I did to Emperor Michael III of Byzantium.

Approaching the door that only Amethyst should be knocking due to him being the only one to know my sleeping place and being instructed to come wake me up before most of the caste staff got up themselves. I proceeded to remove the make-shift barricades while simultaneously keenly listening for any sounds to detect any evidence of whether others were outside as well. Hearing no auditory signs of others, I opened the door with a slam inwards and retreated to the side of the door so potential ambushers couldn’t attack me from both sides. Amethyst was startled by this act and took a step back.

I waited a few seconds and determined there were no others but only Amethyst and then came out, plus my new dagger still hidden under my jacket, which was virtually unnoticeable.

‘’Why did you do that? Sir.’’

I answered, "The first 24 hours are the most dangerous for any sovereign, so I personally felt bit wary about my own security."

'The same principle applies to new prison inmates as well, and I am practically one now, because I couldn’t really leave the caste for two reasons: 1. I would still be treated as a monster by the locals and, 2. The council will probably send someone to look for me now.’

I thought back on having ordered him to wake me up earlier than the others, so I could get to know them, before breaking the news to the general population, which would soon leak out anyways, as much of the population would inevitably notice something was wrong.

"First stop will be Emerald Spear’s room. Amethyst, you can escort me now on."

Approaching Emerald’s door one more, I knocked. Stallion soon opened the door.

Emarald Spear was slightly surprised at seeing me, "Wait! Yesterday actually wasn’t just some dream then?"

"Yes, unfortunately. Meaning that we have a very busy and long day ahead of us."

"Oh", said Spear.

"Now I would like to know some basic facts about yourself personally and the guards.", Emerald Spear looked with raised eyebrows alongside, expressing a strong flavor of uncertain anticipation.

"How did you end up in charge of the guards and do you believe other guards will respect your, now… shaky authority?"

Unnerved by the question, he still answered after a few seconds of contemplation, "I was an advisor to the Count of Rubrum before King Sombra enslaved us. He then quickly assembled a large army of mind-controlled soldiers and marched southwards towards the still freshly formed nation of Equestrian to eliminate the only serious threats to himself, namely the alicorns of sun and moon. After some major setbacks and military engagements during the campaign, events were assembling for the coming battle of Neighagra Falls.

Equestrian leadership, for some reason, had chosen to engage us with far fewer soldiers, but apparently the royal alicorn sisters had instead utilized it as a mere distraction to help them infiltrate the Crystal City itself. I personally saw them among several others, namely the two alicorns engaging King Sombra in a massive magical battle, until suddenly we all suddenly fell asleep forcefully before waking up simultaneously as well. Strangely, his mind control had for some reason been broken, and two sisters weren’t anywhere to be found either. King Sombra then soon marched back to the castle afterwards and immediately proceeded to execute my predecessor on the spot in a fit of fury. Then he appointed me on the spot and installed me as the one to oversee crystal guards within the inner-city area. After coming back, he has…

Been spending the last three days trying to reestablish his own control over the entire Empire until-, Uhm, you suddenly showed up.", he said in a nervous tone.

What Emerald had said instantly raised some very alarming implications, like: the Empire was way bigger than I had thought, Sombra had spent considerable time in charge and seemingly there had been a genuine war that might still be ongoing. The more I thought about it, the less safe I suddenly felt and the less likely this place seemed to be just a one-to-one copy of the show... ‘The show… Do-… DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!!!’

...

"Sir, you have been standing there just staring blankly for a minute, and I was wondering if I would be permitted to fill my morning needs.", was a sentence of deep concern and tense anticipation.

My mind was interrupted by alternate lines of thoughts, "Actually Emerald, I think you should do that, you may go now.", I spoke, and Emerald Spear looked to be very relieved by these words and soon closed the door with a thank-you.

I had now realized something important and started to quickly walk back towards my room. I then instructed Amethyst to go fetch Dusk Sight and went inside and proceeded to eat the remaining food from the satchel as breakfast/lunch, ‘That should do until midday’ and then started eyeing something in the corner of the room.

Using a chamber pot was one of the strangest experiences in my life but was ultimately merely a minor inconvenience in comparison to what was yet to come. ‘I doubt these ponies poses any advanced technology alongside any modern standards of living if that is the norm.’

Now sitting on the bed, I started thinking, ‘Okay, what to do now?’.

After debating with myself, I came to the following conclusions: ‘Apparently, I have been literally given the ~~mandate of haven~~ and should be the ruling king, which honestly was probably the most absurd thing of all time!!! ‘Like, how in the hell am I even supposed to ever convince the general equine population to somehow accept ME!, A literal alien to be there actual ruling king despite not knowing anybody around here that could meaningfully support my claim in a political or military sense, and could I even really refuse this insane job assignment at all?!? ‘Like, only real thing I personally had going on for me was lack of legitimate rivals and likely backing from the castle council apparently, which honestly didn’t mean much, and I doubted they now would take a ¨No¨ for an answer after yesterday’s display, if I refused this horrifyingly impossible task of unimaginable proportions that would make even Hercules look deeply concerned.’

Cold sweat touched my cheeks for a brief moment and, I stopped and realized thinking anymore about the current circumstances would be pointless until I got a better handle on the situation. I got up and headed towards the door, ‘because there is certainly nothing more difficult than having to personally establish The Neuordnung.’--

The guard duo met me, and I replied first "Let’s go fetch Emerald Spear, Again.", and the guard duo nodded. While walking back, I noticed that the sun was starting to rise over the horizon, ‘Now easily begins the second most important day in my life (hopefully, because one's own death is ultimately the most important one).’

A door knock later and Emerald looked up to me. "I think you should come with us, to help explain the current situation to the castle staff due to them starting to wake up now."

He nodded in understanding and replied "Very good idea Sir, I think it prudent to do that.’’

"Follow us then and let’s begin by going to the guard quarters first!"

Afterwards, we spent well over two hours walking around the castle and catching every pony we four came across. It generally took about two to six minutes of convincing to make all of them generally believe our explanations about the newly developed situation, but when I personally had all three guard ponies vouching for me and then showcasing the heart to them, it didn’t generally take much convincing to make them believe us. Thankfully, there were no real notable incidents during this time, even though we/I received many frightened reactions and interestingly, some afterward showed that of... ‘Uh, a form of admiration? After becoming a believer in Sombra's own demise.’

‘Okay, the general of the castle staff has now been sufficiently pacified and normalized to my own presence. Then it would be time for a comprehensive council meeting on how to break the news of Sombra’s death and how it would be disclosed to the city’s inhabitants.'

"I will then go gather them, Sir! It will take a moment.", said the old stallion.

Emerald Spear soon went on his way, and I couldn’t help but dread what was to come. I had now concluded I should try this whole king business because ‘If I refused, then some pony warlord will probably eventually come march to the castle and kill me for political reasons. Plus, being a play-pretend King would considerably improve my general chances of living more than it would retract in the immediate term.’, If that failed (which it near certainly would), then I hoped I could survive long enough to be able to escape to Equestria.

‘Who am I kidding, there is no way this whole King thing won't fail miserably past the current castle walls.’, because in all honestly, at this point I was just the king of the castle at best.

Self-contemplation of my difficult predicament made my perception of time flyby, and before I knew it, Emerald told me the meeting was ready. Looking at the same door from yesterday, I couldn’t help but feel that my entire future would be decided here, which brought feelings of strong anxiousness like never before. ‘Courage is ultimately about knowing you are afraid’ and then, opened the door.

Pairs of half familiar eyes beset me once more and I returned the gesture. Seeing none were actively screaming, I headed towards the same mini-throne and sat down. Some flinched, but it certainly was a lot better than yesterday's. 'Had they some form of learned helplessness going on?', I thought back to yesterday's events, as I was a bit weird that any of them hadn't screamed or tried to run away by now.

Seeing none were willing to start up this conference, I spoke: "We have gathered here today to discuss the status of the reigning government or more accurately, the lack there of and anything else relevant to the current situation that you might know about.", and that line immediately created an atmosphere of fear within the room.

Now suddenly hoping to lighten the mood, I chose to say the following: "I think most of you have realized I’m obviously not from around here, so I would like to ask some questions now. Like, how many ponies currently live within this city?", so I personally had an idea about how big this place really was.

One of the ponies chose to speak, which was the same mare from yesterday with Azur furred and indigo-toned mane, whose words were filled with great dread, "Y- Your highness, I’m... I'm the current chief director of national population information archives, and after Sombra’s... death… I estimate the Crystal city currently holds about seven to eight million inhabitants."

My brain stopped, "What? How is it even possible to logistically cram that many people in the same area with pre-industrial technology!?", 'I mean places like Rome and Angor Wat could theoretically only have been able to manage at an absolute maximum, slightly less than one and half million inhabitants!'

Council members were terrified by this sudden outburst, but the mare seemed to suddenly muster new courage to replay, "It simply can’t, your highness!"

Dumbfounded, I said: "Uhh… Why are there so many ponies crammed in here?"

The Azur one looked briefly downwards and said, "King Somb- THAT MONSTER, had massive numbers of crystal ponies to be forcibly moved to the city, so he could better control them. Despite the city having started surpassing its maximum carrying capacity even before... Him."

Her tone suddenly changed to that of complete distress, "Because of this unsustainable overpopulation and Crystal Heart's created shield area shrinking, causing the loss of nearly half of the all-year-around farming area, plus the city having virtually used up all the remaining food stores in late winter. I- I think we are about to start entering the latter stages of the greatest historical famine until now!"

‘Am I literally surrounded by millions of starving and scared ponies who many would aim to kill me for nothing else than fear and ignorance!?’, I rapidly thought until I remembered how bad things could soon be, and now I noticed that the council members didn't seem to have eaten all that well or healthily.

"Death estimates? For the Famine."

Mare looked even more scared, "I think the total number of victims will range from... one quarter to two million ponies and this is assuming... the food distribution system doesn’t collapse! If so, then the famine could easily wipe out over half of the Crystal city’s own population in a span of one and half a years!!!"

"This sounds like something on level with the Holodomor!", and I immediately said that without really thinking about it. All the ponies in the room looked completely terrified by this piece of news with some sobbing. Half a minute passed in the very unsettling atmosphere of the conference room and the mare suddenly asked, "What was that Hol-mor thing you said?"

And before I knew it, my internal historian activated; "Holodomor was an artificially caused famine that happened within Communist Ukraine between years 1932 to 1933, primarily due to cruelty by the Stalinist Soviet government that killed about three and half to five million people respectively, with the word Holodomor meaning Terror-Famine." I said that and then immediately regretted it.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that!!!’

Disquieting feelings washed over the ponies in the room, and it seemed the weight of the current situation had started to sink into them as well alongside myself. Looking down at the table due to realizing the extreme seriousness of the reigning situation, which would only worsen if something didn't soon change.

I looked up soon after and saw others doing the same as I was. Understanding none were willing to continue this disturbing conversation, I tried to lighten the mood by rubbing my hands together and saying; "Due to the situation being somewhat out of our control, I would like to start discussing what we can do in an effort to establish some sort of control over the city or at least the immediate surroundings to-", and was interrupted by a loud knock to the door, 'What?!'

Almost flinging, I turned attentively look at the door like many others in the room. After a few seconds, I decided, "Yes, you can come in!"

The door opened and a new guard’s pony appeared who looked very nervous and spoke, "I have come to inform you that there is now a large and growing crowd of gathering ponies within the caste basin that are currently asking what is happening. I ask what sort of action we should take?"

Part of me hoped this wouldn’t happen this quickly, but it was inevitable when the citizenry woke up with their brainwashing missing. I stood up and headed towards a window. Looking down, I saw at least hundreds of ponies below whom most seem to be currently wearing guard armor.

‘What to do, what to do?’. I knew the Crystal Heart would have to be delivered soon to the castle basin or the population would eventually start breaking down the doors to find it.

‘Do I deliver the heart or somepony else?’, I thought. Anxiety of the crowd and their possible reaction to me almost got the better of me, but I remembered that the one who ever delivered it would instantly gain huge social status and would then be interested in silencing me if they wanted to be the next king.

Concluding it might be safer to do it by myself than some other one, I turned at the guard at the door, "Tell the other guards that the heart will be delivered to the castle basin by midday, and some of the crystal guards should gather for instructions regarding the organizing of the ceremony."

The lone guard was a bit weirded out like others in the room and honestly me as well.

"I will then spread the world around then!", said the guard, and soon left. I wasn’t sure if I breathed out in relief or worry, and finally turned to look at the council members.

"’Do you have anything to say that might be relevant to helping the current situation?", was said by me and the ponies seemed hesitant to talk.

I almost continued due to lack of voices until Emerald Spear spoke up, "’Uh, King Isaac!? I think I can speak for all of us and would want to say that it’s doubtful we could accomplish much by ourselves, but you can come to call for us all if need be.", he said with deep nervousness.

‘So, he just admitted they are half useless in a polite way. Okay, so I’m mostly on myself then. Yeah, no pressure.’, I thought in a half-sarcastic manner if this situation wasn’t so unfunny.

"I will leave then to organize the guards then, do as you please meanwhile.", was stated sharply and no responses followed. Sighting, I headed to the door and exited with Amethyst and Sight in tow.

"Emerald come with us as well!", which was obeyed wordlessly.

‘Am I seriously pretending as if I am in control of this horrific mess which holds my life as a very real stake?’, and I almost let the stress of the situation wash over me, but now there certainly was no time for resting. Heading towards the crystal guard quarters, I started coming up with possible schemes for how to proceed next.

With three ponies on my side, it was extremely easy to get the castle guards to listen to my instructions regarding the Crystal Heart returning pseudo-ceremony, but I noticed that their numbers were only about a hundred souls and concluded that it might be a good idea to supplement their numbers still in an effort to give a better impression of power and control to the coming crowd. I was half-surprised when I heard of the existence of a dungeon under the castle filled with genuine prisoners and decided to go there to look for any useful and likely considerably more loyal and morally indebted candidates to add to the ceremony guards.

I couldn’t help but wonder why Sombra had even bothered to keep prisoners in the castle and any hypothetical reasons I came up with certainly didn’t paint any sort of rosy pictures. Descending the stairs with my entourage in tow, we reached the bottom and met several guards who were extremely terrified about experiencing potential retribution for their involvement here. After a few minutes of emotionally intense communication and receiving a few extra ceremony guards and useful info, we finally headed to the cell block or, more accurately, Me.

It was as grim as I had feared, as the sight of utterly terrified inmates retreating deeper to their cells upon seeing me and the unmistakable smell of rot, bodily waste and corpses filled the air. This place’s standards for inmate care appeared to approach Oubliette levels for the most stored in here, which was the reason I had left the pony group behind, as I sensed they were seriously disturbed by this place, and even I had a seriously hard time keeping a straight face there. A quick look around the side rooms revealed that this place was actually a testing ground for unethical creature experimentation, primary mind control and dark magic on unwilling victims, with one of the nearby room's contents was better be left unmentioned.

Opening a door, I came to a small room filled with several scrolls and instruments, but most interestingly, a live captive strapped to an operating/prison table. Pony looked at me and noticeably didn’t show any strong signs of fear.

"Have you come to kill me in Sombra's stead?", were his words that didn’t betray any real sign of weakness under such circumstances.

A bit impressed by this pony, I replied, "Actually, I killed Sombra several hours ago, and I’m looking for some competent help." Brief silence followed, and then the stallion showed great signs of relief.

"I suspected that potentially was the case if someone like you was just walking around here. My name is Humble Glass, and I’m a pony of many talents, mainly social ones, and I would very deeply appreciate it if you let me out of these straps."

Moving to remove the strapping mechanism locking him in place with my hands, I continued, "I think you were... was one of his test subjects for rather new and interesting forms of mind control, am I correct?"

He said with a heavy sigh, "Yes, I was, and he kept trying to utterly break my spirit, but thanks to you, he has now failed. Uh, mister?"

"Name is Isaac, The Human."

The reply made a fairly large smile on his muzzle for those words and the restraining straps finally gave away fully. He looked incredibly relieved as he could finally move his muscles once more and began giving a growing flood of tears of joy. Before I knew it, my trained reflexes to pet my dog came in. He seemed initially confused and then was ready to break apart until he hugged me for comfort, which I awkwardly returned to him in an effort to comfort him after his likely unimaginably horrid ordeal.

One minute of silent but still dignified weeping later, he looked up with that sort of eyes whose exact meaning I couldn’t exactly put my finger on, but only that of one looking at a savior; "What do you need?"

After getting out of that seriously creepy dungeon and making sure that some of the guards would make sure that inmates in there wouldn’t die for now. I proceeded back towards the meeting room once more. Walking down the castle hallways, I noticed that some of the staff didn’t try to get away from me anymore after spotting me but gave slight bows and remained still like statues during it. I was still a bit weirded out at suddenly receiving such treatment, but I knew it was a lot better than most alternatives and couldn’t feel a bit more confident that I might actually be able to pull through this madness.

A quick knock on the conference room door later and walking in with my pseudo-entourage in tow, I saw there were only two ponies there. One was the Azur mare and the other was the unhappy stallion from yesterday who seemed to have been debating with each other until I arrived. They only looked at me sheepishly.

Deciding to break the ice, I started: "What have you two actually been doing, while I was gone?"

The last part raised some of the withers from the other male pony and the Azur mare answered, "We have been looking into the issue of managing the food distribution, and have thankfully come to the conclusion that nearly all the food workers remain in the nearby area of the castle and have managed to contact the nearby distribution stations that have now asked for directions from-… The highest authority available."

"Good to see that this city and its population might not be completely screwed over then." I said and two of them seemed somewhat relieved by those words.

"Continue the good work and I will then go make the final arrangements to return the Heart, clear?"

Both tensed a bit and said it like soldiers, “Yes, Sir!”.

Receiving that bit of a cringy but satisfactory response, I thanked them and soon left towards the guards assembling area. 'I might want to look at that stallion more when I have the time.'

I was fairly nervous at seeing almost two hundred guards armed primarily with various spears standing in the hall that seemed to be for dining, before they turned to look at us, with few of them being slightly familiar faces, like Humble Glass who looked a lot better now in terms of appearance. They seemed to be no less tense about seeing me as I was of them, but my pseudo-entourage seemed sooth them over fairly quickly to being somewhat more normal in their behavior. I seriously hoped no one would try to challenge me as things could quickly turn ugly otherwise, because I couldn't hope to fight off more than one attacker, as I started my speech for instruction giving.

Thankfully, no one questioned me seriously in any way, as any who seemed to be hesitant to follow my instructions got a stern glance from Emerald, which immediately put them back on the line with the rest.

After distributing the simple plan for the guard positions for the ''ceremony'' and briefly simulating their standing positions relative to each other in the hall. We finally got ready to begin the Crystal Heart returning ceremony.

Looking down from the window, I couldn’t help but feel I was walking on eggshells as the crowd which I saw below was absolutely massive! A random assortment of dot-like colors covered the entire castle-surrounding ring-like area like some incomprehensibly knit together multicolor carpet and a quick calculation in my head suggested that there were about 150000–250000 ponies if my assumption of two and half ponies per square meter held any water. I couldn’t help but briefly hate myself at that moment, as I had so grossly underestimated the sheer number of participants and couldn’t but feel incredible anxiety if something went wrong. ‘If the crowd went on a stampede after seeing me, there would undoubtedly be a large number of deaths.’

‘Or worse, attack us.’, I thought as I went down to the same door as I entered the castle, with a sizable convoy of crystal guards in tow, which now held the old ceremonial guard armor before Sombra's rise to power.

The audience below was listening to some announcer's speech about how, “The great and powerful creature called Isaac had defeated evil King Sombra by himself and recovered the Crystal Heart to return it to the crystal ponies!”. That last part certainly got the emotionally mixed but surprisingly silent crowd's attention, based on the looks and voices of uncertainty and awe in terms of what I personally could perceive through a tiny opened viewing crack from the very same door I had entered the castle.

A pair of flügelhorns blared as the signal for the start of the ceremony, and I was feeling on edge as the next few moments here would either make or break my future here. Two lines of guards exited the door in synch and began heading towards the center of the castle basin which Crystal Heart was planted during ceremonies, with me still staying out of sight. Two lines of guards formed a corridor to the holding platform-area in a very synchronous manner, which was meant to give an impression of power and control so no one would try anything rash. Emerald Spear’s commanding voice caused all the guards then to turn towards the crowd in virtually perfect synch.

Knowing my moment had come, I stepped outside with the strongest air of confidence which I could personally project, while internally I was nearly cracking under the sheer pressure of the situation. A gasp of untold thousands of voices followed and the hawklike stairs of many more that treated me as if I was suddenly the only thing to currently exist in the universe. Noting that the situation had not immediately gone to shit as I had feared, as the crowd had fallen into a trance-like state, after a few seconds I came into view with most mouths hanging open to varying degrees.

Deciding to quickly march to the Heart holding area while a crowd of untold thousands of pony eyes was still petrified. I arrived at the inner ring area and felt a tug in my hands, where I visibly held the Crystal Heart for all to see. Suddenly, a spike rose from the ground from the very middle of the castle, while another far longer and narrower one descended from the ceiling to form a clear area where the Heart was to be put while the pull on my hands strengthened further.

Feeling I had to say something to the stunned spectators, I started a short semi-improvised speech with a strong voice directed towards the almost dead silent audience, which was on the edge of their figurative seats, “The dark days of King Sombra have finally passed away, so let us cast off his works of darkness and put on the light within our own hearts to work towards a better tomorrow together, which we all share the magnificent light of the Crystal Heart."

I hoped they bought my mini speech and then put the hearth next to the holding pedestal with an open palm. The heart swiftly took to the air and floated to the middle of the two spikes and then began to glow as the street also began to glow. The heart began to spin with increasing force and the crystal ponies suddenly acted as if they remembered something, namely bowing down, and then the growing spin of Crystal Hearth reached the final phase.

My closed eyelids did little to help, as the extremely powerful light flashed from the Heart and its sheer intensity put me worrying if I would go blind, but thankfully, after a few seconds, I regained my vision with overwhelmingly intense cheers of joy that were nothing short of deafening! I think I might get hearing damage as I almost jumped from my skin due to the sheer intensity of the collective voices while being seriously on edge.

Spike in my heartbeat stabilized a few seconds later, and I decided to leave before somepony decided to act on their own volition. Giving a small wave which, meaning I wasn’t sure the crowd could even understand, was still given. Many were very excitingly stomping in their places, and some were even giving looks that only fans would give to their idols, which at some level seriously unnerved me in the back of my mind.

Quickly walking back towards the castle door, I went in with most of the guards from the bridge corridor in tow, while the ones surrounding the Crystal Heart stayed behind to keep the crowd at bay, including Emerald. Noticing how exhausted I felt from sheer adrenaline being released during that ordeal, I almost wanted to sit for a moment and rest, but remembered the presence of the following crystal guards and began kind of panicking internally.

‘What the hell will I do now?’, as a glare from my peripheral vision, which revealed the group of crystal guards following me like a herd does a Shepherd, as the voices outside remained clearly very audible still. Even more disturbingly I saw myself being semi-transparent and sparkling like the ponies, which I tried to not think about currently.

Deciding I couldn’t dismiss them now, I decided to then march back to the conference room. Opening the door, I saw the unhappy stallion and the Azur mare alongside most other council members in the room, who seemed to have held a heated discussion between themselves before I came. Some looked uneasy but most seemed to be still in a very good mood, with their coats visibly sparkling like others.

The Azur mare greeted me as others council members seemed to be a bit intimidated by my new guard entourage in tow, as the guards were partially of the council members. I personally decided it would now be either fully conforming my dedication in pursuit of this insane scheme of being a king or simply dropping it now, as I currently had kind of amassed the required jump start for a required militant following in terms of theoretically trying now for the possible genuine takeover of the Crystal Empire.

I briefly let out a small breath at such an indecisive moment, ‘I need a consensus on opinions.’, for what to do next.

The mood in the room only communicated that I was the only one really allowed to talk, so I did: "As you know, I have been quote on quote; Anointed... by the Crystal Heart as the possible new King of The Empire and now ask if you believe in such a thing to be even possible and you would personally be on board with it, or I should now simply end any such pursuit in favor of an alternate optio-"

"NO!" was a sudden and emotional shout from the very same Azur mare from yesterday which caught me and others majorly off guard.

"Wait, so you personally believe I would make a possible good fit as a future king?", I questioned with major skepticism about the sheer dubiousness of such a prospect.

"ABSOLUTELY!!! For you are our only fitting choice we have!!", was staunchly stated with far greater emotional intensity then before.

I was a bit shocked by this sheer emotion of the outburst alongside some others, but chose to continue after two seconds, "What is your name then? If you truly believe so."

"My name is Starry Sea and why should you be! For you are the only hero we currently have!!!", was said in desperate plea. The rest of the audience seemed to come to some sort of realization as the figurative gears in their heads were apparently turning and then all were soon awaiting my response collectively.

I looked around and decided to interrogate them further to confirm their sincerity, "Are you all with this decision, for there would be no turning back afterwards then?"

I saw only expressions that signaled various forms of approval from them and said more than mere words, and then I came to a terrifying moment to make a truly huge decision.

‘Can I even refuse at this point?!?’, as the situation would certainly collapse to complete anarchy otherwise and all the deaths that would result from it. If I did, then I would have to literally perform likely the most ambitious and impressive power grab of all time! That normally would be completely impossible, but now it is barely even borderline possible, only due to the sheer uniqueness of the situation! It would undoubtedly be a huge uphill battle, but I had kind of received the required political backing to even try and the concept of ruling held some considerable personal appeal to me in terms of other personal career paths, despite how short it all would likely end up being. Plus, having access to state resources would help me possibly get back home or at least grant me a decent standard of living.

I was consumed by those possibilities of very slim chance success and most likely fatal failure for a few seconds as the all-consuming tension within and without simply didn’t dissipate, then I came to a final conclusion.

‘Okay, Screw it! Better to be a lion for a single day than a sheep for a hundred years!’

I looked at the audience with a determination and a smile filled with determined confidence even if a bit artificial, "If you so wish, then I will be your Champion of a Revolution."

Author's Note

Notes:

The chapter came later than planned as the production phase took longer than expected (Note: I have mostly written the content of future chapters then fully completed them). Expect the next chapter to come out before the end of April.
About the Ukraine mention (I’m neural about the topic), I almost didn’t add it until I remembered its necessity to test out waters and experiment on how the audience reacts on easily controversial topics on this site, due to planning to add a lot more politically and thematically controversial topics later on within this story that will eventually be introduced and discussed. I also added it due to feeling it would add good future story points. (I’m smart enough to discuss with proper care about such sensitive topics (I refer to other subjects here)).
EaW is inherently pretty political and in this story politics will be a huge component of it which comes in. As you have probably noticed by now, I try to aim for maximum realism in terms of my story telling. This story will include often overlooked/interesting topics in all its forms, including the uglier aspects of them.
I will try to answer all questions that aren't too spoilery. (Note: Notify me if I make a mistake in regards EaW lore, so I can fix it due to my strong personal attitudes towards canon compliance.)