“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)