A vast expanse, often covered in snow, freezing for most of the year, and what little life there is often hides away from the weather where it can. How did Thorax survive that? A changeling, battered and weak, with the closest source of sapient love far, far away, is usually a dead changeling, and the tundra is very unforgiving.

Timeline stretches from shortly after the end of the Changeling Invasion of Canterlot to when Spike discovers Thorax, with an epilogue as a closer. I may come back in the future to add to the epilogue, but for now, this story is complete.

Note: The prologue is filled with scientific jargon. It should be readable to most, though it might not be the easiest to go through, so I have a summary in the author's note at the bottom just in case. Later parts have narration more befitting Thorax, for the most part.

Cover image is a crop of a screenshot in the wiki's gallery for The Crystal Empire Part 1.