A shrill cry rang out, sweeping across the tundra in its entirety. Outside of being audible to every living thing with ears in the Frozen Wastes (and far more than just that for those near the source), it had little physical effect on the surroundings.

There were two exceptions to that, though. The first was that an ancient, extremely powerful defensive artefact absorbed much of the magical power behind it, shattering in the process. As the day-to-day function of this crystal was to ensure that the area it warded was hospitable to the local denizens, having this happen during the harsh winter of the area was bad enough.

What made the whole matter worse was that the magical bonds chaining the mostly forgotten ancient evil had weakened. There was yet not enough anger and strife to truly awaken them, yet they went from a deep, forced slumber to dreaming of the world above. And as the collective dreams slowly strengthened, their natural influence began seeping into the world from which they were banished from.

The winter of hatred was slowly returning.

Thorax shuddered in his Insect Wing form as he both heard the cry of a newborn foal and an intense wave of negative emotion pass over him. It was raw and undirected, not filtered into something like fear or anger or the like. Whatever caused it must've been very powerful and fairly undeveloped emotionally, or maybe just barely conscious.

He shook his head to try and get rid of the cloying negativity, which was mostly successful. For some reason, some of it still seemed to cling on him, but he put it behind him. He needed to keep an eye out for any ponderous pink ponies pronking about, as he did see the little dragon named Spike near that Equestrian unicorn's house that he had since forgotten the name of. While he didn't know much about that dragon, as the locals tended to tell stories about him that got more outlandish every month, the changeling was aware that he had some connection to Pinkie Pie, and-

A shudder went down his spine when he thought of the strange pony's name, and he lost his train of thought when he realized it wasn't stopping. He looked around in confusion as an unusually chill wind penetrated the crowds in the streets. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, but that couldn't be right. It had to be impossible.

To his horror, it was true. The bright fire of love that appeared like a beacon in the center of the city had vanished. Not only that, but the shell of warmth surrounding the city had vanished. At least the disappearance of the Heart's influence explained why things just didn't seem quite as nice, as it gave the entire city a weak, but positive aura. It was so thin that it took more energy to feed off it than it would give, but he could still sense it. And now, it was gone.

He looked around at the various ponies passing by him, but they all were unconcerned. While he was expecting them not to really notice the slight shift in the emotional background of the city, they had to notice the cold weather streaming into the city, right?

However, there wasn't any real reaction from them, they just kept walking about and talking excitedly about some sort of crystalling. While the celebration that he knew little about in honor of the royal couple's newborn was a bit of a big deal, the barrier protecting the city vanishing during the harshest season of the year probably was a more urgent problem. It's not like the Heart would get taken down for a polishing or something.

...okay, it would explain the vanishing barrier, but what about its own signature? Unless it was teleported away to some polisher well outside the city...

Another, even colder breeze pushed Thorax out of that train of thought, and he decided that the best thing to do was to head for the castle at the center. It should be the part of the Empire that's furthest away from those amazingly angry looking storm clouds that were coming in and might give him an idea on what happened to the Crystal Heart.

While the crowd was moving in that direction anyway, it was painfully slow, as if they were heading there, but whatever they wanted to get to was hours away. Whether or not that was actually the case, he had a hard time getting around all those legs that were constantly moving around, but the occasional detour into the alleyways helped make him good time, considering the circumstances.

Eventually he managed to get ahead of the bulk and easily trot around the many crystal ponies dotting the streets. There was another crowd at the outer rim of the marketplace as there were a few enterprising ponies looking to make a quick bit. While most of the sellers he could recognize by sight, one pair he didn't was a couple of unicorn stallions with yellow coats and red and white manes who looked identical to each other with the exception of one having a mustache. According to the sign, they were selling 'Genuine Crystalling Shards'. As he was walking past the stall, he did notice what looked like a very small line of text underneath the big letters. They were so small, he might've needed to fly up to it in order to read it.

Still, that wasn't the problem he was worried about, so he moved on towards the small crowd in front of the castle. He panicked a little upon seeing Fluttershy as well as the rainbow maned pegasus and the earth pony that wore a hat, but a quick scan of the area told him that the closest pony with anything like that pink pony's emotional signature was in the castle itself a good way up, so he should be safe from that creepy forced cheer and weird randomness.

The wind was definitely beginning to pick up, but over it he could easily hear that rainbow pegasus shout, "Come on, it's freezing out here!"

One of the crystal ponies replied, "Uh, this is the Crystal Empire. We've seen snow before."

Thorax was about to ask, "Inside the city?" but the argument was ended by the prince announcing an evacuation. With a dramatic pause (partially filled by ponies asking about the Crystalling), he also revealed that the Crystal Heart had been shattered.

The changeling found this utterly shocking. Sure, he kept his distance in the last year, but he was very much aware of how it protected and the ponies that lived in the city. Without it, this place would be too difficult to survive in, even without this unusually strong storm. He wasn't just worried about needing to go to a new and unknown place to stay and hide in, but also that the ponies that he had started to get to know (and many, many more that he hadn't) would lose their homes and need to find new ones. There was also the big problem of-

He was once again pulled back to reality, this time by now the sensation of somepony pushing him on his rump. He heard Shining Armor say behind him, "Come on, little guy, we have to leave now before the train tracks freeze."

Sure enough, the rest of the crowd had already started moving towards the station. Not wanting to stand out too much, the disguised changeling ran forward and kept a brisk trot to keep up once he caught up. The short legs of a colt made the transfigured muscles work to keep the pace, but the equally low weight was a plus in making movement easy.

The pace didn't last. Once the prince meandered through the crowd to the front, he kept his high speed going, prompting the crowd to match. None of them complained, as the sight of the royal sisters of Canterlot fighting a losing battle against the weather provoked a distinct sense of urgency.

Naturally, Thorax fell behind, the little legs only able to put on so much speed. None of the other foals evacuating had this issue, as they had some relative with them to carry them to the station. After all, he kept his interactions as Insect Wing to a minimum outside of school, so the only adult with any reasonable amount of knowing him was Apple Skies. That particular pegasus caught a train leaving the Empire about a week ago, probably to visit family.

His gait slowly wavered as he began to wonder whether or not leaving the tundra was a good idea. Sure, the weather was insanely unforgiving, but the same could be said of Queen Chrysalis's wrath, and up here he was far from her reach. After all, Mayfly and Damselfly were here over a year ago, and since then he had seen not a single changeling. The hive ought to know he was here, and policy was that anyling gone from the hive for over a year and not on a long-term mission was either dead or treasonous, and the occasional scream from the deepest parts of the dungeon reminded everyling that getting caught was a fate worse than death. The uncaring wastes were looking better and better by the minute, even in this storm.

The decision wasn't made for him. As he stood there shivering at the memories of the screaming damned, a guard leading another evacuation group managed to grab him by the scruff of his neck and plop him onto an armored back without losing speed. For a sheet of bouncing metal constantly dusted by snowflakes, Thorax's new spot was surprisingly warm.

As the effort of holding on occupied most of his attention, he discovered, to his mild surprise, that the earlier-than-expected stop wasn't just his imagination. They were quite the distance away from the train station, and the group in front had stopped too soon as well.

It didn't take long for the crowd in front to move again, this time splitting down the middle to let some Equestrians through first. While the royal sisters were the most striking, there was also Spike, the pony that Thorax eventually recalled to be named Sunburst, and a mare that looked like someling tried to merge together the forms of Pinkie and Fluttershy's unicorn friends together in a transformation.

Incidentally, the last of these was yelling, "Make way, we've got a wizard who knows how to save the day!"

The changeling couldn't help but smile a bit at the news. Maybe he didn't need to choose between barely scraping by or having horrible, horrible things happen to him.

Any further musings would have to wait until the guard that was giving the poor, lost foal a ride reached the castle again.

The disguised changeling was wandering the streets again. He left the crowd surrounding the castle as soon as he could do so without getting noticed, as he doubted he would be able to follow the procedures of the festivities. Sure, it was even colder out in the alleyways, but he was used to it by now, and if he needed to, he could change into something warmer or take shelter in one of the nearby buildings.

Of course, he kept an eye on the city center with his emotional sense, and Sunburst did not disappoint. He smiled at sensing the familiar (if almost painfully bright) sight of the Heart again. It faded once he noticed something else that was forming that he was less familiar with, but still recognized: an expanding shell of energy, yet another large enough to cover the whole city.

Turning away, he ran at full speed, but only managed to pass by a couple buildings before it hit him. It shoved him forward a short distance, dispelled his transformation, left a little love behind as a treat, and made his exoskeleton feel all tingly as it raced off into the distance in front of him.

He lay there dazed for a while, just staring at the city shield being reestablished while wondering about what just happened, and how.

With the ancient artefact restored in full power, a pulse of its energy swept the lands of the continent. The dreams of the ancient spirits of hate stilled, and they returned to a peaceful slumber. It was nowhere near as deep as it was before, and should something go wrong, they would return in full, picking the grapes of wrath from the tangled vines of exclusion as their bounty.

Author's Note

Act 5 is here, and we're hitting the end soon.

The sheer power of the storms in The Crystalling doesn't match anything in earlier episodes involving the Crystal Empire, so I figured a one-two punch of it being near the height of winter and the Windigos having an influence on it would give the appropriate amount of raw strength to attrition away at the power of the two sisters.

Also, I only now realized that Starlight looks like an average between Twilight and Rarity in terms of color palette and styles. It's been years since I first watched. How did I not notice this until putting myself into the mind of someone who doesn't know them by name, just appearance?