Sombra looked over the map of the Crystal Empire, dusted off from years being in storage. He gripped the table with a hoof, never expecting to need it until after the Equestrian lands were conquered. His sharp teeth grit against each other, producing the occasional spark that died off as fast as it was born. His planning room was overgrown with dark crystals of varying shades, all having black exteriors with colorful cores. It was like a disease overtaking everything in the palace. A giant table sat in the middle, roughly carved from a giant, purple gemstone found some ways outside the empire in the royal gemstone mines. A relic of Sombra's prior dominance of the land, it was left abandoned in the war room due to its sheer size, but the king's return gave everything new purpose.

Multiple smaller tables with boxes and sorting cabinets for folders held a plethora of documents concerning the daily needs of Sombra's servants and the empire. The walls were still barren of any art, but with the crystals growing over them, there wasn't much room for such leisure, but they had their own colors to compensate.

He looked over several piles of paperwork that his military councilors were helping him with, although there were only two at the moment. The rest were on the front lines.

"Only two thousand pony prisoners this time," the king thought to himself. "And thirty-seven losses for my monsters... The war is progressing too slowly."

One of the councilors pulled a map out and started measuring it. "Looks like our forces west of Equestria managed to capture several mining pits." She scratched her neck and grimaced. "We're going to have to start building railroads to transport everything that gets mined there to our refineries."

Sombra tilted his head as he looked at his councilors, a sense of pride welling up within him. These creatures were made with a dash of pony flesh and fused to a new breed of crystal he had managed to refine during his exile, and each one sported the coloration of any particular crystal they crew from. These two were almost entirely black with a colored outline that displayed their features at certain angles. The mare's was yellow while the stallion's was orange.

The stallion scratched at his missing eye while a crackling and rubbing of stones seemed to come from his head. "This damnable wound is getting on my nerves," he complained.

"Stop picking at it!" Sombra howled. "Your eye is regenerating. Doing that will delay the effect."

The fake pony snorted and went back to sifting through the papers and reports. "I wish you made us with instantaneous regeneration."

Sombra cackled. "This isn't a book where anything can be done with the stroke of a quill." He leaned back in his chair. "Your crystals require material and magic to fuel their regeneration, and I won't accept my subjects to be used as food for regeneration, let alone our slaves and prisoners." He sifted through some documents and shook his head. "We'll need them to work the factories and the mines now."

The akward silences were interrupted haphazardly by the rustling of paper and folding of cardboard. Despite the darkness in the room thanks to the windows getting covered by the growing crystals, the three equines could see just fine. It also acted as a sort of cloak for any outside spies if they could peer inside. The two fake ponies bounced in terror when the door slammed open, shattering some growths on the wall and revealing an exhausted fellow fake equine.

"Your highness!" the pony wheezed. "Bad news! Something happened on the front!"

Sombra slammed his hooves onto the table, throwing off quills and weights holding down maps and causing some of the said weights to roll off onto the floor, creating muted thuds.

"What? What happened? I had ensured my monsters could handle and disperse the princesses' magic if they showed up!"

The fake pony shied away from his lord's fury. "I-it wasn't th-them! It was something else!"

The king's sharp teeth ground against each other, producing dark sparks. "What is it, pony?! Speak!" Sombra hollered.

The soldier took a deep breath and looked at the stern, heavy gazes of the three high-ranking ponies before him, each able to have him executed immediately. "Some weird things came from the sky and interrupted the battle at the border near a supply core of ours at the border. They started attacking the Equestrians."

At first, Sombra was going to have this claim dismissed and have this soldier flogged for incrrectly relaying information, but he and the other two ponies broke into an uproarius laughter.

"Did you hear that, my king?" the orange-tinted stallion shouted. "He wanted to give us good news!"

"It sure is good!" the mare added.

"You have brought me some good news, soldier. I have needed a good laugh in quite a while, now leave. You shan't be flogged for this ridicule," Sombra said with a wave of his hoof.

"But your majesty, I aml not lying! It really--"

Sombra slammed a hoof onto the table. "There is naught but stars and darkness outside of Equestria. I have gazed at the sea of the night for many a cycle and have found nothing of note." He then pointed at the soldier. "I still feel the mirth you have given me, but contain to push and I will have you executed through repeated flogging." He watched as his fake pony shook in place, his lips pursed. "Has the spell malfunctioned?" Sombra thought to himself. "They shouldn't be having conflicts."

Suddenly, a dozen envelopes swollen with reports from multiple battlefields landed on the table, forcing more of the paperwork and office supplies to tumble everywhere. The stallion concilor grabbed two and opened them with his magic. As he and the mare read through both, their eyes cracked the more they went through. Shocking Sombra, the two hurried through the others and started mumbling to each other. Then came a dozen more envelopes apparating from above the table, and a dozen more.

"What is happening?!" Sombra panicked.

"The Black Fields to the south-west, the Gold Flamingo Islands east of Equestria...the borders connecting us. Even some of our allies on the other continents have reported the same thing," the stallion gasped in horror.

The mare dropped the paper and dropped her face into her hooves. "That soldier was right...It's not possible to spread such stupidity across entire continents in so short a time."

Sombra stuttered and stammered as he tried to formulate words that wouldn't leave his addled mind. "Then what exactly is happening?! Stars are attacking us and the Equestrians?!"

The messenger shrugged. "I do not know, your highness. I was told told to inform you before the reports came in so you wouldn't be overwhelmed."

Sombra's eye twitched and his gaze filled with a burning fury that made the soldier wish he was dead, but the strike never came.

"Let us wait and see what happens and how our troops react to this newcoming. It will aid us in understand and eventually dealing with whatever these monstrosities are.

After about a month of gathering information and putting the factories on overtime as well as pouring his magic and strength into the vats of growing flesh and crystal to make hundreds of new false ponies and forcing the failures into monstrosities he used as shock troops, Sombra ad joined the new frontline that had the arrogance to dig deep into the melting snows of his territory. Worse, still, were the many black crystals rising high into the sky like skyscrapers, their uneven and crooked shapes harnessed by his warlocks as absolute area control artillery. It was something he tried to bring to the frontline to destroy the Equestrians, but without the Crystal Heart, they crumbled like a deck of cards and were forced to be within his lands.

He grimaced as he approached the line with his cohort of armored troops and rifleponies, a strange sound beating and whistling in the air around him. Crafted, hexagonal bunkers of dark crystal had been hoofmolded and ground down to a near perfect smoothness as a make-shift defensive structure, and the king could see a few, significantly larger constructs through which the barrel of artillery cannons poked out. Even as he passed them by, the many artillery regiments in the back were actively gathering, distributing, and organizing artillery shells. A few of the bunkers and walls had elevated walls or deeper pits in which a crew of mortar ponies resided.

Sombra wasn't a huge fan of this new technology, but he enjoyed the results and vowed to be taught everything it offered in the modern day. He saw runners going up and down the lines, relaying information or delivering supplies of food and ammo to the troops waiting nervously for the upcoming assault. Even the monsters Sombra was so proud of were not bouncing in place, roaring, slavering, and yanking on their chains for freedom. In fact, to his shock, they were free! They were waiting patiently, quietly, and calmly behind the artillery and defenses.

"What could cause even my mutated failures to be so apprehensive? They never displayed such thing with the Equestrians," Sombra thought out loud.

One of the infantrymen pointed to a field of destroyed buildings, mud, burned trees, and mounds of rotting flesh and rusting metal. "Perhaps that is why, your lordship."

As he and the reinforcements got closer to the defenses, the strange mounds in the mud and refuse grew with detail, showing that dozens of his monsters were lying dead. They surrounded themselves with a plethora of giant blue creatures that had been ripped apart, chopped up, melted, chewed on, or any other number of physical actions.

"At least they went out fighting."

"Your highness!" a soldier realized.

"Stay at your posts!" Sombra ordered. "And what is that infernal noise?!"

A machine gunner rolled onto her side to look at her king. "It's the blue things. They've been singing and chanting in our old trenches and those buildings over there. We don't know what they're doing."

Once more gazing into the distance, sombra could see dozens of smoke stacks, each darker than the last, rising high into the cloudy sky. Sparks grew between the ruins of the village the creatures stayed in, working on whatever weaponry they had in place. The sounds of hammers seemed in sync with their almost orchestral howling echoing off of nothing, making Sombra feel like he was in an orchestral theater. Metal banged and clanked in rhythm to steam escaping pressurized confines and explosions accentuated the voices while material was bent and melted into place.

Sombra grimaced at this orchestra of unease, the music bringing discomfort and anxiety to his soldiers and even him. Even the monsters seemed to cower.

Enough was enough.

"You call yourselves the ponies of my Crystal Empire?!" Sombra shouted. "You exist because I made you, and you will recover from your wounds because I demanded it from your growth! You have nothing to fear, so are you cowards or my shadow crystal ponies?!"

The machinegunner gawked at him. "B-but your majesty, they--"

"Organize and attack!" Sombra ordered loudly.

The ponies that had gathered in the trenches in front of the bunkers and machinegun nests cheered in unison at their king's speech and hopped over the steep walls of dirt reinforced with wood and crystal.

The artillery and mortars sounded like drums, crashing into the enemy lines after seconds of waiting, and bringing pride and amusement to Sombra as he saw his gigantic monsters fumble alongside his ponies, but his smile quickly soured, leaving way to an increasing amount of dread when he saw the massive blue things soar out of the ruins and trenches, weapons in hand and raining bullets and explosions everywhere.

"They have portable machine guns?!" Sombra gawked in horror. His monsters crashed into the blue lines, sending the creatures flying, and to the king's shock, they immediately got back up, jubilating at the event that transpired and laughing at any lost limbs. "They're...they're crazy..."

Loud roars drowned out the sounds combat as monstrous machines running on what Sombra could only perceive as chains with no holes hopped over hill and drifted around walls. The bunker artillery opened fired, hitting several of these ramshackle machines, shattering them apart, but others dodged comfortably, running over soldiers and blowing others apart with their weaponry. One of Sombra's failures open its maw, unleashing a dozen tentacles that caught one of the vehicles and ripped it apart in its fury, but that didn't stop the others from peppering it with lead and gunpowder.

"I tried to warn you, your highness," the machinegunner said between volleys. "They're attracted to us more than the Equestrians because of your monsters."

Several lasers from the crystal skyscrapers beamed down, razing the ruins of the old village off the map. Two were even used to create a ball of intense gravity that moved slowly along the creatures' line as it sucked them and their crafts up, crushing them into thin plates and growing its field of attraction. Even overhead they weren't safe, as odd craft soared, dropping explosives on the fake ponies and their defensive line while being chased by pegasi and flying beasts.

One section managed to get through the blue creatures' lines, only to start fleeing in the other direction, enraging Sombra. Unfortunately, he didn't get to voice his objections to this event when multiple lights shone through the darkness and he was deafened by the loudest boom he had ever heard. Everypony was stunned, including the monsters, but as the hearing returned, the blue things were cheering.

Something wider than an appartment complex slowly rolled into view, its wide, heavy body covered by a cannon that Sombra could only describe as the size of a corvette. In his horrified mind he was certain that was a clear exaggeration, but the sheer bulk of this ralshackle abomination stunned him. How did it move? How did it work? How anything?

He could see eight separate rows of the thick chains moving underneath it, protected by multiple layers of thick armor. In fact, the armor was so thick and the body s o huge, that it carried a plethora of smaller cannons out of its hull, on its sides, and even had a few turrets hastily slapped together sitting atop it. Worse yet, even though the artillery and bunker weapons were hitting it, it was covered with so many random plates of scrap metal that they would simply flake off on impact, and the blue things hanging off the side, shooting at his monsters and soldiers would jump down, roll on the ground, grab the sheets, then climb up and hammer everything back in place excitedly.

It stopped in place while the turret adjusted, but instead of aiming at the frontline, it aimed up.

"Brace!" Sombra ordered as he magically covered his eyes and ears.

A few of the ponies w eren't able to comply, and the shockwave shattered them in front of their fellows. The cannon's power was so great that it caused a vacuum effect at its barrel mouth, sucking back some of the enormous fire it had created which was expelled almost immediately back out several 'pores' along the metal cylinder.

Sombra turned to see one of the crystal skyscrapers collapsing. They were meant to hold off the entirety of Equestrian might! They could shrug off Sombra's most powerful spells! He had designed them that way!

"How?!" the king shouted in indignation. "Hoooow?!"

The blue creatures continued fighting, unbothered by the event, with many laughing at their fellows getting shot to death and some grabbing their bodies to use as shields and make-shifts clubs. This wasn't a war Sombra wanted. He hated this mockery of something noble and honorable.

Author's Note

You'll find the link to Lux Locus: The First Awakening here.

It's a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid spanning 82k words, set in a universe where eldritch aliens can come in from other dimensions with weapons that have odd effects within our reality and gods that can enter our plane with the right rituals, but that's for later books.

Here's the description:

Killigan Ghor, a blacksmith of the Calaghi System, explores the swamps beyond his village and discovers immense gauntlets that put him on the path to becoming a super soldier of the Terran Expanse: A Pillar Scieldan. As he grows in experience over the years, he returns to his home system with the promise of defending it from threats. However, due to his reckless actions, he awakens a rotting threat that casts its eyes over his home system. Its ever-changing tendrils grow closer to his home, and Killigan must find a way to stay its decaying flesh lest it destroys all of his work.