A dark wasteland of icy snow covered the land of tundra and with the gloom condensing down from the moonless pitch-black night. A raging snowstorm did not yield any sign of warmth to sustain anything living, If anything were alive. There were neither trees nor grass; any that tried to break the veil of the snow would have frozen and died in their pitiful attempt. Black pebbles were scattered around the field of white slush, each having a coating of crystalline solid ice covering their exteriors, as if the isolated darkness and coldness of this wasteland went down to their very centres.
The storm raged on; its howling winds seemed to beckon death itself.
The further north a pony would travel into the snow, the more unforgiving and sinister the environment would become. Almost trapping in the land’s cold embrace and banishing them from the rest of the world as if they weren’t even there to begin with.
Banished.
That word became the hidden meaning of this wretched place.
There is a large abyss that had made a rip into the very ground, its blackness descended down for miles into a bottomless pit, much like the blackness that covered anywhere on the surface where one would try to look. The snow itself didn’t appear white and inviting that others would have experienced, this snow had turned a duller shade making it appear grey and lifeless. This snow isn’t normal; this land isn’t normal.
There is only pain, suffering, agonizing loneliness, and being frozen to the core. Constantly battered by snow storms as being hopelessly trapped in this forsaken place for an eternity.
Traveling further into the north, the storms get more violent, snow piles on higher, and the world of the frozen tundra gets darker that not even if Celestia’s sun were to rise into the sky at its peak that this ravaged land would receive any gift of light from it. More black rocks liter the path until a point where a mound forms with many of them littered onto one another.
Each one is encased within a sphere of ice, and that could only have happened being frozen over time. Being… forgotten.
Suddenly, in all the darkness that covered the tundra, a small red light shone underneath a larger pile of black rubble. It was a gleaming red horn. It protested against the night, its time was not done yet.
Its light gradually got brighter and brighter. Soon it became a shining beacon, a sinister one that pierced through the darkness of the land.
The storm was unsettled, it raged even more with this act of defiance from the horn. The crimson horn protested to the land once more, but it also accepted it? Yes, it feasts on this unbearable landscape. The horn glows and all the shadows cast around it soak into the sleek object. It draws power in from the darkness of the clinging shadows; anything that did cast a shadow soon was swallowed whole into the energy of the horn. The horn hungrily fed itself this feast, this land, its home, was rich in shadows and hate.
The horn was not satisfied, it wanted more, it wanted to devour every last piece of hate this place has to offer, it wanted to become WHOLE.
It levitated towards the sky in a sudden rush of power. It grew brighter; its light shined over the black discarded rocks and piles of rubble surrounding it. A wave of scarlet energy shoots out and the ice around the rocks starts to melt. Instead of melting completely, the rocks shatter and cascade a dazzling light. The rocks were only shells as the blast had exposed what was waiting underneath to be awoken once more. Crystals, and they were as black as night.
The crystals gather around the floating sinister horn and smash into each other. Crystal dust soon covered the air and everything was concealed within a thick layer of grey smoke and shadow. The sound of them clanging against one another echoed through the wasteland. The snowstorm grew more raged.
Faster the clanging went, ignoring the attempt of the wind trying to buffet and cancel out its noise. It can’t be stopped, not anymore. This thing died once before; it was not going to die now.
A pair of ominous red dots pierces through the smoke-covered air. They were eyes.
A dark figure was forming inside the cloud of smoke, and soon its full body was reformed from literally a pile of rocks, a horn, and nothing else other than the cold desperation of this place. The shadows parted and the figure stepped out from its smoke as it dissipated into the storm. The horn that formed the standing pony was placed right on top of its head, a cape draped down past it’s body, it’s gleaming grey armor strapped to its hooves and neck, and a crown covered the top of its head and black flowing mane.
Its look was one of pure malice.
The figure did not feel any rejoice about being alive again; all it could feel was rage; all he had left was hate. It gritted its glistening white teeth as it remembered the events prior to how it ended up back in this place, how it had died. His heart was still black as before, but all his feelings were gone. A curse it gladly accepted. Nothing remained other than the burning rage which he felt throughout his entire being.
He looked up into the sky; the storm was still raging and trying to bring this thing down to its knees. The pony clutched the ground in a firm hold and arched its back upwards. Its mouth opened and it roared ferociously into the night with a booming vibration of anger, ceasing the storm in its tracks and shaking the savage wasteland around it.
It was signaling that it was not dead, that it was now alive.
The dark tyrant has returned.
Chapter 2: Ignorance is Bliss
A loud shattering noise erupted from the ground from where a cup had fallen out of the regal sun princess’s magical grasp. A strange chill had run up the Princess’s spine and a feeling came from her gut. Something bad had just happened, something horribly bad. Celestia didn’t know what it was, but there’s no other reason she would have dropped her cup if it wasn’t something related to Equestria’s well-being. She could sense if something was unbalanced in her world.
“Sister, are you alright?” a midnight blue alicorn went over to Celestia with concern in her eyes.
“I… I don’t know…" Celestia was fazed. "Did you feel that just now?” Celestia said with eyes filled with horror to the alicorn in response.
“I don’t know what you mean dearest sister. All is well here in the court.”
Celestia stammered, “It just felt like something went very wrong in that moment. That something terrible had just happened or has yet to happen.”
“Perhaps thou is stressing too much with all this work. Come, you should have a break sister. There won’t be many more visitors and the paperwork can be finished later,” the alicorn said with a smile before beckoning Celestia to abandon her seat on the throne for a few minutes. The sun princess let out a sigh knowing that there would be no way of her talking her sister out of this.
“Fine Luna, perhaps a break does sound like a good idea,” she said trotting beside her sister and realized just how tired she felt.
Celestia tried to ignore that feeling from before and dismiss it from giving her any more stress, but no matter how hard she tried to bury it in the back of her mind that feeling always lingered, a reminder.
The two ponies trotted down a corridor, nodding their heads to any passing guards or officials, the sun princess grimaced every time she did. How could Luna not sense this? The princess said to herself in a fleeting fit of inner anxiety. They went further through the castle and eventually Celestia was relieved that they arrived at their private quarters.
“Hello Iron Knight, wonderful weather we are having,” Luna gave a smile to a grey elite Pegasus guard.
His movements were swift and he opened the door to allow the sisters through to their rooms. Members of the elite guard were known to have been subject to stricter disciplinary training than the other members of the guard, so the grey Pegasus had only saluted them with an unwavering stance and replied alertly, “Indeed it is, your highness.”
Luna gave him a courteous nod and went into the room followed by Celestia who said a small ‘thank you’ to the guard, and the door shut firmly closed behind them. Now with some privacy Luna can get to the bottom of this.
Luna waited patiently to let her sister address her concerns first; it was after all, polite. A silence lay stagnant in the room; Luna gave a small awkward cough, but received no notice from Celestia. Her eyes were shadowed and grimaced, obviously deep in thought with… whatever she was trying not to feel.
At last Luna had lost patience in her sister to speak, she needed to snap her out of it. At the top of her voice shouted, “WHAT THOU IS WRONG SISTER!?”
This immediately crashed through Celestia’s skull and she regained her composure. “Thank you. I don’t know how to describe it. First I was sipping tea on the throne and then… just… something purely evil and angry came into my mind. It was if all of Equestria had been struck by a cataclysm.”
“Strange, there are no reports of anything out of the ordinary so far. Ever since you’ve sent Twilight Sparkle to restore the Crystal Empire, everything has been in harmony,” Luna answered, still unsure about just how the feeling Celestia felt was like.
Instantly a horrible dark thought crossed her mind when she heard the Crystal Empire being mentioned. Celestia went weak in the knees, she didn’t know why. Why do I not KNOW!?
Luna helped her up and Celestia quickly explained. “I just felt that feeling again, only this time it was directed at the Empire!”
“What!? Could they be in danger?” Luna sounded horrified. Celestia was in fact not going crazy being overworked like she had originally thought. No, Luna had felt the amount of darkness going through Celestia’s mind when she made contact. Whatever did or was going to happen, it was not going to be good. “Perhaps you should send a message to them, warning them of a possible—whatever it is!”
Celestia’s grimaced look before went to one of panic, “I can’t do that! The magical systems in the Empire haven’t been rebuilt yet; my magic won’t be able to reach it until they fix their amplifier!” Celestia quickly let out a breath of relief when she realized there was another way to deliver her message, “A messenger.”
Luna nodded and went out of the room to find the royal messenger while Celestia remained and wrote out a long note to Princess Cadence and Shining Armor who presided over the Empire. Just as she finished the royal messenger stepped into the room and bowed.
“Your grace, you have something to be delivered?”
“Yes,” Celestia said rolling up the scroll and levitating it over to the messenger’s hooves. “This is an urgent letter that NEEDS to arrive to the rulers of the Crystal Empire. The fate of Equestria may be in your hooves to deliver this soon enough. Do I have your promise?”
“Absolutely, your highness. I will make sure this gets there in record time!” the messenger said with a bit of pep which brought a smile of approval from Celestia. In no time at all, he raced from the room and out from Canterlot.
Luna came back into the room and went next to her sister, she said quietly, “What do you think it actually is for a thought to have such grief?”
“I don’t know Luna… Until we know what we’re dealing with we can’t make guesses and we can’t let fear into our hearts. We need to stay strong.”
Even though Celestia had said she needed to have courage, all she could feel right now was a tight knot in the confides of her stomach.
The Crystal Empire, it has become a wonderful city full of happy ponies ever since Twilight and her friends have saved them from the wrath of the dark tyrant, King Sombra. Knowing that he was forever gone and unable to harm them further, the crystal ponies have lost all fear from their old tyrannical leader and gave love and affection to their new rulers.
Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was looking outside from a window in the crystal palace at the heart of the empire. All she could feel was happiness and love from the citizens below, why wouldn’t they be? They were finally free after one-thousand years of a curse on top of which King Sombra had enslaved them for who knows how long. Cadence gave a heartfelt sigh as she turned her head back indoors to attend to some royal duties.
She and Shining Armor have become the rulers of the empire soon after the Sombra threat ended as thanks from the Celestial Sisters as well as the populace. They truly did bring in the teachings of what love and harmony were to the empire and its citizens were grateful. To them, the empire seemed like a utopia. Completely cleansed from dark magic, and left untouched by dangerous entities.
As Cadence began to sort through some royal paperwork, a door creak grabbed her attention. She looked to see who it was and her eyes filled with happiness when she saw it was her husband. No words were needed for the hug that was inevitable, they loved each other strongly than anypony else.
After their embrace Shining quickly gave her wife the report he made on his trip further north. “It was snowing just like everywhere else outside the empire. However, there was a pretty crazy storm blowing at me the more I went up. It wasn’t like that in any other direction though. That was very odd, maybe one day I’ll get through it if I’m better equipped, but until then I’m be with you,” he said with a grin.
Cadence gave a shyly smile and said, “Well until you head out again it’s great to have you back home.” She glanced over at the table piled up with papers from her work and gave a small grunt, “Urgh, it’s going to take me hours to do these.” Her expression changed to the previous smile from before. “Can you believe they are all from the crystal ponies? There are just so many things that we need to fix and build and create and—”
Shining quickly put a gentle hoof to her mouth, “And we will do it all one hoofstep at a time.” He said it with such a sincere smile Cadence couldn’t resist a small giggle from her mouth. They both went over from the table and selected a sheet of paper from random and began to read it. It was concerning the lack of defense the empire had (minus Shining and Cadence, plus a few 'guards' if you want to call them that) and that any future attacks may prove disastrous.
“We really should ask Celestia for a few guards,” Shining began to say.
“We can’t. We don’t have the magical transmitter enhancer to send her a request from that far away. Either the letter doesn’t reach her and ends up in a lake or I explode from overcharging my magic,” Cadence said with a bit of a rhetorical tone.
“No, no— we don’t want that to happen,” Shining joked.
“Who would even want to attack the empire in the first place? Sure this place is powered by love, but we could use it against the Changelings. And Sombra? I saw him explode and get vaporized. Unless he’s returned as a ghost I don’t think we’ll need to worry about him.”
Suddenly a chill went down her spine; she didn’t know what it was. Shining was busy thinking to notice. The feeling quickly passed just as soon as it had come and Cadence was left confused by what had just happened. As soon as Shining was done thinking he nodded his head.
“Agreed. That tyrant got what was coming to him. Still… it would be foolish not to just have SOME form of defense other than our magical barriers. Some offense to match our defense?”
“We can’t send her a letter until the transmitter gets built. I don’t think I can work on anything else today. So I guess we should just call it a day and be together?” Cadence asked her husband before nuzzling her body next to his. He grinned and gave a nod before the two slowly walked down the hallway together.
“You seem to be more clingy than usual Cadence? Everything alright?” Shining said with a bit of concern.
“No. Everything is fine. There was just… this strange feeling I got for a second. It was nothing, I’m alright.”
The stallion shrugged and wrapped a hoof around her beloved’s shoulders as they trotted through their castle of the majestic Crystal Empire.
A simple trip between Canterlot and the Crystal Empire was generally five to six hours long by train over acres of land mass. The rail system wasn’t efficient enough as most of the tracks were made to go around certain obstacles in the frozen north. This message has to be delivered and it has to be done quickly. The messenger couldn’t afford to take the leisure ride of the train, too much time would’ve been lost, and he had to maintain his reputation as a royal messenger.
He wouldn’t have been trained for this if it was going to be easy.
The moment he had left the celestial princesses of sun and moon, he flew with determined speed on a direct route to the Crystal Empire. Instead of going around, he would have to go through. Though, despite how experienced the messenger was on his deliveries, he never did traverse the northern parts of Equestria that often. Whatever happens he will have to fly through it as best he can.
An hour passed and things were still alright. He looked below past his hoofs and saw white powder replacing the bright green shade of grass. In his mind he knew that things were only going to get worse from here on out. He secured his goggles over his eyes and rushed forward into a snowy mist.
Time passed as he flew, he had almost forgotten how cold the northern winds could be and how unforgiving its storms are. Snow pelted across his face with fury and sharp winds tossed his body around through the open sky. Visibility did not exist. He wiped his goggles assuming that they were fogged or covered in snow, but in reality, it was because he was trapped inside a dense snowstorm. He hovered for a moment to assess his location; all he could see was white. From a pocket in his uniform, his hoof pulled out a compass. It was spinning erratically, never staying in place.
“Argh, what is this!?” The messenger shouted in annoyance through shaking teeth, putting the useless device back into his pocket.
He realized just how cold he felt and figured the best thing he could do to survive this was continue flapping his wings in a direction that he hoped led to the empire.
“Brrrr… no wonder no pony ever wants to visit this place. I can’t wait for the ride back home in a warm train car when this is all over,” he silently said to himself before slowly resuming his flight path, he barely felt the frost from the winds begin to spread slowly across his wings.
His body was shaking, teeth chattering, and frozen to the core. The icy chilled air pierced through his lungs with each breath he took, he felt his insides rupture in pain every time he inhaled. Everywhere was white. He couldn’t even tell which direction was up or down anymore.
Suddenly, something weird happened to the messenger. He began to fall.
Wh-what’s happening!? I… I can’t feel my wings! He shouted into his mind in disbelief, as he continued to fall. He didn’t know how high he was, he didn’t know how deep the snow would be, if there would be any rocks that would crush him on his fall.
He comes crashing down into the frigid powder.
His head pops up from a mound of snow moments later and weakly he begins to climb out from the hole he made. Checking his wings on his back he saw the reason why he crashed. They were covered in a sheen of frost, enough to render his wings immobile.
His breaths came in rasps; he could only look around him in a blind panic as the snowstorm buffeted him further. NEVER had the messenger ever been in a place like this. He crossed the deserts of Saddle Arabia with no issue, he evaded the dangers when traveling through the Aneighzon rainforests, and he even considered the Badlands of Equestria to be a cake walk compared to this.
This place… THIS PLACE IS A *NIGHTMARE!***
Panic and the bone-numbing cold were breaking the royal messenger in ways he never thought his rigorous training couldn’t handle. He doesn’t care about disappointing the Princess’s duty she bestowed onto him, in fact, right now, he considered being fired or retiring to be a better option than being lost in the middle of nowhere. A crippling fear took over him as he panicked and ran in a random direction to escape this land.
He didn’t want to die out here; he didn’t want to die…
Alone.
He tripped over a sharp rock and landed face first into the snow bluff. His hoof began to bleed on the snow where it was cut. This was it, he thought to himself. I am going to die right here...
He laid his head down and awaited his final sentence from this wretched place.
The storm died down in a sudden halt. This prompted the poor Pegasus to lift his head momentarily and see a greyed figure moving towards him in the view of the falling snow.
“H-HELP!” He shouted with what little strength he had left.
The figure stepped closer and closer towards his body, each movement forward by its hoofs reduced the intensity of the snow, and soon, the sky was clear enough to see Celestia’s shining beacon. The messenger couldn’t help, but allow a tear of relief to roll down his frosted cheek.
He found enough strength within himself and from the rays of the sun to raise his body from the snow and limp towards his savior. “Thank you, thank you… I don’t know who you are, but thank you…”
The figure stepped from a small veil of snow to show his self without any obstruction to his appearance. A black flowing mane, red eyes, armor, and green replaced the white in his eyes as a stream of purple wafted from them and through the air. The most interesting aspect of this pony was his glowing red unicorn horn.
The Pegasus had no idea who this stallion was, but he was grateful to finally find somepony else in this savage wasteland. “I was—I was sent to deliver news to the Crystal Empire to warn them about something. I don’t know what. Please, can you help me reach there?” The messenger said with a weak smile while holding out his scroll towards this strange, sinister looking pony.
The black unicorn made a large scowl across his face and barred his teeth sharply as he stepped with the might of anger crushing the snow beneath his hoofs in every step.
“No, what are you doing, what are you—”
It was too late; the dark tyrant was upon his victim.
“NO, STOP!”
“PLEASE!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
The Pegasus’s scream echoed for miles before silencing into a still void.
The unicorn turned away from his work, red crimson was now splattered across the pure white snow.
He found the message the pony was trying to deliver, and uncaringly he crushed it with a stomp of his grey hoof. The snowfall ended and he could see the Crystal Empire shining in the distance. His expression stayed the same, emotionless yet full of hate.
He growled under his breath, his revenge against all of Equestria will start there.
Menacingly, he trotted towards it, leaving a trail of smoke behind his whispering hoofsteps.
