Slanted moonlight like a low bent note fell from the heavens into twilight below.

Caramel Apple scrambled up the western wall of the crystal castle. The moon glowed like a streetlamp in the sky, casting a singular wall of light for him to ascend. His hooves burned under the strain. The castle’s walls weren’t just sheer--they were flawless. Far behind him bloomed the fire of a distant and endless war.

When he finally made it to the edge of the front balcony and threw himself over, he saw a beautiful mosaic of stars. The night was cool and clear. He smiled and imagined them sparkling all around him. A harsh chuckle escaped his lips in between gasps as he let his cheek rest against the floor. The castle threw off a subtle purple glow. No doubt he was laying on millions of bits worth of gems, flattened into a floor fit for a king. Purple lace curtains flanked a single, wide doorway leading into the castle. The moonlight transformed everything around him. The floors glowed lavender. The walls reflected moonlight into the corners

After a moment of rest, he got to his hooves and looked over the railing. From this height he could trace his path all the way down the castle wall, through the sleeping city below, all the way to the wasting plains beyond the city’s protective influence, finally terminating at the strange lights dominating the western horizon. It was a fire, that much he knew. Roaring silently from beyond the northern mountains, imminent like an explosion whose shockwave hadn’t reached him yet.

Hoofsteps came from beyond the balcony curtains. Caramel whipped around, but there was nowhere for him to hide. Grimacing, he flexed his hooves and attacked the wall once more. He barely got up ten meters before his grip gave out and he slid down the wall. His two bottom hooves made contact with the lip of the balcony entryway just as the curtains billowed open.

Four crystal guards and the gem prince emerged from the doorway. The guards took up posts at the balcony door below while the prince walked to the railing. The five of them stood there for a moment, statuesque except to blink at the raging inferno a few hundred miles away. When they moved, their bodies cast opaque, angled shadows over the floor.

Caramel looked into the night sky, desperate for celestial direction, a star-map to guide him through. His body was all twisted up, balanced perilously on his two hind legs. He let his breath out slowly as he ran a free hoof along the rock in search of something to hold onto. Opaque shadows closed in on his periphery.

More hoofsteps came from inside the castle. The guards stiffened. The silk curtain covering the doorway slid across the body of the gem princess as she walked slowly onto the balcony.

“Will it stop?” she asked the prince.

“No, your majesty,” he replied. “From its origin, the fire has consumed about eighty percent of the forest. Our agents say only the complete exhaustion of its fuel source will kill it.”

“So the whole forest will go.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

The princess sighed and turned her head towards the guards. “You may go back inside,” she told them. As they exited, she and the prince hung themselves over the balcony and stared at the ground far below. A beat of silence passed before the princess mumbled, “Your majesty.”

The prince chuckled. “Gotta keep up appearances.”

“Anything from your source?”

“She’s been very traumatized by this whole experience. If Equestria loses--”

“As if they’ll lose at this point.”

“--she could be tried for a war crime. At any rate, she’s very distraught.”

“You can’t mean she’s responsible.”

The princess trailed off. Caramel traced his remaining path of ascent to the top of the castle. He could feel it in his hooves--he wouldn’t make it. As his mind raced, he went back to staring blankly at the fire. From his perspective it looked as if somepony had ripped the sunrise open and spilled it across the horizon. The fires of a distant and endless war grafted orange light onto silvery clouds.

“The domestic outcry will be severe,” the prince said.

“If you think she’s in danger--well, we’ll have to be secretive about it, but I’ll make sure she can get asylum here. She’s as much family to me as she is to you. We’ll protect her.”

Caramel’s muscles ached. Strange lights filled his head. The moon and the sun glowed together in the twilight sky.

“At any rate, the fire could never reach the rainbow plains. Even if it did, we’d have the mountains to stop it,” the prince said.

“I’m not worried about the fire. The politics of burning a protected forest to the ground are a firestorm of their own.”

Caramel nearly slipped.

The prince chuckled. “Always the politician, my dear.”

The two kissed softly in the firelight. The prince lingered a moment longer on the balcony as the princess went back inside, his eyes half-lidded. Caramel clenched his barrel and held his breath.

“Are you coming inside,” the princess’s voice drifted through the curtain, “or are you going to make me finish my work all alone?”

The prince smiled and tossed his blue mane back proudly. “Coming, your majesty.”

The balcony grew quiet again. Caramel heard the distant echo of hoofsteps fading further into the castle. Beyond the castle, the hum of the invisible shield protecting the city formed a tritone against his ears.

He counted to ten, looked down to make sure the guards hadn’t stuck around, uncrumpled his legs from beneath him as slow as he possibly could, and made to lower himself onto the balcony.

Three legs slipped simultaneously. He grabbed at the ledge, missed, and fell onto the balcony. He hit the hoofsteps of royalty facefirst.

Once he wiped the little spackle of blood from the floor, he dug out his knife and slipped into the castle. The silk curtain felt divine against his fur, but he dared not linger there. As he made his way deeper into the castle, he thought about how he would kill a crystal guard if he had to. He couldn’t just stab it to death, for the blade would shatter against its crystal body. He couldn’t strangle it, because--again, the thing was made of crystal. The only reasonable way seemed to shoot it in the face a few times, not that discharging a firearm in an enemy palace would do him any good.

After a few minutes of searching he found an unguarded stairwell. As he climbed, he wondered whether or not all of this was really necessary. If the crystal empire really was made out of crystal, it might have been wiser to just steal a wall from somepony’s house on the outskirts of town, or maybe an older crystal pony. His thoughts turned to crystal nursing homes, then crystal graveyards. He wondered whether or not the crystallites buried their dead and whether or not they decomposed.

When he finally reached the uppermost room of the tower, he was sweating but overjoyed. During his ascent he had figured out how to kill a crystal guard. All he had to do was throw it from a high place--like the top of a stairwell--and watch it shatter like glass below.

He took the last two steps in one stride and looked around the tower room.

The crystal heart didn’t spark the same kind of awe as it had from ground-level. It bobbed above a star-shaped emblem embossed into the floor, rotating slightly. The open design of the room let him look out on the entirely of the crystal empire. A few lights pulsed dimly far below him. Looking south, he saw the distant firestorm again. It seemed brighter than the heart.

Caramel stepped over a few obvious pressure alarms and took the heart gingerly in one hoof. To his surprise, it weighed almost nothing at all. His brow furrowed, and he turned it over only to bend it cleanly in half.

He looked up and saw the silhouette of another pony leaning on one of the outer columns.

Sensing she was had, she twirled around the column and smiled. Caramel yanked a knife from his boot and said, “I’ll kill you.”

A shout echoed up the stairwell, followed by the sound of scuffling metal shoes. The other guards must have found the body.

Her smile sparkled against full black camouflage. Something glowed inside her ornate saddlebag. “Try,” she said joyfully.

Another shout from the stairwell distracted him. His eyes shot to the opening, then back to the mare. The knife felt good in his hooves. “Give me the heart. I’ll kill you.”

A curl of hair fell across her face and split it right in two. “Not with that attitude you won’t.”

Caramel gripped the fake heart and took a step away from the stairs. Warm air blew from the north. The firestorm was almost upon him. He could feel his core heat up. ”Give me the heart,” he said again, “or I’ll kill you.”

Boots hammered against crystal. The guards were coming to get him now. The climb was long, but he could hear their panting. They were almost on him.

“No,” the mare said one final time, “and that’s that. I’m sorry I have to leave you here.” Her pale eyes pulsed the color of nearby stars. “I’m really truly sorry.”

Caramel drew his face back in a snarl and threw the fake crystal heart at the mare just as the first guard entered the room. It sailed wide and and fell into the night. The guard, a unicorn, dropped his rifle and dove after it. The mare tossed another smile towards Caramel and fell backwards into empty space. Caramel followed her to the edge, but she was gone.

He turned to find the room full of guards, huffing and puffing and brandishing pikes and guns and swords. They fanned out quickly, cutting off the stairs. A few pegasus guards flew over his head and dove out of sight. The knife felt good in his his hooves. The firestorm burned away on the horizon. He twirled it in the air and threw it as hard as he could at the nearest guard. It bounced off his cheek in a torrent of sparks and skittered out of sight.

Without the knife he had nothing. He stepped back to the edge of the tower and gauged his fall. The moon hung above him, its light a towering beam for him to descend. Cold winds burned the skin on his face with the chill of the lower atmosphere. Down was freedom. Down was four broken legs for sure. Down was life. He exhaled and prepared himself for a drop.

Just before he could fall, the guards pounced. He managed to punch one guard in the teeth before another rose up with a knife in hoof and slashed his face open just above his upper lip. He twisted and staggered, inadvertently dodging a fireball and walking into another guard’s club.

His center tipped. The guards grabbed his rear legs just before he could fall to his death. He flailed and writhed and clutched at his burning face, but his legs would not budge. The blade had clawed deep into his face. His wails were eaten alive by the atmosphere. The guards shouted over and over. Blood poured down his face, into his nose, into his eyes, into his hair, into the air. His forelegs went limp. Caramel’s world redshifted to near-blackness, except for one thing.

He stared west, into the fires of a distant and endless war.