"Without this life-giving jewel Cromithia shall forever sleep, resting atop the graves of all who came before, but should its heart ever return then so too shall the fallen King."

~Terra

/ / / Cromithia, Fringes of the Fallen City / / /

The sun's warming light was in retreat, fading quickly as if on the run from the wall of black clouds, thick and boiling like smoke as they rolled over the sky. The darkness closed in rapidly, blotting out the light until it nearly looked as though night had come once again. The darkness brought with it a chill, like the cold breath off a glacier and it smelled of brimstone.

The winds slowly picked up as they blew dust and bits of debris around the cracked and broken landscape, ancient trees bent and twisted as their shed branches scraped across the rocky ground. Just as the first rumbles of distant thunder rolled off the jagged mountains and echoed down through the valleys a few heavy drops of rain struck the collapsed side of a once grandiose structure, heralds of the oncoming monsoon. As if wishing to relive its former glory the now slumped over husk would occasionally offer a gleam in the flashes of light from the angry storm now blowing in from the nearby sea.

As the rain began to fall in earnest it blew in ever thickening sheets against the monolithic pile of rubble, little rivulets of water joining together to rush their way down the uneven sides of what was once a mausoleum of sorts. The brief but intense flashes of lightning in the distance illuminated hundreds of time eroded runes carved into the surface of what had been finely polished marble, the corners and cracks all lined with moss and vines. Broken columns and obelisks lay where they had fallen oh so long ago, the sporadic light telling a little more of the story with every roar of the heavens.

Though the sun was well on its journey into the sky its light mostly failed to reach this place, blocked out by the quickly growing wall of unnaturally thick clouds. Spears of lightning arced across the underside of the swirling tempest, reaching inland as if grasping at this very construct, as if desperate to pluck it from the ground for its own…

From deep within this pile of ruin came a light, its wispy greenish blue glow dancing between the carved runes as it traced along their flowing edges, the very presence of it strikingly out of place amongst the dreary backdrop. Like an electric spark it flickered back and forth between the cottage sized blocks of hewn rock, ascending its way through the rubble on a path to the top.

Within moments the light found itself at the crest of the towering remnant, some hundreds of feet above the ground. For a time it simply floated there, hissing occasionally whenever a drop of rain passed through it and was turned to vapor. It waited, as if watching the storm, not so much as a flicker passing over its form as another bolt of lightning split the sky.

Hovering forward slightly the light settled over a spiraling pattern of runes, their surfaces barely visible amongst the moss and lichens. After one final moment of hesitation the light slammed itself downward into a form fitting indentation, burning away the offending plant matter as the runes lit from within.

At first nothing of interest seemed to occur, the light from the runes dimming briefly, or at least until the entire structure began to vibrate. With renewed vigor the runes shone brightly, their carved grooves filling with the same frothy glow that soon spread from one to the next, quickly illuminating the top of the building as the spiral grew and spilled over the edges.

The trail of runes quickly split up into dozens of paths, each one coiling around different blocks and bits of broken column on its way to the ground. Faster and faster the energy spread, seeking out every path still intact enough to carry it, a hundred different trails of light that snaked their way across the broken ground and out through the gathering darkness.

Atop the structure the light began to burn brighter, its shape swelling upwards as it grew, empowered with strength it had not expected to find here. Its energy strobed and pulsed as it took on a form that had become a familiar comfort in these waning years; the feeling of rough stone beneath his hooves bringing with it a sense of stability, and the tug of his mane whipping about in the wind made him feel so very nearly alive.

“If the gears had not continued their turning then this would have been a gross squandering of precious energies,” the pony said softly as he looked back over his shoulder. He watched the faded green fur of his coat form over his body, the new skin twitching under the cold rain. “But it would seem as though there remain a few surprises yet for the both of us, would you not agree?” His old cloak draped itself across its owner’s back, still stained around the shoulder with his blood from the recent battle. “Even still, I would not have denied myself the opportunity to have tripped you up one last time.”

From someplace still far out over the ocean the towering thunderheads roared as they split with enough lightning to light up the horizon, waves of it rushing towards the shore like the foamy ocean swells. With a crack of sound that shook the valley and rocked the ruins a single streak of lightning lanced its way inland, burning an angry blue as it scared the sky. Nearing the edge of the ruins it suddenly dove at the glowing pony, standing smug atop his precious pile of moldy rocks, only to burst apart into sparks and flashes as it struck some unseen barrier. Denied again by this feeble fool.

“You thought because you smote our ruin upon the ground we would fall silent, you thought us dead and gone,” he heard his voice call out over the wind even as it picked up. His smile grew as he felt the runes traveling along in the distance behind him begin to reach their destinations. “But this place still holds strength enough to repel one last foe.”

By then miles of dimly lit runes crisscrossed the backdrop behind the crumbled monument, defining edges belonging to hundreds of other structures, some nearly as large as the surrounding mountains themselves. For every half crumbled derelict that was revealed through the pouring sheets of rain the runes grew brighter, fueled by the scraps of energy found within.

The skies roared with righteous fury, the wind howling with the threats and curses that it carried and the very ground seemed to tremble with fear. None of this troubled the lone pony standing atop his own mausoleum however, for this day had been a part of his destiny for a very long time and so Amethyst Song simply smiled as he watched the storm rage on.

/ / / / / /

Deep in the rocks beneath the mausoleum and the pounding rain a single determined drop of water managed to find a crevice in the ancient stone and seeped lower still, eventually entering into a chamber unseen by any since well before the war above had begun.

Slowly sliding down the side of a stalactite larger than a grown pine the droplet hung off the tip for a moment before plummeting into the gloomy abyss below, falling nearly a mile before splashing into the gritty sand that covered the entirety of the expansive floor. The sand, radiating an eerie orange luminescence from within, slowly shifted and blew about like the towering dunes of a desert without so much as a whisper of wind to disturb it.

The glow rippled with the movements of the sand, flashing and flickering along the smoothed walls like moonlight off a disturbed pond, barely reaching the ceiling to illuminate a pair of titanic structures that hung there. Each spinning mass of stone sprawled the width of a city with a thickness to match the tallest buildings; settled on their sides the two massive gears spun with slow silent precision, some unseen force the only thing keeping them aloft.

As the teeth of the gears went about this eternal dance a faint trace of the sand's warm glow would flash from where the cogs met each other, growing brighter with every pass until, after each full revolution, a single tiny grain of new sand would fall…

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