With every Crystalling the Crystal Heart grew stronger.  Thus the borders of the empire expanded, some dozens of meters for each newborn.  By the fifth year of Princess Cadance’s rule, warm weather could be felt throughout the peaceful vale the empire was nestled within.  By the seventh, homes and farmsteads were built atop the foothills of the Yaket Range.

On the day of the 382nd Crystalling (by Cadance Reckoning), sunlight touched the root of Mount Everhoof for the first time in uncounted millennia.

Three days later, the crystal ponies awoke to find themselves under siege.

Gigantic bipedal creatures of blue-white ice lined the northern border of the empire.  They stood over a hundred hooves high, all hard angles and sharp features.  They made no move to enter the empire, but their sudden appearance was impossible to ignore.

The Royal Guard mobilized to maintain a perimeter as the denizens of the northern reach fled into the city.  Grand Wizard Sunburst was summoned to court and tasked by Prince Shining Armor himself to discover the creatures’ intent, and find a solution if they proved hostile.  Sunburst departed at once, while the prince stayed behind to assist Princess Cadance with the preparations for the Crystalling of their newborn son.



Sunburst arrived at the northern border to find a frigid stalemate.  The ice giants had advanced no farther than the line of permafrost that marked the edge of the Crystal Heart’s influence, while the guardsponies stood at rapt attention on thawed ground.

A howling sleet storm raged above the giants, but where Sunburst stood, there was little more than a cool breeze to take the edge off the warm sunlight upon his back.  He cleared his throat, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again as he craned his neck back to address the closest giant.

“Hello,” he managed to croak.  He cleared his throat again.  “W-what, ah, what can I do for you?”  He winced at a snort from a guard behind him.

The next giant over detached himself from the line and moved towards Sunburst, joints cracking and groaning beneath the weight of its ponderous gait.  Sunburst heard the guards behind him stiffen as they readied their weapons.

It halted at the edge of the sunlight a dozen hoofsteps before him, and with a groan, knelt down.  In a voice akin to a calving glacier, it said, “You are killing us.  Please stop.”

Sunburst blinked.  “Um, what?”

There was an audible crunch as the giant spoke again.  “Your lands are not our lands.  We cannot live in the heat.  We cannot abide the sun.”  As it spoke, small chunks of ice shaved off its face and fell to the thawing ground below.  “The ground softens.  We soften.  We rot, and we die.”

Sunburst looked closer at the giant.  Its ice was brittle and pitted, and he could see trickles of water start to slough off of its broad back and shoulders.  As he realized the giant was melting away before him, he sputtered, “Then go!  Don’t stay out here in the sun, go back north!  Stay where the weather is still cold!”

The giant shook its head as it stood.  “This mountain is the last of our home.  There is nowhere else to go.”  Its shoulder creaked as it pointed to the west.  “The yaks kill us.”  It pointed north.  “Beyond these mountains lies the sea.  Your lands grow larger with every moon.”  Water streamed off of its limbs as it stepped back beyond the Crystal Heart’s reach.

Something clicked in Sunburst’s mind, and his eyes widened as he shouted, “No!  No no, you have to leave!  Now!”

Again, the giant shook its head.  “We have to make ponies see.  Perhaps you will stop if you see us.”

Sunburst stepped forward.  “No, you don’t understand, you have to–”

A wall of blue-white light raced up from the south, shoving back the heavy black clouds by a half kilometer.  It tingled as it lent Sunburst’s coat a prismatic tint, but it slammed into the ice giants with the force of a tidal wave.  As one, they staggered back a step, then collapsed in on themselves with a crash.

Sunburst stood agape as rivulets of water traced paths past his hooves.



In the coming years, the crystal ponies would learn that crops would never taste so sweet as when they were grown from the soil on which the ice giants died.