Queen of Assassins

Chapters

The Queen
Trial by Combat
Assassin
The Last Queen Standing
The Living Hive and the Traitorous Hunt

The Queen

Far below, the presence crouched within shadow. The Queen.

Through her old legs, the Queen felt the vibrations of faint murmurs overhead, somewhere amid the banging, crashing, war-crying rabble of her loyal, royal soldiers. Then something cracked; she felt it as a sharp shake. A burst. Changelings scattered. The rabble became more chaotic.

A diversion? The murmuring joined in the chaos, impossible to discern.

Part of the roof broke.

The Queen tensed.

A section of the roof – under the Smell Galleries, and precisely under where the rebels’ self-cocoon had been set – sagged. Soil fell down. Then it crashed.

Something large came through. The Queen saw the gleam of changeling hide.

Cautiously, the changeling hide was scanned. Not enough to give her own royal presence away, but enough to tell how much power the hide’s owner possessed. A lot. A commander’s worth, by the heat of it.

The Queen smiled.

Commander Chrysalis – her large hide gleaming – spun round and sealed up the hole quickly. Pieces rose into place. A clever plan: the royal soldiers would not notice unless they were looking specifically for the cracks, and in whatever chaos had broken out topside, no one was in the mood for examining the floor for anything.

Keeping still, the Queen watched as Commander Chrysalis hovered. No one wanted to land on the floor down here.

Because this chamber… This chamber was different.

Every changeling hive needed one. Waste couldn’t be disposed of out in the open; if the huge pile didn’t attract attention, then the scent most definitely would. A scent like that could travel for miles. What constituted waste in a changeling hive was pungent.

Sooner or later, a changeling had to shed its exoskeleton. Sometimes, they lost a limb or a wing and managed to recover it from whatever battle they’d escaped. And sooner or later, every changeling died.

The black mass below was incredibly pungent.

But a changeling adapted to it. Whether a white young adult, or a soldier, or a nurse of some kind, or even a Queen, all changelings learned to carry what was no longer needed down into the depths of this chamber and store it there. The heat of all those skins and bits and bodies baked the air dry. It also warmed the hive, once it escaped to the other chambers, which was why the Living Hive itself usually sealed the chamber in summer – too much heat had to be contained, after all – and then opened them all wide in winter, when the changelings sealed themselves in and slept and kept warm and dreamed impatiently about the fresh air of spring.

Right here, right now, Commander Chrysalis hovered and kept well clear of it. Anyway, she scanned it as she went. So she expected an ambush. Clever.

The Queen crept amongst the shadows, closer and closer.

The Queen – Queen Argent – then circled warily. A direct approach would be spotted, but if she kept to the shadows and let the pungent smell confuse her opponent a bit more… Chrysalis even hovered clumsily… the Smell Galleries had indeed done their job…

Queen Argent didn’t speak. Taunting Chrysalis was a good way to unbalance her, but down here the echoes wouldn’t scramble so much. Even a heavy sigh would tell Chrysalis exactly where the voice was coming from.

So Argent crept on, holding her breath.

She hated this. She hated hunting.

Wet-nursing had been no picnic either, she thought. Argent had watched over each changeling from egg to corpse, and then realized more and more that there were fewer eggs and more corpses.

Some of the other nurses ferried the love from the cocooned victims – brought back from raids which always sounded so exciting the way Chrysalis told them – and brought the love past the throne to the nursery chamber. Once in a while, Queen Imago had come in to lecture the larvae about the hive, and how it would survive thanks to their hard work.

Some larvae would become soldiers, others would be nurses. Some would go out into the world and bring back love in their bellies and captured foes in their hooves. Others fed the larvae and cleaned the tunnels and comforted the Living Hive itself when it was scared or angry or confused, which was very often these days.

Queen Argent watched the figure inspect a likely-looking corpse below. Chrysalis was so predictable.

For Argent had watched Chrysalis all her life, seen her as giggly as a schoolfilly – and Queen Imago proud as a principal – and wondered if that was all Chrysalis ever saw. Because what Argent saw were the tired faces and the bent backs and the weak knees and the suppressed grief in the eyes of those soldiers who had come back with fewer allies than they’d left with.

Sometimes, she’d seen that grief on Chrysalis’ face too. Chrysalis might be the last of her brood, but she remembered all the others over the years. Argent had comforted her once or twice, and been violently shaken off and faced furious denials shouted at her. Chrysalis knew how to kill. She didn’t know how to grieve the dead.

Sometimes, the great Queen Imago herself had come down to visit this chamber, full of dead parts and bodies, and Argent wondered if she was mourning in some way. Hard to tell. Unless it was a cheer or a smirk or a grin or a smile – anything good in her eyes – Imago never let on how she was feeling.

Now Chrysalis approached a pile of dismembered legs, rising ever so slightly from the general mass. A good hiding place indeed. Argent decided to head straight for her now…

But Queen Imago hadn’t visited often enough. And so Argent had asked those soldiers who weren’t as giggly as Chrysalis, and they told stranger, less triumphant stories. Stories about big cities, and vast libraries, and new spells coming out of Canterlot and appearing from the horns of unicorns who, six months earlier, had barely known how to levitate things.

Then one day, Argent had slipped out herself and seen Equestria’s towns, where villages had once stood. Cities, where towns had once been.

The map changed daily. Yet Queen Imago didn’t keep up. Instead, she kept up the smiles and cheers even when the love stocks got lower and lower.

One day, Argent had spread word about the cities. She’d decided what they really meant. Some changelings, especially the tired ones, had listened.

One week later, most of the changelings had listened. The Living Hive had listened too. It blocked tunnels in front of Queen Imago unexpectedly. That was a bad sign. It meant the Living Hive itself wanted a new leader. The Living Hive was as hungry as they were. But Chrysalis was next in line, and she didn’t listen at all.

One month later, Queen Imago was dead.

Argent had surprisingly enjoyed it. Poisoning someone and then tearing their weakened body apart from behind was much more fun than trying to fight them up close. Besides, Imago was just a big, dumb brute. It was hardly worth shedding a tear over.

No one protested. No one really understood why the world was turning on them, so they’d stood around like lost sheep waiting for something to make sense. It was easy to take command after that. Like talking to little larvae.

No one had grieved much either, except Chrysalis, who’d finally grieved for a hundred and frankly made a spectacle of herself.

Argent had considered killing her too, but it was one thing to poison a stupid old Queen. It was another to strike down someone shrieking and weeping so hard. Except banishment had not been enough, it seemed.

And now Chrysalis would join her precious, big, dumb brute in the pile.

Argent crept until she was right above the Commander. Then she prepared to drop down.

The bodies were a good hiding place. Trouble was, they were too obvious a hiding place. No one recognized the ceiling was ruffled, though. Plenty of hiding places there.

She aimed for the back of Chrysalis’ neck. One slice. Problem solved.

She dropped.

Chrysalis dodged out of range. Argent’s horn slashed, then she herself rushed backwards from the answering kick.

Both changelings circled each other.

Then Argent sensed something pass over her. It wasn’t a spell appearing. It was the realization that one had been focused on her the whole time, and only when it vanished had she realized it had existed at all.

Scanning magic?

That wasn’t right! Chrysalis should never have sensed any approach at all. She should have been decapitated without so much as a clue to warn her first.

What’s more, Chrysalis definitely didn’t know that kind of scanning magic, not when she relied on her everyday senses so much.

Through the gloom, Argent glared into the answering scowl. A brief scan of her own: yes, the magic level was about right. Opposite, Chrysalis faltered as she hovered, but that was definitely her, her power, her face, her…

For a moment, Chrysalis’ eyes flashed green. Greener than normal.

“A trick!” hissed Argent. She spun round just as the second Chrysalis leapt from the ceiling.

Something black swung. Not Chrysalis.

Argent zipped aside, but the hissing blade nicked her leg and she felt a small jolt at the impact. Groaning, she zipped out of range of another swipe, and saw that it wasn’t Chrysalis’ horn swinging back and forth. It wasn’t a horn at all.

Behind her, the first Chrysalis… changed. Where she’d stood, Captain Antenna saluted, his horn spitting sparks.

“Permission to return the load, Commander?” he grunted.

Queen Argent stared down at the black swiping blade.

“You brought a sword?” she said.

The second Chrysalis – the real Chrysalis – bared her fangs. It wasn’t a smile. It wanted to be one. Yet it had too much lip-twitching hatred to be a smile.

“My own make: your, aha, throne gave me much inspiration,” she said, haughty as a Queen already. “This will slice through whatever magic you care to name.”

Queen Argent relaxed. Perhaps that queenly haughtiness could be manipulated?

“Ah. Too dull to concoct your own schemes?” she said. Slowly, in mid-air, she began backing away. “I notice you copied my ‘seeing-eyes’ trick with Blattodea too. Spying on me through master scanner Antenna here? Rather clever for you.”

“I learn fast,” replied Chrysalis.

“That’s what Imago always said.”

“That’s Queen Imago to you!” Anger flickered across those green eyes. “I needed to keep an eye on you while I regained my strength and followed the tunnels leading here. No one noticed me slip away in all the chaos upstairs. But there is one trick I learned without your help.”

“Permission to return the load right now?” Captain Antenna yelped. Sparks sizzled along his horn.

Without taking her glare away from Argent, Chrysalis nodded.

Captain Antenna’s horn sprouted green threads and webs and ribbons and sheets of gangrene. The transferred magic slithered through the air, split around Chrysalis until they ran rivers around her sharp eyes, and flowed back into her horn. Restored to full power again.

Too late, Queen Argent lunged forwards, swiping with her own magic. She should have guessed!

The sword swung back. Argent backed off fast. Even through the rivers of magic returning to her horn, Chrysalis never lost sight of her prey.

“We learned that trick during the Maulwurf campaign.” Chrysalis drifted closer and closer in turn. “Whilst Captain Antenna fled our shield and distracted the beasts, we slipped around behind them in all the chaos and stuck them with our swords.”

“I was under the impression those beasts resist magic.”

Chrysalis’ smile cut her face further into a mortal wound of a grin. “I didn’t say they were magical swords.”

“Indeed? Where did you of all changelings learn that?”

“We spied on unicorn blacksmiths. Queen Imago always said to look for weapons everywhere, and we did. We stole iron from stupid unicorns too weak to resist, and we thrust it into those Maulwurfs until they screamed for mercy!”

Argent frowned. Something was wrong. If Chrysalis had her cornered, or believed she did, then why was she talking so much?

“And you are right about one thing, you simpering milksop of a wet-nurse.” Chrysalis licked her lips, apparently without cutting her tongue on those lengthening fangs. “The hive is dying, and we do need to save ourselves from extinction. But I will see you in Tartarus before I see the changelings surrender! To a mere princess! We are survivors! We master every place we encounter! Why talk to a princess when we are the Kings and Queens of the World!?”

Just in time, Argent stopped backing off. This was a trap!

She shot sideways…

…to precisely where the waiting rebels weren’t.

She heard some of them leap screaming out of the bodies below, springing their trap too early. After all, the bodies were still a good hiding place.

By the time they recovered, she was already down a tunnel, followed only by Chrysalis’ shouts and curses.

Left and right, through branching tunnel after branching tunnel, Argent fled. Somewhere in all this was salvation. A place to regroup, if she was going to stop them all.

Something was wrong here too. The tunnels branched, at first. Then they ran straight, where they should’ve been branching again. She knew these tunnels. She knew they shouldn’t be blocked up now, not with her loyal soldiers out and about. The Living Hive would know, it would let them pass, it would help her.

The last branch sealed itself just as she arrived. Only one passageway left. Far behind her, Chrysalis’ screams of rage followed.

Dread crawling through her skin, Argent peered into the chamber up ahead.

No, this wasn’t a mistake. The Living Hive was interested now. The Living Hive had shepherded them both this way for a reason.

She swallowed, and dived in. What choice did she have? What choice had she ever had?

Trial by Combat

Chrysalis huffed and panted as she went. Her wings seized up, forcing her to gallop on legs that wanted to seize up too. She couldn’t keep going like this. The effort would kill her.

As she stumbled, she noticed the tunnels around hers had their exits closed off. The Living Hive corralled her onwards. So it wanted her to go this way. Why?

When she emerged, lungs struggling, she saw at once why.

The Intravenous Arena.

Chrysalis just stood there, breathing her strength back.

She’d entered a vast, featureless pit, large enough to match the marble stadiums of the civilized ponies. Only this was pure dark flesh, made out of the same fresh living matter as the rest of the Hive, not a foreign substance stuck into place like a stone in a troubled gut. Pure changeling architecture.

Thoughts tumbled over each other as Chrysalis scrambled to understand. This wasn’t a place she’d visited often. No changeling did.

Very rarely – though especially often in more recent times – changelings came to blows. Nurses, perhaps, insisted that hive-wide diets should change, or scouts insisted on promotion sooner rather than later, or the Queen found her ultimate authority challenged by an upstart with bright ideas.

However, although they argued and shouted and pushed and shoved one another, changelings took an actual bite-and-kick battle as the last of all last resorts. No one should stand against the very essence of the hive unless it was a grave matter indeed. No one wanted to risk becoming no true changeling.

For those rare times, the arena provided thus:

A few minutes, where everyone could see. Trial by combat. Both sides had to agree – if one refused, there was no battle. But refusing meant giving up. Even making the challenge in the first place could get a changeling scorned by their brothers and sisters. No one trusted a changeling who picked fights with their kin too readily.

Once agreed, though, the terms were simple. The goal: make your challenger surrender first. Use any trick at your disposal. Hope your opponent doesn’t know them too. And above all: Do. Not. Kill.

Purity ruled here. That was the idea. There was just open, ready ground and two changelings on equal terms.

Meanwhile, the hive would be there. Watching. Judging. Seeing justice done.

Tall walls separated the spectator stands from the pit. Row upon row of stands – throbbing with fluids pumped here and there – separated the walls even further back. Veins too throbbed along the ceiling. The Living Hive itself watched everything below. With great interest.

Chrysalis licked her lips. Her breath still left warm traces down her throat, but she could breathe freely.

There, on the opposite side of the arena, was Argent.

The Queen scurried from entrance to entrance leading out of the pit, but one by one, they sealed against her. Trapping Chrysalis inside with her. Or trapping her inside with Chrysalis?

Now it started to make a little sense.

Far above came an ominous echo. From the corridors leading off to the spectator foyers, the ominous whirr of wings approached. The changeling army was coming.

Far behind Chrysalis, the cries of her rebels took on a more urgent tone. Then the tunnel behind her closed, shutting out the noise.

Chrysalis’ heart staggered slightly. No allies here.

Yet all around the top of the wall between the pit and the stands, a transparent curve emerged. A massive dome eased shut like the closing carapace of a beetle.

By the time the first of the army arrived, they bounced off the invisible shield. More changelings filled the stands, butting against the dome to break into the pit. Some of the smarter or more uncertain ones realized where they were and milled about, wrapping their minds around an old instinct to watch whilst their bodies tried to keep being soldiers.

No allies for Argent either.

And then Chrysalis understood.

The Hive had listened.

Argent made as if to run at her, then stopped as if seeing her for the first time and skidded to a halt.

Slowly, looming easily, Chrysalis advanced.

“How fitting,” she gloated loudly and proudly, glancing around at the changeling spectators bouncing against the dome. “Trapped like an ant in the pit of a mighty antlion! This was where it was supposed to happen. This was where I would have earned my title as the Queen of the Changelings!”

Argent said nothing. She backed off, then backed off again when she realized Chrysalis wasn’t stopping. Around them, changelings settled down, listening.

“Just as tradition decrees,” Chrysalis belted out the words. “A changeling is meant to become Queen honourably. Fairly. Proving herself in the field, and then proving herself in the arena. I would have given Queen Imago – the true Queen – the retirement she deserved! Challenged by a worthy opponent! Fighting me in open battle! Face to face!”

Beyond the mortal changelings, a greater intelligence focused on her, a giant through a magnifying glass, leaning over a termite. But a queen termite.

“My last raid under Queen Imago’s watchful eye brought home a feast of feasts!” Pride roared like a chainsaw against iron anger. “I provided for the hive! I provided beyond what my Queen had ever dreamed of! I earned my right! Then you poisoned our minds, you murdered her, you threw me and my rebels to the maggots, just so you could grovel before our enemies and turn us all into traitorous cowards!”

The stands settled into silence.

Above them all, the Living Hive rumbled into life. Thoughts creaked and churned and ploughed the stuff of the psyche as a mountain of doubt shifted along a fault line and set off ponderous rockslides of contemplation.

Some changelings shuddered at the unheard sound quaking through them. Yet Chrysalis heard it, in all its thundering glory. Changelings heard the Hive all their lives. But she listened to it. She barely listened to anything else.

For the Living Hive – its pulsing flesh and throbbing veins and endless tunnels and chambers – was more than just the mass of changelings, dead or alive, forming its walls. It absorbed their souls upon death, united them, collected them together as one, became the sentient tradition, the massive collective, and the hidebound nurse-seeking comfort-eater of today. The hive came and went, in generations of bodies, but the Living Hive endured.

Yet it didn’t have room for complexity. Small tugs and contrary trends worried it on the margins here and there, but the burning urgencies of one century fizzled and died out over the next nine, so such things were mere itches to it. All oddities and quirks and fads were submerged by the strongest and most consistent will.

Argent heard it too. She became twitchier, glancing about for a way out.

And because the Living Hive was so big and plodding, it got caught out too easily. Thrown off balance by Imago’s murder and Argent’s unorthodox takeover, the thing had quaked then too. Chrysalis had screamed with the pain shared by the countless confused cries. Almost strong enough to match her own pain ripping her chest apart.

But all changelings remembered their nurses. Even nurses had nurses once. Argent had soothed the Living Hive and comforted it. The eternal nurse for the eternal hive.

Then she’d persuaded it, for a while. She’d banished the last voice of its resistance. And she was still a Queen, after all. All changelings remembered their Queens.

Chrysalis stopped her advance.

Now she and Argent stood in the pit together, far enough to charge, close enough to guard. The banished changeling – Chrysalis herself – had come back and, against the Queen’s own confidence, gotten this far. Argent had fled. Queens were not supposed to flee.

Chrysalis yelled, “Brothers! Sisters! To the Hive, I speak: I demand a trial of Queens! I appeal to all those before me and all those around me! I alone am fit to lead us into the new age! Hear my words, watch her cower, and judge us by our deeds!”

Around them, the changelings delved, if possible, into a deeper silence. The challenge. She had issued the challenge.

Hitherto, this had been an insurgency. Then a confusing chase. Now it was official doctrine. They and the Living Hive thought as one.

Argent breathed heavily. Then nodded. Once.

Perfect, thought Chrysalis.

True, it meant – annoyingly, outrageously – she couldn’t actually kill Argent. That was against the rules. But if she couldn’t kill the traitor Queen, she could at least beat her so hard she wished she could die. Pain beyond understanding would be a tasty consolation prize.

Then she could send Argent out a miserable exile.

It even flattered Chrysalis. She’d get her throne, and all without having to kill a single changeling. The conflict didn’t hurt as much when she thought of it that way.

Better yet, she’d be giving Argent what Argent had given her. She’d leave the killer a broken wreck, humiliated forever. She’d be alive long enough to suffer for her defeat against Chrysalis. Argent wouldn’t even be able to come back: Chrysalis could set traps and lash her guards into shape far more efficiently than a mere nurse could. Oh, what a deliciously fitting irony indeed…

Best of all, Chrysalis knew the Hive. She knew how to appeal to its conservative bent. Argent had broken too many rules to achieve such perfect trust.

All around, some changelings sat down. Others remained standing or hovering. Far behind, Chrysalis heard the dull thumps of her rebels trying to break out of the blocked tunnel.

Then Chrysalis noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the cleaner changelings. Still in the pit.

A team of seven cleaners, each dribbling green drool. Changelings cleaned the hive by vomiting on the ground, or on the wall, or on the ceiling, waiting for the dirt and dust to dissolve, and then sucking it up again. Some still had puddles at their hooves, or were half-bending down with cheeks bulging. All of them were staring.

As one, they fluttered to a safe distance, then – of course – turned to watch.

Chrysalis kept glancing in their direction. They hadn’t gotten out in time. No gaps opened up in the dome or along the tunnels, either. The sheer titanic weight of attention had focused purely on her and Argent.

She shook it out of her mind. Why worry? This would be over in seconds. Argent was a nurse, not a grappler. Without slick words, promises, or trickery, she was defenceless. One sword stroke would end this soon enough.

So why not go further? Put on a show. Prove to everyone who was the superior, beyond all doubt.

Chrysalis’ horn blazed green.

At once, Argent’s own flared in response. A meagre flare next to Chrysalis’ sickly sun brilliance: feeble emerald spirals wound out, coalesced like dribbles into a pool, became a floating, slightly translucent shield.

It shifted: first a circle, then a much more traditional shield shape, then a spike-ridden monstrosity, and then a rotating spiral with buzz-saw arms.

Puh. Basic scout defence.

Chrysalis leered. Her magical corrosion seeped out of her horn, down her face, and – as she stretched her neck up to show off the glow – around her throat.

Through the ground itself, the Living Hive lowed like a wounded ox the size of a city. That was the signal to start.

Bellowing echoes died away.

Both sides waited for the other to make their move.

A thousand eyes stared as the magic in Chrysalis’ neck slid up towards her jaw and then around her lips.

At first, a few green, gleaming, magical locusts trickled out of her mouth. They buzzed through the air.

Then Chrysalis gaped.

Escaping from the broken bars of her fangs, the cursed locust cloud billowed forth. Fogs of green plumed out, its millions of wings humming until the air itself shimmered all around. By the time Argent cried out in horror, they’d slipped past her raised shield and swarmed her.

Within seconds, she was lost to green. However much she swung her shield, the amorphous cloud simply spilled around it. The locusts buzzed in her ears, smacked into her nostrils, batted her eyes. Tiny bodies pelted her flanks. Mouthparts and spiked kicking legs cut her all over.

None of the swarm dealt much damage. But then, they weren’t meant to.

Chrysalis swished her sword.

And, unleashing a scream that had sent axe-biting berserkers scrambling for their lives, she reared, kicked back for the bloodlust, and charged.

Sword met shield.

Argent was quicker. The sword of Chrysalis didn’t bother bashing the shield for dramatic effect, but lunged around it like a lioness reaching for the throat. Yet the shield got there in time, rattling, and the sword twanged off.

But Chrysalis was lightning itself to begin with. Before Argent could launch a swipe with the shield, the sword immediately flung itself back round for another overreaching stab. Even a deflected sword was no barrier: Chrysalis simply seized the momentum and circled it round to strike from the other side.

Green sparks flew. Iron against magic would wear it down. Sparks leaped from Argent to her morphing shield, but the sword chipped away magic as soon as it had repaired anything. And Argent was struggling: she backed away under the blows. Locusts kept jolting her before she could launch any real counterattack.

Just let her back into the wall, Chrysalis thought. Corner her, and it’s all over.

Desperation zapped forwards. The shield morphed into a forked shape. The sword blow slid into the gap. The tips tried to close around it, to trap it.

A trick.

One Chrysalis knew.

At once, she let the sword go and… changed. An earth pony stood in her place.

And its solid, massive hooves punched.

Earth pony strength shattered the shield into green wisps, scattered the locusts, and sent Argent tumbling backwards. Without magic, the sword clattered to the ground.

Any second, Argent would recover.

Speed! Beat her to it!

The earth pony… changed. Became a pegasus. Snatched up the sword in its mouth en route.

Argent summoned a new magical shield – not fast enough – just as the blade plunged right through the middle. Stuck.

Worse, though, the impact punched Chrysalis in the jaw. Pegasi couldn’t take a hit. She dropped the sword, tumbled on the ground, for a moment was nothing but sharp broken teeth in her mouth.

Get up, get up, get up!

Chrysalis found the strength to change again. The earth pony form recovered faster. Changed again. Became the pegasus. Dodged as the sharpened edge of the shield struck down and got stuck in the ground. Pink fluids spurted out of the gash she left in the ground.

The Living Hive whimpered.

Another change: the pegasus became pure changeling Chrysalis, summoning the downed sword. It flipped into the air towards her, her magical grip caught it, raised it – took the blow aimed at her head.

The scattered locusts – recaptured again under Chrysalis’ green, glowing horn – surged forwards. Argent leaped back, let the magic shield die, conjured another one and swatted locust pack after locust pack into the ground.

Just enough time to rush her!

Chrysalis… changed. The unicorn fired a shot. As Argent broke off to deflect it, the next wave of locusts smothered her skin. As she broke off to shake them off and bat them away, Chrysalis focused on her unicorn horn, and…

FLASH!

She opened her eyes. Teleportation spells. She’d never mastered them as a changeling, but mimicry brought advantages.

And now she was right behind Argent and her unicorn magic still held the sword ready for a decisive, final –

Argent didn’t bother with a normal-sized shield this time. Instead, the sphere of green enveloped her utterly.

Before Chrysalis got over her shock, the locusts fizzled out under the touch. The sphere pulsed like a heartbeat bubble. Chrysalis raised her sword flat-side first as a shield, braced her legs, skidded under the wash of force.

Wait. A defensive bubble spell? Argent!?

How? Only soldier changelings knew that spell! A mere wet nurse could never…

The shock ran over her face.

Under the green film, Argent scowled at her. “I study! You don’t!”

Then Chrysalis scowled in turn. Fool! This changed nothing. No magical shield could repel iron for long. She stabbed right into the shield, opening her mouth to cackle –

Argent… changed.

Her unicorn form flashed out of existence. Along with the bubble.

Chrysalis stared. Any changeling could change form, but it took practice and mastery in the field. A nurse couldn’t –

Her body ignored her brain’s prejudices and spun round, exactly where Argent had reappeared, back in changeling form again.

Chrysalis had swung before she realized Argent was nowhere close. Much further away.

In the midst of the cleaners.

Chrysalis hastily stopped her sword in time. Held it steady.

Six of the cleaners scurried away. Every changeling would watch a fight, but only from a distance.

One wasn’t so lucky.

By the time Chrysalis could blink, the cleaner was yanked yelping into mid-air and Argent’s glowing horn held it suspended in place, gasping and patting at its neck.

Horror broke out in a chatter all around them. From afar, the rebels battered through the blockage of their entrance tunnel, but only Antenna had managed to squeeze halfway through, and he stopped for a moment at the sight whilst the hive broke into uproar all around them.

Chrysalis froze.

As obviously and deliberately as possible, Argent straightened up. The choking cleaner whined through what was left of its crushing throat.

“Don’t move,” said Argent.

Chrysalis raised her sword.

At once, Argent raised the cleaner to block it.

The sword stopped immediately. Inches from the frightened face, the blade trembled.

“You… You soul-sucking spore…” hissed Chrysalis.

Soul-sucking spore. One of the worst plagues a changeling hive could face. A killer fungal growth that warped changelings and drove their transformation spells haywire beyond recognition. An insane and painful way to die.

And the vilest of insults.

Argent changed.

Before Chrysalis could block, the sword clattered out of her magical grip. The next shot spell hit her squarely in the chest. Sent her rolling.

Through the daze, a voice droned indistinctly.

Sense trickled back. The voice became Argent’s.

“…and haven’t you learned yet?” said Argent. “No rules anymore. No restrictions. No stupid old codes. Only what has to be done to survive.”

That voice sounded too close.

Chrysalis changed, the pegasus shot away, and she changed again into the earth pony as the blade of the new summoned shield stabbed where her head had been seconds ago. How could she still fight? There were no rules anymore! The spell had been broken! Why weren’t there any riots?

Overhead, the dome stayed in place. She heard the crowd clearly, though. A babble of confusion, outrage, hurried excuses, uncertain arguments, and frantic questions. The Living Hive itself stirred uncertainly.

She spotted the sword, shot towards it, leaped, changed, somersaulted in mid-air as a pegasus, zipped by the flash that brought a teleporting unicorn before her, yelped, dodged Argent’s slashing shield, grabbed the sword in her hooves, tossed it up, changed, landed on changeling hooves again, and caught the sword in time to block a blow aimed at her head.

Argent’s mobile shield smacked and rammed and battered into her; it was all Chrysalis could do to get her sword there in time, and each blow smacked it dangerous inches out of her control before she could seize it again. Yet she couldn’t strike back. The cleaner was Argent’s hostage. If Chrysalis tried a stab, she knew it would kill the wrong changeling.

Worse, she hadn’t expected Argent to know so much magic.

Especially not when Argent changed into a unicorn and fired at her leg.

Block!

Chrysalis’ sword was a second too late.

“NO!” shrieked Captain Antenna from a lifetime away.

Sheer white-hot pain blasted Chrysalis’ leg out from under her. Her chest smacked into the fleshy floor and only soldierly instinct rolled her away from instant decapitation via shield. Her sword tumbled aside. She tried to stand up and then the pain swung round and barrelled so hard over her hurting leg that she blacked out for a fatal second. The scream raged through her leg to her pain-pounding chest and burst out and fled from her mouth for the wilds.

Trapped between the crushing pain and the head-smacking daze, she found just enough sense to grab the nearby sword and thrust it regardless into –

Argent’s expectant sphere of green.

Behind this great sphere like a princess raising the sun, Argent did not smirk. She did not laugh or gloat or banter. She had the look of a tired old mare forced to perform one last act of regrettable surgery.

In the entrance, Captain Antenna flurried in desperation, still squeezed within the tiny hole he and the rebels had forced into the blockage. He got no further.

No help. Chrysalis’ gaze swept back to Argent.

Whose green sphere gripped the stuck sword like an amoeba curling around a wound. Both held firm for a concentrated moment. Then the metal groaned. Bent. Began to glow red hot where some strange, unnatural magic met it. For a while, the sphere flared like the sheen of the enchanted throne. The air shimmered with magic that had never been used inside a changeling hive before, because it had always been forbidden. Had been the stuff of inferior species.

The sword screamed. Cracked. Reddened along its entire length. Resisted. Lost a sudden shard.

Snapped.

Shattered.

Showered.

Chrysalis had wielded swords for years. She’d fought alongside them, as any infantry pony fought alongside their bravest comrades. Even this young one had acquired a soul forged in the fires of battle. It had acquired a name. Maulwurf’s Bane.

Died.

The dead pieces smacked on the flesh of the ground. The hilt clanged off a shard of blade. The hope died with it.

Dead hope mutated. Sprouted something. Burst and swarmed with rotten maggots of helpless rage. Chrysalis growled her defiance. Made to stand up.

Her leg screamed at her.

Yelping, Chrysalis crashed onto her face.

She peered up in time to see Argent drop the cleaner, who bolted screaming for an exit.

Argent inspected Chrysalis’ face carefully. She summoned another shield. Brought it up over her own head, poised. The pointed edge cut into Chrysalis’ future.

In the distance, Captain Antenna shouted. Spells blasted something away. It was all a faraway dream now.

Chrysalis made to growl her defiance –

“I will regret this,” said Argent, ever the nurse.

And that was it. Simple. Chrysalis became, for the first time and the last time in decades, a mere grub. A helpless sack of fluids, begging from a towering authority that kept her alive, decided her life. First life, for the last time.

The shield stabbed down.

And missed as Captain Antenna barreled into Argent and bowled her over. The edge of the shield struck the ground, spurted pink gunk into Chrysalis’ eye.

Antenna had the element of surprise. His horn already glowed, aimed –

Then Argent slashed with her shield.

Antenna was thrown back. His fired spell missed utterly. Smacked into the dome overhead.

Argent slashed again.

And again. And again, and again, and again, and then she drew it back and smacked his limp form aside to bounce once and then slump and lie still.

Rage! Shock! Horror! Crying heartache!

The Living Hive screamed along with her as Chrysalis was on Argent before she even realized she was on her hooves already. Horn aglow. Horn overflowing with emotion. Emotion rising and exploding into power.

Argent’s sphere resisted for a second.

Then the years of campaigns, the rising joy of battle, the cry of comrades, the shots in the dark, an age of paranoia and living on the edge between a raid worth cheering and a death you had to mourn – Chrysalis exploded with a screaming, slashing rage at her own failure.

The sheer emotion burst her body, became sickly green and dead purple and seething black, reddened hot with bloodlust, gave magic all the strength it needed and flew wild, and then Chrysalis cast the only spell that would match and instantly became a supernova.

Argent inside her defensive sphere blew away like a bubble, with her rattling inside.

Chrysalis screamed until the dome cracked and the Living Hive echoed and screamed with her, all the memories of comrades who’d fallen fighting in every war in every lifetime.

And then the backwash of power surged towards Chrysalis and knocked her off her hooves. She barely braced herself in time to stop the tumble. Her breath punched her in the solar plexus and left her gasping back the energy she’d splashed out. Her head swam with the aftershock. Her horn throbbed, flickered against the short-circuiting lines of force, and died.

She had just cast the ultimate spell. The Suicidal Sting.

Like a wounded bee sacrificing itself for the cause. Once a changeling stung her worst enemies with such a supreme act of magical defiance, she was doomed. Her life force would simply bleed away. All magic was spent.

She took in the arena all around her.

Far away, the cleaners groaned and picked themselves up where they had been scattered like dandelion seeds. The dome cracked. Shards fell out. Eventually, it withdrew, wounded and whimpering. The entrances to all tunnels broke open. Her rebels peered in cautiously, surrounded by scorch marks.

Overhead, the hive was in uproar. Changelings flew, hovered, picked themselves or each other up, and rushed around trying to make sense of what had happened.

Self-control. That was the danger with magic. She had to learn self-control.

Calm down. Take a moment. Get her strength back. Then find Argent and make her pay!

Just in time, she spotted the tail flee down a tunnel. Argent! Chrysalis charged after it, ignoring the cries and chatter everywhere else. How dare she? How dare she!?

Argent was a dead mare walking!

“Chrysalis…?”

It was Antenna.

Chrysalis halted.

He wheezed. Curled up on the ground. Surrounding by a growing pool of green liquid.

She didn’t think, or argue, or dare wait too long. Her hooves helped him stand up, shakily, then she lost patience and made for Argent’s escape hole.

No.

She hurried back and helped Antenna limp forwards.

“Get to the infirmary at once,” she commanded. “I can’t let her – that thing – escape.”

“Yes, Commander…” Antenna winced. Something found extra green fluid in him, because one of his wounds spilled another trail down his leg.

Not now. Of all times, not now!

She glanced across to her fellow rebels, who hurried towards them. Overhead, the rest of the hive slowly came to terms with the fact that it was still technically the Queen’s army. Orders broke out. Some soldiers didn’t bother with ethical debate: they simply broke ranks to chase her.

Another tunnel, several exits away from Argent’s bolthole, would lead to the infirmary. But Chrysalis couldn’t let Argent get away with this. Time was suddenly much too short.

Pass him off to her loyal rebels? No, not for Antenna. He’d fought too many battles with her. If he was going, she’d be the one to take him. Common sense had nothing to do with it.

Besides, she’d promised she’d be there whenever he fell. She’d made that promise so many times for so many changelings, and had been forced to break it once too often. Revenge could wait.

No! Kill the traitor! Suffer it to live no longer! Blood for blood!

Chrysalis swore.

She hauled Antenna over her saddle and galloped for the infirmary, just as some soldiers blocked her off.

Antenna was smart. He summoned enough of his energy, switched, became a unicorn. FLASH!

FLASH! Appeared inside the infirmary.

Chrysalis gasped and staggered. She almost let him slide off her saddle.

A wipe of emerald flames restored Captain Antenna to his changeling form. He turned on her back and fired at the entrance to the pit. At once, a green wall blocked the way. Thumps rebounded off the other side.

Chrysalis very carefully laid Captain Antenna down on a nearby bench. Now what?

Always running, always sealing exits behind them. Chrysalis swore. She couldn’t fight like this. Her Suicidal Sting alone had robbed her of any future. Her leg was slowly killing her too. What on earth had Argent hit her with?

A quick inspection revealed the slight pulse of purple through it. Poison. Of course. Even now, she felt little stings clinging to her shoulder.

Poison was not something changelings usually relied upon. Once an enemy discovered you, brute force or simple fleeing mattered more than delightful sadism. And since an undercover changeling needed their prey alive and well, poison was of no value even if an enemy hadn’t discovered you yet.

Argent was learning too much.

Chrysalis tried to forget her – an impossible task as it was, stamping through her blood and chanting through the echo chamber of her skull –

Chrysalis tried to forget her and focus. The infirmary. Healing. Help.

She looked around, and then she cursed louder than ever. Usually, there’d be specialist healers in this dank, stuffy room. Changelings relied on other changelings. Magic spells countered magic maladies, but at a pinch, their own spittle and the natural secretions of their chitinous shell would do. Healers simply produced more than usual, and knew hard-to-master tricks that could enhance those effects.

Division of labour. Normally, that worked in a changeling hive, but it assumed the hive was cooperating. No one had stuck around here once Chrysalis’ rebels had set off the alert.

Curse Argent! If she’d just behaved like a true changeling, none of this would have –

Stop focusing on her!

What else?

Herbs. Herbs were sometimes involved. Chrysalis hurried – then winced and limped – past the benches. Some ivy grew along the wall on one side. Changelings didn’t bother with cupboards.

But you couldn’t have many herbs inside a dark hive. Most of the medicine would be grown outside in a plot, so… the infirmary was close to the hive’s exit. No good! She’d be leaving Antenna alone, and meanwhile Argent was running around betraying everything that was changeling. Supposing she used Captain Antenna as a hostage?

She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t stay here, either. Antenna leaked over the floor even as he lay on the bench and quietly breathed away his minutes.

Thumps hit the green blockage separating her from the might of the changeling army. Something else broke out: yells, blasts, wails of pain. Changelings, fighting each other?

Her rebels wouldn’t last. Fifty against hundreds?

Chrysalis felt the poison spreading past her shoulder. Soon her ribcage would be enflamed.

So close… she’d been so close…

“Ah,” said the voice of the Queen from all around again. “We find ourselves back at Square One.”

Chrysalis tried to fire a spell. It was a waste of time. Her aim was so sloppy that any such spell would have slapped against a random corner. The quiet infirmary swayed around her as she fought to stay standing. Something kept knocking her mind out of focus. The poison?

“What were you expecting?” mocked the Queen. “Did you think you’d break into the hive and succeed with only one casualty? You think you’re that perfect?”

Captain Antenna groaned, stirred, and spat into the bench.

“Your naivety is going to get us killed. The world’s evolving, and we must evolve with it. You think changeling purity is just going to blow all that aside, simply because you really want it to? Well, your last loyal companions are dying because of you. You don’t plan for complications. You don’t plan for real life.”

Chrysalis didn’t reply. As far as she was concerned, Argent was too far gone for reason anymore.

“Too late, you learn every action has a counter, every deed has its price. That’s what ecology means. It’s the system. It’s all around you. It rules your life and you don’t even notice it’s there. And in this chaotic world, it tends to eliminate imbalances. Anything that doesn’t fit in.”

Half of Chrysalis staggered her towards the exit. The other half staggered her back to Captain Antenna. She’d be a lot happier about dying if the voice of that thing would just shut up.

“So we have to pay the world back, for all we’ve taken from it. How we pay matters, too. We can’t pay, in one night, for all the misery and suffering we’ve inflicted on others. It would take centuries. But we’ll have all the time in the world once we’ve stopped dying of fear. Once we’ve learned to take responsibility. Once we’ve –”

“QUIET!” shrieked the last shred of anger from Chrysalis.

Nearby, Captain Antenna mumbled. Outside, the battle rose in pitch. Screams broke out.

“We can survive!” Chrysalis waited for a thought to escape the gauntlet of chest pain, the urgent tug of war, and a desire to kill a voice she couldn’t see. “We can conquer our enemies! Fight them! Defeat them! Stop them, before they stop us!”

The voice of the Queen… She might have barked a laugh. She might have briefly choked.

“Conquer?” she repeated, as if it were the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

“Yes! We know how!” Chrysalis almost tripped, but the core of her mind held steady. “We have the numbers! We have the skills! We can’t lose! We won’t lose!”

“And you think burning down, say, all of Equestria –”

“Burn it?” Chrysalis felt the spark of smug inspiration, itself dying. “No! Rule it! Farm it! Master and slave! Forever!”

The voice of the Queen let her have the silence needed to sink and drown in idiocy. The smug inspiration succumbed to poison deep in Chrysalis’ burning chest.

“And to think I let you live,” breathed Argent. Her voice drifted eerily from another planet of complete horrified incomprehension.

The poison attacked Chrysalis’ heart. Bits of her gut writhed in sudden agony. Her head didn’t so much swim as get bashed about through sudden rapids.

“After all that praise from Imago, you’re just a braindead thug. How would you expect to break into, say, Equestria, the most magically secure realm in the entire world? How would you get past all the normal unicorn spells alone? Oh, you can mimic some, Chrysalis, but they can invent more. We can’t. They have Princess Celestia too: how many ways could you break in that she wouldn’t know about? Because she’s had a thousand years to find them, Chrysalis, whereas you couldn’t find a way out of this infirmary without a sudden burst of good luck from the Last Chance Fairy. And even if you got all the way to Canterlot without resistance, how do you intend to beat Celestia, the Sun Princess herself? Her allies? Her entire Royal Guard? Her security agencies spread out across the land? Her intelligence agencies alone, and they’re not even built for dedicated combat, and do I need to remind you how good they are getting? They’d blow the whistle before you even uttered the threat. And even if you somehow pulled off this miraculous feat for more than one hour, what would you get in that time?”

“I’d take every last drop of love from –”

“From a city full of panicking ponies. Chrysalis, for pity’s sake! You don’t think that might overwhelm the flavour? Mute the love feelings a bit? Why do you think we sneak and hide in the first place: to let lovers panic and forget themselves at the sight of us? And even if you defied basic logic and sucked Canterlot, or one of its boroughs, or even a fraction of Equestria itself dry, how do you expect to do it again? Do you think all your problems will stop there? When the other cities and nations find out what happened, they’ll immediately prepare for an invasion. They’ll notice something wrong with the sun, and no one wants that. They’ll gang up on us. You might as well tape a dartboard to your chest and hand out javelins.”

Chrysalis yelped and fell onto her knees. The poison had broken into her heart’s chambers. Her pulse skyrocketed. She heard every beat through her brain.

“If you want to commit suicide, fine by me,” declared the voice of the Queen. “But how dare you drag your brothers and sisters down with –”

“DON’T YOU DARE CALL THEM THAT, YOU VILE TURNCOAT!”

The strength ran out with the cry. Chrysalis gritted her teeth, willed herself to slow her heart, willed herself to get up, was betrayed by her own body.

Nearby, she realized Captain Antenna was laughing.

“Tell her again, Commander!” he rasped.

Chrysalis growled. She just wanted the agony to stop, and by now she barely cared how.

“Commander?”

“What!?” Then Chrysalis remembered herself and forced her last few breaths to dignify themselves. “What is it, Antenna?”

Antenna spat again. Green ooze trickled out of the side of his mouth.

“What?” Chrysalis’ urgency fought hard against the poison, hard enough to shuffle her closer.

“In the Galleries… back there… the Smell Galleries…”

“Yes?”

“We were few… They were many… Yet we escaped.”

Chrysalis wondered what in Tartarus he meant at a time like this. Was he delirious? She looked longingly at the ivy. If only that had been the medicine, she could’ve shoved it in his mouth and waited. He deserved better than this weak finish.

“Used… smokescreen… and disguised ourselves… tricked the army… tricked them into fighting each other.”

“You’ve always been a great soldier,” she said, hoping he had wanted comfort.

Captain Antenna’s leg trembled its way up. “Smaller force… can… outsmart… a bigger one.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. Humouring him? Believing him? She wasn’t sure herself.

His leg reached slowly for his head. “We can win. We could… We could win that war.”

No doubt in his voice.

The world around them began to darken.

Then she knew what he meant.

“Dream, my brother,” she said, and against the dying light, the grin of old warriors captured her lips. “Dream of the cries of our enemies. Dream of our fallen dead cheering us on. Dream of the day when we don’t need to hide and die anymore. Dream of the day when we no longer have to watch our comrades be taken from us, ever again.”

“I’ve always loved your dreams…”

“Rest well. I apologize. We won’t see our revenge after all. But I promise it would’ve been the gold of dreams.”

Captain Antenna’s leg gave up and flopped beside his head.

His horn glowed.

“Permission… to give you… the load, Commander? My load?”

Tendrils of green slid out from his horn. As Chrysalis watched, they spiralled into the air, spun around her head, and slid in through the holes of her own horn.

As they did so, heat spread through her. The darkness around Captain Antenna retreated. Her brain began to settle. Her heart reached a crescendo of pain and then, incredibly, unstoppably, calmed and quelled itself to a regular check. Whatever poison conquered her from the neck down retreated, flushed down the veins and tendons, forced out of her ribcage and pushed down to her pulsing purple leg. A sting: she hissed. Purple streaks fell away, splashed on the floor, blackened, and evaporated into nothing.

The pain was gone.

Chrysalis shot to her hooves.

“You didn’t –!” she cried.

Captain Antenna gagged, choked, wept against the blockage.

“Why!?” she breathed.

“I wanna be famous… when you make history…”

“Captain Antenna, stop!”

“I want us… to win…”

“No! Don’t you realize what you’ve done!?”

“Stop… Argent… You’re… better than her…”

“If you give me everything, you won’t join the Living Hive! You’ll vanish! You can’t abandon me like this!”

“No… you never… abandon us. You stood… You stood up for history… Don’t just talk… Do…”

Chrysalis had to bite down whatever fought to get out of her throat. This was Queen Imago, all over again, except this time she had to watch it happen. And she had to, because anything else would disgrace her brother.

She watched as if her life depended on it. Magic flowed through her horn and down to her hooves.

“I’ll kill her,” she promised. “For Imago. For you.”

“Shame… I wish… wish I could join you… Just like… old times…”

His leg fought to rise. A final spiral of magic – and more – left his horn.

The weak leg struggled. Chrysalis’ horn glowed, spread her telekinesis for him, helped him raise his leg further.

“To the hive…” He spoke through a mouthful of green, but she heard, just in time: “Your Highness.”

Finally, the weak leg made it. He gave the salute.

Then she let go. His leg flopped.

Captain Antenna didn’t move.

Chrysalis stared at the eyes, seeing no trace of green in the deep purple. Just the dying embers of utter faith, until even they faded and became cold nothing.

Then she closed his eyes.

Outside, the screams broke out. Then stopped.

The thumps resumed. The green wall buckled. Chunks flew out.

The night before this fateful day, she’d promised one thing: only one changeling would die when this was over.

How many of her rebels were still alive? They might have just been captured. Maybe even Corporal Blattodea had survived the library fire, though Chrysalis didn’t hold out much hope.

Captain Antenna lay right in front of her, silently oozing from his wounds.

She had failed.

She was on her own.

She would know from this point on that she had failed.

All the worse was that Captain Antenna – and any rebels who had fallen – would not have fared much better whether the Living Hive had absorbed them or not.

No changeling should think that – Queen Imago certainly hadn’t – because it was the due honour. To become one with the collective.

It was one of the few old teachings that made Chrysalis recoil. The Living Hive would absorb them, yes, but she’d listened hard to it, unlike the others who’d just blithely assumed. And she’d had a hard time finding anyone distinct. Any souls got lost among the millions. They went from sharp, single identities to a dull, slow, shapeless collective. All around her, and yet never really close. Not like her fighters in the trenches, or spying out a settlement, or sniggering whilst in disguise, or fleeing for their lives together and hearing each other pant and cry out.

But at least someone would’ve been there. She’d have known they were in the Living Hive, find them or don’t find them. Captain Antenna had chosen a different fate for his soul.

Chrysalis’ horn pulsed brighter than ever.

So now he was truly gone.

Chrysalis waited for the world to tell her what to do. Somewhere nearby and far away, the barrier between her and the changeling army cracked further. Wings buzzed as the blockage let the sound through clearly.

Argent had seen her, even here.

Or… she’d sensed her power. Just as Captain Antenna had sensed her whilst they were in the Smell Galleries. But how? The chambers of the hive didn’t have see-through walls, and Argent had been hiding among dead bodies all this time.

Chrysalis looked up. An eye-sized and muscular hole opened and closed like a sphincter overhead. It had a fleshy grating. Like a ventilation shaft, only made out of natural body rather than foreign material.

Part of the hive’s air flow system. Underground, the air could get stale fast. So the Living Hive breathed, sending the air through a network of tubes and mini-tunnels to spread around the place. All of it, however, had to be expelled at some point. So it all had to come out at one particular place.

Think, Chrysalis, think… Don’t get angry. Don’t scream in grief. Don’t lose yourself.

The air carried everything. Scents. Sounds. Traces of magic. Carried the lot out, ultimately to be breathed out of the top of the hive like invisible smoke from a volcano, but before then it had to go…

Chrysalis’ gaze moved past the grating, followed the tunnel she couldn’t actually see but which she knew must be there. For Queen Imago had taught her one final trick.

By the time the army broke into the infirmary, Chrysalis had changed, the unicorn form had teleported, and with a flash all that remained was a dwindling twinkle of magic.

Assassin

Confined to darkness, cramped but not daring to move, Queen Argent waited.

She was not in a tunnel. All the ventilation tunnels – the air tubes of the hive – eventually ended up here.

Inside, the core of the hive was where all the chambers and rooms were nestled safe. Outside, a thick wall of congealed changeling mass protected them from their enemies. In between, there lay the honeycomb labyrinth.

A honeycomb layer that ran like a padded blanket around the margin of the cone-shaped hive. Insulating. Warm. And the perfect hiding place.

Every scent, every trace of magic ever cast, even every sound: all of them soon came through the honeycomb labyrinth. Here, the Living Hive breathed out, and pushed out everything. Fresh air would then be breathed in through the pores or through secret back tunnels elsewhere to replace it.

If a changeling was patient, they could wait here and detect everything that happened, wherever it happened in the hive.

If they were smart, they could throw their voice through the tubes.

Argent hadn’t started out smart. She’d seen the great libraries of her enemies. She’d resolved to become smart.

Her horn felt the slight shake of magic in the air as, a few combs away, Chrysalis reappeared. Teleportation spell. Took her long enough.

Argent steadied her breathing. There would be no pleasure in this, she told herself. Nevertheless, her face grinned. Sheer overexposure to this hunt was making her adapt to it. She was finding pleasure in this grim duty after all.

She crept closer.

In the distance, she heard the hammering and retching of changeling repair workers. The honeycomb labyrinth broke easily, but changelings took great care of the one thing keeping their hive fresh and aerated.

“Leave!” commanded Chrysalis. “You’re in danger! Flee!”

Hidden in the dark, Argent’s eyes held back the risk of tears. Danger? From her, the Queen? She hadn’t meant to hold that cleaner hostage. It had been a bluff, she insisted. Anyway, her life had been threatened. Chrysalis would have killed her, she knew. Too much hatred. Too emotional for her own good. Such reckless use of the Suicidal Sting – inside the hive no less! – proved enough.

With relief, she heard the workers buzz away. Chrysalis had the voice of a Queen, to her credit. Argent herself felt a slight twinge in her knees and wings.

Instead, she crept on.

Poor Chrysalis sneaked around a few combs below, completely ignorant, and precisely where her scent caught on the current blowing up to Argent’s hiding place. The rage burned through her nostrils as Argent sniffed quietly at the scent. Rage… and the sweat of too much pain suffered. A zap of fear. And… rotting sadness. Even Chrysalis knew she was a dead soul walking. The nurse in Argent pitied her but kept quiet.

At least Chrysalis was sneaking now. So the thug could learn too.

Then Chrysalis disappointed her; she spoke.

“Argent!” she cried through the combs. “You miserable wretch! You won’t use my fellow changelings as mere pawns again! Show yourself! Let’s settle this one on one!”

Rolling her eyes, Argent crept closer. Her magic detector, her sense of smell, the sound of Chrysalis’ voice: all told her the prey was just a few yards below. Behind that bit of comb.

Well, if that was how it was going to be…

“Very well,” she said, loudly but not too loudly: Chrysalis would suspect an obvious trap. “Since the great hunter of ponies must surely have no problem finding one lonely changeling.”

Then she scuttled behind another comb nearby and listened. Scuffing hooves: her prey climbed up, heading right for the spot where Argent had spoken. Clever tracking. Stupid tactics.

She could almost see Chrysalis’ silhouette on the other side of this comb she hid behind, see her rising into view. Not that she actually could. Only the other senses fed her imagination with what it needed to guess.

A few more feet.

Shimmering, Argent raised her green sword.

It wasn’t iron. Iron resisted magic, but when Chrysalis’ sword had swung towards her, Argent hadn’t bothered using magic directly. She’d used a proxy. Sheer heat spells focusing on her defensive sphere like an overheated amoeba had done the job. Heat was heat.

Problem was that iron also resisted heat; melting and bending it enough to break could sap the energy clean out of a changeling. The cold presence had confused her mind. So she’d hidden, and thus waited for her strength to return.

Enough to summon a new weapon. A sword conjured entirely from magic. No earthy, heavy metal with its cumbersome physicality. Just clean cutting power, the essence of blade.

She’d summoned it early, well before Chrysalis had even teleported close. Magic conjurations would tip her enemy off if she was close enough to sense it. Even a dullard like Chrysalis would notice the shift in the texture of the air.

Argent would have preferred to slash with her own horn – a horn was just a long, sharp thing, at the end of the day – but that required getting close. She didn’t want Chrysalis up close.

So she backed off slightly, aimed where she thought the heart was going to be in a few creeping seconds –

Noticed Chrysalis falter.

Had she realized?

Suddenly, Argent sensed something. Magical attention. Through the comb.

On her!

Panicking, Argent stabbed!

The glowing green sword cut right through the comb, but no blood flecked it as she pulled it out. Chrysalis was already scrambling away.

Curses! The devil had spotted the trap in time!

Fury pushed Argent through. She slashed, caught a retreating leg. Heard the scream of Chrysalis in pain rake her ear to the nub.

Stabbed! Stabbed! Stabbed again! Slashed!

All missed.

Argent chased the retreating shape.

Something green shimmered on a comb as she rushed past it. Blood! Chrysalis was wounded. Now! She couldn’t get away now!

Chrysalis fled upwards, through narrower and narrower gaps between the combs. She shouted and swore as she went, flecks of green dripping behind her and almost plopping into Argent’s eyes. Up ahead, other worker changelings cried out and buzzed out of sight.

As Argent followed, slashing at Chrysalis’ tail, she spotted green sparks flailing around the cut in the wounded leg. Healing spells. Well, healing wasn’t going to save Chrysalis. What a fool! To have blundered into such an obvious trap, blinded by her own pride, as if Argent was stupid enough to just reveal her location. And then to waste her restored magic immediately on a healing spell –

Then Chrysalis flipped round and fired.

But Argent thought quicker. Moved quicker.

The hot spells bounced off her protective sphere and smashed into the combs on either side.

Whatever confidence had stayed Chrysalis for that last attack vanished: Chrysalis had enough experience to know how advanced the defensive spells of grapplers could be. She’d wisely chosen to flee.

Then the debris smothered everything.

Dust bloomed from the smashed combs on either side. Argent waved the plumes aside using the flat of her sword. Dratted things! She couldn’t see what was going on.

So she fell back on the other senses. Chrysalis’ magical signature had faded slightly – after all, Argent was below her this time, upwind as it were, and the changeling was running away – but her smell left a slight trace on top of all the other ones funnelled up this high. Fear, and sharp pain on the scent.

Argent followed it.

She left the sphere spell on. If Chrysalis tried another magical attack, she’d be ready for it.

As she climbed, however, Argent found it harder and harder to focus on Chrysalis. Sight was near-impossible in the tight spaces as the combs narrowed nearer the peak, and bright light shone down to blind her. Smells from all over the hive converged up here in total confusion. So did magical traces. All her effort was spent focusing on the retreating locus of power that was Chrysalis fleeing for her life. A few flecks of sparkling blood showed the way.

Soon, they’d be at the chimney. A chokepoint.

Argent frowned.

A trick. It had to be.

She readied the green sword.

It all ended in seconds. Time slowed. Everything became magnified in importance. History held its breath.

Chrysalis shot out of the chimney at the peak of the hive.

A few shots of magic singed her tail as she darted around and landed on the side, out of view. Argent had gotten impatient.

Sparks of magic fled desperately from Chrysalis’ horn to the green gash on her back leg. She panted under the effort. Changing into a pegasus would have been faster and easier, not to mention it would have made her far more agile, but she didn’t want to lose Argent.

All the breath of the hive boiled the quivering air above her. Every puff of life came out here.

Horn aglow, Chrysalis had ducked down north of the chimney’s hole.

So she shimmied east.

Then she stopped sending out sparks to her leg. The “gash”, the “wound”, the fake “blood” faded like tricks of the light. There was no wound. Chrysalis had merely faked the pain. Faked the blood. Faked the healing spells too.

She held the locus of all her power on the tip of her horn, and then made as if to give it to another changeling.

Held it there, on the east side. Left it planted there.

Shimmied south.

And Argent shot out of the hole, slashed down, impaled the glowing green dot on the east side.

Turned south immediately, suspecting a trick. Just as Chrysalis shimmied west.

Chrysalis lunged.

Horn first.

Her head juddered. Flesh and bone squished, tore, cracked, wrenched itself, and then went suddenly limp, all in the blink of an eye.

No earthy metal. No magic. At the end of the day, a horn was just a long, sharp thing.

Time sped up. Returned to normal. History relaxed.

After the weight became unbearable, Chrysalis braced her hoof against Argent’s shoulder and tugged her horn free. Not cleanly. Argent’s head broke off and tumbled down, down, down the slope to the rocks far below. Argent’s body – everything below the neck – slid back inside the chimney.

She heard it thump and rattle for a long time, sounds blown up to her by the breath of the hive, until the distant patter died away.

Only then did she summon her magic back to herself. The shock of return made her gasp.

Long live the Queen.

She almost said it. But Chrysalis found no energy left to gloat. She could barely stand upright.

Instead, she stood on the peak of the hive and surveyed the domain around her. The sunset bled through the sky. The forests hid their nightly dangers from her. The circle of dead stone around her hive showed where the changelings had, hidden on this tiny dot of the world, taken back something of their lives and claimed a home in defiance of the rest of creation.

Up here, the winds blew from Equestria.

If she squinted, she could pretend that country waited for her on the horizon. Lurking, looming, a dark tidal wave coming.

It didn’t matter that she planned to meet it on its own waters. The tidal wave was always there in her mind. She held her breath just thinking about it.

Chrysalis felt numb.

This wasn’t exhaustion. She’d felt that before. Exhaustion was where you wanted to go on but found nothing to travel on. This felt like a complete loss of everything: wanting things, having somewhere to go, travelling under any kind of steam. She looked inside herself, but there was no name. There was no story where she fitted in. There was barely a hive out here to stop her mind from expanding into oblivion. There was just her body, an empty husk, about to fall over.

Something surfaced, though.

A flicker of pride.

Queen Imago’s memory, beaming.

Before Imago had died, she’d rewarded Chrysalis the highest honour: the role of assassin.

That was who she was! Scouts were just test cases. Grapplers were backup thugs. But assassins topped them all. They became legends among legends.

Assassins went out in secret to eliminate the worst enemies that menaced the hive. Anything that threatened the hive but was too difficult to just grapple aside or run away from, the assassin had to face it. No exceptions. Assassins had no truck with exceptions. They did every job they got, or they gave up the title.

So they had to be cautious, and they had to be cunning, and best of all they had to not only tolerate their dangerous work, but to delight in it. An assassin lived to see a crucial job satisfactorily done. They had to love it. Embrace it. Feed on it. Breathe it. Only the most devoted and skilled of all changelings could be trusted as assassins. Almost always, they went on to become Queen.

The highest honour.

By the time the first changelings found her, Chrysalis had watched the sun fall and die. She hadn’t smiled once.

The Last Queen Standing

The smile of triumph still refused to come forth, hours later.

Chrysalis was in the throne room. Where she belonged and where she didn’t fit.

Overhead, the cocooned ponies twitched as changelings extracted rations of love for the celebratory feast – she didn’t bother watching this part, but heard the slurping and sucking sounds. This was traditional upon a coronation.

Around her, the tunnels lay wide open. She felt the Living Hive ease and relax, now that a Queen had been secured. Changelings were free to mingle all over, regardless of rank or role. This too was traditional upon a coronation.

The throne flashed. She still didn’t dare sit on it; instead, other changeling officers and soldiers crowded around it, inspecting and testing the hard blackness through their own glowing horns. Most of them had experienced magic of one form or another, out in the world, out on several distant campaigns.

One by one, their horns shut off. The earliest ones waited patiently for the later ones. Chrysalis waited for their verdict. Even the Living Hive waited, breath held in the still air. Argent might be gone, but the throne had been of her own make. Even in death, she might not be trustworthy.

But Chrysalis had to be in the throne room, just the same. After all, this was the most traditional part of any coronation.

It just didn’t seem to matter very much.

Nothing did.

Eventually, the last horn went out. Commander Lepidoptera, the commander who had succeeded Chrysalis what felt like a lifetime ago, stepped forwards and saluted.

“Proceed,” droned Chrysalis.

“Your Highness,” said Commander Lepidoptera smoothly, as if she had been born for the commander’s position. “All magical types have been checked. Report thus: we can make no guarantees regarding the chaotic TOM –”

TOM. Type of magic. Changeling military jargon.

“– but Captain Vespa assures us the other kinds should diminish its effects for the most part. All other types ESC-OK.”

ESC. Enchantment, spell, curse. Standard code when checking good, neutral, and evil magical types.

“Thank you, Commander,” droned Chrysalis.

She couldn’t help noticing the changelings give each other worried glances. No mystery why: Chrysalis usually spoke more authoritatively. Her dull monotone didn’t sound right, especially for a new Queen.

Chrysalis waved a hoof to dismiss them, then sat down on the throne. No ceremony. No fanfare. At the finish, it was just a big spiky seat.

Barely worth the effort, she nonetheless watched the changelings scurrying about from tunnel to tunnel. A group of cleaners applied their liquid trade to the scorch marks on the floor and far wall.

What now?

Chrysalis leaned back. She didn’t care about chaos magic. The way she was feeling right now, she’d barely notice the difference.

Inside the throne, she felt a presence stir. Like the Living Hive.

What now?

She watched the changelings come and go.

She’d loved the Hive. The Hive had loved her. Even Argent had loved her, before all this. The Living Hive had been their constant friend. Up until It happened. Up until Queen Argent happened.

Chrysalis’ mind vaguely gave a toast to her honoured dead. She’d heard the reports. Most of her rebels had died.

Changelings weren’t used to the idea of fighting other changelings. Up till now, it hadn’t mattered if the enemy had died, so long as they themselves survived. Only about eleven had survived the skirmish in the Intravenous Arena, around the same time Captain Antenna had sacrificed himself for the cause.

They’d fought. Under her leadership. They’d died believing in her, but they’d still died all the same.

And now? Under her leadership were thousands of changelings who hadn’t. Changelings who had stayed with Argent when Chrysalis had rebelled, had been banished, had sneaked her way back in only to fall into a trap.

Anger found something to grasp in her heart.

Hive of idiots! Traitors! Cowards!

Now she was their Queen, everyone seemed determined to pretend the last few hours hadn’t happened. They refused to make eye contact as they hurried by. Most of them pretended the throne and she weren’t even there.

She’d imagined it differently. Captain Antenna would have been alive and would have been rapidly promoted to Commander Antenna. A position she could entrust to him. Not to Lepidoptera, who’d led the charge of the royal army when Chrysalis had been fleeing for her and her rebels’ lives…

Commander Lepidoptera approached.

“Yes, Commander?” said Chrysalis tersely.

Commander Lepidoptera saluted. “Your Highness, we’ve found Argent’s body.”

“Oh?”

A few hoof-shuffling moments passed. The anger – the one constant of her last few days – flickered slightly… then rose when Chrysalis realized what was coming.

“Er…” Commander Lepidoptera alone met Chrysalis’ eye, and very, very clearly did not want to. “Permission to bury her in the death chamber, Your Highness?”

Normally, they wouldn’t have to ask. That was how strange the situation was.

Chrysalis turned it over in her mind.

Argent was dead. No longer a threat. Even if she merged with the Living Hive down there, she’d have no influence on its thoughts. One renegade had no sway against the million-strong.

But then she remembered her poisoned leg. Worse, she remembered the sight of Queen Imago’s body in the nursery chamber after Argent had left her there… That had been poison too…

Poison.

Chrysalis furiously pushed back against the image of Argent comforting her, Argent feeding her, Argent cooing and encouraging her grubby little larval form as it blundered uselessly in the nursery chamber, dreaming of battle.

Poison.

“Permission denied,” snapped Chrysalis.

A few nearby changelings stopped in a hush. The hush spread some way around the throne room, competing with the bustle and scurrying legs.

“But… Your Highness…?” said Commander Lepidoptera.

“Cast her body out for the scavengers.” After far too long a hesitation, Chrysalis leaned forwards. “Your Queen just gave you an order, Commander.”

Commander Lepidoptera unfroze and bowed stiffly. To her credit, she never dropped eye contact. Lepidoptera was made of sterner stuff than her cowering brothers and sisters.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Go! Trouble me no further unless it’s important.”

The hush took on a darker muttering tone, but Lepidoptera flew off and the others hurried back to their tasks. Outrage worked better if you had someone strong to use as a shield against any backlash, and they knew better than to challenge Chrysalis in this mood.

Still… her order had crossed a line.

All changelings looked forward to the death chamber. To merging with the Living Hive. Refusing entry to such a perfect state – Chrysalis winced at the idea – was the ultimate declaration of hatred. It meant a changeling was Not One Of The Hive.

Chrysalis snarled at the idea in her own head. Tough! The hive could take a hit for once. The world could take a hit for once. Because they were not Right. Nothing about this was right, and Chrysalis had no patience for it anymore.

No, she was thinking wrong. She needed some time alone.

Chrysalis got up and ambled around the throne. To the nursery chamber beyond.

Inside, the massive stalactite hung as a dark reminder over all the eggs. To think, eons ago she’d been checking that stalactite for any sign of Argent. It seemed ridiculous now. Argent had been a nurse. She’d belonged on the ground, tenderly clutching the eggs scattered about.

As Queen, Chrysalis would be gravid soon. That was a natural response to the hormones and other chemicals in turn responding to her new state of mind, her royal state of mind. More eggs would need to be laid. Over time, her brothers and sisters would be replaced by her sons and daughters, and the hive would endure. The Living Hive would endure. This whole wretched, unfair, confused, frightening life would endure.

No.

No, it wouldn’t.

Chrysalis remembered the plains in the distance. On the top of the hive, she’d seen the forests and shadows and rocks and skies and the sun casually destroying another day behind it in fire. Down there, timberwolves hunted, songbirds roosted, worms burrowed in happy ignorance, and countless, endless villages and towns and cities of ponies got on with their inscrutable lives. Chrysalis had seen a world that didn’t care what she thought, that had been everything and nothing all at once. What difference would it make to such a world if she and her kind disappeared?

The hive was dying. Queen Argent had seen it. Queen Imago had seen it and pretended not to. Chrysalis saw nothing else.

Oh, how she wished she could follow in Imago’s hoofsteps. How she wished, insisted, pleaded that Argent had just been a warped traitor and nothing else.

Now Chrysalis felt the stirrings in her own abdomen. Soon, the first of her children would be born into this mess. But it was true: the changelings had relied on the same tactics for too long. Other species – not just ponies – were wising up to them. The feast tonight would barely satisfy the thousand-strong survivors. If she didn’t change something soon, if she treated her hive as invulnerable, then her belief in their own superiority would kill them.

The truth poisoned her.

She couldn’t conquer this. She couldn’t take back her right. She couldn’t earn it just by working harder. She would simply lose. Equestria alone would crush them as easily as a hoof crushed the tiniest bug.

For a moment, she wished Argent was still here. Not the traitor Queen, but the all-loving nurse coddling her fright and grief. Even if Chrysalis refused to admit her own fear, she needed someone to be defiant at. No wonder the Living Hive had fallen in line. It had remembered all the nurses. Even the nurses remembered their nurses.

Doubt poisoned her.

But she couldn’t let it win, either. Surrender was not a word she’d ever use. Something else she’d seen, from the top of the hive, looking down on the rest of the land, was death.

Death of the soul. Death of the self. The hive was everything to her. In a sense, she was the hive. If she surrendered, she’d mix with non-changeling things – ponydom, minotaurs, zebras, buffalo, griffons, diamond dogs, donkeys, and stranger species than those – and she’d be lost. Just like the individual souls in the Living Hive. It would thin her, dilute her, reduce her to nothing. Everything would be lost. Being a changeling was everything to her, so anything else was emptiness, a void, nothing.

If she surrendered, she would be lost.

If she surrendered, she would be no true changeling.

Part of her wondered if she was doing Argent a favour. Better to die as yourself than live on as a speck in the void.

So don’t surrender?

But then what? She’d cleansed the hive of its traitorous poison, only to have no cure for a body that was still sick. The hive needed a change. It was getting by on luck now, and it would fall to enemies if those drops of luck ran out.

She was no changeling if she surrendered. She was no changeling if she didn’t.

And she’d had to kill a fellow changeling anyway, just to get here. She was poisoned with that knowledge. That must mean she was no true changeling, mustn’t it? After all, changeling should never kill changeling.

Worse, she’d led her rebels to their deaths. She was a complete hypocrite. An incompetent. A danger to her own subjects.

She’d solved nothing…

Argent’s ghost leered at her as she stared at the eggs so hard they might have cracked under the pressure. The eggs, scattered on the ground at her hooves.

Argent was right about this. They couldn’t win.

Yet Chrysalis refused to become another Argent. Befriend ponies? Befriend mere food?

What would a changeling – a true changeling – do?

Eventually, she couldn’t stand it any longer. Chrysalis returned to the throne room.

Nothing had changed. The cleaners cleaned. The passersby passed by. Soldiers soldiered on. Then Chrysalis remembered something.

Besides, she understood how Argent’s mind worked now. Befriending. Surrender.

She peered at the stylistic holes in the throne’s base. To Argent’s credit, the throne at least looked approvingly changeling-esque.

A few seconds of rummaging unearthed the letter. Of course. Argent would have wanted to keep it very close by.

Chrysalis read it through. She’d been taught to read for the campaigns in civilized territory. Changelings who were illiterate had fewer options when it came to impersonating ponies.

The letter was addressed to Princess Celestia. It declared the hive’s surrender. It listed a proposed negotiation for reparations to the citizens of Equestria, in exchange for rations for her changeling subjects, et cetera, et cetera…

For a moment, Chrysalis cowered.

Befriend ponies? Befriend the enemy? The eternal enemy of an eternal hive? That was what Imago would have scoffed. Imago would have gone right back to the old mantras without another thought.

Surrender? Argent would have done anything to protect the hive. Anything?

Dare she?

Dare she send it, and save her changelings?

What!? The rage clawed at her heart. Let someone else help US!?

A voice very much like Argent’s responded: Pride won’t feed us. Pride will get us killed.

I’d sooner die fighting!

Good, mocked the inner Argent. Because that’s precisely what you’ll do. Princess Celestia raised the sun that razed the sky. You saw it. You are a mere wasp under a gigantic eye. Sting it, and you will be swatted like a pest.

Chrysalis’ teeth cracked as the tightening jaws started kinking them ever so slightly out of joint.

She watched the changelings massing into the throne room, baffled for a blink. Then… oh, yes. The coronation speech.

She’d have to tell them what she wanted the hive to do. Remove the Smell Galleries and that intrusive library. That was about all she knew for sure. Everything else was a red haze in her head.

You’d sooner die fighting. Would you sooner kill THEM fighting?

Chrysalis shuddered under the chill of the thought. Kill her family? Kill the only thing that mattered?

Why did they matter so? What did they actually do?

Despite the panic and protest in her head, she stepped back onto the throne as if quietly confident in her speech. As if the thousands of blank stares would erupt into applause no matter what she did. As if they would not mob her if she got it wrong.

Chrysalis gaped back. A mere grub under a mass of nurses –

No! She snapped her jaw shut.

The throne room was silent with bated horror.

Go back to basics. Chrysalis sought refuge, and so thrust some easy words forward.

“My fellow changelings!” she announced, shuffling to sit more comfortably on the crystal-hard throne. “Let us heal this rift that has divided us! Let us restore our hive to greatness! Let us create a future, in which we are not the last hive hiding in the wilderness, but a proud hive and the envy of others!”

So far, so good. Changelings still looked blank, though. That last bit didn’t sound right, either…

“I have a vision!” she hastily added. “A vision where, from the brink of death, we snatch life! Our hive will increase. We will be strong enough to send forth brothers and sisters to found new hives. We will once again be a great and terrible scourge upon our enemies! We will be the founders of a whole new era! We will become the hive of hives!”

Still no reaction. She knew why. All these regurgitated promises had come from Imago’s mouth too. Unspoken was a rising question: how? How can we do this? What are we doing wrong?

Chrysalis glanced at the letter. It shook in her telekinetic grip.

This was the moment. This was where dare became history.

Changelings had been doing it wrong for too long. But doing what wrong? Why would being a good changeling be wrong? She just did not understand it. Hadn’t she been a good changeling? A true changeling?

She held up the letter.

A shift in the air as thousands of eyes and a monstrous, looming, concentrated focus squeezed the letter in her grasp. The Living Hive itself engulfed the letter through a flood of curiosity, a torrent of emotions, whilst the millions of lost lives found themselves waiting for the drop and the strike of the ground as whatever befell them… fell…

How would it land?

“We will never go hungry again!” cried out Chrysalis.

No one listened. They stared at the letter.

At Argent’s work. During Chrysalis’ moment to shine.

“For the good of the hive…” Chrysalis found her own eyes staring at the letter.

“We will…” She faltered.

“We…”

“We will never…”

Argent’s work. Argent’s policy. Argent’s…

Chrysalis realized what she was doing. Argent’s work.

Argent’s… treachery.

This was all the fault of traitors! Of enemies! Changelings had done nothing wrong! Imposters like Argent had! Their enemies had! It was their enemies! It was always their enemies! True changelings always had enemies! A true changeling knew she was doing right when she made enemies! True changelings! For the Hive!

She ignored the screams of fear in her own head. They didn’t reach her now.

She glowered at the thousands of eyes. Imagined their fear too. Violently conquered it.

She screamed, “We will take over ALL OF EQUESTRIA!”

Shock and surprise blinked and murmured around her. Even Chrysalis barely believed her own mouth, but now she’d said it, suddenly the rest became clear. She held the letter higher.

“As Queen of the Changelings,” she bellowed, “I will right all wrongs! I will make the world ours again, as it should be! Protect my own, for we are the Hive, and nothing else matters! We are everything!”

Then she growled and shredded the paper, as viciously and finely as possible, under the new wave of horrified whispering. Bits of white rained down like confetti over a bride.

“The world will hate us!” raged Chrysalis. “As it should! To be hated by our enemies is proof that we are on the true path! Our enemies wish to make us weak and helpless! Well, we will not satisfy them! We will take from those who don’t deserve their privilege! The greatest raid in the history of raids! All of us will become assassins! All of us will show the world which is the dominant species!”

Whispers died down. Several faces looked worried, but more began to smile, or smirk, or grin, or beam, or nod, or laugh, or shake in sheer excitement.

“Feed, my brothers and sisters! Feed, as we’ve never fed before! Equestria has more love than could satisfy a hive of hives! So Equestria will serve us! Equestria will feed us! Equestria will be our slaves, and we its masters! Equestria will fear us, and we will fear nothing!”

Someone whooped at the back. Several murmurs of approval ran around the room like playing children. She’d touched a nerve.

“THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!” shrieked Queen Chrysalis. “DO OR DIE!”

Cheers erupted, first from those few who could no longer contain themselves, then from their neighbours, then from all around as the mood caught fire and spread its heat and light and painful joy from cleaner, scout, grappler, soldier, nurse, the entire hive. The Living Hive billowed as rich smoke over them all.

“First! We will feast here! Gather our strength! Then we will make preparations! There will be no delaying our destiny! To Equestria, and to a future fit for changeling-kind! Go! GO!”

As soon as the changelings dispersed, however, Chrysalis dismissed Commander Lepidoptera – who’d stepped forwards smartly to salute – and slipped out before anyone else tried to object.

The echoes of the hive’s cheers followed her all the way, until down here, they could no longer reach her.

Down here, in the chamber of death.

Shed skins. Body parts. The corpses of her fallen comrades.

Stretching endlessly.

For Chrysalis knew she wasn’t going to win. No one would question the logic of her attack, her actual plan, and in any case she didn’t want them to. Commander Lepidoptera would do as she was told, because that was her role, but Chrysalis knew what she’d been about to say. What objections she’d have brought.

The commander would’ve been wasting her time, though. Chrysalis could see all those objections, plain as day. They’d want to know the details of her plan.

There was no plan.

True, she knew a few things about the country’s defences. Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard, for instance, would be a major obstacle. She’d have to gather more intelligence about him. Although the changelings were moving out soon, she couldn’t just march them up to Canterlot – the heart of Equestria, the heart of the most magical country in the world – and expect to topple it in a day. She could set up a bivouac somewhere in the forest, scout ahead, find some weakness to exploit, hope they didn’t let anything slip before she could move in and disable the defences, and…

Somehow beat Princess Celestia. And wasn’t there talk of another princess now? An ally? And six others… Chrysalis hadn’t kept up with the latest news, not during the Imago and Argent crises. The hive had been a bit distracted during all that business.

But this she knew for sure: she wasn’t going to win. There was no way. Argent had poked so many holes in the idea that Chrysalis herself didn’t see any of the actual plan left over.

This was insane.

Part of her didn’t care anymore.

In a way, it was fitting. One last tribute to the greatness of the changelings before their defeat, and before their death. One last defiant statement to the world.

Befriending weak little ponies? Ha! What a lovely but ridiculous sentiment!

So! What better than the glory of a final battle? If insanity rules, then why not? Die as herself. Die as a true changeling. Surrender and mercy and patronizing pity were the ultimate insult, to her, and to her astonishing kind.

Anyway, she didn’t care anymore.

Why should she? The world didn’t. The world had put her – overwhelmed her, hated her so much – in this unwinnable situation. It was the world’s own fault she’d been made to do this.

How she longed to hurt the world for that. To share her pain. To gloat at it, as her final dying victory. If she could kill it too, then all to the good.

She gritted her teeth at the sight of all those bodies. Deep inside, the simple pain.

The world wanted them to die? Very well. She, they, her changelings: all of them were going to die whatever she did. But she would make it matter.

The smile of triumph finally arrived.

So her one choice was simple: she’d show the entire world and everything in it as clearly, as spitefully, as gloriously, as directly… and as painfully as possible… how a true changeling should die.

The Living Hive and the Traitorous Hunt

Chrysalis had never killed a changeling before.

This was not for lack of desire; it was just that the only thing she’d sworn never to kill was her own kind. After all, changeling should never kill changeling.

Ponies, fine. Other species, sure. Random wild monsters, yes with emphasis. But never her own flesh and blood.

She hesitated.

Even lurking outside the throne room, waiting in ambush with a few dozen of her loyal rebels, she hesitated. To merely get this far had taxed her heart to its limit, and it still found enough fresh horror to beat faster.

You did not kill your own kind.

Fight a changeling, maybe. Disarm her, if necessary. But kill her?

Then she reminded herself: the Queen of the Changelings was a fake. An imposter. A traitor. A backstabbing, conniving, vicious, un-changeling-like changeling! That smirking parasite didn’t deserve the throne!

Chrysalis would never kill a changeling. Never kill a true changeling.

She kept the Queen’s smirk firmly in mind. That traitor’s smirk. Yes, it was easier to think this way: her target was not a changeling at all.

Her spell began to charge.

Chrysalis loved the idea of wiping that insufferable smirk out of existence. So much so that she channelled her dark, twisted desire around all the poison in her heart, and lowered her horn, aimed the lot, and fired.

The blast echoed back and fled through the maze of hive’s chambers around them. Behind Chrysalis, the rebel changelings groaned under the booms, yet she herself remained braced and firm. No weaknesses. None were allowed in a future Queen.

Her advance guard hurried through the hole in the wall. Green magic glowed beyond.

She waited, eyes narrowed. Their hisses assured her it was all clear. She strode through, horn lowered. The rest of her rebels followed her immediately, fanning out to cover as much ground as possible.

“Ha!” She licked her lips with relish. “At last, you will no longer chain us down! My loyal changelings and I… will…”

The throne was empty.

She glanced around, horn simmering green. The whole throne room was empty.

Chrysalis sniffed the air. Years of watching villages and leaping out at wandering ponies had honed her senses to near perfection. A changeling who couldn’t hear a bounty hunter sneaking up on them was dead. A changeling who failed to smell the dogs on the prowl was chased down and then dead. And a changeling who never trusted her instincts was already a dead beast walking.

Her senses screamed: Trap!

Yet no traps could be seen. Her gaze and her own detection spells cast about, expecting something. Not a glimmer of magic stood out.

Her suspicion glared at the throne. The current Queen had built this one, using hardened saliva and shed skins and the stolen magics which even changelings never used, and such an aura radiated from the throne that anyone could be hiding there, camouflaged by power.

Chrysalis’ eyes narrowed at the holes all over it. Perhaps anyone could be hiding inside.

Silently, she nodded a changeling towards it. The rebel nodded back and crept over, taking six of his fellows with him.

They approached the throne as though approaching a sleeping manticore. Green light spilled out from all around.

Overhead, cocoons throbbed and pulsed under their magical work. The pony victims, dimly visible inside, squirmed.

He leapt. All six rebels leapt.

Each stared into a hole.

They looked back at her, two flashes for each horn. Nothing found.

That “Queen”… How dare she! How dare she!

Chrysalis ground her fangs together. “Rot, wither, and die! Always, you run and sneak and hide like a grubbing coward!”

“Those are called ‘tactics’,” echoed a voice. Harsh. Commanding. Yet quiet as a sword slicing cleanly through winter winds.

The voice. The voice of the Queen! At once, Chrysalis spun around. High above, tunnels led out of the throne room. It could have come from anywhere.

“Queens must consider what’s best for the hive,” continued the voice. “Have you considered what is best?”

“Where ARE you!?” Chrysalis’ glare leapt from hole to hole, ignoring the uncertain buzz growing among her fellow rebels.

Squishy sounds creased in her ears. Looking up, she spotted the tunnel entrances closing all around her. So the hive itself was on the Queen’s side. Just like she’d guessed, and feared.

The hive would not accept her, Chrysalis, as anything but an intruder now. Very well. That meant it was loyal to the Queen. The current Queen. She could yet change its mind…

“I see banishment has taught you nothing, Commander Chrysalis,” said the voice. “Oh, excuse me. Ex-Commander.”

Without a word, Chrysalis’ spire of a horn pointed her fellow rebels at the various tunnels: search everywhere.

Wings droned through the air, and savaging jaws tore chunks away from the blockages. Some of the smarter rebels lit up their horns and grunted and groaned until the blockages glowed in kind and started to shift.

There were maybe half a hundred changelings loyal to her. A force to be reckoned with, sure, but still no match for the entire hive. Everything had been riding on this sneak attack. After all, it wasn’t running and sneaking and hiding if the ultimate aim was to charge and confront and destroy.

And now she had to improvise. How could she have been so reckless? If the royalists caught her rebels before the Queen was killed…

While the rebels worked, Ex-Commander Chrysalis moved to the centre, under all the glowing and squirming cocoons. Even here, she warmed under the magic pumping their love out, making the pony victims inside twitch and spasm.

“When this is over,” she hissed, “they will call me Queen Chrysalis, Slayer of Slinks and Slivers like you. No one will even remember your name!”

“Planning to write your own chronicle?” The voice sounded impressed for a moment. “Intriguing. That would imply you have finally discovered how pens work.”

Chrysalis fought not to spit and hiss. The anger, crushed under the hooves of years and the mountains of smug smiles and withering insults and disapproving grunts from every day of every week of every month of every year of her entire life: all fought to attack something, anything. But she dimly knew that if she gave in to it, the Queen would win.

“Show yourself and fight me!” she demanded.

“I have a much greater suggestion,” replied the voice. “Why not come and challenge me? Face to face? Since you are so capable?”

The throne was right there. Nothing could stop Chrysalis from striding over and claiming it. How often had she imagined herself seated on that royal crystal of spikes and holes, barking those orders her fellow changelings needed to hear? Orders she would be honoured to give. Orders she wanted – desired – hungered to give.

But it’d never truly be hers. Like the hive, the throne rejected anyone it sensed was an enemy. Being full of a magic stolen from many nations, it wouldn’t be subtle. It wouldn’t settle for merely sealing up on her.

Even as she watched, a green sheen flashed over it. Daring her to come closer.

So it needed a strong master. Good. She was more than willing. And capable.

“You can’t hide forever!” Chrysalis cursed herself. Her anger wanted to win so badly, it was starting to overpower her desire not to lose.

“Correction: You can’t seek forever. Behold my loyal soldiers.”

Clanking armour hailed her ears.

No… Not now… Not right now…

She listened to the royal regiments marching up behind her, back up the maze and the way she’d come. Marching in lockstep, rank and file: she could tell by the synchronized timbre, by the way the hundreds of hooves harmonized. She didn’t need to look behind her. Her instincts saw through the back of her own head via her swivelling ears.

The army could see her back.

That was why she didn’t bother spinning around like some prissy dancer. She charged up the spell without giving away anything.

Behind her, the Queen’s regiments began shouting, and were cut off.

Her spell had worked?

Only then did she spin round to check. Yes! Perfect. Where the hole had been, a magical, slightly translucent wall now glowed like sunlit glass, showed her the surprised eyes beyond, and then thickened and became a solid green wall. The magical wall muffled all thumps and curses thrown at it.

Safe behind a barrier. For now.

Sure that no one could hear her, she sighed under her breath.

Pieces hit the floor around her. Chunks rained down from those tunnels where Chrysalis’ own rebels finally broke through the blockages. Yet more marching, more shadows came down them…

“Seal those tunnels!” she commanded.

Such loyalty! Lesser soldiers would have asked stupid questions like “What? Why?” or “Weren’t we supposed to open them a minute ago?”

The last wall of green magic smothered the last tunnel entrance before any of the marching royal soldiers could break through, and the last of her own rebels dimmed their horns. Buzzing wings settled down as her rebels landed all around. Waiting for orders.

Despite her first blunder, they still trusted her. Good. She had a chance to recover from this embarrassment.

Chrysalis ignored the thumps and curses from the magic wall behind her. Even if the structure of the hive itself rearranged its tunnels to get around all the green walls thus erected, the Queen’s own regiments were stuck in them at the moment. They needed to withdraw first, or else they’d get caught in the tunnel shuffle. Moving whole squadrons back wasn’t a quick task either.

Time enough yet.

She’d walked into a trap, she’d walked into a trap, how could this be, she’d walked into such an obvious trap –

Anger twisted and writhed inside her, forcing itself to turn into panic. “No –” escaped her mouth too late for her to bite down on it.

“No,” she said again, all rebel eyes beseeching her for orders. “There is a way… I have not come this far to be thwarted by a petty ruse.”

So where would a snivelling coward hide?

Perhaps…?

Wishing she could ignore the muffled thumps and curses all around, Chrysalis signalled to her rebel changelings and hurried around the throne, giving it a wide berth.

Such a monstrosity of design! The Queen must have disposed of the old, regular throne. Perverse, radical, dangerous… and so much better than anything Chrysalis could manage.

Her stomach seethed. Changelings had never needed anything but their own magic, yet the Queen had raided griffon and minotaur and ahuitzotl and unicorn and many other territories, collected as much magic as possible, and forced it together and made it work for herself, right there, in that new throne. An abomination! A betrayal of changeling principles!

And yet…

Chrysalis shook the treacherous words out of her head.

On the other side of the throne, she aimed at the wall. Her fellow rebels did likewise. The air sizzled and distorted under the collective heat.

“On my signal,” she said through gritted teeth, “lower all green wall shields and concentrate fire. Three, two, one!”

Half a hundred blasting spells rocked them backwards, barely out of the way of shattering shrapnel and flying dust. The boom gave way immediately to the fresh sounds of angry buzzing far behind as the magic walls vanished as one.

“Go!” she shouted.

The rebels shot through the blasted hole, straight into the next chamber. Chrysalis waited until the last one darted through, expecting hooves or hot spells to strike her back at any moment – There! She leapt through, spun round, saw the Queen’s regiments pouring out of every suddenly free tunnel, pushed the spell up her horn and focused.

One minute, she saw the throne room swarming and filling with glowering changelings shrieking after her. The next, a fresh green wall rose up to cover the scene.

Thumps met it on the other side. They were too angry for curses, replacing them instead with more thumps. Bits of the green wall cracked. She pushed another wall spell up, reinforcing and fixing it. A couple of her rebels joined in.

Extra thick. Good.

One of her fellow rebels hissed. All clear.

Only then did she turn around.

Eggs. Little enough to crush underfoot, the colour of parchment, the smell of chalk and fresh mint. They hung from the ceiling so thickly it had sagged and become a whole bush full of eggs. Some littered the centre of the chamber, where they’d fallen, ripe and ready to hatch.

Her place of birth.

Chrysalis hesitated. The nursery chamber. Indeed. Only now it seemed much too small and cramped, not like the old days. Why, when she’d been just another larva, the ceiling had risen for miles.

Queen Imago – the true Queen, the one who had ruled before the current traitor had replaced her and made that abominable throne – had been a dark watchtower. Chrysalis shivered to remember the column-like legs, legs with holes she herself could have crawled through. The armoured chest blotting out her world like a metal moon. The expressionless eyes, too high to reach but too fascinating to leave unexplored. And the mouth that whispered secrets in her ear –

“What are your orders, Commander?” said a rebel changeling.

It was Captain Antenna.

Hastily, Chrysalis shook the memories out of her head. Hardly anyone remembered or cared about the old Queen Imago now. Most of them had either allied with the current Queen out of fearful duty or been banished alongside Chrysalis for impudence. And Chrysalis and the current Queen had been among the last of the oldest generations too. No one else knew old Imago like they did –

Chrysalis shook again. Concentrate! Concentrate!

Honeycomb gaps lined the walls of the nursery chamber. Not enough for a changeling to squeeze through, but weak enough for a changeling to break its way through. No sign of violence, though. So…

Very, very carefully, Chrysalis stepped around the eggs of her younger brothers and sisters. She’d set out for the Queen alone. Other changelings were poor slaves and dupes, not enemies.

Her fellow rebels hovered and encircled the sagging ceiling. So they even thought like Chrysalis. Good.

The traitor… What a Queen! Hiding amongst her own children! This was low, even for her!

Yet it was clever. Chrysalis, whatever else she was, would not attack young. If she did, she wouldn’t be a changeling. Rebel, yes, but she wasn’t a traitor. The Queen was the traitor. The Queen didn’t act like a changeling should, as Chrysalis had been taught…

Pah! Did the Queen think she was stupid?

Chrysalis… veeerrry carefully… lit up her horn. Eggs growing out of the ceiling near her glowed in kind. Around her, the rebels followed her example. Soon, the whole bush glowed.

Don’t move the eggs. That would tip the Queen off, lurking inside. They’d have to move fast.

But Chrysalis had spent a lot of time in unicorn country. Her first role for the hive had been scouting, because she was fast and agile, and a scout who was slow and clumsy would soon lack a life to be slow and clumsy in.

There, she’d watched. And she’d learned. She’d learned new spells.

Still, being a changeling helped in a way.

Learning new spells was not easy. Over time, a changeling could do it in their default form. Until then, however, they needed training wheels. A more comfortable form to practice in. Even expert changelings sometimes defaulted to them as a quick aid and a boost.

Chrysalis… changed.

The unicorn that stood in her place gave a signal. The other changelings changed too. Gangrenous fire washed over them… revealing new forms. Unicorn forms.

Unicorns knew how to cast powerful magic. They were built for it. And function followed form.

Teleportation was a hard spell to master.

In a flash, she and her rebels teleported the eggs to the ground. In that brief flash between disappearing and reappearing, she and they fired.

The bush cracked, crumpled, revealing the stalactite at its core before that shattered and blew into grey clouds, which settled over the teleported eggs harmlessly.

Nothing else.

Chrysalis growled. Changed back. She’d been so sure the Queen was hiding there–

“Well, it seems you have been learning after all, little grub,” said the Queen’s voice from afar. “Not just a thug stuck in her ways. But I’ve been learning too. Regrettably, I’ve learned I must kill you first.”

The other changelings changed back too.

Green chunks smashed behind Chrysalis.

Green pieces scattered over the eggs. Chrysalis spun round in time for a hoof to smash through the green wall keeping hundreds of royal soldiers from flooding the room and crushing everything in it.

“Surrender, little grub,” said the calm confidence of the Queen.

Chrysalis froze. An impulse rose up. Hide among the eggs. Take one hostage. Be practical. If it meant not losing –

She growled until the impulse fled. No! Only traitors thought like that.

“There!” she pointed at random.

The rebel changelings magically or physically – depending on personal inclination – grabbed one of the honeycomb holes and pulled it wider. She beckoned them urgently to dive inside, grabbed the edge herself, pulled it back further, and ducked through, spinning round, lowering another green wall, ignoring the battle cries pouring in.

Then, in this new chamber, she fired at the ceiling.

Chunks and dark ooze rained down over her. Someone grabbed her from behind and threw her backwards. She tumbled, righted herself hastily, rose up onto all fours and watched the cave-in block out the honeycomb hole and the green wall plugging it. Muffled anger shouted on the other side.

Good luck getting through a cave-in as well, she thought.

Her breath was ragged, as though jagged blades stung her throat every time she gasped. Her legs weakened along the holes as fissures of exhaustion threatened to grow.

They couldn’t keep this up. This was no way to fight a Queen. If they didn’t find her soon, Chrysalis would drop dead of exhaustion.

How could it have come to this!? How could the Queen have seen them coming!?

Chrysalis heard the others hiss and turned around.

This chamber was long. It stretched into the distance. As did the bookshelves.

The effect was like finding fallen trees in a whale’s stomach. Black ooze dripped from the ceiling – Chrysalis saw the veins and arteries of the hive itself throbbing up there – and the ground underfoot sank and squelched wherever she walked. Now she noticed it, cold clung to her sides where she’d been thrown and tumbled; she ran a hoof over that side, and came away trailing a thin, oily slime, as though she’d rolled on glue.

The stomach of the hive.

Not just the hive in fact. The Hive. The Living Hive.

It was the Living Hive that surrounded her. It was the Living Hive that dwelled in the solid structures and chambers and mazes within the mountainous mound that was their home. It was the Living Hive that opened and closed tunnels on a whim.

It was the Living Hive that watched over all the individual changelings that made up the mere hive without the capital H. It was the Living Hive that observed all with fascination and interest like a baleen whale inspecting a curious diver. And it was the Living Hive that fed alongside the rest of the hive – a guardian spirit that hungered too for love.

Here, it was fed. Here too, it consumed the knowledge of its changelings. Their hopes. Their dreams. Their sweat and blood. Here, changelings had to give it everything, prove themselves by satisfying it. Befriending it. Being trusted and thus honoured by it.

Young changelings trained here. Once they had molted for the fifth year and the fifth time in their lives, changelings learned the tricks from their masters and met the Living Hive for the first, for the most wonderful, for the most awe-inspiring time in their entire lives. Here, they learned the great secrets of their home. Here, they heard the song of the Living Hive.

A gentle moan rumbled through the ground. Bits of the cave-in shuddered.

Chrysalis almost fell to her knees. A changeling never forgot their first time, hearing the Song of the Hive.

Then she quailed. Shook. Trembled with newfound outrage.

A perfectly fine teaching chamber for new changelings, and the treacherous Queen had done this to it? Bookshelves!? Foreign objects!? Sacrilege!?

Several young changelings – too white to be full adults, too advanced in shape to be larvae – watched from various reading pulpits. Many were wingless.

Books! They never had books when Queen Imago was in charge! Trust and words had been enough for any changeling!

“No one move!” Chrysalis’ horn flared warningly. “The first changeling who moves, that changeling will die!”

The young changelings cowered, ears ducking down. That was a bluff; Chrysalis had sworn upon her life that only one changeling would die today. But she could feel the aches and panic ganging up on her. The Queen should have been dead by now. The plan was unravelling.

Next to Chrysalis, one of her rebels saluted.

“What is it, Captain Antenna?” she said.

“Commander,” he whispered. “We are close to the armoury. If we keep fleeing like this, we won’t be strong enough to escape the same way we came in. Recommend we seize the enemy’s armour and stand and fight, Commander.”

Chrysalis’ heart sank. Now the script was being yanked away from her. Standing and fighting: someone – royalist, rebel, any of her changeling brothers and sisters – would be killed because of her mistake.

“Stay your course, Captain,” she replied. “I am… assessing the situation.” Buy more thinking time, that was the key to getting out of this…

She saw the disapproval in his eyes, but he saluted all the same. “Yes, Commander. Commencing our sweep, Commander.”

“As you were, then.”

Captain Antenna led the others down an aisle. Testing for traps, their spells ran along the shelves, floor, ceiling, and any young changeling they snarled at as they passed by. Chrysalis followed them, wishing she could be out in front sweeping the way. A future Queen, though, had to be kept safe at all costs. Even if it made her feel like a wretched coward to do it, duty insisted.

Yet a small part of her whispered, A good thing for me.

Angrily, she hissed until it sank back down. Some of the nearer rebels looked around, suddenly alert, until she waved them off with a curt, “False alarm. Continue!”

Overhead, the echoing voice of the Queen – the traitor – laughed, but as a noble might laugh at an amusing joke by her jester.

So the Queen knew they were coming. Even if Chrysalis and her rebels had burst their way through the hive instead of sneaking their way to the throne and then bursting in, no Queen could have been informed early enough to prepare this trap. Guards on lookout duty told the high command first – the Queen didn’t need to know about every petty invasion attempt. It only became a royal matter if the threat delved deeply enough to be spotted too close to the throne room. Even if the current Queen kept changing the rules, she couldn’t have foreseen…

Unless…

Unless she knew in advance. Had been told, say, one day before, exactly as Chrysalis rallied her rebels and planned out their sneak attack. Had been told, perhaps, by one of the very changelings here, marching among her rebels.

No. Could she think that about her own allies?

“The trouble with you, Commander – apologies, I meant Ex-Commander,” said the voice of the Queen overhead, “is that you know nothing but the joy of the hunt. You are a creature of the outside world. What makes you believe you are a Queen, meant to rest in the hive and brood children forever?”

“Queen Imago was no mere brooder!” snapped Chrysalis. Too late, she tried to stop herself talking, and then gave up. “She fought alongside her daughters!”

“Imago was a fool,” said the voice with such reasonableness that Chrysalis wanted to strangle it. “You see the books around you? Stolen from ponies and cattle and donkeys and diamond dogs and buffalo. Stolen from many more species besides. Knowledge is power. Knowledge enough to show us what we’ve been doing wrong with our power for centuries. What our role in this world must be, if we are to survive. Do you believe Imago would have led us to glory? Would you believe it still, if you knew one-tenth of what I know about Equestria’s defences?”

The Queen had said, “You see the books around you?” And in the nursery, she’d said “little grub” as though at some kind of joke. So the Queen could see them, wherever they were.

How? No one could predict this route; Chrysalis herself had just chosen randomly. Yet she was also sure her rebels had detected no other changelings, not even ones spying through holes. The magic-detection spells would have picked them up.

Far behind, the echoes of bangs told Chrysalis the cave-in was beginning to crumble. The education chamber, the aisle, the walking never seemed to end. Where were they going, anyway?

She smelled the fear among her ranks. Hoping she didn’t smell like that to them, Chrysalis glanced at the books on either side. More abominations. Changelings didn’t need written words to tell them how to be changelings! These shelves were intruders! Why didn’t the Living Hive itself spit them out?

Black drops pattered her chitinous shell. The place wasn’t even built for reading! She remembered Queen Imago drilling them in here, making them fly to one end and back, dodging as many black drops as they could, while all around them the Living Hive rumbled and sang and oozed and digested the love they’d stolen from other countries. Here, the Living Hive itself – the walls and the floor and the ceiling – fed alongside its young changelings. Fed and shared their bond through their collective feast. Fed on love. Fed on knowledge.

The same knowledge. Over and over.

It was stupid.

Far behind, the echoes of bangs changed. Cries of rage followed. A changeling royalist had broken through! She and her rebels hurried their steps without a word.

But Queen Imago had taught Chrysalis here, taught her about the glory of the hive, and the care of the hive, and how to use healing herbs, and how to regrow a lost limb, and how to kill without magic, and a million other things that she could take out into the world as a shield to wield against the ponies who wanted her dead.

It was here she’d graduated from scout to grappler. Grapplers took over; once the scouts told their fellow changelings what a town was like, the grapplers ate that knowledge and digested it. Then they went after the targets.

True, there were official ranks in the royal army. Private, Corporal, Captain, and so on up to Commander. But there were more informal roles too. The ones changelings knew and idolized. Scout. Grappler. Legends in their own lifetimes. Heroes in ancient stories told by Queen Imago.

Chrysalis had burst with pride on her first grappling; she’d wrestled her first unicorn to the ground, out in the woods, where he’d been alone, and had taken his form and cocooned him and sucked him dry and strode back to the town and…

Puzzled the other unicorns. Fumbled her excuses. Forgotten to keep her hunger in check when his son had come to hug her. Been found out. Fled. Fought. Took a blow. Fled for her life.

And she’d come back here, where Queen Imago heard her terrified story and then simply laughed. An excellent start! Every changeling got it wrong first time. The secret, Imago whispered in her ear, was to learn from it. Grow stronger. Grow… not smarter, because useless smarts made you stupid, but more cunning. More ruthless. More efficient, for even this botched attempt had brought back precious food to share, and if she got better, she’d bring more food next time.

Yes, Queen Imago had been magic. She’d turned a newbie’s miserable failure into a triumph. Chrysalis had champed at the bit to get back out there and prove herself properly…

Whereas the new Queen, the traitor, taught them how to use mind spells on each other. Insubordination, in a hive!? To doubt your own side was to not be a changeling. She…

She wouldn’t…

Would she? But then, anyone who thought about spies all day might just try it…

Chrysalis suddenly glared at the rebels around her.

“Halt!” she barked.

As one, the changelings about-turned.

“Captain Antenna?” Chrysalis watched him scurry forwards and salute.

“Commander!” he said.

Carefully, she peered into his eyes. Nothing except the usual purple. To his credit, he didn’t even blink.

Good.

Leaning close, she whispered in his ear, “There’s a spy among us.”

He didn’t flinch. She’d taught him well enough to keep his emotions in check.

“What are your orders, Commander?” he whispered back.

“Inspect the eyes. Someone is letting the Queen use their eyes.”

“Commander?”

Impatience flashed through her. “Only a changeling has eyes here. And the Queen taught us this: some spying spells only work if the changeling gives their consent. She spies on us, Captain. I don’t intend to let her spy any longer.”

“What shall I do, Commander?”

“Prepare the vice spell. I’ll signal you. You’ll know it when you see it.” Then she straightened up, glaring at the assembled company of nervous faces. “None of you move! Don’t even blink!”

One by one, she glanced from eye to eye, while behind the rank, Captain Antenna moved into position. His horn glowed, ready and waiting.

Blue eye, blue eye… blue eye, blue eye…

Far behind, a buzzing closed in. At least one of the Queen’s soldiers must have spotted them. Time, time, why was there never enough time!? Blue eye, blue eye… blue, blue… blue, blue, blue, blue, blue-green, blue-green, blue, blue…

Aha.

She glanced back. The seventh one along. She had a tiny green spot within each eye.

“Corporal Blattodea?” said Chrysalis.

“Yes, Commander?”

She even had the gall to use her title! Chrysalis bent closer.

“Say hello to the Queen for me,” she hissed.

Corporal Blattodea reacted too late. Whatever spell she’d built up shot over Chrysalis’ shoulder just as Chrysalis ducked and seized her and held her aloft. Behind Chrysalis, the buzzing yelped and stopped. One of the Queen’s soldiers had come too close at the wrong moment.

Captain Antenna shot forwards, spiralling around the struggling corporal until they were a green blur, pausing, and then spiralling again until the cocoon became completely solid.

And Chrysalis dropped it as though handling a severed limb. “I’m not interested in your reasons, Corporal. But I hope you prove more cooperative when the new world order is upon you. I have no use for treachery among my ranks.”

She was shaking. A spy, even among her own! Chrysalis was a rebel, yes, but she’d been open about defying the Queen up until banishment. She’d spoken loudly and clearly. This was… this was a dastard’s trick!

Books and spying and trickery and mind games. Queen Imago would turn in her grave, if anyone had found all the bits of her and buried them together. This was no way to rule fellow changelings.

“Commander!” Another of her changelings pointed.

Chrysalis turned to see the army flooding towards them.

The black tidal wave threatened to crash over her. Over everything she’d worked for.

Rage shot up. Rage, and joy, the sheer joy of imagining the treacherous Queen’s face when she got a chance to do this.

Flames sickened the shelves, infected the air, oozed over the books. The army fought not to fly right into it. Covers crackled. Pages blackened. Smoke rose up, overwhelming the royal soldiers who coughed and buzzed and cried out in confusion.

Hungry for more, Chrysalis fired again, at the bottom shelves. Books exploded. Pages flew. Groaning, the shelves on one side began to fall.

Only then did Chrysalis wake up.

“Down, down!” she yelled.

She aimed her horn down, fired, closed her eyes against the splattering black drops, and jumped into the gaping hole.

All around her, the Living Hive screamed.

Even as the shelf of books collapsed over the hole, even as burning books rained down all around her, even as Chrysalis shuddered and stumbled where she’d landed in the chamber below, the Living Hive screamed harder. It moaned and pleaded and broke itself over and over with each octave shattered and each decibel torn apart. She’d wounded the Hive. She had to, but she’d wounded the Living Hive.

“You spying wretch!” shrieked her anger. “You’ll pay for this! I’ll make you pay for all this foul corruption!”

Around her, the other rebels had jumped down too. They coughed and spluttered. Some rolled out flames clinging to their backs. Others brushed comrades who were blackened with ash. A few limped.

To her relief, she saw Captain Antenna beat out the flames on his mane and salute her. “All present –” he coughed a puff of smoke out of his mouth “– all present and correct, Commander!”

“And Corporal Blattodea?” she said.

He coughed again. “All true rebels present and correct, Commander!”

Chrysalis glanced up. The bookshelf had fallen flat over the hole. No sign of obstruction remained. Those shelves had been storeys tall.

Blattodea…

A traitor, yes. But still a changeling. Brainwashed and misled. If only she’d been given the right leadership?

No, this was where everything had gone wrong. Changelings against changelings? They’d never thought like that before. The new Queen poisoned everything with her mind.

So where were they now?

Chrysalis sniffed the air. Then she sniffed again, because too much happened in her nose all at once. Vinegar… and lavender? Golden tints crossed with iron blood? And… another sniff… Cherries twined between old cheese and rotten eggs?

Then she glanced around.

Oh no.

Either side of her, the walls had splotches spaced out among them. Each splotch glowed, some red, some white, many flexed under hues and shades of all kinds. It was as if someone had melted rainbows, mixed them with paints, and thrown bucketfuls of the stuff against the wall before enchanting them to shift and swirl.

It was a new chamber, not included in the old hive. All the walls and ceilings and floors squared off instead of curving naturally. Everything that wasn’t flat was a corner, or an edge. Chrysalis grimaced at the sight.

Square rooms, neatly organized into galleries: that was pony thinking.

The gallery wasn’t there to be looked at, though.

Chrysalis sniffed again, and her nose met strawberries and cinnamon, dancing and tingling along her nostrils before a needle of spice hit her.

The Smell Galleries.

Queen Imago would never have approved. Art wasn’t for changelings. They didn’t need to tell the world what it wasn’t. They just needed to feed. Smearing the walls was a waste of time and valuable energy.

Yet as she passed, Chrysalis sniffed, and strange visions rose up in her mind. Visions of summer, where the bluebells blossomed and rotted under the oaks raining pollen. Dead logs, full of the wet stench of slugs and the crackling little tingles of crawling insects – useful snacks for a changeling, if love was in short supply, but not particularly rich or tasty. After all, insects hardly felt anything, much less love.

This was insane. She was in the hive, a place no insect or bluebell would dare to be found. Smells were supposed to tell a scout or a grappler what was out there, what they could do about it, what was real. Why make the smells lie?

“Chrysalis,” said the voice of the Queen, perfectly calm and collected. “I see you remember your training from the old days. You can be so much more intelligent than this. Why persist in being a throwback?”

Chrysalis threw all caution to the winds and raced through the galleries. She tried not to smell anything, held her breath at first, but the aches spiked her limbs and the smoke clung to her lungs and she had to snort and suck the air if she wasn’t to drop dead, and then they came all at once.

Smells flashed past, carrying tales of sweat and fear and strange things that tried to force her mind not to think, but to feel, to act like she was in a swamp, then a city, then a gas-filled cave. Gag reflexes fought urges to flee, which scrabbled against the survivalist’s freeze response to a dangerous scent, which in turn held fast against the scent of a superior, pheromones forcing her muscles to slow and stop and bow.

She gave up, gasping, shepherded between too many colours. Her head wanted to vomit, her stomach wanted to spin. Up was down, darkness was light, the ground under her hooves threw her back to the ceiling. She willed herself to overcome it.

“What are you doing to me?” Chrysalis demanded.

“Nothing you haven’t done to yourself. You don’t learn, Chrysalis. You don’t adapt quickly enough.”

“I outsmarted you!” Chrysalis almost threw up, but that wouldn’t do for a future Queen. Something trickled out of the side of her mouth.

Weakly, she added, “I found your spy.”

“A temporary setback. Do you think I’d settle for only one means of spying on you? I had a second pair of eyes cloaked and watching, just in case you found out poor Corporal Blattodea.”

“I won’t lose! I can’t lose! Not to the likes of you!” Where was the Queen? Over there, in those shadows that hadn’t been there a moment ago – no, they were gone now. Or over there, where the meadow and the bakery – the smells of the meadow and the bakery came to her.

She was going to die, she was going to die, she was going to die…

“You killed Imago!” Chrysalis shook and slapped her own head, forcing the smells and their worlds to make sense.

“I had to. Queening isn’t what it used to be, Chrysalis. We can’t simply wait for the next changeling to retire and let the Commander take over. That’s a stupid rule. It means the prize goes to the biggest muscle, not the smartest brain.”

“You killed her! I would have at least let her live, if I’d ever wanted to be Queen. That’s our tradition, you worm!”

Somewhere among the papery smells of Fillydelphia’s streets and the feathery choke of Griffonstone’s nesting place, she heard the Queen sigh as though at a backwards pupil.

“But you killed her!” shrieked Chrysalis.

“Listen. I’ve been watching our hive for a long time, Chrysalis, since long before you were even born. I saw how the world saw us. I looked for other hives and found nothing. Then the truth came to me: We were going to drive ourselves extinct. Because we do the same things over and over, and we expect that to keep working. Imago never thought about that.”

“Liar! Imago knew every trick in the book. But she trusted you, and you killed her!” Chrysalis clung to the statement, because if she didn’t, the voice would sweep her mind away. Reason threatened to drown her on all sides. The voice was reason. But it belonged to a traitor who killed.

“Imago knew the small tricks. She was a genius in that area, I grant you. What she didn’t see was the bigger picture. Our place in the world. Have you ever heard the term ‘sustainable ecology’? I hadn’t, until I infiltrated a library. Before then, I believed Imago too. I believed we were the dominant species.”

“We are!” Chrysalis closed her eyes and covered her nose. How was she supposed to think? Her mind kept thinking she was in fifteen different places all at once, and every new smell threw her across the world until she landed in a bog or on a hill, or in the middle of a fortress full of iron.

“Then why are we the last of the great hives? I built that throne to protect us from as much magic as I could find. If we die, the ‘dominant species’ dies with us. So we must adapt! We must learn from the ponies, and other species too.”

Chrysalis fought against the doubts invading her mind. Hadn’t she secretly noticed that too? Hadn’t she asked Queen Imago about it once, when she’d been promoted to Commander and had finally felt brave enough to try?

Imago had squirmed. She’d just repeated the old mantras. We are the dominant species. Changelings were meant to rule. One day, we will triumph.

They were dying. Chrysalis knew why she was one of the last of her brood. Almost everyone else had been found out, or made mistakes, or gotten lost. The old ways were all she knew, and they were killing her.

Chrysalis was too tired to reply. She was going to die. She’d barely believed it when this rebellion started, but as soon as she saw the throne room empty of Queen, the belief had crept up on her mind. And now her mind was everywhere, breaking her across Equestria and beyond, and somewhere in all that, she was going to die.

“I should be on that throne…” she managed to blurt out. “It’s my right! I earned it! Not you! Runt! Has-been! Stay-at-home fool! You were just a wet-nurse to grubs!”

“It’s over, Chrysalis.”

“NO!”

“It’s over. Your fellow rebels will not be harmed. They can be re-educated. But I see now you are beyond hope. Perhaps it will comfort you in your dying moments to know I am planning to send a message to Princess Celestia, announcing our surrender.”

Chrysalis’ mind fell away, pulled in too many directions at once –

Leaving rage. Leaving pride. Leaving the beast.

She snorted out every confusing smell. She was in the gallery. The square walls, the odd colours, the lying smells – WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

“Surrender!” she screeched. “Surrender!?”

“It is for the best. We will need love, but I am sure the princess can be reasoned with and we can come to a mutually beneficial –”

“SURRENDER!?”

“Commander Chrysalis?”

She met the relieved gazes of her rebels, who flew into the gallery and joined her. Captain Antenna led the force.

Chrysalis held the beast back just long enough to say, “Where is she?”

“Below us, Commander! We widened our detection spells. There’s definitely a presence in the chamber below us.”

“You’re sure?”

“Affirmative!” Captain Antenna saluted.

Chrysalis seized him and glared into his eyes. Nothing but purple. It was too late to check the others.

“Who detected this presence?” she barked.

“I did,” said Captain Antenna, squirming in her grip. “Shall we charge, Commander?”

Chrysalis held her breath. The beast wanted so much to charge right in, but the rest of her didn’t forget the confusion of smells. She’d always been the keenest of the changelings under Queen Imago’s rule, right down to her nose. But Imago had taught her: never let the nose lead. Noses could be wrong. A changeling trusted her senses, true, and then she did the leading for them.

Besides, in the distance she could hear buzzing wings closing in. The army would not be long.

“Self-cocoon, now!” she shouted.

As one, her little army and she faced outwards in a circle, mouths bubbling over. Heat oozed up her own throat, joining the blood rushing down her own horn to meet and froth behind her mouth.

She belched out a river of sparkling green. As the emerald width of the falling water splashed on the ground, it rose up as though filling an invisible mould. Other rivers rose up around her. The rebels piled up the stuff, Chrysalis tilted her head back, and she aimed her jet of changeling ooze. Soon, the rising mould met at the top, sealing them inside a pure green dome.

No one could see in or out. She glanced down at the ground beneath her hooves and scanned it instantly. Whatever presence lurked below, it wasn’t near enough. Perhaps it could sense vibrations, though? After all, some wet-nurses learned to detect the tiniest rumbles when dealing with thousands of little bellies and little mouths.

“Whisper,” she commanded.

Captain Antenna nodded. Quietly, he said, “Permission to speak, Commander?”

“Yes?”

He saluted again. “She’ll be expecting an attack, and with all due respect, you need your strength back.”

“My strength is fine!” Chrysalis rose, overbalanced, and stumbled. Some of the smells still tugged at the edges of her brain.

“With all due respect, Commander. Only remember the Maulwurf campaigns in the Badlands? Remember when they had us blocked in one of their tunnels and we couldn’t break through without them chasing us?”

“No.” She pulled him closer, despite his cowering eyes. “Wait. Yes, I remember. That was weeks ago. Well?”

“Might I make a suggestion, Commander?”

“You!?” Chrysalis seized the beast rising up and she forced it back down. Her pride wanted to make the plans. This was her rebellion! She’d got to get them out of there, or what kind of a Queen would she be?

Hooves and horns struck at the cocoon around them. Muffled again, as before, but this close the noise made half the rebels jump.

On the other hoof – however much Chrysalis fought against the idea – Captain Antenna had years’ worth and countries’ worth of fighting and spell-casting on his side. And hadn’t Queen Imago once said that out in the field, it was never a bad idea to listen to what others had found, in case you found it too?

Some of the dome began to crack.

Chrysalis realized she was holding him by the neck, and she let him go as graciously as she could without overbalancing again. “Very well. What do you –?”

Then she remembered to whisper.

“What do you propose?” she whispered.

“Listen carefully, Commander.”

And as she did so, she saw what she wanted to see: Captain Antenna, his smile breaking through, his purple eye gleaming with the malicious joy of the hunt. A true changeling’s eyes.