Pandora's Box

by Zombificus

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Princess Luna, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Romance, Changelings, Queen Chrysalis, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Alternate Universe
Length: 18061

Queen Chrysalis wasn't the first to take Cadance's place, since her childhood she has been replaced by changeling after changeling. With this new revelation, finding the real Cadance is going to be a lot more complicated.

We all know the story of "A Canterlot Wedding" by now, but what if Chrysalis wasn't the first impostor to take Cadance's place? What if the deception went back a lot further than that, back to the princess's very childhood? When Changelings are involved, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

[Was written based on pre-season 3 knowledge, inconsistencies with S3 and S4 plot may exist.]

Published 2013-06-19 18:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-03-21 22:48:47 UTC

Main

-Pandora’s Box-
-An Fanfiction for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic-

-Written By Zombificus-

--
-----------------------------------------THE ROYAL PALACE, CANTERLOT----------------------------------------

The great double doors burst open as Twilight Sparkle rushed into the Great Hall, emptying her lungs in one desperate yell:
“STOOOOOP!”
Everypony in the room looked in shock at the wedding-crasher; Twilight’s friends exchanged looks and Rarity facehoofed. Celestia’s mind spun, trying to think of a reason why her usually level-headed student would do something this rash. Beside her, in the guise of Cadance, Queen Chrysalis groaned inwardly at the sight of the intruder.

“Why does she have to be so possessive of her brother?!” growled the changeling in a fit of irritation. Realising where she was and who she was supposed to be, she corrected hurriedly: “And why does she have to ruin my special day?”

“Because it’s not your special day!” came the comically well-timed reply from beyond the doorway.
Eyes widened as a 2nd Cadance stepped into view. Chrysalis, realising the game was up, and already tired of the charade from months holding Cadance’s unbearably PINK form, dropped the disguise to a round of shocked gasps. Her face snarled into a furious grimace and she replied with all the venom of a viper:

“That’s as may be, but it isn’t your special day either, Penumbra. Run along now filly, before the guards catch your cowardly flank.”
Chrysalis grinned in triumph, her whole mind on her war of words with the other changeling. Fortunately for her, the guards remained frozen to their spots.

“So… that’s how it is” said the second changeling, the form-taker charm wearing off as she spoke. “Very well, Chrysalis, so be it.” The creature revealed was less impressive in stature than her counterpart, though no less memorable owing to her abnormally shaped body. Angular, protracted cheekbones; a knit of jagged ribs visible through the skin of her chest; a spine arched permanently down and a neck a fraction too long for the rest of her body – all this made her a sight to remember, and in the case of a few wedding guests, a sight to lose your breakfast over. Chrysalis merely smirked.

“I see you needed help to get out of that little prison I put you in, Penumbra. Now that really is sad, escaping that should have been foals’ play for any true Changeling”

Penumbra bristled, but stayed in control of her emotions: self-control was something she prided herself on.
Besides… she already had her comeback. To Chrysalis’s momentary confusion, Penumbra’s lips curled into a smirk.

“Taking the place of a bride to be to get the love from her fiancée? I see you haven’t changed a bit from that desperate alleyway slut we all remember.”

Chrysalis hissed, speechless with fury. A few ponies laughed, and she sent them looks that would make a grown stallion soil himself. Twilight stood, gawping in the doorway, still trying to figure out what in Equestria was happening. Penumbra smirked cruelly and sent another cutting comment Chrysalis’s way.
“Still hurts, huh? I’ll bet you tried to forget the day I told the hive all your little secrets, didn’t you? I didn’t – that day, Chryssy, was the best day of my life!”

Finally stepping into action and hurriedly trying to make up for lost time, the Guard surrounded the pair. Her job here done, Penumbra calmly offered her hooves to be cuffed. Chrysalis fought every step of the way until one quick-thinking guard had the thought to sedate her, after which things went far more smoothly.
They were led and dragged away, respectively, to the dungeons where the jailers - who hadn’t had an inmate for months - took great pleasure in throwing them into the dingiest cells available.

----------------------------------------------------~MEANWHILE~---------------------------------------------------------

Twilight Sparkle sat with her brother and the princesses at the huge oak table in Princess Celestia’s chambers.
Beside her, Shining Armour was in a state of shock: released from Chrysalis’s tangle of brainwashing he was still trying to get his mind back to some semblance of normalcy. Twilight herself was barely better, her imagination running confused loops around her head.
Celestia was deep in thought, muttering bits of words under her breath and jotting her train of thought down on a scroll, every now and then crossing something out with a vengeance. Next to her sister, Luna absent mindedly twirled her hoof in her mane, using her magic to lift her metal cup from the table, turn it over and drop it back into place. Twilight’s hoof tapped out a slow beat on the stone floor. The clock ticked on.

TAP!
TICK
TAP!
“…lings…”
TICK
CLUNK!
TAP!
“…guards...…maybe….”
TICK
TAP!
CLUNK!
TICK
TAP!
“NO, that’s not right…”
SCRIBBLE
TICK
CLUNK!
“…We’ll have to…oh, no, that won’t….”
TAP!
TICK
CLUNK!
“Yes, we’ll have to… but how...”
SCRIBBLE
TAP!
TICK
CLUNK!
TAP!
TICK
“We have no choice”

All heads turned to Celestia, curious eyebrows raised at the first full sentence she’d offered them this entire time.
“We’ll have to question the Changelings for Cadance’s whereabouts – that is, if they haven’t… well, let’s try not to think about that”
Twilight looked even more troubled than before at that.
“Princess, are sure there’s no other option? Can we even trust them to tell the truth?”
Celestia took a deep breath.
“No, my faithful student, there is no ‘other option’. We have no choice but to hope our creepy little friends will tell us”

-------------------------------------------------A SHORT WHILE LATER------------------------------------------------------

Chrysalis sat ill-temperedly in the large steel cage the guards had procured to keep her in; they stood around it, watching her warily as she scowled through the bars. Penumbra was in a similar cage, looking annoyingly relaxed, stretched out lazily on her back like a snoozing cat as if she were on a luxury bed and not cold steel. There were fewer guards around her cage, but they eyed her with paranoid suspicion, her continued relaxed attitude serving only to unnerve them further.

She was, of course, doing this deliberately. In reality she was worried out of her mind, a dark mass of dread writhing in her stomach. But self-control was her most prized ability, and on the outside she appeared unnervingly relaxed, her true emotions unknown to anypony but the most observant onlooker.

Princess Celestia walked forward cautiously, moving over to Chrysalis’s cage with Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armour to either flank. The trio’s eyes displayed a contrasting range of emotions; Shining’s eyes were swimming in confusion and doubt, shell shocked and sparkling with tears.

Celestia’s were filled with a grim determination; she knew what had to be done and she would do it, although if one was to look closer, hints of self-doubt and paranoia made themselves known, the feelings forever felt but never shown.
Twilight’s eyes were another drastic switch of emotion; tinged with sadness and confusion, a dark shadow of emotion driven back by the glowing sun of curiosity twinkling in her eyes, she would find out what had happened and make sense of it, that much was certain to the mare.

Chrysalis would be first to be interrogated, the plan – however misguided it may turn out to be - was to use her simmering anger to reveal information; to bait her into telling them about her fellow impostor. And hopefully that information would give them a game plan for drawing knowledge from Penumbra because right now the changeling was unreadable.
“Queen Chrysalis, I’m going to cut straight to the point here. WHERE IS CADANCE?”
Chrysalis chuckled darkly.

“What makes you think I know that?”

Celestia was not amused, her face darkening along with her mood. The desperation of the day’s events, along with the changeling’s insolence made her temper flare, a rare event for the normally calm and collected diarch.

“Drop the act you pathetic little cockroach. I asked you a question, now you answer it truthfully or I crush you like a bug.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. Behind her in the other cage, Penumbra shook her head at Celestia and mouthed ‘waste of time’. Celestia moved her hoof to the spear she’d brought with her and pointed it at Chrysalis, the point mere inches from the Queen’s face.

“And I said: I don’t know. I never met the real one; somepony had already taken her place when I got here. So, why don’t you ask miss I-got-hit-by-a-train over there? She’s been pretending to be your precious little princess for far longer than I have.”

Jabbing the point of the spear at the changeling’s face one last time as a warning, Celestia pulled it back out of the cage and dropped it into the waiting hooves of the guard to her right.

Twilight and Shining Armour followed the princess over to the other cage, ignoring Chrysalis’s leering face staring from behind the bars of her prison. Penumbra looked up at her interrogators and dropped the relaxed act; right now her future was under their control, so, she mused, why not try and turn their relationship around.

After all, she might get off lightly if she told them what they ask… maybe a little more than what they ask… all she knew, perhaps? She held no allegiance to her changeling ‘kin’, not after the life she’d had at their hooves, and besides, treachery was in her blood – not that ratting out Chrysalis was really betrayal.
What did she have to lose?
“I just want to say now that if you don’t coopera-“began Celestia.
Penumbra cut her off.

“I don’t want to hear your threats, so save your breath. I’ll tell you everything I know: no lies, no tricks, just the truth.”
Celestia frowned, surprised at the changeling’s cooperation. The relaxed obedience before had clearly been a deception, but this was different… either this ‘Penumbra’ was a very good liar or she was sincerely prepared to help them.

“How do we know we can trust you? Why would any sane changeling give up her kind’s secrets without any resistance whatsoever?”
Penumbra met her gaze. “To answer your first question, you don’t have any choice but to trust me. I’m all you’ve got. To answer your second question, they are no kin of mine except by genetics… this… this is a matter of payback.”

“Very well… you may begin.”

“Your highness, may I make one request before I speak?”

An edge of frustration entered Celestia’s voice. “Well, what is it? We haven’t all day to dawdle on your behalf.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to reveal two decades of changeling secrets in the presence of their ‘Queen’”

“You make a good point, changeling,” she turned quickly and issued the order.

“Guards! Take the other one away, somewhere she won’t be able to eavesdrop.”

Only when the furious changeling queen was out of the room and, still in the cage, being transported along the stone corridor outside did Penumbra speak.

“Thank you, your highness… I am… I was a changeling agent, sent by a hive based north of the Griffon border to Canterlot with orders to recon and infiltrate the ruling class’s inner circle.”
“I did well - more than well, actually. The plan was only for me to take the place of some noblepony and find out what I could from that position. Instead… well, I impersonated a princess for twelve years.”

She paused at the shocked gasps from the trio of ponies outside her cell. Twilight’s eyebrow had climbed so high it looked ready to escape; Shining Armour’s eyes were wide in shock once again, confusion clouding them like an ocean storm.
“I wasn’t the first, and I wasn’t the last. I’m still trying to piece it together myself, but the pony you knew as Princess Cadance hasn’t been a pony at all for a long, long time. I can tell you what I know, but I don’t know – or even understand – everything.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you understand it all, just tell us.” replied Celestia.
Twilight looked like she wanted to ask something, so Penumbra waited a few seconds to allow her to. She kept quiet, however and the changeling continued.

“Alright, this is where things get a bit more complicated. As far as I know, there have been five changelings to take Cadance’s place, myself and Chrysalis included. Two before me, two after me – and before you ask, I don’t know where the one after me is. Only Chrysalis does.”

“Tell us what you know for now, we can speculate where the other one is later,” said Celestia, stress and worry clearly visible on her face.

“There were two before me– from another hive, which is why we didn’t know that Cadance had already been… replaced – a young one, Cocoon, to test the waters and an older one who took her place a year or so after that. I can’t be sure how long they were there but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t more than two years after Cadance was adopted that Cocoon was sent in. She’d have been an easy target at the age she was.”

Twilight finally spoke up.

“You were the Cadance I knew, then… the one who I though was Cadance, anyway. All those years… that ‘friendship’, they were all one big act, weren’t they? I meant nothing to you; I was just another pawn in your little game. ”

“NO!” came the reply. The changeling went quiet, evidently embarrassed at her outburst and a long time passed before she spoke again.

“It… wasn’t an act, Twilight. Granted, I didn’t care for you at the start – but how could I? I barely knew you. Once I got to know you, Twilight, I… It was impossible not to care about you. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend.”

A long silence descended after that, one only broken after it became unbearable not to say anything.

Twilight was first to breach the quiet: “Alright… I still don’t trust you, Penumbra, but if you tell us everything you know, I… I’ll give you a chance.”

The changeling merely nodded in response, though joy flooded her veins. She had a chance now, a chance to gain some shred of happiness in her life. There it was at last: proof that she had something to gain here besides a shorter prison sentence.

“Cocoon was replaced by an infiltrator codenamed ‘Ten-Delta-Sixteen’, a little older than Cadance should’ve been but she was skilled enough to change body size. Probably the most gifted operative to date. Her skillset was enormous: advanced form-taking, loveseer spells, limited teleportation, combat magic to match a war-mage, you name it.”

“And you defeated the ‘most gifted operative to date’ how, exactly?”

“My hive specialises in different tactics to hers – their general-purpose magic’s good against a lot but I was trained extensively in magic she wasn’t prepared for. It was a lucky coincidence I was trained in what I was; anything else would have stood no chance. Put simply, sheer luck, coincidence and more than my fair share of dirty tactics.”

“Eventually another hive decided it wanted to impersonate Cadance and I got chucked into that pit you found me in. I don’t know what my replacement’s name was but she was the one who started this whole romance thing with Shining Armour – That wasn’t anything to do with why she was sent here, that was an intel-gathering mission like mine, so why that started is a mystery to me.”

Shining sat a little straighter at that, apparently content to be spoken of as if he wasn’t right there so long as he could listen in.
Celestia frowned.
“How do you know why she was sent here?”

Penumbra smirked.
“She was very good at finding things out; but keeping prisoners under control? Not so much. She never did anything to stop me using magic; she trusted the caves to do that – but they aren’t as inhibiting to magic as she thought so after a while trying to make a listening spell it wouldn’t deflect, I was able to listen in on her reports back to her queen. Very interesting they were, too, although…”

“Although what?” snapped Celestia.
“Well, she never mentioned that whole romance so I’m pretty certain it was nothing to do with her mission.”

Celestia frowned again.
“You mean to say that she got to know Shining Armour and started dating him of her own free will? Are you suggesting she might really have felt something for him?”

Penumbra shrugged.
“Maybe. She might have done it of her own initiative to get more information but if she did learn anything she never told her queen where the info came from. Either option is likely.”

“So, where are they?”

“Cadance? I don’t know, but I do know where the other changelings are. Ten-Alpha-Sixteen knows where Cadance is, find her and we can find Cadance. Our confusing little friend who may or may not have been in love with Shining Armour? Also, I don’t know, but Chrysalis does. She won’t want to talk but I have some rather embarrassing secrets of hers you could use to persuade her”
“Sister?” called Princess Luna, suddenly present in the doorway, “Forgive me for arriving so late, I came as soon as I heard what had happened.”

“Ah, Luna... I was just going to send for you. I know you’ve only just got back but I’d like you to go with our… informant… here to where the previous changeling spies are and bring them to the dungeons. I’ll get the guards to prepare extra cages for them and provide additional security in here. We’re most concerned with one codenamed ‘Ten-Alpha-Sixteen’; she knows where the original Cadance is. Take as many guards as you need and keep an eye on the informant. She’s cooperated so far but she may try to make a break for it.”

Luna frowned.
“Previous changeling spies? Sister, this sounds… complicated.”

“Indeed it is, Luna, I’m sure Twilight can adequately fill you in on current events.”

Luna departed swiftly, accompanied by a small complement of Lunar Guards and Twilight, Penumbra cuffed tightly to one of the bat-winged soldiers.

Celestia turned away as they disappeared out of sight, preparing to set off on her own mission: to obtain the location of the other changeling from Chrysalis. To her surprise, Shining Armour walked with her, a hint of the old steely determination back in his eyes.
“Just to be clear, Captain, I wouldn’t think any less of you if you stayed back there. You’ve had the sort of day most ponies have nightmares of.”

“I can’t sit around doing nothing. I need to work this whole thing out for myself, and the only way I can do that is by finding her”
‘Fair enough’ thought Celestia, ‘The more the merrier.’

------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE------------- ----------------------------------------------

Deep in the disused tunnels beneath Canterlot, Princess Luna shattered a lock on a rusted cell door. This whole area had been sealed off decades ago, making it the perfect place to hide somepony away. The rust-eaten door squealed in protest as the princess pushed it forwards and she paused before cautiously entering the darkened room, the guards on alert for any sudden moves by the changeling inside.

Twilight and Penumbra stayed outside while Luna’s bodyguards followed her in. Deeper into the chamber they went, Luna vanishing completely into the darkness, shadow threatening to cloak her guards also as they proceeded.

One step, two, three, four steps further in and still there was no sign of life. Luna took another two steps forward and acid yellow eyes flickered open, the pupils unusually positioned. It took Luna a second in the darkness to realise the eyes were perfectly normal, their owner was upside down. A raspy voice, a long time since its last use, echoed out from the hanging changeling, her mouth just visible as she spoke.

“Princess of the Night, what brings you to my humble abode? Other than our mutual acquaintance outside, I mean.”

“We require the location of Princess Cadance; you will surrender it to us at once or face the consequences of disobedience.”

“I didn’t know you’d got back from exile, how long have you been back exactly? My, my… I’ve missed quite a lot, haven’t I?”

Luna clenched her jaw; this changeling was already testing her patience.
“Cease this behaviour at once. Thou shalt tell us what we need to know immediately or on thy head be it.”

The changeling, predictably, gave another infuriating reply.
“I’d have thought you’d be open for a bit of conversation, all this formality makes me-” She yawned melodramatically. ”-bored out of my mind, it must bore you too, princess?”

“We are not here to discuss personal matters with ones such as thou.” Her voice lowered to a growl. “Tell us where Cadance is, NOW!” Her vice slipped into Royal Canterlot Voice at the last word, finally losing her temper.

“Or you’ll do what exactly? I’m no use to you dead, and I’m less likely to talk if you carry on screaming in my face. You really are very rude, for a princess.”

Panting slightly, Luna tried to formulate a response. Then, with an evil grin, an idea clicked into place.
“Well… we could always leave and seal this place back up. Seeing as you love living in this chamber so much, we are sure you’d love to spend the rest of your life here.”

Luna signalled to her guards to leave and nonchalantly walked away. She got three quarters of the way to the door before Ten-Delta-Sixteen’s panicked voice rang out across the chamber, the echo ricocheting of the walls in the silence that followed.

“Wait! WAIT! I’LL TELL YOU WHERE SHE IS; JUST DON’T LEAVE ME IN HERE!”

Luna slowly turned her head to face the spy. “You’ll tell us, will you? No more stalling, no more games and deceptions? Because it would be so easy to just walk out of here and come back in a year or so. If you mess with us, you’ll regret it when you’re locked back up in here, knowing you could have gotten out”

Defeated, the changeling agreed reluctantly.
“I’ll tell you”

---------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE-----------------------------------------------------------

“Why should I tell you anything? You’ve locked me in a cage, attacked my hive and threatened me. Not to mention you’ve sided with that runt.”
Chrysalis was not cooperating.

“That wasn’t taking sides.” Snapped Celestia, exasperated, “That was the sort of treatment we give to those who tell us what we want. So, are you going to talk, or am I going to have to threaten you on more serious terms?”

Chrysalis considered this… her position wasn’t exactly one of power, and she’d have to be an idiot to think that her knowledge gave her an advantage. But these ponies were her enemies, and it would take more than hinting at benefits to get her to do what they want.

“Say I do tell you what you want, what’s in it for me?”

“Tell us what we want, and we’ll let you go free with any of your hive that wants to join you, provided you and your changelings stay out of Equestria for the next 50 years.”

Reluctantly, the changeling queen agreed.
“Alright, I’m in.”

“Thank you, Chrysalis. Now, we haven’t got all day, so would you kindly tell us what we need?”

Chrysalis sighed. This was it, no going back once she told them this. Was it worth it? - Probably. As long as they kept their word, and as long as the hive stayed with her, it should be.
“She’s in another branch of the caves, below the palace gardens. Now can I go? I have a hive to rebuild.”

“Not yet, Chrysalis. For all we know you’re lying about where she is, I’m sure you can understand. We will let you go as soon as we can confirm she’s where you say”

Chrysalis scowled.
“You’d better keep your word on this, Celestia, or I swear I will hunt you down and-“

“I will. Goodbye Chrysalis, and do try to behave until we get back.”

-----------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE---------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight, Luna and Penumbra walked alone. The guards remained watchful at the tunnel entrance but did not follow, in such tight spaces they’d be more hindrance than help.

Luna led the little group, heading deep into the bowels of the dungeons where the walls have crumbled and nature reclaiming ponykind’s creations. They turned left down a tunnel, all three using magic to reinforce the rock above them.

The passage wound deeper and darker, down into the bowels of Canterlot, the walls turning to roughly carved channels in the stone. Twilight had read of these tunnels, they were regarded as myth but here she was, following them into the gaping maw of the earth. She recalled the tales she’d long since discarded as scare stories, eyes widening in fear as shadows seemed to draw closer, wrapping tendrils around her, heightening her paranoia.

The story went that before the nation of Equestria was even a fragment of a concept, there had been another nation before it. The ponies living there had been a proud race; ruthless to the very core and the foundations of their military empire had been built on hard, physical labour and a complete disregard for compassion. These tunnels had, apparently, been their method of secret attack, they would burrow under EVERYTHING, and whenever they needed to attack, the ground would seemingly drop from under their enemies, buildings would topple and the opposing force would be swarmed by a flood of soldiers seemingly rising out of the earth itself. The tunnels were everywhere, allegedly, and looking at the passages branching off left and right, Twilight could see that was actually possible.

Ahead, Luna had stopped dead. Peering round her, Twilight made out the skeleton of a pony and, regretting her curiosity whipped her head back so she could no longer see it. Shuddering, Luna slowly stepped over the bones and hurried off further into the tunnel, letting out a squeak of fright as she almost trod on another. Twilight followed, taking extreme measures to avoid looking at the remains. Behind, Penumbra took a long look at the skeleton before carrying on slowly after her companions. If she wanted to, she could run away now. They weren’t even looking her way; she could disappear and find a life somewhere else and they would never know. Well, actually, that wasn’t true. Twilight would know, now that she knew that how she’d acted as Cadance was just how she acted normally, she only had to think back to work out what had happened. That would hurt her feelings, and Penumbra was a decent enough… pony… not to do that to a friend. So she hurried along, forgetting the skeletons littering the place in her rush to catch up to her friend’s retreating form.
__________________________________________________________________________________

The problem Shining and Celestia faced was not finding the cave; the problem was getting into it. Chrysalis couldn’t have picked a better place to trap somepony, the magic-deflecting rock was at least 3 metres thick at its thinnest point, but most of it was much thicker.

The one spell Celestia attempted almost killed hem, rebounding round the cave for a full terrifying minute before it fizzled out. By the end of that little incident, both Celestia and Shining Armour were exhausted, slumping heavily against the cavern wall. However, when Celestia’s head fell back against the stone, there was a hollow sound, similar to that of a gong. Turning around in surprise, she used a different spell –on herself this time- to allow her to see through the rock, leaving only its outlines opaque. The rock was thinner, far thinner, only about 80 centimetres between them and the cave. It was almost as if somepony had been trying to burrow out of there.
In fact, somepony had been trying to tunnel out, at the edge of her vision; Celestia could make out a pickaxe and a large pile of rock aside a makeshift hammock and a small box of belongings. Removing the spell, Celestia turned back to Shining Armour.

“Shining Armour, there’s a thinner section right here, it looks like she’s been digging her way out. It’s still too thick to shoot through with magic, unless we want to risk…THAT again. I think we could shatter it if we use the cannon, what do you think?”

Shining considered; as a prototype it was naturally temperamental, and with it being reverse-engineered from Pinkie Pie’s own ‘party cannon’ it was always risky using it. Also to take into account was how the cave’s rock might react to having steel spheres shot at it - if it acted the same as with magic, it could end up in a deadly catastrophe.

But, if the changeling had been digging her way out, it couldn’t have a particularly violent reaction to being hit. It was probably worth it.
Still, better to check. He picked up a rusted wheel that had fallen from a discarded minecart and signalled to Celestia to move. He threw it as hard as he could at the rock, diving for cover. Seconds passed without anything happening so he picked himself off the floor and peered around. The wheel lay a short distance from the now-cracked stone wall.
It looked as if it would be safe to try, so he looked back to Celestia and nodded.
“I’ll go fetch the cannon; we’re going to need it.”

----------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE----------------------------------------------------------

As Luna and her companions ventured deeper, the skeletons became more and more numerous. So much, in fact, that it was almost impossible to take a step without treading on bones: every few seconds came a snap and a muffled squeak of fright.
Tales of the passages’ construction were ever-present in Twilight’s mind. Even if the workers’ hearts didn’t give out completely from the stress and exhaustion, they would be trampled to death by hordes of others. The deeper the tunnel, the tougher the rock and the harder it became to breathe, combine this with the slave workers’ unrelenting regime and it was obvious why there were so many skeletons down here.

Twilight took a deep breath and thought of her friends all those miles above. Would Rainbow Dash let herself panic like this? No, and nor would any of the others – well, except maybe Fluttershy, but she was an exception. She imagined they were all there with her and her pulse calmed somewhat. Her eyes, though, remained fearful and a lone tear of despair rolled down her cheek.

“Twilight, it’s ok. Everything will work out just fine. We’ll get out of here, no problem.” She was surprised to hear Penumbra’s voice. It was surprising, too, to hear her talk like that; almost motherly in her manner. Penumbra placed a comforting hoof on Twilight’s back and smiled reassuringly at her scared companion.
“Besides…” The changeling took an over-the-top heroic pose, “With my powers I can stop anything in the world – just as long as it isn't lasers”

Twilight giggled, for a moment forgetting where she was and her fear of the unknown to lapse into simple laughter.
Even as their laughing faded and they were brought back to reality, the warmth of friendship remained, a shield against the fear and the worry, and from that point on, everything was that little bit better.

-----------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE---------------------------------------------------------------

Shining Armour wheeled the cannon into place.
Taking a deep breath and glancing over to Celestia to make sure she was somewhere safe, with a glow of his horn he lit the fuse, diving for cover onto the rough stone floor.

Several seconds passed and he lifted his head slightly, ready to check if the fuse had gone out. But then a shrieking roar erupted from the cannon and the flaming steel sphere collided with the weak spot.

The effect was immediate; fragments of shattered rock and metal mushroomed out from the impact, burning knifes slicing dangerously through the air. The rock above the hole collapsed and the whole cave shook, throwing up a dust cloud that coated everything in a dull grey powder.

When the smoke cleared, Shining raised his head warily, opening first one eye, then the other. He gingerly lifted himself up onto his hooves and looked around for the princess. He began to panic when he failed to spot her immediately. Then the grey lump he’d mistaken for rubble coughed and wiped dust from its face.

“Princess!” He ran over and helped her up, looking guiltily at her dust-covered coat and mane. He laughed nervously. “Sorry. I should have realised how much dust that would throw up.”

“That’s quite alright, captain. I was well aware of the risks, and this is nothing a good wash won’t take care of.” He visibly relaxed, the tension slipping away as he was reassured that he wouldn’t be sent to the moon for covering the princess in dust.
What a daft idea.
Where in Equestria did the thought that she’d send him to the moon come from, of all punishments? Resolving to ponder this later, he shook his head clear of the thought and turned to the hole in the cave wall.

The cave on the other side was covered in even more dust than the one they’d come from, and the damage to the rock structure was far more severe. Water trickled through cracks in the ceiling, pouring downwards from the palace gardens’ miniature lake. Miniature it may be, but it still contained more than enough water to drown the cave and anyone in it. They had to move fast.

Spurred on by the steadily increasing downpour, they galloped into the cave and down a side passage, following a trail of flickering lanterns, some of which were already beginning to go out.
A rough tearing sound ripped through the cave as another crack sprouted along the roof, more water squeezing through the gap. They had very little time left before the roof would give way and they’d all be either crushed or drowned. The water was all over the cave floor now, soaking the bottom of their hooves as they searched furtively for the changeling.
The passage curved round, following the natural curve of the rock formation deeper into the cave. There was still no sign of the changeling and now the water was lapping against their ankles, the roof above criss-crossed with cracks like a spider’s web, leaking more and more water into the cave.

The cannon had been a very bad idea indeed; in fact, it may just have doomed the three of them to a panicked death in a cave nopony knows exists.
There came an almighty crack and a section of rock the size of the average stallion plummeted from the roof, the roar of the water rushing in after it was as loud and terrifying as a hurricane. The water spiralled and swirled, threatening to drag them down and dash them violently against the rock. To slip now was to die. More rock tumbled from the edge of the hole, water plunging in, a never – ending torrent of rock and lakewater and the princess felt the sudden sharp pain as a passing rock sliced a gash into her leg. The rock itself wasn’t particularly sharp but the water made up for that with pure brute force.

“WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE! PRINCESS, YOU NEED TO GO, NOW! I’LL BE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!” Shining Armour yelled over the roar of water. The princess nodded and began to move as quickly as possible through the torrential water, swirling around her belly and trying to suck her under to a vicious death. Shining began to follow, it broke his heart to leave the pony they’d been looking for to her death but if he stayed a moment longer he’d be drowned.

Then, over the screaming torrent of water came a shout of pure terror and desperation.
“HELP! PLEASE, ANYPONY, HELP ME!” Shining turned towards the source of the voice and half ran, half swam through the torrent. Celestia slid to a halt, swept of her feet as she whirled round. Flapping her wings, she lifted clear of the water for a moment and corrected her course back towards Shining Armour and the voice. Her jaw determined in determination; she hadn’t let a pony die under her command yet, and she wasn’t about to start now.

“I CAN’T SWIM! HEEEEELP!” Shining swam round a bend in the tunnel and there she was, up to her neck in water, strangely still in Cadance’s form even on the brink of death.

He wondered momentarily whether she couldn’t change because of the stress, he’d always assumed the changeling had to hold the form and just stopped the spell when they didn’t need to anymore but maybe they needed the same concentration to turn back.
Whatever the reason for her appearance, he had to help her and he powered forward, grabbing her hoof with his own and pulling her into a kind of half-embrace as he set off back the way he’d come, the dreadful knowledge in the pit of his stomach that he wouldn’t make it, that he would drown here, with the princess and the Cadance impostor. He rounded the corner and just had time to see the princess a short distance away, having come back for him herself. There was a final crack, far louder this time and the roar of water filled their ears, along with the muffled shattering of the collapsed ceiling and then the water filled their mouths, their ears, everything and suddenly there was no up or down and no control, the ponies swirling round and round under the water, Shining Armour still stubbornly holding Cadance’s hoof even as he slipped into unconsciousness.

The last thing he saw was a light blue blur, the glint of water-refracted sunlight on armour and two tucked in wings as his eyes drifted closed.

The last thing he felt was a strong but gentle hoof looping round his back, the rush of moving through the water and the feeling of cold evening air on his face as his vision went black.

The last thing he heard was Cadance’s voice, quiet and delicate, whisper his name.

“Shiny…”
Then his mind shut down and all was still.

--------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE------------------------------------------------------------

“Now listen here, Fluttershy, everything’s going to be all right. You know as well as ah do that the Princesses wouldn’ta kept Twi’ at the Palace if she was in any real danger - and besides, Twilight’s a smart mare, she’ll be just fine, ah’m sure.”
Fluttershy, however, was in full worry mode and continued to let her fearful imagination spiral.

“B-but… what if there are still some changelings about and they hurt her and she couldn’t fight back?” Fluttershy’s eyes widened in panic as a new thought popped into her head; “W-what if the PRINCESSES are changelings and they l-lock her in t-the dungeons! Or-or send her to the moon! O-oh my…”
Stressed and worried beyond belief, the Element of Kindness broke into tears.

Applejack sighed, it was enough trouble putting her own worries for Twilight at rest but Fluttershy was a whole other matter. She smiled in gratitude as Rainbow Dash pulled their shy friend into a comforting hug, allowing Fluttershy to sob into her shoulder. Whispering words of comfort, Rainbow gently stroked Fluttershy’s bubblegum mane with her hoof.

Normally the brash speedster would avoid such a show of affection like the plague but this was different. This was her oldest friend in tears here, this was Fluttershy. Besides, she reasoned to herself, she was Element of Loyalty.
Though she’d never admit it she was just as worried as Fluttershy about Twilight, normally they’d have got word somehow that she was OK but they’d heard nothing.

Although Fluttershy’s tears eventually stopped both mares were content to remain that way, and while Rainbow didn’t tighten their embrace, she didn't loosen it either. It had been a long day, but they’d get through, they always did.
Now that Rainbow thought about it, the same applied to Twilight, and she managed a small smile. Twilight would be just fine, she was sure.

------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE--------------------------------------------------------------

The mare in question screamed as her face met with a cobweb. A few seconds’ mad yelling and clawing at her face with her hooves passed before she regained her composure and swiped the remains off her face with her magic. Ahead, Luna had turned to see what was wrong but quickly raised a hoof to cover her grin as she realised what had set the unicorn off. Penumbra was biting her lip in an attempt to stop herself laughing at her friend, the tips of her fangs drawing blood as she bit harder to restrain her laughter. It was in vain, however, and a few seconds later she laughed hysterically at her friend’s reaction.

‘Friend’... It was strange how easily she’d slipped into thinking of Twilight as a friend, but it felt right, the lavender unicorn - protégé of Princess Celestia no less – was her friend, and the only true friend she’d had her entire life.
Said friend’s face turned beet red and she indignantly retorted: “What?! It’s NOT funny!”

Penumbra laughed even harder, sure, she felt bad making fun of her friend but Twilight wasn’t even making it hard to laugh at her. She spat furiously, a bit of cobweb hanging absurdly from the corner of her mouth despite repeated efforts to remove it.

“Pfft. You wouldn’t be laughing if YOU had cobweb on your face” Twilight muttered, in her annoyance sounding like a schoolfilly. To this her changeling friend laughed louder, tears of mirth trickling down from the corners of her eyes. She was laughing so much it hurt. Even Luna stifled a chuckle, overhearing the exchange from up ahead.

Twilight huffed. ‘She’s just like Rainbow Dash’ she thought angrily as she picked up her pace to escape from the sound of her laughing friend.

The thought of Rainbow Dash quickly cheered her up, however, and soon enough she was walking side by side with the changeling, who had gotten over the sight of Twilight trying to bat cobweb from her face – for now, at least.

“Twilight? Penumbra? I think we’re here.” The pair turned their attention to Luna, who was peering at a wide hexagonal opening in the tunnel wall.

The opening didn’t go back far, more like a doorway than a true tunnel and was blocked by a smooth piece of grey stone, crystal-filled grooves in its surface forming symbols that glinted softly in the light from their horns. Twilight and Penumbra looked expectantly at Luna, who let out a deep breath and cautiously shot a burst of magic into the door.

The symbols glowed brighter and brighter as she held the beam of magic, light emanating from the lines like a glowing mist. The light grew brighter, illuminating the tunnel fully now and the stone of the door split along the lines of the symbol, shifting to either side of the door’s centre and disappearing seamlessly into the rock on either side.

The trio quickly realised with disappointment that it was not the door itself that had opened but a cover of sorts. The façade of the door had slid away to reveal a glossy black-blue surface, slightly translucent, with what looked like waves of sparks moving back and forth as if it were alive. The feeling was helped further by the warmth moving from the door and the temperate breeze moving back and forth from under the door.

The door was wide enough for three ponies to fit through easily and had a circular hole in its centre. In the half-light the translucent nature of the door made it impossible to tell exactly how far back it went but it could easily be as deep as Twilight’s leg was long.
It was a similar size to a pony’s hoof in diameter, ominously so, Twilight felt. She looked closer at the door, trying to make out the ancient inscriptions on it. It had a message in Ancient Draconesque on its left, with a depiction of a dragon’s clawed toe hooking round some kind of handle deep in a crack or opening, directional arrows informing that the handle was to be pulled. Twilight knew enough about dragon culture and language to identify it but not nearly enough to translate it.

Another set of inscriptions was below, this time in a language similar to what had been spoken by the griffon kingdoms before they had conformed to Equestrian language. Another picture sat opposite this writing, similar to the dragon one but this time with the unmistakeable talons of a griffon clutching the handle. The arrows were the same, indicating the handle was to be pulled out from the opening shown.

The next set of carvings was in Ancient Equestrian, with a picture showing the same handle being pulled by a hoof. Twilight had studied Ancient Equestrian extensively in her time as Princess Celestia’s student but this was slightly different, a dialect perhaps, and she could tell just from scanning it that even with her knowledge of the subject she’d have trouble translating some sections of it, and some words were unrecognisable to her.

Behind her, Penumbra let out a slight gasp. “That’s –“
The word she uttered next was completely unintelligible to her pony companions, a combination of foreign sounding syllables and insectlike clicking and chirping. “It was the language we used before we adopted –“Another foreign word, though one that both ponies recognised as the Changeling word for their own language.

“And that’s Ancient Equestrian. I think the writing on this door will tell us how to get this door open, I can’t translate all of it though…”
Penumbra tapped her on the shoulder with her hoof. “I can translate some of the old changeling language, if that helps…” Twilight looked up and smiled.

“Yeah, that’d be great”.
They set to work translating, once again forgetting all else in their camaraderie. Luna leant against the tunnel wall, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she watched the two. A changeling who had impersonated one of the royal family and Princess Celestia’s protégé – they were some of the most unlikely friends Luna had ever seen. Who would have thought it? She chuckled softly and let the pair work.

Friendship: it really was a very strange thing.

--------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE------------------------------------------------------------------

Shining Armour spluttered and coughed his way back into consciousness, his eyes fluttering open to see an armoured pegasus guard with dark fur rush over to Cadance – No; she was a changeling, not Cadance. He blinked, shocked as the pegasus apparently kissed the fake Cadance until he realised that she was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, something she must have done for him too. Running his tongue over his lips he found he couldn't quite identify the taste her lips had left.

Another bout of spluttering and the pegasus got up and went over to his right, where a barely conscious Celestia lay, a blood-soaked bandage around her head. Wordlessly, she removed and replaced the bandage and turned back to Shining Armour, who identified her with some surprise as one of Princess Luna’s nocturnal, bat-like Lunar Guard. What she was doing awake at this time didn’t really matter to him; he just thanked the princesses and every star in the sky that she had been there to drag them out, to save their lives.

She smiled a crooked grin at him. “Well, seeing as I just saved your lives… I’d say y’all owe me a drink.” He stared for a second before breaking into laughter, the other guard joining in after a second. They both laughed like hyenas for a good minute or two before settling into silence.

A thought popping into his head, Shining levelled a grin of his own at her. ‘Time to knock her of her pedestal’, he thought mischievously.
“Tell you what, when this mess is over, I’ll buy the entire Lunar Guard a drink. How does that sound?”

He mouth hung open for a second.
“You’re not serious…” she said, incredulously.

“Oh, but I am” he returned.

She smiled at him in glee; her comrades were going to love this.
“You know, you ain’t too bad…” She smirked again. “…You sure you’re not a Lunar Guard under all that ugly?”

Shining’s reply was cut short by the waking of the changeling, still in Cadance’s form despite the events of the past few hours. She sat up and immediately looked around frantically, stopping and letting out a sigh of relief as she spotted him. Her body visibly relaxed as she slumped so that she was almost lying down again. After a moment’s hesitation she got to her feet, smiling weakly at him.
She moved like a drunken old mare towards him: stiff-jointed with no sense of balance. She smiled again in thanks as Shining reached out to steady her, her eyes filled with a murky soup of emotion. Looking closely, he could identify nearly all of the contrasting feelings displayed on her face: doubt, fear, joy, relief, gratitude and… no, it couldn’t be.
Shockingly, impossibly, in her eyes was the one emotion that ponies believed a changeling could never feel, that they were incapable of feeling.

Love.

“Shiny…” She trailed off, looking down at the ground and fidgeting with her hooves.
There was a long silence before anypony spoke, neither knowing what to say, unsure of where they stand in the other’s mind. Well, Shining had a feeling how the changeling felt about him… how he felt about her, however, was another matter.
“We need to talk”, he gruffly stated.

‘Cadance’ nodded and the two took a walk through the partly-destroyed palace gardens, leaving the lunar guard behind to look after Celestia. They walked in silence for a long time, and eventually it became uncomfortable. They had come out here to talk, after all.
Shining took a deep breath; beginning with the difficult questions.

“Who are you?” Plain and simple, this was what he needed to know first.

She hesitated, took a shaky breath and then answered.
“T-that’s not easy question to answer… I was born as Weave, in a changeling hive a long way from here. At least it was… it’s gone now… anyway, I was trained in espionage and sent here to take the place of the youngest princess… who was another changeling, it turns out. But that’s beside the point, ponies change, and so did I. I’m… not that changeling any more. I haven’t been for a long time.”

Shining Armour resisted his urge to question what she said, instead asking the next thing on his mind.
“Why do you still look like Princess Cadance?”

She blushed and stuttered. “I-I-it’s embarrassing”

Shining frowned; he wasn’t going to take that as an answer.
“Tell me. Why haven’t you changed back?”

“The truth of it is… I can’t. Most hives have forgotten, but changelings weren’t always the parasites they are now. There is a sort of… lock, I suppose, in changeling magic that when we feel safe and happy as a certain persona, we become them, permanently.”
She looked at him with sorrow and affection in equal parts, sighed and finished: “I-I was happy with you, Shining, you made me feel like I belonged. I’m changelocked now, there is no changing back.”

Shining’s mind was awhirl. His fiancée had been a fake, in the place of a fake, in the place of another fake in a long chain of impostors leading down to his so-called fiancée’s early childhood.
And NOW he was being told that the changeling was STUCK as Cadance because she’d felt like she BELONGED with him. Shining was dizzy and confused and he had a headache from the stress… it was almost too much to handle.

And when he finally worked through the mess of threads that the tapestry of his life had become, he felt no less conflicted than before. He took a different approach, thinking about each emotion and why he could be feeling that way.

He felt angry because everything he’d held dear had been distorted and twisted from his grip.
He felt depressed and lost for that same reason, though he still had that old sense of purpose… he still had a goal, though now it was to work out what had happened and how to continue his life from this bombshell of a revelation.
He felt guilty because in a way it was his fault that she was stuck like that, and there was no real way she could live any sort of life now, not in that form, not after everything had happened.

She had no way to continue with any of the lives she’d been leading, and no way to lead her own now, just like he couldn’t carry on how he had been before this whole mess, he no longer had a fiancée, he no longer had the reassurance of a special somepony and he no longer had any real options of where to go…

Unless…

No, that would be stupid. He shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts and smiled apologetically at the mare in front of him. Seeing the sparkling of tears in her eyes, he moved into a comforting hug, and as they stood in the embrace, another emotion woke inside him.

He would never admit it, even to himself, but the feeling was there nonetheless… Love.

Love, because after everything, even after it had all become so complicated, so broken and so confusing, deep in his heart it was all so simple; he still loved Cadance, and the mare opposite him was Cadance, she had been all along. She wasn’t the Cadance who’d been born many years prior but she was the Cadance that he knew… and the Cadance that he loved.

He would never admit it.
Not even to himself.
But the feeling was there, nonetheless.

-------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE-------------------------------------------------------------

“...I’m perfectly fine, Corporal. Now if you’ll just excuse me I have some rather important business to attend to.”
Corporal Bright Streak cringed back into himself at his princess’s sharp response. He’d been assigned by the field nurse who’d brought Celestia back in from the waterlogged gardens to keep an eye on her and advise her against doing anything too drastic. And while he was prepared to risk his neck to uphold his duty, he couldn’t help but feel discouraged from trying to stop the princess going to see her visitors. He would try one more time to get her to change her mind and if that failed he would just let her go – she was the diarch of Equestria after all, and he really didn’t want to get in her bad books.

“Princess, are you sure you’re really in the condition to be having visitors? I-I mean, you almost died half an hour ago, maybe you should go get some rest before you do anything too active, you really need to recover after what you’ve just been through”
Celestia sighed, shaking her head. She had to admire his stubbornness but enough was enough.

“Corporal, I AM going to go see my visitors, now are you going to let me get on with my day or am I going to have to order you to get out of my way. I admire your resolution, I really do, it takes guts to stand up to a princess in her own palace, but there comes a point where it just isn’t worth the hassle. Please, Corporal, just let me pass.”

Bright Streak swiftly stepped to one side; he wasn’t going to go against the princess on the orders of a Field Nurse, of all ponies. He had risked his own neck more than enough and now it was time to give in and let her have her way. As she passed, she gave him a smile of thanks, then stopped still, struck by an idea.

Her smile changed to a shy grin. “Say, Corporal, would you like to eat with us in the Royal Dining room this evening?”

“I-I-I… I couldn’t… it w-wouldn’t be my place to-“

“Please? As nice as dinner with my sister can be, it gets awfully dull sometimes. I’m sure Luna wouldn’t mind a bit of company”

“A-alright… I’d be honoured to eat with you, princess… if you’re sure that it would be OK” he said slowly.

“I’m more than sure, Corporal”

He watched her go, his brain still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Princess Celestia had asked him to eat dinner with her and her sister. She…just asked him…to dinner.

Slowly, his expression of utter shock turned to a surprised smile. The smile grew and grew until he was grinning like a loon. A pair of guards walked by on their way to the barracks after the end of their shift, one of them raising an eyebrow at Bright Streak’s goofy grin. Unnoticed by the overjoyed Corporal, the guard turned to his companion, whispering with a light chuckle.

“What’s he so happy about? Heh, maybe he just scored with one of the maids. I hope for his sake he uses protection, you never know what they’ve been rutting with …” The other guard laughed raucously at this, but by the time Bright Streak looked up, they were long out of his line of sight.

Celestia giggled, raising a hoof to her mouth in surprise. She hadn’t giggled like that since she was a filly, well; she did feel like a little filly who’d just asked her crush out on a ‘date’. Strange, she didn’t have prior feelings for the guard, and she certainly hadn’t asked him on a date… though, in a way, maybe she had. She hadn’t asked anypony to dinner in a long time, and she hadn’t been on a date for even longer than that. Maybe time had blurred the line between the two… anyhow, it was sure to be a night to remember; for better or worse.

Shaking her head, she walked down the empty corridor. After a few seconds, a smile spread across her face and after a few more seconds, she giggled, the sound echoing away, bouncing off the marble walls, down a side passage and into the ears of that same pair of guards who’d seen Bright Streak earlier.

After pausing for a few seconds, confused as to who could possibly be giggling, the pair shook their heads, chuckled and carried on. That was another puzzle for them to figure out over one of their regular card games when they were back in the barracks.

----------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE----------------------------------------------------------------

Deep in a cave accessible only from a single sealed entrance, a shape stirred. An ear twitched at the very distant, very faint sound of voices and the shape moved up, off the cave floor, up to its full height. Two wary eyes opened, their reflective pink irises causing them to glow despite the extremely low light. Four faintly iridescent hooves snuck soundlessly across the stone, and the lamp-like eyes swivelled from side to side, advanced low-light vision aiding their owner in spotting every detail, every movement, everything. They would be as blind as any other pair of eyes if the dark was absolute, but it wasn’t, not quite, and so the shape could see quite well.

As it moved, a tri-coloured mane rippled soundlessly from the head those searchlight eyes were mounted on, like the shape’s coat and eyes, this too was iridescent, the rare, faint rays of light refracting softly off, highlighting dust drifting lazily in the stale cave air. As the shape drew closer to the entrance, following the trail of air and the ever-louder sounds of voices to the sealed entrance to her prison, it thought, pondering questions about its half-life down here, about the world it was locked away from, about who it had once been and who it had become.

The shape liked to think, it had little else to do down here but sleep and think, and thinking at least kept its mind sharp. It liked to think about the time before it was trapped here, about what had happened since its entrapment and it especially liked to think about the stars.

Yes, the shape liked the stars, even though it had very few memories of them, it would often think about the stars, all the shapes and kinds of stars, their patterns and the constellations they formed. It dreamed about stars, too, it dreamed that it shaped the stars pinned to the dark blanket of sky every night, and when it dreamed of this, it felt happy, it felt like it was doing something it was born to do. When it had those dreams, it would smile in its sleep, the only time it ever smiled in its dark and lonely time underground.
When the shape had reached the door, it closed its eyes in thought for a moment before a spiralling horn on its forehead glowed with the warm spark of magic and those searchlight eyes saw. They saw through stone and metal and magical barriers, they saw through all that would conceal those on the other side from their vision, and they saw that there was still hope.
The shape had a name. For that matter it had two, the name it was born with, a name that it hardly remembered anymore, and the name it had given itself a few years into its subterranean existence.

The shape had once been known as Cadance, but that name no longer applied to the shape. She’d changed too much to be that pony - that carefree filly had died a long long time ago, in a dark, damp cave with no light and nopony to comfort her. That sort of experience changes a pony. It can break them or it can make them stronger, and even after all this time the shape wasn’t entirely sure which had happened to her… It was probably a little of both.

Cocoon hadn’t been the most experienced shapeshifter when she’d taken Cadance’s place and as a result not one of the subsequent ‘Cadances’ ever had the original’s iridescent coat, mane and eyes: the original was unique in that respect.
Her new name - her true name now, since she was no longer and would never again be Cadance, was partly based on this unique feature of hers, and partly on her precious stars.

Her name was Iridesca, and she, for the first time since her imprisonment, had hope in her heart.
Iridesca had looked at her flank a long time ago and decided that she mustn’t be destined to have a mark there, for she had been young then and had never had the chance to learn about cutie marks before she had been locked away all those years before. She had seen no reason to look at her flank and in the following years she never had, not even once. And so it had taken until now, when her body was illuminated from horn to wings to hooves by her magic for her to see that there was something there.
A dark violet blanket of cloud dotted with an artistic swirl of bright, gold, stars.

------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE--------------------------------------------------------------

Rarity was shaken, perhaps too enthusiastically, from her sleep by her friend Pinkie. Scowling at the way the pink mare had messed up her beautiful mane, she looked around for any explanation for her rude awakening. Her ‘explanation’ was the tall white alicorn standing patiently in the doorway.

Immediately, Rarity snapped to attention, wiping the drool from the corner of her mouth and self-consciously tidying her mane. Celestia smirked behind a hoof at the fashionista’s panic; it really was touching that her subjects would worry so much about their appearance in front of her… that said, Pinkie Pie still had half a bucket of popcorn hanging from her mane, although Celestia doubted she’d even noticed that was there.

And at the moment she couldn’t really criticize anypony’s appearance, she was still dripping wet from her little ‘swim’ and her mane was sticking to her face in all sorts of directions. As she stood there, her teeth began to chatter in the cold. All in all, she wasn’t looking particularly regal today – in addition to her disaster of a mane, her wings were a mess and her crown was slumped drunkenly against her horn – no, not particularly regal in any sense of the word.

“Good evening, my little ponies. I’m sorry to have kept you all waiting.”

Applejack spoke first, deciding to start with the big question.
“Where’s Twilight? Is she alright?”

“Twilight is just fine; she’s with my sister looking for Cadance.”

The five friends relaxed visibly, Applejack letting out a sigh of relief. There was silence for a few seconds more before Fluttershy unexpectedly spoke up.

“Um, Princess, w-what happened to the changelings? I-I’d like to know… if that’s alright with you.”

“The truth is, Fluttershy, we don’t know. We’ve got the guard on full alert but we haven’t seen them since Chrysalis got captured… They might have retreated now that we have their leader or they might be hiding.”
Fluttershy whimpered into Dash’s back at this revelation, and Rarity let out a gasp of shock, the others had similarly horrified expressions.

“Ya mean to tell us that nopony has any idea where they are? No offense, but they’re an army of changelings, how the hay can they just disappear out from under our noses?”

Celestia looked troubled. “I have no idea how we lost them… maybe I’m losing my touch… perhaps I’m just getting too old for this…”

“Ah’m sorry, Princess, you’re doing a fine job – I oughtn’ta said anything. Ain’t mah place to criticize y’all.”

“Thank you, Applejack. Now, you had all better sit down, I have a lot to tell you. This matter with the changelings is even more complicated than it seems, even I’m having trouble working out the details.” The ponies did as they were told and Celestia sat down with them, looking from face to face before she continued.

“Now, I’ll start at the beginning, right after you left. After a long time thinking, we finally accepted that we had no other option but to interrogate the changelings – there was nothing we could do but to ask them and hope they would tell us the truth. Chrysalis, their queen was mostly a waste of time but the other changeling was far more cooperative – she and Chrysalis are old enemies, you see, and she wanted to get back at Chrysalis – her revenge: telling us everything she knew.”

She examined their expressions of the ponies around her. Applejack – thoughtful, her brows knitted together in contemplation, Pinkie Pie – excited: she was clearly enjoying the story, Rarity – one eyebrow raised, curious, Rainbow Dash – confused… and impatiently annoyed that Celestia had stopped speaking. And Fluttershy – fearful and curious in equal parts, wondering what happened next but scared of what it could be.

“It turns out that Chrysalis and Penumbra weren’t the first to take Cadance’s place, not by a long shot. Chrysalis was the most recent of them; she’d only been here since the wedding proposal. Before her was another changeling, from a different hive - she was the one who started the romance with Twilight’s brother… and, well, there’s a chance that she really loved him. Penumbra - the changeling you saw when Twilight stopped the wedding – was before her, she’s been here just over twelve years now, she actually foalsat Twilight and they became quite good friends. Despite what you’d expect, it appears the changeling genuinely liked – and still likes - Twilight.”

Celestia expected them to gasp or ask questions about that last part but they stayed patiently silent, evidently they wanted to wait until all the facts were in before commenting.

“There were two others before Penumbra, both from the same hive. The first was a trainee spy by the name of Cocoon who replaced the real Cadance shortly after her 6th birthday, barely months after I adopted her. From what I’m told, she was here to test the waters, to see if we’d notice an impostor in our midst, once they were sure it was safe to start spying around, they sent in a more qualified spy. We only know that her codename was Ten-Delta-Sixteen, and we still don’t have much idea what that stands for. She gathered intelligence on everything and anything she could get her hooves on.”

“Very thorough, very careful, we don’t know how much she found out but it was undoubtedly a massive amount; it could have ended very badly for Equestria if her hive had used it. It had some sort of skirmish with another hive and then disappeared off the radar – again, we don’t know what happened but it seems odd for them to vanish like that. We assume they’re hiding for whatever reason, considering their strength and numbers it’s hard to believe the other side simply wiped them out.”

Again she looked around at the five ponies opposite, now, she decided, would be a good time to let them ask their questions.
The group turned and spoke in hushed voices before deciding on what they all agreed what were the most important questions. Applejack, it was decided, would speak for them all.
“Ya say this changeling might actually care for Shining Armour? I never heard of a changeling fallin’ in love, only ‘bout them stealin’ it from other ponies.”

“It’s possible, yes, it seems unlikely that she’d start a romance with him for any other reason – it could have been for information but she never sent anything she learnt back to her hive and unless she was planning something completely different to her orders, the only logical path of reason is that she did care for him.”

“Granny Smith always told me that changelings couldn’t love; only take it from others, like dirty great leeches.”

“I don’t blame her for thinking that, it is an incredibly rare occurrence – I’ve only come across three couples in my entire life, four if we count Shining and our mystery changeling. It goes without saying that changelings are a very secretive race, especially when it comes to how they act in their hives. We know next to nothing of their behaviour other than their more military activities above ground, but I think they are far more like us than we realise, certainly more than most would like to think.”

“In truth, the real reason we don’t see changelings and ponies in love is not that the changelings can’t love – it’s more likely our attitudes to them and their attitudes to us that keep our kind apart, we fear them like some sort of love-stealing monster and they despise us for it.”

There was a long, contemplative silence, Applejack nodding her head a single time, a gesture of agreement while her friends sat in silence working things out for themselves. There were more questions than just that one, and more important ones, too.
“Alright, so where’s Twilight? She off chasing after for one of those changelings y’all mentioned?”
Celestia smiled, pleased that the farmer had figured it out with so little information.”

“As a matter of fact, she is. She went with my sister and the changeling Penumbra to find Ten-Delta-Sixteen, and find out from her where the real Cadance is. I went with Shining Armour to find the other changeling; we had to get her location from Chrysalis, which was an absolute pain in the flank. Honestly, that changeling is like a rebellious teenager, almost reminds me of how Luna was back when…”

She trailed off, her expression turning to one of regret as she thought of back then, in the days before her sister’s transformation into something not quite a pony anymore. So much guilt, so much pain, so much sorrow; emotions that the composed and seemingly confident princess never showed, never let out - this was her burden, and hers to bear alone. A ghost of a tear crept slowly down her cheek and she turned away to hide it. She couldn’t crack, not now, not here.
‘Come on ‘Tia, pull yourself together old girl.’

“Princess Celestia? Are you okay?” A voice, Applejack’s, pulled her back to reality from the brink of memory’s dark pit.
“You’re crying,” - a statement, not a question. Celestia would not lie; she liked to think she was above trying to fool her subjects and Applejack had seen her tears, she would tell them what she had to, she owed them that.

“I’m fine, Applejack. Just an old mare wallowing in past regrets…”

“About your sister?” Though Celestia didn’t respond, the look in her eyes told Applejack that she was right in her assumption.
“Ya know as well as I do y’all shouldn’t be blaming yourself for that. She’s forgiven you and that’s what’s important now. If you keep blaming yourself it’ll tear you up inside, it’ll break you… ah should know, from what happened to mah parents. Ah couldn’t forgive myself after that happened, kept blaming myself for not being that little bit faster, for not being there to save them, to do somethin’ – anythin’ to get them outta there… But… after a couple years I realised it wasn’t mah fault, I accepted there was nothin’ I coulda done… a-ah still miss them, but ah can live with myself – ah can get on with mah life.”

Fresh tears swam in Celestia’s vision, both from sorrow at what Applejack had gone through and from the knowledge that somepony knew how she felt. She had to move on, the pain of what she’d done was nowhere near what Applejack had faced… if she could move on, so could Celestia.
“Thank you.”

A comforting orange hoof wrapped itself around her shoulders and Celestia slumped gratefully into the embrace. It had been so, so long since she’d had somepony to comfort her, to tell her it would all be okay. It felt much, much longer than those thousand years since she had last been able to be a little filly who could collapse into a motherly embrace and cry the pain away. And cry she did, she cried into the mare’s muscular shoulder, sobbing her heart out, crying until the orange coat was dark and matted with tears, until her white face had become a pair of waterfalls falling inexorably from the two crescent-moons of her closed eyelids. She cries until there were no more tears left to cry, a millennium of tears - one for every moment of sorrow and fear, of guilt and self-loathing, of loneliness and disappointment.

And when those tears stopped several minutes and a thousand memories later, she felt free. And for the first time in an eternity, she wanted to fly not because she needed to do so but just for the sake of flying.
She was a songbird free from the cage of her own regrets.
She would fly out into life and she would never look back.

-----------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE---------------------------------------------------------------

Luna could tell from their expressions that it was bad news, even before they even opened their mouths. And bad news it was.
“We’ve worked out what the inscriptions say… it’s not good, not in the slightest. To open it one of us will have to put our hoof into the hole in the door. There’s a handle in it, you have to pull it out of the hole as far as it goes - that still leaves most of your lower leg inside the tube – you have to keep it there to keep the door open.”

“But that’s not the worst part – you can’t use magic, even an alicorn like you wouldn’t be able to budge it an inch and the further out you pull it – which you have to do to get the door open – the tighter the tube gets. It has hidden mechanisms, when you pull the handle to open the door it also moves the stone inside so it crushes your hoof bit by bit, and there are spikes that come out when it’s fully pulled. If somepony used it their leg would be twisted and broken beyond recognition! We can’t use this, there has to be another way in. There has to be…”

“I’ll do it.” Luna had taken but a moment to decide. She refused to make her subjects do something she wouldn’t do herself, and besides as an alicorn she would be able to take far more pain and heal more quickly afterwards – it was possibly the worst task anypony could be made to do, but somepony had to do it, and she fit the bill.

“You don’t have to do this… you can’t! I’ll think of some of other way, there’s got to be something else we can do.”

“No, Twilight, there’s no other way, you know that. I can’t ask any of you to do this, that wouldn’t be fair. I’m an alicorn anyway; I can take far more pain and physical trauma than either of you and I heal far more quickly – if one of you did this you’d be disfigured permanently, my body will heal itself back to normal in a matter of months, if I use healing magic too. I’m doing this, and that’s final. Just… make it quick, alright?” She grimaced. “I don’t want to spend any more time than I have to with my hoof in that death trap.”

Twilight grudgingly accepted the princess’s decision, she wasn’t happy about it but what else could they do?
“I don’t like this, but as much as I hate to admit it, this is our only option. We’ll be as fast as we can, princess, and thank you.”

“That’s quite alright, Twilight. Tell me when you’re ready to go, just give me a second to prepare myself.” She looked for the first time since the start of the conversation at the unusually silent changeling, who seemed to be deep in thought… and staring, transfixed at Twilight’s lavender face. ‘Well’, she thought, ‘at least she’s not staring at her flank’ Despite the nerves, she managed a small smile at the thought. Noticing Luna’s stare, Penumbra blushed slightly and looked away, shifting her hooves uncomfortably.
Twilight looked up at her from beside the door, her body tense in anticipation.
“Princess, we’re ready.”
Gritting her teeth, Luna put her hoof inside the rough stone tube, then her entire foreleg, then almost up to her shoulder until she could reach the handle. She gripped it tightly with her hoof but did nothing, the churning of her stomach was unbearable and all she could hear was the sound of her own rapid heartbeat, she felt sick and dizzy much like she had when she was a young mare barely out of her teens facing Discord alongside her sister. She had won that battle, and she would succeed here too.
She grasped the handle in her shaking hoof and pulled.

-------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE-------------------------------------------------------------

Chrysalis looked in distaste at the book one of the guards – ‘Corporal Merry Hooves’ - if she remembered correctly, had given her. Its edges were torn and worn away from countless years of reading and re-reading and it had “PROPATEA OF MERRY HOOVES KLEEP OWT” scrawled messily in permanent marker. Somepony had scribbled childish doodles all over the blurb, rendering it unreadable, albeit slightly more aesthetically pleasing.

The book’s title was “Daring Do and The Curse of The Silver Sceptre” and she hated every single word of it. Swallowing her dislike for the book, she turned the next creased and dog-eared page and read on as the sickeningly heroic protagonist defeated a group of stereotypical bad guys with a ridiculously small amount of effort. By page 14 she had devised a little game whereby she would attempt to spot each and every one of the book’s plot holes. By the end of chapter 2 she was losing interest in this game, she told herself she was just getting bored of the easy task. By chapter 4 she had forgotten the game altogether and by the time she had finished the book she found herself asking the dopey blonde stallion if he had any others in the series.

He did, and Chrysalis soon lost herself in the action-packed battles and high-tension chase scenes of the eighth book’s finale. As she opened up the ninth she asked herself ‘how could I ever hate these books?’

Merry Hooves smiled at his handiwork before heading off to inform his commanding officer that the plan had worked perfectly. The Daring Do series of books were actually an experiment into subliminal messaging by the Experimental Technology division of the Equestrian Military Intelligence Agency, the books were designed simply to make the reader find Daring likeable and to enjoy the story no matter their opinion before they began reading. They also had the added side-effect of improving the reader’s mood both in general and towards others – while unintended; this was useful so the ETD had kept it as a feature.

The seemingly dopey stallion knocked on his superior’s office door smartly, a clipboard with his neatly written report already tucked under his wing to give. When no answer came, he pressed his ear against the door and heard tinny music from the other side. Cautiously, he nudged the door open and the first thing he saw was a pink cd player emblazoned with hearts atop Lieutenant-Commander Bravestar’s desk. The captain was facing away, speaking in high pitched voices as he moved various figurines from a little fillies’ show – My Little Human, if Merry’s memory served correctly. Placing the clipboard on the desk quietly, he made a hasty retreat from the onslaught of foals’ music and his captain’s imagined conversations.

Lieutenant-Commander Bravestar Ember, veteran of multiple theatres of war and bearer of all but one of the Equestrian Military’s medals, liked a show for little fillies. Even the toughest stallions, Merry mused, have a soft side. He was only shocked by this revelation about his commanding officer for a few seconds before it slid from his mind: ‘like water off a duck’s back’ his mother would always say, and he supposed that was true.

He was rarely bothered by anything, and even then it would only be for a few seconds – it was this that made him one of the most valued young agents of the Guard, a job that he loved almost as much as his dear sister, Derpy. He wondered how she was doing, perhaps he’d send her a letter later, if he had time in his overflowing schedule; for his superiors liked to keep him busy.

He strolled past some of his comrades, who were playing a card game, and took his place outside Chrysalis’s cell. The changeling was already finishing the ninth book and he watched with satisfaction as she picked up the tenth eagerly.

Chrysalis loved the books; she would take them with her back to her hive, even if she had to kill to do so. NOTHING would stand in her way, the books were HERS.

The subliminal messaging was working too well, perhaps.

------------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE--------------------------------------------------------------

The handle slid smoothly from its place as Luna pulled, and for the first few seconds nothing negative happened, the door began to slide open but nothing happened inside the tube. This delay tricked her, despite her intelligence and usual pessimism, into being stupid enough to hope that the mechanism had broken. She was just opening her mouth to tell her companions this when there was a loud click and then the grating of stone as the plates began to move inwards toward her foreleg.

She gulped in fear before pulling it further, after a second there was a further click and the door slid open to reveal a differently coloured, featureless door, simultaneously the plates moved again, getting closer by half a centimetre.

She pulled again, her upper leg emerging from the tube, until the click came once more and the current door slid open to reveal as she had feared another one, this time silver-grey with a grate pattern gouged into it. Again, the plates moved closer and again she felt her heartbeat quicken further.

Another pull, another click, another door opened, another half-centimetre closer the plates got.
She repeated the routine, again and again, until the plates’ presence could be felt just to either side of her leg and she had to pause once more, her breath in short, panicked sobs. She felt sick, dizzy, afraid, so very afraid, and yet she grit her teeth and pulled the handle further. Another few millimetres, then another few, then another, she paused, tears streaming down her face and pulled it the last few millimetres.

Another click and the door opened to reveal a smooth metal gate with slits to see through. A breeze swept in and froze the tears on Luna’s face. The stone was tight around her foreleg now, it scraped her skin whenever she moved and the claustrophobia was becoming unbearable.

It was a minute or two before she worked up the courage to pull the handle that last distance. She couldn’t take it slow; she would always panic and stop moving bare millimetres from where she had started. No, this time it called for a more drastic approach. She would do it fast, like pulling off a plaster.

“Like…pulling off… a…plaster…” She muttered, before looking with a dead mare’s eyes at Twilight and Penumbra, she was about to do it and they needed to be ready.

With a powerful tug, she yanked the handle all the way to its final position.
The door slid open and there was a second’s delay before the stone around Luna’s leg crashed inward, somehow folding in on itself – and her foreleg – and spiralling round. Luna screamed in pure agony, despite the countless pain-numbing spells she had cast they had no effect on the mass of pain being dealt to her and it was only by electrocuting the muscles in her hoof that she prevented herself from letting go and allowing the handle slide back into place.

How long had it been since they had gone in there? She was losing track of time, sight, sound, all sense of what was going on around her was lost in the pain of her ordeal. As the stone encasing her splintered foreleg stopped spinning and began to turn in the opposite direction, her screams filled the room, the noise overtaking all other sound as they took on the Royal Canterlot Voice.
All she could feel was pain.

-----------------------------------------------------MEANWHILE---------------------------------------------------------------

It didn’t take long for Twilight and Penumbra to find the original Cadance, but getting her out of there was a completely different matter.

The problem was, she refused to move an inch. Now that the door was open, she said, every section of the cave floor could be trapped and any one of those traps could kill a pony in the most excruciating manners ever conceived, and so she refused to budge from the spot she was standing on.

“It’s a miracle you didn’t trigger anything on your way in here, if any one of us moves now, we will die. I’d stay still if I were you, there’s no way we’ll walk out of here alive. It really was a stupid idea coming here; you can’t get me out safely so you might as well have not tried to ‘rescue’ me at all. Too late now, you’ll just have to wait here until whoever’s holding the door passes out.”

This was not what the ‘rescuers’ had been expecting. Eyes wide with disbelief and rage, Twilight snapped at the princess before her.
“Our friend is getting her leg DESTROYED keeping this door open so you can GET OUT, and YOU tell US that you aren’t going to take another step because the floor is trapped? You’re a bucking ALICORN, you can FLY out!”

Iridesca didn’t see what the purple unicorn’s problem was, there was no way to get out alive without having the most ridiculous good luck in the world. Couldn’t she see how wasted Iridesca’s wings were, and how would the other two get out? Float their way over the minefield to the door like a bunch of pixies?
“I’ve never used my wings; they won’t get me an inch off the ground! And how do you propose you get out? Exactly. You try to walk out of here, you die. We stay here, we live”

Twilight was beyond furious, this was no way for anypony to behave, especially a princess. She wouldn’t expect even Fluttershy to be this unwilling to take a risk.
“IF WE STAY HERE, you’ll be EXPLAINING to PRINCESS LUNA that she LOST HER LEG because you were too much of a COWARD to FLY OUT OF HERE. Your wings will easily carry your body weight; you’re just TOO SCARED to TRY. You don’t even WANT to get out, do you? You LAZY, COWARDLY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING, PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A PONY, call yourself a PRINCESS?! I’ve seen WORMS with more guts than you, now you FLY the few metres to the door before I personally use your ROYAL ASS as a MINE CLEARER, IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?!”

“I-I-I… O-okay, I’ll try.” Twilight’s outburst had shocked the princess into submission; it had shocked everypony, even Twilight, and would have shocked Luna if she had been aware of anything other than the handle in her hoof and the pain coursing through her body.

The previously unused wings unfolded clumsily from Iridesca’s sides and hesitantly spread out.
“Well, go on, you won’t get off the ground if you don’t flap them”
Penumbra, who’d been silent from Twilight’s furious rant, took the opportunity to play good cop and sent an encouraging smile at Iridesca. Nervously, she flapped her wings once, slowly, then faster and faster.
The alicorn grinned, ecstatic that she was almost in the air. She flapped, much harder and took clumsily to the air, for a dizzying moment she lost control but she regained her balance and half flew, half fell forwards through the air and out through the door. The two friends looked out the door after her as she picked herself up from the ground and stood shakily, a smile of triumph on her face.

Twilight looked gratefully at her changeling friend.
“Thanks.”
Penumbra shrugged.
“No problem, you had that whole thing just set up for the old ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, I just took the initiative to make it happen.”

Her friend smiled, and then frowned.
“I can’t use teleport spells in here, something’s blocking my magic! How do we get out now?”

“Twilight, I’m a changeling, remember?”
With some difficulty, Penumbra altered her form so that her wings were larger, large enough, she hoped, to carry both of them. She had to sustain the spell constantly; she could feel the anti-magic enchantments eating away at her transformation.

“Twilight, stay completely still, I don’t want to miss.”

“I’m already still, and what do you mean you don’t want to miss?!”

Penumbra kicked out with her hind legs and cannoned into the air, her hoof activating a trap as it pushed up. Her speed carried her forward before it could hit her, though, and she curved through the air towards her dumbstruck friend and then flew straight into her, pulling her up and away from the trap-covered ground in a split second.

A split second, however, was enough time for Twilight’s hooves to hit not one, not two, but five of the traps in the room. Lightning bolts, jets of flame and disintegration spells ripped out of the stone floor, the sheer speed of Penumbra’s wings once again carrying them clear. The triggering of these five set off a chain reaction with all the traps in the cave, and Penumbra dodged and dived and ducked and wove through everything the room threw at her, ignoring any injury to herself in her determination to get her friend out of there.

Her hoof got the chitin scorched off, she flew on. Her ear was torn in half by a shower of metal blades, she flew on. Acid sprayed across her side, she flew on. She didn’t even feel the shower of razor sharp icicles as they penetrated the thick chitin on her chest and emerged, covered in her green blood on the other side.

Twilight knew instantly that something had gone very wrong when Penumbra’s wings sent them into a terrifying spin. Had she been hit? They were out of control now, flying into the path of a lightning bolt that would surely kill them both. At the last second, Penumbra’s failing wings flapped a few more times frantically, before stopping altogether.

It was enough. The pair soared away from the path of the lightning and through the rapidly closing doorway.
Princess Luna had finally passed out from the pain and had let go of the handle. The stone around her hoof retracted and her foreleg slid partway out, looking more like some sick piece of abstract artwork than a limb. Blood trickled out of the hole and down the front of the door to the floor, where it collected in a sticky red pool.

To one side, Iridesca lay panting, her short flight had tired her immensely and she had lain back down from the exhaustion. To the other side lay Twilight and Penumbra, the two tangled together from their crash landing. Twilight extricated herself from her friend with nervous haste, Penumbra was hurt and there was nothing she could do to help while tangled in her hooves, comforting as the accidental embrace was.

One glance at her confirmed Twilight’s worst fears, partially melted, three long spikes of ice had burrowed through the changeling’s deformed chest from left to right and sluggish green blood oozed from the holes they had made. She doubted Penumbra would make it back alive, not with an injury like that, although she didn’t seem to be bleeding nearly as much as Twilight would have expected.
The changeling’s saving grace lay in the same flawed genetics and hideous disfigurements as had ruined her early life. Firstly, the impossible angle of her deformed ribs had both slowed the impact of the frozen daggers and deflected them away from hitting her vital organs, which in any case were not where a normal changeling’s organs should be. The bizarre inwards curve of her ribs had caused her heart, lungs and major arteries to form several centimetres behind the typical position and so none of them had suffered more than a glancing blow. A glancing blow from something that sharp and large still caused a lot of damage; hence the steadily growing pool of blood around her body, but it had not killed her.

Despite the changelings’ very Spartan attitude to weak or deformed foals almost having gotten her killed as a newborn, these same deformations, these mutations that had earned her the label of ‘freak’, the disfigurements that had led to rumours that she was the result of inbreeding, that had caused her nothing but trouble until now, had seemingly made up for the pain they’d caused her by saving her life.

Who says mutations don’t come in handy every once in a while?

------------------------------------------------------------LATER -----------------------------------------------------------------

Princess Celestia, Shining Armour and “Cadance” stood waiting in the throne room. It had been several hours since Twilight had set off to find the real Cadance, and they were worried. The clock ticked on slowly, seeming to taunt them. The silence sneered at the three, speaking all their worst fears like a silver-tongued snake. The wait was unbearable.

Out of the new, rapidly approaching sound of footsteps, Princess Luna limped into the room with Iridesca just behind. They stopped in front of the three, and a few seconds passed with no sign of their companions. Before anypony could ask, Twilight and Penumbra walked slowly into view, the changeling leaning heavily on the other mare for support. The scars from the icicles were clearly visible, as was the dried green blood down her chest. The same blood stained Twilight’s coat, but she didn’t mind, it had been worth the mess to get her friend back to a stable condition. She was still very weak but she wouldn’t have any lasting injuries; Twilight took pride in that the scars would be the only reminder of her friend’s ordeal. Healing magic was a miraculous thing, indeed. The pair joined the others facing the other occupants of the room.

“Let us go somewhere we can all sit down, we have much to discuss.”

Celestia led the way to the long table in her chambers, the place this whole plan had begun hours before. She thought it was fitting that it would come to absolution there too. They all took their seats and waited for her to begin.

She and her sister sat at the head and tail of the table and for the first time since she had returned, Luna looked her sister in the eye without her sibling looking away; something had changed in those familiar eyes, and for the better. Twilight also sat opposite her sibling, Penumbra at her side as “Cadance” was at his. The two pairs of eyes on her side of the table met the two pairs on Shining’s, and in that moment more was said between them than could be said in an eternity of words.

Iridesca looked around the table nervously, her eyes were still adjusting to the light and she felt this was a sign she needed time to adjust to this new world she’d escaped to rather than be thrown straight into meetings with royalty the moment she emerged.

“Cadance” Said Celestia, looking straight into Iridesca’s eyes. ”Welcome back”
“I’m not that pony any more… I’m sorry aunt Celestia, but I’ve changed so much. I don’t know who I am anymore, but I-I’m not her.”
Her adoptive aunt’s eyes were sympathetic.

“I understand. If you are no longer Cadance, then what should I call my favourite niece?”

“Iridesca.”

“Princess Iridesca of the stars it is then.”

“Of the stars? I don’t understand”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed your cutie mark, Iridesca”

She looked, and sure enough there was a marking there, gold stars on dark purple sky. Her own cutie mark, something she had never thought she’d have.

Luna chuckled, it all made sense now.

“Ever since I got back the stars haven’t been quite under my control, I thought it was because I was out of practice, but no, they just chose somepony else for the job. Congratulations, Iridesca, you now have command of the stars. If you want, I can teach you how to raise them tonight.” She chuckled again and grinned proudly at the mare she’d only met a few minutes ago as if she’d known her all her life.

Looking around her, the newly crowned princess of the stars was surprised to see similar smiles from everypony in the room, even the guards standing to attention at the door. Slowly, shyly, she returned their smiles with one of her own. After a minute, the attention on her lifted somewhat and Shining Armour decided unexpectedly to speak up about a matter intertwined with that of Iridesca’s identity – Cadance.

“I fell in love with Cadance – Not Iridesca, Cadance. I know Iridesca, biologically speaking is the true Cadance but at this table it’s common knowledge that it’s a lot more complicated than that.”

All heads turned to face him, all except the mare next to him, who was holding his hoof under the table.
“You see, Iridesca may be the original Cadance, but she has a completely different personality to the mare we knew. She is pretty much a different pony to Cadance; the two are nothing alike except for looks.”

Celestia was intrigued to see where he was going with this.
“Go on”, she encouraged.

“I’ve been talking to…” He gestured with his head to ‘Cadance’ “…and…she says that how she acted when she was pretending to be Cadance was more or less how she acted normally, like Penumbra was when she foalsat Twilight. If she’s telling the truth, then no matter whether or not she was born as Cadance, she is the Cadance we knew… and the one I fell in love with.”

“Do you know if she was telling the truth, Shining?” Celestia asked the only question they need ask at this point, its answer would change everything or nothing. She hoped for his sake it would be the former.

“Yes, Princess, I used a lie-detection spell. I feel bad about using it on her but I had to use it to be sure she was telling the truth… she was telling the truth the whole time”

“That’s wonderful, Shining!” Twilight was ecstatic for her brother, he had managed to work it all out, and the outcome of that was one of hope.

“There’s something else, too…” He paused, making sure everyone was listening.

“I can’t explain this perfectly, but I’ll try to give you the gist of it. Changelings weren’t always how they are now, they used to live with us, changing forms only when they needed to or to have a fresh start if something went wrong. It’s been so long since it last happened that the modern hives have all but forgotten it, but when a changeling felt they belonged where they were, that who they were was who they always wanted to be, they’d lock in that form. When Cadance was with me, she actually felt so happy with me that this… change-lock, whatever you want to call it, happened. She is both physically and mentally the Cadance we knew… And I love her.”

There was a silence after that, but not an unpleasant one. All that needed to be said for the moment had been said. Luna was the first to speak after that long pause, she grinned as she spoke.
“Well, it seems we do have a wedding to plan after all.”

Shining and Cadance exchanged smiles.
“Actually, Princess, we’d like a while to get used to things again, to recover from what’s happened. And besides, Canterlot is a bit of a mess at the moment. Next month, perhaps, if that’s a convenient time”

Unfazed, the princess of the night beamed down at the reunited couple.
“Next month it is, then. I look forward to it.”

Celestia concluded the meeting, dismissing them a few at a time.
“Shining Armour, you and Princess Cadance can have all the time you need, you have a lot to talk about, I’ll bet. Twilight, you should probably go see your friends, they’ve been worried sick. They’re in the waiting room downstairs.” Twilight seemed reluctant to leave, sending a glance over to Penumbra. The princess carried on.

“Penumbra, Chrysalis is leaving with any changelings who want to follow her, I know you despise her but do you want to go with them, at least back into changeling country?”

The changeling shook her head then moved to Twilight’s side.
“No, Princess, my place is with my friends, and not one of them is a changeling.” She looked at Twilight expectantly, and the purple mare smiled warmly, nodding in approval.

“She’s coming with me back to ponyville, Princess Celestia, I know she’s a changeling but the ponies there are welcoming enough when they get over their superstitions.”

The pair walked out, Twilight helping her along without having to so much as think about it. Helping her friends was second nature to her, and she felt that with time that would be the same for Penumbra, after all, she had changed a lot just in half a day, who knows how she could change for the better with more friends, and more time. It would be difficult to introduce Penumbra to the townsfolk but they’d accept her eventually, like they had with Zecora. And if they didn’t… well, Twilight knew a few spells that would help in that situation.

When they were gone, Celestia slumped in her seat, exhausted.
“I’m glad that’s over, Luna, I feel like I’ve been here for days… What happened to your hoof, by the way? You were limping earlier. “
“Defense mechanism on the door to Iridesca, it made mincemeat of my leg. I had to keep the handle pulled to keep the door open and all the while…” She trailed off, feeling faint from the memory. There was still dried blood splattered over her coat, her shoulder caked in the stuff. This, along with her considerably paler face made it quite clear to Celestia what she’d been through, all without needing to say a word. It’s funny how much the little things can tell a pony.

“We didn’t cover everything we meant to in that meeting, ‘Tia.”

“I know we didn’t, Luna, but I think we all need a little bit of rest after what’s happened. The other things can wait. Besides, I have to go tell our chef that we’ll be having a guest to dinner tonight.”
“A guest? I wasn’t aware we had anypony to dinner this evening, sister.”

“Ah, yes. Sorry, Luna, I forgot to tell you. I invited Corporal Bright Streak to dinner, I thought we could both use the company and I quite frankly enjoyed talking to him.”

Her sister sighed and shook her head, a knowing smile teasing one corner of her mouth.
“Why am I not surprised? Do you really find my company so boring that you feel the need to invite lowly servants to our table?”

“I-I don’t mean it like that, Luna. It’s not that I find your company lacking, it’s just that…“Her face grew bright red as she thought the words, but her sister’s face didn’t look convinced that she telling the truth so she took a deep breath and admitted her real reason for wanting him there.

“-FINE, I like him, ok? It’s been so long since I’ve met a stallion who had the guts to stand up to me, I just want somepony who doesn’t agree with everything I say just because they think it will get them on my good side… Luna, why the hay are you laughing?”
Behind the hurt, doubtful expression, Luna had been smirking. It was the oldest trick in the book and her sister had fallen for it! Oh, poor, lonely Celestia, so desperate for somepony of her own… Luna was crying with laughter, tears of mirth pouring down her cheeks as she cackled.

“SHUT UP!” This outburst merely sent Luna into bigger fits of laughter and Celestia gave up and left the room in a huff. She didn’t go off to sulk as her sister would have done – she had a date to plan and no amount of taunting from her sister –who had never had a coltfriend anyway – would stop her.

All in all, despite what had happened, some good had come out of it after all.
Like the story of Pandora’s Box, when everything seemed to have turned to chaos and all good had seemingly perished in the flames, there was still one thing left.

Hope.

There was always hope.
No matter how bad things may seem, the ponies of Equestria had learnt that day that there would always be hope, although not necessarily from the places you would expect.
They had learnt to love and laugh when all was dire.
They had made friends amidst the chaos and destruction.
They had lit a shining light of certainty in the darkness of confusion.
They had learnt to look beneath the surface and find the truth.
But for now the lesson was over and they could all relax. Well, at least until the next power-hungry megalomaniac arrived and tried to take Equestria for themself. As she looked back on the day’s events, Twilight Sparkle smiled wryly.
‘Just another day in Equestria’

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Epilogue

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