The Golden Daughter

Aurelia nodded to the two guards standing watch in front of the dimly glowing room. “Open it, but take your time. It is a dungeon, after all.” The helmeted drones nodded and began the work of undoing the organic waxy curtain that blocked the other two royal sisters inside.

While The Queen would never refer to the room as a ‘dungeon’ out of respect for herself, Aurelia had no qualms with dirtying her own tongue with the distasteful word. If there was one thing her mother refused to do, it was get dirty. The changeling queen had a predictable habit and behavior. She held herself in high regard and considered harvesting love to be like tasting fine wine. She would only chase after older, married mares, who came from wealth and power, mature mares who were neglected by their husbands and sexually frustrated. She would appear to them as a young, muscular stallion, a tall, dark, and handsome type that would spin a tale of mystery.

Her modus operandi was predictable and scientific. She would approach the mares at large social gatherings that featured wealthy and powerful ponies. Operas, gambling houses, garden parties, museums, theatres, and expensive restaurants were her favorite hunting grounds. She would tell them about how she was travelling and visiting the town, but that she couldn’t stay long. And if the mare gave even the slightest sign of interest to her flirtations she would pursue them viciously, by planting the seed of intrigue, and then rapidly ignoring them. She would seemingly finding another, more attractive, younger mare to give attention to. By the end of the night, the true target would have given the seed every ounce of doubt and jealousy it would need to bloom into unbridled passion. Only then would The Queen return to offer up a dance or a moonlit walk.

In the end, it always ended with a passionate night, and a cold bed in the morning. The Queen would have a full belly and the mare would have a broken heart.

Aurelia knew better, however. There was always a more efficient way of harvesting.

The idea that love was something that had to be aged in the ‘oaken cask’ of a marriage to become ‘potent’ or more powerful was old-fashioned. For centuries, changelings had been targeting ponies that were powerful, rich, and influential. The idea that only married ponies who were deeply in love were the best sources of food was a crippling mindset. Hundreds of changeling drones starved as queen after queen was outed by lovers who were immediately tipped off to the differences in behavior that their replaced spouses displayed. Hives collapsed, and the race as a whole nearly went extinct.

The Queen, her mother, had grown out of this time of hardship. The next evolution was, naturally, to only target spouses that were unhappy with the marriage. And this most often meant older females who had husbands off chasing young tails. The harvesting missions would be shorter and provide a less stable source of energy but the amount of resources was nearly endless. By sacrificing prolonged imitation and identity theft with short trysts of manipulation and betrayal, the love began to flow steadily once more, and the risk of being identified as a changeling was reduced. After all, feeling like you had love stolen from you after cheating on a spouse was not an unexpected reaction.

Aurelia was proud to be pioneering the latest and greatest form of love harvesting. In her experience, the pony didn’t have to be in a relationship, married, rich, powerful, or popular. The ponies she targeted only had to be lonely enough to be desperate for romance. When she showed up and offered to sweep them off their hooves in a weekend of unbridled passion and carefree lovemaking, they opened their hearts to her. She was like an oasis in a desert to her victims and they all drank deeply. Aurelia would feast until she felt like bursting.

She tried her best to not get stuck into any one particular ‘style’ of harvesting. She experimented with stallions and mares, in both combinations. But when given the choice, she would always pursue the sapphic relationship. Mares who preferred the female form seemed to be the most desperate and open emotionally. They had the urge to merge, so to speak. The extremely short relationships she would have with them would give the most efficient payout. Not to imply that stallions weren’t an option for her, far from it. Given a little more time, stallions could pay out as much as mares. They were simpler in their desires; They would always give little true love in the beginning, only lust, especially the colt-cuddlers. But if one had the patience, the payoff would be equal in the mid-length relationship as the male naturally became dependent, protective, and trusting. Both genders could love equally, but for quick gains, finding a lonely filly who needed someone to listen was always the easiest safe to crack.

What was that delicious pony joke again? Aurelia thought to herself, Ah yes, ‘What does a fillyfooler bring on a second date? A U-pull’. The eldest royal changeling giggled to herself as she recounted the numerous fillies that asked her to move in after one night of passion. Of course she would agree, the burst of love she got after it was the perfect dessert to every ‘late night seven-course meal’. She licked her lips as she imagined the exquisite stab of betrayal that must have met their hearts when they awoke to an empty bed.

It made her hungry just thinking about it.

Aurelia was stirred from her thoughts as the drone guards nodded to her and cleared the final strands of the barrier from the entrance. She strode in with purpose and found her two younger sisters sitting in the darkness together as they watched her enter.

She grinned at the painful expressions that were barely hidden behind their masks of defiance. “Mother is going to give us our next challenge, a month in the wild, harvesting love for the hive. We’ll be getting a swarm of our own.”

Aurelia smiled viciously as she looked at her sisters’ slack-jawed expressions. She knew it would be no contest and that her place at her mothers side would be assured. She had won every challenge that involved gathering love. The only challenges that Chrysalis ever beat her at was theft, manipulation, and betrayal. And little Nympha only ever won at mimicry, camouflage, and deception. All of which were simply foolish exercises in practicing a changelings natural gift for transformation and trickery, something that every drone could do. But harvesting love was the duty of The Queen.

Aurelia was the best harvester of all of the Golden Daughters, she knew it, and her sisters knew it.

“If I were you, I would take the opportunity to flee. Start your own hive with the drones given to you and eek out your existence away from here. You will never be able to provide for the hive like I can. Mother told me last night that there is only room for one of us on the throne.” She bared her fangs viciously and hissed at her sisters. “The final challenge is approaching.”

Aurelia turned on her hooves and strode down the hallway towards the great chamber.

Chrysalis and Nympha rose and walked through the entrance to the room they had spent many nights in together. Life was always easy for a royal changeling, compared to a drone. Their time together as pupa was filled with nourishment and contentment. They never hungered and they wanted for nothing. The Golden Daughters were treated like princesses from the day their mother laid them in their special birthing chambers. After Nympha underwent her imago and tested her wings for the first time, The Queen began their training.

‘The Challenges’ as she referred to them were all practical exercises in honing their natural talents and gifts to fulfill their sole task, harvesting love for the hive to help it grow. Because all drones were male, the Golden Daughters were the only changelings capable of laying eggs. Strong doses of love were required to nurture eggs in their cells and through their larval stages. But drones were weak and lived for only a few weeks, never more than three months. So while it was possible for drones to forage for themselves and survive, the hive as a whole would collapse without a queen to get the sustenance necessary to reproduce at the rate needed.

Chrysalis and Nympha walked down the hallway slowly. They had no desire to catch up to their eldest sister. But it didn’t stop them from reacting to the news.

Nympha looked up to Chrysalis and smiled, “Are you excited? I’ve never had so many drones to order around before. I think it’s going to be fun! I can show them all which ponies to copy and how to improve their disguises!” The young royal changeling flitted her blue wings and hovered above the ground.

Chrysalis walked forward calmly, doing her best to not show how weak she was after feeding her younger sister once more. She smirked down at Nympha and smiled genuinely. “I’m more worried about winning, Nympha. You seem to forget that I have finished second in every single challenge. I’ve never had the opportunity to take part in the feeding ceremonies.”

Nympha fell to the rocky floor and cast her eyes away from her sister in shame. She had finished in first place twice, once on the first challenge where they first tested their mimicry and again on the challenge to practice lying. “I’m sorry, Chryssi, I wish you could have seen it when it first happened for me. It’s so beautiful.”

The two youngest royal sisters emerged from their tunnel into the great chamber. A thin rocky ledge extended out from the entrance to make a landing area of sorts. But all along the walls in every direction was the hexagonal lattice of birthing cells. Many were filled with drones resting. The hive was a twenty four hour operation and they worked in shifts. Others were capped off with the waxy opaque green building material and young larvae and eggs could be seen glowing inside. Drone after drone flew in every direction and crawled in systemic patterns along the cells to disperse love to each and every growing changeling they could.

The duo of female changelings extended their wings and flew down to the lower part of the chamber. A geometric pattern of six rocky bridges extended from the main storage rooms into the central chamber. The two changeling princesses landed as one and relaxed their wings.

High along the uppermost reaches of the cavern, stalactites reached down and were covered in rows of hexagonal cells that stretched between them in avenues of vertical housing. The changeling hive was buzzing with activity and no space was wasted as each drone served its purpose without hesitance. The entire scene was illuminated by threads of vibrant glowing moss hanging from the tips of the stalactites into the grand chamber. The cool greens, blues, and purples of the lambent fungi painted a lagoon of light onto the central stone platform in the bottom of the room.

The two royal changelings puffed out their chests, raised their wings vertically and held their chins high. They remembered the first lesson from their mother, A Queen never shows weakness before her swarm.

Chrysalis and Nympha strode side by side through the magnificent grand chamber. The sheer scale of the room was difficult to take in from their position so low to the ground now, but the omnipresent hum of changeling activity was enough to assure them that everything was alive and well.

Aurelia stood in the center of the large stone gathering area next to her mother. The Queen and the eldest daughter watched the younger sisters approach slowly but with purpose. They held their posture perfectly and their vertically slitted eyes narrowed to exude only one idea, power.

Nympha and Chrysalis both bowed low to their mother, The Queen.

The matriarch of the changeling hive rose to the air on large diaphanous wings. She turned once and shot a burst of magic to call the entirety of the swarm down to them. “Hear me, my swarm! Today, one hundred and fifty of you will be selected to accompany the Golden Daughters on their greatest challenge yet!” There was a susurration of awe as excitement filled every drone. The chittering and cackling of normal playful banter between the males was stopped abruptly as the opportunity to accompany a potential future queen on her first swarming presented itself.

The Queen giggled. “Now that I have your attention, we will be choosing the worthy ones in the typical changeling fashion, a contest, of sorts. You will use your skills for camouflage and mimicry to hide in the great chamber. Your display of skill will be paramount in whether you will be selected. If you are approached by one of the Golden Daughters you are to obey her commands, to the word.”

After a pause for dramatic effect, The Queen raised her hooves high and slammed them to the stone below her. “Conceal yourselves!”

The entire swarm swirled in frantic excitement. The drones dove to and fro to hide and impress the royals. A cacophony of chittering, screeching, hissing, buzzing, and scratching assaulted the ears of the royal changelings.

Only one sound could be heard over it all, the sound of The Queen cackling maniacally as she rotated slowly in the air and held her hooves out to the swarm whirling about the royal females in activity.

Then, with a sudden decrescendo, the noise of the hive fell to silence. The cold caverns seemed to become a vacuum of sound as the royal changelings each could hear their own breathing in the grand chamber. Chrysalis felt her breath catch as she gulped audibly in the eerie silence. She could almost hear her own heartbeat.

“Isn’t it magnificent?” The Queen asked as she landed and strode to where the three Golden Daughters stood in awe, searching every dark corner of the normally bustling large chamber and finding nothing but stillness and silence.

The Queen laughed quietly once more and said, “The rules of this contest, for them, are simple, and for you they are almost laughably so.” With a bright green glow, the horn of The Queen shot to the floor of the rock and drew three black lines extending radially from the center, marking three perfect 120 degree sections of the central platform.

“Your personal swarm will consist of the first fifty drones to land on your respective platforms.” With a harsh shove, The Queen moved each daughter to their designated thirds. “Once a drone lands on your platform, you may not exchange it for another, so choose wisely. As soon as fifty land on your platform you will leave and begin heading to Hollow Shades. Do not tarry.” The Queen smirked at the confident look on Aurelia, the downcast look on Nympha, and the ponderous look on Chrysalis.

“Use every skill I have taught you, daughters. In thirty days time, whomever returns - with the most drones alive - to this chamber, will win.” The Queen gave a final glance to each of her daughters before saying, “Begin.”

Aurelia hardened her features and gave a deep bow, “I will not fail mother, I will win this challenge, just as surely as I will be the first to leave this chamber. I will make you proud.” With a sweep of her wings she ascended high into the air and began to search for the best drones she could find to build up her swarm.

Nympha and Chrysalis remained silent and motionless. The youngest knew in resignation that she would finish last, because she was the weakest flyer. Chrysalis continued to look to the ground around her, the gears turning in her head were almost audible in the deathly silence of the large cavern. Her eyes widened and brightened at an exciting epiphany.

“Mother,” Chrysalis said audaciously.

The Queen looked to her second daughter with narrowed eyes.

Chrysalis took a calming breath and continued, “Would it be considered cheating if one of the drones I selected were to accidentally pick the wrong section of the platform?”

The Queen leaned her head back and laughed long and loud. She turned down and moved in to nuzzle Chrysalis affectionately, “Oh, my dear, cunning, Chrysalis, this is why I have such high hopes for you. The way of the changeling is to cheat, steal, and betray.” She leaned back and winked at her daughter with a wide grin of elation. “Make me proud. Take every advantage you can.”

Chrysalis felt a swelling of pride fill her that dulled her hunger momentarily.

Standing back to the center of the platform and turning her calm viridian gaze up to the shadows above, The Queen watched Aurelia flit about with her deep purple wings. She savored every moment of watching the eldest daughter be predictable and go for the least subtle means to the end. Teaching lateral thinking to the bright and ambitious girl had been her greatest challenge. She knew Aurelia was a fantastic harvester, but only because she was a single-minded and mercilessly efficient thinker, almost blindly so.

Chrysalis felt a wave of relief fall over her and she turned to pull Nympha into a huddle. The smaller changeling was pouting at – once again – being placed in a challenge of physical prowess, knowing her smaller and weaker form would be her downfall.

“Nympha, you’re the best at hiding and disguising yourself, you always were, you can find the best hidden drones, correct?” Chrysalis whispered.

Nympha looked up into the emerald eyes of her protective older sister and said, “Well, of course, I always win at hide and seek with the drones. Some of them are terrible at hiding, I can see a lot of them even from here.” Nympha rose to point with a hoof at several sets of glowing blue eyes peering from their cells in the highest parts of the great chamber.

Chrysalis followed to where Nympha was indicating, squinting to make out the tiny points of light in the distance, then nodded enthusiastically. “That’s perfect Nympha, because we don’t want to find the drones that are best at hiding. Not yet at least.”

Nympha looked confused. “But if we want a good swarm we need good drones, right? I don’t want drones that are going to get caught by ponies!”

Chrysalis held a hoof to her lips and made a shushing motion. Two drones landed on the platform that Aurelia’s army would belong to. She pulled Nympha closer and whispered softly, “We don’t want Aurelia to hear us. The rules have a loophole, if we can find the worst drones and tell them to land on her side, then we will have all the time to gather the best for ours!”

Nympha blinked in understanding and felt a giggle rising up in her and she raised a hole-filled hoof to cover her mouth and stifle her happy chortles. “Heehee! That’s so smart, Chrissy! Let’s go get them now, I can see the worst ones hiding up at the top. I bet they thought being far away in the dark would be good to hide them but they don’t even close their eyes. What a bunch of silly horns!”

Chrysalis hugged her little sister and then looked to her damaged wings again. “You won’t be able to fly fast enough. I’ll go and tell them where to land, you just stay here where it’s bright and point me where to go and which ones to pick.”

Nympha nodded and hummed an obedient, “Mmhm!” before scanning all around the cavern with her keen eye for detail.

Chrysalis soared high up into the cavern with a burst of speed from her large wings and headed straight for the foolish drones in the highest reaches. Several of them noticed her direct approach and began to hide even more, a few even closed their eyes, wisely.

Chrysalis tapped three on the shoulders who were simply huddled in the back of their cells and told them to land on Aurelia’s section of the platform.

They obeyed her without question and landed on the stone surface.

Nympha pointed to another pair of drones who were scuffling with each other to squeeze into a crack in the cave wall and Chrysalis flew to them rapidly.

The Queen smiled as more and more of the simple-minded drones landed on the platform of the eldest daughter.

~~~

Aurelia looked down from where she was carefully sifting through the glowing fungus. She had been focusing solely on the delicate work of finding the best camouflaged drones to make the most adept swarm possible, but had only found five that met her criteria. She had passed over a dozen who had been too stupid to even close their eyes or stop moving. She heard quite a commotion below and couldn’t ignore it any longer

What she saw left her flabbergasted. Her platform was nearly covered in five neat rows of drones, almost eight columns wide.

Aurelia keened with anger and pulled a purple lock of her mane out in frustration before folding in her wings, casting a spell, and diving down to the central platform. She landed with a purple blast and the crater she left smoldered with her impact.

“Mother! These drones are landing on the wrong side! That is my side, not theirs! Tell them to stop!”

The Queen regally strode to be face to face with Aurelia. Her viridian eyes burned with unfiltered emotion. The eldest daughter immediately held her tongue and winced as she realized what she had just done.

“You dare to command me?” The Queen spoke murderously as she stopped in front of her eldest daughter.

Aurelia averted her eyes and fell into a deep bow. “Forgive me, My Queen, I forgot my pl—” A hot rod of pure torment shot through Aurelia’s foreleg. “Aaauuughhh!” She yelled until her lungs emptied and looked to the black serrated appendage impaling her hoof.

The foreleg of The Queen had transformed into a long sharp point. The razor sharp spike was curved and serrated like the claw of a mantis. The thin black tip buried itself into the stone below and had been precise enough to go through one of the holes in Aurelia’s hoof. But it was just wide enough to split the thinnest edge. The Queen twisted her new appendage and let the barbs and uneven edges widen the wound.

Aurelia fought down tears and any other outward sign of weakness as her mother mutilated her hoof. She did not speak or utter any sound other than the gasps and deep breaths she took. She squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced as she felt the outer layer of her chitin splitting and widening the hole in her hoof. The thinnest edge of that particular gap was nearly ripped off completely.

The Queen smiled as her eldest daughter looked up to her with violet eyes that were regretful. With a quick flick of her foreleg, the changed appendage pulled itself from the stone and scraped outward from the wound in the hoof. The thin barrier on the side of the hoof came with it and a thick line of ichor painted a trail across the stone floor.

Aurelia grimaced and whimpered as the part of her was cast away and her hoof began to bleed from the now completely missing part of it. That particular hoof was no longer just pocked with holes, it was split. The jagged curving shadow it formed on the ichor covered stone below was haunting. Aurelia wondered if that was how her mother’s had become so shredded.

“You forget your place, Aurelia. Your overconfidence and ambition has blinded you to the most subtle path to victory. As a changeling, it is not enough that you succeed, your enemies must also fail. The rules of the challenge were vague, and Chrysalis and Nympha took that advantage for themselves. But nature has no rule other than the survival of the fittest. If you are unable to do everything you can to survive, than another will simply take your place.” The Queen dismissed her eldest daughter with a spat of distaste. She turned and looked behind her at the five even rows of changeling drones. Ten columns wide.

“Your swarm is prepared, Aurelia. Head to Hollow Shades and redeem yourself. Do not return to me until you have drained the town with your swarm and taken every advantage you can. The only rule, is to win.”

Aurelia stood shakily to three hooves. She placed a brief amount of weight on her wounded forehoof to give the proper appearance of a deep bow to her mother and then took to the air. The fifty drones followed her, bumping into each other and cackling in annoyance as they moved as an unorganized mass of black silhouettes.

Before she disappeared down the wide upper corridor leading to the outside, she cast a hateful glance to her sister, Chrysalis. The violet eyes glowing in the darkness narrowed and squinted before a loud hiss came from their direction.

Chrysalis hovered in the air high in the chamber watching as the last of the worst drones she and Nympha could find were trailing out after their new temporary queen. She turned to look down at Nympha who appeared to be nauseous. The small royal changeling was still staring at the ichor smeared ground near her and the shard of black chitin taken from Aurelia.

Chrysalis descended rapidly to alight next to Nympha. She gave her a quick embrace and then leaned her forehead against the smaller one. “It’s ok, Nympha, we can choose our drones together now, and we can choose the best ones. We don’t need to worry about Aurelia.”

Nympha closed her mouth after realizing it had been open in shock since she watched her eldest sister be mutilated. “I... We did that to her.” Nympha began to sniffle as she fought hard to not come to tears in front of The Queen.

Chrysalis held Nympha close and shushed her.

The Queen watched the display dispassionately but analyzed the interaction with care. When Chrysalis looked over Nympha’s shoulder to her mother, she saw the malicious smirk of approval begin to form. Chrysalis frowned and averted her eyes, turning her back, and Nympha’s back, to The Queen.

“It wasn’t our fault, Nympha. Aurelia brought that upon herself.”

Nympha coughed the tightness in her throat away and squeezed her eyes to think of something other than her sister yelling in agony. “Why can’t she just help us? We help each other, and we get better. You taught me how to find the best ponies to feed on. And I taught you how to mimic better. Why can’t we all just work together?”

Chrysalis feared the answer to that question every time she finished a challenge second. She knew that every hive only ever had one queen, but she didn’t know what happened to the rest. Was it possible that the Golden Daughters that were not selected simply left to form their own hives? She hoped so.

“We’ll get through this together, Nympha. We’re sisters, and we’re a team.”

Nympha nodded in agreement, then she whispered, “When you become Queen, you’ll protect me then too, right? You won’t hurt me like mom does to Aurelia?”

Chrysalis smiled and nodded.

Nympha hugged her big sister once more briefly, and then she rose to look for her drones.

Chrysalis stood to watch her little sister fly into the darkness with weakened wings and saw out of the corner of her eye that The Queen was silently applauding.