Welcome Home

Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie all gathered in the throne room with Princess Luna. They all sat in a circle and made idle chatter while waiting for everyone to get here. The guard on duty walked over to luna and informed her it would be another minute or two before Princess Celestia and Twilight would arrive as they were getting the guard captain and princess Cadence before coming to the throne room.

Rarity turned to Princess Luna, “Theres quite a bit of activity going on around here Princess, does that have something to do with what were here for?”

Luna nodded and turned to Rarity, “We can’t tell you much without the others here, We’ve mostly been dealing with cleanup so We don’t actually know much of the story, other than the events of the night itself.”

Rarity mulled over Luna’s words and an inkling of worry worked its way into her system. This casual visit was slowly turning into something that she would call a life altering event, were she one who had a flare for the dramatic.

Twilight reapplied the illusion spells around her before walking out of the room with a slightly stunned Celestia. Turning to the Princess, Twilights asked, “So where are we going, strait to the meeting or are we picking up the guard captain?”

Celestia sighed, “He is your brother, one would think you would acknowledge him with a name rather than a title.”

Twilight nodded, “Sorry, Its just been a long time since Ive had to deal with anyone here. The time seems to have rusted my relationship with everyone."

Celestia could only continue to walk as she mulled over that statement. How long had Twilight been gone?

Shining sat alone in the infirmary. Cadence had left a while back when the doctor on duty had ushered her out. This left Shining plenty of time to think over the events of the past twenty four hours. Shining would be overjoyed to have heard that the Queen was dead in most any other circumstance but the good news was overshadowed by the news that it had been her sister that had single handedly beat him in combat. She hadn't even used magic to beat him.

On top of all that the pony he thought was his sister turned out to be the same monster that had impersonated his wife. Shining was starting to see a pattern in the events and then started to get paranoid. 'What if other people he loved were being replaced as he lay here in the infirmary. What if its a giant conspiracy!...' After that thought Shining started to get the idea that a few sessions with a therapist would be good for him. Maybe he would buy a boat and go on a cruise for a year or two, try and get away from all the changeling madness.

Shining was still rolling the thought of the sea life through his head when the door opened and Celestia and Twilight walked in. The doctor rushed over and tried to shoo them out of the door but Celestia just ignored him.

“I trust you are ready and able to walk captain.” asked Celestia. Shining nodded got out of bed before walking over to the two much to the ire of the doctor. On their way to the throne room Shining kept trying to start up a conversation with Twilight but she only gave him some sidelong glances and grunts in response. Resining himself to wait until the throne room, Shining continued to walk.

Princess Celestia walked into the throne room with Twilight and Shining Armor in tow causing everyone to stop their conversations. All the mares except for Luna rushed over and gave Twilight a crushing hug, much to the displeasure of the mare. Twilight gave everypony a few awkward pats before they released the hug. Coughing Celestia drew the attention back to herself.

"As some of you know Canterlot castle was infiltrated by a pony who, at the time, was of unknown identity." This drew gasps from five of the eight others present. "When the infiltrated got to the throne room after fighting past all of the guards who were on duty they managed to kill Princess Twilight Sparkle." This drew some confused murmurs and frightened glances at Twilight.

"Before any of you do anything rash let me finish." Celestia said, quieting the murmurs. "After the sword hit Princess Twilight and killed her, it was revealed that Queen Chrysalis has been acting as Twilight for... how long has it been Twilight?"

"Somewhere around ten years." responded Twilight.

"Yes, Queen Chrysalis has been acting as Princess Twilight for around ten years. Now I'm sure your all wondering how we figured this out." A few nods were given. "The figure who infiltrated the castle, and blew past the guards was the Twilight you see now." The only response to the story was a stunned silence as the mares tried to understand. "Now that the back story is out of the way, Twilight. Would you please share what lead up to your replacement and what happened afterwards?"

The hardest part was finally here, starting her story to those who still saw her as innocent. It was painful knowing the story would scar some of them, but a part of her didn't care. She still held a slight grudge against everyone in this room. They were all "close friends" so why couldn't them see that it was Chrysalis in her place. Twilight supposed it was just that she hated situations like this, destruction due to the inabilities and incompetence of others.

Though regardless of how much she could have stalled Twilight would have to tell her story, and what better place than with the first and most crushing death she had witnessed.

-10 years ago Equestria time, Everfree Forest-

A younger and recently crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle was wandering around Everfree forest with her young draconic assistant Spike. They were there to do further research on the vines that were the most recent “tragedy” to befall Equestria. This of course meant that they had to head to the deeper parts of the dense forest to gather valid data.

“This place gives me the creeps Twilight” She heard her assistant/ adopted brother say. “Lets get the information we need and get out of here.” Twilight couldn't help but agree, she had Spike here mostly because should something go wrong she had the utmost faith that Spike would be able to get a message to Princess Celestia. She normally wouldn't be so eager to wander deep into the most infamously dangerous forest in Equestria and put her best friend at risk, but she wanted to look more into the seeds Discord had planted and see if she could get a detectable magic matrix out of it. If she had that she could, maybe, find more things that Discord had done in the past and stop them before they became a nuisance.

They stopped at a place relatively near the sprouting place of the vines and started digging. It had been about an hour before Twilight had heard Spike scream. This was no normal panic scream like Spike so often produced, this was a scream of pain and terror. Twilight was running and meters away before the shovel even hit the ground.

When Twilight found where she thought she heard the scream originate she saw nothing. She proceeded to see nothing as a large blunt object hit her in the back of the head, knocking her out.

When Twilight woke back up she was bound in a familiar green gunk and in a cave somewhere. Twilight squirmed for a bit before noticing another member in the room. The outline suggested female and the hight suggested alicorn, but she was too thin to be one of the princesses, she looked malnourished.

“Oh how the mighty have fallen, not so tough without your friends are you Twilight Sparkle?” Sounded a mocking voice from the shadows. The form stepped forward, revealing Queen Chrysalis.

“You won’t get away with this” Twilight said with confidence “My friends will realize something is wrong, They will come and find me.”

Chrysalis just smirked, “Perhaps eventually, but you did say yourself back in town that this visit could take a while. Whose to know if they will come today, maybe you had to camp the night in the woods, or perhaps got a room at that zebra’s house? Either way, I have as long as I need.”

“Things haven't been going so well for me lately. After your brother’s little super charged shield spell knocked my invasion out of Canterlot, I was seen as a failure of a Queen. I was exiled by my subjects.” Chrysalis had gotten a mad look in her eye by this point, “They didn’t realize that I was the only thing that kept them from starving to death. Honestly, you wouldn’t think that changelings would believe that fool who said that distilled poison joke would substitute.”

“None of that matters now. You see, Twilight Sparkle, you becoming a Princess has left me with prime opportunity. The changelings be damned! They made their decision now I will make mine. They don’t want me as their ruler, fine, I’ll just take the place of another.”

Twilight decided that it was time to derail Chrysalis’s crazy train before it could go further, “Your plan will never work. Spike is naturally resistant to all kinds of magic so you wont be able to control him. He will just send a letter to Celestia telling her about your plan.”

Chrysalis seemed to consider this for a minute, “Yes that does make a bit of sense now doesn't it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention Sparkle, it will make getting rid of you even sweeter.” A green glow engulfed the Queens form and two things started floating towards her, another green cocoon and... something Twilight couldn't make out.

Chrysalis sent a blast of magic towards the cocoon and it melted away from Spike’s upper body, except for his mouth. After a few seconds of being dazed Spike seemed to realize his problem and started to squirm.

“You see, Twilight Sparkle, you are a problem to my plans and I learned after last time that simply moving someone to a hiding place will not keep them away for long. I’ve been practicing my Planar spells lately and figured, why not, that should get rid of the brat. But first, like you said, We have the problem of your dragon. I could just send him over the hills and say he left on a journey of self discovery but that would mean he could come back, and there is that pesky ability to send letters. The real solution is quite simple in my mind.” Chrysalis got that manic smile again as she levitated the second object into a better view, a dagger. It had a black hilt and red hilt with a silver blade.

Spike started to panic more and squirm more to try and get out of his binds as the dagger drew closer. “The reason most dragons walk on 4 legs at all times, Sparkle, is because the underbelly of a dragon is covered in much thiner scales then the rest of the body, even more so on a baby dragon.”

Spike gave Twilight one last look of desperation before the dagger buried itself into his heart. Twilight screamed as the light went out in Spikes eyes.

She continued screaming as she sunk into the ground