This day was supposed to be perfect. The day I've dreamed of since I was small. A picturesque wedding full of happy faces and loving hugs. But... This isn't how I imagined it. I didn't even have to look. I could smell the fire. I could hear the screams. I could feel my own tears.
My feet were glued to the floor in their goo. It was hardened like glue. Trying to move was next to impossible. I 'stood' next to my fiance. I couldn't bare to look at him. Even though I was told he was brainwashed, his shrunken blue irises and droning face made me think he was more braindead. I tried so hard to get him to remember me, but he just kept on droning.
"Give it up..." Her haunting voice boomed in the hallways. She waltzed towards me and put her clawed hand onto my chin. "I've dug so deep into his mind that he only cares for me. Trying to remind him will only result in my face popping up in his mind." She told me.
"W-why... why are you doing this to us?" I could see baring her sharp teeth as I let tears fall onto my face. "You could have just asked for food! We would have helped you!"
"Help? HAH! There's no room for help in my realm! It was just simply survival of the fittest for me and my kin. Everyone who thought otherwise learned the harsh reality! That only the strong survive!" As she laughed, the doors opened and I could see the woman that I used to babysit, along with five other people, captured by her monstrous creatures. "And I've got to hand it to your race. They have shown all kinds of weakness... Strength, intellect, emotions... Hell, I wasn't even trying to be you!" She burst into green flames and turned into me.
"Seriously! From what I heard of you, I've acted the complete polar opposite of you! And yet these fools were willing to protect me, even when one of their own pointed out that I was clearly... 'evil'." She cackled as I saw her eyes flash her true color: a sickening green. I could see one of the people, what looked to be a cowgirl, apologize to Twilight, but I couldn't hear her. However, I could see the look on Twilight's face. The furled eyebrows, the way her eyes pointed at her in a threatening manner, and all of that in a second before she sighed and spoke.
"She fooled everyone." She said. Chrysalis gave a smile and changed back into her true form, an insectoid monster with large green compound eyes, cerulean hair that swept down, and holes among her legs and arms.
"I could have been easily stopped, but it seemed I was too good at acting bad. Who would have known making people bridesmaids would have benefited me? I guess in this struggle for survival, your kind just won the... what do you humans term it? Ah yes. Darwin Awards." She laughed and looked at the ensuing chaos from the balcony. Twilight went to me and undid the glue, begging me to save her brother. I looked to him and my heart nearly broke.
For a moment, no one else mattered. It was just me and Shining Armor. I cried some more as I placed my hand onto his head. I began to replay my own memories with him. How we first met, how we declared our feelings to each other, how I proposed to him and convinced him of why he should marry me. And for one moment in time... it worked. I could see Shining Armor's eyes return to normal. I could see him look to me in complete love. True love.
But that was for a moment.
Next thing I knew, his eyes rolled as his sclera melted from white to a sickening green. He struggled to say my name, but I could hear bits of Chrysalis' name in there as well. In the end, all I could hear was a garbled mishmash of our names before Shining Armor fell over, his eyes being nothing but green. That's when I noticed the guards did nothing to stop me and that Chrysalis never turned around. She just stood there and laughed.
"What did I tell you?" I began to shake him awake, even kissed him longingly on the lips like in the fairy tales. "Nothing you do will work. You just jumbled his mind so much with conflicting loves that he couldn't take it anymore."
"S... so he's..." My body ran cold. I never wanted this to be a reality. I fell to my knees.
"In a sense, yes. If I can't siphon his love, no one can." She laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And all I did was kneel and cry. I could feel all my anguish and despair wanting to break out of me. I struggled in vain to keep it all in. That's when I saw Chrysalis knocked back, green blood spraying onto the carpet. I looked and saw Twilight scowling. Her eyes were the same kind of eyes that I saw when she rescued me.
The eyes of someone who had been betrayed, hurt, and undergone despair. These were the eyes of a killer. I could see Chrysalis barely struggling to get up. She fired a green bolt at Twilight, but she slapped it away before firing twin shots, blasting apart her wings. Chrysalis screamed and covered her back like she just lost her arms. Twilight walked over and grabbed Chrysalis' head.
That's when the Changeling Guards came and attacked Twilight. I could see it all happen, but I was unable to help. I was frozen. Twilight incinerated the guards with her burning hands before firing a large magic missile at Chrysalis. She knocked her so far out of the balcony that her magic glue began to weaken. A cocoon chandelier fell down and broke apart, revealing our Princess, Celestia, unconscious but alive.
Then it became night. That's when I could move. I ran out and nearly wretched as I saw dried husks that were once people laid out in the streets. I could also see corpses of the Changelings fall down like meteorites. I looked up and I could see how they fell.
I heard of tales as a kid about this monster. A woman who was envious at her sister's popularity that she became the Goddess of the Eternal Night. She threw lightning bolts at the Changelings and scattered the living ones out of town, including Chrysalis. The Goddess landed, and it returned to daytime. She looked to me with a solemn face and flew off with navy wings.
"What... happened?" Celestia asked. I turned around as she looked at the body of Shining Armor.
It was time to face the music.
The funeral was a blur. My mind was pressing fast forward on everything. Crying parents, depressed people, trumpets, lowering the casket... I always wanted a wedding, not a funeral. Never a funeral. At least not until we were eighty.
As I remembered this, I heard my aunt's speech regarding the invasion.
"On April 21st, 2012, our peace was disrupted by monsters from another world known as Changelings. These beings have robbed us of our love and of our harmony. But we won't forgive them for this. We will fight back. Our attack on the Changeling forces will be deadly. They will answer for the hundreds they slaughtered on that day. And they will know the true power that they tried futily to absorb. The power of Love."
And all I could think of was what she said next:
"Mi Amore Cadenza will be our major general, leading the forces into battle until Princess Luna can be found."
Normally Luna would lead the attack when it came to wars, but with her gone, it fell onto me to lead a generation of ponies who have never fought in their life...
And she's asking me to equip them with something I have just lost on that day. This is a burden I cannot bare.