Author's Note

This just started as cool idea and snowballed into a chapter. Also I think it's fitting the chapter follow Twilight instead of Chrysalis or Spike, it helps keep the outside perspective I decided to aim for in the chapter, also the emotional Twi moments just needed to happen in my opinion.

The Halls of Chrysalis's Memory

Twilight steadied her breathing, Chrysalis was sitting right across from her with a skeptical look. They had spent two hours going over the spell, and she had spent another five just studying it. If nothing else she was at least ready to give it a try, she knew that failure of a spell like this was an option, especially with all the ways she had been told it could go wrong or disrupted. She was told that when visiting the memories she would usually be a passive observer, but sometimes casters found themselves affected by something in a memory they were observing. Chrysalis had also told her that whatever ages Twilight saw in those early years were ages her mind had approximated because the further you get from the age the harder it is to recall the exact age the memory occurred.

Celestia, Luna, and Cadance had rushed over when they heard what Chrysalis had been doing, to everypony's surprise Chrysalis was actually waiting for Twilight to remove the formulas from the board. Even more surprising to Celestia was when she went over the formulas and the order that they appeared on the boards was that the spell was in line with exactly what Twilight had been told. She decided to study the spell herself, to see the full extent of the spell. Luna gave it a once over and gave comment about how similar it was to her ability to move through dreams.

Twilight repositioned herself to get more comfortable and continued to steady her breathing. A spell like this would take a lot of focus the first couple of times, but after she got the hang of it this spell might very well be something to expand on, for one thing, she could designate not only designate who's memories were targeted but also who would be journeying through them. Even with all that there were certain dangers that she had been warned of several times during her introduction to the spell, she deemed that in spite of it all the risk needed to be taken.

After calming her breathing Twilight lit up her horn focused the spell with her as the one entering Chrysalis's memories. She kept focusing until it felt like she was being thrown through a whirlpool, she had been told to expect some disorientation when entering the domain of another's mind.

Twilight blinked a bit and looked around, she was in a well-lit tunnel of some kind with a wooden door to her right. Taking a closer look she saw an image of a lavender alicorn drawn on a chalkboard, the lavender mare gave a little smile since she had been told entry point would be the most recent memories. She opened the door to just take a peek inside. What she saw was Chrysalis giving her the lecture, she expected the nervousness and excitement Chrysalis had rushing through the memory, especially when she took into account the amount of enjoyment the two of them had just comparing academic information, but what she hadn't expected was to hear the thoughts rushing through the changeling's head in relation to the memory.

She heard Chrysalis thinking, I'm taking a big risk teaching her this spell, especially since I'm sharing all I know about it. It will be worth it, I'm doing my best to change for the better. When Twilight finally gets this down I just hope she doesn't look in on some of my daydreams about Spike, they are a bit risqué in a few ways. Just focus on the lesson plan, not Spike and his big tasty musc...no keep on track, lesson first then fantasizing about that big sexy dragon, mmmh mmmh, stay on track Chrysalis.

Twilight shut the door and thought to herself, Okay, Chrysalis keeps having her mind wander towards Spike, not sure if that's a good thing or not yet. She also warned me there would be things I probably want to avoid, but it shouldn't be too bad as long as I don't wander in on her sexual fantasies or any of her memories of having sexual relations...with Spike. Twilight gave a shiver, just the thought of accidentally seeing something involving the dragon she saw as a little brother in a mature situation gave her a bit of a chill.

She wandered through the hallways of the tunnel spotting images depicted on doors of various kinds. She made a full stop and backtracked when she saw an iron door that had a thought cloud around its image, she figured it must be a dream or fantasy. The only part of the image she saw was a depiction of Chrysalis (in her classic black coloration) and Spike together, fortunately for Twilight the images on the doors were so simple that she couldn't make out any discernible anatomical features, if it were the case she'd have already terminated the spell herself and gone through the process of purging memories from her head while trying gouge her eyes out in an attempt to unsee any of it.

She pulled the door open just enough to hear what was on the other side while not seeing any of it. She heard Chrysalis's voice in the throws of pleasure saying, “...can take it, no other mare deserves to take it.” Twilight quickly shut the door with a scarlet look on her face that had managed to creep half way up her horn. It had taken almost instantaneously for her to figure out what was on the other side of that door, she was thankful that Chrysalis had been brave enough to admit there would be memory gateways that Twilight likely would probably have to skip. She then recalled seeing a door that had Spike and Chrysalis in a passionate kiss and gave another shiver, she decided that any doors that depicted dreams or Spike and Chrysalis in such close proximity meant she should just avoid it for the sake of her own mental health.

She continued through the halls until she came upon a pair of doors, one showed Spike and Chrysalis on opposite sides of the door and the other showed a lamenting Chrysalis in on her knees in sorrow with a changeling. Twilight decided to put a pin visiting those later. She continued down the halls until she saw a green changeling giving a lecture to four smaller changelings (all of which were black). She opened the door a crack to hear what was going on, “...and with this spell you'll be able to dominate the mind of any creature you wish,” came a self-important voice that sounded as if Princess Celestia had decided to become a cruel tyrant, at least that's what it sounded like to Twilight, the voice gave a similar impression to the Princess while also seeming to reflect the opposite of the lavender mare's mentor.

She then heard a vicious, yet startlingly attractive voice say, “Do we really need to know this spell? Our physical charms should be enough.”

“Nymph,” said the prior voice causing Twilight to throw open the door to get a better, revealing a bare basics lecture hall that seemed to be carved out of the walls with four young (still black) changeling queens in desks that were carved into the walls, one of which was around the size Twilight had been when she began learning from Celestia, a much larger changeling queen with emerald coloration and cold eyes was in front of a board displaying a changeling sending out beams that were making a variety of creatures (one of which was a unicorn) bow to the changeling, “you will one day encounter a circumstance that require you to force your will upon the target.”

A brittle looking hole covered arm moved up from the smallest of the young queens. The other three gave the youngest one among them an annoyed look, “Do you have to be so,” said the young queen to the right and behind the smallest one there in a condescending and highly aggressive voice, before making an exaggerated gagging noise, “pony, Chrysalis?”

“I'm just being respectful of our instructor,” said the young Chrysalis in squeaky lisp that sounded somewhere between a young Twilight and Sweetie Belle with a hint of Fluttershy to Twilight's ears, “better to be respectful than do something to direct her anger.”

“Regardless of your attempts, and the expression is appreciated,” said the green queen with freezing venom in her voice, “if you have something to say just say it, you act more like one of those naively sweet ponies than I would like. The only reason I tolerate such behavior is because your performance in class acts a good motivator for your sisters.”

“Yes, mother,” said Chrysalis in defeat, “when will we be given subjects to test this spell on, knowing how and application aren't always the same thing.”

“An excellent point,” said the green queen, “I'll be sending you out shortly to find targets for the spell, you will be graded on the quality of your spell application.”

“The quantity of victims and told impressiveness of each individual victim will affect your overall assessment of our ability to use the spell,” said Chrysalis with a vested interest, causing the three older queens to groan.

“Great,” snarked the changeling directly behind the young Chrysalis with a murderous tone to her voice, “now she'll be expecting us to come back with more than one, you are without a doubt the worst thing to happen to us.”

“Agreed,” said the other two in unison.

*************

The memory sped forward three hours and she saw the young Chrysalis coming up on a mass of large water rodents, capybara if she remembered her zoology texts right and heard the young Chrysalis muttering, “I'm so sorry, to all of you, you won't ever see the sun after today, but mother demands it, I can't go against my mother.” With that she shot forth seven rays for the seven large rodents, the began to thrash around for a few seconds before going into zombie-like trances. Chrysalis then began to make her way back to the colony grounds when a large cat, a jaguar, blocked her path changed her a few minutes later, more out reflex than forethought it seemed, she fired the subjugation spell off at the big cat causing it to stop a few inches from the young Chrysalis's face, Twilight heard Chrysalis whisper, “sorry about this,” to the big cat and continue on with it in tow surrounded by the large water rodents.

The memory zoomed forward again to reveal each of her sisters with one very large unusual jungle beast with their mother offering congratulations on finding such tantalizing meals. As Chrysalis trotted in with her catches. The jaws of her sisters dropped, and her mother smirked.

“Well,” said her mother with a hint of pride, “seems the youngest among you went for quantity and quality, she brought back some appetizers and a good main course. Chrysalis gets high marks. Leave your catches in here for better inspection and go now Chrysalis, I need to talk to talk to your sisters about optimizing their approach.

The young Chrysalis nodded and commanded the small herd she collected to move over by her mother before trotting out of the room. Once out of the room she did a quick look around before heading into the most sparse library Twilight had ever seen, it was so sparse Twilight swore it was a crime against literature to have a library with so many empty shelves while having so many occupants. Chrysalis turned around to check no one was around and watched a few drones pass by while attending to their duties before nodding to herself and going over to a tome with faded lettering on the Spine.

Twilight caught the young changeling thinking, Would it kill them to actually maintain what little written knowledge we have, I need to study up more so my sisters can't...

The sound of approaching hooffalls stopped her train of thought, and in an act that seemed more in line with Twilight than anypony else the young changeling jumped out of the library headed down to the halfway point in the hallway. She was met once again by her sisters. “Well, if isn't mom's little prodigy,” said one of the three her viciously aggressive tone, “thought you could hide from us in the place we don't like to go, guess you thought wrong.”

“Please don't make my damage too severe this time, Vespa,” said the young Chrysalis.

“Did she just say please,” said the young queen with a murderous tone, “you know that that means girls.” They all grinned viciously.

“Yep,” said the one with a vicious, yet attractive, voice, “triple, 'congratulations' are in order.”

Chrysalis gave a small sound of fright before trying to move up against a wall to prevent herself from being struck from behind, her efforts were in vain. Twilight watched in horror as Chrysalis was thrashed by her 'sisters' for almost a complete half hour. When it was over Chrysalis was broken to the point left leg wouldn't cooperate, her right arm was approaching the point of threatening to fall off, her body was covered in cracks, her wings had visible tears and her horn was so cracked that its base was dripping the green goo that passed for a changeling's blood. On closer inspection, Twilight noticed the young changeling was bleeding all around her body. A small trail of blood followed Chrysalis as he headed for some other distant part of the complex, it was at this point Twilight stepped closed the door to the memory.

She turned around and headed further into the later memories. She stopped at what looked like a preteen Chrysalis watching a red changeling queen and threw open the door, ready for whatever was next to come. What she was greeted to was a more cynical, yet still very pleasant, Chrysalis watching a red carapaced changeling fly around snatching up birds and biting into them with a sense of delight as the red changeling drank her catches dry and dropped them to the ground. Twilight and, surprisingly, Chrysalis had waves of nausea flow through them before Twilight practically slammed the door shut. Just as the door was shutting Twilight heard the much older Chrysalis, now devoid of the hints of Sweetie Belle and Fluttershy and a tone that sounded much closer to a disillusioned Twilight say, “You make me sick, Culicidae!”

Looking over she noticed an 'earlier' door with a younger Chrysalis running from an airborne yellow changeling. She threw open the door just in time to see Chrysalis get stung by an aerial yellow changeling queen with her green abdominal stripe now a dark green a few shades lighter than her mother's carapace. “Ha, nice one Vespa,” came the murderous voice, “Chrysalis always does make the bast test of our abilities.”

“Thanks, Culicidae,” said yellow queen with more of a buzz to echo in her viciously aggressive voice, “Chrysalis, you really need to work on your running, you're the slowest thing out here, and that's an accomplishment since I ate the only snail in the area two minutes ago.” Twilight closed the door to the sound of Chrysalis's sisters laughing.

Twilight then turned her attention third door, this one had a blue changeling dragging Chrysalis into the water, Twilight had a good idea and bad impression about this one. This was Chrysalis's third sister, Nymph. She opened the door to witness a teen Chrysalis getting dragged int the water and held below to point her lungs were near bursting before she resurfaced and slowly crawled out of the water of what looked like a reservoir for the colony. After Chrysalis had crawled a few feet and nearly collapsed she weakly huffed while spitting up some water, “Not funny, Nymph, I said I was heading to take a bath, not that wanted to drown the drink.”

The vicious, yet attractive, voice laughed from the water before a dark blue changeling queen brought her head to the surface and a set of guide fin on the crown and sides of her head folded back, “But you're the best little test of my abilities,” said Nymph with a sinister smirk.

“That's not true and you know it,” retorted Chrysalis as she finally got back up, “facing Culicidae with your abilities would be a far better test of your abilities.”

“Maybe, but you're so much more fun to 'play' with.”

Twilight closed the door and continued to her intended target while thinking, Well, her sisters are pretty bad, but I still doubt her mother was that bad to her. Sure her mom sounds like a villainous Celestia, but I doubt it means...was that a door with just her and her mother? Twilight did a quick backtrack and she saw a young black Chrysalis on the door looking dejected in front of a green changeling queen that Twilight now recognized as Queen Cicada. She carefully opened the door to see a wounded teen Chrysalis trying to support her broken leg and doing quite badly and from the emotions, she felt from the memory she could tell that Chrysalis was crying on the inside.

“Just walk it off,” said Cicada with no sense of compassion.

“It's not a sprained ankle mother,” declared the young Chrysalis without almost all sense of the cute and sweet foal Twilight witnessed a few minutes prior, “and even if it was that's not very good for the healing process. This is a seriously broken leg, my support structure is shattered, I need to keep it straight for at least a few hours.”

“Just use your magic to accelerate the healing,” said Cicada with little interest.

“That's more than a little hard with a fractured horn,” said Chrysalis icily while making quick gesture to her horn, which had three large fractures that were clearly visible with several smaller ones branching out from the larger cracks, “it'll take at least a few hours for my horn to be usable enough for your 'suggestion' and without my horn's magic my leg would take weeks to heal, not the better part of a day.”

“Then it's time for a trust exercise,” said Cicada before trotting over and stepping on the injured Chrysalis's leg as she coldly said, “never trust another queen with knowledge of your weaknesses they likely haven't learned of yet, and certainly don't tell another queen about the length of you healing time.”

Chrysalis still didn't visibly cry, but the pain was evident on her face as Twilight heard the thought, And now my mother has made my healing time bump down to three days. Never misses an opportunity to extend my agony. It was at this point Twilight shut the door and shivered, she remembered when she had broken her leg, and part of the practice hall, with an awry spell while Celestia was elsewhere, the moment the princess had learned of Twilight's injury, which was mercifully light after an examination in the medical wing, she had rushed Twilight to medical and stayed with her until the doctors had given the all clear. She also recalled the time she caught a cold and her mother stayed by her side and eased her worries, only leaving Twilight's side to prepare meals or get the young Twilight another book to ensure the filly didn't strain herself. Cicada, Chrysalis's own mother, and teacher had deliberately gone out of her way to increase the damage of an injured Chrysalis, it didn't matter what age Chrysalis was because that sort of behavior to Twilight was inexcusable, she knew her friends and family all had similar compunctions.

Twilight continued down the hall back to Chrysalis's most recent memories, there was a memory she wanted to check out before leaving. Once again Twilight found herself at the door that showed Chrysalis and Spike at opposing sides of the door, she carefully swung it open and heard Chrysalis's thoughts as the black carapaced Chrysalis wandered the halls and thinking, Alright, I found the throne room, some of the egg chambers, and the archive room, Chrysalis gave a sigh, Why did Spell Cocoon do this? I desired so much for my hive to survive anything that was thrown its way, and to make matters worse this artificially induced heat is going to drive me up the walls, I'm lucky it's just the first week. At least in the first week I can manage it, but come next week or the week after my ability to control myself will be noticeably less. I just hope... she started crying [Rest of what happens is found in the first chapter]. Once Twilight saw Spike give Chrysalis a tender embrace she shut the door and said to herself, “That's what we need, Spike. I'm sorry I let my ill feelings towards Chrysalis get in the way, I'm happy she's taking these kinds of risks, they're the kind she needs.” Twilight cut out the spell with a promise to herself to visit the one the gateway that had Chrysalis on her knees weeping.

When she came back Rarity was in the room(and the princesses had all left), and seemed to be measuring Chrysalis's waist area and writing down a set of estimates. “Okay, two things,” said Twilight, “one, what makes a changeling's heat cycle different from a pony's? And two, what is Rarity doing?”

Rarity stopped when she heard the first question, Chrysalis just giggled and said, “Our cycles specifically target our mates and usually can be triggered by the Queens themselves, Spell Cocoon found a way to artificially induce mine so I honestly don't know how long this first heat cycle will last, for a queen her first heat cycle usually lasts around a year, it allows us to facilitate optimum breeding conditions within ourselves regardless of the mating cycles of our mates.”

All the ponies in the room just stared at Chrysalis like she had just told them she was holding an active bomb without knowing it, “I suppose that makes some sort of strange sense considering changelings don't always know what they'll be mating with,” said Twilight, “not to mention dragon breeding cycles have always been hard to study and predict. Also I owe you an apology for my less than friendly actions towards you.”

“I forgave you the moment I hit the floor,” said Chrysalis right at Twilight with a tone of acceptance, “I knew some of you would feel the need to exact some sort of vengeance on me; you, Shining Armor and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza would be the most likely to want to enact some sort of vengeance on me, I wasn't wrong with that estimate. And to answer your second question, she's taking measurements and running calculations for my maternity wear.”

Twilight blinked few times and just before she opened her mouth for retort Rarity said, “She'll carry egg sacks around for who knows how long...”

“Three months,” said Twilight offhandedly.

“Yes well,” continued Rarity with a flourish of her mane and quick press on her elegant, violet sundress, “it would be reasonable to assume she'd have some semblance of a pregnant mare during that time.”

“Oh, I won't have what you call a 'baby bulge' until about six weeks after my day of impregnation,” said Chrysalis with an elegant flick of her wrist. The two mares just stared at her.

“And you just now decided to share this with us,” said Rarity, “you've been going at it with Spike for nearly the past week now, and you're certain you're developing little ones. That means you have five more weeks before you show, darling, I need to step up on your maternity wear.”

“I'd make it looser by about thirty-six percent than you estimated, just be on the safe side,” said Chrysalis as Rarity made her way out.

“I saw some of your memories,” said Twilight, “and thanks for the warning, but you could have told me that there would be a chance I could hear your strongest thoughts within some memories.”

“I honestly didn't consider that,” said Chrysalis, “changelings are taught early on how to block out the thoughts of others that aren't their queen, so in all honesty, I can say such experiences are foreign to me. I only did the spell thrice before, all were during my magic lessons. I could have used the spell on Shining armor or your sister-in-law, but I deemed the threat to high, also even the old me would only violate that kind of privacy if the situation were perceived as dire.”

“Which at the time it wasn't, you could easily cover up the gaps in your knowledge with a spell like the one you used on my brother, which we're both still not happy about.”

“I'd feel insulted if you were,” said Chrysalis.

“Or shifting doubt to any pony that was suspicious of you, like you did with me. That was well done by the way, and leaving the bride's maids under a weaker version of your subjugation spell to stop me and Cadance was brilliant, in a way you actually wanted somepony to stop you.”

“At the time I figured it would be more impressive for you to come back at just the right time to continue casting doubt, I figured you and Mi Amore Cadenza would beat each other up so badly you'd barely get past my easily distracted guards and she would collapse just shy of a location for others to catch on to my ruse.”

“That...actually makes a lot of sense and explains why you taunted me in the chamber just outside where you were holding Cadance, that and you initially intended for the wedding invasion to fail. Maybe on some level you still wanted it to end poorly for you.”

“Perhaps you're right,” said Chrysalis, “so now that you've seen my family, which I'm assuming you have since I have no idea what memories you actually saw, what's your impression of them?”

“To be blunt,” said Twilight, “just from how they treated you I can see why you acted the way you did at the wedding, and I'm thankful it was you that tried that ploy. You were a cute little foal that was practically the pinnacle of what any pony parent could want, which I find a bit ironic considering you are a changeling. Since you have the same basic body structure of us I'm going to assume changelings and ponies have some sort of common ancestor that's just far enough back to impart the basic body design while causing a host of evolutionary differences.”

“A fair assessment,” said Chrysalis, “what did you think of my mother?”

“That...individual has no right to call herself a mother, she intentionally worsened your wound while saying it was a teaching moment.”

“Actually to my recollection she performed that maneuver two hundred and seventeen times, and not once was she remorseful of the act,” said Chrysalis with contempt, “I have no intention of doing such things to my offspring, and when I finally decide to make another queen I'll make sure the treatment my mother gave me isn't done and instead nurture all of those wonderful properties that my mother decided to weed out of me.”

“When you finally decide to have a new little queen what will her name be?”

“I think I'll leave that up to Cadance, still not used to that name exiting my mouth, to decide, she deserves the right, considering what I put her and Shining Armor through, maybe by the time my little queen is laid he'll have few names for her as well.”

“Will you leave her in their care before she hatches?”

“Not likely,” said Chrysalis, “it's ill-advised to move egg sacks once they've been positioned. The only exception would be a rapid transit with caretakers dedicated to ensuring the survival of the egg sack all day and night until the egg sack is placed in its new location, then they would have to have somepony watch it and help deliver the larva when she hatches, I'm sure Cadance would want to do that personally since it would mean she helps form a stronger bond with the newly born queen.”

“Well, now that I've gotten to better know your family maybe we should hammer out some details for when they finally decide to 'visit' you.”

“You should get the other princesses involved in this discussion,” said Chrysalis, “but first you should begin the plans with...”