Kingdom of Loving: Fear and Loving in the Crystal Empire

Chapter 11: A Royal Invitation

A strange quiet had come across the palace. The crystal spires shone brightly in the middle of the day while the guards stood at alert. The town below was abuzz with the rumors, but the castle’s solemn face was one of anticipation and uncertainty. Twilight stood in the throne room with Cadance, who had decided this would be a far more formal affair. They would do things the right way, or so she’d suggested. Twilight was unsure about whether it was the smartest way to do things, but then, after being alone in a room with a changeling, she didn’t want to go anywhere without a contingent of armed guards following her every move.

She had not seen the throne room proper since she’d arrived. Cadance was so casual, moving about the castle where she pleased, hosting meetings in the breakfast nook or the main hall or even going out to meet with ponies in the town itself. She was so very laid back, but the gravity of the situation was making Twilight doubt her methodology. Celestia was always regal and poised and in control. Cadance now looked like a child sitting on the elegant crystal throne with Shining at her side, Twilight on the other.

Of course she’d insisted on being present for the meeting. She shifted her weight from one hoof to the other as they waited. That morning they’d received word from one of the guards that Nymphaedra had returned. She hadn’t tried to come in or demanded to see Twilight. She simply delivered the message.

Her mother was going to come.

Twilight’s mind raced over the endless possibilities and outcomes, turning situation after situation like the wandering pages of a choose your own adventure book. Every time she thought of Sunset her chest panged and her eyes stung, her mind clouding with her desire to talk to her and be with her. Her heart burned at the notion that she still wanted anything to do with that creature, after she lied and used her. But there were more important things to worry about, weren’t there?

The tall doors of the main hallway swung open and the tension in the room swelled. Twilight stiffened while Cadance leaned back in her throne. Shining, who never brought a weapon with him anywhere, steadied his own stance and set his gaze on the archway.

Twilight wasn’t sure she was ever prepared to see what stepped through.

A towering black figure walked with a foreign grace along the long purple carpet that stretched between the raised steps to the throne and the doors. She was tall, easily bigger than Cadance, probably as tall as Celestia herself - which put her intimidatingly at twice Twilight’s height. Her body was the same pitch black that Nymphaedra’s was, with gossamer and sickly green comprising her flesh, her wings, her mane and tail. Her horn was a towering, gnarled blade, and her face was set into a slit-pupiled smirk. Several guards ringed her at a respectful but still cautious distance, and there in the center with her was another pony.

Sunset.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat when she saw her, bright amber-orange and red, in her pony form. Her blue eyes darted away as soon as she noticed her searching gaze. Somehow, it made Twilight feel better, knowing that Sunset was here and that she had been telling the truth. At least, she had been about one thing.

The guard escort stopped in the center of the hallway and began to retreat. Twilight looked at Cadance who gave her a reassuring nod. The doors pulled closed behind the last as he departed, and then they were alone.

“Welcome,” Cadance said, her voice echoing slightly in the grand hall. “I am Princess Cadance, ruler of the Crystal Kingdom. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

“I am Queen Chrysalis,” the tall creature said, and her voice was terrifying. It hissed and reverberated on its own, a commanding potency and female strength that compounded on itself a hundred times. Twilight had to repress a shiver.

“Welcome, Chrysalis. Forgive me if I’m a little unfamiliar with your kind, as we have not seen a changeling in the Crystal Kingdom for some time.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Chrysalis mused almost conversationally. She extended one long-fingered hand to Sunset’s head. Her claws graced her mane, stroking in tiny little rows through the fur. Sunset tensed as if she’d expected to be hit.

“Why have you only chosen to reveal yourself now?” Cadance prompted.

“The time was simply not right, Your Highness. We changelings were cast out from ponykind centuries ago by your precious matriarch.”

Cadance shifted in her seat, folding one leg over the other as she moved her hands to the armrests. “Celestia may be queen in Equestria, but she does not hold sway here. Whatever she has done, I hope you can see that I am not her.”

“No, certainly not,” Chrysalis chuckled. It was a strange, wracking sound. “I would never have thought it this easy to walk into her throne room in broad daylight.”

Twilight looked sideways at Shining as discreetly as she hoped. Shining glanced in her direction to give her a helpless shrug. He had no idea what the changeling was planning.

“It’s my understanding that your kind are emotional feeders,” Cadance said, trying to keep the conversation civil. “You may not be aware that the Crystal Kingdom encourages the open expression of love and free exchange of ideas. I want to offer you peace, in exchange for honesty.”

“Honesty?” Chrysalis’ black brows raised in clear amusement. “Oh, I feel I can be honest with you, Princess Cadance.”

Sunset’s eyes shifted towards her mother in clear astonishment. The black hand on top of her head moved so that Chrysalis could sweep grandly in a gesture of emphasis.

“For centuries I have dwelled in darkness, subsisting on little more than the scraps of your feelings.” Chrysalis’ voice had taken on a darker tone. “My kind waned after being cast out from Equestria. We were forced to hide and dwell in fear, to never know the warmth of the surface”

Cadance’s expression hardened. Shining’s fists clenched tightly. Sunset’s face fell, her mouth slowly opening.

“The time has come, my dear princess, for you and all your little ponies to know what it means to truly live in fear. You will know what it is to never see the sun.”

“Mother, that’s not-” she began. There was no time to finish before Chrysalis swung her entire long arm and caught her daughter straight across the mouth.

It wasn’t a slap. Sunset was hurled across the hallway behind the pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. Her body hit the crystal wall with a sickening thwack. Chrysalis’s eyes burned with unnatural green hate when she turned back to the throne.

Twilight didn’t realize she shouted Sunset’s name until Cadance shot up out of her chair and Shining stepped forward. Chrysalis didn’t hesitate. Her horn glowed green with crackling lightning and it was all Cadance and Shining could do to throw up matching azure and pink barriers before the bolt hit. The steps where they stood were obliterated, throwing all three ponies backwards to the throne. Twilight stumbled and caught herself on an arm while Shining skidded to a halt, still standing on his feet. Cadance lowered herself down from midair with a snap of her wings. All around them crystal chunks clattered down from the massive explosion.

“Why do this?” Cadance shouted, her voice terse. “Why throw away your chance at peace?”

“Peace? You think there can be peace between us? Harmony?” Chrysalis’ voice cracked in a hoarse laugh. “I will not rest until my kind has drained every pony down to an empty husk. My swarm shall not go hungry again.”

The doors to the throne room flew open. Several guards rushed in, their halberds at the ready. Chrysalis straightened herself and gave them a glance, but her fanged smirk never faded.

“You can’t win, Chrysalis,” Cadance said sternly, her hands moving to her hips. “My guards have the palace surrounded.”

“Really?” Chrysalis chuckled. “It is fortunate, then, that I have had agents within their ranks for years.”

One of the guards standing in the doorway shifted and grinned. He, along with a half dozen others, were engulfed in green flame. Their black forms immediately turned on their companions with swift blows from the pommels of their halberds, cracking into ribs and smashing into stomachs. What few guards managed to turn their attention to a defense were quickly overwhelmed as multiple gangly limbs grabbed them, wrestling with them.

The changelings opened their mouths. Hissing green tendrils swirled out of them, enveloping the ponies in their grip. Though the guards kicked and struggled against the insectoid creatures’ grip, their motions soon became sluggish, limp. One by one the guards still able to stand crumpled while the changelings’ bodies glowed with luminous green energy.

Twilight gasped. Her eyes shot from the gruesome scene of ponies being drained to the pillars at the side of the hall. She could just barely see Sunset’s orange form laying on the polished crystal, not moving. Her brows knit tightly.

She had no time to make her move before a brilliant blue flash erupted from beside her. Cadance’s horn ignited and shot out a coalesced beam of pure magic at the changeling queen. Chrysalis brought an arm up to reinforce a protective barrier spell as the magic hit. When the aura cleared, Cadance was barreling straight for her.

Twilight hadn’t even seen her move. The alicorn hit the changeling in the center of the hall with enough force that the ripple of energy blew back Twilight’s mane in a palpable gust of wind. Unicorns were capable of reinforcing their natural abilities with their natural magic even before they learned to fully control it to work into spells. With practice, magic could bolster a pony’s abilities several times over. If she refined her control Twilight might have been able to keep pace with a race pony or levitate many times her own weight.

Alicorns were something else entirely, and Cadance was exceptional. Even knowing that, Twilight’s heart sank when she saw Chrysalis had simply braced and caught Cadance’s fists in her own. The two stood facing one another, one scowling with barely-restrained anger, the other smirking.

“Kill the others,” Chrysalis commanded.

The changelings at the doorway leapt from their unconscious victims towards the throne. Twilight snapped out of her reverie as Shining summoned up a flickering pink shield of magical force.

“Twily, go left!”

“On it!”

Twilight had never been much of a fighter. If she were asked, she would have said that learning combat spells was for guard ponies. If she’d read one or two in her time in the Canterlot libraries or practiced with her older brother just for fun, it would have been a happy accident. What most ponies failed to realize was that Twilight had read every treatise and theorem on magical applications in combat. She had practiced spells late into the night, she had forgotten birthdays, and she had missed parties.

She was not as helpless as she looked.

The first changeling to reach Twilight was surprised, if she could be any judge of the twisted changeling features, when her horn lashed out with bright magenta energy. The magic bolt slammed into it as it flew threw the air, immediately reversing its momentum with a loud and painful crack. The second changeling managed to dodge her second bolt, but when it kicked off the floor to pounce at her she summoned an oversized fist of magic that punched straight up through the air and plowed it into the ceiling.

Shining knew his sister could take care of herself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to look out for her. The changelings on the right were quick, trying to flank around him to get at Twilight or to surround him and eliminate him as a threat. His glowing pink shield hovered over his left arm. When one of the glistening-fanged beasts jumped at him, he easily deflected it with a sweep of his arm. Just as he suspected its partner waited until his shield was high and came in low. He’d anticipated it, too, and summoned his magic into his free hand.

The magical jousting lance shimmered out at the very moment he thrust it forward and slammed the lunging changeling. It screeched and rolled off the dull tip in a heap on the floor. Shining pulled his shield away from the changeling trying to claw its way around it and brought it crashing back around into the side of its head. Whatever he’d just broken, he hoped it hurt.

The two remaining changelings hissed gutturally at the pair. Stepping closer to one another, Twilight and Shining pressed back to back, horns still glowing, Shining raising his lance and shield while Twilight’s hands were engulfed in licking purple-pink fire. Suddenly a searing bolt of green energy slammed into the hall between the two changelings, sending them reeling. The explosive impact made Twilight cover her eyes and Shining brace his shield to deflect more crystalline debris as it whipped past them like shrapnel.

A crackling blast of thunder made both unicorns glance up. Cadance and Chrysalis had taken to the air. Their magic flared in angry auras around their bodies, occasionally lashing out in time with quick strikes to try to slip past the other’s defenses. Each time their energies met it send a resounding boom through the hall.

“We’ve got to help her,” Shining breathed.

“How?” Twilight stammered. She looked around the hallway. Her eyes settled on the orange shape on the ground. “Sunset!”

Forgetting the battle raging above her, Twilight hurried down the blasted steps and across the ruined floor. She landed on her knees so hard that she skidded, but the sting of her fur and skin being scraped didn’t matter. Her arms wrapped Sunset and pulled her upright. She was limp, rolling as unresponsively as a foal’s doll.

“Sunset,” Twilight whimpered, supporting her head with one hand.

“Twilight?” came a hushed whisper.

“Sunset! It’s me. Sunset, are you-”

“Twi, I’m sorry,” Sunset stammered. Her eyes cracked open, but they were unfocused.

“No, no, don’t be sorry. Sunset, please,” Twi pleaded, brushing some of the stray strands of brilliant orange mane away from the mare’s face.

“Changelings can’t live...without love. My mother’s consuming it. I can’t draw from the hive.”

“But I’m here, Sunset,” Twi’s voice broke.

“You don’t…”

Twilight’s muzzle twisted and her tears began to stream down her face. Sunset closed her eyes and let out a ragged breath.

“I was lying to you. You were just too naive to realize. You don’t love me.”

Twilight clutched the unicorn tightly to her chest. “That’s not true. I might not have known you and you didn’t know me but I still felt something, and--and--and I don’t want you to go.”

Sunset lifted an arm and placed a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight squeezed her tighter. Sunset’s fingers curled into her fur.

“Twilight.”

“No! Don’t try to tell me how to feel!”

“Twilight,” Sunset repeated more firmly. She suddenly shoved Twilight out to arm’s length and blinked at her, sitting up on her own.

“Sunset?” Twi gasped, looking at the mare’s bright cyan eyes. “What’s going on?”

The answer came as flickering purple energy started to lick down Sunset’s arm. A green aura swirled out of her body and met with it, the two meeting seamlessly like chemical flames dancing from a reaction in a beaker. Twilight watched it for a moment or two before looking back at Sunset, who seemed just as much at a loss.

“I can feel it, Twilight,” she breathed. “You’re giving it freely. I don’t have to take it.”

Twilight let out a laugh. It was elated and bright. She didn’t feel weak, as she suspected she might when she saw the changelings feeding before. Instead her own emotions were welling, rising, building with a sort of giddy pleasantness that made her never want to stop. Her arms grabbed Sunset and pulled her in close, and the gentle glow of their auras mingled.

“You never did.”

A sudden crash snapped the two out of their embrace. Twilight and Sunset looked back out to the hallway just in time for Shining Armor to be flung aside from a bolt of green power. His shield and lance dispelled and he hit the ground between them.

“Shining!” Twilight gasped. He clutched his lance-arm, wincing and setting his teeth.

“So admirable, his love for you,” Chrysalis taunted as she strode to the middle of the hall. Cadance was standing squarely across from her, magic still shimmering through her horn. “But you should know by now you cannot defeat me.”

“It’ll take more than you to beat us,” Cadance spat back.

Chrysalis laughed. “How appropriate. I’ve come prepared.”

There was a great grinding of crystal.