Kingdom of Loving: Fear and Loving in the Crystal Empire

Chapter 12: Reservation for 100,000

Quaking shudders resonated through the crystal hall. The ground was moving, and not just from some great impact. Something was coming, something enormous, and it rolled under the very foundations like a distant wave approaching the shore.

Outside the castle, the ground began to bulge and distend in tumorous welts. The pavement and elaborate cobbling stretched and groaned over the soft earth beneath until it exploded outward. From the newly-blasted hole came a sound unlike any other. The sound of thousands upon thousands of wings rose up the tunnels, and like a black cloud, changelings swarmed free of it into the skies above. Hole after new hole erupted from the ground and the buzzing grew more deafening. The light from the sun slowly faded from the crystal castle as the throng of bodies filling the air began to choke it in living smoke.

“For too long we have skulked in the shadows. For too long we have danced on the edge of extinction, but no more! My brood will cover this land in darkness. We will drain every pony dry. Our number shall be unending, and you will not live to see your precious kingdom die,” Chrysalis’ voice rose with a laugh.

Cadance’s muzzle was wrinkled with anger, her eyes narrowed, brows knit. She obviously knew this was bad as shadows flitted past the tall windows on either side of the hallway. So far everything she’d given was met with equal fervor, and though she never wanted to fight where it could be avoided she knew how to protect her kingdom. She had done it once with the power of her love, but Chrysalis was something new and dreadful.

“Cadance!” Twilight shouted as she hurried over to the princess’ side. Sunset stepped up beside her, scowling darkly at her mother.

Chrysalis’ eyes narrowed, but she did not break her arrogant and mad grin. “And even you stand against me. How easily you have betrayed your own kind, and for what? A pretty face?”

“I never wanted this,” Sunset growled through her teeth. “You always told me that we would return one day, maybe when the ponies of the surface were gone or had moved on.”

Chrysalis laughed. “Foolish child. And then what would we eat?”

Sunset yelled out her angry response with a surge of magic. She stepped forward, planting a hoof solidly on the floor. The crystal around it rippled like a stone breaking the surface of a serene pond and in a flash of motion the gemstones erupted outward towards Chrysalis. She looked taken off guard for the first time since entering the grand hallway and leapt into the air on her wings to avoid the enormous crystalline spike.

“She’s been collecting love from the kingdom for years,” Sunset said, her eyes never leaving the dark shape in the sky. “Her changelings can absorb emotions from ponies by force and feed it into the hive.”

“My magic is powered by love,” Cadance sighed. “And the kingdom is defenseless against a swarm that feeds on it.”

“Then we need to fight them without love,” Twilight said to keep the focus on the task at hand.

“Not a problem for me.” Sunset threw her hands to her sides and focused. The crystal around her shook and swelled, rising up to cover her fingertips, then her hands, and finally her forearms. The shapes solidified into a pair of large crystal gauntlets. As she lifted them and flexed the fingers they moved effortlessly.

“At least we have plenty of crystal,” Cadance said with a slight smirk.

Twilight frowned. She hadn’t learned any form of crystal magic since she’d been here, too preoccupied with the discovery of her feelings and body. She quietly cursed under her breath as she went over the possible spells she could use against something that could stand up to an alicorn.

Shining grunted as he shuffled over. His right arm was wrapped in a bright magical cast, a hasty but effective first aid technique. “What’d I miss?”

Chrysalis hissed and shot towards the group. A clawed hand lashed out for Sunset, but she jumped back a pace and immediately followed up with a swing from her crystalline fists. The blow caught Chrysalis squarely in the cheek. Reeling, she stumbled towards the back of the hall, but Sunset was on top of her in an instant. A furious series of blows slammed into her mother’s body, each one making a sickening crack that resounded through the halls.

“You never cared about what happened to me,” the unicorn snarled as she rammed her mother against a pillar. “You only care about your petty revenge!”

“I care about the survival of our species. The future of our kind,” Chrysalis growled darkly. A shock of her magic lanced out from her horn. Sunset lifted a gauntlet to stop it but the force still knocked her arm aside, shattering some of the protective enchanted gem.

“And what kind of future do you want? When you wipe them all out, what will you eat?”

Chrysalis’s expression split into a deranged, toothy grin. “I am eternal. I will survive, as I always have. And with me, the swarm lives on.”

Sunset scowled. “Not if I stop you here, now.”

With both gauntlets raised Sunset jumped at her mother. Chrysalis made no move to get out of the way. The crystal gauntlet extended towards her connected right with the center of her face and there was a sickeningly wet crunch. As magic rippled through the glove and snapped out into a potent shockwave, Chrysalis stumbled backwards.

Her leering grin, mangled and broken like shattered glass, was distorted. Green ichor dripped from her chin in heavy globules. As she straightened back up, Chrysalis’ wounds began to knit. Popping, snapping, crinkling carapace slithered over her form to reconstitute her unmarred black body. Just like that, the queen was smiling again.

“How noble of you to stand between me and your pony friends,” Chrysalis chortled. “But you think they accept you? You think they love you? I have seen the worst of what their kind will do to protect each other.”

Chrysalis’ eyes narrowed. There was an intense building of magic in the air. Sunset braced herself while Cadance, Twilight, and Shining looked around. The light in the hall was dimming rapidly as black shapes crawled around the windows. Chrysalis made a gesture, a sweep of her arm. A wave of force rolled out from her that sent Sunset spiraling backwards, and the three spectators cried out as the floor underneath them exploded without so much as a flash of magic.

“I have had enough of this,” Chrysalis snarled. “Nothing will stand in my way. Not some upstart nymph, not some naive princess, and certainly not some tiny unicorns.”

The changeling queen lifted off into the air, the buzz of her wings joined by the hum of the thousands swarming the castle. Outside, the surface teemed with bodies, black as pitch and glowing with the fear and love and anger and desperation of ponies across the empire. Where any pony fell, a changeling pounced, siphoning them with their ethereal tendrils until the opposition was too weak to fight back. Then they returned to their queen, feeding her fury and greed. Coalescing swirls of radiant green magic started to flicker into existence, bending around the dark queen like eddying streams.

Twilight sat up from the cluster of jagged crystals she’d been flung into. Her body ached, cuts and scrapes staining her fur in places. Cadance helped her up and Sunset pushed aside a large hunk of rubble that had blocked the worst of it. Shining erected a protective bubble as a powerful wind stirred up through the hall powerful enough to fling gemstone hunks at dangerous speeds.

“What do we do?” Twilight gasped.

“We’ve got to get her away from the swarm,” Sunset chuffed, turning to spit a bit of red onto the floor.

“How? There’s so many of them.”

“The tunnels,” Sunset said flatly. “There are tunnels all throughout the Crystal Kingdom. We used them to get around without being seen.”

“Won’t there be more changelings down there?” Shining asked, sounding more concerned about the stratagem than the gross security breach.

“With this many up above, the tunnels should be abandoned,” Sunset replied. Her resolve set on her muzzle, her eyes never leaving Chrysalis as she swirled in a typhoon of dark magic, she clutched her gauntlets into firm fists.

“Sunset,” Twilight said, putting her hand on one of the massive gloves. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Looking to her side, Sunset found Twilight smiling at her. Cadance, too, gave her a nod, and with a quick glance she saw Shining give a thumbs-up, then he winced as he’d used his broken arm.

“Okay, give me some cover. Twilight, we need to weaken the floor.”

Twilight frowned but looked out over the wrecked crystal studiously. “I’ve got a few ideas that might work.”

“Are we ready for this?” Cadance asked as she flexed her fingers and spread her hooves out along the crystal floor.

There was no response, but every pony stood steeled against the wind. Twilight was already mouthing over a few formulae. She might not have learned much about crystal magic, but she did know one thing, one thing she was very good at.

Magical theory.

Kneeling down, Twilight placed her hands on the crystal floor. Bright pink lanced out from Shining’s bubble. A soft hum began to build just under the roar of thousands of changelings and the vast stores of stolen energy they channeled into their queen.

Cadance jumped forward in a fluid arc, sweeping her arms in a gesture recalling an elegant ballet maneuver. The crystal floor in front of her swung up in a giant crescent. Its motion followed the sweep of her arms and lunged towards Chrysalis. The queen gestured and a black-green bolt of energy shattered the rising crystal blade. Another one rose up on the other side of her, but it too was destroyed with a flick of her wrist.

“Almost got it,” Twilight huffed, keeping her focus on increasing the growing hum through the crystal floor. Her magic shone brightly even in the emerald storm. Shining kept his shield raised, but every time a chunk of crystal impacted the barrier he winced as if it had struck him directly.

“Go!” Twilight shouted.

Cadance thrust both her hands, palms out, towards Chrysalis. A huge wave of crystal surged up out of the floor, rolling in a sweeping arc. Sunset leapt onto it. Like the wheels of a train car guided by crystal tracks her hooves slid along the material as if she were ice skating. Chrysalis of course destroyed the end of it in a dismissive wave, but through the cloud of tinkling gemstone shards, she did not see Sunset leaping off the end.

Carrying her momentum through with both fists above her head, Sunset rose into the air above her mother. Chrysalis’ eyes narrowed angrily. Twilight’s spell flared underneath her, casting brilliant magenta energy through the hallway as the hum reached a piercing crescendo.

Sunset slammed into the queen with a shuddering peal of thunder. Together they crashed into the resonating floor like a falling star, shattering it completely. Their forms dropped in the hail of glass and magic and swarming changelings. Chrysalis’ voice shrieked in outrage as Sunset poured every ounce of her magic into the gauntlets. When they hit the ground, they didn’t stop.

In a rumbling crash similar to the one that brought the swarm, Chrysalis and Sunset were plunged into the darkness.