Emerald followed Queen Thysanura to the queen's royal living quarters. Click, tap, clop went their hole-riddled hooves on the polished corridor floors as they walked. The sound was welcome in the steely, uncomfortable silence. Emerald's wings prickled with that strange, unsettling feeling that something dark and dangerous was about to happen. All Changelings could sense emotions, but right now, Emerald couldn't pick up on any emotion from her mother. Queen Thysanura was experienced at burying her feelings.

Chrysalis wasn't, Emerald knew. Then again, her little sister was young and inexperienced.

Once they reached the queen's royal quarters, Queen Thysanura ordered every Changeling to get out and stay out of them. Several Changeling drones popped out of various places, where they had been dusting, scrubbing, straightening, or reorganizing. They scurried out the door quickly, not wanting to anger their queen and give her a reason to punish them.

The royal quarters had three rooms: a sitting room, a bedroom, and a dressing room. Emerald and the queen stepped into the sitting room, which was elegantly furnished and decorated in shades of blue and green and black, with luscious silks and dark, polished woods. That was when Queen Thysanura's long, crooked horn glowed with bright green magic, casting two quick spells on the room. Emerald recognized and identified the spells as a silencing spell, which made any words spoken here inaudible to anypony or any Changeling outside, and a locking spell, which magically allowed nopony to leave the room. The spells were both very strong, courtesy of the queen's years of magic experience. The second spell worried Emerald more. What was so secretive that they had to be magically locked inside this room?

"Now," Queen Thysanura said as the last green sparks faded from her horn, "let's get down to business." She smiled, showing off her needle-sharp fangs, but Emerald knew that it was not a sincere or friendly smile. She'd watched her mother use that same cold, meaningless smile when the queen was facing an enemy, and it was a smile that nobody would ever want to see.

"Mother—" Emerald began, but the queen cut her off.

"Princess Emerald," Queen Thysanura said frostily, "you know the rules of the royal Changeling Hive. The rules that every princess should live by."

"Yes, Mother." Emerald stood up a little straighter and said, with the air of somepony who had recited this many, many times before, "Pride, responsibility, coldness, intelligence, and no sentimentality. Put the Hive and your kind above all else, and do whatever it takes to keep them alive."

Queen Thysanura circled her daughter, studying Emerald with her piercing green eyes. "Very good, Emerald. Repeat that second-to-last rule, will you?"

"No sentimentality," Emerald answered. She knew exactly where this was going.

"Precisely. No sentimentality," the queen repeated, leaning in so close that she and Emerald were almost nose-to-nose. Her eyes were cold and unfeeling and merciless. "Correct me if I am wrong, Princess Emerald, but was that not sentimentality you showed to your sister, Princess Chrysalis?" Queen Thysanura leaned away again.

"It was, Mother," Emerald said, keeping her voice even and neutral. Stealthily, she used her magic intuition to test the strength and complexity of her mother's locking spell. As she'd suspected, the magic was nearly effortlessly strong. If things got ugly in here, it would be very hard to escape the room. And with Queen Thysanura, things got ugly pretty fast. "Chrysalis's my sister, and I love her. Actually, Mother, I think you're pretty lucky that all of your daughters are alive and strong here. What would they do without love?"

The Changeling queen laughed mockingly. "Really, Emerald," she said. Queen Thysanura stopped laughing, and her eyes narrowed once more. "Sentimentality is weakness, daughter. I think you—and your weak little sister—could learn something from this. Did you really think that I wouldn't notice your weakness for each other? Advantage, Emerald. A good Changeling queen always takes advantage of the situation when she gets the chance. That's precisely how I became queen, in fact. Care to hear the story?"

Emerald said nothing. She fluttered her wings, trying to hide her anxiety and discomfort. Also, she really needed to get out and stretch her wings.

Queen Thysanura started the story anyway. "About two hundred years ago, I had three sisters, just like you, Emerald," she began. "I was the eldest. My mother was Queen Flitterwing—a weak queen, in my opinion. She actually cared for others, not just her kind, but the ponies." The queen spat out the last word like it was poison. "She's more like you than I thought. I think you two, and Chrysalis, would get along just fine, which is not really a good thing. One weak deceased queen, two weak aspiring queens? Anyway, she was always good to her daughters, including me, but I think Flitterwing kept her eye on me because I was the strongest and coldest and smartest, and the most dangerous. My sisters, Ruby, Garnet, and Carnelian, were pathetic fighters. Ruby was the smartest of them, but I outsmarted them all.

"Flitterwing was getting old, and she told the four of us that we would rule together, as sisters and equals, once she died. Ruby, Garnet, and Carnelian readily agreed. But did I? Of course not! This went against royal Changeling tradition, and it still does. The traditional way of the royal family is fighting your sisters to the death. After Flitterwing was mysteriously murdered—"

It took Emerald less than a second to put two and two together. "You killed your own mother!" she cried, pointing an accusing hoof at Queen Thysanura. But of course, this sort of thing could be expected from the Changeling queen.

"Daughter, sometimes you will just have to prove your strength," Queen Thysanura replied. "Now, as I was saying, after I murdered Queen Flitterwing, I managed to unearth an ancient document. It stated that when a Changeling queen dies, the eldest daughter may go against her will if she wishes to. Changelings will do whatever their queen says, Emerald, but they treasure the princesses—the heirs to the throne. So I, as the eldest surviving member of the royal Changeling family, challenged my sisters to a magic battle. Ruby, Garnet, and Carnelian on one side, just me on the other. But I was prepared, you see.

"For years, I'd been studying an old transformation spell. I practiced it on rocks and destroyed the results, and I became quite skilled at it. In fact, I still know it. And I studied my sisters very closely, taking careful note of their strengths and weaknesses. This I used against them in the final magic battle.

"Ruby, being the second-eldest sister, was the only one who stood a chance against me. Garnet and Carnelian, the younger ones, added their magic to Ruby's magic beam, which she fired at me. But I was too quick. I dodged the ray, which destroyed a good part of the Hive. I used the transformation spell on Ruby; you'll see what she turned into. Then BOOM, Garnet and Carnelian were gone. I burned their bodies outside, because that is Changeling tradition. I may be hardhearted, but at least I still follow royal tradition. Unlike some ponies I know—or rather, knew."

Emerald had stopped paying attention by the time Queen Thysanura ended the story by saying, "So that's what happens to Changelings—royal Changelings especially—who show weakness by sentimentality. Did you learn the lesson, Emerald?"

"What? Oh, yes, maybe," Emerald said airily. She knew she was being cheeky. "What happened to Princess Ruby?"

The queen narrowed her eyes; Emerald thought she saw a spark of irritation there. "Come with me, Emerald, I have something to show you," she said. Her horn glowed green, and the spells on the room vanished.

"Yes, Mother." Emerald had no choice but to follow Queen Thysanura out of the room.

They walked briskly and silently through the long, twisting hallways of the Hive. Large green and blue jewels were embedded in the walls, giving off eerie, bright viridescent and sapphire glows. Aside from those and the long, narrow, blue-and-green silk banners that hung every twenty paces, the polished, black stone walls held little adornment. Less is more, Queen Thysanura always figured. In this case, less was more, because Changelings relied on strength, good acting, and obedience instead of beauty.

Queen Thysanura suddenly stopped. To avoid crashing into her mother, Emerald had to flap her wings and scramble backward on her hooves. She peered around the queen at the set of enormous doors made of impenetrable stone and studded with emeralds and sapphires. Emerald noticed that these jewels glowed and pulsed much brighter than the light-jewels. She felt the magic being emitted from them. She was nearly certain that the gemstones were infused with some sort of very sturdy magic.

"These are the Hive doors, the only Hive doors, that lead outside to the Wastelands," Queen Thysanura told her daughter. "And yes, as you are suspecting, the jewels reinforce the doors with very powerful magic. They make these doors impossible by any standards to get through. Only a Changeling has the magical ability to unlock the dozens of enchantments on the doors. I designed the system myself." The queen tossed her mane over her shoulder, looking more than a little smug. Grudgingly, Emerald admitted that the idea was genius and very magically strong.

"Come now, Emerald. You don't want to keep them waiting." Queen Thysanura nodded at a nearby Changeling drone, who hurried to open one of the two doors for them.

They? They who? Emerald thought as she followed her mother outside. Unless "they" are Changelings, they cannot survive out here in the Wastelands.

Here was the reason why. The whole of the Wastelands was either gray or brown and very, very dusty and dry. No plants grew here. Adding to all of that, the air was filled with toxic chemicals, making it impossible and fatal to creatures other than the Changelings who lived there. Anyone who ventured into the Wastelands who was not a Changeling would most certainly die within an hour of breathing the poisoned air. This was what made the Hive so safe. No one could get to it, and even if anyone managed to do it magically, which was highly unlikely as there were lots of bits and bobs of loose Changeling magic in the air, they would be outnumbered by the loyal Changelings who only had one mission: to defend their queen and princesses.

The Wastelands sounded exactly like the perfect vacation spot.

Emerald never went outside the Hive unless strictly necessary. There was nothing to look at out here in the Wastelands, nothing to do, nothing at all. Just gray, brown, dust, and rock. Oh, and the occasional Changeling who went out to take care of the trash, and for other reasons.

The two royal Changelings walked and walked until the Hive was just a speck in the distance. Emerald was wondering why they did not fly when Queen Thysanura stopped abruptly. "Open the tunnel!" she suddenly commanded loudly.

What tunnel? Who's going to open it? There aren't even any other Changelings around! Emerald thought, just as three ordinary Changeling drones flew to land in front of them. Okay, never mind about the "no Changelings".

"Yes, right away, my Queen," one of the Changelings hissed in their usual dry manner.

Together, the three Changeling drones shifted aside a very ordinary-looking gray boulder in front of the queen and princess, revealing a dark hole beneath the rock. The drones bowed and stood off to the side to stand guard while their rulers flapped their wings to fly into the creepy-looking hole.

The hole turned out to be an opening to a huge labyrinth of underground tunnels beneath the Wastelands. Like in the Hive, glowing green and blue jewels on the walls provided light. Queen Thysanura led Emerald through the maze confidently, as if she were here every day. One can never tell, with the Changeling queen.

Finally, after more twists and turns than Emerald cared to count, they came to a heavily bolted and enchanted door at the end of one tunnel. Queen Thysanura's horn flared, and a thick swirl of green magic fed from the tip of her twisted Changeling horn into a large green gem set in the door. The jewel pulsed wildly with bright magic light, and the door just vanished into thin air. Emerald looked back as they walked through where the door used to be, and saw that the magic door reappeared once she and the queen were through.

They walked through a short tunnel and emerged into a huge underground cavern in the rock. Emerald's eyes were dazzled by what she saw: mounds and mounds of glittering gemstones filled the cavern, some of the piles at least nine times taller than Queen Thysanura's height. The jewels gave off a light of their own, though these were not magical.

The air in here was dry and crackled with heat.

Suddenly, Emerald knew why when a shape that she'd mistaken for an enormous pile of red jewels shifted and rose to its full height. A dragon! She spread her great wings, which were scarred and torn in places, and roared out a jet of flame that would have singed Emerald's mane if she hadn't ducked quickly. The dragon, who Emerald could now see was a middle-aged female, lashed her long, spiked tail, smoke billowing from her snout. She was very beautiful, but also very angry and, Emerald guessed, had been in a terrible war with someone.

"Calm down, Ruby, it's only us," Queen Thysanura said, not at all fazed by the dragon's clear anger and fire.

Emerald gasped. This was Princess Ruby, Queen Thysanura's sister? She was a dragon?

"Yes, Emerald, I turned Ruby into a dragon and banished her here, hopefully for eternity," Queen Thysanura said, as if simply confirming that she'd just ordered a bunch of food from the kitchens. "Have you ever wondered how it feels? Well, now you will.

"This is the price you'll pay for your own impudence. Goodbye, daughter."

The queen's horn began to glow. Emerald felt herself being wrapped in her mother's magic, unable to struggle. It felt as if fire were searing her bones, and she screamed, helpless and pathetic without her magic. Ruby the dragon whimpered and then growled.

Flashes of green, and Queen Thysanura's malevolent gaze, were the last things Emerald saw before her world went black and red.

Moments later, there was an explosion that shook the Wastelands.

And then the roar of a dragon took its place.

Author's Note

Emerald's talk with the queen was a little hard to write. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and sorry for the long wait.