It was an ordinary day in the small town beside the Everfree Forest. Morning in Ponyville shimmered, and also in fact, did shine. Not that Twilight would have noticed, the town's resident ex-librarian turned princess locked away in the archives of her massive crystal castle, where she had spent the past week sorting through the scorched remains of her old library's book collection. Even with her Class-7 flame retardant enchantments that the entire tree house had been warded with (In case of Spike getting a cold), nearly all of her old belongings were nothing but ashes. Sighing, the alicorn lifted up another ruined book before slowly placing it in the ever-growing burlap sack of burned parchment and singed paper. Blinking away tears at the crumbling, unsalvageable remains of her favorite first edition copy of “An Egghead’s Guide to Advanced Thaumodynamic Constructs”, she looked wearily at the large pile of scorched timber she had left to dig through.

Luckily, libraries and archives across Equestria had begun to donate scrolls, books, tomes and papers towards what was now being called "The Vaults of Friendship", a massive spiraling underground library extending dozens of floors into the earth. Despite the thousands of articles she had already received and sorted, the shelves were mostly bare. It seemed the castle had overdone its growth slightly, in regards to how many books would be accumulated.

Levitating the sack of tomes that had not survived incineration, she gently set them into an overflowing open pit of desolated knowledge. With a sigh, Twilight lit her horn and vanished from space, her atoms bending through the fabric of reality to reappear in the slowly growing archives beneath the castle. The alicorn was distraught and did not want to deal with any more ‘salvaging’ for today, instead she was planning to just relax with a good textbook by one of the archive’s many crystal fireplaces. Unfortunately for her, before she could even open the book, a sound caught her attention. She looked up at the sound of claws scampering wildly down the hard crystal staircase.

"T...Twilight!" Shouted Spike, her faithful assistant as he practically tumbled down the spiral stairs in a panicked manner. "Y...you've got a visitor!"

Twilight rolled her eyes in response. "I've had visitors here every day for the past week, Spike." She spoke patiently as she placed the book on the ground and stretched her wings. “What is so important about this one?”

"It’s... sh... ...bu...just come up! Quickly!" Her assistant replied, his stubby arms flailing wildly to try and express his point. He then proceeded to run into a nearby closet, the little dragon looking terrified for his life.

"Ugh, fine..." Twilight replied in a somewhat downtrodden voice. She still had not gotten over the total destruction of her belongings that occurred less than a week ago, but she couldn’t just sit around moping when she had guests to meet. Guests that were apparently important enough to make her little assistant panic like this. Deciding to take the fast route to see what the big deal was, she flapped her wings and propelled herself out of the archives and back into the main hallway towards the entrance of Friendship Castle. "I really don't get what you're freaking out about. None of the princesses are due to visit for weeks."

"I-it's not a princess I'm worried about!" Spike shouted from the bottom of the stairs, only his eyes visible as he clung to the side of the doorway terrified. "It's a queen!"

Twilight snorted. "Spike, don't be silly. The only pony one Equus that goes by that title is..." Twilight stopped suddenly, her eye twitching as she came face to face with her visitor.

"Twilight Sparkle." Chrysalis sneered, her eyes filled with hatred, her horn aglow with sickly green energy and an eerie hiss to her menacing voice.

The two creatures stood there, staring at each other with drastically different expressions. On the face of the lavender alicorn was a mixture of confusion, surprise, and fear. Contrarily, the Queen of the Swarm looked mostly menacing, furious, and... slightly nervous?

Twilight was fast to react, instantly blasting off a class 9 containment spell, followed by seven separate null-magic wards and a thaumic refraction field just in case. The sheer onslaught of magical power knocked the queen off her hooves, only for her to slam against the back of Twilight's force field with a chitin cracking crunch. Letting out a shout of pain, the changeling ruler doubled over before falling flat on the ground unconscious. This all took place in less than three seconds.

Blinking, Twilight stood still for ten seconds before a thought came to her head. D-did I just kill somepony? Twilight stared for a moment longer, before letting out a scream loud enough to reach the edges of Ponyville. Not even a minute later, the sound of smashing glass came from the second floor, followed by a muffled curse and the flapping of wings. Jumping with a start, Twilight looked around wildly, panicking at the idea of somepony walking in and seeing her like this. Oh crap... I can’t let anypony see her! The alicorn thought to herself. Acting quickly, she activated the refraction field around Chrysalis, causing the changeling to vanish from sight just before a prismatic blur shot into the room.

"Twilight! What's wrong! Is it Discord?! Trixie? Who's flank do I get to kick!?" Rainbow Dash hollered while brandishing her forehooves like fists.

"Uh... it's... n-nothing! That's right! N...uh...nothing!" Twilight responded with a transparent grin.

Rainbow only glared in response, raising an eyebrow. “Then what was that scream? You sounded like somepony getting a wedgie from Discord.”

"I...uh... was... uh... pranking? Yeah! That’s right! It was just a prank! Uh... gotcha!" Twilight said, the lie so painfully obvious that even her over enthusiastic grin hurt.

"Uh... huh." Rainbow replied in clear disbelief. She noticed Twilight jump suddenly away from where she was standing, like something touched her hoof. "You sure you're alright? I could hear the scream from my house. And I live halfway to Cloudsdale!"

Twilight grinned in response, her eye twitching slightly while she attempted to wipe something unseen off of her hoof. "Y...yeah! Never better! Alrightthanksforcheckingbye!” With a flash of her horn, she warped Rainbow Dash exactly ten feet to the left, dropping her right outside the front door before magically locking every entrance and window. Letting out a sigh of relief, she released the cloaking charm only to cringe at what she saw. The queen's carapace was cracked along her back, green blood pooling on the floor and... onto Twilight's hoof. Flinching, Twilight walked closer and lit her horn, biting her lip as she began to slowly repair the queen's chitin.

After ten minutes straight of white tier healing magic, Twilight let out a pant and practically collapsed on the floor. It had taken nearly all of her considerable pool of magic, but nothing had changed! It made no sense, that amount of magic should have been able to regrow an entire ponies lower half, yet Chrysalis was still lying there in intense suffering.

Despite her intense exhaustion, Twilight was immediately on her hooves again. Gently lifting up the queen in her magic, she carried the changeling towards one of the spare rooms before slowly lowering her into a bed. Biting her lip, Twilight glanced around for something to secure Chrysalis with, before deciding finally to just cast a Mithril Weave charm on one of the blankets and then tie the chitinous pony to the bed. After which, she reached into her personal sub-dimension with the last of her magical energy and pulled out a small ebony ring, one that she had not needed to use since she was a filly with uncontrollable surges of power. Slowly, she placed it on the queen's horn before letting out a sigh.

"Okay..." Twilight mumbled to herself, rubbing her temples with the tips of her hooves. "What the buck just happened..."

“You just mauled a foreign dignitary who is wanted for crimes of impersonation, kidnapping, assault, and restricted mental manipulation charms.” Answered Spike who was sipping tea slowly, the young drake clearly in shock. Twilight responded with a deadpan glare.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Twilight said with a sigh, before her expression softened and she brought the drake into an embrace. “I’m sorry Spike, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just... really confused.” She said with a worried smile. Her number one assistant didn’t respond verbally, instead just hugging the alicorn back as best as he could with his small limbs.

Author's Note

Alright, I'm actually going to finish a story for once! Sorry for the extremely short chapter, just wanted to get the setup out of the way in its own little 'Prologue' chapter.