Princess Cadance: Changeling Hunter

It was dark and pouring as the canopied carriage that carried me was bringing me to an unknown location where I was to meet a good friend of mine. The clopping of the stallion’s hooves pulling the vehicle on the muddy dirt path was entirely muted by the pouring of the rain. This made me feel very guilty, as I was inside the comfort and safety of the carriage I was being carried in while the stallions were soaking in the rain. I had no idea how far they could or would go without getting ill. Nopony should be out in this kind of weather.

Despite my feelings of pity and guilt, there was no stopping them. This pony said that my arrival was urgent and that I should do everything ponyly possible to make this meeting even if it meant lying or skipping previous engagements to get there.

It saddened me because I was going to attend a party of Pinkie Pie’s celebrating her, for lack of a better term, baby brother Pound Cake’s 5th “monthiversary,” that being five months since the colt’s birth. Pinkie Pie was really excited about the party and begged that I should come, but I was forced to lie to her by telling her that my bookshelves were in desperate need of organizing and that I could not be bothered in the slightest. She answered with her usual “okie dokie lokie” and let me be.

I’ve heard from Rainbow Dash what Pinkie Pie can be like when she feels abandoned by her friends, like what happened when she thought we were skipping out an after-birthday party for Pinkie’s pet alligator Gummy. The thought alone makes me cringe. However important my friends’ engagements are, they couldn’t hold a candle to the urgency written on the note that I had received late last night.

My name is Twilight Sparkle. I am the head librarian at the Ponyville Public Library in Ponyville, Equestria. I am also a personal protégé of Equestria’s ruler, Princess Celestia, who tasks me and my other friends, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity, with finding the virtues and magic of friendship. As well as being Princess Celestia’s students, my five friends and I are also the physical embodiments of the Elements of Harmony, the most powerful source of magic in all of Equestria. I represent the Element of Magic, the most elusive of the elements.

My friends and I have gone through many trials and hardships in our time together. While including minor things such as surviving a terrible Grand Galloping Gala and getting two of my friends together for a slumber party, we have saved Equestria three times from evil forces. Once when Nightmare Moon threatened our land with eternal darkness, once when Discord sought to instill eternal chaos, and most recently, when my brother, Shining Armor’s wedding was nearly destroyed by a power hungry creature named Queen Chrysalis, the leader of a race of beings known as changelings, who could maintain the form of any pony and feed off of the love that ponies give them while in the form of a loved one.

Queen Chrysalis took the form of my old foalsitter, now sister-in-law, Princess Cadance and planned to marry my brother and feed off of his undying love for the mare he thought he loved, which fueled Queen Chrysalis with so much power that she even defeated Princess Celestia in a magic duel. However, Cadance and Shining Armor used the magic of their love to cast the queen out of Equestria, ending her reign of terror.

I hadn’t seen hide or tail of Queen Chrysalis since then, but I still felt that the changelings were an ever present threat to Equestria. We had foiled their plans, and they would be out for revenge. Since then, however, things were quite peaceful.

It was about a week since the wedding and I assumed that Cadance and Shining Armor were out on their honeymoon. It was nighttime when I was tucking in my assistant, a baby dragon named Spike to bed. I was planning out a checklist of errands I had to do tomorrow, when I noticed that my dragon was convulsing on the ground. I tried asking him what the matter was, but upon seeing him burp a puff of green fire that turned into a letter, I was relieved at my assistance’s well being.

I thought it rather strange that Princess Celestia would send me a letter at this late into the night. The letter, however, was not written in Princess Celestia’s hornwriting. It was in a font that I was completely unfamiliar with. Not wanting to be rude, I read the letter. I found its contents rather disturbing.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

Your presence is highly requested late tomorrow evening. It is highly important that you tell nopony about this. If you have to lie and deceive your friends and cancel any other planned engagements to make this meeting, do so. A carriage will arrive at your house around 6 PM tomorrow. It is highly recommended that you get on that carriage. If you don’t, you will neither hear nor see of me ever again. I will say, however, that we are closer than you may think. Bring a quill and some paper and ink… a lot of it.

From,
C

P.S.: Before I forget, burn this letter after reading. This meeting mustnot be known.

C? What could that mean? And she’s closer than I think? Is she one of my friends? What could this be? My mind was swimming with questions all night; I could hardly sleep. What could this pony want from me that would require me being alone and not talking about his to anypony? If this pony was trying to worm the desire to see who he or she really was, it worked. Now I felt like it was my sworn duty to find out who my writer was. All I could do though from that point forward was wait.

The next afternoon, I packed my saddlebags in case the journey would be a long one. I waited for what felt like hours, even though it was merely a few minutes. However, the six o'clock bell chimed throughout Ponyville and as if on cue, a brown, wooden carriage came riding in with two muscular stallions pulling it. Not wanting to keep my writer waiting, I quickly hopped into the vehicle with my saddle bags in tow. We promptly began the trek to the unknown.

I wasn’t sure who would want to meet me alone like this, but I was a very skilled wielder of magic and would’ve been able to fight my way out of a jam if one were to arise. About an hour into the journey, it began to rain. Two hours after that is where we pick up where I left off.

I began to realize that the path I was taking would lead us straight to Canterlot. Instead of continuing down the path though, we turned right into the forest. I was unfamiliar around this forest, obviously having never been there. The foliage wasn’t as thick as the Everfree Forest, but it wasn’t as lovely as Whitetail Wood, and the rain only helped to make it look more ominous.

Upon a half hour more of riding, I was taken to a secluded cabin in the woods. The carriage stopped. The stallions told me that I had arrived. I grabbed my saddle bags and made a gallop for the cabin to keep as dry as possible. I opened the door with my magic and got inside. It was way too dark to see anything, so I used my horn’s magic to illuminate the area. Upon seeing who was in the room with me, I almost gave in to shock.

Standing at the far end of the room was my old foalsitter, Princess Cadance, and her husband/my brother, Shining Armor. After calling out their names, I ran over and gave them both hugs. I even tried doing our “Sunshine Sunshine Dance” from when she used to be my foalsitter. She looked at me here with a blank expression. I was confused as to why she would deny herself the dance we used to enjoy so much in our youth. She then talked to me.

“I know that you are happy to see me,” she said, “and I am happy to see you too, Twilight Sparkle, but understand that our gladness is for entirely different reasons.”

“What do you mean?” I ask her. “That reminds me. Why am I in a cabin in the middle of nowhere? Who sent me that let-”

I soon remembered the single letter that was signed upon the message.

C.

Cadance.

“You… sent the letter?”

“I did, Twilight.”

“How… You were so… demanding.”

“Forgive my lack of compassion in that letter, my little pony. I consider you one of the only ponies left that I can trust.”

“What… what do you mean by that?”

A new Cadance was showing herself, and it frightened me to see how much different she was from the caring and kind pony I knew from my fillyhood.

“If you have lived a life such as mine, Twilight, then you will come to learn what I mean by these statements. If I told you that the loving and gentle pony that you saw in me years ago was nothing more than a façade, would you believe me?”

Why was she asking me these things? Who was she really? Was she a changeling? That’s when it hit me. She was another one of those creatures in disguise. I leapt right into action. I charged at her, but with a quick step in her hoof, she stepped aside and tripped me, bringing my face to the floor. I felt as my jaw painfully smacked into the wood. I was sure I didn’t break a tooth or my jaw entirely, but it still hurt very much.

I tried charging again, but I caught her sidestep and plowed into her stomach. I tried driving my horn into her but she held me back with her arms. She then lifted me up under my armpits and threw me into the wall. I felt my head hit the floor on my way back down. I felt the back of my head. There was a small trickle of blood on my hoof.

Cadance continued to approach me. I watched, horrified, as my brother stood by and did absolutely nothing.

“Shining Armor…” I wheezed through my pain. “Help… me…” No response.

I went to my last resort and forte: magic. I tried restraining her with a simple levitation spell. Instead of flailing around and hoping to break free, she instead used her own magic to begin choking me. My growing lack of oxygen began to weaken me as I eventually was forced to put Cadance down. She continued to choke me though as she approached me.

“Do you believe me now?” she demanded.

I nodded as vigorously as I could with as little air as I had left. I then saw the blue aura (her original aura unlike the green aura from when Queen Chrysalis acted as her doppelganger) on her horn stop glowing. I gasped for air, and was relieved as the oxygen entered my lungs and gave me new life. My head was throbbing from the fight.

Princess Cadance used another spell to heal my wound. I looked at her, confused.

“I knew what you were thinking,” stated Cadance. “You thought I was a changeling. And why wouldn’t you? I bring you out to a secluded cabin in the middle of the woods and I begin exhibiting strange behavior. It’s only natural for you to think that after coming into contact with a changeling as you have.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Twilight. “Why are you doing all this?” I was close to tears at this point. The Cadance that I knew was dead, and I didn’t know who the real one was. My brother finally stepped up to address me.

“I think the two of us need to take you to the basement.”

Shining Armor and Cadance led me down a long flight of stairs to the basement of the cabin. I was thinking about what could be so secretive as to be hidden this far underground. It wasn’t long before I got my answer. The room was too dark to see anything. Even with your hoof right in your face, you couldn’t see anything. All I could smell was clotted blood and rotting flesh. Princess Cadance provided a light with an illumination spell. What I saw made me wretch.

There were dozens of heads collected on the shelves that lined the walls. They weren’t the heads of ponies, dragons, or any other kind of creature. They were all the heads of changelings. I looked at their beady lifeless eyes, the fearful expressions on their faces right before they must have died. The base of the neck where a body once supported it was a clean cut, as if the head had been chopped off by an axe.

The trophies that lined the wall were bringing me close to vomiting. What was in the center of the room brought me over the edge. There was a glass case bringing me to the head of a much larger changeling. This changeling, however, was unmistakable. Her green catlike eyes, her kelpy blue-green hair, her fangs, her jagged horn, her crown. I was looking directly at the decapitated head of Queen Chrysalis herself.

I couldn’t hold it in. I emptied my stomach all over the dank, dirty floor, the smell of stomach acid, dissolved daffodils, and daisies mixing horridly with the smell of mold and death in this room. Cadance picked up the vomit with magic and placed it inside of a bucket. Shining Armor wiped my mouth with a towel and stroked my back for comfort.

“There there,” he cooed. “I was shocked myself when she showed me this room.”

“Showed you this room?” I yelled. “And you’re totally okay that she has the heads of dozens of dead changelings up on her wall like trophies?”

“Again, Twilight,” spoke Cadance, “if you lived the life I had, you’d have no qualms with ending the lives of these creatures either. I’d say that you’d even enjoy it.”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “There’s nothing that could be so bad as to commit acts like this.” Cadance just sighed.

“This brings me to the real reason why I’ve called you here. When I was kidnapped by Queen Chrysalis, I began to realize my mortality; that what I’ve been doing nearly my entire life will eventually end it.”

“But I don’t know what you’ve been doing, Cadance. Please, just tell me.”

“Since I was a filly,” she finally admitted, “I have hunted down and slain over 400 changelings. This doesn’t even include the casualties from the spell that Shining Armor and I casted during our wedding.”

I was just shown a major hint in the basement, but I still couldn’t bring myself to believe her. My foalsitter and childhood friend Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was one of the greatest killers in Equestrian history. Billy the Colt was infamous for 250 kills in his life as a ruthless outlaw and Son of Stallion had a notorious 370, but Cadance just admitted that she killed much more than that. I would have doubted her further, but the trophy collection was proof enough.

“Do you have the supplies I asked you to bring?” asked Cadance as we walked back to the main floor.

“Yes,” said Twilight. I got to my bag and pulled out a two large stacks of paper, a couple of quills, and 4 bottles of ink. “What are these for?”

“As you probably would have guessed, not many ponies know about my true identity. And like I said, the attempted ruining of my wedding made me realize fully the dangerousness of my what I have been doing all these years. If my next mission were to be my last, no one would ever know about it. But I feel like the truth should be passed on in one way or another. That is why I contacted you Twilight. You are not only the closest pony I have to family other than Shining Armor and the princesses, but I trust you above anypony to document and conceal the truth. I must ask you before we begin: are you ready?

“The tales which I am about to tell you trace back to my birth up until this very moment. They are not the old mares tales that your parents would tell you before bed. This is a story of horror, betrayal, loss, and blood. Much blood. Despite my precautions to you, my dear Twilight Sparkle, will you still take this task?”

I was seriously unsure. I was basically hearing a confession of one of Equestria’s greatest killers, but the fact that it was my own foalsitter made it too intriguing to resist. I wanted to know what made her like this. It was not only my duty as her transcriber, but it was my duty as a friend to find out.

“Princess Cadance, I accept.”

“Excellent. Let’s begin.”

Cadance walked over to the rug on the floor and sat down. With quill and paper in hoof, I was about to uncover the truth of the real Princess Cadance. Her official autobiography. Her true life was about to unfold before my ears.

“Alright,” I stated. “Let’s start at the very beginning.”