Another night spent in the cold. Another night of scraping icicles from the holes in her hooves, or trying to chip frozen streaks of slime from the gashes in her side.
“Queen…” The little drone warbled beneath her, scuttling and scrambling over the frozen wastes. “My queen, it’s getting dark, and I… we want to know…” He gulped as he scurried, struggling for purchase on the unmapped ground.
“What? Out with it, nymph!” Chrysalis snapped.
Another gulp. “How long do we have to stay in the cold?”
The queen sighed, then wheezed as she climbed over a boulder. “Until the ponies call off their idiot search parties.” She shook her head, her crown jostling and sliding on her ice-slick carapace. “They won’t expect us to be hiding here.”
They wouldn’t expect anything to be able to live up here.
Shining Armor’s magic had scattered the changelings far and wide, but every drone in Equestria heard the dull throb in their skulls, Chrysalis’s magic calling them to join her in secret. For now, that meant hiding in the mountains.
Damned, blasted, unforgiving mountains. She hated mountains—they reminded her of Canterlot. She hated snow more. It drove itself into the cracks in her body, infiltrated every part of her with cold, snaked and wormed and driveled and—
“My queen! A cave!”
Her drone’s shout stopped the stream of muttered curses spouting from Chrysalis’s mouth. “What?” She looked up. It was a cave alright. More importantly, it was shelter. The sun was low in the sky, and that meant more cold was coming soon.
“Well? Don’t just stand there gawking, get inside!”
The drones hurried to her command, some scampering with frost-chilled limbs, many limping on dislocated legs and shattered hooves. The queen heard them try to muffle their little cries—they would heal, eventually. Changelings were tough.
Maybe if their queen was just a little tougher…
No, not the time to second-guess. “Come on, no stragglers! You never know when ponies might be watching!” She ranged up and down the line of changelings, her words whipping them to move faster.
Still, they were too slow for her. “You two! What’s the hold-up!” she barked. A hoof prodded the snowy pair of nymphs, and Chrysalis could barely make out their reply. The bloodiest of the pair tried to stand, fell, and tried again.
“What? It’s broken?” the queen asked. The nymph’s muffled moan was all she needed to hear. “Fine, just… just get on my back, you two. It’ll be faster.” A scoop of her leg and a flash of her magic settled the nymphs between her wings.
“Yeah, I know I’m not as comfy as a fuzzy pony. Quit whining.” Her voice was harsher than she intended, a side effect of the frostbite in her throat.
Icicles vibrated and shattered as Chrysalis stomped through the sleet, her hornlight a beacon to the others. With the blizzard as thick as it was, it was all they could see. “C’mon! Cave! Now!”
She shoved the drones through, a warding spell keeping out the cold. Slightly. Finally, once she had counted off the last changeling and dragged a few wounded to the cave mouth, she staggered inside herself.
“Damn snow. Damn peev—” Her eyes met with a trembling nymph, and she caught herself before her profanity got any worse. “Oh. Don’t repeat that, Cica.”
Even with her magic, the cold fogged the queen’s breath. She slumped against the arctic moss, wiggling her rump in an attempt to get comfortable.
It failed. Still, it was the closest she’d had to a blanket since she sloughed off Cadance’s skin. Those princesses always got the nicest things…
Her eyelids sealed shut, weighed down by exhaustion and ice. It had been a long night.
“Ow.”
It was about to get longer.
“Hey, stop that.” Her hoof blocked the nymph just before it could boop her nose again. “What do you want?”
Little wings straining to hover at her eye level, the shivering bug whimpered. “Mom, um, I mean… my queen, could you… could you…” He drew his legs closer to him, and Chrysalis could see something clutched tight to his chest. It was small, and bound in once-brilliant gold-etched leather, and if her eyes did not deceive her, there was a faded picture of a prancing pony on the cover.
It looked dangerously similar to a sappy book of fairytales. Chrysalis did not like sappy things.
“Cica, your queen is very tired,” she grumbled with a flip of her eyes. “What exactly is worth keeping me awake?”
The nymph somehow managed to shrink even smaller, but shoved an answer past his chattering teeth.
“My queen, I f-found a book… could-could you read us…” Chrysalis could barely decipher his whisper. “A be-beh-be—”
“Deep breaths, nymph.” She draped a crinkly wing over him and tried to calm his stutters.
The young drone swallowed hard. “Could you read us a bedtime story?”
Chrysalis let loose a sigh which turned into an icy cloud once it met the chilled air of the cave. “Cica, I have just been brutalized—again—by that cursed creature Celestia, I am still seeping from freshly-torn holes in my carapace, and my pride is shattered into more pieces than there are worms in the dirt…” Her pasterns rubbed her eyes as she spoke. “And you want a bedtime story from a prissy book about ponies?”
“Oh. I… Sorry.” Changelings do not have hearts, but this nymph’s certainly broke, and the quake in his voice was due to more than frostbite. “Okay. Um, sl-sleep well, my queen.” He stumbled off to join the other drones, the book still held tight against his small body. If Chrysalis hadn’t shut her eyes and tried to get to sleep, she’d have seen the look on his face crack like glass.
The queen grabbed a scrap of moss for a pillow and tried to get comfortable again. She couldn’t. She turned over. It didn’t help.
“My queen—”
“What!” For an instant, her features knitted into a savage sneer, but they softened ever so slightly when she recognized the voice. Asaf was an old drone, a survivor of worse disasters than Canterlot. “What is it, Asaf?”
He drew nearer, too used to Chrysalis’s fits of rage to be concerned by them. “My queen, our nymphs will one day masquerade as pony foals, will they not?”
Her back turned to him, Chrysalis nodded.
“And they will no doubt be read… prissy fairy tales, yes?”
Another nod.
“Perhaps we should prepare them for that—” Asaf searched for a word. “—unpleasant experience, so that they will not, er, vomit from the sheer saccharine nature of the—”
Chrysalis rolled her frozen eyes. “You want a bedtime story too, don’t you?”
“I… only for the good of the hive, mighty queen. I’m sure the drones would never stoop to such frivolous indulgences, but for their own good…”
Asaf was many things, but he was not a very good liar, not when he was talking to the queen. It was one of the reasons she liked him.
“Their own good, eh?”
“Um. Yes, most malevolent of mistresses. You see…”
“Oh, shut up.” Forcing herself to stand , she started to call to the swarm, but her words were stolen by the screaming winds outside. Her throat strained to shout louder. “Cica! Get over here!”
Too loud. Timorous on his shaking legs, the nymph turned back to her.
“Hey.” The queen’s mouth contorted itself into what she hoped was a comforting smile, but which ended up showing more fangs than she intended. “Just… get back here. And bring the book.”
The nymph froze, blinked, processed what just happened, and leapt into Chrysalis’s forelegs.
“Woah! Hey, no need to—” The queen rolled her eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that night and cautiously hugged him back with the slightest of pressure.
“Yeah, okay. That’s enough; warm fuzzy’s over. Get the other drones over here, Cica.”
The nymph scurried around, little legs acting like ice skates on the frosty ground. Chitters and chirps and happy insect noises erupted from the swarm, and for the barest fraction of a second, Chrysalis felt something stir in her chest.
One by one, the drones gathered before her, smaller nymphs perched on their backs and moss garlands tied around their necks. Not exactly woolen scarves, but they would do. Chrysalis sat up on her haunches and let her children rest against her belly, slowly rising and falling with breaths that seemed a little easier than usual.
“Ahem.” The queen was not used to anything like this. “Training. Yes, that’s what we’re doing here. You’re going to need to… um, tolerate… Give it here, Cica.” She plucked the book from the grateful nymph’s hooves. “… to tolerate—ugh, they really called it that?—The Prettiest of Princesses & Other Tales.”
Chrysalis looked up from the cover page to see her children hanging on her every word. Granted, they always did that—it was one of the perks of being a queen—but they usually didn’t look so happy.
“It’s an absolutely abominable book, full of…” She leafed through the pages. “Cupcakes and furry animals and all that stuff I hate. Try not to… try not to…”
It was hard to talk with a nymph nuzzling her cheeks.
“Try not to wretch.” She groaned, but her breath didn’t freeze, not this time. “Take notes, my dron—er, I mean, my children.”
Her nymphs waited patiently as she cleared her throat. “Ahem. Ach-hem. I’ve never seen so much pink in my life. It’s repulsive.”
A drone tapped at her side. “No, that’s not written in the book. Just a personal comment. Yeah, I’m starting for real, now.”
“Once upon a time in… sheesh… Okay, alright, I’ll keep reading! Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there was a pony with a mane that sparkled like fireflies.” She flicked the page over with her tongue. “Oh, and her name is Firefly Dream. Gosh, that’s original. You guys can seriously stand this stuff?”
The nymphs brushed snow off the book as Chrysalis read, her voice more accustomed to shouting orders than narrating a tea party. Suddenly, she hit a snag.
“Lock me in Tartarus and throw away the key—there’s a poem in here.” She felt a nibble on her neck. “Okay, okay, I’ll read it!”
“Princess Firefly was the prettiest princess in Rainbow Castle. She was faithful and strong, kind but never bashful. So, setting the wordcraft bar a little low, I see.”
“Ahem. She loved the piglets, and she loved the frogs. She loved the jackalopes and the bears—no, jackalopes, Cica. It’s like a bunny with horns.”
“She loved the jackalopes and the bears, and the fuzzy barking dogs.” The queen reached out a hoof and patted the watercolors that framed the text. In a dull monotone, she groused “Look. They’ve painted a puppy. Isn’t it insufferably adorable?”
“Where was I? Oh, yes. She loved to give her furry friends big, warm hugs, and yes, she even loved the bugs.”
She felt a somewhat aggressive nuzzle on her belly. “Hmm? No, I think the book means real bugs, like cicadas and things.” A hushed whisper. “No, I don’t think Princess Firefly would like us very much.”
Chitters ran through the swarm. “I mean, it’s in the illustration. That’s definitely an aphid she’s playing with.” Hot black oil seeped from the corners of a nymph’s eyes.
“What? Hey, no, don’t cry. I’m sure she loves drones, too. Yeah, that’s… that’s in the sequel, I’m sure.” Her hoof lanced out into the crowd and seized her second-in-command, dragging him to her. “Psst. Hey, Asaf. Abduct an author next time and make them write a sequel.” He nodded his head frantically.
“Okay. Where were we? Right, the princess finishes her song…”
Nymphs piled on higher and higher, crawling over their brothers to get closer to the queen. The bigger drones stretched membrane wings over the little ones—not as warm as pegasus feathers, but they’d do. Now that she’d started reading, the winds didn’t seem so cold anymore.
“And so Princess Firefly Dream lived happily… ever after.” Chrysalis pondered for a half-second before continuing. “I mean, until the changelings invaded and sucked the love from her horn, but that’s just implied, of course.”
Acid-green magic clapped the book shut, but a sliver of stone kept her place. “Okay, that’s it. Guards, get back to your posts.” The air chilled again and her voice grew scratchier. “And shore up the cloaking spells. I don’t want those ponies here when I wake up.”
Sorceries wormed through the cave, creeping along the stone and insulating it from prying eyes or scrying spells. Cobwebs of light spread from roof to floor, dripping ectoplasm and sealing the cave against enemies—changelings had no lack of those.
Chrysalis’s eyes glazed over as she renewed the wards, lost in focus.
Until she felt a warm sensation at her cheek. She’d been nuzzled more this night than all of last year.
“Um, um, excuse me, there’s… there’s still more in the book, see…” He rubbed the last part of the title. & Other Tales.
“No, Cica. I did what you wanted, now go to sleep.” She pushed him away, but made sure to magic a soft blanket of moss around him as he settled down.
“Besides, if I read anymore, there won’t be any stories left for tomorrow.”
