A Changeling Heart

by Rocket Lawn Chair

Rating: everyone
Tags: Thriller, Changelings, Queen Chrysalis, Princess Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Sad, Princess Luna, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark
Length: 13895

After two years of happiness with their adopted daughter, Twilight and Celestia hit a problem they never saw coming: Their daughter is a changeling. Now Twilight, desperate for a solution, lies on the brink of a choice that could ruin her life.

Alya was the name Twilight and Celestia had given their adopted daughter two years ago. Nopony knew where the little filly came from. Nopony knew anything about her.

The two princesses had no idea that two years later she would reveal herself to be a changeling, and nopony—especially not Twilight—was prepared for it. Her previously normal, structured world comes crashing down around her. The happy future she had pictured for herself and her family, now a bittersweet memory.

After long days full of prying questions and sleepless nights bristling with nightmares, Twilight comes to a desperate conclusion: Alya is the root of her troubles.

Silver Scrolls has been a wonderful help as an extra pair of eyes and editor on this story.
Cover Art: The Price of Immortality by MagnaLuna

Published 2016-07-26 06:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-07-26 06:20:01 UTC

Chapter 1

***

When Twilight awoke she thought she must still be in the middle a nightmare. A pair of translucent turquoise eyes hung above her, reflecting the pale moonlight. All around were curling shadows and cruel claws of rock, which only served to solidify the impression that she was still spiraling through some twisted dream.

To Twilight, ever since she’d made her escape from Canterlot four nights ago, dreams and reality had become horrifically indistinguishable, and each night it seemed like some new horror emerged. The first night it was a pack of timberwolves in the woods, howling outside her camp. That was enough to put her on edge for the second night, where the obscured snapping of twigs completed the chilling picture she’d already had stewing in her brain; of something huge and hungry crashing around through the trees. The third night it had just been the wind howling through the empty mountains, but by then her fragile psyche was already in shambles.

She lay now in the midst of the wastes that clamored up to Equestria’s eastern border, a barren landscape shredded with craggy peaks and dark, yawning gorges too deep for the eye to measure. She felt completely and utterly alone, and every throaty gust of wind that howled through the mountains reminded her of this, and the waking nightmare her life had become. But the nightmares had started long before her journey began.

She had been awoken by a rustling sound, and while it may have been a very pathetic sound, it was enough for her hair-trigger ears to pick up. She looked up, saw the cold, sparkling eyes, and nearly screamed.

The taste of blood hit her tongue as her teeth dug into her lips. Whatever the cold-eyed thing was, she could feel it sitting on her chest. It wasn’t heavy, but it squirmed as if trying to crawl inside her. She dared not move a muscle. She wasn’t yet sure if the creature knew she was alive.

The eyes disappeared. They reappeared within the same moment. Then they blinked again, the lids closing horizontally, leaving two vertical slits for the briefest and most horrifying tick of a semi-heartbeat.

In Twilight’s mind there brewed a furious blizzard of ideas. Should she remain still and hope it didn’t see her? Should she blast it in the face with a spell? Should she attempt to teleport herself away, and pray she didn’t accidentally take any of the beast with her? She narrowed down her options. Teleportation looked like the way to go.

Her horn glowed as she readied the spell. In that moment the purple light of her spell illuminated the grotesque features of the creature’s horrible face:

A honed, black muzzle,
Glistening white fangs,
It was the same in all her nightmares.

There was a thunderous crack and an electrifying bubble of light, then Twilight was sucked through space—right into a cluster of jagged rocks about fifteen feet away. She felt numbness, a warm buzzing sensation, and a tangy copper scent filled her nostrils. She started to jump away, but couldn’t due to the sinister spike of rock that had materialized directly through her leg. That was when she finally let go of her lip and let out a shrill scream into the cold depths of the night.

Sleep-casting had been one of Twilight’s worst habits when she was a filly. She’d gotten over it now that she was grown up and didn’t have five reports to complete for Classical Equestrian History, or six exams to study for the following day. That’s not to say she didn’t have relapses from time to time, if ever her princess duties or fervent study over a new spell kept her up late. And tonight, with a perfect combination of fatigue and nighttime delirium, she managed to do something she never would have done with her wits about her: blind teleportation.

She slowly slid her leg off the stone, reeling as the pain seeped through her nerves and into every crevice of her skull. She screamed as her tendons scraped and tore themselves against the stone. She gritted her teeth, focusing all her will into the singular task of freeing her leg before she passed out.

There was a dreadful sucking sound followed by a pop, then her leg came free. Tears and sweat streamed down her cheeks. She dragged herself and her bleeding leg out of the stones, back beneath the ledge of rock where she’d been sleeping. She collapsed on her bedroll, watching bright throbbing red spots make her vision go blurry.

Two turquoise eyes appeared above her face.

“Please, just end it quickly,” thought Twilight. She shut her eyes tightly, bracing for the flash of fangs and the darkness to follow.

The creature didn’t screech or go right for Twilight’s throat, in fact it did almost precisely opposite of those things. Twilight felt the creature step down from her chest and press its tiny body against her side.

“Mama!” it squeaked, just as it did her nightmares.

Twilight’s breaths came in tight, panicked gasps. Her heart thudded like a sledgehammer against her ribcage. Thick, warm blood spilled from the open gash in her leg, making the air smell foul and salty. She reached down to her leg, doing her best to ignore every scalding, screaming nerve in her body that told her not to. The moment her hoof touched the wound, she recoiled, moaning as fresh waves of agony took their sweet time to subside.

That wasn’t going to work at all. There was only one thing she could do, and she really didn’t want to do it. If she didn’t act soon she would bleed out. She pinched up her face and ground her teeth together, preparing to cast a spell.

She took a deep, shaking breath. The light from her horn wavered, swelled, then burst like a firework. Her entire body erupted with a million jolts of electrified needles. Twilight didn’t know if the tremendous roar she heard was an effect of the regeneration spell or her own eardrums exploding from the blood that suddenly rushed into them. Or her own screaming.

The last thing she heard was the creature against her side, frightened and crying out: “Mama!” Twilight’s fading thoughts echoed into the blackness that consumed her.

“I’m not your mama!”

Chapter 2

***

The tranquility of the Canterlot Castle gardens was shattered by a terrified cry, coming from the open window of the royal bedchamber. As if it was a signal, the rest of the night came to life in irritation. Crickets chirruped in the bushes. Frogs croaked from their comfortable lilly pads. Swans stirred from their sleep, craning their necks toward the source of the commotion. The two guards patrolling the garden simply looked at each other and sighed. “It happened again,” muttered one.

Princess Twilight Sparkle rose from her bed, very stricken, quite pale, her sweaty mane clinging against the side of her cheeks, her pupils zipping about like moths around a flame. Even though the summer night breeze was mild, it felt terribly icy against her damp, clammy skin. She rushed out onto the veranda and nearly vomited over the railing.

This was her routine now. She’d gone through the motions so many times that she could do them in her sleep, if she could get any sleep to begin with. She’d been having persistent nightmares for nearly two weeks, and each one seemed to be worse than the last. Her shrieks would wake Celestia, who would then try to console Twilight until she returned to sleep. But Celestia’s reassurances were becoming less potent with each sleepless night Twilight endured. Not even her sister, Luna, Princess of Night and Dreams, could make any account of the nightmares, despite her constant pressure to know Twilight’s mind.

“Twilight? Are you alright, my dear? Was it worse tonight?”

Twilight couldn’t stand the nightmares, how they dug into her mind like daggers, haunting her thoughts the following day, only to have them return the next night. She felt irritated at Luna for questioning her so intimately about her dreams. She felt resentful of herself for keeping Celestia awake at night. She didn’t want to admit that the nightmares were only the surface of the problem. If she were honest, the nightmares were more of a distraction from what was really cutting into her mind.

“I’ll be alright, Celly. Just need some fresh air.”

She wasn’t, and she didn’t, but she made her reply convincing enough. She thought she needed to keep Celestia in the dark more than she needed the truth.

When she tried returning to bed, she simply couldn’t find harmony with the sensations around her. The clock on the wall ticked out of rhythm with her heartbeats. The moonlight was a shade of pale blue brighter than what her bloodshot eyes could handle. The pillows felt like hot sacks of sand against her face, Celestia’s caress felt icy against her back, and now their adopted daughter, Alya, was sleeping in their room because she was afraid of monsters.

This most recent development made Twilight more than ever want to sleep elsewhere.

For the past few nights she had made up some excuse to leave the room, some benign little reasons like needing to step out to the garden to stretch her legs, or jaunt down to the library for some late-night reading to calm her mind.

Each time she had woken up in the library somehow, sprawled out over a couch beneath a pile of books in the “Parenting” section, so tonight she decided to try a new venue.

“I’m feeling kinda hungry,” she told Celestia, shivering as Celestia’s cold hoof rubbed her shoulder. “I may hop down to the kitchens for a snack.”

She stood up to leave without turning back. Behind her she could hear Celestia soothing Alya with a lullaby.

“You’re up in the clouds so high,
Your smile goes floating by,
Good night, my dear, sleep tight,
Float far into the night….”

Twilight breathed several heavy and slow breaths as she left the room, then she made her way towards the kitchens. As she walked, her mind brooded heavily on the lullaby Celestia had sung. Twilight herself used to sing it.

Before she had traversed two hallways, it suddenly occurred to her that the kitchens may actually be in the opposite direction, so she turned around. It was extremely late, after all, and it wasn’t her responsibility to keep an entire ground plan of Canterlot Castle inside her head at every moment. She began to trot back from where she'd come, to where she supposed the kitchens were.

At night the halls of Canterlot can be a complete maze of dark corridors with suspiciously similar-looking suits of armor, as if some sinister interior decorator intended for his labyrinth of few landmarks to mystify ponies until escape became hopeless. During the day there was always a castle servant cleaning the draperies of a nearby window, or something like that, and they’d be happy to offer some friendly directions. But now there was only the silvery moonlight to guide Twilight, and the suits of armor certainly didn’t seem to be in the friendly direction-giving mood. All it took was a little left turn here, then a familiar suit of armor that she had already passed three times, and before long Twilight found herself completely lost.

Twilight's breath hitched and her chest quivered. It was terribly late. Her mind was terribly frazzled. Her hooves were terribly shaky and clammy. Her past two weeks had gone terribly. Under any other circumstances she would know these halls like the back of her hoof. Tonight, however, was a special breed of derangement.

After screaming at the top of her lungs into the empty halls of Canterlot Castle, Twilight Sparkle sat down and cried. It had been a while since she’d had a good cry, and that realization made her cry even harder. Of course it wouldn’t look good to suddenly break down in front of the nobleponies during some important state meeting. All the newspapers and tabloids in Equestria would eat her up if they caught her crying in public under the current circumstances. And she didn’t want to cry it out in front of Celestia either, and risk letting her know how she truly felt about their daughter. For starters, she didn’t believe Alya even was their daughter, at least, not anymore.

For finishers, their daughter was a changeling.

Twilight sobbed for several minutes, huddled up against an alcove in the wall with a window at her back. She lifted her head when she suddenly heard hoofsteps rapidly approaching down the hallway. If there is one thing that empty labyrinthine hallways are good for, it's carrying sounds for miles. Twilight heard the hoofsteps nearly thirty seconds before actually seeing the pony who created them.

Her sister-in-law burst into view at the end of the hallway, a magical orb of pale blue light floating above and a little behind her head.

“What’s the matter? I came the moment I heard you scream!”

Her sister-in-law, Princess Luna, sounded anxious, but her demeanor appeared calm as ever. Twilight sometimes wondered if her sister’s lack of outward emotion was a common trait among ponies over a thousand years ago. After all, Luna had, in a sense, recently returned from a different time altogether.

“I’m alright, Luna, don’t worry about me.” Twilight swallowed. Her own voice sounded frail, like a breath could topple it.

“Are you hurt? Why are you wandering the halls in the middle of the night?”

“I was….hungry…” She almost wanted to believe it, too.

Twilight sniffed and chuckled weakly. Then she stood to her hooves, brushed the tears away while trying to make it look like she was just zealously wiping her nose, but it was somewhat pointless because the next second she started crying again. Her tears were hot, seething with the rage she’d buried deep within herself over the past few weeks. And now Luna had to come in to ruin her private cry.

“Oh, sister, what’s wrong? Shh, tell me what’s bothering you…..” said Luna as sweetly and hopefully as she could. She placed a wing gently over Twilight’s back.

“I’m fine,” insisted Twilight, pushing away Luna’s wing. “It was just another bad dream.” She gulped at the air, trying to get control of her breaths and press her rage further down inside her. Gradually her tears subsided. “I’d like to get to the kitchen, maybe relax over a cup of tea or some warm milk.”

“Of course, Twilight.” Luna hesitated, mentally calculating the safety of her next move, then cautiously offered her wing to Twilight once more.

Once more Twilight shoved it away. She walked to the edge of the bubble of light cast by Luna’s floating orb and started walking down the corridor.

Luna gently patted Twilight’s shoulder.

“Actually, the kitchen is this way,” she said, walking to the opposite end of the hall. “Follow me.”

Twilight stood dumbly, for it hadn’t occurred to her to actually go to the kitchen. Her whole plan, before Luna ruined it all, was to find another hall to get lost in, hopefully one deep inside the castle, at least deep enough to where her sobs couldn’t be heard by anypony, and then recommence feeling sorry for herself. She didn’t see any decent way of getting away from Luna now, though.

Reluctantly, she followed.

Chapter 3

***

While she followed Luna to the kitchens, Twilight churned through various escape plans in her head. She didn’t even care about having a private cry anymore, but she certainly was not prepared to spend the night avoiding conversation with her sister.

Steadily she slowed her pace so she was always several feet behind Luna, close enough to not arouse suspicion, yet far enough to give her the time she needed to scheme. Perhaps she could simply teleport herself out of the castle, maybe all the way to Ponyville, if she needed to. If she were stealthy, she thought she could manage to cast a spell and conjure an illusory version of herself, then silently slip away.

But she never got the chance to put her plan into action. To Twilight’s dismay, Luna found the kitchens with uncanny speed, so her hopes of escaping melted away almost as rapidly as her level-headedness.

The kitchen was warm and shone with the various slabs of orange light cast down from gleaming pots and pans which hung anxiously above the pre-lit stoves that the cooks had set before breakfast. There were three, maybe four early-morning cooks shuffling midst the countertops, kneading dough or polishing knives that the kitchen colts had forgotten to clean after dinner last night. They looked very surprised to see the two princesses, and made hasty bows that wouldn’t interrupt their activities for more than a second. It suddenly occurred to Twilight that dawn was only a few short hours away.

“Tell me what’s wrong, sister,” said Luna, once she and Twilight were both seated at an isolated table behind the brick oven, and sipping cups of steaming tea. She bent her head closer to Twilight in a manner that forced Twilight to dodge her horn. Luna apologized sheepishly, then continued.

“You know you can trust me with whatever you say. Why have these persistent nightmares tortured you so over these past few weeks?”

Twilight held her cup to her muzzle and blew over it. It trembled in her hooves. Would the Canterlot newspapers eat that up as well, if they saw her nerves so frayed she couldn’t hold a teacup steady? The headline “Princess of Friendship Cracks Under Pressure” sounded horribly newsworthy in her head.

“You’re asking me about nightmares? I imagine you would know more about them than I do,” she muttered.

Luna smiled, sipping her tea mildly. She seemed completely at ease. “Dreams are extensions of our subconscious thoughts,” she said, “reflections of what troubles our minds when we’re awake. I don’t create all of them. Mostly I watch.”

“Then you know what I’ve been dealing with.”

“Indeed, I know what. Not why.”

“Well,” sighed Twilight heavily, “it’s not easy dealing with them night after night, driving you crazy until you don’t know how to separate what’s true and what’s not. It puts a huge strain on you when you can’t trust your own senses. And even more than the nightmares, it’s been…...it’s just been a very long week.”

“Hmmm, I see,” hummed Luna. Twilight thought it sounded like a hum somepony makes when they’ve heard the story already, now they’re anxious to get to the juicy parts. Beyond that Luna wasn’t giving any hints that she was in any sort of hurry.

“I understand,” Luna continued, and it sounded like she did understand, but Twilight remained wary. “Watching you and Celestia run around back and forth between your typical duties—then on top of that dealing with all those obnoxious reporters. It’s no wonder you haven’t been able to spend much time with your wife and daughter lately. At least, that’s what Celestia tells me.”

Twilight didn’t reply right away, and instead took a long sip of tea that burnt her tongue. She considered what Luna had said, then considered how long it had been since she and Celestia had read together in the gazebo, or tossed crusts to the swans in the pond. Between her duties as princess and caring for Alya, Celestia hadn’t had a moment alone with Twilight in weeks. No wonder her hoof felt so cold, thought Twilight.

She tapped the side of the cup pensively, thinking if she burned her tongue enough that before long it would be too damaged to form coherent speech.

“No, that’s not the problem,” she lied bluntly. “But, like I said, it’s been a long week, and I really don’t want talk about all the stress lately. Just thinking about it...ugh...Can we change the subject?”

Luna folded her hooves in front of her mouth with a particular sort of eloquence, which was enough of an answer in itself. She wasn’t about to let Twilight off the hook. Her stiff posture alone created what Twilight imagined was a barrier between her and her sister, as though Twilight were nothing more than an insect sitting helplessly at the other end of a microscope. It was this impersonal elegance which Luna seemed to have perfected over her many years in exile that made her extremely frustrating to interact with one-on-one. She stared piercingly at Twilight, not batting a single eyelash, her jaw set in stone, like a statue that is trying very hard to look alive.

Twilight stewed in heated silence, then cracked her neck and waited for Luna to say something. The fire in the oven crackled and waited for the cooks to stoke it. She wondered why they didn’t.

The silence persisted until Twilight’s teacup was empty and her tongue had gone numb. She showed Luna the empty cup and rose like she was going to fetch more tea. Luna halted her with a wave of her hoof, then summoned a fresh cup out of nowhere as though she’d been keeping one in case Twilight tried to make a break for it. She set the steaming cup down, and Twilight made a forced “Thank-you.” Once more they sat and waited, staring across the table at each other until Tartarus decided to freeze over, or the cooks decided to shoo them out of the kitchen.

Sweat trickled down Twilight’s nose and dripped to the table a with a soft plink that echoed loudly in her head. Another bead tickled her nose and she started to tap her teacup. Time started ticking to the steady tap-tap of her hooves.

Tap.

Tap Tap

Ta—plink...Tap.

“Out, I need to get out.” The thought raced around her head at a dizzying speed.

Tap Tap.

“Out. Anywhere.” She didn’t know where. Out of Luna’s gaze, out of Equestria, out of her mind, she didn’t care.

She chewed her lip and her hooves quaked. Why was everything so hot? Hot, smothered, oppressive….

Oven burning. Luna staring. Tea seething.
.
Tap Tap.

“Leave me alone,” she wanted to scream at everything at once.

Clink!

She dropped the cup, partially by accident.

The scalding tea streamed down onto her lap, sending a searing pain through her thighs, but she tried to look as though she hadn’t been preparing for it. She yelped, then leapt from her seat, wiping the hot liquid out of her fur as quickly as possible. The tea was hotter than she’d expected, which helped her startled leap to look more convincing.

“Ooh, that stuff’s really hot, might even leave a burn,” she muttered, even as Luna rose to offer a cold, damp cloth—which again she seemed to have mysteriously on-hoof. “Thanks, Luna, but I don’t think tea is going to help me tonight. What I really need is sleep, so if you want to knock me out cold, be my guest,” she added with a wry chuckle.

Luna smiled, but otherwise appeared unfazed.

“I know this week has been trying for you, but it’s upsetting to watch you alienate yourself from everypony else. Celestia worries about you, and so do I. Don’t forget we both love you.”

Twilight huffed indignantly. She was alienating herself? Luna had it backwards. Luna was part of the problem.

“It’s not like —— I haven’t forgotten that!”

“Then tell me what’s been bothering you. Tell me about your daughter.”

“Alya is…..she’s not my....” Twilight fumbled around for the words she wanted to say. “Alya is a changeling, and we….we didn’t see that for two years. It’s a little, erm…..surprising.”

That was putting it mildly.

“I, um…..Well, actually, Celestia and I don’t really know how to handle this.” She coughed and racked her brain for a direction to lead the conversation which would hopefully end with her leaving the room, and more importantly, Luna. “It’s taken a lot out of us—especially me—to keep up with all the changes this past week. I’ve hardly slept a wink since Sunday, and….I mean, have you seen my mane? Have you smelled it? Just speaking in general, I’m pretty gross right now.”

“But,” inserted Luna, suddenly drawing up very close to Twilight, close enough for her presence to dominate Twilight’s field of vision, “this isn’t about your gross mane or your run-ins with snoopy reporters, or even about your recurring nightmares. I’m looking for the heart of the issue. I’m wondering why my sister would pour hot tea all over herself just to get out of talking with me about her feelings.”

Twilight’s cheeks flushed. The fur on the back of her neck prickled uncomfortably. Luna knew. Somehow she knew what Twilight was thinking. She knew what Twilight truly thought about Alya. She knew, but she would never understand.

Twilight shifted in her seat like she could dodge Luna’s inscrutable expression. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, it’s not like that!…...Rrgh! I don’t want to explain it! Everything’s too complicated.”

“Please, Twilight, if you don’t want to talk to me, at least help me understand.”

“But that’s just it—you wouldn’t understand. Can we be done now?”

“I’m only looking out for you, my sister, and right now you’re just making this harder for yourself. If you open up to me, I know we can work it out together.”

“You want to work it out?” And how did she expect to do that if she only saw things her way? She hadn’t been through what Twilight had been through. She still thought Alya could be a normal little filly? She obviously hadn’t had the little creature crawl into bed beside her and felt its horrible, chitinous body against her side.

“...Just…..wouldn’t understand……” she muttered. Her horn began to hum with a purple light.

“Celestia has told me some very concerning things about you,” said Luna. She took a step back, eyeing Twilight’s horn dubiously. “She’s told me that you refuse to nurse Alya anymore, that you refuse to sing her to sleep, that you seem disgusted just being in the same room as her.”

Twilight locked her jaw and shook her head. Sweat began sliding from her forehead and down her neck, and the kitchen suddenly felt too small. The walls on every side seemed to be only a few feet apart—and why was it getting so hot in here? She glared at the nearby oven, which continued pumping out wave after wave of dreadful heat. Disconcertingly, this was starting to feel like one of her nightmares.

“We’re done talking about Alya, I’ve heard enough about Alya,” she growled, her eyes welling with hot, angry tears. The words Luna had said about Celestia hurt. A lot. In spite of all the lullabies and good-night kisses, she had wanted to believe that Celestia would still wake up one day and see Alya for the monster she was. The things Luna had said all but dashed those hopes. Now there was nopony she could trust.

So, even Celestia had betrayed her now.

A sick feeling welled up from deep in Twilight’s gut. She bent over, breathing heavily as the room began to spin and heave. Her vision began to go dim and go blurry. Even Luna became swept up into the roiling collection of hazy images. The world around her abandoned any reason or sense.

“Really? Even Celestia?”

“Please tell me what’s wrong, Twilight. I truly do want to help you.”

Twilight jumped, then almost screamed in anger-twisted surprise. Her eyes snapped back into focus, then she recoiled as if her entire body had tasted something sour. Her legs quivered, her horn was poised to impale the next pony to get too close. Luna stood before her, head bent low, and a look so sincere it appeared as though she wanted to blame it all on herself.

“Leave me alone!” fumed Twilight. The air above her frazzled mane crackled with purple lightning as the furious spell wound itself up on the tip of her horn. “Can’t you just leave me alone? It’s bad enough to have everypony in Equestria clustering here to learn the latest scoop about our daughter-turned-changeling, and then Celestia fawning over her—it—like she thinks she’s still our daughter! Then she wants me to act like nothing’s different? She wants me to act like Alya hasn’t been feeding on our love for the past two years, like.…like....”

Her eyes scanned the room glaringly. Her jaw tightened. She reeled as she pictured Celestia nursing that foul thing Alya had become; all black with dead eyes and dripping fangs. Her horn flared up angrily. Her lips quivered while she tried desperately to get the words out of her mouth.

“....a changeling! That’s all she’s ever been! A disgusting parasite!”

The lightning tendrils stemming from Twilight’s horn fizzled and hummed, filling the air with a tangy scent, making Luna’s mane tingle and her fur stand on end. Some of the tendrils reached behind Twilight, arcing all the way to her flank.

“You want to know what’s wrong, Luna? Open your eyes!”

She released the spell, and all at once the oven, the kitchen, and the two ponies became petrified in a brilliant purple flash. Color drained from the world like a bleeding watercolor. The air turned stale and empty, and if you breathed it, it would feel like you hadn’t breathed at all.

Twilight—now airborne—loomed above Luna like a deadly thunderhead, raining tremendous arcs of lightning from her forehead.

“Nothing has gone right for me ever since we discovered Alya was a changeling. Nothing! Shall I give you a recap the last two weeks?”

The pale scene began to shift and swirl as if all the contents of reality had been tossed into a washing machine, and now curtains were merging with floor tiles and moonlight was running through streaks of uncongealed silvery-grey kitchenware. Luna and Twilight remained the only solid things in the world, until new shapes began to materialize between intermittent sparks and flashes from the energized memory spell. It didn’t take long for these figures to take on more familiar shapes as the licking tendrils of Twilight’s spell coaxed them into existence.

The conjured flashback became filled with Twilight’s most poignant memories from the past two weeks, populated by near-still images of ponies and places which Luna recognized. There was a hazy image of Celestia sitting in her bed with her head bent over baby Alya. Another image showed an entire crowd of ponies pressing through a door that was being desperately closed behind them, the floor in their wake littered with dropped notepads and press tags. And another showed Twilight herself sitting beside Celestia on the bank of a peaceful lake with their adopted daughter rolling in the grass between them. Luna did not recognize this one.

All of these images were disjointed and incomplete, and flecks of their profiles kept falling off and reassembling themselves somewhere else, like several jigsaw puzzles which have their own ideas about how they’re meant to be put together. It made the overall picture look anxious, more feverish, like something you’d wake from with a pounding heart and wild eyes.

“There, this is what you wanted to see, right?”

Twilight descended slowly, her face softer, her tone softer still. Most of the fire had gone out of her eyes, and the furious sparks around her mane had subsided into languid strands of purple light, wavering gently against the fuzzy grey backdrop. She hung her head like a heavy cloud, the somber aftermath of a raging storm.

“You’ve already seen most of these, I’m sure,” she said. “Some of these memories come back to haunt me in my nightmares, but most of the time they just sit in my mind, like this one. I think about this one all the time.”

She pointed out the lakeside scene.

“That was more than a year ago, when we went to Dewdrop Lake for a picnic. Alya picked a daisy for me to put in my mane. She fell into the lake and nearly drowned. I remember that was the first time I truly felt like her mother.”

She reached out to the hazy scene. Her hoof fell right through Alya’s pale, giggling face. There was confusion in Twilight’s own face. There was pain, too. The pain was confusing, even though she thought it should be obvious.

“I….I don’t love her anymore. Do I deserve any of this?”

A sharp jab of purple lightning cut straight into the dream scene, causing the picture of the lake to shatter before their eyes. All the hazy grey particles scattered and fizzed with Twilight’s magic, then settled into dying embers around their hooves.

Another dream quickly replaced the first. This time it was a scene inside an orphanage, showing Twilight and Celestia stooping over little Alya. This must be the first time they’d ever met the filly, thought Luna; two years ago at the Welcome Heart’s Orphanage in Canterlot. Nopony knew where the child had come from. She had been overlooked by dozens of other families until that day when Celestia and Twilight came to adopt her.

Even in the blurry scene Luna could see the child’s wide-eyed terror as the two benevolent alicorns loomed overhead, looking clueless as they tried to soothe her. Pretty remarkable, she thought, how quickly Alya had taken to Twilight and Celestia after that.

“Do you remember your thoughts, your feelings, when you saw Alya for the first time, Twilight?” Luna asked.

Twilight nodded and said, “I was nervous. I knew I was coming out of that orphanage a different pony, a mother, even. When I saw how afraid she was of Celestia and I, that made me more nervous than ever. I didn’t know if I was the right pony to be her mother. I didn’t know if we were making some terrible mistake that would ruin this filly’s life. After all, I pointed Alya out to Celestia, told her she looked like she needed a mother. I had no idea what we were really signing on for.”

“You signed on to be a caring mother. You signed on to raise a filly to marehood.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect….all this!” sputtered Twilight. The scenes around them—of Celestia nursing the infant changeling, of the paparazzi squeezing through the castle doors—became highlighted as Twilight pointed them out in turn. “I didn’t know any of this would happen. I didn’t mean to put Celestia through this nightmare.”

She trailed off, her head sinking low. The energy from her spell faded, then snuffed itself out completely.

Now the scenes began to melt away, all the fuzzy grey figures disassembling to make room for reality to come back. The windows and tile floors re-collected themselves into their familiar shapes, and brick after brick began stacking up beside the two sisters before a flame floated out of nothingness to light itself within the oven. The countertops congealed, the pots and pans hung in the air before racks appeared to give them something to hang on. The only dream scene remaining was that of the orphanage, with the two nervous mothers and their soon-to-be daughter.

Twilight slumped against the counter as it re-materialized behind her back. Her head fell into her hooves and she sobbed. “If I could go back, change one thing,” she whimpered, “it would be this. I’d never have singled Alya out, and we could have raised a normal filly together.”

Throughout the duration of Twilight’s spell, Luna hadn’t shown any emotion. Twilight had spent enough time with her sister to know that she reserved emotion for when she felt it was appropriate. It was another trait that made her difficult to be around.

“Motherhood isn’t about knowing everything that will happen.” Luna approached Twilight with an outstretched wing, gently stroking her feathers over Twilight’s head. “I’ve never been a mother, but I don’t believe there is any textbook you can study for it. There’s no way to always know what’s coming when you’re always being tested.”

“I didn’t expect you to understand,”sniffed Twilight bitterly. She held her hoof against her phantom daughter’s chin as the last remnants of the dream orphanage faded away, leaving the two ponies back in the dull oven heat and pale light. It must have been nearly dawn by now. The first grey glimpses of daylight made the kitchen look fresh, yet wrapped in a drowsy blanket that made you want to shove your head back beneath your pillow.

Twilight shuddered as she felt Luna sit down against the counter beside her, then a truly remarkable thing happened.

Luna began to weep. It wasn’t from pity, or worry for her sister, either. Her sobs were deep, they came from inside her. They were her own sobs, and for a snippet of a moment, Twilight thought that Luna may be in more pain than she herself.

“You feel afraid and betrayed,” choked Luna. “Many years ago I felt the same about the ones I loved, and….well, you know where that got me.” She stared blankly at the ground, wiping her cheeks.

Suddenly she laughed.

“You know what’s funny?”

Twilight shook her head.

“I feel like I’m putting you through the same inquisition Celestia put me through over a thousand years ago, right before….” she paused and looked sad again for a moment. Then she shrugged. “You know…..right before I became Nightmare Moon. I never imagined I would be doing this.”

Twilight looked up earnestly at Luna. She felt cold and numb, and suddenly very tired. It looked—and felt—as though the world was still melting away around her.

“But,” Luna continued, after tremendous pause, “I’m here now, your sister, crying my head off with you. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the ones who love me, the ones who refused to give up on me, and I’m grateful.”

Twilight smiled, but couldn’t find the words to say, in fact she was finding it difficult to think at all. She felt a dizziness overtaking her, and a strange pain in her leg that should not be there.

Luna stood to her hooves. Twilight tried to do the same, but found that she couldn’t move at all. She felt like all her limbs were braced by icy iron rods, except for her right leg, which felt searing hot.

“Luna….” she grunted, “I….I think something’s wrong. I can’t….can’t get up!”

Luna didn’t seem to hear Twilight, or even care that she’d suddenly become paralyzed. She stepped up to the oven and idly tapped her horn against the bricks. The wall of the oven rippled from the tip of Luna’s horn like a pond with a stone cast into it. She looked back down to Twilight with an expressionless face streaked with tears, yet still somehow managed to look kindly.

“Being a mother is filled with all kinds of wonderful, unexpected turns, and it isn’t your job to know what they are. You didn’t know that Alya would fall into the lake, either. You were simply there for your daugher.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t move! My leg….rrgh! Feels like it’s burning up! And what’s going on with the walls?”

The rippling waves emanating from the oven traveled further until they were all around the kitchen. Twilight didn’t know what she was seeing. Her own head felt like it was rippling in tune with the rest of the world. She was sure her leg was on fire now, but it hardly mattered when she was losing her mind. Everything started to swirl again, but she certainly wasn’t creating the dream this time.

The world grew dim and formless, and out of the void came Luna’s soothing, loving voice.

“Your heart is strong, Twilight. I know deep down inside you, you’ll find the answer you need. I know in the end you’ll do the right thing.

Always remember, there are ponies who will never give up on you.”

Chapter 4

***

Twilight’s head swam in a sea of darkness suffused with constant numbness. There was nothing to feel or be felt. Her head could have been floating a million miles away from her body and she wouldn’t know it. She didn’t know what it felt like to be dead, but she guessed this probably wasn’t far from it.

Her first sensation was similar to what your eyes experience after being in pitch darkness for a long time, or your ears upon hearing a sound after complete silence. A jolt of searing pain collided with her body like a meteor from space. Her eyes snapped open. She immediately shut them again as the pain shot up her right side and crawled up her neck. She let out a yelp and rolled over onto her back, then groaned as a badly-placed rock dug into her spine. When she’d taken a moment to recover, she pried her eyelids open a tiny fraction, desperate to know if she’d find herself in a dream or reality, or something worse than either. The world came spilling into her vision.

The night was still lingering in its deepest hours. The stars were still glittering, the moon still on display, which made Twilight think she must have been out for hardly more than an hour. She blinked. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the clear moonlight splashed around the rim of the canyon, then she laid her head back and sighed with relief, stroking the dirt beneath her hooves. The ground was probably the furthest thing from comfortable, but at least it was finally real. Luna was known to make incredibly vivid dreams, but she may have outdone herself this time.

Then the memory of the dream came crashing back into Twilight’s head, and something in her head clicked.

“Alya…..”

She propped herself upright with a straining effort. Her leg still throbbed painfully with the energy of her regeneration spell. The gash had healed over well, but the bones and muscles in her leg must still be reconstructing themselves. It took every ounce of her effort to drag herself backwards so she could lean against the cliff.

“Alya!”

She took several deep breaths, wiping cold sweat from her brow. Alya couldn’t have gone too far.

The pale moonlight made the labyrinth of crags and canyons look even more mysterious and ominous, as though anything could be lurking within any one of those looming shadows. Her eyes darted between black, stony crevices and wide, moonlit outcroppings that spilled over into some unknowable depths. It would be a simple matter for a small child to become lost in this place, or worse. She cupped her hooves to her mouth.

“Alya! Where are you?”

No answer came, and Twilight’s heartbeat quickened. Alya had been right beside her when she passed out, and if Twilight really had been out for around an hour—well, any number of terrible things could have happened to her.

She made an effort to rise to her hooves, then instantly collapsed again. Her right leg was nowhere near ready to carry her weight. She grumbled, then tried an alternate strategy by bracing her left hoof against the cliff and her right wing extended to balance her stance. It did the trick in a pinch.

She then made an effort at limping, which proved difficult at first as the left half of her body was still numb from having been slept on for the past hour. After a few painful falls she managed to find her hoofing, and started limping about in search of Alya. She scoured the crevice where she’d made camp, then she checked around the huge stone slabs just outside. Lastly she came to the edge of the outcrop and peered over the precipice, down into the canyon.

Nothing but blackness and hollow wind below her.

“Alya!” she shouted again. “Alya! Alyaaaa!”

Her echo returned after a second or two. It sounded even more desperate than she thought it would. Her stomach lurched at the thought of what might be lurking down there.

Twilight cast a spell that sent a floating purple light into the heart of the canyon. It traveled deeper, deeper, until it was so deep that the light became little more than a speck in a sea of blackness. Then the light became swallowed up, and Twilight gulped. There was no way Alya would have survived a fall like that.

A chilly gust leapt up the canyon wall and sent Twilight’s mane into a frenzy. She stumbled back from the ledge, lost her balance, then fell to the ground with a thud and a scream. She watched her leg shift sickeningly without the bone to support it, then clutched her stomach, thinking that legs were not supposed to bend that way. She sprawled out on the ground and took several slow, deep breaths while she watched the stars overhead. When she felt that the sickness had passed, she propped herself upright once again, and glared at the canyon.

How was she going to do this? Flying down seemed out of the question with those unpredictable air currents blasting around down below. The thought of teleportation briefly flickered across her mind, but she took one look at her limp right leg and instantly crossed out that option. There were no clear hoofpaths that she had noticed the previous day or just now, even if she was in any fit condition to traverse them.

Another gust of wind howled out of the bowels of the canyon, sending a chill down Twilight’s spine. She slumped back to the ground, at a loss of what to do. The details of her dream with Luna came creeping back into her memory. Even though Luna had only been in her mind and was about as expressive as a brick wall, Twilight knew that Luna had been right. She would never have confronted the truth by herself. She seriously wondered if there was a problem Luna could not solve by simply sitting aloof at an imaginary table, sipping imaginary tea.

But there was only so far her sister’s power could reach, and it didn’t extend as far as getting Twilight to the bottom of this canyon to find Alya. She still wasn’t even certain that Alya had actually fallen down there, but her brief search hadn’t turned up any leads. Feeling utterly lost and alone, Twilight did the only thing that seemed logical anymore: she broke down and began to sob.

Whenever Twilight was afraid she liked to think about Celestia; her kind and loving mentor, her wife, and the love of her life. Now all she could think about was her daughter. Alya had been such a beautiful filly, so happy, full of innocence, full of wonder. She had a soft mane of turquoise as deep as the sky in spring, a sparkling giggle like the pitter-patter of a brook through an airy glade. She could only just remember those things now, as they had been before Alya had changed, and Twilight clung as tightly as she could to those memories. She thought of how things could have been different if she and Celestia had never decided to adopt Alya. She paused in her thought to imagine having no memories of Alya at all.

Her ears suddenly perked up. The wind was loud enough to pierce through her sobs, but she thought she heard another sound—a sound within the wind. Twilight summoned what little strength she had to drag herself to the edge of the canyon once more.

She dipped her head downwards, and listened.

When the wind came again, Twilight definitely heard the sound this time. The sound was of somepony crying, somepony very lost and afraid. She was crying for her mama.

What most ponies mean by the idiom, “Like a bat out of Tartarus,” is that someone or something is hurtling out of control, destroying everything in their path like they’ve just been spat out of the depths of Tartarus in a ball of fire. As it turns out, this is a very accurate way to describe a mother rushing to save her child. As soon as Twilight heard Alya’s cries, her wings were open and the pain in her leg seemed to vanish completely. Nothing, not even the gates of Tartarus, was going to stand in her way.

With a lunge and a mighty burst of light from her horn, Twilight dove headlong into the canyon, her wings pushing her downwards faster than gravity would allow. The wind howled past her face, pressing her ears against her head and causing her eyes to water profusely. She blinked the tears away and kept her eyes trained dead ahead of her, while her glowing horn cut through the darkness with a piercing ray of purple light. She strained her ears catch the faint cries, and followed them deeper into the abyss.

Suddenly the crying ceased, and Twilight halted her descent. The icy air gripped her all at once, causing her to gasp and briefly lose equilibrium. She flailed through the air for a split second before returning her wings to steady beat and rectifying herself. It was deathly still all of a sudden, not even the wind howled. Twilight looked up to moon, which looked terribly distant now. She was so deep that the inky blackness seemed to be swallowing up the night sky from below.

Where had the cries gone now? There wasn’t a sound to be heard besides the flapping of her wings. Nothing in that black world below stirred, or at least nothing that could be seen. Had it just been her feverish imagination? A tremendous dread sunk in as Twilight imagined she was diving wildly into a dark, fathomless tomb.

“Mama!”

The cry came again—this time much fainter, but certainly real—and Twilight dove after it, fearing she might lose it again. The wind became more erratic, forcing Twilight to draw her wings close, putting her into a much faster but less controlled descent.

Temperature dropped by the foot as the blackness became more absolute, and the cries became gradually stronger. Twilight focused only on the cries—ignoring her aching wings and her freezing limbs—and continued her fall. It was taking an unsettlingly long time to reach the bottom. She felt she must be nearing the depth where her light had disappeared.

The ground came into view beneath the light of her horn. She sighed with some relief, but something wasn’t right about the landscape. It looked featureless, even formless. There were no rocks jutting from it, nor any cracks sitting in the earth, it simply looked like the surface of a darkly ominous ocean, and it had a strangely fuzzy quality to it. It appeared to be moving, even seething, roiling and belching huge black clouds into the air. A foul scent filled Twilight’s nostrils as she approached it.

“Oh-ack! What is this?” she choked. The smoke covered her body, stung her eyes, tightened her throat, made her skin prickle. All of her senses were swarmed simultaneously by the deadly fumes.

She rose out of the toxic cloud, taking several deep breaths while her vision cleared and her head stopped spinning. She cast a spell, and a magical purple bubble appeared around her, creating a fresh air barrier. Then, with reignited vigor, she continued her plummet into the toxic fog.

Alya was somewhere down there. The true bottom of the canyon must not be far off, but she had little notion of how close she was. Her bubble spell proved top-notch to ward off the fumes, but her light was practically useless at this point, with the thick clouds pressing so heavily around her. All she had was the reassurance that her daughter’s voice was getting stronger.

“Mamaaaaa!”

The cry kicked up to a terrified pitch. Twilight pressed her wings to her side and shot like lightning through the haze. “Alya!” she screamed, “Where are you? Mama's coming!” She shot a furious beam from her horn that cut through the clouds, and before she quite knew what was happening, the air around her erupted in a purple fireball. She took a perilous dive to dodge it, and a split second later found herself plowing face-first into something black and sticky. It was hot, and filled her ears and nostrils almost instantly, but by the time she’d managed to extract her head, the rest of her body was already sinking into it.

She lifted her forehooves above the surface, then tried to free her wings. Her eyes suddenly felt like they were melting out of their sockets, and then she realized that her protective spell had broken. Rushing to cast another spell—because the overwhelming fumes were probably killing her faster than the tar—Twilight fumbled, managing to spit a few miserable sparks from the tip of her horn. It took her two more tries before she got it right, and by then her wings were hopelessly stuck. At least her head and forehooves were out, and at least she didn’t have tar in her eyes or mouth, but she was still sinking. Before long she’d be stuck up to her neck.

She looked around desperately. The clouds hung thick as pitch, making it impossible to see anything more than ten yards away.

Thinking quickly, Twilight tried to collect her bearings and aim herself in approximately the direction she’d last heard Alya’s cry. The light from her horn swelled and hummed.

She shook her head and moaned. “Please, no more sharp rocks….”

There was a decisive crack, a bright flash, and she was gone.

Less than a split second later, a terrified scream rang out fifty feet away.

Twilight fell, her limbs flailing, until she landed with a heavy thud on a slick stone ledge. She tumbled head-over-hooves without any notion of which way was up or down. She managed to snag a protruding rock just before spiraling down into the depths of a bottomless chasm.

For several sickening hours, which in reality was only ten seconds, she clung on at the edge of the overhang, unable to hoist herself out. When she finally did, she rolled onto her back and watched bright flashes pop into her vision. Her chest heaved and her whole body trembled.

“That better be….the last time….I ever need to teleport like that,” she wheezed. She peered down at her body, then slumped back to the ground. Still completely coated in sticky tar. She wanted to cry again. She wanted to scream, or tear the whole world apart, but for now she could only sigh.

“Gonna be a nightmare…...just getting this stuff…..out of my wings.”

For several minutes she lay very still, counting her heartbeats and waiting for them to stop pounding in her ears. Her energy was almost completely spent in that Bat-out-of-Tartarus blaze to the bottom of the canyon, but at last she was here.

At length she rose to her hooves. The searing pain in her leg had settled into a warm background sensation of constant burning. She tried moving it, and immediately regretted doing so, making a little yelp as the pain flared up. The bone had finally grown in, and so too, it seemed, had the nerves. Still not quite ready to be useful. She refreshed her protective spell and then tried to do something about the tar. It clung in her fur, her mane, some of it was still seeping into her ear, and to make matters worse, it smelled awful. She tried extracting it with a spell, but the tar had some weak magical repulsion, so the best she could do was clean out her ears and some of her wings. Flying from now on, she thought, would have to be limited to short bursts.

She turned her attention to the chasm below. A weak greenish light rose from the heavy haze beneath her, coming from deep within the bowels of the earth. Tar oozed from cracks in the wall and slid downwards in great, steaming, black globs before dripping off and becoming consumed by the pit. Twilight peered down over the ledge, and shuddered. Nothing wholesome lived in this place.

Twilight gave her neck a few good cracks, shook herself, then limped to the edge. She flexed her wings, drawing a few steady breaths and tried not to think about what awaited her down below the earth.

“Just keep thinking about other things: more picnics by the lake, the smell of Celestia’s mane, Alya’s adorable smile. Just keep thinking about Alya…”

She took a deep breath, and then leaped, keeping her thoughts firmly on her daughter as she plummeted headfirst into the heart of the changeling hive.

Chapter 5

***

For Alya’s third birthday party, Twilight and Celestia had gotten her a little silver tiara with pink jewels. It was fake, of course, but it looked splendid in her mane. It hadn’t been her real birthday, either. Twilight and Celestia had no clue how old Alya was. They guessed she was close to three years old.

Alya looked different now. She had four tiny black legs with a little, jagged hoof on the end of each. Her mane was turquoise, but not silky and soft like it had been during her birthday party. It felt more like the leaf of an orchid, all waxy and flexible. Her eyes were disproportionately large compared to her head, but that had also been the case when she had the form of a filly.

Twilight still thought she looked close to three years old. She was only now starting to see how much had actually changed. She was only now realizing that her daughter was the least of these changes.

But another thought rapidly eclipsed her thoughts of Alya as she descended into the hive. From the moment her wings caught the squalid catacomb air, Twilight could tell that something was not right. For one thing, the walls of the cavern pulsed with an eerie glow as if some tremendous beast was living beneath the layer of slime, and Twilight instantly contracted the unsettling visual of being inside a monster’s throat. For another thing it was becoming much more difficult to sustain her protective spell, as it seemed the magically-repugnant tar was more potent down within the hive. Overall there were plenty of things that did not feel right, but the one she felt right away was that her wings were not supporting her weight. She’d hardly descended twenty feet when her marginally controlled dive turned into an out-of-control spiral.

Her body slammed into the greasy wall, then bounced off into the opposite wall, and down she fell, utterly on the whims of gravity. She couldn’t tell how far she’d fallen, but after three more bounces she had a difficult time keeping track of anything at all. She gripped tightly to her waning senses, on the brink of completely losing consciousness, clinging on to warm thoughts about her family. She supposed, if they were to be her last thoughts, at least they should be good ones.

Something wide and black and solid-looking loomed out of the haze before her eyes. Twilight didn’t know if it was the wall or the ground or the infinite beyond, but it was coming on fast, and she had no choice but to embrace whichever one it ended up being. She closed her eyes and braced herself.

Quite suddenly, the world went still.

For a moment Twilight thought that she may have died. There wasn’t wind screaming past her face and her entire body felt numb, except for the dull thrumming fire in her right leg. She then quickly rationalized that she wasn’t dead. But, then again, how was that possible? Slowly she opened her eyes.

She was suspended mid-air, hardly a foot above the ground. The ground was slimy and black, coated in tar and fleshy, pulsing, greenish things that she hoped weren’t as alive as they looked. The walls were also coated with these greenish lumps, and as far as she could guess, so was the ceiling. It was tricky to make out much of the chamber, for it expanded so vastly that most of its labyrinthine, spired interior was shrouded in the omnipresent green haze.

“So glad you could join us, my dear Twilight!” came a cruel, slick voice.

Twilight whipped her head around to face the speaker. She found herself face-to-face with a tall, lithe creature with a jet-black body and chittering insectoid wings on her back. Twilight had put this creature near the top of her Top Ten: Never Want to See Again list.

“Hope it wasn’t too much trouble finding the place,” giggled Queen Chrysalis coyly. “I know we’re a little out of the way, but our doors are always open. We simply adore having guests drop in!”

The queen laughed, and a cacophony of screeching laughs joined hers. Twilight noticed for the first time that there were hundreds—probably thousands—of eyes lining the shadows in ceiling and walls of the chamber. She must have fallen right into the central chamber of the changeling hive.

Chrysalis’ needle-like horn glowed with a steady green glare, sustaining the spell which held Twilight upside-down above the ground. She circled Twilight slowly, peeling back her black lips to make sure her fangs were the most noticeable part of her face. The intense grin she held made Twilight wonder how many times she’d been able to practice it. Unless you were somepony who particularly enjoyed living beneath a toxic swamp while constantly surrounded by thick green haze and the irritating chitter of insect wings, there wasn’t much reason to grin.

“You know, I’m actually surprised to see that you made it all the way down here by yourself. You weren’t looking especially…..ah, shall I say, conscious?....when I stopped by earlier this evening,” chuckled the queen. Her voice carried the same righteous confidence that a looming storm cloud carries over a flimsy blade of grass.

She released her magic without warning, and Twilight’s face planted into the ground with a moist squelch. Immediately five changeling drones swooped down from the walls to restrain Twilight. She lay still and made no effort to resist.

The queen approached Twilight slowly. “It really is fortunate that you decided to invite yourself in,” she said. “I was worried that after coming all this way you would drop my daughter off, then leave without saying hello.”

“How did you know I was coming?” demanded Twilight, trying to stall for time. She didn't care what the queen would say, as long as it gave her enough time to track down Alya's whereabouts. Her eyes scanned the chamber while the queen laughed coldly.

“Oh, come now, Princess Twilight, don’t tell me you don’t keep a sharp eye on every ne’r-do-well that crosses your borders. Don’t tell me there’s yet another weakness in Equestria for me to exploit! My scouts have been watching your progress through my domain ever since you first set hoof in it.”

“Where is Alya?”

“Oh! You’ve given her a name? How touching! How….Equestrian!” the queen hooted. Her minions joined in with her laughter, and the whole hive rumbled and screeched.

“You better not have hurt her, or I’ll—”

“Hurt her? Now, why would I ever do that to one of my own subjects, my own offspring, even? Why, I wouldn’t dare harm the one who is to be my successor some day!”

“She’s not your daughter,” huffed Twilight, She tried standing to her hooves, but the guards shoved her back down into the slime. “She’s mine, and I’m not giving up on her. Not this time.”

“Hah! Aww, you’re being serious, aren’t you?” mocked the queen in such a condescending voice that Twilight wanted to get up and slap her face right there. “You know, it always amazed me how you ponies are even alive. It boggles the mind that you have the capacity to survive with your heads constantly floating in the land of make-believe. I swear, your entire race wouldn’t even be a smear under my hoof by the time I was through with you.”

“Huh!” snorted Twilight. “Says the bug who got swatted by us the last time we met.”

The queen’s lip quivered perilously, then melted into a cruel smirk. “Newsflash, princess: the swatting’s on the other hoof today,” she snapped, and she accentuated her statement by slapping Twilight’s cheek with the back of her hoof.

The slap seared against her already-bruised face, but Twilight fought back the tears.

“Where is Alya?” she growled again.

“It’s cute you think my spawn is one of your toy fillies,” sneered the queen, “but playtime is over. You wish to see the future queen of the changelings, well here she is!” Chrysalis stepped aside to reveal something that made Twilight’s heart plummet further than she herself had plummeted in the past hour.

A green glow emanated from a slimy, translucent cocoon, and within that cocoon was the tiny, limp body of Alya. Her eyes were closed, her frail black legs crossed beneath her chest. There was something horrible to Twilight about seeing Alya like this, even beyond the fact that she was sealed in a disgusting cocoon. She didn’t look asleep or even dead, but she looked…..empty, like a shell that’s waiting to be filled with something sinister.

“The metamorphosis will soon be complete,” pronounced Chrysalis triumphantly. “Soon her mind will be completely wiped of all memories of her life among you wretched ponies. She’ll be washed clean of whatever filthy Equestrian magic suppressed her natural changeling instincts. She’ll awaken anew as one of the Hive.”

“No….” moaned Twilight. Helplessly she reached out her hoof. She collapsed to the ground. “Please, I can’t let her…”

“Wish I could say I was sorry, but I’m not one for apologies,” snickered Chrysalis, spitting to add extra spite. “I wouldn’t worry about ‘Alya’, though. Once she’s fully awake, she’ll know her true strength, and then she’ll consume what pathetic little remains of your essence. Amazing how fast our little ones grow up, isn’t it?” She sniffled sarcastically.

“Whatever you’re doing to her, please…..please stop,” coughed Twilight as hot, desperate tears began flowing freely down her cheeks. “It’s my fault, I...I tried to abandon her. She doesn’t deserve this. You can do whatever you want with me, but let Alya go!”

Chrysalis cackled wickedly, and a livid green energy suddenly sparked to life on her horn. “Twilight, don’t you see? This is where she wants to be! This is where she was meant to be, among her own kind, feeding on the love of others. A changeling doesn’t need a mother—only raw instinct, and the command of their queen! You’re foolish to think we were meant for anything else!”

“But she’s my daughter, I felt her love….or at least Celestia did. Somehow I forgot about it...”

Twilight slid into the muck, wishing she could watch Alya skip through the meadow picking wildflowers again, or at least hear her laugh just one more time.

The magic from Chrysalis’ horn leapt up into the air and crackled downward to connect with the cocoon. It flashed to life, then began to flash intermittently as Chrysalis filled it with changeling magic. The final stage of the metamorphosis process was almost complete. All throughout the chamber, the thick green haze pulsed in time with the feverish tempo of Chrysalis’ spell.

Twilight shut her eyes tightly. The light was unbearable, even managing to pierce through her eyelids. She thought for the third time that night that she was going to pass out. A part of her wanted to do just that, to drift off to sleep and never wake up, and never witness the terrible creature her daughter was being turned into. Another part of her knew she couldn’t. It didn’t take much longer for the nauseating flashes to slow down, and after another minute the spell was finished.

Chrysalis stepped back from the cocoon. She stood to the side, waiting for something to happen. The cocoon steamed, glowing with a haunting green light. Twilight also waited, and hoped beyond hopes that her daughter was still in there, and not some mindless changeling drone. It felt like agonizing hours passed while she waited.

Suddenly the walls of the cocoon began to bulge and bubble like something was boiling from the inside. Chrysalis stared on with an immensely pleased grin.

“Yes! Be reborn, my minion!”

“No! Alya!” Twilight cried a moment befor her face was shoved back into the slime by the changeling guard. The guard held her face down so that she couldn’t see what was transpiring. She could only hear the vile glee in the queen’s voice, and despair at it in her heart.

“Welcome back to the Hive, my child! Go now, your queen commands you! Go feed on that pathetic waste of life, wallowing in the muck over there!”

Twilight heard the tiny hoofsteps approaching her, and tried to cry out Alya’s name, but only foul bubbles spurted out beneath her smothering face. She flailed her hooves, and the other guards pinned her at once. She tried to cast some sort of spell—any spell, even if she teleported herself into solid rock, but her magic was fully suppressed at this depth.

Then she became very still. It was over. She wouldn’t even get a last look at Alya’s horrible, beautiful face.

Then she heard a tiny, precious voice cry out in pure glee.

“Mama! I missed you!”

She heard Chrysalis sputter and shriek: “What?! No! You’re mine now, impudent whelp! She’s not your mother and she never was! Obey me and destroy her!"

“Mama! Help! She’s mean and scary!”

Twilight felt two tiny legs clamp desperately around her sprawling forelegs, and something clicked inside her heart.

Many things happened to Twilight at once which seemed to all be happening in slow motion. The first thing that happened was she calmly stood up, and was surprised by how casually and effortlessly the changeling guards were flung away from her, screaming and spiraling through the air like grotesque, lazy snowflakes. The second thing—and this one lasted the longest—was that she looked down to her tiny, quivering daughter latched around her forelegs. The two locked eyes for the first time since Twilight had blacked out earlier that night. She saw the same fear in Alya’s deep turquoise eyes that she had seen when she and Celestia first met her at the Welcome Heart’s Orphanage. She depended on Twilight to protect her from that fear now.

What happened next was she noticed that the ceiling and walls stirred to life with thousands of eyes and furious chittering wings. They all seemed to be converging on she and Alya, blocking the tunnel in the ceiling which led to the exit. Then she noticed that Chrysalis was actually leaping at her with a horrifying expression branded on her face, and Twilight imagined if she were in a lesser state of mind, she might have fainted at the mere sight of it. There were strands of green spit dangling from the queen’s bared fangs, and the snarl which sliced her cheeks looked torn between wanting to rip out Twilight’s throat and withdrawn in defensive terror. Her venomous glare bespoke much the same.

All these things happened in roughly the span of five seconds, but to Twilight they seemed to be passing outside of time and into a completely separate realm, where she and her daughter were the only two beings in it. As the world began to crash in upon them, Twilight moved into action, but did so lightly as a waiter does when toting trays through a restaurant. She glided easily through the encroaching changeling swarm in an almost transcendent way. Entire clusters of the vile creatures seemed to be shoved aside by her presence alone. A vicious bolt of green lightning shot from Chrysalis horn; Twilight covered Alya’s head and casually ducked aside as it shot harmlessly over her shoulder. She suddenly realized that she was running on all fours again. She couldn’t even feel her right leg anymore, or any of her other limbs for that matter. They had, in a certain sense, become part of the air.

And now she was flying with Alya tucked safely between her hooves. She wasn’t sure quite how or when she’d gotten into the air, but the floor of the hive chamber was growing more distant by the second. She could hardly make out the little green blobs any more as the angry changeling swarm engulfed her view. Her wings were beating, but she didn’t feel them or the wind beneath them. She had no real sensation beyond the feeling of being lifted upwards, and now the vertical shaft was changing. As she rose, the walls looked more greasy-black rather than sickly green. She ducked past huge globs of tar which fell down into the advancing mass of changelings, scattering some, only for fifty more to replace them. Twilight could sense the air around her trembling with the angry buzzing of their wings.

She shot out of the hive, and rocketed straight through the toxic cloud layer. The changeling swarm followed close behind. Twilight held Alya tighter as they burst through the clouds. Warm morning light spilled over her. It was a good warmth, and she was quite ready to fall asleep with it draping over her, but her job wasn’t over yet. One thought stood out above all the others: that her daughter was going to be safe with her, no matter what. With that thought held firmly in her mind, she climbed higher and higher, out of the canyon and up into the sky. She flew out towards the horizon, where the morning sun was cresting over the craggy mountain peaks. The changelings, hissing and screeching in the sunlight, did not let up their pursuit, and flew after her without a moment’s pause.

Then suddenly, after her tremendous and seemingly effortless flight from the hive, an overwhelming weariness overtook her, and she began to fall. “No, no, not now!” she thought, trying to command her wings to work. “Please, just a little further….”

No matter how hard she strained, how deeply she implored, her wings would not do what she wanted. It was as though they’d run out of fuel mid-flight, having spent it all just to get away from the changelings. But the changelings hadn’t given up, quite contrarily they seemed ready to pursue Twilight to the ends of Equestria.

“Mama!” screamed Alya, “Th-they’re coming! Hurry, mama!”

Twilight dug deeper inside herself than she had yet dug, and found nothing left. What she had had already gotten them this far, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Already the changelings swarmed around them menacingly. Alya began to cry, and Twilight did what she knew she must do then.

“Shhh, everything’s going to be alright,” she whispered softly, hugging her daughter close to her. “Your mama’s here for you now, and nopony is going to hurt you.”

As she fell from the sky, the world darkened around her.

She heard the changelings screech.

She heard Alya’s cry.

She saw the sun explode and a heavenly light dissolve everything else from sight.

Then Twilight slept the most wonderful sleep she’d had in more than a month.

Chapter 6

***

A slow procession of grey daylight slid through the curtains, lighting the room in an overall quality of gloominess that would be better reserved for a rainy day. The window was open, letting fresh air spill in, rustling the curtains with a sweet hint of lilacs and freshly-mowed grass.

Twilight awoke to the outside smells, and remembered that Saturday was usually when the gardening was done around the castle. She tried sitting upright in her bed, and found that she couldn’t, even in spite of the enormous mountain of clean pillows that had been propped beneath her; they seemed more apt to absorb her body than support it. Celestia and Luna were sleeping beside the bed. Celestia had her hoof next to Twilight’s side.

Twilight smiled and lightly touched Celestia’s hoof.

“Hey, I’m awake,” she said weakly.

Celestia snorted and stirred. Her flowing mane appeared tarnished and unkempt, as though it hadn’t seen a decent shower in a few moons. Her face instantly lit up when she saw Twilight, still feeble but alive.

“Oh!”she gasped, then flung herself upon Twilight.

She suddenly sat back and hesitated.

“Oh, s-sorry, couldn’t help myself. Too much?” she stammered.

Twilight shook her head stiffly, shifting her position upright as best she could. “Nah, go for it. My body doesn’t feel sore everywhere,” she chuckled, then winced as Celestia wrapped her hooves around her and kissed her deeply on the forehead.

“Good,” asserted Celestia. “Because I’m just going to keep doing this until you feel better, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Just what the doctor ordered,” replied Twilight. “I’ve missed you so much, Celly.”

“We’ve missed you too, Twilight,” yawned Luna, who’d just awoken. She smiled. “It seems like you had quite an adventure with Alya.”

“I…..We did,” said Twilight, her face suddenly downcast. Slowly she looked over to Celestia with tears in her eyes. It was wonderful, and very confusing, finally seeing her wife again after so long, and realizing she probably hated Twilight for what she had tried to do.

“Celly, I…..I just want you to know…..there aren’t enough words…..you deserve so much more than an apology. At least an explanation.”

“Knowing that you two are safe with me is enough for now,” Celestia replied, tears forming in her own eyes, and she squeezed even tighter. “Mmm, feels like a lifetime since I hugged you.”

For the moment Twilight felt a wash of relief with Celestia’s forelegs so warmly wrapped around her, sore as she may be. She couldn’t deny, however, that she didn’t know quite what to tell her wife and sister once she’d returned to Canterlot. The truth, obviously—but hadn’t they already figured that out? Would it bring more consolation to hear it from Twilight’s own mouth, or just more discomfort? She put her hooves around Celestia.

“You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you—and Alya….” she trailed off. “Where is Alya?”

“With her nurse, Maybel,” answered Luna. “Would you like me to bring her in?”

“Yes, please.”

“Good. Be back in a jiffy.”

“And Luna? One more thing?”

Luna paused at the door.

“Yes, Twilight?”

Twilight thought for a moment.

“Could you, umm, not tell Alya that I’m awake? Don’t want to spoil the surprise for her.”

Luna smiled and nodded.

“I’ll figure out some excuse.” Then she left, closing the door behind her.

The room was silent for several moments while the two ponies remained alone together, hugging each other for the first time in what had felt like years. For Twilight it felt much longer, like she’d been to the edge of the universe and turned back at the very last moment. She shuddered as Celestia gently caressed her mane. At last she could feel Celestia’s hooves again, no longer cold and unfamiliar, but like a kiss of sunshine on a summer afternoon. With all her heart she wanted to take all her feelings and put them into the perfect words, let Celestia know how sorry she was and how much she loved her. It took her a very long time to find what she wanted to say.

“Your mane smells good,” she said at last

Celestia laughed. “Recognize this smell?” she said.

Twilight sighed and buried her face deeper into Celestia’s mane, that glittering playground of silky textures and stunning auroras. Celestia still hadn’t told Twilight the trick she used to make it so wavy and flowing all the time, like it was caught in a perpetual photogenic breeze.

“You must be using that sunblossom-scented shampoo I got you for our anniversary a few months ago. Didn’t think you liked it. Wasn’t the smell too fake for you or something?”

“It grew on me,” said Celestia.

Twilight took a deep breath. She felt faint all of a sudden, like she was about to vanish right out of the pillows.

“Whatever you think—think of me,” she said, staggering like she was out of breath, “I certainly deserve it. But please, don’t ever think that what I did was your fault for any reason. It was selfish of me to think that I knew what was best for the two of us, and what was best for Alya.”

“I can’t blame anypony,” said Celesia, “not that I want to anyway. I don’t care about what happened then, only what’s going to happen now. I look forward to our future as a family, and I love you and Alya, no matter what.”

Twilight’s face fell, then she broke into fresh tears, which caused Celestia to be taken aback. Twilight knew all this, even without Celestia saying it out loud, and it was exactly what she needed to hear. Yet, after all she had done to make it look like she had hated their daughter, she worried that Celestia might be making some kind of mistake.

“You’re way too good to me, you know?” she sobbed into Celestia’s shoulder.

“Comes with the territory, I’m afraid,” replied Celestia, chortling a little.

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll—you know—slip up again?”

Then Celestia laughed a trickling laugh that felt like warm raindrops against Twilight’s ears.

“Hah! I think you need a little lesson in love, my ‘star student!’” she said. “I’ll always be worried about you, I can’t help that. I’ll be worried if you’re safe when you’re off protecting Equestria from some world-consuming evil. I’ll be worried when you storm in from a tough day and say that ‘Everything’s fine.’ I’ll worry about you when you cry in your nightmares, and I’ll worry about you when you leave and I don’t know to where. I worry so much, that I don’t know what I’d do without you, Twilight!”

There was a knock at the door. Celestia rose from the bed. She strode across the room to the door, and held her hoof on the handle.

“But,” she added with a wink, “did I worry that you would stop loving Alya—or me? Never. I knew you couldn’t give up on us that easily. It’s not in love’s nature to give up.”

She opened the door. Luna stepped through, then Alya a moment later.

If I could put into words the feeling of fresh morning dew on your legs that’s not too cold, or the sensation of wind through your feathers the very first time you fly, or the smell of home-baked apple pie in the kitchen that makes you realize it’s finally Hearth’s Warming Eve, then I would. However, those experiences are very unique to you, and I very much hope that you have them some day. But, if I was able to take those glorious feelings and wrap them up into a joyful little bundle bursting inside a tiny changeling’s body, then you would be halfway to understanding how Alya felt upon seeing her mother, alive and well.

Twilight had at least all these feelings when she saw her daughter, and for a beautifully fleeting moment, wondered how she’d ever forgotten them.