Twilight Sparkle stood in the dark, only her horn's magical aura illuminating the immediate area around her in her magic's purple glow. "Hello? Is anyone there?" she called out, only to hear a thud, scampering, and evil-sounding laughter.

"Where am I?" Twilight asked, seeing a fast movement and hearing more laughter, before an image of the Alicorn Princess Cadence, her long-ago foalsitter and brother's fiancee, appeared on the stone wall. Twilight had sensed something fishy about her today; her blatant disregard of her and appearing to not even know her at all despite foalsitting for her and being her best friend ever since her foalhood, not to mention that she was the sister of Shining Armor, the stallion she was to marry today. Now her suspicions were confirmed when, after turning her friends against her, and in front of Princess Celestia no less, Cadence had teleported her here via a ring of green fire.

"The caves beneath Canterlot, once home to greedy unicorns who wanted to claim the gems that could be found inside. And now, your prison!" Cadence said, following it up with another malicious laugh.

Twilight panicked. "Help! Help!" she called out, running around aimlessly, hoping somepony could hear her.

Princess Cadence only laughed. "It's no use! No one can hear you, and no one will ever think to look for you either! Most ponies have forgotten that these caves even exist, which is why they are the ideal place to keep the ones who try to interfere with my plans!" she said, laughing more.

Twilight Sparkle was confused. "Plans? What plans?" she asked, feeling a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at the way Cadence said it.

Cadence simply gave an evil grin. "The plans I have for your brother, of course."

"Don't you dare do anything to my brother, you... you monster!" Twilight snapped, anger glowing in her eyes.

Princess Cadence kept up her evil grin. "Only way to stop me is to catch me!" she said, laughing as her illusion switched from one rock to another, Twilight having blasted the first solid rock to pebbles with a powerful beam of magic a little too late. "Over here!" the voice taunted, her illusion switching again as Twilight blasted the other rock. "Nope, over here!" It said, laughing all the while.

This time, however, the shattering of this rock led to a pony being revealed to Twilight: a pink alicorn, the very same one who had just been taunting her.

"No! Wait! Ugh! Please! Don't hurt me! Twilight, it's me! Please, you have to believe me. I've been imprisoned like you. The Cadence who brought you down here was an impostor!" Princess Cadence said as she was pounced, cowering before Twilight.

"Likely story!" Twilight spat out, glaring down at her.

"Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves..." Cadence started, Twilight letting her stand up and doing the motions that went with the silly little song and dance she and Twilight always did in greeting; the one they'd done ever since they'd made it up when Twilight was just a foal, including giving Twilight a hoofbump as part of it. Something only the real Cadence would know about.

Twilight Sparkle joined in. "...and do a little shake..." she said as she saw Cadence shaking her rump at her in the final move of the dance, before beaming widely at what this meant.

"You remember me!" Twilight said, before going and giving her close friend a big hug.

"Of course I do! How could I forget the filly I loved to 'sit for the most?" Cadence said, hugging back.

Both of their ears perked up as they heard more of the evil-sounding laughing in the distance.

Twilight stood, puffing up her chest bravely, facing a mine-cart. "We have to get out of here. We have to stop her! Let’s go, Cadence! We have a wedding to save!" she exclaimed, only to be met with a confused look from Cadence.

"A wedding? What wedding?" Cadence asked, looking utterly confused.

"Your wedding with Shining Armor, my brother? We can’t let that impostor marry him! It’s your wedding, not hers!" Twilight said, looking at her confidently, yet dumbfounded at her reaction.

"Why would I be having a wedding with my...friend? Your brother never asked me to marry him before; we've never even been special someponies! We're just best friends and I've never even thought about him as more than that." Cadence asked incredulously, looking as baffled as Twilight was.

Twilight Sparkle was stunned silent for a moment. "W-What!?! S-so this means…that impostor must have mind-controlled him to make him love her! Why did she need to have a wedding with him though? I think she's just up to no good!"

"Then we must hurry! We have to save him! As the Princess Of Love, I can’t let my friend marry with a fake me!" Cadence said stoically, stomping a hoof in emphasis. "Come Twilight, to the mine-cart! Let's get out of here!"

~

Twilight and Cadence rode the mine-cart to its end, Cadence then carrying Twilight in flight before teleporting to another ledge, fooling the mind-controlled bridesmaids by distracting them with a bouquet of flowers, before finally charging into the ceremony and interrupting it just as Celestia was pronouncing Shining Armor and the impostor as stallion and mare.

"Ah don't understand, how can there be two of them?!" Applejack asked from the bridesmaids' side of the alter.

"She's a Changeling!" Cadence exclaimed, pointing a hoof at the impostor; "She takes the form of somepony you love and gains power feeding off your love for them!"

The fake Cadence then had a furious look at being found out, and her back arched as she convulsed, engulfed in a green magical aura, before soon revealing the true self of the fake. The Queen of the Changelings. Twilight and her friends, however, realized after her explanation that she and her hive were going to feed off the love of Canterlot's population, that they had to reach the Elements of Harmony to stop her.

They galloped away to recover the Elements from their vault, just as an earth-shattering crash came from outside, Shining Armor's protective shield around Canterlot shattering just as they headed out of the room.

~

"You'll never get away with this!" Cadence hissed, before getting a conceited smirk from Chrysalis, her hooves bound to the ground with green changeling resin and her horn coated with the same, making magic casting impossible.

"You were saying?" the Queen said to the powerless Cadence and Shining Armor with a smirk, watching as the captured Twilight and her friends were forced to walk towards her. Even Celestia herself was captured, hanging helplessly in a Changeling cocoon above them all.

"You do realize that the reception has been canceled, don't you?!" The Queen of the Changelings said, chuckling evilly as she did, before turning to some of her drones; "Go my minions! Feed!" she shouted aloud, her minions then flying off outside into the chaos of an invaded Canterlot, Changeling drones capturing and feeding off of the pilfered love of the citizens.

As the Queen was monologueing and distracted with her own victory, Twilight was able to help Cadence reach Shining Armor, cutting her binds with a spell and telling her to go to him. "Love will give you strength…" Cadence said, touching her horn with Shining Armor's and converting his love for the fake Cadence into magical energy. He snapped out of his trance, and now having enough magic and focus to re-cast the barrier, blasted away all of the invading Changelings from Canterlot, the Queen included, in a spectacular magical wave.

After saving the land, Shining Armor turned to look at Princess Cadence and hugged her, his love. "Oh Cadence! I’m so sorry for not seeing through her disguise, that she wasn’t the real you!" Shining said, tears in his eyes as he hugged the named mare.

Princess Cadence simply hugged him back, softly petting Shining's crest with a hoof, "It’s OK, Shining. I understand. Nopony here knew about Changeling-kind and their powers before now. It’s not your fault. It's nopony's fault except the Changeling Queen's!"

"...but I still felt bad for mistaking her with you, my future wife…" Shining Armor said with a sigh, "…alright…now that we're done saving the day, should we continue the wedding again?" he asked with a hopeful look in his eyes, trying to brush his hoof over Princess Cadence's cheek affectionately, as she always loved for him to do.

When Cadence blushed and avoided being caressed by him, Shining felt very confused and hurt, finding her looking at him with an unsure expression. "Shining…about that…I know you love me, and that you're having this wedding to prove that, but..." she paused to sigh, "Shining, I've never thought about you as more than a friend…"

Shining Armor was utterly stupefied and felt his heart breaking at that announcement. "W…what!?"

"I'm sorry Shining, and I know this is hard to hear on the cusp of you marrying that fake me, but I've never loved you romantically, just as a friend. It was the fake Cadence that you asked for her hoof in marriage, not me." Princess Cadence explained, giving him an unsure smile, knowing the absolute turmoil his emotions must be in.

"But...but Cadence, I really love you, and you said you loved me! Don’t you remember the time when we started dating three month ago, when you said you've always loved me since we were foals!? Or last week when we agreed on marriage!?" Shining asked, the heartbreak evident in his tone.

"Shining…I was imprisoned by the Changeling Queen for three months…"

"W…what? D…does that mean…"

"Yes, my friend. Shining, it seem like you've fallen in love with the fake me. It’s the fake Cadence that you were dating all this time. The Changeling Queen."

"Oh…now that I think about it, your personality did seem to change drastically three months ago. I think that's kinda the reason why I fell in love with you." Shining said, looking down with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"I 'changed my personality'? Care to tell me how you started to fall in love with fake me? What kind of personality made you love her?" Princess Cadence asked, sounding interested, as the Princess of Love trying to do her job.

"Well, before I met what turned out to be the Queen, I only thought of you as friend, like you clearly think about me, and as a royal princess that a loyal Captain of the Guard like me must protect. You always spent your time with nobles, at high-class meeting, and other royal business. That always made me felt like your status was higher than me, not an equal, impossible to reach and become a lover with..." Shining explained, before looking Cadence right in the eyes, "...but around three months ago, your personality seemed to change. You were more friendly towards me, and very playful. Sometime you even pulled pranks on me! You spent less and less time with your boring royal business, and more time with me. You loved to just spend evenings with me like a very close friend, instead of a Princess with her guard, just coming with me to see a movie together, playing games in the arcade with me, or even visiting the pub for a drink and going to a karaoke restaurant with me and some of my guy friends. You...I mean, that fake you, is a mare that was a lot of fun to hang out with....not to say you aren't, of course. Hanging out with the fake you like that finally convinced me to ask her on a real date...then I fell in love with her... "

"So the fake me, the Queen of the Changelings, is 'more fun' than me, and that seems to suit your romantic tastes more," Princess Cadence said, before looking at Shining, then over the whole audience of the wedding, including Twilight and her friends, "...but how could you, nor anypony at all, see that huuuuge difference between that impostor's personality and mine? Also, don’t you think three months of dating is a bit too fast for you to consider marriage?"

"Well…we might have only dated for three months, but you and I have been best friends for over twenty years, Cadence. It made it feel like we knew each other for a very long time. The fact is, it was me who asked for the fake Cadence to marry me. I just wanted to play a prank with her one day like she did with me, despite knowing it was a bad idea, even with an obviously fake horn-ring made of tin foil, but that fake you seemed to think I was being serious with it..." Shining sighed again, rubbing his forehead with a hoof, "...she seemed very happy and was crying before saying 'Yes!' so many times. I felt too bad with how happy she was to tell her that it was just a prank, and when Princess Celestia was told about my proposal by the fake you, the wedding was quickly prepared. I bought a real wedding ring for the ceremony, and now here we are..."

"Mmmm, I see," Cadence said, " but how can you be sure that it isn’t because of a mind control spell that you like her?"

Shining Armor shook his head firmly. "No, I know our love was real. She didn’t use any mind control on me. What Twilight saw last night really was just her helping to calm my headache that I got from maintaining that huge barrier that covered the whole city of Canterlot for so long, and that daze I've been in all day is from a lack of sleep and magical exhaustion."

"So you aren’t under her spell, and you never loved me in a romantic way until three months ago, when I was replaced?"

"Y…yes Cadence, that's right. Why do you ask?"

"Shining Armor…I think you really did fall in love with this impostor…the Queen of the Changelings," Cadence said with a sigh, "Do you know what spell it was that I cast to gave you the strength to cast the barrier that repel all of the Changelings? It turns out that it was from the power of the love that you held, or possibly still hold, for the fake me. Because you thought she was me…and, well…" Cadence paused as she made a realization, feeling very uneasy now.

"You...just used your love for the Queen to defeat her and blast her away…"

Shining Armor looked at Princess Cadence with horror at the revelation, before deeply thinking for a while, coming to a decision. "Cadence, I…I have to go. I need to know if this love is real between us, even if it costs me my life." Shining said as he turned around and ran quickly from the room, before anypony could say anything to dissuade him.

Princess Cadence gave an uneasy smile as she watched her long-time friend leave, surely heading out to the Badlands, or along the way to them, to where the Changelings had likely landed. "Please go my friend, find her again. If she really is your true love, please keep your love for her and don’t let her go, no matter her species…" she whispered to herself, before then turning to face Twilight and her quintet of friends, as well as the rest of the remaining, and rather confused, guests, Celestia still hanging from the rafters in the cocoon. It would seem she had a royal wedding to officially cancel now, as well as cutting down the monarch from her hanging prison.

There was indeed much to be done to fix what the Queen had wrought on this land.

Author's Note

So begins another story commissioned from me. This fiction was written for the artist vavacung for the picture series "Misguided Love" and converted from a rough script into a story format by me. Also, if you wish to read this alongside the full illustrations (33 full color illustrations) that the artist made, then check this out to find out how. https://vavacung.deviantart.com/art/Pay-What-You-Want-SECOND-WORLD-VOL-7-729175326

~

A false wedding set up by a Changeling Queen? A stallion who may very well love her? Quite a start indeed!