Once upon a time, there was a family. A son and a mother that loved each other very much.
“And so the prodigal son returns,” said Chrysalis, monologuing. She sat on her throne, listening to her changelings roaming the hive, trying to find the rogue changeling and his friends. Why did he come straight here? He was always so naive… so distastefully heroic that it gave her headaches. Always asking those little questions like ‘why this’ and ‘why that’. Even as he grew up he kept asking to the point that Chrysalis considered he might have a problem of understanding. Understanding how things worked in the world, understanding why things were as they were, understanding when to give up and when to retreat.
This incursion, for instance. Why come straight to the source? Why not uncover her agents and then come to her with an army? Why go on a fool’s errand and rush towards her sanctum? Didn’t he know the secret of the changeling throne? How smart she was? How great her mastery over magic was? He was coming to her, wasting his mother’s benevolence to let him escape, wasting the last ditch effort of his companions to save their loved ones! How could he be so stupid?
Chrysalis took a deep breath, furrowing her brow as she repeated until she was calm again. Bah! She shouldn’t have cared about his failures, because soon he would pay for them dearly, and rejoin the hive. Everything would be perfect, as they should be.
Yet she couldn’t help but think. He had come here with friends. Despite everything, he had forged bonds in the most unlikely of places and he had prospered for it. Her lessons had not been wasted, and Thorax’s team had made good use of their individual potential even without magic. If anything, he hadn’t forgotten his cunning and he had the energy and the magic to see his mission through.
Chrysalis smiled. A changeling will always be a changeling, no matter what. A changeling would always adapt to the situation, a changeling would always move forward whatever might lie ahead. Yet as pride filled her, it didn’t escape her that he wasn’t leading them. He didn’t lead the events, but trusted on others to follow.
‘How foolish.’ she thought, but sooner or later they would fall.
One day, the son fell in love with a lady. She was beautiful like the moon, and warm like the sun.
So they did. One by one the intruders were secured, with only Starlight Glimmer and Thorax remaining. Quite an interesting bunch. She expected a rebel like him but... a spirit of chaos? A rogue magician previously consumed by power? A reformed madmare who sought to bring equality to the world by force? All of them had ambition, all of them once terrified ponies, all of them tried to conquer the world.
None could lead.
None could command.
None truly knew how to charge forth with their brethren in combat. All of them brats who played with power, but with no vision! She gritted her teeth. She deserved that! She fought! She sacrificed for the ungrateful, the desperate, the scared. She took the initiative while others waited! She planned! She that was never defeated in single combat SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE VICTOR!
She should… but she wasn’t.
Why?
The lady was haughty and uptight. She envied the son’s love for her mother. So she formed a plan.
She was the hero of the story. She was the vanguard of her people, the dark sword of their determination cutting through the shadows, ushering a new era, a new glorious future! It had taken her months, and her efforts had finally paid off. She stood among the pods of her victims, proof of her victory, testament to her genius and leadership. No more would changelings and their hives be in need of love. No more would the progress of their civilisation be hampered by the lack of resources. No more would changelings be second place to the world. Finally, after millennia of infighting and bickering the dark ages were OVER!
They would never beg again.
Finally… the changelings were masters of their own fate. They were FREE!
The lady asked the son for something that would prove his love to her, something invaluable, something irreplaceable. She asked for an irrevocable decision, an irreplaceable part of his life, and a testament to his devotion.
And now the pony that he followed was here. Slowly walking towards her throne, inspecting her surroundings. Behind the pods of her prisoners, Chrysalis narrowed her eyes at Starlight Glimmer, the leader of the unlikely bunch of “heroes”. She let a little bit of goop fall on her and gleefully watched the disgust, the fear, the surprise. Such a delicious maelstrom of feelings gathering around her petty little mind.
“Well well well…” the Queen made her way through the pods and descended upon the stunned pony.
“Now we got ourselves an intruder. WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HER MY SUBJECTS?” On her call the changelings charged, overwhelming the pony and binding its hooves.
“No friendship will save you this day.” The Queen looked down on Starlight.
“You won’t get away with this!” Shouted Starlight in protest.
“Who’s going to stop me? You?”
“Thorax is still out there! He’ll fight to the end.”
“How will he do that…” the Queen leaned closer, and came eye to eye with the enemy.
“When he’s standing right in front of me?” Her horn touched the pony’s forehead, the form shattering into a million pieces. Her wayward son stood before her, shivering silently before her scrutinizing gaze as hundreds of changelings hissed at him.
“You’re no fool to believe I, the mistress of reflections, would be deceived by your amateur illusions? No… you knew this, but perhaps you hoped...” She jerked her head towards her throne, “THAT I WOULD NOT LOOK BEHIND ME LIKE LAST TIME?” And she zapped the real Starlight. If not for the pony’s lightning reflexes she would have been incinerated right where she stood.
Starlight had retreated below the throne, hiding like a little filly, and Chrysalis could feel it. She was terrified of the big bad wolf that was coming.
‘How cute’ she thought. The pony didn’t know the extent of her capabilities to terrorize.
“You know… I could crush the throne right now just to squash you and it wouldn’t even matter. There’s no one else left to oppose me, and no one knows of your coming here.” The Queen approached her throne, her prey gasping for air from her hiding spot.
“But I want to see you suffer for what you did. I want you and Thorax to feel what it’s like to be betrayed. I will put you both in a dreaming sleep and I’ll show you how it is to lose trust and faith in all your ideals. I will repeat that again, and again, and again.” She was so close she could even hear Starlight’s heartbeat.
Her voice was now a sinister whisper, a serpentine corruption of fear creeping into the spines of her enemies. “By the end of it you’ll never be able to trust or make friends with another soul again. I’ll just drop you to the wastelands and watch as you die cursing your fate in the four winds around you. Starlight Glimmer… I will break you.”
“Stop this madness, Chrysalis! What are you even saying? Why are you doing all this?” Starlight blabbered in her panic
She asked for his mother’s heart.
“Why? WHY? You dare ask… “ a smoldering heat wave swept the room as Chrysalis’s eyes found them, a dark green fire swirling within them, “Did you not ask why we have these holes? Did you not ask why our scales our black?”
She jerked her head and within an instant dashed within breathing range of Thorax.
“DID YOU NOT TELL HER ABOUT THE HOLE IN OUR SOULS DEVOURING US FROM WITHIN? OR WAS THIS OMITTED FROM YOUR TREASONOUS BEHAVIOUR?” Thorax winced, shuddering a whimper left his form, something barely intelligible, words muffled in fear. Chrysalis backed up a bit, letting him breathe.
“Speak up already!” she said impatiently.
“I found a way… a way to end our hunger. It’s friendship, it can save us! It can sate our hunger, Chrysalis!” His eyes gleamed as he looked back to Chrysalis. A shadow made by the Queen’s mane hid her expression.
“That’s right!” Continued Starlight, “Thorax shared his love, and it came back to him! He made friends, he managed to find a way not to worry for love anymore.” Emboldened, Starlight turned to the other changelings “You don’t have to live starving anymore we-” she ducked again as another beam grazed her.
“You have inspired enough traitors among us. Don’t you think we’ve already tried this? Thorax isn’t the first ‘Messiah’ to grace us with his presence!” Chrysalis’s response didn’t stop Starlight.
“I know what it’s like to lead by fear and intimidation, and I know what it’s like wanting everyone to follow your way! But if one of you managed to make this work why can’t you give it a try?”
Chrysalis listened as the murmurs of doubt spread themselves among her subjects. What she wouldn’t give for the nightmare to end. How many was it that she had buried? How many had tried the same thing as Thorax and had died throughout the millennia? Hundreds? Thousands? It wasn’t important. What mattered was this…
Not.
One.
More.
“THIS ENDS HERE!” The Queen announced, her hooves thundered the ground below her.
“I’ve heard enough! WE have a goal, and WE have achieved it! WE have Equestria’s most beloved ponies, and now that this goal is achieved you want us to go back? To risk it all on some gamble that my subjects, Equestria’s number one enemy, will find love with them?”
No changeling spoke. Chrysalis shook her head.
“I’m going to end this. I’m going to discipline Thorax, but worry not for I never kill,” she paused for a moment. “I will, however, drain him of all his love.”
Thorax couldn’t escape. He could only watch as Chrysalis approached him. He could only thrash around in vain as she opened her mouth. He could only grunt in pain as Chrysalis begun to draw his love out of him.
“Help me! I can feel it slipping away!” Thorax’s life-force was drawn out of his body and his love was leaking along with it. A purple glimmering stream of love was flowing from his chest as he struggled to catch it with his hooves, to draw it back. His eyes began to sink into his body…
“Please.” he said with groggy breath.
Starlight Glimmer couldn’t stand it. Thorax wanted to share his love with the changelings and Chrysalis was taking it away.
She pressed against the increasingly hesitant guards and spoke again.
“You wanted to share your love with the changelings, you wanted to change your friends, your family! Now’s the time! Share it with everyone!”
And so the stream widened and widened, and the love that now emerged from Thorax radiated from him. In a wave of glorious light Chrysalis was shoved against the wall. The light enveloped him and then…
She saw it.
Chrysalis saw everything. The blackness gave away, the hate, the suffering, the madness, and anger! All the corruption of emotions, the evil smog of untold generations…
She couldn’t hear the words aired, she couldn’t listen to her changelings. Only the same transformation on going over and over and over, it overwhelmed her. She looked down and saw the ground she was standing on did not share the same light.
She wasn’t transforming. She wasn’t a part of the miracle unfolding before her.
Why?
The light blinded her and she winced, her eyes shutting for a moment. She found herself within a luminous blank space, or so she thought. Once everything became clear she saw them. Three tall changeling-like shadows stood before her, three godlike figures of legend.
The middle one approached, with a few regal steps the female changeling placed soft linen cloth from her regalia on Chrysalis’s back, and the latter felt a spark surge in her. The changeling before her had emerald eyes, sparkling with hope. A soft touch of a hoof caressed her cheeks as a faint smile spread on her face. Chrysalis couldn’t resist.
She pushed her head against the changeling mare, the one she had never met, but always knew.
“I’m s-sorry. S-so… sorry.” Chrysalis said, sobbing into Queen Metis’s sunshine-yellow mane. Metis, the Queen of mercy, one of the three greatest rulers of the changelings stood there, comforting her lost child. Her ‘prodigal daughter’ that strayed so far from the path of love. Both her hooves and her radiant white regalia caressed Chrysalis and comforted her.
And Chrysalis realised…
“What have I…”
On his way back to his mother the son tripped and fell. His mother’s heart fell on the ground before him. Suddenly he heard a voice coming from it.
A grand shadow spread overhead and Chrysalis blinked.
The ground cracked, the throne surged with unbridled love. Chrysalis’s eyes darted left and right realizing the hive’s collapse was imminent. The rumbling earth echoed in the halls of the hive, and everyone began shouting.
Chrysalis saw Thorax shielding his friends from the rocks, but he didn’t notice what was coming for him.
If only he’d been two seconds quicker.
As the roof came crashing down, dust spread throughout the hive. It settled, revealing ponies and changelings shielded by Thorax’s spell. But the shield surrounding him...
It was not his own.
He heard gasping breaths behind him, and a hoof poked out from beneath a pile of rocks, directing the horn’s glow to the shield. Thorax turned only to see a red liquid flowing steadily on the black rocks. Thorax’s eyes shot wide open as he tossed the rocks away.
He didn’t want to see it, but when the last rock was removed he heard a clinking sound. The crown of the changelings rolled in his hooves, one of the orbs breaking off from the relic. Thorax ignored it, and lifted the body of his former Queen.
The sight of the broken Queen attracted many, but none dared say a thing. She was a shattered toy, and the younger changelings could only hide behind their elders at its sight.
The Queen’s breaths were getting slower.
“Chrysalis! Chrysalis! Hang on… please talk to me!”
Even so, she tried to stand, to breathe… but coughed up blood instead. It now stained Thorax’s new carapace. But even marred, dusty, and bloodied the Queen looked with a toothy smile towards Thorax.
“Are you alright my son?”
“Are you alright my son?”
The only answer she got was tears falling on her face. She wasn’t his mother, but in her heart they were her children nonetheless.
“I… wanted the same thing as you. To be liberated from the hunger, to save the changelings, but I only did it because it made me happy. That’s why my love didn’t transform you like yours did. My love smothered you. I guess I’m paying for that sin right now?” The Queen coughed up blood again, her expression twitching, and breaking.
“W-what are you saying?” Thorax sniffed, “I betrayed you to achieve my goal, my own f-family, my fellow changelings. If you’re a sinner what does that make me?”
The crown was levitated in the Queen’s magic, the broken orb stitched magically back in place. The Queen gave it all her love with a last smile.
“Thorax, you have to lead them. The Queen is dead, long live…”
Tired, her eyes closed, and her hoof trembled as the crown in it fell on Thorax’s lap.
“The King.”
Author's Note
The story told in italics is a true fairy tale I used to hear. Likely some elderly/religious person told me. It used to touch me a lot. That, combined with a recent dream I had were the driving force behind writing this fic.
The dream had me holding the corpse of my mother while walking forward (in the city I think and heading to the church). I remember I likely screamed, and cursed god/s for it.
I won't lie... I have trouble with my family much like any of you would. But that doesn't change how love works.
Anyway I just wanted to tell you guys what motivated writing this fic (besides the will to at least write something and not be creatively lazy).
