Queen No More

Chapters

2012 Original: Queen No More
2014 Retelling: Broken Without Salvation
2014 Retelling: In The Company Of Hope
2014 Retelling: The Magic of Life

2012 Original: Queen No More

Author's Note

FOREWORD

The following is the original version of Queen No More. It was a one-shot, which means the entirety of the original story is contained below within this first chapter.

I decided to write a retelling of it, which is included in three parts within the other chapters of this story. I wrote the retelling simply because I wished to do so. I did not write it to provide any comparison between it or the original. Neither did I write it to suggest readers choose one over the other. It is simply there should you be interested to read it. You may choose to read the original only or the retelling only or both and it doesn't matter at all in which order you choose to do so. Both versions exist simply for your enjoyment.

To those who may be concerned over such matters, the retelling does contain some slightly darker tones and physical injury that is omitted from the original version. I do not consider the material sufficient for full trigger warnings or tag changes but I do feel some readers may benefit from the heads-up (for the squeamish).

Please do consider grabbing a snack, relaxing, and reading in whichever manner suits you best.

With love, BlackWater

2012 Original: Queen No More

Queen Chrysalis was certainly not new to flying. However, her current mode of flight was very much new to her. It was not everyday that she was sent careening through the skies after being hit with changeling-crushing magic. This may, in fact, be only her second time experiencing it. The first being her defeat at the hooves of the celestial sisters those many years before. It was so many years in the past that she had nearly forgotten about it. As she soared past a flock of birds, she remembered it all once again. Life had never been worse.

“Ah” was the single thought that replaced all others as her flight took a downwards curve. Time to meet the ground. Or rather, time to meet a muddy pond - for that was her destination. She hit it face first and sent globs of mud splattering in every direction. It was fortunate for her that the murky water and mud was deep enough to soften her landing. As she arose from the grimy excuse for a pond, she was proven right. Life had never been worse.

Her hair was soaked and was dripping with wet soil. The holes littered across her legs were now filled with it and it gave her a sickening feeling. She had been so certain that everything was under control. She had all of Canterlot - even all of Equestria - at her beck and call. Most importantly, she had finally been able to feed her children. Yes, that was the most important thing. She had starved herself more than the others in her attempt to infiltrate Canterlot and give her children hope. For a brief moment they had that hope. If only she had not let the glee overtake her and make her so reckless.

She just wanted to survive. She wanted her race to survive. Was that so bad? It was only in her supposed moment of triumph that she had let her emotions overtake her. It was those emotions that had built up her entire life that had led her and her race to ruin. After all, she had lived her whole life scraping the bottom of the bucket, so to speak. By mere threads she had led her fellow changelings to one more day of starvation...just enough food to live another day of agonizing hunger.

Chrysalis had not always been queen and she had seen the last leader of their hive die a broken mare. The previous queen fell to unfulfilled hunger for there was no love for changelings. If their appearance did not drive ponies to hate and fear them then their desperation, born from hunger, would. They tried to be like ponies, as they considered themselves fillies, colts, mares, and stallions. It was no use. They were outcast, forsaken, and wretched.

As the now humbled Chrysalis escaped her muddy landing site, she felt the tears return. She had expelled great magic in those last moments in Canterlot and, as a result, she was now starving once again. Nothing had changed even if her appearance could. Those few moments of fulfillment within the royal city were now gone and she was back to crying. It was not just for herself but for her every child.

The changelings of her hive were not her biological children, but she considered them as such when she was appointed queen. After all, they were her responsibility and she wished to care for them as a mother would. Their cries were so much like a foal that needed its mother’s attention. Just a single grain of wheat or half an oat’s worth of love was not too much to ask.

There were no second chances were there?

A few more changelings fell nearby as they ended their own scenic flights. One hit a tree but the other flew overhead and, by the sound, probably fell through a barn ceiling. He would be fine. It wasn’t like they had cushy lives and most of them were unusually resilient as a result.

However, this particular setback may be more than they were capable of living through since they hadn’t had enough time to feed. They were still starving and were now strewn across half of Equestria after being assaulted by magic. Her hive would need a miracle to make it through this time.

She made her way towards the changeling that had hit the tree. As he finally fell out of the branches and hit the ground on his backside, she addressed him.

“Are you alright, dear?”

The smaller shape-shifter paused in his reply before giving a simple “pfft.”

That was hardly the way to respect his queen but she let it go since the day had been rotten to them thus far. Another changeling approached them via the nearby road. Judging from the purple eye and limping walk, it must have been the one that hit the barn.

“For a...grugh,” he faltered as he winced in pain. “For a while I thought you were actually worthy of being our Queen.”

The other changeling followed his peer’s thought. “There was so much promise before us.”

“But you failed us,” the injured one finished.

This was not happening. It couldn’t. Chrysalis was herself a changeling and thus she thought partially with the hivemind that they all shared. She knew for months that one of her children had taken on a name. Those that took on names were always candidates for leadership. The one that took on the name of Princess Flux - such a tacky title - had wild ambitions of taking leadership of her hive. She had been perpetrating discontent with her rule and now her malice was taking root. She could hear the thought travel like lightning through the hivemind.

She was unfit to be Queen. She had lead them to great opportunity and then messed it up. She was to blame. The hive wanted a scapegoat for their new predicament.

Queen Chrysalis tried desperately to assuage the doubts even as she tried to shake the disgusting mud from her mane. She projected her own thoughts into the hivemind but was immediately repulsed. No!

She was being cut off from the hive. Her starvation, the aches from her fall, and her wounded pride from defeat were all forgotten in an instant when she was threatened with not only losing her position as queen but also being exiled from her hive. The hive meant everything. One would die quickly without it.

You can’t do this, she countered the hivemind. I am your queen. You need me.

There was one more detail - one more reason why she feared separation from her hive. Death was something they had all faced their entire lives, but there was something deeper about being the hive queen that no other pony could understand. It was like being a mother.

No mare could entirely explain what motherhood was like. Every explanation always fell short of the emotion that could only be experienced first-hoof. Her earlier tears returned. She didn’t want to lose her children. They were the children she had fought for nearly her entire life. She loved them even if that love could not feed them. They were the purpose that fueled her existence.

The hivemind had decided. As she watched the two changelings walk away, the depression of loss hit her like a cold axe. She was no longer their mother. She was no longer a part of the hive.

She was no longer queen.

Her stomach grumbled. It didn’t matter. She was no longer any pony of any account. Her life hung by a single thread without any purpose. She could only shuffle slowly down the rural road devoid of any destination.

As if some greater power had the sick love of pouring salt on open wounds, it began to rain. At least it washed some of the mud off.

It was now night and the air had a chill to it. Chrysalis looked up from her stupor when she heard a carriage passing by on the road. It was the perfect insult added to the injury.

It was the now married Shining Armor and Princess Cadance being carted off to their perfect happily-ever-after honeymoon.

Chrysalis only paused her stride long enough to take the emotional blow. Ha, she laughed internally. Some ponies were just destined to have a life that she never would. Ever since birth she had known only pain and suffering. Even as queen of the hive she had never known comfort. She had suffered just as her subjects did. Born as a changeling, she was destined for a miserable fate. With these unarguable thoughts clouding her every step, she continued to wander forward. It didn’t matter what she tried to do since it always lead to the same thing. She would just keep walking down the road - her miserable road of life - until it ended.

Chrysalis awoke beside the road where she had finally collapsed the night before. She didn’t remember for just how long she had continued walking but it didn’t matter now. She had been awoken because somepony had been ferociously shaking her. What could they want? She was not disguised since she had no energy left. Perhaps the pony in question had recognized her and wished to torment her before her final moments were over.

When she turned and saw the pony who had awakened her, she nearly took flight. There was no mistaking that purple mare. It was that very unicorn that had ruined her; the one that had brought the real Cadance from her underground prison. If she could ever blame one pony in particular for her death then it would be this very one. It was Twilight Sparkle.

“Gah!” the unicorn squeaked in fear as their eyes met. She looked as if she was about to run off. The fact that she didn’t must have had something to do with the former queen’s poor physical state.

Chrysalis had nothing to say. Truly if she had anything to say then it would be to the cruel weaver of fate that was so intent on feeding her irony even as she died of starvation. When Twilight remained glued in place with a mixed expression of curiosity and terror, Chrysalis finally spoke.

“Kill me...”

The purple mare widened her eyes. Slowly she crept forward and, for a moment, Chrysalis thought she was actually going to do it. However, the unicorn spoke with resolve instead.

“I’m not going to kill anypony even if you’ve done some really terrible things.”

Was this mercy or torture? The changeling mare was going to die of starvation anyways. It was when Twilight lowered her horn towards her that she was finally confused. Some magic began to work and her physical pains began to ease.

“I would be a pretty pathetic student if I never applied my friendship lessons to real life,” Twilight smiled. The smile wavered as if she was still uncertain about helping the changeling. Regardless, Chrysalis was very certain of one thing about the unicorn. She had strength of character like none other. Unfortunately, she was too exhausted to gag at the unicorn’s personality.

“Why are you doing this?” Chrysalis asked even as she shakily stood up and her fangs bore from her mouth.

“You’re evil but that doesn’t mean that I should be. I’m certain that healing an injured...pony is the right thing to do,” Twilight emphasized “pony” as she tried to find the right way to categorize the changeling mare.

“Right thing...?” the idea escaped her. Twilight thought of her as evil and an enemy of her teacher and her very land and yet she thought helping her was the right thing to do?

“...” Twilight seemed to be thinking of something grave and her expression made her look like she was trying to solve calculus in her head. Just before Chrysalis could speak, she came to a conclusion.

“Follow me.”

They finally arrived at Twilight’s library residence. In reality, the walk wasn’t that long but it was a stretch for the weakened Chrysalis. Whatever healing Twilight had applied had not solved her starvation and she was incredibly weak as a result. Twilight had noticed her companion’s waning stride and had kept an appropriately slow pace for her.

Now that they were back at the library, Twilight’s eyes were quickly swirling. Her thoughts raged with panic.

What have you gotten yourself into, Twilight? The Princess will throw you into the dungeon for this! No, she will praise you for this! You lead the insane Death Queen into your house! No, you made an enemy into a friend!

Chrysalis started to notice that something was wrong with Twilight. The purple mare was nearly having a mental breakdown. She didn’t understand it all but she finally buckled to the floor from exhaustion. The starvation was ringing the bell of death. Whatever hope of life she had now rested with the very mare that had taken it from her.

“GAAAH!” a small dragon screamed in surprise.

It was just what Twilight needed to snap out of her meltdown. “Spike! Calm down. I need you to get me every book we have on Changelings. Something’s wrong with her and my healin-” she stopped short as she noticed Chrysalis was now sprawled on the floor.

“Oh no!” she cried.

Spike was less panicked, but still shocked. “Didn’t she get thrown out yesterday?”

“We need a doctor! Spike!”

“Geez, Twilight. The things you get yourself into...I doubt the local doctor will be much help.”

Twilight countered Spike with her rare icy glare. “Books, Spike!”

However, the dragon just shrugged as he walked to the shelves to begin the search. “She’s starving. All she needs is love,” he countered.

It was a curious and almost comical comment but the assistant had once again proven his usefulness. Perhaps he was more observant than Twilight gave him credit for. Obviously he, unlike herself, had remembered the whole reason that Chrysalis had attacked Canterlot in the first place. It was simple logic but it still took a sharp mind to put the pieces together.

“Do we have any?” Twilight asked desperately as she cradled the mare’s head with her front hooves.

Spike merely leaned around a tall stack of books and gave Twilight the did-you-seriously-just-ask-that look. She was always this scatterbrained when the situation was out of hoof. Her perfectionist personality gave her little calm in emergencies. Chrysalis had obviously gone to great lengths to secure a source of love with her brother Shining Armor. What could she or anypony else do on the spot to save the dying changeling?

Twilight was already beyond the “should I save her” question and was thus wracking her brain for a solution. Her only conclusion was not to her liking. It was crude and had a dicey chance of success - to say the least. When Chrysalis began to breathe unevenly, Twilight knew her time was up. The green-eyed mare had been silent this whole time and it did not bode well. She was obviously slipping from the starvation and would soon go unconscious. No hospital could help a starving changeling.

Twilight moved closer so that she could cradle the mare’s head in her lap. “Chrysalis, don’t try to speak. I know you’re really weak right now so I just want you to listen. I think what happened before with the wedding was horrible and I thought you were evil, but I realize now that I was just as bad. Actually I was probably worse than you were. You were just saving yourself and your subjects from death and I...I was painting everything black and white as if you were the villain and I was the hero.”

Chrysalis didn’t respond but her eyes were still making contact with Twilight’s. The purple mare’s eyes began to water as the weight of the situation began hitting her.

“It had to come to this f-” she faltered as she sniffled. “for me to realize...Chrysalis...”

The black mare’s eyes were closing slowly. Twilight panicked as she realized that the mare’s time was up.

“Chrysalis! Please! I’m sorry!”

Twilight didn’t know that it would feel this horrific to lose somepony, knowing she couldn’t save them. It didn’t matter if it was the same two eyes that had seemed so full of malice before. It didn’t matter if she barely knew the mare. All of the magic she had studied throughout her life couldn’t help her. Death was not just scary. It was sad. Her own tears were testimony.

The green eyes continued to diminish as they closed.

“Don’t go...I’ll...” she choked out the words. “I’ll...I’ll l-love you like a f-friend...l-like a sister...”

Spike watched silently from the other side of the room.

The black mare’s eyes finally closed.

Twilight stayed that way, not watching the time but just letting it flow by. She had only her own thoughts and actions to reflect on. What had she done? Was she so self-centered that she only applied friendship to her five friends in Ponyville?

She did not offer friendship when it would have made the greatest difference - when it would have saved an entire race. Now she held the consequences of her actions within her very hooves. One of her tears dropped and landed on Chrysalis’ crooked horn.

Mere hours previously, she would never have been able to guess what it was like to see somepony die. Even when she fought the likes of Nightmare Moon, Discord, and the changeling queen herself, Twilight never wished them death. She, just like everypony, sometimes thought of killing others in anger but it was always in a rhetorical sense and never realistic in mind or matter.

If friendship is magic then let it grant me one miracle, her thoughts begged.

Her horn glowed with a vengeance and the two mares were quickly enveloped in a purple haze. Twilight sat in wide-eyed wonder as the light that surrounded them grew to a blinding brilliance and then vanished altogether.

She gasped in shock, not believing in the wish she had made mere seconds previous. When Chrysalis opened her eyes, bewilderment plastered the black mare’s face.

“I’m...I’m not hungry...?” Chrysalis questioned herself. She didn’t believe it. It was such an odd and foreign sensation to not be starving. Even when she was manipulating Shining Armor, she always felt a tad hungry. It only added to her confusion when Twilight leaned down and hugged her. She could feel the unicorn’s warm tears against her.

Twilight sniffled, “I won’t. I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” she questioned in a daze.

“I won’t make the same mistake again. We’re friends now - I don’t want enemies ever again.”

“Wait, you?” the changeling was surprised. “...You fed me?”

Spike smirked as he interrupted their conversation. “Friendship is a better meal than stolen love. At least when it’s pure.”

Both mares looked over to the baby dragon in surprise. It was then that Spike held out a scroll. It was like the ones that Princess Celestia sent every now and then to Twilight.

“The Princess sent this summary. She must have done some research on changelings after the incident yesterday.” Finding the remark to be odd, he added, ”Or else she just guessed based on your friendship reports.” Considering Princess Celestia’s age, the latter was more likely.

Twilight protested, “Spike, did you know it would happen?”

“As your number one assistant, I had no doubt.”

Both mares laughed, though Chrysalis was less in the know with the joke.

“Twilight...” the fallen queen started.

“Hm?”

“Can I stay?”

Twilight didn’t know the mare’s situation and she hadn’t thought of what they would do after her health was taken care of. However, she didn’t have any real issue with letting the mare stay. After all, the library was big enough to hold quite a few ponies. It would be a simple matter to let her stay. Thus, it required no further thought than that.

“Of course.”

With the day long over, Chrysalis laid on the cushion she had taken up to the balcony. For the first time she gazed at the stars without contempt in her eyes. She didn’t have to keep living her old life of hatred. She no longer had to loathe the alicorn of the night nor the princess of the sun.

She pushed all thoughts of her hive aside. There was nothing she could do now that she was cut away from them. The hivemind no longer resounded within her mind. It was actually a bit lonely.

“Princess Luna sure knows how to make a beautiful night sky,” Twilight commented as she stepped out onto the balcony. The sight of the changeling was still unnerving for her even if she knew that the mare was not a threat. Chrysalis picked up on the unicorn’s faltered gaze.

“Would you prefer me to change my appearance?”

Twilight buckled her legs and laid beside her. “No. It’d be wrong to treat a friend that way. I want to get used to seeing you as you are.”

The resolve in her voice indicated that she was remembering some prior lesson of friendship. In fact, Twilight was thinking that very moment that her encounter with the changeling was some scheme of Princess Celestia’s. It could have all been an attempt to put Twilight’s learning to the test.

“What’s the blanket for?” Chrysalis asked.

Twilight had draped a throw blanket over her back. The question snapped Twilight out of her thoughts and she leaned her head back to grab the blanket with her mouth. Doing so, she tossed it over so that it covered the black mare.

“Oof,” Chrysalis disappeared under the star spangled blanket. It had been one of Rarity’s generous gifts. The white unicorn knew of Twilight’s love of the stars and had crafted a beautiful blanket on one of her random sewing sprees.

Slowly the black mare’s head popped out from under the sheet and Twilight couldn’t help but giggle. The former enemy of all Equestria looked nothing like she did at the height of her evil marriage-wrecking scheme.

“Huh?” Chrysalis asked confusedly.

“The blanket’s for you. I thought it might be a bit cold out...seems I was right,” the purple mare shuddered. Many quiet moments passed between them as they gazed up to the stars. It was the changeling that finally broke the silence.

“Twilight?”

“Hm?”

“Why have you been so kind to me?”

Finally Twilight got a question she didn’t have to think hard about. It was like getting a simple multiplication question after learning calculus. “Because that’s what friendship is for.”

“We’re friends...” Chrysalis commented softly to herself. It was hard to imagine anypony wanting to be her friend. Even in her hive days she was only respected as Queen. None of her subjects were truly her friends - just responsibilities.

“Friendship tastes different than love,” the black mare continued.

“I don’t think what you experienced was pure love...since it was acquired through deceit I mean...” Twilight speculated.

“Maybe I’ve never tasted true love then,” the thought saddened the changeling. “Will I ever?”

“I’m sure. But you will always have my friendship,” Twilight assured her. Although her attempt to help the formerly evil queen was risky, Twilight had never felt better about taking the initiative. Oh, the letter to the Princess would be very interesting. She even wanted to see the look on the Princess’ face when she read it.

Chrysalis sighed into a smile as she snuggled up under the blanket. Yesterday she had lost everything. Today she had gained a whole new life. Food was no longer a problem with Twilight beside her. No longer did she have to manipulate others because the purple unicorn had sincerely given her friendship.

“If friendship is this good, then I want to taste true love,” Chrysalis remarked.

Twilight smiled as she turned her gaze from her new friend to the breathtaking sky. “So do I,” Twilight added too softly to be heard.

They both lied there for quite some time as they stargazed together. When Twilight began to shiver, Chrysalis realized that she should have shared the blanket earlier. As she offered it and Twilight scooted under the sparkling sheet, she decided that life had never been better.

Yes, as they both cuddled against the blanket under the starry sky, she knew that life had never been better.

2014 Retelling: Broken Without Salvation

Author's Note

FOREWORD

The following is the 2014 retelling of Queen No More. It unfolds in three parts contained in this chapter and the next two.

The original 2012 version is contained fully in the previous chapter. I wrote this retelling simply because I wished to do so. I did not write it to provide any comparison between it or the original. Neither did I write it to suggest readers choose one over the other. It is simply there should you be interested to read it. You may choose to read the original only or the retelling only or both and it doesn't matter at all in which order you choose to do so. Both versions exist simply for your enjoyment.

To those who may be concerned over such matters, the following retelling does contain some slightly darker tones and physical injury that is omitted from the original version. I do not consider the material sufficient for full trigger warnings or tag changes but I do feel some readers may benefit from the heads-up (for the squeamish).

Please do consider grabbing a snack, relaxing, and reading in whichever manner suits you best.

With love, BlackWater

2014 Retelling: Broken Without Salvation

Pain. That was the way of changeling life for so long that Queen Chrysalis had to strain herself mentally to remember anything else, and even then the memories felt dull and made-up. Were they even real? Had she ever experienced fullness not just of the stomach but also of life itself?

She was taller and stronger than any of her fellow changelings. She was, after all, the queen. But she was more than that to her precious hive. She was their master, their mother, their leader, and their hope. Or, at least, she had been. At some point things had started to change and it was not just the outward appearance of her own shape-shifting body.

It was years of segregation, years of starvation, and years of being rejected by the other races that had pushed her past any semblance of sanity in her decisions. Once she had been calm, kind, and even gentle. What she had turned into was a monster that laughed at the pain of others. She didn't just want love to feed her own kind anymore. She wanted to see the ponies squirm and suffer, as if inflicting pain on them was a triumph of justice for all the years of pain she had to endure.

It wasn't a new concept. Ponies had known for centuries that those that endured long and strenuous bouts of suffering would seek ways to vent their frustration. They would seek something or somepony to lash out at in an unusual and indirect attempt af revenge. In some cases it was just an attempt to force others to experience the same pains, as if making another understand one's own experiences was more important than anything else. It was a simple desire to be accepted that was so twisted by the pain that it was hardly recognizable as such.

Queen Chrysalis would never think of such things, though. Her mind was consumed with fleeting curses of hatred as the magical blast of energy from Shining Armor and Princess Cadance blew her and her kind from Canterlot. But even those last shreds of anger were dying out because, truth be told, she was as well.

The queen had thought herself at her zenith, a miracle that she had cheated death and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The scythe would not deal her its fatal blow! Such was her certainty when she had thought Canterlot taken and the ponies defenseless. She had won. The hive would be fed and the ponies would begin to understand in at least some small way what the changelings had been forced to live through. No more were they outcast and kept from the plenty that Equestria offered.

Things changed. The impossible became possible. Love, the greatest source of nourishment for the hive, became its greatest bane. And in that one moment, everything reversed. For the ponies, they saw their own personal hope and freedom. For the changelings, they saw a defeat magnified more than any other and a dark old changeling myth hooded with scythe waiting impatiently. Life had become death and someone was ready to collect.

Thought. It happened in a heartbeat. A thousand ideas could zip along even if Chrysalis wasn't listening in to her hivemind. There could be billions of thoughts there, mixing about to occasionally provide a few golden examples. Each of the thoughts now consisted of “look out below” and “oh, darn.” A few of them flooded with thoughts of pain. Probably the changelings that had the lowest trajectory upon being hit with the royal couple's magic. Those falling within close reach of Canterlot would likely deserve the most pity since they would likely be executed by Royal Guardponies if the fall didn't do the job.

Where she, the queen, was headed...well...that didn't matter. There was nothing she could do about it as the ground, so far below, passed along at lightning speed. At first, the blur below was of a deep emerald green. The trees of Mt. Canter were left behind to those of the summit and then the surrounding forest. When those gave way, there were green fields and then prairies after that. A lake was mixed in somewhere, giving a splotch of blue against the green backdrop. The green gave out like everything else to become dustier colors, though it had been losing its richness to pastels all along.

As the land soared below and Chrysalis soared above, the speed only decreased gradually in tune with her arc. There was a marked difference between having wings and being able to fly in her current conditions. Forgetting all notion that she and her children were now too weak to fly on their own, it was simply not possible to make any corrective action at this point. A bird could fly on its own just fine but could do very little to control its destiny should it be shot out of a cannon a hundred hooves per second. This was not to say that Chrysalis didn't try anyways.

A kind of scrubland desert was taking over as the next biome below when the queen made her first attempt to take corrective action. Perhaps, she thought in disregard to the realizations of her children, she could at least turn her body in such a way so as to minimize damage upon inevitable terrestrial impact. She should never have bothered.

The second she started moving her wings to reposition herself in the air, she was introduced to a new kind of pain. That was saying quite a lot considering how many raw years of it she had been through. She had broken a wing before for certain but never like this. The way the wind cracked its forward spine and literally tore the upper half clean off was...there was no word for it.

Chrysalis screamed. It was not the same scream she had given upon the initiation of this whole event. It was a different scream altogether that said “death is sweet compared to this.” Thankfully, as she was certainly not being appreciative of in the moment, changeling wings were worlds apart from pegasi wings. They were not irreplaceable and could, in fact, grow back to some degree so long as a part of the forward spine remained. She had learned this once from one of the anatomy tutors that her mother forced upon her a few hundred years back. She was not remembering any of it right at the moment, however, because it didn't matter so far as the evil pain was concerned.

Some of the changelings in the hivemind noticed the mental plight of their ruler and, for some strange inexplicable reason, did not inquire whether or not she was okay. They continued their own individual tirades about defeat, doom, and dissatisfaction. Not necessarily in that order.

As more and more changelings ceased their acrobatics, the hivemind became less and less vocal. That was odd. It should have been alight with discussion about what had happened or, at the very least, be in some form of panic. But instead, every second brought with it an unnerving and growing void that Chrysalis had never quite experienced before.

Time was running thin now. Her painful flight was reaching a low arc and velocity. A short strip of open desert had passed by below and reopened to greenery that she could only guess in the hectic moment was somewhere in the vicinity of Neighagra Falls. A few other changelings were crashing with her nearby.

With all of the trees being tall and unforgiving, she knew this part was going to hurt. There was no avoiding collision with a few before she hit ground. Her magic was spent, her body broken. Oh, but that was not enough. It was going to be even more broken as soon as the-

Crack!

Chrysalis hit and broke an upper branch of a pine with the top portion of one of her forehooves. It happened so fast that she hadn't even had the time to attempt moving her leg out of the way and the impact was so blunt that it wasn't until she hit the second tree that it really began to register in her mind. After all, the pain of it had to overcome that of her broken wing. There was little time for either of those, however, because she hit the branch of the second tree at a lower height. One of the holes in her left leg caught on it and wrenched her in a sickening new direction.

Her mind, regardless of all hivemind enhancements, could not perceive everything that happened after that since it was simply a fast blur of color and pain. She saw green. Whether it was the pine needles or the underbrush was unclear. She felt impacts all over her body. More things cracked and broke, some of which were her own.

There was the taste of tree bark and the smell of broken blades of grass while the sharp flavor of blood rapidly filled her mouth. Finally her voice caught up and managed one shrill but gurgled scream before going silent. Nothing came from her for a long time after that. As far as her mind was concerned, there was an expanse of approximately five hours in which she was simply not alive.

When she came to, everything but the kitchen sink wasn't working. That meant that her reawakening was incredibly unpleasant and began with not but one eye opening halfway. She didn't see very well with it because her vision was blurry and determined to shift back and forth even though she was certain that her body was not making those movements yet. There were fresh tears in the working eye, as if she had been crying while she was still unconscious. There was also forest detritus obscuring most of her view because her head was pressed sideways into the soft soil.

Not a single part of her body responded when she tried moving. She panicked at this but it didn't do any good until she got a response from her right forehoof two minutes later. It was more than she got from the hivemind, which was completely silent. Dead silent.

If Queen Chrysalis had anything to be worried about then it wasn't her broken body or the failed invasion. It was the hive itself. Her conscious flared with concern compounded by all of the negatives that were overwhelming her. Some changeling – any changeling – had to respond!

Her right forehoof rustled some piles of dead pine needles as it was dragged over her limited field of view. Not good. There was blood all over it and she could see new unnatural holes as well. She already had too many to begin with and having more meant she was getting dangerously close to death's door.

She kept trying to move other parts of her body so that she could stand. There was no way she was going to be flying any time soon, she could remember that much. As she kept at it, gnashing her teeth through all of the scream-inducing pain, the hivemind finally came back in a quiet murmur. How could that be? It was as if the sounds of her children were being muffled under a thick blanket, keeping her from making sense of the words.

She tried casting her mental voice into the hivemind but nothing happened. It was as if she had become mute there in the one place she knew for hundreds of years she had been safe from the terrors of the real world. Something dropped from beneath her, but it took agonizing minutes for her to realize it wasn't the mushy forest soil she was half buried into. It wasn't anything physical at all. It was everything she had relied on and taken for granted in her long life.

Eventually, she regained control of her neck and shifted her head around to find out why her left leg was not responding. It was dug into the ground at an anatomically incorrect angle. Clearly, the joint at the shoulder was not currently connected. It was funny that she didn't feel that in particular amidst the pain that wracked her entire body.

As it turned out, her body only had to catch up on the overload of damage. She sadly regained enough of her other bodily function to attempt standing up. It was a mistake, but she didn't know it until one of her back hooves twisted a bone fracture and she fell back onto her left shoulder.

She passed out again.

It was dark. Once more, Queen Chrysalis awoke with only her left eye opening and a wall of pain that meant nothing but torment to her. This was going to go on forever, wasn't it? The light of the sun may have been in the twilight phase but it might as well have been night because even that dull glow from the edge of the horizon was dim.

She had no magic and very little of her body left to work with. There was something critically wrong with the hivemind and she couldn't honestly expect help from her children anyhow. She was their leader. She was supposed to be taking care of them. And even if they could help her, the closest one that had been with her in the air had probably landed a good five thousand hooves away. There was no guarantee he had survived.

She tried to be more careful this time. Instead of standing, she crawled forward with her right hoof. It ached badly but so did everything else. She had to do something about that left leg if she was going to survive but she didn't want to pass out again either. After some very delicate testing that wound up excruciating anyways, she found that it was her rear left leg that had fractured. Her right one was still good!

“Thank The Spinner,” she gurgled in her beaten voice. It was the first thing she had spoken in quite a while, not being able to help expressing some kind of relief among all of the immediate problems.

She could have worried at any point about ongoing bleeding or internal injuries but any such thought was utterly pointless. She couldn't do anything about such things if they were a problem and she didn't think they were fatal since she happened to be currently alive. Weak reasoning but it was a waste of time to fret over matters that were out of her control.

A few more hooves distance of crawling brought her to another pine tree's thick and slightly damp moss-covered trunk. Chrysalis positioned herself up against it using her right limbs and used her teeth to break off a low branch that was thin enough to remove but thick enough to clench in her mouth. She could focus on digging into it with her teeth while she did what needed to be done.

There was no way she could get to any place with love to steal for regeneration so long as she had to crawl on just her right-side limbs. She might be able to force a splint for her back leg if she got something to bind it with but, right now, her best bet was to reattach her left foreleg at the shoulder. If she passed out again, she only hoped it wasn't for half the night.

The tall changeling ground her right rear leg into the soil until she had good leverage. Her chest was pressed into the tree trunk at an angle that would allow her the best position to do the deed. Never in her long life had she needed to pop a bone back into a socket but she figured it wasn't as easy as a quick tap. She angled her left side down towards the trunk and reached over to the limp limb with her opposing forehoof. She had been breathing heavy this whole time but only now did she take even greater pants as she mentally prepared herself.

It happened as quick as she wanted it to. She grabbed the top of her left foreleg as best as she could with one hoof and no magic, the pain so immediately searing that her vision started fading just as fast. At the same time as she touched the limb and moved it up to the socket, she thrust with all of her body weight off of her right back leg. The stray limb crashed into the hard tree and mashed into the joint. It did not, however, pop in.

The pain was freshly acute and Chrysalis lost vision out of her one good eye again. When her body knifed sideways because of her loss of bodily control, the leg made a magical little pop and fully reattached. She realized this fifteen minutes later when she came back around to consciousness and also realized that she had not, in fact, hit rock bottom yet. For now she had three usable legs. Painfully usable legs. She tried not thinking about that word but it wouldn't get out of her mind any more than it would get out of her body. Pain.

The left foreleg was, of course, usable only in the sense of her using it or dying. It was pounding with so much tear-inducing sensation that she considered death as an immensely viable option. Regardless, it was still better than putting any weight at all on that rear left one. Her vision went in and out very time even the slightest tap went to it.

She still couldn't stand due to her condition, knees not being able to take her weight, but she could half crawl and half crouch along much faster than she could before. With the possibility of movement came the question of where she needed to go. She needed some kind of love to leech off of immediately and that meant some pony house or establishment.

She had no clue where the closest one was. Her memory of her flight only involved blurs. She didn't even remember seeing the trees from above because there was...something wrong with her memory. Finally, she realized that she didn't know why she wound up where she was. There was the invasion of Canterlot. She knew that. But how had she gotten thrown out here?

Chrysalis paused and squinted. Her right forehoof slid up to her head and she felt more wounds and crusted blood there. Her horn was jagged as usual but otherwise fine. Ah, she found her conclusion. There was a searing bump hidden in her mane on the top of her head. Now she had a concussion as well. In a nutshell, it just wasn't her day.

The queen continued limping and crawling along the forest with the impossible hope of finding somepony to work off of or perhaps even one of her changelings if she was particularly lucky. She wasn't sure how luck could play into any of this since she was obviously cursed from birth but, what the heck, it couldn't get any worse...right?

At some point she started singing as she carried along. Her voice was full of cracks, her mane a tangled mess of sticks and leaves, and her mouth tasting always of blood. She sang anyways with words full of mixed brokenness and hysteria.

“This...”

Something tugged at her one operational eye.

“This...day...”

She sniffled to keep her nose from running. It was one more place she didn't need blood to come out of.

“...day...is going to be...”

New tears started slowly dripping down, having to work their way first past the dirt and dried blood on her face.

“This day...my day...my...”

She chocked up as she limped along the now pitch dark forest alone. Something new had broken and it wasn't her body.

“My wedding.”

She giggled in a daze, spirit crushed.

“My...Shining Armor? Where are you?”

Chrysalis stopped in her tacks. Endless seas of pines surrounded her and nopony was in sight, but she looked suddenly panicked. Something was incredibly wrong. The hivemind was silent again and her Shining Armor wasn't with her. Her memory was telling her that he was supposed to be with her. She wasn't supposed to be alone.

“Shining Armor! We're getting married!” the changeling cried loudly in wide-eyed horror at his absence. “We can't get married if you're not here with me!”

She started crying bitterly. As she bawled, she slumped down onto the forest floor and cried out for the white stallion repeatedly.

“This day was going to be perfect,” she sobbed. “Today is our day. Our special day...”

The tears ran out, the pain kept on, and she laid in a blank-stared shock until a little laugh crept up from her grainy throat. It grew until she was laughing hard. It didn't matter that her vision was filling with black dots. She could hardly see them anyways because it was already nighttime and the moon was not generous where she was.

“I love you, Shining Armor!” she laughed out hysterically. The act made her feel freshly hurt all over. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

“I love you!”

Chrysalis didn't remember how she got there. Her mind didn't hold things anymore and the hivemind was far away from her. She forgot how to walk properly, which was a good thing considering her back leg that was still broken. There was the feeling that she had something she really hated but exactly what that was...she just couldn't remember.

It was morning. She knew that because she was at the edge of the forest. The sun was rising with an annoying glare that seemed to have it out for her. With no more trees to block it out, it was like a slap in the face. But she had the urge to stay where she was because there was still a shrub big enough to hide her and the carriage path was right there as well. She forgot why that was important to her but she was dying anyways and so figured that it didn't matter.

It made sense. Something did. Perhaps she hadn't already passed into the stars because of her battle-worthy age or maybe her strong passive magic kept her alive. Whatever it was, it was just about gone. Her memories were badly jumbled now and she saw ponies mixed in with the memories of her changeling hive. There was a white stallion in a lot of them but she didn't know his name. There was also a pink one but she never talked for some reason.

There were others as well, such as a crazy pink one different from the other and a hard-working orange one. A white unicorn mare seemed to fuss over her wedding dress while a shy yellow pegasus was doing something with small birds. It was unbelievably bizarre. There was also some blue pony painting on a big canvas. She was using a wide variety of colors but her painting looked like a mess. There were depictions of starvation and death mixed with hatred and evil glee. The ponies in the painting were badly messed up.

But something caught Chrysalis' attention as she laid in the over-sized bush. There was this one purple pony that visited her every day. She was very special because she would come over with flowers to her hive chamber and tell her that everything would be okay because she loved her. The unicorn mare was called Twilight Sparkle. She was nice.

Chrysalis began crying, though her tear ducts didn't have much to give. How could she forget Twilight? She was the most important pony in her life. She had even organized all the plans for their wedding. They were going to be married! She had to say goodbye to Twilight before she closed her eyes for the last time. At the very least, she had to tell Twilight that she would always love her even after she was gone.

Wedding...wedding...what wedding?

The sound of carriage wheels started emanating from the distance. Something was coming down the path. Chrysalis didn't know what it was but her heart picked up pace rapidly. She moved some of the shrubbery with a forehoof so that she could see whatever it was. She couldn't get up even if she wanted to and had to settle for turning her head and hoping for a good view.

Looking through a thick bush with one good eye didn't provide the best of visuals but she could positively make out the fact that the carriage rolling along was a big expensive one. The ponies that were inside were probably important royalty. What she found interesting was the feeling that she got from the occupants as they rode straight past her hiding shrub.

It was love.

There were two ponies in love within the confines of the vehicle. Perfect!

Chrysalis' horn lit with a green glow as she began a shameless siphon. Normally, such an indirect approach to feeding would provide minuscule nourishment, but something about this pair was powerful. Their love for each other was as deep as a bottomless well. Chrysalis would have taken a moment in awe if she wasn't dying in a shrub beside the road. As she was, she only cared about stealing as much of the emotion as possible before the carriage was too far away.

Eventually the changeling did lose her magical reach on the pair, but it was not before she had taken enough of it. The emotion had been bleeding over while the carriage was passing by and Chrysalis now had an active store of magic which she wasted no time at all in using. She was hundreds of years old, a changeling queen, and a master of powerful magic that even the world's best would find challenging.

Chrysalis' horn lit again with a fierce green and wrapped her entire body in a magical cocoon. It blasted apart a minute later to reveal a healed changeling queen. Well, healed only in the sense that she was farther from death's door than before. She was still covered in dirt, sticks, leaves, and blood. Broken bones remained broken and her memory wasn't much better. She did, however, find it easier to breath and she also had the strength to crawl back out of the bush. A few more precious moments had been stolen from greedy death and those moments might just make the difference for her survival.

Her first thought was to follow the carriage, but she quickly saw it in the distance and realized that it was too fast and too far away to keep up with. She had to survive, though. Perhaps she could resume her search for changelings or pony settlements. It was as she was restarting this plan that she tripped on some half buried rock and landed backwards on her bad leg. She cried out vocally and quite loudly.

Something made an “aha” sound from somewhere in the the sky and raced towards her. Chrysalis didn't even notice until it landed in front of her face. She had been too busy cursing herself, life, and whoever had it out for her. She also cursed pain itself for being a pain. She wasn't original in her curses but she figured she deserved to be a little rudimentary in that regard.

“Chrysalis,” buzzed some voice above her.

The queen looked up with an annoyed expression to find that the two black hooves in front of her belonged to an actual changeling. He was the one that had been falling with her just before she hit ground. Wait. Was that something that had happened? Her head was hurting in the most peculiar way.

“Chrysalis,” the non-descript changeling repeated, as if the name was distasteful. “It is our collective decision that another candidate is best suited to lead us as Queen. Your leadership has lead only to ruin and you are hereby banished indefinitely. Words of our new leader.”

Chrysalis blinked and then did so again. She tried to forcefully stand up but, unsurprisingly, found she couldn't. The pain from falling on her bad leg was crippling. She wanted to wring the puny child's neck for his insolence but she didn't have the strength for that either. She was powerless and the other changeling seemed to both know and enjoy it.

“I've waited my whole life to say that,” he went on with an infuriating little glee. “I never liked you, Chrysalis. Our new queen is making me one of her royal assistants for this!”

2014 Retelling: In The Company Of Hope

Princess Flux is our new Queen. She will lead us to victory and prosperity.”

The arrogant worm of a changeling deserved a thousand deaths for his mockery. Chrysalis was in critical condition and he just stood there smugly denouncing her from her own hive.

“Well, that is all,” he finished. “I have better things to do now than watch the last moments of a decease.”

Chrysalis boiled so much inside that she contemplated using all of her last strength to kill the blight of a changeling. She would die but would have the satisfaction of taking him with her. Unfortunately, either in an attempt to leave quickly or in anticipation of her rage, the drone leaped up on his mostly undamaged wings. He even snickered at her as he twirled off in a dart for the horizon. She didn't see him anymore after about a half minute.

The next time she attempted to crawl, the pain came back from under the mask of adrenaline it had been hiding beneath. The offending changeling had been good for one thing. The anger he incited made her forget some of the pain for a short while. With it back, though, she nearly passed out from the intensity.

“Gah!” she shrieked as she managed to pull herself onto the road. It kept getting worse and worse. There was nothing left for her now. Even if she had all of her strength back and was in perfect health, she could never force her hive back into line. The hivemind would be in full agreement and without her position as the queen, she had no persuasion in it. There was no going back.

There was no going forward either. Her legs gave out, not even allowing her the ability to crawl. So she just laid there on the middle of the carriage path. Some of her wounds had decided to open up again, as if she needed an extra push to die. That was the last thing she could laugh about, but her voice escaped her as her body began shutting down. Nothing was what her mind became clouded with. Nothing...

Until there was a name.

A face.

A twisted memory.

A small purple unicorn with the most peculiar star for a cutie mark.

“They forgot the tickets,” Twilight Sparkle mumbled to herself as she was drawn along in the cab-like carriage. Her front legs were crossed over in indignation. “Only my brother would forget. Only my brother.”

“I don't know,” Spike yawned from his opposing seat. He looked about ready to faint from sleepiness, which was fitting for a dragon his age. “I thought it was kind of both their respons...respon...”

“Responsibility,” Twilight finished for him. “If you're that tired then just go to sleep, Spike. It'll be a while before we get to Fillydelphia. I just hope we can catch them before they start going north for their honeymoon tomorrow.”

Spike yawned again as he repositioned himself to lay down on the coach bench. It was, thankfully, cushioned even if said cushioning was well worn and getting a bit thin. “Why not have it flown Pegasi Express or something?”

“That,” Twilight was about to lecture him about his bad ideas but then stopped herself. “Actually, that would be an excellent idea.”

It was just as she was trying to fathom how such a simple and obvious plan could go over her head so completely that the carriage jerked to a wrenching halt. Twilight caught herself with her forehooves just before she introduced her horn to the opposing wall of the cabin.

“What in the name of-” she began to complain.

There were two strong stallions pulling this particular carriage since it was a long-route transport between cities. The passenger mare could hear them talking. Whether it was for the silence of the middle-of-nowhere night or the fact that their voices were raised in alarm was irrelevant. Twilight heard them clearly.

“Sweet Celestia! Look at the size of it!” one said in a conspicuously horrified tone.

“Is it alive? What do we do?!” worried the other.

“What's going on?” Twilight called to them as she leaned out of the carriage door's window. It was dark out and, since the cabin had an internal light, she had to squint to try to see anything outside. All she could see was that they were nowhere near civilization and the two carriage stallions were unhooked from the vehicle. They were also a little forward down the road.

“Stay in the cab!” the first stallion shouted back to her. “Lock the door!”

To Tartarus with that, Twilight decided. She had just gone through a living version of it during the failed changeling invasion and had, in fact, been to Tartarus before to return Cerberus. She legitimately believed there was nothing out there that could top what she had already faced. Honestly, she thought to herself, what had not happened to her already?

With a click of the cab door, Twilight stepped out onto the moonlit road.

“What're you doing?” Spike asked in concern from within the carriage, far more awake now from the jolting stop.

“Getting us moving again,” Twilight answered with flat voice and brows.

Neither stallion noticed her coming yet. One was still half-panicking and the other was offering ludicrous solutions.

“Drag it to the side? Go around? Could we just roll over it?” he tried to decide.

Twilight came up between them. “What kind of rock is it? A boulder? Honestly,” she grumbled and scared the two unsuspecting males. Her vision was still adjusting to the dark and all she could see so far in the dusty road was a black lump. A big one, but still a black lump.

“You need to be in the cab, miss!” the first stallion ordered insistently now. “It's not safe.”

“Safe from what exactly?” Twilight waved him off as she stepped closer to the thing. Her eyes adjusted, less floating dirt obscured her view, and the moonlight hit it better as one of the stallions moved from blocking the source of illumination.

“Miss-!” the second Earth pony male stretched out a hoof to her shoulder.

Twilight's face got in almost close enough for her nose to touch the thing and that was when she started to realize what the black lump was. She was looking at two massive eyelids, both closed. She felt air move from two nostrils. Her blood ran cold. The thing was breathing faint and haltingly. Twilight's mouth lost all moisture and her throat seized up.

She had been wrong. She thought herself unbreakable because of what she had survived but, now that she was faced with it once more without any of her friends at her side, she found herself paralyzed in fear. Her own breaths started matching the changeling's in broken patterns. The stallion that had reached for her finally pulled her back. She almost tripped backwards, still in shock.

“Get back in the cab,” he said with a stern voice and then looked over to his fellow driver. “We'll just move it aside. It's dead anyways.”

“Yeah...” the other replied with less assurance.

Twilight stood behind them now as they moved forward to grab the thing. They began pulling and shoving it towards the bushes beside the road. Twilight's own mind was reeling. It was a changeling. A changeling! They had all been thrown into the sky...

What comes up must come down.

The thought was just Twilight's usual logic at work but it was what set all other thought in order. It prompted her to break out of panic and think things through. The changeling had come back down out here. It was dead. She was safe.

Wait a moment.

It wasn't dead. It had been breathing. Barely, but it had been breathing. It would probably die soon. That was good, right? No, that didn't sound right. Why was she considering death a good thing? Because the changelings had posed a threat? Because they had done horrible things? That was natural logic, right?

A thousand words came to Twilight all at once as a spark flew in her eye. They were the words of her friends and family. Her parents were telling her to be understanding. Applejack was telling her to be strong. Rarity was telling her not to be afraid to give and Rainbow Dash was telling her to be bold. Fluttershy was telling her to be calm and kind. Pinkie Pie was telling her to do the unexpected. Cadance was telling her how important love was.

Twilight didn't know if what she was doing was smart but she did know it was right. Tears formed in her eyes but they were not for anypony but herself. She was not just scared about the steps she started taking towards the two stallions dragging the limp body. She was terrified.

She had never faced this kind of situation before. She had never had to make this kind of decision. If she turned away then everything would be fine. She would be safe...but then her heart would wear a scar, forever reminding her of how she had ignored all of those voices. By going forward, she risked her life. She could die if anything went sour.

With shaky hooves and trembling voice, she spoke. “I-it's n-not...”

“Get back in the cab!” the stallion on the left barked.

“It's not dead!” Twilight countered, tears of fear now dripping down her cheeks. This was not like all the moments when she learned something about friendship. This was scaring her. What if she was wrong? “We need to help it.”

“What?!” both drivers looked at her as if she was outright insane.

“We need to save it!” Twilight insisted as she rushed up to it and lit her horn with some basic medical magic. She didn't know much but she could check some basic things like pulse and wounds, assuming changelings were not too different from ponies when it came to those sort of things. Overall, she didn't have a clue what she was doing. But amidst all the feeling in her chest that told her to run away, she stood her ground.

“It's a changeling,” the stallions insisted. Then one of them added, “it's better off dead. We're better off if it's dead.”

Twilight's heart was still running faster than a rabbit and it started giving her a headache. She tried her best to ignore it and gently grabbed the large changeling so that she could support the neck. When the stallions tried physically interfering again, attempting to pull her away, she used up all of the boldness she had left.

“You two go back to the cab!” she shouted with forced anger. “Or I'll have my dragon burn it to the ground!”

It was an incredibly stupid thing to say and, given time, Twilight could have come up with something far better. But the adrenaline of the moment allowed it to work because neither stallion suspected Spike was incapable of doing so and both found his presence curious, mysterious, and fearful all at once. They looked to each other for a moment and then split back to the driver hookups on the front of the vehicle.

One of them did, however, remark as they went back. “You want to die? Fine. This is on your head, lady.”

As Twilight winced to levitate the large heavy lifeform, she admitted the male was right. This was on her. If something went wrong then it would solely be her fault for helping a changeling. But she decided that if she had to die for saving someone's life then that was something she'd be proud to bear on her gravestone.

After that, neither stallion helped her at all even as they watched her struggle step by step back to the carriage cabin. She dragged her hooves and walked almost in a crawl. Her horn was sparking and frizzing out under the weight of the changeling she had managed to half drape over her back and support with her magic. It wasn't working too well and she didn't have a clue what to do when she got it back to the cabin. She tried fixing that problem as she went but it was hard to do while straining physically and magically. She wasn't used to doing much of the former, which made the latter much more difficult.

“What's going on?” Spike called out when Twilight got close enough. He too started to see what she was carrying while he leaned out of the door's window. The form was made visible by the light that emitted from the inside of the cabin out onto the dusty midnight road. “Holy horsefeathers...” he gasped with wide eyes.

“Open the door,” Twilight mumbled with a deep voice due to the strain. She felt ready for her legs to give out under her.

“But that's-!”

“Do it!” Twilight growled, taking the final steps up to the entrance.

Spike was in full panic mode and his claws slipped repeatedly on the door handle as he fumbled with it until it opened and he nearly fell out of the cabin. Twilight forced one last push with her magic to levitate the changeling up from her back and onto the forward seating bench in the carriage. After the body was settled carefully into place, Twilight nearly collapsed on the dark roadside. She had never known how incredibly taxing it was to handle an unconscious body before, especially one so large. Still, she managed to crawl her way pathetically into the cabin with a little pulling assistance on Spike's part.

“We...have to...hurry,” Twilight panted.

The small dragon, returning his panic towards the new occupant of the vehicle, started hyperventilating. “This is bad. This is bad. This is bad!”

“Quiet,” Twilight ordered as she leaned over and moved her hooves across the carapaced being. There were a lot of wounds. That was obvious. What worried her most were two things in particular. Firstly, she didn't know anything about changeling physiology but she was pretty sure that one rear leg was pointing in the wrong direction. It was broken badly. Secondly, there were multiple lacerations to the back of the head and some kind of scabbing further down on the neck. With ponies, that kind of injury could mean death or serious damage to the nervous system as well as the brain.

“What are you d-doing?” Spike worried as he started biting his claws.

“I don't know,” Twilight gave an Applejack-worthy answer. “I'm being stupid. Really stupid.”

Spike wanted to say something else to express his absolute horror but the purple unicorn shouted out really loud to the drivers outside.

“To Ponyville! And hurry!” she commanded.

There was some mumbled answer mixed with a complaint or explicative but it fell on deaf ears. She felt the carriage turn around on the road and start racing back they way they had come.

“What are we going to Ponyville for?” Spike now worried about something else.

“I have books there,” she put simply. “I don't know. Maybe I can find something. The hospital's doctor might be able to help too.”

“Doctor?”

“I can't figure this out on my own, Spike! I only know advanced pony anatomy and first aid!” Twilight started panicking. She thought first to go to Princess Celestia but then imagined a thousand terrible things happening. First she would get scolded then her rescue subject would die without treatment then she would be suspected of being a changeling herself...

“We're dead,” Spike said finally with a calmer tone. He resolved to that inevitability.

Twilight sniffed deep because her nose had run at some earlier point. She kept checking over the changeling queen with every second destroying any hope of helping her. Of all the look-alike changelings she could have come across, why did it have to be the one that was different? Why did it have to be the queen?

She noticed a wing was missing. It wasn't just broken. It was gone. There was a small stem sticking out from the carapace but literally nothing else. And then, at that very moment with her forehooves on the changeling's midsection, she felt the shape-shifter's breathing go into some sort of convulsion.

Twilight's eyes raced around, gears in her mind turning desperately for what to do. She should have taken those emergency medical courses all those years back rather than trading them for tertiary calculus classes. Maybe the medical knowledge would have helped her now. Instead, she just froze up. The queen began sputtering painful croaks and coughs while choking to inhale. Twilight had never seen somepony actually die but she imagined this was what it sounded like because simply hearing it was putting ice in her chest.

She cried at her own inability as she slumped against the changeling, holding on to it uselessly. The tears were accompanied by a moaning from deep in her throat. Maybe if she had been able to return to her logical mind then she wouldn't be undergoing this. But her logic did not save her resolve this time. It was not so much the possible passing of the nemesis queen that so unwound her as it was her failure to save a life. Changeling or not, this was death and it terrified her. She was helpless before it.

She didn't know when it happened because the carriage was bumping along the road and her own sobbing had caused so much heaving that she didn't notice the change. The breathing had stopped. The changeling was still as stone.

Eventually, Twilight looked up from where her face had pressed against the being's side. She didn't note the stillness of the body immediately because she became transfixed by something else. The jagged horn that was protruding from the queen's head was pulsing with a green electricity. It frizzed and sparked not too unlike Twilight's horn had earlier.

Suddenly it grew outward in a grand light show, lightning reaching out to hit various points in the cabin. Twilight went rigid in the moment and didn't have the reaction necessary to move away. Spike leaped from his seat with the fastest jump he had ever made in his entire life. He leaped to his surrogate mother.

“Twilight!” he yelped in fear. He wanted to push her away or at least shield her from the magical lightning. Anything to save her. But he was struck by a bolt and blasted against the other side of the cabin before he could reach her. Somehow he managed to hit the cushion of the seating even though the trajectory shouldn't have been right for it.

Twilight was also hit by a bolt at the same time. Several, in fact. They didn't hurt even the tiniest bit and actually felt rather warm and tingly instead. Her eyes glazed over with a green hue and she saw places she had never seen and heard voices she had never heard. There were a thousand faces that all looked very much the same and yet she knew them each individually. In her heart, she felt a desperate love for them and then it was severed all at once.

That was when something gripped her hard. She could see enough through the haze in her eyes to see it was nothing physical. The changeling still lied still. And yet there was a clawing on her inside. In one last disturbing moment, Twilight heard a voice in her mind whisper her name. It was a buzzy voice she could only have remembered in nightmares if she had the occasion to experience them. Then it was gone.

The green lightning finished and the cabin went quiet. There was no green light at all anymore and Twilight had to blink herself to reality. Her feelings were mixed and confused. She had felt terror towards the still shape-shifter laying on the bench before her. She had also felt hatred and reluctant pity. But she had felt a desperate sympathy too. The part of her that she shared with her friends told her that she should feel sympathy. That she should do what she could even if this being was an enemy.

Now, it didn't matter anymore. The queen was no more. Was that lightning then just a dying spasm of magic?

She was breathing.

Twilight didn't smile or react in any other way at first. She just sat there between the seat benches dumbly. She didn't even hear Spike mumble a “what happened” as he came back to himself. The rise and fall of the changeling's chest cavity was still labored but was no longer in convulsions.

The queen's head laid sideways on the seat and the visible eye appeared badly marred. It was closed tight. But, when Twilight finally slumped backwards in relief that her rescue efforts were not in vain, she could see a tiny bit of the other eye against the cushion.

It was half open.

It was looking at her.

Now Twilight finally felt her blood cool again. The changeling's end was staved off for now but she was also conscious. What was she going to do? The unicorn only thought as far as the saving part. She had no contingencies.

“Twilight!” Spike called louder. “Are you okay?”

The purple unicorn gulped. “Y-yeah...”

A sound came from the changeling's mouth. She didn't move and the sound was very coarse and full of gurgles. She repeated it in chokes.

“T-w-ilight...”

Spike jumped to his feet and tried to assert himself between the mare and the changeling but Twilight stuck out her hoof and held him back. It sent a shiver up her spine to hear her own name on the queen's lips, but she kept vigilant.

“I kn-ew,” the queen continued in painful sounds. Her good eye closed again. “Y-you'd save m-me...”

Now that was a very weird thing to say. What could possibly have given her that notion? The small dragon fell silent and Twilight leaned up towards her enemy. She drained away as much fear as she could, convincing herself the one before her was empty of power as she was.

“You're the queen of the changelings, aren't you?” she asked close to her face where they could speak easily in soft voices.

The eye remained closed. “Wa-s...Chry-salis...”

“Chrysalis?” Twilight furrowed her brows. The carriage hit a larger bump and she had to brace herself against the bench with her forehooves.

“My name,” the changeling came back a little easier but in a single difficult breath.

“Chrysalis,” Twilight repeated the name, now knowing it was one. “I want to save you. How can I help?”

She knew it was a question that made her sound dumb but it was the truth. She needed some information if she was going to be able to assist in any way. Then she heard an odd buzz-like croak from the changeling's throat. It almost sounded like a laugh.

“Why?” Chrysalis groaned.

“Because I believe it's the right thing to do,” Twilight answered, ready to defend herself against any argument. “I don't believe my dislike for you makes it right to let you die when I could do something to prevent that.”

“You,” Chrysalis coughed on her own word. “You don't dislike me.”

“What?” Twilight squinted. Had she heard that right? “I'm pretty sure I do. You did some very evil things,” she recalled, trying to remember that it was yesterday rather than today based on how late in the night it inevitably was.

“I saw,” Chrysalis went on unabated. “Your...heart.”

“Huh?” the unicorn tilted her head.

“It's pure,” the former queen opened her good eye halfway again. “That's why you saved me. You're the only one that would.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Twilight shook her head. “You're not making any sense.”

“Shining Armor...”

Twilight's face turned more apprehensive. “What?”

“My Shining Armor...” the changeling repeated, now beginning to sob. Her large open eye wavered in some distant horror.

There was no doubt in Twilight's mind that something was seriously wrong with the pseudo-pony beyond her established actions of evil. “Not your Shining Armor,” Twilight corrected her. “Now tell me what you're up to. I'm willing to save your life but I won't let you harm anypony-”

“Twi....light...?” Chrysalis moved her eye so it latched onto the unicorn's. She spoke as if she only now noticed the mare was there at all. Her eye widened again as if she was shocked before she turned to a look of joyful relief. “Twilight!”

The mare found herself shrinking back a bit when the changeling tried reaching out with a forehoof. The leg didn't make it far, though, before it seized up from injury.

“Twilight?” Chrysalis asked in worry. She didn't know why the mare had shied away.

Spike couldn't stand it. “What's going on?” he asked with a concerned wobble.

“I don't know,” Twilight squinted in confusion.

“Don't you...” Chrysalis began to sniff and cry. “Don't you love me, Twilight?”

Something about the tone and piercing eye began to disturb Twilight deeply in an entirely new way. This was nothing like the strong malicious spirit that Chrysalis had exuded during the invasion. This was something terrifying on a completely separate level. Chrysalis wasn't just physically ruined. She was mentally broken too. Was this what happened to changelings on the verge of death? Did it have anything to do with that bizarre surge of green magic?

Twilight dared to get close again. “Who are you?” she tried again, muting the sound of the racing carriage she was in to hear the next words carefully.

“Chrysalis,” she answered with a tentative buzz. “Your Chrysalis.”

“My...?”

“Don't leave me,” the changeling started sobbing all over again. Her working eye kept sealing up because of the tears. “Never leave me again...”

Twilight lowered her gaze as her mind grasped for a logical explanation. Perhaps some clue to a possible charade. But every possible deceit she could dream of failed to involve such unstable projections. The purple unicorn stretched a forehoof out and traced it along one of the changeling's bruised sides. Her magic began analyzing again and reported the same status. Those head and neck injuries might very well be the culprits after all.

It seemed her charity towards the former enemy was not out to kill her. With a heavy heart, Twilight brought her forehoof and laid it on Chrysalis' that she had tried to move before. If Chrysalis survived then perhaps the truth might be unveiled. The unicorn reassured herself that there was no need to shrink away again because of the changeling's physical restrictions.

The carriage raced across the moonlit road, driven by two stallions who would like nothing more than to be rid of the contents as soon as possible. Inside, the Element of Magic hoped to Luna's stars that her courage was not misplaced and that her own feelings would resolve themselves upon what she had done.

2014 Retelling: The Magic of Life

The nerve!” Spike huffed as he ran as fast as he could from shelf to shelf. The Golden Oaks Library would normally be a nice place to be since it was his home as much as it was Twilight's. The situation, however, called for less comfort. He was finally handling the changeling's presence with more calm but he was incensed now over the carriage fare. The blasted stallions had demanded an extra fifty percent extra on top of the full price for passage to Fillydelphia when they hadn't even gone there in the first place. It was compensation because of the changeling “cargo” as they had called it.

“Just focus, Spike,” Twilight ordered from her place across the room. She was laying on the floor with Chrysalis' head resting in her hooves. “We can file a grievance after somepony's life isn't in danger.”

“Somepony?” Spike cocked a brow and kept grabbing each of the books the unicorn called for. “And how do we know when her life isn't in danger? Do we give her a thermometer or something?”

“Very funny,” Twilight's tone said it was everything but. Chrysalis was not currently awake but she could feel steady breathing. “That's why I need those books. Even if her respiratory system has stabilized, there's no telling how everything else is doing. I keep finding new wounds every time I move her. I don't even know if I'm supposed to move her.”

Spike nearly fell over due to the weight and size of the tower of books he was carrying. “What's a res...resp...?”

“Respiratory system,” Twilight provided as she levitated a blank scroll, quill, and ink pot from her desk. She began hastily writing up a letter. “It's what you use to breath.”

“So it's important?” he asked and nearly toppled over again when he set the pile of books next to Twilight, who had been multi-tasking with magic since the second they had come into the library.

“Yeah, important,” Twilight barely deadpanned as she struck a quick signature and flung the scroll at Spike. “Send this to Princess Celestia and then go get the doctor. Remember not to tell him she's a changeling. Just say she's hurt really badly.”

“It's past midnight,” Spike commented more to himself than the mare as he disintegrated the scroll with his special magic and rushed back to the door. “I'm sleeping overtime after this is over.”

Twilight's best guess was that the changeling was doing better, but every scrap of medical knowledge she managed to pull from her book-reading memory failed to back that up sufficiently. The books helped less than she had hoped and, anyways, there was no telling how much pony medicine was applicable to changelings. The only encouragement she had that she was doing something that was helping her patient was the faint green glow that continued to pulse on Chrysalis' horn. She assumed that was a good thing.

When Spike came back with the tired looking unicorn doctor, he didn't come back with only the doctor. He clutched a scroll in his claws that bore Celestia's seal. Needless to say, it was snatched in a purple haze so fast that it nearly pulled the dragon along with it. Once again, Twilight found herself splitting her attention dramatically.

“How much of an emer-?!” Doctor Horse started and then nearly choked himself to death upon seeing the changeling. He had heard of what had happened in Canterlot – there were few that didn't only hours after the event – and word of invasion was more than enough to make him wary.

“Hey,” Spike remarked in amazement. “I really thought you'd pass out or run away or something...”

The doctor recomposed himself with an “ahem” and then proceeded to the large pseudo-pony. “I'm a doctor, not some greenhorn med student. A patient is a patient regardless of race or nationality. I was just a little...surprised is all.”

“Thank Celestia,” Twilight sighed deeply and levitated the read letter to her desk. She then repositioned herself without letting go of Chrysalis' head. “Can you help her?”

“Hmm,” the doctor mused as he swung a medical pack off of his back and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Taking a quick look around the body, which was tall and thus rather spread out, he settled down on the floor near her chest. He immediately set about poking, prodding, and retrieving his instruments for a basic body assessment as he began his usual bout of patient-relaxing banter. “You're lucky. I just got back from a charity trip outside of Equestria. Doctors Without Borders and all that. Treated a centaur, minotaur, sea serpent, and about a hundred griffons. Even a few crystal crabs – long story on that one. Never treated a changeling but I had a head physician that did back when I was apprenticing.”

“Really?” Twilight perked up in hope.

“Oh, yes,” the doctor continued, more awake now. He put some tools away and grabbed some metal sticks and cast wrappings. “He was far more proactive than me. Spent years on end abroad. Said he had a hard time coming back and dealing with Equestrians that worried and whined over little bruises and papercuts. But then again, he used to be a war med.”

Twilight's ulcer-inducing worries were already subsiding and being forgotten altogether, even the ones about whether or not she could handle the changeling after the healing process was over. Whatever training Doctor Horse had in calming patients and their caretakers was quite good.

“Hmm,” he concluded as he unwound some of the wrapping and set it aside. There were some dim flashes of light as he used some kind of diagnostic magic and he then got some bottles and assorted swabs from his heavy looking bag. “Well, you'll be happy to know your friend here will live bar unforeseen complications. There may be some memory confusion for two or three weeks but it should clear up. The concussion caused it, I think. Maybe some permanent memory loss but I don't think it'll be much. Just small random spots. She should still recall recent events after she recovers. One major bone fracture. Various minor bone fractures and dislocated joints. Maybe some scarring on the deeper cuts. Don't know why but there seems to be some magical reinforcement around the lungs and primary arteries. I'm guessing it's changeling healing magic, but I've never actually seen it before.”

“Friend?” Twilight echoed, breaking his summary. The word was not exactly accurate.

“Not a friend?” he furrowed a brow and then lifted it. “Well,” he laughed, “should be after recovery. Saving one's life means the world regardless of culture, you know? In fact, I'd say Equestrians have the lowest of any life debt sentiment. She'll be grateful, I assure you.”

“How can you say that?” Spike grumped as he peered at the doctor's splayed out tools with mild curiosity. “She attacked Celestia for Pete's sake.”

Twilight gazed intensely for the answer.

Doctor Horse shrugged and went about cleaning the wounds with the swabs and a liquid from one of the bottles. “Some lines are never crossed, even between heated enemies. Learned that when I was on my graduating tour of practice. That H.P. I mentioned had some stories, I tell you. He'd treat both sides in a war and nopony and nothing wanted to touch him. That's called 'respect for the neutral' or something like that. Way he told it made it sound like they just respected him personally, though. Anyways, she's going to rely on you too much to bother with embitterment.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight pursed her lips. “I was thinking she'd take off the first chance she got, if she couldn't fight me head-on anyways.”

The doctor grabbed the fractured rear leg with is magic and gently moved it to feel for the underlying structure. He was having to use quite a bit of his medical magic for such a late emergency but his focus was still everything his experience declared for him. “A changeling?” he titled his head for a moment. “Even I know something as basic as their digestive system. They live off emotion and yours was about ninety percent of what's in her right now. I'm assuming. There seem to be a few similarities with other species I've dealt with.”

“What?!” Twilight failed to catch her voice before it rang out loud.

There was no time for a response from the male because it was in that moment that he suddenly jerked the changeling's back leg. There was a cracking sound and Chrysalis awoke with eyes as big a dinner plates.

“Gah!” the changeling's voice buzzed out in shear pain, nearly passing back into unconsciousness.

“Aligned,” Doctor Horse reported as he quickly assembled some interconnecting metal sticks and weaved the wrapping material through them. The from-scratch construction was wound around the leg and past the joint where it squeezed the parts into obedience. “Now for the DBs and monitors. We're almost done. Don't talk,” he added to keep the changeling from saying anything to him. "You're in bad shape. You just need to rest and heal."

Chrysalis was crying now like a hatchling because of the shock that kept traveling up her maniacal nerves. She only glanced to the doctor once and then looked up to Twilight, who met her eyes. It made the unicorn uncomfortable in the extreme to have someone she had considered a monster not twenty-four hours ago now held in her hooves. Chrysalis was looking up at her with the eyes of a hurt foal looking to its mother.

What seemed to be two dozen new bandages levitated out of the doctor's bag and affixed themselves all over the changeling's body. She was looking more like a mummy every second. A few more flashes of Horse's magic accompanied the act.

“You're helping me?” Chrysalis half buzzed and half groaned, glancing to the stallion.

“That's what friends do,” Twilight tried to keep the words from coming out with her own embitterment. “Or at least if we were friends.”

“Please?” Chrysalis moaned with pain. What she was asking for was unclear.

“All done,” Doctor Horse concluded. “Now I'm going to get some sleep before my shift at the hospital.”

The stallion laughed but did indeed start gathering his equipment back into his bag before hovering it onto his back.

“So she's going to be okay?” Twilight rushed to reconfirm.

“Yes, yes,” he assured. “Just keep her in bed for a few days and keep her fed. I'll stop by to check up on her and tell you when the injuries are healed enough to get her walking again. I won't report this to the hospital, so you don't need to worry about...complications.”

He bit back whatever else he was going to say.

"Take it easy," he smiled and nodded straight at Chrysalis.

The pony mare tried to dismiss the idea of feeding a changeling from her mind. She hadn't planned on that. “I don't know how I can ever thank you enough for this,” she expressed her appreciation.

“How about you buy me a new x-ray machine?” he laughed again in good humor. “Goodnight, Miss Sparkle. And...?”

“Chrysalis,” Twilight answered for the changeling.

“Chrysalis,” he nodded and made his way out of the library back into the moonlit night.

The former queen made some kind of humming buzz. What it was for was unknown to the unicorn. She didn't precisely have an intimate knowledge of changeling communication norms.

“Please what?” Twilight looked back to the changeling, resuming whatever the shape-shifter was getting at before.

“Keep helping me,” Chrysalis replied.

“And why should I?” Twilight cocked a brow, not really serious about the idea of ceasing her assistance but curious at the answer her question begged. Spike offered his approval of it from where he stood, a respectable distance from the scary looking black being.

“You saved me,” Chrysalis tried.

That made Twilight sigh. “Because I don't want to be a monster – like you were at my brother's wedding. But I'm not going to enable some villain so she can do even more terrible things.”

“But I won't!” the changeling coughed on her words, making Twilight move a hoof over and rub her back to calm her down. “I have no reason to anymore.”

“And why would I believe that?”

“Because my hive exiled me.”

Twilight's eyes narrowed. Had she heard that right? “Changelings are a hive with a queen. Why would they exile their queen?”

“There are others,” Chrysalis snarled at remembering it. “Upstarts. The occupation failed so they decided another would lead them better.”

“I'm supposed to believe this? From the one that impersonated my sister-in-law?” Twilight remained half cold. She still intended to take care of Chrysalis, but only long enough to see her leave and never come back. As bold as she had been so far in saving her life, she wasn't as sure about keeping a wayward changeling around.

“Please...I have nothing...” the changeling swallowed hard. "And we...we were going to get married. Don't you still love me?"

The words made the unicorn grimace. This had to be the memory confusion the doctor mentioned. She frowned, thought hard, and kept thinking hard even as she started moving Chrysalis up to her bedroom. It was still difficult to move her, especially in her injured and bandaged form, but she knew she could make it and the guest bed would suffice for her stay. Spike followed behind and fidgeted the whole way.

It still nagged at her four days later. She had kept Chrysalis' presence a secret from all but Celestia and planned only to tell her friends after she was confident about it. But she continued to struggle with whether or not to trust Chrysalis. She could come up with no facts to back up the changeling's trustworthiness. She had every reason to believe the whole thing was a sham. Perhaps the queen, or former queen, would even go as far as inflicting those injuries to herself to reinforce her story.

But every day she also spent with her friends outside of the library. It made her worry that she was pushing away all the wisdom she had gained through her friendships. Perhaps it was those very friendships that had convinced her to save Chrysalis in the first place. So it came down to using her head or her heart. That fourth night was when she decided between the two.

Chrysalis was doing far better mentally and had regained much of her sensibility. She was still unable to walk, but Twilight decided to get her to the library balcony so she could get some fresh air. It was night, nopony was about, and the angle of the balcony wouldn't allow anypony to see the occupants laying down upon it. It was after she had gotten the changeling to the balcony that she realized the night had gotten rather chilly.

“Just a moment,” Twilight said as she headed back into the treehome. She came back shortly thereafter with a large throw blanket. “It's getting cold.”

Chrysalis looked at the unicorn with sleepy half-open eyes. She felt far stronger than she had that first day, but a nagging unease had settled over her. The realization that her hive was gone from her forever was something she had been numb to accept. Would she be like this forever? Never seeing or hearing another changeling for the rest of her life? The hivemind she was so used to in her head was silent and the emptiness brought a cold tear to each of her eyes.

“Here,” Twilight smiled politely as she stretched one side of the blanket over her long-term guest. “Rarity got the constellations right this time,” she added with a giggle.

It took a lazy glance at the sheet for Chrysalis to realize it was some kind of dark blue or purple with white, yellow, and light blue dots scattered across it. She looked back up to the night sky and found the two to be similar. The blanket must have been designed with the night sky particularly in mind.

“I don't understand,” Chrysalis said quietly in her buzzy voice.

“Luna positioned them like that,” Twilight tried to answer. “I don't know how she decided on each one. You'd have to ask her yourself. But I think it's extremely beautiful...”

“I meant I don't understand why you're so kind to me,” the changeling looked the pony straight in the eyes. It was an empty look.

Twilight sighed and then moved over so that she could get under the blanket next to Chrysalis. As a sort of habit she had developed, she put a hoof around Chrysalis' shoulder and closed her eyes for a second in concentration. The magical monitors the doctor had placed made it far easier for her to ensure there was nothing physically wrong with the shape-shifter. She opened her eyes again, content that the regular check-up went without startling incident.

“I like to think that I get it from Fluttershy,” Twilight began and gazed up at the stars she so enjoyed.. “She is the Element of Kindness, after all.”

“The yellow pegasus at the wedding,” Chrysalis spoke softly to herself. Her unicorn host had talked to her much over her stay and she had heard quite a bit about Twilight's five closest friends. She hardly needed to hear about Spike since he talked to her regularly on his own. His fear of her had all but dropped entirely in the last two days.

“Maybe it was just late and I lost my sanity,” Twilight continued, “but I don't think I'll ever forget that night. Honestly, I think I wouldn't have saved you if it wasn't for that...that spark. It was like I had gone back in time to the moment my friends and I defeated Nightmare Moon. I guess I just remembered that there's more to life than my own wants and desires.”

“What does that mean?” Chrysalis asked for clarity with something of a broken tone. She felt alone, not understanding the pony in the slightest.

Twilight looked back over to the changeling that, in spite of laying down next to her, was still much taller. “If I had gotten what I wanted back then, I would never have gone to Ponyville. I would never have met my friends and I would have just kept on like I always had. Maybe I wouldn't have felt like I was alone and missing out, but that's exactly what the case would be. I'm much better off now because Princess Celestia forced me to consider others before myself.”

Chrysalis looked down to the wooden boards beneath her, a tinge of shame on her face.

“That's why,” Twilight emphasized as she brushed her forehoof over the changeling's back in encouragement. “When I saw you there on the road, everything I had learned came back to me. I knew, in spite of how crazy it felt, that I had to be true to the me that I've become. What I wanted at first was punishment and justice, but I knew that would only lead to your death. I'd be ashamed if I looked back on that moment and admitted that I acted out of fear or hatred. Now I'm proud to say I acted out of friendship and hope. Hope for you, Chrysalis. And you know what?”

Chrysalis looked back up to her.

“I'm glad I did,” Twilight smiled warmly and sincerely as she hugged the changeling sideways.

“You mean that you want to be my friend?” Chrysalis would have asked wide-eyed if her heart was not so heavy.

“As an Element of Harmony, I'd have to say yes. But as just plain old me,” the unicorn leaned back so she could look up into Chrysalis' eyes, “I want to say yes.”

Chrysalis bowed her head so that she nuzzled the unicorn. “Thank you, Twilight,” she showed her appreciation even as one of her tears streaked down her face. “Thank you for letting me live.”

The former queen knew that she was just that. Former. No longer a queen. She was just a regular changeling with no hive and one small pony to keep her alive. But she decided then with the faint green glow of her jagged horn and emotional nourishment that seeped into her body that Twilight was all she needed.

Something stirred in Twilight's own heart. She didn't know what it was but she did know that it was powerful. The reality of the moment sunk in and she couldn't help but brighten up at the possibilities that opened to her. Maybe if she could change a hostile changeling queen into a loving friend then she could change the very world. But no, she reminded herself. Right now, this was her world and it had already changed.

“They are beautiful,” Chrysalis remarked as she gazed up at the dark sky lit only by the moon and tiny pinpoints of the stars.

“I told you,” Twilight joked beside her.

Chrysalis smiled faintly. “It's been a very long time since I've been able to enjoy the sky like this. The Spinner must have blessed me to give me the ability to do so again.”

“The Spinner?” Twilight questioned as she also stargazed.

“Just an old changeling's tale,” Chrysalis dismissed it.

The unicorn was not so quick to do the same. “I'll want to hear about it when you're ready to tell me. I have a lot of questions.”

“I know...”

Hearing the sad tone, Twilight moved to cheer her up. She rubbed the changeling's back again. “No, I didn't mean some interrogation. I just want to know more about you on your time. Like what you like and dislike. What your favorite foods are. That sort of thing.”

“My favorite food is love,” Chrysalis smiled wide, bearing both of her fangs in a way that was more goofy than scary.

Twilight blushed. “I know changelings feed off emotion...” she remarked, coming off far lamer than she wanted.

The shape-shifter felt elated for some reason at getting such a reaction out of the pony. “It was your friendship, though, that I've been feeding from. It's not as strong as the love I tasted from Shining Armor but it's so much more pure now that it's directed at me.”

“My friendship, huh?” Twilight mused. All along it had been that one thing that had driven her and her fellow Elements of Harmony. That such a thing had saved this changeling did not escape her as being ironic.

“It's warm,” Chrysalis commented as she nuzzled Twilight again.

“I guess you could describe friendship that way...”

“No,” the changeling corrected. “I meant the blanket. Thank you for it.”

Twilight laughed quietly. “Well, I was cold too, you know.”

They both kept laying there for a while, looking up at the stars and not saying anything. After some vague amount of time, Twilight noticed something unusual. Chrysalis' body was nestled beside her own and had a faint but comfortable warmth to it that radiated from the changeling's carapace. It had struck her as unsettling before that the species had insectile characteristics, but that didn't affect her now. Perhaps it was because she had been taking care of Chrysalis for the last several days to keep her from death's door.

A sudden nightly breeze swept over the balcony, making the old wooden planks beneath them creak just shy of the worrisome point. With the gust of wind was the aroma of leafy plants and a tinge of dirt. It was the Earthy smell that Ponyville often had and one that Twilight had gotten used to for the most part. The unicorn did, however, pull in the blanket to wrap around her tighter. The movement caused the sheet to shift on the changeling.

“We can go back inside if it's too cold,” Chrysalis offered generously. If she was back in her old hive then she might not have been so concerned about such a thing but circumstances had changed and her old self had to be put to rest. She knew she had to be as considerate as possible if not just to ensure her host's survival then to ensure she was happy. This friendship was what was most important to her now.

Twilight shivered but didn't accept the invitation. “No, I'm fine. Really. Not every night is as clear as this. I want to savor it.”

Chrysalis didn't know how much it'd help but she slowly lifted one of her long forelegs over Twilight's midsection. It was nowhere near as hurtful as it had once been to do so but she took it easy all the same to prevent unnecessary pain. Finally, she hugged the mare sideways.

Twilight looked back from the sky to her new hole-ridden companion. The changeling's leg was so much longer than her own that it easily draped around her. It reminded her somewhat of Princess Celestia's whenever she would hug her as a filly to encourage her in some difficult task. It was nearly shocking for one to remind her of the other and she certainly never would have imagined it before she had saved Chrysalis.

“I like the taste of this friendship,” the changeling said to herself as she glanced up at her faintly glowing horn. “It's so...peaceful.”

“Yeah,” Twilight breathed out evenly as she resumed her stargazing once more. “According to my last analysis, I've had fewer breakdowns since I came to Ponyville. I've narrowed it down to a ninety-three percent probability of being an effect of the friendships I've developed since then.”

“Probability?” Chrysalis raised a brow.

“Oh!” the unicorn exclaimed in a wild realization. “Maybe we can read some books together on probability. Won't that be fun?”

Chrysalis shook her head at the excited squeak in Twilight's voice. She had most definitely been saved by the most extraordinary pony. “Perhaps we might read one on love as well.”

“Why love?” Twilight cocked her head.

The tall pseudo-pony sighed as she concentrated on one star that was shining fainter than all the others. “Because I want to know what it's like. Real love, not stolen. It must be nice.”

Twilight's excitement dampened, taking note of her stargazing companion's solemn disposition. She said nothing for a long while, enjoying the stars and moon while shirking away from the small cold gusts of wind that tried getting beneath the blanket. The moon was moving along its course but did so just as slowly as it was supposed to.

Eventually, she glanced over to Chrysalis to find her not looking at the stars anymore. She was wincing and looked distraught. Fearing some physical problem, Twilight used her magic to check the changeling's vitals. Nothing wrong.

“What is it?” Twilight asked outright. It didn't look at all as if the shape-shifter was doing well.

“They're gone,” Chrysalis whispered sadly. “I don't hear anything.”

It was like they were back in the carriage again, Chrysalis' mind veering from one thing to another in some broken daze. And she had been recovering so well...

“No, I'm right here,” the unicorn tried uplifting her. “Who's gone?”

No response.

Twilight reached up and cupped the changeling's chin to point her face towards her. “Who's gone, Chrysalis?”

“My children,” she turned horrified again. “They banished me.”

Twilight sighed as quietly as she could. This was going to take a lot of time and a lot of patience. It seemed that changeling queens did not take well to exile and, really, Twilight couldn't even begin to comprehend what it might feel like. Her understanding of hive societies was quite limited.

“It's going to be okay,” the purple mare reiterated. “I'm not going to banish you.”

Chrysalis leaned in again for a hug, never feeling like it was enough. Her mind, usually abuzz with a thousand voices of her children, was as silent as the grave. It irked her. It scared her. It ate away at her inside.

“I'll get a book on love,” Twilight offered even as they hugged beneath the soft starry blanket. “We'll read it together.”

“I want it,” Chrysalis felt the emotions come back without relent. She couldn't control it. “I need to know what real love feels like...”

The ache in the changeling's distraught voice was something that everything of the medical world couldn't fix and Twilight knew it. She knew she could do nothing but what she already was, hugging Chrysalis and telling her that it would be okay. Maybe the hive was still out there but it was dead as far as its former queen would ever know. There was no going back and now the path forward was filled with a void that neither knew whether or not could be filled again.

Twilight felt small for a new reason other than comparative physical size. Everything was out of her hooves. Life, death, love. The only thing that wasn't was the trembling changeling currently in them. She didn't know the future, but she desperately wanted it to be something better.

“I want it too,” Twilight finally said against Chrysalis' neck. She kept holding her tight as she glanced to the stars above them. “I want to know what true love feels like.”