To Love Your Torturer

Shining laid awkwardly like a saddleback across the queen's scaly back as they wandered out of the hive's torture dungeon and back to the many tunnels he had spent far too much time trying to navigate with little success.

Her insectile wings felt weird under his stomach as they tended to instinctively twitch due to his weight pressing down on top of them. They ticked... But after all that pain, a little tickling was more than welcome, even if tensing up from it made his aching body hurt even more.

They walked in verbal silence, the sound of the bug queen's echoing hoofsteps paired her most recent torture victim's occasional painful whine being the only sounds to disturb their ears at all.

Neither of them knew if choosing to keep their mouths shut for the duration of the long walk made it more or less awkward, but neither desired to find out, so they both kept quiet until the very last moment, where Chrysalis finally broke the curse of silence to explain to her living backpack that they had arrived at their destination.

Shining turned his tired head and stretched his neck out over the Queen's to look around the queen's large mane.

In front of them was a rather large, ornamented door, incrested with thin golden patterns, neatly spiraling towards the center of its wooden frame where a heavy door knocker, shaped in the shape of a dragon head with a ring in its mouth, hung menacingly.

In some sense, it reminded Shining a lot of the older parts of Cantorlot castle, build back when the Princesses were both keen on showing off their immense wealth.

It wouldn't really surprise him if showing off her wealth was a trait of Chrysalis', but he naturally didn't say anything about that.

"I see," he mumbled hoarsely, right as the ethereal green light of Chrysalis's magic encased the handle of the door.

The changeling corridors he had been living in for weeks where only ever dimly lid with a green glow, produced by an organic bioluminescent goo, glued to the ceiling, and the toilet stall he had spent (what he imagined to be a considerable amount of time) bound to hadn't been much brighter, so Shining Armor was in no way used to light.

He had to avert his remaining eye as the Queen opened the door to her personal quarters, where the yellow glow of a well-lid fireplace radiated out with a lovely, warm flicker.

Shining was overcome with a soothing warmth as the Queen moved inside the cozy room and he curled up against her as best he could, trying to forget his situation for a moment and enjoy the feeling of an actual pony-like location.

As he started to get used to the light, he took a peek around.

The ceiling was exactly like the rest of the primitive hive. Dark, rocky, and covered with stalactites of different lengths and sizes. But that was were the similarities ended.

It was a large oval-shaped room. The floor was covered with a soft, dark-red carpet. And from the deep, green walls hung velvet banners adorning changeling symbols, all looking sharp and aggressive in their threatening design.

Just beneath the banners, the walls where almost entirely surrounded by book-shelves and trinket-filled cabinets. The sole exception to this, being the massive fireplace, were the flames where dancing gently, licking at the wood they had been granted in plenty.

There was an open kitchen to the back left side of the room, and opposite to that, a massive, soft-looking, luxury bed stood proudly with open curtains, a mass of pillows spilling out. And at the fireplace that bathed the entire room in the flickering light, two large, leather arm-chairs and a sofa stood around a thick mahogany table, looking solid enough to build a tank from.

But as he turned his gaze a little higher, his heart sunk.

The Queen looked around her own room just as much as the stallion on her back did. She was currently enjoying the sight of the quarters far more than usual. She would be lying if she said she didn't take at least a little pride in getting to show off her royal chambers to a Cantorlot pony.

Shining in the meanwhile not feeling well about the situation at all. Not that he had much of a problem with the room as a whole, but rather with the final piece of decor that adorned the walls.

Above the already creepy changeling banners hung hundreds of bleached pony skulls as trophies in wooded frames, giving a macabre finish to the already slightly eerie atmosphere the queen had somehow managed to build into an otherwise cozy and homely chamber

The Queen turned her head to gaze back at Shining, sending him a smug, somewhat seductive smirk, her dark lips looking even thicker than usually with her current expression.

"So?" she asked him, not really taking too much notice of his worried expression, blaming it on his constant pain in her mind.

"What do you think of your new home. Much better than a torture chamber, one would think," she chuckled mildly.

It was first when the stallion turned his single teary eye to face her that Chrysalis realized that he perhaps didn't agree entirely to that statement.

"Please..." he mumbled quietly to abused to speak in any other way even if he had wanted to.

"Don't be so insensitive," he finished.

The queen turned her gaze back to the room to try and figure out what that ungrateful pony possibly had to complain about.

"I can assure you, you knew none of these equines," she assured him in an annoyed tone, as she came to the conclusion that he didn't enjoy her trophy collection.

"It does not matter..." he muttered. "You gotta understand that me seeing this as a pony, is very unpleasant."

The queen laid down on her belly, gently, not to hurt Shining's body even more as he was still on top of her.

"I do not understand," she answered bluntly, though she at least sounded a lot less annoyed at him this time around. "They're all from before your time. None of them should matter to you."

Shining sighed.

"Please... I'm not in the mood to explain... Just know that seeing them hurts me. This is your room, you can decorate it the way you like, but if you do not mind, I would rather stay outside while we're not interacting."

There was a pause from the queen.

She did quite like to look at the remains of her defeated foes. While she laid in her bed at night especially. And she did not get why Shining insisted on making such a ruckus about it. It was a strange to her as if he had gotten sad over her furniture being mahogany...

But even though she did not get his reasoning, she did understand that he wasn't feeling comfortable here. She could even feel his stomach tense against her back.

"No. You live here too, now," she started. "If getting rid of my little collection is your only request in terms of decor..."

Her horn lid up and the entirety of her, (In shining's eye), cruel gathering were bathed in a green, shimmering light. And with strange vibrating sound, they were all gone.

Shining looked up at the empty spaces of wall above the banners. They looked weirdly barren now, with the rest of the chamber so decked, but he felt much more comfortable now. Not only because the horrible sight of his slaughtered people was gone, but because the queen had decided to take his request to heart.

"Thank you," he whispered gently, closing his tired eyes.

"Don't mention it," answered Chrysalis with a deep sigh.

She wasn't used to listening to requests that went against her own choices. She wasn't even used to listening to requests at all... But in the effort of this little experiment of theirs, perhaps it was for the better.

She did feel somewhat glad as she felt him relax his stomach against her back. It did soothe her a little, knowing he wasn't as distraught now as he had been a moment ago.

She smiled calmly as her "backpack" started to snore quietly, her tail swaying gently across her carpeted floor.