To Love Your Torturer

With a deep sigh, Chrysalis dropped her angry demeanor and sat down on her stool.

"They don't suffer. They just slowly lose their sense of self, becoming compliant and easy to handle. They don't think for themselves, but they don't suffer," she answered, honestly.

She was actually glad he asked that. She wasn't sure if she could bring herself to hurt him more without some encouragement.

Shining let out a soft groan from pain, his burns and torn limbs still dunking with pain constantly.

Chrysalis mercifully responded by carefully placing some cold, wet towels over his burned spots, as well as injecting him with a healthy dose of morphine. Although not so much that he couldn't talk with her.

Her kit of towels, water, and painkillers had been waiting in a bucket behind him the entire time. It was her intention to wait until the day was over to do this, but they both needed another torture break, and with Shining's body so utterly broken at this point, there was no way she wouldn't let him have a little relieve in between sessions.

Calming down a bit, Shining managed to continue the conversation in a meek, defeated tone devoid of anything but the simple notion of his words.

"Well... That's not good, we do like to think..."

Upon hearing the weakness in his voice, Chrysalis couldn't help but look away from her ruined torture victim, slightly embarrassed at the extent of the torture she had made him endure.

"We like living... and to do so, we need love," she finally answered back.

Shining thought for a minute, trying not to fall asleep in his weakened state while.

"Why do you need to defeat Equestria then... Why not just take what you needed and avoid a war."

"I've tried you know... Ponies in captivity are difficult to breed, and every following generation is less capable of loving than the previous.."

The thought of ponies being livestock in some sort of changeling farm, made Shining sick to his stomach.

"That wasn't what I meant... But good to know that's not an option."

His pain was slowly lessening, but he still felt meek and underpowered.

"I mean why try to enslave all of pony kind, rather than just attack a few at a time?"

The large bug seemed to fill with passion.

"Because, with your help, Shining Armor, I can," said chrysalis, not even realizing how utterly villainous her words sounded.

He scrunched his face at her, whimpering a little.

"What a benevolent leader you are..." he said sarcastically, through his tears, the lessened pain both making him slightly braver in his state of utter defeat and blurring his judgment. He immediately regretted it, as he suddenly remembered his current, undesirable position of torture victim, tied to a rack.

"Uh, I-I mean..."

"Sorry..."

Shining blinked a couple of times out of sheer confusion. He had expected to be interrupted. But had expected to be done so via angry shouting or even more unbearable pain. The last thing he had expected from Chrysalis, was an apology.

"Uhm... A-accepted, your majesty," he answered softly. "I'm sorry too."

The queen nodded, letting her ears droop down in acceptance.

"I realize that sounded harsher than what I meant it to be... I want to defeat pony-kind simply because as long as your people remain, mine will always be on the brink of extinction itself. I'm simply choosing my kin over yours. It is nature, is it not? The compassion I feel for my children, as well as my instinct to survive myself, are what drive me to do this."

She shifted around in her seat before continuing her explanation.

"With every small, coordinated attack I make... Every pony I kidnap... I'm getting more and more attention from the Equestrian military. Case in point, you're here." She nodded towards Shining. "I don't blame you for fighting back. Again, it's all merely nature, but you can't blame me either, then."

Shining gently moved his head back as he thought of what the queen had just said.

"I see your point... But you can't blame me for not talking then, either, can you?"

Chrysalis scoffed, seemingly offended that he would even suggest such a thing.

"No, and I don't. I'm impressed with your strength, really, but that doesn't mean I won't break you. This is my people against yours. This is instinct and here is no foul play!"

Shining frowned slightly...

"You laughing and smiling when you tear me apart doesn't seem very instinctive to me..."

She actually blushed at this. She hadn't expected to be called out on her manners rather than the reason behind her actions.

"I torture for good reason. That's what matters. The fact that I enjoy myself doesn't affect anything."

"It makes it so you can't pretend to be the good guy here, either," exclaimed Shining, already forgetting his place again.

"None of us are villains. We're merely products of our biology and our environment, doing what's best for our own species. I just happen to be in a position where I can enjoy doing it."

Shining sighed deeply.

"To me, it seems that you're choosing your own enjoyment over what's best for your race..."

This struck a nerve with the queen, and she rose from her seat.

She trotted close to her torture victim, looming in over him like a predator over her prey. She showcased her teeth to him, getting close to his face, breathing on him.

"Come again, Shining?" she said threateningly, letting him know that she was still not to be trifled with.

Shining closed his remaining eye and gritting his teeth as he felt her warm breath.

"I-I-I'm sorry. Allow me to explain," he tried, replicating her own approach from just a minute ago.

Slowly, Chrysalis retracted from his face, giving him a deadly glare before sitting down once more. She watched him sigh in relief as she spoke.

"You're lucky I'm not in a torturous mood," she sat down once more.

He took a deep breath, fearing he was about to put her straight back into just that.

"I've refrained from mentioning it, since you seemed quite adamant about avoiding the subject... But if you really want what's best for your hive... Why not let them evolve... You can coexist with ponies. We can feed you willingly and there will be a symbiosis between us... Wouldn't that be wonderful. You have the option to end this, Chrysalis... Why won't you?"

Chrysalis snared at that, though not at Shining in particular.

"Those technicolored freaks aren't changelings in my book," she grumpily spat.

"What's wrong with them, exactly?" Shining asked, slightly annoyed, but hiding it well behind a layer of respectful fear.

"Seriously? Do you want antlers?!" his torturer proclaimed loudly, rolling her eyes.

"I wouldn't mind that..." he answered quietly. "And I don't see why that would be the final deterrent."

"It wouldn't be. But that's not all of it. They become non-functional, and Disobedient," she snarled.

"Well... Maybe they just start acting out because they know you don't accept them that way?" suggested Shining carefully, to which he immediately received the deadliest stare he had ever been greeted by.

He gulped as the queen squinted her eyes.

"That's not how changelings work. They are creatures of complete and utter devotion. If I told a changeling. A real changeling that I wanted to kill it. It would bow and fucking let me."

The sickness returned to Shining upon hearing that. Chrysalis talking about even her own children in that manner... It disturbed him.

He had to stop himself from lashing out and calling her a monster.

"... So they really are drones? They don't think for themselves, do they?"

They looked at each other in a moment of tense silence.

"Any functional changeling chooses to follow me freely, because my will is theirs. Always."

"Why?"

"Because they want to, Shining. Because it's their nature."

Shining looked to the side, really not wanting to be eying out the queen right now.

"Did you ever bother asking them that. Or did you just choose that that's how things are," he muttered, his anger slowly starting to poke through his innate fear.

"I don't need to ask them. I know how they fucking work. They want to serve me. More than anything," snared Chrysalis through her teeth, legitimately holding herself back from taking his remaining eye at this point.

"...And the fact that they maybe have the ability to choose for themselves once they change... is that the reason you choose this destructive rout?" asked Shining, looking around at some of the many devious devices rather than at Chrysalis.

"They can choose for themselves already. And they choose me!" she huffed, rising from her seat.

She trotted closer, her heavy steps echoing through the chamber. Shining turned his head to look at her, his eye red with tears.

"But how can you know for sure if you've never let them stray. How can you know the ones you call defects aren't just your everyday changeling standing up for what they want?"

"Maybe I know them better than you do, you filthy warhorse!"

Shining closed his eye to not get saliva in it as his captor berated him loudly, right in his face.

"You probably do... I'm not denying that you've nurtured these beings... All I'm suggesting is that perhaps things aren't exactly the way you think they are... I wanna make a bet. Give me twenty changelings to talk with, if I can make one of them admit he wants something different than what you want from him, that will prove he has a will of his own," Shining suggested relatively calmly.

"For the last time, you insolent, thick-skulled, pathetic equine. They do have a will of their own. They just follow me above all else." she spat, slamming her hoof onto the rack right next to his face.

"S-sorry," stammered Shining. "I mean I'll find out if they have the will to go against you..."

"Or maybe I should just drop this conversation, that I didn't even initiate, to begin with, and go back to torturing you until you spit out what I want to hear!"

Shining gulped...

"Perhaps... But I would really like to know, and although you may be a bit scared, I really think you would like to know as well."

Chrysalis spared no more time arguing, nor to give out a warning.

She had heard more than enough from her prisoner this time. And she didn't enjoy what she heard in the least. Quite the contrary. She had received the encouragement she needed to rekindle her craving for torture.

Shining had barely even finished his sentence when the rage-filled queen Chrysalis slammed her hoof onto the handle of the rack and turned it with great force.

The device activated with the threatening noise of grinding gears, quickly expanding Shining's already slobbily-connected, teared up hooves to lengths that would make him as tall as Celestia herself if he was standing.

He screamed in pain, saliva spraying from his this time. His joints were already ripped over at his knees and shoulders, but this time his pelvis gave out as well, each side popping out one after each other in quick succession.

Chrysalis wasn't satisfied, however. She continued stretching him with an incredible relentlessness, watching him suffer, as his limbs were mutilated beyond reason.

His skin was already ripping in multiple places, fibers exposed to the open air, but his legs had reached the point where even his muscles couldn't hold it together anymore, and his bones became visible through multiple, deep tears through his very flesh.

Blood splattered across the rack.

His screaming was louder than it had ever been before at this point, and his pain, even through the morphine's dulling effect, was immeasurable.

With a crackling, tearing noise, he felt himself retract downwards with great speed as if he was a rubber band.

He felt the tear... His front legs had been ripped off of his body. They were gone, and he knew it.

He cried and moaned as he drifted off into unconsciousness, Chrysalis laughing at his misery in the near distance.