ENOUGH! Or the dragon's wings get plucked
I think a lot about that moment when Chrysalis almost ripped off my wings.
Do I really deserve these wings? At any moment they could disappear. I don’t have to be able to fly. Yet it gives me joy to soar in the clouds and to hover and move wherever I like at a moments notice.
I can feel the wind rush past me. The effortless gliding through forests and mountains and long stretches of ocean. Sometimes it feels like I can feel every single air molecule as it casually helps raise me up. It’s as if every single strand of Equestria wants me to soar so I can bear witness to its glory.
And in those moments I know that everything Rainbow Dash ever said about flying was right.
But then why do I interrupt my rejoicings with my most painful memory? WHY? Why am I constantly thinking back to that moment where I could have lost it all?
ENOUGH! Or the dragon's wings get plucked
Chrysalis shouts, enveloping me in her emerald magic. It isn’t a soft levitation like when Twilight does it. It’s like I can feel every single one of my scales trying to be ripped away from my body all at once.
I think about what would happen if all my scales were torn off and mentally scream. I used to scream out loud, but I’ve gotten much better at self control since then. And if I screamed like that now at my current size, it would cause earthquakes all the way in the Crystal Empire.
Chrysalis’s vile magic concentrates on my wings. My weak, young, tender wings. Only some bones and sinew keep them properly attached to my body. I can’t believe how vulnerable they used to be.
But even in that moment, I don’t envision the short seasons of joy I had felt being able to fly. Or the friendship with Gabby I made because I could follow along with her. Or how I could pick up books or fly to wherever high place I wanted to. Or my special hidden nook inside the castle that no one from the ground could see, and my little hoard of blankets and other things that made me happy I put up there.
In that moment of incredible pain, I didn’t think about myself.
Don’t worry about me!
With what I’ve become now, I wonder if I will ever be that brave again? Perhaps I am still that brave, but those moments of bravery are so rare they never get tested. And so I wonder how I would behave if a situation like that happened again.
My mind keeps repositioning myself in different angles of that fateful day, as if I’m seeing myself from far away—from Twilight’s perspective—from my younger self’s perspective—from Chrysalis’s perspective—all at once. I feel every feeling they feel, and the one that shines the brightest is my own recollection of that moment, drowning out every other view.
Just save—AAAAUGH!!!
The pain.
It’s so exquisite and excruciating. The agony coursing through my wings is orders of magnitude beyond the feeling of ripping scales. I can only yelp as the full impact of what is happening registers.
I’m not going to get to keep these wings. They’re going to get taken away and that will be all.
But that doesn’t matter. The me in the past only thought about saving Twilight and everypony else in that moment. "Just save yourself." That was the central thought I had even when I was in agony.
Will I ever be that brave again?
Sometimes I wonder about cutting off my wings just to glimpse that pain again. I know I deserve it. I’m so bad at forgiving others. I have such terrible opinions I only entertain in my own mind that any mind reader would suggest that I deserve death. But the cost of my wings could cover a fraction of the pain I’ve caused her.
I shake my head, shifting myself back into the ancient past.
Somehow in the moment of my worst agony, the wings aren’t torn off my body.
Chrysalis just tosses me at Twilight and continues her gloating.
I can barely glance at Twilight before my eyes close. It hurt. It hurt so bad.
I feel confident that that was the single most painful experience that I have had or will ever have. It was the feeling of my wing bones about to be ripped out of their sockets. The feeling of losing something that gives me joy.
Chrysalis didn’t have to show mercy like that. I’ve envisioned millions of scenarios in which she just plucked the wings right off. She could have easily done so. Just like she could have decapitated me or ripped all the scales off my body, or grabbed each limb in turn and torn me apart, leaving me a bloody torso on the fields outside Canterlot.
Why didn’t she?
It’s a question that causes me a different kind of agony.
Did that mean there was some good inside Chrysalis all along? That at the moment she could have ruined the rest of my long lifespan, she showed me mercy?
Then why can’t she be redeemed? Why is she turned to stone for the rest of time while I wander Equestria feeling fulfilled and surrounded by those that love me?
Why does it feel wrong that my happiness is dependent on the mercy of this villain?
That moment haunts me. And I can’t help but envision an alternate reality.
ENOUGH! Or the dragon’s wings get plucked!
No! Don’t hurt him!
But it’s too late. I can feel as the wings are torn away, leaving bloody sockets where they used to attach. The wings flutter, embodied only by gravity, all the way down to the ground, dripping blood all the while. And Chrysalis throws me at Twilight and laughs.
Blood glistens the ground next to Twilight and my mutilated self. Twilight quickly casts a spell to stop the blood from flowing.
And moments later, help arrives and saves the day—saves everypony—every creature!
And everyone is saved.
Except the villains.
In that alternate world, I’m still the friendship ambassador. I still help Twilight; I still do all the things that fulfill me. I still find love, raise hatchlings. I continue on as a healthy, helpful drake, assisting all those around me, especially my Princess and my ever growing family. Every so often I scratch my back and realize that there should be wings there. And think back to when I lost them and wonder what it would be like to fly.
Am I any less happy in that other reality?
If I calculated my happiness on a scale from 1-1000. Am I even one integer happier in the reality where I have my wings, compared to if I don’t have them?
I honestly think it would be the same. The things that make me happy aren’t my wings. They’re the friendships, and the fatherhood, and the joy I feel in helping others. The wings are a fringe benefit. Just like legs are nice to be able to walk with. And arms for holding and hugging. And eyes for seeing the faces of all my friends and family.
So then why do I wonder? Why do I agonize over that moment when Chrysalis spared me?
Because it meant there was some good in her. And that terrifies me.
It means she needs to someday be released—that she’s still trapped in her own chaotic mind in that stone prison.
Discord had mentioned it before—that he felt every moment of every second of every day he was turned to stone. That he could hear everything.
And so I wonder.
Do I owe Chrysalis something? Do I owe her another chance at redemption? Or would a better release be to simply kill her? I can’t imagine being trapped inside a stone coffin every day of eternity. It’s like I can’t properly imagine my life without wings. They're different realities. And yet they gnaw at my mind.
I hate Chrysalis.
I think back to that moment she caused me the greatest pain ever. I think how even now, centuries later, I still feel traumatized by that moment.
I think of how time bifurcated at that instant and there is a reality where I have wings and a reality where I don’t have wings.
Which one do I find love quickest? Which one am I a better father? Which one do I have more children? Which reality do I forgive Chrysalis the fastest?
Would somehow losing my wings make me forgive her faster? I don’t want to forgive her. I want her to stay a lawn ornament for long past my death thousands of years from now. I don’t want to see her again. I don’t want to think about her again.
And it doesn’t have to be me. I don’t need to go to my Princess and request that her statue be moved. I don’t need to tell Twilight that my plan for redeeming Chrysalis involves spending a lot of time talking at her. Or that talking at her could either someday lead to her escaping and being livid at me for more years of torture—or the cracks could fall away and she becomes a reformed changeling.
The reformed Chrysalis could bring a lot of joy back to the changeling hive. But perhaps after decades of me talking at her, she may get the wrong idea and think that I would actually want to be friends with her.
But that’s not it at all. I can’t stand her. And I want nothing to do with her. And I just want to stop thinking about how much she abused me. And how the psychological damage hurts far more than I ever anticipated because I just can’t stop thinking about it.
It taints every flight I take.
Chrysalis can be redeemed. I know that deep down just like I know I have wings on my back that carry me to vistas I could never imagine.
But I don’t want to be the one that helps her in that path toward redemption. Please don’t make it be me.
It’s been seven hundred sixty-two years. Someone should have rescued her and redeemed her by now. Someone else will do it eventually.
Or someone will execute her and save her from her own mind.
Celestia knows that I wish someone could save me from my own mind.
