The Darkest Path

“I would like to call to order this meeting of the Council of Friendship,” Cozy Glow said brightly.

A dead changeling drone served as a table. Cozy Glow sat at the head, of course, a sheaf of changeling wings before her, their tips stained green with ichor where they had been torn from their casings.

Cozy Glow cleared her throat and neatened her stack of changeling wings, seeming for all the world as though she was shuffling paper.

“Thank you for offering to let me be the Chair, Princess,” she said, and inclined her head gratefully to Twilight, “and for inviting me to sit in on the meeting in the first place. Though given the subject matter of the meeting, I suppose I can see why you did!”

She tittered, and then consulted her blank changeling wings once more. “So. The subject of this meeting will of course be the matter of my reformation. And all of you, as my new friends, and the part you played in it!”

She smiled beatifically around at the slack-jawed corpses before her. Rarity’s mask was beginning to slip, glistening red tissue showing in the slits where her eyes should have been.

“And Spike will be taking minutes, of course.” Cozy Glow gestured to the scaled shape slumped against Twilight Sparkle’s leg. His stiff claws held another changeling wing and a bloodied blue feather, plucked from Rainbow Dash’s ruined wings.

Cozy Glow frowned slightly, and put down her sheaf of glittering wings. “But just before we get down to business, I’d like to take a few moments to catch up with you all. On a personal level, I mean. That’s what friends do, right, Professor Twilight?” She beamed up at the purple alicorn beside her.

Twilight’s tongue hung from her mouth, and a fly crawled across one staring eye.

Cozy Glow’s eye twitched, and she jumped up from her chair and hovered in the air beside Twilight’s face. “I have to say, you all look terrible,” she commented, scooping up Twilight’s bloated tongue and shoving it roughly back behind her teeth. “And not even from our little party today. You’ve all just… really let yourselves go!”

She gestured to Pinkie Pie. “I mean, look at you Pinkie! Fat as a barrel and covered in stretch marks. Motherhood definitely has not improved your looks.”

She lowered herself back to her seat, another dead changeling, and resettled herself on its chest. “And Rarity! Of all ponies, I never expected to see grey in your mane. Couldn’t you have come up with some sort of spell, or even just dyed it?” She giggled, the sound as childlike and charming as it had always been. “Well, I guess I’ve died it for you, now.”

“And as for you!” She rounded on Twilight. “It seems like you’ve had some sort of freakish growth spurt. Didn’t they tell you you’re meant to stop doing that in high school?”

The fly on Twilight’s retina wrung its little legs and began to lay its eggs.

“And the rest of you,” Cozy Glow waved a bored hoof at Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Applejack, “You all just look old. Wrinkles up to your eyeballs, arthritis in your wings, and some terrible new hairdos. Age does not bring wisdom, it seems; certainly at least stylistically.” She inspected her own hooves and small body, unchanged by the years. “I’m just glad I haven’t aged as poorly as you all. Or aged at all, in fact. I suppose I should thank you, really. Being frozen in stone is a wonderful skincare regimen, as it turns out.”

She leaned forward on the changeling table, putting her chin on her fetlock. “But here I am, rambling on. Go on, tell me. What have you all been up to?” She waited expectantly, but was met with silence.

“Ruling equestria?” She guessed. “Peace, friendship, harmony? All the usual? Thought so. Blah, blah, blah bucking blah.”

She leaned forward little further, both hooves resting on the changeling’s neck. “Want to know what I’ve been up to?”

Again, she waited for a response, and when none came, she went on. “Well, I think you all have a rough idea. I’ve mostly been hanging out in the basementof saintly Princess Twilight’s castle. There was a little barred window, high up in the wall, and I was positioned just so I could see it. Yeah, that’s an interesting point — did you all know that being a statue doesn’t remove your senses? Yep, I was shocked too. Turns out being turned into stone doesn’t stop you being able to see, or feel, or hear. I heard all sorts of things. I could count the sunrises and sunsets. I could listen to ponies walking in the garden, moaning about each other. About their new rulers.”

She turned now to Fluttershy. “Birds used to come in and out of the window, too. I guess the basement was a good place to nest. But honestly, Fluttershy, see how much you like birds when you feel hundreds of the damn things take a shit on your face every day for thirty years!” Her voice climbed into a shrill squeal, and she caught herself and stopped abruptly. She ran shaking hooves over her face and took a deep breath.

“So, I waited. I listened. I learned some secrets.” A smile spread over her face once more. “Oh, I learned some good secrets. One of them in particular was really good. It’s not even my secret to tell.” She shot Twilight a small smile. “Shall we tell them, Princess Twi? You do it, go on! No, you! No, silly, you do it. Really? Oh, well, if you insist.”

She clambered forward onto the changeling, and pulled Applejack in close to whisper in her ear. The orange pony’s head rolled forward and her stetson tumbled onto the floor. Annoyance flashed across Cozy Glow’s face and she jammed it roughly back on.

“Oh, never mind, I’ll just tell you all at once. Less suspense for you all that way.”

She seated herself back at the head of the table and steepled her hooves. “About ten years into Princess Twilight’s splendid new reign, she finally found it within her heart to come and see the little pony she had sentenced — without trial, I might add — to life imprisonment.”

Cozy Glow looked up again at Twilight. “I bet you never told them about this, did you, Princess? You didn’t consult the Council of Friendship about this decision.”

Her smile gleeful, she turned once more to the blank stares of Twilight’s friends. “She sat there in the dark, and she talked to me. Twilight Sparkle felt guilty for what she had done. Who would have guessed? The pony who pretends harder than anyone to be good finally felt a twinge of conscience. She left after a while, but she came back the next week, and the week after that. And then one day, she came down there with a full platoon of royal guards and some big old hoofcuffs. Golly, I could hardly believe what I was seeing!” A maniacal little giggle.

“And she did some sort of spell, and then I could breathe again! I fell off Tirek’s shoulder pretty hard, but I can’t tell you how good it feels to move after you’ve been frozen solid for years.”

Cozy Glow paused and took a deep breath, drinking in the air afresh. The sun was rising in earnest now, and its gentle rays were beginning to light up the massacre of the day before.

“I looked around for Chrysalis and Tirek — I was pretty sure we could take you, Twilight,” she nudged the purple leg nearest to her, “But they were still stone. I still don’t know how you pulled that one off.”

She reclined in her makeshift seat and exhaled. “They grabbed me, hoof-cuffed me — I still don’t know why you thought you needed twelve full grown stallions to overpower little old me, Twilight — and threw me in a dungeon. I stayed there for a few weeks, and Twilight came to talk to me every couple of days. Spoke a lot about friendship, forgiveness, all the usual old guff. She even offered to play chess with me. She stank at it.” She looked up at Twilight again and giggled, as though the two of them were in on a shared joke. Her gaze flicked back to the rest of the Council, still slumped where she had placed them, and her eyes narrowed.

“She never told you any of this, did she? The Council, her moral compass — all of you content to think that you left a child to rot in a statue. Twilight let me out, but kept me locked up.” She shot the Princess a baleful look. “Not that she could keep me that way. I got out, as soon as I got bored. Prisons can’t hold me. I can’t believe you haven’t learned that by now.”

“I fled to the mountains.” Cozy Glow’s tone was almost bored now, and she examined her hooves, picking a little at the encrusted soil and blood covering them. “Took a trip to see old Starswirl the Bearded. I found him by accident; only stayed with him for a few days, and then I moved on. He died, didn’t he? He fell down that well outside his mountain cabin. Horrible accident, especially for a unicorn who can teleport. When was it he died, Fluttershy?” She skipped across the circle and grabbed Fluttershy by the cheeks. She shook her, hard, and Fluttershy’s wings flapped in the wind like dead leaves. “It was about…let’s see…fifteen years ago, wasn’t it?”

She leaned in closer, pressing her muzzle hard against Fluttershy’s own. Fluttershy’s filmy blue eyes stared blankly into Cozy Glow’s gleaming red pupils. “Are you starting to connect the dots yet, Fluttershy?”

Cozy Glow whirled away and darted back to her own seat. “But I didn’t leave old Beardie’s cabin empty-hoofed. He was guarding something out there, something you gave him.” She pointed triumphantly at Twilight, and then grinned at Rarity’s hunched body. “Can you guess what it was, Rarity? The generous gift that Starswirl gave me?”

Rarity’s makeup had run, fat gobbets of bloodied paste fallen at her feet. Her raw pink face leered down at Cozy Glow, all the teeth exposed in one final terrifying grimace.

Cozy Glow laughed, a tinkling sound. “That’s right! You got it in one!” She gestured with a wing to the shattered alicorn amulet.

“I stayed in hiding just long enough to put the finishing touches of my plan in place, and to learn what magic I needed from the amulet.” Cozy Glow’s voice had taken on the sing-song cadence of a pony telling a story they have told often. “Illusion spells, shielding. That sort of thing. And then I let one of dear Twilight’s ridiculous patrols find me.”

Her head whipped suddenly to Rainbow Dash. “Bet you remember that, don’t you? The summer the Princess wiped the Wonderbolts’ schedule and had you all fly patrol over the Yakyakistan mountains with no idea what you were looking for? And she never told you what it was about!”

She giggled again. “Why did I let them catch me, you ask? Well, it’s simple, Applejack. Simple enough for even a dullard like you to understand. I knew what I wanted.” She leaned towards Applejack, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I wanted revenge. On all of you, for what I had suffered. And even with my new powers, I couldn’t do it alone. I needed help. And what was a little more suffering, in return for something like this?”

Her sweeping gesture took in the entire Council, and the desolate battlefield beyond them, where mounds of shining black carcasses rose into the sky.

“So I made it look like the amulet wasn’t there, and I shielded myself from Twilight’s spell; because naturally, she decided immediately to re-calcify me. Again with no trial, no public knowledge of my fate. All hushed up, just like before.” She regarded Twilight with a sour expression. “When we were in Tartarus together Tirek told me a little of what Celestia’s idea of justice was like in the old days. But I think you surpass even that, Twilight. How like our parents we become.”

“I intended my shield to be total. It was supposed to just be an illusion of stone, to last until your guard was down. But it turned out differently. I got my spell slightly wrong, I think, and Twilight’s stone magic took effect. And then there I was, back in my cellar, with more birdshit on my wings and the same little dank window to watch.”

A darkness passed over Cozy Glow’s face, a brief flash of the despair of a thousand nights spent trapped and silent. But then she brightened and the same too-wide grin as before dimpled her cheeks again. “Only your spell didn’t quite work either, did it, Twily?” She elbowed Twilight savagely enough to send the huge alicorn toppling sideways onto Spike.

Cozy Glow scoffed and let her lie there.

“The stone spell only had a partial effect. My shield stopped it from completing, I guess. I could still feel my power, the amulet’s power. It took me a long time to build up the strength, but I did it. When I was ready, I unfroze myself, and this time I bought Chrysalis and Tirek along with me.”

She paused her tale and stretched just as she had done when she emerged from her stony cocoon, forcefully enough that the joints in her wings cracked.

“Years had passed. Again. Twilight abandoned us down there to rot for the second time. But we were out. And once I explained to them what had happened, my old allies didn’t let me down.” Another giggle. “Of course, I had the amulet, and they had no Bell or other source of power. They finally had no choice but to acknowledge me as leader. I disguised us, and we fled to the mountains.”

She fanned herself with a wing. The morning sun was heating up. It wouldn’t be long before the esteemed Council would begin to smell. “We spent a year building up our strength. We raided the mountain towns, the minotaurs, the goats and the ponies living there. Tirek took their magic and gave it to Chrysalis, and she,” Cozy gestured to the ocean of dead changelings surrounding the hill, “Bred us an army.” She chuckled. “Several, actually.”

“Her very first child we sent back to Canterlot to take on the form of our statue. There were months between when Twilight and her stupid little flunkies checked on us, so as far as she knew, we never even went missing. And of course, she never told anypony else she had released me in the first place, so none of you knew there was even the potential for a problem.”

She sniggered, an ugly, joyless sound devoid of mirth.

“I spent my time getting to grips with my new toy.” She gestured again to the broken amulet on the ground. “Perfecting its spells.”

“Chrysalis gave me two legions, and took three more north to the Crystal Empire. I imagine they’ll be sending messengers begging you for help right around now, actually. Too bad you can’t lend any. Tirek insisted on going on his own to take on the Princesses of nothing in their old folks’ home at Silver Shoals. I let him.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “It doesn’t matter if he fails or not. This is all I care about.”

She stood up and began to prowl around the edges of the circle, looking at each pony in turn.

“I wanted you all to suffer. I wanted you all to pay for what you made me endure, locked inside my own body for thirty years. You’re smart, Twilight; can you guess how many days that is? No? Eleven thousand. I counted every one.”

She jabbed a hoof into Fluttershy’s back. “And all of you, even the kindest and most generous amongst you were party to my suffering. Not one of you ever thought to visit me, to check up on me. Not one of you ever thought to ask ‘is this the right thing to do?’” She spun away in fury, her eyes glowing with hate. Her voice began to climb. “You just solved all your problems exactly the same way you always do, with magic and friendship! You just locked me away! But there was no friendship for me, no magic for me!” She stopped, panting, her muzzle inches from Twilight’s.

Her little chest heaving, she collected herself, took a step back and calmly kicked mud into Twilight Sparkle’s open eyes. “Not one of you ever took the time to talk to me,” she said, looking balefully up at the ponies encircling her. “It took Twilight fifteen years to even make the attempt.” She paused and drew in another breath. “And it came far too late.”

She scrambled back up onto her original seat and spread her wings, the changeling throne she stood atop lending her extra height enough to bring her to face height for the adult ponies. “What a shame it is that I had to kill you all to make you stop long enough to listen.”

A small smile spread across her face as she looked at her old enemies, finally broken and ground down to their rightful place beneath her hooves. The cost had been immense; her entire army, all her magic, her wonderful amulet. But she had done it. Here she sat, in the seat of Equestria’s power, amongst the most powerful ponies in the world, in the Council of Friendship. And she was the only one left alive.

The midmorning sun shone cheerfully down upon the scene of chaos and destruction, and as Cozy Glow walked away from the smouldering remains of the last meeting of the Council of Friendship, her heart felt strangely light. Once she passed the last changeling carapace, the plains stretched green and empty before her. For the first time, the world seemed full of potential. She was alone, but at last, she was free. There were no more enemies left to fight, nopony left to hunt her down and wrap her again in her stony prison. Her scores were settled, her debts paid. She could go anywhere, everywhere — endless possibilities stretched before her. At last, she was on a journey that had no master plan, no ultimate goal. Cozy Glow smiled, and took the first step on the path that led to the rest of her life.