My wings ache. I have been flying for hours. Days, perhaps. The sun and the moon have come and gone, but I cannot say how long ago it was. I have been focused on one thing and one thing only, with no energy for trivial matters like calculating the passage of time.
Escape.
I must flee, as far and as fast as I can, over the ocean and beyond the great grass plains. There, on the other side of the world — should I reach it before exhaustion claims me — I will have time. Precious, beautiful time, to rest and heal. To lick my wounds until my ichor seals the carapace up again, and I am whole and hard and iridescent once more.
And once I am well again, I will be able to turn my thoughts again to the goal I have held dearer to my heart than my own children.
Vengeance.
Revenge upon all who have wronged me. Twilight Sparkle, who humiliated me. Discord, who tricked me. Celestia, who has moved against me over the centuries in more ways than I can count. And foremost of them all, the wretched little unicorn who toppled me from my throne, robbed me of my kingdom, and cost me the love and loyalty of my children.
After all, what greater joy has a mother than her young? Certainly, I had none. In the times before they turned against me, I believe that I was happy. I kept them close to me, I taught them wrong from right, I showed them the way to survive. The ancient way, the way that I have taught generation after generation of them. It had never failed me before.
So I cannot help but wonder, as pain spirals down from my wingtips and into my basicosta, what went wrong this time.
Perhaps my mistake lay in reaching beyond our ancient borders. Venturing too deep into pony lands was never our way before. But they were so weak, so useless — how could I have ever predicted the way events would work against me?
Perhaps I placed too much trust in my children. They are weak-minded, stupid creatures, I have always known that. That is why I am here, to guide them and punish them. To keep them true to themselves.
But I sent them out into the world, to spy for me and gather love for me, and they obeyed. Perhaps they were gone too long. Perhaps enough of their fragile little psyches were turned, perverted by the ponies, that it was just sufficient to sway the whole.
I keep my wings buzzing, a clear sheen in the air around me, too fast to be seen clearly. The sea is below me, placid as a mirror, but my mind is as turbulent as a storm.
This is the very ocean that those pony princesses, in the height of their narcissism, dare to claim as their own. I am hundreds of miles beyond the Equestrian border already, but the Lunaran Sea is below me still, and it is Celestia’s wretched sun that burns my shell.
I turn my mind to my home, our beautiful hive, woven from the ichor and the exoskeletons of my children over millennia. Each of them contributing to the future of the hive and their unborn siblings even in death. What has become of it now, of my shining dark halls and ancient throne? No doubt the ponies have torn it down, and thrown some sort of macabre celebration over the graves of my offspring. The changelings who once belonged to me — who I birthed and fed with my own bile — likely helped them.
There was a time when their whispering thoughts would have been all around me. For almost my whole existence, my mind has been full of the buzz of my children. With a thought, I could change their mood. With a whim, I could change their very will.
But now they have cut me off. They have cast me out, and locked me from their minds. I have beaten and hammered against that awful, many-hued door — if I try, I can still sense it even now — but they have locked it fast against me.
“You are not our mother,” that fool changeling said to me, the one who claims the name Thorax for himself and pretends that he is a Queen.
Not their mother! As if mere words could change the fact that I created him, carried him, laid his egg, laid the eggs of the very drones who cared for him in his pupal state. As if he could deny his history — that I fed him, taught him, shaped him, like every one of his thousand littermates.
My fangs grind together. My jaw locks.
They are ungrateful, puling infants. They know nothing of the world. They want to sit in their false hive and play pretend that they are ponies. They want to elevate themselves to the status of Queen, every one, eat of the royal jelly and birth their own spawn.
I scoff at the thought, but there is no mirth in the sound.
They will hatch only weak, ugly creatures smaller and more pathetic than even they are themselves.
Only a changeling born of a Queen is a true changeling. They will learn that the hard way, when in a few generations their royal jelly runs dry and their eggs will contain only ashes. They will return to me then, whatever brightly-coloured monstrosities they have made of themselves. They will crawl and fly and limp across the sea to me, and I will accept them, my prodigal children. A mother’s love is boundless, after all. I will embrace my children’s descendants, and I will tear out their throats. Their ichor will serve well enough as sustenance for my new larvae, before they grow large enough to digest love for themselves.
My mouth dampens at the thought of love, my mandibles flexing in their hidden spot behind my canines, ready to unfold. To my dismay, I involuntarily dip a little lower in the sky. I have been flying for so long, since the instant my stone cocoon first cracked away from me, with nothing but my own empty mind to listen to.
I did not wait to learn the identity of my saviour, or whatever their reason for releasing me. Let them rot, along with my fellow prisoners. All that matters is that I escape, and live to fight another day.
The silence in my mind is loud, and I almost — almost — miss my children. It is an insidious beast, this thing called friendship. It consumed my children, and there was a time when it almost was able to hook its claws into me. I find it hard to believe, now. That even I nearly succumbed.
I was lonely and bereft, a Queen with no subjects, a mother with no swarm. Grogar — no, Discord — tempted me with the prospect of revenge, victory, and the chance to win my twisted children back to me. I listened to him, and to the creatures that he tried to match me with. I had spent so long alone in the ruins of my hive that I was grateful even for their company.
I suppose it was not their fault; Tirek was a fool, easy for even that idiot Discord to manipulate — and Cozy Glow was nothing more than what her species is. A pony, susceptible to the creeping power, the so-called magic, of friendship.
Not I. My carapace is harder than steel, but my will is stronger yet. I will wait a thousand years if I must. I will rebuild my power and my hive, and do whatever it takes to wreak my vengeance upon the land that calls itself Equestria. They think they are good and right, and they believe me a monster, but for a changeling, there is nothing more right than killing your enemies and drinking the love of their unsuspecting young.
My resolve is strong, my mind is set. But the waves yawn closer beneath me, and I must grit my teeth and redouble my efforts. I am hungry, I am tired, yes, yes. But I have suffered worse, and will suffer worse again before I succumb to the grasping, starving wolf that is death. Always it dogs my heels, and always I have defied it. I will do so once more.
