Abandonment Issues

Cadence stalked through the gardens of Canterlot. Well, it wasn't actually Cadence, it was a creature wearing the alicorn princess' skin. Every once in a while her purple eyes would flash their natural green, signifying her annoyance or frustration. She was prowling the lush green fields for a specific purpose...to find a statue that owed her a thing or two.

Said statue wasn't always a statue, once upon a thousand years ago the stone was flesh and it's magic was very dangerous. In fact, the creature fashioned her....then left her in the desert to suffer! Even when he was freed those many months ago, he did not come to her, he simply cavorted about with some fillies, creating new playthings so he could leave them behind.

Just the thought of him enraged her.

Sure, after he left her in the desert...starving, alone, forgotten, she had survived. But that did not excuse him from what he  had done...created her, and left her. You can't just make a being and leave them! That's not how the world works! Or...at least that's how she felt...

Ever since that day he left her, she felt this undeniable, unquenchable rage deep down. It poisoned her heart, her very soul...it hurt her as well, knowing that someone who promised her a good life, care, and a life where she didn't have to fight for survival...but no. That's not how it went.

After exhausting her food sources in the desert, she moved on. She traversed the great sand pit until she found a little settlement on the edge of her home. It had maybe twenty ponies tops...and it was filled with the life force she so desperately needed to survive.

She still remembered her first pony, a little filly by the name of Rose Petal. One night, when the filly was going out to the barn she dragged her into the darkness and drank the little pony dry. Then...something odd happened, her magic flared and she assumed the shape of the filly. She could blend in...she could feed freely.

But, over the next week she learned that life force is given freely if it's from someone they love. It was hard for her to drain them, she didn't want to. For the first time in her miserable life she had a father that loved and cared for her, a mother who just wanted the best for her. But she couldn't stay, her mind wouldn't let her. She had to search for her true father, she had to find him and make him pay.

So she moved on, from town to town, draining whoever would cross her path. Usually families, though. She hated how somepony had something she did not. Why did they get a father that didn't abandon them? Why did they get nice houses with plenty of food? It wasn't fair!

Of course, her movements were documented by the government. Whole families dying was not a common thing...so she was hunted. She was hunted back to the Badlands, back to her unfortunate tomb. The ponies would not follow her, they were too scared to. But she still needed someone to protect her.

That's when she found them. Little beetles that made towering hives in the desert rock. Tiny little things with gleaming black shells, glowing blue eyes, and translucent wings. In a way, they looked a little like her, but smaller and actual insects. Immediately she grew found of the little bugs, and over time she used her magic to shape them.

It took her centuries upon centuries, subtly manipulating the very genetic structure of eggs and mothers to finally realize the bugs' full potential. But when all of her hard work was finished, she had her colony of pony sized insects. They buzzed about the magnificent, monumental hive they had carved out of a butte, treating her as their queen. Which in a way, she was.

As soon as they were ready, she began to alter them further. Giving them working horns like her and teaching them the ways of her deceitful magic that she had mastered over the years. She taught them to pull nourishment from love, from the very core of ponies. She made them dependent on it.

Nothing is more loyal than an addict with a loyal supplier. She kept them hooked on love and supplied with it for so long that they would constantly beg and plead with her for more and more and more. They could not be sated, which was perfect. Chrysalis convinced her hive that the faraway mountain had an immense source of love upon it. That all they needed to do was help her take the city and they would be sated forever....but she was just here for the statue.

As soon as she assumed the identity of the Princess, she looked through the royal records to see what had happened to her dear father. She soon learned that he was turned into stone at the hooves of the monarch of this kingdom, then again at a group of ponies called 'the elements of Harmony.' She needed to see this for herself.

Then she saw it, the terrified expression on his stone face, his arms outstretched at a feeble attempt to stop an invisible force. Just the sight of his mismatched face made Chrysalis' ire rise immensely. The disguised queen trotted over to the statue and looked up at it.

"This serves you right, fool." The Fake-Cadence sneered out, her fangs showing through her disguise. "You left me out in that desert to starve..." She made sure not to speak to loudly as to not attract too much attention. "You abandoned me to play your little game and you lost." Each word was coated with the poison of one thousand years left alone, of one thousand years of hate and confusion.

The statue simply stayed there, unmoving and solid as it has always been.

"I hate you. You know that? You had no right to bring me into this world just to...to...leave me!" Chrysalis could feel something strange, something in her eyes. She sat down and raised a pink hoof to them, the appendage came back with a clear liquid upon it. This was impossible...the last time she had cried had been...been....right after he left her....

"I hate you...so much..." She could not stop it now, the tears were flowing. So she simply hung her head and let them do so. "I thought you were playing a game! I thought you would come back!" She was practically screaming at the statue now, her feelings were in a limbo between rage and severe depression. "How could you let this happen? How could you let them do this to you?!"

Chrysalis collapsed right then and there, right at the feet of the once mighty god of chaos. She wept into her hooves, she let a millennium of pain and anger finally come out like a tidal wave. She just wanted to see her father again...she just wanted him to be alright. She just wanted her Daddy Discord to tell her everything was going to be alright...

She looked up at the statue once more and attempted a glare, it failed and only caused her vision to swim with more tears. As she put her head back down, a breeze passed. Upon it three words could be heard very faintly, the voice they came from seemed so sad.

"I'm so sorry...