I am not like the other changelings. I see the way they look at me, sometimes, and I can sense that I make them nervous. They aren’t sure how this change in the hive will affect me, and it worries them. Now that Chrysalis is gone, they are afraid there is nothing to keep me in check.
They’re right.
When I was little, I remember always being hungry. That was simply how things were. The nurses in the hatchery would give out only the tiniest tastes of love each day, and anyling who wanted more needed to prove they deserved it. The nurses encouraged competition to keep us strong, and to weed out those who could not contribute to the hive. If one of our nestmates starved, then that simply meant more to go around for those who remained.
I was never very good at the fighting. I was small and weak, and when my fellows who would grow up to be soldiers pushed me aside, there was nothing I could do about it. If brute force was the only way to prove your superiority, I would have died long ago. But in the changeling hive, there are many ways to get ahead, and I learned them. I was sneaky, and I was smart. The strongest and stupidest of my nestmates were eager for sycophants, and I was willing to do their dirty work. I made myself essential to whoever was most favored at the time, even as I stole love from right under their noses. It was a careful balancing act to make sure I was never too much of a target, and that I never stole enough to be caught.
I had no doubt that the nurses knew what I was doing. They never showed their approval openly, but I could sense it. It would have only made my life harder to acknowledge my techniques, but they still found ways to nudge things in my favor when they could.
When I grew older, I would often slip away from my nestmates to watch the comings and goings of the hive’s infiltrators. They would leave for weeks or even months at a time, and come back suffused with love. And then Queen Chrysalis would take it from them, to be distributed as needed to those who remained in the hive. I could smell the emotions on them when they returned, and before long I could pick out the individual feelings.
I would make up entire backstories for these ponies I knew only by scent, and imagine how I would extract their love when I grew up and became an infiltrator myself. This pony smelled like saffron and roses, so I imagined them as a chef—I would compliment their cooking, and they would feed me delicious food baked with love. Another pony smelled like sweat and fresh-plowed dirt. They were a farmer, working from sunrise to sunset, who would need someone to comfort them when they returned home long after the moon had risen. One smelled like ink and strawberries, and I imagined they were a noble, issuing decrees from behind a massive desk filled with delicacies. They would need a secretary to carry out their whims, to praise their intelligence and quietly remove their rivals. It would hardly be different to what I was doing already, except that they would have enough to satisfy me, unlike my useless nestmates.
Once, I lost myself so deeply in those fantasies that I wondered why I would ever return, when out there, in my head, I would go to bed sated and full, surrounded by loving ponies who would never suspect what I truly was. Why would those infiltrators return to the hive, when their only reward was to be drained of their love and sent out to gather more?
I was lucky. I found out why, before I could be so foolish as to give voice to those traitorous thoughts. A young infiltrator—older than I, but still inexperienced—had the same idea. She went out into the world and did not return. She chose her own welfare over that of the hive.
Chrysalis sent soldiers after her. All they bothered to bring back was her head. I still remember the Queen holding it up as she screamed about loyalty to the hive, and what happened to deserters. Everyone got the message.
It wasn’t until much later that one of my teachers told me that something like that happened once every generation. There was always one who didn’t think the rules applied to them, and didn’t remember the last example.
I remember thinking that in my generation, there were two.
For most of my childhood, I didn’t think I was anything special. I was smarter than my nestmates, yes, but that didn’t seem particularly notable. After all, each of my nestmates were quick, or strong, or charismatic. They all had some way to curry favor, or prove their value, or demand what they wanted. Those that didn’t defend their niche would find it taken from them, and those with no talents at all were pushed aside and quickly forgotten. My methods may have been different, but they weren’t extraordinary.
It wasn’t until I reached adolescence that things really started to change. All changelings can sense the emotions of others to some degree, but I had spent my entire life utterly dependent on knowing what other changelings thought of me. I could sense the slightest changes in mood, and I could tell who was full of love and who was starving. And I could use that to keep myself just a little better fed than everyone else.
It was when I realized that I could sense such things from my nurses and teachers, changelings twice my age, that things really clicked. Our senses aren’t really supposed to work on each other. Stealing love from your hivemates doesn’t help the hive in the long run. Still, it takes a while for a young changeling to guard against such things, and your nestmates are good practice, anyway. But an adolescent nymph able to read full-grown adults? That was special.
At first, I was cautious with my abilities. I could skim a little love from an overseer, fat on privilege and too complacent to notice. When whoever I was sucking up to at the moment wanted to send a message, I could take a little from the target, just to prove I was serious. But when no one noticed what I was doing… I admit, I got greedy. I stole from anyone who had too much, anyone who couldn’t do anything about it, anyone who wouldn’t notice. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to be actually full.
I could take what I wanted, and I was smart enough to keep it a secret. The rules didn’t matter, because I would never get caught.
I’m sure most of you can already see where this is going. Of course I got caught. I wasn’t nearly as smart as I thought I was.
I was lurking in the only place in the hive I really felt was “mine.” It was a little nook high up on the outside of the main structure, which I had hollowed out further, enough to fit myself and a few trinkets and not much else. It was a little secluded place that nobody else cared about, and more importantly, it gave me a view overlooking the Badlands so I could watch other lings coming and going. Most of the activity was from guards, soldiers, and other laborers, but I was really there for the infiltrators. Each one returning was like getting to read a new chapter in the stories of the characters I’d made up in my head.
This time it was different. I was old enough to have started training to become one of them myself, I was cocky from my successes, and being well-fed made me feel powerful and ready for anything. When Carapace arrived, full to bursting with love, I did more than just bask in the aroma. I reached out, almost on instinct, and took some for myself. He had so much, after all—surely he wouldn’t miss it.
I was naive. I assumed that because I could hide my thievery from other adults, that I could hide it from anyone, even an experienced infiltrator. Instead, just as I was beginning to savor what I’d taken, it was roughly torn away from me, leaving me feeling lightheaded and empty. And while I was gasping for air, trying to figure out what had happened, Carapace looked right at me, even though I was hidden far above. He knew exactly who had stolen from him. For a moment, I feared he would fly up and kill me himself for my insolence. But instead he just walked into the hive.
I had gotten lucky again, I thought. He had given me a lesson I would not soon forget, but it hadn’t been a fatal one. I knew never to try that again, but at least there had been no lasting consequences.
By the time the evening meal rolled around, I wasn’t thinking about it at all.
And then Queen Chrysalis herself walked in, with Carapace behind her.
If you haven’t grown up in a changeling hive, you might not understand what made this notable. The Queen does not eat with her subjects. Certainly she does not eat with the adolescents, the teachers, the junior laborers and acolytes who filled this particular dining chamber. The Queen is an intangible presence—the knowledge that she is overseeing everything is enough. She addressed the hive as a whole only rarely, and unless you were of particular importance, you could go your whole life without ever really meeting her. Most of us thought things were better that way—the kinds of positions that interacted regularly with the Queen had significantly shorter life expectancies than most. Infiltrators included, of course, but I thought that I still had a few years yet before I would be skilled enough for that to matter.
Every ling in the room snapped to attention or got very busy looking at the floor, depending on their status. I was in the latter camp, but even the furious pounding of my heartbeat in my ears didn’t stop me from hearing Carapace say coldly, “Her.”
I didn’t have any real hope that he could be talking about anyone else. But it still felt surprising when I was roughly pulled up from the ground, a pair of guards flanking me. Without thinking, I made the mistake of meeting Queen Chrysalis’s gaze, and it was like my entire body turned to ice.
“Bring her,” Chrysalis said, and the guards pulled me out of the room. I was too frozen to resist. I was sure that my life was over. I had angered someling the Queen favored, and that was that. Strangely, though, I felt no fear. The prospect of my life ending instead brought only disappointment. I should have known better. I’d been playing the game long enough to know the consequences, and I had no one to blame but myself.
The guards dropped me in some sort of receiving room. It was unnaturally cold, the living warmth that normally flowed through the entire hive completely absent. There was a throne of some kind for the Queen, but I barely looked at it. Looking too closely might mean meeting Queen Chrysalis’s gaze again, and I knew beyond all doubt that I did not want that.
“You have more than your share, nymph,” the Queen began, her voice smooth and soft, belying just how dangerous she was. “How long have you been stealing from the hive?”
I didn’t want to speak, but I didn’t want to anger her even more. “Years,” I whispered. Lying to her didn’t even occur to me. “Ever since I realized my nestmates were stupid enough to let me.”
The Queen laughed, but it wasn’t comforting. It was a mocking, chilling laugh. “And that made you think you could steal from one of my operatives? You have gone too long without being challenged, nymph.”
I didn’t answer, but I began to feel a glimmer of hope, which I dared not give voice to.
“Clearly, your teachers are inadequate,” Chrysalis continued. She stepped up to me, and I stared unflinchingly at the hoof that entered my vision. And then I felt a sudden emptiness as all that I had stolen was torn away from me, leaving me hollow. I did my best not to whimper, and closed my eyes. “If you have stolen so much beneath their blind eyes, you require better. Henceforth, Carapace will train you personally. A talent such as yours must be put to the benefit of the hive.”
I felt the cold chitin of her hoof as she grabbed my chin and forced my head from the floor. When I opened my eyes, her gaze was boring into me, a wicked smile on her face that exuded no joy. “If I ever again find you with more than I have deemed you worthy of, I will not be so merciful, nymph.”
Then she let go, and walked away, and I remembered to breathe.
Carapace didn’t let me recover. He nudged me harshly with one leg. “Up, nymph. It would seem you are now my problem.” I stood as best I could, and he took his time sizing me up. “What is your name?”
I blinked. “Ocellus, sir.”
“Hmph. Well, let’s see if you turn out to be worth my time.”
When I returned to my nestmates, I was an instant celebrity. Everyone who had witnessed Queen Chrysalis take me away had made the same assumptions I had, and the fact that I had returned intact sent rumors flying. I gave no details as to what had transpired, but the news that I would be receiving private instruction from Carapace spread quickly, and all semblance of truth was quickly left behind. Within a week, the most impressionable of my nestmates were convinced that I had been the one demanding better training from the Queen herself. And that was by far not the most fantastical of the rumors.
I suddenly found myself being afforded a level of fear, respect, and deference I had never thought possible. Even those who didn’t believe the rumors still stepped carefully around me—whatever I had done, it had impressed the Queen, and that was enough.
It made stealing from them even easier than before.
Of course I didn’t stop. It was second nature to me now. I did it almost without thinking. I could pass someling in a corridor, read their mental state, and pluck their surface emotions away in the time it took for them to reach me. But I had learned a valuable lesson in caution. Never again did I gorge myself. I could take a small treat, savor it while I was alone, and have all evidence of it gone by morning. Queen Chrysalis’s threat was excellent motivation to keep myself lean.
Besides, I no longer had time to sit around and watch creatures come and go. Carapace was a perfectionist, and he demanded the same from me. Nothing I did was ever good enough for him. I could show him a dozen pony personas, flawless down to the last freckle, and he would still find something wrong with them. He drilled me on everything from manticores to Twilight Sparkle, and only rarely did I get anything as positive as a ‘good enough.’
When the hive invaded Canterlot, he said I wasn’t ready. He went off to replace high-profile ponies, and I was left behind. My nestmates joined the ranks of the army, ready to fight with hardly any training at all. But I was just a half-trained infiltrator, so even though I’d been working harder than any of them, I was trusted with nothing.
It stung. And when the hive returned defeated, Carapace made sure I felt the sting of defeat, too. It was months before he showed the slightest hint of approval again.
But eventually, begrudgingly, he did approve. And that meant I was finally allowed to leave the hive, and gather love for real.
I could fill an entire book with the stories of my missions. I finally got to put faces to some of the familiar scents. The real ponies were nothing like the caricatures I’d made up in my head. Well, except for Applejack. ‘Farmer’ summed her up pretty well, though she didn’t have any desire for the kind of companionship I’d given her in my head.
When you get right down to it, most ponies are the same. They’re quick to trust, and they just want someone to listen to them, validate their opinions, and tell them everything’s going to be okay. Slip into the skin of a pony they care about and give them attention, and that’s usually all it takes.
Gathering love is easy.
Leaving is hard.
We could never stay in the same town for very long. Replace somepony, and the longer you stayed, the more likely you were to make a mistake. Most importantly, the more likely things were to go wrong when you put that pony back. Create an entirely new pony, and then you risk getting in too deep. You might become the pony you were pretending to be, or leave too many ponies looking for you when you left.
Ponies are too eager to pour their entire heart into you, no matter how many times you take it with you when you leave.
The hardest part of it all was keeping myself separate from the ponies I was becoming. I had to always keep in mind that I would leave eventually, and that I was doing it for the hive. I had to separate myself from the feelings I was absorbing. It was important that I didn’t leave my heart with my targets when I left with theirs.
It’s harder than it sounds, and I wasn’t always entirely successful. There was this mare in Appleloosa, and we…
Nevermind. The pony she fell in love with doesn’t exist, anyway.
By the time I was an adult, I no longer needed Carapace to shadow me when I went out to gather love, and that meant that I delivered it directly to Queen Chrysalis. That was always the worst part of the process. Being full of love, and then having it all torn out of you in an instant. The Queen is never gentle, and even when the love isn’t really yours in the first place, it still hurts.
It took me a long time to figure out why. No one explained what was going on to me, after all. I just assumed that the way it was, was the way it was supposed to be.
Emotions are like a river. They flow from one creature to another, up and down and around in a complicated network of relationships. Stronger relationships mean wider channels, and a stronger current. But at the same time, emotions aren’t like rivers. They flow both ways, back and forth between ponies, through words or looks or touches. It was one of the first problems I learned to deal with—form a strong enough bond with a pony, fill yourself up with enough love, and your excess would flow right back to the pony you were supposed to be feeding on. You’d think, then, that giving it up to Chrysalis would be easy, since that was when I was at my most open.
But the problem wasn’t me. It was her. The river wants to flow downhill, from those who have it, to those who don’t. It wants to spread to those who need it. As the Queen, it was Chrysalis’s job to facilitate that spread, from the infiltrators who gathered it, to those who remained in the hive.
At least, that’s what made sense to me. Until I was old enough and strong enough to realize otherwise. Until, in a moment of carelessness, Chrysalis let her guard down just enough for me to truly sense her. Until I discovered just how much she had. Lakes and oceans of it. Sparkling mountains of love, covered in waterfalls. But it wasn’t truly hers. I knew what it was like to be around ponies overflowing with love, and how easily it pours out of them. Chrysalis was the exact opposite of that—her love encircled her heart without touching it. She hoarded it like a dragon hoards treasure, and not a drop of it spilled from her.
She was more full than I could ever be. That was why she had to tear the emotions out of me. They would never flow to her on their own.
The experience shook me. I didn’t know what to do about it. She could feed the entire hive, more than enough to go around, and yet she gave us only scraps. How could she be so selfish?
Ironic, isn’t it, that looking into a mirror can change you. In Chrysalis, I saw myself. After all, the changelings I had stolen from had deserved it, hadn’t they? I was clever, and they were stupid, and if I could take what I wanted without getting caught, then that was just and right. Clearly, I was more deserving. If a few of my siblings starved when I could have shared… well, that simply meant they were weak, and there would be more for me.
I was such a fool. If I couldn’t fathom how Chrysalis could possibly be so deserving that she needed all that love, when she was the Queen, how could I possibly justify deserving extra myself? I couldn’t even hide behind the good I was doing for the hive. That wasn’t why I was an infiltrator. I did it because I was good at it, and it made me feel good, and I reaped all of the benefits of it before I only begrudgingly returned to share it. If I could stay with the ponies who loved me and abandon the hive without consequences, I would do it. That was why Chrysalis hunted down deserters. Without that threat, perhaps none of us would ever come back.
I was nothing but a Chrysalis in potentia. Even though she terrified me, even though being around her made my exoskeleton itch. How many other lings had felt the same way about me, when I let them believe the rumors?
I resolved right then that I would not follow that path.
I am not like the other changelings. I help where I can, taking from those who have too much, and giving to those who do not. There still isn’t enough to go around, but it doesn’t matter. It took hardly any time at all for the kinds of changelings I’d dismissed as ‘weak’ to surprise me. They were thinkers and creatives and empaths, and they all had something to contribute, even if the hive didn’t see its value. I don’t know how they knew it was my doing—I should have easily been able to hide my manipulations from nymphs so young, but somehow they knew what I was doing and flocked to me. Even those I didn’t help directly, the ones who were naturally strong or cunning, they came to me as well. There was an unspoken rule in my presence that all were accepted, and even the bullies respected it.
The older changelings viewed me with suspicion. Perhaps they thought I was grooming the next generation to follow me instead of the Queen. Maybe in some ways they were even right. Privately, I thought it rather funny that as soon as I took steps to avoid becoming Chrysalis, others saw it as following in her hoofsteps.
Sometimes, I wondered just how much potential had been lost. Haltere made beautiful art, and there had been one just like him in my own nestmates. Clypeus had so many ideas, most of them impossible, but all she wanted to do was help. All it took was me giving them a little bit of love, and they were emboldened to be themselves, instead of what their nurses tried to mold them into. There could have been hundreds like them, if only Chrysalis had allowed it. But instead they had been forced to conform, or left to die.
I couldn’t be there all the time, and there was only so much I could hide from Chrysalis when I returned from my missions. But at least to my eyes, it seemed to be enough.
I tried to make up for the mistakes I made growing up. I tried to give back everything I’d stolen. But I was still an infiltrator. And more importantly, I was one of the best. So when Chrysalis unveiled her plan to kidnap the entire population of Ponyville, I was one of the operatives in the room. I didn’t like the idea. Chrysalis is a little insane on a good day, but when it comes to Twilight and her friends, she’s positively unhinged. But refusing would have gotten me executed, and failing would have been almost as bad.
I took Applejack. We were already close, from when I’d posed as a merchant in Ponyville. I hadn’t meant to get to know her specifically back then—we were always warned to be wary around the Elements. But when she approached me in the market, she reminded me so achingly of Apple Cobbler. Even if I could never tell her what her cousin meant to me, it was comforting just to be near her.
Betraying her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on her face when the pony she thought was her friend put her in a cocoon.
At least Apple Bloom and Big Mac didn’t see it coming. That made it easier.
Does it absolve me if I say I tried to come up with alternatives the whole way back to the hive? Ways that I could let them ‘escape’ that wouldn’t bring Chrysalis’s wrath down on my head. But I couldn’t find any. As far as I could tell, the plan had worked. All the ponies who could really oppose us were in our clutches. And hitting the entire town meant that we could leave behind… less than perfect copies, and still expect the ruse to hold for a while. Which freed up changelings like me to hit the next target. If something was going to stop us, it seemed like it needed to have already happened.
So you can imagine my excitement when I was moping in my hidey-hole and saw Thorax and his friends approaching. It wasn’t exactly the rescuers I was expecting, but, well… it was something. I told the guards at the front entrance to get lost, and they were scared enough of me that they listened. And then I just watched.
I knew Discord only by reputation, and the two unicorns weren’t familiar to me at all. But when the changeling got close, I sort of just knew everything was going to be okay.
He was just like Chrysalis, and at the same time, nothing like Chrysalis at all. He was overflowing with love, but it was different than when an infiltrator returned with a bounty. He was loved. Not for a disguise or a persona. This was love for himself, as he was.
It reminded me of the spark I sometimes felt when I praised Haltere’s art or Clypeus’s crazy schemes. When, sometimes, the love I shared with them didn’t seem to come from anywhere. It just sprang into existence, and lit them up from inside.
That was enough to satisfy me. I didn’t know who Thorax was then—I'd never met him before he left the hive—but I trusted him.
Everyone knows the rest. That moment in the throne room… It was exhilarating. It was a confirmation of everything I’d been trying to figure out, and just how wrong I’d been as a nymph.
Stealing love, letting your nestmates starve, that doesn’t mean more for yourself. Love isn’t a zero sum game. That’s why ponies are so free with their hearts. Sharing love amplifies it, over and over and over, until there’s enough for everyone.
I can tell some members of the hive aren’t sure about this change, just yet. They liked the security of their routines. They’re worried about whether Thorax can really lead. Some of them are even looking at me, wondering if I’ll challenge this new ruler. They’re easier to read than ever, and many of them were sure that I was Chrysalis’s natural successor.
But they don’t have to worry. I’m finally free of Chrysalis’s greed.
I send them love.
