I awoke from a few drops of water landing on my snout. I lifted a hoof to my head as I groaned in pain. It was like someone had taken a jackhammer and was drilling directly into my skull. I opened my eyes and tried to blink away the spots of light. Fuck, I hope I don't have a concussion.
What was I doing? I tried to recall what had led us to this moment through the fog in my mind. Suddenly it all came flooding back.
I had disguised myself as the loving princess. Infiltrated the enemy, and disposed of Celestia. My children were laying siege to the city. Then it all went wrong.
How was she supposed to know that the love between Cadance and Shining armor was enough to send her and her army packing? It didn't make sense. How can you defeat Changelings with love? We get our strength from it, If anything. We should have gained more power, but instead. My line of thinking halts as another drop of water lands on my face.
I rub my hoof against my forehead.
Calm down, Chrysalis. This is no time for such things, first I must fully understand our situation.
I looked at my surroundings and blinked in surprise at what I saw. A cave? They were in the middle of a cave. The repeated droplets of water were coming from the rock sealing above me.
I looked around the cave and saw my children all around me. Hundreds of them. How, did we end up in a cave? We should have landed in a field somewhere. It doesn't make sense for us to be underground.
I slowly rose to my hooves as I noticed more and more of my children were waking up. As the queen, I had to be the first one to regain my barrings. Especially after such a loss, it was paramount not to show weakness. The sub-queens will see this as an opportunity to try and gain my position. After this loss, I must retain every little bit of influence I can.
I stand up and start checking my body for damage.
I prod various places with my hoof. Everything seems to be in order. Surprisingly I had no broken bones. Only some minor injuries sourness which would cause bruising.
Was I not flung from a high place? Was it just some type of mass teleportation spell that moved us to this unknown cave?
No, wait. Something else was wrong. It was almost imperceptible, but I could feel it. I looked at my hoof.
Something was off. It was the same hoof I had seen for decades. There wasn't a single thing out of place. And yet it was different. It was like I had stared at a fake hoof my whole life. And for the first time, I was gazing upon a real one. This feeling would have been imperceptible to any other creature. But a changeling knew this feeling. It was the same one any changeling got when they transformed back into their true form.
"Your majesty," one of my generals called for me.
I looked at him. Pharynx was his name, one of my children.
I didn't see any of my other generals in the immediate area. Perhaps they were in different places inside the cave.
"Pharynx, gather a group of changelings. Scour the entire cave. I want every changeling brought to this cavern. From the sub queens to the unhatched brood, everyling is to gather here. If they refuse then you will tell them it's a direct order from me. Under no circumstances are you allowed to leave the cave. I don't care if you're trying to save a larva or running from an Ursa major. You will report any oddities to me before anyling else. Do you understand your orders?"
"Yes, I will do as you command. Your majesty," he said as he bowed his head. He raised it after a moment and pointed to a few of, the changelings that had regained their barrings. They followed him as he flew out of the chamber and down one of the cave passages.
"You," I said, to one of the remaining lings.
"Y-yes, your majesty," she said with a start, clearly surprised to be called out.
"What is your name."
"Leatx."
"Congratulations, Leatx. You've been promoted to my lead architect since the other one is not here. Start making this cavern battle ready. If you fail, and the defense is too weak, the worst that could happen is that we all die painful slow deaths being eaten alive by whatever monster that happens to live here. And I'll make sure you suffer the most. So, good luck and no pressure."
I smiled. Showing perhaps more teeth than necessary, she quickly scrambled away and called to some other changelings to help her.
I looked around the cave chamber until I saw a nice-looking rock, might as well see how my magic is doing. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my core. I felt the magic that resided there. It was still powerful the effects of my feeding of the guard's love were still present.
The magic flowed from my core to my horn as it started to glow in my green aura. I shot a beam of pure changeling magic at the stone after it hit. The rock began to form cracks. Out of which came rays of green light. The stone shattered, bits of it flying everywhere. When the dust settled. A throne stood where the rock once was.
It wasn't as good as the throne back at the hive, but it would do for now. I lay across the seat of my temporary throne. Looking at my subjects complete their assignments. In the meantime, I would concentrate on coming up with a plan.
Some time had passed. With no sun, to try and determine the current time was impossible. But regardless of that a lot of changelings had reported back to me. It appeared that we had been, spread throughout the cave system. It also appeared that this cave was bigger than I first thought.
I organized my changelings into various groups. First were the scouts. Their mission was to scour the cave and create a map of the inside, Which they had almost completed. They had even found what they believed to be an exit. They didn't leave the cave. As per my orders. After they complete the map of the cave system. I will probably send them out in small teams to start scouting the surroundings. Getting a sufficient grasp of our surroundings was priority number one. If we didn't know where we were, we couldn't properly prepare for the dangers we might encounter. Pharynx led this group.
The second group was the workers. Their mission was to construct primary defenses and make proper living quarters for changelings out of the various clearings inside the cave. They had already finished the construction of my throne room and were now busy constructing other rooms. This cave system seemed like an optimal space for us to live in. So they needed less work than I first assumed. Leatx led this group.
Third were the warriors. Although the construction of the defenses was done by the builders, the actual fighting was handled by the warriors. for now, I ordered them to secure the cave. They worked together with the scout team to secure every inch of the cave in a grid pattern. Imago led this group.
Imago was one of my children and a sub-queen. She was one of the best warriors I had. So it was a real shame she was a total cunt. I had taken her with me to the invasion of Canterlot. My original plan wasn't to do a full-on assault on the city. But in case something went wrong I had her and some of my other sub-queens on stand-by. The ones I brought to the battle however were also the ones I didn't mind losing. Regrettably, she and the others survived. And now I was stuck with them since the only ones teleported to this cave were the changelings I brought to Canterlot. My biggest supporters are all still back at the hive.
Imago was one of the first to report to me. When she awoke in this place, she came face with a bear family. They attacked her and the other changelings that woke up in that clearing. The bears took the still disoriented lings by surprise and killed a few of them. Imago, however quickly fell back on her training and was able to kill the adults and capture the two cubs.
Those cubs were what I was examining right now with the last group, the researchers. Led by, and currently its only member, Temporal. It was sheer luck that my best researcher came with me. I originally planned to have him stay at the hive during the invasion. But he refused, Temporal was obsessed with learning as much as he could. So when he had the opportunity to observe how ponies acted was available, he insisted on coming along. He almost blew his cover when he foul-napped a few ponies for his experiments. Now, however, I was glad he pestered me into bringing him along. He would prove vital in finding our way back to the hive safe and sound.
Temporal was hunched over one of the cubs, it had an incision from neck to crotch. Its organs lay neatly beside it. The face of the cub was showing signs of distress. besides the small cub lay one of the adults in a similar state. These bears had black fur all over their bodies, with a small patch of brown around their nose.
"Hmmmm, how curious," Temporal muttered to himself. "It's not in the usual place. No sign of it. Similar to grizzly." He said pulling out a long intestine. One of his hooves transformed into a small claw that he used to cut open the bear's stomach. "Carnivorous diet recently ate." He said examining the stomach's content.
"Temporal, have you found anything useful," I asked.
Temporal spun around flinging the intestine to somewhere unknown. A huge smile plastered his face. His chest was covered in blood and he smelled awful. "Oh, yes. I have found so many interesting things."
"First of all these bears have no magic at all. They don't have the organs that most magical creatures do," he said smashing his claw into the bear's heart and pulling it out of its ribcage. "They're just like those animals in the pony kingdom. No odd organs or strange mutations. Strong bones, sharp claws, no mutations," He rambled on as he showed me a bone, paw, and its skin that he ripped off with his magic with a violent tug. Blood went everywhere, and I took a few steps back to get out of the splash zone. "Shit got too excited," he muttered looking at the bear skin sadly. "Oh, well I'll use it later or something," he said tossing the skin on the table. I almost felt bad for the thing that had once been a bear cub.
"Interesting, those types of creatures are rarely seen outside of Equestria. Does, that mean we're still inside the pony kingdom."
"That, or we're somewhere on an undiscovered land that has similar creatures."
"Anything else?"
"Nothing worth noting," he said as he turned back to the corpse. "I would like a bigger sample of creatures though."
"I'll tell the warriors to find other beasts in this gave and bring them to you."
"Thank you, you're majesty," He said dismissively.
Temporal has always been disrespectful. If he wasn't so good at his job I would have killed him years ago.
I leaned back into my temperary throne as the last changelings finally reported to me. It had taken hours but now I knew our resources 2.500 changelings, under which were 1.550 worriors, 500 workers , 400 scouts, and 50 researchers. I also had 4 sub-queens to command.
We usually had far more workers then worriors but most of my workers were still back at the hive. This would be an issue. Without the workers to keep up maintanance the hive would quickly fall apart. Since the warriors have such large numbers they can do the job of scouting aswell, i decided to fuse the scouts into the worker group untill further notice.
The cave had been fully explored, and all inhabitants other then changelings had been killed.
It was time to scout the outside world.