The Gray Dames

“Power corrupts; absolute power is divine.”

With the mission in Canterlot a success, and as her warrior mares prepared to return to the bunker, Celestia trusted Crucible Wings with instructions on dealing with the nobility and the Hall of Friendship.

“Spread the news to all garrisons, along with my orders. Keep your heads down, remain focused on your daily duties, and be ready for when I summon you. Let the Hall of Friendship address the lack of leadership. The more the enemy believes we are uncoordinated, the better.” She instructed, and the pony listened, focused eyes on hers. Crucible and the officer corps of the Royal Guards, intelligent ponies well equipped to execute her orders until she was ready to move against the Harpy.

Her battlehorns used a casket meant for transporting their fallen sisters back to camp after a battle. Although the fit was tight, it securely housed Chocolate Velvet, preserved by potent spells. It was about time to replace the original ones, anyway. Celestia could see the sadness in their eyes—they didn’t fully comprehend her loss, but mourning a brother in arms was something they inherently understood.

Once inside the bunker, they placed the casket in the center of an empty hall intended for future expansion—a safety measure. Come any eventuality that required Celestia to awaken them, they might need resources unknown at the time of building. The expansive hall was adorned with arching pillars and a spacious open area. It stood a testament to Star Swirl’s meticulous planning. Once again, his foresight had served Celestia well.

It filled Celestia with a reassuring sense that his foresight continued to support her, but her mood was not one for reminiscing about the past. The casket, crafted from noble evergleam oak—silver-streaked gray with a subtle blue gleam—felt incomplete. It lacked the Royal House banner that was the occupant’s right. Uncertain of the proper protocol, the battlehorns had left his face uncovered. It showed little of the damage the lighting spell caused on him.

Celestia stared intently at the stallion’s lifeless form. She couldn’t tell how long she had been there. His expressionless, unmoving face seemed to mock her persistent hope of witnessing one of his smiles again. To hear him say something silly. Her ears pulled back, and her eyes stung with unshed tears. Bitterness coiled around that hope with the thought that Harmony’s miracles were not meant for her, even if she often gave them to others.

The others sat ‘at the minimum safe distance,’ Chocolate Velvet would have said, half-seriously, half-humorously. Two battlehorns in full armor and battle gear guarded the door for no other reason than that it was customary to stand watch over their fallen sisters. They had no protocol for the situation, but they all wanted to do something. Another reason was that so many of the critical mares of the Legion were there. Celestia was there because she didn’t want to leave him alone again. Radiance, with the quintessential light gray coat and purple mane of the Gray Dames, was there because Celestia was there. Both were natural leaders, always at the forefront of significant events. The mare seemed to best understand Celestia’s pain and stood a silent watch both over the stallion and Celestia.

Medica Panacea resembled a younger version of the Matriarch Legatus, lacking her faint battle scars and a touch less physically imposing. She, too, maintained a silent vigil over the stallion. And Domina Hammer, draped in her gold-hemmed red cloak, meticulously examined him. Her golden yoke and its delicate arms held one of the crystal filters between the stallion and her scrutinizing eyes.

“I am unsure of what you expect me to do, Celestia.” The Domina said while a telekinetic spell folded the delicate golden arm back into place with the many other tools. Her blunt practicality and honesty reminded Celestia of her own uncertainty. “As much as I am sure our life-saving magical implants would work on him as they do on the battlehorns…”

She hesitated, revealing a glimpse of empathy she typically concealed. Her artificial leg shifted as she sought the right words. “The wounds caused by the griffon spell are too grievous. His heart was destroyed, and the surrounding tissue was seared. Damage extended all the way to his hind legs. I do not know if we could save him, even if he had not yet expired.”

Much more empathetically, Panacea merely repeated the same with different words. “There is no usable magic in his flesh anymore. And no savable flesh either. It is inert matter. As soon as the preservation spells are lifted, decomposition will set in again.”

Hammer nodded respectfully, but as dry as ever. “Were it otherwise, we could employ our resources. An artifact might sustain him. Given his rank and importance, we could attempt to give him a magical heart, but it is too late, and our craft is insufficient—especially in our diminished state. His alicorn physiology might allow him to endure longer than our sisters, but only under ideal conditions, which are far past due.”

Panacea nodded in agreement with Hammer’s assessment. Celestia kept her gaze fixed on Chocolate Velvet. She could hear their voices. Her rational mind acknowledged their words, yet her heart stubbornly clung to hope. “If his body can be mended sufficiently, and his soul brought back, they might couple again. Animate him enough that we can heal his wounds and make him capable of sustaining his life again…”

Matriarch Legatus Radiance interjected in an imperial voice and reproachful tone, resonating through the empty chamber. Her stern gaze softened slightly as she addressed Celestia. “What you suggest is not only necromancy—and a crime by your own laws—it is madness. Impossible. He is gone, your majesty.”

Celestia listened. Ironically, she knew all the processes of the brain that presented the obvious conclusion to her, as well as she knew the ones that rejected it. And was still helplessly at their mercy. Domina Hammer further reinforced the point. “I have barely begun examining the recovered weapons, and I am thoroughly impressed with the advances in the magical sciences. But magic still cannot do the impossible.”

Celestia’s voice trembled. “His soul differs from that of most ponies. It cannot enter the Pool of Souls and will remain at the mercy of the winds of the Aether and Nightmares. He will fade away if I don’t rescue him, but he is still there.”

Panacea stepped back, shaking her head, and spoke with a voice tinged by a quiet dread. “Even if Hammer could conjure up an artifact capable of replacing his heart, and we could restructure his chest, the intimacies of the flesh are lost. The damage is far deeper—coagulated blood, necrosis, and degraded structures. Even with potent healing magic, even if you could reunite his body and soul, you would condemn him to an unlife of horror.”

The three mares regarded her, not with anger or judgment but sympathy. Radiance, of the three, better understood; her ears drooped, and her voice came out softly. “Celestia…”

The princess’ face had hardened, stripped of the usual calm serenity. “I have served Harmony for millennia. This time, Harmony will heed me. If the Harpy can afford to break the rules of the Cosmos—stowing away the souls of her wretched catbirds—then I will reclaim my Prince-Consort. It is my privilege as the Firstborn of Harmony.”

Hammer raised an eyebrow, her voice tinged with amusement and challenge. “I thought our mission was to stop the Harpy and save Equestria from a cataclysmic demise.”

Celestia lifted her eyes from the casket and met the unicorn mare’s pursed lips. Not a hint of yielding in her eyes or convincing in the other’s. “It is. I need him for that as much as I need you and your obedience.”

Still delightfully defiant and rational, the red-cloaked mare sat on her haunches and crossed her remaining foreleg with her crude, mechanical one. “Unless you possess a miracle worker and a reality-defying laboratory, my obedience is as useless as hopes and dreams.”

Maybe it was that hope had finally drowned the realist practicality screaming ‘impossible’ at her, but Celestia found the mare’s disagreement refreshing. A ghost of a smile danced on her lips. “But I do. Ready all available mares. We will teleport to the Chittering Bog within the hour.”

***

Logistics was a constant theme in every war and warfare treatise. And in crossing terrains, all authors, Celestia included, agreed: hooves were meant for solid ground. They were poor limbs for traversing swamps—a miserable combination of rotten smells, decaying trees, and creeping vines. A difficult terrain that sapped the morale of soldiers, and even the most motivated and well-trained would eventually succumb to the lugubrious filth. But a swamp was more than just filth; it teemed with life that thrived on decomposition. That turned rot into new life. It was Life—as beautiful and vital as all Life under the mighty sun—but unappetizing to the aesthetically minded mares of war and pretty pony princesses. Ponies, being eclectic creatures, found the vibrant yet smelly flora more appealing to flies than themselves, unnerved by the sight of insects bathed in digestive juices.

Celestia was glad she could not see the water in the gloom. It shouldn’t ever be so sludgy as it seemed against her legs. The vegetation poking out of the water grazed her legs too, but their network of roots provided some leverage in the muck. Luna’s light in the clear sky provided enough light for her to maintain direction, but harmless animals and pretty flowers turned into specters in the shade. Celestia silently counted her small blessings in that infernal quagmire.

“Explain to me again how it was that the Changelings invaded Canterlot and Chrysalis ruled it for five minutes?” the red-robed Domina Hammer demanded. The swamp murk probably clung to her fancy robes, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her glare bore into Celestia like she meant to see through a lie. “And how come they now have a king… and also, why is Chrysalis still alive?”

The leadership of the Fellbane legion marched flanking Celestia. Behind them, a thousand couples of pale purple eyes followed. Trusting the mares in charge of their lives even if they were winging it and bickering like a group of old mares throwing petty complaints in a cafe while negotiating the terrain. Aside from the sloshing of their march, the occasional croak of a frog broke the silence, as the mares spoke in a hushed tone. Most animals instinctively avoided the sheer magnitude of magical might they emitted, but the swamp lived on despite them. An unseen creature splashed at the water, and suddenly their noise was gone. Clicking insects also buzzed incessantly. An occasional ululating cry pierced the night. The mares, except for their superiors, remained silent, eyes darting for any sign of danger as it behooved a marching battlehorn. It was the privilege of the officers to converse—or to bicker.

“I promised Queen Farfalla I would not kill Chrysalis,” Celestia explained, ever keeping her ears forward, twitching at any noise in the water. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she envied the others who could not inherently sense the intense magic of Life radiating from the water.

“That monstrous, sororicidal devil does not deserve compassion,” Panacea whispered bitterly.

Funny enough, Celestia mused to herself that compassion was best served to those who didn’t deserve it. And that was precisely what put her in the present situation. Maybe it was time she relearned to put down and bury her enemies once more.

“Why exactly are we here, Celestia?” Radiance inquired with a steady yet probing voice. Celestia considered she might start with nosy mares who asked too many questions. Fortunately, Radiance couldn’t see her expression in the dark. Regardless, the question was fair, and the mare continued it. “The changelings certainly patrol this area. I cannot see the benefit of engaging them, nor do I understand how this pertains to the tragedy of the Prince-Consort’s passing.”

“Also, kindly explain when male alicorns started appearing.” Again, Domina Hammer interjected with a tone nestled between the judgmental and the overly practical. The princess could almost hear the old mare complaining that she wanted to play with her new toys back in the bunker.

“We are crossing through here precisely because the changelings do not patrol this area,” Celestia stated dryly.

“Why not?” the military commander demanded, genuinely baffled.

“Because Chrysalis has more ego than smarts,” Celestia replied with a subtle chuckle, but it turned to a nicker as she unstuck her hoof from a submerged log and shook it. Finally, she sighed and turned around, looking at the leading mares and the troops behind them.

“In an age past, before Nightmare Moon, Luna and I decided we wanted to share our lives with somepony like us. For various personal reasons. The ones you need to understand is that male alicorns do not occur naturally, for whatever Harmony-forsaken reason. But it goes beyond that. We became weary of those who proposed marriage to climb up the social ladder, even if they were not aware they were doing so. We lost too many good ponies to that.”

Celestia’s legs sloshed purposefully on the sludgy water. She ignored all the lumpy matter floating in the dark, much like her mind sifted around timeworn memories she would rather forget. The swamp’s unpleasant smells mingled with the stale scent of her recollections, like sifting through moldy cream. Even ones such as how Twilight herself might qualify had Celestia not learned the hard lessons of the past.

“Not to mention outliving every single one that didn’t,” she muttered, resuming her march. “We created an alicorn, but it is impossible to fit the soul of a pony into an alicorn. We also lacked the means to craft a proper alicorn. Instead, we ended up with unholy flesh golems condemned to a fleeting existence of pain and insanity. Harmony does not take kindly to tampering with the mechanics of Life.”

Celestia paused and turned around again to meet the gaze of a hundred pairs of purple eyes in the first rank of soldiers under the moonlight. “Recently, the changelings have developed surprisingly advanced and powerful medical sciences alongside innovations in both thaumatological and thaumaturgical fields. Their goal… Chrysalis’ goal was to offset their curse. Most changelings are stillborn due to damaged parts of their souls not coupling properly with their physical bodies. Despite all the damage Chrysalis caused, she and her ‘eggmaidens’ made immense advances in the medical sciences.”

The mares listened quietly, and intently as Celestia continued her explanation, avoiding unnecessary movements. “After Thorax became the Changeling King, there was a problem…”

“They needed a queen because that is just how those disgusting bugs reproduce,” Panacea frowned. She spoke with a contempt that Celestia saw mirrored in frowns, grimaces, and hushed comments.

“They are not the same as us, Panacea. That’s how they work.” Celestia admonished them before those feelings escalated. “After some shenanigans, we made a deal with Chrysalis and Thorax. It would not do in our civilized society to keep her under house arrest merely for the means of their species to reproduce, so she kept her title and important duties. Thorax was supposed to rule the hive.”

Celestia sighed, rolled her eyes, and looked at the stars before she continued. “But because Chrysalis is the way she is, and Thorax is the way he is… She effectively remained Queen Regnant. Changelings were always supposed to function within a caste system—working changelings, soldier changelings, and ruling changelings. Once Chrysalis destroyed the other hives and killed her sisters and her mother, she suppressed this structure. We only realized this when Thorax freed some of her children from her control. That alerted us to the fact that Chrysalis had mastered a new field of knowledge. Biological sciences, far beyond my primeval memories and instinctual understanding of Life. At least as far as one can apply those in present times.”

“The deal we made included a seat for the changelings in the Hall of Harmony, even if their political structure doesn’t accommodate representative seats. Effectively, the Changeling Swarm joined the Equestrian Confederacy. Officially, part of the deal was that Chrysalis would share the changeling medical sciences. Under the sleeves, she would help Luna and I with our personal project.”

Radiance, glaring at Celestia with the intensity of a disappointed mother, interjected sharply. “Letting Discord free was not enough. You had to make a deal with the literal queen of deceit.”

“Discord earned his freedom. You do not understand the power Twilight Sparkle and her friends wield.” Celestia glared back at her. “Regardless, Chrysalis will assist us whether or not she wants to. And that is all you need to know for now. I will infiltrate the Changeling Rock and talk to her. If it does not go well, I will signal you to attack. You will seize control of the place and put down any resistance.”

That was something the warrior mares understood. They steeled their eyes, and grim frowns etched their faces. They silenced any unquiet murmurs and followed Celestia across the swamp. Some hooves slipped in the wet dark or tripped on inconvenient, musky logs. Sometimes, a mare or two needed rescuing from being swallowed by the mud. A couple of leeches needed magical burning. A few hushed comments about the fitting filth of the place reached Celestia’s ears, not unlike the colorful smells and eerie noises of the nocturnal plants and animals. Precision and martial discipline reigned above all.

The transition was abrupt and seamless. Equestria’s magical climate could shift as the boundaries of touching bubbles, and the terrain changed in kind with no more than a couple hundred hooves of transitional, dried up swamp in between. The trees thinned and shortened, lending more moonlight to shine on the restricted puddles of algae-filled water. And mud. Inordinate amounts of mud clinging to coats, armor, capes, and manes, but the mares of war marched on at Celestia’s back. The wind picked up and brought smells of sand and the metallic, bleach tang of changeling magic. The lights of the Changeling Rock were in sight, and the practiced mares grouped closer together, staying low behind Celestia and their leaders.

When she noticed, Celestia had already magicked herself clean of the muck and clingy mud. She stared blankly at her pristine white hooves and then at the similarly clean sets of armor and manes that looked at her and wondered what she was so distracted with. One of them even rinsed her purple mane of water from her drinking supply. Ponies will be ponies, Celestia supposed. She coughed dryly and focused on their destination.

Changeling Rock. As much a literal name for a place as Ponyville. Except one was a quaint town, vibrant with joy (sometimes chaos) and full of nice and well-meaning ponies, despite the few exceptions. The other was a jagged tower of black, uncharacteristically magical stone and tunnels as tortuous as the lies and deceit changelings built around them. It glowed like the horn of its de facto ruler and the eyes of its inhabitants. A small sun in the magical senses against the subdued dim of the barren wasteland that surrounded it. A rock filled with bug ponies who turned deception into a racial identity.

Part of Celestia immediately condemned such thoughts. Changelings were not like that because they wanted or liked it. Their king, Thorax, was one of the nicest creatures Celestia had ever known to the point he might have been another potential spouse for her was he not so excessively awkward and naïve. And Chrysalis… Celestia grimaced as similar words came to mind about her, save for her exceedingly malicious and cunning selfishness. Now, Chrysalis was lucky. That was the word that best described Queen Chrysalis. Another thing the changelings did was to elevate the idea of a caste system to the very biology of their cursed race, and she got away with tampering with it.

An ominous beacon of both promises and condemnation, Changeling Rock was home to the changelings, and a dreaded dungeon of horror to ponies. And under the pale light, dots buzzed left and right against the faint glow of the stone. The Swarm never truly slept.

The sight dragged an anchor across the sludgy bottom of a serene lake of memories, stirring what time had settled. Layers upon layers of ugliness challenged the silt of the Holy Griffon Empire’s slavery and barbaric debauchery. Most creatures didn’t know what changelings were under their hard keratin carapaces, much less the civilian caste’s colorful, cute bug appearance. Celestia understood what lay at the heart of their need to feed on love. Celestia knew. She remembered. And it was one of the reasons she had decided Equestria had no need for goddesses and religions. And that was another thing the changelings clung to. Chrysalis defined Queen Mother in every sense of the word.

As Chocolate Velvet would have put it, Celestia should have ‘nuked’ that place.

With the other mares falling silent so she could focus, Celestia sat on the hardened ground of the wasteland. Eyes closed; her mind focused on the magical energies that surrounded her. The magic from the place radiated to her, but she probed into it. The experienced spellcaster discerned layers upon layers of defensive spells etched into the magical aura of the rock. Her mind probed the magical formulae in the air and glyphs of arcane meaning presented themselves in her mind’s eye. Bizarre, eldritch changeling magic threatened to give her a headache with dissonant magical energies, sudden shifts in orientation, and foreign glyphs with mismatched magical meanings. Recurring phrases, like notes on a musical sheet, helped her map the unknown energies and correlate them to her encyclopedic knowledge of the very nature of magic. And familiarity too. Changeling magic was not as foreign as it used to be. Her mind’s eye swam through the levels of magical walls and nimbly dodged the triggers embedded in the depths of age-old defensive spells meant to detect tampering or intrusion.

It was not a map of the physical place, but a mental image of the magical architecture and defenses impregnated upon the magical part of the matter. If she could see it with her eyes, the rock would tower before her, taunting her to brave its innards. Still, she had no time to hesitate before the gargantuan task. Celestia probed deeper into the labyrinthine magical fortress. Focused, determined. Chocolate Velvet depended on her not fluffing this up.

She watched for any spellcasters guarding the magical matrix, and when none presented themselves, she continued her infiltration. Her mind poked as softly as a feather for the way through the maze of magical defenses. Her mind tiptoed into the deeper layers, and she found an immensely complex web of spells above a pool of bleach-like liquid that rested in the heart of the changeling citadel.

Time stretched and bent as she mentally struggled. She slowed down not to run headfirst into any traps. Her closed eyes trembled, and her ears flopped. It was more difficult than she had expected, but she prodded at the magical formulae. She saw both the obvious and subtle triggers and their associated alarms that would summon the guardian spellcasters to shut her off. Or worse: magical feedback traps ready to overload her horn with mana and splinter it into a gory mess. Realistically, it was unlikely that one such trap could match the magical feedback of the sun, but giving Chrysalis an early warning was dangerous.

Ethereal mechanisms revealed themselves to her expert knowledge as the tumblers and cylinder of a magical lock. If you know the spell, you cast it and enter. If you don’t, you must disassemble the ward. A thief in the night, deftly picking an ethereal lock; as one’s hoof might tremble at the danger and exertion, her horn was becoming numb.

Still, she opened the way without a pop or a click of pieces coming apart, nor a magical ripple a spellcaster sentry could detect. She found an immense magical system of complex spells covering what could only be the Spawning Pool and forming the magical architecture changelings used to sustain and monitor Chrysalis’ eggs. Celestia had no time to examine those; the ripples following the wake of the soul of a changeling in the physical place evidenced someone magically probing the spells. Were they probing the wards for intruders, or using the spells to monitor the eggs? It didn’t matter. A dedicated infiltrator spellcaster might remain undetected, but whoever they were, the changeling would notice something unusual given the monumental potency of Celestia’s soul. A very real gasp escaped her physical body. And even as she remained perfectly still, her mind nimbly found its way through the maze of glyphs and flowing mana. Luck was involved, but Chocolate Velvet would say it was in her character sheet. Whatever that meant.

She was no novice to this game and followed the flow of mana up, knowing that Chrysalis would reside at the top and would require the magical systems to inform her of the status of her eggs. Celestia’s gambit paid off and the magical energies took her consciousness quickly to the top. Even as her body remained a statue of focus and discipline, her mind twisted and spun. Millennia of training moved her thoughts like the legs of a soldier wielding a weapon. She disarmed all the triggers along the way and passed untouched by the arcane defenses, dodging the sentry spells, and denying the guards outside any warning.

An office. Its likeness, imprinted upon the magic of matter, filled her mind’s eye. A living room and a bedroom combined. But the magic stirred in the air. Her intrusion may have been detected. Outside the office, a guard extended their magical reach inside like an octopus unfurling a tentacle. Too close for comfort; it needed to end it now! She felt like Daring Do slipping under a closing stone door. Practiced familiarity, skill, and talent allowed her to build the formula for her teleportation spell, complex as it was, on the fly. With a flash and a bang outside, but only a subdued glimmer and a whisper at the destination, she found herself in a dark room.

In the wake of her controlled teleportation, magical energies quickly settled. No shouts came from beyond the door. No magical probing poked at the edges of her soul. Still, heart racing, a serious frown, and hooves at the edges of a desk, she hid behind it. A million subduing spells quickly rushed past her thoughts while she kept staring at the stone doors over the neatly organized piles of parchment. Absolute silence. The double door never opened, no alarms rang, and no changelings screeched.

A triumphant grin flashed on her muzzle as she eased out of her lowered fighting stance. A second later, her ears flagged, and her eyes opened wide, taking stock of where she was. The office she had reconnoitered surrounded her. The image could have been false, but luck was still on her side this time. Soft moonlight streamed through the wide, luxurious windows and bathed the organized desk. But, with the danger in the past, the terrible stench of Changeling magic assaulted her. Rationally, she knew there was no burning smell, nor a vile metallic tang in her mouth, but her senses insisted otherwise.

“Bleh!” she stuck out her tongue in a grimace and flapped her wings to shake off all the magical changeling cooties. Her eyes shut tight, and she blew puffs of air, trying to banish the imaginary taste. Chewing at nothing and wagging her tongue until she blew a sigh of relief. With a final shake of her head, she straightened up. “Ahem…” She swiveled her ears forward.

A trace of lilac and gooseberries replaced the impression of changeling magic. As she had seen, the room was divided into three elegantly organized spaces. A grand, royal bedroom with a canopy bed so large it was tacky. A door certainly led into a bathroom, and grand armoires certainly held all of Chrysalis’ dresses and clothes. Nearby, a vanity held an impressive collection of dissonant perfumes that ranged from the ridiculous, such as swamp flowers, to the lilac and gooseberries Celestia smelled. But that was what a cursory glance showed; an assortment of beauty products crowded the vanity.

The connected office and leisure room shared the rest of the space with barely any separation from the bedroom. A massive desk in black mahogany and fancy spirals for decoration dominated the ambiance, while seats marked the place for her visits to stay, a touch too far away. In the leisure area was a vast collection of books, ancient and old. Finally, a grand piano shared the domain over the room with the bed and the desk. Unfortunately, colors were hard to see in the dusk save for the fluorescent, ‘changeling green’ glowing in the accents and the spines of the books.

“Oh! She is practicing the piano, like I told her!” Celestia let a grin escape her focused examination of the area, only for it to crumble at the memories that the Changeling queen had betrayed her.

Her ears pulled back, and a grim flat overtook her lips as she walked around the desk, minding that the hooves didn’t strike the stone too loudly. Feather Hoof’s Soundproof spell should work, but she could not afford to be discovered by the magical radiation of any spell. The guard outside showed that underestimating them would be a mistake, and the teleportation was bold enough. Someone was bound to be paying attention after that ‘flicker’ in the security spells.

Her wings lowered like her head, sneaking about in the dark. She saw no documents on the desk or the reading table. None of the books, all written in the scratchy changeling language, were relevant. They were translations of popular non-fiction books, some of which Celestia had written and nothing else.

Celestia rolled her eyes, thinking about Chrysalis telling her she had a terrible tendency to educate her enemies.

It was uncouth, at least, for her to be poking around. But Celestia supposed that with Chrysalis’ betrayal, any mutual trust was long gone. The princess walked around the desk again, eyeing it carefully, avoiding the impulse to shine a light over it. She found only the neatly organized papers and writing supplies, except for a locked drawer. Every desk had one, and they were often the receptacle for sensitive but not quite secret documents.

Celestia’s curiosity was piqued. Pouring as little mana as possible into the locking mechanism, Celestia probed it and found a simple cylinder and tumblers. Her horn barely shone brighter at all as she poked inside and wiggled the well-lubricated cylinder. Celestia smiled at the thought that Chrysalis’ temper would not allow her to suffer an unlubricated lock. A good sign she used it frequently. The Princess tried the different positions, gradually locking the tumblers in place. Using her finer magical senses to better sense the lock might make it easier, but that would require more magic, and it flicked open eventually. She made a tiny grin as she pulled the drawer open, imagining a diary, or something of the sort, taken back to the years of her youth once she and Luna were finally taught how to read and write.

A loose piece of paper held a list of ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you’ gifts for Thorax. Of the seven mostly mundane items, three bore an ‘already done’ mark. There was also a dagger. Cold and gray, hardened steel coated in a perpetual magical poison. Examining the thing with her magical senses pierced Celestia’s skull like a nail and made her grimace. She knew that one. ‘Widowmaker’. Chrysalis had mentioned it once or twice and that it had come in handy whenever her mother tried to marry her to somecreature.

An icy shiver crawled Celestia’s back at the thought that she had married Chrysalis with Thorax. But while her duty to the swarm stayed her wrath at the start, she eventually warmed up to him. Still, Celestia grimaced at the thought of such a sweet creature as Thorax ending in Chrysalis’ bad side.

Celestia focused on the notebook. Its cover was a customized piece of art. An abstract, uncomfortable combination of blacks, grays, and greens. Biological motifs were reminiscent of living shapes, with a damp sheen and light evocative of secretions and pulsating matter.

“Yeah…” she whispered sarcastically to herself. “Definitely belongs to Thorax…”

Following that, she pursed her lips and flagged her ears. No response from the guard outside.

The book had no lock, but years of peeking into Luna’s diary directed Celestia to probe it for magical wards. The matter was covered in layers of its own magic, and Chrysalis had covered it with a triple layer of different, synergizing wards. Professional magic, used by changeling spies. More than silly defenses to keep your sister—or husband—out of your thoughts. Unfortunately for the Changeling Queen, her kind’s magic was not as unknown as it used to be. Examining the formulae, Celestia built a counterspell to mask her presence and the fact that the book was opening. Then she carefully examined the book again to find a very personal, informal fourth spell meant to blind whoever opened it. Chrysalis overestimated her skill in mana weaving, and Celestia avoided that one, too, also fooling it with a spell of her own.

Laying it on the desk and opening it, Celestia found it was indeed a diary.

This is so stupid. It is unholily stupid. This is what I must do, anyway, as it was required by the Royal Psychiatrist and the Psychologist. And Celestia held me to it once I tried to appeal. I suppose harsher sentences exist. For shame. I will write every single vile thought into this thing for no other reason than to spite them. I suppose this is enough for a first entry. Just one tiny indignity more to add to the pile. Ugh. (I wrote that so that you would know I groaned.)

Shaking her head, Celestia kept reading and found misbehaved musings and angry rants about everyday issues (such as the removal of her previous throne) and the psychological counseling Chrysalis went through. Through weeks and months, entries showed Chrysalis may never have understood the purpose, but that writing the diary helped her. Eventually, entries came to the night she returned to the Changeling Rock.

Celestia stopped for a second. Her more ancient-than-time memories stirred again. In another life, in another cycle, the Changeling queen had not been so lucky, and yet, much like any other creature alive, she failed to see that. Maddeningly, it was not her fault for not knowing, nor Celestia’s for remembering. But rather than lingering on memories, Celestia read on the next entry.

I feel so different. Maybe it is Cadance and her magic. I feel drunk. Sated, or maybe sedated. Maybe Shining Armor had more of an impact on me than I would dare accept.

Celestia paused and reread it. Then she rolled her eyes at how the last sentence had been struck through multiple times.

The Swarm is all that should occupy my mind. It has lost its edge! A year back, I could not bear to call these creatures my children. My children were strong. Voracious. I had the worker caste under control. The biological threads for the king were right where they belonged: crushed under my hoof. The best traces of the Swarm were honed and distilled into perfection. I had my fierce, love-starved warriors. I was supreme. I was The Queen.

A ravenous hunger made me aware. The burning anger fueled my magic, and my insatiable yearning pulsed through the Swarm, compelling my children to seek our prey and feed. Wolves upon the lambs.

In my absence, the Swarm returned to my mother’s feeble vision of skittish, childishly stupid creatures. I needed a sizeable portion of my renewed magic just to bring my warriors back into the fold, some good lies, and a good dose of luck to hide from the Alicorn Sisters what had actually happened. Just so that the damnable giant anteaters of the wasteland wouldn’t devour us all—our benevolent alicorn tyrants don’t even know they pose a threat. Why did Thorax never inform them? Maybe that was him, growing a clever bone. I will never know for sure. He said we ought to face our own problems. Moron. With a hoofful of incapable non-combatants… They are lucky I have returned.

It is maddening. My body insistently informs me of the chemical signals those unhinged abominations that Thorax arrogantly called ‘freed’ constantly flood the Hive with. It is disruptive. Those happy feelings. Empathy and an unending carefulness with each step, doing all and everything so as not to hurt another’s feelings. It crawls under my carapace. What manner of inane nonsense must dwell inside their heads!

Happy feelings exude and flood the Swarm. They convinced themselves of their safety, that they would not starve anymore. They are making me happy, and I abhor it. This is the opposite of what they should feel. Safety dulls the senses. They should hunger. I should hunger. It was my brutal tyranny that kept the swarm whole.

Enough of this waste of time. I have a royal marriage to prepare for. I must mentally steel myself so I can bear the thought of Thorax as an equal.

Ignorant buffoon. Thought he had rid himself of me. All of them had. But I am the Queen.

Celestia shook her head at the queen’s caustic words. Forever missing the point, it seemed. The marriage though, Celestia remembered it. Chrysalis used all the money the Changelings didn’t have, so it would upstage Cadance’s marriage. Well, for one, hers didn’t have a hostile takeover to make it epic and fantastic. What is worse, to think that Chrysalis would be angrier to have Thorax as an equal rather than the fact that he would sire the following generations of changelings. Again, memories from a previous life threatened to overshadow the present. Chrysalis should count her blessings more often.

The princess’ eyes rose from the paper. The door remained silent and unmoving, so she read the next entry.

Our marriage went reasonably well. As well as it could have. It was a glorious affair, given the Swarm’s austerity measures. None came except Celestia, Luna (begrudgingly), and Cadance. Twilight Sparkle and her minions were invited, but none came. Nor that annoying student of hers, much less Discord. I suspect Shining Armor only came because of Cadance. It matters not. The important thing is that tensions between the castes ceased.

Cadance lent us her blessing. The gall… But it was another injection of Love magic, and it did the Swarm good. I hate to admit it, but I needed every ounce of self-confidence to face the affair.

When Luna asked me why some changelings ‘were back to their old selves’, it was Thorax that cheerily explained about the caste system. I am glad I talked to him beforehand. I suppose he doesn’t like the giant anteaters any more than I do. What matters is that she stopped probing.

Not all was as satisfactory. When I tried to guilt Celestia for making me marry Thorax, she retorted with a long-winded list of previous marriages that helped secure Equestria into what it had become and were pleasantly happy. I swear, I don’t know if she was mocking or reassuring me.

Well, I remember what old Brightmane did to her. As well as what she did to him as soon as the sun-hallowed savior of Equestria donned the sun for a crown. I just wish I knew the details because making a stallion swallow a bowl of broken glass feels symbolic. Not to mention, hilariously, Blueblood died of a heart attack when he heard Celestia was the reborn goddess they never believed but sold to the populace. I suppose I could have done worse than Thorax. But he’d better perform in the nuptials.

Stupid tradition. Stupid changeling biology. Curse my mother that damned our kind. And curse you, Luna. Curse you Celestia. Curse it all.

Celestia pursed her lips. Maybe it was just easier for Chrysalis to process the idea. Celestia couldn’t bear to go through it. It helped that she could not bear foals to begin with, in contrast to Chrysalis, who must. Different perspectives, she supposed. Deep inside, Celestia was just glad Chrysalis was fine with Thorax.

Instead of focusing on memories of old Brightmane, images of the blond Queen Farfalla flooded Celestia’s thoughts. She blamed no one but herself. The birth of a cursed race, the pettiness of a god. Celestia refused to dwell on it. She had ended the Age of Gods and hidden it beneath the tapestry of a previous existence—a happier one—for a reason. That, and the Griffon Empire, but that was another batch of unpleasantness.

Chrysalis’ foalish rants were a pleasant distraction, even if little of importance graced the following pages. For months, nothing more than long complaints, which grew less common, filled them. Promises of improvement followed guilt-ridden admissions related to her vile mood in dealing with Thorax. The pattern replaced her rants about the state of the Swarm until a fateful day months later.

Diary, my confidant, I am stunned, bewildered, and, dare I say, ecstatic.

The Alicorn Sisters came to Changeling Rock today. No warning, no fanfare. None of the interminable lines of reporters that usually stalk them. Only guards accompanying their bosses on a visit ‘that never happened.’

I imagined they wanted to talk about the Swarm’s seat in the House of Majesty and our lack of representation in the House of the Chosen. I prepared, in seconds, a speech about how changelings were different and had no need for senators, much less elected officials. That I and Thorax sufficed to have the will of the Swarm heard by the federation. I was not even lying.

When they said it was not about that, I assumed it was about our agreement to disseminate our medical magical science. Boring, but necessary. I was ready to explain our preparations, already in place. I know I am a liar, but I honor the deals that I like. That was not it either. At all. In fact, I am still stunned. Still grinning. I cannot believe what they asked of me.

They want a coltfriend! They came to me to commission a male alicorn. A tailor-made consort. They explained their reasons, but it all blended into background noise. Off the gate, the amount of resources such an endeavor would require could bankrupt half of the countries in the Federation. And that is if it could be made. It is not just about making a living thing. Making a very complex living thing and keeping it from dying along the way until it is capable of not dying by itself, and then sane. It’s probably not possible. More than the exceeding difficulty, imagining the negotiations to secure the necessary resources daunted me. I dreaded angering them when I explained it.

Celestia sanctioned it on the spot. And we called it Project Genesis.

I feel dizzy just thinking about it. It came out of nowhere, and technically, I know it can be done. Practically, it is impossible. No one can create life. Not like this. Not a copy, not a simple mirror image that would vanish in time or go insane. We are talking about a new being from nothing. Without the wonder of gametes meeting, that already have a flimsy chance of working. Injecting a soul into a flesh golem is known to be impossible without sanity-shattering necromancy, and this project would be a step beyond.

It has to be a trick. Some manner of test. They want to see how far I will go for them. Fine. I can play at that. I will humor them. After all, if any creature in the entire world could pull this off, it would be me. Not even Discord and his maniacal magic of impossibles could accomplish this with lasting success. I will play their game. I have asked for a realistic list of supplies and materials. Let us see how this goes, how it will end when they must admit they asked for the impossible for a petty test.

Celestia stared blankly at the exquisitely written black Changeling scratches on the parchment. Should she laugh or be cross that the queen had taken the project for a joke, or a test in poor taste? Celestia remembered meeting her, expecting skepticism, and now she understood the immediate compliance. Chrysalis didn’t understand. It was a plan left to mature a millennium before they met that day. The Sisters waited, Nightmare Moon came, Luna returned, and the Sisters waited another year. Two. Three years. More… Only then did they travel to Chrysalis’ home and present her with the plan.

When the next entry came into view, Celestia grinned under the restrained light. Chrysalis’ horn penmanship slipped. Too much force on the strokes of the feather. Too quick. Nervous.

Diary, unlike my last entry, today I am truly shocked. It is happening.

It was not a test. Project Genesis is real, and it is happening.

What in the ever-glowing stars are they huffing? A week ago, the Alicorn Sisters visited the Rock. In less than a dozen days, everything arrived—delivered in a commercial galleon. Inconspicuous and still brimming with guns. It was one of the refitted sea-faring vessels converted into an airship. It bore the usual supplies for the recuperating hive, wink-wink. Other than an armed vessel traveling above the safest lands in the world, it raised no suspicions.

Among the private crew were Royal Guard Marines. Even without their armor, one could identify them by the sticks up their asses. One Lieutenant Ironshod talked to the captain and the Hive’s Door Guard—the galleon was so large it wouldn’t fit our berth, so it landed in the front. Crewponies started unloading the ‘valuable goods.’ Fortunately, I was quick enough to ensure that my black carapaces took over the proceedings. Before any of the workers figured out something was out of the ordinary or Thorax stuck his nose in matters none of his concern.

I hastily cleared some space in my laboratory to store our share of the cargo. Thank the stars, Pharynx kept Thorax from finding anything about it. After the hectic rush of transporting and securing the cargo in the laboratory, keeping the royal guards off the Rock, and keeping nosy workers off the way (blasted good manners made them rush to assist us), it was all safe. And secret.

By the end of the day, I finally finished inventorying everything, and I must say, I was surprised. Not only everything I asked had arrived, but the quality was beyond what I had imagined. Metalized crystal and crystal cutting tools, as well as gold soldering and imprinting tools. The good stuff used by the Crystal Empire’s magical induction engine manufactories. Platinum, nickel, chromium, selenium, lithium, and all the specific metals I asked for, mostly from Yakyakstan’s mines. Several specifically cut gems from Saddle Arabia. Precision surgical tools from Griffonia. Magical golden tools from Canterlot’s arcane forges, and several shaped metal parts from Manehattan Ironworks. Quality fit for a Prince-Consort, I suppose. Inordinate amounts of medical materials from all over the Federation, from volume expanders to vasoactive agents and even top-of-the-shelf medicines for emergencies.

Stars above. How in the ever-dark Tartarus did no creature raise an eyebrow at this? Probably because the project is so outlandish, no creature joined the pieces. Then again, maybe nobody bothered with it because this has Celestia’s little hooves all over it.

Why can’t I command such wealth? Such power?

Maybe my way into such fortunes is helping them.

I am the only one who could, after all.

The entry was interesting and… Sweet? No, that was not the right word. Instead of satisfaction at Chrysalis’s admission, Celestia could almost feel the envy dripping off the changeling glyphs. Hear the arrogance in the changeling’s voice. It disappointed, but also made it dawn on her that Chrysalis was never as friendly as she had thought. She saw how much Chrysalis envied her. And she didn’t know how to feel about that; she had never considered somecreature might ever envy her. ‘Sadness’. That is what it felt like.

The Princess sighed a little sigh in the dark and moved on to the next page. The following entry was much shorter. And also, the following ones. Apparently, Chrysalis took her role seriously, because of the challenge or because she looked forward to whatever reward she could reap. What followed were a series of rants regarding the impossibility of the task, followed by arrogant, celebratory comments when she eventually overcame every hurdle. All with sprinkles of jealousy over Celestia’s abilities in between.

The difficulty of the project had surprised Celestia too. Of course, she never expected it to be easy. She and Luna knew what they were getting themselves into, but it appeared Chrysalis didn’t. Many times, Celestia had come to the Changeling Rock to assist Chrysalis, and those visits had not been as heartwarming as the Princess had believed.

I have been sitting at my desk for hours. I finally decided to simply relay what happened.

My eggmaidens and I had been testing the artificial womb for weeks with anteater embryos, as Celestia would not allow me to use a pony embryo. We calibrated the talismans, which control the exchange of nutrients, and I was confident it would work. Ponies, anteaters… They are all mammals.

But I worried, as without a base for a pony, problems ought to arise. It might be difficult even if the support devices worked. Creating a pony—an alicorn, no less—from the egg of an anteater would be too complicated. I imagined Celestia would donate an egg… But I had no idea how we would patch a functional seed of life for the cell.

Turned out I was naïve, and my worries barely reached the depth I would find myself in.

Celestia mumbled something about the diminished capabilities of the magic of Life so far past the primeval era. All the while, she produced from under her wing—I am not joking—a magical briefcase with powerful frost magic and holding seven chilled test tubes. Somehow, she got her hooves on eggs harvested from Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, and her friends. Money? Promises? An appeal to their innocence? A kingdom of their own? How she pulled that off bewilders me, although not as much as what we did with the samples.

Explaining that in the present time, we cannot trivially knit cells together and expect them to work and live. She exposed her plan for us to make a new chimeric cell from those samples. “It shouldn’t matter in the long run as cells rebuild themselves within 30 days,” she said.

I laughed. She did not.

We worked together, and even though I was an active part of the process, I barely understood what we did. She needed my help with the hoofing microscope on top of it all. This mare is making me insane! How can she need the microscope while building things at the molecular level?! How is that even possible?!

Our combined magic made a miracle. A very complex one of joining invisible pieces, keeping alive what was ready until the whole could sustain itself, finished with a tiny poke of Life magic. She guided me and let me help her. Then I understood that the only reason she never created her perfect coltfriend by herself was that she lacked the know-how of keeping something like that alive outside an actual womb. Not to mention modern magic used for bioengineering. Something for which I developed an instinct that worked well along her own. Like two mares playing the piano by ear, we built a cell. We constructed a seed in its heart with pieces from the samples we had. We made the essence of life that is usually inherited from parents. My hooves are still shaking and my horn is still sore.

“Alicorns summon no soul from the Pool of Souls,” she told me, as though that made any sense whatsoever, or explained the festering madness this project has been.

Is this a joke? Her idea of a prank? It would not be the first time I heard of Celestia doing such things. I am not sure what is going on. That thing is now growing in the laboratory, and Shimi will call me if anything goes wrong.

I believed the whole thing was doomed from the start. Now I am scared. I am thrilled! I don’t know for sure if I want this to work. I need this to work! All I know is that I must try to recreate the process. I must have this power. This knowledge. Whatever this is.

Where Celestia had seen a joyful collaboration of two experts, alone at the top of their fields, complementing each other, Chrysalis saw an offense. But Celestia frowned as, in the following entries, Chrysalis’s focus shifted from their shared project to unbridled rants and ravings about the injustice that only got worse after Celestia came another day to bind Chocolate Velvet’s soul to his body. And then again after Luna arrived to ensure his soundness of mind. She bitterly joked to her diary that she would prepare a room for Cadance’s visit.

Her worst came out as she realized she didn’t have enough material or had retained sufficient understanding to replicate ‘Celestia’s stupid power.’ Chrysalis thought about destroying Chocolate Velvet. In several entries that denoted days upon days of reflection and mental struggle, she decided against it. But the diary lacked any explanation as to why.

Conflicting emotions battled in Celestia’s chest against her reasoning mind and the notion of Chrysalis’ ending Chocolate Velvet’s life. Would she lie that something had simply gone wrong? Even as her eyes squinted and her ears pulled back in restrained anger and pursed lips. The fact that it was a moot point eventually won, and all she did was let out a tired sigh and softly shake her head in the dark.

“Chrysalis…” she mumbled as her magic made pages fly from one side to the other.

An entire section of the diary brimmed with a month’s worth of similar rants and misbehaved complaining. One would think the poor diary could fix all her problems. Eventually, months later, after Chrysalis narrated Chocolate’s birth as her success, more complaining followed for three years’ worth of entries.

Celestia remembered Luna keeping his mind sedated, experimenting with it to ensure his soundness. For some reason, the queen failed to properly articulate her anger, and Celestia avoided those entries. After a while, she found what she was looking for, but it was not what she expected. Instead of a focused entry about the unique opportunity their next project had presented, Chrysalis simply made brief entries, mentioning it and making fun of Celestia’s inability to bear foals. Still, one of them was damning.

This is a golden opportunity. The likes of which seldom present themselves. Celestia has gifted me another sample—this time, something more profound. A significant sample of her soul and flesh. I cannot claim to fully comprehend it, but with this, I may be able to recreate our miraculous feat in the past. This time, for my benefit.

It could hold the key to repairing whatever damage the curse has inflicted on Changelingkind. Or to unlock an untold potential. I must study it, and she must never know.

I will fulfill my end of the bargain and help her bear a foal. I already have the inklings of a cure for whatever enigmatic affliction prevents her from summoning life with more traditional methods. But I will use this power for my benefit. For the Swarm.

Curse the bug-horse-extraordinaire! With an indignant neigh, Celestia thought of a thousand curses that time had forgotten. Then she grimaced and her eyes snapped at the door, but it didn’t move. Celestia still grumbled to herself that it would have been so much easier to enrage herself if the damnable Changeling Queen had not mentioned the curse and her intention of helping her own children. Still, betrayal ran cold in Chrysalis bleach-smelling humors, and Celestia winced just at the memory of the intimacies they shared after Chocolate’s birth. And yet, as the pages turned, the most recent entry came into view.

It is preposterous that Twilight Sparkle has an airship—a custom-made one!—and I don’t. If that thing can be called an airship. Mine would have a broadside bristling with cannons and black sails to blot out the sun, and if anything were to be custom-made, it would be the armor, so it looked rugged and tough like me. I would berth it at the top of the tower, and I would hunt all the cursed giant anteaters in the wasteland. There would be meat for years to sell to the griffons.

If I had one, because I cannot. The hive’s coffers run dry, and only because I am Queen am I able to keep it functioning. Thorax is an idiot who would run us aground with innumerable rights and measures to the damnable worker caste. Not only that, but I must suffer that ignorant hen, Queen Novo, babbling on and on about the antiquated political structure of the Swarm. All because she must, absolutely must, find every parallel that she can to complain about the ignoble griffons, their corrupt chancellor, and the brutish northerner governor.

“The Lion would topple thousands of years of refined democratic processes for an antiquated oligarchy based on hatred and discrimination,” she says in every single meeting. It is not enough that in every meeting, we must listen to Chancellor Gail ranting about his political rival. We must also listen to the overly proud hen almost describe her own government when complaining about the damned griffons.

I hate politics. Murder is so much more honorable.

But that is not even the worst. It is Celestia protecting the Lion and the ‘griffons’ right to adjudicate on the future of their nation.’ If only the Lion were not a murderous tyrant preparing for a war that Celestia refuses to see! This is maddening!

And if that was not enough, the cursed ponies invaded the sanctity of the Spawning Pool where I was laying the eggs. I should have had them made into rugs and delivered to Celestia. Her damnable student thinks she can snoop around my nest and poke around my secrets! The gall! In the interrogation, she and her friends betrayed nothing other than their silly little quest for the Holy Griffon Empire. Some things should remain under the rug, and Celestia ought to hammer that into her precious little protégé’s head. Especially when it was the cake-inhaling, overly sugary, always-smiling, insufferable mare herself that (righteously) buried the Griffon Empire under the dirt herself!

Damn it all! I told Celestia. Thousands of years ago. She should have killed all of them. And to think my mother wanted me to marry Emperor Grigor!

Chrysalis’s horn penmanship was elegant and fast, but in that paragraph, it devolved into angry scratches. The changeling alphabet didn’t help, as scratchy and quick as their chittering language, but the queen had poured her wrath into the paper. What came later made the princess’s eyes widen, and her ears perk forward.

I keep telling myself that Twilight and the others knew nothing. That Celestia has not sent them to spy on me. There is no reason. She knows nothing about the Praetorians, and it would be folly. Dangerous. She has better agents for that. But then again, that would be her alibi! If she knew of my Praetorians, she would have sent someone better prepared for espionage, and that they turned out flawed may itself already be because of her meddling! I hate when others try to fool me. I am too good at it, and I keep seeing feints in their incompetence!

All this, while the Lion is recruiting left and right, the Griffonian government is producing muskets, and Novo is renovating the hippogriff armada. I’m scared! I let them weaken me and the Swarm. Did Celestia trick me? Why would she do that? I delivered on my promises! I made her their precious consort. I did what she and Luna asked! I basically let them use my knowledge, accrued on the suffering of a million stillborn changeling larvae, to make their silly dream a reality. I did use the samples they provided for my gain, but that is normal. I delivered on my promises. I worked on the cure for their infertility. I am looking at it right now as I write this.

My life was long, and I finally thought that I had found an ally. Despite it all, her methods worked. The Swarm is deceptively strong, even if they had lost their edge and my military strength is diminished to a third. If it came to a war, Celestia could wipe us off Equestria trivially. Or worse: let the Lion do it for her. Doesn’t that put my Praetorian’s flaws into perspective?

In the end, Celestia achieved all she wanted. She had maneuvered me to trust her. Was it a mistake?

I still remember what Celestia did to the noble families that ruled Everfree after she took the throne. Most ponies do not remember. They wouldn’t believe it. No one old enough to remember remains other than me.

Am I projecting into Twilight? Am I imagining my malice and cunning in the little pony? She might not know Celestia meant for her to spy. Did Celestia mean for her to spy? I cannot say for sure, and it made me lose my sleep.

After all the deceit I survived and wrought upon others… My mother. My sisters. All the wizards and questing knightly fools that tried to kill me… It was Celestia who bested me by turning me into a friend. This is why I care so much, isn’t it? This is why it frustrates me so, and the thought of her betrayal hurts.

I am tired. I want to trust Celestia. I can leave all the masks and lies when I talk to her. There is no reason for her to send Twilight to spy on me. She would not. She needs not. There is nothing for Twilight to see in my laboratory that Celestia doesn’t already know other than the Praetorians, and even then, Twilight went out of her way not to poke around. On the contrary! There are things in there Celestia would not dare let Twilight come to know.

I must not let paranoia blind me. Celestia has not betrayed me. It is Twilight, naively poking her nose into matters she would rather not know who the problem is. I must see Celestia. I shall teleport to Canterlot immediately and inform her of Twilight’s visit. The serum is ready, too, and I must deliver it before long. More importantly, she will lose Twilight if the nosy pony makes it back to Ponyville and teleports to Griffonstone. Her airship should take a day or two. There should be plenty of time, but I must act. For the safety of the Swarm.

In the spirit of the foals playing with fire while mom is away, Twilight and Cadance are flailing about with a flamethrower.

Chaos. It might have been Discord who wrote that entry for her. Those words… that long diary write-up put so much into context that Celestia felt she should commend Chrysalis for not betraying her sooner. Cursed miscommunication and abominable misunderstandings. She had gotten used to being trusted by everycreature. Had Celestia been more open about her way of dealing with the Lion, Chrysalis might not have betrayed her in her airship. Maybe Twilight and Cadance would have been dissuaded from their quest, and whatever plan the Harpy had brewing would have failed already.

“I didn’t know about the Harpy…” she muttered to herself, with her ears flopping, abandoned in the dark of someone else’s office, peeking at their diary like a petty foal. “I believed Gilad’s intentions were honest. The Lion is such a noble title… I thought he meant to bring back the same greatness Grover instilled in Griffonkind. It was a good thing.”

A moment of loathing made her realize with a sense of vulnerability just how well the Harpy knew her.

The princess glanced at the pages again, eyes lingering on the angry scratches. Chrysalis truly believed the injections would work. Celestia sighed. Too much of the blame rested on her. Maybe it had been too soon. Maybe Project Genesis was vanity and selfishness shrouded as ambition and should never have left the drawing board.

But it was too late. With Luna missing, Twilight and Cadance lost in their misguided quest, further and further into the harpy’s grasp, Celestia was alone. Then her ears flicked. Chrysalis, too, had reason to loathe that chimeric monster. In fact, looking at the last entry in Chrysalis’ diary, Celestia saw their alliance had again fallen on fertile soil.

On cue, voices coming from the other side of the heavy stone doors made her ears twitch.

“And then we get some of the top-layer loveshrooms and spend the rest of the evening reviewing worker requests.” Chrysalis’ voice muffled through the doors, silky like the web of a spider, along with approaching hooves and Thorax’s awkward chuckling.

Celestia’s mind got caught trying to fit together and process all that in a sane way as the doors ground open. She squeaked, realizing she was about to be caught. Instead of Chrysalis, the rumbling doors revealed one of her alicorn-like Praetorian guards.

While Celestia didn’t know her specific name, it dawned on her how similar she was to herself and Chrysalis. She got a good look when the tall, black changeling stopped at the door with an empty stare at her. She could almost hear the spinning gears grinding to a halt. Satiny black carapace reflecting the light of the atrium and unsettling keratin plates above her abdomen and a double-bladed sword at her flank. They spent a whole second staring at each other until the changeling blinked her acid-green eyes and turned around, closing the door in the process.

“I have a better idea!” Her peppy voice echoed weirdly through the door, similar to Chrysalis’ after the queen questioned what was wrong. “There is a huge problem with the royal chambers, and you should go to Las Pegasus to eat pizza instead!”

“What’s wrong with you?” Chrysalis roared from the other side, and when the door opened again, it was under Chrysalis’s significantly more powerful magic. “We are not traveling all the way to Las Pegasus just for pizza! Are you out of—”

She never finished the impatient rambling, staring at Celestia from the door. Two more of the imposing Praetorian guards peeked from the edges of the doorway, and Thorax’s head popped from behind Chrysalis.

“You know what, pizza it is!” Chrysalis declared with an awkward grin, as she started to close the door.

“Chrysalis!” Celestia shouted at her. All the awkwardness turned to powerful telekinetic magic. Celestia not only tore the doors from Chrysalis’s command, but almost ripped them from their magical hinges as she made her way around the desk.

Screaming, Chrysalis grabbed hold of Thorax and put him in front of her. “It was all Thorax’s fault!”

He squealed, flailing hooves in the air before covering his face. “I—what? What did you do, Chrysalis?”

While his panicked expression was humorous, Celestia’s eyes went wide, shocked open. “You didn’t even tell him of what you did?”

“He would be happier if he never knew!”

“Alright! Time out, you two!” Thorax stood and waved his hoof in front of Chrysalis. “What is going on?”

“She is a betraying witch!” Celestia pointed a hoof.

Thorax gasped and glared at his queen. “I knew it! It is because of the praetorians! Isn’t it?”

“No, you dummy! She already knew about them.”

“What. Did. She. Do?” Thorax turned to Celestia again. “For pony’s sake!”

Celestia again pointed an accusatory hoof at Chrysalis. “She allowed Twilight and Cadance to escape with the Lion’s son! Because of her, my command ship, the Break of Dawn, crashed to the ground. Not only that, but they crashed the Endearing Kindness, the hospital airship that served as testing ground for the new medical magic! She got Admiral Gloria killed! Hundreds of creatures died because of her game!”

Thorax squealed in shock. “Chrysalis!”

“I didn’t know the griffons would destroy her precious airship!” Chrysalis took a step back, her ears drooping. “Much less the hospital ship! I didn’t ask for this! How was I supposed to know that the damn admiral would get her griffon hindquarters killed? She was a griffon, like them! I just wanted Cadance and Twilight to escape!”

Her rant turned to unintelligible ramblings before she gathered her wits again and snarled at Celestia. “And you! You lied to me about the Harpy! I panicked!”

The two of them stood their ground, glaring at each other. Suddenly, Chrysalis’s snout contorted into a further ferocious snarling grimace brimming with fangs. She stood on her hind legs and punched Celestia in her snout.

“Oh, my gosh! Chrysalis!” Thorax shrieked and rushed to help at Celestia’s pained ‘Ow!’.

“I told you I’d punch you if you were lying about the Harpy!” Chrysalis’ voice rose to an anxious shriek. “I told you you should have killed all of them a thousand years ago! I told you! I literally said this would come back to bite you in the ass! But you didn’t listen to me!”

“I wasn’t lying about the Harpy, Chrysalis,” Celestia responded calmly, sitting on the polished floor and rubbing her nose. “I believed she had been destroyed. And you, by sending Twilight and Cadance with the griffons, have made things much worse. I don’t know what she means to do, but they have…”

She paused, looking for the right words. “Magic. They have magic that one with the Harpy’s knowledge might use to rob griffons of free will, and then, through their devotion, she’d be unstoppable.”

“Are we talking ‘King Sombra unstoppable,’” Thorax raised an eyebrow at the perceived exaggeration. “Or are we talking about something actually dangerous that we can’t just trust Twilight and her friends to fix?”

“The Harpy is unlike anything we have faced before, Thorax.” Celestia looked at him. “It is difficult to explain, but she possesses a kind of magic that transcends normal magic. I don’t know what her plan is. But I know it doesn’t include us.”

“Excuse me!” Chrysalis cried, seeing the open book on her desk. “Were you reading my diary?”

“It is half of the reason you are still alive,” Celestia responded with a half-smile.

“The hoof is that supposed to mean?” the queen glared with a distrustful snarl that turned into a shocked gasp. “Wait. You need me. What for? Oh, no. No way. No!”

“You are the only one who can help me, Chrysalis. I will need him to fight the Harpy.”

“You just want your coltfriend back!” Chrysalis shouted. “You shouldn’t have left him to die fighting a griffon swordmaiden!”

Silence shrouded the room like Chrysalis had cast a curse of muteness. Thorax let his jaw hang, sitting in his corner, and the Praetorian guards grimaced and exchanged stares. Celestia let her eyes aim at the floor again, and Chrysalis exhaled, ears flopping and her crown of antennae bending over the weight of her lack of tact.

“Sorry,” she averted her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I kinda liked him, too.”

She sighed again, turning around on herself as her hooves clacked on the stone floor. Her wings buzzed like her brain must have been buzzing with thoughts. “We can’t do this, Celestia. I—we will help you fight, but we can’t bring back a dead pony.”

She sat on the floor and massaged her temples. “Three years ago, I told you we couldn’t make a pony out of anything, and we did just that. Now, you want to bring him back to life. What I learned about the magic of souls and of life is that once dead, the soul is decoupled and goes to the Pool of Souls. It can’t be forced back without necromancy and proper timing, and as far as I know, you abhor necromancy. It would also destroy his psyche. But I also know we made him by copying you and slamming pieces of Cadance and the Mane Six into him. And you have a weird, damaged soul. So now, you’re going to tell me there is a way. That I won’t understand, but you need my help because of the changeling medical-magical science and the equipment we used in his creation.”

“My soul is not damaged. Well, it is, but…” Celestia sighed her frustration and tossed her head, trying to explain something that she alone understood. “Not only was it ripped apart when the ponies summoned me in the past, but it was not meant to inhabit the mortal plane of existence. It was not meant to enter the Pool of Souls when decoupling. And that is why it is possible to help Chocolate Velvet. His soul mimics mine. He is still there, at the mercy of Nightmares, in the Aether. Slowly fading away precisely because his soul lacks the magical mechanism to enter the Pool of Souls.”

Chrysalis moaned, holding her head, and made an exasperated groan, followed by a sharp, frustrated gasp. “You want me to rebuild his body and make it work again? So that you can hammer his soul back into it and jury-rig whatever magical yadda-yadda makes this whole thing work.”

“We’ll need months.” Chrysalis shrugged. “Maybe years. If it were the same as letting a single cell do its thing, merely supporting it, it would be different. But I supposed we have about a week…”

The queen made a sarcastic smirk. “Right?”

“Well, the answer is no,” she added, letting a proper serious expression wash her face. “If anything, we must prepare for war.”

“Do not push your luck, Chrysalis.” Celestia retorted, letting a frown mar her patient façade.

“You’re bluffing!” Chrysalis’s triumphant grin and snarl turned to a disappointed glare. “Don’t threaten me, Celestia. Just go Snow Mountains and kill the Harpy as you did before if you think yourself so powerful as to make threats. You are here because you need me.”

“It is not so simple. You wouldn’t understand.” Celestia sighed as soon as the words left her mouth, and she saw Chrysalis’ condescending smirk. Fair enough, that kind of secrecy had already caused enough problems. “I won’t lie to you. I want him back. But that is not all. Chocolate Velvet understands a form of magic that I wiped off Equestria. The same kind the Harpy means to earn from her griffon followers and that he will teach to ponies. A kind of magic that can finally destroy me or destroy the Harpy.”

Telling Chrysalis that felt like delivering a dagger to a murderer, but Celestia felt cornered.

“Details,” the queen demanded. “Quit hiding things. Explain!”

Celestia’s ears flopped. “Chocolate Velvet understands that magic! He can teach it to the ponies, and that will help me fight the Harpy. It is what she means to do! She can feed and empower herself from the worship that her griffons will lend to her!”

“And you want him to teach ponies that kind of magic so that you can use it to fight the Harpy.” Chrysalis sneered. “You are lying.”

“I am not!” Celestia yelled. Her calmness devolved into desperate yelling. “Chrysalis, please!”

“You wiped this magic off Equestria? You let go of this kind of power?” The queen twisted her nose. “Who does that?”

“It is dangerous!” Celestia cut her words short, but Chrysalis’ fuming stare prodded her on. “Knowledge… It can be dangerous, Chrysalis. And it often is more binding than is liberating.”

“Tell me everything. No more lies. No more layers of meaning.” Chrysalis stepped a hoof toward Celestia. “Everything, or I am not helping you.”

Well, Celestia didn’t enjoy being threatened, either. Her ears pulled back, and she made a grim scowl, and her sweet voice dripped with the raging flames of a star. “Fine.”

“Countless eons ago, when the universe first started—” Celestia began, only for Chrysalis to cut her off with a grimace and a raised hoof.

“I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Shut up and listen.” The sheer commanding gravitas in her voice made the queen undo her expression and sit on the floor. Thorax and Chrysalis’s guards, too, obeyed.

“As the universe was created, Harmony manifested upon the world, and a being was made with the power to impose Order upon Chaos. She made the land and sky and filled it with a storm, and when her magic poured over the land, she molded the iron in the mountains into the first griffons. Because they needed sustenance from the flesh of other creatures, Harmony responded to her creation and made the ponies so they would spread their harmonious magic and further enforce order upon the world. Wherever they went, the magic of life bloomed, and the creatures griffons craved appeared.”

“Griffons outgrew their irrational beginning and started developing an understanding of their own choices, and that gave rise to free will. It empowered them to go against the natural order of the universe, and the creatures tasked with sustaining life became their preferred meal because of the immense magic their flesh carried. Although irrational, the ponies carried souls, and what are souls? They are the fundamental magic of space and time that animates living beings, mimicking in magic the workings of physiology and the psyche. They can retain memories.”

“Irrational, they were, but their complex mind was an echo of that of the griffons and still gifted with the power of Creation. Their innate magic enabled ponies to create life, as it was their purpose. Threatened with pain, horror, and death they were not equipped to deal with, their undying souls took their sorrow and helplessness back to the Pool of Souls. Reborn in new bodies, these horrors remained as impressions of traumatic memories of their past lives over and over, even as new ponies replaced the ones the griffons had killed, for their purpose compelled them to spread their magic and sustain nature.”

“In cycles of suffering and death, helpless, they clung to the things that they understood: the cycles of day and night that regulated their bodies. The bonds that united them to mate and to group into herds. They cried for help, and their magic of Creation delivered it. Four mighty beings were born, and they protected the ponies from the griffons.”

“Beings of immense power, fueled by sorrow, rage, and fear. They hunted the griffons back to the place of their creation, and they destroyed everything that lived. They killed the Demiurge. Overwhelmed by the flow of magic, the pool of souls turned into a whirlpool of magic and consumed everything. Once it all returned to the source, the singularity that started everything happened again. But this time, one of the alicorns was in charge. “

“The process was painstaking and required multiple attempts, but eventually, the primordial beings tasked with shaping the world created the modern ponies we know today. Ponies called them Day, Night, Love, and Friendship.”

“Are you messing with me?” Chrysalis yelled, but Celestia showed no reaction. Her Praetorian guard that had gone for the loveshrooms had returned and was eating the tiny bits from a bowl as Celestia continued.

“Each handled a piece of their creation, and their works built upon that of the previous. Life gave them cutie marks, bodies and their soul. Night gave them their rational mind so they could best the challenges ahead. Love taught them to reproduce so they could replenish their numbers and Friendship… She tied it all up and elevated them to free will with six moral directives that showed them they could choose between their purpose, their fears, and their friends.”

“With their task complete and ponies let loose to reign in the Chaos into Harmony, the primordial beings left and ponies forgot them. They inhabited the Pool of Souls, which can be seen from Equestria as the sun and the Moon. But also, inside the minds of ponies, helping them in the first steps into complete self-awareness. Destined to become nothing more than magical strands in the complex mechanisms of their minds. Thus bestowing upon ponies the control of the sun and moon.”

“What is the Pool of Souls?” Celestia asked, staring down the completely befuddled changeling queen. “It is the source and the final destination of all. Every rock, every molecule, every mote of magic from the rocks they inhabit to the complex magical machinery that binds soul and brain came from it. And so there they will return come the time.”

Listening to Celestia, Chrysalis frowned, a combination of anger and fear. “What are you?”

“Each alicorn carries the powerful soul of one of the primordial beings. And we are born into the material plane because of the different ways the system breaks as desperate ponies summon us back. But we do not remember anything because our souls were properly integrated into the magic of the pony mind and into our final resting places. In the previous cycle, the magic of unicorns failed to properly connect to that of the sun, and they lost their magical abilities because of the anomalous magical feedback after thousands of years. Harmony corrected by sending Luna and I.”

“When Discord came and stole away the free will of ponies, Harmony granted us the shards of Friendship’s magical heart, and we restored it to them and turned Discord to stone. When Luna succumbed to Nightmare Moon, I lost my bearings and nearly broke my Animus Imperative, my reason for existing, my cutie mark. I could not wield the Elements of Harmony. So they returned to the Pool of Souls and came back, once replenished, as souls do. Six pieces of a shattered soul that found each other and restored the world to what it should be by cleansing the monster and restoring my sister and my will to live.”

“But in the present cycle, something changed. The ponies were supposed to forget us, but they didn’t. Once their civilization started, it made them worship the primordial beings. It made several things happen differently, but the most important of all is that I remembered the Harpy was not gone. That she took part in sabotaging the previous cycles, waiting until the right circumstances to destroy me and reclaim her world.”

“Now that you sent them towards the Harpy, Cadance, and Twilight, are taking their primordial souls to her. She will pick their souls apart and extract the key to free will as it was bestowed upon the creatures of this cycle. She will force all the griffons to love her and weaponize devotion against me. And instead of the smiling goof that likes to eat cake, you will know horror under the black and white wings of the Queen of Talons. Therefore, I need Chocolate Velvet. So I can fight the Harpy, and the immense divine power the Children of the Harpy will deliver unto her with my own, given to me by the Children of the Sun.”

“And he… Somehow, understands how to… Harvest this devotion? He knows how to bring back this magic?”

“He does, but mortals get caught in a war older than time. Gods spin their plans, and you dance.” Celestia lowered her head. “I ended it. Buried our past in this cycle under the past of the precious one. A happier one where I was no goddess, just a big pony with the right magic to fix the sun. This power is dangerous. It makes you petty and vengeful. Daffodil, a priestess of Love, caught the eye of Night, and she wanted the priestess of Love to reciprocate. Love denied it, forbidding the mortal’s heart to love the other goddess. Enraged, Night cursed Daffodil. She damaged her soul so that her body became hard and blackened. Her horn became jagged, and she grew the wings of a fly. She craved the love that would never be given to her hideous form, and she was forced to steal it.”

“This is why a million changelings are stillborn, and you crave love.”

“She never told me that. I only heard of it because of the folk tales ponies spread.”

“She wanted her children to find their own place and not be defined by a curse. And you killed them. You killed your mother. You killed your sisters. You took their broods into your own and crushed any distinctiveness. All because you wanted this cursed power that turns beautiful things into petty squabbles!” Celestia settled and trembled before her first words. “But I cannot judge you, can I?”

“Do…” Chrysalis mumbled, jaw hanging, and her insect wings hanging from her back. “Do they… Know? Do Cadance and Twilight know? What about Luna?”

“Luna remembers. Not so Twilight and Cadance. And I never told them,” Celestia said softly. But then a chuckle escaped her. “I thought they would be happier if they never knew.”

Chrysalis snickered. “You moron.”

Celestia sighed and looked at the ceiling. She had barely noticed that once the doors opened, the balls of light hanging from the ceiling lit like changeling lamps. She looked back at the Changeling queen, looking at her. “Will you help me?”

“I guess we are ponies against griffons now… The Unified Pony Front,” she said, opening her holed legs in a sweeping gesture, but it lost its energy, and she stared at the floor. “Do they suffer?”

“Hmm?”

“The unborn changelings. Do they suffer? Somehow? I know they are too young to fixate memories…. But… Look! Just tell me!”

Celestia shook her head. “No. They don’t… Consciousness is not present until they have coupled to their body. They simply drift back to the Pool of Souls, knowing nothing of the circumstances of their… Rejected life.”

“That’s better.” The queen sighed and stood on her hooves. “Get your coltfriend here. I don’t know the extent of the damage, but if my recollection of fighting the Harpy’s whores is accurate, we’ll need a long time. Months. You better stall.”

“We will use your laboratory and your knowledge. But we will also use my magic. What we cannot heal, we shall replace with lifesaving battlehorn implants. You will have to allow me to bring a few battlehorns in here.”

Chrysalis turned slowly to stare at Celestia. “Battlehorns? I thought they had all died in the Battle of all Armies, and that you had disbanded the legions which survived.”

“All but one. And one you never knew. The Gray Dames… They are waiting outside. Just in case you wouldn’t help me.”

Chrysalis nodded. Silently thinking, still staring at Celestia. “We are both learning, aren’t we?”

“Aah… Is there anything I can do to help?” Thorax rubbed his hooves together.

“Yeah…” Chrysalis showed the door with a nod of her head. “Get to the main entrance and make sure workers don’t freak out.”