The painting was massive—over five meters tall, and easily a dozen across—yet it depicted a deceptively simple landscape. An ancient oak tree, in full bloom, standing tall over a sun-dappled field, surrounded by hundreds of saplings. The roll of the clouds perfectly matched the sway of the leaves and dangling cattails; and the play between direct sunlight and scattered overcast gave the impression each sapling was facing the central tree. Waiting. Listening. It’s been so long.
“Nah yeah, that’s the mare.”
A gruff voice brought the mare in question back to reality. Silver Frames’s art gallery had been virtually empty all day, even of its owner; its opening ceremony thus far was going utterly unnoticed by the Canterlot elite. Save for the solitary guard, she’d been alone all afternoon, until a pair of stallions—one a short, stocky earth pony, one a very tall unicorn—approached her.
“Green coat, red mane, and…” the shorter pony squinted at her flank, “ladybug cutie mark. You’re Cautious Client, aren’t you?” he asked in a deep, nasally Broncos accent.
That was indeed her pseudonym for the day. “Correct. And you must be-”
“Zap,” the unicorn answered. He was definitely a local—the Canterlot Look indicated a drop or two of Celestia’s blood in his veins, as it did with most ponies in the city.
“And I’m Breaker,” the earth pony chimed in.
Cautious Client appraised them both with a flinty stare. Cover names, no doubt. Unsurprising. They weren’t much to look at, but they came highly recommended.
Looking to break the ice, Breaker looked around the gallery for a second, before getting to the point: “So, which one’re we boosting?”
Cautious nodded towards the painting in front of her, “This one. Mother and Children, painted circa four-ten C.E. by renowned Southern Equestrian artist Mirage.” Her last painting.
Breaker asked, incredulously, “You sure this is the one you want? It’s a field. And some trees. Pretty sure my motel room had something like this. Just, y’know, smaller.”
A slight, distant smile crept onto Cautious’s lips, “This painting has been stolen, looted, and pilfered a dozen times throughout its history—once, it was even the spoils of war! It’s traded hooves through violence more times than it’s been legitimately sold.” She stamped a hoof, “Yes, this is the one I want.” It’s time for you to come home.
Zap rubbed his trimmed beard, adjusted his glasses with his telekinesis, then finally stammered, “Al-alright, Ms. Client. We can get started—”
He was interrupted by the sounds of many hooves on marble, a dozen voices, and singing. The trio turned and stared as eleven ponies—more than Cautious had seen all day—strode into the gallery, all following a powder-white unicorn that Cautious immediately recognized. Leading the herd of vapid socialites was none other than the Bearer of the Element of Generosity and thrice savior of Equestria.
“Well, this complicates things,” was all Cautious said aloud.
Breaker just looked confused, but it was evident Zap’d picked up a newspaper sometime this year. “Sweet Sun, th-that’s Rarity! What do we do?” he failed to whisper, already starting to hyperventilate.
“Keep calm. Shut up,” Cautious hissed. “We’re in an art gallery. Stare at the art.”
Rarity led her entourage from painting to painting, pausing to appraise each one, singing an admittedly catchy little melody all the while. After a few minutes, she returned to a surreal, disconcerting painting—Persistence of Memory, the tag read. Melting, taffy-like ponies sprawled over sparse, abstract scenery; a butchered olive tree, a nearby lake, the bugs, all conjured themes of death and metamorphosis.
Cautious made the mistake of making eye contact with the painted ponies; their eyes were somehow simultaneously flat, and bulging. And melting. Melting. Melting—
Princess Golden Dream could only stare, dumbstruck, as her beloved city burned to ashes around her. High above, swooping and diving through the thick, acrid smoke, the rampaging dragon wasted no time hunting down and incinerating stragglers in sheets of vibrant green flame. The princess looked down at the charred skeleton that was once her husband—husband?—still unsure just who the pony in front of her was, how she’d somehow trotted out from the royal banquet hall to the middle of town square, or why there was a dragon burning down her city. But then it hit her. The memories flooding back in a blurry, liquid haze. The years—the decades—she’d spent in a lovestruck stupor, unable to take her eyes off the lowborn prince who’d once offered her a drink. The cries of her dying subjects, and the smell of burning meat, overwhelmed her.
Horror, shock, shame, and guilt all ran through her mind, but rage—soul-blackening rage—consumed her heart. The dragon rounded on her, Golden Dream, the last survivor of Bitezh. The princess looked up at it, and yelled, “Why hast thou slain us? Surely we’ve done thee no harm!”
It cocked its head, let out a thunderous chuckle, and roared back, “Sic semper fures, Amore!” It inhaled, then breathed a gout of green flame directly onto her.
Golden Dream screamed, long and loud, utterly insensate as her flesh cracked, charred, and fell away; her rage soaked into her very bones, before she finally collapsed. The alicorn was dead. Her city was dead. And soon, the ice and snow of the Frozen North would bury them all.
Cautious shuddered, her joints aching and burning with restless energy. She closed her eyes, and tried to focus on her breathing. Tried to calm herself down. I am the master of my anger.
The Pony Everypony Should Know eventually gave her seal of approval with a silent nod, then the entire throng of ponies quickly filed out, leaving the three soon-to-be burglars almost alone again. The slightly-less-bored guard took up his position at the front door, parked his rump on his stool, and froze in place to match the statues.
As soon as the sound of singing died down, Zap let out a sigh of relief. “Pffff, well that was close.”
“So hey boss mare,” Breaker asked, “if this painting’s been stolen so many times, why is it here, behind a single sheet of glass, bein’ not-exactly-watched over by a single, sleepy rent-a-cop?”
Cautious took another deep breath, let it out slowly, then resumed control of the situation, “Because of two things: first, this might be a fake. I’m about to check that. Second, this… Silver Frames pony is as naive as they come.” Which suits my tastes just fine. “But I don’t want to take any chances. Go, distract the guard. Zap,” she turned back to the unicorn, “you’re the security expert, yes? I only need to touch the glass without sounding the alarm.”
Breaker wandered off to chat up the guard, muttering, “Gonna have that song stuck in my head for days. ‘Makin’ my mark, makin’ my mark in high society…’”
Zap touched his horn to the painting’s display case, and sent a short jolt into the frame, “Nothing s-special, the contact alarm’ll be down for a few minutes.”
Cautious turned to face the painting directly, but glanced back over to Zap, “How does this painting make you feel?”
Zap shuffled his hooves, squeaking on the marble, “Eh, it’s nice? Warm, pretty inviting. Oddly… cozy?” He paused, eyes wildly scanning the canvas’s vast area, “Still don’t know why it’s called ‘Mother and Children’, though.”
Cautious’s green eyes gleamed in the half-reflective glass, “Look at the old oak, surrounded by its saplings. Look at the flowers, the cattails, the acorns—so, so many acorns. Generations of that tree’s children, her children, are looking up to her. They’re all one family, and she guides them.” As it should be.
Zap tilted his head and squinted, “Huh, I think I see what you mean. That’s… honestly kind of wholesome? I didn’t even consider that.” He stood by awkwardly for another moment, “Are you some kind of druid, or—”
“No, nothing like that, though I do enjoy gardening.” Pruning, so much pruning. Cautious placed a hoof against the glass; even through the dormant security hexes and preservative wards, she could feel the passion, the love, that was poured into each brushstroke. She continued, “Do you know the story of Mirage? The pony who painted this?”
“You said she was some big-time artist. Fifth century Southern Equestria. I was paying attention.”
That slight, secretive smile crept back onto Cautious’s lips, “Yes, you were. Mirage was certainly active six hundred years ago, largely in Southern Equestria. But she was no pony.” A sickly green miasma, sparking and sputtering like a torch, formed around Cautious’s horn, before she fired the bolt into the painting. Trapped under glass, the canvas burst into roiling green flames, consuming the trees, field, and sky. Out of the conflagration, a new image emerged: a cramped, but warmly-lit cave; hundreds, thousands of black-carapaced bugs, each a parody of the equine form; and standing tall above them, a single regal queen. The Hivemother, surrounded by her brood. Her children—drones, nymphs, and wigglers alike—hanging on her every word as she taught them their history through story and song. To Cautious, at least, the emotional core, the feeling of the piece remained unchanged. She closed her eyes again, and welcomed the memory.
“Unicorns control the stars, pegasi control the skies, and earth ponies control the seasons; but love controls all life, from the lowliest scorpion, to Celestia herself. And we, my children? We control love.” The Hivemother looked down on her brood; the firelight flickered and danced off the young nymphs’ domed ocelli and through their translucent plates.
“Hivemother?” a nymph, yet to be given a name and a bonetrestle, raised her hoof.
“Yes, little one?”
“If we control love, why do the hoofbeasts hate us?”
Asking the hard questions. There was always one such wiggler in every creche. “Because we are monstrous,” the Hivemother replied to the whole clutch, “we are not hoofbeasts- we aren’t ponies. The ponies fear that which is not them.”
“But, we can choose to look like them! Can’t we?” a wiggler chirped, his voice both inquisitive and plaintive.
“We can choose to look like them, but we will still be monstrous. We feed on love, and passion—matters of the heart, mind, and soul—in the same way griffons feed on flesh. Even if we never, ever harm the hoofbeasts, they will never, ever trust us.”
“But–but–” a second nymph, almost old enough for the Rites of Maturation, sounded like she was on the verge of tears, “then why do we protect them? Why are you sending drones into Ornithia, the Centaur Union, Yakyakistan, and all the way to Zebrica and the Dragonlands? Why are you sending us to die for nothing?”
Pride and grim determination gripped the Hivemother’s wooden heart. “I’m sending you to intercept and destroy Griffish raiders, Hippogriff pirates, Abyssinian contrepreneurs, Yak war parties, and especially—especially—rogue dragons because we are parasites, Equestria is our host,” the Hivemother stood up to her full height, towering over even the full-grown drones, “and I. Will. Not. Share!”
Zap recoiled in shock, gawping and gawking, stuttering, “S-s-stars above! What are those?”
Cautious’s smile had grown into an undisguised smirk, “They’re called changelings. They were one of Equestria’s many enemies, centuries ago. Love-sapping parasites that fed on others' passions.”
“W-wait, those are changelings?”
“The changeling artist, Mirage, wanted to show the world—or, at least, Southern Equestria—that changelings weren’t all that different from ponies. That they had families. That their mothers nurtured their children. That they had art, creativity, culture. That they deserved to exist.” She turned her head slightly to hide a tear. Blinking it back, she looked over at Zap, “Do you know what happened to her?”
Still partly in shock, he mutely replied, “No?”
“Somepony caught wind she wasn’t one of us. The authorities tortured her for days on end, trying to get her to confess what she’d done with ‘the real Mirage.’ And when they were done with her, they burned her at the stake.” My child. My poor, naive child. How could you have ever trusted the hoofbeasts?
Zap looked about on the verge of panic again, when a spark of recollection lit up his eyes—some long-forgotten chapter from high school Equestrian History, perhaps, “Yeesh… but, d-didn’t the Princess kill them all, o-or something? G-good riddance, I say.”
Choosing her words carefully, keeping her voice level as best she could, she replied, “Yes. Three hundred years ago, Princess Celestia single-hoofedly defeated the entire changeling hoard during the Siege of Trot; she gravely wounded Queen Chrysalis, before casting her, and the entire changeling race, into the fires of Mt. Vehoovius.” She withdrew her hoof, and the painting was once again consumed by a flash of green flame.
Chrysalis hated begging. It was beneath a creature of her status. She was Chrysalis the Undying, the Hivemother, and Queen of the Swarm. But today, as she struggled to raise her eyes up to meet Daybreaker’s scorching gaze, she needed to beg.
“Please… just kill me already.” What was left of her legs couldn’t carry her weight from all the holes Daybreaker had melted through them. The cries of her dying children, and the smell of burning carapace, overwhelmed her. Even her rage was blunted, muted. She knew as soon as she died, she’d be whisked back into the safety of the hive—what was left of it—to reincarnate in the husk of one of her drones; Chrysalis was nothing without the Swarm, and the Swarm was nothing without Chrysalis. Maybe Daybreaker knew that, too. Maybe that’s why she was sticking to torture.
“All in good time…” the Sun Tyrant crooned, “You should be thanking me. I’m giving you and your cockroaches a chance to bask in the glory of a goddess.”
“You are–no god!” Chrysalis groaned haltingly, “You’re nothing more than–than Starswirl’s pet! You and your sister. Before you murdered her!” She knew that wasn’t entirely true, but if it spurred Daybreaker into killing her faster, all the better.
Instead, Daybreaker cocked her head and quietly snickered to herself. Whatever she found funny, it was lost on Chrysalis. “I figured it out: you’re just missing the pièce de résistance.” She lit her horn in her blood-red aura, and touched it to Chrysalis’s; the changeling’s glossy black chitin warped, sagged, and folded in on itself as it melted like butter on a hot sunny day.
Chrysalis screamed, wild and inarticulate, her brain boiling in her skull, until Daybreaker broke contact, evidently satisfied. The Hivemother writhed and convulsed in unimaginable pain, barely hearing the Sun Goddess’s words.
“Queen Chrysalis!” Daybreaker shouted, her Royal Canterlot Voice shaking the very earth beneath them, “I place upon you a curse! As you and your hive are one and the same, so shall these wounds be suffered by you…” the alicorn charged her horn, a massive ball of solar plasma hovering at the tip, “and all your children!” She let loose the coronal mass ejection at point blank range, instantly vaporizing the defeated, wounded, and insensible changeling queen, sending her consciousness—and her curse—back into the Hive.
Cautious let out an eerie, off-beat laugh, her smile sliding into a crooked grin, “No more changelings means no more changeling art. No new art, that is~”
Zap’s eyes widened as far as his lids could stretch, “–Which makes this a priceless artifact!”
Cautious nodded, her green eyes glowing behind her auburn mane, “And you are going to bring your best work to this heist. No mistakes. No delays. I want this painting. Am I understood?”
The glow from Cautious’s eyes reflected in Zap’s. “Yes… I–I understand,” he mumbled.
“Approach your work as you see fit. But accomplish, hoofbeast. Do not disappoint me.”
The sound of muffled hoofsteps approaching caused both ponies to snap their gaze back to the perfectly ordinary painting. Nothing to see here. Eventually, Breaker coughed, and muttered, “Yeah, I hope you just got done doing whatever it is you’ve been doing, the guard’s getting a little suspicious. And honestly, this Buck Ross painting an’ its happy little trees ain’t worth it.”
“Oh, believe me, Breaker, it’s worth it,” Zap breathed.
“Alright, if you say so,” Breaker grumbled. “So when’s the heist?”
Eyes still fixed firmly on the painting, Zap simply replied, “Tonight.”
“Errr… not a good plan. I just spent ten minutes talking sports and crap with the guard. He knows my face, you putz.”
Zap shuddered, blinking a few times, his lips moving silently as he worked out a plan, “Rarity just endorsed this place—just endorsed one of the other paintings here. I can tell you right now, this gallery will be absolutely jam-packed with socialites and tourists as soon as the doors open, tomorrow.” He finally looked over at Breaker, eyes bright with intent, “We’ll give ‘em a week to forget about us, then come back and finish the job.”
At the end of her surprisingly harrowing day, Crackle Cosette trudged towards the welcoming purple faҫade of Cinnamon Chai’s Tea & Cake Shop. This late in the evening, only a few customers huddled together at a single corner table, engrossed in their private conversation. Crackle eyed them wearily as she approached the counter.
“Helloooo~! Welcome back, Ms. Cosette. Can I get you anything tonight?” the cream-coated unicorn, Cinnamon Chai, greeted her with a warm smile.
Crackle gave her a wan smile in return, “A nightcap. Seltzer and lemon, extra bubbles. Add it to my tab.”
“Coming right up!” Cinnamon rubbed the inside of a glass with lemon oil, rimmed it with zest, filled it with water, then gave it five shots of carbonation from the bar gun. She passed it over with her telekinesis, and Crackle gave a silent nod in thanks.
Crackle looked over her shoulder one last time to make sure nopony was watching, then headed through the kitchen, past the pantries and freezer, and into the back staff room, all the while sipping her drink. The carbonation hit her hard—just like she wanted—and she was already starting to feel tipsy. In the staff room, a single bored janitor sat resting against the broom closet door. He looked at Crackle. Crackle looked at him. He slid out of the way, and she made her way inside.
In a column of green flame, Chrysalis dismissed her disguise, her mint-green coat burning away to reveal dull, charcoal-gray chitin. Safe within the layered protective wards, anti-scrying shields, and scent-blocking spells, she could finally, finally relax. Her drones had set up a dozen such safehouses, scattered throughout Canterlot, expressly for getting some proper rest behind and within enemy lines. Six translucent green recuperacoons glimmered in the dim lamplight. Three were occupied; a pair of sleeping drones, waiting for their night shift to start; and, of course, the real Cinnamon Chai, face frozen in a silent scream as she bobbed sluggishly in her slime. Her passion for baking and love for her clients together made for a small, but reliable food source. Like a snack machine!
The Hivemother drained her drink, then crawled inside a vacant recuperacoon. As soon as the transparent chitin sealed around her, the chamber flooded with goopy, luminescent green sopor slime. She flexed and stretched the articulating segments of her carapace, opening up all of the interstitial spaces between her plates and her bonetrestle to the soothing, restorative colloid. Immediately, the constant sounds of screaming, the smell of smoke and ash, the undying hatred of a long-dead god, all fell away into a distant tinnitus whine—just quiet enough to drift into a deep, dreamless sleep.
A week passed, largely without incident. Two dozen scout reports papered the staff room’s small dining table, enough that Chrysalis had to resort to using her compound eyes to read them all. Social events, juicy rumors, blackmail material, Royal Guard troop movements—and some genuinely good news: her drones had successfully commandeered a small, nondescript bottling factory on Terrace 4. Last month, they’d secured stockpiles of grain alcohol, lamp oil, roofing tar, and stormproof matches. Put together, her children might stand a fighting chance against the Guard’s armored vehicles and emplaced fortifications, should it come to open warfare. She took a sip of her drink—flat sugar water—and offered a silent prayer to the Old Growth that it wouldn’t come to that. Not yet. They just weren’t ready.
She brushed the reports aside for the moment. There was a high-class garden party tonight, and easily a hundred of Canterlot’s wealthy elite would be in attendance, including—she slammed a hoof into the table—Rarity. Again! She’d stolen the show at no less than eight events in seven days. Eight! The Hive’s best infiltrators would struggle to keep up that pace.
Something felt off, though; Chrysalis dug through last week's reports, including the ones from the four events she’d personally attended, compiling a timeline of Rarity’s activity. Rereading them all, she noticed a pattern: each successive brunch, auction, or yacht party brought Rarity’s personality profile closer to baseline—closer to the nopony tailor from a no-name suburb lurking in the shadow of Equestria’s capital. Day by day, she was peeling back layers from her mask, from her social guise. If Chrysalis had to guess, it would all come to a head at tonight’s garden party. And with Fancy Pants as her patron, maybe—maybe—those upper-class twits wouldn’t eat her alive.
A sharp pang of envy gnawed on Chrysalis’s wooden heart; the rage seeped from her bones like poison; and the memories came flooding back.
“I won’t stop you, little one, but I think you’re making a mistake.” The eye of the Mare in the Moon gazed down at the two changelings, mother and daughter, at the edge of the Abyssinian border. “You’re needed here, in the Hive.”
“The work I’m doing is too important. If it all goes according to plan… maybe we won’t even need the Hive.” Mirage looked over her shoulder at her mother, “I’m not saying every stallion, mare, and foal will welcome us into their homes, and I’m sure there’ll be many individual ponies who will never see us as equals… but I know, someday, we’ll be able to walk down the streets of Canterlot, unmasked.”
They stood there for some time, the chill desert wind whistling through the gaps in their plates. “Alright. I understand. And you know the rules–”
“’Once a month, I am to supply at least one hundred megathaums of love to a roving forager operating in my area.’ The Hive must always come first.” That was the standard pact between free-roaming drones and the Hivemother. With nothing left to say, Mirage donned her crimson keffiyeh, disguised herself as a plain Saddle Arabian mare, and set off into the night.
“Wait, little one,” Chrysalis called out. All the Hive’s drones were her children… but some were more her children than others.
Mirage turned, and waited.
“You are… lacking in provisions, and are insufficiently equipped for your mission.” The Hivemother braced herself, “Prepare for transfer.”
Mirage was stunned, barely managing to unhinge her jaw before the Hivemother did the same; a green ethereal miasma left Chrysalis’s throat, snaking its way over to Mirage, who accepted the energy. Twenty megathaums—more than two weeks’ rations—from the Hivemother’s personal reservoir.
“Now go, little one. Work your magic. Show them who we really are.”
She'd barely managed to blink back her tears when Fleur de Lis burst into the staff room, hyperventilating and shaking in her horseshoes.
“Hivemo–” she shouted, before Chrysalis cut her off.
“My name is Shutterbug. Today, at least,” she grumbled. Nopony should’ve been able to hear them, but that was still no reason to break from protocol.
“Shutterbug, urgent news!” she corrected herself. And then stood there.
“...Well? Report, Ms. de Lis.”
“It’s not just Rarity, all six Bearers are here in Canterlot! They just arrived by train, and they’re on their way up to Terrace 1 right now.” Her ears pinned back in fright as she failed to keep the panic out of her voice.
Shutterbug shook her head, trying to reorganize her scrambled memories, to recall just what could be so important for all six mares to make their way to Canterlot—oh, right. “It’s Twilight Sparkle’s wriggling day,” she let out a long, relaxed sigh, “they’re just here for a party. Should’ve been our first guess, really.”
But Fleur didn’t relax. She shuffled her hooves, before blurting out all at once, “But if it’s Twilight’s wriggling day and she’s in Canterlot that means Commander Shining Armor might show up and if Shining Armor shows up–”
“–Then Princess Mi Amore Cadenza might show up.” She blinked, and with a green spark shifted her eyes back to their usual reptilian form.
“You need to be there, Shutter. Your painting can wait.”
Such insolence! “I’m busy. I’ll put Pharynx on it.”
“He’ll be busy with the garden party,” Fleur shot back.
“Then get Urtica on it. She already has a good rapport with Twilight.” The presumptuous little drone was beginning to grind her plates.
“She’s dug in at the Academy, you can’t pull her out now.” She paused again, “Look, I’ll take care of your stupid painting–”
That was it. The Hivemother had heard enough. “IT’S NOT! JUST! A RUTTING PAINTING, THORAX!” she roared, swatting the table aside and rising to her hooves. She glowered down at him—even with Fleur’s pronounced Canterlot Look, he was a head shorter than her—with licks of green flame curling out from under her plates.
And yet, the little drone stood his ground. “You’ve always taught us the Hive is nothing without you, and that you are nothing without the Hive. We are here, in this hostile city, risking our lives because you want revenge. On Amore, and on Celestia. Well, tonight’s your chance. If you’re not going to take it, we should leave.”
Chrysalis glared for a few moments longer. Loath as she was to admit it, he was right. Infiltrations and infestations were always the riskiest operations. Thus far, their biggest advantage was that everypony—except perhaps Celestia—thought they were all dead, one with the magma in the heart of Mt. Vehoovius.
“Fine,” she growled, “I’ll handle Twilight’s party. And you, irritant, do not fail me.”
Thorax shuffled off, mercifully silent, shapeshifting into Cautious Client on his way out. Now all Chrysalis had to do was prepare for what could be the turning point of their entire occupation. A shot at Princess Cadance—maybe it might just pay off. Maybe Mirage’s vision could come true, after all. "We will march, unmasked, through the streets of Canterlot, little one. I promise."
Author's Note
Is there an 'unreliable narrator' tag?
Also, this Chrysalis is voiced by Terri Brosius.
