Lovefools

Chapters

Chapter 1: Far to the North
Chapter 2: Of Crystal Princesses
Chapter 3: A Thorny Encounter
Chapter 4: Waylaid by the Waterfall
Chapter 5: Out of Dust and Darkness
Chapter 6: Eavesdrop to Egress
Chapter 7: Maidens at the Crossroads
Chapter 9: Ruins, Revel in Reveal and Royalty
Chapter 8: Trudge, Trudge to the Threshold

Chapter 1: Far to the North

A blanket of white stretched in all directions, extending to the horizon and far beyond. A lone figure galloped across the sweeping, frostbitten plain, accompanied by an odd glow. The snow melted in their wake, leaving behind a trail which quickly froze over after they moved on. Almost nothing else disrupted this world of glaring white, where even the most thoroughly adapted wildlife barely clung to life.

The other intruder to the sterile serenity of the scene was impossible to miss. Far beyond the bright speck of sparkling armour rushing across the expanse, a great black spire jutted from the ground far to the north. Dominating the hostile vista, the grievous black spike was an overwhelming sight, imprinting itself deep in the mind of any creature who saw it.

The figure slowed to a stop, pausing their tireless trek towards their destination now that they stood on the cusp of reaching it. They caught their breath and took in the full horrible majesty of the tower standing before them, shiny chromed armour clinking as they panted.

There was something… wrong, about the cruel dark thing that stabbed up into the northern sky. It was midday, and from where the armoured figure stood the tower blotted out the sun, and gave the strong impression that whoever designed it had always hoped that it would do just that.

It was all spikes, scything curves, and cruel edges. No part of this was made to contain life, at least not life with any future. There was a grim quality to the structure, a certainty, as though it knew what it was and what it represented. It stared back, reminding you that long after your life ends this horrid black spire would still be standing. The smooth black stone seemed to mock even the idea of mortality.

The figure took a sip from a waterskin, etched in runes that kept it from freezing, then slung their saddlebags back on and strode forward towards the base of the tower. The shining steel armour glowed gently, and a shrewd onlooker might note the same runes inscribed subtly all over the bright armour. Few however, could miss the great wall of a shield they carried on their back.

A heavy steel bulwark, the kind that would crush most ponies just for attempting to lift it. While it could in theory be held like any other shield, it was intended for use by a powerful unicorn, levitated magically by a unicorn’s horn. The pony carrying this lumpen mass of iron, so big, so thick, so heavy that it could hardly be called a shield, just so happened to have such a horn, jutting from their forehead in a sharp spiral.

The face of the shield was adorned with a bright blue crest depicting a crystalline heart on a deeper blue background, surrounded by blue and pink stars. Where the cutie mark would be on the flank of the armour, the same crest was inlaid in delicate gilt enamel. The crest marked the figure as a knight, and the shield on their back weighed heavy on them, reflecting the duty they carried in their heart.

As they approached the tower, the ruins scattered around its base came clearly into view. Whatever these structures had once been, they were long ago reduced to abstract chunks of stone. Time and regular battering by the icy wind had worn them further down, but something was off.

Here and there the stone had been… melted? Frozen puddles of stone lay between the debris, and huge pieces of marble dripped and flowed together into messy pools. The heat required to reduce these fragments of a former glory to liquid was too immense to imagine.

Seeing these oddities, the knight slowed their pace and dropped their bags in the snow. Levitating their Greatshield before them, they crept forward defensively, eyes just visible through the visor of their plate armour, darting back and forth, waiting to be accosted.

Settled over and among the stone debris were great drifts of snow. Pure white, paler than the brightest light and powdery fine. The knight carefully clambered over one such drift, taking their eyes off their surroundings for a moment to ensure their footing did not betray them as they half slid, half trotted down the snowbank.

Right as they alighted at the bottom, their ears pricked. A subtle sound caught their attention, a whisper of movement, and of snow crumbling gently to fill a void.

The knight tensed, bulwark at the ready, and waited for a blow…

The seconds passed glacially. A few turned into a dozen, turned into several dozen, turned into a minute. Three minutes passed before the knight began to relax, doubting themselves. It must have just been the sound of snow settling, they reasoned, and they began to trudge further through the ruins towards the base of the tower.

They clambered over another snowdrift, catching sight of the door to the tower from the miniature peak. They had just alighted at the bottom safely, when a whisper of a sound caught their ear again. A rushing noise hit them, but before they could process the sound it was followed by an echoing strike from a huge, arcing tail.

The knight was flung, turning tail over mane as they spun through the air, their flight arrested as they impacted a large piece of granite. There was an unpleasant crunching of armour as they struck the rock, and another a moment later as they fell to the ground.

With their mind reeling and with the wind crushed out of them the knight desperately sought for their shield and for the foe that had cast it and them aside like toys. The gleam of the steel shield caught their eye a few yards away in the snow as they got to their hooves, just as they saw a great claw streaking towards them.

They dove towards the bulwark, retrieving it just in time to save themselves. The cruel trajectory of the claws glanced off the heavy metal, followed by a deep hiss from nearby.

Following the length of the limb that carried the talons that had so nearly divested the knight of their internal organs, the knight’s eyes fell upon their attacker.

The breath they had fought to regain caught in their throat as they took in the ancient creature before them. Claws like sickles, teeth like daggers, and a white scaled hide gleaming brighter somehow than even the snow. Before the knight stood a truly regal dragon.

Staring down at the knight was the only trace of colour on any part of the exterior of the fearsome beast. Two bright lavender irises framed black wells of pupils that seemed to pierce through to the very soul of the pony.

Now hopelessly dwarfed by the dragon, the formerly awe inspiring knight, choked on their own fearful awe at the majesty before them.

Hopelessly dwarfed by the terror inspiring majesty of the dragon looming over them, the knight froze. They stared back, meeting the dragon’s glare in the same way a doe might an oncoming train.

The silence stretched on… but was finally broken by an elegant, surprisingly gentle voice from the dragon. “It has been an age since I have encountered anyone foalish enough to trespass in these sunforsaken lands. What possessed you to come here, traveller? Do not lie, or I will cut you down before you can think to regret it,” she hissed sternly.

Fear stuck tight to the knight’s throat, but swallowing it they whispered “Forgive me, you are as gracious as you are mighty oh Dragon. Please, I beg thee, let me live. Grant me passage to yonder tower. My love waits within.”

The sound of the knight’s last few words scarcely had time to move through the air and be heard before the white dragon had leapt. In too short a moment for a mortal mind to process, the pony was gripped tightly in the claws of the tower’s guardian.

Slowly pressing the immobile pony into the stony ground, the dragon brought her eye close to the face of the knight. It was still hidden by their armour, which otherwise meant little to the pale guardian.

The watchdog of the prison tower spat bright pink flames into the snow just to the left of the pony’s head, blackening their armour with smoke and threatening to do much more than that at a moment’s notice.

“Liar,” snarled the dragon. “Did I not warn you? Heed my words pony, answer again, and if you lie to me you will be reduced to ash and lost in the wind. Why would you risk your meagre, fragile life to free the prisoner in the tower? What is so important?”

The pony, reduced to not much more than a doll in the grip of the great and terrible wyrm, strained to speak despite the pressure of the claws around them. Two tiny, barely audible words escaped their lips and hung in the air.

“True… Love.”

The dragon stared intently at the pony, as if daring them to backpedal and beg for their life. A long minute stretched by before she spoke again. The anger from before had bled away, replaced by an icy, blunt tone that dripped disgust and pity.

“When you find her, you will wish I had destroyed you now, before you could find out what she really is.”

The pony stayed silent, and after a moment more of glaring into the narrow slits of the steel visor, the dragon withdrew her talons.

Unfurling tremendous feathered wings, the white dragon of the north turned away wordlessly, then took off. The snow was whipped up into a mist that hung in the air as she disappeared into the sky.

The knight lay there, the snow around them that was melted by the dragonfire began to seep into their armour. After several minutes, they carefully pulled themselves to their hooves. Their armour was dented in many places, but still moved freely by some stroke of luck.

The knight gathered up their things, after finding their bearings in the chaotically rearranged ruins that lay at the base of the tower. Then trudging wearily they made their way to the tower entrance.

As they approached they snatched a look up at the body of the tower as it ascended above them. From here the perspective made it impossible to see where it ended, it seemed to extend far into the sky forever.

Another stroke of luck, the door was mercifully unlocked. Dark wrought iron ground against stone, but the gate slid open easily, in spite of the protesting noises of the structure.

The inside of the tower was tight and cramped, the stone of the tower had to be thick and bulky to support the top-heavy design. The space danced back and forth across the line for what constituted the bare minimum required for the staircase to function. To make things worse, no torches lit the way and nor did any windows grace the interior of the tower with the light of the sun.

The knight lit their horn as they entered, and a pale blue light pushed back the shadows inside just enough for them to make their way up the spire.

It was slow going, hundreds of stairs in plate armour was an endurance test for even the burliest of creatures, and while the pony was courageous, their strength lay more in their magic than their physique. They were forced to pause their journey several times, and halfway up the tower they even fell into a fitful slumber.

Waking groggy, after Celestia knows how long, the knight rose again after a brief meal of hardtack, dried fruit and lukewarm water from their pack. All sense of time seemed to evaporate in this space. They wondered if that was a deliberate part of the design of this behemoth, or just a happy accident on the part of the architect.

Heedless, they climbed onwards, and unknown hours later they ran headfirst into a door, barely saving themselves from tumbling back down the spiral they had just fought to ascend.

It was… a strangely pretty thing, ornately carved wood, stained black. Covered in elaborate repeating patterns of insects, their carapaces interlocking like puzzle pieces as they wove in all directions across the wood.

Like the heavy set portal far below, the knight found this too was not locked. With no knob, the door swung effortlessly into the room as they pushed against it.

Through moth eaten holes in thick, velvet curtains, the sun pierced the darkness of the room, though tinted deep orange by the lateness of the day. There was only a single piece of furniture, an enormous four poster bed in the centre of the austere room. The floor was coated with dust, and somehow every corner of the gloomy room was laden with spiderwebs.

The knight stood in the doorway, as their heart beat hard in their chest, working to dredge from somewhere deep within the courage to proceed.

As they stepped forward, halfway between the door and the bed, a voice broke the silence.

From within the heavy black curtains of the bed a fearful whisper crept. “Hark… whatever business you have, stranger, come no closer.”

It was a strange voice… a sharp serrated hiss, barely audible, pleading to the interloping knight.

”It is for the benefit of every creature that I am imprisoned here. Whatever possessed you to come here, and whatever strength you must wield to best the guardian of this bastille, I beg thee turn around and return to whence thou came.”

The knight lingered, then as they turned to leave spoke calmly. “As you wish.”

“Wait!” The cry rang out, loud in the small, austere space. “Is it really you?” Saying this the occupant of the bed drew aside the curtain, divesting herself of the last barrier that held her away from the world.

The pale blue light of the knight’s horn fell upon the prisoner, her phthalic green carapace glittering as it reflected the light. Wide green eyes peered from the depths of the four poster bed, searching for a clue about the identity of her would-be rescuer through the gaps in their metallic visor.

Entranced, the knight lingered to take in all the details of the mare before them. Long, elegant legs, odd holes bored through her hooves, fragile papery wings, and a long curved horn bearing the same strange holes as her legs. She was draped in a black silk nightgown, and her aquamarine blue hair trailed across the bed and almost touched the floor. The identity of the mare was unmistakable to the knight, who had dreamt of her every night since they parted…

After a moment the knight started slightly, their reverie subsiding as they realised their anonymity. The light from their horn dimmed halfway as they used their magic to remove the plate helmet obscuring their face. Thick curls in pink and purple flooded out from under the helm, which the owner carefully brushed aside. Her pink coat was ruffled and blue grey bags hung under each eye. Despite her exhaustion there was a glimmer in her eyes, and she smiled brightly as her gaze met that of the prisoner.

“I simply could not stand another day without you.” The knight whispered.

A look of terror struck the features of the changeling mare, who recoiled, panic stricken. “No! Please. Don’t throw away your life, after all I’ve done, they’ll never forgive me!”

The knight strode slowly forwards, a soft smile still on her lips as she spoke. “It’s not too late to fix things.”

“No!” A sharp wail cut through the shrinking space between them.”Please! You don’t understand, I deserve this!”

Shrinking back into the darkness of the furthest corner of the bed, the prisoner watched as the knight removed her armour. She sobbed, “Please… You have a life… Don’t abandon it to be dragged down with me.”

The knight spread her luxurious pink wings, relief flooding her face after several days cramped under that armour. The errant princess climbed up onto the mattress and made herself comfortable across from the former queen.

The prisoner flinched as Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire reached out to stroke her cheek, then allowed herself to be caressed. She remained tense as though in defiance of the act of tenderness, and tears continued to stream down the soft carapace of her face.

After a few moments the pony princess reached forward and pulled the changeling prisoner close to her. The changeling didn’t resist, but did not relinquish the tension she clung to. Cadance held her close, embracing her with an air of confidence and ease. After a few moments, Cadance bade her companion to lay her head upon her lap.

The changeling allowed herself to be led, and the pony began to stroke her back, petting her sweetly and whispering soft reassurances.

Gradually, the tension began to ebb in the body of the deep green mare. Her tears slowed, then stopped, and her breathing became more natural. She found herself questioning the state of things, whether sequestering herself had truly been the only choice.

Shaking off the restful peace that had started to settle on her mind, the changeling sat up. “Cadance… I want to believe you but… after all I’ve done, do you truly believe things can change?”

Reaching forward to cradle the target of her affection again, Cadance whispered close to the other mare’s ear. “For tonight my love, just trust me. We can worry about the details tomorrow.” She kissed the soft shell of her beloved’s cheek, and the changeling shivered, before relenting and leaning into the embrace of her pony suitor.

“As you wish…” murmured the changeling, finally giving into the affections.

Every last vestige of tension and panic faded from her as she and Cadance held each other, alone, together, and with the kind of peace that only comes from certainty.

Then, she tasted it… Radiating off the pony was love richer than the changeling had ever witnessed. Pure, bright, completely earnest. A deep and passionate love, with no doubt to poison it. The kind of love changelings dreamt of.

It was too much, too good to be true. Her instincts were roused by the taste and began to shriek and wail at her. She realised she was starving… Surely it wouldn’t hurt to feed, after all there was so much, and it was being directed at her anyway…

Her eyes shot open and the tension flooded back. The dark green mare tried to speak, but all that came from her jaw was a guttural hiss. Cadance started and pulled away slightly, a worried look came over her face as she spoke. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

Her beloved tried to respond, but once again found she could only hiss and screech. Her jaw opened and shut awkwardly as she tried to speak. Something was deeply wrong… She could feel something stirring inside her, baited out into the open by hunger.

The changeling’s eyes went wide with panic as she felt a feral pressure rising inside and her body began to change. Her jaw burst open, splitting into four segmented fangs that clutched at the air and dripped glowing green spittle.

She tried to back away, tried to let go of her pony lover and flee, but as she went to move, the carapace of her hind legs suddenly ruptured and exploded into two pairs of much larger, spindly limbs covered in cruel barbed spines.

Tangled in the thick blankets and struggling madly Chrysalis tried desperately to pull away from the pony princess who loved her.

Cadance was trying to say something, but Chrysalis couldn’t hear her over the sound of her own heartbeat. Hard and rapid, thrumming in her ears as blood pounded through her.

As she struggled to escape the bed, Chrysalis fought hard against the ancient hunger that arose within her. She could feel the changes pressing in, trying to fully transform her into the monster she knew she was deep within. Little by little the changes spread through the rest of her body.

She grew larger, filling the cramped space under the canopy of the four poster bed with a tangle of barbed limbs, a long tail ending in a wicked stinger, and huge translucent wings. She fought to keep her forelegs from changing, and tried to push away from the pink pony that looked up at her, eyes wide and mouth agape.

If she could just hold herself together long enough for the pony to move away it would be okay, she told herself. But the pony just sat there, frozen in terror. Chrysalis tried again to speak, but after a number of strained hisses realised her only option was to push the pony out with her hooves.

Slowly, with exaggerated care and using every bit of willpower she had to stop her forelegs from following the rest of her body in transforming into cruel weaponry, she lifted the pony up and began to move her out of the canopy.

She was so close… relief started to blossom as she realised in a few moments the pony would be clear and she could let the change complete without causing any harm.

But the thought betrayed her, the distraction of relief gave the transformation the window it needed to push through, and the carapace of her forelegs cracked… then erupted.

She was still holding the struggling pony as a huge serrated scythe burst from each of her two remaining hooves. She tried to let go, to let the pink creature she held drop, but the tangle of her limbs in the cramped bed robbed her of her most earnest wish.

There was still a chance, the creature she held was panicking and struggling, but only scratched on the surface. If she could just… let the thing free, surely it would flee on its own.

She tried to slowly extricate her lethal tangle of limbs from the creature she held, but one claw was caught on the blankets.

She tugged at it carefully, straining to pull it free. After a moment the cloth gave way, but as the tension was suddenly broken, the serrated foreleg jerked back, and slashed across the body of the creature that struggled in her grasp.

She dully registered the pink thing making some noise… then felt the fog descending over her mind. This thing she held was so feeble and weak, soft flesh with no hard outer layer to protect it… it would be far too easy to…

Chrysalis shook her head, pulling herself back into focus. Cadance. She had to protect Cadance. Nothing else mattered. She loved Cadance. Chrysalis took in the sorry state of her erstwhile lover. A dozen small nicks dotted the pink of her coat with bright red, and one particularly long but mercifully shallow cut lay across the right side of her torso. She was crying and straining, trying to get free.

Chrysalis’ heart ached at the sight. But it would be okay, she told herself. All she had to do was let Cadance go.

She tried again to free her forelimbs from the tangle they were in, delicately unhooking the barbs of her claws from the thick blankets. She almost had both limbs free, when she slipped again, nicking Cadance’s cheek.

The pink pony, pushed far past the point of normal panic and running on instincts, jerked in response to the latest wound and lashed out with her hind legs, kicking hard against the insectoid chest of the changeling queen and pushing herself forcefully away.

There was a wet noise as the spines of one of Chrysalis’ claws bit deep into Cadance’s flesh.

The smell of blood was suddenly overwhelming.

Cadance looked down in horror at the spikes protruding from her chest… Then up at Chrysalis, searching for some sign, some response.

Chrysalis stared back, frozen in shock. She watched the light fade from her lover’s eyes, and felt the hunger flare up again in her mind.

*****

A scream broke the calm of the night. The source of the shrill noise lashed out at the heavy blankets constraining her in the unfamiliar bed and bolted upright.

She blinked at the darkness, then a moment later a bright verdant light filled the bedroom of the small cottage as she grew a unicorn’s horn and lit it.

She felt her heart racing, and looked around. The grogginess of sleep lay heavily on her mind, and it took a few seconds for her to remember where she was. Her gaze darted over the room, taking in the quaint hoofmade furniture and odds and ends of the home.

Not her home… Or at least, not truly. The pony who lived here was currently suspended in a cocoon full of sedative goo in the basement of the cottage.

So… it was just a dream. Insipid… As she sorted through the events of the nightmare her lip curled in disgust. Despite her current form as a pleasant looking, mint green, chubby earth pony (temporarily sporting a unicorn’s horn) she still managed to radiate her distaste intensely.

How dare those vile pony virtues creep their way into her mind. She was no prisoner, and in spite of the betrayal of her hive she was still a powerful changeling queen. Yes, she was truly alone for the first time in her life. But that was only temporary. Once she had her revenge on the ponies she would return to her hive, crush the upstart Thorax, and reclaim her rightful place as ruler of the most powerful changeling hive in all of Equestria.

She sighed, flicking her adorable, cotton candy pink mane out of her eyes. At least that was the plan. Normally she never let herself indulge in doubt. She was a Queen, perfect in every way. Or so she had been raised to believe.

In the months since she had been ousted and had fled from the hive, she had had much time to think. Alone and in exile, doubts blossomed frequently in her mind. At first she had strived to stomp each and every one out before it could take root, but despite her best efforts, over time she had been worn down. Between the loneliness, and the constant fear that she might be caught by the ponies as she was forced to live amongst them to feed, her self-righteous certainty had gradually been eroded.

Now, as the cold light of the moon shone between the gaps in the bedroom curtain Chrysalis found herself wondering for the first time whether she was truly in the right.

A tiny, insidious thought wormed its way to the front of her mind. It said simply, if she had been a good queen, why did her changelings leap at the chance to rid themselves of her? Not even a single bug had held back, or stood by her side.

She sat in silence, staring fixedly at a mote of moonlight on the bed in front of her.

All she had ever done had been in service to the hive. To lead her changelings out of the shadows and into the light, to rule over their prey as ought to be their right. Other hives contented themselves on living on the fringes, just taking what they needed and eking out a pathetic existence dependent on the ponies. Self made lap dogs that were too stupid to realise how disgusting they were, she thought, sticking her tongue out and grimacing dramatically.

She had dedicated her life to the betterment of her changelings… Yes. Even if they couldn’t understand her ways, even if she had been cruel and cold. It was for the good of the hive. If they had trusted her, and if those revolting ponies hadn’t stuck their pathetic pastel snouts where they weren’t welcome… It all would have worked.

She lay back down, pulling the blankets back up and sighing again loudly as she did. As she got comfortable, the pink hair of her borrowed form fell into her eyes again. She brushed it aside angrily, then tensed up as a memory bit into her.

“Cadance…” she whispered, so quiet it was barely a sound.

Her heartbeat began to race again and a lump formed in her throat as images of the princess of love’s body, lifeless and punctured, exploded into her mind.

She hadn’t meant to. As much as she wanted revenge, as angry as she was, she would never go so far as to…

She swallowed and shook her head forcefully. It didn’t help. The image of Cadance’s face might as well be tattooed on her frontal lobe. The confusion and fear. The tenderness torn to shreds in a smattering of seconds.

Chrysalis curled up and pulled the warm hoof-stitched quilt over her head, hugging herself tightly.

She would never do something like that. It was just a dream. A cruel, vicious dream, just her brain smashing together bits and pieces that were lingering in her mind when she went to sleep. It didn’t mean anything.

Her mind wandered back to the moment in the dream where she had felt totally at peace… safe and understood. Alone with someone she could trust. Loved.

She dealt in love, thought of it daily, constantly hungered for it. But she had almost never felt it directed at her. Truly at her, not at the facade she was wearing to steal it.

Her mother had loved her, she dimly remembered. But beyond that she had only ever felt the frightened adoration of her subjects. For the first time, she felt the full severity of that gulf in her life, and something inside her began to ache.

Cadance… Chrysalis had almost forgotten her. The princess of love had been outclassed by her sister in law in the hierarchy of ponies that the changeling queen hated. More recently even Twilight Sparkle had been outdone by her latest pupil, Starlight Glimmer.

She tried to recall the feeling of the pink ponie’s soft fur, the warmth and tenderness of the embrace they had shared in the dream. It was too cruel. She knew with a heavy, leaden certainty that she could never truly enjoy something like that. The most she could hope for was to steal it, but part of her hated herself for even thinking to stoop that low.

Was there any version of her life where she and Cadance could have avoided being enemies? Or even become friends? Perhaps… Maybe if she had revealed herself to Celestia long ago when she had become queen, they could have found some mutually beneficial arrangement, and she could have avoided conflict with the ponies altogether.

She hissed, discarding the thought, disgusted at herself for even entertaining the notion of supplicating herself to the ponies.

She was a changeling. The most essential part of her nature was that she preyed upon ponies. For all their talk of friendship and forgiveness, the lamb cannot love the wolf.

Still… It was a shame.

As sleep closed in and she gradually fell victim to the warm comfort of the pony bed, the lonely green mare thought again of how it had felt to be loved, and fell asleep with her mind full of thoughts of the beautiful pink mare who had loved her…

Author's Note

Hi there! Nice to meet you, I'm Aggy. First chapter! Lots more to come, I hope you'll follow along <3

This isn't my first fic, but it is the first thing I'm posting online for anycreature to see. I'm posting the first four chapters together, then I'm aiming to post one chapter a month. My life is a little chaotic, so I might not be able to keep to that schedule. But I have this whole fic very carefully outlined and mapped out, so eventually we will get to the end!

If you read this far, thank you, see you again soon! :3

PS: The title of this fic is a reference to a song I love, one that specifically inspired this fic. At some point I'd like to add a playlist of songs to go along with the fic. For now, I'll just try to sprinkle in references here and there. Aside from the title of the fic, there's two references in this chapter which serve as easter eggs to clue you, the audience, in on works of fiction that I enjoy and take inspiration from! let me know if they're too subtle :p

Chapter 2: Of Crystal Princesses

The latch clicked as Cadance carefully shut the door to the crystal palace kitchen behind her. She stared at the natural patterns in the opaque blue quartz of the door for a few moments, then sighed and turned, setting off through the hallways of the castle.

It was late, later than she’d prefer. Later even, than she had planned. She’d just finished an improvised meal out of whatever leftovers she could find in the castle pantry. It hadn’t been bad, in fact the ponies who worked in the castle kitchens took their work to heart and she enjoyed almost everything they made. But it had been cold, and lonely, and taking a break from her work to eat had not given her the sense of respite and relief she had been counting on.

Hooves clacking on the stone floors, she ambled slowly back towards her study, head hung low and mane tied back carelessly into a low effort ponytail. She felt herself dawdling, taking a longer route though the maze-like hallways of the palace than she needed to. She took pride in knowing the castle better than almost anycreature alive, just slightly shy of some of the senior staff at the castle. Although probably no one knew it as well as her predecessor, but… you could hardly call what happened to the previous rightful ruler of the Crystal Empire living. Cadance shuddered at the thought.

The princess of love paused at an intersection, standing in the centre of the T shaped junction between several hallways. Moonlight shone down on her though a magnificent stained glass window, subtly mottling her features with colours borrowed from an ancient depiction of her predecessor.

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza stared up at the hoofmade crystalline portrait of her ancestor. Although, truth be told, she had never been quite sure what the exact relation was. Sometime after Celestia had adopted her, she had stumbled on an old book that spoke of the lost pony kingdom of the Crystal Empire, which had a chapter devoted to the founder and ruler, Princess Amore.

Between the entire empire vanishing overnight, and the nation’s history of isolationist tendencies, little information about it had survived the thousand years the Crystal Empire was absent. But from what there was, Cadance knew that Amore was said to be an enormous pale unicorn, renowned for her compassion and grace.

The stained glass window depicted Amore smiling down lovingly, and the artist had carefully constructed the image so that if you stood in the precise centre of the junction, the princess’s eyes would appear to stare directly down into yours.

Cadance had spent much more time than she would ever admit standing alone late at night in this exact spot. When the moon was bright like tonight, the stained glass seemed… less static, more alive. As though some fragment of the real pony had been captured by the intricate labour that had gone into making this copy.

Staring intently into the portrait’s kind golden eyes, Cadance wilted slightly. She bit her lip nervously, feeling herself being crushed slowly under that gaze, almost like it was demanding something of her.

When the Crystal Empire had first been recovered, this had been a place of solitude and reassurance. She had seen Amore as an inspiration, someone she had a special connection with and who she could aspire to follow in the hoofprints of. But as she had become immersed in her role as ruler of the empire, the meaning she privately found in this transient sanctum had gradually soured.

Where once Amore had been a comforting, encouraging image, now Cadance couldn’t help but compare herself to the frozen image of the first Crystal Princess.

Cadance had, throughout her life, sought out every scrap of information she could about Amore. Doing so with a ravenous intensity that had at times become an obsession. She knew that she was connected to Amore, but no one could ever tell her exactly how. The closest she came to ever getting a clear answer was when she was seventeen, and had confronted her adoptive aunt about it directly.

Celestia had typically been cagey about Amore, refusing to give detail or elaborate, but insisting that Cadance was destined for great things, things no one else could do. But under the fury and angst of her teenage niece, she had relented, finally admitting that she didn’t actually know any more than Cadance did. What she had said was based on her own intuition about the facts, and wanting to encourage her beloved niece.

After the Crystal Empire had returned, Cadance had privately been brought back to her adolescent obsession with Amore. She began pouring through records relating to the founding of the kingdom, interviewing historians, and seeking out anyone who had any connection to the Princess for more information.

It had seemed promising at first, after all there were many crystal ponies who had known Amore personally, through working in the castle or advising her. But there were so many gaps in the memories of the crystal ponies. Even after the majority had been restored, much information about some glaringly specific topics had frustrated Cadance to no end.

No one could tell her exactly who Amore was, or where she came from. As far as Cadance could tell she had no family, no lovers, and no known descendants. Worse still, despite everypony being certain that she had founded the crystal empire and played a pivotal role in it’s construction, nopony could explain how, and any records of it seemed to have been lost, or maybe never written at all.

It was beyond baffling. Even records from outside the empire were vague about its origins. The most detail she could find, was an implication in some notes by Clover the Clever that the Crystal Empire had been extremely insular and had been deliberately hidden by Amore from the rest of the world at its conception.

This scrap of information was found in a journal with a second hoof reproduction of an account by Clover detailing the first contact (as far as anycreature could tell) between the Crystal Empire and Equestria.

After the three tribes had settled in Equestria, there had been a period of expansion and exploration. In the latter part of this era, the frozen north had become a subject of great interest to explorers and cartographers of the time. It was the least explored portion of the continent, and the most hostile to pony life, but eventually a small group had survived the trek all the way to the North pole and returned. They told a tall tale of an incredible city carved out of the ice, but lit by the sun and graced with green grass and warm climate.

Several more expeditions had been arranged, but only one successfully made it to this mysterious kingdom to the north. To the society of the time, this group was thought to have been lost, however they were instead being held in the Crystal Palace, by order of Princess Amore, and interviewed at length about the outside world.

Eventually the princess seemed satisfied, and used her magic to return the expedition to the border between the Arctic North and Equestria. They returned to Canterlot, bringing word that in a month's time, Princess Amore was coming to meet with the rulers of Equestria, to discuss the future of her nation and the relationship between it and Equestria.

Shortly thereafter, the two nations formally became allies, and the Crystal Empire opened its borders for the first time to outsiders. A joint effort began, a railway between the two nations to allow trade and travel, so that they might each benefit more from this new friendship.

But that was it. Every other word penned about Amore was detailed descriptions of her beauty and kindness, or an account of her attending some event. All leading up to her… well, death wasn’t the right word, but it was close.

She had disappeared one day, thought to have been killed by Sombra, who had immediately declared himself King of the Crystal Empire, enslaving the crystal ponies and using them as soldiers to wage war on Equestria. Luna and Celestia had defeated him, but as he was banished, he cursed the empire to disappear with him.

The rest, the more recent history, wasn’t worth dwelling on. At that point it stopped being history and became a recount of several borderline traumatic events in Cadance’s life, and she was already worn thin tonight.

Cadance sighed in exasperation, and finally broke away from this clandestine ritual of hers. Once again it had proved to be fruitless, and had not provided any of the sense of hope or catharsis that she needed so badly. Amore had no answers nor clues left to pass on, the distant Crystal Princess was an everlasting mystery, even to her only flesh and blood descendant.

The current Crystal Princess trotted slowly down the hall towards her study, doing her best to ignore the guilt she felt for taking the time to herself to think about Amore like this.

After a minute or two of walking, she reached the unassuming door to her personal study. It had until recently been a guest bedroom in the wing of the palace furthest from the daily hubbub of royal activity. This part of the castle was mostly storage and bedrooms, all rarely used like this one. But she had had it cleaned and renovated last year, finding that between her work, her husband, and her newborn baby, sometimes she needed somewhere to retreat to that was hers alone.

The only pony she allowed inside besides herself was one of the maids. At the insistence of the senior house maid, Cadance had chosen a mare she was familiar and generally comfortable with to be tasked with the duty of cleaning this room once a week. Though Cadance usually endeavoured to keep the room clean enough that there was not much for her to do.

In spite of the ‘once a week’ terms of the arrangement, Moonbreeze seemed to make a point of ‘forgetting’ that she had already done her duty, and came to check on Cadance late at night two or three times a week. Usually she came bearing tea, and the two would sit and chat for an hour or so before Cadance insisted on getting back to her work.

With the magic from her horn Cadance pulled a small silver key from a hiddenslot in her tiara. It was overly dramatic, she knew, and it wasn’t the only key. But having the small compartment added to the inside of her crown, and storing the key there somehow made the space feel more private, like it was a secret she was keeping from the world.

She unlocked the door and wearily strode in. On her desk was a silver tray, bearing a carved crystal teacup and matching teapot. Cadance peered through the darkness of the large room, half expecting to find Moonbreeze reading something, lounging on the formerly grand sunbed against the far window, or sitting in one of the moth-eaten armchairs that Cadance had dragged in here herself from other half abandoned parts of the castle. But to her disappointment the pale blue bat-pony was nowhere to be found.

The worn and weary princess slumped into her desk chair. Underneath and around the tea tray was a disorganised swathe of paperwork. Some of it Cadance was deliberately avoiding, but mostly she was just inundated.

She reached for the teapot and poured some of the contents into the cup. The familiar smell hit her immediately. Camomile. It was cold, not quite ice cold, but the herbal tea had been left to steep far too long and tasted strange and bitter. Despite the taste the lukewarm concoction was still a refreshing relief to the exhausted princess.

It helped that it had been delivered by a friend. Moonbreeze was of the few ponies that seemed to be able to pierce Cadance’s carefully managed facade and see that she wasn’t the image of grace and confidence she strove to project. Nopony said anything directly, but privately she treasured this short list of ponies. She found that the small, silent gestures of sympathy and support were what motivated her most to toil away at all the demands placed on her to keep the kingdom running.

She sighed again deeply, and sank lower into the heavy wooden chair. Her back ached… Sipping her tea, she tried to convince herself to sit up straight and get to work. After several minutes she gulped the last of her tea, sat up, and pulled the most urgent paperwork towards her.

After staring at it and rereading the first paragraph for the umpteenth time without retaining any of the information, she slumped again, snout pressed against her desk.

She relented, admitting defeat, and tried again to smother the pang of guilt she felt as a part of her sang out in joy at the reprieve. Far too tired to work and happy for it, she stood up and tottered over to the great big sunbed she kept in this room.

It was, like everything in this room, antique. Old and uncared for furniture that Cadance had claimed as her own. This particular example was completely covered in all manner of blankets, quilts, pillows, and stuffed animals, in varying conditions but none of them new, and all of them loved.

Shoving a rotund plush narwhal aside, the weary pink pony crawled into the bed, nestling under the mess of familiar and comfortable fabric. It was heaven… her own private cloud.

Compressed under the weight of all the assorted cloth and sundry, Cadance smiled to herself softly. Curled up on her side and hugging tight a voluptuously stuffed satin pillow, she sleepily examined the moonlight shining into the room through the slits between the curtains.

The tiny fragments of bright blue tinted light fell across her bed and onto the armchair opposite. Cadance let her mind wander, skipping through the events of the day. She grimaced slightly as she recalled how she had dwelled on Amore, and the path that had led her here.

Was this really where she was meant to be? Who she was meant to be? She was doing her best but it never quite seemed to be enough. At some point it had made sense, she’d felt driven, had known where she was going. But somehow that had been lost. In this moment she found herself sure of very little besides the material facts of her life.

Her thoughts turned to her husband… Shining Armor. That was another part of her life that had made perfect sense at one point, but now, well. She could never see herself moving away from her devoted husband. She didn’t resent him, or find him particularly lacking. He was kind and patient and always lent an ear to her troubles. He was a fantastic father too, taking up the slack of caring for their daughter Flurry Heart when Cadance was swamped by her duty.

He even somehow found time to do his job, and seemed to be thriving in it, despite the additional burden of fatherhood.

All that was… good, but why did it feel like something was missing? He was always eager to support her, wasn’t that good? She couldn’t understand why she felt as though something was missing from that part of her life.

Cadance rolled over onto her back and stretched all four of her legs out across the bed, enjoying the coolness of the blankets as she splayed out her body.

Somewhere in all this, something was wrong, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint what.

She went further back, to her wedding. The princess of love and the captain of the royal guard, swept up in a passionate revival of their highschool romance. The papers had described it as a whirlwind romance… that was a strange, prepackaged term. The type of thing used too much, to the point where it lost most of the meaning unless you stopped to deliberately stare at it.

Whirlwind romance… It had been oddly fast. At the time it had all made so much sense, she could still viscerally recall the feeling of certainty. Hard and gleaming like marble under her hooves. It had felt like destiny.

But then so too had becoming the ruler of the Crystal Empire… and yet now she felt assuredly in her heart that something was wrong. She wasn’t thriving like her partner, she was fighting to tread water and stay afloat. Every day she let something slip through the cracks, she knew it. There were so, so many problems, and it was so hard to answer every single one. Many of them she just, guiltily ignored, or did her best to delegate.

Cadance scrunched up her eyes and snout and huffed. She laid out the pieces of this puzzle in front of her in her mind’s eye.

Everything in her life was built on the core assumption that she was following a path laid out for her, pursuing her destiny. But what if along the way, she had stepped off the path, and incorporated something into her life that wasn’t meant to be there?

If there was such a thing as destiny, and cutie marks were in fact clues towards that destiny, hers clearly pointed towards involvement in the Crystal Empire. Despite not actually being a crystal pony herself, she bore the Crystal Heart on her flank, the point which the entire empire pivoted around. But now that point seemed to be more connected to her daughter than to her.

Had her destiny been to restore the empire but not to rule it? Or, had the misstep been not following Amore’s example more strictly. One of the few facts about the formerly lost princess of the crystal ponies was that she had no publicly known family or loved ones.

As these thoughts unfurled in her head, Cadance felt her heartbeat start to pick up pace.

Was she being subtly punished? Was she meant to just be a karmic replacement for Amore, a perfect emulation? And now that she had strayed, started a family and split her life into two different devotions, she’d failed her destiny and missed her chance. Come to think of it, Flurry looked even more like Amore than she did… Could destiny work like that? If she had failed, would her destiny pass onto her daughter? And… if it did, where did that leave her?

She scrunched her eyes tighter and patterns began to swirl across her vision. After a few moments she patiently let out the deep breath she’d been holding and made herself allow her face to relax.

No. That was paranoia. She was tired and stressed and her mind was taking her to unhelpful places.

If she wasn’t meant to be with Shining Armor, it wouldn’t have happened. If destiny existed in the way so many ponies thought it did, if it was as inflexible as all that, she never would have found Shining Armor. Something would have intervened.

A manic tension struck her and her eyes shot open.

Green fire raged across the landscape of her mind, ravaging her carefully constructed composure and setting her blood alight as panic took hold.

The invasion of Canterlot, the attack on her wedding, surely it couldn’t have been…

She kicked off the blankets abruptly, fighting through the dense constraining layers in her panic stricken flight. Pulling herself to the edge of her bed, she swung her hind legs down and sat up as quickly as she could.

Hyperventilating, she held one hoof to her chest, feeling her heart beating like hundreds of fleeing hooves.

It had been over a year since she last had this sort of reaction to remembering her wedding, what should have been one of the best days of her life.

She forced herself to slow her breathing down, and closed her eyes again. In her mind’s eye she summoned a familiar visage that she leant on in moments like this. It was a place from her childhood, a small waterfall deep in the forest near her hometown.

Before the passing of her parents, before she had moved to Canterlot, this had been her private sanctuary.

Behind the waterfall was a small cave. Miraculously sheltered from the rushing water, it was full of a bed of lush moss across the floor and up the walls. It was relatively shallow for a cave, only about two yards at the deepest point, and through the thin descending stream of the waterfall the sun shone, bathing the space in gentle light.

When she was troubled, or overwhelmed, or had been caught up in some fight with her parents or another foal, this was where she ran. It had been nearly two decades since she’d last visited the real place that her memory was rooted in.

As she focused on the sanctuary she felt the panic and fear fade from her body, tension ebbing out of her like bitter tea poured down the drain.

She was safe. Whatever Queen Chrysalis had or hadn’t been, she was long gone. Powerless without her hive to support her. She and all the other monumental threats to peace had been solved, and any future problems could be faced with confidence. She had the support of three other alicorn princesses, the elements of harmony, the entire might of the Crystal Empire and Equestria, and there were countless ponies out there doing their best to protect and care for the world every single day.

Even the changelings were now friends, a new tiny kingdom far to the south. Much like the crystal ponies built a relationship with Equestria after who knows how long of isolation and secrecy, the new leader of the changelings, King Thorax, was leading the changeling hive of the Badlands into a new era of friendship.

Part of her was still acclimatising to the changelings being friends and not foes, but they really did have a lot in common with her crystal ponies. Maybe she should make a more pronounced effort to build relations with the reformed changelings, be proactive and direct rather than just relying on Equestria to support the fledgling nation.

They could be powerful allies, and maybe it would help her finally fully shed her fears about their previous ruler.

Cadance took several deep breaths, centering herself fully and making sure all the last little bits of tension left her body. Then she turned and lay back down. With her magic she untangled the heavy knot of bedding she had made in her panic to escape, and pulled the covers back over herself as she settled down to sleep.

Chrysalis… it was a point of some lingering anxiety to Cadance that the former Queen was still at large, but aside from occasional reports of somepony being found asleep in bed after acting strange for a few days, no one had heard hide nor hair of the changeling. Or should that be carapace nor… Cadance wondered whether the limp blue strands that hung from Chrysalis’ head were actually hair, or some part of changeling anatomy she was unfamiliar with. She made a mental note to ask Thorax next time she saw him.

Really it was almost sad what Chrysalis had been reduced to. A scavenger, a stray. No allies or friends, no one to trust, no one to rely on.

Cadance couldn’t quite sincerely find it in her heart to feel pity for the changeling who had replaced her and tried to steal her life and fiance, but objectively she could see the tragedy of the Queen’s situation.

If Chrysalis came to light and sought forgiveness, Twilight and Celestia would probably jump at the opportunity. Oh they’d be stern at first, Cadance knew that both her Aunt and her close friend had been plotting regularly, both trying to find a solution to what they saw as the problem that was Chrysalis.

Maybe their way of seeing things was right. Whatever happened, even if Chrysalis did somehow hurt her again, it wouldn’t last long. She couldn’t really do anything. Not alone, not with the threat of four princesses, the elements of harmony, and three nations all aware of her tricks and waiting to catch her.

She was just a loose thread now, a lost lamb strayed from the fold of friendship. Whatever she did, there were only two outcomes, Cadance surmised.

Either she’s found, or she isn’t.

If she’s found, whether by giving herself up or not, she’ll be rehabilitated somehow. That was the modus operandi with threats to the harmony of Equestria and her allies these days.

If she isn’t found, then what can she do? Spend the rest of her life hiding? Never speak sincerely with another living creature? Die truly alone? But no, surely eventually she would realise her predicament. No creature could be that stubborn.

So then that meant, in a matter of years, maybe even months, she would probably have to see Chrysalis again. Once she went through whatever rehabilitation process Twilight and Celestia concocted.

Cadance found that idea difficult to accept. She was all for friendship and reconciliation, but there was a part of her that revolted at this specific instance.

Though, wouldn’t it be nice if she could let go of this fear, and replace it with a new friend? Let things go, move on from the past that occasionally haunted her, and focus on the present and the future.

That was something to hope for, she thought hazily. Sleep was beginning to curl around her, sweetly slowing her thoughts and turning her train of thought to molasses.

Cadance let out a wistful sigh. Whatever the future lay, she just had to keep trying. There was nothing that love and… friendship couldn’t fix…

Cadance yawned heavily, almost totally claimed by sleep.

As she fell into a much earned slumber, the face of the Changeling Queen came into her mind’s eye, and a final conscious thought with it.

Maybe… they could even be friends…

Author's Note

Hi again! If you haven't figured it out already, I'm drawing on some secondary canon sources here. Cadance doesn't really have much in the way of a canon origin or backstory, just fragments in a little girl's chapter book of all things. Dubiously canon, but an interesting seed to start with and build on. For this fic I've taken the mlpfim comics and that particular chapter book (Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell) as canon, with some minor tweaks to make it all work, and with a lot of additional things built off those stories. I get a lot out of exploring the mlpfim stories outside of the show and thinking about how they all fit together, and it's a big point of inspiration for my writing.

On that note, another big point of inspiration for this fic was that Cadance just, really doesn't get to do much besides helping others and being the one who needs saving. She never really gets to do anything just for herself, and doesn't really have any episodes that give her proper agency. She just doesn't get to be her own character very much, she's always in service to someone else, and she ends up feeling a bit flat as a result. Which is a shame! In planning this fic I spent a lot of time thinking about how she and Chrysalis can work as foils, as well as what they each want, and what fears or anxieties or issues they carry with them, and I've grown to really love Cadance through that process, and love Chrysalis even more than I already did.

The show makes a wonderful habit of introducing characters who are foils of other characters, usually evil, and often giving them a redemption arc. Trixie, Sunset Shimmer, Lightning Dust, etc. Cadance and Chrysalis feel like they're under-explored or under-appreciated in that regard, at least, from what I've seen. I never liked the way S9 ended, but I do love taking canon as fact and working around it. I'm excited to show you what I came up with!

Thanks for reading this far! I hope to see you next chapter :3

Chapter 3: A Thorny Encounter

A scream cut through the night.

Cadance jolted awake at the noise, her mind reeling. Sitting up with a gasp, she reached to pull back her blankets so she could get up and pursue the noise. Her hooves fumbled at the air and she was stunned to find nothing there.

Puzzled and groggy from recent sleep, she blinked and struggled to get her bearings in the darkness that lay over her, flooding the space.

Where her mattress ought to be she found long wet grass, and above her wove a canopy of gnarled branches cutting her off from the distant moon. It was still full, but the light it reflected was filtered by the trees, and what meagre moonlight made it through was lost in the oppressive gloom below them, smothered by the shadows.

She lit her horn and forced back the darkness around her with an intense white light. Wincing at the sudden brightness so close to her eyes, she looked around. She found she was in a small clearing, it looked barely big enough to stand up in, and all around her was a tight knit maze of sharp brambles and tree branches that impeded her passage in every direction.

As she tried to stand she tripped over her own limbs and collapsed again. Her legs felt… strange, much thicker and longer, overwhelmingly unfamiliar. She shone the light downwards and her shock grew as she found she didn’t recognise her own body.

Her coat was the same, and she was roughly the right shape, but on examining herself it was immediately apparent that something was very wrong.

She was not normally a short pony, always standing a few inches over all but the tallest of non-alicorns, but now she was… enormous. Easily taller than Luna, maybe even taller than Celestia.

She stood again, taking care to move slowly and carefully so that she didn’t trip over herself. At her full height her ears brushed against the canopy of the small clearing, and she had to duck to make sure that her horn and mane didn’t catch in it. Looking down to examine herself, she realised her mane and tail had grown to match her new proportions and the ends were dragging on the ground.

Frozen but finally standing, her mouth hung agape as she tried and failed to process the situation she found herself in.

Another scream tore her out of the trance that was settling over her.

Fully awake now and mostly in control of her faculties, she turned towards the direction the sound had come from and squinted through the undergrowth. In the distance she could just barely make out something moving, though it was impossible to see what through the tightly packed trees.

She rushed to the edge of the clearing and tried to untangle the brush and push through it to create a path for herself, but it seemed to fight against her. Any branch she pulled away brought another with it, and none would stay put, springing back to bar her way as soon as she let go. Worst still she found herself struggling with fine control over her magic. With every movement the target of her levitation jerked further and faster than she meant it to. She couldn’t precisely separate two branches, only rip them apart with force.

Cadance snorted, frustration setting in, and resolved to abandon precision. She closed her eyes for a moment, recalling a basic combat spell taught to her by Celestia. Her eyes opened again, and with her eyebrows furrowed in determination, she took aim at the claustrophobic flora before her and fired.

Instead of the fine lance of magical energy she had expected, she was almost blown backwards by the recoil of a massive blast of bright blue fire.

She faltered again, staring dumbstruck at the gaping hole she had vaporised in the trees and the lingering bits of icy blue flame that dripped from the branches.

Shaking her head abruptly she strode forward into the path she had made. Whatever was wrong with her would have to wait, she resolved, somewhere nearby somepony needed help.

This thought was punctuated by another scream, quieter this time. It was shrill, and trailed off into what might have been sobbing.

Cadance hurried to clear the way between her and whoever was in need, blasting repeatedly into the forest ahead of her. With each spell cast she felt her control over her magic improve, until she was able to finally produce and maintain the razor thin continuous beam she had meant to. Scything it back and forth in a careful pattern she made short work of the dense trees obstructing her.

After a few minutes of work she found herself entering another natural clearing, this one larger than where she had woken up, but the low roof and clinging branches still made it feel tight and claustrophobic.

Opposite where she entered was another path of broken branches through the trees, though perhaps, she thought, calling it a tunnel was more accurate. It was much too small for a full grown pony, and for her current stature the tunnel would have been barely big enough for her to lean down and poke her head into. Many of the torn off twigs and branches had bite marks in them, and the passage was clearly made by diminutive brute force.

The sobbing was clearly audible now, interspersed with hiccups and loud, wet sniffling. It could only have come from a creature that was quite young, and from the sound of it completely terrified.

Cadance knelt carefully and peered into the hole in the underbrush. As she did so, she brushed several branches. At the sound of rustling, the sobbing stopped suddenly, and a moment later a shrill voice squeaked and called out from the darkness.

“W-who’s there? Don’t come any closer!”

To Cadance’s ear it definitely sounded like the voice of a young filly, but there was something about it that caught in her mind. It was somehow familiar...

She called back, “It’s okay, I’m here to help!” and began to carefully make her way through the underbrush. Using her magic to create a wedge shaped shield, she forced it forwards to part the branches before her, favouring a non destructive method of clearing a path now that she was so close to whoever was ahead of her.

The noise of her work was obvious, and as she made her way Cadance heard the branches several yards ahead of her begin to shake vigorously as the strange filly struggled.

The faceless voice cried out again, panic dripping from every syllable, “Come no closer! W-whoever you are I swear you’ll regret it! Leave me be!”

Cadance paused her work, wincing at the fear in the filly’s voice.

She called back in the gentlest tone she could muster, “Please, don’t be frightened. I only want to help, I’m a princess.”

The rustling ahead of her stopped, and the filly exclaimed, sounding confused, “Just stay away! I-I don’t need help! Especially not from a pony!” The last comment came out as a high pitched wail, the filly’s voice cracking as though she was fighting to hold back tears.

Cadance knit her brow, exasperated. “Look I know you’re scared and confused, we both are. I don’t know what’s going on, but just wait there a minute and we can figure it out together, okay?”

All that met her in way of response was the sound of renewed struggling.

The princess of love sighed, and pushed onwards, surging with her new power. She ignored the irrational protests of the frightened filly, and proceeded to forge her way delicately through the forest.

She scrutinised the distant murk ahead of her as she went, searching for some sign of who exactly she was trying to help. Through the shadows she could make out a small tangle of limbs thrashing wildly.

After labouring for a few more moments Cadance carefully pruned a particularly large and unwieldy branch, moving it aside with her magic to at last reveal the filly.

The seconds seemed to stretch by glacially as the two apparent strangers stared at each other.

The filly, a pegasus with a dark coat the colour of slate, reacted first. She hissed sharply and bared her blunt teeth before scrambling with all the might in her small body to escape.

Her deep green mane and tail were incredibly long, and both had been caught in countless tiny knots in the grasping brambles around her. Long wiry vines with dark red thorns wove around her, catching one of her wings. She scrabbled at it helplessly with her hooves, which had a number of gently oozing small cuts all over.

All her chaotic efforts to escape succeeded in doing was to snare herself even more in the undergrowth.

Cadance stood there, too shocked to move or react. Before her, what she hoped was a bizarre figment of her nightmare lashed about in panic, trying to escape.

As she watched, the filly bit into one of the thicker vines and tugged at it abruptly with her teeth. This caused a particularly cruel thorn jutting out of the vine to slash across her coat, opening a long thin ragged red line across her flank. The grey filly yelped and flinched as the thorn cut her, but kept up her chaotic and fruitless escape attempts, even as more tears dripped down her face to join the already sopping wet fur around her eyes and snout.

Cadance shook herself. Even if this was a dream, she couldn’t watch another living creature do this to themselves.

She stepped forward, and in the best maternal voice she could muster, said, “Please, you need to stop struggling. If you be good and stay still for me, I can help you get out.” The struggling filly flinched again at her voice and looked at her for a moment with wide eyed panic, looking more like a cornered wild animal than any pony.

As Cadance spoke she reached out with her magic to grasp the vines, intending to carefully pry them away. But the filly’s mane and fur were so tangled that she quickly realised they could only be cut free, and the knotted mess of filly and foliage was all moving so much she wasn’t sure she could do it without injuring the filly as well.

“Look, you must know you can’t do this alone. If you just stop moving, I can use my magic to free you!” Her tone was measured, but cracks in her composure let out a trickle of the frustration she was feeling.

The filly responded by glaring at Cadance, followed by another deep, feral hiss. She spat, “Is it not enough that I’m in this form, trapped like a rat? Must you spit in the wound as well? How dare you look down on me like I’m some grub who can’t survive on its own.” She bared her teeth, “I am not so low and vulgar to let myself be condescended to by my own psyche! I am not helpless, no matter what you subject me to here.”

Staring daggers at the enormous pink alicorn before her, the filly relented at last, and drooped. She half sat, half hung from the foliage, and stared up at Cadance, panting from her wasted efforts. Then she stuck out her chin, huffed, and turned away haughtily.

“Besides, none of this matters. You’re not real, you’re just a dream, I don’t even know why I’m wasting my breath talking to you.” She huffed even more.

Cadance snorted derisively at the little pony, “I am not! You’re the dream! You’re clearly some sort of messed up manifestation of stress invented by my subconscious.”

The filly tried to talk again, eyes wide and huffing and puffing indignantly, but Cadance spoke over her. “Now shut up and hold still. Even if you are a figment of my imagination, I’m sick of seeing you doing this to yourself.”

Before the filly could react, Cadance shot out her right forehoof and held her still. The alicorn fired off a series of fine blue beams in quick succession, each neatly slicing through a portion of the brambles that held the unsettling filly captive.

Right as she finished, Cadance felt a sharp pain in her leg. Looking down, she saw the filly’s jaw clamped tight into the flesh of her ankle. A shiny bead of blood was welling up where one of the little pony’s canine teeth had punctured Cadance’s skin. The feral filly was hissing again, muffled this time, and glaring up at the pony princess as though daring her to do something about it.

Cadance glared back and fought the overwhelming impulse to lash out. It would have been far too easy to kick the tiny creature away, and leave her to her fate, but instead a small, dark smile flashed across the princess’s face.

“Alright, if that’s the way you want to do things.” She said through gritted teeth. The fresh wound in her leg hurt quite a lot, but she was determined not to let it show.

Before the filly could react or let go, there was a burst of bright white light, edged with electric blue, and both ponies were gone before it faded.

*****

It must have been less than a second, but it stretched out long and thin. There was an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty and a spike of nausea, as she was suddenly in two places at once. Yet, she was also somehow in neither. She could see both perspectives simultaneously, melded together in a mind bending blur across her vision, and just behind them a deep grey emptiness that hung like fog. But then, before she could fully process the sensation, it was over.

The eerie gut wrenching experience Chrysalis recognised as teleportation quickly became a much lower priority, as she felt herself falling and saw the ground. It was very, very far below her.

Her teeth were still buried in the flesh of the beloathed pony princess, but she opened her mouth to scream again and felt the blood rush from her face. All rational thought fled as she took in her new fate.

The wind rushed past her and stripped the moisture out of her eyes and mouth as she started to plummet.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, she felt herself scooped up and held tightly against a soft fuzzy coat, and the sensation of falling evaporated.

Eyes wide as saucers, she stared down at the landscape far below. Her mouth opened and shut repeatedly in an involuntary impression of a carp. Rather than the terrain coming rapidly up to meet her, as the adrenaline in her body had prepared her for, it was drifting along below her the way a lazy river might meander.

Her hindlegs hung below her, and her long tail and mane streamed behind, but the huge pink pony… this huge and terrifying visage of Cadance, held her close to its chest. The grip was firm, and Chrysalis could feel the loud thudding heartbeat of the alicorn against her back as they floated across the sky.

Rendered helpless, Chrysalis clung tightly to the two strong forelegs holding her. She could still feel fragments of vines tangled up in her wings, and knew that if she squirmed out of the powerful alicorn’s grasp she would fall, and she wouldn’t be able to save herself when she did. She felt impotent, even more acutely than she did about being forced into the form of a pony for weeks at a time to survive.

It was better than becoming a charcoal splatter on the forest far below.

She peered up cautiously at the enormous alicorn holding her tight, and recoiled, eyes wide, as she met Cadance staring down at her. Not with rage, or impatience, but with a calm, placid smile. A wave of calm went through Chrysalis and washed away some of the fear and panic that had been flooding her mind since she was first trapped in the forest below. she fought to squash the urge to keep staring back, indefinitely, to let herself float off into those lavender eyes.

Instead, she broke off the gaze dramatically, curling her lip in feigned disgust. She quickly turned her head away with what she had meant to be the justified indignance befitting a Queen, but could be better described as impish pouting. As she did, the deposed changeling matriarch made a sulky noise like “Hmph,” which did nothing to help.

Chrysalis felt the alicorn’s chest rumble softly, and heard the beloathed pony princess begin to laugh. It started as a quiet giggle, then as Chrysalis turned back to look it rose, transforming into raucous snorting laughter. Cadance was smiling wide, but tears were forming in the corners of her eyes.

The powerless changeling turned pony glowered up at her saviour, confused and suspicious, still carrying some of the panic up with her from the forest. Cadance’s laughter gradually sputtered out, fading into giggles again, and then settling into a soft smile.

Ice forming on every word, Chrysalis spoke sharply, “Just what, is so funny?

Cadance smiled down, overpowering the sceptical look she was receiving from the little filly clutched tight in her arms. Relief was evident in her voice, though there were still cracks at the edge of her mild, breezy tone.

“I’m just so happy to be out of that claustrophobic forest, aren’t you?”

Top lip still curled in confusion, Chrysalis didn’t reply.

Cadance continued to glide serenely over the forest, and Chrysalis felt the tension ebbing out of her, and began to relax. Not completely, because she was still watching the ground moving past at least a hundred yards below her. But still, in the privacy of her mind she admitted this was better than where she had just been… struggling alone in a dark and hostile forest. It was a dream, she reasoned, no creature would ever know about this besides her, so maybe there was no shame in enjoying the moment.

With that logic in mind she lowered her head, pressing her chin against the soft fur of this strange and powerful Cadance’s coat, and found that she felt a little better for it. The huge pony was warm… and with the wind whipping past the two of them it was quite chilly up in the sky.

After several minutes Cadance broke the silence.

“Even if one of us is a dream, heck even if I’m a dream and I can’t tell, I’m still me.” She continued, “And even if I have several good reasons telling me I should hate you, I couldn’t leave you there. Not just because I’m not sure that I believe this is really a dream, but because despite what you did and how I feel about it, it just wouldn’t feel right to abandon you to suffer.”

Chrysalis stayed silent, aside from a small snort of derision. This was exactly how ponies operated, they did you favours until you felt indebted, or until they converted you to their insidious ideology… Not that it would work on her, she told herself. She wasn’t some lost lamb to be indoctrinated like that traitor Thorax… She was still a Queen, no matter what any bug or pony said. No one could take that away from her.

“You know, I think I might know where we are.” Cadance said thoughtfully, pulling Chrysalis out of her thoughts.

“What? How could you possibly-” the tiny queen started to complain, but was cut off by the much larger princess.

“Look, ahead of us. Can you see that river? It looks just like the river that went past the village I grew up in.” She glanced back and forth, scanning the horizon. “Either the Everfree has expanded way out to the West while I wasn’t paying attention, or we’re in a dream after all. If we were really here we’d be about halfway between Ponyville and Baltimare. But we should be able to see Canterlot from here, to the Northeast.”

Chrysalis followed Cadance’s gaze and looked to the Northeast horizon. All she could see as far as her eyes would take her was more forest. She scanned around, scrutinising the landscape. The beloathed pony princess was right, there was nothing but more forest, dotted here and there with small clearings, and split in half by the river they were now following.

Begrudgingly, Chrysalis piped up, “So what do you suggest we do?” She was careful to sound annoyed, she didn’t want the alicorn thinking she was content to be held like this.

“Well,” Cadance mused, “I can’t see any sign of civilisation. I think perhaps our best option is to find a comfortable spot to try to ride out the rest of this supposed dream. There’s a spot I know, if I’m right, it should be only a short distance upriver.”

A sickening cheerfulness had seeped into the alicorn’s voice… Chrysalis stuck out her tongue in disgust, and went back to watching the river rush past far below.

There was something tugging at her mind, something urgent but just out of reach. She frowned, and scrutinised the river more carefully. Cadance was right, she begrudgingly admitted to herself. The forest and river below them bore a striking similarity to those to the west of the Everfree. It wasn’t far north from her hive, in the badlands on the southern edge of Equestria, but with the dream warping everything she wouldn’t have recognised it if it hadn’t been pointed out to her.

She had only been to these woods a few times, all long before she became a queen. It was an ideal location to test the skills of adolescent changelings on the local wildlife, since there wasn’t much threatening fauna in the area. The first two or three times she’d been here had been part of her training in the finer points of manipulating prey, under guidance from her mother. The last time she’d been here was…

Ah, she thought, there it was. Chrysalis shivered as a shard of ice stuck into her heart. There, that was why she had avoided coming this way for so many years. She’d buried the memories, but her body hadn’t let go, not completely, and now they came streaming out unwelcome.

The last time she had been to this part of Equestria, well, suffice to say she had more than enough good reasons to want to forget. There was nothing else she could do. She couldn’t go back and change what had happened, and no one could go back and stop what had been done to her. Not that there was anyone left to remember it besides her.

She’d been startled awake late at night, while most of the hive was sleeping. Raised voices, shouting not far from her bedroom in the royal chambers deep in the hive. Her mother’s voice. Chrysalis had never heard her sound like that before… Queen Chrysanthe was well known for her even temper and her cool rationality. But now she sounded ready to burn the hive down with her fury. Led forward as the siren song of curiosity got the better of her, Chrysalis had crept silently to the hallway outside her mother’s chambers and listened in on the chaos within.

Chrysalis flinched suddenly and scrunched up her face. Something she fought to keep buried had taken advantage of her moment of vulnerability and leapt out to try and drag her down as she skirted close to it. The kind of memory that pierced right to her core and threatened to send her spiralling down deep. Down to somewhere she might not come back from. No, actually, she hardened herself, most certainly not. Not today, not now, this was hardly the time to dwell on that.

She let out a deep, frayed sigh. As she opened her eyes she spotted a familiar landmark up ahead. A small waterfall, flowing over a mossy cliff and crashing down gracefully into the river below. It had been years since she’d fled here in the middle of the night, after hearing something she shouldn’t… and watching unseen as her mother and grandmother tore each other almost to pieces. She’d hidden here for days, getting by on what she could connive out of the larger wildlife. Eventually her mother’s… friend… had come to find her.

That was why she avoided this place. The waterfall and this whole region eventually brought her back to this. She could bury the memories of how it happened, but she couldn’t ignore the material reality of the consequences it had had on her life. They were too useful to not take advantage of, cost be damned.

As she said that, her mind’s eye flew back and she saw herself. A moment of clarity rang out in her mind, and she realised there was no fog. No irrational, overindulgent greed, no thirst for conquest. She felt still, in control of her thoughts. It was jarring, like a home emptied out and devoid of familiar details, a liminal, empty shell. It was too strange to be a relief.

The unwelcome memory prodded at her mind again, but she was ready for it. She tensed for a moment, letting it glance off and retreat back into the depths.

Her private bubble of introspection popped and the diminutive queen felt her stomach drop as the ground rushed towards them. To her relief, Cadance landed gracefully on the riverbank near the waterfall. As soon as the princess touched down, Chrysalis kicked performatively at the princess and scrambled out of her grip. She leapt down onto the wet grass that filled the clearing beside the river.

She turned to her… rescuer. Her jaw tensed at the thought. Barely able to admit even to herself that she’d been rescued, she resolved to never admit it to the princess. Even if they were stuck here alone together forever. Chrysalis was just about to spit some biting comment at the alicorn to try and make herself feel better, but as she turned towards the princess, Cadance lit her horn. A bright blue glow spread across the riverbank.

In the magical light of Cadance’s horn, the bright red blood seeping from the gouges in her right leg gleamed and pinned Chrysalis’ gaze. The beloathed pony princess’s pink fur was marred with a crimson stain around the wound. Whatever unkind words had been growing in the changeling filly’s mouth died when she saw the damage she had inflicted.

Chrysalis’ hoof went to her mouth, and she felt the wetness around her lips and on her neck. She had been so focused on the flight and her own woes that she had forgotten. The taste of the pony princess’s blood filled her mouth and the steel tang staked itself into her mind. She felt her stomach drop again, as nausea flooded into her.

Tearing herself away, she ran over to the river and crouched by the water, frantically washing out her mouth. It took far too long to get the taste out, and by the time she was done the memory of it was seared into her mind. With it came an awful, bright hot, burning shame that clung tightly to her. She rinsed her mouth again, then did her best to wash the blood from her coat. It did not help.

When she turned back to Cadance, Chrysalis found the pony had also gone to the water’s edge, and was doing what she could to clean the wound in her ankle. The tiny perpetrator of the puncture wounds tried to appear as though she wasn’t watching, as she examined the princess through the corner of her eye while facing out towards the stream.

Chrysalis watched the pony who had saved her struggle, and sat with her red hot glowing guilt, unable to shift it, but too stubborn and proud to apologise. Cadance had managed to clean the excess blood away, and was now attempting to put pressure on the bitemarks with her other hoof to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t working, and Chrysalis felt glands in the back of her throat poise to produce a specific kind of waxy resin used for sealing wounds. But she bit her tongue, and fought back the compulsion.

The guilt stricken changeling turned away again, and busied herself with her own problems. Picking stray vines and bits of foliage from her mane, she did her best to pretend she didn’t see or care what her saviour was dealing with.

As she worked at cleaning the debris from her mane, she turned to look upstream. Ah, there, through the waterfall she could just make out a familiar cave. Her shoulders locked and her jaw set as the memories pushed against her mind again, threatening what little composure she had left. She refused to allow herself to appear any weaker than she already had in front of the pony. They were still enemies. No matter what happened here, this alicorn was still in part responsible for the betrayal she’d suffered.

The former queen’s train of thought was derailed as a badly knotted twig tangled in her mane took all her attention. Usually, when this sort of thing happened, she could either solve it with magic, shapeshifting, or by ordering a subordinate to attend to the issue for her. It should have been simple, it was just a tiny piece of wood for goodness sake. Plenty of ponies and other creatures live without magic, so if they could do it, shouldn’t she be able to too?

She caught the twig in her teeth, and used a hoof to gently tug at her mane, trying to tease it free. Instead, she pulled the hair, hurt her scalp, and got spit in her mane. A hot, stifled, burning sensation rose in her cheeks, as she fought with the not so miniscule nuisance. Nevermind that there were still at least a dozen more bits of foliage stuck just as tight as this one, all silently mocking her.

She spat out her mane and let out a sharp, pained growl. Her jaw hurt, and her lips stung from several delicate scratches. Fine! So be it. It didn’t matter. It was just another attempt to humiliate her that would evaporate soon. When she woke up, she could bury this memory with the others, and no one would ever know. She reassured herself, she would put up with these pains, because once she awoke she’d forget, and it would be like it never happened.

All she had to do was endure.

Author's Note

Howdy, Chapters 3 and 4 were originally just one chapter, but 11k words was a bit too bulky so for the sake of pacing I split them into two. I'll put the rest of my thoughts on these two chapters with Chapter 4. I think they work quite well together and set the stage for the rest of the fic quite well! I think if I just posted this fic one chapter at a time, the first chapter or two wouldn't stand up well enough on their own to hook readers, so I felt it was important to get a good chunk written to post all at once. Chapters 3 and 4 are where I feel the fic really starts to shine! Also I'm not sure if you can tell, but I like writing cold opens! There's another fic I was writing, but put on hiatus to write this fic first (because it had a much cleaner/clearer scope, which felt very achievable for my first published fic). Working on that fic taught me that I really enjoy just throwing the audience into a situation, and gradually expanding on details until the mystery resolves. Especially when there's layers to it, or even using the cold open as a fake-out. I look forward to demonstrating exactly what I mean one day when I'm able to post that fic! For now, let's just stay focused on Lovefools :3

Chapter 4: Waylaid by the Waterfall

Chrysalis lay sulking in the wet grass near the riverbank, watching the water stream past her and forcing herself to ignore the bright pulsing throng of little pains, and the myriad of distressing sensations flooding her mind. Between the lingering taste of blood, the cruel knots in her mane, and the awful sensation of a wet coat of pony fur, she felt close to snapping.

The fur on the back of her neck prickled, and out of the corner of her eye Chrysalis saw the beloathed alicorn princess watching her with an odd look that she couldn’t parse.

“What is it?” Chrysalis spat nastily, her cheeks blossoming bright pink with shame. “Go ahead. Do your worst. Nothing you could possibly do to me could be worse than what your kind has already done.”

Cadance’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes went wide with shock. “What? No no, please it’s not like that.” She hesitated before continuing. “I was just… trying to think of a way to convince you to let me help. I could clear all that up in a couple of minutes, if you’d like.”

Cadance smiled as she finished speaking, but her face was still doing something strange that Chrysalis couldn’t put together. It put her on edge, she felt as though she was being looked down upon.

Chrysalis broke away from trying to comprehend the behaviour of the pony, gaze drifting down as she did. Her eyes settled on the bite she had left in Cadance’s leg. The alicorn was still holding the wound with one hoof tightly, trying to staunch the bleeding. It had apparently slowed, but as Chrysalis watched, a droplet of blood trickled down the pony’s leg, leaving a thin red trail.

The gland in her throat awoke again, and she bit her tongue trying to suppress the impulse.

Desperate for any excuse to avoid the morass of shame and guilt that was piling up and smothering her, Chrysalis croaked, “Why did you bring us here, alicorn?”

Cadance opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off by a sudden crashing noise from deep in the woods. It was coming from this side of the riverbank, and sounded like… something or someone smashing their way through the trees.

Turning towards the sound, Chrysalis bared her teeth and crouched low, poised and ready for whatever was approaching. To her right, Cadance just peered into the forest, looking startled.

As the noise came closer flashes of golden light stabbed through the brush, unnaturally bright and tinged with odd flecks of indigo and violet. The crashing sounds resolved into crackling bursts that sounded magical to Chrysalis’ ear, and coincided with the bright flashes of light.

Cadance started to speak, but when Chrysalis turned and glared at her she cut herself off and said nothing.

Just as Chrysalis turned back towards the approaching blasts of magic tearing through the trees, an unfamiliar voice called out from the same direction. It sounded… bizarre, to the changeling queen’s ear. Whoever was out there was shrieking loudly and erratically, and it was unintelligible at first. Whatever they were saying, they were clearly furious. But then the part of her brain responsible for processing audio was able to just barely separate the voice from the sounds of magic and destruction polluting the night.

One word was being repeated, on its own or strewn into garbled sentences.

There was a pause in the sounds of magical violence, and the manic voice rang out clear, slicing through the air.

“Revenge!”

The tone sounded hysterical, completely hell-bent. A shiver ran down Chrysalis’ spine as it hit her. She glanced over at Cadance, who was backing away slowly. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were glassy and wide, unblinking. She was backed up against the edge of the river, her tail actually in the water.

Just before Chrysalis turned back to face the oncoming threat, she heard Cadance whisper under her breath, “No… It couldn’t be.”

Whoever or whatever was approaching, it was almost upon them. Chrysalis felt her heartbeat loud in her chest and throat, and her muscles began to ache, but she stayed low, ready to leap.

The seconds stretched by, as whatever it was came closer and closer. There was another blood curdling shriek, and then one last blast of gold burst apart the foliage. As the flash of magic cleared, a figure hurtled out of the trees onto the edge of the clearing.

In the turmoil, Chrysalis lost a few moments trying to comprehend the stranger that stood before her. It was clearly a pony, but it wasn’t a unicorn or even a pegasus, just an earth pony. Where had all those flares of magic come from?

That question was put to the side as Chrysalis realised she could see the trees behind the stranger through their body. A grey blue glow emanated from them, except for their eyes, which shone bright fiery red, but stared vaguely and had an empty quality to them. All the colour in their coat, mane and tail was obscured, faded to grey like an old moving picture. She, for Chrysalis realised at this point the stranger was a mare, was nearly completely translucent.

The only thing that she couldn’t see through was the necklace the figure wore, from which hung a strange black glass spike, spiralled, and at least as long as a unicorn’s horn. When the light hit it, the long obsidian stake shone deep purple, edged in burnt orange.

Before she could get a grip on what she was seeing, the figure stepped towards Cadance aggressively. It let out another furious howl, then pointed one hoof at the alicorn princess in accusation.

“You! I finally found you, you putrid brat!” The stranger screamed. “You did this to me!”

Cadance shrunk under the intensity of the screech, and nearly tripped into the river as she went to step back further and her hoof found only running water. Her mouth still hung open, and Chrysalis just barely heard her whisper “No…”

“Liar!” The spectre immediately shrieked back. The noise was so loud and sudden that Chrysalis recoiled instinctively, and Cadance nearly fell over again.

“It was you…” The stranger continued, slipping into a low tone that dripped hatred. “You killed me.”

The alicorn princess flinched at those last few words as though she had been struck, and somehow found room to sink even lower into the grass, staring up at the shrieking apparition. She choked out a reply, “I- I didn’t mean to…”

“Disgusting foal.” The phantasm continued in a mocking, singsong tone. “Living your perfect pony princess life with your happy family and your crystal castle. But none of them know what you really are, do they?”

Tears started to trickle down Cadance’s face, and she tried to take another fearful step back, but as she shifted her weight the mud at the edge of the riverbank gave way, and both her back legs slipped into the river with a splash. The spectre stepped forwards again, nearly close enough to touch Cadance.

It was strange how small the princess seemed. Even in that enormous alicorn body, crouched low in terror and clinging to the shore, she seemed so fragile. In her panic, her back legs kicked and scrabbled at the riverbank, trying to stop herself falling in, but there was nowhere for her to go unless she fought back.

The water whipped around her and threatened to drag her in, and she spoke so quietly that Chrysalis almost missed it. “Please, I had to… You were going to…”

Before she could finish explaining the spirit cut her off. “Oh miss high and mighty! Judge, jury and executioner over here. You’re just as bad as I am missy. Maybe even worse. Sure I let a few worthless peasants starve, but I was just careless. You wanted me to die. Don’t deny it.”

The black crystal spiral hanging from her neck started to glow, and began to hover, tip pointed towards Cadance. The stranger continued, “An eye for an eye, little one. If I deserved to die for what I did, then it’s only right you die with me.”

With the last syllable, a ray of golden light flew out of the horn-like crystal with a sharp static buzz, and struck Cadance in the forehead. She flinched, then froze, as the golden beam spread out to encompass her whole body.

The cacophonous spectre cackled hysterically as she caught Cadance in the ethereal beam. At first Chrysalis couldn’t understand what the unfamiliar spell was doing, but as she watched, a stream of pink energy slowly began to flow out of the alicorn’s mouth and back into the amulet. Cadance was frozen, eyes wide and staring at nothing, transfixed under the magical assault. Her coat began to fade to grey and lost its lustre, and she grimaced in pain. The light in her eyes started to dull, and her body jerked back into the river slightly, as her grip on the riverbank began to fail.

Seeing the beloathed pony princess moments away from being swept away by the river, Chrysalis felt a violent primal surge fill her body. Before she could even think, she reacted. Using every inch of muscle in her body to propel herself forward, she leapt towards the distracted phantasm.

As she sailed through the air, a split second sliver of panic stabbed through her, weren’t ghosts usually intangible? What if she passed right through and she couldn’t do anything, and by the time she landed Cadance was gone? Swept away, or drained dead?

Before uncertainty could sabotage her, she felt her hooves meet the solid form of the earth pony spectre. She clung tight, and an instant later her head lunged forward. Her bared teeth hit home, and with all the might she could muster, the little grey filly bit hard into the neck of the horrid, dead pony. Even trapped in this pathetic form, she knew where to bite a pony to inflict the most brutal and conclusive injury. She also knew that she only had one chance. If this didn’t work, she didn’t have any other option to stop this monster hurting Cadance. It had to work.

As her teeth sunk into the translucent flesh of the ghoul, she felt something squirt and spray out of the wound. An acrid, foul taste filled her mouth, and her nose was filled with the scent of something long dead. She fought back the urge to be sick, and used all the power contained in this diminutive form to rip away the chunk of flesh between her teeth. There was a sickening squelch as the meat tore away, with thick grey glowing blood gushing after it.

Chrysalis let go and fell off the stranger as she tore away the lump of flesh, spitting it out into the grass. Her ears rang and her blood was pumping so hard and fast she felt like she was going to pop. As the ringing faded it was replaced by guttural screams of pain and anger coming from the monstrosity she had just savaged.

The magical aura that had been leeching energy from Cadance had faded, and the ghost was suddenly directing all its attention at Chrysalis. Screaming bloody murder, it advanced on her. The effort to attack it had been so great, all the changeling filly could do was watch and try not to choke on the ichor filling her mouth. Just as it raised a hoof to strike her, the shade staggered.

Where Chrysalis had wounded it the spectre’s form began to waver. The uncertainty of form quickly spread, and all over the creature’s body large patches began to fade away into nothing. It fell to the ground, collapsing on legs that were rapidly disappearing.

“No!!!” The stranger bellowed, and swiped a hoof hard at the pegasus filly panting and coughing on the grass in front of it. Chrysalis shut her eyes right before it struck her, then opened them wide again as she felt only a wave of cold pass through her body. The ghost shrieked and flailed wildly at the changeling queen, but every blow passed right through her harmlessly, and every moment the spectre dissolved more. In no time at all she was gone completely, save for her amulet, which dropped into the wet grass.

Chrysalis forced herself to stand, and staggered over to the amulet. It was jagged and rough, clearly assembled by an amateur. But on closer inspection she realised that there was a disconnect, this wasn’t all the work of the same single craftspony. The metalwork was rushed and shoddy, but it was just wrapped around the crystal, which was shockingly detailed. It was an intricate and eerily realistic black crystal carving of a unicorn’s horn, one that was unusually long and sharp.

Chrysalis spat out a mouthful of ectoplasm, and watched it evaporate on the grass, then stepped forward and put all her weight into stamping on the amulet, directly in the middle of the horn. It snapped easily, breaking into two halves. On the off chance that this wasn’t a dream, the changeling queen felt safer destroying the unnerving artefact. If anyone was going to magically manipulate emotions and control ponies, it should be her, and she didn’t need a magic trinket to help her.

Satisfied, she turned to check on Cadance. The beloathed pony princess was frantically pulling herself back onto the riverbank, soaking wet but physically unharmed. The colour had returned to her coat, and her eyes gleamed with concern as she clambered to her hooves and rushed over to the changeling filly.

Tears were still streaming down her face as she arrived at Chrysalis’ side and asked, “Did she hurt you? Are you okay? I’m so sorry i-”

Chrysalis cut her off with a hiss, then whispered, “How could you let that wretched thing do that to you.”

“W-what? I-” Cadance stammered.

Cutting her off again, Chrysalis’ voice was pure ice as she said, “You’re an alicorn, one of the most powerful creatures in all of Equestria, if not the world! But you acted like a foal and let that foul thing get the better of you without even trying to resist!” As she went on the ice broke away, and tears spilled down her face to match the princess.

Chrysalis’ voice cracked as she said, “You were going to let her kill you!”

The accusation hung in the air, and Cadance’s mouth opened and closed several times before she could say anything. When she finally did, It came out as a whisper, just shy of a breath.

“You’re right.”

Cadance sniffed and wiped some tears out of her eyes before she went on. “I know, I’m sorry, I just… What she was saying, some of it was true…”

“I did kill her.”

Chrysalis’ jaw dropped, and the alicorn continued, “Look, it was a long time ago. Her name was Prismia, and she was hurting people, back in the village I grew up in. That necklace she had, she was using it to control the minds of all the townsfolk, including my parents. She just showed up one day demanding things, and when she didn’t get what she wanted she’d blast somepony with that crystal horn and they’d do whatever she told them.”

“She had everypony in my village under her spell within a day. My parents…” Cadance paused, looking down. “Her magic didn’t work on me, I still don’t know why. I tried to tell her to stop, but I was just a filly, she laughed at me.”

“The villagers, she worked everypony to the bone for days, not letting them eat or rest. I tried feeding them myself but it was like they couldn’t see me.” She shivered. “When she wasn’t ordering them about, everypony just stood there, waiting, like they were puppets.”

“Ponies started to collapse, and when they did she’d just order someone to drag them off so they were out of the way. All while she was waited on by hoof, and had them carry her about on a throne. It was insane.”

“My parents, they were… old, and not well. At first they were lucky, she left them mostly alone until she’d burnt through all the healthier ponies in the village. But after a few days they…” Cadance looked up again and stared directly into Chrysalis’ eyes. “I begged and pleaded with her to stop, to at least look after them. She made them lock me in our house, but I crawled up the chimney and flew back.”

She spat out a wry, hollow laugh. “I should have broken a window, or attacked her earlier. When I made it back to the town square, she was shouting something nasty, and two ponies were dragging off my parents. I was too late to save them. I remember feeling like I’d been set on fire. When I saw them, crumpled and empty, being dragged through the mud, something in me broke. Next thing I knew I had flown at her, and I was kicking and screaming and trying as hard as I could to hurt her.”

Cadance went quiet again, whispering, “In the struggle she fell over… she hit her head on the cobblestones, and because I was on top of her the extra weight, it… By the time I realised what had happened it was too late.”

“Then the spell ended and they all saw me. Standing over her body. Prismia had been old, like my parents. Fragile. She bled so much so quickly.” Cadance shut her eyes tight and went tense. “It got on my hooves, and they were all staring at me with this look. I flew away before anypony could say anything.”

“I was the only pegasus in the village, so I knew if I took off they’d never find me, so I came here.” She turned and gestured towards the waterfall. “I used to hide here a lot. I was… out of place in that village. When something went wrong and I needed to be alone this was where I went. It was my secret. But that was the last time, I haven’t been back since.”

“I stayed in that cave for days, I’m not actually sure how long I hid there, I slept for most of it. I drank from the river, and when I got hungry I curled up tight and tried not to think about it. Until she found me…” Cadance trailed off, looking lost in thought.

Chrysalis sat up, and with a wary look asked, “Who?”

The alicorn princess met the changeling queen’s gaze again, and smiled wearily at her. “Celestia. The last thing I remember from this cave was being woken by the sound of somepony moving through the trees, and seeing a bright white light outside. I was too weak to do anything except lie there, and I fell unconscious again before she found me. The next thing I remember was waking up in Canterlot. The sun was shining through a huge window, and I was in the biggest bed you could ever imagine. At first I thought I was on a cloud, everything was white and blue, and bathed in golden light.”

“Apparently somehow word had gotten out, and Celestia had come herself to investigate. The villagers told her what happened, what I had done… and she came to find me.”

Cadance smiled brighter as she went on, “Not long after I woke up, she came to check on me. I tried to apologise, but she hushed me and hugged me tight. I was only eight years old. She told me to forgive myself, that what had happened was a terrible accident, and that I’d done the only thing I could have. It’s so hard not to go back to it, to think about what I could have done differently. But I know it isn’t fair to myself to do that. I just try to remind myself that she was right, I did the best I could.” A choked laugh escaped her lips, and she slumped slightly. Chrysalis could see she was shaking.

“This dream… It’s like it’s trying to dig all that back up and hurt me. I worked so hard to forgive myself for what happened, I hadn’t thought about it in years. But now it all feels fresh, like it happened yesterday.” The alicorn looked ready to collapse again.

Chrysalis huffed and pulled herself to her hooves. Straining to stand at her full possible height, she glared at the alicorn princess and in a commanding voice said, “You did nothing wrong. This, Prismia, this sorceress. She was an idiot, a selfish thoughtless glutton. Working ponies to death for her own fleeting pleasure. For once I agree with Celestia…” Chrysalis hissed as she said the name of her ancient enemy.

Emphasising each word she went on, “You did nothing wrong. Do not forget it.”

“You are nothing like that waste of magic Prismia. If I find out one day that some impulsive idiot with a trinket, or a worthless ghost in a dream managed to- to.” Chrysalis bared her teeth and hissed, and her cheeks flushed brightly. In a low voice dripping menace she said “If anyone hurts you before I get my revenge, I will kill them.”

In the most earnest and commanding voice that she could muster, Chrysalis demanded, “Promise me right now that you will not let some creature take advantage of you like that again.”

The alicorn reeled and said nothing. Chrysalis felt the ichor dripping from her body, and the debris still caught in her mane, and almost faltered as she realised how she must look. A vicious, feral creature, ranting aggressively at a graceful princess.

Cadance recovered from the intensity shone directly at her, and stammered, “Look, I don’t need you to-”

“Promise me.” Chrysalis snapped, deathly serious.

After a long pause, Cadance replied, matching Chrysalis’ sincerity with her own.

“I promise.”

Chrysalis stared deep into the lavender eyes of the beloathed alicorn princess, searching for any trace of insincerity.

Once she was satisfied she spoke again, forcing herself to sound bright, “Well then. Come princess, you spoke of finding somewhere to wait out the rest of this dream. Let’s clean off this muck and then…” She faltered, and squirmed in discomfort as she finished her sentence. “I would… appreciate your assistance in clearing this mess from my mane.”

Chrysalis turned away and trotted haughtily over to the river’s edge before she let Cadance reply, and for the second time that night hastily washed blood out of her mouth and coat. She didn’t look up, but she heard the alicorn sigh, then follow suit, washing off the mud she’d picked up when struggling at the riverbank.

They both spent the next few minutes in silence, save for the sounds of the waterfall and river.

Chrysalis was just about done when she heard the alicorn finish up and start trotting slowly over to the cave. The changeling filly rushed to finish cleaning the last of the blood away, then raced after Cadance, fueled by the petty need to enter the cave first.

She made it into the mouth of the cave just ahead of the princess, nearly slipping into the river on the mossy rocks that led into the small pocket behind the waterfall.

The interior was just as she remembered. Quite shallow, but just big enough for two or three ponies to shelter in. It was perpetually damp, and a lush green carpet of moss covered the floor and most of the walls of the space. It was nicer than she remembered, in a dreamy idealised way.

Chrysalis found a soft patch of deep green moss and got comfortable, sitting with her legs tucked up beneath her for warmth. The cave may have been very soft, but it was also quite cold, definitely not as cozy as it looked.

She flinched as Cadance stepped over her and settled down behind her. Neither pony said anything, and after a short pause, Chrysalis felt the odd sensation of her hair being levitated by the alicorn’s magic. It felt a little like being underwater, and the thought made her shiver.

Chrysalis inched closer to the princess. The damp, cold air was quickly stealing the heat out of her currently tiny body. She squished up as close as she could, forgoing subtlety as her teeth started to chatter. Cadance didn’t react, and continued to quietly comb the knots and foliage out of her mane.

Tucked neatly up against the alicorn’s side, the wound Chrysalis had left in the leg of the beloathed pony princess’s leg was impossible to ignore. Where she sat, she realised it was close enough for her to reach out and touch. Once again, her instincts pressured her to do something about it. She sat, frozen and staring at the wound for nearly a minute before she relented. So be it, she thought.

The alicorn princess had just started work on brushing her tail, when she suddenly leaned forward and spat a tiny glob of bright green slime directly onto the wound. Cadence jumped as she did, and accidentally tugged at her tail.

Chrysalis was about to snap something nasty at the princess, but before she could Cadance squawked in fright, and said, “Ow! What in Celestia’s name are you doing! Get that off me!”

The tiny changeling hissed, “Hush alicorn, I am doing this for your benefit. I couldn’t stand to owe you anything, so I’m returning the favour. This is a kind of resin we changelings can produce. Once dried, it will protect the wound and keep it clean. Don’t make me regret this.”

She was careful to stay facing away from the beloathed pony princess while she spoke. She’d only ever done this for herself, or had some subordinate do it for her. So by actually helping another creature in this way for once, she felt acutely vulnerable. But she was not about to let Cadance see her insecurity.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she leant forward with her tongue stuck out and tentatively began to massage the green resin into and around the wound. She hurried, as the waxy substance was already starting to harden. She pressed it firmly against the skin, forming a roughly round seal. Once dried it would be just as flexible as the skin it stuck to, and would stay on tight, protecting the wound from being reopened and allowing the blood to finally clot, and additionally keeping out anything that could lead to an infection. There was even a subtle anaesthetic quality to the substance, Chrysalis recalled, feeling her tongue start to numb slightly as she thoroughly kneaded the waxy resin over the wound.

Once she was done, she realised she couldn’t feel her tail being pulled to and fro by the alicorn. She spun round, intending to chide the princess for stopping. But as she turned, she saw Cadance watching her with another strange look.

Her eyes were bright, almost twinkling in the darkness, but she wasn’t smiling. Her mouth was open slightly, and she was silent, just staring at Chrysalis, who squirmed under the scrutiny.

The changeling felt her blush return, and looked away again. Then she snapped, “What is it? Stop looking at me like that, you pink cretin.”

Cadance blinked, then leant back and laughed. It was such a sweet, bubbly noise, like the tinkling of a wind chime, or the babble of a brook. Chrysalis felt the red in her cheeks spread as the beautiful sound lit up the dank gloom of the cavern.

She was about to say something targeted and very unkind, to try and cover up the confusing mixture of feelings swelling in her as the beautiful alicorn laughed, seemingly at her. But the princess of love spoke up before she could.

Still giggling, Cadance said, “Sorry, sorry. I just never would have thought you could do something like that. I thought you were trying to wrap me up in a cocoon… Wait, how can you do that? Aren’t you stuck as a pony, have you not tried to change until now?”

“Of course I have!” Chrysalis snapped indignantly. “Do you think I want to be stuck like this? If I could have been in my own beautiful body this whole time, I’d have changed shape in an instant! I tried to as soon as I woke up, but something about this place is interfering with my magic. The one silver lining is that the form of this pathetic little pony is only skin deep…”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think I could get used to seeing you like this.” Cadance teased, giggling again, seemingly unaffected by the changeling queen’s acerbic attitude.

Ignoring Chrysalis’ dramatic scowl, Cadance sighed and went on, “This dream is so peculiar. I’ve had nightmares like this before, but not for years. Usually it’s pretty straightforward, and I just get put through it all again. But this time you’re stuck in my role, and I’m… I think I’m supposed to fill the role of Celestia? I don’t know how she can stand being this big! I’m having a hard time just walking without tripping on my mane.”

Chrysalis scoffed, then said, “Perhaps. Though you’re hardly the only creature to ever shelter here.”

The alicorn looked surprised, then asked, “Wait, are you saying you’ve been here before?”

Internally Chrysalis cursed herself for giving something like that away, hissing under her breath before continuing. “Once, long ago. I had good reason to need… space… from my family.” She fought with herself over how much to tell, then said, “There was an incident, something that made me what I am today…” Trailing off, she curled up tighter around herself.

“It’s no concern of yours.”

Cadance gave her a gentle smile, “I guess at the end of the day, everyone has a story like this. At least we’re not alone.”

Chrysalis felt her composure melting. It was too cruel. She was so close to the beloathed pony princess, pressed together in this little private sanctuary for warmth. If she wanted, she could in a moment lean her face against the princess’ chest, and bury her snout in Cadance’s warm fur. The urge to do so was weighing heavily on her, and she set her jaw. She refused to fall victim, to let herself be seduced by the princess of love’s beauty and kindness. The ponies truly were insidious, she thought, as soon as you gave them an inch they would try to take a mile. In spite of herself, she leaned closer to Cadance.

“You know, I think if you’d shown up in your usual body, we probably would have just ended up fighting.” Cadance’s voice rang with sincerity. “Maybe Prismia would even have caught us in the middle of it, and hurt both of us.”

The alicorn smiled radiantly at the changeling again, and Chrysalis felt the last foundation of resistance in her barely holding out. In the face of that blazing, brilliant, beautiful pink sun beaming down on her, how much longer could she hold herself together? When Cadance smiled at her, all her pain and troubles felt so, so far away. She bit her tongue to break the spell, and sharply looked away.

Just as she did, Cadance spoke again, “Thank you for saving me from her, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there to help.” To Chrysalis, the alicorn’s voice seemed to ring through straight to her heart.

Chrysalis knew she was succumbing to the sweet assault of the beloathed pony princess. It would be so easy to just give in… Maybe she could just apologise. The ponies were so eager to forgive, it would be so simple to turn herself in and let them lead her where they wanted… Then surely she could spend more time like this, alone with the princess.

She bit her tongue again, hard this time. The jolt of pain cut through the fluffy pink fog that had descended across her mind. No. This was what they did. Wormed into your brain and destroyed your pride, took away your independence. Fed you sweet nothings and kindness and all manner of delights until they had you dancing to their tune.

Chrysalis pushed away from the pony and stood up. Saying nothing, she stepped away from the princess, and sat down again in the moss at the opposite side of the cave.

In a moment of weakness, she glanced up at the beloathed pony princess, and their eyes locked. Cadance had another look on her face that Chrysalis wasn’t sure how to interpret, but it might have been sadness, or confusion. She knew her own face was showing the pain she felt, and she didn’t have the energy left to stop it. As she stared into the alicorn’s eyes, she felt something deep inside her ache.

At last Chrysalis turned away for good. She felt ashamed at how much of herself she’d given away, and how close she’d come to falling for the pony’s temptation, but all she could do was close herself up again and wait out the rest of this dream in silence. She sighed, and curled tightly around herself, trying not to let it show when she shivered.

After what felt like an eternity, the energy she’d spent finally caught up with her, and she sank into the grey abyss of sleep.

*****

Chrysalis woke to the warmth of the sun on her face, shining through the gap in her curtains. Well, she corrected herself, not her curtains.

She enjoyed the warm sensation for a few minutes, and stretched out lazily in bed, eyes still shut. Her wings got in the way, and her tail had gotten itself wrapped around her leg somehow during the night.

The changeling’s eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright. Pulling back the blankets, she groaned in revulsion as she saw her body clearly.

Somehow she had changed shape in her sleep, to match the form she had been trapped in in that awful nightmare. She groaned as the memories of her dream flooded in.

Green fire flickered across her body, and where the dark grey filly had been was now her natural form. An enormous, fully fledged changeling queen. Seeing her own body returned to her she let out the breath she’d been holding and collapsed back into the bed.

These dreams had to stop, she had had enough of her own mind sabotaging her. The ponies said a lot of things, and offered the world, but everything they gave came with the caveat of supplicating yourself to them, and doing things as they demanded. That might be good enough for that pathetic pony pet Discord, and the traitor Thorax, but she would never bow to a pony.

Pride rushed in and forced any trace of uncertainty out. Yes. She didn’t yet know how, but it was only a matter of time. She’d get her revenge, she’d taste the satisfaction of ruling Equestria and bending the ponies to her will. Then she could do whatever she pleased with that beloathed princess of love…

A blush spread across her features and her eyes went wide as she realised what she’d just told herself.

She shook her head, dismissing the thought. That was the dream’s influence. She felt nothing for the princess of the Crystal Empire except the same loathing she felt for all ponies. Yes, definitely. It was just all this time she’d been forced to spend around ponies, it was affecting her.

A moment later, she huffed in resignation, and returned to the form of the mint green earth pony. For now, she needed to focus on survival. Revenge could wait.

Author's Note

Howdy! That's the intro chapters done! I'm glad that I held back and build up a real body to this fic before I tried to post anything. I've been able to develop a workflow and good habits that I'll be able to stick to. I'm really excited about the future of this fic and my other eventual contributions to this site! My Little Pony has been deeply important to me for nearly half of my life, and led to a lot of growth and inspiration. I'm glad to put something out into the world that I can be proud of. I really hope it resonates with you!

Not to toot my own horn, but Chapter 3 and 4 really highlight one of the best parts of writing fics. I get to make things that I can come back to later and get excited about! Giving this the final proofread before uploading it to fimfic barely felt like work. It's been a few weeks since I read through these chapters, and months since I'd read Chapter 1. There was a feeling of "omg, did I really write this?"

Anyway! Prismia and the black crystal horn are two specific pieces of mlpfim extended (optional or perhaps dubious) canon, each from a very different source. 10 points to whoever can pick where the horn comes from :P

I think I mentioned earlier, but I'm aiming to post 1 chapter a month, and for whatever it's worth each chapter will be around 5k words. I can't promise I'll keep to my planned update schedule, as my life is very hectic, and there's a few things that tend to disrupt plans that I make. But I'm optimistic! Whatever the case, I will finish this fic! It's going to be a fun ride, and one day we'll have something complete and pretty to look back on.

These notes are a little stream of consciousness, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments, feedback is welcomed <3

Thank you for your time! ^w^

Chapter 5: Out of Dust and Darkness

This can’t be real, Cadance thought. Her heartbeat thudded in her chest and her mind raced alongside it as she strove to piece together a logical explanation for what she had been confronted by when she woke.

She was sitting up in the sunbed in her study where she’d slept, and the inside of her cheek stung where she’d just bitten it. The spark of pain hadn’t jolted her awake out of another dream like she’d hoped, and her bed, desk, and all the other various furnishings of her private study were exactly as she’d left them. Not least of all, her body was its usual shape again.

All the evidence told her that she was awake, and that everything was as it should be. That was, almost everything. One small detail, one tiny little thing, hung over her head and threatened to smash to bits her trust in the reality that her senses presented her.

It certainly didn’t feel like a dream. She felt heavy and weak, exhausted, like she’d barely slept. Though, she considered, that was likely because she had barely slept. Four hours disturbed by nightmares was not enough to run a kingdom on, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to crawl back into bed.

Cadance fought back the anxiety rising in her and took a deep breath. She turned her left wrist slowly in the sunlight that shone through her window, curtains hastily pulled open as soon as she’d awoken and found that lingering fragment of her nightmare.

The emerald green resin glittered in the clarifying light of the sun. It was partially transparent, and particles suspended throughout caught the sunlight as she turned her wrist to and fro. The odd, glimmering substance was surprisingly beautiful. Despite her panic, part of her couldn’t help but be fascinated. So strange that something like this could come from someone like that.

Cadance shook off the stray thought, then continued examining the organic bandage in the early morning light. It was pressed firmly against her skin, and the fibres of her coat were immutably caught in the flexible waxy substance. Somehow it didn’t tug at her fur at all when she moved and twisted her wrist, but it seemed like there was no way to remove it without pulling the fur away with it. It fitted snug against her skin, and moved with her body so perfectly she wondered if it had some subtle magical properties. She could easily see herself forgetting it was there. At least, if not for the fact that it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

In the bright morning light she could see through the translucent green resin. Beneath it lay the wound she had received in the dream, clear as crystal. But that made even less sense, how could a dream leave a wound? She prodded at it cautiously with her other hoof and winced as she was rewarded with a spark of pain, further confirming her fears.

It was just like she remembered, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. Everything told her it was real. Denial would mean denying her own senses, questioning her daily experience of reality. But there was nothing else in her life that gave her pause like this, no other reason not to trust what she saw and felt. What could she do? The only way to get more information was to show it to somepony else.

How could she ever explain what this was and where it had come from? Oh you know that evil insectoid matriarch that was deposed several months ago, Queen Chrysalis? Well she visited me in a dream and bit me, then she saved me from the zombie-ghost of this sorceress I killed when I was eight years old who was back for revenge. Then she spat this magical green goop on the bite wound she gave me and apologised. Cadance shuddered for a moment at the idea, the best case scenario was that anypony she told thought she was joking…

But if it was real, then that left her with an uncomfortable question. How much more of that dream had really happened? For that matter, was it even a dream? Cadance was certain that she’d slept, but how could you bring a wound back into the waking world from a dream? It didn’t make any sense.

As if to punctuate that last thought, a string of birdsong punctured the silence. Her head throbbed as a thorny headache grew behind her eyes.

The Princess of the Crystal Empire knew she ought to go back to sleep, to try and recover some semblance of function so that she wouldn’t be totally useless for the rest of the day. There was still time to steal a couple more hours before anypony wondered where she was, but how could she relax with this hanging over her head?

As the fresh, sparkling daylight bore down on her, Cadance leaned forward and hugged herself. She hung there, almost perfectly still, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply.

Her eyes shot open and she leapt to her hooves as a dark, paranoid possibility struck her. Standing on the bed, she hastily pushed the edge of the curtain aside to check the latch on the window. The heavy brass was where it should be, and the window was shut tight, seemingly undisturbed. Unsteadily, she climbed down off the bed and dashed around the room, checking the other windows, and finally the door. But nothing had been disturbed. The door was still locked, and unless Moonbreeze was secretly a changeling in disguise or somepony had somehow stolen her key, there was no way anyone could have snuck in and bitten Cadance in her sleep. At least, not without powerful magic…

Shaken, Cadance tried to dismiss the thought that her friend might have preyed upon her while she slept. All those old stories about bat-ponies drinking blood… anypony with any sense knew they were nonsense. Besides, Moonbreeze was her friend. If Cadance paused and thought rationally she knew there was no way Moonbreeze would hurt her. What would be the point?

Just in case, Cadance thought, maybe she should ask Twilight for a spell to set an alarm on her study while she slept. Something to wake her if anyone came into the room who shouldn’t be there. She couldn’t quite rule out that someone or something might be teleporting in, or otherwise entering magically, as much as it seemed like a stretch. After everything she’d been through it was hard to completely dismiss any possibility.

Otherwise, the obvious path forward was to seek out Princess Luna. The sleeping mind and the world of dreams were her domain, some extension of her connection to the moon. If she didn’t have an explanation for what happened, or some idea of how to find out, then likely nopony would.

But a deep and private part of Cadance bristled rebelliously at the idea of asking one of her aunts for help. Especially if it involved Chrysalis. Every time the changeling queen had been an issue Cadance had been forced to the sidelines to rely on somepony else to save her.

The princess of love often felt she was the odd one out among the princesses of Equestria. They all seemed so confident and capable when it came to their destinies, even Twilight. As the former foalsitter of the new Princess of Friendship, Cadance had been relieved to no longer be the youngest and least experienced alicorn. She’d even hoped to give some advice. But Twilight had excelled, regularly going above and beyond to save Equestria from all manner of threat, magical or otherwise. Cadance on the other hoof, mostly just struggled not to fall too far behind.

As the warm sunlight prickled on the back of her neck, dread pooled in Cadance’s throat. It had been hard enough growing up nearly blinded by the searing example set by Celestia. Then Luna had returned, and not long after that, the little purple filly Cadance used to help with her maths homework was racing ahead and leaving her in the dust. How could she ever hope to compete? The others were always so in control, especially Twilight. Cadance couldn’t even save herself most of the time, let alone the kingdom that depended on her. It was hard enough to just keep it functioning.

The swirling murky bubble of gloom and insecurity engulfing Cadance was popped by a light knock on the door. She jolted upright, mouth agape, and blinked in surprise at the source of the noise.

She sat there staring for several seconds, her weary mind trying to piece together who it could be, and just what she was supposed to do about it. But before she could finish, the lock clicked and the blue quartz door opened just a crack.

Cadance caught a glimpse of a puffy, powder blue mane like a raincloud, and a pastel purple snout at the gap in the door, which spoke before she could react.

The pony on the other side of the door hissed softly, “Cadance? I saw light under the door, what are you doing up this early? Don’t you have like, a hundred meetings today?”

As her brain caught up with her eyes, the shock that had struck the startled alicorn began to fade away. It was just Moonbreeze.

Trying to force herself to sound relaxed, Cadance called back, “I’m okay! I was just, uh… something woke me up, I was just deciding whether to go back to sleep or not.”

“Alright, I’m about to clock out, you need anything before I go?” As the bat-pony’s casual tone rang out, the door opened further and Cadance scrambled to hide the bright green seal under the blankets.

Ice ran down her spine as Cadance realised she’d been a moment too late, and Moonbreeze’s brow furrowed at her as she poked her head around the door.

“You sure you’re okay Cadance?” Moonbreeze said, and Cadance felt the concern in her friend’s bright pink eyes pin her down as the bat-pony peered at her across the room.

“I, uhh, well-” Cadance stammered and went silent for an uncomfortable moment as she tried to decide what to do.

The need to confide won out, and the pink pony princess tried again. “Well, to be honest, no, not really.”

As she said it, Cadance gingerly beckoned Moonbreeze into the room, and the bat-pony mare stepped forward, closing the door behind her.

“Promise me you won’t tell anypony else, and you won’t freak out?” Cadance implored her friend.

“Of course, what’s going on that’s got you so worked up?” replied Moonbreeze, the concern on her face fading, replaced by a curious look.

Cadance cautiously pulled her hoof out from under the covers, then turned to sit on the edge of the bed, holding it up so that the green resin was clearly visible.

Moonbreeze’s face clouded over, clearly puzzled, and she stepped close to examine the green blob and said, “Okay, cool… Help me out here, what am I looking at…?”

“This is going to sound crazy but if I’m going to tell you all this I really, really need you to believe me.” Cadance felt her voice crack as she spoke, gripping her composure so tight it creaked.

Moonbreeze nodded intently, and Cadance stumbled onwards, explaining everything she’d been through last night in as much detail as she could. The words gushed out of her. If she stopped she wasn’t sure she’d be able to work up the courage again to talk honestly, even to somepony she trusted.

Cadance eventually ran out of steam, and trailed off weakly with a final description of how she’d been fretting when Moonbreeze had found her. Finished, she watched her friend keenly, waiting for a reaction.

After a moment that seemed to stretch agonisingly for Cadance, Moonbreeze reached out a hoof and firmly prodded the green resin. Cadance flinched, pulling back her hoof at the pain.

“Ow! Hey, be gentle!” Cadance yelped.

“Sorry, just checking.” The bat-pony replied. “Well hey I mean, looks pretty real to me. Whatever happened you’re not losing your marbles,” Moonbreeze mused.

“Silver linings I guess…” Cadance rubbed at her hoof, giving Moonbreeze a mildly annoyed look.

“Thank you though, for listening.” Cadance said, brightening.

“Don’t mention it.” The bat pony mare smiled genially. “So when are you gonna talk to Luna?”

Cadance froze. Unsteady, she replied, “O-oh, well, you don’t really think that’s necessary do you? It was just a weird dream… nothing to worry the other princesses about. I’m sure this thing will drop off on its own in a week or two.”

Moonbreeze met the hunted look the alicorn princess gave her without hesitation, responding in an understanding, but firm tone. “Come on Cadance, I know how you feel about them, but this could be serious. You could be in danger. What if you have another dream like that one and no one’s there to help when some monster comes crawling out to get you?”

Cadance turned away. “Look, it was just one dream. It’s hardly a pattern. I’ll talk to Luna if it happens again. For all we know it was just… some freak magical occurrence. You hear about all sorts of things like that happening, like uhh…” Cadance trailed off, unable to think of any similar examples. “Anyway I’m sure she’s busy! I don’t want to drag her all the way out here from Canterlot over something small.”

“Fine, just promise me you will actually ask her for help if you have any more even slightly weird dreams. Just in case.”

Cadance felt the weight of her friend’s concern crushing her, and resisting the desire to hide behind some excuse and pretend to be fine, she relented.

“Alright… I promise.” She said, eyes shut tight, unable to directly bear the white hot, sincere concern of the mare sitting opposite her. “Any more weird dreams and I’ll reach out.”

Before she could open her eyes she felt herself caught in a tight hug. Her face was full of fluffy blue mane, and the bat-pony’s long dextrous wings wrapped around both of them.

“Thanks. Don’t know what I’d do if some creep took you out.” Moonbreeze croaked.

Then as abruptly as it had come, the hug was withdrawn. Moonbreeze coughed awkwardly and looked away when she saw the stunned look on Cadance’s face.

“Anyway. You should get some rest, and I’ve gotta get home.” Saying this, the bat-pony mare made to leave.

“Oh, right. Of course.” Cadance murmured. Then, the moment catching up with her, said more firmly, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Already in the doorway, Moonbreeze gave the princess a wry grin, her fangs peeking out over her lips. “Okay.”

Then she was gone.

Cadance stared at the door, at the space where she’d just been. Mysterious as always, she thought. She never quite knew what to think of the mare.

Steaming on the large desk against the far wall sat a pot of tea in an ornate gilt teapot, with a matching teacup set beside it on a plate. Cadance could smell chamomile. She had been so wrapped up in hiding her hoof she hadn’t noticed Moonbreeze bring the tray in. She really was so thoughtful, Cadance thought to herself, as she stood and made her way over to her desk.

Cadance poured herself a cup, and sipped at it thoughtfully. Feeling the warmth of the tea fill her throat and spread through her body, she sighed and resigned herself to what she knew was the right decision. Speaking to Luna was the only rational next step. She’d known that since she first found the resin, she just hadn’t been willing to admit it to herself until now.

So be it, she thought. She’d worry about it tomorrow, right now she needed to prepare for her day, and that meant catching up on what sleep she could.

*****

Tap, tap, tap, tap…

As the distant sound prodded and tugged at her consciousness, Chrysalis squeezed her eyes shut and clung tight to the heavy haze of sleep.

Tap, tap, tap, tap…

Each tiny noise seemed to perforate her skull, leaving behind a tiny hook and dragging her ever closer to waking. As the warm, fuzzy fog of sleep started to drift away she clumsily sought for her blankets to pull them up over her head, hoping to insulate herself from the invasive noise of the waking world. But rather than the thick, hoofmade luxury of the bedding borrowed from an unwitting earth pony, Chrysalis’ hooves met a cool, solid surface. A tiny noise rang out as her hoof made contact.

Tap…

Chrysalis’ eyes shot open and she froze as her brain made the connection between the sound and the sensation. Her pilfered bed was gone, and she stood in a vaguely familiar hallway. One hoof hung in the air, having been denied its role in her rhythmic journey. Looking down, she saw and felt the huge, ice cold grey marble tiles beneath her hooves. Had she been sleepwalking? Surely not, she thought.

There was another series of small taps, disordered and chaotic this time, as Chrysalis whirled around and hastily took stock of her surroundings. Glancing behind her she saw that the uncomfortably familiar hallway extended off in both directions, though the darkness kept her from telling exactly how far away it ended. Along one wall ran a series of closed doors, too many to count. Opposite each door in the other wall was an arched window, breaking up the dark intermittently with light from the moon.

Chrysalis stepped forward, towards the nearest window. From above her the full moon beamed down on the landscape far, far below. From this olympian view she could clearly see the tiny town of Ponyville bathed in the moonlight. If she concentrated, she swore she could make out the cottage of the candy-loving dullard she was impersonating… a stolen oasis, containing the plush, comfortable bed ought to be asleep in.

Her hackles raised and Chrysalis felt her heartbeat quicken as the certainty of where she was sunk in. The place where everything started to go wrong. Where her first major failure started a downward spiral she hadn’t been able to correct, that had ended with her being exiled by the changelings she was hatched to lead, who she had no purpose without, who in her own twisted way she had devoted herself to.

Canterlot.

Panic gripped her deep in her chest and she fought to breathe, desperately gasping and trying to stop herself falling apart. Nearly tripping over herself as she did, she knelt down in the corner between the wall and one icy stone pillar. Resting her head against the marble pillar, chilled by the night, she went to hide her face in her hooves only to find they weren’t her hooves.

“NO!” Struck by a sudden burst of rage she shrieked, then bit her tongue and clutched the unfamiliar hooves to her face.

She was too exposed. In her mind she tensed, pushing hard where her magic should be, willing herself to change forms. But just like last time, nothing happened. The terror embedded itself deeper inside her.

Eyes darting back and forth, she galloped to the nearest door and checked the latch. It turned easily despite her unfamiliar hooves, and she slunk inside without hesitation. It was mercifully dark, and after a moment her eyes adjusted and Chrysalis made out the interior of a large, unoccupied guest bedroom. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust, and white sheets hung over all the furniture. It was perfect, she thought, then turned and scrambled to lock the door behind her.

As soon as she felt that she was safe, behind a locked door hiding her in a forgotten corner of the pony world, all the manic energy borne of fear that had filled her fled. She slumped to the floor panting rapidly, letting her body sink. Laying on her side she forced herself to breathe deep and slow, filling her lungs and holding it for a second before exhaling. In response, she felt the sharp current of fear ebb out of her, leaving a cool, leaden feeling, mirroring the tiles beneath her.

Now that she was safe, she took a moment to examine her hooves, and the rest of what was ostensibly her body.

It was… not quite as bad as she’d feared. This wasn’t exactly the terrible, weak, tiny form she’d been trapped in so recently. Her mane, tail and fur were roughly the same, though her deep, dark, sea green locks weren’t so long and impractical now. She was noticeably larger too, but still much smaller than her natural form, and still, to her estimate, shorter than the average full grown pony.

The most drastic difference was that she was no longer a pegasus. Gone were her downy, immature, nearly useless wings, and from her forehead sprouted a stubby horn. Better, but far from ideal. As she lay in the dust she poked at the diminutive horn and wondered, what degree of magic was this ridiculous pony body even capable of?

Chrysalis eased herself up slowly. She’d burnt a lot of energy in a very short amount of time, between panicking and nearly catapulting herself into this room to hide. Thank the ancient queens that it had been unoccupied. She wasn’t sure what she’d have done if she’d stumbled into some pony noble or foreign dignitary. Though… it occurred to her that she ought to give herself more credit. In a pinch she could think on her hooves well enough to weasel her way out, or at least distract whoever was there long enough to flee.

With nervous dread and a barely suppressed ache of fervent hope, she concentrated on her horn, pushing hard to see what it could do. She was met with immediate disappointment, as the weak, stunted organ sputtered to life. Her heart sank. This was not like shapeshifting, where she could funnel her own magic through whatever horn the body she was mimicking had. She really was confined to the limits of this alien anatomy.

A green glow gently lit the room, and the intimately familiar colour gave her some small comfort as she recognised her own magic. It was still frail, so, so much more than it ought to be, but it responded to her easily and already felt like a natural extension of her will.

A small smile lit her face, but was doused a moment later as she extended her magic out towards a stray object on the bedside table and tried to lift it. A forgotten lipstick case floated jerkily towards her as she strained with the effort. This was just barely better than last time, but still dire, she thought.

As she caught the forgotten pony trinket in one hoof and let it drop out of her magic, Chrysalis saw a tiny flash of movement across the room from her. Instinctively she tensed, expecting an attack, ready to roll away or fire off whatever feeble blast of energy this horn could muster, but froze as her movements were reflected.

A moment later she hissed a particularly vile expletive under her breath and let herself slump again. A small sheepish blush came over her features as she crept towards the full length mirror set into the open door of the walk-in closet. It was mostly covered by another white sheet, but with some effort Chrysalis was able to tug the heavy dust-ridden sheet to the side. Using the corner of the sheet, she wiped as much dust off the mirror as she could manage, and relit her horn with the familiar pale green light.

It was several minutes before Chrysalis was able to pull herself away from the morbid vision of herself, or maybe… what she could have been in a very different life. She had known she was trapped in the body of a pony, that was obvious. But she hadn’t expected to see her own features… Younger, softer, lacking the signs of stress and covered in a thin layer of devastatingly soft fur. But undeniably her own face.

She sat, stroking the gentle fuzz on her cheeks and staring at herself in disbelief. A dangerous thought wormed its way to the front of her mind and hooked her attention. This form she was stuck in wasn’t all bad. It was warm and comfortable, like that last tempting vision of Cadance had been.

The hard angles of her carapace worked well when she was living as a powerful, imposing matriarch, and needed to rely on fear to control her changelings. But that was over, wasn’t it? She wasn’t a queen anymore. Just a stray changeling, lost among ponies.

A Stray… That had happened sometimes in her hive. Usually an infiltrator who got too comfortable with ponies, but it could happen to anybug. Something in them railed against the structure and rigidity of life in a changeling hive, and they left, typically vanishing overnight, sometimes with an accomplice. Every so often, maybe once or twice a year, she’d awoken and felt that little hole in the hivemind, almost the same as the space left when a changeling died. They cut ties, and chose the chance that they could live as a pony, over the certainty of life as a changeling.

For the first time Chrysalis felt she could understand why. It was a small, bitter and fragile glimpse, but it was there regardless. It shook her.

When she was very young… Chrysalis remembered her mother inviting a particular stray changeling to visit the hive. She’d been tall and elegant, with long limbs like a queen. In fact, she was almost as tall as Chrysalis’ mother, but the only other defining feature she could recall were the stranger’s deep golden eyes. The memories were heavy and blurry, but that was nothing new, everything from her infancy was scattered, often seeming to actively fight her efforts to recall.

Chrysalis had been… sick. Queen Chrysanthe, her mother, had brought that stray, an old friend, to try and heal her. At the time Chrysalis had been so exhausted and feverish that she had barely been able to comprehend the situation, and cared even less, but Chrysanthe had carefully explained to her poor little nymph that this stranger was here for her benefit.

Chiranterelle had been the stray’s name. Chrysalis hazily remembered huge amber eyes pouring over her, and being prodded and poked with magic that looked like stolen motes of afternoon sun. After examining her, the strange graceful changeling had gone away for several hours. When she came back… at that point Chrysalis’ memory failed her.

Of course, she knew now what had happened. As she’d grown older she’d developed suspicions, and there was the… incident, when she found out for sure what had been done to her by eavesdropping on the final argument between her mother and grandmother. The night she’d run away from the hive and hidden for days behind that waterfall…

Without the intervention of Chiranterelle, the wandering witch, Chrysalis would have fallen to a fate worse than death. Her mind had been fractured, smashed to bits as if by a blunt intrusion. At the time no-one had fully understood what had happened, but years later Chrysanthe had confronted her mother with suspicions.

Before Chrysalis had even hatched, her grandmother, Chatelicera, had forced a great burden into her barely formed mind. Never bold enough to be her own queen, the hag had served as underqueen to her own mother, eventually laying the egg from which Chrysanthe would hatch. Chatelicera had spent every moment of her miserable existence plotting and scheming in service to her great and terrible mother… a changeling known as the Witch Queen, renowned for her unparalleled cunning, knowledge, and immense power.

A shiver went down Chrysalis’ spine as she thought about her ancestors and her youth. She’d survived what her grandmother had done, and walked away with an unspeakable resource, not everyone had been so lucky. But it had been close, and she knew she owed her life to someone she felt she ought to abhor.

She’d only been able to confirm this after her mother had died, by reading her journals, but Chiranterelle had once been a queen. Her mother only wrote about it in vague terms, but something had happened in her hive, and only a few days after she’d ascended to the throne she fled. When she’d first read the entry alluding to the incident Chrysalis had been disgusted that a queen would abandon her duty, her birthright, like that. But now… Feeling guilty she wondered, was being a queen really worth much? A long lonely life of managing a hive, waging secret wars, and dreaming of living openly in the daylight like the ponies. If she had succeeded at Canterlot, they’d all have thanked her. Instead they threw her out, and here she was… playing pony in the dust.

Chrysalis hissed quietly to herself, and glared at her reflection. Even in this powerless form, she had all the cunning and knowledge of over a thousand years of ruling as a changeling queen. Thinking this, she reached into the depths of her mind for the pool of ancient knowledge that held the memories of her past reign… only to find they weren’t there.

Drat, she’d forgotten. This was a dream. For whatever reason, she was apparently cut off from that part of herself when she slept. She deflated a little and bit her lip anxiously. She wasn’t totally herself right now, just the last two and a half decades. Well, she’d leant on her old memories so many times, and she had plenty of her own cunning.

She thought carefully, asking herself what her true self would do. Even without her powers, she had resources available. As far as she could tell she was occupying a genuine pony body, and with a little work and careful examination of the odds and ends left forgotten in this room, surely she could turn that equinity to her advantage. She’d disguise herself manually, and move among the ponies so that she could explore this castle, and maybe she could find some meaning in these strange and uncomfortable dreams forced upon her lately. At the very least it would give her something to do. The thought of passing the time sitting alone in the dust and darkness and trying not to sneeze was too shameful.

If this dream was like the others, eventually it would go wrong no matter how well she hid. Last time she’d been able to find… help. Maybe there was another Cadance somewhere in the palace, maybe they could work together again to thwart whatever cruel threat was inching closer. Even if it all went horribly wrong, at least she could face it standing tall.

Jaw set in forced confidence, Chrysalis nodded to her reflection. Yes. She’d face her fears head on. Emboldened, she set about ransacking the room for anything she could use.

*****

Chrysalis stared intently, frowning as she examined her collected odds and ends.

The pickings had been slimmer than she had expected, but in the enormous walk-in wardrobe built into the suite she had found a number of forgotten items of pony clothing. They were all caked in dust and most too moth-eaten to be of any use, but one ageing pink silk ball gown had both fit her current body and survived the years of abandonment well enough to wear. At least, once she brushed most of the dust off.

With any scrutiny it would still probably seem to an observer as though she had been wading through forgotten closets, or even an abandoned tomb, with the dust that still lingered and the odd musty scent that clung to the dress. But that sort of unruly adventuring wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for an adolescent pony, or at least so she hoped.

The lipstick tube she recovered earlier had been a lucky find too. She’d found a makeup bag on the dressing table, but nearly everything inside had been too dried and desiccated to use. She was forced to make do with the almost empty tube of pink lipstick, and some cracked peach eyeshadow.

Digging through the closets and drawers to find these artefacts had been exhausting, but she pushed forward buoyed on brittle pride. After recovering from a fit of coughing and sneezing induced by the dust and cobwebs strewn into the air, Chrysalis brushed herself off, and set to work on her disguise. The ordeal she faced was still a trifle compared to herculean task of trying to untangle her mane without the aid of magic. Magic was magic, however weak, and her patience and hard work bore her fruit.

Alone in this forgotten guest’s bedroom, Chrysalis was free from the judgement of other creatures as she struggled. While she still felt an internal pinprick of shame, it was easier to ignore with no bug or pony watching her, and she was spared the bright, burning pink self hatred she had felt when rendered helpless in front of… that beloathed pony princess...

It was a little easier in the world of the unconscious mind too, to ignore her own self doubt. In particular, that part of her that incessantly pre-empted any potential criticism by suggesting all the worst possible ways her words or actions could be interpreted, or used against her. She wasn’t carrying around a thousand years of triumphs to compare herself to, just a vague notion of something out of reach. On some level she still felt a hazy, lingering obligation to live up to the legacy established in her past, but that felt more… passive, than the cruelty her waking mind inflicted on her. She was far from her usual self, and that felt… surprisingly nice. There was a sharp pang of guilt when she thought that, but she shrugged it off and kept to the task at hoof.

As her thoughts wandered to and fro, Chrysalis examined her reflection and led the lipstick tube inchworm-slow across her top lip using her meagre magical power. For now she might be trapped as a fragile pony adolescent, but she wasn’t helpless. With this little magic and the paltry collection of pony cosmetics she’d been able to scrounge, she’d be able to take control of the world around her. Not with grand, distant schemes like a Queen, but as a changeling. Even with everything taken from her, at her core she was a creature made to infiltrate pony society and bend it to her will.

Once she finished assembling her disguise, the deposed queen stepped back to scrutinise the fruits of her labour. The sickly pink pony accoutrements made her skin crawl, but she looked the part. It wouldn’t be hard to pass herself off as the daughter of some pony diplomat. This ruse didn’t have to work for long up close, just enough to let her slip past unnoticed. If accosted, she could fake some over the top tears and insist that she was lost and looking for her mother, improvising details as she went.

Easy… A grub could do this, she sneered. Then she huffed, and bundled up her trembling courage. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t hide like a coward, she’d take control of the situation like a real changeling.

As that last thought settled, she frowned and bit her lip nervously, remembering how she had spent the last few months barely surviving, hiding among ponies in unimportant rural towns. When she returned to the waking world, she’d have to do something about that. It was easy to be brave in a dream, where nothing could really hurt her.

Author's Note

hiiiiiiii!!! we did it! here's chapter 5 :3

i was worried i wouldn't have it ready, i've been sick a lot this month, and i had to edit this a LOT. but here it is! done! and i feel pretty happy with it!

this is another case where i wanted to fit an entire idea/dream into one chapter, but it's going to need to be two. dont worry though! chapter six is well under way :3

i'll see you next month, thanks for reading <3

edit 11/02/23: lesson learned, accidentally posting a chapter early means when you post it again itll get backdated to when you first posted it. no big deal either way. the part of my brain that worries about numbers on the internet is trying to get me to 'optimise' all this, but that way lies madness. the numbers dont matter, the thing that matters is building something and leaving it to be seen. comments and feedback are very very welcome of course, talking to people about something you made is one of the most exciting things ever in my opinion.

Chapter 6: Eavesdrop to Egress

Tap tap, tap, tap.

She couldn’t be lost. How many times had she studied the stolen maps of Canterlot Palace, burning the layout into her mind until she could see it with her eyes closed.

The unfamiliar hooves of Chrysalis’ current body tapped out a nervous staccato rhythm as she wandered the dark hallways, pausing every so often to glance around. Desperate to orient herself, she peered around another corner, only to be met with yet another long identical hallway. It stretched far off into the distance and presumably led nowhere, just like every other one before it.

None of this made sense! She should have been well out of the guest wing of the palace ages ago, but it was all just… windows and doors and endless stretches of these awful cold marble tiles.

Shivering slightly and biting her tongue to keep her teeth from chattering she strove onwards.

Tap, tap tap tap.

Chrysalis broke out into a gallop, abandoning the last vestige of stealth. At this point, after what felt like hours of wandering identical hallways, getting caught would practically be a relief. The thought that she was alone in this seemingly endless maze of marble, dust, and moonlight was too much. Where were the monsters? The manifestations of her guilt, or carefully targeted illusions preying on her weaknesses? Anything would be better than waiting in the silence, than being alone.

Was this some new level of self inflicted torture? In that last dream, she had given in to temptation momentarily, and sought comfort in the confusing facsimile of her sworn enemy, Princess Cadance. Perhaps whatever twisted part of her psyche that concocted these dreams had seen her enjoy those brief moments of warmth and comfort. Perhaps it was punishing her for it. Could it be deliberately depriving her of the only silver lining of these dreams? It would be an appropriate level of cunning for the mind of a changeling queen… It would be impressive, if only it wasn’t being used to self-flagellate.

Metaphysical paranoia aside… She still had no idea where she was, and every single dream she’d had in the last month had featured Cadance in some way or another. It felt so wrong for this to buck the trend despite so obviously being a continuation of her last dream, it just didn’t make sense.

Chrysalis began taking turns at random, running down whatever hallway she saw first and making turns on impulse. Logic clearly wasn’t getting her anywhere. Out of breath and panting hard she came to a halt suddenly at a junction between four different paths. She spun around, dizzily examining each option stretching off into the distance, until she realised she’d lost track of where she’d come from. Not that it seemed to matter much.

Chrysalis stood in the centre of the junction, straining to stay upright despite her aching muscles. This body was far from used to such strenuous exercise. Her hooves were shaking and she felt her flesh pleading with her to let it collapse onto the cool tiles and rest. Not yet, she thought. She forced herself to stand. There had to be more to this! Was there some trick that she wasn’t seeing?

No answer came, and soon despite her best efforts she lost the battle against her trembling, burning muscles and slumped bodily to the floor. Just a few minutes, she told herself begrudgingly, just enough time to catch her breath…

But as she lay there on the cool tiles, the heavy weight of exhaustion pressed her down and pulled her towards sleep. Her aching muscles begged her to give in, and as her breathing slowed her eyelids began to droop.

“Just… a few… minutes” she repeated in a whisper, as all the energy she’d spent caught up with her and the heavy hoof of sleep took her.

*****

A trickle of sound danced through her mind, with some familiar undertone that tugged at her memory. Chrysalis’ eyes shot open and she tried to leap to her hooves. Stumbling, muscles still recovering, she realised that she wasn’t where she had been when she had closed her eyes. The junction was gone, somehow she’d been deposited halfway down another random hallway.

Fear bit down hard, and gave her the strength to lurch sharply to her hooves. Frozen, unsure how to react and waiting for something to strike, she nearly jumped out of her skin as another bubbly, shrill sound filled the hallway.

Was that… laughter?

Chrysalis turned to and fro, trying desperately to tell what direction the sound had come from. It rang out again, and she turned towards it. That was a voice! Someone else was in here. Multiple creatures, if she was any judge.

She crept towards the noise as quickly as she dared, caught between desperation to escape her isolation and the threat of what might happen to her if she alerted whoever was talking. Eavesdropping was the safest option, she assured herself. Avoid drawing attention and gather information, then make a decision on what to do next. The last time she’d been in Canterlot, she’d underestimated the ponies, and paid dearly for her hubris. She would not let herself make the same mistake again.

After several minutes of carefully creeping down the hall towards the noise, Chrysalis finally pinned the source to a particular door up ahead on the left. A mote of light shone through a crack in the doorway, and as she got closer the tangled indistinct noise resolved into several voices. It sounded like quite a lot of ponies, chatting and laughing. After the deathly silence of the endless hallways, the sound was overwhelming, too sweet and potent. It flowed over her like a wave, pressing her into the wall.

Whoever was in there, maybe she could finally get some answers. Chrysalis inched forward until her snout was barely a hair’s breadth from the crack in the door, and she turned her ears intently toward the noise.

Definitely multiple ponies… maybe a dozen? Sounds of cutlery and glassware interspersed between the chatter and gossip, indicating… some sort of dinner or banquet. More confused than ever Chrysalis held her breath and kept listening.

The voices sounded high class, a mixture of genders, posh and well mannered, all adults… wait, no. One voice stood out. If you weren’t listening like you’d been starved of the sound of living creatures, it would have been easy to miss.

One voice was unlike the others. Young, rough around the edges. Where the other diners carried an easy confidence, this voice almost stuttered and worked hard to imitate its fellow diners. Traces of rural earth pony intonation clung to the edges of a clearly artificial royal canterlot accent. Concentrating hard Chrysalis felt as though she knew this voice, or… perhaps some distant evolution of it. Surely not… Could it be?

*****

Cadance stared down at the dozen or so forks laid out besides her plate, and felt her forced smile crack at the edges.

Around her the other diners were well underway, and the dining room was filled with the sound of cutlery working and all manner of upper class conversation.

Princess Cadance looked back to her plate, where the steamed remains of an unfamiliar creature stared up at her with dead black eyes. She tried not to feel guilty as she met its gaze.

Glancing around, her heart sank deeper as she saw that nopony else had been served the same dish as her. In fact it was hard to make out what the other diners were even eating, it all seemed random, every diner eating something vague and unique.

She wished her aunt was here… Celestia wouldn’t hesitate to discreetly help her out. And yet, at the same time some part of Cadance felt that this was her chance to prove she could stand up for herself. What was the point of all those lessons on etiquette and navigating the royal court if she still needed Celestia to save her? She couldn’t always rely on others. A flicker of shame caught alight in her chest at the thought.

The gleaming row of forks reflected warped fragments of Cadance back at her as she scrutinised them, hoping for a clue. This was some sort of crab, right? It looked like… she shuddered… It looked like a beetle. A huge, black and green beetle. The sort of thing you’d find living a private life under a rotting log deep in the forest, but big enough to keep as a pet.

She really, really didn’t want to eat it. This probably counted as seafood, right? But she wasn’t used to eating that yet either. Even besides the complexities of eating meat as a pony, there was no insulating layer of abstraction or processing between her and this… creature. She couldn’t distance herself from the death in front of her. The tastes of the nobility made her skin crawl.

Maybe she could just… pick at the greens around the plate, and if somepony took offence at her lack of manners she could pretend she was feeling ill.

Even if she found the right implement, what part of this were you supposed to eat anyway? It was all hard, glossy black carapace and nerve wracking edges. There were a number of very sharp looking spines in several places too, she could easily imagine pricking herself on the poor thing while trying to dismantle its defences to get at the… insides.

Her carefully constructed smile twitched and nearly collapsed as her imagination was flooded with a flickering series of round, wet, warm tubes that were never meant to see daylight. How anypony could try to eat something like this without retching was beyond her.

She selected what she knew was a salad fork, and raised it in the grasp of her magic, intending to try and save whatever face she could. The bed of leafy greens around the poor insect looked perfectly edible and very fresh. But before she could take a bite, raucous laughter broke across the table towards her.

She looked up and glanced around, but the bright lights of the chandeliers and candelabras spread out along the table disguised the source of the noise. In the glare she could barely make out her fellow diners. The lights seemed so much more intense than a moment ago…

As she squinted, searching the table for the source of the noise, a voice uncomfortably close to her ear cackled loudly.

“Princess! Don’t be so modest. Surely you haven’t forgotten how to eat a lovebug?”

Cadance craned her neck up, trying to make out the face of whoever was talking, catching a brief glimpse of a long sharp spiral horn sprouting from the forehead of a pale unicorn.

The stranger continued, “Oh we all know how cosmopolitan you are.” The speaker paused for a moment, giving ample space for the wave of snickers that swept across the table as if on cue.

As it faded, Cadance felt her blood run cold as she realised the other diners had stopped talking and were listening closely as the pale unicorn addressed her. Through the glare she could just see their silhouettes, leaning forward, poised as if waiting to pounce at her as soon as she spoke.

“Oh, I-” The teenage princess stammered. In her chest she felt a rising tension, as though she was underwater, holding her breath, and some instinct in her screamed that if she let go of that tension things would get much worse for her immediately.

Before she could even begin to think of a response the stranger cut across again. “Really Princess… If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t want to eat this darling little creature. But then why seek her out? Don’t you want her? Can’t you see she needs your help?”

Cadance looked back down at the bug… and instead was met with the pleading eyes of a very young changeling, sitting on her plate of greens and trembling. Vertical slit pupils stared up at her out of pale green eyes, framed by long tangled deep sea green locks.

Cadance gasped and jumped back, almost falling out of her chair and very nearly losing her grip on the strange feeling in her chest as she did. Bright pink burned in her cheeks as the illusion on her plate faded, and the whole room burst out into an uproar, all laughing at her expense. They were mocking her! She was being set up, this wasn’t fair. The pink in her cheeks deepened as shame turned to indignation.

Cadance opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off again. The silhouette of the tall pale unicorn next to her seemed to loom over her as they needled, “Oh come now Princess, can’t you take a joke? Why don’t you go ahead, tuck into your lovely meal. You don’t want to hurt the Chef’s feelings, do you?”

The bright glaring lights turned towards her, and Cadance felt herself pinned down. Under the spotlights, she could see what seemed like a hundred dark, hungry shadows turned towards her, watching and waiting.

Frozen, her mouth just opened and closed like a fish on a hook. She didn’t, no she couldn’t eat this… creature. Not for all the social approval in the world, and definitely not for these hyenas!

The diner that had spoken loomed even larger, and Cadance felt the pressure of their gaze on her as they turned her around in their golden eyes like a butterfly on a pin. The tension in her chest ached and burned like a cramped muscle.

In mock surprise, the speaker gasped, and spoke so the whole audience could hear, “Could it be, you really don’t know how to eat this at all? But it’s so simple, any real princess would have no trouble. Are you sure you’re really one of us?”

The last word sawed at the taut tension inside her. She knew she couldn’t hold it much longer. She needed to get out of here, or everything she’d been struggling for would fall apart.

“When her majesty, Princess Celestia herself, plucked you out of the countryside we all had our doubts. Despite our concerns we trusted her when she assured us, insisted that you were no country bumpkin, but rather a diamond in the rough. Although, even a peasant would have something to say for themselves, surely? I’m starting to wonder if you’re even a pony.” The speaker followed up the thinly veiled accusation with laughter, presenting the cruel dagger held at Cadance’s throat as a joke, and the audience of ravenous shadows followed where she led them, howling and guffawing in response.

Her grip was slipping, and Cadance knew she should just laugh along and make some excuse to leave, but her face burned with a red hot pride that wouldn’t let her flee with her tail between her legs.

Drawing herself up to her full height, meagre as her stature was, Cadance cleared her throat and spoke in the best royal tone she could muster.

“N-now see here! I may not be of noble blood, b-but even still I am a Princess of Equestria, and you have no right to treat me this way!” She continued, standing as tall as she could on everything she’d worked hard to learn since she came here. “I may not know everything you know, I may still be learning, but you had to learn these things just the same as me. Don’t you dare treat me like I'm below you just because I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. If Celestia was here, you wouldn’t dare behave this way, like a pack of schoolyard bullies. I won’t make myself small or disappear just because you don’t approve. I’m here to stay and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

A hush fell on the diners, and Cadance hoped that meant they were stunned or shamed into silence by her words, but after a moment the room burst into yet more uproarious laughter. It could barely even be called laughter, it was more like the howling, hooting and gibbering of strange animals or monsters, the kind of sounds that came out of the deep forest late at night and turned her blood to ice when she was very young.

Cadance felt tears streaming down her face as her cheeks turned an even brighter shade of pink. An explosion of shame blossomed in her chest, and she sunk back into her seat, nearly collapsing at the weight of the humiliation she felt. In her turmoil, she felt her hold slip on the tension in her chest, and suddenly a strange sensation spread throughout her body.

Before she could react, a wave of green fire rampaged across her body. Pink fur dissolved into glossy black carapace, fangs burst out of her jaws, and in her now bright blue and compound eyes she could see the way every other creature in the room was reacting to her sudden metamorphosis. She realised she could taste their hatred, and it assailed her without warning, acrid and bitter. The stink of it was overwhelming.

Her heartbeat bucked and kicked in her throat. What was happening to her? How could she be a changeling? Before she could dwell on it, the deep, dark and ancient part of her brain shouted something guttural and caught her attention. They hated her when they thought she was a pony, what would they do if they thought she was a monster?

Cadance had just enough time to realise the danger she was in before a chilling scream shattered the stunned silence. From across the table someone called out “What is that awful thing!” and reacting as if on cue the diners fled. Moving like a herd, nearly every creature at the table was suddenly frantic, scrambling to get away from the object of their terror. Shadows bobbed and weaved in the glaring lights as they fled, and there was a chorus of yelps and bleats as they trampled each other in their haste.

As the flow of bodies cast shadows around the room, Cadance caught a glimpse of the pale unicorn seated beside her. The stranger was the only pony who had actually spoken to Cadance all night, and now she watched the other guests with a sharp, satisfied smirk.

As the frenzied flock tripped over themselves, the pale unicorn piped up and took charge. “Don’t let it get near you! This vile creature killed the princess and replaced her! Clearly it wants to work its way into the royal court and take control! Quick, Guards! Kill it, before she can replace one of us too!”

From the deep shadows at the far corner of the room was a great clattering of armour, and through the mess of panicking diners Cadance saw a hoard of glinting gold that bristled with silver spears rush forward to heed the call of the pale unicorn.

Cadance backed away from the table, hoping to dart around it and out the door, but her escape was blocked by the enormous stranger beside her. Up close, without anything to keep her tormentor obscured, Cadance felt her heart skip a beat. Like a punch to the stomach it forced all the air out of her lungs. Princess Amore loomed over her, all hard angles and sneering, sadistic smile.

“Just who do you think you are?” Amore hissed. “How could a foul, pitiable thing like you ever dare to try and imitate my greatness. I forged an empire out of ice and snow, what have you done? Tread water? Slaughter the elderly? Oh I forgot, most days you’re just dead weight, a damsel in distress that forces those around her to pick up her slack and put themselves on the line to save her worthless hide. The only useful thing you’ve ever done was breed, maybe dear little Flurry won’t sully my memory like her painted nag of a mother.”

Every word struck Cadance hard, it was all she could do to remain standing under the onslaught. Her mouth hung silently open, and she felt tears begin to trickle down her face. She wanted to refute what her predecessor was saying, to stand up for herself. But it was like she was flayed open. Amore was inside her chest, surgically targeting her deepest fears and severing her agency. Cadance opened and closed her mouth like a dead fish, all but paralysed.

Amore sneered and lit her horn, “At least I finally have the excuse I need to end this pathetic charade.” and started to charge a spell.

Cadance recognised the same simple beam spell she’d used to blast through the forest what seemed like a hundred years ago. Fear and panic pulsed through her body as she realised in a few moments Amore would strike her down. Fight or flight instincts roared throughout her body, and the golden light of the magic growing on Amore’s horn glinted off her carapace. She knew there’d be no time to react once the spell was completed. If she didn’t act now, before the princess was done, she’d die. But despite it all she couldn’t bring herself to move.

In the swirling, swollen maelstrom that was Cadance’s mind, one thought reigned over all else. Wasn’t Amore right? What had she ever done to deserve being a princess? Maybe she should just, roll over and-

The bubble of fear and self-loathing popped suddenly, as something or someone clattered loudly onto the table. Caught off guard, both princesses of the Crystal Empire turned, reacting to the sound, and in shock Amore let her spell launch prematurely. It scythed through the air, a beam of white hot golden light that went just barely wide and singed the ear of the stranger standing on the table, one hoof in the remains of a meal.

Cadance gasped in recognition. No, not a stranger at all!

*****

Chrysalis flinched as the beam of light nicked her ear, and wondered what in tartarus she was doing.

It had all happened so quickly, instinct taking over before her brain could catch up. The last thing she’d known she’d been hiding just out of sight around the door, piecing together whatever fragments of conversation she could, then Cadance’s voice had rung out clear as day, tempting her to peek through the crack in the door. Lo and behold, once her eyes adjusted to the glare she’d spotted the beloathed pony princess, different again, but still clearly Cadance.

She remembered the wave of relief, as the icepick of fear she’d been carrying within her melted away. That stupid pink fluffball was here after all, this dream was just like all the others. Immediately after relief, shame flooded her system, and the two competing feelings roiled inside her like a tornado. Before she could berate herself privately, the tone in the room dropped through the floor and froze stiff.

Up to that point Chrysalis had been struggling to actually make sense of the conversation, there was a lot of laughter, and some regal pony she didn’t recognise was speaking to Cadance. But then there’d been that flash of familiar green, and Cadance was gone. Except, she wasn’t. In her place sat a changeling… She was a different species, but Chrysalis could still recognise the familiar face of the beloathed pony princess without even trying. Cadance was a changeling! Before Chrysalis’ imagination could take that and gallop off into the sunset, a pony had screamed.

It was an often told cautionary tale, a bug hiding among ponies slips up and is caught red-hoofed. It hadn’t actually happened often, at least not in recent history. Chrysalis had worked hard just like her mother to make sure her changelings were safe and well trained to avoid this sort of thing. It used to be a more common issue, long long ago. It never ended well. Pitchforks, fire, screaming, that sort of thing. A chill ran down Chrysalis’ spine as the gravity of the situation hit her and thousands of years of survival instincts thundered awake inside her.

For a fraction of a second she held back and hesitated, then the next thing Chrysalis knew she had raced into the room and darted between the throng of ponies. Now here she stood on this table, one hoof in a bowl of soup, her ear stinging where a lance of magic had seared it, and dozens of hysterical ponies staring at her in disbelief. Chrysalis knew she only had a few seconds before the shock wore off and the guards reacted. She had to make them count.

Before she could reconsider and turn tail, she thrust a hoof towards the changeling, towards who she hoped was Cadance, or at least some version of her. “Hurry, take my hoof!” She yelped, voice cracking as her nerves got the better of her.

The changeling that was probably Cadance hesitated, jaw slack and eyes wide, clearly terrified, and Chrysalis had just enough time to wonder if this was all a mistake. Before she could withdraw her hoof and flee, the changeling leant forward and gripped her hoof tightly with their own.

The exiled queen turned counterfeit princess gripped the hard carapace of the hoof tight and heaved with everything she had. In response the changeling leapt up onto the table with her.

They both stood there, awkwardly exchanging a harrowed look for a moment, before Chrysalis said shakily “And now, time to run” and took off, dragging the changeling after her.

The ponies, guards, diners and Princess Amore all hung stunned and silent for several seconds. Then the princess roared like a predator deprived of it’s prize, and the angry mass of ponies all rushed the door, swarming through like locusts.

*****

“Who are you? Why are you helping me?” Cadance wheezed between deep desperate breaths as she fought to keep up with her saviour.

“Don’t talk, just keep up,” came the terse and frantic reply. The unicorn was still dragging her along with one hoof, and evidently struggling just as much as Cadance herself. They were both out of breath after galloping at a breakneck pace down a chaotic series of corridors. Surely they’d lost their pursuers by now, Cadance thought, and started to slow.

Right as she did, from somewhere behind a cruel, violent howl slashed through the air, scraping after them. It didn’t sound far off. Cadance’s muscles were burning, but a burst of adrenaline from the cold lash of fear pushed her forward.

“Wait, turn here!” the dark grey unicorn in the frilly, flouncy, ruffled pink dress skidded to a halt at a corner and dragged Cadance after her.

“There!” Cadance followed her saviour’s gaze and saw an open door up ahead, framed by silver moonlight. The dark grey unicorn let go of Cadance’s hoof and raced ahead the last few yards to the door, and took a moment to fiddle with the knob.

Losing steam, Cadance trailed behind the unicorn. Beyond the door the corridor was filled to the brim with deep shadows, but far off in the distance was a tiny pinprick of red, an isolated glow adrift far off in the gloom. Panting hard, Cadance trotted after her saviour, and squinted hard into the distant darkness while she waited.

Straining to see, Cadance realised the distant glow was coming from two tiny points of light, not just one. They were almost like… eyes? Surely not, she thought to herself. As she watched, the two specks of light went dark for a moment, then returned. Was something… out there?

Before Cadance could follow that thought she was interrupted by her fellow escapee wrenching open the door. Voice cracking, desperate and overwrought, the dark grey unicorn cried out with relief, “Finally!” and leapt inside, pulling Cadance bodily after her.

Once inside, the unicorn slammed the door shut, then ran towards the back of the room, nearly tripping on the train of her ball gown as it bounced along with her.

She turned to usher Cadance to follow, then dove into the walk-in wardrobe, calling out “Quick! In here!” as she did.

At this point it was too late to ask questions or hesitate. Running on fumes, Cadance did as she was told and half ran, half collapsed into the enormous stuffy closet. Dust immediately flooded her nose and throat and it was all she could do to not stumble into a coughing, spluttering heap.

She heard the door to the wardrobe shut behind her and the lock click tight, then she was pulled bodily to the back wall of the suffocating space. It was filled to the brim with ancient, forgotten clothing. Relics of countless guests and events spanning centuries of pony nobility living in Canterlot Palace. Who knew the last time somepony had been back here.

At the back of the closet, the unicorn lit her horn and pulled several huge fur coats down into a heap with her magic, clearly straining at the effort. As soon as she was done she scurried underneath, waving for Cadance to follow before disappearing into the makeshift burrow and leaving her in the darkness.

Somewhere behind her another howl left a gash in the night air, and Cadance leapt in after the unicorn.

No sooner than she was underneath the great nest of coats, did the strange dark pony drag her even deeper and hiss for her to be quiet, pulling her close and putting one fluffy basalt hoof tight over her mouth. Cadance briefly considered yelping some indignant reply at being handled in such a way, but instead simply lay still and did as she was told.

The two creatures lay there in the darkness together, listening to the noises of the roving band of what ought to be ponies as they hunted. The dark grey unicorn lit her horn again, and sweat beaded on her forehead as she began to cast an esoteric spell that Cadance couldn’t parse at all. Green flames licked at the air and dripped from her horn as she shut her eyes and muttered something silently to herself.

Through the gap between the coats and the floor the princess could just see the door, and watched as the crack around the edge of it filled in, cutting off the last of the natural light. A moment later the spell was done, and where the door had been there was simply sheer, smooth wall. After she’d finished, the strange unicorn slumped, eyelids fluttering as she gasped frantically.

Seconds later, Cadance nearly cried out in shock as she heard the entrance to the bedroom burst open. She froze, not even daring to breathe as the two of them lay there and listened to the hoofbeats of several ponies pacing around the room. There was a crash of furniture, then another, and Cadance felt another tear trickle down her face. Each noise made her jump, but she managed to strangle the startled sounds in her throat before they escaped and betrayed their hiding place.

Just when the lack of oxygen was starting to burn, the hooves of the pursuing ponies clattered off out of earshot. Forcing herself, she held her breath for a few more seconds just in case, then relented, sucking in as much as she dared, still uncertain how safe they really were.

Breathing quietly, Cadance turned to her saviour, who was staring back at her with pale green irises and tears streaming down into her grey fur. There was a profound moment of deja vu, then Cadance blinked as it all came rushing back. It was as if she’d pierced the veil. Some barrier over her mind split and ruptured, and she remembered everything. The forest, the ghost, the waterfall… Chrysalis. This had to be her, just like last time.

Her wrist! Cadance glanced down at her hoof, blinking in confusion at what she saw. One moment it was bare, the next the green resin bandage was back, covering a pair of neat holes in her… carapace. Her carapace. She was a changeling, somehow. It could only be part of the dream. So long as she didn’t wake up a shiny black bug in the real world, she could handle this.

Cadance turned back to her companion, opening her mouth to talk, but hesitated. The dark grey unicorn was shaking her head fervently, a look of wild eyed panic still clinging to her face, and Cadance held her tongue.

The minutes crept by. Every so often, frustrated shrieks and howls could be heard somewhere far off in the castle, but eventually everything seemed to go completely silent. Cadance watched her rescuer closely, the grey pony’s gaze flicked back and forth between the door and her fellow dreamer. After another long staring contest with the door, the grey unicorn let out a deep breath and let herself melt into the tiles.

Jumping at the chance now that she could finally talk without being shushed, Cadance said, “It’s you, isn’t it? You saved me again.” Cadance lit her horn and stared intently at her saviour, pouring over every detail.

The dark grey unicorn squirmed and looked away. Somehow deflating even more, under her breath she hissed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Unperturbed Cadance pushed forward. “It is you, Chrysalis, I know it is. This isn’t just some random dream, we’re here together again.”

The reluctant unicorn shrugged. “If you insist…”

“You saved me again!” Cadance continued, adamant awe in her voice.

Chrysalis recoiled as though she’d been accused. “Clearly you’re not going to let me deny it.” She snarled, lip curled in aggravation.

Cadance sat stunned for a moment, derailed by her saviour’s response. Fumbling, she asked, “You mean… you didn’t want to save me?”

The strange short unicorn who could only be Chrysalis went red in the face, and sputtered, “I- You- Of course I wouldn’t! Why would I ever want to help a pony,” she finished weakly, turning away to hide her face.

“Well then why go out of your way for me! Why save me? If you’re so sure this is meaningless why not just watch from the shadows as they tear me to pieces?” Cadance snapped in retort.

“Ha!” Chrysalis croaked sardonically. “Who’s to say I’m not about to turn into some horrible monster… For all you know I could be about to lunge forward and rip you to shreds.”

The dark grey unicorn turned back to glare at Cadance, and let that last sentence hang in the air icily before she went on. “What makes you so sure I’m on your side?”

A wretched look came over the changeling queen’s face, and she continued miserably. “How do you know this isn’t some sick fantasy I’m playing out? To toy with you, or to punish myself…”

Chrysalis looked away again, and curled in on herself. “If we truly are both here, if this is more than just a dream like you say and what we do matters, I should have left you to die. You’re a pony. Not just any pony, you’re part of that clique of revolting do-gooders who took everything from me. If this is real, I owe it to my ancestors, to every changeling I failed, maybe even to myself, to return a thousand times over every ounce of pain and shame I’ve endured because of you.”

In a tiny, lost voice Chrysalis trailed off “But instead, I saved you. Again...”

In the dim blue light of her horn, Cadance stared at her saviour and watched as a trickle of bright red blood trailed down from where her ear was cut by Amore’s blast. Her heart twisted and ached. How were you supposed to respond to something like that?

Swallowing the lump of fear in her throat, Cadance whispered, “Thank you, Chrysalis. Whatever happened between us in the past, and whatever made you leap in and help, I’m here right now because of you.”

As Cadance spoke, confidence trickled into her voice. Momentum carried her forward and she went on, “Look maybe when this is over, we could-”

Chrysalis snapped around and cut her off before she could finish. “Don’t! Don’t you dare. It’s cruel enough to thank me. Now you’d deign to pity me? I’d rather die. If I’m ever desperate enough to accept the help of a pony I can only hope I have the sense to end my own life before disgracing myself any further. You’re just my own guilt torturing me. It’s all a sick, cruel trick, to debase me and smother me in shame.”

Taken aback, Cadance sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh I’m sorry your royal highness, I didn’t realise you were a drama queen too. You’re so convinced of your own superiority that you can’t see past your own overinflated pride! This isn’t a coincidence and I’m not a figment of your imagination! We’re lost, we’re hiding in the dark, we just escaped some twisted nightmare ponies who want to kill me, and we’re stuck in bodies that aren’t our own. Isn’t that a little too similar to last time?”

“And what about this?” Cadance shoved her wrist in Chrysalis’ face, clearly showing off the green lump of protective resin. “Do you still think this is all in your head?”

The sulking grey unicorn pulled back slightly and squinted at the resin sparkling in the blue light of Cadance’s horn. “That doesn’t prove anything.” She snarled, turning away. With her grey coat it was hard to tell, but Cadance caught a glimpse of what might have been a blush glowing on the changeling queen’s cheeks.

“Well what about your ear, you’re bleeding! Just like last time. What happened to all those cuts and scratches? Go ahead and lie to me, tell me they weren’t there when you woke up.” Cadance persevered, silently praying her gamble would prove correct.

Pulling away again, Chrysalis bared her teeth. It was true, she hadn’t noticed until after she’d gone back to make the bed, but here and there the sheets were dotted with thin streaks of blood, and when she’d shifted back to her natural form she’d found a number of tiny oozing cracks in her carapace that had been hidden by her transformation.

“You’re in my head! You know everything I know. It was pure coincidence, I just… scratched myself in my sleep!” Chrysalis spat back at the beloathed pony princess.

“Oh for goodness sake… You’re kidding me.” Cadance put a hoof to her forehead and scrunched up her eyes. “Alright, fine, if that’s how you want to play this. I can prove it to you, just hold still.” Frustrated and tired, she accidentally let a touch of malice slip into her voice.

Chrysalis backed away as fast as she could, but ran into the far wall of the wardrobe. “Stay away from me pony!” she hissed frantically.

Cadance ignored her and crawled forward. “Just trust me. Wouldn’t you rather know? If you’re so sure this is a dream, then when you wake up you’ll be vindicated and you can forget all about me. If I’m right and this works… then we both have bigger problems than accidentally showing vulnerability in front of each other.”

Backed into a corner and exhausted, Chrysalis felt her skin turn to ice as she realised she couldn’t stop the changeling that might be Cadance if she wanted. Dread pooled and weighed her down as she watched the creature opposite her approach, fangs bared.

“Please, this will only hurt for a moment.” Cadance’s voice rang clear, dripping equal parts frustration and sincerity to Chrysalis’ trained ear.

Before she could reply, Cadance blurred for a moment, and the next thing Chrysalis knew there was a sharp jolt of pain..

Feeling suddenly lightheaded, she stared in horror at Cadance, who had plunged her fangs into the soft flesh of Chrysalis’s wrist, and was staring back up at her.

The two… ponies? Changelings? Chrysalis felt lost. All she could do was keep staring into those huge bright blue eyes as they lay locked together.

The airy, hazy feeling intensified, and Chrysalis realised she was waking up. “Oh dear…” she whispered.

She tried to reach out with her other hoof, tried to say something else, but it was getting harder to think. All she knew was that she didn’t want to leave like this.

“Wait… No…” She mumbled. “Don’t make me go!”

Chrysalis pulled a final burst of strength from somewhere deep, and leant forward to embrace the changeling Cadance with everything she had left.

Then she blinked, and a beam of bright sunlight lay warm across her face and stung her eyes.

Chrysalis shifted in bed, shielded her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The newly familiar knots in the wood above her head stared back.

She was back in her- no, not her’s. Back in the cottage in Ponyville.

Ah, she thought, then croaked weakly to herself. “Just a dream after all…”

Still reeling, she sighed deeply and tried not to let shame flood in and overwhelm her. Sitting up, Chrysalis reached for the blanket, then froze as she saw her hoof. It was grey, coated with a layer of fine fur that she recognised miserably.

There, right before her eyes, two thin trails of blood caught the sunlight and glinted back at her. Two neat holes in her wrist oozed, and suddenly it felt like every ounce of blood in her body had been drained out of that bite.

Cadance was right. Or at least, she might be, Chrysalis corrected herself. It was still technically possible that something mundane was going on, but at the same time… she could feel her denial wearing thin.

Exhaustion lay on Chrysalis like a heavy quilt, and she longed to stay where she was and melt back into sleep, but it would be stupid to ignore the twin twinges of pain in her hoof. Especially so if she got blood on the sheets again. If a stain was left behind it would certainly come back to bite her.

The much maligned and demeaned queen dragged herself out of the warm pony bed, and made her way to the bathroom to examine and clean the wounds accrued in the night. As much as she hated to give the beloathed pony princess any credit, it would certainly be difficult for one to self inflict these wounds. Something or someone else was to blame, magical or otherwise.

In the mirror above the bathroom sink Chrysalis could clearly see her own wounds reflected. The singed fur around the wound on her ear and the neat round semicircle cut out of the edge of her ear could only have come from a beam of magic. And while she certainly could have bitten her own hoof if she had truly wanted to, the pattern of the bite made it clear that it came from an angle that she couldn’t have replicated. Not to mention… even at a cursory glance the bite didn’t match her teeth. It was clearly from a much younger changeling.

So there was something going on, but what? Could she really be sharing her dreams with her sworn enemy?

A soft pink glow blossomed in Chrysalis’ cheeks as she retraced the events of her dream, growing brighter as she recalled some of the things she had done and said. She had thought everything she was doing was ephemeral and private, but the thought that the beloathed pony princess had been there with her… The pink in Chrysalis’ cheeks exploded into incandescence.

Just how much had Cadance been privy to?

Chrysalis stared at her reflection, resisting the impulse to return back to her undisguised form that was welling up inside her.

It really was her own face, except… it was as if she was being given a glimpse into another life she could have led. A million different contradictory emotions and reactions ran through her head. It was… disconcerting, but secretly thrilling. It was tempting, but also shameful. It was evocative, inviting, but then also… It made her skin crawl, it was a bizarre and new kind of vulnerability she’d never felt before. This form, she knew that any creature who’d seen her real face would recognise her immediately. It was practically begging to be recognised by her enemies, but at the same time it was a kind of message, pleading to those who understood it to see her in a different light, a peace offering. As though she was asking for a second chance, or apologising.

It was so… so deeply tempting…

Chrysalis shook her head, freeing herself from the last vestiges of sleep. The roiling swarm of contradictory emotions inside her fell silent, cowed by one clear thought that overruled everything else. She was a Changeling Queen. The idea that she might make amends, apologise? To the ponies? It was disgusting, pure drivel.

Yes, she thought, all these thoughts were just lingering pony propaganda.

A momentary flicker of green fire later and she was herself. Tall, imposing, perfect.

Much better, she thought, examining herself in the mirror again. Her lip curled and Chrysalis recoiled slightly as she saw the three oozing wounds still remained.

For all her royal assertions, she couldn’t deny the physical evidence carved into her body. Someone or something had hurt her. Doubt crept in and made a nest under the floorboards of her mind.

Assuming for a moment that these dreams were real or shared in some capacity, she thought, what would be the point? It certainly wasn’t the way ponies did things. Yes they were insidious, pushy, and always so desperate to convert you to their way of thinking, but they were almost never cruel. They were rarely even angry, let alone violent.

Who else would want to cause her harm? Chrysalis’ brow furrowed as she concentrated on massaging resin over the wound on her ear.

There were no other changeling queens in Equestria, no rivals left to attempt an assassination. She had made certain of that long ago. If this was some new upstart invader from another land, why target her and not Thorax?

Looking back at the events of the last two dreams, the only two where the beloathed pony princess had seemed aware that they were dreaming, Chrysalis hadn’t even really been the focus of events. Cadance was in the most danger. If anything, it almost seemed like they were being toyed with.

What kind of creature possessed both the power and the need to subject creatures to this kind of magic?

Queen Chrysalis shuddered. No, she thought, pushing her fears down and wrapping herself up in the forced certainty of denial again. It could only be a coincidence. What was a dream, in any case? Simply a random collection of odds and ends taken from the subconscious mind and strung together. Nothing conscious, nothing coherent or planned. Nothing real. Nothing, just meaningless chaos that she could safely dismiss.

Yes, she nodded sharply to her reflection. That made sense didn’t it? It was nothing to concern herself with.

With her doubts buried deep, Chrysalis set to work. She was long overdue to move on from this disguise, as comfortable as it was. The longer she lingered the greater the impact she would leave behind, and in turn, the greater the chance that she’d be discovered.

As soon as she was done erasing the traces of her presence from the cottage, she could free her captive and disappear. She’d move on to another town, somewhere far away like Las Pegasus. Coming to Ponyville had been a mistake. For all the spying she’d been able to do on her various enemies that lived here, it brought up too many bad memories. Better to go somewhere she had no connection to.

A fresh slate was just what she needed. Then these awful dreams would end and she could get back to… surviving by herself… in exile.

Whatever the case, it would be better than staying here, waiting to be caught, she concluded.

Mind made up, Chrysalis poured herself into her work. Whatever she felt, whatever her dreams did to her, whatever insipid ideas had wormed their way into her subconscious through overexposure to ponies, it would pass. She just needed to keep moving forward.

Author's Note

Hiiiiiii again! ⭐ :trollestia:

I wanted to call this chapter 'Back into the Closet' but that's a little too overt. This chapter was a pain in the behind to get done but that's nothing new. The dialogue gave me the most trouble and went through the most iterations. It helped that I knew what I wanted and was able to gradually build up to that with each edit pass.

Otherwise, I had a lot of fun with in your face metaphors and symbolism this chapter. I try hard to do that sort of thing all the time, both because it's fun, and because it's a good way to foreshadow and communicate indirectly with the reader. Metaphors and similes and so on are also good for tone setting! Though I feel some of my similes in this chapter were a little muddled and not as consistent in theme as I'd like, but it's 8k words and it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough that I feel confident putting it out into the world.

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere else, but I made a commitment to myself that once I post something, I won't ever go back and edit it. I'm treating this the same way I'd want to treat publishing an actual book. I want what you find here to be the Final product. Any spelling errors, well, maybe I'll fix those because that's a little different. But even published books have those occasionally. Between my frequent rereading and my proofreader TemporalReverie, I feel pretty confident that very few errors will get in. I think I'll leave any that do get posted, if only for my own endearment towards imperfections.

In other unrelated news, I finally got my hooves on a copy of Lords of the Fallen (2023), and it took a lot of restraint to stick with my deadline and not waste too much time lost in that game. My other passion besides ponies is dark fantasy, but I hazard you can probably get some of that vibe from this story.

Did anyone pick up on the Berserk reference in Chapter 1? The absurdly big shield that dream Cadance had was a play on Guts' sword. In terms of other references, the white dragon's dialogue is full of references to one of my favourite classic fantasy/romance movies... Princess Bride! And the whole lost in the snow thing was a little inspired by the snowy areas of Elden Ring, which I was replaying last year while I was writing that chapter. The black spire is inspired by LOTR of course.

I stuck a number of references in that chapter specifically in the hopes that it would signpost my tastes and communicate some of the themes and inspirations I draw on in my writing. I'd really like to be upfront about what I'm doing so that I can let readers make an informed decision about whether this fic is for them. Broad appeal is not for me.

One thing I might redo is the blurb for this fic... I didn't really have a clear plan or idea of what I was supposed to put in there so I decided to just wing it, which I'm regretting. At some point I'll do some research into the proper way to write a blurb and rewrite it. But that can wait until I'm more used to keeping up this commitment and successfully finishing each chapter before the monthly deadline. Part of the point of this whole exercise is to prove to myself that I can complete something like this. This is not my first fic, but it will be the first fic I complete, and I will keep to the clear goals and scope that I chose at the start of this journey.

Anyway that's what's on my mind lately, I hope that whoever reads this, you're in good health and you have something to be excited about and look forward to, and I hope you'll keep walking alongside me as I follow this through to the end!

See you next time ponies :trollestia: :heart:

Chapter 7: Maidens at the Crossroads

Sparkling sunlight surged through the open bathroom window and glinted off glossy white tiles and bright silver taps. The Princess of the Crystal Empire swept into the room, hacking and spluttering. Eyes streaming, she thrust open the blinds.

The ensuite bathroom was attached to the bedroom Cadance shared with her husband. While he lay dozing sweetly, she began furiously brushing her teeth in the bathroom mirror. In the light of the early morning she could see every exhausted detail of her own face, and as she brushed she frowned at the dark bags under her eyes. The last two nights of sleep had been unusually draining, and she felt muddled and sluggish. It felt almost as though she hadn’t slept at all.

Cadance leant forward suddenly and spat into the sink. Finally, she sighed in relief. The taste of blood was gone.

She’d been thrust awake by the feeling that she was choking on a thick, warm fluid that filled her mouth and throat. But even more distressing was the unmistakable taste of bitter iron that flooded her senses.

Racing over to the bathroom mirror coughing and spluttering, she had seen nothing except her own saliva. If it hadn’t been for the overwhelming taste she could have dismissed it as just a lingering nightmare, or something catching in her throat while she slept. But the sensations were impossible to dismiss.

Even if her other senses told her there was nothing there, even if she could find no trace… Cadance shuddered as she thought of last night. Somehow it had happened. The changeling queen’s ichor had been in her mouth, or at least a mouth she had possessed very recently.

She caught her breath finally, able to calm down now that the excruciating sensation was gone. Even with that small silver lining, the small feeling of vindication that came with this subjective proof, the feeling of another creature’s vital fluids inside her mouth was too much to bear.

Cadance rinsed her mouth one more time just to be sure, then slumped slightly. Leaning forward so that her face was near the running tap, she splashed some of the cold water over her closed eyes and snout. The coolness of the water dripped down her face, and washed away some of her tension with it. She still ached like she’d been pulling a cart all night, or maybe been run over by one, but at least she felt better than when she’d first woken.

Water still clinging to her fur and dripping from her snout, she fumbled blindly until she found a towel. Wiping her face dry with the soft fluffy fibres helped a little too, as did the warmth of the sun on her coat. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she felt a spark of confidence growing in her nonetheless. Things would work out, they always did.

As she pulled the towel back from her face she turned to look in the mirror again, and fell backwards in shock, landing heavily against the bathroom door, rattling it.

Her heart raced, all the fear that had just ebbed out of her came back tenfold.

In the mirror… Had that really been her reflection?

Icy blue compound eyes had stared back at her, framed by a glossy black carapace. Two white, sharp fangs had jutted from a mouth that was wide in fear and surprise. The image stood, clear and unshakeable in her mind.

“You okay in there babe?” Shining Armor’s voice, blurred and half asleep, called out from the bedroom.

“Fine!” Cadance called back hurriedly. “I’m fine, I just… slipped on the bath mat!”

It sounded like an obvious lie to her ears, she knew she’d replied too quickly. Still on the floor where she’d fallen, her breath caught in her throat as she waited for a reply, or worse, the sound of Shining climbing out of bed to check that she was okay. But after half a minute all she was met with was gentle snoring.

Her heart beating loud in her throat and her hooves trembling, Cadance carefully got back to her hooves and peeked up over the lip of the sink at her reflection in the mirror.

An abundance of pink was all she saw. Cloying, saccharine pink. Familiar pink fur, pink and purple mane, messy from sleep, and wide eyes with pink irises.

She stared unblinking at her reflection, daring it to change. But nothing happened, and eventually she slumped back down to the floor, eyes dry and stinging.

Maybe it was finally time to contact her Aunt Luna, she thought. Tonight even, she could send an urgent letter. This was all getting a little too… unreal for her to deal with on her own. As much as she was loath to admit it, she needed help, and who else could she ask but Luna?

At least she probably wouldn’t have to tell anyone else. Who could keep a secret better than the Princess of the Moon, guardian of the dreams of Equestria?

Cadance sighed heavily and pulled herself upright again. It was going to be another long day…

*****

Under the thick duvet of a particular cottage in Ponyville, the shape of a chubby little mare thrashed.

Spitting ancient, vulgar curses, Queen Chrysalis tossed and turned like an eel caught in a net. She just couldn’t get comfortable. No matter how many times she rearranged the sheets, refluffed the pillow, rolled over into another position, nothing worked. Her skin felt hot and prickly and there was a dull ache in her head wherever it lay against the pillow.

What in the world was wrong with her all of a sudden, she wondered. She was habitually a light sleeper, ever since she’d struck out on her own. But normally a great big soft pony bed, especially this most recent one, had her out like a grub in minutes. This was her last night in this rotten town, and she’d rather die by torture than admit it, but this was far and beyond the most comfortable place she’d ever slept.

Chrysalis shuddered. She’d had more than enough occasions in her life to experience the lowest and most woefully, thinly stretched definitions of a place to sleep.

Sighing, she stopped wriggling and lay flat on her back, staring up at the dimly visible ceiling. It was just nerves, surely. This place, not just the bed but this whole life she was borrowing, was comfortable. It was easy. There was so little to worry about when it came to basic survival. For all the things she despised about the pony way, even the most meaningless townspony lived in comfort and safety, and never had to worry where their next meal was coming from.

Chrysalis herself hadn’t even had that security when she was a Queen! Every day she worried if her infiltrators would be able to bring back enough love energy to sustain the hive. Somehow they always managed to scrape by, but it was lean. The ponies had no idea how easy their lives were…

She was just on edge because she was about to give up that security, even though she knew she had to. This was her last night in Ponyville. Already she was sure the neighbours of the mint green pony she was impersonating were concerned. Her act was slipping. It was well past time to leave. At least she had one last night to enjoy this comfort before everything in her life got thrown into limbo.

Chrysalis stared intently at a knot in the timber of the ceiling. She’d get up, wander gently around the house for several minutes, maybe read some dull pony magazine on the couch or have a glass of water. Refresh herself, then climb back into bed and try again.

Scrunching her eyes tight, she tried to will herself to get up. Scraping and clawing at the threadbare remains of her exhausted resolve, until she finally caught it and pulled herself upright. Eyes still shut tight she threw off the blankets and sat up.

A sharp, icy wind blew across her face and the changeling in exile shivered involuntarily. Her eyes shot open at the strange sensation, and she froze.

Darkness. In every direction darkness. The light of the moon barely pierced the shadows, and she realised with a start she was now standing. When had she moved?

Chrysalis turned, sharp snow crunching under hoof as she surveyed the unfamiliar landscape. What little she could see through the pitch black of the night was just more ice and snow. A flat, frozen, windswept wasteland everywhere she looked.

The cold bit into her, and she realised she was in her true form. She was sure she hadn’t transformed out of the soft body of the mint pony…

Panic followed the cold and sunk its teeth into her. She turned erratically, backing up as she did, searching for anything in the dark. Straining, she lit her horn as brightly as she could, but it did nothing to penetrate the gloom, instead reflecting off the fog and snow that whipped around her face and making it even harder to see.

As she felt the icy wind cut right through her a thought struck, piercing deeper than the cold and her fear. Temperatures like this could kill.

Shivering, teeth chattering violently, she stepped backwards in fear. No, no this had to be a dream! But then she remembered the marks left from her last two dreams. No! This couldn’t be how she died! There was still so much left to do. She’d never even lived her own life yet! Everything she’d done, trapped in service to the legacy of her awful-

Her panicked line of thought was cut abruptly short as she backed into something solid.

Chrysalis spun around, and tripped over herself in fright as recognition bit into her.

A colossal red crystal towered over the changeling queen. Staked into the earth, covered in jagged ridges and spikes, a thousand tiny crimson reflections stared back in terror at Chrysalis as she shrunk back from the looming crystal.

As she watched, all the reflections swam and pooled together. Running down to the base of the crystal like droplets of water, then suddenly coalescing and rearing up. An image of herself stared back at her with a sly smile on its lips, brow turned downward in malicious glee. Herself, but taller, stronger. Overflowing with a confidence that hadn't been eroded by losses to ponies. An echo of her great-grandmother.

Before she could flee, the surface of the crystal rippled and wavered. The twisted reflection stepped forward and pressed a hoof against the inside of the unnatural mirror. On the outside, it bent and warped, stretching like taffy as the hoof tested the limits of the boundary.

Then suddenly it was through. The black glossy hoof shot forward and grabbed the cowering changeling from out of the snow at the base of the blood red monolith, and effortlessly pulled her through.

Chrysalis’ scream was cut short as she disappeared into the colossal red crystal, leaving no trace besides a confused mess of hoofprints in the snow, already being erased by the relentless wind.

The wind whistled eerily around the ominous scene as it battered the landscape, and only the moon was left to witness as snow piled high and the red crystal monolith was once again buried.

*****

Cadance awoke, catapulted into consciousness. Involuntarily she sat bolt upright in bed. Her mind was hazy, but her body was tense, as though startled into waking by a thunder crack.

Still feeling that she was several steps behind her body and the instincts that drove it to react, Cadance turned to the window beside her bed to peek through the curtain, seeking a glimpse of the storm outside. It took the princess a few moments of futile, hazy inspection to realise that something was wrong.

Where there ought to be a curtain concealing her bedroom window, there was just… empty space. Reeling, her mind caught up to her body and delivered a key piece of information. She couldn’t hear any rain.

Out of the distant depths of the darkness a voice split the night. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Cadance went rigid as the deafening sound shot through her. The speaker sounded very close, and she realised with a small gasp that she knew the voice. A variety of teenage scoldings rushed to fill the panicked space in her head. But something else was off.

When had she ever heard Celestia sound so violently outraged? She hardly ever raised her voice. The few times she had actually spoken anything remotely like that to Cadance had been out of overwhelming fear for her niece’s safety. Times when Cadance had been dangerously late home, or acted out and gotten herself hurt.

Another voice, sly and oily, crept through the cold, black air. “Exactly what was needed, surely you grasp what this will mean for the future of our species?”

The second speaker almost hissed. Her tone was a disquieting mixture of fear and snide self righteousness. It tugged at Cadance’s memory, pulling her in several directions at once, all of them painful and just out of reach.

Shivering, Cadance fought the impulse to dig for the splinters in her mind and focused her magic into her horn to light the room, jaw dropping at what she saw.

She was back in Canterlot palace. The pale light of her horn reflected off the white walls as she took in her surroundings. It was a perfect recreation of her bedroom as it had been when she first moved to the capital.

Before she could dwell further on her predicament, another outraged cry broke through the night.

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT!”

It was definitely Celestia, and something or someone had pushed her too far.

The Princess of the Crystal Empire threw back the covers and scrambled to her hooves. There was a loud thud, as Cadance fell face first onto the floor in a very direct and blunt introduction to the tangible facts of her current situation. Once again, her body was not her own. Or at least… she realised on closer inspection, not as she knew it today.

Placed perfectly as if designed to bring her crashing down to reality, or whatever approximation she found herself in, was a full length mirror. It was against the wall past her bedside table, tilted down slightly for a small filly in what now felt almost like a cruel joke. Any hope of denial was swept aside as she beheld the image of herself, not quite nine years old. That awful point in her life where suddenly the whole world expected so much of her, and everypony except her had a say in what she was supposed to do and be.

Cadance’s shock at the state she found herself in was interrupted by the sound of that sly, cruel voice. Sounding uncomfortably close, almost like it was right by her ear, it slithered through the gap under her bedroom door.

“What do you know of it, worm? Who are you to speak of what ought and ought not to be? We are both merely moments in service to Her eternal life.”

Again the strange voice tugged at some deeply buried place in Cadance’s memory. As she crept over to the door she wracked her brain, digging for some sort of hint. When Celestia’s voice cracked the night’s sky again she was barely startled, but repetition did nothing to save her from aching in sympathy. The pain in her adoptive aunt’s voice was impossible for her to ignore, fueled by sorrow and boiling over into anger.

“SHE IS DEAD! Why must you desecrate the living in service to a corpse?”

Arriving at the bedroom door Cadance pulled it open as quickly as she dared, cautious not to attract attention to herself, but eager to discover the identity of the unknown speaker. To her dismay, What she found there only raised more questions.

The hallway that her childhood bedroom was attached to was twisted, almost beyond recognition. The refined, regal architecture had been melted, warped and moulded like clay into an uncannily natural tunnel. Where windows ought to open out into the clear sky they were blocked off by an eerie dark grey stone, roughly hewn to fit the round tunnel that the hallway had been transmogrified into. The distorted hallway stretched off to either side of her, curving as it went so that Cadance couldn’t see what lay ahead in either direction.

After a moment of dazed confusion, she snapped back to herself and remembered her goal. The stranger was talking, but Cadance could barely make out what they were saying. She needed to get closer.

“Death cannot stand in the way of Her ambitions. I do only what She commands me. The only pony ever capable of standing in Her way wanes. That fool Celestia has been weak ever since she banished her own sister, but now she reveals just how far she has fallen. The Alicorn of the Sun has named an heir, she sees death on the horizon. The time is nigh for the true Queen of the changelings to return, and take control of Equestria and drag it screaming and bloody into a new age. We exist to serve Her, and She exists to conquer. Your failure was in daring to believe you had any other choice.”

As Cadance crept down the winding tunnel, she heard Celestia’s voice again, distraught.

“I do not care what She commanded you to do! I will not play your games any more Chatelicera! I will not ask again, undo what you have done or suffer the consequences.”

The cruel stranger, who Cadance supposed must be Chatelicera, cackled. “You have no power over me, child. Besides, it is far too late. Perhaps if you had intervened before it had hatched, but now, even I would be powerless to stop this.”

There was a scream of rage, Celestia’s voice again Cadance was sure, and a moment later a hissing, sparking noise, that might have been somepony casting magic. The sounds of the argument reverberated off the tunnel walls, and Cadance turned and hurried towards them. As she drew closer, tripping as she struggled to traverse the warped floor of the twisting tunnel, Cadance heard the cruel stranger again.

“Tantrum all you like maggot, your idiotic ideals of peace, all your dreams and ambitions mean nothing! Did you truly think you were Queen? You are merely a placeholder, unfit to be graced by Her majesty.”

Chatelicera paused to laugh cruelly. “You suffer now because you thought above your station. You were chosen because of what you could do for Her, because you were just strong enough to keep the colony fed. Because for all that you do possess, you are ultimately too weak to change anything. She will return, now it is just a matter of time.”

Cadance could hear that she was close, so so close now. She slowed to a crawl and listened carefully, trying to tell which room the speakers were in.

Chatelicera continued, vindictive glee evident in her voice. “You were chosen because you lack the resolve to do the one and only thing that would prevent Her from returning to claim Her throne. You could kill the vessel and end all of this, but you are predictably a coward. Bound by compassion and empathy, you can’t even bring yourself to kill me.”

The cruel voice of the unseen speaker Chatelicera rose into a ghastly cackle, which rang out, bold in its mockery. But it was cut short by a terrible crack of magic that shook the air, followed immediately by a resounding shriek of pain.

Rushing, throwing caution to the wind as the stakes skyrocketed, Cadance finally found the right door and pressed her face flat against it, desperately peering through the keyhole. Another burst of magic resounded, and a flash of light briefly filled her vision. After it passed, leaving blue spots in her vision, she struggled to put together what she was seeing.

Inside was an unfamiliar bedchamber. At least she thought it must be, it was hard to make out any of the decor besides a vague impression of earthy green darkness. But one of the speakers was clearly visible.

It was Celestia, Cadance was right! She was here, somehow, but her hair and mane were… different, long hanging strands like a willow tree, thrown about chaotically as she cornered the other speaker in the room.

The cackling returned, wavering, before ending in a bout of harsh guttural coughing.

“Magnificent! I see you have untold depths, Chrysanthe. But you are far, far too late child. Does this juvenile act make you feel better? Nothing will change if I die. I have done my part. You cannot kill your own offspring, you cannot undo what I have done. She will return.”

Cadance was finally able to get a good look at the stranger named Chatelicera, and almost recoiled in shock at what she saw.

It was her mother! Her dear mother, the one who had found her abandoned in the woods. But she was long buried, Prismia had seen to that.

Cadance blinked frantically as tears welled in her eyes, trying to dispel thoughts of the past. This was just an illusion she knew, but still she had to see more, she had to try and understand.

A gasp leapt unbidden from her mouth as she saw the face of the dead sorceress. As if summoned by the pain of memory, where Cadance’s adoptive mother had been a moment earlier, Prismia now lay.

She was laughing in the same strange voice Cadance had been following. Prismia’s body, struggling to stay sitting up in the far corner, shuddered as she laughed, blood dripping from her mouth.

The frightened princess bit her tongue to stop herself gasping again as she took in more details of the dreadful scene.

There were holes, seared through the sorceress’ body. Dark blood, nearly black, oozed from the wounds that peppered her body.

Cadance watched, wrapt in grim terror as the figure in Celestia’s form stepped towards the trembling body of the stranger shaped like Prismia. It was all that she could do not to cry out or flee, but whoever this Chatelicera was she had spoken of Celestia naming an heir. Cadance could remember that day clearly, when she had been presented to the whole of the nation, and named a Princess of Equestria.

That had only been very shortly after the real Celestia had adopted her. From what Chatelicera had said, it had only happened very recently from her perspective. It seemed to Cadance that she was being shown something important. A recreation of real events, a ghastly stage play built out of dreams. If so, surely it was an important glimpse into the past. She had to see this through, she had to know what it all meant!

The towering vision of Celestia, Chrysanthe, spoke again, and Cadance had to strain to hear her.

“Know this in your last moments, Mother.” Chrysanthe spat the word, as though the taste of it revolted her. “I will undo everything you strove for in this world. She will stay dead. Our race will not return to the darkness of our past, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

As Chrysanthe, still in Celestia’s voice, spoke, the ruined body of Prismia began again to laugh, harder this time. Blood ran in streams from her mouth and the holes in her body, but still Chatelicera laughed and laughed, spurred on as though by some private joke.

Finally she spoke, a sadistic smile still gripping her face madly. “Oh my poor stupid daughter, you always were overconfident.” Then bright green light grew on her horn as she began to cast a spell.

Try as she might, Cadance could not stop her body from blinking, even at this crucial moment. As she opened her eyes she saw the form of Chatelicera had changed again.

Lit weirdly by the pulsing uncanny magic building on her horn, Prismia’s shape was replaced by an elderly unicorn mare that Cadance didn’t recognise.

A blood red horn curved from an ash grey coat alongside a black mane that billowed like smoke. The unicorn’s face was lit eerily by the green glow of Chatelicera’s magic, within which swum flecks of purple and black. Something inside Cadance squirmed with recollection, but before she could dwell on it, Chrysanthe summoned a shield bubble around herself.

Too late Cadance realised what was happening. A moment later everything went white, and she felt herself scream and tumble backwards.

The explosion rocked against the door, throwing it off its hinges. It flew free, narrowly missing crushing Cadance as it shattered against the wall.

Shaken, she stayed where she had been thrown, curled up in a ball against the wall. As silence lay on the world around her, she poked her head up to investigate.

Clumsily Cadance found her hooves and stood. The room she’d been spying on was in complete disarray. Furniture was smashed against the walls, blown into unrecognisable shrapnel by the suicidal blast of Chatelicera.

Standing in the doorway, she scanned the wreck of the room, searching for signs of life. There was a pained noise as some of the debris began to shift slowly. Cadance ran forward. Whatever this was, reality, illusion, or somewhere in between, she had to try and help.

With all the strength her body had, Cadance pushed against a heavy piece of broken timber that lay on top of the pile of debris. After several long seconds of straining, it finally shifted, and she set about clearing the rest of the rubble to free the creature trapped beneath.

Her hooves found something warm, and she pulled them back to see. Bright red shone in the darkness of the destroyed bedchamber, dripping down Cadance’s hooves as she stifled her shock.

From the mess of destroyed furniture and crumbing stone, a magenta eye with a familiar vertical pupil stared up at her. Black carapace shuddered as the tall, once elegant changeling, Queen Chrysanthe, no longer hidden by the illusion of Celestia, struggled to breath.

Cadance stared back, paralysed.

*****

Chrysalis blinked up at the inky blackness where a moment ago someone, or something, had pulled her into the blood red crystal monolith. Once she was inside, the echo had vanished like smoke on the breeze. The exiled changeling queen lay where she had fallen, too shocked to move.

Above her, black swirled on oily black. She watched as patterns moved in the air above her, barely perceptible wisps of shadow that roiled and danced, turning over each other as they filled her vision.

She sat up and looked around. It was eerie, she thought, she was in pitch darkness, with no hint of light in any direction, but somehow she could still see. Everywhere she looked was a void, but she could see depth and movement as the black clouds twisted on a black sky, and soft black sand like ash shifted under her hooves.

Chrysalis looked down at her own body. She could feel herself, hooves sinking into the cool sand, but see nothing until she moved. She shifted uneasily, trying to delineate herself from the darkness.

She watched sand trickle down the gentle slope from where she disturbed it, and for the first time noticed the border between the ground where she lay, and the swirling void. She was on an island, and a tiny one at that, barely ten paces from one side to the other. A floating chunk of darkness in a whirling storm of shadow, whatever sense that made.

More grains of sand slipped into the yawning abyss as Chrysalis backed up towards the centre of the island, eager not to join them in their journey into the vast maw below. The changeling was nearly startled into an early moult as her hindquarters bumped into something cold and hard. She whipped her head around, eyes wide in bewilderment and fear.

In the centre of the tiny island, a harsh stroke of bright red split the darkness, creating violent contrast. It was a twin to the red crystal she had been dragged unwillingly into. The copy, or perhaps one and the same, stood jutting like a bloody dagger out of the small dark oasis.

The crystal towered over her, larger than life. Chrysalis stood cautiously and turned towards it, watching her reflection with a wary eye. The mirror image moved in sync with her and matched her gaze, but graciously that was all that it did. Nevertheless, she watched carefully, just in case it felt like moving on its own again. Staring deeper into the bright red depths, she searched for some sort of clue. Chrysalis was just about to give up and turn back to study the darkness when something caught her attention.

Her reflection rippled and dissolved in the surface of the crystal, like a pebble thrown into a pond. As the movement settled, she found her reflection replaced by somepony she couldn’t help but recognise.

It took Chrysalis several moments to process what she was seeing. The image was glassy and distorted, as though seen through a poorly made window, or on the surface of a pond. It felt as though what she was being shown was just out of reach, as though she could smash the surface of the crystal and reach in.

But even through the distortion, through time or distance Chrysalis could never forget that face.

The pink locks of Princess Cadance, unusually unkempt, framed a face that looked tired beyond belief, stained with grime and tears. An ache pooled in Chrysalis’ chest as understanding and memory coalesced. The wedding. Where it had all gone wrong. The image moved, as Cadance looked up from her reflection in the floor, showing a view of the rest of the cavern she was trapped in. Some small fragment of light filtered down into the cave from somewhere above, just enough to see the rest of the space, sealed deep below Canterlot Palace.

In the abyss of black and red, the shades of hazy blue and purple that glittered in the image of the crystal cavern nearly overwhelmed Chrysalis’ senses.

As she fought back the pain in her chest and the guilt that clawed at her heart, Chrysalis heard a voice. Barely a whisper, the changeling drew closer to the statue. The image loomed larger than life, and she held her breath to hear.

“Please. Somepony save me. Anypony. Please don’t let me die down here. Please let someone find me.”

Chrysalis felt something sharp in her throat, and a prickling in the corners of her eyes. She swallowed hard. She wouldn’t let them get to her. This was years ago. Who cares if Cadance suffered for a day or two, or three or four. She, Queen Chrysalis, was the one who had truly suffered, lost her kingdom, her meaning. The feelings of this snivelling pony meant nothing.

As Chrysalis gird herself in rusted, crumbling armour, the whispering voice went on and on and on. The beloathed pony princess praying to whoever could hear, sharing fear and anguish earnestly out of the desperate hope that somepony would come and save her. It came gushing out of her as she sat huddled in a corner of the cave, with nothing to do but wait for rescue, and hope that she wasn’t left to die alone and abandoned.

Just as Chrysalis felt her heart might split in two, the scene faded out, leaving only the blank red of the crystal monolith.

The stray changeling stumbled back as she was released, and half collapsed half sat in the black sand of the island. Tears trickled down her face, in spite of what she thought she knew.

Before she could recover, another large facet on the red crystal lit up with an image. It was to one side, not quite in view. Chrysalis lingered frozen for a few aching seconds before scrambling to her hooves and rushing over to watch.

On rough stone cobbles lay a body. A thin, elderly pony, unmoving. Its mouth hung open where a look of shock had died moments earlier. Eye’s stared unseeing, as bright red blood pooled around the skull in a perverse halo.

Chrysalis felt herself pulled forwards, caught in the tow of the gravity of the scene. The perspective shot up, revealing a crowd of onlookers.

“No… I didn’t mean to! It was an accident…”

Captivated, Chrysalis drew closer to the glowing facet of the crystal. She found herself mouthing the words just after they were spoken, becoming an echo of a memory.

The view shot back down towards the ground, skimming past the body of the earth pony sorceress and onto another pair of elderly ponies laying far too still a short distance away.

The small voice of a very young Cadance cracked as she continued. “She… she killed them… I had to stop her.”

Without a final look into the faces of the crowd, Cadance took off. Galloping at first, then stumbling for a moment as she awkwardly took flight. Seconds later she was high above the forest, leaving her home far behind.

The vision on the crystal grew blurry and the silence of the small dark island was flooded with the gut wrenching sound of a small filly sobbing as she fled from everything she ever knew.

The facet dimmed, and Chrysalis’ heart grew leaden as two more lit up to replace it, then even more a moment later.

Chrysalis found more scenes that she either recognised, or could piece together from what she knew. Cadance’s life, cut open and laid bare before her. As the stray changeling watched, yet more facets lit with the memories of the beloathed pony princess.

Here was the view out over a balcony in Canterlot Palace, a sweeping, dizzying scene of thousands of ponies here to see the coronation of their new princess. There, a night spent cold and alone in the forest under the waterfall. Much of it was mundane, but a great deal featured one or another supernatural threat. Several times Chrysalis glimpsed herself, and that heavy ache entrenched itself deeper in her stomach.

But even more often than she saw her own impact, Chrysalis saw traces of another dark figure. A particularly heinous smear on the history of the Crystal Empire. The King of Monsters himself…

Sombra.

Dotted all over the crystal memoryscape were traces of the dark tyrant that had enslaved the Crystal Empire. Had it not been for Cadance, the thousands of ponies that she now cared for and watched over would have been turned into an army. Enchanted and empowered by the shadows that Sombra commanded, they would have swept across Equestria like a plague of locusts.

That same plague would have grown and grown, and forced Chrysalis to decide between uprooting her hive from their ancestral home to flee, or standing to fight against the tide. To side with the ponies against the darkness.

In many ways Chrysalis knew she was much like the now dead King Sombra. But in just as many ways… she was different. She lived and breathed for the sake of her hive. Everything she did was for them. In that way, she mused uncomfortably, was she not just like the princesses?

The thought sat with her as she watched the myriad of memories play out in front of her. She felt herself being slowly crushed under the torrent, but she knew she couldn’t tear herself away. There was so much here that she knew her own mind couldn’t have fabricated. There was so much mind shattering detail.

As if to prove her point, Chrysalis was pulled from her introspection as a nearby facet lit up with a scene that Chrysalis couldn’t place, couldn’t even guess at.

A dormitory… no, a hospital bed maybe. A lavender unicorn filly sitting with a grey unicorn colt as he lay there, barely conscious, twisting under the covers as though wracked with pain. Both unicorns were silently sobbing, and the filly reached out and took the hoof of the grey colt as a tear slid down her face. Some sort of festival was visible in the corner, out the open window.

Before Chrysalis could take in any more details of the scene, the perspective shifted suddenly. It was hard to distinguish any particular sound among the quiet cacophony of a hundred painful memories, but she could almost swear she heard a small, unfamiliar voice whisper “I can’t take this anymore…” as the view suddenly flew out the window and soared into the open sky. The festival fell away below, and Chrysalis had just enough time to recognise the blue stone spire at the centre of the Crystal Empire, before the memory turned towards the horizon.

The frozen expanse of the far north yawned ahead of the flyer as the crystal facet faded to darkness.

Chrysalis sat very still, head spinning as her gaze lingered on the empty panel. She slid slowly to the floor, and hid her head in her hooves. This was all too much, what was she supposed to do with any of it?

Her queasy reverie was broken by a sudden sharp sound from somewhere behind her. Chrysalis pulled herself away and peered apprehensively into the darkness from where the clashing sound had seemingly sprung out of the thick shadows that choked the air.

In the grimness of her current predicament it was an alien sound. The chaotic tinkling bells of someone giggling uncontrollably, broken up by the occasional snort. It was somehow… deeply repulsive to Chrysalis’ senses, like an intrusion into a sacred space. She reeled in shock and disgust, feeling once again like she was out of her depth. A blind cave salamander in the sun.

As she stared, there was a distant, brief flash of light. Dizzyingly white on the ink black horizon, leaving two red dots in its wake that quickly faded to black. Then the laughter was gone, as abruptly as it had started.

Behind her, one by one the images on the red crystal faded to dark red, and after them the light in the monolith, the bright red lifeblood that had struck the shadowy sky with its contrast, ebbed, wasting away into barely a suggestion.

Chrysalis stared up at the space where the laughter had come from. An echo of the bright flash danced in her vision, but as she scrutinised the sky she realised it was closing in and coming down to meet her. Chrysalis felt the encroaching black clouds lapping at her hooves as they swarmed her tiny oasis. The lost changeling had just enough time to scream, before the abyss rose up and swallowed her completely.

*****

Cadance hung there, paralysed, staring into the eyes of the unfamiliar changeling at her hooves.

The strange changeling’s flowing locks of rose pink hair shimmered as she moved, disturbed by the jerky movement of the changeling’s body as it was wracked by coughing.

The stranger turned her face towards Cadance, and in fear the princess stepped back. A moment later she saw the room around her. It had changed as much, maybe more even, than the changeling surely dying before her.

It was a cave, smooth stone walls cut from dark grey, almost black stone. The jumble of furniture and other debris had taken on a more natural form… Moss, stone, and homely hoofwoven textiles. Blue shattered crystals glowed weakly. Was this where Chrysalis…?

Before the thought could finish, the regal changeling spoke. Her voice was weak, but the tone was strangely familiar. She wasn’t Celestia, but Cadance glimpsed in her voice a similar kindness.

“Do not fear little one. It will be alright, but first I need your help. Go quickly, fetch the Wayward Witch, she has not left our home yet. She is my last… my… hope…”

The voice gradually trailed off as Chrysanthe faded into unconsciousness. Cadance shook off the shock that had rooted her to the spot, turned and galloped out of the door as fast as she could.

As quickly as she had taken flight, she realised she had no idea where she was going. She stared down one corridor, feeling her heart sink as she trembled with nervous energy. It had sounded like this Wayward Witch was visiting, so perhaps she would be in a guest bedroom or some like, perhaps in the direction Cadance had come from?

In the gloom of the night, with the illusion stripped back, the nearly dark tunnel that extended ahead of her looked completely unfamiliar with its green-black stone and pale blue crystal glowing to gently light the path. Maybe she’d come from the other way, she thought shakily.

Cadance turned to run down the other corridor, and nearly tripped over her own hooves to stop herself colliding with another tall stranger.

A dull, dark brass carapace clad four long legs. In a distant way, Cadance was shocked as she noticed they lacked the odd, irregular holes that were so recognisably typical of changelings, at least as she knew them.

Before she could take in the rest of the newcomer, the little pink princess was lifted unceremoniously off her hooves, dragged by golden magic, floating into the air in front of the face of the stranger.

Rich amber eyes pinned Cadance in place and scrutinised her. They too were split by the iconic vertical slit pupil that seemed to be synonymous with changeling royalty.

The stranger spoke, and Cadance was struck as she recognised the voice almost immediately.

“Typical behaviour for a Princess of Equestria…” The voice dripped venom, and Cadance thought she caught a hint of shame before Chrysalis went on. “Always sticking your nose where it isn’t wanted. Are you satisfied, now that the tragedy of my upbringing is laid bare? My grandmother dead before my eyes, my mother’s blood on my own hooves as I ran to find that abominable stray that was the only hope of saving her.”

“It seems that now that I’ve lost my throne I’ve lost my right to privacy too. Oh no, I can’t have secrets if I’m to be saved. Another lost lamb to be torn apart and drawn into the flock, isn’t that right?” Chrysalis hissed. Cadance could feel the vitriol in growing as Chrysalis spoke, so bright now she felt it might burn her.

She struggled to speak, “What? No! That’s not what I-” But Chrysalis deftly cut her off any chance of explanation.

“Oh of course not. You thought you could open me up, make me feel like we were the same by showing me your past. As if I’m stupid enough to fall for the elaborate tapestry of lies you created for me. You thought if you gave me something in return, made me feel like I wasn’t alone, you could reach into my head and steal whatever you wanted!”

Chrysalis, gleaming gold and brass wherever she was usually green, was almost shouting now.

“WELL I AM NOT YOUR TOY TO DO WITH AS YOU PLEASE.” The exiled queen howled. The pain in her voice was unmistakable, and Cadance could see tears in the corner of those great gilt eyes.

The fight seemed to fade from her all of a sudden, as though forced out of her body with the last few words.

In a quiet, nearly pleading voice, Chrysalis continued. “You know, for a while I actually believed we might be the same. Part of me wanted to try to understand you, wanted you to understand me. If you had just asked, I might have told you. But now… I know there’s no hope left for me.”

Cadance felt something inside her snap. “No! Please I promise, I swear I didn’t do any of this. I promise, I’m not your enemy, I don’t want to hurt you! On my heart, on my life! I never-” She pleaded fervently. Panic stripped away any concern for dignity as she desperately tried to repair the misunderstanding. She couldn’t let whatever was growing between them fall apart.

“On your LIFE?” Chrysalis snapped, cutting Cadance off again. “On your life…? On your perfect, pink, pony princess wonderland? On everything you have that I have had TAKEN from me by YOUR kind? You swear?” The towering golden changeling stared intently at the beloathed princess floating in her glowing grasp.

Ice formed in Cadance’s throat as she tried to swallow. She stammered, “W-whatever is happening to us, I know that if we don’t work together we don’t have any chance. Whatever happened in the past, whatever we were and whatever made us, we’re here together for a reason, and I know in my heart that we need each other if we want to have any hope of getting out of this mess.”

Cadance struggled not to wilt under Chrysalis’ intense glare as she continued. “If I must, to regain the trust growing between us, I will stake my life on my word. If you really, truly think that I’m here with you because I mean you harm, then do what you must.” With the last few words, Cadance fought back her fear and met the changeling queen’s gaze with all the adamant sincerity and genuine earnest belief that she could find within herself. “I put my life in your hooves.”

For several long minutes, the two lost creatures stared intently into each other’s eyes, each hardly daring to blink, lest it break the spell.

Finally Chrysalis broke away, her golden gaze turning down to her side as she lowered Cadance to the floor.

“F-fine,” she spluttered. “You needn’t go so far.”

Cadance thought she glimpsed a blush lighting up the cheeks of the changeling as she turned away even further.

“I still don’t know that I should trust you… but I can try, for now.” She finished quietly.

Relief washed over Cadance, but was soon replaced with urgency as she remembered the crisis from a moment ago, and turned back to the room where Chrysanthe and Chatelicera had fought, only to find it gone, and the tunnel stretching unnaturally far, far into the distance.

All the colour had been drained out of the scene, and she couldn’t hear the laboured breathing of Chrysalis’ injured mother. The gentle noises of hundreds of distant sleeping changelings were gone too, replaced by a deathly shroud of silence.

Cadance trotted quickly over to Chrysalis’ side as fright took her, and wrapped one hoof around the towering changeling. “What’s happened? What do we do?” She whispered, as she hid behind the front leg of her ostensible nemesis.

Chrysalis was taken aback for a moment, staring down in disbelief at the soft pink thing clinging to her leg.

“I’m not sure.” She said, letting her defences crumble in the wake of Cadance placing her life on the line for her sake. For Chrysalis of all creatures, who more than once tried to destroy all that the beloathed little pony held dear. “I supposed we should look for some way to wake up, or to move the dream… forward.”

The silence stretched out to smother them. The hallways, frozen and emptied of life, now seemed so much more threatening.

Just as Chrysalis felt that the stillness was going to swallow her up and crush her, there was a bright flash of blue light, and the unmistakable sound of magic.

The two creatures turned together towards the source of the noise, and both gaped in shock at what greeted them.

Wreathed in midnight, the stars and night sky flowing from her as she stood, ironshod in confidence. As if there could ever be any doubt of who she was, a stark, bold icon of the moon shone proudly on her flank, neatly matching the tiara cast in deep blue that sat on her brow.

Princess Luna, Steward of the Moon and Guardian of Dreams regarded the odd pair of creatures with a cool and calculating eye as they stood before her.

Before either of them could find their tongues, Luna spoke, her tone dire.

“Thou must come with me at once. Make haste, for thy very lives depend upon it.”

Author's Note

Hi yall, I'll (try) keep this brief, it's 6 minutes to midnight and I should sleep soon.

Chapter 7 is finally done, I haven't actually checked how far behind my last self imposed deadline I am, but the important thing is that the chapter is complete.

The thing about health is that if you don't slow down and rest, or address issues, they will rise up and force you to. I'm okay, don't worry. Just long term chronic things rearing up, then a month or two of absolute chaos intruding into my life and throwing my plans to and fro.

Things have settled down now I think. I'm happy to be writing regularly again. I think I learnt something about making mistakes and putting too much pressure on myself. Perfectionism leads to inaction.

I'm proud of this chapter, it's longer and more chaotic than I planned for it to be, but that matches the conditions that it was written in. It's also another case where I had planned for a particular sequence of events to fit into one chapter, only to have to split those across two chapters, which has the pleasant benefit of meaning that the next 5000 or so words will be very straightforward.

There's a lot of little clues and references in this chapter, it's hard to gauge how obvious or subtle anything is, but I hope that as you read you'll still be able to enjoy the feeling of piecing together a mystery. I think this chapter will raise at least as many questions as it answers.

The dialogue was really fun to write, and I got to have a lot of fun with describing characters. The new characters introduced in this chapter are some of the culmination of ideas I've been thinking about for two or three years now, I've always loved thinking about changelings and exploring royal and social dynamics. It's one of my favourite topics in fanart and fanfiction, and one of the main motivators for writing this fic. The other being to explore the under-developed depths of certain characters. After all, fiendship is magic.

It's late and I'm getting really drowsy. I know that there were other things I wanted to talk about here, but they've all slipped my mind. In the name of getting this posted I'll end things here. (So much for brief! Hello 12:37am.)

Thanks for reading, see yall again soon. :trollestia: :heart:

PS: I promise the next chapter won't be such a long wait away!

Vivat Rex, Vivat Regina!

Chapter 9: Ruins, Revel in Reveal and Royalty

Sudden darkness blotted out everything as the light faltered, flickered, and failed. The change brought by the light going out was the first noteworthy thing in what felt to Cadance like an otherwise indiscernible grey eternity of simply walking wearily down the spiral stairs.

So taxed was Luna by the effort of maintaining the spell of silence, that she was forced to dispel the light she cast from her horn in order to keep her focus from slipping. Yet without being asked, and without a word spoken herself, Chrysalis had taken over the duty of lighting their way. Cadance had lost sense of how long they’d been travelling or how far down they’d made it. Their pace through the darkness was steady, but it had taken its toll by the time they finally reached the bottom.

Trudging forward automatically, lost in thoughts of home, Cadance nearly ran right into Chrysalis when she stopped at the bottom. The changeling stepped aside, and the three creatures gathered at the door which alleged to hold beyond it the final trial of the night. Hope flickered in the storm winds, but stayed alight, despite everything.

The strain was evident in her voice as Luna spoke. “Morphia lies asleep just ahead. Keep thy wits sharp, and do not give up hope. Whatever it may feel, it has been mere minutes since we entered this dream. Time in the unconscious mind is twisted every which way. Stay close by my side and we will end this.”

The slightest whisper of doubt drifted through Cadance’s thoughts, but they’d come this far. It was much too late to back out now. Her only option was to have faith.

Neither dreamer spoke or moved as Luna turned the ancient brass knob, green with age, and pushed open the heavy wooden door. Cadance held her breath, and felt her whole body tense with anticipation. What kind of creature could control dreams like this? What gave this ‘Queen Morphia’ power to rival that of the Princess of the Moon, and what did we do to draw her ire?

As Cadance’s head spun with the questions swirling around it, she got her first glimpse of what lay ahead. Following after her two companions, she stepped carefully through into the room beyond.

Her first impression was of serenity. Cadance’s eye was drawn immediately far up to movement near the ceiling. Stalactites hung there, dozens of them, strung with flower-laden vines like fairy lights. Each flower, white with wide petals and yellow cone-like stamen, was in full bloom, with no apparent concern for the time or lack of sunlight.

“Magnolias… how dare she…” Cadance barely caught the trailing whisper from Chrysalis as they both stood awestruck.

Among the hanging garden, countless fireflies flitted to and fro, filling the room below with the soft light from their ballroom as they danced together in an endless waltz.

Their gentle glow glinted here and there as it fell upon the desert below. Above Cadance stretched an enormous dune. Rather than grains of sand, it was made from an uncountable hoard of… well, this and that. Odds and ends, trinkets. She wasn’t sure how else to categorise the stupefying collection of objects that stretched before her.

As much of it was treasure as was trash, but none of it seemed well cared for. A rotting teddy bear considered Cadance with one baleful eye as she took it all in. She watched a glittering necklace of pearls slide down the dune and catch on the outstretched arm of a broken lyre. As Luna and Chrysalis picked their way carefully up the mountain of keepsakes, a cascade of baubles and knick-knacks slid down around them.

Shaking off a butterfly net that she’d caught her hoof in, Cadance hurried up the dune after her companions. Reaching the top, she saw sweat dripping down Luna’s furrowed brow as the lunar princess scouted across the mounds. The cavern seemed to go on forever, endless hills of forgotten junk. Here and there stacks of bookshelves, chests, and other furniture stuck out of a dune like palm trees around an oasis, or monuments celebrating an inscrutable history.

Everywhere overhead hung the haze of flowers, pollen, and fireflies, with fragments mirrored in the sentimental debris below.

Clambering up onto a wardrobe that seemed sturdy enough, Cadance cast about, searching for… something. She wasn’t sure what, but there had to be some sort of clue she could spot. Even if it was fruitless, she thought, it was better than standing about waiting to be led. Just as she finished forming that thought, something caught her eye.

Red curtains. Hung about something large and square. A bed she realised, a four poster. The kind of old musty thing you could find trying to decay privately in some dusty corner of Canterlot castle, or her own castle for that matter. When it was new, it could be the spitting image of the one she used to fantasise about as a filly. Before bleak, bright, shiny reality crushed innocent dreams of grandeur.

“Look!” she hissed to Chrysalis and Luna, gesturing with her hoof and trying not to fall from her perch on the wardrobe. “You said that this Morphia was asleep, surely a self proclaimed queen would want a grandiose place to sleep, what about that?”

“‘Tis surely our destination.” Whispered Luna, sounding out of breath. “I doubt time has dulled her ego like it has her treasures.”

Chrysalis scoffed quietly, dripping disdain.

“Are you fit to fly despite the change in form?” Luna asked the two dreamers, dropping her regal canterlot tone.

Cadance was caught off guard momentarily by her aunt abandoning the archaic mode of speech that she was known for, and hesitated before replying. “I think so.” Flapping the translucent, filmy insect wings of her dream form, she continued rhetorically, “How much harder could it be?”

Chrysalis sneered, though it seemed half hearted to Cadance, and said, “Don’t be too sure princess… It takes months of practice for my changelings to learn to fly with feathered wings, the method is completely different. How could you possibly know how to fly after spending a few hours in a changeling body?”

But Cadance could feel unfamiliar instincts telling her what to do as she reached out. Without speaking, she concentrated and listened to her body. Her dream body, she corrected herself mentally.

Cadance rose delicately from her perch on the rotting wardrobe. Hovering almost effortlessly, she smiled down at Chrysalis, proud of herself. It felt as natural as flying had always felt, even all the way back when she was just a lone pegasus filly in a village of earth ponies.

“How are you doing that?” Chrysalis snarled. “There’s no way a pony could possibly adapt that quickly.”

“I don’t know, I just… listened to my body, it seemed to know what to do.” Cadance shrugged.

“Preposterous…” Chrysalis grumbled. “It’s the dream, it’s letting you cheat.”

Without leaving room for anycreature to reply, the disgruntled changeling spread her feathered wings, and took off in the direction of the distant four poster bed. Luna flicked Cadance a nervous glance, before taking flight herself. For all her display of frustration, Chrysalis waited only a little way ahead, and the three flew together in agitated silence towards their goal.

Cadance’s heart rose in her throat as they flew. Anticipation pushed her to think of all the ways this could go wrong, steadily feeding her dread. The aching, throbbing fear in her head was left to run wild in the silence, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t sound vapid. Not that she dared to speak, even to cope with how she felt, it simply wasn’t safe. Luna looked as though she could lose her focus at any moment, and Cadance couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for distracting her and ruining things if it came to that. It wasn’t just her neck on the line.

In no time at all the trio arrived at the crest of the dune upon which the once grand, timeworn four poster bed was perched. Cobwebs clung to the ruby red velvet, which somehow still held its sheen despite what looked like aeons of dust.

Luna landed first, managing to keep her balance despite the unstable collection that made up the junkpile. Chrysalis was right behind her. Neither were paying Cadance any heed as she approached. She took her time landing, wary of the potential cascade of trash that could be dislodged if she put her weight in the wrong place.

Her insectoid wings flickered, moving so fast they couldn’t be followed by the pony eye. Cadance thanked her lucky stars that some part of this ordeal was proving useful, she could never have hovered so delicately with her pegasus wings. Testing an upside down bathtub with gilt clawed feet, it seemed stable enough, and she landed, relieved to have finally made it. A short walk, a few more steps, and she could simply watch and wait. Luna would handle the rest, whatever it was that needed doing. It was too late to ask, and at this point, short of murder she felt she would condone practically anything to escape. Each dream seemed to take more out of her, and she felt as though she hadn’t slept in days. But it was nearly over.

Cautiously inching her way up to where the others were waiting, Cadance felt relief spring inside her. She knew it was too soon, that old adage about counting chickens before they hatch always rang true, but the idea of just… moving on from all this confusion and pain made her want to giggle and frolic like a foal.

As she caught up, she turned her attention from where she put her hooves to Luna. While Cadance had been occupied navigating the treacherous terrain of the dune, Luna had apparently drawn open the curtains of the bed, revealing what lay within.

Peering past the tall forms of the two alicorns, Cadance was only able to catch glimpses of whoever or whatever lay inside. Here a delicate white trunk, like a baby elephant, there a leg like an enormous pallid toad, and… something that might have been a crocodile’s tail.

After all this trouble, after everything she’d been through, the curiosity was too great. Cadance felt herself fall prey to it, too tired, wired, and excited to fight it wholeheartedly. She told herself it was too late for anything to go wrong, stretched to her full height and fought to get a clear look at the creature inside the canopy.

It still wasn’t quite enough to satisfy her. A lingering image of furry forelegs ending in clawed paws taunted her. She had to see more, she couldn’t bear it. There might not be another chance!

With that last thought leading her, Cadance buzzed her wings and placed a hoof on Chrysalis’ back to steady herself as she leant forwards over and between her companions.

For one glorious moment she had a perfect view of Morphia, self proclaimed Queen of Dreams.

Then it all came crashing down.

Chrysalis, startled by the unexpected contact from behind, nearly jumped out of her skin. The changeling half leapt, half spun, reacting automatically to some unknown threat, and beneath her the dune shifted ever so slightly. Her hooves slid on the debris, and acting on instinct, she reached out for the nearest thing to support herself with.

There was no sound as Chrysalis fell against the corner of the four poster bed. For a moment it seemed like it would support her weight, and then the trinkets underhoof betrayed her and she fell again. In spite of the enormous, carved wooden bulk of the bed, the dune did its duty, and the four poster began to slide.

Like a snowball rolling down a hill, the bed moved ponderously slow at first. Cadance felt her blood turn to ice, and clutched at the wooden bedframe with Luna. Chrysalis tried to right herself, tried to take her weight off the bed, but despite all their combined efforts it was too late. The four poster accelerated down the enormous dune.

“Fool!” Luna spat, glaring at Chrysalis as the changeling struggled to her hooves.

The universe held its breath as the bed raced to explode into splinters at the bottom. Time seemed to move like a glacier as Cadance watched. There was nothing else she could do.

At the last second, right before the inevitable eruption of shattered wood and torn velvet. Right before Morphia met some grisly fate, crushed in the wreckage at the bottom or impaled by broken timber. Right as Cadance felt she might die right then and there from shame and tension. Everything froze.

The showers of trinkets flowing down the dune after the bed hung suspended, so too did the thousands of soft white fireflies above.

A thundercrack split the air, and Cadance felt her stomach cartwheel as the world around her was rent asunder. For a fraction of a second everything in sight exploded into white light and the next fraction the dark void flooded in. Then the world reappeared, and somehow she was at the bottom of the dune. Cadance saw Luna and Chrysalis beside her, piled on top of each other, thrown there haphazardly like abandoned dolls.

Glancing up, she saw the four poster back on its perch at the top of the dune. A second later the curtains blew back as though a great gale was surging from within, and a harsh cackle echoed out over the dunes.

“Crude! Especially for you, Luna!” Morphia sneered. “You got this close and that was your best plan? Do they not let you handle knives after that whole ‘betraying everypony who ever loved you’ debacle?”

There was a telltale fizz of magic, and a moment later the creature Cadance had seen in the four poster appeared before them. Morphia.

The mismatched Queen looked down at her soon to be victims with a sultry smirk.

“For pity’s sake, why not pierce me through with that icepick of a horn and be done with it. Did a thousand years reduce your iron will to rust? What happened to the monster who once upon a time would hunt me til we were both bloody?”

The words came out almost in a singsong, as much a lullaby as a cryptic stab at Luna’s past.

Two ruby red eyes looked down at the trio, bemused, framed by a face very like that of an elephant. Her coat was white like sun bleached bone, and her body was… Cadance couldn’t think of it as anything other than a mess. Chaos even.

The front half of her body was almost like a ponies, but the legs were short and stumpy, ending in paws with long curved claws. Short, soft white fur covered everything from her waist up. Her broad ears twitched, betraying her cool demeanour. From her forehead jutted a horn like that of a unicorn, though rather than ending in a point, a large red crystal cut like a polished diamond was embedded in the tip.

The lower half of her body was… nearly amphibian. Pale white and ever so slightly pink toad’s legs hung awkwardly as she hovered, held aloft by her own magic. Her trunk was longer than her body, and her tail matched it, albino scales covering the long crocodilian bulk as it flicked angrily below her.

“You had me darling.” As Morphia spoke, the fury in her eyes shone through and pinned Luna in place. “Just like a thousand years ago when you sealed me away. But clearly one of us weathered the millennium better than the other.”

“Wait!” Cadance heard herself call out. “You’ve got it all wrong! We weren’t trying to kill you!”

Cadance saw Morphia glance down at her, faint surprise in her eyes, then the queen of dreams turned her piercing focus back to Luna.

In the singsong voice that one might use to talk to a foal, Morphia said, “Not now sweetheart, the grownups are talking,” and the red glow of her horn intensified. With the tip of her trunk she rapidly traced a trail of glowing red lines in the air, forming an intricate sigil. Completed, the sigil flashed once and then vanished, and Cadance felt an odd sensation flow across her face.

She clutched at her snout, realising there was only smooth skin where her lips ought to be. Panic set in immediately as she tried to scream and found that she couldn’t. The sound was muffled into almost nothing as she scraped frantically at the newly sealed skin on her face.

Turning back to Luna, Morphia sneered again, though it seemed halfhearted. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself Moonie dear?”

Luna glanced sympathetically at Cadance, then glowered up at the queen. Her armour clearly weighed on her, and she looked small and tired despite the grand and imposing design. Speaking through clearly forced calmness she said, “Cadance speaks the truth, we made no attempt on thy life. For all we have in common you made it clear a thousand years ago that neither compromise nor communication were possible. While you are free, Equestria cannot sleep safely. Thus I am forced to seal you away. History repeats itself.” She finished quietly.

Cadance was barely able to take all this in as she concentrated on slowing her breathing. She was vaguely aware of Chrysalis beside her demanding that she hold still. Squeezing her eyes closed, she shut out the world around her. Prodding at her lips with her magic, she thought she could feel the edges of the spell that had been cast on her. Then she found it, a thread of magic. It screamed painful red thorns into her mind when she touched it, and try as she might she couldn’t undo it or pull it loose. Panic surged again and she fought to swallow it down. This was a dream, this was just a dream. Morphia wasn’t playing by real world rules, surely she didn’t have to either, right?

She could sidestep the spell, find a loophole. If it was a dream, she could be anything and more importantly, do anything. Cadance concentrated as hard as she could on escaping the spell. It looked and felt like her lips had been melted, sealed shut. But that was just a trick played on her senses. Her lips were being held shut physically, so if she just… became intangible for a moment she could…

There was a sensation like falling, weightlessness. Cadance felt her body drift and flow like smoke, and a moment later she was gulping in air and staggering to her hooves. She realised she’d drifted a little distance away from Chrysalis and Luna, who were now staring at her wide eyed.

“My my, that one is full of surprises isn’t she?” Morphia said, bemused. There was a knowing tone in the strange creature’s voice that made Cadance’s skin crawl.

Her skin. Cadance glanced down at herself to find that she really was herself. Familiar pink fur, she’d never felt so relieved to see that colour. Not that she hated it, it just never exactly felt… right. She shook away the thought and turned back to Morphia, glaring intently.

“You won’t win this Morphia! You can’t control us, and you can’t kill us. We know your tricks and now we know your weakness, between the three of us we can handle anything you throw at us!” Cadance shouted up at the odd little creature. She knew it sounded foolhardy and shallow, she knew Morphia could see through her forced confidence. What mattered was that she stood up for herself, she was sure. She had to make it clear she wasn’t going to be easy prey. She had to fight.

As if reading Cadance’s mind, for the umpteenth time that evening Chrysalis did her best to skewer somecreature with her magic. The predictable toxic green bolt fizzled into nothing as it made contact with the magical aura Morphia shielded herself with, and Cadance felt a little pang of disappointment.

“You should listen to the pony. Whatever you are, a predator like yourself must know how dangerous cornered prey can be.” Chrysalis stood at her full height, at a glance Cadance could feel the genuine confidence radiating off her. “Even a pony can kill if sufficiently pushed, but I am not a pony. You’ve seen into my mind, you know what I am capable of. Let that temper your decision.”

For the first time since they were drawn together into this nightmare, the malice and cruelty projected by the changeling queen shook Cadance. This wasn’t an embarrassed, annoyed, or defensive reaction. She wasn’t trying to hide her real feelings, or push Cadance away. This was simply cold, calculating determination. The changeling queen would die fighting if she had to, of that Cadance had no doubt. She was glad that, even if it was temporary, Chrysalis was her ally.

Morphia said nothing, watching placidly as Cadance and Chrysalis made their proclamations in turn. Whatever she was thinking, she gave no trace of it away.

Turning to Luna, the cryptic mess of a queen spoke coolly. “And what say you, oh guardian of dreamers? Will you fight me to the last breath? Will you give everything you have left to defy me?”

Cadance wasn’t sure how to place the look that filled Morphia’s eyes as she spoke. Dreamy, but with a glittering intensity, she continued, eyes locked on Luna.

“Will you spill my blood one last time, in the name of your precious duty, oh knight of knights?”

Luna met her gaze, and Cadance had the distinct feeling of intruding on something that was none of her business as her aunt replied, her voice barely a whisper.

“If I must.”

The weariness of it seemed to drag the world down into the tow of its gravity. Somehow Luna stood adamant, and faced her age-old enemy unshaking. There was no question, only regret. Cadance got the sense that Luna had given up long ago on finding a better solution.

Morphia’s elephantine face lit up with a scowl. Visibility flushed, she turned away as she spoke, not bothering to hide her feelings.

“Duty! Always duty! You always had to be so holier than thou about everything Luna! I still don’t understand why you care so much about Harmony and protecting every one of those poor stupid ponies. You’re so much more. Together we could have done anything we wanted. Instead you’re trapped, held back by what that primordial hag set in motion. As if she was some beacon of goodness and purity, as if she knew what in tartarus she was doing. She did far, far, worse things than you or I ever did. Aeons of scheming and manipulation, but you and your lot act like she was some goddess.”

Morphia turned back to meet Luna’s gaze before continuing. “I never even really did that much damage! I never killed anyone. Neither did you! You stuck me up there, sealed in stone, and what good did it do you? Barely any time later your own sister pulled the same trick on you! Look what following Harmony got you, was it worth it Moonie?”

Luna said nothing. As the princess of the moon stared stoically up at her, Morphia seemed to buckle.

“Fine! Alright. So be it. I wasn’t going to kill them. Not all the way. They both have so much power, so much potential sitting there being squandered. It’s not as though these ignorant, inferior, ponies would miss a little bit of power.”

Chrysalis stepped forward, snarl on her lips, looking ready to go for Morphia’s throat at being called a pony. But before a single syllable could escape, a ruby red bubble was around the changeling. Cadance saw a vein bulge in the exiled queen’s neck as she visibly screamed and raged, but no sound escaped the bubble.

Turning back to address Luna, Morphia sighed. “If it really means that much to you, I can lay off. At least for a while… The world has changed a lot in a thousand years, there’s plenty of new ways to entertain myself I suppose.”

Rolling forward to float on her stomach just in front of Luna, Morphia continued, a hint of teasing in her tone. “Just don’t come to me with some sob story asking for help when either of these little accidents-waiting-to-happen melt down like you did and you have to deal with the fallout. Dear little Discord and I might both be a mess, but at least the hag knew what she was doing when she made us, more or less.”

Sighing again, Morphia finished. “Oh well, just give me a moment to wrap all this up and I’ll be on my way.”

Humming casually to herself, the self proclaimed queen pulled away and began drawing sigils in the air again. This time both her trunk and tail flashed through the air, almost blurring as they traced intricate patterns and symbols.

Still staring up at Morphia with the same blank look, Luna spoke, her tone dire. “Know that If I find you again, I won’t be able to give you another chance.”

There was that same gut wrenching flash to darkness as the world around them shifted again. Then Morphia scoffed. “Sweetheart if you ever see me again it’ll be because I want you to catch me.”

“Do be sure to keep an eye on that one though.” She said, nodding at Cadance. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Luna’s cool stare slipped, and she glanced at Cadance with a look of genuine astonishment and just a hint of disconcertion. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you could mean… Cadance is family. I’d trust her with my life.”

Morphia’s eyes went wide and she burst out in an abrupt half snort, half laugh. “Oh Moonie you’re not kidding are you? You let your fool of a sister turn her into an Alicorn and you don’t even know where she came from?” She laughed again, this time a full blown, genuine cackle.

Cadance felt her heartbeat pick up, and her stomach seemed to swim as she stepped forward in earnest. “What do you mean? What do you know about me?” She said, frantic as she saw this chance for information on her past about to slip away.

“Oh dearie, I’m so sorry, but it’s so much more fun if I let you find out for yourself.” Morphia held back laughter, barely suppressing her sadistic glee at whatever it was she wouldn’t tell. “Heredity’s no fun, take one look at me and you can tell I know what I’m talking about. Anyhow, I really don’t have all the answers you’re looking for sweetpea. You need to figure this one out for yourself.

“In any case, this has been a riot, but I think I better go before your young lady friend over there pops her top.” Morphia gestured with one clawed paw to Chrysalis, who was still raging despite the muzzle of silence placed on her by the red magic bubble.

“Ciao darlings” With a last playful look at Luna and a hiss of magic, Morphia vanished.

The red bubble popped, and Chrysalis fell to the floor, still ranting and cursing, but clearly nearly out of steam.

Cadance called out after the fading echo of Morphia, but she knew it was too late. She suppressed the urge to slump the floor and sob, and turned to Luna. She struggled to find the words. “Auntie… What did she mean?”

Luna could only give her an agonised look before shaking her head.

Before they could get any further there was a noise like a whole storm’s worth of waves crashing on a beach, and the endless grey nothing around them started rapidly fading to black.

“The dream...” Luna choked, then without further hesitation grabbed Cadance’s hoof and reached out to touch the still ranting form of Chrysalis. There was a momentary flash of blue light, and the trio was gone.

*****

“No! Wait!” Cadance shouted. The crystal princess flailed around, trying to find Luna or Chrysalis. But as her eyes adjusted to the light she realised she was alone, back in her bed, sitting up and clutching at nothing. The furniture of her study seemed so dead and unfriendly as it stared in disapproving silence at her outburst.

The early morning sun was like sharp claws raking against her horribly sleep deprived brain, and she lay back down, curled tight around herself and pulled the blankets up over her head.

Damn it all, she thought, as tears came unbidden and unrestrained. Her kingdom, her subjects. Right now even her family, as the loneliness of being unseen, and unheard crushed her. No one knew what she was feeling, and there was no one she could tell.

Moonbreeze had surely betrayed her trust. Luna… couldn’t help with this. Her husband wouldn’t understand. Celestia, right now she wasn’t sure what to feel about Celestia. Twilight would be even worse. What could she say to any of them in any case?

The only creature she felt she might have a chance of being understood by… she was gone. Back to wherever she was hiding. Cadance felt her heart might break as she lay with the thought that she would almost certainly never see Chrysalis again, and that even if she did, whatever the dreams had done to them… However Morphia had facilitated it, the common ground and understanding she’d created was just as likely gone. Never to return.

The questions raised by Morphia sat in her mind like heavy stones. Finding the dream-hopping ‘Queen’ when she didn’t want to be found would be almost impossible even with Luna’s help, of that she was certain.

Older questions she had buried long ago rose from their long-still graves. Who was her real family, where was she from, and why was she abandoned? For the first time in so many years there was some tiny flicker of hope that she might find all that out and maybe even more.

Apparently there really was something strange or special about her after all… Though trusting Morphia didn't seem like the wisest choice, given the circumstances.

It wasn’t much, but for the time being it would do. Right now, there was nothing left to do but sob, to let herself grieve and process. She knew that once she was done, she’d be able to pick herself up and move forward. There wasn’t any other choice.

For the first time since she was a filly she’d feign sickness. Just for today, the Crystal Empire would have to get along without her help.

Author's Note

First and foremost, I hope this chapter answers enough to satisfy, and asks enough to keep you curious!

Secondly! I hope you all like Morphia.

I'm not a regular reader of fanfiction, at least not usually. I read a little in 2016, and then reread all my old favourites and found quite a few new favourites in 2022. That's what inspired me to write my own stories, but I don't know how readers tend to take it when an author adds their own original characters. Well, I hope.

My intent is to keep this fic within bounds of believable, and my goal is to extend canon in a manner like the comics. I designed Morphia with that in mind, drawing on real world folklore and mythology in the same way the show and comics do for their villains.

Visually, Morphia is inspired by Nidra from Them's Fightin' Herds and Munna from Pokemon. I say visually but art is still something I need to put together for her. I'll be sure to post it once I've made some!

Thematically, she's drawing on the Baku from Japanese folklore, with a little bit of inspiration taken from Ancient Greek mythology. Her name specifically, I hope obviously comes across as an allusion to Morpheus, the god of sleep.

Setup, setup and more setup. Foreshadowing galore. I hope you're picking through these chapters with a fine toothed comb, dear readers. There are SO many carefully chosen words, metaphors, similes, and more in this chapter. I truly hope the mystery continues to draw you in as much as I find myself entangled in writing it.

One day everything will be answered, but in the mean time we trudge forward and build towards a finished work of fiction (or perhaps works? Time will tell).

Thanks again for reading, and triple thanks for bearing with me through this hiatus! We aren't totally out of the woods yet, but the trees are much less dense, and the road is in sight.

Hope to see you all again soon :trollestia:

Chapter 8: Trudge, Trudge to the Threshold

Uncomfortable questions swirled around Cadance’s head like storm clouds as she stared wordlessly at her aunt. How did she know they were in danger? What did she know that they didn’t? Was this really a dream after all? Even worse, how much had she seen?

But worst of all, Cadance wondered if Moonbreeze had betrayed her confidence. The possibility tore at her insides as she tried to think of something to say.

Luna’s proclamation hung heavy in the air between the three of them, but before Cadance could find her voice there was a harsh snarl, followed immediately by a hiss and a loud crack. Sickly toxic green lightning spat sparks as it cut through the smog and arced towards the princess of the moon, who effortlessly drew a cobalt blue shield across herself. The impulsive attack was smothered without any hint of a surprise from the intended target.

“Another wretched princess…” Chrysalis seethed. “You ponies can’t seem to get enough of me. You ought to learn to keep your hooves out of things that don’t concern you. To what do I owe the displeasure, Alicorn?” She spat the final word with, to Cadance’s ear, exaggerated disdain.

“And thou cannot seem to keep thine own hooves out of trouble, changeling.” Luna delivered her retort with the same confident grace that she defended herself with magic. “Be thankful my fellow princess is embroiled in the same danger as thee, or I might have left thee to thy fate. It is a miracle to have survived this long. I dare not think what would have happened had thou been alone.”

Chrysalis started to speak again, but before she could spit back her own retort, Luna spoke again. In a voice that was as cold as the distant moon she warned, “If thou would prefer to be left to thy death, I can easily oblige.”

The stray changeling stayed silent, but glared defiant daggers at the princess. Cadance realised this was the first time she had seen the former queen in her own body, albeit apparently graced in gold. Chrysalis had never been a soft figure, but there was a certain gaunt quality to her features. Was she always that thin? Cadance wondered, unnerved.

Luna turned to her dumbfounded niece. “Quickly Cadance, there is no time to tarry.”

Cadance blinked in shock. “W-wait, how do we know it’s really you, this could be a trick. How did you know we were in danger? I never told you about any of this.”

“No, thou did not,” Luna replied.

Cadance suppressed the urge to apologise as her aunt gave her a calculating look and continued. “I was alerted to thy peril by a maid working in thine employ by the name of Moonbreeze. She was deeply worried, and right to be.”

The little pink pony princess felt something in her twang and snap at the name. Ah, of course. Her dear friend was worried about her… and went behind her back to tell her aunt. Of course. How kind and thoughtful.

As Cadance sagged, her aunt scowled and stepped forward. “There is no time for this!” Luna urged.

Before either dreamer could object, the Princess of the Moon lit her horn and enveloped the three of them in a pocket of night sky. Cadance felt the air chill as she was insulated from the nightmare by the glittering bubble. Luna, eyes closed and brow furrowed in concentration, mouthed something silently to herself as she worked her spell.

Cadance watched motionless as Chrysalis stepped towards her aunt, rage radiating off her in waves. Dripping hatred she snarled, “Just what do you think you’re doing, p-” but was cut off by a flash of white light.

The tunnel around them vanished, but the bubble… Cadance gasped and looked down at her hooves, expecting the floor to burst beneath her at any moment and the pitch black void to flood in. Except, she realised, the bubble was gone too. In its place she felt something soft and plush underhoof. But to her senses, she was staring into empty space.

She stumbled, head spinning. Looking around she saw the night sky in every direction. Twinkling stars on an endless sea of purple and blue. Reflexively she clung tighter to Chrysalis’ leg, and felt the changeling falter, then slump. Cadance turned to see her begrudging companion reeling in shock and awe just like she was.

Luna spoke abruptly, “Wait here, they cannot reach us in this place. I will return posthaste, I must prepare myself for what lies ahead.”

Cadance could only watch her aunt leave as abruptly as she’d arrived, disappearing in another flash of magic.

“You’re kidding… she really expects us to just wait here? No explanation? Just zap, flash to wherever this is, and wait like foals in the cart while she does who knows what?” Cadance lamented, watching the empty spot of darkness where her aunt had been a few seconds prior. “Surely we deserve a little more than that…”

She turned to Chrysalis as she trailed off, hoping to find understanding. The changeling shrugged, not meeting Cadance’s gaze.

“Perhaps Miss cold and rigid is upset because she thinks that you’ve been fraternising with the enemy. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for her to come to that conclusion. I’m sure she’ll be back in no time with guards to clap me in irons, and a stern talking to for you.” Saying this, Chrysalis sighed heavily and lay down to wait.

“But you’re not my enemy. You saved my life! If she won’t listen, surely Celestia or Twilight will…” Cadance said, wishing she felt certain.

Chrysalis simply shrugged again in response, and Cadance was reminded how different the world she lived in was to that of her companion. They had lived through polar opposite experiences of the Equestrian royal family. Her family, however much she felt like a black sheep within it.

Seeing nothing better to do, Cadance moved closer to Chrysalis and sat down to wait. Whatever they were sitting on was comfortable at least, despite the way her stomach felt whenever she accidentally glanced at where the ground ought to be and saw only the yawning abyss.

Cadance began sorting through the events of the night in her dream. It hadn’t been more than a quarter of an hour since she’d woken up in that recreation of her foalhood bedroom at Canterlot, but every moment since had been fraught.

“How long were you waiting outside?” The question had been lurking in her head since Chrysalis found her, and now with nothing to do it struck her again. “When I was… you know…” She finished lamely.

“Invading my privacy?” Chrysalis snapped, finishing for her. “Not long, It happened just like the real thing. I caught up with you just before you could gallop off in the wrong direction. Why does it matter?”

“Oh, well, I was just wondering…” Cadance looked away, embarrassed. After a few seconds of tense silence she piped up again. “It’s just… something’s bothering me. Something your… Something Chatelicera said.”

“Spit it out already” Chrysalis hissed, eyes still closed.

Cadance swallowed. “Well Celestia has technically only ever named one heir…”

“What’s your point?” Chrysalis retorted, turning over and staring daggers at Cadance, daring her to finish.

“W-well, that didn’t happen until I’d been living in Canterlot for a while, and it was at least a couple of years before Celestia announced anything publicly.” Cadance pushed onwards through the ice and snow of Chrysalis’ glare. “And you said I was seeing things that happened when you were being brought up… I was just wondering…”

“Are you… younger than me?” Cadance said, meeting Chrysalis’ eyes with a frantic courage she could barely hold onto.

Chrysalis bared her teeth in a snarl, but Cadance could see the shock and fear in her eyes as the changeling stammered and faltered. “That’s not- You don’t know anything!”

Before Chrysalis could find some biting retort and dismiss the question, as Cadance was sure she was desperate to do, there was another flash of white light nearby.

Pony and changeling both turned as one to see Princess Luna reappear. Gird in the pale blue metal of her ancient battle armour, Cadance was startled by her aunt’s appearance, mistaking her for a split second for her corrupted alter ego. Cadance was still reeling as Chrysalis leapt to her hooves and strode aggressively towards Luna.

“It’s about time! Explain yourself now, pony, my patience is already worn thin and you do not want to see me lose it.” Chrysalis demanded, malice dripping from every syllable as she stood over the princess of the moon.

Cadance hurried over as Luna started to reply. “There is no time, we must-”

“No!” Chrysalis cut her off, “No more dodging the question, if time is so scarce then you had better speak quickly. I’m not going anywhere until I get an explanation.”

Luna scoffed derisively. “Thou would only undo thyself to wait, we have mere minutes before thy captor awakes.”

“Oh for hive’s sake, pony just ex-” As Chrysalis spoke, Luna reached out and repeated her earlier trick, catching the three of them in another bubble and teleporting away.

“-plain!” Chrysalis finished, then gaped at the forest now pressing in on the three creatures.

They were in a clearing, trees and brambles pressing in on them. It was just like the first dream, when Cadance had found herself alone, surrounded on all sides by the hostile forest. When she’d helped Chrysalis, who had in turn saved her…

Without waiting to see if they would follow, Luna strode off towards the treeline. Cadance ran after her, calling out as she went. “Please Aunt Luna, can we really not spare a minute or two? What’s going on? Why are you dressed for a fight?”

Still moving fast, Luna opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off as another toxic bolt of green magic shot through the air just beside her face. As the stricken trees hissed and smoked, the exiled changeling queen roared. “DO NOT IGNORE ME AGAIN, PONY. TALK NOW, or it will go very BADLY for you.”

After only a second’s hesitation, Princess Luna turned to face the changeling. “Keep thy voice down, at least for thy own sake” She said, curtly. Lips pursed and glaring she continued. “We have only a short window, we must strike before she wakes. The two of thou are under the hoof of Morphia, self proclaimed Queen of Dreams. She is an old enemy of mine, if we do not stop her and these dreams continue, she will drain thy very lives to empower herself.

“‘Tis not for me to judge thou for pursuing destruction of thyself, but for whatever reason she has taken thee and my niece as a pair, changeling.” Luna said, disdain dripping off every syllable. “And I would very much like to keep Cadance alive.”

Without waiting for either of the apparently paired dreamers to respond, Luna turned and strode off again into the woods. The trees parted in front of her as she moved forward with purpose, like the prow of a boat through waves. Luna exerted her own power over the dreamscape as effortlessly as she seemed to do everything else, Cadance thought as she chased after her aunt.

She turned back to see if Chrysalis was following. The changeling had a look on her face like a camera flash had gone off inches from her nose.

Cadance called out to her, “Are you alright?”

The question seemed to draw her out of her shock, and Chrysalis snapped back, “Oh be quiet…” and hurried over to Cadance’s side.

Galloping together, the two dreamers chased after Luna, who had gotten well ahead already. Where she had passed through the formerly oppressive trees stayed bent back, seemingly totally cowed by the Princess of the Moon’s power.

No one spoke as the three figures made their way through the path Luna forged. Cadance felt the silence of the forest striving to compensate for the failure of the trees to frighten and hinder their progress. It gave her a deep seated sense that she was somehow intruding. Into what she had no idea, but as she turned the idea over in her head, she was brought back to the forefront of the situation by an indignant yelp from her fellow dreamer.

Chrysalis had stopped suddenly again, as though petrified mid stride. She was looking at herself with horror, and Cadance couldn’t help but follow her example and stop to stare.

“You’re so… minty” Cadance said, the words slipping out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Shut up!” Chrysalis spat back, her cheeks bright pink, clearly she knew she could hardly deny it.

Once again the dream, or perhaps the creature controlling it, had worked its magic, playing a now tired trick and turning the changeling queen into a pony. This time though, her shape had hardly changed. Cadance wondered, was it low effort, or was there a point?

Chrysalis was just as tall and lythe as ever, but sharp angles and dark carapace were replaced with a bright minty green fur coat, matched with a perfect pointed horn and graceful wings. In fact, to Cadance she looked the very model of an Alicorn Princess of Equestria.

The princess of what though? Cadance mused privately.

Chrysalis cut into her reverie. “Speak for yourself princess,” she snarled. “I think your Hive might be missing you…”

Without thinking Cadance looked down to check her own form. It was a dull little surprise, what she saw there. Was this the fifth or sixth time she’d been put in a different body? It was hard to keep track, and it occurred to her how very odd it was to be desensitised to this phenomenon. She wondered if this was at all similar to how a changeling felt in their day to day.

From what she could see of herself, she could almost have passed for a young Queen Chrysanthe. She didn’t have time to dwell on the changes before from the trees ahead Luna shot a hissed command at the two dreamers.

“Quit thy gawking, are thy minds addled? ‘Tis only thy lives at stake…”

The two dreamers caught up to Luna just as she finished berating them. After a frustrated sigh, she addressed them again.

“Thy latest changes are evidence that we are nearing our goal. Morphia is attempting to distract thee and halt our progress. Somewhere nearby she sleeps within the dream so that she may mould it and thee to her whims. Unless thee wishes to be drawn again into a labyrinth built from thy own traumas, we must apprehend her before she escapes into the waking world.”

As they walked and listened intently, Cadance noticed Chrysalis shooting her a questioning look behind Luna’s back. Cadance simply shrugged, hoping to convey that while she was just as lost, it sounded as plausible as anything could at this point. Chrysalis simply bared her teeth in frustration and went back to trudging through the undergrowth.

Just as Cadance felt her doubt starting to boil over, Luna gestured that they halt, then pointed out something ahead through the trees. Squinting through the gloom, Cadance could just make out a dim orange glow.

Barely audible, Luna turned and whispered to the ensnared duo. “The beast’s lair lies ahead, we must proceed in silence. I will cast a spell to dampen the sound of thy tread. Once we enter thy are to stay close to me lest thy mind fall to Morphia’s spell again. If all goes to plan, I will ensnare thy enemy and free thee. Ready thyselves.”

Luna met Cadance and Chrysalis’ gaze in turn, waiting for something. Chrysalis still looked frustrated, but simply nodded. Cadance nervously followed suit, feeling she had no option but to trust her aunt, assuming this really was Luna and not another trick. She shivered as the thought slid down her spine.

With the dampening spell cast, the trio proceeded through the trees, quickly reaching the edge of the clearing up ahead. Cadance was finally able to see clearly the source of the light. It was a quaint wrought iron lantern, lit and hanging from a hook by the door of a small ancient looking cottage. With sagging thatch roof and low stone walls, the ancient structure seemed ready any moment to sink exhausted into the grass and return to nature.

Luna didn’t hesitate even slightly as the cottage came into view, and strode forward, confident as ever up to the front door. Cadance and Chrysalis reached her just in time to see a heavy iron lock drop sharply and silently into the damp grass, half buried in the soil by its own weight. A moment’s work and two more, even larger black metal padlocks joined the first. Each had somehow been wrenched free in the grip of her magic, split like walnuts in the process. The noise should have been almighty, but the silencing spell was evidently doing its work well.

The wooden door, made of thick oak planks, swung open slowly. Cadance watched flakes of rust and thick dust rain down from the hinges as it moved. Friction fought admirably against the Lunar Princess, and like the locks, the noise would have been tremendous had Luna not thought ahead.. Cadance shuddered as she imagined the concealed din, and wondered if this whole structure was designed like a guard dog, to react loudly to the merest hint of intruders.

It was only mildly surprising to Cadance when she saw that the inside of the cottage was larger than the exterior could ever allow. The unreality of dreams was losing its dramatic effect for her. Cobblestone floor stretched off into the darkness, the distance lost to sight until Luna lit her horn and pierced through the gloom.

Ahead of the trio, outlined softly in the blue light of Luna’s horn, the entryway was enormous. Stone pillars disappeared into shadow, holding up a roof hidden out of sight far above. Between them the floor was covered with all manner of ruined finery from forgotten eras. Torn paintings and crumpled tapestries, rusty suits of sundered armour in scattered pieces, piles of corroded coins and cracked jewels. Everywhere she looked Cadance saw yet more opulence abandoned to time. The room was plagued with it, now all just ancient trash. Obstacles and distractions for unwanted guests, guests who would never have come if they’d been given a choice.

As Cadance took in the sight of the ancient dust and debris, a doubt tugged at her mind. Why was she here anyway? Wasn’t there somewhere more important she ought to be? She knew there was… something, or maybe someone, that she was forgetting.

She shrugged off the thought as Luna gestured to her and Chrysalis, beckoning them forward. In the centre of the room the lunar princess had begun to clear away the debris, revealing the edge of a trapdoor. It didn’t take long, working together, for them to fully clear the rubble. Cadance brushed flakes of rust off her carapace, hoping she didn’t have to add tetanus to her list of worries, while Chrysalis lifted the trapdoor open with her magic.

Through the yawning portal a spiral staircase wound down out of sight. Doubt clawed at the back of Cadance’s mind again as she stared into the darkness below. Why was she here? Did she really believe Luna’s tall tale of an explanation? Dread pooled in her throat, and she turned to see the pony princess Chrysalis hesitating just as she was. Some feeling deep in her gut told her nothing good would come of continuing forward down those stairs.

“We are on the precipice, do not lose thy nerve now that escape is within reach.” Luna’s voice broke the silence, intruding upon Cadance’s mind and grounding her as though sensing the urge to flee growing within her.

It took every bit of concentration she had to break her inertia and force herself forward. With a furtive glance, she met Chrysalis’ eyes, and knew without a doubt the princess was burdened by the same feelings. Still, she had to trust Luna, and she clung to that point of light in a swirling storm of uncertainty.

They descended in single file, for the stairwell was too narrow to do otherwise. Unlike the soaring ceiling of the foyer above, the stairs were cramped, and as they carefully made their way Cadance struggled not to scrape her horn or carapace on the rough stone above and beside her. The minutes were taken to the rack, stretched out and broken by the sheer discomfort and tension of travelling down the claustrophobic stairwell. It was clearly not made for a trio of creatures their size, maybe not even made for an average pony.

Ahead of her Cadance felt Chrysalis flinch, and had it not been for the cramped confines she was sure the princess would have turned back, just as she herself wished desperately to do.

Questions rose again, swirling in the chaos of her mind. Why was she here? What was she forgetting? She fought to reach them, grasping at the edges with her mind. Someone was waiting for her… someone who needed her. They were helpless, lost without her… they were…

The uncertainty grew into confusion, swirling ever swirling, filling her whole mind as she trudged slowly through the darkness. Her heartbeat raced, and sweat beaded on her brow. This wasn’t where she was supposed to be, they needed her!

The fog covering her mind suddenly burst, memories flooded in like a tidal wave crashing down and wiping everything else she knew away.

Her hive! Her changelings, they needed her! She was their queen, what was she doing here in some dank dungeon? She had to-

The revelation was cut short as the pony in front of her bucked wildly, hyperventilating and wailing.

“I- I can’t turn around! I need to leave, I can’t be here!” The pale green princess sobbed. “She needs me! My daughter, she’s all alone! She’s too young to take care of herself!”

A flailing hoof struck Cadance in the jaw and she fell backwards, ears ringing. The world swam out of focus and the universe shorted out. Cadance flailed alone in the void until consciousness trickled back into her. She returned seconds later to a red pulsing ache in her jaw, and impassioned voices somewhere very far away.

Sitting up carefully, she probed her face. There was a hairline crack on the left side of her jaw, where Chrysalis’ hoof had made contact. She wondered how that would translate to her real body when she woke up in the morning. Somewhere in the distance far below her an argument raged.

Clarity returned like a cold winter morning. She was a pony. But she could still feel the memories of a life she knew now wasn’t real. Of being a Queen, ruling a hive, of having thousands of changelings who depended on you for their next meal. A life lived on the edge, in the shadows. A life defined by hunger.

The world around her came into focus, as the ringing in her ears abated she began taking in the heated altercation happening right in front of her eyes.

It was nearly a brawl. Chrysalis was on her back, on the ground, with Luna on top of her holding her down. The changeling turned pony was howling and begging the lunar princess to let her go, while Luna stammered out fragments of sentences insisting the opposite. It was painful to watch.

Cadance pulled herself to her hooves, the movement catching her aunt’s attention.

Through the wailing din, Luna implored her niece. “Cadance! Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Please, she won’t listen! I- I don’t know what to do, it’s all I can do just to maintain the spell! You’ve got to do something!”

Before Cadance could speak, the transformed Chrysalis struggled out of Luna’s grasp and leapt to her hooves. Somehow in the cramped space she had found room to turn around, and was now trying to push past Cadance and flee, but the crystal princess stood her ground and body blocked the sobbing changeling.

“No! You have to let me go!” Chrysalis moaned, tears pouring down her face. “She’s just a foal, she needs me, my filly!”

Fighting through a tangle of long limbs all trying to climb over her, Cadance managed to catch the woefully enchanted changeling in a tight hug.

Forcing all her own fears and worries down, she took on the tone she used to reassure her own daughter and whispered into the terrified changeling’s ear.

“Hush, it’s okay. She’s safe, you don’t need to worry.” Holding Chrysalis tight, in spite of all of her own fear she continued. “She’s sound asleep, dreaming peacefully. There’s nothing to fear.”

Exhaustion caught up with the changeling queen turned pony princess. Still trying to escape, she gradually slumped sobbing into Cadance’s embrace. “She needs me…” Chrysalis whimpered softly through tears.

“Shh, it’s okay. Just a little further and we’ll be free. She’s safe, you’re safe too. I promise. I won’t let anything happen.” Cadance said gently.

Slowly, Chrysalis’ sobbing subsided. Still Cadance held her tight, half for her own sake. It was all too much. She felt close to breaking down herself as the implanted memories of caring for a starving, suffering changeling hive clung to her, still open and fresh.

The changeling’s body suddenly turned rigid. Chrysalis gasped, then pulled away. In the eerie blue light of Luna’s magic Cadance saw the shame and fear etched into the changeling queen’s face as she recovered from the illusion, and realised what she’d just done. Their eyes met, and Cadance spoke in a whisper only Chrysalis could hear.

“It’s okay, I promise.”

Tears welled in the changeling’s eyes again, and she hesitated for a moment before pulling away completely. She gave Cadance another brief, desperate look, then turned away.

After a few long, awkward moments of gathering themselves and hastily tying together torn composure, the trio were ready to move again. They proceeded in silence down the rest of the claustrophobic stairway, each entrenched in a private need for this nightmare to end.

So it was that the trio continued their trial, headed into unknown but surely certain danger.

Author's Note

Howdy, hell of a delay on this one jeez. Yet again one chapter turns into two.

For once I don't feel like I have a lot to say here. There were a lot of periods of on and off writing since I posted the last chapter. I couldn't stick with it and be consistent like I could at the start of the year. I don't want to get into talking about my personal life but it finally feels like things are starting to stabilise.

This chapter is a little odd, what with it mostly being transit. It's a necessary build up to the next chapter though, and it's on the shorter side by my standards for this fic.

I didn't reread and reread and make tonnes of careful little tweaks and edits until it felt polished to my utmost satisfaction this time. I was still pretty thorough, but this and the next chapter are my least polished so far. Though I'm confident they'll stand up plenty, in spite of not getting 100% of the love the other chapters got.

Thanks for the comments and words of encouragement, without you my audience and my treasured proofreader this fic wouldn't be happening. It feels good to put something out into the world.

See yall in the next chapter :trollestia: