Portrait of a Monarch

The library of the Crystal Empire opened as normal that morning. Amethyst chatted with visitors about how she had enjoyed her trip to the big city and listening to the talk at the university. When she stepped into the back room to process returns, her gentle smile left her face, and all that remained was Chrysalis’s sharp-eyed stare.

She had information now. The next thing she needed was enough food to sustain her hatchlings when their eggs finally cracked. She had been lucky to find Lightbulb, who wasn’t local, and Eventide, who no one knew had traveled here, but any further disappearances would always increase the risk that she was caught. She needed some kind of concrete excuse to cover her traveling in and out of the city borders, and she needed a reliable way to find her next victims.

The excuse part turned out to be simple enough. There was a nightly train to the Crystal Empire, and for whatever reason the train station was outside of the boundaries of the city; the walk to and from the station after that last service was long, cold, and dark.

That evening, Chrysalis found a small cart for pulling books in Amethyst Maresbury’s house. It had a weatherproof cover, and once she had pulled all the shelving out of the middle of it, it could just fit an unconscious pony if they were curled up tightly.

She harnessed herself to it and began the slow evening walk out to the train station. A couple of her neighbours asked her what she was doing, and Chrysalis informed them that she had started up communication with a professor at Canterlot University who would send her twice-weekly requests for books to issue from her library. Since they were old and fragile, Amethyst insisted on taking them to the train station herself for carriage on the first service the next morning. Not knowing any better, this explanation was barely questioned by ponies around her.

It was almost too easy, and certainly a lot safer than dragging a pony her own size out of the city in a wheelbarrow.

Out in the cold and dark, she pulled away from the road and into the bushes to open the cart cover and pull out a bag of food for Eventide. Bread and carrots and apples. It would be enough for him to live on until her next visit.

She found him huddled against the warm floor, his fur stood on end to keep out the cold and the occasional snowflakes that would drift into the room and land on him. The excitement in his eyes when he had seen her that first time had already faded into a numbness as the aching cold forced him to curl up to survive.

He still stood up when he saw her, though, and he still dipped his head in respect. She dropped the bag of food in front of him and he tried to play himself off as unaffected as he levitated out a slice of bread and began eating it.

“How’s it going?” Eventide asked. If he was disappointed by the lack of a book or blanket he didn’t mention it.

“Things are progressing nicely,” Chrysalis said.

“Yah? I have to ask, are you working alone or have you re-established a hive?” Eventide said.

She paused and decided to humour him. He might be a source of the information she sought.

“I have laid a clutch of eggs to form a new hive. Thorax’s brood of pacifists betrayed me, and I have no interest in returning to them,” Chrysalis said.

“That’s interesting! You know, I couldn’t find any accounts of a queen being replaced while the previous queen survived - if it hadn’t happened to you, I would have assumed it was impossible.” He stopped for a moment, then looked bashful. “Uh, sorry about that, though.”

Chrysalis gave him a withering look, but in reality, she had no ill-will towards him for speaking of these events. In reality she wanted to know what he thought. It was validating to know that she walked in unfamiliar territory. Future queens would speak of her with the reverence she deserved.

“It is of no concern to me. I would rather have a loyal hive, no matter how I have to struggle,” Chrysalis said.

“I didn’t have the chance to mention it anywhere in my talk, but one incident I found really interesting from a very old pony scroll was the mention of a bugmite infestation that wiped out almost every member of a nearby peaceful hive of changelings. The ponies sent assistance, but ultimately the queen and a very small handful of workers had to abandon the hive and form a new one down in San Palomino where the drier conditions would slow the mites down,” Eventide said. “If she could do it, so can you.”

Chrysalis remembered a mention of a San Palomino hive in one of the books she had skimmed.

“I appreciate your forthcomingness.” Chrysalis turned and left him.

The eggs were safe, and Amethyst and Lightbulb still slumbered. Chrysalis took her cart and wheeled back into town.

Excerpt: Changeling Dentition: a brief analysis

Comparison between pre-transformation and post-transformation changeling dentition.

TONGUE:
Pre: long, extended 2-3x length of skull, cleft tip with pronounced ridge separating each half. Compare: monitor lizard
Post: moderate length, extended 0.5-1x the length of skull, cleft tip with pronounced ridge separating each half. Compare: cobra

CENTRAL/LATERAL INCISORS:
Pre: chisel-tipped, slight overbite. Compare: pig
Post: flat, with wide grinding surface. Compare: pony

CANINES:
Pre: pronounced, fang-like, upper tooth significantly larger than lower. Compare: tiger
Post: reduced, flat, with angled grinding surface. Compare: marmoset

PREMOLARS/MOLARS:
Pre: carnassial. Compare: wolf
Post: flat, grinding, continuously growing. Compare: pony

Conclusion: pre-transformation dentition consistent with carnivore. Post-transformation dentition consistent with frugivore or herbivore. Tongue is a sensory organ used to detect energy for feeding.

Additional notes: Primary pre-transformation changeling diet consisted of magical draining of energy; dentition may serve in self defence. Some reports indicate that changelings can eat flesh to bolster their diet in times of starvation.

Primary post-transformation changeling diet consists of shared magical energy within the hive, supplemented with vegetation, fruits, and flowers.

With her system in place, all Chrysalis needed to do was wait for victims to present themselves. She no longer regretted choosing the library as her base of operations; she couldn’t imagine a more suitable place in town. Ponies walked in alone and traveled to solitary parts of the library, and they trusted Amethyst implicitly when she asked them to accompany her places. Here in the centre of the Empire, ponies felt much too safe to ever distrust a kindly librarian.

It only took two days for the opportunity to arise. A blue crystal pony with a pink and purple mane came into the library wanting to access some documents her family had left with the library’s archive. She gave her name as Autumn Gem, and Chrysalis accompanied her into the back room and magicked her unconscious before she realised anything was wrong.

That night, Amethyst traveled with her cart and her delivery for the kindly professor, and Autumn Gem vanished.

Short of room in her egg chamber, Chrysalis suspended the mare in a cocoon in a third warm cave near the other two. Autumn Gem had many friends in the Crystal Empire, which was good for the amount of food she could provide for her young, but bad for how much suspicion she would raise.

She delivered another bag of food for Eventide; more food this time, since he had already finished what she had left before. Chrysalis didn’t know or particularly care how much food a pony needed to survive, but she didn’t want her fount of knowledge expiring here in this cave.

As soon as he saw her he bounced to his hooves. “Hello! Thank you for bringing me food.”

“Don’t take it as kindness. I need you alive,” Chrysalis said.

“Well, I’m flattered either way,” Eventide said, crunching into a carrot. He fumbled the bag with his hooves and then pulled out a book. Palaeopony Era Evidence for Interspecies Interdependence. Chrysalis had already read the relevant chapter on changelings. “Thank you! I only read the changeling chapter, now I can read the rest.”

She ignored his words and looked him over. He looked ruffled and sweaty, but there was no sign of frostbite. He had moved a pile of snow inside to melt on the warm floor so he had something to drink; Chrysalis idly realised she had forgotten to bring him any water. He seemed determined to stay chipper despite his circumstances.

He finished the carrot and looked up at her. “Is Lightbulb okay?”

“Yes. Lightbulb is cocooned and knows nothing of his fate,” Chrysalis said.

“Oh, phew. So long as he’s okay, I’m okay,” Eventide said. “Hey, do you have time to answer some questions? This is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me.”

Chrysalis looked at him, disheveled and trapped alone in a mountain cave, and had to respect his tenacity enough to indulge him. “You have my ear for a moment. Do not waste this opportunity.”

He froze for a moment, clearly scrolling through all his potential questions that he had been stewing on, before finally saying, “The reign of Alate is well-documented due to her conflicts with ponies, and I have a pretty good idea of when you took the throne, but wasn’t there a queen between you and her? What was she like?”

Chrysalis sneered. “Tarsus. Alate was killed in combat with a dragon that attempted to move into the mountains near our hive. Tarsus was selected to rule us. She was -” Like Thorax, Chrysalis had been about to say, but she elected to not give away extra information to Eventide. “She was a weak leader, and the hive starved for it. I stamped the life out of her hoping the hive would choose again, and it chose me.” The memory tasted sweet on her tongue, just like the first pony feast under Chrysalis’s rule.

“Interesting, interesting… How long did she rule for?” Eventide asked. He didn’t react at all to what she had said otherwise.

Pausing for a moment, Chrysalis tried to recall. It had been a long, long time ago, long enough for all of Equestria to have been founded since.

“An autumn and a winter. I remember her sending peaceful messages to the nearest pony settlements around the time the leaves fell, and I remember a long, cold, hungry winter where we did not hunt and instead grew weaker and weaker by the day,” Chrysalis said.

“So about six moons. Interesting that history remembers her at all, then, if her reign was so short,” Eventide said.

Chrysalis hissed. “The messages she sent had consequences. Ponies believed her words and cautiously sent out envoys to meet her, and we were not permitted to feed despite how hungry we were. She tried to build relationships with them while her own hive turned to dust. Once I had destroyed her I set my changelings free on those pony envoys who sought to weaken us. I am sure the results were enough to last in written memory.”

Eventide continued on, undeterred. “You said you listened to my talk - did Tarsus fit the profile of a ‘passive’ changeling queen, like Thorax?”

Of course he had guessed it. This was his field of study. “She was just like him. Weak and pathetic. But when she turned into a queen, none of us changed with her. There was never a chance of us getting the food we needed just from forming friendships.”

His eyes widened and she saw him fumble around for a split second before he remembered he had nothing to take notes with. “So your hive didn’t fully change? And then you changed it back on purpose?”

“Trying to change was a mistake. It left us unable to survive,” Chrysalis said. “I will not apologise for doing what I have done to fill the empty stomachs of my hive.”

“Of course, of course. I actually got into studying changelings while you were still queen, because Princess Twilight was talking to me about how she felt sorry for changelings for being hungry all the time-”

“I don’t want her sympathy!” Chrysalis snarled. “We have enjoyed many times with stomachs full, thanks to my leadership. And if she’d had the grace to lie down and die in a hole like I wanted her to, my hive would have stayed that way instead of becoming flower-eating cowards like they are now.”

Eventide’s eyes widened and his body language became submissive. Chrysalis couldn’t quite taste if he was scared or simply trying to pacify her. He had proved to be an unknown element; his scholarly curiosity seemed stronger than his survival instincts.

“Yes, of course,” Eventide said. “I meant to say I thought that your ability to keep your hive fed even though ponies keep messing it up for you is impressive.”

She ignored that, and left the cave.

The eggs were still growing. They seemed full, almost ready to hatch, and she hadn’t lost many. No doubt she would lose more after hatching, as she always did, but she hoped dearly she would get enough of them to adulthood to start rebuilding.

And then she headed back to the Crystal Empire, looking for another victim.