Portrait of a Monarch

Time was short. She had at most a few hours, and her grubs needed to hatch out on their own, no matter how much she tried to hurry them with pleading and fretting. She knew from experience that changeling larvae couldn’t be cut free from their eggs to hasten hatching; they had to do it themselves, or they wouldn’t start breathing.

She couldn’t leave any of them behind, and because of that, she might get caught.

The sun shifted across the morning sky. As the last of her hatchlings cut themselves loose, she heard hoofsteps approaching her cave and she readied herself for a fight.

“It’s just me. Please don’t kill me.” Eventide’s voice. His head, blocking the daylight from the cave entrance. He had no doubt come back to take Lightbulb from Chrysalis, but she couldn’t afford to lose him now.

Eventide was alone. He picked his way into the cavern awkwardly. He had clearly taken a bath since she had last seen him, and that haggard, hungry look had eased a little from his face.

“What do you want?” Chrysalis said.

“You’re welcome for me leading those guards away. Anyway, I’m here to help you get out of here. If you stay here then you’re fucked; I heard the guards putting together their plan for raiding your cave,” Eventide said. “We need to get you and the eggs to safety.”

“Why are you helping me?” Chrysalis said, her eyes narrowing. He looked past her at the already-hatched grubs, trying to climb her tail and hind legs, and she could see that spark of interest come back into his eyes.

“I want Lightbulb back, safe and sound. And in exchange, I get to help you and your brood get to safety, and I get to claim you blackmailed me at the end,” Eventide said.

Chrysalis barked out a cold laugh. This pony was a freak.

“I’m glad your grubs hatched safely. I was worried when I saw Cadance turn back for you that it was over,” he said.

“This is all to satisfy your pony curiosity?” Chrysalis said.

“Yeah. And you do have Lightbulb; if I leave now you’re going to eat him,” Eventide said with a preemptive wince.

Chrysalis laughed properly this time. “Yes, I am. Pony, do you know how to operate a train?”

“I, uh,” he faltered for a moment. “When I was a kid I loved trains, so maybe? How hard could it be?”

“That is good enough,” Chrysalis said.

Another tiny cry behind her. Chrysalis turned to see the very last larva pip and break its egg, crawling out. She had a healthy brood, with a good mix of workers and drones. Now she needed to act as their queen and get them out of here.

“I’ve packed myself some food and supplies, and I drafted your hive plans like you asked,” Eventide said.

“Good. You will use your magic to lift the cocoon with your Lightbulb inside down to the station. I will take care of my brood. Originally I planned to ambush the last train of the day, but there is no time in hoof for these things. We must take what we can get; after all, Cadance is already on high alert.”

Eventide nodded. He pulled a pocket knife out of his saddlebag and started to cut Lightbulb down. “He’s going to be so pissed when he gets out of here,” Eventide said.

“Take him out now,” Chrysalis said, and with some effort, Eventide magically pulled Lightbulb’s cocoon out of the cave.

She was glad to see the last of this place. It was small and cramped and damp, and she had almost perished here after laying her eggs. She had spent too many nights experiencing a creeping fear of what was to come, and now she was to say goodbye.

It had taken Chrysalis a long time to work out how she was going to transport her young. Her one advantage was that they hatched able to follow orders, and were endlessly loyal to her; free thought came after pupation.

In the Everfree Forest, where Chrysalis had survived for some time, she had once witnessed a father cragadile transporting hundreds of his newly hatched offspring in his slightly opened mouth, their small faces peeking out, dreaming of a future where they, too, were enormous beasts capable of swallowing a pony with a chomp and a spray of blood.

She gathered her brood from the corners of the cave they were crawling into, already exploring with their soft limbs. It relieved her to see how active and inquisitive they were; she had seen plenty of larva in her time that were listless and weak, and knew those ones were not long for this world. They often hatched from defective eggs, and Chrysalis had done what she could to weed those ones out.

Once she remembered she had resented Alate for stationing her in the nursery when Chrysalis was so well suited for the guard or for scouting parties, although Alate had always claimed that her leadership skills were most appropriate for moulding the young. Now she was grateful for how well she knew the tasks.

Chrysalis had them all in front of her. She flared her wings out and told them, in the secret changeling language that they chittered to each other from birth, that they had to enter her mouth and stay still until she turned back into her queenly form. They lined themselves up, their bodies moving almost without their own understanding, until they were ready.

With a flash of green light, Chrysalis became the largest cragadile that she could, or at least, the largest that would still fit out of this cave. It was a risk, because cragadiles were ill-suited to cold, but Chrysalis had learned a lot about pushing through while her limbs froze.

She opened her mouth. The cragadile’s mouth was astoundingly powerful; slow and weak to open, but capable of snapping shut hard and fast enough to shatter a pony’s leg or rip off a pony head. She had never tried to use this body to fight, but already she could feel the poised power at her command, along with the muscular tail perfect for swiping an enemy off their feet.

Instead of any of these things, she held her mouth just a little open, and kept it perfectly still while her grubs climbed in and gripped onto her teeth. They were endlessly trusting and endlessly obedient, and Chrysalis did not know if it was the cragadile’s natural instinct or her own, but there was no way she would close her mouth now.

Excerpt: Changeling Mimicry and its Limitations

I found a willing participant in ‘Kevin’, a changeling that frequently visits Ponyville to meet with his friend, a local donkey. When I told him I was looking for an adult changeling to display their shapeshifting abilities to me he was excited to show me what he could do. I have noted in the past that many changelings view their powers as a point of pride, and even timid Ocellus, my own student, was more than eager to display her favourite morphs.

I had a pre-prepared list of organisms and objects I wanted Kevin to transform into, and I’ll list the results below:

PONY: Like other changelings I’ve seen, Kevin was excellent at transforming into different ponies. He can copy voice and intonation very easily, and even mimic body language in real time. He says copying other sapient creatures comes most easily to him.

GRIFFON: He also excelled in transforming into griffons, and could fly and screech just like a real griffon. He says that although he’s barely met any griffons, it’s very simple for him to figure out how to imitate them. His exact words were ‘almost instinctual’.

DRAGON: Kevin has transformed into dragons in the past, he told me, but only for the purpose of intimidating others, and he has never tried to copy their mannerisms or speech. I had him try to imitate Spike first, which he found to be easy enough; I then asked him to try changing into a large adult dragon, and while he could do it physically, he had not learned dragon mannerisms and so couldn’t replicate them.

YAK: Kevin was not familiar with yaks and so at first struggled to change into one. When I introduced him to Yona he was immediately able to imitate her with high fidelity.

URSA MAJOR: Having travelled through the Everfree Forest, Kevin had actually encountered an Ursa Major before, and he did an excellent job copying it. I was curious as to whether he could replicate their semi-translucency and the glittery/starry effect it provided, and he was able to.

FLASH BEE: I picked flash bee because I doubted that Kevin had ever seen one before, or even heard of one. He hadn’t, and even after I described them to him he couldn’t do it. He needed to see it in the flesh or at least in a series of good photographs.

MUSHROOM: Kevin easily transformed into the mushroom examples I gave him (Calvatia gigantea, Amanita muscaria, Agaricus bisporus) but only the actual mushroom part, as he was unaware until I explained to him that the majority of a mushroom is the mycelium network. Even after this explanation and several diagrams he found it too complex.

STONE: Kevin did a great job morphing into several different stones of various sizes, and could even make up new shapes of stone to morph into. He claimed that it’s easy because stones are very similar regardless of their shape.

BOOK: With any given book, Kevin was able to imitate the cover and shape convincingly, but he was unable to imitate the contents, usually giving the book too few pages (and making the pages thicker). Even with books he knew well he could not repeat the literary contents with any fidelity.

TREE: When given examples Kevin was able to imitate trees he had already seen, although I would note that he couldn’t copy their root structure and so it wouldn’t quite hold up to closer inspection. Kevin was not able to imagine a new type of tree to transform into, and he claimed that trees are too complex.

My conclusion is that changeling shapeshifting seems geared towards transformation into other sapient creatures and extends to an innate ability to imitate the body language, speech patterns, and other idiosyncratic traits of these creatures. They are able to extend this physical change to cover inanimate objects and non-sapient creatures, but this is limited to things they are familiar with and also has a boundary of complexity, where particularly intricate specimens far removed from the animal kingdom were beyond his abilities.

I am immensely grateful to Kevin for his contributions to my research.

Chrysalis pulled herself out of the crevice, the rocky protrusions on her back catching on the roof of the crevice as she did. Eventide was so startled by her terrifying appearance that for a split second he dropped Lightbulb’s cocoon before quickly catching it again.

“Let’s - let’s get moving, eh?” Eventide said. She could hear his breathing rate inch up.

Chrysalis started walking. The snow was unpleasant on her limbs and belly, making her feel sluggish and uncomfortable, and it was packed deep enough that she had to force her chest through it with each stride. Her eye, perched on the side of her head, scanned over the hillside. She was too low to the ground to see any of the Crystal Empire, and her hearing didn’t catch anything.

“When I left they were still preparing. We should have time,” Eventide said. He started trotting ahead of her across the hillside. She wouldn’t say it, but she was grateful; emerging from the cave in this form had disoriented her a little.

The grubs seemed to be staying put, all balanced in her mouth. It was a tight fit, and some had retreated further back into her gullet to find some space. She found herself able to cover her throat to stop herself from swallowing them.

“I can see the station from up here,” Eventide said. “There’s no train there now, but there’s a bunch of people gathered on the platform. Hopefully that means one is about to arrive.”

Chrysalis tried to vocalise to respond, and found a deep, sinister burbling sound rising in her. Eventide didn’t react, and she wondered if it had been too low-pitched for pony hearing.

As they cleared the last rise, the train station came into focus. She had no doubt that her appearance would be terrifying enough to get the ponies to flee, but she needed to wait until the train had arrived and emptied, or it might prove too chaotic.

“You should probably see if we can kidnap the current train driver. Rather than trusting me to do it, I mean,” Eventide said.

Motion caught her eye, and she turned her head. There was a train snaking its way through the frozen north; they were in luck.

Eventide had paused next to her, clearly waiting for her word. Up here on the hill they were no more than a strange shape for the ponies waiting on the train platform below.

The train pulled into the station; ponies disembarked, and the train cooled down as the luggage cart was unpacked. Now was the time.

With the advantage of the downhill slope she broke into a lurching gallop down the hill, letting that guttural sound out of her throat. The first pony to notice her was a crystal pony, who let out a shriek of alarm and started running towards the city, leaving everyone behind.

Fear spread quickly through the group of waiting ponies. Some ran inside the station building, hoping that Chrysalis couldn’t fit through the door; others followed the first pony and ran towards the city.

Behind her she heard the soft crunching sounds of Eventide trotting down the hill behind her.

To her frustration, some of the ponies unloading the luggage were hiding inside the luggage car. She wondered if there was a way to separate each of the cars of the train. But first, she needed to put her babies somewhere safe.

Chrysalis picked a train carriage with a double door entrance and shoved the front half of her body into the train, hovering her snout above some of the seats. Then she changed back into her natural form, sending her grubs bouncing down onto the seats.

She spoke to them and told them to stay on the cushions for now, and then moved out of the way as Eventide hopped onto the train and gently placed Lightbulb’s cocoon down onto the floor, leaning against the wall.

“Go and find a way to detach the carriages behind us from the train,” Chrysalis said. “I will take care of the train driver.”

Eventide nodded and ran to the back of the carriage, sliding open the rear door. Chrysalis left her grubs in his care, something that felt natural now that he had proven his loyalty, although the idea of leaving her children in the hands of some pony would have previously disgusted her. Needs must.

The train driver was an elderly unicorn who didn’t react as she jumped into his cabin. He was concentrating on cleaning up something underneath the mess of levers and pulleys and switches that made up the control surface. The cabin was hot, hot enough that Chrysalis felt nauseated coming in from the cold snow.

“Train driver pony,” Chrysalis said, raising her voice to be heard above the hissing steam.

“What was that?” the old unicorn said, his voice muffled by the wrench in his mouth. He turned to face her, nudging his cap out of his eyes, and then flinched in terror, all four legs splayed onto the metal flooring. “Changeling! Help!” he yelled as the wrench clattered to the floor.

“Nopony is coming to help,” Chrysalis purred. “I need you to make this train operational. You’re taking me through Canterlot Station to the undiscovered west.”

“Or what?” the train driver said, puffing his chest out.

“Or you’re going in there,” Chrysalis said, pointing a hoof at the mouth of the coal burner. “My unicorn accomplice will get this train working anyway, and your pathetic resistance will have been for nothing.”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” the driver said, deflating.

“Does this train have a radio? I will need to call ahead to warn ponies to stay out of my way,” Chrysalis said.

He picked up a boxy unit with a mouthpiece and earpiece and gave it to her. “I can get the train running in a few minutes,” he said.

Eventide would likely know how to use the radio. Chrysalis picked it up with her magic. She would prefer to stay here and supervise the train driver to ensure he wasn’t playing any games with her, but there was no way she was leaving her brood without her for that long.

She could send Eventide to supervise, but that might give the pair of them the chance to collude. She trusted Eventide to an extent, but Chrysalis did not believe in completely trusting any pony.

Chrysalis would have to trust that her threats, and the fear this pony felt towards her, would be enough.

“Good. Don’t fail me. I want to be out of pony lands posthaste,” Chrysalis said.

She leapt out of the train cabin and into the passenger car. Eventide had taken a seat on one of the benches, a respectful distance away from her grubs, who were already starting to get a little impatient.

“Take this radio,” Chrysalis said. “Get it working. We’ll need to call ahead to Canterlot Station so they direct this train to the right place.”

Eventide nodded, taking the radio from her. “Oh, cool. It uses a magical relay system with the radio spikes along the train tracks to -” he caught her facial expression. “You don’t care. Right. Yeah, I can get it working, no problem.”

Chrysalis spent a few minutes moving her grubs to different bench seats to give them room to move around. No doubt their fussiness now was to an extent hunger, and Chrysalis did what she could to feed them. It would be gauche now to suggest taking any part of Lightbulb for them.

Underneath her, she felt the train steadily start to move off. They were headed south.