Portrait of a Monarch

The next morning at the library brought the delivery of a pile of newly printed books fresh from the publishers of the royal libraries in Canterlot. Included in this pile was a number of bulletins to be added to the bulletin board in the library, promising Ponish lessons, weekly sewing club meetups, a town council meeting on the laws and bylaws surrounding the construction of the new library, and right at the bottom, a flyer for an upcoming talk in Canterlot.

Chrysalis would have disinterestedly thrown all the pieces of paper covered in meaningless drivel in the garbage if she hadn’t been startled by her own face on the very last notice.

Her profile, drawn by some royal artist and capturing the terror she was delighted to inspire in the pony populace, was portrayed opposite to the face of Thorax, with his ridiculous antlers and bright colours. The flyer advertised a talk by a professor on “The Impact of Changeling Parasitism on Cultural Evolution of Social Groupings”. She recognised the name on the flyer and realised that it was the very same Eventide pony she had encountered so recently in this library.

He had been researching changelings, so it all made sense. His talk would fall at the end of the week, and there ran a train directly from the Crystal Empire to Canterlot. It was possible.

It pained Chrysalis to admit that this Eventide pony, and other pony historians, might know so much more about how to be queen of the changelings than she did. She knew all the important parts, or at least all the most important things from when she had taken over from Tarsus, but the minutiae of how to rebuild a hive were still outside of her grasp.

Chrysalis had always been good at playing the long game, stretching out her plans into months or years so she could prepare. She had approximately chosen a site for the new hive; once her brood had hatched and grown strong she could travel there and survey the area more closely. She would need a plan of construction. The grubs would hatch with some instincts to burrow and build, but they were blank slates, and Chrysalis would need to become the architect necessary to regain what had been lost.

She thought for a moment of that pegasus’s interest in crystal architecture. There was something to be learned from ponies, unfortunately.

The other things her young would need were food and training. The years Chrysalis had trained young changelings under Alate would come in handy here; no skill of hers was wasted. She would easily be able to teach them the basics of fighting and camouflage, to be expanded on when her new hive was complete.

The last stage was food. Here in the Crystal Empire Chrysalis was confident she could fill her crop with enough love for the changelings to make it through their larval stage and begin pupation, although the slow and steady trips through the frozen wasteland between the city and her cave would no doubt prove frustrating and inconvenient.

Her other alternatives would be to move the changelings, or move the food. It was possible that she could move her young closer into the city, although she knew from experience that young changelings could be difficult to corral; they longed to explore and were aggressive towards anything new in their lives. One adult changeling, even a changeling with Chrysalis’s power and gravitas, might struggle to convince an entire hive of grubs to stay hidden.

Chrysalis could move the food. She could kidnap some select members of the Crystal Empire, those who were loved but left idle enough to not be immediately missed. No doubt the alarm would be raised, but if she was stealthy enough and she timed it correctly, it seemed possible to Chrysalis that she could get her hive to the stage of mature changelings that could defend themselves before it all came crashing down.

She was both very stealthy and very well-timed. This would be the future of the hive. And she already had her first captive.

Excerpt: Analysis of Change-ling Feeding Magic, a report by Mage Meadowbrook.

I find myself writing these words due to the unlikely event of the capture of a predatory change-ling. This creature was found preying around the edge of the swamp, picking off ponies that wandered alone, and with the help of my family, we were able to confine it and bring it back to my hut for study.

From the words of other healers I know who have worked with change-lings before, I expected this one would have infiltrated our peaceful village and fed upon us from there. But instead I find that this one has developed something of a carnivorous habit that I must write on to warn others of.

This change-ling appears to be in some kind of frenzy of hunger, spitting and gasping when any of us so much as speak. If it can communicate with language, perhaps it is a language we do not share.

Our current theory on this carnivorous behaviour is that in periods of starvation change-lings can use their quite intimidating dentition to eat the remains of their prey, removing the last traces of love-magic from them much as a dog might crack bone to eat marrow.

Under the blanket of night Chrysalis freed Amethyst from her cocoon and placed her in the wheelbarrow from Amethyst’s garden, covering her in grass and plant matter. The spell of sedation was still over Amethyst and would remain so until the bubble of slime over her face was removed.

Chrysalis had already resolved to travel to Canterlot to hear Eventide speak. If the moment presented itself and he could be tricked into accompanying her, perhaps he could even be lured back to the Crystal Empire and confined with her brood so his knowledge was on tap at all times.

But Canterlot was not to be taken lightly. Chrysalis had tried to take the city before and even at full power with a healthy hive behind her she had been defeated. If she made any mistake in her current weakened state, Twilight Sparkle or any of her lackeys could easily overpower her.

The first step was to insure herself against any failure if her brood hatched early. That would be Amethyst’s purpose.

Chrysalis had not managed to devise a way to take Amethyst from town without being suspicious. This disguise, a senile old woman removing some green waste on the edge of town, was ridiculous, but ponies were ridiculously trusting, and so she wheeled the unconscious old woman out to the edge of town and through pasturelands.

Once away from civilisation, she turned into a bugbear and slung the unconscious mare over her shoulder as she buzzed away into the hills. It felt good to have her full range of transformation abilities at hand now that she had recovered from starvation.

At the crevice, she slid Amethyst down into the warm stone, leaving her slumped on the cave floor.

The eggs stirred when Chrysalis entered the chamber. A few of the eggs here and there had died, and Chrysalis removed these, expelling them from the thermal cave to freeze out in the snow. It was normal for some eggs to not make it to maturity, but it didn’t make Chrysalis feel any better.

Here she picked up Amethyst and got to work constructing her a new cocoon, hanging next to where the larvae would hatch. If Chrysalis was late home and the eggs hatched before she could care for them, then the unconscious form of Amethyst and her cocoon would provide enough nutrition for them in the meanwhile.

Chrysalis was not quite sure how long these eggs would take to hatch, since this was an unusual incubation, although she suspected they had about two weeks left. The warmth and humidity as well as the extra food Chrysalis had been bringing them was keeping them ticking along nicely.

She lingered for a few hours in the dark, watching the tiny embryos squirm within their eggs. Even after her years under Alate in the nursery, the development of tiny new changelings had never seemed as exciting as this.

It would be a little harder than before to play the disciplinarian this time around, when they were so little and so dependent on her. But she would not let base sentimentality affect how she ran this hive. She wanted to run it in a way that would make her old self and past great queens like Alate proud.

Warm and comfortable, she remembered shoving Tarsus to the ground off her throne, sinking her fangs into her hind leg to weaken her, smashing the old queen’s head against the stone over and over until the queen stopped moving entirely. Although Chrysalis did not welcome her own demise with open wings, she did look forward to the day when one of her very own workers would stand over her, determined and powerful and deadly enough to take the hive for herself. Any good changeling queen would welcome the rise of a more splendid queen to bring the hive higher.

Frankly, Chrysalis was relieved that those other mighty queens were dead and gone so they could not see her sunk so low. Being deposed by a drone and surviving was humiliating. Leaving her last hive to become benign pony-friends was worse.

She nudged her head against the cocoon holding Amethyst and watching it sway from its mooring point on the ceiling. Good and secure. The eggs squirmed in approval, and Chrysalis left the cave before day could break.

She retrieved Amethyst’s wheelbarrow on the edge of town and returned to the house, eyes constantly wide to look out for guards or prying ponies who might catch her in the act. As far as she could tell, she had passed undetected.

Chrysalis caught a scant few hours of sleep before she returned to the library for another day of ponywatching.

In the afternoon, that pegasus pony she had seen around recently came in to return the book he had borrowed.

“Thank you for returning it,” Chrysalis said, not bothering to chase the rigidity and chill out of her voice.

“No problem! I wanted to make sure it got back before I left town,” the pegasus said.

Chrysalis’s eye followed the lightbulb-shaped cutie mark on the pony’s flank.

“You’re leaving?” she said.

“Yeah, my secondment was for the Crystal Fair. I’m on break for a bit and then I’ll be back at the weather factory,” the pegasus said.

Thinking on the fly, Chrysalis smiled. “I have a friend in Cloudsdale. Would it be possible for you to bring them a book I’ve been meaning to return to them?”

“Of course I can,” the pegasus said. “My name’s Lightbulb, by the way.”

“I’m Amethyst,” Chrysalis said. Ponies were so trusting.

She led Lightbulb to the returns room in the library, closing the door behind him and casting the room in shadow.

“Is it just you working here?” Lightbulb said, looking around.

“Yes, until Princess Twilight opens the new library,” Chrysalis said. She pushed through the returns room and into the staff room behind it. Lightbulb’s eyes were flicking around the shelving, fascinated by the inner workings of a library, without a glimmer of suspicion.

The staff room door swung shut behind the pegasus. He fumbled for the lightswitch, lost in the dark.

A flash of green and Chrysalis was back in her natural form. She charged a magical blast with her horn and saw the shine of green reflected back in Lightbulb’s eyes before the pegasus gave a shout of fright and flared his wings wide in fear.

It was too late. The trap snapped shut, and Chrysalis’s magical blast hit Lightbulb, knocking him unconscious. He would be harder to move, all long legs and wiry muscles and feathers, but tonight she would transport him out to hang next to Amethyst.