“Stupid forest. Stupid ponies.”
Chrysalis growled to herself as she plodded through the undergrowth. Mud clung to her hooves and clogged her leg holes. Twigs, leaves and dead insects peppered her once glorious mane and tail.
She’d lost count of how many days she’d spent on the run, traversing the wilderness and outskirts of settlements after breaking out of her stony prison. Anything more than one was unbefitting of a perfect queen’s record and therefore expunged from her memory.
The shrivelled void within her gnawed and ached, yearning to be filled, but she had no victims on hoof for even a sip of love. But that would change. Oh, that would change soon. Her former intelligence network had once found signs of a hive in this remote, mountainous region, which meant that she had a potential ally to recruit in her efforts to wreak vengeance upon Equestria. Refusal was out of the question, but if its queen did decide to be an idiot, Chrysalis would simply depose her and assume direct control of the hive, and then she’d have a base to rebuild her army and destroy that insufferable Starlight Glimmer.
She cackled. “Oh yes, just you wait. I’ll be sure to make it nice and slow…”
“Make sure what is nice and slow?”
“Gah!”
Chrysalis most definitely did not shriek and jump into the air like a startled cat. Her martial instincts were precise and her defensive posture immaculate as she bared her teeth and glared at the one who’d intruded on her personal space.
It was a changeling. Juvenile female, just on the cusp of adulthood, and a proper one at that, with greyish-black chitin and holes instead of the wholesome rainbow-vomit monstrosities her traitorous children had become. Its wings and elytra had bluish-purple hues instead of blue and teal, and its horn had a more pronounced curvature almost to the point of ugliness, so it definitely belonged to a different hive. One that would soon bow to her natural superiority.
She didn’t like that smile, though. It was friendly. It reminded her of the pink one.
Disgusting.
No matter. She’d sort it out soon enough.
She pointed a hoof at it and barked, “Drone. I require sustenance. You will relinquish your energy reserves and take me to your queen immediately.”
The changeling dropped its smile and tilted its head, staring.
Chrysalis glared back.
Was it stupid? Mentally deficient? Or so in awe of her gloriousness that it had momentarily ceased to function properly?
“What’s a drone?” it asked with a puzzled smile.
Chrysalis needed a moment to retrieve her jaw. “You. You are, you stupid changeling.”
The drone giggled. “I’m not Drone. I’m Berry Buzz!”
Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “That’s a stupid pony name. What’s your real name?”
“Huh? But I don’t have any other name.”
“I don’t have time for jokes,” Chrysalis growled as she took a menacing step closer. You will do as I—”
“Also, what’s a changeling?”
She froze.
No. Impossible. It was either the greatest infiltrator in the world for keeping a straight face whilst asking such a stupid question, or it was fundamentally broken in some way. Its wings and chitin practically glowed with lustrous iridescence, so it couldn’t be malnourished. But maybe it hadn’t been fed enough love in the egg and in its larval stage. Or maybe it had suffered a fungal infection in the brain at some point. It didn’t bode well for the state of its hive, but Chrysalis needed an army, and she’d get one even if she had to whip a whole hatchery of malformed grubs into proper shape.
“Forget it,” she muttered, waving a hoof. “Just show me where your hive is. I need to speak to your queen.”
“Queen?” The drone blinked innocently.
Chrysalis felt an eye twitch.
Inconceivable. How could a changeling fail to immediately understand the very concept of Chrysalis’ entire being? How did this drone even function?
“Queen. Your mother. The one who rules over your dwelling. The place that you stay in. The one who raised you from grubhood,” she said through gritted teeth. “Have I made myself clear, you annoying little—”
“Hey, Berry! Who’s that with you?” cried another voice in the distance.
Chrysalis turned towards the voice and saw a pair of ponies trotting towards them.
“Quick. Disguise yourself!” she snapped, ducking behind a tree trunk.
The drone followed her gaze and raised an eye ridge. “Huh? Why?”
“Because ponies are coming!” she hissed.
“Oh. Hi, guys!” Berry spotted the oncoming figures and waved at them. She then hopped right next to Chrysalis and gestured at her, with a massive grin on her muzzle. “Look! I met someone new!”
Oh no. This one’s even worse than Thorax…
It was an absolute train wreck of a failure in basic changeling doctrine, and Chrysalis could only watch in morbid fascination as she waited for the ponies to inevitably spot the undisguised infiltrator. Utterly disgraceful, but at least the screams would be entertaining. She might even get the chance to attack and pod the stupid ponies on top of seeing the drone get chewed out by her queen for her failings.
Except… the ponies never screamed.
As they bounded over like a pair of excited puppies, Chrysalis saw that they were both juvenile earth ponies with identical coats and manes. Twins. At first glance, anyway. She could taste sweet, sugary joy radiating from one, whilst the other had the muted, ashy flavour of a changeling’s emotional output. The pheromone markers were present, too. Also juvenile—not an adult disguised as one. The only visible difference between them was that the pony wore a simple necklace consisting of twine and a short metal tube, like he was wearing a little wind chime.
“Whoa, you’re a big Faery!” said the colt as he skidded to a halt in front of Chrysalis.
“Yeah. Your mane is so pretty! I didn’t know we could have those colours!” said his changeling twin. “And your horn is so tall and straight!”
With a flash of purple fire, it transformed into a mini-Chrysalis and went cross-eyed as she admired her own horn.
“I know, right? I bet it’ll look even prettier when it’s clean!” Berry bounced on the spot and reached out with a hoof, but Chrysalis reflexively swatted it away before it could touch her mane. “Ooh, got’cha. No touchy until after a bath!”
Chrysalis blinked.
The screams hadn’t started. Why hadn’t they started?
“What did you call me?” she asked the pony.
“Big?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. That other word.”
“Faery?” his twin suggested, right before transforming back into a clone of his ‘sibling’.
“Yes. Is that what you are?” She gestured at Berry and the bug twin. “Is that what you call yourselves?”
“Yup!”
Chrysalis frowned. “I see…”
Other creatures had their own names for changelings, and that one sounded similar to what the Deerfolk used. But that still didn’t explain the pony’s utter lack of concern. He didn’t have glazed eyes, so he wasn’t under any mind control spell. She didn’t taste any panic or apprehension, so he wasn’t being coerced, either. There was a bit of magic in the necklace, though. Maybe it was enchanted to render him docile in some way, or to apply a perception filter so changelings would look harmless to him without the need to actually disguise themselves. Whatever the case, it would be useful to her, and she would learn of this hive’s secrets soon enough.
“Listen,” she said, silencing them with a sharp buzz of her wings. “I have important things to do, so you will take me to—”
“Oh, you mentioned that earlier. You wanted to see my mother, yeah?” Berry spun around and pronked away. “Come on, she might still have breakfast for you if we hurry!”
Chrysalis bristled at the interruption, but since the drone had retained part of her initial instruction and was already carrying it out, she saw no need to waste any energy on reprimanding her.
She followed Berry at a brisk pace, tuning out most of the asinine remarks and questions that the three juveniles threw her way. The twins had given their names at some point, but they weren’t worth remembering. She simply nodded or gave noncommittal grunts every now and then, and that was sufficient to stir up their awe and imagination, as befitting a queen of her stature. The details were irrelevant, so long as she got to drink in the pony’s admiration and apparent love for learning everything there was to know about the queen of a thousand armies who had very nearly unified the whole world under her rule, if it weren’t for the devious machinations of one Starlight Glimmer.
The forest soon gave way to trimmed hedges and fenced fields. They passed cottages with increasing frequency, and curious heads turned to watch as they made their way to the middle of the village. Most of them were earth ponies, and Chrysalis belatedly realised that she had forgotten to disguise herself even before meeting the twins.
That was Berry’s fault, of course. She wouldn’t have forgotten if the drone hadn’t been so distractingly stupid in the first place.
At any rate, the villagers were not alarmed by the presence of a changeling queen in their midst. Not when one in ten were undisguised changelings themselves, openly carrying out pony drudgery. In fact, Chrysalis suspected that a significant number of the ponies were changelings as well, once she’d passed a few and gotten a whiff of their pheromones and emotional signatures. Also, the odds of that many twins being born in a single village were impossibly tiny.
Her suspicions were correct. The wind chime necklaces definitely had something to do with it. No changeling wore one, and the ponies who didn’t were presumably changelings who’d simply chosen to look like prey for some unfathomable reason. The ponies were already fooled or under control, so what was the point?
And the love. Oh, the love!
Chrysalis could taste it in the air. This hive had found a way to harvest it without the use of pods, and with a far subtler form of deception than she had ever achieved. The ponies were practically leaking it out of every orifice, apparently convinced that their changeling minders were part of their herd regardless of physical appearances. There was enough for her snack on without drawing attention to herself.
The unfortunate need for the minders to show near-genuine affection for their livestock was more than a little off-putting, though. She would’ve gone insane if she’d had to put that much work into Shining Armour at the wedding…
“And we’re here!” Berry voice cut into her musings. “Mama, I’m home! And I brought friends!”
Chrysalis frowned at the house before her.
Wooden beams and thatched roofing, and smaller than even the standard hovels in Ponyville. A queen must be truly wretched to live in such squalor, and unless she was using it to hide the entrance to a fully subterranean hive, Chrysalis would probably be doing her a favour by way of regicide.
The door swung open, and the unicorn mare within gasped when she saw Chrysalis and the juveniles around her.
“Oh, goodness! That’s quite the friend you’ve got there, Berry!” said the mare as she dusted herself off and looked around like a worker drone caught slacking off. “I… I don’t believe we’ve ever had another elder Faery in our little town before. It’s lovely to meet you!”
Chrysalis shifted her gaze down to the necklace around the mare’s neck.
“You said you were bringing me to your queen,” she hissed to Berry.
“I did!” The drone’s smile didn’t waver as she gestured at the mare. “She’s my mother, the one who rules over my dwelling, the one who raised me. Exactly as you asked!”
“I wasn’t talking about your roleplay, you stup—” Chrysalis snapped, but quickly cut herself off and sucked in a deep breath as she buzzed her wings.
She then rubbed her temple to relieve the oncoming migraine and resisted the urge to blast the drone into a wall.
Calm. She was calm.
That ringing in her ears wasn’t her spiking blood pressure; it was just the sound of her dwindling hope that this queen wasn’t also surrounded by fools. Truly, it was the curse that all superior beings had to put up with.
She could do all the blasting after she’d secured a position of power over the hive. For now, she needed to navigate the sea of stupidity she’d found herself in.
So, she gave the mare her most charming smile and said, “Perhaps your… daughter just misunderstood. Is there anyone in this place who is like me? I believe you used the term ‘elder Faery’? She would be the most powerful and beautiful creature around, and is likely the leader of your community.”
“Oh, you must mean the Fair Lady!” said the mare after a moment of hesitation. “I am so sorry for the misunderstanding. My little Berry Buzz does get so excited sometimes.”
Chrysalis nodded magnanimously. “I must speak with this… Fair Lady. Immediately. Where is she?”
“Oh, she’s at the Eyrie.” The mare stepped out past Chrysalis and pointed to the top of a stony ridge that jutted into the valley from the surrounding mountains, like the prow of a ship. “She watches over all of us from there.”
Chrysalis turned to leave, but paused when the mare cleared her throat hesitantly.
“My lady, I’m sure your business with the Fair Lady is of utmost importance, but could I convince you to stay for a while? I have a bath of suitable size at the back, and plenty of scones in the oven for the little pumpkins and yourself. As our esteemed guest, surely it would please you to be groomed and refreshed before meeting her?”
“Oh, please stay!” cried Berry whilst the twins cheered and darted into the house. “We could talk more about where you come from!”
Chrysalis hummed and brushed a twig out of her mane. She wanted nothing more to do with the juveniles, but the scent of pastries wafting out of the house was making her treacherous stomach rumble, and getting cleaned up could only improve her meeting with a fellow queen.
“Very well. Your offer is acceptable,” she said.
Perhaps things were going her way, after all.
Things were not going her way.
Chrysalis could only stare, frozen in her admittedly comfortable chair as Queen Cuculus prattled on about her arrangement with the ponies in excruciating detail.
“—and if parents wish for their foal to have a sibling, they simply hang a dream catcher above the crib. One of my agents will take note of their preferences, and a suitable nymph is assigned to their new role. Fully trained and screened for good temperament, of course. As far as my little ponies are concerned, they place the dream catcher, go to bed, and find their dream foal in the crib the very next day! I also allow for adoption of older ‘lings, of course. It doesn’t always have to be foal-aged, and the sibling thing isn’t even mandatory. After all, not everypony is able to conceive, and not for lack of trying, the poor dears.”
The teacup shook in Chrysalis’ magical grip as she absentmindedly took a sip, barely tasting the distilled love within.
Queen Cuculus was insane. She allowed ponies to raise her changelings.
Those ponies weren’t actually under her control. They freely mingled with her brood and considered them their friends. Relatives. This level of integration would’ve made Twilight Sparkle green with envy, and it had been conceived by a changeling, by one of her fellow queens, no less!
She glanced around, at all the pony-made furniture on the pony-made balcony of the pony-made house sitting on top of the ridge overlooking the pony-made village. Queen Cuculus was surrounded by pony paraphernalia, enjoying pony treats, whilst her hive was buried in the mountain, mouldering in the dark.
“How—how long have you been doing this?” she asked.
“Oh, only about five centuries, give or take a couple decades,” said Cuculus, smiling as she lounged in her deck chair and twirled her hoof in a vague circle. “Took me a while to seed a few populations with the necessary stories, a few generations to let them congeal into folk tales, and then a few more finding a community that fully embraced the concept. After that, revealing ourselves as the Faery folk looking for a home in this realm was easy-peasy. Honestly, Titania really should’ve listened to me back then. No one’s called for another meeting of the Unseelie Court in ages, and I’m starting to worry.”
Chrysalis had attended the last Unseelie Court, and could not remember Cuculus at all. It was possible that she was simply lying, but she’d named pretty much all of the queens present back then, and with far more familiarity than even Chrysalis could recall…
She took another shaky sip, and her stomach churned.
Everything suddenly made a horrifying amount of sense.
Berry Buzz was practically pony in changeling chitin. So was the fake twin brother. They pranced and frolicked with their prey, treating them as equals. All of the changelings in this town were… were… twisted. Ponified. Domesticated.
And Queen Cuculus was the architect of their unknowing humiliation.
Oh, she could already see Starlight Glimmer giving her that insufferably smug grin if she ever got wind of how this hive had fallen. At least Thorax—pathetic little traitor that he was—still maintained some of the hive’s dignity by keeping it a discrete entity in the Badlands. And Pharynx would make sure it stayed that way.
But this? This was abomination.
A tiny voice at the back of her mind pointed out that the love harvest was plentiful, and at least they hadn’t all turned into gaudy rainbow-reindeer, but that voice was stupid and wrong and not worth an ounce of her attention.
Chrysalis watched as Cuculus got up from her chair and admired her twisted little project from the balcony railing, like a changeling facsimile of Celestia. Or Twilight Sparkle. She even had the purple bangs to go with it.
What was it about purple that made it such a bane to changelings, anyway?
It was Chrysalis’ new most-hated colour.
No.
An alliance was out of the question. Cuculus would sooner side with the ponies than join Chrysalis in defeating Starlight Glimmer.
She would have to destroy Cuculus and take her hive by force.
With Cuculus so distracted by the view, Chrysalis set aside her teacup and stalked closer. She got into position behind her, just out of bucking range, and then opened her maw and unleashed the full hunger of the void upon her prey.
A purplish-pink filament of love burst out of Cuculus’ back and flowed into Chrysalis’ mouth, and she nearly moaned in bliss from the sheer amount of love she consumed. She fed voraciously, ripping it out as quickly as she could, with as much force as the void could exert.
But something clamped down on the stream of love with the weight of a mountain, and the flow abruptly ceased.
“Oh dear, that was quite a yawn,” said Cuculus as she slowly turned to face Chrysalis. She then gave her a sweet, toothy smile which didn’t quite reach her eyes and chuckled. “You must be so very tired after your harrowing journey, and I just so happen to have a spare cabin for you to rest in. Would you like to go there now?”
Chrysalis snapped her jaw shut and stared, seething in silence.
How? How had Cuculus fended her off so easily whilst being drained?
She must have cheated somehow.
But Chrysalis knew that now was not the time to reengage, especially not after Cuculus had so foolishly given her an opening for a tactical retreat. She would find another way to take her down more efficiently after putting some distance between them.
“Yes, I think a bit of rest would be nice,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Splendid! The cabin’s down on the western edge of town, next to the pond just before the treeline. You can’t miss it. Enjoy your stay!”
Chrysalis could feel Cuculus’ eyes on her back as she flew down from the Eyrie. She made a show of going into the cabin as promised, lingered for a while, and then snuck out the backdoor before any assassins could corner her. She wasn’t stupid.
“Just another minor setback,” she muttered as she stalked back into the forest.
She was already laying plans for keeping a low profile and poaching Cuculus’ ponies once they’d let their guard down. Rinse and repeat until she’d gathered enough love to properly trounce her in an ambush. She had the initiative.
“Hey, wait up!”
She apparently had a trio of pests, too.
Despite all her hopes to the contrary, Berry Buzz and the twins came galloping through the undergrowth and sidled up to her.
“Why are you leaving so soon?”
“Yeah, don’t you like it here?”
“Can you tell us about the Pink Pig and the Foolish Royal Guard again? I really liked that story!”
Chrysalis stopped and looked down upon those huge, innocent eyes. She then glanced back in the direction of the village. She’d gone far enough that the fields and houses were fully obscured by trees. The sun would be going down soon, too.
Fine. If they were such good friends, they could all suffer together.
She grinned, just long enough for their confusion to take hold, before she opened her maw and unleashed her hunger.
And then the screaming started.
Both changelings dropped instantly, curling up into foetal positions as they cried for their useless pony parents. Chrysalis savoured their fear and pain—spice for the measly portions of love they possessed.
Meanwhile, the actual pony of the twins simply stared at her and trembled in place.
Once she had emptied the drones of their reserves, she magically grabbed the pony by the scruff of his neck and held him before her.
“Oh, nothing to say, now?” she sneered. “You’ll look good in a pod. The same as every last pony in your stupid little village.”
He responded by stuffing the wind chime of his necklace into his mouth.
When he blew, the shrill note which blasted out from that little tube felt loud and sharp enough to shatter glass and bone. It pierced right through Chrysalis’ very being, and flattening her ears did nothing to reduce the volume.
Her magic faltered, but he continued blowing for a good ten seconds or so even after she’d dropped him, until he’d completely run out of breath.
Chrysalis shook her head to clear it and then loomed over the colt.
“Oh, you’re going to regret that, you stupid grub,” she snarled as she yanked the whistle away from him.
Purple, intricate runes glowed softly on the metal tube. Magic.
She chuckled. “Was that supposed to hurt me? Hah! It’s nothing more than an inconvenience.”
The painful ringing in her ears had already died down to a distant buzz.
“Maybe stuffing you in a pod is too kind.” She shoved him into a thorny bush and cackled when he yelped. “I’d always wanted to try my hoof at slavery. Sombra said it was very satisfying…”
The buzzing got louder.
Chrysalis frowned.
The colt didn’t seem as scared as before.
“You’re mean! Meanies get punished,” he cried.
“Oh please. You and what army?”
Then, as the shadows on the forest floor darkened, Chrysalis realised that the buzzing wasn’t in her ears.
She turned around just in time to see a buzzing, black cloud of chitin descend upon her at terminal velocity.
“Oh, golly.”
She remembered now.
“Fellow queens of the Unseelie Court, we are facing a crisis.” High Queen Titania thumped both forelegs on the table and scowled. “Ponies have grown wise to our ways. Our infiltrators are exposed before they can bond with their partners. Our nymphs are discovered and exiled by their surrogate parents. Our hives are invaded, our prisoners rescued. We must adapt.”
“Let us go to war!” cried Queen Vespa. “When they are all our slaves, we shall have no more need for subterfuge!"
“No, we must go dormant!” cried Queen Gossamer. “Once generations of ponies have had time to forget, we shall rise from our slumber and resume the harvest!”
Shouts of agreement and dissent rang out.
“Can’t we simply give ponies our young?” asked Queen Cuculus. When all eyes turned to her, she gulped and added, “I mean, ponies are already naïve and soft-hearted by default. They just might accept our young as their own, with no need for us to steal theirs. That means less work for us, and no resentment or desire for revenge from them, right?”
High Queen Titania glared at Cuculus.
Cuculus blinked.
From her seat right next to Cuculus’, a bored Chrysalis leaned over and whispered, “Imbecile.”
She had no idea why the Unseelie Spire had a glass window, but she roared with laughter along with everyone else when the High Queen threw Cuculus out of it.
When Chrysalis next came to, she found herself belly-up in a puddle of mud. Her chitin was bruised and cracked in several places, and she’d lost some of her teeth.
The moon peeped through gaps in the canopy, providing her with just enough light to read the note stuck to her muzzle.
This is my hive, and these are my little ponies. Don’t come back.
Sincerely,
Cuculus
P.S. Imbecile.
Chrysalis flopped back onto the mud and groaned.
“Stupid changelings.”
