The Queen of Canterlot

On the morning of her wedding, Cadence stood in the bridal suite above the grand hall in which the ceremony was to take place.

The room was lavish: larger than most pony’s entire homes, appointed with the finest comforts, built from white stone and sided with gold. Grand windows dominated one wall, offering an unparalleled view of Canterlot and allowing the entry of both the morning sun and the fresh mountain breeze. And there in the middle of it all, bathed in sunlight, was the bride.

She was the center of a hive of activity, swarmed with ponies: two ponies to fix her dress, two to fix her makeup, one to do her hair, one to do her hooves. There was a photographer, a choreographer to walk her through the steps of the dance, and a cryptographer with his enigma machine because Luna took perverse glee in sending the most mundane of messages through secure government channels. Her mother was there, and her father, and three bridesmaids, to cheer her up and cheer her on and fill every little empty spot in her thoughts with questions and chatter and blather and noise.

And she liked it, because it meant she didn’t have to think about anything. She was too busy to think.

She did not notice when the cryptographer was called away to the communications room, for this was normal, and he shortly returned with more of Luna’s messages to decode. It was, after all, about the process. Nor did she notice when the dress ponies came and went, or her bridesmaids, or even her parents. A wedding was barely two hours away, ponies were constantly coming and going -- running errands, running messages, visiting the little foals room.

But at some point, she did notice that the quality of the chatter around her had begun to shift. The natural flow of conversation, though the words were not consciously perceived, had taken on a different quality. The cryptographer punched buttons on his encoding device, seemingly at random, but he never delivered any messages. The photographer wound the crank and snapped pictures, but at seemingly unflattering angles, and Cadence had enough knowledge of photography to notice she was not changing the exposure plates. The servants worked on her dress, but she saw one pull out a pin, return it to her pincushion, and then restore that same pin a moment later.

And her mother had just told her, “I’m so happy for you, dear!” three times in a row, with exactly the same inflection each time. Like a recording.

And so Cadence raised her voice and asked, in tones loud and commanding, “Is there anypony here who isn’t a changeling?”

All conversation in the room stopped at once. Every pony turned to face her, with blank eyes and blank stares, living ponies reduced to puppets on strings.

“Oh fuck off,” Cadence snapped. “I know all of you. I’ve seen you get entranced by bug zappers. You’re not scaring me with this body snatcher routine.”

One by one, they all turned back into changeling drones, until only the photographer was left. And she? She turned into Chrysalis.

“What are you doing here?” Cadence demanded, voice trembling with rage. “This is my wedding.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Chrysalis answered. “I’m kidnapping you.”