A Hearth's Warming Game

A Hearth's Warming Game
By Wanderer D
Prologue

It was the middle of the night as the shadow made its way towards the center of Canterlot Gardens. The hedge maze proved no challenge for the interloper as it followed the route that would take them to the center of said labyrinth unerringly, until soon, the figure stood in front of the three stone-frozen villains that had almost brought the end of ponykind.

With a furtive glance around, the figure raised its head, and a hazy glow emanated from within the cowl of the cloak it had enveloped itself with. A glow echoed around the most devious queen of the changelings…. Chrysalis herself.

The queen—originally caught in the imprisoning magic while in the middle of screaming in anger—groaned in delight as she was able to close her mouth after an unknown amount of time having it forced open.

After sputtering for a moment, she allowed a deep, rumbling laugh to escape her lips as her eyes searched the familiar stars above her. "At last!" she bellowed, "I am—" she tried to raise her hoof. "I—" She tried to open her wings. "I— I am not free?"

She glanced down as much as she could force her otherwise paralyzed neck to move and saw that the rest of her was still very much a piece of rock. She hesitated, then blinked."What kind of moron only dispels the head?" she asked aloud.

"Ahem." Somecreature below her gently coughed.

"Ah, there you are," Chrysalis said, narrowing her eyes with displeasure at the cloaked pony. It could only be a pony… well, she supposed it could be a zebra, or a yak. Or even a kirin. Sure. But the single horn poking from under the hood gave her a good idea that she was dealing with a particularly tall one. "Well then, won't you finish the job? Preferably before the guards come."

"We'll be fine," the interloper answered.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "You."

The pony shrugged. "The one and only."

"Hah. Not for an entire month!" Chrysalis snorted, then worked her jaw a little and made a heroic face. "Okay, you can stone me again, just let me keep my mouth shut this time. Pigeons are not fun when you're a statue."

"You— I… no! That's not what I'm here for!"

"Well, whatever you're here for, Princess, it can't beat being able to close my mouth for the first time since…" she let that hang, glancing down at the pony. "Aren't you going to tell me?" After a moment she sighed. "Well, far longer than I ever did for Shining Armor, in any case."

Chrysalis grinned at the sound of gritting teeth.

"I knew this was a bad idea," Cadance said, pulling back the hood to glare at Chrysalis. "Twilight keeps harping about second chances and things like that, and I thought that since Shining had said you had a good side, I could appeal to that, but clearly not."

"Wait, he said that?" Chrysalis asked before her mouth was grasped by Cadance's magic and forced open even more than before.

"Let's make sure you have enough space to get an eagle to nest there this time."

Eyes wide, and unable to move any other part of her body, Chrysalis attempted to say something with her mouth wide open, which didn't work until she shapeshifted her tongue into a tiny head that managed to squeak out a high-pitched: "Wait!"

Cadance stopped her spell, although she kept an iron grip with her magic on Chrysalis' mouth. The bigger one, in any case. She couldn't decide how to feel about the tiny Chrysalis. It was disturbing at best.

"Look, maybe we can come to some sort of an agreement," the high-pitched tiny Chrysalis said. "I'm a villain and I've been encased in stone for some time, give me a break."

She sounded like a mouse would, that is if mice spoke Equestrian, Cadance decided. Huffing. she released Chrysalis' mouth and had the satisfaction of watching her bite her tongue. While the changeling sputtered and gasped in pain, Cadance started pacing in front of her.

"It's been a few years since you were imprisoned. My daughter is now a teen, and she's…" Cadance trailed off, closing her eyes and bracing herself. "She's a nerd. Just like her dad."

Chrysalis gave her a look. "Uh-huh. So what does this have to do with me?"

Cadance gritted her teeth. "Well, she recently came to me because she found out her dad used to play Ogres and Oubliettes with-with me."

"Uh-huh."

"And I have never played that!" Cadance snapped. "I—Chrysalis, playing O&O is social suicide! I can't do it! I never could! My entire life I was taught that I should focus on doing the popular things rather than that because being into that automatically made you a loser!"

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. "You can't tell me you didn't know he played that."

"I did, but—"

"...but you thought he'd abandon his hobbies once he married?" Chrysalis guessed, then snorted when Cadance looked away. "Passion is not the only thing that makes marriage work, Princess."

"Love requires a bit of sacrifice, you know."

"Ha. And tell me, what did you sacrifice? What did Shining expect you to drop for his sake?" Chrysalis smiled, waiting.

Cadance opened her mouth to respond, then, after a moment closed it, a flustered look crossed her face.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "I can't believe I'm the one giving you marriage advice."

"That barely counts as advice."

"Insight, then."

Cadance huffed, then sighed, then sat down, wide-eyed in front of Chrysalis, looking at nothing but the floor and her hooves.

"Oh no," Chrysalis muttered as the Princess started having a panic attack.

"I've been such a self-centered pony!" Cadance wailed. "The Princess of Love? More like the Princess… of Avarice! Of Self-Centerededness!"

"Is that a word?"

" I get to have all I want, but Shining can't have even his hobbies!" Cadance continued, undeterred.

"Okay, Cadance, seriously…"

"I'm so out of touch with him that I can't even understand his favorite game!"

"To be fair, who can truly understand another creature, am I right?"

"And I pride myself on having 'helped' ponies find love and return to marriage, but what did I really do? I only made them horny!"

"Hmm."

"Or-or just made them forget for a bit, but I never helped them understand and deal with the underlying reasons for their marriage failing!"

"It's not like he's leaving you over a tabletop game, Cadance. I don't think the thought's crossed his mind at all."

"It's just the start! He'll find out I've been just pretending to not be in the mood, and then, and then he's going to force the issue and I'm going to be sitting there with my husband and my daughter and they'll see that I don't know what the hay THAC0 even means! And, and then I'll roll the wrong dice and I'll ruin the game an—oghrth!" Cadance blinked at the hoof suddenly in her mouth, stopping her from ranting.

"Fine," Chrysalis said. "Fine. I'll help, just… stop. It's depressing. You're syphoning love away from the air, lady."

Cadance's eyes shimmered with grateful tears, and she lowered Chrysaly's hoof gently. "Thank you. Shining was right, you're not completely evil."

"Yeah, well, I think my contract is over anyway, so it's okay to drop the act."

"Your contract?"

Chrysalis clamped her mouth shut for a moment. "Let's just say a certain Princess thought an invasion roleplay would be fantastic, then extended the contract to have me instigate enemies of the state in order to help Twilight grow into the role," she admitted. "Her name might or might not be Celestia."

Cadance studied Chrysalis for a moment. "I don't believe you." She snorted. "You're too good at lying."

"Thank you!"

Cadance rolled her eyes, but stood up with Chrysalis' help, and together they started walking out of the labyrinth until a stray thought crossed her mind. "Wait, I only dispelled your head, how did you—"

"I'm the Changeling Queen, Princess," Chrysalis snorted. "I transformed."