Fluttervalley Reborn

Chapters

The Rebirth of Flutter Valley
The Corruption of Flutter Valley
Flutter Valley Revisited
The Trouble With Flutterponies

The Rebirth of Flutter Valley

If one were gifted with the omniscient eyes of a goddess it would be readily apparent that Equestria was littered with ruins. Without the benefit of eyes that could strip back the layers of soil and sediment and push back the invasive greenery, however, even the most imposing edifice becomes indistinguishable from the untouched earth from which it once sprung, given an eon or two.

In places ancient civilizations overlapped each other having never known of their predecessors before succumbing to endless obscurity themselves. A place rife with such occurrences is the cradle of pony civilization itself, Dream Valley, and within half a days walking distance to the East it's erstwhile sister, Flutter Valley.

The whole topography spoke of erosion, drought and a tenuous hold on life for it's few denizens, but Flutter Valley, more than the rest of the surrounding environs was also bleak and desolate. Where the badlands of Dream Valley offered some promise for the obstinate and intractable, Flutter Valley was a waste so entire even it's name had been long forgotten save among the most assiduous historians. Stone monuments, unrecognizable from time's vicious weathering, strained despairingly towards the sky, their reach falling far short of that bitter grey veil.

Such a miasma did it exude that no living thing had graced it's plains for centuries, until an unlikely black, winged quadruped burst forth from a long disused series of burrows. It slowly and carefully made a survey of the forsaken valley and finding no fault with it chittered loudly towards the dusty burrow.

The ground boiled with glossy black bodies emerging from numerous subterranean runs, the valley floor collapsing into the widening fissures, soil streamed over the sleek dark bodies as they emerged. Their turquoise eyes shone in the unrelenting gloom.

Flutter Valley was alive once more.

High in the soaring spires that marked the capital of Equestria, Canterlot, two alicorns were engaged in the sort of argument that historically tended towards resentfulness and name calling. A third alicorn, the largest and decidedly most regal of the three, sat nearby pretending to enjoy a cup of tea that had long since gone cold. The dictates of experience told her to let this play itself out until the two combatants vindictiveness had subsided somewhat.

"If there is one thing I know..." Started the pink alicorn, anger flashing in her eyes before being interrupted by a snide remark by the deep blue one.

"Yes, if there is one thing you know I'd like to hear it because thus far you've done naught but spit bile and rehash machinations of vengeance that ill-befit the ruler of an empire, much less one who's meant to be some manner of embodiment of love itself." The darker alicorn stated wryly and gestured vaguely towards the horizon, "Cadence, regardless of what the changelings did to you and your husband this is not a meritorious path. Have you not found, both in their defeat and your battle against King Sombra, that love and harmony are invariably the answer, if only we can see how they might be applied?"

"Luna, correct me if I'm wrong but we, by which I mean primarily the crystal ponies and their heart shaped rock, KILLED Sombra." Cadence spat back.

"We don't actually know that for certain." Interjected the tea sipping non-combatant, "As ethereal as his form had become it's difficult to come to that conclusion with anything nearing certainty. He may yet rear his head."

"Forgive me, Celestia, but I was there. He wasn't just..." Cadence paused looking for the correct word, "...dissipated. He was destroyed. Bucking destroyed. There were chunks and the smell of death. Some pony found his horn and thought to bring it to me as a trophy. Can you even imagine that?"

"Wh...What did you do with that?" Luna asked, shocked. Such an artifact might prove to be dangerous but her true worry was the gruesome member's effect on Cadence's mental state.

"I buried it. Outside of town in a deep grave and marked it with a small crystal obelisk engraved with an effigy of the crystal heart." Cadence said.

"I am certain that's for the best and a very proper thing to have done." Luna said, thinking about all the magical relics and detritus stored away in the castle vault that would have been much safer committed back to the earth, and that was just their own confiscated collection. There were decidedly too many powerful magical artifacts floating around Equestria, unrestricted.

"I may be young, but I'm no fool." Cadence scoffed. She wasn't ready to let the argument drop despite Luna's now more congenial tact, "What I was getting at was that there is a level of threat at which certain otherwise unspeakable options should at least be considered."

"To be clear, you are implying that we should eliminate the changeling queen, or do you propose something more broad based? A genocide perhaps? We haven't had a proper one of those in some considerable period." Luna asked sardonically and let her flowing mane of stars lash abruptly across her face to disguise her improper smirk.

"Demagoguery is beneath you, Luna." The pink alicorn glowered. "Besides, at this point I don't care what you call it, those changelings are incorrigible, irredeemable and I don't see any way that we can coexist in this world, much less within a days flight of each other."

"Don't forget these are parasites, they cannot live without preying on our kin. They're an abomination who, but for a lucky fluke, would have taken Canterlot, cocooned us all and kept us like aphids in an ant dairy."

"I...I don't believe I understand that particular simile." Luna admitted.

"They would have sucked the entire kingdom dry, reduced us to husks and livestock, possibly they would have propagated our species as a slave race destined to live our entire lives in their pods just for them to leach emotions from." Cadence's eye's narrowed and her lip quivered, "These are not ponies we're talking about. They're filth and horrors that Discord himself wouldn't have dreamed up and now that they've made their presence known again and raised up a hive in that wretched valley it's only a matter of time before they spread. We should stamp them out like the bugs they are before they can entrench themselves more firmly."

"As I was saying before, if there's one thing I know it's changelings..."

Again Luna interrupted, "If there's one thing that I know, it's vengeance, and I assure you that it is invariably foalish and counterproductive. We must find another method. As we've no notion of the changeling's motives it may even be fruitful to make inroads towards diplomacy. We may find that they've simply acquired that arid valley for it's solitude in an attempt to avoid our further ire."

"We cannot, and I mean cannot, try to make peace with the changelings!" Cadence screamed, "I will raise an army of my own and march upon them unsanctioned if you withhold your own!"

"Oh, Cadence," Luna's voice wavered, "You can't mean that."

Cadence had reached a point of no return, where the bold declaration itching on the back of her tongue was all that stood between her and the irrevocable unknown. Despite her passions running high she wisely paused, and took a moment to simply breath deeply and consider that as passionate as she felt, perhaps her judgment was a bit clouded by her dealings with the changelings, as Luna implied.

Celestia sighed, knowing it was time for her to join this fray. Hearing her, the other alicorns knew her intentions and looked to her expectantly. She, for her part, reheated the tea in it's pot with solar magic, poured three fresh cups and sent two of them spinning atop their saucers towards her sister and niece who deftly caught them in their own magic fields.

They were obliged to sip from the steaming cups, impatiently waiting for Celestia to render a verdict. Despite the supposed diarchy, Celestia's opinion in this matter would be as good as law.

Celestia set her own cup aside, rose and trod the polished marble floor, meandering towards the bright lit balcony. She stepped through the ornate gilded arch and the sun streamed played across her gleaming white coat blindingly emphasizing the thought of divinity made flesh unaffectedly.

Gazing over the countryside, her back still turned to the duelists, she finally spoke.

"Cadence, I understand your anger and I admit you have every right to feel it, but we simply will not harm anypony unless we have absolutely no other choice. It's completely unlike you to follow such a dark path. It's most unsettling." Celestia admonished.

"The changelings are dangerous, I admit, but so far they've done nothing untoward, simply raised a hive in a cursed valley. Nopony nearby has been reported missing, there have been no incursions and few enough sightings besides. In all honesty that area is so sparsely populated that without that weather team getting sent off course that hive may have lain undetected for years."

"Mayhaps they have been and we have only just now become aware." Luna speculated.

"I think not, the hive was still in a crude state when it was first spotted. Chrysalis had yet to even erect the central spire so it must have been in it's infancy as I don't believe she's one to forgo such regal trappings." Celestia said, "I would think it a new colony but that I had her former one surveilled and it was found to be abandoned."

"Do you mean to tell me that you not only refuse to take military action but, if I'm hearing you correctly, don't intend to do anything at all?" Cadence demanded.

"No, much as I would like to simply wait and see there are some things bothering me that I believe are related." She finally tuned from surveying the countryside and stepped back into the shadow, "If nopony's gone missing recently and, so far as our intelligence tells us, they don't leave the valley, what are they feeding upon?

Luna's eyes went wide, "That valley! I remember now. Sister, do you think they found the sun stone?"

"It would be extraordinarily fitting if they have, I suppose." Celestia said, "If it is indeed the case then the Elements of Harmony are going to prove crucial."

Cadence thought of her sister in law, Twilight Sparkle, and the boundless power her friends possessed. Her eye twinkled just thinking of their Harmonic might and imagining a vast field of ossified changelings, Chrysalis' outraged statue at the fore, "The Elements?" She ruefully thought to herself, "Well that's even better than a military action."

The Elements of Harmony in the flesh were sent for without delay and the elements themselves removed from their vault and artistically arrayed across the blue velvet draped table beside Celestia's gilt throne. Celestia studied them thoughtfully in the nearly empty chamber. The great solar alicorn sighed, but the guards were disciplined to take no notice of melancholy exhalations. Essentially she was alone and troubled. Her sister had long since retired for the day and as much as she'd downplayed the peril she didn't know if her sister realized the true gravity of the situation. Cadence, for her part, was quite prepared to steamroll the valley by any means necessary and she sympathized with the feeling to some degree.

The changeling queen had imprisoned her, and had Twilight Sparkle not happened upon her she would have remained trapped within the crystal caverns beneath Canterlot and probably died. This was not where her deep, implacable hatred of the changelings had come from. Chrysalis had brainwashed her fiance, fed on him, used him and come so very close to killing him outright. For such a passionate creature as Cadence it was beyond unforgivable, it was a vendetta. Celestia knew she would put herself in a position to repay it as soon as it presented itself. Now that it had, Celestia debated stopping her, but knew in the end that she wouldn't.

Cadence was a young pony and by alicorn standards she was virtually newborn, short on experience and impervious to advice. Despite the Sun Goddess' misgivings the young Princess was going to have to learn this lesson on her own. She took comfort in the fact that her student would be there, a forgiving and level headed mare when serious peril reared it's head. (Surprisingly less so with the mundane and trivial trials one so often faces, but nopony's perfect.)

Again Celestia sighed, but from boredom this time, and when the door to the throne room was finally flung open it was as if she'd been anticipating it for quite a span. Because she had. You didn't make it eons without acquiring some presentiment regarding other ponies' actions, even when they themselves felt them to be spur of the moment and unpredictable.

"Cadence, what brings you here dear one?" She said while thinking that she was quite late. She'd canceled her afternoon appointments for this, after all.

Cadence bowed formally, establishing a cold distance between the two of them, "Princess, I want to go along with my husband to fight the changelings."

"I would prefer if you didn't." Celestia stated simply, "I think you'll find you're too close to this issue to see it objectively and there is a considerable likelihood that your presence will hinder the party, maybe even endanger everypony."

"What about Shining Armor?" Cadence demanded, "He's as close as me, closer even, to the 'issue' as you put it. But you're still sending him. I demand to be by his side when he faces those...things. He needs me there."

"If everything goes well his involvement will be minimal, but even should he come into close contact with Chrysalis herself I am confident he will acquit himself admirably. It is, after all, what he has been trained to do for so many years." Celestia replied, "Aside from that he is by far the most suited to defend against the changelings should things go badly."

"So you refuse to allow me to go with him?" Cadence shot back.

"No." Celestia grumbled, rubbed her temple with a forehoof and screwed up her face in concentration, "No, I won't stop you. Look, Cadence, I know you're going to go no matter what I say just as well as you do. I cannot condone it because your being there puts everyone in unnecessary danger. The risks are too great for me to give my blessing, surely you can see that?"

"Still, the fact remains that you will go and it breaks my heart to fight with you, to see you like this. Could we perhaps simply skip that portion, as I've no stomach for it?"

"So, I can go, then?" Cadence asked, somewhat shocked.

"If you must." Celestia said, "But you know how I feel about it and I wish you'd reconsider. I don't say these things lightly, you know."

"I know," Cadence relented, "But I feel this is something I have to do, my responsibility."

"I would debate that, but we simply haven't the time. Your effects have been stowed with the caravan and it's already moving out. You'll have to hurry if you mean to catch it before it leaves the city. Shining Armor and the Elements are there and have already been apprised of your addition to the team." Celestia said.

"You knew?" Cadence asked incredulously.

"Yes. This is not my first rodeo, I assure you." Celestia smirked and gave a little wink as Cadence trotted towards the open balcony, preparing to leap into the open air beyond, "Stay safe."

"I will. Thank you." Cadance said as she spread her wings and soared away with only the barest backward glance.

A quiet rustling behind the throne drew Celestia's attention to the dark coated alicorn emerging from her hiding spot, "You've grown wise in my absence." She teased, "Such a tactic is far more certain to temper her hatred in a way that a blatant denial never could."

"Luna, I thought you were sleeping." The white alicorn said with annoyance.

"Oh, yes, sister, I was. Right behind the curtains there so I wouldn't miss out on the row with Cadence." Luna yawned, then said with a cheesy grin, "You wouldn't want me to miss out on all the entertainments the day has to offer, would you? I must admit, though it was handled deftly, there was a distinct lack of fireworks."

"So you knew, too?" Celestia asked.

"Certainly. Would you expect any less?" Luna shrugged, "Children are simply so predictable, after all. I do wish she had not chosen to go, though. She is ill equipped to do battle with a changeling swarm and her unique power may prove to be her undoing."

"I feel the same way, but some lessons can only be learned the hard way." Celestia marched back to her throne and seated herself, pulling out a game board from behind the throne she asked, "If you're done spying, maybe a quick game?"

"Nay, I never do seem to best you at chess. Checkers. Now that's a game for royalty and lacking all that trite symbolism besides." Luna smiled and produced a stack of red and black pieces.

Four elephantine war ponies were divided between the yokes of a pair of large, rustic wagons which were cowled in twin arches of filthy canvas. A further twenty ponies, all clad in intricate gleaming armor, followed in loose formation behind. Trailing them at some distance, glancing over his shoulder every other minute, was a white coated, blue maned stallion. Despite his current lack of armor and fretful disposition his bearing definitively pegged him as the one in charge, even as he scanned the Canterlotian skies for the dozenth time.

The caravan had long since passed the city's gate and started the meandering descent down the rocky cliff side trails towards the low rolling hills cut by their intended path, heading Southeast. Officially their destination was Dodge City, if anypony asked, but they intended to pass straight through there and deep into the badlands themselves. To maintain some modest level of secrecy they were taking the slower route, going on hoof as opposed to taking the train and the seven passengers of the rearward wagon were strongly encouraged to stay sequestered within it's confines lest they be seen. It was, perhaps, a bit overcautious given the measures they had already taken to avoid coming into contact with changeling spies, but the greater their chance of going undetected the better.

Their party was still short one member, but a flash of pink on the horizon appeared and steadily grew larger until it finally became a pink alicorn who swooped gracefully earthwards and was caught up in the embrace of the white stallion even as she landed.

"Cadence!" He shouted with joy, "What kept you? For a moment I was thinking of turning back for you."

"Shining Armor," She chided, but returned his embrace, "Really now I can look after myself and why would you hold up the whole group just to retrieve little old me, who, as I recall, nopony wanted to tag along anyhow?"

"Ah, so the Princesses agreed with me." Shining Armor said smugly.

"Yes, but one princess didn't agree, and here she is whether you like it or not." Cadence countered, "Besides, in the end they said it was okay."

"Now Cadence, you know I love having you around, it's just that we're trotting right into a changeling hive and I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you." Shining Armor said, "I would sleep sounder at night if I knew you were home, safe."

"If you think I'm going to let you hog all the action, mister, you are very much mistaken." She said and give him a quick peck.

"My wife, the action hero." He said and shook his head, "Hey, Twily's in that wagon up there with her friends, you should go say hello. I'm sure they're bored by now and I have to pretend to be doing my job properly instead of consorting with some pretty pink alicorn."

"Yes, that's highly improper." She said, kissed him lightly and giggled. She took briefly to the air, split the formation of armored troops and landed gracefully on the rear step of the moving wagon. Balancing on the narrow board of the rear step she settled her wings and poked her head between the curtains that closed off the interior.

"Boo!" She hollered playfully with only her muzzle penetrating into the interior. Her sister in law, the purple unicorn who represented the Element of magic recognized her immediately.

"Cadence!" She yelled happily as the rest of the alicorn slithered her way into the tightly enclosed space and made it that much tighter with her entrance. She hugged the purple unicorn in greeting as best she was able.

"Twilight, it's so good to see you and all your friends." Cadence smiled around the wagon and was greeted by the same save for one face. In the corner a yellow pegasus had genuinely been frightened by her entrance and had jumped up into the lap of a cyan coated, rainbow maned one and still sat there, shivering. Cadence's eyes widened in realization and guilt, "Oh, Fluttershy, I didn't mean to scare you, I'm so sorry."

"Oh, it's okay." Fluttershy replied quietly, "You just surprised me a bit, is all, but it's quite alright. I'm glad to see it's you. You can, um, put me down now Rainbow Dash."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and abruptly did just that, letting Fluttershy drop right on her plot with a tiny surprised, "Eeep!"

A pretty white unicorn with a carefully coiffed purple mane glared at Rainbow Dash, "Really Rainbow, must you be such a ruffian?"

"Oh, relax, no harm done. Sorry, Flutters." Rainbow said less than sincerely.

"Oh, it's um fine, don't worry Rarity, I shouldn't have jumped on her like that." Fluttershy whispered.

"Rainbow Dash, there ain't no cause for treating your friends so rough just 'cuz you're getting ants in yer pants." A blond maned orange coated earth pony drawled, "Why don't you read somethin', or play cards with Pinkie Pie before y'all have a fit?" Here she indicated a poofy maned pink pony, shuffling cards in a deft and dizzying manner, hoofing and reappearing cards with alacrity.

"No way, Apple Jack, Pinkie's a card shark." Rainbow said disgustedly, "I still owe her half my next paycheck from the last time we played. For somepony so dedicated to making her friends happy she sure seems willing to part them of their bits."

"Silly!" Pinkie exclaimed, "Just think how happy you'll be when you win them all back!"

"But I won't win, Pinkie!" Rainbow Dash protested.

"You'll never know if you don't try!" Pinkie giggled and with a flourish fanned out three aces, tapped them with a hoof and they became four, then once more and the ace of horseshoes joined the others to make five. Quickly the hand was folded back into the deck before it could receive closer scrutiny.

"How do you even do that?" Cadence asked, incredulous.

"Do you really want to know?" Pinkie leaned towards her conspiratorially. Cadence nodded. Pinky arched the deck in her hoof and until they shot out in a fluttering stream towards Cadence. When she flinched Pinkie instantly reached out and collected the deck in a perfect pile with her other hoof, just shy of Cadence's face.

"Practice!" She exclaimed with a smile and giggled as she continued to dance the cards about in unlikely ways.

"I wasn't sure the Princess would let you come." Twilight said as Cadence settled herself in the bed of the wagon.

"They didn't want to." She admitted. "In truth they were not in favor of my presence here. They were of the opinion that I was putting you and myself in unnecessary danger."

"They may be right, oh not that you'll be putting us in danger, no, no." Rarity said, "But this is a simple mission and I can't see that it's worth risking your safety for it. In all likelihood we won't even be facing the changelings directly."

"That's not what Stalwart and Lefty think." A small purple dragon said as he crawled through the front curtains, down from his former perch on the driver's seat.

Applejack sighed, "Alright, I'll bite. Just who're Stalwart and Lefty?"

"They're the stallions pulling the wagon. Great guys. They say we're going to exterminate the whole changeling hive once and for all." The purple dragon said with shaky enthusiasm.

"Spike, you can't believe soldiers when they tell you things like that." Twilight said.

"So they're lying?" Spike asked, disillusioned.

"It's not lying, exactly," Applejack said, "It's called scuttlebutt. It's a soldier's form of gossip but you'll mostly find it's a bunch of exaggeration and hooey."

"But everypony knows it's not true, so it doesn't count as a lie?" Spike conjectured.

"Precisely." Twilight said, proud he'd picked up the concept so quickly.

"So there's not a sunstone there that I get to eat?" Spike asked, disappointedly.

"There might be a sunstone, but I don't think you'd want to eat it even if you were allowed, and you're NOT allowed." Twilight said bluntly.

"I never get to have any fun." He whined.

"I can help with that!" Pinkie cried and started dealing cards, "Know how to play seven card stud, stud?"

"Huh?" Spike said.

"Pinkie, no." Twilight chastised.

"Pooh." Pinkie said dejectedly and squirreled the cards away in her mane.

"What is this sunstone? Is it similar to the Crystal Heart?" Rarity asked, intrigued by the potential for a new gemstone to covet.

"Sort of, I guess. The texts aren't especially clear on it's precise nature," Twilight flipped open a book to an illustration of a large, erratically cut gemstone sitting atop a crooked stone pillar which may have been a heavily stylized sundial, "It apparently gathered the sun's energy, focused it and released it primarily as warmth. From what I can tell, though, I believe it also exuded an elemental force of love, otherwise it's effects on the flora and fauna of the valley wouldn't have been so wholly salubrious."

Pinkie balked at Twilight's word choice, "It made the valley into greasy salad?"

"I think it's a kind of cheese." Offered Rainbow Dash, "So what did it do exactly, buffet aside?"

Twilight groaned, "This valley, it used to be called Flutter Valley before it fell into ruin, was notably the grandest paradise in the whole of Ponyland, as they used to call it. This was at a time when Ponyland itself was several million acres of unblemished paradise."

"It was said to be thickly carpeted year round in the beautiful flowers and verdant gardens. For centuries it stood isolated because there was only a narrow pass into it and it was otherwise surrounded by sheer mountains. If you didn't know to look for it you'd be unlikely to find it by accident."

"The inhabitants of the valley, animal and pony alike, could frolic carefree without a care in the world, guarded by their isolation and maintained by their sunstone. How it got there, and what exactly it was the books don't say. I have my guesses, but for now we'll skip it. It was a fact, however, that without the sunstone the valley would shrivel up and die, which in the end, is just what happened, I guess."

"The whole race who'd served as guardians to the valley and the sunstone went extinct when it was lost. It's said that the flutterponies just couldn't live without the valley."

"Flutterpony? Oh my. I think I'd like to be a flutterpony." Fluttershy said.

"What's a flutterpony?" Asked Spike, "Is it like a pegasus?"

"Apparently they were like pegasi, but with insect wings. Butterfly I think." Twilight said, flipping through a book she'd pulled from her saddlebag but failing to find an illustration.

"So, like Rarity when she went to the Best Young Fliers Competition?" Spike asked. Rarity hung her head bashfully at the memory.

"Probably." Twilight said, "They weren't as strong as pegasi, but they had this one amazing talent that kept them safe. They could come together in a group, beat there wings, and create a wind charged with the love energy from the sunstone that would dispel dark magic and repel malevolent creatures."

"What happened to the sunstone, did some old baddies steal it to make their own cheese salad?" Pinkie asked, bouncing in place with nervous energy.

"I think that may have happened, but they got it back." Twilight said, "In the end they sacrificed it to save the rest of Ponyland, though I'm not sure if they knew they couldn't survive without it. I don't know the story, exactly, but it's in one of my books, somewhere."

"I remember it," Cadence said happily, "I'm surprised you don't. I used to read it to you when you were just a little filly. I guess you were too young."

"It read like a fairytale so I don't know how seriously you can take it anyway, but the nut of it was; There were a trio of evil witches who wanted to take the valley for their own, but they had to corrupt it to suit their needs. They'd tried before, releasing a horrible amorphous monster that covered over Ponyland, and then conspiring with a swarm of bees to steal the sunstone away. The Flutter ponies were victorious both those times, so it was equal parts corruption and vengeance the witches were seeking."

"By means of mesmeric magic they enlisted the help of an elder dragon with the intention of running them off and stealing the sunstone themselves, both of which they did, but the ponies returned with help and using a magical artifact called the rainbow of light..."

"I've read about that!" Twilight interrupted excitedly, "It was an early manifestation of the elements of harmony, wasn't it?"

"Probably, yes." Cadence continued, "Anyway, they used the rainbow of light to free the dragon from the witches influence and he chased them back to their volcano and took over their castle."

"Now these were far more innocent and forgiving times, but even then there's only so much that can be forgiven and everypony agreed that it was high time that the witches were dealt with before they regained their keep and started terrorizing ponies all over again. So the Flutterponies took the sunstone into battle with them, used it to create a rainbow portal to another world, drove the witches through it and sealed it off forever."

"So they just pawned them off on another world to cause somepony else trouble? That's so not cool." Rainbow Dash said.

"The world that lay beyond the rainbow, though, didn't have any overt magic of it's own, so they would have been powerless there. I have often wondered what kind of world it was and whether it wasn't a death sentence to send them there without a means of support. Their attitudes would have been sufficient to stifle all offers of charity if the stories are true." Cadence said, "The flutterponies returned to their valley and reinstalled the sunstone, but it's power waned."

"Either it wasn't meant to be a weapon or the witches power had somehow corrupted it, but it ceased to radiate love and warmth from that day forward and soon grew dark entirely. As it did the flutterponies slowly faded away."

"Literally faded away?" Twilight asked.

"That's just how the story phrased it, I can't imagine that's what actually happened, but it's a very old story." Cadence said.

"Hmm," Rarity considered, "I could understand the changelings wanting it if it were true that it radiated love, but if the stone is truly dead I can't see it's significance to them."

"Um, maybe it's a coincidence?" Fluttershy offered, "What if they just wanted someplace out of the way where no one would bother them? I could understand that."

"Maybe, but you'd have to admit it would be a huge coincidence. No, whatever they're up to, it involves the sunstone, I'm certain. " Cadence finished.

The wagon rattled along in foreboding silence for a time. It's loose frame creaked like a ship's timbers as it bounced over washboard and ruts. Pinkie had her eye pressed up to a slit in the canvas, satisfied by the slow moving scenery it revealed. Fluttershy intently watched Rarity who had donned her reading glasses and was working an intricate pattern on a stretched piece of fabric in a frame. It was still at an early stage and unrecognizable. Cadence and Twilight had spread a small selection of books on the splintery wagon floor and were both shuffling listlessly through the yellowing pages, occasionally showing each other a passage or two as they came across them. Rainbow Dash and Applejack eventually took to gossiping quietly to pass the time, giggling over the Cutie Mark Crusader's latest fiasco which had ended with the three of them with coarsely buzz cut manes that would take months to grow back out properly. Rarity had not been pleased and glared at them across the wagon to emphasize that. Where Rainbow and Applejack thought it nothing but trivial gossip Rarity felt it cruel to laugh at the misfortunes of the fillies who would certainly be teased remorselessly until their manes grew back. She thought to rebuke them, but swallowed that harsh sentiment instead. After all she had to admit it was a bit funny.

The light beam from Pinkie's small portal to the outside shifted slowly with the sun, illuminating the dust specks in it's path and eventually dimming. Soon the wagon rattled to a stop and they disembarked in the dim dusky glow.

All around them nature had set out wonders of organic stone architecture. Eroded sandstone arches and slot canyons glowed a rusty red in the waning sunset. They set up a large tent half in a sheltered stone outcropping for the express purpose of keeping the elements reasonably out of sight. Guards were sent out, shifts and patrols established, all the sorts of thing military ponies did to feel useful. The four massive ponies who'd pulled the wagons tirelessly all day, when they finally got to rest, bedded down right beside their conveyances.

There was a collegial buzz of voices as the off duty squad made up a stew of vegetables and mushrooms and shared it around in their battered tin dishes.

The Elements were catered by Pinkie herself, who wouldn't have had it any other way. She produced a picnic basket the size of a casket loaded with sandwiches and baked goods. By the time they'd finished Luna's stars had come out and Shining Armor and Cadence came to join them for a moment and discuss the upcoming day. Things went bad right away.

"Captain Armor?" Rarity started sternly, "While I appreciate the gravity of the situation I'm uncertain that I will be able to maintain my composure with the minimal provisions I have been allowed. We will, I presume, be passing through Dodge City tomorrow, no? I should think I could bolster my supplies even from such a meager little backwater given a few hours."

"Um, Rarity?" Apple jack said, "You do realize we ain't goin' to such a hay of a lot of trouble to stay hidden for you to waltz into town just to pick up some frou frou knicknacks, right?"

"Well, of course darling." She said, producing a scarf and sunglasses, "I shall go incognito, obviously."

Shining Armor shook his head, "I'm sorry, but we aren't going to have enough time for sight seeing. We're going to start early and get through town as fast as possible. By tomorrow night we need to have installed ourselves in a hidden encampment that's being prepared for us over the mountain from the changeling's hive."

"Encampment?" Rarity asked, incensed, "As in camping? No no no, I despise and deplore camping. It really is out of the question."

The group sat in stunned silence, unsure whether to laugh or to yell, then the gentle yellow pagasus spoke up, "Are we...going to have to go over the mountain? Because I should tell you, I'm scared of heights."

Cadence and Shining Armor face hoofed and groaned.

"Actually we'll be going under the mountain. The whole area is riddled with tunnels and we've secured one concealed passage that will take us under the mountain and within half a mile of the hive." Shining Armor said.

"Oh, well, I...I'm scared of dark tunnels too. Light tunnels too, I'm not really good with the whole tunnel concept, really...if that's okay with you." Fluttershy stammered.

"Flutters, you're scared of your own shadow." Rainbow Dash scoffed, "It won't matter, though, just let me at that hive and I'll take on that whole swarm, then you can all just take your time cleaning up my mess."

"D...Do you really think you can, Rainbow Dash?" Fluttershy asked.

"No she cain't." Applejack stated before Rainbow Dash could reply. She settled her cowpony hat tightly to her head, preparing to dish out some honest truths, "We lost to those changelings on our own home turf and we ain't going to do no better just rushing in there half cocked and without a plan. There's just too many of 'em."

"Eh, we've got the elements with us this time, we'll be fine." Rainbow said.

"We do have them and the element of surprise to boot," Applejack admitted, "But we've used the elements twice against a couple of what you might call demigods. I don't think they're meant for or suited to down and dirty fighting a whole swarm of peons and it don't seem like a good time to settle that question either way. 'Sides, if'n we get that sunstone we're libel to avoid having to fight 'em at all. If you just crash your way in there we might use up the elements on small fries before we even get to surprise the big spud herself."

"Chrysalis is a potato?" Pinkie cocked her head, "I guess that explains the green eyes. Eyes? Get it? 'Cuz she's a potato?" She was rewarded with an annoyed silence, "Eh, they can't all be winners, I'll do better next time."

Cadence spoke up, "I'm not sure you girls need to fight at all. Shining, why couldn't you just cast your shield spell over the hive to expel them and we'll have all the time we need to search it for the stolen sunstone."

"It's precisely because they're in a hive that we can't do that." Shining Armor said, "If I cast that spell and they're trapped inside it's likely to crush them all against the wall of the hive. It would suffocate them at it's kindest and might just pulverize them."

"So?" Both Rainbow Dash and Cadence said simultaneously. Twilight glared at them both.

"Girls! I'm surprised at you two!" Twilight chastised, "They might be evil, ugly, horrible monsters, but you can't just murder them! That's just terrible."

"Yes, I'm sure they don't mean to be such rotten, duplicitous back stabbers." Fluttershy said, "They're probably really really good deep down inside."

Cadence blinked and whispered to Rarity, "Is that sarcasm? I can't really tell with her."

"Sorry, you're right, Fluttershy." Rainbow admitted, "I guess I didn't really think that one through."

"Actually, I don't see why we have to fight them at all." Pinkie said. Everypony groaned, waiting to hear the latest party related solution, but that's not where she went, "So what if they do have the sunstone? If it keeps them fed and out of our manes, why not let them keep it? It's just some silly rock and we don't need it for anything anyway and if we take it away aren't they just going to start kidnapping and replacing ponies like they used to?"

"Sorry to be all super serious, but good is subjective. An eagle eats a fish. Good for the eagle, bad for the fish, but without the fish the eagle would starve."

"I could feed the eagle some suet." Fluttershy volunteered.

"Yeah, that might be just what the sunstone is to the changelings, a big gemmy bit of suet that keeps them from wanting to eat poor fishy little us. Maybe we could even get to know them and be their friends. They'd be great at impressions." Pinkie finished by making a fish face and mimicking swimming movements with her hooves, "Glub." She said, fishily.

"Changelings are NOT our friends." Cadence said coldly.

"Not yet." Pinkie responded.

"I still say we hit 'em hard and fast." Rainbow said, pounding her hooves together in a crushing motion, "Take the sunstone and sort it all out afterward when we have the upper hoof."

"But what if Pinkie's right? I wouldn't want to hurt anypony." Fluttershy whispered guiltily.

"I reckon we need to scout out the situation before we go trying to start a war. Ain't no purpose in talkin' like a bigshot afore we even know just what's goin' on." Applejack angrily said to Rainbow Dash.

"All I know," Rarity said in a huff, "Is that if I have to sleep rough like this for two whole nights without some basic necessities my mane will be simply ruined, then how am I to face down a changeling swarm with any sort of confidence?"

Twilight just indicated the sleeping form of a baby dragon, "I'll have to write the Princess for more books before I can formulate a proper plan, but I can start a checklist right away."

"Less planning, more whamming!" Rainbow shouted, backed up by a stern nod from Cadence.

"That doesn't even rhyme right." Observed Pinkie, mockingly. Dash rolled her eyes.

"Now simmer down, sugarcube," Applejack said to Rainbow and Cadence, "Let's not tip the kettle before it boils. We're going to need to approach this delicately, those varmints are mighty tenacious and they out number us a hundred to one or better."

"What if they see our camp? The longer we wait the more exposed we are." Rainbow Dash countered.

"We can't go in until I know more about the sunstone, it might be dangerous!" Twilight interjected desperately.

"Between Shining Armor and myself we can decimate the hive and capture their queen once and for all. Unless something goes terribly wrong we shouldn't even need the elements." Cadence stated.

"Wow, you really don't like changelings, do you?" Pinkie asked rhetorically.

"After what they did to me and my husband..."

"We were there, we know." Rainbow turned on Cadence despite supporting her plan, "I don't want to be the one to tell you to get over it, but get over it."

"How dare you!" Cadence's voice raised towards borderline Royal Canterlot levels.

"Girls, stop, why are we fighting like this?" Fluttershy asked in a voice so low that nopony acknowledged it.

"I'm really quite serious about my mane." Rarity said, eyes blazing.

"Stop, we need to get some rest and sort this out in the morning!" Twilight said exasperated.

"Who put you in charge anyway?" Rainbow glared at Twilight.

"Y'all are acting nuttier than a squirrel on a fruitcake." Applejack shook her head.

"STOP!" Shining Armor bellowed, to great effect. The whole group froze in mid argument, "It will surprise you to know that this is an Equestrian military action which puts me squarely in charge." Here he glared around the tent intimidatingly, "Tomorrow we will get to the encampment and send a recon unit to assess the situation. Then and only then will we formulate a plan and in the end it will be MY plan. Am I making myself clear?"

The seven mares nodded dumbly.

"Cadence, go back to our tent, we need to talk about this." He said sternly and Cadence shamefacedly headed out. Once he judged her to be out of earshot his face softened and he addressed the six in a calmer tone.

"You may have figured this out, but Cadence is still traumatized by the changeling incident in Canterlot."

"Well, duh!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Yes, well, what you don't know is that this disharmony between you six is created, or at least exacerbated by her troubled mental state, and it gets worse the more worked up she gets. I don't believe you would ordinarily squabble quite so much, right?" Shining Armor asked.

"We do fight from time to time," Applejack admitted, "But it did seem kinda petty right towards the end, now that you mention it."

"Well now you know, so just try to keep it in mind and I'll try to reign her in where I can. It's one of the reasons Celestia didn't want her along on this trip, but even she couldn't see any way to stop her. I think once we settle this matter she'll finally be able to move on." Shining Armor said.

"Yes, well, I suppose I could just tuck my mane up under a hat..." Rarity said to everypony's amusement, "What? Surely you wouldn't have me look unruly?"

"No, never." Rainbow Dash said sarcastically.

"Get some rest, we start bright and early...actually before bright and early, tomorrow." Shining Armor said and left the tent to return to his own.

When he got there he found it empty. He looked to one of the sentinels who motioned to one of the wagons but for better or worse he decided to cut his losses for the night and turned in to sleep fitfully and alone.

Tensions improved, somewhat, the following day. Shining Armor had a long talk with Cadence who was quite susceptible to his charms and she remained mostly silent for the rest of the day, studying what new material Celestia had sent using Spike's dragonfire.

There were few new facts to be gleaned about the sunstone or the changelings. The fact she'd found interesting was about the flutterponies. Apparently they'd disappeared along with the abrupt desolation of the valley, rather than languishing away afterwards, though the precise circumstance was left unrecorded. Other than that the information was nothing but rehashes of facts she already knew.

Twilight had come upon a theoretical dissertation on the structure of the sunstone's crystal matrix and after studying it for an hour she had to admit that knowing what it was originally composed of was not remotely relevant to the matter at hoof and she talked with the girls about superficial matters up until they reached Dodge City.

They passed through the erstwhile frontier town in silence lest they be overheard and discovered though the murmuring and bustle of the town passing by cheered them considerably. Once through they resumed their various discussions and took turns peeking through the tear in the filthy canvas, watching the landscape become increasingly arid.

Their pace quickened as the sun lowered and long after that, deep into the night, they reached their destination. The two teams pulled their wagons into what appeared to be a shallow cave sunk into the granite of a mountain side. It was covered by sickly drapes of moss and vine, the bare mountain peaks towering skyward above them until it disappeared into the black haze of night. Looking out the other way was a vast expanse of scrub and stunted trees glowing bone white in the moonlight. From the map they knew that the landscape in that direction eventually ended in high, unseen plateaus.

The seven mares and one young dragon exited the dim confines of the wagon into that bright moonlight and were shepherded right back into the near pitch black of the cave's interior.

Some rough prepwork had indeed been done in the caves. For one, a dark cloth had been fitted across the mouth of the cave to keep any light emitted from inside from being detected by anypony patrolling outside at night. For another a line of supply crates had been stashed against the back wall, presumably full of provisions.

Upon closer inspection the cave itself was just the tip of an underground iceberg.

"Look! There's a light coming from that hole in the floor." Twilight said and found that there was also a ladder leading deeper into the cave. Rainbow Dash cautiously started to climb down.

"It's okay." Shining Armor said, "The advance team's down there now. Head on down." He gestured to his troops, "You ponies too."

The four ponies who'd drawn the wagons were made to remain topside, ostensibly on guard and quite satisfied with that post, though they were forbidden to speak for fear of a changeling patrol overhearing them.

Upon reaching the bottom of the hole they found a rough barracks set up in a large room and a more comfortable set of quarters farther along for the Elements, Cadence and Shining Armor. The soldiers set about settling their gear into the bunks and checking their weapons and armor.

The cave was brightly lit by modern lanterns hung from ancient, rusted lugs set into the walls. The pinkish stone glittered with moisture and fine crystals, veins of quartz cutting through at random wild angles.

Stalactites and stalagmites randomly decorated the cave, all rounded over as if touched and rubbed against by numerous travelers. Where the cave narrowed back down a pair of worn fluted columns stuck up incongruously from the floor. Two distinct voices drifted back between them.

"That should be the advance team. Stay here." Shining Armor said and went to retrieve them.

The ponies Shining Armor brought back were a couple of the roughest looking customers any of them had ever seen. Shockingly, to Twilight at least, one was a mare. Her rust colored mane matted into distinct plaits of mud and debris, her grey coat zigzagged with a muddy pattern of dark lines and blotches. The mare's intelligent blue eyes met Twilight's inquisitive look.

"It's camouflage." The mare clarified, "Breaks up a pony's profile so they're not so visible when they go spying on the buggies."

"Buggies?" Twilight asked.

"Changelings, ma'am." The mare restated, "We've been keeping an eye on them for the past couple days."

The stallion of the pair was a somewhat less filthy but heavily scarred dark brown with a shortly cropped black mane. His cutie mark was an orange oak leaf bent against an imaginary wind. On his left eye he wore a brown eyepatch. He held up his hoof to Twilight in greeting, "Breezy," He said simply and pointed to his partner, "Cheyenne." She saluted sloppily.

His introduction to Twilight complete he turned to Shining Armor, saluted crisply, and asked, "You want my report now, sir?"

"Yes, we need to get this operation under way before we draw attention to ourselves." Shining Armor said and motioned for the rest of the Elements and Cadence to join them.

"Funny thing about that, sir." Cheyenne said, "I believe you'd have to be pretty brazen to draw the attention of this particular group of changelings. They're barely patrolling and seem to be sticking to the hive itself."

"Are they still building it?" Cadence asked.

"Not so far as we can tell, ma'am." Breezy said, "The exterior's been static for the past two days and they aren't exhibiting the behaviors common to changelings when they're building, so we think the interior's finished as well."

"Can you confirm Chrysalis is there?" She followed up.

Breezy shook his head. "No ma'am, there's a changeling queen that entered the hive a day ago, and so far as we know she's still there, but I've never seen Chrysalis, so I couldn't say for sure it was her. Are there more changeling queens than her?"

"I don't know. There seems to be a lot we don't know about changelings." Cadence admitted, "Shouldn't you be keeping a rotating watch so we'd know if she was still there?"

"Ma'am, to be honest we had to set up all this and it's just the two of us," Cheyenne gestured to the hospitality of the cave, "Besides which the honeycomb of tunnels mean we'd only know when she came and went by the front door which is too inconclusive to be relevant."

Shining Armor finally spoke up and asked, "If that's the case, how can you know for sure the changeling drones are still in the hive?"

"Sir, we can say conclusively that there's a considerable number of drones." Breezy said.

"When you get close to the hive you can lay your head against the rock and hear them chittering, sir." Cheyenne shuddered, "It's disconcerting, to say the least."

"Do you know how many of them bugs there are?" Applejack asked.

"Not for certain, ma'am, but judging by an abandoned hive that's been studied we estimate about five thousand drones above ground. This is a bigger hive than has been seen elsewhere, not that there's ever been that many hives to be found and studied, but counting the ones underground we think it may be nearly every changeling there is." Breezy said.

"So you think there's more below ground?" Shining Armor asked.

"We know there are." Breezy admitted, "We counted another thousand in the underground chamber."

"So you've been there?" Cadence asked, shocked.

"Ma'am, we have." Cheyenne shuddered in recalling it, "It's a big domed chamber that the hive is sitting on with one relatively spindly column right in the center holding the chamber's roof up. We were planning on rigging it with explosives to bring the hive down on itself."

"Really?" Cadence asked incredulously, "That sounds perfect, how hard would it be to set the charges?"

"Dead easy, ma'am." Breezy said, fiddling with his eyepatch and resettling it, "It's pretty dark in there and there's a ridged fin formation that leads right to the base of the column. The changelings are cocooned all across the ceiling and only a few of them are active at any given time. I expect we could have it rigged with pretty negligible risk."

"Why haven't you, then?" Cadence narrowed her eyes.

Breezy exhaled slowly, "Ma'am, several reasons, actually. The simplest one is that we're here as a recon team and it exceeds our orders to go setting charges."

"The other thing, ma'am," Cheyenne continued for him, "Is that we can't see that it'd do just what we want it to. Granted the cavern's deep enough for most of the hive to fall into, and the descent would shatter the structure sure enough, but those changeling exoskeletons are pretty durable, so maybe we'd squish half of the bugs. Then what? Even with that level of chaos to distract them we can't take on several thousand changelings. They'd just rebuild the hive and they'd know we were gunning for them."

"More than that," Shining Armor said sternly, "This is not a mission of vengeance, now is it? We talked about this, Cadence, we're to avoid casualties if at all possible and that includes changeling casualties."

"You're right, I was getting carried away again, I'm sorry." She said. All the while thinking of the one thin spire of rock that held the changeling hive aloft.

"I don't know," Rainbow Dash said from the rear of the group, "It's not like those drones are the same as ponies. They seem pretty stupid."

"Ma'am, stupid is fairly subjective." Cheyenne said, "If life in a hive was all you knew then everything you know now would be useless. To them you'd be some kind of sub-moron. They each unquestionably have a unique personality, you can tell just by watching them, and even though they work together with amazing coordination there's no evidence they share a single hive mind, as has been suggested in some books."

"I've yet to see them replace a pony and emulate them to steal their loved one's affections, but that has to qualify them for some level of intelligence, even if it's borrowed somehow."

"With due respect, ma'am," Breezy addressed Rainbow Dash, "I agree with Cheyenne that they're fully sentient creatures, I'm still not above squashing the lot of them. They're parasites after all, and no amount of love and harmony's going to make it so that us and them can live side by side peaceably." Here he turned and addressed Cadence, "But then I'm a soldier. I've fought alongside griffons and taken down a dragon warlord with my own two hooves, I made it out of the desert after forty days eating nothing but rattlesnake meat and scorpions. My problem solving skills generally revolve around killing, that's what I get paid for. I'm not saying it's right, some nights I swear I can hear Tartarus howling for me and me alone, but I don't regret it."

"I take it all on myself so that all the pretty pink princesses can live in a world of love and harmony and not have to worry about such savage things. That's my role and I wouldn't foist it on any other poor schmuck if I could."

"W...We thank you for that." Cadence said falteringly but sincerely, then fell to considering the implications. Celestia's small army was said to be defensive in nature, how often had she utilized her soldiers to solve problems in such permanent ways? Wasn't a single occurrence enough to brand her a hypocrite? Lacking the time to devote to these thoughts and pursue them to their bitterest ends, she filed them away for later.

Fluttershy had shrunk back from the two military ponies, but now felt that her voice needed to be heard, albeit somewhat quieter than was optimal for it's purpose, "Um, excuse me...I, um, don't think that's the right way to deal with those you disagree with. There's always some good in the heart of the scariest adversary, nopony really tries to be evil, afterall. Sometimes they just make some bad choices and it makes it hard to go back, but there's always a peaceful way out of every situation if you look hard enough for it and...um, you can't just kill anypony who disagrees with you because in the end none of us agree about everything and then there wouldn't be anypony left. Or, um, at least that's what I think."

"Hah hah!" Breezy bellowed loud enough to shake the cave and in two long strides had parted and traversed the knot of friends to arrive face to face with the shuddering pegasus. Before any of her friends could intercede on her behalf the scarred veteran enveloped her in an aggressive bear hug and laughed heartily. He addressed himself to the others, "I like her, she's a spirited one, and clearly right besides. Sadly I'm not as clever in finding non-violent solutions as I might be."

He then released her and she cowered slightly, hiding her frightened eyes behind a curtain of pink mane. He turned to face the rest of the group more fully. "This sunstone you're looking for, I believe I've seen it, though the color's not what it should be the shape's a dead match to what's in the drawing."

"Where?" Cadence and Shining Armor both demanded.

"At the pinnacle of the hive's spire ma'am, er...sir. It's heavily guarded but with a bit of confusion sown elsewhere it could be retrieved, I think." Breezy said, "I'm sure it's the right stone, only it's not amber like we were told, it's black as obsidian and something's strange about it. Bad juju, like. It hurts to even look at it and from the moment I first saw it I couldn't think of nothing but destroying it and if that's what it comes to I can live with it."

"Let's hope, though, that you lot are clever enough to find another way around it, that proverbial peaceful way, before the changelings get it to do whatever it is they mean for it to do."

Author's Note

My first pony-fic, though admittedly not my first fanfic.
If there are any glaring errors feel free to point them out.
All minor errors, plot holes and inconsistencies may be attributed to the fact that I'm a fairly iffy writer and a wholly terrible human being.
Thanks for reading despite that.

The Corruption of Flutter Valley

She'd grown from a pampered, impish tomcolt into an intelligent and elegant mare, and he'd grown up right beside her. It was a shock to him when childish infatuation gave way to a more complex and substantial love, but everypony else in their small town had long known long before that the lovers would wind up forever bound. That would have been the start of happily ever after, but life does have a habit of tearing down even the most well crafted dreams. Illness took her and now she lay in a pine box, deep under the earth in a strange land, her azure eyes forever closed to the world.

She'd died agonizingly slowly and passed but a few hours before. As was the custom in these tropical parts she was interred without delay. Now with his beloved Crystal Days so abruptly gone he was bereft and adrift.

Slowly he gathered together the pitiful few belongings he had and prepared to leave the zebra village that had been their home for more than a year, but it wasn't to be. He'd intended to depart in the morning before a rustling thump against his door woke him from a dead sleep. He rolled out of bed, lit his horn with a hasty light spell and opened the door.

Laying on his stoop, worn and exhausted was the biggest changeling he'd ever seen. They both started when the light hit her and she tried to rise, but lacked the strength. She slumped back down, her green eyes looking pleadingly up at him.

Changelings were not uncommon in these parts, they often switched places with well loved zebras or hypnotized them to feed if a good chance presented itself. They never did any real harm so they were mostly tolerated and since the zebra nation was a loosely organized one at best it lacked the wherewithal to evict them as their Northern neighbors in Equestria had done on several occasions.

The changeling before him was injured, weak, bleeding, wet and smelled bad besides. Like dirty beeswax. The fact was that she was in rough shape and the changeling hive was said to be another half a days journey to the South so he did the only thing he could, he reached out a hoof to help her inside.

When their hooves touched, however, all her sleek, grim armored shell faded away into a soft blue coat and bedraggled honey colored mane. His breath hitched and he almost let her drop back. From Crystal's face a pair of azure eyes now peered back at him and though he knew that he should feel outrage at the charade he didn't. He felt grateful and so helped her inside and into bed where he tried his best to salve her wounds.

Over the next few days they didn't talk much, only the scantest exchanges pass between them. They both felt that anything they said would already be half a lie, but he continued to nurse her back to health as best as he knew how. He realized early on, though, that his ministrations were not especially useful in the intended way, even if they still did have an effect. It was the tenderness he showed, rather than the bandages and salves that slowly healed her. Within a week she'd regained her wobbly footing, though she was still fairly sickly.

He suggested, with a single word, that they should go for a walk when he found that she had taken to fitfully pacing the floor of the hut and she nodded her acquiescence. They headed into the village proper which, given her appearance, was a bad idea, but the zebras were not superstitious and only believed in real ghosts. They'd heard stories of changelings appearing in the form of departed loved ones often enough to know what was going on and though it started many a tongue wagging there was no move to trouble them.

They made a rough circuit of the large village, meandering between the grass roofed bamboo huts, crossed the log bridge over the washing stream, passed the shaman's hut and finally ended up at the precipice of a cliff where they could look down at the lush jungle as the day faded away into night. A romantic twinge hit him and he sadly remembered what the zebras had told him long ago regarding the changelings. A pony can love a changeling, true enough, but a changeling will never regard love as anything more than food, no matter how convincing they might be.

"Chrissy," He said simply and sadly, "I'm happy to've had you around. Whenever you think you're fit enough I'll take you home."

"How did you know my name?" The changeling asked, her voice a strange warbling like two voices talking in unison.

"Your name's Chrissy?" He asked, stunned, "That's what I used to call Crystal Days, my, um, y'know, you..."

"Ah, I see. We have, it seems, yet to be formally introduced." She replied gently, "I am Chrysalis, so you may understand my confusion. Queen Chrysalis, more properly."

"A queen? Well I knew there was something special about you. Rockford," He extended his hoof in long belated greeting, "Everyone just calls me Rocky."

"Rocky, then." She shook his hoof politely, "Tell me, what is a pony doing so far from home?"

"Well, me and my wife," Here he gestured towards Chrysalis, "Were gemologists, specializing in the sort of gems that could be charged with magic. The zebras do that sort of thing more regularly than ponies. Since most zebras lack any sort of magic the shamans charge all manner or totems and fetishes with magical powers but gems work best for the most powerful spells. We were researching one particular stone we picked up from a trader. He said it's been in his family for as long as anyone can remember but they always said it was found on top of a rock pile out in the middle of the desert."

"The Shaman here is known to be one of the best so we brought it to her to see if she knew anything about it or, better yet, could remove it's curse."

Chrysalis scoffed, then realized her mistake and looked somewhat sheepish, "You do realize that while there are malevolent magics aplenty there's no such thing as a curse, exactly?"

"Yeah, I know and that's what I said too. My special talent's in discerning the structure and flow of magic within the leylines of a stone and it's interaction with the greater whole. I don't believe in any of that mumbo jumbo, but Chrissy talked me into thinking about it another way and got me to thinking of it as a curse too." He said and chuckled, "Tell you what, when we get back to the hut I'll show it to you and you'll see what I mean."

She shrugged, supposedly cursed stones didn't interest her unduly. She'd look so as to be polite but she didn't expect a lot from the experience.

"So what's a beautiful queen like you doing in dump like this?" He joked, lacking any other conversation starters, but she took it at face value.

"Since you've been away from your home country you may not have heard that we attacked Canterlot and were defeated most brutally." She admitted. She figured he deserved the truth and she was well enough that she didn't strictly need him should he turn on her once she came clean.

"Serves you right." Rocky said simply, "We've even got two princesses now, one who controls the sun itself, why did you think you could take them on?"

"Desperation, mostly, and by the way, you have three princesses now. I was at her wedding." The changeling queen said bitterly.

"Desperation, why?"

"The changeling race has not been doing all that well. Our hive has shrunk, what colonies we once had have died off and our plans have not gone altogether well for some time now. In short we're dying out and the only chance I saw to save my race was a coup...and I'll spare you the sordid details of that little travesty. Suffice it to say we failed. That's how I wound up out here."

"My army was scattered and our expulsion injured or killed many of my best drones, I still don't know the extent of our losses. Separated as they were they would make their way home to the hive, feeding along the way as opportunities presented themselves. I was trying to make it back without... entangling myself further, but I underestimated the time and distance in my injured state. In truth I was... failing, shall we say, when something drew me to your door in particular."

"Ah, so I'm an entanglement of opportunity." He kidded.

"Quite, and a fine meal besides." Chrysalis shot back, then thought to change the subject as she felt a bitter tinge from him, "This mare," she indicated herself, "She was quite pretty. What became of her?"

"She passed on just before you arrived, it was silicosis." He shuddered, "She probably got it from digging around in the dirt for gemstones and since I was beside her all the time I'm almost certain to have the same thing. It's a humbling thing to know what you're going to die from."

Chrysalis lit her horn with a green glow and looked at Rocky's chest, "Ah, yes, I see." she said and she pulsed her magic briefly. Rocky fell to the ground in a convulsive coughing fit, phlem and mucous splattering the glossy green leaves as he hacked for a full five minutes.

"What the...? Why'd you do that?" Rocky demanded angrily after he quit coughing.

"I just broke up the pollutants so your body could expel them. It seemed a fitting sign of gratitude." She looked at him smugly, "You're welcome."

"Well...just warn me next time." He came back weakly.

"Ah, no. You'll have to wear a bandana to keep your lungs clear in the future, I've no intention of saving your life perpetually from things that could be easily avoided unless of course you mean to do the same. You may serve well as my hoofserveant and champion, I suppose, though you'd make a poor enough drone." She teased.

"We should get back." He said abruptly, "I don't feel very well." That was true. His lungs ached and his ribs hurt from the protracted coughing fit so they turned and headed back to the hut.

Now that the dam had burst and they were on speaking terms they couldn't stop. In the next few days they were seen at all hours wandering about discussing anything they could think of. Rocky got an education with no rival as to the practical operations of a changeling hive.

"The problem," He stated non-pejoratively, "is that you're all parasites. Your hosts have formed defenses against you. You need some way to generate your own love energy or the problem's just going to get worse. Oh, speaking of which, remind me to show you that cursed stone I was talking about. It's kind of like what you need."

"You can't get blood from a turnip, I'm told, nor love from a stone." Chrysalis said, restating a point she'd made to him several times before, that yes, she was a parasite, and no, she couldn't just have the hive eat something else. They required love, like it or not. Imitations or farming non-sentient life forms to serve the purpose, though all manner of homely and pastoral, simply didn't work. It had been tried quite early on, though she couldn't seem to recall the exact circumstances, which she found odd.

"Still, it might be that if we really worked at it we could find some solution other than trying to cocoon a whole nation's populace, because you might even be able to do that in the short term, but in the long term it's a pretty risky way to go, and that's not even bringing up that it's bucking evil and immoral." Rocky said and lapsed deep into thought. Chrysalis held her tongue. His morality was not hers and in the end the hive and her children were her prime concern. She had proved long ago she'd give up everything for their sake.

A fat zebra bedecked in gold hoops and jewelry beckoned from the door of her hut. It was the shaman and she called Rocky to her garishly decorated hut, it's frightening masks and abstract tapestries marking her relative opulence.

"My pony friend, a moment if you would, in blessed private, if we could." The zebra said and motioned towards her hut.

Rocky rolled his eyes and whispered the Chrysalis, "Oh, the rhyming. Go on back to the hut, I'll come back when she's done. I expect she just wants to warn me off of you anyway."

"Charming." Chrysalis was offended, but understood. It's amazing how tolerant the zebras had been so far so she just headed back to wait for the verdict as Rocky entered the hut.

He was grabbed bodily by four strapping young stallions who held him to the floor. He made to scream but his mouth was clamped shut by muscular hooves. The Shaman pried his eyelids apart and looked into his darting eyes.

"Mesmerized you cannot be, for I could see it quite plainly." She signaled and the stallions let him loose and he stood, ruffled, but somewhat understanding. They were making sure he wasn't hypnotized and would have tried to save him if he were so he couldn't hold it against them. "Around the village have you been seen, with your former wife, a changeling queen. Mesmerization I thought the case, not just an assumed, lovely face."

"No, uh, I know what she is, but she was hurt and I couldn't just let her die." He said sheepishly, "I thank you for looking out after me, though."

"A hard thing it is to lose a wife, but beware letting changelings into your life. She may seem a beacon of love, but such ideals she holds herself above. You may find yourself used, broken and badly abused." The Shaman rhymed.

"Yeah, I know, but, uh, she's got to go home soon anyway, and yeah, she's actually kind of evil and done some really bad stuff, but she's honest about it, at least, and she's not much danger to me, so far as I can tell, so um..." He stammered, trying to justify his actions, which was a hard enough thing to do to himself.

The big zebra shrugged dismissively, "So long as you're forewarned and fine, what you do in bed's no business of mine."

"Um...thanks?" Rocky said and made a quick exit. He was glad only the shamans rhymed, it made precise communication awkward.

The Shaman, for her part, just figured that if the foreign pony didn't make a fuss of her having four husbands, despite the tribe's dislike for such practices, she had no right denying him a changeling queen to replace his poor fallen wife.

She had known and liked them both before the illness, and had tried to cure her with no success for months after it's onset. Before that she'd tried to dispel the curse on the black gem, but to no avail. Though she'd told him a great deal about the stone itself, it's magic was too powerful for her, probably too powerful for Celestia herself to overcome, but they'd stayed on, hoping to sort it out as well as studying the rich gem enchantment magics of the zebras, though why unicorns would need such things she couldn't understand. To each their own, she supposed and returned to her work.

When Rocky got back to the hut the chest that held his collection of gems was overturned. In the middle of the small glittering jewels he glimpsed the large black angular stone sitting on the floor for but a moment before averting his eyes to Chrysalis who stood staring at it.

"Chrissy?" He shouted and stepped between her and the stone. It broke her stare and she looked up at him confused, "See? Cursed. Told you didn't I? But you had to go searching through my junk and find out for yourself. Why were you getting in there anyway?"

"Bored." She stated, then looked him right in the eye with an odd intensity, "But that stone, I know that stone from somewhere, if only I could remember. I think I can feel it calling out to me, as if it was what drew me here in the first place." Even though she hadn't cared a bit about magical gemstones in general this one seemed important, but she'd had a lifetime of stealing, loosing and outright exhausting magical artifacts in one scheme or another and she just couldn't remember where she knew this one from. She'd been alive for eons. Not as long as the Princesses, she supposed, but they were immortal alicorns whereas Chrysalis had simply managed to not die for many thousands of years. She was not, so far as she knew, properly immortal and her memories were ragged and ratty things, full of holes and meaningless cross associations. She shook her head, trying to rattle memories loose, but they wouldn't come and she finally gave up. Still staring at it she asked, "So what is it?"

Rocky rolled it back into it's chest and shut the lid. He didn't like having to look around it. Then he got a book from his meager selection and opened it to a well worn page, pointing to an illustration. "It's just called the sunstone. It's an interesting thing for me because it's supposed to be capable of storing massive amounts of heat energy, and if I could figure out how it works I could make solar plants to to supply steam power cheaply and effectively to every house in Equestria, and that's just the start. It could be used to grow crops year round, expand our territories into the icy North, who knows what all."

"It does another thing that would be a peculiar help to a bunch of love moochers I happen to know. It takes in the sun's rays and re-emits them not just as heat energy, but love energy as well. So you see that could break the changelings from needing hosts if it's strong enough or we can make more of them."

"Of course, as I said it's cursed, so it's only good for a doorstop now, and one that'll make you want to cry if you look at it for very long."

"There's no such thing as curses." Chrysalis said quietly, "It's not cursed, it's been somehow defiled, put under a dark enchantment."

"Which means?" Rocky asked.

"Which means we can fix it." Chrysalis said, thinking over the implications, "Where did the trader say it was found?"

Rocky flipped to a map that was stuck in the pages of the book and pointed a hoof to an X on one side of it, "Right here." He said, "A place that used to be called Flutter Valley."

Several telescopes and pairs of mismatched and battered binoculars spied out from a shady hollow towards an unlikely structure rising from the dusty barren waste of the valley floor. It was nearly jet black, the shape of a turnip, set root side up and full of holes, a very few of which were filmed with turquoise coverings. It's size was hard to judge with nothing to provide a sense of scale. After watching for some time a changeling patrol flitted in for a landing and gave a sense of it's mass.

Twilight scowled and thought that it wasn't nearly so big and imposing as she'd expected. It was somehow a lighter structure than the other changeling hive she'd seen pictures of, but just as dark and menacing. Maybe Chrysalis had wanted a vacation home?

"Now look up at the spire." Breezy whispered and the assorted optical instruments swiveled upwards and refocused. Instead of a pinnacle as might be expected there was a platform just large enough for a half dozen ponies to stand on. From their low angle they could just see the tops of the heads of three changeling guards. Set on a crude metal stand between them was the black stone itself, assuming of course, that it was the real sunstone. It made them feel queasy when they looked directly at it and Twilight thought she could almost sense a strange dark aura circulating through it, but it was hard to separate reality from her own misgivings.

"Is it safe to talk out here?" Twilight whisperingly asked.

"It's safe, ma'am." Cheyenne said shortly, moderating her volume only the barest amount, "The wind's blowing straight at us into the cave behind us. So long as it does and the cave mouth stays in shadow we're pretty much invisible. Now if the wind was going the other way...well just be quiet and listen."

Everypony quieted themselves, stayed their rustling and held their breath. The wind brought with it the chittering sounds of the changeling language. Hundreds of tiny scratching voices drifted right into their perked ears.

"You can smell 'em too, if you know what they smell like." Breezy said.

"What do they smell like?" Applejack asked, "I caint smell a durn thing strange."

"It's like...wet roots and earwax, I'd say." Cheyenne said, and turned to Breezy, "Wouldn't you say, sir?" He nodded in the affirmative.

Twilight lowered her telescope, "I thought you said the sunstone was heavily guarded? Three changelings is all I count, and if that's all that's guarding it I could probably put a sleep spell on them and just levitate the stone away from here."

"Ma'am, look close at the spire itself, it's not what it looks like." Cheyenne hinted.

Twilight returned to her telescope and closely examined the tower. Right below the platform a spiraling structure was visible, presumably a spiral staircase built into the organic structure. There was a gap in the spire's skin below the platform. The skin of the tower obscured the stairway from view once the spire started to fatten up a bit. Then she took a closer look at the skin of the tower. The rest of the structure was smooth, organic and looked like it was grown from smooth stone but this section of the skin appeared to be scaled like triangular shingles save for it's rhythmic writhing. Was that because of the wind? No, she suddenly realized, the outside skin of the tower was composed of changeling drones with their insect like wings leaved over each other. From just below the platform to where the spire rounded out was one huge mass of changeling drones clinging to each other and the structure's shell.

Twilight shuddered in shocked revulsion, then undertook estimating their numbers. It was in the hundreds, easily.

"Okay, I admit that qualifies as heavily guarded."

"This hive isn't built the same way as the one they abandoned." Shining Armor observed, "It's missing pieces."

"Yeah, the nurseries are missing, sir." Cheyenne said, "They would have been a rounded part that stuck off either side of the main structure towards the base. At first we thought the cocoons underground accounted for that, but all the pods are too big for their larva."

"That's not all that's missing, sir." Breezy scratched his chin in thought, "The other hive had an area inside it that we believe was meant to warehouse cocooned ponies or other hapless creatures and drain them of their love. There's some distinct structures that are required for that that are just plain missing from this hive."

"It's a stripped down hive, isn't it?" Cadence asked, "They don't intend to live in it, I'd imagine. Still, what are they feeding on? How long can they fast for?"

"There's no way of knowing," Twilight said, "We just don't know enough about changeling physiology. What about the cocoons in the cavern? Could there be creatures in there that they're feeding off of?"

"We kind of thought so, ma'am." Breezy said, turning to face her, "We can't see all of them that well, but appears like they're all changeling drones, big fat ones from what we saw. It kind of got us thinking that maybe they charged a bunch of them up with all the love they could steal and now they're using them like batteries to keep the whole hive going while they're working here."

"They must think this is pretty important if they're cannibalizing their own." Twilight said and handed her telescope over to finally let Pinkie have a turn while she thought for a minute. The excited pink earth pony raised the telescope to her eye and dramatically focused.

"Ooh! A unicorn!" Pinkie exclaimed louder than anypony really thought appropriate.

"Oh, yeah. It's funny the changelings all have wings and horns..." Twilight started, then Pinkie crammed the telescope back into her face.

"No, a unicorn!" Pinkie repeated and the others with their various devices also turned to where Pinkie had been looking.

In the gap between the changeling skin and the platform above, on the exposed section of staircase was a blandly grey unicorn. He stomped in place in impatience, turned around and shouted something, then finished ascending to the platform where he was obscured from view. Stalking up the stairs an oversized changeling could be seen to be hollering back up at him, then changing into a smaller light blue female unicorn and surmounting the platform.

"Ma'am, that's the one from before, was that Chrysalis?" Cheyenne asked.

"It bucking sure enough was." Cadence growled and squinted into her binoculars, "But who's her latest victim?"

"That certainly complicates things," Shining Armor said, "It was bad enough when we just had to get the sunstone, now we've got to stage a rescue besides."

"Breezy, watch that unicorn, see if you can tell what he's up to or if any others show up. In the meantime I'm going to send the rest of the troops up here in shifts. I want them to all get a feel for the area in case we have to fight our way in. Show them the sights and keep an eye on them." He said unironically to the eyepatched earth pony and motioned to the Elements, "Let's get back to the barracks and see if we can't come up with some ideas."

Breezy saluted as the rest of the group reentered the underground passage that led under the mountain and back to their base camp.

Atop an awkward platform tacked onto the newly minted changeling citadel a greyish unicorn with a gemstone cutie mark was arguing with a disguised changeling queen. The disguise was out of courtesy to the unicorn guest, it's the form he was most comfortable with though he'd often seen her in her true form in the months they'd spent getting ready for this. Now that all the big showy work was done everything was going excruciatingly slowly. Chrysalis was, however, patient. Rocky, less so, even though he had little enough to gain from his success.

He argued with her, she realized, mostly as a way of working things out in his own head and though she held her own, usually, she was actually unnecessary to the process. It was his show now, owing to the Chrysalis' repeated failed attempts to purify the stone on her own. Her raw power had returned thanks to Rocky's unreciprocated affections, but it was fruitless to use it as it carried a taint similar to the stone and valley. Her power unsuitable to purify the stone, she'd essentially put the fate of the whole changeling race in Rocky's hooves, and though progress was slow and time was short she had faith in him.

It had been her contention that the stone was a product of it's place and that it would be simpler to undo the damage that had been done to it there. Powerful enchantments fed off the magical leylines of the earth and upon returning it to the valley it was readily proved to be true.

Dark magic circulated purposelessly but perceptibly through the stone, which was a good sign at least in that it was finally doing something. With much experimentation they found the precise spot and alignment where it's resonance peaked. It had been far above the valley floor so they'd simply incorporated it into the plans for the hive that Chrysalis had been planning anyway.

Rocky thought that the valley floor, having long been starved of moisture, had lowered in elevation both from that and wind erosion over time. It was as plausible a theory as any, so the changelings built their sleek and alien tower, it's smooth and flowing form actually composed of sand and a special form of saliva the changelings excreted for hive building purposes. Whenever he thought about it he felt rather disgusted, but it was a prejudice he was trying to get over.

It was a simpler hive than Chrysalis was accustomed to because this was, in her eyes, a last ditch effort.

Certainly she had other little schemes and scams to keep her children fed, but it had become increasingly more difficult in the past few centuries to live off the fat of the land. Ponies were wise to and wary of her methods and zebras were too few in numbers. Even her best plans would be short term stop gaps at best and most of them traded the dignity of the changeling race for sustenance. No, the changelings had had their day and if this plan was not an unmitigated success she was certain this would be the end of the collective hive, if not the whole species.

"If I could get enough high quality sapphires I could put them in an array and purify the valley." Rocky said as he leafed through a book absently. The wind at the pinnacle carelessly flipped the pages back and forth as he thought.

"You're still working on purifying the valley and not the stone?" Chrysalis was a bit annoyed, she didn't care about the valley save for it's leylines, it was the stone she wanted. She would be perfectly pleased to have the cursed valley just as it was be home to the changeling hive if only she could.

"I think the stone's a part of the valley, though and if we purify the stone without purifying the valley it will just revert again like it did when I set up the array the other day." Rocky jammed his hoof in the book, pointing to a complex diagram that Chrysalis didn't even try to understand, "This is a complicated trick the way I have to go about it. It would be a simple enough matter if we could just overpower it rather than having to wheedle away at it, but there you have it."

"We changelings are not much for delicacy. When you have an entire hive of brothers and sisters to take up for you there's little necessity for the light touch."

"Yeah, well not every situation can benefit from a hive full of bullies..." He trailed off, "Actually that might work." He started flipping pages and scrawling out formulas, "Yeah, I know how we can get this to work, but it's a risk. A life or death risk, probably."

Chrysalis waved her light blue hoof dismissively, "It's always been life or death, but I find my options dwindling, so let's get on with it."

"Yeah, alright, but I'll have to do a couple tests first." Rocky said looking one of the changeling drones in the eyes, contemplating his form and capacities without really seeing him and formulating his plans. The drone returned the stare placidly.

Shining Armor thought for some considerable period of time after he'd heard the plan, "It's a risk." was all he came back with in the end, but none of the ponies seated around the table had anything more illuminating to add.

Seated around the table were the six pegasi soldiers he'd brought, Cheyenne, his sister Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Shining Armor had left Cadence out of the planning and he knew he'd pay for it later, but she was overbearing and short sighted when it came to the changelings, precisely the opposite of her attitude towards pretty much every thing else. Ever.

She was in the next cavern over, talking with the half of the Elements who were unconvinced that they should be going to war. They were not, after all, soldiers. They had not been conscripted nor were they volunteers precisely and would not (admittedly could not) be coerced into acting against their will.

Shining Armor had convinced her to talk with the three reluctant mares, but his intentions were decidedly the opposite of what he'd stated. He preferred, instead, that the more level headed mares (and Pinkie) would assuage her recent vengeful feelings.

He felt that this whole operation could be handled without involving the Elements at all, but Rainbow Dash in particular wanted in on the action where Applejack felt it was her duty to help and Twilight's magic would prove invaluable, so he let them insinuate themselves more than he wanted.

One of his soldiers, a unicorn named Masquerade, had come up with the plan based on her signature feat of magic. She could disguise herself or any other pony much as a changeling could. It was a tough spell to accomplish more than a few times, but Twilight managed to pick it up as second nature with a quick bit of practice so that they had sufficient power to disguise their six pegasi as changelings. It wasn't a spell that would hold up to close examination, though, and it would be impractical to navigate the hive without arousing suspicion and that's where distraction came in.

Rainbow Dash had come up with the final version, "First, we set off a landslide at the mouth of the valley with some explosives. That should get the changeling's attention and get them all looking that way. I'll come from behind them as fast as I can and snag the sunstone off the top of the tower. It's a big rock and it'll slow me down some, but I'm sure I'll be able to outrun them. Once I clear the mouth of the valley I'll circle around and the outside, maybe go above the cloud cover, and land back in the cave with the wagons and hunker down."

"The thing I like about that plan is the same ol' thing I like about you, Rainbow." Applejack drawled, "It's simple. Seems like y'all forgot about the unicorn we've got ta rescue, though?"

"Nope. Got it covered." Rainbow continued, oblivious to the Applejack's good natured insult, "The changelings are all going to be chasing me, or at least paying attention to the chase, so the pegasi disguised as changelings sneak up, throw the unicorn in a bag and haul him off to the cave mouth on this side of the mountains. If we do it at dawn or dusk it'll still be light enough to see, but not so much that it'll be obvious when they bag up the unicorn. Brilliant, right? You can admit it. I'm a genius."

"Lotta holes in that there plan." Applejack considered, "If one of them drones looks the wrong way when you're putting the unicorn in the bag that'll be the end of it, and us."

"Yeah, maybe, but there's only a few guards on the platform at one time and they should come after me and you can't see the top of the platform from where the swarm is hanging from the sides of the spire. So long as the unicorn's on the platform all the other changelings will see is a squirmy black bag being lowered to the ground, if they see anything. Maybe we could use a tranquilizer dart. Do you guys have one of those? Are they even real or are they a book thing?" Rainbow asked.

"Yeah, we've got some of those." Cheyenne confirmed, "For the record I think it's a stupid plan, but I can't see which part of it's going to go bad and doom us all right off. It's bold, I'll admit to that."

Rainbow beamed, taking that as magnificent a compliment and turned to await Shining Armor's reply.

"It's a risk." said Shining Armor, eventually.

Cadence was sitting on the edge of the crude straw bunk looking irritated. She sighed, "What you seem to have forgotten was that Chrysalis, when she'd already cocooned Celestia and looked as if she'd decisively won the day wasn't satisfied with that. Canterlot, a city of tens of thousands of ponies, wasn't enough. She meant to take all of Equestria for her buffet. So it's not just a matter of her trying to keep her hive fed, she's another one of these low grade tyrants that keep turning up."

"Certainly, yes, I can see that, of course, but that's not truly the issue we're facing just yet, is it?" Rarity reclined on the coarse green polyester blanket of her nightmares, but stayed composed rather than making a show of her discomfort. The thinly mattressed bunks, the damp stone walls and bare, dusty floors, she took it all in stride. There would be time later to decry this lack of refinement she'd been forced into. She would certainly write a sincere letter of protest to Princess Celestia when this was over.

She looked to Cadence, "In the past we've used the elements, but our friends were in peril, undoubtedly you can see that a preemptive strike is another matter entirely? Darling, I know what you're about to say, that if we don't stop these brutes then our friends will most certainly be in danger, but that is a supposition, no?"

"Whatever the changelings are up to it's not going to be for our benefit." The pink alicorn huffed, "They're our enemy. Their very way of life is an open threat, an evil we've let fester too long."

Pinkie rolled over on her bunk, bouncing slightly on her back, causing the weak frame to creak in distress. "I don't have enemies." She stated simply, "I just have friends who don't know it yet."

"I'm not sure the changelings want to be friends." Fluttershy said.

"Sure they do!" Pinkie chirped.

"Oh, well alright." Fluttershy conceded without an argument, "Even if they don't, though, I don't want to hurt anypony and I can certainly see the changeling's problem. M..Maybe we could talk to them and find a some other way to keep them fed so they don't have to fight us? Maybe they just need a cutesy wootsie bunny to love? I know when I need love a bunny's usually my first choice, so maybe it would...work for them?"

"I don't think that would do, I'm afraid." Said Rarity, then she considered for a moment, "I do wonder, though, if they've thought to try it?"

Here Cadence dropped her stern facade and returned for a moment to the warm and kind princess they all knew and loved. She giggled sweetly at the thought of happy changeling drones with pets. Then she looked around the cavern to the young mares all smiling and giggling with her. Twilight's friends were all so adorable, how could she have ever have desired to rope them into exterminating a whole race? Then and there she gave up on her plans of revenge. For several seconds. An image of Chrysalis smirking lasciviously with a dead eyed Shining Armor on a leash popped into her head unbidden. In a moment of honesty she admitted, "I don't care about the changelings, it's Chrysalis I want."

"She's still mad about what Chrysalis did at the wedding." Pinkie stage whispered, fully audible to the other three ponies. Rarity and Fluttershy nodded sadly.

"Is, is it really that obvious?" Cadence asked.

"Um...well, you have been the teensiest bit, um, moody." Fluttershy said while hiding behind a drape of pink mane.

"And bloodthirsty!" Pinkie volunteered happily, "Like a vampony, but without a cape. Oh, please say we can get you a cape and one of those Dracula medals!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was being so single minded." Cadence finally realized the extent of her anger and how it was firmly in opposition to everything she had formerly stood for, "I shouldn't have come here. I should have let everypony else handle it. It's just...everytime I think of that horrible bug I get so angry I can't even see straight. I just want to...want to..."

"It's quite alright, darling, what you went through was extraordinarily traumatic and you still haven't recovered, and here you see your chance for justice. For closure." Rarity rose and walked to the seated alicorn's side. She nuzzled the Princess gently and softened her tone, "I can understand how you would see it as your responsibility, but maybe it's not really the best thing for you."

Tears began to trickle down Cadence's face as she buried it in Rarity's mane, "No, you're right, it really hasn't been. All it's done is let me relive those horrible days over and over and all the while I feel this impotent rage balling up in the pit of my stomach and you're right. I shouldn't have forced the Princess or Shining Armor to let me tag along, they knew, didn't they?"

"We all knew, darling, but who are we to deny a princess?" Rarity joked, "Oh and Shining Armor is in an even worse position. If he said no you could send him to the dungeons AND cut him off, the poor devil."

After a time Cadence calmed down and a more jovial conversation started up. Her rage had dwindled enough, having had a chance to talk it through, that she could see Celestia and Luna's point, though she still refused to douse it entirely. She held it jealously ready to kindle again should Chrysalis prove herself to be the beast and tyrant Cadence knew she was. Cadence resolved, though, that she would fly back home just as soon as she had a chance to talk with Shining Armor. This was not a healthy place for her and her vacillating emotions to reside.

The chance didn't come.

Rocky once more relived a recurring dream. In it the sunstone sat on a crooked stone column surrounded by pyramidal monuments marking the cardinal directions. The well trodden grass around him gave way to a lush and vibrant tangle of colors in the distance and fragrant forests of flowering trees beyond that.

The stone pulsed gently with amber energy. Facing him from beneath it was Crystal Days, not Chrysalis in disguise but the real Crystal Days. She looked up to meet his gaze. As she did the stone and her azure eyes both fell instantly dark. The landscape dried and crackled, desiccated greenery crumbling to the ground. Crystal began to whither with them and she called out in fright.

He ran towards her, stumbling and fighting for each step but when he finally reached out to her she was nothing but dust, and as he screamed out to the sky the black stone filled his gaze and called out to him.

He jolted awake, dim blue light filtering through the window covering of his room. It was in fact the only room in the hive, the rest being communal space, including the throne room. It was made just for him, just big enough to sleep in and hold a shelf full of books. That's all he needed. He certainly didn't need an alarm clock, the nightmare woke him whenever the stone started calling to him. It might be at any hour he'd feel it's pull and he'd obey it, getting out of bed and heading up to work on his equations and experiments next to the baleful stone he could hardly bear to look upon.

He'd felt the cursed stone calling to him from the very beginning. He'd tried to write it off as paranoia but it had gotten stronger over time and he'd grown to believe it was his and Crystal's destiny to restore the stone to it's former glory, especially since the amber stone it was meant to be shone as Crystal's cutie mark. Surely that had been a sign? If so, then how could she have died?

Lately he felt the stone was a curse specifically made for him and that only when he solved it's evasive mystery would he finally be free. By this logic he half convinced himself that he was using Chrysalis as much as she was using him. He knew deep down that it wasn't true, that he was doing this because he'd always been on one quest or another and without Crystal and without a quest he didn't have anything left.

In short he was lonely. He'd been lonely before Crystal died. Her illness had lingered on and the zebras had avoided them save for his few close friends and the Shaman and even they stopped coming in the end. It wasn't just that, him and Crystal were growing apart before her illness. They'd always been together and now he knew she was feeling stifled in ways which he could not hope to rectify.

Even if she had lived it would have been their last quest together and they both knew it without having discussed it. So now here he was, helping a changeling queen for reasons that she never bothered to ask and ones he would only partially own up to to himself, crawling up a tight spiral staircase at dusk just because a cursed stone called to him.

"You're some kind of screwed up." He told himself.

"Skree, chickt-chickt!" one of the changelings hanging on the framework of the spire told him. He thought it was a word of encouragement, but he didn't speak the language so he'd never be sure.

"Thanks, pal, you're alright." He replied ironically and passed through the small hole onto the platform itself with the stone. He tapped it with a hoof for no good reason than to hear it's crystal chime and got out his notes once again.

Minutes later the sound several small explosions rolled down the valley, causing the hive to vibrate slightly. The changeling swarm that blanketed the tower chittered and juddered in confusion, looking in the direction of the explosions. At the mouth of the valley black smoke rolled above dust clouds that concealed rock slides. Many drones took the initiative and took off towards the commotion.

It never even occurred to Rocky that they were under attack until a rainbow maned pegasus lit directly on top of the stone and made to carry it off. He was too shocked and cowed by her determined expression to act immediately, but as she struggled to prize the stone loose he couldn't help but speak.

"It's glued in place." He volunteered.

"What, why?" The pegasus demanded as she continued to tug at the stone to little avail. The glue the changelings generally used to hold prisoners stretched slightly, but not nearly enough. The steel framework on which it sat groaned and deformed slightly with the pressure but likewise would not give.

"I didn't want it getting bumped and having to realign the silly thing so I had them stick it down, now leave it be before you do something to it." He said simply. The pegasus, for her part, simply redoubled her efforts, to no avail.

"What's going on out there..." A hard clink of hooves hitting the hard deck announced Chrysalis' hurried arrival. In her true, imposing form she spoke, "Ah, Rainbow Dash, wasn't it? I see you've taken to thievery. Please do remove your hooves from that stone before I have them removed." Chrysalis backhooved Rainbow loose from the stone.

"Give it back, Chrysalis, it's not yours!" Rainbow hollered, "I won't let you get away with...whatever it is this thing does!"

"Indeed?" Chrysalis spoke condescendingly, as Rainbow rose and hovered in the air, planning to bolt, "It's not mine, true enough. Mr. Rockford is it's rightful owner and he's quite alright with me borrowing it. You, on the other hoof, have no claim on it and you're trespassing besides. Perhaps you're volunteering to feed the ever hungry changeling hive? We appreciate the gesture and will be happy enough to take you up on it."

Without warning and from a dead stop Rainbow shot away from the spire, quickly building speed. Chrysalis was content to let her go as a complication she simply didn't need.

She turned back to Rocky, only to find the platform empty. The stone and unicorn both missing her green slitted eyes went wide with shock and rage. Turning back Rainbow Dash was rapidly shrinking against the grey horizon, but was she too far? She couldn't be sure. She aimed quickly and carefully and fired a bolt of raw green energy.

It went wide, and Rainbow turned to gloat. The beam, however, lost coherence as it passed her and exploded, it's shockwaves knocking her from the air and the drones were on her before she could either hit the ground or right herself.

They bound her with sinewy green goo like a fly in a web and dragged her back to the hive as night rapidly fell.

"This is trouble that I do not need." Chrysalis said to herself and shook her head. She had enough problems without this added encumbrance.

Triumphant in their yet to be marred success the small force of pegasi, now reverted to their natural forms, carried their prizes back to their cavern with Twilight and Applejack in the lead, Shining Armor covering the rear. Some unicorns and earth ponies as well as Cheyenne remained behind so as to be sure the entrance was undetected and to close it off if it was. Breezy had set off the charges and was now practicing his special talent, running. As fast as he was it would still be an hour before he would make it to the outer mouth of the cave. Longer if the changelings forced him to cover. Rainbow would be expected back in half that time, the pegasi had seen her dart away from the tower as they acquired the stone. They could simply hide out until the time seemed right to slip away into the night.

Cadence and her friends greeted them in the cavern turned war room and after a round of hugs Pinkie lifted the large black bag and set it in the center of the floor.

"Aw, guys, you brought me back souvenirs, you're so sweet!" She giggled and opened the bag revealing a sedated grey unicorn and a large black stone, "Huh, I like them but I think a hat might have been easier."

"Can you wake him?" Shining asked Twilight who shrugged.

"I can do it." One of the pegasi said and produced a vial which was held under the unicorn's nostrils, "Be ready, he's probably still under her power."

The unicorn snorted, shook his tangled mane and slowly got to his feet, eyes adjusting to the darkness and mind adjusting to it's predicament. "Wh...where am I?"

"You're safe now." Fluttershy said gently, walking to the fore, "The changelings captured you and hypnotized you into working for them, but they're gone now and we'll keep you safe, don't worry."

"Please, what's the last thing you remember?" Twilight asked.

"Well, I was on top of the platform with the sunstone and some things exploded and a crazy pegasus tried to take the stone, then Chrysalis showed up and started arguing with her." He squinted, trying to pry loose some further detail, "Then something bit me and I woke up here."

He paused and looked around the dimly lit stone room and all the ponies surrounding him. Then he noticed the black stone laying on the floor, it's adhesive having been cut though it left considerable residue. He narrowed his eyes, "That's not yours, you need to give that back, it belongs to Chrissy and me."

"Chrissy? He must still be under her influence." Shining Armor said and gestured for Twilight to come forward and try to break the spell.

"Chrissy's my wife." He attempted to clarify but only drew disgusted and horrified looks.

"Just hold still, I can fix this." Twilight said, approaching and lighting her horn to scan for enchantments. She gasped and stepped back, "He's not under an enchantment." She turned to the unicorn and asked, "You know you can't be married to a changeling, right? It's like bestiality or something. I don't even know."

"No no, Crystal Days was my wife. She's passed on, but that stone was hers, ours. It was her cutie mark for Celestia's sake, and you have no right to take it!" He said, growing increasingly agitated. The knot of ponies stepped back, giving him space, save for Cadence and Shining Armor, he grabbed up the stone in his magic and made as if to leave, "Now if you'll tell me the way back, I have a lot of work to do and I'm running out of time."

The armored pegasi moved to block his way. "We can't let that happen, sir."

"You have no right to keep me!" He screamed, "I've done nothing wrong!"

"That's not for us to judge, in the end." Shining Armor said, "But from our perspective it looks like you're consorting with the enemy, bordering on treason, so you'll excuse us for not simply releasing you."

"Treason? Now see here, if this sunstone does what it's supposed to do the changelings will be able to get all the love energy they need without harming anypony else." He emphatically said and slammed the stone down on the table, "This single item could bring peace between our two races if it weren't for your interruption."

The various ponies took this news different ways, but it was Cadence who finally spoke up for them, "Of course it would seem that way, certainly. I'm sure that's what Chrysalis told you..."

"That's what I told her, it was my idea from the very start." He interrupted.

"...But do consider what happens if you succeed. The changeling hive will be fed in the short term, but they will increase their numbers, will they not? Moreover, nopony and no whole race can be expected to sit idle, simply feeding and sleeping like infants. It's unnatural and sooner than later they will go back on the warpath with the numbers and strength that you're seeking to provide."

"Chrysalis has proved in the past that her aspirations range far beyond simple subsistence, I do not expect that your influence is sufficient to change that. She may feed on love, but she is a heartless beast. Whatever you think she feels for you, it is, sadly, a lie."

"Incidentally, I'm Cadence. I did not catch your name?"

"Rockford." He said and sighed, "Look, I know she's heartless and relatively evil, and I sure know she doesn't love me. I'm not even sure she likes me at all most of the time. But I think you've got the wrong idea. I've been fighting this stone from the beginning, long before the changelings. Regardless of why, or who it helps or hurts I'm certain it's my destiny to remove this stone's curse."

"I don't believe in curses." Twilight said simply, walked over and started studying the stone. It was all she could do to look at it, but she could sense and probe it with her magic and that was more useful anyway. She could feel in it a complex and densely packed spell that encumbered and overrode the underlying spell, which she could not fully discern.

It was powerful work but she felt she recognized it. It was dark, ancient magic, malevolent in intent and resisted her every attempt to unravel even it's edges.

"Where's Spike?" She asked and was pointed to the next cavern where he was probably asleep, she headed off without further discussion, "No time for sleep, Spike! There's research to be done. We need more books!"

The interrogation continued but it was shortly determined that aside from what he'd already said Rocky had little enough to add. There were no other ponies in the hive and they were indeed using the changelings in the lower chamber to feed the hive while they attempted to activate the stone. This, however, was one of their normal capabilities in time of famine and though it was drastic it did not amount to cannibalism.

After a time Rarity and Applejack started to murmur uncomfortably to each other. Pinkie's ears perked up, not content to be left out of the gossip, "What's up?"

"We was just speculating on what's taking Rainbow Dash so long to get back." Applejack said with an edge of worry in her voice.

"I certainly do hope she's alright. Cheyenne told me she escaped safely, but she should have returned by now." Rarity confided.

"You don't think she's been captured do you?" Pinkie gasped, "Not Dashie, she's too fast for some sluggy buggies to catch up with her. Oh, but what if they did? We've got to go look for her!"

"I know sugarcube, but it's too dark to do any good 'til morning. We're just gonna have to wait and hope for the best." Applejack tried to calm her.

"But what if she's out there all alone and scared, just waiting for us to save her and here we're just sitting on our hooves and hoping?" Pinkie mewled.

"I'm afraid Applejack's correct, we're simply going to have to wait until dawn, and who knows, she may be back by then." Rarity nuzzled Pinkie, "Just be patient. It won't help to go out there and get yourself captured too, you can do that for her, can't you?"

"I guess, but it's so hard when your friends are in danger!" Pinkie sniffled and hugged Rarity tightly to her.

The dawn saw them at the inner mouth of the cave and they finally saw what became of Rainbow Dash. She was hanging limp from the platform atop the changeling hive, tied by the roots of her wings. To further dampen their triumph, Breezy had yet to return.

Flutter Valley Revisited

Chrysalis stood before her hive, putting on a show of being well pleased with herself. In truth she was just annoyed and wanted to get the trade over with as efficiently as possible. She was planning on having a bit of fun with it but assured herself that it was from careful necessity rather than any gleeful vindictiveness.

By her estimation both parties knew how this would work. One annoying pegasus traded for a unicorn and cursed sunstone. She had the upper hand in the negotiations since her counterparts were too goody goody to actually harm their hostage. Further, since they had henceforth gone undetected she imagined that their numbers were fairly few. Her surprise could not be overstated when it was Cadence and Shining Armor who finally approached, side by side, under a white flag with Rocky wearing a bag over his head and a contingent of twelve armored guards trailing them.

"Hmm...I know you don't I? Didn't we date once?" She asked mockingly.

"We've come to discuss a trade." Cadence seethed but ignored her barb and took charge, to Shining Armor's chagrin.

"Yes, obviously." Chrysalis rolled her eyes and looked back and up towards Rainbow Dash's limp body hanging from the tower, "But what if I've taken a liking to my decoration? It's quite...colorful. I realize that changeling hives can be a bit dreary and with my favorite unicorn gone it did need a little splash of something."

"We'll trade you Rockford for Rainbow Dash." Cadence gulped, "She's...she's still alive, isn't she?"

"How could we have a hostage trade if she weren't? I can't imagine she's very comfortable up there, though." The Changeling Queen scoffed, "But I'll have the sunstone back while we're trading. Everything you stole for what I happened upon, and you'll promise to leave my valley."

"I can't let you have the sunstone..." Shining Armor started only to be interrupted.

"Listen, I've been doing this for a lot longer than you and I've come to find this whole process very trite." Chrysalis narrowed her eyes, "First, take the bag off of his head so that I can be sure we're dealing in good faith." They did and Chrysalis asked the squinting unicorn, "What color were Crystal's eyes?"

"Blue." Rocky said.

"A lucky guess." Chrysalis conceded, "Now tell me, how long have we been sleeping together?"

"What? I...um...forget the exact, um..." the fraudulent Rocky sputtered. Chrysalis bawled laughing. Even the changeling drones found the fraud's embarrassment funny. But Chrysalis' tone darkened and all laughter ceased.

"Will the real Rockford show himself?" She growled and the false one shimmered back into an ordinary unicorn guard, pulled her double from the column and dispelled his disguise to reveal him to be a gagged and shackled Rocky.

"You will free him from his fetters. Now." She chittered to her guards and they menacingly closed in around the motionless figure of Rainbow Dash. Seeing no other option they ungagged him and removed his chains. He waved to her, groggily.

"Azure and never." Rocky said.

"Correct, and what are changelings?" Chrysalis asked.

"Parasites." He replied without thinking, drawing shocked looks from the guards, he looked to them uncomprehending and shrugged. Chrysalis laughed madly.

"Now that you've produced the true Rocky, where have you hidden the sunstone? Come now, don't try to fool me again, it won't go well." The changeling queen, by her nature, was an observer of behaviors and she'd learned long ago that most ponies when asked where something was hidden will automatically look right at it's hiding place so when several of the guards and Cadence herself looked to the Southeast she knew what it meant. She chittered under her breath a detailed set of instructions to her drones, one of whom returned to the tower to relay the message. To allay suspicious forty or more drones flew outward as if searching in all directions.

"No matter, we'll find it." She said shortly.

Half a dozen drones flew towards the cohort of soldiers, screeching. Shining Armor produced a shield and they simply buzzed by. Rocky, though, took the confusion as a chance to bolt and did so much to Chrysalis' delight. Chrysalis issued her chittering orders loudly and the drones had swooped Rocky up before his captors could react.

Cadence attempted to stop them with a raw burst of magic, but a drone bravely inserted himself between her and her target and was struck in their stead. The drone's eyes opened wide and his belly swelled as the beam discharged into him. When the beam petered out he licked his fangs happily, grabbed a brother drone to take his place. The new drone opened his mouth hungrily and pointed to it in a feed me gesture.

Cadence growled, eyes lit with anger. Her magic's power came from love itself, but she hadn't realized that it would be useless against changelings because of it. She'd powered Shining Armor's shield in Canterlot, but never directly used her magic against a changeling. In the end she felt she should have seen this coming.

"My but that was entertaining." Chrysalis said with a chuckle, "Now it's fair, right? One pegasus for one sunstone."

"We'll never let you have the sunstone!" Shining Armor yelled.

"If that's true then you have no leverage and our negotiations are at a standstill." Chrysalis said reasonably as Rocky was returned to her side by the flight of drones, "I tell you what, just as a show of good faith, which you've lacked thus far, I'll let you have the pegasus."

Chrysalis turned and signaled to her drones who cut the unconscious pegasus loose. She freefell until the spire expanded out enough, then she contacted the shingled backs and wings of the changeling swarm around the spire's circumfrence, skittered against them unabated as the spire flared into it's domed section, her ragdoll posture picking up speed the whole way.

"Rainbow Dash!" Cadence yelled and took off as fast as she could to intercept her before she hit the ground. She would have made it too, but a voice called to her from her right.

"Cadence! That's not me, it's an imposter!" Another Rainbow Dash limping through the air, pursued by half a dozen drones yelled. True to her words the previously limply falling Pegasus turned in the air, growled and crashed into Cadence savagely.

She was momentarily swarmed as was the other Rainbow Dash who was likewise becoming entangled with the drones an eighth mile distance to the Southeast. Purple beams of magic shot out from from alongside a boulder where Twilight had been hiding under a camouflage blanket. The beams held back the drones so that Rainbow was finally able to struggle over to Twilight and the drones gave up. Twilight moved to hug Rainbow in relief, but Rainbow instead grabbed Twilight's saddle bag, correctly assuming that the lump it enclosed was the sunstone, and changed back into a drone. Flying low and erratically she avoided Twilight's angry onslaught long enough to reach the safety of the hive.

The other imposter had long since extricated himself from Cadence and when the chaos died down Chrysalis was once more looking pleased with herself, but this time she had the sunstone, Rocky and Rainbow Dash. She made a signal and her drones brought out a bound and blindfolded Rainbow Dash.

"For such treachery I should teach you a lesson." She hissed, "But I'm feeling magnanimous. How about I trade this one for another element of harmony? A less self obsessed one, perhaps?"

"Hey! You watch it!" Rainbow yelled.

"Really though, she's a terrible bore and I'd prefer to be rid of her. Sadly you're all out of things to bargain with. In fact you'd be doing well to get yourselves out of here intact." Chrysalis gloated.

"What do you want?" Shining Armor asked angrily.

"I would like you all to leave, obviously." She turned to Rocky, "Rockford, how much did you tell them?"

"Everything." He admitted, "I couldn't see any particular harm in it, we're not doing anything wrong."

"Of course, I figured as much." She said and turned her focus back to the Equestrians, "So regardless of what you imagine our plans to be you do, in fact, know the truth. For the time my sole impetus is to save my race. I can't make any promises about the future, we've both proved ourselves to be deceitful today so it would be of little consequence but if you want Rainbow Dash back you'll have to leave this valley and stay out. Can we agree to that?"

Cadence considered for a moment and boldly asked, "Could we stick around and watch if we promise not to interfere?"

Chrysalis rolled her eyes and snorted, "Fine. But you'll have to go as soon as we get the stone repaired. We'll pretend we don't know you're here and you will all keep your distance, agreed?"

"Agreed." Shining Armor and Cadence conceded in dismal agreement.

"So, we done here?" Rainbow asked.

"Cut her loose." Chrysalis said simply and Rainbow was freed from her constraints and roughly shoved on her way.

One of the changeling drones turned into a copy of her, turned around and shook it's butt at her, laughing a scratchy laugh. She quickly kicked him with a hard buck, knocking him down, which delighted the other drones and made Rainbow smile for the first time since she'd been captured.

Thinking back on it later she realized it softened her walk of shame considerably and was grateful for it.

She rejoined her companions and they all turned to silently walk out of the valley through the pass, taking the long way around to maintain a semblance of stealth.

"That was anticlimactic. Why did you let Rainbow Dash go?" Rocky asked as he made the long climb to the platform once more.

"You would rather that I kept her?" Chrysalis laughed, "And you call me evil."

"You know what I mean. Using her as leverage would be a lot safer than just having a promise to go on." Rocky argued.

"Perhaps, but those pests are relentless when one of their own is in trouble. We would have had to be on guard at all times had we kept her. I had considered simply capturing them all, but again, I'd have to get all of them for certain, with no stragglers or they would turn up to sabotage our work. No, I feel far safer with a promise than with a hostage in this situation."

"Why did you agree to let them stay and watch?"

Chrysalis considered for a bit and couldn't really define any reason, "I don't know. Why did they want to see it? It's an important moment, granted, but less so to them. Maybe it just seemed like someone outside the hive should see it?"

"I'll see it." Rocky said, "I'm outside of the hive."

"Hmm...maybe. But I think perhaps you're family now." Chrysalis said without sentimentality and he noticed that she hadn't bothered to turn into Crystal Days this time.

He surmounted the staircase to arrive on the platform, sunstone already returned to it's place only a bit out of alignment, "Family, huh? I think I like that." He said as he resumed his long interrupted tasks.

"You ponies are such saps." Chrysalis said, grinning, "Soon enough you'll forget what a cruel, heartless parasite I am and go professing your love for me." Her tone got suddenly serious and she glared at him to emphasize her point, "But don't you forget, I really AM a cruel, heartless parasite, that's not just me leading you on in some insipid courtship ritual like you ponies are wont to do."

Even knowing full well that it was the truth Rocky found himself less convinced than he was outright comfortable with and he squirmed under Chrysalis' gaze and muttered something nasty under his breath.

My Faithful Student,

I have faith in your judgment. If the sunstone becomes an issue I do have certain contingency plans.

Stay safe,
HRH Princess Celestia

Having written a ten page report, or at least dictated one to Spike, the Princess' response was underwhelming, but knowing there was some manner of backup plan in the works at least took the pressure off of her a bit. Maybe Chrysalis would get banished to the moon, Twilight thought, but no, that took the elements of harmony and that would fall on their shoulders as well. What DID the Princess have as a backup plan?

She was at least grateful to get just the scroll she needed. A third hand copy, it was still old enough to predate Luna's exile and it confirmed several things. Firstly, the malignant spell on the stone was not unicorn magic, though it shared several traits with it. Reverse engineering it she realized immediately that it was cast by a meticulous artisan of spell crafting. It was, if nothing else, an extraordinarily durable spell that meshed with the stone's original faded enchantment. The most surprising part was that after some study she was able to confirm that a prominent exile to the Realm of Darkness was the original caster, for what good that did to know.

The solution was itching at the edges of her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp it.

"Did you find anything yet, Twilight?" Spike asked, yawning. She'd kept him up to an unholy hour and he'd been napping to make up for it.

"Well, I know what's going on, but not what to do about it. It might help to talk to someone about it." Twilight said grumpily. She also had a severe lack of sleep to contend with.

Spike walked over, fully intending to volunteer his ear, if he had one, but then saw the notes and diagrams Twilight had been drawing. The name 'Grogar' was written across the top and underlined twice. The interwoven lines of text and densely scribed superscript made him feel woozy and he thought better of it, "Whoa. I'm gonna get Cadence, maybe she can help."

"Thanks Spike." Twilight said genuinely as he waddled his way to find the alicorn. After a time Cadence showed up, along with Shining Armor.

Shining Armor was well schooled in major aspects of magic but he would have to admit, had he been given the chance, that his sister had delved into esoteric realms far beyond his grasp. Cadence, being an alicorn princess knew a little more than him, but still had trouble following the concept until Twilight simplified it to it's basic elements. She sat down at the head of the planning table and smoothed out her diagrams, even if they were only of any assistance to her.

"The stone's the major component of a spell that once encompassed the whole valley. It feeds into and is in turn fed by the leylines of this land. Thus the place at the top of the spire to align it just where it's meant to be so that's connected, because it looks like you can't fix the stone without fixing the valley and vice versa." Twilight began.

"That actually should make it easier to fix because it should create a feedback loop, or maybe a chain reaction according to how you go about it, but we're dealing with several different problems. The stone has a massive output, but it's storage capacity isn't so good. It looks like it would fully discharge in a day, and once it's fully discharged the capacitive spell's not strong enough to gather energy anymore."

"If it was taken into battle, and I'm not dead clear on how one one uses it as a weapon, it could easily get discharged past the point where it could replenish itself, even if you did get it back in place fast enough. It simply wasn't meant to be a weapon. In truth the terms of the original enchantment makes it a fairly cantankerous spell in it's own right, even without the curse."

"It's no trick to restart it once you know how it works. All it takes is a massive dose of love energy and a little sunlight and it would start right back up."

"Love energy?" Cadence asked, "Are you saying that it needs my magic to restart?"

"If I were doing it, yes. That's exactly what I'd do. If you're Chrysalis, who knows. They live on that energy, but isolating it and refocusing it on a stone would be extremely inefficient. I think it'd take several hives that one's size to pull it off. Maybe not even then, but I guess you never get anywhere underestimating changelings." Twilight considered, "If that unicorn really knew his stuff, he might get some sort of focusing array going...dunno."

"That's a solvable problem, though. The trouble they'll have is disentangling the misanthropic bit of spellcraft."

"You mean undo the curse, right?" Shining clarified. Twilight scowled, screwed up her face and glared at him.

"There's no such thing as curses." She growled angrily.

"Yeah, well, it sounds like a curse." Shining Armor said and stuck out his tongue.

"Well it can't be a curse because curses don't exist, Shining." Twilight barked at her brother, "We've had this argument before, we had this argument when I was seven, when are you going to get it through your head that there's no such thing as curses?"

"If it looks like a curse and smells like a curse..." Shining started with an evil smirk. Twilight got up from her seat and pummeled him with hoof blows. Cadence had seen these fights between them before and knew not to take them seriously. She began to laugh at them. Twilight's eyes darted over to her.

"Do you want to weigh in on this?" Twilight said to Cadence, daring her to choose sides.

"Oh, don't bring me into this! I'm not one to place so much importance on semantics." Cadence said, trying to keep out of the fray, but it was just the wrong thing to say.

"Semantics IS important! How will anypony know what you meant to say if you don't use your words precisely?" Twilight demanded, shook her head and settled back into her seat, "I swear you two say horrible things like that just to rile me up."

"Shh! Don't tell her!" Shining Armor stage whispered and then looked to Twilight, "So you were going to tell us how to undo the curse?"

"It's easy to dispell the dark magic affliction if you're us, we'd just have to use the elements of harmony and dose it with love to keep it from getting reinfected. Boom. Problem solved. The question and the problem is how do you do it if you're the changelings?" Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof, thinking seriously on the subject.

"Is there another way around it?" Cadence asked, "Couldn't the love energy be used to break the spell as well as charge the stone?"

"If that unicorn was very clever and everything went just right, maybe." Twilight admitted, "But things only ever go that right in books and from talking to him I do wonder how experienced he really is in practical magic? That's the trouble with this sort of thing, there's ways to make it work in theory that look great on paper and even check out mathematically, but won't work well in reality. That's where experience really counts and I have my doubts about Rocky's."

"So what would happen if he tried and failed?" Shining Armor asked.

"That part worries me quite a bit." Twilight said with deep concern etched on her brow, "I think it would backlash leaving them drained of nearly all their love energy, which I believe would kill all the changelings."

"Oh, I see. You think we should help them." Cadence stated, disappointedly.

"I...maybe?" Twilight cringed, knowing how Cadence felt about the changelings, "Because they're going to do it anyway and even if they're an evil scourge I can't really just let them get killed, can I?"

Of course it comes to this, Cadence thought. It keeps circling back to the same problem, and she so wanted Chrysalis frozen in stone, sent to the moon, she might even settle for her being divested of her evil intentions and living in peace and harmony like Luna, blah blah blah. That was not the path that continually presented itself. It would be so easy, so justifiable to be rid of the changeling menace as a whole, all they had to do was nothing, and who could really blame her?

Everyone, is who. Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Shining Armor even. Of course they would understand, forgive her and coo sweet words over her even, but they would be disappointed and would likely never see her the same way again. But what right did they have, after what Chrysalis has done, to judge her?

Her eyes watered and she sniffled, snorting in a decidedly unprincesslike manner. They'd tried to dupe the changelings and Chrysalis, in turn, played them for fools for her own amusement. In the end she had gone to great lengths, even though she had the upper hand the whole time and could have set the whole swarm against them at any moment, to give them back Rainbow Dash and balance the books. She had acted more honorably than Cadence would have had their roles been reversed, and why?

Without Rainbow the elements were nothing but costume jewelry and yet she traded her back for a simple promise that Cadence wasn't even sure she would keep.

Cadence knew the right thing to do, the only thing she could do and still look her loved ones in the face. She just hoped she could pretend to be okay with helping the changelings, even though she decidedly wasn't.

Cadence dropped her head with a thud onto the table and covered it with her forehooves. After a time she spoke from that position with only her muzzle exposed. "Maybe it would be for the best. I think we should discuss it with the girls, first, though."

"They're still out looking for Breezy, by the way." Shining Armor said as he belatedly went to his wife's side and nuzzled up against her, speaking gentle encouragements and soft words of affection.

"Oh, you don't think the changelings captured him, do you?" Twilight asked, realizing that if they had it would change the whole dynamic.

"I doubt it, but maybe we should go find him before we make any further decisions." Shining said, "The girls are searching the mountains on the outer ring, maybe we should search within the valley in case he ended up there. If we don't find him we could just ask the changelings, I suppose, but I'd like to avoid it if at all possible."

As it turned out it could not, in fact, be avoided. Searching the inner part of the mountain range they were intercepted almost immediately by a pair of changelings who instead of attacking looked at them expectantly.

It unnerved Cadence enough being so close to changelings again that she described Breezy and asked if they'd seem him, just to have something to say. They chittered and chirped to each other, discussing it and one of the pair took off. The other remained and tried to look nonchalant, while waiting, going so far as to attempt to whistle, which he failed at being able to produce a single note properly, and even went so far as to look at his watch, which of course he did not have.

Eventually the first drone reappeared, dragging along another shier little drone. Cadence went through her description again, and the changeling got excited and turned into the stallion they were after with a burst of green magic, the details and scowl uncanny. He then pointed up the mountain emphatically and reverted to his normal form.

"Up there?" Twilight asked, "I might be able to teleport there, I'm not sure, and you'd have to carry Shining Armor up and then back down. Would you feel safe going it alone?"

"I might have to carry Breezy back down, so it's probably simpler if I go alone." She turned to the changeling, "You won't hurt me, will you little guy?"

The drone made a cross my heart gesture and took off, pausing to make sure she and the other two drones were following. In truth she had considerable misgivings and felt on the verge of a panic attack, but she followed none the less, her resolve to get along with the changelings being put to it's first test.

They arrived at a spot just on the other side of the ridge line where yellow, pony sized boulders nestled together to form an incoherent pile of glacial debris. There was a void in the debris that the changeling was pointing to. When Cadence looked down she was startled by a single eye staring back at her.

"Are you okay?" She yelled.

"I'm fine, nothing broken, just fell down a hole." He groused, "You know there's a changeling beside you?"

"Yeah, well, we'll talk about that." She smiled at the changeling. "How'd you end up down there?"

"A changeling patrol was sweeping the foot of the mountain so I came up here for the cover. They saw me and came after me and I jumped down this hole hoping it went somewhere. It doesn't by the way, but they followed me down, three of them did, and I beat them quite handily so they skedaddled. The walls are slick, though and I can't get back out." Breezy climbed halfway up the wall and held himself there, legs quaking with strain. Instantly Cadence was halfway down the hole, rear legs and wings expanded to keep her from falling in and grabbed Breezy's hooves. She gradually wound herself back up, hauling him back towards the surface.

A look of sudden realization appeared on her face as his face reentered the sunlight. She unceremoniously dropped him, turned on the changelings and kicked the little one square in the face. Then she hit one of the bigger ones with a glancing blow, but he and his compatriot grabbed up the injured little changeling and took off, screeching angrily at the seemingly deranged alicorn who took off to retrieve and forewarn her friends.

She was already yelling by the time she'd crossed back over the mountain and first came into sight of her friends, "...Can't believe I trusted them, it was a trap! We've got to get back, now! Before they try something worse!"

Shining Armor couldn't make much of her ranting but her distress put him on guard, ready for an attack at any moment, a shield spell at the ready for an attack that failed to occur, "Where's Breezy?"

"I don't know." She landed hastily and sloppily and used her wings to urge Shining Armor and Twilight into a trot, "They probably have him. They tried to pass off a drone as him, but they made a mistake, his eyepatch was over his right eye so I knew it wasn't him."

"You're sure?" Shining Armor asked, increasing his speed to a light gallop.

"I'm sure." Cadence stated flatly, "That eyepatch was on the left eye before and then he conveniently fell in a hole just waiting to be rescued. How likely is that, really?"

"I don't know, this place is all full of holes. It wouldn't be that hard to fall into one if you were running in the dark." Twilight said, "I see what you mean, though, Cadence. It is suspiciously convenient."

"Also, if they could change into him it pretty much means they've captured him, wouldn't you think?" Cadence asked. Shining Armor nodded his agreement as they rushed back to their cave.

From the platform high atop the changeling hive Chrysalis had heard the drones screechy chittering from some considerable distance and had turned to listen. A minute later it's insistent volume drew Rocky's attention away from checking his calculations.

The drones arrived carrying the smaller dazed one between them. Chrysalis listened intently to their hastily conveyed story as she inspected the small drone. His armor had been cracked across the bridge of his snout and he was bleeding moderately. He sniffled, but Rocky assumed it was from bleeding or swelling in his sinus cavity rather than an emotional response as he'd never seen the drones act with any great deal of sentimentality.

Chrysalis licked her holey hoof and wiped away the smear of blood, then spoke some words of comfort in her own language before the drones took him inside to recover.

"What happened to him?" Rocky asked with concern.

"That ridiculous pink alicorn kicked him in the face." Chrysalis told him.

"Why?"

"A simple misunderstanding, I'm sure." Chrysalis said tonelessly and called to one of the drones, who came over. She gave him a long set of instructions in their own unique language after which he gathered two dozen more drones to him and led them off to the Southwest in loose formation.

"You're not starting something, are you Chrissy?" Rocky narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"Me? No, of course not. I just thought I could help those silly ponies out with something." She said with a wicked grin.

"I don't believe you, but we shouldn't be starting anything." Rocky chastised.

"We?" Chrysalis asked, taken aback, "I don't recall you having been put in charge of the leadership of this hive and one of the things I've found most tolerable about you all this time is that you don't attempt to interfere with my decisions."

Rocky was somewhat hurt, but he figured she might be right. He might have overstepped his bounds and he'd always felt his place with the hive to be a rather tenuous arrangement at best and he'd told himself he was okay with that. But was he really? He shook his head to clear away these irrelevant meanderings, he was too deep in this now to start second guessing himself and mewling about some hurt feelings.

"It's just that it's almost time. Maybe dawn tomorrow and I need to start setting up the array. It would be better not to be riling up those ponies now is what I'm getting at."

Chrysalis shrugged, "What's done is done. Their reaction should be amusing." She left it at that, Rocky looked at her and groaned trying to put out of his head the mean spirited plans he imagined she was hatching.

"Anyway, I've got to scratch the array out in the dirt and then I have to set all those little receptor stones in the array. After that we'll be ready to do this, unless you've changed your mind?" Rocky asked. Having told her the dangers he still felt he should warn her off and give her a last chance to chicken out. Chrysalis, however, wasn't one for changing her mind out of fright.

"The drones are at your disposal, feel free to use them if they can be of any assistance." Chrysalis gestured and one of her personal guards, a sweetly dispositioned and seemingly intelligent drone, stepped forward awaiting Rocky's task.

Shortly he had a small army of changelings gouging an arcane array into the crumbling soil. They turned out to be extremely capable and even more accurate in execution then Rocky himself and he was quickly relegated to distributing the numerous mismatched gemstones and shards within the pattern. The patterns and concentric circles expanded until the ground started to become too uneven and rocky to continue and the pattern was terminated.

Rocky rechecked his and the changeling's work by the waning sun and found it to be satisfactory. There was nothing left to do but trigger it in the morning and he'd finally fulfill what he'd counted as a fated task.

Southwest of the hive, outside the ring of mountains that encircled the valley a dark brown stallion limped his way along a trail that would take him over the ridge line, down the opposite slope and directly towards the changeling hive.

His progress was slowed by his three legged gait. His left rear leg was hurt, probably fractured, and had begun to swell. He was scratched, bruised and sore as could be, at least he wasn't lost. He was, however, confused. The changelings had been acting very oddly and it was unclear at this point whose side they were on, he even had some vague notion of a coup at the hive.

The drones didn't help him on his arduous trek, but neither did they hinder him despite occasional patrols spotting him. One little drone with a mashed up face had even waved to him as they passed. Given the scarcity of patrols earlier and the odds against being spotted by chance in the vast expanse he'd come to assume that they were primarily keeping an eye on him.

He stopped, balanced himself on one front and one rear leg, reached up and scratched his dusty, scrubby black mane then scratched under and resettled his eyepatch before stomping his forehoof back down as his balance began to waver.

Gruntilngly he resumed his journey, over a field of loose, jagged rocks, up a series of eroded switchbacks and up a slope angled so steeply that he was forced to crawl up it, dragging his injured leg. Once surmounted he was rewarded with the welcome view of the mountain's slope falling away down into the valley.

The valley floor, he was surprised to see, had been scratched with geometric patterns and interlocking circles, a faint glittering at their junctures and key points as the sun sank rapidly towards the jagged horizon. Certainly this development hinted that things had progressed quite considerably in his absence.

Not for the first time he wondered what had become of his comrades. The truth was that as broad of a range as they would have to search he still should have seen some hint of their efforts, if they were indeed looking for him. This lead him to believe they weren't. The pain that every step, every breath for that matter, produced slowed and clouded his mind and the various possible implications were slow in coming.

It was possible, but unlikely, that they were driven from the valley. He'd taken off running just as soon as the charges went, though, and so couldn't know for sure. They could have been captured, but the odds were against all of their number being entrapped. They could have believed him dead or captured himself and no longer at large, but he couldn't see that being the case.

A lot of it hinged on whether or not the Cadence that came for him yesterday was real or a changeling, and if she was the genuine article, why had she turned on him and dropped him back down the hole? He'd injured his leg in that fall and it had lead to his current batch of problems.

Though it was risky to go over such terrain in his current state he couldn't gamble on the outer cave mouth, the planning room of the cave, just inside being where Cadence and her herd of hangers on would probably be. Cheyenne, though, would be at the inner cave mouth inside the valley, on watch, if she was anywhere. She tended to be where the grunt work needed to be done, something he very much admired about her, so he continued on with the sole goal of finding her.

Then if that Cadence was a changeling imposter, why had the large cohort of drones come back and pulled him out of the hole? That was all they did, however. They simply arrived, twenty five darkly gleaming drones with their unreadable turquoise eyes, proceeded to push and pull him out of his sorry predicament and then leave en masse. They hadn't ignored his questions, exactly, but they wouldn't say anything save for their chitterings and squawks either and then they were gone.

As the dark grew deeper his condition deteriorated. The pain was excruciating, his leg was throbbing hotly with every heartbeat. Confused and badly dehydrated he had overexerted his forelegs compensating for his gimpy rear one. He was stumbling more often, despite the bright glow of the moon fighting through the overbearing haze and for the past hour he'd been debating the merits of his choices.

If he stopped he would, likely as not, never be found and die in the rocky, wind blasted mountains. If he continued on he might die on his feet. The way things were going he'd be too far gone to be anything but a burden by the time he made their hidden outpost, and if he didn't make that by dawn he'd risk giving their position by going there.

While his mind debated, rebelled, negotiated and insisted on stopping immediately his feet kept dragging him inexorably forward. His shuffling zombie walk hardly breaking rhythm despite his inner turmoil.

Under an outcropping of rock that hid the narrow cave mouth sat Cheyenne, finally cleaned of her itchy camouflage and with her rusty mane and tail combed free of the burls and matting she'd been maintaining. Her cutie mark was visible as well and the soldiers waiting with her commented on it idly.

"It's an axe, innit?" One of the armored stallions speculated.

"Nah, it's a tommy-hawk." Another soldier, named Foxhole, said with his odd accent, "It's like them ol' buffalo carry 'round, 'cept they're just decorative now. They don't go 'bout scalping everypony like they used ta in the ol' days."

"You're both wrong." Masquerade, the unicorn soldier who specialized in camouflaging magic informed them, "It's a tomahawk, sure, but look at the hammer end. See how it's fluted? That's so you can put tobacco or some such thing in it and smoke out of the hole in the end of the handle."

"So it's just a glory-fied pipe? What's the point in all that then? It'd be a heck of easier and lighter just to have a reg'lar ol' pipe and save the blacksmith a whole heap o' work." Foxhole said.

"It's a peace pipe. Being shaped as a weapon of war while being an implement of peace is some kind of symbolism, that's what the buffalo used to say." Masquerade said and addressed Cheyenne who'd been staying clear of their musings on her flank, "Isn't that right, Sir?"

"Right enough, I suppose." She replied simply and returned to scanning the night with her binoculars.

"Well if'n that don't beat all." The oddly accented stallion laughed, "Our Lieutenant's special talent is runnin' away and our Sergeant's a peacemaker in the shape of a weapon o' war. That's downright ironical that is."

Cheyenne giggled, "I don't think you really ought to let Breezy hear you say that sort of thing, unless you like KP and running laps." With the tension of an impending battle more or less broken she assumed a more relaxed air and let discipline slip a bit. It was good to let the men blow off steam and to her mind it didn't hurt unit cohesiveness a bit either.

She was worried about Breezy, sure, but if the changelings had him like Cadence said he should be okay. Changelings don't tend to hurt ponies, despite their wicked looks, but rather keep them well tended so that they can be harvested for their love.

The palest tinge on the horizon indicated the imminence of the sunrise was mere minutes away. A shuffling from the cave mouth distracted the four soldiers from their posts as Shining Armor emerged.

"Cheyenne, Twilight says that she thinks the changelings will cast their spell just as soon as the sun rises so that they'll have the maximum amount of daylight to recharge it. She says the array out there's meant to drain and refocus all the changeling's love energy to uncurse and restart the sunstone, so they'll need it working to recharge themselves. It would be a perfect time to take the hive, but we've promised that option away." Shining Armor hung his head and sighed, "She also says that Rocky's spell is overly optimistic and they won't have enough love energy to pull it off."

"So nothing will happen, then, sir?" She asked.

"No. Something will happen, we can be sure of that at least." Shining Armor stated, "Twilight says that the spell will collapse and backlash and it will most likely kill all the changelings. At the very least it will leave them all drained and without the sunstone working they will die within a few hours."

"It's going to create a magical shockwave that unicorns and even pegasi are going to want to avoid, so we're going to hide out in the cave and block it off with fill in the narrow part right here. We need a couple of volunteers to stay out here and keep watch, then start digging the hole back out after the fireworks die down."

"That's harsh," Cheyenne said, neutrally, "Sir, I thought you had all decided not to hurt the changelings. What happened with that?"

"They took Breezy and held him, then tried to infiltrate us with a changeling drone after we've already come to terms. You know I'm morally against it, but there's only so much forgiveness and trust that can be freely given, so if they're going to kill themselves I don't see that it's our duty to bust our flanks to stop them." Shining Armor said coldly. He'd fought with himself over this issue and much as he wished for peace, harmony and second chances, the changeling's self destruction would be the simplest, safest solution to this whole situation and he had no great sympathy for them anyway. While he didn't match his wife's bitter and bloody minded hatred of changelings they had endangered everyone he loved and it would be so very easy to look on their passing as righteous vengeance, despite a serious tinge of guilt.

"Sir, what about Rocky? What about Breezy for that matter? Will he be alright in the hive with all this going on around him?" Cheyenne asked.

"Breezy should be fine, earth ponies should be mostly immune to the spell, even at it's epicenter." Shining Armor looked at the ground, "Rocky won't fare so well. It's hard to say for certain but minimally he'll be completely drained of love energy and suffering from the backlash. If he lives through it and we can get him to Cadence fast enough she should be able to save him, but the spell has a pretty nasty half life. It'll need to be earth ponies that go in the hive after him until we can dismantle the array."

"I volunteer, sir." Cheyenne said, coming to attention and saluting properly for once, "I'd be honored to keep watch and to go in with the rescue party."

"'Spect I'll volunteer as well, if ya don't mind, sir." Foxhole said with a proud grin.

"Granted, now come on, let's get everypony to safety and the cave mouth filled in." Shining said.

Cheyenne looked to the brightening horizon and squinted, "My saddle bag's just inside the first chamber, do you think there's time to get my eyepatch out of it?"

"Wait, what? Why would you need an eyepatch?" Shining Armor asked, stunned at the odd request.

"Cadence! Twilight!" Shining Armor yelled as he entered the cavern and the soldiers quickly started to seal up it's mouth, "We've got a big problem!"

Most of the soldiers, all the Elements of Harmony, Cadence and Spike were assembled in the wet unevenly floored cavern. Shining Armor gave Cadence a wild, panicked look, shook his head, trying to determine where to begin and eventually just started spewing words hoping they would make sense, "That pony in the hole WAS Breezy. Cheyenne just told me about the eyepatch. It turns out that Breezy has been fighting the Diamond Dogs until he came here, Cheyenne too. They're in and out of tunnels all day and it takes a while for your eyes to adjust, you know?"

"Well it's deadly to go jumping down holes and running into someone who's been down there and can see because their eyes are already acclimated, so they took to wearing eyepatches. Whenever they jumped in a dark hole they'd just switch it to their other eye and they could see again because the eyepatched eye was adjusted to being in the dark under the eyepatch. I only found out just now because she wanted one to go looking for Breezy in the changling hive, which she figured was full of dark tunnels."

"Buck!" Cadence swore the implications of this bit of news setting in, then again, "Buck! The changelings! It's too late to do anything to save them!"

"Don't blame yourself," Shining Armor embraced her and nuzzled her neck, "You couldn't have known. It's not your fault."

"It is my fault!" She wailed, tears cascading down her cheeks, "A whole species is going to be wiped off the face of the planet because I was blind to any explanation other than treachery."

A high pitched whine started building from outside the cave, shaking the dust from all the walls and causing the rock walls to creak unsettlingly. It rose to a monstrous pitch and abruptly stopped. As soon as it did hooves from outside could be heard attacking their hasty barricade and the soldiers inside took to dismantling it as quickly as possible.

The hive rattled, creaked and then fell deathly silent. Atop the platform lay the prone figures of a grey unicorn and a blue one, both with gemstone cutie marks until the blue one's color suddenly reverted to a glossy black.

Chrysalis' green blood trickled from her mouth and nose, thin rivulets joining to form a small lake. She coughed piteously and looked to where Rocky lay.

His eyelids fluttered open and he tried to stand but he was incapable. His horn was blackened at the tip and he bled from the ears. He didn't look to be badly injured, but they both knew he'd killed them both. Shamefaced he met Chrysalis' eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. I don't know where I went wrong, I just..." He whimpered with difficulty. Chrysalis didn't look on him reproachfully. It was far too late for reproach and Chrysalis had long been at peace with the fate that was rapidly approaching her. Now that it was done and beyond her control she found she just couldn't be that angry. In fact she felt relieved more than anything, as if a great weight was lifted off of her.

"Failed or not you've given your life to aid us, who were on the verge of death already. All is forgiven and you have my gratitude besides." Chrysalis replied graciously, which she realized was unlike her, but what use was fury at this late juncture? She could feel the hive dying beneath her, the last sputters of energy drying up and she knew she had every right to rage but it just wasn't in her, she felt so peaceful as to wish to reassure her misguided benefactor.

Rocky grunted his thanks, struggling just to stay breathing. Every rise of his chest was a monumental battle that he would soon lose the strength to fight. His spell had come close to working, the stone had briefly resumed an amber hue and had even the barest trace of illumination lit it from within before the oily black retook it.

Chrysalis looked at him, almost tenderly, which she found rather surprising herself. Rocky loved her, that was obvious from the very beginning. At first it was a fraudulent, shameful and pathetic thing, like loving a paper doll of his wife. Had Chrysalis known his wife, been able to copy her mannerisms and speech it might have stayed that way, but she'd only been able to glean her image from his mind and the rest remained her true self. Haughty and selfish as she was he'd grown to enjoy her acid wit, vicious honesty and brutal pragmatism.

Their no holds barred verbal sparring had been the highlight of his days. He'd never met such a confident, quick witted and often laconic mare. There was, unsurprisingly, a queenly grace to her that thrilled him. In many ways she was the opposite of his wife whose body she'd assumed, but he grew to genuinely love her.

Chrysalis, for her part had explained to him that she was without the sort of love he was seeking, being devoid of it not by inclination but by her very nature. Love was food and nothing more to her. Grudging respect was about as far along the spectrum towards love as she could go. It had always been so, she thought.

A nagging thought started tickling the back of her brain when she tried to think back to her earliest days, had it really always been this way? Wasn't it different once, in a distant and long forgotten life? Her mind was a disjointed quagmire of distorted memories. The farther back she tried to think the more tattered the pieces became.

Time passed unmarked in the changeling hive and save for brief flurries of activities and various convoluted schemes to acquire more victims for her hive's sustenance one day ran into another. She was around before Discord, before Celestia and Luna had left their respective astral bodies for good to walk the earth amongst their little ponies.

The drones themselves came and went and though she knew each of her identical children well, memories of them all ran together after they were gone...save for the first drones.

She remembered now, the first drones had been live births, rather than eggs hatched in a nursery, but how could that be? They were born to others, not queens like her, but not drones either. Subjects, she remembered. They were her subjects who gave birth to the first drones but all her subjects had long since passed. She couldn't remember their faces, but she knew, unlike her drones they each had a name.

She was the one rendered ageless, the queen and mother to all the generations of drones that followed. She belonged to the hive as much as the hive belonged to her, she thought bitterly for a moment, but she had loved her subjects. All that she'd done then, all that she'd done after was out of love for them, to keep them safe and alive the only way left to her.

Chrysalis, for as long as she could remember had a sense of duty, a memory of a promise given and a great sacrifice undertaken but even now, on the edge of death she couldn't discern their precise nature and when love had become a thing only meant to sustain the hive.

She knew, though, that she wanted to love Rocky, just as she knew she was wholly incapable of doing so and the time for trying had passed. Her limbs had gone numb, her breathing shallow, she blinked slowly, taking in the grey sky and the grey unicorn before it, then she closed green her eyes for good.

Twilight used her magic liberally, recklessly and in haste to blow away the crumbly soil and the magical array it contained. Her spells would not work within it until it was dispersed somewhat so she attacked it by generating gusts and small tornadoes to erase all lingering traces.

The aura was quickly weakened though only time would dissipate it fully and the small army of ponies crossed the blasted landscape, scarves covering their snouts and wishing for goggles to guard against the stirred up dust. Applejack sprinted to the tower, followed by the bouncing pink party pony. Twilight felt woozy from the exertion and from the remnants of powerful magic. Rarity looked positively green and had to stop to retch, on several occasions as she trotted.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were dizzied by the magical flow and staggered often as they walked but were otherwise okay. If time were not of the essence they would have waited for the disturbances to die down.

The surroundings having been cleared was one thing, the hive structure itself was still rife with potent magics and it would test each of their constitutions to carry on through it. Not bothering to even look for a door Twilight blasted a hole through the structure's black shell and it crumbled into sand under her power. It was the last time she would be able to use her own magic until this was done.

Stepping inside a wave of nausea hit her along with the scent of tallow and peat and she emptied her guts on the polished black floor and moved on without remark. She could hear Rarity having a similar reaction behind her. The floor of the hive was littered with changeling drones, in the dark they could be living or dead, there was no way to tell. Drones still clung to the walls in all manner of awkward pose. They were still in the silent hive, their turquoise eyes eerily illuminating the huge hollow interior accented in a few places with luminescent green blood.

Twilight felt the guilt of knowing that she could have stopped this and hadn't. She hoped it wasn't already too late to redeem herself.

Her eyes burned and teared up, her horn throbbed, but she crashed forward regardless to her friends awaiting her at the spiral staircase that climbed straight to the tower. She was determined that she would make it regardless of her discomfort and stepped onto the first step woozily, preparing to soldier her way up. Fortunately the unaffected earth ponies grabbed her and Rarity both and slung them on their backs.

Pinkie's boundless energy saw Twilight to the top and Rarity was carried by Applejack's farm pony strength. Rainbow, suffering herself, still managed to help Fluttershy surmount the platform.

Breaking back into the grey daylight the six struggled to find enough room on the platform to stand. They straddled the unconscious Chrysalis and Rocky, not even taking the time to worry over them as they realized speed was their only salve. Applejack took a box from her saddlebag and distributed from it the elements of harmony. Which they all quickly donned.

"Wait, before we do this, how's blasting Chrysalis going to help anything? She's not in any shape to fight anyway." Rainbow said and pointed a hoof at the fallen changeling queen, "I don't think it's right kicking her while she's down and if we were going to she's right there. We could just, I dunno, actually kick her."

"Rainbow, are y'all serious? We're blasting the sunstone, sugarcube. Don't be going and aiming that ol' thing at Chrysalis, she's got enough problems today." Applejack chided as she finished hooking the clasp on her necklace, taking the barest moment to admire the apple shaped crystal.

"I didn't know we could aim these thing anyway!" Pinkie said and smartly turned to face the stone with her best determined glare.

"The rainbow does seem to just go where it wants to, I've noticed." Twilight admitted woozily, it was time to get this over with so she could pass out, "Everypony ready?"

"Ready!" They all agreed and Twilight let the energy build and flow through her. Her eyes glowed white as the the gems shot beams that converged on the center of the sunstone and produced a swirling rainbow. The sunstone sparkled and cleared of the black, not that it was much lighter. It was now a dull brown and no use to anyone in such a state, but the elements had done their part, even so they did not abate but instead expanded to encompass the hive then grow exponentially to cover the whole valley with a massive swirling rainbow vortex like a thousand sonic rainbooms stacked on top of each other and set spinning.

The miasma of grey that covered the valley was blown away instantly, the magic residue of the failed spell subsided and the rainbow finally collapsed and released the six mares from their thrall.

Five of the six looked to the bright sky in awe, the riot of spectral hues still burned into their retinas.

Rainbow shook Chrysalis. Her body light and unresponsive like a cicada shell, "Still dead." She announced. Twilight glared and Fluttershy gasped. Rocky was still breathing shallowly and raggedly.

"We've done what we can do, it's up to Cadence now." Rarity said.

Cadence crossed the valley in the time it took the rainbow to recede and lit on the edge of the crowded platform, shouldering her way between Pinkie who was always thrilled with physical contact and Fluttershy who was mortified, Cadence charged up her horn and channeled as much love energy as she could into the stone. It was the barest trickle compared to what the sun could do, but she hoped it was enough to kickstart the stone. She poured every bit of will she could into the beam until it sputtered away.

"It's done." Cadence announced, exhausted, "Now we wait."

Twilight signaled to her brother and the various soldiers on the ground that everything had gone alright. Fluttershy longed to stay and nurse the stallion laid out on the cold platform, but there was little to be done so she and Rainbow took off to resume the search for Breezy. It was a short search, as they found him waving from the front of their hidden cavern entrance and it gave Fluttershy someone much more appreciative of nursing skills until the medic got there.

Applejack and Pinkie left the platform carrying the still struggling Rarity between them and met Shining Armor and his various soldiers halfway across the valley and proceeded to give him what report they could come up with. Twilight refused to move, insisted that she would never be forced to move ever again and stubbornly fell asleep right on the platform. Cadence stayed to watch her as well as to watch over the recovery of the hive.

Her special talent was love itself, which had metaphysical ramifications that couldn't be imagined. She could sense and control the ethereal love energy that permeated Equestria, that was simple. She could help along a primordial love and cause it to blossom and she could, if one irritated her sufficiently, force love, however against type it seemed. This was not a power she often used and she viewed it as her deadliest weapon, to be used only in cases of direst importance, only once or twice for fun. Most pleasing to her she could sense a the channels through which the love energy flowed, the magical connection between family friends and lovers that made her world a beautiful, complicated, pulsating spiderweb.

Even drained she could see, clear as day, the affection that Rocky had for Chrysalis, it moved like an erratic torrent. What surprised her was the thread of love that the changeling queen returned. Though it wasn't a sufficient path for a torrent to flow through it was finely wrought, strong and deeply rooted. The hive below received a measure of consideration as well, all of it familial love like a mother for her children, though and entirely unlike what she felt for Rocky.

"D'aww....I didn't think a changeling COULD feel love except to feed upon it." Cadence couldn't help but smile and find her former bitter enemy cute as a kitten after feeling that. Everypony was cute when they were helpless and sleeping, she supposed.

While she didn't forgive her, exactly, and even had a fleeting thought of shoving the sleeping form off the edge of the platform it was only for the briefest of moments. Maybe this was something she could finally get past after today. Maybe even the changelings, even Chrysalis, had a right to live and to be forgiven.

On the other hoof, if the changelings went on to hurt anypony after this it would be her fault for not putting an end to the queen right here and now, was it really right to take that risk? Where she saw cute and helpless moments ago she saw weak and pathetic. It would be so much safer to take the path of suspicion. She sighed and resettled herself, forcefully quelling her vicious thoughts.

Love and tolerance, she reminded herself, was the whole of what an Equestrian princess was meant to embody, an ideal she'd dedicated her life to. If she couldn't act by that ideal now then it was meaningless, and even if it had to be an act now, in this place, maybe her ideals could grow into her actions later.

She tried to scavenge some more energy to feed the afflicted changeling but she just couldn't scrape together any more power after exhausting it so fully. There really was nothing left to do but wait and hope the stone would start feeding them soon enough. She sat down on her belly and waited silently.

Shining Armor climbed up and joined her. Not breaking her reverent silence he settled down beside her and nuzzled her lovingly. As the day wore on the sunstone began radiating warmth and love, first at a low, almost unnoticeable level, but soon the whole valley pulsed with it fostering a contentment in all all those within it's bounds. It's effects on the flora were equally pronounced. Wild grasses sprung out of the dead parched soil. Springs, freed of the valley's curse that held them at bay, welled up to feed the small creeks and fill the shallow depression around the hive. By late afternoon saplings had appeared and flowers carpeted the valley floor.

Twilight yawned and rose, startled when she realized where she was and how close to the edge she was she sidled up to the pulsing yellow stone, grinning madly.

"You did it Cadence!" She chirped.

"Yes and I believe the changelings are going to be okay too. They're absorbing the energy nicely and should be up and around any time now. Chrysalis was beginning to stir moments ago, but I figured it's best to let her sleep." Cadence said.

"They found Breezy, by the way." Shining Armor said, "The changelings went back and pulled him out of the hole after the incident, but made him walk back. He's got a broken leg and he's not in the best shape, but he'll be fine."

"What about Rockford." She said and pointed to the collapsed unicorn.

"He's stable enough now that his energy's started to restore itself, but he's suffering from the magical backlash. There's nothing to be done for him but just wait and see." Her brother said.

"Poor Rockford." Twilight said sadly, she knew just how dangerous a magical backlash really was.

"His name...." a halting voice emitted from the changeling queen, "His name is Rocky." She said, rocking stiffly as if trying and failing to regain her feet. She couldn't see and her body refused to move properly, as if it was encased in a skin of plaster. She kept rocking and muscled her way to a sitting position. Her body cracked and crackled as she moved and when she abruptly stood plates of her exoskeleton clattered to the ground and Twilight swiveled to meet her eyes. Her pink irised eyes, set in a pale yellow face which was in turn hung on a pale yellow mare. She was, like a changeling, skinnier and proportional longer legged than a normal pony, but she had large clear wings shaped like a butterfly's but iridescent like a dragonfly. She retained the majority of her stature, losing a few hooves in height. Her mane was long and pink and most shockingly of all she retained her jagged horn only it was now her new color.

The three others on the platform stared at her, eyes wide, mouths hung open.

"Do I have something on my face?" Chrysalis asked teasingly but when she raised a hoof and discovered it's new hue she was likewise perplexed. She turned to her flank and found she even had a cutie mark of three roses and some bits of surrounding foliage. Her voice had lost it's odd insectile quavering and had become a gentle lilting thing.

"You do, actually..." Twilight started to say, "Oh, no, I thought it was a leaf but it's part of your markings, though I haven't seen a cutie mark that made it clear up to a pony's face. So, um, yeah, there's a tiny leaf by your eye on either side, also, what are you now? Can you change back?"

Chrysalis strained and grunted, "It seems not." she admitted, then thought of her drones and their predicament. She leapt down the hole in the platform and slid down the rails of the staircase, using her unfamiliar wings to slow her descent. The inside of the hive had become a riot of color as pastel insect winged ponies pulled their comrades free from the changeling drone shells.

They were all smaller than pegasi, with longer legs, just like their queen. They were each and every one a blank flank despite their wildly varied ages. Their sexes were likewise varied. Instead of a chittering buzz like a confused hive would normally generate there was, instead, a murmur and then raised voices.

"My queen!" "Are you okay?" "You look so soft and yellow!" "What happened?" "I'm so...Pretty!" "My wings!" "MY HORN! WHERE'S MY HORN?" The former drones fussed until Chrysalis calmed them.

"My children!" She tried to bellow, but rather lacked the volume, all the ponies hushed and listened intently anyway, "This is to be expected. Please check on your fellows, including those who were in the cavern below us. Help them from their pods, if you will, then take time to acquaint yourselves with your hive brothers and sisters new forms. I will return shortly with new orders. You two, please go up on the platform and look after Rocky. Inform me at once should his condition change in the slightest."

Chrysalis looked up to where Twilight, Cadence and Shining Armor were following each other down the staircase in confusion. She signaled to the three with her head to hurry up and follow her outside. Twilight, seeing the ponies opened her mouth to start asking questions, "Ixnay!" Chrysalis said and motioned more emphatically before exiting herself.

Once they'd joined her outside she walked well clear of the hive through the tall grass, turned to the three. She grinned stupidly, for a time at a loss for words, "That, is by far the least likely thing that could have possibly happened, yes?"

"Agreed." "Definitely." Cadence and Shining Armor said. Twilight shrugged, "I've seen stranger, I suppose, but it's got to be right up there."

"Well...at least now I know what's been going on for the past few eons." Chrysalis said, grinding her newly yellow hoof in small circles in the grass.

"I'm glad you do, because I don't get it." Cadence said with a thoughtful scowl.

"It turns out," Chrysalis said melodramatically, "That I made a deal with a devil."

The Trouble With Flutterponies

"The trouble with flutterponies is that they, like changelings, are parasites." The former changeling queen told the assembled mass of ponies who, aside from the younger colts and fillies who galloped playfully, testing out their new bodies, listened attentively, "They were safe in their ancestral home with their family and loved ones, which, along with the sunstone, provided all the love energy they needed. It kept them mostly sequestered there, though they occasionally visited beyond the borders and were perfectly safe in doing so as long as they were well thought of at their destination."

"They mostly were, of course. It's easy to love beautiful things and the flutter ponies were that. They were another thing, however, one that you would not expect. They were capable warriors and defended their valley, and eventually ponyland itself against evil forces. It was on just a crusade that the flutterponies lost their identities."

Rosedust, queen of the flutterponies was dubious of the plans that Forget-me-not had devised, but all her closest confidants had agreed with it's premise. Even Honeysuckle, who could find fault with Christmas morning, grudgingly admitted it was a solid tactic.

It had it's costs and it's risks, but things had come to such a state that their isolationist ways had to be put aside to put an end to the scourges the witches were continually bringing down on their collective heads.

The dragon that the witches commandeered had been the last straw. To the witches it was just like any of their other schemes that had ended in failure; a temporary setback at worst. Once they'd driven the dragon off and regained their castle they'd be on to their next misanthropic and far fetched scheme.

To the ponies it was different this time, three ponies were lost to the dragon's flames, one of which was a flutterpony named Lily. Rosedust assembled a council representing all the pony races and a few others and they argued passionately into the night. Despite their gentle nature several called out for blood. Three ponies lost, three witches to pay for it, an eye for an eye. The flutterponies were against killing the witches outright, though even they acknowledged that it would be the quickest, simplest way to deal with the problem. An assassination would be the safest way to go too, as the dragon was quite contrite for his actions while he was under the witches thrall and had so much as offered to do away with them if they wished.

The plan they offered, instead, would cost them something precious. It would cost them access to their friend who lived over the rainbow in that other world. In truth their friend could not visit so often as she once had, having a family of her own by this time. Even her siblings had grown and moved on, but still the idea of closing off their world once and for all weighed heavily upon them.

A messenger had been sent for her and had returned with only a heartfelt letter, saying that she would miss them all and that they should do what was best for ponyland. The creatures who lived in that land without magic had saved them, given so much to their lives and played a pivotal role in bringing all the disparate pony tribes together that they despaired of casting away the hope they engendered. They could see no other choice, though and it was soon decided.

The witches were to be exiled over the rainbow and their connection to that land permanently severed. In execution the plan was rudimentary and simply accomplished.

The witches had taken refuge in a cave that had formerly belonged to a sorcerer of their acquaintance who had long ago departed. It was large with well stocked book shelves, a fine cauldron and a chimney that drew well to pull out the cooking fire's smoke.

Some of the ponies' assorted friends were subterranean creatures and they'd been employed to surreptitiously seal off the cave from the rear, as it had passages that lead deep into the earth where pursuit would prove difficult. Then they simply clogged the chimney, that exited a fissure in the cave's ceiling, with mounds of damp earth and waited. The smoke billowed out of the cave's mouth and shortly the three witches came out with it, coughing, gagging and blaming each other for the clogged chimney.

The ground they stumbled over had a net lain across it that was raised as soon as they were within it. As the smoke cleared their dumb faces and incredulous eyes took in the majority of pony kind gathered into one herd, glaring at them.

The witches cursed and plead, but the ponies silently and solemnly went about their task. The flutterponies used their sunstone along with the rainbow of light to force into existence the rainbow portal they needed and held it open whilst four pegasi carried the netted witches into that other world.

They dilly dallied there for some time bidding their friend a final, tearful goodbye after depositing their captives at the outskirts of a nearby town. When they returned the flutterpony queen used the sunstone's power to disrupt, once and for all, the powerful magics that connected the two worlds.

A victory party was held, but Rosedust had to return to the valley with the sunstone before sunset and she didn't much feel victorious besides. She made it home hours before sunset and set the stone back on it's sundial themed pylon. By twilight she knew something was hideously wrong, by dawn the valley had died away, becoming a dry waste accented by bare blackened tree trunks and brown crumbling stalks.

Though the loss of the valley hurt her tremendously there were other places to live and the other ponies offered them lodgings just as soon as they heard what had happened. The flutterponies, though, immediately began to look sickly and fall ill. Without their valley they were dying.

Rosedust herself was still in tolerable condition and went to consult a local wise man who went by the title of Moochick. Though Roseluck's mother, the former queen, had taught her to see and manipulate the currents of love and solar energies that the sunstone radiated, and even taught her some considerable spell casting using it's principals, she had remained ignorant of her subject's need for love energy. Even with the best intentions the ponies felt the sick and displaced flutterponies were a bit of an imposition after only a short time and sad as it is to say there simply was not enough love to go around.

The wise man said there was little he could do to help, but had an idea the witches may have had a certain item who's power might set things right.

"They are indeed powerful artifacts, these amulets, but be wary of them for dark magic will always exact a price. In short, use it's magic, do not let it's magic use you." He warned.

Forewarned and foredoomed Rosedust searched the witches cave and, finding nothing, went to their former castle to ask the dragon for his assistance.

"That which you're seeking lies within these walls and if you desire it, I'll be more than happy to provide it." The green dragon told her. He was built in the typical dragon pattern, claws, leathery wings, sinewy body and jagged teeth. He stood as high as ten ponies stacked up, which was a fairly runty size for a dragon. Rosedust had heard him attribute a spirit of generosity with the stunting of his growth but she was uncertain of the connection.

He slithered and thundered through the circuitous halls and chambers of the decrepit castle and at length returned with the object of her quest. It was not given without warning.

"This is one of five identical pieces." He said as he handed her the bulky golden amulet that was shaped into a bust of a horned pegasus with a turquoise stone set in it's chest, "They were crafted by the tyrant sorcerer Grogar more than five hundred years ago, before his exile to the realm of darkness. He had it in mind that he would conquer the world with his five armies, each led by a general of unrivaled power over whom he had complete control. To this end he imbued them with great powers that might be utilized for good, if so required, but their continued use will wear away your free will, putting you deeper and deeper under his control until you are a mere puppet."

"They are, bluntly, a trap, and only you may remove it once you've put it on. If you chose this path you are quite likely to trade away your soul and yourself for the power it contains."

"Grogar was banished back to the realm of shadows but a decade ago." Rosedust said, "Certainly he cannot overtake my mind from there?"

"I do not know," The dragon said, "But it would be a mistake to underestimate his power."

With that Rosedust thanked the dragon and departed to return once more to the blighted flutter valley.

She lit in front of the sunstone and sat on the stone apron that surrounded it. Three pyramidal stones marked the cardinal directions at the periphery, a larger stone monument marking the South. These were raised by her great great grandmother when flutter valley was brand new. She, and all the previous generations of flutter ponies who'd passed on were buried just beyond that southern marker. It had been a thick thatch of ivy and blooming vines save for the freshly dug grave of Lily. The vines had died away, dried out and crumbled now, and the field of older graves were all as plainly visible as the newest one.

If she failed Lily would be the last flutterpony buried in the rich soil, their connection to their elders severed. She couldn't allow it, she had to save flutter valley and her flutterponies. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and donned the golden amulet, it's crude, square chain links pinching her coat as it settled.

When she opened her eyes she didn't feel any different. She exhaled her held breath and waited to see if this supposedly immense power just needed time, but no. Maybe without Grogar being on this plane of existence the amulet didn't work?

How would she have done magic anyway without either the sunstone to guide her or a horn to channel her power? She didn't know, but she wished she did have a horn to control her magic directly the way a unicorn does, and then a tiny pain budded in her forehead and grew excruciatingly as a short, jagged horn grew, like a crystal.

It was far shorter than a unicorn's horn, but she could feel the magic flowing into it, wrapping around it. Without waiting or making any attempt to familiarize herself with her powers she reached out to the dead brown stone and sensed within it the dearth of power that kept it inert. She poured the power of the amulet into it, but it had little effect. If anything the stone had just become darker.

"You need more power." A voice told her. She started and looked around, but there was nopony else there. Was it just her imagination or...? "I can give you more power, it's yours for the asking."

"Yes." She said, "Give me more."

Her horn grew, now matching the size of a unicorn's, still with an odd crystalline shape and she waited but a moment before unleashing it's might into the sunstone to no avail.

"It's still not enough!" She growled. The sunstone looked darker than ever, she could barely stand to look at it, it radiated the shame and rage of her failure, "Why do you withhold the power I require!?"

"I can give you all my power," The voice said, "For a price."

"Wh...what price?"

"When I return your subjects will be my servants and you will lead my armies." The voice stated.

Rosedust opened her mouth to argue but thought better of it. This was indeed a trap and her anger would only draw her into demanding more power and losing more of herself. She removed the amulet, dropped it to the ground and flew swiftly away. Her new horn remained, and it turned out her stature had increased slightly as well. She was now as tall as the tallest earth pony mare.

During the following days she'd visited each of her subjects in turn. There were few of them in good health and many of them in dire straights. She consulted with the Moochick many times after relating the amulet's effect but he could find little enough to add, other than that he thought she did the right thing.

She traveled far and wide, asking for advice from every wise man, witch doctor, sorcerer, and charlatan she came across but came up with nothing. Her own drained and dejected state caught up with her and she took ill for a week and was taken into the care of a kind pony gardener who's generously given love and care nursed her back to health.

Once she recovered her strength she visited her subjects once more, and found that more than a few looked as if they would not make it through the night. She even thought of begging the one who'd nursed her back to health to look after her friends, but it would be a temporary solution at best and their numbers made it impractical even with such a warm and caring heart to feed them. Having exhausted her other options she could only see one left to her, so she returned to flutter valley.

The amulet lay just where she dropped it and the sunstone was still darkened with her shame.

"You've returned, I see." The voice spoke long before she reached the amulet.

"I have." She answered simply, picked up the amulet and slung it around her neck, "Give me the power I need to save my subjects."

"Will you serve me?"

"When you return to this land, I will serve you."

"What of your subjects?"

"They will serve you as well, only you must let them be free until that time."

"Of course," The voice reassured her, "I have little enough use for you until then. So we have a deal?"

"Yes, Grogar. We have a deal, just give me the power to save my people and we will serve you when you return." Rosedust said sadly. As soon as she concluded the horn on her head shot forth like a barbed blade being withdrawn from wounded flesh. It was a twisted and unnatural horn with which she'd been blessed.

Screaming, she crashed to the ground, throbbing with power and agony. She staggered to her feet, recklessly aimed her malformed appendage at the sunstone and poured all her excess power into it.

Through her Grogar's spell was woven, sealing away the sunstone's power. It was overlaid with Rosedust's shame and impotent rage at what she'd been forced to commit to. When her power ebbed the stone was jet black and she couldn't force herself to look upon it, it exuded a miasma that choked the leylines of the entire valley. The sky was a dim grey fog.

Rosedust probed the stone with her magic and found that she'd been tricked into cursing it. Little did she know then that the malevolent magic could never have cured the stone. In a rage she reached down to remove the amulet once more, but it had spent it's magic and it crumbled to dust in her grasp.

"Grogar!" She screamed towards the sky, "You promised you'd give me the power to save my subjects yet the stone lies not just dormant but imprisoned by your spell! I won't serve you if you can't keep your promise!"

"Why, my little pony, I wouldn't lie to you. We have a contract, you and I, that neither of us may breach." The voice chuckled, "I did give you the power to save your subjects and I took the sunstone out of play so that you'd be forced to use it."

"How? How do I save my subjects without the love energy the sunstone provides?"

"Simple, you steal it."

Rosedust was now taller than the tallest pony and her wingspan had increased to complement her new size. She would have cut a statuesque figure save for the jagged and irregular horn protruding from her forehead and the fact that she was losing patches of fur in clumps. By the time she made it back to dream valley her coat had gone mangy and was covered in angry looking welts.

She fell to crying, and hiding in the forest, nothing but unanswered questions before her. How could she be expected to steal love in this ragged state? How could she even let herself be seen after what she'd been fooled into? What a foal she'd been. She flitted up into a tree and sat on it's branch. Suddenly she felt so tired she let herself drift off up there.

In her dreams she called out to her subjects to come to her, she was free, everypony was safe once more and surrounded by love. She drifted in slumber for a considerable time.

When she awoke a milky transparent shell surrounded her. Startled, she broke through it and fell roughly to the ground below. When she looked to her legs to see if they were injured she found them to be a slick black shell, full of irregular holes. She looked to her back and found insectile plates had grown over her body and her still wet wings had taken on a sinister shape. She was ravenously hungry, but lost her appetite when she licked her lips only to find the fangs of a predator.

She fell to her rump in despair, and in her changed perspective became aware that the branches of all the trees in this forest bore a strange fruit; cocoons just like the one she'd fallen out of. One rustled and drew her attention. From out of it fell a sleek black creature that was, for the most part, a miniature of herself. It saw her and spoke timidly,

"Who are you? What happened to me?" It asked in Forget-me-not's voice, frightened and confused. Rosedust didn't want to admit she'd done this to her subjects and foisted the life of predators upon them.

Thinking fast she took inspiration from her circumstances and spoke in her odd buzzing voice, "I am Chrysalis my child. Be at peace you are safe here. Rest up, though, for as soon as the others hatch we will hunt."

"How to hunt?" Chrysalis wondered. Stealing love in her current form was impossible, even if she went to Posey, the notoriously motherly pony who'd nursed her so recently she would be turned away. If only she were a baby pony. Or Tex, Posey had said she had a crush on Tex, she thought wryly, but in this form what chance did she have of getting even the most loving pony to care for her?

That was when her green magic flashed for the first time. Once again she was shorter and had no horn or wings, though she could feel her magic. She looked to her hooves once again, yellow, her cutie mark a couple cactus and she had a blue tail. Reaching up on her head she found a cowboy hat, she WAS Tex. She concentrated and found that she could change into other ponies with little effort, then she reverted to her new natural, unnatural form.

"So Grogar had given me the means to hunt after all, and a hunger sufficient to drive me, so I did." Chrysalis said to the gathered throng hearing their history for the first time, "We were only a hundred strong and so inserting ourselves into family and romantic situations could go unnoticed for a moment, and a good haul was potent enough to share amongst ourselves. We adapted to our new lives and we began to build the first communal hive, learning as we went."

"That was when we developed our language so that we might communicate surreptitiously when working in concert among the normal ponies, besides which the insect clicks and whistles seemed to come naturally to us, as if that were the obvious way we should be communicating."

"My subjects came back on many occasions with foal, and gave birth to the first of the true changelings who'd never known a life other than the one they were to lead. Soon enough all my old friends were gone and I was surrounded by our children."

From the back of the crowd a pink hoof waved frantically in the air. Chrysalis squinted, was that, "Pinkie?"

"Hi!" Pinkie shouted and bounced her way to the front. Chrysalis as a changeling had found the pink mare to be intolerable, in her reformed state she couldn't say for certain that her voice was any less cringe worthy.

"You've already heard this story once, did you have a question?" Chrysalis asked, hiding her annoyance, badly.

"Oh, yeah...I like stories though and I wanted to hear it again, you tell it so well." Pinkie rolled her eyes, held her hoof to her mouth as if to whisper and then asked in a stage whisper, "It's just, I thought changelings laid eggs like a chicken."

Chrysalis face hoofed. Several of the former drones laughed heartily, they knew the answer, or part of it and one of them spoke up, "More like a turtle! She'll be all grumpy for weeks then squirt out a clutch of twenty or thirty eggs, then she'll be right as rain for another six months or so.

Many of the flutterponies giggled demurely, others outright bawled laughing. Chrysalis blushed and stammered, "Yes, well, the female drones were mostly infertile, one hopes that does not continue to be the case as this physiognomy is unlikely to produce in such numbers. It was only my original subjects who were properly fecund. After them it was only once or twice in a generation that a fertile female was produced, and they likewise laid eggs. They should have grown to be queens like me, to further colonize the land, but it never worked out precisely that way."

"So what happens when Grogar comes back? Will we all be forced to serve him?" A female flutterpony asked.

"Yes, well, a funny thing about that. He's not coming back." Chrysalis said.

In her mind the changeling queen had heard Grogar's voice for years. Demanding and pestering her had worked for only so long before she learned to ignore even his most adamant demands. Then Chrysalis did something she should have done long ago and told her only remaining friend just what had transformed her.

It took a special type of friend, one who was generous beyond measure and had a wisdom and calm honed by years of heartache, to overlook her circumstance.

Still residing in the derelict castle built on the edge of an active volcano was Emerald, the stunted green dragon. Chrysalis had maintained contact with him over the years in an irregular fashion. Their first meeting after the change was somewhat awkward, but to his credit, once he realized Chrysalis would not tell him what had happened to twist and deform her so he'd simply let it drop. He was certain that, given time, she would tell him and, if not, that was her business. Sipping strong coffee in the dank hall of the castle she finally revealed to him the whole story. He remained silent and thoughtful for a very long time, so long as to make Chrysalis doubtful he intended to respond. At length he revealed some bit of good news.

"Transit to and from the realm of shadows is exceedingly easy for those who have not been cast into it. There's a door guarded by a certain hellhound of my acquaintance three days journey to the North." Emerald replied at length. Then with a glimmer in his eye, "Should you wish it he owes me a favor, at least, and if I was to ask he would allow you, I and some considerable army to enter and return from that dire place, I am certain."

"I wish it were that simple, but I made a pact with him and even though I feel cheated he did live up to his terms, even if indirectly." Chrysalis sighed.

"True, you are to be his slave and your hive his chattel should he return, but he holds no sway on you actions until such time as he does. I see nothing in the contract that would be violated should you choose to do away with him." Emerald laughed, "Turn about being fair play, after all."

The voice in the changeling queen's head howled with curses, warnings and epithets, but she ignored them as if they were a mere buzzing, "He will know we are coming. He will know our every move. Even now his voice rings in my ears."

"If led to slaughter with full foreknowledge, a lamb will still become mutton. Let him know. Can he raise an army in that dark place?" The dragon grinned a malicious grin, "I know the circumstances of his current imprisonment. He sits with but the tiniest fraction of his arcane powers, trapped in a dead city he cannot leave, with but one deranged and incompetent jackass as his sole follower and confidant. I should relish this less if there were no way to let him know of his impending woes."

That was the first time the changelings went to war, and though their campaigns were infrequent they occasionally did march en masse afterward. Through the dread gates, unguarded and thrown wide, they flew ten wide. Through the featureless expanse of black void they reached Grogar's citadel, the infamous ghost city of Tambelon.

Their attack was wholly successful, they pulled Grogar's ghost city down to it's foundations and scattered the remains. Grogar himself was not killed, but rather imprisoned in seamless, dragon forged fetters with his lone remaining acolyte, chained to a boulder and dropped into the endless ocean of aether, stripped of even the pittance of power that he had left to him. Chrysalis was assured it was inescapable, a far harsher punishment, and in this place far more insurmountable than mere death.

From that day forward Chrysalis had only to contend with her own thoughts rattling around in her head.

"So...how come that didn't end the curse right there?" Twilight Sparkle asked from the back row. Were all the Elements of Harmony still here, listening to her retell her story? Chrysalis squinted and confirmed that yes, that was the case and Cadence and Shining Armor were nuzzled up together, seated off to one side which made her unaccountably jealous for a moment until her own Rocky was brought to mind. Unconscious still he was recovering under the medic's watchful eye within the hive...She was distracted, what had Twilight asked?

"Er...Oh yes." Chrysalis regained her train of thought, "The curse was wholly independent of Grogar's power at that point, as was the amulet after it was sent into the world."

"Was the amulet the Alicorn Amulet?" Twilight asked, "Also, how come you're still an Alicorn?"

"I fulfilled my end of the bargain so I maintained this form. I think I heard it called that name at the time. I believe the changeling aspect was an evil taint that was purged from our being by the elements of harmony." Chrysalis said, hoping this manner of questioning would come to an end soon.

"Did the amulet affect your personality? Make you more aggressive, arrogant and power hungry? See, we've encountered one of these amulets and it seemed to have that effect on it's bearer, but she took it off before it bonded with her." Twilight hoped the former changeling queen wouldn't take that the wrong way, but she DID seem a bit dastardly for a flutterpony queen.

"Um, maybe? Are you saying I'm a megalomaniac?" Chrysalis thought on it for a bit, "I guess I am at that, I'm pretty certain I wasn't when I was a flutterpony the first time, so... something to work on? Any further questions, Miss Sparkle?"

"I have one." Cadence said without rising from her husband's nuzzling embrace, "Why didn't you just tell Celestia what happened and ask for help? I'm sure she would have been able to."

"You may be mistaken about the timeline, child. The simple fact is that when all this occurred it was an eon before Celestia and Luna first came down from their heavenly bodies and set foot on Equestrian soil. It was before Discord's wrath, and before the Crystal Empire rose and fell." Chrysalis shook her head, "It was a long time ago and I do not have an alicorn's memory. All that I've told you is full of holes and misrememberances, and would have remained buried even as my memory of the sunstone was had things not played out the way they had. Being thrust back into a form from a former life does have a way of jarring one's memory."

"Are you sad you can't turn into anypony you want anymore?" Pinkie was genuinely curious, though she couldn't think of another pony she would rather be.

"Not a bit." She said, and it was the genuine truth. The life of the changelings was one of longing and perpetual hunger. It was not a kind or pleasant life and had within it not a moment to relax and lacking the bonds of love and friendship (for even her motherly hive bonds were of mean duty.) she would willingly trade that life and all it's powers for a normal life with...

"Rocky!" Chrysalis exclaimed, seeing the unicorn standing off to the side in the dim light, "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to hear most of your story, not long enough to know what you plan to do next." Rocky said with a laugh and walked through the parted crowd to her side. He nuzzled her timidly and she returned his caress affectionately.

"Ah, that's simple." Chrysalis winked at the Elements and Cadence then turned stonefaced and serious, "I intend to reestablish this sanctuary for the flutterponies that we may thrive in relative peace for a time. I am glad you are up, though, because first we have an extraordinarily difficult task, the most arduous we have yet faced and we have little enough time for it."

"What is it, how can I help?" He sternly prepared himself to face her task.

"We must..." she paused and gestured to the gathered throng of flutterponies that stretched into the distance, "We must name all of our children."

"What? Our children? Chrissy..." Rocky sputtered, abashed.

"Yes, I believe as my king that duty falls to you."

Rocky's jaw dropped, "You arrogant...unconscionable...psychotic..." He sighed, shook he head and considered, "Fine. You, up front with the bushy mane? You're Marigold, next to her, um...Chester..."

"Seriously? Chester?" Chrysalis arched an eyebrow.

Rocky replied with a kiss, "Silence. The king has spoken."

"Chester it is." she purred.

Flutter valley became a paradise once more, it's freakishly fast growing foliage able to easily sustain their numbers now that they had to eat actual food again as well as love energy. The hive was left as a monument to their past though it was quickly covered in flowering vines. The piteous column that held the whole structure aloft was reinforced and the cavern containing it back filled for safety's sake. The railroad was extended clear into the valley proper. It became a tourist destination and a fine one at that.

Twilight was gratified that the main necessity that the valley lacked were books and an educational system and she was thrilled to arrange for and plan both.

The Summer Sun Festival was held in the valley that year, both Princess Celestia and Luna came to greet the long displaced monarch and fellow alicorn as well as her far more down to earth king. In their conversations it was implied, but never overtly, that Princess Celestia had long foreseen this precise outcome for the changelings, master of the long game that she was.

Twilight had asked the Princess what her contingency plan to counter the sunstone was and she'd admitted that in the worst case she would have just withheld the sun for a day, but that it was best not to do such things as they frighten ponies with memories of Nightmare Moon still fresh in their minds.

Chrysalis had started in on a new quest, to grant her king immortality that she might forever have him at her side. It was enough of a challenge to keep her more insistent thoughts of world domination at bay. Mostly.

When her dragon friend migrated back from the South she planned to discuss both matters with him over coffee in her new home. If anyone had a solution it would be Emerald.

Rocky, fortunately, was informed of the tradition for naming flutterponies after flowers and so alphabetically went through a book provided by Twilight, simplifying the process immeasurably. He threw the odd Fillmore, Arcturus and Eunice in from time to time for the sole sake of irritating his queen's sensibilities.

The flutterponies' former barrenness had also been remedied, there was a veritable baby boom and within a year even Chrysalis herself had a little filly.

Rocky named her Rosedust, after her mother.