Everyone's a Changeling

by Aquillo

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Changelings, Comedy, Queen Chrysalis
Length: 5445

Everyone's a changeling. You, him, her, that. If it moves, it's a changeling. If it breathes, it's a changeling. If it's alive, it's a changeling. And Chrysalis is utterly sick of it.

Everyone's a changeling. You, him, her, that. If it moves, it's a changeling. If it breathes, it's a changeling. If it's alive, it's a changeling.

And Chrysalis is utterly sick of it.

An attempt at following a silly concept into the deepest depths of its burrow. Kinda dark at the start. Mainly surreal for the rest.

Thanks go to Fredrick the Saiyan for the preread & plethora of helpful corrections and Firebirdbtops for... well, being him, I guess.

Published 2013-03-03 01:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-03 01:40:01 UTC

Chapter 1

"Enough."

Her words were strong and interlaced with the faint buzz they always had when she was in her true form. They reverberated off the alley's walls and floor, bouncing over the tightly knit clump of changelings swarming round the dead end of the alleyway. Slowly, one by one, that clump unfolded into a collection of turned heads and disentangled bodies.

"I don't want you to kill her. I can hardly have my revenge on a corpse now, can I?" She took a step forwards, hoof crumpling a can down flat with a satisfying crunch. Dark, black lips slid open into a smirk. "How am I meant to feed on something that can no longer feel, let alone love?"

She waited a heartbeat for a response before remembering who she was dealing with. Suppressing a sigh, she continued:

"Leave us." They obeyed, chittering and chattering to themselves as they piled out of the alley, green flashes along the walls showing them transforming back into the form of the city's residents, blending back in. Her army, hidden in plain sight. Right under the light of the supposed goddess Celestia's Sun.

And then she was alone. A faint wind rushed down the alley's sides, playing with tattered newspapers and flicking around ruined carrier bags. She stepped forwards, wings bristling as the breeze roused a unicorn compressed into an unnatural position between two warped metal bins, a unicorn that groaned.

She kept on pacing towards the alley's end, staying as silent as she could, hoping beyond hope that... The unicorn's head bobbed up. Her breath caught in her throat. Yes. Yes, now just... Lavender eyelids opened to reveal bloodshot purple eyes, eyes that wearily darted about the place before snapping onto her.

"Chrysalis!" Twilight Sparkle gasped, the words sounding painful and forced, as if it was an effort to simply breathe them out. "Oh Celestia, help me."

"Oh, I don't think Celestia could really help you," Chrysalis murmured. Her wings rustled again at the look on Twilight's face, at the expression of mixed horror and dread. "She wasn't much use last time, if you recall. Oh, and there's nopony nearby about to have a sudden romantic incident that’ll stop this. Believe me, we cleared out every couple in a three mile radius just to make certain: this is a love free zone. Which... well, just leaves you and me some nice 'alone' time to fix that, now doesn't it."

Twilight whimpered up at her, back legs making little circles on the ground as she tried to get away. It wouldn't work: she was jammed too tightly between the trash cans. Tightly enough that Chrysalis was starting to wonder just how she'd get her out of there.

But that was a thought for later, and she wanted to savour the right now.

"So. How's it been, Sparkle?" Chrysalis propped herself up, one elbow resting on the bin lids as she looked down on the struggling pony. "Ruined any plans that'd been carefully laid out while you were still a twinkle in your godfather's eye lately? Stuck your nose anywhere near the great big pile of "places it doesn't belong" in the past couple of weeks? I want to hear what's been happening with Twilight."

Silence. For a moment, Chrysalis feared it would be a lasting one, but a quick kick to a sensitive spot soon set Twilight off again.

"And there you go again." Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "Groaning. I mean, I feel like I'm the only one talking in this conversation, Twilight. Like I'm the only one trying to open up a connection. Isn't that what you want? I mean, Friendship is Magic, yes?" She leant in a bit closer, breath blowing around the blood-crusted strands on Twilight's forehead. "That is your little motto, isn't it? Come on, Twilight: I'm trying to befriend you here. Well." She stood back up. "I guess I'm trying to get a little bit more than that.

"See, Sparkle, you're a powerful little unicorn, aren't you? One of a kind. That's why Celestia has you quite firmly under her hoof. But... see..." Chrysalis stretched out a leg. "I think my hoofs are much prettier. Wouldn't you agree? Well, probably not right now, but..."

She waited for a retort that simply didn't come. Still not a word from Twilight, though she was aware, definitely. She'd spent the last couple of seconds glaring up at Chrysalis in some imagined form of defiance whilst her horn splurted out purple droplets above her eyes. It was quite cute, really. But not cute enough:

"Well, we might as well skip to the point if you're not going to talk. Destiny awaits me, Sparkle; haven't got time to waste on you being you. So." Chrysalis smiled again and leant forwards till her face was centimeters away from Twilight's own, the long, green strands of her mane brushing and floating over Twilight's eyes and cheeks.

"I know you've got a heart somewhere in that frigid little librarian's body." A flash of green. "Is it your teacher?" Another flash. "Or how about your old foalsitter? Oh no, wait: I know." Five more flashes, all in quick succession. "One of your friends, no? No? Hmm..."

Turning back into her usual form, Chrysalis tapped at her chin thoughtfully, an obviously faked expression of confusion on her face. "Oh, this is a tough one," she mimed, voice a slower, stupider parody of Twilight's own. "Maybe Twilight Sparkle doesn't love anyone because even the most basic idea of social contact scares the living beejevies out of her. Or maybe it's because she doesn't think there's anyone else out there who deserves her and her towering levels of arrogance.

"Oh, wait! I do believe I've figured the answer out through being an insufferable know it all!" There was another rolling wave of flickering green, and her black, skeletal body melted into thick muscles under a red coat and a pair of green eyes that flashed wickedly.

"Gotcha."

Twilight made a noise like a startled fish—a sort of aborted "hrrgh!"—and then froze over completely.

Chrysalis paused, illusion sliding off her features like makeup in the rain. One of the black ridges where her eyebrows should've been lifted into the air.

"What sort of trick is..." The other 'eyebrow' joined its fellow. "Twilight?"

Twilight Sparkle had a deeply spaced out look on her face, her mouth seemingly stuck in the shape of this strange 'O'. The dirty light of some far-off street lamp reflected off eyes that were suddenly dull and distant, eyes that weren't really seeing what was there.

Chrysalis reached out and prodded her. No reaction. Coughing, and giving a quick look behind her to make sure her changelings hadn't returned, Chrysalis reached out and shook Twilight like a ragdoll, causing the unicorn's head to roll limply round on her shoulders.

"Wake up, Twilight Sparkle," she hissed. "I'm trying to make you fall in love with me! I'm meant to be having my revenge! You can't fall asleep or do... whatever it is you're doing right now! As your future lover, I forbid it, you got me?"

It didn't work: Twilight was still frozen, trapped in whatever strange place had gripped her. A small stream of dribble had started to leak out of the round hole that was her mouth.

Chrysalis wasn't quite sure what she should do. Her plan had involved drooling, yes, but not quite like this. Twilight limp and prostrate—helpless, in other words—were other items that were also on the list of preferable things which, somehow, when all brought together, didn't turn out preferable at all.

A flick of green washed over her horn, and the two bins holding Twilight in place crumpled into thin sheets. The glow stayed in place as Chrysalis hoisted Twilight aloft into the air and gave her another, more violent, shake.

That didn't work either. The stupid expression, it seemed, was here to stay.

Chrysalis decided to switch from shaking to prodding, jabbing her hooves into the unicorn's pudgy flesh. That also didn't work.

And then, when she had almost given up hope, some form of awareness returned to Twilight's eyes.

"Oh, thank goodness," Chrysalis muttered, straightening up and pushing her hair back into place. "Anyway, where were—"

There was a pop of green magic, and Twilight Sparkle turned into a changeling.

"Wha..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, my Queen," the changeling who had been Twilight Sparkle said. "I’ve only just remembered: turns out I've been a changeling all along! Who'd have guessed it, am I right?"

Chrysalis knew that her mouth was mirroring Twilight's own from earlier on, but she also knew that she couldn't help it. "You're a... changeling..." she managed.

"You bet I am! Turns out you sent me to go infiltrate Canterlot ages ago. Guess you must have forgotten all about telling me to do it!"

"Must have... forgot..." The light around Chrysalis's horn snapped out, allowing the changeling who'd been Twilight to tumble down onto the ground. She picked herself up, brushed herself off and slipped past Chrysalis to the alley's entrance.

"Well... if you don't need me for anything else, I guess I'll go help out with the others. Ohh, taking over Canterlot's going to be so much fun..."

Chrysalis was barely aware of any of this; the green flash of the changeling who had been Twilight turning into somepony else hardly even registered, for her mind was gripped in a whirring storm of confusion and denial, a fuzzy cloud of disbelief that was made manifest in a single, poignant word:

"What."

Two Years Later

Chrysalis was bored.

Like, really, really bored.

And it wasn't just the usual type of boredom you'd get at the end of a busy day doing nothing. No, this was the special type of empty skulled, hair-roots pulled, eyeballs gouged and entrails bitten off type boredom that only came from a solid two months of being really, utterly bored.

She had, in fact, grown bored of being bored.

It was boring—so very, very boring—and there was absolutely nothing she could ever do about it. Because the very thing she was bored by was something that she just couldn't take back.

She'd won, you see, and in that lay the problem.

The bang of doors opening interrupted her brooding. She peeked open one eyelid before raising her head out of her hooves, eyes following the changeling tapping his way across her castle's floor towards her. The muscles of her legs twinged from disuse as she shuffled around on her throne, her heart beating just that bit faster. Perhaps this might prove entertaining.

"Report."

The changeling stopped before her and gave a half salute. "We've found the last of the diamond dogs, my Queen."

She didn't dare hope. "And?"

"Amnesiacs, all of them." Chrysalis slumped back down. "It only took about twenty minutes before we got their memories jogging again, and then they were all ready to rejoin your empire." The guard grinned at her. He actually grinned at her. "I think that's the last of them now, my queen. There's no more ponies, dragons, mules, zebras, griffons, cows, sheep, buffalo or dogs left in the world anymore. Everyone's a changeling."

"I know," Chrysalis muttered. "Believe me, I know."

“What are your orders, my queen?” one of the changelings down below said in an infuriatingly servile tone. He even gave her a little bow.

“What orders? What orders? Is there anything even left for us to do? You heard it yourself: everyone across the whole, stinking planet’s a changeling, every last thing. They’ve been changelings all along, all of them, without even knowing it!” Chrysalis slammed a black hoof down on her throne’s armrest. “What am I meant to do now, huh? There're no places left to conquer, no people left to subjugate. Everyone's a changeling!”

"I could always try... not being a changeling?" one of her guards said, green light washing over him as he turned into a pudgy brown pony wearing a hopeful grin.

Chrysalis tried to give him a "you are so dead" look, but it didn't seem to work, for no sooner had she'd made it than fifteen more flashes marked her royal guard being replaced with a squadron of grinning, chubby ponies.

"Oh just get out," Chrysalis snapped. "And that means all of you. I don't want a single changeling left near me, do you hear?" Her guards glanced between each other. "I said, get out!"

They complied, all of them. First to go were the guards, features flickering back into angular blacks as their illusions peeled off. Then there were the paintings, shrubbery, furniture—even her throne: green flashes marked all of them turning back into one or two or more changelings, often stacked atop each other in precarious positions.

And then there was the great rolling, tumbling waves of green slipping off the walls in discarded sheets of light: the waves that dissolved away the pillars and beams and windows of her castle to reveal a towering, jigsaw-esque construction of changelings slotted together. There was a buzz of wings, and holes through which the sky glimmered appeared as, one by one, the changelings fled.

Soon, Chrysalis was all alone, a solitary figure sitting in a barren desert in which the soil hadn't even made the effort to become sand. The wind flicked about her hair as she sulked, the first change to happen to her in over a year.

The stimulus should've been exciting, should've been new. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, Chrysalis was still bored.

Her eyes slowly flowed over featureless horizon, the only change from one place to another the angle of the sunlight striking out of a pale-blue and cloudless sky. The changelings weren't even visible anymore; they could move surprisingly fast when they needed to. All she could see for miles around was flat, brown desert, plain and dull and uninteresting.

Chrysalis blew out a vibrato whinny. She contemplated getting up.

By the time the sun had finally tinged the horizon red, that idea had started to become attractive. With hooves sore from months of disuse, Chrysalis rose and started walking towards the sunset.

One Week Later

She'd spotted the mountain on the third day, and had consciously angled her path towards it, walking day and night until the shadowy peaks had started to become clearer. Aside from the black cloud of changelings lurking a perpetual three miles behind her like a delayed shadow, it was the only thing she'd ever been able to spot, the only feature on a featureless horizon.

Hells, it might even be the only feature on a featureless planet, Chrysalis didn't know. All that she did know was that none of her changelings had ever made mention of it, had only ever told her about all the mountains that'd turned out to be stacked changelings in disguise. The prospect of something new and secret and possibly not boring tugged her on, urging her over miles and miles of flat, dusty ground beneath the light of a cloudless sky.

She was nearing its base now, and her wings unfolded in preparation. They buzzed, stirring up a small wake of dust behind her; not as much as the occasional breeze roused about her, but enough to be noticeable. They glittered as the moonlight hit them, turning the scattered dust into a trail of brown-silver.

Chrysalis hopped, jumped and then broke into a run, causing yet more dust to stream out behind her. And then, in a leap that did not end, she left the ground behind and flew, wings blurring into a vibrant smudge as she angled towards the mountain's peak.

The cold light of the moon glistened as it struck her black carapace, breaking into several small reflections that made her look almost studded with stars. Or like a salmon painted black and then flung through the midnight air in an arc that stubbornly refused to bend, to turn groundwards, and instead curved towards the sky, up and up and up in a path of higher order than the dismal parabola.

Though clearer now than when she'd first glimpsed it, the mountain's face grew even clearer, turning into a rocky spire that penetrated the heavens; a memory stirred inside Chrysalis's head of this scene played at day and in reverse, of her flying away from this very mountain.

She had reached all that remained of Canterlot: the mountain, the great central spire, barren now, with no buildings, plants or fauna to be seen upon its surface. Only occasional wet splashes of water marked a difference from the bare rock.

Chrysalis's smile felt like a crack inside her face, brittle and out of sorts. She was no longer bored.

She landed on a small plateau on the mountain’s side, wings and the muscles along her back burning from the flight. She stretched and then walked about, turning in a little circle.

Chrysalis sniffed, hoping that a difference here might mean she was right in thinking that the mountain was different, more than just a potential oversight.

Nothing. The mountain stank of nothing, just as had the desert and the palace and everything else but her and her changelings, sole sources of stink within an odorless world.

It wasn't a good omen, but Chrysalis pressed on regardless. She walked up to a part of the mountain's face and began studying it, warts and all, looking for any hint that it was different.

There was none. Disappointed, she pulled back and frowned. "All right, you can come out now."

Nothing. No sound. No crack of green or shimmer of magic dispelled. The rocks remained, silent and rugged.

Chyraslis's frown turned heavy. "That was an order."

Yet more nothing: a plethora of it.

Something was wrong.

Her wings unsheathed themselves, fluttering as the wind ran through them. Her long strands of hair felt sticky against her neck, clingy and unwilling to let go. She turned. She walked.

The landscape below her had changed; the white moonlight revealed it.

Chrysalis felt her eyes widen as she looked, aware of the thousand sets of eyes pointed up at her from the carpet of changelings laid before the mountain, a great black sea of crouching bodies and heads angling towards her arranged in a crowding circle round the mountain's base.

This was new. She felt her heartbeat quicken. She looked behind.

Bare rock. White strands of moonlight. Nothing to indicate the reason for their interest. Was it her they were reacting to? No... no, they were her changelings, and she knew them well enough that this was unprecedented.

A combination, then: the alliance of her and the now here on this mountainside forging a union whose result was creepy changeling stares. Unexpected. New. Exciting. Her smile returned.

She positioned herself a little better on the flat, filled her lungs with air and bellowed, "What do you lot think you're doing?!"

No response. No response! Actual insubordination! Her heart fluttered again.

"I know you can hear me," she shouted. "You've snapped to attention fast enough over all the other years, so it'd be out of character for you all to turn deaf now. What, is this some sort of bowing ritual?" She began walking back and forth across the plateau, occasionally stomping down a hoof with a sharp crack when it came time to change direction. “Who are you bowing to, then: me, or the mountain?” Her eyes gleamed. “Is this mutiny? Are you overthrowing me for a pile of rocks? You are, aren’t you, that’s what this is all about, that’s why you’ve—”

Her hoof cracked down again and cut through the rock, dislodging a slab and causing the ground to crumble away from her. Within seconds, the sky had gone from above Chrysalis’s head and she was rushing downwards in a bundling cloud of rocks, pebbles and dirt. Occasionally, she hit a wall of some sort to either side, as if she was in a chute, and the impact left her breathless and bruised.

Eventually, the fall ended. Groaning and shaking rocks and dirt off of herself, Chrysalis rose, her eyelids splintering open and her gaze darting round.

Darkness, complete and total. She concentrated: green chased away the black before the colours morphed into a more sensible yellow.

Crystals: the room, the cave, that she was in was made up in its entirety of crystals. Another memory pinged, anxious for attention. The crystal mines under Canterlot: her fall had carried her down far into the mountain’s bowels.

Except that there were no crystals. There was nothing, nothing of that complexity. Everything inanimate or living more nuanced than stone and dirt and water had turned out to be a changeling in disguise, every forest and every town built from a changeling combination. Even some of the rocks and hills themselves had been made up of her creatures, the Crystal Mountain range of northern Equestria being a great web of changelings hanging above the inactive planet.

And yet, here they were. She reached out a hoof to stroke one, half expecting it to flash green and turn into a bashful subordinate. It did not, feeling wonderfully smooth to the hoof, like ice at room temperature. Her reflection smiled at her as she ran her hoof over it.

Then said, “Stop admiring the crystals and get a move on, Chrysalis.”

Chrysalis snapped back an indignant “Excuse me” before her brain reached her legs and she back-wheeled, rapidly.

Her reflection flickered off the crystals and onto another one a way off, just above a black shadow hinting at a tunnel past it. “This way. Come on. I can’t talk to you properly here. Just follow the lit crystals.

“Oh, and I am you,” her reflection added as a series of selected crystal facets begin to glow a rich blue, the one with her reflection in it included. “This isn’t someone else borrowing your image; this is one hundred percent, completely and utterly you.”

Her reflection vanished. A few seconds later, Chrysalis’s wits returned.

“As if I believe that.” She snorted. “I should’ve known this was all too good to be true. Everyone and everything on the planet turning out to be a changeling! Hah! What a truly ridiculous thing to believe in hindsight; this is obviously all just some ploy of—”

“—It’s not a ploy of Celestia’s,” her reflection interrupted from right behind her, causing Chrysalis to scrabble quickly away, ears so flat they almost merged into her skull. “Seriously, I am you and you are me.”

“Prove it,” Chrysalis hissed. Her reflection snorted, a perfect copy of her own snort from earlier on.

“No.” It vanished, leaving Chrysalis alone to crow out her victory over Celestia’s haphazardly constructed plan.

Ten minutes later, when the crowing had become boring and there was nothing else really to do, Chrysalis trotted off after the glowing crystals, her lips set into the thin, discontented line of a creature with little other choice.

The rooms she passed through were much of a muchness, all being drafted from the same ‘subterranean and crystal’ blueprint. The only change between them was the air, which gradually and slowly picked up a current and charge to it, tasting less and less stagnant with every hoofstep forwards.

And then she rounded a corner and entered out into a world of blue light, every crystal in the much larger cavern aglow and shining down upon a house-sized grey cube in the centre of it all. Her destination, she supposed. It would’ve been a lot of effort to put in otherwise. She headed towards it.

Drawing closer, she spotted a black rectangle on its surface. The door, perhaps. Her horn lit up, and she tugged it open. A door it was. Her eyes shone with interest, and the flickering movements of things within the cube.

She passed inside, and the door clicked quietly closed.

The inside was a mechanical hothouse, with gears great and small whirring everywhere in silent arcs and foaming jets of steam firing out with only a hushed hiss to announce their doing so. A pendulum the colour of bronze swung past her like a scythe, nearly succeeding in taking off her snout, and then vanished off into the surrounding darkness the two gas lamps beside her did not illuminate.

She caught a glimpse of stairs off in the distance, next to another puddle of light spilled by a second duo of lamps. She danced round the pendulum, dodged two thick bolts of metal firing out in a staccato rhythm and flowed her way towards the staircase.

She climbed, and the room above was far less hectic. This was a room comprised of shelves, a settee, a few wardrobes and a single chunk of crystal in which her reflection lurked, watching her movements. It smiled at her.

“All right,” Chrysalis said, walking towards it. “What’s going on here?”

Her reflection shrugged. “Everyone’s a changeling’s the long and short of it. If it moves, it's a changeling. If it breathes, it's a changeling. If it's alive, it's a changeling.”

“Yes,” Chrysalis replied. “I’d gathered that. What I’m asking about is... is all this. What exactly is Celestia trying to do here? What’s she trying to manipulate me into doing?”

“Celestia’s not manipulating you into doing anything. Like I said before, it’s all you. You’re the one doing all the manipulation here.” Her reflection paused. “Okay, well not you you. More like the you from millennia and millennia ago.”

“I... what?”

“Let’s take this off on a tangent for a couple of seconds,” her reflection said, shuffling about and resting her head down on her forehooves. “So you discovered that everyone in Equestria—well, the whole world—is actually a changeling, and that they’ve been suffering from a sort of delusion in which they suppressed their memories of being a changeling and lived their lives in a state of thinking they were something other than what they were, yes?”

Chrysalis nodded. There were a few differences, but that was the long and short of it.

“So,” her reflection continued, “everyone has suppressed memories and thinks the world isn’t stuffed with changelings.” It raised a thoughtful hoof to its lips. “Now where does that leave you, I wonder?”

The penny dropped, clattering, to the floor. “Oh...”

“Bingo,” her reflection said in a smug tone of voice. She reached up and tapped at her skull.“You ain’t all there, Queenie.”

“I...” Chrysalis breathed out, and recovered. “How long?”

Her reflection shrugged. “I dunno: I’m just a recording. There’s a timer on the shelf over to your left.”

Chrysalis glanced over. There was a dusty patch of shelving on which the impression of something heavy lurked, the weight of the absent thing having warped the shelving into a physical ghost of its former presence. Atop this indent into the shelf was a slip of laminated white paper:

Machine gave out on the thirty thousandth iteration and the previous iteration had just sent all the bismuth off into the sun for reasons I don’t quite get. Just pretend it's really big or the recording won't work.

The letters were faded and written in the faint grey of a black diluted by time. There was a scribble beneath that in the vague shape of her signature.

Chrysalis turned her attention back to the recording. "Yep," her reflection said. "It's been that long."

"Hang on a moment, I need to figure something out first." Her reflection kindly paused as Chrysalis rubbed her forehead. "How are we talking? As in, talking talking? Having a conversation as opposed to you just... saying things at me? You’re a recording, right? So... How’s this working?"

“We’re very predictable,” her reflection answered.

“Really?”

“Well, no. Sort of.” Her reflection paused and hissed between her teeth, eyes examining the ceiling. “By the time we get here, no matter what we’d been through before, we pretty much all want to ask the same sort of questions. As well as that, a part of us remembers. A part of us always remembers." Her reflection smiled. "How else do you think you could have a conversation with a recording of yourself from the distant past? You’re subconsciously tailoring what you’re saying so that it matches up with what you once said." The image frowned. “I think.”

“Sounds... convenient.”

“It’s working, don’t knock it.” Chrysalis grumbled.

“Fine. Alright, I can... accept that, I guess. But... iterations?”

“Just a name for each time you finally get bored with the current world you’ve created to distract yourself from the perpetual boredom of immortality and wind up here, ready to suppress a few memories and start all over again.”

Chrysalis snapped her mouth shut, closing off the circle that’d developed whilst listening. “That’s... that’s a lot to take in, all at once.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to waste my time guiding you to all the answers,” her reflection countered. “I’ve got stuff to do too, you know.”

“Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

The conversation reached a lull, allowing the silence to stretch out, punctuated by the occasional tap of Chrysalis’s hoof against the floor as she mulled it all over. “I...” she started, then stopped. Her lips pursed together.

“Yes?” her reflection ventured, scarily soon after she’d finished speaking. Chrysalis blew out slowly.

“If it helps, there are little differences with each iteration,” her reflection said. Chrysalis would’ve been comforted, but the illusion of having her mind read was too great.

“Really? Anything important?”

“No.” Her reflection shook its head. “No, not really. It’s all... pretty much the same, if I’m being honest.”

The next silence was longer, though how much longer Chrysalis could not say. Occasional exchanges broke it, but less and less frequently as time went on. About halfway through it, her reflection let her know that the wardrobes were filled up with books: memoirs of the first few iterations, when she had considered such things worth keeping.

Chrysalis read them all. There were some variations, but also a lot of constants: it seemed that every world Chrysalis created had changelings and ponies, a Princess Celestia and a Twilight Sparkle. That felt important, somehow, though Chrysalis wasn't quite sure exactly how. Just... important.

She would've underscored their names had the Chrysalis's of the past not already done so, the paper underneath black and almost ready to tear. It seemed she—as in, the current she—was hardly alone along this branch of thought.

Eventually, she raised her head. "Alright." She breathed out. "Let's do this."

"Drawer on your right," her reflection said instantly, less than a millisecond after Chrysalis herself had finished speaking. Chrysalis's ears flattened.

She opened the drawer. There was a wooden mallet inside. She lifted it out.

"Now bonk yourself on the head," her reflection said helpfully.

Chrysalis opened her mouth to retort, thought about it and then placed the hammer back into the drawer, hooking out the scrap of paper lying next to it as she did so. She ignored her reflection's jabbering about it being "all a joke", and read the words on the paper: a spell to suppress memories. And then, after having committed the spell itself to memory, replaced the scroll, turned and left without saying another word.

Ten Minutes Later

The sun was out and the wind was roaring, running cold hoof-tips through her mane and tail-hairs. Chrysalis breathed in the air—a far more delicious thing than she'd remembered—and looked down.

Her changelings were still there, still gathered round the mountain's base like lost sheep. A part of her wondered if they too also knew, or if it was just she alone who was charged with knowing. A strange question, and not one she wanted to know the answer to; she discarded it.

She looked up. She looked down. She breathed in and out. She closed her eyes and readied the spell.

"Go," she whispered, and there was a buzz louder than rainfall as the changelings left her, flying off to remake the world again. She waited till the sound had faded, till there was no noise left but the sound of the wind and all it played with.

Then she concentrated, and was gone.

Author's Note

I started writing this around quarter to six monday morning, having pulled an all nighter to get a project finished on time. Whilst I was closing down tabs, I came across the Fimfic tab I'd left open to see another generic "X is actually a changeling" fic in the feature bar.

I think my first thoughts were "Not a bloody 'gain."

That might have been my second and third thoughts too. Not sure. Tired. Bleh.