When Everything Changes

by K.J. Cragon

Rating: everyone
Tags: Sad
Length: 2012

A near dead Chrysalis roams the halls of her abandoned hive, reliving her once perfect life.

[This will be a multiple chapter fic, as I am absolutely horrible with one shots! This was inspired by this, and it will hopefully be done by the end of this month]

After the invasion I lost everything I cared for, which was almost nothing. I lost my children, my title. Now, as I roam the halls of my once flourishing hive, I try to remember what life was like before all of this. Before everything changed.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-17 19:50:01 UTC

Chapter 1 - The Letter

Before the second attempt to take over all of pony kind I would have waken up to the sound of beating wings. Commands would have been shouted from the commanders to the workers, then from the workers to the drones. Everything had been so perfect, so nice. They would lay feasts before me just by being there, just for being their Queen. They adored me, and everything I stood for. What we stood for...

Now? Now, it's just me. Alone in my hive, alone with my thoughts and memories, no matter how painful they may be. I still wake up from time to time sobbing as I realize my dream wasn't and would never more be a reality. That I would never be happy again. If I was ever happy at all, I didn't know. All I knew was my fate, to be the last of a dying species that had plagued the world since the first dawn. That's how others used to think of us. Monsters, a plague that needed to be avoiced and unloved forever. To them, we were a curse. To us, we were just doing our best to survive what with us having to feed of of other's love. How I woke up on the last morning of my life, I knew what others thought about us. they were going to win, wiping us out of existance. And so, I woke up on the last morning of changeling history. Crying my eyes out like one of those darned ponies.

I used to be a leader, one of the best generals in the world and then a queen, as was my apparent destiny. I used to be a strong willed queen who did whatever it took to keep going, to keep expanding. Now I wish I hadn't been so eager for complete world domination. My children had suffered much more than I ever had, all because of me and my clueless self. After the second invasion attempt on Equestria, which again was foiled by the Elements of Harmony, I was only left with less than a hundred changelings left at my disposal, and that number was slowly dwindling as time went on. Without enough love for all of us, I stupidly and greedily took it all for myself. I didn't treasure what I had until it was too late to save them...

After going through the usual sob suppression techniques I had learned from many, many mornings of such, I got off of the floor of my old thrown room and looked around, hoping, praying to find a familiar face. Emptiness greeted me, as plain as ever. Nothing ever happened in here but death. I sighed for what seemed like the nth time. After I learned of the dire situation of my kind, I tried to feed my people as much love as possible. When I tried that for a few days, I found that it had only made their condition more dire, their bodies expelling the sudden food as it was not used to it. Knowing that I would be the last of my kind, it fully enraged me. As more and more of my kind vanished from this plane, I became more and more agitated. I finally, after a few days, came to an unsettling decision. I gathered the rest of my children into my thrown room. I then used my magic and set everything in the hive room in flames, the dying workers, the furniture, everything.

Well, almost everything. Taking a look around the empty space once more and sighing again, I walked out of the large room and through the even larger hallway that had been meant to hold millions if not trillions of changelings all at once, and into a smaller room with a domed roof. It too was empty, save for the splitting wall paper that had pictures of purple butterflies and flowers and leather bound book that lay in the middle of the floor. It sat there, taunting me. I know what was in it, that was one of the reasons that I had saved it. Another reason what that I hoped maybe someday a rouge changeling would come home to find this and lead on a new generation to thrive in a new world. Not the war-filler world that I had been born into. Not the one that my mother had settled so many disputes in, not the one I had grown up in.

A tear shed from my eye as I thought about my life before all of the madness began on the day of my coronation. I sat down in front of the brown book; My Mother's scrapbook of my life as I grew up. My Mother, oh my dear mother. So gentle and caring to the hive and the ones she loved, so inspirational and loving to me. She taught me to cherish what I had, so to let it prosper in ways I could never imagine and now never would or will. When she died and I took over, everything turned to a complete and utter mess. Whenever I messed up, though, my children would come up to me and try to tell me that everything was going to be alright, that everything was going to be- I sobbed- That everything was somehow going to end up good and be OK. I didn't love them like my mother did. She found them on the battlefield and brought them back to be carefully nursed back to health be herself alone. I lashed out at them, punished them for being caring to me. She would cry at the death of 1. I wouldn't put on an even slightly upset face when a million died for me, to save me if they could. For a long, long time I thought I was doing something right, making my children suffer and be pained so that they could handle anything, even death. I couldn't have been more wrong in any way.

After looking at the picture of my mother holding me in a bright green blanket at the moment of by birth for a moment, I finally gathered some of my last stored willpower and opened up the book the the first page. The first picture was one of me on the first week of life. In the picture, I stared back at whoever was holding the camera, probably a new invention at the time. I was grinning with an open mouth, clearly excited and happy. My sharp and pointed canines hadn't yet grown in, and all that was visible of my mouth was my bright pink gums. For the first time in a long while, I smiled. Granted it wasn't a happy smile, it was a sad, knowing smile. I wish I knew then what I would turn out to be. I would have done something, anything, even if it meant leaving the hive. Leaving the hive would have been a horrible deed, though. There would be no one to rule the hive once Mother died.

Skipping the other pictures, knowing that they would most likely make me burst into tears again, I turned to the next page, It was not a picture of me, but my mother. Her beautiful elegance radiating from the picture as she smiled with pride. I noticed that she was looking down at a small changeling foal, and I could tell that it was me. My mother loved me, and trusted me, and I betrayed her after she died, as if it was all just an act, the love, to distract her from noticing that I was hungry to rule. She would be there for me, until the day I was appointed Queen of the hive at my coronation day after she was dead. Another wave of sadness washed over me. I remembered that day, the day of my coronation.

I had been in my room the room that I was sitting in reading the scrapbook. I had made sure that none were to disturb me while I was getting ready for the biggest, proudest, most important day of my entire life. When I looked into the long full body mirror and saw the dress that my mother had given me, the one that she had worn on the day of her own coronation, I smiled. At least I would have some way to remember her now that she was... dead, passed into a new plane. My smile faltered and I began to tear up thinking about my mother, the old queen. I wondered if the changelings would have the same respect for me as they did for the old queen. While I was lost to my thoughts and feelings, I didn't hear the changeling servant come into the room. When she spoke suddenly, it startled me so much that I almost set her aglow with flames in rage that someone had disobeyed by direct orders. Seeing her cower before me, it gave me such happiness. I was a devil. And evil satanic being with a raging fire that should have been snuffed out many years before.

The servant, as she cowered before me, said that she had come to deliver a letter of great importance, and that she hoped that she could leave without ever have disturbed me. When I saw the look of great fear in her eyes, a warmed up a bit. Not by much, but the thinking of my parent had buttered me up a but. I told her with a wink that if she just gave me the letter and went on her way this event could have never taken place whatsoever. She then left. She, of which her name I could never remember, had lived in my guidance until the very end. She died when I lashed out that very last time. She, who I knew respected me and loved me just like anybody else. I betrayed her...

I will never forged what the letter said. It was told to me later that my Mother had written it to me when I was born and hid it, telling only her greatest and strongest servants to give it to me on the day of my coronation, when I would become the leader of a partial country, the leader of a people who cared for me, even if I did not return those feelings. The changeling who had given me the letter was the last standing of the servants who knew, the last of the ones serving the old queen. The letter read:

My dearest Chrysalis,

I am standing here beside you, you of your foalish self, while you dream of a perfect world that is entirely your own in your repetitive slumber. I am absolutely sure that you shall do great things for your people, now that the decisions are your own. Though if you are reading this than I am afraid that I am around no longer, and you will take my place as Queen of the changeling hive. When that day does happen, do know my dear, that I could not be more proud. You shall find yourself in a path to greatness that you, and only you are set to fulfill.

I imagine you as a great leader, as gentle and as caring as a mother sparrow is to her children, and as a wolf is to its kin. You, when needed, will rise up to great lengths as this hive's leader. If there is war, you shall make piece among both. If there is death, you must only to turn to what is inside of you to make things right.

I trust you to make things right, and to be the best you can be, whether it be leading us, making important decisions, or just being yourself.

I'll miss you, my little Chrysalis. I am sure you will soon break free from your shell, and spread your wings to become a beautiful butterfly.

I love you, Chrissy oh so much,

Mom.