//------------------------------// // Crusader Containment Conscription // Story: For Want of a Mask // by LDSocrates //------------------------------// Silence. Stillness. Shadows. No company save for countless reflections staring back at her as she trudged forward. The changeling Queen was very familiar with the dream, lived and relived it many times over. Twisted mirrors, crystals and gems flanked her on either side, each surface bearing one of her many different reflections. She glanced in one direction. A horse with a night black coat and snow white face stared back at her; Hisan the Third, prince of a forgotten Arabic sultanate. A lifetime of feeding off concubines she seduced with his face and whispering in his hypnotized father’s ear flashed in his eyes. It ended with the image of his capitol burning to the ground, another casualty in one of the countless attempts to unite the desert under one banner, before she moved on to the court of their conqueror. Chrysalis looked in another direction. Her eyes locked with a griffon’s, feathers silver and fur chocolate brown, a long, sleek cigarette holder in her grinning beak; Phyllis von Duke, renowned theatre actress and ever enduring griffon sex symbol. Hundreds of crowds of adoring fans to feed off of flashed in her golden eyes, along with seduced and hypnotized bureaucrats and nobles so helpfully spilling all their secrets. Her story came to an end with sneaking out the window of her chateau, a body double left behind with a spilled drink of poisoned wine. Every time Chrysalis shifted her gaze, another met hers and another life played out in the blink of an eye. Kings, queens, statesmen, celebrities, nobles, lawmen, revolutionaries; all with different faces on the surface but with a single identity hidden beneath. She stopped, the tunnel coming to a dead end as it always did. A single, flawless mirror stood before her. Its reflection was blurred; not her own. Not that she recognized. Even the names of the distorted colors eluded her, a gaping hole in her memory. The hazy reflection’s lips began to move, and she felt her own lips move in unison. In her own voice echoed back a hundred fold, in languages modern and dialects only she remembered, she chanted: "And into her own reflection she stared Yearning for one whose reflection she shared And solemnly sweared not to be scared At the prospect of being doubly mared." She raised a hoof and pressed it against her reflection’s. The mirror between them cracked. As the world around them shattered, behind the mirror she caught a glimpse of a single eye staring back at- Her eyes snapped open with a heaving gag, a noxious smell right under her nose. Through her tearing eyes, she saw Zecora pull away a bottle of she-didn’t-even-want-to-know-what and canter away to put it back on her shelf. “Wh-what in the name of Tartarus’ deepest hole was that for?!” she spat. “I apologize for being so abrupt and rude, but patience right now would not be shrewd,” the zebra rhymed before coming back into her guests’ view and sitting down. “You quite frankly slept sounder than a stone, and what’s at my door I can’t handle alone.” “What do you mean?” Chrysalis asked as her coughs died down. “I probably couldn’t fight off a deer in this condition; handle your own blasted fights.” “I don’t need your help in combat; I hardly need a hoof with that,” Zecora snorted. “What I need is beyond my normal role. I need your help with sitting foals.” “Sitting foals… you mean foal sitting?” Chrysalis asked. “What is with you and your unwillingness to speak like a sane mare?” She paused and blinked. “Wait, why are you foal sitting? You’re a crazy hermit in the middle of the most dangerous place on the continent. What irresponsible mother would put their children in your care?” Zecora’s eyes narrowed. “I’m quite responsible, I’ll have you know, and none are harmed in my fire’s glow. Their safety is not my concern; it’s that they’ll somehow make my house burn. You’ve mentioned your swarm of countless kin, and I was hoping your experience could save my skin.” Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “These kids are that bad?” Zecora mutely nodded. Chrysalis sighed and draped a foreleg over her face. “How many of them?” “Thank you so much for hearing my plea,” she sighed with a small smile. “Today’s trouble comes to us in three. Their search for their marks causes quite the commotion, and today they want to earn theirs in making potions.” “Cutie mark seekers?” she asked, peeking from under her hole-riddled foreleg. “I’ve seen plenty of those over the years. What breed are they?” That gave the zebra pause, her brow furrowing and lips going taut, probably to think up a good rhyme. Chrysalis couldn’t help but chuckle at the almost cute concentration on her face. “Each of these three fillies were born under the breeds of hoof, wing, and horn,” she finally said, her self-assured smile back. “So that either means they’re all alicorns or they’re one of each of the mundane three. I’m going with the latter,” Chrysalis snickered. “That rhyme was awful.” Zecora’s eyes narrowed more and ears flattened, her smile turning upside down. Chrysalis ignored her and said, “Fine, I’ll help out, if only so you aren’t the poor foals’ only guardian. I can’t exactly walk, but I’ll help you keep an eye on them. I just need to get in disguise first; I think I have enough energy to use magic by now. Which to pick…?” She hummed in thought and closed her eyes. A few seconds ticked by before she burst into emerald flames. A moment later the flames were gone, and in the place of the changeling queen was a pegasus mare. She grunted, stretching her white wings and opening her eyes to look over her long black mane. With another spurt of fire, her wings looked mangled and bandaged. “There we go,” she said in a sweet country accent. “Just call me Willow Wisp, and we should be good. If they ask, I was flying nearby when sudden turbulence made me crash into the forest near your house. Don’t worry about details; I have a life story memorized.” Zecora smirked with raised brows and nodded. “I would expect no less from a master of lies.” She turned to the door, but paused and added, “By the way, that’s a beautiful disguise.” Chrysalis scoffed and rolled her eyes with a smaller frown than she felt she should have before laying her head back down. Zecora opened the door and peeked outside. “My patient’s eyes are open wide; you three are free to come inside.” There was a trio of cheers as the three fillies came in. Well, less came in and more stampeded in. And less in and more everywhere. Chrysalis snickered to herself as she watched Zecora scramble to keep track of the colorful little blurs, spluttering out started and then aborted rhyming warnings. “Energetic, even for fillies,” she muttered to herself. She charged her hidden horn, magically grabbing Zecora by the legs like a marionette. The zebra gave her a bewildered look of shock, but the queen mouthed back “trust me.” In a flash, through Chrysalis’ control, Zecora expertly grabbed the pegasus’ tail with her teeth, stomped down on the unicorn’s tail with her hoof, and pinned the earth pony’s under her plot, bringing the blurs to a screeching stop. “Hey!” the three fillies protested in unison. Chrysalis let Zecora’s limbs go with a snicker. “I don’t think it was really kind of you girls to go crazy without saying hello,” she said in her sweet country drawl. “But kids will be kids, right Miss Zecora?” Zecora gave the changeling a hard glare for the briefest of seconds before letting their tails go and saying, “Indeed they will always be, Miss Willow, and these are the spriteliest ones I know.” “Sorry, Zecora,” the unicorn mumbled. “Yeah, got a bit carried away there,” the earth pony said with a nervous giggle. “Wow, what happened to you?” the pegasus asked Chrysalis, ignoring the freshly frazzled zebra. “Oh, just a bit of wind shear, a few broken ribs and wing bones, nothing for foals to worry about,” Chrysalis shrugged off. “I’ve had worse.” “Wind shear?” the unicorn repeated. “That’s when the wind speed and direction changes really drastically in a short distance, usually along cold or hot fronts or when severe weather’s about to hit,” the pegasus explained. “Sometimes it’s so bad it kills ponies!” There was silence as her two friends stared at her. “What?” “It’s just that that was awful… eggheady coming from you, Scoots,” the earth pony said slowly. “No offense.” “I’m a pegasus; I wanna fly someday,” she huffed. “Doesn’t mean I’m an egghead.” “I’m impressed you know so much,” Chrysalis said warmly, bringing a smile to the pegasus filly’s face. “What’s your name?” “I’m Scootaloo!” she answered with a small flutter of her wings. Small, under developed wings. Worrisome. “I’m Sweetie Belle!” the unicorn piped in. “And I’m Apple Bloom,” the earth pony greeted. “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders! Pleased to meet ya, Miss Willow.” Chrysalis’ mind flashed through pages of memorized dossiers. She recalled those names from the list of family members for the wielders of the Element of Honesty and Element of Generosity. Suppressing a wicked grin, she said, “Please, call me Wisp; everypony else does. Cutie Mark Crusaders, eh? Is that what those capes are for?” “Darn right!” Scootaloo boasted, the three of them turning to show them off. “They’re kind of covered in leaves because we tried to follow Zecora home in a bush,” Sweetie giggled nervously. “Not one of my best ideas.” “What’s your cutie mark?” Apple Bloom asked. Chrysalis chuckled. “Sorry, but it kind of hurts to move, so can’t really show it off right now, but my special talent is burst flying, like sprinting to you ground pounders. I’m a Canterlot firemare, though my hometown is Dodge Junction, so I do a lot of drills to get in and out of a house’s top floor as fast as I can. Don’t have to worry about wind shear as much when I’m only flying a couple dozen meters in short bursts.” The three fillies let out cute little gasps in child-like awe and crowded around her bed, widening her smile. “Have you saved anypony?” Apple Bloom asked breathlessly. “Oh, maybe three,” she said with a humble hum. “Canterlot’s very strict about fire after it nearly burned down in the Inferno of 1666, though that was obviously way before my time. Not many fires happen up there.” “Still, that is so cool!” Scootaloo squealed. She then paused and cleared her throat, composing herself. “But not as cool as Rainbow Dash; she’s saved way more ponies.” “Scootaloo!” the other two scolded her. “What, it’s true!” she said defensively. While the three were discussing how rude her comment was, Chrysalis giggled as she mulled over how utterly useless that Rainbow Dash stunt flier and her friends were against the invasion. “What’s so funny?” Scootaloo suddenly asked her. “Just that you’re fighting over something so silly,” she fibbed, keeping the heartbreaking truth sealed shut. “It doesn’t matter how many ponies I saved or she saved or he saved; I did my best to do good. That’s what makes a hero, isn’t it?” “Yeah, I guess,” Scootaloo mumbled, looking away in embarrassment as the other two looked at Chrysalis in greater awe and admiration. Chrysalis tore her eyes from the adorable foals to their zebra host. Zecora was looking at the disguised queen with wide, disbelieving eyes, but an infuriatingly amused smirk. Chrysalis’ gaze hardened for the briefest instant before she said, “Now, you gals wanted to learn to make potions from Miss Zecora here, right?” “Oh, right!” Apple Bloom said with a facehoof. “Sorry, Zecora! Can we start helping you make potions now?” Zecora giggled behind her foreleg. “Ready when you and your friends are, Apple Bloom. I’ll get some nose plugs; we’re not exactly mixing perfume.” “What, and no nose plugs for me when you give me that foul medicine, Miss Zecora?” Chrysalis chuckled darkly. “It smelled like something died in old bath water.” Zecora just chuckled back, the three fillies already hopping excitedly at the prospect of finally earning their marks. Chrysalis idly watched as the zebra walked them through the lesson, letting them know that she had her eye on them if they got out of control again. Soon enough her eyes and her smile were in a different place, in many different times, watching millions of hatchlings throughout hundreds of years leaping in joy at the thought of serving the family and their mother for the first time.