//------------------------------//
// The Crystal Forest 
// Story: We Aren't All Monsters 
// by Arctic Inferno 
//------------------------------//

The explosion had been loud and powerful- powerful enough, in fact, to blow all the Changelings and their Queen clean out of Canterlot- but many of them knew that what was coming was going to be much, much louder.

During the attempt to take over the capital of Equestria itself and have the entire planet beneath her nightmarishly black hoof, Queen Chrysalis had very much believed that nopony could possibly have thwarted her wonderful chaos. The sight of those pathetic ponies running from hordes of her subjects had filled her to the brim with an intense feeling of... accomplishment. Yes, that was the word. It was a feeling of accomplishment that she had never truly felt since she was a hatchling and killed her very first prey. The moment she consumed the smallest of her 8 younger sisters she knew that she deserved to rule the kingdom one day.

But then her glorious revolution, the long-awaited day of reckoning for that pitiful race of ponies was halted by six. It took just six ponies to strike down the entirety of a squadron of at least 300 Changelings sent with the single job of killing them in mind, and even after they had been captured there was only a good 50 of them left standing. Queen Chrysalis honestly couldn't remember what happened next, but she remembered a rainbow, followed by a flash of light and the explosion which knocked the Changelings so very far away.

Queen Chrysalis had always hated rainbows. It made ponies smile, and a smiling pony always made her cringe; the last pony that she had seen smiling before her invasion had seriously warranted the need to lose their mouth.

The world was spinning as she pulled herself up onto all four hooves and shook her head to get her bearings as to where exactly she and the failures she called her subjects had landed following the explosion, but it didn't help to try and clear the ringing in her ears so she resorted to shouting angrily instead. Scaring the Tartarus out of one of her inferior Changelings always made her feel better.

"WHO," She began in her loudest voice, "WAS IN CHARGE OF THE KILLING SQUADRON?"
All around her the Changeling race had been getting up onto shaky hooves and stumbling around into rocks and trees as their visions went double, but the shock of the sudden outburst from the Queen shook their eyes back into place and they quickly assembled into a terrified group which eventually spat one of them out. He gulped as Queen Chrysalis walked up to him and lowered her head to look him directly in the eye.
"You, child..." She said, her voice eerily soothing now, "You were in charge of the killing squadron?" The young Changeling beneath her swallowed hard and nodded.
"You were the ones responsible for killing off that pesky purple unicorn and her friends?" The young Changeling nodded again, this time with a slight whimper.
"... Well, then. Why is she not dead?" The Changeling remained silent, quivering beneath his Queen as she glared at him. If looks could kill he would be tortured, hung, drawn and quartered.
"... SPEAK, CHILD!" Queen Chrysalis eventually bellowed. He yelped and spoke quickly,
"M-Ma'am! I-I was t-trying m-my best!! They w-were w-working so well t-together, it was l-like the w-were an entire army!" Queen Chrysalis scowled. 
"Yes..." She said quietly at first, "But you WERE AN ENTIRE ARMY!"

The Queen could not stand to look at the failure beneath her for any longer, so she raised her head at two larger Changelings in the crowd.
"You two. Come and take this child. He deserves to receive The Punishment, I should think." The two Changelings she selected nodded and stepped forward, taking the sobbing Changeling beneath the Queen by the front hooves and dragging him back to where they started from. Every Changeling that had ever been born knew what The Punishment was; they were taught about it from a very young age within The Hatchery. It was one of the worst deaths imaginable, they had been taught, because it was a way of making the Punished feel like they were dead when in fact they were still forced to work on in life.

Queen Chrysalis shot an annoyed look at the rest of her subjects as if to say "Let that be a lesson for you" and then directed her gaze to where they had actually landed. Conveniently they were in the Crystal Forest and she grinned. At least something today had gone right that would actually last. The Queen shot a look at four younger Changelings who immediately caught her drift and raced over, hoisting her up and distributing her weight equally amongst them, and she hissed at them to stop having trouble lifting something they clearly couldn't carry and get them to move forward. They forced themselves to do so and, with a little encouragement in the form of an irritated bellow, the rest of the Changeling race followed in their thousands. As they walked, Queen Chrysalis looked around her at the fog; it was thick and black, like smog hanging low on the ground that obscured the forest floor and led many of the hatchlings that played around the outside of the Hive to trip and fall often on invisible roots and thorny flowers growing in the shape of crystals from the hard mud.

Around the wide path they walked on were the forest's trees. They were unique, to say the least; they towered high above the wide trail and covered up the sky with leaves grown into pure emeralds that glowed faintly with a dark green hue as the Changeling Queen passed them, reacting to the presence of such a damned, sickening race bent purely on ponykind's destruction. The huge trunks of solid grey stone rose up out of the ground around them which made it impossible to see further into the woods past the trail, and the thick crystal leaves blocked all traces of Celestia's pure sunlight from reaching the thick black fog that hung low on the ground like a blanket of darkness. Even during the day, the darkness was a black wall before them that opened up invitingly at the front but snapped shut like a locked door from behind as they walked. Queen Chrysalis sighed dreamily like she used to as a hatchling, playing in these very woods. It was so wonderfully, gloriously, sickeningly peaceful, and she loved every moment she spent there.

The Changeling Queen looked ahead at the wall of darkness that moved away from them just as far away as they got closer and lay, occasionally snapping a command at the hatchlings carrying her to go faster if they tried to catch their breath. It was only when they reached her glorious kingdom and beloved home, the Hive, and that the towering structure marked that they had reached the very centre of the woods that stretched for so many countless miles around it, did she stop issuing orders to the hatchlings and stepped down off of them to enter. She always awed at the sight of it, every single time it materialised out of darkness along the main path from it and the outside entrance at least ten miles away. The Hive was so gorgeously massive; a massive egg-shaped structure of chrysalis, with emerald spikes jutting out from its walls at random intervals that served as landing zones for Changelings on patrol. Inside it was a labyrinth of tunnels interspersed between twelve floors lit dimly with torches lit with a dark green flame that had trouble illuminating the wall it was on, let alone the rest of the tunnel. Queen Chrysalis smirked at the sight and the huge emerald gates opened menacingly as the Changelings approached.

And then they were inside, the doors closed and the trees outside stopped glowing. The Changeling race was home.

***

As soon as they had arrived the Changeling who had been sentenced to The Punishment was taken straight to the higher floors of the Hive and nobody heard from him until a few weeks later when he ran through the corridors in an escape attempt- with no wings or horn. He was quickly subdued by the other Changelings, however, and expired from the panic, so the Changeling Queen sent him to the hatchery for the hatchlings' lunch. She was a little disappointed at first, but her regrets quickly passed when she realised just how delicious he tasted as she nibbled mindlessly on his ear on the way to the hatchery lunch room with his deceased body on the lunch cart.

Queen Chrysalis paced in her room by her desk, the events of that day playing in a loop in her head. Those six ponies were bad enough, but the one she hated most of all was the purple unicorn. She just arrived, walked in and stopped the most powerful race in Equestria in a single sweep of the hoof! The Queen's blood boiled. Oh, the things that she could have had, and the things that the purple unicorn took away from her...

In fury, Queen Chrysalis swiped at her desk, knocking a perfectly preserved skull off of it and onto the floor. She took a moment to compose herself and lifted it back up with her magic, holding it in front of her and stroking its head.
"Sorry, dear," She cooed as she placed the skull of her last husband back on the desk, "I can get very violent when I'm angry, can't I?" She laughed a little at her own statement, both in reference to what she just did and why the only thing that remained of her husband was a skull in the first place. The Queen stared into the empty sockets where the eyes should be for a while before perking up.
"Oh, dear, you're quite right!" She said aloud, "You always had such wonderful ideas!" 

Queen Chrysalis walked over to her door, stuck her head out and yelled for one of her servants to get the Tartarus to her room immediately. One arrived very quickly (six seconds; she always had a great time counting to see how much time it took) and stood to attention as still as he could, though he was very clearly petrified. She stepped forward and looked at him.
"Do you have a name?" She asked in a stern voice. A moment of confused silence passed.
"U-Uh... no, your h-highness. None of u-us do." The Changeling replied slowly.
"Of course you don't!" His Queen laughed, "Only important creatures deserve names."
The Changeling swallowed and nodded, "O-Of course, my Queen."
"So," She said after a moment of her cackling, "How do you like the sound of a little stealth operation?"
"... Pardon m-me, ma'am?" He replied quietly.
"Head up when you speak to your demigod, boy!" She said, back to a stern tone. He quickly obliged and looked straight up at her and she smiled. "Good."

"Now, what I want you to do..." She began, "Is go back to Canterlot and find that cursed purple unicorn."
"Y-Yes, ma'am? To d-do what?"
"My goodness, you're thick. To ruin her, idiot!" Queen Chrysalis cried in frustration, causing the Changeling to flinch. "Disguise as a pony and befriend her or something, then slowly remove all the things-" Queen Changeling paused for effect, "- and other ponies- that make her happy."
The Changeling swallowed, "N-Not kill her?"
"No." Queen Chrysalis said quickly, "No, I want to do that as she sinks to her knees in emotional agony." She bent down and looked at the Changeling before her. "You have 5 weeks."
The Changeling nodded quickly and collected himself, running out of the room, through the halls and exiting from the huge doors, sprinting down the trail. 

As Queen Chrysalis watched him leave through her window she looked over at the mountain with Canterlot perched on its rocky slope so many miles away and grinned, enjoying the thought of a purple unicorn being reduced to tears.