Chapter Fifty Seven : Captive
- - -
(57)
Captive
- - -
In the kennels, Genevieve Griffin ran one last check on the dogs. They could feel the magic being channeled as easily as she could feel the ground underfoot trembling. It made the dogs anxious; it made her anxious, too, but at least she wasn’t hungry to boot.
“Easy now,” the gray griffin said, scratching under the chin of one of the pony-sized guard dogs. Its ears were folded back, and she patted it affectionately.
Lord Brass needed them ready again, and she intended for them to be ready to answer his call. Together, they would hunt changelings, just like before. Sniff them out and then snuff them out. Already, a few of her dogs were out on a mission with Lady Euporie. Genevieve would not let Lord Brass down, and the knowledge that she wouldn’t seemed to fill her with strength. More than usual, even.
“You feel it, too, don’t you?” she asked her dogs as they began to bark and howl. “Very soon now.”
- - -
In a reinforced chamber within the central spire of the Gardens, three mares paused in their work. The first, a pure-white earth pony with a cutie mark of lenses and angles, reached up with her hoof to adjust her glasses.
“We’re moving,” she stated, simply. “Is it time already?”
“That means the party’s about to begin!” Siren Song chortled, flapping her wings and stretching her long, slim legs. She reached up to her throat to massage it with a dainty hoof. “Ah, my poor singing voice! Stoking this forge of yours is killing me, Grade! To say nothing of my poor chorus, we’re only equine, you know!”
“We need more power to alter the enchantments while they are still malleable.” Cesian Beryl, the unicorn of the trio and a crystal pony descendant, was unsympathetic. She huffed. “Can’t you feel Lord Brass’ power flowing through you? Sing yourself hoarse if you have to. The forge must be ready for Lady Twilight and Lady Eunomie.”
“Sing yourself hoarse?” Siren laughed. “Was that a joke?”
“Do I sound like I’m joking?” Cesian asked, deadpan.
“It was a horse pun,” Genuine Grade chimed in to support the singer.
“Everything is a horse pun!” Cesian argued but stumbled slightly as a particularly potent shock ran through the Gardens. She looked to her two partners. “Shall we continue this after?”
“Ah, yes,” Siren agreed. “After.”
They turned to Cesian Beryl, who nodded vigorously. The three mares set their hooves to the floor as it shook again.
- - -
“Beneath Canterlot?”
Antimony stared accusingly at the intersection of lines that marked her map. According to the calculations provided by her mother, the magical isotope she had infused into her children was still working just as intended. Only it was too late. Too late now to be of any use!
“This is… unfortunate,” she admitted, trying to keep from sounding too sour. But her own reading was accurate, so it stood to reason that those of Chalice and Alpha would be as well.
Hooves flat on the parchment, she looked down at a map of the Matterhorn and the mountain range on which Canterlot and her adjoining burbs were situated. The whole place had been a series of fortified unicorn castles back in the migration period and the initial settlement of Equestria. Much of the range was also riddled with old mines and partly collapsed shafts. Only some of it was mapped.
Her location was deep below the mountain, in the twisted tunnels of the changeling swarm. With Rarity’s Diamond Dogs and her own troops, she’d pursued the changelings under Princess Ecdysis, savaged their forces under the city and cut them off from reinforcements along their underground network.
A rumble in the mountain sent a dusting of debris falling from the ceiling into the noblemare’s normally immaculate mane. She was bloodied, her magic drained, her eyes red – redder than usual – from overuse. Around her, injured ponies and diamond dogs lay side by side. This was a particularly wide and stable section of the changeling tunnels, so she had adapted it as a short-term makeshift triage and command center.
“All this time, and you’ve been so close by.” Antimony glared at the map underhoof. “Are you in the tunnels, too? Or… no… this is something else… something big.”
- - -
Princess Instar sat in the Mayor’s office of Ponyville, pouring over a map of her own. Half her mind was on the battlefield, the other half in the less familiar and comfortable realm of politics. News had reached her ear from Canterlot. The other hives had lost Queens, but that hardly concerned the proud Warrior Princess.
What did concern her was that her Queen, her Mother, Chrysalis, had been blinded. Not just that, but she had lost control of the alicorn Princess Celestia and steadfastly refused to consider abandoning Canterlot with their prizes. The latter was the right move, of course. The ponies of Equestria needed to be crushed before they would ever truly accept the yoke of submission. But the former was… troubling. If Chrysalis did die, then it fall on her, Instar, as eldest, to become Queen. Only she doubted her sisters Exuvia and Ecdysis would readily accept that fact.
“Damned Equestrians,” she growled, studying the map. Small metal chips represented her own forces, spread out in Ponyville and encircling one tiny pocket of resistance.
That tiny pocket of resistance being the Blueblood Manor outside town!
The cursed townsfolk of this place had fled to the manor house ahead of the attack that should have caught them completely by surprise. Key townsfolk should have been captured a day ago in the initial attack! Especially the two fillies Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. They were key hostages in neutralizing the Elements of Harmony.
Instead, they were still secure in the bloody manor which, by and by, had been turned into a Hatcher damned fortress! A crack element of the White Company were holding it alongside household troops and now who-knew how many militia. There was a barrier up around it, and to make matters worse, it had been built like a castle on a high hill overlooking the town below.
Attack after attack had met with failure. Ponies fought in the grounds, on the walls, from within the manor itself. Attack from above had failed. Attack from below had failed. Bombardment from afar with cannon was the only response left, and Instar had her guns unlimbered and pounding away at the shields of the fortified manor, but there was no good ground to hit the hill from.
In the meantime, their march had ground to a halt besieging this stubborn knot of resistance!
“Princess Instar,” the voice of one of her guards said from outside the Mayor’s office. “A scout has returned.”
“Very good,” the strongly built changeling Princess growled, stamping a chitin hoof. A gaslight lantern on her desk shook from the force of the stomp. “Send her in now!”
A haggard-looking changeling scout entered the room and staggered into a bow before Princess Instar. The smaller changeling was a sister, but just a drone. Her wings twitched uneasily, emerging repeatedly from beneath their green and black carapace.
“Princess!” the scout said, respectfully. “I have grave news! Cloudsdale scouts were encountered on our patrol routes, and Terre Rare forces are continuing their all-night march to relieve the town!”
“Cruciger and the Prench and Germanes,” Instar groaned, flexing her magic to move one of the metal chips across the map. ‘They shouldn’t even be down this far south, damn them. And now Cloudsdale? Our agents were supposed to be keeping them paralyzed!’
The changeling Princess reached for a glass of water… only to notice odd ripples in it.
“Did you feel that?” she asked, but the scout only shook her head.
Instar frowned, not just at being potentially surrounded and outflanked, but at the possibility she was imagining things on top of everything else! Turning around, she opened the Mayor’s windows to reveal a view of the mountains and embattled Canterlot up in the distance. The city shield was gone, but Instar could’ve sworn she saw some sort of magic at play in the air there.
“Princess?” the scout tentatively asked, and Instar glanced back at her. “Is… is something wrong?”
“No,” she lied, and waved off the scout. “Nothing is wrong. Return to your sisters and get some water. Help yourself to one of our captives, and get your strength back. When the morning comes… we fight.”
“Yes, yes, Princess!” the scout stammered and excused herself.
Instar turned back to the view of Canterlot. What was wrong, the drone had asked. The real answer was everything. And from the looks of it, there was more to go wrong that hadn’t even revealed itself yet.
- - -
“Breaching tropo-hemispherical barrier,” Eunomie stated as the model of the Gardens continued to rise, punching through layers of disintegrating dirt and stone. The lattice of crystalline formations, Algenib, Alpheratz, Markab and Scheat, all burned bright as they preceded the rise of the Gardens below. A cascade of particulate matter, like grains of sand in their quintillions, flowed around the spherical shield around the underground complex.
“One hundred and sixty meters,” Eunomie continued. “We are crossing into the crystal tunnel network now.”
- - -
Far beneath Canterlot, a squad of buzzing changelings paused to consider the unusual glow that now surrounded them. They were just one combat unit out of hundreds in the Greater Changeling Swarm, shuffled from front to front by Princesses and ranked drone lieutenants.
The arteries of their battle, the lifeblood of their war effort, were the abandoned crystal mining tunnels far below the city of Canterlot. Cut out more than a thousand years ago as greedy unicorns plumbed the depths for gemstones, they had just as quickly been tapped out and left to rot. Some had been filled in, some had been converted to storehouses near the surface or even parts of the growing city’s sanitation system, but most had been boarded up and left to nature.
When the changelings came, they found a ready-made network of tunnels to take shelter in, gather forces in, stockpile supplies in. When the Brown Hive brought their mighty Tatzlwurms with them, the rate of expansion of the network grew tenfold. The worms could bore through rock faster than even the most motivated unicorn geomancer or earth pony work team. Without the tunnels, in fact, the invasion would have been nearly impossible. In some ways, they were even the dark underside of Canterlot, a city beneath the city.
The changelings were thus used to the normal pinkish ambiance of the crystal walls.
They’d never glowed white-hot before.
And the ground didn’t rumble like this, either… not unless a huge Tatzlwurm was nearby!
“What’s going on?” the changeling guarding the squad’s rear hissed. “Is it magic?”
“It must be,” the point changeling snarled. “But where is it coming f—?”
- - -
Twilight felt another small lurch underhoof as they continued their ascent. A few drops of coffee splashed out of her cup, and she grimaced.
“Sorry,” she murmured, conjuring up a sparkling cover for her coffee. “Those bumps just now, were those…?”
“Changeling tunnels,” Alpha Brass confirmed. “But nothing can get in the way of the disintegration field we’re riding up to the surface. Just wait,” he promised, still wearing his grin from before. “You’ll really feel it if we plow through one of their war worms.”
On her dais, Eunomie continued her progress report. “One hundred and fifty meters.”
- - -
Lyra Heartstrings and Cadance waited impatiently behind him. Blueblood checked around the corner a moment or two longer, mindful of the fact that there were rumors of changelings who could disappear into thin air. Satisfied that the way was clear, he held up a hoof and gestured them forward.
Both mares, like the Prince himself, were cloaked in black and green. It was a combination of clothing and glamour, a poor imitation of how changelings could disguise their appearance. It was hoped that it would work in the low light conditions of the palace at night, and if not that, at least it would give them an edge if they were spotted at a distance.
Bright pastel colors and alabaster white were out of the question, anyway.
There were no white or pink changelings, and anything with that color palette would be singled out. As a result, Blueblood’s own marvelous and fabulous white coat was wrapped in shadowy black, his middle dyed with bands of a metallic shade of green. It wasn’t actual dye, thank the Princess, but a magical glamour, a basic spell used in the cosmetic industry.
What they couldn’t hide were their horns. The two unicorns and one young alicorn had the right colors, but get close enough and it was easy to see the lack of holes in their legs and horns. Their silhouettes were off, too. The Prince was too bulky and barrel-chested to look anything like a changeling drone; Cadance was too tall and thin, her legs too long; even little Lyra was a little too tall, her horn too symmetrical.
It was the best they could do on such short notice.
“Which way now?” Lyra asked, as the trio approached an intersection. “Are we close?”
She kept her voice low and took a moment to take in the view of the darkened palace halls. Great framed pictures adorned the walls here, oil paintings of ancient ponies from a thousand years ago. The largest picture of them all portrayed the famous meeting of the founders: Princess Platinum, haughty and proud; Commander Hurricane, bristling and boisterous; and Puddinghead, unhinged but brilliant. They were glaring at one another in a dark cave, huddled around a dying fire and clinging to their battle standards even as the ice began to build around their hooves and hindquarters. Stylized windigos circled the trio overhead, like ethereal vultures.
“That way,” Cadance said, remembering her own time spent in the Palace, her own room in the Royal apartments.
Blueblood nodded and crept forward, doing his best to muffle his hoofsteps on the granite floor. They made it just past the next set of doors when the sound of chittering voices pulled them up short. Glancing back at the two mares, seeing their unspoken agreement, Blueblood began to back up. Cadance and Lyra did the same, until the three of them sunk into nearby shadows.
“—know who I am?” a hissing voice chirped. “I represent the will of the Princess Exuvia! Her orders are that anyling who defaces our cultural inheritance is to be stripped of her wings!”
“I will discipline my changelings as I see fit!” another changeling snapped, and the two came into view as they walked past. One changeling, the one speaking, looked normal aside from the ornate helmet and the large size. The other had what looked like a pink and cream colored wig of a mane and blue pegasus-wings… an odd mishmash of changeling and pony features.
“I do not answer to Exuvia, nor do any of the Praetorian Guard!” the normal-looking changeling lectured her counterpart. “We obey Princess Pharate and Queen Chrysalis. No other can command us.”
“You may regret your words when Exuvia herself arrives to check on her mother… and finds your soldiers have destroyed priceless artifacts! Artifacts that are our future inheritance!”
“Equestrian art…”
“And when Equestria is no more, it will be our art. And this contingency plan? Madness! I know my princess, sister, and she will not be pleased to hear of this! None of this was in The Plan!”
“Plans change, sister. Plans change…”
The two changelings opened a door and descended a curving flight of stairs. Blueblood, Cadance and Lyra didn’t follow – the pair were headed away from the Royal apartments – but they did pass by a balcony overlooking the Princess’ personal theatre. This was a small private theatre where the Princesses and other select guests could enjoy entertainments, both live shows and motion pictures.
Changelings were encamped there, now, taking advantage of it being the largest open area in this part of the palace. From the fleeting glimpse Blueblood got, he could make out at least a dozen changeling guards below. They’d trashed much of the theatre, tearing up seats and cushions and coated the walls with foul changeling wax. They also had a number of gas lights running, filling the room with light. Changelings, just as some had begun to suspect, did not see in the dark any better than ponies.
The changelings below laughed and chittered amongst one another, and soon the arguing pair vanished among them, physically and conversationally. Blueblood tried not to think of the dozen or more changelings at their back and kept creeping towards his oldest Aunt’s room.
- - -
“One hundred meters,” Eunomie stated.
- - -
“Wait,” Euporie ordered, brushing the dust off her alabaster coat. “Not that one. I want to talk to it.”
“Yes, Mistress!” The armored mare bowed her head but didn’t let up on the pressure her armored hoof used to press her opponent into the grass. Beneath the armored mare, her steel cuirass and crimson barding – crinet, flanchard, and mask-like chaffron – marked with signs of a struggle, was a pinned and immobilized changeling. This one wasn’t the common shade of green, however. It was yellowish-gold, lean and slender and built like a cat. A second armored mare held a spear tip against the creature’s bare throat, an upwelling of brackish blood seeping out from where the edge nicked the changeling’s chitinous hide.
“Not even a scrap of armor on them, yet they charged right at us,” Euporie observed, trotting up to the changeling and leaning down to look it in the eyes. “I don’t know if they’re brave or suicidal… or if they just don’t know any better.”
Euporie brushed back her wild blue mane and looked down at the changeling as if it was a particularly disgusting insect. “Do you know better?”
The creature hissed in response, like a wounded snake.
“Be careful, my Lady,” the guard with the lance warned. Behind her chaffron, her armored helmet and face-guard, the burly mare snarled at the changeling. “Hiss at Lady Euporie again and it will be your last offense, beast!”
“Let us slay it, my Lady.” The other, the one who had wrestled it to the ground while it was still in the form of a lion, pressed her hooves down hard against the shape-shifter’s back. “You saw how it was treating those ponies we rescued? Lord Brass has commanded that there be no mercy shown to the enemy!”
“I am aware of my father’s orders,” Euporie reminded the powerful earth pony guard, and she quickly lowered her eyes in deference.
Sighing, Euporie turned slightly to look over to her left. A dozen changelings, all yellow, were strewn around the ground of the park by the pond. Twice as many equestrians had been held captive by half their number changelings, forced into a rough corral of wooden planks. The yellows had been scratching at them, marking them with faux-feline claws, divvying them up between themselves for sport and play. The largest and strongest, their leader, had taken the form of a manticore… that one, Euporie had killed personally. The rest she had left to her guards and her dogs.
The former captives were now appealing to their rescuers for protection. They were a rough assortment of earth ponies and two unicorns who were so woefully incapable of magic that they had been spared by their assailants. It was no secret by now that unicorns were being specifically targeted for elimination by the changeling swarm. Euporie looked at them, at her countrymares, and felt only disgust. Their helplessness was nothing unexpected, but the way their fear paralysed them was off-putting, embarrassing.
Still, she knew Brass would want them protected, and they would serve another purpose as well.
“Set up The Device over there!” Euporie ordered, pointing.
Two unicorn mares began to move a sealed wooden crate held aloft in their magic. They moved slowly and carefully, ever mindful of their precious cargo. Inside was “The Device”… the smaller prototype of the Triptych. Twilight Sparkle would have the honor of using that one, but Euporie tried – halfheartedly – not to hate the other mare for it. There was no reason for jealousy. Twilight wasn’t Father’s Favorite, after all. She was just a tool, and who could love a tool?
The Device, at least, was hers.
She had tested it successfully at Appleoosa; now it was time for the Main Event.
“As for you,” Euporie continued, turning back to the lone surviving changeling. She narrowed her eyes for a second. “Praat jy Afrikaans?”
The changeling sniffed, face down in the grass.
“No?” Euporie inquired, leaning in a little closer. “Hal tatakallam al-lughah al-arabīyah?”
The changeling’s yellow eyes widened slightly in recognition, but it didn’t respond. Euporie nodded to the guard holding the shape-shifter down, and she pressed hard with her right front hoof into the changeling’s back. It winced in pain and she ground the hoof in place, twisting the flesh beneath.
“Na’ama!” the changeling cried. “Na’ama!”
“Yes! Yes!” Euporie translated and smiled. “Good. Lucky for you, I know a little Mareabic.” Her smile widened enough to show teeth, and her hoof gently patted the changeling on the forehead, where the horn of a green changeling would be. “While my Device gets set up, I want to talk to you.”
- - -
Celestia’s Room
Predictably, the way was guarded. But that was not the impediment it might otherwise have been had a certain somepony been alone and on his handsome lonesome.
“Mgff!” Lyra’s magical hand – part of the celestial manifestation of the Lyre – stapled around the mouth of one surprised changeling guard, muffling her call for help. The second, Blueblood took down with magic and a little help from his mass.
These changelings, Praetorians, the other one had called them, were larger and stronger than normal changeling drones. They could use magic, too. A pair of them had been projecting light from their jagged, misshapen horns while on patrol. Speed was of the essence. Cadance’s magic did most of the work nullifying the changeling’s magic and locking the shape-shifter’s mouth shut. Blueblood just did what he could to hold the changeling down long enough—
A golden hand floated over and, with a flick of an ethereal finger, knocked the changeling unconscious.
“What about the other one?” Cadance asked, and Lyra simply pointed up with her hoof. The other changeling was dangling limply from the ceiling, her horn jammed into the woodwork as she swayed back and forth.
“That answers that,” the Princess of Love amended. “Is she… dead?”
“No, Handy won’t kill anyone unless I tell him to,” Heartstrings replied, and the deadly hand reached down to tousle her mane. “I don’t know what the Princess was talking about before. He’s really friendly!”
“Friendly,” Cadance repeated, her eyes on the unconscious changeling Lyra’s celestial pal had just shoved face-first into the ceiling. “Let’s hope so.”
A faint rumble punctuated her worry, a tremor that shook not just pony and changeling, but the entire Palace. Lyra’s changeling-chandelier jerked back and forth as the tremor subsided. It was a less than encouraging sign, but there was no turning back now.
“You’re sure he’s in there?” Blueblood asked, turning to the imposing double-doors that led directly to the Chamber of the Sun, the personal quarters of the Princess herself.
“Absolutely,” Cadance replied, her orchid-red eyes fixed with a glare that could melt a windigo. Still, she kept her voice low. “I told you it would come to this. Of course she would keep him close to her.” She turned to Lyra. “You know what to do, right?”
“I practiced it on you guys enough,” Lyra answered but not without a little worry. “But isn’t it a big leap to think what works on a pony’s horn will work on a changeling’s?”
“From what we’ve seen, it won’t prevent shapeshifting, but other magic?” Blueblood shook his head. “Anyway, we have no choice.”
“It was better things happened this way,” Cadance remarked with a sniff. She quickly turned to face the door. “Let’s not waste any more time.”
Another rumble, feeling closer now, shook the floor.
“Alright,” Blueblood said, putting his hooves to the double-doors and pushing.
There were two Princesses, now, but for most of Equestrian history there had only been the one, and Celestia lived in all the opulence that was expected of the most powerful monarch in the known world. Yet at the same time, Blueblood knew well that his aunt preferred to forego much of the luxury that was her birthright. She was not one to slum it, to spend a day every year laboring in the fields and pretending to be an earth pony; Celestia loved her cakes and pastries and treats, and she loved her shows and plays and culture, but it was tempered by an almost Spartan urge to rein herself in.
Her quarters reflected this dichotomy.
For all the gestures of magnificence on display to awe arrivals: the priceless artwork, the finest silks and sheer chiffon hanging by the windows and draped over the wrought-iron canopy bed, scrolls, parchments, porcelain tea sets, gold and gifts from a dozen nations – some no longer existing in the modern era – the desk of mahogany carved into a block of marble, said to have been a foundation stone brought from the Old Kingdoms… for all that majesty, the great room was surprisingly open, uncluttered, even casual.
A warm fire crackled in the fireplace under a relatively plain mantelpiece, casting a gentle orange glow over the room. A mere hoof-full of papers were neatly folded on top of the desk. The walls were an alabaster white, tinted peach by the color of the fire, and the dark wooden dressers and furniture were plain enough that you could see the like in any fine bedroom. There were two odd-looking barrels as well, one next to the desk and the other in a corner… gifts from the frontier maybe?
Blueblood, Cadance, and Lyra moved swiftly across the room, a soft burst of magic closing the doors behind them but not shutting them. They were only left open a crack in the wake of the three Equestians, a small piece of metal making sure they could not close entirely. Just in case.
Blueblood zeroed in on the bed.
There were two shapes there, in the darkness, curled up amid the covers and the pillows. One was white, the other pink. It smelled like a trap. If he had been in Chrysalis’ horseshoes, he knew he’d have set up a trap, which was why he and Lyra came forward first and Cadance followed a short distance behind. Who knew what insidious surprises a cunning and ruthless mind like that of Queen Chrysalis would have defending her while she slept?
Yet, rushing up to the bed… there was no spring of a carefully concealed trap door or cage, there was no malicious snicker as invisible guards materialized out of thin air, no hideous chitter as pillows shape-shifted into changeling assassins. There was no trip of a magical wire and alarm.
Blueblood slowed as he came up to the side of the bed.
Queen Chrysalis in the form of Princess Cadance was curled in a tight ball, holding onto the captive Shining Armor like a foal would her favorite doll. Disturbingly, Shining’s eyes were open, but he neither seemed to notice his surroundings or the arrival of company. He just stared blankly up at the ceiling while Chrysalis clung to him, hooves tight around his midsection like a drowning mare clinging to a piece of flotsam. Both of them, in their own way, lost to the world.
Only then, his body tensed and a split second from lunging, did Blueblood realize not only that there was no trap here, but why. For some rulers, it might have been a matter of trust, but not the changeling queens whose loyalty was ensured by biology. No. Queen Chrysalis, the Queen of Queens, didn’t want any of her children to see her like she actually was: clinging desperately to the source of her power, to the life she had stolen, to what she treasured and feared above all else. Her face buried in Shining Armor’s side, Chrysalis shuddered as Blueblood drew the blankets back, revealing their entwined bodies to the world.
“Shining,” Blueblood said, placing a hoof on the stallion’s shoulder. There was no response from the Captain of the Guard. “Hold still…”
“Do it now!” Cadance suddenly yelled, also sensing as Blueblood had that there was no trap here; that this was their moment to strike.
“Handy!” Lyra stood on her hind legs and pointed. From a swirl of starry gold and black energy – unicorn star field wreathed in aethereal miasma – emerged the extended aspect of the celestial Lyre. The claw-less hand that plucked the lyre. Surging past Blueblood, it sent chills across his skin, the hair of his coat standing on edge. He was not the target, however.
The hand clamped down on the sleeping changeling queen’s horn.
Like any other mare in her position, Chrysalis was shocked awake, pulled bodily off her bed, her muffled cry of confusion and alarm muffled by a scrap of silk torn from Celestia’s bedspread. The wad of fabric was held in Cadance’s magical grip, but to the changeling Queen’s credit, she got over the shock even before her back hit the floor.
Blueblood pulled Shining away, being the pony most easily able to move another large stallion around without magic. The two rolled to the other side of the bed as Lyra and Cadance took down the changeling Queen. But Chrysalis was quick – deceptively, impossibly quick, despite being blinded in Celestia’s escape earlier in the day.
Rather than panic and try to rip the ball of silk, the gag, out of her mouth, she rolled with it. Her wings snapped out, and defying their true form beneath the changeling disguise, the sudden wall of feathers hid her body from view. Twisting in midair, now hidden from view, she shot forward, amazingly right at the source of her handicap.
Lyra flinched, hooves flying up to protect her face. “Oh sh—”
CLANG
Opening her eyes, the minty mare saw a golden lyre floating just inches in front of her. Chrysalis had slammed into it, and like a shield, it had protected the young bridesmaid. Chrysalis’ wings unfolded, the Queen’s surprise betrayed by the confused and enraged look in her blind eyes. What she couldn’t see, she no doubt felt. She’d expected to mow down the smaller mare, freeing her horn in the process. Instead, the celestial Lyre had acted on its own accord to protect her.
With a cry of anger that none present had heard from her before, Cadance galloped into her evil doppelganger, bodily tackling the Queen of the changelings. The two look-alikes fell to the ground in a tumble of pink legs and wings. Despite having her magic sealed by the hand on her horn, wrenching her neck to the side, and a gag in her mouth keeping her from yelling for help, Queen Chrysalis did not shy from the impact or the fight.
Blocking a hoof that could’ve cuffed her across the face, Chrysalis caught the limb and pulled the Princess of Love forward into a head butt. The pair rolled, and in an instant, Chrysalis was on top. She tried to take a swipe at the young alicorn beneath her, only to reel as Lyra pulled hard on her horn, arching her back painfully.
Screaming like a feral monster into the gag stuffed in her mouth, Chrysalis flailed wildly, hooves and wings thrashing with enough force to dent one of the bed’s four wrought-iron posters. Sheer chiffon curtains handing over the bed rustled in the wind kicked up by the changeling’s wings, finally catching on one and tearing free. Finally, finally, Chrysalis reached up to her mouth and then her horn, trying to grab onto the aethereal hand Lyra commanded. Her blinded eyes were wide with fear and, above all else, rage. The bright green in them had been burned away, leaving a pale and sickly lime-color.
Cadance lifted herself back onto all four hooves and watched the changeling struggle, a hard expression set on her face. If Chrysalis hoped to evoke sympathy with her struggles, it would not come from this mare. Not Princess Cadance. Instead, she simply watched Chrysalis flail, the changeling Queen’s struggles growing weaker with every passing second. The Princess of Love just watched. Transfixed.
How long had she dreamed of this? Rotting away in that cell, tortured by the Queen, physically and mentally… humiliated and mocked… how many nights had she gone to sleep, the only comfort being the dream of escape? How many nights had escape not been enough comfort? She was living the dream now. So Cadance just watched as her tormentor finally stopped fighting, resignation setting in.
And Cadance took it all in; drank it all in.
“Cadance,” Blueblood hissed, trying to get her attention. It was starting to make him uncomfortable how she was just staring at the captive Queen. “Cadance!” he hissed again, more loudly. “Have you forgotten something? Hmm?”
“What?” Cadance asked, and she sounded angry at the interruption. Then she saw the stallion hovering in a pool of Blueblood’s magic and her eyes widened, her expression transformed, and tears welled up over her cheeks.
“Shining!” she galloped away from the subdued Chrysalis and over to her betrothed. Blueblood set the poor Captain of the Guard down just as another tremor shook the palace. The force of it almost made Cadance stumble, but she slid to a stop next to her Shining Armor. With a gasp and a cry, she wrapped him up in her forelegs, murmuring into his ear.
Blueblood shook his head sadly. Shining Armor just kept staring forward, a deep green haze clouding his eyes. A droplet of drool dribbled down his chin and onto Cadance’s shoulder as she hugged him, whispering fiercely for him to “snap out of it,” to “come back to her,” to “be strong.” Shining Armor was a strong stallion – Blueblood knew this even before he’d dueled with the guardsman in front of Twilight and Rarity. He was strong… but magic could be stronger, and Queen Chrysalis was no lightweight.
Words would not bring Shining Armor back.
This was exactly what he had been afraid of when they went on this crazy quest.
“Cadance…” It was Lyra. Maybe she thought the same. The young mare offered her a sad look, but one clearly colored by her pressing desire to get the heck out of the palace. “Princess, we have to…”
“What did you do to him?” Cadance asked, her voice cold enough to freeze over Yakyakistan. The object of her question, the source of her ire, managed a smile around her gag. Queen Chrysalis did not seem all that intimidated.
“Blue,” Cadance ordered. He knew what she meant.
“This is really not the place for this,” he objected, but his horn glowed. “All royal apartments have zones of silence spells built into the walls… to prevent eavesdropping and… unfortunate accidents.”
It took a moment for Celestia’s room to recognize his magic, but a reddish-tinted light filled the quarters a second or two later. A sprinkle of faint sparkles from the slightly-ajar door caught the Prince’s eye and he quickly closed the double-doors, sealing the room shut and fully activating the privacy-spells. The reddish light blinked a few times over the next ten seconds and then faded away.
“We can talk now,” Blueblood said, running a hoof through his blond mane. “But can we please not press our luck with this? There are about a hundred changelings back that way, you’ll recall.”
“Privacy spells, huh?” Lyra asked, glancing around the room. “The sigils have to be hidden in the walls. I read a paper once that the Princess’ room was actually a giant Fair-a-Day Cage, I wonder if…” On the verge of asking about another of her conspiracy theories, Lyra quickly slapped a hoof to her lips and reined herself in. “Sorry.”
Under her breath, she muttered, “Maybe I’ll just poke around and find out…”
Cadance gently set Shining Armor down and loosed the gag she’d stuffed in Chrysalis’ mouth. The spittle-soaked silks fell from the changeling’s fang-filled jaws, but Chrysalis didn’t scream or cry for help. Still hanging from her horn, suspended in midair by Lyra’s empowered lyre, the so-called Queen of Queens managed to angle her nose up and look down at those beneath her despite being bound and blind. Her still being in Cadance’s body made the expression all the more disturbing.
“Chrysalis!” Cadance was louder this time, aware that no sound would escape the room. She trotted up to the captive Queen, eyes narrowed into enraged slits. “Answer me! What did you do to my husband?”
Chrysalis simply licked her lips and shifted slightly as if to get more comfortable.
Cadance snarled, but kept out of kicking range. “Chrysalis!”
“It seems you’ve got me,” the changeling Queen answered and raised her front hooves up. For a moment, it looked like she was going to try and lunge at the Princess; instead, her hooves came together in a soft ‘clop.’ The next clap was louder and more enthusiastic.
The changeling Queen just hung there, clapping.
“Look at this,” she said, and gestured for a second at the hand clamped firmly around her horn. Her alicorn disguise shifted, a magical ripple of fire flowing through it. “You’ve cut me off from all my unicorn magic. You snuck into my own room and captured me. Really…” She smiled and her mouth was full of wicked, pointy teeth, all except for a small gap, where one of her fangs had been knocked out in the fighting. “Congratulations, Princess.”
Cadance was unmoved by the flattery, false or otherwise. “What. Did. You. Do. To. Him.”
“Him?” Chrysalis played dumb, and tapped her chin. “Which him do you mean? There are so many.”
“Shining Armor!” Cadance very nearly screamed, walking closer to the Queen, before Blueblood held up a hoof and motioned her back. She snorted angrily but complied and remained where she was. It wouldn’t be wise to get too close to Chrysalis, even with her incapacitated like she was. She was deadly and had survived fighting with Celestia herself. It was only thanks to Lyra’s aether-enhanced magic and the vulnerability of all horned magic users that they could have this talk.
“Shining Armor,” Chrysalis said the name and her smile broadened. “Of course, that’s the ‘him’ you meant. What other him would you even care to ask about, Princess?”
“Just answer the question,” Cadance growled.
“There’s another ‘him,’ you know?” Chrysalis seemed to look around, trying to find someone or something in the room. “The Prince is here, too. Where are you, Blueblood? Cadance, wouldn’t you like to know what I did to him? How I had my fun with him while he slept under Night Shade’s watchful eye? How I helped her play with his body and his mind? How I planned to break him… turn him into a toy… a weapon… and a key to the ancient archives? The one his family never trusted you with?”
“You brought him to me. What happened to him was your fault,” Chrysalis observed with a thoughtful hum. “Aren’t you worried about him?”
Cadance ground her teeth together. “We dealt with that. He understands why I did what I—”
“—had to do,” Chrysalis interrupted with a dark chuckle. “How kind of him, to forgive you… how noble. And you even believed him! What a sweet sister you are, Princess of Love.”
Cadance glanced at Blueblood, only for a single uncertain moment. Then she went back to glaring at the damned changeling Queen. “Chrysalis…!”
“And then there was the other ‘him,’” the Queen continued, laughing now and not just chuckling. “Alpha Brass! He was your friend, wasn’t he? So sweet, such a nice colt, you liked him. He made me, you know? He made me by imprinting me on you.”
“Brass?” Blueblood heard himself say. He knew Lord Brass, of course, but… “When?”
“Blue,” Cadance objected. “Don’t listen to her… She—”
“Don’t listen to me? Aren’t you the one asking, ‘what did you do to him?’” Chrysalis couldn’t see them, but still she seemed to enjoy the scene before her blind eyes. “Alpha Brass was a convenient tool. We used him to get to you, Princess. My mother did it, mostly. I was just a little nymph. It was the night of his wedding, you see, to my mother… Olive Branch. Or the creature everypony thought was Olive Branch. My mother knew you would come, planned for it, and that very night, after she broke his mind in, she had him bring me to you.”
“Do you get it now?” Chrysalis asked, her question punctuated by a wild, mad laugh. She jabbed a hoof in Cadance’s direction. “This is all your fault! All because of you! All because you ascended and became an alicorn! All because you exist!”
“Shut up!” Cadance nearly surged forward, but again Blueblood used his bulk to hold her back, to keep her out of range of the dangling changeling Queen. There were tears in her eyes, some from before, some not.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” Chrysalis asked, swaying in midair. She ran her hooves over her body, over Cadance’s body. “Knowing all this death… all this suffering… all of it is because of you. But is that really even a surprise? Your ascending killed the young Prince’s father, too, didn’t it?”
Cadance shook her head, her mane curling around her shoulders. “No. No.”
“Just how far back do you think it goes? Princess? Alicorn!” Chrysalis’ words seemed to stab the mare in the heart with every word. “How many have suffered because of you? How many don’t even know how you played with their emotions? How many of your friends are even really your friends? Is there anypony you haven’t used your magic on, consciously or unconsciously? Isn’t it odd how many young stallions fell for you? Courted you? Loved you?”
“Shut up, you – you horrible creature!” Cadance bent forward, covering her ears with her front hooves. “Just shut up!”
“I’ve told you again and again! But you never listen!” Chrysalis crowed, burying her hooves in her luxurious tricolor mane, reveling in her stolen features, her stolen identity. “Don’t you see? I’m the real Princess Cadance! I’m the REAL ‘Princess of Love!’ This isn’t my real face, but I’m more true to yourself than you are! You’re the liar here! Not me!”
“Cadance!” Blueblood reached down to pull his adopted sister’s hooves away from her ears. “Calm down. She’s just trying to rattle you. Distract you!”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it, Prince of the Unicorns?” Chrysalis asked, and Blueblood’s ears twitched.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled, holding the trembling Cadance as her helplessness quickly turned back to rage. Both royals glared up at the captive Queen.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Chrysalis wondered. “Didn’t you notice it? How her ascending sent everything into a spiral, a spiral that led here? More importantly, didn’t you notice how everyone… your parents… your aunt… your so-called friends… how they all abandoned you for her? Think about it, really think about it, and tell me I’m wrong. That you didn’t find it strange, back then? That you don’t find it strange, even now?”
Blueblood opened his mouth, to tell the changeling how wrong she was. But… the memories of his mother, of his childhood… for a moment, he paused. And in that second and a half of hesitation, Cadance looked up at him and saw it, too. That he was thinking about it. That he had thought about it.
“No! Not again!” she cried, pushing him away. “I won’t let you take him away too!”
“Princess!” Lyra gasped, but she was too slow.
Cadance lunged for Chrysalis, hooves aiming for her mouth or her throat, to choke out the horrible words that slipped from the Queen’s lips: her own lips from her own body, stolen and used against her. Chrysalis just laughed, her right hoof pulling out of her flowing mane with something long and white in her grip. Cadance’s hooves wrapped around Chrysalis’ slender neck, and the Queen choked, gasped.
Princess Cadance fell backwards, clutching at her chest.
“Careful, now, Princess,” Chrysalis warned, her hooves up in the air and empty. The Queen was smiling again, that toothy changeling smile, with the same gap in it as before.
“Cadance!” Blueblood cried, rushing forward to catch the falling alicorn. She fell against him with a whimper, blood seeping out from between her hooves. While Chrysalis laughed, the Princess of Love stared down at the fang jammed halfway into her stomach.
“Princess Cadance!” Lyra screamed, rushing over a second later. “Princess!”
“To answer your question, you stupid little pony…”
Three pairs of eyes glared up at her. Chrysalis crossed her hooves and stuck her tongue out, massaging the gap in her smile. One she’d made herself before hiding her broken-off tooth in her mane. Wiping the blood off on her coat, a ripple passed through it, turning red back into pink.
“It was poison,” she continued, nonchalant. “After my mother and I ‘tapped out’ Alpha Brass, I resolved to find a way to make use of the husks that result from overfeeding. I wanted to improve the process, make it less wasteful, more efficient. I know you ponies prize efficiency. The answer was love poison.”
“Love… poison…?” Cadance gasped, her hooves still delicately cupping the fang jabbed into her abdomen. The blood just kept flowing. Blueblood ripped down a bundle of silk from a nearby drape to staunch it.
“Love poison,” Chrysalis said again, nodding in amicable agreement with the mare she had just stabbed with her own tooth. “Why so surprised? All changelings possess a poison used in the feeding process… it makes our prey more pliable and cooperative. I simply took the formula you ponies developed and modified it.”
The changeling Queen screwed up her face, as if smelling something rotten.
“It adds a certain tart,” she admitted, “but the results speak for themselves: a long-lasting and extremely potent love-meal. Only…” Chrysalis made a moue face as if to show how sorry she was. “It burns out the victim in a few days. That’s why you’re supposed to save it until you need to eke out the last few drops of emotion. I’d have used it on Alpha as well, but he was too cautious and too valuable to kill, even in such a delightful way. Using it on Shining made me…”
She tapped her chin in thought.
“Rueful?” Chrysalis wondered aloud. “Yes, that’s it. I’ll miss him when he’s gone, my poor, dear, loving husband, Shining Armor.”
“You’re a monster.” Cadance shuddered again, tears flowing down her cheeks. “A monster,” she said again, moaning as the fang was ripped out of her stomach and thrown aside. Her middle lifted as Lyra and Blueblood wrapped a line of cloth around her. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed him.”
“Oh, don’t cry!” Chrysalis licked her lips again. “The same poison in Shining is flowing through you, now, too. If you’re lucky, you can die together, just like in a romance novel… and you have me to thank! Am I not a thoughtful Queen?”
“Cadance is right,” Lyra said, turning her eyes to the swaying changeling. “You are a monster.”
“I’m sure apples think ponies are monsters, too,” Chrysalis argued.
“I should have Handy rip you apart!” Lyra roared, standing up. “How would you like that?”
“You’ll kill me? Me?” Chrysalis was incredulous, as if after all that she had done and said she was still untouchable. This, despite dangling helpless at the mercy of Lyra’s magic. “You’re welcome to try… but if you do, you may not like what happens.”
“What do you mean?” Blueblood asked, trying damned hard to keep his own cool. In his hooves, Cadance seemed to have given in to despair. All she could do was look at the empty-eyed husk of Shining Armor. Chrysalis had broken her, as much with her words as with her poison.
“Kill me, and my oldest daughter Instar becomes Queen,” Chrysalis explained with a shark’s smile. “My dear daughter is capable but none too fond of you Equestrians. I know full well that she will hold thousands of them hostage to ensure the swarms can leave Canterlot. And to prove her seriousness, she will execute hundreds of them and send their poor little heads tumbling off the edge of the city to rain down on those below.”
“But that isn’t all!” the Queen added. “I have two more aces up my sleeve, contingencies in case of the worst. The first is a name you wouldn’t recognize… the Ichchadhari Nagin. The greatest monsters of the changeling race. The second threat is more mundane… did you notice the barrels in this room?”
Blueblood looked to the side. He had, in fact, noticed them: one by the desk, the other in the corner near the back of the room. They looked like typical barrels, the type that would hold cider or apples or water or even salt.
“Powder,” Chrysalis told him, “sulfur and pitch… I wanted the legendary spell for the Phlogiston from you – that was Night Shade’s job – but even without it, I made backup plans to burn this city to the ground.” The Queen of Queens laughed again as all three of her captors paled in realization. “Kill me… and you kill Canterlot!”
“If that happens, no changeling will escape this city alive,” Blueblood argued. “We shall all burn.”
“Then we shall all burn,” Chrysalis called his bluff. “So what will it be, Prince? Princess? You know, you three still owe me a wedding present.”
“You sick—” Lyra stumbled mid-sentence, falling on her back as the palace trembled one last time. It was another earthquake.
Except this time, it was punctuated by a great crash outside.
“What the heck?” Lyra grumbled, rubbing the back of her head. “What’s with all these earthquakes? These mountains are supposed to be geologically stable! That’s why the government built so many secret bases under the city!”
“Miss Heartstrings, trust me: we did not build any secret bases under Canterlot.” Blueblood trotted over to the windows and threw open the shades.
What he saw left him speechless.
“Or…” He spoke slowly, still not sure what he was seeing. “Maybe we did?”
“What?” Chrysalis growled.
“What!” Lyra asked, eyes lighting up. Finally, one of her conspiracies was true!
Blueblood turned away from the window, glancing back at the two other mares. “We have to get out of here. It won’t be long before some changeling comes to wake up the Queen here and tell her about this.”
“What is happening?” Chrysalis snarled, struggling again against the unbreakable grip Lyra’s magic had on her horn. “What was that crash? I can’t see! What was it?”
“I think I know.”
It was Cadance, and she was back up on her hooves.
“I think I know,” she said again. “And you’re right; we need to get out of here.”
“You can’t kill me,” Chrysalis reminded her. Gone was the look of paralysis and hopelessness on the Princess’ face. Gone was the resignation and despair. But missing was also the look of helpless frustrated rage from before. Through her frown, the Princess of Love seemed almost eerily serene.
“If I die, this city burns,” Chrysalis said, unable to see but aware of the wounded Cadance coming closer. “You’ll be responsible for thousand more dying. Is that what you want? Do you really think you can live with—”
A telekinetic tendril of Cadance’s magic slipped under Chrysalis’ wing.
“Ah!” Chrysalis gasped, shifting her weight away. “Wait. Wait!”
“I was wrong about you,” Cadance said, then. “You aren’t evil. You aren’t a monster. You’re just a sick, twisted, wicked reflection of me. All the mistakes I’ve made and regretted, you reveled in; all the doubts I had, you embraced, proudly; all the love I live and long for, you consume and destroy. The family I always wished I’d had as a child, you make mockery of.”
Chrysalis’ upper lip curled, her dull, blinded eyes flashed with mute rage.
“But you,” Cadance spoke slowly, like drawing a knife over a wound, “will never be me.”
Then, with an ear-splitting crack, Cadance’s magic came away, and Chrysalis howled in raw pain. Wriggling like a fish on a hook, she thrashed wildly, hooves beating savagely at anything in range, her left wing beating frantically. There was a wet “pop,” and she screamed again, cursing and trying to rip herself free. It was all for naught. She had no magic, no unicorn magic, and Lyra’s Handy did not relent or slacken its grip, no matter how much Chrysalis beat on it.
Cadance’s magic withdrew, taking with it a diaphanous wing.
“Princess,” Blueblood swore.
Lyra winced. “Ouch.”
“Blue,” Cadance said, turning to him. “You can teleport us all to Celestia, right? You, me, Lyra, Shining, and the Queen?”
“The privacy spell won’t interfere with it, if that’s what you’re asking,” he answered slowly, staring at his adopted sister in shock, “but…”
“Good. We’re going to leave the changelings a little message,” Cadance explained, waving the bloody tip of the membranous wing she had ripped free. “And then we’re going to get out of here. All five of us.”
- - -
“My Queen?” The knocking on the door intensified. Four changelings were standing before the door, waiting for permission to enter. “O Queen?”
They were about to push the doors open, and risk the Queen’s ire, when another member of the changeling “royal guard” stomped into the scene. Unlike the others, mere scaled-up drones, this one fit the alicorn-like profile of a changeling Princess beneath the dark helmet and metal armor. She carried herself with authority as she advanced up to the door.
“Mother!” the new arrival yelled. “It’s me, Pharate! I’m opening the door. No one else will enter!”
She turned to the other changelings.
“Stay here,” she ordered, and the lesser changelings readily agreed. They quickly averted their eyes when Pharate pushed open the doors and slipped inside.
“Mother?” Pharate asked, approaching the bed. There was a single large lump under the covers. “Mother? We have a situation! Your wisdom and expertise is needed in the—”
Pharate came to a stop next to the bed, pulling the covers back slightly to reveal a pile of pillows…
And one severed changeling wing.
Pinned to the membranous wing was a single piece of white stationery, taken from Celestia’s desk nearby and stamped with the seal of the Office of the Princess of Equestria. Aghast, Pharate read over the note and then a second time. Stumbling backwards, she fell onto her rump, holding the note in shaking chitin hooves. This was bad. This was very bad! In a way, worse than finding the whole body. With a stunned expression, Princess Pharate read the note one last time.
The note was useless. Baffling. There was nothing explaining who this “we” even was.
“Guards!” Pharate yelled, rushing back to the door. “Search the Palace! Search the grounds! Search everywhere! Now!”
A piece of paper floated to the floor. On it were two sentences.
WE HAVE HER.
ARE YOU READY TO NEGOTIATE?
- - -
Princess Luna appeared atop the escarpment in a swirl of shadow. A true night owl, it was not in her nature to rest when the night was in full bloom. Instead, while her friends and allies slept and regained their strength, she worked to organize the motley assortment of noble banners that had made their way to the newly secured Sky Harbor. Already, a trickle of pegasi had flown in under the cover of the city shield, and that trickle increased with regular flights of ponies from Cloudsdale once the shield fell. For all the energy needed to organize the retinues of dozens of noble mares and stallions, there was just as much work needed to keep the survivors and fighters fed, watered, and well-supplied. That work continued, day and night.
The quakes had not at first seemed too unusual. The enemy’s vile War Worms – creatures Luna knew as Tatzlwurms, but parasitized by the brown changelings – often tried to tunnel up close before emerging to strike with fleshy tentacles. Scouts and other wary ponies had quickly learned to identify the telltale vibrations as “worm sign” along with the damage the creatures did to the surface when they moved. Everypony had thus assumed the periodic tremors to be the work of yet more worms and began assembling for a counter attack.
Luna shielded her eyes with a leg as a blast of dust erupted upwards from around a castle in the distance.
Camlann.
That was the source: Camlann Castle. Through narrowed eyes, she could see armed equestrians vacating the structure. Camlann was not a particularly large château, even by crowded Canterlot standards. There was the single large keep, built of stone and wood in the classic style, and four large quarters of gardens around it, surrounded by a low wall. Around that were yet more shops, homes, and a small marketplace selling vanities.
“What’s going on out there?” A brash voice asked as Rainbow Dash swooped down to land next to the Princess of the Night. She had keen eyes, as most pegasi did, and squinted against the pre-dawn light to try and discern what was happening around the castle.
“What you see are ponies, correct?” Luna asked. It was likely Rainbow had better eyes than she did, plus a better instinctive feeling for flight and how things moved in the sky.
“I think so,” Dash answered, pursing her lips together. “It isn’t easy to say for sure… They could be changelings, but it looks like they’re ponies, and it looks like they’re evacuating.”
“I thought as much,” Luna murmured. A frown crossed her features. “Camlann was being used as a refuge for survivors, but now they are all leaving the safety its the walls. Why?”
“Somethin’ ta do with all that rockin’ and rumblin’ I’d guess,” Applejack said, pulling herself up the escarpment without much trouble. She then turned and held out a hoof, to help Rarity up to join them.
“It is entirely too early for more trouble – even if this is a war zone,” Rarity complained, bleary-eyed but unwilling to sit this one out. Her mane was frizzled, her coat color was slightly off, and it was rather clear that she was not a morning pony. Applejack, on the other hand, looked the exact same as always. Life on a farm had obviously blessed her with constitution suited to waking up and getting to work at five in the morning.
Another rumble, this one greater than the ones before it, very nearly tossed Rarity back and off the elevated rubble of the former roof. She just barely caught herself. Yet the rumbling did not peak and fall; this time it kept on and on as if a crescendo about to reach new heights. All present felt it. There was something coming.
Something big.
“Look!” Dash yelled, pointing towards the castle. “Look at the ground!”
Luna did. The ground… was glowing.
“What the hay?” Applejack shuddered as an involuntary shiver ran up her spine, strong enough to make the hairs of her coat stand on end – strong enough to make the hairs of her mane fizzle with static electricity. Luna felt it, too. A part of her was earth pony as much as unicorn and pegasus. There was a tremendous amount of magic ahead and under the surface. No doubt thousands of earth ponies in Canterlot were feeling it just like Applejack was.
Around Camlann Castle, the ground glowed, and that glow cut across the ground in a line, like a chef cutting out the lining of a pie. The glow pierced through buildings, cut across boulevards, bisected a plaza, and it wasn’t alone… three other lines were also emerging, circling Camlann, cutting it off from the rest of the city. In all of two seconds, the four thin lines connected to form a seamless glowing moat around the castle grounds, engulfing dozens of other buildings nearby in the process.
For a moment, the city was still, hushed, holding its breath.
Then the ground swelled and heaved upwards, whole huge slabs of it rising up out of the earth. They were cut in perfect shapes like toy blocks, ejected from below with incredible magical force. A wave of dust blasted out from the cracks in the slabs as they rose, hundreds of tons of it, filling the air in a gritty cloud and surging down the streets like water in a flood. The latter observation was more prescient than Luna had expected, as a second wave of sand followed the dust cloud, sweeping down the streets and destroying everything in its path.
At the center of it all, Camlann Castle heaved violently upwards, the stately little château buckling under the strain beneath it. The slender watch tower that crowned the manor snapped in half, the topmost portion dropping down to vanish into the billowing cloud of dust below. The east wall collapsed next, exposing several floors of the evacuated interior. Bricks and stone from the decorative allure atop the wall came loose, tumbling off the sides like rain off the edge of an umbrella. The fortified barbican, more ornamental than truly functional, ripped loose, huge metal bars and braces twisting as they popped free. Finally, the four bartizans, the small turrets built into each corner of the keep, came off and took most of the rest of the walls with them.
In seconds, the beautiful Canterlot château was just a spreading cloud of rubble.
- - -
“Depth: zero meters,” Eunomie announced, and a cheer came up from her subordinates.
Twilight Sparkle finished off her coffee and mindfully placed the cup down on a nearby table. Next to her, Alpha Brass watched impassively as an illusionary simulacrum of his castle above the Gardens disintegrated. The remnants were even now tumbling down off the side of the Garden’s hemispherical shield.
“We are now ascending above ground level,” Eunomie said, steady waves of magic flowing away from her pure white horn. “Two meters… four meters.”
“Are you ready, Twilight?” Brass asked, looking to her to be sure. “Are you ready to show me a five alliteration spell?”
“I’m ready,” she assured him, determined to do her best. He nodded and looked away, and Twilight nibbled her lower lip. She was ready and she was determined, none of that had been untrue, but it would’ve been hard to tell the truth if he had asked, “have you done this before?”
“I’m ready,” she said again, this time to herself. “I can do this. I have to do this.”
“Observers confirm: Canterlot’s shield is down!” one of Eunomie’s subordinates announced with a grin. “We have clear skies.”
“No damage to superstructure,” another said. “Signal-Blue is Go! Lady Woolpack’s pegasi are expanding the brume-work into a dense cloud foundation.”
“We are seven seconds behind schedule,” Eunomie stated, neither angry nor happy, simply sticking to the job as outlined. “Height: twelve meters. We are free of all ground obstructions and picking up speed.”
- - -
Luna gaped as the first few stone structures emerged from the suspiciously dome-shaped cloud of dust. In that instant, it became clear what was happening before her eyes. “By the Brightest Stars… a Sky Palace?”
“Sky Palace?” Applejack’s green eyes were wide. She had seen Cloudsdale before, but Cloudsdale was mostly cloud. It was a pegasus city. What few non-cloud structures there, you could hardly see from below. Not to mention that Cloudsdale had always hovered in the sky, it didn’t burrow up from underground!
“Like yours?” Rarity asked, meaning the one Luna had told her about in the distant past.
“We… came—” she avoided using the word ‘invaded’ “—to Canterlot in many Sky Palaces…”
“How many?” the Baroness of Ponyville asked, also watching the palace ascend with a look of awe; it wasn’t another colossal worm, at least, but was this the work of friend or foe?
“Nine,” Luna answered, and the shield around the palace shimmered as it shed the last few particles of dust and earth. What she saw below was a central platform surrounded by a green ring of gardens and white stone turrets. Trees grew on well-watered terraces and tiny motes, pegasid perhaps, flew beneath the shielded canopy.
“Nine Sky Palaces came to Equestria with my sister and my father,” she explained, shaking her head. “Four were repurposed to enhance the foundations of Cloudsdale… The others fell into disrepair when their magics faded. I don’t recognize this one.”
Dash whistled at the sight and, as always, cut to the heart of the matter. “So someone or something probably built it from scratch. I think the biggest question is: is it one of ours?”
As it ascended, great banners were unrolled off the sides, a hundred hooves long. Emblazoned on the swallow-tailed gonfalons all could see, even from affair, the heraldry of a bull’s horns and an eight-pointed star. It was the emblem of the Terre Rare, unmistakable, borne by them since the time of Arsenic herself. This version of it, however, displayed one clear deviation. The star was magenta, and around it circled five much smaller stars, white against the near-black field, three below and two above.
“That’s Twilight’s cutie mark,” Rarity said what they were all thinking. “Is this her doing?”
“Hah-ha! So it is one of ours!” Dash reasoned and started to laugh. She pumped a hoof in excitement. “Yeah! Go Twilight! I knew she’d find some kind of doomsday weapon!”
“This is a good thing, ain’t it?” Applejack asked, tentative. “Rarity? Princess? I can see neither of ya were expecting this ‘ta happen, but this is a good thing, right?”
Luna choose to remain silent.
Rarity, however, smiled and nodded, for her friend’s benefit if nothing else. “Yes,” she answered, wishing her smile was more genuine. “It must be.” She turned to the floating palace that continued to rise higher in the sky over the besieged and battered city. Despite a wary feeling in the pit of her stomach, she tried to remain optimistic.
“I dare say we’re due a stroke of good luck by now.”
- - -
“<Who is your Queen?>” Euporie asked, reclining on a fold-out lawn chair. Two glasses of liquid, one orange the other clear, mixed in a field of her magic overhead. The contents of both were then poured into a third glass – the other two tossed carelessly into the nearby pond – and the resulting concoction downed in one bitter gulp. Euporie grimaced, finished the drink, and then put the glass down next to her.
The taste had been foul, but it was better than a hangover.
“<My Queen?>” the chained changeling to her right asked, surprised by the question. “<Do you mean Chrysalis?>”
“<Your hive-Queen,>” Euporie clarified. Though the translation was imperfect, she trusted it got the message across. The changeling seemed to be mustering up another vicious hiss, but one look at the two guardponies nearby disabused her of that impulse. Both were only waiting for the slightest word from their Mistress.
A third guard, this one a griffin, was also close by with a pair of huge dogs. Those same changeling-hunting dogs had torn a leopard-sized changeling apart less than a half hour earlier. The sight of it, and the cooling corpse that had shortly been tossed into a pile, were more than on the changeling’s mind as it considered whether to cooperate or not.
“Bahati,” the changeling answered in broken Equestrian. “Bahati Princess. Princess Queen.”
“<Is she a Princess…>” Euporie used the Marabic word for junior of a queen. The Equestrian for ‘princess’ usually translated to ‘queen’ in other languages, since Celestia had ruled as one in all but name for a millennia. “<Or a Queen?>”
“<Both,>” the changeling explained, tugging slightly at the chain around its feline neck. “<Old Queen Bahati fought Chrysalis and Sarai. They came to Queen’s Pride, made demands… demands we join their swarm. Bahati was proud, strong. Golden Hive was oldest hive, strongest hive, best hive. Bahati said she would not join with lesser hives. Lesser hives were for crushing. Bahati said she would not feed alongside lesser Queens. Lesser Queens were for crushing.>”
Euporie nodded, understanding the sentiment. “<Chrysalis killed her.>”
“<Chrysalis killed her.>”
“<And she made you follow her here, to Equestria.>”
“<Golden Ones have no choice. Young Queen Bahati, Princess Bahati, bowed to Chrysalis. Kept captive.>” The changeling hissed again, but this time not at her equine captors. “<Golden Ones told to leave Queen’s Pride. Golden Ones told to leave great valley. Golden Ones told to leave Sunset Lands. Green Queen must be obeyed. Golden Ones told to board great ships, hide in them, hide underground with brown and green and red savages. Green Queen Chrysalis promises many not-zebra for every Golden One to feed on as long as we obey.>”
Euporie shook her head sadly and ran a hoof down the changeling’s cheek. “<I see. The Golden Ones were just victims of the evil Green Queen.>”
“<Yes!>” the yellow changeling hissed, but happily. “<Victim! Victim of Green Queen!>”
“<And all the ponies you’ve killed?>”
“<Not-zebra?>” the changeling asked and shied away from Euporie’s hoof.
“Unicorn,” Euporie explained, motioning to herself before pointing to one of her winged guards. “Pegasus.” Finally, she singled out one of the wingless, hornless equestrians, not a guard this time, but one of the survivors her team had rescued. “Earth pony.”
“Po-ny,” the changeling repeated the word, seeming to taste it in her mouth.
Euporie’s hoof drifted over and abruptly grabbed the chain around the changeling’s neck. Yanking it towards her, the yellow shape-shifter growled in surprise and pain.
“<How many have you killed? How many did you plan to enslave? You understand that word, don’t you? Enslave?>” Euporie’s amber eyes bored into the changeling, and her lip curled in visible anger. “<If I were one of these weak ponies, would you be feeding on me right now?> Ehhh? Answer me!”
Gritting its teeth, the feline channeling snarled and snapped at Euporie, aiming to bite her face off. “<Not-zebra still prey! Feed! Feed on you!>”
“Mistress!” “My Lady!”
“Relax,” Euporie ordered, her hoof holding firm around the changeling’s lower jaw. Despite being larger than her, both in mass and length, the chained changeling couldn’t break free of her grip. It tried to twist away, but Euporie’s hoof couldn’t be moved.
“Relax,” she said again, glancing back at her guards. “What is there to worry about? Have you forgotten who I am?”
Standing up off her lawn chair, Euporie kept her hoof raised, and the changeling’s lower jaw in her grip.
“Hrrm! Hhm!” The changeling gnashed her teeth, only able to move her upper jaw, and not enough to bite down on anything solid.
“<You will never feed again.>” Euporie said, simply. “<You changelings think everypony should fear you. The truth is… you… should fear… us.>”
Her foreleg twisted, her grip tightened, and the changeling fell back with a cry.
“The pain must be incredible,” Euporie stated, lowering down onto all fours and glancing over at the changeling. It was trying to cradle its broken jaw. A smile dawned on her face and her horn began to glow. “I’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine.”
The changeling froze.
“Laugh,” Euporie commanded, her magic burning bright. “Laugh for me.”
And, despite the pain, despite the broken jaw, the changeling began to laugh. It was little more than a gargle, half-hiss and half slobbering chortle.
“My Lady?” A guard approached and bowed, clearly a bit hesitant to interrupt her commander’s fun. “The Device is ready for you.”
Euporie’s horn dimmed, and she turned away from the fallen changeling. “Perfect timing!” she exclaimed, inhaling deeply and turning around three-sixty to look around the park as it caught the first few rays of morning sunlight.
She stopped when she faced the floating gardens in the sky, visible from anywhere in the city.
“Everything is in place,” she said with a laugh of her own. “Twilight Sparkle! I’m waiting for you!”
- - -
Twilight Sparkle stood atop the highest central tower of the Hanging Gardens, now more like Floating Gardens. A cold wind rippled through her mane as the light pierced the horizon far in the distance. Below her, the gardens themselves stretched out in tiers and terraces. Above her, a transmission tower extended, even higher into the sky. This, she knew, would be even better than what she had planned for. From here, her spell could reach every corner of the country.
It was perfect.
“Equestria,” she said into the wind. No one could hear her, but they would feel her magic in just a moment.
“Princess,” she said, and thought of her mentor, of Celestia. The changelings had captured her. Who knew if she was even still alive?
“My friends,” she said and thought of Ponyville. It was under siege. Her friends and their families were in danger.
“Shining,” she said and thought of her brother. Her brother. Enslaved by Chrysalis. Her mother, replaced by a changeling. Damn Chrysalis.
“Brass,” she whispered and thought of the pony who had helped her get here. Who had given her the tools to keep fighting, to save her plan – the stallion who wanted to protect her and help her protect others.
“Everypony!” Twilight yelled, a deep magenta magic pouring out of her horn, suffusing her skin, expanding in all directions and trailing behind her like a comet’s tail. Her mane whipped violently back and not due to the wind; her magic rose up like a tidal wave, breaking over the top of a dam. “Everypony! You’ve waited a long time for this! Risqué’s Rampant Retaliatory Role Reversal!”
Stats
Page generated in 0.038 seconds
Total duration
1,082 users online
1,853,009 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
To be concluded in 2019!
That observation from Chrysalis is... scarily accurate.
I mean... Cadance's presence did destroy Blueblood's family. And... in a twisted way, her presence helped make him the person from the beginning of The Best Night Ever, didn't it? The person that Changelings felt like had no love in him remaining at all. The Princess of Love wound up destroying Blueblood's love...
Of course, the loops helped him fix that... and the way all of these events are swirling around each other, I keep coming back and wondering if the loops had a greater purpose than to help a wayward prince to be less self centered, or if Blueblood is a wrench no one could have expected thrown into all of this.
Exciting and nerve-wracking all at once. So many thoughts swirling around my head. I think I will have to contemplate this chapter a while.
I think I love to dislike Alpha Brass (I don't hate him, I just don't like him).
6282729 Well, he's not pleasant at all. Even if he's trying to do the right thing overall, his methods and motivations just aren't particularly nice. If this were a regular war and they lost that war, he'd be tried for war crimes. As it is, he's likely to end up a hero.
That's....strangely ominous.
Methinks this will be painful for the 'lings.
This chapter was magnificent. It was interesting to see the weakened Chrysalis be captured by Blueblood, Cadence, and Lyra. God knows how the war will go if they attempt to do negotiations now that Chrysalis is, for the moment, out of the picture. It was an interesting scene watching Chrysalis explain to Cadence about how her status/powers made Blueblood's life miserable and made her question herself and Blueblood. Still, it was cathartic to call Chrysalis out on her nature as a twisted version of Cadence herself...and it was kind if badass to see Cadence take a wing off the ruthless queen. Now, it's Alpha's turn to showcase his plan. I'm curious as to whether it'll be shown how Twilight met Arsenic and learned the spell, as a meeting between the ancestor and descendent of the Terre Rare who had magic as a special talent and different views about friendship is sure to be amazing. Thanks for the great chapter.
And so we approach the climax of the Black Weding!
Wait, role reversal? Considering the ponies have turned the tide, that sounds bad.
That's what Cadance should've written.
Ooh..."Role Reversal" may not be the best idea now that the ponies have already gained the upper hoof...
Ohh. Oh dear. I hope that spell isn't going to do what I think it's going to do. Because that spell sounds like it's meant to reverse the situation.
Considering Celestia/Luna are alive and healthy, Chrysalis has been captured, reinforcements are arriving from Cloudsdale, Germane, and Prance...
6280196 But the point is, NOW they're all evil. Whatever moderation there was no longer exists. Also, simply living in a harsh environment doesn't guarantee viciousness. That's a poor excuse and a false generalization. Small nomadic tribes the world over have often been quite hospitable, for the simple fact that they depend so much upon each other for survival and their culture developed into one of magnanimity, where a kindness given could one day be re-payed. This was both a religious and practical mindset in the harsh lands.
Game. On.
6280288 I've seen plenty of serial killers run from the police. I've watched soldiers who burned much of Europe flee before Allied forces. I've seen murderers who didn't shed a tear when they slaughtered their victims sob when the guilty verdict comes down.
Simply because they turn tail and run does not make them innocent. It makes them afraid.
The wicked often know more of fear than the just, which they cover with brutality to appear as though they do not fear. Yet they are ever consumed by it, as demonstrated by the paranoia exhibited by every dictator in history.
Also... the story still has a comedy tag. Seriously? Where the hell is the funny? Are the piles of burning ponies Celestia talked about supposed to make me crack a smile? This story has been 90% violence, ever-increasing in savagery!
Now it has gone full-on horror in these last few chapters.
An adventure-comedy would be the likes of "The Goonies", "Romancing the Stone" or "Pirates of the Carribean" or, at the darkest ends, "Indiana Jones".
Frankly, this is like calling "Schindler's List" a comedy because a few jokes were cracked from time to time.
Unless this whole thing turns out to be a bad dream by Twilight after eating some bad hayburgers, there is no joy to be found anywhere in these words since very very early on.
6284223
90% violence? Full on horror?
Do you really feel that way? If anything, I'd say TPC is mostly dialogue, talking and various characters planning. Dialogue probably takes up the largest portion of the story by volume, though plenty of it is confrontational dialogue or verbal sparring. The next segment would be "action" but there is no category on FIM for action. Overall, I'd say I have maybe 100k words of various fight scenes, which is a lot, but still just a fraction of the whole story. Of truly violent (usually sudden) moments, like in this chapter Cadance ripping off one of Chrysalis' wings after suffering from a prolonged verbal tongue-lashing, there are maybe 5k words or less.
Comedy is present as a tag because scenes of that type probably occupy the third most common form after "adventure" (an admittedly broad definition) and "action" (which has no tag). Plenty of comments have indicated that people found things humorous that were intended to be humorous and I do feel that a serious story can function with lighter moments within it. Tally up all the ridiculous Pinkie Pie stuff, even her crazy fight scenes, and you have a significant chunk of the story in and of itself.
You've been reading TPC with me virtually as long as I've been writing it, Alondro, and I value your opinions and comments. I value all comments and all honest criticism. I'm just wondering if you really think things are that violent and that thematically 'horror' genre, or if you're frustrated due to the changeling discussion.
Frankly, I want changeling morality to be ambiguous, for some people to see naked evil and for others not to. Characters in the story will see them much as different readers do. This is actually a major point in the upcoming TSC Chronicles chapters as well (which take place years after TPC ends).
6283994
That... is actually probably a better kick in the gut than what I wrote. lol. 'The rest of her'
6284146
6284184
6283764
I see a few comments about this, and I'll just snag these three as an example. Don't worry, Twilight won't botch this spell. Or will she?
I have some strange feeling that the ponies will win and most ChangelingQueens will die, but a decade in the future, the changelings will still be a threat. It is almost as though I saw the future.
A role reversal from a pony named Risque, being used against love-eaters... so, I'm guessing that will make them vulnerable to love instead of eating it, which sets the stage for the Shining/Cadence loveblast.
6284223 I don't know if I would say this story as a whole is quite as dark as you make it out to be, a lot of the early chapters had stuff like Flim and Flam's Cider Bar and Rarity doing fashion shoots. That said, I would say this story definitely qualifies for a dark tag, mostly due to the changlings, but even due to some of the stuff with the Terre Rare. I would say this story is a moderately dark action adventure, which has some comedy elements, and some romance elements as well. That said, I don't think this story really fits with a comedy tag any more than it really fits with a romance tag, there's simply not enough of that by volume in the story.
6284589 if there ever was a better time for her to botch it....
That sounds like a spell one won't need to cast more than once, and probably couldn't.
I imagine with what could be Cadance's writing, in magenta ink, and a heart dotting the I (even if it's all uppercase).
They'll probably later regret not having left her horn there instead of her wing.
6284223
Personally, I dont think the comics painted them as pure evil. The queen perhaps but not all of them. It clearly showed that the drones were capable of independent thought and even questioning the Queen's leadership, albeit to implied fatal results. I'm a firm believer that evil is a product of choice and environment, that if a being has the ability to think, then it can chose to be good, even if its nature and/or society dictates otherwise. Then there is the inescapable fact that an un-desgised changeling was present at Cranky and Matilda's wedding who, according to the writers, was a friend of Matilda's.
The question for this story is not if the ponies will win but rather if they will spare the surviving changelings or commit genocide which would make them even worse monsters than the changelings themselves.
I like Princess Cadence getting hardcore on Chrysalis here. Well-deserved payback.
Also, I don't really count preserving art and culture for your own use after committing genocide on part of the population and enslaving the rest as anything resembling a good act. I mean, seriously? At most, it's pragmatic villainy: don't senselessly burn what you can loot.
6284805 I like that idea!
6285875 Well, in the comics the changelings were spawned from a tree of death and evil on an ancient battlefield of mass slaughter... kinda think that screwed their chances at being even an antihero. Vegeta had more going for him!
There has to be some sort of pathos to a villain to make something more of them than the guy everyone loves to hate.
It's fine to have a purely evil villain as contrast to a good guy dedicated to super goodness (and, in Goku's case in opposition to Frieza or Cell, incomprehensible stupidity and bacon addiction), but if the villain is going to come with a backstory, interact frequently with the heroes and other characters and you're going to get in their head and they blather on for a significant length of time... it's dull to have everything, starting with their origins, be practically dripping evil from the getgo. All that ends up doing is having people shrug their shoulders and go back to waiting for the villains to get their comeuppance.
Or for those really emo people, to watch the heroes die horribly as they psycho villains butcher then alive or something like that... such people worry me at times... but I digress, I like to see a literary villain with a strong presence in the story amount to more than just a dirtbag, or a race of dirtbags.
In the comics, Sombra almost made it, but his instantaneous conversion ruined it at the end. There was no internal struggle, no self-doubt or questioning his allegiances. He just got zapped by evil and SHAZAM!! Instantly evil! It made everything in the story to that scene pointless, and then made us wonder why the evil Sombra was suddenly writing this autobiography apparently as the Princesses were on their way to fight him. The lazy, hasty ending shattered a strong lead-up, as many movies have done. "Hancock" did that with a 3rd act that just lost control of where it was going and threw in god concepts out of the blue.
I was hoping to see at least one hive working with the ponies, instead the most decent one of them only wants to save those she finds interesting to the culture... I could make another Nazi comparison here... but I think it's been demonstrated these changelings fit the bill pretty conclusively already.
Alpha Brass is Stalin... far more deadly in the long run.
It's clearly a T-Rex.
Oooo, it'd suck to have been the changelings in those particular tunnels.
But even more so to be this one.
Handy, so cute and so helpful!
Did I mention friendly? Definitely friendly, too.
Oye, Cadance. Never give the enemy a chance to monologue, and if you do never listen to that monologue. It's just opening anyone and everyone in earshot up to manipulation.
See? That was so preventable. (Though I am suspicious it needed to happen to get Cadance into the same poisoned state as Shining, it feels like it's probably not a coincidence story-wise that that just happened.)
Hah! In truth though, the Terre Rare in particular if not Equestria in general are really pretty good candidates for being the subject of conspiracy theories.
Daaaamm. Cadance just went hard core. It's always the pink ones!
So they even have a term for what the gardens are, a Sky Palace? Cool.
Awesome bit of world-building there. Reminds me a bit of some of the floating structures in the Malazan series.
I love that Dash has the sort of faith in Twilight that she figured she'd be coming up with a doomsday weapon at some point.
Hmn, is that just a five alliteration, countrywide version of the gender swap spell?
6284589
I'm actually on the latter page with you, I would still like to believe that there can be some sort of peaceful coexistence. For an imperfect real world comparison, there's a difference between Nazi Germany and the German people. Dismantling the former didn't require exterminating the later, and given the wide variety of changeling types we've seen and how many of them haven't been committing genocide (well, until Chrysalis showed up they weren't), the in-progress crisis could just as easily be described as a changeling regime issue as a fundamental consequence of the species.
There's still time to edit it in if Derpsby doesn't mind!
So did anyone else think that after chapter 55, "Not To The Strongest", the title of chapter 56 would be called "But To The Most Worthy"?
6287944
Err, what? The changelings came from a probably-magic-do-not-approach tee that sprouted from an ugly acorn that a squirrel rejected.
6284223
I guess posing before a mirror is also indicative of complete and utter evil?
Also, let's not forget: Exuvia did more than just try to save the "most cultured". She let Octavia go, along with the information about Alpha Brass' involvement with the Changelings. And she let her go so that they know to take out Instar, who would turn this into a slaughterfest more than it is now. Perhaps just to gain power... but also perhaps because she doesn't want this kind of bloodshed.
In any case, she gave Octavia every relevant piece of information and then let her wander off to be rescued. Think about that.
Some things I noticed:
Anyway, when I saw this in my updates list the sheer excitement almost gave me a heart attack. I was so sad that this story had likely been abandoned. It didn't disappoint with the updates!
6306676
It is, exactly. Are you the first person to notice that? You may well be! Vinyl's thoughts kind of mirror my own there (and, heck, elsewhere, too). He was so controversial when I was a teenager and then he became so bland and irrelevant just a few years later, his moment in the sun gone forever. It doesn't help his image in my eyes that he tried to eke out some popularity by going for the low hanging fruit of mocking bronies back when that was still supposedly the cool thing to do.
6301483
Hmm. Corrections to make!
Thanks!
6292572
I think it might have been Paradise Lost?
6294524
Exuvia probably would favor a way to live peacefully among ponies if such a possibility presented itself, but she's also pragmatic enough to be wary of assuming they can all live together in harmony just like that. Especially after all this. She's a ponyphile, or equiphile maybe, but she's still a changeling, loyal to her mother in as much as she has to be, and her first and foremost responsibility is to look out for her people.
Chrysalis in TPC is sort of like how some elites from non-European societies became Westernized, except the aspects of the west that they brought back to their homelands were the tyrannical ones that helped them seize and hold power. In that way, Chrys is kind of like the pan-X leaders (pan-Arabist, pan-African, etc) who may have noble goals but generally ignoble ambitions as well. Exuvia is a counterpart to that, coming back more liberalized and enamored with the host culture, favoring rapprochement rather than confrontation. Changelings, separated from their Queens, can and do run the gamut of opinions and personalities. They're monolithic, but yet not monolithic, more like a bundle of sticks tightly bound. And yes, I know what the word for that is.
Anyway, new chapter update coming soon. I'm running it through the site's doc designer right now.
First of all....LOVE POISON?
You ingenious mulefucker!
I forgot all about that. And my word, you also stopped the "Lovesplosion" with Cadence and Shining. You just ripped all of Canterlot Wedding right up, didn't you?
One last thing: "Role Reversal?"
Dis gon b good.
Role reversal...Twilight intends this to swap the gender of everything in Equestria. I can't help but think Euporie intends to turn every pony into a monster as vile as the parasitic changelings.
The confrontation between Cadenza and Chrysalis was a complete surprise. I envisioned another battle, with the Queen's physical blindness a mirror to her mental blocks towards her goals. Instead, a veil is lifted from a Princess, and a terrible truth is revealed to her. Chrysalis has already had her moment of triumph: defeating Celestia. She has had a moment of despair: Celestia's escape, and the realisation that her plans are unravelling and failing with every moment. Now Cadence has triumphed in her escape after months of abuse and torture, and despaired in the knowledge of her and Shining's short futures.
Both changeling and alicorn are now calm. They are dark mirrors indeed.
Again, thank you, Captain.
6284589 for what it is worth, I've seen Alondro a lot in the comments on Fimfiction over the years, and they are to a one full of negative criticism and disdainful of nuanced approaches to morality and motivation. I can, generally, predict what they are going to say before I read them.
I don't know why he reads any of the stories he does; I get the feeling he doesn't get any enjoyment out of them.
Having just re-read the entirety of the fic, there has been comedy enough throughout to merit the comedy tag, even the recent chapters. Luna stealths through an airship like she's Roger Moore's James Bond, quipping with every kill and snagging some brandy to enjoy later as she snuffs the life out of drones. Blueblood breaks out of a hellish nightmare, joking all the way. Literally any scene with Pinkie.
A story without any light can turn into a droning mess. One can appreciate darkness only because of the light.
6284223 dude. What the hay?
You stick with this guy from start to finish, then spit stuff like this at him?
That's like me talking down to Pusspuss! Or AJ Afficionado! Or Ender001!
Or even my bro Wanderer D, who helped this brony!
This story may have a lot of..."negativity and aggression" but he adds little spices of fun and comedy in before things get grimdark.
What about that moment when Luna found that changeling modeling in front of a mirror?
what about that playboy Blueblood and when he talks to Rarity?
What about Pinkie Pie?
If you are saying even Pinkie is not finny, then you must be Maud, cause I can only count one moment when she wasn't funny, and it was at Eupories orgy.
And that is a moment checkmark ed for the mile line, cause it was still a big moment!
Personally, I have found this story to trump virtually all other stories in means of pure round characterization.
Every character is so unique, and we'll rounded, you could literally make a story on them based purely off what he gives you.
and they would be the main character!
Other then his spectacular ability to create well rounded characters with personality, he also has a real eye for making some awesome magic! (Not as good as my New Oblivia magic, but I give him 5/10 on my own scale. Higher then the 1 or 0 of everybody else)
And not only that! This guy can twist plots better then Cloud Kicker and Blueblood combined! And when I say Twist Plots, I mean this guy can make a storyline so convuluted, that if you went five chapters in, it would be like scratching a coin over a lottery ticket.
out of 10 boxes
This guy just has the most amazing world building skills I have ever encountered.
...well...maybe besides Kkat, but he is a special case.
The point remains! Why don't you take a page from your very own fandom, sir.
you know? The one main thing our fandom and MLP is iconic ally known for?
Freindship.
Learn it. Then go apologize to your friend for being a stick in the mud.
Oh, by the way, sorry for Thsi long comment,Capn
just making sure this ship doesn't rock and sink. (Ship jokes, Capn)
Also, Capn and D, sittin' in a tree!
C O N S P I R I N G! (Ship jokes, Capn)
6282721
This is looking more accurate than ever.