Changeling Heart and the New Moon
chapter sixteen
The resounding slam of hooves on stone rattled the patrolling guards. Just as they steadied themselves at the surprise of seeing their princess, the aftershocks of Luna a moment startled them again. The two alicorns skipped and flitted along the parapets, flustered and giddy from their sudden burst of flight.
Celestia nuzzled Luna and touched her wings with her own. Luna met the gestures much in kind. It was a moment out of time, a simple joy from before royalty, before changelings, before nightmares and chaos, before even a whisper of the Elements had ever made themselves known.
Celestia stopped as they passed through an arch into their citadel and the intervening years crashed in upon them both like so many pieces of stained glass.
“Luna...” she began, but the uncommon fluster had turned her usual surety to nervousness. For the dark alicorn, it was a rare and strangely endearing thing to see.
It didn’t last. Before the last note of her false-start had even faded into silence Celestia began again, all trace of fallibility banished from herself. It was like a wall had been raised.
“Luna. I am glad you are back. Before anything else, I want you to know that. I was worried.”
So many times Luna had encountered it before. There were days she despaired that they were too different, too changed from the sisters they’d both been so long ago. She wondered if Celestia feared the same.
Conflict flickered across the white alicorn’s features as if she assaulted her side of the divide, trying to reconcile Celestia the reigning princess with Celestia the big sister. She didn’t smile, but the tension eased from her wings and her eyes softened.
Despite everything - or perhaps because of it - Luna smiled for her. She was tired of the worry and the strain. It all became so much simpler when she accepted that she just wanted to be close again, and the rest be damned.
A nondescript unicorn of the guard broke in on her thoughts. “Princess,” he began, shifting slightly as he added a belated plural, “Some of the journalists are already at the gate and more are showing up by the minute. What do you want us to do?”
“Leave them be for now.” Celestia stole a look to Luna. “They’ll be seen to in a moment. You may go.”
“As you wish,” the guard said, bowing deeply to each alicorn before departing.
“I’ll go to them, before their confusion becomes anything worse.” In a softer tone, one that, if not breaking the wall still managed to peek out over it, she added. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” A smile ghosted the white alicorn’s mouth.
Luna said nothing and looked away, her eyes closed for a moment’s thought.
‘Yes’ she said, because Celestia always managed the duties of royalty when Luna came up short. Luna would retire to the privacy of her chambers to rest, glad to have Celestia step in and solve her problems better than she could have. In short time she managed to find a fair solution to the changeling crisis that Luna had made for them all, and all the while the dark alicorn retreated further from contact, even her sister’s, no longer needed, Luna trying to convince herself it had been, as always, the sensible thing to do, but always the feelings festered, the resentment that refused to be dispelled, and sooner or later it boiled over and the power took hold of her and she’d know the full despair that not even the legendary powers of the Elements could truly save her from the seething darkness of the nightmare...
“No.” Her voice and body trembled as she buried her head in the warm shelter of her sister’s shoulder, enough so that she could feel her big sister stiffen with worry. “I started this. It should be me.”
Soft feathers fell upon her. “Are you sure? They’d...they’ll be uncertain. Maybe I should...” Luna sorely wanted Celestia to go on convincing them both that she was right, but it had to stop.
“I know. They’d rather see you. They always prefer to see you. Nopony trusts me like they trust you.” There was no upset in her voice, just honesty. “I can’t change that without trying to.” Luna gently pulled away and looked deep into the worried eyes of her sister. “I can’t keep being your shadow.”
Far in the distance of those beautiful eyes, something flickered with pain and understanding.
Luna instinctively began to take deep, steadying breaths as she readied herself to face the crowd a second time, all of them looking for answers that she didn’t have. She was not going to enjoy this.
Whatever wall there’d been lay forgotten as Celestia grabbed up Luna in a very undignified, but much needed, hug.
“I should...” Luna managed to wheeze as white legs wrapped around her the back of her neck.
“They can wait a bit longer,” Celestia said, squeezing Luna to her even more tightly.
Luna gave herself to the simple embrace. When she stopped struggling, it really was quite nice.
The changelings had been put up in a hotel. It was a fairly wealthy one, situated in one of those districts where the common pony in the street very assuredly believed themselves to be anything but suffering existence as ‘the common pony.’
As far as they went, the hotel probably had a lot going for it - not that the changelings cared. With the eye of a self-declared expert Chrysalis took it in at a glance, from the big shining chandelier above the carpet-lined staircases to the centrepiece fountain of the lobby. Chrysalis decided it was decent enough. She could hardly care less for pony aesthetics, but she’d never pass up an opportunity to rail on them, especially if those ponies were acutely aware of it.
Changelings were the only guests here now, if they could be called that. The royal guards had done something useful for once and barged in, cleared the startled occupants in the princess’ name, all but shoved the visiting enemies inside before taking up watching to see if they tried something.
Chrysalis had the penthouse, which was nice because it had the only doors in the building where she didn’t have to stoop and sidle to slip through them. As with all the occupied rooms, two poker-faced guards stood, staring attentively at nothingness.
The building catered for the exclusively well off, so there were too few rooms to accommodate all the changelings that had set out on this strange venture with their Queen. This would have been fine for the blinking, black-bodied little creatures, though even that wouldn’t be a concern. In the confusion of the night and the subsequent train ride the Queen of changelings had sent the word around and the majority had slipped away into anonymity. A changeling out of sight could get up to so much more that way, though they were to behave nicely, for now.
The magical uniforms that the guards insisted on wearing made changeling endeavours laughably easy; not one had been caught, nor had the ponies even been made aware how many had eluded their watchful gaze. More than likely they suspected something, a great many things even, but such was inconsequential as a huff of smoke.
All in all, Canterlot’s security was a joke. It’d been caught with its pants down, and when the matter involved the immense and intense Queen of changelings herself, the situation necessitated very large pants indeed. For now, their security had more holes than a changeling’s legs.
“I hope everything is alright!” the manager squeaked. At the insistence of the armoured ponies she had the misfortune to show the Queen around her room.
“What are you going to do if it isn’t?” Chrysalis demanded of the trembling mare. Her tightly-wound bun was rapidly losing ground to her even more tightly-wound nerves, and she peered frightfully out with wide eyes from wider rimmed glasses.
The menace to Chrysalis’ voice was for fun, the biggest part of which was not letting the building staff know how little of it she meant. The Queen of changelings had a reputation to nurture, after all.
The little unicorn was white, with a cutie mark of a cloud smiling. “We’ve never had this problem before,” she managed to squeak.
“Are you saying that I am a problem?” Chrysalis grinned and let her shiny fangs do the talking. They said: Of course we are. Go on. Say it. Dare you. They could be terribly eloquent, as teeth went.
They filled the unicorn’s gaze and made her pupils to pinpricks. “Nononono! I’m just...I’m just I’m just...” with a keening trill the sentence died and the pony fled, through the doors and past the guards.
As for the two trim guards, they were proving themselves made of tougher stuff. Of course, talc was made of tougher stuff than half of these ponies, and she’d hardly started with them at all. There were a great many ways she could knock them senseless and run havoc, or just subjugate their little pony minds. Had they forgotten she could do that?
Without a second thought, Chrysalis decided that she should. Tapering flames of translucent green crawled between their legs and up, under their chins. Even as each saw the magic grasping the other it was too late. One managed a strangled grunt before settling back into a lax stance, his eyes as heavy and unfocused as the other’s. Green light lurked in their irises.
“That’s better. Don’t you agree?”
“Do we?” they chorused with deathly - and deathly boring - monotone.
“Yes, you do. Come here.” They promptly did.
“Tell me, my little ponies, what the guards are doing?”
“Guarding.” Ah, right. That’s why she rarely used this spell. She got unquestioning servitude, sure, but that was just another way of saying mindless servitude. Chrysalis sighed. The green light spilling from their eyes shimmered patiently.
“Let’s try this again. What do you know of Luna?”
“She’s big.”
“Go on.” The Queen of changelings circled her prey, though a shark would have had more of a smile just then.
“She’s dark.”
"Does she look like a princess?”
They made no response, the magically enthralled equivalent of ‘what?’
“Knowing as you do that she is a princess, does she fit your idea of what that should be?”
“Yes.”
Chrysalis lunged towards the nearest, her mouth an inch from his. “So why don’t you treat her like a princess?” He didn’t twitch in the slightest, or even look at her.
“We do.”
“No you don’t! No you don’t.” Chrysalis paused. Why did she care? What did it matter to her how cared for her little moon was?
“Whatever, moving on. Where are most of the royal guards at?”
“Castle.”
“Why?”
“Castle.”
Chrysalis groaned. “Are there more of them there now, today, than usual, and if so, why?”
“Answers.”
She thought for a second. “Answers about what?”
“Changelings.” Fair enough.
“Answers about changelings for who?”
“Everyone.” It might just have been her imagination, but there was a strained undertone there, as if the subjugated minds of these two were anxious to stress the point.
“She’s really taken us all for a spin, hasn’t she?” Chrysalis muttered. “Don’t reply to that,” she hastily added.
It was more or less what she’d expected; Canterlot was clueless. They’d hardly known Luna had even gone, then suddenly she returned, changelings in tow. There was a lot an ambitious Queen could make of the situation, but she didn’t know enough to make a committed move. Not yet.
One of the guards blinked. Chrysalis offhandedly reinstated the spell. This one never lasted long, especially against anything with a stronger will. A thought struck her and she grinned.
“Do I scare you?”
“Yes.”
“Does Luna scare you?”
“Yes.”
“Who scares you more?”
If before unresponsiveness had meant one thing, now it said, somehow quite clearly: ‘we’d really rather not say.’
“Oh?” she said coyly. “And how else do you feel for her? She’s tall, and dark, and strange.” Placing her hoof to one’s chin, she gently shook his unresisting jaw around. “Of course, I’m taller, and darker, and stranger. What does that say, hmm?” Her tail whiplashed the air between the two and she laughed.
They didn’t, and their silence gutted Chrysalis’ noise.
“Go on, laugh. It’s alright. It’s funny.”
“No, it is not,” they chorused back tonelessly.
Growling, the Queen of changelings whirled away from them and strided to the windows. The big, wide windows. She flung them open with her magic, and indeed the curtains billowed exactly as she imagined they would. Some things just know how to do drama right.
“Go back to guarding the door. Forget about coming in here. Forget about everything I said. Forget that I’m leaving now, and don’t notice when I get back. I’ll have been here the whole time. Got it?”
“Yes.” As if both ponies were extensions of one simple machination, they turned on the spot and marched back to their places.
“It was funny,” she muttered darkly, hesitating only as her wings unfurled and stretched, flapping a few warm up beats.
Chrysalis, the Queen of changelings, looked at what she was doing, and smiled. “This is really becoming a thing, isn’t it?”
On that note, she leapt and ascended quickly into the morning sky.
What pegasi abounded had rushed on to the castle grounds, so Chrysalis had an easy time of gaining altitude without being seen. There didn’t seem to be that many of the winged ponies in Canterlot anyway outside of armour, an observation she made note of. Her’s was the flight of a moth, bobbing up and down on huge sweeping strokes of her wings, her body slung beneath the pair of them. She had no invisibility spell, nor anything of the mysterious sort Luna had called upon during their travel together, but the Queen was confident that she could evade detection.
As an added measure all the same she set herself to the flame of her people. Where Chrysalis had rode the wind a blond, gray mare flitted uneasily.
Changing down to such a small size always left her dazed for a moment - not a prospect the Queen enjoyed when high above the city. She focused solely on flying in the intervening seconds, letting her body adjust and her eyes refocus in their own time. Blinking them back together, she glided down to the edge of the crowd.
There was no surprise for her that the crowd of journalists and onlookers had swelled and was in full swing. They weren’t yet shoving at the guards, but ambled in a sort of restless way. It wasn’t happening, yet, but it could certainly be improvised readily enough.
What was surprising for the Queen - whom despite all historical evidence liked to think she didn’t get caught by such a thing - was that it was Luna, not vaunted Celestia, that stepped forth from the balcony to address the growing throng.
They might have cheered for Celestia, or they might of clamoured for her words and leadership. The silence that fell in their stead was eerie. Ponies, even Luna, especially Luna, could have heard a pin drop, except they couldn’t, not with their hearts pounding in their ears. It was a deafening silence, enough so that it unsettled even Chrysalis.
She watched, just another pony in the press, as Luna looked to her subjects, then to her place on the balcony.
The silence broke, all at once. It was a ride in madness like Chrysalis had never seen in changelings. They might have been called the swarm, at times, but these ponies swarmed, to the last, clamouring over one another, flashing their magic boxes by the dozens.
She was far enough back that the Queen, in form of gray and blonde, couldn’t hear anything clearly. Even so, she wondered how Luna managed to grasp any question from the roiling surge. When she started speaking and the other voices died down, Chrysalis realized she hadn’t, maybe couldn’t.
Luna was just telling a story. Her story. Their story.
She wasn’t very good at it. She stumbled over parts, and omitted the private and irrelevant. She said things, then struggled to explain what the reason behind them had been, because the truth was that she’d done a lot of things and only tried to figure out a reason after the fact. They listened all the more closely for her failings in the telling.
So it was told to the crowd at large that, for reasons she didn’t go into, Luna had sought out the changelings. She’d been at the mercy of the Queen whom, for reasons neither quite comprehended, hadn’t been entirely unwelcoming.
It ended with them here, in Canterlot, testing the waters of an idea that no one had seen before, one that had only presented itself after intrigue and cruelty and consideration. Communication with the changelings. Peace with the changelings.
Chrysalis eyed the ponies around her, inconspicuous in her observation. She never could get used to being of an equal size, in the immediate sense it meant she couldn’t see how many, if any, of her own had planted themselves into the gathering. A changeling could usually spot another, regardless of appearance, but circumstance made it a bit futile to try now. There were just too many ponies.
Silence retook its familiar throne as Luna’s words echoed through their thoughts. She hadn’t said anything actually hostile about the Queen, though it’d been apparent to Chrysalis how the princess had struggled to find something to say about her. Managing to put the Queen of changelings in a decent light while still being genuinely honest was quite the challenge. It was kind of cute, really, for her to have gone through the effort.
The ponies were silent. For a moment it all seemed that somehow, this would work out. Then they remembered, more or less at once, that they weren’t just ponies - they were journalists, reporters, and gossips to the last.
‘Uproar’ didn’t have enough up, or enough roar, to describe the moment. It hit Luna hardest of all, from the back Chrysalis could still easily see how the mare recoiled from the auditory assault. There were too many words to make sense of any. The tones, however, ran together in a swirl of anxiety and inquisition. Some - and these were fewest, but loudest - ran with unadulterated menace and fear.
Somepony flung a mouldering fruit at the princess. Where mobs get these from has never been adequately explained.
The rotten piece flew true, but rather than strike Luna it halted a breadth away from her and was reduced to ashes in a flash of blackness.
“Enough!” Luna shouted, her voice a tsunami that crashed over the clamour of a hundred other ripples. Their echoes died away, syllables that sounded suspiciously like a name all together longer than Luna’s, and filled with accusation.
“I am not Nightmare Moon,” she said with terrible calm. The dark princess hesitated for words that wouldn’t present themselves. “She is not me,” she managed. “There’s...she...she would never have tried to explain herself to you. I am not Nightmare Moon,” she reiterated more forcefully.
In the depths of Chrysalis’ magic, the power inherent in the jewels tickled at the edge of her awareness.
“Nor am I Celestia. You trust her and love her. As do I. She deserves these things more than you know. But I’m not her. I’m not asking for your trust, or your love. But if you are going to look at me and what I do, make up your mind for what you see of me and none other. My name is Luna, I am your princess, and I am nobody’s shadow.” The magic boxes flashed with renewed vigour, while the excised pieces of Luna squirmed incessantly, chafing at the Queen’s firm grasp over them. She couldn’t slacken that grip to air them, not here, not now, especially not in this form.
The crowd erupted once more. “What are you going to do about the changelings?” a strong voice cried out.
Luna spoke gravely. “I am going to talk to them. And listen, and give them a chance.”
Aww, little moon, that’s touching, Chrysalis thought, her snideness not entirely hiding the truth that the sentiment was real. Luna turned to withdraw, and as she did so too did Chrysalis, unsettled as she was by maintaining her deception whilst quashing the riled up powers she’d taken charge over. In short, she’d seen enough.
Chrysalis slipped away, returning to her true form only as the windows loomed. The curtains billowed all the while, even though there didn’t seem to be enough wind for it. The guards on her door, now returned to themselves still conceded a brief walk around the hallways, that the Queen might check in to see her changelings were alright. Mostly what she had with her were the young - too much so to be of any use other than as showpieces - their carers, and a few extras in case they were needed, and to take turns at minding.
It was mostly an excuse to walk and wonder over what she’d seen. As room after room passed by, to the last her changelings were being treated fairly, if stiffly, another concern niggled at her thoughts. Though this one had nothing of spooky powers in it, it was no less unsettling.
Changelings were good at slipping away, there was no denying that. Surely, it was a point of pride with Chrysalis. Never before had she had to face the prospect of a changeling slipping away from other changelings. As she returned to her penthouse, the Queen was in a thoroughly bad and thoughtful mood.
Her attendant was not to have left with the others. She’d been specific with Surreal, and the defiant little changeling had gone and defied her. If it wasn't so unthinkable, she probably should have seen it coming.
The Queen of changelings lay back on her overly cushioned bed. With an easy flash of magic the strange byproducts of that terrible, fascinating first night surged into existence once more. She tried to ease into the too-soft blankets while watching the jewels dance their slow waltz above her.
“As if things weren’t interesting enough already,” she mused.
For their part, the bobbing and weaving colours of magic said nothing.
And as always every chapter leaves me wondering exactly what will happen next, got to love those stories where you honestly don't know how it will end. Could go either way I feel, glad that Luna is getting a bit more confident as well though I wonder how she would react if Chrysalis ends up betraying her as she's not been that good at handling her anger so far.
Is there going to be a Lunaxchrysalis ship?
1321113
-Don't rock the boat-
1321132
sorry...im a sucker for romance and the shipping between my top two favourite characters...
1321132
lol. I had to look up what "Rock the boat" meant, before replying to your comment
1321113
You know, I wondered the same back on the train.
I came to the conclusion such a thing is appealing and dangerous for the same reasons. Namely, Luna and Chrysalis have interesting chemistry and rare but good characterization in this story. But the danger is that shipping would get in the way of those very qualities that make the story good. Although, if pulled off well, I'd certainly have no complaints.
I figure it's up to the author to go as far as he/she/it feels comfortable when it comes to romance, rather than trying to force things.
By the way, as far as that interesting characterization goes, this chapter is another great one for both leads. Chrysalis manages to be entirely sympathetic, as she displays some concern for Luna, despite being the type of person to employ mind-control on a whim and who doesn't understand why she's concerned. The Luna/Celestia interactions and the insights into Luna provided during her speech, through Chrysalis' observation hardly need to be said to be excellent, but I'll say it anyway.
1321318
I know right. It just seems that cry and luna would be great together but I dont think you could pull it off, or force it, not to mention the HUGE change it would make on this story, it just wouldn't be right, but...but if it can pull it off, it might, just might... be the greatest story i have ever read since past sins.
P.S. I think the author might be an it because nothing write something this good.
P.S.S Sorry if my reply to your comment seemed childish or bad, im only 13
1321351
Your name appeases me, because I spent a good bit of time fretting with my good broblerone over whther THIS line:
“Enough!” Luna shouted, her voice a tsunami that crashed over the clamour of a hundred other ripples.
Should have been, as originally writ:
“Enough!” Luna shouted, her voice a thu'um-nami that crashed over the clamour of a hundred other ripples.
This is of course a terrible, TERRIBLE pun (I count that as a PRO more than a CON) but the deciding factor was 'do you think many people would get it?' Very hesitantly, I decided to let it go. But it gets to live on, here in the comments.
-Now for the serious half of this comment, which is STILL addressed to you, but also to 1321318 as well.
SHIPPING. CHRSSY. LUNA. WHAT?
Anyone senseitive to potential spoilers (up to date is chapter sixteen as of this) may want to skip the numbered bit.
There. Moving on: let me state up a few apparant, solid facts.
1) Luna is not the most emotionally stable or self assured of ponies, and this is certainly a trying time for her.
2) Chrysalis is a proven self-interested and manipulative personality with an unspecified value of Luna's Essence/Soul/Mojo/Thing more or less under her direct control.
3) Chrysalis has displayed the ability to bend minds to her will, and can manage at least in so far as to weasel her thought's into Luna's awareness when she bothers to. She doesn't bother to do either very often.
Just looking at these, it's rather apparant that of shipping oppurtunities there are plenty, many of which meander down uncertain and dark paths, certain to change the nature of the story.
Will the story do this? I'm gonna be up front honest about this: Not likely. Certainly not in a plot dominating fashion anyway (...ok, that was terrible, considering the potential dynamics of the two. I should be punished.) Of course, the term 'ship' at its dark and insidious heart just means 'relationship' - its only in common usage that it's taken to mean 'romantic relationship' . And the lines between what consitutes the differences between such connections can be blurred at the best of times.
In short, there's uncharted territory in them dangerous waters, but its an aspect worth exploring. Just don't expect anything to come of it. Or do. I dunno. The story will let me know. I'm pretty sure Chrysalis lampshaded this exact conundrum in one of the early chapters. The story's so clever
Too Long To Read Edition : I will tentatively consider and explore the notion, but it is not a prominent theme as far as I've been made aware.
It feels like my comments are longer than my chapters
*grrs* I despise mind-walkers who abuse their power. They always remind me of the Psi Core from Babylon 5. Arrogant, self-serving, murderous to the 'mundanes' they intended to enslave or eliminate.
But the Changelings should be made aware of one thing. Though stronger, though with great power at their beck and call, the telepaths lost the war.
Changeling powers use magic, magic of a very specific kind. Thus, it is quite easy to block and inhibit. They are over-specialized, they have inbred weakness and vulnerability. If only one pony could stop being a coward and realize this simple fact.
It's one thing I don't like about this story. The ponies are ALL incredibly weak-willed thus far. Even the strongest seems pathetically vulnerable and stupid. Even in a passive society, there are always those who foster paranoia. I would expect them to arise in their full glory now, and immediately target the changelings using measures they are certain to have developed after the first invasion.
1321847
You have made me smile, yes indeed you have
So very much so
1321867 I have a confession. I disguised some of my suppositions as a rant. I often do that to make it look as though I'm NOT predicting what will happen.
1321904
This is partly why I am smiling.
1321923 I'm of course aware things may not go that way, but I can only hope they do. I expect more from this story than a one-sided tale in which the Changelings are just sooooo much smarter and craftier than the namby-pamby ponies. For if in this story, the changelins are much more intelligent that in the canon show, it only makes sense that the ponies must be also, lest it come off as mere species favoritism.
1321948
No worries, I like it when people try to predict things. It shows to me an interest in the story that I really appreciate
As for rants...I love ranting. And raving.
As for what've you said, its very true, very true. Indeed, it is for this very reason that Chrysalis is much more cautious this second time in Canterlot, and she has mused on this specific topic before in an earlier chapter, I believe. A deal of it boils down to this: You're average changeling could probably take your average pony, because changelings don't differenciate like they do, and they have the inherent advantage of flight and magic, always. This means that every changeling is more or less as capable as every other changeling, whereas only those ponies with some kind of relevence to any particular field of interest will be notably skilled within it.
However, this is a double edged sword, as it also means that the changelings lack, what, for lack of a better word, could be called expertise. There are also decidely a great deal more ponies than changelings.
The story did point out at one point that the changelings are decidely not crafty. Much like how a mimickery insect wouldn't actually be able to write a book on disguise, so too does having decpetion as an inherent gift mean that they have never had to develop or refine their abilities. Another of the chapters explores this point, when Chrsysalis considers the word 'spy' as it applies to them. It doesn't, not really.
I would hope that I have in no way presented the average changeling as being exceptional compared to ponies. (Keep an eye out for Sureal and Beetle) If there's room for misconception here, most of it is surely in that we have not been following the average changeling. We've been following Chrysalis herself, who is anything but mundane. Her mindset, physical build and power is vastly different from the rest, and it is already canon that she addled the Captain of the Guard and had multiple brides' maids under sway for an extended time, let alone shot down Celestia. My impression of this is (going by the look on her face) that such was an unexpected, downright amazing surge of power attributed to the absolute raw intensity of love, especially considering it is the heart of a sizeable city in the midst of a favoured wedding. Her abilities under more casual circusmtances hasn't been defined yet.
It would be rather silly to expect the ordinary pony to match up against this one, single, extrordinary changeling. It's no slight to the door guards that she muddled them with such ease; they're probably upstanding and proper guards in their own right, but they're simply not in her league. Even then, she only plied them for minorly sensitive information, and at that still felt it necessary to reassert the spell.
As for the patrol that met up with them. Whether or not the guards as a whole have countermeasures, these guys certainly weren't equipped or notified of the issue. One minute their tracking the guy tracking Luna, then changelings, all of a sudden. Just that sudden. They really had no idea beforehand. And they were all pegasi, so even a known, effective and widely available anti-changeling spell was out of the question.
Canterlot as a whole has been hit equally hard by the sheer, raw unexpectedness of this situation. An attack would be one thing, and surprising and confusing enough in its own right, it would at least be direct and reactionable. On the other hand, having enemies invited into your city under the protection of your 'other' ruler must have thrown quite a few wrenches into quite a few cogs for ponies by and large. Do you react aggressively to that, or not?
Not even Chrysalis herself expected this scenario at all, but she's had a long headstart in mulling over the implciations and planning ahead. To this point, the ponies of Equestria have had less than twenty four hours since that group first realized the kind of mess they were in. Luna, as we've seen, tends to not think of this kind of thing, and either through wilfulness or ignorance never told anypony where she went, or why.
As regards Chrysalis and Luna, keep in mind that the Queen hasn't directly tried to manipulate the princess yet, or even tried to plumb the secrets of the jewels. She's displayed the ability to send purely communicative thoughts to Luna, though it's not been shown one way or the other if there is any kind of two way functionality on this. Luna has, to an extent, been able to hold her own in the pyschological jujitsu the two of them have going on so far. They have a dynamic and evolving relationship, putting them at odds as often as it sets them on the same side.
The rest of Equestria is caught up in the Shock phase of realization. As was said, they were caught with their pants down, and the situation necessitates very large pants. Rather than the smash and grab of the invasion, Chrysalis seems to be playing for the long haul, and the various advantages and counter stratagies will shift as Canterlot, and Celestia herself, finds their Very Large Pants of Situational Necessity.
A phrase to know here is 'Pleuralistic Ignorance.' The term means, loosely, that when you don't know what's going on, the first thing you do is look to those around you to gauge their reactions. This is precisely why you will never see half of a mob. Not knowing what to do, they are all looking to each other, all not knowing what to do, so on and so forth. Celestia does not get this luxery, and as news spreads it will break beyond the confine of any single mob mentality. Thinking will inevitably set in.
If the ponies have yet to play up to what you expect of them, it is because you are expecting a great deal from them more or less instantly after they have been bashed in the face with a fairly profound surprise, than compound that by the fact that they are being taken for a ride by an a so much more powerful person who has also had more time to prepare and consider.
As for the word 'glory' - be careful with that. It's a dangerous word, that one is. This is not the kind of story, nor am I the kind of person, that would throw it around lightly.
i.imgur.com/KZvoe.gif
Have some delicious splint mail.
1322329
that's a really good case. your story seems to be a lot different from a lot of chrysalis second coming stories where chrysalis is just kinda swatted away as being weak at a glace. here she's given a position of power thats ambiguous to the sisters that allows her to interact very uniquely and openly and i really like it.
1321615
So your saying there is a slight chance........
P.S. Are you an
1. It
2.He
3.She
4. was
1323861
whats a 'was?' You sayin' I'm post mortem? Electrolytically-vivaciouslychronaticallly-ensepholographically challlanged?
1324203
Are you a holy ghost from the void with the soul purpose of writing these stories for our entertainment
1324203
or you used to be a living being
1324209
By Her Holey Hooves I hope not. I imagine ghosts wouldn't get the same clickety-clackety sound of the keyboards as easily. Though if you start getting bits that read like:
"Chrysalis and Luna were impossibly adorabl-HNNNG... OooooooooOOOoooOoooOOo" -you know who to call..
1324228
Yeah... Gabe Newell
Wow, I am amused by this comment-tennis, it's been a nice read, luv this story and hopes it's a lot longer than some other ones, I always love the ones that take a while to read....
Waitaminute. Derpy is Chrysalis!?
1874385
can you think of a better, more unasuming disguise then an innocent little mailmare
doesn't mean there isnt a real ditzy either, just means the changelings know the benefit of a form that wont be questioned about showing up in ranodom places because her job involves delivering mail
Surreal be double dead.