Previous Chapters
Close
Chapter 15,743 words
Chapter 24,420 words

Chapter 2

She deserved this!

Chrysalis frowned as she watched Luna's reaction to her honestly expressed opinion of the princesses. Luna was not openly sobbing, but Chrysalis could see the subtle signs that it was something she was greatly making an effort not to do.

The changeling watched emptily. She had been waiting for this. She had been itching to see this reaction, to relish in the emotions that Luna deserved to experience.

And yet now, with these emotions on full display before her, Chrysalis felt nothing. Not a single trace of the satisfaction she had been expecting. She could not even bring herself to conjure back the hurtful thoughts that had been reverberating through her head and off her tongue. Because before her was no tyrant, no monster or murderer or traitor.

Before her was a friend, one who had made many mistakes, and yet despite it all had always been willing to put the will of her subjects before her own.

How different were they, truly? Even after a thousand years...

There was no monster before her, even if it would have been so much simpler for her cause if there would have been. No matter how much she lied to herself or spat harsh words at the broken mare before her, she could never convince herself that they were any more than emotional lies.

If Chrysalis focused, she could detect the faint, pulsating throbs of emotion welling from Princess Luna, thumping like a heartbeat. The emotion itself was like a bitter taste on Chrysalis's tongue, a sadness of the richest and most toxic kind: regret.

The thought echoed again in Chrysalis’s mind. She deserved this. This sadness, this regret…

It was a lie. Or, if not a lie, an exaggeration. A cruel, one-dimensional judgment. One that absolved Chrysalis of all blame, and painted Luna out to be so much worse than Chrysalis knew her former friend to be.

“I am truly sorry,” Luna spoke suddenly, the words forced out as an emotional squawk.

“I know,” Chrysalis responded flatly. Luna did not speak further, and Chrysalis took it as an indication to carry the sentiment further. “I can—feel it, Luna. Your regret, sorrow, sadness, guilt.”

“Y—You were reading my emotions.” Luna clarified bluntly, gingerly wiping her watering eyes. “I seem to recall us having some sort of agreement about that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chrysalis held up a hoof. “Sorry, or whatever. Point is… I apologize.”

“About reading my emotions?”

“No, you dunce. About calling you a monster.”

“I’m not a dunce,” Luna mumbled, Chrysalis’s joking tone taking a moment to register and her mind automatically shooting back an emotionless denial. When it finally did, however, she whipped around to see Chrysalis shooting her a sly, sheepish grin.

“I went overboard, Luna. Calling you Nightmare Moon and all that. Sorry. I guess I sorta figured it would give me satisfaction.”

“You weren’t wrong, though. Nightmare Moon—she’s still alive. I’m still her.”

“Oh, come off, Luna. Stop it,” Chrysalis said sternly, like an irritated schoolteacher. “You’re not. The emotions I read from you—you’re not that.”

Luna sighed heavily and looked back at the dying changelings on the wall, only to quickly grow uncomfortable and stare at the unnatural black lake of dripping water in the center of the chamber instead.

“If the ponies, and Celestia have forgiven you...” Chrysalis continued, speaking Luna’s sister’s name like it produced some toxic taste in her mouth. “What exactly are all those guilty feelings about? I felt some,uh… heavy stuff in there, Luna.”

“Heavy stuff… ” Luna repeated, looking down at her hooves.

“Yeah. Stuff I didn’t know you were dealing with. Wounds I probably shouldn’t have opened further,” Chrysalis muttered cryptically. “Guess I’m not the only one who sees herself as a failure.”

Luna said nothing. Chrysalis perked up suddenly, as if realizing some mistake in her sentence and rushing quickly to fix it.

“I mean, not a failure to you ponies—couldn’t care less if I’m a failure to them. I mean to my changelings.”

“I understood what you meant.” Luna’s response was brief and sullen, although less so now that Chrysalis was no longer berating her with vicious intensity.

Chrysalis stared intently at the rippling, imperfect reflection meeting her eyes from the black lake in the center of the cavern for several eternal seconds. In time, another reflection joined her, and the queen and princess locked eyes in the deep darkness of the rippling waters.

“Point is, we’re a bit of the same, Luna,” Chrysalis said, speaking it like it were some regretful confession or dishonest apology.

Even in the fluctuating and imperfect mirror-like waves, Chrysalis saw the light of relief flicker into Luna’s eyes, wide like tiny little moons.

She turned from the cavern’s lake and looked back at the dimly lit pathway they had come from, and then up at her changelings perched sadly against the walls, moving quickly as if out of regret from the emotion she had accidentally shown.

“Now, don’t take that too personally or anything,” Chrysalis added swiftly, not turning back around to face Luna, who was still looking at herself in the dark waters.

“I believe I will,” Luna replied, finally turning and trotting the short distance dividing her from Chrysalis. “I might not be able to read emotions like you, Chrysalis, but you were never a master when it came to lying to me.”

“Hate you.” Chrysalis muttered for the second time that evening, but she could not seem to hold back another sly and genuine smile.

“Oh, I doubt it.” Luna snorted, with a roll of her eyes.

“You do, huh? You’re not very reserved about directing that hatred inwards, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Chrysalis snapped. She was growing tired of Luna dancing around the clear issue. “I read your emotions.What you felt about Nightmare Moon isn’t anything new, is it? Hatred towards yourself, but I also felt something else. Fear. What are you afraid of, Luna?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You were never there. Never a monster, like me.” Luna looks down her voice quieting to a whisper that was almost too quiet to hear.

“Hm,” Chrysalis sniffed. “Tell that to your sis. Or her little purple protegee.”

“My sis is the reason I’m here, striving for peace. As for her former protegee, I’m sure even she is willing to accept you friendship—”

“Former protegee?” Chrysalis blinked. “Oh, don’t tell me.”

Luna’s empty stare provided all the information the changeling Queen needed, and before long the too-quiet caven rung out with her sardonic laughter.

“Seriously!” she hollered, waving a hoof in indignation. “I’m treated like a feral beast, and that little brat gets the literal royal treatment? Talk about unfair!”

“That little brat—” Luna narrowed her eyes defensively “—is responsible for saving me from the beast I had become.”

“Oh, oh! And Equestria from the terrible changeling Queen, too, no doubt! I’d bet they even have a statue of it!”

“Stained glass window, actually,” Luna muttered. “That’s not the point, Chrissy. You’re intentionally derailing the issue.”

“Oooh, Chrissy! You’re really testing the ice now, aren’t you?” Chrysalis cooed. “You didn’t answer my question though, Luna. I read fear in your emotions. Terror, even.”

“The Nightmare,” Luna mumbled simply.

“Yes, I gathered that much,” Chrysalis let out an irritated snort. “But I thought Twilight Sparkle and her group of noble, do-good friends defeated it.”

“They freed me from its influence,” Luna replied. “Allowed me to think rationally and realize that killing my sister was the last thing I wanted to do. But it isn’t that simple.”

“Hmm— so they helped put you back in control, but didn’t boot the Nightmare out completely, huh? You know this for sure?”

“I can feel it when I dream,” Luna said. “It’s like a parasite, Chrysalis. Every nightmare I have, I feel like when I next awake, I won’t be in control again. Ever have those dreams where you’re paralyzed and some danger is approaching?”

“Yeah,” Chrysalis said cautiously. “So?”

“Imagine that same feeling, but you’re not dreaming. Instead, you’re watching as something wearing your flesh tears the world apart. I don’t want to watch that again.”

“Well. Can’t blame you for being afraid of that,” Chrysalis replied. “Seems a little silly though. I mean, I doubt the same mare vouching for peace with her enemies is about to start terrorizing her own friends.”

“Thank you, Chrysalis,” Luna heard herself say, as if in a trance. Chrysalis had just complimented her. It had been a veiled compliment, but genuine all the same, which was quite surprising considering it had come from the same mare who had called her a murdering monster not half an hour prior.

“I don’t consider you an enemy, though,” Luna promptly added. “I consider you a friend, Chrysalis.”

“Ah yes. I figured.”

“You figured.”

“Do you have hearing problems, Luna?”

“You don’t consider me a friend?” she asked sullenly.

Chrysalis groaned loudly in frustration and chagrin, prodding the dirt with a hoof awkwardly. “Ugh. Didn’t think I had to paint you a picture. Yes. I do. I’m gonna tell you something, Luna, but I swear if you ever use this against me in the future—”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Luna nodded. The very thought of Chrysalis expressing some personal secret was too intriguing, she was almost giddy with curiosity.

“A thousand years ago, when you stopped writing to me, and I looked to the moon and saw you, I suppose,” Chrysalis recounted, starting to blush and refusing to meet Luna’s eyes. “I guess I assumed the worst. And to be honest, I never felt more empty in my life.”

“Ah,” Luna shot Chrysalis a devilish grin, “All this coming from the mare who ‘couldn’t care less about us ponies.”’

“I don’t!” Chrysalis exclaimed, throwing her hooves in the air. “At least, most ponies. I suppose there’s a select few—”

Chrysalis broke off, looking to Luna as if begging her for help. All she received instead was an expectant smile.

“Or perhaps a select one,” Chrysalis said, sighing in defeat. “Hope you’re happy, you monster.”

Luna did not speak, but a wide grin had already begun to form, not that Chrysalis would have seen with her gaze directed anywhere except towards Luna. The only sound once more became the steady dripping of water falling from the cavern ceiling, echoing its soothingly consistent song across the sombre atmosphere that suddenly did not seem so sombre to Luna.

There was still so much to be done between them. Their friendship had survived after all, and with it they could perhaps one day begin mending the broken links between Chrysalis and the rest of the ponies, too. And maybe Luna could never spark a friendship with Twilight or Celestia or anypony else… maybe she would remain the only pony who Chrysalis called a friend even after a thousand years. But like the repeated dripping echoing about, there was some solace in familiarity to be found.

And there was even more beauty with the promise of change and progress. Not only friendship, perhaps—

“Stop it,” Chrysalis nearly barked, cutting through Luna’s reverie with harshly spoken words.

“Stop what?” Luna asked innocently. “I didn’t say anything!”

“Luna, I can read your emotions! Stop. You’re making me uncomfortable. Like this isn’t awkward enough for me, you’ve gotta go start feeling those emotions again!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Luna said simply. This time, it was her turn to blush.

“Yeah, sure. Sure you don’t.”

Chrysalis seemed quite content not to pursue the issue any further, and Luna was more than happy to move on herself. In a moment, her mind was clear and her emotions were back under control, back to solely friendship, her purpose in the Changeling Empire back to solely political—

“I presume you’re staying here the night,” Chrysalis interrupted her thoughts abruptly. “I presumed, actually. Past-tense. Got a nice, cozy little cavern all set up for you. Aren’t you lucky.”

Luna stared, tilting her head slightly in confusion. Chrysalis snorted in frustration.

“I’m done talking to you for now, Luna. Need some time to think. We’ll talk peace negotiations later.”

“Oh—” Luna spoke just as Chrysalis started to walk away, “—Kay”

Chrysalis then proceeded to brush past Luna in a harsh manner, their bodies almost crashing into each other.

Luna watched as they were led underground. Harsh laughter echoed around her, echoing from all about and yet seeming to come from right beside her.

"Isn't this beautiful?" a voice said beside her, an icy and patronizing drawl. "Their suffering, I mean."

Luna’s eyes darted towards the voice, shocked to see the shadowy figure beside her. It Sometimes formed into a shape that was vaguely alicorn, but more often than not it was a simple mass of shapeless vapour.

“Ooh, don’t look at me like that,” she cooed, “Isn't this what you wanted? Sweet little subjects, bowing before you?”

“You’re not here,” Luna said firmly. “You can’t be here.”

“Oh, Luna. Foolish Luna. Here, there… I never left.”

“Leave now, you have no pow—”

Laughter echoed around her again as shadows drew closer towards her. “I have no power here…?! Ha! You’re the one out of place now. You’re a relic, Luna.”

Luna kept her guard up, her horn sputtering to life and forming an icy barrier between herself and the formless vapour. She knew it was all for naught; it was a dream, all that was around her was not truly there, and her magic was no true exception. Even if it would have been, it wasn’t as though the Nightmare would have let her get a single thought in.

“I mean really,” it chuckled, its voice too freakishly alien to be called equine. “Me, having no power in your nightmares? Do you put any thought into the things you say?”

"I don't know what it is you want Nightmare, but I can assure you that I will never let you have it. You're nothing more than a beast of dreams and when I awake, you and your venomous words will be nothing but memories."

"That's where you're wrong," The umbral being spoke while wisps of shadows encircled them. The last of Luna’s magic was cut off without effort. Before the vaporous shadows even made contact with her, she was shivering from their cruel iciness.

"Nightmares don't cease when you awake. We merely go into hiding."

As the shadows grew ever closer to Luna her horn glowed once more, and she said firmly, “You’ll never win, Nightmare.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Luna! I’ll be watching!” The Nightmare’s words faded into its maniacal multi-toned laughter, and as suddenly as it had appeared in Luna’s dream, it vanished into the air as her world was consumed by the growing shadows.

Luna woke up with a start, her body shaking like a leaf.

Slowly, she let her breathing calm and return to normal as her familiar settings faded into legibility. It was still quite dark (not that the caverns typically housed much light) but even by the dim, glowing overhead crystals Luna could see that she had kicked the silk-like gossamer blankets clear across the room and was now fully exposed to the shivering cold of the underground caverns.

Two days. Two whole days had passed without a nightmare. For forty eight beautiful hours, it seemed like she had left them behind when she had left Equestria.

No. Nightmare Moon had said it herself; she hadn’t gone. She perhaps never would. Certainly not willingly, and Luna wasn’t even sure she existed at all. Perhaps the Elements had purged her completely, and yet her own paranoid mind kept the dream alive. Or perhaps the Elements had done nothing, and Nightmare Moon herself had been some sick coping fantasy her guilty and desperate mind had leapt onto.

No sense being afraid now, that could wait for the next time she slept. Heavens knew she had enough to fear in her dreams, and being afraid in her waking moments seemed an excessive waste of time. Luna stumbled from the bed—surprisingly comfortable, which she admittedly hadn’t been expecting from Chrysalis—knowing there was no chance in all the cosmos that she would be getting back to sleep.

At least not before stretching her hooves, and breathing a bit of air that wasn’t filtered through heavy layers of moisture and slime. If the entrance cavern and feeding chambers had been humid and uncomfortable, the condensed sleeping chamber Chrysalis had prepared her was something else entirely. It was akin to sleeping inside a cocoon. Of course, it could be reasoned that that was the very intention, and changelings quite liked the sensation of warm humidity, but Luna was no changeling.

Luna’s restless hooves carried her through the tunnels as if in a trance, her mind idly repeating her dream back with gradually fading intensity. The fright that had flung her into wakefulness was still there, although it had shifted from an intense panic into an omnipresent dread. She was unsure whether it was better or worse.

She did her best not to focus on the nightmare playing over and over in her mind like a brokenrecord, but by time she calmed herself enough to think of anything beyond the impossibly calm, bone-chillingly sharp voice of Nightmare Moon, she realized she was hopelessly lost in the maze of changeling tunnels.

“Damn it,” Luna muttered, looking behind her where she came, and seeing at least three other splits in the path that very well could lead to someplace completely separate from what she had been expecting.

Luna couldn’t imagine the derision she would receive from Chrysalis when the changeling queen found out she’d gotten lost in the caverns, the sneering jokes and insults at the expense of her lack of direction.

Cursing her foolishness, Luna could do little else but continue trekking forwards in the hope that she would come upon something in the featureless tunnels that served as some sort of proper landmark.

She eventually found one, when the narrow, claustrophobic corridor she was urgently trotting down suddenly opened into a familiar looking cavern with an incredibly high ceiling and countless of the barely-alive changelings clinging onto the walls like hibernating bats.

Instantly Luna froze, still safely in the darkness of the corridor. The Feeding Chamber. It was quite certainly the last place Luna wanted to wander upon in the dead of the night.

Instead, she remained in the refuge of the unlit entrance, wondering whether it would be better to go back where she had come from, simply to avoid travelling through the one area where she knew Chrysalis did not like her being.

As Luna stood thinking, she suddenly became aware of another sound besides the constant drizzle of water.

It was a voice, very familiar, but in a fashion Luna had never heard it before. It was soft and low, with a beauty Luna could not describe.

Chrysalis was singing.

It was a low sound, more of a hum than an audibly vocal voice. Luna could not hear words, she was quite sure Chrysalis was not trying to sing them. In fact, Luna did not even know if the changeling queen quite knew what she was doing.

Luna smiled—a distant, melancholic smile—as she listened to the sound. It was like a lullaby without consistency or chorus, just a long string of bittersweet tunes, weaving into each other like a great, many-movement symphony. Creeping closer out of the darkness, the queen herself came into view; Chrysalis was peering up at the changelings gripping onto the cavern walls, her horn alight with magic, and the slimy surface of the walls pulsating with magic, too.

“There you go,” she whispered to the empty room. “Eat up. I know it isn’t pleasant. It’s the best I can give you.”

Chrysalis continued singing softly as she transferred her love through the hive mind and up towards the sleeping changelings. The process evidently did not last as long as Chrysalis would have liked it, and she stopped her soothing song as her magic sputtered away.

The moment it did, Chrysalis heaved a long, sad sigh.

“You can stop pretending I can’t see you, Luna,” she called. Luna tensed first in terror, and then, knowing she was trapped with nothing else to do, she shakily stepped out from the darkness towards Chrysalis, who had not even turned around to see her.

Luna was dumbfounded; she hadn’t made a sound… and there was no way Chrysalis could see her with her gaze turned to the changelings. Luna’s mind wandered to the emotions that had been flowing through her mind, and to Chrysalis, through the air itself.

What had her emotions been? Sympathy? Sadness? Regret? Fear? Luna had already forgotten.

Hopefully it hadn’t been the other one.

“Yeah, yeah, Princess of the Shadows,” Chrysalis said impatiently as Luna crept into the light.

“You have a pretty voice,” Luna offered, her ears drooping in embarrassment.

“Shut it,” Chrysalis said, and then, after another heavy sigh, “Thank you. I find it relaxes them. Helps them sleep.”

Luna said nothing, but nodded nonetheless.

“What are you doing here, Luna?” Chrysalis asked. “Can’t sleep?”

“No, I cannot. I figured a little fresh air would help but… I got lost.”

“Nightmare?” Chrysalis inquired further into the question Luna had been hoping she could subtly brush past. “Or, I should say, Nightmare Moon?”

“Yes,” Luna said simply.

“Trying to take over? Taunting you with promises of imminent despair?”

“I was hoping we could leave it at ‘Yes.”’ Luna said, not angrily, but with a firm edge. To her amazement, Chrysalis nodded and did not offer any snide remark. Indeed, her response was quite the opposite.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Looney.”

“Oh, pray tell you aren’t resurrecting that nickname!” Luna pleaded, although she could not stave back a silly smile.

“Chrissy and Looney,” Chrysalis returned Luna’s smile with a snicker of her own. “Looney needs to stop having her nightmares, and wandering around spying on my shows of sentimentality. And flooding my cavern with the scent of her rancid emotions.”

“Yes, well, Chrissy needs to keep her nose out of other’s emotions, and her own emotions to herself.”

“So do you,” Chrysalis shot back with faux-sharpness, although her good-natured gibe was quick to simmer into uncomfortable silent. A sudden tenseness had already flung their playful bantering into an uncertain lull.

“What about you?” Luna finally broke the silence. “What are you doing up?”

“I’m feeding my changelings,” Chrysalis said, her voice soft and somber.

“With your love,” Luna elaborated, gazing up at the sleeping changelings in awe. “Your love for them. But why now, in the middle of the night?”

“Emotions dilute...” Chrysalis explained, like she was reading from a textbook, and yet still omitting as much information as she could get away with. “I can transfer them to my changelings easily, but I cannot actually control my emotions any more than a pony can.”

It wasn’t a proper answer, but Luna knew what the unspoken premise behind it was. Chrysalis could not control her emotions any more than a pony could, that much was factual. And if Chrysalis felt happiness or satisfaction, unfiltered by any layers of guilt or dread, Luna knew just as well how fleeting that emotion could be.

“It’s short term,” Chrysalis said, jerking Luna back to attention. “Giving them my love. And they don’t like the taste of it anymore. It used to be pleasant to them, but my love isn’t welcoming anymore.”

“We will fix this,” Luna assured. “Together, Chrysalis. We’ve already made so much progress in two days alone.”

Two days. They had passed in a strange dualistic pattern of the most gruelling and boring stretches, or as memories so swift she was not quite sure they had happened. Negotiations, the agreement to gradually start destroying the barriers keeping changelings and ponies apart. One settlement first, one monitored closely, and with a full magic inhibitor shield around it to prevent changeling magic.

Undisguised changelings would live alongside ponies. It would be a test… long term to the ponies perhaps, but the ten year stretch it entailed hardly mattered to Luna, Celestia, or Chrysalis.

Then, depending on the outcome of that settlement, they would begin expanding more. Integrating the changelings into Equestria was the answer, Luna knew it. And Chrysalis, against all odds, had agreed. Or so it had seemed to Luna.

As if reading Luna’s thoughts, Chrysalis spoke:

“I don’t know, Luna. Your… our plan is flawed.”

“Flawed?” Luna asked. “In what sense?”

“Already my changelings are dying. Ten years is nothing to us, but to them it's a death sentence. They won’t all survive… and I don’t want to see another one die! I’m their queen! Do you know what that does to me?”

In an instant, Luna could once again hear Chrysalis’s soft, singing voice echoing in her mind. Not the taunting drawl of a terrifying foe, but a beautiful and soothing sound.

Their queen…

A truth. Luna knew it. But a half-truth, and hardly what Chrysalis had intended to say. She was their queen, but that title did not matter to Chrysalis, at least not amongst her own changelings. Chrysalis was a queen to Luna and Celestia and to the ponies of Equestria, but to the changelings? She was no such thing.

She was their mother, and this place was their home.

With a great amount of effort and a lengthy span of ten year’s time, perhaps Equestria could be, too. And yet even so, Chrysalis was right. It would not be enough.

Love was a resource. If only they had more of it to go around...

1,207 views

Previous Chapters