Chrysalis: Saviour of Time Chapter 5

It's been awhile, but here's the next chapter of Saviour of Time: Aftermath of a Nightmare. Actual discussion, including spoilers, after the page break.

This isn't a huge chapter, in both physical size (less than half the word count of the previous chapter) and in content. It is primarily exactly what the chapter title would imply: the aftermath of the Nightmare Moon incident. Not to say that nothing important happens in this chapter, it's just not as major as stopping an evil overlord from bringing eternal night. It may seem to have even less than one might anticipate since the first considerable chunk is a retelling of what had just happened at the end of the previous chapter from Spike's perspective.

I felt that showing Spike's perspective may have been necessary for two reasons...first I wanted to show why Spike doesn't just straight out tell Celestia that Chrysalis is Twilight. He doesn't see as much as one might have thought, he is questioning himself on account of his exhaustion possibly messing with his mind, and because he is in some serious denial. The second is because I wanted to show what happened after Chrysalis fainted rather than just having her wake up in the hospital. Then came the next problem...something I hadn't thought about at first. Why doesn't Luna just tell Celestia?

While she may have had her memories wiped, it wasn't far back enough for her to not have seen Chrysalis showing her sharp teeth or for Luna to not remember making the conclusion that she may be using dark magic. Eventually, after writing a bit, I realized this wasn't nearly as big an issue as I had initially thought. Without even really changing anything of my plans for the character, I was able to justify her lying. In fact, the lie actually fits very nicely with what I had already been planning with how she feels about Twilight/Chrysalis.

Anyway, in this chapter we get Twilight meeting with the princesses and her parents (the latter of which she siphons love from) and sets up Chrysalis staying in Ponyville, as well as some stuff that is going to be led to eventually in regards to her future interactions with both of the Princesses. Not the most exciting chapter, but still stuff that is reasonably important to establish. There should be one more chapter to get through that could be argued as "adventure", but after that we should be heading into some slice of life chapters

As a bit of trivia...this chapter was initially going to begin with a dream sequence from Chrysalis' perspective and then transition into her vaulting awake because of it to find herself in the hospital. The dream was in relation to her childhood and her mother, but in the end I scrapped the idea because I felt it didn't quite fit and I wanted to show what happened after she fainted in the ruins. I may take the idea I had involving the dream and integrate it into the story at a later point, but I'm undecided at this point whether or not I will or what form it will take (as I'm thinking it would be better if it weren't presented as a dream).

That's enough rambling for now. I hope you enjoyed the chapter.