Echo is a high ranking changeling officer. The Canterlot invasion was going perfectly, and her battalion had personally defeated the Elements of Harmony. Suddenly, she finds herself far flung from Canterlot, crashing into the Everfree forest. Now she is faced with a difficult reality - her hive, the only family she's ever known, no longer exists, and she must adapt to life as a pony. What she finds out about herself, though, will surprise her.

Rated Teen for occasional suggestiveness and language, tagged gore for brief violence, particularly in later chapters.

Dark because later chapters get pretty ... well, dark.

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Addendum 5/29/2018

This story is now, as of this addendum, five years old. It is getting more attention as I put out new chapters on the sequel.

I recognize that this story has problems, and that some of them by their nature carry over to the sequel; please remember that when I started writing this, I was not yet even old enough to legally drink in the US. A lot has happened and a lot has changed, and there are many things about this story I regret including, but which it is now too late to change. Some of those things I have simply done my best to ignore and make irrelevant, but some of them are errors from a 19 year old me that will haunt me until the sequel is finished.

In short, please be gentle.

This story is a sequel to Princess Celestia The Changeling Queen: Stories Behind the Mask

At the Royal Wedding, Chrysalis and the Changelings were revealed to all of Equestria.

But another mask was torn away that day. A mask born for a thousand years. A mask created on one promise. A mask, that has become synonymous, fused, to its bearer.

A mask that when ripped off, causes Twilight, her friends and Luna to question everything they ever knew about the one pony, one very important pony.

At the Royal Wedding, the meaning of the phrase 'Princess Celestia' changes forever.

NOTE: Chrysalis is NOT Celestia!!! That'd be impossible to pull off.

Credits to: Plainoasis for the design of the cover art
Note 2: Original cover art here: https://angelea-phoenix.deviantart.com/art/Contest-entry-Changeling-Celestia-337023552

Pre-read/edited by Zervziel,
Blankscape,
FinalFan,
Courage Fire
Aurora Borealis

Side Stories to this can be found: here.

An audio-reading on youtube up to Chapter 21 is up by StraightToThePoint Studios. I'm aware there are others but this is the nearest complete one: [embed]https://youtu.be/X3eMW673CSY[/embed]

There are also 2 print versions of Princess Celestia:The Changeling Queen. Nonexistent Publications run and Ministry of Image's run.

Contribute to the TV Tropes Page (thanks to Babs_Seed72 for getting it up)

It's Sisterhooves Social time again. This year, Dash catches wind of two new competitors and gets Spike to bet on the race. When her team is revealed to be a rather famous set of siblings, it looks like poor Spike will be her slave for a week! However, due to a team of masseurs, a minor invasion, unfortunate addictions, and dubious barrel components, victory might not be as near as she thinks...

A chance encounter between Carrot Top and Rarity in the spa leads to what could be a very promising opportunity for the carrot farmer. In order to seize this chance, Carrot Top needs only to prepare some of her finest carrots for the fashionista, so that she may verify whether a celebrity friend will be willing to promote them. Carrot Top arrives to cook for Rarity, but though they begin with only business on their minds, as the evening progresses -- and the two ponies learn more about each other -- they find that they have far more in common than they thought.

"Derpy..." He knew he needed to say something, but, well...Words had never really been Thunderlane's strong suit. Taking a quick moment to think on what would be the right thing, he hunched down next to her, resting his cheek on his own forelegs as he peered at her. "I'm glad you're not part a my family."

Her muffled sob was a very clear indication that that was decidedly not what she wanted to hear.

-

This is a much longer follow up to How Sweet It Is. It will definitely make more sense if you read that first!

During a lull in the conversation at an upper class charity dinner, Rarity takes a moment to contemplate some commonly held assumptions made of Princess Celestia. Specifically, her table manners.

The depths of Luna's loneliness drive her to create a creature that never should have been. But the nature of her companion, and the dark methods used to create it, may lead Celestia to commit an unforgivable deed of her own...

Written for World-Building Alliance's January Writing Contest. Credit, as always, to NorsePony, for his wonderful editing work.

Rock's as solid a unicorn can be without being an earth pony. Then most of a life time growing up in a mine is going to leave a whole bunch of rough edges. Still Rock's always figured that it was pretty good preparation for when the sun went down for the last time ever over a year ago.

Now though she's stuck in a whole other Equestria and there's another unicorn that looks just like her that also lives in Ponyville. Just she's still calling herself Rarity and is far too prissy for her own good.

Soon she's going to meet other ponies in the same predicament, linked in ways they don't yet understand and try to find a way home to the Equestria that they know.

Course first off she's going to have to work out how to get along with herself...

***

Courtesy of an awesome brony Random Elements now has a tropes page : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/StrykesRandomElements.

This fic was completed in the week between One Bad Apple and Magic Duel, so consider anything before that as having happened for purposes of this fic and everything after as not happening yet, or at all.

Original chapter publish dates:
Chapter 1 - 24th July
Chapter 2 - 29th July
Chapter 3 - 2nd August
Chapter 4 - 8th August
Chapter 5 - 12th August
Chapter 6 - 30th August
Chapter 7 - 1st September
Chapter 8 - 5th September
Chapter 9 - 9th October
Chapter 10 - 5th November
Chapter 11 - 28th November
Epilogue - 28th November

When Twilight was young, she used to sit on the balcony and look down at the statues in the royal garden. At the strange creatures of fur and armour and feathers and horns, and just...wonder on them.
And out of all of them, out of the unique draconequus and the rare Cyclops and the terrifying Invention Monkey, one particular statue always caught her eye.
Four...blocky, for lack of a better word, knights. Frozen in perfect formation, their heads hidden deep within the confines of their helmets. Each one stuck in the same pose, for as long as she'd known them.
And beneath them, engraved into the stone they were a part of, was a simple message.
"Wake us when something fun happens or Celestia stops being a bitch, whichever comes first."

Now with tropes page, all thanks to Eyeshield. Good work, buddy.

A Wendersnaven is a mythical creature. Some say it looks like a bird with two heads and feathers of every color of the rainbow. Others believe it looks like a cat with zebra stripes and sparkling jewels for eyes. There's at least one pony who thinks it looks like a turtle carrying a tiny castle on its back! See, nopony has ever seen a Wendersnaven before, so nopony knows what it looks like.

But with Twilight's help, Fluttershy is going to go find one. Into the rugged Blackhoof Mountains they'll go, in search of the mythical beast. But perhaps they'll find something more among the high rocky peaks.

Many thanks to Loving Tolerance for pre-reading!