Edited by: SilentCarto
Proofreader: Coandco
Disclaimer: Yes, I think I would like to have a lie down and talk to the nice doctor.
Queen Chrysalis, absolute monarch of the Changelings and First Guardian of the Hive, was not having a good week. Or month, for that matter. In fact, the past year had pretty much just been one disaster after another.
She sat on her throne sighing at the unfairness of it all. It had seemed so simple in the beginning. Capture Cadence, drain her love, impersonate her, conquer Canterlot, subjugate Equestria using its citizens as livestock, and from that base conquer the world in an unending swarm. When had things gotten so complicated?
The source of those complications was waiting just beyond the range of the magic-draining effect of her Carapace Throne. Over the past few days, a massive army of ponies had gathered there, lead by the three damned alicorns that insisted on plaguing her. And a fourth that had slept through her invasion.
Having reminded herself of the bothersome presence of those interlopers, Queen Chrysalis felt compelled to get up and vent her feelings on the matter properly.
“GET OFF MY LAWN!” she roared, using an amplification spell to its fullest effect.
There was some milling about in the ranks of the distant ponies but eventually four taller-than-average and less-pretty-than-the-Queen mares marched forth.
Queen Chrysalis prepared herself for their no doubt witty rejoinder, already calculating where the argument might go next and what her most cutting reply might be.
“NO!”
A moment of silence passed while Chrysalis reconfigured her mental gears. “THEN COME FIGHT ME ALREADY!”
There was some heated discussion among the alicorns before Twilight Sparkle stepped forth once more, ready to proclaim their combined decision. “ALSO NO!”
Queen Chrysalis took in a deep breath and counted to ten just like her therapist-drone suggested. It did not make her any less angry, and she made a mental note to have him executed later. Before she could shout anything back, Celestia stepped forward.
“SURRENDER NOW, CHRYSALIS. WE WILL TREAT YOU AND YOUR CHANGELINGS FAIRLY. THIS CONSTANT CONFLICT BETWEEN OUR PEOPLES MUST END.”
A smaller, pinker alicorn also stepped forward. “PLEASE SAY NO. I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO TAKING THAT TINY CROWN OF YOURS AND SHOVING IT–”
“CADENCE!”
“WHAT? THE BITCH KIDNAPPED ME, SLEPT WITH MY HUSBAND AND RUINED MY WEDDING. I’M THE PRINCESS OF LOVE, NOT FORGIVENESS.”
“WE ARE HERE TO REFORM THE CHANGELINGS,” Celestia declared, glaring at her niece or daughter or whatever. Chrysalis didn’t really know or care how they were related. “NOT TO HARM–”
“BUT TIA,” whined Luna the Sleepy. “THOU PROMISED US BATTLE.” She turned from her sister (or cousin, or something? Again, who cared?) and towards Chrysalis. “NOT THAT WE HAVE ANY GRUDGE AGAINST THEE, BUT TIA HATH SAID THAT BLOODSHED IS RARE ANYMORE AND I APPRECIATED A CHANCE TO RETURN TO THE FIELD. I HOPE YOU DO NOT DIE THIS DAY, BECAUSE I RATHER LIKED YOUR PLAN TO RE-INTRODUCE BROTHELS TO EQUESTRIA.”
“LUNA!”
“WHAT? DON’T GIVE US THAT LOOK, TIA. IT’S NOT AS IF YOU NEVER SOWED YOUR WILD OATS. WHY, I REMEMBER ONCE ON A BET WHEN YOU TOOK SEVEN–”
“LUNA! NOPONY WANTS TO HEAR THAT!”
Chrysalis saw Twilight Sparkle mouth the words ‘I wouldn’t mind’ and saw the nods of many guard ponies in her vicinity.
“SO ARE WE GOING TO FIGHT OR NOT?” Chrysalis bellowed. She had plenty of other things she could be doing if they were going to just stand around bickering.
Celestia composed herself and hushed her fellow Princesses with a glare. “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SURRENDER AND COOPERATE PEACEFULLY, CHRYSALIS. OTHERWISE WE MUST CAPTURE ALL OF YOU BY FORCE.”
“... AND IF I SAY ‘NAH’?”
Celestia glared at her with a disappointment that Chrysalis could feel despite more than a mile’s distance. “THEN WE WILL ATTACK FORTHWITH!”
“THANKS FOR THE WARNING! BE SURE TO WEAR YOUR CROWN TO THE BATTLE; I LOOK FORWARD TO COLLECTING IT FROM YOUR CORPSE!” Queen Chrysalis left her balcony feeling far more lighthearted than when she had stepped out there. Let them attack, her castle was impenetrable.
The bleak stone of the Badlands made a stealthy approach impossible for an army and left her enemies exposed to the beam spells of her soldiers. Even if some creature was foolish enough to try such a thing, the Carapace Throne absorbed all magic except that of the changelings. Griffins and pegasi would fall from the sky, earth ponies and minotaurs would lose their strength and stamina, unicorns and zebra alchemists would find their spells and potions useless garbage. Not even Alicorns were exempt from its effects, if the legends were to be believed. And if against all odds some creature survived the killing ground outside, the shifting confines of the castle were nearly impossible to navigate and would soon reduce an organized army to meaningless chaos, easily cut down by her soldiers.
“Worker,” she said to a nearby changeling. “Tell the soldiers to prepare for a full assault from the ponies sometime today. And fetch me some fresh love. All this leading has given me quite a hunger.” The worker scurried off to do her bidding as the Queen of all changelings settled comfortably onto her throne.
Yes, Queen Chrysalis thought self-satisfiedly. Let Celestia and her ponies gnash their teeth outside. We have enough ponies cocooned in the basement to last through years of siege, and they have no hope of taking the castle through force. A customarily smug smirk flickered across her face as the worker soon brought her a snifter full of freshly extracted love. Chrysalis held it under her muzzle, sampling its delectable aroma.
“Mmm… a Baltimare stallion, aged but not old. Taken in his prime and cocooned for years.” She inhaled some of the gaseous vapor. “A 996 vintage, I believe.”
“Correct as always, your Majesty,” a worker said with a bow, hastening to push a cocoon holding a small filly out of view.
For the first time in a long time, Chrysalis relaxed and simply felt at peace with the world.
The world, however, would have none of that.
“HEAVY PROJECTILES INBOUND! PLEASE EXIT THE CASTLE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!” Twilight Sparkle proclaimed, her voice piercing the air like a shrill siren.
Queen Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “What do they take us for? That’s one of the oldest, dumbest tricks in the–”
The castle suddenly rocked with an impact that threw Queen Chrysalis to the floor. She snarled at the interruption to her second lunch, but before she could do any more, a second, a third, and then a fourth impact slammed into the castle. Each one was accompanied by the sounds of rending and smashing of castle walls.
Queen Chrysalis rose to her hooves and rushed to the balcony overlooking the rest of her castle. Most of the gray-green architecture stood tall and pround, a monument to the industriousness of the Hive. But two of the smaller spires had been snapped clean off and there were shattered walls on the main building where it had been hit with glancing blows. The culprits were four massive boulders that looked like they had come straight from the heart of a mountain. As a changeling landed on the rock, Chrysalis got a much better idea of its size. It had to weigh dozens – maybe even hundreds – of tons!
A flash of light in the distance caught her attention, and she focused on the four Princesses, hefting another massive boulder in their combined magic fields. With a blaze of power well beyond anything Chrysalis had ever performed herself, the rock was launched skyward.
Changeling Queens had never needed to study higher math, and Chrysalis would not recognize a parabola if it dropped a rock on her head, but she had no problem deducing that this particular boulder had her name on it.
Yelping with fear, she fled to the air. The worker serving her followed, struggling under the weight of the cocooned pony. Once at a safe distance Chrysalis belatedly realized that her snifter was unbroken and still threaded through one of her hoof holes. She wordlessly held it out to the worker for another glass of freshly extracted love. She obliged and Chrysalis slugged the glass back in one gulp as they watched the boulder plummet straight through the throne room, smashing the Carapace Throne to pieces in the process.
From the sound of it, the stone had enough momentum to pass through three more levels before it finally stopped. Holding in a sigh and a curse, Queen Chrysalis fluttered back to the remains of her throne room to assess the damage.
“Finally!” a strange voice proclaimed as a serpentine outline traced itself in the air, filling with color from the top down. Discord inspected the rubble with a practiced and pleased eye. What the eye had previously belonged to and why it made noises like a flashing camera when he squeezed it were not subjects that Chrysalis wanted to linger on. “Oh, I have been waiting all day for that thing to go down so I could gloat in person!”
“Discord,” Queen Chrysalis said crossly. “If you don’t mind, I have a desperate, hopeless battle to preside over. We’re going to be a bit busy.”
“Not so fast, Chryssie,” Discord said with a smirk. “I am going nowhere until you admit that I won. I want to hear it from your own lips. Or mandibles. Whatever .”
Confusion was common around the Spirit of Chaos, but Chrysalis found herself stumped. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Discord’s face fell and he spent several moments fumbling around to find it. He slapped it back on – upside down – and gave what she thought was a frown. “Oh, come now. Think back to several months ago, when I just recently ‘reformed’ and went on a Chaos World Tour. I was annoying you for weeks!” The grimace on Chrysalis’s face said that she remembered the occasion very well, and Discord happily plunged ahead. “In one of your more angry tirades – I think it was after I turned all of your workers this glittering pastel color with big jewel-like eyes – you accused me of being, to pardon the expression, a one-trick pony.”
The specifics brought the incident to mind and a dawning horror crossed Chrysalis’s face. “I remember. I said you were helpless without your powers and you said…”
Discord possessed a plethora of varied teeth, but for a moment every one of them seemed to come from a shark’s grin. “And I said I could topple your entire hive with nothing but a quill and parchment.” He flung his hands out and laughed wildly, rocking back and forth in the air. “All of those letters to Celestia, and she thought each one was from you! Oh, it was too rich!” He peered into the distance, looking through what had been his paw and was now a contraption of metal and glass. Then he tsked. “Oh, really now, Celestia? She's outfitting her earth ponies with lassos and pegasi with nets. Ugh, why does she have to rain on my parade? ” Discord shrugged. “No matter; I'll find some fun elsewhere. All you need to do is admit that I won, and I’ll be out of your mane and let you deal with the army marching on you.”
“But you didn’t.”
Discord’s grin soured and disappeared. “What’s that?”
“You didn’t win,” Chrysalis repeated.
“Balderdash! I didn’t use anything except a quill and parchment–”
“And ink,” Chrysalis said a sly grin on her face. “That wasn’t part of the bet, was it?”
Discord froze.
His teeth moved first, grinding against each other like millstones. He grew until he towered over her, teeth and tusks spilled out of his mouth, eyes red with fury and madness. He reached for her with a claw large enough to enfold her entire body and strange sounds, too jumbled and chaotic to be called words tumbled from his mouth.
Queen Chrysalis was frozen in place and the worker next to her dropped the pony cocoon to the floor.
Then, in the space between moments, the nightmarish monster facing them disappeared. Discord stood there back to his usual form, breathing deeply. He drew a candy bar out of nowhere and started munching on it. “I needed this snack. I’m not me when I’m angry.” He took a few more deep breaths, then glared at Chrysalis.
She couldn’t help flinching.
“Fine,” he said with a pout. “I didn’t manage what I said I could. There.”
“Great,” Chrysalis said, unsteadily. “What do I win?”
At that Discord gave her a pitying smile. “The satisfaction of being right.” Then he disappeared with a snap of his fingers.
Queen Chrysalis examined the ruined castle, her disorganized defenders, and the pony army thundering towards them. “Yay me?”