They should have known it was going too easily to last.
While walking slightly behind the pink alicorn, but staying close enough to not seem suspicious, Metamorphosis went over a few mental notes.
Okay, appearance? Check. Voice? Check. Mannerism? Check, so far… A questioning expression briefly came across his face, blue eyes gazing upward in thought. Magic? He knew that there were many times where a changeling would have one little detail that allowed them to blend in perfectly – the colored magic of the unicorn’s horn. It was one physical trait that changelings often forgot to conceal.
Making sure no one was looking, Metamorphosis hurriedly materialized a spurt of magic onto his horn…
Blast it! Metamorphosis inwardly snapped as the horn briefly flickered with a bright green aura. Come on, focus… conceal it properly!
After a second of focus, Metamorphosis sighed in relief when the magical aura became the same magenta color that the real Shining Armor had as his magical aura, as had been clearly shown when the captain created the shield.
The pink alicorn in front of him turned around, having heard his sigh. “Something wrong, dear?”
“Just…. a headache from the shield,” Metamorphosis said, relieved that he had been able to express a reasonable explanation. Luckily, the alicorn seemed satisfied with the answer.
When the guards and royal ponies entered the large expanse of the dining hall, the two changelings had to stop themselves from looking too surprised. The long, cloth-covered table in the room’s center was laden with foods of all different kinds – stacks of waffles and pancakes, jars filled to the brim with various types of syrup and jelly, a basket of bread rolls and bagels with butter to the side and even a plate in with several deviled eggs that had been cooked to perfection. In the center there was a large bowl of fruits and vegetables such as watermelon, celery, grapes, carrots, apples, cantaloupe, and just about every kind of berry that existed in Equestria.
The same was true for the myriad of drinks placed around the table – everything from ordinary water, to lemonade, to cider, to even some of the more alcoholic beverages. Whatever anypony could want, it was there.
To almost anypony, it would have looked extremely alluring, and they’d immediately want to dig into whatever food it was they liked best. To Chrysalis and Metamorphosis, however, the magnificent spread posed a big problem. An issue that hadn’t quite hit them before in their plans.
What in the world do they eat?!
While both swarms had managed a few brief glances in the dining hall when scouting around the castle’s exterior, they had never happened to see the princess and Shining Armor eating, and thus had next to no knowledge of their dietary habits. Aside from able to gain power through feeding off the emotions of others, the changelings did eat small foods that corresponded to their habitat. But the pair were in strong doubt there were any fish here.
Oh crap! Chrysalis thought, her eyes darting back and forth from one piece of food to the next. This is bad! Does she like any of that pancake stuff? Apples? Celery? I personally think that’s too stringy, but I’m supposed to be Mi Amore Cadenza now, not Chrysalis! The princess might love them!
Metamorphosis tried to keep his outward appearance calm, but he was having similar thoughts. How could I have fallen into such an oversight and not given proper thought into this?! Does Shining Armor drink alcohol or not? Is he allergic to anything? The changeling king wanted to slap a hoof to his forehead, but he resisted the urge.
Before the pair could even sit down, the circumstances they were in got worse from their perspective.
“Good morning, you two!” a voice said brightly.
The hearts of the two changelings skipped a few beats as their heads whirled to face the speaker, who was sitting at the end of the table. It was a tall white alicorn with an aurora-like mane, the one pony who everyone knew of no matter where they lived. She was the ruler of the sun, after all.
“Oh, uh, good morning!” Chrysalis stammered, momentarily caught off-guard at the appearance of the sun-raising alicorn as she tried to sound natural. She would have to be extremely careful about what she said and did – Celestia was the younger alicorn’s aunt, for crying out loud!
Metamorphosis bowed, quickly thinking it would be an appropriate gesture for the Captain to express. “Good morning, Princess Celestia.”
When Celestia stood up from her seat in greeting to the two of them, Chrysalis ran over with false enthusiasm and grinned at “her” aunt. You’re supposed to be her niece now, Chrysalis! Act like it and she’ll be fooled!
Smiling, Celestia looked kindly at the pony she believed to be her beloved niece. There was a look of understanding evident in her gaze, rather than confusion or mistrust. “I hope pre-wedding nerves aren’t getting to you too much,”
This vulnerability of the princess’s is making things easier, Metamorphosis chuckled, a smile coming across his face.
Thank Circe, an excuse! Chrysalis thought, nodding before speaking aloud, looking disgruntled. “A little… okay, quite a lot, Aunt Celestia.”
The moment the last two words left Chrysalis’s mouth, she inwardly snarled. She wished she could take the words back, and it wasn’t just because those two words together were disgustingly cheesy on her tongue. What if she had said the wrong thing? What if the real princess called Celestia by some name other than “Aunt Celestia”? She might have just blown everything!
Fortunately, the older alicorn didn’t seem suspicious, and only offered an encouraging smile. “Hang in there, you two. I know that the days leading up to the wedding can be stressful. You just have to make it through a few more days-”
“And then we can have the wedding of our dreams,” Metamorphosis finished confidently, flashing a charming smile as he wrapped a hoof around Chrysalis’s shoulder.
Chrysalis smiled warmly. But on the inside, she laughed at her deception. Ha! He doesn’t suspect a thing! He’ll be under my control soon enough!
Metamorphosis rested his head against Chrysalis’s in a gesture of faux affection. Don’t think that I feel any emotional attachment to you, Princess, Metamorphosis thought. I only ‘love’ the power I have over you, and what I can and will get from you.
Almost subconsciously, the changeling’s focused on the energy of the other, to feed on their love, gain power from it, get closer to the unsuspecting lover…
And in that moment, the eyes of the two changelings widened as they came to the same realization.
The love I can sense isn’t as strong as it should be!
They could sense that love was there – love in some form was definitely there, that much they could tell. But it wasn’t the kind of all-consuming love that they had expected. What love they could sense was more subtle than that.
Metamorphosis’s mind was whirling as he looked directly at Chrysalis. Could it be that… the Princess has been faking her undying love for Shining Armor the whole time? Does she only love him a little, but he thinks she loves him completely?
Chrysalis, too, was perplexed, but attempted to keep her expression normal. Does Shining Armor not really love the Princess as strongly as I thought after all? That love is there, but it doesn’t seem to be completely unconditional…
Things were only getting worse.
“Aren’t you two going to eat something?”
The two changelings were jolted out of their thoughts by the questioning voice of Celestia. She and the guards had sat down around the table, some already eating, leaving two vacant seats to Celestia’s left for the pair to occupy.
“Oh, right!”
“Of course!”
Chrysalis and Metamorphosis gave each other brief smiles as they sat down, looking at the spread in front of them. They had to eat something, or their cover might be blown.
I’ll just watch to see what Shining Armor does, Chrysalis convinced herself, feeling the idea to be foolproof. I assume they at least like similar things.
I’ll just wait for her to eat something first, Metamorphosis calculated. She’ll probably give some sort of indication of what the real Shining Armor likes to eat, like a mention of his favorite food.
The disguised changelings looked at each other, then at the table. Neither said a word, each clearly waiting for the other to make a move first.
“Ahem,” Chrysalis coughed, brow raised questioningly. “Aren’t you going to eat something, Shining Armor?”
Metamorphosis nudged his head a little towards her, smiling. “Ladies first.”
“Oh that’s so sweet of you!” Chrysalis said sweetly before her voice turned more insistent. “Seriously, Shining, you should eat first.”
With a shake of his head, Metamorphosis’s horn lit up, the magenta aura gently surrounding one of the waffles and Chrysalis’s plate. “Please dear, eat it-“
Chrysalis’s horn quickly shimmered, magically taking hold of an apple that Blaze Storm had just been about to reach for (not noticing his exclamation of shock), and swiftly levitating it over to the two of them. “Shining Armor, you are Captain of the Guard, you need your strength to perform your duties.”
“I don’t mind, dear, really,” Metamorphosis insisted, using his own magic to attempt to guide the apple next to the waffles which he attempted to place down on her plate.
“Shining, be reasonable!” Chrysalis hastily levitated one of the pancakes onto Metamorphosis’s plate, pouring on some syrup along with it.
The two were so focused on their stubborn magical war that things began to get out of control. When they had begun to focus on attempting to give each more of the food spread out in front of them (much to the onlookers’ surprise and slight amusement), the apple they had been fighting over was freed from their magical grasp, but continued the momentum it had gained in the changelings’ tug-of-war. The small fruit ended up ricocheting off the table and crashing into one of the large cider glasses, causing wobble before being knocked to the side and cider to spill all over the table, with some splattering Blaze Storm and Silver Cloud.
The still-bouncing apple ended up working like a domino effect, knocking into several other glasses and causing shards to fly over the table. One glass landed squarely in the fruit bowl, and another knocked over the basket of bread so that the rolls rolled right out onto the table.
After having knocked into just about everything the food table had to offer, the apple ended up rolling to a stop in front of Blaze Storm. In the stunned silence that followed, the look in Blaze’s orange eyes clearly expressed his disappointment. The thought was written all over his face: If only I had gotten that apple.
The coomotion and the surprised exclamations from the other ponies caused Chrysalis and Metamorphosis to quell their magical battle immediately, feeling the eyes of everypony on them. As they looked across the table, they realized that the their short dispute had cased almost every bit of cuisine to be smashed, knocked, impaled by glass shards, or spilled.
Except the devilled eggs, which, somehow, had remained unharmed.
The other guards and Princess Celestia gazed at the couple with stunned but amused expressions on their faces, though Blaze Storm looked a little irked at having his apple being taken away from him.
The duo grinned sheepishly, embarrassed at all the attention they had drawn to themselves as a result of their fiasco. With short laughter and embarrassed glances at one another, their magical auras slowly began to try to get things normal again, and put some food on their plates in a dignified manner this time.
Well, that went well, Metamorphosis thought sarcastically.
Chrysalis groaned, looking rather disgruntled. Who would have thought that breakfast could end up causing so many problems?
The others chuckled lightly.
“Try to keep yourselves under control you two, okay?” Silver Cloud said with a laugh.
As Chrysalis and Metamorphosis attempted to straighten things up a little and actually eat breakfast without tearing everything apart, it suddenly hit them that this was only the start of the day. They were going to have to work out this same sort of food issue quite a few more times before the wedding. But hopefully, it wouldn’t be near as bad as this first time.
Not only that, there was that issue of getting energy from love, a love that seemed to be there in a much smaller quantity than each of them had hoped.
Great, just great.
As the pair glanced at each other, they each thought of a potential solution: the only way to properly get the energy they wanted was to attempt to make it grow a little more, or at least take what they could get of it. The love may not be completely consuming, but it was still some sort of love.
Metamorphosis sighed, placing a deviled egg onto his plate, as it was the only food that hadn’t been smashed, tainted, or otherwise affected by their brief magical argument. And despite the little squabble, the changeling king had to admit that the deviled eggs actually tasted pretty good.
Chrysalis sighed and started eating the waffle that the unicorn had put on her plate, though the taste was, to her, a lot to be desired.
This was going to be a looonnggg day.