The abduction of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza was not going as Chrysalis had planned. Which is to say, it was going far, far too easily. Chrysalis was a great proponent of nested, forking contingency planning, bundles of options and sub-options fanning out from each inflection, each decision-point involving some other entity's agency birthing another nodule of choices and possibilities, each of which required its own set of reactions, opportunities, and threats.
Chrysalis had, by the time of the first Canterlot operation, been doing this for a very long time. She'd made a galaxy of mistakes over the years, entire universes of blown opportunities, errors, near-catastrophes, and lost drones, from those first few scrabbling raids in Ultima Mule to those hungry years in the wastelands around Klugetown, to the hoof to mouth years in Abyssinia and the land of the tanuki. She'd built her swarm up from a corporal's guard of soft, easily distractible imbeciles to that horde of hard-flanked veterans who lurked, undetected, in the remote high slopes of the mountains behind the Canterhorn. The infiltrators and collectors were embedded throughout the suburbs and market-town backcountry of the pony capital, maintaining a continuous supply line to her army, a logistical feat of love-rationing in which she believed her pride and self-satisfaction to be well justified.
Chrysalis had been ready for this.
What she hadn't been ready for was the way that the young, pink princess had so easily fallen into friendship with the frankly suspicious approach of a total stranger like the blue pegasus mare Chrysalis had disguised herself as for the first meeting. Chrysalis had scheduled a series of increasingly intimate and entrapping encounters with the target-princess, inveigling her into an ill-advised relationship with ‘Flutter Feather', until such time as the disguised changeling queen could lure her royal friend away from her guards and into a position where her small retinue of infiltrators could overwhelm the precious, privileged pink princess and allow Chrysalis to replace her mo- replace the youngest of the princesses.
Instead, Princess Cadance had embraced Flutter Feather as if she'd known the stranger all of her life, blithely told her two guards to return to the barracks, and left a message informing Captain Armor that his fiancée was going to the spa with her friend, and not to expect her until the morning.
Chrysalis hadn't had any contingencies planned for what to do if her target dove head-long into the trap before the snares had been properly laid. She was forced to improvise.
Chrysalis loathed improvisation.
Mi Amore Cadenza was properly restrained, of course, and Chrysalis' minions had her surrounded, hissing and glaring as was proper. The spa on the east side of town had been identified by an infiltrator as a vulnerable and convenient position, and they'd bought it from the retiring pony, planning for something like this. Except they'd not had time to smuggle the employees that came with the spa out of the city, and they were currently all in the process of being cocooned in the basement, while drones who were not, in Chrysalis' rueful assessment, truly ready for public impersonation, rebuffed the usual clientele with awkward stories about a royal having rented out the entire facility for a ‘party'.
Which was even a species of truth. The best lies generally were.
The princess was looking around at the drones snarling and hissing at her, and she was… she was…
Beaming. Looking delighted, even happy. She reached out and pulled in the nearest hard, black-carapaced soldier, and nuzzled the now-confused drone with an expression of delight.
"Oh, honey, look at them! So very fierce and threatening! Such a good job you've done with this instar! So proud, so very, very proud. Ahem. Oh! Oh dear! I am at your mercy! However did you get all of these monsters inside of my Shiny's perimeter!”
Was Cadance a terrible actress, or did she just not care? Chrysalis quickly riffled through her mental catalog of scripts and response-trees, and pulled out something that was perhaps… not exactly appropriate.
"Hahaha! Thank you for your donation, my lady! It was so generous of you to offer up your facilities so easily!”
"Oh, honey, that's not really… I have to call you something. What are you calling yourself? Can we talk as mares, and drop the script? There's nopony here listening other than your drones. Are they a sapient breeding? Will they remember anything we say?”
This had gone so far past Chrysalis' expectations that she was beginning to suspect that she was dreaming. She'd heard that the newly returned Luna was some sort of dreamsmith. Was she trapped in some sort of nightmare ambush?
"What am I saying! Of course they'll remember! You'll have to wipe their memories, of course. I'll have some suggestions for that later. And darling, dearest – you aren't dreaming this. This is real. And you've done so well to come here, on time, in position, just as the planning for our wedding truly got into gear. I'll be offering suggestions, certainly, but you'll be carrying most of the weight. I've been looking forward to this! Flurry Heart, darling – or are you calling yourself Chrysalis yet? Oh, tell me you've settled on Chrysalis. I never did like the other edgemare names you dabbled in. So embarrassing!”
"The- these- this generation of drones knows me as Chrysalis, yes.”
"Well, then, we'll leave to obscurity and oblivion the other names, then. Great! You'll be foalnapping me, of course. This is a lovely forward base of operation, and I recommend you use it for the more… public aspects of this operation. But you can't keep your prisoners or – Celestia forbid – me, here. There's a perfectly lovely set of abandoned crystal mines under the palace which will be quite suitable. Oh, dear. I wonder how we found those in the first place? Oh, this entire thing confuses me so much!”
The drones were looking about as confused as changelings of their limited experience and intelligence could possibly be. And Chrysalis was… she was feeling… she hated losing control of an operation like this.
"SEIZE HER! Gag her! Don't listen to a word she says!”
The quickly subdued and bound princess's eyes danced with glee over her gag. Even with the pretty pink princess hog-tied and silenced, the changeling queen still felt like she wasn't the person in control.
She needed to be in control.
She sat down in front of the prisoner, and directed her two most trusted infiltrators to go find these crystal… caves? Mines? And examine them for a change in base.
Cadenza had called her Flurry Heart. She'd called her by her name! Was it another changeling? Was it some sort of monster that had gotten here ahead of Chrysalis and stolen her prey? Was this entire plot a failure, a blown operation? She reached out and prodded her – poked at the princess's flank with her black, holed hoof. She ran the side of her hoof over the princess's coat, examining the hair, the cutie mark. She lit up her wicked, jagged horn and studied Cadenza's magical aura, looking for deviations.
It was the same version of the Crystal Princess that she'd known, so long ago. And of course, a hundred years of desperate, hard-scrabble existence lay in between Chrysalis and her long-ago foalhood days. She rather thought herself lucky that she remembered as much as she did of that time. A great many traumas and terrible times had come and gone, and to remember everything of…
She leaned forward and drew in the mare's scent, trying to remember. They said that smell was the strongest of the sense-memories. That your nose remembered that which your mind had forgotten.
Home…
If it was another changeling hive, or a shapechanging monster of some sort, it had – she had done such an impossibly fine job that Chrysalis was humbled by the feat. If this is an enemy, I should immediately surrender and offer my swarm up as an offering to the victor, instead of wasting all of my resources in a futile battle. Were her own drones and infiltrators being replaced even as she sat, perplexed?
Chrysalis cleared the room, and used her horn-magic to ungag the princess-thing.
"Who are you? How do you know so much?”
"Oh, honey, Flurry, don't worry. I know what you're thinking now. Everything is going to be just fine. I am what I seem to be, really. I'm sorry I've been so… out of character. I am just so delighted to see you! This body is rather hormonal, I'm afraid. I'm so young! You wouldn't believe what it's like, being me. Like a continual feast, an embarrassment of riches. I want so much for you, I really do. I'm so very sorry that you’ve had to go through what you've already gone through, will go through from here! The world makes so much more sense when… well, telling you now won't help, I'm afraid.”
"Why do you keep calling me that? You shouldn't know who-"
"Flurry Heart is? Well, yes. Paradoxes and all that. But you must know that alicorns have a rather… complex relationship with providence. And prophecy. And so forth. This meeting was preordained! An awful lot has been preordained, in fact. What do you remember before the tree, my darling girl?”
"The… the world before.” The princess – the puzzle – her mother looked at her with all the benevolence in the world. "The before-time. Before the- the disaster. Before my mother d-d- sent me here.”
"What do you remember about it, dearest?”
"Bits. Bits and pieces. More comes to me when I sleep. Sometimes. Nothing, originally. I was a mindless beast for years, I think. I can't even remember where that damned tree is, I think somewhere in one of the northwestern forests, but I've not had time to go looking.”
"Hrm, yes. That explains some things. Oh, dearest, if only I wasn't tied up, I'd hug you. You look like you need a hug. But I understand why you need me restrained. I'll try to not be too threatening, and we only have tonight before you have all sorts of work to do. You're not ready for this, but I'll try to help you as much as I can. What you're planning is probably not… going to be great for you, emotionally. I don't suppose I can talk you out of trying to marry your father in a couple weeks?”
"What? No, of course that's not the plan!”
"Darling, you're plotting to replace your mother in the affections of your father, and marry him in her stead. There are entire books of pony psychology about this sort of thing.”
”It isn't like that!”
"No, of course not. That's just fine. I just worry about the wear and tear on your swarm – you've built up a proper swarm by now, I think? Good. We're going to have to figure out how to get them through this without too much damage.”
"You're talking as if I don't hold all the cards! We will be victorious!”
"Do you remember Chrysalis being victorious in the Battle of the Wedding?”
"Th-the battle of the…?”
"Hrm. Haven't remembered that yet? For the best, if I recall correctly, you're not exactly the best actress right now, are you?”
There was prophecy, and then there was this…
"No, come now, who are you, really? You're not Cadenza!”
"Is that a distancing technique? Getting your own mother's name wrong? Does it help you maintain your equanimity?”
”Stop addressing me as if I'm Flurry Heart, mother!”
"Ah. You have remembered that much. Good. That'll help. Yes, dear, lovely to meet you for the first time. I look forward to your birth, if we can get everything right the first time. I'll need your help in that regard. It will be a long and preposterous road, I'm afraid, and you're going to be the designated villain for most of it. But please, darling. Try to enjoy your villainy. It sometimes feels awful in the moment, but if you can find the joy in being bad, it can be a species of fun. Just… don't do yourself or yours too much damage. Life's funny, and easier if you try to find the good in it. Even the wickedest parts. Have you worked on your villainous laugh yet? How about a good villain song? The crowd will love to hate you if you work up a proper song and dance.”
Chrysalis threw up her hooves, and tried to change the subject.
"Fine! You have preknowledge, you knew this was coming. I'll still make this work! Stop talking to me as if you know me!”
"Of course, dear. We can talk about it later. Now, what did you want to ask me about? I'm assuming your father, and how to pretend to be me. That should be easier than you'd think. You'll find out why, eventually…”
Chrysalis spent the rest of the night grilling the mare who would eventually become her mother, learning the details of her daily life, those little facts and tics which would let her impersonate the young mare in the palace, fool the great white pony princess who was her mother's adoptive aunt. They ended up talking more than Chrysalis had planned about her father, how to take care of him, how to keep him from burning out under the pressure of Chrysalis' planned mind control spell.
Cadenza had offered an alternative spell, saying that what Chrysalis had planned would have crippled her fiancé. She even demonstrated it on a drone shapeshifted into a semblance of the blue-maned captain of the guard, explaining to Chrysalis the failure points inherent in the spell she had been planning to use…
"Are they starting to show signs of independence, dearest?”
"What? Who?”
"Your children, of course.”
"My ch- you mean my minions?”
"Darling, you lay eggs, and they hatch from them. They're children.”
"They're mindless!”
"You know that isn't true. I was just holding a perfectly lovely conversation with my prison-guards.”
"Well, they're dumb as rocks.”
"You need to be better with my future grandchildren, Flurry. You can't treat them like cattle and expect anything from them.”
"I've spent a hundred years breeding my minions! They are ruthless! Obedient! Effective!”
"I'm guessing they're not the greatest company, though. Honey, you need to plan for the future. When they figure out there's a better world out there, they'll turn on you.”
"My drones are loyal!”
"Loyalty given is loyalty returned. Give them a reason to be loyal beyond the fact that you birthed them.”
"Sh-shut up! You're not my mother!”
"Not yet, dear. Imagine! Barely out of adolescence, and already a grandmare! Isn't time travel amazing?”
"Was – was that what it was?”
"You haven't remembered that much yet?”
"Not- not exactly.”
"Well, you will, eventually. How can you be plotting to replace your mother at her own wedding, if it isn't time-travel?”
"Some sort of alternate timeline or dimension?”
"Not likely, darling. Don’t you remember those stories about a changeling queen that crashed your mother’s wedding?”
"I was a foal! There's a lot I don't remember.”
"Hrm. Well, it will come to you. Probably not in time to help you get through this caper, though.”
"This is not a caper! This is a coup d'etat! An invasion!”
"What it is, is a very strange spa date at the moment. Dear, can you please have them take me out of this bath? I'm starting to get pruney.”
Chrysalis sighed, and signaled to the attending drones to pull her pre-mother out of the jacuzzi they had been lounging in, enjoying the warm, bubbly water. Cadenza had been carefully strapped into place so that she wouldn't fall over in the water and drown. Why use a spa as a lair, and not make use of the amenities?
Cadenza looked at the holes in Chrysalis' forelegs as they carried her out of the baths, onto a pile of fresh towels.
"You're not taking care of yourself and your children. Look at those holes! At least they're washed out now, I hate to think of what accumulates in there.”
"It's part of the territory, Cadenza. We harvest what we can, but it's never enough.”
"If you treated your children better, the damage would be less. Love them, Flurry.”
"We are predators, princess! Love is something we take, not something we give.”
Her not-exactly-mother looked at her, sadly. "You'll learn better, eventually. I'll try to do better for you when the time comes, Flurry, but something badly warped us – ah. I mean you. Something terrible in my future, I fear. I haven't seen that far. Some catastrophe, some disaster. Somepony loved you very, very much, Flurry, even if the way they saved you did… well, this. I both hope it was me, and am sorry if it was, because if I did this to you… Try to remember that love, dearest. Try to find it in your heart to love your children, if nopony else.”
It took half an hour to get Cadenza off of that subject, and resume pumping her for information about the Court and the palace.
"Why didn't you tell me that Father had an obnoxious little sister?” demanded a disguised Chrysalis of the improvised magic mirror she had linked to her mother’s prison down in the bowels of the crystal mines. “She just showed up out of the blue with five peasants from the back-country! When did you invite all of these hicks? That purple unicorn nearly broke my cover the second she laid eyes on me!”
"You honestly can't remember your aunt Twilight? I had her foalsit you when she was available! Have you remembered anything at all?”
"Wait, no, that rings a bell. The mare with the toy bears, right? Wait a minute! Auntie Twi-Twi was an alicorn princess! That little spazz this morning wasn't Auntie Twi-Twi!”
"She does grow up, eventually. And pretty fast, if I recall correctly.”
"Recall… I thought you said you were getting this from prophecy?”
"Flurry Heart, dearest, prophecy is nothing more than remembering the future as if it were your past.”
"Right, right… what do I need to remember about Auntie Twi-Twi?”
"For one thing, you probably shouldn't call her that. Twilight, we call her Twilight.” Cadenza was looking sadly at a lock of her once-lustrous mane. It had been a long three weeks since that night in the spa, and Chrysalis had kept her prisoner isolated from even her own minions and drones.
She'd caught Cadenza talking with young Thorax, and had had to separate the two. It took two hours of intensive spell work to winkle out of the drone's consciousness whatever it was that Cadenza had done to Chrysalis' youngest. She hadn't been sure of that clutch, some of them had worked out, but there were too many like Thorax, who just didn't seem to have the proper warrior spirit.
Chrysalis shook her head, and returned her attention to the present.
"So you apparently were her foalsitter. Why is she so surprised to find you were courting her older brother? How did you keep her from noticing?”
"It's Twilight, sweetheart. She generally doesn't pay attention to anything that isn't rolled up in a silk ribbon or bound codex-style.”
"Well she's certainly paying attention now! Her damnable friends are all over the palace, and every time I try to bond with one of them, she shows up to cause trouble!”
"It's hard to say, Flurry. This is new territory for me, too. The Twilight Sparkle I know is an introverted study-holic monomaniac. Sweet filly, but very self-contained and hard to break out of her head.”
"Gah! I'll figure something out.” Chrysalis slumped next to the projector in the princess's personal quarters, which she'd used to contact her prisoner down in the crystal mines.
"I, I remembered myself last night. In my dreams.”
"Really? You remembered us telling you stories, or…?”
"Being foalnapped. I remembered when the drones came breaking into my nursery. When they took everypony.”
"You weren't even a yearling! How can you have remembered that?”
"You haven't even had me yet, mother. How are you remembering any of this?”
"A fair hit, a palpable hit. How did it make you feel?”
"Horrible. Like a limb of the void had come into my warm world and just… sucked all the warmth out of everything. A vacuum. A bottomless pit which hungered for me.”
"That must have been terrifying.”
"It was! It was- marvelous. Do I appear like that to everypony? How they fear me – it's so clear now, isn't it?”
"Flurry, dear, you live on love. Fear isn't the emotion you want to evoke.”
"I get by, mother.”
"The point is to do more than get by, Flurry.”
"Stop calling me that! I have a plan for this weekend. It’s so simple that even Father’s meddling sister can’t derail it. They're going to give you all of their love, and I'll harvest it! I'll be full! My children will be fed!”
"Good for you, dearest. Don't over-extend yourself.”
"You'll see!”
"So good to have tracked you down, dearest. How's the leg?” The outer perimeter patrol had found the magic mirror laying by the side of an oasis two-thirds of the way back towards central Equestria, with a bow and a note reading ‘watch me for updates!’
"YOU! You mousetrapped us! You were plotting with Aunt Twilight all that time!” Chrysalis was still stuck in the hive, mostly immobile, and favoring the broken chitin on her right rear leg.
"Don't be preposterous, Flurry. You mousetrapped yourself. You ‘ported your Aunt Twilight right to me. And you left me alone and hungry for weeks on end.” Chrysalis was ruefully aware that the young alicorn had neatly reversed their positions from the last time she’d truly spoken to her future-mother, arguing over a magic mirror interface. Wait, was the princess using the same full-body mirror Chrysalis had modified in the suite in Canterlot Palace?
"I knew you were suborning my minions!”
"Please, can't a grandmare dote on her grandfoals?”
"They're not foals, they're proud changeling warriors!”
"Grandgrubs then. Grandnymphs? I suppose we never did come up with the proper terminology… seeing as you never did figure out how to hatch any fertile children, did you?”
"I don't want to talk about it, you witch! My poor swarm… you and daddy flung us into the wastelands!”
"Yes, it was quite impressive, wasn't it. You shouldn't have left all that power laying around for just anypony with the right knowledge and skill to latch onto it.”
"You were talking as if you were helping me!”
"Flurry Heart, really. I was your prisoner. You were stealing my fiancé. And you continue to maltreat my grand-drones.”
"It didn't keep you from flinging all of your grandchildren to their dooms!”
"Did we lose many?”
"N-no. Actually, noling died, not that I can see. We're missing a few, and some of them are coming to the end of their service lives, but – how did you do that? Was it intentional?”
"It's love-magic, my darling girl. It's not a killing magic, love. I would hardly be a good and loving princess if I went around slaughtering my enemies, would I?”
"This isn't finished, mother. We'll be back!”
"Of course you will be, dearest. I look forward to it. You have much to learn. Try to bring your ‘A' game next time, won't you? Feel free to keep this magic mirror. Its opposite number is enchanted to not reply until I'm safely alone and we can talk freely. There's so much we need to talk about. I'll be busy, though. I'm pretty sure the Empire will be returning soon.”
"H-home? Home's coming back? I spent so much time looking for it…”
"Well, that's the thing about cities of legend. They travel time on their own schedules. But yes, we're about due. Try not to get ahead of yourself, Flurry. It'll be a mess for a while as we work this out. The Crystal Empire won't be all that hospitable for changelings until we, hrm. Call it fumigation? Do you remember the stories we used to tell you?”
"The wars against Sombra. And ‘Great and Honorable Spike the Brave and Glorious'!”
"Exactly! Good girl, you're remembering! Yes, that. It'll be a mare's job, I think. Be sure to take care of the grandchildren, and be kind to your prisoners. No draining ponies dry, Flurry! They're your responsibility as long as you have them cocooned, and I will be quite wroth with you if you abuse your toys.”
"We felt it even down here. We lost a dozen prisoners! They broke loose from their cocoons, fled across the desert, and some of the damned fools nearly died from thirst and exposure before we recovered them from the waterless wastes!” Most of the damage from the love-wave had been easily repaired in Chrysalis’s wasteland hive, but she was aware that some debris might be still laying around like filth and dust visible in the magic mirror’s view-arc.
"Well, that's a shame.” The warmly decorated princess’s boudoir that had been behind Cadance during the last call had been replaced by peculiar glowing crystalline walls and unfamiliar furnishings. The princess herself was crystalline, and it made Chrysalis feel oddly nostalgic for the halcyon days of her childhood. “You should probably make arrangements to have those memory-wiped and returned to their homes, don't you think? A good predator maintains their hunting preserves, and they certainly don’t sound suitable for further exploitation. Sustainable hunting, dear girl – catch and release! Have your drone talk to my minion, we'll take them off your hands. The Empire is full of ponies with uncertain memories and emotional issues. We can just shuffle them into the encounter groups and therapy sessions, and someday they'll be almost good as new.”
"How is it you keep ponies thinking you're the good one again, mother?”
"Oh, my darling baby girl, I am the good one. I fix things. In fact, Shining and I will be busy fixing Sombra's mistakes for the foreseeable future. It's no trouble at all if I just shuffle your particular mistakes into the deck while we're playing cards. It's amazing what you can get away with when you're the house.”
"Hello, dearest. Good to hear from you. I've got good news! I'm expecting you.” The pink alicorn was glowing, wearing her usual superior smirk.
"W-what? What does that mean?”
"I'm pregnant with you. I'm going to be a mother, agai- er, at last!”
"How are you sure it won't be a miscarriage?”
"I'm fairly certain, dear Heart. She feels like you. I'd invite you to play Evil Fairy Godmother at your own birthing, but you know, there are other prophecies in train.”
"Oh, yes, that. The name. The stories. That damnable legend!”
"Yes, that. You can see why I don't want the grandchildren in the way of all that disaster. It'll be hard enough keeping my subjects from being crushed under the debris or frozen by the storms. You know that changelings don't do well in the cold, anyways.”
"Fair enough. I have my own projects, you know.”
"Yes, dear. I do keep track, when I can.”
"Your library of prophecies must fill entire buildings.”
"You have no idea, dear Heart.”
"I haven't heard from you in quite a while, dear Heart. I mean, other than the card at your crystalling. Such a lovely sentiment! I had to do some fast-trotting to keep the Aunties from figuring out who it was from, though. Try not to be so blunt in writing, where just anypony can read it.”
"Have you captured a changeling recently?”
"Oh, all right then, I suppose we're not doing pleasantries. Why, are you missing a drone?”
"I'm always missing a few, but they eventually check in, and this one isn't one of my… most adventurous drones. In fact, I've never been quite sure if Thorax is a proper drone. He always smelled a bit different than the rest. And he's the one you were suborning back in Canterlot.”
"Oh, was he? What a coincidence! You think I have your missing child?”
"He's a full-grown warrior!”
"A warrior, really?”
"Well, he was supposed to be. Have you seen him?”
"I might have. Spike the Brave and Glorious brought him to our attention. He's an honored guest of the Empire. Such a well-behaved child! And he gets along swimmingly with infant you. He's almost drawn to the baby.”
"What! Keep him away from me – from her! I never let my children near the foals, it's dangerous!”
"That's an interesting scruple. Almost charming – quite right, I approve, darling. Even evil should have standards. But no, Thorax is doing nicely. It's a wonderful object lesson for the subjects. They were starting to show xenophobic tendencies, Thorax is helping with their further therapy. I think he might have a future as a psychotherapist!”
"I- I just remembered him. That changeling you had hanging around. The one who turned into - that traitor! How had I forgotten that until just now?”
"The vagaries of memory, Flurry Heart. Sometimes, we only remember what we need to know, when we need to know it.”
"Or forget things until it's too late! I've been harboring my own worst enemy in my own household!”
"Nothing of the sort! Thorax has great things ahead of him. You're still not doing right by my grandchildren, future-daughter-of-mine. He will help address that.”
"GRAAA! I'll not stand for it! This means war!”
"Of course, dear Heart. Talk to you next time.”
"I see you still have the enchanted mirror, Chrysalis. Where were you keeping it? We turned the hive over, looking for you. I went to a great deal of trouble to include myself in the search party, to control the damage. We didn't find anything, of course – but more importantly, I didn't find anything, either.”
"I'll recoup my losses, witch! I haven't figured out how you all did it, but I'll birth a new generation of warriors, better-controlled, better-commanded, harder, faster, sharper – I'll show you all, your drone-puppet, all your pony minions, I'll-"
The mirror-connection cut out, and light suddenly filled the darkened forest glen in which Chrysalis had been hiding. Her mother emerged from the thicket across the way, staring intently at the bedraggled changeling queen.
"Hello, there, darling. I was pretty sure I knew where you were holed up, but I needed the triangulation. You're surrounded. Your rebel children are all around us. Thorax is confused, but amiable. Such a malleable child! Just the right mix of earnest and heroic. Not that smart, sadly, but we'll see about what we can do to compensate for that in the future. I think he's fertile! It'll be a bit strange when he starts laying eggs, but I guess that's something he'll have to work through. Such a shame he identifies as male. That will be something we'll have to address in therapy.”
"L-let me go, witch! How are you doing this? Where'd you get all this power from?”
"Flurry Heart, dearest, I've always had this power, or rather, access to yours. Not little foal you, of course – that's a different matter. I still don't know what will happen in the future to send you tumbling back in time, stripped of all of your love, all of your capacity for love. I'm a little worried that what I'm about to do is what causes the displacement, perhaps even the initial damage. Whatever it is, it will have to happen, one way or the other. I think it's time to pull off the bandage, and take our lumps while I'm prepared. If it has to happen, best it happens now, here.
"You and I know that Flurry Heart has another ten years of childhood ahead of her. But I can't chance another outburst like this last month. You had my grandchildren decapitate our entire government! You foalnapped yourself. We can’t have you running about doing things like this. I don't really care about the rest – it's the rules of the game, we're all fair play. But messing with your future self – well, it's massively hypocritical of me, I admit this. I'm the last pony who should be saying this, but it's over. Play time is over, Chrysalis. You've run out your string. Time to grow up, dear Heart.”
Her mother loomed over the defeated, deposed queen, standing like a glacier of implacability. How had Chrysalis gotten so small? Her back was to the ugly old tree she'd found in her flight, the tree that had looked so familiar. Evil black limbs twisted around the changeling queen, holding her in place as she cringed away from the wrathful pony princess.
"I never could get you to accept my love in the way it needed to be given, dear. You only wanted to steal it. Whatever we do in the future, whatever it is that breaks you, neither of us remember it. It is, I suppose, the central mystery of our existence. You'll understand later on. This will hurt almost as much as the first time, dearest. But in the end, you'll understand why it had to be this way.”
The love-witch's blue horn-aura glowed, growing terrible, filling the whole of Chrysalis' vision. She tried to fight against it with her own green aura, but the two magics blended together at the edges, pale blue invading slime-green, until the two merged into a blue-green swirl, the green pulsing, pulsing, fading – until everything in her sight were lit in shades of pale blue.
The black tree was wrapping around her, and she felt her limbs folded up against her against her will, and something was pulling her back into the heartwood of the tree, surrounding her like a wooden shell.
An egg-shell.
She could still hear her mother's voice through the shell, humming a lullaby, one that Chrysalis remembered from her long-ago pony childhood.
"If that mockingbird don't sing, momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring… Flurry Heart, I'm not sure how I'll fail us in the future, but I hope this makes up for it. Take what I can give you… and be a good girl.”
And the eggshell flooded with all the love in the world, and she dissolved into the chrysalis.
The little pink pegasus foal stumbled away from the black-limbed tree and the great broken eggshell shards that lay under the dark boughs. It was the middle of the night, in a dark wood, but she could see light everywhere. The mushrooms adoring the refuse upon the forest floor, the sleeping squirrels in their nests dreaming of their well-loved hoards of nuts above, the happy little worms digging through the loam underhoof… everything was alive, and everything was love.
She found her way down to a creek-fed pool at the base of the hill, and looked down in the water as dawn broke overhead. The shining rays of Celestia's rising sun lit up the little glade she'd found, and she saw herself for the first time in the light of her first day. Purple eyes, multi-colored mane, beautiful pink coat… she had seen this pony before. In her dreams, in her memories, in her nightmares and…
She croaked at first, as she tried to talk to her reflection. And then she found her voice, and it was… musical. And familiar. She looked in her own eyes, and loved herself, perhaps for the first time ever. And realized what she'd been missing for so long.
Cadance remembered who she had been, and what she had been. And looking into the mirror of the pond, she almost panicked. Hyperventilating, she tried to change back, she tried to undo the shape-shift.
Except it wasn't a semblance. It wasn't a ‘shift. She reached for her horn, and it was gone. Not the long, gnarled sabre of a changeling queen, nor the juvenile unicorn's-stub of little alicornic Flurry Heart.
She remembered stories she had been told of how her mother had begun as a pegasus, had grown a horn after winning her ascension by an act of self-sacrificial love, the selfless, pure-hearted redemption of some backwoods provincial witch.
Cadance looked at her filly self in the mirror of the world, and remembered everything her mother had ever said to her, over two lifetimes of existence. That sly, subtle, all-knowing mare who had always been two hoof-steps ahead of her often-baffled, often-rebellious daughter.
She looked down at her little self, and wondered how long it would take to grow up this time. And how she was going to go about dealing with her future self. Because Cadance was now pretty sure where she was, and when she was, and what was in her future.
It wasn't often that a pony had the chance to make themselves over again, let alone twice in a lifetime.
They say that ponies never escape their origins, that lives end as they begin - poorly, well, happy, miserable. I've been happy, and miserable, and loved, and hated. I've a surfeit of origins. I'm free to be anyone I choose to be, now. I don't know about all you ponies, but I know where I came from. And I'm choosing to be me. Time to make things better.
Cadance looked up from her own reflection, and, looking out across a world truly seen for the first time, got to her hooves.
Let's make a difference.