//------------------------------//
// So far, so good 
// Story: Things Change 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"Any questions?" Celestia asked the guards standing at attention before her. She had just finished explaining the situation to them, reassuring them that Chrysalis's presence was not a danger to them and that she meant no harm. A trembling hoof was raised, the unicorn to which it belonged fearfully glancing at what was happening to his right. Celestia nodded to him.
"Your Highness, was it not said just yesterday evening that there were no unreformed changelings in Canterlot?"
Celestia swallowed the piece of cake she was munching on. "No such statements were made."
"But, forgive me, Princess, I was present and I remember-"
"Are you doubting your princess' memory?"
"No, no, I would never-"
"Good." Celestia took another bite from her slice of cake. "Then I will be going. I expect you all to do a good job at taking care of her. Goodbye Chrysalis, I'll see you at lunch." Celestia walked out of the room and then teleported away.
"Goodbye," said Chrysalis. She was busy hugging the guard next to the one who'd spoken before, the pegasus paralysed with fear.
"So... What do we do now?" asked one of the guards.
"Well, you heard the Princess, we have to take care of this... of her," said another while pointing to the changeling.
Chrysalis's tongue was slowly travelling towards a few crumbs left by Celestia on the ground, her body still glued to the pegasus.
"How?"
"Oh, come on! It can't be that hard. Why don't we ask her?" asked another guard. He turned towards the changeling. "Chrysalis?" he asked.
"Yepth?" she replied, her tongue slowly coming back in her mouth, "What is it?"
"What would you like to do today?"
"Can I see more of the castle? I'd love to see more of the castle. Can I see more of the castle?"
"Of course you can. Right guys?"
The rest of the guards just looked at him. Except for the pegasus hugged by Chrysalis, who was starting to hyperventilate.
"Of course you can. Come here, we'll show you around."
He began to walk out of the room. Chrysalis started to hover with her wings and followed him flying, the body of the guard who had now fainted carried in her hooves like a stuffed animal. The rest of the guards reluctantly followed them, keeping a safe distance from the changeling.
"Do you think spiders can dream?" asked Chrysalis as she reached the guard in front of her. He turned towards her with a puzzled look but before he could say anything the changeling pointed one of her hooves to a door. "What's behind there?" she asked.
"That is Princess Luna's room. She is sleeping right now so we shouldn't-"
He was cut short by the body of the guard Chrysalis had been carrying around getting thrown at him as the changeling dashed inside the room and shut the door behind her.
"Luna?" she called once inside the dark room. Somewhere in front of her came a mumbling. She lit her horn and walked towards the bed where Luna was lying face-down. "Luna?" she asked again as she turned the alicorn on her back.
"...joining hooves and make a chain, the shadow of the Wicker Mare is rising up again..." mumbled the alicorn in her sleep.
"Luna!" called Chrysalis, louder this time.
The Princess jerked awake, incoherently blurting out something about time. She turned her half-asleep head to the changeling and her instinctive response to the sight was to fly out of her bed and onto the wall in fear, which resulted in her head smacking against the ceiling and in her falling to the ground, all the while Chrysalis watched with eyes that were in equal parts confused and amused.
"Are you alright?" she asked as she walked to the other side of the bed, where the alicorn was.
"Yes," was the somewhat annoyed reply she got.
Chrysalis hesitated at hearing that. "Did I scare you?" she asked Luna.
The Princess looked in the changeling's eyes. Chrysalis looked worried, her body trembling a little. She got up and hugged her. "No, don't worry. I know what it's like when ponies are afraid of you. I'm sorry I made you think that."
"Do you really know what it's like?"
Luna got up. "Of course. You see-" she cleared her throat "- I'm the Princess of the night, so of cou-"
The door slammed open. "I'm terribly sorry, Your Majesty. Chrysalis, Princess Twilight is here and she would like to see you."
"But I was about to break into a song," lamented Luna.
"Goodbye Luna," said Chrysalis as she followed the guard outside.
"But... my six minutes long musical number..."
Chrysalis shut the door behind her. She grabbed another guard and hugged him as she flew behind the one leading the group. The unicorn in her grasp silently mouthed out the words 'help me' before passing out from the lack of oxygen, the changeling hugging him a little too forcefully. The group walked down a series of stairs and reached a hall in the lower floors of the castle, where Twilight waited for them with a stack of books.
"Twilight!" joyfully called Chrysalis as she threw the unicorn's body behind her, knocking down a couple of guards. She jumped on Twilight the two of them crashed through a pile of books before landing on the ground. "I'm happy to see you," she said while hugging the purple pony.
"Me too," replied Twilight from somewhere under the changeling and the books. She teleported out with a flash of light and turned to the slightly confused shape-shifter. "I brought you a few books on pony history, I'm sure you'll find them interesting."
"Oh, thank you!" Chrysalis picked up a small red book and opened it to a random page. "...and I'll look down and whisper "No." " was all she was able to make out from the writing as she read it aloud before it was snatched away from her by Twilight's magic.
"Whoops, that's not supposed to be there. Don't know how it ended up here."
Chrysalis grabbed another one, although it was more like a bunch of sheets of papers held together than a real book. "The time has come for a truth that I have long held back. As of this day, Luna and I shall be stepping down as-" she read aloud before this one too was taken away.
"I thought I'd burned this thing," said Twilight looking at it.
Chrysalis levitated another one and she stopped to read the title. "The Empress of the V-" but once again Twilight took it away.
The alicorn was scanning all of the books she brought, holding them up in the air with her magic as she looked at them one by one. Realization slowly hit her that she'd brought the wrong pile of books, and her eyes widened in fear. "Errrr..." was all that came out of her mouth before she teleported herself and all of her books away, leaving a very confused Chrysalis behind.
"Was that book the book I think it was?" asked a guard to the one near him, but none of them had time to say anything else before Chrysalis was face to face with them.
"What do we do now?" she innocently asked.
"Well, the castle is still big, there's a lot of other things to see before lunch," said the guard who had guided Chrysalis up until that point. He began to walk down a corridor and Chrysalis followed him, the rest of the guards reluctantly joining them.



"So, how did it go?" asked Celestia between bites, a large cake resting on the table in front of her.
"Great!" answered Chrysalis, the slice of cake on her plate left untouched. The pair of guards still left smiled and nodded to the princess, happy that Chrysalis hadn't mentioned what had happened to the rest of them. Showing her the armoury had not been the brightest of ideas.
"Happy to hear that." Celestia took another bite of her cake. "Are you going to eat that?" she asked looking at Chrysalis's plate.
"No."
Celestia levitated the slice on her own plate, then a thought occurred to her. "Chrysalis, have you eaten anything since you've gotten here?"
"No."
"And are you not hungry?"
"No."
"Well, more cake for me then. It takes a lot of energy to move the sun. What do you want to do later, Chrysalis?"
"..."
"Chrysalis?"
Only silence.
"Chrysalis?" Celestia turned to the changeling. "Chrysalis, what are you doing with your head against the plate? ...Chrysalis?"
Celestia lifted the changeling's head. Her green eyes were rolled back in her head and her breathing was slow and erratic. "Oh."
"Is she dying?" asked one of the guards to the other.
"Well, we could leave her there. No one will know, after all."
"That's a good plan," said Celestia, the two guards turning towards her, "although it does involve killing all the witnesses too," she continued as she turned to them.
"I'll go call a doctor. Or a changeling. Or a changeling doctor. Are you coming with me?" said one of the guards as he turned to the other. He'd already left.
A knife was slowly floating in the air towards the remaining guard, a golden aura around it, when a scream from the other side of the room gave him an opportunity to run away.
"Princess, there's a changeling sitting at the table!" screamed a maid who'd just entered the room.
Celestia's eyes shifted from the knife to the pony to Chrysalis. "So what?"