The Last Changeling

by GaPJaxie


Chapter 2

Not all of the guards were crystal ponies. Some were earth ponies, or pegasi. One was a unicorn, whose cutie mark was a zip-tie and a sword. His natural magic gave him the power to shape plastic into more effective restraints.

So he made a plastic cap that went over the tip of Cheval’s horn, rendering it useless as weapon. He also made caps that went over her teeth, lest she use the points to tear out somepony’s throat. It was as though she was wearing braces, and they made her lisp.

Cadence explained that she wasn’t being punished. She committed crimes, yes. Terrible crimes—mind control, sexual assault, multiple murders or attempted murders, torture, and treason against her monarch. But fifty-two years of confinement was enough.

She didn’t need to pay for her crimes. She needed to get better. Cadence was there to help her recover from the stresses and urges and dark thoughts that made her do all those things. The plastic caps and the inhibitor on her horn and the pills that prevented her from shapeshifting weren’t because she was a prisoner, they were for her own good.

They protected her from herself.

She was free to do whatever she wanted. She could leave the palace, see the world, do whatever made her happy. She only needed an escort. And once she could control herself, and was safe around ponies again, she’d be free to go.

When Cadence was done explaining, an long silence came between the two of them. Finally, Cadence asked: “Do you understand?”

Cheval stared at her hooves for a long time. Then she asked, “But why is dad’s chair gone?”


It was morning when Cheval was turned to stone. It was evening when Cadence restored her. A small matter, easily overlooked among half a century of distractions.

But Cheval didn’t feel like sleeping, even as the hour grew late. Shrine fillies hung up firefly lanterns, and offered flowers to those who had come to grieve. By midnight, she and Cadence were the only two ponies left in the graveyard.

Shining’s headstone was unfit for royalty. It was a plain, square marker in the dirt. “SHINING ARMOR,” it read, “SAVIOR OF CANTERLOT, TWICE-SAVIOR OF THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE, AND A GOOD PONY.”

Only the offerings marked it as different from any other grave. Ponies piled flowers around it, or lit candles, or left notes or poems in the dirt.

Amaryllis was there too.

“You want to cry,” she told Cheval. “But you can’t. Because your eyes don’t have tear-ducts.”

Cheval looked to her left, where Cadence sat silently. Cheval didn’t want to talk, but Cadence had said she’d stay as long as Cheval wanted to be with her father. Then she looked to her right, where Amaryllis sat, her gossamer wings folded against her rainbow-hued shell.

“Changelings,” Amaryllis said, “don’t cry to express grief. We buzz our wings against our shells to produce a sound like rain. Hujan, in vespid. But you were raised by ponies. You learned by watching the ponies around you that your eyes need to be wet when you’re sad. And so if you don’t cry, you think that you must not be sad. You can’t cry, so you think your grief is cheap.”

Cheval looked at Cadence again. Then to Amaryllis she said, “I hate you. I hope ghosts are real, because if there’s an afterlife it means you can burn in hell for eternity. Death is kinder than you deserve. I want you to suffer.”

Cadence didn’t react. A moment later, her ear twitched.

Amaryllis let out a small breath, something that was almost a laugh. Then she said, “Your grief isn’t cheap. Shapeshifting is part of how you express your emotions. If you have to turn into a pony to cry, it doesn’t make you a bad daughter.”

“Does poisoning him make me a bad daughter?” Cheval’s muzzle twisted into a snarl, and her tone turned bitter. “The last thing I ever said to him was, ‘Hey, I made coffee.’ And he believed it. He trusted me so much that even with a black shell and my legs full of holes, it didn’t even occur to him I might do him harm. And I betrayed him.”

“You put him to sleep. You didn’t kill him. He died years later.”

“You say that like it matters. Mom and Flurry didn’t even wake me up for his funeral.” She looked at her hooves. “Why should they have?”

Amaryllis said nothing. A chill breeze blew through the graveyard, rustling the flowers and the offerings. Somepony’s note blew away.

“I thought you cared about him,” Cheval said. “Somehow, even though you’re made of arrogance and hatred, I actually believed your affection for him was real.”

“It was.”

“And you couldn’t do anything about this?” she snapped. Cadence still showed no signs of having heard. “You couldn’t turn him into an alicorn or put his soul in a little jar or… or something? You’ve got thousands of drones who practice dark magic, and not one of them had a way to cheat death?” Her voice cracked. “He was a hero.”

“We were at war. I couldn’t exactly walk up to him with a book of rituals.”

“And whose fault was that?”

Amaryllis’s wings buzzed against her shell. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You were supposed to surrender without a fight. Then all the politics in the north would be over and we’d be one happy kingdom. I wanted us to stay together.”

“Right.” Cheval laughed. “You didn’t want to hurt him. You just wanted to take his kingdom, enslave his people, get between him and his wife, then chain him up in your hive as part of your harem. But you’d never hurt him. You cared about him too much for that.”

She couldn’t stop smiling. “I really am your daughter aren’t I?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Cadence lifted her head, and Cheval’s alarm was so great she nearly lept out of her shell. But Cadence didn’t look at Amaryllis, and her smiled showed a quiet sadness instead of alarm. “He asked after you, you know. Often. He wanted to unfreeze you right away, but Flurry wouldn’t allow it. So instead he kept checking on you. He put shield spells around you that lasted through the whole war. He was so scared something would happen to you when you couldn’t defend yourself.”

“He loved me,” Cheval said. “How did he die?”

“He was poisoned. One of his aides was a spy for the international party.”

“Was it quick?” Cheval shifted in place. “I mean, painless?”

Cadence nodded. “Yes. He fell asleep and never woke up.”

“She’s lying,” Amaryllis said. “The poison destroyed all function in his kidneys. He wasted away for weeks under the care of incompetent doctors who thought he had lupus. They didn’t understand why their medicines and spells weren’t working.”

“Ah.” Cheval cleared her throat. “Were you and Flurry there for him? In the end?”

“No.” Cadence lowered her head. “She was ruling in the North. I was in the south, trying to rally the remains of the Stormguard to Equestria’s cause. It all happened too fast.”

“So he died alone.”

A shiver ran through Cadence. She squeezed her eyes shut, and for a moment, her voice cracked. “He knew we loved him”

“He didn’t die alone,” Amaryllis buzzed her wings again. “Others were with him. Comforting him when he got scared. But she’s not lying about that. She doesn’t know. They never told her. The officers thought it would injure the dignity of the army, if ponies knew he was afraid of death.”

“Why was he even with the army?” Cheval snapped, her tone shifting into outright anger. She didn’t know who she was talking too, and didn’t care which of them heard. The plastic caps on her teeth gave her a noticeable lisp. “He was deposed. He was needed, to help with Twilight and to protect Equestria with his shield spells. And he was getting old! There were younger officers.”

“It was what he wanted,” Cadence said. “I’m sorry.”

Cadence tried to hug her, but Cheval pushed her away. And so they stood beside each other in silence.

“I didn’t understand that either,” Amaryllis said. “I don’t understand why anypony thought of him as a soldier. That was never what made him special. He didn’t save Canterlot by stabbing Chrysalis to death, and he didn’t save the Crystal Empire with shield magic or the command of an army.”

Staring down at the gravestone, Amaryllis said: “He saved Canterlot because he loved Cadence so deeply their bond overcame Chrysalis’s dark magic. The first time he saved the Crystal Empire, it was because he trusted the ponies around them, and helped them do what he couldn’t. And when he saved the Crystal Empire from me, it was because he could empathize with a creature who didn’t deserve it.”

She flicked a hoof at the writing. “The headstone is right. ‘And a good pony.’ That’s what made him special. He was a genuinely good pony. All the way down.”

“He never…” Cheval had to struggle for the words. She was still lisping. “He never did tell me what he said to you that day. To get you into bed. He never told anypony, other than mom. And she kept his secret.”

After a long pause, Amaryllis replied: “He asked me what I was so afraid of.”

She needed a moment to find her words. The chill midnight air was descending on the graveyard, and as it gradually got colder, the colors on her shell stood out all the brighter. “To have come so far, and done so much. To have killed so many of my own drones. And to have gambled with my life. He asked what I was running away from.

“I said reform. I didn’t want to be a reformed changeling. But he didn't buy it. I dealt wholesale in atrocities and dark magic, but I expected him to believe this blasphemy was one step too far for me? No. I lied to him because I was too weak to face the truth, and he refused to believe me.

“He said I saw the world as predator and prey. That all there is is the powerful and their victims, and if I didn’t want to be powerful, a victim was what I’d become. Ponies were weak. They were prey. And anything that made me like them made me more like prey.

“He told me I was afraid of a world where Equestria forgave me for what I’d done. That I didn’t want to be your friend or your ally, and so I poisoned everything around me. I wanted you to hate me, because hate was an emotion I understood.”

For a moment, Amaryllis paused. Then she finished: “And he said he’d give me everything I wanted, all the treasure, all the power, the Crystal Heart, if I just gave friendship a chance. If I couldn’t do that, I was crippled. And he had too much dignity to surrender to a creature that couldn’t stand under her own weight.”

“Heh.” Cheval looked up at the sky. “And then he fucked you.”

“No. Then we made love. And I gave peace a chance.”

“You lied to him. Took advantage of him.” Cheval sneered. “Betrayed him and everything he stood for. You are a monster and he was a fool.”

“He wasn’t a fool.”

“He believed he could change your heart. But all he did was change how you look. He turned what should have been a quick battle into decades of suffering.”  She spat the words. “Changelings are monsters and we always will be. And I don’t know if you’re a ghost or a hallucination, but I’m tired of you. Leave.”

Amaryllis vanished into the thin air.

“I’m done,” Cheval said to Cadence. “Let’s go.”