CHAPTER TWENTY THREE:
BREATH
QUEEN CHRYSALIS
The throne was never comfortable.
It was more important than any of these drones could ever know -- even while they knew what it did -- but it was never comfortable, in a physical or metaphorical sense. The long hours I sat upon it were often marred with pain, and that was especially so when I was desperately waiting for something.
Some nights it was news from further realms, and others it was letters from spies deeply imbedded in any alcove of society. Tonight, though, I was waiting for news outside my own front door.
What are you up to, Melody Waltz?
I mentally kicked myself as I repositioned in the most comforting way possible. Even I had begun calling my most prized operative by her false name, and the name she'd been given -- Cyrilla -- seemed to be fading from my memory with each passing day.
Cyrilla may have been the hive's greatest spy, but she certainly wasn't its only one, and a day ago, I'd sent three of them out to tail her for as long as they could. She'd grown increasingly distant lately, seemingly refusing to answer my coded messages, and what was more, her strange trips deep into the Everfree Forest became more plentiful by the week. I'd let her walk over me for months now with the fruit of her efforts dangling above my head, but I'd grown tired of her games.
They should have been back by now. It was getting late.
The minutes ticked by. If there had been something important to do tonight, it would have helped keep me sane, but that simply wasn't the case, and so the throne bruised my body as my crown held me down as it were. The guards at my side stood staunchly, and I often admired them for their posture and often wondered how they could stay so still for so long while I constantly wriggled in my seat.
You'd have them beaten if they so much as moved an inch, I reminded myself. I couldn't help but smile as I looked upon them, knowing well that the fear coursing through their veins would keep them in perfect form.
"One of them has arrived, my Queen."
I jolted up from my seat to see a lone changeling in the center of the room. I'd been so preoccupied in thought that I hadn't even noticed her walk in, and it took a few seconds for my thoughts to fully catch up with her words. I'd been excited to finally hear back from the spies, and I almost made a gesture for the messenger to bring them in before I realized exactly what she'd said.
"One? Where are the other two?" To my surprise, the messenger simply shrugged before looking back to me.
"There was only one. Perhaps the others are not here yet, but he hasn't said a word. Shall I bring him in?" With an irritated glance I knew I couldn't hide, I quickly waved my hoof in the affirmative. Bowing carefully, the messenger retreated back into the shadows, and it only took about a minute before the spy trotted into the throne room. He, too, bowed with grace, waiting for me to dismiss him from the action.
"Rise, Hesperus," I told him. Slowly, he rose from his position, and with a visible shake he failed desperately to hide, he waited to be addressed as he stood below me.
"I sent three spies to see what Cyrllia was doing, and only you return. Are they late?" I asked. Hesperus' face immediately soured, and he broke the eye contact he'd worked so hard to keep as he stared to the floor.
"...No, your highness," he began. "We followed Cyrilla into the forest, but I believe she knew we were coming. She managed to lose us in the thick of the trees and pathways, and once we hit the fog, we had lost ourselves as well. When we attempted to make our way out of the forest, we encountered a Manticore, and we tried to escape it."
Hesperus turned his body slightly to reveal a large gash than ran all the way up his side, wincing as he did so. The wound clearly didn't hurt as much as he thought his next sentence would, because he continued to avoid my gaze as he finished his tale.
"I was the only one who survived, my Queen," he said shakily. "And we could not find Cyrilla. I assume she has yet to return as well, based on your inquiry."
I stared.
He could feel it, too. The shaking in his posture had grown tenfold, and when the seconds turned to a minute and the silence pierced through the air like a shot, the changeling finally looked up to see me glaring at him still. He opened his mouth to presumably justify the failure he had just reported, but I made sure to get to it quicker and watch it shut just as fast.
"That truly sounds horrible, Hesperus," I told him. "And I am saddened to hear that two of my changelings died in combat. I am sure they fought honorably. Perhaps we can go after Cyrilla another day, but I am immeasurably glad you have returned safely." Hesperus twisted his face a bit, taking a step back before responding with an unsteady voice.
"R-Really?" He asked, a doubt bleeding through his tone. I nodded heartily, looking up to the ceiling perhaps a bit too dramatically.
"Of course," I told him. "I couldn't imagine what your sister would be going through had you not returned safely. That you are still here to take care of one of my changelings is a blessing in itself."
Those words drew narrow eyes from the spy. Shrinking back towards the shadows, he looked up to me with an apologetic glance, and when he finally managed to speak after a few moments of deliberation, his words came out just louder than a murmur.
"Umm... I'm sorry, my Queen, but you must have mistaken me for one of the others," he told me. "I do not have a sister."
She's slipping.
I sighed, leaning back into the throne -- I hadn't realized I'd been on the literal edge of my seat. "Hesperus" dropped his face, revealing a stoic, cold gaze I'd come to know far well than I would have liked to.
"Yes, you do," I began, even able to hear the own biting disappointment in my voice. "Not everything is a trick question, Cyrilla, and it's very rare that anyone will try to fool you. Read my body, not my mind."
It was always a quick flash of green light, and once the fleeting moment was gone, a pony stood calmly where a changeling had been only moments before. Her pink mane flowed over her shoulder even in a ponytail, and her tail looked almost too long to walk with. Her light blue coat seemed to glisten at the right angle, and she had dark green eyes that seemed to match the room around her. The mare called Melody Waltz had a countenance still as a mouse, and yet she still managed give off an endearing air about her with Cyrilla's ice-cold glare.
"I am sorry, my Queen," she said simply, but I quickly shook my head.
"No you're not," I fired back, "But you're about to be. Where are my spies?" I already knew the answer, but I found myself still getting infuriated when she told me the obvious.
"Dead," she replied. "You had them tailing me. If they found out what I was doing, they would have told you, and you would have ruined everything." In a blink, I found myself standing up in front of my throne, and I could almost see my snarl in the reflection of her eyes. It took absolutely everything in my power not to step forward, but I made sure to let Cyrilla know exactly how I was feeling.
"'Everything'," I spat. "You've been doing 'everything' for weeks now. And I ask about it, and you refuse to tell me. You keep telling me that I'll see, Melody Waltz, but those weeks have gone by and all I'm seeing is yet another case of you murdering your fellow kin. Where is it you go off to, Cyrilla? Or did you mean to try and make a fool of me in my own throne room just to try?" I took a step further, but she didn't move an inch.
There was something different about her, though.
I didn't think I'd ever seen shame from Cyrilla. It made sense, of course -- she never really failed -- but I had only seen a selective draw of emotions appear across her face in her lifetime. Shame wasn't one of them, so I knew something had to be drastically wrong to watch her look to the floor with genuine indignity. I could feel my own face soften at the look, but before I could say anything, she did it for me.
"...Celestia discovered me," she said bitterly. "I changed into one of her trusted guards, and she saw through me immediately. I've been banished from the castle."
The throne room slowly began to turn, and my stomach turned with it.
I was fully prepared for Cyrilla to tell me she'd killed my spies. I'd braced myself for the knowledge that she had betrayed me, or that she would be leaving the hive to continue her little project on her own time. I had not prepared for the knowledge that Cyrilla was not only no longer in Celestia's service, but that the princess now knew that I had placed a changeling directly under her nose.
I took more than one step forward this time.
"You WHAT!?"
Everything I had worked for had come crumbling down. Everything I let Cyrilla do, allowed her to get away with, had just lost the very position that made her acts all the worthwhile. I had Princess Celestia at my whim for years, and with one stroke of her brush, Cyrilla had ruined it. Every crime and slight she had ever committed against my hive played through my mind like a movie reel as I looked upon the changeling in the middle of my throne room.
Just like earlier, I found myself in another place with a blink: this time, I was hovering over Melody Waltz, looking down upon her as she stared into my eyes from below. The shame she'd displayed left as quickly as it had come, however, and when it became clear she didn't intend to explain any further, I leaned into as I unloaded on her.
"And here I thought our operation would crumble with your betrayal, not your incompetance. Where did you allow her to discover you like this? And why would you be anypony but Melody Waltz?" Cyrilla stood confident for her first answer, but she once again evaded my glare with her second.
"Her personal quarters," she said. "And... I cannot tell you why, my Queen. Your will is almost complete."
That was what did it.
I could feel rage flowing through me, and to see Cyrilla there standing calmly with that empty expression only served to amplify it a thousand fold.
"I'm sick of it," I growled, feeling my eye twitch. "Of your emptiness. Of your disregard for your own kind. Of your disregard for me, and the shell of a changeling you really are. Do you even know just what it is you reap, Cyrilla? Do you even feel love? DO YOU?"
She stood there, like she always did. She stared up at me as if to study me, listening to my heavy breathing and watching my subtle shakes.
And then she spoke.
"Never from you.”
I raised a hoof.
Winters in Canterlot were cold.
I didn't come here a lot. It was far away from the Changeling Kingdom, and so I usually sent another changeling to do any task that needed to be done this far away from the hive. I'd been enough times, though, to know that winter in Canterlot was much colder than it was when it hit the hive.
I couldn't send an envoy for this, however. I had to do this myself.
I'd only ever seen Canterlot Castle from a distance, but from just outside its moat, it was a magnificent structure. It had to be influenced by magic in some capacity -- there was no way it could stay hanging off the edge of the mountainside otherwise -- but even in the nighttime, I could tell that the architecture itself was all the magic it needed to dazzle.
I gazed at it for ages. There were a million other things I would rather do before I did what I was about to, but she had to know what had happened, and perhaps I had to ease my mind, too.
I rose a hoof to my face, twisting and turning it for my eyes to few. It was the instrument that had ended the life of my first and only protege, a changeling I'd let run rampant time after time. Never again would Cyrilla take the life of another changeling, shatter any bonds, or scheme and plot from under my nose, but as I gazed upon the tool that had silenced her for good as it glinted in the moonlight, I could not help but let a thought bounce through my head.
Why did you kill her?
Because she was a mistake. Because she should have been tossed out of the hive when I uncovered the monster she really was. Instead, I used her as a pawn who I knew could never take the queen I sent her after.
You berated her for killing her own kind, and then you did the same. You're a monster, too.
I could have battled with my thoughts for the entire night, but it was at that moment I'd seen what I was looking for. A guard had walked up the hill and crossed the drawbridge, trotting over to where two of his colleagues had been standing in front of the gate for hours. With a nod, they opened the castle doors for him, and he easily slipped inside to begin his shift patrolling the castle.
That was my cue.
In an instant, I'd transformed into one of Celestia's royal guards. She wasn't a pony that actually existed -- she had a stark white coat and a forest green mane and tail under all her armor -- but it was probably better that way. I knew that there were likely quite a few guards that the ponies watching the door had never seen, and my plan to get in was through a simple miscommunication.
Once a few minutes had passed, I stepped out of the shadows and began to trot over the draw bridge just as the guard before me had done. They already looked confused when I was a distance away, but that was the point, and I made sure to slightly echo it as I walked up to them.
"Hi! I'm here for my patrol shift." One of the guards turned back to the door, but it was the other one who spoke.
"We just had a guard come in for this shift only a few moments ago. Are you sure this is your night?" I immediately twisted my face, and I made sure to throw in just the right amount of sheepish glances to anywhere but their eyes as I responded.
"Oh, I thought it was! I'm sorry, maybe I put down the wrong day! Um... should I head home?" The two guards stared at each other for a few seconds, trying to gauge each other's thoughts, and it didn't take long for the one on the right to tell me exactly what I wanted to hear.
"Eh, the patrol could always use more hooves. Go on in, but make sure you let your E.U.P Commander know you're picking up another shift for the file." They both grabbed the handle on their respective sides and pulled, slowly revealing the main hall of the castle. Once it had fully opened, I nodded curtly and waltzed inside, trying my best not to snicker as I heard the gate close behind me.
That was almost frighteningly easily, I thought to myself. Although I didn't think I'd ever be so bold as to try and directly invade Canterlot Castle, it was at least good to know that I had a way into the place if I ever needed one. Once I hit the first fork in what I knew would be many through the maze of the castle, though, I remembered that I still had one more job to do.
I needed to find out where Celestia was.
I knew she wasn't sleeping -- it wasn't quite late enough for that -- but if she did happen to be in her personal quarters, I would be hard-pressed to get in without hurting the guards, which I absolutely could not afford to do. I didn't know her schedule, but I was desperately hoping that, for whatever reason, she wasn't in her chambers during this time of night.
So I walked the halls, and I listened in on the guards trotting down the castle pathways without care.
And it took me just a few minutes of eavesdropping to get my answer.
"Is the princess in her chambers? She hasn't been out and about much for the last few days," said a guard to another on the third floor. I was just about to round the hallway they were standing in the middle of, but I made sure to stop in my tracks as I leaned up against the wall to listen.
"No, she's out on the balcony. She's always liked to look at the moon for a while around this time of night. Couldn't tell you why."
They continued talking, but I didn't particularly care what else they had to say. Thankfully, I didn't have to go guessing where the balcony was, because I passed by the door that led out to it on the way to where I was. Silently, I crept the other direction, making sure to look somewhat natural in the event I had to give a quick hello to one of the other guards on shift. Thankfully, I didn't have to, because before I knew it, I'd arrived in front of the stained glass door that led to the balcony.
She was out there.
The individual I considered one of my greatest rivals was beyond that door, and I wasn't here to fight her. I wasn't here to capture her, or belittle her, or end her in one swift stroke (as if I could).
I was here to apologize. To tell her something that, even as much as I despised her so, I believed she had the right to know.
I stood in front of the door, observing every little pattern in the glass. It wasn't depicting any sort of mural or event, but the pattern it was arranged in gave me an odd sort of tranquil feeling as I traced the lines over and over .Like the guard, I couldn't have said why Celestia liked to watch the stars at night, but I had to be thankful for it at the moment.
I felt my disguise wash off as my true self was revealed. Perhaps one of the guards would round the corner to see me, but I didn't care in the slightest.
I walked up to the door and knocked.
The seconds it took for her to get to it were agonizing. I immediately told myself that this was a bad idea and I wanted nothing more than to hightail it in the opposite direction, but I knew that Celestia at least deserved this solace. I took a step back and readied myself, reciting line after line and deliberating my choice of words, but when the planet's most powerful being finally opened the door, every word I had planned immediately melted away.
She looked horrible.
Her mane still flowed deftly in a wind that wasn't there, but it didn't shine as I knew it could. Her face was red and weary, and it only took a glance to know she'd been weeping for quite some time. Her eyes were black around the rims, and it appeared that she was glancing at the stars at night far longer than she should have been. She wasn't taking care of her coat, either, and it was mottled in more areas than one.
She stared at me with her jaw dropped, and I stared back with a mirrored expression. We were both at a loss for words for a few precious seconds, but in the dead of the night, her shocked gaze slowly turned to a snarl as a single tear ran down her eye.
"You... the audacity... " she muttered. "Have you come to gloat? Do you mean to laugh and point while I weep over the fact that a mare I dearly loved was nothing more than a lie?"
I stood there shocked, but as she stared into my eyes, I found myself able to shake my head. Trying not to stammer over my words, I gave her the news I'd come all this way to deliver.
"She's gone," I told her. "I wanted you to know."
There were many ways one could have interpreted the phrase, but when her eyes widened to match the full moon behind her and she stared emptily at the wall behind me, I knew she read it correctly. I could have said a thousand more things about the mare called Melody Waltz, but those two sentences had conveyed everything I wished to tell her in a span of mere moments. She began to shed more tears, the little droplets flowing gracefully across her face as her breathing grew heavier, and she held a hoof to her mouth and looked away as she processed the news I had given her. After what seemed like a thousand lifetimes, she finally looked back up to me with that fierce gaze upon her countenance she given me when she first saw me.
"Leave, Chrysalis," she told me curtly, bitterness dripping from her tone. "Before I do something I regret."
I certainly did not want to stick around for whatever that could be, and with a nod, I quickly turned around to leave. The guard that I'd been masquerading as flooded back over me, and I took a right to begin walking back to the castle gate the way that I came.
"Wait."
The words echoed through the hall to shatter the silence. I stopped on a dime, turning my head slightly to meet her gaze. She had the look of someone who had something plaguing their mind for quite some time, and sure enough, she fired off one last question before she was rid of me.
"What did you tell her to do to me?" she asked me, her voice cracked and frail. "Did you tell her to kill me? To capture me?"
I could have told her a comforting lie. I could have simply nodded my head and left, or assured her that it was something along those lines, but I came here to tell Celestia the truth. I shook my head slowly, and with one last look into her eyes, I told her what I told Cyrilla on a night just like this one moons and moons ago.
"No," I replied. "I told her to break you."