//------------------------------//
// The Fallen Queen 
// Story: Three Second Chances 
// by TCC56 
//------------------------------//

A lunge hundreds of years in the making ended as Queen Chrysalis collided with the ground. And a banana creme pie that was laying in just the right place.

The once Queen of the Changelings regained her hooves almost immediately, despite wearing a comical beard of banana custard. "You INSOLENT--"

And just as quickly, she was silenced when Discord drew the zipper across her muzzle. "Out of stone for fifteen seconds and I'm already tired of your ranting." He sighed heavily, body twisting around the forcibly silent changeling. "Really Chryssy, I would think that you'd be happy to get to stretch your legs. But I suppose you're the sort who takes things for granite."

Chrysalis screamed mutely.

"Oh come now, as if your material was any good." He slid slightly to the side as a bolt of green scorched the grass. "And if you do that again I'll put you right back."

She froze at that, eyes still full of vengeful hate. But there was no follow-up blast - only a flinch as Discord unzipped her mouth again. "I would say you have no idea what I've been through, creature, but you understand all too well." She slowly paced to the side, never taking her eyes from the draconequus. "Let me guess. Now that you've freed me you think you're going to smile and laugh and turn me into a simpering sycophant?"

"Excellent alliteration," Discord commented. Then he ducked another blast of magic.

"I should have destroyed you when I had the chance instead of cocooning you!" Chrysalis' wings unfurled. "And next time, I shall!"

She lifted into the air - and went nowhere. A snap of Discord's claw manifested a weight around each hoof with a comical 1 TON written on each. "As funny as you trying could be, that isn't how this works."

Chrysalis tried to lift off again - unsuccessfully - before grumbling with resignation. "Just put me back in stone then. I want nothing to do with your pathetic pony ways!"

"Let's make a deal." With a motion that looped and twirled in ways that would have made Trixie envious, Discord sent a cascade of playing cards between claw and paw. He tossed five in front of Chrysalis. "You come with me and let me try to influence you away from being such a sourpuss, and I'll promise that afterwards I'll let you go." Five more cards extracted from the deck into his claw. "No turning back to stone, no putting you in a dungeon, no chasing after you. You give me my chance, and I let you go free."

She frowned. "I don't trust you. But I don't really have a choice, do I."

"Wonderful! I'm glad we're on the same page." Discord gleefully grinned before flipping the cards. On Chrysalis' side? The ace and eight of clubs, and the ace, queen and eight of spades. On Discord's? Five jokers. "Let's begin with something simple."





Atop the hill, the pair looked down on the bustling little town. 

"It hasn't changed so much," Chrysalis smugly noted. "I would think that they would have turned their Princess' former home into some sort of shrine."

Half-ignoring her, Discord dumped a picnic basket out on the grass. The resulting calamity of cutlery fell into a near-perfect spread for the tea party - complete with a gently pulsing jar of liquid labelled LOVE. "It's grown and shrunk a few times over the years. I haven't paid a lot of attention honestly." The Lord of Chaos sat himself down on a purple mushroom that hadn't existed the moment before. "Tea, with a bit of love in it?" He shook the bottle. "It's a good vintage."

Grudgingly, the Queen sat opposite the Lord on the blanket. "Extracted from new parents cooing over their foals? Or is it some alchemical concoction the traitors developed?"

"It's mine." 

The admission froze Chrysalis for a moment - before she laughed. "Yours? A creature such as you understands love?" 

Her laughter ended as the air around her froze. All the warmth of the spring day was sucked into the fire in the draconequus' eyes. Chrysalis knew hate. She knew when to fear it. 

And then it passed. Discord chuckled in a way the Queen knew was false. "I think the problem is that you don't know love, not me." Before she could scoff, he continued on. "To you, love has never been anything but a food source. Something to gather and hoard, not feel." He poured a dollop of love into her cup, and allowed four cubes of sugar to swan-dive into his.

The tea poured. Once it was finished, the teapot ran back across the blanket, turned in a circle three times and settled down for a nap. Chrysalis refused to give Discord the satisfaction of thinking it was weird. "That's because it is. For us it is food. It's what keeps us alive. The rest of you are simply blind enough to waste it frivolously."

"Your successor," Discord airly noted, "didn't seem to think so."

She snarled. And he smiled. 

"That grub will be just the first in a long line of those I shall have my revenge upon." Chrysalis brooded over her tea. 

Discord, heedless of her sour mood, tipped a bit more love into the cup. "You do realize how much time has passed, right?" A clock that hadn't been behind him before ticked away. "Just who are you seeking revenge on? Starlight Glimmer? Not only is it too late for that, it's so late that her lineage has blossomed and faded away again. The only ones left are me - and I think we both know how that would go - and Twilight Sparkle. Who you couldn't beat when she didn't have her full alicorn power, an army at her disposal and several centuries of experience." The clock chimed, popping out a tiny bird that declared cuckoo.

"I shall start with my revenge on Thorax's memory, then. By taking back my Hive and purging them of this pony-like foolishness!" The former Queen stomped a forehoof as punctuation, causing the watercress to flee in terror. "Once they are reshaped into what changelings should be, I will remind that Princess what true power can do."

As a rebuttal, Discord yawned. 

Rising up to her full height, Chrysalis loomed over the lounging draconequus. "You doubt me?"

"'Doubt' implies the potential that you could convince me otherwise." He yawned again, mostly out of spite. "Tell me - just how are you going to change the changelings? What do you have to offer them? Being hungry again? Being hunted? Hated?  Giving up everything they've built and gained so they can live in a cave in a desert? You're going to need to offer them more than a gift basket for that." Said basket popped into Discord's paw, full of wax fruit and a glass jar labelled Empty Promises. 

She said nothing to that as the love turned sour in her mouth. 

Discord didn't let up just because he'd won. "It's been dozens of generations since a changeling like you existed outside the history books." He paused for a withering beat. "When the books even still bother to include you." He slithered forward, rising up to put his face right in front of hers. "Why would they follow you? And don't say you'll take the throne by force," he added, flicking her in the crown off her head. "They outnumber you ten thousand to one and have every hero in Equestria on speed-dial."

"I'll just make a new hive, then!" She seethed, but didn't dare turn her back on him to retrieve her crown. Giving an inch would lose the war.

"With--" Discord got as far as pulling out the blackjack cards before Chrysalis cut him off. 

"Then we'll see who outnumbers who!" 

Discord flopped down the cards, showing two nines and a four. "And you think that your new changelings won't see how the old ones live? And betray you immediately?"

Chrysalis didn't have an answer for that one.

"Your kind of changelings are gone and never will be again. And you don't have any revenge to take. What does that leave you?" Discord's voice dripped with oil as he set his trap. His body contorted, wrapping around Chrysalis like a snake. He put his words right into her ears. "Just trying to satisfy your hunger? Sneaking around Equestria for the rest of your life, ambushing ponies in alleyways to take their love? Roaming around to feed and running away when somepony gets too close?" He pulled back to be once more face to face with her, and his eyes narrowed threateningly - but glimmered with mischief all the same. "Sounds less like a Queen and more like a wild animal. A scavenger." He paused for just long enough. "Prey."

The former Queen recoiled when the word struck her. "Changelings are not prey!"

Lazily, Discord meandered away from her and plucked a cookie off of the nearby bush it was growing on. "I've learned quite a lot about animals over the years running the Sanctuary. We both know I'm right."

He was, and they did. Chrysalis deflated to the picnic blanket. "So that's your pitch for me to accept friendship? That I have nothing, and I am nothing? That everything has been taken from me and all I have left is either friendship or annihilation." There was silence for a few moments before she added, "This approach of yours is far more depressing and has fewer balloons than I expected."

And then Discord smiled. "You haven't lost everything. Come! Come come!" He clapped his hands, signalling the changeling to rise. And then with a snap? They were gone.





She recognized the stone around them as the Hive - but nothing else. All the rest had changed dramatically in the time since she had last seen the Badlands. It couldn't even be called the Badlands anymore, and she doubted it was. Outside there were rolling hills of verdant greenery, tall willowy trees and a riot of spring flowers. 

It made Chrysalis a little ill.

Discord didn't care in the least and clapped his claws to beckon her. "This way! This way! Pick up those hooves, I need you right over...." He snapped, teleporting Chrysalis two yards to the side. "Here." 

Then she looked into her own eyes. 

Draconequus laughter echoed alongside the changeling shriek. "That was even better than I hoped for!" Discord's sides split, popping out two more of him that joined in the hilarity. 

"What is this?" The shock had passed into disbelief, and the former Queen could only look in confusion of a statue of herself. 

"Some kind of a shrine," Discord explained with a dismissive wave. The two of him who had split off moved to the side, drawing Chrysalis' attention to the other statues in the somber hall. There were only two she recognized - one, the traitor Thorax; the other, the pipsqueak dragon Spike. A dozen or so of others stretched out, each carved by delicate hooves, set on low pedestals and surrounded by a litter of candle wax and dried-out flowers. "The changelings honor their greatest heroes here." 

"You said history didn't even include me anymore." She was confused for certain - leery, as well. A shrine? Unexpected. 

Discord snapped his claw once more, and a gust of wind swept debris and corrosion from the plaque on her statue. "Most don't. But your descendants call you Broodmother. The Queen who made the Hive survive when they had no other way." He paused to let that sink into her chitin. "They consider you a figure of reverence and pity. A leader who became a monster to help her people survive, and had to be left behind because you couldn't stop." 

The draconequus turned to the changeling. "This is what you haven't lost. You still have a legacy that you can choose to change." 

"I... I could conquer the Hive again," Chrysalis hesitantly threatened. "Use that legacy to take over and ravage pony lands. Destroy everything you and yours hold dear." 

"You could," he agreed. A snap and the gentle clink of glass on stone as the bottle of love from tea appeared. "There's enough in there to last you around a month, if you're not as greedy as usual. The window over there leads out into open fields. Normally you would be meeting King Plumose right now, but oh my." Discord glanced at a watch displaying Greek letters rather than numbers. "I seem to have told him the wrong time and he won't be here for another ten minutes." 

His yellowed eyes turned to the changeling that was once a Queen. "There was my chance, and now here's yours. Use it well, Chrysalis." 

And with a snap, he was gone. 





"And then what happened? Then what happened?" The nymphs and grubs practically scrambled over each other to hear more of the story. 

"And then," the pink-on-green changeling said, "The Broodmother was still there when the King arrived in the hall. The two talked, and she came into the Hive." 

One of the more rambunctious grubs waved a hoof in the air wildly. "What color did she turn?"

The crowd's babysitter shook her head. "The Broodmother didn't. She spent the rest of her days in the form of a changeling of old, being given the filia of the Hive around her. They say she never shared it because she wouldn't move on from the old traditions of her time." She paused before adding a half-whisper. "I think she didn't because she wanted to do penance for the bad things she did, and thought she didn't deserve to escape the hunger." 

Another young grub piped up. "Did she ever do what she said and try to take over?" 

"She did. Twice. And the Caretaker was correct - no changeling would join her, and her new children chose the Hive's way over hers." The older changeling smiled a sad smile. "But she was forgiven, because every changeling understood. It was part of what she sacrificed to help our ancestors survive."

The youngest of the grubs spoke next - barely more than a nymph, voice quiet and muted. "Was the Broodmother really a hero?"

Leaning over, the babysitter caressed the little one's cheek. "She was. And that's the point of this story. Just like any one of us could become a hero, every hero is also one of us. They make mistakes and sometimes do things that are wrong. And sometimes they have to make sacrifices that hurt themselves to help us all." 

The youngest looked pensive - but the first excited one clamored over her to ask another question. "So what happened to her?" 

"The Broodmother lived as part of the Hive." It was a rather short summary for a long life. "She caused trouble for the three different Kings she lived through, but she also brought knowledge to the Hive that we had lost. History from the earliest changelings and understanding about ourselves. Magic, too, that our people had lost. The Broodmother was not a nice changeling - but she was still a changeling."





The unicorn levitated the brochure-slash-map a bit higher. "Oh, and then there's this one. I think it's titled Young And Old." 

His partner came over, bringing the camera to bear on the statue rather than the sloths. "It's pretty macabre. Maybe it's here as some kind of contrast? Cute fuzzy animals and a frightening statue?" The camera flashed, grabbing pictures from a few angles. "The filly's really lifelike, too." 

The first looked the statue over a second time. "It's probably something from a donor that they can't get rid of because of the bits involved. Come on, the Caretaker said they had a family of jackalopes that just had a new litter. We really have to see that."