//------------------------------// // My Coronation May Not Be for Me at All // Story: This Coup is Going to be Perfect // by Akouma //------------------------------// Chrysalis reverted fully to her natural form, and staggered as the adrenaline left her system. Her carapace was cracked, her wings would be unusable for months, and the slice across her stomach was doing her no favors. But she would survive, and a statement needed to be made, so she began the painful climb up to the throne. Her throne. As she went further up the slope, she surveyed the chamber. The drones on the edges of the room were looking back at her. Those that had been part of Pupa’s honor guard quickly surrendered, only to be met by fang and spear. Chrysalis couldn’t help but smile at that. She had said no prisoners, after all. No pesky changelings who might get ideas about honor and loyalty to a dead mistress were going to trouble her going forward. Closer to the throne, things were less heartening. Pupa had unfortunately been right about something, and that was the destruction they’d wreak on the drones. All around where the sisters had fought, smears and carapace shards marked the ground.  Acceptable losses, Chrysalis thought, and turned her eyes back toward the throne, getting ever larger in her view. Finally, she made it up to the massive stone slab of the seat itself, and the changelings below her went silent. Chrysalis climbed onto it with a grunt of exertion and a flare of pain from her wounds, and turned to face the crowds below as she sat. Before she could speak, the clacking of hooves on stone from applause echoed throughout the chamber. Her gaze went to the source of the sound, a massive changeling at one of the side entrances to the room. Even with the distance between them, Chrysalis immediately recognized her father. A brief flash of magic went from his horn to his throat, and his words were like thunder as he spoke. “Congratulations, Chrysalis, on your total embarrassment of a coup!” A gasp went throughout the crowd. “Yes, you can beat your sister in a fight! Well done! Oh, wait, perhaps Pharynx should be king instead since you’d be dead if not for him right now!” She didn’t have the energy to cast her own spell to match his volume. “What do you want, Mandible?” “I want my kingdom back!” Chrysalis laughed, barely suppressing the cough that tried to interrupt it. “I don’t see how this kingdom is ‘yours’ anymore. You named an heir, she was crowned, she was deposed. It’s mine now, by right as the next in the line of succession.” Mandible walked slowly and deliberately up the slope towards her. “Funny thing about that, you’ve demonstrated a quick and easy way around the problem of a monarch you don’t like being on the throne,” the volume in his voice dropped back to normal as the gap between them closed. “And I’m thinking about taking a mulligan on this whole ‘letting my children run the kingdom’ thing given what a hash you’ve both made of it.” “What a hash I’ve made of it? Pupa certainly failed in her duties, but I orchestrated this, and here I am, the victor! I succeeded, father.” “Oh, Pupa was always supposed to fail,” Mandible said with a grin as he reached the point where he was right in front of Chrysalis. “She was almost certainly going to be a weak ruler, and you resented her so much already that it was supposed to be just the right push. To get you to learn what it truly means to be a changeling. To win with subtlety. With guile. With your brain. “But no, you just threw a gigantic tantrum, stormed in here with the subtlety of a yak, and declared yourself queen because you’re just so very tough. You were always supposed to take the throne, you idiot grub. You just had to pass one final exam in ruling. And guess what? You failed, so now I have to go back to square one. Goodbye.” As Mandible finished speaking, his horn began to glow. Before he could finish casting his spell, Pharynx jumped at him, still in war form. Barely flinching, Mandible turned and swung a hoof into his grandson’s face that sent him crashing to the chamber floor below them. Pharynx shortly reverted to his natural form, an obvious indicator he had lost consciousness. “You kids and your ‘war forms,’” Mandible mumbled with a sigh. “Just shapeshift to have denser muscles.” He turned back to Chrysalis, looking considerably more annoyed than before. “You know, if he’d thought about this for five seconds, he would’ve realized that you being gone makes him the obvious choice to groom into a king. He failed his test before I even put it in front of him! Good to know my daughter is an utter failure of a parent, t—” The hoof smacking into his jaw barely hurt in Chrysalis’s weakened state, but it did briefly force Mandible’s mouth closed. “If you insist on being obstinate about this,” Mandible said, “then I guess I best make this quick.” His horn began to glow once more. “Wait,” Chrysalis yelled. “What? What could you possibly say?” She prostrated herself before her father, and looked into his eyes pathetically. “You wouldn’t… you wouldn’t kill the last of your family, would you? Me and your grandson are all that’s left, father. You’re too old to have children anymore. The line dies with us if you do this!” For a brief second, Mandible hesitated. His eyes softened just slightly as he thought that over. A second was all it took. Chrysalis seized the one opportunity she would get, and began draining him immediately. Every last ounce of love he had ever had for her, nothing spared. It was sweet at first, exactly like what she would expect of a parent’s love for his child. As she continued, it turned bitter, tainted with disappointment. And all so stale. Besides this one moment, he hadn’t loved his daughter in years, perhaps decades. Still, the energy would be enough. Her wounds knit, her wings repaired themselves, and Mandible grew just slightly leaner as his eyes glazed over. “Now then, if you would kindly die,” Chrysalis barked as she released her own spell. Raw heat and force overtook her father, and as the light cleared, nothing remained but a pile of ash. The challenger vanquished, Chrysalis spared a glance for her son below, now being tended by medical drones, and spoke out to the crowd still gathered. “Does any changeling left object to my rule?” The room remained silent. Chrysalis sat back down on the throne, and relaxed as much as she was able to on the cold stone. “Aah, it’s good to be the Queen.”