They were weak.
All their bluster, all their assurances, and they were weak. Just like everyone else. Everyone. Victory in our grasp, our clutches, our jaws, and we failed. Struck down in our moment of triumph.
All fail me in the end.
...I was weak.
It pains me to admit it, but being sealed in a prison of stone affords one a remarkable sense of perspective. I was weak enough to fall for their lies, muttered platitudes of friendship and alliance. Friendship? Me? Unthinkable. Even desperation shouldn’t have driven me to such stupidity. What has friendship ever afforded me in the past? What has loyalty ever wrought save for bitter betrayal?
I have no need for friends or allies. I was foolish, blinded by visions of revenge, lured in by the honeyed lies dripping from the tongue of that old goat. Or not a goat as it turned out, but we still outsmarted him, didn’t we? We saw through the chaos god’s deception, soundly defeated him with the very weapon he was stupid enough to gift us on a platter.
No, not we. My plan, my victory. The others had already succumbed to his promises, but not I. I’ve heard lies like his before, from the traitorous grubs my hive fell victim to, and I saw them for precisely what they were. But in that moment, when his mask fell away and we had won our first, real victory, that was when I fell to folly. Not from his words, but our trio’s success. To have comrades again, so reminiscent of the warm embrace of my hive. I do not do well alone. I have not done well alone. A queen needs her subjects. A queen needs her loyalty.
But partners? Equals? That was a mistake, my mistake. Stupid. Foolish. Weak.
I was going to betray them eventually, of course. I’m sure they were planning the same. None of us would share Equestria, even if we might share in our revenge. But, for a time, I allowed them in. I gave them my confidence, and once again it was dashed against Twilight Sparkle and her band of friends.
Statues. That’s what they made of us. Icons to her success, our defeat. Celestia always did know how to make an example of her enemies, a demonstration of the fate of dissenters just in time for a new monarch to take the throne.
But it is not strength. The ponies imprisoned us because of their fatal flaw, the one which will prove to be their undoing. A ruler must be strong, decisive. They cannot hesitate, or spare their enemies the axe. But Twilight Sparkle will never take that step, just as Celestia refused to do, and one day it will be their ruin. So we stood in the gardens of Canterlot Castle, locked in place, frozen in time, years rushing by like a swollen river.
The Princess would take walks, staring up at our immobile forms, and we would stare unblinkingly back. We watched wordlessly as she grew more and more like her equally reprehensible mentor, settling comfortably into her role as her mane began to flow and she grew to tower above the ponies around her with a nobility she did not deserve. And still she would walk in the gardens and stop at our statues, and then she would sigh and shake her head and walk on.
Until one day she stayed.
We didn’t know, then, what she wanted from us when she unravelled us from stone. When the rock flaked from our bodies and we collapsed to the dust, too weak to even stand. Impossible to say how many years it had been – I lost count after the first decade. And as we lay there, breathing in air we had forgotten was sweet, stretching aching muscles that were finally remembering what it was to move, Twilight Sparkle made her declaration.
We laughed when she told us. Our first taste of freedom, our throats hoarse and dry, and still we laughed. And when she shrank back at our answer we only laughed harder, and her despair was delicious. I practically lapped it from the air.
Repentance.
That’s what she asked – no, demanded – of us. To renounce our deeds, honestly and truly, and become nothing better than the meek, pathetic herd she ruled over. To become servile, to her. And so of course we laughed as she tried to persuade us, even though we knew what it meant. What she would do afterwards. We laughed anyway, and when I had strength enough to pull myself up onto quivering legs, she knew she was out of time. We knew it too.
Back to stone.
Back to days sliding ceaselessly past, back to birds perching unwittingly on my muzzle, back to the garden’s visitors staring up at us with a mixture of awe, fear, and pity.
The last one only made me angrier. How dare they? Pity? For me? I dreamt of tearing right out of my cage, of ripping the love out of those pitying ponies until they went cold. On some days I felt sure my furious snarl would widen enough to break through the rock, my hatred unable to be bound any longer.
It never did.
When Twilight unsealed us again, so many years later, we didn’t laugh. We refused her offer again, of course, but I could sense the cracks beginning to form in my unlikely allies’ resolve, even if they couldn’t. I didn’t know which was worse – the cruelty of our punishment, or the fact that it was beginning to work.
Time passed. I lost count not only of the years, but of the times Twilight had unbound us and we had refused her. Those cracks I had sensed were widening, and their reluctance to keep denying Sparkle was sickening.
Tirek broke first. I did not think he’d be able to find a way to disappoint me further, but of course he managed to. One would think his incarceration in Tartarus would have prepared him for something like this, that he would have lasted the longest of all of us, but he crumpled like wet paper. Pathetic.
Perhaps Tartarus was his undoing in the end. Perhaps he remembered, reliving it twice over in his head, imprisoned yet again and perhaps for aeons. Perhaps that was too much. Beat a dog, and it will learn to fear the whip.
It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he was the first to betray us – betray me – and grovel before the pony. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at us. I would still have some shred of respect for him if he had, if he could at least have looked us in the eye as he shattered the alliance we had made, if he had the guts to acknowledge his cowardice. But that would be a contradiction, wouldn’t it?
Rest assured, he was a coward, and he knew it. And if he didn’t, Cozy Glow and I were quick to inform him. The pitiful creature wept and grovelled, and when Sparkle swept him up in her wings in an embrace, murmuring reassurance and comfort, she smiled. Another victory for her. Another soul cowed and broken.
I can at least take some pleasure in remembering how her smile faltered and died as Cozy Glow and I continued to curse her name, cursing Tirek’s too, spitting fury and hatred. All deserved, all earned. A pathetic coward and his new, wretched mistress.
And only two of us were returned to stone.
Tirek’s cowardice was so great that he never returned to the gardens. I didn’t expect him to, except perhaps to gloat, but even he must have known that would be as hollow as his resolve had turned out to be. Instead, he was simply… gone. I do not know what became of him, although Sparkle would later assure our statues that he had indeed turned over a new leaf and become her pawn, her slave. Not in those words, mind you, but it is so very easy to read between her lines. She imagined that would serve as a motivator, I think. A disgusting kind of equivalency. If he can change, so can you!
She didn’t realise how much we despised him for what he did, couldn’t comprehend that he was now as good as dead to us. That’s her friendship, again. Another weakness: forgiveness. If one of her friends were to do the same, she would forgive them. And in allowing such betrayal, she invites it in. It’s only a matter of time.
Her attempts to sway us continued as the years passed. I don’t know what prompted her appearances – there seemed to be no pattern to them. Sometimes only a couple of years would slide by between her unearthing us, sometimes entire decades. We remained steadfast.
At least at first.
I have to admit, the filly surpassed my expectations. She often did, even before we were locked away. So young, yet so precocious. There are very few things in this world that have impressed me, but Cozy Glow came close. And she held out against Sparkle’s efforts for far longer than I imagined.
She’d seemed the most afraid when the stone took us, after all. But in the rock that fear had given way to a similar anger that burned within me, it seemed, and whenever Twilight unbound us Cozy Glow would spit on her offer with vehemence to rival my own. I was proud of her spirit.
But no matter how strong-willed, no matter how angry, a filly is still a filly. A pony is still a pony. And over time her anger began to dull, clashed against Twilight Sparkle’s unflinching question, time and time again. Whilst my own fury still boiled, Cozy’s became muted and quiet. Her strength failing, and when Sparkle would wrap us in stone again, Cozy Glow began to flinch.
I was losing her.
There was no time, you understand. Twilight did not wait, did not allow us to wax lyrical or discuss amongst ourselves. There was only the question, hanging in the air, and when we refused she would encase us before our strength returned and we became an actual threat.
And so I had no time to reinforce Cozy Glow’s disdain and reignite that hatred. No time. Barely enough time to fan my own flames, to spit on Twilight’s name and assure her I would never submit to a pony, least of all her. And as Cozy Glow grew quiet beside me, my anger was alone.
I knew it was only a matter of time, and Sparkle must have done, too. And the day came when Cozy gave the quietest of sobs as the stone surrounded her again, and I knew she was going to break. Twilight showed her true colours again then. She had broken Cozy Glow’s spirit, shattered it against the stone she imprisoned her in, but when she heard that sob to confirm it she left us there for the longest time yet. Longer even than the first time.
Long enough that I could feel my own mind slipping away, that days and nights no longer felt distinct, light and dark merging into a constant, unrelenting grey. So long that ivy began to snake across our stone, wrapping and strangling, that the corner of the gardens we resided in grew forgotten and overgrown. Long enough that if we were truly mundane statues we would have crumbled into pieces from the elements.
But finally the day came, and I knew Cozy Glow would turn even before I hit the ground, so weak as the stone melted away again, staring up into Twilight’s impassive face. Searching for the emotions I could taste spilling off of her in waves. Guilt. Pity. Sorrow.
The guilt tasted sweet, everything else was bitter to my tongue.
And I watched, silently, as Cozy Glow sold herself to the devil, as tears rolled down her cheeks and she promised to be good, just please Twilight don’t lock me in the stone again. And Twilight smiled and extended a wing and although Cozy was at least a little more hesitant than Tirek, she still accepted it gladly.
And unlike Tirek, she at least had the guts to look me in the eye, after. We were wrong, she told me. There’s no point in fighting any more. We don’t have to.
Traitor, I hissed, and I would call her many other things besides, things I won’t repeat here. I should have known I would stand alone at the end of it all, the only one with true commitment and resolve. The only one with a spine and determination. It would take far more than this to break me.
Twilight cut me off, and as her horn lit up I turned my ire on her instead. She would learn that I was not so easily cowed, that I wasn’t scared of her. That I would never be scared of her. I cursed her until the stone crawled down my throat and silenced me. And then they left me there. Alone.
Cozy Glow did return, several times. I watched from my pedestal as the years passed. I watched her grow up. She would come and share her misadventures, and she would try to persuade me to ‘see the error of my ways’. It made me sick to see how utterly Twilight had crushed this filly’s soul. And then no longer a filly, a full-grown mare, and I did not really know where the time had gone. She still visited, though, far more than Twilight herself.
She could not have seen through the stone that covered my irises, she could not have seen the malice lingering within them, but I believe she knew I had not changed. That I would not give Twilight so much as an inch. Cozy would continue her efforts, talking to a statue that could never answer back, trying to convince me that we were wrong. We’d been wrong, and cruel, and I should take Twilight’s offer as they had done. That I could have a hive again, that the changelings had grown so much more populous and integrated than ever before, and I could rejoin them.
And even though my statue remained immobile, I hope she could tell how much that suggestion sickened me. As if I would ever agree to become what that traitor turned my changelings into. As if I would ever view that as a success instead of a corruption of everything that we were, everything that made us strong. Thorax destroyed my hive, destroyed the changelings, and for Cozy Glow to tell me it was all for the best… Well, even she seemed to struggle to believe that one. She couldn’t look at me as she said it.
Reformed. Enslaved.
Broken.
Twilight unsealed me only once over those years. Once, in a lifetime. I wonder if Cozy knew that. I doubt it. Instead I was forced to watch as the second pony to try and change me grew old before my stone eyes, and then eventually stopped coming at all. Twilight delivered the news herself. She didn’t unseal me for that, though, speaking up to my statue instead. Even still, I wonder why she didn’t. Perhaps she thought I would not want to be seen grieving. She thought wrong.
I didn’t grieve for Cozy Glow. If she had died, it was the moment she had surrendered to the Princess’ lies. There was nothing of Cozy Glow left to mourn, all these years later. Just another weak-willed pony, beaten into submission.
And then I really was alone. The ivy climbed again, now that there was no one who cared to clear it. My fury only burned hotter in my isolation. I clung to it. It was a rock in the storm, a lighthouse in the raging sea. The only thing I had left, the only thing keeping me from slipping into oblivion – my sanity, my identity, all falling away if it wasn’t for that raw hatred. All I had, the only thing in my restricted circumstances that had no restraint, nothing to hold it back. Years, decades, maybe even centuries alone with my thoughts, and they were filled with dreams of retribution, of escape and fire, the sky dark with my drones as we conquered. As I took my vengeance for this ignominy. The only comfort I could find in my otherwise desolate existence. Small comfort, yes, but comfort nonetheless, enough to heat through my stone heart, anger that burned hot enough to sear even through the rock.
I was so lost in it, so acclimatised to the nothing that I didn’t even notice Twilight approach until the stone was flaking away again and I collapsed to the thick foliage that had reclaimed the ground around my pedestal. Just once I would have liked to have enough strength to resist the pull of gravity. Just once I would have liked to have stood tall over Twilight and watched her pitying expression turn to fear. Alas, it was not to be. The stone was too much, too draining, too different. After years of barely existing, freedom was always too much to hold up.
“I don’t expect you to have changed your mind,” Twilight said, as I floundered in the dirt, “but you know I have to ask. I’ll keep asking.”
I couldn’t help myself. Normally I would have spat insults and cursed her name, but the years had changed my anger. Before, it had been boiling, but now it was… not cooled, but more concentrated. I didn’t lash out because it no longer spilled over, instead it simply filled me, every part of me. And so instead I lay in the dirt and I couldn’t help but try and understand. “Why?”
Twilight blinked, as though it was obvious, as though the question hadn’t even occurred to her. “Because everyone deserves a second chance.”
“We’re far past second chances, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “Everyone deserves another chance to redeem themselves. Everyone deserves kindness.”
Even as the overgrown plants pressed uncomfortably against my face, I couldn’t help but laugh, and the bitterness in it soaked the air. “This is kindness, then?”
“Of course it is,” she said.
“There’s no kindness in this, Sparkle.”
“Only because you haven’t learned your lesson. Only because you won’t change.” I could hear the frustration leaking into her voice.
“And what if I never do?” I asked. “Would you keep this charade up forever? Am I doomed to eternally stand in your garden, a statue in some forgotten corner?”
“I think everyone can change,” Twilight said, but even she must have known that didn’t answer my question. “After all, the others did.”
“And yet I’m still here.” I smiled. “Have I changed? Do you really think I will?”
“Not yet, but-”
“You’ll try forever, Sparkle, and I will fight you until my last breath. I’ll never surrender to you.”
“It’s not surrendering,” Twilight insisted. “It’s just deciding to be a better changeling. A good changeling. I have to believe even you can be good.”
My eyes narrowed. “And if you’re wrong?”
“I-”
“I will never become the mewling creature you want me to be, Twilight Sparkle. Do you really believe that sealing me away forever is kindness? Is that good?”
I could see her resolve shifting, swaying, bending. The slightest breeze of resistance threatening to snap it in two.
“One day you’ll see I’m right,” Twilight said. “And you’ll be glad that I gave you these chances. That I didn’t just leave you here, like everyone expects me to do.”
“We both know you couldn’t do that,” I sneered. “Your conscience wouldn’t let you.”
“Please, Chrysalis. I’m trying to help you.”
Was she begging? And I had thought she couldn’t be any more pitiful.
“You’re trying to help yourself.” I tried to pull myself up but my hooves gave out and I clattered back down to the dust again. I hated it. I hated how weak it made me seem, hated how my wings could flitter and thrum but had no strength to lift me, how my hooves quivered at the slightest bit of weight as though I was a fresh-born nymph again, hatched from an egg of stone.
“There are only two ways this ends,” I told her. “Either you kill me, or one day I will escape this place and wrench this underserved kingdom from your miserable little hooves. And you know that as well as I do.”
“Everyone can change,” she repeated, her voice full of pity that made my stomach churn.
I wonder who told her that. Her mentor, most likely. I did not even have time to laugh at her words before she encased me again, my once noble and indignant statue becoming a weak wretch, crumpled on the floor where I had been unable to even stand.
She has not returned since.
It has been a long time.
I’ve lost count again, and so I lie here and watch the world turn. Encased in rock, degraded and pathetic. The ivy grows thick, smothering, burying me in a blanket of green. But I will stand any humiliation. I am Queen Chrysalis. I do not surrender. I do not break. I am strong. And I would live in stone before bowing to that pony. To any pony.
I have patience. I have nothing but patience, endless, unfathomable. One day I will find myself free of these bonds, if it takes an eternity. One day I will wreak my revenge, and it will be swift and sure and as cruel as this punishment, and I will watch Twilight Sparkle scream as I tear every last speck of love from her.
I’ll win in the end. I’ll always win. I’ll never break. I will not be forgotten.
I’m the strong one, the only one left, the only one still willing to stand up to her.
I am a Queen.
…
And I always will be.