“Well, that went poorly,” Chrysalis said.
“You think?” Twilight ran a hoof through her mane as she paced up and down the room. “Now what? Do we go after her? Do we give her space? I-I mean, we don’t even know where she went. She might not even know where she went! What if she’s in danger? What if—”
“I can’t imagine she can teleport that far,” Thorax said. “She’s probably still in the hive, and there’s nothing here that would put her in danger.”
“Nothing we know of,” Twilight said. “What if she’s in, like, a secret passage you don’t know about? That could have anything in it! It could be full of timberwolves for all we know!”
“She has Gooey,” Chrysalis said. “I imagine the two of them together aren’t at much danger from timberwolves.”
“Do you really just wanna assume like that, though?”
“It’s better than assuming the worst,” Chrysalis said. “We’re talking about a girl who broke an element in half. Our daughter can keep herself safe in a place like this.”
“I…” Twilight forced herself to stop and take a deep breath, then nodded. “You’re right. She’s safe. But still, what are we supposed to do? Oh, we messed up so badly…”
“I’d say we’re quite used to messing up,” Chrysalis said. “We might be the best at it.”
“This isn’t the time for jokes,” Twilight said. “Our daughter just ran off! We have to—”
She was cut off by a knock on the door. “Come in!” Thorax called out.
A young changeling walked in, visibly out of breath from running to them. “King Thorax, there’s, there’s…”
Thorax got up and walked over to the changeling. “Take your time. What’s wrong?”
The changeling nodded slowly. When he’d finally caught his breath, he looked up and frowned. “Th-There’s something happening in the nursery. I think I heard some kind of monster in there!”
Thorax stepped back in shock. “What? I have to go, then!” He turned back to Twilight and Chrysalis. “I’m sorry to run off, but this is important.”
“Do you need our help?” Twilight asked.
Thorax shook his head. “You two focus on Daybreak. I can handle my hive.” Then he left with the changeling, leaving them to their worries.
Twilight walked over to Chrysalis and rested her head on her shoulder. “Chrissy, what do we do?”
Chrysalis hugged her close. “We should try to find her, first. Any idea where she may have gone?”
Twilight shook her head. “I have no clue. My brain isn’t working, I can’t think, I don’t even know what we did wrong.”
“Should we call in some help?”
Twilight groaned. “I hate asking her to do so much. I feel like I’m using her.”
“She’s happy to help.”
“That’s not the point. It just feels… Wrong.”
“Well, do you have any better ideas?”
Twilight thought for a moment, then sighed. “No.”
“Well…”
“Yeah, fine,” Twilight said. She took a deep breath to compose herself and nodded. “Fluttershy, can you hear me?”
“Hm?” They looked up to see Fluttershy, sitting comfortably in one of the chairs across the table from them. “Oh, hello Twilight, hello Chrysalis! Did you need something?”
Fluttershy was sitting casually in the chair, but she had an air of confidence she’d never shown in her youth. Her mane was longer than ever, pulled back now into a messy ponytail that still had the distinctive shadows that had crept in and devoured huge swaths of the pink. She wore her appearance proudly, and truly looked like she felt she belonged.
Twilight relaxed a bit at the sight of her old friend. “Oh, Fluttershy, we… We really messed up. I don’t know what to do.”
Fluttershy gasped softly and frowned. “Oh, no! What happened?”
“Well,” Twilight said, “Daybreak found out about Chrysalis’ past, and she, um… Didn’t take it well. She ran off.”
“Oh, how awful! I’m so sorry,” Fluttershy said, “that just sounds dreadful for all of you. How can I help?”
“We don’t exactly know where she went,” Chrysalis said, “and we’d rather not waste time searching the entire hive.”
“Oh, of course!” Fluttershy nodded. “Yes, she’s, uh… Oh, my.”
“Oh, my?” Twilight repeated. “What’s that mean?”
“Well, um, she’s safe,” Fluttershy said, “but… Well, you may want to give her some space.”
Daybreak reappeared with a pop a few feet off the ground. She stumbled as she landed, nearly toppling over, but managed to find her balance before she did.
Once she’d righted herself, she took a look around. She wasn’t very good at teleporting yet, so she didn’t actually know where it was that she’d ended up.
The room around her was dark, frigid and crowded, but not with changelings. As far as she could see in any direction, she was surrounded by strange pods that dangled precariously from the ceiling. They seemed to glow as they refracted the faint light that found its way into the room, and the effect was only intensified when Daybreak lit up her horn so she could see better.
Her light lit the pod she was looking at enough that she could see inside, and she stumbled backward at the sight. She backed up until she ran into another pod before her, which made her jump into the air with a frightened yelp.
Inside the pods was… Well, she wasn’t entirely sure what they were. They held strange, worm-like creatures that she’d never seen before. Their faces looked familiar, and the few who had their eyes open had full, colorful eyes much like her own, but their bodies were like nothing she knew. They were strange, black, chitinous things that seemed to ooze malice.
Beside her, Gooey arched its back and hissed at the strange beings.
“Shh,” Daybreak shushed Gooey. “You’ll wake them up or something.”
Gooey stopped hissing, but it kept its defensive stance. It also started to slowly back up, one creeping step at a time, away from the pod it was staring at.
“Gooey, c’mon, chill out. I wanna get outta here, and you—”
Her words fell of deaf ears, and she was cut off entirely when Gooey’s backpedaling brought it straight to another pod. When the two touched, Gooey let out a wet howl, a sound like the crashing of waves against rocks, and darted off into the forest of pods.
“G-Gooey!” Daybreak sprinted after it, doing her best to keep her voice down as she called out. “Get back here! I’m supposed to watch you!”
She quickly lost track of Gooey in the endless maze. The pods seemed to go on forever, so long she started to feel like the room must have been bigger than the hive itself.
They ended abruptly, and suddenly she was up against a new obstacle. She’d found the entrance to the room, and the tiny clearing between it and the pods, barely big enough for two creatures. Which was a problem, because there was a second creature, a tall green changeling standing right in between her and freedom.
“Uncle Thorax?”
“Daybreak?” Thorax tilted his head. “What are you doing here?”
“I—” Daybreak glanced around, then bit her lip. “I really don’t have time to talk, Uncle Thorax.”
She tried to dart past him, but he caught her easily and held her up so they could be eye to eye. “Nice try, Daybreak, but you’re not getting away that easy. You really scared your mothers running off like that!”
Daybreak frowned. “Okay, sorry, I get it, can I please go? I have to find Gooey!”
“Your pet?”
“Yeah, it got freaked out and ran away.”
“Well, I didn’t see it go past me,” Thorax said, “so it must still be in this room. Which means we have time to talk.”
Daybreak groaned. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Thorax said. He set Daybreak down and made himself comfortable on the floor.
“I really don’t wanna talk about it,” Daybreak said.
“You’re gonna have to talk to someone about it,” Thorax replied. “You know your mothers aren’t just going to let you do whatever you want.”
“So? What are they gonna do about it? They’re just a couple of weak old ladies.”
Thorax chuckled. “Look, you can talk to me, or you can talk to someone else, but you’re not getting out of talking about this.”
Daybreak grumbled incoherently and laid down on the floor. “What’s there to even talk about?”
“Well, you seemed pretty upset.”
“I wasn’t upset.”
“So it didn’t bother you to hear about your mother’s past?”
“...No.”
Thorax sighed. “Daybreak, she’s changed. Really. I knew the old Chrysalis, I grew up in her hive, she’s nothing like she was then.”
“So? Why should that matter?” Daybreak glared angrily at Thorax. “She was still a bad guy! She’s been bossing me around my whole life like she was better than me and had never done anything wrong, and they were lying! Both of them!” Her voice had steadily risen, and now she was outright yelling. Her voice cracked as she vented her frustrations, and she had to stop to sniffle. “I get in trouble for lying all the time, but I’ve never lied like that! Why do they get to lie? They go on and on about honesty, about how important it is to tell the truth to ponies you care about, and they’ve been lying to me! Don’t they care about me? Or was that a lie, too? Do they—They…” She trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes.
“I—” Thorax frowned and let out a long breath. Then he got up, walked over to Daybreak, and picked her up in a tight, loving hug.
Daybreak sniffed hard and leaned into the hug. “Do they…” Her voice was a lot weaker now. “Do they even love me?”
“Of course they do,” Thorax told her. “They love you more than anything else in the world. That’s why they wanted to protect you. They didn’t want you to be hurt.”
“Mm…”
“Would you like to go see them?” Thorax asked. “You’ll probably feel better if you can explain to them why you’re upset.”
“Not really…”
Thorax squeezed her and stood up, holding her in one leg, then started carrying her back up into the main part of the hive. “Well,” he said, “let’s at least get out of here. I can show you my favorite places in the hive, if you’d like!”
A few minutes later, Gooey poked its head out of the sea of pods and peered down the hallway. Seeing nothing, it slinked out of the room and into the hive.