The smile of triumph still refused to come forth, hours later.
Chrysalis was in the throne room. Where she belonged and where she didn’t fit.
Overhead, the cocooned ponies twitched as changelings extracted rations of love for the celebratory feast – she didn’t bother watching this part, but heard the slurping and sucking sounds. This was traditional upon a coronation.
Around her, the tunnels lay wide open. She felt the Living Hive ease and relax, now that a Queen had been secured. Changelings were free to mingle all over, regardless of rank or role. This too was traditional upon a coronation.
The throne flashed. She still didn’t dare sit on it; instead, other changeling officers and soldiers crowded around it, inspecting and testing the hard blackness through their own glowing horns. Most of them had experienced magic of one form or another, out in the world, out on several distant campaigns.
One by one, their horns shut off. The earliest ones waited patiently for the later ones. Chrysalis waited for their verdict. Even the Living Hive waited, breath held in the still air. Argent might be gone, but the throne had been of her own make. Even in death, she might not be trustworthy.
But Chrysalis had to be in the throne room, just the same. After all, this was the most traditional part of any coronation.
It just didn’t seem to matter very much.
Nothing did.
Eventually, the last horn went out. Commander Lepidoptera, the commander who had succeeded Chrysalis what felt like a lifetime ago, stepped forwards and saluted.
“Proceed,” droned Chrysalis.
“Your Highness,” said Commander Lepidoptera smoothly, as if she had been born for the commander’s position. “All magical types have been checked. Report thus: we can make no guarantees regarding the chaotic TOM –”
TOM. Type of magic. Changeling military jargon.
“– but Captain Vespa assures us the other kinds should diminish its effects for the most part. All other types ESC-OK.”
ESC. Enchantment, spell, curse. Standard code when checking good, neutral, and evil magical types.
“Thank you, Commander,” droned Chrysalis.
She couldn’t help noticing the changelings give each other worried glances. No mystery why: Chrysalis usually spoke more authoritatively. Her dull monotone didn’t sound right, especially for a new Queen.
Chrysalis waved a hoof to dismiss them, then sat down on the throne. No ceremony. No fanfare. At the finish, it was just a big spiky seat.
Barely worth the effort, she nonetheless watched the changelings scurrying about from tunnel to tunnel. A group of cleaners applied their liquid trade to the scorch marks on the floor and far wall.
What now?
Chrysalis leaned back. She didn’t care about chaos magic. The way she was feeling right now, she’d barely notice the difference.
Inside the throne, she felt a presence stir. Like the Living Hive.
What now?
She watched the changelings come and go.
She’d loved the Hive. The Hive had loved her. Even Argent had loved her, before all this. The Living Hive had been their constant friend. Up until It happened. Up until Queen Argent happened.
Chrysalis’ mind vaguely gave a toast to her honoured dead. She’d heard the reports. Most of her rebels had died.
Changelings weren’t used to the idea of fighting other changelings. Up till now, it hadn’t mattered if the enemy had died, so long as they themselves survived. Only about eleven had survived the skirmish in the Intravenous Arena, around the same time Captain Antenna had sacrificed himself for the cause.
They’d fought. Under her leadership. They’d died believing in her, but they’d still died all the same.
And now? Under her leadership were thousands of changelings who hadn’t. Changelings who had stayed with Argent when Chrysalis had rebelled, had been banished, had sneaked her way back in only to fall into a trap.
Anger found something to grasp in her heart.
Hive of idiots! Traitors! Cowards!
Now she was their Queen, everyone seemed determined to pretend the last few hours hadn’t happened. They refused to make eye contact as they hurried by. Most of them pretended the throne and she weren’t even there.
She’d imagined it differently. Captain Antenna would have been alive and would have been rapidly promoted to Commander Antenna. A position she could entrust to him. Not to Lepidoptera, who’d led the charge of the royal army when Chrysalis had been fleeing for her and her rebels’ lives…
Commander Lepidoptera approached.
“Yes, Commander?” said Chrysalis tersely.
Commander Lepidoptera saluted. “Your Highness, we’ve found Argent’s body.”
“Oh?”
A few hoof-shuffling moments passed. The anger – the one constant of her last few days – flickered slightly… then rose when Chrysalis realized what was coming.
“Er…” Commander Lepidoptera alone met Chrysalis’ eye, and very, very clearly did not want to. “Permission to bury her in the death chamber, Your Highness?”
Normally, they wouldn’t have to ask. That was how strange the situation was.
Chrysalis turned it over in her mind.
Argent was dead. No longer a threat. Even if she merged with the Living Hive down there, she’d have no influence on its thoughts. One renegade had no sway against the million-strong.
But then she remembered her poisoned leg. Worse, she remembered the sight of Queen Imago’s body in the nursery chamber after Argent had left her there… That had been poison too…
Poison.
Chrysalis furiously pushed back against the image of Argent comforting her, Argent feeding her, Argent cooing and encouraging her grubby little larval form as it blundered uselessly in the nursery chamber, dreaming of battle.
Poison.
“Permission denied,” snapped Chrysalis.
A few nearby changelings stopped in a hush. The hush spread some way around the throne room, competing with the bustle and scurrying legs.
“But… Your Highness…?” said Commander Lepidoptera.
“Cast her body out for the scavengers.” After far too long a hesitation, Chrysalis leaned forwards. “Your Queen just gave you an order, Commander.”
Commander Lepidoptera unfroze and bowed stiffly. To her credit, she never dropped eye contact. Lepidoptera was made of sterner stuff than her cowering brothers and sisters.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Go! Trouble me no further unless it’s important.”
The hush took on a darker muttering tone, but Lepidoptera flew off and the others hurried back to their tasks. Outrage worked better if you had someone strong to use as a shield against any backlash, and they knew better than to challenge Chrysalis in this mood.
Still… her order had crossed a line.
All changelings looked forward to the death chamber. To merging with the Living Hive. Refusing entry to such a perfect state – Chrysalis winced at the idea – was the ultimate declaration of hatred. It meant a changeling was Not One Of The Hive.
Chrysalis snarled at the idea in her own head. Tough! The hive could take a hit for once. The world could take a hit for once. Because they were not Right. Nothing about this was right, and Chrysalis had no patience for it anymore.
No, she was thinking wrong. She needed some time alone.
Chrysalis got up and ambled around the throne. To the nursery chamber beyond.
Inside, the massive stalactite hung as a dark reminder over all the eggs. To think, eons ago she’d been checking that stalactite for any sign of Argent. It seemed ridiculous now. Argent had been a nurse. She’d belonged on the ground, tenderly clutching the eggs scattered about.
As Queen, Chrysalis would be gravid soon. That was a natural response to the hormones and other chemicals in turn responding to her new state of mind, her royal state of mind. More eggs would need to be laid. Over time, her brothers and sisters would be replaced by her sons and daughters, and the hive would endure. The Living Hive would endure. This whole wretched, unfair, confused, frightening life would endure.
No.
No, it wouldn’t.
Chrysalis remembered the plains in the distance. On the top of the hive, she’d seen the forests and shadows and rocks and skies and the sun casually destroying another day behind it in fire. Down there, timberwolves hunted, songbirds roosted, worms burrowed in happy ignorance, and countless, endless villages and towns and cities of ponies got on with their inscrutable lives. Chrysalis had seen a world that didn’t care what she thought, that had been everything and nothing all at once. What difference would it make to such a world if she and her kind disappeared?
The hive was dying. Queen Argent had seen it. Queen Imago had seen it and pretended not to. Chrysalis saw nothing else.
Oh, how she wished she could follow in Imago’s hoofsteps. How she wished, insisted, pleaded that Argent had just been a warped traitor and nothing else.
Now Chrysalis felt the stirrings in her own abdomen. Soon, the first of her children would be born into this mess. But it was true: the changelings had relied on the same tactics for too long. Other species – not just ponies – were wising up to them. The feast tonight would barely satisfy the thousand-strong survivors. If she didn’t change something soon, if she treated her hive as invulnerable, then her belief in their own superiority would kill them.
The truth poisoned her.
She couldn’t conquer this. She couldn’t take back her right. She couldn’t earn it just by working harder. She would simply lose. Equestria alone would crush them as easily as a hoof crushed the tiniest bug.
For a moment, she wished Argent was still here. Not the traitor Queen, but the all-loving nurse coddling her fright and grief. Even if Chrysalis refused to admit her own fear, she needed someone to be defiant at. No wonder the Living Hive had fallen in line. It had remembered all the nurses. Even the nurses remembered their nurses.
Doubt poisoned her.
But she couldn’t let it win, either. Surrender was not a word she’d ever use. Something else she’d seen, from the top of the hive, looking down on the rest of the land, was death.
Death of the soul. Death of the self. The hive was everything to her. In a sense, she was the hive. If she surrendered, she’d mix with non-changeling things – ponydom, minotaurs, zebras, buffalo, griffons, diamond dogs, donkeys, and stranger species than those – and she’d be lost. Just like the individual souls in the Living Hive. It would thin her, dilute her, reduce her to nothing. Everything would be lost. Being a changeling was everything to her, so anything else was emptiness, a void, nothing.
If she surrendered, she would be lost.
If she surrendered, she would be no true changeling.
Part of her wondered if she was doing Argent a favour. Better to die as yourself than live on as a speck in the void.
So don’t surrender?
But then what? She’d cleansed the hive of its traitorous poison, only to have no cure for a body that was still sick. The hive needed a change. It was getting by on luck now, and it would fall to enemies if those drops of luck ran out.
She was no changeling if she surrendered. She was no changeling if she didn’t.
And she’d had to kill a fellow changeling anyway, just to get here. She was poisoned with that knowledge. That must mean she was no true changeling, mustn’t it? After all, changeling should never kill changeling.
Worse, she’d led her rebels to their deaths. She was a complete hypocrite. An incompetent. A danger to her own subjects.
She’d solved nothing…
Argent’s ghost leered at her as she stared at the eggs so hard they might have cracked under the pressure. The eggs, scattered on the ground at her hooves.
Argent was right about this. They couldn’t win.
Yet Chrysalis refused to become another Argent. Befriend ponies? Befriend mere food?
What would a changeling – a true changeling – do?
Eventually, she couldn’t stand it any longer. Chrysalis returned to the throne room.
Nothing had changed. The cleaners cleaned. The passersby passed by. Soldiers soldiered on. Then Chrysalis remembered something.
Besides, she understood how Argent’s mind worked now. Befriending. Surrender.
She peered at the stylistic holes in the throne’s base. To Argent’s credit, the throne at least looked approvingly changeling-esque.
A few seconds of rummaging unearthed the letter. Of course. Argent would have wanted to keep it very close by.
Chrysalis read it through. She’d been taught to read for the campaigns in civilized territory. Changelings who were illiterate had fewer options when it came to impersonating ponies.
The letter was addressed to Princess Celestia. It declared the hive’s surrender. It listed a proposed negotiation for reparations to the citizens of Equestria, in exchange for rations for her changeling subjects, et cetera, et cetera…
For a moment, Chrysalis cowered.
Befriend ponies? Befriend the enemy? The eternal enemy of an eternal hive? That was what Imago would have scoffed. Imago would have gone right back to the old mantras without another thought.
Surrender? Argent would have done anything to protect the hive. Anything?
Dare she?
Dare she send it, and save her changelings?
What!? The rage clawed at her heart. Let someone else help US!?
A voice very much like Argent’s responded: Pride won’t feed us. Pride will get us killed.
I’d sooner die fighting!
Good, mocked the inner Argent. Because that’s precisely what you’ll do. Princess Celestia raised the sun that razed the sky. You saw it. You are a mere wasp under a gigantic eye. Sting it, and you will be swatted like a pest.
Chrysalis’ teeth cracked as the tightening jaws started kinking them ever so slightly out of joint.
She watched the changelings massing into the throne room, baffled for a blink. Then… oh, yes. The coronation speech.
She’d have to tell them what she wanted the hive to do. Remove the Smell Galleries and that intrusive library. That was about all she knew for sure. Everything else was a red haze in her head.
You’d sooner die fighting. Would you sooner kill THEM fighting?
Chrysalis shuddered under the chill of the thought. Kill her family? Kill the only thing that mattered?
Why did they matter so? What did they actually do?
Despite the panic and protest in her head, she stepped back onto the throne as if quietly confident in her speech. As if the thousands of blank stares would erupt into applause no matter what she did. As if they would not mob her if she got it wrong.
Chrysalis gaped back. A mere grub under a mass of nurses –
No! She snapped her jaw shut.
The throne room was silent with bated horror.
Go back to basics. Chrysalis sought refuge, and so thrust some easy words forward.
“My fellow changelings!” she announced, shuffling to sit more comfortably on the crystal-hard throne. “Let us heal this rift that has divided us! Let us restore our hive to greatness! Let us create a future, in which we are not the last hive hiding in the wilderness, but a proud hive and the envy of others!”
So far, so good. Changelings still looked blank, though. That last bit didn’t sound right, either…
“I have a vision!” she hastily added. “A vision where, from the brink of death, we snatch life! Our hive will increase. We will be strong enough to send forth brothers and sisters to found new hives. We will once again be a great and terrible scourge upon our enemies! We will be the founders of a whole new era! We will become the hive of hives!”
Still no reaction. She knew why. All these regurgitated promises had come from Imago’s mouth too. Unspoken was a rising question: how? How can we do this? What are we doing wrong?
Chrysalis glanced at the letter. It shook in her telekinetic grip.
This was the moment. This was where dare became history.
Changelings had been doing it wrong for too long. But doing what wrong? Why would being a good changeling be wrong? She just did not understand it. Hadn’t she been a good changeling? A true changeling?
She held up the letter.
A shift in the air as thousands of eyes and a monstrous, looming, concentrated focus squeezed the letter in her grasp. The Living Hive itself engulfed the letter through a flood of curiosity, a torrent of emotions, whilst the millions of lost lives found themselves waiting for the drop and the strike of the ground as whatever befell them… fell…
How would it land?
“We will never go hungry again!” cried out Chrysalis.
No one listened. They stared at the letter.
At Argent’s work. During Chrysalis’ moment to shine.
“For the good of the hive…” Chrysalis found her own eyes staring at the letter.
“We will…” She faltered.
“We…”
“We will never…”
Argent’s work. Argent’s policy. Argent’s…
Chrysalis realized what she was doing. Argent’s work.
Argent’s… treachery.
This was all the fault of traitors! Of enemies! Changelings had done nothing wrong! Imposters like Argent had! Their enemies had! It was their enemies! It was always their enemies! True changelings always had enemies! A true changeling knew she was doing right when she made enemies! True changelings! For the Hive!
She ignored the screams of fear in her own head. They didn’t reach her now.
She glowered at the thousands of eyes. Imagined their fear too. Violently conquered it.
She screamed, “We will take over ALL OF EQUESTRIA!”
Shock and surprise blinked and murmured around her. Even Chrysalis barely believed her own mouth, but now she’d said it, suddenly the rest became clear. She held the letter higher.
“As Queen of the Changelings,” she bellowed, “I will right all wrongs! I will make the world ours again, as it should be! Protect my own, for we are the Hive, and nothing else matters! We are everything!”
Then she growled and shredded the paper, as viciously and finely as possible, under the new wave of horrified whispering. Bits of white rained down like confetti over a bride.
“The world will hate us!” raged Chrysalis. “As it should! To be hated by our enemies is proof that we are on the true path! Our enemies wish to make us weak and helpless! Well, we will not satisfy them! We will take from those who don’t deserve their privilege! The greatest raid in the history of raids! All of us will become assassins! All of us will show the world which is the dominant species!”
Whispers died down. Several faces looked worried, but more began to smile, or smirk, or grin, or beam, or nod, or laugh, or shake in sheer excitement.
“Feed, my brothers and sisters! Feed, as we’ve never fed before! Equestria has more love than could satisfy a hive of hives! So Equestria will serve us! Equestria will feed us! Equestria will be our slaves, and we its masters! Equestria will fear us, and we will fear nothing!”
Someone whooped at the back. Several murmurs of approval ran around the room like playing children. She’d touched a nerve.
“THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!” shrieked Queen Chrysalis. “DO OR DIE!”
Cheers erupted, first from those few who could no longer contain themselves, then from their neighbours, then from all around as the mood caught fire and spread its heat and light and painful joy from cleaner, scout, grappler, soldier, nurse, the entire hive. The Living Hive billowed as rich smoke over them all.
“First! We will feast here! Gather our strength! Then we will make preparations! There will be no delaying our destiny! To Equestria, and to a future fit for changeling-kind! Go! GO!”
As soon as the changelings dispersed, however, Chrysalis dismissed Commander Lepidoptera – who’d stepped forwards smartly to salute – and slipped out before anyone else tried to object.
The echoes of the hive’s cheers followed her all the way, until down here, they could no longer reach her.
Down here, in the chamber of death.
Shed skins. Body parts. The corpses of her fallen comrades.
Stretching endlessly.
For Chrysalis knew she wasn’t going to win. No one would question the logic of her attack, her actual plan, and in any case she didn’t want them to. Commander Lepidoptera would do as she was told, because that was her role, but Chrysalis knew what she’d been about to say. What objections she’d have brought.
The commander would’ve been wasting her time, though. Chrysalis could see all those objections, plain as day. They’d want to know the details of her plan.
There was no plan.
True, she knew a few things about the country’s defences. Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard, for instance, would be a major obstacle. She’d have to gather more intelligence about him. Although the changelings were moving out soon, she couldn’t just march them up to Canterlot – the heart of Equestria, the heart of the most magical country in the world – and expect to topple it in a day. She could set up a bivouac somewhere in the forest, scout ahead, find some weakness to exploit, hope they didn’t let anything slip before she could move in and disable the defences, and…
Somehow beat Princess Celestia. And wasn’t there talk of another princess now? An ally? And six others… Chrysalis hadn’t kept up with the latest news, not during the Imago and Argent crises. The hive had been a bit distracted during all that business.
But this she knew for sure: she wasn’t going to win. There was no way. Argent had poked so many holes in the idea that Chrysalis herself didn’t see any of the actual plan left over.
This was insane.
Part of her didn’t care anymore.
In a way, it was fitting. One last tribute to the greatness of the changelings before their defeat, and before their death. One last defiant statement to the world.
Befriending weak little ponies? Ha! What a lovely but ridiculous sentiment!
So! What better than the glory of a final battle? If insanity rules, then why not? Die as herself. Die as a true changeling. Surrender and mercy and patronizing pity were the ultimate insult, to her, and to her astonishing kind.
Anyway, she didn’t care anymore.
Why should she? The world didn’t. The world had put her – overwhelmed her, hated her so much – in this unwinnable situation. It was the world’s own fault she’d been made to do this.
How she longed to hurt the world for that. To share her pain. To gloat at it, as her final dying victory. If she could kill it too, then all to the good.
She gritted her teeth at the sight of all those bodies. Deep inside, the simple pain.
The world wanted them to die? Very well. She, they, her changelings: all of them were going to die whatever she did. But she would make it matter.
The smile of triumph finally arrived.
So her one choice was simple: she’d show the entire world and everything in it as clearly, as spitefully, as gloriously, as directly… and as painfully as possible… how a true changeling should die.