Chryssi took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts.
Countless mouths opened and chattered. It didn't work.
She had to go away, she had to make things right, she had to hide, she had to talk to her family, she had to get away from her family.
Consume.
Yes, she should do that. No, she shouldn't.
Breathing didn't work. She was too scattered. It wouldn't do.
She took the hunger and put it away, then gathered her memories and put them in a coherent shape. It felt wrong, but she pushed through with it anyway.
She was Chrysalis of House Sottile. She was a baker. She had sisters.
There, she was whole again.
Chryssi looked around. She was in the cistern plastered all over the wall at the end of it and reaching deep down in the ground below.
That seemed like a dumb place to hide, even if it felt safe. She had been here for years. No, Chrysalis had been around the farm, her body had been here.
It wasn't the time for that now. She had to make a plan like Tia always told her.
Tia… Lulu…
Eat.
They had seen her. They were scared of her, of that she was sure.
They were right. She knew that now. She would eat them. She would eat everything.
A plan, right, priorities.
She had protected them, and now she had to go away and continue to keep them safe. It had been fun and wonderful but it was over.
The forest sounded like a good first step. If she got deep enough into the woods they wouldn't find her and she could decide what to do. Maybe become a witch. That would keep people away.
"Chryssi?"
That had been Tia's voice. Why had she heard Tia?
Chryssi's attention returned to the world around her. Tia and Lulu were coming down the stairs. Slow, careful steps.
They shouldn't be here. A dozen maws hissed, "Go away! Leave me alone! I'm dangerous!"
Her sisters ignored her and reached the bottom of the stairs. They squinted and looked into the darkness upon her horrible form. Lulu sounded worried, "Chryssi, are you alright?"
She had eaten up the terror of dozens, but she couldn't bear the idea of tasting her sisters' fear. "No! I'm not Chryssi. I'm the hunger that will consume the world. I'm the end of everything. Run away while you can."
Tia took a step forward. "What are you talking about?"
They had to understand. "I'm a danger. I'm the devourer, the hunter stalking the dreams, the eater of light. I'm not your sister." Chryssi extruded an arm covered in talons and pushed a mass of eyes and mouths forward. She gathered every nightmare she had seen, felt her heart break, and put it into the face she showed to her sisters. "It was all a lie. I'm Death made flesh."
Tia and Lulu stood still for a moment and looked at each other. There was a brief nodding before they came forward and hugged the slavering mass of fangs.
Tia whispered, "Don't be silly."
Lulu snuggled a withering tentacle. "You're Chryssi, our sister."
"And no matter what–" Tia leaned back and looked right back in one of Chryssi's eyes, "–you'll always be our sister and our friend."
Chryssi felt the wetness of tears running down her mass. When had she decided she could cry?
Her sisters were there. She could taste worry and determination. She could taste love. Sincere love. And there was magic becoming stronger all around them.
Tia and Lulu began to shine with a light of many colors, most of which hadn't even a name. It became stronger and stronger, it blinded her, and then, with a flash, they disappeared.
Chryssi blinked and immediately regretted it. Something had rattled her, and each of her eyes seemed confused about what its role was and on what it should focus.
She had to assert control over every part of herself, push down the urge to feed once again and take in her surroundings.
She froze. Where her sisters had been just an instant ago, only a scorch mark marred the floor.
"Tia! Lulu!" Smells, sounds, emotions, everything flowed into her mind as Chryssi opened up sense after sense. They were nowhere to find.
Dread gripped her soul. She couldn't feel them. With a dozen voices she called out again. "Luna, Celestia, where are you?"
Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!
No, something. It was faint, just a trace in the flow of… It was in the magic, the thing that Master Sottile had told them laid below everything.
She shifted her attention, looked through the world instead of at it. There it was. The track shone like the sun and the moon but with the borders fraying off. It wouldn't remain there for long.
The magic had taken them.
It had carried away HER sisters.
The growl shook the ground. Dust trickled from the vault. "Give them back."
Tentacles thrashed through the air, pressing against the walls of reality.
"I don't want to be alone. I want my sisters!"
Appendages shifted, compressed. Talons and spurs changed into bony blades and pressed in new directions.
"You won't take them away."
Chryssi was getting angry. Furious. More than she had ever been. More than when they had attacked the farm. The hits became frantic, the blades scratched against something.
"Give them back! Give them back! I'll rip you apart piece by piece! I'll feast on your innards! They are MINE!"
Appendages curled back, and something deep inside her said, Do it.
Sharp bone snapped forward with a ripping, wet sound.
When Chryssi withdrew her tentacles, their blades dripping with rainbow goop, a tear in the world floated in the middle of the cistern. Light of many colors, most of which didn't have a name, bled out from the borders.
Chryssi hadn't time to admire her work. She slithered forward and poured into the hole, all her attention fixated on the track snaking in improbable configurations. It was fading.
The world around her fell away, the smell of damp bricks became more an idea before getting lost in the totality of blinding possibilities. The chirping of birds felt smooth, green. Joy was a wave of smooth pink.
Nothing mattered to Chryssi as she crawled between currents and songs. She could smell them now, they were there, not far away. A last push and she dropped on a floor.
"Tia! Lulu!"
Luna didn't know what had happened nor where she was. One moment she was comforting an overgrown Chryssi, the next she was standing in a place that seemed made of light.
And yet, it didn't matter. Not now, not when there were far more important things to consider.
She heard a ripping sound and a wet splat. When she turned she saw Chryssi rising from a thick puddle of goo and heard her call, "Tia! Lulu!"
Luna jumped and hugged her sister, "Chryssi, look!" She took a step back and moved new muscles. "I got wings!"
A brief glimpse over the shoulder told her that the flaring hadn't worked quite as majestically as planned. One wing hung low and the other had only half-opened. Not that it mattered too much. The point had gotten across.
It was remarkable how a dozen eyes could express confusion. Funny. "I…see. You got a horn too."
"Huh?" Luna crossed her eyes and tried to look up to her forehead. The success was limited, but she thought she could see something peek out from her mane. "I got a horn. Hah, Tia! I got a horn."
"That's nice, Lulu."
Tia sounded distracted. That wouldn't do. Luna got wings and a horn. That required more enthusiasm and, ideally, some envy from her sister.
In that place made of light things got blurry and it took Luna a couple of moments to find the spoilsport. There she was: standing a short way over and looking at some suspended picture.
Luna stomped over to her and said, a bit louder and with more entitlement, "I got a horn. And wings."
This time it worked. Tia looked away from the floating picture and down to Luna. A smile crept onto her face. "You do." She shifted in a little dance. "You do! Master Sottile was wrong."
"Tia, you got wings too." Chryssi had shuffled to Luna's side and now sported just a single mouth. She still towered over both of them and continued, "When did you two get wings?"
Luna scratched her chin. "I'm not sure ... there was the flash, and then we were here, and I got them. I don't know where here is, though."
"I guess we are in a dream?" Tia was trying to open her own wings with visibly less success than Luna. "There are these memories all over. I think we must be dreaming."
"Memories?" Something moved in the suspended picture and Luna finally took her time to look at it.
Scenes of her life were displayed there. They were sitting as judges while Willowbark kept ranting about something. Then it changed to them sitting in the barn under rackety bridges made of planks and ropes. Another change, now she and Tia were looking in a bucket where Chryssi bubbled.
And now that Luna was looking up she could see dozens, nay, hundreds more of those… Illusions, memories? Whatever they were, they were all over the place, always showing Tia and Luna, sometimes together, sometimes alone.
"We're not in a dream." Chryssi shivered. "We're in… I think we are in the Magic of the world."
Tia frowned. "Oh, that's impossible. I think. Maybe."
Shrugging when one had no shoulders was an impressive accomplishment. Luna admired Chryssi for pulling it off. "I'm kinda confused myself. It doesn't matter. You are well. And you have wings."
A low grumble awoke in Luna's tummy and brought her back to important things. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. "So, how do we go back?"
Chryssi turned around. "I think I know the way."
When they stepped out of the light and into the cistern the world made sense again. Celestia welcomed the cool air and the smell of damp walls. No emotions chattering in her ears, or songs having geometric forms. It was grounded, real, comforting.
She felt like she needed that comfort. It had been a long, terrifying day. One that felt like it had begun months ago and in which so much horrible stuff had happened. She needed a warm thyme infusion, some sweet bread, and to cuddle her sisters.
She would have to wait for that.
Lulu was still hopping around excitedly while twitching her wings, and Chryssi was returning to her corner.
She took a deep breath, time to face the possibility of ugly things coming up. "Chryssi, did you eat those jerks?"
Chryssi froze, then settled back at the end of the cistern. "I…"
"Right, can you get back to your usual form?"
A wave ran down the mass and coagulated into a foal-sized figure. The old Chryssi they got used to took a step forward.
Celestia walked up to her and held Chryssi in her forelegs. "You're more huggable this way. We told you, we are your sisters and whatever happened, we will go through it together. Now, did you eat them?"
There was a bit of mumbling that finally became intelligible. "A bit."
Not the answer she had feared, but neither the one she had hoped for. "What do you mean by 'A bit'?"
Chryssi bit her lip and looked away.
"Please, what happened?"
"I…" Chryssi took a deep breath, then looked at the heap of—of more Chryssi, Celestia guessed—at the end of the cistern. "Let me show you. Just… I swear, I tried."
A low rumble shook the ground, bricks shifting on the floor as something moved below them. And then a speck of color emerged from the black mass. It grew and grew and became a giant green gem as large as a pony. Another followed, and then another one until there were two dozen of them like jewels embedded into obsidian.
Celestia let Chryssi go and, dreading what waited for her, walked to the nearest gem. No, not a gem, more like a vial. It was full of liquid and something was in there. She squinted. It was—
Growing up had changed a lot of things. Celestia was well aware of how her tastes and the things she had once deemed important had changed. It was part of life that what had delighted or scared a little filly wouldn't touch a grown mare in the same way. And yet there was always a core of immutable values and deep-seated fears making up the solid foundations underlying her being. It was what made her Celestia. And what she saw in the pod spoke directly to her soul.
"Tha–pfft. You've–snrk. They… they–" It was too much. The laughter exploded out from her and tears ran down her cheeks. She had to sit down, her legs wouldn't carry her.
"What's happening, Tia?" Lulu had stopped prancing around and came to look at the thing. "Chryssi, why is there a naked pony in there?"
Chryssi murmured something, which didn't help Celestia at all with her current hilarity issues. She laid down before she risked tumbling over from laughing too hard.
For some inexplicable reason, Lulu didn't seem that entertained. "Chryssi, when you said you ate them a bit, did you mean you ate away all their fur?"
The answer was barely audible. "Yes."
Celestia was making an effort to get herself back under control. The situation was serious. There was stuff to do.
"And their mane too? Did you really eat their manes?"
There was no hope. Celestia could barely breathe as a hiccup joined her guffaws.
"I tried not to. It was hard. Ginevra told me to not eat speaking people."
Lulu sighed. "I guess fur and mane technically don't speak." She kicked Celestia. "By the stars, have some dignity, sister."
Every once in a while Lulu was right about something. Right now was neither the place nor the time to bathe in the hilarity of the situation. And Celestia was stronger than her base impulses. At least she could be for a little while. After all, it was just a fully grown mare floating in there, completely bald, skin pale and barren like some of the ugly moles she occasionally had found in the untilled fields. The ones that were wonderfully adept in making Lulu screech and flee when Celestia put them into her bed. No, bad Celestia, wrong thing to think about. She bit her lip before she noticed something.
"Chryssi, why are they twitching?"
The tone of the answer was unexpectedly cold. "Because they're having nightmares."
That sounded less fun. Celestia took a deep breath and stood up. Her legs still felt a bit wobbly, but at least the whole laughter thing had passed. "Are you giving them nightmares?"
"Yes."
The funny part had been better, but no good thing could last forever. "Right, stop that, it's cruel and you don't need to do it. I'm pretty sure they won't escape from there."
"But they tried to take you away! They wanted to—they wanted to destroy our family!"
Lulu put her foreleg around Chryssi. "Yeah, but you stopped them. It's over, and, well, dreams are kinda important. You can't ruin them because you're angry."
"She's right." Celestia sat down on Chryssi's other side. "You won, they lost, manes and coats were the cost of defeat. Let it be just that."
It took quite a lot of mumbling, scratching of the floor, and occasional buzzing of wings before Chryssi finally looked at the pod and asked, "A'ight. What do I do with them now?"
"Er... I don't know. Set them free somewhere far away?" Celestia prided herself on always being able to throw together a plan on the fly with all due panache, but for once drew a blank. What does one do with prisoners without a ship or a dungeon? She shrugged and looked over to Lulu.
Her sister seemed as lost as her. "I guess we can ask Master Sottile? He's a judge and all that."
At the mention of Master Sottile, Celestia felt Chryssi huddle down. "What is it, Chryssi? Something wrong?"
"The others saw me. I mean, they saw the ugly stuff I've done. They're scared and—" A sob rattled Chryssi's frame. "—they're right."
"Nope, none of that." Celestia hugged her sister harder. "You're our sister. You're Chryssi, the Chryssi we always knew. You put on some scary faces, big deal. They came at us, you defended us, end of the story."
"But…They're right to be scared. I–I will eat the world. Everything everywhere forever, I'll devour it all."
Lulu snorted. "And they still let Tia into the kitchen too even if they shouldn't. I don't see the difference."
Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference between her sister being horrible and her trying to help. This time Celestia was pretty sure it was the latter, which meant her vengeance could wait. "Can you explain ‘devour it all’ a bit better? It seems to be kind of vague and kind of came out of nowhere."
There was a very specific expression Chryssi had when she thought hard about things. Celestia knew it from when her sister tried to explain things, and it was usually followed by some complicated concept described with a lot of similes and waving-around-of-hooves.
As Celestia looked at her sister, she felt she recognized more and more of the usual Chryssi. She liked that.
After what seemed an eternity Chryssi said, "I got a lot of… well, not memories. More knowing things. I kind of put them away when I became a little caterpillar because I wanted to be with you in the right way. Anyway, now I know that stuff again. Some of it. It's a bit messy and weird. So, I know what I am. I'm a thing that eats worlds. I come to a place, and then I grow and I grow and then I eat everything that is and that was and that will be. And when I'm grown enough, my Fath–my Moth–my parent will come after me and I will spawn more world eaters and rejoin my… I guess my relatives."
Celestia nodded. That explained so much. She thought about it some more. No, actually it didn't. Those were words, but she wasn't sure she understood the full meaning of it. There was probably a lot behind them, a lot of concepts, of ideas. They would need some time to get it.
"Do you want to do that? Eat the world and leave, I mean." Lulu glanced obliquely at Chryssi.
"No, I don't think I want it. I like it here. I love you. I don't want to eat everything, but it's my nature, and I hunger for it."
"Right, but it's this brick's nature to stay on the ground, but with a little help—" The flow of magic felt a bit different, easier. Interesting, but not something Celestia had time to think about right now. She had to make a point. Her magic touched a brick laying at the side of the cistern. "—it can fly. See..."
The crash was sudden, the sound deafening, and the debris irksome. When they finished coughing and blinking the dirt out of their eyes and the dust had settled, the sisters admired a new hole in the vault. It was large enough for a pony to wiggle through, and a testament to Fidelis' ability as a mason considering the cistern hadn't collapsed.
A couple of heartbeats later the remains of the brick fell through the hole and shattered on the floor.
Lulu crossed her eyes and tried to look at her own horn with what Celestia guessed was suspicion. "Tia, let's not do that to Chryssi."
She had a point. "Right, so, do you have to eat the world, like, right now?"
"Huh?" Chryssi blinked. "I…No, I don't think so."
"Wonderful! Then we can find a way to help you fly despite being a brick and without going splat. Which I guess is a bad metaphor." A little poke of Celestia's hoof caused the remains of the brick to crumble to dust. "Anyway, we now have at least some time. We can make a plan."
From the fresh aperture in the vault, Celestia could hear Meadowsweet and Donna Copper Horn call out for her and Lulu. She frowned. She didn't hear them call for Chryssi.
"So, now what?" Chryssi sounded a bit dejected.
That wouldn't do. At all. Celestia ruffled her wings, then glared at them. They felt weird. "Now we go back to the others together. We clean up, see where we can put those jerks you're keeping down here, and then I guess we have dinner."
"I… I don't think they want to see me."
Celestia reached out and pulled Chryssi into a hug. "They'll get over it. We are family. We stay together." Her stomach grumbled. "Let's go, maybe we can find a snack before we start with the chores."