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// 2: Is This What Death Feels Like? 
// Story: Death of a Queen 
// by Arkane12 
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“Do you see anything?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing yet, Princess.” The two guards had fallen behind, searching for anything the frazzled lavender alicorn may have missed in her haste. “I’m sure she’s here somewhere.”

To call the princess panicked would be a gross understatement. “Panic” would have been appropriate when she woke to find the moon still high in the sky. After Luna’s missive, that changed. As Twilight read the parchment, still dripping with fresh ink, her panic had evolved. What these two guards watched as they combed the blank canvas could only be hysteria.   

“I mean, what if she got lost out here? This desert is huge. Would we ever be able to find her? What if she hurt her wing and can’t fly? What if she’s in danger and needs to be saved? Will we be able to find her in time? What if we don’t find her in time?” The gold-clad guards knew better than to doubt their patron, but that didn’t stop them from exchanging worried glances. They needed to find Celestia, for both princesses’ sakes. “I mean, what was she even doing out here?”   

As if the fates themselves had answered her question, the changeling hive rose into view on the horizon. The only landmark for miles. Twilight reared to a stop, instinctively digging her hooves into the air to slow herself. The guards hovered to their charge’s side.

“A changeling hive out here?”

“Why didn’t we know about this?”

“Princess, you should let us-“

The guard’s conversation ended abruptly as the princess rocketed off at speeds fast enough to make Rainbow Dash jealous. The pegasi shook off their shock and followed.

A collapsed section of the mountain provided her entry into the hive. If Celestia had been here, it would likely have been the path she’d chosen, Twilight figured. The gap led directly into a room she recognized as the throne room. She’d been in too many of them to forget. She’d never seen any in such bad shape, though. The silence broke as her guards descended beside her.

“Princess Twilight, you shouldn’t run off like that. It could’ve been dangerous, you should have let us go first,” The guard explained through his unsuccessful attempts to catch his breath. Twilight didn’t hear a single word of it. She’d started to shake. Had she thought to eat breakfast this morning, she probably would’ve emptied it onto the stone tile under her hooves. By now, the guards had noticed it too, and were just as speechless as their princess.

Beside the throne, half shrouded in the darkness of the hive, Princess Celestia rested in a pool of her own blood, dripping from a deep wound on her flank. Her head and wing were braced against the changeling queen. Neither of them stirred. Twilight’s breath caught in her throat. She told herself to tear her gaze from the horrifying sight that she’d seen so many times in her nightmares, but her body wouldn’t move. Tears started to gather in her eyes, but she couldn’t even bring herself to cry.

Snapping from his stupor, the guard turned to his fellow. “Fly back as quickly as you can. Bring two chariots and a complement of guards for each.”

“Two?” The second guard blinked a few times, making sure his eyes hadn’t betrayed him.

“Yes. And chains.” The senior responded, turning his gaze back to the changeling queen. A quick nod and the guard vanished, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

“Is . . . is she?” Twilight couldn’t bear to finish her thought.

“I think she’s still breathing. Princess Twilight?”

The alicorn couldn’t hear him. Her resolve had finally broken, leaving her a sobbing mess. With a wail of pain only an orphaned filly could manage, Twilight threw herself down beside her mentor, her tears soaking into her white fur.







Changelings didn’t believe in the afterlife. They existed only to serve the hive and their queen. Nothing after that mattered.  With her time at an end, though, Chrysalis started to wonder. Every culture she’d ever infiltrated had its own beliefs. Ponies tended to believe the afterlife would be paradise. A reward for a life well lived. Yaks believed death felt like an eternal dreamless sleep. A reprieve from the hardships of life.

For Chrysalis, though, death felt like a soft bed. A chill settling beneath her shell prompted the changeling to dive deeper beneath her covers. An eternity of comfort hardly seemed to warrant the great reverence mortality commanded.

This doesn’t seem so bad, her mind reasoned. Surely there were worse ways to spend eternity.

Settling in for the long haul, Chrysalis relaxed, spreading to cover as much of the bed as she could manage. That plan hit a snag when a red-hot spike of pain jolted through her leg and up her flank. The suddenness forced the changeling to gasp as she jumped from the bed, only to be pulled back with the rattle of chains. Each of her legs had been shackled to the bed rails. Sneaking a peek under her covers, Chrysalis located the source of her pain. One of her hindlegs had been stripped of chitin. Her soft flesh had not been exempted from detainment. A fresh wound bubbled blood from beneath the metal cuff.

That didn’t seem right. The dead shouldn’t feel pain. They probably shouldn’t be shackled to a bed, either. Two opposing ideas settled between the changeling’s ears. Either every possible interpretation of the afterlife had been false, or she hadn’t actually died. Despite knowing the right answer, a small sliver of her mind hoped to be proven wrong.

As the shock of her survival waned, Chrysalis studied her surroundings, trying to piece together the series of events that led here. Memories swirled, stained by starvation and a spark of madness. Something about ducks? Similar to the waterfowl themselves, her thoughts were easily scattered, fuzzy, and incredibly difficult to catch. Also, like that particular flock of ducks, it infuriated the changeling queen. Ducks. Of all things.  What had they even been doing in her hive?

Her hive. Something clicked. Chrysalis had been in her hive, specifically the throne room. It had been destroyed when she arrived, forcing her to craft a new throne from the existing stone. Not her finest craftsmanship, but enough to be comfortable. Then the princess showed up. She scoffed at the recollection of the solar goddess. Suddenly, her survival made more sense. With the “how” answered, she moved on to “where”.

Past her bedside table, a collection of machines buzzed with a staccato whine quiet enough to be drowned out by silence.  Despite the lack of wires attached to her, the machines had no trouble monitoring her vitals. If she’d been a betting mare, she’d have wagered magic. While magic flowed freely through nature, harnessing it required finesse that not many could achieve. Above, the ceiling consisted of long white panels, easily removed and replaced to access the space beyond. The only break in the monotony came from the glass lights and large vents. General features of a public building. The only light in the room came from below, where the moonlight reflected across the white tile, casting a cool lunar aura through the air. Though the muted soundtrack of nature hinted at civilization, the apparent openness of the room didn’t feel like the oppressive dungeon cells she’d been in before. A realization that only made her restraints the more confusing. A soft white curtain surrounded her bed, blocking out any observations of the larger room around her.

A rather advanced civilization, capable of producing machines powered with magic. Along with the presence of the princess prior to her loss of consciousness, all signs pointed to the ponies. If it were the ponies, though, she should’ve been sealed in the deepest pits of Tartarus, not confined to a soft bed. And even then, the theory didn’t account for the “why”.  Her first impressions of Princess Celestia hadn’t heralded genius, but she knew the princess wasn’t stupid. Not stupid enough to save the life of her mortal enemy, at least. Her introspection ended without conclusion; too many missing pieces rendered the puzzled unrecognizable.  

Death or capture, she thought with a bored sniffle. Then again, maybe this is just what death feels like?