With a pow and a boom and a rattle what had been a lovingly-swept floor became a lovingly-swept floor scattered with bits of what had been a wall. It’d need sweeping again.
Chrysalis laughed uproariously. She laughed at just how easy and how fun it was to magically blast holes in walls. She laughed at how stupid Richard had been to waste all that time sweeping the floors when it was much easier to cover them in rubble. She laughed because, while striding around and blasting holes in things, it was expected that she should laugh.
This she understood, this made sense.
And given the way things had gone lately having something that made sense was enormously reassuring.
Her whole life - a not inconsiderable period of time - she’d had clarity of purpose, drive, vision, ambition! She’d known where she was going, what to do to get there! It had all been so obvious - so obvious she’d never even thought twice about any of it, never even had to. Being her had come as easily to her as breathing or excreting a thick, resin-like mucus on command.
Now everything she wanted to do - knew she had to, because it was who and what she was - came with a background hum of what she had come to learn was doubt and concern, two feelings that until not that long ago had been foreign to her, bordering on alien.
Indeed, ‘feelings’ plural had been alien! She’d just had one feeling before and it had barely qualified for the name! Now she had lots!
Lots and lots, all vying with each other and tripping her over and confusing her, swilling about inside her head and sometimes in her gut and sometimes in some other places she wasn’t so sure about, all pulling her in all sorts of directions, all leaving her thoroughly unlike the her she was used to.
It was a nightmare!
But she knew all this, she’d been over this. This had been stewing away inside her head for days, now, only now properly reaching boiling point in light of…
...in light of recent...
She didn’t even know anymore!
With a sound that stood halfway between a snarl and a growl she blew some more holes in some more walls, making more mess. The more mess she made the more she had to not try and think about Richard, being as he’d be the one to (eventually) have to clean it all up again, and the way she tried not to think about it was to blow more holes in more walls. This did not work out very well as could well be expected.
Thankfully for Chrysalis, the cycle was broken as her angry wandering brought her upon something that caught her full attention: the mysterious magical item she’d been planning on using for mysterious magical purposes.
It was exactly where it had been when they’d left it. Not surprising, it didn’t have any reason to have gone anywhere and no-one knew to come by and move it. But seeing it there still caught Chrysalis off-guard - she’d quite forgotten about it.
There it sat. Inscrutable. Mysterious. Magical. Chrysalis was so stunned to see it there - and so stunned that she had, as said, somehow forgotten about it entirely - that she could only stand and gawp for a moment.
Then the moment passed, and Chrysalis grinned. This was providence at work, this was! This was life giving her a sign about what she should do, a suggestion on where she should go next, a chance to recapture that spark that she’d lost. This was an opportunity to prove that she still had it, falling right into her hooves.
She could feel it!
All those clouds of doubt that had gathered parted, and all was clear again. It was wonderful.
She’d show them! She still had it! Nothing had changed - nothing! She was as vile and evil as she’d always been! Just because she was a shade or two lighter now and maybe a bit twinkly and sparkly around the extremities didn’t mean she’d gone soft, no! She’d show them!
Chrysalis was back to laughing again, this time the booming laughter of one who has wonderfully evil schemes coming together, one who is imagining ultimate and unavoidable victory. The sort of laugh that could, if you were stood in the right place (on a rocky outcrop, say) cause lightning to flash behind you.
Since she was inside this did not happen, but the laughter was still booming and impressive (obviously).
“They’ll rue the day they ever stood against me! Rue it! And they’ll especially rue having somehow succeeded in standing against me! They’ll curse whatever good luck allowed them to beat me! Whatever twist of fortune caused me to lose! Oh, I’ll see to that! They’ll see! They’ll see and they’ll rue!” Chrysalis said once she felt she’d laughed enough, circling the hall and the mysterious magical object as she spoke, head held high and hoof occasionally raised before her in triumph.
Her circuit of the hall then brought her to a particular spot and her hooves bumped some particular rubble, and on looking down her eyes found something in that particular spot. A bloodstain. A small bloodstain agreeably, but a bloodstain all the same, and one that brought a fresh and unhappy memory into sharp relief for her.
“Oh Richard!” She cried, flinging herself down atop the bloodstain. “Why did you have to stand there? Why did you have to let yourself get hurt like that? You poor, stupid idiot, why? How could you do that to me? What if you’d left me?!” She wailed.
In her mind she was picturing over and again that memory of how that chunk of roof had hit him in the head, and that moment when she’d turned to see him laid out and bleeding. Every time she ran through it again - ran through those few seconds - she felt the same horrific lurch down deep in one of those places she wasn’t sure about. Over and over again the same lurch.
She’d hated seeing him hurt, hated it. In a way she’d never hated anything else. It was a different, novel type of hate, one which, at the time, she hadn’t known how to handle and even now still had trouble with. It made more sense to her now, though she had no real idea how or why.
Normally, she hated things because they were obstacles to be destroyed. That made sense. Things stood between her and what she deserved (which was basically whatever she wanted at the time) and because they were standing between her and whatever she deserved she hated them and wanted them gone. That made sense. That was simple.
That time though, when he’d been there on the floor, she’d hated it because she’d been about to lose something. Not for the first time, no, not really, but still. She’d looked and seen him and felt the looming sense that something important might have been about to be taken away from her. Because of something she’d done.
And for that tiniest, tiniest of moments she’d been absolutely terrified. Frozen solid with dread.
Because Richard might have gone from her life, and that idea was horrible. Because he wasn’t a thing she could put back together again or replaced or an item she could take from someone else or anything like that. He was unique and he was hers and if he left that was it.
And that mattered!
And now she’d realised this, she couldn’t ignore it!
The more she tried to force it down the harder it kept bobbing up, like trying to force a bucket underwater the wrong way up. She could almost feel it physically welling up inside her, she didn’t know what to do, and when she stopped trying to force it down - mostly out of sheer emotional exhaustion - the feeling flooded out to fill her.
He mattered to her!
To her mingled horror and delight the idea actually made her feel surprisingly good inside. Warm. Fluffy. He mattered to her! He was somewhere out there right now, hers, and mattering to her. And probably thinking of her, too.
She smiled to herself dumbly, lost for a moment, but then remembered how he was all on his own right now, surrounded by her enemies. And that was because of her!
And she’d yelled at him! Maybe lightly brushed him up against a wall once or twice! Thought he’d somehow been in cahoots with her enemies! How could she have thought that, that was impossible. He’d never do that to her, never. Not ever. She knew that. How could she have suspected him! He was blameless! Devoted! Loyal! Far too stupid!
But mainly devoted and loyal. He’d stuck with her from the very moment they’d met, and she knew he always would no matter what.
That was why she l-
Why she lo-
Why she loved him!
Even though she hadn’t said it out loud Chrysalis still slammed her hooves over her mouth, her eyes wide with the fear that someone might somehow have heard that.
Obviously no-one had - no-one could have, she was entirely alone - but that the thought had slipped out quite so easily was still frightening indeed to her. Worse, it hadn’t felt wrong. It had slipped out and slotted into place quite naturally, quite comfortably. Now it was just there, in her head, impossible to dig out, shining out to her.
No sense in trying to argue with herself.
And just like when she’d given up on trying to deny that he was important to her, giving up on denying that she loved him filled her with the most overwhelming sense of contentment. Normally she’d have hated it, loathed it, but now she realised it was normal, it was fine, it was good!
She did love him! She did!
It wasn’t something he’d done to her, either, like she’d thought and said at first, no. Or, rather, it wasn’t some trick he’d pulled on her, it had just happened! It had happened as a result of him just being him with her. Because that was what it did! It was so obvious to her now she had to laugh - though it came out as more of a giddy giggle than her booming laughs of before and had her pressing a hoof to her mouth again in embarrassment.
Again she felt deep, gnawing regret at how she’d yelled at him so, brushed him up against that wall like that, stormed off and left him - told him he was the worst thing to have happened to her!
That last part was especially painful to think about. How could she have said that to Richard? Her Richard? How could she have said something so obviously untrue, so hurtful? When she loved him, how could she have said that?
She must not have said it. She must have just imagined saying it.
Yes. That made sense. She’d imagined that part.
But the yelling definitely happened, and that was still bad. And so had the storming off and leaving him, which she was now definitely regretting. He should be here with her! In their lair! Helping her plot her - their - revenge!
She shouldn’t have been angry at him! Any mistakes he’d made had just been the result of his being stupid, not out of malice! They’d been the result of being too dense to realise he was being manipulated by those foul ponies. It hadn’t been his fault at all, poor Richard. It had been their fault, all their fault.
She should have been - and was - angry at everyone else. After all, this latest episode wasn’t the only thing that was their fault. Their malfeasance reached back further, was the guiding, malign hoof behind everything bad that had happened of late.
Really, it was their fault Richard had been hurt in the first place. It was their fault Chrysalis had been pushed to such extremes as to start digging up mysterious magical artifacts, after all. If they’d just done what they’d all supposed to have done and lost in the first place then she wouldn’t have had to do what she’d done and Richard wouldn’t have had to stand there and he wouldn’t have been hurt.
It was their fault, their fault!
And now she was going to pay them back, oh yes. This had been one step too far. Foil her plans, destroy her hive, take away her minions, but going after the freakish, idiot alien she loved? Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! She was going to make them pay for what they’d done!
Extending her magical concentration towards the mysterious magical artifact she began feeling about it, sensing its hard and its soft spots, carefully thinking about how best to use its mysterious, vaguely-defined magical abilities to exact her revenge.
Nothing too spectacular - this just about making a statement as much as it was about vengeance, showing the world she was still who she was and that she was not to be taken lightly, as well as to make them rue, of course.
An explosion?
Yes, an explosion. An explosion would be good. A nice big one, a really big one. The kind that’d alter the local geography, make them have to update all the maps. She could do that. It would be the work of a moment, barely take any effort at all! The artifact would do most of the work for her anyway! That was it’s job.
She assumed. It was hard to tell, what with it being so mysterious.
Why not point that explosion towards Ponyville, while you’re at it? So spoke a tiny voice in her head, coiled at the back of her brain in some dark, forgotten corner.
This seemed like an excellent idea, a perfect blend of spiteful and gleefully destructive. A good concentration of her enemies lived in Ponyville, after all, and she had been forced to live there for a few horrible, horrible days and she’d hated every second of it (or at least every second not spent with Richard) - destroying it was both practical and poetical.
There were no downsides! None!
So why was it she again felt the tug of doubt? The little hitch that told her to reconsider? Was she missing something? Overlooked some key detail? What?
Don’t listen to the doubts! This was the little voice again piping up.
It was difficult though, the sense of doubt was pervasive. She was increasingly certain that there was something obvious she hadn’t considered.
They want you to doubt! Doubts are weaknesses your enemies will exploit! Moments of hesitation that leave you vulnerable! Your plan is perfect! You are perfect! Go! Go now! Do it now! Show them they haven’t changed you! Make them regret ever making you not win! Do it now!
The little voice had uncoiled from its forgotten corner and slithered right to the front of her thoughts, then, drowning out the doubts and anything else that might have slowed her down. And it was right. It was right!
As much as the new, fuzzy, fluffy, warm feelings were undeniably pleasant they had a time and a place, and that was not now and it was not here. Now was time for ruthlessness, for decisive action. Once she’d wiped Ponyville out of existence (or at least a good chunk of it) then she could push the voice back into that corner and focus on grappling with the fluffy fuzzy again.
Later, later.
For now, she poured her concentration and her magical energies into the mysterious object, getting it going in a vaguely-defined but clearly increasingly dangerous way. Ethereal wind blew, bits of it started to glow, tiny little arcs of lighting crackled and gradually started to get less tiny.
Yes. Yes this was perfect. This was exactly what she needed to do.
“This is for us, Richard! For us! For our life together! And for our revenge!”