Chrysalis sighs.
Rotting in Manehattan for so long has been irritating beyond all reason. However, a huge city like that provides the best cover and plentiful opportunities for feeding, which her two warriors have been using on a daily basis. The problem, so far, has been time - the longer she lingers here, the lower the chance of her successfully recovering what little is left from the hive. Unfortunately, returning to the Badlands with the boiling fury in her mind beating against her mental defenses could, in the long term, be the final nail in the changeling coffin.
“Your Majesty,” asks 96, “May I ask something?”
She looks at him and nods.
“How long is this going to take? Don’t think of this as me questioning you, but they are somewhere out there. We left the Riverside survivors on their own… you’ve read the newspapers, right? We’re all over the place. Every day there is a fresh ‘Changelings found in X’ article… and they never end well.”
Her anger boils and lashes out.
“You will obey, and we will stay here for as long as it takes,” she snarls, “If we must start a new hive from scratch, we will!”
96 back off from the outburst.
“I understand,” he says.
Chrysalis would be a pretty bad infiltrator if she couldn’t detect the hint of disappointment in the warrior’s otherwise perfectly loyal voice which makes her regain control over her unruly brain.
“Look,” she says forcefully, “What you just heard wasn’t- was only partly myself. The rage, the complete disregard for anyone other than the queen, all that is a mess locked in the hive mind infecting us changelings. I must either eliminate it, contain or, or at least diminish it to some manageable level. Something happened during the invasion that made me finally see it clearly for the first time in my life and if I don’t use the opportunity then there won’t be any hive ever again. We will just keep attacking and hiding until we manage to anger everyone enough to go look for us together. Do you think dragons will care about the anti-magic field around the Badlands if ponies ask them for help and offer some of their extremely valuable artefacts?”
“My apologies, Your Majesty. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she frowns at him.
Truth be told, she’s more angry at herself than at him for not being able to resist the lingering insanity inside her head. However, as much as she wants to jump back in to tackle the next shade in line, she knows that an angry infiltrator is a bad infiltrator. As such, she takes a deep breath, looks at 96 again, and says:
“You’re a good warrior, 96, and your concern for your hive is admirable.”
The shock.
The shock in his face stings more than anything genuinely critical he could ever say.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Damn it.
Well, being sad is still preferable to being angry when diving into the depths of the mind. If nothing else, it serves as a grand reminder of what she’s fighting for. Granted, it’s far too many centuries too late, but better late than never.
The landscape of her hive mind isn’t the usual empty darkness, though. Instead, she finds herself amidst hordes of changelings running through a forest, the thundering of hooves and cracking of branches almost deafening her. There are no ranks, no formations, and through the cracks in the treeline she can see the brown, dead landscape ahead - the Badlands.
This isn’t an attack or a bait, it’s a barely organized retreat.
Hmmm, if grandma Whisper was the one who organized the hive after the return to the Badlands, this could be the final retreat.
Maybe-
Instincts honed by centuries of fighting and surviving assassination attempts immediately save her when, from the corner of her eye, she spots a changeling not fleeing in the same direction as the horde.
She spins in a pirouette, hooking the leg of the warrior charging at her with her foreleg and using the swing to lead its attack into an head-first crash with an infiltrator trying to take her from the other side.
A hive link above her makes her aware of the next incoming attack which she resolves by a simple blast of energy from her horn cutting the changeling’s head off mid-flight.
More and more break off of the fleeing army, swarming Chrysalis who recognizes this as the classic ‘throw insignificant changelings at the enemy to tire them out’ tactic.
“ENOUGH!” she yells, sparking a shockwave of green power from her horn knocking the changelings away and leaving only one standing.
One as tall as herself, watching her with a smirk. Infiltrator, certainly, yet possessing a manner of bulky carapace suited for someone used to war rather than cloak and dagger operations. Her bright, blue eyes contrast sharply with her black mane tied into a ponytail and, despite the difference between the ages of the two queens, she does look older than Chrysalis, or at least more worn.
To her surprise, the other queen doesn’t order a new wave of changelings to attack, instead simply waving her foreleg around to encompass the entire situation. As she does so, the noise of the army fades away and the entire picture goes blurry.
“Chrysalis, Chrysalis...” the queen shakes her head, “Does this look familiar?”
Oh yes. When the bastards betrayed me during the first invasion of Canterlot. When my changelings started getting massacred from behind by the loyalists of my ‘generals’. When Celestia saw it and ordered a counterattack by the forces she protected inside the castle itself. And finally, when we faced the fury of the alicorn of the Sun backed into the corner.
We made that huge mistake ourselves. We cocooned and gathered Canterlot citizens in one place so she didn’t have to restrain herself anymore in fear of killing them.
Chrysalis shudders and rubs a particular spot on her carapace. Of course, with enough love there are no actual lasting wounds for changelings, but the memory of the blistering heat as Celestia flew out of the castle in front of her guards…
Some lessons never disappear, only fade.
This isn’t that first defeat in Canterlot, though.
“Considering that with every queen’s shade I get rid of I uncover even more stupidity, I’m fairly certain that this is a sight most of us grew to know.”
“HAH!” the other queen laughs and the world disappears, leaving only the two of them in the darkness of the hive mind, “Correct. This, young one-”
“I am literally centuries older than any other queen in history...” Chrysalis rolls her eyes.
“Oh fine,” the queen waves her hoof dismissively, “Chrysalis, I am queen Hiss, and that memory,” she grins again as she resumes her previous sentence, “Was our escape into the Badlands, the breakdown of the changeling territory, and the reason why we never should have had warrior queens in the first place.”
“You’re an infiltrator,” comments Chrysalis dryly.
“Oh har har,” Hiss rolls her eyes, “Of course I’m not talking about myself. I saved all those idiots running like hunted animals. Too bad all I got from that was a slit throat by my daughter Whisper whom I assume you’ve met already.”
“I did,” Chrysalis nods, still on edge and ready to answer any sudden attack. The problem with these dives into her own mind so far has been her love reserves serving to fuel both her and her ‘opponent’, which of course meant splitting her power in half.
Despite her calm tone, it’s impossible to hide how tense she is from another infiltrator queen, though.
“Geez, you look as if you had too much coffee,” Hiss snickers, “I have no desire to return to the world, especially since I know the shape you left the hive in.”
“Then why did you attack me?”
“Moi?” Hiss touches her chest with an innocent look, “Surely a queen like you can’t consider a small group of mid-ranks an attack.”
“Fine, let’s stop with the games. Every moment here is costing me the energy I need to save what little of our future is left. How do I make you disappear? And don’t try to bullshit me, I can easily just ram my hoof through your eye socket and would have done so if I didn’t have some questions first.”
“Now now, let’s not go full warrior on each other, that’s beneath us. If you want to learn, I have something to show you and to teach you. I know that accessing the hive knowledge is difficult due to the blood-red cloud of rage hanging over everything but the least I can do is make my knowledge easier to sort through once I’m gone. We can get to what I want later.”
“Alright, I’m listening.”
“Funny, three words no queen would ever say to someone they would consider lesser.”
“You are lesser. I’ve lived longer, I did way more with less than any other queen, and I’m fairly confident that my top ten would rip a bloody swath through all the other queens combined just because of being tempered in a lack of love so severe that all of you would starve,” Chrysalis frowns, “You can’t offer me more power, but you can grant me knowledge without me having to waste energy to obtain it.”
Hiss scowls for a moment before saying:
“Fair enough.”
A lack of reaction to a monologue like that rings all the warning bells inside Chrysalis’ head.
“So, what did you want me to know and see?” she says despite her chitin crawling.
“The seeds of hatred and revenge Carapace and Bloodlust sowed,” Hiss’ horn flashes, and the darkness around them changes into what looks like a village.
Cocoons are hanging everywhere and amidst them… ponies. Ponies walking around, talking, and generally going about their lives. Chrysalis can sense the nervousness, unease, and shifty looks they occasionally give to the openly hanging cocoons but they are far from horror and despair which she’s always associated with ponies learning about changeling long-term feeding habits.
“I only lived a short time in this place,” Hiss looks around, “My mother will have to tell you more,” she shakes her head, “Hole, I lived a short while overall as you pointed out so eloquently. This was the grand experiment - ponies and changelings living together until a mass rebellion, clearly incited from the outside because the entire south of Equestria rose up as one, coupled with the united forces of the world straight up rolled over us.”
The clouds hanging above part and the skies darken with approaching shapes.
As changelings start gathering and looking upwards, ponies suddenly pull out anything sharp they can reach and begin to hack the cocoons with their friends open.
A pillar of fire bursts out in the distance as the first dragon descends on a changeling watchtower and incinerates it in a single breath. Changelings freeze only for a moment before the hive mind rings with orders from the east to the west.
Images of a massive zebra fleet on the horizon approaching the southern coastline. In the east, the griffon ships raise the Redtalon flag first and the flags of the other noble families of the, unlike ever before, united Griffon Empire. The griffons are already on the mainland, though. Strike forces of them, pegasi, and dragons, all covered by the cloud bank prepared earlier by the pegasi until it was time to strike.
Chrysalis’ jaw drops. Not even during the time of the Great Changeling Empire she and her mother built had the united forces of the world converged on the changelings. Granted, she was much more powerful and able to fight on more fronts instead of being locked down to one area easier to assault, but still…
“How…?” her jaw drops.
Seeing her wide-open eyes, Hiss laughs.
“That is the legacy of our warrior queens Carapace and Bloodlust, as I said. When you meet their shades, don’t bother talking to them, just stab them in any hole you can find until they die, will you?”
Slowly, Chrysalis nods. In front of her eyes, changeling ranks are being utterly obliterated, and she knows that through all southern Equestria, the situation is the same.
“Queens, queens, queens,” whispers Chrysalis, “Never tried a king, did you?”
“HAH!” Hiss laughs, “Who’s ever heard of a changeling king?”
“Indeed,” Chrysalis files that topic as closed which leaves her with only one more, “Anyway, there’s one more thing I want to know more about, and that’s Scream, the alicorn of Lust.”
With a flick of Hiss’ horn, the scenery changes again, and they both witness another version of Hiss standing on the roof of a massive black and green fortress, coordinating changelings in their efforts to fight off the united forces. With a deep “WHOMM!” a ballista nearby fires what’s basically a sharpened log, its tip laced with changeling acid, and takes down an approaching dragon in one shot.
This is the command center. Dozens of changelings specifically tasked as hive mind nodes are relaying a web of orders, something no queen could do on her own. Other changelings are working numerous ballistae or conjuring up magical barriers against the siege weapons used by the enemies.
Memory Hiss turns around as a blast of golden light in the center of the roof scatters the node changelings, crippling the changeling communications. A group of nine unicorns can be seen when the light fades, all wearing armors that even Chrysalis knows. White full-plate armors with golden ornaments and symbols of the sun - the paladins.
Changelings swarm the group but the strike force smites them down with ease.
With a scowl, memory Hiss grows blades on her forelegs along with conjuring a burning green blade out of thin air and joins the fray.
A somewhat jokingly small hammer surrounded by golden light breaks through her magical barrier and strikes her straight in the chest with the force of a meteor, sending the queen flying off of the roof and into the courtyard. As she stumbles back onto all fours, blood pouring from her mouth, two paladins appear in front of her, the one with the floating hammer and one seemingly unarmed, only wearing a solar talisman around his neck.
Whatever few changelings are able to help their queen immediately approach, but the unarmed paladin conjures up a magical dome around them, cutting memory Hiss off from any help.
To her surprise, the leading paladin takes off his helmet, revealing a scarred face of a brown pony with one eye missing. He is smaller than the queen, as common ponies compared to alicorns or queens are, but his telekinetic grasp wraps around Hiss’ neck and squeezes so hard her armored carapace starts crumpling like paper.
“Who-?” is all Hiss can croak.
“My name is Grandmaster Holy Storm, you pest. Yes, that is exactly what you are - not a monster but a mere annoyance. We paladins face true mind-shattering darkness on a daily basis. However, in subjecting common ponies we are sworn to protect to your brainwashing, you and your species have gone far beyond salvation, and I’m here to show you personally that light always triumphs over darkness in the end.”
Hiss’ horn flares with all the remaining power she can gather and-
*Crunch!*
-everything stops.
She howls in pain, throat finally allowed to get some air as Holy Storm tosses her on the ground like a discarded toy. As she twists on the ground, he picks up her horn broken off by his levitating hammer, and rams it through her neck, turning her screaming into gurgles.
“How did you get out of this?” Chrysalis turns her head in amazement to shade Hiss standing by her side.
“Ask a stupid question...” Hiss rolls her eyes.
The golden barrier suddenly turns pitch black and lets through what looks like a common infiltrator. The unarmed paladin conjures two burning blades which flicker a brief moment later and hiss out in a puff of smoke.
“My my, what do we have here?” says the infiltrator in a voice dripping with amusement and honey, and shakes her head, “Two fanatics ganging up on a girl. Let’s reverse the roles a bit, shall we?”
Faint shimmer surrounds the second paladin before he gets flung out of the opaque dome with no resistance, leaving only crippled Hiss, Holy Storm, and the infiltrator inside. The paladin grandmaster doesn’t wait for anything, lobbing his hammer straight at the new changeling who simply… catches it.
“A dwarven artefact...” she examines the runes all over it and sighs, “Whose tomb did you vultures rob this time? Such a waste,” the head of the strange hammer begins melting.
Holy Storm’s horn lights up as he tries to rip it out of the changeling’s grasp. The moment he does so, though, he screams. Fractures appear all over his horn, light flowing through them like liquid, and then - boom!
To his credit, he takes the loss of his horn way better than Hiss, remaining standing and simply gasping for breath while watching the infiltrator with hate-filled eyes.
“Now, let me quote one very silly unicorn,” the changeling’s form burn away in golden fire, transforming black chitin into a much taller, golden coated, platinum-maned alicorn mare whose telekinesis rises Holy Storm by his neck to her eye level before squeezing.
“Grghh...”
“My name is Scream, you pest. Yes, that’s exactly what you are - not some kind of a holy warrior but a mere annoyance, Celestia's braindead lapdog. Do you like it?” the alicorn growls, “And I will scramble your head -by all means, please, resist as hard as you can, it will only hurt more- and afterwards, I will send your braindead body out with a simple mission - to kill Celestia. Of course you are going to fail but she will see yet another of her closest and long-lived companions reduced to a shambling mound she herself will have to put down,” even Hiss shivers from the venom dripping from the alicorn’s words, “She took everything from me in one go, but I will peel her entire life away from her like an onion - layer by layer. Her family was easy, her sister was even easier, her friends? I made her fear for anyone she could even remotely get close to. Instead, she chose her ponies over personal relationships, but there are so many of them, too many to protect, and I will get them, break them… one by one. Over and over and over and over.”
“Don’t… you dare… touch… my princ-” a flash of golden light, and everything that made Holy Storm himself is gone.
Scream lets the drooling unicorn drop on the ground. With a flick of her horn, Hiss finds herself overflowing with lust energy, enough to completely restore her body.
“Are you… are you going to help?” asks the queen, rubbing her previously pierced neck.
“Not directly. I can’t risk anyone seeing me,” she jabs Hiss’ chest, taking care to hit the exact painful spot where Holy Storm’s hammer hit her, “As far as everyone knows, you did this,” she nods to the motionless paladin, “Leave him here, he’ll do his job. You must gather everyone you can and escape, there’s no way you can win an open war against everyone. Great job on that, by the way.”
“Not my fault.”
“I don’t particularly care,” says Scream, “Go to the place that ponies call the Badlands and hide there. The remaining magical radiation is dangerous to living creatures in the long term but you changelings should be able to adapt. We’ll clean the place up later but for now you need a hideout where no one will follow you.”
The memory fades into black.
“In retrospect, it was a stupid question,” is all Chrysalis says.
“Told you,” Hiss nods, “Anyway, I haven’t talked to Scream since, because shortly after we built the basic layers of the hive, my daughter made herself queen.”
“The usual way.”
“Indeed. Love does enter through the jugular,” Hiss laughs, “Anyway, I can feel you running dry thanks to the memories we went through, so I think I’ll take my leave.”
“One final thing, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes?”
“Other than myself and my mother, you and grand- Whisper didn’t seem like the source of the hive mind rage. Do you have any idea where all the hatred for ponies is coming from?”
“Well, I doubt it’s my mother. She was the one to change pony farming into somewhat forced coexistence. Possibly the warrior queens before her,” Hiss shrugs.
“I see,” Chrysalis nods, “Thank you.”
“Hey, two more words no other queen ever said,” Hiss laughs again and her body vanishes into the darkness, leaving behind the familiar fresh and calm feeling Chrysalis is growing more and more familiar with.
As she opens her eyes, she finds herself lying on the couch again.
She can barely raise her hoof due to exhaustion.
“96!” she croaks.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” the warrior who, in her current state, could easily end her if he wanted to trots over.
“Leave… me here… and go help… 68...”
“I can’t leave you unprotec-”
“...please...”
96 stops, bows, and says:
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
After the apartment door opens and closes, Chrysalis sighs.
“This... is only going... to get... worse, isn’t... it? The other… old hags… must be… seething...”