//------------------------------// // CH: 13/13 - Wistful // Story: They're EVERYWHERE! // by Nameless Narrator //------------------------------// “If there is someone I would ever ask for forgiveness it would be my own daughter, not you, you spineless-” The hive mind freezes, taking Wistful and Chrysalis away mid-word. *** To Chrysalis’ surprise, while she doesn’t know the richly decorated room she lands in, it is beyond familiar. The white walls, the high ceiling, the round table in its center with various ponies of the main three tribes sitting at it. If one switched the torches and candles for electric and magical lamps, Chrysalis could swear she ended up in modern day Canterlot castle. If she still had full access to the castle plans stored inside the hive mind and a chance to look out of the window, she could likely figure out which exact room she’s in. Everyone is frozen in time. “This was the only thing I could do to buy us some time,” she hears Wistful’s real voice behind her, “I won’t be able to hide us in this memory for long, though, and then we’ll both return and…” “I can’t defeat her,” admits Chrysalis, turning around, “I thought that I could overpower her with the knowledge of the other queens, but I can’t even touch her.” “That’s the flutterpony mind at work. If we were still a species, we would be the worst enemy of changeling mental abilities.” “If the flutterponies were this powerful, why even bother turning you into… us?” “You misunderstood me. We could only soothe, listen, protect ourselves, and analyze. We couldn’t attack, break somepony down, or manipulate them. All those avenues opened for us with the fate-changing dark magic,” Wistful walks over to the central table with a large map rolled out on it. It’s exactly like when she lived through the memory of the griffon war council. Chrysalis pushes between a unicorn wearing heavy armor and a pegasus in a much lighter one made of leather. Romane, probably? Her personal memory is a bit rusty. Relying so much on the collective hive mind can be both a blessing and a curse. With Wistful leaning over the map across the table from her, she examines the pony and griffon miniatures made from wood or crystals. “This was my first visit to Canterlot as a citizen of Equestria, although I’ve met with Celestia and her ambassadors several times before,” Wistful sighs, tapping his hoof on the map - a small dot on the coast covered in griffon figurines, “Griffon beachhead which they managed to establish after weeks of brutal fighting. With the standard scrying spells suddenly failing, ponies weren’t prepared for such a quick strike at all.” Chrysalis adds what little she’s learned so far. “Scream gave the griffons the knowledge of istrium. The same substance my throne is made of, although my throne negates all magic, not just long-distance scrying and communication. From other memories I saw, unicorns were perfectly able to use offensive magic in battle. I wonder why.” Wistful shrugs. “I don’t know anything about that. I was just a chieftain of a small tribe that ponies which Equestrians discovered while looking for faster and safer supply routes to the front lines through the Everfree. In my time, the Everfree forest spanned the majority of eastern Equestria, as dangerous as today or maybe even more, but we were safe from the creatures living there thanks to our psychic abilities. At first, we only helped ponies pass through the forest, hoping that the war would be over quickly, but then unicorns started studying us and learned some features of our mental links.” “I get that you were roped into a war thanks to it, but there must be a big string of god awful decisions between protecting supply caravans from wildlife and being irrevocably turned into an entirely different species of hive-structured murder monsters. Holes, even our breeding cycle is completely different from normal ponies.” “The transformation spell was supposed to be reversible…” mutters Wistful. “What? I mean, that actually makes sense, but the memories I saw all felt as if it was final.” “Starswirl, a powerful unicorn and Celestia’s personal friend, designed the spell and tested it on me first to see if we were compatible or if it wouldn’t fail in some terrible way. I was already a changeling for days before I gathered everypony- almost everypony, but I couldn’t let them know the drawbacks. Well, it’s not as if I knew many of those myself at the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to deliberate. The griffons launched a large-scale offensive which the ponies only temporarily halted by a tactical spell strike which reduced a part of their army into radioactive ash along with a massive stretch of land.” “That’s how the Badlands were created, right?” Wistful shakes his head. “That was only the first strike out of three, each closer and closer to our home as the griffons kept progressing in smaller units and regrouping whenever ponies tried to stop them again. But yes, eventually the whole area earned its name, because nothing would be able to adapt to living there for centuries. Almost nothing, as you know. To avoid turning more of Equestria into a scorched hellscape, I agreed to the transformation. Say what you will, but after the tide of war turned thanks to us and unicorns gained the forward positions from which they could nuke the Empire, I knew I was right.” “They started it…” grumbles Chrysalis, “Scream or not.” “To this day -well, to the days of the Great Changeling Empire which was the last time we were getting information from the griffon lands- there were massive stretches of silver deserts. Dozens of ‘Badlands’ that ponies created by wiping out major cities, all still uninhabitable nearly a millennium later. That’s what Equestria would have been if it weren’t for us - a crater of ash and dust filled with pony skeletons.” “My plan was to go through the full memories of all queens to figure out what was true and what they only believed, and you’d be no different-” Chrysalis freezes, “Fuck… is that the price? All our history and knowledge?” “What?” Wistful tilts his head. “I think I understand what I must do to stop Shroud. I might not be able to affect her, but…” she sighs, “Tell me, what happened with the reversible spell then?” “It didn’t work, simple as that. Starswirl tried it on my friend and bodyguard Twinkleshine several days later,” a memory of Wistful and presumably Twinkleshine, fairly similar to the mass transformation in the flutterpony village that Shroud had her live through earlier, flashes through Chrysalis’ mind, “He volunteered so that nothing bad would happen to me so shortly after the original transformation. Starswirl said it had something to do with changing pony cutie marks, but we didn’t have those anymore so the spell needed altering. When I spread the transformation to others, I knew there wasn’t a way back, but I wasn’t reaching too far by hoping there soon would be.” “Even I know the name Starswirl the Bearded,” replies Chrysalis, “I saw him in memories of queens who came later. What happened that prevented him from creating a counterspell?” “After the war, it stopped being a priority. Starswirl was sent to the northern mountains where ponies discovered istrium in order to research it so that a war like that couldn’t happen again. It wasn’t a big deal because everypony knew about us and what we did, so even if we looked scary we were the same ponies. We were saviors and heroes.” “Still waiting for the bad news…” “Starswirl didn’t return during my lifetime, and no other unicorn was able to figure out how the original transformation spell worked. A pony generation passed, and our heroism was forgotten. Court politics was the main cause, as some nobles wanted to rule Equestria instead of Celestia and started portraying us as her tools for killing political opponents, or worse. As time passed, more and more ponies grew to believe that we were just monsters, and transforming into ponies wasn’t particularly helpful due to how love usually weakens over time, especially with the side effects of our feeding. You know the rest, you know why all the other queens failed at farming ponies for love, and you know how this story ends.” “Hmmm,” is Chrysalis’ only reaction, “Makes me wonder why the flutterponies were the ones singled out for transformation.” “I don’t know.” “And that is a lie,” she glares at him. “Does it matter?” Wistful look away, “We are what we are now. Well, you are what you are and I am what I am.” “Yes, a bigger difference than you or Shroud understand,” a devious smirk graces Chrysalis’ lips for a moment, “If you can’t make memories work properly,” she nods to the motionless gathering around them, “then I think you can bring us back.” *** “-coward!” Shroud finishes her statement. As if nothing just happened, Wistful only sighs, replying: “You don’t know how the war started, Misty. You don’t know how close the danger was when we joined Equestria.” “Oh shut it! You sold us all out to get to fuck Celestia,” Shroud rolls her eyes, “Which you did, so I hope that ass was worth it.” “Look, I can show you-” “I’m not here to hear your excuses.” With only a flick of her horn announcing a similar telekinetic blast that all but disintegrated high rank changelings during her fight against Haze, Wistful tumbles on the ground and starts coughing out blood. “...then… what do you… really want…?” Chrysalis groans, pushing herself into a sitting position as her voice gets steadier, “To kill Scream? You know you can’t do it. You lived through her schemes, and even I understood from what I saw in everyone’s memories, that the main reason she caused all the tragedy was to make Celestia suffer because killing her outright wouldn’t be enough, not because it would be impossible.” “She should have done that herself if she’s that powerful!” retorts Shroud, eyes burning with now too familiar rage. “You don’t even understand… basic infiltration and manipulation. That’s what separates us,” Chrysalis makes the effort to stand up, “You think like a warrior, no matter what you believe. You were made to win a war through intelligence gathering and precise assassinations, but that’s still a thing a warrior can do. You’re not a changeling, Misty, you’re a transformed flutterpony, so you don’t understand what we are now. I can easily see what Scream wanted to do. I know how to torture a mind and make it turn against itself, and not having a clear enemy when everything is going wrong around you is so elementary it hurts. If Scream openly obliterated Celestia’s every project, then Sunbutt would only get stronger and more focused against a visible threat. And we? We were just the most convenient tool for the job. So think again - what do you really want? To wipe out or enslave ponies? Others tried and you know how that ends even if you win. Is it really to kill Scream? How? Alone? Or with a hive of starved wretches? She will eradicate all of you without even raising a hoof.” “First,” Shroud teleports over to Wistful, one foreleg raised over his head, “I want to finally see justice served for a genocide.” “Misty n-” *Crunch!* Shroud kicks her leg to get rid of the gore as she turns towards Chrysalis gritting her teeth. “Oh, did you want more knowledge?” she laughs, “More excuses about how he had to do what he did? More of our pre-transformation history?” Shroud shapeshifts her hoof into a set of claws with which she grabs Chrysalis’ chin, “All this time you were looking for me, so here I am.” “I want… freedom,” hisses Chrysalis, “No more queens sitting in the hive mind and draining the entire hive. No more you driving everyone crazy.” “Heh,” Shroud smirks, “You know what? I wholeheartedly agree. With the traitor gone from you, there’s no one else I can’t find. Not even the flutterponies still surviving right under your nose. Now I just have to find the core of the hive mind in case they survived and destroy whoever is their new host.” “And then?” Chrysalis’s horn flares up only for a fraction of a second before Shroud’s telekinesis slams her into the ground and the glow weakens into only the faintest shimmer. “Then, finally, we can rebuild an independent species. Scream can go fuck herself, Celestia can go fuck herself, the griffons will be reminded not to mess with us, and-” Shroud raises her foreleg to look at her slowly disintegrating hoof with a stare of pure horror. “-what?” the word leaves her mouth alongside a cloud of dust. “Everything you want to do,” Chrysalis spits out a wad of blood, “would work if we already had territory and any level of safety. And even in that case there were at least three different old queens who could do it way better.” With a growl, Shroud takes a step towards Chrysalis, and her foreleg breaks under her, making her collapse on the ground. “How are you doing this, weakling?!” “I can’t attack you directly, but you’re still inside my body, inside every cell that forms my connection to the hive mind, and I am a real changeling, unlike you,” Chrysalis looks down at Shroud with a scowl, “It sucks that our history must disappear in order to get rid of you. All the memories I gained from the other queens I wanted to fully examine later. All the changeling tricks I wanted to learn. All the power I could have gained from their knowledge. Everything, unfortunately, must go.” “You can’t do that,” Shroud snarls, “Stronger queens than you tried and failed. This is just another trick, and I will get through it!” “Yes, and unlike all of them I’m finally ready and able to sacrifice everything the hive mind offers. This time, you will truly be just a memory inside my brain, not a living entity hiding in our collective mind. After today, the known history of changelings will begin with me.” “You. Physically. Can’t. Do. That,” Shroud grits her teeth which crumble in her mouth. “No, you can’t do that. With all this, you made me understand why you never simply escaped into a powerful changeling after overwriting their mind when you could have touched and influenced so many over your lifetime,” Chrysalis looks down at Shroud, “You never truly accepted what your father did to you, Misty. You never wanted to become what changelings ‘degenerated’ into over the centuries,” Chrysalis spits on her, “Unlike you, I understand what we are, and I can control my body on a level you never bothered to learn. And trust me when I say - we didn’t degenerate, we became more than you could have ever imagined.” Chrysalis’ horn flares up again and the queen screams in agony as the final stage of the burning process targeting nerves all over her body including her brain starts. No shared knowledge will remain, for some time, only direct hive links. Next time doing something like this, shut off the pain center beforehoof.  Retain only the part of the brain that controls shapeshifting and the parts with your own memories. And now start searching, cell after cell. She’ll grow weaker with every correct nerve severed. You’re completely isolated from other changelings, so you have the time. Do I have the love, though? We’ll see. How much time passes in relation to the real world? No one knows. No matter what Shroud tries, she can’t move. What’s worse, she can feel her own memories trickling away.  Infinity passes.  Eventually, Chrysalis stops screaming, chuckles through her bleeding throat when her hazy vision stabilizes, and looks at… “I had a feeling that this would be the memory you’d hold on to until the end,” to her own surprise, the queen smiles at the young flutterpony in front of her, “I guess Wistful got what he deserved from a foal soldier he created.” Before vanishing completely, Misty looks Chrysalis in the eyes, and a forced vision crosses the queen’s mind - thousands of Silents and drones slamming against the protective shield surrounding Canterlot followed by their broken bodies sliding down and piling under the mountain, all while the queen, the warriors, and the infiltrators watch the cracks inside the barrier spread. “Hrmph!” huffs Chrysalis and wakes up. *** Withered to the point of looking like a skeleton with black rubber bodysuit draped over it, broken, and completely alone, Chrysalis opens her eyes inside the pitch darkness of her cocoon. “Anyone?” she mentally calls out, not really expecting an answer. After all, the cocoon surrounding her was made specifically for this situation. She tries to bang on it but barely manages to move her foreleg enough to scrape it against the green surface.  “...your queen is back…” she croaks in a barely audible whisper. She made a mistake. Living inside her illusion of absolute power for so long, she never imagined the option of losing it. “...damn it…” She specifically reinforced the cocoon against it, but she might be able to absorb the love she used to make it. Eventually. If she doesn’t die from the effort. “...heh… makes sense… that the only queen… badass enough… to stop me… would be… me…” Sudden burst of light blinds her. Dryly blinking away the shock because she can’t even produce tears, her mind gets flooded by information. > 18 drones died of their wounds. > 21 warriors lost to natural hazards while protecting infiltrators on their way to gather love. > 4 infiltrators never returned from assignments. > Remaining changelings: 186 > Elapsed time… She was stuck inside the cocoon for weeks, living lifetimes’ worth of changeling experience and reconstructing her own body. Everything other than her own memories is gone, forgotten forever.  Normally, the death toll would be within hive standards, but this is now the entirety of the hive. Her hive. A small hoof clearly belonging to a drone which pierced the cocoon moves down to cut it open completely, revealing a warrior holding the drone up and using it like a knife. She stumbles out of the cocoon, immediately getting caught by 68 as 96 lowers the drone staring at her with eyes wide open. Reaching out to the drone, which winces and lowers its head, she gives it a weak pat on the head. “...good job…” Talking hurts. The following throbbing headache as she tries to speak up mentally isn’t much better but it’s still a step up. “Let’s salvage what we still can.”