//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three: My Heart is Flame. 
// Story: The Last Changeling War 
// by Coyote de La Mancha 
//------------------------------//

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…
Sunrise galloped through the palace, the foals running fast behind. Left. Right. Another right. Left. The doors out were no good, the palace was surrounded by changelings. All around them, she could hear the windows breaking. Desperate, she led her students deeper into Twilight’s home, looking for some safe haven. Maybe some secret dungeon she’d never known about. Maybe a secret passage would just open up as they approached.
And even as she searched and hoped and galloped on, she threw her thoughts as loudly as she could, over and over again:
Luna, honey, I need you, where are you...?
Up another set of stairs. She could hear the drones' wings buzzing louder as they homed in on her and her charges. Right turn, then a left. Then another.
The castle was magic, she told herself. According to Twilight, one day it had just grown there. Plus, she'd shared an oath of hospitality with its mistress. Maybe that would make a difference.
Sweetheart, come on, please, please don't be hurt or caught somewhere, answer me, please...!
Maybe the castle had a secret way out. Maybe it would grow a new room for them to hide in. Maybe it would show them the way.  
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
She careened around the corner and saw its dead end, maybe twenty feet off. No doors. No windows. No way out.  
Trapped.  
Behind her, she could hear the schoolfoals approaching. Any second, they’d see the dead end she’d led them into. Then, they wouldn’t just die. They’d die afraid.  
No, she realized, probably they’d be captured. Changelings fed on emotions, and the foals would be a rich supply. Images flooded her mind. The foals, encased in nightmarish cocoons of slime and carapace. Entombed in an eternal living death, the Changelings' fangs forever sunk into their hearts.
Either way, dead or caged, she’d failed them.  
Again. As always.
Then, her eyes narrowed, her face constricted into a scowl.  
No.
“Um, Miss Shimmer?” Pipsqueak asked. “Where do we go from here?”
The other foals rounded the corner and bunched up together as they screeched to a halt, wide-eyed and dismayed.
But Sunrise whirled on them. “Go to the end of the hall,” she snapped. “Stay together. Keep your eyes shut. Your ears covered.”
Silver Spoon stared at her. “But—”
“Move!”
They moved.  
For her part, Sunrise faced away from them, backing slowly towards them from the corner of the hall. There was a strange calm overtaking her now, even as she reached deep within herself. She had one thing left. Something locked away, deliberately forgotten. Yet somehow, she knew, now was the time.
“Sunrise?”
It was Diamond Tiara’s voice. No doubt her fellow CMCs were with her.  
Sunrise didn’t look. She just shook her head, tears beginning to form.  
“Go with the others,” she said through gritted teeth. Her throat was getting tight, talking was difficult. “Keep your eyes shut. No matter what you hear, you keep them closed.”
Apple Bloom started, “But—”
“I mean it, baby,” Sunrise managed. “Get back there and don’t look. I don’t want you to see this.”
Sunrise barely heard the four foals scamper back to the others. She swallowed, her thoughts returning to what she had only begin to intuit moments ago. Voices came back to her, the first an old teacher with old lessons.
Nevuh trust anyone but yo’self, Roundhouse had said years ago in his soft drawl. In yo’ dahkest moments, even yo’ shadow abandons you.
Sunrise had to admit that, in a sense, maybe he'd been right. He’d certainly done his own best to prove it all those years ago, when he’d vanished from her life without a word. But there was no way in hell her students were going to learn that lesson today.
And she was god-damned if they were ever going to learn it from her.
Almost simultaneously, Twilight’s melodic voice, lecturing and sad, Despair is one of the only two emotions that have no positive application in magic; the other being, of course, hatred.
Deep within Sunrise’s mind, something stirred.
You’re wrong, she thought. I’m sorry, Twilight, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.
Because I am venomous, despite what we’d both hoped, she realized. I am the viper, the scorpion. Look around me. Look at my life. Look at what’s happening now. No matter what I touch, it crumbles. It dies, or else it just gets too tainted to survive.
It’s my nature, she thought.  
Her heart ached, tears striking the floor between her hooves as she hung her head down. She thought of Luna, of Twilight, looking at her with nothing but hurt and disappointment.
I can’t fight it anymore. I’m sorry, my dears. But I just can’t keep lying. Not to you, not to myself. My touch is toxic. No matter what I do, it’s my nature to destroy.
She swallowed.
And… I... accept that. It’s what I am, and... I accept it. I do.
Then, her eyes narrowed, and she raised her head once more.
But I will choose who I destroy with my poison!
Hidden within the shadows of her psyche, countless boxes of almost-forgotten memories and their accompanying emotions waited in silent formation, as they had for most of her life. Sunrise had learned long ago, even as a small child, to suppress her darker feelings. To hide them away, to bury them.
Now, slowly at first but with rising speed, those boxes began to open.  
Some were ancient, silently leaking blood into the darkness around them as they had been for years. Others were more recent, more intact and pristine. But one by one they opened, dissolving as they did, spilling out a lifetime’s worth of secrets that Sunrise had desperately tried to keep from herself. They released their pain, their anger, their resentment. Their rage. And, above all, they released at last their long-confined hate.
Every time, as a child, she’d been shamed.  
Every time, as a little girl, they’d taken her art away or destroyed it.
Every time they’d burned her books.
Every time she’d been beaten.
Every time she’d been touched.
And above all, every time, every time, that someone younger or smaller than her had been hurt, and she’d been powerless to prevent it.
Her eyes were closed now, screwed tightly shut. Tears flowing freely as her breathing became more rapid. She didn’t hear the light crystals in the sconces around her overloading and shattering in rapid succession. She didn’t see darkness engulf the hallway. She only saw within, a dreadful, rapturous fire, a flame of blood-drenched gold and black that would rise to burn all before her. 
And it was… beautiful.
A terrible mantra began to form, one different from any that she’d ever read or that Twilight had ever taught her. Her heart gave birth to it, her mind nursed and nurtured it, even as blood and fire roared throughout her mind like a tsunami, consuming her even as it was consumed by her.
Unbidden, her mouth formed a coarse whisper.
“I… hate… you…”





One changeling looked at another, eyes wide. “Hey, you feel that?”
His companion nodded. “Yeah, this way!”





Outside the palace, Chrysalis watched and waited. She doubted even she would have been powerful enough to stop a sending from Princess Luna herself, but blocking the unicorn's frantic thought projection was pupa's play. And, of course, her current disguise would allow her to easily intercept any last-minute meddlers in the physical realm.  
But now she frowned, ears twitching, glancing back at the castle.  
Something had shifted. What was going on in there?  
She caught an old scent, mostly forgotten, growing within the youngest alicorn’s home. She wracked her mind, trying to remember. Even as, careful to maintain the wards and barriers she had placed upon it, she strained her senses into the Castle of Friendship.





Apple Bloom glanced up at the sound of rapidly shattering crystal. For a moment, everything was plunged into darkness. Then, the sconces’ light was slowly replaced by another. Something was forming itself around Sunrise, something bleeding out from her, shaping itself from shadow and flame. Sensing the foal's gaze, the apparition turned its as-yet eyeless face towards her.
Apple Bloom ducked down again, covering her face. “Don’ look,” she whimpered. “Don’ nopony look…”
Meanwhile, Sunrise began to rise into the air as her energies continued to grow, the thing she was birthing continuing to form as she lost herself more and more in the moment, in the fire, in the wild, burning power she had kept locked away for so long.  
The hatred was so fierce, it was actually joyous.  
They were coming, these hunters of children.  
And she would burn them.  
She would burn them all.
All of them, everywhere.
Sunrise Shimmer would burn the world.
Her whisper filled the hallway, unheeding of the fearful sounds behind her. It echoed its way through the Palace of Friendship as her magic burned its way through her veins and flesh.
“I hate… you…”





Throughout the palace, Changelings were swarming towards a hallway on the center floor, near the east. They could feel the emotional force emanating like a beacon. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t fear. It was something they hadn’t fed on before, and their excitement at such an overwhelmingly powerful feast was almost uncontrollable.
**Targets acquired!** they sent to their queen. **Visual contact any moment!**
Chrysalis’ eyes snapped open. It had been a long time. Too long. She had almost forgotten. But she recognized that scent now, all too well. Recognized it from the core of her own misshapen heart. And, tinged with magic as that emotion was…
**Abort!** she sent frantically.
**But we almost have them!**
**No! Stop! Do not pursue that mare!**
The drones rounded the corner, and stopped in mid-flight, astonished. 
It roared and bellowed and stomped before them, a massive, armless, two-legged thing of crimson fire, of shadow and blood. The creature’s face took up most of its squat body: tusked and fanged, fiery eyes all but blind with the burning need to destroy. Within it, about where its heart or brain should have been, glowed what looked like the golden outline of a mare, curled into a fetal position.
The lead changeling blinked. “What in every hell…?”
As the demonic form focused itself on them, the eyes of the mare within opened, to stare at them with identical fury. When she opened her mouth, the beast thundered with an unholy wrath, waking ponies throughout the town even as her prey turned to flee.
“I!”
**Get out of there!**
“HATE!”
**Fly! Everybug, fly!**
“YOU!!”
And then, the fire burst forth with the fury of a wrathful sun, devouring all before it.





Mayor Mare was on her hooves almost before she was awake. Whatever had happened to jar her awake so, she knew it would require every pony available to deal with it. Then, even as she reached her door, the explosion rocked her almost off her hooves. It was followed almost immediately by a sound like a meteor shower, with several projectiles smashing into her home's walls and rooftop.
By the time her eyes had started truly focusing, she was outside. Other ponies were pouring out of their own residences, all running the same direction she was, all exchanging identical looks as they ran. Earth ponies and unicorns galloped, pegasi flew. Police, fireponies, emergency volunteers. She didn’t need to look skyward to know that more reinforcements would be coming from Cloudsdale.
The crowd was gathering around Princess Twilight’s Castle. Or, at least, what was left of it. All around town, cracked and shattered fragments of blue and violet crystal littered the ground and rooftops like a broken set of blocks. More than a quarter of the palace was gone, the entire east half of the upper floors. The cavernous hole that remained of them billowed black smoke into the nighttime sky.
Mercifully, it looked as though injuries from the rain of mystical stone were minimal. The crowd parted as the Mayor ran through, allowing her to reach the princess easily.
“Princess Twilight!” she gasped. “Thank goodness you’re alright! What--?”
“There’s no time for that,” the Princess snapped. “Just listen. The Changelings have invaded again. They impersonated me and I don’t know who else. Queen Chrysalis is here somewhere, maybe in this very crowd!”
As the assembling ponies murmured uncomfortably, she went on, “Assemble your forces as you normally would, but with one exception: nopony is to ever be alone, ever! Stay in groups of at least three.”
Cheerilee stepped forward. “But, Princess, what about Sunrise? And the foals? Are they… oh,”  
She stepped back as Twilight closed her eyes in pain.  
“Oh,” the teacher whispered. “Oh, no.”
“The Changelings murdered them,” Twilight managed through her tears. “It’s my fault, I should have been there, but she surprised me—” she choked slightly, then shook herself.  
“No, there’s no time for that now,” she managed. She took a shaking breath, and then addressed the grief-stricken ponies around her, saying, “We have to protect the living first. I’m going to the Princesses to explain what’s happened. Meantime, send the word, and prepare your people. As of right now, Equestria is at war.”
As she flew into the nighttime sky, the dismayed ponies below her began planning and breaking into teams, even as more and more arrived to be told the harrowing news.  





Celestia bolted awake. The tremor had been a massive one; the chandelier above her was swaying slightly.
After an instant’s pause, she sent her thoughts out to her sister. 
Luna?
Luna caught the thought, forging a connection instantly. **I am here. What has happened? Many of the dreamers have suddenly awakened in Canterlot, most all in Ponyville.**
Celestia went out to the balcony, looked out over the expanse below the palace. The thoughts she projected were as close to panic as Luna had ever witnessed.
There was an explosion in Ponyville. Twilight’s castle-- oh, Luna, I can see the smoke from here--!
**Go.**  
But, Sunrise--!
Luna was by this time already in flight down the wide halls of their palatial home, her dream duties for the nonce abandoned.  
**I would know if she were dead,** she sent. **See to your heart’s daughter and her son. I will control things while you are gone.**
The thought rose involuntarily, But, if Twilight and Spike were there--!
**Then have pity upon their slayers. I shall have none.**
Celestia projected no more to her. Spreading her wings, she took flight: a pale rainbow blur that vanished from all but the fastest eyes.  
Luna, for her part, was already barking orders to the military around her, preparing the palace for both refugees and for siege.  
After a few minutes, a young stallion in armor ran up to her. Luna scarcely spared him a glance.  
“Speak.”
“Your Highness, I’ve just heard we have intruders. Other guards are investigating.”
“Intruders? Strange, I sensed no…” she frowned, then stared in shock.  
The guard stepped forward, unsure. “Highness?”
Princess Luna wheeled on him. “Bring me to them immediately!”
The young guard gave a quick bow, then galloped as fast as he could, the Princess of Night flying above him.





Darkness.
Then, a small glow of blue light.
Then, another of pink. And one of green.
The foals were grouped unevenly around the mare who lay on the marble tiles, grey smoke curling gently from her coat. Some of the children were staring around themselves frantically, others were crying from sheer terror.  
Some, however, had kept their wits about them, and were doing the best they could. A few of these looked down at Sunrise’s body, dimly illuminated by the pale light of the unicorns among them.
“Is she…” Diamond Tiara swallowed. “…dead?”
Silver Spoon touched Sunrise’s throat, then jerked her hoof back, looking at her fellows in dismay. “She’s… cold,” she whispered.
Meanwhile, Snips and Snails had blinked, looking at the walls around them anew as their own horns lit up.  
“Waitaminute,” Snips said. “Doesn’t this place look familiar?”
“Yeah,” Snails frowned. “We were here for a field trip, weren’t we?”
Pipsqueak started, then nodded frantically. “This is the palace! We’re in the Royal Palace of Canterlot!”  
At his fellows’ blank look, he explained, “Don’t you get it? There’ll be guards! We can get help!”
At this, about half the class scattered, calling for help in frantic voices. The response was almost immediate, helmet-mounted lights flashing in the darkness as palace guards galloped to the sound of their cries.
Meanwhile, Apple Bloom was examining Sunrise where she lay. “Uh, guys? Kin a pony get a cutie mark post-humerously?”
“Posthumously,” Sweetie Belle corrected automatically. “And no, I don’t think so.”
“Then she’s alive,” Scootaloo said. “Come look.”
The rest of the class gathered round, even as the sounds of hooves surrounded them. But even before the sentry lights of their rescuers illuminated the area, the mark on their friend’s flank was evident in the many-colored light of their horns.  
It was a shield. Black as a moonless, starless night.
Emblazoned upon that shield was a sunburst of purest gold.