Pronotum climbed around her hive by using the sangria-colored mucus lining the walls. The massive stalactites held new eggs and the captured ponies meant to feed their hosts when they hatched. While her mind was more laced to the status of her hive, such as new infants, food supplies, and watching for predators like a throos; she had other concerns.
The queen jumped down next to a changeling currently feeding on a pink, luminescent ball of crystallized love after a scouting mission around the mountains. "You. Scout," Pronotum called out. The changeling shoved the orb under its left foreleg and stood to attention. "How have the rocky lands above been?" She paced around the changeling, staring it down with a vicious glare. “Any signs of abnormalities? Parties of ponies or other creatures? Dragons?”
The bug nodded. "In the 74 days since that mare was captured, there have been a number of other ponies trying to look for our brood."
"How many?"
"Twenty-three discovered so far. Three were in groups."
Pronotum fiddled with her mandibles. "Did you capture the couples?" The changeling nodded, and the queen gave a brief smirk. "Good. What about Chrysalis? Has she been found yet? I would have word with her, still."
The changeling grinned. "The hunters sent message that they found her five days ago." The changeling mumbled to itself while it calculated their estimated time of arrival. "They should be here in about an hour, though they told me to warn you that she is quite aggressive."
Pronotum nodded. "Good. At least in that department she still demonstrates the quality of a queen. What about those searching for other broods?"
"They're looking for them, but we have not heard news of any other hives, my queen."
The queen remained silent for a moment "You may resume eating, scout."
"Thank you, my queen," the changeling said. He sat back dawn and started gnawing on the orb like a dog would a bone.
Pronotum lied down next to the changeling and started meditating. She was sensing every possible disturbance she could find along the mountain side closest to the hive. After several hours of impatient waiting, a loud noise echoed through the wide spaces of the blue-purple hive. Chrysalis landed with a thud from the ceiling tunnels onto her weakened hooves.
The blue-purple queen watched Chrysalis' wobbly legs struggle to keep her standing. The changelings that carried her in followed out of the tunnels and hissed at the fallen queen. She saw Pronotum looking at her from 'above' with disdain, her disgust leaking washing over her.
"What do you want?" Chrysalis wheezed.
The opposing queen snorted at her. "Such a sorry display." Chrysalis hissed at her. "Disheveled and thin beyond comprehension for a queen of changelings, even for one putting the well-being of her own hive above her own."
She grabbed the half-eaten orb from her scout and threw it at Chrysalis who eagerly started to gnaw on it. When the scout whined, she told him to go get another, something Chrysalis wasn't too fond of.
"You're letting the drone take MORE love?"
Pronotum stared at her former equivalent. "Yes," she stated blandly. "We have a large surplus of excess love, so drones that distinguish themselves acquire an extra orb of condensed loved if needed." She snorted and looked down at Chrysalis from the corner of her eyes. “Besides, that was my scout’s meal, and he did his job excellently.”
The former queen stopped gnawing on the orb, but her lower jaw did not clamp up. "S-surplus? HOW?!" She jumped up and butted heads with her opponent. "My hive STARVED for YEARS before we could find any food!"
Pronotum pushed back. "So this is what your hive was? Blue-green? And you say you starved?" She scoffed then walked away, letting Chrysalis fall over. "The pieces are setting into place little by little." She grumbled angrily, scaring the drones around. "Hmmm. You still emit the essence of a queen, Chrysalis. You're starting to scare my changelings as much as I do."
"Well, they SHOULD be scared! I'm still a queen!"
"A former queen," she emphasized harshly. "You lost your brood, your home, and your validity." She stood tall in front of the fallen Chrysalis. "You never thought about the well-being of your own hive, and thus you never developed surplus food stocks. Did you even research your prey and their superstitions before setting into a developed city?"
Chrysalis closed her mouth and looked down.
"What? What is this? What are you hiding?"
"We lived in the badlands. It was the safest place."
Pronotum's eyes twitched. "I bet you even made your hive visible to everyone above surface.” When Chrysalis didn’t respond, the queen took on a more stoic tone. "...I see. I'm understanding more and more about your thought patterns, Chrysalis." She paced around the queen and analyzed her disheveled, boney state. "You tried using intimidation tactics, but you didn't plan ahead. You would have been able to get away with that if you were a war-like race of changelings." She booped Chrysalis' muzzle. "But you aren't. You're just a pupa that thinks its status exempts itself from logic."
"Exempt from logic?! I almost had all of Canterlot! I almost owned it all!"
" 'Almost'," Pronotum emphasized with a smile.
"We were defeated by a fluke! By that accursed lavender unicorn. She--"
"Only worked through the flaws in your plans and planning." She wiped her muzzle "Ponies are crafty creatures. Let one loose and they'll find ways of undoing your work." She leaned in closer, letting her mandibles fumble about. "That's why we don't attack major metropolitan areas like that. In fact," She gestured to the stalactites behind her. "we use the rumors and legends of the locals to acquire our 'food'. The ponies come on their own, and if they vanish?" She shrugged. "They weren't supposed to come to this cursed place." Her emotionless face warped with the advent of an immediate, massive smile.
"So you only brought me here to berate me? I'm a joke to changelings everywhere, now?"
"Did you even know there were other hives?" Pronotum snapped. Chrysalis shook her head. "Now you know the answer. It's 'no'. Changeling hives will only contact each other when they find each other and need help, or if they're...outstanding, like the red hive." The other changelings quivered at the sound, and some sank into the mucus to not think of them.
"What was that?" Chrysalis asked. "Why are they so terrified of this 'red hive'."
"Nothing!" the other queen snapped. "The reason I brought you here was to figure out what to do with you now that the world knows changelings are real things and not just rumors that our drones have created over centuries of us living." She pointed at the queen accusingly. "It was your endeavor that exposed us all, and now ponies are trying to find my hive. I even had a few mention this 'King Thorax' and his brood," she noted dismissively. "Whatever that is."
"THORAX!" Chrysalis yelled. "I hate him! He took my hive from me! He destroyed everything, and then Starlight Glimmer." Chrysalis ground her teeth against each other. "She's the one that allowed it all to happen."
"An interesting tale, that you bring in ponies to your failure as a queen," a voice said.
The two queens turned to see that, further down the tunnel opening to the massive cave was another, incoming queen accompanied by Pronotum's changelings. She was vanilla yellow in her traits. The newcomer appeared to be smiling, but looking closer, Chrysalis noticed it was the shape of her lips accentuated by the fangs built into them. This new queen's mane dug into her neck, popping in and out of it to create an interwoven neck cover of golden hue. Her horn stood straight up, but was covered with hundreds of small bumps. Her back and tail were also strange to them; They appeared like a single, solid mass. The mass was ridged, with the elevations pointing away from the queen and towards her tail. Her tail was similar to the two other queens save for it being a third of the length.
"What is this? Another?" Chrysalis noted. She stood up and hissed at the opposing queen. "I don't need more of you insulting me.
The new queen lowered her brows angrily. With a mouth that only displayed smiles, she needed to accentuate her emotions with her eyes. She walked towards Chrysalis and started to hiss with her mouth closed. The two exchanged angered hisses until the new queen started to create a loud grinding noise from her mouth. Both Pronotum and the green-blue queen reeled their heads back in preparation of what was to come; The queen opened her mouth revealing seven rows of teeth in her throat spinning around and screaming as they ground against each other with each rotation. Chrysalis flew back in fear behind Pronotum.
The blue-purple queen laughed. "A fine display for a changeling queen!" The changeling drones around stared with a morbid curiosity at the new arrival.
"They're used to grind stone, so bone and chitin are not an issue" the new queen explained. She pointed to Chrysalis. "Is she the one responsible for exposing our kind?" she asked. Pronotum nodded. "Foalish...Stupid...!" She couldn't formulate proper words and jolted her head to the side because of an anger tic.
"Her name is 'Chrysalis' of the blue-green brood. Mine is Pronotum of the blue-purple brood. What is yours?" the blue-purple queen asked.
The pale-yellow queen relaxed her neck in a bid to stop her tic. "Clypeus. I am the queen of the pale-yellow brood." She opened her mouth and dug into it with her hoof, pulling out several shining shards of obsidian and iron. "We live in very rocky and crumbling terrain."
"I trust then that my changelings kept your flight her comfortable?" Pronotum wondered.
Clypeus made a single laugh. "My brood does not have wings. We dig through the grounds." She tapped her horn and swung her tail. "Hence my form."
"Adaptations. Understandable." Pronotum huffed. "I suppose my scouts told you about THIS one's actions," she pointed to Chrysalis.
"Yes," Clypeus growled. "This IDIOT exposed us!" She looked to Pronotum and slammed her chest with a hoof. "MY brood caught a few ponies looking for our brood as well. The terrain was PERFECT! Ponies had not set hoof in our lands because of how unstable and dangerous it is." She sported disbelief. "Do you know why they would actively search for us with the guise of wanting to be our 'friends'?" she wheezed. "Why did these ones want to 'reform' us? Teach us to 'share'? What even IS sharing?!"
"I heard from a pony I captured that it's because of a changeling from Chrysalis' brood that became a king. They--"
"King? Changelings don't have kings. They have QUEENS!" Clypeus emphasized with a bellow that echoed throughout the caves several times.
Pronotum resumed, ignoring the outburst. "They have been...promoting love and peace between changelings and other creatures." Pronotum stuck her tongue in mild distaste.
Clypeus however, was absolutely appalled. She was going over to Chrysalis, her eyes sparkling with explosive anger, but the blue-purple queen stopped her. "Why?!" she asked.
"She still seeks to regain control of her hive, but if she fails and-or if they refuse, then she is a fully fallen queen."
Chrysalis looked up towards the two queens. Perhaps it was the lighting, or perhaps it was the angle and the fact she was still gnawing on the orb, but their faces had taken sinister expressions, and their glowed intensely with color and hope of her failure.
"This isn't...I shouldn't have come...They want to kill me."
"Thinking of running away?" a raspy voice whispered in Chrysalis' ear.
The queen swung her horn to the left, attempting to skewer what startled her, but her horn met with a hard substance.
"An elder queen!" Clypeus gasped.
This other queen had a twisted face, almost like someone with a cartoonish fake smile pulling their face upwards. Her left foreleg was a gnarled, twisted pillar of chitin with shapes similar to snakes wrapping around each other. She possessed two horns on opposite sides of her head. They both pointed backwards and followed a delicate waving pattern twice. Although the horn on the right was riddled with holes whereas the one on the left was a solid mass. Her color was black, and the scelera of her eyes were a deep gray while her iris was white and pupils black. Her tail was split in two a few inches from its base, and her mane was almost nonexistent; having been gradually eroded down to a few bands of 'cloth'.
"What is an elder queen doing here?" Chrysalis asked. "Shouldn't your successor be here in your stead?"
The elder chuckled and chucked a changeling of Thorax at the hooves of the other two queens. "My successor is not yet ready for the tasks bestowed to her, so I still work outside the hive since I'm infertile now." She put a hoof to her neck and cracked it several times while stretching. "I even lost my colors. Magenta brood." She hummed to herself. "As for you, Chrysalis, my brood developed the ability to read minds." Her horns glowed magenta and exchanged creeping bolts of energy briefly. "Makes it easier to trick potential prey for food." She looked towards the other two queens. "I see someone has been calling as many broods as she can find."
"Not at all," Pronotum said. "I've simply been looking for others. And...What are you doing, Clypeus?"
Clypeus was poking the colorful changeling who flinched with every poke. "What is this disgusting thing? It looks like a changeling, and also not."
"That's one of Chrysalis' old brood." She pointed at Pronotum. "Some of your drones captured it, and I took it here since I was coming here anyways."
The three glared at the little changeling who trembled against the dripping wall, much to the disgust of the other drones around. He looked around in terror then spotted Chrysalis still lying down on the ground and gnawing on the orb. A great big smile grew on his face, and he hurried over to his former queen.
"Chrysalis! I'm so glad you're here! Please, help me! I want to bring you--"
The changeling was interrupted by Chrysalis swatting him away. He sat up and put a hoof to his cheek and stared at the queen the avoided his eyes. He looked betrayed.
"Don't touch me, traitor," Chrysalis said sternly.
"But, Queen Chrysalis..."
"DRONES!" Pronotum screamed. Seven came in from the abyss in the main cave and sat in front of her. "Bring this thing to an empty chamber. I want to know everything about this 'brood'."
They nodded and were about to grab him, but the elder queen blocked their path and put a hoof on the colorful changeling's chitin.
"A-a-a-a-an elder queen?!" the changeling stammered.
"I have easier ways of getting the information we n--"
She was, in turn, interrupted by Clypeus. "I'd rather they use the 'classic' methods." She grinned. "It's more fun," she cackled.
The elder queen shrugged and stepped away. "Fair enough." She turned back to Pronotum. "Say, your brood has been looking for other broods. I'm already surprise that there are more than the few I knew of that have since gone extinct, and even fewer that still exist. You..." she gave pause. "You haven't been actively looking for the RED ones, have you?"
The blue-purple queen shook her head. "No. Certainly not."
"Never," the pale-yellow queen added.
"Good. Good...Do we attack the fallen queen's hive and all those responsible for this betrayal?" she asked casually.
"And expose ALL of ourselves?" Clypeus raged.
The elder queen tapped her muzzle. "A battle is not always done through brute force."
Pronotum sighed. "I would also like to see this 'king' of changelings," she said.
"King?" The elder queen blinked several times in rapid succession. "Changelings don't have kings?"
"I just wanna SMASH him!" the pale-yellow queen screamed with a deafening boom created by her smashing her fore hooves together.
"Then let us plan and, perhaps, wait for more queens." Pronotum looked at the rays of light created by the massive fungus growing on the cave walls. "And we should try gathering information about pony society first seeing as they were responsible for all of this...insanity."