Mi Amore Cadenza was dead.
She had been dead for many years. The alicorn floated languidly, suspended in the changeling cocoon underneath the Crystal Heart. Her pink fur was stretched tight over her skeleton, looking nothing like she did in life. Her mane and tail had been cut away, along with several patches of fur along her legs and barrel.
The Changelings left her cutie mark of the Crystal Heart. Autopsy scars ran across her forelegs, her barrel, her withers, around her wing joints and across her neck. Her horn was chipped down and plugged into a wire that ran out the top of the cocoon to the Crystal Heart above. The Heart, suspended by chains driven into the ceiling of the basement laboratory, shone with a faint blue light. Dozens of other cables and wires had been driven into its cracked crystal body, connected to the cocoons attached to the walls of the circular room.
Flurry Heart didn’t know that cocoons could be used to preserve bodies. Her mother’s eyes were closed. Flurry didn’t want to open them, for fear that the changelings removed her eyes along with most of her organs. It almost looks like she’s just asleep. Flurry sat before the only occupied cocoon left in the room, with her little crown between her hooves.
Six days ago, those cocoons contained crystal ponies, taken from the mines and dumped into them to provide power to the weakened Crystal Heart. They were sapped of magic slowly, drained by some combination of changeling love extraction and whatever the Heart had become under their experiments. Despite her death, Cadance’s cocoon was still plugged into the Heart.
Flurry stared up at the artifact, but her mind was elsewhere. As a foal, she shattered the Crystal Heart with a magically-charged wail, but it had been rebuilt with the love and support of her crystal ponies. At it’s full power, it could make the Crystal City and its ponies shine with blazing light; their crystal coats sparkled with their hopes and dreams. The Heart did more than keep out the storm and the cold. It endured with the Empire. There could not be one without the other.
The Crystal Palace had been a massacre. Flurry saw to the upper floors herself, but her soldiers and crystal ponies did their share of killing through the ground floor and the basement. Over the day of the attack, changeling civilians gathered in the palace as the city fell, rushing to place the garrison between themselves and their vengeful slaves. Trimmel and the officers under him lived in the palace with their families.
None of them survived the night. Only a few young changelings lived, sheltered in an old broom closet by an Aquileian pegasus. Flurry saw that they were moved to the armory with the others in the morning. Flurry did not have it in her heart to punish her crystal ponies for the rivers of blood that flowed from her home, but she did shield the armory for two days to keep the mob away.
During the nights, several changelings dropped their disguises throughout the city and tried to take the appearance of Flurry’s fallen soldiers. They stripped bodies of their uniforms and attempted to regroup with other units, or escape the city. Most failed the countersigns, and a large group was caught in the west trainyard. Their bodies now hung from lampposts in ill-fitting, stolen uniforms.
Bonfires for the dead spread along the outskirts. Flurry attended a few herself, but there were too many. By the time the first armored train arrived through the storm wall with reinforcements from the army, the crystal ponies had reclaimed their homes, tearing down the boards and barricades with weak hooves and sitting in empty houses. There were few reunions and celebrations as the living looted the dead and moved on.
There were hundreds of thousands of crystal ponies in the city. They had been forced to sleep in the mines for years, chained with shackles when brought above to the city to work as servants or clear the rails. Trimmel feared a revolt and sent infiltrators into the mines, disguised as other slaves. The mines were separated into sections to keep the crystal ponies isolated. Her ponies mined for crystals, shipping them to the Changeling Lands. Like the mines in the mountains, they were given rotten hay and little water. Occasionally, the elite Jaegers and bureaucrats arrived to take a census and drain them. The ‘Love Harvests’ as part of Chrysalis’ taxes sapped their strength more than the arduous labor.
The other part of the Crystal Protectorate was the research center. Flurry always knew that Chrysalis hated her mother. Cadance defeated the Queen in Canterlot with the power of her love for Shining Armor, long before the Great War, back when things were easier. The Queen of the Changelings declared herself Empress after the fall purely to spite her rival's memory. Chrysalis wanted the Crystal Heart to serve her and provide a beacon of unending love. She would’ve doubtlessly used it as a weapon.
Flurry Heart sighed at her mother. Perhaps if she took you alive, she would have gotten her wish. Her mother stayed behind and poured her own magic into the Crystal Heart. The shield that gave them clear skies and shelter from the Frozen North stopped bullets and bombs. Cadance connected herself to the shield, and Trimmel’s army encircled the city and shelled it for months.
Cadance grew weaker and thinner. The Heart needed more magic to sustain it than she could provide. The crystal ponies cheered for her in the street and held impromptu parades, but hope waned as the food and supplies ran low. The city was always going to fall, and it was just a question of how long the shield would hold. The storm grew more intense outside the shield as the loss of Cloudsdale ruined the weather across Equus.
At some point, Chrysalis dropped a kind of new bomb from high above the Crystal City. The night lit up like the day and the entire city heard Cadance’s ragged screams as the shockwave pummeled the Crystal Heart.
The shield held, but her mother never truly recovered. Cadance's muscles gave out as the magic was sapped from them, unable to stand under her own power as she exhausted her magic. She laid under the Crystal Heart day and night, barely able to give commands. Her horn still glowed as she poured all her strength into maintaining the Heart. Cracks slowly spread across it as artillery shells pounded the shield.
Diamond Dowser, the defense minister, took control. Flurry vaguely remembered him as a hard-eyed stallion with a sharp frown. The Crystal City prepared for the shield to break under the continuous bombardment. The civilians gathered in the mines for shelter while the palace was reinforced. Outside the city, the Changelings grew sick and died from something in the storm winds after the bomb fell, in addition to the cold and the storm.
On a cold winter morning, Cadance died beneath the Crystal Heart. The changeling autopsy assessed that she died of Magic Depletion, the fatal condition where a unicorn burns through their magic system after the stages of Magical Exhaustion.
If her mother said anything at the end, Flurry didn’t know, and neither did any of the crystal ponies. The soldiers in the palace committed to a last stand as the Changelings rushed into the city. They held out for a day, and Diamond Dowser fell with them. The Changelings did not take prisoners from the palace, or if they did, none were ever seen again.
Trimmel hung Pharnyx from a balcony and Chrysalis arranged a final victory parade, wearing a stark white uniform and leading a convoy of tanks through the streets. The Heart was not shown to her captive audience of crystal ponies as Chrysalis proclaimed herself Empress of the Crystal Empire. They were forced to stomp in approval by armed guards before being herded back into the mines.
Over the next year, the shield dimmed around the city and began to shrink. The farmlands and outer fields were lost to the perpetual storm, and the rail lines were buried by constant snowfall. Chrysalis was infuriated and ordered the Heart fixed. The Changelings claimed Cadance was still alive and aiding with the shield's restoration. Nopony really believed them, but over the years there was a hope that the Princess would return with the Crystal Heart.
And now Flurry Heart sat underneath a broken blue crystal. Her wings ruffled against her flight jacket. The first morning, Flurry ordered the cocoons broken open and the ponies released. Some were beyond saving from the strain, but they died embracing their families and friends. One mare had nopony left, so Flurry held her hoof while she died.
She could still feel the feeble, bony hoof clinging to her hock. Her name was Garnet; the paperwork beside the cocoon listed her information, signed by a familiar signature Flurry couldn’t look at. Garnet’s foals and husband died in the mines. She managed to smile before dying.
Trimmel did not lie. Ponies helped them. Ponies from Equestria and the Crystal Empire, taken by the Changelings and brought in to help research the Heart. All the changelings in the palace were hunted down, but her soldiers left the ponies alone after verifying they weren’t disguised.
The crystal ponies did not.
An older mare named Abacus Cinch was run down outside the palace, having tried to flee during the attack. A herd of crystal ponies literally tore her apart with their hooves and her blood drenched the cobblestones. She had been the head overseer for the mining operations in the Crystal City. Most of the lower overseers had already been killed at the start of the revolt, beaten with picks and shovels in the mines.
The changeling scientists studying the Crystal Heart sheltered in the basement beside the ponies. Spike had found them after discovering the cocoons, holding cells, and test subjects, so he wasn’t in the mood to listen to the screams that they surrendered. He spared the ponies, thinking they were prisoners like the others.
Perhaps they were in a sense, but the crystal ponies recognized them and beat them to death in the hallways. The few survivors barricaded themselves in the basement behind a squad of confused Nova Griffonians. Her soldiers managed to restore some semblance of order and shelter the remaining thirteen scientists.
Under Trimmel’s orders, the scientists and soldiers in the Palace were to burn their documentation on the experiments. They did not succeed in burning everything, and the survivors liberated from the cocoons and cages knew more than the Changelings assumed.
They tested methods of Love Extraction, and if the health and condition of the pony affected the overall amount that could be taken before death.
They tested if the race and age of a pony affected the quality of the love.
They tested if ponies from a mixed-tribe parentage had stronger or lesser traits, and how it measured to the changeling standard.
Finally, they tried to restore the Crystal Heart. They assumed the Heart had a connection to the crystal ponies, and devised a method of draining their love to funnel their energy back into the artifact to restore it. It was cruel and ingenious, but it didn’t work. The subjects died of Magical Depletion no matter the tribe. Or age.
Jadis limped down into the open doorway. “Princess,” she bowed.
“Is it time?” Flurry asked, taking her eyes off her mother.
“We’re ready.”
Flurry gave one last look at her mother, then placed the crown on her head. She stood up and walked away from Cadance and the Crystal Heart, past Jadis and towards the stairs. Jadis stared back at the cocoon, struggling not to cry in front of her Princess. Flurry ignored her strangled breathing and the alicorn’s fast trot forced the crystal pony to limp after her. The alicorn walked by bullet holes and scorch marks on the blue crystal walls and stepped over a faded bloodstain that hadn’t been wiped away.
It would take weeks to clean the Crystal Palace, and a generation to repair the city. The Changelings never bothered reforming the shattered crystal buildings from their attack, and Heartsong’s forces still looted the armories and scattered equipment from the city’s fall. There were more important things to do.
Flurry wordlessly made her way to the throne room; the soldiers and civilians she trotted by briefly stopped to bow to her, then resumed their tasks. Her head was tired from nodding back at them to show appreciation, but she forced her mane to bob up and down regardless.
The throne room on the ground floor of the Crystal Palace was crowded with ponies and a few scattered griffons hovering near the roof. The floor was smudged from thousands of dirty hooves, and the walls were similarly scored with pockmarks from errant bullets. The black banners of the Hegemony had been torn down, but the walls were left bare. Flurry ordered that cloth be used for clothing, not useless flags and heraldry.
Flurry entered through a guarded side door and surveyed the massive crowd. “Word’s spread, Princess,” Jadis panted and limped up to her side.
Spike stood before the Crystal Throne; he was speaking rapidly to Duskcrest and Heartsong. A ring of soldiers surrounded them and kept the herd back. The Nova Griffonian guard at the side door opened his beak to shout for the crowd to clear, but Flurry raised a hoof and shushed him. “I’ll make my own way,” the alicorn said.
Beside the door guard, one crystal stallion wiped away a bloodstain on the wall with a cloth rag. The stallion’s coat was thin and patchy; he struggled to stand on his hind legs to reach the top of the stain. When he stretched, Flurry saw the patch of fur shaved away from his right foreleg, and the number tattooed on. From the cocoons or the holding cages. He saw her staring and gave his Princess a brittle smile. “Almost done, Princess. We’ll get it spick-and-span in no time.”
Flurry teleported to the throne and stared at it while taking several deep breaths. She faced away from the crowd. Spike noticed the flash of light and turned away from Duskcrest. He climbed the short steps up to the throne and his claws clacked against the crystal floor. The room noticed the movement and the crowd began to whinny at their Princess.
Flurry's heartbeat pounded in her ears.
Spike leaned to Flurry’s pinned ear. “We don’t have to do this now.”
We do. Flurry turned around and flared her wings, standing at the top of the raised crystal floor. “My Ponies,” she forced out. “It gladdens my heart to see you here.” The crystal ponies stomped in approval. From her vantage point, she saw several stumble from the effort, only to be helped back up by the others around them. The cheering was almost deafening.
“And it pains my heart to say this,” Flurry continued, “but this will be a private hearing. Please, wait with the crowd in the plaza.” The crowd slowly stopped cheering and stomping. They stared up at her in confusion and disbelief, then Flurry noticed muzzles twist with anger and tails whip. A few moved to follow her command, but the majority stayed in the throne room. The soldiers along the doors and below the throne readied their weapons.
Word had spread about the protection of the changeling foals in the armory. They would leave on the first train back to Nova Griffonia, under heavy guard. Flurry wasn’t sure what kind of life they would have after this; a few of the younger ones were rendered catatonic by the flood of uncontrolled rage they experienced. Thorax held out hope for them, and perhaps that was enough.
Flurry glanced down at a gray, nondescript crystal pony in a brown uniform below the throne. He felt her look and stared over his withers back up at her. Flurry returned to the crowd. “There will be justice,” Flurry promised.
“Kill him!” one mare in the crowd screamed. Flurry didn’t have to guess who she meant.
The cry was taken up by several others.
“We’re going to have to force them out,” Spike remarked. “The crowd outside is growing, too.”
Flurry’s horn ignited with blue fire. It was a beacon through the throne room and reflected off the walls and ceiling. “I said there will be justice,” she belted out. “Is my word not good enough? Do you think my heart will be moved by their words, after what they have done to you, my ponies? They will answer for what they have done, on my terms.”
The Princess narrowed her eyes. “Leave.” The word echoed and reverberated through the room and the chandeliers on the roof swung in a nonexistent breeze. The force from her voice staggered the front of the crowd and the line of soldiers. The herd backed away.
Spike lowered his claws from his ears. The remaining herd slowly filtered out the front entrance, ushered by the advancing line of soldiers. They stepped around the shallow crater outside from her blast. The doors had been blown away during the attack, so Flurry summoned a flat shield and turned it opaque. It blocked the view from the square. Her horn popped and the sound of thousands of gathered crystal ponies faded away as well.
Flurry slumped down into the hard crystal throne. It was technically part of the floor, so Trimmel never had it removed. When the palace was taken, the throne was sectioned off with plush velvet ropes and dividers, and only meant for Chrysalis’ use.
Her ass probably has enough plush by now to make it comfortable, Flurry snorted. Her mother had to use a pile of cushions, and Flurry self-consciously looked at her lean, bare flank exposed by the brown jacket. Her flight suit was a total loss, soaked in too much blood and gore to recover. Her pink fur hid the worst of the remaining stains, but it was still tinged slightly red. It would probably take more water and soap than was currently in the city to scrub herself clean.
Flurry scanned over the remaining griffons and ponies. Rainbow landed midway down the throne room from a chandelier. Her metal wing spasmed in agitation as she paced. Duskcrest sat on the steps below the throne, hard-eyed and drinking from his flask. His other claw idly spun one of his revolvers. Heartsong stood beside the griffon, staring ahead with a practiced ease, and yet the stallion’s right hind leg shook with suppressed agitation. Jadis sat near the side door, looking conflicted. The pale blue mare rubbed her twisted foreleg.
“Jadis, bring them in, then stand before the throne,” Flurry requested.
“I-I don’t have the right,” Jadis shook her head.
Flurry’s wings jittered against the hard crystal edges of the throne. “Please, Jadis.”
The crystal pony limped out with her rifle bouncing along her side.
“You haven’t officially claimed the Crystal Empire,” Spike reminded Flurry while the group waited.
Flurry leaned against one of the hard crystal sides and rested her head on an upturned hoof. Her crown caught the light from the flickering crystals installed along the walls. “The radio tower is still busted, right? No point.”
“It’ll give the crystal ponies a reason to celebrate.”
“They know I’m here, Spike. There’s only one thing they’re going to celebrate.” Flurry glanced down again at the row of guards before the throne. The gray crystal pony shifted. “Besides,” Flurry said after a moment, “the signal’s too weak to breach the storm wall.”
“We, uh, we need to discuss that Princess,” Rainbow interrupted and approached. The gray crystal pony stepped aside for the pegasus to pass. “I’ve been running patrols along the edges, and the storm’s getting worse, if that’s possible. We can barely keep the tracks clear.”
“We’ll have more fliers once we get the changelings out,” Flurry answered. “I’m wasting a battalion on guarding the armory.”
“Why are we even bothering with prisoners?” Rainbow snorted. “You said you didn’t want to take any.”
“Foals aren’t prisoners.”
“They’re not foals,” Rainbow stated. “They’re grubs, little parasites that just suck-”
“Enough,” Flurry replied and her voice startled the mare. “If you wish them dead, take your wing and lob their heads off yourself, Loyalty. Do it while they scream and tell me how proud you are to kill foals.” She leaned down from the throne to glare into Rainbow’s eyes. “I am here because of a changeling. Do not forget that.”
Rainbow swallowed and bowed clumsily. Her metal wing scraped the crystal floor. Flurry sat up straighter as the side door opened.
Thirteen unicorns entered, guarded by a dozen griffons. Flurry ordered Nova Griffonians to guard them; the Aquileian volunteers took heavy losses destroying the tanks. Every surviving Aquileian was injured, including Altiert. She was still in an overburdened field hospital in one of the old factories.
The unicorns all wore shackles around their legs. It stiffened their movements to a slow, plodding gait. Black crystal rings wrapped around their horns, cutting off their magic. Sombra’s energy-sapping crystals had been rediscovered by the Changeling scientists and applied to their slave population, but it was difficult to produce. The crystal ponies were the only ones that could shape and mold crystal structures well. Dusty theorized that they were an offshoot from an ancient tribe of earth ponies that refused to migrate south.
One mustard-colored mare didn’t have a ring; her horn had been snapped off by a furious crystal pony in the assault. She walked with a heavy limp. All of them stared up at the alicorn in fear, but Flurry only stared at the stallion at the front of the group, the only pony she recognized.
He walked with a slow shuffle, burdened by the chains his test subjects were forced to wear before being placed into cocoons. He signed the documents and gave them to his Changeling overlords. Flurry remembered him as an orange and white stallion, but the white had expanded beyond his socks and marking on his muzzle. His goatee had turned entirely white, and streaks went through his dark orange mane. It had been seven years, but the unicorn looked decades older. A black cloak embroidered with Chrysalis’ crown covered his flanks.
“Sunburst,” Flurry greeted him. “Royal Crystaller of the Empire.”
Sunburst licked his lips as his chains clinked together. He halted at the line of guards before the throne. “Flurry Heart,” he said back in a tone of utter disbelief. He squinted watery blue eyes. Without his glasses, he clearly struggled to see more than four hooves in front of him.
“Princess Flurry Heart,” Jadis snapped at him. She jabbed her hoof into his side.
Sunburst struggled to bow, but the chains restricted his legs too much.
“Uncomfortable, aren’t they?” Flurry asked bluntly. “Have you ever worn them before?”
“L-long ago,” he stuttered.
“What changed?" Flurry asked, but continued before he could answer. "Your signature is on most of the surviving paperwork. Were you in charge of the experiments with the Crystal Heart?”
“He made us do it!” the mustard unicorn screeched and rattled her chains. “He loved working for them! He threatened us!”
Flurry’s telekinesis cracked across the room and flung the mare halfway across the throne room. The mare landed hard on the crystal floor and a leg snapped. She whinnied in pain.
“Do not speak out of turn,” Flurry said casually. “Guards, please drag her back into position.”
Two griffons wordlessly pulled the sobbing mare across the floor. She cradled her broken foreleg. The bone broke the skin and blood dribbled onto the floor. Flurry sighed, then cast a pain spell and a blood-clotting spell on the unicorn to quiet her.
Sunburst watched the exchange with wide, watery eyes.
“Is what she said true?” Flurry asked. “Did you enjoy working for them?”
“No!” Sunburst stuttered.
“But you were in charge?”
“I worked under Fylifa. She died in the attack,” Sunburst gaped up at her. “I didn’t…I had to do it.”
The gray crystal pony shifted slightly.
“I thought you were dead,” Flurry sighed.
“We all thought you were dead,” Spike echoed. “Your convoy was strafed. All the trucks were destroyed in the retreat.”
Sunburst struggled with his cloak. The guards leveled their guns at him and he froze. Flurry lifted the cloak up with her horn.
Sunburst’s right side was heavily burned. The fur hadn’t grown back on top of the mess of scar tissue. Even his cutie mark wasn’t spared. It was still there, but the rays from the orange sphere disappeared into ugly knots. Flurry examined the injury wordlessly and dropped the cloak.
“I was badly burned,” Sunburst explained, “but I lived. The Changelings found me in the snow outside the wreck and took me and a few others prisoner.” He shook his head. “I-I never thought this day would come.” He clutched the cloak tighter around himself, as best he could with his manacles.
“That I would come back?” Flurry asked.
“That anypony would.”
“Is that your excuse?” Spike snorted a gout of flame. “Is that all you have to say?”
Sunburst swallowed. “Chrysalis wanted the Heart fixed. She demanded it. The changeling that told her it couldn’t be done was executed. Fylifa told me to find a way.” He looked towards the glowing shield at the doors. “Cadance-”
“Don’t say her name,” Flurry warned. A spark of blue fire dripped from her glowing horn.
“The Heart was badly damaged,” the stallion continued shakily. “I couldn’t repair it like I did before. The Heart is linked to the Empire, and all its ponies. I told the Changelings to be nicer, but they didn’t care.”
“You told them to be nicer?” Flurry laughed. “That’s what you did for your ponies, Crystaller?” She leaned down. “They sent you into the mines, but you chose the ponies, you put them into the cocoons, and you killed them.”
“No,” Sunburst stammered. “Fylifa was the one that developed the cocoons. I told her it would never work. It would just slow the Heart’s failure, not undo it.”
“You blame your actions on a dead mare,” Jadis snorted.
“There are thousands of crystal ponies out there that are waiting to tear you apart,” Flurry said. She shifted her glare to the other dozen. “All of you, for all the pain and misery you gave them over the years!” The others stared up at her, terrified.
“I saved them!” Sunburst shouted.
Flurry erupted off the throne, horn burning with fire. The chained prisoners stumbled back and stripped over their legs. The alicorn bared her teeth down at them, then smelled her mane smoking and took a few breaths, pushing her foreleg away from her chest. Her breathing steadied and the fire died out. “Explain. Now,” she ground out.
Sunburst took a moment. His muzzle quivered. “They were always going to take them, even if I refused.” He shuffled his hooves. “I took the weak, the old, all the ones that were going to die anyway in the mines.”
“And the young," Spike snarled. "You call that mercy?” His claws dropped to his sides.
“Yes,” Sunburst answered without hesitation. “There are ponies alive out there right now because of me.”
Rainbow bared her teeth at him. “They don’t see it like that.”
He turned his head to look at Rainbow. “If I didn’t do it, Fylifa would’ve sent some changeling that didn’t even care. They would have taken anypony.”
The gray crystal pony underneath the throne trembled in his uniform. His muzzle spasmed. Flurry noticed the shaking guard and cast her eyes back to Sunburst.
“Your argument is that you saved more lives than you stole by working with Trimmel and his government.” She sat back down and tapped a hoof on the throne. “Perhaps that’s even true,” she admitted. “Thousands of my subjects are struggling to eat watered-down soup, their stomachs are so shriveled. It takes a strong pony to survive those conditions.”
Rainbow and Jadis looked at the alicorn in disbelief. Jadis whirled around to her. “Princess, you can’t-”
“Silent!” Flurry snapped at Jadis. The mare quailed and reared back. After a moment, the alicorn exhaled and looked to Sunburst. “I have another question.”
Sunburst waited with pinned ears.
“You were taken prisoner before my mother’s death. Did you help them breach the shield?”
“No,” Sunburst answered quietly. “T-they tried to make me help.”
The crystal pony spasmed, but summoned all his strength to stay in the line of griffons. Sunburst squinted at his angry muzzle without recognition, then back to Flurry.
“We have found no surviving documentation on my mother’s body, but she’s connected to the Heart,” Flurry began. “You’ve already said you helped them.” She leaned forward off the throne and stared into his eyes. “Did you help them cut apart my mother, Crystaller?”
Sunburst took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. “The Changelings demanded-”
The crystal pony lunged at him, erupting into green fire. He tackled Sunburst to the ground and went for the throat with gnashing fangs.
Flurry barely pulled Thorax away from Sunburst with her horn in time.
“You wretched fucking coward!” Thorax shrieked. “You absolute bastard!”
Sunburst laid on the floor, tangled in his chains, and squinted at the writhing changeling. “Thorax?” he mumbled.
“Hiding behind excuses like a pathetic worm!” Thorax hissed, struggling against Flurry’s magic. She drifted him away and up to the throne, but the changeling’s solid blue eyes were locked on the unicorn. “They used you! They knew exactly what they were doing when they sent you into the mines!” His fangs glistened. “The crystal ponies saw their Crystaller betray them! You sucked away their hope better than any of their machines!”
“I m-made sure to choose-”
“You think that mattered?” Thorax screamed and kept struggling. “You did more to ruin them than anyone!”
“They tortured me!” Sunburst shouted back in a broken voice. “They forced me to go along with them!” He pointed a hoof at Thorax. “All of you left me! What was I supposed to do?”
“Die!” Thorax answered in a ragged hiss. “You should have died, like I would have! Like Spike! Like any of us! But you only thought about staying alive!”
Flurry drifted the changeling over to Spike, who wrapped him in a hug and pulled him close to his chest. Thorax kept struggling and hissing, but soon collapsed against the dragon. The changeling sobbed against his friend with ugly, broken, dual-toned wails. Duskcrest and Jadis stared in shock at Thorax’s crying.
Flurry closed her eyes. “I don’t care what you did to my mother’s corpse, Sunburst,” she said slowly, “but what you did to my subjects is unforgivable.”
“T-they would have done worse,” Sunburst replied.
“How?” Flurry asked. “Tell me how the Changelings would’ve done worse than ripping a foal from his mother’s teats to drain him in a cocoon?”
Sunburst did not reply. His muzzle quivered and he stared up at the alicorn with runny eyes.
“Perhaps, in the end, you did save lives,” Flurry admitted after a moment. “You served my mother and father well as Crystaller.”
"I-I loved your parents," Sunburst said quietly. "All of you."
Thorax spasmed and hissed again, but Spike held him close and clamped a claw over his muzzle. Flurry missed what the dragon whispered to the changeling.
Flurry stood and flared out her wings. “I have made my decision. For your years of service, I will grant you mercy.”
Sunburst nearly collapsed on his white-socked legs. “Thank you, Princess,” he gasped.
“You will hang last.”
The pronouncement rang through the throne room.
“No!” the mustard mare sobbed. She stood on three legs with froth in her coat. “He did everything! It’s all his fault!”
Flurry twisted the mare’s head around with a flick of her horn. The unicorn’s neck snapped like a dry branch and her body spasmed. Pee streamed down a hind leg; it matched the color of her coat. The body collapsed to the ground with her head facing the wrong direction.
The remaining twelve stayed silent. Sunburst stared at the corpse, blinking owlishly.
“Hang her first,” Flurry ordered. “The ponies outside will want to see it.”
Duskcrest stood and drew his revolver. “Right, up and at ‘em, birds. Take them to the balconies.”
“Use my parents' and mine,” Flurry added. “They have the best view of the square.”
“As you command, Princess,” Duskcrest nodded. The griffon guards pushed and dragged the sobbing ponies out of the room, beating them over the head with rifle butts when they resisted. Sunburst went slowly and quietly, as if he was in a trance.
“Jadis?” Flurry asked.
The pale crystal mare turned up to her. “Princess?”
“Do you mind standing on the balcony with Duskcrest? It will do my subjects good to see a crystal pony present during the executions.”
Frosty Jadis smiled viciously up at her Princess. “Not at all.” She limped after the guards.
“Heartsong,” Flurry requested. “Announce the verdict on the steps outside. Word will travel quickly, I imagine.”
The light emerald crystal pony sighed and shook out his legs. “As you wish.” He paused and stared back at Flurry. “Do you remember the Crystaller, Princess?”
Flurry closed her eyes. “I remember chasing him through the halls with Whammy.”
“Whammy?” Heartsong asked, confused.
“The snail toy,” she clarified.
Heartsong pursed his lips and his eyes lit up. “Ah, yes. I remember it.”
“I left it behind.”
The stallion swung his tail slowly. “It’s not my place to say, but the Crystaller was a good pony once.”
Rainbow spat on the floor. “Once.”
“Get back to the patrols,” Flurry ordered the mare. “Watch the hangings later.”
“Right,” Rainbow agreed and flapped her wings. She looped through the air in the tall throne room and stopped before the glowing blue shield at the doors. Heartsong and the remaining guards waited at the bottom.
Flurry dispelled the shield and her ears pinned back at the roar of the crowd. Thousands of crystal ponies gathered in the square, waiting and jeering towards the palace. She replaced the blue shield the moment Heartsong and the guards crossed over.
Flurry was left with Spike and Thorax on the raised dais. She stood and shook her legs. The throne was uncomfortable without cushions. Perhaps it should be, Flurry thought with a grimace and embraced Thorax. The changeling chittered softly and accepted her hug.
The changeling was limp against her wings. “We thought he was dead. His convoy was completely destroyed.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself,” Flurry said aggressively. “He made his choices.”
“He didn’t fight at the front, but he worked with Twilight,” Spike said quietly. “He was a kind pony. Your mother loved him.”
“And he helped cut her apart,” Thorax hissed.
“I don’t care about that,” Flurry repeated. “My mother wouldn’t want somepony to die just because they refused to defile her corpse.” The alicorn gave the dragon an even look. “He was your friend.”
“Yeah,” Spike said softly. His green eyes were wet with tears. “He was.”
“Would you spare him?" Flurry's tail bobbed. "Would you spare any of them?”
Spike’s lips twitched around his fangs. “Twilight would.”
“I’m not asking about Twilight. She was the best of us.”
“She is,” Spike agreed. His tail curled around a leg while he thought. “I helped kill every changeling in that basement, but Sunburst and the unicorns were prisoners too.”
“They had their own rooms and food,” Flurry responded. “They didn’t wear chains. Sunburst had a bed, quills, books, everything. I saw his room.”
“A gilded cage is still a cage,” Spike pointed out.
“They made the same choice the changelings did,” Thorax answered. “Chrysalis would’ve killed them for failing to restore the Heart, so they killed ponies. The Changelings would’ve killed Sunburst for refusing, so he killed ponies.”
Spike looked up at the ceiling.
“If they were changelings like me, would this even be a discussion?” Thorax asked softly.
“The changelings that lived here aren’t like you,” Spike growled at him.
“The crystal ponies outside would beat me to death without a second thought.”
“Some remember you,” Flurry interrupted, “and how much your changelings helped us.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, Flurry. They barely remember you,” Thorax laughed sadly. “They just see this,” he touched her large wings. “And this,” he reached up and poked her long horn. “You’re the Princess that they always hoped would come back.”
“You’re the reason why I could come back, uncle.”
Thorax smiled, but his eyes were still wet with tears. “Can I ask you something?”
“The changeling foals will be on the first train out,” Flurry responded.
“Thank you,” Thorax said sincerely, “but that’s not what I was going to ask.”
Flurry waited.
“When Trimmel dumped Pharynx off the balcony, the rope was too short. His neck didn’t break,” Thorax licked his fangs. “They let him dangle there and filmed it.”
“I’m sorry,” Flurry responded and nuzzled him.
“Please,” Thorax pleaded, “kill Sunburst quickly.” Spike patted the changeling’s back and his gossamer wings buzzed.
He has to ask, because he believes I won’t. “Okay,” Flurry agreed.
Above the throne room, Jadis, Duskcrest and two griffons stood on Flurry Heart’s balcony. Jadis reared up onto the half-destroyed railing and pumped her crippled hoof into the air with a wild neigh. The mustard unicorn’s body was heaved over, and the rope went taut around her broken neck. The corpse dangled above a crowd of thousands.
The crystal ponies roared in approval.