Thorax was having a great day. The love and happiness in the air made his wings chitter with delight as crystal ponies pranced through the streets. Everypony he passed gave him a beaming smile, even if some of the crystal ponies didn’t really remember him and were just being friendly.
Thorax tipped his antlers and smiled back. It was ‘Defeat of Sombra Day’ according to the banners, with a ‘4’ sloppily painted over a ‘3’ at the end. Thorax sighed; it was probably for the best that his train was delayed.
If he ended up fighting Sombra again, Pharynx would have chewed him out relentlessly when he got back to the hive. Thorax finally convinced him to let him travel without guards this time. The green changeling didn’t want to be biased, but he loved the Crystal City far more than Canterlot. The crystal ponies were the first to accept him, and everything was just so shiny.
Thorax paused to admire his reflection on the wall of a restaurant, then shook his head. “Breath and focus,” he reminded himself, continuing to trot along to the Crystal Palace. Last time he'd been here, he got distracted by a firefly lamp for nearly an hour.
“Hello, King Thorax!” a crystal mare shouted from her flower stall and waved a glittering foreleg with a blush.
Thorax waved back, feeling the mild infatuation, more of a crush, and offered her a dazzling smile. The feeling intensified and the mare’s coat rippled with color. Thorax made a note to buy some flowers from her after his meeting with Prince Shining Armor.
Purely by coincidence, Thorax stumbled into Sunburst, Starlight, and Trixie on the train, heading north to spend their anniversary in the city. The former Crystaller was delighted to see his old friend, and made not so subtle suggestions for plans later. Thorax reached the palace easily, trotting with a hum on his muzzle and a shining green carapace.
“Good morning, your majesty,” Flash saluted. The orange pegasus was guarding the front doors. Thorax sensed he felt a little tired, but was otherwise chipper.
“Good morning, lieutenant!” Thorax chirped back. “Everypony’s in a wonderful mood today, aren’t they?”
“Sombra was defeated again last night,” Flash explained. “It’s a holiday. A tax-free holiday,” he yawned and flushed with embarrassment. Thorax laughed it off.
“Does that apply to visiting royalty?” Thorax asked teasingly.
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Flash shrugged. “You’re here meet with Shining?”
“Yep,” Thorax nodded. “Crystal trade. We don’t want to step on anypony’s hooves, but the hive has found a lot in our excavations. We should fix our prices together.” Thorax tilted his head and blinked. “I think it’s called ‘racketeering’ or a ‘monopoly,’ but maybe that’s a board game?”
“Maybe don’t say that out loud,” Flash advised.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Flash waved a wing. “I’ll let him know you’re here. Do you want to wait inside? I can have Emerald escort you to a guest room.” Flash pointed a wing at the crystal mare on the other side of the door. Her coat flushed green with envy, looking the King of the Changelings up and down. Mostly down. She bit her lip.
Thorax considered it, then shook his head apologetically. “It’s such a beautiful day. I’ll wait outside, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” Flash nodded. He disappeared into the palace. Emerald sighed and scuffed a hoof on the ground. Thorax smiled apologetically to her and trotted to the courtyard. He sat down next to the large statue of Spike; for a moment, he just basked in the warmth of the sun and the emotions flowing around the city.
“Everything is just perfect,” Thorax sighed.
He was abruptly seized in a blue aura and flung upwards towards one of the balconies. The changeling hissed in surprise and yelped when he landed hard on his back, splayed out. Princess Cadance straddled him and shoved a hoof in his mouth.
“King Thorax,” she whispered with a strained smile.
Thorax mumbled a reply.
Her ears pinned back. “Right. Sorry. Just be quiet.” She removed her hoof, shaking spit off the bandage.
“Uh, h-hello Princess,” Thorax stuttered softly. He tilted his head as best he could with the antlers, looking down from the balcony. A few ponies looked up, confused, then shrugged and continued along with their day.
Cadance pulled him up and crouched low, shuffling along the railing and below the quarter-moon windows on the balcony doors. “I need your help.”
Thorax sensed her seriousness and desperation. He frowned and shrunk down into a field mouse with a quick flash. “What’s wrong?” he squeaked, rushing up to Cadance and standing near her hoof.
Cadance almost reared away on reflex before realizing the rat was Thorax. “I-I need your help,” she repeated with a stammer. “We defeated Sombra last night, but he did something to Flurry.”
Thorax gasped. It just sounded like a squeak. “Is she alright?”
“No,” Cadance hissed. “He’s corrupted her. She was speaking in tongues during breakfast, and I think Shining’s been enthralled again.”
“Oh, I should’ve brought Pharynx.” Thorax rubbed his mousey paws together nervously.
“I need proof,” Cadance continued. “You can sense the darkness in a pony’s heart. The festering void that no amount of love can fill. The dark, black heart of evil.”
“Wait,” Thorax paused. His whiskers twitched. “Is this a changeling thing? That’s horrifically racist.”
“It is horrifying,” Cadance nodded. “My daughter is becoming a monster, Thorax, and I need your help.”
Thorax decided to let it go. “Okay, I was going to speak with Shining anyway. I can check on him and let you know.”
“My daughter is inside,” Cadance lifted her head marginally to the window on the doors. “She sits there as the darkness consumes her. Come and see. Behold a pink pony.”
“You want me to spy on your daughter with you?” Thorax squeaked, confused.
“Observe her and tell me what you feel,” Cadance said gravely. Her eyes were locked on something in the room.
“Okay,” Thorax said warily.
Cadance froze in pure terror as Thorax crawled up her leg with his little rat paws. She felt them clutch her fur, and her scream choked out when he reached her neck and skittered through her mane. He stopped between her ears, squinting through the glass.
Cadance exhaled shakily, staring at nothing.
Flurry Heart sat at her worktable, back to the balcony. Her wings fluttered as she focused. She clenched a thin paintbrush between her teeth as she gave a small statue of some tentacled pony a critical look. It was half-painted in yellow and red armor.
Her hoodie lay on the bed, and her closet door was open, revealing a rack of similar hoodies and another rack of strange cloaks and felt armor. Her books had been disturbed, laying sprawled out on the floor. Thorax read the titles aloud.
“Monster Manual, Fifth Edition. Spells and Incantations for the Necromancer Class. Dark Deities. The Wicked History of Wildmount." Thorax rubbed a whisker in thought. "Oh, it’s O&O stuff. Sunburst told me she’s really good.”
Cadance shook, both from the rat atop her head and the names of the fell grimoires.
Flurry carefully set the paintbrush down and chugged a fizzlepop soda. She belched loudly and blushed, then picked the brush up and resumed lightly touching the figure. It was hard to tell with the glasses, but she had dark bags under her eyes. Flurry’s horn lit up and her record player began to play some loud, screeching music.
Thorax squinted at the lines of small dolls on her table. He pressed his paws up to the glass. “Oh.”
“What?” Cadance asked in a strangled whisper.
“She’s building a Chaos army,” Thorax sighed. “Aw, she’s gonna beat Pharynx again. I could tell him, I guess, but he wants to fight her fairly.”
An army of chaos. Was Discord involved? “How do you know?”
“I don’t really know Warhammer,” Thorax admitted. “That’s Pharynx’s thing, but I can recognize the miniatures. She’s got some Imperials and Changelings out, too.”
Thorax squeaked indignantly at one of the small dolls and folded his paws. “I keep telling Pharynx we should sue them for using our name on those horrible things, but he thinks they make us look cool. I just want them to be renamed to something fake, like ‘Tyranids’ or whatever.”
“She can defeat your brother?” Cadance asked, aghast. It did make sense on some level. Flurry was an alicorn and Pharynx was only a changeling prince.
“She did last time,” Thorax leaned his mousy paws down and angled Cadance’s muzzle to a shelf. A few kitschy golden trophies rested on it, depicting ugly armored ponies wielding swords closer to chainsaws. Or horrible monsters. Sometimes both. Cadance saw the title on the latest trophy at the end of the shelf.
Flurry Heart, WarMistress of the 41st Millennium, 287th Annual Expo.
A lone tear escaped her eye. When was the last time I poked through her room? So much was different, and her daughter seemed a stranger. She remembered being confused by books full of tables and statistics, finding dice and strange little sets. Maps and notebooks scrawled in ciphers of numbers and letters. Cadance was just looking for something normal while Flurry was off somewhere.
The alicorn found some magazines called Fanatically Fantastic Fiction that looked promising, depicting a hunky stallion in a torn sailor’s uniform fighting a giant crab. Her disappointment was immeasurable when she opened it and found it was all just text and boring stories. Flurry wasn’t even hiding them under her bed like she was supposed to.
She’s already collecting dark tomes and grimoires, building an enthralled army to seize power. “Tell me,” Cadance ordered through her tears. “Is she lost to darkness?”
Thorax hopped down from her head and patted her hoof with a paw. “No, no! It’s fine! Don’t worry! Your daughter is fine!”
“How can she be fine?” Cadance whispered harshly. “You’ve seen what she’s become!” She was too indignant to be upset that the rat was touching her. “What did you sense?”
“Nothing,” Thorax shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong. She’s very focused.”
Nothing. Cadance swayed. She was wrong. The absence of love is not hate. It is apathy. She staggered upright and leaned against the railing heavily.
“Uh, Princess Cadance?” Thorax asked.
Cadance looked through the window. Flurry sat on her stool, bobbing her head to some Tartarus-spawned beat while several paintbrushes swirled in her magic. They dipped down and added fine touches of paint, then floated back to their cups. Her record player blared some hideous cacophony of sound.
She is heartless.
“You said she is building an army of chaos and changelings?” Cadance asked wearily. “How can we hope to face that?”
“Well, they aren’t really changelings,” Thorax admitted. “The miniatures were based off the old stories about us, long before Former Queen Stoneface revealed everyling.”
“What are they, then?”
“You saw the miniatures,” Thorax squeaked. “I could show you.” The little field mouse erupted into green fire.
A tall, slavering beast of black chitin and claws reared above Cadance, clicking mandibles and glaring down at her with six red eyes. Four arms with wicked claws bore down on the alicorn, and a spiked tail pointed at her heart. Cadance looked blankly into its jaws.
“I think it’s pretty racist,” it said calmly in Thorax’s voice, “but Pharynx thinks it’s good for security. ‘We have a reputation to uphold,’ he says.” The eyes looked to the side. “I think he’s just biased because it’s his favorite faction.”
Cadance’s eyes rolled up into her head and she fell off the side of the balcony. One of the claws lashed out and grabbed her foreleg. She dangled high above the street in the claws of an eldritch horror.
Nopony noticed.
“Whoa!” the monster said in a high-pitched yelp. It disappeared into green fire, revealing the normal Thorax with the exception of one black-clawed arm. “I guess that was a little intense. I’m sorry.”
“Let me fall,” Cadance whispered. Her hoof itched. “I have failed my daughter utterly.”
Thorax bit his lip. “Hey, so I can sense when something is wrong,” he admitted. “Are you alright, Princess? Your heart is, uh, a little—”
Cadance flared her wings and flapped up to Thorax’s eye level. “You must return to the hive and marshal your forces.”
“What?” Thorax blinked. His claw vanished in a burst of green fire.
“I will not give up on my daughter,” Cadance declared imperiously, “but we must have a contingency. Her army will be defeated.”
“Oh,” Thorax nodded. “I can tell Pharynx you’re rooting for him, but I’m sure Flurry will be hurt."
Cadance closed her eyes. “I do not wish to cause my daughter any pain, but this may be the only way.”
“She has won the past three tournaments,” Thorax admitted. “Pharynx sulked for weeks afterwards. He even attended the Feelings Forum without growling about it.”
“Go, Thorax.” Cadance laid a hoof on his shoulder. “My duty is here.”
Thorax blinked at her. “Right. I’ll, uh, do that.” He hopped off the balcony and floated down.
Cadance turned back to the doors. She crouched down again and peered through the quarter-moon windows. Flurry Heart hadn’t noticed the commotion; she still arranged her tiny dolls along the worktable, setting them down on some strange map. She’s planning her conquests. Some gray figures were still set aside, waiting for their turn to be painted.
Flurry Heart bounced on her stool, distracted; Cadance noticed she had a slight pudge that her hoodies usually hid. The dark magic has ruined her. Flurry levitated over a new record, setting up a new screeching song. She sang along poorly with a lisp.
“We come from the land of the ice and snow…”
Cadance listened to the horrific lyrics and pressed a hoof to the glass. They promised overlordship, suffering, gore, and threshing oars, which was odd because the Crystal Empire didn’t have a navy. Not yet. She's planning her dark reign.
“I won’t give up on you,” Cadance promised.