//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 - The Princess in Chains // Story: The Chrysalis Letters // by A bag of plums //------------------------------// Psithyra was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a gentle clanking sound. She opened her eyes, trying to ignore how hungry she was feeling. Hungrier, to be precise. Changelings were nearly always hungry, but that was beside the point. Psithyra sat up and saw a guardspony taking her armor from the jailer’s desk and putting it into a wooden crate. “Where are you taking that?” Psithyra asked hoarsely.  The guard glanced up, looking a little bit surprised at being spoken to in such a direct manner from a prisoner. “Er, orders from high up. I have to take it to the armory.” Psithyra frowned. “Why?” “I don’t know,” The guard answered honestly as he put the lid on the box. “I’m just following orders.” Psithyra watched as the guard lit up his horn and levitated the crate into the air, taking it around the corner and out of sight. She found herself sad to see it go. She had worn that armor on so many scouting and reconnaissance missions for Chrysalis and now she was likely never going to see it again. Speaking of never seeing things again, Psithyra quietly thought about the spa, and what was to come either later today or tomorrow morning. These ponies shall never see it coming. The end of their precious Canterlot. Even Celestia will be powerless to stop it. But unlike before, the thought gave her little pleasure. She was still stuck in a cell and starving to death slowly. The fact that the city would soon implode around her was now not something to look forward to, but rather a fact that she had resigned herself to. A death knell for the both of us, should my Infiltrators simply choose to flee with my sister. This is still my city, and I get to fiddle while it burns. Then there was the fact that she was to be moved to Tartarus in less than forty-eight hours. Psithyra wasn’t exactly sure how long it would take for all the juicy information to make its way into the right hooves to do damage, but she trusted her changelings to find the best and fastest method of distribution. If she recalled correctly, the incident in Ponyville that she was trying to copy and enhance had involved the local newspaper. If that was the case here, there was the risk that she might be moved out of the city before the metaphorical compost hit the windmill. Psithyra lay back on the bed and tried to sleep. It was not easy, but eventually she drifted off into a sort of waking dream. The creature first opened her eyes, blinded by the light that was coming in from a hole above the cavern, raising one of her hooves to shield herself. Once she felt she was ready, she slowly pushed the rest of her body out of the tree trunk she had emerged from, already finding more of her kind spread around the cavern, though they were different than she was. While most of them had spiky fins on their heads and smaller forms, she had long purple hair coming down from the top of her head, some of it covering her left eye, and she was about double their size. “Where is this? What is this?” she asked aloud, her eyes darting around her new surroundings. Before the tree she had exited from was a murky lake, filled with the bones of various other creatures she had never seen before. The water was a poisonous green and that was enough to tell her not to swim in it. There was a commotion near the shore of the lake, where about a dozen of the smaller ones were  gathered, seemingly staring in awe at something in the shadows. The creature herself decided to see what was going on, trotting closer. She noticed they all had wings on their back, tiny for their size, but once she began to flap them, she realized size didn’t matter. “We can fly… What else can we do?” Gliding over to the shadows, the creature peered through the darkness to find another of her kind, a larger one with long teal hair, lying down on her side, watching the smaller creatures with a smile on her face. She had much larger wings than even the creature herself and something about her seemed to radiate power, even as she simply lay there. She has hair too. Just like me. “And who are you supposed to be?” The one with long hair turned to her, lifting a hoof to her chin. The smaller creatures all turned their heads to the purple maned interloper, their bug eyes now looking directly at her. “I… I do not know…” The creature shook her head. She felt as though that had been nothing before, up until this moment. The first thing she recalled was walking through the tree, nothing else. “And we are all unnamed, just like you.” The larger creature smirked and pointed to a row of smaller creatures. “But I have given these few names. Cephalon, Chitin, Oryctes, just to name a few. As for me, you may call me… Chrysalis.” “Chry-salis…” the purple haired creature repeated. Yes, she liked the sound of that name. But that was the other creature. What about a name for herself? “A-And I?” The one called Chrysalis rubbed her hoof against her cheek and then stood up on all fours before slowly trotting over to her. “You are not like the others. Perhaps you deserve a name above these little ones… You shall be called…” There was a long pause before Chrysalis spoke again. “Psithyra. And you shall be my closest friend. You shall be my sister.” The smaller creatures began chattering amongst themselves, then giving nods of approval towards both of them. “Yes, Psithyra…” The purple haired one smiled, her first smile since arriving here. They had no knowledge of everything around them or even what they were, but Chrysalis had made sense of it all, even for all of them. Psithyra felt like she owed her now, and she would gladly do so. “Thank you, Chrysalis. I will make you proud, my sister.” Psithyra awoke with an odd, misty feeling in her eyes. She rubbed them and was surprised to find them to be damp. She quickly scrubbed away the moisture, more than a little cross at herself. This is ridiculous. She thought. I do not get weepy. I have been through far worse than this before. Right? However, she knew she was lying to herself. Every other time she had been in a tight spot, she had still had the help of her faithful six infiltrators and her own cunning and magic. Now her infiltrators were nowhere near, and she had no magic to speak of. All that was left were her wits, and those were fast deteriorating under the heavy burden of starvation. It doesn’t matter. Psithyra thought to herself. Even if I die in here, the city will die with me. The hive will live on, and Canterlot will be in ruins. It is more than I could hope for. More than I deserve. By now, Azal and the others should have seen Chrysalis out of the city. Psithyra trusted her spa staff to carry out her orders, but she was also aware that they would have to bow to their hive queen’s orders over her own. If Psithyra was due to be carted off to Tartarus, she hoped the ponies might as well get it over with. From what she knew, creatures in that prison didn’t suffer from hunger or thirst, which would be a welcome reprieve from her current situation. Or it might mean she would be stuck in a cell for the rest of time with nothing but a gnawing feeling  in her stomach for company. That didn’t sound nearly as good. While Psithyra was mulling over her immediate future, the guard Frigid Night came back down into the dungeons. He was holding a newspaper in his mouth and he sat down behind the jailer’s desk to read it. He seemed completely at ease, which made Psithyra’s brow crease slightly. “Hey,” Psithyra said at last, the word scraping out of her throat. “Pony. What are you reading?” Frigid Night looked up. “Uh, the news? Like everypony does every day?” He said, slapping the paper with his hoof. “No news about changelings, in case you were wondering. Seems you were telling the truth about you being a one-mare rescue act.” “I am not a mare,” Psithyra growled and returned to her bed.  Clearly the blackmail and secrets had not yet been unleashed, at least, not for this morning’s paper. Still, the changeling princess was not that concerned. It took time to write and print newspapers after all, and something as juicy as her stash would take a little while to process. She had waited this long; she could wait a few hours more. And yet. As the day wore on, Psithyra drifted in and out of the clutches of sleep, waking in snatches to look at the clock that hung over the jailer’s desk. The hours were flashing by. This was the third day. This had to be the third day, she had been keeping count of it meticulously.  And yet. Canterlot was still standing. No signs of civil unrest, no signs of riots or nobles killing each other. Everything seemed to be fine. Psithyra dared not ask Frigid Night about the news again; he might get suspicious and tell someone with a brain, and then investigations would begin again. What she did know, however, was that something about her plan had gone wrong. There was only one creature she could think of to blame. “Chrysalis…” Psithyra growled at the wall. Who else could have stopped her loyal infiltrators from doing their jobs? No doubt because Chrysalis would be against the total annihilation of Canterlot; she probably still had fanciful ideas about conquering it. News flash, Chrysalis, you couldn’t plan your way out of a wet paper bag, much less to conquer a whole city. In truth, Psithyra was concerned about what would happen if she were to be locked up in Tartarus. Her sister needed her to be her tactician and advisor, and without Psithyra’s presence, the hive could very well be in great danger. A wave of nausea swept over Psithyra as she imagined the state of the hive without her. Or it might have been hunger, but changelings were always hungry. That was nothing new. Still, she hoped that she was wrong and that her stash of secrets and blackmail had managed to be distributed after all.  But as the hours continued to tick by, the gnawing sense of unease in Psithyra’s gut grew stronger. Something wasn’t right. Oh well. She had tried her hardest, and if that wasn’t enough, then there was nothing else she could do about it. The next morning dawned with the sound of a guard rapping his hoof against the bars of the cage. “Wake up, changeling,” The guardspony ordered. Psithyra blinked the sleep from her eyes and sighed in defeat. So it seemed like her final orders had gone unfulfilled after all. She rose from the bed and stood before the cell door, swaying slightly on her hooves from hunger. Outside, various pony guards assembled, one of them holding a set of metal shackles.  So this was it. Her plans had failed her for some unknown reason, and she was to be carted off to Tartarus. It wasn’t that she was afraid to die; Psithyra had known since the beginning that her job and role meant that death was always close by and she had long since come to terms with it. But the prospect of being trapped in a cell for all eternity with no idea what had happened to her sister and her infiltrators made her empty stomach turn. She didn’t like mysteries. Better to be wrong and know that than be left guessing forever, she thought. “Hooves in the slot, prisoner,” The guardspony ordered.  Psithyra was too worn out to say anything, and simply did as she was told. The cold metal shackles were secured around her hooves with a click.  The pony guard opened the cell door, with the other holding swords and spears in case she tried to make a break for it. They needn’t have worried, as Psithyra meekly left the cell. She still had no access to her magic, due to the cuffs bearing the same enchantment as the cell.  Thus began the slow march outside towards the front gates. The grim parade did not run into any servants or castle staff on the way out, as the route had been secured to make sure that there was no chance of escape. As Psithyra was walked outside, she looked up at the sky. Even it seemed to be in a sad mood, with billowing thunderclouds swelling in the heavens, blocking out Celestia’s sun and the clear blue sky. “Didn’t think we were due for any rain until next week,” One of the guards commented in a quiet voice. Another guard shrugged. “That’s the weather department’s problem, not ours.” Psithyra didn’t think much of this fact. It just meant that the last sky she would ever see would be this overcast soup.  The group walked around the corner and Psithyra saw a large wooden carriage with metal banding parked there. The leadmost guard hurried forward and opened the door with a key. “Get in,” He said to Psithyra. Psithyra obeyed. The carriage itself was probably bound as well, to make doubly sure that nothing magical could escape from inside. The interior of the vehicle was austere, with two benches facing each other. A pair of pony guards, both earth ponies, climbed in after her and sat on the front bench. Psithyra sighed and settled down on the rear bench. The door to the carriage swung shut and locked itself, leaving only two small barred windows for air. “Alright, lads,” The lead guard called from outside. “I want a smooth journey from here to Tartarus. It’ll take us at least two days to get there, so be ready for a long trip. We’ll make a stop at the garrison in Fillydelphia for the night before heading on the next morning. And prisoner,” He was now addressing Psithyra. “No funny business, understand?” He didn’t seem to be expecting an answer, and the carriage began to roll. They weren’t going by air; that would be far too risky if something did happen to go wrong. Far safer to be on the ground in case of any mischief or breakdowns. Besides, a carriage like this was heavy, even weightier than the princesses’ royal chariots, and hardly aerodynamic enough to fly a long distance. Psithyra leaned her head back and rested it on the wooden interior surface of the carriage. It was going to be a long and depressing ride.