//------------------------------// // Chapter 15 - Secrets and Truths // Story: The Chrysalis Letters // by A bag of plums //------------------------------// Captain Bright Aegis has always prided himself as a pony that could follow orders to the letter. In fact, he liked to have a long, detailed plan for anything that pertained to his job, as well as anything outside it. His wife had often teased him about it, saying that if something didn’t go according to plan, it would be as if the world ended for him. But Bright Aegis had not yet met a situation in which he hadn’t had a backup plan or several in case the first one didn’t work out. So when he found himself as one of the five ponies tasked with escorting a dangerous prisoner to Tartarus, he had immediately drawn up a plan for the whole trip there and back again. He plotted out the best path for the carriage to take, as well as the shifts the rest of the guards would have to take on such a long journey. Granted, his plan had included a clear sky to make the trip lighter and easier, but something must have changed at the last minute in the weather department. I’ll have to write a strongly worded letter to the weather teams, Bright Aegis decided once they were out of the castle gates. This is Canterlot, the capital city of Equestria. The weather needs to be kept in check, like everything else. A few spotting drops of rain began to fall, no more than a slight annoyance to the three guardsponies who were outside the carriage. None of the guards let their irritation show, though. This was an important job, and no amount of rain was going to keep them from doing it to the best of their abilities. Canterlot Castle stood on a raised platform above the rest of the city, so the way down to the city below was nice and easy. However, their path was soon stopped by a series of orange cones and wooden barricades. Captain Bright Aegis stepped forward and looked at the obstruction. There was a lot of roadwork being done here, with numerous ponies holding power tools and other equipment. The road was just in the middle of the project, with paving stones scattered all over the place and deep holes in the earth beneath. “Sorry, officers!” A pale green unicorn wearing a yellow hard hat and a fluorescent vest hurried over. “Road’s closed for pipe inspections.” “Why weren’t we told about this?” Bright Aegis complained. “I’ve got some very important cargo that needs to be brought somewhere as soon as possible.” He did not want to mention that his cargo was a changeling princess. “I still can’t let you through,” the unicorn in the hard hat shook his head apologetically. “It’s not safe. Too many holes in the ground. You’ll have to go around.” Grumbling to himself, Bright Aegis went back to the carriage and the two burly guards pulling it. He took his plan in his head and sketched out another path for them to take. “We can’t go through here. We’ll take her down Rosy Lane instead.” The guards nodded and turned the carriage around. Rosy Lane was close to the weather factory, and going through there would take them past some slopes in the city infrastructure. It wasn’t an ideal path for a wheeled vehicle to go down, but there wasn’t any other choice. The dips and hills in the road meant a bumpy ride, and a slow one too. Rosy Lane was quite an old road, and it hadn’t received the proper refurbishment that a lot of the other, older parts of Canterlot had gotten. At least it was still paved and mortarted. Captain Bright Aegis walked around a large puddle of mud, making sure he kept his armor clean. The two ponies pulling the carriage simply plowed right through it, but before they could make it another three steps, something caught and the carriage stopped.  “Oi! What’s the matter?” Bright Aegis exclaimed. “Why did you stop?” The captain hurried back to the vehicle and looked at it. The reason for the sudden halt became clear: the carriage’s wheels had gotten stuck in the mud. “Why wasn’t this cleared away?” Bright Aegis groaned. “This could hold up the traffic for hours if somepony else’s cart had come here.” He circled the carriage and looked around. There actually wasn’t much other traffic on this street, but they had stopped at a T-junction, at the bottom of a steep hill. “Come on then, let’s get this thing out of the muck.” Bright Aegis trotted to the back of the carriage and rammed his shoulder against it, pushing with all his might while the two ponies up front pulled as hard as they were able. The wheels of the carriage moved a little bit, but not enough to break free of the mud’s sticky embrace.  “Again!” Bright Aegis ordered, throwing himself at the rear of the vehicle once more. "Heave!” As he pushed, the captain’s ears picked up a faint, but quickly growing rattling sound. He looked around for its source. Nothing was coming up or down Rosy Lane. Then he looked at the upper part of the T-junction, where the streets intersected. Another wagon was speeding down towards them, its back part loaded with heavy bricks. The driver of the vehicle pulled on the steering reins, her mane flapping wildly in the wind as she tried in vain to slow down. The downwards slope only added more speed to the runaway wagon, and it suddenly became clear to Bright Aegis that unless they managed to get their carriage out of the mud in the next ten seconds, there was going to be a collision. The captain lunged at the back of the carriage in one final effort to move it, but the wheels remained stuck fast. “Brace yourselves!” Aegis shouted as the brick-laden wagon smashed into the guards’ carriage at full speed.  Psithyra had been brooding moodily to herself when the carriage had come to an abrupt halt. She looked up from her thoughts and cast a half-hearted glance out the tiny window. They seemed to have stopped on Rosy Lane. As a spa owner, she had never really come down this way, but as a changeling spy, she had made it her mission to learn the entire city’s layout. Rosy Lane wasn’t an optimal path to get to the city exits.  The carriage continued to shake and shudder, but not really move anywhere. Were they stuck? Psithyra almost wanted to ask, but in the end decided it wasn’t worth it. Even if the wagon was stopped, she was still trapped inside with these two humorless fools for company. Still, any moment longer out here to breathe fresh air was welcome. There was a faint rattling sound now. Quiet at first but growing louder by the second. This time she craned her neck to look outside, but the window was too narrow to afford any kind of good view. All she could see was the cloudy sky and a small stretch of road. And then her ears picked up the sound of the guard captain yelling, “Brace yourselves!” Faster than lightning, Psithyra picked up on the scent of alarm and fear. She threw herself onto the floor of the carriage, putting her hooves above her head. It was just as well that she did. CRASH! The carriage suddenly exploded all around her, with wooden splinters, shards of metal, and fragments of brick flying every which way. The two guards who had been in the carriage with her had not reacted as quickly as she had and had been hit full on by whatever had struck the vehicle. Speaking of the carriage, it was in ruins. The collision had more or less torn it apart like a battering ram on a wooden gate, and Psithyra felt the binding magic from the vehicle fade away. She got up and looked around. There were carriage parts everywhere, and the two guards who had been pulling it were lying on the ground, groaning. The pair who had been inside with her lay half buried in the wreckage of the crash, one of them unconscious, the other one struggling to push a shattered wagon wheel off himself.  Around his neck was a key. Psithyra leapt over and picked up the key in her teeth, unlocking her shackles in a heartbeat. She grinned as the old familiar surge of magic came back to her, and she leaned over the guard, draining his love energy as quickly as she could. It felt so good to finally eat after almost four days of starvation. She was going to need all the strength she could muster for what she was about to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the guard captain pick himself up and look at her in alarm. Psithyra looked back and for a second, they locked eyes. Then the changeling princess buzzed her wings into motion and took off into the sky.  It was at that exact moment that the thunderclouds above them decided to unleash their watery payload. Gallons and gallons of rain came down like a heavy blanket, impairing sight and sound. Psithyra shot up into the air in a steep climb, looking back to see that the captain of the guard troop was flying after her. His golden armor was easy to see in the deluge, so she climbed higher until she was inside the clouds themselves.  Thunder rolled and lightning crackled in the dark masses. This was a storm of epic proportions, which was perfect for Psithyra. Once she lost this fool, there would be nopony to see where she had gone. “Stop!” Aegis shouted in vain. His feathered wings were becoming waterlogged and soon would be unable to sustain flight. But there was something else that was going to get to him first. In a blinding flash, a bolt of forked lightning struck Bright Aegis full on. He had been unlucky enough to be wearing metal armor while flying in a storm, and now he paid for it. His scorched form fell from the sky like a dropped stone, leaving Psithyra to make her escape uncontested. Wings buzzing and splashing raindrops everywhere, she did a little loop to make sure nopony else was following her before taking cover inside a cloud. In a flash of green, her changeling form was replaced with an unassuming white pegasus with a red and orange mane. She circled around Canterlot once before making her way down to ground level. Everypony was busy seeking shelter from the sudden downpour, and nopony looked at Psithyra twice.  In less than ten minutes, she had made it back to her spa’s front doors. They were locked and the sign said ‘closed’, but she could smell the scent of creatures inside. So she trotted over to the back door and found the spare key, using it to get inside and out of the pouring rain. The inside of the spa was dark, with all the lights off. Psithyra shifted back into her changeling form and used a drying spell to get rid of the water before walking over to the entrance to the living quarters. She made it to the dining room and was greeted by the sight of all six of her infiltrators lined up in a row. “Princess!” Salegg exclaimed with gladness. “You made it back!” She rushed forward and almost looked as if she wanted to hug Psithyra, but then remembered who she was and settled for a sort of half-bow, half-salute.  “We knew you could escape from those ponies,” Azal said smoothly. “The plan went perfectly, if I do say so myself.” “Plan?” Psithyra repeated, puzzled. “What plan? Whose?” From behind Psithyra, a presence made itself known. The princess smelled it before she saw it, but she knew who it was all the same.  “My plan,” Queen Chrysalis said, coming out and standing in the doorway. “Your plan?” asked Psithyra in shock. “But… how did you…?” “Why are you so surprised?” Chrysalis asked with a smile. “I can make plans too.” “You can?” Psithyra was actually taken aback. Her sister had never made a plan in her life. All this time, it had always been Psithyra concocting every plan, every detail, every contingency, every assessment. “You’ve never once used your brain for such a thing.” “I know you wanted us to distribute all the blackmail and secrets to the city and destroy it,” Azal continued. “But Queen Chrysalis decided to use it to manipulate the ponies into setting up a scenario in which you could escape from them. It wasn’t possible to get to you while you were in the castle dungeons, but the queen figured that there would be substantially less security if you were being moved from one prison to another. So I bribed the leader of the Canterlot weather department with some free tickets to a Wonderbolts show to make sure it would storm today…” Nahara changed into her maid form. “I was the one who made sure the ponies would move you to Tartarus today. I altered some of the instructions in the guards’ ledgers.” “I blackmailed a construction forepony to tear up the road that the guards normally would have taken,” Mava said proudly. “And I was the pony who was driving the brick wagon,” Hafet grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun!” “Oh, and I was the mud puddle,” Salegg chimed in. “Made sure to be extra sticky so the carriage couldn’t move.” “I never thought it could be done.” Chrysalis put a hoof on her shoulder proudly. “But I have to hand it to your infiltrator here, she worked wonders as mud. Perhaps you could do it more for those mud face things you do here.” Psithyra took this in slowly. “So you disobeyed me… to give me a chance to escape?” Pride swelled up in Psithyra’s chest, not just for her six faithful changelings, but for her elder sister as well. “It seems I owe you an apology, sister.” “Don’t get all mushy on me now,” Chrysalis sniffed derisively. “I only did it because I still want to conquer this city, and it’s no fun ruling over a pile of ashes.” But Psithyra could smell and taste the affection that her older sister had for her. She had not felt this in a long time. “And we even managed to get all your armor and weapons back!” Khama brought out a crate with an open top; all of the equipment that the ponies had confiscated from Psithyra was inside. “Nahara put in the order in the guard captain’s schedule to have it moved outside the castle, and then I just picked it up from there.” Hafet snickered. “Those ponies are going to be so mad that one of their most valued prisoners escaped. Again.” “If it’s any consolation to them…” Azal said. “At least they have one prisoner in Tartarus.” “And I would very much prefer it to stay that way,” Chrysalis said. Then her voice grew a touch brittle. “Look. I know you all haven’t had the best opinion of me since the wedding. And…maybe that’s not completely undeserved…” She seemed to be having great difficulty getting the next words out. “But I do want to get better. At being a ruler. That… you can all look up to.” Chrysalis scuffed her hoof against the floor and looked away. The infiltrators and Psithyra were stunned. They had never heard such honest words from the queen before. Finally Salegg spoke. “I know I said before that you weren’t my queen. To be fair, you were being a really insufferable jerk at the time. But… you got us our princess back when there wasn’t any hope. That has to count for something. So I take back what I said before. You are my queen, and I will do as you ask. Within reason.” “Three cheers for Queen Chrysalis!” Hafet whooped. “Hip hip hooray!” As the six other changelings cheered, Psithyra went up to her sister and rested her head on Chrysalis’s shoulder. Both royal changelings looked each other in the eye, sharing in their unique bond. “Chrysalis…” Psithyra whispered, feeling the warmth of her older sibling suffuse into her own body. “No matter how bad things get, no matter how angry and frustrated you make me, you are still my sister and I will always love you. Nothing will ever change that.” And Chrysalis simply held Psithyra close and said, “And I love you.”