The door was locked.
I should’ve expected that. Flurry lowered her hoof to the porch with a solid clop, then absent-mindedly checked the window to her right. The curtains were drawn; the thin slit between the blue fabric was blocked by wood. A shelf? Did they board up the windows?
Flurry returned to the red door. It was a cheery rose-red, and the paint was new. It looked nothing like the tenements in Weter, nor the houses in the frontier. Aside from the numbers on the mailbox, there were no signs marking it as the foalhood home of two of Equestria's greatest heroes. Night Light and Twilight Velvet enjoyed their anonymity before the war.
Flurry looked down from the porch, overturning a few rocks in a small flower bed with a flick of her horn. There was no hidden key. Obviously. Stop stalling. The alicorn took a deep breath and turned around. She cocked a rear leg.
The door shattered from the one-legged buck, crunching inwards and falling into a small coat room. Wooden paint chips bounced off Flurry’s crystal flank armor, but there was no explosion or hail of gunfire. The snap of fine wood was the only sound in the street.
Flurry had just cast the changeling detection spell, but forced it through her horn again and licked her lips. The wave reverberated through the house, but she did not hear the telltale flare of a failing disguise, nor a flash of green. The house seemed empty.
She stepped on the broken door and smashed it into splinters without truly intending to; her armor was too heavy for it. The wooden floor below creaked as it pressed against the foundation from the armored alicorn. Flurry inspected the empty coat racks and small pot with an umbrella stuffed inside it. The pot had been knocked over, but was printed with bright sunflowers.
Flurry’s chest was tight. She took a breath, and it only seemed to get tighter. This is wrong. Chrysalis made a trophy out of it. She stepped forward through the entryway into the house properly, standing between an open kitchen and living room.
Space was a commodity in Canterlot; the city hung from the mountain. The fancy estates with lawns and gardens cost a fortune, but even the middle-class homes were modest affairs spruced up with elegant carvings and the occasional gilded marble.
The trim along the ceiling was still carved with tiny suns, printed with gold leaf. The walls were lacquered wood, giving the bottom floor a homey, rustic feel. The kitchen had pearl tile with a stove and fridge behind a marble island counter in the center. Shelves ringed the counters along the walls.
The living room had a couch and a plush chair. The couch had been pushed up against a bookshelf that leaned awkwardly against the window and depressed the curtains. A coffee table joined it in blocking another window. Books were scattered on the floor. Flurry could see where the shelf usually sat, on the opposite wall besides a modern sound system. The wall was discolored.
There was a portrait of Queen Chrysalis on the wall beside it.
She was wearing a crisp white military uniform, complete with a high-brimmed officer’s cap. Flurry didn’t recall her ever wearing anything like that; she was usually naked except for her trident crown. It was a bust portrait; the Queen of the Changelings smiled directly into the camera with slit eyes and fangs. Only her head and shoulders were visible, green mane flowing behind her.
Her fangs were very white, and her green slits seemed to burn with zeal. There was no warmth in her stare; it was predatory. Chrysalis leered at the living room.
The picture was dusty and slightly crooked. It hung there as a mandatory afterthought. The pictures beside it were more cared for. Flurry trotted over to them, stepping onto a worn rug and over a few of the scattered books. The wood creaked under her weight.
A changeling posed in front of a fuel truck. It was an old photo, in black-and-white and partially underdeveloped. Flurry guessed it was a mare from the shorter muzzle. She smiled in her black uniform in an unknown forest.
The picture beside it was a changeling stallion in a smock. He stood in a group of three other changelings, posing before a partially finished stained-glass window. Flurry recognized it immediately; it was one of the dozens lining Celestia’s throne room. Chrysalis’ black frame reared above a roaring panzer as the tank charged forward. She wasn’t filled out completely yet. The window was suspended in a mold at the time the picture was taken.
Flurry backed up, stomping atop a book. She crushed it flat, then lifted her hoof and peered down to see the title. It was in Herzlander. A Thousand and One Tips for Homestyle Cooking, the Changeling Way. There was a picture of a changeling in a chef’s hat pouring a pink vial into a pot. His fangs were bright and sharp in his smile.
The alicorn backed into the kitchen. Her flank bumped up against the marble island counter and jostled it. Her horn flickered as the tile underneath her bowed and cracked from her weight. The kitchen was full of knives, but none were ‘weapons.’
But there was a pistol upstairs. Flurry bumped into the doorframe and shattered it when she twisted to go up the open staircase from the living room. She had to fold her wings tight to avoid the wooden railing, and the stairs still almost collapsed from her armor.
Flurry ignored the laundry room and small dining room, only casting an eye through the slit in her helmet to the interior and window beyond. They led to a patio and small flower garden. The flowers had dried up.
The alicorn reached the second story. The wood bowed under her hooves and the entire frame shuddered. There were three rooms upstairs, but Flurry went to the one with the pistol first. Her horn’s aura flickered like a gold flame.
The door had been left slightly ajar. She pushed it open with a hoof as gently as she could. It slammed into the wall and knocked several pictures off their hangers. The room was an office space with a few tables and filing cabinets. It looked like it was partially a storage room, filled with dusty boxes and a closet with a few dresses and one suit.
There was also a black uniform hanging in the open closet. Flurry scanned the lapels around the collar, but didn’t recognize the rank. The sleeves were cut slim, for a mare.
The pistol sat atop the table. Flurry’s entry knocked a few spare bullets off the tabletop; they rolled around on the floor with more. A magazine sat half-filled next to the pistol. Flurry heaved a breath and reached out with her magic.
Spring’s broken. It was standard issue. From the last decade. Fired at training, then never again. The imprint was so faint she could barely feel anything about the owner. It sat in drawer until now. Frantic hooves cursing, trying to remember how to fix it. She picked up the pistol in her magic and drifted it over to her muzzle. It was unloaded.
No time.
The pistol crunched in her aura, splintering into metal shards from her telekinetic grip. Flurry let it fall to the floor and finally properly looked around the room. There was a shelf with two small ribbons propped next to the window to the backyard. Flurry stared at the sunshine reflecting through the glass.
Perfect spot for a telescope. Flurry stepped back, eyes darting from the ribbons to the gun to the boxes. Twilight’s room. She’d never been in it before. She couldn't even remember the house.
…This isn’t her room.
Flurry bumped heavily into the doorframe again with her flank and the wooden wall snapped outwards. She forced herself through the doorway. Her wings flared reflexively and carved a gouge into the wood. The knives in her feathers sliced through beige wallpaper as she walked back to the railing and stumbled down the hallway.
There were two more rooms, but she was only interested in one of them. Flurry stopped before a closed black door, the one next to the office. She leaned her helmet against the door; her burning horn charred the wood and the smell filled her nostrils.
Please.
Flurry twisted the lever with her flailing magic and let herself into her father’s room.
There was a poster of Chrysalis on the opposite wall next to a curtained window, clad in her white military uniform and grinning at Flurry. Follow Your Queen! was printed below her smirking muzzle. A small bed with no pillow or covers was below it. There was another poster glued to the ceiling, and small stickers of green stars that lit up under the flare of her horn. The poster on the ceiling depicted Changeling panzers racing across a field.
It took the alicorn a moment. The poster was for a movie called Blitz! and it proudly starred A Real War Hero! in the leading role. There was a pony running away in front of the panzers, muzzle twisted into a cartoonish, wide-eyed look of terror.
Flurry stepped into her father’s bedroom. Her hoof brushed against something and knocked it forward. She didn’t feel it under her greave, but a tiny figure spun and rolled onto the rug in front of her.
She swallowed, exposed lower jaw working as her mouth went dry. It took her a minute to look down. Flurry Heart whined low in the back of her throat.
It was a tiny figurine of a Changeling in blue armor. The joints moved. It was obviously one of Chrysalis’ Queen’s Guard. There were more scattered near the bed, and a wooden submachine gun toy shoved under the bare bedframe.
…no.
The wooden floor bowed heavily under her hooves. Flurry stared at the figure. The little Queen’s Guard was smiling under his blue helmet. She wrenched her head back up to the poster on the ceiling. Above the tanks, a bust of the lead changeling stallion stared down at her. A Real War Hero!
No.
Chrysalis smirked from her poster. The floor bowed from the alicorn's weight, threatening to break. Like the kitchen.
No.
Flurry Heart reared away from the room with a snarl and crashed through the doorframe with flared wings. She vaulted through the railing and cleared the stairs in a wild leap, landing back in the living room. Her hooves shattered the floor and cracked the foundation below it.
But there was solid ground below her. Her horn glowed and she forced another spell. This time, the blood ran from her nose freely.
Her wild life detection spell picked up three signs below the kitchen. Flurry heaved and flung herself towards the marble island with a roar that sounded more like a beast than anything a pony could make. She rammed the countertop aside, sending it crashing into the shelves.
There was a high shriek below her. A knife flashed in green magic and sparked off her crystal armor. It didn’t even leave a mark. Flurry tensed her legs, standing over the hole and angling her horn down. Her eyes glowed in the light from her horn; liquid fire pooled down the spirals.
The changeling mare retracted the knife in her magic for another wild stab, then registered what was standing over her hideaway. She gaped up at the Princess, and the blade tumbled out of her aura and clattered to the ground.
Flurry breathed in, jaw quivering. Canterlot hung off a mountain, only Lower Canterlot really had basements or space carved directly into the mountainside. Most houses and buildings only had the smallest of storage spaces, if anything at all. Canterlot Castle’s so-called dungeons were barely cut into the supports and reinforced like the airship dockyards.
She took in the sight below her. It wasn’t a proper basement, more a hole cut into the foundation, cramped and meant for storage. Like the musty boxes upstairs. A few crystal lamps lined the rough-hewn walls, coupled with piled-up bedding, pillows, cans of food and a few empty jugs of water.
And pink vials bundled in a small cloth.
Lastly, there were three changelings. A mare, a stallion, and a small colt. The space was too cramped for all of them. The colt crouched under the stallion, near the very back of the crawlspace. His father shuffled backwards, blue pupilless eyes wide and wings jittering. All of them were naked and their black carapaces were gray from dust.
The mare did not say anything. She fell back from the opening and landed with a quiet hiss. Her jaw moved, but only a rasping cough came out. Flurry exhaled above them. Her teeth ground audibly.
The knife had tumbled back into the hole and landed at the mare’s shaking legs. She laid with her legs curled against her, staring upwards in mute horror. The marble top counter had slammed into the shelves next to the stove, scattering bits of plates and utensils. It was embedded deep into the wall.
Flurry stared down at the changeling. The changeling gazed up at her. Neither said anything.
The alicorn’s lips trembled. “What are you doing here?” she finally choked out. The stallion clenched the young colt to his barrel with holed hooves. One hoof pressed over his muzzle, but his son still managed to cry through a hole in his father’s hoof.
The mare blinked and quivered.
“What,” Flurry repeated, “Are. You. Doing. Here?” Her voice echoed through the hole.
The changeling breathed in raggedly. “We…w-we live here.”
“No,” Flurry immediately replied. She shook her head. “No. W-where’s the stuff? Where is everything? What was here before?”
“P-please,” the mare pleaded, “we…we didn’t have any servants-”
“Slaves,” Flurry snarled down.
The mare’s voice broke. “We d-didn’t have any! I…I never k-killed anypony!” she continued. The changeling spoke accented Equestrian as good as Thorax. “My h-husband didn’t! He’s a glassmaker!”
Flurry glared at the stallion, but he was busy restraining his son and whispering desperate Herzlander into his ears. The colt was maybe eight. Old enough to play with Queen’s Guard.
The mare saw Flurry’s eyes drift to her family behind her. Her own eyes went down to the knife near her hooves. The alicorn felt her stare shift and returned to glaring at her. “Where’s…” Flurry swallowed, “where’s the stuff?”
“I don’t…” the changeling managed, “I-I don’t understand.”
“Where is the stuff? F-from the house?” Flurry growled. She blinked and felt tears. Her horn flared brighter.
“I-it was empty!” the mare shrieked. “It was empty!”
Flurry looked up at the walls. She was facing the living room, standing over the hole in the kitchen. Her eyes danced wildly as her muzzle twitched under the helmet. “No.”
“We live here,” the changeling said below her. “We’ve lived here for…” she caught herself. “P-please, we didn’t fight in the war.”
“You did,” Flurry said absently. “You have a gun.”
“I didn’t kill anypony,” the mare repeated desperately. “We didn’t hurt anypony.”
Flurry stared at the picture of the mare, almost a decade younger, standing in front of the fuel truck. Logistics. The changeling smiled at the camera. Where in Equestria did you take that picture? Where in my home?
The mare looked down at the knife again, then back up to the alicorn’s exposed jaw.
Flurry ground her teeth. “You…” she heaved, “you raised your little parasite here? Here?” She tossed her head. “Changelings raise their grubs communally. You don’t…” she trailed off. “You d-don’t get to pretend to be us.”
“We…please,” the mare said. “Please.”
Flurry’s muzzle trailed blood from her nose and tears from her eyes. She shouted, and her voice shook the walls. “You don’t get to raise your parasite in my father’s room.”
The stallion and mare shrank down, pressing themselves to the earth. “Oh Gods,” the stallion whispered.
What Gods? There's a Crusade against you now. Flurry laughed a cold, tight cackle.
The mare shuffled back, blocking her mate and foal from the alicorn. “Please,” she begged, “we…we didn’t know.”
“You think this house was built for you?” Flurry snarled down at her. Her horn had reignited the smaller spires on her helmet and the burning crown framed her eyes in a hellish glow. “You think it was just waiting for you?”
None of them offered an answer.
“Or did you just think none of us would come back?” Flurry bared her teeth. Her eyes went to the stallion. “You…you made the windows of that bitch. While she t-tortured my aunt and c-carved up my mother.”
The stallion licked his fangs, still clutching his son. “It…it was an order-”
Flurry tossed her head back. “Orders!” Her voice blew out the windows on the bottom floor, raining glass shards into the street. “All of you! You were just ordered! That makes it okay!”
The changelings screamed at the rain of glass and the press of magic in the shout. The pictures rattled on the living room wall; the stallion’s and mare’s pictures fell to the ground and shattered.
“You didn’t have an order to live here!” Flurry growled. Her voice cracked deep into a sobbing hiss. “You wanted to live here! In my home! What…what did we do to you!? What did w-we do to deserve this!?”
The colt sobbed in his father’s hooves. Flurry shifted her eyes to him. “You played with Queen’s Guard while they tortured her! While they fucking laughed at her! She d-didn’t do anything to you!”
The mare’s eyes went to the knife again. “P-please, w-we didn’t know.”
Flurry suddenly felt very calm as something inside her hardened. She pulled her head back from the pit the bugs hid inside, and her horn pulsed with the life detection spell again. It bounced through the house, then out to the street.
She felt more bugs hiding in attics and basements and floors. Ponies had no reason to cower, not now. Hiding like rats, like insects, like parasites now that the horseshoe is on the other hoof. How many of my ponies hid? How many begged? Flurry turned her glacial irises down to the mare.
“You knew,” she said in an emotionless tone. “Everyday, you walked past my ponies. All of you knew. We didn’t do anything to you. My mother didn't do a thing to deserve what your Queen did.”
The mare’s hooves shook. Her horn sparked with a feeble green light. Flurry didn’t bother hiding the twist of her emotions from them. The colt trembled under his father.
“Please,” the stallion begged. “Please, no. No.”
How many of my ponies said that? Did you listen? Flurry’s horn burned. She took a deep breath, and snuffed out the fire from her horn. The spires of her helmet still burned, and the crystal swirled with the pattern of flames.
Flurry stepped back from the hole, then took a step to the side. She stared blankly at the wall, seemingly distracted. The colt sobbed below her. He was too young to control his emotion sense.
“Not just her.”
Flurry looked around the house. It was just a house. There was no trace her family ever lived there, that her father ever trained there or her mother ever foalsat or her aunt ever looked to the stars.
Synovial. He watched as Chrysalis came to take me.
Trimmel. Held Quartz up as a shield.
Jachs. Watched my aunt be tortured like a coward.
Vaspier. Sent his good little 'lings after me.
There was nothing. Changelings burned the school and burned her books, rewrote the war and claimed the ponies started it. Changelings shipped her family’s things to Vesalipolis for their Queen and moved into their homes with a smile.
They all did something.
Changelings raised families in the wreckage of Equestria. Flurry looked around at a couch and bookshelves made with slave labor, a sound system that played cover songs of dead Equestrians, books scattered across the floor full of lies. Changelings raised their families while ponies were shoved into cocoons or worked to death in the mines of her Empire.
The Crystal Heart burns them all.
Far to the north, the Heart hummed with fire and whispered with the dead.
Because they all deserve to die.
Flurry waited for the mare to seize the knife and try it. She looked away, towards the living room wall with a dimmed horn, but let her emotions speak for her. The mare could feel it, so could her husband and even the little colt.
You want to be a Queen’s Guard? You can die like one.
There was a shuffling in the hole and Flurry exhaled.
“Please,” the mare said. “Just us. Not him. Please.”
Flurry stared at the wall, eyes wet with tears and nose trailing blood.
“Please, Princess,” the mare begged. “J-just…just leave him.”
You shoved foals into cocoons in the Empire.
Flurry remembered the stallion outside the armory, howling for the death of those little parasites that good little 'lings brought with them while her ponies were worked to death.
“We deserve to take everything from them.”
Her eyes drifted along the living room wall. Jadis’ voice echoed.
“You at your worst could not match Sombra.”
The dusty picture of Chrysalis still hung on the wall. Flurry could see her reflection in it, lit by her burning helmet. Her helmet overlapped the Queen’s muzzle, slit eyes and fangs seemingly protruding from her own muzzle in the glass.
The mare poked her head up from the hole, head fin bent and eyes wide in a pleading stare. The knife was left where it lay. “Please…”
Flurry’s horn glowed and she looked away from the picture, staring down at the mare. The changeling closed her eyes and flinched. Flurry Heart took a deep, shuddering breath.
There was a burst of fire, and the Princess vanished in a crack of magic that raced down the crystal armor. Her armored hooves scorched the kitchen tile as she teleported away, leaving behind a wrecked house and a terrified family.
She reappeared further down the street, horn smoking and stumbling out of the teleport. Flurry fell to her knees, crashing onto the cobblestone awkwardly in her armor. She heaved again, throat dry.
Cadance whispered to her in a quiet wind.
“You have a good, strong heart. Destiny is a choice, Flurry.”
The Crystal Empress answered.
“They say my heart is as hard as crystal. Let us see what their words are worth.”
There was a shout further down the street. Jadis and the group of guards raced down the road, having followed her earlier shout. Flurry could feel their weapons without looking at them. She still looked up and saw the wisps of magic flying off Jadis’ rifle bouncing along her flank.
“You were born on the eve of war.”
Jadis was an excellent shot, even with her limp. She had killed in the Empire, during the war, in Aquileia. She killed the griffon that wounded her foreleg with a shot through the eye. It was her rifle. She didn’t love the rifle, but she loved what it represented to her. Flurry heard Rainbow Dash in her head.
“One weapon failed. We got another.”
There was a crater to the west of the Celestial Plain, full of the ashes of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers of the Hegemony. Flurry should have felt guilty. Her mother would have. Her aunt would have wept.
Flurry Heart felt nothing.
“Princess!” Jadis shouted. The crystal pony approached, but Flurry summoned a bubble shield around herself like when she was a foal. She turned it opaque so they couldn’t see her. Flurry could still feel them crowd around the shield and fan out on the street.
Her family’s house was quiet. The door was splintered, but there wasn’t any movement inside as the changeling family waited in their ruined hiding spot. It would have been trivial to order her guards into the house. And Flurry knew her ponies would do whatever she ordered them to do.
"Be the storm."
Flurry dispelled her shield and stood up. “Back to the castle,” she ordered in a short voice. “I’m done here.”
“P-princess?” Jadis stuttered, taken aback.
“I’m done,” Flurry repeated. “Let’s go.” Her hooves moved on their own, forcing herself away from the house and back towards the castle. Her ponies milled around uncertainly. The pegasus with sagging eyes glanced at the broken red door.
“Let’s go!” Flurry shouted and flared her wings. The crystals hummed in the air.
The guards scrambled to keep up with Flurry’s long strides, and she marched them away from her family’s house, back to the Plaza of the Arts and towards the castle. The townhome was left behind.
Flurry Heart knew she’d never go back there again.
It’s not home. I was born in the Crystal City. That’s home.
But that assurance felt hollow in her chest.
Weapons don’t have homes.