//------------------------------// // chapter eighteen // Story: Changeling Heart and the New Moon // by ambion //------------------------------// Changeling Heart and the New Moon chapter eighteen Chrysalis didn’t find Luna under ominous - or even auspicious - circumstances. The sun was creeping higher in the sky, and its warmth shone down upon the two dark beings. Birds sang in the trees, at least until the Queen of changelings startled them from their perches, sending all the coloured feathers squawking away. There were bushes and shrubs and all sorts of flowers. Even Chrysalis could recognize the humble buttercup. She trod it underhoof. The Queen took it as a good sign that Luna hadn’t waited on the stroke of midnight of a stormy night this kind of clandestine meeting; things were moving much too quickly to wait on style. Drama be damned. For once, the warmth and light seemed to have eased Luna from her usual, surly manner. It didn’t mean she was happy, but at least she wasn’t glowering at the world in general. Chrysalis wandered over to the flowerbeds. She looked at the vivid colours as she waited, then waited more. Flowers, and these were probably nice ones, couldn’t keep her interest for long. “Well? You asked for me. Do you have something to say, or did you just want to see me?” Luna grimaced. “Strange you should say such a thing.” “Oh?” “Yes. I had a talk with one of yours. Truth be told, she came to have a talk with me. I think you know who I mean.” Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “Surreal,” the Queen growled. She knew it’d be her, of course it would be, but she had to be certain. She gently cupped a soft pink flower in her hoof and stared into it. Luna nodded. “She had certain ideas, but seems a bit confused. She seems to think she can be a messenger between us.” Chrysalis snorted with humour black as her hide. “No. She just wants a reason. She needs justification for her actions. Anything that’ll obscure the truth.” Power crackled through the Queen’s hoof. Petal by petal the flower disintegrated, and from there the tainted touch spread to stem and stalk, withering as it went. A flash of Luna’s magic stymied the damage with a timely cut. Dying flowers fell, but the whole would survive, if tended. “What is the truth, Chrysalis? I can appreciate the irony that I must ask it of you.” Only then did Chrysalis turn on the princess. “It has nothing to do with you.” Luna’s jaw set a hard line. “I think your lost little changeling would say otherwise.” “Do you have her? Do you know where she is?”  Voices were rising. “You're not answering my question.” “Trust me, I noticed,” the Queen snapped back. She steadied herself, but it was the calm of banked anger. “Do you have her or not?” What followed could have been called lot’s of dramatic things, but it was essentially a staring contest. Luna looked away first. “No. I don’t. Nor do I know where she went. I do not think I would give her up to you were it otherwise.” “Don’t play games with me Luna,” Chrysalis growled. “You don’t understand.” The dark princess flared her wings. “I have never made a game of this, unlike you! And no, I do not understand. So tell me the truth! Have you forgotten where you are? I called for you, remember. Things have changed.” Chrysalis reared back, barking out a humourless laugh. “And who would know better of change than a changeling?” Without warning she dropped back to her hooves, almost listless in her stance. “Fine. You want to know so badly? Surreal isn’t well. She’s sick.” “She hardly seemed ill.” Chrysalis lunged into Luna’s personal space, or lack of it. “And you would so obviously know about what it means to be a changeling! I’ll sit here and you can tell me how wrong I am, because surely you know more about it than I do! She’s sick, and whatever she might say, keeping her from me is the worst thing you could do for her. It is hurting her.” Luna winced. Chrysalis snarled. “That’s right. Hurting her. If she wants you to find her, than she will make sure that you will. Have you considered that in all of this city you might be the only pony that might actually care what happens to her?” Chrysalis paused, only to relent and breath. She looked into the distance, past Luna, staring at nothing in particular. “It’s funny, really. So funny I could cry. Now. Was there anything else to this little get together, or can I leave your presence, oh gracious princess?” She turned to go, but even that simple motion reflected a certain, deep set exhaustion. Luna had only silence. The intensity to Chrysalis’ emotion stunned her. “No. No, there is not,” she managed at last. the Queen of changelings snorted and flicked her tail. “Good. You know where you can reach me, and rest assured that if I want to get to you, I can, guards be damned. I’m sure dearest sister of yours is more than anxious try me as well. And you know what? I wouldn’t mind blasting her a second time. I just might.” She took a few steps to leave, leaving Luna to mull over her words before stopping. “Nice speech, by the way. I especially liked what you did with that fruit.” The breeze blew up the ashes of the flowers, which swirled around them both, filling the air with the scents of sweetness and burning. The Royal Canterlot Gardens were always bigger than ponies expected them to be. This was alright, because Chrysalis wasn’t a pony, and she was also much bigger than could be expected. She could fly, but meandering through the empty pathways gave her more time to bank her anger and think. The gasp of a startled pony broke her from her reverie. A flick of her horn that was hardly worth the effort muted the voice and numbed the mind behind it, but rather than play a bit with her sudden toy, the Queen of changelings merely blinded the pony and her memory to the moment and passed by. Her heart just wasn’t in it. Surreal, she groaned within the confines of her own head, spitting it across her thoughts like a curse. She tried to think, but her ideas circled one another with infuriating aimlessness. She needed to rest on it, and feed. A proper, healthy feeding, from proper, healthy ponies. She could stop leeching from the suspect jewels and their half demented alicorn entirely. Once she caught Surreal, she could beat the sense into her to do the same. Thinking along such lines, Chrysalis walked headlong into the ambush. Her eyes narrowed, and she bore her fangs. She took a step back, glancing about through the corners of her eyes for a way out. There wasn’t any. Several ponies stood arrayed before her, made one in their intent. The guards watched her with eyes hard and cold as their armour. With a unicorn to each side, Shining Armour glared murder. Chrysalis’ mouth twisted to a snarl. “Hello, lover.” She could feel magic at work, sustained by the unicorns. The Queen tried to change their minds, only to meet resolute resistance to her spell. “We’ve had time to learn a thing or two, monster.” “Are you still upset about that whole thing? It was nothing personal. You’re hardly that interesting.” She let loose a nasty little cackle. “This madness ends here. Take her down.” She met the first charging earth pony with a punch that sent him tumbling away, only to have a pegasus grasp at her throat. Another earth pony tackled her flank, knocking her legs from under her. Her windpipe burning for air, Chrysalis pummelled at the pegasus’ chest, her blows denting the solid metal, but for her fury it didn’t give way and the pegasus held on. Her back leg shot out, tripping a unicorn and smashing into the shoulder of another. Their minds might have been protected, but what about their bodies? Green fire entrapped the staggered unicorn, whipping him around in a wide sweep that sent the other ponies sprawling before being driven into the pegasus at her neck. With a shout of surprise and a heavy impact he was swatted away. Chrysalis flung the wild eyed unicorn away, roaring with challenge as she regained her footing. She barely had caught her next breath when the furious Shining Armour collided headlong into her, sending the huge changeling backwards head over hooves. They tumbled, and he came out on top. Magic burned her eyes as Chrysalis snarled. Yelling and blind, the Queen threw a wild haymaker at the captain, but he caught her strike with his leg and drove the other into her face with a resounding crack. He reared back to slam both forelegs down together, only to miss as she dodged out of the way. Following through on the motion, Chrysalis bashed at his face with hers, unbalancing Shining Armour enough to get her hooves up and under his chest. With a shove she managed to launch him away. The captain landed neatly on his hooves while she tried to stand, but ponies grappled with her limbs and grasped at her head and throat. The Queen shrieked as she let loose a reckless surge of magic that knocked them from her, yet even as the green light filled her vision another flash of magic slammed into her. “There’s a cell in Tartarus with your name on it!” Shining Armour shouted. Chrysalis spat defiance, and another surge crashed into her. “Give up, parasite!” Blinded a second time, she swung at the nothingness before her eyes, hitting nothing. A kick to the side of her head dazed Chrysalis. Shining armour pressed his hoof down hard into her temple, amping up the pressure until it felt as if her skull would crack and cave, and all the while her vision was blurry and filled with stars. Of course, what were stars without the night? What before had seemed like nothingness was blazing brilliance compared to what came next. A tide of tangible darkness that coursed through them, pony and changeling alike, carrying Shining Armour away from the Queen. Thick tendrils of writhing blackness chained him to the dirt, which he struggled against vainly. Chrysalis tried to stand only to find that the same power held her in its immutable grip, as it did every one of the guards, pinning them all. “Enough of this! Stand down, Shining Armour.” The unicorn shouted something wordlessly venomous. The constricticons visibly tightened against him, and he gasped for breath. “Calm yourself, captain, or I will do it for you. Stop fighting! Submit!” The voice brooked no argument, but even as the unicorn slackened his struggles his eyes went to pinpricks and his flesh paled. Luna stalked through the stricken like the shadow of death. When she strode into Chrysalis’ line of sight, even the Queen stilled with fear. Like a change spell gone horribly awry, the princess was aflame, burning with patches of midnight blue and black that ate away at her form. As Chrysalis watched, one eye was eaten away in the magic, slowly remade as the dark touch passed through it. Luna’s voice resonated with strange undertones, like two voices speaking as one. “What is the meaning of this?” The Queen couldn’t meet the gaze of one hale eye, one tainted. "Shining, whose authority are you acting on? Has Celestia ordered this action?” Luna’s dark mane, usually calm and placid, frayed and melded together only to fray again. “Speak, now!” “No. Not hers. Mine.” the captain managed to say, mesmerized in fear. It was like watching a nightmare strive into being. “You do not have that authority! The Queen of changelins is under my royal protection. Your attack on her is an attack on me. Or have you forgotten that there is more than precious Celestia above you now?" Silence fell upon them. “Go. Now. All of you, and you may yet have jobs to return to. Shining Armour, I will not be merciful again.” The bindings of blackness over the ponies broke and crumbled into nothingness. The ponies hastened upright to leave, content to leave Chrysalis to Luna’s mercy. All but Shining. “Princess, with all due respect, look at yourself,” he pleaded. Luna raised one smouldering hoof to her eye - the one that wasn’t slitted - and went silent. Silence, unmoving, only breathing. As Luna shut her eyes the dark flames began to reverse their course across her body, undoing what had been done. The princess shuddered and was herself once more. “I am...I am in control, captain. Now go. Do not press my patience again. Until such time as you are ordered to apprehend her, the changeling’s treachery is my problem.” The unicorn nodded stiffly and made to leave. “This isn’t over.” Luna ignored the comment. The princess towered over the Queen. “I may yet give that order, Chrysalis.” The grasping emptiness snapped, and Luna offered her hoof to the fallen Queen, who accepted it to stand. From the twinges in her flesh and cracks in her hide, she felt that she’d not only gotten the short of the stick, but had been vigorously beaten with it. “What was that about?” she asked the Queen asked through a grimace. Whether by intent or not, Luna misheard the question. “Of anypony, Shinging Armour has the most cause to bear a grudge against you.” Luna scowled. “Nor do I think his anger misplaced. Such is a consequence of your actions to deal with. Chrysalis laughed, even though it ached to do so. “That’s rich coming from you, little moon.” The Queen worked the kinks from her neck. “You know, I could almost say I needed that bit of fun. It’s really whet my appetite.” Luna said nothing, opting instead to flare her wings and lift off. “Tread carefully, Chrysalis. Shining was right; this isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Tomorrow will bring more than enough trouble for us both. I suggest you consider your position carefully before we have this conversation again.” On that note the princess beat her wide wings and left. After a moment, a disheveled gray pegasus flew out also.