//------------------------------//
// Hate 
// Story: We Were Trapped in Stone, And Now We're Free 
// by King of Madness 
//------------------------------//

I wake up to find myself in some kind of cave; the shine of crystals sheds light on the scene I wake up to. I get up onto my hoofs and hear a voice behind me.

"Sunny, w-what's happening?!" Asks Izzy.

I turn to face her and gasp in horror. There stands Izzy, Hitch, Zipp, and Pipp. All four of them look to me with fearful expressions. In the dim light, I see their bodies are unmoving; almost as if they are stone. Then I realize they are stone; all but their faces, which continue to look to me with expressions of fear and pain. I try to move towards them, but find myself unable to move from where I stand. I look down to find my hooves encased in the same stone. Indeed, the stone is slowly moving up my legs, preventing me from moving from where I stand.

My four friends cry out to me; hoping for answers. Hoping for help. But I have no answers and can only watch as the stone slowly covers their faces, freezing their horrified expressions in statue. I stare at them; despite their now unchanging appearance, I can still feel their pleading for help. It is a feeling I have felt before though only vaguely. I remember the stone statue that me and Izzy had come upon a month ago. Just as I connect the dots in my head though, I hear a laugh.

I look around the dark recesses of the cavern; the laugh seems to come from everywhere. It is not at all a joyful laugh, but one filled with anger and pain. And what's more, I know to whom the laugh belongs to. The first I see of her is her eyes; a pair of green glowing orbs within the darkness. She steps into the light; almost an insectoid parody of an Alicorn. Chrysalis.

When I had freed the three from their stone prison, they all had acted very oddly. Cozy Glow; the Pegasus filly; had taken to deeply taking in simple sensations such as gliding in the breeze and rolling around in grass. Yet, she also was very cautious. She seemed afraid of us, like as if a single wrong step would bring upon dire consequences to her. Tirek; the centaur; was a very quiet creature. He seemed to struggle with his grip on reality; as if waking up from a dream that had spanned his entire life. He would often just sit and look upon the sea with a contemplative look.

But Chrysalis was a very different sort. I had pieced together that she was a changeling and for the most part, she seemed almost feral. She kept to herself and seemed much like a rapid, abused animal; ready to attack anyone that approached her.

I had deduced that these three were foes of the Equestrian heroes of old; and more prominently, that they had been fully aware during their imprisonment. I felt deeply sorry for them; I couldn't begin to imagine their horrible state of being for so very long. So, my friends and I have done our best to care for them as they adjust to their newfound freedom. I had always felt that Chrysalis was someone to very careful and wary of, but I would never have expected this.

"Hello, Sunny Starscout." Chrysalis hisses. “So, nice of you to join us."

I can feel the stone sarcophagus inching up my body as a look between my already incased friends and our captor. "Chrysalis, w-what is this?! What are you doing?!"

Chrysalis comes closer to me. "Oh, but isn't it obvious. You're all being turned to stone. Well, your friends already are; you took a bit longer to wake up."

"But why?!" I ask as the stone reaches up to my chest. I find it becoming difficult to breath; my heart and lungs slowly giving way to granite.

Chrysalis' green eyes gleam as they stare at me. "Why? Why?! I would think you would already know!" She steps closer; her glowing eyes glaring down at me. "You know what I have suffered through, don’t you? A thousand years of unending agony, trapped in stone."

I nod. "Yes, I know; but why are doing this? We haven't done anything to you!"

Chrysalis let out some kind of snort and rolled her eyes to look upon each of us. "You think you know, but you don't!" She fixes her gaze back on me. "Discord set us up and they left us to suffer! They left us to stew in our agony and with every day, my hatred boiled in my mind as my body remained forever still. Forced to watch day after day go on and on and on and on and on and on!"

"Yes, I know." I answer, the stone rising to my collar bone.

"NO!" She shouts as she puts her face to mine, her green eyes staring daggers into mine." "You don't know! But you will. You and your friends will know. It took time. Time to feed off the love you all share to gain the power I needed. But now, you all will know my pain!"

"But why?!" I ask again in desperation. "We haven't done anything to you!" I repeat.

She hisses, looking to the ground with her wild eyes. "I wanted them to suffer. They should've suffered! Every fiber of my being begged for it and continues to! But they're gone. So, you; you who have taken to representing them will suffer in their stead! You will have to take the hatred I have harbored for over a thousand years! The hate that has boiled in my mind; burning within me for time untold!"

"I understand!" I plead to her as the stone reaches up to my neck. "I understand why you feel like this. But hatred isn't the answer!"

She strikes me across the face at this statement; her eyes are wild and her voice is hysterical to such a point I hadn't seen before.

"Hate? Hate?! Hate?!  Let me tell you something about hate! I was in that stone cocoon for over a thousand years! If the word hate had been uttered by my statued self every second of every day of those thousand years, it wouldn't equal a billionth of the hate I feel! Hate! Hate!" She bursts into a fit of laughter; she sounds utterly hysterical. She sounds as if she were suffocating on her hatred. I realize then that she very likely is. For over a thousand years she has suffered and in all that time, her anger and hatred has only boiled within her. Her hatred isn't just consuming her; it's literally killing her and she must let it out.

"Please, Chrysalis." I beg as the stone crawls up my neck. "If you need to let your anger out, wouldn't you rather do it to the those responsible? Instead of the ones who freed you? Who've tried to help you?"

Chrysalis looks at me with contemplation. It seems to be an internal battle between logic and emotion in her mind. "Those responsible? They're all gone!" She shouts. "They're gone; so you have to take what I would give to them!"

The stone crawls over my head. Everything is so painfully stiff. Nothing in my body seems to work. It seems unavoidable; me and my friends are to suffer in darkness for the sake of one denied her vengeance. And who is to say we are the only ones to suffer? Indeed, it occurs to me that Chrysalis will unleash her horrible wrath on any pony that she encounters, for the sake of satisfying her unsatisfiable wrath. It is now that an idea comes to me. An idea that just might persuade this engine of rage and hatred to let us go. As the stone crawls over my face, my still free mouth wheezes out. "What about Discord?"

The crawling of the stone stops. I look into the green eyes that shine in the darkness around us. For a moment, all is silent as those eyes stare into mine.

"Discord? He's still here?"

"Yes!" I answer.

The eyes glow in intensity, a hiss echoing around us. "Where?"