//------------------------------//
// 7. 
// Story: No Thanks for the Memories 
// by auctor 
//------------------------------//

“Keep it open, or I’ll be trapped forever!” Cozy Glow called, before flying into the cave.

“Would that be so terrible?” Chrysalis mused.

Tirek chortled, “No, not at all,” letting the hole he’d made in the cave’s shield close up.

Chrysalis looked up at Tirek from where she lay on the snow, vulnerable and helpless, “My magic?”

“It was delicious,” Tirek crowed, before leaping down the mountain.

Chrysalis scrambled, shrieking “No, no, no, no!” as she crawled hopelessly after him—

—crawling off the side of her bed, hitting the floor with a resounding thump.

Finding herself in darkness and covered by a warm blanket, instead of sunlight and cold snow, it took a moment for her to orient herself.

A beam of moonlight entered through a window of shatterproof crystal.  Sturdy stone walls.  A heavy door, locked from the other side, where she could hear hoofsteps receding, and a little later, hoofsteps approaching, telling her that as always, guards patrolled the hall outside.

Chrysalis got back on her bed and covered her face with the blanket.  It was a far more spacious and comfortable cage than the ones she’d put her present captors into when that power had been hers.  A remote observer might find that quite considerate, but to Chrysalis it was just another cage, in which she wallowed with no brood, no subjects, and no power.  Her only solace was that no‐one was watching as she sobbed herself back to sleep.