Celestia’s gaze swept over the stone-speckled wasteland below as she glided through the air. The wind shifted, forcing her to adjust her wingspan. Hours had passed since the last time she spied any greenery. Even under ideal conditions, it would be centuries before anything grew here. Thorax couldn’t have gotten this wrong, could he?
Despite a rocky start to his relationship with Equestria, King Thorax proved himself trustworthy time and time again. Celestia would be a fool to question him now. Still, conflicting doubts clashed in the back of her mind, leaving her thoughts as unstable as the dunes of the earthen ocean below.
Pushing those thoughts aside, she forced herself to focus on the task before her. Based on the position of the sun, centered in the sky above, Celestia surmised her journey took most of the day. She trusted Thorax, she decided, but more explicit directions would have aided her greatly on her journey.
Her budding annoyance only mounted as a harsh gale caused her to falter. Even at such a great height, Celestia still found herself caught amidst a swirling cloud of sharp sand. With a defeated sigh, her wings tilted gently. The harsh winds nipped at them, ruffling the feathers as she descended. Unless the weather improved, flight would be out of the question.
Folding her wings, the alicorn dropped gracefully from the air with a practiced dive, landing hard on her horseshoes with enough force to deepen the cracks already spread through the dry earth. The wind howled through the empty landscape like a beast, waiting in ambush, but she pushed forward with unwavering resolve.
As she continued, midday sun faded from view, along with the horizon. Razor-sharp gales tore through her pastel mane and tail, causing them to billow madly. The sand clung to her porcelain white fur like small needles. With a wave of her horn and a warm golden glow, she summoned her magic, forming it into a bubble around her.
Nature clawed at her shield, but her spell never faltered.
As visibility grew worse, Celestia lowered her head. She watched for anything that looked out of place against the monotone colors of the sandstorm. With each step, she felt her hooves slip deeper into the dunes.
As she yanked herself free with each trudging step, her thoughts drifted to the bed waiting for her back in Canterlot. She would have given anything to nestle between the silky pink bed sheets, nuzzling her mane into the soft feather pillows.
Overwhelmed by her intoxicating fantasies, Celestia’s confidence dwindled. But through a brief break in the storm, her goal came into view. Tall stone spires, rising from the sand like talons, tearing their way through the earth and up into the sky. Though the storm hid most of the finer details from view, she spied a series of strange holes bored into the mountain, in patterns far too clean and orderly to be natural:
A changeling hive.
Celestia set herself towards one of the openings at the base of the stone monolith. Jagged stones scattered around the entrance resembled a hungry maw more than any cave. As the fluid sand shifted into solid stone, Celestia let her spell fade. Once out of the storm completely, Celestia shook herself free of her desert coat. She would still need a shower once she returned home, but it felt sufficient for the task at hand.
Though the cobweb-laden corridors suggested the hive had long since been abandoned, Celestia knew better than to underestimate the Changeling Queen. She would not make that mistake again. Dressed in a careful stoicism practiced over centuries, she kept her head high and walked deeper into the mountain.
Even if her sister ruled as master of the night, Celestia carried no love for the dark. Tales from her youth told of horrible monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting for young fillies to drift off to sleep. The thought sent shudders down her spine. These weren’t stories anymore. Celestia faced what once lurked in the dark. She fought many of them. She nearly died to one.
She shook those thoughts away.
Things changed. A string of humiliating defeats had stripped away the legend behind the boogeyman. The Changelings abandoned their old ways. They pulled themselves out of the shadows to become true citizens of Equestria. In her heart, Celestia cared for them, same as any of her own little ponies. Now, only one monster remained.
After the Changeling Queen fell from grace, Celestia’s old fears diminished, burned away by the love and support of all of those that stood alongside her. With thoughts of them in her head, Celestia burned bright with determination, a flame that reflected through the golden light that erupted from her horn as she pressed forward into the dark.
Celestia remembered little of her first visit to a changeling hive. Only flashes and glimpses that she saw the few times she woke from Chrysalis’ magic. The halls twisted and wound in on themselves, forming a nightmarish labyrinth just as deadly as the creatures that once inhabited it.
Her magic light fell across the faded green crystals that protruded from the walls, drawing forth a flicker of their long dormant magic. Once, these gems bathed the caves around them with their eerie green glow. Now, dead and abandoned, they waited for their masters to return. Unclean, uneven walls bent at angles that no pony could carve. At certain points, the walls turned inwards, stretching overhead like the ribcage of the mountain.
The volume of these caves stretched on far longer than Celestia would have believed possible. Each step brought with it a slight incline or gradual turn. Some led deeper into the mountain, others were a near vertical incline. Each step further warped any sentiment of navigation, along with any hope of ever finding her way back out. In a way, Celestia found herself almost in awe of the Changelings. Of their trickery and deceit so ingrained into them that even their architecture could not escape its influence.
Sore hooves and a magical strain in her horn told Celestia that she’d been wandering for hours. A worrying number of collapsed tunnels weren’t making her journey any easier. Celestia wondered if even the Changelings themselves would be able to navigate their old home in this state of disrepair.
A series of tunnels and turns left Celestia standing before a massive wooden gate. The claustrophobic ceiling vanished, stretching up high enough that even her light couldn’t find it. The same green gems that littered the hive were present here, embedded into the wood. Broken slivers and cracked shards formed an intricate mosaic of the Changeling Queen, proud and confident, surrounded by her loyal army. It must have been a sight to behold back when magic still flowed freely through it.
With a surge of composure and a deep, steadying breath, Celestia wrapped her golden grasp around the doors and pushed them open. The hinges turned with a shrill cry, revealing the shattered remnants of the throne room beyond.
Granite pillars lined the sides of the room, except for one that had collapsed into a pile of rubble. Above, where the pillar once supported, the roof caved in, allowing a streak of sunlight to filter in through the gap. A trickle of sand spilled in from the storm outside. Torn and faded banners hung from broken golden hooks; their grand crests unrecognizable now. Sconces filled with green gem shards dotted the walls. Much like their whole counterparts, they had lost their luster. Without them to push it back, the darkness claimed the back half of the throne room.
At the darkness’ edge, a staircase led upward, spiraling around a stone pedestal at the center of the room. Atop the pedestal, its gold sheen barely visible in the shadows, Celestia saw a crumbling throne. Her expression hardened as recognized the silhouette sitting upon it.
Chrysalis.
The princess stood tall as she advanced into the great hall. With her horn aglow and muscles tensed, Celestia stepped into the beast’s lair, stopping at the line where the light and dark swirled in a thick miasma. Through the hole in the roof, she could feel the comforting glimmer of sunlight on her back, solidifying her confidence.
“Princess.” Chrysalis’ voice echoed from all directions, soaked in equal parts grace and venom.
“Reveal yourself,” Celestia demanded, her eyes searching for any hint of movement in the dark. Chrysalis’ insectoid wings fluttered in the quiet. The shadows moved in thick, roiling waves. Each shape her mind conjured vanished under a careful gaze. “I have come to speak with you.”
“To speak with me? Nonsense. What could the great Princess Celestia possibly want with such a lowly Changeling as myself?” Chrysalis’s voice grew louder as she spoke, breaking into a cackling laugh at the finish.
Celestia stood still and silent as the stone beneath her hooves. Her magic swirled through her body, ready to aid her as she waited for the changeling’s laugh to die down. Instead, it shifted into a violent coughing fit. She hardly noticed the change until it stopped abruptly with a pained gasp.
“I told you to show yourself.” Celestia stomped a hoof, her royal voice loud enough to shake dust clouds from the ceiling. Chrysalis answered with a weak chuckle. The princess felt anger boil in her chest. Gritting her teeth, she flared her wings and focused her magic. The sunlight grew hot as her horn erupted with a flash, bathing the room in a solar glow.
Celestia stood at the base of Chrysalis’s throne. A flight of steps curved their way up to the throne, the entire ensemble carved from the same black material as the pillars and covered with a shoddy red and gold carpet. Small holes riddled the sides of the altar, just the right size for a changeling to comfortably nestle within. At the peak, stretched across her broken throne, lay the Queen, her green eyes reflecting the dawn’s light. For a second, the spell fumbled, dimming as the princess cast her gaze over the creature.
In Celestia’s mind, the Queen stood tall and regal. This presence that had faced her down at Cadence’s wedding and bested her. The wickedness in her eyes that portrayed a deadly sadistic streak.
But this thing no longer resembled the monster from Celestia’s nightmares.
Chrysalis rested on her side, her head low. Her body moved enough to betray only her unsteady breathing. The fire in her eyes had long since dimmed. Her chitin, once as imposing as the void, had faded to a lusterless gray. Her mane showed several bald patches, and what remained hid beneath a filth coat.
A sense of dread mounting in her gut, Celestia moved her light across the changeling, reading each wound like a tapestry. Cracks in the Queen’s shell trickled with a rust colored sludge, the same that ran from the corner of her jaded smile. Chrysalis dredged herself from her seat, rising on shaky limbs. One of her insect wings shuddered at the movement, sending a painful-looking surge through the torn appendage.
Between agonized breaths, Chrysalis stood defiant against the goddess before her. She lifted a trembling hoof forward onto the stairs, descended from her throne with a strange and unsteady gait. The Queen’s left hindleg drew Celestia’s eye. The shell had been torn away, leaving a bloody, pinkish stump where her hoof should have been. She refused to put weight on the mangled limb.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to stare?” Chrysalis growled.
The hostility in Chrysalis’ words snapped Celestia back to the present. She widened her stance and lowered her head. Chrysalis’s laugh turned to a wheeze then to a sputtering cough. The Queen collapsed, head in her hooves. More of that red-brown slime dribbled out with each croak.
Celestia relaxed. “I’ve come to take you back with me.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.” Celestia advanced, sending the queen shrinking back with each step. “You need help.”
Chrysalis shivered. She could feel the princess’ emotions flavor the air. Entombed beneath her anger, Chrysalis tasted sorrow. The bitter flavor made the remnants of her skin crawl.
“Haven’t you princesses helped enough?” The queen spat as a dose of adrenaline made her twitch. “Look around you. All of this is your fault.”
Celestia’s instincts screamed. Even with a foot in the grave, Chrysalis remained a threat. Fear surged through the alicorn’s mind.
Her defeat at Cadence’s wedding.
Her entrapment within the hive.
At that moment, Celestia felt the pain of countless ponies tormented by Chrysalis’s machinations. A nation’s anger vengeance coiled inside her, begging her to end this. She wouldn’t even have to get her hooves dirty. She just had to walk away. Simple.
Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to hate the broken thing before her.
“You’ll die without it,” Celestia whispered.
Celestia’s pitiful glare made the changeling retch. Pity even sullied the taste of Celestia’s pain, making Chrysalis’ blood boil. She gnashed her teeth, ignoring the pain in her fang as it splintered.
“I know,” she snarled.
Celestia flinched as a bloody speck splashed against her cheek. Still, she stepped forward, ignoring the voices screaming in her mind as she offered a hoof to the dying Changeling.
A surge of energy poured into Chrysalis. As that golden horseshoe inched closer to her face, she snapped. Her limbs bucked. Plates cracked and muscles tore under the strain. She lashed forward with a roar.
She blasted forward like a cannon shot, driving her horn into Celestia’s side. It plunged through the soft flesh behind the princess’ shoulder. With a sickening crack, the twisted black horn snapped, remaining impaled at the far end of the wound. And after a cackling cry, the changeling’s limp form dropped to the ground. Her eyes dimmed, the wicked smile on her face fading to the sound of a long sigh.
The room swirled around Celestia as she picked the broken horn from her side. She tossed it to the ground and watched it clatter away. Something warm and liquid seeped into her white fur, leaving her feeling cold. She clutched her side and staggered back toward the door, careful to never take her eyes off the changeling. Despite the blistering pain down her side, she found her wings undamaged and flight worthy. With a pained gasp, she stepped back into her sunlight, turning her back to the unmoving changeling.
Celestia stretched her wings and tried to take to the air, but her body refused. Every instinct told her that the world would be better off without the Changeling Queen. Even in her final moments, when offered a chance for redemption, she chose pain and death. And Celestia’s newest scar would remain, a testament to her greatest failure. The thought infuriated her. Her mind flooded with all sorts of colorful curses to vent her frustration.
But none of that mattered. The Changeling Queen would die. This had to be for the best.
Celestia flapped her wings, hooves lifting off the dust.
Before she could leave, though, Celestia found herself hesitating. In her mind’s eye, she watched the Changeling eke out the last of her life, alone on the cold floor of her abandoned hive. Would the Changelings miss their former queen? Would any living thing miss such a monster?
That thought made her hesitate. A cold hand gripped at her stomach.
She folded her wings back to her sides. Her breathing slowed and her thoughts grew fuzzy. Excuses filled her head, telling her to leave. After all, that was the death Chrysalis wanted. This was how the story should have ended.
Celestia pushed those thoughts aside, though.
Instead, her hooves moved on their own. She faced the dark throne and took a soft step forward. Celestia lowered herself to the icy rock. Blood seeped from her side, mixing with the dust before sinking through the cracked floor. With a graceful turn of her mane, the princess rested her head against the Changeling Queen, feeling the slick filth of her ravaged mane against Celestia’s pristine fur. She drew a gentle white wing over Chrysalis’ cold chitin.
Celestia shifted herself as close as she could get to the dying changeling and closed her eyes. She felt herself succumbing to exhaustion, but kept her thoughts occupied with a single, repeating line:
There would be at least one who would mourn for the broken queen.