Five. Hundred. Years.
A plan in the making. More accurately, the lack of one.
All of this, and for what?
Her heart beat steadily as she walked. The carved hallways winding, twisting, and turning. Darkness meant nothing to her eyes as she explored the ruins of an old home. A relic of a past where that incessant beating organ believed in something brighter.
Chrysalis explored the dilapidated system of the rotting changeling city of Mariposa. It was a project that combined the above-ground and sub-terrain to produce a massive superstructure. But it had begun to fall through after that one day. The day everything had started falling apart. Sure, the city was completed- but then they were all forced to evacuate. Consolidating all of their forces, she called it.
She heard whispers. Faintly. Sometimes. She wasn't too sure if... If they were the ones from her heartbeat or something else. Changelings had three hearts. But she had another one in her chest, an extra, a hold-over. The pulse of a second soul.
What would she do once she found all of the pieces?
Chrysalis turned over a pile of rubble. Shell fragments, petrified and dusty, littered the earth. If there was even the slightest chance of one of his remnants being here, it was quite slim. But they were drawn to these locations like flies. It wasn't the rot, it was the memories that drew them in. That was her theory anyways.
They called it the Stranding.
Some did, anyways. Weaker remnants, incapable of comprehending death. But it was a fitting title. That was what happened when he died, well and truly. The beings powered by his shattered soul were stranded, abandoned, with thousands of tiniest remnants, ones that were just fueled by soul dust and memories, dead. They were all lost, clamoring for order.
Her hoof stepped in something mushy. Fungal growth. A dead blisterlight, organic lights intended to replicate the warm glow of the sun. It's fluid spilled out and coated her hoof for a brief moment before it trickled down and left her shell clean. She was wary of them. Such mutated creations were known to be highly flammable.
Bereft of purpose and order, they had all turned to the one who had the strongest shard of him. The one who had eaten him. Her. Chrysalis. The New Allied Master. All because she'd been taken by a moment of weakness, she knew she shouldn't have reached out to that tiny flame, that little light. But she did, and now it was hers. Nestled inside somewhere neither blade nor magic could reach. He was hers. Alyosha.
Then she had to juggle three races under her control. Her loyal changelings, the lost and confused souls created in his image, and his pony followers. They could have housed all of them within the central hive. She should've made that the permanent solution. She should've started with all of that first instead of letting them gallivant around the land without a leash. They were obedient, but the ponies always wanted more. More land, more light, to break their frontiers. It had all started souring the second they had decided they would have more than one Allied Master. The Council of Am's, strong-willed ponies, shadows, and those of importance to their fractured hearts.
Chrysalis let out a tense breath. Something in her sights. A weird, soft, jelly-like thing. It had looked like a cross between a serpent and a changeling. A mishmash of what life should look like underground.
It all started the second she gave his remnants free will. Or more accurately, ordered them to continue having free-will. Stupid. He'd never actually allowed them free reign, only told them to live, and to record the world outside the tower. It spiraled from there. A traitor. A mole. Greed infected their ranks, and something had sold them out, their secrets. She should've eaten them. All of them. It would have saved her this near millennia-long hunt.
An ache in her heart disagreed with that idea. But that ache belonged to a foolish little idiot who killed themselves with their mercy. How could he have ever loved again after being killed twice in a row?
Fueled by hate, a black arrow of magic flew forward in a millisecond, a violent recollection twisted and formed into reality as it tore through the jelly-like facsimile of life. There were more. There was always more. The remnants tore themselves up to make more of themselves, falling to the same disease their maker had. Insanity consumed them, and they began to worship their origins as holy, sanctified, just. Others did not care. Other's saw them as an error to be corrected, dogs to be put down.
The thing gurgled. Material was splattered everywhere on the lightly dusty ground. No gore or viscera, it lacked organs of any kind, even any to be capable of long range offensive tactics. It had taken them all to be beaten back to near extinction before they revealed their trump card. Arms Of Light. This one lacked any such capabilities, and yet she was wary as she approached the pretending corpse.
Prototypes didn't die. They literally were never told they could be killed, so they didn't die. They'd return to the tower, time and time again, damaged, salvaged, machines and puppets made of synthetic flesh and molded abyssal energy. One of them used such tactics to be remade at the central hive, and delivered the message that called the fall of all their kind. Including hers.
One blast. It exploded again. A second blast. Concussive force ripped it into two pieces, and the jelly-like thing was liquified and smeared everywhere. His heart ached in her chest. Senseless violence he'd call it.
Then it started reforming. At one point, almost all of the shades that wrote to him or her disappeared. News of a finale, a grand staging ground mountains away, where all that was left was fire and rubble, and thousands of armored corpses. She knew nothing more. A kinetic blast tore off a malformed and hastily regenerated limb, something sharp and pointy. It wanted to imitate her structure. It wanted to understand.
Another one of his apostates, possibly using his Envy as a template. She ended it's farce of an existence with a teleportation spell, and she displaced its existence with her own, shattering it and splattering it around her as she fragmented it. Gibs of soft glowing tissue fell around her, and her horn flared to life with magic as she called upon the second soul within her and the pieces of it on the outside.
Naturally, it resisted.
Not him of course. As much as he hated the fact that she was murdering him, maiming him, he knew it was to bring him back. Aside from that, she was stronger than his will in any case. It had broken her heart to eliminate an entire workforce of their most valuable builders and thinkers.
It was the remnant that resisted. Ordered and operating to stay alive under any means necessary, reflecting the sheer terror of death he had in life. The kind of terror that gripped you in your quietest, most peaceful moments, the kind that kicked you in the heart and brought you to your knees, or stabbed and dug into your ribs with a hot iron, as you feel the air leave your body. The kind of terror that comes with finality.
This was it.
The flesh of the skinstealer turned to ash as she gripped a particularly large fragment of the soul she was looking for. Odd. Odd indeed. Maybe they'd been eating each other- who knew how many might have chosen to leave themselves behind? Mariposa was massive- too big to fall. It wouldn't surprise her if some of the sentimental pony subjects and their loyal scarecrows chose to stay behind. She pondered this as she bit into it. It crumbled. It was tough. Chewy. Worst of all it tasted like melancholy, a bitter aftertaste with only a mild initial sweetness.
All of this, and for what?
Once she'd finally put him together again- then what? Back to work? Come up with another idea to continue survival? To cling to this world by your teeth? What would she have in the next five, hundred, years?
Him. As the pulse grew steadier, warmer, simply more correct and whole, she at least knew she'd always have him. And for now, that would be enough.