A scream cut through the night.
Cadance jolted awake at the noise, her mind reeling. Sitting up with a gasp, she reached to pull back her blankets so she could get up and pursue the noise. Her hooves fumbled at the air and she was stunned to find nothing there.
Puzzled and groggy from recent sleep, she blinked and struggled to get her bearings in the darkness that lay over her, flooding the space.
Where her mattress ought to be she found long wet grass, and above her wove a canopy of gnarled branches cutting her off from the distant moon. It was still full, but the light it reflected was filtered by the trees, and what meagre moonlight made it through was lost in the oppressive gloom below them, smothered by the shadows.
She lit her horn and forced back the darkness around her with an intense white light. Wincing at the sudden brightness so close to her eyes, she looked around. She found she was in a small clearing, it looked barely big enough to stand up in, and all around her was a tight knit maze of sharp brambles and tree branches that impeded her passage in every direction.
As she tried to stand she tripped over her own limbs and collapsed again. Her legs felt… strange, much thicker and longer, overwhelmingly unfamiliar. She shone the light downwards and her shock grew as she found she didn’t recognise her own body.
Her coat was the same, and she was roughly the right shape, but on examining herself it was immediately apparent that something was very wrong.
She was not normally a short pony, always standing a few inches over all but the tallest of non-alicorns, but now she was… enormous. Easily taller than Luna, maybe even taller than Celestia.
She stood again, taking care to move slowly and carefully so that she didn’t trip over herself. At her full height her ears brushed against the canopy of the small clearing, and she had to duck to make sure that her horn and mane didn’t catch in it. Looking down to examine herself, she realised her mane and tail had grown to match her new proportions and the ends were dragging on the ground.
Frozen but finally standing, her mouth hung agape as she tried and failed to process the situation she found herself in.
Another scream tore her out of the trance that was settling over her.
Fully awake now and mostly in control of her faculties, she turned towards the direction the sound had come from and squinted through the undergrowth. In the distance she could just barely make out something moving, though it was impossible to see what through the tightly packed trees.
She rushed to the edge of the clearing and tried to untangle the brush and push through it to create a path for herself, but it seemed to fight against her. Any branch she pulled away brought another with it, and none would stay put, springing back to bar her way as soon as she let go. Worst still she found herself struggling with fine control over her magic. With every movement the target of her levitation jerked further and faster than she meant it to. She couldn’t precisely separate two branches, only rip them apart with force.
Cadance snorted, frustration setting in, and resolved to abandon precision. She closed her eyes for a moment, recalling a basic combat spell taught to her by Celestia. Her eyes opened again, and with her eyebrows furrowed in determination, she took aim at the claustrophobic flora before her and fired.
Instead of the fine lance of magical energy she had expected, she was almost blown backwards by the recoil of a massive blast of bright blue fire.
She faltered again, staring dumbstruck at the gaping hole she had vaporised in the trees and the lingering bits of icy blue flame that dripped from the branches.
Shaking her head abruptly she strode forward into the path she had made. Whatever was wrong with her would have to wait, she resolved, somewhere nearby somepony needed help.
This thought was punctuated by another scream, quieter this time. It was shrill, and trailed off into what might have been sobbing.
Cadance hurried to clear the way between her and whoever was in need, blasting repeatedly into the forest ahead of her. With each spell cast she felt her control over her magic improve, until she was able to finally produce and maintain the razor thin continuous beam she had meant to. Scything it back and forth in a careful pattern she made short work of the dense trees obstructing her.
After a few minutes of work she found herself entering another natural clearing, this one larger than where she had woken up, but the low roof and clinging branches still made it feel tight and claustrophobic.
Opposite where she entered was another path of broken branches through the trees, though perhaps, she thought, calling it a tunnel was more accurate. It was much too small for a full grown pony, and for her current stature the tunnel would have been barely big enough for her to lean down and poke her head into. Many of the torn off twigs and branches had bite marks in them, and the passage was clearly made by diminutive brute force.
The sobbing was clearly audible now, interspersed with hiccups and loud, wet sniffling. It could only have come from a creature that was quite young, and from the sound of it completely terrified.
Cadance knelt carefully and peered into the hole in the underbrush. As she did so, she brushed several branches. At the sound of rustling, the sobbing stopped suddenly, and a moment later a shrill voice squeaked and called out from the darkness.
“W-who’s there? Don’t come any closer!”
To Cadance’s ear it definitely sounded like the voice of a young filly, but there was something about it that caught in her mind. It was somehow familiar...
She called back, “It’s okay, I’m here to help!” and began to carefully make her way through the underbrush. Using her magic to create a wedge shaped shield, she forced it forwards to part the branches before her, favouring a non destructive method of clearing a path now that she was so close to whoever was ahead of her.
The noise of her work was obvious, and as she made her way Cadance heard the branches several yards ahead of her begin to shake vigorously as the strange filly struggled.
The faceless voice cried out again, panic dripping from every syllable, “Come no closer! W-whoever you are I swear you’ll regret it! Leave me be!”
Cadance paused her work, wincing at the fear in the filly’s voice.
She called back in the gentlest tone she could muster, “Please, don’t be frightened. I only want to help, I’m a princess.”
The rustling ahead of her stopped, and the filly exclaimed, sounding confused, “Just stay away! I-I don’t need help! Especially not from a pony!” The last comment came out as a high pitched wail, the filly’s voice cracking as though she was fighting to hold back tears.
Cadance knit her brow, exasperated. “Look I know you’re scared and confused, we both are. I don’t know what’s going on, but just wait there a minute and we can figure it out together, okay?”
All that met her in way of response was the sound of renewed struggling.
The princess of love sighed, and pushed onwards, surging with her new power. She ignored the irrational protests of the frightened filly, and proceeded to forge her way delicately through the forest.
She scrutinised the distant murk ahead of her as she went, searching for some sign of who exactly she was trying to help. Through the shadows she could make out a small tangle of limbs thrashing wildly.
After labouring for a few more moments Cadance carefully pruned a particularly large and unwieldy branch, moving it aside with her magic to at last reveal the filly.
The seconds seemed to stretch by glacially as the two apparent strangers stared at each other.
The filly, a pegasus with a dark coat the colour of slate, reacted first. She hissed sharply and bared her blunt teeth before scrambling with all the might in her small body to escape.
Her deep green mane and tail were incredibly long, and both had been caught in countless tiny knots in the grasping brambles around her. Long wiry vines with dark red thorns wove around her, catching one of her wings. She scrabbled at it helplessly with her hooves, which had a number of gently oozing small cuts all over.
All her chaotic efforts to escape succeeded in doing was to snare herself even more in the undergrowth.
Cadance stood there, too shocked to move or react. Before her, what she hoped was a bizarre figment of her nightmare lashed about in panic, trying to escape.
As she watched, the filly bit into one of the thicker vines and tugged at it abruptly with her teeth. This caused a particularly cruel thorn jutting out of the vine to slash across her coat, opening a long thin ragged red line across her flank. The grey filly yelped and flinched as the thorn cut her, but kept up her chaotic and fruitless escape attempts, even as more tears dripped down her face to join the already sopping wet fur around her eyes and snout.
Cadance shook herself. Even if this was a dream, she couldn’t watch another living creature do this to themselves.
She stepped forward, and in the best maternal voice she could muster, said, “Please, you need to stop struggling. If you be good and stay still for me, I can help you get out.” The struggling filly flinched again at her voice and looked at her for a moment with wide eyed panic, looking more like a cornered wild animal than any pony.
As Cadance spoke she reached out with her magic to grasp the vines, intending to carefully pry them away. But the filly’s mane and fur were so tangled that she quickly realised they could only be cut free, and the knotted mess of filly and foliage was all moving so much she wasn’t sure she could do it without injuring the filly as well.
“Look, you must know you can’t do this alone. If you just stop moving, I can use my magic to free you!” Her tone was measured, but cracks in her composure let out a trickle of the frustration she was feeling.
The filly responded by glaring at Cadance, followed by another deep, feral hiss. She spat, “Is it not enough that I’m in this form, trapped like a rat? Must you spit in the wound as well? How dare you look down on me like I’m some grub who can’t survive on its own.” She bared her teeth, “I am not so low and vulgar to let myself be condescended to by my own psyche! I am not helpless, no matter what you subject me to here.”
Staring daggers at the enormous pink alicorn before her, the filly relented at last, and drooped. She half sat, half hung from the foliage, and stared up at Cadance, panting from her wasted efforts. Then she stuck out her chin, huffed, and turned away haughtily.
“Besides, none of this matters. You’re not real, you’re just a dream, I don’t even know why I’m wasting my breath talking to you.” She huffed even more.
Cadance snorted derisively at the little pony, “I am not! You’re the dream! You’re clearly some sort of messed up manifestation of stress invented by my subconscious.”
The filly tried to talk again, eyes wide and huffing and puffing indignantly, but Cadance spoke over her. “Now shut up and hold still. Even if you are a figment of my imagination, I’m sick of seeing you doing this to yourself.”
Before the filly could react, Cadance shot out her right forehoof and held her still. The alicorn fired off a series of fine blue beams in quick succession, each neatly slicing through a portion of the brambles that held the unsettling filly captive.
Right as she finished, Cadance felt a sharp pain in her leg. Looking down, she saw the filly’s jaw clamped tight into the flesh of her ankle. A shiny bead of blood was welling up where one of the little pony’s canine teeth had punctured Cadance’s skin. The feral filly was hissing again, muffled this time, and glaring up at the pony princess as though daring her to do something about it.
Cadance glared back and fought the overwhelming impulse to lash out. It would have been far too easy to kick the tiny creature away, and leave her to her fate, but instead a small, dark smile flashed across the princess’s face.
“Alright, if that’s the way you want to do things.” She said through gritted teeth. The fresh wound in her leg hurt quite a lot, but she was determined not to let it show.
Before the filly could react or let go, there was a burst of bright white light, edged with electric blue, and both ponies were gone before it faded.
*****
It must have been less than a second, but it stretched out long and thin. There was an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty and a spike of nausea, as she was suddenly in two places at once. Yet, she was also somehow in neither. She could see both perspectives simultaneously, melded together in a mind bending blur across her vision, and just behind them a deep grey emptiness that hung like fog. But then, before she could fully process the sensation, it was over.
The eerie gut wrenching experience Chrysalis recognised as teleportation quickly became a much lower priority, as she felt herself falling and saw the ground. It was very, very far below her.
Her teeth were still buried in the flesh of the beloathed pony princess, but she opened her mouth to scream again and felt the blood rush from her face. All rational thought fled as she took in her new fate.
The wind rushed past her and stripped the moisture out of her eyes and mouth as she started to plummet.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, she felt herself scooped up and held tightly against a soft fuzzy coat, and the sensation of falling evaporated.
Eyes wide as saucers, she stared down at the landscape far below. Her mouth opened and shut repeatedly in an involuntary impression of a carp. Rather than the terrain coming rapidly up to meet her, as the adrenaline in her body had prepared her for, it was drifting along below her the way a lazy river might meander.
Her hindlegs hung below her, and her long tail and mane streamed behind, but the huge pink pony… this huge and terrifying visage of Cadance, held her close to its chest. The grip was firm, and Chrysalis could feel the loud thudding heartbeat of the alicorn against her back as they floated across the sky.
Rendered helpless, Chrysalis clung tightly to the two strong forelegs holding her. She could still feel fragments of vines tangled up in her wings, and knew that if she squirmed out of the powerful alicorn’s grasp she would fall, and she wouldn’t be able to save herself when she did. She felt impotent, even more acutely than she did about being forced into the form of a pony for weeks at a time to survive.
It was better than becoming a charcoal splatter on the forest far below.
She peered up cautiously at the enormous alicorn holding her tight, and recoiled, eyes wide, as she met Cadance staring down at her. Not with rage, or impatience, but with a calm, placid smile. A wave of calm went through Chrysalis and washed away some of the fear and panic that had been flooding her mind since she was first trapped in the forest below. she fought to squash the urge to keep staring back, indefinitely, to let herself float off into those lavender eyes.
Instead, she broke off the gaze dramatically, curling her lip in feigned disgust. She quickly turned her head away with what she had meant to be the justified indignance befitting a Queen, but could be better described as impish pouting. As she did, the deposed changeling matriarch made a sulky noise like “Hmph,” which did nothing to help.
Chrysalis felt the alicorn’s chest rumble softly, and heard the beloathed pony princess begin to laugh. It started as a quiet giggle, then as Chrysalis turned back to look it rose, transforming into raucous snorting laughter. Cadance was smiling wide, but tears were forming in the corners of her eyes.
The powerless changeling turned pony glowered up at her saviour, confused and suspicious, still carrying some of the panic up with her from the forest. Cadance’s laughter gradually sputtered out, fading into giggles again, and then settling into a soft smile.
Ice forming on every word, Chrysalis spoke sharply, “Just what, is so funny?
Cadance smiled down, overpowering the sceptical look she was receiving from the little filly clutched tight in her arms. Relief was evident in her voice, though there were still cracks at the edge of her mild, breezy tone.
“I’m just so happy to be out of that claustrophobic forest, aren’t you?”
Top lip still curled in confusion, Chrysalis didn’t reply.
Cadance continued to glide serenely over the forest, and Chrysalis felt the tension ebbing out of her, and began to relax. Not completely, because she was still watching the ground moving past at least a hundred yards below her. But still, in the privacy of her mind she admitted this was better than where she had just been… struggling alone in a dark and hostile forest. It was a dream, she reasoned, no creature would ever know about this besides her, so maybe there was no shame in enjoying the moment.
With that logic in mind she lowered her head, pressing her chin against the soft fur of this strange and powerful Cadance’s coat, and found that she felt a little better for it. The huge pony was warm… and with the wind whipping past the two of them it was quite chilly up in the sky.
After several minutes Cadance broke the silence.
“Even if one of us is a dream, heck even if I’m a dream and I can’t tell, I’m still me.” She continued, “And even if I have several good reasons telling me I should hate you, I couldn’t leave you there. Not just because I’m not sure that I believe this is really a dream, but because despite what you did and how I feel about it, it just wouldn’t feel right to abandon you to suffer.”
Chrysalis stayed silent, aside from a small snort of derision. This was exactly how ponies operated, they did you favours until you felt indebted, or until they converted you to their insidious ideology… Not that it would work on her, she told herself. She wasn’t some lost lamb to be indoctrinated like that traitor Thorax… She was still a Queen, no matter what any bug or pony said. No one could take that away from her.
“You know, I think I might know where we are.” Cadance said thoughtfully, pulling Chrysalis out of her thoughts.
“What? How could you possibly-” the tiny queen started to complain, but was cut off by the much larger princess.
“Look, ahead of us. Can you see that river? It looks just like the river that went past the village I grew up in.” She glanced back and forth, scanning the horizon. “Either the Everfree has expanded way out to the West while I wasn’t paying attention, or we’re in a dream after all. If we were really here we’d be about halfway between Ponyville and Baltimare. But we should be able to see Canterlot from here, to the Northeast.”
Chrysalis followed Cadance’s gaze and looked to the Northeast horizon. All she could see as far as her eyes would take her was more forest. She scanned around, scrutinising the landscape. The beloathed pony princess was right, there was nothing but more forest, dotted here and there with small clearings, and split in half by the river they were now following.
Begrudgingly, Chrysalis piped up, “So what do you suggest we do?” She was careful to sound annoyed, she didn’t want the alicorn thinking she was content to be held like this.
“Well,” Cadance mused, “I can’t see any sign of civilisation. I think perhaps our best option is to find a comfortable spot to try to ride out the rest of this supposed dream. There’s a spot I know, if I’m right, it should be only a short distance upriver.”
A sickening cheerfulness had seeped into the alicorn’s voice… Chrysalis stuck out her tongue in disgust, and went back to watching the river rush past far below.
There was something tugging at her mind, something urgent but just out of reach. She frowned, and scrutinised the river more carefully. Cadance was right, she begrudgingly admitted to herself. The forest and river below them bore a striking similarity to those to the west of the Everfree. It wasn’t far north from her hive, in the badlands on the southern edge of Equestria, but with the dream warping everything she wouldn’t have recognised it if it hadn’t been pointed out to her.
She had only been to these woods a few times, all long before she became a queen. It was an ideal location to test the skills of adolescent changelings on the local wildlife, since there wasn’t much threatening fauna in the area. The first two or three times she’d been here had been part of her training in the finer points of manipulating prey, under guidance from her mother. The last time she’d been here was…
Ah, she thought, there it was. Chrysalis shivered as a shard of ice stuck into her heart. There, that was why she had avoided coming this way for so many years. She’d buried the memories, but her body hadn’t let go, not completely, and now they came streaming out unwelcome.
The last time she had been to this part of Equestria, well, suffice to say she had more than enough good reasons to want to forget. There was nothing else she could do. She couldn’t go back and change what had happened, and no one could go back and stop what had been done to her. Not that there was anyone left to remember it besides her.
She’d been startled awake late at night, while most of the hive was sleeping. Raised voices, shouting not far from her bedroom in the royal chambers deep in the hive. Her mother’s voice. Chrysalis had never heard her sound like that before… Queen Chrysanthe was well known for her even temper and her cool rationality. But now she sounded ready to burn the hive down with her fury. Led forward as the siren song of curiosity got the better of her, Chrysalis had crept silently to the hallway outside her mother’s chambers and listened in on the chaos within.
Chrysalis flinched suddenly and scrunched up her face. Something she fought to keep buried had taken advantage of her moment of vulnerability and leapt out to try and drag her down as she skirted close to it. The kind of memory that pierced right to her core and threatened to send her spiralling down deep. Down to somewhere she might not come back from. No, actually, she hardened herself, most certainly not. Not today, not now, this was hardly the time to dwell on that.
She let out a deep, frayed sigh. As she opened her eyes she spotted a familiar landmark up ahead. A small waterfall, flowing over a mossy cliff and crashing down gracefully into the river below. It had been years since she’d fled here in the middle of the night, after hearing something she shouldn’t… and watching unseen as her mother and grandmother tore each other almost to pieces. She’d hidden here for days, getting by on what she could connive out of the larger wildlife. Eventually her mother’s… friend… had come to find her.
That was why she avoided this place. The waterfall and this whole region eventually brought her back to this. She could bury the memories of how it happened, but she couldn’t ignore the material reality of the consequences it had had on her life. They were too useful to not take advantage of, cost be damned.
As she said that, her mind’s eye flew back and she saw herself. A moment of clarity rang out in her mind, and she realised there was no fog. No irrational, overindulgent greed, no thirst for conquest. She felt still, in control of her thoughts. It was jarring, like a home emptied out and devoid of familiar details, a liminal, empty shell. It was too strange to be a relief.
The unwelcome memory prodded at her mind again, but she was ready for it. She tensed for a moment, letting it glance off and retreat back into the depths.
Her private bubble of introspection popped and the diminutive queen felt her stomach drop as the ground rushed towards them. To her relief, Cadance landed gracefully on the riverbank near the waterfall. As soon as the princess touched down, Chrysalis kicked performatively at the princess and scrambled out of her grip. She leapt down onto the wet grass that filled the clearing beside the river.
She turned to her… rescuer. Her jaw tensed at the thought. Barely able to admit even to herself that she’d been rescued, she resolved to never admit it to the princess. Even if they were stuck here alone together forever. Chrysalis was just about to spit some biting comment at the alicorn to try and make herself feel better, but as she turned towards the princess, Cadance lit her horn. A bright blue glow spread across the riverbank.
In the magical light of Cadance’s horn, the bright red blood seeping from the gouges in her right leg gleamed and pinned Chrysalis’ gaze. The beloathed pony princess’s pink fur was marred with a crimson stain around the wound. Whatever unkind words had been growing in the changeling filly’s mouth died when she saw the damage she had inflicted.
Chrysalis’ hoof went to her mouth, and she felt the wetness around her lips and on her neck. She had been so focused on the flight and her own woes that she had forgotten. The taste of the pony princess’s blood filled her mouth and the steel tang staked itself into her mind. She felt her stomach drop again, as nausea flooded into her.
Tearing herself away, she ran over to the river and crouched by the water, frantically washing out her mouth. It took far too long to get the taste out, and by the time she was done the memory of it was seared into her mind. With it came an awful, bright hot, burning shame that clung tightly to her. She rinsed her mouth again, then did her best to wash the blood from her coat. It did not help.
When she turned back to Cadance, Chrysalis found the pony had also gone to the water’s edge, and was doing what she could to clean the wound in her ankle. The tiny perpetrator of the puncture wounds tried to appear as though she wasn’t watching, as she examined the princess through the corner of her eye while facing out towards the stream.
Chrysalis watched the pony who had saved her struggle, and sat with her red hot glowing guilt, unable to shift it, but too stubborn and proud to apologise. Cadance had managed to clean the excess blood away, and was now attempting to put pressure on the bitemarks with her other hoof to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t working, and Chrysalis felt glands in the back of her throat poise to produce a specific kind of waxy resin used for sealing wounds. But she bit her tongue, and fought back the compulsion.
The guilt stricken changeling turned away again, and busied herself with her own problems. Picking stray vines and bits of foliage from her mane, she did her best to pretend she didn’t see or care what her saviour was dealing with.
As she worked at cleaning the debris from her mane, she turned to look upstream. Ah, there, through the waterfall she could just make out a familiar cave. Her shoulders locked and her jaw set as the memories pushed against her mind again, threatening what little composure she had left. She refused to allow herself to appear any weaker than she already had in front of the pony. They were still enemies. No matter what happened here, this alicorn was still in part responsible for the betrayal she’d suffered.
The former queen’s train of thought was derailed as a badly knotted twig tangled in her mane took all her attention. Usually, when this sort of thing happened, she could either solve it with magic, shapeshifting, or by ordering a subordinate to attend to the issue for her. It should have been simple, it was just a tiny piece of wood for goodness sake. Plenty of ponies and other creatures live without magic, so if they could do it, shouldn’t she be able to too?
She caught the twig in her teeth, and used a hoof to gently tug at her mane, trying to tease it free. Instead, she pulled the hair, hurt her scalp, and got spit in her mane. A hot, stifled, burning sensation rose in her cheeks, as she fought with the not so miniscule nuisance. Nevermind that there were still at least a dozen more bits of foliage stuck just as tight as this one, all silently mocking her.
She spat out her mane and let out a sharp, pained growl. Her jaw hurt, and her lips stung from several delicate scratches. Fine! So be it. It didn’t matter. It was just another attempt to humiliate her that would evaporate soon. When she woke up, she could bury this memory with the others, and no one would ever know. She reassured herself, she would put up with these pains, because once she awoke she’d forget, and it would be like it never happened.
All she had to do was endure.