Once again Chrysalis didn't know how to feel, whether flattered or insulted.
Traveling encased in a flying chariot of gold and alabaster colors, surrounded by eight heavily armed pegasi members of the royal guard, sitting on highly comfortable purple padding, Chrysalis looks through the hard, magic-proof glass window at her destination. A castle with ivory towers with golden spiers and many waterfalls and rivers running through it, embedded next to a large mountain.
Descending onto a landing strip, the door to her highly ornate cage was not opened until the eight guards who guarded her during the journey were formed four on each side and another eight that were already waiting join them to escort the Changeling Queen inside the castle.
During the procession across a long red carpet, Chrysalis marched tall and regal, never moving her gaze from the front; Even so, she did not miss the opportunity to store every detail she could discern from her surroundings. She didn't want to give any praise to the architects who designed this building, but she couldn't help but think that this was indeed a proper castle, even if it had nothing overly special, except for the large windows giving a spectacular view of the outside world, and the large stained glass windows that depicted some of the most significant events in pony history. From the founding of Equestria, Nightmare Moon's return, the gathering of the Elements of Harmony, etc. But one of them put a frown in Chrysalis's face as she got to the one that depicted her defeat at the wedding. The glazier made sure to make her and the rest of the unreform Changelings out to look like hideous monsters.
For the first time, the Queen thought of giving some credit to the castle of the Princess of Friendship, which, in its dull and lacking appearance, had no room for these pretentious displays.
Arriving at her destination, stopping in front of an immense two-winged door with the effigy of the sun, the guard in front knocked on the door.
"You can come in," the hostess and next personality she was scheduled to meet almost crooned.
The doors opened giving way to a large room in which there was only a small table on which rested a tea set and plates, with a tray stocked with multiple snacks, and two bean bag like chairs, one of them occupied by the Princess of the Sun, Princess Celestia.
With a grimace on her face, nonchalantly trotting forward to meet her, Queen Chrysalis takes her place in the other chair in front of Equestria’s older reigning ruler. Celestia, for her part, received her with a smile almost as bright as the sun she commands.
With a golden glow radiating from her horn, Celestia arranges the plates and cups, moving on to serve tea for both of them.
Celestia's smile disappeared after seeing that the scowl with which her guest entered was now accompanied by her forelegs crossed; The sixteen soldiers that surrounded them were most likely the reason for this.
"Please, leave us alone," Celestia friendly command to her guards.
Every visible guard salute, signaling the reception of the decree, and in a couple of seconds they all leave the room.
Chrysalis uncrossed her forelegs and abandons her annoyed face in favor of a more neutral expression. Despite all this, she was aware that they were not truly alone, she can taste the emotions of some hidden guards. It was faint, a little bit of fear here, a few more of hate there, and a lot of the in between emotions clearly masked by years of training. Without giving any indication of knowing she was being spied on, the Queen decides that she was going to play the part of the puppet when in reality she was going to be the puppeteer.
Celestia lets out a sigh after the first sip of her cup of tea and proceeds to say: "All of you, I wish to be alone with our guest," and then Chrysalis stops sensing any kind of emotions in the room beyond those that come from Celestia.
"How did you know there were still guards among us?" asks the Queen, surprised by this and a little upset because the strings she intended to play with were cut so soon, so suddenly.
"You have your ways... and I have mine," Celestia responded, showing a complacent smile after sweetening her tea with a teaspoon of sugar.
There it is! The politician, answering the question without actually answering it, Chrysalis thought bitterly.
"Aren't the tea and snacks to your liking?" Celestia asks, a bit of disappointment painting her words. "We have meat available for when we receive visits from dignitaries from carnivorous kingdoms, if that's what you feel like right now." The solar ruler of the ponies offers with impressive naturalness, having lost all sense of discomfort with the carnivorous diet after more than a millennium of receiving or being received at strictly political and ceremonial banquets by Griffins, Dragons and very rarely by Diamond Dogs or Kirins tribal chieftain.
"The tea and snacks are fine," the Queen replied, sipping from her cup and munching on a glazed cookie, showing her teeth for a second, maintaining a serious expression that didn't give away her thoughts.
I am also capable of playing this game of giving answers that do not give answers.
Both Princess and Queen begin to chat very friendly, but after a while Chrysalis relaxes, not in a sense of security or comfort, but of boredom, having expected to test her intelligence and cunning against the Solar Diarch, thinking that throughout this meeting, which she saw as nothing more than a charade, the alicorn would try to extract valuable information from her.
But much to her disappointment, Celestia had come extremely uninterested in that kind of course of action; telling the Queen about the most vain and meaningless things, which barely got Chrysalis's attention.
Sensing boredom in her guest, Celestia turns the conversation to a topic that she hopes will be of greater interest, both for her and for the Queen.
"You know," Celestia began, refilling her teacup, "I was initially skeptical when Twilight informed me about what happened between the two of you on the island of Saint Ashtray, about your willingness to give up aggression for peace, and how you save her life; but now I more than happy to help in any way I can."
"Don't fool yourself, Celestia! I only agreed to your protégé's deluded proposal because having a source of energy would increase my chances of escaping from that place and tangently proving the falseness of his ideology will be a delicious result," Chrysalis responded with a little of strength, more than was necessary, but this had no effect on the Princess; she knew that the Queen was only being overprotective of her appearance.
"Even so, I am surprised that you had never attempted a friendly approach with us before. If you simply wished to feed your subject, you could have…"
"And there it is! The pony arrogance!"
"Excuse me!?" Celestia asks, having been taken by surprise by Chrysalis's outburst expression. She sounded angry, truly indignant, unlike her reaction to the previous comment.
"Did you never bother to wonder why it might have been that way? Did you truly believe Thorax was the first Changeling to try a friendly approach to the ponies!?"
"I...didn't." Celestia responds, beginning to introspect, realizing that that thought never really crossed her mind; In her mind she was always sure that the Changelings' decision to live in anonymity was a decision based strictly on her eating habits, if not on Chrysalis's tyrannical desires for control and domination.
"Well, he was not!" says the Queen. "In the past, when for the first time from the safety of the shadows we Changelings laid our eyes on you ponies, we could see how much delicious and nourishing love existed between you, far superior to the one of the woodland creatures, but only among those of the same species.
"We could see how, when ponies interacted with members of other tribes, they emanated contempt, distrust and hatred.
"So, tell me, Celestia, if the members of the ponikind were so willingly to go to war, to murder each other over such trivial differences, such as having or lacking a horn or wings, what chance would me and my kind would have to trive, to live openly among your kind?
"Did you ever hear of the Selalem Trials?" the Queen asked with an accusing and inquisitive look directed at the tall Alicorn Princess.
A shiver went through Celestia's spine. The name of that town sounded familiar to the Princess of the Sun, due to the infamous events that took place there. And the fact that Chrysalis was asking about them brought a new but equally abhorrent context to that historic event.
"A family of Changelings volunteered to see how the ponies would react to us. They spent several months in that town, living among its population. They then revealed their true nature to the town ponies.
"There was no fairness in those so-called trials, I tell you. They were all beaten, tortured and those who survived the initial stoning were subsequently burned alive at the stake."
Celestia listened carefully to Chrysalis. She had no way of verifying the veracity of the Changeling Queen testimony, but to her recollection, it does bring some clarity to what happened. When news of these insane events reached her ears —their names!— the so-called 'Black Trials', also known as 'The Selalem Witchcraft Hunt'. This zealots movement reached over two hundred accusations and had already claimed the lives of twenty ponies before she could put an end to them, all of them under the accusation of being aberrations of black magic disguised as ponies. Of only twelve of those 'sentenced' she was able to recover a record of names, families and belongings, but eight of the victims were lost from history. Celestia was aware that even after the union of the three tribes, her little ponies could be dangerously fearful of other creatures. Now there was a chance that the Changelings Chrysalis spoke of could have been among those eight.
"Now you get it, Princess?" Chrysalis asked, seeing the realization on Celestia's face. "Thorax wasn't the first good Changeling to interact with the Ponies, he was just the luckiest one."
Chrysalis doesn't know how right she is. Celestia thought bitterly, remembering the reports she received regarding the sightings of Thorax in the Crystal Empire. There's no such thing as a nice changeling. She remembered Shining Armor's written judgment in his letters. And from what Spike said upon his return, if it hadn't been for his intervention and support, Shining Armor and the Crystal Ponies could have seriously injured Thorax, if not worse.
"We would have died, Princess." Chrysalis continued in a somber tone. "If not under your hooves for the crime of being more than slightly different from you, poisoned by the only emotions that would be directed at us. And so, I made the decision that, for the survival of the Changeling kind, no creature should know of our existence.
"That is, Celestia, why until recently we never ever thought about coming out of the shadows, continuing to change our shape to harvest love without fear of dying."
"If true, why invade us?" Challenge Celestia, hiding her skepticism, not satisfied with what she was hearing. There were still some things with the Changeling Queen's explanations that didn't make sense to her.
Chrysalis let out a sad sigh, forcing herself to remember their arduous and distant past.
"When the Windigos showed up, attracted by the discord between the three pony tribes, things became even more difficult for the Changelings; We Changelings don't take well the cold weather. That is why we settled in the warm lands from the east; the ones you called "the bad lands" we called "home" for over a millennia. And from there we launched recollection missions to later bring that love back to the Hive."
Chrysalis explained, beginning to sound increasingly anxious and desperate as she recounted some of the details of her and the Changelings' past.
"But as time went on, the ponies became more and more capable. Able to defend themselves, able to work together between the three races, able to share information and compromise the existence of the Changelings. So, to maintain our existence a secret, we needed to be more discreet, reducing the number and size of scouting and gathering groups."
"But what does that have to do with the invasion?" Celestia press once again, on this occasion a bit of her disbelief could be heard in her words, not yet understanding why a race of creatures whose bread-and-butter was hiding in shadows and secrets, suddenly reveal their existence to the world by attacking so explicitly the capital of the Pony nation.
"Did that fool of Thorax never told you!?" shouts the Queen with the force of all her righteous indignation, wiping the table with a quick sweep of her hoof. "We were starving! Our love reserves were low, oh, so, so low." Chrysalis wailed sadly. "Even with the most generous of expectations, six months was the estimated time we could last, and that was with rationing."
Chrysalis took a deep breath and her eyes crystalized.
"That's why I concocted a plan, a simple and desperate plan, one that in our starving state the only thing it considered was ending our hunger." She continued, but not for Celestia anymore. The Diarch of the Sun was now nothing more than a witness to the Changeling Queen's decline into hysteria. Chrysalis didn't even look at her anymore, she talked to herself more than to anyone, like a crazy mare driven by guilt.
"We were meant to kidnap one of the most beloved ponies in Equestria and I was supposed to usurp her identity to harvest all the love meant for her and take it back to the hive to replenish our stores of love, and if possible, rinse and repeat for as much as possible, until there is no more love to gather or suspicion of my identity were unavoidable, then I would bail out. And in case the plan failed and I was captured, whoever we chose as a target had to be kept alive as a bargaining chip for my release.
"There were only two options: you and your niece."
Celestia, listening to that 'confession', pursed her lips at that little piece of information; that her beloved little sister was considered "not loved enough" by the Changelings, and the fact that she could not disagree with that sentiment, did not sit well with her. Despite her efforts, Luna had a hard and long way to go to get the appreciation Celestia knew her sister deserved from their subjects.
"Cadance was the obvious choice," the agitated Queen continues her explanation. "She was not well guarded and of the two she was the easiest to subdue. Everything was going perfectly. Then I met her boyfriend -soon to be husband- and that changed everything.
"The amount of love that fool stallion oozed for his bride was unbelievable. That was the only reason I decided to go through with the wedding. A 'honeymoon' in the Hive and I knew my Changelings wouldn't feel hungry for months or even years if I could keep up the charade.
"But then, something happened, I became too attached to that love, it was... intoxicating. And that's when, for me, the plan stopped being just about feeding my subjects, and it became a plan for power. I have never had so much love turned into power, never that much love directed and flowed through me.
"Can you imagine living with a hole inside you, an ever-present hunger that reminds you of its existence scratching at the back of your mind every second of your life, a sword hanging by a thin thread above your head making you aware that at any moment it will kill you... and suddenly you discover that that hole has been filled, the voice in your head has silenced and the itch in your body has disappeared?
The Queen smiled with her lips, but her gaze was lost in despair.
"I was euphoric, feeling all that power coursing through my veins. I became addicted to it. And at that moment I just... I just stopped thinking rationally. I felt like I was on top of the world. I didn't care or understand the consequences of my actions, revealing the existence of the Changelings to the world, risking the end of the world by taking down the beings in charge of moving the sun and the moon... nothing really mattered, to Tartarus with all!"
The Queen begins to laugh, but it is a sad laugh full of self-loathing and pain.
"And then what started as a mission to quench our hunger, for me it became a mission for revenge.
"I didn't care how many Changelings were lost after being expelled from Canterlot. I didn't care about those who returned with me to the Hive. I didn't care that our reserves of love were quickly depleting. All I cared about was getting revenge. Revenge against those who had taken away my power and had cursed me to feel once again the cruel and painful sting of hunger...
“And before I knew it, I lost it. I lost everything!”
Chrysalis fell, face down on the table. She looked like a lonely body fallen on a battlefield, then a sob arose from inside her. For a moment Celestia didn't know what to do, how to react? She didn't expect the Queen to burst into tears, not with her in particular. Was this a testament to the Changeling Queen's trust in her as a fellow immortal ruler? Celestia couldn't tell.
Should I stay in my place or should I try to console her? Celestia thought. She didn't want to comfort a tyrant who was putting a tantrum over what was definitely her greatest failure and subsequent downfall. It did not escape Celestia that, although Chrysalis's reaction was honest (There was no way that the Changeling Queen, with all her pride, could fake such a performance... or could she?), her last whining were vague enough to be one or the other, a cry for her failure as a queen, a ruler, a leader, a mother figure to her Changelings, or for the loss of power and control over her subjects.
At the end, and after hearing a couple of more forceful and heart wrenching sobs, Celestia decides that instead she was going to solace a fellow ruler that cries because it has just realized she fails to do good for it's subjects do to her hubris. Celestia did not know which one of the two was being Chrysalis, she just hoped this was another step on her own long and hard road to become a better creature.
When the wailing subsided, Celestia called for some guards and instructed them to escort the Queen to a guest room and to pay no attention to her appearance.
Entering her room, Chrysalis wrapped herself in the sheets like a tight cocoon, closed her tired eyes and went to sleep.