A/N- S-K Of The Flame here. Dear readers. First of all, I wanted to take a moment and give you, the readers, an enormous thank you. Over the course of time that it took me to write this chapter, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the mostly positive reception this story has received. This being my first story, (On this site anyway.) I hadn’t expected it to receive much attention. I would have thought the story would have needed to have a few chapters to have the amount of faves and views that it currently has. So for that, I give you my wholehearted thanks. I hope I continue to impress.
Secondly, I have been mulling over an element of the third or the fourth chapter. I can’t for the life of me decide whether to have Twilight be kidnapped before or after the third season’s premiere. The Crystal Empire two parter introduced a lot of elements that I rather liked, (Dark magic, some nice character development for Spike and Twilight.) and I do love the idea of having all that be a part of the world while I’m writing this thing. On the other hand, at least two or three weeks would have had to have past at least between the events of the season two finale and the third premiere. Two or three week since Discord escaped and Celestia would have had to known. I kinda have trouble picturing her sending her student anywhere without the elements while Discord was out and about, and if Twilight was in possession of the elements during the Crystal Empire events, well couldn’t they just use the elements on Sombra. This has been giving me a lot of trouble trying to make up my mind on this, so I’m asking you, the reader, to give me your thoughts on this. I want, you, the reader,(Or at least the ones who didn’t give up on reading this ridiculously long authors note and jumped right down to the chapter) to tell me whether or not to have Twilight be kidnapped before the season three premiere.
Don’t be afraid to suggest things either. I want you, the reader, to be as satisfied with this story as I can possibly make you. While I realize that I’ll never be able to satisfy everyone, I want to make as many of you as I can happy, so if there's something that you think would be interesting to see, leave a comment. I can’t promise that it’ll make it into the story, but if enough people suggest the idea, I’ll give it fair consideration. Now, I’ll just shut up and let you read the next chapter before you all get too fed up with me. Thanks again and enjoy the chapter.
(A bit of a side note here. Changeling drones as I write them do not have genders. Only the queens have a sex, so that’s why the changeling who’s perspective we’ll follow for a little bit refers to itself as ‘It’ or ‘This one’.)
Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony
Prologue Part 2- Perfect
{Menyanthes}
‘This one is unsure what it has done to deserve this.’ The changeling thought to itself as it continued to walk.
Several hours ago, it and its family had prepared for the invasion of the pony capital, Canterlot. It would have been the first of many invasions they would have performed in order to gain the love that they wanted. The queen had bolstered their numbers and sent many sleeper agents to many different cities and towns for this glorious day. They had been high in morale. They would no longer go hungry and unsatisfied with the meals they received. They would be as stuffed and as full as if they had perished and gone to the great hive below.
‘Instead,’ the changeling thought bitterly. ‘This one not only gets blasted with magic, it also gets thrown out into Azalea knows where!’ It almost instantly regretted sullying the goddess’s blessed name in the same thought as a curse. It closed its eyes and offered a prayer to the blessed mother, apologizing for its transgression.
Opening its eyes once again, the changeling took a quick look around its surroundings. About an hour ago, it and its unwanted companion had left the canyon that it had landed in about three hours before. The moon shined in the sky above. They were now walking along a dirt path towards a forest not far from there. The forest held the queen inside. The changeling was certain of it. It wasn’t within telepathic talking range, but they were close enough that it could feel her getting closer with every step.
“Menyanthes?”
Hopefully, the queen would be alright and unharmed. It was unsure what the Hive would do without one of the blessed daughters. They would be lost and would not be able to do anything without the guidance of the queen.
“Yoo Hoo? Hello, Menyanthes?”
Just the thought of the queen hurt in anyway was enough to quicken its steps. It may have only been a perioeci, but it would be among the stars before this one would allow anything to happen to its queen.
Without warning, the changeling was brought from its panicked thoughts, and was lifted into the air by the strange creature this one had been saddled with.
The strange creature apparently called Discord brought his face close to the changeling’s own face and asked, “Are you even listening Menyanthes?”
The changeling snarled at Discord, nodding its head. The creature had apparently decided that he had not done enough hurting this one. No, he had to go even further and had given it a name. It hated the very thought of being given a name. Names were rewards given to the spartiates. It was their reward for being acknowledged as the best warriors of the hive. They were supposed to be given by the queen herself. How dare this creature give it, a mere perioeci, a name!
“Now that I have your hopefully undivided attention,” Discord said to the changeling he had named Menyanthes, a light grin making its way onto his face. “Are we getting any closer to this ruler of yours? We’ve been walking for hours.
Giving one last snarl at Discord for good measure, Meyanthes nodded its head.
“Oh good. And here I was thinking you were being stupid, not to mention stubborn, and leading us in the completely wrong direction.” Discord smiled down at the changeling in his grasp, patting it roughly on the head. “Stubbornness, I must admit, is a quality I both like and despise. I mean, some ponies, they know how to make it work. They honestly can make it work. Like…oh for example, my Uncle Puddinghead! That stallion was more like a mule in how determined he was to have his way. But he had a certain charm about him, you couldn’t help but forgive him. The stuff he was able to get away with because of that. I mean, Auntie Hurricane would have had my hide if I had tried or said half the things he did.”
Discord suddenly stopped talking and briefly looked up in the air for a moment. “What was I talking about again?” He used his free hand to snap his fingers, waiting for the word to come out of his mouth. “STUBBORNESS!” Menyanthes flinched, being momentarily startled by the loud declaration. “I was talking about stubbornness. Sorry, I tend to get off topic when I talk. At least I think I do. Do I?”
“Bah, no matter” Discord said, waving his free hand in the air. “Anyway, whether or not stubbornness is a good trait or not is a discussion for another time. Well, a one sided conversation that is.” Discord pinched the skin of the changeling’s cheek and in a high pitched voice mocked, “After all, you can’t speak!”
Menyanthes snapped at Discord’s hand with its fangs, wanting to take a bit of the flesh off this arrogant creature. Discord pulled his hand back, chuckling despite having nearly lost a finger.
“Down Menyanthes, down.” Discord laughed out. “No need to get mad, it was just a joke.” He placed the changeling down back down on the ground. “Well that’s enough standing around twiddling our thumbs. Or at least I’m twiddling my thumbs. You though, you don’t have fingers.” He shook his head, drawing an end to his rather pointless analogy. “Lead on.”
With a shake of its head, Menyanthes led its unwanted companion into the forest.
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It had been twenty minutes since Discord and Menyanthes had entered the forest. The changeling headed the bizarre duo, leading Discord in the direction of the fourth blessed daughter.
They were getting closer. Within two minutes, Meyanthes would be back in the presence of its queen. It was excited at that prospect. It would be back where it belonged. At its queen’s side, serving her in whatever meager or important way that she needed it to.
It glanced back at its unwanted companion. It hoped that this creature would leave as soon as he had whatever it was that he wanted to see the queen for. This creature gave this one a chill. There was something unnatural about the creature (Asides his strange assortment of body parts). It was like he warped nature and reality just from being there. It was like all the rules that seemed to rule the natural world didn’t apply to this creature.
As Menyanthes and Discord passed another bush, they finally caught sight of what they had been looking for for the past several hours. The fourth blessed daughter of the Changeling Hive, Queen Chrysalis.
Menyanthes took a moment to admire its mother and leader. She was as tall as the pony’s leader, Celestia. But where Celestia was a hair covered beast with all the grace and beauty of a rat, Queen Chrysalis stood (Or rather sat, as she was seated for the moment) with an air of grace that only one of the blessed daughters could emit. Her near black skin shone as traces of moonlight danced upon her. When the moonlight touched her chitin, specks of blue and green lights were reflected unto the background. Her silk like hair was lightly frizzled but otherwise hung from her head in the same natural way that it had always done, for the queen lacked the incessant vanity of the ponies and did not place a mace like objects to the hair in an attempt to impose some kind of order to it. The crown of the goddess Azalea sat atop her head.
The queen seemed not to notice the two new arrivals, for she seemed to be lost in thought. Her hole ridden hoofs held the corpse of a changeling perioeci. Its head was twisted in an unnatural angle, a broken neck no doubt. As the Queen sat there, slowly stroking the dead changeling’s head, her thin transparent insectoid wings fluttered every few seconds.
Menyanthes shifted on its hoofs, a bit unsure as to what to do. This seemed like a private moment for the queen, one that it was quite uncomfortable with interrupting. Unfortunately, this one’s unwanted companion had no such qualms about interrupting.
{Queen Chrysalis}
‘How did this happen?’
Queen Chrysalis sat there in the dirt, holding one of her poor children that hadn’t survived their eviction from the city of Canterlot. She wasn’t sure how many of them had met the same fate, but it was at least over a hundred.
She looked down at her poor, dead child. When she and her children were purged from Canterlot by means of a large magical burst, many of them had been unable to land on the ground properly. Many of them had landed head first, twisting their necks, killing them almost instantly.
Well, most of them had died instantly. She had come across one Perioeci who’s neck had been broken, but had survived. She’d had to end her poor child’s life mercifully. The poor thing had been in terrible agony. She shuttered to think that any more of her children had suffered a similar fate, only they did not have her to ease their suffering.
‘It was all so perfect.’ And it had been. Almost nothing had been left to chance. This had been planned so carefully, ever since one of her scouts had reported that that stallion, Shining Armor had been courting that princess Cadence.
While other rulers of other species would have seen potential leverage with that particular piece of information, Chrysalis had seen even more potential. A princess. The very symbol of leadership in this land of ponies. Who would attract more love from so many then a princess. Just the very thought had been enough to make her drool.
She had personally overseen the advancement of the Captain of the guard and the princess of love’s budding relationship. Doing so without having her existence revealed had been exceedingly difficult, but it ultimately had been worth it.
Oh, how easy had it been to accelerate the growth of their relationship. She had left gifts and letters, claiming them to be from the other. They had never questioned it, the fools. They were too star struck with each other to even conceive of the idea that they were both being played. When on the rare occurrence that the two of them fought, she would use her illusions to make one believe that she was the other. She would whisper the sweetest words into theirs ear.
‘Oh, my love. I’m so sorry’
‘Dearest, it was all my fault. I was wrong.’
‘Sweetheart, how could I have been so blind?’
It was all too easy to make them look past their differences and cause them to fall deeper in love with one another. And she had watched it all from the shadows.
Eventually, Shining Armor finally proposed to Cadence. And it couldn’t have happened soon enough. Chrysalis had been getting fed up with the lack of rings between the two lovers. She had been on the verge as presenting herself as Shining Armor to the princess and popping the question herself. What had kept her from doing so were two facts. One: The Captain of the guard apparently possessed some kind of spell shield that he could use in the case of an emergency. If by some random chance that such an incident occurred before the planned invasion took place, her illusion magic would be useless in recreating the spell he used. And two: She planned to replace Cadence, not Shining Armor.
It was ironic really. On any other day in the kingdom of Canterlot, it would be neigh impossible to openly invade the city, even with her species’ strong affinity to illusion magic. But the wedding of a princess, that was a different story. The security in the castle would be bolstered, true. But, the wedding of a princess attracted too much attention for the guards to keep everypony out. She would send a few of her Spartiates into the crowd, disguised as nobodies. The kind of ponies you saw on the streets everyday, going about their life, but you would forget about them as soon as you saw them. You didn’t know them, therefore, they didn’t hold much priority in your thoughts.
She had waited to the last possible moment to replace the princess. She had had to watch her carefully, very discreetly replacing the princess’s guards with her own children. Eventually, she knew, the young princess would slip up and leave the queen with the ideal time to kill her and place her body somewhere no pony would ever hope to find it.
And slip up, Cadence did.
One night, four days before the wedding, the princess had decided to take a stroll through the gardens. Her “Guards” had insisted on accompanying her for her “Protection”. The isolation of the gardens had provided the cover needed for Chrysalis and her children to bludgeon the young princess into submission.
Although, to be fair, Chrysalis and her children had slipped up as well. In their eagerness, they had allowed their illusions to fall, allowing Cadence to see them in their true forms. Somehow she had immediately recognized what they were. Curious as to how she knew what they were, Chrysalis had altered her plans to simply murder the young princess and had instead sealed Cadence in the crystal mines below Canterlot. The crystals emitted a strange magic that prevented any from sensing anything within. It had been a useful place to hide the corpses of the guards that she had had her children replace.
No one had suspected a thing. Not even the being that the superstitious types called a goddess. They wrote off any out of character behavior as stress induced by the pressure of preparing her wedding.
It disgusted her. For a century now, Chrysalis had ruled over the hive. She took keeping their existence a secret seriously. Even if her subject were her beloved children, she didn’t tolerate foolish behavior. Even if she had laid the egg sacs that they all came from, she wouldn’t be forgiving if they screwed up and put the existence of the hive at risk.
Since the days of the so called ‘Blessed Mother’, they had only survived for so long because nopony knew of their existence. Secrecy had been, and always would, be their greatest weapon.
To see the capital of a civilization infiltrated so easily sickened her. To see a ruler so unconcerned with the upkeep of safety for her people disgusted her. It was true that Chrysalis looked down on ponies, but even she was shocked at the level of incompetence displayed by their ruler. A ruler was supposed to look out for the safety and happiness of their subjects. While it seemed Celestia had provided happiness for her subjects (After all, this land had more love then Chrysalis had ever seen before.), she had neglected to provide for the safety of her land.
That day before the wedding, Chrysalis made her second, and possibly, her most fatal mistake. The mistake had come in the form of a lavender little pony. Her so called husband’s little sister, Twilight Sparkle.
Admittedly, she had been caught off guard when Twilight Sparkle had first appeared before her. Chrysalis had been stunned into silence when the little pony had started singing and shaking her flank. Twilight then further stunned Chrysalis by pointing her flank at her face. Chrysalis had honestly thought for a moment that Twilight was offering herself to her.
She had barely held back a gag at the thought of herself laying with Twilight. Her fur covered body rubbing against hers. The very thought of it made Chrysalis shudder.
She had ignored Twilight for the most part. She had assumed that from what she had been able to gather from the various conversations between Shining Armor and Princess Cadence, that Twilight would be too busy preparing for her brother’s wedding to spend time with her. She had been spending most of her time avoiding any contact with anypony, even her “Aunts”. She would normally have no problem spending time with ponies, for she was quite the actor. However, when one of the ponies you were trying to fool was a so called goddess, one took extra precautions.
Even if Celestia wasn’t a goddess, she had still clearly been alive for a thousand years. A being that had existed for so long was bound to be powerful and have a high degree of intelligence. Despite the fact that Chrysalis had no respect whatsoever for Celestia’s policies when it came to ruling her subjects, even she would be foolish to underestimate the skills and smarts of a creature that had been supposedly around since the days of the so called ‘Blessed Mother’. She was doubtful that her magic with illusions and pheromones would last long around such a creature.
Where she mostly expected the largest threat to come from Celestia, she had been surprised to find that the one creature that suspected anything was Twilight. Somehow, Twilight was able to look past Chrysalis’s pheromones and illusions, and see that there was something off about her. If Twilight hadn’t shown her hoof early and blown up at the rehearsal, Chrysalis might not have made it as far as she had.
But that was the thing about spur of the moment plans. They were so easy to destroy.
Through the use of her acting skills that she had so carefully honed over one hundred and twenty six years of life, she managed to get Twilight’s brother, Twilight’s Teacher, and even Twilight’s friends on her side. Her brother defended Chrysalis’s out of character behavior, reducing Twilight’s accusations to dust. And consequently, reduced Twilight to tears. It had been beautiful to watch.
But nopony told Twilight to leave the city. That had been slightly annoying. If she had been out of the city, her plans would go so much smoother. But no, the one time that she needed these ponies to do something even remotely competent, they completely muck it up. And she couldn’t very well just kill her either. She was good, but she wasn’t ‘Kill somepony in the castle of the capital and completely get away with it’ good.
She approached the crying mare slowly. While she doubted Twilight would do anything to harm her in the state she was in, expressing caution when it came to such a powerful little creature was never a bad idea.
Twilight never even heard her coming. Putting on the face a caring parent would look at their child with, she gently turned the lavender mare’s head towards her. Tears were streaming down her face as she looked upon the changeling queen’s face. She almost felt sorry for this pathetic creature.
She tried to apologize for her actions, not that it mattered to Chrysalis. Whether or not Twilight was truly regretful was irrelevant to her, though she doubted it. Ponies would do or say anything if they thought it would strip them of any retribution or ill fate. She saw it so many times when she prepared ponies for their fate of becoming a helot.
But she had already made her decision. Since she couldn’t kill Twilight right now, she would place her in the mines, where she could do nothing to disrupt Chrysalis’s plans.
That had been her third mistake.
Chrysalis, in her rush to rid herself of Twilight had forgotten that she had also placed the young Princess Cadence in the mines as well. Obviously, without her knowledge, the princess and Twilight had joined forces and escaped the mines.
She had been surprised genuinely when Twilight had brazenly barged into the ceremony. That hadn’t stopped her from again trying to act like she was distressed at the accusations laid onto her by Twilight.
It might have worked too if the true Princess Cadence hadn’t walked in at that very moment.
Once again, Princess Cadence identified Chrysalis as a changeling. And again, Chrysalis found herself wondering how it was that the young princess knew of their species. Seeing that it was pointless to keep up the charade of Cadence, Chrysalis allowed her illusions to drop, revealing her true nature.
She saw throughout the crowd that many of the ponies seemed disgusted with her true form, as if she was some abomination. Hideous and ugly. Like they knew anything about what it was to be beautiful. These creatures whose bodies were covered with fur. These creatures who lacked the blessings of magic, lacked the blessing of flight, or in some case, lacked the blessing of both. Who were these inferior creatures to judge her and her children when they lacked the beauty that they possessed?
Dropping her act as the young princess, Chrysalis explained to them that their race would fuel her species hunger for love.
It was then that another revelation made itself known. She had completely forgotten that Princess Celestia was standing just a few feet from her.
She had to silently applaud the so called goddess for finally taking some initiative for the safety of her subjects as Celestia stepped forward with the intent to defend her people. Even if she was Chrysalis’s enemy, she was pleased to see that she wasn’t fleeing with her guards to save herself, like so many rulers would.
On the other hoof, a part of her had wished that the so called goddess had fled. She knew that Celestia was powerful. This wasn’t a fight that Chrysalis was sure that she could win. Here was a being that could raise the sun everyday. Even if she wasn’t a goddess, she was beyond what Chrysalis was sure that she could handle.
Still, this was for her children, her hive. She had planned this invasion solely for the purpose of securing sustenance for her species. She wasn’t about to throw that all away just because she wasn’t sure that she could win a fight.
Without hesitation, Chrysalis charged forward, her horn making contact with Celestia’s. Celestia then flew up in the air and shot a beam of magical energy at Chrysalis and she shot her own beam of magical energy in kind. At first, it seemed as if Celestia was too strong for her to handle. But as she began draw power from Shining Armor, her power began to grow in ways she could never have imagined. Her magical energy began to push Celestia’s magic back, until it made contact with her horn. Celestia fell to the ground, defeated.
Chrysalis had done it. She had single hoofed managed to defeat a so called goddess. She wished her subjects had been here. So that they could see that even if something called themselves a goddess, if you could gather enough power, nothing was invincible.
In her triumphant mindset, Chrysalis made her fourth and final mistake.
She allowed Twilight and her five friends to leave the hall. They were under the orders of the still barely conscious so called goddess to retrieve ‘The Elements of Harmony’. While this could have turned out to have been a mistake, it wasn’t that slip up that had been Chrysalis’s ultimate downfall. Call it a stroke of good fortune or luck.
No, what had ultimately been Chrysalis’s downfall had been how she had ignored the young Princess and her fiancé. The stallion who had spent the better part of the day a mindless husk that she had bent to her will, found Chrysalis control shattered by a spell administered by the mare that he loved. Chrysalis had been too enraptured with watching her beloved children tear the pony’s society to pieces and, as a result, hadn’t noticed the spell the two lovers had been charging until it was too late to stop them.
The wave of magic had hit her fast and hard. It took a moment for her mind to see through the haze of pain to even realize that she was flying through the air. She screamed out, her mind barreling in pain as she felt each of her children be slammed by the wave.
After what seemed like an eternity of never-ending pain, Chrysalis felt herself hit the ground. And then, through her mental connection to her children, felt them hit the ground as well.
Changelings were unique, to say the least, when it came to how they communed with one another. Since the dawn of their existence, the so called blessed daughters of Azalea had been the only ones born with the ability of speech. True, the queens of the Hive had the ability to gift this ability to their children, but really, what was the point? They were a race that feed off the emotions of others, what better way was there to communicate then emotion.
Changelings shared a hive mind unlike any other. Each of them could feel one another, and when they were within a mile of one another, could commune through feelings and images. It was perfect, flawless. Perfect understanding through hundreds of thousands of minds. There was no double meanings, no half truths. Just pure, unfiltered thoughts.
When one died, every member of the hive felt them disappear from the collective. The hive mind seemed to get just a little bit smaller. It was always horrible and sad. Here was a member of the family that they would never again share conscious with.
Until this day, Chrysalis could never have imagined the pain, the agony, and the despair of feeling hundreds of minds disappear.
‘How could this happen?’
Chrysalis sat there in the dirt, one of her poor dead children held tightly in her hoofs, pondering that question. Deep down, she knew the answer.
‘How could I have made so many mistakes? Why didn’t I just kill that princess and that lavender pony when I had the chance?’
The queen of the changelings looked down at the dead child in her hoofs. If a pony had looked at this child, they could never have discerned it from any of it’s siblings. But she, who gave birth to all changelings, could easily tell all of them apart.
She remembered this one. It had been unusually energetic and curious for a perioeci. She had been slightly worried that it would become a genetic anomaly, but as it had grown up, it showed less and less signs of being such. It had integrated into the hive mind, it had showed no interest in pony society, and it hadn’t tried to leave on its own to the outside world.
“Good bye my little perioeci.” She whispered into her dead child’s ear. She then paused. Should she say what came next? It went against all her beliefs. Still, this changeling had served the hive well. She supposed she could swallow her skepticism and at least give it this. She tenderly kissed the head of her poor dead child.
“May you rest peacefully in the hive below.”
She gently lowered her child’s body to the ground and stepped back a few steps, not once taking her eyes off of it. Lighting her horn with magic, she ignited a spark of flame on the changeling’s body.
She hated doing this, but it was the only way. There were who knows how many dead, and she wasn’t about to spend what could possibly been weeks sending her children to retrieve all the bodies. It was too much of a risk. They had already been exposed to the world in the largest, grandest possible way imaginable. They had no choice but to burn the bodies in the hopes that ponies didn’t stumble upon the corpses. If that happened, stallions and mares of science would dissect them in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of their species.
“Hello there, descendent of Azalea.”
Chrysalis was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of a male voice almost directly behind her. She spun around and was met with an unusual sight.
There was a strange creature standing a few feet from her. At the creature’s side was a changeling perioeci, gaping at the creature with a stunned expression on it’s face. No doubt that it was as surprised as she was to hear the so called blessed mother’s name.
“I hope you’re not too busy,” The strange creature spoke. “Well, you don’t seem to be busy, seeing as you just set that mess over there on fire.”
Chrysalis let out a snarl at the strange creature for that insult against her child. “What do you want….Whatever you are!?”
“Oh good!” The strange creature face lit up with a smile. “You can speak! I was slightly worried that Menyanthes here,” The creature inclined his head over to the still gaping changeling at his side. “Wasn’t being honest with me when he told me you could speak. Well, told as in he just kinda nodded when I asked him if you could speak or not.”
“But, no matter.” The creature took a step forward looking Chrysalis directly in the eye. “I’m hoping that we might have a word.”
What in Equestria had just been dropped in Chrysalis’s lap this time?