The Monster in the Twilight
Judgement
In the Everfree, nothing lasts forever. Within years, the crater left behind by the exploding hive would be nothing but a shallow lake with few visible traces of the destruction involved in its creation. Months from now, the stripped carapaces of the dead changelings would be converted into valuable nutrients for the wealth of hydrophytic vegetation that would clog the shallow edges of the water, providing cover for predator and prey alike. Weeks from now, the piles of wood would have dried enough to spontaneously catch fire in fits and spurts as fire ants performed their role in the ecosystem. Days from now the bodies would be picked over by predator and scavenger alike, everything from tiny insects to massive creatures who only prowled at night to conceal their hideous features from even their own kind.
Today, the piles of changeling dead were the focus of something strange and different to the Everfree, of such interest that the normal denizens watched in hiding from behind the treeline. They did not seem to be scavengers or predators, for instead of devouring the widely scattered pieces of changeling bodies, they seemed to take great interest in the living ones. The strange multicolored creatures brought with them all types of wagons and carts, and spread throughout the devastation with amazing precision. Creatures with glowing horns pointed out living changelings, other of the creatures moved fallen trees and rocks to bring them out, and the creatures with wings loaded the battered and stunned changelings onto their flying conveyances and vanished off into the distance. It was all very strange to the forest.
If the Everfree was truly alive, it might have wondered why the creatures picking their way through the bodies in search of the living were casting nervous eyes at the descending sun, as if they feared the oncoming night.
* * *
Standing in the center of the massive crater with his wife, Shining Armor could not help but feel cold sweat drip down the inside of his armor in the baking late-afternoon sun.
It would be dark in a few hours, before which time Cadence and himself would have to depart in order to be at Cavillia as promised, leaving the nauseating job of rescue to the myriad of pegasi who had flocked to the rescue effort, both military and many civilians. It itched at his sense of duty to abandon them all to fly with Cadence to the carefree town of her childhood while the rescue crews still searched the piles of the dead for the few still living.
The lucky survivors were the physically injured ones. Many of the rest of the surviving changelings did not have a mark on them. They were found curled up helplessly as if their life was being leached away, or just staring out into space with bleeding ears. Despite his earlier flippancy, there was a dark shadow that tugged at Shining Armor’s soul to think of his sister as somepony who could kill or maim this many with a single spell. And worse, it was his fault.
The sharp chemical tang of smoke forced Shining Armor’s mind back to the time just before Twilight took her entrance exam for Celestia’s school. Days of constant studying and preparation had driven his little sister into one of her normal fits of neurotic nerves that even double-chocolate ice cream had not been able to budge. As any good big brother would do, he had decided a distraction was in order.
Sustained use of the Flashpaper spell throughout the house gave a sharp itch to everypony’s nose for weeks afterwards, in particular on the back porch where the discovery had been made that Miss Smarty Pants could indeed briefly fly like a pegasus. After parents and a certain filly-sitter had returned to find out just what Twilight and her big brother had been up to, cooler and older heads prevailed before the distraction had turned into too much destruction. Cookies had been liberally doled out along with a stern lecture, and sincere promises had been made that she or Miss Smarty Pants would never use the spell again.
And she had used it to kill.
He could not help but look at the muddy floor where Twilight must have been imprisoned. Two open pods and two sets of side-by-side hoofprints leading away meant his sister had somepony else. Somepony who did not wear horseshoes, and who had no hesitation about trotting off with her into the surrounding forest. It meant Twilight actually had somepony who cared for her.
He was both happy and sad at the realization.
Twilight was alive, and had a friend. Had he discovered this at any time other than in the bottom of a huge crater where she had killed thousands of living beings, his heart would have been singing for joy. The little sister that he had sought for twelve years, who Cadence had hoof-sewn dozens of Miss Smarty Pants dolls for in hopes of triggering a memory, was not lost forever. Some part of her mind was still there. She was not simply a ravening beast of destruction who could pull down the sun, but some little spark of the tiny filly he loved so much still burned inside her battered body.
Perhaps too much of a spark.
The folded piece of grubby cloth set to one side of the hoofprints must have been one of the first Miss Smarty Pants dolls Cadence had faithfully made for their expeditions into the forest. It had always seemed such a futile gesture after each trip into that hellish forest to leave the new doll behind, but he had not argued with his marefriend, and later his wife. Cadence left a tiny little bit of her heart behind in the forest with the doll every time they returned, whether in despair over not finding Twilight, or in anguish at the way she lashed out when they did find her. Shining Armor still worried that someday he would come home to find his wife gone away into the Everfree all by herself, never to return. He was not sure if he could resist the same urge without her loving presence, the urge that called out to him louder every time they were surrounded by the verdant green of the trees and cloying swamp air.
The flattened and patched doll now rested tightly against his wife’s side, crushed under one wing as if by that intense physical contact the Princess of Love could somehow pass her love to the traumatized little unicorn.
Shining Armor had once thought Miss Smarty Pants was the ugly step-sister of stuffed animals, a badly sewn pony made of scraps and loose stitches that nopony could possibly love. Twilight had seen something else, a doll who needed love because of her shortcomings even more than the other little fillies with their perfect little stuffed creatures who never had a hair out of place or lacked a plastic smile. Other little fillies needed their dolls; Miss Smarty Pants needed her Twilight, to the extent that Shining Armor often had absent-mindedly forgotten that she was a doll when distributing cookies or treats. Someone that close to your heart was never given up without loss. He tried not to think of his own well-worn Sir Armor action figure, buried away from spousal detection in boxes of his old things and camouflaged with an old hoofball trophy. What depths of despair was Twilight going through to make her cast away her lifelong friend?
* * *
In a small clearing in the Everfree Forest, a sufficient distance away from the crater so as not to have any obvious dead changelings scattered about, a small group of very different ponies did very different things. The largest of the group, striped in black and white, stood calmly to one side with her eyes closed and all four hooves firmly planted in the thick, rich forest soil. She said nothing at all, but her tail repeatedly twitched, and her head was in constant movement, glancing back and forth as if she were watching a large number of things through her closed eyes.
Four of the smallest ponies were gathered together with the jumbled pile of their possessions, separating out the various foodstuffs from camera equipment while chattering away with each other about the grand adventure they had today while lamenting a general lack of additional cutie marks from the experience. The fifth little pony had just emerged from the last pod, all covered in green goop with the emergence being properly documented by the clicking noise of Featherweight’s camera. Despite being urged for a picture posed with the collapsing pod, the little red-maned pony went promptly over to Monster and gave her a hug and a messy green kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you Monthter. Aaaa-thooo!” Twist backed off a bit, and looked her depressed friend over carefully before asking, “Guyth. How long were we trapped?”
“Just a couple hours by my watch,” said Featherweight, proudly holding up his timepiece. “We’ve only got a few hours before nightfall, so I’m a little more worried about where we are.” The little colt finished his sentence with a badly-suppressed giggle, which set off the other little ponies too, but it took Twist to ask the question they were all thinking.
“Then why doth Monthter look like thee’th been thwimming in purple cotton candy?”
* * *
Monster had been trapped within her own thoughts ever since she had plodded listlessly through the body-strewn crater, carrying five little green pods and a collection of saddlebags in her wake. The green goop that coated her legs almost to the knees was not only the result of being in a pod, but also the blood and other bodily fluids of the changeling corpses and shattered pieces of corpses she had blindly walked through, instead of around like Zecora. The bodies had been so pervasive when they had reached the rim of the crater that her mind had finally shut down rather than watch the reflexive twitches inside the thick piles of corpses.
Nothing could have survived that. There can’t be anypony alive under that pile. Just keep walking. Don’t think. Just walk. There had to have been another — No! Just walk. Would it be easier to kill now? Does each shattered corpse lower the threshold until murder becomes a simple reaction? Don’t think. Just walk. What if I am so numb to murder that I could kill one of my friends?
Any experienced medical pony would have recognized the beginning symptoms of shock on the young mare, from her dilated, staring eyes to her short, panting breaths and sweat-soaked hide. However, a doctor would be baffled at the light purple fuzz that covered her entire body like some sort of pony-peach right down to the end of her tail, which had developed somewhat of a purple pom-pom appearance. Lacking a mirror, Monster had not really realized what had happened to her until Twist’s outburst, which soaked into her depressed mind rather slowly. But it did soak.
“Aahm purple,” blurted out Monster in shock, holding a trembling, green-splotched leg up for inspection, then twisting around to look over her purple-fuzzed back. The fuzz did not wipe off, but the green goop smeared across her hide when she tried sent spasmodic little twitches of nausea up and down her stomach. There was no obvious explanation for the fuzzy phenomena, and she could not bear to think of the origin of the green, sticky blood, so she quickly resorted to a technique that had stood her well for many years. One smeary and slightly fuzzy purple hoof gently prodded the silent zebra. “Mom?”
The meditative zebra touched hooves with her adoptive daughter without opening her eyes. “Beloved Flower, restrain your power. Please be calm without alarm. There is nought on you that shall cause harm.”
“Do ya think it’s from the green goop?” asked Apple Bloom, trying to get the last of the icky stuff off with leaves from a nearby tree. “What if we all turn fuzzy purple?”
“Ewww!” Sweetie Belle rubbed the leaves against her last few green splotches with renewed vigor, taking an additional bundle in her magic to enthusiastically wipe down the sections of her back she could not reach. “I don’t want to be purple.”
“Purple’th not that bad,” said Twist, rubbing a clump of leaves over Monster in an attempt to clean her up. “We’d look like a bunch of grapeth.”
“I still can’t find my scooter,” Scootaloo groaned, grabbing a clump of leaves and contributing to the cleanup effort of the sticky unicorn, who seemed reassured by the physical contact of her friends. “I have no idea where we are either. Miss Zecora, can you get us home before dark?”
“My dears, do not fret. This is not over yet. Flower did what she must to set us free, from inside that awful, horrible tree. Now you small ones we must return, before your fate your elders learn.“
A loud roaring hiss split the afternoon air, followed by a nearby weak scream of terror. Before the echoes had died out, Monster bolted through the forest in its direction, her horn lit up with a blinding violet aura.
“Oh, no!” cried Zecora before dashing down the path after her wayward daughter, followed by five little ponies.
* * *
Once she looked up from the shattered copse of trees in which she had just struggled back to consciousness, Queen Chrysalis considered the bitter fact she was not having the day she planned. Not at all. Nothing in her plans included having nearly all of her children destroyed in one cataclysmic explosion, or her own well-battered and heavily punctured body being flung deeply into the forest. From the dull grating whenever she shifted positions, she was fairly certain all four of her legs were broken, the back ones during the explosion, and the front ones on what could only jokingly be called a landing. The explosion had ripped both of her wings off or at least broken them so badly they no longer worked, and the number of burning wooden splinters that had punched ragged holes in her rear carapace made it impossible for her to turn to look at the carnage. Not that it really mattered anyway. Even though shock had set in and enough nerve endings had been severed to keep her from screaming constantly in pain, the sensation of additional wooden stakes transfixing her vital organs when she crashed to the ground into the shattered trees made her numbly aware that once she had exhausted whatever small supply of love the Hivemind could still provide, she was going to die in agony.
Of course, the Everfree Forest seemed ready to deny her even that mercy.
“Oh, come on!” Queen Chrysalis glared up in disbelief from her dying spot, unable even to pull her punctured body off the shattered trees she was impaled upon. She could do nothing but stare in amazement at the huge beast who nearly blocked out the sun, looking back down at her with hungry, beady eyes.
The Scorpio was an ancient Celestial, created by unknown gods near the beginning of the universe from the primal building blocks of the very sky. Nopony knew just why the twelve great stellar monsters were created. Perhaps they were pets of the original creators, or deeply meaningful symbols of the creation. Or maybe just leftover bits of the heavens given to their malicious children to create play toys. This one seemed to be taking out its fury on the surrounding trees, slashing its way forward with snips of razor-sharp claws, apparently quite angry at being woken up by the recent explosion. And it seemingly had just decided just exactly who was responsible for awakening it from a mere century or two of napping.
Chrysalis was not aware of her screaming. To be fair, she was not aware of many things, because the changeling queen had her full and undivided attention focused on the giant starry scorpion who towered above her, and the huge claw that seemed to be taking so long to plunge down on her bleeding body. The claw that slowed to a stop, surrounded in a shimmering purple magic.
“Ha! Bite me, you brainless beast!” screamed Chrysalis in a unthinking rage. “My changelings will tear you limb from limb and feast on your — Eeek!!”
The poisoned stinger of the giant star-beast lashed downward at the tiny speck of food that resisted being eaten. Perhaps a few stings would make it less annoying. Within the Scorpio’s brain of star-stuff were only a few primitive emotions. Anger. Eat. Sting. Grab. Sleep. It needed little else. Sleeping was out of the question after that horrible shaking rattled it around inside the comfortable hole it had dug just a few centuries ago. Anger filled most of its mind now. Eating was mostly an empty effort. Very few of the creatures of the forest even tasted good. The little bit of food that made such annoying noises was the exception.
It smelled delicious.
Raw forest loam sprayed in all directions when the giant Scorpio stinger smashed into the ground, deflected to just inches away from the changeling queen by a sparkling violet aura. With a deafening hiss, the giant beast stabbed again, and again, each time missing by inches. Gathering itself up, the Scorpio lashed out one last time with all its might, the glistening tail plunging down unimpeded at Queen Chrysalis — only to sink into the bole of a leafy forest giant held suspended over the helpless changeling.
Chrysalis barely had time to utter a startled ‘Eeep!’ at the sudden appearance of the tree trunk, and the pointed end of the Scorpio stinger that protruded out the bottom mere inches away from her face, before the tree went spinning up into the air. Unable to free its tail, the Scorpio spun away after it, with clattering claws and angered hissing dying away into the distance as the two vanished over the horizon.
* * *
Standing in the middle of the crater, a wooly-coated pegasus dressed in slate-grey armor suddenly looked up into the air, and reflexively punched his commanding officer in his armored flank with a loud clang.
“Captain Armor, do you see that?”
Shining Armor and Cadence looked up from their discussion to see the giant star-scorpion and attached tree soaring above the forest horizon and still gaining altitude.
“Well, that’s new.”
* * *
Still woozy from blood loss, Chrysalis turned her head to look at the changelings who rescued her, even as her pain-numbed mind finally managed to figure out just how large the star-beast was, and how many changelings it would have taken to lift it, let alone throw it. It would have been a very large number, far more than the few hundred survivors she could still feel in the weak tingle of the Hivemind.
Instead of changelings, a single, familiar-looking unicorn stood a few feet away, with her eyes blazing white with power.
Chrysalis missed the Scorpio already.
“How did you escape the hive—” she started before the appearance of a zebra and five little ponies at the edge of the newly created clearing brought realization to her fuzzy thoughts.
“You! You’re the one who blew up my hive!”
The changeling broke off into an agonizing coughing fit while the fuzzy purple unicorn just glared at her, breathing heavily. Finally, the unicorn muttered, “Bug hurt my friends.”
Chrysalis fairly snarled in response, “You killed thousands of my children!”
“You would have killed us,” snarled Monster right back at her.
“Only after extracting every single drop of love you could give, after years of pleasant dreams and joy.” Chrysalis coughed wetly again, looking at the zebra and the little ponies standing nervously at the back of the new clearing.
Turning back to the fuzzy purple unicorn, she lifted her chin up with a jerk. “Go ahead. Kill me in front of your little ones, and show them the blood of the one who wronged you. Bathe them in my blood, for all I care. I’m dying already.” She coughed again and spat weakly. “There is only one Queen of the Changelings. After I die, another shall take my place. We shall have our revenge for the deaths of my children, for my changelings shall never rest until you are dead and eaten! And your little friends too. So strike me or not, as long as one of my children live, our fangs shall be at your — what are you doing?”
Above her, Monster raised one hoof, stained with changeling goo and blood, and placed it almost delicately on the queen’s chest. For a moment, the changeling queen thought the unicorn was simply going to force her body farther down onto the wooden stakes impaling her carapace to the forest floor, perhaps as a last act of cruelty. Then her horn lit up, with a darkly burning fire so purple as to be almost black.
The tingle of the Hivemind in Queen Chrysalis’ chest abruptly turned into acidic fire when the faint trickle of love from her changelings cut off almost instantly, replaced by the slimy feeling of dark tendrils sliding through her mind. The darkness split, and split again, each of them slipping down a thread of the Hivemind to the heart of a distant changeling, even as she felt one of the tendrils coil about her own dark and unrepentant heart.
“What!” gurgled the changeling queen, as the unicorn’s intent became clear and her throat started to contract. “That’s genocide!”
Monster spoke but one word, her voice dripping with contempt. “Justice.”
Apple Bloom’s curious voice could be heard all the way across the clearing. “Zecora, what is she doing?”
The zebra seemed to be almost a statue while she stood quietly and motionless next to the young ponies. “When the changeling queen dies, her life to another flies. If none live when her body retires, the race of changelings forever expires. My daughter fully intends, to put them all to gruesome ends.”
Twist gave an anguished cry and fairly flung herself across the clearing to wrap around Monster’s neck in tears. “No, Monthter! Thee may be bad, but that dothent mean all of them are bad.”
Sweetie Belle was right behind her friend, wrapping one hoof around a purple leg in a tight hug regardless of the mess. “Twist’s right. I mean, if you judged all ponies by Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, you’d think we all were just horrible.”
Featherweight quit taking pictures and floated down to join the hug with the rest of their friends. “They’re right, and you know it. Just because she did something bad, doesn’t make her a bad pony.”
“She’s evil,” snarled Monster, her horn glowing even brighter. “Evil should be destroyed. She hurt you! She’s a bad—”
The unicorn cut off abruptly as her eyes met the loving gaze of the quiet zebra. Even though Monster had only been adopted instead of being her own daughter, Zecora had always been there for her no matter what, during thunderstorm, freezing cold or when dark things in the night stalked her dreams. There was no bottom to the forgiveness in the depths of her heart, just the same as her shattered memories brought up the image of an older unicorn mare with a purple and white mane who used to look at her that exact same way. As well as a blue unicorn stallion with golden eyes, and a pink winged unicorn and a white colt and a giant white unicorn who brought down the sun—
Chrysalis gurgled helplessly, unable to spit words of defiance back into the foolish little idiot’s faces. Forgiveness? Revenge was all she cared about now. The blaze of rage quickly succumbed to an icy chill that crept across her body from the cold hoof on her chest as the spell gained in power and realization began to dawn. She knew she was going to die, but the thought of having her entire race exterminated like insects after so many centuries of existence grated on her flinty heart.
The crushing sensation of despair overwhelmed her. Perhaps it was best, after all. The ravenous hunger of the changelings had only deteriorated over the years. Someday soon they would be nothing but loathsome parasites. Hunted in fear. To be exterminated as a danger. Monsters.
The purple-fuzzed unicorn standing over the queen suddenly wrenched herself away with a scream of agony that shook the ground and tore deafeningly through the surrounding little ponies. The bellow of pain and rage jolted Chrysalis agonizingly against her bloody stakes while the unicorn reared up on her hind legs, horn pointed to the sky to release a bolt of indigo power with a mighty crackle straight up into the air. The dark threads of power filling the hivemind ripped away from Queen Chrysalis as if a thousand jagged steel threads were flaying her alive even while the battered unicorn bolted away from the little ponies, darting off into the shadowy forest with the sound of sobbing.
“Monster! Wait!” Apple Bloom galloped off into the Everfree after her, quickly followed by most of the rest of her little friends.
Zecora finally moved, walking over to lift up Twist from where she had fallen during the stampede. The zebra looked down at Chrysalis, who gasped for air with a glare in return.
“Dying queen of the changelings, your life shall soon be no longer.
But the new queen you select, can make your kind stronger.
Forgiveness is what I choose to give as your instruction,
for revenge will lead your children to destruction.
Be very careful about choosing your successor,
but remember you are dying. So—”
The zebra turned her back and began to trot after her daughter. “No pressure.”
“Aren’t we thtaying with the bug-lady, Zecora?” asked Twist, with a look of conflicted stress between her friend, running away in the distance and the mortally wounded changeling.
“No, you must come right now, my little one. In order to catch my Flower, we both must run.”
The little pony dashed off after the zebra for a few steps before doubling back to Queen Chrysalis just long enough to stick a cinnamon stick in her mouth, then ran as fast as her little hooves would carry her after her friends.
The dying changeling queen sucked in welcome air despite the gurgling that had begun to fill her lungs. With the departure of the small one, the clearing was as silent as anything ever got in the Everfree. Only the buzzing of insects and the faraway flapping of approaching pegasus wings could be heard through the ringing that still echoed through her head. There were at best mere minutes to go before her essence would pass to the Hivemind and a new changeling queen would be born. It seemed like such a short time compared to her long life, and whatever changeling inherited her power would certainly curse her stupidity as the remainder of her children starved. Then her race would die, just as she was dying. Alone. Unloved. Struck down as a monster.
As the sounds of wings grew louder, Chrysalis gave an experimental suck on the sweet candy and managed to smile, despite the pain. “They really are made with love!”