Changeling Heart and the New Moon
chapter twenty nine
Chrysalis was not one to ever consider mortality, least of all her own. Fallen to the ground and with eyes too heavy to move, or even shut, she thought on it now. Broken, drained and detached, she decided death wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but it wasn’t so bad. As deaths went, she had to admit that it didn’t line up with her expectations at all. Not that she’d ever actually expected to die. It was one thing to know it would happen in the unspecified future, and quite another have that future suddenly, violently arrive. Nobody wanted a present like that. Even as her energies drained slowly from her, shredded in Luna’s grasping power, part of the Queen raged and thrashed against fate.
It grew more desperate, but also more distant, and the rest of Chrysalis felt an unusual calm. Her unblinking, unmoving eyes watched placidly from the floor at the lives still striving in front of her.
It was all so very lively, what with Cadence, the broken pony and his doppelganger all struggling with and against one another. Shining was fumbling with his hooves, dribbling blood and saliva from a jaw he couldn’t quite shut. Chrysalis felt the strangest urge to shush and chide them all, but that too passed her by, and faded away into the distance.
She’d pushed herself too hard. She’d carried herself too far on strength that had never been hers to claim, loves she’d let come far too close to her heart. Luna had reclaimed two of the gems from that deep, vulnerable place, tearing them free through Chrysalis’ very being, and now that the Queen lay on the smooth marble of the castle she found herself asking: What had it all been for? Petty vengeance? To prove something? None of that mattered as much now. Chrysalis felt cold, as if she were under the open sky. Colder than that, she realized, like the very stones beneath her were ice from the far underground. It wasn’t uncomfortable; she could get used to this. It was making her sleepy.
Cadence and the ponies weren’t moving as much now, the Queen realized. The two that weren’t ravening had been shouting, back and forth, but the words had been too much and too quick, and they had escaped the Queen’s notice. The one brother held the other tightly, as if to let go was to lose him forever. That was very likely the case. The light of the princess Cadence shone down on the pair, the brightest yet Chrysalis had seen the mare capable of. Despite the sudden illumination, the Queen’s eyelids slid slowly down over a vision that steadily blurred. She could have sworn that, at the very end, Wane’s skin burned away in little papery flakes. Flakes that burnt green, and left a satisfying glossy blackness behind.
So, he was a changeling all along. She couldn’t see very much now, just paleness and blackness pulled together in a tight embrace, but it was nice. She’d never heard of any of her changelings seeing one of what they called the lost ones; those changelings that fell headlong into love and lost themselves in it, never to return to their true home. It was nice to see one who had made something real and lasting out of it. Chrysalis couldn’t feel much, and even the weakest of chuckles was quite beyond her, but she could appreciate the notion. It must have been their secret for years. Right under all their noses. Mine too.
Chrysalis’ thoughts drifted apart and lost focus, but saw all the further for it. And what she found out there would have made her weep had her body the strength left to cry, for what she saw saddened her more than anything had ever done before.
For all their striving, for all the warmth of this one moment, Wax would still die. Wane, a changeling irreparably attuned to his sole brother, would soon follow in grief or starvation. With her end so too would all changelings wither and die, regardless of whether they escaped Canterlot today or not. All their hopes, all her aspirations, all of it. They would diminish, there would be no day in the sun for the changeling race.
All her struggles for naught. Suddenly the cold felt so very cold indeed, and stretched away into eternity before her. Cold, empty and waiting, Chrysalis waited for the end.
Shining Armor despaired. Every second he wasn’t rushing to Celestia’s aid weighed on him heavily. His jaw ached terribly and flashed with hot pain whenever he tried to move it. Each hurried step jarred it painfully. He tried to think, tried to plan, but what could a plan do for him now? His princess could be dying as he dawdled. In his zeal and vindictiveness against Chrysalis he’d sent all the guards he could command, sent them all to capture the changelings. Who could have expected the damnable Queen to try to break through such an assault, let alone succeed?
It was all falling apart around him, mounting up in a great desecrated heap of failures. All his plans, his warnings and aspirations, all for naught. Celestia could be dying, the nightmare reborn in Luna, and he know with sickening certainty he had neither strength nor hope to fight it.
The cascade of Cadence’s light faded, and Shining looked upon the brothers, clutching onto one another as the entire world tried to tear them apart, and was succeeding with utter cruelty. For what felt a very long time, but could only have been a very few seconds, Shining Armour watched.
Stilled of thoughts, the guards’ oath drifted upwards in his mind. Not the actual one, which was steeped in tradition; long, archaic and dull, but the real one, the one he’d inscribed in his heart. The spirit of what he fought for.
To protect. Plain and simple. To protect as many as he could, for as long as he could. Even one such as she and all she had wrought did not deserve to die like this. Not today.
Everything moved slowly as it coursed through him. For this one moment of clarity the pain hardly registered. He looked on the brothers, half crazed and clinging to hope and each other, for what else was there for them to hold onto? His wife, tears spilling freely from her eyes even as she determinedly staved off the inevitable just a little longer, each tear a crystal terrible and precious to behold, glinting in the twilight. Chrysalis, who had no light left at all, slumped and still on the marble. And who could know what horrors yet transpired above?
Shining Armour was not one for cursing. He wiped bloody spittle from the side of his chin, and grumbled something, almost like words, but made unintelligible by his broken jaw. It sounded like a threat. Shining carried himself to Chrysalis, groaning as he pushed over the lax changeling to her side. Her head was stretched out before her, as if she waited eagerly for judgement. He hesitated.
In nightmares yet to come for the good captain he stood here, recalling this very instant with unerring clarity and chose, instead of hope, the axe.
But that was not to be and, in this life, he lowered his horn to her throat and set to work.
It was only a tingle in the empty darkness, but it grew. It crawled, dragging itself across the vastness to Chrysalis. It became an itch, an ache, a scald, all these things and none of them. It became sorrow and anger. Joy and belligerence. Mostly it became pain. It reached into the void on a lance of light and life and love, filling the emptiness with being. It crashed into the Queen, spilling over her and into her, filling her with richness and sustenance.
Chrysalis’ eyes snapped open, her pupils like twin pin-pricks on rarest gemstones. A ragged gasp tore through her throat, and her heart beat as if it intended to pulverize her innards to mush. She awakened so suddenly, came back so violently from that distant place that she nearly impaled herself on the paired horns of Cadence and Shining when her body shuddered, just to know it was alive.
Now this love was one she’d never expected to taste again, one like sweetest vanilla. The little princess and the good captain, offered up willingly for her at that. With the invasion that seemed so long ago, she had chosen these two for good reason, yet even with all thatbetween them, here and now they pulled her back from the brink. It was bewildering, and maddening to try to comprehend their reasons. Mostly though, it was intoxicating.
Chrysalis clawed at the floor, feeble, but gaining strength. The wellspring of her energies was still damaged, still bleeding out. It was cracked open like parched ground, but now the rains had come and with it, the power to bind those intangible wounds and, if nothing but time could truly heal, she could at least stop the bleeding and fill herself on the succour for now.
One black hoof slammed down and remembered just how strong it really was. Slowly, and with great effort, Chrysalis pulled herself upright, past the height of the ponies and the alicorns, further up, a menacing black monolith of a Queen on the rise once more. The brothers watched in stunned awe. Chrysalis opened her mouth to speak, but she collapsed, the hall ringing out as chitin cracked off stone. Groaning, she forced herself up once more. Sitting, she breathed a few throaty breaths, peering the royal couple from their eye level.
“Why?” Chrysalis asked. Of all ponies, none had more reason to revile her than these two.
Defiance and hostility was mirrored in each others’ faces. Shining tried to speak, winced slightly, and looked to his wife. She understood.
The Queen had never seen such a look on the face of the princess Cadence, and that was counting the times she’d worn it herself. It was just so piercing, and so cold like disappointment. “It was the right thing to do,” she said simply, daring the Queen to look away. Chrysalis found she wanted to; she was too exhausted both physically and emotionally to contest with wills like those, but something compelled her to hold that glare and match it anyway.
Cadence strode forwards; Chrysalis couldn’t hold the stare any longer. “What is happening with Luna?” The little princess asked. The eyes were still intense, but with concern, not challenge. “You must know something. She went to you. She brought you back. Started all this.” Sorrow crept into her voice. The Queen recognized it. She’d felt it herself, in that dark place on the edge of life.
She could feel the last gem within the folds of her power. She prodded it gingerly with her magic, working it gently this way and that, as if it were a festering arrowhead that must be removed. She eased it back into the material world, conjured in a puff of emerald flame. To be rid of it felt like a cleansing, and she sighed a deep, liberating breath.
Chrysalis looked up. She could feel the emanations of power from above. Something big, something terrible was happening up there. “Luna tried to escape her past, but that only opened the way for it to find her again.”
Chrysalis stared into the blue gem. Another choice, another choice, always another choice to be made. Grating her fangs, Chrysalis chose, and reached out to Luna, like she had done when the alicorn had hid in the thorns.
Chrysalis hated doing it, not for morality, but because she was always afraid to do so. Changelings were creatures of the heart, not of the mind. The prospects of what she might find there, or worse, what might find her were terrifying. But the thing about choices was once you knew right, wrong and the difference between them, there was no choice. It was a time for change. For everything.
She reached out, using the last jewel as a bridge between them. Something reached back.
The Queen of changelings screamed, her wings flaring and legs thrashing. She flung the jewel as a tiny fireball away from her, stepping back a few wild paces.
“That’s what’s been inside her all along? Inside Luna?” she asked breathlessly. To think that she’d let that thing into her home made the changeling Queen shiver and shake.
“Nightmare Moon,” Shining Armour whispered.
The blackened brother blinked his green eyes. He seemed unsettled about seeing himself for what he really was, but snapped out of it quickly. “We have to try to save her,” Wane said quietly, staring at Chrysalis, perhaps seeing an unavoidable piece of himself reflected there. “We won’t abandon her, whatever she is.”
Wax whimpered, burying his head under his brother’s chin. “I’d rather she be Luna,” he whimpered with exhausted resignation. “She’s a good pony.”
Shining turned away to one of the huge windows. His horn flared once, then he conjured a quick duo of red lights that bled through the glass and flew off into the sky. Biting down hard on one side of his lip he spoke in a groan from the other half of his jaw.
“The shield’s down. We won’t follow,” he said, growling and croaking the words. He wiped a fresh trickle of bloody saliva from his jaw, then gestured with a shrug to the strange brothers.
“We’re not leaving,” said Wane. “There was nowhere else for us to go. Canterlot...Luna, it’s our life.”
“Come back with us,” Chrysalis said, something not even she expected.
Wane’s gaze fell to the floor. Even as a changeling, his eyes retained the edge of that shining, multi-coloured hue distinct to the pair, and she had to wonder just how it had come about. Wax looked to him, and to Chrysalis, fear plain across his brow.
“No,” said Wane. “I might be the same as you, but that doesn't make me anything like you. I never lied to Luna about my loyalties. The changeling that came here isn’t who I am now.”
Chrysalis was stung. There was something of Surreal reminiscent in that honest defiance. Chrysalis made a choice and, walking to the brothers Wax and Wane, braced herself for delicate magic. She’d seen something dark and terrible at the edge -- it made her want to save her people all the more, even the lost ones. Especially the lost ones.
A trickle of emerald embers fell from her horn and onto Wax. His chest rose and fell with anxiety. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rapidly going shrill. Chrysalis felt acutely aware of the royal couple, watching her, deciding.
“Fixing what shouldn’t have been done in the first place.” She was still very tired, and words were taxing what little patience she had. The lights crackled like little sparks, dancing and sinking into the pegasus’ coat. Each burning fleck carried her awareness further into the pony. She could feel him squirming against her, but his efforts were little more than a nuisance to be pushed aside.
It was easier than she expected it to be. Unsettling too, just how easily a little magic had become a great deal of suffering.
Wax blinked, enraptured by the fuzzy, crackling static dancing back and forth across his skin. “It’s...it’s warm!” It didn’t matter much to Chrysalis one way or another. Her only focus was the task before her; it was good that she, in thoughtless whimsy, had not taken any part of him away like she had done for Luna. Everything that made the pegasus was still there, it was just that some parts were...blocked off. Obscured. Out of place. The magical sense didn’t translate well into physicality. Regardless, she worked, aware but for once unmindful of the others watching her.
Then, with the fading of the lights, it was done. The effect was almost instant; tension melted from Wax’s taut muscles, the wild glint to his eye settled, he breathed deep enough to fill himself with air and sighed it away. He blinked and blinked again, slumped into his brother’s holey hooves and cried, weeping and laughter all mixed up in a torrent of release and relief.
Wane’s big changeling eyes found tears just the same as Wax’s, letting them roll down his cheeks get lost in the matted, messy coat of his brother.
“What did you do?” Cadence asked softly, reverently, as Chrysalis walked away soundlessly. “I tried everything I knew...” The Queen didn’t answer.
“Chrysalis?” Cadence called again, stepping hesitantly to her side, Shining Armour quickly following. Before they’d been enemies and, through all of this...they still were. But she knew in her heart now the truth she needed: she was no leech, she was no base parasite. She was a Queen, one yet again faced with a weighty choice. Chrysalis, Queen of the changelings drew a sharp breath that whistled along her fangs and she made her choice.
“I suppose I should thank you,” she said softly, the sounds almost lost in the whoosh of air as she flared her wings, and her horn lit up with sudden fire.
“Chrysalis, what are you—” Alarm turned to slurs as Cadence, Shining and the brothers all succumed to the sleeping spell. The princess collapsed with a dull thump, with the good captain quick to follow. Wax and Wane, already embracing as they’d been, merely slumped.
Ponies and changelings, working and striving together. It made for a strange memory, but not an unwelcome one. Nor would it be one Chrysalis soon forgot.
She turned away from the sleeping forms, the warring, twisting energies from above still calling to her. The last jewel was a tiny speck of darkness on the pale marble and as she neared it. Chrysalis lifted it in her magic. The green flames that grasped it intensified to nearly black as Chrysalis siphoned what strength she could. Bracing herself, both in hoof and mind, the Queen leapt into the air and, with a snickering little feeling of satisfaction, smashed her way into the open night through the stained glass window depicting the happy couple’s triumph over her.
A Queen had to find her pleasure in the little things after all, even on the very verge of making history.
Shards bounced and fell harmlessly from Chrysalis’ wings and hide, and with their fall so too did the light of the castle die away to gloom. The stars, the moon, these things were not to be seen for the morass of clouds had grown only thicker and heavier with the descent of the sun. The lights of Canterlot, bright and vivid as they were, huddled to one another and to the ground, serving to highlight the vastness of the night more than issue any real challenge upon it.
High up on a lonely battlement one light railed against the endless expanse. Chrysalis angled herself towards it, beat the air with her wings and rose. The air was heavy with ice, the bitterness of it gnawing at the Queen’s every inch. She wrapped herself in sprawling tongues of emerald fire for light and heat, but for all that she was still cold, and it was still dark. The wind wailed all around her, pulling the tatters of green flame this way and that, back and forth over her body.
So too did the wind tear at Celestia, for it was she who stood as a beacon against the night. She glowed with a luminescence that stood at odds with the night, strange as a shadow’s opposite, looking more to be an image cast upon this darkling world than a thing unto itself. She cast from her horn a gossamer trail of lights that, for all her effort, petered out to nothing a scant dozen paces ahead of her, swallowed up by the ravening dark.
She stood vivid, tiny and alone, unmoving, focusing her all on maintaining the spell. The old exhilaration welled up within Chrysalis and, dipping her wings to glide, let gravity speed her on her way there.
What would she do to the alicorn, mangle her, burn her? Could Celestia even be burned? Even as Chrysalis thought these things she knew better. A Queen just couldn’t keep doing that sort of thing, not in these times.
A cry of rage and anguish cut across the night. They weren’t alone. Not as such. Shifting and ephemeral, clawing at the surface of its own existence, something tried to take form in a swirling miasma. It pulled itself together like living oil and tried to stand, roaring at Celestia. The alicorn did not falter nor look away, but there was little more she could do than that. From somewhere deep within that morass came a light, pale but unvanquished, rising like reflections of moonlight on still water.
Silvery shimmers flew across the beast and up along what was becoming its neck. The silver light flashed within it like a saber and the form collapsed, gurgling and shifting, pouring itself to smother the light within. More of Celestia’s flickering trail of lights was tugged into the abyss, making the princess of sunlight cry out as she struggled to maintain it.
Could an eldritch nightmare burn? The Queen of changelings was willing to find out. Chrysalis landed at a gallop and readied as much magic as she dared. Sickly light spilled to the edges of the battlement, the air itself singed with the scent of charred tin.
“No, Chrysalis, stop!” Celestia cried out in a breathless gasp.
Chrysalis whipped about, her still readied spell now trained on the alicorn. “Why should I? Look at it!”
“Look at them! Luna’s in there!” More pools of inky black welled up and pulled together, but again thin crescents of light flitted across the nightmare. Where they flew inside of it, it was cut down once more, torn apart in silvery fangs. “She said it was the only way, that it had to end.” Tears streamed freely down that face, one normally so perfect and graceful, but in those eyes there was steel as well, steel and hardness and certainty. “I can’t lose her again.”
The darkness grew and grew. The pale moonlight would rise up and surge across it, only to be snuffed out again. Chrysalis tried to think, she needed to think, but there was so much, all of it clamouring for her thoughts, for her decisions. It all surged through her mind.
The face of Celestia, resolved even in her despair. Luna, facing her past to whatever end. Shining, standing over the Queen’s prone body, passing judgement. Ponies. Changelings. War. Peace. A slap from Cadence. An unlikely newcomer in the heart of her domain, foolish and impulsive.
Chrysalis, hissing and screaming her frustrations, fired her spell straight into the delicate string of lights. Emerald flecks and crackling jade lightning spilled through it, mingling with Celestia’s magic, adding the Queen’s strength to her spell.
It poured new sensation into Chrysalis like icy water. The spell of little lights was a tether, the way home for Luna. The only way home because Luna, ever impulsive, ever passionate had flung herself headlong into the abyss not to flee her monsters, but to fight them. To execute them once and for all.
It was like a weight bearing down on her shoulders. Gritting her teeth, Chrysalis pushed more of her energies into the spell so that the electric arcs grew wider and more fervent, weaving themselves all the more thoroughly through the tether. Knocking out Cadence and Shining was looking like a bad move in hindsight; she’d have spit if her jaws weren’t clamped shut with exertion. She began to pull, the resistance causing her body to swing around so that she stood side to side with Celestia.
They pulled, but for naught. The seething dark held every claimed inch more firmly than an anchor, and as each pulse of Luna’s winnowing light came weaker within it, so too did the nightmare grow. Chrysalis and Celestia -- they pulled with their magic, then pulled harder still just to hold their ground. White and black, their hooves dug into the stone of the battlement.
Luna was fading. It was wrong, not least of all because Chrysalis had yet to beat down the recalcitrant princess to her liking, but it was happening. Another thin flash of moonlight from within decapitated the monster, only for the thick lump to snag on tendrils and ill conceived, ill fitting tendons of utter, glistening blackness that pulled the lump haphazardly back into place. A half formed jaw, now upside down, twisted through the seething mass until it was upright once more.
Insurmountable friction pulled them in slowly. Fighting alongside Celestia of all beings, only to fall. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Chrysalis had had enough despair today. She found a much more familiar, much more useful emotion instead.
“Damnit, Luna!” she roared, whipping her horn this way and that, flaring her wings, kicking her legs at the stone. Everything and anything she could to come through this. “This is all your fault! You did this, you did all of this!” She scorched the nightmare with a touch of flame, hoping Luna felt it as much as the monster did. She turned again, striking Celestia with the thin arcs of green electricity with which she had set so much in motion. The alicorn looked to her with fear and bewilderment, Chrysalis met her eyes for a fraction of a second only. What Celestia saw in there maybe not even Chrysalis herself fully knew. But what the Queen knew just then was how readily the alicorn let the magic dance across her. Celestia closed her streaming eyes, committing her every ounce of strength to holding on.
“Luna you arrogant, ignorant, self-pitying screw-up!” Chrysalis bellowed. The nightmare bellowed back. “Can you hear me, little moon? Can you see, little moon? Look what you’ve done! Look at what you’re doing now!” In the periphery of her mind, Chrysalis dared a glance at the last jewel, the last missing piece of Luna. There’d only be one chance. Once chance for them all.
Chrysalis knees threatened to buckle. The still-tender scar tissue, inflicted by Luna no less, had torn open. Her wings strained and her horn burned, whining and thrumming, casting off heavy sparks that scorched where they fell. The static crawling across Celestia surrounded her entirely and, on a moment of perfect stillness, sunk into her like a thousand scorpion stings, her eyes flaring wide in startlement. It hurt to keep going, but Chrysalis was running her power on sheer momentum. If she stopped she’d never manage this again, never have this chance.
“Fight, damn you! Because for all that, you’re worth fighting for! I don’t have to be a changeling to see how much they love you, Luna! They all love you, so don’t you dare let them down! Not this time! You’re better than this!”
The nightmare boiled from within, bloating like a corpse. The last tiny slivers of silvery moonlight were razor sharp crescents, and blinding in their last stand of Luna’s defiance. They tore across the nightmare, shredding, tearing, doing untold damage to the abomination for one hideous instant.
Now. It wasn’t just a thought, it was the entire universe for Chrysalis, boiled and distilled, refined and purified into a single instant of crystalline action. She pushed what dregs of magic she could into the tether, warping it, changing it. It became not just a tether, but a channel as well, a connection. In the same instant the Queen of changelings battered her way into Celestia’s heart and threw open the floodgates. She had tasted this love before, but this time it was not for her.
No, it was for one who right now needed love even more than a changeling. Chrysalis cast the essence of the jewel into the current, along with every trace scrap of power she had hoarded to herself. Of Wax and Wane. Surreal. Cadence, Even Shining Armor. The tether burned brightly, a light strong enough to drive back the unnatural darkness surrounding the nightmare. The stream of light tore through the air and slammed headlong into nightmare reborn.
The concussion threw them back, alicorn and changeling, and they fell heavily upon the battlements. Then, as the dazzling stars faded Chrysalis saw the last silvery thread of light wink out, subsumed at last in the black.
The nightmare howled; a thing that had tried to create its throat from darkness and its voice from madness. It managed a step towards them. With little else to do and still dazed, Chrysalis hissed angrily. That seemed to do the trick and, quite to Chrysalis’ surprise; the nightmare blew apart, the slabs of its false-flesh burning away into sour smoke. Smoldering hunks fell away and from within came the light, the pale moonlight thought lost.
Luna stepped from the smoking ruin, glowing much as her sister had and walked, a silent wraith, past the Queen of changelings. Celestia, battered and rumpled, could only watch in stillness as the soft light reached out a downy wing, brushing one feathery tip along Celestia’s jaw.
“Luna...” she said reverently. The smaller sister only nodded, then slumped against Celestia’s side as the silvery light released her. Then it was just them, two sisters battered and bruised, dragged to the edge and beyond.
Chrysalis stayed out of their precious moment of silence. Not unselfishly though, for she huddled metaphysically as near to their affection as she dared, basking in the radiance, chasing off the chill of night with their warmth. She stood up warily, trying not to draw attention to herself for the moment.
“Chrysalis,” said the elder, her voice measured and flat as if they hadn’t all just escaped immediate mortal peril. Largely due to her efforts, the Queen wanted to say, but exhaustion cloyed her thoughts and motions. She listened. Celestia fixed her with a stare. The steel hadn’t gone from those eyes, but at least the softness was coming back, albeit slowly. “I hold you partly responsible for it all, Chrysalis. Havoc and violence in my city. Intrigue, conflict and strife. And this,” she said gravely, gesturing the last smoldering ashes as they crumbled into nothingness. Chrysalis, quite affronted with this whole thing, wanted to bite and fight, yell and shout. Luna cut them both off.
“But she also did this,” Luna said, stepping back and opening her wings for display. For a second she stared at her own feathers, seeing in them something unbelievable. Tears glistened in her eyes, then she broke down entirely. Her legs fell out from under her and she sat. Torrential sobs and blubbering sniffles, there was no decorum or restraint, or deceit, in it at all. “I’m free...I’m really free...It’s finally over.”
There was sorrow, yes, but also elation. Terror and hope. Disbelief. Acceptance. It all came pouring out, over which Celestia draped her wings, white blankets over the shoulders of Luna’s crisis.
Chrysalis felt conflicted too. There was anger; always a healthy dose of anger, but more and more it had been the tempered, measured, useful kind. Then there was pity, even sympathy and empathy for Luna. And newfound respect, most surprising of all. First and foremost among them however, was tiredness. Chrysalis was tired and homesick, and weary of this conflict.
But she had to know, one last thing. “What does this make us? Where does it go from here?” she asked. She needed to know, needed it with the depth of her being.
Celestia hesitated, and in her pause only Luna’s weeping broke the stillness of night. “I don’t know. The guards will be here soon. You should go while you still have the chance. I’m sorry.”
Chrysalis nodded in slow agreement. She stretched out her wings once more, then went quietly into the night, uncertain and pensive. By the time the cloud cover broke and moonlight gently spilled upon the city she was long gone from Canterlot.