Moonlight stroked silvery light over every leaf in the orchard, the summer evening breeze perfect and gentle and rustling. Cadance held her breath, her magic already wrapping her in shadows and silence, and kept her attention focused on the two pegasi settled among the roots of the big cypress tree several yards away.
"Please, Azure," the stallion was saying, a tremble in his voice—Nimbus was his name, Cadance was fairly sure. "Will you...will you marry me?"
The suspense made Cadance clench her teeth, but when Azure Skies gave a delicate little sigh instead of a joyous squeak and turned her head away instead of throwing her hoofs around Nimbus's neck, a chill ruffled Cadance's feathers. "Oh, Jetty," Azure said, and Cadance had to wince. This was Jet Stream, of course, not Nimbus; she really needed to keep better records!
But even worse than that— "You know I like you," Azure went on. "Just not that way."
It took a fair amount of self-control for Cadance not to let fly with the power of her horn, grab the weft of the love weaving through the air around the two, and give it a yank in the proper direction. How could Azure do this! Didn't she realize that Jet Stream was perfect for her??
Unless Cadance was still thinking of Nimbus...
Azure's voice had gotten all quiet and sad and understanding, but that just made Cadance want to trot over and give her an injudicious kick: "You're a great guy, Jetty, and any girl'd be happy to have you propose to her."
That got a snort from Jet Stream. "Any girl but you."
"Jetty..." She reached out a hoof to touch his front leg. "I'm sorry. Really. But we can still be friends, can't we?"
Jet Stream blew out a breath and nodded, and Cadance vented her frustration on the air, tearing an invisible hole in it and shoving through into the Realm Between, Aunt Luna's silhouette looking down at her the same way it did every night everywhere. It was only during this past century that she'd become really conscious of it, though, and with the sting of her latest failure still needling her, she could almost see the smug little smirk on the Mare in the Moon's face. "Just you wait," she told it. "I'll figure this out yet. I will!"
Giving her hoof a useless but satisfying stomp, she flared her magic against the front door of her house and stepped inside, only then thinking to wonder why the lights were on in the front room. She had left in something of a hurry earlier, not wanting to miss the culmination of her efforts these past eighty or so years when Azure accepted Nimbus's proposal—except, she reminded herself, that stallion had been Jet Stream, not Nimbus. So maybe...maybe it really was Nimbus she'd wanted to pair with Azure Skies. Which might mean this whole thing was still salvageable...
Lost in her thoughts again, she forgot all about the lights being on till she rounded the corner into the front room and saw Chrysalis stretched out on the sofa, one of Cadance's big illustrated history books propped open in front of her, a half-eaten apple floating in the green glow of her horn. Which was something else she'd been noticing lately: all her changelings—especially the last few to hold the post of Chrysalis—actually had holes in their horns and legs now. The pockmarks that had been there since the beginning had deepened with each generation till Cadance found she could see clear through to the other side in some of them. It didn't seem to bother them at all, so Cadance had never asked if—
Chrysalis's ears twitched, and she looked over, her eyes going wide. "Cady!" She leaped to her hoofs, the apple vanishing in a puff of smoke. "I...I was waiting for you to come back, but when you didn't, I just—!"
"Don't worry about it, Chrys." Cadance waved a hoof and settled onto her own big easy chair. "Everything I have is yours: you know that."
"You mean it?" This Chrysalis had pointier teeth than the previous ones, too, her smile big and crooked around them. "So we're domestic partners now? But this is so sudden! I don't know what to say! Except that you've made me the happiest changeling in the margins between the living world and the dead!"
Cadance wanted to join Chrysalis's buzzing laughter, but she couldn't keep from scowling and waving her hoof again. "There! That's the sort of answer I was looking for from Azure Skies! Not a droopy little 'Let's be friends'!"
"Azure Skies?" Chrysalis did some blinking. "There something I should know about, Cady? Or more to the point, some pony I should know about?"
For half a second, Cadance hesitated. After all, she hadn't even told Aunt Celestia the details of her plan yet. But the way the thing had been crumbling to pieces around her so far... She gestured to the book Chrysalis was reading. "A lot of those newer histories are starting to treat her like she's a myth or something, but maybe you came across a mention or two of Nightmare Moon in there?"
Still looking confused, Chrysalis nodded.
"Well," Cadance said with a sigh, "Nightmare Moon is really my Aunt Luna." And she told Chrysalis all about Aunt Luna trying to take over the world four hundred years ago, all about Aunt Celestia having to banish her to the moon, and all about the way her aunts' actions had upset the relationship the three alicorns had once had with the Elements of Harmony.
This, of course, meant that she had to explain about the Elements of Harmony, too, and that got her into Discord and how she and her aunts had first been summoned to Equestria. So it was some time later, night fully fallen outside, when she finally got back to her starting point: "Aunt Celestia thinks—and I find myself agreeing with her—that the power she used to bind Aunt Luna is weakening." She shrugged. "Another six hundred years or so, she'll work her way free, return to establish eternal night, and neither Aunt Celestia nor I will be able to use the Elements to stop her."
The only sound for a moment was the continual soft hum of the hive next door. "Wow," Chrysalis said, stretched out on the sofa once more. "So you can't feel the Elements of Harmony at all anymore?"
Curled in her chair, her chin propped on the armrest, Cadance managed to shrug. "Not really, and even Aunt Celestia's had a hard time sparking them up the last couple times we looked at them. It's like—" She thought back to her most recent visit with Aunt Celestia to Canterlot Tower's vault room. "Like there's a stone cocoon forming around each one." She shook her head. "By the time Aunt Luna comes back, they'll likely look like nothing but big round rocks..."
The silence this time went on longer than before. "OK," Chrysalis said, "but what does this have to do with somepony named Azure Skies just wanting to be friends with you?"
"Not with me." Cadance let her eyes pull shut. "With Nimbus. Or Jet Stream. Or whoever..."
She heard a rustling sigh from across the room. "Imagine that this is me asking my question a third time."
"It's simple, Chrys!" Leaping to her hoofs, Cadance started pacing along the carpet. "The Elements aren't designed to by wielded by a single pony, y'see? I mean, how can you have harmony when all you've got is one note? So when Aunt Celestia had to use all six of the Elements without anypony else to help her, that stretched our connection to them all out of tune! And turning them against one of the previous bearers snapped that connection completely!"
Spinning, she faced Chrysalis. "But I'm betting that the Elements themselves are fine! It's just—" She swallowed, made herself say out loud what she'd been mulling over for a hundred years. "It's just that my aunts and I have changed too much for them to respond to us the way they once did."
Chrysalis was leaning forward, her eyes wide. "And you think...you think me and my changelings can work them?"
Cadance blinked at her. "Uhhh, no, actually. I'm pretty sure they'd just sit there if you tried. The Elements get their power from the same place me and my aunts do: the hearts and minds of all ponies everywhere. And while you guys are great, you...you're not ponies..."
A little snort, and Chrysalis sat back. "Fine. So what ponies did you have in mind to take over the Elements?"
"The perfect ponies." Never having talked about her plan before, Cadance found suddenly that she wasn't sure how to describe it. "Six ponies, one for each Element like it's supposed to be, and each one embodying the traits of their particular Element. And I mean literally embodying them, those traits embedded in them from birth in ways they never were even in my aunts and me. When those six ponies take over the Elements, the power of Harmony they'll generate will be greater than anything Equestria has ever known. They'll be able to cleanse the hatred and jealousy from Aunt Luna and bring her back to herself and to us." Taking a breath, she shrugged. "It's just that those six ponies won't exist for another twenty or twenty-five generations."
The changeling's shiny blue-green eyes went wide again. "You're using your love magic," Chrysalis whispered. "It's like when we were still just magic bees. You're breeding Element bearers."
"No!" Cadance stomped a hoof in the carpet. "I wouldn't do that! Not the way you mean it, at least!"
"Oh?" She gave that toothy grin of hers again and folded her front hoofs demurely. "And how exactly do I mean it?"
"You mean it all—" Still struggling for words, Cadance fanned her wings with a shiver. "All manipulative and weird! But ponies aren't animals, and I'd never do that to them!"
Chrysalis had gone completely still on the sofa, even her wings no longer buzzing. "So you only do your breeding tricks on animals. Is that what you're saying?"
"Chrys..." Cadance slumped in her chair and pressed a hoof to her forehead. "You changelings haven't been animals since you learned to talk and think and feel, and I haven't done anything to influence your development since before your first leader told me her name was Chrysalis." She waved at the changeling. "I mean, those holes you've been developing on your legs and horn. I'm not sure what that's all about, but I don't have to know 'cause you're your own people now. It's nothing to do with me anymore."
Cocking her head, Chrysalis ran a hoof over her front leg. "I've been selecting for them as far as mates go, actually. I've found the holes quite handy for manipulating the strands of love when we're out on a Call." She gestured, her legs whistling slightly. "You should try it sometime yourself."
"No, I shouldn't. That's my point." Cadance rolled her eyes. "I can't go around forcing ponies—or changelings, either—to fall in love!"
"You can't?" Chrysalis's brow wrinkled. "'Cause I pretty much thought that was exactly what you did."
Cadance sighed. "Let me rephrase. It's not right for me to make ponies fall in love with whoever I think they should fall in love with. No matter how much good I think it'll do, it's an improper use of the power I was given by all ponies everywhere when they summoned me into existence."
"Huh." The look on Chrysalis's face told Cadance that she wasn't convinced. "So, even though you're Equestria's foremost expert on how love flows and works and binds us all together, it's not right for you to use that expertise? You're not supposed to make life better for each individual pony in the world by matching them to their most suitable mate? Is that what you're saying?"
A tickle of doubt tried to start up in the back of Cadance's mind, but she shook her head and pushed it down again. "What I'm talking about here is a part of love that you don't see, dealing with death so often. It's the wild, flowering part when ponies are young and carefree, when life is a flood sweeping them along, laughing and dancing the whole time." She sighed again. "The most I can do at that point—the most I ever should do, I mean—is to set things up so that a couple ponies I think'll be good together will meet. If sparks go off, I feel free to encourage them, but if they just nod and pass each other by, then that's it: I abandon that branch of possibilities and move on to another."
Chrysalis was staring open-mouthed at her. "That's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"
Ears burning, Cadance scowled. "Chrys—"
"I mean, they're your little ponies, aren't they?? You're their princess! How can you let them just stumble into a decision that might very well end up being vital to the chain that keeps your Aunt Luna from throwing the whole world into eternal night??"
"Because I don't really know, all right??" The words came bursting out, some dam inside her giving way and letting her deepest fears pour over her tongue. "Sure, maybe I can mold love like warm wax and make it do whatever I want, but I've never been in love, have I?? So who am I to tell ponies who they should love and marry and have foals with?? If I can help two ponies find each other, that's great! But I'm not about to put my judgment higher than anypony else's when they know what they're doing and I don't!"
"Ah." Chrysalis's whole demeanor changed, her face clearing like a morning fog before the sun. "If this has something to do with that whole marriage thing, then yes, I can see why it's causing you such confusion." She shook her head. "Your Aunt Celestia's wedding was the oddest thing I've ever seen. I mean, the love generated by all the ponies involved in the ceremony was intense, but—"
"Wait." Chills shook every pinion in Cadance's wings. "Aunt Celestia's wedding was more than two hundred years ago. You weren't there."
"Ah." Chrysalis's whole demeanor changed again, fear coming all sour into her scent. "I, uhhh, read about it? In...in one of your books?"
Something else Chrysalis had said earlier popped like a click beetle through Cadance's memory. "And weren't you talking about selecting your mates so you and the other changelings would develop those holes in your legs? That's a multi-generational project. So how can you be...be...?" Unsure how to finish the question, Cadance just let it trickle away.
Chrysalis had gone completely still again. "OK, now, Cady, just—" He thin black tongue darted out to touch her lips in a couple different places. "Promise me you won't freak out."
"You're not immortal." Cadance focused on that fact. "I knew your predecessor, saw her lay your egg, saw you hatch from it. I...I watched you grow up, gave you presents every year on your hatch day, and when the previous Chrysalis got so sick, I was there when you took over running the hive!"
"You're freaking out."
"I am not freaking out!" Though she had to admit she was just a little: Cadance breathed in, breathed out, breathed in, breathed out. "The previous Chrysalis must've...must've told you everything that had happened to her and all the others the same way her predecessor had told her and so on and so on back...back four hundred years to...to..." Which didn't make sense: how would an elderly, sick, and/or dying changeling be able to tell so much history in anything like enough detail? And looking at Chrysalis, Cadance recognized something in those eyes, something that wasn't just twenty-five or thirty years old, something that was... "What do you do?" Cadance asked, her voice so quiet, she wasn't sure she'd spoken out loud.
"It's not just me." Fear still dominated Chrysalis's scent, but for all that her ears lay flat and tight against her head, she was keeping her gaze steadily on Cadance's. "Every changeling picks a successor from the next generation. And when we reach the end of our days, we go to our successors, and they...they take us, kill us, and devour our eyes and brains. We then become our successor, and our successor becomes us." She spread her front legs. "It's our way."
"You..." Cadance wasn't sitting anymore though she didn't remember leaping to her hoofs. "You killed Chrysalis and ate her brain?"
"I am Chrysalis. Just as the Chrysalis before me was Chrysalis and the Chrysalis before her and the Chrysalis before her all the way back to that very first day when I stood beside you with my eleven lieutenants, gave you my name, and heard you call us changelings for the first time." Chrysalis—or whoever she was—slid from the sofa, slowly rose onto all fours, and looking across the room at her, Cadance realized for the first time that she and the changeling leader were the same height. "We are what you made us to be, princess: always and forever, your assistants."
Choking off a cry, Cadance turned and bolted from the room.