Deception is Magic

by DragonOverlord2012


Regret

Chapter 3
Regret

Twilight couldn’t even breath as she sank down into the crystal caverns. Literally. She had to pass through solid rock to do it. The cavern crystal for which it was named could naturally reflect magic if struck correctly, so simply teleporting in could be risky.

She touched down with her saddlebags in tow. Looking over herself she quickly gave herself the appearance of a blank flank, like a normal changeling. Thinking it over she decided to give herself an overall ratty look to her hair, lengthening it and letting it hang limply over her face and neck. Looking at herself in the reflection of a crystal, she looked like herself, but not like herself at the same time. The changeling she knew herself as was there, but the unicorn everypony else knew was nowhere in sight. It was...satisfactory.

She sniffed around looking for any trace of love in the air. It didn’t take long, and she set off looking for her. As she trot she worried about seeing her, after what had happened to her; what Chrysalis had done. It didn’t give the best first impression to a people, but she’d said she’d taken good care of her. Twilight hoped good enough.

Twilight found herself looking at...a door. One that looked like it didn’t belong, but it fit the architecture. A little pink crystal doorknob was fit in as well. Twilight hesitantly knocked.

“Why do you even bother with that, Chrysalis?” She sounded annoyed. At least she didn’t sound mad.

“I’m not Chrysalis,” Twilight told her. Her voice as a changeling had enough of an odd pitch and vibration to it that she didn’t sound normal, so Cadence didn’t suspect.

“Well if you insist on keeping up the illusion then ‘please come in and make yourself at home’.”

As Twilight trotted in she realized what Chrysalis meant by “well taken care of”. The room was actually fully furnished. A large bed that actually looked a lot like Cadence’s bed at home was pressed against the back wall. A few tapestries in the likeness of the castle’s own were hung on the walls, and a decorative rug was placed in the middle of the floor. A couple nightstands and a dresser were even added for her convenience.

“Um, wow. Chrysy wasn’t kidding. I really underestimated her this time.”

“Ahem.” Twilight saw the alicorn sitting on the bed, and despite not looking like a captive, she did look like she wanted to be elsewhere. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked impatiently.

“Why are you so grumpy?” Twilight snarked back, “You’re being treated like a princess in here.” Cadence arched an eyebrow. “Oh. Right. You, uh, are a princess.” That left an awkward silence. “To be fair you’re not really acting like one, so it was easy to forget for a moment.” Stay distant, don’t get too friendly.

“How do you expect me to react?” Cadence asked, “Just because your queen put a door in my room to simulate that I’m free to go at any time, or that I actually have some means of privacy, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m trapped here while somepony else is at my wedding!”

“She is not my queen,” Twilight snapped at her.

“What?” Cadence looked at the filly now, rather than just at the changeling. “You’re different from the others,” she said quietly as she realized it, “What makes you different?”

“Does it matter?”

“Then what’s different?”

Twilight’s eyes glanced away for a moment. “Chrysy...she’s kinda my sister,” Twilight admitted.

“Sister?” Cadence parroted in surprise. “Well, now that you say it, I guess you kinda look—”

“Not literally I mean,” Twilight corrected, “I mean, we’ve known each other since the day I was born. I was always raised by my pony parents, so Chrysy showed me the difference between me and them. Taught me what I was in addition to what changelings were.”

“She filled a big sister role when you needed it,” Cadence simplified.

“Exactly!” Twilight said in a much more chipper voice as she finally made eye contact again with a now very curious Cadence. “Why the look?”

“You still look like her,” she pointed out.

“Ugh.” Twilight rubbed her head in annoyance. “We’re both queens,” she explained thusly, “We’re bred differently, and we’re more powerful.”

“So there can be more than one queen to a hive then. Interesting. Then how do you divert power between the two of you?”

“We fulfil roles based upon convenience and need both. I’m out and about more keeping an eye on Equestria. I’m pretty well connected actually, so I can keep an eye on things,” Twilight explained, “Chrysy keeps an eye on the swarm, which is what we call the majority of changelings. Taking care of them and generally keeping them safe. We take care of our own you know, just like any other pony.”

“But you’re not ponies.”

“Yes we are!” Twilight yelled angrily, “Why does everypony think changelings are bugs or something?! We! Are! Ponies! Just like you are and anypony else for that matter!”

Cadence just looked at her in astonishment. “You’re...mammals?”

“YES! Do I look like I have weird antennas? Do I look like I can use this little weird sticky hairs on my legs to walk up walls and on the ceiling? Do I look like I have convex eyes? Do I look—”

“I get it!” Cadence finally snapped back.

“Apologize!” Twilight demanded, “Right! Now!”

Cadence was taken aback by the blatant demand. All while she’d been down there she’d never actually been told to do or say anything. Chrysalis said she’d already known all she needed to imitate her perfectly, so she wasn’t even interrogated. “Why?” she asked.

“Calling a changeling an insect is racist! That’s why!”

“I didn’t know that,” Cadence stated calmly, “But you’re getting ahead of yourself. I didn’t actually call you an insect or a bug.”

Twilight stopped for a moment and ran through her thoughts, suddenly laughing nervously when she realized Cadence was right. “Uh, sorry. I kinda got ahead of myself. I’ve just heard so many ponies say bad things about us, I guess I just wanted to snap on one about it for once, before I actually had a reason too.”

Cadence stayed surprisingly calm about it. “Your kind endures such hardship does it?” Twilight nodded meekly. “You know it has to be because of ignorance right? I don’t even know how changelings came to be.”

“So?”

“I just explained.”

“Okay...where do unicorns come from?” Twilight countered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s just as valid a question,” Twilight rationalized, “How did unicorns come about? Or pegasi, of earth ponies? How about manticores? Oh, I always wanted to know where minotaurs came from!” Twilight dropped a deadpan expression. “We’re just ponies. I don’t know where we came from. You can argue evolution and such, but changelings don’t exactly have the same luxury of keeping our distant history as neat as Equestria has. We just know we are ponies, and maybe we’ve evolved outwards and away from the ‘traditional’ pony races, but we exist all the same, just like they do. That’s all we know, and all we need to know.”

“I see...can you speculate?” Twilight groaned. “Just humor me.”

“We can’t really tell you how or why changelings became what they are. We rationalize that it was a time of famine and we eventually evolved to a different state of being, one that doesn't require physical nutrition, but rather magical nutrition.”

“You feed off love,” Cadence deadpanned. “Actually, since you’re so chatty, how does that work?”

“I was getting to that.” Am I this annoying when I’m asking questions? “All creatures produce magic. Emotions alter the magic that all creatures exude, creating different magical frequencies. Changelings are nourished by the ones created by love and kindness. The Element of Kindness is therefore revered by changelings. If one were to bear it, they could be fed forever.” She couldn’t help but think of just how lucky Fluttershy was at that moment.

“And it would make you more powerful too, right?” More of an accusation on that one.

“Well, yes,” Twilight admitted, “Love and kindness create similar enough emotional frequencies for us to feed on, and it does give us power. It’s like when you eat. Your body breaks it down and converts the food into energy. It’s similar, but different for us. When we feed on love our bodies process the energy and convert it into magical strength. Changelings are not known for physical prowess to be perfectly honest.”

“So how powerful would it make you? In theory of course.”

“It’s not about power,” Twilight stated more calmly than she thought she would have, “It’s just about living, like anypony else. The Element of Kindness isn’t like the changeling equivalent of the apple from the tree of life. It’s just an artifact used to protect ponies from anything that threatens them. You know that.”

“If it’s not about power, than why lock me up and have your sister steal my fiance?” Cadence finally asked with all the spite that came with it.

Twilight flinched at the resentment she could feel rolling off Cadence. “This wasn’t what we wanted, but she needs her strength right now. Shining Armor was the best candidate.” That was the honest truth. “Couples during their engagement share more love then more than any other period during their relationship.” That was a lie.

“Really?” She didn’t sound too convinced. “There’s no period of time other than the time leading up to the actual wedding that—”

“Okay I lied,” Twilight admitted in annoyance, “Most of the time it’s during the honeymoon.” Her tone lightened a bit to try and comfort Cadence. “But...we wouldn’t actually take that from another pony.” Cadence seemed surprised. “It doesn’t matter what it brings to us. It’s about the other ponies. We only replace temporarily if we’ve been starved to near death, or if we need to take...drastic measures.”

“And taking over Equestria would count as ‘drastic measures’, right?” She glared through Twilight again, at the changelings she represented to the alicorn princess.

“It’s not like that,” the young queen tried and failed.

“Then what is it like?” Cadence demanded, “What good reason could you have for wanting to take over Equestria?! What?!”

Twilight stayed quiet. “I...can tell you wouldn’t believe me.” She dropped her saddlebags. “Inside you’ll find some of your favorite perfumes, some bath salts for the underground watering hole, a new charm to heat the water, more soaps, and your dress.”

“My dress?” she parroted in confusion.

“She told you didn’t she?” Twilight asked in confusion, “Chrysy wouldn’t actually take your big day away from you. Granted it’s going to be postponed a bit, but I thought you’d like your wedding dress. Rarity made it special for you, just so you know.”

“Oh, I, um...thanks?” Cadence wasn’t entirely sure just how to react to that. “Wait, you know Rarity?”

Said too much. Twilight trotted out the door as indifferently as she could, but Cadence followed her.

“How do you know Rarity? Who are you posing as?”

Twilight stopped dead a few steps ahead of the princess. “Most changelings don’t pose as anypony. They just make up their own image and live undetected for as long as they can. I’m no different in that aspect.”

“You said your pony parents,” Cadence reminded her.

Reeeally said too much on that one. “I was raised by a pair of unicorns, why?”

“Who? What poor couple never got to see their baby?” Cadence demanded.

That was going too far. Twilight glared at her and gave up her facade by putting on the one Cadence knew. “NOPONY!” Twilight screamed, “I love my parents and they love me! That’s all it’s ever been!” She marched up to Cadence and got eye to eye. “I’ve never lied to them in my entire lifetime. They just don’t know what I really look like.” She revealed her true unaltered changeling appearance. “This is what I look like Cadence. That’s the truth. The only thing I never told you.”

“You’re lying!” Cadence said in disbelief, “You can’t be...I’d...I’d be able to spot a changeling a hundred miles away.”

“Sunshine, sunshine. Ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves...”

“And do a little shake.” She almost believed it, but only for a moment. “Thats doesn’t prove anything! Twilight and I did that everyday, everypony knew that.”

Twilight just looked at her. Honesty was the best way to get Cadence to believe her. She’d either see a monster or the little filly she loved, and she was about to find out. “We...we...” She could barely stand to admit it. “We practiced...kissing. We said we’d never tell anypony else, remember?”

Cadence looked at the real Twilight in shock. Just shock. Not sure what to make of it. The Twilight she knew was a changeling. “Why are you doing this?” She looked away. “Tell me!” She flinched. “Tell me there’s a good reason,” she begged softly, “Please Twilight.”

She looked back with teary eyes. “Because some things just need to be done, and that’s that.” Twilight couldn’t take another moment of it. She was scared to hear the response, so she flew off at quickly as she could. She thought Cadence would see either her or a monster. It seemed even worse.

She saw both.

***

It had been a long day for Twilight. She almost lost her friends for good because of Discord. She wasn’t sure if Discord knew the truth, but she could have easily died that day. It left the lot of them drained.

The six of them couldn’t even hold their respective disguises as the dropped to the floor of Twilight’s library.

“I’m starving,” Rainbow muttered, her now bluescale mane more disheveled than ever.

“Where’s Spike?” Rarity asked, her white curls reduced to a split ended nightmare.

“He’s upstairs resting off a lot of delivered letters,” Twilight answered.

“Please wake him up,” Pinkie begged, her strangely still bouncy mane starting to deflate like a balloon.

“I don’t think I can last much longer,” Fluttershy wheezed, her own yellow mane more limp than ever.

“Well one of our critters better get here soon, or I think Ah’m gonna pass out from hunger,” Applejack muttered softly, the band lost from her orange mane, making it hang freely.

An unfamiliar looking pony knocked in pattern and entered the library with a certain dog with her. The six of them instantly looked at the door and calmed down seeing the pony. Anypony else wouldn’t have noticed from a distance the one thing they noticed up close: her slit pupils.

Winona ran up to the familiar smell of Applejack and started revitalizing her strength by licking her face. “Boy howdy am I glad to see the both of you!”

“Hey come on, AJ. Quit hoggin’ the dog,” Rainbow complained.

The six of them started arguing over who got the dog first. The pony finally erupted in green flame and scolded the lot of them. “For goodness sake, you’ve saved Equestria from certain doom twice now, certainly you’re above this sort of pathetic bickering.”

“No duh,” Spike added as he all but fell down the stairs. He yelped as Twilight magically dragged him over and hugged him with the last of her natural magic pool.

“Help me and Rarity for a bit would you Spike?” Twilight asked sweetly.

“Well it’s not like I have to move,” Spike said with a roll of his eyes and a blush in his cheeks as the two mares squeezed him between them.

“One more thing,” Chrysalis said as she pulled the baby alligator out of her mane and the small rabbit out of her tail. She passed them to their respective owners. “These ones missed you.”

“Angel bunny!” The rabbit cuddled up in Fluttershy’s hooves.

“Gummy!” The baby gator chomped on her hole riddled mane.

“Yes, yes, I am great, you’re very welcome,” Chrysalis bragged, cockily rubbing a hoof on her chest.

“Okay, you fed them, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Spike grunted from between his mares, “You hardly have the time to show up for a casual visit though.” Spike narrowed his eyes, which looked strikingly similar to the tallest changeling’s own, albeit a slightly lighter color. “Why are you here, and what made you bring everypony’s pets?”

Chrysalis clammed up for a moment. “Ugh,” she groaned finally, “Am I that transparent?” Spike nodded. “Very well.” She stood to her full stature, looking as regal as possible. “It’s time.”

The seven of them froze. Twilight was the first to say anything. “You mean...Canterlot?” Chrysalis nodded. “It’s really coming then?” Another nod. “Any plans?”

“Why now?” Rainbow asked, “It could have happened years ago or years later. Why now?”

“I wish I could say,” Chrysalis said solemnly, “Now is the time though. We need to amass our forces. The question is when, and how. So no, Twilight, I do not have a plan. I didn’t think it would be happening this soon either.”

“Another problem is, well, to be completely frank, ya don’t exactly have as much means of gatherin’ yer strength as we do.”

“You could replace me for a couple days!” Pinkie suggested.

“Pinkie, no,” Rainbow stated firmly, “We need her to build her strength, not explode.” The only reason Pinkie herself didn’t “explode” most days was because she was naturally hyper, so she burnt off her energy very quickly.

“I think we should plan a date to invade first,” Fluttershy wisely suggested.

The eight of them silently agreed and thought hard on when it should happen. “Well...” Twilight started nervously. The others instantly had eyes on her. That was her “I have an idea, but it’s not exactly my favorite” tone. “There is...Shining Armor...and Cadence.”

“We need a date Twilight dear, not a pony,” Rarity reminded her, “Although I wouldn’t exactly be opposed to standing in as Cadence for a date or two.” Rarity couldn’t help but melt at the idea of Twilight’s brother—

“Do not think about that when you are this close to me Rarity,” Twilight snapped, “Or when you're hugging another boy. That’s just weird.”

“And insulting, and emasculating,” Spike added, with enough spite on his voice to give the white eyed changeling a good jolt.

“I was actually suggesting Shining set the date...without knowing it,” Twilight explained hesitantly. The others looked at her in confusion. “Well...you see...Shining and Cadence have been getting serious lately...and Shining has been talking about her a lot in his letters...I think...he might be getting ready to propose.”

The others looked at her with dropped jaws. Rainbow was the first to saw anything, “You’re kidding.”

“Yer thinkin’ of havin’ Chrysalis replace Cadence leadin’ up to yer brother’s weddin’?!”

“I know it sounds messed up, but it’s not like Chrysy would actually marry him, and it’s not like they can’t reschedule and make a real wedding,” Twilight argued.

“And we could help with the real wedding as an apology,” Fluttershy added.

“But this is supposed to be a sacred time!” Rarity argued against the idea, “And not to mention—”

“From a strategic standpoint it’s brilliant,” Chrysalis finally said, much to everypony’s shock, “Of all of us I’m the only one without any connections to Canterlot. Spike is always with Twilight and the six of you hold the Elements of Harmony, and are all friends with the princess. This will require all of us, and I need a way in.”

“Not to mention my brother has a huge heart,” Twilight rationalized, “If anypony alone can bring Chrysalis up to full strength it would be him, not to mention the additional support from the princesses. Cadence wouldn’t be too difficult to overpower. Alicorn or not, she deplores violence, and doesn’t actually have any offensive spells at her disposal.”

“What if Shining wants to have sex?” Rarity asked bluntly.

“What if Chrysalis, as Cadence, suggests that they don’t have sex again until their honeymoon?” Fluttershy reasoned, “That sounds like something Cadence would do.”

“He wouldn’t like it, but he’d do it,” Twilight agreed.

“Well.” Rainbow still didn’t like it, but, “Okay fine, but we have got to go all out to make it up to both of them.”

“Then it’s agreed,” Chrysalis stated, “I’ll pose as princess Cadence once Shining Armor proposes, and then Operation: Hidden Blizzard is on.”