//------------------------------//
// A Strange Meeting 
// Story: That Which was Lost 
// by LadyRFC 
//------------------------------//

   “Changling?” Discord echoed, making Twilight flinch. 
She waved a hoof back at him to signal silence, her ears pricked forward for the voices beyond. 
“Make sure he stays still,” Chrysalis’ icy voice carried in the stale air. 
The reverberation off the cave walls only made the tone that much worse, heightening the tightness of Twilight’s stomach at the flood of memories. Suddenly she felt as if the shadows were moving and she looked around hastily. Discord was missing.
“Discord?!” she hissed, turning around completely and peering into the darkness. There was no answer. 
“Who are you?!”
Twilight groaned and turned back around, rushing towards the green shield. She instinctively knew why the changling queen’s voice had risen in alarm. 
“Discord!” she cried, partly in concern and partly in reprimand. 
The green film gone, all that faced her was a grinning dragoniquus, a startled and confused changling queen and Silverline, whose eyes remained closed and appeared to be under some kind of fever from the sweat on his coat. A smaller changling was at his side, a role of gauze in its mouth. 
“I’ve never seen a changling before,” Discord began, breaking the ice in his usual flamboyant tone. “I heard a great deal about them and was told to look out for one, but,” he sighed dramatically, “I never actually got to see one.”
“Alright, fine, you saw. Now let’s get ou- Wait.” Twilight blinked. “You transported in here.”
Although it wasn’t a question, Discord treated it with a smile and a cheerful, “yes.”
Twilight’s left eye twitched. “You could always do this?”
“Yes.”
The alicorn could hear her eaten spells screaming for vengeance from the draconiquus’ stomach. “But you didn’t earlier. You just watched as I struggled with a brand new spell and-“
“Oooooh,” Discord sputtered a laugh and rolled his eyes. “So that’s what this is about. Why, you can hardly blame me for that. You didn’t think to ask.”
Twilight had rarely seen so much red before and would have acted on it had not a very unwanted voice broken her train of thought.
“What is this?”
Chrysalis was looking back and forth between her newest arrivals, her eyes constantly drawn to the tallest of them. She looked as if she wished to say more, to demand answers, but it was clear that she had no words to use at the moment.
Discord snapped, a top hat appearing in one hand and a monocle covering one of his eyes. “Greetings, Chrysalis of the changling court.” He bowed elegantly, top hat in hand. “I am Discord, a humble draconiquus who is just as curious about you and you are of me, I’d imagine. And this,” he straightened with a flourish, setting the hat on his head and gesturing back, “is my sidekick, Twilight Sparkle.” He put one hand to his mouth and lowered his voice as if to share a secret with the queen. “She’s rather new.”  
Chrysalis’ mouth hung open a second, a rare moment of speechlessness. But the instant passed, her green eyes hardened and, with a scrapping noise echoing in the room, she planted her hooves to either side in a fighting stance. Her horn began to glow a bright green, her teeth on edge. 
“You dare to-“
  Pop.
Discord had snapped and his top hat immediately appeared on the queen’s head, covering her horn and putting a stop to whatever magic she had been preparing. 
“What is this?!” she sputtered in a rage, the rim of the hat covering her eyes, for it was far too big on her.
Discord, of course, began to laugh. “Oh, it’s just-” 
Chrysalis attempted to walk, or run –it was hard to tell- and immediately got her legs tangled and fell, the hat still blinding her. 
“Precious!” Discord roared. 
Twilight sighed, feeling sorry for the struggling changling. As much trouble as she had caused the alicorn, the panic in her movements was a sad sight to see. 
“Chrysalis? I’ll have Discord take the hat off, but you need to promise not to try anything.” Twilight straightened up, despite the scream of her overtired muscles. “I’m an alicorn now and will fight you if I have to.”
At Chrysalis’ still body laying on the floor, her legs spiraled out and her subtle nod, Twilight looked over at Discord. 
The draconiquus sighed and began shining his monocle with a handkerchief. “Very well.”
With a snap, the hat disappeared, leaving the changling queen blinking several times. The cave was quiet for a moment or two.
“I don’t think,” Chrysalis commented dryly, her eyes on Discord as she slowly got up, “it’s you I need worry about, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Discord may not look like it, but he works for Celestia now,” Twilight announced with authority, catching Discord flinch out of the corner of her eye. “Attacking us will make him your enemy as well.”
“As well?” Chrysalis echoed, one eye brow raised. “Us? Are we then a dreaded ‘them?’” She sneered. “What a fair and loving princess you’ve become.”
Twilight blinked, feeling as if she had jumped into the middle of a chapter without having read the first part. 
Chrysalis didn’t wait for a response. She turned her hard gaze towards Discord. “Works for the pony princess ‘now?’ Meaning you didn’t before. Turned good, did you?”
Discord gave a smile that looked oddly serious. “No, I turned my powers to good. I myself am neither good nor bad. I am simply Discord, your highness.”
The changling blinked at her title, unused to hearing it from anypony but her own subjects. Her gaze lost its force. 
“A draconiquus,” her eyes looked the tall creature up and down, not surprised by the inconsistencies presented, but rather curious of them. “Interesting. I’ve never met one of your kind before. Not in all my hundreds of years.”
“Nor I, you,” Discord said, his smile bright again. “We must have just been on different sides of the globe.”
“Possibly,” the queen admitted, sitting down calmly. 
Twilight was on the verge of saying something, her eyes continuously wondering towards Silverline’s silent form, when the princess rushed in, murmuring something about looking for food. 
She stopped cold, eyes roaming over all those gathered around the changling queen. “Oh. Did I interrupt… something?”