//------------------------------//
// Migration 
// Story: Changeling 
// by Criticul 
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Luna kept huddled in the corner of the cabin; shadows and silence—they stood honest when all else failed her. They were her only true allies in the world of light and illusion—noise and chaos. She’d left herself vulnerable—she’d allowed unjust virtue take hold of her, and for it, Equestria would pay in blood.
Forced into the brink and given the choice between two greater evils—the chains of desperation already tugged at Luna’s throat. To give into the queen was to let her people be left in lies and sociopathy, but to resist meant risking the greatest possible devastations. Her country, her sister—all would be left to an unchecked flame; there would be no dawn—no light at the end of the tunnel for her or her country.
But was it really any better than what they’d be given in mercy? That was contingent upon the truth from a perfect liar—hardly anything to place the fate of lives upon. What hope had remained in her was swept into the reaches of her parasite’s grip.
The end was coming, and all she had to hold her was the knowledge that it was all her own.
Luna curled tighter into the corner, ignoring the stares of the tawny stallion. She let her thoughts think only of the shallowest of feelings: the faint rocking of the carriage as it rolled over dirt and stone or the feeling of splintered wood against her face. It was all so plain—so empty. Not even the sun had the strength to break her bond—so warm her frigid skin.
The stallion watched her suffering, silent. Neither Equestrian had spoken for hours; no words could bridge the gap between the two wayward souls. One, the subjected, had already given his being to the parasites influence, while the sufferer still let her wounds bleed out—blind, enraged, and lost in the depths of her own desperation.
But he knew that they were closer. He knew that they both wanted the same thing to happen.
“She’s going to lose. I know she is.” The stallion edged slightly closer to the princess, but kept his eyes locked in front of him. “I’ve seen her at her best, and believe me, she’s biting off too much.”
Luna remained locked in her reclusion.
“You know, a short while ago, I never even knew you existed. Sure, I knew about your sister and the Nightmare, but never had I even once imagined that you’d returned.” The Stallion tapped his hooves quietly against the frame of the carriage’s cabin. “But once Chrysalis told me about you, I instantly felt a connection to you.”
Luna shuddered slightly at his words, but still offered him nothing.
The stallion frowned. “No, no, I don’t mean it like romance or anything. I just—well—think that we could learn a lot from each other, or at least I could learn something from you. That’s all.”
The words fell again on deaf ears. The princess did not whimper or cry or mourn. She was simple silent—nothing more or less.
“My entire life, I’ve been trying to find out what’s wrong with me,” the pony sighed, “I don’t know if it was the way I was raised or if it was the books I read, but I feel like I’ve spent my entire life pounding a puzzle piece into the wrong place. I’ve always carried these—well—interests, so to speak, that no one else seems to share.”
The princess twitched. Her ear lifted, if only for a moment.
“From the beginning, I’ve always had a sort of dream—for heroes and villains and for raw, brutal emotion. All those normal fantasies—the money and the sex and the fame—have all evaded me. Back when I was still a student, all the colts would be talking about their talents and their jobs, I stood back and watched.”
“Well,” the princess muttered, under her breath, “why do you think I can help you?”
The stallion paused, as if to reorganize his thoughts. Then, with a slightest hint of desperation, he whispered, “You’ve lived too long to care about the physical stuff, haven’t you?”
Luna grunted.
“Well, how do you deal with it?”
The mare turned around, eyes bloodshot and aggravated, and pushed herself up onto the chair across from her companion. For a moment, she was silent; the two just watched each other, looking straight into one another’s battered features and dying emotions.
“Well?” The stallion prodded.
“Well what? What do you mean by ‘how do I deal with it’?”
The unicorn shrugged, still expecting an answer.
Luna responded with a curt sight. “If you must know, I don’t deal with it. I let it get in the way, and I let it pollute everything about me. But then again, you already know that, don’t you? That’s how we got here, isn’t it? It’s just—”
“Stop.” The stallion shook his head. “Luna, the only thing you’ve done is act by compassion. The queen... well… she’s a narcissist and merciless and there was nothing you could have done to avoid her. I’m sure she had a thousand other plans that have brought me to this same place. She would never have left her lynchpin to something so specific—so incalculable.”
The cabin rattled as the wheels rolled onto a fresh dirt path. Wherever they were headed, they were getting close; the sounds of civilization just barely bled through the wooden frame. And all too quickly, the thoughts of depression rolled through her head; Luna bowed once more, only barely holding back the tears.
“Luna, look at me,” her companion demanded. “Look at me!”
The princess shot the boy a glare before sinking back into shadow.
“Luna, we’re going to get out of this, alright? We both want the same thing here. If we didn’t, we sure as hay wouldn’t be talking to one another right now. We can still fix things—just you and me.” The stallion placed his hoof on Luna’s shoulder; she could feel his joints tremble with excitement. The princess could see a spark in his eyes—a desire that had been cast away by years of silence and deceit. “Can I trust you to help me? I can’t do this alone—I just can’t—so can you promise me that you’ll finish it, even if I can’t?”
Luna cleared the weariness from her eyes.
She looked down at the briar necklace and the changeling blood that still stained its surface in an soft violet.
And she opened her mouth.
“I promise.”
The stallion’s eyes lit up. “Are you sure? You know she’ll—“
“I’m sure.”
And then Luna smiled.
And she felt the warmth of the sun again as it crept through the woodwork.  
Perhaps she might even have said that there was hope again.
--~~--
It was nearly midnight before their carriage finally came to a stop. Chrysalis, who had spent the day under the façade of a royal lieutenant, hopped from her position at the head of the vehicle and dismissed her changeling crew.
Luna could only barely hear her shouting through the woodwork, but from what she could tell, one of the wheels had shattered in their final moments of travel, which would leave the carriage in unusable condition.
Of course, she paid very little mind to the queen’s ramblings: the companion was a master of stories—a true poet. In the darkness of their enclosed cabin, the two shared their memories and their sufferings, hoping to reflect upon each other and to find comfort in mutual understanding.
She learned that the stallion had existed as a sort of training dummy for the parasite, helping her hone her craft in the realm of manipulation and, more specifically, toxicology. Chrysalis was an artist as any other and needed constant feedback to be sure that her craft was well-managed and truly ingenious, which, in an odd sense, left Luna with a feeling of relief. It didn’t particularly change her situation, per say, but it did tell her one thing: Chrysalis was not unreachable—she had her weaknesses hidden back somewhere in her twisted skull, but they still lie dormant.
She also learned that the stallion had spent a significant amount of time in one of her feeding chambers, which, as he described, meant that he was isolated with an image of his lover. When Luna asked about her, the unicorn changed the focus to her own past, so she told him about the nightmare. She told him about how she’d lost herself to the corruption in ways that still rested at the back of her conscience, and she talked about the millennia of silence she’d endured.
When the wheels of the carriage finally came to a sudden, jolting halt, the two felt strangely at ease. For their entire lives, they’d held thoughts and ideas back—repressed them for fear of judgment and castigation—but here they’d finally let go of those blood-kept secrets. They spoke openly of their characteristic weaknesses, and of how they had always searched their entire lives for something only describable by the term ‘greater’.
And even with thousands of years difference between the two, there remained plenty of common ground for them to grow upon—to think upon, and to reflect upon.  Whether philosophical, emotional, or simply factual, the pair shared any detail about themselves that could prove—nobly and truly—that they carried the same intentions.
“So, what’s it like, then?” he asked.
“What’s ‘what’ like?” she returned.
“Immortality, Luna—never having to worry about sickness or time or any of that. What’s it like?”
Luna thought to herself, struggling to piece together the perfect way to describe it. “It favors the individual.”
The stallion tilted his head slightly askew, batting his eyes in confusion. “Care to elaborate?”
“I mean it’s a very fickle thing. It’s funny: I’ve had plenty of time to think of a way to paint it, but I can think of no other way. Endlessness in a world of ends is a very singular sort of thing.” Luna paused. “I’ve lived my entire life around my subjects, from their moment of birth to their final hours and those bloodied, tired breaths. I often find myself in the situation that I know far more about somepony else’s heritage than they do. I’ve known our ancestors, and I’ve known the ancestors of those ancestors. Still I remain.”
“Interesting,” the unicorn replied, staring in awe as the mare’s eyes lit in a torrent of both suffering and joy. “Do you ever wish that you could be normal—like me?”
Luna grit her teeth for a moment before responding. “Sometimes, when I come upon the realization that I too must end, I wish that I could have the pains of nature. Every day, I live knowing that my only possible end comes by the hand of murder: in agony, absent mercy.”
“Hm. So, how far would you go to avoid death?” The stallion stopped, as to listen to the voices outside the carriage. Chrysalis had evidently given up on the wheel and would be cracking the cabin open any minute. The unicorn dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Is there anything in this world that could convince you to give it all—the final sacrifice?”
Luna opened her mouth, as if to say something, but was caught off guard. The mare retreated into silence, thinking again and again of that intrepid phrase: the ‘final’ sacrifice. Something about it was sticking to the sides of her mind—the ‘final’ sacrifice.
There was a scratching at the back of the carriage.
The stallion looked to her with nervous eyes. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, OK?”
“Of course. We need to—“
Luna stopped.
Something was grumbling just beyond the wall—metal twisted in place.
The back of the carriage flung from its hinges, rocketing off into the road. As the dust cleared, a familiar lieutenant poked its head into the cabin.
The parasite scanned the room with a smile. “Enjoy the trip, princess? I hope you’ve had time to gather yourself.”
Luna glared at the false lieutenant before shrugging in ambivalence.
For once, Chrysalis actually looked surprised. For a moment, she was without words. “Good! Good, good! You’re uncaring—I like that.”
“Just do whatever you need to do, and I’ll try to reciprocate, your majesty.” Luna pushed through the gaping emptiness that had once been a wall. The mare dropped into the dirt before looking up into the familiar windows.
“Ponyville? Why are you—“
The parasite slipped her hoof over her mouth. “Silence, please. We don’t need anyone seeing you, hm?”
Luna shot the queen a second glare but fell mute. She was far too distracted by the town, anyway. For some reason, Chrysalis’ plans began here—of all places! Luna looked up into the night sky; her sister had dressed the stars tonight, which, as characteristic of Celestia, left hundreds of stars suspended in the sky. Indeed, the arrangement had left the streets painted in starlight.
“Here! There is something called ‘tact’, princess.” Chrysalis stood at the door of the nearest building, which, of no surprise, was an inn. The stallion made paces between the door and the carriage, snagging their cases from the top of the cabin and hurrying them inside. “Well? Are you just going to stand there? I have your key.”
Luna remained in the center of the road for a few more seconds, struggling to piece together the queen’s intentions. Surely it had something to do with the elements, but beyond that, what was there? The princess eventually shuffled out of the road and into the inn’s porch, but still there remained a worry—a worry of unknowing.
Chrysalis simply stood there, tapping her hooves against the steps. “Any minute now, princess. That is, if you’re not having second thoughts.” The parasite wiggled the key in the mare’s face.
Luna, who lacked the energy to toy with the queen’s sarcasm, opted to help the Stallion carry the bags.
“So you’re going to be the help too, huh, princess? Well, I’ll leave your key here, then. You’ve got room twenty-one.” Chrysalis began backing through the doorway, but stopped suddenly. “Oh, and the innkeeper is already asleep, so do your best to keep quiet, hm?”
Luna gawked. “So you think we can simply break in?”
“Oh, of course not, Luna. That would be absolutely immoral, right?” The queen cocked her head. “Don’t worry yourself about it, hm? Have faith in my ability for once.”
Luna made sure the queen was well out of range before releasing her breath.
The stallion stopped beside her, suspending the last of their luggage above his head. “I want her dead. I don’t care how—I just want to be there.”
“Wait, friend. We’ll—“
The stallion smirked. “You don’t know my name, do you?”
Luna froze.
He only laughed.
 “Barlowe. My name’s Barlowe.”