Chrysalis stared deep into the crystalline reflection of her mirror. Her eyes scanned the image before her, looking for inconsistencies and lies. Looking for the part that would make her realize this was all some twisted macabre vision haunting her from her deathbed. She knew for a fact that this had to be the case, that it simply couldn’t be the truth. She had died! She knew it! She had experienced the horrible almost untellable dread of having your soul slowly dragged loose of your mortal coil, being carried off to be judged and filed with all the other souls.
She could even, at the very edges of her memories, recall being dead. She could recall being in the hereafter with all the other souls. Scared and frightened by the wrapping white light that choked her dark heart. So how then had she come back? And, more importantly, why was she alone?
She looked at the corpses of changelings around her room. All pulses killed mid beat and stifled breaths from frozen breaths. Why had she been the only one to return? Why were all the others still gone from the world? It pulled at her to see them like that, but not in the tragic way she had felt seeing them all fade out of existence. It was the kind of feeling that you only got when you knew they were going to be alright, that you knew they were in a better place where they would feel no pain. A bittersweet memory that stuck to your tongue and refused to leave until you swallowed every painful ounce.
She was happy for them, more or less, and found herself surprised by this. She had treated them as slaves and underlings her whole life through and now she felt happy that they were happy? She had taken them for granted, had forced them to her every will, and they had followed gleefully and completely naive that there were other paths they could take. And now... now that they were gone to a greater place, she found she was happy that they had finally found peace. And at the same time, she was extremely angry that she had been denied that gift.
She heard steps behind her, in the hallways of the hive, and for a moment her heart swelled with the idea that she wasn’t alone. That perhaps the pestilence of death which had taken so much from her may have left her one friend. However, when the door to the room opened, her gaze was not met by a changeling, but a biped of odd size and shape. Chrysalis felt the joy die in her throat, worming like roadkill in the last throes of it’s life. He spoke preemptively, not wanting the conversation to be misguided from the start.
“I’m sorry.” The words were heavy with meaning and they hit Chrysalis with their unexpected weight. “They didn’t want to come back.” His eyes fell on the changeling corpses around his feet and he dropped next to the nearest one, placing his fingers against the neck. The queen pondered at the meaning of the act, but when the creature stepped away and nothing had changed she grew angry. Still, her searing rage was delayed amongst the silence that hung like a corpse from a tree.
“What do you mean they didn’t want to come back?” The queen hissed.
“From the hereafter.” He stated sadly. “I brought back everyone who wanted to stay, but you were the only changeling who… ” he stopped and looked around again. “Who didn’t want to stay there.”
“And why would I want to come back alone?” Her tongue was sharp and bit through the air like a sword, unfiltered anger permeated her words as she spoke and a rising rage flooded into every syllable.
“You don’t remember?” The question was simple and full of mourning, and it gave Chrysalis pause. She thought back as far as she could manage, to the blurry remnants of what had happened before her revival, but came up empty. She could have called him a liar, she could have casted a memory spell, she could have killed him where he stood... She could have...
She remained silent and still, unable to say anything of import. Her gaze fell to the ground and she almost forgot her surroundings, lost in a conflicting sea of depression that had swarmed her mind without warning. She sat there, not wanting to move, for a long time. And yet her immovable demeanor lasted only as long as the silence that held her like a caring parent.
“Do you want to help me bury them?”
“And that’s the story?” Celestia said, her pity-filled eyes tormenting the queen with every blink. Chrysalis looked at her surroundings, the wedding hall, every inch of marble shining with a luminescence all it’s own. A room to be coveted, to be stolen, to be held like a prize gem. And here it was, this beautiful room barren of all the life that had crowded it’s walls and floor only moments ago. Now, it held the court for two rulers.
Her insectoid wings strained against their bindings subconsciously, itching to stretch out in a burst of glorious freedom. She remembered the reaction of the guards when she had showed up, they had feared her, even with her magic bound by the ring on her horn and her wings tight against her body under oppressive steel, they had still been scared by her presence, and that was the only thing about current events that she could take relief from. That she mattered to them, still.
“That’s the story.” Chrysalis answered at last. Her voice pained at the mere admission of that horrible truth. She had told all the important events. There were the facts that the biped had escorted her here, that he had comforted her when she had collapsed in another fit of apathy. Not in words, he had merely sat next to her, silent, she had admired his knowledge in knowing that she didn’t want to talk. And after a day or two she had managed to force her way through her depression and they had continued, without a drop of sarcasm or anger from the man in response.
She had told him about what she had done, about her attack on the ponies, about wanting to take all that they had and enslave them to her will. About her tormenting of Cadence and her corruption of Shining Armor’s heart. And she did this in the hope that he would shun her and leave her be, that he wouldn’t be able to take her to the capital in good conscience. But when the story was done he had merely asked if she was going to do it again. Her answer to the negative seemed to be all that he had cared about, and she wondered why, but decided he wouldn’t answer the question even if she asked it.
He had disappeared one night when they were only half a day’s travel from the capital, leaving a warm stew for her to eat and keep her strength up and a note that said he had important matters he had to address, and an apology for leaving the difficult part to her. It had taken all her willpower to get on that train alone, the trip to the castle had been unbearable comparatively, watching the ponies shake and rattle like mice in a snake’s cage, none daring to confront her even with her handicap. Still, she had made it here, bound in her chains and self-induced magical shakles.
Celestia sighed heavily, this was not an easy position to be in. A known enemy of the empire, surrendering herself with the desire to go disguised among her subjects. Of course she wouldn’t have let her under normal circumstances, and she certainly wouldn’t believe her story, but she had mentioned the strange biped, had mentioned that he said he could bring beings back from the dead, and that was information only she and Twilight were privy to. She hadn’t even told Luna of the creature, and Discord hadn’t seemed to know anything about it, despite his sharp and twisted intellect.
Chrysalis knew that Celestia was in a bad place, and it had been a long shot coming here in the first place. If the situations were reversed Celestia would be behind bars already if not worse, a testament to the changelings that their greatest foe had been toppled. But even the alicorn’s mercy might not be immense enough for this favor. An unbelievable story from the one who had tried to steal her kingdom out from under her, the very same one who had beaten her handily, who had destroyed her student’s entire life, from her brother to her filly sitter.
“Oh come on Celsestia, let her do it. Her face is so sad!” Both beings’ heads snapped to the sound, and watched as Discord walked into the scene from behind a pillar, a place that both knew had been empty only seconds ago. The smile on his face was wide and manic as he walked up to the side of Chrysalis and tapped the binding on her mid-section, which instantly shattered.
“Discord!” Celestia shouted angrily, getting the attention of the amalgamation right before it destroyed the ring on the changeling’s horn. “What is the meaning of this?” Celestia’s eyes held a white hot mixture of anger and annoyance, more the latter than the former. Chrysalis, meanwhile, looked at the draconequus with shock clear on her face. She hadn’t seen Discord in the flesh, though she had heard stories of him from her scouts, and the sudden exposure to such an impossible thing took her by surprise.
“Oh please Celly. After Fluttershy ‘reformed’ me I’ve done nothing but sit in this castle messing up one room over and over again.” Discord said with half lidded eyes, a bubble pipe lightly held in his claw. Of course that wasn’t enough to satisfy his chaotic tendencies, so naturally the bubbles would come out in impossible shapes and colors, filling the room with a rainbow of shapes. “I say you let our pretty queenie here go undercover and I keep an eye on her for you.”
“Why-” Celestia started, getting ready to challenge the logic behind letting two former villains stay with each other but was stopped by the sudden appearance of her sister, who entered via teleportation into the room. During the few fractions of a second before Luna spoke Celestia began to think about how she desperately needed to rework the magic protections on the room.
“Sister!” Luna called almost immediately. “I was informed of the Changeling Queen’s return! I have come to assist you!”
“Luna…” Celestia started in a caring tone, desperately trying to mask her growing levels of annoyance. “I am fine. You needn’t have worried yourself so.”
“I merely…” Luna’s voice fell away as she realized she hadn’t been needed, she seemed like a child then, for a moment, as she acknowledged her failure to herself. “I wanted to be there for you this time.”
Celestia closed her eyes, the look on Luna’s face right at this moment was something she didn’t need. She had to make the right choice, and that look on her sister’s eyes would cloud her judgement like nothing else could. The dark blue alicorn wasn’t just talking about the changeling invasion. She was talking about the end of the world, when she had given up on her. It was something that Celestia couldn’t blame her for. With how horrible things had been, it was only a false belief that had even let herself keep living, she couldn’t expect empty promises to keep her sister content.
They hadn’t worked on that dark day, and they hadn’t worked on the darker day one thousand years prior.
“I assure you Luna, you have no debt to me.”
“Nay, but I have one to myself.” The tone in her voice was wounded pride as she spoke these words. Celestia obeyed the rules of the state to the letter, but Luna obeyed her own code of ethics with a far greater strictness. Both had their flaws, their weak links, their extremes… but in the end, both worked well in the governing of the massive world of Equestria.
Luna and Celestia shared a moment, one of the purest sisterhood and promises. Then, as a pair, they turned their attention to Chrysalis and Discord. The draconequus seemed oblivious to the moment that had just occurred, never having known a family of his own and thus unaware as to what he had witnessed. Chrysalis, however, found herself struck by the pure levels of love that the two had shared. Something she had never done with her family while she had them, and something she would never be able to do with her family at any point in the future.
She turned her head to the ground, in submission and respect as well as in shame. She fought with her emotions and tried to hide it from the pair before her, and managed to succeed for the most part, with only a single tear dripping down her carapace muzzle and onto the ground.
“Chrysalis!” Celestia announced, glancing to Luna for a moment before turning her full attention back to the one of whom she spoke. “I have decided to grant Discord’s suggestion, admitting that you understand you will be under constant surveillance, both of you. Does that sound appropriate, sister?”
Luna paused for a moment and closed her eyes in thought. It wasn’t very long before her pupils revealed themselves from behind their deep magenta curtains. “I can not think of a better plan, dear sister, and I shall support this as much as you need me to.”
“Then it is settled.” Celestia finished. “We will allow you three nights in the castle to come up with your new identities, both of you, and we will want them presented to us before you leave. At which time we will ensure they won’t attract too much unwanted attention. If you fail to do this then the deal is off. Am I understood?”
Discord and Chrysalis nodded together. “Good, then I bid you farewell for now. Find a guard when you are done here and they will be able to tell you the way to your rooms.” Celestia left, Luna only a pace behind and, when it was only to two villains remaining, they both looked at each other and stared emptily. Even Discord hadn’t expected the idea to get passed. They too eventually left the building, and silence hung in the empty air that was left behind.
A biped emerged from his hiding place. His black cloak was gone from his shoulders, and was instead wrapped around a form that stood next to him. He hugged it and smiled. “Told you they would do it Anna. I knew they were good people.”
There was no answer.
“Yea yea, you told me so.” He smiled at the voice only he could here and then led the shuffling thing towards a dark corner of the room, where they both disappeared into the Aether.