Chapter 7
No More Room For Error
Breakfast was always a tricky one. Like most changelings, Chrysalis could eat what other species might consider normal food, and actually needed water to survive, but since the food provided no nutritional value she certainly had no inclination to do so. That was one of the more annoying parts of pretending to be a pony for extended periods of time, Chrysalis had learned early on – even if she got everything else just right, she would always have difficulty hiding her distaste for what these pitiful creatures called food.
At other meals she could grin and bear it, enjoying the background emotions that came with the social interaction of a meal, but breakfast was a sluggish affair, especially if Shining had been out to a meeting during the night. The stallion was simply unbearably unsocial when he was tired and Chrysalis found herself working twice as hard to try to coax some small amount of emotion out of him to make the fruits and barley she was forced to ingest at least a little tasteful.
It was almost more than she could take, in honesty. Every second was spent agonisingly reminding herself that she couldn’t just let her disguise drop and terrify him, no matter how much she craved fear in the mornings.
It took him a while to get going, but before long Shining was up and about, pulling on his uniform and preparing for his last week at work before the wedding. Today, he’d said, Twilight was coming to town to speak with the Princesses, and he was hoping to have a chance to meet up with her after his work was done. Chrysalis sent him off with a peck on the muzzle and a softly murmured “love you”.
As soon as he was out of the door, Chrysalis trotted calmly into the living room before throwing herself onto the couch and curling up, exhaling a deep sigh.
Chrysalis liked being alone on missions like these. Any hours she could spend just alone with her thoughts, not Cadence’s, were something to be enjoyed, savoured. She might not be able to change out of the stupid disguise she had to constantly wear, but it was the next best thing and Chrysalis had always been one for looking at what she had, not moaning about what she hadn’t.
It was in hours like these that she didn’t have to think about every word she said, every action she performed. It was like those blessed moments backstage after a lengthy scene, where one could relax for a few short moments and catch one’s breath. But like those moments, one’s mind inevitably turned towards the next scene, or the next performance, and so Chrysalis found herself carefully refining the coming stages of her plan.
The presence of Shining’s sister unnerved her, of course. The unicorn was the source of her fears these days and she simply couldn’t shake the feeling that Twilight would be her downfall. The mare was undoubtedly dangerously smart and, having known Cadence almost as long as Shining, she was one of the ponies Chrysalis feared most. There were only a few ponies she interacted with regularly who knew the old Cadence well enough to potentially see through her disguise if she slipped up even the tiniest bit and of those Twilight was the unknown. She’d had years to study Celestia (there had at one point been a plan to have a changeling take her place – her grandmother’s idea, she believed – and enough research had been done on the Princess’ habits that Chrysalis probably knew her schedule better than she did) and Shining was relatively easy to fool regardless. She’d had some difficulty with Cadence’s own parents and sister, but the three of them kept their distance and, for the most part, left her alone.
Chrysalis hoped that Twilight’s long absence from Canterlot (and less-than-regular interactions with Cadence as she grew up) would make the mare nowhere near as dangerous as she had worried she might be, but she couldn’t possibly know exactly what Twilight knew about Cadence. That scared her more than she was willing to let on.
Still, she hoped she’d be able to avoid Twilight for as long as possible. The key to ensuring that one did not slip up when one was disguised was to avoid being near those who knew the pony whose place you’d taken as much as possible without arousing suspicion – and in this case, wedding preparations provided the perfect excuse for avoiding social interactions. Cadence’s high position in court further isolated her from most of society, so even her closest friends didn’t see her all too often.
The plan, initially simple, was becoming far more complicated than she’d thought each and every day. Where at first she was simply meant to replace Cadence on the wedding day itself, using the sheer emotions of the wedding to fuel her magic in a coup, Thorax had suggested that she impersonated Cadence for a week or so beforehand, “to feed off Shining Armor’s love”. That week became a month, and what was going to be a short undercover mission became a last-minute rush of information gathering.
Despite the rush (and she blamed Thorax entirely for that), she managed to take Cadence’s place three weeks before the wedding. Surprisingly, it turned out that Cadence appeared to be rushing the wedding plans herself, leaving an awful lot of preparation until the last minute, which whilst rather amusing turned out to be more effort than Chrysalis thought it was worth. But Thorax was right: making an anonymous threat against Canterlot to force them to focus their energies on protecting the capital from outside threat was smart, but doing so after a handful of agents had made their way into the city was the icing on the cake. It was laughably simple, watching Shining struggle to maintain the barrier and deal with the investigation of the threat, not knowing that the threat was snuggling up with him each night.
But now, as the plan was being carried out, Chrysalis found herself having some issues with small parts of it. She was particularly worried about dealing with Twilight Sparkle and so started forming in her mind alternative courses of action. Her first thought had been to lure the mare away soon before the wedding and trap her with Cadence, but her nightmare had given her some food for thought. If she played her cards just right, she could have Twilight exactly where she wanted her by convincing the mare that she was not the Cadence she knew; no doubt Twilight would confront the problem head-on, and Shining would take offence at her lies and accusations.
She knew it wasn’t a good plan. It was risky and it could go wrong in so many ways, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good daydream. So perhaps she would have to put up a show for Twilight when she did arrive in Canterlot, but dreaming about having the mare shunned and hated for being the only one to see through her disguise was a pleasant idea.
It was such a pleasant idea, in fact, that Chrysalis didn’t hear the doorbell the first time.
Snapping out of her daydream, she rose from the couch and trotted quickly to the front door. Nopony was meant to be visiting today, she was very sure of that, and Shining wasn’t due home from work until the middle of the afternoon: it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Still, when she opened the door, the two stallions in the doorway were quite a surprise to see.
“Sorry to bother you, honey,” Shining said, smiling nervously, “but I thought I’d drop Flash here off on my way to see Twilight.” He nodded towards the orange pegasus who stood shyly behind him. Chrysalis stared incredulously at him.
“And he’s here because…?”
“Oh,” Shining almost jumped. “It must’ve slipped my mind. Flash Sentry is going to be in charge of security at the wedding. Y’know, since I can’t exactly do that myself.”
Chrysalis stepped out of the way, allowing the pegasus in. He stepped in, looking around self-consciously and coughing quietly. She turned back to Shining.
“I better be off,” Shining said, turning to Flash. “Just make sure you cover all the important points about the ceremony, where the guards will be, that kinda thing.” Flash nodded and Shining, flashing a quick grin at Chrysalis, turned and walked down the garden path, shutting the door behind him with a sharp intake of breath.
Chrysalis turned to regard the guardspony beside her. He was young and – dare she say it? – even a little handsome, but he seemed quite shy and uncertain. His emotions seemed all over the place, too, and she barely had enough time to recognise a flavour before it disappeared. There were hints of fear, a sure sign of nerves, and the sharp, sour taste of embarrassment occasionally flicked its way across Chrysalis’ palette. It was certainly a more interesting meal than her breakfast had been.
He couldn’t keep eye contact with her at all, either, desperately glancing around the hallway. She might have mistaken it for taking an interest in his surroundings, but he clearly wasn’t looking at the more interesting furnishings – the trophy cupboard, fireplace and full suit of armour alike all passed under the sweep of his eye without a second glance. Something was undoubtedly off.
“So, Flash…” as she said his name, his eyes snapped to hers for an instant, and there was a flash of excitement and guilt in the air. Her acute ears could hear his heart rate increase. She stretched her wings a little, ruffling a few feathers and drawing his eyes to her – well, Cadence’s – body.
Well, this is going to be interesting.
She began to walk towards the dining room, trusting the young stallion would follow. Turning her head slightly to the right, she called over her shoulder, “Do you want some tea? Coffee? You look exhausted.” There was a small part of her mind that was trying to ring a few alarm bells – this kind of behaviour was going to raise suspicion! – but she found the young stallion’s emotions far too enticing to stop entirely. She decided to compromise: no overt flirting, but keeping him a little on the tips of his hooves nonetheless.
She wandered over to the kettle, listening to Flash settle down at the table behind her as she boiled some water quickly with magic. She pulled down a box of teabags before turning to face the nervous pegasus.
“Coffee, please,” he said, still not quite making eye contact. “No milk or sugar.” She smiled warmly and pulled down a jar of coffee powder as well.
“Sorry we only have instant,” she said. He shrugged, curling himself up on the chair a little, as if he were trying to roll up into a ball and hide. She quickly made both drinks, stirring them as she carried them over, and sat down opposite him. “So, you’re in charge of the wedding’s security? Tough job.”
“It is.” Flash nodded, taking a few sips of coffee and staring at the mug. She could taste the slowly-building confidence and was pretty sure that any time soon he would – ah, there. Eye contact. “I think I can handle it, though. Princess Luna trusts me completely.”
“You’re in the night guard, then?” Flash smiled, nodding. Chrysalis feigned a look of surprise; the information wasn’t particularly difficult to deduce without his little slip-up.
Why was she thinking of conversations as interrogations? This is just a discussion with a guardspony, nothing more, nothing less. Thorax had often told her not to complicate matters unnecessarily and here she was, already doing exactly that.
“Well then,” she said, finishing the long mouthful of tea. A small magical filter over the tip of the cup cooled the liquid so it didn’t scald her mouth and filtered out most of the caffeine. One day, she promised herself, she would try drinking the juice and tea and coffee ponies drank properly, without magic to remove the unnecessary minerals and solutes, but today she just wasn’t ready. “What do I need to know about the arrangements?”
“Guardsponies, both of the night and day guard, will be stationed in and around the room for the ceremony,” Flash said, and something about the look on his face made Chrysalis suspect he was reciting. “Captain Shining Armor is going to attempt to maintain the shield spell throughout the ceremony, although alternative defences are being researched since, as I’m sure you’re aware, maintaining the spell is taking its toll on him.
“Despite this, Princess Luna has personally agreed to oversee the monitoring of the shield during the course of the afternoon, and she will be keeping a close eye on the sky, as it were. Princess Celestia will be providing an enchantment of her own over the whole of the room, ready to use in case of emergency.
“Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we’re making some progress in the hunt for the group who have made threats against Canterlot,” he said. The lengthy monologue had seemingly dealt with the worst of his nerves and he was now making a reasonable amount of eye contact. “Unfortunately we still don’t know quite who it is who has made the threat, but we have been doing what we can to uncover details of the attack regardless.”
Chrysalis’ exterior was as calm as it could be, as she took a careful sip of tea and smiled pleasantly at her guest. She was focusing as much as she could on her deliberate, slow actions to prevent herself from panicking internally. This did not sound good; the guard should not be able to make progress on this investigation.
“How does that work?” she asked, infusing her tone with just a little bit of curiosity. “I mean, if you have no idea who threatened Canterlot, how can you possibly work anything out about the attack?”
“No idea,” Flash said with a shrug, and Chrysalis found herself suppressing a giggle. “It’s the unicorns who’ve been working on that case. They say that they can use their magic to search for traces of suspicious magic in the city.” This was fine – not even Celestia could create a spell to detect changelings, so far as Chrysalis had managed to find. She hid her relief and creased her brow. “They found a few instances of teleportation, a trick very few unicorns can manage, and there was a rather strange “spell form” hidden underneath it. Beats me if I know – do you know any of this jargon?”
Chrysalis smiled; she knew the answer Cadence would give to this. “I was a pegasus before I got this horn,” she flicked her eyes up, and Flash’s eyes followed. She could taste a hint of the same guilt resurfacing as before, which was unexpected. “My understanding of magic is purely functional, not academic. Sorry.” Flash swallowed and nodded, taking another sip from his coffee.
“Well, anyway, that’s pretty much all they’ve found, but that’s given us some serious clues. Whoever is planning the attack, they probably have some agents inside the city. To me – and Commander Nova agrees with me on this – this suggests that they’re trying to catch us unaware. I think they want us focused on the exterior threat as much as possible, so that we don’t look as carefully as we should inside the city.”
Chrysalis made a mental note to trap Thorax in a soundproofed aura next time she saw him, before proceeding to yell obscenities at him for as long as her voice lasted. His plan entirely relied upon the enemy falling for that issue; with extra pressure inside Canterlot, she was going to find it much harder to complete her mission.
Still, it wouldn’t be impossible. After all, she was a perfectly capable actress and, with less than a week until the wedding, all she had to do was make sure not to slip up and get caught. It shouldn’t be too hard – as far as she could tell, nopony suspected her of anything yet, else they probably wouldn’t be sharing this with her at all.
“I take it you’re increasing the guard inside the city, then?” she asked calmly. Flash smiled and Chrysalis had to very carefully avoid making a face at the sudden, unpleasant taste of smugness that overcame the room.
“We’re going to keep the number of guards exactly as they are,” Flash replied with a conspiratorial smirk. “If we were to increase patrols, or react in any way to this news, whoever is planning this attack is going to notice and that’ll give them a chance to respond. We’re just going to keep an eye out for more suspicious magic and see if we can pin down their location, instead.”
Chrysalis raised an eyebrow, impressed. “And are you going to be logging all teleportation as suspicious?”
“As far as we know, only Princess Celestia, Princess Luna and Spell Nexus, the headmaster of the school, can pull that spell off,” Flash replied. “The three of them have been told only to teleport when necessary-”
“I can teleport,” Chrysalis interrupted. Flash stopped, surprised. “But I’ll keep it to a minimum wherever possible.” Flash nodded, frowning. Chrysalis considered for a moment whether that had been the wrong decision, but decided quickly that there was little other choice. She would need to teleport occasionally to speak with Thorax or Cadence, and there simply wasn’t another option at this stage; if Cadence could not, in fact, teleport, nopony would be able to confirm that until after the wedding.
“Strange,” Flash murmured, “nopony has any records of you being able to do that.”
“I started learning a few months back,” Chrysalis replied. “I didn’t want to tell anyone about it until I was comfortable with it, because somepony would ask me to show them and I didn’t want to mess it up in front of everypony. You know how it is.” Flash nodded, seemingly satisfied with her story, and Chrysalis let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding, a silent sigh of relief.
“Of course,” Flash continued, “there is one more matter of safety to discuss – the Elements of Harmony.” The very name of Equestria’s most potent weapon caused the fur on the back of Chrysalis’ neck to stand on end and she suppressed the involuntary shudder that coursed through her body. “We don’t know exactly what the arrangements are yet, but a decision is being made this afternoon on whether to station them here in Canterlot, or have them elsewhere, ready to take back Canterlot if all else goes wrong.”
“Surely,” Chrysalis replied, “it would be better to have them here and ensure that any attack can be countered before any lives are lost?” Of course, that would leave the elements vulnerable in the midst of a swarm of changeling soldiers, but with Flash not knowing the scale of attack Canterlot would face she reasoned that this proposition seemed reasonable.
“Princess Celestia believes that is the case,” Flash replied. “But it is your fiance who is arguing against the idea. Apparently it would require his sister being in Canterlot during the wedding; we’re certain this wedding is going to be the moment Canterlot is at its most vulnerable, and the Captain doesn’t want to take any chances with his family.
“But if they are used,” Flash continued, much to Chrysalis’ surprise, “the guard will be stationed to protect them day and night, with the same level of protection given to yourself, perhaps even the same level of protection Princess Luna herself has. It is the only way the Captain will let Twilight enter Canterlot during this threat – there are currently twelve guards escorting Twilight Sparkle around the city, even today when the risk is relatively low.”
Suddenly Chrysalis was less convinced that having the elements in Canterlot, ready to crush before they could be used against her, would be a smart plan. She was considering instead that keeping the elements out of Canterlot during the vulnerable moments when she would be seizing control may perhaps be better, anyway: it would give her a chance to later face them once she had already secured her position and power.
“Well,” Chrysalis said, “those precautions seem perfectly good to me. Do you, by any chance, know exactly where guards will be posted during the ceremony? I would quite like to know exactly where they’ll be, for my own peace of mind.”
Flash pulled a scroll out of the loose space in his saddle used as a pocket by most guards. He stood up, pushing the empty mug slightly towards the middle of the table. “There you are,” he said politely. “I should probably be going…”
Chrysalis let her face slide into an expression of disappointment. Now that this stallion had served his practical use, she figured she might as well have some fun with him: after all, a small snack couldn’t hurt anyone. “Are you sure you couldn’t stay a little while? Shining’s out all day lately – you know better than anypony, I expect, how many meetings that stallion has – and it just gets a bit lonely around here.” She tried not to let her voice get too flirtatious; she couldn’t afford to let her cover slip, and that would certainly seem a little suspicious this close to her – Cadence’s – wedding day. Still, despite her best efforts to make the phrase sound bored and casual, she couldn’t quite stop a hint of playfulness making its way into her tone. She hoped it was small enough that Flash might think it was his mind playing tricks on him.
Flash once again seemed to lose the ability to make eye contact, and where he had become so confident and assured he was now reduced to his earlier, nervous self. “I, uhm, don’t think I should,” he said, lamely, and Chrysalis could taste the excitement and guilt and disappointment rolling off him in waves, one after the other in a delicious cycle. “Guards’ duties and all that.”
“Night guards have to work through the day?” Chrysalis asked. It wasn’t something many ponies knew, but she and her spies had spotted them in their investigations. “That seems so unfair.”
“N-not often,” Flash replied, staring at the floor. “The occasional extra duty, once a fortnight. Just to bolster numbers.”
“Such a shame,” Chrysalis replied, opening the dining room door with her magic. She followed Flash into the hall, opening the front door for him. “Well, if you’re ever off-duty and want a chat, feel free to stop by, Mr. Sentry,” she said with a genuine smile: Flash was fun to tease.
The stallion nodded and, a hint of a blush on his cheeks, made his way down the garden path before spreading his wings and kicking off from the ground. Chrysalis watched him fly away for a moment, before closing the door and trotting back to the couch, throwing herself onto it and curling up once more.
This security arrangement was going to need a lot of thought.