//------------------------------//
// 35 - Collapse is Compensation 
// Story: Hive Alive 
// by BlackWater 
//------------------------------//









Queen Twilight Sparkle was in pain. She wanted to regain control, but she couldn't. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. Chrysalis had been right to warn her. She wanted to turn back time and heed those words. Overconfidence had been her undoing. It only pained her more because she had struggled so much with a lack of confidence in herself and now she felt like she could never be confident about anything ever again.
The memories swirled with colors she didn't like until she came to moments she dreaded the most. The back of her mind had warned her that this would come eventually. Part of her wanted to connect with Chrysalis on this point because it was so important. Part of her wanted to run away as far as possible. This was the climax of everything that had gone wrong.
Canterlot.
No! Anything but this. Twilight's immaterial tears tore her apart. Cadance was tricked into being alone with a servant pony she didn't know. The equine transformed into the changeling queen. Voiceless screams, physical violence, blackout. The pink princess was dumped into the caverns, audience to a gloat of victory from the queen when she awoke.
Emotions bled over directly into Twilight's very being. The horror of her situation was temporarily washed aside by the changeling's feelings of fulfillment for the successful invasion. The hive's survival was guaranteed and all those that had hurt them directly or indirectly had been defeated. A special torture would have to be planned out for the now fallen Celestia.
It turned sour. Their sustenance somehow became a weapon to repel them. The sheer power of the love was beyond anything Chrysalis had felt before. Twilight began feeling pains throughout a body she didn't have. The brunt force from Shining Armor and Cadance's love now attacked her. The non-existent carapace felt like it was on fire and cracked from top to bottom.
Air whistled by as she sailed through the sky. One of her wings bent...and snapped off. It felt like she was tumbling through treetops, thrashing one way and another through sharp branches. Ground assaulted her, bones broke, memories started to tangle. She came to and passed out again several times before the last event finished her off. Chrysalis could take no more in that moment, the memories becoming too powerful while she was at death's door. They fell together. They fell completely.
Queen Twilight Sparkle's mind broke.
Her eyes opened, white lights beaming from them. She was back in the real world and awake, though she couldn't see anything but blank whiteness. Perhaps she wasn't in the real world. Only the Element of Magic nestled deep inside of her - defining her - kept this moment from being her last. The Tree of Harmony's Elements had matured inside the six friends and used all their strength to stave off the end.
A single word screamed louder than any other that had come from Twilight's mouth.
“CELESTIAAAA!!!”









Princess Celestia had heard her name millions of times over thousands of years. She had heard it from bored royals proposing uninteresting and mundane laws in court. She had heard it as the dying word upon the lips of many ponies she had failed to save. She had only heard it like this once before in her entire life, though. This was the kind of shout that her little sister, Luna, had made when they had nearly died shortly after the death of their parents.
She knew Twilight's voice like the back of her hoof. She had practically raised the mare alongside the purple pony's biological parents. The tone of the scream sent a chill through her very bones. It was a chill she had promised never to feel again after what happened with Luna. Now it had happened again.
Princess Celestia was fully awake to begin with. She was in Luna's room, discussing details of their impending travel. For that matter, Discord was present as well, shooting off the late night hours quite literally from Luna's clock. They all heard the scream, which seemed to pierce through every wall of the castle.
Only a fraction of a second was spent before they all moved into action, Celestia a microsecond faster. Discord had practically paled. She had never seen that look on his face, which was so often painted with something goofy. They teleported by using magic that Celestia normally refrained from due to the massive energy requirement. But she wouldn't waste any time getting to Twilight and Discord didn't have usable magic of his own at the moment. He had used it all recently on Twilight...









Spike regained consciousness just before it happened. If matters had been different, he might have had the time to properly learn to control his magic. The situation had gone from bad to worse, however. He had no time to think and acted only on the instinct to survive and his desire to save the others.
Green lightning shot out a dozen times per second between Chrysalis and Twilight. The bed sheets had long been blown back to the far side of the room and there was no doubt that something about the connection had gone horribly wrong. Spike was still having afterimages and felt ill down to the pit of his normally indestructible stomach.
“AH!” screamed Pinkie Pie, who had rolled down the steps leading to the bed. She was holding her head with eyes closed and an intense expression of pain.
“No, stop!” Rarity cried out. Her eyes were also closed in pain as she attempted to crawl away from the lightning that repeatedly struck her.
Spike's small body shot into motion and his untapped magic came soaring out without any filter or manner of control. His body size started fluctuating drastically even as he jumped between Rarity and the assaulting lightning that originated from Chrysalis and Twilight. He didn't understand anything that was happening and the pain he soon felt from the lightning made him realize that he might never get the chance to.
Bolts struck his body again and again while his spines finished growing to twice the size of a pony. He wanted to be more, but he didn't have the necessary control. If only he was larger, he could protect everypony. He needed time to learn and master his magic. Time he didn't have. The lightning blackened his scales and his vision faded. He shouted to Rarity and everypony else.
“Run!”









Centurion shoved Flash Sentry back from the doorway. The younger stallion hadn't realized why until the door suddenly exploded outwards and struck the veteran square in the torso. Several hooves distance worth of bricks around the frame also exploded outwards, portions that would have hit Flash had he not been shoved out of the way.
The heavily built guardpony grunted from the impact but shook off the blow and, instead of running away from the danger area, he shot straight into the glowing smoke of the rubble. They had both heard Twilight scream Celestia's name a second before and it was clear that their royal charge was in mortal danger.
Flash Sentry may have been considered a greenhorn by some, but he was a guardpony and no coward. He darted in behind his superior. What he didn't anticipate was what he saw after he cleared the first smoke haze. Centurion was suddenly visible again, being tossed through the air to the other side of the room. A massive green lightning bolt was electrocuting him. Fear gripped Flash's heart but did not impede his resolve to make it to Twilight. Only a mismatched paw and claw withheld him.
“Get back!” shouted an unexpected voice.
Flash had never met Discord before, but the seriousness in the creature's tone gave him something new to fear.









Whatever happened had occurred so quickly that it was impossible for the alicorn sisters to make sense of it. The room was literally falling apart now. Lightning struck the walls, floor, and ceiling. Bits of stone brick splintered from the hits and some of them exploded outwards entirely. Key supports along the wall were cracked, some breaking and collapsing the ceiling downwards. There would be no time to take in the sights. This part of the castle was about to come down on their heads.
Celestia had seen Twilight like this once before, sans the green lightning and the rainbow-colored sphere that flickered on and off around her like a half-broken lightbulb. The incident that occurred when Twilight was a filly was merely a result of massive untempered magical energy. Now that Twilight's abilities had matured so much, this event had the potential to be worse. Far worse. The green lightning connected down to an unconscious Chrysalis, which meant Twilight's out-of-control magic was linked to changeling energy.
“My magic isn't working,” Luna worriedly called out, using her wings to fly up and avoid tendrils of lightning that tried to grab her. Indeed the dark alicorn's near-black magic aura frizzed out when it tried to beam from her horn towards Twilight. “How do we stop this?!”
The roar of the snapping green energy and the collapsing stone made it hard to hear each other even when they shouted. Princess Celestia knew there was no time to think or reason it out. She had to act immediately, regardless of how ill-advised her plan was. She thought that she might be able to reach into Twilight's magical source the way she had that first time. Her magic would calm and everything would be alright.
Thus the Princess of the Sun jumped up towards Twilight, pushing with her massive wings when it became clear she would have to fly the distance not covered by her spring. Lightning curved mid-arc in an attempt to overwhelm her, as if it had it out for white alicorns. Celestia's subconscious dealt with each strike by deflecting the bolts with her powerful star-hued magic.
“Twilight!” Celestia called as she reached forward at the end of her short flight. Her golden horseshoes entered the rainbow sphere around Twilight for just a second before white light exploded outwards from the younger mare.
None of the guards that came rushing to the scene were able to make out much from the rubble. Canterlot Castle had completely collapsed on the southeast wing. There was so much junk stone piled in a billowing heap that it took the entire Canterlot Guard's unicorn division to get to what used to be the visitor's bedchamber. By that time, daybreak had arrived.









Discord, lord of chaos and fine connoisseur of mayhem, decided that there did exist some forms of chaos that he didn't like. His chaos was one of laughter and enjoyment. This chaos was just...well, it certainly didn't make him laugh. His head hurt and it felt as if some part of him may have been broken.
“Discord?” Celestia groaned as she became conscious.
Her vision was terrible and everything appeared to be bathed in a tinted light that might have been blue or green. It was hard to tell. She was laid painfully on some sort of medical bed. It wasn't the bed that was uncomfortable, but rather it was her own body. She ached all over. Only the plush silkiness of the massive bed made her condition feel bearable.
As her mind started to come into order, she realized that this was a room she only vaguely remembered. Some royal unicorn looking to get in on her good graces had built a special wing at the Canterlot Hospital that was made for Celestia's sole use. Of course, it was a ridiculous idea since Celestia hardly ever got hurt in the first place. She had rolled her eyes at the unicorn back then. Now she wanted to find the pony and praise his foresight.
Discord was indeed standing at one side of her bed. An unamused and almost bitter expression was written upon his countenance. A coin was being flipped over and over from his eagle's claw. Or was it a griffon's claw?
“Now that your majesty is conscious,” his voice dripped with annoyance, “might I begin my carefully prepared complaints?”
“Quietly,” Celestia replied. “Start with Twilight. Is she okay?”
Her voice was coarse and her lungs ached at the action. Of more importance to her, however, was her smaller sister. Luna was curled up asleep next to her on the bed, likely against the wishes of the tending doctors and nurses. There seemed to be about a half dozen of the medical ponies present in the room, monitoring various devices and charts that ran data on Celestia's condition. Something was keeping them busy enough that they didn't think to swarm the royal princess with their relief at her return to consciousness.
Discord rolled his eyes, though he did not do so literally this time. Something had him in a sour mood indeed. “Yes, of course. I go spending all of my magical reserves to ensure Twilight's safety in our absence and what does she do? The one thing my magic was not intended to prevent!”
“Being?” Celestia prompted him with her tired tone. She wanted to know what had happened, but her body was not quite up to the task. It felt as if she might fall asleep from some kind of exhaustion.
“Self-initiated harm,” he frowned. “No, don't give me that look, Tia. They're all as fine as can be expected. Nobody died.”
Celestia was so relieved that she almost let herself drop back into unconsciousness. Discord's next words prevented that.
“But some of them might now wish that they had,” he added in a dark manner. “By the way, you might want to know that little Lulu there never left your side. Seems her loyalty to you is stronger than any friendship she has with the so-called 'Elements of Harmony.'”
Celestia furrowed her brows at his use of air quotes on the Elements, but she looked back to her little sister fondly. That was just like Luna to stay by her side. The lunar mare was even holding Celestia's right forehoof with both of hers, as if she were afraid her sister might leave her.
“You've been out for a week,” Discord continued. “I don't think I've felt so miserable for so long before, even when I was encased in stone! It's Fluttershy mainly. I go putting all my chips down on this friendship thing and...and...”
“You know what it's like now to have empathy for a friend,” Celestia finished for him. She smiled, though she knew it was a less than happy experience for the draconequus. “Is she alright?”
“Fluttershy?” Discord kept his frown and averted his gaze. “No. She's torn to pieces over what happened. I've tried every slight of claw and paw I know and nothing cheers her up.”
“What did happen?” Celestia's smile disappeared. She still needed more information.
It was then that one of the doctors finally stepped forward and interrupted.
“Your highness!” she exclaimed in obvious relief. “I can't tell you how relieved we are that you're alright. You gave us such a scare! Medical history has never recorded such low life support throughout your internal systems. Your heart nearly stopped.”
“I'm alright,” Celestia assured the unicorn mare. Some of the other doctors and nurses were by the speaker's side. “I've had worse days, believe me. Discord, please continue.”
The depressed creature of chaos had slithered onto the far side of the bed and toyed uselessly with a corner of the sheets. It was eerie to see him so glum. Perhaps it was the contrast to the predictability of his character.
“I've gotten a small amount of my magic back over the past few days and I immediately used it to do a little investigating. The problem lies with Queen Twilight.”
The female nurse spoke up again. “Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie are all here in the intensive care division. Coma condition. We tried separating the...uh...Chrysalis, but we encountered a negative magical feedback. One of Twilight's guards, Centurion, is also in intensive care. We expect him to have a full recovery within the month. Some less severe care has been applied for Applejack.”
“Applejack?” Celestia questioned. She hadn't remembered that mare being present at the event.
“Yes,” the doctor turned a tad sheepish. “She caused some commotion upon arriving at the hospital. Some of the guards had to restrain her and a few tables, chairs, and walls may have been...reconstructed during the...altercation...”
Celestia smiled once more at hearing the doctor's difficulty with wording the event. From what she knew of the Element of Honesty, it made sense that she'd come barging in wanting to take names. Celestia tried not to think of the implications of their current state of affairs. Having herself and Discord low on energy and four of the six Elements of Harmony in a coma left Equestria on highly tentative grounds security-wise.
“She's alright, though,” the doctor concluded. “Just a few scratches.”
“Far less than Rainbow Dash,” Discord said, still toying with the edge of the sheets. He hadn't lost his lack of cheer. Gears turned quite literally within his eyes, some part of him trying to work out the problem in such a way that he could turn it all into some light-hearted joke. “She had the worst injuries. Best of the best doctors and they still don't know. Personally, I'm inclined to think she'll live.”
“What does he mean?” Celestia returned her attention to the unicorn mare.
“Ms. Rainbow Dash received multiple high-voltage electrocutions. Pegasi are naturally resilient against storm weather, but...”
“But?” Celestia prodded.
“We haven't been able to properly diagnosis the electrical magic produced from Chrysalis. Or Twilight for that matter,” she tacked on. Most of the other nurses and doctors had returned to viewing the readouts and diagrams littered throughout the room.
Celestia sighed. She hoped that the extra breath would make her feel better, but it didn't. Luna finally stirred in her spot, one eye groggily opening. After recognizing Celestia's conscious state, both eyes shot open in an instant.
“Tia!” Luna exclaimed louder than anyone else had been thus far. The dark alicorn hugged her sister as if her life depended on it. She apparently had no regard for the other occupants of the room observing this.	
“Good morning to you too,” Celestia croaked from within the stranglehold.
“Actually, it's the afternoon,” Luna made a pouting face after leaning back from her elder. Her voice wobbled with the tears in her eyes. “We've been keeping close track of daytime since you passed out.”
Celestia leaned back on the bed sheets once more, somehow more at ease because of her little sister's slip of the old language. “What were you saying about your investigations, Discord?”
The draconequus finally stopped messing with the sheets and rolled upwards so that he was sitting on the bed's edge. By some slight of paw, he produced a full deck of cards from thin air and proceeded to play a game of War against himself. His unamused expression hadn't flown away.
“Twilight finally took on more than she could chew,” he began in the tone of a Canterlot elitist. A top hat, a monocle, and a bubble pipe poofed into existence upon him. “I invested heavily in analytical magic, which I admit I'm not all that good at. Mostly stick to causing problems rather than solving them. Anyways, I found the heart of the trouble. Blasted ponies,” he puffed some bubbles from the pipe, “think they can just loop their minds together and not get all tangled up. Twilight's mind is stuck with that of the changeling.”
“I see...” Celestia hummed to herself. She was trying to come up with ideas.
Luna grabbed her sister's attention. “We believe that, until their identities are resolved within the hivemind, all the members that were connected at the time will remain comatose. Centurion was only injured physically, but two of Twilight's guards were connected at the moment of the incident. They're comatose as well.”
“So the question is?” Celestia sighed again due to her tiredness.
She looked to one side of the room that had a large window letting in the sunlight. Luna must have been handling a multitude of affairs while she had been unconscious. Raising and lowering the sun in addition to the moon for an entire week had to have put a strain on her sister.
Discord flicked a card atop the sheets Celestia was half beneath. The large white alicorn was able to look down and see what it was. No surprise. It was a joker card with the contrastingly gleeful visage of Discord upon it. He was dressed in a goofy jester outfit. When she looked back over to the real version, she found him suddenly wearing the same getup.
“How do we quickly fix our little queen's problem so that we can move on with our own journey?” Discord's mouth caught the edge of a grin. Some scheme had obviously worked itself out within the gears in his eyes. “Fight chaos with chaos.”
“No,” Luna immediately rejected it. She knew instantly what the odd creature meant.
“I just need a teeny-tiny boost of magic,” Discord offered with a full grin, “and I can control the chaos that's darkened Twilight's mind. And I won't even have to join her band of mental compadres either.”
“Don't do it, Tia,” Luna warned her exhausted sister. “He just wants to take advantage of the situation. Without the Elements-”
“No,” Celestia calmed her sibling by moving a weak forehoof to Luna's mouth. “I trust Discord.”
The draconequus beamed at that.
“Twilight needs help as soon as possible and there's nothing we can do ourselves. Breaking the hivemind bond would be far more dangerous and would harm all of them long-term. Discord, you have my blessing.”
“Excellent!” he exclaimed as he stood up fully on the bed. His cards scattered into butterflies and his jester costume transformed into a surgeon's scrubs. “Who will be the lucky super-powerful alicorn to give me their magic?”
Discord was looking straight at Luna, who then looked to Celestia, who looked back at her.
“What?” Luna furrowed her brows and took on an expression of disgust. “No. Tia, no. I won't let that snake have my magic.”
“It's only temporary,” Celestia begged in her weak voice. It softened her sister considerably to hear that kind of tone. “If not for Twilight, then at least for me...”
Seeing Princess Luna's face falter under the wording, Discord whipped out a defibrillator as easy as he had done with the cards. Levitating it mid-air, he took the paddles off and started sparking them against each other. “Oh, goodie!” he regained his full glee at last. “I always wanted to be a doctor!”
The actual doctors in the room gave him mixed looks of disdain and horror.









The air honestly hadn't changed much. If one was to be in a hospital then one had to come to terms with the fact that the “hospital smell” would follow into every room. Though, perhaps this particular room was a tad more sterile than Celestia's private wing. There was a kind of light spring fragrance in that special wing of the hospital, for some reason.
This large circular room was stocked full of medical machinery. Masses of wires and magical observation devices were directed towards seven beds that lined one side of the room. On those medical beds, from left to right, were Midnight Strike, Direway, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Chrysalis, Twilight Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash. Some had more machines than others, Rainbow Dash's bed being completely encased within a glass shield for her critical condition. All of them were in a full coma state.
“What're you doin' here?” Applejack glared angrily at the draconequus as he waltzed carefree into the intensive care room. She didn't like him much to begin with and she sure didn't like him after this most recent incident. It wouldn't surprise her if he even had a claw in what happened.
“Oh, tut tut, my little Applejack,” he waved a paw as he approached the medical bed that the pony was standing beside. It held Rainbow Dash. “I'm here to save the day. Isn't that what all masters of chaos do every weekend?”
“B-but,” squeaked a small voice that didn't sound to be in much better shape than Princess Celestia's. Fluttershy almost failed to utter the rest of the words, her face ashen from her place beside Twilight's bed. Her mane was a mess and it appeared as if she hadn't slept in days. “Y-you said you didn't have the s-strength...”
“Yeah,” a familiar but slightly deeper than usual voice added in from the other side of Twilight's bed. It was Spike, the dragon who had miraculously escaped the troubled hivemind and survived the lightning. His scales were still burnt and his body was now fixed at a teen size about two and a half times that of a pony. “What changed?”
Discord was too happy to register the drake's skepticism. “The power of the moon is truly a wonderful thing. I believe I shall be respecting dear Lulu a little bit more from now on.”
“Oooh, nelly!” Applejack remarked wide-eyed upon realizing what he meant.
“As you can see,” Discord laughed jovially and gestured to his surgeon's scrubs, “I'm fully qualified. It won't take two shakes of a pink ewe's fluffy tail before I have everypony in tip top shape.”
Applejack remained worried, Fluttershy let herself fall for a hope, and Spike remained rooted in place. He was unsure whether he could trust the misshapen creature or not. Discord, on the other claw, was quite sure of what to do. He used a blast of magic to replace his scrubs with a magician's cloak and top hat.
“Let the magic begin!”