//------------------------------//
// Epilogue: Making Room for Us 
// Story: All for You 
// by Stryke 
//------------------------------//

"So how much did you know?" 

Celestia looked up from her own private reflections in her throne room. The party outside had long since burned out and Canterlot for now was at peace.

She turned to her sister on the balcony who was silhouetted against the night sky. "Not much," she admitted. "I saw something hidden approaching Canterlot, which was why I increased the palace security, and then after that I saw Cadance and Shining Armour at the altar so I knew that it was linked somehow to their impending betrothal."

"Oh," Luna said, as if finally connecting some dots. "I had wondered what was with your expression when Chrysalis transformed."

"I almost dropped the rings," Celestia confessed. "I had begun to think my visions had been wrong for once."

Luna snorted. "I'd have thought you'd have known better than that by now, my sister." Her expression became uncertain. "We did do the right thing, didn't we?"

Celestia stepped down from her throne to approach her sister. "Sometimes I think the price of living so long is getting to see just how all of your mistakes turn out in the long run."

"Sister?" Luna asked, moving to Celestia's side.

"I told Cadance to ask Chrysalis about the changeling's history," she said, and leaned in closer in a gesture of sisterly affection. "Now, I don't know why. After all, how could a changeling now know everything that happened."

"Especially given how few of them escaped my campaign," Luna said, an odd mix of pride and regret in her voice. "I was suitably thorough after what they'd done."

"Yes, yes you were," Celestia agreed sadly. "I never should have sent you."

Luna shook her head. "I know what you regret," she said firmly. "But I would not have taken no for an answer at the time."

"You never would have had to if I hadn't tried to help them once before," Celestia said, her gaze somewhere else, and a very long time a go. "If I hadn't shown pity back then, I..."

Luna hugged her sister close. "You did what you did with the best of intentions, and If you hadn't, what happened today could never have happened. As you say, we have lived a long time, and perhaps that is long enough for a mistake to yet work itself out in the end."

"Hmmm," Celestia murmured. "You might be right."

"It does happen on occasion," Luna, said with a wink.

They fell into a comfortable silence born of familiarity until a thought arose again that she had been putting off "That wasn't the only vision I've had recently," Celestia said, a look of worry crossing her face. "A great evil is returning to our lands and we will need to be prepared. We may even need to release Discord from his prison."

"Sister!" Luna exclaimed, as she jumped to her hooves. "Please tell me that this is some mischief of yours."

"I wish that it was," she said, feeling her sister's tension. A thought crossed her mind again that over the last few weeks that would not leave her alone. The thought that she had finally believed might have been disproved this time before Chrysalis had shown her vision to be true once again.

Please can I be wrong about what is coming, she thought. Just once, please let me be wrong.    

~~~

Sunset Shimmer flipped the page that she was reading and settled further back into her chair. There had been some commotion going on in the rest of the palace, but it nothing to do with her and her ambitions, so she had paid it little to no mind. That Trixie mare however had been of some interest. Not like at all the occasional researcher or scholar that she would make a point of ignoring. That would have to be a name to bear in mind for the future.

The leather-bound tome she was reading was old, old enough that the leather might not have been obtained in the proper civilised fashion, but it was full of fanciful nonsense. She had occasionally wondered what a book of foalish tales was doing in this library which contained the greatest treatises on magic to be found in all of Equestria, if not the whole known world.

She had finally given into her curiosity and so far she had been right. Any right thinking graduate of the school for gifted unicorns could tell you that Queen Majesty had never existed having resulted from a simple error of translation by Clover the Not-so-Clever. Yet this book talked about her as if she was an actual historical figure. 

Sunset was about to discard the book, and possibly mark it for transfer to a more suitable library, like one for the under fives, when she stopped and studied the margin of the page that she was on intently. She wasn't much of librarian, but she was enough of one that the sight of such vandalism to a book made her tut out loud. Then though Sunset realised what exactly she had discovered. The passage was in regard to the magical mirror from which it was said that Queen Majesty could create ponies from nothing, but what had drawn her attention was what was scrawled next to it. Sunset recognised the style of quill-work in a heart beat. After all she was sitting in a library full of his writings.

She felt her pulse quicken as the possibilities opened up before her eyes. More research would be called for. A lot more research, but this was what she had been looking for so long to find. A way to finally bring down the reign of Princess Celestia, a way that she would never see coming, and it would all be due to just six little words written by Star Swirl the Bearded so very long ago.

'I know how she did it.'

~~~

Queen Thorndust stepped into the throne room of Hive Nychus casting her veil aside as she did so. She had nothing to fear of the lowly drones that would have otherwise barred her path, but frankly she neither had the time or patience for such trifling matters so a veil was far more convenient.

She shook her head. She'd had reason to be here before, but it was just as tiresome as last time. Unlike more civilised changelings the preferred decoration around here was bone with pride of place given to the giant bleached skull of an elder dragon hanging over the throne. 

The one that had personally claimed the immense trophy was currently snarling out her name and looking most put out for some reason. Thorndust couldn't imagine why.  She suspected that some might find the skull impressive, but really what was the point in such base pursuits of power?

There was one change that had not been here last time. An earth pony with the dotted markings of a winding trail on his flank was observing her with alert eyes. Far too alert for a pony that was being used as food and yet the heavy chain around his neck spoke of his lack of choice in being here. Interesting, most interesting, Thorndust thought as she tucked that oddity away for investigation later.

"Queen Nychus," Thorndust said abruptly in the pony tongue. Partly as she knew that it would annoy Nychus who always needed a good needling, and partly for the benefit of the unexpected guest of her hospitality. "We should talk."

"I have nothing to say to you," Nychus growled, as she stepped menacingly towards the other queen. Unlike most changeling queens that tended to be slim and angular Nychus had always more reminded Thorndust of a rhino from distant Zebrica. The belligerence and smell also probably had something to do with that.

"Oh, but you do," Thorndust pressed. "I bring word of Chrysalis."

Nychus grunted. "She's dead. Killed her myself."

"Her daughter, Nychus," Thorndust said with a heavy sigh. "Her daughter."

"What do I care of that whelp?"

"She attacked Canterlot," Thorndust said.

Nychus let out a low whistle. "That is impressive," she conceded. "Insane, but impressive. So Chrysalis' whelp is no more?"

"Enslaved, from what my little bird tells me," Thorndust said, scuffing some bone dust from her hooves. 

"She should count herself fortunate," Nychus said, and shrugged. "Still don't see what this is to do with me."

"'We are now the last true pure-blooded queens left with an unbroken line stretching back to the change," Thorndust said, her eyes gleaming in the darkness of the hive. "There is opportunity there, and power."

Nychus raised an eye ridge at that. "The drones speak of true queens that fled over the sea."

Thorndust chuckled darkly. "They do, don't they."

Nychus grinned back. "I had suspected," she said. "But what about Queen P—"

"She is no longer changeling!" Thorndust snapped, her expression one of pure venomous hate, and her horn blazed with wild magic. "She is unclean!"

"That she is. So I ask again why are you here?" Nychus said, and grinned nastily. "Unless you just want to give up your head and make it just the one."

Thorndust chose her words with deliberate intonation. "Before her defeat Chrysalis somehow managed to consume enough love to strike down the Tyrant."

Nychus leapt out of her throne while the collared pony gasped in disbelief. "The whelp did that?" she yelled. "We have really cowered for so long for nothing?"

"But wait, it gets even better," Thorndust said, and licked her lips with her long purple tongue. "There is a new alicorn that has arisen to stand with the Tyrant and the Bane. She was the one that enslaved Chrysalis with..." She paused to savour the moment.

"Will you get on with it?" 

"With the power of love," Thorndust said, and let loose a piercing cackle.

Nychus roared with laughter causing the pony to wince as his eardrums threatened to rupture.  

"On top of that she was able to partially remove Majesty's great working on several drones."

"Unbelievable," Nychus said. "But that does sound like an alicorn we should make a point of getting acquainted with."

"Indeed she does," Queen Thorndust said, inwardly rejoicing that Nychus had proven as easy to manipulate as she had expected. Soon the king would return as the visions had told her so, and he was but the least of those from the distant past that she had seen moving to reclaim their power once more. Only considering their names was enough to make her quiver with anticipation. In the impending chaos and distraction a clever changeling could change the fate of nations, and Thorndust knew that she was a very clever changeling indeed.

She favoured the pony with a quick conspiratorial wink and smiled using all of her fangs when he flinched back. Thorndust gathered her magic about herself as she focused on her intended destination elsewhere in the badlands. As the hive faded around her a pleasant thought crossed her mind.

Things are about to get interesting.