//------------------------------// // Evil Twilight Good Chrysalis 1 by Europa (Story) // Story: Tainted Love: A Twysalis Prompt Tag Collab // by Foals Errand //------------------------------// by Europa Princess Chrysalis stared at her dearest friend, Genasi. The shorter changeling - not royal caste like her - approached her. "It's okay, Chryssy. I'm sorry, I've just been under a lot of stress lately," she admitted sheepishly. Chrysalis drew her into a hug. "It's okay, it's okay. I know how it is." "You're not the one getting married." She chuckled. "Okay, maybe not." She pulled away. "I'm just glad we're okay." "Me too, Chryssy." Chrysalis turned around and began to trot away. "Aaanyway, I got to go see if mother's still angry at me. Catch you later." "Yes," Genasi said, her voice suddenly cold and hard. "Your mother, Queen Thorax the Orange." Chrysalis turned around at the surprisingly hostile tone, and was taken off guard by what she saw. Genasi's short, curved horn was lit up with blinding luminescence. But instead of the orange magic that nearly all changelings shared with her mother thanks to the hivemind - Chrysalis herself was royalty, so her magic could be its natural green, heralding she had great things ahead of her - Genasi's horn was a swirling maelstrom of magenta, dark blue, teal, and golden magic, its core so brilliant as to be white, the colors swirling around her horn like a whirlwind. "Genasi, what - " That was all the time she got to speak. The crushing torrents of certainly-not-changeling-magic wrapped around her. There was a flash, a jerk in a direction she couldn't see, and then the magic faded. Princess Chrysalis looked around. The room she was in was made entirely of dark stone, with bookshelves all around her, filled to bursting with tomes. The only light was the gentle bio-luminescence of her eyes. There was some strange magic layered upon the walls, and nothing more. ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** Queen Twilight Sparkle, Ruler of the Dusk, Goddess of Magic, monarch of Equestria, finished teleporting away the young Princess Chrysalis and sighed. There. That was one problem taken care of. Making sure that the polymorph spell disguising herself as an average changeling - Genasi was her name, and being a statue was now her game - held, she trotted back to the underground chamber that 'Queen Thorax' had prepared for her upcoming wedding to 'Swarm Commander Polin'. It was just too easy. For a species that apparently made their living around shapeshifting and espionage, beating them at their own game was pathetically simple. Then again, what wasn't pathetically simple for the Channeler of Love, Mover of the Orbs? She'd hoped that overwhelming the changelings would provide her with a challenge, but no such luck. Oh well. When she was done here, maybe she could go let Tirek loose, give him a head start to feed, then cram him back into Tartarus. Some infinitesimal small part of her, from millennia ago when she only had the power of an exceptionally strong unicorn, wondered if maybe what she was doing was wrong. After all, the changelings did no harm; they made sure of that. They'd never hurt her. She was a monster for doing this. Queen Twilight ignored that and closed the door behind her with a flick of orange alicorn-disguised-as-changeling magic. She trotted over to the bed and flopped down on the green silk sheets. It was very luxurious and soft, but nowhere near as comfortable as her enchanted cloud bed back home. Good enough for bugs, she supposed. She closed her eyes and fell asleep, ready for the 'wedding' tomorrow that would spell the end of the changelings with a swift decapitation strike. There was nothing they could do about it; all their power combined wouldn't match her, and while Queen Thorax could've overpowered any single alicorn, Queen Twilight had much more than one alicorn's worth of magic in her. And it wasn't like they had hypnotic magic either, so she was safe. Twilight Sparkle had no dreams, and she was up and about quickly. Reapply her polymorph spell and the emotional suppressor to keep her field of emotional energy suppressed. She conjured nutrients directly into her stomach to nourish herself, and then stepped out of the seaweed-esque door flaps into the tunnels of the hive. She had a wedding to go to, and with that admittedly intelligent Chrysalis safely hidden away in a pocket dimension, there was nopony - and noling - who even suspected her. Too easy. ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** She had to get out, she had to get out! Chrysalis blasted the walls with all her formidable power, but didn't even mar the books. She screamed and lashed out again and again, but no matter what she did she couldn't escape. No fire portals, nothing! How much air was there? Would Genasi - if that was even her real name - ever let her go? Would she be doomed to starve here, over the course of weeks, slowly and painfully, begging for rescue that would never come? The thought sent chills down Princess Chrysalis's shell. She had to get out, though! It couldn't end like this. With a scream of anger, she gripped a bookshelf and tugged, but it didn't fly off. Some magic had affixed it firmly to the cylindrical wall. Instead, she lit up her horn with eldritch emerald energy and ripped a line of books off. One of them landed open, the picture of some strange, mismatched being on it. Chrysalis cocked a brow. FLASH! A surge of white light filled her vision, accompanied by the feeling of fibrous feathers tickling the spaces between her chitin. Then there was a loud, "AAAAAH! Oh man, that feels good! Cooped up in a book for five thousand years, can you believe it?" The chimera - no, not a chimera, even chimeras had more sense to them than this - looked her way. "Hey hey there! You must be the 'ling that let me out! Great going on that, by the way." "W-Who are you?" she asked, backing up against the wall. "Why, my name is Discord, first and only draconequus!" He flexed, his lion arm and eagle arm suddenly bulging with ridiculous muscle. "Most powerful being on the planet!" The muscles, and Discord's expression, deflated. "Well, was. Miss Purplesmart's rather crafty. Cruel too, putting me in a book like that! Do you have any idea how boring it gets to read charts describing the equations for torque and angular momentum for five thousand years?!" "Um, no?" she squeaked. Discord nodded, hovering in the air without flapping his strange wings. "Well, anyway! If you're here, then I guess you must've had a run in with ol' Sparklebutt. Now, listen. I can't fight her; my chaos magic is very powerful but she's developed counters to it and ways to predict it. I can get us out of here though, but you'll have to deal with her on your own, kiddo." "That's, uh, good?" she asked. "But wait, who put us here?" "Twilight Sparkle, ever hear the name?" Princess Chrysalis gasped. The Twilight Sparkle? The only living alicorn, mover of the cosmic orbs? She'd heard reports stating that the Queen of the Ponies was acting strangely; was it because Twilight had left an imposter on her throne to come to them under disguise? Why? She couldn't imagine anything pleasant. Then there was a snap of light, sending her back to the hive. ***-_***_-***-_***_-***-_***_-*** Chrysalis ran like she'd never run before. Normally she would have taken a fire portal, or inferno-dashed her way there, but she needed to save her magic for the Dusk Alicorn. A quick sip from the hive's repository of love refueled her, and gave her all the power she could hold. She ran and ran. She bowled over Imperial Guards and guests alike as she neared the Wedding Hall, then burst inside. It was a magnificent cavern, decorated with multicolored silken tapestries. At the ceiling clung stalactites upon stalactites, empty cocoons resting in them to provide lighting. On the floor and ceiling clung a great mass of changelings, chittering and buzzing to each other excitedly in Hemipid. A line through the middle had been cleared, up to the dias where no more than three figures stood. The largest, of course, was her mother, Queen Thorax the Orange. She stood as tall as Chrysalis herself with orange, multi-ringed eyes and a unique collection of holes in her mane, tail, wings and legs. Her horn, instead of a crooked back-and-forth like her own, looked more like a lightning bolt. Before her, wrapped in green silk around their abdomens, was 'Genasi' and Swarm Commander Polin. From her distance she couldn't make out which was which. "STOP THE WEDDING!" she bellowed, continuing to run forward. All at once, everyling looked towards her as she approached. Soon she could make out the changelings by their hole patterns; the one on Chrysalis's left was Genasi and, therefore, Twilight Sparkle. "STOP!" She pointed a hoof at the utterly stunned imposter. "She's not Genasi!" "My daughter, what is - " "She's the Pony Queen, Twilight Sparkle! She's an imposter!" Murmurs broke through the hall as Chrysalis stared down the disguised pony. 'Genasi' looked down and bit her lip, then back up at her. She sneered, baring her fangs. "You bucker!" she shouted. "You've just made the biggest mistake of your life!" Her horn lit up again with the same multicolored swirl as before. Chrysalis and her mother both shielded themselves, just in time for Twilight Sparkle's magic to detonate. Twilight's entire body exploded, transformed into a shell of pure magic that surged through the hall. Everyling it touched was wrapped in a pulsing bubble of alicorn power and levitated, helpless and thrasing, into the air. Chrysalis and Queen Thorax, for their part, were untouched, but the burst of magic rent their shields asunder. Strands of magic swirled back together and coalesced into Twilight, the pony - as tall as Chrysalis - floating in mid air with her ethereal, galaxy-filled mane and tail flowing in an unseen gale. The pony hmmphed and turned around. As she did, her flowing tail extended like a whip towards Chrysalis, and before she could react the surprisingly solid mass blasted into her chest and knocked her far back, burning away nearly all her magic, leaving her to land on the ground with a crisp thud. By the time she recovered, Queen Thorax and Queen Twilight had switched positions. Her mother's forelegs were buckled as a geyser of orange magic spewed from her horn at the Goddess of Magic. Twilight, standing tall and proud, effortlessly channeled a thin ray of intertwined colors. Despite being much smaller in girth, it was slowly pushing back Thorax's magic. Chrysalis grunted and pushed herself up on her forelegs, but her hind legs weren't responding; her back had broken?! If they got out of this, she was going to need weeks in a pod to heal that. She gasped when Twilight's magic beam pulsed in brightness, all at once overpowering Thorax and sending her back like a rag doll, unconscious. Twilight Sparkle chuckled to herself, looking around at the stunned, helplessly floating changelings, and shook her head. "Honestly, I thought this would be so much harder. Strongest military in the world, and what have you to show for it?" Chrysalis screamed when a ray of magic shot over her head, petrifying the Imperial Guards that were streaming in. "Nothing." Suddenly, an idea dawned on Chrysalis through her throbbing head. It was absurd, but she'd practiced the spell for a while now. It was their only shot. She wove a disguise on her eyes so no unusual glow would show through, and let her changeling magic pour into her green eyes. She took a deep breath. "Twilight Sparkle!" The pony - so much fur, eugh - snapped her attention at Chrysalis. "Why are you doing this?!" Just for a moment, Twilight Sparkle wavered. "Ah yes, Princess Chrysalis. I don't know how you got out of my temporal prison. I didn't leave a book on deciphering space-time anomalies in there, did I?" "Better, someling named 'Discord' was there. I let him out of his book, he let me out of your cage." She snarled, continuing to hold eye contact. "Discord, of course. Bucking Discord! I think I'll go visit him." "No, don't! You're already here, so indulge me." Twilight stayed. That was good, it meant her suggestion spell was working, however slowly. "You already went through all the effort of invading us, the least you owe is an explanation." "Isn't it obvious?" she asked. "I'm bored. All the power in the world, such that none can challenge me. I can calculate the economy's status decades from today. Every scientific law is mine to hold. I've had to resort to letting a demon out of Tartarus like... like letting a fish out on reel, just so I can have anything resembling a challenge." Twilight approached, the aura of power around her making Chrysalis's eyes burn. "Here I was, hoping you changelings would challenge me, but no!" Chrysalis took a deep breath. "Shut up." Twilight did. She'd been looking into Chrysalis's hypnotic eyes for a while, after all. "Now, surrender." Twilight sat down and bowed her head. "Why am I - " "I said shut up. Keep looking at my eyes." The pony did so. "Now, release everyling." A pulse of world-shaking magic, and everyling was free and unpetrified, some changelings attending to their fallen Queen. "Now, do not use magic until I say. Do not shield your mind. Do not do anything that may endanger us." "Y-Yessss, my princessss," she hissed through gritted teeth as an emerald light began to overtake the pony's eyes. "Now, allow yourself to be cocooned and sedated." The raw magic radiating off of Twilight was burning her. Chrysalis felt she didn't have long... "All... right. Alright, I will." The Imperial Guards from before tackled Twilight, who did nothing to resist. Flashes of changeling magic later, and the pony rested in a cocoon. Then, after having been blasted, manaburned, crippled, and scorched by Twilight's aura, Chrysalis passed out. TO BE CONTINUED