//------------------------------// // 14. Tears in Tartarus // Story: Love Hungry // by helmet of salvation //------------------------------// The glittering, blue-green orb glided silently through the dank air, a rare vision of colour and beauty in the desolate environs of Tartarus. It was as if some pony in power had graciously allowed a Hearth's Warming ornament to lift the spirits of the prisoners to some degree. Yet no Equestrian authority even considered any such desire. Not that any of the Tartarean inmates had sufficient regard for pony aesthetics, much less tradition, to make such a gesture meaningful. As the sphere drifted overhead, they directed a cacophony of curses, imprecations and unintelligible howls of rage at it. After a few minutes Princess Cadance, magically generating the protective sphere from within, neared her destination. Queen Spinnerette lay curled in a ball, chained fast to the ground. Her heavy bonds looped around and through the perforations in her legs, preventing her from transmogrifying into a limbless form. Her neck was manacled so as to keep her from aiming her horn at any approaching pony, on the off chance she should regain the strength to generate a harmful energy beam. Her chitinous exterior, glossy and black when healthy, was tinted grey, and her formerly blazing green eyes were pallid and conveyed a sullen inner emptiness. Aware of Cadance's presence, Spinnerette turned weakly to face her. "Another visit from royalty," she croaked. "To what do I owe this honour?" "I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you." Cadance raised her voice to make herself heard through her forcefield but she still sounded as sombre as her appearance suggested. "You are unable to attend my housewarming function?" Spinnerette's defiance was all she had to help her tolerate her lonely, interminable incarceration. That, and the hope that her changelings were growing strong on the bountiful food source she had found for them. "My husband, Prince Shining Armor, and I have cast our love wave in Ponyville. Your entire changeling brood has been ejected from Equestria." Spinnerette flinched away, her eyes shut tight. She could not say that this came as a total surprise. Her warning to the princesses about the disastrous side-effect of the love wave could not be specific, otherwise the ponies would have immediately excised her undeveloped nymphs from her chosen host and disposed of them. Any fear and worry she sowed among the ponies gave her brood their only chance, but it was remote. Yet the realisation that her final defeat was upon her struck her to her core. She had taken such pains to ensure that they would have a continuous supply of love to sustain them. Now she had no idea where they were or whether there was food for them. The queen pined for about a minute, silent save for an occasional sharp intake of breath, before another thought occurred to her. "You are Shining Armor's wife?" "Correct." "What news, then of your sister-in-law, who so graciously offered to act as surrogate mother to my dear changelings? Twilight ... Twinkle, was it?" "Sparkle. And your dire predictions didn't quite come to pass. She survived." Survived. That did not exactly sound like the optimal outcome from the ponies' perspective. Perhaps she had been badly injured, never to recover. Or perhaps ... "Your Highness, it's so hard to keep track of time in this dreadful place. Pray tell me, how long have I been imprisoned here?" Spinnerette implored, trying to sound feeble and helpless, which wasn't difficult given her physical and emotional state. Cadance thought for a moment. "Ten, eleven days." Spinnerette grew excited. "That's well past my brood's incubation period. And you're only just telling me now?" Her dull eyes gained a hint of a malicious gleam. "Did my little ones leave your sister-in-law feeling a little ... empty?" Cadance wanted to leave without answering but felt that very action would provide the answer. She could not give Spinnerette any sense of victory. Instead, she tried to stifle her rage and sorrow. As a changeling, Spinnerette's survival depended on deception and on discerning the feelings of her prey; she immediately picked up on Cadance's cues. To confirm her suspicions, she transformed her head to that of Twilight Sparkle, her expression neutral and hollow. The guise had its desired effect: Cadance trembled noticeably. Spinnerette chuckled in Twilight's voice. "They took it all, didn't they?" The coldness emanating from the changeling made her seem even more like the Twilight that Cadance had last seen in Ponyville. This effect compounded Cadance's distress, feeding Spinnerette's schadenfreude even more. "Oh, what are you so upset about? You have my brother, after all. You can love him forever." The fake Twilight's demeanour turned morose. "I'll never have what you have. I'll spend the rest of my days in that big castle, feeling completely alone, never again to experience friendship or romance or family love ..." Determined to resist Spinnerette's taunting, Cadance remembered the promise she made to Twilight, to stand by her and treat her with as much love as she ever had. She stoked the fierce love she felt for her sister-in-law, warming herself in the flames engulfing her. "Twilight will always have us," she told the impostor. "She means more to us than you can imagine." "Really?" Twilight-Spinnerette goaded. "Yes, really. Your brood might have taken Twilight's love, but our love for Twilight is as strong as ever. Nothing can ever diminish that." "Not even the futility of wasting your affection on that hollowed-out husk of a pony?" "Not even that." Cadance caught herself with a start. Twilight was not a hollowed-out husk, and showing love to her would be neither futile nor wasted. How could she even think such a thing, let alone articulate it? The answer was literally staring her in the face, feigning deep hurt at Cadance's words. Cadance instantly cleared her mind of all thoughts of Twilight, silently cursing herself for a fool as Twilight-Spinnerette burst into scornful laughter. The ravenous changeling queen had deliberately fueled Cadance's love so as to consume it, and Cadance had played right into her hooves. Her forcefield was no defence: love could transcend any barrier. Cadance could replenish her love easily enough but that would do nothing to offset the triumph of the queen, who was meant to be in a permanent state of misery and torment. "Mmm, delicious," Twilight-Spinnerette enthused. Her eyes were now alight, and her body looked fractionally less weak. "You'd better watch Shining Armor doesn't get jealous. What a rich, deep source of adoration you have for me. Too bad I will never reciprocate that love." She laughed and laughed. It was the first moment of pure joy she had felt since her imprisonment and she exploited it for all it was worth. Cadance shook with rage. Spinnerette, now restored to her full changeling appearance, saw this reaction and laughed even harder, until tears began to form in her eyes. As she bathed in her small but precious victory, the tears became a steady flow, until she had to bury her face in the cold, hard ground, her body quivering. "My babies." Changeling love was vastly different from pony love. Changelings felt no eros nor phileo; that was for lesser creatures. Yet their urge to reproduce was not entirely cold instinct, either. Deep within the psyche of a changeling queen was a tiny kernel of storge, a hint of caring about her brood, a consideration of them as more than just gene-carrying minions but ... family. Princess Cadance had found that kernel. Spinnerette's transition from laughter to mourning was so seamless that she herself didn't notice it at first. Her brood needed her and there was nothing she could do. As her rudimentary love amplified to levels unknown to changelings, her sense of loss and helplessness inflated and burgeoned within her, crowding out her vengeful defiance and utterly overwhelming her. Through her blurred eyes she saw Cadance, gazing impassively at her. The image ignited an irresistible urge to take out her terrible grief on her captor. Spinnerette lunged and thrashed wildly but impotently against her bonds and shrieked a lengthy torrent of changeling obscenities that would have been barely intelligible even to another changeling. Cadance contemplated giving her prisoner an additional love magnification to clear away her furious hatred, but saw that she needed not bother. Spinnerette's tantrum quickly exhausted her, despite the energy she had gained from her stolen meal, and she collapsed, wailing abjectly. "My babies." Cadance firmly believed in treating others the way she would want them to treat her. For example, if she were gloat mercilessly over the misfortunes of an enemy, she would expect to be repaid in kind given the chance. It would be what she deserved, after all. So she had no compunction at all about subjecting the changeling queen to a fraction of the cruelty that the queen had inflicted upon Twilight and her former loved ones. As Cadance ascended to leave Tartarus, the sounds of Spinnerette's grief began mingling discordantly with the howls of fury and frustration emanating from her wretched neighbours.