“Fillydelphia… no. Trottingham… abysmal. Canterlot… been there, done that. The couple’s suites were not to my liking.” Chrysalis listened as her drone chittered off a long list of cities. Another nymph filed the queen’s horn with her teeth, while a third massaged her neck. “I don’t suppose you have any locations in mind?” She tried to smile at Spike, though it came off as more of a predatory grin.
“Huh? What?” Spike swiveled his head to face her. He had been lost in thought—partly about Chrysalis, but mostly about how many gems Twilight had destroyed. “Locations for what?”
The queen rolled her eyes. “Our honeymoon, of course. It is traditional in pony society to honeymoon, and since I am making the extra effort to abide by your quaint practices, I want one. Now, perhaps Mareami?” Spike heard a sound like a flute as Chrysalis’s snort forced air through tiny holes in her snout. “Why are all their cities named after stupid horse puns? Would it kill them to add a little racial diversity?”
She waved a foreleg at a drone, almost knocking away the nymph giving her a hooficure. “Daca, remind me to rename the first city I conquer Cicadago. Or maybe San Antonio.”
To tell the truth, Spike didn’t love Chrysalis. He thought. Sure, she had a way of livening up any conversation, but the whole child-abduction thing and the wife-stealing and the… whatever else changelings did kinda put a damper on the relationship.
But he’d said he’d marry her, and he was nothing if not a dragon of his word. He was a bit drunk on love slime at the time, and surrounded by an army of drones, but wedding vows were wedding vows, after all, and she did give him a pretty great gift for Twilight.
If he could just keep this up, he might even be able to get Celestia a present, too—a peace treaty with the swarm.
Spike rubbed the back of his neck nervously, almost squishing a few drones. “Oh, whoops. Sorry, guys, didn’t notice you back there.” He refocused on the queen. “Listen, have you considered… not conquering Equestria?”
Chrysalis dismissed the other drones around her. “What, and merely mesmerize the civic leaders into obeying my every whim? Mind control magic on that scale would be a challenge, but it would mean I wouldn’t need to send any of my children into battle.”
“Um, no. I was thinking more along the lines of… leaving them alone.”
She scratched her chin with her jagged hoof. “Hmm. Yes, we bide our time, train in secret, then once your bodily fluids have enriched my drones, my—I mean, our—army will be unstoppable, and all Equestria will know the power of the changelings!” Her foreleg came crashing down onto the cavern floor, twisting as if she were crushing a small animal.
Okay, so maybe peace treaties were a bit premature. “Chrysalis, er, Chryssy, do you really need to invade at all? You said it yourself, ponies are full of love, and pretty forgiving, too. Maybe we can try not fighting each other?”
Her eyeslits narrowed, before her expression suddenly softened. As if she was explaining a basic concept to a foal, she responded. “Spike, we tried that once. Walked straight in, no disguises, into one of those pony towns.” She gazed at something a thousand yards away, eyes unfocused. “Do you know what happened to Hive 453?”
Spike shook his head.
“No, of course not. Not like it matters to your kind.” She took a deep breath, chitin snapping a little as her belly expanded. “One of the more foolish hives, too stupid and too starving to pull off successful raids.”
Chrysalis took a few steps forward, still looking far past Spike. “They needed to try something else. The idiots revealed their hive, dropped their disguises. They did everything they could to make amends—offered their magic, their strength, their mastery of massage techniques.” Another snort. “They would have let the foals suckle at their own teats. And what did the ponies do?”
Spike twiddled his claws. “Uh, welcomed them with open forelegs?”
Her jaw clenched. “The ponies said we were plotting something, said it was not in our nature to be anything but villains. For a few days, they tolerated the nymphs, but they did not feed us. Nopony would consent to having their love ripped from them.”
A chitinous hoof scratched out vague patterns in the dusty floor. “One drone went mad from hunger. He fed on a single couple, just a little, just to fill up the gnawing hole where a changeling’s heart should be. What did the ponies do next, Spike?”
She answered for him. “Torched them, all of them. Forced them back into their tunnels, threw down fire and scorching sorceries, and sealed the exits with boulders.” The drones around her shuddered. “You know love burns, Spike? I hear we make very good kindling.”
The dragon started to reach out a wing to her.
“Even from my own hive, I could hear their voices. My drones could barely burrow there in time to save what was left. We still haven’t gathered enough love to heal all their wounds.”
Spike’s claws clenched into a fist. “Princess Celestia would never allow that! Villages out here in the Badlands aren’t technically under Equestrian law, but I’m sure if anypony tried that again she’d—”
“What? Let us feed on her citizens? She may be able to protect us from angry mobs, but we are ravenous wolves surrounded by raw meat.” Magic boiled in her belly, pops and hisses of steam escaping from fissures. “You expect us to restrain ourselves? For what, so we can starve a little longer?” She sat down on her haunches, crossing her forelegs and curled her lips into a grimace. “No, Spike. We will not make peace. It is not in our nature.”
The dragon drew closer. “Some ponies are like that, but not Twilight! Not Celestia! We don’t do the whole burning nymphs alive thing!”
“No, that’s right. You would turn me to stone, banish me to the moon for a millennium, or confine me to whatever the trendy method of arcane imprisonment is? Do you know how long my children would last without me?”
Spike folded his wings over her. “Chryssy, we forgave Discord, and he’s been causing trouble for much longer than you have!”
The queen coughed as a bit of black oil dribbled from cracks near her eyes. Her wings folded around her, their thin membranes a poor substitute for soft feathers. “Not all monsters are lucky enough to have a stupid buttery pegasus befriend them.”
Spike exhaled a gusty sigh. “No, but sometimes a stupid scaly dragon will do.” He laid his head on the floor, curling his neck around her and letting the dragonfire in his throat warm the cold-blooded queen. She hesitated, then leaned against him, her drones following suit and nesting along his spines.
Half-muffled by his leathery wings, he heard a few chirps, then the sickly voice of Chrysalis. “I’m still going to conquer the world. It’s my only hobby.”
“We’ll talk about it later, Chryssy.”
“Couples are supposed to try out each other’s hobbies, yes? So you should…”
“Don’t push it.”