The Twilight of the Crystal Heart

by WanderingPony

Chapter 15: Gaze Blank and Pitiless as the Changeling

Queen Chrysalis was, for a changeling, in heaven.

Heaven happened to be a somewhat raggedy wagon pulled by four crystalline stallions, upon which the faux Empress of the Ex-Empire rested her "battered" self. Two of the stallions weren't the genuine article either- no Queen was foolish enough to leave her hive without guards, and the crowd of refugees had been swollen by groups of excited but utterly fake ponies talking up the trip.

Safety and sanctuary from the mad Princesses. The Empress had returned when all was lost to lead her subjects to a land of love!

Oh, how they trusted and adored their little pink alicorn. Adoration, to a changeling is like freshly baked bread to a pony- wholesome, nutritious, and best fresh from the oven. The crystal ponies adored their Empress. The "empress" soaked in the sea of good feelings, and passed the bounty to her children. The drones and workers were energetic and all-too-happy to help their "fellow refugees", and the energy was contagious. Hope. Excitement. Even joy.

It was easy to do, because those feelings were mutual. Equestria's Princesses had been a trail of tears for the Hive, a trail of a thousand years and more.

The Burning Of The Hive. The failed attempt at revenge by suborning a junior queen on her mating flight to assault the seniors. Being denied the chance of mastering pony magic to finally have some parity with the relentless march of hooves, finally trapped in a pony-hive for months. Moving far away to a fresh source of equine emotions...and having the hive first invaded by things that stalked through the undercity of the Crystal Empire (thankfully, they had avoided notice), then being forced to abandon everything they'd built as once again, a scourge of bright destruction reduced the hive to a smoldering crater. Miles away from escape tunnels, the tattered remnants donned their false-skins and joined the throng of refugees, crawling back into Canterlot.

Fortunately for the hive, their Queen was three steps ahead.

---

"I want every last rosebush picked clean- by hoof!", Thorny Bloom informed the somewhat haggard earth pony. A carmine aura plucked an insect-speck from under a leaf, and crushed it. "Prince Blueblood must have only the most perfect and juicy petals for his salads, and that means NO bugs!". And with a snort, the unicorn in charge of the Prince's gardens moved on to the next pony in the crew to terrorize into ever-more frenzied efforts.

Chief Garden Assistant Helper (Fangs, could ponies NOT think up sillier names?) "Midnight Flower" Chrysalis felt oddly sympathetic as the pony walked away, nose in the air. The poor aphid was only trying to get a meal, and it wasn't like there wasn't plenty of bushes to go around. Gently bending a leaf up, she carefully scraped at the little white dots, thinking about how to get Thorny into a nice quiet closet where she could move up the ranks to the Prince...

Her hoof suddenly stung in half a dozen places, making the imitation pony wave her leg in a spastic semaphore that spelled out the very unponylike words she wanted to screech. A few black ants fell away from the welts they'd made on the tender spots, and others crawled up the stem to wave their antennae fiercely to scare away the interloper.

The bug, protecting the food it was farming.

Queen Chrysalis stared her tiny, distant cousins and every plan in her scheming head vanished, replaced with a single, shining path.

---

And so, she had carefully plotted her way to replacing the Prince, with an eye not towards devouring every scrap of love she could steal (From Bluebood? Thin pickings!), but farming ponies instead. Blueblood had estates far distant from Canterlot, or indeed much of anypony's demenses- in truth, the Princesses encouraged them and his diligent care of them whenever possible. The Prince had proven almost laughably easy to capture- she copied a maid, "accidentally" broke something, the Prince had sent everyone out to castigate her clumsy hooves. Minutes later, "he" was informing the staff that Duster had fled the manor in terrified shame, never to be seen again.

And she was in charge, just like that. Blueblood's usual rate of turnover in staff was kept up, with stranger ponies replacing them- again, not at all strange with Blueblood. The local help had already learned Blueblood's employment was a miserable row to hoe. The "Prince" toured far and wide, leaving the usual trail of fired help and the replacements as loyal hive-workers, who of course served most efficiently and obediently. They thrived and passed a steady trickle of love back to their Prince-Queen as she/he returned, and the pressure began to ease on the real ponies. Nobody noticed the "fired" staff was a changeling simply switching to a new skin, and even with a handful of feeding workers, it was still nicer for the real ponies working Blueblood's scattered homes. The mood lightened, a steady flow of friendship and even love between true-ponies sustaining the false-ponies doing their best to keep the goodwill coming.

The hive, protecting the food it was farming. They prospered. It could hardly not have happened, considering she'd replaced the most idiotic drone in pony history with a proper royal female. The only thing he'd done worthy of his rank was lord it over his superiors, letting her occasional rough spot as the "Prince" seem as Blueblood simply being Blueblood. The thoughts of using the Prince as a means to attempt to destroy the Princesses faded, replaced with the pleasant weeks of simply partaking of the bounty whilst her rivals turned their cake-stuffed rumps aside with relief at not dealing with their insolent prig of a nephew. Of course, she took advantage of her new form to poke them anyway. They all deserved it.

Then her entire horde came crawling and hungry to Canterlot, and with more mouths to feed, suddenly the false Prince needed some new bushes and a great deal more four-legged aphids. Stealing the crystal refugees once she was certain Cadence wouldn't find her way out of another pit, disposing of Blueblood so she could use a more familiar and flexible (and properly queenlike!) form, and making sure the pony-queens would have PLENTY to deal with whilst she spirited her herd of meals far and safely away, where they would be....lovingly cared for. Equestria would sting itself to death, she would have her lovely ponies to sup on, and the hive would finally, FINALLY thrive, revenge attained.

In the distance, the peaks of the Appaloosan Mountains began to form from the faraway edge of the sky, the halfway mark to the abandoned lands of the luvcats, whose bare homes and fields fairly begged for the hoof of a homeless, poor pony to easily set them right.

And a queen to rule her love-orchard there forever more. Let the Equestrians thrash and die in their own poisons whilst a few disposable squads of her loyal soldiers threw them into confusion. They would find no hive to burn, no queen to kill, only an adopted Empress who had every reason to keep her subjects away from the evil Equestrians who had slaughtered their families.

Why, it was worth singing about!

" This day is going to be perfect

The kind of day of which I've dreamed since I was small ..."

she chirped. Both races cheered their ruler, if for different reasons...

Comments

[Death2205]

I see a white Mage a black Mage and a red Mage

[WanderingPony]

4682678
Or perhaps...
A Lunar Mage, a Trickster, and a Solar Mage in order. :)

[Death2205]

4682688 message me what u said I'm on iPad got no computer so I can't read it