Changeling

by Criticul

Past, Present, and Future

Amongst his things, his memories, and his lies, Barlowe stared out from his second-floor window.
He saw children running in the street, playing with each other and laughing as though they’d never known the fate lying beyond those distant mountains. He saw their parents, who watched over them with a certain gentle touch, carrying on with the same joy as their kin.
Was it so easy to forget?
Was it so easy to ignore how quickly everything might turn against you?
Barlowe turned to the nightstand beside his bed.
There, laying in peaceful silence, a picture remained.
He had remembered the day they took it: Spring had brought him out to the meadows below the golden hills. They had brought a camera with them, but in his own joy, he’d forgotten the extra film.
They had one picture between them, so they’d spent the entire days scouring the meadows for the perfect shot, even into the early hours of the evening. Their clothes were stained green, and their faces were burnt with the heat of the sun, but in those last few hours, they found their place.
There was a river crossing through the meadow—one that ran perfectly clear, unaffected by the distractions around it. The pair climbed into the muck, smiling and laughing with one another, even with those last final moments before the shot.
It was the one shot that he believed captured the true beauty of Spring: it was not her hair or her eyes or any of that, but in the way that she would always stand beside him, even in the misery of the summer sun.
They never argued—the two of them. If it could come between them, they cast it aside as unimportant, even if it meant betraying their own passions.
That was when he knew that she was made for him—that such a thing as love was far too personal to take lightly—that, in the end, it didn’t really matter to him if whether or not he was rich, but that he felt fulfilled and loved and important.
Spring had given him the world, and he’d thrown it all away.
Barlowe twisted the blinds and looked further down the dirt road. Down on the corner of the street, an ice cream parlor was serving to a young couple, presumably just out of school.
He could see their happiness—their contentment—and in it, he could see her again—Spring, standing alongside him.
Anger rushed into his heart; the stallion slammed the blinds shut and returned to his place at the desk beside the bed.
Images of paradise flooded his skull as he attempted to push the inevitability from his head. He imagined Chrysalis walking through the doorframe, smiling as always, but this time, in genuine compassion. He imagined looking straight into her eyes and seeing, for once, a glimmer of hope for him and his “twisted” view of love.
Then she might grant him merciful payment, and he could retire again into joy with the only pony he truly loved.
All would be calm. They would be able to return to their peace and forget about everything else. The changelings would leave them alone, and everything would be as it should. Everything would be as it should have been.
Barlowe pushed his head against the desk.
“How it should be.”
--~~--
When Luna opened her eyes, it came without morning.
That’s not to say that the sun wasn’t rising. She had, in fact, awoken at the apex of “morning”: that moment when the sunrise just barely creeps through the shutters, casting a wayward beam upon her face—bringing her out of the shadows of unconsciousness back into the world of color and warmth and fraternity.
But that didn’t happen.
Rather, she was left empty. Luna opened her eyes without any sort of rested yawn or comfort—without goals or thoughts of what she would do.
She simply stared up at the ceiling and waited, thinking about the end of the world—expressionless.
Each minute crawled by, coming into hours and then into days, but she did nothing.
The parasite brought food, but she did not eat.
The parasite brought water, but she did not drink.
For each time that those jade eyes met her own, she felt a sharp sickness within her. It did not bring pain or weariness, as other sicknesses, but it instead festered into the very core of her being. Her emotions ran dull—dried out by over-use and mismanagement. Her senses spoiled under the heat of her own anger, which, in its final desperate pleas, clinged to the image of her final dreams.
There, in the center of Canterlot, the parasite hung by the very chains she had cast upon Equestria. All would be silent as Luna would look up into the rafters—as those envied eyes slipped into the dark. And she could feel the slight trembling within her bones—the graceful horror—as the last remnants of the corruption burned into nothing. There, the body would remain as her testament to Equestria: that the night is not a monster, but of true, everlasting beauty—that the night could show them the worlds that live beyond them, and how they can find comfort, even under the immense bleakness above them.
That was her dream.
And no realm of sleep could bring her such a beautiful fallacy.
When Luna opened her eyes, it came without morning. No, the sun still set upon Equestria, ticking slowly down until at those final moments in which the flames would rise and the warmth would die.
Chrysalis was the night, and the morning after was uncertain.
Luna looked up into the plain, dry ceiling of her room, counting all the gashes in its pale cover.
The night was coming, slowly and naturally. The fires surrounding her would soon rise from nothing, igniting her in a golden blaze so that she might end as gloriously as she had lived. Chrysalis was simply playing her time, waiting until those final moments when Luna would give everything to her at will, if only to beg for the mercy of death.
And it was then that Luna realized something.
She was without desires.
For a moment, she let the thought drift through her mind. She thought back to what Chrysalis had said and back to the reasons of her failure. She thought back to the insanity that composed the sociopath and what it was inside her incalculability that let the queen drift between shadows.
Luna looked down at herself and the covers. She saw a weak body, fighting against thirst and starvation, unwilling to fight on. She saw her skin shivering under the cold of her own ignorance. She saw a bloodied, briar tie around her neck that remained spattered in the blood of the changeling.
She saw a mare broken of convictions and limits, placed within a system of absolute chaos but given the strength to thrive.
She saw a sociopath waiting in the darkness, prepared to unleash itself against the enemy in a game of willpower and death.
There was no Equestria anymore—that name belonged to an idea that had run its course in time.
No, there were only two things.
There was the parasite…
…and then there was her.
Everything she’d lived for—from the earliest of her childhood to this very moment of desperation—had been put up for this one match.
It was her and the other.
She was beaten, but she’d recovered from worse.
And here she lay, recounting her thoughts and her strategies and her experience so that the next battle would not be its last.
Two souls stood opposite each other.
Every thought, every experience, and every emotion—they had all built up to this one point: the moment when one continues and the other is brought to nothing.
She’d been preparing for this as long as she’d lived.
Two souls stood opposite each other with the desire to prolong themselves in a tournament that neither could truly win. They both knew that, in the end, one would sink into the dreaded nothing: the ultimate end of existence and thought. What they were would be destroyed—their memories and preparations left to nothing.
It was the gamble that everypony has been putting up stake for: the one true game that made life.
Live.
Or die.
She would have to be fast—certain and decisive.
She would have to know her enemy more personally then she knew herself. She would need to know where to counter fire with water, and where to allow her strengths to push, just as where to defend herself.
The game wasn’t a true gamble: each experience stood as a playing piece, and each thought, a play.
She would have to adapt—to change herself from the mare that the enemy knew into a very different sort of creature. She would have to go out of the bounds of her character, cutting apart her love and hope and rationality. She would have to destroy the image of Luna—thoroughly and completely—so that none might ever follow its tracks or know its place in the world.
Here, in this final bed, the final remnant of Luna would be cast away, into the bowels of her memories, perhaps never again to see the light of dawn.
And with one hoof on the blood of the choker, Luna pushed herself from the covers.
She allowed herself to eat and drink and to take of the generosities that the other had prepared for her in this deathly battle neither player desired to participate in.
She allowed herself to look in the mirror and into the battered face of the mare she used to know, so that she might look upon her new self and mouth that last, foul word before coming at odds again with her opponent.
She spoke of a word that both knew personally—a word that signified the nature of their very place in this world.
“Changeling.”
--~~--
Chrysalis had heard the whispers around town, but was somewhat skeptical of their weight.
Of course, she did have something to worry about then, didn’t she? Someone had seen Luna getting out of the carriage, but from the sound of the town’s banter, no one particularly believed them. Sure, some ponies were lurking about the inn, hoping to catch a glimpse, but none lasted more than thirty-or-so minutes before disappearing back into the noise of the crowds.
No, it was nothing to worry about. Perhaps she could pursue the rumors to their source some time, but it wasn’t really necessary, nor did she desire the added work. The Equestrians were, after all, remarkably dull creatures with attention spans lasting no more than that of any other animal.
Either way, they were going to have plenty more to talk about in due time.
Chrysalis tossed her bag under a park bench before dropping down right above it. The bench was something of a treat for her; every morning, she would come down from the inn to watch the ponies struggle with their trivialities.
“Oh, my hair has gone flat.”
“I had to skip breakfast to catch the train!”
“Do you think she’s talking bad about us behind our backs?”
All their social poisons had rendered them blind to the actual nature of their suffering—the actual reason why they bothered to form a civilization in the first place. Their ignorance was almost sickening—it was the true face of stupidity.
But still she felt a bit of curiosity. What might it be like to exist with a mind uncaring of the future? Her particular skillset was built to preserve such ignorance, but every so often, she would let the thoughts boil in the juices of her contemplation. From an outward perspective, the ponies were somewhat bred for their captivity, but what would she see in herself if the same curse bit into her?
The thought was poison; Chrysalis pushed it away for some other time—perhaps one that wasn’t built for her relaxation.
The queen pulled her bag back onto her lap before tearing at the paper. Underneath, a slight glow revealed itself in the darkness.
“Oh hello, you! Are you ready for your big day?” the queen cooed. “Let’s make this a good one, hm?”
Though the bag did not respond, many of the bystanders were caught off guard by the lieutenant’s babbling.
Chrysalis looked up from her treasure to catch the watchers with a grin.
“Has anyone told you that the end of the world is coming?” she laughed. “The changelings have already begun to poison our food!”
A murmur rose from the dozen or so wide-eyed simpletons that had hoarded to her like rats upon cheese. One surly colt pushed his way through the crowd to speak directly: “Can we help you home, sir? You seem—“
“Distant? Oh yes, quite! It’s the poison, you see!” Chrysalis swung from joy to despair as the last word chittered from her mouth. She stuttered each line—rasping and coughing and cackling with insanity. “It’s undetectable—it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. The doc says I need the water, but, between you and me, I think that guy’s an… an...”
The crowd backed away as more bystanders surrounded the disoriented guard.
Chrysalis caught herself in a stare with one mare. “Do I… Do I have a fever? I feel hot. I feel sunburnt—hot, hot. Take my temperature, please, I’m sick.”
The mare pushed back into the crowd and disappeared.
“Look into my eyes, ponies. I am the end—the end, the end, the end of things!” The parasite’s eyes flickered between red and gold and blue and silver, shifting as wildly as her thoughts would allow. The crowd’s murmurs had morphed into cries and fear and senselessness. “This is the end of it all!”
The crowd burst into chaos at the final word, dashing about in patterns only logical in fear. Of course, the queen was too busy enjoying herself to notice their screams; it had all been so easy. Something had told her that these particular ponies were a nervous bunch. No doubt they’d be regurgitating her performance all over the town, hopefully picking up on the right points. Hopefully, the apocalypse would have settled upon the town by midnight.
Of course, she wouldn’t be able to enjoy her place at the bench anymore, but those times were done. The machine was already in motion, and she couldn’t possibly stop it.
Chrysalis looked up into the rooftops and smiled.
What’d she know about plumbing and water treatment?
Well, it couldn’t be too complicated, could it? At worst, she’d find some dimwitted engineer to handle her toxin. Perhaps she could run it off as a cure to this terrible disease? Yes, that’d surely work.
Just as silently as she’d come, the queen walked out of the park, chanting and screaming those last bitter words.
“I am the end! I am the end!”