Who Needs the Sunshine

by Atuhor Name

CH. 11 Where Mountains Are Grown

...Where Mountains Are Grown

Twilight stood up, slightly unbalanced by the sudden teleportation.

Then she saw the changeling there on the floor, the changeling that had impersonated Luna.

Anger gripped Twilight, then fury like she had never known, and before she knew it she was standing beside the changeling, front hooves raised.

And then Twilight took a look at the situation.

Calling the changeling queen below her “beaten” would be too kind a word. Twilight hadn't yet laid a hoof on her before she mumbled something about love, and seemed to have a complete mental breakdown. Wary of some kind of trick, Twilight stood back from the blubbering mare, waiting for her to drop the guise and lunge for her...

For a minute...

Then another couple minutes...

Twilight eventually began to pity the changeling, and hesitantly edged up to her and put a hoof on her back.

At which point the changeling lunged at her.

And threw her into a tight hug, crying "I've failed her." and that was all Twilight got out of her for several minutes of awkwardly patting the back of the larger changeling queen.

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She had failed them.

She had failed them all.

Naudia felt a hoof touch her back. Without hesitation she lunged, bringing whoever it was into a tight hug. After a few seconds, she felt a hoof awkwardly patting her back, but she could feel the unease coming off whoever it was.

She could almost hear her mother's voice.

"Siding with the enemy, then, are we?" she would have said.

"I'm sure I raised you better than this."

"And now you're dumping your problems on somepony else. You can't do anything right."

Naudia's sobs returned twofold, until finally she was ushered into the merciful arms of sleep by a half familiar voice.

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Twilight wasn't sure what to do.

After all, she was vaguely aware of how this sort of thing should go.

She and the rest of the girls would unmask or otherwise discover the villain and, through working together, they would overcome them and restore peace to Equestria. That was how it went with Nightmare Moon, the sleeping dragon, Discord, Sombra... Chrysalis.

Twilight knew this wasn't Chrysalis. Although this changeling strongly resembled Chrysalis, she was noticeably shorter, about Luna's height, and she had dark blue hair instead of green.

...And she had a complete mental breakdown when Twilight told her how she and her friends had defeated Chrysalis.

Were they related?

Did word get around that fast with changelings?

Twilight was entirely unsure if she could even consider this changeling a threat. Not after looking into its eyes after its disguise dropped.

She would never forget that look of pure animal fear.

Twilight was literally shaken out of her reverie when the floor shook.

Looking around her, she realized that she was no longer in the library, but was in...

Another library?

A much larger library, by the looks of it: floor to ceiling, the walls were plastered with books and more books. And in neat rows, wooden bookshelves chock full of still more.

Twilight was actually unsure if the library in Canterlot was this big.

Walking up to a random shelf, she perused the titles briefly...

That was odd: Twilight didn't recognize a single one. She was sure that she had read through most of the library at Canterlot.

Picking a book off the shelf at random, she flipped through it idly to find that, to her surprise, every page was hoof written.

Another floor shake startled her. She decided to try and find a window or something.

Trying the first door she found in the Library, she walked into a changeling bedroom.

What surprised her the most about the bedroom was that, other than the odd secondary material inlaid into the walls and dark hardwood furniture, it looked utterly normal. If it wasn't for the green material Twilight could have almost mistaken it for any other pony’s bedroom. Maybe Rarity's bedroom, because it was so fancy.

Noticing a circular window carved into the stone wall, she walked over and peered out of it to get a bearing on where they were now. She nearly fell over, partially from shock, and partially because the floor shook once more.

Outside was an expanse of rocky desert stretching off into the distance as far as the eye could see. But below Twilight was an entire city carved out of the same reddish stone.

Every house seemed different. Most were variations on the theme of "squat one story square house," but several were graceful spirals jutting upwards, seemingly placed at random. Below all this, though, was what really caught Twilight's heart in her mouth.

Just below the cliff edge, huge even at this distance, were four titanic stony legs seemingly sticking out of the mountain holding the entire city off the ground.

And they were moving.