Thirty Chrysalises

by Diamond Sparkle

Cordyceps-Dark

Queen Chrysalis lay on her royal bed and cried. Where once there were busy, bustling changelings digging new shafts and tunnels, selling in the Hive's internal markets and generally going about their business, now there were only the dying and the dead, many of them mere shells covered with the dreaded cordyceps fungus, one of the most horrible ways to die that was possible for a changeling. And it had all started so well...with most of the love coming in from the infiltrators rather then those they had kidnapped and cocooned. Many infiltrators didn't in fact need to kidnap anyone at all, they just assumed identities of their own. Kidnapping was only generally done either to protect the changeling race as a whole, or to replace those in high places that could aid their changeling kin.

The problems had started when the tentacles of the Changeling black market had reached into the central love store. Every hive of any large size had it's own criminal underworld that was generally tolerated as long as it didn't do anything outrageously bad. After all, it provided things to the royal subjects that were forbidden to them by their monarch, be it firecrackers, illegal weapons, drugs or...extra love rations. Small scale, this was not a problem, but by the time the Queen found out what was happening, over half the Hive's love that was meant for a year had been stolen. The Queen's police went all over the hive with royal warrants looking for the stolen love but most of it was never recovered, often being quickly consumed as soon as the guilty ones heard the knock on the door.

Faced with famine, something that was one of the few things that could make changelings angry enough to consider removing their monarch, Queen Chrysalis asked the nearby Hive Queens to help. The Griffonia Hive point blank refused-griffin love, it was said, was hard to earn and the Hive had nothing to spare. The Miasma Hive was willing, but asked for half of the Chrysalis Hive's territory in exchange, something that the Queen angrily turned down. And relations with the Phantasma Hive were too bad even to ask for some of their love. Trading openly for love with the outside world was a major breach of the Changeling Code, so, reluctantly the Queen called her generals together and plotted the invasion of Equestria, a country whose love reserves were legendary. Excitement buzzed through the hive-it would be a love raid to end all love raids. Everyling would be able to feast on as much love as they could fit in their stomachs for the rest of their lives. That was what they thought, but it had not worked out that way at all.

When they were blown out of Canterlot, ironically on a wave of love, many of the changelings had been killed when they plummeted to solid ground. Many others had received cuts and nicks of various kind from crash landing in trees, with only those who hit the lakes and rivers being unharmed by their catapulting from Canterlot. All their infiltrators in Canterlot apart from one who was away on holiday at the time were lost, and could no longer bring love back to feed the hive. Worse was to come. A spell was created after a couple of weeks to uncover changelings and those in Baltimare, Manehatten, Ponyville and other towns and villages were routed out. Not just Chrysalis's changelings either. Miasma's and Phantasma's and, when the spell was shared with the griffins, Griffonia's hives also suffered greatly because of Chrysalis's folly, much to their annoyance. Not a hive would or could share any of their love, as they were all now on short rations because of Chrysalis's actions.

Chrysalis did her best...she authorized love raids on any ponies or griffins she could capture; which meant they armed themselves and moved around in large groups. She shortened the rations to the bare minimum for health, but there was still very little love to go around. And with her changelings injured and hungry, the cordyceps fungus came. It was in the earth and got into many of the changeling's wounds when they had been smacked into the ground earlier. The immune system of a healthy changeling could kill the cordyceps, but weakened as they were, the fungus was able to grow inside their bodies and suddenly explode, scattering blood and spores everywhere, leaving the victims near death and sheathed in white threads. And Chrysalis could feel the agony of the victims through her hive-mind link until she turned it off in despair. My whole hive is dying, and there seems to be so little that I can do about it. If I had not kept strictly to the Changeling code I could have traded for the love. The ponies had so much of it, surely they could have spared a little bit for my hive of desperately hungry changelings?

She walked through her hive, finding nothing but dead and dying changelings covered in fungus, totally love-drained and dead captives hanging there in the cocoons and green eggs that would never hatch. Except for two, that had some love from her last captive that was still alive. I will take these two and fly away to somewhere far from here, as this place is nothing but a death-trap now. And in time they will become the generals of a brand new hive when my hive rises again from the ashes. She gently picked them up using the magic from her horn and deposited them in her royal saddlebags, then said a prayer aloud for the souls of all her deceased changelings. "My heart has joined a Thousand, for my Hive stopped living today." Then with a whirr of her wings she left the place of death behind and flew out into the warm bright sunlight.

Author's Note:

I got the idea from a very real fungal disease that affects insects and thought-what if it was capable of infecting badly injured and sickly changelings as well? Obviously it could only reach plague proportions in a seriously malnourished hive.

Comments

[GrandAdmiral MitthRawN]

Nice watership down referance! Are these stroies connected with each other this one and the previous seem to do so