Her Greatest Fear
Fear.
Changelings have the innate ability to sense and 'taste' any emotions being given off nearby; whether they like it or not. Fear happens to have a tart bitter taste and is considered repulsive to most changelings.
Queen Chrysalis had only just entered the cave when she was slapped in the face by the despised emotion. Usually even with a disgust for the emotion, fear wouldn't really phase a changeling much more than a moderately ill-kept public restroom. However the air in this cave was absolutely saturated in fear and the effect on Chrysalis was about the same as a strong whiff of chlorine and had cleared out her both sinuses and concentration.
Chrysalis blinked tears from her eyes as she lit up her horn with a light spell and looked for whoever was producing all this fear, but there was nopony there to be seen. What she did see, however, was the only other opening in the cave barricaded by large black jagged crystals.
Walking closer to the crystals, Chrysalis felt blood pounding against the back of her head. Groaning, she put a hoof to her head with her eyes squeezed shut as the light from her horn dimmed and flickered out along with her disguise. When she finally realized that she had let her horn go out, she concentrated until the light hesitantly flickered back to life.
Chrysalis stepped forward, trying to focus on anything but the headache that all of the fear was giving her.
She took a few more steps.
Step.
Step.
Trip.
Her jaw connected with the uneven ground as she fell on her side. Chrysalis opened her eyes to darkness again and slowly lit up her horn. Between the fear and pain in her jaw and head, all the light she could summon now was a dim glow, just bright enough to show that she had landed next to something tall that she could use to pull herself up with.
Chrysalis lifted a foreleg to the object and pressed a hoof against the cold surface.
Instantly her eyes went wide. She jumped back from the object and curled up, shivering on the ground in crippling terror.
The moment passed. The fear left as quickly as it had come but the adrenaline was still going strong, allowing her to think clearly for the first time since she had entered the cave.
Chrysalis lit up her horn again and glared in indignation at the illuminated black crystals that she had touched. Her eyes shrunk to iridescent green slits as she bared her teeth and fired a magical bolt at the offending crystals.
Imagine her surprise when that bolt rebounded and barely missed her flank.
"Great. Not only have I just been controlled by some glorified rocks but my magic can't even touch them -ugh- and my headache is coming back from all this Tartarus damned fear!" Chrysalis slammed her hoof into the hard-packed snow floor. She wished for the second time in her life that she had some defense against emotions.
Second time. The queen finally smiled as she remembered how her subjects had eagerly found a spell for this purpose at her request from the first time, which was right after the failed Canterlot invasion.
It had only taken a month and a half for Chrysalis to learn the spell that would have taken a normal unicorn about a week. Chrysalis just happened to be a fast learner for a changeling.
Her horn glowed as a translucent green bubble formed around her. Chrysalis sighed in relief as any outside emotions were cut off from her senses. This wasn't exactly what the shield had been designed for, but if a spell couldn't be used for more than one purpose then it wasn't worth its magic.
Chrysalis then turned her attention back to the black crystals and stomped towards them. Confident in the spell's ability to prevent the earlier incident, she reached out her hoof again to touch the crystal. This time, however, she never made contact. The crystals had disintegrated on contact with the green bubble instead.
Interested by this new development, Chrysalis thought for a moment then stuck her head outside the bubble and reached out with her senses, focusing on the fear in the air. What she found was multiple concentrated pockets of fear in the shape of large jagged crystals. It seems as if changelings are not the only ones who can solidify emotions. Chrysalis thought.
That led her to thinking about who might have created the crystals and the reason she was down in this ice-lined cave. Chrysalis used her emotion shield to plow a hole through the crystals and set off down the tunnel before her to find King Sombra and the endangered changeling.
What Chrysalis failed to notice was a unicorn and bat pony that had been watching her from the cave entrance. She also failed to notice the bat pony tripping over a remaining crystal and the unicorn snickering at his companion as insect wings sprouted from his back and he flew gracefully through the hole.
Night Owl Quickly got back to his hooves and shushed the pony besi- sorry, the changeling beside him, glad that the darkness would hide the red coloring on his face.
Distressed cries suddenly echoed from deeper in the cave. The Queen's eyes flew open as she listened to pure terror emanating from the pitiful cries and muffled pleas of one of her own. The nymph was close. She doubled her speed, turned a corner, and finally saw an end to the tunnel that would surely lead to the chamber where she would have to fight for the changelings life against the one enemy she had both hoped and feared to face.
Chrysalis jumped through the end of the tunnel, horn lit in preparation for a surprise attack.
To her utter astonishment, chrysalis found herself not facing her dreaded foe, and instead she was facing an oak tree. She wasn't even underground anymore, but rather she was standing on a grassy hill covered in flowers, and beyond the tree stood the most beautiful scene she had ever encountered in her life.
A lush green valley was spread out beneath her, covered in wildflowers of every kind; including rare types that were almost extinct that still grew in abundance amidst these flowing fields of grass and grains. To her right stood a tamed forest- no, a town of wide trees with doors windows and balconies built into them, while to her left stretched out a perfect tree line of a forest boasting its beauty in the fiery spectrum of Fall leaves. And above her -- oh, by love and all its glory -- above her was a radiant flaming orange sunset framed by crystalline clear blue skies and a silhouetted skyline of majestic snow-capped mountains.
Still in a slight daze, Chrysalis felt herself reach out and pluck one of the rare flowers and slip it into her mouth. Changelings have very weak taste buds so it was no surprise when she could only barely taste the delicate petals, but she found herself not only wishing she could taste the exotic flower but also . . . missing the taste of it.
Chrysalis shook the feeling off as silly since she had never fully tasted anything besides emotions in her life, much less this rare flower.
She turned around looking for the tunnel she had just left, but it was gone. Now that she thought of it, she couldn't even remember why she had been in the tunnel. Was I looking for something?
~You were looking for the town~
She turned her attention to the small town of trees and wondered why she couldn't see any of its inhabitants. Chrysalis donned an unremarkable pegasus disguise out of habit and walked towards the deserted tree town.
The town its self was just as beautiful as the rest of the valley was, if not more so. Almost every tree house was blooming with Spring flowers of different fruits. There were apple blossoms, cherry blossoms, peach blossoms, orange, pear, mango, and star fruit; even almond, pistachio and other nut trees. Adorning the houses were all kinds of trinkets, but most of all, wind chimes made of every size, shape, and material imaginable; from wood, to metal, to shell, to glass, to some so small the slightest breeze would send them flailing, to one so large that the wind would have great difficulty trying to play its massive chimes. All of them gave their music to the gentle wind and filled the air with twinkling melodies that accompanied the hundreds of petals dancing on the breeze.
Chrysalis had already reached the first few houses and was simply basking in the pristine atmosphere when the sound of window shutters pulled her out of her reverie. A quick survey showed that every window was shut tight or barred by shutters despite the humid evening warmth, and chrysalis was starting to get unnerved by the emotions she could just barely sense through the walls of every nearby building. Anger, sadness, fear.
"So you have come," a voice stated behind her.
Chrysalis jumped and turned around to face the stallion that had spoken to her, but was greeted by the sight of a street full of hovering pegasi. Why didn't I notice them earlier?
A bright green stallion with orange eyes and a gray mane flew forward and addressed her with the same voice. "We have heard about you, parasite. We know what you plan to do here and we will give you one chance to leave now before we force you to do so."
Chrysalis couldn't believe what she was hearing. Nopony should have been able to see through her disguise. She looked down at herself and was shocked to find her pegasus form missing and instead replaced by smooth black chitin and hole filled hooves. If they knew what she was then she could guess what they meant by her plans.
"Oh, you will, will you?" Chrysalis' blood ran cold as she heard her own voice speak out in malice against the pegasus. She tried to put a hoof to her muzzle but her body wasn't responding to her commands. "I would like to see you try."
"You had been warned. I see that warning has fallen on deaf ears," the pegasus spoke out like a command.
Suddenly wings were flapping everywhere. Rocks flew out from nowhere to crack down on her chitin shell, showering her insides with the reverberations. The wind whipped at her mane, ripping the membranes in places sending waves of pain through her head. It felt like the wind might just pick her up and throw her away like trash, vermin, an insect, a monster, a parasite.
"Enough!" Chrysalis shouted as she sent a wave of magical energy crashing into the wall of pegasi. Chrysalis felt herself galloping around the edge of the town and anger riding through her veins.
The wind had gone from a slight breeze into a maelstrom as pegasi were appearing everywhere, rocks hailed down on her from all directions, and streams of petals threatened to blind her. Chrysalis seemed to just ignore them all as she kept running and occasionally fired blasts of magic into the ground as she circled the town. Chrysalis immediately knew what she was doing but that only made her scared and want to take back control even more. She had finally come full-circle around the town and galloped straight for a stone circle in the middle of town with a large mob trailing behind her.
She finally stopped running as she came to the foot of the stone dais. The wind was raging around her, tearing out petals from trees all around and carrying them with it in a red stained vortex swirling all around her as pegasi hovered in a large ring encasing the central clearing like a jeering crowd from a griffin coliseum of ancient Roam.
One mare with a bright pink coat and deep purple eyes and hair and came forward from the hateful crowd and shouted out at her with tears flowing from her accusing eyes and a large stone in her hoof. Her words were torn away from the air and drowned out by the raging wind and cacophony of wind chimes slamming out their insidious discordant tunes. The mare was breaking down to sobs in her outburst and she finally threw the stone.
Time slowed down as the rock flew straight and true to Chrysalis' head.
A green magical aura encased and the stopped the stone a few trots in front of her. Chrysalis could feel herself smile as her chest started shaking with a slow rising laughter that escalated into a full throated malicious cackle. Her voice rang out, amplified by magic. "You say that you know what I am and what I was planning on doing to you." Most of the ponies around her seemed to be unaffected by her bravado, but many of them didn't seem to be quite sure about themselves anymore "Well, I have one question for you all then: Why didn't you run?"
With that, Chrysalis fired a beam of magic straight into the air. Right then, every spot on the ground that she had fired at while circling the town glowed and fired their own beams of energy arcing up into the center beam. when all the beams coalesced Chrysalis let hers die down and watched as all the beams widened into strips of magic and then walls until they all connected in a seamless dome of green magic that surrounded the entire town.
"You should have run while you still had the chance." Her amplified voice was soft but it could still be heard clearly over the dying wind.
Twenty shots of magic sprang out from her horn, each striking a pegasus and enveloping them in changeling gel. Panic instantly ensued. Many tried to fight but were easily subdued with the green gel. Most tried to flee but as soon as they hit the barrier, they too became encased in gel as they fell to the ground.
Chrysalis was screaming on the inside. She knew that she didn't need to feed from all these ponies. Changelings might invade cities en mass every few years, but that was always done in stealth and secrecy; any memories of them being wiped away with practiced care. But that was only to ensure the hive's survival. This . . . this was outright domination. A few invasions have ended up becoming physical but all that would be left after the fact was a few headaches, a fear of bugs, and a week of widespread crankiness. Never had Chrysalis seen such a blatant use of fear to dominate a population, and especially not for the shear p- ... pleasure ... of it.
It horrified her to think it, but watching herself subdue an entire population on her own she felt ... powerful, as if nothing could stop her, as if they were the vermin for once, and it felt ... good.
She could sense the love seeping out of every single trapped victim; the gel slowly milking it from their bodies. It was intoxicating. Chrysalis' body stepped forward to the closest of her captives who's gel was starting to turn blue, showing that she was done producing love. It was the pink mare who had spoken out earlier.
Chrysalis bent down to the mare's ear and whispered, "You were right, I am a monster."
Ever so slowly she brought her horn down into the gel surrounding her terrified victim. The gel began receding back into the changeling's horn, the mare's eyes slowly losing their shine and closing as the energy was taken from her. Most of the gel was gone at this point with just enough gel left covering the mare that she wouldn't go out on violent rampages after she reabsorbed her love. Chrysalis expected her head to lift any moment but it didn't. The gel kept flowing until there wasn't a drop left on the mare's body. She had been completely sucked dry of her love, leaving her looking gray and lifeless. Another changeling taboo that had been broken and it was the worst one of all.
The mare was dead.
Chrysalis couldn't believe it. Never in one thousand years had she drained somepony completely of their love. She hadn't even come close to doing so in almost as much time after the first few close calls had resulted in several ponies earning capitol punishment. Her thoughts ceased as she watched on in shock while her body went around going against every morale she had ever held.
Chrysalis moved on and began going through every house, dragged every free pony out with her magic and encasing them in gel. Some gave in as soon as she entered, but many still attempted vain resistance. Fire seemed to sprout from nowhere covering the once beautiful trees in raging infernos lighting up the night sky. More and more gel covered bodies piled up in the town center until they towered over the tall arches of the stone circle.
Chrysalis finally dragged the last free pony from her home kicking and screaming to be let go. The dark blue pegasus mare was thrown into the pile where she sunk into the thick green gel. Chrysalis let loose a torrent of magic on the pile, covering it in more layers of the gel and speeding up the milking process until the entire mound was stained a deep blue.
Every pony in the entire town was in that pile, and every ounce of love that resided in them was now sitting there, ready to be harvested. Chrysalis looked straight into the eyes of that last dark blue mare as she lowered her horn into the gel. Power flowed through her veins. raw power, stronger than she had ever felt since -- since . . . Sombra.
This was all fake.
Her vision started to split as she fought against what she now knew to be an illusion, but this illusion was far stronger than the reports she had been given of the trapped door in the Crystal Castle. The world seemed to warp around her as her struggles grew more violent.
Finally she broke free from the bonds on her body, but she wasn't out of the vision quite yet. There, standing in front of her was herself as she finished sucking the love from the entire village, leaving a massive pile of lifeless bodies.
Her double looked down at the empty shells left after her feeding and laughed in triumph. "Do you see what your purpose is now?" The clone looked directly at Chrysalis. "Do you see what you were designed to do?" The clone's eyes morphed into solid glowing green orbs. "This is you. This is your race. Parasites!" Purple mist was flowing from the sides of her- its eyes now as the rest of its body continued to change as the dead bodies caught flame. As the flames covered the bodies the flames began to turn a familiar green. "This is your truth that you've been seeking." The green spread to the fire in the trees and Chrysalis was surrounded on all sides by walls of her own emerald flames. The apparition before her rose up and levitated high in the air. "You are not of a natural race and you know it. You can not simply live in peace with ponies as you have been foolishly wishing over the centuries." The figure wouldn't keep a single form for long. It would grow large pristine white wings then shed them for torn and tattered membranous ones. Its horn would twist into a black crooked knife, then into a smooth red tipped thorn, then change again into a straight swirled ebony white. Its mane and tail never matched as it grew out and burned away at the tips flowing from pastel rainbows to aqua blue, to midnight black. Its body was a poorly stitched together greyscale and its facial structure was an amorphous blob of fur, metal, and chitin. The eyes, however, remained closed. "Your mind is a rather amusing thing. You are the original changeling. You have lived for over almost one thousand years, and yet you still deny what you are." The thing above her finally opened its eyes. One was the deep, unforgiving pink of a pony and the other was the dark manipulative green of a snake. "You came to me," -- the horn stopped transforming and split into all three -- "already knowing what your are." Its body grew sharp spikes of dark blue, sterling silver, and shining gold armor as its wings lost all but the longest feathers, revealing blue membrane underneath while black smoke billowed out its back. "You can not escape this." A slit formed on its forehead, an insidious purple haze billowing out on both sides. The slit slowly opened revealing the terrifying green and red gaze of a demon. "Your fate was sealed when I created you. And now I see my error in doing so." All three horns charged with their respective auras. "It was a mistake that I shall now rectify."
Three beams of magic flew down, crashing into Chrysalis' body. Unimaginable pain raced through her nerves. Every single inch of her felt like it was being stabbed by white hot metal. Chrysalis shot out her own beam of magic in a desperate attempt to counter the apparition's. All she could manage was to hold back two streams as the third seared its way into her. She knew what she was seeing wasn't real, but the pain and fear she felt seemed all too real. Chrysalis was losing badly. She racked her mind for anything that could help her but there was no spell she knew of to release her. The closest thing to being helpful was her hypnosis spell.
Chrysalis was nearing unconsciousness. She knew that if she faded out now, her mind would be easily broken and she would likely either become catatonic or a mindless slave. She thought of her hypnosis spell again. She wouldn't be able to control herself, as she would need to be in control to do so, and she wouldn't be able to control Sombra for the same reason. She thought hard on all she knew of magic and an idea came to her. She might be able to break his control over her if she could reverse the effects of her spell and de-hypnotize herself. She knew that this could be done but had never needed to do so before.
Chrysalis dropped her beam of magic and cried out as all three opposing beams hit her in full force once more. She closed her eyes and gathered her energy, working the hypnosis spell inside-out in her mind, fighting against the pain for her concentration. The light from her horn slowly turned from green to white as she put more force into the spell.
The world around her began to split apart once again as she put more and more magical force into her spell. The walls of flame around her began to sputter and quake in the light of her horn. The ground beneath her was drained of its color and texture leaving it a flat black plane. Chrysalis gave the spell another burst of magic and the flames around her were blown out, leaving her in a featureless black expanse. The only thing that remained was the monstrosity hovering over her, trying to fry her into submission with its three beams of magic. Chrysalis pushed harder than before for one final surge of magic. The white light on her horn grew ever brighter as the ground beneath her cracked apart and the apparition screamed as it dove for her, abandoning the magical beams.
Chrysalis could feel herself cracking through the barrier to reality. The hideous beast was almost upon her. She reached for those cracks in the spell and pulled, ripping them ever further. The apparition's armored hooves were almost within reach of her when the illusion finally unraveled with a blinding white light.
The light on Chrysalis' horn faltered and faded out, leaving her back in the tunnel exit next to a dazed Puppet Master and Night- something. Both were crying. before her lay a large cavern filled with towering black crystals. At the far end of the cavern sat King Sombra himself on a black crystal throne with a crystal cage next to him holding a changeling nymph with her eyes covered in a green glow.
"Hello again Chrysalis. It has truly been too long."
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Nice
MOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3926288
Thanks. I'm almost done with the third chapter, just trying to get over the shock of a two month writer's block.
3926300 Yay!
I'm going to flip out if I don't see dat smexy new chapter.