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Prologue: Falling849 words
Chapter 1: Crashed1,961 words
Chapter 2: Triage2,605 words
Chapter 3: Morphine1,488 words
Chapter 4: Poppy933 words
Chapter 5: Apprehended518 words
Chapter 6: Attacked795 words
Chapter 7: Overdosed950 words
Chapter 8: Tortured1,527 words
Chapter 9: Addicted601 words

Chapter 1: Crashed

Bold Words hummed tiredly as he signed the last form in the stacks of papers arrayed before him. With satisfaction, he gazed at the work he had accomplished today. If he kept up this pace, the Red Lion would easily be ready for the yearly audit in May, one month away.

This year had been even cleaner than usual, he mused as he punched the elevator button to the ground floor and as it rose upwards. The discrepancies he had found today had been small and easily resolved—things like Taille Crayon forgetting to mention a box of pencils HR bought last November on the expense report.

He waved to the secretary, a surprisingly young and spry mare, at the main desk, who waved back cheerfully as she, too, began to wrap up her shift. Unusually, though, she trotted up to him and matched his pace as he opened the doors at the front of the hotel. It took Bold aback; usually she just went out the back with a goodbye.

“Did you hear?” she asked him excitedly.

“Hear what?” he replied.

“The news!” she exclaimed.

“I’ve been in the Records Room all day, Stencil,” he replied. “I haven’t heard any of today’s news.”

“Oh!” she gasped. “I’ll just have to tell you then. Something big happened in Canterlot—“ she began, just as Bold opened the second pair of doors and stepped onto the street.

Immediately, he was deluged with sound. The rare sight of newsponies crowding everywhere came into his view, confirming Stencil’s comment that something big had happened.

Speaking of, he could see her mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear her over the newsponies’ cries:

“Extra! Extra! Canterlot Invaded!”

“Breaking News! Changeling Attack Nearly Succeeds!”

“Hot off the Presses! Clever Infiltration and Ambush Foiled by Elements of Harmony!”

Bold blinked as he managed to disentangle the numerous shouts. “Canterlot attacked? Good heavens!”

Stencil cocked an ear towards him. He leaned in and asked loudly, “Canterlot attacked?”

“Yeah!” she yelled back. “It’s all anypony’s been talking about since the news got here by radio afterwards. I’d explain it to you, but...” She looked to the side. “I have a date tonight I have to go get ready for. Sorry! Go buy a newspaper and read it, that’s what I’d recommend.” As she turned, she gave him a hopeful look. “You understand, right?”

“Yes, thanks,” Bold said, but as she trotted away he gave her an envious glance and muttered something under his breath before he pulled a bit from his saddlebags and bought a paper from the nearest vendor.

As he read through the details—goodness, changelings sounded like quite the pieces of work—his eyes grew wider and wider. “I wish I had been in Canterlot,” he groused after reading an eyewitness account, gaining several strange looks from passersby as he walked down the street. “Sounds like it was quite the adventure.”

“If you wanted to die, maybe,” one runner scoffed as he galloped past.

“I’m an author! I need things to write about—and a first-hand account of an invasion would have been perfect!” Bold called.

“Nutter!” the stallion replied rudely, secure in his faster pace and opposite direction. Bold gave him a sardonic wave and a rude gesture before turning back around.

As he continued his way to the subway station, he could see that Manehattan’s more enterprising vendors and peddlers were already selling changeling-detectors and anti-changeling charms—all junk, of course. But the foolish and the tourists ate that kind of stuff up. They were probably making the most money they ever had selling the new trinkets.

Bold ignored the bustling nonsense, instead reading through ‘Guidelines to Detecting a Changeling: 10 Tips that Could Save Your Life!’ in the back of the paper. Though a few of the 10 tips could prove useful, the majority of them only corroborated what the news stories said: Changelings exist, they’re out there, we know what they look like, they can shapeshift and eat emotions. But that was all. Nopony knew anything more about them, and so the tips were just as vague as the speculation on changelings and their motives. Already, the editorials showed the crazies were coming out of the woodwork with conspiracy theories and straight-up insanity.

Nonetheless, he bought a second newspaper, (always good to have more than one point of view) and read through it on the subway ride, only to find more of the same.

On the bus ride into Neigh Jersey, a third paper repeated some of the articles from the other two. Bold Words had already exhausted the formidable resources of a nation searching furiously for answers. Everything he’d read totaled up to be Not Much, capital letters included. Nopony knew enough about changelings to make any educated guesses—in fact, nopony had known they even existed before this morning.

As Bold cautiously trotted off the bus and down the three blocks to his apartment, watching for broken streetlights or suspicious stallions, he threw aside the three papers in exasperation.

Punching in the code to the door, (the lock was the newest thing on the building, he swore) the door swung open with a screech of neglected hinges, revealing a dimly-lit and poorly-furnished lobby.

Old Stallion Jenkins, the landlord, gave him a glare as he shut the door. “D’you want somepony to run in here and knife all of us?” he growled. “Close the door faster, you fool!”

“Of course, Mr. Jenkins,” Bold said automatically as he walked to the steps.

“And there was some crazy racket on your floor,” Jenkins said angrily. “If it was another one of your stupid machines, I’ll boot ya out, rent or no—I’m tired of your shenanigans!”

“It wasn’t mine!” Bold said defensively. “I haven’t been here all day!”

Confronted with the evil eye, he said hastily, “But just in case it was, I’ll go check, and I promise I’ll clean it up if something happened.”

As he made his way up the stairs (the elevator had been broken since he’d moved in, and privately, Bold held doubts it had ever worked,) he grumbled, “Old geezer. How could he even hear something that far up? It’s fifteen floors to my apartment...” The law stated that one couldn’t simply kick out an occupant who had already paid rent, but Jenkins was affronted by the “recklessness, insolence, and general insouciance to other tenants” of Bold Words, who was easily the youngest in the building by a decade or two. None of this was founded in truth, of course—well, maybe a little, Bold conceded inwardly. Or a lot.

As he rounded the landing to the fourteenth floor, he waved to Miss Short Stitch, the kindly mare who lived below him and who was watering the landing “garden,” a pitiful collection of cheap flowers and various weeds.

“Hello, Mr. Words!” she said brightly, her wheezing voice blowing dust around in the air. “Did you know something green is leaking down from your bedroom?”

“No,” Bold returned, surprised. “Really?”

“It’s dripping into a bucket in my kitchen,” Short Stitch rasped. “Could you clean up whatever it is, please?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Bold said. She was the only pony he really knew in this building who showed any degree of kindness towards the “whippersnapper intruder,” as he’d once been called. (Really? Whippersnapper intruder?) That stallion had been a cranky, shriveled pony who was well on his way to senility.

Bold was almost glad he’d died a few months back.

Fumbling at his keys, he stuck them in the lock, turned them firmly, and then shoved the door open with his shoulder, the slightly misaligned slab of wood groaning out of the way.

It was awful bright in his apartment for this time of day, he thought. Usually it was only bright in the morning—and then he noticed the hole in the upper right corner of his kitchen wall and ceiling.

“Sweet Celestia!” he screeched. “Who put a hole in my apartment?” The cool evening air shone through the gaping hole, which continued through the wall into his bedroom.

One cabinet had been knocked askew, its pots and pans lying strewn over the floor and counters where they had fallen, but in his haste Bold noticed none of that, rushing to his bedroom door and pulling it open.

The first thing he noticed was his Neightendo 64, lying in a shattered heap just in front of his door, knocked from the shelf on which it had rested.

“My Neightendo!” he fumed. “That was a classic... what sort of monster would blow a hole in my apartment and wreck a Neightendo!” Neightendos were works of art! This crime was inexcusable.

Though it probably had more to do with the fact he couldn’t afford to replace it.

Carefully, he scooped up the desecrated remains of the precious console and set them on a clear section of the counter where he could mourn them later at his convenience. Only then did he return and survey the rest of his room.

It was a wreck. Whatever had broken through his home had come in at the corner of the kitchen and the bedroom, gone through the dividing wall at a 45-degree angle, and then, judging from the sagging matress, torn canopy, and green splotches, caromed off his bed and then behind it.

Curious, Bold stepped through the doorway and circled around the bed. Cautiously, he peeked around the corner of the old four-poster.

There was a changeling on the floor in front of him.

“Ffah!” Bold reared back in shock, his curse stifled at birth as he overbalanced and fell over. He scrambled to his feet, eying the monster. “Stay away,” he warned, “I know Torujutsu!” It didn’t move.

Then, giving the changeling a closer look, it was obvious something was wrong. A green puddle surrounded its prone body, its wings looked shredded, and its legs were bent unnaturally.

As Bold put two and two together, he glanced at the hole in his apartment, then back to the unmoving changeling. He winced in sympathy.

Warily taking a few more steps, it became even more obvious that it wasn’t a threat. In fact, it looked rather dead. Really, Bold thought, if it had been flung all this way, no wonder it hadn’t survived.

No more than a hoof’s reach away now, Bold noticed that its horn appeared to be broken close to the base. Being a unicorn, this garnered the most attention. While incredibly tough, horns were also exquisitely sensitive—even tapping one could cause enough pain to disrupt a spell midcast. He could only imagine the unspeakable pain having a horn broken completely through would cause.

Then, unexpectedly, a weak spark of sickly green magic condensed at the break point, and slowly dripped off to mingle with the greenish fluid (It was blood, Bold knew, after he had put the tiniest drop on his tongue) in a disturbingly large puddle on the floor. That spark of magic meant that the soul wasn’t quite fled—that the changeling may have been dying, but not dead.

And just as he came to that conclusion, but before he could act on it, its eye opened and gazed right into his. Its pupil, unlike that of any normal pony, brought to mind a picture from the newspaper, taken by a quick-witted colt in the final moments of the attack.

This was no ordinary changeling. He, Bold Words, was facing Chrysalis, the queen of changelings, the most powerful, most dangerous, and most evil one of the lot.

“Buck.”

Author's Note:

So, here is the first actual chapter, at about 1900 words!
I've found, completely unintentionally, a song which I feel represents Chrysalis perfectly: "Tell me Why" by Jakalope. Check it out, and pay close attention to the lyrics!

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