I Am Hikaru

by cutedash55

Chapter One

Queen Chrysalis trotted down the dim halls of the stony castle, heading nowhere in particular. The castle was carved right out of a titan stone monolith in the middle of the badlands. Once, the castle was bustling with activity and had many beautiful things to see, but now it was empty and the halls were barren and melancholy. It was so quiet you could walk through the entirety of the castle and never be noticed, just as she was now.

She made it seem she was heading somewhere important, as she always did, for leaders must never show weakness, not even in times when the whole kingdom itself was weak. She learned this from her mother long ago, and she had walked with an air of purpose ever since. She stopped at a window that stretched up and up and stopped a few tail lengths short of the ceiling.

Her eyes scanned the barren wasteland that lay outside the kingdom. You couldn’t really call it a kingdom, though. There were no nobles and all of the changelings were peasants. Even she couldn’t call herself rich. There were very little luxuries and for her sake, the kingdom let her have them. After all, a queen wasn’t a queen without luxuries.

Soon, the sound of another pony’s hoofsteps filled the hall and broke the silence. They came to a stop near her, but she did not attempt to face the owner. Sounds of shuffling came and she finally turned to face the new pony. He was a scraggly thing and was only a little bigger than a young adult. Like every other changeling, he had no special features that made him stand out, other than the fact that he didn’t sport the customary crest the soldiers did. He was in a deep bow, his muzzle inches away from touching the ground.

“My Queen,” he spoke in a low voice, “The Princess and her envoy have arrived. They are entering the kingdom as we speak.”

Chrysalis did not answer. She simply looked at him, awaiting more news.

“The scouts have also reported strange activity in the territory of the Stone-Claw clan. They suspect they are planning an attack. We are waiting for your direct orders.”

Silence. Then she spoke softly, “Prepare the soldiers for invasion and ready my weapons and armor. Alert the people to be ready for a possible evacuation. Do not utter one word of this to Hikaru or the Princess. We do not want her to get the wrong idea.”

“As my Queen wishes.”

He hastily left the silent corridor and disappeared through the wooden doors at the other end, letting them creak close behind him.

Chrysalis turned back toward the window, wondering why she said what she did. Even now the words echoed through her head: ‘Ready my weapons and armor.’ It had been so long since she had gone to war. The last time was over one thousand years ago, in a desperate attempt keep Discord from tainting her kingdom. She had succeeded, but she had not exited the crusade unharmed. Instinctively, she lifted her hoof to her neck and ran it down the jagged edges of the scar.
After she had learned that she was pregnant with her first child, she had vowed to never battle again until she had seen her child take the throne. And she had kept to that promise, until now.

“O Folia, forgive me for what I am about to do.” she thought. She felt something wet run down her cheek, but she didn’t bother trying to wipe it away. Even though they mustn’t show weakness, even a leader has to weep to herself sometime.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight silently followed the changeling guards down a winding corridor, going over the spells Shining Armor taught her in case she ever needed to defend herself. You can never be too safe, he said. The guards told her nothing about the meeting, just that she should be ready for the treaty. When she was sure she knew them by heart, she occupied herself by scanning the corridors. She had always been curious about their culture but she had never voiced this thought to her friends.

There was very little to see, however. The halls were barren and it was eerily silent, like the castle was in a deep slumber. There was no evidence to suggest that they celebrated holidays or honored war heroes. There wasn’t even a decorative piece of carpet.

This disturbed Twilight greatly. Out of all the books she had read about foreign cultures, she had not once heard of a culture that didn’t celebrate holidays. She pulled her wings tighter and hoped no one had noticed.

“Something wrong, Princess?”

Her mind was jerked out of her thoughts and she turned to face the owner of the voice. It belonged to that of a Lunar Guard. He looked like every other guard, with the exception that he was taller than most.

“It worries me that the changelings have no evidence of culture,” she spoke softly, hoping a changeling guard wouldn’t hear it and be insulted. “It’s almost like the entire kingdom is depressed. Like the Crystal Empire, but worse.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. After the beating Cadence and Shining Armor gave them, I’m surprised they even gathered up the courage to send you a letter!”

One of the changeling guards’ ears twisted back to face her, but he didn’t do anything else. With this, Twilight and the guard’s conversation abruptly came to an end. They were silent for the rest of the journey to the throne room. They didn’t dare say anything else, lest the guards turn on them and start an attack they couldn’t stop.

After a few minutes in silence, they finally reached what Twilight assumed was a throne room. Like the other rooms in the castle, it wasn’t too impressive. It had tall windows that reached the ceiling, and throne at the back had nothing special, except for a single cushion that sat upon it. However, the pony awaiting her was not Chrysalis.

She was a pure white changeling, her coat a stark contrast with the grayness of the kingdom. Her mane and tail were like a waterfall of silver that flowed over her shoulders and haunches, respectively. However, her eyes were not those of a changeling’s. They were a pony’s eyes and they were imperial red. She had many similarities to Chrysalis, like the various holes in her body and the air of professionalism, but her beauty and size came from somepony else. She was the same size as Twilight as well. She wore no crown and did not sit on the throne, which added to the mystery around her.

The guards were quickly dismissed and the mysterious pony came within talking distance of Twilight. The changeling was the first to talk.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, I presume?” Her voice was clear and gentle and it kind of reminded Twilight of Fluttershy.

“I thought I was meeting Queen Chrysalis.” Twilight started. “Where is she?”

“Well, she’s. . . Actually, I don’t know where my mother is or what she is doing. I was simply told that she was busy at the moment and that I needed to stand in for her. My name is Hikaru.”

Twilight was surprised by this. She did look like she could be related to Chrysalis, but that only brought up the question: who was the father? Twilight pushed this thought out of her mind and returned to reality.

“Shall we get started then?” asked Twilight.

“Right. Well, I’m sure you got some of the details from the letter, correct?”

Twilight shook her head.

“Here are the full details: We are asking for safe integration into your society in exchange for labor in any division Equestria needs help the most in.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to ask for anything big, like a few million dollars or a safe haven in Equestria? Normally the other nations would ask for more and offer less, not ask and offer an equal amount.”

“Well, given our current situation, we can’t offer too much; therefore we won’t ask for too much. Simple as that. We’re trying to work on improving our image, not deteriorate it more by demanding more than we give.”

“How do I know you won’t try the same thing at the wedding? I may have only been a princess for a little while, but I’m not dense. There’s lot of things happening around here that are very suspicious: you aren’t aware of whatever your mother is doing, the citizens are wary of something else other than ponies in the kingdom, and the soldiers seem to be preparing for something.”

“While I’m not sure of the reasons for these things, I can assure you that nothing of the sort will happen. As far as I know, we aren’t planning anything against Equestria or its allies. You have nothing to worry about.”

“How can I know if she’s telling the truth? All the things she’s saying and the strange behavior of the changelings are contradicting each other! If she’s telling the truth and I refuse to sign the treaty, I could be committing genocide! But if she’s lying and I do sign the treaty, Equestria could be doomed and it’d be all my fault! But still, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt. The letter asked for one of the princesses and Princess Celestia sent me because she trusted my judgement. She told me that whatever I chose to do, she would trust my choice and wouldn’t judge me.”

All these things were running through Twilight’s mind, and after a few minutes she asked her, “How do I know if you’re telling the truth?”

“Look down there.” Twilight’s eyes followed her hoof out the window and they fell upon the kingdom.

“Anyone can tell that the kingdom is sad. Weak. Like I said earlier, we don’t have very much to offer, but we did once. I can barely remember it, but there used to be a jungle where the badlands are now. It gave us everything we needed. Everyone was happy and my mother worried about nothing except making sure that I would be a great queen when the time came. But the forest disappeared, and it took everything with it. And everyday became a battle for survival. I know you can’t give us what we had before, but I do know that you can give us something better. You may not have my mother’s promise, but you do have mine.”

Twilight was silent for a few minutes and appeared to be deep in thought. Finally she said, “Okay, I’ll sign the treaty.”

Hikaru summoned up the treaty and a quill and levitated it toward Twilight. She took them in her magic aura and lifted the quill to the paper. However, not all moments are meant to be peaceful forever.

BOOM!!

The two were thrown to the ground and the sound of shrieking changelings sounded outside. The doors to the throne room were thrown open and in rushed a scraggly changeling no bigger than a colt about to enter adulthood. He rushed to the princesses’ side and said in a frantic, shaky voice, “Your Highnesses, we must head to the evacuation tunnels immediately! The Stone-Claw clan is attacking the kingdom!”

Hikaru struggled to her hooves, and asked, “Where is Asher?”

“He’s with Terra. We must go quickly!’

The two gathered their energy and followed the changeling down the twisting corridors of the house. Eventually, they came to the opening of a wide tunnel that led into the ground. Twilight hesitated, but the changeling and Hikaru charged on. She followed them down into the tunnel and found herself struggling to walk through the throng of changelings that were rushing this way and that.

A sharp whistling sound sounded and Twilight began searching for the sound. She settled on a white holey hoof waving to her above the crowd, and she steadily made her way to it. She found Hikaru standing in an alcove with a female changeling guard and a young changeling colt.

“No more hesitating, Princess. When you are told to do something in the Changeling Kingdom, you either do it or you don’t do it.” interjected the guard. She signaled for them to leave but Hikaru was busy with something else.

“あなた,”she called to a nearby guard, “私の母はどこにありますか？!”

The guard seemed nervous when she asked him this foreign question, and when he didn’t answer, she fired off another series of alien words at him.

“教えてください！”

The guard still didn’t answer and before Hikaru had a chance to yell something else, her guard dragged her away from the nervous changeling and down a tunnel with another group of changelings. As they raced through the underground passage, there was a sudden rumbling in the ceiling, but the group of ponies disregarded it and charged on.

Suddenly, the ceiling gave way and when they turned to head down another tunnel, it gave way too.

Hikaru stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, “Impossible! How can they know where the tunnels are?!”

“That doesn’t matter right now! We need to go!” said the guard. They raced down another series of tunnels that had not yet collapsed and burst into the outside world. The sight of the over world, however, was enough to make anypony have nightmares for weeks. The kingdom was being and turned into an inferno by a group of terrifying, stony colored dragons. Everywhere you looked there was chaos and flames and destruction.

The group had little time to linger and goggle at the carnage being wrought, for if they did would end up blackened and crispy. They followed behind the guard, weaving through the backstreets and trying to avoid going out onto the main streets as much as possible. The one time they did however sent Hikaru flying to the side of a building that was thankfully not burning.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and found that the entire had became hazy and sounded distant. She could see figures and tell they were ponies, but she couldn’t tell who there were or what they were yelling at her. Then all at once, her vision and hearing returned.

“Hikaru, get up!” The guard was practically screaming at her. Hikaru, quickly realizing her mistake, jumped to her hooves and resumed their dash to the exit. Soon, the gate came into view and an expression of relief spread across Twilight’s face.

FWOOM!!

The gate suddenly burst into flames and the newfound relief suddenly shattered like glass. Frantically, the guard began scanning the surrounding environment for something that would provide protection. She settled on a small hole in the ground that led to a burrow and quickly dived into it, the colt, Hikaru, and Twilight, speedily following suit.

Hikaru stood protectively in front of the colt, who quivered and cowered behind her, while the guard took an offensive stance and Twilight prepared a spell, ready to fire it at the first dragon that stuck its snout in the hole. The ceiling began to shake and bits of gravel and dust sprinkled on the group. Slowly, the shadow of a dragon appeared over the hole. Hikaru could hear her heart pounding in her ears now.

It swung its head back and forth, searching for the ponies. After a few moments, the dragon and its shadow left. Twilight let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Meta, what are we gonna do?”
Hikaru looked down at the colt and after a few minutes, she said, “I don’t know.”

The group spent the rest of the day inside the hole, and after a few hours, they all fell into a fitful and dreamless sleep.

Comments

[cutedash55]

Wow, I did not expect this to be liked so quickly! Sorry I didn't add an author's note, but I will have the next chapter ready in the next three weeks. I welcome criticism, but not rudeness. If I misspelled anything or left out any details, please let me know immediately!

Sincerely,
cutedash55

[Phazon_Corrupted_Unicorn]

This, this right here is gold. The kingdom is filled out, with names, personalities, and culture. Hikari feels natural, but cunning like her mother. Twilight is right in character, and the conflict is vivid, yet it shows that there might be something going on behind the scenes.

This deserves a like, fave and a watch. I'll keep my eye on this story.

[cutedash55]

Thanks!

[Traveling Soul]

Intresting very intresting.
Looking forward for the next chapter.

[SiIver Spoon]

Amazing! Sorry I didn't look over your story when you sent it to me. But, you sent it to the wrong account. I rarely use my student email. I am surprised you still use yours.