32 - Act 2 Prologue
Everything is going well for Twilight Sparkle, she is princess of the Badlands hive, has reunited with her estranged mother, survived a plot against her life and ultimately organised a peace treaty between both of her homes, the Badlands Hive and the nation of Equestria.
But now it's time Chrysalis moved Twilight on from the tame practice of Equestrian politics, and introduced her to the dangerous battle that is changeling politics...
Among all the queens being gathered for the council one in particular stands out, one that is playing the long game, making plans...
Chrysalis' aunt is keen on meeting the latest addition to her family.
Queen Crudelis is waiting.
****
Princess Twilight Sparkle couldn’t believe her luck. The book held in her hooves could shed so much insight to her hive’s elusive past.
The apprehension was absolutely killing her. Her scholarly mind buzzing.
The changeling princess practically sprinted down the corridors towards her personal chambers, where upon reaching said chambers she burst through the doors and quickly closed them again with a almighty slam.
Without a moment to lose, she placed the book onto the desk near her bed and opened it. Her muzzle went right up to the page as she examined every word in utmost detail.
The opening paragraph seemed to be the author looking back on events before her time, and leading up to her own birth. Some other entries described life events before the author received the book and began writing in it, and the following entries eventually began to detail events as they transpired.
Twilight's attention was well and truly caught.
Almost one thousand and three hundred years before the return of Princess Luna, Equestria was a troubled land. Discord's reign of terror was an all too recent memory for the ponies; and the three tribe’s government was no more - in their place the new alicorn princesses stood, the two sisters who defeated Discord now faced the task of fixing a broken nation.
And if that wasn’t enough, during the reign of Discord, Equestria’s ally, Queen Amore of the Crystal Empire, was ousted by the tyrant King Sombra. Sombra now sought to claim Equestria and truly turn his new kingdom into the empire its name suggested. Equestria was fast becoming a warzone.
However, far from the troubles of the ponies sat a changeling hive. Queen Imperatrix cradled two new-born nymphs, one sporting a blood red mane and eyes, and the other the usual teal most changeling queens possessed.
They were twins. The elder, Avia, was born minutes before the younger, Crudelis.
They were the queen’s daughters, and she had high hopes for them both.
…
Ten Years Later
Two small changeling nymphs, Princesses Avia and Crudelis, played happily together. They were in their mother’s throne room, chasing each other around in a game of tag, each trying to best the other and giggling all the way.
They had received a good life; their mother had given them an equal share of love. Both literally and metaphorically.
However, Avia had noticed a rather… severe side to her mother. She had never acted harsh towards them, but there had been times when a drone had made a mistake and her mother would get angry. Sometimes she would see the drone again, and sometimes she wouldn’t…
And what worried her the most is how this seemed to be affecting Crudelis, Avia witnessed her snap and boss drones around. Threaten and deceive them as if it was a casual hobby. Avia loved her sister, they were nearly inseparable, but she worried for her.
She also didn’t know where the love energy they consumed came from, neither of them did.
But they were about to find out.
The door opened with a loud creak, and Queen Imperatrix strolled in, a green chrysalis held in her magic.
“Momma!” both shouted happily, rushing to great their mother.
“My darlings! I trust you have behaved yourselves?”
Both of them hastily nodded, smiles on their faces.
Imperatrix chuckled. “Good, now I want both of you to pay attention, this is important for your future duties.”
“Have you got a lesson for us?” Avia asked.
“I have, and one you must learn,” Imperatrix smirked as her horn lit up, and with a slash of her magic the chrysalis opened up and an unconscious unicorn stallion tumbled out.
“Eep!” Avia screamed in surprise. “Why did you have a pony in there?”
“This, is dinner,” Imperatrix casually responded. “Love energy must be gathered from live hosts, this pony shall be used as an example.”
Crudelis gave her mother her upmost attention, but Avia was repulsed.
“But, couldn’t it just be gathered passively by our drones?”
Imperatrix smiled. “You have always impressed me with your intelligence, my daughter. Of course we could passively collect it, which would give us more than enough to survive. But what we really want, is power. And not some abstract concept of control, taking all the love energy a pony has to offer increases our abilities tenfold. With enough, even their alicorn princesses would bow to our strength.”
“How do you take it momma?” Crudelis asked with childlike glee. “Show us!”
Imperatrix smiled again, and lit up her horn. The pony awoke with a start, screaming in pain as a green aura surrounded him and began lift up into Imperatrix’s horn.
“Momma, stop! Stop!” Avia shouted, tears in her eyes. However, neither her mother nor her sister heard her.
Soon, the pony went still, the body that was left behind being little more than a husk. Queen Imperatrix grinned viciously as she glowed with power.
“That is how you extract the love energy, it kills the livestock, but we have plenty more in that little farm they call Equestria.”
“How could you?!” Avia screamed.
Imperatrix and Crudelis turned to her, wide eyed.
“Sis?” Crudelis reached out, only to have her hoof slapped away.
“You didn’t need to kill him!” Avia cried. “We were fine with passive love, I don’t want power if that is the cost!”
“Avia! You are being childish and immatu-“
“No!” Avia ran past her family and burst her way through the doors. She ran crying all the way back to her room.
…
100 Years Later
“Mother!” Avia shouted in a rage, blasting the throne room doors to pieces.
Imperatrix kept an almost bored expressions as she turned to her daughter. “Avia, what is it now?”
“An entire village?!”
“Our race values secrecy, Avia. If I left survivors that secrecy would have been compromised. Better we be relegated to myth and legend.”
Avia’s outrage only grew. “How many ponies? How many children did you kill to feed your own strength?!”
“Not just her own,” Crudelis said, stepping over the charred remains of the door as she entered the throne room.
“You? You were a part of this?”
“Yes, sister. And if you weren’t so weak you would know of the benefits mother and myself garner from our little excursions.”
“It is not worth the price that must be paid!”
“Sister, they are just livestock,” Crudelis dismissed.
“They are sentient, living beings! With families, hopes and dreams…”
“You really are pathetic, you know that?” Crudelis sneered.
Avia recoiled in shock at her sister’s words. “Pathetic? What happened to you, Crudelis? We were inseparable once.”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Imperatrix bluntly said. “You refuse to grow up, my daughter. It’s time you accepted that we are the predators, and they are the prey.”
“There is a better way.”
Imperatrix snorted. “For all your intelligence you are young and misguided.”
“Actually, I’m fairly certain I’m the only one who see’s sense! You kill other sapient creatures to fuel your power, you treat other changelings like slaves-"
“They are drones. They exist to serve us.”
“They need us and we need them,” Avia retorted. “Without them what are we? Exiles. Homeless. You can’t treat them the way you do.”
“Avia, enough! Leave my sight this instance!” Imperatrix shouted in anger.
“Mother, I plead with you! Turn away from this dark path!”
“Sister,” Crudelis addressed threateningly. “Leave. Now.”
Avia stared at her sister disbelievingly, and without another word she stormed out the throne room, blasting a hole through a wall instead of using the already shattered door.
Watching her sister leave, Crudelis sighed. "Why can't she just accept the reality? What will it take to get my sister back?"
"She is too emotional," Imperatrix stated. "But give her time, my daughter. She will come back to us soon enough, it is an inevitability."
Princess Crudelis glanced towards her mother, and then back to the shattered wall Avia had exited. "I hope you're right."
Unknown to them, a short way down the hall Princess Avia was met with a group of armoured drones, who all bowed when they spotted her.
“Your highness, is it time?”
“Yes, we leave tonight.”
“Then we shall follow you, my Queen.”
…
155 years later
Much had happened since the formation of the Badlands Changeling Hive. The most recent of which was the birth of Avia’s daughter, Princess Chrysalis. But outside the hive, there was some kind of disturbance occurring in Equestria, and one of Avia’s spies was investigating.
The spy was shocked to witness Celestia and Luna battling each other to the death. And she was even more surprised to find Queen Imperatrix and Princess Crudelis watching from afar. The spy settled down in a location she could easily watch both without being seen.
“It is fortuitous the sisters chose today to fight it out, it has made taking those ponies so much easier,” Crudelis noted.
“Indeed daughter, though I must wonder what spawned their… disagreement.”
“To be honest, I truly don’t care.”
Imperatrix turned away from the fight, and took on an almost sad expression. “Crudelis, I can’t do this anymore.”
Crudelis looked surprised. “Mother?”
“Avia was right, she was always right,” Imperatrix fiddled with the red runestone hanging around her neck. “All my quest for power did was drive away one of those I care for the most. It has gotten me little else. After today, no more taking ponies, we will simply move over to passive love. It tastes better anyway.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I am!” Imperatrix shouted, still not looking at her daughter. “It’s time things changed.”
Crudelis sighed, her expression sad, but with a steel to it. “Yes… it is.”
Imperatrix gasped in surprise as she felt the blade slide across her neck. And then she didn’t make another sound.
The nearby drone had witnessed the murder, and scrambled away in terror, wanting to immediately report to Queen Avia what had transpired.
All the while the moon sadly looked on, the new silhouette of the Mare In The Moon looking down on the planet below.
Twilight couldn’t believe her eyes as she went through her grandmother’s diary, having recently discovered it hidden within the deepest parts of the library.
“I don’t think I like my great aunt very much…” Twilight muttered to herself.
Twilight decided to skim right to the end, and read the very last entry.
My changelings reported a dragon sighting near the hive, however there have been no sightings since. I am forced to conclude they were either imagining things, or that the creature moved onwards. In brighter news, I plan to take Chrysalis with me on a run out of the hive today; take her to visit Equestria. In all her years she has never visited the country. While she is no child and she has shown no signs of becoming like my sister, I still feel I need to show her first hoof that they are almost just like us, and not livestock to be harvested.
And then maybe one day she can help show the world that we are not monsters. The day the world discovers us is coming, and I hope we make the right impression.
‘That must have been the day she died,’ Twilight thought sadly.
Deciding she needed something happier to read, she closed the diary and instead grabbed the other book sitting on her desk.
Princess Twilight Sparkle sifted through her signed early edition of the latest Daring Doo novel, the only other to receive the book being Twilight’s Wonderbolt friend, Rainbow Dash. A ping over the hive mind made Twilight aware of her visitor.
“Come in,” she called out vocally.
Queen Chrysalis slipped into her daughter’s room with a smile etched onto her face. “Good morning Twilight, sleep well?”
“Just fine thank you, you know how politics can tire me out,” Twilight responded with a chuckle.
Twilight got up from her desk and embraced her mother. It had been two years since that fateful wedding of her adoptive brother, and Twilight had developed a lot since that time. She was currently around the size of Princess Luna, and with the current rate of her growth it would not be long until she stood eye level with even Celestia. Her chitin remained the same pitch black as it always was, but she now also had a dark lavender chitinous plate across her midsection much like her mother's green-blue one.
Within those years she had experienced things like the return of the Crystal Empire and the rampage of Lord Tirek, which she and her hive had helped put to an end after being given the power of three alicorns. They had even managed to redeem Discord himself! The icing on the cake for Twilight had been the recent birth of her niece, Flurry Heart.
‘She was certainly a hoofful,’ Twilight giggled to herself.
“The other queens can be a bothersome lot…” Chrysalis sighed, reluctantly breaking away from the embrace,
“And I haven’t even met them yet,” Twilight chuckled.
“Though that may soon change,” Chrysalis pondered.
Twilight tilted her head to the side, and quirked an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”
Chrysalis shook her head to remove those thoughts. “Never mind that, I’m sure I can handle diplomacy for a bit while your friends visit.”
“Well, okay. I mean, as long as you don’t go invading any capitals, we should be fine,” Twilight remarked with a mischievous smirk.
“You are never going to let that one go are you?” Chrysalis rolled her eyes.
“Honestly, I don’t know what you did without me for eighteen years, or the centuries preceding.”
“Oh, they were just terrible, I don’t know how I ever survived,” Chrysalis said sarcastically with a swoon fit for Rarity.
Both royals sat giggling for a few moments, before Spike entered the room and made his presence known. Spike was still young, but had developed quite a bit in the months following Flurry Heart’s birth, having undergone a growth spurt. His body and tail had elongated to the point where he now tended to walk on all fours, with him now standing as tall as an average adult pony. Also, two small wings were growing from his back. His muzzle was now also filled with several razor sharp teeth that would give many pause. He was turning into a proper little dragon, just without the rampant need for shiny things.
“Hey Twilight, they’re here! They really should thank the princesses for sending a chopper to pick them up, those things really do chop the journey time.”
Twilight could only roll her eyes at the horrible pun, while Spike grinned regardless.
“Hmph, I really don’t trust the reliability of those mechanical creations,” Chrysalis huffed.
“They’re safer than you give them credit for, don’t worry,” Twilight assured her mother. “Are you sure me taking time off isn’t too much trouble?”
“I’m sure,” Chrysalis gave her daughter one final hug before Twilight put away her book, and Chrysalis walked with her daughter to where her friends waited, but not before giving a glance to the diary that once belonged to her mother.
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By the throne... Awesome start to the next stage of the story!
THAT WAS AWSOME BUT STILL
there is no war
EXACTLY
I see
YOU DO
no
Let's do the Time Warp again!
No, Starlight, not that again!
Let's do the Time Warp again!
Glad to see it keeps going. I approve!
Interesting...
The plot thickens still...
Daaaaaamn Tom back at it again with the updates. You're really on a roll.
Man, time for things to go up a notch.
7112617 Comment and ProfPic match, don't you love it when that happens?
Yay!! I'm so excited for the next part. This story is awesome!
Which pair of fictional siblings do you think Avia and Crudelis are most similar to?
Mufasa and Scar or Cain and Abel?
Also, when I see what Crudelis did to Imperatix, I see Macbeth
really nice start for the next act, looking forward for more details about chrysis past and the other Queens out there
So, the next act is about to begin. I have a feeling that Twilight is about to learn about Changeling politics the hard way.
7112668 I wouldn't call Cain and Abel fictional...
I think the Mufasa/Scar relation is a bit more appropriate, or some relationship where the daughter did the same to her mother, which is what happened here.
Not so sure the time skip was a good idea, I'm just saying. It cuts off from Act 1 and leaves us in the dark as to what else had happened. Since this is an alternate history/universe story...
Just my two cents. Sorry if I annoyed anyone.
If the changelings helped defeat Tirek after he got the power of three alicorns, does that mean that they never got the Friendship Castle and the events with Starlight Glimmer never happened?
7112789 Probably, but this is an alternate universe. Besides, Twilight is going to be a changeling queen. She doesn't need to be the Princess of Friendship in this universe.
me like and i stady up for 22hours
7112771 that was a mistake on my part. Cain and Abel actually existed. I apologized to God for the slip up.
The problem with choppers is that as soon as they have their engine shut off.....
For those of you who have read my comments, I want to clarify that Mufasa and Scar are the fictional siblings; Cain and Abel are 100% real.
BEGIN ACT 2 PROLOGUE 1
EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE A-OKAY!
media.tumblr.com/552a50a5a754e4394538fb4dd8cf00da/tumblr_inline_ms4zv0kZTc1qz4rgp.gif
This...is gonna be awesome!!!
I honestly prefer a time skip over reading over a detailed retelling of the shows events where the only thing that was different is Twilight being a changeling. I've lost interest in quite a few potentially good stories that make the mistake of doing just that.
I'm fine with the time skip but I don't really see much point you could say You "didn't want the show getting in the way of things" but you're trading the past show that's already out getting in your way for the future show that's not out yet getting in your way.
So I don't agree with your stated reason for the time skip but I DO think it fits well and logically into the story (aside from the mention of alicorn power transferal to a non alicorn) Saying that the Queen summit would take time to organize and bring together was spot on and a perfect reason for the story to jump ahead.
7113011
Honk :o)
7112789 Dun dun dunnn!
An excellent story of the badlands clan's past. Can't wait to read more
Well it looks like all is right in the world and nothing could passably go wrong.... said the stupid guy.
I see bad things in the future.
Loving the evolution. It's not gradual but I take it. Also why Glimmer Heart!? Couldn't you just take Skyla???
Farewell.
The time skip did momentarily raise my eyebrows, but I understand why you put it in there since there's virtually no deviation from the show.
7113496 Remember that Celestia, Luna, and Cadence gave Twilight their power to hide it. What better way to hide it than to give it to a race that has, until recently, eluded historians for who knows how long.
Or we're just overanalyzing a kid's show... again.
7115657 I too am subscribed to Game Theory/Film Theory, I mean over-analyzing is magic right? But I mean Alicorns transferring power to Alicorns I can understand but I personally think it wouldn't or shouldn't work to transfer Alicorn/Unicorn magic to a Changling or Changling to Alicorn/Unicorn. But in the long run it's a teeny tiny point of contention that I hardly feel matters.
Weeee, it continues!
Wow, Crudelis is a cunt.
I wonder what offed Chryssie's mom.
An interesting choice with the timeline. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
7115916 Dragon, as was stated in early chapters, and eluded to in her final entry.
Crudelis must die...
7116350 No the dragon!
Me : where in the hell is them reinforcements.
Snipers :right here mate.
Me : oh thank god .
A few hours later after the battle.
Phone goes off.
Me : that's it.
Me :brb
Hopes over to a " mother's "love.
7112974 Ok, thank you.
Indeed...
Nice chapter, good work.
Changelings actually eat love thru thier mouths, not horns. It's cooler that way too. Xd
Your story. Your choice. Xd
I am going to be called mean but the characterisation has reached child like levels of transparency and development.
I don't like it.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2f/5e/2a/2f5e2ad0e301126828faef99f3db5eaf.jpg
7115916
Chrysalis outright says she believes it was Crudelis.
Oughta wipe out her entire line.
I think I'll leave this story here. I was looking for something that lived out Twilights struggle of hiding her bizarre body and later acceptance or whatever later. Preferably before the knowledge of changlings. Leaving a like but just became uninterested. Thanks for the read in the meantime :)
Sans in this story is Spike.
Flurry Heart is the true monster here.
7847306 tru, xd
Flurry Heart is the best Death Star
derpicdn.net/img/2016/4/3/1123837/medium.gif
*checks personal flowchart of episodes for accuracy*
Holy shit it's almost exactly two years between Sombra's attack and Flurry's birth, this is surprisingly accurate.
I wonder about Starlight, though... does she exist in this AU? Hmm...
8552326
I do try to keep with my own thought out timeline.
Seasons 1-3: year 1.
Season 4 and 5: year 2.
Season 6: year 3.
Season 7: year 4.
She exists, just never discovered without the map.
7115916
I bet Crudelis did it herself. Seems like something she would do...
Also, as soon as Celestia finds her, please be a dear and launch an orbital strike with your sun.