Consideration
Three days after the wedding
Queen Imago of the Everfree hive was not pleased. The news her daughter had brought her was giving her a headache. She had heard the rumours that the largest badlands hive had a new queen, something that occasionally caused problems, but she could never have predicted something like this.
To do something as stupid as attempting to conquer Equestria... The new queen had to be a complete imbecile. How did she expect to gather love from ponies who only felt fear?
And replacing ponies? Certainly, it could work for a little while, but it was impossible to learn everything about a target, and eventually a replacement would be caught out. Not to mention that it was a disgraceful thing to do in the first place, in her opinion.
Besides, why steal what isn't yours, when ponies are so friendly to strangers? Platonic love might not have been quite as nourishing as romantic love, but it was still plenty to feed on, given a little effort.
Not only had the idiot tried something that could never work in the long run, she had lost, and exposed the changelings as a whole... as enemies. Imago suspected that the other queens would be just as unhappy as she was, so the idiot would probably die soon, but that didn't solve the exposure issue.
To make matters worse, Imago's daughter had actually been at the wedding in her main disguise. She could only be glad that the banishment and shield spell that had been used were intent based, rather than absolute. Her daughter meant no harm, and so hadn't been banished. If she had been hurt, it would only guarantee the idiot's death sentence.
Her daughter had always been a boisterous filly. She was very skilled with disguises, often arriving back at the hive in her pony form (or, if she'd been practicing, somepony else's), and had really taken to the idea of making friends with ponies. The stories she told of the antics she and her friends got up to were a frequent source of amusement. The fact that they often ended in disaster certainly wasn't helped by her personality. Princess Mirage was a complete tomboy, although she did at least take her position seriously.
Now though, she was in a dangerous situation. Her choice of friends frequently brought her into close contact with the bearers of the Elements of Harmony, including Twilight Sparkle, the most powerful and skilled unicorn in generations. Imago would put good money on her creating a spell to expose changelings very soon. She could only hope that Mirage,or any other hive member for that matter, wouldn't give Twilight any reason to suspect her.
Mirage's disguise was a small pegasus filly, and she was easily sustained by the love of her two best friends. The fact that her friends were each a sister of one of the Elements and that she practically idolised a third was a source of many headaches for the queen.
All she could really do now was wait and see what would happen.
'Scootaloo' reached the edge of the forest and stepped off her scooter. Trying to ride it all the way to the hive was insanity. She knew this because she had attempted it once. It had ended, like so many of her endeavours, with a generous coating of tree sap.
While the ponies found the forest scary, for a well fed changeling it was no different to anywhere else. The geographical dangers were easily bypassed, and the creatures could be scared off by shifting into something bigger than they were. The weather working on its own was unpredictable, but it rarely threw up anything truly dangerous.
The town, on the other hand, was dangerous. Ponies had active magic, so were always a threat. Especially now that Queen Stupid had exposed changelings to everypony.
Looking around to make sure nopony was watching, 'Scootaloo' dropped her disguise, revealing a royal changeling of the same age. There were two main advantages to this form. First, she could use magic, something which came in handy if a forest creature decided to fight. Secondly, having learned to fly as a changeling had completely messed up her flight instincts in pegasus form. She could get forward propulsion with pegasus wings, but any meaningful lift still eluded her. Flight lessons with Rainbow Dash had helped, but the moment she got off the ground, she would instinctively start flapping her wings like her natural ones, causing her to drop almost immediately.
The flight through the forest was relatively uneventful, although she had made a minor detour to avoid a hydra. She could have beaten it by shifting, but it was easier to just go around it.
The day had been spent crusading, and it was obvious that neither Sweetie Belle nor Applebloom had a talent for delivering mail, though admittedly they hadn't been much worse at it than Derpy. Mirage knew that she wouldn't get a Cutie Mark like the other two, and had seen how Applebloom and Twist had grown apart after Twist got one and Applebloom didn't, so she planned to wait until both of her friends got theirs, and then shift one of her own the next day. She already had a design in mind.
Finally reaching the cave which led into the hive, she slowly walked inside, stowing her scooter next to the entrance of the main cavern (she had been forbidden from riding it through the hive after one such attempt had left a trail of chaos behind her). Other changelings quickly moved out of her way when they saw her, after all, she would rule them one day. Mirage wished that they wouldn't. With all of them being so nervous around her, there weren't really any opportunities for friend-making. In fact, the friends she had in pony form were her only ones.
The ones she was lying to.
Mirage loved being a changeling, but sometimes the guilt got to her. Many times, she had thought about telling Applebloom and Sweetie Belle the truth; not only would it solve the guilt, but also increase the power she could get from their friendship. If they accepted her.
The other side was that they might abandon her. She wouldn't go hungry, the hive had too much love stored for that, but she would lose the only people who cared about her for who she was, other than her mother.
The decision was left to her by her mother, who was adamant that she should learn to make tough decisions for herself.
It was just so difficult, and the effects would be permanent, and after the wedding, they would be even less likely to trust her.
She had been thinking on the issue for months now, and before the wedding had been planning to tell them. After all, most ponies had never even heard of changelings, so there wouldn't be much distrust. Maybe a little hurt that she hadn't told them, but not much distrust.
Now though...
Mirage sighed. That lunatic on a power trip had ruined everything.
Now, instead of rejection, she faced being run out of town, or even arrested.
In her heart, though, she knew that it was the same choice, just with higher stakes.
It was a matter of trust, plain and simple. If she truly trusted her friends, and she believed she did, then she should tell them.
Should.
The reality of the decision was much more difficult. The instinctive fear of discovery was hard coded into a changeling's genetic make up. Less so in royals, since they had the power to fight, but it was there.
Several times she had started to tell Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, but she had always ground to a halt a few words in. By this point, she was certain that they knew she had a secret, but they could never guess what it was.
Before she could dwell on it any more, she arrived at the entrance to her mother's throne room, a pair of tall double doors with the hive's emblem carved into them, surrounded by images of important parts of the hive's history. She pushed open the doors and walked in.
"Hey, Mum," she called out, after making sure that the queen wasn't in a meeting. She was welcome to sit in on such meetings, as long as she didn't disrupt them, since some day she would have to hold them herself, but today her mother was alone.
"Ah," Queen Imago replied with a smile, "my little princess has returned. How was your day?"
"It was good, we tried delivering mail, but it... didn't really work out. But at least we didn't get covered in tree sap again."
The queen shook her head. "How you manage to do that so often, I'll never know."
"Hey, it's a surprise to us too. I'm starting to think we have a combined talent in mess-making."
Imago laughed at this. "It would certainly explain a few things."
Mirage then dropped the light banter for a more serious topic. "Any word on Chrysalis? I could tell the others were still nervous that she might come back."
"Chrysalis would be a fool to come back, and yet we know that she is one. Certainly she will not return soon, when so much of her army was decimated, but to say that she will never return with absolute belief would be folly.
"I received a message today, stating that a conference shall be held to discuss the situation. I will be attending via magic as I can't get to the badlands soon enough to attend in the flesh, but I was also one of the most affected, given that you were put at risk. I will know what the plan is tomorrow." A dark smile appeared on her face. "Personally, I hope I get to go after the bitch who put my daughter in danger."
Mirage smiled. Her mother really took her wellbeing seriously. A yawn broke through the smile. It had been a long day. She left the throne room and headed for her bed.
On her way, she recognised one of the hive's former warriors. "Hey, Trance."
The drone growled at her. "Don't call me that!"
Mirage laughed as she galloped away. Trance preferred to go by the name of his main disguise, and calling him by his real name was sure to rile him up. Noling understood why: it was important for a changeling to separate their identities.
In Trance's case it was especially confusing. Only royal changelings were female, so female pronouns immediately implied royalty. Calling Trance by his pony name, which was female, would just be strange when paired with male pronouns.
Either way, Mirage made a point to call him Trance at every opportunity. His reactions were just too much fun.
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I generally like the concept of expanding changelings beyond that initial attack, that one hive, but this is a very clumsy beginning.
Let's take a look at your first five paragraphs and I'll show you what I mean.
Queen who of where? You give enough over the chapter to piece together the blanks in this first paragraph, but this needs to be your hook, your lure to get people reading. Instead, this is a very vague setup. All we ever get for Imago is the name, no real description to work with.
You're already retconing the canon to make your story work. Putting Chrysalis into the position of making self-defeating decisions on the level of wiping out her own food supply means wiping out what little we already know about changelings. What are you going to replace it with?
And there goes everything else. Worse, you're soapboxing. Three paragraphs in and all the reader has is that you think lying is bad. If the paragraphs weren't so brutally short, I'd have stopped reading by now.
Seriously, with a little reworking you could have this as dialog. I honestly couldn't care less about your headcanon for a hypothetical "good" changeling, I want to read about your characters actually doing things. The headcanon can come out on its own as you tell the story.
And all the ranting about Chrysalis is probably pointless because you set Chrysalis up for an offscreen assassination. And now, after ranting about a character that you've implied won't even play a role in your story, you finally get to something that looks like a plot hook.
You should have started with the exposure issue. Give Imago some dialog, even if she's just screaming at her pet rock or favorite pillow or other inanimate object. Give us a solid setting to work with. Where are they, why haven't they been spotted by ponies or Zecora, who is this queen with her unexpected ethics? The more you feed those details now, the more likely your readers are to hit the next chapter button.
6555383 On one level, I see your points, or at least some of them. The initial section could have been done a bit better. I wasn't a very experienced writer when I started on this (and, to be honest, I'm still not). The first two thirds of this chapter, and also the first half of chapter four, were written several months before the rest of it.
On another level, I'm not sure I agree with a couple of others. While it is written in third person, the rant about Chrysalis is supposed to give some idea of Imago's train of thought, and therefore her personality, and is coloured by her current anger.
As for setting Chrysalis up for an offscreen assassination, again, it was a thought fuelled by anger. That's not exactly how things will turn out. She has a character tag for a reason.
I like this. Regardless of any mistakes (which I didn't notice), I love the idea of Scootaloo being a changeling. It explains SO much. Her lack of parents, her inability to fly when even a newborn pegasus can, and just where the heck she goes when she's not with the CMC or RD.
Well, there we go, that's as good a reason as any for Scootaloo being incapable of flying as a Pegasus I guess. Though it makes me wonder what Luna will see in her nightmares if Sleepless in Ponyville actually happens.
That said, Mirage is a cliche name, Imago is a lot better and more inspired though.
Should 'Illusion' be 'Imago', here? Though I suppose it's only to be expected that changelings change their names, too...
Poor Chryssi gets no respect.
7013244 Fixed that minor detail.
I'm honestly not surprised that one slipped through. The first two thirds of chapter one were written several months before the rest (except for half of chapter four, which was originally planned as a separate story entirely), and with different names.