Majesty Incarnate

by Ice Star

Reincarnation

One of the first things that Majesty learned was that changeling goo had many uses. The filly who had been Majesty pulled her hoof from the sticky, icky mixture of the pod in front of her. She had been wishing that it might take more than the last shred of warmth she felt from her. Everything in the hive was cold, but the queen-mother told her that would no longer matter. Not when her blood had been given the same Change of Heart that would finalize the rest of her. Majesty already felt the pangs of yearning in her chest, the one calling her to imagine herself as the kind of lanky black behemoth that her new mother was.

The queen stood next to Majesty, and the filly looked up at the great creature. She knew at last that this was a mother who knew better than to love. If only more mothers might be like her.

For the first time since she arrived, Majesty realized that the queen was giving the biggest, most real smile she had seen on her.

"Oh," the great queen cooed, "if I had a heard, it would love the sight of this. Does your chest not bud with warmth at so glorious a site?"

Her cold, snakey voice had a lilt to it, and Majesty smiled too, though not with half the happiness of the queen. Floating within the thick, viscous slime of the disposal bod was the battered, broken body of an eight-year-old nymph.

A peculiar, vibrating coo left the queen, and she stroked the surface of the pod intimately. Later, two mindless drones would be summoned to dispose of the remains of the worthless prototype that natural-born daughter Chrysalis had been. They would see the brokenness of her chitin, the way that her soft insides spilled from the broken shell she was into the suspended goop. Each drone would look at this, look into the grub's dead eyes, now as blank as their own — and they would feel and know nothing more than they had known the moment before.

"She... she is quite the sight now," Majesty said with a lovely sigh. "I don't think she was ever much of anything before. Do you?"

"No. It is a miracle beyond your goddess I did not dash whatever brains she had upon the rocks. Any other drone egg could have thrived on the royal jelly, yet she became a waste. You, my dear, are the perfect incarnation of the malice a queen is supposed to know. I suppose I was too, when the last queen summoned me here to dispatch her no-good grub."

Majesty gasped, tilting her head up to her truest queen-mother as best as she could. "You were a pony too?"

"Yes, my little nymph. I too had to sever a useless attempt at a grub-life from the world in order to have my Change of Heart completed. It's not exactly uncommon, you know."

"It's... a cycle?" Majesty asked, eyeing her fallen mask. She never wanted to see it again, not after today.

"Not always," the queen said simply, "but oh, it often is. Heirs can be such broken instruments — I believe that is your word for what they are? Daughter is such a false notion; it does not properly convey that these creatures must be used. We, the queens, can only create royal jelly twice in our lifetime — if the first time fails, then a pony must step in. You have so kindly taken up my offer, and now all my remaining jelly awaits you to sample it."

"At least until they become like you, right?" Majesty asked. "A queen cannot be used."

"Mhm, of course. That is the proper way. To use a queen is worse than any claim that tyranny is an illness," retorted the queen with a snort. She stuck up her muzzle snidely, then nodded to the dark tunnel they had come from. "Now, come along, dear Princess Chrysalis."

The nymph-to-be blinked. A few seconds elapsed before she realized that the corpse of the worthless one was not being named. It was she who was being addressed. One step forward — that would be all it took to start the cycle again, for her to one day have to stand by and watch her own daughter cry out for her half-way through her murder. There would be no safety in this life, nothing to do but conduct the song of sadism the queen had told her about upon her entry.

The real Chrysalis gladly took one step forwards, ready to claim the road to queenhood.

Author's Note:

I wanted to do a proper epilogue, since this ended up being too subtle upon initial publishing.

Comments

[fanreader999999]

Subtle like a bulldozer.

[Ice Star]

10551639
I mean, this is the optional "reveal" chapter/epilogue for readers who felt that the story was too subtle before. I got enough comments that it felt justified to make one, so I'm not sure what you expected.

[fanreader999999]

I never the story before today so I read both at the same time.

Even without the epilogue chapter, the story is extremely blunt in what its doing.

[Ice Star]

10551981
Well, then you should be glad you were one of the few readers who picked up on that. The fact that I had to explain myself so many times on the original one-chapter version means that hopefully more readers come to your conclusions.

[Forsaken139]

The princess is dead. Long live the princess.

Classic royal succession, always have a backup plan and a spare.

[hmaf43]

wait what?