Queen in Exile

by The Usurper

1. Exile

There are times when a Queen must suffer for the sake of her people. Sometimes she must starve so her people can eat. Sometimes she must risk so her people can triumph. And sometimes she must run so her people can survive.

Necessity makes my burden no easier to bear.

The ponies couldn't understand what it was like to run away. They were weak. Running was their way. Only a predator truly knew the scathing, burning shame of absconding from the hunt - and on her home turf no less. It's a horrible feeling, to be put in that spot where you either ran or died. I was going to choose death. I was prepared to go down fighting. The predator in me was ready to unleash every iota of magic I had left and drag as many of those infernal ponies as I could down with me into the depths of Tartarus.

But I wasn't just a predator. I was a Queen. I had a duty to my children, to save them from the weakness that imbecile Thorax cursed them with. Where the predator would die the easy death the Queen would suffer anything for the sake of her people. So I bore the shame, the hate, and the fury on my shoulders, stared my hive's murderer in the face, and bravely ran away.

Well, it sounds a little less noble when I say it like that.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself. Thinking about it was only making me angry again. And getting angry didn't make me any less hungry. I needed to feed, and soon. Very soon. The beating of my punctured wings was slowing down and becoming more erratic with every flap. I'd been flying for a few days now, and despite my best efforts to conserve my magic I could feel my strength leaking away.

I knew what the problem was, of course. I was too accustomed to the love tribute from my hive. It was unspeakably uncomfortable, feeling the void where the stolen love from my children in the field should have been trickling in. I was hoping I wouldn't be as reliant on it as I was, but clearly exile was a heavy burden.

For another two minutes or so I managed to keep flying; then my wings finally, and suddenly, gave out. I wasn't expecting it so soon. I attempted to control my graceful but rapid descent towards the ground, and eventually was rewarded by crashing unceremoniously face-first into the ground. My momentum carried me forward a short distance, the trail of my fangs in the dirt ending only when my horn buried itself in a pile of rocks. Clearly fate didn't intend to give me even the tiniest break.

I stumbled weakly to my hole-ridden hooves and surveyed my surroundings. When I fled from the ruins of my home I didn't have a destination or even a sense of direction. I'd just flown forward without thinking. A tactical error uncharacteristic of me, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Two days ago the landscape had changed from the bleak desert wasteland of the hive to a bleak, rocky wasteland of... wherever I was. Two days later and I had yet to escape the accursed rocks. They were all I could see, apart from distant mountains and the thin layer of dirt below my hooves and—

Wait. That wasn't a rock.

I trod forward cautiously. For a moment I was sure that my tired brain was playing tricks on me. Then in the next moment I reasoned that it had to be a trap. But I reached the thing, I touched it, and nothing jumped out to attack me.

What in Tartarus was a tree doing in a place like this?

It couldn't be natural. Trees didn't just grow in barren deserts. It didn't even look like it was growing in sand. It looked like its roots had dug themselves into the rock. A few cacti sprouted beside it, having accomplished similarly impossible feats of nature, and all of them were wresting enough nutrition from the barren ground to sprout bright pink flowers.

Food.

I backed away from the tree, still not entirely convinced that it represented some sort of ill intent. But the promise of sustenance was greater than the danger. I looked around - there was a tree behind me, too - and quickly established that I was standing on some sort of primitive dirt pathway. Not a griffon stronghold, then. A pony village of some sort seemed the likely candidate. It was somewhat concerning, though, that I had no inkling of any settlements in a place like this.

It could be dangerous, my mind warned.

But food, though, my stomach argued. There was no retort.

I picked one direction in the path and followed it. Luck, for once, was on my side; the trail led me to the crest of a small hill, and the moment my head cleared the peak I could see the quaint village in the distance, two simple rows of houses sticking out from the dreary background in bursts of tan and earthy brown. I squinted, and I could just make out a mass of moving pastel blobs that I could only assume were ponies.

Jackpot. Ponies were the best prey. There were a few sharp ones, with the paranoia, distrust, hunger and cunning that served a predator well, but for the most part they were trotting, talking gullible food sacks who trusted blindly and never questioned anything. If only their princesses had taught them better. But they insisted on squandering their endless luck with foolish notions of 'friendship' and 'forgiveness'. All the better for me.

I ordered my hunger-addled mind to calm down and cast. It was second-nature for a changeling to change, obviously, but in my state even that was a challenge. As the remnants of my magic swept across my carapace, I set my thoughts to the task of conjuring up a new identity.

Species? Unicorn, obviously. I needed my magic.

Name? Chry... Cry... Crystal. Crystal... Jade. Sounded like some kind of cheesy restaurant chain. Whatever. It'd do.

Colour scheme? I had the benefit of not having to impersonate anypony, so green. Jade green coat, to go with my name, and mint green for my mane. It matched my magic so it wouldn't arouse suspicion. Not that ponies were particularly observant.

Cutie mark? With a name like mine the choice was obvious. A single cut gemstone would do.

There was more on the list. History, place of birth, et cetera et cetera... but I was in no state to weave a convincing story now. I had the basics. It would be enough.

I sucked in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and cast. A queasy feeling washed over me, followed quickly by the comforting familiarity of changeling magic. I felt myself shrinking slightly and my exoskeleton morphing into soft coat. Then pain stabbed at my abdomen - the angry lash of hunger - and the transformation wavered. I grit my teeth and forced it through. The spell sped up and tapered off at my hooves in full completion, but something was wrong. I thought. I didn't know what it was, but I intuitively knew that I wasn't as I had envisioned.

No time. I checked my hooves, my hair. Green, as planned. I glanced at my cutie mark. The gemstone was there, albeit cracked somewhat. Inconsequential. Whatever it was, I couldn't see it. The ponies would probably overlook it too. I suppressed the unmistakable feeling that this would come back to bite me in the rump, and made my way down the hill to the town.

The ponies seemed to be occupied with something, gathered at the fringes of the town - taking some strings down, it looked like? - but it didn't take them long to notice me. The first one was a pegasus, who spotted me a half a minute away from the outskirts. She signalled to her
comrades, three of whom fell into step beside her, and she took to the skies and swooped towards me like a griffon on the hunt. I unsteadily swallowed my apprehensions as best I could and kept moving forward.

She met me halfway, landing firmly in front of me while her allies played the rearguard to her vanguard. Her eyes fixed themselves on my face and looked me up and down. Evaluating her opponent. I tried to do the same, but the hunger confused my assessment. I could only maintain a neutral expression.

"Are you okay?" the pegasus asked.

What kind of a question was that? "Ye," I started to say, but a breakdown of communications between my brain and tongue forced me into a slur and I finished with a "ssssssss." My vision blurred briefly, and a distant part of me noted that my supposed neutral expression was probably a lot more pained than I intended it to be.

"You're obviously not," she said. "You look like you're going to pass out." She put a hoof around my neck. I tensed up instinctively. It was a poorly coordinated manoeuvre. My muscles convulsed in response and I nearly toppled over. Her hoof was the only thing that stopped me.

"Celestia, you're burning up!" She turned to her companions, who had by now caught up with her. "Sugar, Party, can you get her inside? Her temperature's through the roof. Diamond, fix her something for a fever."

"Got it," said the white earth pony. He galloped off back towards the village. The other two, both unicorns, trotted up to me, and the double sheen of simultaneous telekinesis floated me up into the air. The pegasus said something along the lines of "Don't worry, you'll be okay."

And then I blacked out.

---

"Oh Chryssy...~ where are you...~"

Her voice. I hated that voice. Not because of the way it sounded; it was the voice of an angel. No, it was because it was hers. She was better than me in every way, and she knew it. Every changeling knew it. The Queen, the drones, the princesses. Me. She was a better shapeshifter, a better talker, and a better fighter.

And now she was going to kill me.

I stared down at my hooves. They were covered in green blood. Six different princesses had died by my hoof today. The other eight kills were probably hers. That left her and me. Soon it would leave only her.

"Come on, don't make this any harder than it needs to be."

I had no idea where she was. I'd tried a hundred times to pinpoint her voice, but it echoed carelessly off the shifting walls and gaps of the hive and filled the air with cacophonous indiscernability. I'd set a hundred traps, cast a hundred spells, and as soon as I drifted away from the area I'd felt them fall apart under her methodical dismantling. I'd found several of her cantrips myself, but with every trap discovered I inched closer and closer to falling into one. I was tiring out.

"We both know who's going to win."

And she was as fresh as ever.

I peeked out from behind my cocoon. Nothing. I tentatively summoned my dependable combat spells and crept out from hiding. I kept my wings firmly at my sides, unwilling to give away my presence with the telltale buzz of changeling flight. A convenient stalactite beckoned me; she might miss a trap enchantment on the flip side. I prepared an explosive cantrip and moved towards it.

I almost missed it. A flash of light. I jerked my head towards it. Then the stalactite detonated in a fiery conflagration of green flame, consuming the ceiling, and the floor, and me. I screamed.

"There you are."

I snapped upwards, breathing heavily. Green hooves clutched a warm blanket close to my chest. My hooves now. My eyes darted around, scanning the unfamiliar room. It was a pony bedroom. I was in bed. Beside me, sitting patiently, was the white earth pony from earlier, mixing a warm bowl of soup. He heard the rustle of the blanket and turned towards me.

"You're awake," he said kindly. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," I said cautiously. It wasn't entirely a lie. I felt less hungry, probably from the passive absorption of love from the ponies around me. Also I felt less... bad.

"Oh, good! The remedy worked. I wasn't sure it would, with how high your fever was." He blew gently on the bowl of soup and hoofed it over to me. "Have some soup. You should get something in your belly."

"Thanks," I said. It was a while since I had used that word without sarcasm or contempt. The soup would do nothing for my hunger, obviously, but I made a show of drinking it anyway. I would hate for him to get suspicious. I tipped the bowl to my mouth and swallowed the broth in a single gulp.

He chuckled. "Wow, you really were hungry, huh?"

"Yes." I put the bowl down carefully and licked my lips. It actually tasted pretty good. "Did you make this? It was delicious." Ponies did enjoy compliments, if I recalled correctly. Besides, credit should be given where credit is due.

There was no response. At first I thought he hadn't heard me. Then I actually paid attention to his face, and I realised he was staring slack-jawed at me.

"Is something wrong?" I asked icily.

He shook himself out of his trance. "No, no, it's nothing, I just noticed your..." He motioned to my mouth. "You know."

"My what?" I tried to look down at my lips. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Your..." He gesticulated awkwardly. "Your teeth."

"My..." I ran my tongue - my pony tongue, not my normal forked one - over my teeth. And there it was. They were dull, only about the size of my other teeth, but they were unavoidably, unmistakably, fangs.

Well. Horsefeathers.

"I..." I faltered, trailing off into bewildered silence. This must have been what went wrong during the transformation. Of all the things that could have happened, of course I had to get the anatomical impossibility. What explanation could there be for fangs? Tartarus, I didn't even make up my past yet, how was I supposed to explain this?

"... I don't like to talk about it," I finished lamely. Mentally, I facehooved. But as much as I hated to admit it, it was the best course of action available to me. I had to start crafting a history for Crystal Jade as soon as possible.

"I understand." He took the bowl from me gently and put it back onto the bedside table. "If you're feeling better, I should get back to the others. They're as anxious about you as I am."

Alarm bells went off in my head. How much did he know? How much had he deduced? Was he going to tell the others about what he saw? "Stay here," I ordered in a panic. Then my manners came back to me, and I added, weakly, "Please."

"Um." He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, yes I am," I assured him. "I just... need some company." Specifically the company that knew too much.

"S-Sure," he said. "Alright." He stayed put in his spot and stared down at his hooves. I didn't know what to do or what to say. I gave myself a few precious seconds to plan out a simple history, and then I began with the standard question.

"What's your name?" I inquired.

"Oh!" His head snapped up from his hooves. "I'm Double Diamond."

"That's a nice name," I remarked obligingly. I fell quiet, as did he, and we resumed our awkward silence until he asked, "So, what's your name?"

Oh, yes. I'd forgotten to reciprocate. "Crystal Jade," I said. "I used to be a jeweller in Manehattan."

"A jeweller? That must have been interesting," he replied. Empty words; even I didn't know how it could possibly be interesting. Then again, it was my cutie mark, and in pony culture that probably meant I had to like it.

"It was quite fun," I lied. Now if only I had the slightest clue of how jewelling actually worked. Or what it meant. "What is it that you do?"

"I'm a botanist," he said proudly. He turned around to show me the trio of blue flowers printed on his flank. "Mostly I grow flowers to give this town a bit of colour, but I also do herbs and spices."

A little part of my brain added two and two together. "You're responsible for those trees over the hill?" I asked.

"Yep!" he said. "I'm really proud of those. It took me a long time to find something that would grow in the right conditions - for some reason the soil alkalinity is off the charts around here - and I had to chip through the top layer of rock to actually get to the soil, but it was so worth it. It's a pop of colour compared to all the drab rock."

I forced a smile. "Yes, it was very beautiful." It wasn't a lie; I did think it was pretty, at least by pony standards. But I was getting rapidly bored of his rambling. Still, every moment he spent here was one he didn't spend ratting me out. "Tell me more."

"I'd love to, but..." He turned his rump away from me and picked up the bowl with his head. "I really have to tell the others about how you're doing."

Damn it. "Please stay?" I pleaded.

"I have to prepare your next batch of medicine anyway," he said apologetically. "Don't worry, I'm sure somepony will come up to see how you're doing. They'll keep you company."

I supposed his departure was inevitable anyway. Time to make a gamble. "So, you know, about my... teeth..."

His ears perked up. "Yes?"

"Could you... not mention it?" I paused, then added for good measure, "It's a sensitive thing to me." Silly emotional reasons had a fairly good track record for deceiving ponies, if my reports were correct.

He blinked. "Um. Sure."

"Do you promise?" I insisted. It was a foalish tactic, but ponies were particularly foal-like.

He nodded sincerely. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

I raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Just something I learned from a friend." He flashed me one last smile and disappeared down the staircase at the end of the room. The delicious siphon of love weakened, but held. He was only downstairs. I let myself lean back on the bed and ease the tension out of my tired body as I monitored the situation. For the first time in days I felt some measure of safety.

Then Diamond's siphon was joined by three others. A set of hoofsteps on the staircase signalled the arrival of his friends, no doubt the pegasus and the two unicorns. The tension returned to my muscles. A moment of patience confirmed my supposition as the three familiar faces arrived the steps.

"Hey," said the pegasus. "You doing better?"

"Yes," I replied. Unlike Diamond I didn't yet know where I stood with them. "Thank you for saving me."

"It was nothing," she said dismissively. "You were in trouble, so we helped. Anypony would've done it."

Sure. Any pony.

"Now that we know you aren't going to up and kick the bucket, though, I need to know." She settled down on the floor where Diamond had been sitting. "Why are you here?"

Well. Here it was. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"You know," she said. "Why did you come here? To our town? It's way out of the way."

"It is, isn't it?" I observed needlessly. Yes, this was a bit of a problem. And I hadn't any reasonable answer. Thank goodness ponies weren't reasonable. "I was... bored, is what you'd call it."

"Bored?" she asked.

"Bored of my life in Manehattan," I said. I filed the little characteristic into my mental character consistency repository. "It was the same routine, day in and day out, and while it was enjoyable it eventually became too repetitive for my tastes."

"So you just... left?" she queried, a conspicuously inquisitive note creeping into her voice. "And wandered randomly over to here?"

"I intended to lose myself," I said. "And there was nothing but wilderness on this part of the map, so I thought I'd be sufficiently lost." I let the obvious though apparently not go unsaid.

She didn't reply. Instead, she looked expectantly to her companions. The female unicorn just shrugged helplessly. The male one gave her a knowing nod, and with that took over her side of the conversation. She yielded the floor in an unspoken acquiescence.

"I understand," he said, sitting down beside his comrade. "A lot of us came here for that too, a long time ago. The real question is, though..."

"Is?" I prompted.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Uh." It was a bigger question than he knew. What now? I found food, so my survival was no longer at immediate stake. The long-term objective was obviously to liberate the hive from my usurper, but there was a lot to do to get there. I had to gather power, enough to challenge a changeling supported by the love of the drones and triumph. Ideally I would not have to strike alone, either; perhaps I could track down another hive, if there even were any left. Or perhaps I only needed to brainwash a bunch of fools into obeying my every command.

"You don't have to decide now, if you don't want to," he assured me. His pegasus friend shot him a pointed look. He ignored it. "But if you're going to stay, we should—"

There really was no contest, in the end. "I'll stay," I said. There was everything here. A steady and stable source of love, a potential group of disposable minions, and relative proximity to the alpha hive location. I was already on good terms with one of their number, and certainly with time that count would grow. It was slow, yes, but given time I could easily take control and establish a firm power base. And from there...

From there, I would show my children their folly. I would show them the strength of the ruthless.

The unicorn smiled. "Alright. I suppose you could stay with Diamond for now. What happens next will be up to him. Maybe we could build a new house, or partition out a separate room... any number of arrangements, really."

"That sounds great," I said. And it would be. But not for them.

Comments

[herp]

>redemption
It's already shit.

[Sorren]

This was nice. I'm glad I awkwardly woke up at 5 AM and decided to read this.

[Scarheart]

Looking forward to more!

[PonyDragon]

What explanation could there be for fangs?

One of her parents/grandparents was a Thestral/Batpony, if you need an explanation later.

---

Nice beginning.
I'm curious where it goes.
(This town doesn't know what it had gotten itself into...)