Grief is the Price We Pay

by Scyphi

Give or Take

It was so sudden that it was a split second before Thorax’s mind had even comprehended what had happened.

Chrysalis was upon him so abruptly and so unexpectedly that it seemed unreal, and he struggled to believe that what had happened actually just had. But at the same time there was absolutely no denying it as he felt all at once the tip of his former queen’s horn pierce the chestplate of his chitin and dig deep into the softer tissues immediately underneath. The force of the impact winded him, his breath catching in his throat, and in the next second immediately following, a wave of indescribable and blinding pain washed over him. It was so overwhelming that Thorax involuntarily tried to inhale again so to scream, but his lungs locked up, refusing to cooperate, and he could only stand there and make faint hiccoughing sounds as he tried to draw breath again.

It felt like he was that way with Chrysalis’s horn jammed within his chest for ages, but it was only a few seconds longer before Chrysalis yanked her horn free of Thorax. Blinded by pain already, Thorax hardly felt it. He stared as Chrysalis straightened to her full height before him, smirking wickedly while red blood ran down her horn. His blood. Behind her, Starlight had frozen partway in the process of picking herself up off the floor and stared in horror. By then Thorax became aware of something warm and wet beginning to run down his front, and looked down to see it was his blood dribbling out of the newly-made two to three inch deep hole in his chest. Immediately, he wanted to place his hoof over the wound to try and stop it, but his forehooves were still stuck to the floor with gel and he couldn’t lift them high enough to reach his knee, let alone his chest. As such, he could do nothing but watch as the wound continued to bleed freely, dripping onto the floor in front of him.

This combined with his continued inability to draw a full breath eventually caused Thorax to begin to feel light-headed, and within a half-minute after getting stabbed started to wobble on his hooves. Finally, gravity took over and he tipped over onto his side, hitting the floor with a thud, his forehooves getting pulled in uncomfortable directions as the gel adhering them made them resistant to moving. Spots started to flicker in Thorax’s vision as he realized he was on the verge of suffocating, but finally his body’s need for air overwhelmed the shock of his stab wound and a mouthful of air managed to make it down his throat to be welcomed into his lungs. But the movement of his muscles to do this only aggravated his stab wound and caused another wave of extreme pain to surge through him, resulting in subsequent breaths being staggered and more than halved in size due to the pain just the act of breathing was causing him.

It was around then that Thorax heard Spike.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Revealing himself from wherever he had been hiding somewhere in the vicinity of the throne, Spike came running out into view, pushing his way through the throngs of changelings that still encircled the scene (who had all been looking on at the events playing out before them with apparent surprise themselves, seemingly not expecting this sudden turn of events) and drawing their attention to him. A centurion and a regular changeling guard both moved to block his path, but Spike immediately warded them off with a blast from his firebreath and didn’t even slow down. He also scampered right past Queen Chrysalis, but she made no motion to stop him, instead looking on with bemusement. Spike barely paid her any attention anyway as he dropped to his knees, skidding to a halt before Thorax and looking the wounded changeling over in terror.

“Sp-Spike…” Thorax tried to choke out as he came to a stop before him, wanting to both reprimand the dragon for revealing himself and to order him to go back into hiding while he could, but the effort to talk was too straining and ended with a weak and agonizing cough that momentarily left him breathless again. He felt something wet and warm splatter into his mouth in the process and dimly realized he was coughing up more blood.

“Oh, Thorax!” Spike cried in dismay as for a moment he viewed the critical wound that was beginning to pool blood on the floor around Thorax, helplessly unsure what he could do to stop it.

Ultimately, he stripped off his navy sweater vest and balling it up before pressing it against the wound in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. The sudden pressure resulted in another flare of pain for Thorax that he could only hiss his way through, trying to focus on keeping himself breathing. By this time, his brain had caught up with events enough that Thorax noted the wound was deep enough and far enough on the left side of his chest that it could’ve easily punctured his lung on that side, explaining his troubles in drawing a full breath, which, of course, only worsened the situation.

But his thoughts on that were derailed as he became aware that Chrysalis, standing over him and Spike, was cackling with laughter. “So!” she declared gleefully as she used her magic to clean the gore off her horn then callously flung it in Starlight’s direction, speckling the mare with Thorax’s blood, “This is the little dragon who so foolishly dared to befriend a changeling!”

“You monster!” Spike twisted around to snarl at her. “You vile, vile, MONSTER!”

Spike’s fury only seemed to amuse Chrysalis all the more and she cackled once again. “And yet it worked wonderfully in getting you out and into the open, did it not?” she pointedly commented as she took a step closer to the two. “Game over, dragon, you have all lost, and once I have all three of you taken care of, my victory is assured.”

But before she could come any closer to the fallen changeling and his dragon friend, Starlight suddenly zipped in front of them, blocking the queen’s path and sternly glaring up at her.

Chrysalis was momentarily taken aback, even moving a small step back at this, but she otherwise didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by Starlight. “Oh, going to try and be the brave defender, are we?” she asked Starlight as she moved to approach the three once again. “Very well then, I’m fine taking on all three of you at once if need—”

“We’ll surrender,” Starlight abruptly interrupted, her gaze remaining stern.

Chrysalis did a small double-take of surprise at this, and some of the other changelings looking on were taken back by this as well. Thorax managed to stare at the mare in shock, not understanding her intent with this unexpected pronouncement.

Spike, however, wasn’t about to stand for it. “The HAY we will!” he shouted, his eyes alight with a fury and distaste for the very idea that not even Thorax had seen the likes of before.

“We’ll surrender,” Starlight nonetheless repeated again undeterred, raising her voice so to be heard over Spike’s protest, “if you will also spare Thorax’s life.”

Chrysalis regarded Starlight for a second then chuckled. “Just like that?” she asked giving the unicorn a very doubting look. “You’re really willing to give up everything, even Equestria itself, for the life of just one changeling?”

Starlight glanced back at Thorax briefly before giving her answer. Thorax just gaped back at her, shocked by what she was doing for him. “That’s what friends do,” she replied simply as she looked determinedly back at Chrysalis.

Chrysalis only cackled more, taking great amusement in the very idea. “All three of you truly are insane!” she declared with wicked glee. “How will that friendship ever protect you from the dangers that will await you now? Do you even realize what it is you’re suggesting to do, pony? Your whole world as you know it will cease to exist! But it will be all right, because your one friend lives, is that what you’re thinking? Surely you must still realize that any life of the individual is ultimately expendable for the greater good of others, especially if your own life is on the line, right?”

“And that’s what the difference is between you and Thorax,” Starlight assured softly but clearly, for all to hear. “Because he wouldn’t do that…and neither will I.”

It seemed to baffle the other changelings watching and listening, as a number of them looked at each other and murmured under their breaths, trying to process the idea of what Starlight was suggesting, it clearly being a foreign one.

Thorax, however, disagreed with what Starlight was trying to do. “Please, no…don’t do this, Starlight…just…never mind me,” he pleaded in a raspy and unsteady voice, before turning to look at Chrysalis. “Your highness, please…just spare them.”

“Thorax…” Spike began to object, worry clear on his face and not about to let him sacrifice himself for them either.

Chrysalis shot a cruel smirk at the wounded changeling. “Now, now, Thorax,” she replied. “You know I can’t do that, even if I wanted to. You’re all too much of a danger to my plans, and thereby the hive as well.” She turned the smug look to Starlight. “But at least Thorax, of all changelings, is being the sensible one here. In his state, he’s not worth saving now, especially seeing you’ve all already lost.”

“But Thorax is still a friend,” Starlight persisted regardless. “A friend I refuse to just abandon like that, even if it means paying a price for it.”

Chrysalis, however, merely snorted and turned away. “No friend could ever be so important,” she argued as she did so.

“This one is,” Starlight stressed.

“Besides,” Spike butted in heatedly as he started to understand what it was Starlight was trying to do, turning his head to look at the changeling queen defiantly, “it wouldn’t just be Thorax that would live, but his ideals as well.”

Chrysalis shot a dark look back at them as she caught on to this intent as well, and glanced critically at the other changelings encircling them as they continued softly debating to each other on this topic, viewing the matter in a new light. She turned to face Starlight again, advancing closer. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she insisted in an attempt to divert the topic, “because as I see it, I don’t need your surrender, you are all already at my mercy, my want, my will, and I alone will decide all of your fates, not you.”

Starlight couldn’t help but glower a little at Chrysalis, taking a step back from the queen as she continued to advance menacingly on the pair, but Spike wasn’t so deterred by this flat-out refusal. “At least give us some changeling gel we can use to patch this wound, give him a fighting chance!” he pleaded defiantly, motioning to the stab wound in Thorax’s chest. The sweater vest Spike as using to try and staunch it was already soaked through with blood. “I know you changelings can use that gel to treat wounds and stop bleeding!”

“Thorax is a changeling himself!” Chrysalis reminded, eyes darting to one side so to glance at Spike but otherwise keeping herself facing Starlight. “Let him patch it with his own gel.”

“He can’t,” Starlight objected quickly, remembering Thorax’s comments about his set of the relevant glands in the acorn grove. “His glands are empty. He’s out of gel.”

“Then that sounds like it’s his problem, not mine,” Chrysalis concluded, lowering her head to look Starlight in the eye. “Consider it his punishment for his misdeeds.”

Starlight gaped at Chrysalis for a second for how cold she was acting then suddenly turning furious, impulsively slapped the queen across the snout with her hoof. Chrysalis let out a cry at the blow and several of the onlooking changelings hissed in anger at the attack on their queen, a couple advancing menacingly towards Starlight with almost murderous intent in their eyes. Chrysalis acted first out of all of them though as she quickly recovered and lit her horn, starting to surge towards Starlight with intent to strike back. “You--!”

She got no further than that when she suddenly slammed into the side of a cyan forcefield appearing without warning between her and Starlight, cutting the queen and the other changelings off from Starlight, Spike, and the wounded Thorax, sealing them within its protective bubble. For a split second, Starlight thought she had somehow thrown up the forcefield herself, instinctively and out of self-defense, and proceeded to glance up at the tip of her own horn before remembering she was deep within the changeling hive and did not have access to her magic. She quickly looked around for the caster of the spell when she glanced down and saw Thorax’s horn was alight with the source of the cyan magic, Spike staring at the changeling in disbelief for this deed.

Thorax’s stern eyes, however, were on Chrysalis standing outside of the mystical field. “You…will not…hurt them,” he wheezed determinedly, trying to weakly lift himself up off the floor, but wasn’t getting much more than his head off the ground and Spike quickly moved to try and keep him still anyway.

Chrysalis was not intimidated by Thorax’s threatening though, and instead laughed mockingly. “And you really think this will stop me?” she asked, responding by firing a spell into the forcefield dividing them. Thorax grunted from the strain of the impact and the barrier cracked a little, but it quickly healed and refreshed itself. “In your state, you’re much too weak to be able to maintain this shield for very long. You’re only delaying the inevitable at best.” She struck the forcefield with another magical blow, causing it to crack again but this time more considerably before it healed itself, proving her point—Thorax wouldn’t be able to maintain the forcefield for longer than a few minutes at best, especially if Chrysalis kept attacking it like this, and the others had no way of helping to support it, especially while Starlight was robbed of her magic.

So Starlight decided she had better make use of the time the changeling was giving her. “You know it doesn’t have to be like this at all, Chrysalis,” Starlight insisted to the changeling queen through the forcefield. “We could work this out and I think we both know it, but it’s you that is refusing to consider it!”

“There is nothing to consider!” Chrysalis snapped as she circled the outside perimeter of the forcefield. She fired another spell into it, causing it to again crack as it deflected the blast, and it was a little slower to fully heal again afterwards. Thorax grunted from the strain of trying to maintain the field. “In order to thrive, this hive needs positive emotion to feast upon, and to have that, we must take it!”

“But what if you didn’t have to?” Starlight challenged as she turned herself with Chrysalis’s movements circling the field.

“Impossible!” Chrysalis declared. “The hunger of changelings can never be sated!”

“Exactly!” Starlight stressed and thrust a hoof at the wounded Thorax. “Thorax doesn’t have to feed like that anymore, because after he left the hive he was able to do just that AND sate his hunger once he found a friend!”

“And a lot of good it did him too!” Chrysalis snarled back. She fired another spell into the forcefield, and this time not all of the cracks healed up afterwards, leaving a small one where the spell had struck the barrier. “He was shunned by you ponies no less, left an outcast in hiding and struggling to survive—”

“He was doing no such thing!” Spike interjected at this, twisting his head away from his tending of Thorax so to glare at the changeling queen. “Thorax has told me stories about the life he was living in this hive, and the life he was living in Vanhoover was a hundred times better than that, even with the constant threat of being discovered! And he didn’t make just one friend, he made several! Despite everything he’s been put through, he was thriving by comparison! Can you and your hive even pretend to claim to be doing the same thing?”

“Equestria’s been slow to accept Thorax for who he is, just as you and your subjects have been, and that’s on us both,” Starlight agreed, accepting her share of the blame. “But he’s still helped to prove all that can be overcome! We both just have to give him the chance, and if he can do it, why not all of us?” When Chrysalis only responded by firing another spell into the barrier, Starlight stepped closer to the field separating her from the queen. “Chrysalis, please, no one else needs to be hurt in this!”

“No one…ever had to,” Thorax grunted weakly, again trying to push himself upright, but Spike forced him down again. He still turned his head to look at Chrysalis though. “You…have only convinced yourself its necessary…because…the hive is fighting…for food…and is only just scraping by…and you’re using that…as an excuse to…wage a war…a needless war…”

Chrysalis fired another spell into Thorax’s forcefield, the recoil of the blast causing Thorax to get cut off as he grunted in the pain it caused him. The forcefield, meanwhile, was no longer fully repairing every new crack dealt to it, as some were now always getting left behind with every hit. It was slowly starting to splinter. “If I do nothing, our enemies will steal that love away from us, ensuring that we get nothing!” the changeling queen argued as she continued to circle the forcefield continuously. “And with no love, we WILL starve! What you are proposing will only result in the very extinction of the changeling race in the end, and that cannot be allowed to happen, even if it means eliminating our foes first! We MUST prevail!”

“And we can!” Thorax persisted, managing to keep talking again with a grunt, though it clearly took a lot of effort for him to say his piece. “But…this isn’t the way to do it! You must trust me…all of you!” He turned his gaze to look pleadingly at the other changelings looking on at the argument, but though they were all listening attentively, none of them seemed ready or eager to rally to his side of the matter. “We can…survive…off of friendship…and love…without stealing it…and it can be given freely to a changeling…there’s more than enough…to be had out there…for us all…and still have enough left over…I’ve done it…I swear to you…on the name…of the Informis Una herself…I’ve done it…”

“Silence!” Chrysalis commanded, trying to stop Thorax from continuing in his monologue.

“…you all can too…” Thorax pressed on regardless, wheezing as he forced himself through the pain he was suffering so to speak it now while he could. “…you just have to try…please…refusing to…is what will really destroy our race…”

“I said silence!” Chrysalis repeated, firing another spell into Thorax’s shield. Though he grunted from the impact though, he kept going, ignoring the angry queen.

“…hate only breeds more hate…” he pressed on, “…every enemy we defeat…will only create another in its place…what we need…is friends, not enemies…what we need…is to give love and friendship…back…”

A couple of the onlooking changelings began looking at one another and murmuring among themselves again throughout this, Thorax’s words sounding potent yet strange to them. They clearly weren’t sure what to make of it. The fact they weren’t just automatically dismissing them though only riled up Chrysalis even more. “SILENCE!” she bellowed again, punctuating it as she fired another spell into Thorax’s forcefield, creating more cracks in the weakening barrier. The fact the magical shield had even held this long despite its caster’s weakening state was nothing short of a miracle. “You speak insanity, Thorax! Your words will only get us all killed!”

“You…have…to…listen…” Thorax pleaded on regardless, trying to stress this as hard as he could despite the strain it caused him in his wounded state. Regardless of Spike’s efforts to at least slow the bleeding, the dragon worryingly noted he was now kneeling in a puddle of Thorax’s blood and the changeling was only continuing to bleed profusely. “This…drought…of positive emotion the hive is in…we’ve brought this upon ourselves…”

“Thorax, you will cease your prattling, now!” Chrysalis commanded.

Thorax kept ignoring her protests. “…you can’t force love…we must earn it…and we can’t do it…trying to harm those…that can and will give it to us…”

“Be silent!” Chrysalis bellowed again, growing increasingly and increasingly furious the longer the unwanted debate continued. She fired repeated spells into the forcefield in a brief fit of fury. Miraculously, Thorax was able to keep the field intact and up still, but only just. The field sported cracks all over it afterwards, and it was clear Thorax was at his limit maintaining it. “All of you will listen to me! That friendship you speak of is a fool’s errand! It is an act of selfishness, giving up the well-being of the many for the one just because you’re a friend, and worse still, leaves you open for exploitation, a back unprotected and ready for stabbing! You could never feel safe around a potential foe that could only use that to strike!”

Spike suddenly looked up from Thorax’s wound, looking as if lightning had suddenly struck him. “Twilight thought the same thing,” he realized suddenly, speaking more to himself than anyone else. “That’s why she turned Thorax away—she feared Thorax, as a changeling, would only exploit the friendship she offered…” he gazed down sadly at Thorax, wounded and almost critically weak, “…but just look at what has become of that.”

“She forgot, in her fears, that friendship isn’t just something you give, but something you receive as well,” Starlight explained, picking up the point to add into her argument, glancing at Spike but gradually turning back to Chrysalis again. “Both sides give and both sides receive. You can’t have a friendship without the other, but if you do have both, then both sides are shielded from that danger.” She was interrupted when Chrysalis fired another spell into the weakening forcefield. “Chrysalis, listen! Friendship isn’t selfish at all, because both benefit from it! It’s symbiotic, and in the case of the changelings, it’s almost literal! You need us to survive, and we need you to not be enemies so we can survive! Wouldn’t seeking peace make more sense?” Starlight stopped to take a quick breath, as deep as she thought she could spare the seconds for it in this tense situation. “You asked earlier if I thought giving up my well-being for Thorax would be worth it, and the answer is yes, it absolutely would, because even though I barely know him, I would stand to lose more if I didn’t at least try to defend him. I had a chance to befriend him before, and like others, I turned it away, only to see over these past four moons it bringing nothing but more and more harm for all of us. I never wanted that. But even without that, changeling or not, I can’t just stand to one side and let him die over this. Standing up for him is the right thing to do!”

“And whatever gave you that idea?” Chrysalis demanded as she fired another spell into the shield. More cracks formed, and now new ones were gradually appearing even without suffering additional blows. It would collapse soon, and how it hadn’t already was impossible to guess.

Fortunately, Starlight had her answer ready. “Spike did,” she answered. “From the beginning, he was willing to give up everything so to defend Thorax and did so, just because he knew Thorax was a good changeling and that was something to promote, not destroy. And yes, he’s been hurt repeatedly because of it and has lost so much, and I deeply regret he had to be put through all of that…but he also gained not just a good friend, but an important friend, a friendship that has filled that gap…and he knows it’s worth fighting for, because not only does he get a friend out of it, he knew before all the rest of us stupid fools that it was through that friendship that paved the way to make it possible for ponies and changelings to be friends, and that great good to both would only follow if this were done.” Starlight’s gaze turned to one of guilt. “And I deeply regret that I didn’t see that myself the same time he did, not until almost too late.”

Starlight, being turned away from him so to keep Chrysalis in her view, couldn’t see Spike at the moment, but the little dragon heard every word, and while he determinedly worked to try and staunch the bleeding from Thorax’s wound, he found that he had to blink back tears. He noticed a couple of changelings directly across from him on the other side of the forcefield were watching him almost curiously and turned away in embarrassment, shame, and annoyance, feeling like he was an oddity being gaped at.

Chrysalis still remained unmoved though as she continued to circle the forcefield, her attention currently all on Starlight as her circling moved her in line with her throne once again. “How touching,” she remarked sarcastically. “But while your words promise much, they will never deliver. No pony has ever given freely to any changeling before.”

Starlight, growing weary and furious at Chrysalis’s stubbornness, suddenly snapped. “That’s because you won’t let them!” she argued and decided she wouldn’t hold back any longer. “This isn’t even about the changeling race needing to survive at all, and you know it! You know Thorax is right, that he has been right this whole time, but you refuse to listen, because you just don’t want to admit that a lowly drone like him overrule your ruling and force you to admit that you are wrong!”

“Thorax’s place wasn’t to decide the fate of the hive!” Chrysalis argued back, stopping her circling finally so to glare at the prey she wanted at but couldn’t yet reach. “He is my subject! He is supposed to answer to my wishes, my wants, not his own! And I will use my drones however I wish to get those needs done!”

“And just how many more will you let suffer over this?” Thorax suddenly demanded, his voice raspy but he somehow managed to get the whole statement out in one, shaky, breath. He was glaring daggers at his former queen as he continued speaking. “How many more drones alone…are you willing…to sacrifice…just because…you can’t admit that you…are in the wrong…and that someling else came up…with…a better way? How many are…starving right now? How many have already died…because of it? How many are there…that you know you just don’t…have the resources to support?” He narrowed his eyes darkly at her. “You know the hive is struggling…and it’s only gotten worse…since I was last here…you are only letting your subjects…suffer and starve…trying to cling to an old way…that doesn’t make sense anymore…your stubbornness and…lust for power is holding us all back…preventing us from…continuing to grow…develop…evolve…just like the hive minds of old did…” Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed dangerously at the implications Thorax was making, but Thorax kept talking. “Starlight’s right…this isn’t about survival…this is about power…how you want it all for yourself…and how you will stop at nothing to get it…and how you will steal it from other changelings…to get it…because you and I both know very well…that there is already enough prey…in this hive…to support every changeling here…”

“What nonsense are you spouting now?” Chrysalis growled, but there was a knowing tone in her voice that made it clear that she knew very well what Thorax was getting at.

And Spike decided it was time they revealed all. “We know you’re hoarding prey for yourself from the rest of the hive,” he said, looking darkly at the changeling queen.

That caused a stir among the other changelings, and a great deal of whispering immediately broke out among them, wondering how that could possibly be true. Many turned their eyes to Chrysalis blankly, wanting some sort of explanation from their queen. Meanwhile Chrysalis’s eyes widened involuntarily, only confirming the truthfulness of this statement.

“It’s true!” Starlight said, backing Spike up as she addressed the other changelings, hoping to make them see what Chrysalis was doing. “We saw for ourselves and you can too!”

“In the harvesting chamber!” Thorax shouted for the reference of the other changelings, so they would know where to look. “On the thirteenth row…on the far right end against the wall…”

“Shut up,” Chrysalis growled darkly, her eyes narrowing to slits in her dangerous fury.

Thorax ignored her objections as before. “There is an illusionary wall hiding it…” he pressed on determinedly, “…but it’s there! We’ve already opened the door…you can see for yourself! There is enough prey there to…”

“SHUT UP!” Chrysalis bellowed with such fury that everyone else, even every other changeling in the room, abruptly went silent and twisted to stare at Chrysalis in alarm as she fired another spell into the weakening forcefield. It still held together somehow, but it had to be the last time it would, because the field was cracking on its own now, no longer repairing itself as it geared up to collapse fully. There was no way it would withstand another hit. “You dare come into my hive and speak of such TREASON?”

“Treason?” Thorax barked suddenly and harshly, not cowed by Chrysalis’s display of force, but then he was hardly in a position to be at the moment, lying wounded as he was. His voice croaked as he spoke. “You…are the one about…to commit treason…if you continue…with what you…are doing! It…is…time…to…CHANGE!”

“NO!” Chrysalis bellowed back.

“Tum nihil magis sed Irritati es!” Thorax abruptly bellowed back in his native language, the effort of doing it so aggressively seemingly draining him of his energy as the wounded changeling let himself flop back onto the floor, panting and coughing after he said it.

What he said was lost on Starlight because of the language barrier, but it was apparently shocking because Spike knew enough of the words to understand and he just stared at Thorax in astonishment for this statement. A very loud gasp of similarly stunned astonishment rippled through the onlooking changelings, and Chrysalis actually stumbled backwards as if physically struck by the words, only to immediately turn manic with fury to a degree she hadn’t yet before. As she immediately lit her horn and started lowering it to fire one more blast of magic at Thorax’s crumbling forcefield, Starlight quickly grabbed Spike and threw them both to the floor. She did so just in time, because the blast of magic Chrysalis fired burst straight through one side of Thorax’s shield, flew right over Spike and Starlight’s heads so close that they could feel the violent heat of the magic, burst out the other side of the magical shield before it had even finished collapsing, then continued to whizz right on across the throne room, dangerously missing two of the changelings encircled around them, before finally striking the center pillar in the throne room’s main entrance, blasting a sizeable chuck out of it in a spray of shattered resin.

As Spike and Starlight started to pick themselves up though and the shattered remains of Thorax’s shield rained down on them, bursting into wisps of energy on impact, Chrysalis hurried up and forced them back down, pinning them to the floor first with her forehooves, then with her magic immediately following so to keep them there. Thorax, weakened though he was, tried to light another spell to stop this. But his horn merely flickered weakly, alight for a long moment, but never forming any sort of visible spell. “Don’t… hurt them,” he pleaded with Chrysalis.

“I think they have clearly proven themselves to be too much of a danger for that now, Thorax,” Chrysalis growled as she held down the squirming unicorn and dragon, who were trying to free themselves but Chrysalis’s magical grip held them firm. “Besides, I don’t recall you having a choice in the matter.” She shot him a dangerous look. “And anyway, it is far past time that you remembered just what you are.”

“We don’t…have to fight them,” Thorax reminded urgently. “We can be better.”

“But this is what we are, Thorax,” Chrysalis stated, and raised her gaze so she had the attention of the other changelings looking on. “What we all are. We are changelings, we will always be changelings, and you may try to fool yourself as much as you want, but you can never change the fact that we are the predators, and they are our prey.” She motioned to Spike and Starlight as a twisted grin appeared on her face. “So why are you fighting it? Give in.” She leaned over Spike and Starlight so to bring her lips close to Thorax’s ear. “Come,” she whispered coldly, “Feast with us.”

Thorax’s eyes widened as he realized what Chrysalis, leaning back to stand straight over his two friends, was about to. “No,” he murmured, trying to find the strength to push himself upright and do something to stop what was about to happen, but it just wasn’t there to be had within him any longer. He could only squirm weakly on the floor and watch in horror. “Don’t!”

Starlight and Spike meanwhile had their attention focused on the changeling queen looming over them, helpless to do anything to stop her. Even without Thorax’s growing panic to clue them in, they could tell for themselves that Chrysalis was about to do something awful for them, it just wasn’t immediately clear what exactly…until Spike saw the queen begin flicking her tongue from her mouth in an all-too familiar manner. But held in place with her magic as they were, there was little either he or Starlight could do except watch as Chrysalis proceeded to lap hungrily at their emotions. And worst still, the longer she did it, the more she did what Spike knew Thorax never would—the lapping grew more and more intense as Chrysalis took in more and more emotion off the two captives. He soon saw she wasn’t going to hold back.

Thorax had mentioned overfeeding several times over the four moons Spike had known him and how he blatantly refused to resort to it at any time, but he also never really explained just what overfeeding was beyond that vague defining term he used to name it. All Spike really knew about it was that it was some sort of highly intense form of changeling feeding, and that it was inherently harmful in some way for the prey being fed off of in the long term. But as Chrysalis’s feeding began to upgrade from mere lapping at their emotions to flat out and visibly gulping it down, her mouth wide open now, Spike started to see just what overfeeding was like as he felt for the first time ever, with a sudden chill of realization running through him, his emotions being actively taken from him and be pulled down the changeling’s queen gullet. He could the feel the tug of Chrysalis’s feeding dragging the emotions off of him, feeling a bizarre vacuum-like effect in what seemed to be his very soul, and a well of cold unfeeling started to form in its place as the positive emotions in him drained away, leaving only the negative in its place.

Around the same time Starlight began feeling the same thing draining away from her, her eyes bulging at the shock of the sensation. As more and more emotion left both of them, crippling depression began to set in, followed by lethargy, their physical strength sapping away from them as they sank to the floor. Both started to get headaches, initially as a dull throb but quickly growing as a sharp stabbing pain as their bodies found themselves unable to cope with the loss of positive emotions and the unfiltered negative emotions started to weigh cripplingly upon them. Chrysalis released them from her magical grip as they succumb to the effects of overfeeding but otherwise only kept right on feeding as her two prey writhed on the floor before her. She was feeding so intensely now that the streams of emotions she was pulling off the unicorn and dragon was starting to coalesce into a wispy but visible stream of pinkish-white emotive energy. She showed no signs of stopping.

Meanwhile, Thorax could only look on in horror, still trying to find the ability to rise up and do something, anything, to stop the torture his two friends were starting to be put through, but the wound in his chest released sharp stabbing pains every time he tried to move his body, and he had already bled enough that he was weak from blood loss, Spike’s sweater vest having fallen out of place without Spike there to hold it, nor could he find the magical strength to light his horn and use it in any meaningful way. He couldn’t even find the strength to buzz his wings, not that it would help any with his forehooves still stuck to the floor with changeling gel. His only comfort was that only Chrysalis was feeding off the two—the other changelings looked on, but hadn’t joined in, and didn’t seem especially in a hurry to do so. Indeed, an unusual stillness had settled upon these changelings encircling them, as if Chrysalis’s cruelty had left even them taken aback.

This meant that with only Chrysalis doing the feeding, it bought Spike and Starlight more time before the overfeeding grew to be too much and their bodies—unable to operate without emotion to direct and guide it—start to fail, slowly being poisoned by the negative emotions being left behind. Although at that moment, it wouldn’t have surprised Thorax in the slightest if Chrysalis chose to feed even upon that too, if only out of spite. But that additional time Thorax was left with wasn’t any good if he couldn’t do anything to stop it. And it was only dragging out the whole experience further, torturing Starlight and Spike as they were forced to continue to suffer and that was hardly any better. Scarily though, Thorax saw the almost twisted glee in Chrysalis’s eyes as she fed without restraint and realized she probably preferred it this way.

“No,” Thorax breathed in protest, dismayed at what was transpiring right before him and was too injured to even do anything to try and stop it. “NO!” Chrysalis, however, paid his protests little heed, and if anything, she only seemed to take joy in watching him squirm and object fruitlessly. It only infuriated Thorax, locking eyes with her and staring down his former queen. “Why are you doing this!?”

Chrysalis abruptly stopped feeding so to free her mouth to speak, Spike and Starlight both breathing gasps of relief at the momentary reprieve. “Survival of the fittest, Thorax,” the changeling queen replied calmly, ignoring the two she had been feeding off of at her hooves. “What cannot fight back does not survive.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you need the reminder.”

She resumed feeding at the same intensity she had left off at, causing Spike and Starlight to resume writhing in agony as their emotions continued draining from them. Starlight actually cried out as the feeding dragged on. The clear agony they were in was almost driving Thorax mad, desperate to do something to stop it. But he still was no more capable of doing so than he was before, lying limply there on the floor in a still growing puddle of his own blood, limbs too weak to support his weight, unable to find the strength to protest or call upon his magic, and because of the stab wound in his chest, still struggled to even draw enough breath to keep himself conscious. Feeling the blackness that came with the sleep of unconsciousness starting to creep upon the edges of his being, he wasn’t sure how long even that would last at this point. He could do nothing to stop this horrible and insanely cruel injustice taking place directly before him, and the most infuriating thing about it was that it was within hooves reach. And yet he could do nothing. The most he could even think to do was to somehow try and buy time and hope for a miracle.

For Spike and Starlight though, the hope of a miracle had already long dried up, so sapped of positive emotions now that their very beings felt under attack by the crushing negative emotions left behind. Neither could cope; Starlight had locked up with shock at the intensity of the despair she was beginning to drown in, involuntary tears streaming from her wide eyes. Spike, meanwhile, had sunk so far into depression that any sort of positive thought at this point now seemed alien to even consider. The grief was pressing on him so intensely from all angles that it was hard to see what was left to even live for as Chrysalis continued to drain him of emotion and his very being started to buckle under the strain.

Just end it, he thought despairingly to himself, longing for the release he hoped would come with it. Just end it now and get it over with.

But then that growing black hole of extreme negativity constantly growing within his soul was broken by a sudden spark of positivity. Mentally, Spike clung to it, desperate to keep it close and dearly afraid it was only going to get ripped away from him again. But instead, it gradually started to grow, flaring stronger and stronger, giving Spike enough hope that he started to pay attention to his physical surroundings again. He realized Starlight had suddenly brightened slightly and saw she was sensing the same thing he was, yet he could still clearly see the stream of concentrated emotions Chrysalis was stealing from both of them right before his eyes. He was left uncertain where this spark of hope could have come from, thinking for sure that Chrysalis’s feeding should’ve ripped it away by now.

But then he heard one of the onlooking changelings encircling them gasp loudly in shock, quickly being echoed by many more in a rippling wave, and Spike began to search for an explanation. Scanned the area around him, he spied Starlight and the two streams of emotions Chrysalis was drawing off of them, but then shifting his head lower, he spied a third stream of emotion flowing into Starlight’s belly from somewhere behind him, away from Chrysalis. A glance down at his own torso and he found an identical fourth stream doing the same thing. Gradually starting to comprehend that this stream of emotions was the cause of the renewed spark of positivity he felt, his eyes followed the two new streams of emotion on down to their source, springing out like fountains from Thorax’s chest, the changeling’s eyes closed and brow slightly furrowed in concentration.

This sight apparently surprised all present, especially the changelings who had all begun to whisper anxiously amongst themselves in their native language, and even though Chrysalis hadn’t slowed her feeding any, she too regarded the sight before her with puzzled surprise. Finding some of his strength returning to him thanks to the positive emotion streaming into him, offsetting slightly the emotion Chrysalis was drawing out almost just as quickly, Spike weakly crawled closer to the wounded changeling.

“Thorax, what are you doing?” he whispered to his friend, confused and not understanding.

“Returning…the favor…” Thorax breathed back in an unsteady and broken statement. He did not open his eyes, but the determination to finish whatever it was he was doing was clear both in his face and his tone.

Chrysalis then suddenly stopped feeding, letting out another of her cackling laughs as she understood what Thorax was doing before Spike did. “You fool, Thorax!” she declared, amused at Thorax’s selflessness. “You’ll only kill yourself faster doing this!”

Spike’s eyes widened as he realized what Chrysalis meant. Thorax was giving up his own supply of collected emotion for Starlight and Spike, preserving their lives even when it meant it was also slowly starving himself. “No, Thorax!” he started to object, placing his claws on Thorax’s side urgently, “Don’t—” but he was cut short as Chrysalis resumed feeding again and felt it gnawing away at the flare of positive emotion Thorax was sacrificing for him.

Thorax seemed resolute regardless. “Mihi lacrimo non…” he breathed to Spike in linguae mutationis, his voice already turning weak. “Mihi…lacrimo…non…”

“No, NO!” Spike objected, trying to push himself upright, only to fall back to his knees, his body draping itself over Thorax’s barrel as Chrysalis’s feeding started to rob him of the brief flare of strength the positive emotions Thorax was trying to pump into him had given. Already he could feel that flare of hope fade again, having hit its peak far too soon. “Don’t do this! Somebody, please, stop this! Don’t let this happen! PLEASE!”

Starlight, meanwhile, made use of the brief burst of strength she was getting from Thorax’s donated emotions to shakily try and heave herself onto her hooves. “Chrysalis, don’t be a fool yourself,” she rasped as she addressed the changeling queen feeding off of her. “What do you hope to gain from this? What good will it do? Is it just for the cruel…satisfaction…of doing us all harm?” She managed to raise her head long enough to shoot the queen a glare. “You really think yourself as some brilliant queen of the changelings doing this? What kind of queen would voluntarily do something like this?”

Chrysalis stopped feeding again so to reply. “You know nothing of the changelings and what it takes to be queen!” she retorted, annoyed. “I decide what is best for my subjects, not some mewling grub, and certainly not the likes of you!” She immediately resumed feeding again, considering the matter settled.

But Starlight, unable to keep her head raised so to keep looking at Chrysalis, instead let her gaze fall onto some of the changelings that were looking on, standing around them, and saw in their faces that they both looked confused, awestruck, and even frightened. “No,” Starlight objected, feeling the brief flare of strength Thorax’s donated emotions had given ebbing again. “No, I don’t think so…the changelings here don’t seem so eager to agree…they’ve just been too afraid of you to do something about it…” she managed to glance back up at Chrysalis again. The queen didn’t give any sort of reply back this time, opting to keep feeding and probably hoping that by doing so she can end the argument that way. But Starlight could see in the queen’s eyes what sort of response she would give. “Ruling by fear isn’t strength, or the best way to be a ruler,” Starlight rasped as she struggled to keep herself from toppling over onto the floor again, unable to rise to her full height but shakily on her hooves regardless. “I know what that’s like, ruling by fear and intimidation, and I know what it’s like to want everyone to do what you say, but that’s wrong. A real leader doesn’t force their subjects to deny who they are…or strike them down or torture them when they choose…better…ways…” feeling light-headed suddenly, Starlight stumbled and collapsed onto her belly again, the despair left behind from Chrysalis’s feeding starting to engulf her as the reprieve Thorax had bought her faded away.

Thorax was still donating away positive emotion for her and Spike, as much as he could, but he was clearly running out, and the two streams he was channeling into them started to dwindle. As they did, Spike panicked, fearing for Thorax’s life. “No, please, don’t let this happen!” Spike pleaded aloud to anyone who’d listen. “Please…please…someone do something…”

Starlight laid helplessly on the floor, losing the resolve to fight any longer, but noting the onlooking changelings staring at her, Spike, and Thorax in stunned shock, she realized one last point. “No one has done this before…have they?” she asked aloud softly, directing the question not at Chrysalis but at the other changelings. “What Thorax has done…sharing love freely…none of you have seen that done before…have you?” She looked knowingly at the encircling changelings within her line of view. “But…why is that so shocking? Couldn’t…you…share love…too? What…would you…have to loose…if you all did…did…”

She couldn’t bring herself to speak further, feeling the flare of hope Thorax was providing within her shrink away and get swallowed up in the misery that Chrysalis’s feeding was filling her up with. Any remaining strength she had to fight back rapidly disappearing, she curled into a ball, shivering in despair. By Thorax, Spike was starting to succumb to similar effects, but he nonetheless was trying everything he possibly could to stop it. He was shaking Thorax anxiously, watching with dread the stream of emotion the changeling was produced fade away, now only a mere sliver of a wisp left. “Stop, Thorax, stop!” he pleaded, in tears. Thorax didn’t respond though. Spike wasn’t even sure he was still conscious. “Please…” he repeated, starting to collapse to the floor again, his head falling onto Thorax’s side. His gaze, fading in and out of focus, eventually locked onto the encircling changelings watching him. He again felt like he was some odd spectacle they were just standing around and ogling at. He frowned. “Stop this,” he tried to shout at them, but couldn’t generate the volume needed for it to be a proper shout in his weak state. “Don’t let her do this, please…please…” he let himself collapse onto Thorax’s limp form, continuing to murmur in despair. “Please…please, don’t take him away…someone just save him…he’s my friend…he’s…he’s all I have left…”

There was no response. In fact, the throne room had fallen eerily silent now that Starlight had gone quiet and there was no one left willing to protest what was happening. Squeezing his eyes shut in despair, Spike let gravity pull him limply off of Thorax and to flop on to the ground at the edge of the puddle of blood his changeling friend laid in. Lifelessly, he stared at the wisp of emotion Thorax was still trying to donate, but whether or not the changeling was even still conscious of it was anyone’s guess, as that stream had faded to a mere flicker, stuttering as Thorax milked himself dry of emotion. Spike’s heart sank in despair and finality as he watched the stream flicker out entirely and he braced himself for the end.

But then the stream of emotion suddenly flared back to life, doubling in strength from before.

Spike’s eyes shot wide as it felt like it was flooding him with goodness, swatting away the vat of negative emotions he had been about to vanish into. His strength returning, he started to push himself up along with Starlight experiencing the same restoration of being, staring in awe at the strong emotions Thorax was now somehow giving up…but how? Hearing another ripple of surprise, Spike stood and studied Thorax and saw there was now a fifth stream of emotion, channeling emotion into Thorax, now flowing through him to Starlight and Spike in the stead of his own. Astounded, all eyes turned to the changeling standing within the encirclement as he shared his collected emotions with Thorax. But no sooner had all eyes fallen onto this changeling, another stream of emotion flowed into Thorax, joining the first as a second changeling started sharing their emotions too.

They were then followed by another. And another.

Chrysalis abruptly stopped feeding, her eyes growing wide as she took in what was happening before. “What are you doing?” she demanded of her subjects. “Stop!”

But none of the other changelings listened or obeyed, and instead, only more streams of emotion started joining the first, spurred on by the first few. Soon there were so many streams of shared emotions going around that the air was growing thick with positive emotions, so much so that even Starlight and Spike could sense it in the air. Now that Chrysalis had stopped feeding too, their strength quickly returned with all the emotion that they were getting from Thorax, serving as a central conduit for all of this shared emotion. Starting to feel back to himself, Spike went back to Thorax’s side, trying to shake him awake. “Thorax, you can stop now!” he urged. “We’re out of danger!”

But Thorax made no response, and again, he didn’t seem to be conscious. Meanwhile the onlooking changelings continued to share their emotions freely, with more and more joining in as a sort of chain reaction that soon it seemed Chrysalis was the only changeling in the room who wasn’t sharing her emotions.

And she was growing increasingly panicked at the eminent uprising taking place among her subjects. “Stop! Stop!” she commanded with growing desperation, slowly starting to back away and towards her throne. “I order you all to stop!”

None of her subjects heeded her demands though, and only continued sharing their emotions, apparently unaware they had done their part already and instead seemed determined to see through whatever it was they had started. Whatever it was, it was pumping so much positive emotion into Thorax now that gradually a shimmering aura of what could only be magic started to fade into view around the wounded changeling. Startled by its appearance, Spike gasped and leapt to his feet as he and Starlight started to back slowly away too, not sure just what it was they were being witness to.

“You traitors!” Chrysalis was bellowing now, sounding furious, but there was also a clear terror in her eyes as she realized she had lost total control of her subjects. “You are all TRAITORS! You will all PAY for your disobedience!”

This did absolutely nothing to discourage the uprising changelings though, taking no heed to her threats as they continued to share their emotions, the streams of emotion so thick now that they all intermingled with one another, their exact sources and destinations all getting lost from view. The shimmering aura that had engulfed around Thorax eventually plateaued after a certain intensity and grew no further, but now similar auras were forming around the other changelings sharing their emotions, and their auras didn’t plateau out, instead growing in intensity until the respective changeling vanished into a ball of magical light. As this started to spread among all the changelings present save for Chrysalis and Thorax, the aura around the first changeling suddenly exploded outward with an echoing bang, startling Chrysalis, Starlight, and Spike as they kept backing away, feeling the wave of magical energy wash over them and the rest of the room. Immediately after, the auras around the other changelings all started to explode in loud booms as well, generating so much light and energy that it was getting hard to look at them without being blinded.

Then, among all the magical booming, a loud crack echoed out and the three onlookers turned behind them to see a swarm of cracks start to ripple across Chrysalis’s throne, crumbling as the initial crack Spike had started began to give way under the magical pressure, compromising the whole structure.

“No!” Chrysalis declared in a clear panic now, racing towards the throne in some vain hope of stopping it. “No, no, no, no!”

The throne only continued to crumble though, the cracks glowing with energy as all the magic trapped within started to slip out, prying the throne apart from within. Getting a taste of this magical energy as she felt the tell-tale beginnings of her magic returning to her, Starlight realized with a jolt that the years upon years upon years of magic the throne had been collecting for who knew how long was somehow all still within, under pressure…and was now about to escape in one mighty explosion.

“Spike!” she cried, going to the dragon and taking his claws, trying to pull him aside so to shield him along with herself in the imminent blast.

Spike, however, had already come to the same conclusions, but his focus was turned back to Thorax, left lying in the middle of it all. “Thorax!” he exclaimed in alarm, and misinterpreting Starlight’s actions as an attempt to pull him away from the wounded changeling, he ripped his claws free from Starlight’s grasp so to hurry back to the side of his friend.

“No, wait, SPIKE!” Starlight called back, desperately lunging after Spike, trying to grab him again.

But before she could reach him, the throne let out one final crack then exploded in one mighty blast that slammed into Starlight from behind, blowing her off her hooves. All at once she felt herself bounce roughly off something solid followed by several little things pelting her, before darkness engulfed her.

But for no more than a minute at most.

Coming to again with a jolt, Starlight awoke initially confused, unsure where she was or what had happened, but gradually came to realize she was lying on her back, lightly buried under resinous rubble. For a frightful second she thought she might have been seriously injured, but in hurriedly doing a mental assessment of her body, she found she was scraped all over and her ears were ringing, but otherwise bore no critical injuries of any sort. Even better, the layer of rubble covering her was thin enough that she could still easily see light streaming through the gaps, and she proceeded to brush and throw it all off of her. Nonetheless, once she had her head free and got a good view of what lay directly above her, she still found herself disoriented and unsure of where she was, because all she saw above her was open early noon sky and not the ceiling she was expecting.

Had she somehow been teleported somewhere else? She rolled herself over and onto her hooves, picking herself up fully as she gazed at what laid ahead of her. There wasn’t much to see though—all that laid before her was more rubble scattered unevenly across an open floor before it all vanished and gave way to open air. Beyond that, Starlight could make out the wastelands that surrounded the hive and the acorn grove bordering it, and she recognized she was still at the hive, before realizing she must still be in the throne room. With a jolt, she saw that the blast of the exploding throne had completely blown it apart, opening it up to the air outside the hive.

She heard a shuffling beside her and turned in time to see Spike pull himself out of the rubble and sit up. The white shirt he still wore was scuffed and smudged with dirt, and one lens of the false eyeglasses he had managed to keep on his face throughout all of this was cracked, but like herself, he seemed very dazed yet largely unhurt. Blankly, he pulled off the cracked glasses off his face and began to peer around behind Starlight in a daze. Starlight, meanwhile, kept herself facing the other way, searching for the spot she had last seen both the throne and Queen Chrysalis. Chrysalis had vanished from view however, and all that remained of the throne was a small pile of dark rubble, now completely destroyed. Starlight tested her horn quickly and found with relief that it easily lit up with her magic now that the throne’s effects had been removed.

“Starlight…” Spike suddenly spoke up as he numbly rose into a standing position, starting straight ahead of him.

“What?” Starlight asked as she twisted around to look behind her for the first time, taking in the rest of the ruined throne room, and immediately gasped.

The cocoons of her captured princesses and friends had all, naturally, been knocked loose in the chaos and fallen to the floor. Fortunately, they had all seemed to have landed gently enough that their occupants were cushioned from harm in the impacts, yet all had still managed to break open in the process. Now their occupants were starting to clamber out of their little prisons, wet with goo and looking very disoriented. But what was most startling about this view wasn’t the cocoons and their liberated occupants, but rather who was hovering around them, assisting.

They were creatures bearing brightly colored and clean carapaces, the exact color varying on the individual, but seeming to range from a light yellow, to a bright cyan, on to a mint green or even in some instances a combination of more than one color. Most of them bore horns and sparkling gossamer wings with smooth edges and tails to match. Their ears were long and often appearing tufted, but depending on the individual they were held either upright and alert or folded back and concerned. All of them seemed to be going about in a bit of a daze, still trying to make sense of what had just happened like all the rest of them, but regardless, many of them were buzzing around and provided friendly help and aid where they could. Some were helping each other, some were helping cocoon occupants out of said cocoons. One had kindly located little Flurry Heart and reunited her with her dazed and confused, but thankful, parents.

Starlight didn’t recognize these creatures initially at first, but then with eyes growing wide saw that they were changelings—the same changelings that had encircled the throne room and opposing them only minutes earlier. At some point in all the chaos, or more likely because of the chaos, all of them had transformed into entirely new, gentler, forms. These changelings had gone from fearsome foes into kind and docile helpers, now compelled to be friends rather than enemies in light of these events. The possibilities that could explain how and why this happened sent Starlight’s mind reeling, wondering just what in all of that magical chaos was responsible for creating this, before deciding that for the moment, she just couldn’t care.

“Wow,” she breathed, shocked and humbled by the sight, while also overjoyed at this change for the better the changelings had undergone.

She and Spike were brought out of their reveries however when a fallen cocoon lying near them suddenly had a fist punching through its filmy skin and Ember noisily sat upright out of the opening, hacking up slime in the process. Focusing once more on the broken cocoons and their liberated occupants, Starlight surveyed them again, watching as her friends all crawled free no worse for wear, until her eyes fell upon Trixie clambering out of her own cocoon. With a small smile, she walked over to help her friend.

“Bleh!” Trixie said as she spat out slime, accepting Starlight’s helping hoof without comment. “I don’t even want to think about what it is that I’ve got in my mouth.”

Starlight only chuckled in response as she pulled Trixie upright, the azure unicorn pushing the soaked tip of her hat out of her face, the only thing she still wore as it seemed the changelings had relieved her of her saddlebags before putting her in the cocoon. Trixie then turned and surveyed the ruins of the throne room herself, taking it all in with a dazed and confused look. She studied the transformed changelings for a particularly long time and Starlight waited for her to demand to know what the heck had just happened.

But instead, Trixie asked a totally different question, one that should’ve been asked well before now. “Where’s Thorax?”

Starlight’s eyes widened in realization that she hadn’t seen their changeling friend yet, and twisted around to scan the reformed changelings again, hoping to pick him out. Of course, with all of their new forms, she realized it’d easily be that she wouldn’t recognize him now if he was there, but despite that, she somehow knew that he wasn’t and quickly grew alarmed.

Spike, by this time, had realized the same thing and was urgently scanning the ruins for his friend as well. “Thorax!” he called with clear worry. But when he, too, couldn’t find him among the transformed changelings, he, like Starlight, started to search for the spot they both recalled last seeing him. Their eyes quickly fell upon that spot, only to see that a large pile of debris lying there, one of the pillars for the room’s main entrance having come down on that spot. Spike eyes widened in alarm and he immediately raced towards the pile. “THORAX!”

He quickly threw himself onto the pile and set to work trying to clear away the rubble in search for his friend buried somewhere underneath. Overhearing and without even asking questions, Ember suddenly vaulted herself free from her cocoon, and her wet feet slipping and sliding a little, raced to Spike’s side, joining him in shifting rubble. Other changelings quickly descended upon the pile to assist too, soon followed by Applejack, Fluttershy, and a few of Twilight’s other friends, all working to move the rubble. Trixie stared in alarm at all of this then hurried forward to assist as well, leaving Starlight’s side.

Starlight started to move forward to help too, but was suddenly stopped when a slimy hoof grabbed her shoulder and turned her around so to come face to face with a very lost and confused looking Twilight Sparkle. “Starlight, what happened?” she asked urgently, looking like she desperately needed some frame of reference in order to understand what it was she had awoken in the middle of.

Starlight twisted her head back at the ruined throne room, momentarily unsure how to explain. “I guess we did it, Twilight,” she finally responded in a bit of an unsure daze. “We defeated the changelings with no magic at all, and…they’re all kinda…good now.” Her eyes rested upon the pile of rubble the others were trying to clear, hoping to uncover the missing Thorax, and she felt her spirits fall. “But for what price?”

Celestia and Luna suddenly joined the pair, on their way to help clear the rubble too. “Clearly, much has happened since we last spoke,” Luna observed as they passed. “But for now we—”

She was cut off when a rumbling behind them sounded out, and they turned in time to see an absolutely furious Queen Chrysalis, not having transformed in the slightest like the others, burst her way free of the rubble that was once her throne, hissing loudly and her horn alight with magic. As it seemed clear she meant to do battle, everyone who wasn’t helping to clear away the rubble covering Thorax immediately about faced and stood to oppose her, bracing themselves to be ready fight her off. Even some of the reformed changelings moved to oppose their queen. Within seconds, everyone was standing off against the changeling queen, ready to do battle and resume the age old conflict between Equestria and the changeling hive that had been going on for so long.

And in witnessing in horror history about to repeat itself, Starlight felt something within her suddenly and unexpectedly snap.

“Stop! STOP!” She bellowed as she ran into the middle of the standoff, right into the line of fire for both sides and she motioned for all of them to stop and listen. “We don’t need to DO this anymore! It’s changed, everything’s changed! There’s no reason left to fight anymore! The changelings have changed, they’re willing to make peace, and here you all are, ready to start that conflict all over like nothing happened! Don’t! Just don’t!” She stood their panting for a second, looking back and forth between Queen Chrysalis on one side, and everyone else on the other, making sure she had their attention. Once she had, she first focused her attention on everyone standing to oppose Chrysalis. “Look! We’ve all been fighting each other for so long that I think we’ve forgotten to stop. We forgot to stop and consider that maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to be enemies, or even better, we never needed to be enemies in the first place.” She glanced back at Chrysalis then back at the others. “I know, Chrysalis is just one changeling, perhaps the only one here still looking to be an enemy, but she should realize by now that she’s outnumbered. She’s no threat to us now! So maybe the move we all should be making right now is to pursue peace. That might seem hard to consider after spending so long considering her a foe…” Starlight’s gaze fell upon Twilight, standing in the line of those opposing Chrysalis, and looked at her knowingly, “…but if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that a changeling can change, deep down as well as on the outside…you just need to give them the opportunity to do so…a real chance to be a friend, instead of a foe.”

That addressed, she then turned to face Chrysalis, stepping closer to her. “Now,” she began, “as for you…”

“Save your breath,” Chrysalis hissed as she glared down at Starlight but for the moment made no move to attack her. “You will not sway me.”

“But what do you have to gain from it?” Starlight challenged and motioned a hoof at the reformed changelings. “Look at your subjects, Chrysalis. They are not willing to follow you down this path any longer. Like Thorax, I think they see now that there’s a better way. You should too, because to be honest? You don’t stand a chance going down this path on your own. Trust me, I know, oh boy, do I know. Back when I wasn’t much better than you and Twilight and her friends defeated me, I chose to run away and seek revenge. But all that brought me was more pain and suffering and nothing of the happiness I really needed. But it’s not too late for you, Chrysalis, because you are still at that point where you don’t have to go down that same path. You can learn from my mistakes and spare yourself that grief. Perhaps you can still be the leader your subjects deserve too. You just need to take the time to pursue forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Chrysalis spat. “Do you know who I am? What I have done? Little pony, how can you expect forgiveness to even be on the table when I, and I alone, have brought about the demise of hundreds!”

“And I have brought about the demise of MILLIONS!” Starlight suddenly snapped at the queen, silencing the changeling, who was taken aback. “At one point even leveled all of Equestria! And the only reason that isn’t still the case right now and we’re all lying dead is through some fluke of magic that undid all of that, so none of you would ever have to know about it! But I do! I have to live with that, every day of my life, to somehow go on with the knowledge of what I am capable of doing hanging over my head, haunting me! I’ve done far worse than you, Chrysalis, and am far less deserving of mercy than you. And yet, despite ALL of that,” Starlight motioned behind her at the others, “they still found it within themselves to forgive me. And if they found they could do that with me of all ponies…surely they can do it for you too.” She faced Chrysalis solemnly. “I won’t lie to you, Chrysalis, the path ahead of you would still be very rough, and you won’t succeed at it all at once. You will still have to earn that forgiveness, and trust me, they will make sure you do. I will make sure you do, because I have not forgotten what you just tried to do. But it is still attainable, and I think you have it within you to do it.” She held out one hoof towards Chrysalis. “You just have to take the first step.”

Chrysalis, taken aback by all of this, simply stood there and stared at Starlight, clearly unsure how to react to all of this. Her eyes wandered down to the hoof Starlight was offering her, staring at it for a long second, and as the changeling queen’s gaze started to soften, it was clear she was genuinely considering it. She looked back up at Starlight—who tried to give her an encouraging grin—and continued to debate her options. The others looked on with baited breath in tense and stunned silence, wondering if Starlight’s attempts to reform the changeling queen would actually be successful. Gradually, Chrysalis started to raise her own hoof, and, slowly and shakily, started to reach for Starlight’s proffered hoof.

But then at the last second, Chrysalis’s face twisted back into a scowl and she shoved Starlight’s hoof away. “There is no revenge you could ever conceive that will come close to the revenge I will extract upon you one day, Starlight Glimmer!” she hissed at the unicorn, who backed away, before raising her gaze onto the others, “To all of you, too! Take heed, because I will be back to have my revenge, I vow it!”

Then, backflipping off the open ledge of the ruined room behind her, Chrysalis took to the air and flew down towards the ground far below as fast as she could. Starlight raced to edge to stare in dismay after her. She was quickly joined by a more determined looking Twilight, horn already alight as she moved fire a spell, taking aim at Chrysalis as the ousted queen shot like an arrow across the wastelands below.

“I SEE HIM!” Spike suddenly shouted from behind them, who had still been clearing away rubble with his helpers during all of this. “I SEE HIM! THORAX!”

Startled, Starlight and Twilight both instinctively turned their heads to look back at Spike at the exact time Twilight fired off her spell, the potent spell just narrowly missing the fleeing changeling queen and slamming into the ground beside her with an impressive explosion, kicking up a large cloud of dust. Realizing her error, Twilight twisted back around and prepared to fire again, her eyes searching for Chrysalis. But Chrysalis had made use of the explosion as a distraction and was already gone from sight. Twilight, looking crestfallen, let her horn go dark as she searched the land stretching out before her for some sigh of the missing queen, but Starlight, seeing no point in continuing to do so, instead urgently turned around and moved to join the others at the now mostly cleared away pile of rubble.

She arrived in time for Ember to slip herself the pillar that had fallen, working at lifting it enough so to move it out of the way, and as Starlight watched, she understood what had happened. When the throne room broke apart in the blast, the pillar Chrysalis had unintentionally struck and damaged with her magic earlier gave way and fell inwards into the room, the top of which being just tall enough to come down right where Thorax was laying. Anything caught under it as it fell should’ve been crushed, but when it came down, it appeared it had brought a large chunk of the ceiling down with it. That chunk landed immediately beside Thorax and served as a prop for the pillar and all the rest of the rubble to land upon, making a nice little pocket of space around Thorax and shielding him from the worst of the collapse. Thus he was layered with a coating of dust and had a few more scratches in his chitin from smaller debris that had slipped through, but otherwise had been spared additional harm.

But as Ember moved the pillar aside and the others came closer so to look at Thorax, Starlight realized with alarm that this may not have mattered. Like Chrysalis, he also hadn’t transformed and instead retained his usual appearance, but the fact he of all changelings hadn’t transformed seemed more than cause for concern. Blood was still slowly oozing from the stab wound in his chest, but he was frightfully still as he lay in the now sizeable pool that had collected. His eyes were closed and his mouth slightly ajar, he responded in no obvious way to the movements going on around him, and his gossamer wings had wilted, no longer retaining a solid shape. He was clearly in a bad state.

Spike, naturally, was the first to move towards him. “Thorax!” he cried pitifully as he first tried to shake Thorax awake. When Thorax made no response, he grabbed his balled-up blood-soaked sweater vest from where it had been left and reapplied it to the wound, desperate to do something to help. Others moved in to assist, hovering around Thorax’s form and trying to see what could be done, but before much of anything did, Princess Celestia came striding determinedly into the group.

“Everyone, stand aside!” she commanded resolutely as she approached.

Intimidated by her purposeful approach, everyone sprang away from Thorax, giving the princess of the sun space, except for Spike, who refused to move. “You are not taking me away from him, not now!” he shouted, believing Celestia intended to strip his friend away from him, not having forgotten her role in the changeling’s past banishment.

“No, Spike, you misunderstand,” Celestia pleaded urgently as she arrived, lighting her horn. “I can help save him, please let me!”

Not expecting this, Spike looked up at her in surprise, giving Ember the chance to slip in and, with odd gentleness, pull Spike back a few steps while keeping her arms wrapped softly around him. Once he was out of the way, Celestia immediately cast a healing spell upon the wounded changeling, forming a beam of magical energy that channeled from the tip of her horn and into Thorax as she worked the spell. Following her example, Luna and Cadance both hurried over to join Celestia, casting similar spells of their own so to support Celestia’s. Everyone else stood in a loose circle around the area, anxiously looking on and tensely awaiting developments. With three of the most powerful ponies in Equestria all working together to save Thorax though, it seemed like success could only be assured.

But Starlight noted Twilight was the one princess who didn’t join in with the healing spells, and instead hung back to one side, looking on with an expression that was partly shocked, partly dismayed, and partly horrified, staring at the wounded changeling lying there. At first Starlight thought with disappointment it was because she still bore a lingering dislike for the changeling, but studying Twilight’s face, she quickly realized that wasn’t the case. Twilight’s expression was one of a pony who was making a revelation that potentially changed everything…in time to see it was much too late to actually do anything about it. It was a look of dread, pity, and above all, shame, and Starlight later realized that Twilight had already come to understand the actuality of the situation sooner than all the rest of them.

A fear that was redoubled once Starlight noticed the healing spell was taking far longer to take effect than any healing spell should ever have to on a live subject.

And soon, she wasn’t the only one to realize that.

Cadance was the first to stop casting the spell. She had kept at it for several minutes, but as more and more time went by, the more and more distraught she appeared to get. Finally, with a sob, she broke off the spell and left the other princesses, hurrying to the side of her husband and burying her face into his shoulder to weep. Shellshocked, Shining Armor solemnly wrapped one hoof around her while he looked on, a look of dread similar to Twilight’s growing onto his features. With this, the brief flare of hope that had settled on the group rapidly dissipated and the group became tense with worry and trepidation, realizing what this could mean. Eventually Trixie, standing beside Starlight, made a weak squeal that grew in volume until it turned into a sob of her own. Starlight wrapped a hoof around her in a one-hoofed hug, trying to comfort the mare as she looked on, fighting off tears too.

Luna was the second to stop, only a few minutes after Cadance did. Stone-faced, she had stared down at Thorax’s form while she had cast the spell, but the gears were continuously turning behind her eyes and her face was ever so slightly paling before she ceased casting the spell too. She remained staring at Thorax for a long moment before closing her eyes and reverently bowing her head for a moment, saddened. She then turned her gaze onto Celestia standing beside her, at first as if looking for instruction, but then knowingly moved to speak instead. “Sister…” she began softly, placing a hoof on her elder sister’s shoulder.

But Celestia immediately shrugged off the hoof, making it clear that she wasn’t interested in discussing it. With a look of fierce determination, she kept on working with the healing spell, pumping the magic of the spell continuously into Thorax. To her, failure wasn’t an option, not after everything the changeling had so clearly done in assisting to rescue her, her family, and cherished friends and cohorts, and certainly not after she had spent so long failing to provide aid for the changeling she recognized now had always been innocent of any wrong doing, resolute to ensure she did not fail him again now. So she kept at it, far longer than the others had. When the first healing spell didn’t seem to have the desired effect, she switched to other variants she knew of, rotating through them in hopes one or a combination of them would work. Then she tried making tweaks to the spells on the fly, trying to coax more power out of them, before going on to dangerously invent entirely new and untested ones on the spot. At one point she even resorted to illegal spells she herself had outlawed as much as several eons ago, all in the hope that one of them would be successful where the others had not.

Eventually, though, she ran out, and was forced to loop back to the original spell she had started with, as none of the others had produced any different results.

Rebelliously, she kept with that spell for several minutes longer, running it for triple the length of time it normally would need, longer than any healing spell should ever need to run, but finally, even she knew when to acknowledge facts. So finally, she stopped as well. For a long moment afterwards as a heavy and eerie silence befell the group, she gazed sadly down at Thorax laying there, unmoving and unchanged, mulling through many thoughts in her head, before closing her eyes and heaving a weary sigh. She raised her gaze again and locked eyes with Spike standing on the other side of Thorax from her, still wrapped in Ember’s arms and watching her intently.

He already knew, of course, Celestia could see it in his eyes. But he was still watching her with every ounce of hope he had in him, imploring that she would manage to achieve a miracle regardless. It only made it all the harder for Celestia. She opened her mouth to speak, but after a second, her nerve failed her and she closed it again, instead averting her gaze in shame, unable to bring herself to say it.

It was all Spike needed though. Letting out a strangled gasp, he wrenched himself free of Ember’s limp arms and hurried forward to Thorax’s side. He slowed to a stop as he arrived, standing over Thorax and fumbling his claws about, feeling helpless and frustrated for a moment, his jaw moving up and down as if trying to find something to say, his eyes darting about in some vain hope of doing something to fix this. But even he had to conclude the same as the others. Ultimately, he squeezed his eyes shut and let himself drop to his knees, and as everyone else sadly looked on, the little dragon lowered his head onto Thorax’s side and proceeded to weep bitter tears into the shoulder of the deceased changeling.

Comments

[Scyphi]

Sometimes a story will write itself, leading it to go in directions its writer didn't expect.

I'm afraid this is one of those times.

EDIT: Because this seems to have caused unintentional confusion and led people to believe this was a choice made suddenly and late into the story, I assure everyone that was not the case. What I meant was that when I first got the idea for this story, I didn't initially plan to go this route, but still made the choice to do so early enough in development that I can still say every chapter was written with this outcome in mind.

In other words, I've been planning for this the whole time the story's been published and live...and I did drop hints that it was coming, but it seems I hid them too well and readers overlooked them or dismissed their importance, for which I apologize. I wanted this to be surprising for readers, but not totally-caught-off-guard-never-even-suspected surprised as thoroughly as this.

That said, my plans for the story have not changed.

[elebits360]

Oh.

[KingJoltik]

What? I..........what? I don't.......wow. I uh....yeah. So...is the next chapter the epilogue? I mean....darn. I don't know. I can't tell if I like the ending or not. I mean, I kinda saw that it was going that way but...I don't know.

[Peppermint Frost]

Sorry
Comment will come after mental depression is over
No words right now

evil man

[Johnny B Mediocre]

Twilght for fuck's sake snap out of it and do something nice

68.media.tumblr.com/eec1a00d376f019cc6b4286e1c1e4316/tumblr_osfrgfTzjv1s2k9hxo5_540.gif

[Penalt]

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith

Requiescat in pace, Thorax

[twidash1993]

I really really REALLY hope you are'nt killing off Thorax for real. Please that would be a major stab in the back to everyone who liked this story

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584677
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/179/536/c7f.gif

okay

#1: it's fiction
#2: clearly the author is doing something right if he elicited this response from you
#3: don't be salty
#4: m8 that's what authors do - they try and put feelings that connect with the reader into their stories
#5, and this is a very important one: have you never read a book of any genre before

[twidash1993]

At least put a friggin sad tag on this

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584721

just saying

but if he really does it then fuck me he's got balls

[Even Evil Has Standards]

Taps.

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584732
the AU tag is there for a reason

additionally, calling someone an asshole isn't an opinion

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584737
IIRC Twilight was the only one who went full xenophobe - everyone else was just going by her PTSD-induced accounts before they finally snapped back into reality and were like "uh hey this isn't cool tho"

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584741
Well, her, Shining Armor, and Cadence...but yeah, if the others had just bothered to think for themselves, things wouldn't have escalated this far. As it was, they were all "HURF DURF TWILIGHT'S ALWAYS RIGHT, LET US WIPE YOUR ASS, HURF DURF!"

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584744
well okay Shining and Cadance, again, IIRC, didn't go as far and as extreme as Twilight wanted to - sure, they had their own motives, but Twilight was living in a whole 'nother mainframe entirely until the world decided to say "hey fuck you don't be genocidal" and she suddenly remembered "oh shit genocide isn't friendship"

the others again were just going by what Twilight said - and even they had their suspicions from the start that something wasn't right, that's why Fluttershy discreetly snuck over and helped Thorax when he was sick

I think they only were standing by Twilight just to make sure she didn't lose her lid and overthink herself but unfortunately even they couldn't prevent that from happening so they just said "fuck it we're out"

[KR Chrome]

8584593

I see what you mean. So, Twilight theorized that Thorax was influencing Spike. Now that Thorax is dead and the changelings have all been transformed, it blows that theory out the water. I think when it comes to grief, there will be anger and Twilight will feel guilty. This could drive Spike away from Twilight for good.

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584752

Maybe, but since they didn't put a stop to it sooner, Twilight was able to come up with all those BS "theories" on how Changelings worked and made things worse for everyone involved.

[Laluzi]

...Honestly, this doesn't seem fitting at all. I'm sorry. A bitter ending can be deeply, deeply meaningful, but here it just feels tacked on. It doesn't match the themes of the story that you've spent so much time elaborating on. Acceptance, hope, and perseverance. That everything will end up all right if you just try and keep forging on. It doesn't matter that everyone else got a happy ending, or that Thorax was willing to sacrifice himself. By making this happen to him, you made it so that he was wrong.

I was greatly, greatly enjoying this chapter up until the end. I loved the changes you made to canon, to the changelings themselves, and I was going to talk about that, but now all I can focus on is this one bit. I hope you're trying to pull a bait and switch. If not, from one author to another - I'm sorry, but this was not the correct choice. It's not so much the grief that comes with major character death as it is the total deviance from the tone and feel of the story up until this point. You took a long journey about hope and self-discovery, people starting from a bad place but slowly building something pure around themselves, recovering from past wounds and finding solace in each other, and turned it into a Shoot The Shaggy Dog story with one fell swoop. I have an extremely difficult time believing this is what you intended to do from the start, because the story is not written like this is what you were intending to do. The meaningfulness you get from Thorax making a martyr of himself is drastically outweighed by the meaninglessness you just turned his and Spike's entire journey into. Because Thorax died to save Spike and help the changelings. But he would have done that right from the beginning, so it's not even the culmination of character development. Spike choosing self-sacrifice would have been exceedingly more meaningful, if just as much of a genre-shifting gut punch.

I love to cry over stories. I do so very easily. Give me a sob story or a touching death and I'll break down into a waterworks. I think it's very telling here that I'm not crying, and instead I'm just nursing that bizarre, bitter feeling of having been deceived by a work I was genuinely enjoying.

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584756
do you really think there's any way to stop Twilight from doing anything, particularly when she shifts into "GENIUS MODE"

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584760
Yeah; take her by surprise and whack her in the head with something to render her unconscious, then stand over her and keep whacking her each time she starts coming to....

[Johnny B Mediocre]

8584755
I wonder what damage control Twilight will try to pull here - but hopefully she realizes the ultimate error of her ways once more and doesn't try to make excuses/tries to defend herself but still manages to get an unknowing jab in at Thorax who somehow made this all happen for some reason

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584759
Well, he DID say the story went in directions even he didn't expect...

...holy fricking crap, he really DID bungle this, didn't he?

[Laluzi]

8584778
Again. I know this is something that happens. I have a fic in the works; it's on chapter 34 and it's been being written for over five years now. (I'm slow.) My style has changed immensely over that stretch of time, as have my headcanons on the characters involved. You bet I've changed my plans, plenty of times. Many ideas have been generated and discarded. However, there's a difference between going in different directions than you thought you would - which might include a different resolution, different relationships, new arcs, or sudden ships - and changing the theme of your work. The tone. The underlying message. Kind-of-sort-of the genre, but not... quite so variable, it's almost as simple as whether or not you're telling an uplifting tale or a downer one, a suspenseful one or a slow-paced one, something straightforward or something mysterious. The former can be changed with all the flexibility that an evolving storyline written over a long period of time allows. The latter, though, needs to be handled extremely delicately, or else you get things like this - odd, jarring twists out of nowhere that leave the reader feeling blindsided and empty, instead of touched and desperately sobbing into a tissue box like they should be after a big emotional death scene.

The changes to your original plan should not be visible to your readers. They should feel like natural continuations of the story you were writing before you changed your mind. If they don't, you need to go back and change details in the story prior to accommodate them, and if those overhauls are too huge and overwhelming, you need to consider that maybe this idea doesn't fit in your story.

In the end, I can't tell Scyphi what to do. It's their story, not mine. But I can give my advice and my feedback, and that's that this wasn't a good idea. It failed to evoke the proper emotional response and engendered frustration in me for meta reasons, not in-story ones, and I can see the cracks between this event and... well, basically the entire story leading up to this point.

[Raith021]

If I were the author:

Next chapter, near the start; Twilight, angry at herself, does everything she can as Alicorn of magic to set right the wrong she committed oh so long ago.

...followed swiftly, regardless of her success or failure, by Spike giving her the "reasons you suck" speech to end all "reasons you suck" speeches.

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

I'm not sure how to feel about the end to this chapter. All the character development of Thorax and the others before now, especially happening in the middle of the rush to save Equestria, feels kinda pointless now.

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584827
I have a sinking feeling the author just did this as a way to generate "drama"....

[Thule]

8584593
Wow.... just wow....

I don't even know IF I even want Thorax to be revived.... for the story's sake of course.
This thorax was just a so lovable character.
To see him go is like twisting a knife in the gut..... unexpected, up close, personale and very memorable.

Now this would be an amazing way to make this a real heartfelt and burning tragedy and leave it on a high note.

Of course he could be revived some deus ex machina way, like with the elements, spikes heartfelt grief or a collective sacrifice of emotions from the new changelings pulling him back to life....
BUT! Leaving him as is.... this could be one of those fics that don't end the way the reader want it to end, and still the reader leaves with a closure in regards to the story.

It will be really interesting to see what you will do Scyphi

[Dark Monarch Sombra]

8584842
Don't give him any ideas, dammit! And by one of those stories, you mean the ones that the authors deliberately end horribly so they can get off on the readers' tears?

[gakposter]

Alright. I'm thinking of reading this, but I read the first chapter and was immediately put off.
You mean they cast him out, never try to contact him again, because he tried to be friends with a changeling?

Sorry, no. OOC for any character outside of Cadence and Shining Armor, who got traumatized by changelings.

Edit: Why are you downvoting? This is going off of the description. As it says,

Spike led Thorax into the throne room of the Crystal Castle confident he could convince the others that the changeling could be trusted. That he meant no harm, and instead wanted to be an ally and live peacefully with them. That he could make them see Thorax for what he really was. That they could befriend the changeling and accept him as one of their own.

They didn't.

That's pretty clear.

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

8584842

BUT! Leaving him as is.... this could be one of those fics that don't end the way the reader want it to end, and still the reader leaves with a closure in regards to the story.

I kinda fail to see how it leaves the reader with closure. The grief that the story title refers to is from the negative consequences to the relationships of Spike and everypony else who was involved in rejecting Thorax's attempt at friendship. That's still unresolved, and this doesn't help that. In fact, it makes it a lot more complicated if it sticks. Spike had planned to spend his time with Thorax after all, now he has no where he can go except out on his own (I kinda hope he goes with the reformed changelings to help them setup) or back to Twilight and her friends. This entire thing will hang over their heads, with no chance at making up for earlier actions (like they did with Zecora in Ponyville once they accepted her). It feels wrong for the meta direction of the story. Or rather, it feels wrong if you take the position of righting wrongs and redemption like the rest of the series.

[448]

*people criticizing an unhappy ending*

Welcome to the tier of storytelling where the author is good enough to not buckle to people begging for a feel good ending.

TwT

[DARKPHANTOM13]

Please, don't kill off Thorax. I don't think my heart can take it.

[DominiusTWD]

wow, i um, wow. ok so this is a thing.

[SageBrony07]

Holy crap. That is a big different ending. Great job. It was awesome and sad.

[Laluzi]

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think I can better articulate what's upsetting me about this - at least, in a way that should be useful to Scyphi.

To get to the root of the issue, we need to consider where most of the story took place and what it focused on, and that was Vanhoover, where Spike and Thorax worked on building a life from the ground up while staying beneath Twilight's manic radar.

Thorax died for his friends and his species. But the story wasn't about the changelings' way of life, and Thorax was willing to die for Spike straight at the beginning. His fellow changelings were something Thorax cared about, deeply, but he did not actually make any growth in that direction, because right from the get-go he wanted to integrate into pony society and make friends. He learned that he was right, but his worldview never changed. His martyrdom is not the culmination of anything, ergo it is not as touching as it should be and it is not a conclusion to his character. No, this story was about Thorax and Spike building a life together, and Spike coming to terms with the grief and rejection he felt from his former friends. It spent an excessive amount of time and detail on it - and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave no room for error on what this story was about. And honestly, we knew the changeling plot was coming from canon, but it was otherwise tangential to the story itself. The enmity between ponies and changelings was always part of the plot, but otherwise it just swept the old antagonists and driving forces out of the way for a new one, and while it did squeeze out some wonderful character development and built burnt bridges along the way, now we don't even get the old resolutions the story was building up to.

Because - leaving aside the way the story cared much more about Thorax and Spike's personal lives than it did anything else, Thorax just got killed by an antagonist of a quasi-side-plot who was never the driving opposition in the story, in a way that he very clearly didn't need to die. Like, it's really obvious the choice was just done for dramatics. Thorax died while having the love and hope that transformed all of the rest of the Changelings channeled through him. The Deus Ex Machina was right there. To ignore it seems contrarian to all that Changeling King lore we got earlier in the fic, to say nothing of its themes.

It feels like this story became another story somewhere between the start of Chrysalis's plot and now. Where is Fly Leaf? Ragg? Does all that happened in Vanhoover mean anything now? What I said before about this being a hopeful story suddenly becoming nihilistic hasn't changed, but the departure is starker than that.

[Laluzi]

8584915
Oh, Scyphi can do whatever he wants. But it's not your place to wave away criticism unless you can actually argue against the points raised, because this is meant as a discussion. If you'd read my post, you'd know that 'feel-good' has nothing to do with it. I'd be just as annoyed at a grim, bleak story that suddenly got wrapped up with a neat little bow where everyone got what they wanted after all.

Saying I'm just butthurt over a sad ending and slapping a downvote on all my posts is being dishonest. If you're going to disagree with me, and that's fine, I'd at least like the courtesy of hearing why. Who knows, it might even lead to a good discussion.

Heh... part of the reason I prefer FFN's comment system to this is that the readers don't interact with each other. Fan wars are not very useful.

[LtMajorDude]

Wow.

Okay, first off, I'm divided amongst the comment section now. Part of me refuses this direction this story has gone through so far. Part of me shoulda expected this from the very beginning. Part of me can't believe Thorax is dead. Part of me can just accept that this is just purely an Alternate Universe story and just be happy that canon-wise that he's alive (granted, he's a Skittle but he's alive and it's a happy ending for him).

Either way, I'll just say one thing.

Twilight Sparkle.

...ooooooooooooh, you commenters don't wanna know what's going on in my mind that involves her.

Scyphi, I'm not even gonna call you that two-worded name I always say in the previous comments. :|

[448]

8584955

Idk why you thought I was talking to you you probably made a lot of valid criticisms, there are legit people bashing the author simply because he made them feel sad

[Thule]

8584875
If you read that quote you took from my comment you will see that I wrote ''could be one of those....''.
This refers to how Scyphi write the ending, not whether he revives Thorax or not, but how he execute it.

Even if Thorax remains deceased, we the reader could get closure due to how Spike solve his grievances towards the others and how the others solve their (varying levels of) guilt for their part in this and learn from it.

The reason I think that leaving Thorax dead is a good thing for the story, is because that would work of the whole thing Starlight tried to advocate to Chrysalis about.
Real bad things happened, that have permanent consequences. Can that be forgiven by those most affected?

The difference would be that instead of Chrysalis vs. the ponies, It would be Twilight and her neigh-sayers vs. Spike.
How would it be resolved... with a whimper or a bang?

PS:
The title could also be referring to how Twilight griefs over losing her bond with Spike or losing the chance to get to know Thorax (who she now knows was a great guy), BUT she have now learned not to judge someone based on her own bias and narrow outlook.
Or...
How everyone grieves for the hero, the cause, for the new era of peace. How Thorax died to make a point. How something/someone bad could become good, how changeling went from parasites to symbiotes.

[Thebaconpiggybank]

Yay! It's sad! Now if only I could keep holding back these tears...

But really, great job. The death made this so much more believable in my eyes. It basically told me that life isn't always a happy ending. Still, Thorax showed that Changlings can be peaceful and not need to steal love. This is wonderful and I love it. He died for his cause. Please keep up the great work.

[GamePlayer64]

For change to happen to affect hundreds of lives, it has a price. It’s usually cost that affects all and not even friendship nor Harmony can undo death itself.

[Laluzi]

8584978
Alright. I accept I was too defensive. Sorry about that.

On the flip side, I see exactly one person that fits that category (and admittedly it wasn't a good position. Writers deliberately elicit sadness all the time. When they manage to do it when they want to, it's a mark of good writing. And I love a good cry over a depressing fic.) Every other dissenter has explained why they're upset with the chapter, and frankly I sneer at the people who downvote those simply because they wordlessly disagree, because it's useful feedback - every bit as much as the people who talk about what they liked about this. Saying 'I don't like this' or 'I like this' engenders bad and good feelings respectively, but they don't actually tell the author anything.

[Haoryu Changer]

For fuck sakes, now I have to wait another week to see if he's really dead or not?

One of the best stories I've read about Spike. If Thorax is dead it was well written and concluded greatly, if he's alive you better make it clear.

9.5/10 so far because nothing's perfect.

[Earthpatriot117]

This was the climax I've waited for since chapter 1.
It's, its Beautiful.
Truly THIS is how I see the scene in the show played out.
But thorax dying.....NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Something has to happen, bring thorax back to us!!!

This was an amazing chapter dude! as great as I guessed it would be, and better!
The next part of this is where spike in his grief and broken heart becomes enraged! All that emotion,and more that was building up inside of him will come out, he will scream at celestia and others his hate and how it's thier fault thorax is dead, but it will pale in comparison once he turns his attention to twilight. Oh boy, I've been waiting excitingly for this, and kinda treading it too, but mostly praying for it. Xd
Where spike will slap twilight real, REAL fucking hard!!! That she will forever have a scar! TAKE THAT YOU RACIST HYPERCRITAL BITCH!!!!!!
Well now that I got that out of my system......ANOTHER CLIFFHANGER? REALLY!!?
You evil Troll! Lol
I think I'm gonna be even MORE anxious waiting for the next chapter! Xp

[Architect Ironturtle]

8584990 Don't write Thorax off just yet. If the author was really working that angle they would have changed the story tags to include Tragedy. It's in the tag list for a very good reason, and Scyphi not using it is a clue for what's to come.

That said, a fake-out death does not fit the story at all. Any drama gained from the death would be lost again as soon as he came back, and it goes against both canon and all the buildup this story has gone through. If Scyphi wanted suspense, he could easily pull King Thorax from the wreckage and set up the confrontation with Twilight before ending the chapter. That would have us all on the edge of our seats for the next update.

[Bronyz4ever90]

If Thorax is dead, then I would honestly prefer that Spike just leave Equestria, go back to Vanhoover. Honestly, anything aside from go back to Twilight and the others. In the next chapter, Spike rips into everypony aside from Trixie, Starlight, and Ember. "Whatever friendship we once had, is dead. I can never forget...perhaps one day with most of you, I can possibly forgive and we can be friends again...but you" He then turns to Twilight, and speaks in a deadly tone "Their's nothing between us now. Not now, not ever again. To me, your the Princess of Friendship..and nothing more..."