1 - II - Learning to Trust
Part One: Revelation
Chapter II - Learning to Trust
Shining Armor was worried. He hadn’t seen Twilight since his brief chat with her in his tower the previous day, and the ponies were beginning to wonder where she was. Her friends had told him about her suspicions of Cadence being a… changething, or whatever, but it was absurd. He knew how Twilight got when she was stressed.
They were all getting ready to perform the recital of the wedding, but Twilight needed to be there as the Best Mare for it to proceed. At that moment, Cadence pushed the door open and nodded her head. They all crowded around her and listened to what she had to say.
“I found Twilight. She was wandering the streets below. I asked her if she was going to join us and…” His Cady’s eyes teared up a little, and he felt a jab of sorrow. “She said she can’t be the Best Mare. She insisted that we have somepony fill in for her because she ‘Just wasn’t feeling up to the task after everything that had happened.’” She waved a single hoof, then slowly walked into the hall with her head hung.
She then straightened up and shook her head. “But, if she doesn’t want to be the Best Mare, then we have to pick somebody else.”
Shining nodded and looked over the various gathered ponies. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a Best Mare, but perhaps… “Spike, how would you like to be the Best Drake for the ceremony?” Cadence smiled, and Spike looked shocked.
“Me? But… shouldn’t we try to convince Twilight to come back? Are we sure that she’s even in the right mind to make a decision like this?”
Cadence nodded and spoke firmly. “She was certain of her choice. I wish that she could come, of course, but whatever is troubling her prevents her from doing so.”
Shining gave a small frown. He thought back to his conversation with the Bearers about Twilight’s suspicion, then mentally slapped himself on the hoof. She was his fiancée, not some sort of evil monster. He pushed the traitorous thoughts from his mind as he watched Spike.
Shining took note of how worried he looked. Shining Armor knew that Spike was essentially a little brother to him and Twily, but he looked even more worried than Shining did. Spike nodded and rubbed his hands together.
“Okay, yeah. I’ll be Best Drake, but only after I go looking for Twilight, okay?" Cadence opened her mouth to object, but Spike continued. “She’s my sister as much as she is Shining’s. In fact Shining, you can come with, if you want, see if you can talk her out of whatever funk she’s in.”
Cadence nodded merrily. “Of course! Go ahead, I’ve got things covered here.” The drake and the stallion nodded and headed off towards the door. Cadence sighed and tried not to let her mood sully her expression. With a twitch of concentration, she sent her consciousness into her hives egregore and began to speak with her children.
“I need two inactive infiltrators to tail Spike and Shining Armor and bring them back if they get too close to anything that may compromise our plans.” Some affirmative chittering sounded back, and she smiled. This day was going to be perfect, especially with that moth of a Queen out of the way.
———<Canterlot Crystal Caves>———
Twilight, or Citlali, gasped as feeling returned to her body, causing her chest to tighten in pain. She was very confused. There was no flash of a spell, no indicator of the spell. Just a flick of the horn and she was… Oof. She looked over herself and frowned. Black chitin was covered in a purple ichor, all seeping from a crack in the front. It was going to be hard to take care of.
Citlali reached into her magical reserves and was worried to find it low. Chrysalis took some for herself when she sent Citlali down… to wherever she was. Citlali slowly stood and sent a ping throughout the city. Ten returned from above, which meant that she was underground, in the Canterhorn.
She lit her horn and used some magic to cast a healing spell on her wound. Some of the flesh knit itself together, but the chitin hardly closed at all. Life couldn’t be bothered to cut Citlali some slack. She slowly began to walk forward but stopped when pain spiked out from her chest.
A spike of hunger went through her, and she instinctively sent out a pulse, looking for emotions nearby. Luckily enough, she got a small trickle of emotion coming from another place in the caves. Despair, heartbreak.
As she began to near the source of emotions, more, smaller varieties began to find their way to her head. Despair and heartbreak, but also panic, worry, anger, and… love. She felt the emotions suddenly shift to confusion, to fear, to anger. Citlali put everything together and pulled from the emotions. Cadence, the real Cadence, was in the caves and had felt Citlali in her emotions.
After shifting into her unicorn disguise, Twilight shouted into the darkness. She kept her changeling eyes, grateful for their dark vision. “Cadence! Are you there? It’s me, Twilight! Chrysalis trapped me down… nghh.” The wound in her soft body had torn open, to her annoyance and pain.
Denial swept over her, sending a clear message. “No, I’m not some illusion conjured by that bug, it’s really me! Send some sort of signal so I can find you!” There was a moment of hesitation, then a small trickle of apprehension, defensiveness, and hope. Emotion-speak for ‘I hope it’s you, but I’ll stamp your head in if it isn’t.’
Twilight grabbed the trail of emotion, and made her way towards it, taking the excess for herself, and using it to heal her gash. It would have gone to waste anyways. Eventually, with much stumbling, cursing, and wincing, she found Cadence’s location.
Behind a thick wall of crystalline rock, one that would take a large amount of magical strength to break. “Uh, Cadence? I’m running a little low on magic. I’ve been burning emotions for energy recently, so I’d like a little restorative boost. And I would move away from this wall if I were you, it’s going to be loud.”
She heard Cadences voice from behind the wall. “Oh. Okay. I’ll send something over, just keep your horn lit and pull it in, okay?” Twilight agreed. A flurry of emotions began to flow towards me, from hope to appreciation, to love, to… lust. As she took it all in, Twilight chuckled.
“Don’t think I didn’t catch that lust, Cadence. You had better not be thinking of my brother in there!” The lust stopped flowing, and she smirked. “Thank you. Now, step back, please.”
Twilight charged her horn but felt the magic hit a physical limit. She dropped her disguise into Citlali and continued charging the spell. The magic pooled into a large fire around her horn, lighting up the caves around her. She let it loose, and a wave of concussive energy struck the wall, tearing it apart into a cloud of dust.
Citlali quickly became Twilight and pulled the dust out of the air, into a pile on the floor. Cadence was blocking her ears with her hooves and looking at the devastation in awe. Twilight rubbed her ears as the ringing of the collapsing crystal died away.
Twilight stepped forward and began to dance. “Sunshine, su— NNGHMPH!?” Cadence had let loose a blast of magic, sending Twilight crashing into the wall behind her. With a small scream and a curse, the gash tore even further. So much for healing magic. She looked up to see a very angry, very tired looking Cadence standing over her with a lit horn. “Cadence, what was—“
“No, stop. Stop using her body, stop using her voice, stop trying to lie to me. I can feel your emotions, and they’re dead. And, as far as I know, Twilight Sparkle can’t sense emotions, much less burn them, like a changeling. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t crush you for all you’ve done towards me and my friend.”
Twilight realized the situation and covered her eyes with a groan. “I knew I was going to slip up eventually.” She slid her hoof off of her face and stared Cadence in the eye. “You got promoted to the rank of Senior Pillow Captain after you saved the life of Commander Smarty Pants in the great battle of Shining’s Room.”
Cadence gasped and stepped back from Twilight like the unicorn had caught on fire. A quick check revealed that yes, Twilight was in fact on fire. She quickly refocused, and the fire died out. “It’s me, Cadence. Always has been, always will be. I was afraid you’d figure this out. Aside from that snake taking your place above, a couple other Queens, and myself, you’re the best there is at emotion magic.”
“But… when… how…” Tears built on her face. “No, I can’t— If you really have been a changeling for that long, I would have been able to sense it. Changelings emotions don’t give off energy. All the time I’ve known you, you’ve had charged emotions."
Twilight gave her a smile. “I know. A feedback effect: Every time you were near me, or one of my changelings, I would push emotional energy out of them. Expensive, risky, and not at all reliable, but it worked well enough. Try me, I’m a pony right now!”
Cadence looked at Twilight, then began to shake her head. “N— No. I— I know how changelings work, I helped Aunt Celestia take care of an entire hive that foalnapped and replaced ponies. We only found about 13 of the total 1,057, the rest probably died of age--”
Twilight cut her off. “No. You only found 13 of the originals because only 13 ponies were replaced! The rest were only there to survive, only there because they knew they could benefit from ponies, and ponies from them. Changelings are not parasitic, Cadence. They’re symbiotic.
“I remember the emergency meeting the Queens held to mourn Queen Transitalia. Whatever changelings not killed in your raid were there, even though they knew that without a Royal, or a Queen, their hive would starve to death, doomed to a slow fade into obscurity. They were dead on their hooves.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. “You’re going to have to trust me, Cadence. Right now, Chrysalis is with your fiancee, getting ready for her wedding. Best thing to do right now is work to take her out, and that means getting to the Princesses, and warning them of Chrysalis.” Twilight moved to stand but slumped back as her wound made itself known again. “First, actually, I need to patch this up. I can’t move too far with a wound like this, and I don’t have enough magic to teleport and heal.”
Cadence stared for a moment, then took a long sigh. “Why couldn’t you trust us, Twily? You could have told us about your hive, Aunt Tia and I, I mean. We would have helped.”
Twilight laughed harshly. “Really? Just a minute ago you were talking about how you ‘knew changelings’ and had ‘taken care’ of a hive that had made its way into Equestrian society. That was… what, 27 years ago? Not to mention the Sisters' past with my kind and my line. My grandmother and those two weren’t really best friends.”
Cadence closed her mouth and counted some seconds. “But you are… you. I think, I hope. The other changelings are…” She trailed off.
“Are what? Deceivers? Foalnappers? Monsters? Transitalia was one of the greatest Queens, one of the greatest ponies I had ever had the pleasure to meet. She and her hive came to my own aid many times, she stood up for me whenever another Queen accused me of something foul, and she defended my hive as if it were her own. Maybe, just maybe if she had been alive twenty years ago, if you hadn’t murdered her over false evidence, my hive would still be alive, and I wouldn’t be here, wounded in a cave, but perhaps teaching my nymphs how to perform their duties to the hive. So don’t you dare think for a second that I am an exception because I am just like the others. The only reason I have done the horrible things I have done is that my hive, my entire lineage, my children are an endangered species. There are only fourteen changelings in my hive, including myself. The next smallest hive is in the hundreds.” Twilight's voice escalated until she was shouting at Cadence, tears in her eyes.
Cadence frowned and turned her head slightly. “What ‘horrible things?’” She asked cautiously.
Twilight’s breath caught for a moment, but she quickly recomposed herself. “We need to focus on defeating Chrysalis, and healing our wounds.”
Cadence stared at Twilight for a moment, then spoke. “Why can’t you just shapeshift the wound away?”
“Whatever wounds we have carry between all of our forms if it can. If my horn gets snapped as a unicorn, my actual horn will snap as well. So, when I have a large gash in my skin, I have a large gash…” She drew back the magic around the wound, revealing the crack in her chitin. “This is why changeling armies aren’t unstoppable. We can still be harmed.”
Cadence was visibly shaken by the sudden shift but began looking over the injury. “So, how should I help? I’m not exactly an expert in healing magic. I could never memorize all the different names and spells for different parts of the body.”
“Just… start thinking happy thoughts, and I’ll work on healing myself. Don’t worry, I won’t take more than is offered.”
Cadence looked skeptical but nodded. She began to think about the things that made her happy: Aunt Tia, helping others, Shining Armor, and similar subjects. Twilight took the emotions that floated towards nothing in particular and began the slow process of healing herself.
———<Canterlot Grand Ballroom, a few hours later>———
“I’m just saying, I should have involved her more. I knew that she didn’t like surprises, and yet, I still thought it better to let the invitation tell her, instead of taking a few minutes off my shift to send her a letter.”
Shining Armor was sitting against a pillar, holding his head in his hooves. Twilight had gone missing, and no guards, Elements, or brothers could find her. Princess Celestia even tried, but she said that Twilight was not within reach of the sun’s light.
As such, Shining immediately began to blame himself for his sister’s disappearance. If only he had let Twilight plan more of the ordeal, then she wouldn’t have run off. Cadence was, at the moment, trying her hoof at finding Twilight, but she was likely to return soon. The ceremony was drawing closer, and the Best Mare was missing.
Spike was worried as well. Not just for his sister, but for his mother, and Queen as well. He knew that Chrysalis had likely taken care of Twilight, and he was worried that Chrysalis would try to do more than just trap her. He could still feel her life in his mind. Spike decided that he needed to do something.
“Hey, girls, can I talk with you in private for a moment?” The Bearers turned to Spike and moved over to him.
Rainbow was, understandably, the first to Spike. “What’s up, little fire starter?”
Spike groaned. “I only set the tree on fire once— No, not important. Twilight might be in danger right now.” The others gasped in worry. “When she came here, she saw past the disguise of a changeling Queen named Chrysalis. Remember her talk last night? She was going to try and talk Chrysalis out of her plans and told me to let you five, and the Princesses know if anything went wrong.”
Applejack blinked. “So Twi’ just went and decided to talk t’ this Queen, without backup? What the hay did she do that for?”
Spike winced. “Twilight and Chrysalis have… history. Stuff she’s never told anyone but me. Not even Princess Celestia. I told Twilight that she shouldn’t fight Chrysalis because she was too mad to make any real plans. She obviously ignored me.”
The Bearers were silent as they pondered the situation. Pinkie Pie cocked her head. “But why hasn’t Twilight told anypony? Friends are there to share big secrets with because nopony can have big secrets by themselves for too long, It would smash them, like a bug.” Fluttershy winced.
“Not this secret. Twilight has been adamant about not revealing it to anypony. I’m only telling you about it right now because Twilight’s most likely going to talk about it to you after we take care of Chrysalis, and I’ll get her to talk is she doesn’t. We need to get the Princesses and convince them that Cadence isn’t really Cadence before she returns. Pinkie, I need to send a letter to the Princess, since she’s probably busy with royal duties right now.”
Pinkie smiled and shook parchment, ink, and a quill from her mane, which Spike used to write a letter.
Dear Princess Celestia,
It’s Spike. Twilight isn’t missing because she’s distraught over not being talked to about the wedding, she’s gone because she was trying to take care of a changeling Queen she found in the city and did something stupid. The Queen is the cause of all the strange attacks in the city the past month, and she has currently replaced Cadence. I don’t know where the real Cadence is right now.
We, the Bearers and I, need your help to stop Chrysalis and find Twilight, and Cadence. Please believe me on this. Twilight could be hurt right now, and we can’t afford to waste time trying to argue over who the real Cadence is. We can confront Chrysalis directly if you want, but I think we should free Twilight and Cadence before we attack her. She could order their deaths if we did.
Sincerely, and urgently,
Spike.
The Bearers and Spike waited for a few moments before a troubled-looking Princess Celestia teleported in front of them. “Spike, Bearers. Are you absolutely sure of this? Because if you are wrong, then our accusations could greatly strain our friendship with Princess Cadence.”
“As sure as you are a Princess, Princess. Twilight and I noticed Chrysalis’ disguise yesterday when we first saw her. Twilight went to confront her last night and hasn’t been seen since. Do you know anyplace that Chrysalis may have hidden Twilight?”
Celestia motioned for the others to follow, and they began to move. A distraught Shining hardly noticed them as they passed. “A few. But tell me, why would a changeling Queen want to harm Twilight? I believe I can understand Cadence, but why Twilight?”
“I can’t tell you the specifics, that’s Twilight’s job, but I will say that Twilight and Chrysalis have had a bad history. Twilight’s going to tell you everything after this all blows over, this entire thing really has gone on for too long.”
“I am intrigued, Spike, to hear what secret Twilight has been keeping from us. I cannot think of a time in recent years that she could have encountered Chrysalis, which worries me.”
Fluttershy spoke up. “Wait, why would this Queen want to hurt Cadence? Did they do something to each other?”
Celestia sighed. “27 years ago, Cadence and I discovered a changeling hive that had infiltrated and replaced ponies. We destroyed the hive, but the majority of the original ponies were never found. They are now presumed dead, which is a great tragedy. I assume that destroying a hive would make the other Queens very angry, as evident by the attacks by this Queen Chrysalis.” Spike winced.
Fluttershy squeaked and looked down. Rainbow coughed. “If you don’t mind my asking, Princess, where are we going? We’ve kinda just been walking through the castle for a while, and I wanna look for Twilight, not stained glass.”
Celestia paused, then nodded. “Apologies, I got distracted. We will first search some of the abandoned factories in the city, which could easily be used as a prison. Then we will check the Crystal Caves in the Canterhorn, but we shall do so manually: Those caves reflect many spells cast in there, including teleportation.”
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This is a better course of action than previously, methinks. Well done.
There are still some remnants of the previous version that don't fit here. Mostly random switches to first person and back again. Keep your eyes out for them. (I forgot exactly where I saw it and I'm about to fall asleep, so I can't quote the paragraph or whatever right now.) Other than that and a few mistakes here and there, this seems to be a direct improvement over the previous version. Well done!
Oh thank god it is better.
This feels like a story!
This chapter is better, but I'm not sure I like placing the ponies as the unwitting 'bad guys'. That's one thing this story had going for it, avoiding the trope of almost all other (x) is a changeling, or changeling reform stories: That the changelings are just victims of ponies trying to survive and ponies don't know how hard it is. It is the most over-saturated trope in FIMFIC writing, even surpassing "Rainbow breaks a wing" and "Twilight messes up a spell". I mean, how are the ponies at fault here, even if Transitalia replaced 'only 13 ponies'? A foreign nation is operating within your nation's borders and for all information is harming your people, yet also refuses to have any sort of information exchange or diplomatic talks with you? You, as a ruler, MUST act to remove them with all haste, because the enemies are creeping around in the shadows of your own nation and that's all you can know. Yet, I can already tell, the ponies are going to be shamefaced over this despite doing their duty as they should have.
Personally disappointing to me. I liked the reasoning flow of the original better.
It's interesting how casually Celestia and Cadance can talk about genocide
Alright, chapter 2. First one had tons of changes, seeing as how Citlali was taken away immediately, so this is already gonna be super different. Let's do this! Edit: I'm really getting into this. Ponies are accidental bad guys makes for good motivation for Chrissy to attack. Nice.
Hah.
______________
Same as before, all edits are in chronological order in case I make you lose your place.
*if she was
Shining nodded and looked
*prevents
*fiancée (Generally, with French words, words without the final "e" refer to men, and words with the "e" refer to women)
*Shining took note of how worried Spike looked. (Don't play the pronoun game at the beginning of a paragraph)
Move that quotation mark over to the left.
Comma
What's this supposed to mean? Did you typo?
Citlali, reached
*sent a ping
Comma
There are a few ways to fix this
Remove "Because" (and capitalize "Life")
OR
*'Because life couldn't be bothered to cut me some slack.' (To make it sound like Citlali's thoughts)
*forward
Comma
Don't switch to first person. Change "I" to the name (I think it should be Twilight here)
*into a cloud of dust.
Both commas before the word "and", but not the other one.
*off of
Add the quotation mark at the end of Cadence's sentence.
You DON'T have to add the quotation mark here if you don't want to. This is because it's the same character talking, and talking immediately after a paragraph break.
*fiancé
*greatest ponies, I had
*perform
"What 'horrible things'?"
*if she doesn't.
8226796 Fixed the typos, and clarified the moth sentence. It was supposed to be Chrysi insulting Citlali, but it might've seemed like she was still referring to Spike and Shining.
get her to talk is she doesn’t
That's *if she doesn't
Also, there are a ton of unneeded commas
The talk between them is as interessting as it is weird.
I I have payed enough attention to the story then Chrysalis said Twilight manipulated her hives memories right?, since the bearers maybe are going to be her hive?
Well anyway, I kind of hope that she is not just taking the mind spell back or whatever and that she has to work to earn their trust or gives them the free will to either join her after a while or not, something like that.
Two comments on this story:
First; the encounter and reveal with cadence should have been a lil more fleshed out, but it's alright.
Second; I FREAKING LOVE the reveals of this story's backstory. It's so easy to comprehend and makes for some REALLY COOL world building.
CANT WAIT, WHICH IS WHY IM STOPPING THIS COMMENT NOW.