Insurgence

by Rose Quill

Awakening

I drifted, floating as I had quite often in recent times. It really had no meaning to me while I slept. I just knew that I would drift towards wakefulness and it would be a bleak and dark as it had been the time before.

I was unable to fight it this time and I came to the surface, smells inundating my nose as soon as my senses were back.

Clean linens were a constant as they had been the last few times I had surfaced. As were the smell of sweat and the faintest hint of sterile medication.

But the blackness remained. I gave a faint sigh and started to let myself drift back down when a new smell grew in my awareness.

Anger, tainted with a touch of sickly sweetness to it.

“Oh,” it purred in what was supposed to be a comforting voice as I sank back into my dreamless sleep. “How you must hate them for this. I think we might be of benefit to each other.”

It terrified me.

“No,” I croaked. Something about that voice…

“I’m sorry,” the voice continued, the sickly smell getting stronger as I felt magic slither over my body.

“I wasn't aware of giving you a choice,” it finished coldly as a spike of magic was shoved through one of the cracks in my horn.

And I screamed in horror as the face appeared before me, fanged and filled with madness.

---

Luna paced slowly along the path in the dreamscape when a distant scream reached her ears. She paused and turned towards the sound, a particular dreamscape illuminated in the distance. She was beginning to enter it when another scream ripped through it, shattering it and sending a shockwave throughout the dreamworld.

“Sorla,” she breathed as she struggled to regain her equilibrium. She immediately left the dream realm and alerted one of the thestrals standing guard outside her balcony.

“Wake the day guard and my sister,” she hissed urgently. "There is no time to waste!”

---

The scream rippled through dreams, waking those that it touched.

*

Starlight Glimmer sat up suddenly, ears twisting this way and that trying to locate the faint screaming that had woke her. It hadn’t sounded like Twilight, and Trixie was sound asleep next to her, both of them covered with a blanket she didn’t remember having brought with them to the sitting room.

“It almost sounded,” she began, ears still twitching as Trixie stirred.

“I dun wann’go to school,” she murmured. “The other students laugh at me.”

She looked down at the sleepy mare, a smile quirking at the corners of her mouth.

“Silly filly,” she said as she leaned down and gave the Unicorn a peck on the crown of her head and pulled the blanket back up over her.

It had probably been a dream, anyway.

*

Cadence jerked awake, feeling a tingling sensation along her skin. She poked Shining Armor awake and strode to the door, the guards outside snapping directly to attention.

“Sergent Sentry,” she said. “Send guards to the healing ward and rouse Sunburst and Mandible. We’re enacting search protocols.”

The blue-maned guard snapped a salute and turned, cantering off to carry out his Princess’s orders.

“Search protocols?” Shining asked as he came forward, armor settling around his barrel. “I thought we were at peace with the Changelings?”

“Ever since she kidnapped us, I’ve kept a warning spell dormant for the event that Chrysalis tries to return here,” she looked him in the eye. “It just got set off.”

Flash Sentry rushed back. “Your Highness,” he began.

“Steady on, Flash,” Shining said. “Catch your breath.”

The Pegasus nodded, taking a deep breath.

“The doors to the medical ward you set up were broken down from the outside, the guards unconscious. The prisoner was gone, her bandages still laying to the side, with this on them.”

His wing extended, revealing a scrap of linen with a sticky green slime on it.

*

Sunset screamed, sitting up and grabbing her head, Twilight bolting upright at the sound of pain in her wife’s voice.

Images spun around in her vision, Sorla, the Crystal Empire, a dark cavern filled with ever-shifting holes and cracks. But the fear, so immediate and gut twisting as it had been a moment ago was already fading.

“Another nightmare?” Twilight asked. They had both slowly been resuming normal life, but some of Sunset’s actions had left her with deeper emotional scars than her brainy wife.

She had often seen herself setting Neighlin on fire, and sometimes she would feel the flames engulf her as well, sometimes she would start shifting into her demon form, and sometimes Neighlin would suddenly become her mother instead just as the flames ignited. This wasn’t the first time she had awoken crying or screaming since returning.

“I don’t know,” she whispered as Twilight stroked her back. “It felt different. More like terror than anything I’ve felt before. And I’ve never seen some of the things I saw this time. Caves, tunnels, none of it was familiar.”

Twilight pulled her in, holding her. “It’s just another nightmare, Sunny,” she whispered. “I’m here, and we’re both home and ok.”

Spike hopped up onto the bed, padding up and nuzzling into her. “We’re all here,” he said to the fiery-haired woman.

Sunset sighed, her heartbeat back to normal as she laid back down. Spike hopped over and nestled into Sunset’s stomach as Twilight pulled her into a spoonwise position, their normal roles reverses as Twilight wrapped her arms around the taller girl.

“It’s all ok,” she whispered into her wife’s ear.

---

Darkness was all around me, but I’d grown used to that. At least the pain was gone now, though the faint smell of burnt flesh and shriveled hair still peeked in from time to time. The sounds I’d come to recognize were gone, replaced by echoes like stonework and a strange, chittering all around, the occasional hissing sound.

“Where am I?” I demanded.

“Why you’re in my home,” the voice from earlier oozed. “And you’re about to be part of my revenge on all of Equestria.”

A strange, sticky substance began covering my hooves, and I tried to scramble away, but I was held fast and slowly lifted into the air.

“And what better method than those secrets you have locked away?” the voice purred as I felt tendrils of magic start to crawl inside my horn through some of the unhealed cracks.

As my screams echoed in the cavern, the hissing sound became louder, almost rapturous in its sound.

Comments

[Harmony light]

This is really good so far I can't wait for the next chapter it sounds really exciting

[IndigoMoon]

A. Oh poo
B. Can't wait for the next chapter

[MySisterBroughtMeHere]

Chrysalis has never been more terrifying. Nice work.

[DocChronos]

I'm just gonna save some time, and favorite this now.

[Fangren]

Well. Chrysalis certainly means business, it seems.

[almiok]

1/2
2/2

[Rose Quill]

8358842
Um....

Are you ok, Pinkie?

[The Scarlett Mare]

Aaand this continuity continues to surprise me as to how good it is. I can't say I'm the same person after the war against Sorla and honestly I haven't come into touch with Chrysalis very often in this site, but based on this beginning I'm anxious to find out