Prisoner of Butterfly Island

by Magic Step

Free at Last

“Twilight, you dear, stupid beast,” Queen Chrysalis said, putting one hoof under Twilight’s chin. “Come, walk with me.”

“Are you going to kill me too?” Twilight whimpered.

“Not interested.”

“Are you… are you the good one?” Twilight asked. Not that she expected an honest answer.

“Such a meaningless word outside of your tiny island, where every conflict is carefully planned out for you.” Queen Chrysalis smiled. “Here we have only the strong and the weak. And I am so powerful that none can compare to me. That said, I will be the first creature you’ve ever met who will be completely, utterly honest with you, for I no longer have any reason to keep you in the dark now that your ignorance merely annoys me.” She flicked her head to glare at the two other ponies in the room. “I’ll deal with you both later.”

Starlight and Shining Armor both burst into green flames. Starlight shouted the Queen’s name while Shining called out to Twilight.

“Are you going to kill them?” Twilight whimpered.

“Probably not. Shining Armor’s love for you is still pure and delicious.” She turned to Twilight with a hungry looking smile. “Did you know changelings feed on love?”

“Really?” Twilight said, blinking. “Then why don’t you look… um… happier?”

“Fluke of nature,” the queen said, shrugging. She started walking into a small closet at the back of the room. “Let me show you something, Twilight.”

Twilight hesitated, then stepped into the small room with the queen. She only had one life to lose, and she no longer felt sure there was a cause worth dying for.

The floor began to move, making Twilight gasp.

“I thought we included an elevator in the tree house playset,” Queen Chrysalis mused.

“That was a large bucket on a pulley. Is… is that just what this is?” Twilight asked.

“I’m not here to educate you about elevators. Let me see, I was explaining that we need love to survive. But as you’ve noticed, we weren’t blessed with a natural form conducive to love. That’s why we adapted to be masters of disguise; so we could pose as loved ones and feed.”

“That’s horrible!” Twilight said.

“Oh, yes, Twilight, it was horrible, but not for the reasons you think. We were nothing but scattered scavengers, sipping a little love here, a little love there, always scraping and hiding and afraid for our lives. Well, then I came along. And I changed all that.”

The floor stopped moving and the doors opened again. This time they were on some kind of rooftop.

The sky was rust-red and cloudy; the ground was empty, sandy clay. As far as Twilight could see, the only thing resembling plant life was strange black towers, somewhat tree-like. The trunks of the trees were covered in strange green blobs; the tops of the trees were structures made from perfect cube. Some trees had many small cubes; others one large one. Others had a single structure made from a few connected cubes of different sizes.

“This is all,” Queen Chrysalis said. “We’ve scouted far and wide, and every life form we found is now contained in structures, like these. My drones live slumberous lives of opulence in their homes above.” She gestured to the cubes.

“What… what do you do to them?” Twilight whimpered.

“You can fly, can’t you? Come take a look.” The queen’s wings buzzed as she gently left the balcony.

Twilight followed her strange guide. Even the air felt dead and lifeless, the only breeze coming from the queen’s wings. The surealness of how easy flight was and the nightmarishness of the landscape made the entire experience feel like a dream. Like soon she’d wake up home on her beautiful island.

As the strange tree-like structures drew closer, Twilight could see that each green orb had something inside them.

No, not something. Somepony.

Thousands of ponies, curled up fetally in individual glowing green capsules. Stallions, mares, elders and foals. All were faded, like ponies when they first arrived on Butterfly Island. The younger ones were without cutie marks, without exception. Some looked asleep; others were staring at the wall of their prison with a vacant expression.

“How long do they stay here?” Twilight asked.

“More or less forever,” Queen Chrysalis said. “If they look bored to you, that’s because these pods drain their emotions every few minutes. Not enough time to develop true horror or fear at their condition.”

“How do they live?”

“I hardly think you’re genuinely interested in the gory details but no, I don’t deliberately destroy my food when they reach an arbitrary age or starve them to death.”

“But living in a small sphere for your whole life?” Twilight said, her heart beating a little faster at the horror of it.

“You lived in a large sphere for your whole life; what’s the difference?” Queen Chrysalis said, gesturing back the way they’d come.

Twilight turned around. A giant hemisphere of dully grey metal was behind them, stretching as far as Twilight could see. She could see the balcony they’d come from, and a few other doors at occasional intervals.

“All of Butterfly Island was built inside that dome,” Queen Chrysalis said.

“Built?” Twilight said.

“Yes; it gave my drones something to do for years. Finding sand, scrounging for lost seeds from plants we’d driven extinct, etcetera etcetera… They didn’t complain at the massive task, bizzarely enough.”

“But why? Why did you build such an amazingly better house just for me….?” Twilight asked.

“Silly Twilight. You were chosen completely at random; just another foal born in captivity, pulled away from the lunchline by a toss of the dice.”

“But…” Twilight whimpered.

“But that still doesn’t explain why we did it at all, does it?” Queen Chrysalis sighed and gestured to one of the ponies. He seemed to be staring intently at a shiny painting on the side of his pod. No, on second glance, the picture was moving.

“As I mentioned, changelings feed on love. We don’t feed on boredom; we don’t feed on insanity. Love. It has to be love. But I’m not about to let our prey roam about freely until they feel happy. So instead we invented the mirror network; magic mirrors that all show the same image streamed into them. At first we had musicians play happy music; then, when that started to lose its charm, we had magic shows. But one of my changelings theorized that what would make the love and happiness of our prey explode would be if they could see just one pony living a normal, happy life, just like each of them used to have or could have had.”

“That’s me,” Twilight breathed. “You mean me.”

“We added other ponies, of course. We had contests where prey ponies who met certain quotas might be rewarded with a small toy based on the show. A tiny pony, a playset, etcetera etcetera. The absolute winners might get a chance to visit your island.”

“I… I had no idea…” Twilight said.

“But there was a catch. You would only make them happy if you were happy, and you could only be happy if you had no idea what misery lay outside.”

“So… so now that I know….?” Twilight’s eyes widened.

“Yes. The show is over.”

Queen Chrysalis shot herself up in the air before Twilight could respond and hovered high over the strange tree-buildings. Her horn glowed with magic, but she was too far away now for Twilight to see what spell it was. When the queen spoke, her voice was magically amplified.

“Changelings! The Twilight Show is finally over! Initiate shutdown protocol!”’

“No, wait!” Twilight shouted, but her voice sounded so small.

Hundreds of bug ponies streamed from their tree homes, forming a swarm that blotted out the meager brightness of the sky. The hoard of monsters dove as one onto the building that contained Twilight’s home. The metal curved walls peeled open to reveal a sky-colored interior, and beneath was Butterfly Island, looking grim under the new light of the outside world.

The screaming started almost immediately. Each bug came away with a squirming pony. Bon Bon and Lyra, screaming that they’d done everything right. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, silent with fear. Rarity, contorting herself in her efforts to escape. Fluttershy, weeping profusely. Pinkie Pie, shaking and muttering to herself.

Rainbow Dash tried to outfly the swarm, tried to fight back, but there were just too many of them. The only one missing was Applejack. Twilight saw an orange changeling join the swarm and slowly fade to black.

“No, what are you doing!?” Twilight wailed, launching herself at Queen Chrysalis. Before she got very far, two changelings flew between her in the queen. Twilight tried to let gravity carry her away from her attackers, but they seized her forelegs tightly. Twilight squirmed, casting the spell to electrify her body again.

If it had any effect on her captors, they didn’t show it. One of them even sighed in a bored, buzzy voice.

All her life, she’d only been fighting changelings that had held back.

“Take her to any empty pod,” Queen Chrysalis said with a dismissive wave of her hoof.

“No, please! Don’t hurt my friends!” Twilight begged.

“You honestly have no right to complain,” Queen Chrysalis said. “We spelled out very plainly what would happen if you left the island, didn’t we?”

Author's Note:

In case no one figured it out yet, my theme for the chapter titles, for the most part, was that all of them were lies.

Comments

[Xanderfox]

Of course if this AU Twilight is like cannon Twilight deep down Chrysalis might have just set the timer to a magic bomb that's going to blow up in her face.

[Viper Pit]

What's gonna happen next o.o I'm so excited

[fanreader999999]

Hm.