Dear Faithful Student

by Muramasa

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO:
THE MARE CALLED MELODY WALTZ
STARLIGHT GLIMMER

---

Twilight knew more than anypony that I was a coffee mare.

I hated tea, and Twilight loved it. She would always make me try new types -- white, black, dark, green, yellow, puer, and the thousand varieties within them all -- and would be devastated to know that I found no appeal in any of them. My drink was coffee, and so long as it was served black with a dollop of honey, any and all tea that Twilight desperately attempted to win me over with would fail miserably in the process.

But when I had sat down at the small wooden table in the middle of Chrysalis' cabin to a cup of tea in front of me, I was thirstier than I'd ever been in my life. I lifted it and titled it back as fast as I possibly could and let it wash down my throat so fast that couldn't even tell what it was when I slammed it back down to the tabletop. It had been hot, but the scorching it had given my throat was far worth it to drink something after not having done so for an entire month.

When I looked up, I saw Chrysalis bearing perhaps the most stunned and bewildered glance I'd ever seen, her jaw dropped to the floor and her already-large eyes widened further in pure shock.

"We're sworn enemies," she began, watching me wipe my mouth as I looked to the ceiling. "What if I told you I'd poisoned that?"

"You'd be lying," I replied, turning my head to her as I leaned back in my chair. She went silent in thought, and to my absolute delight, I saw the very corners of her mouth twist into a slight snarl. I was immeasurably grateful for the queen-in-exile's aid, but that certainly didn't mean I was going to go easy on her.

"What are you doing in the Everfree, Chrysalis? The last time I saw you, you were... well, you were, uh, here, actually." It was her turn to be smug, and she raised a single eyebrow and shot me a sly grin as she replied.

"Funny how that works, isn't it?" I made sure to pronounce my subsequent eye-roll the best I could, and to my surprise, she took the time to use her magic and refill the cup and place it back down in front of me.

"And you know why, Glimmer. I have nowhere to go." I would normally interject, but I was too busy taking sips of tea (slower, this time) as she spoke. "The Changeling Captial has been moved, and my throne was destroyed, thanks to a certain someone. It's over. I found this cabin here abandoned, so I refurbished it. There aren't any ponies foolish enough to venture this far out in the forest to bother me, and I can feed on love when I go into town. I thought that there wasn't a changeling left that hadn't joined Thorax's hive, and that it was all over for me. Until you showed up at my door."

I narrowed my eyes at her last sentence, taking one last sip from the cup before setting it down and interjecting.

"What do you mean by that? I haven't even told you how I got here yet."

Her horn lit up once more, and her lime green aura surrounded a mirror up against the wall I hadn't noticed when I first walked in. She pulled it from its mount and floated it on over to me, and the second I saw my own reflection, it was easy to see how she'd guessed my plight.

The first thing I noticed was that my mane and tail were a mess. The cocoon had latched on to them, it seemed, and I didn't even feel it take parts of my mane and tail with it when I'd removed it from my body. The parts that were still there were horrifically tangled and mottled, and pieces of the green cocoon were still stuck inside them. It seemed that they were still attached to various other places across my body as well, and in my tunnel vision to find a way out the forest and the distraction of my aching body, I'd entirely failed to notice the obvious.

"That's from a changeling cocoon, and not the type that a metamorphosized changeling could create. In other words, it's one of mine, and I'd like to know why there's a changeling from my hive running around that I no longer have a connection with. Do you want more of that?" She asked the last question whilst pointing towards the cup, and reluctantly, I merely nodded my head.

Green tea, I thought as she rose from her seat and trotted over to the kitchen. It appeared as if she had started to make a new batch, and I was enthralled with the process, seeing as how changelings didn't actually eat or drink anything. She was clearly knowledgable, though, and the tea she'd given me was far better than anything Twilight had ever served me.

"I don't know, Chrysalis. I was supposed to help my friend Trixie with a magic show and I was jumped on the way back from a market I had gotten supplies at. She took me somewhere deep in this place and beat me until I was just about dead before she hung me from the ceiling in a cocoon. It was... it was planned, I think. She had a location and everything." I tried to hide the innate fear that came with recalling it, but thankfully, it appeared that Chrysalis wasn't interested in logistics and failed to notice.

"'She'? Did she tell you her name?" She had begun pouring the new batch into the pitcher, and I managed to reply once I'd gotten over my astonishment at how fast she'd made more of it.

"It was the only thing she told me. She called herself Melody Waltz."

I immediately heard a loud thud from the kitchen table. Chrysalis had slammed down the pitcher, and she was entirely unmoving as the silence in the air began to deafen. She stood dead still, and whilst I was attempting to figure out what I did to make her freeze, she whispered from the kitchen just loud enough for me to hear.

"No, she didn't."

I could feel my eyes narrow slightly as I looked at her. I'd never expected Chrysalis to have any sort of connection to this changeling besides the one that a Queen would normally have with her drones, and I at least thought she'd know of every member of her hive. It almost seemed like the name had invoked some sort of fear in her, but before I could question her, she hit me with a barrage of her own inquiries.

"Did she have wings?"

"No, just a horn."

"What did her voice sound like?"

"High pitched, not at all bubbly."

"How tall was she?"

"You think I had time to measure her while she was beating me to a pulp?"

In a flash, Chrysalis grabbed a hold of the pitcher she'd filled and flung it to the left of her as hard as she could. It collided with the wall next to the front door and violently exploded, sending shards across the floor and tea flying in every direction. Quite a few drops spilled on to me, but I was far too concerned with Chrysalis, who had turned around to face me with a look of sheer horror I didn't think I'd ever seen from anypony. The terrified snarl across her visage was enough to send a tingle down my spine, and I found myself leaning back a bit in my chair as she advanced towards me.

"Do not toy with me, vermin," she spat, stopping her advance right as she towered over me. She was certainly fearsome, but there was a slight shake in her entire body that was just a bit more than obvious. "I killed Melody Waltz years ago. Put her six feet into the ground. I will not have you stand here and tell me that monster is walking on my plane of existence again."

I didn't know what I was expecting Chrysalis to say. It wasn't that.

Another time, I would have been fuming that she'd called me a "vermin". This time, it felt as if I'd been blindsided by a baseball bat, as the flurry of words Chrysalis had thrown at me translated themselves time and time again as I processed them.

Melody isn't supposed to be here. She died a long time ago. Chrysalis killed her, so she should be dead.

She should be dead.

But she's not.

"She was Celestia's student," I muttered just loud enough to hear. That locked Chrysalis in place, her eyes growing even wider than they had been, and her jaw unhinged slightly as I turned to her with a mirrored expression. "Why was she Celestia's student?" Chrysalis stood still for a second longer before closing her eyes as she murmured to herself.

"You said she just told you her name," Chrysalis said. "That's a bit more than a name, Glimmer."

That, of course, is when I knew it had hit her: I'd just given her confirmation that the Melody Waltz who had brutalized me was the very same one she had believed her to be.

"She didn't tell me," I explained. "Because she didn't have to."

So I told her.

I told her about Twilight frantically writing for me to come to Canterlot. I told her about Violet, the mare who was so sweet and yet entirely blindsided by the new world she found herself in. I told her that we found Cobalt in a tomb far into the mountains, and that when we opened Violet's casket, it was empty as the day it was made. I told her that Twilight Sparkle had traveled to the Crystal Empire to make sure everypony there was safe, and that once I had come back here with Trixie, I wasn't aware I would be starting the worst month of my life.

And once all of that was over, and the silence hung in the air like a breeze, I leaned back in my chair and waited.

Chrysalis had been alive for quite a long time. I knew she'd believe me, but I didn't know if I would get a snarky remark from the queen-in-exile or a barrage of follow-up questions as she did earlier: as it turned out, I got neither. Instead, with empty eyes and a stare to the wall, she simply started speaking.

"Her name is Cyrilla," she started. "She was born as all changeling drones were, but it became abundantly clear in her youth that something was... wrong. What do you know about love, Starlight Glimmer?" That was an easy question, but I figured her explanation would go far deeper than my answer.

"You need it to survive," I told her. For the first time that day, I saw a flash of a smile from Chrysalis as she shook her head.

"That's what they tell you in the textbooks. Yes, that is true, of course, but it goes deeper than that. We consume love, but we also feel it. We can sniff it out like hounds, and we can even detect love between two creatures that don't know they have it yet. When we take it, there's nothing on this planet that can compare to the bliss it gives us. It isn't just a need, Starlight: it's an addiction." I found myself looking for words -- I had never heard anything of that sort, even from Thorax -- but thankfully, Chrysalis only let my mouth hang open for a mere few seconds before she continued.

"Cyrilla didn't feel it like that," she said. "She had trouble with her emotions. Calling her a sociopath might be a tinge too strong, but she certainly toed that line. Her emotions were... muted, I suppose. She could not feel love nearly as well as other changelings could, but she could understand it better than any of them. It left her wanting. Love was what allowed her to survive and gave her life, and she struggled with the concept of needing something she could not feel."

I'd been trying not to think of what she'd done to me. I failed.

When Melody had tortured me, she didn't smile or laugh. She didn't belittle me, threaten me, or even talk at all, aside from giving me her name. I asked her why she took me. I asked her what she wanted. I asked if I could give it to her. She didn't listen.

Melody Waltz just did it. Throughout all my screams, resistance, and whimpers, she simply labored away with a blank and empty expression. It was almost mechanical, as if it were a boring nine-to-five job she'd been wasting away at all her life, and now I seemed to know why.

But I still didn't know the whole story.

"When did you realize that?" I asked her. "Did she do something?" Grimly, Chrysalis nodded.

"She'd killed three changelings in schoolyard scraps when she was a filly," she started. I could feel my jaw unhinge right then and there, but she didn't stop to observe it. "She would disguise herself as other changelings and ponies out in town when she had matured to a teenager, and she made a habit of ruining romantic and platonic relationships because she found their emotional responses fascinating. Other changelings were fantastic actors, of course, but none more so than Cyrilla: All the world's a stage, Starlight, and she was its finest player."

Once everything she'd said registered, I could quickly feel my open mouth turn to a subtle seethe with a clench of my teeth.

"You're telling me," I started, "That one of your drones was murdering others, stealing their identities and ruining lives for the fun of it, and you didn't toss her out of the hive?"

That, it seemed, was the golden question. Chrysalis buried her head in her hoofs, seemingly struggling to give me an answer I already knew. I could hear her draw long sigh, and when she looked back up to me, I saw a pain in her eyes I had never seen from the changeling I had deemed my arch-nemesis.

"It's my greatest regret," she told me, her voice ringing hollow. "Because I didn't. I was a fool, and I believed that I could reign her in and use her extraordinary talents without facing its repercussions. Cyrilla was an artist, and if I told her to paint a line, she'd hand me a masterpiece."

I simply couldn't speak, lest I burst into flames. Chrysalis seemed to pick up on it, and with a shameful glance to the floor, she quickly continued.

"Anything I asked of Cyrilla, she succeeded in. So one day, on a whim, I asked her to do something impossible. I asked her to fool a mare I knew couldn't possibly be fooled. If she did it, it would be an incredible victory, and if she failed, she took all of her disturbances with her."

"Become Celestia's apprentice," I whispered, staring her in the eyes. Chrysalis looked to the floor again -- I'd been bringing up memories she'd thought she vanquished, I knew -- but she turned right back to me with a sheepish glare.

"...Something like that," she replied. I narrowed my eyes ever slightly at the suspicious remark, but she didn't seem phased. "It took her a week. I'd been chasing Celestia for years, and in a single week, the mare she'd created called Melody Waltz had put me one length away from the most powerful individual in the world. I was shellshocked.

"See, the mare called Melody Waltz was Cyrilla's magnum opus, if you will. She was a mare from Vanhoover who had a tenacity for the magical arts and the will to see the good in anypony, no matter who they were. She never broke character: even when she'd return to the hive, she would never change back to her original form and she'd demand to be called Melody. She considered the assignment I had given her to be her true purpose in life, and she strove for absolute perfection under Celestia's tutelage. It was her obsession, and the only way to achieve that perfection in her mind was to follow through with both my orders and hers."

Although diving deep into Melody's psyche was interesting enough, there was still one more part of the tale that Chrysalis was withholding. The day had been drawing down, too, and so before I asked her for directions out of this place, I still needed the final piece of the puzzle.

"You said you killed her," I told her. "Why did you do that?"

She nodded. And by the way she did, I knew she hadn't thought about the memory for a very long time.

"Cyrilla was... planning something," she said. "She would go into the Everfree Forest at random intervals, and whenever I'd reach out to her, she'd ignore me for days at a time. Whenever she would return and I would ask her what she was doing, she'd refuse to tell me. 'You'll see, my Queen'. It infuriated me. I feared she was conspiring against me, or perhaps had been swayed by Celestia."

Chrysalis rose from her seat, making sure to push it back into the table neatly. Carefully, she walked over to the window to the right of the entrance, the light shining through it dialing down as the sun began to drop. She wasn't looking out for anypony, I knew: It appeared as if she merely wished for a change of scenery to begin the climax of her tale, and with a deep breath, she started her epic with her eyes to the forest.

"One day, I sent a trio of spies after her to see what she was doing," she said wistfully. "And that was when it all went to Tartarus."

Author's Note:

This story began before Chrysalis' (and Sombra's) Season 9 return, so I guess the path branches off from that point.

Comments

[badninja]

Well I think Chrysalis had a little Starscream on her hooves and now that she has come back things are going to be going bad fast.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

"She'd killed three changelings in schoolyard scraps when she was a filly," she started.

One was a graduation requirement. Two was excessive. Three is quite rude, and we had to draw the line somewhere...

[Edguy0009]

9859555
Things certainly gotten more interesting haven't they?

[MosAnted]

huh, so Melody Waltz *wasn't* responsible for the return of the apprentices then?

[Jubilee Bloom]

Every time I think I know where the story is going, I soon find out that I don't. And I love it.

[Yutah123]

Oof. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you, Starlight. My condolences.

---

Chrissy exposition time! For once Chrysalis isn't being irrationally obtuse in her evil scheming and is somewhat cooperative! Hooray!

[Draco Dei]

9859621
Is that a reference to something (or even a quote?) or did you make it up? It has a Pratchett vibe to it.

[Super Trampoline]

9859621
I know I’m speaking to a comment in the past but this reminds me of how today Lindsey Graham was like hey, what Trump did was wrong but we shouldn’t impeach him. We should wait to see what happens. Maybe if he tries another coup or some thing we’ll circle around back to that.