A Queen's Perspective - Friendship Games

by gerandakis

Sirenic Rebirth

The sole changeling queen in the barn immediately cast her magic to scan beyond the large gates, then smiled. The gates were enveloped in a magenta glow and swung open. "I was wondering when you three would arrive."

There, momentarily surprised by the doors opening on their own, stood the Dazzlings. Sonata and Aria were flanking Adagio whose look of surprise quickly gave way to a rather smug grin. "We'll isn't that just precious?"

Queen Twilight was surprised to hear that, but only for a moment, then she realized the positions the other girls had taken around her over the course of her retellings. Fluttershy and Spike were images of utter relaxation, curled up at her right side and softly snoring, Sunset, Rarity and Applejack were leaned against her other side and had been calmly listening, Rainbow was lying there, her head propped up on her hands, her lower legs idly flopping through the air, having made herself comfortable on the vacant pillows, and the Twilight of this world was leaning against the long neck of her counterpart, relaxed, but still attentive enough to listen to her story and take notes on any interesting details.

"Huh. You're right, that is precious. When did that happen? Usually I notice things like that."

The others were slowly realizing what exactly they were doing and Sunset, Applejack, Rarity and Twilight slowly turned towards the queen, brightly blushing.

Said queen gave them a pleasant smile and they simply leaned back into her surprisingly comfortable and soft coat, reassured that she didn't mind. Rainbow however felt she had an image to maintain and got up to greet the sirens.

After they had gotten settled and managed to bring their giggling under control, the sirens looked expectantly at the queen. Ultimately it was once again Adagio who spoke up.

"So I take it there is a reason why you are here in your natural form? Did something happen at CHS again?"

Aria turned to her. "Right, I forgot to mention, apparently the Twilight from this world showed up for the Friendship games and got the latest demon form."

"I'm here, you know?" Twilight pointed out. "And I don't think we've been introduced yet, I'm Twilight Sparkle."

Aria groaned. "Oh goodness, now there's two of them, and they both have the same name, I can already tell this will give me headaches."

Adagio rolled her eyes at her sister's behaviour, then looked at Twilight with a pleasant smile. "Hi Twilight, I'm Adagio Dazzle, and those are my sisters, the grump is my younger sister Aria Blaze and the taco-obsessed goofball over there is our youngest, Sonata Dusk. We were the last ones before you to try taking over the world, we'll tell you the story some time, welcome to the club."

"Tacooooos."

Everyone, safe for Fluttershy and Spike, who were still asleep, turned at that, seeing Sonata and Pinkie, who had appeared at her side from somewhere, standing next to each other, staring dreamily into the middle distance and slightly drooling.

Rainbow and Aria both rolled their eyes, walking over to their friends and waving their hands before their faces to snap them out of their daydreams.

Once they had managed to bring them back to the waking world, Rainbow shared her pile of cushions with Aria and Adagio while Pinkie and Sonata found Queen Twilight made a much better pillow. Unbeknownst to everyone, she had used a subtle bit of magic to make her coat even softer after she realized what was going on.

Finally it was Adagio who spoke up.

"So, as cute as all of this is, I assume that's not why you wanted to meet us, is it Twilight?"

Both Twilights looked at her, the human with barely concealed confusion, the Changeling with much better concealed amusement. Adagio saw through the mask, she had centuries of experience reading people, but that did little to alleviate her frustration. "Argh, you were right, Ari, this will give me headaches."

"Told you."

Adagio turned to Twilight. "Not you, the other one, guess I should start calling her Queen Twilight to keep you two apart."

"I can take a different form and assume a made up identity, if that helps you." The Queen gave the lead siren a sly smirk. "But yes, there is indeed another reason for that. Remember what I told you when we last spoke?"

Adagio cast her memory back to that day, when they had spoken to a drawing of Queen Twilight in the very barn they were now in. "You said you'd have a surprise for us when you next visited. Is that what this is about?"

Sonata had instantly perked up at the mention of the word Surprise and even Aria seemed vaguely intrigued.

The changeling smirked. "Indeed it is. I have a few things that belong to you. You have proven that you can work the interests of others, rather than just your own. That you can unite, not just divide. As such, I believe it is high time these are returned to you."

She lit her horn and one of the flaps of her saddlebags, set aside on the floor a few meters away, unclasped and opened. Three boxes of dark, polished wood floated over. It was the same three boxes she had packed an hour earlier. She left each of the boxes to float before their respective sirens, it only took a moment for their stunned expressions to turn to intrigue at these mysterious objects.

The others curiously looked over to whichever box was the closest, equally intrigued what was in them. As the three unclasped the boxes and opened them, they saw three jewels on long bands of a silver fabric. The fabric was new, that much was clear. The gems however, were familiar, yet different to how they knew them. Their shape was familiar, but unlike the pendants that were once the source of their power, they were not red, but a deep navy blue. The same could be said about their magic, for they were magical, it had the same shape, but it was of a different nature.

The three sirens stared at them in stunned silence, then exchanged glances. From centuries of being together they could tell what the others were thinking, that they were all thinking the same thing. Finally they turned to Queen Twilight and it was Aria who spoke what they all thought. "How?"

"Well, fixing the gems was easy enough, just a matter of picking up the fragments, foal’s play when you have telekinesis, bringing them back home and using a simple charm to put them back together. The enchantment was more tricky. Naturally forming enchantments are rare and complicated. Innate magic usually doesn't form such a solid matrix, but no rules without exceptions, I suppose. Retooling the enchantments to do the same, general thing using a different form of magic as a power source was unquestionably the most complicated part."

"Wait, you mean?"

"Yes, they no longer use dark magic. Instead they now use the same harmonic magic we do. I had no way to test this, but I assume their ... shall we say 'side-effects' should also change accordingly."

The sirens kept staring from the pendants to the queen, back to the pendants, to each other and back to the pendants. After a few moments Sunset began to quietly giggle and after a few more seconds Rainbow couldn't take it any longer. "So? Are you gonna try them out or what?"

That snapped them out of their collective trance. One by one they carefully removed the pendants from the exquisite cushions of white velvet they sat on – more than one of Twilight's kids had been inspired by Rarity's visits – and carefully put them on.

The moment the pendants settled in their correct places, they each emitted a pulse of blue light, mirrored in the sirens' eyes. For the first time in two months, they felt whole. They looked to each other and, through a combination of the magic of their restored pendants and the centuries of experience they shared, they understood what each of them had in mind.

They chose to start simple. Unlike melodies, lyrics were something the magic could never help them with, so, having no time to come up with any and having no experience writing lyrics on the topic of uniting people, they chose to forgo them for the time being. They simply vocalized, went through various melodies, just like they used to. But unlike before, the magic of their music caused no arguments, no strife, simply understanding. Beyond that, what they had dubbed their 'Siren Sight' returned to them, as they looked to the seven girls clustered around the changeling queen before them, the power of their friendship, of the bonds they shared, became visible as lines of light running between them and a general, soft mist that seemed to change color depending on how the light hit it, turning it into a swirling, ever changing mix of different colors. The girls before them practically glowed with magically amplified friendship. And as the power flowed towards them it didn't flow into their pendants, instead it formed a glowing aura around the sirens and as the song ended it exploded outwards in a shockwave only the sirens could see, though the finely tuned magical senses of Sunset and Queen Twilight's empathic abilities easily picked up on it.

As the wave washed over the girls they felt at peace, and they understood their friends on a deeper level, even after the effect wore off, none of them would have been able to explain exactly how they knew that or how that was even possible, but regardless it was true.

As the sirens' song ended, there was a content silence in the barn, finally broken by Fluttershy.

"That was beautiful."

"Indeed," the queen easily agreed.

"The Dazzlings are back!" Rainbow exclaimed.

Sunset gave her a sly smirk. "Better than ever, eh?"

Everyone erupted in giggles at that, save Twilight, who seemed confused.

"Don’t worry, Twi." Rainbow managed though her giggles. "We'll explain later."

Once everyone had calmed down, Adagio turned to Queen Twilight. "All joking aside, thank you. These really are better than they ever were. Having power was fun, sure, but this is something far better than that. And I couldn't even explain why if I tried."

Aria nodded during that and after Adagio was done, Sonata spoke up herself. "I only know that I could see the friendship between you. It's beautiful."

Queen Twilight smiled at that. "Glad to hear. It was my pleasure." I guess this is why Rarity likes satisfied customers so much.

Rarity had by now taken the box Sonata's pendant had been in and examined it more closely. "These are quite exquisite as well, did you make them yourself?"

Queen Twilight looked over to her and had to suppress a giggle before she could answer. "No, I'm afraid artistic talent was never really my forté. Some of my more artistic children made these from the wood of trees that grow in the Cresnox Jungle. I doubt you'll find anything like it in this world."

Rarity seemed satisfied, but Twilight turned to her counterpart, her face a mask of confusion. "Wait, what do you mean 'children'?"

The queen simply giggled. "Oh did I forget to mention that? Well, I'm a changeling queen, practically every changeling in my hive is my child, that's why they call me their Queen Mother."

Twilight looked absolutely stunned. "You have kids."

"I do."

"How many?"

"Including nymphs and eggs, around 2800 at this point. And my hive is still very small, mother's hive numbers around 4000 and others have tens or hundreds of thousands, but since mother and I are the only ones with intelligent drones, they really don't compare too well."

"My dimensional counterpart has thousands of children." Twilight stated quietly.

"Yup, that was pretty much my reaction as well." Sunset pointed out.

Everyone broke into giggles at that, even Twilight.

After the queen had calmed down enough she turned to her counterpart once more. "If you like, I can introduce you to some of them later. I suspect we might have a way to do that soon that doesn't even involve them coming over here."

It took a moment for the others to realize the cryptic statement she had just made.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Sunset finally managed.

Queen Twilight smiled coyly"Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any to get to the main event."

Author's Note:

And the Dazzlings are back. We'll see in time what they do with their restored power. For now though, it's time for the main event (no, not the mane event, enough with the horse puns!) Let's do this.

Comments

[Fetch]

Apparently Her Majesty was not informed of the various jungles on Earth.

[Edguy0009]

9097572
Oh yes some of them have VERY dangerous creatures, some of the rain forests even more so. *thinks of the Amazon*

[gerandakis]

9097572

Well she likely wasn't told about those. That being said if the fauna includes silence behemoths, fire hornets and phantom scorpions it stands to be reasoned that the flora would have some endemic variations aswell.

[DavisSentoV5]

The Dazzlings are officially back & better than ever! Also, damn your cliffhangers!