• Published 26th Oct 2019
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Celestia XVII: The Broken Princess - brokenimage321



Celestia's twenty now--but her problems have only gotten bigger.

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Criterion: Reactivity

“Don’t cry, Rarity,” Pinkie murmured. “It’ll be okay…”

“You sure about that?” snapped Rainbow.

“It. Will be. Okay,” Pinkie repeated, louder.

“Girls, shut up,” I hissed. “There’s another one…”

Another changeling squirmed his way through what was left of the massive double-doors at the entrance of the throne room, then made his way down the red carpet that ran the length of the hall, towards the dias at the far end. As he walked, he wove his way around the wreckage of all the wedding chairs, and through the throng of the hundreds of other changelings, each buzzing to themselves as they did Harmony-knows-what. The big one that had been Blueblood—their queen, apparently—walked back and forth in front of the hall, striding back and forth between my throne and Luna’s. She noticed the little drone approaching, and turned to watch him come. He scampered up onto the dias and said something in their language—lots of butt-wiggling, lots of wing-buzzing, and a few snaps and growls.

As they spoke, I turned and shot a nervous glance around me. The changelings had snagged a number of prisoners, myself included. They’d also snatched Rarity, Twilight’s other four friends, and a ragged assortment of wedding guests. They’d cemented each of us to the floor with some sort of mucus that had turned hard as stone in seconds. They’d even spat some of it on our horns, keeping us from using them for anything other than decoration. Blueblood, Luna, and Twilight were still unaccounted for, thankfully. Hopefully, they were planning some sort of rescue mission for us already. But in the meantime, we were stuck here, all of us together, in this nightmare version of my throne room.

Rarity, still wearing her wedding gown, had been stuck right next to me. She’d been crying for over an hour. I mean, you couldn’t exactly blame her, of course, but there wasn’t anything we could do, and the crying wasn’t helping. In fact, as much as I loved her, she was starting to get on my nerves a little...

I tried to distract myself by turning back to watch the queen talk to her drone. You had to hand it to her: her plan had worked perfectly. She had engineered every second of my escape to ensure I made the most dramatic entrance possible—making her own revelation, in turn, all that more horrifying. Pretty genius, actually—scare the horseapples out of anyone watching, and they would rather run away than fight back. In fact—

“...buzz kck bz ck-klk Twilight buzz.”

I jerked my head up. He had said Twilight. I’d heard it, I’d swear it. Had she managed to pull something off?

The queen buzzed and snapped at the drone, then looked up at the door. A half-dozen more soldiers strode in—and my heart sank.

“Oh no,” breathed Fluttershy.

Between them, they carried Twilight, bruised and unconscious. They hauled her into line with the rest of us and tried to get her to stand, but she dropped to the floor the second they let go of her. They conferred among themselves for a moment, then they each vomited their mucus on her where she lay, pinning her to the floor.

“Is she breathing?” asked Pinkie.

“Looks like,” Applejack replied.

As I watched her lying there, my chest began to tighten. Every breath became a battle. Blackness started to swim around the edges of my vision. Twilight was going to be the one save us—she had to—and now, if she was here, like this, then we… then we…

“Y’hear that? Applejack asked suddenly.

“Is that… singing?” asked Rainbow, incredulously.

I turned to follow their gaze. A dozen or so of the bugs had moved to stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, in a semicircle around the hole in the big front doors. From beyond came a crash, then the sound of raised voices.

“That sounds a little like…” Fluttershy began.

“But that’d be crazy!” finished Pinkie.

The changelings fluttered their wings angrily, finally catching the queen’s attention. She turned and hissed a question at them, and one of them responded in kind. But before the queen could reply, another voice made itself heard, floating through the hole in the door:

“He-e-ere comes the groom,” sang the drunken voice, “all dressed in—in—”

“That’s Blueblood,” I breathed, dumbfounded.

The bugs at the door pressed closer together, but the queen at the far end smiled wickedly.

“Let him pass,” she said, in Equestrian. “This will be sure to be… entertaining.”

The guards didn’t hesitate. They didn’t even look at each other. They just stepped aside and melted into the shadows of the wreckage around them. And through the gap in the doors, stumbled the stallion of the hour, my brother, Prince Blueblood.

His tux was rumpled and dirty, and a few cuts and spots of dried blood marred his jacket. His mane was dishevelled, and his bowtie hung loose around his neck. His eyes were bloodshot and weary, and it wasn’t hard to tell why: in the glow from his horn, he held a massive bottle of what looked to be the Palace’s best cognac, already emptied by several inches. I could smell the booze on him from here.

“Queenie!” he slurred, stumbling forward. “So nice to see you!”

She bowed low. “The pleasure is mine,” she said, her voice smooth as silk, despite a faint, buzzing rasp. “If I had known you would come and see me of your own accord, I would have sent an invitation instead of a search party.”

“Well, you know me,” he said, sloshing a generous amount of booze on the carpet, “I just can’t keep my hooves off a pretty mare…”

I snarled, then shot Rarity a glance. She stared, open-mouthed, at Blueblood, the tear tracks still drying on her cheeks.

“Oh come now, Your Highness,” the queen said. “You should know that flattery doesn’t work on one such as myself. Besides, I’m spoken for—I have an entire harem of drones, back at the hive…”

“You dirty little horse,” Blueblood replied. He stumbled forward and bumped into one of the bugs, splashing him with liquor. “Oops, sorry,” he added.

“I must say,” the queen said, barely suppressing the amusement in her voice, “you have made quite the mess of yourself, even given the circumstances.”

“Ah, y’know,” he slurred, “I was thinking that, since the wedding’s off… I might as well start the party a little early.”

As he reached the steps leading up to the dias, his horn flickered, and the bottle tipped over slightly, spilling more booze. He tried to climb the steps, stumbled, and somehow managed to stay upright long enough to make it all the way to the top. Absently, he dropped the bottle on the carpet, which started to pour its contents on the floor.

“Y’know what I mean?” he continued, shooting a goofy grin at the queen. “You know what I mean.”

“Get ready,” Rarity whispered to me.

I looked over at her, incredulous. To my surprise, she was smiling—but it was a hard, determined smile.

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“Not so loud,” she hissed. She nodded at Blueblood. “He’s planning something.”

I turned and looked at him, still making googly-eyes at the queen. “What makes you think that?” I whispered.

“It’s an act,” she whispered back. “He doesn’t talk like that when he’s actually drunk. Don’t look at me like that,” she added. “Yes, we are adults. Yes, we have spent a few evenings sampling the Palace wine cellar together. Deal with it.”

I looked at him again—and suddenly, I saw. It was like one of those optical illusion things: no matter how hard you look, all you can see is the dumb bunny, until someone points out that what you’re actually looking at is a clever little duck. Yeah, he was swaying and slurring his words, but no matter how much he stumbled, he always kept a sure footing, and every single word of his was intelligible.

I turned back to Rarity and gave her a silent, wide-eyed nod. Rarity smirked in satisfaction, then turned to Pinkie, who stood on her other side.

“Get ready,” she whispered again.

I nodded my encouragement to Pinkie, who turned and passed the message along. I was about to tell the pony on my other side—some random noble from who-knows-where—when movement on the floor caught my eye. I turned and stared. As Blueblood stood, talking with the queen, the rest of the changelings in the room had slowly been gravitating towards the two of them. Now, Blueblood was surrounded by a dense half-circle of black forms, their wings buzzing erratically as they talked amongst themselves.

The queen looked over her subjects, and smiled. “I assume you’ve come here for some reason other than the conversation?” she asked. “As delightful as this little interlude has been, you’re too smart to come waltzing in here without good reason, even as drunk as you are...”

Blueblood flashed her a goofy grin. “Naw, Queenie,” he said, “I gotta reason. A good one.” He belched, shook his head vigorously, and swallowed. “I gotta gift for ya,” he finished.

“A gift?” she said, amused. “Praytell, what sort of gift do you have for me, the Queen of the Changelings?”

“Wanna guess what it is?” he asked. He lit his horn, and, from one of his pockets, he withdrew a small object, barely larger than a toothpick, and held it up to her.

She stared, uncomprehending, at the thing. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What is it?”

Even from here, I could see the change in his posture. He straightened up and squared his shoulders, his drunkenness falling off him like an old coat.

“It’s everything you deserve,” he snarled.

He shot a spark at the kitchen match he held in his magic, and it flared to life. He dropped it on the alcohol-soaked carpet at his hooves, and it blossomed into sapphire flames. The fire raced down the length of the carpet, engulfing a swath of the changelings, before leaping onto the broken chairs. In seconds, clouds of choking black smoke were billowing upwards. I flinched. The changelings deserved everything they got—and yet, the screaming—

Meanwhile, Blueblood charged towards us. He had leapt out of the way before the match even hit the carpet, and was making a beeline towards us.

“Bloob!” I cried.

“Blueblood!” Rarity cried, in the same instant.

He skidded to a stop, then shot a beam of blue light at Rarity’s hooves, and a second one at her horn. The hardened slime around them broke and shattered. Rarity gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then dashed off into the smoke.

“Rares, wait!” I cried.

He looked up at me in surprise. A flash of guilt crossed his face, then he turned to me. “Rarity can take care of herself,” he grunted, as he shot magic at my hooves. “Help the others.”

I nodded, and, as soon as the shell broke from my horn, I turned and started to work on Pinkie.

The screaming of the changelings was growing louder, and the smoke was starting to fill the hall. Some of the bugs had taken flight, their wings and their manes still burning, while others ran in circles or rolled fruitlessly on the floor.

I freed Fluttershy and Applejack, then turned to Twilight. I zapped the shell holding her down, then Applejack scooped her up, draped her over her back, and sprinted for the exit. I turned to the other prisoners still stuck in the slime, then glanced over at Blueblood and did some math. Too many ponies, not enough time—!

And then, Rarity appeared.

“Sorry about that, Darling,” she said. “I just had to do a little pest control.”

And then she doused her horn and dropped the object she had been holding. It was the broken-off stump of the bottle of cognac. Thick, green blood dripped off the broken end and onto the floor.