Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

And a Lack Thereof

"I understand." Chrysalis nodded. "As I have said, I won't share this with anyone you don't wish me to. Be careful while you're in there." She kept on playing her part, though a part of her wondered if she shouldn't have been doing something else instead. Something pertaining to who she was, and not who she was pretending to be.

"Thank you." Twilight nodded in response, cutting off Chrysalis's train of thought. She seemed calmer already, but a hint of nervousness touched her features again as she breathed in and bit her lower lip. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper as she spoke again. "If I'm not back by tonight, or if I send any messages asking for it, or if anything else comes through, close the portal. Tell Starlight what happened, and... she'll figure out a way to get me out of there." She shook a smile back on her face, though Chrysalis could tell it took effort to keep it there. "But hopefully you won't need to do any of that. Everything you need is in that clipboard."

Before Chrysalis had time to reply, likely before she herself had time for second thoughts, Twilight marched to the centre of the laboratory, cast her spell on the scale she'd been holding, and disappeared through the newly formed portal.

Chrysalis was left there, standing and staring at the portal. Only after a few moments did she shake herself out of her stupor, and begin looking through the clipboard Twilight had given her. She stopped almost immediately while scanning it.

Twilight hadn't been lying. Spells to activate and deactivate a portal, protection spells for travelling through one, routine practices for managing scales and the worlds beyond them, everything one could have needed perfectly explained in detail. All of it surely common knowledge for someone working with scales, but the pony she was replacing was not part of that category and she'd been forbidden any form of research on the specific topic by Stella.

She moved back to her desk, studying the information while keeping an eye on the portal. Almost on instinct she copied the contents of the documents to a different set of papers, just in case Twilight came back before she had time to properly study everything. And as she thought about it, Chrysalis finally realised what she could have done.

She looked around the laboratory. Not enough ponies for her to have any problems dealing with them, if it came down to it. A look back to the clipboard, at Twilight's own freshly added note stating that, yes, she could and in fact should close the portal if the situation called for it. Then she looked at the portal itself again.

She could strand Twilight off in a dangerous world with no way to come back on her own, and run away with the key. She wouldn't even need to fight anyone, just convince them Twilight had asked for it. She could go through the portal and come back as Twilight, claiming the other pony had been lost in there after she'd called for him, and use the opportunity to gather up as many resources as she possible before running away. She could even choose to replace the alicorn permanently, if she wanted, take over the role of Equestria's only leader and take over everything from there.

And almost nobody would ever find out, if she did things right. Almost.

Comments

[Sunny]

But one would and she's that afraid of her, so I'm now curious if Chrissy finally will discover the magic of friendship