CH: 1/13 - Chrysalis
For the first time in centuries, the darkness of the hive mind feels like a fresh breeze. The silence, however, is deafening. There’s no hive, no remnants of all the pent-up fury of the old queens beating down on her, nothing.
She just sits there, basking in the relaxing peace, and soon she senses the two blocked hive links of the only guards she took with her after her abysmal failure in Riverside which was the final straw that opened her eyes.
The same eyes which open in the darkness ahead, followed by the materialization of a mirror image of herself.
“Look at yourself,” Chrysalis sneers, “Alone, hated by the world, and outsmarted by your rank 16. Blind and crippled rank 16, by the way.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” real Chrysalis allows herself a soft smile.
“Oh, do I feel excuses coming?”
“Excuses? Far from it,” Chrysalis shakes her head, “Just a lesson learned. I have enough mental discipline to avoid the pitfalls of self-pity, most of the time at least.”
Doppelganger Chrysalis rolls her eyes.
“So, what lesson did you learn from your hive being wiped out in Canterlot for the second time? That alicorns are overpowered as hole?”
“Oh, pleeeease,” Chrysalis chuckles, “I imprisoned the alicorn of Love, drained her, and with the fake love of one stallion I brought Celestia to her knees. What I did learn from that was how quickly can stolen and soured love betray you. The thing is, dear fake myself, that while I might not be the most morally pure changeling leader, I am the smartest one.”
“You’re definitely not missing the usual dirigible-sized ego of all the other queens. And yet, let me recapitulate, you’re alone and your hive is shattered into fragments or dead.”
“Tsk tsk tsk,” Chrysalis shakes her head, “Now I understand what you are. The insane revenants of hive queens plaguing the hive mind aren’t completely gone, are they? And you are a shadow, the most stable memory of myself,” she closes her eyes and takes a long breath, “Just like the shades of all the other queens I’m going to have to deal with then, I assume. Thankfully, you have no power like this, none of you can mess with my head or my hive anymore.”
“Heh,” shade Chrysalis bares her fangs, “So that’s why you left them...”
“Yep. Granted, playing chess against myself and several other grandmasters at the same time wasn’t easy, but here we are. It took me some time to understand the sudden emptiness inside my head now that the living queen fragments are gone and when I sensed you I thought they just retreated for a while, but that wasn’t it. I’ve lived with all of those revenants inside the hive mind for so long that even the memories inside my own head took on a life of their own. Now there’s nowhere left for you to retreat, I made sure that my two warriors are immune to any hive mind… leakage. I’ve got a question, though.”
“Do you? Is there something the great and powerful Chrysalis doesn’t know?”
“Where, why, and how did the revenants of old queens escape from the hive mind? I felt their rage and hatred even as I was standing in the Canterlot castle throne room and watching the city being taken over.”
“In what reality do you think any of us will tell you, failure?”
Shade Chrysalis’ neck chitin bends inwards and cracks, surrounded by green glow of real Chrysalis’ horn.
“Because you are a powerless shadow inside my mind, inside the mind of the best infiltrator queen who’s ever lived. I can torture you here forever in ways you can’t- well, I mean you, in particular, can imagine but the older queens can’t. In fact, you knowing how I can make you feel even without a real body should actually be even more terrifying.”
“And what good would that do in the end?”
“It would make me feel better.”
“Alright, and how would that make you different from the other queens then?”
“I suppose that since you’re my fragment from before Canterlot failure number two, you wouldn’t get it,” Chrysalis shakes her head, “All these centuries, they blamed Celestia and ponies. For everything bad that’s happened to us, really. And yes, ponies started it and Celestia deserves… a kick in her cake-fueled fat plot, but for being ancient queens, they were really like larvae saying ‘Look what you made me do, it is all your fault’, as if they had on self-control, no agency.”
“There was never a chance for peace! Everyone only saw us as monsters, as weapons!”
“Yeeeeah… that’s what the old queens wanted us to remember. However, someone with my level of mental magic could see the discrepancies, especially when my infiltrators started deserting and taking others with them. Specifically, anyone of low enough rank not to be privy to the influence of the old queen’s rage. It made me wonder why, why would changelings choose suicide rather than life in the hive or hibernation. That was when I started scouring the hive mind for any scrap of our history which wasn’t tainted by their insanity, and when I discovered… him. You should know this, actually.”
“I… argh...” shade Chrysalis bites her lip and clutches her head. After a short moment, she recovers, ”Not following you here.”
“Huh, so their influence blinds other revenants whose hatred in turn maintains the feedback loop. Ponies bad, changelings monsters, nom nom nom love. So if I died and stored myself, I would be the same. I can’t even be mad...” Chrysalis shakes her head, “I was talking about the king of the changelings. The first, the traitor, the eternal prisoner. His version of our history was a little… different than how the others presented it, or possibly even remembered it after so much time.”
“So he was lying to you, whoop-de-doo.”
“I was suspicious, yes, so I started sending out more and more infiltrators under the pretense of gathering love for a future big invasion. However, that wasn’t the goal of all of them. Some were supposed to find the deserters and-”
“If the next words aren’t to execute them on the spot, I’m going to facehoof.”
“-to talk to them.”
Shade Chrysalis facehoofs. Real Chrysalis smirks and continues:
“Yes, some changelings whom they discovered had replaced a pony - lover, foal, friend. Yet, there was a rather small amount of those cases, and in some instances they replaced a pony who died away from their family. In most cases, though, they simply took on a form of a random pony and started a life.”
“Too bad you couldn’t see how many tried that and starved to death.”
“Fewer than you think. You see, without the taint of the old queens, the low-ranked changelings couldn’t understand why we were supposed to hate ponies. In that, they realized a lesson that the old queens forcibly blinded us to - to earn love by caring.”
“WE TRIED! THEY HATED US! TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS, REMEMBER?”
“We didn’t take it slow, we didn’t do it right. We will do it right this time, but first I must make sure there’s no taint of the old queens left inside my own head. Next, I must find where the real hive mind revenants escaped to, which neatly brings us back to my original question - where, why, and how?”
Shade Chrysalis closes her eyes.
“Do you really, from the bottom of your heart, believe that you’re not just restarting a cycle which will lead to millions more changelings dying again?”
“There will be pain, there will be idiots, there will be losses, and they might number in millions. That’s inevitable,” Chrysalis narrows her eyes, “But there will be a direction other than ‘hide and bide your time until you can eradicate or enslave literally every other sentient species on the planet’. We won’t have a repeat of ‘The Great Changeling Empire’ attempt. Speaking of which, if I’m to have a chat with every queen fragment, does that mean my mother is next? Because we’ll have words about that entire Empire thing. Some will be curse words not safe for larvae.”
Shade Chrysalis looks at real Chrysalis again.
“I don’t know where the hive mind fragments escaped to. They had to be jumping away from Canterlot faster than the love explosion, and the transfer of knowledge and information would be killing every changeling they used as a crutch. There was no plan beforehoof, they must have improvised. I have no idea in whose head they can be now, but it has to be a changeling. As for ‘how’, you know the method of transferring consciousness and its dangers. And finally - the ‘why’ is simple. They assumed the love explosion would literally boil or rip apart every changeling from the inside, it wasn’t anything against us in particular, it was just a survival instinct.”
“Yes, a survival instinct...” Chrysalis growls, “The instinct that caused all the old queens to clutter and poison the hive mind under the pretense of keeping lessons and memories when, in reality, they just couldn’t admit the simplest of things - they were afraid to die. Keeping their consciousness alive was the single biggest drain on the hive’s love reserves. Without the need for that, we wouldn’t be rationing every single drop, reprocessing every changeling once they served their purpose, or forcing the more developed ones into near-constant hibernation. The hive would be much more than a queen and her… appendages.”
Shade Chrysalis frowns, crossing her forelegs on her chest.
“A long, hard look into the mirror would do you good now.”
“I am well aware of my role in building and furthering that state of affairs,” real Chrysalis hisses at her, “But without the constant beating of the old hags against my mental defenses I think I’m finally ready to do what must be done. First, I will lay my own memories of the queens to rest. Second, I will gather any survivors I can who are still willing to follow me. Third, I will find into whose mind the real hive revenants escaped to. And fourth, I will contact Celestia and present our case. I won’t hope for forgiveness but I will work my beautiful and bouncy bug ass off for redemption.”
“That’s a tall order, which will either save us or end us.”
“Yes, but don’t forget that while I might not be the most morally pure changeling leader-”
“-I’m still the best queen there ever was,” shade Chrysalis finishes with a smile and disappears, leaving behind only a fleeting moment of peace for the queen.
In the real world, Chrysalis opens her eyes, yawns, and stands up as her two guards glance her way. With a surprised blink, she realizes how drained, both physically and mentally, the conversation left her.
“One thirteenth of the way there,” she says and the changeling warriors give her puzzled looks, “I’m going to need more love for this. 96, head off and look for a settlement. I’ll do the infiltrating myself.”
True love and affection will have to wait. After all, while a delicious, filling, and healthy three-course meal is the goal, a hayburger will do in a pinch.
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Interesting bit of lore here. I am eager to see where this goes.
10670208
Just a bit of filler regarding what Bugbutt had to deal with. That, and some changeling history I haven't explored anywhere else.
The full story of the hive mind revenants of old queens is in "An Exercise In Management"
10668352
This comment was more about the chapter in general.
10670892
Eeeh, let's see how long that opinion lasts.
Btw nice EVE profile pic .)
Huh, is this implying Shining doesn't really love Cadance?
10675877
The exact opposite. Shining's love was so strong that even pretending to be Cadance was enough to superpower Bugbutt enough to deal with Celestia's self-limited form.
What did 16 do? Why are there so many missing plot points in this story I don't understand send help
10675906
Also explains why a bit of Shining's genuine love of Cadance was ever more powerful that then massive amount of stolen love Chrysalis had. In the cannon of the show Chrysalis empowers her self with stolen love and is defeated by much more potent freely given love. Same reason Throax completely forgot about feeding, the Crystal Ponies became his real friends freely given him genuine love(friendship is a kind of love after all) which was much more than he needed.
10829920
Huh, I completely missed a comment. This is a mention of a story that happens in Riverside, the result of which is 156,387, Chrysalis, and others escaping from there. "Hard to find the right words." It's a pretty short one.