They're EVERYWHERE!

by Nameless Narrator

CH: 3/13 - Whisper

Chrysalis has been gathering love for the next encounter for the bigger part of the week herself. While 96 and 68 proved capable at lurking through the night clubs of Manehattan, her previous experiences at fighting the shades inside her head proved that she would need more love to prevail without being completely useless afterwards.

After diving into the darkness, the next shade is already there, waiting for her. A familiar one once more.

“Huh, grandma Whisper...”

The moss-colored queen with grey mane bearing a gold tint only replies:

“Chrysalis...”

“Is that all? No comments about me being a failure and that you would do better?”

“I will leave that to the others and their inflated egos,” Whisper chuckles, “My daughter called me a bitch slinking away after being beaten all the time before her ascension to queenhood. It took all my self-control not to eat her. Besides, I had the pleasure of throwing it back in her face for the last 700 years and, if I recall correctly, you ate some of that ire yourself.”

“I certainly did, grandma, I did. So, just to be sure, no trying to take over my body to give the real world a second shot?”

Whisper sits down and stretches with a long yawn.

“How much do you know about the hive during my rule, Chrysalis?”

“I admit that things are extremely hazy past my own life experiences. The rage of the old queens-”

“You can call it the impotent rage of the old bats who failed at everything they touched and would end up exactly the same if they had a second shot-” she looks up into the darkness of the hive mind as if interrupted by a chorus of furious voices, and smiles a purely happy smile, “Ahhh, it feels so nice to be able to think without their screaming in the back of my already nonexistent head. I don’t envy whoever has the real hive mind revenants in their head now. All I can hope for is that their stupidity leads them to a place where they have nowhere to jump anymore and where their last remaining host starves to death.”

As satisfying as it is to hear someone else voice her own opinion on the matter, every moment here is draining for Chrysalis and she’s spent far too much time in Manehattan already.

“Grandma, what did you mean by the time of your own rule? I hatched during the first spread of my mother’s dream of the Changeling Empire. We were starting to take over villages here and there but we still lived back in the Badlands hive. I-” Chrysalis sighs, “Whenever I try to recall my trips through the hive mind, it’s all just ‘DEVOUR THE PONIES!’ and only the barest knowledge of the world. The rage is everywhere else with the exception of the… the beginning.”

“Ah yes, queen Shroud,” Whisper nods. Chrysalis gives her only the briefest of puzzled glances.

Does she not know?

“Was there no one before Shroud? Is she the first changeling qu- ruler?” probes Chrysalis.

“Indeed,” Whisper nods, “The queen who trusted Celestia’s promises of cooperation and peace and learned the harsh truth about the world - unless its ruler’s will is absolute, no faction can be trusted.”

“You’re rather calm about it. Aren’t you blaming Celestia for creating us?”

“Creating us?” Whisper shakes her head, “I didn’t peg you as the type for theatrics. We lived side by side with ponies under Shroud just as they lived under Celestia. Granted, we had to do our feeding in secret, at least those who weren’t in a position to get love for free, but it was still vastly better than being needlessly antagonistic. Besides, it was a time of war against the newly established Griffon Empire and ponies feared the meat eaters way more than some weird horsebugs,” Whisper chuckles again, “Well, at least until our feeding habits got out. Celestia was on our side but someone wasn’t, and eventually the ponies grew to see us in the same way as the griffons - a species that wants to enslave and eat them with the added horror of us being able to transform into a pony and replace them,” Whisper shrugs, “Population controlled by fear was pointed in the direction of an enemy who looked different. Honestly, from what I managed to untangle from the mess that’s our hive mind, some pony nobles just wanted to use us as a proof that Celestia’s attempts at peace and coexistence were a sign of weakness and take her place. It’s not as if unicorns weren’t doing the same thing throughout early pony history to pegasi, thestrals, earth ponies, flutterponies, hippogriffs, kirins, and every other species they considered ‘lesser’. Standard divide and conquer strategy.”

She knows a lot more about the world but she still thinks Shroud was the first queen…

Or was I lied to?

How does Scream fit into this, if my mother warned me about her?

“Hmmm. Do you know anything about our race before Shroud? Where did we live? What did we do? Anything?”

“I must admit I don’t. The hive mind was already toxic enough in my time and gaining any knowledge with some degree of certainty was a miracle. It can also be that we were split into small, irrelevant hives which Shroud united and didn’t bother burdening the hive mind with remembering those parts. I can’t say. To be honest, I always preferred looking forward into the future, trying to figure out a way to save us from the horrible line of screw-ups that Carapace started when she tried to invade the griffons. Warrior queens, am I right?” she raises a hoof for a high-one which Chrysalis smacks with a smirk of her own.

“One might say you succeeded, grandma. At least for a time.”

“No, my daughter did. I saved what little I could after my mother Hiss had to retreat back to the Badlands. Not to stroke my own ego too much, but the vast majority of hive procedures, rules, and habits are my doing. We survived with next to no love only thanks to proper discipline and management.”

“The queen of changeling bureaucracy,” Chrysalis can’t help taking a jab.

“I take that as a compliment, little filly,” Whisper reaches out and smacks Chrysalis in the back of her head.

“You do know that I’m literally at least 7 times older than any other queen who ever lived, right? I know you know that, you’re inside my head.”

“You’re my granddaughter and that’s that,” Whisper huffs before smiling and pulling Chrysalis into a hug.

“I’m still on edge because a part of me thinks you’re trying to trick me and I can’t blame that part, especially facing myself and my mother in here,” Chrysalis freezes.

“As I said, I know the situation you’re in. You yourself said it - you are old, older than any of us. You’re not that smart-”

“Hey!”

“If you were, you would have learned from your mother’s and your own mistakes before repeating them and getting bubbled out of Canterlot, wouldn’t you?”

“Smartass...”

“But you should know that your own age doesn’t mean that much when half of your head is the even longer-lived line of other queens with hundred times your experience. What the common changelings won’t ever understand is that the queen isn’t a changeling, she is the changeling, the race, its knowledge, its experience, its hope. Unfortunately, I wish more queens understood what it really meant before it was time to throw it all away.”

“I have to, grandma.”

“I know, I know,” Whisper nods, “But maybe you’ll be able to write a better chapter of changeling history with only the barest knowledge of the previous ones instead of being burdened by the pain of living through them, even as someone else,” she stands up, “Well, I guess I’ve been staving off death for long enough-”

“Wait!”

“Hmm?”

“I need to know one more thing before you go. What do you know about Scream?”

“Our protector? During my time, she sometimes informed us about what was going on on the surface. The queens from more... tumultuous times have more experience with her. My only major contact with her was when she guided us through the construction of my throne. You know, the one that blocks all magic that doesn’t belong to changelings.”

“I’ve always felt really weird when sitting or lying on it, cushions or not...”

“It’s from a kind of extremely rare crystal called istrium. We had to mine it all the way north under mount Everhoof. Supposedly, its presence instills remarkable fear in other species but our hive link connections protect us from it and our innate energy manipulation allows us to ignore its magic draining properties,” Whisper shrugs, “That’s why ponies never found us after my mother had to retreat here and I bashed her skull in when she started eating most of the hive to keep herself alive and strong.”

“Huh. So you don’t think Scream had an ulterior motive for helping us?”

“Filly, she’s an alicorn. The entire history of our hive mind is only the tiniest blip on the timeline of her life. Of course she wasn’t doing it out of the pure goodness of her heart but I wasn’t going to bitch about the pony keeping my race alive and risk making her rethink that decision,” Whisper rolls her eyes.

“You know what? I can get behind that,” this time it’s Chrysalis who pulls the other queen into a hug and stays like that until there’s nothing left but empty darkness.

When she opens her eyes again, the now more than familiar ceiling of the Manehattan apartment is there.

She’s weaker than before the conversation but not exhausted like after mentally fighting during the previous two.

“Are you okay, Your Majesty?” asks 68 standing on guard by her side.

Chrysalis wipes her eyes.

“Liquid pride, 68, that’s all.”

Author's Note:

Just a short step backwards through changeling history, nothing big this week.

Comments

[ChakatRedstripe]

Nice chapter

[DovahkiinMaster]

“Filly, she’s an alicorn . The entire history of our hive mind is only the tiniest blip on the timeline of her life. Of course she wasn’t doing it out of the pure goodness of her heart but I wasn’t going to bitch about the pony keeping my race alive and risk making her rethink that decision,” Whisper rolls her eyes.

Snrk.

[Shadowshame]

Huh finally a nice one

[Mewlover]

I love your work this was marvelous

[KVFFour]

Chrysalis has been gathering love for the next encounter for the bigger part of the week herself. While 96 and 68 proved capable at lurking through the night clubs of Manehattan, her previous experiences at fighting the shades inside her head proved that she would need more love to prevail without being completely useless afterwards.

I beg, choose a tense man
It hurts