CH: 7/13 - Rend
Chrysalis would have never thought that fighting a warrior queen inside her own head would result in physical wounds to her body but hey, even a centuries old changeling queen could occasionally learn something new about herself.
It took some serious effort to regain a moderate amount of energy from woodland animals and the three changelings had to pause their trip south for a few days but now they’re back on track with Chrysalis lying on the cart pulled by 68 and 96 again.
“That clearing looks suitable,” says Chrysalis out of nowhere, transmitting a flash of her own vision into the heads of her two subordinates, “Stop there.”
68 and 96 know better than to argue so they simply maneuver the cart over the uneven forest floor into a shade of a tree which their queen marked. As warriors, they’re significantly resistant to the elements but even they must admit that at this time of the year it’s unpleasantly hot even under the tree canopies.
“68, stay on guard. 96, go find water. Wash up, cool down, bring some, then swap with 68. I’m going diving.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they salute.
With an appreciative nod, Chrysalis assumes a position of a meditating griffon monk and closes her eyes. It probably won’t have any effect on her, or at least any positive one, but if she’s learned anything from her previous dives, it’s that the most successful queens were the ones who tried something new.
***
Chrysalis finds herself hovering low over what looks like homogenous woodland stretching as far as the eye can see. Nothing seems to be moving but if this place wasn’t connected to the next queen shade inside her head, she wouldn’t be here.
Too bad I can’t sense the links of anyone other than the queen shades themselves.
Eventually, she does spot a movement in the sea of green underneath and flies closer.
A changeling patrol. So, if the memory is based here then the changelings lived here before taking over the south. Damn, I wish it was possible to talk to Mandible for longer. I’m kind of lost as to how they got from here to mostly peacefully ruling the entire south of Equestria.
“As far as I know, we were pushed here by force,” says a voice from behind which makes Chrysalis straight up jump.
“How did you-?!” she immediately activates all her contingency transformations, her body welling up with love much to the visible amusement of the bigger and broader, amber-maned queen with black carapace tinted with red.
“You didn’t think that warriors are only born to ram our faces into enemy shield walls, did you?” the other queen chuckles, waving her foreleg around, “Fighting in a forest has its specifics, quite a lot of which are stealth-based,” she takes a step towards Chrysalis who is still lowered and tense in a combat stance, “which you will fully absorb once you get rid of me. To be honest, it hurts to see how much useful knowledge was lost over time just so that the bloated hive mind could keep us ‘alive’.”
“So, how do we do this?” asks Chrysalis, not easing up for a second. So far, she’s managed to dig only slightly into the shade’s head and pulled out her name, “Queen Rend.”
“Hmmm,” Rend taps her chin, “How about a quick chat and then we get to the exercise, hmm? Warrior survival instinct is quite something, considering our adaptability, so I can’t exactly disappear for free even if I wanted to, unlike some other queens you’ve met already. Poor Venom. Mandible had the right idea to destroy the hive mind properly but she completely lacked the power to do so. Holes, I’m not sure even you can do it and we’re only weak shades of the real thing.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to the hive mind revenants?”
“They jumped out of your head, using hive links and killing the weaker changelings they jumped through outright. There are only two options, really - they either found a suitable enough changeling host in a safe place and they’re changing them to suit their needs or they miscalculated their power, landed inside the wrong head, and starved to death already.”
Hmph, I suspected that much.
“Yes, you did,” Rend’s smirk only grows.
“You must be irritatingly good at mind tricks to be able to tell what I’m thinking.”
“Not exactly, Chrysalis. You just completely misunderstand what warriors are. Reading body language is just as much of a survival trait for us as reading minds is for you infiltrators. Only, you are used to doing so in a conversation while our observation skills are the sharpest in a fight. Right now, we’re in my territory,” Rend walks over and pats the smaller queen’s head, making Chrysalis bare her teeth at her in response, “Now, now, we wouldn’t be talking if I didn’t see potential for the growth of our species in this.”
“I brought down Mandible. Everyone knows us changelings have only grown in power throughout time, adapting to do more with less.”
“See?” Rend’s expression grows serious, “That’s where I think you’re wrong, and if you don’t learn some sort of humility that sticks you’ll die.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I am not talking about myself. Now let’s stop with the ovipositor measuring contest because the more you open your mouth, the more I’m starting to think that I overestimated your intelligence. Take a deep breath.”
To her own surprise, Chrysalis takes a deep breath. The knee jerk reaction was just an instinctive response to a presumed threat to her queenhood. A sign of…
… of insecurity.
After all, she has nothing to fear from Rend. She is vastly more powerful and she is inside her own body. What Rend is trying to make her realize is the difference between confidence and overconfidence. That’s all. She knows she won’t win a fight and yet she surprised and ambushed Chrysalis just to show her that there are many things she has to understand both about herself and about changelings as a whole.
“Better?” asks Rend.
Chrysalis looks her in the eyes with a stern expression and forces out a polite and factual:
“Yes. Explain what you meant by changelings not getting more powerful over time. From everything I’ve seen and experienced that is true. What makes you think it isn’t?”
“You started this spring cleaning because you knew something other queens didn’t. Someone within the hive mind believed that you were a queen who might not be a slave to the rage and said someone helped you keep your sanity. As you pushed through more and more memories, you learned that the rage wasn’t coming from us queens as you thought but was infecting us, forcing us to see enemies where they didn’t need to be, and in the end being amplified by us as we gave in. Correction, most of us. Venom was special and she could have become the most powerful queen ever and that’s why she had to die.”
“Then the question is - who helped me and where is the rage coming from?” Chrysalis states thoughtfully.
“Unfortunately, that’s where my usefulness ends. Warriors are very good at spotting enemies and allies, that’s our job. Sadly, we are nowhere as good at digging deep or influencing others. That’s your job.”
“Then what did you spot?”
“I just had a passing thought while watching history through your eyes without the corrupting influence of the true hive mind. The thought was - if there’s someone powerful enough to control other queens then why ARE there still other queens. You know we can be reborn, even if the process is exceedingly dangerous. Why would someone with enough power to influence all the other queens to a degree that shaped the entire history of our species wouldn’t simply get reborn and rule us instead?”
“Maybe the one influencing the hive mind isn’t a changeling but rather someone with extensive knowledge of our biology and mental magic? An alicorn, maybe?”
“Suspecting Scream, are we?” Rend shakes her head, “Possible, but I don’t think so. Scream has always been able to influence us through outside events and needs. I’m not ruling anything out but I think this threat is coming from inside the house.”
“So you believe one or more earlier queens were much more powerful than any other?”
“Congratulations, you got half of my suspicion right. Now try the second half. Hint - if it was one queen, why isn’t she ruling us?”
Chrysalis pauses.
“Someone is stopping her?”
“BINGO!” Rend claps, “With how dangerous our resurrection is, the process would be easy to foil. Simply influencing weaker queens, though...”
“Then you believe that changelings started out much more powerful than we are now, fell into a decline, and then rose up again?”
“Exactly-”
As Chrysalis blinks, Rend moves. When she opens her eyelids again, the warrior queen is in front of her, booping her nose before she can react.
A fraction of a second of confusion follows before a right hook from Rend sends Chrysalis backflipping into the air.
“-and you’ll have to face our past. The past which we don’t know anything about but which knows everything about us.”
Chrysalis shakes the concussion off only to be kicked from the side and sent onto the grass.
Rend is perfectly silent. How? Chrysalis has no idea. Even her own steps make the grass whisper and small branches crack so she can’t rely on her ears. The strange thing is that Rend’s blows are no stronger than those of a common pony Royal Guard.
What she can do is limit Rend’s access to her love just like she did with Mandible.
A mistake.
As she narrows her eyes to focus, Rend punches her right under her horn, scattering her thoughts into the breeze.
How is she unaffected-?
Oh crap, where is she?!
Chrysalis finds herself alone in complete silence or, to be accurate, surrounded only by natural noises of the forest.
She can sense Rend’s link, though, and tapping into it reveals-
-darkness?
A heavy mass lands on her back from above followed by a neck-cracking, vice-like grip twisting her body around.
Fine, time to burn love.
“Don’t bother,” the grip around her neck eases up but doesn’t vanish.
Confused, Chrysalis gathers herself only to realize that her neck is in a leg lock of Rend’s thick and powerful hind thighs.
“I know a lot of creatures who would pay good love to end up like this,” Rend’s hind legs tense up and make Chrysalis’ head wiggle, “Now, would you like to know how you lost?”
“Please, enlighten me before I waste a drop of my love and make you spread those legs so far behind your back even the filthiest whorse in Manehattan would be jealous,” says Chrysalis sarcastically, “I mean, if you wanted to get laid so much after all those years, you could have just asked.”
“See? Using love is what I wanted to avoid because you’re going to need all the energy you can get, idiot. And, by the way, I might take you up on that offer because being literally fucked into oblivion does sound rather appealing. Anyway, since you seem to be enjoying yourself under me, why don’t I take my time while you put your mouth to good use?”
“Infiltrator queen’s attention is something to be earned, Rend. Get talking!”
“Fine, fine,” the warrior rolls her eyes with a laugh, “One, I knew you’d try to do the same thing that worked on Mandible first so I simply didn’t rely on love enhancements, rather on my knowledge of changeling weak spots. Two, infiltrator hearing means nothing when I can time my every movement with the natural rhythm of the forest or mimic it. Three, I knew you’d try to get into my head so I got into a position where you couldn’t see what I was doing or stop me. In short, I dropped down from a branch and closed my eyes at the right time. Gravity wins.”
“Smart,” admits Chrysalis. Clinging to her inborn sense of superiority really wouldn’t achieve anything here, “What would you have done, though, if I just decided to use my love straight up and rip you in half?”
“I wouldn’t have fought you and, if I didn’t think I understood you well enough to believe you might be our hope, we wouldn’t be talking. You’d run into what’s waiting for you deeper into your memories and you’d fail.”
“...thank you,” Chrysalis mumbles.
“Oh my, did I hear that right?”
“From this position, I can bite half of your crotch right off.”
“Nevermind.”
“Good. Now that we understand each other, how about a history lesson. Why are we in… wherever we are?”
“The White Tail Woods. My mother Bloodlust led us here after zebras attacked Equestria from the south. The forests used to cover a huge chunk of the west before Las Pegasus and Vanhoover were founded so we had free access pretty much anywhere.”
“Hmm, if I understand it correctly, it was you who took over the south again, right? Before Mandible became queen and managed to hold it by force and threats.”
“Indeed, thanks to our ‘friend’ Scream, which neatly brings us to your second topic.”
“It’s really annoying that you can read me this well.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Rend smiles again, “Scream contacted me and told me that Celestia would be busy and ponies will be in no position to counterattack while we’ll be able to take over any part of Equestria we want other than Canterlot. She was very specific about that. I picked the more populated south where we were situated before and knew the lay of the land.”
“What did she concoct to make Celestia busy?”
“She said the sign would be ‘a long night’. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean but it turned out to be quite literal. One morning, the sun failed to rise and we took our chance. Infiltrators I sent out previously took out critical targets, we woke up warriors from hibernation, and the south was ours in a few days before ponies knew what hit them.”
“Did you find out what the long night was?”
“Oh yes, I had infiltrators in high places. Watch and see how the long night ended,” Rend bends down, puts her own horn to Chrysalis’, and the memory shifts.
***
It’s night, unsurprisingly.
Chrysalis finds herself standing on a balcony of Canterlot castle which can’t have changed much over the centuries even though the Canterlot city itself doesn’t exist. At least the upper city. What she knows as lower Canterlot set at the base of the mountain is smaller but already there. It’s pretty clear that the magic and technology required to put a castle halfway up a steep mountain definitely didn’t belong to unicorns of the time.
A white flash lights up the sky, blinding any potential onlookers without changeling eyes or protection and turning the night into a day for a brief moment.
“STOP, LUNA, PLEASE!” calls out a desperate voice, “I KNOW IT’S YOU IN THERE SOMEWHERE!”
“YOU. KNOW. NOTHING!” a shriek answers Celestia’s begging.
The black clouds above boil and a pillar of freezing starlight hits a rainbow marble which must be a protective barrier surrounding Celestia. The barrier clearly holds but the white alicorn is violently slammed into the ground by the torrent of force.
After the amount of energy which Chrysalis identifies as the biggest no-no she’s ever seen disperses, Celestia is standing in the middle of a huge crater, unharmed.
“LUNA, THIS IS POINTLESS. I HAVE THE ELEMENTS! I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU AND YOU CAN’T HARM ME!”
Her only answer is a furious screech as reality around the black alicorn enveloped by an eerie silver aura begins to twist and bend.
“This seems a little one-sided,” comments Chrysalis.
“Not exactly,” replies the disembodied voice of Rend, “Celestia heavily underestimates whatever power Nightmare Moon possesses right aboooout now.”
A silver spear materializing next to Luna moves like lightning, leaving behind a trail of eye-hurting, shattered reality impossible to describe. Celestia’s rainbow shield shatters and the white princess finds herself impaled through her chest and pinned to the ground, her eyes bulging in disbelief.
Luna lands in front of her, pure murder etched in her facial features.
“Aaaand now comes the evil monologue of a larva throwing a tantrum,” says Rend, “That’s the unimportant part. Let me guide you.”
Chrysalis doesn’t resist. At worst, she’ll be able to examine the memory in close detail later but right now Rend is leading her to more important connections. As her surroundings shift, she finds herself in a castle hallway on the top floor, looking through the eyes of an invisible changeling infiltrator using everything he can to suppress all signs of his presence. No noise, no scent, completely invisible, heartbeat almost still, and his eyes are locked on two figures unaware of his presence.
One is Scream and one is a white, brown-maned unicorn wearing plate armor covered in golden sigils and sun symbols.
“How could she do this…?” asks the unicorn in a cracked voice.
“Hmph,” Scream frowns, “and after all this time of me teaching her the secrets of magic.”
“You have to stop her!” the unicorn grabs Scream and shakes her.
“Nightmare is possessing Luna. The first thing it would do would be to make sure Luna is protected from all those able to stop her. The only reason Celestia is still alive are the Elements. The moment I show up, all her alarms will ring like a cathedral during a solstice. However...” Scream pauses and shakes her head, “No, that’s too dangerous.”
“What? WHAT?”
“I can scribe you a spell scroll. If you manage to get down there and use it against Luna unnoticed it should weaken her enough for Celestia to be able to stop her. The problem is that I don’t know if the spell is enough to protect you from her. We’re facing a literal GOD here and our only surefire weapon is the Elements.”
“I...” the unicorn hangs his head, “I’ll do it.”
“If something happens to you, it will break her...” says Scream, her voice filled with concern.
“If Luna wins, it’s over for all of us,” he shakes his head, “Eternal night? Crops will die, the world will freeze. Luna was talking about it as if it was just… just about appreciation of stars and such. Celestia and I have been together for more than a lifetime and we’ve been blessed with times most ponies can only dream of. This is my duty to her and to the land she built from the ashes of warring tribes.”
Scream closes her eyes and a piece of parchment slowly materializes in front of her, burning symbols appearing all over it.
“Can you activate it?”
He examines the scroll for a moment and nods.
“Then do your duty.”
With a quiet pop of teleportation, the unicorn vanishes.
“You had a pony lifetime with her while she took an alicorn’s lifetime away from me...” growls Scream as she walks out on the balcony and looks down at the two glowing dots at the base of the mountain.
Of course, Rend’s infiltrators are already watching Luna and Celestia from as close as they can, which admittedly isn’t too close because the area near the crater is so filled with magic they’d barely be able to breathe if they got closer but they can see and hear enough.
They can see Celestia’s eyes go wide as the unicorn materializes a short distance behind Luna. Her mouth opens into a scream as the unicorn’s horn lights up and the floating scroll disintegrates.
Luna catches on, turns around, and gets hit by a beam of burning energy incinerating everything in the area with the exception of Celestia and the unicorn himself. The released shockwave rips distant trees out of the ground and shatters glass windows all over lower Canterlot.
The memory wobbles as several of the observing infiltrators get knocked out but the few in good enough hiding places quickly resume watching so that they can eventually inform their queen residing far away through a network of contacts all over Equestria.
Luna’s flesh has been mostly seared off, leaving behind visible bones and chunks, and yet the alicorn is standing, magical power swirling around her.
“NO!” Celestia screams.
Luna only flicks her horn, her mouth ripped open creeping into a skeletal grin.
It’s a vibration more than a strike of an invisible force which, in a barely registered instant, smears the unicorn all over the scenery like a popped water balloon.
“MONSTER! YOU ARE A MONSTER! I THOUGHT YOU WERE STILL MY SISTER BUT YOU ARE NOTHING BUT AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR-” Celestia’s yell devolves into a furious screech as the Elements manifested as jewels adorning her body catch fire and pour all their energy into Celestia’s horn.
A simple flash of light later, Luna is gone without a trace and the sky begins to brighten. The jewels marking the presence of the Elements are gone, and Celestia finds herself sobbing in the middle of a circle of inert smooth stones, each bearing a strange symbol.
Through the ears of the infiltrator in the castle, Chrysalis can hear Scream’s quiet laughter:
“Face your own rage and darkness, your wannabe pure twat. Your lover is dead, you lost your prided self-control, you killed your sister, the Elements now reject you, and before you realize what happened, your ponies will be hanging in cocoons all over the south. I will make you unlock the Silent Quarter for me.”
With those words, the memory fades.
Still pretty much sitting on Chrysalis’ face, Rend gives her time to breathe. The infiltrator queen, though, frees her forelegs from under Rend’s expansive, muscular booty, and pokes her with one.
“I need to think about this,” says Chrysalis, “Turn around so that I can show your fat ass the reward it wanted.”
“Oh my, aren’t I the lucky one,” Rend snickers, “No wonder you don’t exactly have suitors queuing up with an attitude like that.”
“Don’t push your lu-mmmpgh!”
“Did I hear something?” Rend muses, “Nah, must have been just a disobedient royal plot cleaner.”
***
“HELP ME!”
As if through jelly, Chrysalis runs towards the voice.
She knows her daughter is dead. She knows she died because Chrysalis ignored her call for help. And she knows she won’t be able to save her.
“This is your fault, you failure of a queen,” hisses an unknown voice, “All their deaths are!”
Chrysalis’ mind explodes with screams of all the changelings hit by the Canterlot love explosion. Squeaks of weak drones splattered immediately against the nearest surfaces, shocked yells of infiltrators ripped apart from the inside by their love reserves spontaneously igniting, and roars of warriors unable to bear their insides boiling from the burning love unable to tear the tough carapaces quickly.
Chrysalis wakes up with tears in her eyes. In panic, she mentally reaches out to the two hive links near her. Both changelings immediately take their place next to her and only blink in surprise as the queen pulls them both into a hug.
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aaaaaaaaaa
still hooked, thank you for this chapter
You could say it's really rending her apart.
That raises some interesting possibilities that I'm now turning over in my head...
...Ah.
"Silent Quarter," huh? Must be one heck of a 25 cent coin.
Oh gods.
The changelings infested the Southern lands.
Which are now The Badlands.
In her greif,and maybe goaded, guided by Scream, Celestia is about to go The Full Oppenheimer on the vermin?
Wow. Scream is even more messed up than expected (which is saying a lot).
Wait, wasn't changelings created after Nightmare Moon event?
10906307
What can I say? I'm a hooker.
10906508
- She had two sisters - Rip and Tear. In the end, the only thing they feared was her.
- Possibilities like them ending in a drone who got knocked out before the invasion, found a half-Silent drone friend, went out of the Badlands to figure out what happened, found one mostly dead female changeling warrior, saved her, and eventually got discovered by none other than number One of the hive? Nah, that's too unrealistic.
- worth its Void in gold.
10906749
Nope, the timing is wrong but we'll get there.
10907002
She is a very, very hurt mare with immense power, influence, and a personal vendetta.
10907157
I have a vague feeling that I might have mucked up timings in some references in other stories. I'll either have to find the specific spots or just say that the one referencing it had the wrong information. However, this trip through the hive memories done by Chrysalis could be considered the source material closest to the truth.
10907175
Just checked. I was wrong, changelings was created 1500 years ago, so yes, they might saw Luna. Maybe a part "alicorn's rebelions Celestia have dealt with" made me think otherwise, idk.
10907175
It could be the mention that Luna was away and thus unaware of them.
But that can be explained by fact that first invasion was right after the banishment.
10907223
10909982
It took me some time to realize what this was referring to. It might be a good idea to approximate a little bit of a non-spoilery timeline as well as several qualifiers for Luna not knowing about changelings (even discounted her damaged memory):
1) Right now, we don't know what happened before changeling withdrawal into White Tail so we can't be sure how much Luna knew about changelings before her fall to Nightmare.
2) We don't know how Luna's mental state was and how long her fall took. So it's possible she wasn'T aware of anything changelings did in the real world for quite some time.
3) Assuming her life was somewhat similar to the present, she spent most of her time in the dreamscape dealing with things which make changelings look like a small beer.
As for the timeline:
Now we're roughly 1000 years in the past.
- changelings are hiding away in White Tail.
- Luna falls and gets banished. Changelings openly take over the south but without too much terror and bloodshed (unlike during the present invasion) during the long night.
- Celestia's attempts at retaking the south which eventually end due to Carapace's genocide threat,
- Everyone unites against changelings due to past events, ending in Venom'S death and changeling escape into the Badlands.
- (700yrs) Changelings recover, regain strength, Scream helps set up the first attacks by Momalis wanting to build a true, lasting changeling empire.
- Chrysalis comes into power and with the love-wise cheap creation of Silents manages to swarm forces all over Equestria and, seeing impending victory, attacks the Griffon Empire and Zebra states.
- (500yrs) Chrysalis' general Shadowstep is in charge of the attack on Griffon Empire but with zebras joining Equestria, she stops gaining enough reinforcement to crush the Griffon Empire quickly. Griffons unite and in the end destroy Shadowstep'S army.
- Chrysalis attacks Canterlot and is betrayed by Cryo and several other generals who see the crumbling of both southern and eastern front and want to escape with their broods. Chrysalis splits her forces to punish them in anger and is defeated during a successful counterattack of paladins, witch hunters, and unicons from the Orders of Wizardry from the castle led by Celestia. The few remaining changelings retreat to the Badlands where they're protected by Scream's anti-magic throne made of istrium.
- (present) Chrysalis sneak attacks Canterlot and fails.
10910035
You decompiled my shorthand version to something quite close to what I had in head, but I appreciate that! To me possibility of a royal being simply unaware, too busy to take attention to little threat or not quite sane were too obvious points to mention, and invasion MUST have reprecussion, it's something hard to miss.
This timeline is actually a treasure trove for stories (prequels?)
10910234
If I wanted fill up all the empty spots with their own stories, I would have to be an actual writer, not a hobbyist with a job
- I mean, I do want to fill out Cryo's story from betraying Chrysalis to ending frozen on an underground magma island, fighting an infection that wiped out the dwarves and forced her to eradicate her own brood.
- In the same way, I want to do Shadowstep's griffon campaign leaving her as one of the few remaining Chrysalis loyalists venerated by her changelings up to the point where griffons chase them into northern deserts and they all aside from her die from exposure, her being saved by a dragon sorcerer trying to create the ultimate creature, her being forced to kill the original alicorn of Love and Cadance's predecessor, and eventual birth of Horatio Cross, the ultimate hybrid.
- but in the same way I want to write a second part of Greyscale's story and him coming to term with living a normal life as a... slower pony.
- Gem's life after paladin raid on Las Pegasus as she struggles to survive with One locked inside herself.
- Hell, I would love to give some more life to Wistful and Celestia during the original griffon invasion culminating in a tactical spell nuke that created the Badlands rather than having those events be just a short mention.
The thing is - who knows how the fandom is going to fare once G5 comes out and where the interest will be. I'm slowly working on notes of an actual novel so if the interest here dies down too much or I simply burn out completely I might slow down the pace just enough to slowly finish what I started and not start anything new.
All those things, all those events have potential but as things stand, all of those might remain only as mentions of events scattered all over various other core stories.
10910339
For good writers it's also a hobby which is a job
10910344
True, but if I tried it I would starve
...oh, goodness, it's 3am. This story is quite the compelling read.
I wonder what relation Cadance has to Scream.
10914858
No need to binge. I'm already updating slowly so you can take your time.
As much as I'd like to say there's some massive mystery connection between the alicorn of Lust and the newest alicorn of Love, those two are completely unconnected.
10915173
Too late, I already read the entire thing!
Y'know, in the "1313 goes to Paladin camp" one, I thought for sure that the paladins would find a certain Bigger Changeling who is being charioted around in the Everfree as well.
10915592
Ah. That'S the two timelines thing I've been explaining before in the comments, because that's what terrible authors do - they have to explain things because they can't write them in an understandable fashion.
Bugbutt, 156/387, 1988/9999 start off roughly two weeks after the invasion while the rest start off right as the invasion fails.
The rough timing at chapter 40 is: about week and a half to two weeks after the invasion for the "Canterlot events", and some four weeks for "Riverside survivors"