CH: 8/13 - Bloodlust
Another day, another seemingly endless stretch of grassland ahead of Chrysalis. This time, however, she’s not getting carted around, having opted to stretch her legs before another inevitable dive into the depths of her mind. Still, the air is fresh, the sun isn’t overly obtrusive, and she isn’t sensing any amount of discontent from her two warriors.
“Do you like it out here, you two?” she asks.
“Your... Majesty?” 68 recovers first from the surprise of their queen doing anything other than giving them orders.
“Is there something wrong with your ears?”
“N-No, Your Majesty!” 68 stutters.
“96, I am absolutely certain I added ‘you two’ to my question.”
“Y-You did, Your Majesty,” 96 is somehow lost in a situation where a higher-ranked changeling is present and the queen’s attention is on him, “I, umm, I feel like it’s a change of pace but… I prefer being underground, Your Majesty.”
“And you, 68?”
“I-I’m having mixed feelings, Your Majesty,” 68 gathers her scattered thoughts, “It’s too hot out here but I like the breeze. I like being able to see far and wide but, in the same way, being this easy to spot doesn’t feel right. I think I agree with 96 - I’d love to be able to occasionally be out here without having to worry about being attacked but most of the time I’d like to remain underground.”
“In that case, hypothetically, if you were able to walk on the surface without the fear of pony retribution, you would use the opportunity, right?”
“Occasionally, yes,” 68 replies and 96 nods in agreement.
“Would it, say, make you happier?”
“Nothing can make me happier than serving the hiv-”
“Yes yes,” Chrysalis rolls her eyes, “Be happy and obedient or get recycled, I know the ‘Unspoken rules of hive survival’, you idiots. If we had a culture of literature and that section of the hive mind was a book, it would be a bestseller. Now, I won’t punish you for lying to me just now if you answer me honestly. Although that reply might already be more telling than anything you could say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, it would make me happier,” admits 68. When Chrysalis keeps looking at her, she adds, “I… I’m a hive guard, a good one on top, but with that designation I’ve rarely left the hive and I’ve never been among ponies. Hunting in Manehattan would have been difficult for me without the access to the infiltrator experience through you. What I saw in Canterlot showed me how much there is to see beyond tunnels and utilities made of our resin. It was… interesting.”
“I see,” Chrysalis falls quiet.
“May I-” 96 pauses, gathering courage, “May I ask why the sudden interest, Your Majesty?”
68 almost chokes on her spit as she hears the question and she immediately starts pondering how difficult it’s going to be to pull their cart alone.
“Oh?” Chrysalis raises an eyebrow, “Is there anything wrong with the queen taking an interest in the opinions of her subjects?”
YEEEESSSSSSSS! Only a few weeks ago, a question like that would be considered second-guessing the queen and would be grounds for recycling!
Neither of the two warriors can vocalize the thought, however.
Chrysalis, however, knows it full well and doesn’t wait for their reply.
“You two, I’ve been digging through the hive mind and our history for some time now. I’ve seen our successes and failures repeated over and over. We were used, abused, and thrown away afterwards. And I think that what I’m about to learn isn’t going to get better. This made me ask myself - what do we want? What is our goal? Taking over Canterlot? I failed twice and neither time it was what we wanted. It was what they, the insane queens, wanted,” she takes a deep breath, “But there were queens who wanted exactly what you two just said - the simple ability to walk on the surface, unafraid. Do you know what stopped them every time, who was the enemy that ended their rule?” when they shake their heads, she continues, “Every. Single. Time. It was another changeling, be it directly or indirectly. The way I see it, there are only two paths we can take to end the cycle. Care to guess which?”
The warriors think as she climbs onto the cart again before she adds:
“Well?”
“My apologies, Your Majesty,” 96 admits, “This isn’t my forte.”
“I wanted to say that we would have to conquer the world but,” 68 shakes her head, “That wouldn’t make sense since, as you said, we were supposed to be our own worst enemy.”
“I’ll let you two think about it,” Chrysalis makes herself as comfortable on the cart as she can, “Be sure to have an answer by the time I deal with whatever queen is waiting for me next.”
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath of fresh air, and dives into the hive mind again.
***
Huh, another floating one.
She finds herself hovering over a coastline besieged by ships from which ponies are pouring out.
Correction - changelings disguised as ponies.
A few moments later, the ‘pegasi’ fly out from the ships and begin peppering anything moving with crossbow bolts.
The defending force is pitifully small - fewer than fifty zebras wearing leather armors and barely protected with small wooden shields rush towards the first landing point.
Their support comes as more zebras, clearly civilians, answer with firebombs from the streets but there’s no real military infrastructure to stop the invaders as the pony ships dock. Whatever the reason for the changeling invasion was, the zebra defenders had no idea it was coming.
The lack of, even late, military response gets explained soon, as an explosion rocks the fortress in the city center towards which a mob of zebras is retreating through the streets.
Panic breaks out as, one by one, the civilians realize that their only safe place was, in fact, the first one to fall.
Chrysalis watches rank changelings sweep the streets and gather the non resisting zebras.
“Execute them!”
The order rings through the hive mind. Common changelings exchange surprised glances before the will of their commanders is forced onto them and they begin massacring the population. Screams of horror follow, as changelings begin barricading houses from the outside and throwing explosives in through the windows.
Less than twenty minutes later, the entire coastal city is on fire.
This must be the north coast of Zebrica then. Is this a political move to weaken Equestria’s position in the world? During the last memory, changelings were hidden in the White Tail Woods. Did this cause the retreat?
The memory shifts.
This time, Chrysalis is looking through the eyes of a changeling disguised as a zebra wearing gold chains and ornaments of all sorts sitting behind a long table inside what must be some kind of a throne room.
“This must not remain unanswered!” he slams his hoof against the table, “This is the fourth city they burned to the ground!”
“We’ve already sent a diplomatic envoy to Equestria and we’re sending reinforcements from the heartland. If the war council agrees to temporary union, the might of the entire continent will bear down on the attackers like time and time before,” replies the zebra sitting at the head of the table.
The weird thing is that if we were controlling the south, why would any zebra believe that it was ponies attacking them and not disguised changelings? Wish I knew a bit more about our current position in Equestria.
“More and more zebras are being killed while we talk,” objects the changeling, “We can’t be waiting for the diplomatic response. Several years ago, it was the changelings attacking us and the ponies eradicated them with our help. Without any threat to Equestria on their continent, her power-hungry eyes are turning towards us! We MUST answer before she decides to lead an attack herself, not send envoys and beg her to leave us be!”
“YEAH!” comes a chorus of cheers from the majority of zebras present.
Yep, just politics. Instigating two sides against one another while changelings profit. Now… how do we actually profit from this?
The memory shifts again, this time overlooking the now familiar south coastline of Equestria and a massive zebra fleet approaching.
What interests Chrysalis more, though, are the changelings disguised as ponies escaping the cities underneath her, their minds lit up for her to sense. Strangely enough, because she shouldn’t be able to sense the minds of memory entities other than the queens.
She wants me to see this.
Time speeds up. Changelings escape west from all over the south in groups, pairs, or alone, all with the simple order to leave as zebras roll over the south.
In her mind, she follows the changelings west into White Tail and into previously prepared tunnels leading into a large yet shallow network of tunnels where they simply sit down and start hibernating.
***
Shortly after Chrysalis begins exploring the tunnels, the wall behind her explodes.
“Heh,” chuckles a voice right before something grabs her hind leg and flings her deeper into the tunnel.
Even while skipping over the stone floor like a rock over a lake, Chrysalis retains enough self-control to strengthen her carapace and avoid taking any real damage past scratches and small bruises.
From the corner of her eyes, she notices a large, bulky shadow rapidly approaching her.
Another warrior queen.
All she has to do is withdraw all her love into herself just like before and allow the queen to punch her as she’s getting up. It hurts, but unlike her original fight with Mandible, none of her bits have been punched off.
Yep, works like a charm. Warriors just can’t control my love well enough to fuel their power.
To her surprise, the queen backs off, giving Chrysalis a moment to appreciate her brutish form. Still, despite her black scheme tinted with red and her blood-red eyes, she looks pretty much like any other warrior queen before… only with more spikes all over. Fairly tacky, in fact.
“Hmph, afraid of a real contest of skill?” she asks.
“Stupid waste of love is on of the reasons why we never really made it,” replies Chrysalis with contempt, “I’m sure I’m going to need all of mine for something more useful than a show. Besides,” her horn flashes, “I don’t think you can move anymore. Go on, try it!”
The warrior queen strains against her invisible bonds for a moment, her carapace creaking and the muscles underneath bulging, but eventually has to admit her loss.
“Oh well. Can’t expect a warrior to win a mental battle inside someone else’s head,” she says in a surprisingly casual tone, “I am queen Bloodlust and, if you want a quick summary of my lifetime, without me there would be no changeling hive anymore.”
“Elaborate.”
“You’ll understand once you meet my mother,” Bloodlust laughs, “Seriously, the first warrior queen was almost our last one. Didn’t make a good case for us at all. Anyway, what do you want other than to purge me from your head?”
“Just the usual,” Chrysalis waves her hoof casually without stopping watching the warrior for a second. She can’t help feeling that unlike the previous warriors this one’s not exactly acting in good faith, “Scream’s involvement in our history, the burning rage inside the hive mind which has been retreating from me for a while now. You can start with either, really.”
“Ah, the definitely not suspicious alicorn,” Bloodlust nods with a smirk, “I’m fairly certain she was the one who persuaded my mother to invade the Griffon Empire… and Zebrica… and the Dragon Lands… hole, even the undead territory. Seriously, how stupid must a queen be to be persuaded to drain love and lust from the undead. Sometimes, I completely understand why we warriors have the reputation that we have,” she sighs, shakes her head, and suddenly bursts forward. She makes it barely a hoof’s width forward before freezing again.
Chrysalis only raises an eyebrow.
“I think I felt something. Did I feel something? Maybe a warrior trying to break an infiltrator’s control? Or did I just eat some bad love yesterday?”
“Har har,” Bloodlust frowns, “Aaanyway,” she continues as if nothing happened, “She sent infiltrators to elicit dragon love too by turning themselves into lumps of gold. Seriously, how totally braindead-”
“I’m about to meet her so don’t spoil the surprise. Besides, I don’t care about your family issues, I care about Scream,” Chrysalis interrupts her tirade.
“Alright, alright. So, I was suspicious of her ever since she supported my mother’s idiotic warmongering decisions that almost buried us all so I instructed my infiltrators to closely follow events in Equestria as much as it was possible with everyone knowing about us and trying to eradicate anything even remotely related to our species. You see, after my mother invaded everyone and failed-”
Sounds waaaaay too familiar, mom.
“-I killed her and took over. Handing her corpse as well as those of her top ranks to the Dragon Lord and to the griffons to display them as their trophies placated the two most bloodthirsty enemies while forcing everyone to hide and scattering changelings into small cells all over Equestria made hunting us down near impossible. Anyway, as I said, once things cooled down a little, I had changelings infiltrate pony cities all over the place. They hunted, they spread, they controlled, they survived.”
“Until you blew it by attacking the zebras.”
“Blew it? Of course not. I made a deal with Scream just like my mother, only I wasn’t stupid enough to get baited into nonsense. Scream needed a distraction from events in the north and promised me her plan would allow us to gain territory without being contested, which was impossible after my mother’s failures. All we had to do was spur on the war between zebras and ponies, and then lay low for some time. The war should clean up the south while split pony forces would be powerless to fight her plans in the north. Gotta give it to her, she was right.”
No, she used you like she did with everyone else, you’re only too stupid to see it. You were recovering, you were slowly securing your position, and you threw it all away just because you wanted open territory.
Open territory where changelings could walk in sunlight.
Holes damn it!
“What happened in the north?” asks Chrysalis instead of berating the other queen.
“Some kind of a unicorn warlord appeared out of nowhere and started building up in the north years ago. My infiltrators reached some changelings there who fled the hive after it was clear that my mother wasn’t stopping with her war effort and reminded them of their loyalties.”
“Please don’t tell me you were stupid enough to execute them for betraying the hive or something.”
Like I would not too long ago...
“They were allowed to stay there on the condition of giving me information. I don’t use up my resources for no reason,” Bloodlust gives Chrysalis an irritated look, “They still ended up escaping from there anyway.”
“How come?”
“That unicorn warlord, Sombra or something, started out okay as far as they knew, using magic and really weird technology to build some sort of a city state he called The Crystal Empire in which a bunch of ponies of all species could live. He had a pretty good relationship with ponies, with trade and stuff. My sources even said that Sombra and Celestia were romantically involved.”
“Sounds alright. What went wrong?” Chrysalis corrects herself, “I mean, how did Scream twist this seemingly perfect situation?”
“Can’t say with any kind of certainty. At some point, things got weird. All that pony friendship stuff gave way to forced labor, pony experimentation, and strange magic experiments. The only variable that changed was the arrival of a magic expert whom Sombra eventually took on as a lover instead of Celestia. I could only leave a few infiltrators there specifically trained to deal with mind control but I pulled most of those out once Sombra started his military expansion to Equestria.”
“Crystal Empire… doesn’t ring a bell,” Chrysalis furrows her brows, “I even invaded the north but there wasn’t anything there.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you there. After zebras ruined the south of Equestria and Celestia was able to strike a deal with them that they’ll control the territory as long as they’ll allow the ponies living there to remain there unharmed, she went on to fight in the north with her sister. Sombra’s army was beaten back and that’s all I know. When I sent out scouts from White Tail, the entire Empire was gone. Not eradicated, ruined, or anything, simply gone,” Bloodlust shrugs, “Lesson learned - don’t piss off two alicorns at once.”
Luna went crazy after building a new magic research laboratory under a new magic teacher. Sombra started dark magic experiments with his new lover. I think the situation is pretty clear cut here.
“IT HAS BEEN SINCE THE BEGINNING, AND YOU ALL SERVED THAT DAMN ALICORN LIKE THE LOYAL HOOF POLISHING TOOLS THAT YOU WERE!” a mental scream of pure fury sends Chrysalis on the floor as her knees buckle.
The burst of rage distorts reality around them and Chrysalis can barely roll away from Bloodlust’s hoof about to crush her skull.
“Not again...” she groans, fighting the onset of nausea and a headache while barely able to see Bloodlust about to kick her.
It’s a tactic.
Chrysalis realizes what’s happening just in time to jump back on all fours and start running. Pour love into legs, make herself lighter, give herself just a few seconds.
This time she doesn’t waste love on trying to control Bloodlust. She needs to control herself first. Without access to her love reserves, Bloodlust, even infected by rage, won’t be a threat.
She just needs to clear her head. One moment to breathe-
“MOTHER, HELP ME!”
“Not now!” Chrysalis grits her teeth, feeling the massive ball of anger and chitin slowly catching up to her.
“I GOT ONE, I’M STRONG ENOUGH! I CAN-”
The crunch and gurgle at the end of that sentence makes tears burst out of Chrysalis’ eyes.
“ENOUGH, YOU COWARD!” she roars, turns around, and simply raises her foreleg against charging Bloodlust. Emerald flames of love envelop her entire body just as the warrior rams into her, “STOP HIDING IN THE SHADOWS AND FACE ME!”
The last thing that goes through Bloodlust’s mind is Chrysalis’ motionless hoof.
The memory shatters.
Chrysalis wakes up, breathing heavily and staring into the eyes of two paralyzed warriors.
The cart has been cleaved in half and there’s a scorched scar in the ground between 68 and 96, both of whom have one side of their carapace basically gone, leaving open muscles visible in the air.
To Chrysalis’ surprise, all the damage she just caused cost her a fairly small amount of love, which makes her evaluate her situation and say her orders.
“Fix the cart with resin,” she steps out of the wreckage as regally as one can in such a situation, “Once you’re done, you’re to rest while I do the pulling. I need to stretch my legs and get my blood flowing anyway.”
“Your Majesty, we can-” 68 objects.
“96, how would you like a promotion?” Chrysalis interrupts her.
“-start right away!” 68 corrects her objection.
As the two begin fixing the cart, Chrysalis sits down and looks over the rolling hills into the distance.
I’m closing in on the source and whoever she is, she knows it. She can affect other shades, she can dig through MY memories just like I’m doing to the others, and she’s just a damn SHADE!
Chrysalis raises her hoof and examines it.
It’s trembling.
She can’t make it stop.
Stats
Page generated in 0.046 seconds
Total duration
809 users online
1,149,718 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Gotta give Scream some credit--she's good. She knows precisely what the changelings want most, and how to manipulate that want to solely her advantage.
So Chrysalis is right--she's just using the changelings as pawns. I don't think Scream's endgame even concerns the changelings at all, they're just a convenient stepping stool towards reaching it. But darn if she isn't good at it. She seems to always know precisely what buttons to push at what times to get them to play along with her schemes, regardless of the ruling queen...at least until queens such as Chrysalis started seeing the pattern and started distrusting Scream outright regardless. At which point Scream seems to have only started using that general distrust to her advantage too.
It seems like that, no matter what the changelings did all throughout their history, Scream still stood to gain in some way in the end.
Had to remind myself here that this is still technically pre-season 3.
I wonder...the first one Scream managed to scorn? And has thusly held a bit more than a grudge over it ever since?
Scream has so much to hate Sombra for?
10940512
Hmm, that certainly isn't the picture I intended to present. I have a history background in mind for Scream and Sombra kinda explaining why she was able to easily orchestrate mirror Sombra's invasion into our Equestria after our Sombra's destruction by the Elements.
Big Spoiler for Imbalanced and a small one for this:
The one that happens in Imbalanced and forces the original temporary peace between changeling and ponies which eventually blooms into lasting peace. The one facilitated by Chrysalis seeing Sharp Biscuit die while protecting her from corrupted Blazing.
10940366
- I mean, Scream has EONS of life experience in comparison to any currently living creature or species. At this point in time, the only older creatures than her are Void and Magnus, two out of the three primal alicorns. Civilizations rose and fell around her and changelings are only the tiniest blip on her radar.
- Yes, she is clearly using them, just like presumably many others before them, to hurt Celestia because reasons. On the other hand, as Imbalanced and chronologically following stories show, she does feel kinship with them, mostly due to her being the aspect of Lust, and she did make sure not to just throw them under the bus and use someone else as she easily could.
- You have no idea how hard is to write anything placed in my world that's connected to the show. The chronology is crazy at this point.
- Well, hatred this insane and pure rarely has only one reason.
10940567
"Primal alicorns"? What even is this 'Imbalanced' story?
10947064
A series of self-help books which didn't help as much as they needed but kept me away from making certain permanent problems temporary.
10947099
...what?