The Heart of an Empire
…oh, Chrysalis, why couldn’t I have been assigned the nursing chambers?
The pattern marching of the changeling army droned on through the barren, icy plains, rhythmically echoing within the roar of the snowfall bombarding their shoulders. Thousands of compound eyes gazed dead forward, eyeing the oncoming glow of the crystal empire with hungry intent, all save for one. A single head, deep in the heart of the array was tilted down, gazing at the snow his feet crushed with shame. Not that his undivided attention mattered, anyway.
Even if he’d cared, he told himself, he couldn’t even get a decent view behind the chitlin back of one of his comrades. Thanks to his meager size, he had to power walk just to keep up with the soulless march of the other soldiers and also hide from the bemused grunts of the changeling behind him anytime he’d get hit by his knees. The heavy spear he carried around didn’t help, either.
The cornerstone of Crux’s dread for the past few months would finally ensue tonight. All of his efforts; any faked illness on his checkups, rudeness towards his generals, or even attempts at forging his papers didn’t leave a dent on the process, and of all the niches, chambers, or sanitary departments he could’ve gotten been dropped into, the machine somehow still managed to look at his wimpy build and badge him up for the one department he’d done all his gambling to avoid: the army.
Every conceivable outcome flashed before his eyes. Torture sessions, imprisonment, interrogations, trials, servitude, death…or Chrysalis. Oh, god, Chrysalis. "Oh…"
"Distance 700 yards! Mandible formation!"
The march of the entire army instantly ceased, and the soldiers robotically crouched down, readying their spears. The glow of the crystal empire fluctuated, fading from a soothing blue to a fiery red.
"CHARGE!!!"
…and in a deafening herd of battle cries screaming over one another, the legs or wings of the army took a full stride. Whimpering, Crux was one of those who took flight, but only to avoid being trampled by the surging changelings below.
Slicing through the hazy blizzard, the blurry shadow of the crystal city cleared the way, allowing the swarm to see the deftly prepared crystal ponies charging towards the borders, boasting weapons and armor a lot prettier than their skin and spears. Neither side flinched at the other on their races towards the other and collided with an immediate cacophony of striking swords and pained screams.
Against all the orders screamed to him by his general, Crux just ran wherever his mind took him, taking turns through the empire at random streets while avoiding any direct eye contact with any enemy soldiers. His panicked browsing lead him to probably the only grungy alley in the crystalline city, and he shifted into one of his default aliases; a blue pegasus with white hair.
"Screw it, I’m outta here!" He spat, straightening out his mane and hair to get in character, "No way in hell am I-"
"HALT, FREAK!!!"
From the fire escape above, an armored mare dropped down only a few feet away. Crux shrieked and fell back, losing the concentration to keep his disguise intact and disintegrated back into changeling form.
"You’ve picked the wrong army to enroll in, you freak!" The gray unicorn spat, readying her spear on him. "Any last words?"
"P-Please don’t kill me!" Crux begged. "I-I never w-wanted to be in this stupid army in the first place! I won’t hurt anybody here, I promise!"
"Yeah, right. Eat metal!"
She threw the spear down, but in almost an instant before it struck, Crux disappeared, running back out the alley by the time she’d wrenched her weapon from the ground.
Crux ran. He ran as fast and far away from the soldier as his legs’ muscles could take him, fleeing for his life in the very place they’d been sent out to destroy. He easily lost any idea of where in the city he was, but he didn’t care. He just kept his eyes open for any lucky break in the random paths he took that could let him hide. The mare gave chase, flaunting an expert amount of agility through the swings and flips she performed along the city’s awnings and signs to keep her gaining on the frantic drone.
The moment Crux looked back and saw the mare parkouring down the walls, he yelped and ran to the nearest door he could, slamming his back against the wall. The hallway it lead to was massive, with gaping archways spanning along the walls and a convexed staircase before a towering set of doors on the other end. Crux actually found himself standing in awe for a brief few seconds before he kept galloping along the floor. The stairs hampered his pace, and he let out a whimper when he heard the doors behind part away.
"YOU’RE IN PURE GROUNDS, YOU FILTHY BEAST!!! LEAVE!!!"
"Please, leave me alone!"
Crux dove through the doors, looking back at the enraged mare the entire time, but upon looking ahead he was met with his own startled reflection only inches away. He couldn’t stop to keep his nose from smashing against the relic, freeing it from its floating perch as he somersaulted down onto the floor.
The mare gasped, seeing that the space between the ceiling and floor’s columns was empty. "Put that down! NOW!!!"
"W-What?"
Dazed from the fall, Crux opened his eyes, waking up to a warmth trickling from his nose and a weight laying on top of his chest. He lifted the jewel away and observed it at arm’s length: a pure blue gem the size of a dinner plate, carved into the shape of a heart.
He lurched back onto his feet, struggling to piece his awareness of the room back together when a sudden surge of energy from the gem coursed into his arms and infused itself throughout the rest of his body, his starved biology instinctively leeching into the crystal heart’s lustful energy and burned down its beautiful nutrients. The soldier watched curiously as her target winced in pain and shuddered by some random force overtaking his brain, half expecting and half hoping the crystal heart would just burn him into ashes.
But as the pure, unfiltered love from the jewel flooded into his system, Crux adapted to the spontaneous rush, and grew to welcome the raw discharge; it felt heavenly, filling his body with a building fire of power, unlike anything he’d ever felt. The gaping pores in his arms and legs glowed a foggy white, filtering as much excess love as they could from his long-rejuvenated body in ghostly wisps, but the rage of the current was far too strong to control. Slowly, but surely, Crux’ body began to expand, filling out by thickening muscles charged into superchangeling levels of strength and abundant gobs of calories courtesy of his most natural food source. His once frail and slender body filled out with a growing pot belly, and his arms expanded with bulky muscles smoothed out underneath a rich layer of fat.
"Oh, yes…YES!!!" Crux screamed through his teeth. He swung the floodgates open as far as he could, and the love gladly ran in.
The spear in the mare’s hands slid through her hands as she watched the changeling in awe, too stunned to think of a way to attack him. His expansion hit him in a tenfold frenzy, transforming him into the ripe muscle mass of somebody who’d spend years of training and building up a body for the changeling army, even if his ballooning gut was a detraction. His bones stretched within his body and thickened out, scraping his hooves apart along the floor as he crept up and beyond the average changeling height. Inch by inch, then foot by foot, he loomed higher over the stupefied mare, only partially aware she was still watching him in absolute shock.
Crux could feel his lumpy muscles pressing against one another and a layer of fatty build weighing down on his limbs. Over the sheer ecstasy the crystal heart's love brought him, he reveled in how large his body was starting to feel, and he stomped the floor in ecstasy, ripping cracks into the diamond flooring. His gut sagged lower along his legs, bulging out with a firm roundness thanks to both his extreme glutting and the tension of his immense abs.
But even as luscious as the charge felt, he still found the time to taper off the flow into his system and give a pause, letting himself relish in his new glory. The mare, who only seconds ago towered over him and was chasing him around the kingdom with ruthless intent, now stood only half his height and gawked at him with her jaw slack in horror. His biceps surged out into mountains of muscle at even the slightest flex, and his calves alone swelled out wider than the soldier’s waist. Along the upper region of his gut, she could see a row of monstrous abs curving out from under his pecs, only to be halfway submerged by a pool of fat sagging halfway along his chest-sized thighs.
The entire ordeal only lasted a few seconds.
"G-Get back!" The mare barked, struggling to rekindle the demanding tone she’d been screaming around before.
Even with the charge cut off, Crux felt strong. Unstoppable, a sensation that he quickly became addicted to from being denied so long, and by the still prominent aura of the crystal heart he could tell he’d barely scratched the surface.
Burying any sign of weakness that the entire hive taunted him with for years, he showed her two rows filled with dozens of razor sharp teeth through a venomous grin, forcing a whimper out of her. "No."
The mare charged towards her foe and thrust her spear which, not only did it fail to puncture his skin, was snapped clean in half the moment its tip struck his gut, leaving her with a useless rod in her hands.
"Heh…Pathetic." He muttered, a word he’d only dreamed of speaking down on another.
The broken stick clattered to the ground, and the mare backed away from the changeling in fear. He tensed his muscles, thickening out his entire massive figure by a few more inches, and smirked as the mare shrunk down to the ground, eyes begging to him for mercy.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glow of the crystal heart. His face went blank for a few moments as his mind pieced together an idea. He glanced back at the mare, licking his lips hungrily.
Her irises dominated the color of her eyes, her pupils shrank so much. "NO!!!"
But with incredible ease for his size, Crux stuffed the crystal heart into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
In but a few seconds, all the energies of the crystal empire were summoned into the pit of his belly, which rapidly overflowed past his legs and slammed into the ground in a black, spherical mass. His back and shoulders widened out to the size of a barn, and underneath the blobby riches of flab covering his limbs, his arms and legs swelled out with the distinct shape of gargantuan throngs of muscle. The luster of the palace’s walls went dull, and the mare’s eyes fluttered out before she fainted onto the ground, the same for many of the ponies outside, to the surprise of Crux’ former comrades. The space of the room became too cramped for his oversized body, and with a sinister chuckle, he punched straight through the ceiling, effortlessly tearing apart the walls around him to make room for his relentless growth. Floor by floor his head burst into the rooms above with buttery east, where he could see the limp bodies of crystal ponies doomed by fainting in his path, or anybody unlucky enough to stay awake and see his giant, sinister mug tear into their room, and with a shriek would barge out into whatever form of an escape they'd meet.
Outside, the confused armies could see the walls of the palace bulge unusually from the growing weight within, until a pair of mammoth black arms tore through, and Crux lumbered out into the cold air. His stomach grew out to the size of the palace that once stood over the kingdom, and tore away the final rinds of the castle as it poured over, leveling any sign of a building in the first place, and even the slightest movements of his monumental arms and legs shook jarring quakes through the earth below, sending the roofs crashing through many of the empire's homes. Whatever crystal ponies weren't unconscious or too horrified to move ran for their lives en masse, screaming burns into their throats as they trampled over one another for any feasible exit in the city to safety.
Hundreds of feet high in the air, everything looked so tiny in his giant eyes. He could make out individual colors of fur within the panicking crystal ponies and every single face of the awestruck or horrified changeling army with perfect clarity, and glancing up he could gaze hundreds of miles in the horizon, all the way down to the outline of Canterlot in the very east.
Canterlot, he thought. Canterlot, the capital of Equestria. The capital that controlled whether or not the sun rose. The capital that Chrysalis herself failed in a day to conquer. The capital that sat in the heart of the country, which sat in the heart of the entire world.
"Hey, boys!" Crux spoke. His thunderous voice could be felt, burying deep to the bone of anybody whose ears were in reach.
"...hello?" Every single changeling droned. Even a few terrified crystal ponies joined in.
"You know what? I think it’s about time for round two…"
Whatever homes weren't crumbled apart by his footsteps were plowed clean out of existence by his stomach dragging along the earth, leaving a path hundreds of feet wide of upturned dirt, snow, and crushed crystal en route for Canterlot. None of the changelings dared to show a glimmer of doubt in front of Crux and simultaneously took flight, swarming off the ground and trailing behind in a black fog, desperate to avoid the same fate as any living creature caught in the path of destruction.
Whatever army, force fields, alicorns, or evacuation they could have waiting for him when he arrived, he didn't care. His fists were tight and ready, eager to punch that stupid castle straight into oblivion...