“And you're certain Pupa hasn't caught wind of this?” Chrysalis asked the drone in front of her. Tarsal shifted on her hooves, obviously uncomfortable with having her every word scrutinized.
“Absolutely, lady Chrysalis,” she managed after several seconds’ hesitation.
Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at her minion. “That’s ‘Queen Chrysalis.’ Or ‘my queen.’ And don't lie to me, this is too important.” The drone began breathing heavily. “Now, does she know, or are you just not certain?”
“I’m, uh, not certain, my queen. Qu-" Tarsal stopped herself before she could say the full title. “Pupa has given no indication she knows, no drone appears to have defected and told her, and if she's mustering forces we haven't seen any signs of it. We have eyes and ears within her armies; if Pupa was giving the order to mobilize, she knew exactly who not to notify. And I highly doubt she would have skipped giving that order to her second in command, and she's loyal to you."
After a pause to think about the report, Chrysalis gave a deep laugh. Tarsal let out the breath she’d been holding.
“Everything is going according to plan, then. Tell Pupa’s commander to distribute orders to move on the throne room. They are to strike quickly and take no prisoners. After you've planted those orders, contact my son and tell him it's time to move. Make sure to remind him he's going to be the new infiltration captain if this works. Don't want him getting any big ideas about taking over, now do we?”
The drone gave a crisp salute and left Chrysalis's quarters at a calm pace. Normally, Chrysalis would be livid over a drone executing orders for her at anything less than a sprint, but tonight was different. She needed everything to seem normal until the last possible second, and every changeling privy to her plans knew that. Or at least, they knew that they'd rather act normal to not arouse suspicions than have Chrysalis consider them a threat to her operation.
Chrysalis grinned as the drone walked through the corridor and into the larger pathways of the main hive. She was going to be the Queen after tonight. Queen! Her father's gross error in selecting Pupa as heir was being corrected! Her sibling would be dead, all challengers to the throne gone. Sure, the attack on Pupa was going to be a little more overt than a normal changeling takeover. That was really just a sign of why they needed Chrysalis to lead, though.
Changelings needed to see that they could be strong. That they could win in open battle. That they could conquer. Intelligence and subterfuge had merit, sure, but more often the right answer was a swift and merciless assault. The hive was living on scraps, all because her weak sister refused to abduct ponies. Pupa was afraid Equestria would notice a few go missing, and had infiltrators simply send back what love they could glean on the fringes instead of getting sustainable food sources. Equestria had bigger problems than a few missing ponies cases! A hundred ponies’ love could feed an entire wing of the hive, and instead they were rationing.
No more. Chrysalis was going to turn the hive into what it was meant to be. Changelings would infiltrate, capture, feed, expand, conquer, and repeat.
She just had to endure one more night of petty machinations to see it all happen.
“And you're certain Chrysalis hasn't caught wind of this?”
Tarsal stood confidently when she answered her master. He towered over her, forcing her to crane her neck to meet his gaze.
“Absolutely certain. If anything, she thinks I'm in league with Pupa. She's so concerned about her sister catching on, Chrysalis hasn't stopped to think whether anyone else might find this to be their moment.”
The changeling in front of her grinned wickedly. “And you came here after you delivered Chrysalis's orders, yes?”
“Yes, my king.”
The grin got even wider. He reached out with a hoof to gently touch the drone's cheek as she glowed with pride. “Excellent. I truly appreciate everything you've done for me.” Her master turned to one of the guards by the chamber entrance, and the air in the room turned to ice as he spoke again. “Kill her.”
Tarsal immediately began looking for exits that she knew she wouldn't find. “But why!?” She screamed. “I did everything you asked! You wouldn't have this chance if not for me!”
Her master chuckled. “Perhaps.” The butt of a spear cracked against the back of the desperate drone's head. “But you really overestimate your own importance. If I hadn't gotten you to help, some other drone would've leapt at the chance.” She tried to regain her hooves, only to be roughly shoved from behind, back to the chamber floor. “And they would meet the same fate, of course. Can't keep a drone around in your inner circle who has already demonstrated she can be bought.
“For what it's worth, you really had some potential. You probably would have made a decent infiltration captain if not for those loyalty problems,” he said as he turned to leave the chamber.
As the guard in front of her lined up the spear, Tarsal didn't even bother to resist.
Every Changeling Will Gather 'Round, Say I Look Lovely With My Crown
Chrysalis looked to her son Pharynx as their forces stormed through the halls of the hive. Their army filled every available space, making it nearly impossible to see ahead. For her part, she moved at a calm pace as they talked. “Excellent job. I think this is the fastest I've ever seen my armies muster. My pathetic sister won't even know what hit her.”
Pharynx swelled with pride. “Thank you, mother.”
“You've earned your reward today, just as I've earned mine.” Chrysalis gestured to the chambers around them. “This will all be yours one day. Unlike my father, I won't make a mistake in naming my heir.”
“I can't wait to send my first captives back to the hive,” Pharynx said without any attempt to hide his enthusiasm. “It's about time we had fresh food for the drones and grubs. I’m sick of the infiltrators just sending back children’s undying admiration for their parents. Maybe it’s good fresh, but crystallized it’s just absolutely horrible! Why can’t they just occasionally send back lust?”
Chrysalis chuckled. “It's not like the royalty eat any better. I haven't had a good meal since my sibling took over."
As they walked and talked, the halls around them steadily grew wider and eventually opened out into a massive chamber. They had arrived at the throne room. Pharynx gave the order to charge, and quickly disappeared into a sea of violence.
Pupa's honor guard fought fiercely against Chrysalis's army, but both sides knew the would-be usurper had an advantage that couldn't be overcome: sheer massive numbers. Chrysalis had gathered a force that contained most of the hive's able-bodied warriors, including much of her rivals' armies. The defenders had no hope of winning today.
Which was why Chrysalis couldn't for the life of her understand why her sister was grinning at her from the throne.
"My dear sister, did you really think this would work? That you'd what, storm the chamber and catch me by surprise so badly that I'd be dead before I realized what was happening?" Pupa laughed to herself, the sound barely carrying past the echoes of her shouts across the chamber.
"I assumed this would be a fight, but I was so hoping you would kindly roll over and die," Chrysalis said as she released a blast of pure force from her horn, which Pupa ducked under.
While the spots from her own attack were still clearing from Chrysalis's eyes, she felt something descend over and around her horn, followed by a sharp yank backwards. The sudden burst of pain blurred her vision, but Chrysalis couldn’t mistake her sister’s sneering face looking back at her. As the pain receded and thought returned, Chrysalis realized that Pupa had slipped the hole at the bottom of her leg around her horn and simply pulled. Crude technique, but it certainly hurt.
“You always were the worst at infiltration, Chryssi,” Pupa jeered. “I’ve known this little attempt was coming for ages.” Another sharp yank accented Pupa’s words. “Your first recruit to this little cause? Little Adenoid, desperate to prove himself to you? That was me.” One of Pupa’s knees found Chrysalis’s ribcage. “Honestly, you could say I’ve known about your coup plans for longer than you have.
“Any idiot could have seen the jealousy all over your face when Father named me heir. You were obviously going to betray me, and you’ve had a grand total of perhaps three hours since I saw that look on your face where you weren’t being observed in some way.” Pupa released her hold on her sister’s horn before roughly shoving Chrysalis to the ground. “And you only got those three hours because you left my coronation early and I couldn’t exactly give my agents orders while I was celebrating.”
Chrysalis retook the offensive as she sprang back to her hooves. As she swung to punch Pupa across the jaw, a flash of green swept over her. The punch landed as a rake of claws across the muzzle instead.
Chrysalis's war form was a bugbear. She had favored the strength and power it gave her ever since she had first seen one. As Pupa began to bleed from the fresh wound, she darted backwards before the next swipe could land. As the blow after that came down, Chrysalis was caught by the shimmering blue scales of a giant serpent. It wrapped around first her descending left arm, then her right, then constricted its hold to cinch them together.
“Chrysalis! Drones are going to get crushed under us if we both use war forms,” the serpent spoke in a rumbling voice, craning its neck so its head was at eye level with Chrysalis. “And we might break the throne! Fight me in your natural form!”
Since she couldn’t speak as a bugbear, she responded by attempting to bite Pupa’s face off. When her sister dodged, Chrysalis resorted to straining against the coils around her wrists. To the surprise of both combatants, Pupa began to stretch from the force. It was either release Chrysalis, or be torn in two.
Pupa uncoiled from her position, darted behind Chrysalis’s back, and bit down as hard as she could on delicate wings.
Chrysalis roared in pain as her back arched involuntarily, throwing her sister to the floor behind her and crushing a hapless drone in the process. She turned to face her sister, and leapt to attack. Before the first blow could land, she was intercepted by her opponent’s claws locking with her own. Chrysalis began forcefully pressing down on Pupa, but was stopped by a sharp kick to her already aching midsection. Almost immediately, she felt blood begin to flow from the new wound.
She released her hold on Pupa and took a few steps backward to readjust. This simply wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Pupa was supposed to be a pushover.
Chrysalis was snapped out of her stupor by a massive purple and black striped insect leaving the fray of drones below and pinning Pupa. She couldn’t help but laugh as she recognized Pharynx’s own war form.
With her foe unable to stop her, Chrysalis got into position behind her sister’s head and lined up her claw with a now very vulnerable throat. Before finishing Pupa off, Chrysalis reverted her head back into its normal shape.
“Tell me, sister, do you surrender now?”
Pupa grunted with exertion before responding, trying to break Pharynx’s hold on her. “Better to die here than be quietly assassinated in a cell.”
“Well, at least we agree on something,” Chrysalis said, and ended her with the flick of a claw.
Chrysalis reverted fully to her natural form, and staggered as the adrenaline left her system. Her carapace was cracked, her wings would be unusable for months, and the slice across her stomach was doing her no favors. But she would survive, and a statement needed to be made, so she began the painful climb up to the throne. Her throne.
As she went further up the slope, she surveyed the chamber. The drones on the edges of the room were looking back at her. Those that had been part of Pupa’s honor guard quickly surrendered, only to be met by fang and spear. Chrysalis couldn’t help but smile at that. She had said no prisoners, after all. No pesky changelings who might get ideas about honor and loyalty to a dead mistress were going to trouble her going forward.
Closer to the throne, things were less heartening. Pupa had unfortunately been right about something, and that was the destruction they’d wreak on the drones. All around where the sisters had fought, smears and carapace shards marked the ground.
Acceptable losses, Chrysalis thought, and turned her eyes back toward the throne, getting ever larger in her view.
Finally, she made it up to the massive stone slab of the seat itself, and the changelings below her went silent. Chrysalis climbed onto it with a grunt of exertion and a flare of pain from her wounds, and turned to face the crowds below as she sat.
Before she could speak, the clacking of hooves on stone from applause echoed throughout the chamber. Her gaze went to the source of the sound, a massive changeling at one of the side entrances to the room. Even with the distance between them, Chrysalis immediately recognized her father.
A brief flash of magic went from his horn to his throat, and his words were like thunder as he spoke. “Congratulations, Chrysalis, on your total embarrassment of a coup!”
A gasp went throughout the crowd. “Yes, you can beat your sister in a fight! Well done! Oh, wait, perhaps Pharynx should be king instead since you’d be dead if not for him right now!”
She didn’t have the energy to cast her own spell to match his volume. “What do you want, Mandible?”
“I want my kingdom back!”
Chrysalis laughed, barely suppressing the cough that tried to interrupt it. “I don’t see how this kingdom is ‘yours’ anymore. You named an heir, she was crowned, she was deposed. It’s mine now, by right as the next in the line of succession.”
Mandible walked slowly and deliberately up the slope towards her. “Funny thing about that, you’ve demonstrated a quick and easy way around the problem of a monarch you don’t like being on the throne,” the volume in his voice dropped back to normal as the gap between them closed. “And I’m thinking about taking a mulligan on this whole ‘letting my children run the kingdom’ thing given what a hash you’ve both made of it.”
“What a hash I’ve made of it? Pupa certainly failed in her duties, but I orchestrated this, and here I am, the victor! I succeeded, father.”
“Oh, Pupa was always supposed to fail,” Mandible said with a grin as he reached the point where he was right in front of Chrysalis. “She was almost certainly going to be a weak ruler, and you resented her so much already that it was supposed to be just the right push. To get you to learn what it truly means to be a changeling. To win with subtlety. With guile. With your brain.
“But no, you just threw a gigantic tantrum, stormed in here with the subtlety of a yak, and declared yourself queen because you’re just so very tough. You were always supposed to take the throne, you idiot grub. You just had to pass one final exam in ruling. And guess what? You failed, so now I have to go back to square one. Goodbye.”
As Mandible finished speaking, his horn began to glow. Before he could finish casting his spell, Pharynx jumped at him, still in war form. Barely flinching, Mandible turned and swung a hoof into his grandson’s face that sent him crashing to the chamber floor below them. Pharynx shortly reverted to his natural form, an obvious indicator he had lost consciousness.
“You kids and your ‘war forms,’” Mandible mumbled with a sigh. “Just shapeshift to have denser muscles.”
He turned back to Chrysalis, looking considerably more annoyed than before. “You know, if he’d thought about this for five seconds, he would’ve realized that you being gone makes him the obvious choice to groom into a king. He failed his test before I even put it in front of him! Good to know my daughter is an utter failure of a parent, t—”
The hoof smacking into his jaw barely hurt in Chrysalis’s weakened state, but it did briefly force Mandible’s mouth closed.
“If you insist on being obstinate about this,” Mandible said, “then I guess I best make this quick.” His horn began to glow once more.
“Wait,” Chrysalis yelled.
“What? What could you possibly say?”
She prostrated herself before her father, and looked into his eyes pathetically. “You wouldn’t… you wouldn’t kill the last of your family, would you? Me and your grandson are all that’s left, father. You’re too old to have children anymore. The line dies with us if you do this!”
For a brief second, Mandible hesitated. His eyes softened just slightly as he thought that over.
A second was all it took. Chrysalis seized the one opportunity she would get, and began draining him immediately. Every last ounce of love he had ever had for her, nothing spared. It was sweet at first, exactly like what she would expect of a parent’s love for his child. As she continued, it turned bitter, tainted with disappointment. And all so stale. Besides this one moment, he hadn’t loved his daughter in years, perhaps decades. Still, the energy would be enough. Her wounds knit, her wings repaired themselves, and Mandible grew just slightly leaner as his eyes glazed over.
“Now then, if you would kindly die,” Chrysalis barked as she released her own spell. Raw heat and force overtook her father, and as the light cleared, nothing remained but a pile of ash.
The challenger vanquished, Chrysalis spared a glance for her son below, now being tended by medical drones, and spoke out to the crowd still gathered. “Does any changeling left object to my rule?”
The room remained silent.
Chrysalis sat back down on the throne, and relaxed as much as she was able to on the cold stone. “Aah, it’s good to be the Queen.”
