Seeking an answer to a plague striking the Changelings, Starlight Glimmer seeks the help of Chrysalis herself.
Given the circumstances that had found her permanently posed in granite, Chrysalis hardly expected to find herself freed from that state by Starlight Glimmer herself - much less asked for help by her number-one nemesis.
But for Starlight Glimmer and Spike, all other alternatives are exhausted. Something is sickening the changelings: A disease which spreads by no clear vector, no observable cause, and has no known history in their species. If any information or hope of a cure exists, it may very well reside with the mind of their former queen.
But coercing Chrysalis to cooperate for the sake of those she views as traitors will be hard enough, and even if she does, what will the consequences of her information be?
The clinking of chains echoed down the long hall, offering forewarning of the pair’s approach: The smaller, walking unbent but with a tremor in her limbs that rendered her steps erratic, like the beating of fat raindrops on a roof. The larger, her neck bent and legs laden by the weighty chains that hung from them, but still somehow keeping her pace steady, proud, like a march.
They walked together, and before them fled all others: A nurse vanishing through a door with a terrified squeak, a patient's bed abruptly wheeled back into their room before the pair could be seen.
They walked side-by-side, a changeling queen and a pony mare, through the pale pools of magelight cast by the faintly-humming crystals set into the ceiling. Past complex arcanics that hissed and beeped and whined, past threadlike weaves of alarm-magic that glowed a faint, sedate blue - and a few that pulsed an alarming red, signaling doctors to come and see.
They walked until they had reached a wardnear-abandoned but for the golden-clad guards that watched the pair with narrowed eyes; only then did they stop before a wide window to stare at the twitching, writhing forms within.
"So," Starlight Glimmer said as her ears pinned back and tail lashed, "it's just like I told you, Chrysalis. I didn't lie. This isn't any trick. The Changelings need your help."
Chrysalis' eyes flicked dispassionately from bed to bed, hooded eyelids barely moving as she examined one victim after another. Beyond the glass, chitin glimmered erratically under the magelights’ pale, unflickering glow reflected off the shuddering forms laid out on bed after bed. Here and there, a seeming pony lay too - a patient caught in a transformation they could no longer reject. The low hum of background noise was occasionally broken by a shriek or burst of manic laughter that erupted from gibbering lips; legs swatted at things only their owners could see, though clumsily: Like the rest of their bodies, the changelings' limbs were caught in a frantic, twitching shudder.
At long last, Chrysalis’ fanged maw opened to hiss two words in a low, grave voice:
"How long?"
Starlight blinked, head tilting slightly, her ears still pinned but twitching slightly in confusion. "A-About fourteen years. Since you were - um - since the last time you saw-"
"So soon… I did not think these fools would succumb so soon."
Starlight sucked in a low breath, the first hints of anger narrowing her eyes. "...can you please, for a second, stop thinking about yourself and - if there's any hint of care in your heart - consider-"
"I mean, you imbecile, so soon for this to begin spreading." As if a snake circling to face its prey, Chrysalis turned to face the smaller mare beside her. Chains fell across her face like a veil, hanging from the dense inhibitor anchored to her twisted horn like a burl festering on a crooked branch. Her eyes settled on Starlight as if discovering her for the first time, and traced the lines written by exhaustion and despair into her face. If the insult had riled Starlight whatsoever, no part of her face showed it.
"O-Oh. Um. First case was eight years ago. We realized it was a disease in the last three. But in the last few months-"
"How many?" Chrysalis hissed.
"A lot. Most of the population is showing signs. These are the worst, but - there's years where it begins to spread. Some of them aren't this bad yet."
"Is Thorax infected?"
"Yes. Chrysalis..." Starlight Glimmer paused again, her mouth half open, and tore her gaze from the Changeling monarch to again look through the window into the special ward. "...I know you hate me. Thorax too. And I honestly despise you. But I convinced Twilight to pull you out of that stone for a reason: They need your help. None of our treatments work. It's spreading, and we can't cure it. They're your kin. They need you."
When she looked back, Chrysalis had likewise begun staring through the glass again.
The Changeling Queen's next words came so soft Starlight barely heard them.
"They must all die."
“Oh, for Celestia’s sake,” Starlight spat, “can you put aside your horn-up-your-rump bitterness for just a second and look at them? This isn’t about your vengeance. This isn’t about them turning against you. They need you.”
“No, Starlight Glimmer. They die. There is no other choice.”
A line can only be drawn so taut before it snaps. A heart can only be wound so tightly before it bursts. And a pony can only take so much before lashing out.
“What,” said Starlight, her nostrils flared and ears laid flat, “is wrong with you? Don’t you care for them at all? What mountain did you climb to hold yourself above them right now?”
Chrysalis’ head whipped back with the clink of chains, her muzzle twisted into a bare-toothed snarl. “I am above them. You-” Cutting off with a gasp, Chrysalis found herself seized in a violet field - ethereal pressure closing about her throat.
“Can you let go of your rutting self-importance for once - just once - in your miserable little parasitic life and help somepony else?”
Starlight’s anguished howl still echoing in her ears, Chrysalis barely noticed herself taking a surprised step back as the mare’s horn flashed with an oddly discolored glare.
“Are you so unbelievably selfish that you won’t even save the lives of your own kin? You were their Queen; you want to be a Queen again? Stand up and act - act like - like - like -”
Starlight paused, her horn’s brilliance fading. Something phantasmic, something like smoke, rolled from it - but it burned no longer. Her eyes had met Chrysalis’, and found on the larger mare’s face an expression Chrysalis' taller stature had hid from her as they stood side-by-side: The true, deep, and unshakable sadness and horror written into the former queen's face as surely as Starlight's own wrinkled, tooth-bared expression spoke to her frustration-born fury.
------------------------------------------
It was half an hour before Starlight stepped back in.
She had left the guards behind when they came galloping to investigate, and she dearly hoped the last foul, cloudy sparks of hateful magic were no longer clinging to her horn when she stepped back in - just as she hoped her coat was dry of the water she had hidden her rageful tears with.
Even when, when she returned and the guards clanked their way back out to their posts, Chrysalis barely spared her a glance. Nothing passed between them but silence until the hospital's bell-tower sounded the hour.
"We call it Kuru."
Chrysalis' voice was low and cracked, devoid of the resonant depth it usually held; Starlight didn't know if it was damage her magical outburst had done, a relic of Chrysalis' granite prison, or just what she sounded like when sorrowful.
"Have you ever wondered, Starlight Glimmer, why Changeling-kind have always stalked from the shadows? Taken faces, instead of making our own? Stolen, and not shared?"
"You knew about this,” said Starlight, her voice with the sour tones of accusation - and admission.
Chrysalis placidly nodded. "I did, Starlight Glimmer. I knew."
"Yet you didn't tell anypony!."
"Would you have believed me, the Queen of Deception?"
Starlight tried to ignore the slightest note of pride at the self-declared title. "Yes ... No. Maybe. Maybe! But you didn't tell any of them either. Your subjects."
"I tried to keep it out of their foolish little heads, yes," Chrysalis said with a curled lip, "so they wouldn't think about it."
"That's not right. Honesty is important."
A sharp bark of pained laughter was Chrysalis’ first response, accompanied by the clink of chains as she threw her head back to give it. Only when the guffaws had died out did she add words to the retort.
"Honesty, important. What a so very, very pony-like answer... and so very wrong. You cannot know, Starlight Glimmer, what it is to exist as a Changeling. To feel the bite of bitter hunger not merely every second you wake, but even when you rest. To have a hole in your heart. To feel that ravenous demand nibbling at the fringes of your soul. To need to consume the essence of others to see another dawn..."
Gathering herself up again, Chrysalis shook her head. Then, with hooves dragging like they had been weighted with far more than chains, she crawled back to the window again - her steps now just as shaken and irregular as Starlight's had been.
"...the disease is called Kuru. I know not who named it. Some queen-of-queens in misty ages past, beyond even my memory or Celestia's. It is infectious. It is lethal. It is unstoppable."
"How is it spread, Chrysalis? At least we can save some o-"
"By sharing love."
Starlight flinched; the three words slashed at her core, and she felt another slash to her heart as she realized there had been no satisfaction in the Queen's admission.
"When Changelings share love without bringing new, fresh energy in, Kuru follows. Some - deficiency, compared to what we take from you. But you cannot know how strong the urge to do that is, Starlight Glimmer. To have the hole in your essence filled, at long last, and to no longer have the need scrabbling at the back of your mind every moment of your existence. And so Kuru is not merely infectious, but mere knowledge of it is infectious. Sooner or later, changelings who know that love can be shared - even knowing the cost - will dare to try. For they will believe the stories are wrong, or they are superior enough."
"And so-" Chrysalis paused, and to Starlight's shock choked on her words. "-they must all die. Any who knew that love can be shared out by any but the Queen, for it is a siren's song leading to a poisoned prize. And then, when they are gone, a new hive shall arise. And all they shall know is that the old disobeyed the queen - and died."
"This has happened before." It wasn't a question, but a statement. Chrysalis nodded.
"Twice, in my lifetime. Three times, now. Four, if you count the disaster that ended the Queen before me. Even hiding the knowledge is never enough; one of us inevitably rediscovers the sharing of love, reveals it, and we perish. Never on a scale as large as this, though. The cullings… were never this large."
"Wait. If the old queen died, then how did you know - was she your mother?"
"No. I was chosen at random, from my kin, to be fed enough love to become a Royal. Before the old queen passed, as the Kuru took her mind, she gave this knowledge to a single Changeling. The knowledge was in turn given to me, and then I scoured his mind with the strongest of our geasses to wipe it from him forever." A strange expression came over Chrysalis' face, and it took Starlight a moment to recognize a seemingly out of place emotion on features that were usually twisted with a sneer: Fondness. Actual fondness. "He was forever crippled. He was forever honored, living in care until his days ended. Should I die, I shall do the same for another."
Slowly Chrysalis turned to face Starlight - extending out an accusatory, hole-ridden leg that somehow made Starlight feel like a tiny filly again in spite of the chain hanging from its fetlock. "Now, Starlight Glimmer, you must understand why I despise you. Why I despise Thorax. Why I can never accept your 'friendship'.”
"Y-You're lying. You just want them back under your hoof, want to make them your slaves again-"
"And yet all your magic, all your friendship, has not been able to find a solution either."
"...no." Starlight's voice was small, and her muzzle fell to stare at the tiled floor as she sank to her haunches. Chrysalis shrugged, as if the reply had simply been expected.
"I do not know what causes it. What fiendish curse twists us, what whim of a mad god made us this way. But I know how Kuru works. They will die soon, unable to feed or breath. Reduced first to gaudy prizes for you ponies to march around, and then to something that cannot live at all."
"And what then?"
"I will spawn a new Hive. It may be my end, if that gives you any satisfaction. The process is terribly straining; the last reformation taxed me severely. Starving as I am, this may be too much. But my kin will survive."
A ripple ran through Starlight’s coat - a shudder from muzzle to tail as she felt the iron-clad certainty in Chrysalis’ tone strike her like a blow across the cheek. “How can you just be so - calm about it? You sound like I just told you that you’re failing a test, not that every changeling is going to - to -”
“You ponies!” Chrysalis laughed again - long and hard, rows of jagged teeth on full display as bitter laughter rocked her body. “Ah, you’re so convinced that everything can be changed. Controlled. Rewritten. Bound up to your will, or else something scary might happen.”
“...and so willing to believe that that end always justifies whatever must be done to make it so. A sentiment that you have some rather particular experience with, I think?” Chrysalis continued with a smirk.
To Starlight’s surprise, the barb didn’t hurt nearly as badly as she’d somehow expected it to. She simply shook her head, tail swatting back and forth almost as wildly as her mane. “That - I left that behind years ago. The old me.”
“Did you?” Chrysalis asked, and suddenly all the teasing, menacing mirth was gone from her voice - replaced with cold, accusing bitterness. “Is that why you poisoned my children? Gave them the idea of turning into something more pony-like, something better, so they could fit in with you more? You, Starlight Glimmer, are just as bound to who you are as we changelings are to our own nature. The only difference is that your cause is ‘harmony’ now.”
“...I didn’t mean to cause this.”
“Of course you didn’t. You just didn’t think not too either. Because you’re the good pony and I’m the bad pony. Because I am cruel, and vain, and proud of what I accomplished.”
“I didn’t mean to-” Starlight was still repeating the phrase, over and over, beneath her breath. Chrysalis simply shrugged.
“So tell me now, Starlight Glimmer: What will you do with me now…? Release me to my final end, spawning a new hive? Try to ‘reform’ me another way? Kill me, and end my line forever? Return me to that stone prison until I’m ‘needed’ again?”
“...what would you do?” asked Starlight, before she even realized what the words leaving her mouth were.
“Kill me. Finish what the Kuru started.” Chrysalis spoke nonchalantly, and the inner counselor within Starlight wondered whether fury and despair at a hive lost had congealed into the urge for a final conclusion to her life. “It’s the rational choice. I will never not be a predator of ponykind. End me, and you end one of the greatest strains of Changeling lineage to exist since the first queens were spawned.”
“And what do you want me to do?” Starlight asked, her voice whisper-soft.
This time, Chrysalis paused. Paused a long time, long enough that the pause stopped being a pause and stretched on into a silence. Long enough that she could walk back to the window and stare at the writhing, twitching forms on the beds within the room.
“Stone.”
“Why?”
“I have no desire to see my line end. I want my hive to flourish. To conquer. To rule. Perhaps I might even live to see it. But in the same thought…”
Chrysalis turned her sorrowful, bitter stare straight into Starlight’s eyes, and Starlight was shaken by the certainty that - no matter how much she ranted and howled, no matter how venomous her words - deep within Chrysalis there was real, genuine love. “...I have no desire to watch this. Put me back in stone, Starlight Glimmer, so that I do not have to see my children die.”
The dungeon, Chrysalis concluded, was something of a compromise. Not an end to her existence, and so in that something of a mercy - and proof Starlight, Twilight, and whatever other whinging sycophants she had surrounded herself with were far, far too soft to properly rule. But also no company except the cold air, enclosing presence of stone in a cell which was somehow still far too thunderous and a pair of guards on the far side of a profoundly thick door and some unreasonably powerful wards.
The dungeon was a sentence to isolation. To a kind of sublime torment which involved nothing except leaving Chrysalis in the dimnes with her chains and her memories.
Nothing but the memories of twitching bodies and mindless laughter.
It would have been an almost admirable degree of cunning in attempting to break her will, if it wasn’t so blindly obvious that the resultant misery was an accident.
Sleep had deftly slipped from the jaws of Chrysalis’ elusive hunt, and so when the cell door opened her eyes were already even as stark, glaring light spilled in from the hallway beyond. Spilled in, at least, until the door way was filled with a far wider form. Claws scratched on stone and a head ducked beneath a doorway never meant to take it, for his kind had their own cells better-suited for their holding.
The guards did, leaving them alone in the cell again. Chrysalis’ eyes dilated, drinking in the meager illumination to study his form. Spike had grown, yes - grown until he filled nearly half of the generously-sized cell. But he had also changed: His head was no longer so rounded, the frills sharpening into spines and limbs elongating as his body expanded. His wings had broadened and grown deeper, their weight already forcing his shoulders forward; another few decades, Chrysalis estimated, and he’d be transitioning to all-fours as a near-adult dragon.
“The last time I saw you, I believe I was trying to pull your wings off.”
“Yeah,” Spike muttered, flexing the now-widened spans. “Think I’d give you a bit of a better fight now.”
“No doubt. Especially when I am chained down and my magic silenced.”
He winced. “Yeah… look, I’m not coming down here to brag. Not that deep in my own pride yet.”
“Why are you here, then? To annoy me? Contribute to their attempts to break my will?” Chrysalis asked, settling back down onto her belly.
“No. I, uh. I talked to Starlight.” Scratching his cheek awkwardly, Spike shifted from clawed foot to foot in place. “She told me what you said to her. She’s… in pretty rough shape. Really torn up about it. About - her part in it.”
“Good. She deserves it.”
Spike winced, but any retort was bitten off still behind his scaled lips - leaving only a sour look on his face. Chrysalis’ head tilted questioningly.
“Not here to argue, Chrysalis. Just, talk.” Spike finally managed.
“What could we possibly have to talk about that Starlight has not already vomited at me?”
“That I understand,” he flatly said.
Chrysalis huffed, her thin tail swatting against the floor with a light ‘thunk’. “Understand what?”
“Hunger.”
Her tail stopped swatting.
“It’s probably not like you feel it,” Spike continued, “but I don’t actually know. Thorax never talked about anything - before a whole lot.”
“He was weak,” Chrysalis was unable to prevent herself from sneering.
“He is strong,” Spike retorted with suddenly narrowed eyes.
Chrysalis dismissively inspected a shackled hoof. “Was. Starlight told me he was infected. He is already dead.”
Opening his mouth to retort, Spike instead huffed - twin trickles of smoke drifting up to cloud the already dim light in the cell. He settled on all fours, rolling his shoulders. “...you’re not deceiving anyone, Chrysalis. Starlight told me a whole lot. Including what you told her. About feeling a constant hunger.”
“So the toadie has a loose tongue. So what? I can’t say I’m surprised.”
A moment's hesitation longer, and Spike gave another long, low, sulfur-scented sigh.
“I Want, Chrysalis. Not want, Want. Want. It’s every living second I’m awake. Want. Some days are good days. I want little things - an extra ruby with breakfast, to take an hour off and laze in the sun while colts and fillies playing hero climb all over me, little things that I can say ‘no’ to.”
He growled - not grumbled, not grunted, growled. The low thrumming of rocks grinding together in a volcano. It was the first truly dragon-like noise Chrysalis had heard from him, and her chitin prickled from long-honed instinct.
Dragon growls meant death.
“Sometimes I want to grab the next self-serving noble that struts into her throne room and just… breathe on them. Fire. A warning. Don’t take her time, because she’s mine. I want to just pick her up and carry her away to somewhere safe and alone where nopony else can bother her, because she’s mine. Mine. My Twilight, and…”
Was it her imagination, or had Spike always… loomed like that? Had his brows always been so sharp, his crest always so jagged?
“...and I can’t. I know I can’t. But it’s there. So yeah. You’re not the only one.”
“Congratulations. The ponies haven’t wrung every bit of dragon-ness from your spirit yet.”
“That’s not the point, Chrysalis,” and Spike’s claws dug deep grooves into the stone floor as he growled. “I’m saying - saying -”
“You’re saying that you think you understand what I am like,” Chrysalis said, smoothly slipping herself in between his words. “What I feel. Trying to imagine you can understand what I am going through. But you don’t. You never could. Your greed cannot kill you if unfulfilled for too long. Our hunger can.”
“You really think that?” Spike whispered, and Chrysalis paused.
“...why?”
He dragged a claw along the cell floor, diamond-like tips cutting random shapes into the stone. “I won’t starve without a hoard, you’re right. But it can still take everything from me… I give in, I - eh. You probably know dragons.”
“I do,” Chrysalis nodded.
The claw had paused, and was now twisting in place - boring a tiny hole into the cell floor. “The ponies… don’t like that. I’ve been around nearly half a lifetime for them; Ember, Smolder, and the others have been trying to bring us closer for two decades. But so often, ponies look at me and I think they just see a monster ready to blow at any second. Blow up, or… want.”
Spike looked up to her, pupils dropped down the thinnest of slits. “They’re just waiting for me - for any of us - to lose it. And if we do, it’s the end for all of us. They’ll never trust us. Half of them don’t already. And it’s not going to be polite either; ponies… can get panicky. It’s going to be torches, pitchforks, and magic time. And if that happens, a lot of other dragons are going to start looking at Ember as vulnerable, and I’d bet you know what it’s like when dragons really fight too. So yeah, I think I kind of do get what you’re on about.”
For a long few moments the two stared at each other - changeling and dragon, eyes meeting and neither making a move except for the slow rise and fall of breaths taken.
Somewhere in the cell, a droplet fell to the floor with a recognizable plop.
“...they would be right to,” Chrysalis decided at last. “Think of her as weak. Because she is. She’s trying to fight this problem like a pony. So are you too. You want to control it. Subsume it entirely. Change who you are into something more… more pony-like.” With a more sneering tone, she added, “Ember is a gaudy plaything for ponies to feel good about themselves, when they look at how weak and unthreatening she is to them.”
“Ember is doing everything she can-”
“-to turn you into ponies with scales. Just like they took away my kind and turned them into garish things which couldn’t be dangerous to them. But you can’t be a pony. Your essence rejects it. Pulls you back to what you really are. Who knows-” She laughed, throwing her head back again. Spike winced, as it was a harsh and stabbing sound. “-maybe you’ll find your own Kuru too.”
“You sound like you’re looking forward to it.”
“I look forward to anything that sours Twilight Sparkle's perfect little nation, and Starlight Glimmer's life in particular."
“And what would you suggest we do, Chrysalis? Throw a tantrum instead? Let our greed run wild? Steal off gold and jewels, lair in towns and choke them out, kidnap our friends?” Spike’s voice had risen along with his body, all four legs seeming to strain against the ground as he leaned in towards the changeling.
“Prepare,” Chrysalis barked, “for when it does happen. Because it will. Ponies love their control - magic, weather, other species, everything has to be controlled. They’re trying to make you like that too. But the world isn’t like that. You have to be ready to persevere when it does fall apart, because fate is a cruel queen who we all pay tribute to.”
“Just like you.”
“I try to be ahead of the curve.”
“So you think you’ve got everything worked out, huh? Figured out every angle, can’t be surprised, huh?”
“Of course not,” Chrysalis snorted, “I am the one sitting in a dungeon after all. And…”
“And?”
“...I have not seen a Kuru outbreak like this,” Chrysalis said softly. “I have - grown used to needing to cut off certain parts of the hive. Infected parts, so that the rest can live. But I have never lost my entire hive.”
Spike reached out with one clawed hand - not quite touching her, but drawing closer in offer. “You don’t have to. Many aren’t showing symptoms yet. They could be saved.”
“They know. It’s already far too late for those fools. All that can be done now is… being ready to move on.”
“You don’t sound ready to move on,” Spike pointed out.
“Can you fault me for mourning the death of my kin?”
“No. But I can think you’re stupid for just sitting around moaning about it.”
“Remember who you speak to, whelp,” Chrysalis hissed, glaring at him through the chains draped from her horn ring.
Spike drew his claw back - not too quickly, not a sudden jerk of fear, but back all the same. “I am. I know exactly who I’m speaking to. And you know what? You think you’re ‘persevering’ through this, but all I see is you giving up. That’s all I think you’ve ever done - the second things turn bad, you just start running.”
“It’s how we have survived. A changeling revealed is a changeling vulnerable - do you think ponies are the worst things out there?” Chrysalis spat back, rising to her hooves. “There are older, fiercer things out there even I would balk at confronting - Raggedygaol. The Eldest Dragon. The Beast of Anun-Mas. Shellulack. Any one of those could bring ruin in an instant. And all you can do is build back when you are done.”
“Yeah, but you know what?” Spike asked, jabbing a talon into his own chest. “I’m not a Beast of Anything, or Ragggedywhatever, and definitely not the eldest dragon out there. This isn’t any of them. This can be fought. It should be fought! Or are you just too scared to face it?”
Chrysalis recoiled, her expression souring deeply. After a moment, she turned her head away. “I am terrified, of course. I am terrified of losing my entire hive. I am terrified of seeing them waste and die before my eyes. I am terrified of facing my own end - surely that groveling, pink sycophant of Twilight’s told you, that this might be my end. And most of all, I’m terrified because I don’t understand why I’m even telling you this!.”
The last few words had been spat out as a shout. Spike opened his jaws, paused, and swallowed with a sour look. “Considering everything you did to me - did to Twilight - not enormously sympathetic.”
Chrysalis simply snorted again.
“But fine. So I’m not your friend - yet. So what? Don’t do it for me, then. Do it for yourself. You want to be powerful again? Stop running. Be the changeling queen who beat Kuru. Be the one who stood up and yelled back, ‘not this time!’”
“Be a pony, you mean. Control everything.”
“Not everything. Just… something.” Spike settled back to the cell floor, his eyes distant. “Maybe, maybe you can save some of them. Maybe knowing about isn’t so bad, and the ones who aren’t sick yet can go on. Maybe there’ll be something.”
Chrysalis' eyes fell to the floor. Were his words echoing in the chamber, or in her head? She swallowed a heavy bile and spoke slowly. “You want them to live.”
“Thorax is my friend,” he murmured, “and I want my friend to live. I know you probably don’t, but I do. I… I want that a whole lot, and I’m willing to come down here and ask you to just this once push through how bad this is and try. I’ll ask, I’ll argue, Tartarus-take-it-all I’ll beg. Just… don’t give up. This time, don’t give up.”
Silence reigned for a minute, or ten. “...there is one thing. Something I might be able to do for them,” Chrysalis mumbled at last, “but Starlight Glimmer is going to hate this plan.”
“I know,” Spike said, rubbing his claws together, “but Twilight said we’re going with it, and that’s that.” He peered through the glass into the special ward, wincing as his eyes fell on one particular twitching, spasming figure.
Across the hall, the last of the chains fell away with a clatter. Chrysalis extended each foreleg in turn, then stretched herself catlike until something popped; around her, guards cautiously stepped back with polearms lowered and at the ready. Spike pondered for a moment how an exoskeleton could pop, then decided it probably wasn’t worth thinking about.
Starlight too tore her eyes from the special ward, and turned to Chrysalis as well. “Now, remember: We’re giving you your magic back for this, but if you so much as spark a single mote of any other magic-”
“You’ll plunge me back into stone, throw me on the moon, and lock me away for a thousand years. Yes, I get it,” Chrysalis sneered right back. “And don’t you forget, you need to tell any of the others still out there to stop this ‘sharing’. Now, while they can still live. Find somepony willing to donate. And it has to be you; I want them to hear it coming from the all knowing Starl-.”
Stepping between them, Spike pushed his wings out towards both mares. “Enough. Starlight, you don’t have to remind her every five minutes. Chrysalis… we’ll send your message, but I’ll choose who.”
The former lashed her tail and pinned her ears back; the latter simply smiled saccharinely, though it never reached the Queen’s slit eyes. Those remained as dismissive as ever.
“Alright,” Spike said, the silence between them at least good enough. “Chrysalis, do your thing.”
She nodded once, and flame cascaded over her form.
“Oh,” Starlight breathed. Spike had to agree; what had replaced Chrysalis’ typical gnarled and twisted form was, in its way, beautiful. She had not adopted the other changelings’ so vibrant colors, but instead taken on a pale blue tone - her chitin now glossy and a pale, robin’s-egg blue but for yellowed segments over her back and wings. A mane only slightly darker in tone but thick, lush, and full draped around her neck, while equally blue eyes peered out from soft, un-narrowed eyes.
“I never imagined…” Spike breathed, and those pale blue eyes narrowed.
“Don’t you start moping over me,” Chrysalis spat, the moment shattered by the sour expression twisting her face. “This is an illusion, nothing more. Remember that, drake.”
“Right,” he nodded, the moment having been broken the moment her mouth opened and those acidic tones stung his ear membranes. A curt nod signalled the guards; uncrossing their glaives, they pulled the doors open - neither taking their eyes off the transformed queen for even an instant as they did so.
Too many bad memories there, Spike thought.
“Okay. Go on in, Chrysalis.” And we’ll be watching you, he added - but not aloud. Not after I lectured Starlight for doing the same thing.
When the doors had closed behind her, Spike breathed a little sigh. Only a moment later, he realized Starlight had done the same.
“She’s beautiful,” she murmured as she moved to peer through the window into the isolated ward. “If only she’d let go of all her bitterness and allow herself be like that…”
“She can’t.” Spike shook his head as he joined her. “Same reason I can’t just ‘let myself’ be bigger. It’s not just something she dislikes, it’s… it’s a danger to all her changelings too. If she gives in, if the Kuru comes for her, it’d be the end of her hive.”
“So she thinks.”
“Yeah,” Spike murmured, “that is what she thinks. But I don’t know how wrong she is.”
Starlight’s head twisted around. She gave a low whinny and a sharp glare. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Or at least, I understand why she thinks that way, when I feel the same way. Isn’t this-” He gestured through the glass, to Chrysalis as she walked between the rows of beds. “-a compromise?”
Chrysalis moved carefully, placing each hoofstep as if the tiled floor might be sown with arcanic mines. As if a single wrong step, a brush against one of the beds, could infect her with the same spasming, quivering madness that was all around.
This was, of course, ridiculous; but she still did not touch any of them.
Rather, she moved like a phantom through the rows of beds - nearly silent, soft blue eyes sweeping from one body to the next filled with nothing but the utmost sadness and care for those they fell on. Studying, examining, searching - but not finding, and moving on to the next patient. Inside the room, every sound that had been masked by the walls assaulted her ears: The rustle and pop of chitin flexing and twisting, the low susurrus of sheets shifting, and the sudden, unsteady gasps of lungs that no longer entirely obeyed.
Eyes fell on her as she passed, some open wide for lack of control to close but most with surprise. Heads twisted where they could, and here and there a hoof stretched out as if in plaintive supplication. To each of this, Chrysalis offered a smile: Not one that twisted her lips into a sneering rictus, or was swamped with barely concealed disgust, but a true and warm smile. The smile of a queen, a leader, a parent. A smile which radiated warmth, caring, and acceptance in its gentle curve of the lips.
But for none of them did she stop until reaching one particular cot, her gaze fixed on the shuddering victim ensconced on it.
Both studied each other for a long, long time.
His mouth opened, and noise came out. Not words, but a noise - a kind of sputtering, confused burbling. The speech of an infant, almost universal across nearly all species, inclusive of the amount of spittle flung from the chitinous lips.
His brow knitted, and the open mouth tried again: “Bu… burt… butun... buuuuul…”
Chrysalis tilted her head, her mask utterly perfect and unflawed. Not a hint of stray sentiment leaked past it, an absolute finite dam before the sea of emotion.
He drew a shaky, unsteady breath and tried again. Syllables emerged in a confused jumble, a muddied spray of consonants in a barely coherent pattern.
Another breath was drawn, brows were knit as much as uncooperative muscles allowed, and he tried again.
“Beautiful,” Thorax breathed. “Y-Yuh. You. B-Beautin - tiful. So. So hack - s-so happy. To see. You.”
“Shhh…” Chrysalis cood, leaning over to brush her muzzle against Thorax’s. Pale blue met lime green, and Thorax gave a little happy sigh.
Across the ward, every head that could still turn had turned. Dozens of eyes now rested on them.
Thorax tried to swallow again, half-choked, and shook his head. “A-Alw-w-w-ways knew. You. You could. D-Do it. Could let - let go.”
Chrysalis’ cheeks gleamed with dampness as she pulled back. “I’m going to help you, Thorax. I’m going to - to stop this. I won’t let your suffering go on. The Kuru will not have you.”
“N-Nnnnaa-”
“Shhh…” Chrysalis brushed his face with a hoof. “Let me do my duty, Thorax. As a queen.” His mouth closed, any further attempts at words forfeited, but eyes wide with unrestricted joy. He nodded once - a long and slow bob of his head, in spite of all control being taken from him.
She leaned in, again touching chitin to chitin. Her mouth opened, gleaming fangs exposed.
And the magic began to flow, until Thorax’s shuddering, unsteady breathing went silent.
Chrysalis did release her mask nor the tension that threatened to burst out until she was out of the ward: No longer surrounded by the rampant, erratic quaking that had met her on entry nor the silence but for a low, crystalline hum of some obscure magio-medical device which followed her out. Even when the guards fitted the shackles to her fetlocks and the restrictor to her horn, even when they returned her to her cell, her heart did not protest as much as if she’d been made to remain in the maze of cots.
Alone again now, she was once again aware of the painful prickling of her chitin - the imagined spears and bolts slung by the dead, battering against the fortress walls of her heart.
Each breath hurt like a lungful of a furnace’s blast, and she shuddered as she took another. Had it been this painful this much in the past, when the Kuru had come before? She could not remember the losses needling so sharply then, but neither had she ever lost so many.
Never everyone.
Then, there had always been survivors to turn to. Further lives to shepherd forward, plans to make, and subjects to rule. Distractions. That had been it, wasn’t it? Distractions, which might keep her mind from the horror. Voices to continue venerating, so the silence was not so acute.
But there are none now.
All the assaults and tribulations of her life, she had taken in gallop: Evade the threat. Take stock of what remained. Find a new plan, because the old one tended to die along with the victims (and there very frequently were dead, not only from Kuru. Things which forced sudden adjustments of plans tended to do so violently).
That was why she had fallen in with the cursed centaur and whatever that little filly was, wasn’t it? Because I couldn’t stand being alone. Even if it meant following around a hyper-thyroid meathead and a horror in a filly’s flesh. Even then I knew what would come.
Anything, even arguing with those fools, would quiet that anticipation.
Nested within that admission was the seed of another: It wouldn’t have mattered if they had listened to her. Her heart was never in it anyway. The whole thing was just a way to pass the time until the Kuru finally came to charge its terrible toll on the changelings.
Those wretched fools betrayed me. Turned on the only one who ever really cared for them. Threw themselves at the hooves of ponies who were only interested in using my subjects to prove that their pitiful pony ideas were right. And I -
-I-
-I ran away.
I left them to the Kuru. Alone and without anyone to lead them. Guide them. And-
Bitterness rose in her chest, hard and biting, like a lance of celestial fire scorching her heart to cinders.
-why shouldn’t I? Hadn’t I lead them without peer for so many years? Were we not more successful than we had been under any other? I was succeeding! We were succeeding!
But then I lost. I lost all of them.
And instead of leading them to victory, I abandoned them to Kuru and then deceived them into comfort as it took them to the misted neverworld.
A ruler must sometimes deceive her subjects. Even Celestia knew that.
So why does it hurt so much to have done so?
Never in a thousand eternities would she admit any relief when the cell door opened to admit Spike again. But even just watching him snake his way in and curl up on the floor was better than being left alone with the voices of the damned screaming from her memories.
It gave her an excuse to bring the mask out again.
“You look… distraught.”
“I am,” Spike said. “I’m angry. Pissed. Upset. Bitter. I’m a lot of things right now, and I can’t figure out how you aren’t.”
“Or you are merely the only one allowing yourself to show such weakness.”
Spike eyed her sidelong, but no retort emerged.
He sees through me.
Eventually, “We sent out your message. I did, I mean. Took it to the other Changelings. It… didn’t go over well. What this is, what it meant for any of them who were sick already.”
“I can’t think why not.”
His eyes slipped closed, his focus turned internal for a moment until the urge to fill the room with cinder and flame was a little less sharp. “We’re trying to keep it quiet for now, but Applejack caught wind of it. She’s-” Another pause, this one heavier. “-not happy. She and Twilight were in the royal suites for the better part of two hours, arguing it out. ‘Jack doesn’t think it was right, what you did.”
Eyes rolling dramatically, Chrysalis tossed her head back. “Why, the element of honesty is perturbed that a changeling would dare do something dishonest, no matter how necessary it is. I can’t comprehend how you ponies ever functioned as a society.”
“Chrysalis?”
“What?”
Looking straight at her, Spike drew his lips back - purple retreating to uncover bone-white teeth. “Just remember, these are my friends too. I want them to be happy as well. And I’m already a little on-edge from what happened to Thorax and the rest, so try not to be so snippily smug about how much my friends are hating this too.”
Chrysalis gave a little, low harumph, the kind of small dismissive gesture that allows one to register their protest while not saying anything remotely offensive.
Settling back down, Spike let his expression fall back to a neutral blankness. “Thank you.”
“You do know it isn’t going to end so soon though, right? This is just how it starts. When word does get out - and it will, because ponies are in general spectacularly poor at keeping secrets - more than just your friends are going to be upset.”
“I’m trying not to think about that yet,” Spike murmured.
“You should be. It is coming, whether you want it or not. If you wish to still be standing on top when the avalanche strikes - if you wish to be able to endure through this storm - you must be ready.”
“Why are you even telling me this? I’m your enemy.”
Chrysalis peeled back her lips in a grin, eyes narrowing in a thoughtful expression. “I am not actually sure… but perhaps I could teach you more? You already have a mind as sharp as those claws; if you sought to claim the throne of-”
“Forget it.” Spike’s tail lashed, striking the wall with a heavy thud. “I’m not interested in learning from you.”
“Oh, come now. You only just admitted to me that we are not entirely different. We have both been subject to the ponies’ efforts to shape us. We have both been hurt - or will be hurt - by their foolishness in playing with what they do not understand. And we both will never be accepted by ponykind-”
“You shut your muzzle and quit wasting words, Chrysalis.” Sitting himself up again, Spike pointed to his chest with a clawed thumb. “You know what the difference is between us? Yeah. We’re both hurting, and I don’t know if I’ll ever belong. But you can’t ever let go of yourself. All you ever talk about is how you will persevere, what you will do to rebuild your hive. It’s never what changelings can do. You haven’t even said once what any survivors should do going forward.”
“There will be no survivors,” she said softly, though Spike could hear the bitter tremble barely audible in her voice, “and even if there are, that decision has been made for them. Ponies will never accept something which feeds on them. Something which is outside of their control.”
“You don’t know for certain, and you haven’t even tried to think about it. You know what’s been eating at me this whole time since Starlight Glimmer explained it all to me? Why didn’t you try to warn any of the changelings about this! If they’d known-”
“-then they would have fallen even faster!” Chrysalis barked. “Don’t you understand, you who feel that greed eating at you? If they know there is a way out, inevitably one gives in! I have to be the only one who knows, the one who has to endure that knowledge!”
“And you don’t ever want to give in? You’re somehow - somehow immune to it?”
“Of course I do! I feel that desire just as much as any other changeling. Sometimes I even think about what it would be like to just give in, and live my last days in utter freedom from hunger even as I am dying. But I don’t, and do you know why?”
Spike gave her a very flat look. “No, but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
Driving a hoof into the cell floor, Chrysalis yelled over the rattle of her chains. “Because I have to. I am the Queen. I cannot fall; I have to endure, so changelings can rise.”
“...yeah. It’s always about you, isn’t it. Me? Maybe I am still a naive little baby dragon, but I don’t want to bet on that. I’d rather put myself into being right in the first place.”
“And what will you do now that the first pillar has fallen, hmm? What will you do when it comes crashing down for dragonkind?”
He stood up again, turning for the door. “If it comes crashing down… I don’t know yet. Future Spike’s problem. But right now, I’m going to mourn my friend.”
“When the time comes and it does all tumble down around your head - when the ponies turn on you - then you can come find me. My offer is still open.”
“Least you won’t be hard to find.”
“Oh?” Chrysalis raised her eyebrows questioningly.
Pausing at the door, Spike looked back. “You’re going back in stone. If any of the changelings survive, they’ll get to decide if you get let out again.”
For just a moment, the mask slipped. Cracked. Turned aside, and let Spike see the truth beneath: The utter relief written on the Chrysalis’ face. “I will await it.”
Halfway through the door, Spike paused again. From out in the hall, he turned back to look inside: “Just one question, Chrysalis. One question, and I’d really like it if this answer wasn’t a lie. Did you ever care for him?”
She nodded without a second’s hesitation, chains clinking as she did. “I loved each and every one of those poor fools. After all, they were my subjects. They were mine. They shared in my hunger, and I understood theirs. I cared for and guided them, endured the knowledge of Kuru for them. In return they served, revered, and endured for me. That is how it should be.”
“...yeah,” Spike sighed. “I thought so.” And he loped from the room, eyes turned down and wings hanging half open so that they nearly brushed the dungeon’s narrow walls.
