I've Been Alone for a While
Princess Twilight, the sole monarch of Equestria for the past seven hundred years was taking a walk in her garden as she deliberated on what to do for this years Hearths Warming. The most common activity was to separate herself into two so that she could perform the duties required of her and so that she could have a small period of relief. She had attempted to split herself for extended periods of time, the effort straining her after only a week of maintaining the spell that did it. She was unable to abandon her duties, she knew how much people appreciated and needed her. And she had yet to find someone that she could nurture to take her place the way Celestia had done for her. There were powerful unicorns of course, a few of them surpassing her own innate talents from when she was a filly, but none of with the will to fulfill the duties being a ruler required of them. And she had yet to find someone talented that was as much into reading and learning as she had been. And she had come to the conclusion to stop searching for a while, maybe wait three hundred years. Celestia had ruled for a thousand years, why should she get it any easier?
Normally during Hearths Warming or any other necessary event, be it a meeting, party, court, or law making, she would briefly split herself and one half of her would go and live normally in a disguise or take a vacation. Only, two hundred years of doing that had been fun of course, but she had run out of things to do. She would have loved nothing more than to go to the land of dragons and see how Spike is doing, but her and her son had a bit of an argument the last time they saw each other and Spike made it clear he wanted to rest for a while. And now that he was large and needed plenty of rest to compensate, she was going to wait to see him again.
She had very little company nowadays. She remembered all the friends she made over the years, and in case she didn't, Pinkie Pie's example of keeping dockets of everyone spoke to her historian side, and she kept records of everyone she considered a friend with brief summaries. The summaries were hard, especially for those she was close with. But right now, there was no one. There was her advisor, her financial advisor, her royal chief of military, and aside from her old babysitter she saw on occasion, she couldn't really call them friends. They were simply the people she spoke to most lately. She missed her friends every day, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, all her first friends she missed so dearly. Even Applejack who never really died. Applejack was a strange phenomenon, she was always at the Apple family farm, always.
And life had become so monotonous for her too. There had been constant praise and love for her for decades now. It was very rare that she would encounter anyone that even seemed like a threat to her kingdom. Peace loomed over her like death itself. Chaos was in rare supply these days as well. Discord had shown up less and less over the years since Fluttershy had died, there hadn't been anyone to fill the same role in his life and grief took him hard. There had been their child that kept him happy for many years, but after his daughter had taken his place as the Lagomorphic Personification of Chaos, he had time to himself and he found that he liked to be alone these days.
All of this lead to the reason that she had come to her garden. A statue had been in her mind for many weeks now and her considerations were growing anxious. The statue was of three beings, a magic stealing centaur that would stop at nothing to be all powerful, a filly who proved too cunning and wicked to be left to her own devices, and a wronged Queen. Twilight had been considering the possibility of letting the Changeling out for a long time. Only recently had the option been a more pressing issue to change her lonely state. Chrysalis was an immortal like Celestia, possibly older. Twilight didn't know if she herself would be an immortal, she was possibly too young to tell, a thousand years was a page in Celestia's book and she hadn't even made it that far yet.
Queen Chrysalis wasn't powerful anymore, she only posed a threat while she was boosted by her companions or when she laid a clever enough trap. And originally she wasn't evil, it was only a misunderstanding of her species that lead her to what she did. She believed that she was feeding her colony, a noble task, one Twilight now respected. But she had no colony anymore, Changelings have changed many times, proving to be a very adaptable species and easily evolved. And now that Chrysalis had nothing, and she would be completely alone, she had a choice. She could let Chrysalis stay in stone, or free her and see how she would react. And it was no better than death either way, the stone never let them die, they were conscious she learned from discord, and they would never live a life, never grow up, it was the same as death. Perhaps Celestia knew this and thought it was fitting punishment, or perhaps she thought that their corpses being decorations would serve some purpose or serve as their penance.
-
At first, she had counted, then she waited, then she plotted, and she went back to counting. She could do nothing from inside her stone prison but watch the world in front of her and wait. It had been little comfort that she would watch the flowers blossom in what should have been her kingdom. The gardeners came and went and she could piece together her own entertainment for a while. For quite a few decades in fact she relied on the gardeners to pass the time, to make life in an unmoving shell bearable. But the silence waned on her, the stillness slowed her, and the rotating cast did little to sooth her. She let her hatred stew and fester, but found it unsustainable when she could not move or have an outlet for it. And eventually, she was numb to everything. The changing flowers, the gardeners, the visiting foals, the changing of the seasons, there were no reactions as she found solace in the serenity. She thought very slowly, taking weeks at a time to think even a word to describe what she saw. She had lived for a very very long time, but none of it had she spent more than just a couple decades in such a sleep. And that had only been after being well fed.
But recently, there was a consistent change in her vision, one that was different but recognizable. The tall purple alicorn was a confusing sight at first, but revitalizing. As it became more consistent, she recognized more, not just who it was but who it was to her. The reason she was in there in her stone prison in the first place. She had forgotten there were two others with her, but the memory of the day kept playing in her mind. Slowly the events became more clear, accurate, and real. And she could see a bright light approaching her, not from the three that cast the terrible spell, but from one purple alicorn. And as the light approached her she braced for it's impact.
And fell forwards, landing face first, leaving her jaw with a rattling sensation and a terrible confusing clouding her mind.
“Oh my gosh oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I should have caught you!” Twilight said as she rushed to the fallen Queen and lifted her up. Chrysalis' chitinous skin rough to the touch. Changelings hadn't been like that since she ruled them, she was the last of her kind in a sense. Even if Chrysalis didn't make for good company, she was certainly a research project. “I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and falling on your face isn't going to help anything. Again, sorry about that.”
Chrysalis wasn't so slow on the uptake as Twilight assumed she was. She had ruled an entire colony and made sense through the maddening hive mind of thoughts and could think clearly while walking through the flames of tartarus with ease. She understood she was let free the moment her face hit the floor, and had answered other questions from there. The who was of course Twilight, now much older and taller. The how, Twilight had grown powerful enough to undo the spell cast by two alicorn princesses and Discord. The what to do next, was ask questions and not run away. If Twilight was this powerful now, then she had no hope of escaping when her magic was so dulled after inactivity for so long. One particular question seemed rather important. “Why?”
“Because,” Twilight started, and realized she had never vocalized to herself what her motivation was. Or written it down, or even stated it directly while she was pondering the decision. Her thoughts only surrounded whether or not to do it, not why was was going to do it. She had merely known that she wanted it, that freeing Chrysalis had edged it's way into her desires and the thought festered until she took action. And now that she had, she didn't understand why.
“You don't even know do you?” Chrysalis asked, looking up at Twilight. She was looking up not because Twilight was taller, no, even in her stone prison Chrysalis continued to grow at the same rate that she had since she was hatched, and she certainly hadn't gotten any shorter. The possible centimeter of height she gained while frozen didn't give her much in stature, and she wouldn't even have noticed after so long. She was looking up because she had backed away from Twilight, keeping her head low, concealing her preparing to fly away and hope to find safety to figure some way out to hurt her. “Poor little Twilight, all grown up and still acting like a foal. You don't even know why you freed me. I think I figured it out, you wanted a fight. I can't say I'll be a-”
“No!” Twilight said, and closed the distance between them. “The last thing you need to do is fight. You've been in there for a very long time and you don't know how it affected you.” Twilight said a rush, surprising Chrysalis into losing balance on her front hooves. “You should rest, I can't image you're feeling up to anything after being trapped for so long.”
There it was, the comforting caring chivalrous nature of ponies. For any other pony they would feel flattered that a princess was concerned about them. But it only reminded Chrysalis of how much she hated Twilight, they had so much love to give and couldn't spare a kingdom to feed her nest. “Trapped?! Trapped?!” She laughed. “That's a nice word for what being turned into a statue is. I hate you with my entire being, and would throw you into the flames of perdition myself, and I still would never use such a punishment. Just because you can't move, doesn't make time move any faster. Did you know that? I was conscious every second of it.”
“Yes.” Twilight said. The large alicorn she hated sitting down was a true shock to Chrysalis. She wasn't a threat, at all. If Twilight was the least bit concerned she would have stood ready for anything. “Discord told me many years ago what it was like. And I'm sorry, I should have done something sooner when I learned how awful it was. Discord didn't make it seem that bad. But I only recently realized how horrible that must be.”
“You know nothing!”
“I don't.” Twilight said. “If I had known even a fraction of how bad it must be then I would-”
“Have killed us?” Chrysalis sneered. “Thrown us in a cell to rot? Sent us to tartarus? And what of the child?”
“I, I don't know.” Twilight admitted. “But anything must be better than that.”
“An accurate statement.” Chrysalis said. “And I suppose you're here to do that now, aren't you?”
“Not quite. I am here to end your punishment. And the others, I'm not so sure that would be a good idea.”
“Even the child? Cozy Glow still could have a long life ahead of her.” Chrysalis vouched. Cozy Glow, during her short time of knowing her, had proven loyal enough, and powerful enough. And she came to the conclusion early on in her prison that she and Cozy had become friends of a sort, a defacto hive. And she should at least do her best by the life of a child she cared about. “Or am I the only one worthy of such a fate?”
“In a sense, yes.” Twilight said. “I've been ruling Equestria, and more, for quite a long while now. Celestia and Luna are no longer here. And memories can only do so much. There has been no one that has stayed for a very long time. And I'm worried I may have to wait even longer than Celestia waited for me.”
“In short?” Chrysalis asked, patience waning. She could learn the updated history of Equestria later when she was plotting on how to rule it again.
“It's Hearths Warming tomorrow.” Twilight cleared her throat. “And immortals are in short supply. In short, I am lonely, and I'm offering you an ultimatum.”
“You certainly aren't the naïve young princess you once were.” Chrysalis mused. “And I doubt there is much desolate land left, is there?” Twilight shook her head. “Deadly forests? Poison swamps? Caverns of Evil?”
“All have been found, explored, and conquered. To paraphrase a unicorn you might have met.”
Conquered was a shocking word to Chrysalis. Celestia over the thousands of years she had ruled, had never gone out of her way to fight, to gain land. Celestia was a coward and did what she could to shrink her territory away from threats. But to conquer, was a completely different reality for ponies. Twilight was certainly not what she expected. And if all the land as she said has truly been taken over, then there was nowhere to run. And she doubted that she could run somewhere Twilight couldn't follow.
“I'm giving you a choice.” Twilight said. “I can either send you back to your prison, or a similar punishment of your choosing. Luna spent her time in the moon, and I'm sure the sun would work the same, however less pleasing the option is. Or you can-”
“I will never bow to you.” Chrysalis said automatically, she had said it many times while laughing over her life, this was the first she said it out of fear. “I will never bow, I will never let your 'friendship' win, and I will never abandon my pride and become those creatures the rest of my hive became.”
“Good.”
“I- oh, I see. Now you have a reason to end me. Well go ahead, I meant what I said so you can send me back if that's all you wanted. Justification for keeping me in, that's all this was.”
“I wouldn't want you to do any of that.” Twilight said. “While it's true I would like it if you would at least try friendship, I know that's something you would never do. No, what I'm asking is for you to join me for Hearths Warming. And stay.”
“What?”
“Hearths Warming is a pony holiday, we're supposed to share it with the people we care about. And I care about all my citizens, but that's all I have had, subjects. I would like to spend it with someone who isn't. And with someone who wont leave.”
“For how long?” Chrysalis asked, a devious smile finding it's way to her face.
“For what?” Twilight asked.
“When will you want me to leave?” Chrysalis knew how ponies emotions worked, better than they did themselves. Hundreds of years in stone might not have changed her much, but she was very hungry.
“Never.”
And Twilight smelled like food.