Once upon a time...

The Changeling Kingdom discovered the key for bending the time and space. It was a great era of constant development and new technologies.

But then, the pony kind appeared.

Driven by the hunger to enslave everyone who opposed them, they attacked the Changeling kingdom. Changelings fought bravely, but their enemies outnumbered and managed to drive them out of the territories. Ponies hoped to steal the technologies of the Elders, but changelings were faster.

They hid the power and knowledge to dark crystals, so only their descendants could read it. However, not all the secrets stayed hidden forever.

Jumping many years forward, scientist named Sombra discovered one of the Elder crystals.

He lost his mind when he tried to comprehend the content of it. He quickly abused the power and enslaved the area he was in. The great secret hidden in the depths of Crystal Empire stayed undiscovered even after the Solar and Dark alicorns sealed the whole place.

And then, I was born...

Honestly, I can't tell if those stories we are calling history are true or not. I admit I feel special, being born as the changeling queen. Everyone always cared for me, did everything I asked them to do. I became greedy and selfish very fast.

I felt like the queen of the world and behaved this way as well.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you my name. It's Chrysalis, I am sure you've heard of me at least once.

Before my race went to second war with pony kind, there was united university and high school. Ponies and changelings were studying there together in peace for centuries. Guess who my roommate was?

The DARK ALICORN. The bucking Princess of The Moon, Luna herself, was attending the same classes as I was.

Moving on to my queen years, I needed to take care of my people. We were running low on food, raw love. We can sustain on ordinary food, but we will slowly wither away and die. So, my younger self came with a plan. We would attack the bucking capital of Equestria.

You know the story and the outcome of this 'battle' so I won't bore you. I feel bad for using my childhood friend though. Luna looked so happy to see me. She did not expect me to betray her and use her as a ticket to the capital. This act only shows how bad and dark at heart I really was back then.

I almost died, but instead of taking revenge, and my mother would be really upset if she found out, I went to apologize. It took few tries and a little bit of changeling magic to convince the Solar Alicorn to trust me. She did and was glad she had another one to lecture. I hoped to see Luna again, but the smaller princess was avoiding me. The whole castle was not feeling as home it should became.

The solution came from above. I don't know if it was faith or Celestia, who could not look at the faces of her citizens.

Long story short, ponies rediscovered the Crystal Empire. Celestia sent me there to assist her niece with the research. I did not know Princess Cadence was the niece. You can imagine the uneasiness of the situation that followed. Cadence was mostly afraid of me and her husband was well, pissed. The pink alicorn seemed to calm down when I made clear I did not want to cause trouble anymore. Shining Armor on the other hoof, requested to be relocated somewhere else, saying he could not be in the same house as his former nemesis.

Cowardly act, if you want to know my opinion. He out of all should be the one protecting his wife.

The whole Crystal Empire is build on the ruins of the old changeling castle. King Sombra had to change the original buildings to crystals. The overall design is closely resembling the architecture of my kind and if you look carefully, here and there you will see some small details typical for changelings only. It's sad when you realize my species is no longer able to build anything this beautiful. Even more saddening is the world doesn't know anything called 'Changeling Architecture'. Those Crystal Ponies are just result of some weird experiment Sombra did on normal citizens. I wonder if he got that idea from the changeling crystal. Increased defense by deploying full body crystal armor every time one feels love or stronger emotion could be useful.

The team of archaeologists just scratched the surface and hit the archives. That was the reason Celestia sent me here. Cadence could not read a single crystal without corrupting herself. They needed an expert on changeling magic, shortly said, me.

A lot of our discoveries were just messages, maps, star charts and blueprints. I did not know Changelings traveled to the stars before. It looks like my kind hit the space age before ponies could even decide what colors they wanted on their flag.

All the discovered technologies were going to research centers. The history was being written those three months, me and Cadence spent digging and translating all the knowledge of Changeling Elders.

I can't believe my own people thrown away all the things they knew. Whole planet could be profiting from those inventions and technologies.

I remember the day we uncovered something much bigger than the old crystal archive. We hit the metal barrier and when I used the language of Elders to say the sacred words, the door opened to uncover the greatest secret ever.

We discovered the old Changeling star vessel. One could say the whole ship could not stay in the working order after so much time underground, but you would be surprised. I don't believe it either, but it worked.

More unsettling was, the ship had a name written on her sides. She was called CHRYSALIS.

Creepy as hell, I know. By my knowledge of history, that ship had to be build before I was born, so was I named after it? Or, was I meant to be the captain? This obviously stupid idea came from Cadence by the way. I can't imagine myself being in charge of anything after that humiliating defeat in Canterlot.

We discovered the whole area we uncovered was something like a hangar area for ships similar to Chrysalis. There was about a dozen of empty rooms, big enough to support enormous star vessels and ton of smaller cells filled with various old equipment, either frozen or turning to dust.

It's still surprising. I discovered from crystals we found there that changelings were able to build ships about three and half a kilometer long, but CHRYSALIS was just about four hundred meters. I wonder where all those creations are now.