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The Luna Cypher

by iisaw

Chapter 10: 10 Enchanted

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Chapter Ten
Enchanted

I awoke with Luna's big, powerful body curled around me. One of her wings was slightly open and rested lightly on my shoulder. Her muzzle lay touching the top of my head, just behind my horn.

I let my thoughts drift back to the night before and felt my body warm at the memory. I hadn't ever imagined that it would be so good. Nopony had ever told me about feeling like a glowing, golden cloud afterward, either. Why hadn't mom mentioned that when she had given me The Talk? Still... if I had discovered sex while I was still in school, I probably would have flunked all my classes and Equestria would now be shrouded in eternal night, so perhaps mom could be forgiven for not dwelling on the upside of the subject.

I didn't have any idea when Luna and I had finally fallen asleep, but I had fully expected to be woken by Evenstar's crew resuming preparations in the morning. The full light of day lit my cabin through the curtains, but the ship was silent. Luna was blocking my view of the clock, so I extended my magical senses and touched the Great Wheel of the Moon, well below the horizon. It was late morning.

I woke Luna with my sudden start and she smiled sleepily. "I do so enjoy seeing you with your hair in disarray, Twilight."

The look she gave me nearly made me forget my concern. "It's late," I forced myself to say as I stepped over her.

Luna's eyes lost focus for a split-second as her horn glowed. "Nay, 'tis not yet noon, Twilight! Come back to bed."

I grabbed my hairbrush off of the little toiletry shelf below the mirror and began working on my mane as I stretched the stiffness out of my legs and wings. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be; I supposed I was getting used to the armor. "There should be ponies on board by now," I clarified. "Something's not right."

Luna rolled out of bed and shook herself. She floated her shoes, crown and peytral over and they settled onto her. Her mane and tail were, of course, perfect.

I made do with a few quick strokes on my tail and then opened the door to the stateroom. Outside was a little wooden table that had definitely not been there the night before. On the table was a silver tray, and on the tray were a stack of letters and notes, and a first aid kit with a ribbon and card attached.

Luna and I traded looks. I unfolded the little note card on the medical kit and read it.

I hope this helps! The last time I heard a pony scream like that, my sister Limestone had dropped a twenty pound agate boulder on her hoof!

-Pinkie Pie

P.S. I was in the galley last night stowing flour and sugar. Pro-tip: Close the little covers over the speaking tubes if you want privacy!

I had just acquired a valuable piece of information: A pony cannot actually die from embarrassment. Fortunately, the rest of the notes were not of a similar nature. The one on top of the stack read:

Your Highness,

Miss Pie assures me that you are aboard and will wish to sleep in this morning. I have reviewed your correspondence and have set aside some that are of personal or time sensitive natures. I have ordered work aboard Evenstar delayed until you deem fit.

-Periwinkle

That girl desperately needed a raise.

As I flipped through the rest of the papers, my stomach let loose with a truly feral growl.

"Ah!" Luna said. "We must breakfast anon! You must have strength for the trials to come, my dear Twilight."

What I wanted to do was chuck the letters out the porthole and drag Luna back to bed. Every time she tossed off some endearing archaic phase in that rich, lovely voice of hers, I practically swooned. And I'm not the type of pony that swoons easily. Rarity's the expert in that area.

Luna directed an evil grin at me. I guess I was pretty transparent. "Fear not, my dear," she said. "There will be endless nights to come, and we shall have time enough to explore all the ways of love."

Okay. Came pretty close to swooning at that, too.

= = =

Luna had her own royal duties to attend to, and she left me to a working breakfast, promising to return after moonrise that evening. I settled in and began going through the papers while shoveling forkfuls of a rather good primavera omelette into my mouth.

I cranked through a dozen or so requests by the time I was half-way through my food. I was in full-on efficiency mode and didn't even blink at the note from Rarity asking whether I preferred star-cut or rose-cut diamonds. I just answered it[1] and went on.
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[1] Star-cut, at a guess. I really couldn't bring the difference to mind at that moment.
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Just as I was finishing my omelette, a slightly out-of-breath pegasus messenger rushed in and bowed.

"Yfff?" I swallowed. "Excuse me. Yes?"

"Your Highness, the Queen of the Changelings is on her way here. She will arrive in a few minutes."

"Chrysalis? Why is she coming here?"

"I don't know, Your Highness. She sent no message. She and her entourage got off the train just moments ago."

Chrysalis took the train? Something very odd was going on. I gathered up all the papers and stuffed the last of the omelette in my mouth. "I'll meef her ouf front! Sfff..." I swallowed again. "Sorry. See if you can find a herald and a couple of guards to make a show of it."

"Yes, Highness!" He turned and sprinted out the door.

Crown, crown... Where was my flipping crown? I was always leaving the thing somewhere. I gave up trying to remember and threw an object-specific teleport spell. From the huge amount of energy it took to retrieve it, I must have left it in Canterlot somewhere.

I quickly checked my mane and tail in a mirror, brushed some bits of egg off my cheeks and chest, and rushed down to the main doors of the palace.

The changeling hive didn't have a banner or flag. They were more the sort to have skulls on sticks in the way of heraldry, but there was only so far I was willing to go to accommodate Chrysalis' tastes, royalty though she was. She would have to make do with an arch of spears. I thought that might be sufficiently barbaric for her.

As she and her group approached the palace I flung open the doors. The herald blew a short fanfare on his trumpet and then announced, "Her Majesty, Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings!"

Chrysalis stomped up the stairs, wearing something glittering and jingling, trailing a group of hangers-on.

I stepped forward to greet her properly. "I welcome Your Majesty to my palace and offer you—"

She swept right past me without stopping. "Stuff it, Sparkle! We need to talk!"

Her little group of followers, mostly ponies with a couple of changelings, made to follow in her wake with just as little ceremony. While I could put up with all sorts of rudeness in private or from another monarch, the public presence of an Equestrian princess would be respected. My horn lit and they bowed. When I thought they had showed enough respect, I released them from my magical grip and preceded them into the castle. I was disappointed that my friend Csharreee wasn't with them. She would have been polite.

Chrysalis had settled herself on a cushion in the main audience chamber and pulled all the drapes across the windows so that the room was dim. I levitated the big cushion down from the throne on the dais and seated myself across from her on the floor. Two of my guards stationed themselves to either side of me. I let her sullen lackeys fend for themselves and they dropped down on the bare floor around her.

I hadn't seen Chrysalis for nearly a year, not since I had left the Badlands after the destruction of the Dark Crystal Engine. A lot of her subjects had come north to Equestria and had... well, stopped being her subjects. Stopped being changelings, in fact. In the ruined city in the desert, I'd discovered that simple, mutual friendship could disrupt the spell[2] that kept them in their parasitic, insectile bodies and return them to their true pony forms. When the word had gotten around the hive, Equestria had been overrun with changelings. Changelings who wanted to be friends.
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[2] It was an unintentional side effect of a badly designed magical construct, not a curse. I used to flinch every time I heard somepony say, "lifted the curse," or something like that, but it became so common an occurrence that I'm inured to it now.
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Not all the changelings wanted to become ponies, and those had remained behind. It was hard to get accurate numbers, but I estimated around twenty percent of the original population was left. Chrysalis herself had traveled back and forth between her realm and Canterlot but was still her old self: dark, creepy, and semi-perforated.

Aside from the two changelings, her followers were an odd lot. They were all unicorn stallions, attractive in a dissipated sort of way, but ranging from a bit on the thin side to positively gaunt. I tried not to think too much about what sort of relationship they had with the queen.

I finished my survey of her hangers-on and turned my attention to Chrysalis. "You need to talk? I'm listening," I said.

"I've been in Canterlot these last few weeks or so, and out of touch with the hive."

It wasn't a surprise to me. Once I'd seen how she was dressed, or rather, draped, I'd figured out she hadn't come directly from her own lands. It certainly wasn't the sort of thing she'd wear in a dank hole in the ground. She wore a sparkling set of dozens of thin, interwoven platinum chains studded with emeralds of various sizes. Some talented jewelry designer had figured out the ideal sort of decoration to compliment her decayed, decadent looks. The jewelry/clothing hung from her like glittering cobwebs and was quite striking, if a pony's tastes ran to that sort of thing. Judging from the appearance and behavior of her fawning companions, they were exactly that sort of pony.

"Imagine my surprise," she continued, "when I received word that your little poison pit in my realm had begun spewing monsters."

"It came as news to me, too," I said flatly. I was not going to be put on the defensive. My poison pit? The evil thing had been built over a thousand years ago. I was just the pony who had trashed the place.

"And I hear you were driven back by their vanguard a few days ago."

I did not growl at her. I took a slow breath in and said, as casually as possible, "It seems your source of information isn't entirely accurate. What we did was utterly wipe out the vanguard and acquire valuable intelligence which will enable us to destroy the rest of the creatures in a few days' time. Other than that, you're quite correct, Your Majesty."

"You seem confident of that. Perhaps you don't know just how many dark monsters have crawled out of that pit. My subjects have sealed most of the entrances to the hive and are practically under siege."

That was news, and not the good sort. Our patrols had only been watching the approaches to Equestria. I decided to drop the sniping nonsense and play it straight. "If you can get us an estimate of their numbers and strength, that would be very helpful. We can easily drive them back from your hive and then seal the pit with your help."

Chrysalis looked a bit nonplussed. "With your little party balloon and a few soldiers? You're mad!"

I grinned. "You mean Evenstar?" I created a fairly good diagram of my airship in the air between us. "Oh, I'll just be using her as a command post. We have a couple more 'balloons' coming along with us. This one for instance." I popped up an image of Solar Flare next to Evenstar. "That's to scale, by the way."

What with her chitinous skin, Chrysalis couldn't blanche, of course, but her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open just a little bit.

I didn't smile. "Luna will be commanding her. I thought it would be a fun little outing for the two of us."

"Ah, yesss," Chrysalis tilted her head and looked at me appraisingly for a moment. Then she did something totally unexpected. There was a flash of green fire and Luna sat before me, giving me a blatant come-hither look.

I knew it wasn't really her but I my heart sped up and I felt my cheeks grow hot. "Stop that," I said.

Chrysalis returned to her former shape and gave me a calculating look for a long moment. Then she chuckled and said, "Mmmm... That was quite tasty. I might even say exotic. So the rumors are true, then."

"That's none of your business," I said through my teeth.

"Oh, if there's anything I've learned from you ponies, it's that affaires de coeur, particularly those of the upper classes, are everyone's business! You two are the talk of the town!"

I was about to fling an angry, thoughtless retort at her, but I managed to stop myself. I glanced down at Chrysalis' hooves and smiled. The holes were quite small and there were only a few of them. "I suppose you're right," I replied calmly.

Chrysalis caught the direction of my gaze and scowled at me. Demonstrably, the rumor mill could cut both ways. Rarity had told me weeks ago about whispers that Chrysalis had found a friend. A very close friend, but a friend nevertheless. The magic of friendship had begun to work on her, changing her from her revolting insectile form back to the uncorrupted, beautiful alicorn she had once been.

There was just one problem. Chrysalis' new companion had fallen in love with her, not the pony she had been so long ago. Were she to allow herself to change back, she feared she would lose the love of the only pony she had considered a friend in over a millennium. She didn't dare come near him for more than a day out of every week.

I supposed the sycophantic crowd around her might desire her in some twisted fashion, but it was clear that it wasn't mutual, nor was it the sort of love that could work magic. Chrysalis' little harem was mere decoration. And possibly snacks.

When I'd first heard about it from Rarity, I'd gotten a kind of grim satisfaction from the story. That the creature who had abused love for so long was now suffering at its hooves seemed like poetic justice to me. But now that I knew from personal experience how badly even briefly thwarted love could hurt a pony, I wasn't so sure. In fact, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her.

I made sure not to show a hint of that, of course. If there was anything Chrysalis would hate worse than my smugness at her situation, it would be my pity. Time to change the subject.

"Well, I can assure you that my private life will have no impact on my mission. Luna and I are going to eliminate the monsters and their source. If you would be so gracious as to provide us with information regarding that, I would be very thankful."

Chrysalis gazed at me for a long moment and then spoke to one of her underlings. "Blackberry," she said and made a little gesture with one hoof in my direction. The gaunt gray stallion with the eyeliner and black hoof polish levitated a bundle of papers out of his saddlebag and floated them over to me.

"I think you'll find the information to be accurate and fairly detailed. General Csharreee compiled it."

That made me smile. "How is she?"

"Very efficient," the queen said flatly.

I sighed and leafed through the papers. Then something caught my eye and I started reading in detail. After a minute or so, I looked up and asked, "Is this true?"

Chrysalis permitted herself a half smile. "Unpleasant surprise?"

"On the contrary," I said, with a tangential approach to the truth. "This confirms something I'd already suspected. It will make planning the attack a lot easier. Please convey my heartfelt gratitude to Csharreee when you see her again."

"You should thank the queen, not her lackey!" one of the other stallions snarled.

Without bothering to rise or even look in his direction, Chrysalis lashed her tail across his face in a sudden, violent movement. The stallion hissed in pain and covered the reddening stripes across his muzzle with a hoof. The rest of the entourage looked at him with very mixed emotions, and I'm pretty sure jealousy was in there somewhere. I really needed to go through that volume on abnormal psychology sometime very soon.

It turned out that Chrysalis wanted to come along. At least, she wanted to be at the forefront of the relief of her hive. It seemed that she still valued those of her brood who hadn't migrated to the cities of Equestria and become ponies, even though she had spent more time away from her realm than in it during the last dozen moons.

I assured Chrysalis that I could easily alter the battle plan to include the relief of her hive and promised to have the details in her hooves by the next day. What I didn't tell her was that I would have changed the plans in exactly the same way, just to avoid having a mass of the enemy at my back.

"Very good," she said, with every evidence of honest appreciation. She turned to one of her two changeling attendants and said, "Khaatak, go arrange for some place for you all to stay in the village. I will have Princess Twilight show me to my chambers here. You will return this evening to attend me. You, alone."

Wow. Invited herself right in, didn't she? Well, I could afford to be gracious, and seeing Luna's reaction to the news that the "bug queen" was going to do a sleep-over would be priceless.

As I led her to one of the guest suites, I discovered that Chrysalis wanted something more from me than just a bed for the night.

"You are the Princess of Friendship and your special talent is magic," she said as we climbed the tower stairs. "If anyone is capable of devising some way to prevent this insidious side-effect, it would be you." She waved a half-healed foreleg at me and didn't explain further. She assumed I would know exactly what she was talking about, and she was right.

"Are you sure he wouldn't like you just as much if you were a stunningly beautiful alicorn? I know there are severe downsides, but still..."

She gave a little hiss of irritation at my sarcasm and said, "I can be that anytime I want. The point is that I can be quite a number of other things as well, and he likes variety. You may not believe it, but he even enjoys me as I am now. Yes, a pony who loves me for what I really am... think of that!" Chrysalis chuckled and continued. "He has called me haughty and arrogant, cold, cruel, and disdainful... all meant as terms of endearment, I assure you."

She climbed a few more steps by my side and then paused, her shoulders slumping. "I do not wish to lose him, Twilight Sparkle." She sighed and made sure she was looking away from me when she continued. "And so I am lowering myself to ask for your help."

I took in a breath and readied my "Never Be Afraid or Ashamed to Ask Your Friends for Help" speech, and then had a sudden insight as to how poorly it would go over with Chrysalis. I decided that simplicity would work best. "Okay, I'll see what I can do for you when I get back from the Badlands."

She eyed me suspiciously. "Just like that? What do you want in return?"

"It will be an interesting puzzle, trying to counter innate magic like that, and I'll have fun figuring it out, so it wouldn't be right to ask you for anything."

Chrysalis resumed walking by my side without saying anything until we reached the door to the guest suite. Then, she muttered in a low voice, "You are either the most devious pony I have ever encountered, or a complete fool."

I beamed at her as if she had just paid me a gracious compliment and teleported away before I could give in to my impulse to burst into laughter.

= = =

=

Author's Notes:

Thanks again to AcademicPony and statoose (who can spot a double space from orbit) for their excellent assistance!

Next Chapter: 11 Preparations Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 60 Minutes
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