“Oh. My.” It was Chrysalis’s pod… She was thrashing about inside of it, while Ribbon just stood there, unsure of what to do. “Is this normal?”

“Not really.” Bloody hell, this can’t be good.

“Should we let her out?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe knock her out first, do that thing and go in her head.”

“Too risky, I do not want to see what’s going on inside her head if shes spasming like this.”

“I don’t want to let her out, she could hurt herself, or us.”

*Splurch!* Chrysalis had just stabbed her horn through the pod, and her convulsions were causing her to rip it open. “Don’t think theres much of a choice now. When she’s out, I’ll pin her down until she stops flailing.” Why was this happening? and now of all times?

With a wet splat, Chrysalis landed on the floor, where I used magic to hold her down, while looking at Ribbon in confusion. “Do you have any idea why this is happening?”

“I donno. She wasn’t like this when we came back from Tartarus.”

The ex-Queens spasming slowly subsided, until eventually the only motions were her breathing. “Chi, we have a problem.” I looked at Ribbon, fear clearly shown on her face. “She’s waking up.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing, for all we know she’s changed since the wedding.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t care. You can de-”

“Ribbon?” Ribbon had just stopped, when I noticed Chrysalis slowly opening her eyes, before she begun staring at me in absolute terror.

Still holding her in my magic, I took a few steps back, looking at Ribbon for guidance. -Shit, now we have her to deal with in addition to rescuing most of the hive.-

“I’m going to go get Twilight. Keep holding her down.” Ribbon vanished in a flash, leaving me alone with Chrysalis, who now looked even more terrified than before. Getting fed up, I tightened my magics grip, leaving her immobile.

“STAY THE BUCK AWAY FROM MEEEEE!” I immediately clamped her mouth shut with my magic to keep her from screaming again, because I was not in the mood for shit like this.

“Oh for the love of… This is my first encounter with Ribbon all over again… except she wasn’t indoctrinated into believing whatever ancient changeling propaganda you were.” I noticed that Chrysalis’ rapid breathing and futile struggles lessened. “And no, I’m not going to say anything more on that. I’ve probably said too much already. What I can say, is that I do not intend to harm you. Yes, I will fully admit I went overboard when you hurt Ribbon, and turning you into a vegetable was not the best thing to do, but I react extreamly violently when someone I care for is hurt. Now, on that topic, I believe you tried to take over Canterlot, because you and your fellow changelings were starving, correct?”

She nodded rapidly, unable to do much else.

“Good… Now, I’ve seen tiny bits of your memories, and judging by them, you faked taking Canterlot over for more power, because doing so due to you and your people starving would make you appear weak, correct?”

She nodded again, having calmed quite a bit upon realizing she was not going to die.

“So I’m guessing you’re actually glad you’ve been overthrown, and no longer have hold up that facade?”

Her eyes widened, and she slowly nodded.

“Now, I’m going to let you talk, and you're going to remain calm, and not scream, okay?”

She nodded once more, before I released my magics grip on her mouth.

“You… You were in my head?”

“Would you rather have remained in a coma?”

“...No.”

“Then stop complaining, at least you’re in semi-friendly territory.”

“Huh?”

“...I don't know how they found it, but the griffons, with the diamond dogs assistance, ransacked the hive, and got everyone there…”

“They what?” There's the spiteful voice I remember. “And you didn’t do anything about it!?”

“They got me and Ribbon as well, and took us to some weird centaur guy named Tirek, who drained us of our magic, before tossing us through a portal to hell.”

”Tartarus.”

“Same thing, two different names… What?” I looked down to see the glow of the sigil that Lord Malice placed on my chest fade away. Is he really going to try and correct me every time? “Don’t ask… As I was saying, after getting chucked into Hades, and eventually having the Princesses join us, well… I’d rather not talk about what happened after the first week in there…”

“And you got out how?”

“Our standby spec. ops squad, the remaining members of the Exiles, and the Elements, raided the underworld… After bombing the gates open. With a filly riding a manticore sized timberwolf spearheading the group. Although in order to get out I had to make a deal with the resident warden, and bring down a demon who escaped… And possibly came from another dimension, but thats besides the point. All in all, typical Monday.”

“That’s ‘typical’, what else has been happening?”

“Well, there was that one time I fought the god of chaos, and nut shotted him, I fought a thousand year old unicorn corrupted by dark magic, fought a hydra, died, and had to deal with Ribbons hatchling.”

“You died!?”

“...I got better.”

“It’s not like a sickness, you don’t just ‘get better’!”

“Yeah well, apparently when you’re part spirit, and are using someone else to anchor yourself to the material plane, that can happen.” It seems Chrysalis is a little uneducated about souls, as my explanation left her fairly confused. “Basically, resurrection based immortality.”

“You mean… you’re a lich?” Her expression turning towards fear again.

“No! I can die, I just don’t stay dead. Kinda like a shadow, you might be able to make it go away temporarily, but it will keep coming back so long as there is still an object to cast it.”

“You’re not really convincing me here.”

“Look, I think its because I don’t fully exist on the material plane.”

“What do you mean ‘fully’?”

“Lets see, I can dissolve into a cloud of miasma, and reform myself into just about anything, of course it really drains my magic to turn into something bigger than myself, then there's the fact that I apparently don’t need to eat, drink or breath, although I still do that because i’ve been doing it since I was born, oh, And I can apparently sense and feed on fear.” I’m essentially a giant walking ‘fuck you’ to physics.

Chrysalis opened her mouth to respond but a flash of light caught our attention. Both Ribbon and Twilight had teleported into the room, upon seeing Twilight though Chrysalis was freaking out again and I had to clamp her mouth shut, again.

-Crap, she didn't know about how I accidentally caused Twilights transformation!-

’Aw ponyfeathers...’

“Wuh, buh, huh!?”

“Twi, calm down.”

“Explain. Now.”

“Okay, so during the wedding, I had rendered Chrysalis here a vegetable in a fit of rage after she hurt Ribbon. Celestia tried to keep her locked up, but she didn't know that changeling get nutrients exclusively from emotions, meaning she was wasting away. Frankly, I took pity on her, because being trapped in your own mind as your body wastes away is a fate I wouldn't wish on my greatest enemy. After a bit of dreamwalking, I managed to start the process of getting her out of her mind, and she just ‘woke up’ a few minutes ago. As to why she’s freaking out? remember Twi, you weren't a Night Terror back then, and considering I put her in that coma in the first place for hurting Ribbon, shes more than likely afraid that you were going to do worse after what she had done to your foalsitter and big brother during the wedding.”

“I was wondering what happened to her, but a coma? I thought she was just in jail.”

“Yeahhhh, I may have broken her mind at the time, after she hurt Ribbon, by showing her things nobody was meant to see…”

“Well she looks fine now.”

“Well, after a bit of dream walking, I managed to kickstart the recovery, and it turns out she wasn’t invading canterlot for the power, she just said so because saying her and her people were starving would make them appear weak.”

“Did she even bother to learn about her… food? we would’ve helped.”

“Theres the other thing, she was kinda indoctrinated into believing some old changeling bullshit propaganda about ponies being nothing more than enemies and food.”

“As a scout, I wasn’t really in the hive that much, I was with ponies. For the most part, all I did was watch the guard movements.” Ribbon finally decided to add her piece, which actually made a bit of sense, as I was starting to wonder why she didn’t think so as well.

“Ribbon, look at it this way, she’s actually glad you overthrew her, as now she doesn’t have to hold up that facade of being power hungry.”

“So, she doesn’t care? I would of assumed she’d want the throne back.”

“You’re right that she doesn't want it back, but what she IS pretty pissed about the griffons getting most of hive.”

“Regardless, she still tried to invade Canterlot.” Said Twi. She’s right, we can’t just let her off the hook, but we can’t just give her back to Celestia either.

“Maybe so, but we can’t just lock her up, she’ll starve.”

“Which means I need to let the others know about her. Remember we have an outpost in Canterlot now, the old crystal mines. We could lock her up there.’

-Or assuming there's some way to keep her from teleporting out, we could keep her here.-

’Well I sorta kept that magic canceling ring the griffons made you wear. I intended to use it for... something else, but we could use it on her.

-That could work.- Ribbon disappeared in a flash and came back a minute later with a greenish looking ring.

Twilight gave her a bit of a hesitantly confused look. “Why do you have one of those in the first place?”

“This.” Ribbon placed the ring on Chrysalis’ horn. Chrysalis tried to back away but I kept her from moving.

“Now then, I would like to have a talk with our guest here in private.”

“Uh, alright Twilight, you do that.”

Before me and Ribbon teleported back upstairs, I released Chrysalis from my magics grip, knowing that Twilight could handler her if she tried something. With a flash of light, me and Ribbon appeared in the kitchen.

“I managed to get the rifle back, Twilight gave it back. Though, it’s a shame the griffons got Akumu, guess we’ll have to make a new one, huh?”

“Actually…” I lifted a wing, and watched as a cloud of miasma formed into Akumu, complete with its sheath. “It turns out it works on the same principle as my armor. I can form it at will, which still confuses me since we did use some of your discarded chitin to make it.”

“That is confusing. But that’s good, we didn’t lose our weapons. AND, the outpost back in canterlot managed to” She lend in and whispered. “They managed to steal the matter manipulator while we were in Tartarus.”

“Sweet.” So now we can eventually upgrade, that will be something I’ll be looking forward to. “But still, we’ve been avoiding it for long enough. How are we going to rescue everyling?”

Ribbon sighed, “If they’ve already been… sold off, we’ll need to do it one by one. But that’s a lot of changelings, there’s no way they managed that yet.”

“At least it would be fairly easy to get in undetected. We have the shade form, remember?”

“Yeah, finally a good use for it. The first few rescues should be easy, until they realize what’s happening.”

“If you remember, unless they saw us merge, we were unnoticeable unless we drew attention to ourselves, made no sound other than when we spoke, and the moment they looked away, they completely forgot we were even there.”

“True, but it would still go faster if we had help and they can’t all use that.”

“Well, there is Rushdown, He can sneak up on Pinkie of all ponies!”

“Then we have two, you and me, plus Rushdown. We need a lot more. Once we’re at the Griffon Empire we’ll need to set up shop, a safe place that we can guard and get changelings out. And there’s a lot of different city’s we’ll need to check. Who’s to say my changelings are the only ones they have, what if they took others?”

“Remember, the diamond dogs were in on it too, and they are an unorganized bunch, I think we should try to get them first, so we know what to expect when we hit the griffon empire.”

“And they’ll be the one in the most amount of danger, and we should save them soon. Just one problem, which pack helped the griffons?”

“Simple, Gary can sniff em out.”

“If the scent isn’t too old by now. It’s been a long day and I think Twi should be leaving, having finishing up with… whatever she wanted from Chrysalis. We’ll head out in the morning. I’ll have a larger group of changelings come down from the Canterlot outpost, that was a big pack of dogs, we might need the extra numbers.”

“Not too many though, I’d rather get in there and get out with our fellow changelings unseen.”

Our conversation went on as Ribbon started talking about outfitting some changelings with armor. Their natural armor was better than nothing, but if it broke it was very painful. Eventually Twilight had left and Fluttershy dropped off Mirage. I scooped up Mirage and brought her upstairs to the bedroom, Ribbon had already made a new crib, she was probably due for a new one anyway, she’s gotten much bigger.