The cottage was full of silence.

Not dead silence. Not the silence of those waiting for death, nor the silence of death itself. This silence was louder, and had a life of its own. This silence waited, and it was made up of thousands of souls witnessing.

Two ponies stood in the center of the cottage. Both were alike. That was to say, both had the same face, same body, same appearance in almost every respect.

Save for two.

One pony had green eyes, the other blue. One pony, the pony with green eyes, had smooth fur. The pony with blue eyes looked equally hale at first glance, but its fur was ruffled. In places it had burn scars, remnants of some terrible trauma. They reached across her body, but were mostly invisible save in the right kind of light.

Still, from a distance the two pegasi were alike. A casual observer would have been hard pressed to notice such differences, and only by their personalities would they be easily identifiable.

One was called Fluttershy and knew herself as such. She thought of the other pony as an imposter, a villain, a mortal enemy.

Fake Fluttershy.

“I’m not Chrysalis.” Fluttershy said it into the silence Fake Fluttershy had caused. Her voice was level and confident. She had to dispel the doubts Chrysalis was casting on her friends.

“Can you prove that?” Fake Fluttershy – Chrysalis was infernally calm as ever. She stood with Angel and Harry by her side, taunting Fluttershy with the deception of her oldest friends.

“I need to prove nothing.” Fluttershy said. “You are the imposter here; all you say is mere misdirection.”

“That you refuse to even consider alternatives proves your delusion.”

“I refuse to be swayed by hollow words and misdirection,” Fluttershy snarled. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the one point of movement in the cottage. A rabbit was slowly inching its way around the perimeter of the watching animals, holding something close to its side.

Longfoot.

“Oh?” Fake Fluttershy raised one eyebrow in disbelief. Fluttershy focused her attention back to her. Either was Chrysalis would die, but she had to prove she was the changeling queen before Longfoot struck.

“I can prove you’re not the real Fluttershy.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same to you.”

Fake Fluttershy growled, but kept her voice level. “The real Fluttershy would never let a monster like Chrysalis run free if she knew she was alive.”

“On the contrary,” Fake Fluttershy shot back. “The real Fluttershy would bide her time and wait, especially if a monster like Chrysalis was pretending to be her.”

“Ridiculous. Chrysalis would use Fluttershy’s appearance to destroy Equestria and the Elements of Harmony from within.”

“Only if she knew she was Chrysalis.”

Fluttershy paused. So too did the figure of Longfoot on her periphery. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s go back to the night of the Battle for the Everfree. Can you recount the events that took place then?”

“Of course. After Chrysalis’s apparent demise in the cottage, I—”

Fake Fluttershy shook her head. “No, not that. Go back further. What happened when Chrysalis cornered Fluttershy in the cottage?”

Fluttershy went back in time to that day. The past surged around her, trapping her, scourging her. “She—she trapped Fluttershy and Angel in the cottage and threatened to kill Angel if Fluttershy made any moves. And she did, but Fluttershy killed her, or at least thought she did.”

“And how did Chrysalis die?”

“What is this game?” Fluttershy shook her head to banish specters of the past. “I burned you in the fireplace. You were there.”

“You did.” Fake Fluttershy twitched slightly. Her scars were faintly visible in the moonlight. “I remember.”

“Then—”

“You burned Fluttershy in the fireplace.”

“…What?”

Fake Fluttershy brushed at her coat. The burn scars reached from her face down her torso, ending at her cutie mark.

“Your story has one lie in the narrative. The real story goes like this: Fluttershy returns to her cottage with Angel. Chrysalis lies in await and ambushes them. After a struggle, Angel dies and Fluttershy fights Chrysalis. She loses. Chrysalis burns her in the fireplace and then becomes Fluttershy. She leaves Fluttershy for dead and only later does the pegasus wake up, burned, alone in the Everfree. When she returns to her cottage she finds Chrysalis, believing she’s Fluttershy and raising an army to protect Equestria.”

Silence. A shorter silence this time, the silence of shock and racing hearts.

“That’s—impossible.” Fluttershy’s voice felt hollow, weak. It quavered the uncertain darkness. “You’re lying. I recall that night. It was Chrysalis that—I burned—”

“Me. Do you remember seeing Chrysalis’s face in the fire? Or did you only think it was her?”

Something was saying something. Fluttershy listened. It was faint, above the roaring in her ears. It came from the thing she held in the fire. It sounded like ‘please’. She ignored it.

Fake Fluttershy was staring at Fluttershy. No. She was Chrysalis. But Fluttershy couldn’t meet her eyes.

“This is all ridiculous.” Her voice was trembling. “Your story is full of holes. Why would Chrysalis ever decide to become Fluttershy? And why would she keep up an act for so long? Her goal is to destroy Equestria, not protect it.”

“Her goal is to destroy Equestria, its true.” Fake Fluttershy nodded.

“Then—!”

“But Fluttershy’s goal is to protect Equestria.”

Again Fluttershy had to pause. “What?”

“I said Chrysalis became Fluttershy. She also believed she was Fluttershy. That was the irony of ironies. Maybe she was crazy after the forest fire. Maybe she was trying so hard to understand her enemy that she forgot how to be herself. But sometime in the night as her swarm burned around her, I do believe Chrysalis went insane. And the only way for her to make sense of the world was to become Fluttershy.”

They were all staring at her. Animals, pegasus. Fake Fluttershy’s gaze was calm, but the animals around Fluttershy looked uncertain. The old guard stared at her with fear and hatred, but her animals, the ones she had fought with…half looked uncertain, the other half horrified.

And Angel? He stared at her, and Fluttershy saw what was truly in his eyes.

Hatred.

Fluttershy was silent in the cottage for a long time. What could she say? Only this.

“…I am Fluttershy. Not Chrysalis. It may be that I’ve…changed since the battle for the Everfree, but I am not Chrysalis. I know this for a fact.”

“So you say, but I can prove you are not.”

“Impossible.” Fluttershy knew. She knew she wasn’t Chrysalis. She couldn’t be. She couldn’t—

“Oh?”

“I speak with animals.”

“I can speak with them too.”

“I know the Elements of Harmony.”

“You haven’t spoken to them for months. You hide in your cottage because you can’t relate to them.”

“I’m fighting for Equestria! Fluttershy fought Chrysalis. She’s a warrior, not a coward!”

“She stopped Chrysalis. Even in the end, her goal wasn’t to take the fight to the changelings but to prevent them from invading Ponyville. And you’re wrong. Fluttershy is a coward.”

Bile rose in Fluttershy’s throat at those words. Her breath came faster, and anger replaced uncertainty.

“She massacred the changeling army and fought a guerrilla war for two months! She killed over two hundred changelings in the Battle for the Everfree by herself and she fought Chrysalis one-on-one! How are those the actions of a coward?”

Fake Fluttershy looked at the ground and pawed at the floorboards for a second.

“…What you don’t understand about Fluttershy is her true nature. She might be brave sometimes, and she became a warrior and a general because she had to. But Fluttershy is a coward, a weakling, a doormat. And she prefers that to taking a stand. She only fought because her friends were in danger, but she doesn’t attack. She doesn’t kill unless it’s in self-defense. She doesn’t murder, because she’s kind. That and that reason alone is why she is the Element of Kindness.”

“You-you’re wrong.” Fluttershy shook her head. “Fluttershy isn’t like that. She’s stronger. She has to be.”

“No.” Fake Fluttershy looked tired. “I’m sorry, but no. She…I am not like that. I know you want me to be, so you can understand why you lost. But I’m not a warrior like you. I’m just a pony who did what had to be done.”

“I’m not Chrysalis. I am Fluttershy. I may have been weak once, but I evolved. I became stronger.”

“No. You just killed more.”

Fluttershy was lost for words. She fumbled desperately in her mind, but found no comeback. “…I did what had to be done. I saved lives by taking them.”

Fake Fluttershy sighed heavily. She looked Fluttershy in the eye. “Tell me something. If you’re really Fluttershy, why wasn’t it you that used the Elements of Harmony when Tirek attacked?”

“That was…I was separated from the other Elements, so the tree chose a replacement.”

“Really? Then why did the barrier protecting the Crystal Empire hurt you?”

“How do you know about—”

“I was watching. The magic of the Crystal Heart burned you when you entered the empire.”

“I-I was holding Sombra’ horn at the time. The magic must have attacked us both.”

“No. It attacked the enemies of the Crystal Empire. And it revealed the truth that day, didn’t it? The comfortable little lie you’d built around yourself started to fall apart.”

Fake Fluttershy started pacing in a circle around Fluttershy, talking quietly.

“You became more vicious. Almost overnight you changed, becoming more violent, less secure in who you were. You feared to commit to any major battles, even when it was necessary against Tirek. You remembered your failure.”

“That was tactical error.”

“It was fear.” Fake Fluttershy came nose-to-nose with Fluttershy, and suddenly it was she who was cornered, unable to look away. The intensity of the other pegasus’s stare transfixed her in place.

“I…am…Fluttershy.” Fluttershy clung to the words. She knew they were true, but couldn’t prove them except in her own mind.

“You are not. And I have the proof of it here.” Fake Fluttershy motioned with one wing. “Changeling 32433, step forwards.”

From out of the darkness a changeling stepped forward. Behind him the thirteen other changeling warriors stood, all identical reflections of each other. They watched the two pegasi with fear evident on their faces.

The changeling that had stepped forward glanced at Fake Fluttershy uncertainly. She gestured towards him as she spoke.

“He tells me that he saw you change back into Chrysalis when you fainted after killing Sombra. It was just for a moment, but when you woke up you changed back into Fluttershy at once.”

Fluttershy stared at Fake Fluttershy and heard the susurration of animals. She looked at the changeling, and then back to Fluttershy.

Then she laughed.

The whispering of the animals cut short in an instant as every eye, already riveted on the scene fixed on Fluttershy. She laughed, not out of desperation of denial, but out of triumph.

Fake Fluttershy frowned and took a small step back as Angel and Harry moved forwards protectively, but Fluttershy had no intention of attacking. With one hoof she pointed at the changeling Fake Fluttershy had called forwards.

“Something the matter?” Fake Fluttershy inquired cautiously.

“Your lies are amusing,” Fluttershy calmed herself enough to reply. “Very amusing. But there’s a massive hole in your story. I can prove you’re lying.”

“Oh really?” Fake Fluttershy shifted, but her face remained impassive. “We have a witness, albeit a changeling. He saw everything. Changeling 32433, tell them.”

The changeling hesitated. He looked at Fake Fluttershy uncertainly.

“You idiot.” Fluttershy exulted. She’d caught Fake Fluttershy at last. “That changeling isn’t 32433.” She pointed to the changeling furthest back in the room. “That’s Changeling 32433. Your lies are ov—”

Fluttershy paused. Her heart, which had been beating so quickly in relief stopped. The world slowed, and everything seemed to crystalize into a single moment of horror.

“Interesting,” Fake Fluttershy said quietly. “You know, I can’t tell any of the changelings apart. Even after I’ve known them for months, they all look alike to me. No one here can tell them apart. But you can. And though I’ve learned to understand the changeling language, I don’t remember you ever studying how they spoke. So how can you tell them so easily apart and speak with them?”

“I—”

Everything was going wrong. Fluttershy scrambled for words, but this time she found none at all. The cottage shifted. Reality began to spin. At the edges of her vision, Fluttershy sensed the other animals looking at her in sudden horror and drawing back in earnest. Her soldiers, her warriors, her…friends suddenly jerked back and looked at her like a stranger.

A monster.

Fluttershy felt the gazes of thousands upon her. She wanted to defend herself, prove her innocence, but the stares pierced her. And she had nothing to stop them.

How? How did she know which changeling was 32433? How did she speak with them? There was an answer of course.

“I-I must have picked it up from hearing them speaking. They’re not completely identical.”

“They never speak.” Fake Fluttershy held Fluttershy with her gaze. She was so intense. It was impossible for Fluttershy to meet her gaze, yet she couldn’t look away. Only Fluttershy’s mouth kept moving, desperately arguing, babbling.

“They talk occasionally. And knowing what they think doesn’t mean a thing. Speaking to changeling is like speaking to animals. This proves nothing, and you—”

“Enough.”

It was one word but it stopped Fluttershy. Fake Fluttershy’s blue eyes glittered in the moonlight, bright beacons that focused on Fluttershy. A thousand more eyes shone in the darkness, dark and beady, glowing eyes of orange gold, sharp stares of predators, the innocent gaze of grazers. They held Fluttershy and judged her.

“It’s time to stop running.” Fluttershy’s voice echoed in the cottage. The sound bounced until it was as if a hundred Fluttershy’s spoke through the silent animals.

“No more lies.”

Fake Fluttershy stepped forwards.

“No more hiding.”

Fluttershy stepped back.

“If you are innocent,” Fake Fluttershy was a foot away from Fluttershy, “prove it.”

“How—?”

“The changeling. He believes. He knows the truth. Look into his eyes and see. If you can do that and deny who you are, I will go.”

Fluttershy looked. Changeling 32433 stood at the other end of the cottage, wreathed in shadows. His head was bowed. Fluttershy stared at him and felt the walls of the cottage closing in.

She didn’t want to go to him. Desperately, Fluttershy looked around the cottage. But all she saw from the other animals were blank stares, accusing stares. A wall of eyes without pity.

Judgement.

There. At the edge of the crowd, near Fake Fluttershy. Fluttershy spotted a flash of white among the muted colors.

Longfoot. He stood motionless with the other animals, knife in his paw. His eyes were fixed on Fluttershy. She met his gaze, and for one moment felt the bond between them.

Then the rabbit held up the knife and dropped it on the ground. The blade clattered on the wooden floor, and in the silence it was the loudest thing Fluttershy had ever heard.

Something broke. Fluttershy felt her hooves moving. Her unwilling body trudged slowly across the hard floor to Changeling 32433. His head was bowed, and he didn’t look up as she approached.

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to look into his eyes. Fluttershy would have given anything, her mane, her health, her ability to walk and fly forever not to be here. But the walls had closed in. Reality was breaking around her. And she had to know.

Slowly, Fluttershy bent down. The changeling’s eyes were a bright blue in the moonlight. What was reflected in their depths? Once she had thought naught but murder lay on those eyes. But that wasn’t true. She had always known something lived there. She had known, because she had seen the truth.

And now she saw it again.

----

Changeling 32433 stood in the dark cottage, where moonlight illuminated a tableau. Countless animals sat in the humble dwelling and outside, countless lives pressed together to bear witness. In the center of the cottage stood two pegasi, but they were quite different.

One pegasus had been burned. Her mane and fur still showed scars from the past, yet her eyes were still kind, her body still soft. Behind her stood a rabbit and a bear, and all those who walked, flew, hopped, dug, and ran across the earth.

The other pegasus looked identical to the first, but she was different. War had shaped her. It had given her muscle and scars and taken away the innocent look she had once had. She still moved with the past pain of battle on her, of wounds both visible and in her soul that had never healed. No one stood with her in the cottage; no animals were by her side. She was friendless.

But she was never alone.

----

Fluttershy looked into Changeling 32433’s eyes. She felt him. The changeling’s presence wasn’t just physical; it was in her mind, her very soul. Even if she closed her eyes, she would have been able to point to him wherever he went. She heard his thoughts just as clearly as his own. The dark room revealed something else, though.

He was…crying?

Yes, crying. Changeling 32433 wept. Fluttershy saw the tears streak down his face, twin trains of glowing green. For he knew his lies were uncovered. He had defied his queen and for that the penalty was death. He wept for his death, his failure to serve, but also for one more reason.

His queen had returned.

Fluttershy felt the walls in her mind fall. The shroud that had been in her thoughts, the barrier she had made broke as a dam before a flood, and the voices poured in.

Words. Thoughts. Emotion, pure and unrestrained. A thousand voices, countless souls. The minds of the changeling Swarm hit Fluttershy and consumed her. She heard their thoughts, the changelings that hid in the Everfree Forest, the fourteen that stood in the cottage, afraid and confused. They were in her mind, and she knew them.

As she always had. They had never left her. She had only stopped listening for a while. But now the voices came at her, a wave, an ocean of thought and feeling. And the tide spoke. It screamed at her. The Swarm welcomed her back, in joy, in fear, in relief.

Their queen.

Fake Fluttershy stood back at one end of the cottage, Angel by her side. The animals clustered around her, armed, tensed. They looked to Fake Fluttershy for guidance, but she wasn’t Fake Fluttershy anymore.

She was Fluttershy.

And Fluttershy or the being who had called herself Fluttershy stood transfixed by horror. The knowledge beat down upon her, tearing at her, searing her soul. She tried to deny it, tried to escape, but it was too late. The truth fell upon her at last, and it could no longer be denied.

The other pegasus calmly one hoof and pointed at her. Fluttershy, the true Fluttershy opened her mouth and spoke.

One word.

Truth amidst lies.

“Chrysalis.”

And the being who had called herself Fluttershy felt the name burn her skin, sink through her flesh and burrow deep into her center of being. And it reached her soul and then burned away the last delusions she had.

The world cracked.

And the pieces of Fluttershy’s mortal disguise burned away as green hellfire engulfed her form. The watching animals drew back as a dark figure rose from the shadows.

She was tall, tall as an alicorn princess and stood proudly. Not as a warrior or general or even killer stands, but with the regality of a queen. Her eyes were the green of dark magic, emeralds, and malice given life. Midnight was brighter than her dark body, and the witching lights of hell were the fires that made her eyes. Her legs were full of holes as was her horn; a dagger of bone to stab the hearts of the living and burn them with spells.

Chrysalis rose from the ashes and stepped into the cottage, regal, radiant. She was death bringer and royalty and queen of murderers. She was the Writhing Queen, Evershifter, Sovereign of Lies, der Verschlinger, and Queen of the Changelings. She was Chrysalis.

And she had returned.