It turns out that griffons were sticklers for detail. While Twilight had a fine appreciation for that kind of attitude, she felt it was kind of misplaced on the battlefield where situations changed so rapidly that plans could be chewed up, spat out, and shat on before you knew it had happened.

Trixie's theory on why they were being so meticulous was that the Emperor didn't want to risk his shiny new toys. While Twilight didn't disagree, she liked to think the Emperor was pragmatic enough to know that the loss of an airship wasn't the end of the world. Losing one full of the wrong ponies might be, but the plan was to keep the airships out of range of Adepts and everything else, and ferry the prisoners to them, which seemed safer overall.

Of course that was only one facet of the plan. There had been quite a lot about troop numbers, and expected resistance, and the invasion of Griffonstone prior to that. What happened after was also a thing to think about, and that might have led on to an inadvertent planning of the assault on Canterlot. Interesting enough, but not when they weren't supposed to be thinking about that right then.

They did eventually finalise a plan though, although it was more of a loose strategy by the end. They'd swoop in, eliminate the guards, free the prisoners, take them to the airships, then be on their merry way. Simple enough, at least for the griffons. Twilight would be taking care of Starlight Glimmer, which would probably be an experience in and of itself, while Trixie had promised to secure a list of priority ponies, starting with the Bearers and their families, then certain other friends, and a certain other, other friend of Pinkie's that Twilight hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about. She still had no idea when or why Pinkie decided she was into mares, and she was fairly certain the explanation would be something she couldn't possibly expect.

Anyway, that having been all agreed on, and the griffons starting to move towards Griffonstone, the two of them made their way back to the Retreat. They got there to find that the floor of the observation area had become dominated by a mass of chalk lines that were being drawn by Luna, while Cadence, Nightmare, Starsy, Moondancer, and Daring looked on. Flurry was there too, but she didn't seem to care about any of it.

In the middle of it all was the two glaives Twilight had given to Luna, each surrounded by a maddening array of runes. "What the heck am I looking at?"

Luna's head jumped up, her tongue still sticking out of the corner of her mouth from sheer concentration. "Ah! You've arrived! Told you I'd timed this right," she said aside to Nightmare.

"Sure..."

"Is this a enchanting circle?" Trixie asked. "Because if it is, I feel Trixie might have to remind you what a circle is."

"Actually this is about six different circles, overlapping each other for a very specific purpose," Luna explained. "You have no idea how long this has taken me, so do not scuff the lines, because I might just crack and accidentally murder everyone in this room."

"I'll try not to breathe on it either then."

"Much appreciated," Luna said as she resumed drawing the lines.

Twilight cocked her head as she followed the lines, finding that it did actually make a little bit of sense, but only if looked at with the context of what they were doing. Luna wanted to enchant the glaives using the power of four alicorns, but only for certain enchantments. The strength one primarily, to make the blades near invincible. The others only needed the input of Luna alone, so the circles would allow the three of them to empower the strength rune, while Luna could empower all of them.

Since the strength one would make it impossible to add new runes later, doing it this way did make a bit of sense. It was only a bit though, as it would've made more sense to enchant the other runes first, then do the strength rune after. When Twilight pointed this out, Luna threw her chalk across the room, and screamed a little.

"Why not empower all the runes at once with the four of you?" Trixie asked once Luna had recovered enough to go retrieve her chalk.

"Because that would mean Nightmare, Cadence, and myself having control over Luna's weapons," Twilight explained.

"And is that so bad?"

"In the heat of battle, it could be, Twilight started to explain. "Say Luna's in the middle of using them to block, or strike a finishing blow, but Nightmare summons them away for some reason-"

"Probably shits and giggles," Nightmare laughed.

"-Then that'd be a problem. I also hate to think what a sharpness rune powered by four alicorns' worth of magic would do. I'd probably be afraid to put them down in case they cut straight through the floor."

"So just the strength one, gotcha." Trixie looked at the glaives, and the five runes cut into each of them, with the strength one being larger, and placed in the middle under the crescent moon design, with the others on both sides. "Seriously, I want a fancy weapon."

"You don't even know how to use a weapon."

"So? I still want one. Twi-light, I wanna fancy weapon!" Trixie grabbed Twilight and started to shake her gently, "Pleeease?"

"Do you have a weapon to enchant?"

"Um, no?"

"Then what does it matter?"

"Hmph," Trixie pouted as Luna returned with her chalk. "Spoilsport. You never get me anything nice."

Twilight decided on a future where Trixie was ignored for the time being. "So, did we miss anything while were gone?"

"We've given Chrysalis the go-ahead to start moving her changelings into Baltimare, Fillydelphia, and Manehattan," Cadence informed her. "They should be ready to start their 'invasion' soon. Then we sent Seeker and the other Night Maiden the zebras gave us back to Zebrica because we have no practical use for them. That didn't feel particularly good, but there you go. Apart from that, Stout Heart's finished two suits of armour, and has started on the third, but she still needs your measurements to make yours."

"Right, yes. I should probably go do that."

"We must insist you do," said Luna. "It's not like they can make these suits of armour overnight."

"Is that a hint to go do it now?"

"You can call it an order if you like? I should be done by the time you get back."

There really wasn't any putting it off, especially since their success could hinge on her having and wearing that armour. Turning on her heel she set off for the Equestria portal, and passed through it into the tunnel beneath the village. She could hear voices coming from the outside, so set off towards them.

In the shade of a half destroyed house, whose roof now hung over a conveniently empty space perfect for working in, were four crystal ponies, as well as Ember. That confused Twilight quite a bit, since she'd only thought that there was three crystal ponies here. The fact that one of them was considerably more sparkly than the others only made it worse.

"So you look like this all the time in the Crystal Empire?" Ember asked as they all stood around the sparkly member of their party.

"It depends on a lot of things," said Stout Heart, "but a happy crystal pony, under the effects of the Crystal Heart, does usually look like this, yes."

"I like it," the sparkly pony said, turning on the spot to try and look at herself better. "I feel... pretty."

"Mayfly?"

"Hmm?" The sparkly pony squeaked when she saw Twilight, and with a flash of purple fire changed back into her usual multicoloured self. "Sorry! We were just talking about what crystal ponies normally look like, and I thought that I'd have a go, and I'm not going to lie but it's kinda hard, and I know we're meant to be watching for danger, but we're messing around instead, and I'm so, so sorry!"

"Actually, I had no idea you were out here, but if you were supposed to be looking for danger, then... um, good job."

"Sorry!"

"Stop apologising." Twilight kicked the corner of the furnace, breaking a few flakes of rust off. "If this thing put out smoke we'd probably be in a lot more trouble."

"Twilight." Ember pointed down at the three crystal ponies that were bowing to her, and had been for a while. "You might want to acknowledge them?"

"Oh, wow." It'd been that long since anypony had bowed to her that Twilight had almost forgotten what it was like, and how much she disliked it. If there was something worse than ponies thinking she was better than them, it was ponies acting like it. "Uh, p-please stop that. I mean, you can rise."

"Have you come to have your measurements taken?" Stout Heart asked as she stood back up to full height, which Twilight had to note as being slightly taller than herself. It'd been a while since a non-alicorn or non-Saddle Arabian had done that.

"That's right." Twilight stood and smiled helplessly as Stout picked up a tape measure and laid it down the length of her back, and started calling numbers to one of the others.

"Spread your wings please."

"Oh! Sorry." Twilight spread her wings and stood still as Stout measured around her chest. In theory she knew she was as fit and healthy as an alicorn had no choice about being, but being measured always made her feel fat, and then apologetic about being fat. Rather than dwell on that feeling, Twilight decided to talk to Ember.

"Have you heard anything from the Dragon Lands about what you did?"

Ember shrugged and shook her head. "Nah, nothing so far. I'm kind of hoping that's because they all accepted it as a sensible thing to do, but I'm more realistically thinking that it might have more to do with most dragons either not caring, or planning to kill me when I get back."

"Oh, um... do you want help with that?"

"Nah, I'll be fine. As long as I can find my Dad and get the Bloodstone Sceptre back before they find me, there'll be nothing they can do. After that, all they have to do is get used to it. Really shouldn't be too hard since they never went to Griffonia anyway."

"Yeah," Twilight said noncommittally. Personally she knew there was a difference between choosing to not go somewhere, and being forced to. Yes a dragon could still go to Griffonia, but only with permission, which she supposed wasn't all that different from a lot of places, but it was the magical enforcement that made it unethical to her. Maybe dragons felt differently about that sort of thing, but not her.

"Are we ready to take Griffonstone?" Ember asked back as Twilight went quiet.

"Tomorrow, although don't expect too much out of it. Without the Bloodfeathers I doubt there's much, if any, resistance there."

"Pfft, that's boring. Seems like Chrysalis is getting all the fun then. She doesn't deserve fun."

"I think you'll find she passed fun and went straight into pleasure," Mayfly quipped. "She's probably feeling pretty orgasmic about the whole thing. She really enjoys invading. All kinds of invading."

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut against the images filling her mind with filth. "And now she's invading my thoughts too. Ugh, so unnecessarily lewd. That reminds me, can Chrysalis lay eggs inside another female?"

Mayfly's eyes went wide, "How do you even know about that?"

"Chrysalis took great pleasure in telling us."

"Oh, I suppose she would, and... she's not lying, but it's a method that tends to not get used because Chrysalis deems it impure. Besides even if the female survives the implantation process, she will usually attempt to terminate either the eggs or herself. Usually both. Even if she fails, a couple dozen changelings clawing their way out of her will definitely end her existence. Probably a mercy by that point."

"Wow," Ember breathed as she stared at nothing. "No offense, Mayfly, but changelings are really fucked up."

Mayfly shrugged, having heard it all before. "Adaptive biology has its ugly downsides. Hopefully new changeling forms can correct that, assuming others can be convinced to make the change."

Twilight shuddered as her mind bombarded itself with horrors. "I will happily force them to if it means never having to imagine any of that ever again. Ever!"

"Just be thankful that you've never had to see Chrysalis doing what she does to extend her life." This time it was Mayfly's turn to shudder.

"Oh Luna damn it! You're making it worse! Shut up, Mayfly!"

Ember held up a questioning claw, having never been told about this. "What does she do?"

"She devours her replacements after they hatch," Mayfly answered brokenly, "alive, to absorb their essence and live on herself."

"Oh. Damn. And I thought being a dragon was rough at times."

Luna was indeed done by the time Twilight dragged herself back into the Retreat. She felt exhausted, and not from exertion. Mayfly had taken to telling them about the many, many horrible things that came part and parcel with being a member of Chrysalis' hive. Twilight had wanted her to stop, but at the same time her curiosity had gone into overdrive, forcing her to not only keep listening, but to keep prompting Mayfly for more information. She currently had mixed feelings over herself about that.

Thankfully she had been blessed with a diversion from the grim realities of changeling existence, because Luna had finished her highly complex enchanting circle. Circles. Okay, so it was more of a lopsided blob that looked like someone had tipped some bubbles into an oversized magic book, but if it did what Twilight thought it would do, then it would keep the weapons as Luna's, while giving them the strength that four alicorns worth of magic should provide.

"So I'm guessing you're done?"

"Indeed I am. The knowledge that I could've been done ages ago does diminish my satisfaction quite considerably though."

There was a sharp snort of laughter from Nightmare, "I told you to wait until Twilight got back, but noooo... you had to be all confident in your ridiculous ability to make things so very wrong."

"Hush, you."

"That said, I'll be very impressed if this actually works."

"I said hush!" Luna pointed at a small dot drawn on the floor, "Stand there. Cadence, you're at this one, and you're there, Twilight, next to me."

Twilight took her spot on the floor opposite Cadence with Luna to her left, and Nightmare to her right. It was about then that it struck her that what they were about to attempt might in fact not be a good idea. How the hell were lines of chalk supposed to contain the kind of power about to go through them? Then again, she was wondering what would happen if it didn't work...

Twilight resolved to have a serious talk with herself about her curiosity later.

"Okay, on the count of three, place your charged horn to the line closest to you, then feed more power into it."

Twilight charged her horn as the others did, lighting up the dim room with a not displeasing mix of colours as Luna started to count up to three. Twilight held the tip of her horn an inch from the ground, ready to go the moment Luna said three.

"Three!"

All of them touched their horns to the circles, and nothing really happened, even as they increased the power. Most of the circle lit up with Luna's magic as she empowered the other runes, while Twilight's, Nightmare's, and Cadence's magic joined it in the final circle, where it all blended together. It was then Twilight started to smell burning, a split second before the entire thing caught fire, starting in the middle and spreading outwards.

"Keep going!" Luna commanded, and they did, right up until the flames threatened to start burning their horns.

"I think we can call this a resounding success," Nightmare snickered as Luna attempted to smother the flames. Without four alicorns feeding it the fire soon died down, leaving only lines of molten stone that glowed with heat where the chalk lines had been.

"I think we can definitely call it a lesson," Cadence commented as she rubbed the tip of her horn where the fire had gotten a little too close.

"Did it work though?" was Twilight's concern as Luna retrieved the two glaives. If it didn't work, she highly suspected that the two blades were probably ruined. She sighed with relief when Luna lifted the still pristine weapons off the floor, seeing they were undamaged. A different form of worry came to her when she saw the main rune though.

"Should it really be doing that?"

Luna turned both weapons over to look at the two runes. Most of them glowed with the silvery light of her magic, but the ones that strengthened the blades shifted from silver, to pale blue, turquoise, purple, then back to silver in no particular pattern. It didn't exactly look stable, or how she expected it to.

"How peculiar," Starsy said as he got close enough to have a look, his silent ire over the scorched and molten floor temporarily forgotten. "I've never seen something like that. At least not without it blowing up soon after."

All of them took a step back if they could as Starsy said that, but he didn't seem worried himself.

"It's rather ironic really, the power in that rune is enough to destroy the weapons, and probably quite a bit around them. At the same time, the runes are so empowered, and the blade strong enough, that it literally cannot break. Not without significant help at least."

"I'm sure Faust would be more than willing to oblige," Luna said as she of her worry faded. "Even then it would be quite the surprise for her." Luna walked over to the nearest wall and slammed the two blades point first into the bare rock, sinking the blades up to almost their middles.

"Do you mind?" Starsy growled, annoyed at the additional destruction. It only grew as Luna ignored him and started forcing the blades sideways to try and break them. Instead she broke chunks of rock out of the walls. "Will you stop? Please?"

Luna pulled the blades free and nodded as she saw there wasn't a mark left on then. Then she channelled some magic through the blades until ice started to form on them. "Everything seems to be working, so I guess we can call this a success."

"Assuming they don't blow up," said Twilight.

"Assuming that, yes. Still, until that point it is a success. No doubt I'll really get to test them tomorrow. All we need now is the Wonderbolts' final scouting report, and we're all ready."

"This seems like a terrible idea," Lightning said as the three of them hid on one of the higher... branches? Platforms? Whatever part they were of the giant tree that Griffonstone seemed to be, they were being used to hide from the scattering of soldiers on the ground below. "You know what griffons are like. There's no way they'll tell us anything for free."

"Not all of them," Rainbow said back as she watched the ground below. There was a certain griffon she wanted to find, but so far there had seen no sign of her. "Some of them can be alright once you get past the-uh... cattiness."

"Was that supposed to be a joke?"

"I thought it was more of a pun," Vapor said, shrugging when Lightning raised an eyebrow at her. "Or maybe it was an observation."

"I'm surrounded by idiots."

"How can you be surrounded by two ponies?" Rainbow quipped, getting a quick laugh out of Vapor, and managing to get a mirthful snort out of Lightning.

"I'll take that as your confession to being an idiot then. Now keep the noise down. We are supposed to be here in secret after all."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Rainbow continued scanning the ground below, only occasionally contributing to the conversation when needed to, because despite a generally jokey attitude, she was serious about finding her friend Gilda, because if Gilda didn't know the full story here, then she could at least find out, or know who to ask.

It was only a few more minutes until she finally found her target, the brown, white, and purple feathered Gilda walking by below in the company of a grey griffon, and a blue one that seemed very brightly coloured for what Rainbow thought griffons were meant to be like. That wasn't important though. Getting Gilda's attention was.

Rainbow picked a stone out of the pile she'd collected for that very purpose. Weighing it in the flat of her hoof for a few seconds she wound back and launched it, sending it flying with unerring accuracy to smack the blue griffon on the side of the head.

"Shit!" Rainbow swore as the griffon cawed in shock, "That wasn't supposed to happen! Uh..." Rainbow waved vigorously at the trio of griffons as they tried to see who had thrown the stone, catching their attention after a few seconds. She gestured for them to join her, then pulled back before any of the soldiers saw her.

"Real smooth, Rainbow," Lightning complemented sarcastically. "I'm sure a case of brain damage will really want to make them help us."

"It was an accident!"

"Sure it was." Lightning leaned over to see where the griffons were, having expected them to fly straight up. Instead she saw them climbing up the massive tree towards them. "Ooookay, why are they doing that?"

"I'm guessing clipped wings," Vapor supposed, while Rainbow shrugged. She'd ask once they got here.

It was less than a minute after that when the three griffons hauled themselves onto the branch. The blue one seemed pissed, but Gilda only seemed surprised when she saw Rainbow.

"Rainbow Dash?"

"That's right." Rainbow slapped a cocky grin onto her face, "Surprised to see me?"

"Yeah I am! Last I heard all the Wonderbolts that hadn't been killed were being kept prisoner in Ponyville. How'd you get free?"

"We were never captured. Right now you're looking at the last freely operating members of the Equestrian armed forces. But that's not important. Why the heck did you climb up here? Why not fly?"

Gilda spread her wings, showing off feathers that had been cut short. "Those bastard Mareitanians do it to keep us under control. Unfortunately for them we can still climb, so there's still fuck all they can do about it, apart from maybe burning the place down. Might be an improvement to be honest."

"I guess." Rainbow pointed a wing at the other two griffons, "So who are these two?" She twitched her eyebrows playfully, "Friends of yours?"

Gilda pointed at the grey, pigeon-like griffon to her right. "This is Gabby, who's like our mail-griffon."

"Not that I've had anything to deliver for ages," Gabby grumbled. Realising her attitude, she attempted to brighten up. "It's nice to meet you."

Gilda rolled her eyes, then went on to introducing the griffon resembling a blue tit to her left. "This is Gallus. He's kind of a prick, so just ignore him."

"Hey!"

"That's a guy?"

Gallus stared slack-jawed at Rainbow for a second, "Are you kidding me? Yes I'm a guy!"

"Sorry," Rainbow apologised. "If it helps, you're a very pretty boy."

"What the fuck!?" Gallus yelled as even Gilda and Gabby were shocked. "You know what? Forget this! Up yours, pony." Raising his middle claw at Rainbow, which she knew well enough to be rude, he left and started climbing back down the tree, swearing about ponies the entire way.

"Are you for real, Dash? I thought you'd be above using racial slurs!"

"Racial slurs? What are you talking about?"

"Calling him a pretty boy? Y'know, the whole 'who's a pretty boy' thing? We might be half bird, but there's no need for shit like that!"

Rainbow's mouth formed an 'O' as understanding came knocking. "Oh, shit, I so didn't mean it like that! I didn't even know it was thing!" She leaned over the side of the branch to shout down at the descending Gallus, "I'm sorry!"

"Fuck you, pony! You still thought I was a hen!"

"You did call him pretty, racial slurs aside," said Lightning.

Rainbow face-hoofed, and gave up trying to fix this. "Yeah, anyway, I have a question. Do all Griffonstone griffon names start with a G?"

Gilda's expression went slack, "Really, Dash? You're pushing this even more? Of course our names don't all start with a G."

"Are you sure? I mean there's you, Gilda, then Gabby, Gallus, Grampa Gruff, there's that other griffon with the green feathers. Gertrude, or whatever the hell her name is-"

"Greta."

"Right, then there's that shopkeeper Gimme Moore, that chef Gustav le Grande, and your last ruler was King Guto... I'm just saying there's a trend here, y'know?"

Gilda's eyes twitched side to side as she ran through the griffons she know, and while not all of their names started with G, quite a lot did." S-shut up. How about you tell me what you're doing here Dash? I really don't think you came just to risk getting spotted by the soldiers here. Or to piss us off."

"Uh, yeah. Anyway, these are Lightning Dust and Vapor Trail, my squad mates, and we're here to do some recon on Griffonstone."

"Recon? Recon for what? The war ended ages ago. You lost, since you don't seem to be aware."

"Yeah, we're about to start a new war. Or finish the current one. I'm really not sure."

Gilda rolled her eyes, doubting Rainbow's sanity. "Oh yeah? You and what army?"

"The Griffonian one, and the changeling one, and some of the Saddle Arabian army as well. We even have a couple of zebras helping out, as well as a dragon." Rainbow smiled smugly at Gilda's gormless expression, "Did that answer your question?"

Gilda snapped her beak shut, trying to reclaim some of her cool. "Since when does the Griffon Empire help ponies? You have to be making that up. Actually, the changelings as well, why would they help you?"

"Because Faust needs to go, and we all know it, so we've built an alliance. Well, I say we, but the princesses did most of the work." Rainbow started to laugh, "You didn't think it was just us three doing this, did you?"

"No, I didn't know what the fuck was going on! Last I heard, Celestia was helping Faust, the other princesses were missing, and Equestria was invading Zebrica!"

"All true, technically, but the princesses were only hiding from Faust. We've actually been pretty busy making friends and coming up with a plan that we're about to kick off."

"By attacking Griffonstone," Gilda deadpanned. "Really? Why the hell would you want this place?"

"As a staging area to launch incursions into Equestria." Rainbow stopped and nervously tapped the tips of her hooves together, "There's also the small issue that as soon as Griffonstone has been taken, it'll belong to the Griffon Empire again."

"What? Are you kidding me?"

"It was part of getting the Griffon Empire to help us, but don't worry, you'll still have all the rights of Equestrian citizens, and you can move to Equestria if you want. Honestly though, the Emperor's a pretty cool guy now he's chilled out a bit, so living here should be alright."

Gilda dragged a claw down her face, ruffling her feathers. "I can't believe this. Don't you think that maybe you should've asked us what we want first?"

"Look, we weren't really happy with it either, but we need the Griffon Empire's help to stop Faust, and this was the price. Believe me when I say that stopping Faust is well worth it."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" Gilda sighed as Rainbow nodded, "Eurgh... fine, what do you want from us?"

"Basically we want to know what soldiers are here, where they are, do they have any form of contact with the rest of Equestria, and how can we stop them escaping with a warning?"

"A hundred soldiers, mostly unicorns, scattered about with no contact with the rest of Equestria, or just 'Equestria' as it's going to start being known to us, and there's only one way out of Griffonstone if you can't fly. Two if you don't mind dying when you land. Cut off the road, and they're trapped."

"Oh." Rainbow tried to not meet the eyes of her teammates, who were more likely than not thinking that they could've learnt that through observation. "Thanks Gilda."

"Sure. Anything else you want from us?"

"There's one, no, two things you can do. First off, start to quietly spread the word amongst the griffons here that they should keep their heads down tomorrow, without letting the soldiers know."

"Shouldn't be a problem." Gilda gestured with her head at Gabby, who saluted crisply and started to clamber back down the tree to start spreading the word. "What's the other thing?"

"Just hold still." Rainbow walked up to Gilda and grabbed her around the neck in a hug, "I'm glad you're okay."

Gilda happily returned the hug, "And I'm glad you're okay. It's a good job I know you're too awesome to get killed, or a griffon might have been worried, y'know? Those are some pretty gnarly scars by the way."

Even with the complement, the crack in Gilda's voice told Rainbow everything about how worried Gilda had been, and she squeezed a little tighter to reassure the griffon. "Don't you worry about me, I'm not going anywhere."

Gilda released Rainbow and tried to surreptitiously rub her eyes, "I'm going to hold you to that. I guess this means you're leaving now?"

"Yeah, but we're not going far." Rainbow pointed to the east, "Just the other side of those mountains to be honest." She gave Gilda a confident grin, "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Sure. Smell ya later, Dash."

Rainbow gave Gilda a mock salute and stepped off the branch into flight, waving back at the griffon as the three of them pulled up and away. "I'm telling you, griffon hugs are the best. They're just so warm, and you know they mean it."

"Uh-huh, sure." Lightning shook her head at Rainbow, not that the blue pegasus saw it. "I hope you know we're still doing some recon."

"Yeah, I know. That really was a bit light on details."

Chrysalis could have sang, although she doubted that it'd be any song the ponies would've appreciated. An ode to how vibrant the colour of blood is does tend to draw negative criticisms. Still, there was far too much to do to waste time singing, not when there were cities to attack, and ponies to terrorize.

Life wasn't all sunshine and bloodbaths though. She had been ordered, -ordered! The audacity of those ponies!- to begin her attack on the cities of the eastern seaboard. They were lucky that this time she was relatively happy to go along with this. Next time they feel like ordering her, they'd better have some good incentive.

Chrysalis decided not to let it ruin her mood. Not when there was mayhem to cause. Gathering up a collection of four beetle shaped stones, she placed them on the table in front of her. A burst of magic activated then, joining them together with strings of what appeared to be goo, but was more like a viscous web of magic that... who was she kidding, it was magic goo.

The magic blossomed upwards into a flat disc that split in two to show the faces of the changelings leading the attacks on Fillydelphia and Baltimare, while Chrysalis herself had opted to lead the attack on Manehattan. They bowed their heads in respect to their queen, but still wore broad yet nasty grins. They knew what Chrysalis contacting them meant.

"The time has come," Chrysalis purred, unable and unwilling to keep the satisfaction from her voice. "I should hope I don't need to tell you what to do, or that I should have to remind you that this isn't worth getting yourselves all killed over. Any changelings that return with less than the proper number of limbs will be fed to my pets. Any questions?"

Chrysalis was pleased to see they weren't dull enough to actually ask her anything. She'd raised them better than that. "Excellent. I'll be in touch when it's time for us to pull back, but until then I want you all to cause some havoc and make your Mother proud."

"Yes, our Queen," the two changelings said back. Chrysalis ended the communication and allowed herself a satisfied smirk. This was going to be an unbelievable amount of fun, but before the festivities could commence, she had to make her entrance.

A flash of green had her disguised as a rather elegant looking unicorn with a light lilac coat and pale blue mane and tail, with sea green eyes. Giving herself a once over in the mirror, she smiled and made her way out of the hotel room she'd taken for the night, not bothering to check out since, due to a little bargaining with the owner, she never bothered to check in. His love, whilst cheap and empty, had certainly been flavourful.

Outside the hotel was busy, with crowds of ponies going about their business. Some nearby were washing graffiti off a wall, which appeared to be depicting a stylised image of Faust with the word 'Resist' written underneath. Quite amusing really since the ponies here would soon be relying on Faust to save them from the changeling threat. That could be an interesting challenge for the princesses to explain, that this attack was part of their plan to liberate Equestria. Chrysalis was inclined to believe they hadn't thought of that, but they did at least, annoyingly, order her to keep casualties to an absolute minimum, and civilian casualties at zero. Subdue, but do not kill unless there's no other choice.

Chrysalis suspected she might have no choice before the day was over. In fact, she was sure of it.

She'd at least been given the fun caveat that the Mareitanian soldiers were fair game when they arrived, but the Equestrian Guard were all no-no's unless totally necessary when it came to taking their pathetic little lives. Foolish really. How was she supposed to pull this off without a little shock factor to get the ball rolling? After all, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

It didn't take much looking to find some of those so called 'Equestrian Guard,' who were hanging out on the corner of the street, two mares and a stallion. Fighting to keep a sadistic grin off her face, Chrysalis trotted over to them to make her entrance.

"Hi," she said pleasantly, her gaze switching between the three ponies, a copper maned earth pony with a similar coat colour to her current one, a rather garish green coated and purple maned unicorn, and a brown and white palomino stallion. "I was wondering if you could help me?"

"Sure," the copper maned mare said with a smile. "What can we do for you?"

"Well, I was hoping that you could, between yourselves, decide which one of you wants to die first? It'd be a massive help because I don't think I could get away with killing all of you."

Chrysalis finally let her grin show as the three ponies backed away, their spears lowering towards her. The one on the left, the green and purple unicorn, seemed to be the one holding her weapon with the most competence, although the earth pony was trying, bless her. Fortunately for her that meant she got to live, so being an earth pony at least gave her that advantage.

A blast of magic punched a hole in her target's neck, and the mare fell, blood spraying from the wound as she gagged for a breath that would never come. The other two stared in horror at her, idiotically taking their eyes off Chrysalis, so it was a good job she'd already granted them mercy.

A pillar of green fire surrounded Chrysalis as she shed her disguise. Unnecessary, but it did pay to put on a show, even as screams started to fill the street from what she'd already done. Those screams only grew in frequency as she fully revealed herself, standing tall with her fangs on show.

"Boo," she said to the two remaining guards, who dropped their spears and ran. "Pathetic."

All around her were more flashes of green as her children showed themselves, and the streets filled with the musical sound of ponies screaming and running as panic ensued, bringing its friends chaos and terror with it. In the middle of it all stood Chrysalis, laughing merrily as Hearthswarming came early for her this year.