They're EVERYWHERE!

CH: 1/13 - Chrysalis

For the first time in centuries, the darkness of the hive mind feels like a fresh breeze. The silence, however, is deafening. There's no hive, no remnants of all the pent-up fury of the old queens beating down on her, nothing.

She just sits there, basking in the relaxing peace, and soon she senses the two blocked hive links of the only guards she took with her after her abysmal failure in Riverside which was the final straw that opened her eyes.

The same eyes which open in the darkness ahead, followed by the materialization of a mirror image of herself.

"Look at yourself," Chrysalis sneers, "Alone, hated by the world, and outsmarted by your rank 16. Blind and crippled rank 16, by the way."

"That's one way to look at it," real Chrysalis allows herself a soft smile.

"Oh, do I feel excuses coming?"

"Excuses? Far from it," Chrysalis shakes her head, "Just a lesson learned. I have enough mental discipline to avoid the pitfalls of self-pity, most of the time at least."

Doppelganger Chrysalis rolls her eyes.

"So, what lesson did you learn from your hive being wiped out in Canterlot for the second time? That alicorns are overpowered as hole?"

"Oh, pleeeease," Chrysalis chuckles, "I imprisoned the alicorn of Love, drained her, and with the fake love of one stallion I brought Celestia to her knees. What I did learn from that was how quickly can stolen and soured love betray you. The thing is, dear fake myself, that while I might not be the most morally pure changeling leader, I am the smartest one."

"You're definitely not missing the usual dirigible-sized ego of all the other queens. And yet, let me recapitulate, you're alone and your hive is shattered into fragments or dead."

"Tsk tsk tsk," Chrysalis shakes her head, "Now I understand what you are. The insane revenants of hive queens plaguing the hive mind aren't completely gone, are they? And you are a shadow, the most stable memory of myself," she closes her eyes and takes a long breath, "Just like the shades of all the other queens I'm going to have to deal with then, I assume. Thankfully, you have no power like this, none of you can mess with my head or my hive anymore."

"Heh," shade Chrysalis bares her fangs, "So that's why you left them..."

"Yep. Granted, playing chess against myself and several other grandmasters at the same time wasn't easy, but here we are. It took me some time to understand the sudden emptiness inside my head now that the living queen fragments are gone and when I sensed you I thought they just retreated for a while, but that wasn't it. I've lived with all of those revenants inside the hive mind for so long that even the memories inside my own head took on a life of their own. Now there's nowhere left for you to retreat, I made sure that my two warriors are immune to any hive mind... leakage. I've got a question, though."

"Do you? Is there something the great and powerful Chrysalis doesn't know?"

"Where, why, and how did the revenants of old queens escape from the hive mind? I felt their rage and hatred even as I was standing in the Canterlot castle throne room and watching the city being taken over."

"In what reality do you think any of us will tell you, failure?"

Shade Chrysalis' neck chitin bends inwards and cracks, surrounded by green glow of real Chrysalis' horn.

"Because you are a powerless shadow inside my mind, inside the mind of the best infiltrator queen who's ever lived. I can torture you here forever in ways you can't- well, I mean you, in particular, can imagine but the older queens can't. In fact, you knowing how I can make you feel even without a real body should actually be even more terrifying."