They're EVERYWHERE!

Ch: 3/13 - Whisper

Chrysalis has been gathering love for the next encounter for the bigger part of the week herself. While 96 and 68 proved capable at lurking through the night clubs of Manehattan, her previous experiences at fighting the shades inside her head proved that she would need more love to prevail without being completely useless afterwards.

After diving into the darkness, the next shade is already there, waiting for her. A familiar one once more.

"Huh, grandma Whisper..."

The moss-colored queen with grey mane bearing a gold tint only replies:

"Chrysalis..."

"Is that all? No comments about me being a failure and that you would do better?"

"I will leave that to the others and their inflated egos," Whisper chuckles, "My daughter called me a bitch slinking away after being beaten all the time before her ascension to queenhood. It took all my self-control not to eat her. Besides, I had the pleasure of throwing it back in her face for the last 700 years and, if I recall correctly, you ate some of that ire yourself."

"I certainly did, grandma, I did. So, just to be sure, no trying to take over my body to give the real world a second shot?"

Whisper sits down and stretches with a long yawn.

"How much do you know about the hive during my rule, Chrysalis?"

"I admit that things are extremely hazy past my own life experiences. The rage of the old queens-"

"You can call it the impotent rage of the old bats who failed at everything they touched and would end up exactly the same if they had a second shot-" she looks up into the darkness of the hive mind as if interrupted by a chorus of furious voices, and smiles a purely happy smile, "Ahhh, it feels so nice to be able to think without their screaming in the back of my already nonexistent head. I don't envy whoever has the real hive mind revenants in their head now. All I can hope for is that their stupidity leads them to a place where they have nowhere to jump anymore and where their last remaining host starves to death."

As satisfying as it is to hear someone else voice her own opinion on the matter, every moment here is draining for Chrysalis and she's spent far too much time in Manehattan already.

"Grandma, what did you mean by the time of your own rule? I hatched during the first spread of my mother's dream of the Changeling Empire. We were starting to take over villages here and there but we still lived back in the Badlands hive. I-" Chrysalis sighs, "Whenever I try to recall my trips through the hive mind, it's all just 'DEVOUR THE PONIES!' and only the barest knowledge of the world. The rage is everywhere else with the exception of the... the beginning."

"Ah yes, queen Shroud," Whisper nods. Chrysalis gives her only the briefest of puzzled glances.

Does she not know?

"Was there no one before Shroud? Is she the first changeling qu- ruler?" probes Chrysalis.

"Indeed," Whisper nods, "The queen who trusted Celestia's promises of cooperation and peace and learned the harsh truth about the world - unless its ruler's will is absolute, no faction can be trusted."

"You're rather calm about it. Aren't you blaming Celestia for creating us?"

"Creating us?" Whisper shakes her head, "I didn't peg you as the type for theatrics. We lived side by side with ponies under Shroud just as they lived under Celestia. Granted, we had to do our feeding in secret, at least those who weren't in a position to get love for free, but it was still vastly better than being needlessly antagonistic. Besides, it was a time of war against the newly established Griffon Empire and ponies feared the meat eaters way more than some weird horsebugs," Whisper chuckles again, "Well, at least until our feeding habits got out. Celestia was on our side but someone wasn't, and eventually the ponies grew to see us in the same way as the griffons - a species that wants to enslave and eat them with the added horror of us being able to transform into a pony and replace them," Whisper shrugs, "Population controlled by fear was pointed in the direction of an enemy who looked different. Honestly, from what I managed to untangle from the mess that's our hive mind, some pony nobles just wanted to use us as a proof that Celestia's attempts at peace and coexistence were a sign of weakness and take her place. It's not as if unicorns weren't doing the same thing throughout early pony history to pegasi, thestrals, earth ponies, flutterponies, hippogriffs, kirins, and every other species they considered 'lesser'. Standard divide and conquer strategy."