They're EVERYWHERE!

CH: 4/13 - Hiss

Chrysalis sighs.

Rotting in Manehattan for so long has been irritating beyond all reason. However, a huge city like that provides the best cover and plentiful opportunities for feeding, which her two warriors have been using on a daily basis. The problem, so far, has been time - the longer she lingers here, the lower the chance of her successfully recovering what little is left from the hive. Unfortunately, returning to the Badlands with the boiling fury in her mind beating against her mental defenses could, in the long term, be the final nail in the changeling coffin.

"Your Majesty," asks 96, "May I ask something?"

She looks at him and nods.

"How long is this going to take? Don't think of this as me questioning you, but they are somewhere out there. We left the Riverside survivors on their own... you've read the newspapers, right? We're all over the place. Every day there is a fresh 'Changelings found in X' article... and they never end well."

Her anger boils and lashes out.

"You will obey, and we will stay here for as long as it takes," she snarls, "If we must start a new hive from scratch, we will!"

96 back off from the outburst.

"I understand," he says.

Chrysalis would be a pretty bad infiltrator if she couldn't detect the hint of disappointment in the warrior's otherwise perfectly loyal voice which makes her regain control over her unruly brain.

"Look," she says forcefully, "What you just heard wasn't- was only partly myself. The rage, the complete disregard for anyone other than the queen, all that is a mess locked in the hive mind infecting us changelings. I must either eliminate it, contain or, or at least diminish it to some manageable level. Something happened during the invasion that made me finally see it clearly for the first time in my life and if I don't use the opportunity then there won't be any hive ever again. We will just keep attacking and hiding until we manage to anger everyone enough to go look for us together. Do you think dragons will care about the anti-magic field around the Badlands if ponies ask them for help and offer some of their extremely valuable artefacts?"

"My apologies, Your Majesty. I shouldn't have doubted you."

"No, you shouldn't have," she frowns at him.

Truth be told, she's more angry at herself than at him for not being able to resist the lingering insanity inside her head. However, as much as she wants to jump back in to tackle the next shade in line, she knows that an angry infiltrator is a bad infiltrator. As such, she takes a deep breath, looks at 96 again, and says:

"You're a good warrior, 96, and your concern for your hive is admirable."

The shock.

The shock in his face stings more than anything genuinely critical he could ever say.

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Damn it.

Well, being sad is still preferable to being angry when diving into the depths of the mind. If nothing else, it serves as a grand reminder of what she's fighting for. Granted, it's far too many centuries too late, but better late than never.

The landscape of her hive mind isn't the usual empty darkness, though. Instead, she finds herself amidst hordes of changelings running through a forest, the thundering of hooves and cracking of branches almost deafening her. There are no ranks, no formations, and through the cracks in the treeline she can see the brown, dead landscape ahead - the Badlands.