They're EVERYWHERE!

CH: 13/13 - Wistful

"If there is someone I would ever ask for forgiveness it would be my own daughter, not you, you spineless-"

The hive mind freezes, taking Wistful and Chrysalis away mid-word.

***

To Chrysalis' surprise, while she doesn't know the richly decorated room she lands in, it is beyond familiar. The white walls, the high ceiling, the round table in its center with various ponies of the main three tribes sitting at it. If one switched the torches and candles for electric and magical lamps, Chrysalis could swear she ended up in modern day Canterlot castle. If she still had full access to the castle plans stored inside the hive mind and a chance to look out of the window, she could likely figure out which exact room she's in.

Everyone is frozen in time.

"This was the only thing I could do to buy us some time," she hears Wistful's real voice behind her, "I won't be able to hide us in this memory for long, though, and then we'll both return and..."

"I can't defeat her," admits Chrysalis, turning around, "I thought that I could overpower her with the knowledge of the other queens, but I can't even touch her."

"That's the flutterpony mind at work. If we were still a species, we would be the worst enemy of changeling mental abilities."

"If the flutterponies were this powerful, why even bother turning you into... us?"

"You misunderstood me. We could only soothe, listen, protect ourselves, and analyze. We couldn't attack, break somepony down, or manipulate them. All those avenues opened for us with the fate-changing dark magic," Wistful walks over to the central table with a large map rolled out on it.

It's exactly like when she lived through the memory of the griffon war council. Chrysalis pushes between a unicorn wearing heavy armor and a pegasus in a much lighter one made of leather. Romane, probably? Her personal memory is a bit rusty. Relying so much on the collective hive mind can be both a blessing and a curse.

With Wistful leaning over the map across the table from her, she examines the pony and griffon miniatures made from wood or crystals.

"This was my first visit to Canterlot as a citizen of Equestria, although I've met with Celestia and her ambassadors several times before," Wistful sighs, tapping his hoof on the map - a small dot on the coast covered in griffon figurines, "Griffon beachhead which they managed to establish after weeks of brutal fighting. With the standard scrying spells suddenly failing, ponies weren't prepared for such a quick strike at all."

Chrysalis adds what little she's learned so far.

"Scream gave the griffons the knowledge of istrium. The same substance my throne is made of, although my throne negates all magic, not just long-distance scrying and communication. From other memories I saw, unicorns were perfectly able to use offensive magic in battle. I wonder why."

Wistful shrugs.

"I don't know anything about that. I was just a chieftain of a small tribe that ponies which Equestrians discovered while looking for faster and safer supply routes to the front lines through the Everfree. In my time, the Everfree forest spanned the majority of eastern Equestria, as dangerous as today or maybe even more, but we were safe from the creatures living there thanks to our psychic abilities. At first, we only helped ponies pass through the forest, hoping that the war would be over quickly, but then unicorns started studying us and learned some features of our mental links."

"I get that you were roped into a war thanks to it, but there must be a big string of god awful decisions between protecting supply caravans from wildlife and being irrevocably turned into an entirely different species of hive-structured murder monsters. Holes, even our breeding cycle is completely different from normal ponies."