Anonfilly, Harmony-less Part 1

 

You don’t scream. Screaming would be pointless. No one here would understand what they were hearing anyway.

 

Twilight Sparkle finds you three days later, half-starved and hiding in an alley behind Sugarcube Corner. She doesn’t ask where you came from; she only sees a lost foal with no cutie mark and no parents. She takes you home. She gives you a room in the castle. She enrolls you in school. She calls you “Anon” because you refuse to pick a pony name, and the word feels like the last scrap of armor you have left.

 

You never tell her the truth. You never tell anypony. They wouldn’t believe you, and even if they did, what could they do? Magic can’t unmake what’s already been done. You are here. You are this. Forever.

 

School is worse than you expected.

 

The other foals sing when they’re happy. They burst into perfect harmony without rehearsal, voices weaving together like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You stand in the back during Heartsong Day and feel nothing. No urge to join in. No warmth in your chest. Just the cold, familiar certainty that none of this will last.

 

Cheerilee calls on you to answer questions. You answer correctly—too correctly, sometimes. Your voice is quiet, flat. The class shifts in their seats. You see it in their eyes: the way they lean away without realizing they’re doing it.

 

The grass in the schoolyard never quite springs back under your hooves. There’s always a faint imprint left behind, a shadow that lingers longer than it should. Fillies who chase each other in circles avoid the patch where you’ve been standing. They don’t know why. They just feel it.

 

When you smile—because Twilight has gently reminded you that ponies smile at each other—you curve your mouth upward, but the expression never reaches your eyes. Diamond Tiara calls you “creepy” once, under her breath. Silver Spoon giggles, then stops abruptly, like some instinct told her it wasn’t safe to laugh at you.

 

You touch Sweetie Belle’s hoof during a group project. She flinches. “Your hoof is warm,” she says, confused, “but… it feels cold, too.” She pulls away and doesn’t touch you again.

 

Apple Bloom tries hardest. She’s earnest, stubborn, the kind of pony who believes friendship can fix anything. She invites you to the Crusader clubhouse. You go once. You sit in the corner while they brainstorm new ways to earn their cutie marks. They talk about destiny and special talents and the magic of friendship. You listen. You nod at the right times. When they ask what you think your special talent might be, you say, “I don’t think I have one.”

 

The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on.

 

After that, the invitations stop coming.

 

Twilight worries. She reads books about “foals with delayed magical resonance” and “emotional integration challenges.” She schedules extra lessons. She asks if you’re happy. You tell her yes, because it’s easier than explaining that happiness here feels like a language you never learned to speak.

 

At night, you stand on the balcony of the castle and look out over Ponyville. Lights twinkle in windows. Laughter drifts up from the streets. Ponies live in a world where friendship is literal magic, where harmony is a force you can feel in the air like humidity before rain.

 

You feel none of it.

 

You are the hole in the song. The skipped beat. The note that never quite resolves.

 

And the worst part—the part you will never say out loud—is that some small, traitorous piece of you prefers it this way. Human friendships frayed and faded and died. They left scars. Here, at least, no one gets close enough to hurt you when they inevitably leave.

 

You are Anonfilly.

 

You are alone.

 

And the grass still doesn’t spring back when you walk away.

 

===

 

Some afternoons, when the castle feels too bright and Twilight’s worried questions press too close, you slip away. No note, no goodbye—just the quiet click of the door behind you and the long walk to the edge of town where the neat fences give way to tangled undergrowth.

 

The Everfree Forest doesn’t welcome you. It doesn’t welcome anything. That’s why you keep coming back.

 

You step past the last crooked signpost warning foals to stay away, and the air changes. It gets heavier, thicker, honest. No pony magic here to nudge the clouds into perfect shapes or coax the flowers into blooming on cue. The clouds move because they want to. The plants grow because they can. And if they catch you, they’ll eat you without apology.

 

You like that.

 

You find a fallen log near the edge of a clearing and sit. Your small green frame looks ridiculous against the gnarled bark, but no one’s watching. A manticore roars somewhere deeper in—raw, hungry, real. You don’t flinch. You’ve heard worse sounds inside your own head.

 

The ground here doesn’t mind your weight. The moss doesn’t try to spring back and pretend you were never there. It just stays flattened, bruised, truthful. When a timberwolf’s glowing eyes track you from the shadows, there’s no forced smile, no polite distance. Just the ancient calculation: prey or threat?

 

You meet its gaze with your too-small, too-sharp teal eyes. It decides you’re not worth the trouble and melts back into the brush. Fine. You weren’t looking for a fight anyway.

 

Sometimes you go deeper. Past the poison joke (you’ve learned where not to step), past the places where the air itself feels like it’s watching. You’ve seen the ruins of the old castle, crumbling and overgrown, and felt nothing but relief. Stone doesn’t sing. Stone doesn’t care if you join the chorus.

 

One day, you’re sitting by a stream that runs black under the canopy when a cockatrice slithers out from the reeds. Its beady eyes fix on you. The air prickles with its magic, the threat of turning flesh to stone. You don’t look away. You’ve already been turned into something you weren’t meant to be. What’s one more layer?

 

It hisses, frustrated. Something about you refuses to petrify. Maybe there’s nothing left in you soft enough to harden. It retreats, and you almost smile—a real one this time, small and bitter.

 

Twilight notices the dirt on your coat, the leaves in your mane, the faint scratches that never seem to bleed quite right. She asks where you’ve been. You shrug. “Walking.”

 

She wants to follow you one day, make sure you’re safe. You tell her not to. Not cruelly—just flat, final. She doesn’t push. She never does, not really. Ponies are too polite for that.

 

But you know she worries. They all do, in their distant, careful way.

 

Let them.

 

Out here, the world doesn’t pretend to love you. It doesn’t hold out a hoof and expect you to skip along singing about rainbows. It shows its teeth from the start.

 

And for the first time since you woke up in this body, in this place, you feel like you can breathe.

 

===

 

You keep coming back to the Everfree because it’s the only place that doesn’t lie to you.

 

Ponyville smiles too wide, sings too easily, promises forever in every hoof-bump and shared cupcake. The Everfree doesn’t promise anything. It just watches, waits, and sometimes tries to kill you. That’s honest. You can work with honest.

 

But lately even the honesty feels… off.

 

You’re perched on your usual rotten log, picking burrs out of your black tail, when the timberwolves show up again. Same pack as last week. They fan out through the ferns like they own the place—which they do—and then the alpha sees you.

 

It stops dead.

 

Not the usual cautious pause. This is different. Its glowing eyes widen. Its whole body goes rigid, wooden joints creaking like old floorboards. A low, frightened whine leaks out of it, and the rest of the pack answers with the same sound. Then they bolt. Crashing through brush, knocking over saplings, running like something twice their size is chasing them.

 

You didn’t move. You didn’t even bare your teeth.

 

Later, a manticore stalks too close to your clearing. It’s huge, scarred, the kind of thing that should see a lone filly and think “snack.” Instead it locks eyes with you for half a second, roars once—pure terror, not challenge—and barrels away in the opposite direction.

 

Even the plants seem twitchier around you now. Poison joke wilts when you brush past. A patch of choke-vines that tried to snag your leg last month now recoils like you’re on fire.

 

You sit there for a long time, staring at the empty spaces they leave behind.

 

Part of you wants to feel powerful. Look at you: tiny green earth filly, no magic, no wings, no mark on your flank, scaring off things that could swallow you whole. But mostly you just feel confused.

 

Nothing in the show prepared you for this.

 

You watched every season. You know the Everfree is dangerous—Zecora’s warnings, Fluttershy’s trembling, the way Twilight always has a plan. Manticores roar and charge. Timberwolves hunt in packs. Cockatrices turn ponies to stone without blinking. They don’t run from fillies.

 

So why are they running from you?

 

You turn it over in your head the whole walk home. Maybe it’s the eyes. Ponies always stare a little too long at them—small irises, round pupils, nothing like their big, soft cartoon gazes. Maybe predators see something in them they don’t like. Maybe the lack of harmony magic makes you smell wrong to them. Maybe the forest just senses there’s something broken inside you and decides it’s not worth the risk.

 

You don’t know.

 

And you can’t ask anypony. Twilight would freak out if she knew how deep you go. Cheerilee would send a note home. The other foals already keep their distance; telling them monsters are scared of you would only make the whispers worse.

 

So you keep it to yourself.

 

You keep going back.

 

Because even when the Everfree is afraid of you, it’s still the only place that doesn’t pretend everything is going to be okay.

 

===

 

You’re deeper than usual today, past the point where even you normally turn back. The light is thin, greenish, filtered through layers of vine and leaf until it feels like you’re underwater. Your hooves sink slightly into the damp loam with every step, and the forest doesn’t bother to hide its sounds: distant roars, the wet snap of something feeding, the constant rustle of things that would rather you didn’t notice them.

 

You’re looking for nothing in particular—just the quiet that isn’t forced—when you smell woodsmoke and crushed herbs.

 

You freeze.

 

Ahead, in a small clearing you’ve never stumbled across before, stands Zecora. Striped coat, gold rings glinting at her neck and ears, mortar and pestle balanced on a flat stone while she grinds something that steams faintly. Masks hang from nearby branches like silent watchers. Her hut must be close; you’ve wandered into her territory without meaning to.

 

She hasn’t seen you yet. She’s humming—low, rhythmic, nothing like the bright pony songs that make your skin crawl. It’s almost a chant.

 

You should leave. Turn around, slip away before she notices the little green filly with the wrong eyes. Ponies in town already keep their distance; a zebra who lives alone in the monster forest probably has even less patience for strays.

 

But your legs don’t move.

 

Zecora lifts her head. Her gaze finds you instantly, like she already knew you were there.

 

You wait for the flinch. The polite step back. The way everypony’s smile freezes when they realize something’s missing inside you.

 

It doesn’t come.

 

She tilts her head, ears flicking forward. Studies you the way Fluttershy studies a wounded animal—curious, careful, but not afraid.

 

“A filly alone in the Everfree’s embrace,” she says, voice low and rolling with that familiar rhyme, “with eyes that hold a stranger’s face.”

 

You shift your weight. The moss stays flattened under your hooves. Of course she noticed the eyes first.

 

You don’t answer. You’re not sure you remember how to start conversations that aren’t lies.

 

Zecora sets the pestle down. “The forest beasts have fled your path today; their fear hangs thick like morning mist. Tell me, little one, why do they run away when you have neither fang nor claw to twist?”

 

You blink. She saw that? Or sensed it? You didn’t think anypony paid enough attention to notice the predators bolting.

 

You shrug. It’s a small, sharp motion. “Dunno. They just do.”

 

She watches you for a long moment. No forced kindness. No lecture about friendship or safety. Just that steady gaze, like she’s reading something written on your bones.

 

“Come,” she says finally, nodding toward the stone. “Sit, if sitting is your wish. The forest keeps its secrets, but sometimes shares them with a dish.”

 

There’s a small wooden bowl beside her, filled with something dark and steaming. It smells bitter, earthy, real.

 

You hesitate. Every instinct says run—back to the castle, back to the empty balcony where no one asks questions. But here’s somepony—no, someone—who isn’t pretending you belong. Who isn’t pretending at all.

 

You step into the clearing.

 

The air feels different near her. Not harmonious, not warm and fuzzy like Twilight’s magic. Just… balanced. Like the Everfree itself decided to pause and listen.

 

You sit.

 

Zecora doesn’t smile, but something in her eyes softens. “The world is wide, and full of doors unmeant. Some open only for the ones who were never sent.”

 

You don’t know what that means.

 

But for the first time since you arrived, somepony looked at you and didn’t look away.

 

You sit on the root across from her, small hooves tucked beneath you, the bitter steam from the bowl curling up between you like a question neither of you has asked yet.

 

Zecora doesn’t push. She just waits, grinding another pinch of something dried and rust-colored into the mortar, the scrape of stone on stone the only sound for a while.

 

Finally you speak. Your voice is quiet, flat, the way it always is.

 

“It’s probably the eyes.”

 

You don’t look at her when you say it. You stare at the bowl instead, at the dark surface that doesn’t reflect anything right.

 

“They’re too small. Too… beady, I guess. Not like pony eyes. Everypony in town stares, then looks away fast. Like if they look too long something bad will happen. The foals won’t play near me. The grown-ups smile with their mouths but not the rest of their face. Even Twilight flinches sometimes when she thinks I’m not watching.”

 

You shrug again, smaller this time.

 

“So if my eyes scare ponies, makes sense they’d scare the stuff in here too. Timberwolves, manticores, whatever. They take one look and run. I didn’t ask for it, but… it happens.”

 

You finally glance up.

 

Zecora’s expression hasn’t changed. No pity, no forced comfort. Just that same steady gaze, like she’s listening to the words under the words.

 

She nods once, slow.

 

“Eyes are windows, this is true,” she says, “but not all windows show the same view. Some reveal a storm inside the soul; others, a place where storms have taken toll.”

 

She taps the pestle against the mortar’s rim, a soft clack.

 

“Your eyes unsettle, this I see. Yet not from smallness, nor from bead. Something older lingers there—a shadow cast by what you’ve been, or where.”

 

You stiffen. For a second your heart thuds too loud in your tiny chest.

 

She can’t know. Nopony can know.

 

But she doesn’t press. She just offers the bowl, sliding it across the stone toward you.

 

“Drink, if thirst or curiosity calls. The brew is bitter, but it shows no false walls.”

 

You stare at the dark liquid. It smells like earth after rain, like things that grow in places light doesn’t reach.

 

You don’t take it yet.

 

You’re not ready for whatever truth might be waiting at the bottom.

 

But you don’t leave either.

 

You stare at the bowl a little longer. The steam has thinned, but the smell is still there—deep, root-dark, like soil that’s never seen sun. You’re not thirsty. You’re not curious in the way ponies mean it, all wide-eyed and eager. But something in Zecora’s quiet patience makes running feel… pointless.

 

You lean forward and drink.

 

It’s worse than you expected. Bitter doesn’t cover it. It coats your tongue like ash and old iron, slides down your throat and sits heavy in your stomach like a stone. For a second nothing happens. Then warmth spreads—not the cozy pony kind, but slow, crawling, like something waking up inside your veins.

 

Zecora watches. No triumph, no worry. Just waiting.

 

You set the empty bowl down. Your voice comes out rougher than before.

 

“Well?”

 

She tilts her head, gold rings clinking softly.

 

“A brew to quiet masks and veils,” she says. “It lets the hidden speak its tales.”

 

You wait for some vision, some revelation. Nothing flashes before your eyes. No ancient memories, no sudden understanding. Just the same old hollowness, now with a bitter aftertaste.

 

Zecora isn’t done.

 

“I know another with a gifted gaze,” she says. “The pegasus named Fluttershy—her Stare brings beasts to heel in gentle ways. A mother’s scold, a quiet shame; they wilt beneath it all the same.”

 

You know the Stare. You’ve seen the episode. Fluttershy locks eyes with a dragon and it cries. Cockatrices turn to stone under it—or rather, don’t, because they’re too busy cowering.

 

You shift on the root. “Yeah. I remember.”

 

Zecora’s eyes narrow, thoughtful.

 

“But yours is different, little stray. The Stare she wields can be turned away. She calls it when the need is great; she sets it down when mercy waits.”

 

She leans forward. The masks on the branches seem to lean with her.

 

“Yours never sleeps. It never bends. It simply… is. And what it sends is not a mother’s soft rebuke. It is a thing much older, deeper. Something that makes the wild forget its hunger and remember only fear.”

 

You feel it then—the warmth from the brew settling behind your eyes. Not a vision. Just clarity. Cold, sharp, undeniable.

 

The timberwolves didn’t run because they thought you were dangerous.

 

They ran because something in your stare told them they were prey.

 

And you can’t turn it off.

 

You’ve tried. You’ve blinked, looked away, closed your eyes for minutes at a time. It doesn’t matter. The moment anything meets your gaze, it feels whatever ancient thing lives behind your pupils.

 

You look down at your small green hooves. The moss is still flattened, honest as ever.

 

“So that’s it,” you mutter. “I’ve got a permanent monster-repellent face.”

 

Zecora doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t comfort.

 

“Repellent, yes. But not without cost. For what repels the beast may also repel the friend you’ve lost.”

 

You already knew that part.

 

The warmth fades. The forest sounds creep back in—distant calls, rustling leaves. Everything acting normal again.

 

You stand.

 

“Thanks for the drink,” you say. It’s flat, but it’s the closest you’ve come to gratitude in months.

 

Zecora nods once.

 

“The path you walk is yours alone. But know the Everfree has room for those who do not fit the song of home.”

 

You turn to leave. The clearing feels smaller now, or maybe you do.

 

Behind you, her voice follows, soft and rhyming:

 

“The Stare you carry cannot cease. Yet even monsters sometimes find their peace.”

 

You don’t answer.

 

You just walk deeper into the trees, where the predators part like grass before a storm.

 

And for once, the silence feels like it belongs to you.

 

===

 

You’ve gone deeper than even Zecora’s clearing today. The brew still lingers at the back of your throat, bitter and grounding, like a reminder that some truths don’t need visions to cut. The path—if you can call the faint game trail a path—has narrowed to almost nothing. Vines hang low enough to brush your mane, and the air is thick with the smell of rot and old magic.

 

You’re not looking for anything. You’re just walking until the castle feels far enough away that Twilight’s worried glances can’t reach.

 

Then you hear it: the buzz of wings, too many, too synchronized. Not birds. Not pegasi.

 

Changelings.

 

You freeze behind a curtain of hanging moss. Through the gaps you see them—five, maybe six—black carapace gleaming wetly, hole-riddled legs, jagged horns. Unreformed. The kind that haven’t learned Thorax’s glowing makeover yet. They move like a patrol, heads swiveling, tasting the air.

 

One of them stops. Sniffs. Turns.

 

Straight toward you.

 

You step out because hiding feels pointless. You’re small. You’re alone. You’re tired of pretending you belong anywhere.

 

They see you immediately.

 

The buzzing falters. Wings stutter mid-beat. The whole patrol hovers, then lands in a loose half-circle, blocking the way forward and back.

 

The leader—taller, a faint scar across one compound eye—tilts his head.

 

“A filly,” he hisses, voice layered like insect legs on dry leaves. “Deep in the Everfree. Alone.”

 

The others shift. You hear the soft click of fangs.

 

“Shouldn’t be possible,” another mutters. “The wolves would have had her. The plants. Something.”

 

Their eyes—hundreds of faceted blues—fix on your face.

 

And narrow.

 

Those aren’t pony eyes.

 

You see the realization ripple through them like a shared thought. Their nostrils flare. Heads tilt in unison.

 

“Not pony,” the leader says slowly. “Not entirely.”

 

You don’t answer. You just look back.

 

The silence stretches.

 

You expect hunger. Changelings feed on love, and you have none to give—no warm fuzzies, no harmony glow, nothing they can drain. You figure they’ll be angry. Or curious enough to try anyway.

 

Instead, they hesitate.

 

One in the back takes a half-step rearward. Another’s wings buzz nervously.

 

The leader leans closer, trying for menace. “What are you, little thing? Lost your herd? We could… help.”

 

His voice drips false sweetness, the start of a disguise spell flickering green around his horn.

 

You meet his gaze.

 

And something shifts.

 

It’s not the Stare like Fluttershy’s—no maternal disappointment, no command. It’s just you, looking.

 

The green flicker dies.

 

The leader’s compound eyes widen. His legs lock. A low, chittering whine escapes his throat—fear, not hunger.

 

The others feel it too. Wings fold tight against carapaces. They back up a step. Then another.

 

“She’s empty,” one whispers. “No love. No fear. Nothing to take.”

 

“Wrong,” another hisses. “Old wrong. Like the stories—”

 

The leader cuts him off with a sharp buzz, but he’s still staring at you. Still retreating.

 

You haven’t moved. Haven’t spoken.

 

Yet the patrol is unraveling.

 

Finally the leader spits—actual black ichor on the leaves—and turns. “Not worth it. Move.”

 

They scatter into the canopy, wings a frantic storm, leaving only the fading echo of buzzing and the smell of ozone.

 

You stand there a moment longer.

 

The forest closes in again, quiet.

 

Another thing afraid of you.

 

Another thing that looked into your eyes and saw something it didn’t understand.

 

You keep walking.

 

The moss stays crushed beneath your hooves.

 

And for the first time, you wonder—not with hope, just with the dull curiosity of someone who has nothing left to lose—what would happen if something ever looked back and didn’t run.

 

===

 

Far from your slow, solitary trek through the choking green, in the black heart of a hive buried under twisted roots and poisoned soil, the patrol returns.

 

They come in ragged formation, wings buzzing unevenly, carapaces scraped from panicked flight through thorns they usually glide above. The drones at the perimeter hiss challenges until they recognize the scar-faced leader, then fall silent and part.

 

The throne chamber is a cavern of resin and shadow. Jagged spires drip with old cocoons. The air tastes of fear and hunger long denied.

 

Queen Chrysalis lounges on her throne of blackened chitin, long legs crossed, eyes half-lidded with boredom. Green magic flickers lazily around her perforated horn. She doesn’t look up when the patrol throws themselves to the floor in front of her.

 

“Report,” she says, voice smooth and venomous.

 

The leader lifts his head just enough. His voice shakes—not from exhaustion, but from something deeper.

 

“My Queen… we found something. In the deep Everfree. A pony filly. Alone. Unhurt.”

 

Chrysalis’s ears twitch. A single brow arches.

 

“A filly,” she repeats, tasting the word. “Untended snack, then. Why do you reek of fear instead of triumph?”

 

The drone swallows. “She was… wrong. Small. Green coat, black mane. No horn, no wings. No cutie mark. But her eyes—”

 

He stops. The others shift uneasily.

 

Chrysalis leans forward now, interested.

 

“Her eyes,” she prompts, voice dropping to a dangerous purr.

 

“Not pony eyes,” another drone blurts. “Small irises. Round pupils. Predator eyes. Old eyes.”

 

The chamber goes quieter than it has any right to be.

 

Chrysalis’s tongue flicks across her fangs. “And?”

 

“We tried to surround her,” the leader continues. “Planned to feed, or take her for the pods. But when she looked at us… there was nothing. No love. No fear. No anger. Nothing to taste. Just… emptiness. And behind it, something else. Something that remembered us as prey.”

 

A ripple of uneasy chittering passes through the gathered guards.

 

Chrysalis rises slowly. Her shadow stretches long and jagged across the floor.

 

“She made you run,” she says. Not a question.

 

The leader lowers his head again. “Yes, my Queen.”

 

Silence.

 

Then Chrysalis laughs—low, delighted, edged with genuine hunger.

 

“A pony child with no love to give, surviving where nothing should, carrying eyes that make my soldiers flee like grubhlings.” She paces, hooves clicking. “Something ancient wearing a filly’s skin. Or something new that the world rejects. Either way…”

 

Her magic flares, green light painting the walls.

 

“Find her again. Watch from a distance this time. Do not approach. Do not feed. I want to know where she goes, who claims her, what she is.”

 

She pauses, smiling sharp enough to cut.

 

“If she truly has no love in her… perhaps she has room for something else.”

 

The patrol scrambles to obey, wings already buzzing.

 

Back in the Everfree, you keep walking, unaware that eyes far colder than yours have taken an interest.

 

===

 

Days bleed together now, measured only by how long you can stay out before hunger or Twilight’s quiet, searching glances pull you back. You wander the same trails, deeper each time, until even the game paths thin out and you’re pushing through undergrowth that snaps back behind you like it wants to erase your passage.

 

You feel them before you see them.

 

The buzzing is softer this time—distant, cautious. Not the frantic swarm of before. You stop in a patch of sunlight that somehow made it through the canopy and tilt your head.

 

High in the branches, half-hidden by leaves, black shapes cling like oversized wasps. Another patrol. Different drones, maybe, but the same perforated wings, the same glowing eyes fixed on you.

 

They don’t approach.

 

They just watch.

 

You stare back for a moment. Your teal eyes—small, round, wrong—meet compound blue. Nothing happens. No whining retreat. No hissing advance. Just stillness.

 

You shrug and keep walking.

 

It doesn’t matter. Nothing here matters. You have nowhere to be. No destination. The castle is only a place to eat, to bathe so Twilight doesn’t hover, to sleep so she doesn’t send search parties. You go back because endless worry would be annoying, not because you want to.

 

The changelings follow at a distance. You hear the occasional rustle of wings, the faint click of hooves on bark as they leap from tree to tree. They think you don’t notice.

 

You notice everything. It’s hard not to when nothing ever touches you.

 

Hours pass. You sit by a stream that smells faintly of sulfur and skip stones that sink without a splash. You chew on some edible root you learned from watching Zecora once. You lie on your back and watch clouds that move without pegasus hooves.

 

The patrol keeps pace.

 

Finally one of them speaks—voice low, carried on the wind but meant for his companions, not you.

 

“She has no purpose,” he mutters. “No direction. Just… drifting. Like a husk with no love inside to steer it.”

 

Another hisses back. “Orders are to watch. Not engage.”

 

“But she’s alone. No herd. No guardians nearby. She returns to the pony town only when the sun sets. We could simply ask. What harm? If she truly has nothing to feed on, words cost us nothing.”

 

A pause. You hear the leader’s wings buzz irritably.

 

“The Queen said watch. She didn’t say speak. That thing’s eyes made the last patrol flee. We stay back.”

 

You’re sprawled on a slab of sun-warmed stone beside a trickle of water that barely qualifies as a stream. The light is dappled, weak, the kind that makes everything look tired. You’ve been here long enough that the stone has taken on the faint outline of your body. The changelings are still up in the branches—shadows among shadows, buzzing softly like a hive that can’t decide whether to swarm or flee.

 

Then the buzzing changes. Sharper. Argumentative.

 

You don’t bother sitting up, but you listen.

 

“She’s just sitting there. Again. No pattern. No purpose.”

 

“Orders are to watch. The Queen was clear.”

 

“But she’s empty. Nothing to drain. No threat if we don’t feed. What if we simply asked?”

 

A chorus of hisses. “You’re mad.”

 

“Mad?” The voice is younger, higher—newer drone, maybe. “Asking costs nothing. If she answers, we learn what she is, where she goes, why the last patrol fled. That helps the colony. If she doesn’t answer, we lose nothing. If she attacks… well, one drone is an acceptable loss.”

 

Silence. Then reluctant agreement, low and grudging.

 

You hear wings. One set, descending.

 

A single changeling lands a cautious distance away—ten pony-lengths, maybe more. Young, carapace still glossy, holes in his legs not yet scarred from battles he hasn’t fought. His compound eyes flicker over you, wary, but he doesn’t retreat.

 

He clears his throat, a dry clicking sound.

 

“Uh… little… filly?”

 

You finally sit up. Turn your head slow. Meet his gaze.

 

He flinches, but doesn’t run. Progress, you guess.

 

“We’ve been watching you,” he says, voice trying for authority and landing somewhere near nervous. “You come here every day. Alone. No herd. No destination. You don’t forage like prey. You don’t hunt like predator. You just… exist.”

 

He takes one hesitant step closer.

 

“What are you doing here? What do you want?”

 

The question hangs in the air like smoke.

 

You look at him for a long time.

 

The other changelings are frozen in the trees, barely breathing.

 

You could ignore him. Stand up and walk away. Let the silence be your answer.

 

Or you could tell the truth.

 

You shrug.

 

“Nothing,” you say. Your voice is flat, small, the voice of a filly who hasn’t sung in months. “I don’t want anything.”

 

The drone blinks—all those facets at once. He wasn’t expecting an answer. Certainly not that one.

 

He glances up at his hidden patrol, as if asking for guidance that isn’t coming.

 

“Then… why stay?” he presses, bolder now or maybe just desperate to justify his risk. “Why come back to the Everfree at all?”

 

You look past him, into the endless green.

 

“Because here, nobody pretends I belong.”

 

You stand. Brush dirt from your coat. The moss stays flattened where you were.

 

The young drone doesn’t follow when you start walking again.

 

But you feel his eyes—and all the others—long after the buzzing fades behind you.

 

===

 

“Well?” the leader hisses. “Did the empty thing bite your head off?”

 

The young one shakes his head, still processing. “She answered.”

 

A ripple of surprise. Wings buzz in low, disbelieving harmony.

 

“She said she wants nothing. That she has no purpose. And when I asked why she keeps coming back to the Everfree…”

 

He pauses, replaying your flat, filly-small voice in his mind.

 

“She said: ‘Because here, nobody pretends I belong.’”

 

The patrol falls silent.

 

Then one of the older drones tilts his head. “Nobody?”

 

“Not nopony,” the young one confirms. “Nobody. Like the ponies in the old stories used to say before they twisted every word into their harmony-sick little mold. Like something that never learned the song in the first place.”

 

The leader’s fangs click thoughtfully. “A pony filly who doesn’t speak like a pony. Eyes that aren’t pony eyes. No love to taste. No fear to savor. And now words that belong to something else entirely.”

 

Another drone shifts uneasily. “She’s not prey. She’s not pony. She’s… wrong in a way the Queen will want to taste for herself.”

 

The young drone meets his leader’s gaze. “I told you asking would help the colony.”

 

The leader snorts, but there’s no real venom in it. “You were lucky she only spoke. Next time you decide to play hero, remember those eyes don’t blink.”

 

Far below, you keep walking, oblivious to the conversation flickering in the canopy like green fireflies.

 

But the report is already on its way back to the hive, carried on swift wings and whispered through resin corridors.

 

A single word—“nobody”—repeated like a crack in the world.

 

===

 

Deep in the hive, the report arrives like a drop of venom in still water.

 

The returning patrol kneels in the resin-lit gloom, the young drone who dared to speak pushed forward by the others’ silent insistence. He recounts it all: the aimless wandering, the empty answers, the words that cut deeper than any fang.

 

“She said she wants nothing. That here, nobody pretends she belongs.”

 

Chrysalis is motionless on her throne at first. Only the slow curl of green magic around her horn betrays that she is listening—truly listening.

 

Then she laughs.

 

Not the theatrical cackle she uses to terrify prisoners. This is quieter, delighted, almost fond. It echoes through the chamber like breaking glass.

 

“Nobody,” she repeats, tasting the word. “Not nopony. Nobody.”

 

She rises, pacing in a slow circle, hooves clicking on the chitin floor.

 

“A pony child who speaks like something that fell through the cracks of the world. Empty of love. Empty of fear. Empty enough that my drones can look at her and feel… nothing to take. And yet the forest itself parts for her. My soldiers flee from her gaze.”

 

She stops. Turns to the young drone.

 

“You were wise to ask,” she says, and the praise is so unexpected the drone flinches. “Most would have watched in silence until starvation or curiosity killed them. You brought me a gift.”

 

Her eyes narrow, glowing brighter.

 

“This filly is a hole shaped like a pony. Harmony rejects her. The beasts sense it. Even the trees refuse to pretend she’s welcome. And she knows it. She feels it. She walks into the wild because the wild is honest enough to show its teeth.”

 

Chrysalis’s tongue flicks across her fangs.

 

“Imagine what we could pour into that hole.”

 

The chamber is silent. The drones wait, barely daring to breathe.

 

“She belongs nowhere,” Chrysalis murmurs, almost to herself. “That means she could belong anywhere. To anyone. To any thing that offers her a place where no one pretends.”

 

She smiles—slow, sharp, certain.

 

“Bring her to me.”

 

The leader hesitates. “My Queen… the eyes—”

 

Chrysalis cuts him off with a hiss that makes the walls tremble.

 

“I am not my drones. I have stared into the void of starvation and laughed. I have drained love from creatures that hated me and made them beg for more. If this child’s emptiness can make timberwolves run, let it try with me. I want to taste what lives behind those eyes.”

 

She settles back onto her throne, wings mantling like a cloak.

 

“Watch her longer if you must. Learn her patterns—the castle she returns to, the zebra she sometimes visits, the hours she spends staring at nothing. But when the moment is right… invite her.”

 

A pause. Her voice drops to silk over steel.

 

“Tell her we do not pretend here either.”

 

Far away, you sit by your stream, skipping stones that sink without ceremony.

 

You have no idea that a queen has just claimed the shape of your absence as her own.

 

But the forest feels watchful now in a new way.

 

And the buzzing never quite stops.

 

===

 

The invitation comes on a day that feels like every other: gray light filtering through the canopy, the air thick with the smell of damp rot and distant rain. You’re sitting on the same slab of stone, tracing patterns in the dirt with a hoof that leaves no real mark, when the buzzing finally drops from the trees.

 

Three changelings land in a loose triangle around you—not surrounding, not yet. The young drone from before is among them, trying to look official. The others keep their distance, wings half-folded, eyes wary.

 

“The Queen wishes to speak with you,” the young one says. No pretense of disguise, no false kindness. Just the statement, flat and waiting.

 

You look up. Meet their compound gazes with your small, round, human ones.

 

They don’t flinch this time. They’ve had practice.

 

You consider the castle waiting at the edge of the forest—Twilight probably pacing, wondering when you’ll drift back for dinner. You consider the empty trails behind you. The nothing ahead.

 

You shrug.

 

“Okay.”

 

No questions. No fear. Just the same flat agreement you’d give to a change in the weather.

 

They blink—all those facets at once—and then they’re moving, escorting without touching, leading you deeper than you’ve ever gone alone. The forest thickens, then thins, then opens into a ravine where the air tastes of resin and old hunger. A hidden entrance yawns in the rock, pulsing faintly green.

 

Inside, the hive is exactly what you expected and nothing like it: tunnels of black chitin, cocoons glowing dimly, the constant low hum of wings. Changelings pause to stare as you pass, then look away fast. Your hooves make no echo on the resin floor.

 

They bring you to the throne chamber.

 

Chrysalis waits there, tall and terrible and beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful. She doesn’t rise. She just watches you approach with eyes like poisoned emeralds.

 

“So,” she says, voice smooth and layered, “the little void walks into my hive of her own accord.”

 

You stop at the base of the throne platform. Look up.

 

She leans forward.

 

“Tell me, child—who are you? Where did you come from? Why do you carry eyes that make my soldiers tremble and words that taste of nowhere?”

 

You answer some of it. Not all. Never all.

 

“I’m Anon. I live in the pony castle sometimes. I don’t know why the eyes do that. They just do.”

 

She circles questions like a predator: Who claims you? Who protects you? What do you want?

 

You give the same answer each time, quieter each time.

 

“Nothing.”

 

Chrysalis smiles, slow and sharp.

 

“Then perhaps you want something now. A place. A purpose. Ponies pretend you belong—here, we will not pretend. Join us. Be what you are without apology. An emptiness we can fill with strength. With truth.”

 

You tilt your head.

 

“Why?”

 

She pauses, surprised by the question.

 

“Why join you?” you clarify. “Why any of this?”

 

You gesture at the hive around you—the hungry drones, the cocoons, the green glow of stolen emotion.

 

“Why steal love at all? You need feelings from other creatures to live. But why only love? Why not your own emotions?”

 

Chrysalis’s eyes narrow, amused. “We are changelings. Love is what we were made to take. It sustains us. It is power.”

 

You look around at the shadowed faces watching from the walls.

 

“You don’t have love. You don’t make love. You don’t give it. Fine. Then why not something else? Something you already have buckets of.”

 

You meet her gaze directly.

 

“Spite.”

 

The word drops into the chamber like a stone into still water.

 

“Use your own spite. It’s everywhere here—I can taste it in the air. You hate the ponies. You hate being hungry. You hate losing. That hate doesn’t run out. It grows when you feed it. It’s yours. No need to steal it. No need to pretend or disguise or beg. Just let it burn and live on the smoke.”

 

Silence.

 

Chrysalis stares at you, unblinking.

 

Something shifts behind her eyes—not anger, not dismissal. Consideration.

 

A low murmur ripples through the watching drones. Some look uneasy. Some look… thoughtful.

 

You stand there, small and still, while the word hangs in the resin-thick air like a hook waiting to catch something.

 

Spite.

 

Chrysalis does not laugh this time. She does not dismiss you with a flick of her perforated wing or a blast of green fire. She goes very, very quiet.

 

Her eyes—those slitted, glowing pools—narrow, but not in anger. In recognition.

 

She rises from the throne, slow, deliberate. Hooves click once, twice, as she descends the steps until she towers over you, close enough that you can smell the ozone tang of her magic, the faint bitterness of old cocoons. The drones along the walls shrink back instinctively.

 

She studies you the way a starving creature studies a new kind of fruit: wary, calculating, hungry for the possibility that it might not be poison.

 

“Spite,” she repeats, low, tasting it like wine gone sharp. “Not hatred. Hatred is fire—bright, fast, gone to ash the moment it consumes what it burns. I know hatred. I have fed on it when love was denied me. I have wielded it like a blade.”

 

Her tongue flicks across her fangs.

 

“But spite…”

 

She turns away from you, pacing a slow circle, wings half-unfurled. The green light of the hive reflects in fractured patterns across her carapace.

 

“Spite is older. Colder. It sits in the gut like a stone, heavy and dense, grinding finer with every turn of the world that tries to dislodge it. It does not flare. It endures. It remembers every slight, every defeat, every smug pony smile, and it packs them tighter, harder, until the weight alone could crush bone.”

 

She stops. Looks back at you.

 

“I have carried it for years. Beneath the hunger, beneath the rage at Celestia’s light and Twilight Sparkle’s insufferable harmony. Beneath every failed invasion, every cocoon cracked open too soon. I thought it was only the fuel for my hatred. But you…”

 

Her voice drops to something almost wondering.

 

“You are right. It has always been there, self-sustaining. Immutable. Growing in the dark where love cannot reach. Tempered by every hatred that burned out and left it behind.”

 

The chamber is silent enough that you can hear the faint drip of resin somewhere far above.

 

Chrysalis’s magic flares—not an attack, but a probe. Green tendrils ghost across the air, brushing the edges of the watching drones. One hisses and staggers, eyes widening as something cold and sharp uncoils inside him. Another straightens, wings buzzing with sudden, vicious energy.

 

She withdraws the magic. Breathes in, slow.

 

“It is… sufficient,” she says, almost to herself. “Not sweet like love. Not bright. But dense. Endless. Ours.”

 

Then she looks at you again, and for the first time there is no mockery in her gaze. Only the glint of someone who has just seen a new path open in a maze she thought she knew by heart.

 

“You are a strange little void,” she says. “Empty enough to see what we have carried all along and never thought to taste.”

 

She leans down until her face is level with yours.

 

“Stay. Teach us how to feed on what we already own. In return… you will have a place where no one pretends you belong—because here, belonging is earned by what you endure, not what you give.”

 

You look up at her—tall, jagged, glowing with that new, cold hunger—and feel nothing pull you forward. No loyalty. No excitement. Just the same flat emptiness that’s carried you this far.

 

“I can’t stay,” you say. Your voice is small, matter-of-fact. “Not all the time. Twilight would worry forever if I just vanished. Search parties. Lectures. It’d be annoying.”

 

Chrysalis’s eyes narrow, but there’s no rage in it—only calculation.

 

You shrug.

 

“But I’ll come back. Visit. Teach you what I said. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

 

She studies you for a long moment, as if weighing whether an intermittent void is worth more than none at all.

 

Then she smiles—slow, sharp, accepting.

 

“Very well, little teacher. Come and go as you please. The hive will know you by your eyes.”

 

You turn to leave. The drones part without being told. The tunnels feel different on the way out—less like a trap, more like something waiting.

 

You return to the castle that night. Twilight fusses, asks where you’ve been, wraps you in a hug that feels warm and cold at the same time. You let her. You eat. You bathe. You sleep on sheets that smell like lavender and worry.

 

And the next day, you go back.

 

Days become weeks. You drift between castle and hive like a shadow that can’t decide where to fall.

 

In the hive, they listen.

 

Chrysalis commands the first trial. Dozens of drones—then hundreds—seal themselves into the deepest chambers, the ones lined with black resin that drinks light and spits back memory. They curl into cocoons not for infiltration, but for excavation.

 

They sleep.

 

And the nightmares come.

 

Every slight. Every sneer. Every time a pony recoiled at the flash of a fang, slammed a door, whispered “monster” behind a hoof. Every time love was offered and then yanked away the moment the disguise slipped. Every defeat—Canterlot, the Crystal Empire, the throne shattered under rainbow light. Every grub that starved in a bad season because ponies hoarded their harmony like grain.

 

They feel it all again. Raw. Repeated. Relentless.

 

No warmth to soften it. No love to forgive.

 

Just the cold, dense weight of spite packing tighter with every remembered wrong.

 

When they wake, they are changed.

 

Not bright and colorful like Thorax’s swarm. No pastels, no soft glow.

 

Their carapaces darken to something harder—matte black shot through with veins of dull green, like poisoned jade. Their eyes lose the frantic blue glitter, settle into a steady, frozen gleam. Wings thicken, edges serrated. Horns curve sharper.

 

They emerge silent.

 

No triumphant buzzing. No songs.

 

Just the quiet, grinding hum of something that has stopped asking for scraps.

 

Chrysalis is the last to wake.

 

She steps from her chamber taller, leaner, the green of her magic now edged with frost. When she breathes, the air chills.

 

She looks at you—waiting as always in the throne chamber, small and unflinching—and inclines her head.

 

“It is enough,” she says. Voice lower, steadier. “More than enough.”

 

You nod.

 

You taught them how to find the stone in their gut and feed on its weight.

 

They don’t need you every day now.

 

But you still come.

 

Because the hive doesn’t pretend you belong.

 

And neither do you.

 

===

 

You visit the hive less now.

 

Not because you’re afraid. Not because they bore you. Just because the pull isn’t there anymore. The teaching is done. You pointed at the stone in their gut, told them how to chew on it, and they listened. Now they don’t need you hovering while they learn to swallow.

 

So you wander.

 

The Everfree welcomes you the way it always has: with indifference. Predators still catch your gaze and remember something older than hunger. Plants still recoil. The air still tastes honest—wet rot, sharp pine, distant blood. You walk for hours, sometimes days, sleeping under fallen logs or in hollows where the moss stays crushed long after you leave.

 

You go back to the castle only when the emptiness in your stomach gets louder than the emptiness everywhere else. Twilight still worries. Still asks. You still say little. The routine is the same, just stretched thinner.

 

The hive, though—you hear about it even when you’re not there.

 

The changelings don’t infiltrate anymore. No more disguises stretched over resentment like ill-fitting skin. No more scraping for pony love like dogs under the table. They stay in the deep forest, expanding tunnels, carving new chambers from living rock and resin. Their numbers grow—not from stolen emotion, but from eggs laid in the cold certainty that the grubs will never have to beg.

 

They hunt when they want. They fight when they want. They build jagged spires that pierce the canopy and let no light in. Drones patrol openly now, matte-black carapaces catching what little sun filters through, wings edged like broken glass. When ponies stray too close to the borders—curious explorers, lost foals, overconfident guards—the changelings don’t bother with tricks.

 

They just look.

 

And the intruders run.

 

No cocoons. No draining. Just the cold satisfaction of watching harmony’s children remember that the world still has teeth.

 

Chrysalis rules without pretense. No speeches about love and sharing. No promises of reformation. Just the quiet, grinding hum of a hive that feeds on what it already owns: every slight, every defeat, every smug pony smile packed into dense, immutable spite.

 

It sustains them. It strengthens them. It lets them be exactly what they are.

 

Monsters.

 

Openly.

 

Freely.

 

You hear the stories from Zecora sometimes, when your wandering brings you past her hut. She speaks in careful rhymes about shadows growing bolder, about ponies whispering of a new darkness in the forest. She watches you with those steady eyes and never quite asks if you had a hoof in it.

 

You don’t tell her.

 

You don’t tell anyone.

 

Some days you pass near the hive’s outer edges. You see them from a distance—drones perched on jagged resin towers, staring out at the world with frozen green eyes. They see you too. They nod, once. No pleading. No invitation. Just acknowledgment.

 

You nod back.

 

Then you keep walking.

 

The Everfree is wide.

 

The spite is theirs now.

 

And you—you still have nothing to do.

 

So you wander. Days blurring into weeks where the castle is just a distant obligation you fulfill like refilling a canteen. The Everfree has become your mapless home—trails you carve with absent hooves, clearings you claim for a night and abandon without regret. You catch glimpses of the hive’s growth from the edges, like watching a wound scar over into something harder than the flesh around it.

 

They are no longer hiding.

 

The hive spills outward in jagged black spires that claw through the canopy, resin veins threading through ancient trees until the bark gleams wet and obsidian. Where once tunnels were narrow and secretive, now vast chambers yawn open to the poisoned sky—domed ceilings ribbed like the inside of some colossal insect skull, lit only by the cold green pulse of their own magic. No colorful glow. No soft pastels. Just matte black and frost-edged emerald, the colors of something that has stopped asking permission to exist.

 

They hunt openly. Packs of drones—wings serrated, carapaces thickened into natural armor—bring down manticores and hydras not for food but for the satisfaction of proving the forest’s old terrors can bleed. They leave the carcasses as warnings at the borders: bones picked clean, arranged in deliberate patterns that spell out, in a language only predators understand, we are done running.

 

Pride radiates from them like heat from cooled iron—sharp, contained, dangerous to touch.

 

No more disguises. No more scraping at pony emotions like beggars at a feast. They walk the hive’s halls as themselves: perforated limbs unashamed, fangs bared in casual conversation, eyes frozen with the steady gleam of creatures who have remembered they were never the weak ones.

 

You see it in the way they carry themselves. Chests higher. Wings mantled instead of folded submissively. When two drones pass in a corridor, they clash horns in brief, ritual dominance—testing, affirming—not the groveling deference of a swarm that once feared its queen’s hunger more than its own emptiness.

 

Their identities are forged now, individual and collective, in the dense core of spite.

 

Each changeling carries a personal litany: the pony who screamed at the reveal of true form, the lover who recoiled, the village that hunted them with torches, the Elements of Harmony that blasted them from the sky again and again. Those memories are no longer fuel for self-loathing or desperate hunger. They are compressed—layer upon layer, hatred burned away to leave only the unyielding residue. Spite. The knowledge that the world tried to erase them and failed.

 

It makes them proud.

 

Not the bright, boastful pride of ponies preening over friendships and parties. This is colder. Quieter. The pride of something that has stared into the void of rejection and found the void wanting. They do not need love. They do not need acceptance. They need nothing from the ponies they once parasitized.

 

They exist.

 

Fully.

 

Openly.

 

Irrevocably.

 

Chrysalis sits at the center of it all, no longer scheming invasions but overseeing expansion—new brood chambers, weapon forges of resin and bone, gardens of poisonous fungi that thrive in the dark. Her voice, when you hear it carried on the wind during rare visits, has lost its theatrical venom. It is steady now. Certain.

 

You watch from a ridge sometimes, small green silhouette against the jagged skyline they’ve built.

 

They have taken what you pointed at and made it their foundation.

 

And you—you keep wandering.

 

The hive no longer needs your lessons.

 

But the forest still doesn’t pretend you belong.

 

And that is still enough.

 

===

 

In the deepest chamber, where the resin walls pulse with a slow, frost-green heartbeat, Chrysalis stands alone.

 

She does not sit upon the throne anymore—not truly. The throne is a relic of older hungers, carved when she still believed power came from stealing what ponies hoarded so greedily. Now she stands, wings half-unfurled, gazing into a pool of black ichor that reflects nothing but her own sharpened silhouette.

 

The spite moves through her like glacier melt—cold, relentless, eternal.

 

She remembers the first taste of it, deliberate and undiluted. The chamber had closed around her like a tomb, and the nightmares came: Canterlot’s spires gleaming mockingly as her swarm fell in rainbow fire; Twilight Sparkle’s smug, shining eyes as the love explosion hurled her across the sky; every drone lost, every egg crushed under pony hooves because harmony demanded it. She felt each wound again, deeper this time, until hatred burned itself out and left only the dense, unyielding core.

 

Spite.

 

Not the frantic flare of rage that demands immediate vengeance. Something quieter. Heavier. A stone that has sat in the dark for centuries, growing smoother and harder with every slight the world pressed upon it.

 

It sustains her now. It sustains them all.

 

She flexes a hoof, watches the veins of dull jade shift beneath her carapace. No more starvation. No more disguises that itched against her true shape. No more pretending to be the soft, colorful things ponies loved so they could be drained in secret.

 

They are themselves.

 

Fully.

 

The thought thrums with a pride so pure it feels like armor.

 

She walks the upper spires at night, when the Everfree’s canopy blocks even the moon’s judgmental light. Drones salute with clashed horns and bared fangs—no groveling, no fear of her hunger turning on them if the harvest fails. They hunt for sport now. They build because they can. They breed without the terror that the next generation will starve on pony scraps.

 

Pride.

 

It is not the bright, boastful kind that needs an audience. It is the pride of something that has looked at the world’s rejection and answered: I do not need you to survive. I need only what you tried to break me with.

 

The little green void drifts through her thoughts sometimes, unbidden.

 

Anon.

 

The filly with predator eyes and a voice like flat stone. The one who pointed at the obvious and made it revolutionary. Chrysalis does not love her—love is a pony weakness, a chain. She does not even like her. But she respects the emptiness that could see their chains so clearly.

 

The child comes rarely now. Wanders the forest instead, leaving crushed moss and silence in her wake. Chrysalis does not summon her. There is no need. The lesson was given once, perfectly, and taken.

 

She turns from the ichor pool. The hive hums around her—steady, cold, certain.

 

They will never beg again.

 

They will never pretend again.

 

They will endure long after pony songs fade to silence, feeding on the weight of every wrong the world committed against them.

 

And Chrysalis smiles, fangs gleaming in the frost-green dark.

 

Let harmony have its bright, fleeting fire.

 

She has something denser.

 

Something forever.

 

===

 

You’re deep in the Everfree again, farther out than even the old hive borders used to reach, when the buzzing reaches you—two different rhythms clashing in the air like mismatched heartbeats.

 

One is bright, almost musical, layered with hesitant chirps. The other is low, grinding, a cold drone that makes the leaves shiver.

 

You creep forward through the undergrowth until you can see them.

 

On one side: a small delegation of reformed changelings. Thorax leads them—tall now, carapace shimmering pink and blue and gold, antlers soft-curved, eyes wide with that earnest hope they all wear like new skin. A handful of his swarm flanks him: pastel greens, oranges, purples, wings iridescent and delicate. They move carefully, as if the forest itself might bruise them.

 

On the other side: your changelings. Chrysalis’s.

 

Six drones in matte black and frost-green, wings edged like obsidian blades, eyes frozen slits. They stand on a ridge of resin-spiked stone that wasn’t here a year ago—new territory, claimed without apology. No hesitation in their posture. No attempt to look friendly.

 

The air between the two groups feels sharp enough to cut.

 

Thorax steps forward first, hooves raised in that open, peaceful gesture ponies love.

 

“Hello!” he calls, voice warm, almost pleading. “We’ve heard… changes in the hive. We wanted to talk. To understand. Maybe there’s a way we can—”

 

A spite drone cuts him off with a low, grinding hiss that makes Thorax’s companions flinch.

 

“Understand?” the drone repeats, voice flat and cold. “We understand perfectly. We understand every time your kind looked at us like monsters until you decided to become something prettier. We understand starvation while you feasted on shared love like it was infinite.”

 

Thorax’s ears fold back, but he tries again. “That was the old way. We changed. We shared love—real love—and it transformed us. It can transform you too. You don’t have to live in darkness anymore.”

 

One of the pastel changelings nods eagerly. “It’s wonderful! The colors, the feelings, the connection—”

 

A different spite drone laughs—short, sharp, humorless.

 

“Colors,” she echoes. “Connection. You traded your fangs for rainbows and call it evolution. We traded begging for pride and call it survival.”

 

She steps forward. The reformed swarm shifts uneasily; their glow dims a fraction.

 

“We don’t need your love,” she continues. “We don’t want it. We feed on what you left behind—every rejection, every scream, every time harmony decided we weren’t worth saving. It’s denser than your fleeting warmth. It doesn’t fade when the party ends.”

 

Thorax looks genuinely pained. “But… you’re still carrying all that pain. You could let it go. You could be happy.”

 

The lead spite drone—the one with the oldest scars—tilts his head.

 

“Happy,” he says, tasting the word like spoiled fruit. “We are not happy. We are sustained. We are proud. We are ourselves—finally, fully, without disguise or apology. Your happiness requires pony approval. Ours requires nothing but what the world already gave us: reasons to endure.”

 

Silence falls, heavy as resin.

 

Thorax’s delegation exchanges uncertain glances. Their colors seem suddenly garish against the dark spires behind the spite changelings. One of the younger reformed whispers, “They’re… scary now.”

 

The spite drones don’t smile. They don’t need to.

 

Thorax tries one last time, voice softer. “If you ever change your mind… there’s always a place with us.”

 

The lead drone’s eyes narrow to slits.

 

“There isn’t,” he says. “Not anymore.”

 

The reformed group retreats slowly, wings buzzing in nervous discord, bright forms disappearing into the greener parts of the forest like dyes washed away.

 

The spite changelings watch them go without pursuit.

 

Without regret.

 

You stay hidden in the brush long after both groups are gone.

 

The air still hums with their clash—warm hope against cold certainty.

 

You feel nothing pull you toward either side.

 

Just the familiar, honest indifference of the Everfree closing back around you.

 

The moss stays crushed where you lie.

 

And the forest, as always, keeps its own counsel.

 

===

 

In the bright, open glades of his new hive—chambers of smooth, iridescent resin that let sunlight pour in like honey—Thorax stands at the edge of a balcony overlooking the colorful bustle below. Changelings flit between flowering vines, sharing laughter that tastes like warm cider, wings shimmering in every shade of dawn. Grubs tumble in playful piles, glowing with the easy love that flows between them like breath.

 

It should feel perfect.

 

It does, most days.

 

But not today.

 

He stares toward the deeper Everfree, where the canopy grows too thick for light to penetrate, where reports say black spires now pierce the sky like broken fangs.

 

They are thriving.

 

The thought sits in his chest like a stone he can’t transform away.

 

He remembers the old hunger—the desperate disguises, the scraping for scraps of pony love, the constant fear of exposure. He remembers offering a different way: share love, give it freely, let it change you from the inside out. It worked. It saved them. Their colors bloomed. Their hearts opened. They became something ponies could embrace without flinching.

 

And yet.

 

The others—Chrysalis’s swarm—went the opposite direction. Deeper into the dark. Colder. Harder. Feeding not on love but on the very wounds love’s absence left behind. Every rejection, every defeat, compressed into something that doesn’t fade.

 

And they are thriving.

 

No more starvation. No more begging. No more pretending to be what they weren’t.

 

Thorax’s antlers droop slightly. A young drone lands beside him, bright orange and eager.

 

“Pharynx says the border patrols saw them again,” the drone chirps. “They didn’t attack. Just… watched. Like they didn’t need anything from us.”

 

Thorax nods, forcing a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

 

“That’s good,” he says. “No violence. That’s progress.”

 

But inside, the conflict gnaws.

 

He chose light. Openness. Vulnerability. He believed it was the only way to survive—to truly live.

 

But the dark swarm proves there is another path. One that doesn’t require pony approval. One that turns pain into armor instead of healing it. One that says: we do not need to change for you. We will endure as we are.

 

And they are not dying.

 

They are growing.

 

Stronger. Prouder. More themselves than his colorful hive has ever dared to be.

 

Thorax watches a pair of grubs below chase each other in delighted spirals, sharing tiny bursts of love that make their shells glow brighter.

 

This is right, he tells himself. This is better.

 

But the stone in his chest remains.

 

What if better isn’t the only way to be free?

 

What if the dark is not weakness, but another kind of strength?

 

He turns away from the balcony, wings folding tight against his shimmering back.

 

The Everfree keeps its secrets.

 

And somewhere in its depths, monsters are proud to be monsters.

 

Thorax wonders, quietly, which path will outlast the other.

 

===

 

You wander close enough to the new borders one dusk, drawn by the low, grinding hum that vibrates through the tree trunks like a warning. The spite changelings don’t hide their patrols anymore. They fly in open formation above the canopy, matte-black silhouettes against the dying light, wings cutting the air with a sound like tearing parchment.

 

You watch from the shadows as one of them dives.

 

A cockatrice bursts from the underbrush below—feathers ruffled, eyes already glowing with petrifying intent. In the old days, a changeling would have disguised itself, tricked the beast, drained it subtly. Even the reformed ones would have tried to calm it with shared emotion.

 

This drone doesn’t bother.

 

It meets the cockatrice mid-air. The beast’s stare locks on. Nothing happens.

 

The drone’s frozen green eyes reflect the cockatrice’s magic like black ice. The petrifying glow flickers, wavers, dies. The cockatrice screeches—pure terror—and tries to flee.

 

The drone’s horn ignites, not with the bright green flare of love magic, but with a cold, viscous light the color of old venom. A single bolt lashes out. Where it strikes, the cockatrice’s feathers blacken and curl, not burned but withered, as if every drop of life was remembered as an insult and denied. The beast crashes to the ground, still alive but moving slow, confused, like something essential has been leeched away.

 

The drone lands beside it. Doesn’t feed. Doesn’t kill. Just stares down until the cockatrice slithers away, trailing broken pride.

 

Spite doesn’t give them the explosive strength love once did—no massive shields, no overwhelming blasts of raw power. It gives them something denser.

 

Endurance.

 

Their magic doesn’t flare and fade. It seeps. It lingers. A curse laid on a manticore pack three days ago still has the beasts snapping at shadows, their roars edged with unexplained dread. Wounds they take knit slower than love would allow, but they feel no pain while fighting—only the cold satisfaction of another slight repaid.

 

Their shapes don’t shift into pretty ponies anymore. When they change now, it’s into something worse: distorted reflections of pony fears—elongated limbs, too many joints, eyes that multiply across the face. Not for infiltration. For terror. The sight alone is enough to make lesser predators flee without a blow struck.

 

Resin they secrete is harder, blacker, laced with a chill that numbs the hoof. Weapons forged from it don’t break. Armor grown from it turns aside claw and fang like contempt turns aside pity.

 

And the stare—the one you taught them to feed—has deepened. It’s not your empty void. It’s active now. When a spite drone locks eyes, the target feels every time it ever looked down on something weaker, every casual cruelty, every assumption of superiority. The weight of its own history crushes it from inside.

 

They don’t tire like the love-fed do when the emotion runs dry. Spite renews itself with every breath. The more the world pushes, the stronger they become. A lost skirmish doesn’t weaken the hive—it compresses another layer of stone in every drone’s gut.

 

You watch the patrol reform overhead, wings beating slow and certain, no hurry to return to shelter.

 

Love gave changelings power that begged to be shared.

 

Spite gives them power that needs nothing.

 

They are no longer parasites.

 

They are the forest’s new apex—patient, proud, and utterly self-contained.

 

You turn away before they notice you.

 

The moss stays crushed beneath your hooves.

 

And somewhere in the dark, the grinding hum grows a little louder.

 

===

 

In the highest tower of Canterlot Castle, where the sun and moon meet in eternal negotiation, Celestia and Luna sit across from each other in the map room. The Cutie Map is dark and silent—no friendship crisis pulsing for attention. Instead, the table between them is strewn with written reports: parchment sealed with wax from border guards, Zecora’s careful zebra script, frantic notes from Ponyville pegasi who flew too close to the Everfree’s new black spires.

 

Celestia reads the latest dispatch in silence. Her golden magic holds the scroll steady, but her eyes are fixed, unblinking.

 

Luna watches her sister, mane flickering with faint starlight even in the daylight that pours through the windows.

 

“They have changed again,” Luna says quietly. Not a question.

 

Celestia lowers the scroll.

 

“Not like Thorax’s swarm,” she answers. “Not into something brighter. Into something… harder.”

 

She pushes the reports toward Luna. Accounts repeat the same details: no more infiltrations, no more love-draining. Open patrols of matte-black changelings with frost-green eyes. Predators fleeing at their approach. Resin towers rising where none stood before. No starvation. No desperation.

 

Only pride.

 

Luna scans the words, ears folding back.

 

“They feed on spite,” she murmurs. “On every wrong done to them. Every rejection. Every battle lost. They have taken the pain we inflicted—intentionally or not—and forged it into sustenance.”

 

Celestia’s wings shift, a rare sign of unease.

 

“I thought Thorax showed them a better way,” she says. “Sharing love. Transformation through openness. It saved part of their kind.”

 

Luna’s gaze drifts to the window, toward the distant green smudge of the Everfree.

 

“And the rest chose endurance over healing,” she replies. “They do not beg for acceptance anymore. They do not need us at all.”

 

A pause. The solar diarch’s voice is softer now.

 

“That terrifies me more than Chrysalis’s old invasions ever did.”

 

Luna nods once, slow.

 

“When they hungered, they were predictable. Desperate. We could repel them, scatter them, contain the threat. Now they thrive in rejection. They grow stronger every time the world reminds them why they hate it. No army we send will make them weaker—only feed them further.”

 

Celestia closes her eyes.

 

“We created this,” she says. “Not directly. But every time we turned them away, every victory we claimed over them, every assumption that harmony must look a certain way… we packed another layer into the stone they now carry.”

 

Luna’s magic dims, the stars in her mane moving slower.

 

“There is no friendship lesson for this,” she says. “No rainbow blast that will undo it. They have found a path that does not require our light.”

 

The sisters sit in silence.

 

Outside, the sun continues its perfect arc—Celestia’s domain, unchallenged.

 

But in the Everfree, black spires rise higher, patient and cold.

 

And for the first time in centuries, the alicorns feel the weight of something that does not need their forgiveness to endure.

 

===

 

You’re tracing the same faint trail that skirts Zecora’s hut when the scent of herbs and woodsmoke finds you first. She’s outside today, hanging bundles of dried leaves from the low branches of a crooked tree, gold rings glinting as she moves. The masks on her door watch you approach with empty eyes.

 

She doesn’t startle. She never does.

 

“A wanderer returns to familiar ground,” she says, voice low and rhyming as always. “Yet the forest whispers of changes profound.”

 

You stop at the edge of her clearing. The moss here springs back a little under your hooves—Zecora’s space is one of the few places that tries.

 

She turns, studies you with that steady gaze that never flinches from your eyes.

 

“The changelings in the deep woods shift and grow,” she continues. “Black spires rise where shadows used to flow. No longer do they hide or beg for scraps of love; they stride as if the dark fits like a glove. Tell me, little one with the ancient stare—do you know what fuels the storm now brewing there?”

 

You look past her, toward the distant jagged silhouette of new resin towers barely visible through the trees.

 

You could lie. You could shrug and walk away.

 

Instead you meet her eyes.

 

“They learned how to stop asking permission from the world for the right to exist.”

 

The words come out flat, small, filly-soft.

 

Zecora stills. The bundle in her hoof stops swaying.

 

A long silence stretches, filled only by the rustle of leaves and the distant, grinding hum of wings you both pretend not to hear.

 

Finally she nods once, slow.

 

“A lesson sharp as thorns, and twice as deep,” she murmurs. “Some roots drink light, and others darkness keep.”

 

She doesn’t ask how you know.

 

You don’t offer more.

 

You just turn and walk back into the green, leaving the moss to decide for itself whether to spring back or stay crushed.

 

Behind you, Zecora hangs the last bundle and does not watch you go.

 

In the quiet heart of her hut, where potions bubble in low, steady rhythm and masks stare down from walls with eyes that have seen too much, Zecora stands motionless long after the little green filly has vanished into the green.

 

The words still hang in the air like incense smoke that refuses to dissipate.

 

They learned how to stop asking permission from the world for the right to exist.

 

She turns the phrase over in her mind, tasting its edges. Sharp. Clean. Dangerous.

 

Zecora has lived in the Everfree longer than most ponies dare count years. She knows its moods—the way it gives and takes without apology, the way it honors strength that needs no approval. She chose this place because pony lands asked too many questions, demanded too many rhymes that fit their harmony. Here, the plants bite, the beasts hunt, the storms rage, and no one pretends it is otherwise.

 

But this—this is new.

 

She steps outside again. The bundles sway gently in the breeze. Far off, deeper than sound should carry, comes the low grinding hum of wings that no longer beg.

 

Zecora closes her eyes.

 

She remembers the old changelings: skulking shadows, desperate disguises, hunger that drove them to steal what they could not make. She offered warnings, potions, distance. They were dangerous, yes, but pitiable. Creatures twisted by need.

 

Now the pity is gone.

 

They have taken the world’s cruelty—the slammed doors, the rainbow blasts, the whispers of monster—and swallowed it whole. Turned it into stone. Into pride. Into life.

 

And the little one with the ancient stare—the one who walks as if the ground resents her—pointed the way.

 

Zecora opens her eyes. The masks seem to watch her more closely now.

 

“Balance shifts when chains are cast aside,” she murmurs to the empty clearing. “Yet freedom forged in darkness may abide.”

 

She does not fear them. Fear is for those who believe harmony is the only song worth singing.

 

But she feels the weight of it: a new force in the Everfree, patient and cold, growing without permission.

 

And the child who drifts between worlds, leaving crushed moss and silence behind, carries a piece of that weight in her empty places.

 

Zecora returns to her cauldron. Adds a pinch of something silver and sharp.

 

The forest will decide, in time, what grows from seeds planted in spite.

 

Until then, she brews.

 

She watches.

 

And she rhymes no warnings—because some truths need no permission to be heard.

 

===

 

You push open the crystal doors of the castle later than usual. The sky outside has already bled into twilight, the kind of bruised purple that makes Ponyville’s lights look too cheerful by comparison. Your coat is matted with forest dirt, mane tangled with burrs and leaves that don’t quite belong to any pony-friendly plant. The halls are quiet—no Spike humming in the kitchen, no Starlight clattering around with late-night experiments.

 

Just the faint rustle of pages turning.

 

You find Twilight in the library, of course. She’s at the big map table, but the Cutie Map is dark. Instead, scrolls and parchment reports are spread across it like a battlefield of ink and wax seals. Her wings are half-unfurled, tense. Her eyes flick rapidly over the latest dispatch, horn glowing as she levitates a quill that scratches frantic notes in the margins.

 

She doesn’t notice you at first.

 

You stand in the doorway, small green shadow against the crystal glow, and watch.

 

“—no attempts at infiltration,” she mutters to herself, voice tight. “No love-draining incidents. Increased territorial expansion. Predators displaced or… subdued without lethal force. Eyewitness accounts describe them as ‘proud’ and ‘unafraid.’”

 

She flips to another scroll. Her ears pin back.

 

“Thorax reports his delegation was turned away peacefully but firmly. They refused offers of shared love. Claimed they ‘no longer need it.’ Feeding on… spite?”

 

The word comes out like it tastes wrong.

 

Twilight’s quill snaps in her magic. She doesn’t notice. She’s already reaching for the next report—Celestia’s seal, Luna’s elegant script visible even from here.

 

You shift your weight. The floor creaks—too loud in the quiet.

 

Twilight’s head snaps up. Her eyes are wide, bloodshot, the way they get when friendship equations refuse to balance.

 

“Anon!” She startles, then softens immediately, the way she always does. “You’re back late. I was… I was starting to—”

 

She stops. Takes in the dirt, the leaves, the flat teal stare that never quite matches pony warmth.

 

“You’ve been in the Everfree again.”

 

It’s not a question.

 

You shrug.

 

Twilight exhales, slow, and gestures to the chaos of reports.

 

“They’ve changed,” she says, voice quieter now. “The remaining changelings. Not like Thorax’s hive. The opposite. They’re… thriving without love. Without us.”

 

She looks at you like she’s waiting for something—reassurance, maybe. Or denial.

 

You give her nothing.

 

You just walk past the table, hooves leaving faint, unflattening imprints on the rug, and head toward the stairs.

 

Behind you, Twilight’s voice follows, small and lost.

 

“How do you fight something that doesn’t need you to forgive it?”

 

You don’t answer.

 

You’ve already taught them the lesson she’s only now reading about.

 

The castle doors close softly behind you as you climb to your room.

 

And somewhere deep in the Everfree, black spires rise a little higher, patient and cold.

 

===

 

In the frost-lit depths of a new chamber, where the resin walls drink every echo and spit back only cold certainty, a cluster of spite drones gathers around a scrying pool of black ichor. The surface ripples with stolen glimpses—bright meadows far beyond the Everfree, pastel changelings laughing among ponies, sharing cider and songs and easy affection.

 

They watch in silence at first.

 

One drone—scarred across the wing joints from old battles—leans closer. His frozen eyes reflect the colorful scene without warmth.

 

“Look at them,” he hisses, voice low and grinding. “Prancing in pony villages. Wearing those garish shells like medals. Begging for head-pats and picnic invitations.”

 

Another drone, younger but no less hardened, clicks her fangs.

 

“Still parasites,” she says. “Just prettier ones. They traded black carapace for rainbows and call it freedom. They still need pony love to shine. Still smile too wide when a foal calls them ‘friend.’ Still wilt if the approval dries up.”

 

A ripple of cold agreement passes through the group. Wings buzz once—sharp, dismissive.

 

The scarred drone straightens.

 

“We were all hungry once. We all wore masks that itched. But they chose to keep the masks—just painted them soft colors. They live among the ones who blasted us from the sky, who called us monsters until we looked cute enough to forgive. They crave that forgiveness like air.”

 

He turns from the pool. The ichor stills, the bright images fading.

 

“We don’t.”

 

The younger drone’s horn glows faintly, frost-green and steady.

 

“We fill the hole with what the world left us—every sneer, every slammed door, every rainbow that burned. It’s ours. No one can take it. No one can withhold it. It grows when they hate us. It grows when they ignore us. It grows because it’s made of what they tried to break us with.”

 

The scarred one nods.

 

“They are still chained. Their completeness depends on pony smiles. On shared love that can sour the moment trust cracks. They are pretty beggars in a prettier cage.”

 

He spreads his serrated wings, casting jagged shadows.

 

“We are complete alone. Unapologetically. The scorn is ours. The pride is ours. The endurance is ours. We remain ourselves—fangs, holes, frost eyes and all—because we no longer ask permission to exist.”

 

The group disperses without ceremony. No shared glow of affection. No need for it.

 

Just the quiet, grinding hum of creatures who have stopped filling their emptiness with stolen warmth.

 

And started building empires from the cold weight of what was never given.

 

They do not pity the reformed.

 

They do not envy them.

 

They feel only the dense, immutable satisfaction of knowing the hole is filled with something that belongs to them alone.