I wasn't sure for how long I slept after fainting, but it couldn't have been any longer than half a day. Before even opening my eyes, my ears started picking up a voice. It sounded like a somewhat harsh mare's voice overlapped with a creepy mare voice. To my surprise, the voice was familiar as was the song she was singing.
---s -ay --- b--n -st ---fect.
--is --- ---t I ----ned si-ce not -g ago.
P---cess Sparkle -ade a ---t-r,
Th- -irth of my --ious daughter,
I hardly believe that this is all so.
Thanks to the mention of my name, I was completely awake by the end of the song. I opened my still heavy eyes and looked upon the face of one that some part of my subconscious had already feared would be there: Queen Chrysalis.
There looking down at me was one of the many enemies of myself and everypony I knew. I couldn't move against her magical grasp; heck, I could barely keep my eyes open. There was also the fact that she was much larger than I could remember and I could not seem to access my magic. I did what any sane pony would do in that situation and screeched at the top of my lungs.
With my eyes closed and my voice turned up to eleven, the only information I could process was through feel. What I felt were the sensations of being shaken in every imaginable direction, being flipped upside-down, and being poked in the cheeks. Those were clearly attempts to quiet me down, but there was one lesson from a friend that filled my thoughts at that time: If it isn't getting you hurt or killed, cause your captors as much grief as possible and milk them for all they're worth.
"YOUR MAJESTY!" The sudden voice eclipsing mine stopped my screeching. I opened my eyes to see what I assumed was the floor. "WHAT ARE YOU...ahem. Pardon me for my directness your majesty, but what are you doing?!"
"I, I was singing. She woke up. She kept crying. I tried to make her stop." I couldn't see the queen's face, but I easily imagined it being as dumbfounded as her tone.
The other voice sighed in exasperation. "I understand that your majesty is new to this, but you must never shake a larva."
'What larva?!' I found myself thinking. The one being shaken ... was me?'
I was suddenly pulled into direct contact with Chrysalis chest and was flipped right-side-up before I could follow through with my train of thought. "I was not shaking my daughter!" she half-yelled in indignation.
'Daughter?!'
"Then why was she facing the ground?"
"I wished to give her a new outlook on life," she responded with almost no hesitation.
That...off comment stunned the other changeling long enough to allowed me enough time to think. 'Larva, daughter. Larva are the infant stages of many arthropods; especially those with hive systems. Larva, daughter, shaking. She was shaking a larva that was her daughter. Daughter, shaking, me, Chrysalis.' My eyes widened as much as they could. 'A nightmare, that's all this is. Princess Luna will show up any moment, get rid of all this, then we can laugh about it in the morning.' I laughed at the absurdity of my situation, though my laugh was squeaker than I remember. 'It’s nothing. My brain's just trying to get the details right.'
It was then that I heard a little gurgling in my belly. Thankfully, relief came in the form of a foreign object being jammed into my mouth. I bit down on it in surprise then suddenly found my mouth filled by a delicious fluid. "Here you are, Princess. I wouldn't be much of a Caretaker if I let you miss out on your first meal," she said with a motherly tone and a touch of pride.
I finished the bottle quickly and immediately felt an onset of drowsiness. I closed my eyes and tried to let the sleep within a dream take me. Unfortunately my desire to sleep with my full stomach was impeded by Chrysalis's nuzzling and cooing. "Oh what a healthy appetite you have my lovely little aphid. I can't wait to see you grow up big and strong." She nuzzled me more firmly and her tone shifted. "I know that you will become a splendid queen."
My heart skipped a beat at her tone. It was one I was certain I never heard before; yet some deep, instinctual part of me knew what it was. The dread I didn't know why I felt didn't last long as my exhaustion was revealed through a yawn. "Your Majesty," I heard the other female changeling saying, "perhaps we should lay the princess to bed so that she may get some rest. It'll be some time ‘til she can remaining awake for long."
Chrysalis emitted a quiet snarl for a few seconds before huffing. "Very well. You are the finest caretaker in the hive after all."
"Thank you Your Majesty, and excuse me for saying that I am honored to have the opportunity to aid in raising the future queen."
"Yes, well I expect that you will live up to the honor I've bestowed upon you. I am sure you understand what fate shall befall you should these expectations not be met" The underlying venom in her tone and the following silence reminded me clearly of the evil she was capable of. "Contact me the instant she wakes." After a few more moments, I was transferred between two different levitation auras then was wrapped in a soft blanket. It took me only a few seconds to fall asleep.
In my next waking moment, I found myself still wrapped in a warm blanket's embrace. A mild stinging pain around my stomach told me that I was hungry again. I opened my eyes with slightly more ease than previously and looked up at the same cave-like walls from before. I tried to vocalize my distaste for the fantasy's persistence, but the sound came out as an adorable mew. It didn't even take five seconds when I heard a whoosh sound coupled with seeing a torrent of green light.
"Where is my daughter so that I may spend time with her?!"
I managed to quickly squirm around enough to lay eyes on the smaller changeling holding her hoof in front of her lips. "Shhhhh. You mustn't arrive so loudly, Your Majesty. You could startle the princess."
Chrysalis chuckled back at her dismissively. "Nonsense, she is my daughter and, like me, is ready to deal with any and all surprises with poise befitting one of noble birth."
'Yes, because you responded so well against my brother's love-powered spell shield that 'didn't' completely foil your Canterlot invasion schemes.' Dream or not, I would have loved to see her reaction to such a comment.
I was unfortunately denied the opportunity to imagine what her expression would be when I was picked up in Chrysalis's magic. She nuzzled me then chuckled. "You agree with me, don't you my darling little aphid." I chuckled back at her tone and expression: Anypony would when watching one of Equestria's terrors treating them like an infant.
"Your Majesty, it is time for the princess to feed."
Chrysalis gave the smaller changeling an annoyed glare. "Then instead of wasting our time telling us this, present to me her meal Caretaker." I tried to groan at her rude behavior, but the sound once again came out as adorable. "I know little one, but we must show our subjects patience. She will learn soon enough."
I rolled my eyes at her continued sense of superiority. Chrysalis may have been the mother in this fantasy, but I could clearly tell that she knew less about raising a foal ... or larva as the case may be, than the other changeling. I decided to absentmindedly suckle on the bottle I was given while mentally running through the details I picked up on. Chrysalis has so far acted like a dotting parent with only hints of her maliciousness cropping up in place of what could otherwise be called hammy behavior. My caretaker, which also seemed to be her name, seemed mostly submissive to Chrysalis's whims, yet she still exhibited some small level of authority.
Then there was myself. Despite the fact that I was really supposed to be an alicorn pony, nothing about being a larva felt out of place. There was a complete lack of phantom sensations and every movement I made felt completely natural. I honestly had to admire how well the dream inserted me into the role of a changeling larva.
The last detail that ran through my mind was how long the dream was. I knew that every second that passed in this dream was a second in the waking world. The only place I've heard of dreams forming a shift in temporal speed was in fiction: usually as a plot convenience. It’s actually something that has irked Princess Luna to no end.
I finished the bottle and my thought then enjoyed the full sensation while trying to ignore Chrysalis praising my appetite again. My digestive system had other plans in the form of an uncomfortable pressure in my belly. I tried to work it around for safe expulsion, but it couldn't be so. The inevitable result was a stream of liquid shooting out of my mouth and all over the changeling queen's face. 'I'll have to look into figuring out how to do that at will sometime.'
"Your Majesty!" yelled Caretaker as she used a towel to start wiping the bile from my mouth then from Chrysalis's face.
She only wiped the queen twice before the towel was taken from her magic. "Enough! Your purpose is to care for my daughter, not me; I am more than capable of that."
Caretaker bowed. "Of course Your Majesty." I scowled at the oppressive queen: Yes Chrysalis could take care of herself, but that is no excuse for snapping at somepony…someling, somebuggy…someone who's only trying to help.
'Hmm, I wonder what term changelings use in addressing strangers or a group?' I shook my head and returned my thoughts to the length of the dream I found myself in. If I've yet to wake after days worth of mental activity, then I can't be sleeping naturally. That meant that this had to be an induced dreamlike state. 'Then what's happened to my real body?'
'Scenario one: Everything that happened prior to waking up in that egg was real and this reality was the construct of the most advanced dream projector available.' The problem with that theory was that the would be much happier and Luna would've revealed herself by that point.
'Scenario two: The attack was real and I was taken to one of my enemies while, changelings most likely. This dream exists as a way to incapacitate me further with the possibility of inflicting Stockhound Syndrome.' The problem there was in how I was transported without bleeding out.
'Scenario three: The attack was also a fabrication on top of the rest of scenario two.' The issue there was that I remembered the attack: the pain, the bleeding, the shock. It felt as real as anything I ever felt, but so did being a changeling larva.
'Scenario four: I really died and this is some freaky afterlife that I am going through as some kind of joke: a very unfunny one.'
I was pulled from my contemplation by a hoof nudging me on the side. I turned towards the source to see Caretaker and Chrysalis looking at me with worried expressions that shifted to relieved. "Caretaker, what was that?"
"I … I don't know. She's not blind. There's nothing wrong. It's like she was lost in thought."
"Lost in thought?" Chrysalis asked while blinking dumbly. She blinked a few more times before smiling widely and pulling me in for a firm hug. "What a brilliant larva you are! Already you are learning to plot the downfall of your enemies!” I saw Caretaker raise a hoof to interject, but she decided against saying it; though, if I had to guess, she would've mentioned how infants don't have enemies to plot against. "We must foster this budding brilliance. What stories do we have to read to her?!"
"We can read to her Ants and Aphids."
"Of course! What young changeling's life would be complete without hearing that tale?!" She raised a hoof towards Caretaker and waved it dismissively. "Go and fetch a copy so that I may share this tale with my lovely daughter."
Caretaker departed as Chrysalis cuddled up to me with uncomfortable closeness. I distracted myself with what little anticipation I could drum up for what I knew would be a children's book. I was curious about what kind of story this construct would form for me. I only wished that I would be able to read it under my own power, but I knew it was impossible in my condition. That left me hoping this dream Chrysalis could read a tale properly.
It only took a few more seconds for Caretaker to reveal herself levitating an unfortunately thin book. As the book passed between the two changelings, I got a clear view of the title: "Ants and Aphids."
'Whaaaaa?!" I blinked, then blinked again. Over and over I blinked only for the words upon those covers to remain unchanging. 'That's impossible! The parts of the brain responsible for dreams are completely separate from the parts responsible for recognizing writing. You can not read in a dream.' Quick, shallow breaths tried and failed to provide the air needed to fuel my ongoing panic. 'There has to be an explanation!'
My thinking locked up as a horrifying thought pervaded my mind that I would have easily dismissed had I been calm. I tried to silence it; tried to quell the idea, but it had already come. 'No, can I really be…?' I couldn't be sure if it was either my mind or my body playing some kind of prank, but in that moment one of the two decided to make me feel another, more familiar pressure in my digestive system that I knew would not be denied with my current bowel control. I had no choice but to let it happen and to tune out Chrysalis' shocked and mildly horrified expression in favor of figuring things out.
'This can't be! Reincarnation is nothing more than a superstitious concept! Even if it was real, memories are stored in the brain. How can I remember? No-no-no-no-no! This can't be happening! There's no way I'm a baby, and not just any baby: Chrysalis' daughter! So what if everything adds up. Things like this don't happen to anypony! This joke has gone on long enough Princess Luna...Princess Luna!' There was no response.
My panic continued as every attempt to think of a reason this wasn't real only ended at evidence proving the contrary. "What is happening, Caretaker?!" yelled the queen with a panic that didn't help my own.
"I-I...I think she's hyperventilating."
"Then what do we do about it?!" Chrysalis yelled threatening.
"We need to calm her down!"
'Then why don't you two stop yelling?!' which is what I would have loved to yell out loud if changeling larva had functional vocal cords.
"Try talking or singing to her," Caretaker suggested oh so helpfully.
'Great idea, because a song is exactly what a pony needs when dealing with an existential crisis!' I thought sarcastically. 'Got any better ideas?!'
My thoughts went unheard, leaving Chrysalis to pursue the idea. A stroke of inspiration flashed in her eyes then she started humming a tune that I found oddly familiar. My breathing normalized very slightly, emboldening her into song.
This day has been just perfect.
This day that I planned since not long ago.
Princess Sparkle made a martyr,
The birth of my precious daughter,
I hardly believe that this is all so.
...
My breathing did a full 180 from being completely erratic to being nearly as dead as every bit of deniability I had left. What was left in its place was a level of emotion that could not be described with one word, so I used all of them: abhorred, agitated, angry, antagonized, antipathetic, bitter, displeased, enraged, furious, hateful, hostile, irate, infuriated, irked, loathing, malicious, miffed, nettled, outraged, peeved, pissed, piqued, rancorous, resentful, revolted, upset, vengeful, venomous, vexed, vindictive, wrathful, and any other unmentionable synonym.
Chrysalis, my mother, looked at me with a hopeful smile. I glowered at her, took a deep breath, then screamed with all my might.
This sort of reminds me of Twilight: The Gamer. Like, a lot. Coincidence?
Apart from that, I really like what you did and am awaiting updates.
I found one mistake... Your time between posting is damn too long!
butt seriously I'm very intrigued, and you can do alot to annoy chrysalis in larva form :D plus all that crisis
You better hurry up with more chapters
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
This is a very interesting story thus far, and I cannot wait to read more!
Twilight shall become a beautiful butterfly one day. Or a changeling queen, also good.
But seriously, I like this story. Always interesting to see changeling society/biology like this.
So Chrysalis had her assassinated, then. Does she know about the reincarnation?
So... based on the 'Active, Unique Passive' and all that, changelings operate off video game physics?
Interesting so far, but there's not a whole lot of substance yet. Mostly I want to see what happens once Twilight learns to walk (and, I suppose, talk).
Well, now that we have clarification as to what's going on (with the exception of Harmony's Avatar) I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. Especially when Twilight re:gains the ability to speak.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
Smooth, Chrysalis. Very smooth.
How long do changelings take to mature? Bugs usually don't take very long, but bugs also aren't the size of ponies (much less alicorns!). If Twilight has truly picked up Rarity's lesson, then I expect that Chrysalis will soon start counting the
daysminutes until her daughter grows up enough that she can send the brat out on her own.If she can hold back on her vindictiveness, though, she could take advantage of the resources Chrysalis and the hive will so eagerly offer her. Changeling magic, books from outside Equestria, information on Changeling history and physiology... and the means to hinder any future plans of Chrysalis's.
There are so many ways this can go--I'm all but quivering in anticipation. I haven't seen somepony getting reincarnated as a changeling--converted into one, yeah, but not this. Will she be running away as soon as she is capable of leaving, or wait until she's fully grown? From the story description it looks like she'll take on some measure of responsibility for the hive, but there are a few ways I can see her bringing change "for the better" without actually leading the hive herself (although I don't think that's too likely). Will this story ever look outside the hive at how everypony else is reacting to Twilight's death (if she wasn't replaced by a changeling, that is...), or will the p.o.v. remain with Twilight?
I'm so glad I favorited this.
5270733 Your picture makes me think your comment was sarcastic, that is amazing hahahahahha
So love this want more soon
Your doing a amazing job. This is a very interesting concept. Please. Keep going - your possible new follower shadow-silver
Re: monster is one of the best novels i'm reading so I have very high expectations toward this don't disapoint me!
XD Enjoying it so far. The avatar's archive thing is cool, too.
Only Twilight would list get feelings in alphabetical order.
Are we allowed to make guesses as to what the poem says? I have some pretty good ideas...(looks half a page down)
5270680 This story has very little to do with Twilight: The Gamer. I'm sure that your referring to Avatar's Archive and Twilight's reincarnation, but both are significantly different from Twilight: The Gamer.
5270696 5270687 I don't write very fast. I'm lucky to get in 200 words a day.
5270825 Chrysalis has no clue.
5271030 The time when Twilight regains the ability to move around freely and speak will actually be pretty quiet. It's the time just before then that gets crazy.
5271309 You're actually pretty spot on with some of your speculation here. Before anything else, I need to get Twilight through the larval arch. It shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 more chapters. There's only so much I can do with a baby without turning this into a Slice of Life/Comedy story.
5272841 I know. If you've read Re:monster before, then you could easily tell where I got this idea by the first chapter. Obviously Re:Changeling will be vastly different from the inspirational source.
5273289 There's no need to guess what the broken song was because it's the exact same as the second one. The only reason the first one is broken up is because Twilight couldn't make out all the words.
5273478 Gee, maybe I should read the chapter before asking questions about it.
5270842
No. It is the Elements of Harmony that run off of Video Game Logic, but otherwise good guess.
The last (and first) person I used this review formula liked it, so here you go I guess
Stats: (Current chapter as of review: 2)
Shallow face value-7/10
Ooh, a Twilight Becomes a Changeling story. A lot of people do this, which lowers the interest of people scrolling by. Let's see if you can succeed in being a 'hidden gem'.
Plot & feel-10/10
In my opinion, the most important part of an X Becomes a Changeling fic is the reaction scene. This is what most people (unless my knowledge of the universe is flawed) are here for initially. You have an entire chapter devoted to the reaction scene, which is done pretty much perfectly. The only possible nitpicky problem that I could have is Twilight's sheer amount of screaming in chapter 2. What does a screaming mini-changeling even sound like?
Pacing-8/10
Dramatic stories written by brand-new amateurs seem to have this problem. The stellar like:dislike ratio makes me think you aren't an amateur, which explains the lack of a pacing problem. Longer chapters might be better, but you're good at using the few words you have wisely.
Headcanon-10/10 so far
If you write this kind of story, you have to use rules/ideas/concepts not specifically sanctioned by Lauren Faust and co. That is, unless you think of the comics as canon... There are still missing pieces of information regarding how Twilight is reincarnated, but what's a story without something to figure out later?
Spelling and Grammar-9/10
There may have been one grammatical error (missing comma) in chapter 2.
45/50-Highly Recommendable! I guess you did succeed. I'm excited to see where this can go...
(-1 Read It Later)
(+1 Like)
(+1 Favorite)
(+1 Watch)
5273628 I can see what someone else would like your review formula considering I love it.
I understand how common it is for Twilight to become a changeling in Fimfiction, but this idea wanted to be written.
Believe it or not, but Twilight's reaction to being reborn as a changeling isn't over yet. She's now at step 2 of a 5 step process; though I do think steps 3 and 4 will end up rolled into one.
Increasing chapter size presents all kinds of problems and may end up worsening the story. There is little time in a day where I feel inspired enough to write on top of having the free time to do so. Three to six-thousand word chapters would take weeks to write. There's also the fact that this first arc would need quite a bit of filler to become bigger: I'd rather not waste words and effort.
Yeah, I've only got 2 chapters and just over 4,000 words. It would be pretty poor work if I revealed the whole picture within such a small frame. There's a lot happening in the background that I haven't touched.
I try my best with the grammar, but an author looking through their own work will most assuredly miss something. Can you point out the missed comma for me?
5273730
At the bottom of the review thing, it says that you succeeded in making a more popular plotline great. I don't know how to react to the other things you said...
(Watch +67)
Also, here's that
typeotypo.So Twilight died and got reborn as a Changeling. Interesting concept
Twilight is now a bug-bot with a wikipedia database inside of her head!
5278346 you would expect that with Twilight.
"Oh what a health appetite you have my lovely little aphid."
Little typo here, "Health" should be "Healthy"
Other than that, this story is turning out to be pretty damn good.
That's a myth Batman started actually.
Not like she could know(I think) but all evidence to the contrary last chapter where she got stabbed then just sat there taking it.
Ah, so she does know. Alright. Wretched bitch.
The last detail that ran through my mind was how long the dream was. I knew that every second that passed in this dream was a second in the waking world. The only place I've heard of dreams forming a shift in temporal speed was in fiction: usually as a plot convenience. Its actually something that has irked Princess Luna to no end.
I have dreams that seem to go on for weeks and end up taking fifteen minutes in the real world all the time. Yeah, it does it by messing with your time sense instead of literally having you think faster, but it's indistinguishable from inside the dream.
...and sometimes I can read in dreams too.
Not that Twilight isn't the sort of pony to go right to the pop science rules of dreaming to figure out what's going on.
I am really enjoying this so far.
I have to say though, the ending to this chapter was brilliant. Fantastic job.
Debatable. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't at least once in their lives woken up and checked the clock a few minutes before their alarm goes off, dozed back off, and had a "long" dream before waking up again. Hippocampus studies on rats will occasionally detect cells corresponding to location memory firing far quicker than in waking traversal.
Admittedly it is difficult to quantify though.
This however isn't. Why do people keep thinking this? I read in my dreams all the time. Hell, I've had programming breakthroughs with explicit code while dreaming, and from what I've heard from my coworkers this isn't even particularly uncommon.
7027080 I think it's more along the lines of it being a story she has never read. In a dream i would not at all be surprised if you could pull up a memory of a book you've already read, but to create a completely new book from scratch like that? I'm not 100% sure if that's a thing. I may very well be wrong, I'm no expert in dreams or in the inner workings of the brain. I only have a year of psychology, and if i dream i never remember them, so i can't really go from experience on this one.
... Ah ha, so, I suppose information cannot be flexible within the confines of something as fluid as the mind? I do not know quite how to explain it, but dreams do mess with your sense of time, an eternity could seem to pass in only mere hours, it is an illusion, true, but if it looks like a duck. I've had dreams that seemed to last for days during cat naps, and dreams seemingly shorter than a minute take up half a day.
Honestly, Luna being irked by this is like a video game nerd becoming irked whenever people call Doom a 3D first person shooter.
SADFSATGDFGFSAREGDGDFGRGDRG....
I am apparently superhuman by this story's standards.
Urg, sorry for all the negativity, I really do like the story. And I truly don't want to sound like an arrogant asshole, so again I apologize.
7220149
How could anyone consider the original DOOM not a 3D FPS game? (I'm honestly curious)
It's a game which uses a primitive, CPU-rendered version of modern 3D graphics to display a first-person perspective and the goal is to shoot enemies. All of the differences between a multiplayer game of DOOM and a Quake 3 match are purely technical and trying to argue that Quake 3 isn't a 3D FPS would get you laughed out of the room.
(To this day, Quake 3 is widely considered the pinnacle of the 3D FPS arena shooter genre because, not only is the game superbly balanced, it's also in the sweet spot for graphics because, given how human vision works, it's hard to add more detail without making the game harder in an unsatisfying way.)
I suppose someone could try to argue that a 3D FPS must use the GPU, but that's silly, since games which straddled the introduction of GPUs (like the Quake series) let you choose between CPU or GPU rendering at runtime and both Google Chrome's WebGL 3D support and Linux's OpenGL 3D acceleration can transparently fall back to software rendering if something's wrong with your video drivers.
So I'm guessing Twilight wasn't supposed to remember what happened?
Also: I really liked how Twilight gave her list of emotions in alphabetical order; were it anybody else I would have though it odd, but in this case it makes hilarious sense.
7542326 it's not 3D there's a video about it.
And let me tell you how it's done makes doom all the more awsome stunt me 9n this
5278346 With the voice of Abathur.
This is what a changling larva scream sounds like
Nymph Twilight looked directly up at her new mother, opened her mouth, and said, "Martyr doesn't rhyme with daughter."
"Her first words! ...wait, what?"