A Journey Unthought Of: Revival of Chaos

by Hustlin Tom

Prologue

Superstition is an inherent part of any society, and Equestria is no exception to this rule. In the tales of ponies that came from the old days, there were fables and folktales alike; some were to instill bright moral lessons in the minds of growing young colts and fillies, while others were simply tales of the exploits of hero and heroine alike, where everypony lived happily ever after. There were some tales that were told, however, that were not meant to breed happiness. Legends spoke of beings that came in the night, who could steal away your loved ones and replace them, and you would be none the wiser that your husband, wife, father, mother, daughter, son, or any other relation you loved was now somepony else. These tales in time fell to the wayside, being unpopular to begin with for the fear they incited. Besides, there was no such thing as the creatures told in those tales. Some tales are meant to be shared, however, because without the wariness they inspire, one may find that someday their nightmares are very real, and that nopony was prepared for the possibility of it being so, for fear of it ever occurring.

In a dark part of the Everfree Forest, where no common animal dared tread, there lay a small cavern. A creature made its home in this hole; a large three headed dog named Cerberus. Whenever any ignorant animal came too close to entering the cave, Cerberus would be released to teach them the error of their ways. When the threat to the cave was neutralized, the three headed dog would return to its pen, where it would enter a chamber that preserved it in an icy dreamless sleep until the next intruder came. No being of any kind was allowed to pass into the cavern. The dog had no knowledge of why it was protecting this particular hole in the ground; it only knew its masters had commanded it to. Further into the cave, if one could make it that far without drawing Cerberus’ wrath, was a deep shaft; a chasm that looked as if it were a large gaping esophagus to a mighty beast. Down and down it went, hundreds and hundreds of feet, until the tunnel leveled into a horizontal slope. Down here, in a hole where sunlight had never penetrated its depths, where everything was encompassed in a cold muggy environment of subterranean atmosphere, lay Tartarus; the place of legends, frightful and terrible.

Almost a millennia and a half ago, humanity had been forced into life underground after the end of an apocalyptic war on its surface that wiped out all life, except that which was safe below ground. In time, one colony of humanity, Vanguard, discovered a spatial anomaly that emitted a strange radiation that could alter almost any lifeform it came into contact with. Armed with their growing knowledge of what they dubbed ‘Tessaractal Radiation’, they planned to retake the surface and restore life to the planet with this energy, and with the genetic engineering of new lifeforms. As with any scientific endeavor, trial and error was to be expected, and there were of course many failures. Most could easily be cleaned up or eliminated. Tartarus was the place where humanity sent ‘reject stock’ from their experimentation that proved too dangerous to be kept around, but could not easily be destroyed. Dozens upon dozens of cryogenic chambers lined the hole that led up to the surface. The majority of them were filled with one type of creature; the ones that never stopped evolving. Some had even gone so far as to call them ‘the ultimate survivors’, and that statement held true; even with humankind long dead and gone, the Changelings remained deep in an icy slumber.

As the years passed, a few of them had eventually adapted to the cold of their chambers, and had escaped to the world above, where they spawned the forgotten stories of the shape-taking bugs that went bump in the night. Without their royalty, though, the majority of the escaped Changelings eventually starved, because they were not intelligent enough to maintain cover for long periods of time, so that they could feed off the emotions of others. In among the many uniformly sized pods that held their captive insectoids, was one large pod. The slumbering occupant was the leader of the Hive; their Queen. Her metabolism had been slowed to a near standstill by the ice surrounding her lithe and gossamer winged form. As time had inevitably marched on, though, her physiology had begun to adapt to the cold. If one were to look at her now, they could see her chest imperceptively rise and fall with a gradually increasing tempo, as her body had almost become completely immune to the cold. Today was the day that hell would break loose from its bonds; today was the day Queen Chrysalis awoke from her slumber.

Her eyes slowly fluttered open, revealing her dark emerald, slit-like sclera. She stared up through the small portcullis near her face that offered her a splendid view of the stalactites decorating the cavern ceiling. She lay in the chamber for a short while, trying to recall her dreams and last few memories. The humans had shoved her in this pod when she and her Hive had escaped their cages. They had tried to overthrow the humans; she was superior to them in every conceivable way, so what reason was there to remain subservient to them? The humans had fought back with their science, and they had poisoned her and her Hive with a compound that forcibly took away their shapeshifting for a time, leaving her children powerless. She had taken down six of those aggravating little monkeys before they had iced her and put her in this pod. Now, however, was the time to be free from her old life. Now was the time to start anew.

Using her amorphous body structure, Queen Chrysalis punched a hole through the portcullis with a super dense iron hoof. She then transformed into a puddle of black goo which slid up the walls of her sarcophagus and out the hole she had just created. Reforming herself atop her pod, she began to take in her immediate surroundings. She counted no fewer than five hundred Changeling pods, with sixty three missing occupants. She would have to count those missing presumed dead; still, four hundred and thirty-seven was an excellent number of soldiers all the same. She turned her head up to the ceiling, and from out of her mouth came a high pitched wail. The magically enhanced scream shattered the glass of her Hive’s cryo pods, and in time they awakened. Using her emerald magic, Queen Chrysalis ripped the hatches off of some of the closer pods, and her Changelings slowly began to emerge and approach her, awaiting her command. She began to look around for her commanders to her army, her eyes roving over the gathering hoard of insectoids.

“Royal Candidates; my sisters,” she barked out harshly, “Present yourselves to me!”

In a flutter of several sets of wings, three Changelings stood before her, and they bowed to her. These Changelings stood a little taller than the drones around them, but they were still shorter than their mistress. They also had the single eye structure of their Queen, as opposed to the compound eyes of their drones. The highest ranked of them was Pupa; she held the Queen’s ear on many matters, and she was skilled in the art of finding suitable food sources for her Hive. She was just as slender as her Queen, and her mane was shoulder length and thick. The second among them was Larva, who was large and bulky by Changeling standards. She enjoyed the sweet nectar of love just as much as any of the Hive, but she preferred the spicy but bitter taste of anger and the bloodlust of battle. The last of the Royal Candidates was Papillon. The smallest of the three Changeling commanders, she enjoyed the subtle art of deception. While any Changeling could deceive, Papillon reveled in the action of becoming a new being, taking her place at center stage in the theater of falsehoods, and draining her food source of the last of their tasty emotions while she exited stage left.

“So we have lost two. This I will have to make do with.” the Queen muttered to herself. Speaking out to her troops now, she raised her voice, “My beautiful Changelings, the time has come for us to see what lies on the surface above. Much time may have passed, and who knows what we may find, but this world is ours to rule! No matter what obstacles we face, we will take what was predestined as our birthright; Earth belongs to us, and we will seize it!”

The Hive hissed and screeched in passionate agreement.

“Should we find any of our old masters, you all know what to do with them,” the Queen smiled wickedly.

All the Changelings around her angrily buzzed their acknowledgement of her instructions.

“Now, we rise!” Queen Chrysalis grinned before she let out another ear piercing screech.

The Hive scrambled into the air without hesitation, organizing into complicated formations as they flew out of the cavern and up the tall shaft of their pit to the world up above. The mouth of the cave that led to the Everfree Forest belched forth a large humming, jittering mass of black chitinous armored bugs that buzzed off into the grey morning light. By the time their guardian had been released from cryostasis, the Changelings were free and far away from the cave mouth, flying up and out of the gloomy Everfree Forest, to the waiting world of Equestria beyond. Needing to warn someone, anyone at all, of the breach to its territory, Cerberus angrily ran out of its cave into the forest beyond, and then from out of the forest to a small town not too far away from its home. It was a little frontier town by the name of Ponyville.

Comments

[Hustlin Tom]

arch.413chan.net/it_begins-(n1296773412364).jpg
For my old readers, welcome back, one and all! For my new readers, welcome! If at any time there is something in the story that confuses you plotwise, feel free to ask me, and I can point you in the right direction. I'm so very excited that I'm finally starting to post this story now!

Now, update schedule. Because I'm on Spring Break, and to celebrate the start of this sequel, until next Saturday I will be uploading a chapter every day. After this special week, I will instead go on a schedule of uploading one or two chapters every Saturday. If at any point you have questions, feel free to please ask me! I hope you enjoy my story, and have a pleasant day!

[Daedalus]

Entity is in blue... I foresee House of Leaves references!

[Hustlin Tom]

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I've never actually read House of Leaves before, but from what little I've read about it, it seems intriguing. You do have a very good point, though: blue text will denote some rather important things in the future. Also, Homestar Runner fan! High bro hoof up here! /)

[Daedalus]

2308554 Brohoof to you!/)

[Alan Smithee]

Clever giving yourself a prrromotion today. Now I feel like I MUST read this or else I'll DIE...