They're EVERYWHERE!

Ch: 3/13 - Whisper

She knows a lot more about the world but she still thinks Shroud was the first queen...

Or was I lied to?

How does Scream fit into this, if my mother warned me about her?

"Hmmm. Do you know anything about our race before Shroud? Where did we live? What did we do? Anything?"

"I must admit I don't. The hive mind was already toxic enough in my time and gaining any knowledge with some degree of certainty was a miracle. It can also be that we were split into small, irrelevant hives which Shroud united and didn't bother burdening the hive mind with remembering those parts. I can't say. To be honest, I always preferred looking forward into the future, trying to figure out a way to save us from the horrible line of screw-ups that Carapace started when she tried to invade the griffons. Warrior queens, am I right?" she raises a hoof for a high-one which Chrysalis smacks with a smirk of her own.

"One might say you succeeded, grandma. At least for a time."

"No, my daughter did. I saved what little I could after my mother Hiss had to retreat back to the Badlands. Not to stroke my own ego too much, but the vast majority of hive procedures, rules, and habits are my doing. We survived with next to no love only thanks to proper discipline and management."

"The queen of changeling bureaucracy," Chrysalis can't help taking a jab.

"I take that as a compliment, little filly," Whisper reaches out and smacks Chrysalis in the back of her head.

"You do know that I'm literally at least 7 times older than any other queen who ever lived, right? I know you know that, you're inside my head."

"You're my granddaughter and that's that," Whisper huffs before smiling and pulling Chrysalis into a hug.

"I'm still on edge because a part of me thinks you're trying to trick me and I can't blame that part, especially facing myself and my mother in here," Chrysalis freezes.

"As I said, I know the situation you're in. You yourself said it - you are old, older than any of us. You're not that smart-"

"Hey!"

"If you were, you would have learned from your mother's and your own mistakes before repeating them and getting bubbled out of Canterlot, wouldn't you?"

"Smartass..."

"But you should know that your own age doesn't mean that much when half of your head is the even longer-lived line of other queens with hundred times your experience. What the common changelings won't ever understand is that the queen isn't a changeling, she is the changeling, the race, its knowledge, its experience, its hope. Unfortunately, I wish more queens understood what it really meant before it was time to throw it all away."

"I have to, grandma."

"I know, I know," Whisper nods, "But maybe you'll be able to write a better chapter of changeling history with only the barest knowledge of the previous ones instead of being burdened by the pain of living through them, even as someone else," she stands up, "Well, I guess I've been staving off death for long enough-"

"Wait!"

"Hmm?"

"I need to know one more thing before you go. What do you know about Scream?"

"Our protector? During my time, she sometimes informed us about what was going on on the surface. The queens from more... tumultuous times have more experience with her. My only major contact with her was when she guided us through the construction of my throne. You know, the one that blocks all magic that doesn't belong to changelings."

"I've always felt really weird when sitting or lying on it, cushions or not..."

"It's from a kind of extremely rare crystal called istrium. We had to mine it all the way north under mount Everhoof. Supposedly, its presence instills remarkable fear in other species but our hive link connections protect us from it and our innate energy manipulation allows us to ignore its magic draining properties," Whisper shrugs, "That's why ponies never found us after my mother had to retreat here and I bashed her skull in when she started eating most of the hive to keep herself alive and strong."

"Huh. So you don't think Scream had an ulterior motive for helping us?"

"Filly, she's an alicorn. The entire history of our hive mind is only the tiniest blip on the timeline of her life. Of course she wasn't doing it out of the pure goodness of her heart but I wasn't going to bitch about the pony keeping my race alive and risk making her rethink that decision," Whisper rolls her eyes.

"You know what? I can get behind that," this time it's Chrysalis who pulls the other queen into a hug and stays like that until there's nothing left but empty darkness.

When she opens her eyes again, the now more than familiar ceiling of the Manehattan apartment is there.

She's weaker than before the conversation but not exhausted like after mentally fighting during the previous two.

"Are you okay, Your Majesty?" asks 68 standing on guard by her side.

Chrysalis wipes her eyes.

"Liquid pride, 68, that's all."