The throne room of Canterlot Palace had become a battlefield of light and shadow. Chrysalis stood at its center, wings flared, horn blazing with virulent green fire. Around her, the marble floors were cracked and scarred; shattered stained-glass windows let in shafts of afternoon sun that glittered on the resin of fallen cocoons. Her changelings lay stunned or bound, hissing weakly. The Elements of Harmony—six ponies she had underestimated once before—faced her in a semicircle, their crowns and necklaces glowing with gathered power. In the air above them hovered Princess Cadance and Shining Armor, horns locked, bodies enveloped in a swirling aura of soft pink and white. The power of their love pulsed like a living heart, growing brighter with every beat. Chrysalis laughed—low, mocking, triumphant even in defeat. “You think your little light show will stop me? I have fed on love stronger than yours for years!” Twilight Sparkle’s voice rang out, steady and unafraid. “It’s not just their love, Chrysalis. It’s the love of everypony in Equestria. You can’t feed on what you don’t understand.” The pink aura swelled into a massive wave, cresting above the queen like a tidal surge of pure affection. Chrysalis braced herself, magic flaring to meet it. For a moment, the two forces clashed—emerald lightning against roseate light—and the hall trembled. Then the love broke through. It struck her like a physical blow, lifting her from the floor and hurling her backward. The wave swept outward, catching every changeling in the city, ripping them from their perches and cocoons. A vast dome of shimmering pink expanded over Canterlot, pushing the entire swarm skyward in a whirlwind of black bodies and frantic wings. Chrysalis tumbled through the air, the magic burning against her carapace—not painful, not exactly, but intrusive. It flooded her senses with the taste of love: warm, sweet, abundant, effortless. She saw flashes of what fueled it—Cadance and Shining Armor gazing into each other’s eyes at their wedding, the Mane Six laughing together after countless victories, families reunited, friendships forged and forgiven. Everypony below cheered as the changelings were expelled beyond the city’s borders, their voices rising in a chorus of relief and joy. They were happy. So unbearably, unearned-ly happy. Something deep within Chrysalis stirred—not the familiar hunger, not the calculated rage she had cultivated for centuries. Something older. Rawer. She saw the unicorns in the streets below, embracing, tears of gratitude on their faces. She saw the elite she had once envied—the beautiful, the graceful, the privileged—clapping one another on the back, already planning celebrations, already rewriting the story with themselves as the eternal victors. They would have their happy ending. Again. Always. And the green filly had none. The memory slammed into her with the force of the banishment spell itself: cold cobblestones, blood on a scruffy black mane, a small body going still in her forelegs. A nameless earth pony who had lived in alleys, scavenged scraps, and died in agony defending a creature she had every reason to despise. No one had come to save her. No wave of love had swept in to heal her broken bones. No friends had encircled her with glowing jewels of harmony. She had bled out alone—except for the monster holding her—while the beautiful city carried on above, untouched and indifferent. The love pressing against Chrysalis now tasted like ash. Bitter, choking, false. These ponies spoke of love as if it were their birthright, as if it belonged only to those pretty enough, pure enough, lucky enough to fit their perfect narrative. They wielded it like a weapon to preserve their happiness, never once extending it to the filthy, the angry, the forgotten. Something inside her broke—not with a crack, but with a slow, grinding fracture that echoed through every chamber of her heart. It was not self-pity. It was not even hatred for her own expulsion. It was loathing—for them. Hatred—for the world that allowed their entitled joy while denying even a name to the one soul who had ever fought for her without condition. And beneath both, a cold, crystalline resolve: revenge—not for herself, but for the green filly who never got her happy ending. As the banishment hurled her far beyond Canterlot’s spires, Chrysalis stopped struggling against the pink light. She let it carry her, tasting every cloying note of it, memorizing the flavor of their triumph. One day, she would return. Not to steal their love. But to burn it all down. So that no pretty unicorn would ever again cheer over a victory bought with the unnoticed graves of the small, the broken, and the nameless. Far below, the ponies of Canterlot celebrated their salvation. High above, tumbling through the sky with her scattered hive, Queen Chrysalis smiled—a terrible, quiet smile that had nothing to do with defeat. “For you,” she whispered to the ghost she still carried. “Next time, they won’t get to be happy.” === The badlands wind howled across the shattered remnants of her hive, carrying with it the distant echo of pony cheers from Canterlot. Chrysalis landed hard among the jagged rocks where her changelings lay strewn—dazed, defeated, licking their wounds. They looked to her for command, for reassurance, for the next feast of love. She gave them nothing. She walked past them without a word, deeper into the wasteland, until the moans of her subjects faded behind her. The sun bled crimson on the horizon, painting the barren earth in shades of old bruises. Her wings dragged, her horn flickered weakly, her body still hummed with the cloying aftertaste of Cadance’s expulsion spell. Love had rejected her. Again. But something else had taken root in the vacuum it left behind. At first she had thought it hatred—sharp, familiar, useful. Hatred had carried her this far: hatred of the pretty ponies, hatred of their effortless joy, hatred of the world that let the green filly die nameless while rewarding the beautiful with endless happy endings. But as she stood alone on a cracked plateau overlooking the empty desert, Chrysalis felt the hatred cool and condense, the way magma hardens into obsidian—denser, sharper, unbreakable. Not hatred. Spite. Pure, refined, endless spite. It did not burn hot like rage. It did not hunger like ambition. It simply refused. It refused to yield. It refused to forgive. It refused to let them win. She closed her eyes and reached inward, past the hollow place where stolen love usually pooled, past the scarred chamber where grief for the green filly still smoldered. There it was: a cold, steady current, black and glossy as her own carapace. It had always been there, feeding quietly on every rejection, every sneer, every unspoken “you do not belong.” The first time the unicorns beat her for being ugly. The moment her colt’s love turned to disgust. The night the green filly’s heart stopped in her forelegs while the city above partied on. The triumphant cheers as she was hurled from Canterlot like refuse. Every slight, every injustice, every instance of their happiness purchased at the cost of somepony else’s pain—it had all distilled into this. Spite did not need to be fed. It fed itself. It grew in the dark, on neglect, on dismissal, on the smug certainty of others that they deserved their joy and she did not. Chrysalis opened her eyes. Her horn ignited—not with the usual virulent green, but with a deeper shade, almost black at the core, edged in cold emerald fire. The air around her crackled. Pebbles lifted from the ground, orbiting her like frightened insects. She drew on it. Not a trickle. Not a burst. An ocean. It poured through her veins without limit, without the sickening saturation that came from gorging on love. There was no ceiling, no diminishing return. Spite renewed itself with every breath she took in a world that wanted her broken. A low laugh escaped her—quiet at first, then rising into something exultant and terrible. Love could be exhausted. Love could be withheld. Love could turn to hate in an instant. But spite? Spite endured. Spite remembered. Spite would outlast their songs, their weddings, their harmonious little lives. She spread her wings, and the new power surged through them, lifting her effortlessly into the bruised sky. Far below, her scattered changelings lifted their heads as they felt it—a cold, inexhaustible wave rolling out from their queen. They did not understand it yet. They still hungered for love. But they would learn. Chrysalis turned her gaze toward Canterlot’s distant sparkle on the horizon. “Let them have their love,” she whispered to the wind. “Let them believe it is the strongest magic there is.” Her smile was small, sharp, eternal. “I have something better.” And for the first time since holding a dying green filly in a forgotten alley, Queen Chrysalis felt truly, unshakably strong. Not because the world had given her anything. But because it had taken everything—and she still refused to kneel.