While Luna and Phoenix cleaned up from their bonding experience  
 
in my Equestria dreamscape someone else was partings ways with a particular pony.
 
Queen Chrysalis wandered into prisoner and specimen holding chamber of the hive. Slowly she sauntered amongst the rows of jewel-like chambers that held various beings. Ponies were not the only creatures that changelings could, mimic, imitate, and exploit. Her hive had captured griffins, bison, and even a relatively young drake that her specialist studied and experimented on while she and her senior staff interrogated others. In a few special cases captives were experimented and interrogated. It was one of those cases that the queen came to a stop in front of.
 
Purple Marten hung upside down in confinement chamber as she had for the last year and a half. She didn’t acknowledge the queen’s arrival, but these days she didn’t acknowledge much of anything. When Chrysalis and her hive awoke from their thousand plus year hibernation brought on by the Deep Freeze they’d been stunned by how far the ponies had advanced in the fields of magic, science, and medicine. It was these advancements that had made Chrysalis decide the path that her subjects were now following.
 
However the changelings were perfectly willing to take advantage of the knowledge that ponies had created. Particularly when it came to using new medicines and materials in the extraction of thoughts, memories, images from the minds of specimens and prisoners. After some trial and error, and quite a few dead specimens, they’d come up with process of extracting every ounce of information they could from especially a pony. Unfortunately the process was kind of slow and it left the specimen utterly broken mentally, but since they were almost always disposed of after interrogation Chrysalis didn’t see that as a problem.
 
Purple Marten had been one of first prisoners to have successfully undergone these new interrogation techniques. Attached to her confinement chambers were various holders for which potions and medicines could introduced into her bloodstream. Scabbed onto the side of the chamber was a panel with several dials that were magically linked to amulets that the unicorn in the chamber wore. They monitored her heart rate, rough neural activity, and general respiratory functions.
 
Chrysalis stared at the unicorn for a moment then her horn glowed and she reached out for Purple Marten’s mind. What little there was of it these days. After a few seconds there was a faint acknowledgement as the unicorn regained a small bit of lucidity. With this link established the queen spoke.
 
“Hello there dear. I wanted to let you know that our plans are progressing very nicely thanks to they information you have provided.” The queen snickered. “In fact your knowledge has been critical to the success of this campaign.”
 
The pale mauve unicorn stared drearily at the changeling as if trying to remember who or what she was. The Chrysalis pressed on with her monologue.
 
“But I fear that we must part ways now, but before that happened I wanted to thank you for your assistance. Now lets wrap things up shall we?”
 
Chrysalis reached out with her levitation and lifted a large medical syringe from it’s holder on the side of the confinement chamber. Yes, advances and research into medicine by ponies had been very useful for her and subjects. She inserted the syringe into a bottle of saline solution and drew some of it up into the syringe. She really didn’t care how much she withdrew. The queen then inserted the syringe into a glass attachment that allowed direct injections into the mare’s bloodstream. She looked at the mare one more time then depressed the plunger injecting the solution along with 6 large and about a dozen smaller air bubbles into a tube that was hooked into the mare’s neck. Then she returned the syringe to its holder and proceeded to watch.
 
It didn’t take a long. A few seconds later Purple Marten started convulsing inside the chamber and the needles on he dials of the monitoring panel started swinging wildly. A few seconds an alert bell started chiming. The queen ignored it.
 
The unicorn’s eyes went wide and she looked at the queen. Chrysalis leaned forward and watched. “Goodbye.” She said.
 
The queen watched over the next few minutes as one by one the dials went flat. Satisfied with the results she went to find a worker to have them empty the chamber. The solid contents would be sent to processing and recycling. There it would be processed to create nourishment for her growing hive. Then she wandered off to tackle her next task. There was always another task to do.
 
To be continued.