‘No… Not here! Not again! LET US OUT OF THIS PLACE!’ Tears streaked down her face as she repeatedly pounded her hoof. With each strike, a massive boom could be heard as the moonscape in front of her rippled. Despite her efforts, the dream remained in place. Again, she vehemently struck the boundary of the dream and, yet again, she was rewarded with nothing more than a ripple. Luna collapsed into her moon’s dust as she bowed her head in defeat, once more unable to penetrate into the world between dreams. Unbeknownst to her, Luna’s ripples leaked outwards beyond the boundaries of her dream.

The figure standing nearby started walking towards her. Its two feet gently kicked up a trail of dust as it walked towards her. The chimp-like figure that had occupied her nightly moon dreams eventually wandered close enough to touch.

Had Princess Luna been paying attention, she would have noticed that the creature was the clearest it had ever been. Had she been paying attention, Luna would have seen it sit down next to her. Luna would have seen it shift closer, seen it stop just a hair’s width from touching her blue coat. Were her eyes not filled with tears, Luna would have seen it all.

She did, however, hear when a filly’s voice said, “Don’t cry.”

Luna sighed, her magic clutching a mug of that wonderful, life-giving substance known as coffee. One of her hooves massaged her aching temple. Her sister, Celestia, sat in the chair next to her at the breakfast table, horn aglow. After a moment’s time – though it seemed like an eternity to the night princess – the elder’s horn finally went dark.

“Luna, there is nothing that I can find,” Celestia proclaimed. “As far as I can tell, there is no magic influencing you. Everything should be fine.”

“Fine? Fine? ‘Tia, everything is not fine. How can you claim such a thing when every night for the last month I am imprisoned within my own mind, unable to aid the suffering minds of our subjects?” Luna proclaimed, slipping into the Royal Canterlot Voice near the end.

“As I said,” Celestia replied, “everything seems to be correct, at least as far as I can tell. Then again, you are the expert in dreams.” The solar princess took a sip of her morning tea. After setting it back down, Celestia asked, “Perhaps, is there something you might have missed?”

“No, nothing,” Luna moaned before banging her head against the table. After a moment, she suddenly sat up, eyes alight with realization. “Wait, it spoke to me this time!”

Celestia tilted her head in confusion. “It?”

Luna looked at her sister and then said, “Have I really not told you of it, ‘Tia? The creature that stands with me on the moon in my dream?”

“This is the first time you have mentioned it, sister.”

Luna frowned. “I swore I told thee of it earlier. No matter, the creature is a tall, chimp-like being. In fact, I would describe it much like those…” Luna trailed off as she tried to remember a detail. After a moment, she resumed, “…creatures that our niece claims to have met. The name escapes me. ‘Tia, you know of what I speak, yes?” At her sister’s nod, Luna continued. “Before, it was nothing but a blur on the horizon. Then it was a vague suggestion of a creature, before becoming steadily more defined. Last night, it spoke to me in the voice of a little filly.”

“Odd,” Celestia replied, “but why do you think her important?”

Luna took another sip of her coffee. “Because, ‘Tia, she spoke Equestrian and not the meaningless speech of a projection of the mind. Whatever she is, she is most definitely a living being.”

“Luna, Could she be the cause of your problems?”

“It is worth investigating. If nothing else, it is a lead.”

The bumps on the plastic table were the most fascinating things I had ever seen, especially when I looked at them through the holes in my hands. In fact, everything in her office was suddenly just so fascinating. Of course, I was really just avoiding meeting the disapproving gaze of my head Silencer.

Ginny Skinner was one of the fiercest, most serious of my changelings. Even I fold under her disapproving eyes, yet I am her king. In truth, no one who meets her comes away without feeling like, at best, a young child who just got scolded by his parents. At her worst, you feel like you have been skinned alive. And I, in my infinite wisdom, put her in charge of my Silencer Division.

The Silencers are a group of currently three dozen changelings whose job it is to suppress the world’s knowledge of our existence. They work by manipulating social media, creating counter rumors, and, if the need arises, more extreme measures. Thankfully, it has never come to that, yet. This time might be different.

“How badly did I mess up?” I asked, still refusing to look up.

“I watched you rip of a man’s hand… on Youtube,” she said, her voice terrifyingly even and calm. She paced back and forth, silently staring at me. “I read tweets… of a ‘demon’ in the Eye.” She leaned in next to me and whispered softly into my ear, “At least you didn’t break your own ‘magic for self-defense’ rule. I swear, if you weren’t my king, I’d punch you for being such an idiot.”

Like a fool, I said, “That bad, huh?” When dealing with Ginny, the number one rule is to never speak when she gets down to a whisper. Whoops.

Her blue compound eye twitched. A second later, I was sent flying via an impact from her armored hand. “YOU STUPID IDIOT! This is the sixth time this year that you have come into my office asking me to fix your mistakes. I don’t think there is a single other changeling in this hive that is as bad at this as you!”

“Hey! There were shards of glass in my back!” I retorted.

“Then perhaps I need to punch you a few more times so that you can hold your form while writhing in agony!” Ginny screeched. Then, as suddenly has her rage had come, it was gone. In its place was a calm, collected, and terrifying woman. “We wouldn't want to do that, now would we?”

I paled as much as my black carapace would allow. Waving my hands in front of me, I said, “No, no, I got it. I’ll be good.”

Ginny just smiled sweetly.

I slowly massaged my temples with my fingers. Blue-green hair hung down in front of my eyes, obscuring part of my vision. On the desk in front of me sat my laptop; the screen displayed financial reports and other business documents, all for the hive. I wearily scrolled from one sheet to the next. A slight tremor echoed through the hive mind; just like the ones before it, I ignored the sensation.

Klika, my wonderful daughter, was busy with something in the kitchen. I thought for a moment that I heard a squeak, but passed it off as my imagination. After a time, I could smell the scent of cooked meat, the only physical food that tastes good to a changeling, waft in from where she was working.

Eventually, Klika entered the room levitating a bowl of stew for each of us. She quickly wiped down an area on my desk with a paper napkin, then her own fingers. As she set my bowl down on the desk, she said, “I don’t see why you are so scared of that woman.”

I snorted in annoyance. “Klika, if you ever meet Ginny, you will know why no one messes with her.” Shoving the laptop away from me, I reach for the bowl and begin eating.

“I have met her. I was there when you converted her into a changeling. We talked for a while,” Klika said between spoonfuls of her own stew. “Of course, that was before she was your head Silencer, so I don’t know if she’s changed.”

“Mmmm, this is really good. It has a real interesting texture.” I pondered my most intimidating employee while eating my daughter’s cooking. “No, Ginny’s been that way since I met her.”

“Well, I don’t get it.” The currently brown eyed, seven-year old girl shrugged and continued eating. “Oh, that girl from R & D called.”

“Called?” I asked.

“You were busy getting punched out by your Silencer. She said something about not wanting to busy you with boring hive stuff.”

“Trust me, Klika,” I said, shaking my head, “it would have been preferable. So, what’s up?”

My changeling princess thought for a moment. “She said – and I quote – they were about ready to release it. Also, there was something about the Canterlot Black Archives.”

“Got it,” I said. While we lapsed into a comfortable silence, my eyes wandered over to the napkin she had just used. A little red spot marred the otherwise white object. Knowing my daughter, my heart sank. “Klika…”

She looked up at me. “Yes?”

“Where is Mr. Fuzzykins?”

Klika only shrugged.

I glared at her.

She took a bite of stew and smiled.

I sighed. “Why, exactly, am I eating the rabbit I got you for your birthday?”

“I was bored with him. I didn’t want to let him go in the middle of the city, but I didn’t want to care for him anymore, either.” Klika shrugged. “This way, at least he’s useful and I don’t have to leave him.”

“And this is why you aren’t bothered by Ginny… How the hell did my sweet princess end up a little monster?” I said, mostly to myself.

“The best part was ripping out his still-beating heart.”

I winced. “Klika, I love you, but shut up.”

Somehow, I ended up eating the entire bowl of rabbit stew.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you again, your highness!” Sally-Anne said, her voice high-pitched and bubbly, as usual. “We’ve made so much progress since the last time you stopped by here! It is almost ready!”

“You’ve been tempting me with this ‘It’ since Christmas last year, saying that it would be revolutionary. Tell me now, or so help me I will break my promise and pull that information straight from your brain.”

Sally-Anne literally squeaked while blushing fiercely. “Sorry, your highness, it’s just so exciting! So, a couple months ago, I was working on the stolen Canterlot Archives when I came across the ‘Come-to-Life’ spell. I had so much fun with that! I made balls bounce and toys play with themselves and pens write and-“ I cut her off before she was too far gone, somehow making her blush more. “Sorry. Anyway, I thought, ‘what if I hit the computer with that spell?’ So I did! It made the little characters in my game come to life!”

“…What?”

“I thought the same thing! It turns out that the ‘Come-to-Life’ spell animates anything in the way you think it should be alive and uses the caster’s magic and brain power to do so!” She said, her words coming faster every second. “So I sat down and started writing a program. Then I drew it a body, like for a video game character!”

Sally-Anne turned around suddenly and clicked on an icon on her computer desktop. On screen, an image of a Flash-drawn changeling appeared. Its creator lit up her hands and the image was surrounded by an identical glow. A second later, the image moved; its eyes looked out of the screen as if it could see us.

“So, you made a program that looks like a changeling…” I said.

“And because I think that it is a changeling, it is!” Sally-Anne proudly declared. The digital changeling nodded its head.

“Can it hear us?” I asked.

To my amusement, the changeling onscreen answered. //Change.lng: Yes, master, I can hear anything within the range of my computer’s microphone.//

Sally-Anne gave me a quick rundown of Change.lng’s specs. Apparently, it could see and access anything and everything within the computer that it is contained within, including the code for programs and the operating system. It is also capable of seeing through any sensors and cables attached to the computer, including webcams and internet cables.

What floored me was how literal the spell had interpreted the program as an actual changeling. It could use changeling magic of its own free will. The program could literally use any spell that Sally-Anne knew on an object in the physical world, so long as Change.lng was aware of it. The demonstration? Change.lng asked me to hold up my jPhone to the web cam and then proceeded to teleport itself from its computer to the phone.

//Change.lng: Are you impressed, master?// its voice said from the speaker on my phone. I nearly dropped the thing when it spoke. I looked down to see it sitting on top of the calculator app. Suddenly, green fire enveloped the image and in the changeling’s place stood a tiny image of a dog.

“He can also make himself appear to the computer as any file type and size he wants,” The programmer added.

“Well,” I said, “this is just a little shocking. Anything else you want to add before it all clicks in my head?” Before they could answer, a strange pulse echoed through the background of the hive mind. It was enough to make us pause for a moment, but, deciding to ignore it as usual, we continued a second later.

“Well, it takes more magic to animate each copy of him.” She said slowly. “So there is a limit on how many we can make.”

//Change.lng: Master, I can feed on lust if I am on a server that hosts a porn site. It’s not much that I can actually collect, but I at least harvest a net profit in terms of magic consumption and production.//

“Oh!” The programmer exclaimed, “I was thinking that if you had the hive mind collectively share the cost and control of the magic, he could be integrated as a full, independent changeling!”

“What about passwords and firewalls?” I asked.

//Change.lng: I would be a poor excuse for a changeling if I, a shape-shifter, could not bypass such a… primitive defense. The only computer that is safe from me is one that no changeling knows about. My creator theorized that should I be integrated into the hive collective and you grant me permission, I could theoretically infect any computer that is seen by any flesh changeling; I would not even need a physical connection thanks to the teleportation spell.//

I grinned wildly. Seizing control of the spell, I surrendered its management to the collective. A moment later, I felt the minuscule drain on our reserves and the presence of an additional mind. “I think we are going to have a wonderful time. Perhaps you would like to work with the Silencers?”

“…and we ended up doing a cool group evil laugh.” I said to Chrysalis. The two of us were once again in our shared dream. This time, it was one of my favorite locations: the glass sea. The two of us sat upon the surface of an ocean. Except for the tiny ripples that traveled outward from where we were seated, the sea was as smooth a glass. Above us hung a blue sky dotted with an occasional cloud. Below us, fish swam among the coral; each fish was a representation of a member of one of our hives.

“I can imagine. Artificial changelings, who would have thought?” Chrysalis replied, her eyes never leaving the fish below. “Oh, you mentioned something about the Black Archives. What are they?”

I was silent for a minute. Eventually, Chrysalis nudged me to get me to speak. “That’s not their real name, but the ‘Black Archives’ works well enough. In the Canterlot Archives, there is a magically hidden room filled with books; no, I won’t tell you where it is. The World-Capture spell ignored those magical defenses and scanned those books anyway. Over half the books in that room are illegible or untranslatable to us. Most of the others are insanely complicated pieces of magic that would take nearly alicorn-caliber magic to cast. That’s a really good thing.”

Chrysalis looked at me, bemused. “Good? Why would that be a good thing?”

“Because the average person shouldn’t know or use such spells. Let me give you an example: one of the nicest shelves had sixty-four different suicide spells. The largest of those is meant to erase cities by trapping the caster and the area around them in a pocket universe and fixing that point in time so that no time travelers can interfere with it. Chrysalis, that’s one hell of a nuke sitting on a bookshelf, and that’s one of the more friendly spells. And don’t get me started on the torture section; you ponies are sick bastards,” I declared.

Chrysalis, for her part, looked quite pale. “How can they keep such knowledge around?”

“Because, after giving explicit instructions on how to rot a pony from the inside out, they do give the counter-curse. Though, there is more than enough information regarding the counter that, with that information alone, some genius idiot could reverse-engineer the original curse.” I snorted. For a minute, I sat silently watching the fish swim below me. Eventually, I said, “…Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the ponies had a Necronomicon lying around somewhere in there.”

It was at that moment that a tremendous boom, like thunder in the distance, echoed throughout the dream. Our vision blurred momentarily as the ripples in the dream crossed our sight. Chrysalis sighed, “The tremors are starting again, aren’t they? It’s the same every night. How long have they been happening?”

“A month,” I answered.

“Have you been feeling them-” A boom interrupted Chrysalis. “-during the day, too?”

I said, “yes.” Below us, the shock waves had disturbed our fish. Outside the dream, I knew that whatever these waves where, they were bothering our changelings. The only thing that Chrysalis and I had been able to confirm was that whatever was causing these psychic tremors existed outside of either of our networks.

A third boom crashed through our dream; except this time, it sounded significantly louder and closer. The shock waves this time actually disturbed the glass sea, causing small waves to form in the otherwise still water. A breeze, which I had never before felt in a dream, started swirling around us. The sky darkened, filling with storm clouds. The fourth explosion bounced us off the surface of the water.

By this point, we were terrified. Having lost control of the dreamscape, the two of us were subjected to a vicious thunderstorm. For several minutes, the two of us were tossed around like leaves in the wind. Then, with a sudden ‘crack,’ everything was still.

I slowly stood from where I had landed, and then helped Chrysalis to her hooves. What we saw shocked us. Before Chrysalis and me, there hung a crack in the fabric of our dream. As I approached it, I could see what looked like a rocky, grey landscape shrouded in night. The contrast of a land at night hanging in the middle of a day lit ocean bothered me for some reason.

Out of the sea arose a stone archway that surrounded the crack in space, effectively giving it the appearance of a doorway. On the keystone at the top, there was a carving of a crescent surrounded by small points: the moon and stars.

It was through the archway that I saw two figures approach.

Author's Notes:

IMPORTANT: The ending of this chapter has been significantly altered 01/01/2014. The next chapter will not make sense without having read the revised version of this chapter.

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*Ding* Have a chapter! Chapter 30! My longest chapter yet!

FUUUUU!!! This chapter was hard to write! I spent hours trying to figure out how this latest plot development was going to happen and how I was going to convey it to you! Eventually, I thought I would just split it into two.

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A new player emerges: Luna!
A new player emerges: Change.lng (pronounced "Change dot ling" or just "dot ling")

This chapter is to wrap up that mistake that was the bar fight and introduce the Silencers.

Also, I really am interested in that 'Come-to-Life' spell. I wondered what would happen if you shot a computer with it. Ta-Da! Change.lng, a living computer virus that takes the form of a changeling! Instead of cells, his body is made of 1's and 0's. He feeds on magic from the hive mind and a tiny fraction of any emotion that his current computer is exposed to (lust on a porn site, for example). He can teleport to any computer that any changeling sees because he shares the awareness of the hive mind. However, because he is a construct of magic, he can only exist in one place at a time. Copying him produces an inactive replica, as only the original has the spark of magic. Additional copies require additional magic. He can interact with the physical world using his magic. Totally self-serving wish fulfillment, if I do say so myself.

Then we have the Canterlot Black Archives. Some of those books could drive ponies to madness. Nobody wants to talk about them.

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Stats time!

Changeling population: 325 (259 converted, 64 hatched, 1 digital.)
Changeling owned businesses: 6
Funds: $52.6 million cash + $128.9 million raw materials + $60.1 million in businesses. (Total wealth: $241.6 million, or $0.74 million per changeling.)

Changeling divisions:
-Finances (those who make money for the hive)
-Love collectors (those who make love for the hive)
-Research & Development (those who make toys for the hive)
-Silencers (those who make you shut up about the hive)
-Infiltrators (those who infest other organizations for the hive)
-Soldiers & Assassins (those who kill for the hive, not yet established)

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OMFG FLUTTERBAT! I love it! Best MLP episode ever!

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Any suggestions? Comments? Things you want me to do with the story? I'd love to hear them.