Three years ago, it started with a dream. April first, 2029, three year ago to the day, I found myself inside the mind of Queen Chrysalis, and she in me. Back then, I was a normal seventeen-going-on-eighteen year old, with normal hopes and dreams.

Today, I sat on the couch. My abdomen was slightly distended because of the egg I had been growing. Sal, my sweet girlfriend, sat next to me, pregnant with its twin; each of us was the father to the other egg, as weird as that sounds. I smiled; though it may be only my second egg, it at least came without the feeling of indigestion that accompanied Klika’s egg. While rubbing the bulge slightly, I thought about the future.

Over the last few weeks, the hive had saved money and horded its resources in order to prepare for April. We had come to the conclusion that we had enough resources to add nearly three-hundred-and-fifty changelings to the hive without stretching ourselves too thin. Of those three hundred, three fourths would be hatched while the rest were converted.

Then, rather than to try to hide the extra population in Atlanta, we had picked out twelve cities – five Georgia cities and seven in other states, including New York and Las Vegas – to establish colonies. Each colony would consist of fifteen to twenty-five changelings who would rent a few cheep apartments, find work and food, and then find targets to replace for a long term infiltration. Once firmly established, the colonies would be instructed to grow when they can and to seek monetary and political power.

With happy thoughts of the start of world domination in mind, I stood to head to my room to lay my third child’s egg.

“Ewww! They’re gross!” Selene declared when she first saw Sally-Anne’s and my eggs.

Klika commented, “Did I really hatch from one of those things?” I nodded in affirmation.

“Wait, those are eggs?” Selene suddenly ran towards the eggs and hugged each one in turn, seemingly ignoring her previous disgust. “I’m sorry, eggies! I didn’t mean to call you gross and ugly. Well, you are, but… SORRY!” she squeaked.

I laughed a bit. Gently, my fingers ruffled my alicorn daughter’s gravity-defying hair. An odd look crossed her face, but was gone in an instant. “Ah, Selene, I don’t think they can hear you from in there. You definitely have the right attitude, though; I think you’ll make a great big sister.”

“Big… sister?” She said, tasting the words as they formed in her mouth.

“Yep!” I replied. “Our family is growing.” Selene cheered and hopped around, her wings flapping and stirring up a breeze to match her enthusiasm. Klika meanwhile sat on my cloud bed. A smile adorned my first daughter’s face, though it only went skin deep.

The three days of waiting with baited breath had ended. Sal and my eggs had hatched, revealing two perfectly healthy changeling infants.

“They’re adorable,” Sally-Anne cooed, rocking her newly hatched child gently in her arms while I did the same to mine. A steady stream of magic flowed from each of our hands into our respective child, feeding them their first meals. The twins babbled softly while craning their necks to look towards one another. Had they been human babies, their cooing sounds would have been nonsense; yet with the hive mind connecting them to each other, the twins’ words conveyed meanings. Simple, sure, but it was impressive nonetheless for something less than two hours old.

“Can I hold him? See, I’ll be careful,” Selene asked me. Even before I responded, she had her arms outstretched and her hands grasping for the little changeling in my arms. It in turn reached out and grabbed Selene with its little claws.

“No, I think it would rather hold you,” I replied before handing the child over. As soon as it was free from my grasp, the infant reached up and tugged on Selene’s ethereal hair.

“Daddy, why do you call him ‘it?’ doesn’t he have a name?” She asked. In her arms, the baby started wiggling around uncomfortably. It murmured, roughly conveying that it was being held too tight, before it started whining.

“It hasn’t picked one yet,” I replied. “I don’t even know if it wants to be a boy or girl yet. Selene, you’re holding it-” the baby’s fangs chomped down on Selene’s fingers, “-too tightly.” Selene wobbled where she stood. Quickly, I encased her and the petulant infant in my magic, gently setting both down on the couch. By the time I had reclaimed the child and calmed it down, Selene’s eyes had already glazed over from the venom’s effects.

I was not terribly worried. The venom was technically harmless, even more so to an alicorn-hybrid than a human. As I cleaned and bandaged her bite wound, I wondered what Selene was seeing if her emotions were acting like that; there was an awful lot of lust mixed into that familial love, far too much for a pre-pubescent eleven year old.

The twins giggled with pride and began feeding off of Selene.

“Good morning, Selene,” I said to her when she started to awaken. “How do you feel?”

“Tired. Grey. Head hurts” she slurred. After over twelve hours of paralysis plus several house of magical-exhaustion-and-drug induced sleep, that was to be expected. Her emotions were muted and her hair hung limply by her side.

I handed her a glass of water as she lifted herself off of her bed, where I had moved her after she had been knocked out. She took it and downed it quickly and handed the glass back to me. I asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, what did you see?”

“You. Klika. Me. Having sex.” The glass in my hand dropped, shattering when it hit the edge of her night stand.

I cringed. “…What? How do you… you’re only eleven. Great, now I have to give you the talk.”

Selene shook her head. “No. Princess Luna already did the first time I saw a grown-up dream.” Oh, right, dream-walking daughter. She looked up at me and asked, “Why did I see that? Sometimes, I like watching you with Chrysalis… but why with me? See, that’s gross.”

I rubbed the back of my head awkwardly. To my counterpart, I thought, [Great, Chrysalis, my eleven year old daughter is a voyeur… She watches our seduction lesions together.] I sighed while Chrysie sorted through the surprise revelation. To Selene, at about the same time, I said, “Our venom makes people see the ones they love. I never guessed that it would be that… explicit. Can we both agree to not discuss this with anyone else?”

“Yeah,” Selene agreed with a slight nod.

“Good. Though, if you ever need to talk to me about it, just let me know,” I replied.

Selene looked up at me with innocent, drowsy eyes and asked, “Daddy, what’s clopping?”

I spluttered, “W-w-what? Where did you hear that word?”

“See, Princess Luna once said she did it when she saw those kind of dreams,” She commented. Then, as an afterthought, Selene added, “Then she looked like she said something bad. What does it mean?”

“I… Ahh…” In my floundering to form my words, I had an insidious idea. Smirking slightly, I said, “It’s a pony thing. Why don’t you ask Princess Celestia what it means? I’m sure that she will be willing to explain. Tell her exactly what you told me, especially about where you heard it, ok?”

“Ok! I will,” she promised.

‘I hope Celestia chews you out, Luna! That’s for corrupting my daughter!’ I thought. Brushing those thoughts aside, I said, “Now, the twins are waiting outside to give you an apology.” I took her hand and helped Selene out of bed. My face a mask, I took her to see her siblings, who had doubled in size since she last saw them yesterday.

“Sissy! Bi’ Sissy!” The twins cheered in unison as they ran towards Selene. Well, ran may be the wrong word; the one on the left waddled while the other hovered a foot off the ground. Previous events forgotten, Selene bent down and scooped up the two adorable children, giggling and laughing along with them. Sal, who had been sitting on the couch, got up and joined them in their frolicking.

Klika, however, stood off to the side. A slight scowl marred her otherwise beautiful face. I leaned against the wall next to her. “What’s the matter, my little girl?”

“…”

I sighed. “Klika, please, tell me what’s wrong.”

“…”

“Was it something I did? Are you hurt?” I inquired.

“…”

“Come on…”

Finally, she relented. Her shoulders, tense before, slumped. “Not even an hour after my heartbreaker ends, you have… them…” She goes silent for a moment, but I can tell that she’s not done. “Did you have to?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking straight at her. “Klika, are you… jealous?”

“Daddy… I don’t want you to forget about me. When Selene came, you started to spend less time with me. Then I was given heartbreaker, and I saw you even less. Sally-Anne came; I almost don’t see you at all. Yeah, I guess I am a little jealous.”

In an instant, my long arms were wrapped around her in a tight embrace. “Oh, Klika, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that you feel that way. I’ll never forget you; how could I? You’re my daughter. I love you; never ever forget that.”

“Yeah… You’re right. Thanks, Dad.” She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me in a tight bear-hug.

“Feel better?” I asked. When she nodded and relaxed her grip, I said, “Good. Now, I actually could use your help for the next few days. Anthony is going to be showing off to some high-valued targets to see if we can con them out of some money before we take them. Want to help?”

“Oh yeah!”

Most people thought Anthony Titarenko was an average bartender. They would be wrong. Many people in the know thought he was a black-market information merchant that had, for a time, been part of a cult movement in Europe. They would be correct, but their information was a bit outdated. The people sitting at Anthony’s bar in the Livewire club thought they were sharing a mass hallucination. That would be the easy explanation, if it were correct.

Right now, I watched Anthony hanging upside-down, sticking to the ceiling as if it were the floor. Around him, expensive cocktails floated by and mixed themselves without any physical direction on the bartender’s part beyond a subtle wave of his glowing hand. But even that too was not the whole story.

No, I could tell that Anthony Titarenko was worried. This was his plan, after all. In the best case scenario, they would walk away millions richer and with several influential new hive members. In the worst case scenario, well, I had given Slagteri temporary parole and allowed to rejoin the Silencers for a reason. The barkeep and I both prayed for the former.

Ginny’s eyes darted around the room, scanning the gathered crowed from her position above. Mirage, meanwhile was maintaining a very special device: a portable radio-jammer that housed Change.lng. Together, the trio worked to block all cellular communication and erase the digital evidence of magic even as it was recorded. No physical evidence would be allowed to escape, only word-of-mouth, though even that was too much in Ginny’s opinion.

A collective sigh of relief rolled through the gathered changelings when people started asking how Anthony was performing his feats of magic. When he explained that he had been given the power, more of what he could do with it, and that the power was for sale, a refreshingly tart excitement washed over the crowd, much to the changelings’ pleasure. The crowd of club-goers, every individual with major underworld connections, leapt at the chance for supernatural powers.

I grinned like a madman, drooling ever so slightly. The crowd desired me, they needed me. My inner greed sang out joyously.

“Why should I pay so much for that power?” The mob leader stroked the gun in his hand as if it were a living pet. “I could just force you to give it to me.”

Klika, disguised as a Photoshop-beautiful model, coolly replied, “But you see, the process itself is complicated. If my father were under too much stress, he might just make a mistake. I’m sure that you wouldn’t do anything to aggravate him, would you? He’s the only man in the world who can grant you this, after all. Besides, even once you have the power, recharging is hard work.” Klika folded her arms across her chest, supporting her form’s impressive bust. “Very hard work. I’m not sure that you would be willing to spend enough time to get the full effect of your powers.” Klika smiled and batted her eyelashes. “But that’s why we hire people to do it for us.”

The mobster scowled. The price this woman was asking for was absurd. “Oh, don’t be so upset,” she said, reading his expression. “It’s well worth the investment. You will be getting access to our library of magic, all six thousand or so spells. You’ll have so much magical power at your fingertips. What do you say?”

“I still think that you’re ripping me off. And I don’t like to be ripped off. If you won’t part with it for less, I’ll take it myself,” the man declared.

“Ah, my good sir, you can’t just take it. Besides, it’s not just magical prowess that you’re purchasing, but protection. You’re a businessman, are you not? A salesman of the goods people want, regardless of who might disagree, correct?” He nodded in reply. “Then you must understand that we mages are a tight-knit group, a family of sorts. Every single one of us is completely loyal to the whole, for the collective protects and strengthens the individual. We have many powerful individuals on our side. My father, the bringer of magic, is also the founder and C.E.O. of Greenfyre and controls a significant portion of the mineral and gemstone market in the United States. My adoptive uncle is the leader of the “Phantoms,” as the media calls them, and has robbed millions from banks. I’m close friends with the Chief of the Atlanta Police department and the FBI liaison. Guess what? All mages.”

“Interesting,” he replied. After debating for a minute, he finally relented. “Fine, I’ll pay. Where do you want the money?”

“Good choice. Here,” Klika passed a slip of paper with a bank account number to the man. He pulled out his phone, typed a few times, and said, “There’s the first half. You’ll get the rest when you deliver.”

That was my cue. I dropped down from my hiding spot, aiming for the table between the human and my daughter. An instant before my feet hit the table, I dispelled the Notice-Me-Not shrouding me from view. The sudden thud startled the man enough that he jumped out of his chair and fell to the floor.

I bent down and offered my hand to help him up, which he gratefully took. “Sorry about that,” I apologized as I lifted him up.

“It’s no problem. I was off guard; that is all.” He dusted his suit off and looked me over. His eyes quickly scanned me from the feet up, trying and failing to pretend that he was not staring at my figure. Who could blame him? My Adonis-like figure was accented by my skintight shimmer fabric armor; I must have looked like a living, metal, Greek sculpture. But it was not my false body that he was entrapped by, but my eyes. My glowing, true eyes. “I-I… Ah…”

“Well, are you ready? We can begin now,” I said.

Klika muttered, “I think you broke him.”

The mobster shook his head to clear it. “Are you the Shadow Prince?”

I blinked and cocked my head to the side. “No, not that I know of. Why?”

He shook his head again, more gently this time. “I heard a rumor, nothing more. Never mind. Now, I believe you owe me magic.”

“Yes…” I grinned like the predator I was. Without warning, I closed the gap between us and sank my fangs into his neck. As a few drops of his blood flowed onto my tongue, my stomach growled. At the moment, I wished I could just eat him whole, emotion and flesh. But he was too useful alive for that.

Spark’s face contorted as he concentrated on the spell. His hands shined brightly with two layers of over-glow. The glyphs he stood upon were similarly illuminated. We waited around him with baited breath; I more so because the R&D team wanted to surprise me.

The changeling researcher gave one last push with his magic. There was a flash and… nothing. But he was smiling anyway.

“What was that?” I asked. In response, Spark picked up his phone and waved it by his hip. When he lifted his hand, it was now empty; the phone had simply vanished for no rhyme or reason.

Still smiling, he reached into his visibly empty coat pocket and withdrew the phone. “Hammerspace.”

“You mean that it actually exists? How?” I asked excitedly. Even before he could reply, I was busy examining the glyph circle. “4-space vectors, hyper-geometry, non-Euclidian calculus… soul binding?”

“Yeah,” Spark replied, “it’s as complex as it sounds. Don’t even try to visualize 4-space. It’ll make your brain hurt.”

“It’s not that hard if you’ve seen it before…” I mutter under my breath.

“What? How could you have seen 4-space?” Wasp calls out.

Sally-Anne replies, “He’s seen things that we were never meant to see. Why do you think I got hospitalized? The only way that…” she paused when I shot her a pointed glare, “…that could exist…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“What? What is it?” Jerry called from across the lab.

“It’s not her story to tell,” I growled. I heard Jerry mutter something under his breath, but I did not bother with it. I had more pressing matters, specifically concerning the eldritch abomination that was my soul. After a deep breath, I calmly stated, “You were explaining how this works.”

Spark shrugs and continues. “It’s a lot like the preparatory steps of teleportation. Instead of a tiny, one-use bubble of space that pops when you pass through it, this creates a permanent ‘room’ of sorts with a ‘door’ that the user can reach through. Once it’s stable, it will exist until you dispel it.”

I inquire, “And the soul-bind?”

“The basic spell would continuously drain a tiny amount of magic, and it’s meant for temporary usage. The soul bind makes it more permanent and removes the constant magic need. It also allows other races to use hammerspace. But damn, that adds one hell of a magic cost to the initial casting.”

I ponder it for a moment. “Hypothetically, if a soul was in more than one piece when the spell was cast, could both access the same pocket space? Oh, and can living things go in?”

“Sure, I guess,” Spark replied. “That was for both questions, by the way.” He grabbed his smart phone and tapped the screen a few times and held it up to me. A video played, showing it disappear into a black void before reappearing. “Though, I think you would have to make sure that there was air for them. Your hammerspace is a vacuum initially.”

“How much storage volume do I get?” I asked as my final question.

“Depends,” Spark replied. “Radius is proportional to magic input in the spatial component to the power of the absolute magnitude of your affinity. Eighty percent of my reserve and a negative four space-time affinity gave me a one meter radius.”

I grinned at that. “Well then, I think I should do a tad better, don’t you think?”

“Sir, what is your affinity, if you don’t mind me asking,” Wasp asked.

I stepped into the circle and called upon Spark’s memories of casting the spell. “Positive four-point-eight.” With that said, the circle came alit with my magic. The spell was complex, and even with the glyphs aiding me in my spell formation, casting was still difficult. My perception of time faded as the new sensation of the hammerspace attaching itself to my soul momentarily overwhelmed my mind. Then, faster than the sensation had come, it was gone. Had I been standing there for hours or seconds, I could not say.

Gasp sounded throughout the lab as the result of my spell echoed through the hive mind. “What a rush…” Without answering their questions, I grabbed a blue ballpoint pen from one of the work benches and flipped it into hammerspace, while a representation of it appeared in the mental copy created by the spell. I grinned widely. “Ah, that was just a resonance echo,” I explained. “If you figure out why that happened, well, best keep that to yourself, ok?”

No one but Sal and I noticed that she was now holding a ballpoint pen that had not been there a second ago.

The twin brother and sister, Siva and Avis, stood in front of a group of twenty other changelings, all less than a month old. A total of eleven other groups had stood or would stand here within the last week of April, “here” being the airport tarmac in front of the hive’s recently acquired private jet. Though they could fly on their own, it would be foolish to do so when they could make the trip to Las Vegas so much quicker this way.

The plan was easy in theory. They would fly out to the city, find a low-end area to set up base, and begin the process of infiltration. Once a steady income and love supply was established for the colony, they would begin long-term work at subverting power within the city, especially within the casinos and government. The plan sounded simple, but Avis just knew in her gut that something would go wrong.

Picking up on his twin’s distress as they boarded the aircraft, Siva asked, “Tell me, sister of mine, what’s on your mind?”

Avis flopped into a vacant seat. Her brother did the same next to her. The young girl sighed. “I’m just worried about this, brother of mine. Do you really think we can do this? We’re so young.”

Siva tried to reassure her, but she could tell that his smile was forced. “It will be fine. Father and Mother trust us. We can’t let them down, Avis, sister of mine.”

“You’re right, Siva, brother of mine. We can’t, but still, what if?” Avis asked.

“Well,” Siva replied while reaching into his bag, “we always have the armory as plan B.” He pulled out a rifle that could not have possibly fit within. “Heh, I don’t think that’ll ever get old, sister of mine. Ready?”

Avis sighed. “As I’ll ever be…”

“This is your last chance to back out,” I told the seven ‘lings in front of me. We stood together in the warehouse, which had been emptied of all its non-living goods. The luminescent cocoons above provided all the light we needed to see in the night.

“We’ve already made our decision and we will not back down,” the group’s spokesperson replied. “The seven of us agree that we would be willing to lay down our lives for this hive in an instant. But even with our determination, we do not feel that we can serve you to our fullest in our current state.”

“So that’s a no. You’re all in this, correct?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“Yeah…”

“Yup.”

“Yes sir.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Mmmm, yesss…”

I sighed, regretting what I was about to do, even if they had approached me and asked me to do it to them. “Fine. I’ll do it. But I have one question, what did I ever do to earn such loyalty from you all?”

“I’m rich now!”

“I get all the sex I want!”

“I finally got my revenge, thanks to you.”

“Power, sir. You made me so powerful.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m gorgeous now!”

“I’m free now…”

“I’m a vampire, baby! Hell yeah!”

“Well,” I said after I heard their replies, “let’s do this.” I sat down in front of the first and dove into his mind. The technique I was planning to use was something I had learned early on from Chrysalis called strain making. It allows me to make a permanent change to their physiology down to the genetic level at the cost of an elevated metabolism and reduced magical efficiency. However, the strain itself is recessive; only breeding with another carrier of the same strain would produce children with the strain. Furthermore, the magic will only make the change if I have permission from the one I am changing, as he or she has to aid the process along from within.

The original creation of a strain is, however, incredibly magic intensive. Which leads to why I’m entering their heads in the first place; I’m going to freeze their hearts for the whole of humanity. The energy produced will be more than enough to power the transformation. Mentally apologizing to him that I cannot numb the pain for this, I cup my psychic self around his heart and twist.

“Whoa, what a rush!” He declares, but his enthusiastic declaration turns to screams of agony as his body starts to rearrange itself without the aid of the normal transformation magic. Chitin thickens, knuckles grows spikes, muscles bulge, bones harden, joints strengthen, pain receptors are consumed, senses augment, and his magic warps to a more earth-pony like configuration. Just as the pain of his transformation subsides, I begin phase two. Digging through his memory, I pull up his fears, his hates, his disgusts, and his rages, and one-by-one freeze them too. The periodic release of small amounts of negative emotion combined with his malleable physical state worked together to inoculate him against negative emotions. In any other situation, this process would have killed him, but not now. Not on my watch.

After what seemed like hours, he was no longer burnt by foul emotions, though it still caused him mild pain. To ease his suffering now that the delicate part has passed, I cast a numbing spell on him, and then continue my work on his mind. He shows me around, pointing out personality quirks that he finds displeasing, traits he wants altered, and habits he wants removed. I do my best to clean up his mind the way he wants and to not damage anything else.

Eventually, he is satisfied with his new self. We open our eyes to see that an hour has passed. I help him stand from where he lay. As I lift him up, I asked the reborn changeling, “Who are you?”

“I am Greed,” he clearly and crisply pronounced.

An hour later, the second stood and replied, “I am Lust.”

The third, “I am Envy.”

The fourth said Wrath

Five declared herself to be Pride

Six was Sloth.

And the seventh was Gluttony.

After Gluttony introduced herself, the seven of them kneeled with their fists over their chests and their heads bowed. “We are your sins,” they declared in unison, “and we are your Praetorian Guards.”

Upon returning to the Beehive apartments, I noticed something rather odd. This section of the city had been lovingly dubbed by the rumor mill as Atlanta’s curse district. With hundreds of changelings sucking the good feelings right out of the air, and some of those same changelings patrolling the streets while guised as simple thugs, no human came here of their own free will anymore. So to see a human willingly sitting on the steps of changeling central, it raised yellow flags in my mind.

As my newly formed praetorians and I approached the building, the man stood and closed the distance. There was an odd sort of nervousness about him, though it was oddly muted and greasy feeling to my senses. Klaxons blared in my mind, screaming that there was something important about that feeling, but I could not put my finger on it. “May I help you?” I asked when he stepped in front of me.

“Yes, sir. I was hoping you could help me find someone. All I have is a name and a vague idea of his location. Near here, to be exact.” His voice was oddly smooth and controlled, betraying not a hint of his inner nervousness. As I looked at him, more and more mental warning bells sounded. There was something off about the handsome man, but what?

“Oh, I know many people near here. Who might you be interested in and why?” I asked.

“I have a message from my boss for someone named Alvarium Rex,” he answered.

Panic gripped me, though I did not show it. All seven praetorians tensed; their fingers hovered over the weapons stockpile in hammerspace. Reflexively, I activated my soul sight and was surprised at what I saw. His very soul, though not a gatekeeper, had magical runes carved into it, many of which were used exclusively in mind-altering magic. But the rune style was old, very old, and rather inefficient looking, though powerful nonetheless. The fact is I do not write runes like that so, by extension, neither do any of my changelings.

“Come inside,” I said. “I’ll take you to him.” But, while my mouth said one thing, my mind said another. <<Praetorians, be ready to detain him. I want him alive and I want answers. Ginny Skinner.>>

<<Yes, your highness?>> the head Silencer replied.

I passed her the memory and declared, <<Security breach. Prepare yourselves.>>

<<Understood, sir.>>

The nine of us turned a corner into a second hallway, just out of sight of the entrance. My guards pounced, pinning him magically and physically to the floor. The man’s mind conjured hostile emotions while he struggled to escape. Greed and Wrath shifted their shoes into sharply spiked cleats and stomped on each of his hands, quelling his attempts at freedom. Safely in changeling territory, we eight changelings shifted back to our true forms.

Donning my sadistic persona, I said, “Tell me, what do you have to say, little messenger?” I bent down and straddled the supine man, placing my claws on his shoulders and my fanged mouth just inches above his eyes. My hot breath washes over him while my venom drips down onto his cheeks. “And you better have a lot to say. You’re going to start with your message and then you’re going to tell me everything you know.”

“The only reason I would speak to the likes of you is because my king commands it,” the man replied once the magic crushing his throat subsides. I momentarily pondered the fact that he said “king.” The messenger continued, “The message is in my left pocket. However, you will never get me to betray his majesty.”

“Well, if you won’t talk, I’ll just take the information I want straight from your mind. Then…” I gave his face a lick. “…Delicious. I’ll just milk you for all your emotions. You’ll want me. You’ll need me. You’ll beg me to fuck you until your body gives out, and then fuck you some more. And when your mind is nothing but a puddle of goo, I’ll eat your body. Piece. By. Piece. I’ll swallow you, and you’ll make me stronger. Just by knowing my name, you are my enemy. Funny, in death, you shall betray your king. I’ll grow stronger, and he’ll lose a pawn. Pride, check his pocket.”

The changeling complied. She bent down and fished out a small envelope with my name on it. Pride read the twelve words aloud.

Alvarium Rex,

I am coming. You are not alone.

~Signed, King Umbra

Author's Notes:

*Ding* Have a chapter. Eh, sorry about this chapter taking so long to write. I had writers block in the beginning, and my schedule got weird, but whatever. You have your fix now.

Anyway... this is the start of a collaborative section between InfiniteBrony, Alternate Madness, and me. Those two are writing a companion piece, tentatively titled Gatekeeper: Prince of Darkness. It is unpublished at this point, but expect something soon.

---

In this chapter, the hive grew a lot. The total hive population is 821 changelings, 1 drone, and 1 digital.

There are also a total of 14 semi-independent colonies now, with each trying to minimize their connections to the other. In the event that one colony is discovered, the other colonies will not be uncovered. The full list of cities is:
Atlanta, GA
Canterlot, Equestria
Las Vegas, NV
New York, NY
Washington DC
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Agusta, GA
Columbus, GA
Savannah, GA
Athens, GA
Sandy Springs, GA

For the genetic strain that Rex gave the seven sin praetorian guard, it boosts physical strength to nearly earth pony (Maud/Big Mac) levels and reduces pain sensitivity. However, it increases their metabolism and magical expenditure by 165%, making them more expensive to maintain than normal changelings. In order to generate enough magic to power this change, Rex froze their hearts to humanity, removing their ability to feel any positive emotions towards a human. Then, while their flesh was still malleable from the procedure, Rex sniped off their negative emotions to grant them a partial immunity to negative emotions while rendering them incapable of feeling any emotion at all towards humans.

Pick the most boring object in the world, like that pebble in your front yard you've seen a thousand times. Then imagine that a lawn mower sucks that rock up and launches it at your friend's head. Are you mad at the rock or lawn mower? No. Are you scared for your bleeding friend's health? Yes. Humans are the rocks in the eyes of the praetorian guards. Though, only the first generation will be completely emotionless.