“YES!”

Combine together one surprised and excited, high-ranking changeling; one overjoyed hive controller; the collective joy of a nation suddenly recovering their formerly dead leader, who was a friendly acquaintance to all of them and was now engaged to be married; the contagious nature of emotions; and the restored mental link, which was hyper-sensitive due to two weeks of forced disuse. If we were ponies, there would be spontaneous musicals, drinking, and parties. But we were changelings, a significantly more frisky and amorous specie, and thus celebrated with drinking, parties, and spontaneous musicals of a different sort.

I will admit that I did get caught up in the impromptu orgy, having been the epicenter of the emotion bomb that shook the hive. At least I had the presence of mind to limit it to a quick, if no less passionate, affair with my sweet Sal. After all, I had a date with a dracolich to deal with, and it would not do to keep it waiting. Its constant thrashing was quite the buzz-kill in my opinion.

I licked the last of my fiancée’s delicious love juices off my face as I swept her up in my embrace. I switched from physical to psychic sexual stimulation and said, “I hate to kill the mood, but I have one hell of a rowdy prisoner, a job with two weeks of work backup, a potential security breach of disastrous proportions, one young alicorn who hasn’t had her dad in two weeks, and a homicidal firstborn as said alicorn’s only sentient caretaker.” I kissed Sal briefly. “Welcome home, me.”

“Sorry about-” There was a flash of teleportation, carrying us to a nearby warehouse. “-the workload. Ohhh! Ahhh! That’s the spot!” She moaned due to my psychic caresses, barely able to stand as her juices ran down her panty-less legs. Then, slightly embarrassed, she pushed my amorous psychic probes away to allow herself a moment to collect her wits.

I, on the other hand, was busying myself preparing a runic array on the empty warehouse floor using materials I had pulled from hammerspace storage. Simultaneously, I called out to each of my four absent council members and the thirteen royals below me in rank. I also called out to Klika and asked her to bring Selene and Ψ. They arrived as fast as they could extract themselves from whatever situation they were in, and given the strength of my call, that time was measured in seconds. Some arrived as humans, some in their true forms, and most were already messy from their sudden passions. “I have little time for pleasantries,” I said, not looking up from the array, “so I will need your help constructing this,” I sent the blueprints that I had envisioned, “right now. Honestly, I should have done this first, but Sal is so damn sexy that this had to wait.”

The gathered changelings lept to the task at my not-so-subtle psychic nudge. “Hello, Selene, Klika. It’s been too long.”

“Daddy! You’re back!” The excitable little alicorn ran up to me. I had to magically hold her back to keep her from messing up the array.

“Whoa, hang on. I have to finish this first, or we’re going to have an angry dracolich on our hands.”

I swore that I could hear a pin drop at that instant. There was only one place an angry dracolich could have come from, and the implications shocked them. “Yes! You heard me. Here!” I shoved some of the later memories of my time in the shadow realm into their heads. Siva and a few others jumped in surprise. “Careful! This has to work the first time.”

I split my focus between the twenty gathered changelings, reinforcing the link between them, and the task at hand. I needed the hive status, and the standard connection ‘bandwidth’ was not enough. In the minutes that followed, the picture I formed of the situation was, while bad, not irreparable. Jak and Taruke, as heads of Collection and Finances respectively, had managed to encourage miser-like behavior, preserving the treasury and love supplies. The thirteen royals, each of which had been evolved from an ordinary changeling, reported that most of the minor branch hives had fared similarly to the main branch. Anthony, the Infiltration division commander, reported that our spy networks had suffered without our most secure form of communication. We did know that Victor was furious with us, but that he had been throwing around resources to keep things quiet. In conjunction with Ginny’s Silencers and our media plants, my accident had avoided the mainstream media.

Ginny was the one to give me the most chilling news. While the public majority had missed or ignored the tiny ripple my corpse had caused, some conspiracy nuts, doomsday preppers, and fringe scientists had picked up the story, and no amount of hard work would truly be able to wipe that away. Sure, no information about me had escaped except perhaps what Victor’s men had learned from me, and that would stay put, but they would not drop it. This was what the Silencers referred to as “the beginning of the end of true secrecy.”

The room was swiftly transformed by our many hands. Chalk runes covered the vast majority of the room. Sally-Anne, who was the member of my staff most familiar with runic arrays, felt her eyes grow wide as she realized the scale and purpose of what I was attempting. “Rex?”

“That number is unlocked,” I replied, and nodded to confirm her suspicions. She nodded in assent.

When the array was finished, I stood before nineteen changelings and one alicorn child. The twentieth, Ψ, lay within the array at the focus. To my audience, I said, “I think I owe you all an explanation and a set of introductions. When I died-” Selene gasped, “-I found myself trapped in the shadow realm in the guise of Victor Divinci. Scythirraax the plague dragon attempted to attack me while I was there. I have his soul trapped in a powerful but temporary prison. This is the more permanent solution. My name is Alvarium Rex. I am a soul mage powerful enough to destroy souls with a sneeze. That is Ψ, a zombie of my own creation,” I said, pointing at the supine figure, “and reanimated by the very magic that made you into changelings. His real name was John Smith, who was a convicted serial killer. I ripped out his essence and swallowed it! I’m a soul-eater! And right now, I’m going to shove an eldritch puppet into a zombie to make a changeling!”

With that, I turned round and slammed my claws – one black, the other red and grey – against the array. The array lit with an emerald shine, blindingly bright. My staff, reports delivered and runes constructed, knew that they were free to leave. Most did, leaving in a swirl of space-bending magic, but Nick, Taruke, Sal, Klika, and Selene stayed behind, which consisted of them running outside the warehouse and several blocks away.

Space unfolded above Ψ, revealing the dark, fluid soul of Scythirraax. It was visible to the unaided eye because of the powerful magic in the air. The pieces of my soul within Ψ parted, creating a well for the dragon to be placed inside. The immaterial beast easily sank into my creations body, compressing like a gas, but with much less pressure. The moment it was in place, I snapped the trap shut. The lights of the runes were drawn to Ψ, etching themselves in minature onto my drone's chitin and perminantly binding twisted soul to undead body.

There was a sudden slack in the parts of my soul that served as his strings. I momentarily feared the worst, but I relaxed as I fealt my essence be drawn in and fully merge with the dracolich. It occurred to me then that what I had done in that shadowy plane was almost identical to the spiritual component of the changeling conversion process. This, giving the lich a physical body, had sealed the deal.

Much as it had the first time I used soul magic on this body, it erupted in emerald flames. Higher and higher they burned, adjusting the body to fit the creature. I was metaphorically on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what became of it. Chrysalis's changelings had pony bodies and pony souls; mine were the same, but human instead. What would this be?

The flames left as they had come, vanishing in an instant. The unconscious figure that was revealed, while humanoid, had only a passing resemblance to a changeling. White, bone-like plates covered most of its body, interrupted only by the standard black chitin. It looked thin, like a chronically starved man would. Scythirraax's head maintained dragon-like qualities, and his eyes, like they had been in the dark world, looked like sockets, each filled with a baleful green will-o-whisp. And unlike the stump of a tail that all humanoid changelings possessed, his tail – with chitanous protrusions that looked like vertebrae – easily doubled the length of his body at over six feet long. It's wings resembled the bony ones it originally possessed, but the leathery membrane was replaced by a clear, hole-riddled changeling membrane, which actually enhanced the skeletal effect. All in all, my creepy, soulless butler now looked downright demonic.

He was all mine.

I chuckled.

I touched his alien mind for the first time.

I snorted, then laughed.

I found the memories of its – his – identity.

I guffawed. I LMFAO'ed. I wheezed. I cackled like a mad man.

This creature lying unconscious at my feet, bound to my will, believed itself to be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, pestilence. And, according to its memories, it had damn well earned that title.

For the first time in two weeks, I dropped the partial transformation into Victor and became wholly me again. I laughed some more.

Then I froze. Scythirraax had mentioned a being it called "That-Which-Hungers." Scythirraax feared it. The fucking one-quarter manifestation of the end of the world feared THAT? Something that was connected to ME?

My mind went blank. The world flickered. The eyes of the dragon-turned-changeling twitched as a set of memories vanished from his head.

I snorted, then laughed. Again.

I found the memories of its – his – identity.

I guffawed. I LMFAO'ed. I wheezed. I cackled like a mad man.

This creature lying unconscious at my feet, bound to my will, believed itself to be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, pestilence. And, according to its memories, it had damn well earned that title.

I owned one-quarter manifestation of the end of the world! And what did I do? I kicked it in the head. Lightly, of course. Just enough to wake it. "Well well well... Aren't you an interesting little puppet?" My smile promised pain beyond belief; my eyes dared him to disobey me.

Luna was... Well, to understand what Luna was doing, one must first understand that Mi Amore Cadenza had not ascended to deity status until many years after the Night Princess had been banished. So when Luna finally returned and was purified of the Nightmare, she took a liking to Cadance and they became fast friends. The huffing and puffing and wheezing taking place on the royal throne could only be understood as one thing: Cadance's breathing exercise in the Royal Canterlot Voice.

To see an inexplicably hyperventilating princess was unsettling to the ponies of the court. To see her sister having a panic attack, for only Celestia recognized it as such, was far worse.

"L-Luna?" Celestia stammered. Princess Celestia, Immortal Diarch of the Sun and co-ruler of the Constitutional Diarchy of Equestria and its Lesser Territories, never stammered. The guards were in a fighting stance faster than most ponies could blink, and a silent alarm was triggered magically, allerting the rest of the castle guard.

Luna's eyes were fixed, staring blankly at nothing, and words fell on her deaf ears. But her mind's eye watched, horrified at what her double was watching.

Bored by court, the dark alicorn had been overjoyed when Selene found her father returned to her, and had taken to watching out of Selene's eyes. However, the stallion Selene called father was disfigured, with a limb and body that smoked like her old nemesis, King Sombra. Then Rex claimed that he was a powerful soul mage, a field Luna knew well. And the array on the floor, athough Selene and Luna could not see it well, looked complex enough to give her a run for her money.

But it was his claim that he was a soul-eater capable of catching Scythirraax that terrified her. The Nightmare, her only friend and companion for over a thousand years, was a soul-eater. Discord was a soul-eater. Both of them had devoured thousands to satiate their ravenous appetites. Rex, whether claiming the truth or not, was capable of causing a great caticlysm with his actions.

Luna's eyes snapped into focus. "If there is a changeling in this room, I must speak to Queen Chrysalis this instant! It is a matter of life and death!" Her RCV caused the windows to shake and those ponies nearby to clutch their ears.

Murmurs broke out in the crowd. Ponies whispered to one another as Princess Luna's call went unanswered. Suddenly, a voice asked, "Oh, so the great Princess Luna requests an audience with me?" An astral-projection of Chrysalis fades into view. "A matter of life and death, you say? Well don't keep me waiting."

"Answer me this. Countless lives depend on your honesty. Is King Alvarium Rex a soul-eater? And is Alvarium Rex strong enough to control the likes of a raging Scythirraax?" Celestia gasped, recognizing the both name of the beast and the threat of a soul-eater.

Chrysalis, for her part, merely held a faint smirk. "I fail to see how this any of my concern. Or yours, for that matter." Chrysalis hummed and peered through her partner's eyes. "Fascinating. Perhaps... Maybe... I think... Yes... I will tell you that little, tiny, possibly insignificant detail. What do you say?"

"Get off with it already!" Luna yelled in a normal, non-RC voice.

"I think you mean 'Get on with it already.' You are right; I've procrastinated enough." Chrysalis's smirk grew as she saw the princesses' eyes widen. "Rex doesn't have the Elements of Harmony in his world. How do you expect him to deal with the world-destroying megalomaniacs that crop up from time to time? Certainly you cannot expect him to face Discord without any sort of hope? That would be irresponsible of him to leave his fate to chance, and he has already been very responsible."

Luna grit her teeth. "Do you have anything to say on his diet?"

"Oh, our diet is of no concern to you," Chrysalis replied. Sensing something else from her partner, she added, "Anyway, what's done is done, and I wouldn't raise a hoof to change it. Ta-ta!"

Chrysalis promptly vanished.

"Luna, what was that about?" the concerned elder sister asked.

"Sister, disaster is coming. I can feel it in the air."

Unlike her worried partner, Selene was merely confused. Luna had told her the night before that if her daddy was telling the truth, then both he and that creepy changeling that had cleaned their apartments were actually big bad monsters. Her daddy had been playing checkers with her for a while; why would a monster play checkers with her?

Selene's definition of a monster was a giant, writhing mass of tentacles and spikes, with claws, teeth, and a hundred eyes to boot. She had no idea that the image she had conjured was both nearly identical to and an understatement of what the man across from her actually looked like on the inside.

The two of them were sitting on the edge of a chalk ring that her dad had drawn. Said one hundred yard radius ring was drawn in chalk dust poured on the floor of another warehouse near the first. Magic flowed out of both of them and into the mass of symbols. Selene was told that this was a magic wall that only Klika could escape from, and that it kept her safe from Scythirraax's fumes.

Klika, meanwhile, was having the time of her life. Her opponent had intermingled his reduced personal magic and his new changeling magic, allowing him to take a form that was nearly identical to a miniature version of his old body, but sported changeling features and was completely alive. Her barbed tail shot forwards between her legs as she flew, intending to skewer the spot of the pseudo-dracolich's head where its eyes should have been.

Scythirraax blocked with a claw, but immediately regretted it as the acid began corroding his claws. <<How dare you use my own power against me, insolent worm!>> he yelled through the link, preferring it over the unfamiliar speech organs it had recently acquired. He let out a plume of caustic smoke, which Klika dodged with a teleport.

"Hey! This tail is all mine," she called out. Another twin stream of acid and binding gel erupted from her body, eagerly targeting the ex-lich. Klika did notice that her acid had a darker color than before, and she wondered why.

<<You cannot lie to me! I would recognize my plague essence anywhere!>> The draconic changeling lunged again, his claws covered with his signature black ooze. Droplets fell on the floor, corroding in seconds narrow holes that extended several feet down, but where they touched Klika's natural armor, the substance caused only minimal damage.

"Not exactly, Klika. That would be my fault," I admitted. "I know your type, Starscream." He roared at my insulting name for him, recognizing the tratorous character from our shared memories. "I would be exactly the same, if our roles were reversed. You are cunning, ambitious, and very dangerous." <<Do not forget that I am already in your head. You cannot, will not, betray me.>> "Still, you wouldn't be you if you did not try. And to that, I have rendered your greatest weapons moot." <<Your mind is mine, your body is mine, your soul is mine, and your powers will soon belong to us all.>>

<<What have you done?>>

<<I rendered the hive fully immune to you. Klika here has become just as toxic as you as well, though only when she wishes it,>> I replied. Smiling at my firstborn daughter, I said, <<Every nation needs an army, and its general should be the best of them all.>> Klika gasped, hearing my plan for her for the first time. She was almost impaled by a claw while distracted, but I casually redirected the blow with a not-so-subtle push from my mind.

Scythirraax raged, thrashing both physically and spiritually against his bindings. This was what we wanted. I was testing the upper limits of his soul bond and needed him to fight my control. He understood that fighting would only make it worse, as every thrash would illuminate my trap's weaknesses and allow me to improve the whole thing, reinforcing his bindings further. Yet his wounded pride would not allow him to ever stop, for the moment he did, he would be well and truly lost.

Selene watched the fight intently, checkers game long forgotten. She was confused about what was going on because she could only make out parts of the conversation. Regardless, the twelve-year-old cheered her sister onward.

The battle raged on for another hour. The ground was becoming increasingly unstable as the two combatants eroded the floor with acid. Not at all used to the limitations of a living, physical body, my new toy soon realized that he was the inferior opponent. One last blow to the head from his far more nimble opponent, and his body gave out. <<I... Yield.>> Scythirraax shrank back down to his default mortal form, no bigger than the average changeling.

While Klika strode up to his prone body, I merely raised an eyebrow. As she neared him, she extended her hand to help him up. Yet, from my perspective, I could see muscles tensing, magic charging, and thoughts of traps. Scythirraax accepted the hand, but as she pulled him up, he lept, pouncing on her an pinning her to the ground...

Only to be violently launched upwards with a bolt of kinetic and electrical magic. The ex-lich slammed into the dome of magic that Selene and I powered...

Only to shift his limbs into blades and plummet like a guillotine towards Klika...

Only for her to slip through the fabric of space-time, relocating her a few yards to the left and allowing the imprisoned darkling to smash into the ground at bone-breaking speeds. This time, he honestly admitted defeat.

Tightening down his prison magic one last time, I stood and allowed the containment shield to fall. I psychically paralysed him, mostly out of mercy so that he did not hurt himself further, and set to work repairing his body physically and magically so that his magic did not have to work alone. He sighed in relief when I numbed him; being a non-physical being, real pain was just as alien to him as soul pain was to us. "That was very good. You should be proud of yourself; that easily put you as one of the top ten fighters on the planet."

<<How did I lose? I am Scythirraax, the Plague Lord; I do not lose!>>

"You lost to me, you lost to my daughter, and you've lost to Victor repeatedly. I say you lose quite easily." The dragon snarled at me. I merely set another bone and continued talking. "But don't take it too badly; both Klika and I had rigged fights against you. In fact, I was fully prepared to die again while I was already dead."

<<Weakling. Tell me, if I am so much more powerful than you, how did you come to win?>>

I explained, "A shitty match-up with incredibly poor timing on your part. I was mimicking Victor's magic-"

<<An impossibility of the greatest kind.>>

"Nothing is impossible," I replied.

<<Not that,>> the draconic changeling retorted,

"Anyway, I was mimicking Victor when you came along. Had you fought me expecting me, or I had fought without my deep disguise, I probably would have died again in an instant due to dark magic poisoning. You expected Victor and his fighting style; you got me, a standard spell overpowered to the absurd, and the fact that matter and spirit are the same thing in your world." I sealed the last of his bones in place and begain working on regenerating his torn muscle tissue. "Your mistake against Klika was not using instantly lethal techniques."

<<I know no other techniques beyond my claws and my plague.>>

"Liar."

<<...>>

"Anyway, in truth, you are superior to Klika in fighting skill, but I was fighting too, puppet. Strings pulled can both hurt and help. Without my interference, you are second to none." I finished healing him enough that he would make a full recovery on his own. "Klika, if you would take him to the Beehive, that would be kind. Set him up an apartment to live in. He is one of us now, and will get all the basics. Have Anthony get him some ID." She nodded in affirmation.

I continued, "Scythirraax, I know that this might be hard for you, suddenly having to adapt to this extreme situation, but think of this as an opportunity to explore a whole new world. I will expect you to follow my rules, of course. And you will follow them for your own sake, for the majority of them protect the collective; you included. And if you behave, I will slowly unlock your prison so that you may one day be free of this mortal form; however, you will never be free of me. Kill me if you want; I will just climb once more from the Valley of Death."

<<You claim to have risen from the dead, you claim to have seen the fall. What proof do you have of your claims? Describe to me what lies at this ‘Valley’s’ base. Lie, and I will test your claims of immortality.>>

“What lies there is none other than the Grim Reaper. Specifically, it is her mouth that one sees as they fall. Infinite enough to swallow the infinite multiverse, yet simultaneously small enough that you feel it is you and you alone that she is swallowing. The mouth is lipless, tongueless, and toothless, yet very much alive and promising of nothing but utter, absolute destruction for any soul falling towards it. Beyond that, it is incomprehensible and unknowable.

“The Valley itself is dark, but dimly glows with a color that is only definable by what it is not, black. A soul-rending wind blows ever downward, growing faster and stronger with depth, as the Reaper inhales her meals. The only hope for a soul who falls below the halfway mark is if they have an anchor with which to climb back to.” For emphasis, I made him tense his muscles. “Chrysalis and I do.” Then I passed him my two memories of the Valley of Death.

He was silent for a time, which stretched on for what felt like minutes. <<... You were wrong on one small point. There is no point of no return in the Valley; it is the crest before. If you are in the Valley, no power in the multiverse can save you. No artificial anchor can do what you claim to have done. Eternals cannot die in the first place; Divinity bind themselves to their universe, but lose themselves upon the turn of the cycle; Immortals like my Liege, Lord Divinci, and I can stop ourselves from ever entering the Valley, even if our finite shells are destroyed, by an artificial process.

What you do goes against what I hold to be true. And yet... I respect that. I have seen much in my time, having lived since the dawn of this cycle. You are tolerable. I will serve you willingly... when it suits me. Expect nothing more.>>

“Of course.” What else could I say? I had somehow, of no deliberate action of my own, won the favor of an ancient, eldritch abomination.

I’m still waiting for my psychotic breakdown from all the shit that has happened to me these past three years.

Scythirraax was relieved when he stepped out of the accursed sunlight. The one thing he would ever - however briefly - consider thanking his new master for was an immunity to its deadly light. Mayhaps there was something to these mortal forms after all. Emotion for sustenance? That seemed interesting to the bone man. Well, it did until he was forced through one of the busier parts of the city, where he quickly decided that death by hyperstimulation was not a fun way to go.

These changelings, they too were interesting, but in a much less enjoyable way. They knew that he had attempted to end their king’s existence, and resented him for it. In a way, he felt like one of the lesser beings in his old home. They poked and prodded his mind as he walked past them, and because of his position at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy, he had little to no defense against them. ‘No,’ he amended, ‘not them; him. They are ordinary mortals with no power of their own. They borrow power from their bindings, and their assault on my mind is merely their king’s unconscious mirroring of their desire. My own mental defenses are in shambles from his attack earlier. I can feel them rebuilding to their former glory, but it is not by my will. In fact, I feel them spreading and growing to cover all of them. Fascinating.’

The ex-lich followed his captor’s daughter into the building referred to as ‘The Beehive’. On the outside, the building looked like any other structure in the city. The inside, however, was vastly different. Every square inch was covered in a solidified green coating, organic in origin. Translucent windows along the walls allowed sunlight in, illuminating the artificial cavern, and clued Scythirraax into the fact that this was not the building’s original arrangement. The space was filled with changelings living in the large communal areas. Hundreds bathed, ate, slept, worked, and socialized, all within sight of one another in the grand room. Some of them even mated in full view of the others, even going as far as to request an audience.

Without any warning, the ex-lich’s aching abdominal region rumbled. His guide paused upon hearing the noise. “When was the last time you ate?”

The ex-lich thought, <<You mean acquire energy? Why? I do not hunger for mana. Even in my diminished state, I should be satiated for at least another decade before needing to absorb arcane energies once more.>>

“I meant physical food,” his captor’s daughter replied. “Meat, blood, bread, stuff...”

<<Why would I need that? I am->> His abdomen repeated the noise. Dejected, he finished, <<-now in a physical body... I assume that this feeling is my body telling me that it needs nourishment? And if I deny it?>>

“Yeah,” Klika replied. “And that would be a really bad idea. You die before the seal is unlocked, and the Reaper gets dragon pot pie, understand? That spell will launch you at her.”

<<Don’t starve. Understood.>> Hesitantly, and highly ashamed at needing another’s help, he asked, <<How often do I have to... eat?>>

“Three times a day. About three thousand Calories worth of food in total.” Klika laughed. A few seconds later, a projectile was lobbed through the air. Klika, fully expecting it, snared it with her magic without looking back and passed it to Scythirraax. “Eat up.”

The object in his hand was a thick piece of meat that his new memories identified as steak, wrapped up in a thick piece of butcher paper. The pleasant scent titillated his senses, begging him to consume it. He did, at first with apprehension, then acceptance, and eventually gusto as the pleasurable taste seemed to dance upon his tongue. ‘If this was what the physical world offered, he mused, ‘I am sure that my stay here will be... tolerable.’

Klika, however, was snickering the whole time, as if she had found an unspoken joke within the situation. Her ward ate and ate, not knowing the dastardly trap he was falling into. She could hardly wait to spring it. When he finally devoured the last bite, she said, “Now that you’ve eaten, you do know what comes next, right?”

<<What? More food?>> he asked.

“Well, yes,” she admitted, “but it’s what you do with that food when you are done with it.”

Scythirraax was confused; he did not like being confused. He was a genius, a master of knowledge of the arcane. He did not like not knowing. And, admittedly, he was rather poorly educated on the facts of life - such as biology - given all his dealings with mortal sorcerers in the past. It was not the kind of information they thought about or even wanted to share. Digestion also happened to be a vastly different activity than the closest analog to it in the shadow realm. <<What? I thought that I was done; what more could I do with it?>>

“Well, not all of the food can be absorbed by the body. All that waste material has to go somewhere~” Klika sang. “Usually, out the other end.”

The ex-lich changed his mind. This was definitely hell.

His warden looked back at him, her head turned back so that she could see him from the corner of her vision. She had just finished giving him the tour of where he would be staying, and had explained to him that though he was now the bottom of the hierarchy, he could work his way up with hard work, cunning, or, as vile as it sounded, sexual prowess. The only redeeming feature - a quite pleasing one at that - was that by taking advantage of the human’s love, he might just have a way to restore himself to his former strength. ‘Political power by sharing the energy, or personal power by consuming it?’ Scythirraax mused. He also wondered why, if his warden was done with her duty, was she still hovering there, watching him.

“Thank you.” Those two words hit the prisoner like a ton of bricks. Why would she thank him? It was an admission of weakness, that she had been dependant on him for something. Why? He thought, and then decided to confirm his theory.

<<Why?>>

“I... ah...” Kilika was suddenly quite nervous. Scythirraax’s opinion of her fell more. “I’ve never actually told anyone this, not even my father. I think he knows, but...” She shook her head. “I have these... itches, I guess that’s the word. When they come, something dies whether I want it or not... But I’ve always loved the feeling of the life being squeezed out by my claws, the trickle of freshly-spilled blood through my holes. I usually scratch it by butchering the pod-humans for the kitchens, or going to the pet store for something to rip apart... It’s intoxicating...” She stopped. Her dreamy expression shattered as she realized what she was saying. “Uhhh....”

<<Do go on. This is interesting,>> the ex-lich replied.

Klika rubbed the back of her head and drifted around the suspended platform where his cloud bed-cocoon hybrid was mounted. “Really? Most people would have been running away from me by now.”

Scythirraax snorted with contempt. <<Please. Do not associate me with such trash. I am the very manifestation of plague and disease; I love killing.>>

“Well then,” Klika replied, the dreamy expression having returned to her face. Her tail twitched merrily behind her. “I hope we can spar again. That was quite fun, and it scratched my itch, having you bleed all over me. I’m gonna fight you until I can beat you without Dad’s help, got it?”

<<That sounds quite enjoyable. I look forward to seeing you fail.>>

“Dream on!” Klika shouted as she resumed her flight out of the sleeping quarters.

The moment his warden was gone, his knees buckled, dropping him down onto the suspended cloud mattress that was to be his bed. Beyond that one action, his mortal form did not relay to the world the agony it felt. Battered, bruised, and oh so fragile, Scythirraax cursed this prison of his. He called up his magic - his, not the magic forced upon him by his new master - to try and repair his body. The draconic changeling was surprised when the magic poured out of his claws in a mass of purple light, flecked with green and black, but then realized that that was obvious in hindsight. He lowered his claw towards his chest-

“Hey, I almost forgo-yyaahhhh!” Klika, who had hovered back up, gasped when she saw the dark magic. Said magic vanished from Scythirraax’s grasp through no action of his own, but rather Klika’s knee-jerk psychic reaction. “Don’t do that!”

<<What? Heal myself with my own magic from the abuse you inflicted upon me?>> He somehow managed to roll his were-lights-for-eyes in an emulation of the sarcastic expression. The gesture, foreign to the alien being, seemed appropriate given the situation.

“Uhhh... I guess that’s ok,” Klika conceded. “Dark magic doesn’t have the best of reputations here, as dark magic from a non-changeling tends to be... instantly lethal. In the future, just circulate it through your body, rather channeling it out to form a healing spell.” A thought occurred to her. “Now that I say it aloud, a dark-magic healing spell seems quite odd.”

<<I will heed your advice,>> Scythirraax conceded, not willing to do anything to jeopardize his safety... yet. When he actually followed her advice, he was pleased to find that his body repaired itself much more easily - though less efficiently - than the way he had originally intended. <<I am insulted by the insinuation that we do not have magical healing. Ponies heal with the desire to nurture and restore; we darklings heal with rage against weakness, a desire to crush imperfection. Dark mages in the past tended to not be as interested in the more...benign aspects of our power.>> Not for the first time did Scythirraax lament the acursid v҉͔̺ͅi̳͉͓ṉ͔͘e͕̭̝͔̲͔̭s̛͇̖̫̰̘̩ that had wormed their way into his mind, loosening his tongue to and uncomfortable level. <<Now, what did you need of me that required your presence?>>

Klika nodded. “Right, I just found out your assignment. Yow will be placed as a joint member of the Infiltration Division and the Research & Development Division. Specifically, you are going to be working with a group of academics aiming to correct the flaws within the Crystal Curse in order to maximize the purity and energy content of synthetic emotions. Afterwards, you will be permanently assigned to be our liaison with him, and will be provided the appropriate pay for both tasks.”

<<No, I refuse,>> he quickly replied. <<I will not allow my Lord to see me in such a weakened state.>>

“I thought you might refuse. So consider this: You are to be the taste-tester. Divinci will be feeding you magic, helping you grow stronger.” Klika smiled, her fangs glistening as sunlight from a window fell upon them. “Like it or not, you are now a parasite. And the king who you were trying to dethrone when you attacked my Dad is freely offering his power to us. You can serve both of your rulers without issue, and regain your power while you are at it. You already have our permission to consume any of Divinci’s enemies, and those he deems ‘expendable.’ Honestly, I’m slightly envious. It’s free food.”

<<I will consider your proposal... strongly.>>

“That’s all we ask. You also should probably ask Dad for the full limits of your bindings; I don’t think they are quite as restrictive as you think.” Klika then nodded to herself and changed the subject. Cocking her head to the side, she asked, “You up for a brawl next Tuesday?”

Scythirraax tilted his head to the side, then back, and then nodded once. <<I think that is agreeable.>>

“YES! Thank you. It’s a date!” Her tail suddenly whipped out at bullet-like speeds towards his face. The ancient being casually caught it with a claw, careful to ensure that the barb landed within the hole on his palm. “Good. Stay sharp, my friend!”

And with that, the murder princess was gone.

She considered him a friend? Not ally, but friend? ‘This world is so strange.’

Author's Notes:

*Ding* Have a chapter.

I wrote this chapter in two days. I really had some major inspiration during the time it took to write this. Hope you enjoy!

And I may have... sort of stolen Scythirraax from InfiniteBrony's story. It's for a good cause, I swear! It's not like he's gone forever... and it will save Scythirraax's life.

And while my editor, Alternate Madness, ships Klika X Scythirraax, it probably will end up as a creepy stalker crush (Klika) on a manipulative bastard who doesn't love (Scy). Maybe. Klika's bonkers, and Scythirraax is no sane man either.

Today, there is love. Tomorrow, there is death.