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Change the Only Constant

by TheDarkStarCzar

Chapters

Invasion

I include these ten chapters that you may understand how I came to be a chronicler of the changelings, the first in this modern era, and so understand what slight role I have played in their rich history.




Twenty years before Princess Luna's exile and the horrors that ensued, I had been assigned on scholarly exchange to that temple and pyramid infested land of Tanis which lay many days to the Southeast of my own home in Canterlot.

Despite being the capital city of a minor empire, the eponymous Tanis was largely an earth pony city with it's population of unicorns and pegasi numbering in the dozens; a splash in a sea of many thousands. Modest for a capital city, it had a tumbledown keep at it's center that had been whitewashed and decked in garish banners celebrating the town's heritage.

It's legacy was largely militaristic, which contrasted it's current status as an exotic center of learning. Classical architecture still shone as in it's prime even though it was half a millennium old. It's slate roofed and stuccoed modernity had burrowed itself into the ancient walls and ruins, repurposing ancient temple walls into the bounds of apartment blocks and market stalls with blatant disregard for the underlying history concealed beneath. It's defensive walls had become largely vestigial and it's guard slow and corpulent from lack of engagement.

Universities, specialized institutes and libraries made up the main focus of the town, indeed it's what drew me there.

When the Changelings swarmed in, the city was wholly and completely defenseless and I, better than anypony, knew it.

That's why I chose to take refuge in a nearby alley, because I knew their numbers, their tactics. If the Changelings had finally chosen to leave their own citadel in force to pillage the countryside there was buck all I could do about it.




I watched from my ignoble vantage, between a garbage can and a broken orange crate as that sinister army marched unchecked through the town. Chaos, screams and the clatter of battle echoed through the canyon-like alleyways. Certainly some brave ponies tried to oppose them, armed with shovels and axes, weapons of opportunity with limited reach. Being without magic or wings they were relegated to hoof to hoof combat. The drones of course, had both, and again I use that to justify my poltroonery. I am a scholar and a chronicler, not a warrior and my heroic death would do little to beat back the assault, and a considerable amount to inconvenience myself.

Two Changelings swooped down into the lane before me, cratering the ground in a spray of grit and shrapnel, knocking a quartet of the local guards ponies back on their plots as they tried to bring their cumbersome polearms to bear. With a brief burst of green magic emanating from a curved black horn they were stunned into unconsciousness and were left crumpled on the smooth flagstone without a further thought.

No attempt to restrain them was made, which I found odd, and I crept out of my hiding spot for a better view. In the close streets of the printer's district, ponies were strewn haphazardly as far as could be seen. The ones being cocooned had one thing in common, they were mares.

The work was fast, these were creatures who knew how to coordinate and cooperate seamlessly. They would wrap each subdued mare in a green shimmering ooze that the drones excreted from their mouths and shaped with clumsily effective magic. Then one of their comrades would scoop them up, heft the obscene bundle onto their back and buzz away on their ragged, wasp-like wings.

"Coward!" One of the mares screamed and I looked up as certainly as if she'd called my name. I can't deny that I felt the part still half concealed as I was. Her eyes blazed at me, urging me like a puppet to rise and without regard to my own wishes I did just that, and haltingly advanced, "Locus! You craven jackass! Get these abominations off of me!"

I slunk closer along a rough stucco wall, shrouded in shadow even in the harsh midday sun and I recognized this mare. Brush Stroke, one of those few unicorns, but what use did she put her magic to? Nothing more offensive than painting, and unless a barbed caricature would fend off her captors she was completely helpless.

My mind screamed the futility of my actions even as I left the relative safety of the wall, and stepped out into the glaring light, my hooves amateurishly cocked and my horn charging for a brief and spectacular fight.

By now there was a line of the black shelled soldiers all employed in various stages of binding their captives and removing them to Celestia knows where.

Dishearteningly they glanced my way, appraised me, and went back to their duties, ignoring me almost entirely.

Almost.

One of the drones wheeled on me and poked his hoof into my nose. It wasn't a punch but it was hard enough for me to lose my concentration and my horn fizzled out. My offensive magics were rather paltry anyhow and he probably spared me more embarrassment than he realized. He looked back to his comrade who had nearly finished trussing up the mare.

I knew her quite well. She was a friend, I suppose, who I'd unsuccessfully tried to flirt with early in my life in this horrid place. I chalked my lack of success up to me, an equinologist, and her, a painter, having little in common. In truth I was just awkward with mares and failed at any reasonable semblance of smalltalk. I was lucky to have ended up with the mare I did who was understanding of these failings. So long ago I had tried to play gallant with her every chance I got, so it pained me on many levels when the cocoon finally obscured her terrified eyes.


"Cut her loose, you can't have that one!" I made as if to advance towards her, to make some noble play to free her from her larval imprisonment, but was stopped short. The Changeling put his hoof on my withers and shoved me flat onto the ground, my legs collapsing underneath me.


Admittedly it was the minimum amount of force necessary and his message was clear. He was telling me that he knew who I was, treating me as respectfully as he was able, but I wouldn't be allowed to interfere. As soon as he'd held me down long enough for that point to sink in fully he released me, turned, and went back to his hateful work.


"Bastards!" I yelled to no response whatever.


I did not rise and could not bear to watch these activities any longer. I simply sat where I'd been placed in the center of the thoroughfare and shivered in impotent rage, my hooves firmly pressed over my eyes.

Betrayal screamed my mind. But it wasn't, not really. Just because I had lived in the same hive with these creatures for a time didn't mean I held any sway over them. It didn't mean I had any right to interfere. Just like then, I was only an observer here.

We herbivores have a skewed sense of morality. Plants don't go to war against us or scream and squeal as we deliver killing chomps that sever the tender leaf. It's easy to tout peaceful coexistence when your foodstuffs are vegetable rather than living, breathing creatures.

But even we acknowledge that carnivores require animal protein, there's little enough to be done about it. We aren't likely to chastise a bear (or a griffon for that matter) for eating a fish, or even a wolf for taking a rabbit or deer. It's in their nature and if we deny them their sustenance we would be killing them.

The whole thing is made simpler by the prey animal's non-sentience. Were they able and effective communicators, friends even, we would find the whole arrangement ghastly. That's the key difference in those relationships in nature and the one between the ponies and Changelings.

But we are not at the pinnacle of the food chain.

We are prey animals and without us that race of parasites dies.

Were I somepony else, that prospect would be acceptable, even preferable. But I knew the Changelings, too. Between that and my scientific training it would have been hypocritical in the extreme to see this act of predation as an entirely despicable act.

The other ponies, though, knew of my research and would ask for my assistance and, Celestia help me, I would assist. I would be right in the forefront when we counter attacked the hive and I would do my best to decimate them. I would take no joy in it, but regardless of my sympathies, I am a pony first and will fight alongside my fellows when that time came that I could lay down my sniveling and actually make a difference.



The screams and sounds of battle waned and soon there was only the buzz of wings and even they diminished as the invading horde retreated with their prizes.

When I rose and rejoined the world there were hardly any mobile ponies about and all the drones were gone. Galloping through the low slung city I headed towards the gothic edifice of the central university.

Along the way I noticed not a single mare in evidence and the stallions and colts, though stunned and stirring slowly and in a daze, were uninjured. I noticed not a single wound or serious injury in the crowd, though there were splashes of fresh, bright Changeling blood in several places, implying that though they hadn't left any visible corpses, they hadn't fared as well.

The desolate citizens were staggering to their hooves, propping themselves against those ancient walls, attempting to regain their senses that they might pursue their tormentors.

My opinion was that the Changelings had made a grave error. Taking all the mares, humiliating the stallions, called for one thing, even amongst the most peace loving creature that walked this land; Revenge, and swiftly. I knew that as soon as they had a chance to regroup they would march, en masse, on the hive itself with a hate and malice unrivaled by anything Tartarus could supply.

I had to get to the university where the leaders of this forthcoming raid would most certainly assemble, as I was a pony with a fresh and intimate knowledge of that hives defenses, interior and psychology. I didn't stop to check on the fallen on my way, trusting that they would recover and that there was next to nothing substantial I could do to assist them anyway.

Passing through the impressive front entrance found a half dozen notable ponies already assembling in the hallway to strategize and organize.

"Locus!" A grey coated old stallion hollered at me, "Just the pony we need right now!"

I didn't stop to talk but rather gestured that they should follow me and entered the first classroom.

It was a dimly lit, baroque arrangement, with heavy moldings and wainscoting throughout. Mismatched desks and benches were piled high and covered in dust in the back half of the sloped hall. The front half had a few tattered cushions, a teak desk and set of bookshelves occupied by kegs, tankards, mugs and the various accoutrements for brewing tea and coffee, testifying to the current use of the space, an informal lounge for the faculty. It had been abandoned as a classroom and used as storage before being retaken for it's current purpose.

There were only two objects in the room relevant to me, chalk and the chalkboard and I took up the one and set to marking up the other. I started talking as I drew and wrote.

"We've little enough time, as soon as the city recovers it's wits they'll insist on marching into battle and they will lose, don't doubt that for a moment." I said and the six grunted their agreement, another pony poked his head in, motioned to another still in the hall to enter and as I talked more trickled in, "We know where their hive is, however and I know it's layout and environs well enough to give us some advantage."

The hive had gone from a dreaded abomination to something the Tanisians had simply taken for granted. It had appeared nearly a century ago and instilled fear in the local inhabitants. They'd marched upon it only to have their forces defeated or captured, but that was long ago and it's impact was dulled by time. One generation told the next and they the next and they in turn grew complacent. It was almost a lark that sent me to study them directly, the first time it had been done by civilians. Their interests had been renewed when the hive's squat round structures had birthed a tall spire from it's core.

They'd sent me out with an invisibility cloak and a crude map, which show the extent to which they'd lost their fear for the Changelings. They treated it as if it were a wildlife expedition more than as if I were a military spy. I hadn't been especially keen on the idea but they extorted me into it using my scholarly exchange status as leverage.

Since I'd been the first in modernity to study them they couldn't have known that Changelings saw in a spectrum which rendered the invisibility cloak rather useless.

I pointed to a drawing of the Changeling's central spire, "The hive is built around this structure which serves as a throne room and main hall. That's where the vast majority of the drones will be. Down here at the bottom are these four nodular structures, each of which has a specific function but it's the one to the east that matters. That's where they would keep all of the prisoners cocooned and maintained to be used as fuel for the hive."

"How long do we have until the prisoners are...nonviable?" A mare I recognized as a lieutenant of the self defense force asked.

"On that front we have a long time." I shrugged, "They take good care of their prisoners. Not for kindness' sake, but because the longer they survive the more nourishment they can get from them. I'm not entirely uncertain that a pony couldn't live out a normal lifespan entirely within their hypnotic thrall. That's not important, though. Nopony is going to stand for this and if we don't act quickly and cohesively a lot of hotheads are going to go off half cocked and waste their efforts and their lives. We'll need everypony if we have any chance of succeeding."

There were now thirty or forty ponies, but the one I needed and dreaded, the Commander of the Self Defense Force himself, had yet to show up. I was just thinking of sending a messenger for him when he showed up in the doorway with a scowl on his face.

Commander Victory by name, he was a drab, pale green colored pegasus with a sandy mane. His visored blue hat and dress uniform were covered in medals, embroidered gold flourishes and rank insignia which made him into a garishly clashing display. But that's not why I disliked him. His temper and extreme officiousness were what turned me against him, but I needed him so I pretended as hard as I could that this wasn't the case.

He needed me too, but was too obtuse to realize it and so acted in his absurdly predictable manner.

He motioned to a pair of his soldiers to enter the hall, pointed a hoof at me and told them, "There's the traitor. Truss him up and we'll hang him at dawn."

"Ah, Pyrrhic, good of you to show up at last. I was getting worried I'd have to repeat myself." I smirked. This wasn't the first time he'd ordered somepony to string me up, and he would get no closer to it now than any other time he'd tried.

"Shut up, Locus. It's Commander Victory to you, we aren't on a first name basis, and you should call me Sir besides." He growled. His guards made like they were advancing, but were in actuality just waiting to be called off before they actually had to set about tying me up and hauling me off. They too had seen this farce before.

"I saw you with my own eyes this time, bowing down to those monsters as they hauled off our mares. It's beyond what can be explained just by being a yellow belly. I even saw one of them fake a punch and pretend to subdue you. Must have known I was watching. I thought a Changeling would be a better actor, though, because the whole thing was the poorest piece of theater I've ever seen."

"Ah, well it happens you're wrong there, Commander, sir. That Changeling did indeed subdue me with the merest little flick. I should like to emphasize that it was quite well placed and certainly it was intended to humiliate me and demonstrate the futility of my resisting."

I replied smoothly, "I'm not altogether grateful for your bringing up such a humbling experience when, clearly, I am a civilian and untrained for battle, else why would I so ardently rely upon your Self Defense Force?"

"Sir." I added belatedly.

At that he harrumphed and though not swayed by my flattery he still waved off his guards and I was once again reprieved. "Any stallion worth a damn would have stood and fought, I guess that just proves once again what a worthless gelding you are."

He glared around the room at the assembled ranks of professors, politicians, tradesmen and researchers, "That goes for the lot of you! Holing up here amongst your ivory towers yapping and scheming when there's bugs that need to be swatted! Shameful! Just disgraceful!"

A little point should be mentioned just now so one doesn't get the wrong idea. Despite stereotyping to the contrary not all pegasi are warlike louts, but so far as I've seen each and every Commander in their ranks had a similarly grating personality and a dislike for any they considered to be 'intellectuals.' To a large degree, the cost of having the Commander and his squadron of pegasi at the spearhead of our meager force, was placidly taking abuse of this sort, and we'd all grown used to it, thus our silence as his wrath exhausted itself. Speaking up at this point would just make anypony a lightning rod in his storm and it simply wasn't worth the bother.

Aside from this he actually knew he was in the wrong but couldn't help but to go through the blustery motions and saber rattling as a matter of course.

Pegasi, go figure. Militaristic and competitive to what limits harmony would stretch and often beyond, but brave and hopelessly loyal when the chips were down.

"Commander, your opinion of us not withstanding, do join us a moment." Musty Scroll, an earthpony professor said tactfully as soon as he sensed it would not cause a further outburst, "Locus was just pointing out the weaknesses of the Changeling's stronghold."

I was doing no such thing, the hive has no inherent weaknesses that I'd noticed, but I did have somewhat of a plan in mind. The Commander walked in, seated himself violently on an innocent cushion and motioned grandly for me to proceed.

"Yes, well, I was pointing out that the prisoners would all be detained in this structure." My hoof indicated the eastern dome.

"Why?" The Commander asked simply.

"Well..." I put my hoof to my chin, thought for a moment and realized that there may be a weakness after all, "There's a whole network, like veins, that drain the energy from their captives and redistributes it throughout the hive. It's integral with the structure, in fact it is the structure, but there's a choke point just here where the nodule connects to the main hive..."

"But what does that get us?" I was thinking on my hooves and really thought I was onto something but I just couldn't see the bigger picture. I was still scrambling for it, though. "If we sever the vein the prisoners will at least be awake, but still trapped in those cocoons, so that doesn't get us anywhere. It'll be hard to repair being that it's embedded so deep in the structure so they'll probably cut the pods down and move them to one of the other nodules rather than waste the time. That actually seems like a disadvantage because then the prisoners could be anywhere rather than all in one spot, plus it will be hard to get at in the first place..."

I trailed off having failed to pull a plausible plan out of my plot. Usually if I just kept rambling everything came together but I fell short this time until help came from that nemesis of mine.

Their queen being what she is I just couldn't fathom what use they had for so many mares, though. It went against all I knew about the Changelings that they would want them for breeding stock. I'm fairly certain, in fact, that it wouldn't even work.

"I've seen this hive of yours." Commander Victory pointed at my drawing, "But what's it made of? Black metal? Obsidian?"

"No no, nothing so exotic." I said, "It's made from protein excretions, sort of like spider silk. Close up it's texture resembles your hoof's and the structure is primarily hollow tubes of the stuff."

"Will it burn?"

"It will to an extent, but it has to be a pretty hot fire and it won't stay alight on it's own."

"But it will burn?"

"After a fashion."

Malicious, simple minded hate sparkled in his eye, "Sounds like a plan to me."


The Hive

Our Gods are neither as ragged nor as fictitious as the Tanisian's own. Where they rely upon and, in fact, treasure blind faith to the highest degree, our Princesses are actual, factual beings.

With the proper connections, introductions or just plain luck you yourself might bask in their effulgent glory, taking in their radiant magnificence with corporeal eyes rather than awaiting some far fetched ascension to gaze upon them.

In this manner I'd convinced myself that our citizenry and culture were indeed superior to they who worship so adamantly their carnivorous feline deity. I had to wonder at why ponies would bow down in fear and contrition to the sphinxes and graven images of this greasy maned, mange coated, imaginary tyrant.

So convinced was I, that when the Canterlot University originally sent me on a scholarly exchange to their capital city, I spent the bulk of my first year there poring over their holy books and histories in a quest to debunk their entire way of life.

I presented my refutation of their dogmatic construct in hope of tumbling the seemingly precarious monument of their beliefs into the placid sea of reason. Reason that I must abashedly admit was so ordered as to lead them to my own holy diarchy, to the Princesses Celestia and Luna. (This was some years before the banishment of the Lunar Princess and the havoc that surrounded that event. Was I aware that this eventuality had begun to germinate even then, I wonder if I would not have tempered my supercilious treatment of my brother scholars in Tanis, and the kingdom that surrounded it.)

Predictably I was met with condescending praise, jovially lauded as a young firebrand who would come into his own one day. That, of course, was meant to belittle my scholarly efforts and imply that I was a callow little colt, and that such self assured rebukes of the established order were the impotent banalities of the self important, learned youth.

Those things may also be true, but it seems that they took my continued presence to be a burr, if not an actual threat and they made me a proposition that would rid them of my presence.

As an equinologist I intended to study other cultures and they'd had an exotic one on their kingdom's doorstep that they felt merited an in depth study.

"How would you feel," The chancellor of scholarly affairs asked slowly, with implied nonchalance, "Making a study of the sociological aspects of the Changeling hive?"

I considered it, trying to recall any pertinent facts but coming up blank. It was often the case that I was wanting for facts and feeling foalish when I'd been called to this office. This was by design. The Chancellor held himself aloof by this and many other well studied adversarial methods. "Chancellor, you've caught me unprepared, what then, is a Changeling?"

He chuckled and earnestly stated, "I would have thought in your research into our history you would have come across some mention of the Changelings. But very well, I will give you the basics. They are a breed of pony, I suppose, but insectile in nature, with hard black shells and translucent wings that buzz like a horsefly. Little enough is known about them, though they are known to be quite dangerous. They possess magic that allows them to transfigure themselves into other forms and use it to drain psychic energy from their victims. At least that's what we believe to be true, we've yet to do an in depth investigation to date, which is where you come in."

"I rather think not." I said firmly, "That sounds more like the place of a spy or some army specialist than a equinologist, and though I'd not wish you to think me a coward, it does sound a bit more suicidal than I prefer my studies."

"Oh quite. I can see how you would think that, and the plain truth is that the army has had spies evaluate the Changelings, but their findings are their own secret to keep and not released to us academics." He said and leaned back on his stool, propping his rear hooves up on the darkly stained, glossy ash desk. He fiddled with a pipe, variously tamping in and picking out strands of tobacco before lighting it with a glow from his horn and stoking it with quick, sharp puffs. It turns out, I found out later, to have been a lie and it seems the army never took on the task to any great degree.

"You see, they've recently erected a soaring black spire on top of their hive, which I'm told serves as their keep and castle, just beyond our borders. Our generals long for war, as they tend to, but we've little enough information on their society. We should like to gather it from study of living, breathing creatures, going about their lives, rather than cobble together a flawed and incomplete knowledge from the looted corpses and shattered structures left after an army raid."

"Admittedly it sounds daunting, but I assure you it's perfectly safe. We have in our possession a fairly foolproof invisibility cloak that will allow you to infiltrate their hive and observe with only a modicum of caution required. We've already sent a researcher to the hive wearing it and it was quite effective. Now we just need somepony to mount a more long term study before the warmongers take the opportunity away from us forever."

"Still, it's outside of my field of study." I countered. This was some verbal combat the Chancellor was engaging me in and I was beginning to feel that I was being boxed in and a step behind, "It seems like an ethnologist or even an entomologist may be more appropriate. I have no experience in long term field studies, nor any particular interest in them."

I was backpedaling out of instinct, but in the back of my mind I found that I would relish the opportunity to research an unknown culture, but my cowardice was automatic, autonomic and invariably fought to maintain the status quo in any situation. Any hope for stability was upset in the Chancellor's next move.

"Let me be blunt." He grinned at me from his reclining position, "The scholarly council, though most amused and delighted with your thesis, believe your research to be...misguided. They feel your time here is being wasted, and that perhaps you are a poor fit. Now I don't wholly disagree with them, but believe it or not, I like you and would like to keep you on. Funding being what it is, though, I can't keep you on for my own amusement, much as I'd like to, so I dredged up this orphaned project to justify your continued presence. Despite the circumstances I feel it is a most important undertaking and should be quite edifying besides. Still, if you feel it beyond your scholarly goals I can't too much fault you."

Now it became evident that I was playing checkers while the Chancellor was playing chess and there was no choice but to concede to one thing or the other. I told him to let me think on it and he nodded his assent and set his smoldering pipe on the desk with a soft cluck.

The smoke curled up from it and hung in the dim light of the paneled office, becoming a brilliant query mark of white as it rose into a sunbeam that peaked through the slatted blinds; a reminder of my own Princess Celestia in this forsaken, heathen land.

Would she protect me on my journey?

That is the advantage of an illusory god as opposed to a flesh and blood deity. The former, though impotent, is omnipresent and so may be said to walk at your side, though the value of her presence may rightly be called into question.

The latter was back home in Equestria and could give me no more solace than a mother's warm regard for her wayward children would.

Unknown to her, as I, in all honesty, was, there would be no hope of intercession should I find myself in peril, which was quite worrying since, even as I left the smoky office, I knew I'd be back the next day to take on the Chancellor's mission.






I was petrified. Literally scared to the point of complete immobility when I approached the hive and saw my first changeling. Even with the invisibility cloak he seemed to be looking right at me, but with the featureless orbs I imagine I'd feel the same regardless of where he was looking.

Compound eyes, glowing behind protective lenses, I told myself. Jet black segmented exoskeleton, probably chitinous, I noted. What odd mix of the Equine and the Arthropod could produce such a slight against reason and nature as these creatures appeared to be? The changeling chittered and paced about his post in an irregular pattern, occasionally pausing to bob his head and shift it from side to side. It was a mannerism I'd seen griffons display when they were looking for prey.

He had fangs, teeth designed for ripping flesh, and I imagine he can smell me, I thought, unbidden. Assuredly, I should run away and never come back. The worst they can do is rescind my funding and ship me back to Canterlot. Given the alternative, being eaten by these insectoid ponies, that should be much preferable. I had to keep reminding myself that somepony had already gone into the changeling's lair and come back unharmed.

Or so I've been told. Who's to say if that's even true or if it was a fiction invented to keep me unapprised of my peril? Surely no pony would volunteer to be the first on an expedition of this sort and I'd certainly not endeared myself to my colleagues with my previous work. What if this was just their way of getting rid of me? Nopony but the Chancellor and a few underlings and guards knew I'd even come out here, if I disappeared, who would come to seek me out? Who would even realize something was amiss? Maybe I was trapped and needed help, maybe I went back to Canterlot, maybe I was dead. Any of these things could be true and save for one lone contact, who was meant to come to my camp site and collect my report every three days, I was now completely isolated from all of ponykind.

While I was going through the motions of this minor break down, the chittering grew louder and the voices more numerous. Returning to my senses at the intrusion I was staring at a half dozen changelings walking towards me. As if in a dream I tried to turn and run, but found that I couldn't. My knees were locked, my eyes wide and my teeth chattering as they drew nearer and nearer, then walked right by me so close that I could have reached out and touched them. They continued on, pausing only for a moment when one of the party turned and bid some squawky, garbled farewell to the posted guard I'd been observing earlier. They walked away on their odd, holey legs, eventually taking to the air on fast beating wings and peeling off towards the west.

I exhaled a breath I hadn't even realized I'd been holding and took this as proof that the invisibility cloak worked. With residual trepidation a strode across the scrubby brush to about three yards from the changeling who was guarding the passageway into the hive. I had to force every step.

Observing him (if it was a him) closer, I finally took real notice of the holes in his legs and hooves. Was he injured, I wondered? But no, looking closer it was evident that his body was naturally formed that way. His wings likewise seemed naturally perforated. Their symmetry, when he shifted and spread them, the best argument that they were meant to be thus. It also struck me odd that with the wings he also had a horn. Here in this uninhabited back country lay a race of half insect, half alicorns that I'd never heard a thing about. Truly the world is full of wonders beyond imagining.

He was sleek in design and after the initial fear and revulsion wore off, he was pretty, in his own way. His frilled mane and tail reminded me of the night guards, though they weren't really of the same sort. He'd stopped pacing so widely and, if I didn't know better I'd have thought him to be posing for my convenience. More likely, I thought, he could tell someone was about, even if he couldn't see me and I'd raised his suspicions. Better, then, to enter the hive and observe these creatures where they are in a relaxed and unguarded state.

I stalked my way up to the hive itself. The door itself was in the lee and crotch of two monumental black, perforated  hemispheres. Up close the the whole structure hummed with the clickings, rumblings and mutterings of it's inhabitants. It's texture resembled the light, striated rock that lined the plains around active volcanoes. Rubbing it with a hoof I found that it was fibrous, but put off further study for when I could collect a sufficiently large piece.

The perforations of the domes on either side didn't look so much like windows as just natural growths in the structure, almost like eyeless eyelids held invisibly in shape. The entryway was three times taller, but no wider than a regular doorway. Distorted folds around a recessed center gave it a lewdly organic look.

Hugging the wall, I entered, expecting to find a dim series of winding passages and blind chambers, as an ant colony would have, I was surprised to be let into a single airy and well lit chamber. It was dizzyingly high, all made of the same dark material, but inside it was festooned with more changelings than I could count, hung from the inside of the sloping walls that rose into the spire. A venous network was integral with the very structure of the room. It's web glowed with dull green pulses, terminating in a multitude of crystalline structures up and down the walls from which many changelings were hanging. Green waves of magic flowed from their horns to these, or vice versa, I didn't know at the time.

The floor was either a harder material or it had simply been polished by traffic to a considerable sheen. Rising from it were a set of wide stairs that led to the room's focal point, a black throne of enormous stature. It was unoccupied but spoke of a ruler every bit the size of Celestia to sit upon it. It was elaborately woven as if a brocade of black, venomous snakes, with aquamarine frills and silver orbs set below the scrolled arms. A sea green carpet runner trailed before the steps, terminating halfway across the floor where two stout guards stood a head higher than the other changelings I'd seen. Their regal bearing required no explanation. Though they were not present just this moment there surely was a monarch of the changelings somewhere nearby.

A feeling of unbridled excitement bubbled up with the impending opportunity to see a creature nopony had ever seen before. It was quickly extinguished as a membranous wing brushed against the fabric of my cloak, causing it's owner to turn and squawk in confusion. I didn't stick around for any further investigation, I shuffled across the floor and was back outside so fast that I nearly plowed into the portal guard. Breathing heavily I slipped past him and briskly trotted back to my base camp.




The changeling hive sat in a dry valley, covered in scrub brush and channels carved by seasonal rains. On the North edge a series of low, craggy hills grew up, adorned with stunted pines and dry yellow grasses. It was there that I'd set up my shelter, a simple lean to that housed both my extra supplies and my bedding, of which there was quite a bundle as a warming fire would draw undue attention to me. I had supplies for a three month stay. At the top of the hill there was a unique boulder on top of which I was meant to put my report, weighted down by a smaller rock, for collection every three days. That way I didn't need to worry about meeting the long range scout if I was off exploring the hive, and he didn't have to worry about making a strict deadline at the end of a strenuous journey.

It was midday by then and I sat in the shade, writing out my observations and impressions of the hive along with some crude sketches. My stay had been brief but it still took ten pages of my copperplate writing to get it all down, then I climbed up and set it under the rock, climbed back down and seated myself in the shade, staring off into the distance at that hoof made black pinnacle.

If I had not the scientific mind I did I'd have judged it evil based solely on it's form and called the race that lived therein devils while I was at it, surely they appeared to be an unnatural presence. It's an old axiom that one must not judge a book by it's cover, though.

Conversely, how one would know a cookbook from a scientific journal, without it simply saying so on the spine, is beyond me. Maybe it wasn't that apropos. I sighed, knowing that I'd have to acclimate myself to the interior of the hive, my sojourn was going to drag on for months.




As the days went on I grew confident within the hive, my step surer and my instincts honed to keep me from contacting the changelings as they passed. The throne remained vacant, much to my disappointment. After studying the common room and it's array of gems I conjectured to be feeding stations, I finally screwed up my courage and ventured into the more confined rooms contained within the four hemispheres that flanked the tower.

One appeared to be a nursery, classroom and training ground, all in one. Floor after floor was inhabited by young changelings physically training in numerous incomprehensible ways. Often they seemed involved in lectures and discussions, but that may be my own bias coloring some other behavior and painting it in terms that I understand.

They were not segregated by size but rather coexisted with, on top and overlapping each other with no difficulties or conflict to be seen among them. They were watched over and directed by, what I assume by their scars and minor deformations to be, the aged and infirm. Magic was being taught and I finally came to know how the changelings got their names. With a green flash they could mimic their teacher's assumed form and transform themselves into seemingly normal ponies.

There was little appearance of creativity in it. Each teacher had a few forms that they would repeatedly use and their students would copy them as closely as they could, then be critiqued, I believe. Seeing their failures to emulate the form before them was most edifying as it spoke to the mechanisms of transformation themselves.

Sometimes they even spoke in Equestrian when transformed. I found it to be extraordinarily creepy, but fascinating all the same, though they never got beyond rote smalltalk and their accents were atrocious. The most extraordinary part, at least in my eyes, was that they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Such as with the most truly foreign of creatures, I wished to ascribe a lack of emotion to them that they may be lower, simpler, somehow other, but it didn't seem to follow. Though it was raspy, understated and sparse, bits of laughter could be heard in the hive and not just from the younglings.



For the second part of my exploration, I took to following one changeling in particular. He was easily distinguished by a scar that ran laterally down the whole length of his carapace on the left side. He shuttled the youngest of the changelings from the classrooms back and forth to the rookery. It was for convenience that I followed him at first, because the rookery had fibrous curtains that served as doors. If I hadn't followed close behind, my passage would have drawn attention as the curtains should not be seen to open and close of their own accord.

The curtains were not a security measure, but simply a provision to keep the heat and moisture in. The rookery was as dark and humid as any deep jungle could aspire to be, and honeycombed as densely as a beehive. Following Scar, I got to see the various stages of his work. First he would use his fangs to open a cell, then gently extract one of the changeling foals from it. Usually he would settle another to sleep within and recap the cell using excretions from his mouth to form a green, transparent dome. Then he would take the foal to the classroom, leaving him in their care and generally collect another of the young foals in their place to likewise be returned to the comb.

Infrequently he would peer into the smaller cells at the bottom of the comb and if he found all was to his liking he would extract a squidgy white foal from within and resettle it into one of the larger cells. Those foals were the youngest and looked like overgrown grubworms with a few vaguely equine features. When they were first placed into the cells they were nothing but hoofball shaped white eggs, but that was out of Scar's bailiwick. There were a score of changelings puttering around the rookery at any given time to whom these responsibilities fell. He did, in one case, check on some eggs, though I am uncertain beyond base curiosity why. I fancied that Scar was showing me the whole myriad by way of a demonstration, though of course I knew better. They were stored in a batch of no more than twenty five, clumped and clustered around a green glowing crystal that radiated a gentle warmth.

This conclusively proves that these are not, as had been conjectured, another tribe of ponies, but a whole different species. That being the case I was more certain than ever that I was the wrong pony to be undertaking this research, but I found it far too fascinating to break away.

The rookery and honeycombs only accounted for the lower half of the chamber. I broke away from Scar, climbed the ramp upwards and found that the upper floor was guarded by a full dozen royal guards, which implied that this was where the hive's ruler resided. I didn't risk entering without a changeling to shadow and, when there didn't seem to be any traffic to and from the chamber, I moved on.




Two weeks after I'd arrived I made an examination of the third hemisphere. It was disappointing and left me confused and perturbed. It was a simple spherical chamber with fully grown, cocooned changelings massed along every inch of space, often two or more deep. The chamber pulsed with a green bioluminescence throbbing in the arterial networks of the wall. It was almost a tangible flow from this room and out to the hive. At first I thought that they were draining the life energy from the trapped creatures, but it proved not to be the case. Many changelings came in and were encased in the shell, made from the same spit and protein as the caps of the honeycomb were, then hung upon the walls, and tethered by an umbilical cord to the hive itself. Almost as many were released from their wrappings and, after a period of slowly awaking and thoroughly stretching, wandered back out into the world, seemingly no worse for the wear.

Following them I found that a few went to the classroom or napped on the walls of the main chamber, but most simply exited the hive, alone or in groups, and buzzed away.

I hadn't seen any evidence of feeding, aside from the consumption of the used cocoons and honeycomb caps, so I hypothesized that these were the ones gathering energy in some strange way and then returning to the hive so that it might be doled out amongst them. The little I'd been told about changelings, and what evidence I had seen seemed to support that. The contents of the last chamber confirmed some of it in the most disturbing way possible.


The last dome was much like the one before it, lined with cocoons, but there were even more of them here, half a dozen thick on average. From the center of the room the bulbous nodules hung like stalactites, almost reaching the floor in their drapings. The variable that made this a chamber of horrors was that these pods contained not changelings, but ponies.

Mare Trouble

I started in fear, barely suppressing a gasp. I had been enamored with the changeling's nursery as well as their educational pod. Even the vilest creatures are endearing as babies, after all. The pod full of cocooned changelings, that was jolting being that it was so dissimilar to anything I'd seen before, but understandable and not such a divergence from the norm. A chamber arrayed with ponies held in these fluid filled green sacs, their essence presumably being drained from them so as to feed the hive, that was atrocious. These were the sort of eldritch terrors that were too vicious to be attributed to even the time of Discord's reign.

I felt the instinctive need to flee. We are herd animals, we ponies, and my whole being screamed to seek the safety of numbers and warn them of what I'd seen here, but again I was ossified with fright. It was even more disconcerting that around half of the imprisoned ponies' eyes were open, dead, unfocused eyes that entreated me to free the minds behind them.

Standing indecisively something surprising came to my attention, something I hadn't heard since the time I'd actually encountered the scout whilst he was retrieving my reports. It was a coherent Equestrian conversation and it was coming nearer to me by the second. Panicked, I attempted to find it's source. It didn't seem to be coming from the captives so it was a relative certainty it was coming through the door. I crouched down as if I could be seen and listened attentively.

"Of course it is still your choice," A sweet feminine voice said with saccharine sweetness, "But you should recall what drove you here and what a state you would be in without our intervention."

"You'd be dead is what she's saying." A lilting male voice put in with a chuckle, "That being the case, maybe this isn't the worst thing that could happen to you."

"You're free to go, if that's your decision, of course, but we'll have to wipe your memories of us." The female said, "Unfortunately that means you'll be right back in the same situation we plucked you out of and if you've tried to end your life once it is sadly likely that the same thing will happen again, won't you let us help you?"

"Look, I, uh, appreciate it and I hate to have wasted your time, but to live out my life in a dream world having my mind sucked out to power this beehive, it's not exactly what I signed on for." A new voice stated.

By now they'd made it through the door and I could see the ponies as well as hear them. The one who'd just spoken was a fuchsia and tan earth pony whose cutie mark I couldn't see. He was flanked by an unlikely set of twins. Though they stood no taller than a normal pony might they were both alicorns. Stark white with flaxen manes, they were a ponyfication of perfection. Their flanks were unburdened by cutie marks which marked them as fraudulent, but they were glorious all the same.

They looked out of place in the hive, a splash of light against the monotonous black and eerie turquoises. The female, laughed brightly, "Oh, Mr. Sweep, we've no intention of sucking out your mind. You will remain yourself, just in a happier, freer world. We are desirous of your love, after all, that's our sustenance, but truly, when love is freely given, can anything truly be said to be taken? Here it can well and truly be promised that you will live a long, healthy life filled with love and companionship, and it's not a truly false world. All these ponies that you see around you will be in there with you. They were once like you but now reside in a paradise the like of which hasn't been seen since the verdant days of the world's youth."

I recognized the pony now, Clean Sweep, a janitor at the university. He was overworked, underpaid, his wife left him and his kids made fun of him to his face over his occupation. If what they said was true I had, perhaps, misjudged the meaning of this place and maybe he would do well to heed their call. Philosophically I've a hard time putting a torturous real life too far above a beautiful dream. I was on pins and needles waiting for his decision.

He walked around the room, peering into the cocoons through the clear portions about the face, "Who's she?" he asked, pointing at a once lovely mare whose muscles had atrophied but still retained some measure of grace in her features.

"That's Sky Bright, she's a special case." The male of the pair said, "She's a pegasus who was mauled by a manticore. She survived, but will never be able to fly or walk right again. For a pegasus especially, such a loss of freedom is unbearable, so she chose to join us here where she can be free again."

"What is she, about twenty seven?" Clean Sweep asked and one of the twins nodded, "And she's in there, right?" again one of the twins nodded, I concerned look crossing between them, "Eh, buck it. I'll do it." He finally assented and the twins led him to a cocoon that had been prepared or him.

"We just have to alter your memory so you don't know it's a dream world and you'll be set." The male twin said. His horn and eyes glowed and shortly Clean Sweep's eyes were illuminated as well. Then they daintily sealed him in the pod, hoisted it up. Carrying it high up on the arch of the ceiling, they hooked it in place. The umbilical cord was inserted into the pod and that was that.

The female twin sighed, "It's just as well he won't remember us, did you hear the lust in his voice when he asked that mare's age? Shameful, just shameful."

"Don't be so prudish, lust like that is our bread and butter and who knows, maybe they'll hit it off." The male chuckled, then, with a green flash they were both normal changelings again. I decided they'd be a pair to keep an eye on and for purposes of documentation I named them Lucy and Bub for a different legendary salesman. There was nothing too distinguishing about them, and changelings all looked a lot alike. These two simply looked more alike than the rest and if they stayed together I could pick them out. I could distinguish one from the other because one's horn skewed to the left while the other tilted right. Their conversation continued as they checked pod after pod, but I was left out since I couldn't understand their chittering language. I decided to call it a day and headed back to my camp. This report was one that simply couldn't wait.



For several weeks after I followed my selected changelings around, documenting their activities within the hive. I picked out a further two to follow as well. One was a foal who had started making forays out of the classroom and who I believed would venture out in to the greater world shortly. I nicknamed him Squeaky as he had an asthmatic sounding hitch when he breathed that made him easy to locate.

All the ones I kept particular track of had noticeable physical traits. I worried that it might skew my results but it was a necessity warranted by the otherwise identical ebon creatures. It's predictable, then, that the last of my selected subjects was the only blind changeling I'd observed. He was distinguishable by the lack of glowing eyes and his slow, careful gait. He knew the hive so well as to know his location without feeling for it and his pilgrimage was a short one. He fluttered down from the same spot on the wall every evening and made his way to the chamber of cocooned ponies. There he stood before each and every pod in turn, horn lit for a few moments before moving to the next. Occasionally he would feel around and make minor adjustments, but for the most part his job was simple and repetitive. He was checking in on the sleepers, day in and day out. What I fancied to be a smile often graced his weathered features and I imagined him peeking from the darkness into the bright world those combined minds had created for themselves and I couldn't help but to feel a bit wistful and, right or wrong, my reservations about the whole undertaking flitted away.

Two other ponies committed themselves to that regiment of dreamers during my observations. They were both escorted in by the twins wearing their angelic alicorn looks. The discussions were both much the same as the first, though the second pony, an overwrought and overweight unicorn came very close to backing out. The twins talked her into it eventually, always making a point to sound gentle and understanding. As soon as she took her place in the pod they high hoofed and shared a grin.

Changelings seemed not to show very much emotion in their natural forms, but of those who did become ponies, the twins and those in the classroom, I noticed they acted in a more expressive manner. Generally more playful and talkative than a normal pony, but that's an obvious ploy if your object is to receive love, so I must assume it to be a calculated anomaly and a perfect disguise for a predator besides.



An unseasonable frost covered my meager shelter in a rime of hoarfrost and I was forced to wear a heavy cloak even within it where the biting winds could not reach. I whiled away the worst of it nestled in a mound of blankets for three whole days. It was so cold as to leave me little other choice, I was afraid of being discovered in the hive if I started sniffling and sneezing. The scout had been and gone mere hours before I realized that I had fallen ill and that stoically weathering the cold in the wilderness was not just inadvisable, it was suicidal.

The invisibility cloak was claimed as fool proof because it would make a pony invisible even if it didn't cover them entirely, but I hadn't tested this aspect myself yet, preferring that I was fully swaddled, in fear of some small portion of myself being seen. I tried it, and using a bowl of freshly thawed water for a mirror, found that it didn't make my heavy cloak invisible when worn underneath it, which told me the limits of the spell. I had to drape it over the other cloak for it to disappear as well, which was an awkward, but ultimately serviceable, arrangement as it didn't cover me entirely, but worked nonetheless. I took it back off and reconsidered my options. The nearest town was a half day's walk if I was in good condition, I didn't want to risk it. The scout wouldn't be back for a little over two days. The changeling hive was warm, and so long as I wasn't seen I would be safe, it seemed the most logical choice.

There were few places unused in the hive leaving little room for a sleeping interloper such as myself to reside safely. One was the throne which had stayed unoccupied throughout my stay, but that seemed too disrespectful to my unknowing hosts and too exposed despite the cloak. Beneath the ramp that led to the chamber of the sequestered changeling ruler there were hollows that ran a full two yards back. Their purpose seemed to be no other than decoration, and in fact it did add a certain regal elegance to that chunk of architecture that mimicked the changeling's void riddled physiques. Their size and soft curves made them seem the most likely place to curl up and convalesce. The mere memory of the warmth of the rookery set my heart alight.

In my fevered state I tried to gather what I would need. There were basins of fresh water in the changeling hive and drains below them to deal with...waste water, but it would be risky to use either so I filled three water skins and planned on frequent trips outside, then fitted them beneath my cloak. Though I had no appetite just then, and I found it hard to devote my attention to it, I packed dried fruit and tubs of nutritious paste made from soybeans into a cotton pillowcase, then hung it beneath my cloak as well. Preparations had been too taxing, I was lightheaded so I lay down for a moment deciding to rest before my trek.

I shivered myself awake, stiff, cold, feverish and confused, I knew I needed to get to the warmth of the hive or risk death so I started out before the sleep had even been wiped from my eyes. I struggled against the biting wind, stumbling over the scrub and nothings in the pebbly soil. I looked for that dark spire, but couldn't find it for the low haze that hung over the plain.

Fever dreams played every inane scenario out in my brain as I plodded onward. In one moment I was forever lost, doomed to wander Tartarus for all eternity, in the next I was at the bottom of the sea and the air was water but I couldn't tell because I was a crab. A crab? Yes, certainly a crab in the shape of a pony, but most assuredly a crab all the same. Would that I could find a discarded conch shell to crawl into, out of the cold flow that cascaded down from the frozen north, then I'd have time to think on it and it would all make sense.

Fevers are as powerful a mind altering agent as the most potent intoxicant, but my hooves knew the way to the hive and unfailingly brought me there. By the time I arrived I was fully delusional and needed to rest immediately. Waiting for a changeling to follow through the curtain to the rookery was utter torture. It seemed to take forever, but then my savior, Scar trotted through with a little foal hastily scooped up as a passenger as if he'd noticed my impatient waiting, and I slipped through after him. With very little of the caution due the situation I installed myself in one of the lowest cavities of sufficient size and dropped immediately off to sleep.

Over the next day and a half I slept fitfully, with chaotic madness playing through my head. When lucidity finally returned to me, a black hoof was probing my sweat drenched face.

The crevice I'd chosen as a refuge was low to the ground and couldn't be seen from without unless crouching, unless said viewer was very small, like a changeling foal. I froze in panic, had my cloak fallen off I wondered? A larger hoof reached down and swept up the errant youth, then squatted down see what the foal had discovered. Looking right at me he blinked, then reached a hoof in and swept up the tub of protein paste that had fallen out of my cloak. He turned it over in his hooves, opened it and sniffed. Then he held it to the foal who likewise sniffed it. Then they simply discarded it and moved on.

Clearly I was still invisible, but I'd have to move on in case the out of place object's presence was investigated further. I was still weakened and drowsy so I walked around the hive to restore my vitality. The hive was warmer than the outdoors even though it was unheated, but it was much cooler than the rookery. My fever having broken I was grateful for that because now I was overheated and had sweated through my cloak.

The regular spot that Squeaky had inhabited was vacant. He'd been given a spot in the central tower last week and had slept there several nights so I assumed he'd finally been let out to do whatever it is changelings do outside of the hive, and I felt proud for him as if I'd contributed something to the process.

I was curious as to just what their activities outside of the hive entailed. Lacking pegasus wings to shadow their flights, I had to derive what I could from what was taught in the classroom. Basic magic and transformations were taught along with the rudiments of some martial art of the Eastern style which favored breaking holds and running away over fighting. If they wished to insert themselves as imposters into pony society it was only logical that they should be taught these things, it was a dangerous undertaking.

In transformation they followed their teachers as precisely as they could and were judged for their inaccuracies. It seemed to be the case that they would invariably get the face right, though the stature often varied a bit. They had trouble getting their colors to match precisely and often the cutie marks wore poorly rendered or altogether absent. Also, they spoke in Equestrian as ponies, but never seemed to practice at it very thoroughly, it perhaps being something they gleaned from the ponies they copied. I was uncertain. There were, likewise, a great many magics being taught whose meanings I hadn't the slightest glimmer of.

It was clear, however, that their activities heavily or exclusively involved posing as ponies and that a more detailed investigation into this was urgently needed. I had headed out of the hive to write just such a thing in my report when I heard the buzz of incoming wings. I moved aside to watch five of those sleek black creatures land with another carried between them. I moved closer, curious as to what had befallen their comrade and hitch betraying him, found it to be none other than Squeaky, his carapace shattered and oozing rivulets of bright green fluid.

They bore him inside to the rookery and I followed, much saddened by his plight. Once inside several of the regular inhabitants of that space took charge of him, laid him down on a raised section of floor and started to carefully lick at the edges of the wound. The bleeding was abated in short order and he was placed in an oversized section of honeycomb that had been hastily assembled for the purpose. It's sides were thin and translucent, affording an easy view in. Order returned and the tenders of the rookery went back to their various tasks so I ventured a peek at my injured subject.

It was a crushing injury, and though the bleeding was controlled, his damaged shell was almost certainly compressing his vital organs. I was heartbroken because I knew enough to know he had a scant time before his body failed entirely. There was nothing I could do, even if it wouldn't give me away, I wasn't that kind of unicorn, so I sadly left and headed back to my encampment.




The cold had thankfully become less bitter and though it was still rather chilly I found that it was at least sufficiently warm in my shelter that I could shed my sweat soaked and bedraggled cloak. When I threw it down on the bedding I discovered a strange thing. There had been another cloak laying there already. My first thought was that I had a visitor, but upon closer inspection I realized that it was the invisibility cloak turned inside out so that the lining showed.

I chastised myself for my stupidity for leaving such a rare and valuable article behind before I realized the implications.

Cognitively, the facts presented could only be mistaken somewhere. In bewilderment I found that it had been stuck by frost to the bedding and crackled as I picked it up. It was just where I'd left it two days ago when I was preparing my supplies, which meant I hadn't been invisible to the changelings that whole time, and yet they ignored me entirely. It was inconceivable, but seemingly true. I even went to the effort to thaw a some water to use as a looking glass to convince myself that I wasn't currently invisible, victim of some unknown side effect of overusing an invisibility cloak or somesuch thing, nor was my heavy cloak so imbued.

It was more than my mind could handle and set my eye to twitching in frustration. My attention, though, drew me to another article I'd forgotten about, the only book I'd brought with me. Medical Aide for Unicorns, Practical Application and Theory as Established by Mages of Her Majesty's Royal Guard, it read, and I instantly thought of Squeaky and started leafing through the spells.

As might be expected, there was nothing strictly meant for the repair of chitinous exoskeletons, but I found a work around in a spell which I thought I could use and could be adapted either to repair hooves, or with slight modification, knit together broken bones. It was a reach to say for certain that it would work on a changeling, but it was the only chance I saw. I put the book in a saddlebag and slung it over my back, then I donned my heavy cloak and marched back to the hive.




Being certain that I was fully visible, the guard outside the hive was my first test. I walked up to him as I'd done many times before, and he ignored me as he always had so I walked on by closer than I ought and let my cloak's flaring tail brush against him as I passed. He shivered at the touch, but pointedly did not react. I was shivering too, but at my bold and reckless actions. It made me wonder who, if not ponies like me, he was meant to be guarding against? Wild animals, insurgents, rogue crusaders bent on destruction? I was baffled and vowed to quit this place as soon as I'd accomplished my task. I knew it was intolerably daft, but I wanted to save Squeaky. He was so adorably plucky that I couldn't imagine letting him die if there was something I could do about it. We are all of us in thrall to the cute ankle biters of the world.

The other changelings ignored me the same as always, but now that I was aware that they could see me I felt that they were surreptitiously watching me out of the corners of their eyes, insofar as their eyes had corners. I boldly strode through the curtain that segregated the rookery from the central tower, having no further need to disguise my passage. Inside I found Squeaky just where I'd last seen him, with Scar watching over him.

I took a deep breath and finally broke my silence, "Do you think he'll make it?"

Scar looked at me and blinked his big turquoise eyes, "No, she won't make it through the night. It's lamentable, but there's little enough I can do about it. Our latent, more primal healing magics generally do the job and grievous wounds such as this are so very far apart that I've fallen out of practice. Healing ponies is a different undertaking than patching up my beloved little ones besides, so there seems to be a dearth in our archive of spells. But...the loss of one drone, even in a hive of thousands is still a tragic event." Scar spoke in a confident feminine voice that sang with a warbling echo, as if two ponies were talking in unison. I pulled out my book and laid it at my hooves.

"I don't know for sure if it will work, and I wouldn't want to try it if there was any hope she'd heal on her own, but...maybe I could try a spell?" I ventured.

"It will do no harm even if you fail, do as you wish so long as it doesn't increase her suffering." Scar said gently.

"Okay, here goes." I said and cast the healing spell as best I could. It seemed to work. The shell drew itself together and formed itself back into it's original shape. Finally the cracks faded away as the edges sealed themselves just as it would have on a cracked hoof. Thank Celestia for the zebra magic adapted from potion to standard unicorn casting. Squeaky squealed out in pain, which startled me, but I'd planned ahead and marked another page. I flipped to it and quickly cast a painkilling spell and she settled down. I wiped my brow in relief, "The rest will have to heal on it's own, but that's all I can do for her."

"If there's not too much internal bleeding, I think she'll pull through, thanks to you." Scar said kindly.

"So...while I've got you talking I was just wondering, how long have you been able to see me?" I asked.

"Oh, the whole time." Scar said dismissively, "When the first pony came wearing that silly coat we didn't know what it was meant to be. Once we figured out what he was about, well honestly we interrogated him, you would have too I suspect. Anyway, we simply wiped his memory and released him. The queen gave orders to pretend we couldn't see anypony who happened to approach wearing the thing and figure out what your intentions were. It has been a lark to let you sneak around after us. I was rather worried when you seemed intent to install yourself as a resident beneath the queen's chambers. That would have proven...awkward. Then I suppose you are incapable of hanging from a spot at the feeding matrix like a civilized drone."

"So, now what are you going to do to me?" I fearfully asked. I'd stupidly revealed myself and I was afraid that I'd have to trade my life, or at least my memories, for Squeaky's.

"Do to you?" Scar was taken aback, "I see no reason why anyone should want to do anything to you. So long as you do not interfere unduly with us, you may come and go as you please. We have little to hide and if you do happen to learn something we believe would endanger us, we are quite likely to wipe your memory. In fact we could have done so already, maybe more than once, and you wouldn't even be aware we had, so I should not live in fear of that occurrence either, if I were you." That was not a wholly settling thought, but I chose to let it pass uncommented on.

"What about this queen? I've not seen her on her throne, is she hiding in her chambers because I'm here?" I asked sheepishly.

"Oh my but you do have a high opinion of yourself!" She laughed, it sounded foreign coming from changeling lips, "The queen...well the queen is in mourning, though she's been at it longer than is seemly. You see, this hive was established some time back by one of the queen's daughters and though it thrived for a time, that daughter aged and died without producing an heir to keep it alive. A hive with no queen cannot survive, so our queen moved her own swarm here, added on the more fitting regal accoutrements that her daughter deemed unnecessary, such as the spire and the throne, and took the hive over for a time. When her mourning is concluded we are likely to abandon this place and let the earth and sand reclaim it as it has reclaimed her fallen daughter."

"That's so very tragic, and moving this entire hive seems quite daunting besides."

"It's not such an undertaking as might be suspected. With all of the drones present we could relocate the hive and it's inhabitants in a single night without undue strain, but it may be some time off before such a thing occurs. Plans toward that end have been hazy at best." Scar admitted, then excused herself saying, "Really I do appreciate what you've done and I would be more than happy to talk more later, but there are so many things to be done and the hive waits for no one."



After that day things changed for me in the hive. Word apparently got around about me and the drones cheerfully greeted me when I was around. I talked to them often but few of them could communicate effectively in their own form as Scar could, instead they'd chitter and gesture in answer even though I couldn't understand them. One turned into me and answered in my own voice, telling me about the classroom and the proceedings of those which I'd already deduced. Another turned into a matronly pegasus only to tell me she didn't know the answers to my questions, giggling that she just worked here.

I'd been skirting the issue of trying to pin down the activities which provided the energy the hive consumed. In all cases they simplified it to, 'Find someone with love to give, receive that love and return to the hive to distribute it.'

Did they replace the dead? Make up new characters to act as? Did they trade off and keep a relationship alive or did they leave their lovers in the lurch, never knowing what happened? Did they kidnap ponies? The answers were vague.

Bub, transformed into his alicorn state, had the best answer, he said matter of factly, "Changelings have been around a long time and in the past we, as a species, have done every terrible thing you could think to accuse us of, just as ponies have. You could count us as parasites, but we've not a lot of choice in the matter, really, and we do try to act as honorably as is practical. Do we lie? Constantly. Our whole existence is one big lie, but you know about us now. We do little enough harm and can you really begrudge us a little bit of ill gotten affection when your species is awash and overflowing with the stuff?" I didn't guess I could, at that.



I realize now that I'd lost my objectivity. Back then I just kept at writing out reports and sticking them under the rock for collection for weeks. I'd taken to staying many nights in a row at the hive and they seemed genuinely glad for me to be there. I questioned Scar on many occasions and found her to be elusive and evasive, a tease, but I thought little of it. She was different than the other drones, somehow. Well spoken, more expressive, and the only one with a sophisticated sense of humor. I should have known I was being played the whole time. Were I a cynic I might have even questioned if Squeaky's injuries were not a ploy to see how I might react, but that seemed too cruel to be true.

I'd gone out of the hive to relieve myself, hidden in the shadow of the nursery. I had returned from my camp a few hours before having left the most detailed report yet on the reproduction methods of the swarm, which is not saying much, as it simply covered the larval stages and glossed over where the eggs came from precisely. It was written on a scroll I'd saved for just such a purpose. It happened that a green flash drew my attention and I saw a single drone coming from the direction of my camp with that scroll in his hooves, it was unmistakeable.

I wanted to rashly confront them, to air my grievances, but I knew that would have done nothing but get my memory erased, so I wasted no time and simply walked away, starting at an angle to the hive where the guard couldn't see and following the hills along the eastern edge of the valley. There was nothing in my camp worth the risk so I simply left it and made as good a time as I could back to the nearest city. There I bought a cape and hat to disguise myself and headed back for the city of Tanis and it's University, grateful the whole time to have been spared my life and mind.


When I got back I quietly gathered as many academics as I could to hear me and told them my whole tale, excising no detail. I figured that with my tale told and disseminated I was no longer a viable target for retribution, and if I was, at least everypony would know what happened to me. Call me loony, but I still believed the changelings acted rationally and, on the whole, honorably.

It took me several hours of non-stop talking before a packed room to get it all out there. When I was done I felt that a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. Then everypony wished me well, said they were glad that I survived my little safari and likewise congratulated me.

When I asked what they were congratulating me for they gave me a surprising answer, "Your marriage, or have you already forgotten?" I protested that I hadn't gotten married, but they insisted that they'd all attended and certainly I had. Then there were perturbing queries as to my mental health.

Vexed, I finally returned to my apartment, already suspicious of what I'd find there. I entered quietly and found myself reading quietly on a low sofa, "You've redecorated."

"Urk! I um...I mean that is to say, oh my!" The counterfeit me stammered.

"Hey, who's out there with you?" A feminine voice sang from the bedroom. I eyed my duplicate with an arched eyebrow demanding answers.

"It's just an old friend, honey, I'll tell you all about it later, but for now we're going to head down to the pub for a quick pint." He said.

"Alright, but do try and see that it's only a pint, alright? I don't want you out all night like last time." She replied and my imposter ushered me out into the hallway. For my part I figured I could use the pint and headed for Lucky Shot's, the pub down the way. He simply followed dumbly.





The pub was poorly lit by sparse candle stubs that dripped rivulets of wax on great alluvial flows that marked the demise of their predecessors. The tables were made of wine barrel ends and the stools were small casks long since depleted of their contents. Dark, homely squalor made for a good drinking environment and saved the added cost of cleaning as an added incentive. I waved a hoof and mouthed, 'two' and the barmaid shortly had us set up with a fine wheat beer drowned in filthy well water. If it wasn't for the atmosphere, I should think to complain about it.

That atmosphere consisted of several ponies at the bar proper, trying to remember the words to one song and sing them to the tune of another, a table full of louts arguing about taxes. One was for, one was against while the third of the group tried to stay neutral by insisting that they were both plot holes for ruining a perfectly good night out by starting up the same old fight they always had.

Our table in the corner was removed enough to talk while the overlapping noises ensured our privacy. No one could make anything out in that din if it was farther than three feet from them. My doppelganger spoke first.

"Um, so hey, I'm sorry. They were supposed to warn me when you were coming back." He said.

"I snuck away to keep them from wiping my memories or throwing me in a cocoon." I replied, "Then, as soon as I was back here I told everypony who would listen everything I knew about the changelings, that way, if something happens to me they'll know who did it and, since everything I know is already out there, there's no incentive to keep me from spreading it."

"That's...that's not really my department..."

"Your department is stealing my life, then?"

"Well, now, when you say it like that it sounds so bad, but I mean, come on, you weren't even using it right then, were you? It would have been a shame to leave your mare alone all this time and let all that love go to waste, I mean, right?" He asked, somewhat abashed.

"If you say so. Who is the mare anyway? Did you really marry her?" I asked flatly. His face fell and he stuttered for a moment.

"What do you mean, who? It's Concertina Melodia, wasn't that your mare?"

"Hoo boy. That's sure some trouble you've gotten me into isn't it?" He was perplexed, "No? Let me explain. I went on one date with her and found out she was already living with a stallion and pegged her for a mare looking for a living situation rather than a lover. So when I heard she started telling her mare friends about all this soul mate and love at first sight garbage, I knew she was somepony to stay well away from."

"Why?"

"Well, it means she's like a gold digger, disingenuous." I explained. It was odd, but I found I couldn't even be mad at the changeling.

"Ah, I see. You think that just because it's also convenient for her to be with you it means she can't possibly love you?" He reiterated.

"That's the way of things, I'm afraid."

"You find her attractive?"

"I did, yes." Which was true. She was one of the prettiest mares I had ever dated. That alone put me on my guard.

"Would you reconsider you opinion if I told you she well and truly loved you?" He laughed, "Really, consider the source. You know what I am, I'm here to feed, I have little enough interest in a marriage of convenience have I? Could we take it as a given that she really does love you, deeply and truly?"

"Loves you, you mean." I rebutted angrily.

"Well, if you want to go down that road then I'm actually the seventh drone on this particular assignment."

"Seventh!?"

"Yeah, but keep in mind, we met you at the hive, imprinted your mind upon our own, for practical purposes we are you, save for a few memories and I can fill you in on those quick enough, then you'll be all set with your new wife and ready to harvest all that love for your own self. Really you're a very lucky stallion." The changeling said optimistically.

"There's not a chance in the world that I'd go along with that." I angrily swilled down my beer and ordered another.

"Oh! But you've got to! You'll break her heart if you don't!" Then the changeling considered it, "On the other hoof, maybe if you went back to Canterlot we could keep her, she really is quite a find."

"That's even worse, are all you changelings sociopaths?" I demanded.

"No, we're just pragmatic and we'd hate for true love to go to waste."

"True love my flank. The way you have this set up, you weren't planning on me ever coming back, were you?" He grunted non-noncommittally, "Because if I had come back you'd be in this situation we're in right now, with you out a food source, and me legally bound to a mare I barely know!"

"Really it's not as bad as all that. Just think of it as a surprise arranged marriage." He shrunk under my glare, "Really though, tell her the truth if you have to, but for hive's sake, give her a chance! You won't regret it, I promise."

I looked at a pony identical to myself, "Even your face is a lie, why should I believe you? Besides, you never answered my question, what were you planning to do to me?"

"Me? Nothing. I think the queen had designs on you."

"So you changelings do kidnap ponies and throw them in you cocoons," I growled, "I figured as much. I should tell everypony about that part too and they'll exterminate your hive so fast..."

"Hey, easy there Galahad! Don't go overreacting, she just thought you'd end up staying of your own accord once you got to know her."

"I never even met her, never so much as laid eyes on her and she was planning to use me as a paramour? Really? How likely is that?" I spat out.

"Ah, our queen is magnificent indeed and you couldn't mistake her for any other...unless of course she disguised herself as a drone so as to converse with you freely." He smirked, "As to the other part, she's a changeling like any other. She needs to be loved, and she seems to have a thing for blushing, bumbling incompetents. Take from that what you will." He finished his beer in a quick swig, dropped some coins on the table and headed for the door, "Anyway, consider what I said and give Concertina a chance. Beyond that, we'll be around if you need us. I mean we will even if you don't, actually."

In my rage I nearly missed an important bit, "She was Scar, wasn't she?"

"Oh, because of the cracked shell? Scar, that's funny. Makes her sound like a pirate or something." He laughed as he slipped out the door. Green light flashed and by the time I made it to the door he'd already blended into the patchy crowd.




At the start of the day I had an army of perfect imposters with ambiguously hostile intentions towards me to worry about. By the end of the day I was still uncertain of their intentions towards me and I had two mares to worry about, one being legally bound to me and the other being the evil queen of a whole different species. After much consideration I made the only logical choice and stayed in the pub all night.

Once I'd gotten enough beer into me I joined the table arguing politics, decrying communism by explaining that it only worked in ant colonies because ants are neither self aware nor are they ruled by a conniving sex fiend, plot hole of a queen.


"Mare trouble?" The neutral asked.


"You could say that." I sighed and both of his tax obsessed friends nodded in sympathy.

Counteroffensive

Love is...

Love is meant to be a weightless thing. That's how the romantics portray it in song and story, but that interpretation is both too innocent and too jaded. It implies that true love cannot result from being forced together for the purpose, that it must be a creeping, devious thing that twines itself in your very veins before it is discovered. Even though we stayed together for the first few days only as a matter of a misplaced and disgruntled sense of duty, we discovered the seeds of weedy affection had taken strong root.

It was three years before the invasion, in April, that I'd told Connie about the changelings. Two years and ten months since my I got down on one knee and asked if, maybe, she'd do me the honor of staying married to me. Much as I wanted to hate her in defiance of my life having been appropriated, I know a good thing when I see it. I lack the superlatives to exemplify how she was the best thing that could ever have been foisted upon a miserable coward as me. I had no intention of losing her.

It might be the case that I'd downplayed certain details, such as to whom she had said her vows, and the multiplicity of creatures involved, but I set the main points out before her. She was livid for days, but not for the creatures who'd invaded her life and bed as one might expect. She was angry that I'd told the changeling that I'd originally felt she might be more interested in lodging in my home than in building a life together. I'd only mentioned it in passing as emblematic of how wrong I'd been. It was meant to be humorous, even, something I said to break the tension. It is the case that I'm not that good with mares, but I've made a note not to cast them as gold diggers, even in jest, I think it may qualify as axiomatic.

Once I got to know her for myself I found that the changeling assessment had been spot on and I easily grew to love her. When I wrote my treatise on the changelings I carefully kept the timeline and exact dates vague, somehow she still caught on to the things I'd left out, clever mare that she is, but she never said a great deal about it.

The threat of the changeling swarm became a popular bogeyman and it was played up by the local officials to secure military funding and perpetuated by the popular bards and entertainers. Soon there was a whole industry selling anti-changeling charms and devices meant to reveal them if some something turned a different color or what have you. It was common knowledge that they would one day swoop down upon us and steal away all our mares. As the foremost expert on the matter I tried to quell such loose and idiotic talk.

Imagine my surprise when it actually happened just as predicted, almost as if their plan of attack had been plucked directly from our own zeitgeist. If we'd had the time to collectively pick over and reason through the circumstances involved I'm sure we would have found them to be overly suspicious and our reaction would have been more careful, more nuanced.






I was fortunate just to keep Commander Victory from declaring martial law and drafting the whole of the populace in his zeal to retrieve the town's mares and fillies. That's not to say that there were any malingerers to speak of anyway. Everypony capable of bearing arms and any number who weren't had volunteered.

Considerable guilt hung over my own head as I had long been attempting to temper the anti-changeling rhetoric that had driven the town to hysteria before the raid. Also it is no small matter that my own Connie had gone to visit her mother in the country so as to present our new foal, thus my own little family was safe. If that fact were well known, the more reactionary elements might deem it a sign of culpability.

In the current climate, such a coincidence was likely to get me hung should it be revealed too broadly, but keeping it a secret would likewise cast me in a sinister light. There was nothing for it but to strike while the iron was hot and attempt to rescue the mares. Fortunately the hot blooded amongst us had already come to that conclusion and there was no dissuading them in any event. I mean, primarily, Commander Victory. After our little confab in the university he was pacing and flexing his wings in excitement over his forthcoming chance to ignite the changeling hive and we'd taken to brainstorming ways that he might meet with this goal with the minimum level of casualties on our end, drawing and erasing plan after plan on the blackboard.

It should be noted that the Commander was a genuine war hero, a real brawler who relied more on motivating his troops to surpass their limitations than on actual strategy. The truth was that he was scarcely older than I, but he was punch drunk and shouldn't have been left in command after his last tour fighting the griffons. Tanis had heard of his glorious triumphs and had hired him at a below market salary to lead their guard when their military budget had first started to balloon. They soon realized why he could be had and so cheaply, but left the error uncorrected to save embarrassment on both sides.  We needed the commander because he controlled those several thousand members of the self defense force. The majority of those were reservists since there were rarely any plausible threats here, but at least they were trained and equipped, unlike the many thousand ragtag volunteers.

He would have been lost from day one save for his lieutenant, Lightning Strike. She ran the show and managed to respectfully keep him in check. She, of course, had been taken with the other mares and it had been left up to me and my colleagues, and for long hours we were stumped.

The commander sat alone among us eggheads, obviously bored and annoyed. He was toying with a chalk holder that could be fitted with five pieces at the same time so as to neatly write musical notation. It was missing one piece of chalk and he sat on a stool near the board shuffling the chalk to move the gap and crosshatching lines on one corner of the board. He grunted and dropped it to the floor, letting the chalk pieces fragment and spray across the floor. The individual pieces he ground into the floor with his hoof, sighing heavily.

Much as I dislike him, it was his outburst that finally spurred us back into action. Musty Scroll had been vehemently arguing against a conventional assault, lobbying for a siege, "You can't fight them head to head, even if we do have more ponies, we don't know their full capabilities and they have hostages. More than that, what happens when our forces clash and they turn into copies of our own troops, then what? You can't kill them if you can't tell the difference."

"We could wear armbands." Somepony suggested.

Scroll rolled his eyes and accented his rebuttal with sprayed spittle and chalk dust, "If they can copy us they'll copy the armbands and we can't have a password either, they'd pick up on that almost immediately and we'd be right back where we were."

"Well we can't lay siege to the hive. Sure there's a lot of us, but if they stage a breakout we'll be right down to hoof to hoof combat, so a siege is no better than an attack. Besides, who's to say for certain that they can become us convincingly enough to fool everypony?" On of the professors protested.

"They don't have to convince everypony, they just have to confuse us long enough to make us hesitate, that's all it takes." I said, "Mind you they can become perfect copies of us from what I've seen, what I suggest..."

"Oh, we've already heard your suggestion and I say we can't wait for the Canterlot guard to get here." Musty Scroll interjected. It was at this point that Commander Victory stood, yawned noisily, drawing the attention of everypony in the room. He made a show stretching slowly. At length he spoke.

"Wars aren't fought by committee and there's a reason for that. When you take all the possibilities, lay them out there, and try to hedge against them you'll come up deciding every single time that victory isn't assured and it's not worth the risk." He began simply, then assumed the stance of an ice hearted general, his predatory glare holding us fast, "In this case, it doesn't matter. No matter what the risk, we have to fight and we have to win. All we're doing by delaying is giving the enemy a chance to prepare." He glared angrily, feet splayed, volume rising, "Against my better judgment I came here to consult with you supposedly learned ponies and all you've done is waste my time. I had hoped that you'd have given me something better than 'attack them head on and burn their hive to the ground', which is my preference, but you haven't, so I'm leaving to go start a war. I've got confidence I'll win, but I was hoping to keep the casualties low, since I'll be leading civilians, but so be it. If you happen to have a plan, tell it to me before I make it out the door." The other ponies in the room all started yelling and speaking over each other. The Commander waved them all off, "Quiet! I didn't mean you professors. Traitor, tell me your plan. Quickly now."


"Don't call me traitor." I seethed.


"You bug bucking maggot lover, give me something I can use or go to Tartarus! Ponies are going to die because you tried to play it safe and cover all your bets. Tell me now or let it be on your head!" He demanded, walking towards the door.


"Fine! Fine, just, give me a minute..." He kept walking so I just started talking, hoping something would stick, "Okay, divide the forces in half, no...thirds, okay? One force approaches directly, makes camp and act like they're preparing for battle in the morning, right? They should make a big show of it. It should be around twilight when we get there. One of the other forces will flank them on the East by blending in with the low hills. Now the changelings will probably attack at night and if they do, the main force should retreat to a regrouping point. There's a meadow three miles on that will be perfect."

"The flanking force will follow behind and bottle them up in the valley between the hive and the meadow. The pegasi will have to keep the air inhospitable with hit and run tactics. There's not enough of them to get entangled in a running fight but we just need to keep the changelings low enough our archers can get to them."


"Maybe." Commander Victory pondered, having stopped walking and now listening intently, "What about the third force?"

"That's where you come in, I think." I continued, "See we want to get our mares back. Decimating the changelings might be good for vengeance, but it's meant to be a ruse. I don't believe we could exterminate them even if that were our primary intent. While they're all distracted with the battle your force will destroy the part of the changeling hive that's farthest from our prisoners and the most irreplaceable. The nursery."

"All you'll have to do is douse it with a generous helping of naphtha and light it up, then the whole hive will be there trying to put it out and save their foals. While they are so occupied you'll raid the pod where the prisoners should be."

"Should be?" He asked, annoyed.

"Yes. Should be, but honestly I don't know how they'd fit every mare in the city in that dome alone, it was already pretty full before. There's another one set up just like it, but it used to be changelings only in there. They might be in that one too, I imagine they'd have to be." Admittedly there were a lot of holes in the plan, but it's certainly better than doing nothing while the changelings do Celestia knows what to the mares.

"What about their shapeshifting? We don't have a way to circumvent that, do we? We might end up slaughtering our own troops!" Musty Scroll protested.

"Well...we can't use some sort of clothing as a symbol and I don't think a password's going to work unless we can rotate it...we need...I got it! How about we sing? Something we all know like...the Tanis national anthem? It's long and everypony knows it, but I bet the changelings don't!" I suggested, thinking it a stroke of genius myself.

"Fine. If that's the best we've got." Commander Victory acceded. I think he would have agreed with any plan which allowed for his pyromaniacy to be practiced, which is why I let the plan revolve around it. He motioned for us to follow him. By this time his subordinates had assembled the civilian volunteers on the campus lawn. Their mass covered the ten acres with flesh and steel.

Many of them wore armor and they were all armed. Closer inspection revealed the armor to be piecemeal bits of surplus, hand me downs and freshly cobbled together, makeshift versions of some ingenuity. A great many of the weapons, though, I recognized. They'd raided the museum for their armament which irked me considerably. It seems like every instance of emergency makes everypony think they have the right to commandeer whatever they want in the heat of the moment, but here an entire stretch of history was going to waste for a fight that could be waged just as well with shovels and pitchforks. Were they likely to return the relics after the battle or feel entitled to keep them as souvenirs of their fight?

More of history seems to be lost to war's predations than to time's weathering flow. In my anger I missed most of the Commander's speech, right up to the point where he put me in charge of what he named the bait division.

"Wait, what?" I stopped him, "I can't lead an army, I'm just a scholar, I should go with you to the hive."

"Nah, we need you in the bait division for sure. A coward like you ought to be right at home leading a division whose sole purpose is to flee from battle." He chuckled, "Besides, I haven't got anyone else to do it, I need all my squad in the air to keep the skies clear. You're it, bug lover."

Then he finished his speech to a loud hurrah. Soon enough the stallions had been divided off and our three divisions were marching to war. It was a sudden thing. Early this morning had been as peaceful and idyllic as any in this sun drenched university town and I'd been as far from a soldier as it was possible to be. Things change, and when they do, it's often with considerable rapidity.






The other two divisions were lightly provisioned and were doing their best to shadow us by filtering through the trees, brush and cover on either side while we marched loudly and conspicuously down the center of the valley.

We made camp almost on the doorstep of the hive with as many tents and fixtures as we'd been able to carry. Our campfires stood out like bull's eyes. We were making a show of laughing and talking but every eye scanned the sky, waiting for a dark shape to come between us and the bright pinpointed stars above us.

The changelings came not by air but rather by slithering towards the visibly unguarded side of the camp. I'd intentionally let that spot look unguarded, but in fact there were sentries looking out from under the edge of each tent and when the changelings were spotted they ignited conflagrations of oil and timber that drove back the dark and starkly highlighted the aggressors against the pale, uninviting soil. Unfortunately it wasn't a proper attack force, rather just a scouting party of about a dozen creatures and they fled from the light with cockroach-like speed.

"Douse the fires!" I yelled and they were quickly smothered with wet blankets and the world descended into night once more. Our defenses had been tested and we'd sprung our trap and come up empty. Now every stallion stood vigilantly, waiting for the real attack. It was one thing to march with an army and encamp with them in anticipation of a battle, it was quite another to have been thus tested and waiting for the real force to appear. It was maddening. It jangled my nerves and I started at every sound in the camp as the long minutes wore on.

"Is that a cloud or is that...?" I heard one of the sentries speculate, then, "Incoming! There's got to be thousands of them!"

The archers started to fire blindly but in an ordered pattern into the night and clashes in the air above us could be heard, undoubtedly the pegasi engaging the swarm. Their efforts seemed to be paying off as a rain of the creatures fell to the ground. They fell like comets, trailing streaks of green flame and shattering the earth where they landed. Between our camp and the hive was a sea of that emerald fire that I felt fortunate was not landing on us. If their forces had infiltrated ours already, how much worse this would be, but for now we faced a solid line of black snarling creatures.

A difficulty I had not anticipated presented itself. The chitinous armor our adversaries were equipped with was seemingly impervious to our arrows and our swords were useful only as bludgeons as they likewise would not easily penetrate, though the sound beating still seemed to accomplish a great deal. It was with some relief that I ordered the retreat, but when we regrouped the same problem would present itself.

We allowed ourselves to be driven before the changeling army, the rear guard clashing briefly with our pursuers as we galloped away from them. It was no great remedy to my anguish that, even now, their army was being flanked and boxed in from behind. It hadn't occurred to me before that our role was to be the anvil that the hammer crushed them against. The snarling aggression of the glistening black drones would cow even the hardest veterans and here we were, a force of the weakest and most callow sorts, no true iron in our ranks save the archers. We quailed in fear at the hellish creatures nipping at our heels.

After a tense retreat in which our rear guard was miraculously never broken we made it to the regrouping point. The rear guard redoubled their speed and slipped past lines of our little militia who formed up a palisade of mismatched, razor sharp iron and bronze. Upon meeting with such a formidable wall the changelings reared and they themselves retreated, blending back into the cover of night.

We heard the din of battle from the distance and we marched in tight formation towards the sound with it in mind to aid our brothers. In the dark, the battle lines were poorly defined. What we found over and over was stallion fighting stallion, the changelings were trying to blend into our forces and attack from within.

"Sing the anthem! Now, sing out and we'll see who's who." I yelled out and the slow, embarrassed singing began. Even to save their own lives most stallions would prefer not to sing in front of others, but now the plodding, militaristic song rang out from every lip in unison.

"We are valiant ponies, sons of honour,

And all we’ve sacrificed to gain our freedom.

Emerging from malicious grip of fate, from Tartarus a'fire,

We scored a victory of glory and success!" They sang, eyes scanning each other for anypony lip synching along or stumbling over the words.

"Soar high up in the sky, oh, eagle of freedom,

Call up to harmony, agreement and accord!

For hero’s might and strength is in the nation,

Just as unity is the nation’s razing sword!" No infiltrators had been found and so we all figured them to be as clever at impersonation as might be supposed. We, as a whole, got close enough to our fellows to hear them sing out the words clearly and them deemed them to have passed.

"While honouring our mothers and respecting

The cream of cream of our rising nation

We welcomed all ill-starred and struck by ruin...

Our homeland, the steppe, a sacred cradle

Of friendship and accord

Gave all a shelter and a hearty refuge." It was quickly discovered that there were none who were not singing the anthem in earnest, but once started it carried on as if a living thing all of it's own.

"Soar high up in the sky, oh, eagle of freedom,

Call up to harmony, agreement and accord!

For hero’s might and strength is in the nation,

Just as unity is the nation’s razing sword!" Our forces, trained and novice alike, formed into ranks so as to preclude any outside infiltration and discern our numbers. The song went on.

"We’ve overcome the hardships

Let the past serve bitter lesson

But ahead we face a radiant future.

We bequeath our sacred legacy implying our mother tongue

And sovereignty and valour and traditions

So dearly cherished by our forefathers

As true mandate to future generations." All heads held high, the assembled ranks came to attention.

"Soar high up in the sky, oh, eagle of freedom,

Call up to harmony, agreement and accord!

For hero’s might and strength is in the nation,

Just as unity is the nation’s razing sword!"

The changelings had melted away into the night, we'd only been fighting against ourselves, wasting our efforts and our time. I'd fallen into step with the rest, the now combined force's command having been usurped by one of the Commander's officers. We didn't know how they had eluded our grasp but we marched now towards that black and vile hive, intent to give our enemies a lesson on our nation's razing sword.






By the time we marched back down the valley two dawns greeted us. On was the gentle pink radiance of Celestia's sun, the other was the  cast by high flames licking at the changeling hive. Before the hive, being attended to by Commander Victory's forces were the town's mares. Our entire army broke ranks with a joyous whoop and charged down the hill. I alone stood aloof, observing skeptically from the low ridge. At length the commander joined me, his medal bedecked uniform covered in ash.

"Mourning your buggy buddies being given the boot?" He asked with a smirk.

"How did you beat them? They completely gave us the slip, I'd have figured all of them to come back and attack your force." I mused.

He shrugged, "It was a rout. When they saw the numbers they were dealing with they just turned tail and ran. Damned smart of them to do it, too. We'd have decimated them."

"Even though their armor was proof against our weapons and we would be reduced to using brute force against flying, fanged monsters who can see in the dark?" Irked by his assertion I pointed to the field before us, to the mingling ponies in the field, "Maybe they wanted the town, it's almost completely undefended now."

"You think they'd sacrifice their whole hive just for that, only to have all of us march right back home in forces they couldn't hope to counter? How many changelings do you think are out there anyway?" He shook his head, setting his cap askew, "No, I think they're just like you, craven cowards. I think they put their safety far above their honor, I mean consider the results. Did your forces kill any changelings?"

"I wouldn't guarantee that we even hurt any of them very badly." I admitted, I'd seen a few splatters of green blood, but nothing like I'd anticipated.

"Us either." He smirked, "If this had been a battle between ponies or griffons we'd still have won but the field would be littered with corpses. Now we had several fatalities. One stallion tripped and managed to impale himself on his own weapon, one died of a heart attack and still another was crushed when he stopped in his charge and his fellow soldiers did not. Tragedies to be certain, but ridiculous for a real battle. No, I think that they retreated just as soon as they saw that we intended to fight and the numbers we had on our side. Again, just how many of these creatures are there? Hundreds? A few thousand? What?"

I'd never been able to say with any certainty just how many there were out there. In the hive at any one time I'd estimated five thousand, but there were more out there, foraging for their ill gotten foodstuffs. My speculation died as our whole force broke apart, seeking out reunions with their mothers, sisters, lovers, and were swept up in ebullient victory.

Even the Commander was likewise swept up in an improperly emotional embrace with that certain subordinate of his, Lightning Strike. When all of this had calmed down I meant to have a word with her about the Commander's competence, and lack thereof. When he'd raided the hive he'd lit up the wrong dome, the one that should have contained the sleeping ponies.

"Oy!" I grunted to get some attention from whomever might still be able to be engaged as soldiers, "I need volunteers to help drag any survivors out of that pod that's ablaze! Now!"

There was a low grumbling before one of the commander's underlings spoke up, "Begging your pardon, sir, but we already cleared it. The hive's empty."

"That's impossible, there were hundreds of ponies cocooned up in there!" I blurted.

"They must have taken them when they retreated. With your force in plain view they had enough warning, I suppose." He replied.

I was dubious, but had no reason to doubt him. Regardless, I saw an opportunity to sate my own curiosity and to finally see the only part of the hive that I'd been denied thus far, so I asked again for volunteers. It seemed like an intolerably bad idea to go alone. Two ponies who'd been in my force and thus hadn't seen the hive up close stepped forward, and we made our way towards the hive.






The blaze was slow burning and hot. By evening the hive was certain to be nothing but ash, but for now it seemed safe enough. I gave it, perhaps, an hour before the passage out became too hot to brave. Rescuing survivors from the pod room was, perhaps, a little unrealistic. The heat was such that it was hard to even look in, so it's fortunate that no trace of the cocoons or their inhabitants were visible in either of those chambers. From there I proceeded directly to my desire, the royal chamber where the queen once resided. My two soldiers hung back fearfully as I trod up the sweeping ramp and approached the portal that held the only door in the changeling hive, a great thick double door, patterned with whorls and gilding across it's center panels. It stood slightly ajar and I slipped in like a thief.

Lacking it's occupant, the room was rather disappointing. It was large, but not extravagantly so, and was built of the same materials as the rest of the hive. In contrast, it had bookshelves lining one curved wall, sadly, all empty, and it had a bed. A bed, of sorts, anyway. It looked like a fairy tale style four poster that had been liberally drizzled with tar. In fact it was grown right into the floor. The mattress was made of the same material the cocoons were, and if there had ever been sheets, they had been stripped off in the retreat. On the green fibrous pillow was a sheet of paper, an endpaper torn from a book from the look of it and a sense of foreboding washed over me as I reached for it.

"I think she left a note. Weird, right?" I said, and looked back at the soldiers who'd followed me who were just within the doorway, marveling at the scant architecture. I picked up the note, turned it over and read it's one simple line aloud, "'Ponies are extremely predictable', it says. I wonder what that's supposed to mean?"

There was no answer, but I didn't really expect one. I turned the paper over again, looking for something further, when I finally noticed an asthmatic wheeze coming from behind me. I spun around and found my soldiers had been replaced by a familiar, scarred changeling and a still runty changeling filly who waved exuberantly.

Absently I waved back. My older acquaintance slowly trod towards me, her size unaccountably expanding with each step, her grin turning lascivious. When she stood face to face with me, her stature left me bowed far back on my wobbling knees to meet her gaze with my wide eyes and gaping jaw. With a tiny green blaze, a black and turquoise crown bloomed upon her head. She chuckled and then...

...Then she winked at me.

"Oh. Oh buck."

Janus

A green flash was dying away as I was entering the room spoiled the illusion that my Connie was actually there, but she didn't care, she was just using her form...why? To taunt me? I suppose. Her pale orange coat and light grey mane were spot on. The concertina on her flank accurate in every detail. Her voice, and more importantly, the mind behind it, were exclusively the changeling queen's own. "Chrysalis! For the life of me I can't see what it is you're after. You can't very well expect to fool me and you can't keep me here forever, so what are you after?"

"Your Majesty." She sneered with Connie's visage.

"What?"

"If you're not going to play along with my assumed form, then out of respect you should address me as your majesty, or Queen Chrysalis, or simply my queen, with maybe a humble little bow or a curtsey, or some such thing. Oh! Do curtsey for me, dear Locus!" She clapped her borrowed hooves together in delight.

I ignored her request. I'd been down this path before, and it was a fact that she could make me curtsey with the barest hint of her mind controlling magic, but she wouldn't do such things unless I outright defied her. It had taken me two months to learn that lesson and let it temper my defiant streak. Unlike Commander Victory, she also picked up on my more ironic statements, though her reaction varied wildly according to her mood and if she found me amusing just then or not. That and the fact that anypony I talked to might just as likely be a changeling left me in a state of constant paranoia, but I still tended to spout off when I got frustrated, which was often.

"My question stands...your majesty. Two moons of sitting here idle and I've little enough idea why. I'm at your beck and call, a kept stallion since you won't turn me loose and you keep having me tailed. I swear, everywhere I look I'm like as not to spot one or the other of those twins." Lucy had shed her horn and Bub, his wings, but they were still full grown blank flanks, stark white with manes like spun gold. This is to say that they were not subtle and they appeared to have been assigned as my minders since we came to this strange land, claiming to be half Saddle Arabian to explain their exotic oddness amongst the other ponies. They'd even assumed the names I'd coined for them once they found out about them from my pilfered reports.

"I told you before, I want you." She smiled a toothy grin in which I imagined her true form's fangs. I backpedaled, but the cottage's door swung shut behind me and I was trapped betwixt it and her.

"Now...now that is d-demonstrably not true. You've wasted every opportunity. If you'd wanted to seduce me you could have done it by magic, or...or taken me by force, you're a fairly formidable mare." I stammered, "Now, you've said you want me to come along of my own accord, and that's certainly a cute sentiment, but I can hardly put any stock in it. I'm a happily married stallion who you've abducted away from his wife and foal. If I could ascribe to you the normal emotions of a healthy pony, I couldn't find it in my heart to loathe you more. Even given your unique situation, this is all a bit sociopathic, and frankly frightening."

Chrysalis' laughter rang in the small space she'd sequestered herself within, "Never mind that your happy domestic situation can be credited to me and mine, and would not have come to fruition without our involvement. Tell me, are all you Canterlotians such sniveling cowards?"

"Yes." I stated flatly, "In fact each of us is more cowardly and pathetic than the last. You really should look into a proper Tanisian stallion, or better yet, a pegasus from Cloudsdale. I know just the one, brave as can be, a real live war hero. I could set something up if you like, then you wouldn't need me anymore and I could just be out of your mane and on my way."

"Bah. You ponies are always so inflexible. Yapping on about loyalty and morals when there's so much fun to be had." She approached me closely, her muzzle a hair's breath from mine. I could smell her breath with each exhale. It was akin to sealing wax on a wet scroll, a unique scent to be certain, "What would you think if I told you I wanted you for your other talents, rather than the sadly overrated carnal pursuits?"

"Honestly? It would be a considerable relief, yet I'm a bit light in the way of desirable talents." I huffed. Her proximity and stare vexed me and left me scrambling for more to say as she remained silent, "I mean, I'm not that powerful a unicorn, I barely pulled off that healing spell. Really I'm pretty hopeless as anything but a scholar."

"Precisely." She said, and quickly struck, giving me a light peck on the nose. I had the good taste to blush and look away ashamedly, "In a few days time I will give you the run of my reassembled library and you will do as you've done before, study and report every fact ascertainable about the changeling species. Our culture, our habits, our unique magic..."

"What about anatomy?" I interrupted. The specifics of the changeling's anatomy had interested me from the beginning, even though it was distinctly outside of my usual field of study.

She quirked an eyebrow, "I've been trying this whole time to get you to study just that."

In a moment of playful jest I stuck out my tongue foalishly and scrunched up my eyes, "No way. I'd rather eat a bug."

"That also would be acceptable." She said with a nod and it occurred to me what I'd just said. My back pressed against the door, standing on two legs so as to press myself all the tighter against it, she leaned in slowly...

...and turned the doorknob, whereupon the door suddenly ceased to support my weight and spilled me flank over teakettle into the muddy, rutted street of a rough hewn little villiage in the heart of the jungle. Chrysalis roared with delight and pulled the door shut behind her with a thud.

A white hoof reached down to help me up, "Mare trouble?" Bub asked.

"Oh, you just have no idea." I admitted and he too laughed at my expense. It was at this point that I'd decided a large mug of ale would be the best thing for my current woes, and since I had no bits I informed Bub that it would be his treat.

"Suits me," He shrugged, "I haven't anything else to with my cash. Money can't buy me love, after all. Should we go to the new place or the old place?"

Since the new place was still just a tent, I indicated that we should go to the old one instead. At least it had walls to keep the flies out, though it was not much progressed beyond it's competition. The whole place had been haphazardly assembled in a hurry and it would be years before it was a presentable town, centuries before it would be an upstart rival to the hastily abandoned Tanis. I'd accidentally been given the honor of naming it, and seeing as I am a smart flank erudite type, I named it Janus, because there seemed to be a number of changelings crawling about in the shadows. Everypony liked it because it rhymed (when mispronounced) with their former city, so it stuck for the wrong reasons.






Thanks to a certain evil queen I might mention, I'd been out of my head for a time after the Tanisian raid on the hive. When I'd come to myself we were all camped in rude communal tents. Thousands of us sprawled across a broad and ever expanding clearing. Musty Scroll was nearby, curled up with his wife. Given my last memories, I assumed that the changelings were nearby, so I coolly begged his pardon, explaining that a spell I had cast had deprived me of a bit of my memory and asked if he could fill me in on what had happened after the raid. It's an old unicorn tactic to blame magic when lying to earth ponies and I brushed aside his insistence that I see a healer of some sort on those grounds.

The tale he told was that Tanis had been taken whilst we were attacking an empty hive. We'd sent scouts as a precaution against just such a thing, and when they reported back they'd said that their numbers were far greater than we'd imagined and they were on the march, intent on exterminating our kind. We all fled to the south, three days hard march, where the bugs wouldn't find us. Here we would found a new town.

"Who's asinine idea was that?" I asked.

"Commander Victory's, and say what you like, but I think it's progress. At least it's a peaceful solution from him for once. I would have suspected something a bit more suicidal than that, but it seems that Lightning Strike was amongst the scouts and was quite adamant about the hopelessness of the situation." He said and his wife nodded and snuggled herself tighter in his arms. Geriatric love is nearly as cute as the young sort, but it was making me uncomfortable knowing how these two had been at each other's throats for the past few years. I guess all it takes is the prospect of rebuilding your whole life together to make all the little grievances of the past just seem petty, and rebuilding was just what we had in store.

Our new land was a lush jungle which we were jointly clear cutting for lumber to make a start on the town, though it was slow work with our limited tools and few unicorns. Blacksmiths had rapidly set up forges and had them blasting twenty four hours a day, but there was only so much that could be accomplished.

To the west a new port would be constructed, though just now it was too swampy for the task and it would take considerable dredging and filling to get it ship shape, so to speak. We had the bounties of the jungle to sustain us until proper fields could be planted. It was an exciting thing to be a part of for most, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

After all the weirdness that had happened to me recently I just wanted to get back to my wife and foal as quickly as possible and skip out with them for Canterlot. I still had hope that Connie had the good sense to stay well away from Tanis after all I'd told her about the changelings. Let them have Tanis, it was no great loss to me. I just wanted out, so I built up a simple cart, loaded it with basic supplies and readied myself to retrace our steps. With the number of ponies in our little band the trodden path beat across the land might have been paved in flagstone for it's clarity, so I figured on no trouble getting back.





The next morning I woke early, planning to leave, and was stopped by my own wife and foal, standing by the cart and smiling. I was three steps into running towards them before I stopped abruptly, "How did you get here?"

She looked shocked and a bit hurt, and my wobbly little colt looked up at her wonderingly, "We walked."

"The whole way?"

"Yes, the whole way, we heard what happened and we had to find you as fast as we could. I...We missed you." She sniffled and looked back to my son.

"Connie has bad knees from all that gypsy dancing. She does alright, and I expect you wouldn't notice it, but there's no chance she walked across miles of wilderness with a baby on her back. It's too risky and it's just not her. You're not her." I stood tall and puffed my chest out, ready for a fight.

"So we took a wagon part way, what's it matter, we're here aren't we?" She barked back.

"No, I mean that's just the trouble, you're not here, and unless I miss my guess, you're that scarred changeling who turned out to be their queen, am I right? I don't have the slightest idea what you want."

"What...what are you even talking about? I don't want anything, I only...I just want you." She looked baffled, "After all this you're never going to let all that paranoia about the changelings go, are you?"

I sighed and considered my options, "Look, I'm taking that cart and heading back to find my wife. Squeaky? If that's you under there, you can come with me and be my filly. I expect me and mine can keep you fed without having to steal."

In a green flash the changeling filly was revealed and she hopped merrily. Her companion brought her hoof to her face and shook her head in annoyance. Then she turned to the little one and growled, "Turn back! Disguises don't work if you go dropping them in public!"

"You ready to go?" I asked the filly as she turned back into my own colt and shook her...or his head in the affirmative. The queen showed her displeasure by shattering my cart's wheel with a neat kick, then she turned over my water barrel, leapt up and trampled my food stores. It was an extremely petulant display for supposed royalty. I looked around and found that several members of the self defense force were nearby and had taken notice of her antics, chief among them Lightning Strike, and she looked quite confused by my supposed wife's actions, "Hey, Strike, that's not my wife. She's the changeling queen and she's causing me all sorts of trouble."

"Yeah, changelings will do that." She admitted and wandered off, taking her subordinates with her. She hadn't believed me, and it would be hard to prove. I just sounded like an angry husband making bombastic accusations. I would have shouted it to the rooftops, but I didn't think it would help. She was so brazenly confident, but I was certain that I only had to stay free long enough to escape and it wouldn't matter anymore. I could report the situation to...I don't know. Whoever one reports such things to. Princess Celestia herself if it came to it. It was a nice plan, if a bit ambiguous.




I had tried to slip out that night, crawling out the back of my tent and into the cover of the tall brush. I crawled low to the ground for half a mile, keeping my head down and the rustling to a minimum. It was excruciating, and I cannot tell what a relief it was to stand upright once I finally crossed into the woods. Unfortunately I was greeted by a stately white pegasus.

"Hi, Mr. Locus! It's me, Lucy, or well, I know that's what you'd been calling me, so I adopted it, I hope you don't mind. Anyway, I know we need more latrines dug closer in, but you shouldn't go in the woods, it's just not safe." She put a hoof on my shoulder and turned me back towards town, "I'll see you home if you like."

I indicated that I would much rather go it alone, but she gently returned me to town, talking politely the entire way and ignoring anything untoward I happened to say. Further excursions of this sort led to very similar ends, and I encountered at least a half dozen disguised changelings under the darkened skies. They were invariably polite, to the point of obsequiousness, and refused to lite upon the particular terms of my confinement nor their interest in me, but by their actions made it clear that I was, in fact, a prisoner.

Though I avoided her as best I might, the changeling queen herself visited me often during my trivial labors about town, lightly chatting, trying to entice me with her feminine charms. Flirting is rather creepy when it's the undisguised voice of an alien queen coming from your wife's mouth. I suppose it was meant to foster an honest familiarity between us, or something. In a rare moment of privacy, in the dim guts of a freshly constructed granary, she even showed me her true form again for but a moment and introduced herself properly as Chrysalis, queen of the changelings.

She was truly a regal and beautiful creature, sleek, graceful, confident. A match in bearing for either of Equestria's own princesses, but her jagged horn, perforated hooves and hungry looking fangs marked the corruption of her aspect. In that dark shell of beehived mud brick, shaft of light playing across her turquoise mane, I nearly wept in frustration. I would not be disloyal to my wife, and yet this creature's charms were considerable, even though I knew better. It's unconscionable to tease and taunt a stallion in that manner, simply ghastly. I couldn't tell what her plans for me were, aside from the obvious and immediate lustful prattle, and the uncertainty frightened me. I felt that she knew that, even as she pressed on, delighting in making me squirm.

In small matters she used the force of her magic to make me compliant. Forcing me to accompany her as she walked, to cease my screaming when I lashed out at her, to embrace her when she departed as a good husband might do. She could have forced me to do anything she wanted.

Daily she sought me out to press her agenda, whatsoever it may have been. All I knew was that she desired that I come to her of my own free will and assured me that it was only a matter of time before I did.

Truly she was a monster.





That pompous old ass of my long acquaintance finally had a chance to redeem himself in my eyes, not that he cared about that, but my problem fell squarely into his jurisdiction. Since we'd all fled with nothing but that which we'd carried into battle, few of us had any bits and I had to barter away half a day's magical labor thatching the roof of the reed walled hut that served as a pub for the dubious pleasure of inviting Commander Victory for a drink. The old place's walls had just been put up that morning and it was thanks to me it had a roof for my outing with Bub several weeks later.

The beverage of choice was a weakly alcoholic homebrew made from fermented fruit. Ale or proper spirits could be had, but at a high cost as there was only so much that had been brought along from the self defense force's stores and most of it had been consumed at the short lived victory party before the loss of the city was known and the long march that brought us here. None of this greatly concerned the Commander, as he swigged down his and my share both, almost before we got to the nut of the conversation.

"When you invited me here, I kind of thought this was what you were getting at." He'd said after I told him my whole story from my capture at the hive onward. He sipped at his drink in distracted contemplation, "Without knowing for sure how many of them there are it's risky to let this out yet. I'll have to talk it over with Strike, see what she thinks on the subject."

I nodded to the suddenly taciturn pegasus, "Thanks, Commander, I expect I owe you one."

"Naw, this sort of thing is what I'm here for," He chuckled, "This is why everypony puts up with a fatheaded lout like me. Thanks for the drinks." He swigged down the rest and sauntered out, saying he'd be in touch.



The next day I was taken from piling rocks for a foundation by a pair of the Commander's soldiers. I went along, expecting him to brief me on his plan, but instead they took me to the hut of a healer and, ignoring my repeated questions, thrust me inside. The healer sat on a round, tasseled cushion and pointed to one before her, indicating that I should seat myself as well. Though as new as any structure in town, the hut looked ancient thanks to the multitudes of dried herbs hung in great strands from every conceivable place. There were dark wooden cases which I took to be full of the sharp and frightening tools of the trade.

The healer herself adopted the look of a shamaness in the Tanisian tradition, which is to say she was a dark, squat mare who knew as much about the hokum of presentation as the actual treatment of disease. Her copper coat was concealed under a gold brocaded red dashiki that left only her hooves and head exposed. She wore a headdress of braided brass wire that hid her mane and half covered her eyes, giving her a look of placid contentment.

She spoke in a falsely accented monotone, "I suppose you wonder what you're doing here instead of mounting an assault against the changelings in our midst? Well, it has been determined by the Commander and his immediate staff that these are nothing but a paranoid delusion. Something brought on by the injury you sustained when a changeling holdout struck you whilst you were exploring their abandoned hive. Certainly one cannot expect to take such an injury as would leave you incapacitated for nearly a week and suffer no ill effects long term?"

I grunted in disgust, "Is that what they told you? That I'm crazy? I assure you, there are changelings amongst us right now and we need to act before they can...do whatever it is they intend to do."

"No, of course you're not crazy. In fact, there are more changelings around than you might expect, but for our purposes here today, you have a head injury and perhaps a pathological need to blurt out senseless accusations resulting from it." She leveled a stare at me, making sure her meaning was perfectly clear, "Now, I can 'treat' you, or I can treat you. Your choice."

I gulped, "The, um, one where you don't scramble my brain, please."

"Good good," She said distractedly, "I'm going to give you some holistic remedies. Don't worry, they don't do anything, those sort never do, then you can be on your way. Now, my husband is old and this climate is doing nothing but making it worse, so I'll need you to gather a cord of firewood for my kettle by way of payment for my services so that he can rest."

"A..a cord of wood? But...you just as much as told me this was all fake and I was forced to come here, why should I pay you anything?" I demanded.

"That sounds like a very unhealthy response. Perhaps my course of herbal treatments needs to be supplemented by something more substantial?" She gave me a meaningful look, and I told her she'd have her firewood by the end of the week. No small feat for one who wasn't allowed into the forest proper, but what did she care?

"Incidentally," she said as I was leaving, "You should at least visit your wife and foal, it's unseemly to turn your back on them in these tumultuous times."

For a moment I didn't pick up her meaning since I wasn't allowed to leave, but then I caught on. I realized that that bug had kept her disguise up and was living somewhere in town. I walked through the sprawling array of construction and squalor trying to determine where she might be. In the end it was obvious. There was one mundane, timber frame stone cottage in a town full of tents, huts and lean tos, a veritable castle in comparison and that's where the queen would be, no doubt.

I passed it by.





Commander Victory either thought I was insane or he was, himself, a changeling, I couldn't make a guess as to which it was, or who else was against me for whichever reason, so I kept my mouth shut. It was several weeks later and several minor interactions a day with her agents before my presence was requested, and by requested, I mean ordered. That's when I finally visited her cottage, was teased and turned out on my plot in that muddy road after being given warning I'd be taking up her fairly ambiguous research project.

I felt it a considerable victory on my part that she'd finally had to coerce me into coming to her.

How I ended up in a bar with a changeling who's job seemed to be keeping an eye on me, I couldn't especially explain, but somehow Bub seemed like an old friend more than a warden. The devil you know, or in this case, the one in plain sight, is a lot less of a threat than the one skulking in the shadows.

"I think she's just messing with you," He explained after I'd had enough liquor to loosen my lips and I told him about my recent experience, "Being the queen, she might be a little different than us rank and file drones, but there's one thing that's universal about all us changelings, we don't feel love. Nor lust. I mean we can play at it, in fact we're better at faking it than ponies are at feeling the real emotions themselves. That's a good part of what we learn in our youths, pony psychology. Really that's our ultimate weapon."

I thought on it for a bit, downing the dregs of the cloyingly sweet fruit wine. It hadn't gotten any better tasting over the past month and some, but they'd figured out how to up the alcohol levels to an almost frightening degree. The whole pub was improved and, in fact, looked like the one back in Tanis that I used to frequent, largely because my bartered labor had done most of the work. Before Chrysalis had finally called on me I'd thought I was forever going to be relegated to maintaining and improving this little bar until it was a two story inn. I had plans for that contingency should it have come to that. "So, if that's the case, why the salacious mare act? She's got to know I'm not going to go for it."

"Of course she knows, she can read your emotions, not just feed on them, after all. Probably she just wants to keep you uncomfortable, at a disadvantage, so that she has the upper hoof." He took another sip from the ale he'd been nursing, "She probably thinks it's funny besides."

"Really? I thought you lot didn't have a sense of humor or emotions or anything?"

"I never said any such thing. We're not zomponies, we feel everything a normal pony would, except love, and of course you don't get our jokes, you don't even speak the language. Really, half of what we say to each other is some kind of barb or another, it makes hive living more tolerable. It's a bit dull otherwise. But, yes, our queen fancies herself to be quite a wit." He gestured to the barmare to bring me another drink, which she did with a wink.

Half buzzed and full on paranoid as I was, I read it as, 'Hi changeling! I'm a changeling too! Look at that silly pony, let's ply him with alcohol and then we'll suck his brains out, okay?' The fact that the Queen had claimed me for her own gave me a shallow sense of safety at best, "So what does she want with me? Do you know, or can't you tell me?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't tell you if I did, honestly, it's not my place to be spilling the Queen's secrets, but you said she wanted you as a researcher, so why don't you think that's the case?" He swirled his mug thoughtfully, "She's brought in a considerable number of books, some from our last hive, but most are from an older hive and the bunch she calls the 'Moochik Collection'. Nopony's gone through most of those in centuries, I've been told. I doubt she'd do that unless she earnestly had something she wanted looked into. Rumor has it that you're going to be writing a compendium of the changeling race, or some such thing, but it might just be scuttlebutt."

"So she's kidnapped me for a vanity project?"

"Maybe." He shrugged.

"And you're sure she's not trying to seduce me?" That would be simpler, I thought.

"There's one really easy way to tell." He grinned, "You've been rebuffing her advances, right? Well if you want to know for sure you could always just try and take her up on them."



The balance of power visibly shifted when I took Bub's advice. After the mother of all magical slaps across my face, that is. What did I do to warrant that? I'd rather not say. She'd approached me finishing up a foundation, flecks of mortar in my coat and started in with her usual come ons, then I leaned forward and whispered something in her ear that I believe would have made her blush even if she were wearing her own skin. That was when she rang my bell.

I came to later in a heap of collapsed stones that had once been a foundation, the future owner of which was kicking me and screaming about me being drunk on the job. I got up, smiled, tipped an imaginary hat to her and was on my way to visit Chrysalis at home, again.

Having called her on it, her most powerful weapon for making me uncomfortable and thus subservient, was gone. Our conversation was of a more mundane sort, like two ponies talking as equals,  only the advantage was mine in that she still wanted something from me and she didn't enjoy it. I probed her about the supposed library, because there was no place in town large enough to house such a thing, and she was unwillingly forced to reveal it early.

Beneath her cottage's cellar, a set of broad, stone stairs wound their way down into the earth. I was wary, and her smirk showed she was aware of it. We wound our way down only a few yards before we reached a landing that held an ancient, arched wooden door in a black frame that could only have been made of the changeling's unique building material. She swung it open and we found ourselves on top of a well of black bookshelves fifty yards wide and another fifty deep below us, lined with ladders and balconies.

On and around a massive oak table were piles of books and heaps of scrolls being worked over by half a dozen undisguised drones. In the blank spaces between books that were slowly being shelved to cover the whole interior space, venous networks of slick black could be seen, and the gemstones that they serviced. Around the perimeter of the floor, four large openings were sealed off and likewise covered over with books. Enough of the floor was exposed to see that it was black and dully polished. I raised a hoof an pointed down towards it and was about to make some declaration about the impossibility of the thing itself, but managed not to. Rather I accepted that it had been done and questioned her as to how, "Even if half the town were changelings, there's no way they could move this much earth without somepony noticing, and the books, there's got to be..." I did some quick math in my head, "Thirty or forty thousand books? How could you get all of them in here surreptitiously? As many ponies as it would take going in and out everypony would assume you were running a brothel, so how?"

"Very clever questions." She purred, "How about you guess?"

"Guess?"

"Guess."

Apparently we still weren't beyond games, so I decided to take my best shot at it, "There'd be too much of a dirt pile somewhere if this was dug, so...either it was a cave or...this isn't new. In fact, those four arched openings that are covered over, this used to be an underground hive?"

"Correct, and what does that imply?"

"It means you've been pulling the strings and we settled here for it's proximity to this place, but, outfitting it as a library? A hidden one that the town's folk aren't likely to be allowed in? What's that about? It seems like you'd need a proper hive far more than a library, or do you have another hive? Is that it? There's another hive hidden near here and you're using the townsfolk as fodder for your armies?"

"Maybe, that's not your concern just now. More specifically, what does this mean?" She gestured to the assembled heaps of literature.

"That you place a great deal of importance on knowledge, I suppose. To sacrifice such a perfect hive space, you must." This was a hot land. Likely the hive was below ground so as to keep it cool, rather than to keep it hidden, did she build this, or were there more changelings? Was the world honeycombed with such colonies and they'd simply remained undiscovered, how many of these creatures walked amongst us unnoticed? All these things I wanted answers too, but first, "Is it true that you mean to have me write a history of the changelings?"

"Not just a history. A distillation of all that is known about us. An authoritative work."

"Does that mean I get to interview your drones?" I thought if I were to have permission to do that I might, at least, ascertain their numbers.

"Certainly, but you will find they know little but what they need to know for their immediate duties and no history save rumors and persistent superstitions. Their lives are so brief, half a century, three quarters at best."

"Well, are you an immortal alicorn like Princess Celestia? You could give me a hoof up by giving me some background."

"Eventually, but I think it's too early yet for that. You don't know enough to ask the clever questions I've come to expect of you just yet, and neither of us will profit by the experience. That's what the books are for." She gestured.

"So all of this..." I started. All of this was for me, or more realistically, for the project I'd been assigned. She nodded that this was true without me even finishing. Daunting as it was, I secretly relished the idea. In the beginning I'd tried to avoid the changelings all together, and now I simply couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than research them simply for the pleasure of knowing things nopony else did. For the first time since I'd gotten here I'd forgotten the paranoia, the aching fear, the longing for my wife and foal, "When can I start?"

Stealing Away

Two years on, Janus had grown into a respectable and permanent village. No longer just a harried group of refugees, they were coming into their own with all the institutions and conveniences of a much bigger town. There was even a small museum to our exodus that one could tour for two bits. It mostly contained the weaponry and armor that I'd decried the theft of from it's original home.

A government had been established, disgustingly with Commander Victory at the helm, and I still wondered if he was not a changeling, especially since my own 'wife', Queen Chrysalis was his right hoof mare in civil matters. It made me assume that there was a hive within or below the rapidly coalescing city hall. In this way she could have access anytime, day or night with no suspicion paid to her. When I confronted her, she told me I was paranoid, and that I was reading too much into things, and I'd yet to find any proof to support my suspicions.

As one of their first acts they'd instituted a 'changeling test', which consisted of a charm created by the same healer who'd extorted a cord of wood from me, which goes to show the accuracy of the test. Unsurprisingly, despite impressive flares and sparks of pseudo magic, no changelings were located and we were deemed clean of that infestation. Between that and the fake fertility charms she'd had such a demand for, she'd been cleaning up. It seemed like every mare had one, including Chrysalis. I faulted the stallions for the problem. It seemed they'd gotten rather sickly in the jungle heat and constant toil of building a whole new society.

We'd begun trading with the zebras about the time the first hotel went up, and we adopted their currency, though we're still calling them bits, even though they're not. By the sweat and toil of everypony, a new life had been wrestled from the malarial jungles. Meanwhile, I sat in a dank cave, mostly alone, surrounded by thousands of books shelved in no order I could discern, lit by dim, bioluminescent lighting.

It took me the first year to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted it laid out and resign myself to the work. It took half of another to create an outline and start the research in earnest. Now, I joke about the organization of the books, but it was explained to me that they were in chronological order, not by the date they were published or written, but to align with the relevant event alluded to within them. If there was more than one event, it was shelved with the earliest. If it was a generalized history of the changelings it would be at the end, and then organized by relevance in the opinion of whoever arranged them last. Fortunately, I didn't have to keep track. Any I left on the tables would remain untouched, any I left on the floor would be mysteriously reshelved by the next morning, back in their original order.

Some books had histories of whole nations and I was meant to be able to pick out from them the few lines that concerned some changeling activity, and of course I could not. Lucy was of great help in this capacity. She could pick out the oddities and anomalies quick as a whip, even though her knowledge of her own history was vague, at best and I couldn't discern how she could tell what was relevant and what wasn't, despite numerous attempts. She just shrugged it off and said she could feel it when she got to the important bits. Then she would either alert me to it if it fell in my current line of research, or stick a slip of paper in it for later if it did not.

Many of them were fairly ambiguous. A whole book and what was marked would be: A stallion, missing twenty five years returned with no memory of where he'd been. He thinks he'd been asleep the whole time, dreaming of a paradise, but begged to be awoken when he realized that it was a dream and woke to find himself walking towards his childhood home, long since abandoned. Authorities on the matter feel he may be genuine, but is more likely a crank.

Or: A mare aged twenty years old disappeared from a Hambletonian farm in the summer of the great drought. She was searched for and her body eventually discovered at the bottom of a long dry well on the estate, but it's state of decomposition indicated it's long presence there. Moreover, the skeleton was only half grown, where the victim had been an adult at the time of her disappearance. An imposter was at first suspected, but she was well known in town, making her impersonation unlikely and nopony could make sense of it anyhow.

Some were even as vague as a journal that stated: Though I offered a modest reward, my much beloved sheepdog hasn't been located. It's so unlike him to range far from home, though with Hearth Stone gone, I fear he may no longer get so much affection as is proper.

Instances where they had impersonated anypony of note or were found out for what they were was a rare occurrence. Given the numbers of hivelings that must have been supported, there had to have been and exponential number of subtle incursions that went wholly unnoticed.

It's an aberration that we even knew about changelings, or had seen them directly. For most of their history they'd stayed out of sight, with spottings few and far between and direct evidence practically non-existent in most of the land. If it was not for the fact that unicorn wizards were well aware of them and had written on the subject quite extensively, there would be little hope for a book thick enough to answer Chrysalis' desires.

What was helpful was that my fellow unicorns not only wrote volumes on any subject they had a whim for, but they also wrote spells, and early on I'd found the spell of my dreams. It was a changeling revealing spell. Cast in the open it would travel like a wave and strip away the disguises of every changeling within a certain radius, depending on the strength of the caster. As of yet, I was not strong enough to cast it, but I'd been practicing as well as chugging away on a workaround, an individualized spell that would let me feel who was a changeling or not by using my horn like a dowsing rod. I was close to perfecting it, but it was low priority. In truth, knowing how bad things actually were wouldn't help much to fix them. More than that, I felt an obsessive need to finish my work before turning everypony's lives upside down again. Once I did that, I might not have access to this knowledge ever again.

For appearance sake, I'd been staying in Chrysalis' cottage, though I had my own small room. We shared awkward meals with forced small talk and various witty barbs traded back and forth. In truth, I spent the majority of my nights dozing on splayed out books in my own private oubliette. The prime enticement to venture into that cursed house, save to pass through it, was the opportunity to spend time with the quickly growing Squeaky, who's playful company I most enjoyed, though she made me wistfully aware that my own colt was growing without me.

I had poor standing in the community at large since I was rarely seen working to better the city or interacting with it's denizens. It didn't help that the Commander had gossiped about my supposed bout of paranoid insanity and given everypony reason to doubt me. It was a lonely life and it was the case that my only friends were changelings. Were it to come up, they would invariably side with their queen over myself, and were possibly only associating with me on her orders, giving me an actual friend count of approximately zero.




Though I tested my boundaries at every opportunity, I only tried a full fledged escape once more in those two years. Somewhere in the middle of the timeline of books, somepony had found an abandoned hive and made careful drawings of it. Not knowing about it's inhabitants, he made a number of very interesting, but incorrect leaps of logic which cheapened his efforts, but his exacting drawings could not be faulted. They showed a hive with a similar architecture to the one I'd known, but in a less refined form. The layout was the same, however, and the four arches leading to the pods were laid out the same  as this library as well. There was but one feature unaccounted for in my current environs, the method by which the library had been surreptitiously populated with books, a front door.

Once I thought to look for it, the passage was easily located, concealed behind a bookshelf that swung away on hinges. There's no great story to it, really. I had guessed the passage led to the conjectured hidden hive, but after scampering down it I found it simply opened into a small clearing just past the treeline. At the time I gave it no thought, simply taking off to the North. It was just my luck that the rainy season had just started. I miserably trekked through unbroken woodland for four days before my body gave up and I had to hunker in the lee of a great old tree, too exhausted to move. I'd backtracked on my trail, meandered and otherwise wasted my efforts. I couldn't say for certain if I'd even made it much closer to Tanis.

In the peaceful stillness I heard a rustle. Doubtless some apex predator come to do me in and snack on my bones, I thought. Even so, I was too tired to fight, so I hollered out, hoping to drive it off, "You, just get away now, find your prey somewhere else and leave me be!"

A changeling stepped into the clearing, rivulets of water dripping from the natural raincoat of it's carapace. It looked at me uncertainly, then changed to the form of a matronly pegasus, "Oh, ok dearie. You just let me know when you're done escaping and I'll bring you back to Janus." She told me as if I were some wayward foal, having a pout. With a green flash and a few steps she was once again out of view and silent. It was a particularly humiliating form of defeat, and Chrysalis never mentioned it, though the wicked curl of her lip when I'd returned indicated it was of considerable amusement to her, and she's left the passage conspicuously unguarded still, seemingly as a taunt.

After that I hadn't tried to run again, I was a broken stallion, and Chrysalis knew it, even though a severe manic depressive tendency was all that showed on the surface. This, in particular, is the sort of humor that drives Chrysalis wild. Shortly, certain events came to light that promised me the last laugh.



I'd made considerable headway on the book. Once the outline was done it was merely a matter of filling in the facts and drawing conclusions, so the work went quickly. All the disparate reports of changeling activity that had at first seemed useless, instead gave a pattern of tactics and the areas they were being used in throughout the past. From them I could discern the locations of hives and when they were moved with reasonable certainty. I could also say with some certainty, that although satellite hives were established fairly often, they invariably petered out in less than a century. The changeling queens passed on faster than they were replaced, all save one. Though I'd known it obliquely for some time, it became obvious that Chrysalis was immortal, as my own Princesses were.

The unicorn journals had accounts of many events stretching back to antiquity, and it appeared the hive was more reckless in those times. Apparently they waged war and subjugated, for a short time, the sea ponies. Unlikely as it seems, they held dominion over that watery kingdom for several years until the were routed by Neptunia herself. The sea ponies never fully recovered and are now quite in danger of fading into obscurity. The spoils of that conquest kept the changelings fed for a time while they expanded their numbers and marched in several less ostentatious battles, invariably winning each time.

Their success was noticed, however, and they were driven into the shadows by a coalition of the three tribes which, in pre-harmony days, was something to be remarked upon. From then on they used their deceitful natural gifts and various schemes to pilfer love energy in minor and grand situations alike. Though largely unknown, they've had a diverse and successful time of it, skulking about in our nightmares, shamelessly inserting themselves into any situation where love might be harvested, and I'd gleaned a full and rich history with few holes in it.

What it lacked was specific capabilities, limits and extents of powers, and the dramatic take that my eventual interview with Chrysalis would, hopefully, give. Many of the events lacked nuance, but I'd been holding out. In the very top of the library, marking the beginning of the records, was a little black journal, centuries old and penned in Chrysalis' own writing. It was my motivation to continue the otherwise thankless task. When everything else was done, just before I questioned her directly, I planned to read that book. I'd only just cracked it and seen the first few pages which were faded almost beyond comprehension. From it's position and the content of the first page it was obviously the queen's journal. It would take some time to copy it out into a legible form and it wasn't helped that somepony had thought to press wildflowers in it's pages some century or another.

Before I came to that fulfilling point, Lucy left a book for me, marked with a slip of paper that referenced a town that had done a booming business in fertility charms some centuries ago. I thought it very strange that she marked it, and thought for a moment that it was simply in reference to the quack selling them in our own town, but the name of the town, Tapadero, had come up somewhere before. I had to backtrack to find it, but when I did, I found it to be another that had needed further research as I didn't see it's relevance.

"Lucy?" I called to the changeling who was rapidly scanning a thick tome to parse it's relevance.

"Yeah, boss?"

"I think I'd rather like to know everything I can about Tapadero, circa three hundred and fifty years back or so." When I asked this of her, she looked up with a satisfied, knowing grin and nodded.






With the books splayed out around me a familiar story was told. Half the population of Tapadero had been taken, and then shortly reclaimed by military force, routing the kidnappers, but doing little enough harm to them. It was supposed that a curse was put on the town, however, as there was considerable illness among those who'd not been abducted, and no foals were born for over five years afterward. Then all the ones who'd been taken so long ago slipped away one dark night, only to wander back into town, one by one, over the course of a few days. Their memories had been lost from the time they'd been kidnapped to the present. Five years evaporated in one night as did the illnesses. Those who'd been getting progressively weaker were suddenly well again and a veritable baby boom ensued.

So as to get to the bottom of this occurrence, trackers were used to backtrack the victim's trail. When they came to the terminus they found a ghost town. A virtual mirror of their own bustling village, but a hundred miles distant. It was so far beyond what was explicable, they called it cursed and burned it to the ground. A simple minded solution for simpler times.

The interesting part, the thing I was sure had bearing on the current circumstances, was that the denizens of Tapadero were rather amazonian in nature, and all the original kidnappees, were stallions.





With all the preliminaries in place, I simply needed to compile my notes into a single volume, which would have taken years, save that I'd complained about it and Lucy had enlisted her brother's help, along  with a small swarm of other changelings, mostly reverted to drones so that I might not know their assumed identities. The job in capable hooves, I wrote the introduction, which was a frank statement of my situation, and a snarky prologue, which I meant to add in afterward. It detailed my anticipated defeat of the changelings and my triumphant return to my wife and foal. What I lacked was an interview with Chrysalis which should shed light on the many things I'd glossed over for want of information.

I debated the importance of actually finishing my work, for I'd redoubled my efforts towards the changeling revealing spells now that I knew the big secret. I looked over my list of questions, and while they were each something I wanted to know very badly, none of them were so clever or insightful as Chrysalis had seemed to want. I decided to skip it and hid it in the old black book I'd left to read only after I'd victoriously left this place behind me, and I slipped it back into it's spot amongst the others books.

A week beyond that, when the book's draft was done, it was a thousand page monster and had another thousand pages of footnotes in another volume. I packed both volumes in my saddle bags, then headed up the ladders to get that mysterious journal. Lucy and Bub met me halfway, matching sneers on their faces as they appraised my saddlebags.

"Going somewhere?" Bub barred my path. I'd thought myself alone, and having these two see me packed up and ready to make a break was very much a setback.

"No, I was going to show Chrysalis the book, now that it's finished." I lied.

"I was told it wouldn't be complete for a time yet, was there some great breakthrough?" He cocked his head.

"No, no, I just decided that certain parts were extraneous and that it would do just as it is."

Bub scoffed, "This is meant to be the most complete and honest account of changeling history ever produced, it doesn't seem like it could even be complete without an interview with the queen."

"Yeah, from where we're sitting, it almost looks like you're planning on skipping out on us now that your book's done." Lucy looked me dead in the eye and advanced, "It seems like in your haste to be rid of us you've tried to cut corners."

She passed by me, so close as to drag my neck with her wing, then she flopped the flap on my saddlebag open and dropped something into it, "Seems like you're forgetting things too."

I looked back and found that she'd dropped the black journal into my bag. I met her eyes in shock and she winked, "Why are you helping me?"

"Why indeed?" Bub cryptically asked, but I figured I didn't have time to sort it out. There was a town meeting in which Commander Victory was to give a speech. The entire town would be there and I'd finally gotten strong enough to cast my changeling revealing spell, so long as everypony was in relatively close proximity. I brushed by them both and galloped there, a sense of dread overwhelming me. It was my intent to cast the revealing spell, then skip out in the ensuing chaos to work my way back to Connie.



I was seemingly in luck. The Commander was on stage with Chrysalis, in the guise of my wife, by his side, giving me the perfect opportunity to get up on stage myself as if I'd only meant to sidle up beside her. She eyed me suspiciously as I mounted the steps and crossed the low wooden stage. The crowd was gathered as close as that number of ponies could be, covering the lawn before the town hall in a brightly hued sea of ponies, half of which would shortly be revealed as changelings.

Could she tell what I was thinking? I looked at her sidelong only to see her eyes fixed upon me and a sneer drawn on her lips.

"What are you doing?" She hissed at me, and I knew it was now or never.

"...port will usher in a new era of prosperity and a connection back to our homeland besides, and with all your efforts..." The Commander's speech droned on. I crossed to center stage, excused myself for interrupting and cast an amplifying spell.

"Pardon me for interrupting, this really is rather important, however. I've recently come to the end of a rather involved research project, well half of you already knew that, but, anyway, what I've come to discover is that there are changelings amongst us, and a considerable number." The Commander jumped forward to tackle me, but missed, and Chrysalis growled as she strode across the stage, "I will...I will now reveal them to you, and you will see that nearly all the town's stallions have been replaced, so be ready to fight. Here goes."

I cast the spell, even as I was dog piled. A weak shockwave traveled outward and across the crowd. It did next to nothing. The only thing it did do was illuminate each and every one of the fertility charms that the mares had taken to wearing. That's when I recognized the stones. They were smoky, but they were quartz of the sort one would enchant with an anti-magic charm. I'd gotten it backwards, it was the mares that had been replaced, which is obvious in retrospect.

I'd caught on to the trick, that the mares had been replaced by changelings at the battle for the hive, but I'd for some reason assumed I'd been kidnapped away to the other group that was implied, a group where most of the stallions had been replaced and hidden away in the deep jungle. I hadn't even considered the stallions constant low grade illness, it not having been known to me in practical terms how much being drained of vital energies affected one's constitution. Partly it was sexism on my part, fueled by a macho desire to think of all mares as innocents, and partly a want for Commander Victory's actions to be explained by cunning rather than folly. I'd wasted my chance, made myself look paranoid and discredited any in the future who might speculate in the same vein.

I yanked Chrysalis' charm loose and prepared to cast the spell again on just her, but my horn wasn't in it. I'd worn myself out, but it was a very real threat in her eyes, so with supernatural strength she threw me off the stage and into a bush. The saddle bags and books cushioned my fall, somewhat. I think she'd been aiming for something more solid. I scurried to my hooves and took off at a gallop.

"Let him go." I heard her say from behind me, "He'll come home when he gets hungry and we'll have a long talk about what's to be done about his condition." By which she meant that she would hunt me down and drag me in and treat me as if I were a lunatic. As I cleared the treeline I speculated on how to avoid that. I only had one ace up my sleeve, and it was a long shot. With the simpler changeling detection spell I would feel a pull or a pressure in my horn when a changeling was near, and tell from which direction they were coming by turning towards and away from them. If I could feel them coming, maybe I could avoid them. It was my best hope, so I cast it.



It was a long night. I had to keep moving. As soon as I would stop to rest, a pulse in my horn would prod me to my hooves once again. Even with my horn lit, it was dark. I tripped over rocks and roots, branches and spiderwebs assaulted my face, I nearly twisted my ankle in the animal burrows, and the whole time I could feel the changelings searching for me, driving me forward.

When the sun rose I kept moving. I was exhausted, but I was on the right track this time, I thought I had a chance to make it this time. As careful as I'd been about changelings on my trail, I hadn't paid nearly enough attention to the other creatures that might want a bit of pony flesh, and my sweaty musk must have been a beacon to predators looking for a creature in distress.

I stopped only long enough to sip from a beautiful, pebbly stream in a peaceful glade with not even the thought of danger around. When I raised my head, there before me was a rabbit with a single, smooth horn extending half a yard from it's forehead. It looked almost comical, it's little nose twitching, but I'd been warned once about the al-mi'raj. They were vicious, territorial, and they ran in packs. I peeked behind me and confirmed my fear. On their bellies and hind legs, a tiny furry infantry with spears naturally mounted had snuck up behind me. I did not pause, I did not think, I simply ran towards the single adversary with my horn angled for him.

They squealed a cry of a hundred tortured souls as they charged after me. The single adversary had leapt aside, striking a glancing blow to my flank as I passed before joining his brothers in my pursuit. Their sharp teeth chattered as they pumped their little legs, clearing a yard in each bound. I was barely keeping ahead of them and could not do so for long. I saw a stout tree ahead and figured that they couldn't likely climb it. I wasn't sure I could either, but with my longer reach I managed to get up on a low branch and, with difficulty, drag myself to branches far above their reach.

My muscles burned, I'd acquired any number of scrapes and abrasions as I ran, and the foul creatures whorled around the base of the tree in a frenzy, showing no intention of retreating. I felt around and could sense no changelings, and in my state and lacking any better course of action, I settled in to nap in the tree.

I awoke to a throbbing pressure growing in my head, a changeling growing near, I was certain. It didn't explain why the tree was creaking and swaying, however. That wouldn't become evident until the tree groaned in defeat and lazily tilted over. Then I had a clear view of the chewed through trunk below me as I tumbled down to towards the ground, nearly managing to be crushed in the process.

I landed on my right side and the jarring numbed me so much that I swayed badly when I woozily rose. I was half a second from being impaled on those savage horns when my head exploded in pulsing pain and a black blur collided with them, "Run! Run for all you're worth and don't look back!"

I was easily convinced and did so, I did, however, look back. The changeling had dealt with the bulk of the nasty creatures, but half a dozen were still behind me. I momentarily worried for him as he was lost to my view, I hadn't heard his true voice often, but I'm pretty sure my rescuer had been Bub. I outpaced the tiny monsters for a time and thought myself to be home free when I broke through into a clearing and found my forehooves dangling over a precipice. I would like to say that I bravely dove off to escape my pursuers, but in fact momentum carried me over and I freefell for a ways, tumbled through scrubby pines and a field of round stones before I came to an abrupt halt on a small ledge before a gully. I did not pause to assess the damage. Since I still seemed capable of doing so, I rose, made my way across and scrabbled up the opposite side as quickly as I could.

The changeling was far away, but coming towards me now and I was a sitting duck here so I galloped away, pondering just what enhanced senses allowed them to track me so easily. Could they sense me from afar, only to come running when I ran into mortal danger and exuded a stink of fear? Regardless, I had little choice but to keep moving and hope I would travel beyond their range.

Mere hours later I was in a proper town again, or as proper as towns got this far into the southern wilds. It was a Zebra town, a garishly festive barrage of colors and masks hung on huts and hollowed out trees. What it had that gave me some hope, was a small port. In fact, port may be a generous term. It was more like a single dock that had the look of a port due to the barrels, bales, casks and other cargo in the midst of being loaded into the hold of a trireme such as the ones that had graced the Tanisian ports so often.

The vessel's Captain was overseeing the operations as I sprinted down the wide dirt path and came to a halt before her, panting. She was a stout mare, solidly middle aged with a confident bearing. Wearing a knotted scarlet neckerchief over her periwinkle coat somehow seemed quite enough to announce her position amongst the rest of the swarthy crew who labored with the freight in the hot sun.

"Captain," I addressed her with a quick bow, "If I could ask, where might you be headed?"

She appraised me as if weighing the value of a bushel basket of grain, "Tanis is our port of call."

I thought it over. "Is your ship fast?"

She gave me a disdainful look, "She's the fastest ship that ever sailed, I'd lay my life upon it."

Would I, though? It seemed to me that every ship's captain claimed theirs to be the fastest that ever plied the waves, but they'd be no less likely to give that frank appraisal if their vessel had been a washtub toy. I didn't see a great deal of choice. "Could I work as crew for passage there?"

Again she looked me over again, "I don't know, you don't look as if you'd bend to the oar too well. Quite soft about the middle from the look of it. Maybe you'd care to be my own personal entertainment? Hmm? You Canterlotians do have such a refined way about you, I think I should enjoy such company."

I balked, "I...I'm a married stallion, I could never..."

This was met with a hearty laugh, "Aye, you're a good enough fellow. Come aboard as my guest and I'll make no untoward advances, I promise. It seems to me you've few enough desirable maritime skills, and clearly no money, so let me pity you and trade passage for a bit of fresh conversation and I'll come away well enough."

Soon enough I was on my way home, to see what state it had been left in, and in who's hooves it now sat.




It turned out that Brass Belle, the Captain, really had been simply longing for company. She was no manner of refined damsel, but she was far and away more civilized than her loutish crew, from her first officer, right down to the grunting stallions pulling the oars. I remarked that her ship seemed ill suited to cargo and that a great measure of profit seemed destined to evaporate away in keeping her crew paid and fed. She admitted grimly that all but the officers were prisoners and she'd paid a nominal sum to have them serve out their sentences pulling at her oars.

"Still, just feeding them should just about break you, I'd think. You're essentially using the most modern warship of our day to haul freight, and it's hold doesn't seem up to it." I leaned back on the cushion, took up the glass of cognac and swirled it idly. The luxurious cabin seemed out of place given the army of slaves just outside the door. It was a warm and stylishly decorated space, made to look the part of a parlor, and with a similar function. Everywhere I looked was caramel colored wood, crimson cloth and gold painted accents. The library was well stocked with intriguing titles and the pantry was provisioned with mind numbing beverages.

She grinned, "That's very astute, aye. You'd think the miniscule amount of cargo wouldn't answer for the operating costs. In normal circumstances you'd be right, but what with the strange habits and tastes Tanis seems to have picked up, we can cover it and then some."

"Strange, howso?"

"Oh ho, so you haven't heard about it then? Well let me be the first to tell you, the mares have all gone crazy and gotten their stallions so thoroughly whipped that it's shifted the whole balance of trade and made all this possible." She slid a manifest across the chestnut table, I looked at it and found it to be all luxury goods. Silk, diamonds, Zebrican herbal perfume, hazel nuts, exotic fruit and flowers. Stereotypically things mares are said to want. The mares I got along with preferred good books to frivolities, but to each her own.

"How long's this been going on?"

"Couple years now, give or take some. It'd be just fine if it stayed this way, turns a bigger profit than hauling lumber and pitch from down south the way I had been before this all started up, and it's less work besides. At this rate I expect a second ship in my future to keep up. Then I'll be an Admiral, and won't that be a lark?" She grimaced, "Only trouble with the whole thing is, they been doting on their mares so much that they've let that whole city go to rack and ruin. Doesn't seem like anything more industrious or less romantic than planting a rosebush has gone on in a while, and it's starting to show. City's getting worn down, the ponies, too. The mares anyway, it's like they're enjoying the attention, but they all have this kind of glazed look in their eyes. They stumble around in a happy sort of  daze like they'd just finished a marathon or something. It's decidedly troubling."

"Oh, I see. Well...I guess there's something I should tell you." I started, and three hours on I'd confided most of what I knew about the changelings and my suspicions that every stallion in the whole town was a changeling as all the mares were in Janus. I also had my suspicions that the hive I'd sought in Janus was, instead, in Tanis.

"Oh buck." She swore, then remained silent for a time, considering a course of action, I suspected, "This is going to turn the whole exotic gift trade tits up, isn't it?"

Tanis Revisited

Mountainous swells and crashing waves were nothing to Brass Belle's fine ship, we sailed steadily through them for most of a week. Though it was driven by the wind for the majority of the time, the oars fought the thunderous waves and kept us under control, it's great length minimized the pitch and roll. If it were not for the peals of thunder that rattled the window panes of the captain's parlor, I'd have little sense of just what a gale we were embattled by. Those confined to rowing out on the open deck were not so lucky.

Under the dim haze of the sunrise cutting through the storm, we slid into the Tanisian bay, and I stoically withheld my shock. The Captain said that it was desolate, with little activity being undertaken, but to me it looked far past that. It looked like a dead husk, with not a pony visible on the usually bustling dock. Trash was strewn everywhere, ships had been neglected so long as to let the water fill them and had sunken to the bottom in their berths, heeling crazily over as their keels hit the bottom, leaving a matchstick forest of slanted masts.

A cargo of small arms, swords and the like, had been carelessly dumped in a heap and was actively leaving a ruddy stain on the boards of the dock as their once gleaming surfaces pitted with rust. Indeed, what use have changelings for arms, or for war? Theirs is a conquest by subterfuge, though it is no less cruel than the common sort. A similarly abandoned lot of still crated tools insisted that earnest work was likewise outside of their interests.

I was frankly surprised, after I'd come clean and told my tale, that she'd not been angered that I'd put her ship in danger with my presence. I found that it was part of her nature that she'd write of such untoward occurrences when weighed against the bit of insider information I'd provided, but it soon proved rather late to make full use of it.

The Captain pointed ahead and gave commands to her various lieutenants which I couldn't discern. She'd been here before, gliding past this undead city was just another Tuesday for her and the other few merchant vessels who'd been supplying the city.

Tanis was rich in gold and generous with it, they'd heard, and they were correct, though I knew that to take full advantage of their reserves would require bartering away or melting down the artifacts they'd inherited from their ancestors. The tombs and museums that represented thousands of years of history were being looted to pay for the changeling's stay. Short sighted cannibalism, from a pony's point of view, quite logical from the changeling's, who had little interest in our cultural treasures. If they stayed long enough they'd strip the marble halls, pyramids and sphinxes to their foundations and sell off the blocks to continue their inequine harvest of ponies vital energies.

Our ship cut through the water in relative silence. The lap of the oars and the drumming were muffled and much subdued, as if in reverent, expectant fear and they were further swallowed up by the press of stagnant, humid air around us.

Dead ahead, a bonfire blazed, the harbor light that marked the channel's western bound and just beyond, huddled tightly as rats against the tainted decay of the docks was a cluster of ships and their crews, offloading their cargo. The captain tapped the drummer on the shoulder and he stopped his steady beat. She then drummed out a tattoo on the rail with quick hooves which the rowers managed to parse into precise commands which they translated into carefully timed pulls until she whistled and they simultaneously pulled in their oars. The ship slipped into a berth and coasted to a stop as precisely as if it were a toy guided by a divine hoof from on high. We gently nuzzled up to the dockboard and were tied off but a blink later.

Every creature on the dock was from the crew of one of the ships. Not a single resident of the city was in evidence, which struck me as odd. Letting maintenance fall by the wayside is one thing, but the changelings were decidedly ones committed to keeping up appearances. It was a thing they were hardly careless about. From the look on Brass Belle's face, this was something new to her as well. She screwed up her eyes, then turned to me and a pegasus lieutenant.

"You two, come with me. The rest of you, stay at your posts. Be ready to cast off in a hurry if things get out of hoof."

Given that she'd so recently learned the true nature of this city's inhabitants, I'd say that her current level of paranoia was not overblown. In fact, it might be somewhat understated in the situation. We'd talked about plans back in her parlor. She joked that if what I said was true, she intended to sell her ship and the contract to her crew farther to the north and be shut of the whole business entirely. I'm not actually certain it was a joke.

She leapt down, neckerchief tails trailing jauntily as she thumped onto the weathered boards. I followed her down on a gangplank, as did her lieutenant. We heard a strain of argument before us, and upon rounding the neighboring ship's prow we came upon it's source. A team of mules were harnessed to a wagon, waiting impatiently as their drover argued animatedly with, I presumed by his headwear, their Captain. I respectfully stayed back and let Brass Belle approach them, consult with them for a bit, them stride back to us.

"Seems like things have gotten worse since I was here last." She huffed, "But it does sort of confirm your changeling theory."

"Did they put up a hive and start cocooning ponies?" I asked, the lieutenant gave me a queer look since he had no knowledge of our precarious circumstances.

"No, seems like all the stallions lit out in the middle of the night half a week back, left all the mares sick in their beds and never came back." She sighed, "There's nopony to receive the cargoes and they're arguing about whether they ought to try and sell it elsewhere or file a complaint with some authority."

"I think that's rather missing the point."

"Maybe you'd think differently if you had a hold full of items that have little enough intrinsic value anywhere else on this continent. Really this is a big setback for me." She was surprised when I scowled at her for that remark, "What? The mares should get better now that those leeches are gone, right? It's just a matter of time and they'll be alright. The grain and food stores, they'll surely get paid for sooner or later, just because the stallions are gone doesn't mean the mares won't go right on living once they're back on their hooves, and they'll need food, but I'd think things are going to be tight around here for a while. Too tight for my good and goods, I'm afraid. Maybe I can ship them overland and hock them in Canterlot. Seems about their speed, don't you think?"

"I think..." I said, and then I did, think that is. Here I was wracking my brain so that somepony I hardly know doesn't take a bath on a load of cargo when there are more important facts that should be acknowledged. The changelings were gone, I was finally home, and my wife was likely lying sick in her bed. Fretting over bits took an immediate backseat when I realized that, "I think I'll have to look into it. Scout the place out, so to speak. Let me see if I can pull some strings."

Then I took off at a clip, the Captain hollering something after me, but I was too far down the cobblestone streets to understand it. My house was a long way off and my endurance was poor, but I stretched it to it's limit to close the gap between me and my beloved as fast as I could manage. I still had to stop and walk for half the journey when a stitch cropped up in my side. The streets were, indeed, abandoned and littered with the debris of a city too long neglected. Lucky that we had indoor plumbing of the Romane sort or there would be worse things to worry over than trash and decay. As the squalor increased, a throbbing pressure in my horn built to nearly painful levels.

Sooner than I could believe, I was standing at my own front door. Hesitantly, but without knocking, I swung the weathered slab open and found slumped over on the sitting room bench, drooling gently, myself. I was unsurprised.The creak of the door woke the changeling and he lethargically stirred.

"Luna take you bucking bugs. Always getting underhoof, why can't you leave me be?"

He was startled, somewhat, but let out a big yawn anyway. In my anger I pulled loose my saddlebags and whacked him twice.

"Oy! Quit, quit! Is that really necessary?" He shrunk away from the blows, "I'm risking my life being here, just to talk to you. There's no need to act in such a vulgar manner."

"Where's my wife?" I snarled, "Is she here? Did you just take her over after the queen ran us all out of town."

He looked at me in confusion, "Of course I did, hey, hey! Don't hit me again! You know how we work, and well, of course it wasn't me in particular, but I have those memories, too, so I guess it may as well have been."

I wound up for another barrage, hoping the heavy tomes would crush that hard black carapace. In my rage, I swung and he easily dodged the blow, but it's momentum pulled me off balance and he gently put a hoof to my back and I collapsed on the ground where he held me. I squirmed and bucked violently.

"You're going to hurt yourself if you keep that up." He said as he spit ribbons of green cocoon material and bound my limbs to the floor in an undignified spread eagle, "Listen, I came here out of respect. I have something to tell you and it's not going to be easy to take."

"Let me loose and I'll show you what you can take, and where." I semicoherently raged. He rolled his eyes, facsimiles of my own, and spit a strand of the green goop over my mouth.

"You're not making this any easier, but look, you need to know. Your mares are all going to be fine in a few days. The changelings are gone and they're not coming back, I'm the only one left and I'll be gone in a minute." He sighed, clearly not relishing what he had to say, "Your wife, well, she was pregnant when you left and...well there's no easy way to say it. She died in childbirth, the foal too. My condolences, but after all that's happened between you and my brothers, I thought you deserved to know. Your foal is with her parents, but I think your wife had caught on and warned them that I was a changeling and they fled. We haven't been able to turn up hide nor hair of them. I'm sorry, truly I am."

He pulled loose the sticky fibers that held my forehoof down so that I might extricate myself, then, with a respectful nod, he left. I made no move to free myself further, abject despair taking me over, I simply laid on the floor and silently wept at the injustice of it all. It was night when I awoke again, a torch flame glaring in my face.

"One in here." A voice said. I tried as hard as I could to ignore it and the rough treatment as the sticky strands were cut and peeled away. I shuddered convulsively when a hoof pried my eyelids open to peer into my eyes, "You can stand." The voice stated as he pulled me to my hooves and marched me out into the street.

All around me were refugees, pale and haggard mares, standing, slumping on the ground. For every ten there was a healer in Canterlotian guard livery seeing to them. Some of the former crew of Brass Belle's ship were hauling wagons of food and chests of medicine down the way, distributing it around. How any of them got there I had no idea and didn't care. I just wanted to be left alone in my misery and I moved to get back inside where I could mourn a death long passed in peace. I was halted by a booming voice.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite little coward." Commander Victory said, "What's the matter, all upset that your favorite bugs have been run out of town?"

Buck. How did he get here? He wasn't a changeling, I would have felt it, maybe he'd been here all along and the Commander back in Janus really was a fake? But no, he wasn't wearing an amulet. He must have taken my puzzled annoyance as a question.

"Contrary to what you may think, I'm not stupid." He said, and he was right, I had counted his intellect to be a fairly dim flame, "When you cast that spell and all the mare's fertility charms lit, it got me thinking, why would a fertility charm react like that? So I took it to Musty Scroll and asked him. He didn't know, but his wife gave me this egghead run around theory, and that's when I figured it out. We'd fled because Lightning Strike convinced me that we wouldn't win the fight, and she'd also talked me out of heading to Canterlot for help. I suppose we all of us have the frontier spirit, and a pride in our former home, so it was easier than it should have been to talk us into traipsing around the jungle."

"But all the mares were for it, weren't they?" I conjectured.

"You got it, and they made a convincing argument for it, too, but when I actually thought about it, hacking a new home out of a wild jungle isn't any safer than fighting those bugs. The only thing it did was isolate us. I figured that once we got the port finished, we'd be back in business, an outpost of civilization on the dark continent. The port never did get finished, though, and that was due to the interference of your wife and my Lightning Strike." He scratched at the rough cobbles in annoyance, "I thought it was incompetence, but there wasn't much I could do. Those two are a pretty formidable force when they've a mind to be. Aside from that fact, Lightning Strike and my relationship had changed since we fought the bugs, and I didn't want to upset that."

"You realized that she was playing you the whole time, right?"

"Well, after your buck up I did. Really, all the stallions? That doesn't even make sense. The kidnapping, the battle, it was all to distract and separate the mares from the stallions. The exodus was to keep us distant and out of contact." He reasoned, something I'd long thought him incapable of, "Once that became obvious, I concluded that they must have done the same thing to the mares and Tanis. Since Lightning Strike was so adamant about not involving Canterlot, I figured they must be uniquely equipped to fight the bugs, so I lit out that night and flew there. It took some fast talking, but I got an audience with Princess Celestia herself and she not only believed me, but came here with her army to take down the bugs. Only, they were already gone. Princess Luna's headed down to Janus with another army to free our ponies there, but I'd bet my left hind leg that they'll be gone by the time she gets there."

It was no small thing he'd done. To reason it out against all his preconceptions, to fly all the way to Canterlot in his weakened state, to talk his way into an audience with the Princess herself, for the first time I saw him as the hero he well and truly was, even if he was a flawed one.

"Now, you, I was sure you wouldn't make it here, but I knew that if you had, you'd come straight here. You have some way of parsing out who's a bug and who isn't, I need that so we can clear the city of any infiltrators. Nopony will feel safe until we know for certain if they're still among us."

"They're gone." I informed him, "There was one left when I got here, but he's gone too."

"A messenger?" He narrowed his eyes, "What was the message?"

I shook my head, and screwed up my eyes to hold back tears.

"Where's your wife?" He asked gently and a sob escaped my lips. Once it had there was no holding back. To his immense credit he stepped forward and embraced me, shushing and patting my back, making little nonsense noises and pledges of vengeance, "Shh...We'll get those cockroaches for what they've done, don't you worry."

Vengeance wasn't on my mind, though. I was sad and angry, but still, the changelings hadn't been the ones who'd killed her. In fact, despite everything, they'd acted almost honorably. There was little point in saying so, and I was beyond coherent speech in any case.





Later they referred to their return home as 'The Tanis death march', which is considerably more hyperbolic than necessary considering that they were well provisioned and nopony even fell ill along the way. If anything, the stallions were said to have gotten stronger with every day. Like it's sister city, Janus had been devoid of all changelings by the time Luna and her army arrived, prepared to unleash her hellish fury. According to the stallions, they'd thought her quite disappointed, and it's said she attempted to pick a fight with the pacifistic zebras before she gave up and went home, (though it's likely just a rumor) leaving her army to escort the stallions to their homecoming.

I had not remarked upon it when I was in Janus, being so consumed with my own circumstances at the time, but there were no single ponies there. Everypony was fruitfully paired up, (save for me, since my assigned partner was...not to my liking.) though I hadn't realized it. When the two sexes were finally reunited, those who'd been single on the day we attacked the hive joined together with partners they'd only known as changeling imposters, and for the most part, the matches were apt and symmetrical. In a city rapt with reunions of familiar, but novel love, I was an odd one out.

I returned to my elusive research in the university library, though it was much slower work without dear Lucy at hoof. I still couldn't explain her assisting me overtly, it went against all I knew of the hive that it was even possible for her to act against the Queen's wishes.

Before she departed on her next voyage, Brass Belle visited me in a dark paneled reading room stacked with my current crop of reading material to talk. She found me poring over those notes I'd written in the dim light of Chrysalis' library, "Still trying to make sense of it all?"

"Hmm." I marked my place with the amulet I'd yanked from Chrysalis' neck and found myself still in possession of once I'd returned home. If nothing else it was a tolerable bookmark, "It's more like the more sense I make of it, the deeper I want to delve into it. I'm considering writing to the Princess in the hopes that she'll give me access to the Canterlot archives. Some of the books there are ancient, some are even said to be from the reign if Majesty, if you even believe in that rubbish. Except for some legends and confused accounts, there's just not much about the changelings here that I didn't already know."

"At this point, it's a bit superfluous, aye? We know what they do, and they're apparently scared of the Princesses and their armies, with what you already know, it's a closed case, isn't it?"

"Maybe. But the more I look at it, the more I think that they actually got away with every single objective they had in mind, and then made a clean escape. We have no clue where they got to, and it's not like they can just disappear. Somewhere, they're out there. Feeding on the love of good ponies, deceiving them." I shrugged, "I'm incapable of doing anything about it but worry, though, so I don't know why I bother."

"I think it's sweet that you're doing all this, trying to protect us all." She firmly stated.

"I'm not sure if I can really credit myself with such altruistic intentions. It's just...well I want to know. Even if it's of no use to anypony, I want to know for my own selfish reasons." I almost admire them, I thought to myself.

"Eh, regardless, I think you're doing the right thing. If nothing else, they'll be your book to help ponies along in the future." She pointed a hoof to the thick manuscript I'd labeled, 'On the Origin of Changelings', which so far, was lacking insight on the very promise made by the title, which irritated me to no end, but there was no more knowing that than where ponies came from, I suppose.

"Anyway," Brass Belle continued, "I'm about to be off to Eagleland with a load of the Zebra's coffee beans. It's a drink that's really come into fashion lately, and I'm thinking that if I bill it as exotic I can turn a good profit on it. I just wanted to thank you before I left."

"Thank me?" I blinked, "For what?"

She looked at me incredulously, "Keeping me from going bankrupt, for starters. When you ran off I thought I'd never see you again, then those Canterlotian pegasi came down and offered to buy out the contract on my prisoners for labor tending to the ill. If it wasn't for that, I would have been done for. They even compensated me for the cargo loss since it was an emergency. I don't know how you swung that."

She'd credited me with sending them to her in search of labor, and since it was unlikely that it would ever be contradicted, I said nothing. A lie of omission is still a lie, but lies can be beautiful too, and that should not be discounted, "What about your ship? How are you going to row it without a crew?"

"I traded that old wreck to some donkey for a square rigged four master. Let him sort out the trouble of making a profit while keeping a crew fed and in time, I'll be cruising along with the breeze with my new ship. All she needs is a stiff breeze and a minimal crew and I'll be rolling in the bits." She smirked.

"Is she a fast ship?"

"Fast! Let me tell you, that donkey had no idea what he had in his hooves. With that hull and a little bit of rerigging she's going to be the fastest ship that ever split Neptunia's waves." She boasted, then her features drooped and she hesitated, "When I was trying to find you, I...heard about your wife. I'm sorry. I'm sure you have your own friends looking out after you, but if there's anything I can do, I'll be back in three months or so, I'll come see you when I get in."

She kissed me on the forehead, right near the base of my horn and then nearly sprinted out of the room in a deep blush. The whole time I kept thinking I shouldn't have dispelled my detection spell, what if she's a changeling too? How could I trust her intentions? I was starting to have a hard time discerning between real ponies acting of their own accord, those parasites acting in their predatory capacity, and the changelings that lay beneath the lies and illusions, all three intermixed in my mind. I let my head fall between my hooves, thumping down onto the table.

I'm so sick of duality, ulterior motives, treachery, lies maintained for years, ever fearful of their eroding foundations. Above all I just want truths laid unambiguously before me, whatsoever they may be. I just want to know.

I had to know, but how important was it, really? I mulled it over in my head and realized that, for better or worse, it was the one single motivating factor of my life just then, and as much as it would be beneficial to reign in my compulsions, I couldn't and I didn't want to. In a fervor I dashed off a letter that encapsulated my need, ginned up the benefits to be gleaned from the fulfillment of my desires, addressed it: Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia. Once it was entrusted to a courier I felt the entire issue was out of my hooves and I briefly felt content again.

A week later a reply had already arrived. In the hoof of a resolute and immutable bureaucrat who advised the Princess,  it said that because of my known associations with the changelings, I was blacklisted. Not only would I never be allowed in the vaults of the Canterlot archives, but I would also be unwelcome in Canterlot itself. Regardless that it was my home town I was viewed as a probable enemy of the state and most certainly a changeling sympathizer. The latter might even be said to be the truth, in a way. While it listed a way to appeal such a proclamation, I knew from stories I'd heard that these were hoops to jump through for the sake of wearing a pony out, beating down their resolve to fight, not for actually rectifying an injustice.

I flung the scroll against the wall in a spiraling arc, trailing it's tail of venom and vellum to it's resting place under a side table where I resolved to ignore it for so long as it took it to rot away into oblivion. Denying me the knowledge I required on conjecture and implications of conspiracy? Quashing the pursuit of knowledge under walls of ignorance, who did they think they were?

Still, there was little enough to be done about it. The only other who had a library sufficient to my needs was Chrysalis herself, and surely she was long gone and her books with her. Certainly I'd been through a great many of the books there, but thousands still lay untouched. Surely, the knowledge for which I yearn is somewhere within?

That's when I remembered the journal that was still untouched in my saddle bags. I was remiss in not exploring it earlier, but now, with a dead end so firmly set in place, it was to time. I pulled it out, lay it reverently before me and gently let it fall open to a random page. I admit, I trembled a little.

Inside the pages, wildflowers were pressed. Desiccated, bleached and crumbling with time, papery petals the dissolved into powder under the weight of my gaze. I flipped through, viewing them each with wonder. Some of the species preserved here were known to be extinct, but I knew of no way to save them, deteriorated as they were. They'd lasted all this time just to crumble at my hooves, leaving little but a bit of smudged color on the pages to mark their passing. That I was there to appreciate them in their last moments seemed to do them little enough justice.

Towards the end, where the text was clearer, there were mundane accounts of hive life and tallies of her subjects numbers, needs and her ambitions for them to parse out, but it would take time to piece together the faded scrawl into something more easily perused so I kept flipping through. When I got to the endpaper, I found that a note in my own writing was nestled there, the long list of questions I'd started on for Chrysalis' interview, but an addition had been made. Random questions had been answered in tiny script on the back and unless I was much mistaken, it was Queen Chrysalis who wrote them.

Royal Penpal

There are no heroes, there are no villains, only ponies with different points of view. That being said, as the Queen of the Changelings, I do have a reputation to uphold and it has always seemed beneficial to maintain a certain level of menace. It does a great deal to cow any who would rise against my glorious hive, but also, I must admit, I enjoy it. It is a trifling amusement, and beneath my regal station to play the bogeymare, and yet, a filly must take some sort of enjoyment from their life.

In truth, I feel that I do not fit the role of evil tyrant quite so admirably as has been hinted at, but then I also feel a need to consume ponies' vital energies and leave them as mere servile husks, eager to bow and scrape before their new sovereign, yours truly. The two things are irreconcilably at odds, but then that's what defines a fully realized being; Eternal conflict with one's self. Ah, but I do wax philosophical.

Generally it is not something I allow myself, philosophy is for ponies in need of justification for what they've already decided to do and to be, where my choices are nil. I am, and there is little enough dickering about it. Justification or not, there are drones to feed, grubs to raise, ponies to ensnare. To deny this would be to deny my nature, to doom the hive and murder my children as if by my own hoof.

I should also like to convey that, although we most certainly cannot feel 'love' in any capacity save to absorb and digest it, there is an exultant joy that often comes with being an evil queen (As well as being her invincible army, I've been told by the drones.)

Now royalty, odiously benevolent or deliciously evil, all share a trait, I've noticed. We simply delight in talking about ourselves, ad infinitum. In this vein I do intend to answer some of your questions, the ones I find interesting to answer and the one important one as well, and I will even entrust you with my journal, for a time.

Why? At length, we shall come to that.

To answer but a few of your questions:

"Can changelings feed on anything other than love?"

Probably, yes, but can your kind survive by ingesting the carcasses of...pigs, let's say? It should appease my scientific curiosity to no end to know this. What, no takers for my little experiment? Why then, should I wish to imbibe anything other than that purest of foodstuff, to subsist on fodder, flesh, or fear?

It should also be admitted that there's some manner of symbolism involved here. Our natural accoutrements are something of form over function. Fangs, though the carnage we crave is metaphysical and requires little enough mastication. Sleek carapaces of deepest black, pierced through with holes, emblematic of decay and corruption. Eyes of merciless guile.

We are not just consumers of love, for in that consumption we destroy and so are supposed in form and action to be an enemy of that most foreign and desired emotion, that much is clear. How we came to inhabit this niche and for what purpose, I do not know, but I'm certain it's not simple chance that we occupy the fearsome shadows as we do.

"Why not simply get to know ponies and let them love you for your charms rather than stealing it?"

As lovely as that sounds, harvesting love in the manner that we do is toil no less than if we were mining it. In short, the drones work in shifts, which their prospective 'lovers', with their prudish views, would likely find to be distasteful. More than that, this question assumes that being loved does more than fill our belly, which it does not. It does not fulfill us in any significant way, and were we to eschew the hive for a life among ponies, we would certainly languish for the fraternity of the hive, though we were bathed in more love than we can digest. Moreover, we shall not prostitute ourselves for sustenance, nor would that be any kind of a fit meal for us.

In the society of mundane creatures we would necessarily be playacting still, for, could they love us if they knew that we were constitutionally incapable of reciprocating it? I think not. The few that would number in miniscule percentages that would not long keep a hive satiated.

"Can changelings transform into non-equine creatures, and if so what are their limits?"

Non-equine, you say? Is this in regards to some twisted fetish? For shame, dear Locus. What would your Goddess Princess have to say should she hear of such transgressions?

I, however, am not so judgmental, but in truth, I do not recall. I'm certain that, in my younger days I tested the limits of this form, though the results are hazy. It's the case that a dragon's love, or a diamond dog's for that matter, is no more potent than a pony's, but is far more dangerous to obtain than from you meek herbivores.

We may be different than you (superior to, I mean to convey), but we are, fundamentally, equines, and we have little appetite to consort with baser creatures. Should your sort meet with extinction one of these eons, then I would be forced to research the answer to your question further.

"Given the sudden appearance of the species, just after the dawn of recorded history, where did the changelings come from?"

You may come to know that, after a time, and if you do, I should like to know as well. Where did ponies come from? There must necessarily be an answer to that too, but does being a pony give you any more insight towards it?

The Tanisians credit their feline goddess, Catrina, for their genesis and continued fortunes. Their monuments and temples attest to their gratitude for her having birthed them into the world, but as a subject of Celestia you must know that to be untrue. That is unless your Princess is simply the most successful charlatan this world has ever seen, a view which I do not entirely discount.

"Why do none of the satellite hives thrive? Why do you keep trying?"

My daughters may indeed be queens, but they are incomplete in that they age much as a normal drone or pony is wont to do. Their powers may grow to rival my own, were they given a sufficient span in which to let them blossom, so I cannot speak to that. When a queen's health fails, the hive lacks the organization and direction required to thrive, not to mention a source of progeny.

I try because I still hold out hope, same as anypony.

"What does a pony experience in the changeling cocoons, does it kill them? Why are changelings also cocooned?"

Ponies experience an idyllic dream, shared amongst their cohabitants. It does no more to kill them than living in the real world does, though nearly all of those who enter live out their lives in blissful harmony within. The same cannot be said of those resigned to the cruel world outside.

The drones are simply giving over their harvested energies to feed the hive. They walk through the consciousness of the hive from within their cocoons. It's a truly glorious feeling of connectedness to lose one's self within the collected minds that envelop one there. I would highly recommend it if there were any chance that you would survive the experience with your sanity intact. There is not.

"What is the nature of changeling reproduction, and what's the situation with their...you know?"

I have often ventured to let you explore this matter on your own. It's a little late now to be inquiring about it.

"How did the citizens of Tapadero get free?"

We set the abductees free, albeit with their memories of the past five years excised. Indeed that campaign was such a success that each drone was fed fit to burst and I had no more to replace them with. For a generation thereafter we lived of that bounty and I focused on expanding the hive with the intention of establishing a satellite. It was not until nearly two centuries later, however, that another queen was born to me, so it was at the very far ebb of that tide that my daughter was given her own hive. The very one that the Tanisian's burned, in fact.

I counted it akin to her funeral pyre, though her body had long since been recycled and become one with the hive.

It's destruction gave me closure and lent credibility to the Tanisian assault in equal measure.

"Are you an alicorn of the same sort as Luna and Celestia, are you immortal, is your power comparable, how did you come to power?"

Having never met my counterparts in the flesh, it's difficult to say much for certain. I do, however, recall that there was a time before that diarch ascended to the throne, and I lived in that time as well, which implies that I am ageless. I may be immortal as well. I've lived through ordeals which would fell a lesser pony, but a definitive test would not be voluntarily administered, so that will likely go unanswered.

Though my abilities are vast, I cannot raise the moon or the sun. Sometimes, when I've supped upon boundless love, sucked the very marrow of some hopeless sap dry until my belly bloats and aches, I feel like I could.

I do not recall coming to power. So far as I know I've always been the matriarch of the hive, but as all things must surely end, they must also have begun. Such things are lost to the dim haze of history, awaiting somepony to unearth them once more, which brings me to your last question.

"Why me?"

Allow me, perhaps, to corrupt that mewling question, asked as if one's slice of honeydew had fallen from a table onto the dusty floor on a day already fraught with tribulations, for that's how I took it. An exasperated rhetorical foalishly jotted, but there is a particular reason I chose you.

I require an archivist and a historian, plain and simple, and for the recompense I offer you access and freedom to do as you wish in that regard.

Until your recounting of our previous raid, some centuries back, it had completely slipped my mind that I'd even pulled such a stunt before, splitting the town in twain so as to more efficiently extract that glorious glowing nectar. I remember it quite clearly now, mind you, but it's most disturbing to have lost track of something that, in my long and as yet storied life, was relatively recent. The centuries do start to run together and it seems my mind is ossified in predictable patterns, so it is quite natural that I inadvertently repeat myself. It's disconcerting that it so completely eluded my recollection, this is a point I have long pondered, for it's not the first occurrence.

In my vast library lay tomes which your own Princess has commissioned or penned by her own hoof that recount the many parables of her life and nation's history. You asked if we were similar, her and I, and this is one thing which appears to contrast markedly. Her recollections seem complete and naturally interwoven in ways my own do not. One of two things is the case. Either her memory is as ageless as she is, or she has better records so as to bolster them.

Lacking the capacity to will myself into simply remembering, I've long considered posting a talented drone as a chronicler, but such a one has not been in evidence thus far. Indeed I thought to make due by simply appointing one and training them to the task, but my drones do love me so, that their prose proves rather obsequious, and their research tends to gloss over failures and unflattering events. The one you call Lucy was one of those, and though the literary pursuits taught her to interact more naturally with ponies, her writing leaves much to be desired.

It's rather fortuitous that you've come along. When I realized what you were about and allowed you free run of the hive I'd thought, at first, my luck was just too incredible to be true. After your unbiased reports home as well as your fearlessness in the aid of Squeaky, I vowed you would have an honored place in my hive. Your precipitous departure and the subsequent, wholly necessary, invasion of Tanis interceded, a bit, and the circumstances which saw you employed were...less ideal than I had envisioned.

I cannot help but notice with what enthusiasm you undertook your task, however, and the quality of your as yet incomplete historical manuscript despite the duress you were under. I believe your passion towards further closing the gaps in this knowledge will be sufficient inducement to return to me and take your rightful place.

As a show of good faith, I've let you retain the manuscript, which is rightfully my property, as well as that journal, whose pages you've been lusting after, in your hooves and hope you will find something useful therein.

Do not think me altogether too bold in assuming your continued fealty to me. By the time you read this my great charade will be ended and Tanis either restored, or well on it's way. It's simply a matter of logic. I, of course, know of your tragic circumstances, though I can do little in the way of intercession save to convey my own regrets, which I assure you are sincere. Your career and life in Tanis will be tainted with loss and distrust. Were you to return to Canterlot you would find that you'd have to start over and claw your way through the social mores. Handicapped so, a life of placid mediocrity in some mundane little job is the best you might aspire to amongst your kind. It hardly seems fair for a stallion of your talents.

I know, though, that you will return, and when you do, your thirst for knowledge will be sated to it's fullest extent. You may notice that I've not answered all the questions you've written on the obverse of this page? When you return I shall endeavor to illuminate those as well as any million or so thereafter.

Take your time, there's little enough reason to rush, I'll be here, waiting.

Most Sincerely,

HRH Queen Chrysalis

Trojan Pony

"...Then she had the gall to just assume that I'd be coming back to work for her. Can you believe the unmitigated arrogance of it?" My diatribe against the Queen of the changelings finally reached it's conclusion and I took a long draw from my glass and clanked it noisily back down upon the bar. By the time I looked over, my erstwhile conversational partner had slipped a few bits upon the bar and was beating a hasty retreat towards the exit, a look of dull fear on his face. In his haste he headbutted the door and tripped over his own hooves. I sighed, I couldn't blame him for thinking I was crazy, but it's his fault for asking 'How's it going?' If he didn't want to know, why had he asked?

Chrysalis had a point, though. There was nothing for me here. The bar was the same now as it had been those many years ago when I first met my changeling doppelganger, it even had the same three barflies arguing about the same politicians and clerics as last time.

I'd attempted to track down my colt, but as I'd been told, Connie's family had stolen away without a trace. The university let me stay on staff, but students shied away from my classes and most of them were canceled. Bits were sparse and my landlord was harassing me for what I owed him. Even so, acceding to Chrysalis' demands was too drastic.

Being effectively exiled, I had no bond left with Canterlot either, other than a largely theoretical sense of patriotism. Worst of all was the fact that I had nopony to talk to. I'd gotten so desperate as to have started hanging about with Commander Victory so often that I'd found myself defending him as not being such a lout as everypony seemed to think. That's how hard up and lonely I was. It didn't help that I was constantly looking over my shoulder, warily scouting for changeling imposters. I'd taken to keeping my changeling detecting spell active, but despite my paranoia to the contrary, I rarely got so much as a twinge, and hadn't seen a drone in the flesh since I'd returned.

My manuscript, though partially incomplete, was in a state that I could have it published as is, and it would still be the most complete and authoritative work on the subject ever produced, but I just couldn't do it. Without the backing of either Canterlot or the scholarly set of Tanis, who were shunning me as if they knew I was mired deep in the weeds of the matter, there would be no point in printing it. My work would simply evaporate away as if it had never been. It would be no more credited or believed than the drunkard I'd so recently accosted with my tales of changeling woes.

I was about to leave off for the night when a fresh drink clunked down before me, it's foamy head sloshing and briefly overtopping it's container. I looked to the barmare in confusion. She pointed a hoof to the pony who'd just noisily seated herself on my other side.

"Captain Brass Belle?" I blurted, for that's just who it was. The months had crawled by and I'd forgotten her promise to look me up upon her return from Eagleland.

"Aye, I am at that." She said laconically, "I heard you'd been holing up in this dank cave of a pub most nights, can I take that to mean you've not been holding up to the gales life's tossed your way?"

I shook my head in the negative and shrugged, "No, I...I don't know. I'm alright, I think. I spent so much time away, everything just seems kind of muted now, as if all this were a tinge of dream more than anything." It bothered me that it was so, but in fact I had been so far away and so bereft of hope that my beloved Connie had been dead in my mind for nearly so long as she had been in reality and the more recent revelation's stabs were largely blunted. I wish I could justify my callousness better than that, for I still bore an air of guilt and shame about myself as if it were a cloak.

"Then why are you sitting in here with a line of dead soldiers betwixt you and the barmaid?" She asked, pointing to the line of empty glasses and mugs before me.

Again, I shrugged, "Bored. Frustrated." I looked up to her glimmering azure eyes and spat out one more word. The most fearful and vulnerable word that ponies know, "Lonely."

A grin blossomed on her face and she embraced me. I immediately regretted saying anything so carelessly revealing. Certainly she was a fine pony, a prize to which I couldn't even aspire to be worthy, but I was too fragmented to be worth her romantic interests and I told her as much.

"Ha! You Canterlot ponies! Always throwing away your nows worrying about what's proper ten leagues on." She bent forward and kissed me right on the nose, then just when my blush reached a glowing pinnacle she booped it, "I wasn't asking you to run away with me or nothing, and all respect to the departed, it's just, well, I like you well enough and there's nothing for getting a stallion unlonely like a bit of a romp. Now if that isn't your speed, it's fine, you aren't keeping me from a more enticing offer or something. I came looking for you as a friend, afterall. Now show that you've got manners enough to take the focus off yourself and ask me how Eagleland was."

"How...How was Eagleland?" I stammered. Then she told me.






As it turned out, Eagleland had been less receptive than she'd hoped to the bulk of her cargo of coffee beans and she'd barely broken even, but she had several dozen bags she'd taken as a whim that she made it all back up on. Originally she'd taken them onboard from the Zebras to be polite and because she knew customs varied greatly from region to region, but she'd never expected that beans eaten and then excreted by small, catlike creatures would be such a hit.

"The profit margin is just unimaginable. I mean, sure, it'll be relatively expensive to buy compared with the other coffees, but the exchange rate being what it is, most of the outlay is in the voyage itself and the actual cost of the product can be exponentially higher before it actually matters. Anyway, I hear that it's only one group of zebras who harvest and sell these beans, and since I already  dealt with them once, I'm in a position to really capitalize on the next deal." She enthusiastically explained.

"Er, excreted?" I asked.

She looked me dead in the eyes, daring me to say something against it and stated flatly, "Excreted."

I made a disgusted face and let my tongue flop out, "That's awful! Do they know that the makings of their invigorating drink have been shat out, or do you just neglect to mention that?"

"That's a very provincial view to take." Mock hurt in her tone, "The peculiar origins do nothing but add to the cache, among the elites, at least. Griffons aren't so different from us, and I'd think there's a few gourmets who appreciate the flavor, surrounded by a crowd of sheep looking for a status symbol. It's nothing to me either way, so long as I can extract some bits from the fad and I can manage to cut and run afore the bubble bursts."

"I suppose that's true enough, the noble classes always do seem to have some deep desire for some pretty appalling things just to prove their own refined tastes." I nodded, though I still had qualms about trading in dolled up offal, "So you're headed back South to pick up another load?"

"Aye, and if you've a mind to, you could come along as crew. I'm lacking a bit for officers and if you'll pardon my presumptuousness, I thought you might be wanting for a change of locale, Locus." Oddly, her voice turned husky as she spoke my name, undisguised longing in her voice.

I couldn't help but assess the situation logically. She was an attractive middle aged mare, older than me by some five or so years, a bit on the heavy side, possessing a passionate charm. She knew my story, in point of fact, even though we'd only known each other for a very short time, she probably knew me better than anypony save Commander Victory. I'm a bit of a coward, but not completely oblivious to her hoof stomp subtle hints. Still...I had misgivings. Something was gnawing at me and she sensed it and interrupted as I tried to sort out the meanings behind the alarm bells in my head.

"If you're against the voyage as a sailor, you could tag along as a passenger just for the trip down and back. It'd only be a month or so and you could disembark on the way back." She groped with an uncharacteristic desperation that instinctively told me to refuse unequivocally and immediately and I was just going to tactfully go about doing so before she continued, "The zebra tribe we'll be dealing with live just a little south of your old town, Janus, was it? We could see what became of it after the changelings left if you want, maybe there'll be something worth salvaging in that library you were telling me about."

That changed my mind, but not for the reasons you may think. I knew that library would be stripped to the bare shelves, and in truth I had no interest in a homecoming to a town I'd lived in as an abductee, a refugee. But my mind cobbled together the facts I knew for certain, filled in some gaps and gave me a cohesive hypothesis.

Brass Belle offered to sail me back home after her jaunt to the south. That would be impractical. The trade winds were such that a journey back northward was unfavorable and would, in fact, add weeks to her itinerary which would decimate her prospective profits, just for me. Now, either her lust for my flabby plot and cartload of emotional baggage were such that she'd go against her businesslike nature, or she had no intention of returning me home. I thought the latter was more likely.

One explanation suggested that she was confident that her mareish charms would win me over, making the return trip unnecessary, the other suggested that the whole endeavor may be a pretext to return me to Janus, and there was only the one reason for that.

I narrowed my eyes, "It turns out you were asking me to run away with you, afterall. But...I'll go. I think I'd like that. We'll have to see about being a part of the crew, though, I'm not sure I rate."

She released a long held breath and started excitedly talking about departure times and favorable tides. Her stay in port had been kept to a bare minimum and she wanted to be under way as swiftly as possible. It concerned me little since, with my dwindling connections, I could send my regards to the lot of them in under an hour and be packed and aboard in two. The landlord could come pound and berate the door of a ghost and the university could gossip about me 'til their little hearts were brimming with the joy of pointing out another's gross impropriety. She nuzzled me and told me she'd be waiting and I headed into the night to bid Tanis goodbye once more and for good.






I dragged a sea chest along behind me, levitating it with some difficulty. It was a third filled with my sturdier clothes and necessities of toilette, while the balance contained my manuscript, notes and a few books I could not live without, including the little black one that I assumed the Captain meant to reclaim.

I was dubious when I boarded, scanning the flurry of activity all around me and not finding a trace of changeling amongst them. For a moment I second guessed my surmise. In the end I figured that this was either the true crew of Brass Belle's ship and the changelings had replaced only her, or whatever magic kept me from seeing the Captain for the imposter she was had been cast on the lot of them. I had assumed that they didn't know of my changeling detection spell and that Chrysalis herself was somehow immune and that she'd replaced the Captain. That's a naive and overly romantic notion, true, but I felt that Brass Belle could be no other.

It wouldn't be fitting, were it otherwise, for I felt her my true adversary. After all I'd been through because of them, my antipathy was still lacking, and yet this little junket had one goal, and that was revenge. Not the bloody coup and heart eating of a dragon's duel, rather the malicious joy of trouncing a worthy opponent at chess, or besting a card sharp. I had to keep my thoughts so placid as that, for if the underlying brutal hostility that threatened to flare up shone forth into the world, Chrysalis (or her substitute) would spot it surely as a beacon, I was certain. I wondered about the real Brass Belle. Knowing the changelings, she was safe, but probably tucked away somewhere until this charade was over. Maybe on the ship. I vowed to search it stem to stern at the earliest opportunity.

"Locus!" Brass Belle greeted me with a hug and a nuzzle with an enthusiasm that belied the fact we'd only been parted for but a few hours, "Come aboard, I'll show you your cabin and get you situated. You can work a shift with Windlass tonight if you'd like and see if you'd like to make your way as crew."

I saluted sloppily and sarcastically, "Aye, Cap'm."

"Oh. That could work out nicely." She said lasciviously, then hollered to her first mate, "Make ready to get underway, I've got what I came for, right Locus?"

Her officer gave a knowing wink, I arched my eyebrows in response which garnered a hearty laugh and a hoof on the back.





Though I expressed interest in a role on the ship as a ploy to stay out from under the Captain's hooves, I found that I was moderately good at the work and enjoyed it in earnest. Windlass was as taciturn as the Captain was boisterous, but she managed to impart a good deal of practical knowledge within a remarkably short period.

On the third day out, when I was certain I knew just what I was doing and was getting good at it, I ran afoul of a whipping rope that caught me up in it's snarl and nearly hung me from the mast. It was only through Brass Belle's fast reaction that I survived. Just as I was dragged towards the cross yard that would certainly have broken me like a bundle of twigs, a short knife severed the line but a few inches above me. I fell a considerable distance, but was saved by bouncing off the ratline's edge and landed in a coil of thick, soft rope that seemed set there for no other purpose.

When I looked up, Brass Belle, who'd thrown the knife, was standing with a prideful grin. I considered that it was quite a shame that she was a changeling. I could easily fall for a mare so bold and certain of herself. There was a great deal in her that reminded me of my poor Connie and I wondered if that might be by design. As soon as I thought that I started to connect the dots that told me that the whole incident had been staged so as to get me off the deck and into the Captain's cabin without hours of labor to weary me so that she might exert her wiles upon me. How could she throw like that without unicorn magic? I didn't think it possible, and if she'd used her changeling magic for that, then why not to set up the whole incident from which I would need to be saved in the first place?

"Are you hurt?" She asked, trotting over to help me to my hooves.

"Only my pride, I expect." I said, though I'd landed hard despite the soft rope and would find myself bruised head to hoof in a short while, "I'll be careful not to let that happen again."

She let her lip curl into a snarl for a split second, barely enough time to notice, "Are you sure? Maybe I shouldn't have assigned you the hazardous tasks before you had a bit more experience. You should rest in the parlor for a bit, I'll bring you some fine brandy that'll take the stiffness right out of those sore muscles."

"I appreciate it, but I'll have to have a rain check. I need to splice that cut line back together and get it rerigged. It's my fault, after all, that it's cut and I don't want to pawn it off on somepony else." Truthfully I would have liked nothing more than a nip and a lie down, but I had to play the part of a gung ho neophyte or I'd be spending too much time near her which exponentially increased the likelihood of slipping up and exposing my true feelings.







Several incidents of this sort occurred in the days it took to get to our destination, though none of them as severe. Each suspect occurrence had the captain as my enthusiastic rescuer and me playing the contrite, but determined rookie, unswayed by her entreaties to join her for less strenuous tasks in her cabin, which I refused with tact and mock obliviousness. She feigned frustration as expertly as if she were a real mare. Modesty was not her forte and by the time we neared Janus she seemed to be getting rather forward about the whole thing, her entendres being only obliquely double.

I nearly gave in. I admitted long ago that I am a weak stallion and even knowing better I very nearly slipped. As often happens, it was when I'd been plied with a deceptively strong liqueur made from hazelnut or somesuch thing.

Windlass fortuitously discovered us as I was gently nipping her delicate neck from shoulder to jawbone and had in mind a considerable amount more, changeling or no.

"Ma'am, I'm um...sorry to interrupt." She stuttered, "But there's a ship approaching of the starboard bow and they're signaling that they urgently want to talk to you. It looks like Neptunia's Delight, which as I recall is..."

"Aye," She waved her officer off impatiently, "Even Keel's ship. Tell them to come alongside and give me..." She looked to me. In my inebriated state I was blinking slowly, drowsily and gave every indication of being about to fall asleep, "Oh, Luna damn it all. I'll be up in a minute, and if it's not bloody important...I'll...I dunno...but it better be, that's all."

She looked at my sprawled out form on the bed, huffed in frustration, tied on her captain's neckerchief, smoothed her mane with a rough hoof and headed out.

When I awoke some time later, a pleasant buzz still addling my senses, she was doing her best imitation of pacing apprehensively across the narrow room. She started as I yawned and immediately began filling me in, "Even Keel says that the changelings have taken over Janus."

"Huh. I'd have thought they'd have left it abandoned. Must have a hive there like I thought." Then I considered an obvious point I'd managed to skip right over, "How does he know they're changelings? If he can tell, they're not very good ones. Are they going around undisguised or something?"

"Apparently they're disguised, but not making any particular effort to deny what they are. The zebras seem to be able to tell what they are either way."

"What do zebras have to do with it? They used to avoid the town when they weren't doing business."

"Aye, Even Keel asked them about that, too. They're supposed to've known the whole time what was going on in Janus, according to him, but not realized that it was...non-consensual, let's say. What with the language barrier, I could see that, I suppose. The zebras seem to have a much more relaxed attitude towards the changelings and they took over the town when it was abandoned. Now they're living alongside a whole colony of those bugs who walk around the town in pony flesh." She related. I weighed my response and wished I wasn't still so woozy from alcohol as I was. I half expected the town to have been taken over by changelings, though I'd have expected it to be less overt, but I couldn't let on that I'd suspected.

I replied how I thought she would expect me to, "I think we should skip the homecoming in Janus and simply meet up with the tribe you'd been trading with."

"They're the ones who've moved into town."

"Right, well that's to be expected, isn't it? I imagine they have the dock completed by now?" It had only been the changeling's desire to keep us isolated that had killed the progress of that particular project time and again. She replied with a nod that they had, "What did Even Keel have to say about it? Did he make contact with them, and how did he find out?"

"He knew the town had been vacated, so he asked where the new ponies came from and the Zebras told him they were changelings as if it were the most natural thing that could be. Whether you know it or not, the story of your town has been passed around quite a bit recently, especially down here. He said he traded with the Zebras and that neither they nor the changelings caused him any problem." She bit her lip.

"So what are you going to do?"

"Well, you're the changeling expert, what do you think I should do?"

"I don't know that I see any problem with putting in, really. The changelings might recognize me, though, so I'll have to have a disguise of some sort or they'll probably want to bother me." I yawned and rose from the tangle of blankets to my knees. She pushed me back down with a stern hoof and looked me in the eyes.

"Bother you? They're more likely to want to capture you, lock you away in their library for another few years and bend you to their will." She moved close, nose to muzzle and stroked my mane, "You should stay on the ship where it's safe, or we can skip it altogether and just call this trip a wash. It's bound to happen once in a bit that a lead like this doesn't pan out, it's not a contingency for which I have not been prepared."

"I'll be fine. They've had every opportunity to capture me and not done it. They knew I would try to escape and pretty much let me because Chrysalis expects me to come crawling back on my own, she doesn't see a need to use duress." I'd never told Brass Belle about the queen's letter to me, and since she was playing an oblivious role I had to go along. It gave me an opportunity to put my own spin on things, to make it appear as if I had no suspicions of Brass Belle's true nature and was blithe to the changeling threat.

"But you won't be able to get into that library now, what purpose do you even have left for walking those streets except to put yourself in danger?"

"I don't know," I shrugged her off and climbed off the bed, "Closure, maybe. But it's something I feel I need to do." With that, the discussion ended.



When we got closer to port, the buzz in my head that indicated changelings got so strong that I had to dispel it to get a moment of peace. It was irrelevant, anyway. It could simply be assumed that any pony I saw was a changeling anyway. I was sailing right into the belly of the beast, playing my part as predictably as I could. One might question, at this point, if I had a plan. In fact I did, to a degree.

When I'd gotten back to Tanis, those many months ago, and into the university I'd hoofed over the quartz charm that the changelings had worn to ward off my revealing spell to the head of practical magics.

Spellsong had scoffed at it when I told her how it was being employed, "That's ignorant. Whoever enchanted these doesn't know the first thing about higher magic theory."

"But they worked..." I protested, only to be rebuffed harshly.

"Well clearly you don't either." She knocked the bit of quartz on the scarred and scorched blonde lab table appraisingly, "This is such a backward way to go about making a charm, real equiolithic type of cave pony stuff. It's what they did centuries ago, but there's some real problems with it or you'd see ponies wearing all sorts of enchanted gems, wouldn't you? First, if you enchant a gem that's not flawless, it's imperfections manifest in the spell matrix, and quartz is never flawless. Very few gems are of a high enough quality to hold a strong enchantment. Now they can be extraordinarily powerful if they are, especially if you have more than one."

With a flourish she stuck the stone in my face, "If you had a bunch of crummy stones like this one their flaws would mount up, and so long as you knew what any first year student knew, you could cascade a spell through them."

"Cascade?" I asked in confusion.

"You really don't know anything, do you? All you do is focus on one stone, rather than all of them, and direct your spell towards it. Overcome the magic of that one stone and the release of energy from it's collapse will power the spell when the emanations find the next one, and what's great is that it's an exponential chain reaction. Each stone's collapse adds it's excess energy to the equation so you can start with a pretty weak spell and end up with something earth shattering."

I wrote out a the spell I'd used in my attempt reveal the changelings, "This was the counterspell I tried to cast, what would it take to cascade something of it's type?"

"Not much, it should work as long as you have enough power." She frowned at it and swapped a couple words and one number, "Now if you did it that way, you should be able to keep it's wearer in their current form for hours." She wrinkled up her nose and squinted, wrote in another sentence and added an equation, "This isn't new magic, it's all stuff you should have learned pretty far back. Now, like this it should revert them to their original form, but at your level of power, you might need a couple dozen of those bugs wearing stones for it to be effective."

"What if there were something more like a few thousand within a mile radius or so?"

Her eyes got wide, "I expect you'd have enough to bind their power to transform permanently, maybe intergenerationally. That would be the grandaddy of revealing spells is what that'd be, and all you'd have to do is overpower the one as a catalyst to get it to work."

In the end it was established that I couldn't overpower the spell myself, so Spellsong weakened and enchanted the pendant for me so that I'd have one that I could overwhelm if I ever got the chance. She was excited, but this was back when I thought I was shut of the changelings, so I'd used it as a bookmark and forgotten about it. Now, however, I could use it to put an end to the changeling threat.

Make no mistake, it's genocide I'm talking about. A changeling who cannot disguise their dire and corrupt form will undoubtedly starve. It might sound a bit extreme, but I'd hardened my heart. I was interested in the changelings, I sympathized with them, I wanted to know everything about them. More than anything I wanted to complete my definitive history of that dread race, maybe it seemed fitting that I should also draw their reign to an end. I was a pony, after all, and they were predating my own race. Logically, no matter what sympathies I might have, there was only the one choice. With Brass Belle nearby, her deceptively warm and caring form by my side, muttering assurances as we slid into port, my resolve began to slip again.

I had to remind myself that the real Brass Belle was out there somewhere and the way to save her was to let the changeling's plan play out as if I knew no better.

Goodbye!

I was both relieved and disappointed to see only zebras when we came into port. Changelings are not laborers, though, so it's no great curiosity. Before the hawsers were even in place I sighted brightly colored equines in the distance and so I slipped back into the Captain's cabin and donned my disguise.

So as to look the part of a sailor, I donned a raggedy red striped shirt with an oilskin that covered my cutiemark. On my head, a much abused straw hat and a short false beard.

"It won't hold up to a second glance." Windlass whispered to the Captain as I walked out on deck. Brass Belle was busy at the rail giving orders and assigning tasks and spared but a moment to look me over. True to Windlass' thought, she giggled when she looked again.

"You look like some Canterlot noble dressed for a costume party more than a sailor." She barked to Windlass to see to my ensemble and then returned to her task.

Windlass took me aside, on deck but out of the hustle and bustle, "Worn in clothes aren't going to do it if you don't look the part under them."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you lack the filthy coat and ropy muscle of a veteran sailor. Maybe...yeah, I know. First thing, strip off that shirt, it's too hot here to be wearing it without drawing attention to yourself. I guess you're stuck with the raingear to keep your flank under wraps, but I'll see if I can scrounge up a newer hat so you look the part of a recruit. Stay here." When she came back she had a newer hat and a mound of something within it.

"What've you got there?"

"Sweepings."

It looked like dust and dirt, "Sweepings?"

Then she dumped the whole of it on my back and started patting it into the rest of me with her hooves. I made noises of protest, but she harshly shushed me and kept about her business, concentrating her efforts on my face, neck and shoulders. Then she beat the hat back out and plopped it on my grimy head. "Yeah, that might pass. At least you're not so conspicuous now."

I would have been grateful if I hadn't been planning on getting captured as swiftly as possible anyway. I was starting to wonder just how long Brass Belle meant to keep up her subterfuge as she quit her task to come and inspect me. She gave me the once over and nodded brusquely, "Aye, he's tolerable, I expect. Now, stick by me in case anything happens. Putting any bruising of male egos aside, I can talk my way out of most trouble and I can fight my way out of the rest. Your name will be...Coriander? Aye. Coriander'll do. You're a Canterlotian merchant trying to break into the trade. Don't say anything beyond a little small talk and we'll get by fine."

"What's coriander?" Asked Windlass.

"Yeah, what do I say when somepony asks me something like that?" I asked.

Brass Belle gave me a withering look, as if to say that I'd just asked the stupidest question there was, "You look at them as if they were fools, shake your head, and tell them it's a spice. No more than that. If they ask more, just act annoyed and pointedly ignore them." She looked to Windlass, gave her a level glare and replied, "Coriander's a spice."

"No, it's not, it's an herb." The ship's cook, a balding mule, hollered from his resting place against the main mast, "I just don't use it because you swine wouldn't know it from parsley."

Brass Belle threw her hooves up, "As if there was anypony in this backwater that would know the difference! Fine! You heard him, it's an herb. Now come on, we've got to meet with my contact." She turned to the mule who was whittling a point on a short stick for no conceivable reason, "And you, quit eavesdropping! Go check on the ship's stores or something."





The meeting with the Zebras was tedious in the extreme, but they had good tea and even better biscuits. If I hadn't been so set on trying to be gruff and laconic, I would have gleefully made a pig of myself. As it was, I was introduced and my only spoken words were in praise of the refreshments. The meeting was set in the Commander's former abode, as it had a large dining room built for just this sort of conference. The dark wooden beams and buff plaster walls had been maintained largely as their former occupant had left them, but certain tribal flourishes had found their way in. Grotesque masks, a tapestry of tiny shells on strings, a potted banana plant as well as a few bright flourishes of paint marked it's new tenants.

Aside from the unremarkable waitstaff, (one zebra and one pony who I assumed to be a changeling for the obvious reasons, as well as for the charm that hung about her neck, but I wasn't sure why she would be there if she were) there were three zebras with whom Brass Belle was conferring. One was old, fat and wrinkled. His stripes had faded to grey and their pattern made him look all the dumpier. To his left was a young zebra mare who occasionally spoke in rhyme, but mostly just took notes. I imagined her to be a neophyte heir, destined to rule whatever trading empire the older zebra now possessed. On his other side was a trim, fit zebra stallion about my age, and he was the one doing the talking. He seemed born to the role and could spiel non-stop about any subject.

Trouble was that it took three hours to come to the heart of the matter, "We simply cannot supply the quantity of beans you require."

"Why not?" Brass Belle demanded wearily, "If you're holding out for a higher price, I can assure you you'll not get it from me or any of my competitors. There's only so much margin in such trade."

"Certainly, certainly. It's not a lack of will, it's a lack of supply. We cannot, after all, go out in the forests and squeeze the civets until they produce the beans for you. Patience is required."

"Well how much can you sell me?" She sighed when he informed her that a little under a third of her requirement was all they could offer, to this she replied, "No dice." Rose, and walked out with an aggravated air of contempt about her. I scrambled to my hooves and followed her.

"Well that could have gone better." I looked to her sympathetically, "It looks like we wasted the whole trip down here."

She looked to me incredulously, "I guess you never traded with the zebras yourself, did you?"

"No, but what's that got to do with anything? If he hasn't got it to sell he hasn't got it."

"Look, when this is over and done with I'll get my full measure of cargo and pay a quarter, maybe a third more than my final offer. He and I are already aware of this, but that doesn't excuse us from dancing the dance all the way through." She pointed down the road, "Tonight we'll stay in that inn, I already had our baggage brought there, and in the morning we'll probably be informed by messenger, that young rhyming mare, that he happened to come across just enough beans to fill our order. If he's particularly gutsy he'll wait 'til we're ready to sail and inform us then. For the dance to work, though, we have to stick to the choreography. Step on your partner's hooves and they'll know you to be an amateur and tax you accordingly."

It was an inefficient way to go about it, but I must suppose she knew her business. It left us with an afternoon free and so we toured the town and shopped at the quaint zebra shoppes that had sprung up. They offered every manner of remedy, potion, spice as well as charming novelties, hoofmade and with the exotic charm of this striped continent. Brass Belle tried to insist upon buying me things, and indeed forced a finely knit, brightly striped shirt on me, for use when I wasn't trying to keep a low profile.

In the jewelry shop I found something I thought was fitting for her, and practical given my needs for the spell to have it's maximum effect. Though it had been recut into a heart shape and it's chain had been decorated with all manner of beading and woven wire, I recognized the mock fertility charm when I saw it and I snatched it up immediately and asked how much it was. The shopkeeper told me and I laid my bits down and took it.

"You didn't learn anything from what I was telling you earlier, did you? Have you never even heard of haggling?" She started, but I silenced her by hanging the charm around her neck. For the first time I'd seen, she blushed deeply and mumbled something I couldn't make out.

"What did you say?" I asked, leaning in.

She leaned to my ear and whispered, "Thank you, but you know that this is a fertility charm, don't you?"

Oh my, that's awkward, "Um, yeah, I guess I did. Is that okay? I didn't mean..."

"Oh, aye." She interrupted, once again at full volume, "I'm well pleased with it, perhaps we should cut our shopping trip short and take a bit of a break back at the inn."

I blushed, the zebra at the counter of the shop gave me a sly wink and Brass Belle grasped me by the hoof and dragged me after her.






I'll admit to it. I suppose I must. Indeed I slept with her, certain of her true form as I was and I'll likewise admit that it was glorious. I should like to say more, but it's really nopony's business but our own. In my defense, I'm not as quick on my hooves making excuses as she is and couldn't think of one that wouldn't seem contrived and risk outing my agenda. Also, I thought that after that night my life would likely be forfeit to changeling queen, crippled by her lack of transformative ability but no less dangerous, and in my apprehension I sought some release, the probability that it was with Chrysalis herself not withstanding.

These were things I thought of after. In the moment, it was Brass Belle herself to whom I made love, the idea of her if not the physical entity herself.

Well, buck it. Lonely stallions are weak stallions.

It's no revelation, really.






When the quarter moon rose high, I was stalking through the shadows. Across from my former residence I waited and watched, trying to deduce what I could by observation. The large house was dark and in poor repair, but a column holding the porch roof had been recently replaced and the roof had been shoddily rethatched, implying that though it was unused as a house, it needed to stay standing to protect what was beneath it. The library was very likely still there and if I entered it I would surely be caught. I had to remind myself that this was what I was after as I signaled to Brass Belle, who was hidden in another shadow, that I was going in, then I flitted across the street, sprang lightly up the stairs and slipped inside.

Inside, I paused for my eyes to adjust to the near total darkness and felt for the little quartz charm in my pocket. It was still there, safe. I knew the way like the back of my forehoof and made it down the broad stone steps and to the library door without even lighting my horn. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my racing heart, and just when I was about to turn and flee, my hoof betrayed me and opened the door, just a crack at first, then widely.

I don't know what I expected, but I certainly never envisioned this. The library was still there, though it had been altered somewhat. A rude throne sat opposite the formerly secret passage that led to the outside world. The four ancillary chambers had been unsealed and a steady stream of changelings were trailing and flitting between all points. The books were all shelved, but now the shelves were festooned with drones as well, hung as pendulous black fruit on an inside out tree. The whole assemblage had a makeshift look about it, as if it were all temporary, which was likely the case. I was noticed right away, but ignored. I'd grown used to that, but I'd thought my reception might be different this time around.

I walked out on the nearest balcony and inspected the nearest drone. He looked up at me disinterestedly as I absent mindedly patted him on the head and he chittered in an affectionately familiar way. He was wearing one of the quartz charms, even untransformed. I couldn't see for certain, but it looked like all of them were. So far, so good. As soon as Chrysalis showed up I could cast the spell and reap what retaliation may come. She didn't keep me waiting or disappoint.

Her entrance was pitch perfect. On the landing opposite of me, from behind a pair of drones and a stack of books she sidestepped, appearing to simply spring into existence in that moment. Her slitted green eyes locked onto my own, muzzle down as if to charge through the vacant air between us. A small, devious smile bloomed on her lips as she tilted her head back making her fangs her prominent feature. Her filmy wings spring open as she leapt towards me, crossing the void in a blink, and she landed light as a pegasus feather before me, her presence pushing me back against the wall to retain some semblance of personal space.

"So you've finally returned." She purred and raised a hoof to trace my jaw line, "I knew you would, though in truth I feared I might have to send somepony to whisper my virtues into your ear."

"Like Brass Belle?" I retorted.

She raised an eyebrow, "To whom do you refer?"

"You can't fool me. You know who, or were you the one playing her part?" She seemed wholly nonplussed by my accusation. She looked askance and one of her minions came over and chittered in her ear. She scrunched up her nose, paused for a moment, and whispered something back to him. Then they both burst out laughing.

"Oh, you've become paranoid, seeing us where we are not." She chuckled.

"Liar, it's far too convenient that she just happened along and was coincidentally headed right to your front door." I sneered and put my muzzle right in her face, "What kind of fool do you take me for?"

Sitting back on her haunches, her size making it difficult to stay on the balcony without tumbling off, she rolled her eyes and raised her hooves in a 'you caught me' gesture, "Well you certainly are a clever little pony, aren't you? I'd have never thought you'd have caught on. Still, all that means is that you came here of your own accord, so do you, or do you not want to be my chronicler?"

"No. I came here to destroy you, Chrysalis, so that you and your hive can never hurt anypony again." I had my hoof on the stone, ready to cast the spell if she even twitched. In truth, I don't know what was stopping me. Could it be that I really didn't want that?

"Well now, that's novel, at least, and while all things must end, I've some doubts that you're the one to end me after these many centuries."

"I will. I will destroy you and your entire hive once and for all." The steel in my voice quavered and I was just on the precipice of acting when she exhaled unhappily and turned away. I almost asked her what the matter was but she spoke first.

"Stay your hoof, little pony, and consider if that's really the course you wish to take. I cannot imagine it is. This mare, Brass Belle, loves you, I can sense that. You could live out a happy life with her, I'm certain. Be sure you want to throw that away for your petty and misguided vengeance."

"As if I'd be happy living my life with a rotating cast of drones playing the whore for me."

"That is not what I said, I've had nothing to do with this mare of yours. She's as much a pony as you are. You haven't become so mad as to question whether you yourself are a pony, yet, have you?" Her lips curled at her own joke, then fell abruptly, "If you want her, you had best act fast. I only want you here of your own volition, dedicated to the task at hoof, not pining for freedom or whatever slovenly hussy might be intrigued by a basketcase such as yourself. Run to her and I won't stop you. I know you'll be back in time. You have a book to finish, after all."

"You liar, you just admitted that you were her, why torment me like this? What do you even want from me?"

"Fool! Believe what you will, I want a chronicler, I have no designs on you further than that."

"I've seen what you can do, why not just brainwash me into doing what you want?" I demanded.

"Prose assembled by a stupefied pony will not do! I need you at the very height of your perceptive powers if you are to do me assemble the pieces and do me justice." She growled, "An incomplete work is worthless to me. I need a disinterested pony skilled enough to do the job, curious enough to do it properly and unafraid of me so that he might tell the truth. Anything less is contemptible rubbish!"

It finally occurred to me, "You mentioned that in your letter, so you've done this before, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Where are the books? I've at least skimmed everything in the library, if there was something of that sort I'd know."

"In my chambers are the deeply flawed fruits of their labors as well as assorted rare tomes I value rather highly." She changed tact, "Surely, if you are going to take revenge against me and you are truly capable, you can do so at any time. Correct? Work for me again, finish your work and I'll let you have the run of my personal library as well as your freedom to come and go as you please, to roam as far and wide as you like so long as you stay in my employ."

"I don't know." I said, and I didn't. She seemed so honest and vulnerable, but she was a master manipulator by nature, so how was I to believe her even now?

"I can give you anything you want." She stated, not as if she were begging but rather as if it were a simple truth, and it probably was, except that what I wanted was my wife and foal back, maybe Brass Belle, the real one, if there even was a real one, but I'd never be sure of that either. Wasn't it lucky that she'd happened to be just where I needed her to be, going right to my hometown when I'd first met her? She could have been a put on from the very beginning. From what I'd read, such things were beyond neither Chrysalis' morals or her capabilities.

After I thought through and rejected all the possibilities, there was nothing she could give that I valued, she tried, regardless, "Power? I can put a kingdom below your hooves. Canterlot itself would not be out of the question, and what of treasure? My people have no interest in it and we have hordes that would make the king of the dragons jealous squirreled away. Mares? Real ones even, it could be done as easily as asking."

"I do want to finish my work. It's a rather pressing need, I admit, but why what possible reason could you have to value my efforts so highly as all that? It doesn't make sense, and if it doesn't look like a fair trade, it probably isn't, so why?"

She growled in annoyance, "I told you in my letter, bared my soul and deepest fear and you still don't see? My memory is that of a mortal while this body lives on indefinitely. Our selves are nothing but the stories of the life we've lived and when we lose them we lose ourselves. I need a record, well and diligently kept to remind me of who I've been and what I've done. I've lost so much of myself already, maybe irrevocably, but that's not a good enough reason to give it up as futile. Rather it makes it all the more important to save what's left of what I am, salvage the knowledge of what I've been, what my children have been." She gestured an ebon hoof towards her industrious brood as they flitted about, pretending to be disengaged while eavesdropping in a rather obvious manner, "I remember once, long ago, each of my subjects had a name, though I've forgotten what they were, or even if I named them, but the years went by and one by one they died. When the last of my subjects was buried my heart was broken. I've never saddled my children with names ever since. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe more, have come and gone and I remember but brief snippets of each life. Their lives, too, go unrecorded and their bodies rejoin the hive uncelebrated. For them I need to know where I have been that I may more clearly discern where I am meant to go and what purpose beyond mean subsistence we are meant to serve."

"What if it turns out you're simply destined for evil? Creatures of chaos? You yourself seem to acknowledge that possibility and a great many actions you've taken seem to point in that direction." Such as all the kidnapping and manipulation, I thought.

"Even that would be a help. It's impossible to embrace or reject a nature you're never truly certain of, don't you agree?"

"I think it's unlikely that you're going to become upstanding citizens as a result of my efforts to sort out your existential crisis." I said dryly.

She mulled it over and eventually gave a full body shrug, her diaphanous wings rustling in the now silent hive. The drones all stood statue still, heads cocked and ears perked to hear my decision.

Having exhausted her line of reasoning, she yet again shifted her approach, "What of the fact that you don't belong anywhere anymore? You're too paranoid to blend into normal society while changelings still exist, and you'll never truly believe you're rid of us, even if you trampled us under your own hooves, were you capable of such a feat. Here you will at least be respected, an equal, and your work will be cherished for so long as I might live by me and every drone who reads it. There you're just a nutty old washed up professor spewing conspiracy theories."

She was, as she usually is, right, and I was tired of arguing. More than that, in my haste to accede and turn it into one, I realized that I'd been wishing she'd produce an ultimatum I couldn't refuse. It was a revelation that she'd already been fully cognizant of. All angst and moral quibbling aside, this was what I really wanted, even if I was a masochist or pathetic foal for it, "Fine, but I want the freedom you promised me, and a stipend. There's libraries elsewhere that I'll need to look into."

"Done."

"Also, I want Lucy, Bub and Squeaky, if she's okay with it, on my research team."

"Not a problem."

"Lastly, I have no way to enforce it save annihilation, but I want a solemn promise from you that you'll tell me the real and honest truth from now on."

"Most certainly, I have no need or desire to lie to you of all ponies."

"Good, then tell me, was there ever any real pony named Brass Belle?" I demanded.

Chrysalis looked warily over to her drones as if to consult with them, then back to me. She sighed, held her holey hoof over her black heart and told me, "No, of course not, we fabricated her from whole cloth just to ensnare you."

"I thought as much." I said and tucked away the charm that had been primed for their destruction. In the end I almost respected them for their dedication to artifice. They'd gone to such a great effort right to the end that I nearly believed I'd been mistaken about Brass Belle.

Later, when my manuscript had been retrieved and I'd been installed in the cottage that sat over the pinnacle of the hive, I chanced to see the extent of their dedication. From the uppermost window of the cottage I could clearly see the docks, and down upon them stood the distant figure of Brass Belle, taking one last look at the town before boarding her laden down ship, a load of freshly excreted coffee beans most certainly in it's hull. At her side I walked, and as the gangplank was pulled in the two of them shared a passionate kiss.

As they sailed away, the I that was on the deck turned and waved as if to me directly and so I waved back, though I knew I could not see it, goodbye to myself.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Addendum: Hunter in Canterlot

In distant Canterlot a colt stood pondering idly over the form of his sister as she slumbered in a half dismantled crib that she'd long outgrown but refused to abandon entirely. In the chaos of the hasty move, it, and a number of other articles gleaned from a baby shower that had taken place in happier times, had been dumped into this oversized closet in their undersized apartment and had remained, after the birth and developmental years in a state of disarray in this so called nursery, long become a filly's bedroom. His own lodgings were of no greater elegance, in fact he shared a bed with his mother, a circumstance he found mildly irksome and would soon be at an age to find it altogether intolerable, as happens with foals.

He reflected that he'd give up even that comfort and sleep in the streets if he could do anything to lessen their plight. While it was true that they'd been saved from the threat he'd lived under the cloud of his entire life, the changelings, Canterlot was an expensive city. It was a blessing, Celestia's own, in fact, that a high level bureaucrat in the Princess' cabinet had made arrangements for them to silently slip away from Tanis when his mother was still burdened with his unformed sister. They even received benefits for their barest needs from the state in consideration of the necessity that they mustn't be found lest they risk being harried by the changelings even here, in this safest of cities.

His mother still managed to bring in extra bits by performing in the streets in a style quite novel and exotic in this stuffy, all unicorn town, but those bits were earmarked for the sleeping foal before him. Her upcoming education was paramount and took precedence over all other comforts and luxuries the family longed for. She was a unicorn, and early indications said that she was destined to be quite a powerful one when properly trained.

For his part, he'd vowed to train with the guard and protect everypony from the horrors that had turned them all into refugees, from horrors like the one that slept on the other side of the bed, on the other side of his mother. He narrowed his eyes to slits and exhaled sharply as he envisioned it, that thing that thought to claim to be his sire and his mother's own husband. Deep down he felt as if he'd always known, and that's why he called him Locus, rather than father, but things he'd seen in recent days brought the point home in ways he could no longer ignore.

For the time being there was little enough to be done, save that he should get his courage up and make a try at pseudopatricide some night, a circumstance he doubted he had the wherewithal for. He would train, though, in the streets, with the rough foals and the bullies, with the guard as soon as they would have him and when the time came he would live up to his new moniker, the one he'd decided on for himself. A gryphon word for one who stalked and killed his prey.

The filly before him mumbled in her sleep, as if in the thrall of a minor trauma of a nightmare and he nuzzled her affectionately. "Hush now Grace, everything's fine, your brother's here looking after you and he always will be."

In her drowsy state she mumbled the name that had been given him upon his birth, a cutesy thing, not meant for the serious minded and disciplined stallion he vowed to become. He swore that he would protect his sister and then and there made an oath to himself that he would drive away the imposter in their own home and track down all those like him and the malevolent creatures of Equestria would know to fear the name he aspired to, his true self represented by his internally adopted mononym. From that night forward, to himself and later to the world at large, he was Hunter.

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