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.