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.