The next day was in a way both exciting and boring. Sally had worked with Easy, arranging the cleverest of the scouts to head out and guard while scores of drones worked in the forest. Pits full of sharp sticks, deadfalls, great woven nets of spider silk in the canopies.

But neither of the pair actually got to go out and do it. Examining the map around the hive, Sally marked off another section of the big loop that circled it. "Okay, another few hours and we will have every direction covered."

Easy poked a hoof at the north. "Thicken this out, I had some squads working extra lines in here and here." The drone looked down to her own slate, the notes on it now seeming indispensable. "How many do you think it will stop?"

Sally laughed. She really wished she had just a dozen claymores, but if wishes were horses she would eat forever…

Easy Slip looked to the breeder, looking surprised as Sally just kept laughing more and more. "Are you… okay?"

It was a tough fight for the satyr, every time she started to get control of the giggles she imagined more wishes becoming ponies and her belly filling with their love. At last Sweet came up, pressing against Easy and nuzzling the infiltrator. "What's so funny?"

Easy shrugged as she leaned over and nuzzled the mare. "Got me, she just started laughing like mad."

Sally was, by then, finally on top of the situation and calming down. "Okay, it will take a bit to explain… where I come from, there is a saying, 'if wishes were horses we would all ride.'" The pair just stared at her. "It isn't meant to be funny on its own. I just couldn't help thinking 'if wishes were horses I would never be hungry.'"

This did get a grin from Sweet. "I get it, you keep thinking more and more like a changeling."

"It's more than that." Sally reached a hand out to each of the mares and gave them both a forgiving ear-rub. "I just fit in here. Back where I came from, I couldn't go to the normal places, not without acting or feeling out of place. Here, everypony just accepts me."

As she drew her hands back Easy leaned forward and nosed her palm. Sally ended up looking at her friend, really looking. The pair just gave each other a little nod after a while and it was like the tiny bit of tension still between them just faded.

"Okay, but how goes the traps?" Sweet Bite looked up at the map, not understanding what all the symbols meant.

Sally had quite the silly grin. The queen's body was larger than ever, but most of the new size was sideways. "I would ask my queen how she grew so big so fast, but I don't want a lesson on changeling biology." Sally strode boldly into the throne room. Alone together she moved quickly to the mare and leaned up to give her a passionate kiss. "If you had asked me, when I first arrived here, if I would either expect to still be here this long I would have laughed at you. If for a second you had asked if I expected to father a brood on my mare, I would have punched you." One hand reached down to rub Sharp's side while the other rubbed the queen's cheek.

"A queen's brood speed is limited by their food." Sharp gave the lesson anyway, albeit condensed. She nuzzled Sally's cheek and kissed her back. "How goes our plans?"

Sally settled at the foot of the throne, directly in front. She leaned back so her head rested at Sharp's front hooves while she sat. "Easy Slip is amazing at this, if I had a pointman half as good as she is at reacting and planning, back home, I wouldn't have been where I was. The trapping goes well, we have traps to demoralize and wound spread out, extras in the directions they will likely come at us."

"Will that stop them?" Sharp was the smartest changeling Sally knew, smarter in general even than she was. But when it came to this, planning, war, Sally was better. And Sharp knew when to hoof things over to somepony with more experience.

"Not a hope. If they have any determination all it will do is slow them and leave their leaders concerned that the whole jungle will be filled with them. It isn't, but they don't know that." Sally tilted her head sideways and was about to start nibbling on Sharp Mind's hoof when she paused, that would distract the mare a little too much. She just rested her snout there instead. "Maybe we can even get these two queens to bicker when they get here, I will get Easy to thicken the traps on one flank."

It was like the eggs inside the queen activated the last part of her growth. Sharp Mind spent most of the evening with the hive's ponies. Sally was wondering what they were talking about, she was sure they were feeding her queen, but there was only one other changeling allowed in the little meeting. Little Wings, a simple drone, was present.

"Feeling left out?" Gentle trotted over, approaching Sally and laying down beside where she crouched. Both had gotten commands from their queen to not enter the cave reserved for ponies.

"A bit, how are they doing?" Sally gestured to the cave, indicating Gentle's charges.

The mare twitched her wings, a sign she was worried about something. "They are worried for their crops, for their homes. I think it was very good having them see you, but you will excuse me if I tell you, you don't look threatening. Could you maybe carry your blade openly?"

The satyr was left blinking at this. "What? Why? Oh!" She couldn't help but chuckle. "Big scary breeder will be the monster fighting on THEIR side." This got a nod from the leader. "I guess it couldn't hurt. Things could get rough, if they break through our lines."

Gentle nodded. "We all know that. You blocked up the escape passages…" Sally felt the mare lean sideways against her.

"Had to be done. With two enemies you need to limit their access to you, reduce your threat surface." The mare looked a little blank at Sally's use of terms. "Make it so you fight less of them at a time. I take it this isn't a common fight?"

"I have not heard of such before. Normally skirmishes are had, or an invasion happens, but never have I heard of two hives attacking a third at the same time. It makes me proud of my queen, and my mother, that between them they build a hive worthy of such." Gentle didn't seek anything more than just the touch of Sally's body. Sally felt the relaxation of having another hivemate close.

"Both great mares." Sally could say that now. She had examined her feelings about Fangs… mother. She chuckled a touch at the way the hive had shifted their perception of her, once the old queen died, they were never talked about as queen, only the mother of the hive.

"She was not an easy mare to be under, mother." Gentle felt something in her companion, a need for talk. Sally was not just a breeder to her queen, the satyr was also her hive's protector.

Sally reached a hand over and rubbed Gentle's ear. "No, she was very easy to be under, if you were under her you belonged to her, and she was much easier to deal with then. When I was her food, or worse, food with another use, she was ruthless."

"She put me in charge of the ponies. She claimed no other pony had a soft enough heart for it. I was young, I didn't know what I could get away with and what I couldn't. It wasn't until you that I realized that food is not just food. I thought for sure you would escape the hive, I was terrified of it."

"I couldn't, my knee was busted and, once mother knew how useful I was beyond the next snack, she forced her will upon me."

"How was that?" Sally heard genuine interest in the voice of Gentle.

"Terrifying, amazing… good." It took the hybrid a long time to reconcile the last. "If she had not done it, if I had escaped to be captured by one of the other hives nearby, I would not have fared so well. I owe mother everything."

Gentle laughed. "We all do. She was our mother, she was the hive, she was our place in this world where we could go and see that there was something bigger than us, stronger than us, that loved us."

Easy advanced toward the two, trotting with efficient strides. "Sally!"

Lifting her head from the heart-felt conversation, the satyr looked to the drone. "It has started?"

There was a nod in reply.

Sally wondered just how Sharp seemed to know everything, if there really was some kind of link between her and the changelings in her hive.

The queen arrived at their map room moments after Easy and Sally got there themselves. "Started?"

Easy and Sally nodded, the drone reaching with her magic to start laying markers on the map, showing where traps were being encountered by the enemy. "As we predicted, they are sending scouts ahead, they are not having a good day."

The grin on Easy's snout got both breeder and queen to grin too, but it was Sally who responded. "Is the funnel working?"

Easy gestured to a mass of stones she had plopped on the southern-most series of traps, thickest around a gully. "It is, such a lazy army, their scouts only move along the ridges, which is sparse of traps. Here," she poked that gully with a stick, "is not a nice place to walk, fly or sneak."

Sharp's fangs were on display, a sign she was either very happy, or very angry. Both was the true answer, but both Sally and Easy knew who which emotions were aimed at. "You two are a dangerous pair, I must remember to think of a suitable reward for each of you. Do we have an estimation of how long it will be until they reach the hive entrance, or the numbers they may have?"

Easy Slip shook her head. "As soon as their armies reached the outer traps, I pulled all our hive in." She looked a little worried, this had been an order she had given herself, even the leaders had followed it without question.

"Good work, wonderful as it would be to have intelligence on their numbers and progress, every drone is precious." Sharp reached a hoof up and gave Easy's shoulder a rub. The drone blushed furiously.

"My queen!" The changeling leader limped toward the razer-thin featured queen. "We have found another concentration of-"

"More traps? They couldn't have spent more than half a day out here, how do they have so much of this thrice damned jungle infested with these things?" The queen stomped a hoof in anger, causing the leader to drop to his belly and cower. It made her feel good when her changelings groveled.

"My queen, we are moving as fast as we can, we should reach the hive in a few more hours." There was a tremble in the stallion's voice that made Queen Haze pull her lips back into a horrid grin.

"Then go, drive the drones onward, bring me to that hive so we can feast on their food, drain their stupid queen and I will have that strategist. Or nopony will."

The leader did just that, turning tail and running. His queen was mighty and scary, but when she was happy it was worse. When she was happy she made sure all her hive knew they were under her hoof.

Author's Notes:

The calm before the storm, the eye of the hurricane rests over Sharp Mind's hive, soon fury will swamp them.