When Habeas opened his eyes after the dust had settled, he saw, with no small amount of shock, what had become of the changeling who was attacking them.

The changeling with the red eye had been crushed beneath the plow that fell from above. She wasn't squashed into paste, merely laying underneath the crashed plow with her whole body intact, but the force had clearly mangled her lower back and hind legs. Her eyes were closed and she did not move a muscle, telling Habeas the life had left her.

When he remembered seeing the shape that had surely done this deed, Habeas looked in its direction, and he saw fully who his and Persica's hero was standing in the doorway of the barn.

Peach Blossom, shaking horribly, was the figure who stood there by the severed rope. At her feet were a pair of shears, and on her face was a look of horror and disbelief aimed toward the changeling she had just willingly crushed. The filly finally worked up the sense in her dizzy mind to travel forward into the barn, and on her way in she stumbled and stopped several to catch her shaken breath. Sensing the terrible emotions she was feeling, Habeas managed to get to his legs and he walked over to comfort her. The moment he was in front of her, Peach Blossom put her hooves around him and openly cried.

"I-I... I-I had too. I-I saw her attack you from my w-w-window. Sh-she was g-going to... to..." she sobbed, tears falling from her eyes as she snuck another peek at the fallen creature's body. "She was going to k-kill you."

"It's okay, Peach Blossom... It's okay..." Habeas whispered into her trembling ears, hugging her back. His words provided only some comfort. "You did what you thought you had to do... Just don't think about it. Don't think about it..."

Peach Blossom did as she was told, and instead thought of the other important person in the barn. "M-Mom..." she mumbled, leaving Habeas and running up to her parent's side. She saw Persica's wound wight off after reaching her limp form that laid upon the small bed of hay, and it made her wince back and green-faced for but a moment before she stared again.

Noticing her daughter's presence, Persica started to move. A sluggish hoof came up and swiped weakly at Peach Blossom, easily missing when the filly gasped and took a step back in surprise. "M-Mom?" she spoke, panicked at the unexpected action she performed toward her.

Persica mumbled a growl and looked up with an immensely weak glare. There was a forlorn look in her good eye; a look of despair and fear, of loathing and hopelessness, and it stayed there as she looked to her daughter. Peach Blossom had no idea how to react to this, but just as Habeas came over to aid her, Persica's eyes rolled upward and she collapsed onto the floor; passing out.

Peach Blossom was still catching her breath when Habeas spoke. "The changeling had devoured some of her love," he told her. "I can sense that it wasn't all of it, but it was... too much of it."

"What can we do?" she desperately asked.

"I can't use magic," he responded, touching the still-smoking stump that remained of his horn on his head. "We need to bring her somewhere else. Somewhere better than... here." Hoisting her injured and spiritless form over his shoulder, Habeas limped with her out of the barn, uncaring of his own stinging wound. He and Blossom brought her to the house and ventured in, and once that was accomplished, Persica was carried into the living area.

After Peach Blossom had brushed any possible thing off of its surface, Habeas placed her on the soft carpet floor lightly. Persica was too weak to even move a muscle now, much less open her eyes. All the two could do was sit there with her and look at her slowly bleed out.

"What now?" Peach Blossom was the first to ask. "Your horn's gone and we don't have anything to patch up a... gash that bad. I wouldn't even know how. What can we do now?" Habeas pondered the one option his mind could come up with, and exhaling a deep breath, he replied.

"There is... one thing that may work."

Peach Blossom shot her head toward Habeas. Th-there is?" she asked. "What is it? What is it?!"

Habeas gulped with nervousness, but he was adamant. "I can give her the love within me."

Blossom's brow curled in confusion at the changeling's response, as though he had told a horrid joke. "Habeas... I've known for a while that you actually love my mother, and that she loves you more than she'll ever tell, but how in Celestia would that work? What do you mean?" To this, he grunted.

"No, I mean my love. The love resting within my soul, Peach Blossom. All of it." His words were grim, but as he said them he brushed a caring hoof over Persica's tense and growling, but limp and otherwise inactive face. "I've been taught that if a changeling was to ever give all of his or her love to another being at once, basically expunging all they ever gathered, the sheer power of the given love it contains will fill whatever creature it is aimed towards. Changeling or otherwise, it will be absorbed by them, and not only will it fill their soul with the gathered love, but the love magic will help that creature in the same way with any ailments as it does when it rejuvenates my kind, except on a lesser scale. It could heal some of her injury, just enough for you to lead her to a hospital in Canterlot."

"If that's all you have to do, then why do you sound so... morbid about it?"

Habeas held his breath and slowly backed away from the mare. "Because if a changeling performs such a ludicrous action, without an ounce of love to sustain them thereafter, it is said that they themselves will die."

Peach Blossom had no words to speak for several seconds. When she did, she was quick to spout them out. "Wh-why can't you just take back the love from the changeling who stole it from her?"

"I can't. I made a vow to never, ever steal love from anything else again, it won't heal Persica, and either way the changeling looked dead when we left the barn. The love's surely left her." He sucked in a deep breath and looked to the carpeted floor. "I can't let Persica suffer through this fate. I need to do this."

Peach Blossom looked quite disagreeable. "Habeas, wait. We can try-"

"I'm doing it, Peach Blossom. You know there's no other choice in the matter. She will die if I don't. Die as a bitter creature, devoid of all the affection she had once given us. And I'd rather gnaw my own legs off than forsake her now." Habeas' voice was low and somber. As he walked past the filly and up to the mare he loved he took a second to look at Blossom with a slightly warmer expression, smiling. "It's as much as I owe her. As much as I owe you both."

Blossom once more found her heart in her throat. She tried to find a way to stop him before it was too late; to think of a solution to this impossible problem. She was still trying in vain to find an answer by the time Habeas started his ritual several feet away from her mother's prone shape, and all she could do then was watch him. Watch him and hope some sort of miracle would happen.

What happened first was something Peach Blossom had never seen before. After Habeas closed his eyes and gathered all the power within his horn-less body, he began to levitate over the ground. His chest lit up in a pink glow, in the configuration of a heart. As he spread his forelegs apart into a T-shape, a ring-like, continuous beam of pink energy shot out from his very form and headed straight for Persica's limp form like a missile. It hit her body, and Persica unleashed a loud sigh upon its impact, like someone sucking in a deep breath of air after almost being asphyxiated.

Chaos seemed to envelope every corner of the room as various objects once sitting normally about - picture frames, books from shelves, and even the curtains from the nearby windows - all were suddenly thrown around as though a tornado had entered and was wreaking havoc. To keep her own small self from being carried into the air, Peach Blossom had to press her body low to the ground to anchor herself down, and shielded herself from the debris by covering her face with her hooves. And then, just as soon as it had started, it ended and all went still.

Peach Blossom removed her hooves from her eyes and looked around, quickly coming to focus on the body of her mother. The blood soaking her fur and the surrounding floor had... vanished. She still had a wound on her chest that was very much visible through the fur on her body, but it looked smaller and less grave than the condition beforehoof. She was still breathing, but it wasn't weak and erratic.

Spinning her head around, Peach Blossom looked next to Habeas, and what she witnessed was the last thing she expected to see. Where Habeas once stood was an odd object. It laid upon the ground like a stone, and its very shape was something Peach Blossom could only compare to being like that of a giant chrysalis she had witnessed as part of a class experiment dealing with the life cycle of monarch butterflies. The texture it had was that of a raw lump of greenish-tinted crystal.

Curiosity consumed the filly, and she crept closer to it. She lifted her leg, if only to feel what it was like, and the second she placed her hoof onto its smooth surface, a blinding light overtook the filly's eyes. She hopped back in fear and shielded her face from it. By the time she removed it and peered forward again, a new shape stood before her. Her jaw loosened and she gaped in awe.

It was a being of roughly the same size and shape as Habeas. The aquamarine coloration his chitinous skin had was peculiar, but the facial features and basic build of his body told the filly right off that this was Habeas Brittle. Yes, it was clearly him from what she could see. While he was indeed very bizarre in form, the other differences from what he looked like before were largely minor.

A patch of light, rich orange-ish fuzz, like the observable fur possessed by a bee or other insect of the like, covered the base of his neck and grew thicker around his chest. Transparent wings, longer than what they appeared as before but just as insectile in form, emerged from and drooped a bit over the end of his shelled back like a parody of a fanciful cape. His eyes were no longer teal, but appeared to be sparkling brick in color. His fangs were gone too, and the holes that littered his legs had seemingly vanished; revealing them to now be smooth and sturdy. Even the one that had been harmed by the spear now looked healed.

As he became aware of his surroundings and looked over himself with equal surprise and wonderment, Peach Blossom studied his head. He had his horn again, sitting where it belonged above his brow. There seemed to be a slight chip in it, though it looked less carved and circular, and more pointed now, like a splinter shard. His head eventually turned from his body to the filly, and their eyes locked on to one another.

"Well..." Peach Blossom's words were heralded with a shrug. "I don't think you're dead yet, Mr. Brittle."

"I am..." he appeared slow to come about to looking over his new form a second time, and this time patted a curious hoof to his fuzz-lined chest, noticing that is felt so incomparably alien now, especially with how he was touching it with his hole-less leg, and all the new senses that limb alone provided. "I am... a-alright? I don't feel hungry? I'm... still alive?"

"And different," Peach Blossom pointed out in full, until her smile of glee vanished in realization and her facial features quickly changed to alarm. "Mom!"

Without further ado, the two rushed up to the side of the downed mare. She was breathing deeply, which was a vast improvement over the ragged gasps she performed previously, and her body was starting to stir. Habeas knelt down on the floor beside her and began placing his hooves gently under her body as her eyes started to sluggishly open.

"Persica..." he softly cooed into her ear, lifting her head up into his forehooves. "Persica, can you hear me?"

"H-Habeas...?" she quietly whispered in turn, squinting at the unfamiliar shape looming above her that carried with it a familiar voice. She lifted a hoof to his face and touched it, and the warm feeling it experienced intuitively told her it was indeed him. "Is that... really you?"

A tear formed at the corners of his eyes, and a smile came over his mouth. "It is. It is, Persica," he spoke. Blinking twice, the mare's left brow lowered in incertitude.

"You look... odd," she was quick to note with a drowsy, murmuring titter once her vision adjusted properly. "Did you... do something with your mane?"

He managed to give off a laugh of his own. "I don't know how it happened, but... if you don't like it, I bet I can still change back to what I looked like before."

Persica's extended hoof shifted to behind Habeas' neck, and with a soft pull, she brought his head down to hers as the warm emotion that had filled her up demanded. "I think you look kind of... handsome, if I'm allowed to say that."

Habeas was about to respond, when Persica pressed her lips to his. Unable to resist or ignore it, he joined in on the kiss fully. In the background, Peach Blossom put her hooves to her mouth and giggled behind them in delight. The pony and the changeling's kiss was only interrupted several moments later by a pained grunt on Persica's end. Their lips separating, they both looked down to her chest and saw her wound, still very much there, had begun to fester once more.

"We need to get you to the hospital," Habeas told her, once their eyes returned to one another. "What I did wasn't able to fully cure your wound, just slow it. I don't know any healing spells that can deal with this level of damage, so..."

"G-good idea," the mare agreed. She tried to stand up, but when it was shown she could not on her own, Habeas lifted her into his hooves. His wings beating hard, he flew her to the door, and Peach Blossom opened it for them, allowing them to exit and following the two in turn.

Habeas quickly flew to the road hastily, but careful enough not to cause discomfort to the mare laying in his grasp, and Blossom ran after them in an equal pace the whole way there and further. Looking down as they went on, Persica could see her daughter running by Habeas' side, and wanting many answers to her questions, decided to speak to her.

"Do you know what happened to me, Blossom?" she asked her daughter in a hazy tone. "The last thing I can remember is being cornered by a foul changeling in the barn, and then nothing..."

"Mr. Brittle saved your life, Mom," she responded. "Well... I saved both of your live from that... evil changeling. But after that, Mr. Brittle healed you and restored your love with his own."

"So he did," she lightly voiced, looking to Habeas and laying her head against his shoulder as they continued hurrying on the path to Canterlot. "So he did."

A series of rasping breaths escaped Apini as she awoke. When her mouth started to open, she let out a wretched cough, pushing back some dirt and dust that laid on the ground in front of its stagnant air. Her eyes slowly opened, and she became aware of where she was and what was pressing down on top of her.

From what she knew, it was a large metal object. She eventually collected enough data to see that it was a plow of sorts, made to be strapped to a pony and put to use in the fields. Seeing nothing else of interest, as well as noticing how her prey had vanished from sight Apini began to escape from under it, placing her front hooves forward and using them to drag her body out.

Apini crawled further forward, pulling herself out from under the plow that had toppled onto her with only her forelimbs for aid. For some odd reason, her back legs failed to move when she commanded them to, and she noticed this queer fact right off with a hint of a terrible disturbance forming in her mind.

She had no idea why it was happening. They didn't respond. She felt almost no pain in them, but with the numbness that they also had she inherently knew something was dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. Apini strained to turn her head over her shoulder and saw a sight that she feared to see most.

Her legs were not simply broken, but horribly twisted and crippled and crushed, and the lower section of her back where they connected looked as thoroughly injured as them. From the impact of the giant mass of metal that came down on her, her entire lower body had been paralyzed. It took her a few minutes to realize this new fact, but when she did, Apini unleashed a despairing scream. She screamed and screamed until her lungs gave out and she could scream no more. Sinking to a small wail, and then ending as a whimper, her head plopped to the floor.

Her lower quarters were paralyzed. And Apini, having lived most of her life among ponies and learning what they knew, knew how it must have happened. The lower portion of the fragile endoskeletal spine of hers that sat within her slightly-stronger exoskeletal body had been damaged in a severe way. Her hindquarters and limbs were being tormented by what had to be a most intense pain she could not feel, and there was no magic she knew that could cure such a malady. For nearly an hour after this, all Apini could think to do was lay there like a useless bag of malt on the dry barn floor; tears of agony slipping from her eyes and to the ground her cranium was pressed against, quickly building up into a small, muddy puddle.

Apini's scrambled thoughts fluttered to the future. She had no idea on what to do. She had told her children she was only going to be gone for a few hours on 'simple business'. She was supposed to kill that traitorous changeling and go back home, but instead she sought to vent out her own version of hive justice on his worthless, lucky hide first. Or... was it frustration? She only wanted to show him why she deserved to be treated as well as an unpersecuted natural-born like him before she slayed him, and now everything was in shambles. What would her children do now...

Her children. Her children. Just thinking of them made this entire situation seem infinitely worse than the catastrophe it was now. Apini had never once told them of these secret and amoral activities she performed, and for all they knew, she was out shopping for groceries. If she didn't make it out of here... If she were to just leave them, if she were to succumb to injuries and fail to return to them, what on earth would they do?

She had to make it out of here. For them. For the the two things in this world she cared about most and devoted her entire life to raising. Hive or not, they needed her more than she needed it. More than she wanted to sob, and whine, and cry, and piss and moan over her newfound disability. Baring her fanged together in defiance and choking back more tears that bled through her clenched-shut eyelids, she planted her two front, and still-working hooves into the dirt that laid before her, and pushed herself forward even more.

The moment she moved a mere inch, she experienced a jolt of the real pain her body had been keeping from her. It was not merely a small bout of discomfort, but fiery agony her shock had prevented her from experiencing. It felt like lava was running through her veins. All the changeling could feel was this excruciating pain, most of all perhaps affecting her right shoulder that she only now realized was probably more hurt than it seemed. She screamed again, through a clamped mouth and the gritted teeth that were behind her chitinous lips, but still she pressed on; blind determination controlling her movements now more than anything. A river of wet snot ran and dripped from the tip of her snout and joined her tears on their journey to the floor. She dragged herself forward, while her two back legs trailed behind her as though they were two more sagging tails to rest on her flank, until she was at the entrance of the barn.

Out of sheer exhaustion, Apini laid there for several minutes. When she had caught her ragged breath as best as she could, she let the damaged shell on her back open, revealing her slightly crumpled wings. She tried to get them to move, as they were her only true hope of escaping from here now, and to her utter relief, the sound of them slowly fluttering to life became apparent.

They still worked. They still worked, and she couldn't help but smile lightly and change her falling tears from agony to joy. It took a few minutes, but after their buzzing had become less scattered and more like that a single, continuous hum, she managed to bring her hurt self into the air.

Her body crippled, will shattered, and failure complete, she crookedly and weakly turned away from the farmstead and buzzed off into the sky. She headed for home and was uncaring of anything else but getting back to her family. For they were all that mattered to her.

Author's Notes:

What can I say? Love conquers all.
And I know most of you probably want to hunt me down and castrate me for making this decision, but I'm keeping it. I'm too much of a lorekeeper to forsake making the changeling not turn into a changedling. Sorry to those who hate the look, but I for one welcome our new changedling overforms.