Shining felt full, unbelievably full. He smiled a little and leaned up to kiss Cadance. The flood of love continued, in both directions. "So what can he do now?" Cadance smooched her husband and looked over to the two insensible changelings.

Bright was completely out of it; she squirmed and rolled, the love was still coming and she no longer cared how silly it might be to just let go. She was, after all, with her hivemates.

Barely holding to her senses, Gilt Wings watched her hivemate—she couldn't help but admit that this was her hive now—acting like a grub with their first taste of love. "My Queen, the first thing we need to do is to get My Q…" Gilt stopped and blinked.

"You can call us by our names, please." Cadance gave the confused changeling a smile.

"Y-Y-Yes… My Queen… Princess Cadance… Just Cadance?" Gilt watched the mare that had banished every changeling from this very castle, just nod. "Shining Armor needs to learn the basics, at the very least how to burn off excess love." She advanced on the stallion and crouched low, giving up and getting on her belly on the floor with him. "My Queen, you need to focus the love, the energy inside you to your-"

Shining did as he was bid, a flare of green fire pouring over his horn. "Like this?" It was a hurricane of energy, he started to back it off, turning the fire down. "I never had that much power before! Cady, this is awesome!" His mind clicked at what was happening. Am I really happy to be like this? It is pretty cool, I feel… full of power!

"Then somepony needs a top-up?" Cadance leaned down and kissed her excited stallion on the nose. The tingle came and Cadance giggled. "I love you, Shining Armor."

"I can actually taste it, Cady." Shining felt his reserve fill back up, the green glow of his lit horn still burning, but not with the inferno it had been.

"Uh…" Gilt looked between her two queens, this was a very different hive to Chrysalis'. "So, I guess being a unicorn helped a bit, you understand how magic moves and works, this isn't quite magic, but is like it. You can pick up and move things, you can build a parabolic shield, you can even just blast it behind you to speed you up."

"And he can change?" Cadance looked to the drone, her eyes were inquisitive. "That is the most important thing, he needs… he needs something better than armor, it won't be useful for hiding him forever."

"It would be best to work up to it. Even natural born changelings take time to grasp that." Gilt felt well fed to the point she didn't have to be frugal with her magic. It was a pretty good feeling. Looking around the room she spotted the fruit bowl and grabbed out an apple. "My Queen…" She tossed the apple at Shining Armor, once she had his attention.

It was a trick Shining had used himself on new recruits. This power is strong, so just a little... He extended his magic, or love, forward and tried to gently grab the apple out of the air. He grabbed it and gently squeezed to keep hold and… Apple everywhere! "I didn't mean to do that!" Shining's eyes were wide, he suddenly realized how clever Gilt was to do the test with a piece of fruit. "So this stuff is powerful?"

"For a queen, very." Gilt levitated the whole fruit bowl over. "Only a trickle is enough force to grab a boulder and throw it a mile." She lifted up another apple. "Ready to go again?"

"Give me a second." Shining focused on his horn. He let the same trickle of love through as had made "instant apple-juice", and then worked on reducing it further, halving and halving again. He had it done five times before he nodded. "Okay, give me the apple."

This time, the apple floated through the air and bopped Shining on the nose. Gilt grinned. "Better, more juice."

Cadance snorted. "Juice is the problem when there is too much energy."

"Ignore your wise-cracking queen." Shining picked up the apple with his magic, slowly raising the level until he had a grip. The green glow was very different to his normal pink one. "Right, this is easier, I… I wonder how much I could lift now?"

"More than you used to, My Queen, but you cannot replenish your own power anymore. Your magical reserve is literally love and…" Gilt was giving the usual talk given to drones, but she lifted a hoof and bopped her head.

"Just remembered, huh?" Cadance reached out a hoof and gently took that hoof that the 'ling had bopped herself with. "You are the same now, you don't have to beg and scrape for each scrap of food, Gilt."

Gilt blushed hotly at that, it was a heady and strange feeling, to be told you didn't have to work for food. "I…" She sucked up her misgivings. "Thank you, My Queen."

"You are very welcome." Cadance smiled back and Gilt felt love flow, not as strong as for Shining, but it was there. A gentle sip and she realized it was for her.

"Equestria to Gilt…" Shining waved the apple before the mare's eyes. "Hey, Gilt!" He smiled as her head snapped around to look at him. "So what's next?"

"Next we have to visit some ponies who we have to tell everything to." Cadance cut in on the lesson. "So get your horn cover back on. If you want to come too, Gilt, you may." Cadance had seen something new in the changeling's demeanor, it was something that she wasn't quite sure what to really do with, devotion.

"Where are we going?" Shining got up, using his weakest magic to lift the helmet up and bring it over to him. Lifting it atop his head he brought it down over that strange horn.

Cadance picked a little apple from Shining's armor. "We are going to visit your parents, Shiny. Gilt, can you do a royal guard again please? I don't think Aunty will mind, besides, Shining is still technically their captain. What say you Shiny?"

Shining looked at the mare who had been the slowest to "turnabout" yet. He felt kinship and more with the mare, she had taken some convincing and, in his mind, that made her a little smarter for it. "Do you agree to protect your… queens?" The mare stood to attention and gave a curt nod. "Then welcome to the Royal Crystal Guard."

" 'Crystal Guard'? Since when did we have our own name?" Cadance approved, personally, but wanted to hear Shining's reasoning.

"I can't be the guard captain once this comes fully to light. We are probably going to lose a lot of guards when that happens, I just want to have something that is ours, that we can establish as a wall for our ponies and… and our hive too." Shining looked at the two shocked mares, his head turning from Cadance to Gilt.

Slowly having recovered from her overdose of love, Bright Flash had listened to the words. It tickled all the prideful parts inside her in a way Chrysalis never had. Shining Armor is a queen worth being a queen. She smiled. "Can I come too?"

"Can you do a royal guard without messing up the armor logo?" Gilt bopped her hivemate in the shoulder. When the other 'ling nodded, she snorted. "Guess you can come along. My Queen," she faced Shining, pride swelling inside her, "could you deputize Bright as well, please?" The words felt so right, she actually found herself liking the big stallion and the princess more and more, in ways that had nothing to do with the flood of love they seemed to give off on occasions.

Shining's mind moved fast, Gilt had stepped into a role he hadn't expected her to, but he liked that she had. "Of course Lieutenant, you get to choose your own squad. But be mindful, their behavior reflects on you."

"Hey, how come she…" Bright realized how she had been played, she knew why Gilt got to be the commander, she had been too slow and hadn't adjusted fast enough. "Sorry, Sir!" She sat up straight and ripped off a perfect salute.

"You have both been in the guard?" Shining picked up that both mares knew the appropriate behavior for a guard.

"Of course we have." Gilt suddenly flared with green magic. Normally she would rush her transformation, tear into her new one and shut down her power as fast as possible. She literally had power to burn.

Shining watched as the drone's form melted with the fire, pouring into a guard stallion, complete with the regalia and armor. "No, stop." Shining looked critically. "More like my armor, but you will have Cadance's cutie mark in the front, with a shield as the backdrop. Now, be a mare if you wish."

Gilt raised an eyebrow. With a flash she made the corrections to her armor and relaxed into a mare's body again, although it was a larger mare's body. "Sir?"

"Good, much better." Shining turned to look at Cadance and saw his wife grinning in silence. "Cady, what do you think of the new guard's armor?"

"I think you missed some bits. Rarity's designs were quite detailed… but that shouldn't matter. Bright, dear, would you?"

Bright Flash saluted and dove into her own flames. She shifted herself to a stallion, it was odd how familiar it had become to be male. She brought armor over herself, manifested with her magic. When done, she hadn't felt the slightest bit drained, no matter how much she thought she should. "Sir?"

"Passable. Your iconography on the main marks is good, but look at this?" Gilt lifted a hoof and poked at a strap on the armor, a green strap. "Not bad on a first attempt."

Bright felt obliged to defend herself. "You know shifting isn't my specialty, I have-"

"We know what you can do, Bright." Cadance approached the stallion. "You can break the minds of ponies with a glance. I ask that you don't use that unless a life rests in the balance, and even then, sparingly."

Bright flushed at the attention. He nodded to Cadance. "Yes, My Queen!"

" 'Princess Cadance', 'Her Majesty', or just 'Princess'." Gilt elbowed her hivemate with a foreleg. "When we are in disguise, we keep the disguise even in speech."

"Unlike somepony, I am fairly good at doing that." Bright felt the sting of her mistake more than the elbow. "Your Highnesses, you will know the third of our little group by her… horrible slips of language." Gilt smirked at the description, the joke between them was Straight Horn kept to mare's bedrooms mainly so she didn't have to talk.

"We aren't going after her, or the stallion you have relaying information." Shining looked to his wife and smiled. "We have what we need, and I think we have done well out of our visit."

Cadance walked over beside Shining and inspected the two changelings. She studied every part, noticed the greenish strap on Bright. "You look perfect, come on." She turned toward the door but looked to Shining.

"Guards!" Shining's bellow rang loud in the room, both Bright and Gilt snapped to attention, even Cadance felt her muscles twitch. "You take the lead, let's move!" He watched both his new recruits move with the precision of veterans. I will have to talk to them later about finding out how lousy the guard is with Chrysalis' "eyes".

"If you keep staring at their plots I am going to have to smack your nose, Shiny." Cadance leaned over and kissed her husband. She knew full well that he would be watching them, particularly with the two being the new example of the Crystal Empire's own guard. But she didn't want to rib him too much about it. "I am just kidding, Captain of the Guard. Besides, you are allowed to look at mares' plots all day."

"There is only one I really want to look at." Shining leaned in and kissed Cadance. No single act made him feel as safe or proud of what he was doing or becoming, than sharing time with her. He tasted the flare of love in his wife and deepened the kiss, surprising even himself at how much he pushed. Cadance pushed back, not giving him an inch.

"Uh… sir?" Bright tilted his head to Gilt. "I think we might have to wait a little… permission to snack?"

"Permission granted." Gilt was already sipping at the love, it was pure and perfect and better than that, she could sense her queen was already drinking at it. My hive.

Author's Notes:

"What is it like to be fed upon?" Cadance lay neatly in the middle of the stage, looking relax. "It starts as a tingle, at the withers. The deeper the feeding the further the tingle travels. Most drones barely get past my shoulders." The alicorn blushed suddenly. "I feel my Shiny all the way to my tail." Her smile could likely feed a hoard of changelings for a year.

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