Groggily, my aching limbs pulled me out of a snowdrift for what I prayed was the last time. Make no mistake, I was happy to still be walking the land of the living. But, whatever process I was undergoing to recreate my body was leaving me drained like I had just run a triathlon. The muscles dragging me to my feet protested their every movement. The elongated bones that stretched my malformed body writhed under my skin, as if I were experiencing the worst growing pains a pubescent teen could experience. Most debilitatingly, the blood rushing to my head demanded each moment that I collapse to the ground and let unconsciousness take me once more. It took every modicum of control I had to bite through it all and keep moving. I hadn’t won just yet.

“Chrysalis!”

Ahead of me, there was commotion in the castle courtyard. Celestia had arrived at the scene and was currently stalking menacingly towards the still ice-bound bug queen. Like an aurora lighting up an arctic sky, her make billowed before her, hovering over the banks of snow and ice. Celestia’s face, so often a mask of placid peace, was displaying outward anger directed at the bug queen. Seemingly knowing that this was an omen of ruin, the queen in question had taken to wordlessly snarling at the sunshine alicorn and straining her neck as she tried to eke out a millimetre of space in her icy prison to make an escape with.

Credit: Animalstamp

Most eye-catching was Celestia’s brilliant horn. Alight like a bonfire, the keratinous spiral cast a golden beacon of light up to the heavens. Piercing into the murky darkness of the snowstorm above, I realised that the sun princess was calling out for reinforcements.

From the mere handful of Royal Guards which had been present at my awakening, a growing tide of ponies were storming into the castle courtyard to a thundering clatter of hooves. Galloping like trains with hooves, bulky earth ponies were tirelessly charging from castle courtyards in droves. Circling Celestia’s beacon like moths to the flame, flocks of pegasi were making sharp descents before striking solidly against the snowdrifts to kill their falls. And all across the courtyard, polychromatic flashes of light signified entire squads of unicorns teleporting to the scene, magical shields bursting into existence as the battlemages grouped up and solidified their foothold on the courtyard. The Royal Guard had come in force.

Credit: Andyfirelife

Allaying the bug’s numbers, the tide of guards seemed unending. With two or three Royal Guards to each shapeshifter of the swarm, the battlefield was quickly locked down. Between Celestia and the bug queen, any questions of who was the strongest had gone right out the window with Celestia able to summon an army of soldiers at the drop of a hat. Just like that, the shapeshifter’s numerical supremacy had summarily been lost, and then been reversed in the guards’ favour.

Celestia, her head still dipped as if hunting the trapped bug, finally spoke out. Gone was her regular matronly tone, replaced instead with an icy spit.

“Queen Chrysalis, you’ve returned after all these years. I wish I could say it was a pleasure. Why has the changeling hive left the badlands?” Celestia glowered, making no secret of her disdain of the bug encased in ice.

Noticing my worn state as I came closer to Celestia, a number of guards attempted to halt me and perform a medical checkup. Forcing my way towards the changeling queen without looking away from my quarry, I brushed off the guards. I couldn’t stop now. If I stopped moving, I’d collapse. I wasn’t done yet.

The drive behind Celestia’s interrogation spluttered out as I staggered in front of the mare, breaking her concentration and causing her to turn her attention to me, instead of the bound bug. Like a rock scraping across a washboard, each of my breaths came to me in rough, haggard gasps. Spindly arms sinking into the snow to prop me up, I crunched lightly through the layer of snow and heard the faint ‘click’ of claws against the stone underneath. All the while, I was getting closer to the queen.

“Unless you”–I gasped deeply with each word, lifting my right arm out of the snowbank and levelling its claws dangerously close to the ice covering the bug queen’s, Chrysalis’ breast–“want me to do to you what you did to me, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you. Where is Princess Luna?” I growled, composing myself for long enough to properly enunciate the demand.

At the raise of my claw, the ensemble of guards and the sun princess had briefly moved in to hold me back. But, with the mention of Luna’s name, their momentum had abruptly halted. They hadn’t known, I realised, that Luna had been impersonated by the changelings. Breaking the calm, the courtyard was suddenly a flurry of movement, as if the hornets nest had finally realised it had been kicked.

All but one pony was frenzied, that is. Just to my flank, Celestia’s ears had drooped and her eyes were shrunk to pinpricks.

“Luna.” The word hung in the air, all at once a scream of terror and an exclamation of loss.

The changeling queen looked me up and down, trepidation in her eyes. Glancing at Celestia, as if to see whether she’d step in and stop me, the bug was left wanting. After a moment, self preservation won out. The bug nodded at me, always keeping an eye on my claw.

“I podded her myself. The grand hive has set up a base here. The princess is”–the queen hissed, exposing her teeth and glaring down at her breast–“she is in the palace’s wine cellar.”

The wine cellar. I knew where that was. Nights of listlessly wandering the castle’s halls had left me nothing if not familiar with the palace’s maze. My face locked in a snarl, the claw that had sunk into the ice trapping Chrysalis was pulled roughly out of the frozen cage. From the tip of my middle finger, a singular drop of green blood fell to the snow. It went near unregistered by me as I cleared the courtyard with a bounding leap to the exclamations of several guards.

Shooting across castle hallways in a scampering four-limbed dash, my movement was more beast like than human. Bones clicked and scratched against floors and walls. Had I been any more lucid, I might have questioned how I was moving so quickly while so exhausted. Instead, the antler skull I called a head was fixated on the trace scent of heady oak barrels.

Finally reaching a solid door that stood wholly unguarded, I forced the dense wood open with a solid body-check. There was not a hint of the lucidity required in me to fumble with doors, locks, and handles right now. With a dry splintering crunch, the latch was obliterated and the door slammed open. The air was dense here with the earthy and fruity aromas of wine. Beyond the cellar door, stairs led down into the musty stone cellar that I vaguely recognised. But something was wrong. Piercing the darkness below, a soft green glow interrupted the usual darkness of the cellar, its source just beyond sight.

Not missing a step, my barrelling charge through the door had me clearing the staircase in a single leap, breaking my landing against the stone floor of the cellar below. That’s when I saw what the changeling queen had meant when she described a “base” having been set up in the castle.

To the end of the room, the walls of the cellar had been covered over in some sort of dense phlegm like substance. The inkling of a grander lair, a hive, had been laid here. Cutting into the darkness of the room, a singular gem sat in the centre of the room. Encased in green goo, it was functioning much like the pony lights, illuminating the hive in a muted glow.

The most disturbing part of the hive was not the walls or the floor however. Suspended from the ceiling, Numerous pony silhouettes hung upside down by web-like strands. Trapped in cocoon like mummified wrappings, a sludge of glowing green goo surrounded each pony form. In the lime glow of the gem, I could see each pony twitch occasionally, as if in a deep sleep.

Credit: Boomythemc

Sensing movement, I saw a singular changeling latched on to one of the cocoon pods. Midway through a spin, their fanged mouth was open, puking a dense green film over the pod in question. Noticing me, the blue orbs in their eyes shot wide and they tried desperately to sever the tape like mucus trapping them against the cocoon. A moment later, they were slammed unconscious against the wall.

Pawing through the cocoons, I saw that a whole host of ponies, nearly two dozen, had been bound already. Guards, servants, bureaucrats, and finally a princess. Luna was here. Floating serenely in the goo, her face was a mask of placid contentment.

Clutching the bottom of the cocoon sac, I sliced across its underside like a lame to bread. Along with a rush of cascading goo, I caught the unconscious night princess as she fell towards the floor. Gently lowering her to the ground, I watched as Luna began waking up. Jolting in a start, her hooves rushed to her mouth as she evicted a litre of green slime from her throat, joining the rest of the goo on the floor below. Gasping lungfuls of fresh air, Luna took a second to compose herself. Meanwhile, I stood still, struggling to keep myself upright.

“What- what happened?” Luna groggily asked the floor, coughing a residual drop of slime out of her throat. Turning, she looked up to me.

Rushing forward, I scooped Luna into a tight embrace. The residual slime rolling off of her fur and coating my arms was kind of gross, but all I could focus on was how glad I was to see her safe.

“You’re okay now,” I reassured the soggy pony, stroking a hand along her back fur.

“Brian, what art thou-” Luna breathed airly before trailing off. Looking slightly dopey with wide eyes, she just stared up at me. Creeping up her face, a tomato-red blush shone under her dark fur. She just stared at me expressively for a moment, hugging me back. I found myself fading towards unconsciousness, clutched in Luna’s warm embrace. Suddenly, Luna’s wide eyes and blush morphed into a raging red face. Her hug turned into a push as she shoved back from me.

“Foul changeling!” Luna boomed. Horn sparking with a sudden jolt, I was blasted back by an uncoordinated raw wave of magical force, knocking me into the oddly organic wall that the changelings had coated the cellar with. Rubbing my head with a wince, I saw a well of hurt blossom in Luna’s face. Lips parting to show her clenched teeth, the night princess hissed, “how dare thee toy with our affections!”

Too mindless to incinerate me with her magic, Luna launched away from her cocoon, and arced through the air towards me. Before her, a vengeful hoof was outstretched, ready to cave in my skull. Stepping forwards, I closed the gap between us. Intercepting the night princess’ hoof in my right hand, the left caught Luna by the small of her back and pulled her close to me, as if we were waltzing. The punch hurt my palm, but sensations were feeling dulled to me in this stupor and I didn’t want her to be able to lash out at me.

“You’re alright, Luna. It’s me,” I murmured in her ear. She seemed dumbfounded by my hand and its ability to have caught her punch.

“Thou art no changeling.” Luna’s eyes shot wide, whispering, “‘tis really thee, Brian?”

Blearily, as if still in a trance, Luna turned her head up to me, still bound in each other’s arms. Wide eyes gazing innocently up to me, she seemed transfixed by my face. Like a sea of constellations, her twinkling mane flowed behind her. Slowly, her eyes shuttered and closed. Catching me completely off guard, Luna leaned in to me and planted a soft kiss on the lips of my antler skull, which I somehow felt.

What? Where had that come from? A thousand thoughts were swirling through my head and it was quickly overwhelming the last bit of task-oriented concentration I was using to keep myself conscious.

As if finally realising what she did, Luna froze up. Blushing furiously, her wings shot out with enough power to force a whip like ‘crack’ through the air. Flying back from me, Luna’s lips pursed together contemplatively. Under slimy, matted fur, her barrel rose and fell steadily with each breath.

Credit: Fensu

The image of Luna’s face burned into my brain, that is when I finally blacked out.

Next Chapter: Chapter 16: Midnight Passion [NSFW] Estimated time remaining: 17 Minutes