“This is degrading.”

“It was your idea.”

“I didn’t know it’d be like this.”

“Oh, come on. A pony riding around on a griffin. What’s so degrading?”

“It just is.”

“Yeah? Well, cloud walking is slow.”

“It’s not slow enough to put up with this.”

“…It’s slow.”

“So?”

“So, we’re faster like this.”

“It’s sill degrading.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

“Okay, which one of use is riding which, because without seeing us, someone would think you were riding me.” Eclipse said, giving Aranna a pointed look.

The griffin shook her head. “Seriously. You should be having the time of your life.”

“Well, the time of my life is killing the tailbone.”

Aranna huffed, decreasing her altitude so she and Eclipse would pass harmlessly under a stone arch. “Oh, please. Ride a buffalo on the ground instead of a griffin in flight. That’ll rattle your tailbone.”

Eclipse paled. “…I’ll stick around up here.”

Aranna smiled, flapping her wings to increase speed.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask…”

Aranna rolled her eyes. “Yes, boys are different from girls. It’s only natural you feel this way, but I’d really prefer you ask your parents about this sort of thing.”

“I was actually wondering why you have the custom color scheme when all the other griffins are normal.”

“Did you just now notice?”

“No, but every time you flap your wings it looks like they’re on fire.” Even as he said it, Eclipse still cringed slightly when Aranna flapped, having to remind himself that she was not on fire and they were not in danger of crashing.

“It’s a ‘last of my kind’ thing, but we’re not really sure.” Aranna shrugged, causing enough of a disturbance that Eclipse panicked and grabbed her so he wouldn’t fall off. “Sorry. Anyway, my dad said I got it from my mom, but there could be others like me out in the world.”

Eclipse leaned over so he could be seen from the corner of her eye. “This goes beyond the looks, doesn’t it?”

Aranna grimaced, but nodded. “Yeah. Look, can we not talk about it? It’s, uh… got some bad memories.”

“Brutal.”

“Yeah.”

They flew in silence for another fifteen minutes, until Aranna finally sighed.

Eclipse leaned down. “Something wrong?”

“I want to talk, just… not about it.”

“Well, once it’s brought up and shot down, the conversation dies.”

“I know.”

Eclipse immediately voiced a question he had been nurturing, despite it being rather tactless. “It’s related to why I haven’t seen your mom yet, huh?”

Aranna took a deep breath, but nodded. “Yeah.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’m in a situation where I don’t know how either of my parents are doing, or even if they’re still alive.”

Aranna chuckled darkly. “It doesn’t, but thanks for trying. I swear, ten minutes and you’ve got me opening up wider than most of the rest of Vangar put together, including my dad.”

Eclipse shrugged, an idiotic grin plastered on his face. “And taken out of context, that sounds way different.”

Aranna frowned angrily, but the slight reddening of her cheeks could still be seen if you looked closely enough. “That hive should be coming up in another couple of hours. It’s almost supper, so how about we set up camp and then move on for a few hours?”

They found room to camp next to the bottom of a cliff, a small fire going to cook any food they had, though it was more for Aranna’s sake.

Eclipse, even though he may find it unfair, was a pony and had to eat pony food, which didn’t normally contain meat except for survival’s sake. Fucking herbivorous digestive system.

In an ultimately futile attempt to get his mind off the cruelty of the universe, he turned to Aranna in the hopes of starting a conversation. “Why haven’t you taken your armor off? It can’t be comfortable flying in that stuff.”

“Why haven’t you taken off the cloak and glasses?” Aranna asked, throwing Eclipse’s own questioning against him.

Eclipse blinked, taking a moment to try and find a new question that she wouldn’t turn around on him.

“Why didn’t you mention the Sachem was your dad before we got inside the town hall, or even got close to Vangar at all?”

“Why don’t you explain that incident with the flaming mane?”

“Chaos magic.” Eclipse answered, his expression deadpan. The thrill of always being able to give that answer had long since worn off.

After a moment, Aranna shook off her disbelief. “If you’re saying that you’re Discord, I’m the mother of Celestia.”

Eclipse facehoofed. “Why do people always jump to the Discord thing? Can’t there be just a few random chaos magic users here and there?”

Aranna crossed her eagle claws over her chest. “No.”

Eclipse huffed. “Then I’m breaking at least nine different rules of the universe now. Before, I was only breaking five.”

“How are you breaking any rules right now?”

“Ever hear of humans?”

“Fairy tales.” Aranna scoffed. “If they exist, I’ll believe you are Discord after all.”

Eclipse let himself fall backwards, hitting the dirt with a soft thud. Groaning, he wiped his eyes with his hooves. He almost didn’t notice the soft chittering going on nearby.

He did notice however, and was almost immediately on his hooves. “What was that?”

From the fact that Aranna had her sword out and her shield up, she had heard it too. But she was facing the wrong way.

“Hey, it’s coming from over here!” Eclipse said before he heard another wave of chittering from off to the side.

Both he and Aranna turned to face the noise, seeing three sets of blue eyes staring back at them.

Eclipse looked to where he and Aranna had been facing before they saw the three sets of eyes, noticing two more pairs of eyes in both directions. They were surrounded.

Aranna gripped her sword in both sets of talons. “Changelings.” she said, setting her jaw and lowering her head. Her wings flared, seeming to shimmer in the light of the campfire.

Eclipse took a step forward, his eyes now glowing a bright red.

One of the changelings stepped out of the shadows, but he was unlike any changeling Eclipse had seen or heard of before.

Rather than one pair of insectoid wings, this changeling had two pairs of long, thin wings, like a dragonfly. He also had a tail ending with a stinger, wickedly curved like that of a scorpion. Eclipse swore that a dark poison was dripping from the tip of it.

The changeling bowed, something that threw Eclipse completely off guard.

“You were expected.” The changeling said, a genuinely happy smile gracing his suddenly much less hostile face. The dripping poison now proved to be nothing more than a trick of the light from the fire, one which seemed obvious in retrospect.

Eclipse almost fell over at how strange the situation had suddenly become. He practically expected Discord to pop up from behind a rock and throw confetti in his face, likely with the aid of a certain pony and her party cannon.

Aranna however, simply adjusted her stance for better balance and gripped her sword more tightly.

The changeling took a step back. “Please.” He urged, trying to calm the murderous look in her eyes. “We just want to talk.”

Eclipse sighed. “Finnis said she had a thing against changelings.”

The changeling twisted his head slightly. “Finnis? So my eyes don’t lie. You are the phoenix griffin, then.”

Eclipse blinked. “The what?”

“Speak my father’s name again and I’ll decorate this mountain with the slime that is your blood.” Something about the way she said that chilled Eclipse far more than the implications of it.

The burst of chittering from around them spurred Eclipse into action.

“Ooookay, then.” He said, stepping between Aranna and the closest changeling. “How about we calm down, stay where we are and not un-alive anyone today, huh?” He turned back to Aranna, but the blaze in her eyes made him cringe and duck his head. “Or we could glare mercilessly.”

At that moment, the dragonfly-scorpion-ling did the worst thing he could have done.

He took a step forward. “I agree with the outsider. We should not fight amongst ourselves.”

Aranna raised her sword higher.

Eclipse paled. “Yeah, from the way you said that, coupled with her angry state, she thinks that you just put her and yourself in the same group.”

The changeling frowned in confusion. “Do we not both make our home in this mountain range? Why should we not treat each other as one and the--”

Aranna’s angry battlecry cut him off, and her sword almost cut his head off as well. The changeling jumped back, but the blade still managed a shallow cut into his chitin. It didn’t break through, but it was proof that the sword could easily slice through the changeling’s natural armor.

Another of the changelings charged, this one similar to the ones that had attacked Canterlot. It sped forward like a bullet, but Aranna brought her shield up and swatted the bug away like a, well, bug.

Another regular changeling caught the first in mid-air, flying beyond the reach of the griffin.

The sound of pounding hooves (or the changeling equivalent) attracted the attention of both Aranna and Eclipse. A large brawny changeling with a thick shell on his back was picking up speed. In addition to the shell, his horn was much larger and thicker than the normal changeling’s or the scorpionfly one that had originally showed itself.

Eclipse clapped his hooves together. “That’s it! Until I get an official name, I’m calling you a scorpionfly changeling!” He pointed at the changeling, who was currently watching as Aranna and the shelled changeling pushed against each other, neither gaining any ground.

The scorpionfly changeling grunted. “That is actually what my kind are known as, but specifically, I am Thorn.”

Aranna planted her sword in the ground, grabbed the leg of the changeling she was struggling against and flung him into a boulder.

Eclipse pointed a hoof. “What about the shelled guy?”

A changeling managed to snatch Aranna’s sword before she could retrieve it. The griffin swiped her claws at it, the metal claws she was wearing only just barely missing their mark.

“Dozer. Both for his strength and capacity for sleeping.”

About to take flight after her sword, Aranna still spared enough time to knock away Dozer, who had recovered from his trip into a boulder. The shelled changeling was struck with a metallic clang, a piece of his chitin chipping off.

“I meant his species.”

Thorn’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh. A beetle.”

Both a beetle and a scorpionfly charged out, counting to a total of six changelings. Only one had yet to show its face. The scopionfly distracted Aranna, but she had noticed the beetle earlier and had backed herself against a boulder to avoid being flanked.

The scorpionfly went low, much to her surprise, while the beetle opened his shell and unfolded two large wings, going high, though he was much slower and clumsier in the air.

Still Aranna blocked the initial tail strike of the scorpionfly changeling with her shield, using her other claw to grab the beetle’s horn and slam him into his fellow. Aranna jumped over the two, her wings flaring as bright sparks flew from them. This time it wasn’t just a trick of the campfire’s light.

Eclipse pointed at Thorn’s tail and wings. “I thought there was only one type of changeling.”

Thorn grimaced. “You must be an Equestrian. Experienced with the hive of Chrysalis. You’ll find Blackreach hive to have no love of her.”

The changeling who had taken Aranna’s sword dropped it at Thorn’s feet and sped off, assisting its fellow normal changeling in a duel attack from Aranna’s left and right. They were accompanied by a third normal changeling and a revived Dozer.

That accounted for all seven sets of eyes that had greeted them.

Thorn shifted his hooves, both in nervousness and to keep the sword at least a foot away from him. “I am… surprised. Are you not going to help your fellow?”

Eclipse shrugged and proceeded to pull out a rather large artillery piece, as well as aiming said artillery at Thorn’s face. “Do you want me to?”

Two normal changelings aided Dozer with a full frontal assault, forcing Aranna to keep her shield raised. Without her sword she couldn’t effectively fight back, even though the slowly building flames around her were keeping the changelings in enough of a check to allow a stalemate.

Not one to give up a victory, Aranna put her shoulder into her shield and charged, bashing one changeling out of her way and sending the other two running. The third normal changeling swept up from behind, clubbing Aranna with a sizeable rock.

Other than knocking her helmet off and filling the area with a loud metallic clang, this accomplished little.

“I’d rather you wouldn’t…” Thorn admitted while Eclipse stowed the weapon.

“I thought you’d se things my way.” The pony said, smiling.

Aranna spun, clawing a trio of gouges into the side of the changeling before it could properly react. The scorpionfly fired a green beam of magic at her, but her shield absorbed the brunt of the attack.

Dozer and the second beetle took the moment of distraction it provided and slammed her between the two of them while the three remaining changelings fired a tri-blast at her, stunning the griffin.

The scorpionfly and two beetles put themselves between the three normal changelings as Aranna got back onto her feet.

“So if I don’t have the card you requested, I say ‘go fish’?”

“Correct.” Eclipse said, smiling.

“What do fish have to do with it?”

Eclipse facehoofed.

The scorpionfly and the regulars charged their magic, bringing four beams to bear on Aranna’s shield. The beetles rushed, knocking her defenses aside so the beams could decommission the griffin.

Aranna hit the ground hard, alive but knocked out.

Thorn quickly trotted over to her, checking her vitals.

One of the normal changelings landed near Eclipse. “Sup?” It asked with a slight head tilt.

Eclipse sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Sheesh, this is weird.”

Thorn rallied the changelings. “Perimeter guard! Detain the griffin, but leave the pony be! He has shown no open hostility yet and we should pray that it remains so.”

Eclipse glanced at him. “Perimeter guard?”

“We patrol the outer edges of the hive’s territory. The hive itself is about an hour due east.”

“Do you have a leader?”

“One who will want to meet you.” Thorn assured, nodding.

Eclipse jumped up, landing on a black cloud and pointing in the direction the changelings had begun traveling in. "Excellent! We'll get this situation sorted out before we know it!"

Thorn stared at the pony. "A wingless cloud walker?"

Eclipse stared back. "A changeling that didn't help his fellow guards fight a hostile?"

Thorn shrugged. "Pacifist."

"How did you get into the perimeter guard?"

"Strategist."