The Okie Dokie Lokie Swamp was one of the worst areas in all of Equestria. With its humidity, marshes, and mud, it was one of the least desired places for sentient species to live. Add to that, the usual insects and predators that infested swamps, plus the added infusion of creatures such as chimeras, Manticores and sea serpents and it became truly deplorable. No one would want to live in that swamp, much less visit.
With one exception. Changelings. To the changelings, this was not just a place, this was their home. As an insect type species, they reveled in this environment. The extra oxygen, thanks to the huge amount of greenery, allowed them to grow. Originally evolution had made them the size of normal insects, but thanks to higher levels of oxygen, they were now the size of ponies.
The mud too, allowed them to create homes. Using the large amount of clays in the soil, the changlings were able to create huge dwellings, similar to another planets termite colonies, only much bigger to match their size.
There was only one problem, food. Changelings were a emorasite species. Being emotional parasites, they relied on the feelings of other creatures to live. They could survive on a variety of emotions; anger, hate, fear, lust, and wonder, just to name a few. However, what fed them best was love. It was similar to the difference between gruel and a five star meal in Manehatten. Both could keep you alive, but one was better tasting and more filling than the other. However, one feeling that all sentient species shared that changelings could not consume, was hopelessness. Even worse, unlike what most believed, to changelings, feelings were finite and of a limited use. While a creature that was feeling love could feed dozens of changelings off their love, those that felt fear or anger, could only feed two or three at a time, and even then not well.
With all this knowledge, Chrysalis looked around her in desperation, despair and sadness. Everything had gone wrong! The attack on Canterlot, was to have saved her children, not doom them. They had used all their resources and had abandoned their last hosts for the attack. She thought it was worth it, and had they succeeded, it would have been. They could have fed well for years. Instead she was left with this.
Hunger. It burned her with every step she took. Pausing she watched as three of her daughters were taking clay, grass, and mud and desperately tried to shore up one of the many holes in their perimeter walls. This city, her city of Hivonia should have had up to 30,000 inhabitants, including males, drones, princesses, and pupas. But thanks to her failure, there were less then 3,000. And that morning she had lost more then half of her last hatchlings. All because of the hunger. She turned away from her exhausted and hungry daughters in shame.
“Mother, the Nectar mess reports that the pony husband and wife have stopped fearing. Honeywings says they are only producing hopelessness.”
“I see.” She sighed, and shook her mane, “It can’t be helped. A pity though, they were the first we caught since…well since we returned.” She stopped a moment and looked at her depleted city, then turning back to the drone, she nodded, “Buzzstinger, you know what to do. Take them to the river and let them go.” She watched her daughter shuffle back to the feeding hall and winced as she heard Buzzstinger’s exoskeleton rattle from her hunger. She and the other’s like her needed to feed.
She continued to watch her deteriorating city try to function, as drones moved from place to place trying to do what needed to be done, and sadly due to both lack of strength and population, often fail.
She saw movement from the Nectar Mess and watched as a half dozen changelings surrounded two ponies led by princess Honeywings. The ponies’ heads were hung low and they stepped slowly and carefully with no expression whatsoever. Even from the slight distance she could taste the hopelessness in them. Other changelings smelling and tasting it shuddered or dry heaved, having nothing in their stomachs to bring up.
The irony of the situation was not lost on Chrysalis. The husband and wife pony’s were probably the best fed in the entire city. For when changelings captured new hosts they grew, gathered or hunted food for their prisoners to ensure that they would survive. The tragedy being that the changelings themselves, could not survive eating that. Chrysalis, could still taste the nauseating pony food she had to eat while she impersonated princess Cadance. If it hadn’t been her feeding from Shining Armor, she didn’t know what she would have done.
She continued to watch as the group left from the gate at the front of the city where they would continue walking through the swamp to the river. From there princess Honeywings would wipe their memory of the last six months of being hosts. From there, they would be released. Free to return to their home and village.
“They probably think their going to be killed,” she mumbled under her breath. She knew that ponies believed that changelings killed any ponies they caught. That it was one of the changeling myths that parents read to foals to scare them before bedtime. “Hmph, what a stupid idea.” To changelings and Chrysalis herself, it was not only immoral, but impractical. The entire point of capturing a host, was to feed from them. How could one do that if they were dead? Thinking back, she wished she had been willing to kill. Had she been willing to kill Cadance and Twilight Sparkle, instead of simply imprison them she would have succeed.
As she watched the gates close behind the group, she heard a small commotion. It was Waspflower, her youngest princess daughter. Most of her drone sisters and her hoofful of brothers had died that morning from starvation, but being a princess she received the most food that could be given. But anyone watching could see that it wasn’t nearly enough.
“I’m hungwy. Hungwy.” She cried, her little hooves beating the chest of the nursery drone, so young that she hadn’t had her first molting. Because of this, she had no wings or holes that would develop later as she molted. It made her look very pony like. The drone could do nothing to ease the princess’s hunger. All she could do was hold her close and hum to her as she cried to sleep.
This was too much for Chrysalis. Turning away from Waspflower, she headed towards the gate desperate to escape, at least for a few moments, the faces of her children silently asking her to save them. Knowing full well that there was nothing she could do, that her hive was doomed.
She raced past the gates, ignoring the salutes she got from her guard daughters. As she entered the swamp, her eyes began to tear and as she let them fall, she walked aimlessly through the swamp not caring where she went.
It wasn’t until she heard snorts and crashings that she noticed where she ended up, the fire hot springs of Okie Dokie Lokie Swamp. Changing into a bush, she slowly moved forward to see the bane of her existence.
The dragons. In front of her stood three members of their herd. The others were splashing in the pools tossing the fire at the swamps vegetation, and destroying the surrounding plants. Her eyes returned to the three dragons not in the fire. She recognized their leader, the red scaled dragon with the Mohawk. She watched as they tormented an elderly pony, tossing it back and forth, scratching it so small cuts appeared on its body as it cried in pain and fear. The dragons laughed at each cry and seemed to take great pleasure in harming the pony. She watched mesmerized, as the leader, growing bored with the game calmly cracked the pony’s neck and bit off one of its hooves, before tossing the body to another dragon.
And there was the problem. Most dragons, while being meat eaters, favored gems and jewels over meat, but for the last year this group of teenage dragons had been living here permanently, capturing and eating ponies from the local villages. They seemed to take great pleasure in the killings, as if they had a vengeance against the ponies.
Normally, such an atrocity would result in direct confrontation with the sisters royal; however the Okie Dokie Lokie Swamp was considered part of the uncontested lands, an area where no one held sway or jurisdiction. It was considered the perfect place for ponies to live that wanted no one to tell them how to live or behave and for centuries small communities had lived at the edges of the swamplands, more then enough for the different hives of Changelings. However, with the killings entire villages had fled for different lands. Some headed north to Equestria proper, others east to Pandonia, still others west to the Griphonian Empire. But most had fled to the southern coninent of Zimbabwe. It had been a family of ponies headed towards Equestria proper that had led to the idea of impersonating Cadance. Hearing about a city that contained hundreds of thousands of ponies just waiting to be a host was too much for the hungry changelings and the plan had been created, and failed.
Chrysalis watched as they quickly finished eating the pony and were reaching for another trapped in a cage, a Pegasus this time, whose wings had been broken to ensure it could not fly away, then turned away in disgust, wishing she could do something. While most believed that changelings were powerful, with the ability to transform, fly, and having their own type of magic, similar to that of a unicorn, there was one exception, dragons. While their magic worked well on fur and feathers, it could not penetrate the tough scales of a dragon, thus when this group had invaded the swamp, she and the other queens with their own hives could only watch in increasing horror as ponies were killed and the survivors fled to different parts of the world. As more and more villages were abandoned, hives were abandoned as well, so that now Chrysalises hive of Hiveonia was the last of the swamp, and still there was not enough food.
As she turned away, she resumed her shape of a changeling queen and continued to walk pointlessly around her home. For hours she walked not really paying attention to where she strolled, just wanting to be alone and lost in her memories. She only paused when she heard growling ahead of her. Freezing in her hooves, she wondered if she had stumbled to close to a dragon. Quickly changing herself into a sapling, she edged closer to see what it was.
Her leaves blinked in surprise. Instead of the dragon she expected to encounter, it was a timberwolf. She was highly surprised as timberwolves seldom, if ever, entered the swamp. The main reason behind that was, being made of wood they had a tendency to behave like wood. So in wet humid areas, they warped. To a timberwolf this was a crippling and often fatal condition and as a species avoided areas like this for obvious reasons. However, this one looked young and probably only recently left its mother and not knowing better entered the swamp.
She heard it growl again, and this time she heard a sharp “yip”. The timberwolf was hunting, and normally she respected creatures who only wanted to eat and survive, she would have turned away, but after seeing the waste, horror and gluttony of the dragons, she snapped and decided to do something. While dragon hide was too much for her magic, wood was not. Quickly, she transformed back into her normal shape, and with a simple shake of her head, blasted the timberwolf to kindling.
Looking at her hoofiwork in satisfaction, she was about to turn away when she heard a snuffling sound from the base of the tree the timberwolf had been trying to dig up. From the pieces of wood and dirt a creature with brown, tan and white fur popped out of a hole from the tree. It looked around at the pieces of the timberwolf, and after a sniff or two began to walk toward Chrysalis.
When it reached her it sat at her hooves and giving a bark, wagged its tail. Chrysalis gazed down at the furry creature, trying to remember exactly what it was. Suddenly she remembered. Ponies called them “dogs”. Normally, when she saw them they were barking, growling and trying to bite her and her daughters. That made sense, as when she saw them, she and her family were usually ponynapping their companions. But this one was acting differently. She couldn’t place her hoof on it. But she did notice the dog was hungry. Normally, she would ignore it as it wasn’t her concern, but thinking of her own hunger decided to be merciful. Listening, she heard the shuffling of a rabbit under a nearby bush and using her magic she effortlessly caught and dispatched the creature before depositing it in front of the dog. The dog gave an excited “Yip” and began to eat. As Chrysalis was about to turn away and return home, she smelt something she hadn’t had in months. Love! Turning back, she realized it was pouring off the dog. Not having a proper meal in months, she began to feed. Surprisingly, as she fed, the dog continued to produce more and more, and for the first time, in longer then she could remember, she soon became full. She looked down at the small creature in shock.
Pookie, for that is what her ponies called her, lifted up her muzzle from her meal and wagged her tail. It had been so long since she had had a proper meal. She too was a victim of the dragons’ attack. When they had attacked her village, in the confusion her ponies had fled one way, and she another. That had been several months ago, and she was nearing the breaking point. So when this other pony thing protected her and gave her food, she did what she knew best, wagged her tail and gave her love and devotion to her new guardian. She would miss her old guardians, but she didn’t have only herself to think of, taking what was left of the carcass, she turned back towards the hole.
“Small dog thing, wait!” Called Chrysalis. She didn’t want to let the first good meal she had in months escape. So following the dog, who disappeared into the hole under the tree’s roots, she squeezed her head inside, and letting her horn glow, saw why the dog had entered the tree. Inside, squirming around, were at least 7 half grown dogs, eating and gnawing on what was left of the rabbit. From them, wave upon wave of love emanated and pushed towards her. She realized if this kept up she would need to molt again soon, just to have a bigger exoskeleton.
At that thought, she gasped. Then slowly a smile crept on her face, then finally laughter. Speaking to the dog family, who not really understanding what she was saying tilted their heads toward her voice, “You have saved us. I promise we will take care of you and your dog babies for as long as you live, you never have to fear timberwolves or hunger again.” And using her horn she enlarged the hole enough to bring her hooves inside, and taking the mother dog, she wrapped her forhooves around her and laughed and laughed as the dog began to like her muzzle, for the first time in a long time Chrysalis was happy.
Author's Note
For those wondering - Pookie was the name of my first dog, so thought why not put her in the story.
Cover art by Wolfangkun from here - http://wolfangkun.deviantart.com/art/Queen-of-the-Changelings-314311176
