After a VERY curious night, I woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed and well rested. I turned in the bed to look at the Queen, who was currently still asleep. I gave a small grimace at the now familiar necklace she was wearing.

I REALLY don’t like that thing. I quietly got out of bed, at least as quietly as I could while being the equivalent of a new born foal. The morning sun was softly shining through the curtains on the windows as I silently stretched and looked back towards the door. I mimed a good groan and turned back to Chrysalis. She was breathing softly and quietly. Now that is D’AW worthy.

Instead of going against my judgment and opening the curtains, I decided to take this time to learn some magic WITHOUT the supervision of someone who actually knows what they are doing. I looked around and unsurprisingly found the bookshelf I had been looking for; this princess probably was well read. I ran up and quickly looked for a reference book on magic; I didn’t want to blow the area up by screwing around with something as powerful as magic. I needed some reference material. I found something after a minute but it was not what I had expected. It was an older leather-bound tome on advanced magic theory. This made me blink.

She’s learning all of this? She is more capable than I had previously thought.
I did my best to knock it down as quietly as possible so I could awkwardly read each page by flipping it with my hoof. I only fell six times before completing my task in getting it open. The wild array of diagrams and well versed paragraphs were daunting as I worked my way to the first chapter, now it was time to reverse engineer all of this . . .

~~~

Chrysalis finally woke up several hours later, apparently that necklace has some negative qualities. I grinned ear to ear when she gasped as I flung the curtains open for her. After such I continued to read through the Reference Theory book and experiment with my new found utility.

As she got out of the bed she viewed me with amazement as I made miniature models of planets, suns, and subatomic wonders. Electrical arcs and heat waves, whirlwinds and earthquakes. I was micromanaging a wonderland of science (or magic as they would say) and revealing the fabric of reality to all in the room. She trotted over to look at my creations as I blissfully continued to read and experiment. This horn was a beautiful utility to do anything I could want.

“Umm . . . how are you achieving these feats?” This snapped me from my reading, which then dumped all of my multitasking from my subconscious to my conscious. I panicked as I couldn’t control it. I cringed as all of my work collapsed, imploded, and detonated in a flurry of wind, lightning, and unholy fire. As the maelstrom of magic dissipated, I could hear a gentle laughing in the background. It was Chrysalis. ”Now THAT was quite impressive . . .”

“Eh, are you okay?” She nodded and then laughed again. “SooooOOOOOOOoooooo . . . I can do magic now!” My grin grew as it caused her to stifle more laughter; it was completely ridiculous.

“Looks like you covered one third of that which I was going to teach you. Congratulations.” It was at this point that we both realized there was a gaping hole in the floor surrounding me; I was being suspended in midair by my own levitation. “And now you have instinctual levitation. Splendid . . .”

After carefully hopping over the crevice and onto marginally safer ground, I let go of my spell. The resulting crash shook the foundations of the entire building. I also assumed I made a very crude elevator to the ground floor. I cringed horribly, hoping that I hadn’t hit anyone.

As I peeked over the edge of the jagged hole, I heard a muted gasp from behind me. I turned around to see Chrysalis stuffing a hoof in her mouth. The look on her face was also equally surprising. I looked back to me and then once more back to her. I gave her a quizzical look and she slowly took her hoof out of her mouth which revealed a very worried look.

“Uuh, what’s the issue here Chrysalis? Are you that worried about your floor or something?” It took a moment before she responded.

“You have a cutie mark . . .”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“You . . . eh . . . have a cutie mark.” This caught me by surprise and I sat there for a moment before saying anything.

“Wait . . . that can’t be right. You’re telling me that a CHANGELING has a cutie mark?”

“Yes.” I spun around for a bit before finally craning my neck to see it properly. It was a strange set of four-pointed stars. The underlying one appeared to be made of blades, the other made of small dots or particles. “That IS impossible. But you have one.”

“Well, that’s a curious development.” I thusly ignored it for the remainder of my stay. Chrysalis exchanged looks with me and then we laughed; this is getting much more interesting. But of course we still had other things on our agenda for the day, her list being infinitely greater than mine at the moment.

“As queen, I have my duties to attend to, so I must leave you now but feel free to explore and experiment. And play pranks, those are always fun. Be done as soon as I can little one. But before I go . . .” I saw her channeling magic into that damn necklace and panicked, disintegrating it.
She stood there for a moment with a look of horror on her face before frowning angrily.

“You just . . . just destroyed a priceless artifact! You will pa-,” she was cut of my incredibly intense and serious glare. “You didn’t like it that much?”

I nodded slowly and deliberately as we both turned and left the room. When we entered the corridor outside she split off from me and went . . . well . . . the direction I wasn’t going. I had no clue as to cardinal direction here, which no doubt was going to cause confusion and pain for me later; I had the sudden feeling it involved trees.

I shrugged off the ridiculous feeling and went back down the way I was dragged up, this time I was on all four hooves. I wandered past many of the artifact filled alcoves and read the brass plaques that were below some of them. All of them were old and were just little trinkets, but some had some interesting descriptions.

I ignored the majority of them though as I wandered towards the main chamber I was dumped in, in the first place. But, as I was about to finish going down the last flight of stairs

I blacked out.

~~~

I groggily awoke after what felt like an hour but was really only a couple minutes and looked around to discern my current position. Congratulations, I had just discovered another way to go down a flight of stairs. My pain stricken legs and body completely denied that tumbling was the best way to descend, but we all knew that it was.

I carefully got to my hooves again and shook myself off, quickly sorting out my confusion, before making the last couple yards or so into the main chamber again. It seems as if the Colony was suddenly brought to life, relative to how it looked the first time, because the throne room was chock full of insect-y changeling goodness. There were changelings buzzing and flying around with important diplomatic documents, changelings in armor going to some sort of military training, and changelings running haphazardly about to accomplish various tasks.

I smiled softly at all the hustle and bustle before my grin grew wider. I looked around for an unsuspecting, but knowledgeable looking changeling and trotted up to the nearest one who appeared to be incredibly busy.

“Sir, do your testicles hurt?” There was a slight pause as the changeling turned around slowly with an incredulous look on his face.

“What?” He waited expectantly for my response, which was quite quick.

“I molest small foals,” He gave me a horrified look as he started carefully backing away. I responded by approaching him at the same speed. “What I meant to say was: Can you please inform me as to the nearest exit; I need some fresh air.”

The changeling gave me a look I couldn’t read as his face scrunched up. I stared at him unblinking, awaiting his answer. He cautiously gave me an answer before promptly galloping in the opposite direction. I shrugged and looked for another ample target.

I found one, moments later, and the resulting conversation involved rusty spoons, female genitalia, and fetus baths, but got me an answer; now I also assume I have a reputation too. I wandered towards the exit contemplating my latest achievements in horrifying the multiverse. I approached the absolutely massive set of doors leading to the outside.

You’re retarded . . .

Yup . . .

These doors should’ve been quite easy to spot from several miles away, but creeping out the locals is cool too . . .

I shrugged off the inner banter as I examined these incredibly large obelisks whose goal was to protect those inside one rung doorbell at a time. Well, there wasn’t too much, actually, to say about it. It was large, stone, solid, and locked . . .; I stomped my hooves in frustration. Getting outside was the very key to relieving boredom in this situation. It was either that or start a large nuclear dance party where the dancers wore radiation suits and the strippers died of radiation poisoning, with everything glowing like a good rave. I took another look at the doors massive height before noticing there was a smaller set of doors inset in the center of the stone doors. I facehooved violently and fell sideways onto the floor.

You REALLY are blind. Didn’t you see all of the changelings moving in and out? I don’t think that that changeling would lie to you about something so mundane as an exit.

I growled at myself and proceeded onwards. I managed to locomote myself along the floor, still on my side, towards the door; many changelings stopped for a moment to look at me before snapping out of whatever trance they were in and moving on. I grinned as I approached the smaller doors and slid my way through, still oriented horizontally. Once outside of the doors I righted myself and looked off into the distance for the landmark the second changeling had given me. As I trotted towards my destination I noted the significant lack of changelings outside of the Colony; I was alone in the desert as a horse with no name. I stopped and shrugged again before continuing onward.

~~~

So, the small trip was almost uneventful, exception being the fact that I mysteriously collapsed again, furthering my confusion on the matter. But eventually I made it to the canyon stairs; this is where the changeling had sent me.

I had asked for an interesting place to explore or visit. They asked if it mattered if it was dangerous. I responded with “hell no” and then proceeded to ask them about rusty spoons, female genitalia, and fetus baths. This garnered very strange looks from the changeling and surrounding changelings, but the level of not-caring was equivalent to the height limit on the Wonka-vator.

I descended downwards into the rocky gouge whistling a merry tune as I looked around for the interesting aspects of this barren vagina. It was indeed a peculiar canyon, it was approximately 50 yards wide with a completely flat bottom and was about 30 yards deep. It was fairly interesting because it just looked off, like I was standing on a roof or ceiling or something. I shrugged it off and blithely continued on down a ways looking for more things to pique my interest.

Congratulations! You found rocks! Now remind me what the fuck we’re doing here again?

I was bored.

We’ve been walking for close to an hour because you were bored . . .?

Yup.

Screw you. There was a pause in my head as the internal dialogue stopped for a moment and I stopped as well. You feel that?

What, I’m being watched? Yeah. But that’s supposed to happen whenever you walk into a creepy canyon that happens to be more interesting than expected.

You’re being followed.

I had been walking again as the conversation resumed, but stopped at this before using my peripheral vision to see shadows flitting around the sides of the canyon and on the ground nearby. This was very creepy and was not appreciated by myself. I groaned softly before continuing on in silence, finally getting why the changeling had asked if I had cared about danger.

I kept going for only a couple more yards before getting tired of the tension in the air. There was so much you could’ve cut it with a saw, built a house out of it, decorated it and furnished it with more tension, invited several unsuspecting people into it for dinner after you had met them the night before at a movie theatre where you had won the tickets for the movie in a radio game involving pickles and walrus eyes, and then murdered them ruthlessly in the basement before hiding their bodies in couches that you sold to small orphans.

I was suddenly confused. Shaking my head for clarity, I decided to confront my stalkers.

“I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR NEW BASEMENT,” I turned around to face a small posse of changelings dressed in flowing scraps of cloth and Arabian style headwear. “Ooh, I like your hat.”

They all froze for a moment before looking quite confused at my statement; I used this moment to glance behind me, only to see another group of changelings dressed ditto. Lucky enough for me, they all also looked confused as hell.

“So, what do you want from me? I don’t strip for free. Wait, I’m not wearing clothes. Perhaps you could offer me some of your cloth before I ruthlessly deny you the pleasure of me stripping naked and decline,” I smiled at them cheerily.

“Wat . . .?” One of them had stepped forwards, indicating his leadership, and had an exceptionally confused face, one which was beautiful enough to molest small children just by sheer look only if that child was a mutated ogre. He looked left and right at his colleagues before putting on a much more lucid appearance. “You’re trespassing.”

“Where? This canyon? Did you actually build that invisible tension-house? CAN YOU READ MY MIND?”

“What . . .?!” He paused in confusion for a moment before continuing, “Regardless of your obvious insanity, you have trespassed in our home and will be punished.”

“Torture? Monetary fine? Imprisonment? –,“

“Death.”

“Well, where is your house? I didn’t see anything posted that said I couldn’t be here . . .,” My happiness and chirpy attitude flooded out of me as I deadpanned seriousness at them. I raised an eyebrow as one of them literally died on the spot. The leader groaned.

“You are standing on top of it,” I looked down at the “ground” and hooved at it for a moment before coming into contact with some underlying support beams and a sandstone ceiling. “And now you have damaged our property too . . ., someone get this bastard already.”

“And now I’m gone,” I teleported a good bit away behind them, back towards the staircase so I could get out of here. Turns out I’m not used to it. Apparently twisting space-time to move from point “A” to point “B” messes with your noggin, so I stumbled around like a drunkard before falling upon my face in a nice pile of sand. “EEYEECHH!!”

After scrambling to my hooves I spat out as much sand as possible on the lam, trying to not die today. Going at the maximum speed I could while still not being used to my absolutely bodacious bod’, I turned my head around to fire a spell off at my pursuers. I watched as they just deflected my purposeless blast into the wall without breaking stride, I grimaced. I tried a little harder the second time before it was then met with the same result and then some.

I yelped and felt my eyes widen as they opened fire with something decidedly more lethal than what I had been packing.

Why must I suck at packing things? I should have brought a sandwich and some hotsauce to go with my healthy serving of GETTING MY ASS KICKED.

Because I had given up on trying to stop them, I decided to go forwards. I teleported once again, still not orienting myself properly on exit, and went tumbling into a very hard object which I had been hoping was the wall. After letting my head and the dust clear I got up and stumbled a couple steps backwards; turns out it wasn’t a wall.

I had found myself face to face with a particularly disturbing pair of creatures. Standing on either side of the stairway was a pony, but these had a few added features. For example, they had little crab-like legs instead of front legs. They also had chitin on their heads, 6 or so bug eyes, and a very nasty looking scorpion tail with a barb on the end. My face twisted in a cross between horror and intense laughter.

Don’t do it . . .

“That musta’ been one HELLA one night stand,” I teleported backwards as he (presumably) struck with his stinger. I was laughing the whole time, mental distortion just amplifying the amusement, as I tumbled backwards out of my teleport and struggled to my hooves before turning around to retreat and promptly clotheslined myself with a root of some sort that was sticking out of the wall.

All of these events eventually allowed my posse to catch up to me, tired and fuming. I got up one more time before the leader lined up his shot and hit me with something oddly familiar. I went flying backwards into the wall, leaving quite the impression on my rocky ally before falling out of it onto the ground. But something was wrong . . .

“Time to face your punishment little worm.”

“Wait . . .,”I groaned.

“Ready!” The entire entourage bent their heads to aim at me.

“Hold on . . .” my pleas were getting weaker as my vision started to fade to black, flames leaping along the sides.

“Aim!” The lights on their horns almost made it too bright to see. I exhaled softly as I finally lost consciousness to my condition and abuse; the last thing I heard before being consumed by pain and heat was ironically . . .

[center[“FIRE!”

Author's Note

So sorry this took so long. Turns out that the entire last 7/8 of chapter two vanished. I went looking for it. Failed. Then I rewrote it. Success! Anyway, sorry for the abrupt change in style as well, it kinda just happened because I had to rewrite it. It fits better with Ch.6. Please enjoy, I should be posting more of the story soon!