“There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

Karl woke up on the hard cave floor, trying to remember what exactly had happened last night. You know that feeling when you’re on vacation and you wake up in a hotel, but your brain doesn’t quite remember where you are? It was exactly like that, only this was no hotel.

The memories came back quite rapidly as he noticed the slumbering form of the Changeling resting on top of a bundle of blankets which he had made into his bed. Locust had clearly slept far more comfortably than Karl, but given his injury, he was certainly more deserving.

Said injury brought him to the second problem; Karl had decided that the Changeling was definitely a companion he wanted to bring with him, both because he could be a valued ally and because he wanted to ensure the creature’s safety, but he knew that the Changelings hadn’t exactly had the best history with ponies. How would Sunny react to Locust’s presence? More importantly, how was he going to transport a wounded Changeling?

“Thinking?” he heard Locust ask whilst letting out a loud yawn.

“Yeah, about how I’m going to transport your wounded ass.”

“You look like a strong guy, can’t you carry me on your back or something’?”

Karl needed to admit that it was a possibility. A normal human would have trouble just carrying the backpack he had with him, but his new body had given him some more strength so carrying both his backpack and the Changeling was possible, but that would leave him exposed to the eyes of others, and Karl was reluctant to do that for previously stated reasons. Unless the guards had heard of what he did back at Hoovetown they couldn’t legally arrest him, but even then his situation was precarious. Being seen with Locust could easily give them the justification they needed.

“No. You might be seen. It would be too risky.”

Because of the blank, insectoid eyes of Locust, Karl couldn’t be sure, but he would swear he saw a twinge of fear. Not that it surprised him: one could easily liken the Changelings’ situation to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

“Be that as it may, how else am I going to get around?”

Suddenly Karl felt the urge to drive the flat of his hand into his face.

‘Why didn’t I think of that sooner?’

“Urgh we are such an idiots! I just change into a pony!”

“My thoughts exactly. Although you’re still pretty beat-up and tired. Are you sure you can do it?”

“Meh. I still feel better. It’s a fifty/fifty shot. We’ll have to risk it.”

“Fine. Just don’t go whining to me if you can’t pull it off. Get your crap together and make the change… just not to a unicorn!”

“Why not? That’s my favourite type.”

“Unicorns and I have had a bit of a… coloured history. You’ll just have to take my word on this.”

“Alright no worries.”

Locust burst out in green flames and in his place now stood a light blue Pegasus stallion with a dark blue mane and tail.

‘Jeez.’ thought Karl. ‘The “Reptilian Shapeshifter Conspiracy” nutbags back home would have a field day with these guys.’

“Awesome. So what’s your name now? Baby Blue?”

Locust gave him an annoyed look.

“Really? That’s the best you can come up with?”

“I have many talents. Picking names isn’t one of them. Let’s see you do better.”

“My name shall be… crap, I’ve got nothing.”

Karl groaned in irritation.

“Hey, why don’t you give me a human name?”

“Fine. Your name is Mark.”

“That’s not going to cut it with the ponies! For the Hive’s sake, human names are even worse than Changeling names. At least ours are interesting!”

“Your entire lifestyle is based on assuming the shape of others.”

“There’s a reason why I’m in the field instead of working intelligence acquisition.”

“Okay, you know what? Let’s just call you Rain Cloud. OK? OK. Case closed. Now let’s get moving.” Karl finally blurted out.

Organising Locust’s stuff was a quick job as the Changeling had already packed most of it last evening. After Karl ate a bit, he was forced to deal with the most challenging part of getting underway: getting the wounded Changeling in the special carrier the two had constructed.

“You’re good?” Karl asked when the Changeling had finally managed to squirm himself in the carrier.

“Yes, although this is embarrassing.”
“Tell me about it.” Karl mumbled under his breath before he started walking back to the meeting point.

“Say; how did we get this thing built so fast?” he asked Locust, indicating the carrier.

“The writers got lazy and needed a way to move the plot along but didn’t feel like filling in the details.”

“I see.”

Locust went on to give him directions out of the forest. Karl could manage the rest of the way himself.

Of course, luck wasn’t with them (seriously, why would it be? That would be boring.), and they soon heard gruff, angry voices coming from a short distance away.

“Damn. Where is that Changeling?”

“He can’t be far. Sharp Horn nailed him pretty good!” An enthusiastic male voice said.

“Ugh. Why are we even searching? That Changeling has probably already bled to death with that wound!” Another one whined.

“If that has happened, can you explain why we found the puddle of blood and not the body?” a thicker voice replied.

“I don’t know, maybe some predator took the body with him.” The whining one retorted.

“You sound pretty damn sure, especially considering there wasn’t a blood trail or anything else indicating he was dragged away by a predator.” The first voice stated

“We all saw the shot and we saw the puddle of blood. There is no way that that Changeling could have survived! Besides, you said it yourself: no blood trail. If he got up and left, there should be one.” the second voice once again defended his point

“That’s true, but we don’t know if he had help. Somepony could have shown up and carried him out.” A forth voice stated.

“What pony would possibly want to heal a Changeling?” The first one said on a disbelieving tone.

“Who says it’s a pony? Could have been a Griffon or a D-dog for all I know.”

“Yeah right.”

Karl quickly ducked behind some ferns.

“Damn. Your blood survived that storm.”

“Changeling blood is like insect blood: it’s all viscous and slimy. There still shouldn’t have been much left, though. Maybe they have a unicorn using a tracking spell.” Locust replied in a whisper.

“Freaking’ unicorns… Hold on though; if they’ve got a tracker, wouldn’t they have picked up on us just now?”

“Not necessarily: most tracking spells I’ve seen follow specifically along the trail taken by the quarry. It’s a quirk of the medium, don’t ask me to explain.”

“We could probably avoid them, but if they get out of the forest without finding us they would probably call for backup. Of course, I could always kill them, but I doubt the disappearance of four soldiers would go unnoticed. Then we would have an even more serious manhunt on our hands and we could find ourselves with ponies up the ying-yang.”

“There are all sorts of alternate routes out of the forest, but they would take us way off course. Even if we got out of the forest, they would probably set up checkpoints and roadblocks on all the bridges and trails, not to mention patrols.”

Karl groaned inwardly. The situation was deteriorating, and there didn’t seem to be any clear-cut solution. As he was lamenting his luck, the patrol came into view a short distance away. Just as Locust had suggested, there was a unicorn present.

Karl looked at his claws and took a big breath.

“Look, this might bring us some unwanted attention, but I honestly can’t think of a solution to this that would do otherwise. I say we take these guys out here and now. That would probably buy us the most time.”

Locust nodded, giving an understanding expression.

“Now listen; can you take care of the unicorn?”

“No problem.” Locust replied, wriggling out of his conveyance. “I might be wounded, but I have a little debt to settle with that one: he sounds like the one that wounded me… but do you really think that you can take on three healthy earth ponies?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just make sure that unicorn stays as far away from me as possible.”

Meanwhile, the ponies were scanning the area for possible tracks of the missing Changeling.

“Son of a bitch. I’m going to miss breakfast because of this stupid Changeling! Where the buck could it be?!”

Unbeknownst to the ponies, Locust had circled them and was currently lurking in the bushes to their rear, directly behind Sharp Horn.

“Smile!” hissed Locust under his breath, and released a stream of neon-green slime in an extremely focused blast, impacting Sharp on the base of the skull. The unfortunate unicorn crumpled to the ground covered in the viscous matter. He would never get back up.

“Stallion down!” yelled a brown Earth Pony. “It was the Changeling! Behind you!”

He and the other two immediately charged at Locust who turned tail and ran through the bushes he had appeared from.

Karl lay in wait behind a tree not far from the encounter. Locust came through and ran past, closely followed by the brown Earth Pony, who could only look on in terror as he saw what awaited him on the other side. The last thing he saw before he passed into the great Oblivion was the great beast rushing him head on, with bared claws and a vicious snarl pulling across its face.

His partners had gone around the bush and tried to flank Karl. That, of course, was a terrible idea. Karl grabbed the head of one and used him as a flail to bring down on the other, a sickening crack issuing from the body upon impact.

The last pony had survived being beaten with the corpse of his friend, but before he could plead for his life Locust appeared above him. The Changeling placed his holed fore-hooves upon the pony’s head and pressed. He pressed until a sound not unlike the splitting open of a watermelon issued from beneath him.

The ambush had gone off without a hitch. Karl looked to Locust, noting that he had, due to that last strike, had gotten a bit of blood on his fore hooves, but he just licked to clean like a dog or cat would lick their paws. Kind of cute, really.

“Good. What now? Should we burry them?” Locust asked after he was done cleaning himself.

“No: we’ve already wasted more than enough time. When the folks back where these guys came from realise how long they’ve been gone, this whole area will get shut down. The sooner we get out of here, the better. Now climb back in.” Karl said, kneeling.

“Ugh. Do I really have to? I swear, I feel fine now.”

“That was no small injury you got back there. I don’t care how it feels; if you over-exert yourself, it could just re-open the wound. Now like I said, get in.”

“Fine…” mumbled Locust.

Locust changed back to his Rain Cloud form before wriggling himself into the carrier. Karl waited patiently until he heard Locust say that he was settled, and the two continued on their journey.

After walking for a while, Locust spoke up again:

“You know, thanks for sticking with me instead of abandoning me when you heard about the risks involved.”

“I have given you my word and I intend to keep it. I don’t leave people behind just because it could be dangerous.”

“Hmph. If only there were more creatures out there like you.”

Locust was again quiet for a while before he spoke again.

“Say Karl, that pony companion you mentioned yesterday evening? What’s her opinion on Changelings?”

“You’re guess is as good as mine. Never asked her about it. Hell, before I met you I didn’t even knew your race existed.”

“How come actually? You never told me about that part of your history. The invasion of Canterlot was big news! Like, huge!”

“I lived in the Everfree. You don’t exactly get much news around there.” Karl lied. Obviously, he hadn’t been around during the invasion, but he didn’t like to discuss his origins much, for obvious reasons.

“Yeah, I guess so, still didn’t you see us flying?”

“I haven’t seen anything.” And with that, Karl refused to elaborate any further.

****
Sun was anxiously waiting for her boss to reappear out of the forest. She had gotten some information out of some travelers which she was sure would interest him. After another tense few minutes she saw her boss come out of the forest with a pony sitting in some sort of improvised device on his back; certainly not something she had expected.

“Had a good night rest?” Karl greeted her.

“Yeah, very good… but, uh… might I ask why you have another pony on your back?”

“Oh, this fine lad? Don’t worry about him. I found him wounded in the forest and he agreed to help us get to Ironhoof in exchange for transportation. Say, this fellow’s told me some pretty interesting things about Changelings. How come you never mentioned them?”

“Changelings? Uhm, I guess I never saw the use of telling you about them. It’s not like they’re a threat anymore.”

“How do you feel about them?”

“Well, I don’t particularly dislike them, but I don’t like them either. Why?”

“Because your new companion is a Changeling.”

Locust transformed back into his real form, startling Sun.

“You’re helping a Changeling?!”

“Indeed! Sunny meet Locust. Locust, this is Sunny. Did you manage to get some information?”

Assisting a mercenary, assisting a warlord, facilitating a prison break and now aiding a Changeling! Oh boy, if the authorities ever got to her, she would have one hell of a record. She shook herself out of her trance and related to Karl all that the travelers had told her.

“So the basic gist is: there’s some unrest in Ironhoof. That should make it a lot easier for me to rustle up some support. Excellent work Sunny!” Karl stated happily.

“Not to break up the reunion, but we really need to hurry up.” Locust urged Karl.

“Right. We’ll have to go double time so Sunny, I hope you had breakfast.”

With that, Karl set out, followed by Sunny.

The three walked for a couple of hours. The forest started changing more and more into swamp. After a while, it became so bad that the path stopped and was replaced by a set of wooden planks lain across the liquefied ground.

“Ugh. No wonder that all of these pony settlements are so closed off if this is the path that connects them!” Karl exclaimed, annoyed at the ill-maintained and rotting wood which now delineated their route.

“This smell is unbearable.” Sunny stated for the fifth time or so.

“Goddamn mosquitos!” Locust yelled out angrily as he lighted his horn to make a flare which kept the annoying insects away from him.

“Locust I swear, if my hair catches fire …”

“No worries. I’m a pro at this.” Locust stated proudly. Having said that, he noticed a small flame was burning on the hair near Karl’s neck, which he quickly blew out.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” said Locust quickly, brushing off the near-crisis.

“I had no idea our road system was this bad.” Sunny said to herself.

“I never knew there were worse places to crash-land than the forest.” observed Locust

“There are always worse places to land. Believe me, I know all about bad landing spots.” commented Karl

“Shh… did you two hear that?” Sunny whispered as she stopped and crouched a bit.

“Not really. How did it sound?” Karl asked as he also crouched and immediately started searching the area for possible dangers.

“I don’t like having the high ground guys!” Locust whispered, not feeling comfortable being still decently high, making him an easier target.

“I just heard some water splattering, like someone took a step in the water.”

An ambush would be bloody perfect considering that the wooden bridge offered no protection at all against any type of projectiles. The safest thing to do would be going for some cover and analyze the situation there, but this was a swamp who knows what creatures lived in that water.

“You and Locust take the air and stay safe. I will take my chances on the bridge.”

Locust crawled out of the carrier and took the air together with Sunny leaving Karl alone on the ground. Realizing he was alone now he silently cursed his decision, but it was the safest option. Karl just kept on moving the deeper he went, the more he felt like being watched.

This swamp was creeping him out even with his new body, especially the water for only god knew what this world had as fauna in this swamp.

“I swear, if I need to fight again I will…” The rest of his sentence was cut off as he felt some pain in his right shoulder, right claw and side.

He looked what was causing it and saw arrows sticking in his thick flesh. Immediately, he jumped from the wooden path in order to get some cover behind a nearby fallen tree. To his surprise, the arrows didn’t really hurt that much.

‘My flesh is probably thicker, so they didn’t penetrate very deep.’

He pulled out the one in his claw and only very little blood was visible on the arrow head. The one in his shoulder followed, and finally the one in his side. All of them barely penetrated.

“Good thing these are pretty crappy arrows.” Karl stated as he saw they were stone heads rather than metal ones, not even possessing barbs to prevent him from pulling them out.

Shitty craftsmanship or not, some payback was in order, and he sat for a while planning his approach. Even with the poor quality of the arrows, Karl wasn’t going to charge straight into what looked like at least three archers.

“Karl get your ass over here and come and help me with these guys!” He heard Locust yell, and that was all he needed to drop the carrier and his backpack to charge straight at the creatures that had attacked him.

Locust was busy flying around and attacking at least six Earth Ponies. Two others lay dead, one in a puddle of blood, but the other looked like he had gotten a meteorite on top of him, the body lying in a small crater. Four ponies broke off and charged at him as they spotted the new threat. Two of them had spears, one had an axe and the one that looked like the leader had a sword.

He might have big-ass claws and armoured skin, but Karl wasn’t about to charge head in four armed individuals, ponies or not. At least not without a weapon himself. He picked up a rather thick branch and a rock. He threw the rock at the eye of the one with the axe. The pony was fortunate and got hit above his left eye instead of in it, but it managed to slow him down considerably.

The ponies’ lack of combat experience was something Karl soon discovered, mostly because he wasn’t yet injured in the slightest, and he actually managed to break one of the spears with a well-aimed hit from his branch. He wasted no time with that pony and used his right claw to cut the throat of the one with the axe. The range of Karl’s claw also allowed him to take a swipe at the sword-bearing pony in the same motion. The stallion dodged the sweeping attack by jumping backwards, however he had not expected the beast to charge him using it’s claw as a shield.

Karl rushed the stallion and used his teeth to bite at its neck, earning a hoarse scream as the pony desperately tried to get him off. Karl suddenly released the pony’s neck and with full force brought the branch down on his head, fracturing the branch and sending blood and teeth flying everywhere in a fashion that would have made Quentin Tarantino envious.

The third pony tried to stab Karl in his right side using his spear, but his throat was swiftly pierced by the pointed remnant of the branch that Karl still had in his left claw.

The last remaining pony tried to buck him in a final act of desperation.

Karl simply used the one with the pierced throat as a shield. The body made the sickening sound of bones breaking as it took the direct hit. With the attack failed, Karl wasted no time in making sure that it was the pony’s last attack: He jumped on his back and, with a burning, primitive fury welling up from some deep, hidden place, bit and slashed at the now defenseless pony, his weight preventing another attempt at bucking. Karl only stopped his attack when the pony stopped struggling. He got back on his feet and looked at Locust who was looking back at him with wide eyes, standing next to the bodies of his own opponents.

“You okay Karl?”

“Yeah. Just letting off some steam.” Karl quickly replied before retrieving the backpack and the carrier.

“Where’s Sunny?”

“I sent her further up the path. I figured this was no place for a personal assistant to be.” Locust replied as he settled himself back in the carrier. Both were dirty and smeared with the blood of their attackers. The two silently walked away from the carnage they had left in their wake.

Author's Note

Hello everybody! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Let me start by clearing some things up. Firstly the writer (me) was a combination of irritated, lazy, falling without inspiration and suffering from the hot temperatures whilst writing this chapter. Needless to say that this chapter was written with me not being fully well in mind, so please keep that in mind when giving criticism and know that the next chapters are written with me being back at a full 100%.

Secondly, I am sorry that you guys needed to wait so long, but I already explained my reasons.

Thirdly, I am happy to announce that chapter twelve is already send to my editor and that chapter thirteen is as good as done, so normally seen the next few chapters should be up more rapidly than this one.

Finally I am happy that my inspiration is back and that this chapter is finally up and I also hope that you guys will stick with the story for a while longer. The story has since the last update reached more than a hundred favorites and it is so close to hitting the 100 likes, so I want to thank you guys for the support and I pray you keep on giving it in the future.

Author: TheShadowOfZama
Editor: Vlasislas32