The Reparation of the Changeling Queens
Chapter Two: Calliphora

形変物の女王達の補償
二章：カリフォラ

I sit here against what I have determined to be a wall, and I stare back at the two large, black figures in front of me. I raise an eye, looking from the one with blue eyes and pink eyes. Blinking, I try asking once again.

“Where am I?”

The two continue to stare at me before I see the blue-eyed one open her mouth.

“You are in your tomb,” she says, as a protrusion from the center of her forehead, shaped oddly like a black shark’s fin, glows sea-blue, illuminating the room slightly. I raise an eyebrow; her head lowered, so the protrusion was directly aimed at my throat.

“Stop.”

The voice comes from the pink-eyed creature, who raises a hoof in protest. The voice is single toned, unlike her hasty ally, but a second later, I jump to my feet from shock as a whisper of the same word rings loudly in my right ear from behind. I leave my 3DS on the ground to allow light in the pitch-black room.

I immediately look around to find the whisper, but I find nothing. I lock up from fear, something I don’t often feel. She starts walking toward me, and the first instinct I have is to run; however, I see that the blue-eyed figure is between me and the dark doorway, so my next instinct is to fight.

“Stay back. I’ll fight!” I say, withdrawing my knife from my pocket.

She sees the knife and etches a small, unnerving smile on her face, not seeming phased in the slightest. My teeth clatter in my closed mouth as I bring the blade up to a position where I can comfortably brandish it. I could throw it, too, like those Call of Duty assholes that use the throwing knife.

I’m not jealous at all. Nope.

“Sheathe,” she commands, the same whisper effect bouncing around my ear. It must just be the way her voice… acts? I don’t know.

“Sheathe?” I return, raising an eyebrow. She nods softly, stepping closer to me. “Uh…”

I close my eyes for a moment and breathe, and when I reopen my eyes, she’s suddenly directly to my left, staring at me. I sidle along the wall away from her and shift my eyes to hers. She slowly begins to circle me, observing me, stalking me. If you can’t tell yet, I’m pretty freaked out. This is like a time during spring break of 2005 when I had a chance to ride a helicopter, and the moment I looked down out the door of the chopper, I saw the ground a thousand feet below.

“Yes… I see the resemblance,” she lets on, making me jerk my head back in confusion.

“Huh?” I mumble.

“Your hair, it is your father’s, no?”

My mouth drops wider than the Great Wall of China.. It is true that my hair comes from my father’s side of my family, but how she knows this is unknown to me.

“How-“

“And your eyes and nose, they must be your mother’s.”

Okay, who is this voodoo bitch, and when/why was she stalking me?

“How do you know about me?” I ask, putting my blade back down to my side.

She’s finished circling me at this point, and now she’s just staring at my face. I don’t make eye contact with her, but I can see them out of my peripheral. They are the kind of eyes that would pierce my soul, if I had one. I would imagine a dragon having the same kind of slitted eyes as her, and they’re as ferocious as a dragon’s, for sure. The fact that she has a smile on her face doesn’t do anything to detract from the amount of fear I have right now.

“I don’t.”

“What?”

“It is simply an observation.”

I blink a few times in confusion, and I can feel cold breaths blowing down my back through my shirt. My right eye twitches and I start to hunch my back. She is so close to my neck that if she gets any closer, I will karate chop her. I don’t know what it is about my neck, but whenever somebody touches it, I squirm. It may just be a g-spot for me. (Ha ha, gross!)

“An observation? How do you know what my family members look like?”

At this point, her previous look of bemusement takes charge again.

“You heard me.”

After she says this, I roll my eyes and collapse down to the ground. She looks down at me in her bemused state before locking her eyes right onto mine. They drag me in, and no matter how much I try to deter my view of her, I can’t. My head involuntarily turns to her location.

Her eyes then do something odd that scares the utmost shit out of me.

A white screen shuts over her eyes the opposite way that my eyelids do – that is to say horizontally. I can see through them to her irises and pupils, which are now just barely visible milky eclipses through the screens. She then proceeds to breathe out some kind of dirt-tinted, nasty gas from her nostrils, of which sunk to the ground, like some kind of visible carbon monoxide that would suffocate and poison me slowly and painfully.

I jump back to my feet and give myself a fair distance between us. I pull my knife up, grasping it with both hands now.

“What the hell are you?”

“Oh? You don’t know?”

“I honestly don’t.”

Once again, that unnerving smile creeps onto her face. Seriously, this is the stuff of nightmares.

“Changeling.”

A changeling? Don’t those things eat babies or some shit? I went to a bible studies group called Jesus Pizza in middle school, and even though I really just went for the pizza, I did read a little bit of the bible. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in that book is a part where is explains that changelings eat babies.

“Do you eat babies?”

“Do I eat… I…”

Saying this, a mask of pure confusion places itself on her face, giving me the biggest “what the hell?” expression I’ve ever seen, and trust me, I’ve seen this expression a trillion trillion times.

“Isn’t that what changelings do?”

“…No. Changelings eat love. Or steal it, depending on your… preference of words.”

“Oh. I guess that makes more sense. Sorry.”

I blush a little bit, scratching the back of my head. I stifle a laugh.

“Now I have a question: What are you?” she asks, taking a step towards me.

“First, stay back. You’re a little creepy, and you’re scaring me.”

“Really?”

She raises an eyebrow to this. I blink again, and she’s standing with her face nearly touching mine.

“Wha-!” I yell out, swinging my knife out at her neck.

My knife goes straight through her throat, and the same dirty gas from before spurted out. The figure disappears, and she’s still standing in the same spot.

A doppelganger?

Seriously, nightmare fuel here..

Suddenly, the appendage sticking out of her forehead, which bears a strong resemblance to a scythe with a small perforation in the bottom of it, starts glowing dirty-pink. I feel tightness around my wrists as a bright-pink rope-like substance wraps around them, binding them together. Strangely enough, she still let me have a grip of my knife.

It feels like I’m being arrested again. It’s not a pleasant feeling. What the hell is this pink stuff anyway?

“The fuck?” I whisper. She gives a light giggle.

“Sorry. You’re fun when you’re scared.”

“You know… I oddly like that.”

“We’re covering ground. How cute.”

To this, I have nothing to say and my mouth drops. That’s gross. She has to be eight-septillion years old.

And then I realize a few seconds later that it was a joke, and that I probably look like an idiot right now. I walked right into it. I am really too gullible for my own good; I will believe anything someone tells me, just like when one of my friends told me I would look cool pouring imaginary salt shakers into my mouth in front of the entire class.

Oh, how awesome middle school was.

“Nothing to say?” she asks.

“… Nope,” I blanked, straightening my mouth.

“Okay. Well then, I’ll ask questions now. What are you?” she interrogates, once again stepping toward me.

“Like, my species?” I ask for clarification. She nods.

“I’m called a ‘human,’ or homo sapien,” I explained. “I’m part of the order primate in the kingdom animalia. Is that enough?”

“Plenty. Who are you?”

“My name? My real name is Steven LeeRoy Whitaker, as I told you before, but most people call me Sonik.”

“Sonik? An odd name.”

“Oh? And what’s your name, pink-eye?”

There’s only a dash of rudeness in that phrase. Ever since the fifth grade when a part-time bully of mine made fun of my last name. He would always call me “Whinnyker,” which angered me greatly at the time. It was a stupid horse joke, and because horses were (and probably are still) considered highly feminine, I viewed him as calling me feminine.

Not that I have or had a problem with feminine men or men that like horses, but it angered me a lot.

“You may refer to me as Queen Calliphora, you damn monkey,” she calmly spits at me, a tinge of anger lining her voice. I see a frown, which is infinitely more accepted by me than that smile.

Why am I so obsessed with that smile?

“Calliphora? Isn’t that some sort of fly?”

“A fly? Well, I am an insect, so I guess it does make a bit of sense. Anyway, how did you get here?”

“I have no clue. I remember looking in a mirror, and I saw this demon or something, and the next thing I knew, I woke up here.”

“Is that so? How odd.’

“Speaking of which, where the hell am I?”

“You are in my hive, the Nekropolis.”

A hive? I guess it does make sense, considering she’s an insect queen.

“The Nekropolis? It sounds like a zombie party or something.”

“Well, we are underneath a graveyard.”

“We are? Are there dead bodies in here?”

“No. but there are corpses in the ceiling, if that makes a difference.”

“Not really. At least it doesn’t smell in here.”

Okay, that’s a lie. There is a slight stench of rotting corpse in here, but it’s not very prominent. The urge to vomit is minimal.

“What do you mean? The smell of rotting flesh is wonderful. It’s a great aphrodisiac,” she says, a larger smile than before creeping up on her face.

“... What!?” I scream at a high pitch, almost wanting to let out a laugh of disgust.

“It’s very stimulating,” she continues, making me feel a tad violated. I like sexual humor, but this is a bit too much.

“That’s disgusting! Are you saying that you’re going to-” I say vehemently, struggling harshly against the pink rope around my wrists. I wish I could flip my knife around so I could cut it.

“No. I’m not that kind of changeling; although, there has been the temptation in the past,” she interrupts, taking a step forward. She smiles.

“Okay! Let’s change the subject! Please!” I beg, going into a full fetal position, shoving my head between my legs.

At this moment, the blue-eyed changeling steps forward and looks at Calliphora. A series of sharp hissing and clicking sounds emerge from her mouth, like the sounds of a wild African tribe. Calliphora nods her head as if in agreement to something her counterpart said.

“Stay there. We’ll be back.” Calliphora says, turning to walk out of the room with the other large changeling.

I let myself recline to a more comfortable position as I lay in wait for the two to return. I set my knife down to my side and close my eyes, releasing a long sigh.

The two changeling queens walk through a few different rooms to get away from Steven, so as he wouldn’t hear their conversation. The entirety of the Nekropolis is pitch-black underneath the roof of corpses and graves, except for a few patches of light shining through holes in the ceiling. Being a cave underneath the surface, the rocks on the ground and the walls are jagged and sharp. It’s no problem to the changelings, however, as their hard chitin protects them from being stabbed.

“Myxine, what do you think that we should do about this… false intrusion? Perhaps we should order for the council?” Calliphora suggests, sitting down to her haunches in thought. Myxine does the same, sitting across from her.

“The idea is decent; however, I believe we must access if he is dangerous before then,” Myxine informs.

“He does not seem dangerous on the outside. It appears to me that it is merely the fear he is experiencing that is dictating his hasty actions. It is more probable that he is not a very violent creature. I should have taken the knife from him previously,” Calliphora admits, cocking her head. “Why is important if he is or isn’t dangerous? We have spells to protect ourselves.”

“We do not understand the possibilities that this creature has in terms of physical or magical strength. I believe we must test him to make sure that he cannot cause major damage, for if he has magic stronger than ours, he may seek havoc.”

“Well spoken, Myxine. I understand now, but I must question how you believe that he could have magic stronger than one of us individually, let alone combined. Are you that paranoid?”

“I am not paranoid. I simply believe that because we do not know if he has potent magic, or magic at all, we must test him to determine if he does or doesn’t, and if he does, access the level of potency of which his magic is classified. This is the first time either of us have seen one of these creatures, you know.”

“I suppose that you are correct. Very well. How can we test him?”

“The best way to do this is probably the Take Magic spell in your spellbook.”

“A fair idea, once again.”

With her magic, Calliphora conjures up a book out of the air that has a light-brown cover, which is decorated a strange rhombus symbol and an X on it, coming from the corners. There is a clear marble of sorts in the center, glimmering even in the darkness of the Nekropolis.

“Shall we?” Myxine asks, standing up.

“Let’s.”

Author's Note

Big thanks to Commissar-Rarity for going through this chapter with me and helping out ironing out the bigger problems!

If you enjoyed this, why don't you smack that like and favorite button and tell me what you thought about this in the comments below? If you didn't, won't you be so kind as to tell me what you thought was off