Chapters The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGWAwJLAvTE
Entry 1
Entry 1 – September 30th, 1122, approx. 21:00
The moon has waned considerably, so please excuse me if my time reading is somewhat off its mark. I can still see the moon and sun dials outside the mansion, but I can be a little featherbrained in my readings. I always knew I should’ve taken the class on it.
Anyway, I must ask you to please pardon the grey backs of these pages. As I write, I have to keep the carbon sheets and papers beneath them steady with my hooves. I intend to spend the next three days fervently continuously writing. It is quite necessary that some written records exist for what I am about to recall.
We are on the precipice of a breakthrough in combatting the Changelings. Once I am finished recalling the events, both personal and relevant to what will be in my mind the culmination of my service to the Inquisition, I will proceed to actualize it.
Both my desire and the reassurance from my superiors (namely, hunter Starfall and Her Majesty Princess Luna) compel me to write this. However, the only time I have ever kept a journal was during my early colthood when I was first learning to write, so please pardon me if this manuscript gets inane at times.
I guess I’ll proceed from the beginning. My name is Zeta Cherrypaste. I am the sole progeny of my dam, Sara Cherrypaste, and my sire Phil Cherrypaste. I was raised in the mountainside village of Tailsbury. For identification purposes, I state I am a stallion possessing a coat of pyrite color and an umber mane. My Cutie Mark is that of a knife stirring a blood-red potion in an alchemist’s phial, which is surrounded by a green aura. As our last names suggest, we are a family of cherry pickers and mashers. We were all modest Earth ponies.
My colthood was fairly typical; nothing about my particular demeanor suggested that I would become an alchemist. However, there was, I suppose, enough to suggest the possibility of my involvement with the Inquisition’s Changeling hunters. My uncle (on my mother’s side) Gregory had been murdered on the outskirts of an offshoot settlement in Appleoosa. It was a tragic event, of course, and Sara had done her best to indoctrinate in me a hatred for the Changeling perpetrators and a deep resentment for those who attempt to regard them as higher beings than they are.
I would draw their hideous faces on especially stubborn cherry trees and furiously pound them. I think I took her institution a little farther than she had anticipated I would; I recall there was a genuine tinge of remorse in her eyes as I told her, “I wish to fight and bleed and kill and die if it exacts the retribution they deserve. I know Uncle George can’t be their only victim.” I guess she knew then that the Inquisitors would come to recruit me, having sensed an especially kindled will to add to their Changeling-destroying ranks. She never told me that Uncle George actually hadn’t been murdered but rather had been reduced to a pallid, emotionless, expressionless, shell with eyes sable without soul until I had gone much time without mentioning anything about being a hunter.
My fantasies appearing to her to having run dry, I guess she imagined I could take this truth with a dose of old molasses. I don’t know if I have ever since roared so loud – not even on the train. The next day witnessed the arrival of two Pegasi to our village. They were looking for me, of course, and I happily shook hooves with them upon sight, despite not initially knowing the purpose of their visit. I didn’t know they were the characters they were, but I was almost entranced by their maroon costumes and the shimmering buckles on their glossy black boots.
In a partly isolated village like Tailsbury, a pony simply doesn’t find much majesty. The two formal figures allowed me to feast my eyes on their majesty for two solid seconds before they suddenly commanded, “Take us to your abode.”
They proceeded to greet my parents, and the next week featured a series of assessments. The preliminary ones were psychological evaluations for my parents and me. Several of their questions regarded loyalty and personal tenets. I had expected their questions to be more sterile, but I zealously completed all their tasks. They afterwards focused on and moved on to assessing my aptitude.
I made clear to them that they should look beyond my athletic capacities and consider my affinity for magic. Although I was aware magic had always been to a certain extent out of my reach, I possessed several old tomes on the subject. I had acquired them mainly as birthday gifts. The mass production of books to meet the spike in demand for them following Her Majesty Princess Twilight Sparkle’s coronation in 1002 obviously had driven prices down. Revolutions and discoveries in magic since then drove many copies out of utility, so they became bargains. Random copies of these century-old books constituted my personal library.
As anypony with access to the Archives of the Royal Academy of Inquisitors would find under my file, I was admitted despite my otherwise lackluster aptitude scores because my athletics and muscle memory were on par. A new recruitment initiative had been set, you see. Since its formation, the league of Inquisitors had almost exclusively selected talent from Bat Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi for obvious reasons: magician technicians and eyes in the sky make for optimal Changeling hunters. Earth ponies were seen as easier Changeling targets and had been victimized by them far more often. Eventually, somepony realized that there were, first , a mounting will to combat them among my demographic, and, second, talent we could offer to the cause. Wanting to compensate for untapped reserves among us, the Academy made Earth ponies practically preferred enrollees.
A commonality among all of those who are inducted is that they had all been wronged by members of that wretched race of Changelings. I guess I counted under some purview of being indirectly wronged, but practically all my fellow students, as I quickly found out upon my first few days at the Academy, had been very directly wronged.
Their stories still boil my blood when I recall them. If I ever begin to have to slightest bit less contempt for Changelings, I bring those stories to my mind. Their stories don’t and never do get out to the public, so I shan’t disclose them. My lack of a chilling firsthoof account at first made me question whether I could bring myself to be as ruthless in fighting these monsters as my fellows, but my suspicions would not hold.
It would be vacuous of me to fail to mention the sort of courses I took there. Of course, we needed soldierly training, an understanding of the darkest parts of Equestria’s history, and immense education regarding the understanding of our enemy, knowledge obscure to the hoi polloi. The rest of our courses were entirely up to our selection, but each pony only has four years of studying and mastery to acquire the skills which they think will be most conducive to their own style of hunting.
A pony might think, keeping my avid interest in magic in mind, that I would have decided to become more of a scholar than a fighter, but I wanted to stick to my bracers and make my body my tool. Of course, I delved into the great tomes of our library and learned from them a great deal of enrichment history and practical skills for my destined trade; however, there was no point in strengthening my mind if my hide could be easily taken by those love-eating Changelings.
Oh, yes, love-eating. I think my compassion for ponykind is what really drives me. The Academy encourages studying the arts as a means of familiarizing ourselves with what evokes in us that which they would consume. I’ve always thought acting was a fitting art to pursue for our cause; our enemy is born to masquerade and undermine us. Why shouldn’t we all learn to beat them at their own game, I would consider from time to time.
“I shall see to it myself if no one else will,” I’d say. The arts aren’t as popular for our morose bunch as I would expect, but I guess that’s our folly. In music, I came to appreciate a wide variety of composers and performers, but, sticking to my roots yet again, I cultivated interest in a now-deceased guitar-picking Stallion in Black named Johnny Two-Bits. Singing his lonesome ballads and his many covers helped me from time to time, and I don’t see how so many of us can only find solace in the blood we draw from our Changeling enemies.
I took various martial arts courses, and I could practically smith my own armor for myself and stand in as a knight and (solely by test of ability, mind you) be virtually undistinguishable from a typical Royal Guard. That is not to say that any pony of a Royal Guard is typical or unskilled or incapable of rooting out subversives. It is the contrary; I mean to say that my concentrated training at the Academy was so extensive as to whip a cherry-picking, pit-chewing, bark painting-smashing, slurs-his-words village colt into an autonomous and worthy warrior.
At least, at the time, I was so assured of my courage. Martial arts gave all of us cadets a certain degree of discipline, but I regretfully state that some, even from what I could gather of my most respected peers, were and (I imagine) still are prepared to be somewhat reckless in performing their duties. Four years can mold and change a pony, I affirm, but I have always feared that the Academy’s search for the ponies most broken by the Changelings (other than their fed-on victims) leads them to pick potentially unstable candidates. The Academy’s expeditious assimilating, conditioning, and training cycles are all thorough and effectual, but I’ve always felt there is an inner turmoil to all of it.
Obviously, there are checks in the process, and no failings, or we would not last as an order for as long as we have.
Anyway, I’ll put my opinions to the hay for the moment. I became entirely enamored with alchemy once I started the class in my sophomore year. I was one of very few who took it; there were other Earth ponies taking it, also trying to compensate for their lack of spell-casting abilities, but nopony stuck with it for as long as I did. I was basically privately instructed by Master Alchemist Lawrence Mortar. If anypony reading this recognizes the name, he’s the author of More Tar for My Mortar, Please and It Takes a Pulverizer to Truly Obliterate . Probably one of the most lethal poison concocters of our time and one of the most brilliant toxicologists to date, he opened for me the doors to my inspiration and success through his encouragement and tutelage.
I obtained my Cutie Mark in his classes when I realized that I needed to explore the outlets of alchemy in order to benefit ponykind, but the symbolism of my mark is confounded. I’m supposed to use my alchemy to fight the Changelings, that’s what the green aura and the knife and the potion bottle all represent, but the blood perplexes me.
He accidentally poisoned himself during my junior year. He had nearly developed a poison he thought could be implemented as a volatile gas noxious to Changelings but innocuous to ponykind. As it proved, however, the nature of the exotic ingredients that affected Changelings was that they were exclusively safe for ingestion by ponies but not so much for inhalation. Failing to see this possibility, he perished untimely.
What kills Changelings seems to kill ponies alike. With this in mind, I tried not to add insult to death but desperately desired to convey that the search for a safe poison to use on Changelings was a futile measure. I immediately began to write my Acolyte’s thesis (the free-range topic manuscript that each Inquisitor Cadet needs to prepare in order to be coronated “Acolyte” to graduate and pursue a hunting mercenary career) on the matter. I had to suggest an alternative in order to have a complete essay that demonstrated significant critical learning and understanding of the pursuits of the Inquisitors.
As such, I suggested that we seek a formula which, if taken by a Changeling in disguised form, would subtly reveal to a pony that the Changeling wasn’t a true pony in fact. Using the stomach-to-heart principle of alchemy, we could defeat their natural ability to cloak themselves and stand in as ponies they’ve seen by getting their internal mechanisms to betray them in ways that traditionally cast dispel spells fail to do. A basic principle of their anatomy is that they’re like insects: their translucent wings, their eyes, and their putrid blood. I hypothesized, as has been considered a widely accepted theory, that their exoskeletons not only physically protect their blood-bound innards but also protect them magically.
To test such theorized concoctions, however, would require us to abandon our practice of testing our substances in battle with poisoned blades or on incapacitated Changelings. Since the utility of such a substance would be subtle in nature, it would have to be tested using subtler methods. It was revolutionary, in my opinion.
Revolutionary indeed, so thought the board that expelled me from the Academy. The Inquisition takes no prisoners, you see. As I began my thesis I knew that I was putting something at stake, but I had nonetheless proceeded to memorize the speech me and my fellow would-be Acolytes would be given by Princess Luna at our coronation. We would hunt from the ends of Equestria for all our lives, knowing that we are just cleaning up the hordes of Changelings that had been scattered by the explosion of 1001 at the wedding of Her Majesty Princess Cadence, Good Queen of the Crystal Ponies, and His Majesty Prince Shining Armor. Until we can ascertain that they are dealt with, we cannot finally seek out their queen (Chrysalis, whose name I shan’t allow to defile these pages more than necessary) without fear of major undermining retaliation from its (Changelings don’t deserve personal pronouns) sleeper cells and satellites.
There is no gratitude offered to our lot of hunters for the atrocities we must commit for the sake of Glorious Princess Celestia’s Equestrian Kingdom. Inquisitors tarnish not her name but rather our own in whatever transgressions we commit. Nobody goes into it for the glory because there is none to be had except from those in the know, and that’s basically us, too. It doesn’t take a lot of mental power to recognize that praise from our lot isn’t worth the air we would inspire in order to express it.
Starfall has been reading my carbon copies, for I, having been diverting myself with recalling and reflecting upon my past to you, my journal, failed to realize that I didn’t stop writing when I had promised her I would. “I’ve nearly retched from your pretense. Drop the act. I know this means something to you, this discourse about yourself, but tell it how you’d tell it to me. You know, you got like this when I first arrived, but it’s not you. You get into the speech mannerisms we all had back at the Academy, but no one’s going to survive your lofty speech, let alone give their good hoof for your text, if you keep blathering like you’re talking to Princess Luna.”
Noting her point, I respond, “I can’t take this with levity; should anypony delve into this writing, I would be remiss to address these matters with a tone other than one of total seriousness, lest I come across as incognizant of its purpose,” making sure to add a touch of sarcastic intonation on each lofty word.
“Neither shall you take my hoof sandwich with any sort of levity, should I catch you using the word ‘incognizant’ again. Tell it how you’d tell it to me, or I’m setting the little guys downstairs free.”
Please forgive me, journal. Laughing her good-natured threats off, I almost spilled my carrot juice on you. Starfall doesn’t like carrot juice but begrudgingly takes it when I remind her of the Academy’s nutritional maxim:
“Taking carrots each day keeps night blindness at bay.”
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvz5wZ6DSYE
Entry 2
Entry 2 – October 1st, 1122, approx. 21:00
Autumn’s chill must be scheduled to arrive early this year. It was exceptionally cold for being this early in the fall today. I really need to be more careful by the river. I lament never having taken swimming lessons back at the Academy; I would have floated at least a mile farther down the river if Starfall hadn’t magically fished me out of it while I was fetching the water. I just got so wrapped up in what I wanted to express in today’s entry.
I wanted to meditate upon it, and I guess the appropriate time for this came when I galloped circles around Starfall in order to shake off the coldness of the evaporating water (not to mention the panic from my fall into the river). I wouldn’t have called my dip refreshing by any means, but I enjoyed my contemplation. Starfall was afraid my muscles would vegetate a little from my just sitting around and writing, but my workout put those fears to rest.
So yes, kicked out of the Academy with nopony to turn to, I made the shameful trek back to Tailsbury to inform my parents of my failure. Ponies I encountered on the road back couldn’t tell my vocation by just seeing me, for I wore no garments that would have alluded to my status, but everypony back at the village knew what I had been molded for doing and thus didn’t talk to me. Desolate and devastated but hardly surprised, I confronted my parents, told them how things were, and insisted that I still had a use for the books I hadn’t the time to read before my being whisked away.
I didn’t want their money, and they could sell and dispose of the remainder of my belongings. I told them that I still had business as an unofficial hunter to fulfill, pointing to my Cutie Mark, and that I was certain to return for the books once I was prepared to use them. I didn’t tell them the location of my intended future residence, this mansion; it just wouldn’t do well for potentially loose lips to know, and, since they didn’t ask about it and seemed dubious about the possibility of my return, there was no reason to do so.
This mansion is practically the farthest thing in Equestria from my hometown; I needed money to achieve the transport of myself and the necessary luggage to the place. I had learned about it in my studies. This was once an outpost for Changeling hunters of the fifth century. Mostly secluded and surrounded by the forested valley side, it stands not far off from a railway relatively recently constructed, the Horseshoe Curve. The trains take both passengers and occasionally cargo. I knew some enchantment would have kept this place standing, so I only needed the means of actualizing my transport, as I said.
Aye, therein lay the salt. With the stigma on me, employment in Tailsbury was a crux. Everypony with a reputation to maintain asks for your credentials these days, so this impeded me. And, certainly, the Inquisition doesn’t pay unendorsed vigilante Changeling hunters. I moved to metropolitan Manehattan.
Except for my former master, I think there are no poison alchemists without innocent blood staining their hooves (to add to, of course, the ingredients they’ve mashed with them). An average pony wouldn’t believe his eyes if one could see the entirety of Manehattan’s seas of rogues in desperate need for an efficacious poison. Needless to say, I had to cater to a few just to survive, but it would eventually become more than just subsistence. The ponies I had to deal with in that black market frightened me in an untraditional respect. The broken souls I saw in the eyes of those few contacts I made before finally securing a job as a porter struck me as no different to the leagues of souls of those ponies at the Academy. Experience can harden cutthroats and cadets, but it cannot conceal their inner, broken character.
I needed a base of operations in order to cater to the cutthroats. With diligence I was able to lodge at a disintegrating hotel run by a mercurial, middle-aged unicorn who called himself St. Periwinkle. Although I do consider all names to be noteworthy, I shan’t disclose the name of the establishment because nopony privy to its existence would read this and because it’s really the business of nopony else to know it. His hotel confronted, among other pitfalls, an insect infestation of parasitic nature, so to St. Periwinkle I offered to utilize my alchemical capacities to eradicate it and preclude its return in exchange for free boarding and a certain degree of room service and also some discretion as to disclosure of my identity.
One day, St. Periwinkle, having spent the majority of his life as a savvy tradesman among society’s disdained, had been subjected to the smacking of his cranium against the city pavement by some pugnacious pony in a typical bar struggle. His wits scrambled by the injury, he decided to start up in the hotel business, providing low-cost lodging to the menaces with whom he was familiar. Although it was fairly successful (since no such menaces could possibly afford a stay at any other hotel in Manehattan), his patrons effected its inevitable decadence, and St. Periwinkle did not possess enough mental faculties to truly maintain his hotel’s condition.
Obviously, the eradication process was within my ability, and I was dutiful. My room’s carpet was shag and burnt orange in color. The peeling white wallpaper revealed walls of the yellow color of orange juice. The whole facility smelled like rotten oranges.
As I finally managed to surreptitiously establish myself in the area, a network formed. Ponies realized that there was a proficient poisoner available, and black mercantile for the ingredients my products required ingratiated itself to me. In due time, I barely needed to step out of the hotel, and this meant relative safety to me.
My work brought a certain degree of renown to the hotel among Manehattan’s knaves, and it was frequented more often. As I would work in the deep night, through the walls I could hear treacherous business discussions. On many occasions I saw during the day innocent ponies who were to be depraved by goings on there during the subsequent night. I needed only to remind myself of the bystander effect to soothe my conscience. I would just sit in my room and conduct my business; after all, I was saving up so that I could move on to a safer environment. I had to preserve my resolve in my moral mission for the sake of those innocents I passively betrayed.
Once I had managed pecuniary acquisition, I packed up in the afternoon and met St. Periwinkle at his greeter’s desk. "'Fraid I’m finished here. It’s been kind of you to house me here, but I must move on.”
I had made a beeline for the door and had opened it when he ultimately addressed me. “Why don’t you come back here? I gotta depar’in’ present for you.”
I thanked him but said I had to be going immediately because I didn’t want to be tracked. It was a feeble excuse for my promptness, but I knew his ritual farewell. I rapidly slipped through the open door and slammed it shut. Before I could bolt, I heard a dull thump. Panic set my muscles, despite their being severely unused, working in haste. I turned my head and beheld that the tip of his dagger had completely pierced the door. As I reached the first intersection down the street to turn, I looked back once more. Waving in good humor at me, he stood at the open doorway, so I waved back. My departing from there was my sanest act, and my freelance poisoner’s days were over.
Leaving that job for being a porter was a brief relief; still in Manehattan working at the train station, I still had to look over my shoulder for avengers of lost business and lost lives. In due course, my occupational labor kept my paranoia at bay. In preparation for the final trip to come, I expanded my personal collection of weaponry from that of a few knives to a vast assortment of martial accoutrements and tomes of techniques on their usage. I began to feel fairly safe.
So, why did the occupational switch make for a transient relaxation in me? Surely, I was capable of hefting and storing the luggage of innumerable throngs of affluent passengers willing to spare a few bits for me, a stallion with a disturbing image on his haunch. Even though I was capable (after whipping myself back into shape), even though the patrons’ tips were more than acceptable, and even though the work’s monotony was comfortingly mind-numbing, I would expound upon how loathsome the porter’s task is and how it is quite possibly the most undignified occupation anypony could ever hold.
First, there’s no romantic dignity to the job. There’s no respect for the spatial management skills and physical and mental endurance demanded of a porter. Second, a porter’s clients disdainfully afford the porter their business. How their belongings get damaged by anything or anypony other than the porters is beyond their capacity to reckon, and many a wealthy pony has heeded the grime upon our hooves and the coal dust in our manes and almost reconsidered tossing their glistening, freshly minted bits to us. Let me tell you that porters are a lonesome lot with no community but the sole constants in their lives: the conductors, brakeponies, and train engineers. We don’t talk to each other much; we have our duties, and we know that none of us have it better than any of the rest.
I was the only singer among my porter companions. I eventually bought myself a guitar to accompany myself while singing Johnny Two-Bits’ lovely train songs for my porter friends. They would spend their money on salt instead of buying his music and would come to me to soothe their bluesy hearts with the music inextricably connected to them. I eventually started singing a capella at the station as the work began to take less breath out of me. Some ponies, entertained by music from a world they would never know, threw a few extra bits for me to continue singing.
If I could brew a potion to resurrect old Johnny Two-Bits, I’d make it promptly. I would thank him endlessly for what his music has done for me. In about a year I saved enough of those bits to haul my belongings and “tools” (all those pony feather-plucking bribes and obsessive favor winning to persuade them to ship such murderous objects!) along with me the whole way out into the wilderness where the mansion stood. My fellow porters considered my leaving a gesture of betrayal, but I got over it, for the Academy had taught me how.
This mansion is a thousand yards up the valley’s densely forested west side from the tracks. East of the tracks the valley continues downward to a moderately sized river with a fairly regular current that stagnates during the winter from ice and during the summer from lack of rain. Knowing its location by coordinates, I had no trouble finding it, but I did find bringing all my equipment to it all the way from the tracks from where I disembarked from the train to be a decent preliminary challenge.
I use the term “mansion” to describe this building because it was what my sources called it. This is a relatively diminutive mansion. The perimeter, outlined mostly by pines, is sharply square, and the building is, too. A yard out from its walls on all sides extends a roofed porch with no furniture. The front porch and top floor attic feature no windows, but the second floor sports two prodigious, circular ones with cross-braces. A magically noiseless gravel ramp leads up to the front door.
It was twilight time when I finally arrived at my new abode. Hefting my equipment up the silent rock ramp, I was reassured. The old spells protecting the abandoned hunter fortification hadn’t considerably weakened, although the barrier against outsiders had obviously worn off. Taking my favorite rapier from my luggage, I stepped inside in order to clear the place.
The word “pawn” resounded in my mind as I began to gain perspective from what I saw. Magic had preserved the furniture, articles, and food stores in here, but a heavy layer of dust obscured everything. I felt almost as if I was ruining the time capsule by adding my anachronistic self to it. As I passed through the various rooms of the place, I felt young and naïve by comparison to the objects around me. Our struggle as hunters has not ever ceased, and, then in the process of minimizing, my self-significance humbled me.
I called out, “Beware! A Changeling hunter of the Royal Inquisition is here to reclaim the premises. If there be anypony or anything here, be at liberty to reveal yourself; you won’t be harmed if you are not an official enemy. If you wittingly choose not to notify me of your station here, I cannot be held liable for any damage to you I may incur if you surprise me.” Stating my verbal waiver set my mind back on the right track and truncated my brooding.
Immediately a few paces in from the front doorway was a step ladder leading up to the second floor. There weren’t many decorations other than a few mirrors in each room. I guessed they were in vogue during the time. Since the dust was uniform as I traveled from room to room, I counterintuitively braced myself. I didn’t want the lack of an indication of its disruption to persuade me to lower my guard.
To the left of the entrance was a sort of kitchen and dining area with a small window to the outside. It was well equipped; there was dishware for fifteen and seating at an oblong table for about twelve. Deeper into the house (this is to say, forward if one was facing the front of the building) on this side was a pantry room. There was no natural lighting in there except that which reflected off the kitchen’s grey floorboards. There were places for candles, however, and there was a door leading to the basement from this room. Instead of exploring further, I retraced my strides back to the entrance and visited the right side.
The immediate room was a huge lounge. There were twenty-three styles of chairs and couches, each of which seemed to be designed for a unique relaxing preference. There were end tables for the couches, and there were several half-filled bookshelves scattered about the room. Some of the books, I discerned, hadn’t been finished by their respective reader, for they sported a bookmark. A gramophone stood proudly on the room’s only rug, which was located somewhat close to its center. There were windows to the outside along the building’s right wall, and toward the back of the room there was a hearth along the same wall. I briefly peered up the chimney, and my eyes met no night sky. I hoped that the hearth was enchanted so that fires ignited in it would keep burning, for the cool mountain-forest air outside was no different from the air inside except for that the air inside was becoming more dust-laden with each step I took.
I proceeded deeper into the mansion’s right side to a study. It was surprisingly claustrophobic, but the lack of light probably augmented my initial suspense. I certainly wouldn’t be bored reading these ancient works, I thought. The bookshelves were more efficient than I could discern in the darkness; a secondary copy of each book lay deeper in the shelf beyond each book. The cases stood before the walls and covered them entirely. There were some desks and writing utensils within their drawers, but even magic couldn’t possibly clean the dust out of the few still-open jars scattered about.
I returned to the front of the house and proceeded up the step ladder to the second floor. The second floor consisted of a dormitory of cubicles and a spiral staircase up to the attic in the back right corner. There were twelve bedrooms: four adjacent to the right, left, and back walls with none to front. There were simple walls for each bedroom, and from where I stood was the edge of a roughly 13 by 13-foot area of treading space. All the doors were closed, so I turned to face the front of the building, where immediately before me I beheld the windows and the sight above the trees they afforded. The dormitories protruded out from each wall only so far as to be within a foot short of the center as the far edges of the windows were. The last bedroom on each side from back to front didn’t connect to the house’s front wall. In the left wall’s cranny I found brushes and brooms, and in the right wall’s cranny I found the chimney brush. I set down my rapier. I immediately seized it and twirled it, emitting on my falsetto, “Hwoooah!”
Chuckling, I replaced it and wielded once again my rapier. Stoked, I efficiently managed to clear each bedroom. The bedrooms didn’t terribly lack space, but it struck me that the foot of the bed in each one was hardly far from the doorway. Each room had its own garment wardrobe, which either was empty or sparse. The garments to be found were clean, but they were all undershirts. One would not have discerned this mansion’s purpose from these clothes alone.
These rooms all featured an unfilled storage chest, a small bookshelf, a waste bin, several candle holders, and a specialized work station. My destined habitation was the leftmost bedroom on the back wall. I’m not sure what called me to it. It was apparent that most of the previous owners were not majorly into alchemy. However, I was pleased to find a room with a suitable alchemy station on the far right. I didn’t choose this room for my own because sharing sleeping quarters with an alchemist’s experiments and materials is both certainly olfactorily displeasing and potentially mortally risky. Having almost demolished the hotel and nearly suffocated myself at least three times, I should know.
I left every door open except the basement’s as I ascended to the attic. Despite the sloping ceiling, there wasn’t much beyond a large pile of gramophone discs. There was an exit at the intersection of the building’s back and left walls. It led to a platform to the shingled roof. At the top of the protruding chimney was a structure on which one could stand for cleaning the chimney. However, it wasn’t connected to the roof in any way; I would have to leap in order to access it. I guessed the Pegasi among the previous occupants did that job.
Before I could attend to that treacherous business, I still had to clear the basement. Dead hunters are ambushed, so I cleared all the rooms again in reverse order and returned to the pantry with no issue. I brought a candle with me this time.
Nothing about the dungeon was sinister. Although the gleaming, enchanted armaments stored there weren’t cruel, the perpetually sweating stone walls gave the place an eerie ambience. The enchanted cordage I found was disturbingly plentiful, and there were stone protrusions from the floor and walls. It obviously was meant for torture. Nightmare Moon and Discord cultists, I thought, would have been likely prisoners in those times when discussion of holding such characters didn’t make a pony subject to exile.
There was work to be done, and with having been on edge I would have done it all, but settling in and sleeping were my priorities. Putting my belongings in my new home, I regretted leaving them out on the porch. However unlikely, the prospect of having had all this stuff stolen as I explored chilled me beyond what the evening air had done to me.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
There is an audio reading of this installment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ZyvRY9yjo
Entry 3
Entry 3 – October 2nd, 1122, approx. 21:00
Starfall doesn’t keep a journal, and I probably wouldn’t record anything, either, except for my alchemy notes and experiment papers. She does, however, keep a dream journal. Upon my telling her that I don’t have many dreams worth writing down, she commented that I must sleep too deeply to have them. Perhaps.
She tells me, “If you had to sleep in as many strange places as I have, you’d soon know the key to batty dreams.”
Do tell.
The first order of business of the day following my arrival here was to clean the chimney and to fell the trees that would clog it back up in due course. I had managed the perilous adventure with the chimney by noon, for I had slept in considerably. I had brought an axe with me to chop the trees for wood, but I didn’t realize how long it would take me to create my first transportable log. It is impossible to see the tracks from the mansion without being airborne; the trees grow tall beside the tracks, rendering it impossible to even spot passing trains from the chimney platform.
I was famished but not starving at this point, so I decided to forage. After all, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to sustain myself. I was planning on selling a great deal of the weaponry I found in the dungeon, but this wouldn’t bring me enough bits for all the supplies I imagined I would need. Anyway, I proceeded to scope out the area of forest immediately around, following a swirling path out from the center, which was the mansion. My ravenous eyes would catch anything edible, I thought, if there was something to be found.
I discovered a series of blueberry bushes running down the valley parallel to the train, keeping about a thousand yards from the tracks, just as the mansion was. Each bush was about a hundred yards away from the others, but, viewing the series’ pattern, they seemed to form points that connected in a rhomboidal fashion, like a string of diamonds. The first one I met was alone, but a hundred yards further down were two, and further down there was one. Of course, the first bush was a goner; I devoured almost every berry on the bush. Sugared up, I continued to follow the bush’s strange pattern for about twenty miles until it finally ceased.
It was a marvelous thing, but the growing pattern had obviously been orchestrated by ponies. Going parallel to the tracks back to the mansion, one would have to travel about seven hundred yards to reach the first bush, as I discerned on my way back. I also made another important but much more dismaying discovery: there was a small colony of Vampire Fruit Bats in the area. They had situated themselves on the other side of the valley, but their arrival to my side was looming. I would have to let them run their course; the more self-sustaining my operation was, the better, I thought. Their seed-spitting would make more prolific bushes. Still, I needed something for myself.
I admit that the bats irked me to an extent. I should have been grateful for their impending blessings to bestow, but they were my anathema.
It was around 17:00 when I arrived back, I recall, but I was physically exhausted. I had one log whose fire would warm me in the evening, I knew, but I was frustrated at my lassitude. I had gained significant knowledge of my immediate surroundings, but there was something missing. I realized I was craving mental stimulation, so I grabbed some of my candles and stalked to the study to read. When I discovered that I wouldn’t have to selectively relinquish the only copies available to me of these old tomes to Manehattan’s booksellers, I leapt into the air, and the miserable prospects of my future tasks melted from my mind. I found that many of the copies of these books were first editions, and so were their respective duplicates.
The writing mannerisms were fairly abstruse, but the material of many of the books wholly related to Inquisitor’s pursuits although they weren’t necessarily written for them. The rest of the books I found were for entertainment; once I had read them, I would be free to sell them.
Good news, bad news, and more good news for the long haul.
I set forth reading until it started getting chilly again. I made fire with the fresh log with some trying, but it was worth it. I’d have to collect kindling, I noted. The pantry was stocked with magically guarded, ancient emergency rations, so there was no point in my using them. I’d have to collect the blueberries from the bushes quickly and preserve them, being mindful to leave about half for the bat colony. I’d need to continue building fire stores, and I’d need to dust the house. I’d have to find some time to make trips back to Manehattan to obtain needed supplies and actual food stores and sell the treasures.
All things I managed in good time to varying degrees of success. The dusting certainly wasn’t a snappy task, and I had more time to pick the berries than I had initially conceived. Gathering wood was tedious but kept me strong.
I had to wait for the train, but, knowing the engineer, I found hitching a ride on the train for my few spare bits was an easy business, and the extra copies I sold actually fetched me a small fortune, for I knew their worth before hitting the negotiation table. My business dealings proceeded for far longer than the other tasks, as I was keeping after my alchemy and desperately wanted to secure myself as far as my food reserves went.
The first month was a productive one with regards to setup. My communications with others dropped considerably, but, as my time became freer, I had to find ways of occupying myself beyond studying and experimentation. They were undeniably paramount activities, but they were silent ones.
I never regulated my sleeping schedule, so my internal clock was always thrown. I’d study deep into the evening, but I always left the study’s door open and read at a table facing straight through the doorway. I would practice my martial skills during the day and gallop all my energy out, and my imagination would run wild from time to time, too, so I sometimes imagined things being in the mansion when they were nonexistent in actuality.
One could always hear the train coming, and I realized that I should do something somewhat sociable by going out to see the train firsthoof as it passed. I’d never know when it would come my way, but when it did I’d disengage from my current activity and travel down to it. My speed not failing me, perchance I’d see the engineer. If not, I had passengers I could wave to, and conductors always wave to any folks the train passes. It’s good for business.
At first the passengers either scoffed or marveled at my presence in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t say much to me as they passed, but one day somepony threw me a scrap, and I, having not yet taken my lunch that day, inhaled it before she was too far away to see me do so. I guess it shocked her, for, when I saw the train again, I received more scraps as the train passed. I wasn’t hungry and hadn’t connected the events, so I thought they were spiting me for waving at them or just discarding unwanted food they had ordered. Not one to waste, however, I ate the stuff. So it became custom for passersby to throw random foodstuffs at me and for me to gleefully eat them.
It was an ignoble position for me, but I could not complain. They weren’t always consistent in their provisions, and it wasn’t like they came by every day, but it was something. The days I boarded the train to take the artifacts to the buyers were awkward for them, but, as was the case with the buyers, too, explaining to them that I was a treasure hunter assuaged their suspicions. It wasn’t often, but I would sometimes break out my guitar to sing to the passengers as the train passed. They’d never hear my whole song, but the regular riders regarded it as a treat, as they told me.
Despite these glimmers in my life, I sulked in my isolation. Perhaps I could have just elected to remain a porter. The world always needs them. But then I’d invariably insist that I had skills to channel toward my destiny as a hunter.
I kept imagining that some Inquisitors had heard about an expelled Academy student who had somehow situated himself by the Horseshoe Curve and dreaded each night that they would burst in, drag me to the dungeon and leave me there for being a failure among them. I certainly wasn’t making up for anything by neglecting to go out to slay the Changeling beasts. Each time I thought this, I’d press myself to develop a new formula for my theorized potion. There was no way of getting back into the Academy as far as I could tell, so, once I had explored all possible outlets or once I was due to retire (whichever was to come first), I would have to acquire my test subjects and see how close my experiments got. Fatal thinking like this brought me to drown it in the records from upstairs. I guess his works were good for the time, but W. A. Oatzart isn’t my thing.
I’d rant sometimes to fantasized apparitions of hunters at my door. I would argue their fallacies and folly away with egregiously elaborate and premeditated speeches I’d compose in between studying, singing, and experimentation. Pretending to have hearing comparable to that of the Bat Ponies, I’d blindfold and imagine myself succeeding in singlehoofedly slaying entire dens of Changelings. On my explorations I did for exercise, I would search for Changelings even though I knew they weren’t present. This activity reassured me, for it dually fulfilled a precautionary purpose.
In essence, I was plummeting to unprecedented lows in order to maintain a stranglehold on my own sanity. Murderous mares from Manehattan’s crime circuits, insidious shape shifters, delinquent hunters dissatisfied with the Academy’s treatment of my case, killer cultists, marauding berserkers, and even reckless dragons plagued my worries. I am grateful that my fatal thinking always came to same resolution: if my work is to come to an unexpected end, I should get as far as I can manage just to spite it.
Fearing keeping track of the days would add to my sense of desolation, I’d gone a certain length only knowing the year by the turn of the seasons. It was spring. It had been about two and a half years since my initial arrival here and about six since my expulsion. Frequent train passengers knew my name and my affinity for Johnny Two-Bits, and the Vampire Fruit Bats had done their number on the bushes, and I was eagerly awaiting their springtime effect. Summers made river wading comfortable and negotiable for me, and winters made study time cozier. I had moved the downstairs armaments to the containers to be found in the upstairs bedrooms and utilized the extra space in the basement to store the potions ready for testing.
My paranoia had made my sleeping lighter, and, seeing as I could catch up on sleep whenever I felt the need, I would arise from sleep to meet the train, whose whistle the engineer blew extra early so as to warn me. I never got to tell him, but this courtesy warmed my heart.
One spring night the whistle came in faint, but I still heard it. I rushed to the tracks and found that the train wasn’t quite to where I was; the engineer must have rung it too early. The train seemed to be picking up speed, so I assumed he was trying to compensate. The brakepony had recently retired, so I wasn’t sure he realized that he wouldn’t be able to slow the train down in time for me to see him. It wasn’t my fault, and I couldn’t blame the engineer for his mistake.
However, I did blame him for not addressing me as I greeted him when he did reach me. I also blamed him for having not issued his new brakepony to slow down the train as it passed. A passenger’s high velocity cupcake hit my ear as I stood in dumbfounded dejection, but what really made my heart sink was the newly green-eyed conductor’s hypnotized indifference as I tried to wave to him.
I galloped alongside the slowly accelerating but still speedy train and found within myself an ardent resolution to reach the coal bin at the front of the train. I was surprised my arteries didn’t rupture from pushing myself to reach it, but I closed my eyes and with a leap I was in. I could feel by the soft nature of my landing and by slight warmth under my hooves that I had landed on the murdered engineer despite his being covered with a layer of coal chunks.
Fearing the train robbers’ eyes were on me, I abstained from looking down. I panted, but I managed to say in an assumed accent, “Heya, why didn’ cha say hi to me back there, huh?”
The two masqueraders looked strangely at one another but, realizing that they should have hailed me with greater familiarity, they turned to me and did so as nonchalantly as they could manage in spite of their surprise.
“Looks like you got a hasty trip you gotta make. It’s sure nice they had a new brakepony lined up for ya to take the job.” They frowned, but I continued, “I know, business, cargo, privacy rights, and the like. I understand. Please don’t mind the cupcake on my face; the doc p’scribed it for my complexion.” I didn’t want to risk being put under a spell by looking in their eyes, but I had to. Their suspicion had faded somewhat, and I seized my chance, pulling myself from the coal bin. “Say, you’re the new guy, you gotta focus on your job, and the engineer here’s gotta help ya, right? Lemme take care of shovelin’ that coal into the engine for ya.”
Those Changelings simply nodded at each other, so I casually brushed past them to obtain the coal shovel the false engineer had dropped upon my entry. The brakepony, I judged by the green aura around his horn, was sustaining the spell on the conductor. I had shoveled for about a minute before my anger impelled me to slam his head with my shovel with force enough to rocket him off the train and into the rail-side forest. I must have played quite the buffoon because the engineer in sheer surprise gave me the chance to drop my shovel and slam him into the metal engine controls, rendering him unconscious. I threw him into the forest on the same side and jumped after him. I obscured myself there until the train passed.
His disguise faded from lack of concentration and revealed his translucent wings. I bit them and dragged him by them to where his friend was. I was about to crush their skulls for taking out one of my few friends when my opportunity dawned to my rage-clouded mind. I seized them both and utilized my abhorrent state to drag them and their bleeding, cracked exoskeletons back to the mansion. On my trek back I realized that it wouldn’t take much detective work for the Inquisition to realize that Changelings had been involved in this failed attempt to seize a train.
I could only guess as to why they were performing this act, but I had to decide on how I was to stage their deaths. I decided I would feign haughtily that I destroyed them before the fortress and interred the remnants there as badges. I scraped two shallow graves for them, ripped off their wings, and covered the dirt holes, placing sticks in the place of gravestones.
“Even their false graves don’t deserve this much,” I remarked under my breath. Using a spare bed sheet, I cleaned the putrid, bug-scented vital fluid off them and restrained them in the downstairs dungeon, blindfolding them and using the available magic-impervious binding rope to restrain their limbs. In my cruel state I rushed back outside and weaved a few twigs together to form a scratchy rope with which I bound them by stringing it through the sensitive holes in their degenerate legs. Once I had checked for the fourth time that my restraints would hold, my paranoia sent me back upstairs.
Outside it was still dark as the dungeon, and nothing validated my suspicions, so I returned to the cellar to remove my potions to another bedroom. I had honestly hoped for this end, but I had in no way mentally prepared myself for it. Running back and forth with the sealed containers, I felt a hollow sense of satisfaction course through me that sent a few hairs on my mane straight up.
I saw the patterns in the grain of the wood floorboards beneath me, the varying degrees by which the shelved books were tilted, and all sorts of minutiae. This was all well and good except I was really trying to concentrate on what I had failed to consider in my copious free time.
I had no experience in interrogation and prisoner management, so I would have to compensate by using what skill I had in rhetoric. In order to acquire meaningful results and see through the Changelings’ eyes, I would have to brew considerable amounts of truth serum. I would also be subject to some interrogation myself. I headed downstairs to watch my sleeping captives and devised many elaborate ideas of what I could say and hoped to the sun, to the moon, to the skies, to their clouds, to their blues, to all dimensions and hues that I’d remember them. There was no point in writing them down, I thought, as any such document would prove me suspect.
Those wretches would wake up regardless of my wishes as to when they would, so, frustrated, I went to my bedroom and, lying flat, glared at the ceiling. I recall wanting the wood to respond somehow to my gaze. Maybe the wood would burn from my stare, but staring solely burned my eyes.
At some point I made the resolution to just bide on the ladder and await my fate. I kept my vigil until the Inquisition authorities arrived at my door and knocked. My mane was a mess, and my eyes were likely bloodshot, and I answered the door with a guttural, ironic laugh.
“Good morning, filly and gentlecolt. How may I welcome you?” A Bat Pony in deep-colored armor met my eyes first, and he was accompanied by a shorter, hazel pony with a light mane in formal attire.
Unamused, the sable Bat Pony replied, “It’s actually 12:45. You realize that there was an attempted train robbery last evening and that we will have only your two sticks in the ground to point to when we identify our culprits?”
“How would you ever dare assume that some bumpkin living in an old house near the tracks didn’t do it?”
“You, former student #8643279988, had no possible reason to, according your psychological profile, but we’ll just have to see.” So spoke the hazel one behind thin, sleek glasses. My jaw nearly dropped at her mentioning my former student number precisely to the digit, but she continued on, “Will you let us inside? As I’m sure you’re aware, this property is not necessarily yours but not necessarily ours, either.”
“Please come in and stay a while.”
“We doubtlessly will.”
“Then I hope to be worth your time.”
So we proceeded to the lounge for my interrogation. I picked a couch to lie on, but even from my position I always kept my eyes on theirs, as they were seated. I asked for their names, but they instead gave me identification numbers which I have since lost. I first gave testimony as to the previous night’s events, speaking truthfully until I had reached the part about abandoning the train. Instead of jumping off thoughtlessly, I fabricated that I had reasoned that the train would eventually stop peacefully once the engine fires ceased. I immediately asked if all the passengers were okay.
“Except for your engineer friend, no one suffered permanent harm. The conductor’s psyche is even expected to remain intact,” flatly stated the hazel one.
“How’d you know they were friends to me?”
“Frequent riders of the train mentioned you had a connection to those two. They said they wished you would have talked to them some during your trips to the city, but you didn’t seem comfortable with them and exclusively talked with those two individuals,” the Bat pony stated.
I mentioned that I regretted not being cordial to them but was urged to continue my recounting. I told of how I had dragged the Changelings before the house, and, wanting to make a statement but avoiding tarnishing the place with their blood, had smashed their craniums, wiped my hooves in the dirt, and dug their graves where my hooves had been. The graves were my badges, I proclaimed with bravado, and I kept a vigil, not from a guilty conscience, but rather from a profound desire to speak to the Inquisitors who would find glorious me in due time. I had treated them with sarcasm for making me wait so long.
“Fascinating,” the hazel one said with incredulity spilling over into a smirk that could have induced visible fear in most ponies in my position. Thankfully, I was ready for it, but her partner’s response shook my nerves enough to force an undesired, telling laugh from me.
“You should feel free to stop ribbing us and get down to business.”
“I barely believed what I had done as I processed it during my wait for you. I almost lament in telling that I am not ribbing you.” I feigned meditation while at the same time contemplated how I could counter their doubtfulness.
“You have some nerve to-“
“You have some nerve to deny me at least my rationalization for not pursuing my destiny.”
“You sick little foal! This is not a game.”
“It’s anypony’s guess how many years I’ve pushed my goals back for the Inquisition’s cause. And now my vindication is that I be chastised for not putting myse-“
The Bat Pony stood up. “You won’t mind if I disinter what dust should remain in the ground, then.”
“If you feel as prepared to uncover the truth as I am ready to hear the truth from sane lips, I cannot oblige you contrarily.” Ponies out there should know that the Changelings do, in fact, decompose rapidly into a special, highly identifiable dust. The wings I had placed in those graves would have decomposed to dust and would evidence their burial to him.
He was barely moving before the hazel one chimed back in, “Your profile and circumstances suggest otherwise. I hope you aren’t sending him on a fool’s errand.”
“I’m not sure whether or not I wish I was.” She looked through the window to watch him, and suddenly I realized my evaluator was giving me an opportunity to speak my final pleas. “Maybe the Academy would consider my request if I demonstrated intrinsic utility and self-management in ways I could not perform at the Academy.”
“So you feel you made the right choice?” she asked as she turned to me with a dubious frown.
I sat up. “Let us wait until you ascertain what my choice was.” I looked out the window and laughed in feigned regret.
“Graverobber,” she unexpectedly called him.
“I’d say he’s more of a resurrectionist.” She turned toward me, but I didn’t look at her. I just shook my head.
“You had difficulties with Bat Ponies back at the Academy. It seems you may have turned yourself around a bit.”
“Perhaps not in that respect, but isolation and contemplation may have done a few things for me.”
Soon the Bat Pony called to us, “By Celestia’s mane, you didn’t dig these very deep.”
It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it anyway. “Not shallow enough for enemies of the Inquisition, some are bound to say. They may be my trophies, but idolization leads to cult territory,” I replied with sober indifference as the pony stepped back inside, not looking at either of us.
Wide-eyed, he turned to his cohort and said, “They didn’t kick out a liar.”
I just shook my head. “It is too early for me to tell whether I have made the right choice.”
She prodded readily, “You wavered in your own pursuit, though. Wouldn’t the Academy penalize you for your inconsistency?” The Bat Pony turned his head to her, but she searched my soul via my eyes.
“I suppose it can, but I still believe the ends justify the means.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Do you or do you not still hold your ‘destined’ objective?”
“The only way the answer to that question would be negative is if I hadn’t chosen to pursue the Changelings in the first place. Ergo, one could say my actions elucidate the sincerity of the motivations you question.”
“Wow.” Her voice said it flatly, but I should have known that even a profiler of her caliber couldn’t contain her suspicions as to how pleased the Academy would be with those Machiavellian responses. At the time, though, it struck me as a reaction to my rhetorical verbosity. After a pause, she closed her eyes and said, “It’s just that you say all that and in doing so give two successfully hunted Changelings world-moving importance. That’s simply not the case, and, furthermore, the Academy does not readmit anypony. Consider this: statistically, over the time you’ve spent alone out here making no good use for yourself except for lucratively selling precious artifacts you should have returned to the Academy, the least successful surviving member of your graduating class (except for you) has eradicated twenty Inquisition targets and subversives.” She looked my way but not at me. The Bat Pony sat stoically.
Almost defeated, I sighed, but, recalling in a second the only preconceived line I would use to parry hers, I shot back in a fatal, morose, almost lugubrious tone, “In expending the time it would have taken to defeat at least twenty adversaries, I hoped to obtain a means of achieving a thousand victories greater in scope. I have no intention of postponing a thousand victories greater in scope, and it would certainly be of great use to the Inquisition to have itself to thank for accelerating their achievement.”
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBhtR4pi9ro
Entry 4
Entry 4 – October 4th, 1122, 03:25
Progress has been made in fine-tuning the formula. My alchemy notes will, without a doubt, be included with but be separate from this journal, but I must explain just how far we’ve gotten. As regards its first failing, the latest formula evidently makes ponies and Changelings who drink it numb. Changelings in disguise appear to shift back and forth between their true forms and their disguises to other Changelings under the potion’s effect. This shifting likewise appears the same to ponies who’ve taken the same potion. I’m sure we can get the shifting and numbness defects out with diligence, but the limitation regarding how the ponies and the Changelings need to drink from the same potion sample is disturbingly incorrigible. It's appeared in nearly all of the semi-effective batches I’ve produced. Anyway, we’re running out of spuds for the truth serum, and I’ll fetch them this time since I can’t continue my experiments without them.
Starfall has graciously offered to transcribe what I want to say into words for this journal on account of how her magic permits her to write at a faster pace than I can manage physically. Citing that the task was beneath somepony of her stature, I thanked her for the gesture but adamantly declined her offer.
“It’s your funeral,” she nudged me with her typical morbidness.
“You know it. After all, you’ll be playing the dirge.”
“I wouldn’t, even if it obliged me.”
“So cold of you.”
“Cold as the grave.”
I’ve decided that she’ll go out and buy the spuds as compensation for not getting to partake in writing this sordid thing.
To continue from where I left off yesterday, I recall that the examiner immediately put her pen to the paper. I sat contemplatively, knowing that her expression would be unreadable. So did the Bat Pony, but I was fairly certain we were on different brainwaves. Suddenly, my stomach growled.
Disconcerted, I intuitively offered them to join me for lunch, but they informed me that they had already taken theirs. I proceeded to the pantry and retrieved some bread, some hoofmade blueberry jelly, and a bottle of sarsaparilla I was saving for a treat.
In the dining area I proceeded to consume about three blueberry sandwiches. My hunger no longer distracting me, I realized the Bat Pony was poking his head into the room. His eyes were transfixed on the jelly jar, so I made a silly face and said “Boo!” to spook him. He jumped but immediately fell to the floor, laughing at himself. I merely held the jar out to him and kept my forehead turned toward him until he calmed down and took it with embarrassment.
The examiner looked in. As the two of us returned to the lounge, I spoke, “Who am I to deny a fellow pony, hm? The formula for such a beguiling substance could only be wrought from extensive artifice.”
“Okay, braggart, I hope you enjoy your vegetables. From our first meeting we had assumed you were a sane individual. As you know, in evaluating you, we can’t.” She had looked at the Bat Pony with all the chiding in the world, but he was now sating himself with my half full jar.
“I duly recognize the utmost seriousness of the questions I am about to be asked. I acquiesce to respond to each and every question with honesty and will feel free to introspect for as long as I need in order to answer them properly.” I recited this to her amazement, so I felt I should explain, “That pledge has been in the Inquisition for centuries. I have some books here to corroborate.”
“That won’t be necessary.” So she proceeded to examine my psyche.
I was glad I had eaten lunch because the questioning took a couple hours. The Bat Pony assumed the unflinching stance of a Royal Guard once he had finished his snack. Listening to my sterile answers must have been dreadful for both the strangers.
Once they were finished, they bade me farewell and made to leave. I asked them if I would hear from them or the Academy, and they said it would be possible but not certain. I demanded that I at least hear back on my appeal, and, offering me a glare that made me reconsider having raised my voice, the examiner scratched another note on her paper.
Neither of them was a unicorn, but an aura nonetheless appeared around them, so they disappeared. Somewhere in the next few days, my fate would be decided, and with this prospect in my mind, I nearly lost it.
If they were to return, they’d have to check the house, and I’d be exposed. If they didn’t return, there was really no hope for me to implement my potion once I had developed it. Indeed, and the mannerisms with which I regarded the investigator and examiner were far from logical and well outside the no-nonsense/no-sarcasm disposition I had held at the Academy. Indeed, I had changed. I had opened up to them considerably during the assessment regarding my sense of solitude in my living state and the paranoia I experienced of danger from both hunters and their enemies. My answers were too grim for them to be grounds for readmission to the Academy, and instead they’d admit me to an asylum before I turned my violence against Changelings to violence against the equine authorities I was bound to resent for having placed me in such a fix.
My fatigue hit me like a giant hailstone, and I woozily fell prostrate to the kitchen floor. I was too worried to doze there, and, after about ten minutes stupidly lying there, I began hearing voices. They were hapless whimpers, and with purpose I immediately rose. The Changelings had awoken. I lit a candle and proceeded downstairs to meet my wakeful inmates.
In truth, only one was awake. The one who had acted as the engineer was still dormant, and the other had weakly struggled against the restraints but had made no tangible leeway. It hadn’t looked up when I had walked in.
“I know you can hear me.” It barely acknowledged my presence, so I moved closer to it and brought its chin up to face my face. I didn’t yell, but I did begin to fume. “I am built for the murder of your species! And the information I’m going to glean from you two is going to be its undoing. I won’t allow you to escape even if it means crawling from my own grave.”
“We’re not all monsters.” The thing replied automatically. We were taught at the Academy that we would hear this plea at least once in our career.
“It makes no difference. You nailed the coffin by killing my friend, the engineer.”
The unconscious Changeling suddenly assumed the engineer’s guise. I looked over, and my anger solidified into hatred. The sleeping menace in disguise was the image of the dead engineer.
“Your conspirator is in a coma, I have determined, and has reminded me that in due time you’ll be as dead as dirt.”
“You’re not as cruel as you think you are.”
“I didn’t ask for your input. First rule: you will not respond unless I address you. Second rule: you will not escape, try as you might. Third rule: I will address you as 651 and your cohort as 652, and you will address me in whatever way conveys my station as your superior to you beings.
“Yes, my queen.”
“Fourth rule: you will take whatever I give you to take. I have no intention of making things more difficult on you or myself, so whatever conducive things you do for me will be considered when I deem it time to permanently punch your lights out.”
“Whatever. I can’t see you, but the least thing I know is that you talk too much.”
“Oh, you do know my face. If I were vain, I’d demand you show it to me.”
“Can’t do it without a name.”
“It makes no difference.”
So I left them in there to stew. In reality I was leaving myself to stew; I couldn’t deal with anything in my condition, so I resolved to sleep. I proceeded to my room and lay down. I woke up about every two hours with some paranoid notion gnawing at my sanity. Upon my fourth awakening, I had an inspiration. I trotted downstairs and pulled a tooth from the responsive Changeling, which was asleep at the time, and let the blood from its mouth seep into a jar. It was too weak to fight and fainted promptly. I sealed the jar unfeelingly. I would test it for possession of the alchemical qualities of certain insect’s blood.
I trotted to the study. I wrote down the names of various historical figures and prominent ponies as well as anypony I thought the torpid Changeling would have encountered or been forced to learn to assume. I’d have all the time in the world to test the names.
I returned to my room to sleep and slept soundly for about half a day. I industriously set to work on isolating the properties of the blood. This task beset me for about an hour before my hunger returned, and, after sating it, I actually managed to complete the task. My suspicions were true: the blood would resemble any and every type of insect blood I had encountered. It was perfectly conducive; anypony who knows about truth serum knows that it takes a lot of different kinds of insect blood to create it. I had my sources in my own basement.
I started cackling from just how well things were going. My emotions were flooding back into me, and I suddenly realized that I needed to be a little more accommodating the Changelings if they were going to survive long enough for my experiments to run their course. I pulled some records from the attic and dragged the heavy metallic gramophone down the steps.
I turned to 651, “Music for your ears if that’s what you call them. May it sustain you.” I put on Figaro’s Union by Oatzart.
I sat and endured the music as I watched. The effects were not immediate but were nonetheless visible. 651’s cracked exoskeleton healed in some places, and by the end of the short romance it was already significantly more alert. “Can’t contain yourself?” I asked mockingly, “Just because you don’t move doesn’t mean I can’t see you, you know.”
It just hissed at me but I could tell that we were both smiling on the inside. 651 was not only relieved but thought me a weak host, and I smiled because I still was able to maintain my contempt despite 651’s pitiful state. His eyes were covered, but his contempt for me was obvious, and mine for him likewise.
I realized I would need to fetch some ingredients to maintain my supply of truth serum, so I returned upstairs to take inventory. I had sufficient supplies for only a certain amount, but I was afraid that, once I started experimenting, I wouldn’t want to stop for a trip. Still, I would have to be home if Inquisitors were going to return to the mansion, or they would search the place and discover my little secrets.
A frenetic feeling seized me. I took off outside and quickly brought in several logs for the fire. I sped down the stairs to put out the candles and to turn off the gramophone. I slammed the door and placed a lock on it and put the key inside a beet that had rolled out of a bag in the pantry. I retreated to the study and pulled a random book off the shelf and brought myself to one of the least comfortable chairs in the lounge and sat down to read it. I looked down to see that Thirty-seven Objects and Counting: A Master’s Guide to Juggling was the title.
“Pah!”
The sound I made was more a pained shriek than a disgusted noise. With abandon I tossed the book aside and retrieved another one. Instead of sitting back down in the chair, I had a lucid moment. Time slowed, and I heard my pulse as I walked back into the kitchen. In the mirror I scrutinized my visage. The Changelings hadn’t possessed me, but I felt out of my mind. The whole world was on my shoulders one moment, and the next I was on top of it. Have I won a victory at the cost of my sanity? I recall asking myself. I was preparing for another vigil; I wasn’t prepared to step outside or sleep until I was visited.
I read to pass the time, but I was indifferent to both the time and the text. I recall it being dark outside when I brought the first log inside, though, so I was awake for the first evening. Instead of reading, I looked at the pages and counted how many of each letter I could find. A pressure front was overtaking the area, and the sound of a gust frightened me.
Judging retrospectively, I guess I was really on edge the whole time. I didn’t feel on edge, but my reaction suggested otherwise. Either way, I knew at the time that I would definitely reach the edge if I wasn’t there already. I didn’t even know if they were coming, and that’s what scares me the most about it today. I had allowed myself to succumb to fears within. I was waiting with a nightmare’s patience, but in doing so I was living my own nightmare.
Having secured enough sleep from before, I easily waited out the first day. I’m uncertain if I continued for a day more or longer. I remember hearing the train as it rolled by at one point. I considered the selfishness, the irrationality, and the lack of necessity of the stunt I was performing. I imagined vainly that I was disappointing the train’s passengers by not making an appearance for them. Oh, wait. They wouldn’t appreciate my presence any longer now that they knew what I was. And what satisfaction could they possibly afford me with glory for slayings I hadn’t yet committed?
I didn’t feel worth the hay I was chewing to keep myself occupied. However, as I leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and held my head with my forelegs, I felt my despondency suddenly melt away. I sat forward again when I thought I heard a knob turning. A door was shut. I gaped, but I was immobile. 651, still wearing its blindfold and still connected to the wood rope I had fashioned, stepped into the lounge.
“You like to read dictionaries, huh?” It summoned some tea out of the ceiling and began to drink. “Tea is lovely stuff, isn’t it?”
I looked down and beheld a huge dictionary with diminutive print. I was somewhere in the middle of the A section. 651’s horn began to glow, and all the letters on the page disappeared except for the A’s, which swirled on the page and coalesced into the number 651.
“You have no life, do you?” I had ignored its initial question, so it became angry with me.
“You! Your kind’s the lowlife!” I shouted, emitting no sound.
“Such overwhelming purpose.” The whole room seemed to distort as the creature slowly uttered each syllable. I already began to feel a falling sensation. I tried not to blink, but I did, and I suddenly was floating above midnight Manehattan aglow with artificial light.
I looked across to the top of a building and saw a pony’s silhouette waving at me. Its countenance was genial, but vertigo was setting in, and I didn’t wave back. Disappointed, it stopped, and I fell again. It seemed like I was waiting ten minutes before I hit the ground, but they were dreadful because I knew I’d hit the ground hard.
The fabric of reality seemed to implode upon impact, but it was actually a springboard, and I immediately was flung back. I landed back on the train and stared into the hijackers’ eyes. I closed them, and roared, and I suddenly remembered that I had roared on the train before I dealt the first blow. Only this time I didn’t have a weapon, but I swung as though I did, and sparks flew upon the impact. Everything plummeted into murky oblivion until spotlights revealed me in front of a curtain. I stood on a stage, but the audience had left because the show was over. There were no lights on in the audience, and the stage didn’t reflect enough light into the audience for me to distinguish who the last remaining pony was.
I had to speak. Something bad would happen if I didn’t, so I recited, “If my pursuit kills me, I am enough to do loss to my cause.”
My sole audience member stood up and stamped in approval and suddenly began to make her way up to the stage. As she slowly approached, I heard her say in a distorted voice, “Good job, but that’s not the line. It goes, “If we are marked to die-“
I knelt, for I recognized the voice. I wept.
“-We are enough to do our country loss.” Princess Luna was finally visible under the harsh light, and her voice was clear, too. Her expression was as grave as the line she spoke.
“I have not prayed for your guidance, yet you have graced me.”
“My word! I don’t believe I know you.”
“You’re truly Princess Luna! I have so much to confide.” I looked up to see that she was more curious than concerned.
I explained that I was a real pony who needed her help.
Perhaps not fully convinced I was more than an apparition, she shrugged. “Well, seeing as our dreams must be genuinely connected, I guess I can spend my sleeping hours hearing your tale.”
My heart sank, though, because on the word “connected” the world began to distort, and I thought my subconscious was about to pull a reversal on me. However, her horn glowed and the distortion ceased. “I sense your troubled soul leaves your dream to collapse. What plagues you?”
I could have fainted from the majesty and compassion in her voice, but, of course, it was a dream, so I really couldn’t. It took me a couple seconds (I even laughed) as I paused in realization. It then became my imperative to recount my identity, my location, and my circumstances. My memory suddenly cleared as I brought my head up, nodded to her, and recounted. I paced all the while, and, to my shock, she even lay down.
I stopped, but she shook her head. “Continue. These shoes simply are unsuited for standing for a long time.” I paced myself after that remark. She merely looked up at me and wisely processed every detail and interconnected event. I concluded with the otherworldly events that brought me to her company.
She smiled as she stood back up, “This certainly is no dream. My mind would never be able to synthesize such a story.” I didn’t know how to respond, so she continued.
“Do you candidly believe that your venture is worthwhile?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” I didn’t know what to make of the question, and I let my expression convey that to her.
She pressed on, “And you think that your pursuit of it has driven you mad?”
I frowned and was about answer uncertainly when my eyes met hers. She was grinning because she knew what I was going to say, so she was driving me to see the fallacy in my notions of insanity. I looked for another second and laughed because my answer was right there.
“Impossible. They would’ve carted me off at the slightest evidence of it. They’re Inquisitors, after all.”
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0MYr84j-FM
Entry 5
Entry 5 – October 5th, 1122, 00:00
Starfall has just departed for the train back to Manehattan, and she’ll be back within a day or so. A bag of potatoes is a pretty mean thing to send her troubling over, but I don’t wish to give the impression that I don’t appreciate the assistance she affords me by never asking much of her. Truly, this is nothing for her.
Except for a few of the instructors back the Academy, I don’t believe I’ve ever met such a capable hunter. She’s already improved some of the fighting techniques I’ve practiced outside. One does not become defensive when faults are pointed out by such an expert, and our relationship is probably the most tutorial I’ve had since I met Master Mortar.
Oh, no! I’ve brought up the R-word. I’ll state it plain: we do not have a thing. It’s certainly wiser not to; we don’t want any issues from downstairs or elsewhere.
Even though Starfall maintains a protective barrier around the place, Changelings would still detect our delicious emotions. Plus, we don’t want to have so great an emotional investment to be lost, should either of us perish in our combating the Changeling menace.
Besides, she already has somepony lined up for herself. I will tell of him in time.
So, Her Majesty Princess Luna and I were surfing the same brainwave. I decided that it was my turn to ask a question.
“Are you sure you don’t know me?” I had assumed through my entire recount that she had no idea who I was, but it dawned on me that I was the only pony expelled from the Academy in decades.
We simultaneously looked to the floor, grinned, looked back at each other, and burst into laughter.
“In all due candor, I have, of course.” Her expression at first was deadpan, but I presume, since she and I were thinking on the same level, she realized I really didn’t need to ask the question, and her expression softened.
“How can I help my situation?” I asked this after a long pause. A subject can’t brazenly ask a favor of royalty. I realized I was speaking to the highest Inquisitor authority, so I had to formulate a deferential question.
“Beside the matter of your resolution, I guess there really isn’t much encouraging you. Perhaps you need a little perspective from the inside?”
I could only bring myself to nod. She laughed.
“Very well. I have it on good authority that there are more than just a few groups encouraged by your actions on the train a few days ago. As a matter of fact, there is talk of possibly readmitting you, but I’m not necessarily sure they understand what you’re going for. It would certainly be a help to be recognized by the community you’re trying to help, surely, but you simply vie to help it, no?”
I put my head down sheepishly. “You put it awfully kind, Your Majesty.”
Her expression had turned to businesslike severity, only this time it was honest. She looked away. “Mhm. There are, too, though, many in the circle you would rejoin who might have said that you’re a broken machine, citing your initial reaction to your visitors.” She looked at me and began pacing around me in a slow circle, but I kept my head down. “Countless others doubt even the thing you pursue, your precious formula, is a shadow’s shadow of a hope. Certainly, you’d appreciate an intervention –from a sympathetic princess, no less– and all things would run their course, but we’d be just as well off polishing you and making you stand as a statue in the middle of Canterlot as a paragon of diligence. Perhaps a few would suspect short-sightedness on his part, but a princess sanctioned his placement there, so all should be well and good.”
“Small wonder what they’d think of her for pulling such strings for him.”
“Indeed.”
I was shaking from what I had to say, but I didn’t think I could speak it. My eyes floated up and beheld a look of dissatisfaction from her that opened the flood gates.
“You must be as frustrated as we all are. We’ve waited centuries for a breakthrough in fighting these things and now we can’t accept a possibility when it comes along? Because we’re all too set to bear the storm that we can’t bear to face the invention of a weather machine?” She shook her head at me, but I continued, "Our situation has stagnated, so we must all figure that the age of innovation has passed. If you allow me to get a design, they can test me. We have a shot! We can-“
Her outstretched hoof silenced me. “Of course we do.”
I breathed deeply and settled. She said, “With the right announcements for the proper provisions for you, all we’ll need to see the game changer is your diligence.” She saw my astonishment. “And your confidence, of course.”
“You led me on!” I laughed uncontrollably.
“And an immortal princess can’t jerk a few mortals’ chains from time to time? The look on your face! And you nonetheless laugh at my joke now.” Smiling, she paused a moment to let my laughing fit terminate. “The bottom line is still the same.”
There was mystery to that. “So, how will Your Majesty assist me?”
“’Assist us all,’ you mean, by means of yourself.”
Thus she proceeded to explain to me that it would be put out that I had to further substantiate my value to the Inquisition before I’d be admitted. She’d already sent one of the best Inquisitor operatives to my station.
“Starfall Escarleta is a rising name in your midst. Her accompanying you will appear to most of the community to be a reforming force. In actuality, she, as a unicorn, will assist you in ways your alchemy cannot fill in for.”
“Some ponies will have to know what’s really going on.”
“They will be the ones to view the results of your final concoction. We have ways of silencing those who shouldn’t know.”
There were other small details of our arrangement not worth disclosing, of course, but she did tell me to start keeping a journal sometime. I would have it to depend on when I didn’t have a confidant.
“I know you’re doing this for all of us. Never allow yourself to focus on anything but the greater good of ponykind, and things will fall into place so long as you do your duty.”
With the finality in her voice, I knew what I had to express, “If latent evils come from what I will achieve, I will submit myself to the lashings due to me. If this leads to a dead end, so will I meet my end, if it be fitting to you.”
The surroundings distorted once again, and she nodded at me. I saluted her, and she promptly vanished without light or sound. The whole world went black again.
I realized my eyes were closed, so I opened them and saw through the window the sun slowly subsisting outside. Somepony was patiently tapping a regular rhythm at my door. Startled by the immediacy of the event, I had the strangest inclination to not address the door at all to see what might happen. As it was, though, I wasn’t about to let my curious ruminations besmirch my reputation as a grand host.
“Good evening, my friends. How may I help you?”
“You know why we’re here.” There stood two formidable Bat Ponies, each flanking Starfall. Her last name described her pigment, and she had magenta eyes. Those eyes were analyzing me as soon as the door opened, and it was the escort on her right who spoke.
Solemnly I responded, “You’re here to cart me off the asylum. I didn’t pack anything; I figured there was no use, anyway.”
The one on the right hadn’t struck me as the same one from before, but his voice rang the same, “You really should drop the sarcasm on official business like this.”
Sad to tell, I was fairly sure that the clairvoyant dream was truly an escapist fantasy, so I looked at him and morosely shook my head and stood with my legs stiff so that they could arrest me.
“Maybe we have the wrong address,” said the Bat Pony from the left, a little disconcerted.
“Good one, but he’s our pony. He matches the description.” Her mezzo voice would have made me shiver if I wasn’t despairing then so coldly.
I bit my lip, and the one on the right sighed, “Princess Luna should’ve let you know by now. Hey, stand at attention to your superiors, citizen; this is royal business, after all. You aren’t doing yourself any-“
Quietly I interrupted him, “Would I that I have the tears to express,” and I broke off, realizing that I did. I tried to approach the trio to embrace them, but they backed away.
“No offense, sir, but you smell like a bog.”
“You must know why, then.” The three of them looked at each other and to me and nodded seriously. “Pretty professional of you to say it tactfully,” I remarked. I extended my hoof to greet them properly.
Starfall extended hers, and the other two backed away. “We’ll see you later,” they uttered in unison.
The one on the left continued before anypony breathed, “When will you-?”
“However long it takes, my dearest.” She turned from me with a cordial smile to him and waved. They flew away, and she turned to me with an earnest smile, but it immediately switched to a determined smile. “We’ve got long tasks before us.”
“Your goals are my goals,” I said with a warm smile and a tilt of my head.
“That’s a good way to think.”
“All things are ready, if our minds be so.”
“True enough. I guess if we’re going to work together for such a span, we should get to know each other.”
“Come inside, although I hope you don’t mind if I take my evening breakfast in front of you.” I held the door open and gestured inside.
She had barely walked in when she turned around. “Just a minute.” She cast a barrier around the mansion.
So I prepared myself something as I let her explore the place. She ignited candles as she inspected it, and when she reached the hearth, she called to me, for I was still in the process of making myself tomato soup. “I guess you wouldn’t have noticed this, but you could have made more efficient use of these logs if you had the magic. This hearth’s enchanted, you see.”
I heard her chuck a couple pieces into the diminished pile left there, and a roaring fire was kindled. Carrying in the pan of soup to place over it, I said, “I guess that’s what Princess Luna meant.”
Starfall seated herself and smugly gazed as I set down the pan, “Do tell.”
Oh, I told her all about the dream. It’s still fresh in my memory, even after all these months. Once she had endured my privileged dream, I took my turn to endure her list of credentials. She wore pragmatic, durable boots. Her mane was naturally spiked in some areas, but I would learn that she often covered it with a sable cap if she was meaning to be casual. She hadn’t taken off her cape, but maybe it was because I had failed to ask her if she wanted me to hang it up for her.
Without a doubt, she impressed me, but I had to stand up in the middle of her recitation to retrieve the soup before it overheated. I nonchalantly returned to the kitchen and came back after I had filled a glass with the soup, as I am accustomed to drinking my soup. Her furious glare and exposure of her teeth almost caught me.
“Pony feathers! I didn’t ask you if you wanted some.”
“Oh, you did.” She sat forward with one eye turned toward me.
“Oh, good. I’m sorry; I didn’t excuse myself, either.”
“Cruel of you.” She seated herself back again.
I took a few steps to return to my seat facing her, and I turned around but didn’t sit down. I recounted the most important achievements she had mentioned and why I was able to remember them as a conciliatory gesture.
She, agape, seemed to me at a loss for words. “Will you accept my apology?” I asked her when I had finished.
She composed herself with rapidity I have never seen before. “We’ll see.”
“I’m sorry to start us on the wrong hoof.” I sat into my seat and focused on consuming my soup.
Of course, I had to break the silence; it was our mission to acquaint ourselves, after all.
“Tell me about your friends.”
“They are either my peers or my superiors.”
“You don’t look at everypony that way?”
“Of course not. You, for example, are beneath me.”
“I’m glad to know we’re fast friends.”
“Nopony appreciates your sarcasm.”
“I appreciate your company.”
With each remark, our eyes had become in some way greater pinned on the other's. She shook her head, and I broke into a smile. “I really do. I mean to be a friend to you, my friend.”
“You need assistance, and I’m here, sent to provide you it,” she sneered.
“Are you sure you don’t need something to eat?” I held out my glass to her.
“You’re a cruel one.”
“That’s not what my prisoners tell me,” I remarked, more to myself than to her.
“You think yourself caring?”
“Not for them, no. My caring for ponykind is my incentive, as you must know.”
She conjured a hoof file and said with one eye on me, “If and when you reach your fifteenth slain, you’ll be a little less sensitive.”
“I hope you’ll be there to witness. Anyway, tell me a little about your darling.”
Both eyes on me. “Really, now?”
“I know it’s not polite, but, in asking about your significant other, I can get to understand you a little better.”
“Fair enough.” She frowned in hesitation, but the corners of her mouth didn’t convey any negative emotions as she thought of where to begin.
In short, this Bat Stallion was a pleasant being. She called him Jackson and advised me to call him the same. His fellows considered him good company and good-natured. I hadn’t noticed his expression when he was at my door, but Starfall mentioned that he had two expressions he commonly used: a wide smile with genuine eyes and a straight face with pursed lips and detached eyes. A greater proportion of Bat Ponies are employed as hunters. Being one of them, Jackson led a sort of double life as both as a socialite and a hunter, hence his two faces.
I remember she described his smile as “ravishing,” and I simply had to ask how. Apparently, rumors were true that there were some circles among the Bat Ponies that occasionally engaged in semi-vampiric activities. Jackson was among them and had confided in her a full intention to “sire” her into the pseudo-vampire Bathood.
Bringing normal ponies into Bathood hasn’t disappeared, she affirmed, despite the general conception that this fad was as dead as the real vampire ponies. Ever since the change was found to be possible in 1002, two decades were spent perfecting the process so that ponies changed wouldn’t be governed by instinct as the Vampire Fruit Bats are. Not feral but sane. Indeed, this was a fantastic arrangement for her. So distasteful did I find it that I nearly bit off my tongue in an attempt to withhold my objections.
Her first encounter with Jackson was after the incident in which the Changelings had changed her life. It had profoundly disturbed her, and out of pity the Academy sent Jackson, who was the closest to a psychologist available to send at the time, to counsel her. She wasn’t inclined to elaborate on the event; however, this had made their paths inseparable.
Jackson was a fairly effective hunter with more instrumental value than value as a leader in a group. He was a good flier whose combat skills were more adept on the ground. He was just about as vicious as an average hunter (in other words, more than I). He held, however, more prestige among his personal contacts than among his business contacts.
She said something along the lines of: “Jackson’s a master of the finer points of communication. You could take a lesson or two from him.”
“He’s a rhetorician?” I asked enthusiastically.
“I guess.”
“I think I might stand to meet him again.”
“Might? The reports stated you had shed your provincial dislike for Bat Ponies.”
Her use of the word “provincial” stung, but I wouldn’t let it show, “A shame. They got two things wrong when they investigated me. Huh, Luna forbids that I mislead them, yet Luna didn’t fault me when I confessed.”
“I’d say you ought to count your blessings.”
“If I did so, I suppose I’d keep you a little longer from your special somepony, and that would be inconsiderate of me.”
“Ironic indeed.”
“Besides, you never count your money when you’re still sitting at the table.”
She grinned at me, and I grinned back. “You sing?”
“Definitely.” I sped upstairs to retrieve my guitar. “I take requests,” I shouted as I rummaged for it.
“Whatever strikes you,” she said, knowing I was humored just to share my voice.
I returned to the lounge with my guitar a little slower than I had left it. I couldn’t think of what to play to my fairly new friend. It was one of those instances when the artist has to let the subconscious take over. Starfall looked at me strangely as I disengaged myself, but the song dawned on me on its own accord.
“You ever hear of Johnny Two-Bits?”
She rolled her eyes at the typicality of a country pony singing a country song, but her tone remained interested, “I’m not a big fan of him, but I might like your voice better.”
“Come along and ride this train.”
So I sang. I think I looked up when I reached the verse about the valley. I felt the corners of my mouth twitching to frown, but I didn’t let them. I finished my song and continued looking at her, but I didn’t realize how strange that might have appeared to her, for my thoughts were not on her, yet my eyes were.
At length she said, “Very telling.”
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykiiB1pmc20
Entries 6 and 7
Entry 6 – October 6th, 1122, 06:00
I woke up today in an unusual manner. It didn’t really didn’t disgruntle me.
I awoke with a notion that something was terribly amiss. I didn’t dare to open my eyes, but I knew that something was preparing to invade, and I was glad I slept on my back. I inconspicuously moved my forehooves back behind my head and lobbed my pillow. I drew my dagger from beneath it with my mouth, and heaved myself back. I propelled myself through the air by pushing against the mattress and the head of the bed and performed a flying side kick midair.
I landed just beyond the doorway, which had been opened in my sleep. I yelled “En garde!” or something as I stood looking around for the trespasser. I was suddenly overcome, immobile by some magical means. I knew it wasn’t a dream, so my life was on the line. I couldn’t help but shout, “This is not a dream!” I struggled against it; my languid body soon assumed the strength of my volition.
I had taken two inhibited steps forward toward my room, and I saw the outline of my foe; I keep a luminescent mixture for light in the evenings. It had apparently stepped inside and moved aside in the anticipation of my awakening. But suddenly, the debilitating spell dropped, and my foe broke into laughter. My eyes widened.
“Not a dream?” Starfall asked between chuckles before she fell to the floor snickering. “Whooh, that’s intimidating!”
“I guess you haven’t paid a visit to any of my nightmares, night mare Starfall Escarleta.”
With a stoic expression I gave her a few seconds to compose herself before she remarked, “You really fought that spell.”
“I guess you’ll need to work on it a little more.” I extended my hoof to help her pick herself up. “Now there’s going to be a new theme in my nightmares: almost accidentally killing you.”
She beamed, gently pushed my hoof aside, and launched herself at me. The impact knocked the wind out of me and forced me drop my dagger, which she herself caught midair. She had me pinned with the dagger just before my muzzle, and I glared at her.
“How about you never drop your guard, and I won’t, either.”
I tried to wheeze an affirmative response.
“The look on your face!” She backed off and kicked my pillow back into my room and stuck the dagger into one of the floor boards. I lay there recovering.
“Well, looks like my long-distance teleportation spells are becoming more reliable.” I must have been quite a sight because she started laughing again. “The potatoes are in the alchemy room.”
“Thanks,” I managed to utter.
“Good morning. Stupid enchantment on the doorway must’ve woken you up,” she said as she triumphantly strode out of my room and to her bedroom.
When I had looked about for the intruder, the moon had just begun to rise; I remembered seeing it through the left window. I had gone to sleep in the early afternoon. Little sneak.
____
Today (Well, partly yesterday, too) was spent turning the whole batch of potatoes into truth serum. Hopefully, we won’t need all of it, as a consistent, working formula should be found soon.
Hunters speaking to fellow hunters know not to mention any contacts who may not still be alive, so our discussions rarely ever go to our families or distant acquaintances. Thus, Starfall didn’t need to ask about the engineer after hearing my song. Indeed, we said nothing for several minutes. I eventually offered her a book to read, but she declined. So, I asked her about her musical tastes.
“Nothing really speaks to me as a hunter, so there’s not a whole lot I can really get into. Sure, this piece might sound nice or whatever, or some groove may play at a gathering, but it’s not really we hunters writing them, so-“
“It can be hard to empathize.”
So we spent the rest of the evening discussing how the world fails to understand us. It’s a common conversation topic among all hunters; even at the Academy, my peers and I knew we’d never be looked at as ponies again but rather as stereotypes and incarnations of half-baked ideals.
Truth be told, however, I was fairly safe from this because I didn’t tell anypony, and nopony in Tailsbury bothered to mention it to a bunch of others outside the community. Thus, our discussion was pretty close to a debate. I, with my experiences among the masses, could argue that many ponies didn’t actually view us so badly. In fact, I had asked several ponies about their views and actually introduced the notion of having a hunter among the miscreants hypothetically to some of those I met in Manehattan. Starfall was too famous a hunter to enter most normal circles without a disguise, so she waged argument with points when her disguise had failed her.
I don’t remember how our discussion ended, but I just remember it was a good one, and we had mutual sympathy to some extent.
Princess Luna had basically set our arrangement. We should learn from each other in the process, but our paramount goal was to secretly develop a testable version of what I thought could exist, and Starfall was entirely at my disposal to help me. I’m set in my ways, though, and had thought out a practically autonomous process for this potion’s development. As my stores would run low, however, I saw that there was help she could afford me. I explained this to her during this first meeting, expressing that I didn’t intend to patronize her in how I would run my operation and how I didn’t intend to waste her time and abilities as a hunter by keeping her.
“Perhaps you didn’t realize. If you make a breakthrough, your glory will already be postmarked for me. Without the truth escaping from my mouth, they’ll say that I held you to the grindstone or worse, that I found you deranged but picked up your work and continued it after you’d gotten only so far and nursed your sick mind back to light of sanity.”
“I’m not in it for what they’ll write about me;” I said, “But I am in it for the six ponies whom we’ll never meet per thousand we do meet.” I still believe this today, but, with the formula so near to me, I can’t help but fantasize about my plausible recognition.
Anyway, we eventually decided that we could schedule a sort of shift. On days that supplies were not needed, I would work on my project, and Starfall would adventure during evenings for Inquisition enemies. It wouldn’t be until about a month ago before she finally gave up, saying that she’s never encountered a place so unscathed, discounting the train incident because it could have occurred anywhere along the tracks.
The sleeping schedule has since been irregular, following the needs of this project. Starfall and I are both hopeful that it is achievable, but we’re also eager to be done with it.
Her fixation on the local bat colony was maniacal at first, and she loved to terrify me with episodes of bringing a couple tamer bats inside with her and saying that she just couldn’t wait any longer to become a Bat Pony. The colony moved away from here about two months after her arrival. I reveled in the schadenfreude and took no shame from it, for I resented her for those nasty tricks she played on me.
It must have been about the end of June this year when I finally gave up trying to find all the different ponies 652 could transform into. I tried everypony I knew to exist and then all to Starfall’s memory. From very early on, we kept a list. It was partly for the experiments; 651 couldn’t be allowed to predict which guise 652 had been compelled to assume. However, we soon found that this Changeling could pose as nearly any historically significant pony.
We couldn’t, even with the truth serum, force 651 to disclose what rank 652 was (it would always tell us it wasn’t supposed to know anything about its partner other than that 652 was a subordinate). One would assume that higher ranks in their midst would know even more, so, as we tried more names, we would report them via mail directly to Princess Luna. Starfall had the clearance to send such mail, and this information was circulated in the Inquisition. If we fail, at least we managed that.
We almost killed those wretches by keeping lit candles down there without the door open to let oxygen in for a few days. I hadn’t conducted any experiments for a few days because I was running low on formulation ideas. That evening, Starfall had been secretly chugging my sarsaparilla in the pantry when 651 screeched. She nearly choked, and I woke with a jerk that left me on the floor, bruising my shoulder. Starfall and I both knew that Changelings had different screeches for different causes for alarm, and Starfall said she had never heard such a hollow noise emitted by a Changeling even as she had seen them swarm and be slain.
That taught us to keep the door open a little, but it didn’t teach us to be constantly aware of it being open. Sure, we both had nightmares of our prisoners escaping their restraints and waltzing through the unlocked, ajar door and seizing our minds as we slept, but they didn’t drive the message quite home to me. I remember looking out the window of the kitchen and, pretending I could see the river through it despite it not being even in the direction of the window, I sang the river song "Shenandoah." I found 651 especially giddy later that day and vowed not to sing again inside the mansion.
Entry 7 – October 7th, 1122, approx. 20:00
Progress is being made, as always. Check the chronologically corresponding experiment notes.
There’s not much else to mention about today. Just finished off a bag of stale bread. I hate stale bread. I’m also getting a little sick of blueberry everything. I guess the bad bread helped me realize this. Maybe I’ll ask Starfall if she knows how to make good bread.
Bread, bread, bread. If chewing pine tree bark made the bread more tolerable, I’d do it. However, I tried, and it didn’t.
____
NOTE TO SELF: Upon hitting dotage, start trying to develop a formula that makes a pony not hate eating the same thing over and over. Sincerely, Zeta.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FWzARen_2s
Entries 8 and 9
Entry 8 – October 9th, 1122, 16:00
Starfall preemptively told me she didn’t know a good recipe for bread and informed me that she’d sent all the blueberry stuff to Jackson and that he, in exchange, left a pretty goblet replete with a red, metallically scented liquid for me on the table. I can’t believe that I believed her. I actually rushed to the pantry to see if all the jam was still there, not bothering to check for the goblet along the way. The hidden blueberry things were actually on the side porch, but, not knowing any better, I hurried into the kitchen to see the goblet. When I found that the goblet was absent, I knew that I had been played. She had apparently bought herself a camera during her outing and took the opportunity to try it out on my reaction to seeing no goblet.
She’s lucky that I don’t have a short fuse for her antics and lucky to have magic to stop my rampage if she goes too far.
This is what I get for a grazing telling of Starfall’s personal life to you. She reminded me yesterday that I don’t need to write in here every single day, and she utilized the extra time I devoted to potion development to read you.
I want to instill that, although what I may write of her may seem to antagonize her, I am wholly grateful that she is an ally and that I am not actually Starfall’s prey. I am proud to say I have a friend in her; these past months have forged an immense comradery in us.
What’s also fortunate is that the formula worked as intended with some modifications I incorporated at the end of the day yesterday. Today has been spent trying to discern the consistency of the results, and the signs are promising: the effect doesn’t seem to fade from use to use on the same Changeling. Tomorrow will be spent further corroborating this. I’ll also have to see if traditional formulae used to neutralize flavors don’t influence the potion’s effect. Princess Luna will hear from us very soon, if all goes as planned.
I think it goes without saying, but still I’ll mention that Starfall also partakes in the experiments. Not only is there a certain level of objectivity of results to be obtained by her, but there is also information to be had regarding whether the formula affects her differently as, being a unicorn, she has somewhat different physiology. More tests will have to be done for other equestrian races, but, knowing the properties of the materials I’m dealing with, there’s slim chance it’ll affect them differently.
I’m so anxious to see this through. I’m not sure I can really sleep, so I have prepared a potion to curb my restlessness, and Starfall is on standby to magically induce my sleep if it still evades me. I think I have a big day tomorrow.
Entry 9 – October 10th, 1122 14:00
I could just sing. It works! I’ve made several samples, and along with my notes they are currently being sent to the Inquisition’s authorities for examination. Word will not be spread yet of it, but we’ll see it perform soon. The test will be set much sooner than I had imagined.
I gaze at a phial of the fluid I keep on me. It is not blood-red like the one of my Cutie Mark, but it’s crimson. It’s fairly opaque stuff, and a sort of glistering precipitate from the flavor neutralizer continues to eddy when I whirl it in my hoof. I look into it, and my past hardships seem to melt. I see my family smiling at me for doing well in my pursuit and doing good for ponykind.
Starfall formally authorized me to neutralize my first two Changelings. I bottled 651 and 652’s vital fluids in several jars upstairs. Perhaps this station will resume its previous interrogative purpose. Until the Inquisition wants it back, though, it’s mine; I wouldn’t trade this place for anything but Chrysalis’s head itself.
Starfall is pacing in the study, and so would I if I wasn’t currently occupied. I want to get in some final details before I relinquish this book. The Inquisition has expressed interest in keeping a “living copy” of this. Basically, they’re going to enchant this book and another like it so that, whenever I write in it, the writing appears in the other book. Sounds like means for forgery, but it’s something. Starfall’s going to watch them perform it so that she can do the same for another copy and stick it in the library here. I already feel honored.
The book’s supposed to come back to me when they’re ready for us to depart from here. I’ll give you the basic setup. They’re presently waiting on a few ponies to finish up raids and duties elsewhere in the world. I suppose Princess Luna doesn’t want us dead, because they said that, should I slip up, there needed to be a team capable of bailing us out. So we shall wait for the good things to come to us. Well, rather that we wait to go to the good things.
Manehattan’s mayor is going to be throwing some sort of ball in one of the recreational towers to celebrate Nightmare Night and will be expecting a number of rich guests, one of whom is suspected of being a disguised Changeling. The tip the Inquisition was provided didn’t have a specific pony mentioned, so this is where the potion comes into play. With it mixed into the refreshments and provided that it functions properly, we will be able to identify and isolate the Changeling threat during the course of the party.
The subtlety, time, and number of operatives it would otherwise take to successfully enact a measure to the same effect upon such little information would hardly be worth it. I know this potion won’t give us any false alarms that an investigation might yield, and at the very least we’ll debunk the rumor with a calculated expenditure of resources.
I’m so glad we have this substance in our hooves. If there really is a threat on the mayor, I doubt we’d be able to act on the information to stop it. Starfall says that she’s never embarked on a mission, given such minimal information, without months of prior investigation into the profiles of the attendees, and even then the Inquisitors involved didn’t know exactly who at the party was really compromised.
The mayor knows of the possible plot against him and will know that the Inquisition’s eyes will search the party, but he and we operatives haven’t met yet, obviously. Once Starfall and I can see the Changeling, we are not to indicate to him which pony it is. I doubt he’s a Changeling sympathizer, but a pony never knows. They might just be worried about loose lips or the panic that comes from knowing, but it would strike me as equally likely that a pony would panic from not knowing. Still, he’s an elected official whose profile has been scrutinized a hundred times over by different pony analysts just for this cause.
Well, it’s time to join hunter Starfall in pacing. There’s no telling just how deep each of those ponies is into their assignment, but we’re anxious both the same.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ8AorHkLrQ
Entries 10 and 11
Entry 10 – October 13th, 1122, 23:00
The past while spent waiting for our further orders was furthermore spent feverishly developing a version of the potion that will only give us hunters at the party the vision to identify the Changeling. This was a painstaking business; most ponies don’t realize that getting a potion to respond to the voice (certain things must be added to make potions so exclusive, mind you, not just a command) is an intricate business. Fortunately, Starfall was available to play a large part in the trituration of all the necessary ingredients with her magic. Starfall is unstoppable!
We received our notification to move out earlier today, and I’m writing from the midnight train’s nearly vacant passenger car. Starfall had spent much of the time before our departure disguising herself. She’s made herself to look significantly older than she is, but she decided not to change her mane’s color. She’s wearing a bowler hat of a light shade of gray that complements her mane. She wears false reading glasses that are made to look gilded. I protested, but she convinced me to do up my mane in a Mohawk style. I’m wearing a khaki-colored trench coat.
Starfall did not provide me this prop; the Inquisitor messengers brought it to me. They said it was addressed to the Academy to be forwarded to a pony of my name. The return address wasn’t present, but they had held onto it. I asked them if they had known who the sender was, and they said it came with a notecard that said, “St. Periwinkle wishes you well,” but they didn’t know of him. This thing is ancient and still smells like rotten oranges, but I guess it’ll disguise me somewhat further for this.
I can barely stay awake, but Starfall remains vigilant. I didn’t sleep until I knew that we’d have a good potion for the job. It’s a shame I didn’t have all the hunters’ names until a few hours ago, for it would have made the process a little simpler, but I digress. I’ve begged the conductor to offer me a little of his coffee, but it’s no use. He almost didn’t recognize us when he passed us, and the new engineer and brakepony certainly don’t. If he were to give his coffee to me, a “stranger,” he’d be forced to relinquish the rest of his artificial wakefulness to them. I asked him for some water to clear my throat instead.
Starfall and I sit on opposite sides, facing opposite directions, toward the middle of the car; there’s nothing that will sneak up on us so long as we’re both awake. Starfall faces the back of the train.
I guess I’ll try singing to the three passengers in here. They don’t recognize me, and not I them. Before I do, I’ll tell you what I see. I see a dusty old pony, pine green pigment and silvery mane, in the far front corner of the car. He wears a beaten-up brown beret over his face, but he’s obviously awake because his breathing is irregular. Somewhere among the seats in front of me, I spied a handsome businessmare. She’s extremely fair in pigment and in mane, but she’s young and wears an air of industry. Her pale pink bowtie was a little crooked, and I doubt she’s fixed it. There’s a truly ancient mare toward the back of the car whose countenance I barely glimpsed before I stored my luggage and took my seat. She was reading a book of some sort and had been frowning. My guitar is on the table, beckoning me to play.
Let’s just say they weren’t very receptive. Okay. I forgot to mention: the hotel we hunters will be staying in is the same one I switched to from St. Periwinkle’s place. Small world, huh? Not really, it’s a big place, both Equestria and the hotel. It stands right beside the party tower, however, so the juxtaposition dwarfs it somewhat. I remember staying on the hotel’s second floor or something. I couldn’t stand to be any farther up than the seventh story. It’ll be back to pleasantly pale green walls instead of the slate boards and bookcases and cupboards of the mansion.
They’ll know to be silent, since the Inquisition is paying our stay fees to carry out the operation, but they’ll recognize me, and I’ll never be able to come back. Those three ponies bruised my ego a little, but speaking in absolutes like this drives cold metal stakes into me. And yet I must entertain the thought that I may not survive the party if I fail too awfully. We’ll have several days to get the public used to seeing us disguised hunters. I’ll definitely hit Manehattan’s gyms. There’s only a letter’s difference between “rest” and “rust.”
______
We reached the front desk at 04:17. Surely enough, the miserable graveyard greeter, Sheryl, vocalized her recognition of me. Starfall tacitly indicated our reservation by flashing her Acolyte’s identification badge. I was familiar with the expression Sheryl was about to dispense to me, but in it I saw a little more contempt than what I had expected. I guess it came from her eyes. Actually, no, it didn’t.
I took it as more of a personal affront because she was able to overcome her early morning torpor in an effort to let me know that she would resent for the rest of her life my having stayed here. I’m sure she considered it a shame to have realized that she had catered to a soldier of a grisly holy war. I was sure that, to her dismay, she wouldn’t know when we were scheduled to leave, so I would have to spitefully console myself in this fact.
Jackson took it upon himself to be the first pony to welcome us. I guessed correctly that he was wearing his signature smile as he opened the door and gestured inside. There are really two rooms for our party, but at the time everypony was located in this one, the one in which I am staying. The room is huge; I find in here there is more than enough room to wiggle around and are seven queen sized beds. I assume the other room has seven because there are fourteen of us. Five were midair as we entered, and I tightened my jaw when I saw that most of them were Bat Ponies to stop it from falling.
“Welcome, weary warriors,” said Jackson with warmth.
Amazed but perplexed, I mistakenly let my natural accent run, “Howdy do, friends and compatriots.”
“I thought this guy used to live here, surely he knows how they talk so as not to give himself away,” somepony chided.
I was too tired and witless, but another shot back, “That’s saying that he has something to fear from us.” This pony was seated at a table beside a tall window. The curtains were designed so as not be able to be seen through from the outside of the building, but the neon hues of the sleepless city’s streets were plainly viewable from behind them. We were on the seventh floor, and I was already getting vertigo from seeing that the window stretched from the floor the ceiling. I backed away instinctively, but Starfall pushed me forward.
“Numbskull.” I’m not sure whether she or I had uttered the pejorative.
The pony by the window continued, “You don’t suppose we’re dangerous, do ya?” This one was a stallion with dull brown pigment and a deep chocolate mane. He had it styled so thick so as it almost appeared to be solid chocolate.
“The Academy produces no dangerous operatives; the ones without control, the cadets, are those to be feared,” I recited.
“Wiseacre,” came another voice.
“I think you mean, ‘Wise answer,’” replied Jackson.
By this point, I had stepped in far enough to see the entire room. The washroom had been in the front, and its walls had obscured the rest of the party’s faces from me. Chocolate Mane, a unicorn, had been visible to me the whole time, but I had only seen his outline because the lights were kept dim, a measure customary to the Bat Ponies there.
Cattycorner to the entrance, two Bat Ponies had a dim lamp on to illuminate their card game in progress. It must have been pretty intense because they didn’t look up at all.
Jackson announced, “You all know sweet Ms. Escarleta here.” Starfall looked like she was about to drop, and I guess I did, too, but she looked up and smiled at him. “Acquaint yourselves with Zeta Cherrypaste.”
“We’d like to continue our stories, do you mind?” Two unicorns, a stallion and a mare, were situated in the other corner of the room. The mare leaned against the wall and wore an expression of general dispassion, and the stallion was knocking his head in an effort to remember something.
I decided to speak up. “Honestly, I’m not a morning pony, and it’s morning. I’m enthused to get to know you all, but I must turn in.”
“Good enough” was what most of their expressions conveyed. I started placing my luggage under the foot of the front, middle bed in the room. The mare in the back tapped the wall, and a soaked pony emerged from the washroom. I began searching for my toothbrush, oblivious.
“Who goes it?”
“There’s an alchemist about to usurp your bed,” cried the mare in the back.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I had picked up my toothbrush and had barely looked up and turned when I saw a towel about to envelop my face. My reflexes had been dulled, but time seemed to slow, and I switched to combat instinct. I held both my forehooves in front of me to catch the unfurled towel, and when the pony had come to ram me away, I caught his head and tripped his forelegs. He was redirected upwards, and I wrapped his head with the towel as he fell.
I realized that his head might hit the ground a little hard, so I put my right hoof beneath where it would land to cushion the impact. His landing made it smart something awful. With my toothbrush in my teeth and realizing that everypony’s eyes were on me, I tapped his throat lightly as though I was performing a coup de grâce.
His face was masked by the towel, but I could tell he was embarrassed, so I wanted to cast him as the noble victor. “I don’t mean to be fraudulently taking, my friend, but if you would lend a poor pony afraid of heights your bed away from the scary window, he would be indebted greatly.”
“Hmph. Fair deal.”
I removed the towel.
There had been relative silence as we entered, but, as I picked him up off the ground, the only sound to be heard was that of the five pairs of wings flapping overhead. This pony, too, was a unicorn, pale in pigment and sky blue in mane. He didn’t look at me as I pulled him to his hooves, so I stole a glance at Jackson and Starfall. Jackson’s jaw had dropped, and Starfall had the biggest grin her face. Her pranks had prepared me for this.
“Go fish,” said one of the bats in the back. That did it; everypony in there was rolling with laughter.
My slain was starting to turn sheepish, so I smiled to him and continued, “You would’ve got me, had you not thrown the towel first.”
“I was hoping that it would have been me wrapping your face,” he replied silently amid the din of cackling.
I extended my hoof to greet him, “My name is Zeta Cherrypaste of Tailsbury. You’re a quick one; brave, too.”
“I go by Sal.”
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to brush my teeth and hang up my coat before I go to bed.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I knew that was my cue to go do so.
I said I really would’ve liked to stay up and listen to the two ponies recount their exploits, their reason for holding us up, but I wanted to try to sleep. As a matter of fact, though, it turned into a prolonged and raucous discussion. Starfall auspiciously managed to retire to the other room and has probably been tranquilly slumbering while I’ve used my wakefulness to write.
I discreetly asked Chocolate Mane about the whole single name business these superior ponies had. He said it’s a customary sort of thing. It’s more endearing to call ponies by first names, yes, but not mentioning more than one name at once to refer to a single pony was just logical. As a matter of fact, Jackson, Starfall, and I are probably the most familiar trio among them; each of the rest has served alongside the others only a couple times before. He said that there were about fifty ponies in the pool for this job, and he knows that really everypony here believes he or she is too elite to be taking such a relaxed position.
“That reminds me, I’m a little perplexed. A vast proportion of our outfit is of Bat Ponies, and there really isn’t that great a proportion in Manehattan.”
“We know that, you fool,” one of the Bat Ponies replied.
“Be careful where you drop those eaves, my friend.”
“It’s not like we can’t hear you in this enclosed space.” One of them deftly silently flew behind my chair as I sat at the same table where Chocolate Mane had been sitting and permitted her fuzzy ear to touch mine before I could notice her.
When I flashed my bloodshot eyes at her, she flew away, a grin still upon her.
I sat back again and held my face with my hoof. Chocolate Mane seemed confused, “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Most of us aren’t even permitted to leave the vicinity of the hotel until the Nightmare Night party where you’ll work your magic, or not.”
“You mean none of you are coming in to operate with me?!”
“Except for Starfall, yes. We’re just here to bail you out if things go awry.”
That’s when I picked up this journal to recommence writing. Even through my drowsiness the reality clobbered me like Sal might have managed.
Entry 11 – October 21st, 1122, 21:00
These ponies come from very different backgrounds, as I mentioned of the ponies at the Academy. It’s strange; one would think there would be a greater commonality among the histories of the superior hunters. It just comes down to talent, I guess.
I’ve done a great deal of provisions shopping over the past few days for my fail-safe comrades. Manehattan’s shops specifically do not cater very well to the fruit proclivity of these Bat Ponies, but my diligence serves them as they shall serve me; that is, when needed and no more. Before long, everypony will be asking me to fetch sharpeners for their weapons. I’d preemptively secure them if I didn’t require their funds to make the purchases.
The danger I’m placing on myself in this endeavor doesn’t get to me too badly, but I’ve been hitting the gym near constantly since I’ve arrived. I’m getting pretty proud of my fitness, but I know that I just really want to be prepared for the conflict ahead.
Jackson and Starfall have been catching up, and I sit and listen. I can see the appeal each has for the other. I don’t get to talk to Jackson much, but he seems eager to get to know me. He just doesn’t isolate me so that we may converse. I’m better at one-on-one conversations, but he needs a group. Perhaps he’s afraid of my prejudices. In all truth, they’ve been melting.
Granted, I still find his whole affinity for pony blood wildly disturbing, but he’s really a good character, and it’s not like he carries it with him everywhere. I start to wonder if he actually partakes in that, but then one of the bats will inevitably mention somepony in their brood or acquaintance who does partake.
These instances don’t actually entail killing of ponies, but it just sounds depraved to me. Everypony knows that actual vampire ponies ceased to be ages ago. An older sort of Inquisition, solely led by Celestia, brought them down. Inquisitors hate the Changelings now as we hated those vampires of old.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-GrtUwICxc
Entry 12
Entry 12 – October 31st, 1122, 17:30
I guess I really can’t say the stage is set, but Starfall and I are prepared to embark for the eventide event. I wish this was a masquerade, which would make our disguising options a little more open. Under my coat my rapier is tightly strapped to my side. I’ve beefed up a good bit, so the coat might just tear off before I may need it to.
The Inquisitors here all have their weapons ready. If they hear so much as a knock at this door, they’ll be ready to move out. They have to stay here in order to keep their faces from being needlessly seen. The party tower isn’t exclusively being used by us tonight, and the mayor’s personal security is scattered about the building, but the mayor’s guests and we will have the top floor ballroom to ourselves.
Starfall will be the runner if things go wrong. She can teleport, after all. The chefs at the tower should be mixing the potion into the punch batch as I write. I doubt there will be any unintended hunters at the gathering, but if there are, they’ll witness the potion’s effect, and I guess that would further corroborate its results. It would complicate things, though.
We’re about to go. “Happy Nightmare Night,” say a few.
Sal turns to me, as I’m furiously writing what may be my last written, “Remember, Luna is always watching.”
Although nopony in our midst is foolish enough to believe those apples, as it’s organizationally impossible for even Her Majesty to be keeping watch over all of us simultaneously, I suppose there’s enough chance she’ll be surveying tonight’s events since she has a personal stake in my success. If I fail, that stake will be a nail in my coffin. I must go. Love.
____
I’m not sure whether it’s the victory I feel or the remaining adrenaline coursing through me that’s permitting me to write, but I must recall the event while I’m awake so that it doesn’t escape me in my sleep. We’re on the train now. We may be fleeing back to the mansion to save our faces, but without a doubt Starfall and I, well, maybe Starfall has enough restraint to not admit it, but, anyway, we feel invincible.
The ballroom had nice tapestries and rugs. The walls and floor were cream yellow. Definitely a huge room; over two hundred guests were in attendance. Tables were scattered through the room, but they all encircled, with space in between tables, of course, the marble dance floor. There was a raised platform in the far back of the room, behind the dance floor, where a grand piano stood proudly, glossy, sable, and pristine. When Starfall and I arrived, the piano pony was already at play. There was a guitar up there, too, but nopony was playing it. What a waste, I thought.
The ceiling was also yellow, but right above where the tables stood and the dance floor was, the ceiling was a mirror. I never quite understood how mirrors were supposed to make places look bigger until then. There weren’t any windows on this floor; one entered it via a VIP elevator.
One would think a mayor throwing a ball to extol Her Majesty Princess Luna would have delicacies available for food, but the decadent things that were there included traditional party foods: chips and pretzels and the like. Wonderfully salty and thirst-evoking. This stallion was a little craftier than I had pegged him to be.
Starfall and I couldn’t manage to secure seats at the mayor’s table, but we made it clear to him that we had arrived. His mane parted straight down the middle. His hair was a little greyed, and his pigment itself was a grey blue. His eyes were a dull blue that belied his intelligence. Starfall and I had agreed not to ingest the punch until we could ascertain that everypony had consumed it. We got our drinks and sat down and watched some of the more eager ponies dance. Dancing music wasn’t really playing yet, but it was their prerogative to make fools of themselves. Nopony came to talk to us, and I look back now and imagine that my Mohawk was a deterrent.
The music stopped. The mayor stepped up to the microphone to make an address to us for the occasion. He encouraged all of us, before he began, to try some of the punch before he was to begin because he thought it was positively scrumptious. His word, despite his even, politically cordial tone, was authoritative. In fact, the sixty or so ponies who had not yet taken a potion stood up, as if in concert, and went to retrieve some for themselves and began to drink as he began to speak. Starfall and I looked at each other. I was getting a little hot in my coat and was tempted to take a drink when she swatted my hoof away.
His speech wasn’t the best I’ve ever heard, but he satisfactorily extolled Princess Luna. His eyes seemed to glide to us as he finished, and he raised his eyebrows before he walked off. The piano pony took up the mike and said that the dancing was to commence. Indeed, he started with a groovy tune. I was tempted to dance even though I didn’t know the song, but Starfall gestured to our drinks, and we took them simultaneously.
It was a good thing my mane was already styled to stand on end. Starfall and I exchanged glances of disbelief, but we knew without saying that it would be far easier to count how many ponies weren’t Changelings as opposed to counting those who were. I realized the stage would be a good vantage point for the task. We had to let the mayor know which ones were ponies so that he would escort them out.
Starfall and I pulled out of the room where we wouldn’t be overheard to form a game plan. She’d hang in the back of the room and record descriptions of the real ponies to be escorted out whom she could see. The piano pony was still suspect, so I had to approach him and spy from the stage for corroboration and so as not to miss anypony innocent. The mayor, the biggest wallflower at the event, no less, would be able to surreptitiously persuade the real ponies to leave with him, but there needed to be a distraction. I said I’d figure it out because we were running out of time before somepony decided to dance with him.
Starfall began her task, and I obtained a drink. The stage was white carpet, and, over the din of the amplified piano over the electronic speakers, I called to him, “I’ve got a drink for you! I’m coming up.”
“Son, don’t you dare. I can’t have you spilling a drink on this carpet!”
“Come now, I’m trying to do you a favor.”
“Keep it away.”
“You don’t even have a voice you need to protect.”
“I have a job to lose.”
“I’ll take the fall; you’re sweating.” Indeed, he was profusely sweating. His silence gave me the assent I needed. I walked up onto the stage as casually as I could manage. If it looks like you have purpose being onstage, you’re meant to be onstage, I thought. I placed the drink by the microphone. It smelled irresistible. I hung back to the back wall and looked out as he completed his groove. Not any more than eight real ponies besides the mayor, Starfall, and me. The piano pony looked over to where I had placed the drink, frowned, and took it. One gulp. He didn’t change. He was a legitimate employee. He started another piece.
I looked at the guitar. First, I wondered if I could use it as a weapon, but its real purpose clicked to me. I looked up. Starfall was squinting to see me.
Through the opaque walls of the ballroom, I could imagine where the moon was in the night sky, and I nodded to it, thanking Princess Luna for the opportunity of a lifetime.
I approached the piano player.
“How may I again divide my attention to you?” He bit his lip to prevent skipping a beat.
“Is that Show Pan?” In all honestly, I had no clue, but it sounded classical enough.
“You have a keen ear. It’s his ‘Big Shining Waltz ,’ opus number 18.”
I stood silent, not knowing how to transition to my request.
“If you’re looking to reciprocate my compliment, the best gesture. . .” He played a sour chord that was probably not in the song. “. . . Would be to remove yourself and dance to my playing.”
“That’s just the thing. There’s been a change in the entertainment. Don’t worry; you’ll be paid just the same, but I’ll be covering the rest of the evening.”
“What in blazes-?”
“Once you’re done, you may want to clear out. I wouldn’t call my music suited to refined tastes.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“I tell you that I am. I’ll need the guitar to perform, but be sure you leave. I can tell you that it’s not up your alley. Everypony’s gonna enjoy it, of course. It may not be mayhem at first, but it’ll be a riot by the time I’m finished.”
“Big talk.”
I left him to report back to Starfall. She had caught six of the eight I mentioned.
“I saw you talking to the stallion at the piano.”
“You can see he’s not a threat. Make sure he leaves when I get on the stage. I’m going to play something ostentatious, and that’ll be your excuse to leave.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry; I’ll sing of love of many kinds. Just make sure you clear the building before you get the team here.”
“You’re making this a bigger responsibility for you than it needs to be,” she shook her head.
“I don’t see how else you can get those ponies out of here without the Changelings being fixated on somepony other than the mayor.”
She sighed. “Be careful. Don’t dig your own grave.”
“If I am digging it, at least I can play the dirge.”
“Do tell.”
I waltzed back to the stage and awaited the pony’s finish. When he did he just walked off! I seized the guitar when I got up there.
“Give me a second; I’ve gotta tune this. While you wait, I’ll introduce myself.” I looked up from my guitar briefly to see that Starfall had successfully isolated the mayor and was briefing him as everypony and everything gawked at me. “I understand that big, shiny waltzes and grooves are appropriate tunes for a spooktacular occasion such as this. I can’t play you ‘Danse Macabre,’ but I feel it is appropriate to celebrate the emotion we should be directing to Her Majesty this night.”
Some of the Changelings frowned when I referred the Inquisition’s staunchest figurehead by her proper title, but I knew what to say next. “It’s love, my friends. I’m a country pony; that means I love my friends, so I shall share my songs of love to you.”
Malignant grins all around except on the ponies.
I began to play. “This one’s ‘LowDown’ by Thomas Abides . . .”
The Changelings were mesmerized by my vulgar song before I finished it, but Starfall and the rest were out the door. Disgust, I guess.
No time to stall, I continued, “I understand you city ponies like your showtunes, how ‘bout it now?”
The Changelings stomped. “Good! Here’s a more refined taste you might like. ‘Some enchanted evening.’ . . .”
That did it. Already, some showed signs of not being able to contain themselves. A song about longing might have done well after it in a real performance, but I began to feel the pressure to slow things down. Literally, I was playing at a strangely fast tempo for such a song, but I guess it gave a little originality to my performance.
“Awright! I’ve got another serious song for you all. It’s about love for one’s country, but you could construe it as being about a special kind of pony.”
I knew it was too high for my voice, but I hoped my nerves would get me up to the high notes. The Changelings performed a collective shrug.
“’Anthem.’ . . .”
I couldn’t help but think of how the hunters might not make it in time. The room had a grave tranquility whenever I wasn’t singing, and I couldn’t stand the silence of the intermittent song descriptions; I could feel the Changelings’ voracious eyes on me. I mustn’t look into them. I mustn’t look into them. I almost lost my place in the song.
I wasn’t breathing. I was feverish, and I was ready to die. Any moment, I’d catch the eyes of the wrong Changeling, and I’d be done for.
One thing called out to me, “Hey, you should really look at your audience when you sing.”
I snapped back to my sensibility. I looked up and into the voice, wherever it was. My expression was stoic, but I let a grin out once the words had escaped me.
“Okay, Simon Cowbell.”
There was a collective laugh from the audience and a stomping of cloaked legs.
Once it had subsided, I realized that I had been up there for ten minutes or so. The hunters should have arrived. I realized that the sword was above my head, anyway, so I’d go out with a bang.
“You know, there’s a guy I really respect. His name’s Johnny Two-Bits. I gotta Stallion in Black classic to sing. ‘Walk the Line.’”
I couldn’t believe I was singing it. There came a silent flash from behind the doors in the back, and I had to look up. The green eyes didn’t follow my gaze because I didn’t stop singing, but rather they were trying to catch it. My peripheral caught something. There were two Changelings stalking up the stairs to my platform on each side. They were following my rhythm with each step, so I stopped.
The doors opened, and the Changelings remained transfixed for a moment.
In retrospect, I juxtaposed two sentences very ironically, but my comrades knew what I meant.
“It’s safe! Kill them all!” So began the bloodletting.
All the Changelings in the front flipped their tables, giving me time to move back. I didn’t know why I was picking up the piano as I did so, but my reason came to me. About eight Changelings lunged straight for me. My muscles were strong and fast enough to sweep them in one swing.
“Huuruh!” I chucked the piano into the wall to my left. SPLAT! Ten Changelings to my credit, and I was not dead yet.
The pressure from my flexing muscles severed the lining of my coat when I heaved the piano, so I was ready to cut. The four stalkers had taken longer to awaken than the rest of the Changelings took to snap out of it, and I had to face them next. I saw a flying hunter headed for the two on my right, so charged to the left, building momentum for a lethal haymaker. The other foe facing me decided to charge me, hoping to impale me with its deformed alicorn. However, I was ready to combat point with edge before it could race to me, and I cut it down. I turned around instinctively. Two of our unicorns had trapped about a hundred Changelings in a barrier to make dispatching the free ones easier on the rest of us.
I was broadsided by an airborne Changeling. It had me on my back, but I was in a position to kick it off me, so I did, and a scarlet bolt obliterated it. I picked myself back up, and there was yet another horned Changeling before me. I smacked hooves together and sheathed my rapier. The thing was built for pugilism. I swung first but missed, yet it blocked the miss. Big mistake. I ducked when it aimed high for my jaw, but, before I could throw it, a lance pierced its outstretched foreleg. It screeched, but I ripped it from the lance and performed a lethal vertical suplex on it.
I got up and dusted myself off and rebuked, “You think you could use a more cumbersome weapon for indoor combat?! You almost skewered me!”
“Throw me your rapier, then,” Jackson called back.
“Very well.” I reached for my rapier with my mouth.
“Wait!”
I unsheathed the rapier more quickly than he had expected, cleaving a Changeling charging for me. I tossed Jackson my weapon, and I looked at his work. So far, so good; he had slain about five and was still alive. I couldn’t help but catch his stoic work face.
We looked forward from the stage. Everypony was engaged with some group of Changelings except us. The unicorns had probably vaporized about ten each. Some of the Bat Ponies were getting clobbered midair, so Jackson flew to help them. The two maintaining the barrier had been protected up to this point, so I wanted to maintain their security. A couple Bat Ponies were on the ground protecting their right flank while the unicorns checked their left flank once about every five seconds.
I called to Jackson, “Help out at the barrier retainers’ left flank. I’ll meet you there.”
The Changelings were about to pounce on the two Bat Pony soldiers when I plowed through them from the back. Dispersed, some flew into the air, and the Bat Ponies chased them. On hoof I chased a few flightless Changelings and smashed them into the walls with brute force. Jackson helped herd them, as he flew about, reaping at the Changelings as though my rapier were a scythe. It was a decent fight until all that remained were under our barrier.
We probably could have survived the second wave, but, as elites, these ponies had lives too valuable to expend in the name of honorable fighting. We opened a hole in the barrier and zapped the Changelings as they made to escape. None actually escaped. Watching them be destroyed as they tried to escape through the chokepoint, I knew we were being as pitiless as our foes, but we were justified. They had invaded us, and now our public’s sense of security would suffer. The hecatomb of a couple hundred Changelings could not outweigh safety of mind masses of ponies will lose when the word spreads of what the Changelings nearly managed to do.
As I said, we had to leave for fear of having our faces too widely recognized. Ponies can forget and reimagine faces they’ve seen, but photographs never do.
I think, though, that fear is on our side. Nopony loves the feared pony, or Changeling, as it is. There have been campaigns to paint the Changelings as benevolent creatures willing to resort to coexistence, but, to use the words I think Princess Celestia shall, come the daytime’s press conference, “We cannot coexist with monsters.”
We’re getting close to the mansion now. My body has ached to return to that familiar mattress and especially does now, as it quite literally aches. One of those nasty Changelings bit my foreleg when I swung at it, and I’ll have to bandage it before I go to bed so as not to ruin my sheets with my own blood. Starfall sterilized it, but she says it’s going to itch. Great. Out of all Changelings’ features, their teeth are what I most despise. In biting me, that Changeling gave me an idea that may just be the ruination of their race. A one-two punch, they may call it, from a pugilist alchemist.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this entry can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcKq8MqSYI
Entry 14
Entry 14 – November 21st, 1122, 07:00
I am tired but I am anxious. It is perhaps for this reason that I finally remembered to get back to writing today. Today’s been a big day, but I’m not nearly contented enough to put off writing again. It used to feel like a compulsion or a necessity to daily living, but the severe changes of circumstance brought me away from the chronicling table. Maybe that’s not the best word for it, but I think that’s how Jackson would put it, at least.
I finished my tutorial task less than a week ago. I was never meant to be a teacher. The sheer importance of and my personal connection to the matter I had to teach my fellow alchemists brought upon me, while I was before these ponies, an anxiety I’ve never before experienced. It wasn’t so bad as to be debilitating, but even the prospect of death never intimidated me as much as the prospect of failing to impart the necessary information. There was hope deeply ingrained in that I’d discuss the intricacy of the procedure and meticulously perform the steps in front of my audience, and it held firm as it rung true.
Although there were more than enough misinterpretations of certain aspects of the process to be rectified, they became apparent in hilarious meltdowns upon my students’ attempts to replicate “The Solution,” as I’ve come to call it. These instances were straightened out immediately, and by the end of my teaching span there had already formed a student-led group at the Academy committed to understanding exactly how The Solution worked. I myself have an intermediate idea of what makes it work; otherwise, I wouldn’t have initially attempted concocting its ingredients together in the manner that I did, but they really want to figure it all out.
My Acolyte’s coronation and potion tutorial activities accomplished, I found myself at the Academy with no real purpose, so I promptly left the premises to return to the mansion to await further briefing from the Inquisition. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to immediately take holiday with Starfall. I had thought about how she might be spending her time diverting herself in between giving lessons and how long she might spend sulking at the thought of being left to cool after having just been reacquainted with the forges of battle, but my conscience would always smite me with the fact that it really wasn’t my business. Or perhaps it was, but I didn’t ruminate on it for long in any case.
Being reincorporated into the educational facility I had once attended redirected my thoughts to my family back in Tailsbury. My folks don’t have any reason to suspect that I am alive or dead. Perhaps I am both at once to them. They were sad to see me leave even after the Academy, but I still have yet to pin down whether it was the fact that I was persisting in trying to join the despised Inquisition instead of trying to make amends for time I didn’t invest in them or the fact that I was simply going away again would, at best, continue to be present in their lives in a fleeting sense. They don’t know intimately the stallion I have formed to be, and they know full well that their family line could easily truncate with me. We may be villagers and far removed from nobility, but the familial line’s a thing we nonetheless esteem.
The possibility of my seeming to be a failure to them motivates me. Although I can’t fantasize that they know of what waves I’ve made in my persistence, I strive to achieve something that one day will be momentous enough to precede an unexpected arrival back to them.
I am thankful that I had an unexpected arrival at approximately 23:00 yesterday. I had fallen to such bored lows as to be trying to enjoy some of the Oatzart records when there was a pounding at my door. My curiosity was so aroused that I neglected to stop the gramophone before I opened the door.
Blending into the dim brown grimness of the surrounding autumnal wood and untouched by the half-orange, half-purple sundown sky overhead, a devil-red Starfall with supreme wings tucked at her sides stood.
“Come in, stranger,” I offered.
“Forgetting about the vacation was dense of you, but I thought I didn’t have to worry about you not being able to recognize me as your friend from a few weeks ago.”
She had taken it too seriously to not continue toying. “Oh? Let me get my reading glasses and get a good look at your face.” I made for to go inside, “You aren’t Sandra, are you?”
“Oh, shut it.” She had gotten that I was joking.
“If you say so.” I literally slammed the door shut. I turned off the gramophone and opened the door once again to find that Starfall hadn’t moved. Her expression was no longer indignant but rather merely unamused. Her one brow was raised.
“Maybe we could try this again.” I extended my hoof to greet.
She sighed, taking it, “I hope you don’t mean to carry that sarcastic air with you all evening.”
“I don’t. Being with a friend is a merry occasion. Why do you say?”
“Because I invite you to be with many friends this evening. None of us really got to celebrate our victory at the tower, so we planned a party this evening at a recreational center. We would just hate to miss you.”
As she had spoken, I couldn’t help but entertain my eyes to her new eyes and teeth. I reached out to touch her new wings. She didn’t seem to mind me. I guessed she had anticipated censure from me instead of fascination. Her eyelids relaxed a little and she grinned, and I pulled away with a nervous laugh at having been unable to contain myself.
“It seems you have a newfound appreciation for—“
“Not in the sense you may suspect. They’re just a novelty. Smooth, not scaly like I imagined.”
“Really?”
“Uh, they’re neat. I mean, you’re neat. Uh. . .”
“Do tell.”
“I assume our mainly nocturnal outfit is the cause for the time of the engagement?”
“Good guess. Come along.”
We started walking down the path through the forest to the tracks. I soon realized that she was giving me an opportunity to begin catching up with her before we were to teleport back to wherever the recreational center was. I made sure to let her know that I was privy to the underlying purpose of our superfluous walk.
“I just want you to have this over with so that you can be social tonight with the others. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have practiced your small talk conversations before the event, especially if you’re as rusty as I expect you to be.”
We were having a good discussion when the caprice hit her to teleport us away. We stood before a dark treehouse with a few lights still on inside. It was wide and not very tall, and its bark was covered in places by sinister black moss.
“So this is where you stay these days?”
“Horse feathers. It’s Jackson’s place. I intend to stay here.”
I detected a shadow in one of the nearby windows, but Jackson’s voice resounded before I could acknowledge it.
“Fee Fi Fum Phonies: at my door I hear two ponies,” he called.
“Ponies whinny and ponies neigh. You’d do well to let ‘em finish what they say,” she called back.
I couldn’t bear to hold back my laughter for longer than a second or two. “That’s one way to greet!”
Jackson flung the door open, and he stood there, smiling with intent eyes. He was formally dressed, and Starfall perceived my concerned frown.
“Your lack of formal attire will be quite acceptable, Zeta.”
I could only find it in myself to apologize with a look.
“Seems like you would have preferred to leave on me a secondary impression equal to the one I’m leaving on you. It’s really better this way. Nopony who’s going to be there expects anypony other than me to put on this pretense.”
“It’s his way,” said Starfall in a bland manner that was still endearing to him.
“I’m confused. Are there going to be ponies there other than the ones from our outfit?”
There certainly would be. They had made a reservation at the entire recreational center for the party, and the ponies from our lot were permitted to bring guests with them.
“Every hunter has close comrades they like to bring to such occasions. It just happens to be that your best friends are also invitees,” Jackson remarked.
We resumed the conversation as we trekked to the recreational center for the party. We would be given access to all of the facilities for the evening, and there would be a buffet. I am really glad I got some sleep around noontime. We held a substantial conversation on our way there. We didn’t teleport there because of the location’s reasonable proximity. Jackson seemed to be especially interested in what I had to say about the lessons I had given. It struck me funny because he seemed to have no clue about alchemy whatsoever. I realized he was trying to make me feel important to him, and I acquiesced to his intention. I felt a little guilty trotting with them, though. They could have easily flown there, but I was tethering them to the ground. A pony usually tends to not feel this way, but, since I really cared about our being together at this outing, I just couldn’t help it.
We arrived about midnight, and by then all invitees were present. The recreational center was a huge building and very accommodating to flying ponies. We must have been in one of the communities mostly inhabited by Bat Ponies, especially considering they comprised most of the staff there. We decided to head to the buffet, which was located in a special room which seemed fit for no other purpose. The ponies who had not been present to greet us at the door had awaited our arrival in that room. It wasn’t a crowd, but it was sizeable, exceeding twenty.
Everypony seemed to be fuelling up for sporty activity. All around I saw Bat Ponies voraciously sapping various fruits. Chocolate Mane had apparently feasted himself sleepy, for there was some juice on his face, and he was napping in a corner. Sal was trying to strike up a conversation about fruit stocks with his friends. One mare stood in the back surveying the scene while she coolly bit into an apple. Jackson quietly appropriated a watermelon and proceeded to urbanely ingest its contents with a straw. Starfall held back pensively.
“I can’t believe you. Did you forget that there’d be food?”
From gazing at the feast Starfall turned to me. “I’m planning on swimming before I chow down.” She pulled my head in closer and whispered with both our faces turned out the door and into the hallway so nopony would hear, “Between you and me, my transformation was very recent, and my metabolic rate hasn’t reached the speed that most of these natural Bat Ponies have.”
I casually resumed my previous posture. “Don’t mind if I partake.”
She was a little more abrupt in recomposing herself. She snickered. “Of course. Oh, yeah! I remember: you can’t swim anyway.”
A Bat Pony named Steiner, a rambunctious one who had been flying during our first encounter at the hotel, had been gradually approaching us from across the room as soon as we had entered. From the way he stalked us, I couldn’t help but get the impression that he was likely a member of the pseudo-Vamponies. I pretended not to notice him before, but this time he gave himself up pronouncedly.
“Oh, no. You didn’t bring us another hydrophobe, Starfall?” It wasn’t exactly a reproach, but he sounded disappointed.
“Afraid so.”
“What?! I belong here, don’t I? I’m not taking being ‘brought’ here lying down.”
“Chillax, dude. I was only saying.”
That was my first social blunder of the evening but certainly not my last. Fortunately, Jackson broke in to catch my fall from his station.
“I don’t believe Zeta has eaten anything yet. That might be what’s eating at him.” And he gave me that smile! What a guy.
I proceeded directly to a table with honeydew, which I had only read about in some of my alchemy books. I smelled it before picking a chopped chunk up. It had a pretty plain and faint melon scent. I took a whole piece into my mouth and bit down. It was the heavenliest thing! The texture and the underwhelming sweetness were superb.
Sheerly amazed, I pointed to it and shouted to nopony in particular, “This stuff!”
I received some strange looks from those who heeded my voice. I looked to Starfall and Jackson, and they simultaneously gave me a humored snort of acknowledgement.
So I helped myself to a whole honeydew. By the time I had finished it, so had the rest of the ponies finished their meal. They were practically zooming across the room from the natural sugars. Various groups formed to go to various facilities. I knew I was destined to drift among them this morning, but presently I hadn’t the courage to dislodge myself from my closest acquaintances. With a couple others we proceeded to the pool area.
The smell of chlorine in the air was not dense, but I found it atrocious nonetheless. I sat with Jackson on some bleachers. He didn’t intend to remove his outfit at all for our gathering. Starfall took to swimming laps in the pool. She had never told me she could swim, so I brought it up to Jackson after having sat in passive tranquility for several minutes as he beheld her admiringly.
“Who’d have thought it, huh? Isn’t she so graceful?”
In fact I did not think she was graceful at all. I had known a few swimmers at the Academy.
“To be honest, Jackson, I don’t think it’s really something you could boast about.”
He turned to me but did not seem hurt on her behalf. “How do you figure?”
“Well, she kicks up splashes like nopony I’ve ever seen, and furthermore, aside from her backstroke, she doesn’t seem to employ any particular stroke as she swims.”
“Oh.”
I explained to him the source of my understanding.
“I bet you wish you could bring yourself to swim.”
He shocked me with his perspicacity. “An astute conjecture.”
He was back to smiling again and we were now looking forward but still talking. “I guess my wager’s not forfeit then. I’m not a strong swimmer myself, but Starfall can do laps like this for hours. I encouraged her to try her hoof at this new skill, and already she’s superseded me as teacher. I’ll have to get a book for her to improve her art – without mentioning your having inspired the purchase, of course.”
“Fair enough.”
“Speaking of reception of credit, do you enjoy having your name ascribed to the creation of your elixir?”
“I don’t mean to sound more modest than I am, but I really can’t be certain. I didn’t do it for the fame, and I’m afraid whatever attention comes to me might make me a target.”
“Oh, yes. Starfall let me know you were a paranoid one.”
“I guess I am.”
“Well, I hope you don’t take pride in your paranoia. She says it mostly manifests itself in solitude of all places, and you’ll be in our company for a while yet.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Not to call you a liar, but I don’t think any of us can be too far away from the other two from here on out. Luna watches.”
“You don’t honestly believe that slogan, do you?”
“I don’t, but, considering she mandated our vacations, she must expect something to come of our being together.”
The few who had followed us into the pool area were now engaged in some form of Marco Polo and were raucously splashing about. The vaulted room echoed their noise. I had fallen silent, trying to conceive a way to move about to the subject of my next scheme.
“Doesn’t the echo give you a headache?”
“Where would you get that idea?”
I turned to him and looked at his fuzzy ears. He took a second to realize that I was tacitly indicating my reason with my eyes. His grin reappeared.
“Good thought, but no. One learns to tune the reverberations out. Say, you’re awfully considerate of my batdom for a pony with an aversion to my kind.”
“Let me disallow my ‘aversions’ to come between myself and my friend.”
“Well put, and thank you for putting me in the place of greatest importance in that remark.”
“Perhaps we should lay out our baggage on the table for both of us to see.”
“You couldn’t be referring to. . .”
“I do.”
“Very well. Starfall told me what she told you about it. There’s little else to be said unless you have questions.”
“I would like to propose an idea to you that involves both your work and that recreation.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘recreation,’ but go on.”
“It’s just a theory, but it’s been simmering in my mind for a little while now. It’s not anything alchemically based and shouldn’t be abstruse to you.” I looked at him, and he seemed interested but unsure of where I was going, so I sighed. “To cut to the chase, I think that perhaps it may be deeper in your physiology, as Bat Ponies, to combat the Changelings than as far as your capacities as skillful night hunters go.”
“Oh, I forgot to mention to you. I apologize to interrupt you, but you may want to know that sometime before we hit December, all the waterways, rain clouds, and reservoirs shall be filled with your potion.”
“What?!” I didn’t know he had it in him to interrupt me, but I wasn’t just surprised by that.
“Yep. It’s settled. All those ponies you taught the potion to have been hard at work developing enough of the stuff to do it. The Changelings among us won’t be able to hide for long, and anypony who doesn’t drink the water will be suspect. You, me, Starfall, and the rest of us here are the only ones who won’t be on standby to investigate the flood of reports that shall come in. Her Majesty Twilight has apparently convinced Celestia and Luna that we cannot just put off drastic action for long.”
“It’s certainly a state of affairs. I hope hysteria doesn’t set in.”
“They can’t possibly augment the water all at once, but it’ll not be long before they have. Anyway, get back to what you were saying.”
“That’s insane. Perhaps I need to impart this a little more quickly to you. Okay. So, you obviously retain bat characteristics. Some bats eat fruit, yes, but you know what many bats eat: insects.”
“Right.”
“In essence I think you should try Changeling blood. I have a couple jars back at the mansion.”
He briefly looked disgusted, but he saw my reason, and his disgust melted, “Changelings do look quite like insects.”
“I’m really glad I didn’t offend you by suspecting you might try it if I brought it up.”
“It will take some adventure on my part, but I’ll do it mostly to humor you. I’m guessing that your conclusion is that, if you can get enough of us to push past our egos, the Bat Pony hunting force will fight our toothed Changeling foes with our own teeth.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps you may even find another form of sustenance in feeding off your foes.”
“That’s a perverse strain of thought.”
“You understand the honesty in it, though?”
His grin came back. “Certainly.”
“I’d actually like for you try some as soon as you can.”
“Get it in an opaque phial when we escort you back home this morning, and I’ll test it once Starfall’s left.”
“Likewise I don’t think she’d appreciate this development.” I looked over to her lane and found that she had joined up in the game in procession.
“I suggest you get yourself moving. We’ll join you when we’re ready, but find yourself a game you can participate in. I’m afraid your mind, without proper intervention from us, shall never be able to compartmentalize your work from your play.”
I stepped carefully to the pool deck. “We’ll see about that.”
I was certainly prepared to show him up on that matter. I was aware that one of the groups was going to play basketball, and another was set to play dodgeball in the gymnasium. I hadn’t played basketball in years, so I decided to go there first.
I walked in to find that there were about six ponies at play in a game of knockout. Not garnering their attention, I picked up a spare ball and began attempting some foul shots at a spare hoop. I kept overshooting them. My strength had augmented from then, but my muscle memory hadn’t compensated. I must’ve been twenty and still at the Academy when last I played. I tried performing layups, and this venture was more successful.
The ponies at play had tired of their game and invited me to play house with them, but, as I had seen them play quite skillfully, I was too ashamed of my meager skills and thus declined. I made excuse by saying I had to leave for another bite of honeydew.
“I might meet you in the weight room later. I know you can’t stay away from there for too long,” one of the hunters called.
“We’ll see you there,” I called back as I left the room.
I proceeded to the gymnasium. They were still in the middle of an intense game, I learned from Chocolate Mane, who was refereeing.
“You’ll just have to wait until the sugar in these jitterbugs runs out.”
Sal, who had been out when I arrived in, was spectating, eager to be back in the action.
I asked him how things were going.
“Pretty well, I guess, but my mind’s really in the game right now.”
“How’d you get out?”
“Steiner ducked the wrong way, caused me to face-shot him.”
“Would you mind running the rules by me for this game?”
Obviously, face-shots were grounds for getting out. In this game, the boundary line between the two teams was strictly enforced; if so much as a hair attached to your tail crossed the line, you were out. I had never heard of the boundary rule being enforced so punctiliously. If a pony caught a ball, the pony out the longest on the catcher’s side was to be brought back in, but the thrower was not out. If a pony was hit directly but the deflected ball was caught by a team member, he or she was still in, but another pony was not brought back in. One could deflect a ball thrown at them with a ball in one’s possession, but, so long as the thrower’s ball hadn’t touched the ground, a pony hit by the deflected ball would still be out. The other principal rules of the game were still set.
I wanted to join in badly, but I had to wait. Sal was back in soon after he had explained the rules to me. Steiner was a quick dodger, but Sal could throw fast if he got a running start to his pitch. His team utilized him by throwing volleys to distract various members of Steiner’s team while he would start running from behind them. It was a good game, and the rules pretty much set the stage for its interminability, I think, but I couldn’t bear to stick around.
Naturally, I secluded myself to the weight room. I performed my stretch routine before I began to have at it, and it was during this session that the pony from the basketball room entered. He was suitably warmed up, so, while he waited for me to finish, we talked some. His name was Cato, and he loved his position as hunter very much. Although he always knew he’d be good in a group and would not possess enough intrinsic value to become well known, he strove to be efficient in the roles he played. Subtlety not being his strongest suit, he could perform berserker raids at Changeling hatcheries.
He continued telling me about his exploits as we hit the machines. Cato and I were of about equal sturdiness, but he, being fresh out of a game, was quicker to wear out than I was. That didn’t really matter. All I had to do was continue to sing my praises to him in order to keep his mouth moving. He apparently appreciated esteem coming from somepony more famous than he. Our conversation was topical at its profoundest, but his voice was pleasurable.
When I was done, Cato and I vacated to the buffet room. Fewer staples were about this time, but they were fresh. I was good still, but he went about and took a little bit of everything. He bade me farewell, for he was to head back to basketball room.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I defaulted to singing. I just sang in that lonesome space. It maybe was an hour that I misspent in there.
Somepony who maintained the place happened to be walking by in the hallway, and she complimented me. That was nice of her as a stranger.
Not long afterward Starfall and Jackson returned to me.
“Not that I had missed it, but I had wondered if my absence had silenced your singing voice at all,” spoke Starfall.
“If a hunter sings in the middle of the forest, and nopony is there to hear it, does he really sing?”
“Touché.”
This reminded Jackson, “Hey, isn’t there a fencing facility here?”
Chocolate Mane led the sweaty dodgeball ponies back into the room, “I’m afraid they’re renovating it.”
Seeing the food, most of the ponies reanimated and recommenced eating. In the munching din, Jackson approached me.
“Once they’re done it’ll be your final chance to speak with these ponies tonight.”
His words motivated me. The basketball group returned last, and I waited to descend upon them to make them my friends.
There was lots of good chitchat practice to be had. I didn’t soar in the ranks of conversation by it, though. It was especially nice to hear from the ponies from outside the Inquisition’s sphere, but they somehow could always tell that I was a hunter. Nothing I said verbally gave it away, as far as I could tell. I joined up with Jackson, who was hosting a neat conversation with the two card players. Methods of card counting were the topic, and I was keen to listen but not intrude. An outsider joined in, too, and the first thing she asked was what Jackson did for a living. When he told her, she expressed surprise. His solid smile could deceive a pony into thinking he was the only one who didn’t share jobs with the crowd of hunters enveloping him. There was no natural grimness to the face.
His love for life appears wonderful, and his smile gives this wondrously deceptive impression.
____
Jackson just came back to me. He says he’d like to try a little more of the Changeling blood I have stored.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYrEVQiAGY0
Entries 15 and 16
Entry 15 – January 24th, 1123
I lament and report that things have gone dreadfully awry, and it is for shame in having played such a principal part in it that I have not written sooner.
The water fortification campaign worked splendidly, and by the time it was underway Jackson had already spread word among the pseudo-vampiric brood about the delightfulness a Bat Pony experiences at the taste of Changeling blood. There were a first few who tried it while answering the first wave of Changeling reports. Those in the brood who had not partaken could not overcome their curiosity, and within a week or so there were non-vampiric Bat Ponies trying the new substance for themselves. Almost immediately they were hooked, and it sent them into a fervor to slay more Changelings.
These consuming Bat Ponies became acute to the presence of Changelings, and I must say that the process of turning our non-predatory fighting force into one was far more expeditious than I had anticipated it would be. These hunters didn’t go on assignments anymore; they didn’t need to because they were voraciously pursuing the trail of another Changeling whenever they weren’t already sapping one.
The decimation in the Changelings’ numbers was comparable to what havoc could be reached if suddenly a quarter of Equestria decided to wage holy war against the Changelings. In fact, when consuming Bat Ponies sported numbers slain as high as 100 or 200 within a month of the leak of my word, even veteran Bat Ponies considered what fame could be gleaned if they would succumb to the blood fury.
We had made huge strides before we hit the twentieth of December, and I was already being commended for what historians were forecasting to be the decisive sweep that would force even the dastardly inexorable Queen Chrysalis to demand a truce even before our frenzied ranks could draw near her stronghold. Starfall was one of the biggest dissidents to my idea. Until the bloodshed ceased or Jackson died by some mishap, she thought she would never see her beloved again. Even the approving smiles from the princesses could not remedy the wound Starfall inflicted on me when last we met over a month ago when she confronted me for my “shortsighted and desperate attempt to seize glory”. Such a deviant postulation, however promising, should never have been acted upon.
Even my parents must’ve received word of my two breakthroughs, and I was receiving a continuous stream of payment from the Inqusition: one bit’s payment for each Changeling a frenzied Bat Pony managed to slay and report. This considerable sum funded research I had begun into how I could make the ponies’ hunger stop, but, as soon as word got out that I was pursuing such a thing, I was kindly informed that there already existed appetite-curbing spells, so I was relieved of that burden.
“Fearless thinking and perseverance were the only two things I could attribute my success to,” so I said to a few crowds I was hired to inspire.
Almost before the year turned, the first pony turned. In one of the countless raids on Changeling sanctuaries going on at the time, some poor Bat Pony drank his last, so we thought. Some thought he had taken too much blood at once. He had been sapping a Changeling when he summarily disengaged from the thing and turned to his comrades and vomited. Next, it was as if he froze. He dropped dead, stiff and cold as the cavern about him.
The soak’s funeral was held a day afterward. Somepony noticed that the undertaker had left the corpse’s mouth in a smile, and promptly the corpse arose with gleaming, red eyes and pronouncedly enlarged fangs, even for a Bat Pony. The shock of his returning had stunned all the attendees to the point where they gave him enough time to sap one pony there dry. He was slain after a dire and very bloody struggle.
I didn’t mean to, but I had nonetheless brought back the Vamponies. How stupid I was not to recognize Changelings as the link between us and that previously extinct species!
Thus, about a third of our highest-ranking hunters and countless others among our ranks were fated to become enemies of the order. We couldn’t track even a tenth of them down in time to stop their appetites from poisoning their souls.
I have plunged Equestria into a new age of fear. There is immense difficulty in slaying these beings at the given date. The old techniques for slaying them are contained in very few tomes, and their lack of use for almost a millennium forced them out of the Inquisition’s teaching. It’s also nigh impossible because most of us Acolytes have learned the weaknesses of our fellows so that we could compensate for them when we fight. It’s much like why a knight is constantly cognizant of the faults in his or her armor; the knight, just like one of our groups, falls when the weaknesses are exploited.
I returned to writing here once I ascertained that the Inquisition was not bent on slaying me for my mistake. If it was, I couldn’t possibly be writing right now. However, I cannot be in good grace because I have heard nothing from anypony involved. I have offered my supplications and apologies to Princess Luna, but our correspondence has terminated on her end.
As far as I know, Jackson has not come back. I engage myself now in trying to find a cure for the vampirism, but I’m afraid it’ll be of no use until I can have a test subject. Nopony in the early days ever sought a cure, so there is literally no knowledge on how this could possibly be accomplished.
I’ve used my coin to purchase viands in case I suddenly fall under siege here; they are stored in the basement. The mansion is enchanted against Vamponies, so long as there remains a closed door between me and the outside, according to a tome I found in the library. The enchanted copy of this diary in there seems to still keep my writing, and that’s nice, I guess.
I can’t bring myself to go outside at night, and I am alert even as I attempt to sleep. I turn off every light in here just in case some Vampony passes through the area. I will go out tomorrow to resupply myself with ingredients and storage phials.
Monetary opulence is an interesting thing. I can afford to keep a small sack of coin on me at all times, and, if I am robbed, it makes little difference to me. Of course, I carry my rapier for defense, and I have also resolved to keep this book on me at all times, for it is my only companion. The winter out here is cold, so when I go out I wear a scarf.
If there is a royal archiver monitoring this book, let it be known that I have three wishes:
I wish to remain loyal to the Inquisition and to fight this new threat in the manner I have described above.
I wish to be reassured against the coming night. I know that it is always darkest before the dawn, but night invariably comes again, and I fear it like never before.
I wish to be reassured that this isn’t entirely my fault, even though it is.
THERE IS NO DIGNITY IN EXILE.
Entry 16
In a panic, the date becomes no longer of relevance. It’s probably been two days or so since I last wrote, but I can’t distinguish the time from down here in the cellar. I probably should’ve started stockpiling water down here; I am now forced to get it from drinking from the damp walls about me. “Drinking” is probably not the best word to describe it; it’s barely enough to sustain me, as I must lick the cucumber-tasting mold on the surrounding walls.
The silence assails my senses. There is no sound from the exit to the pantry or from the boards overhead. I’d sing a dirge for myself, but I’m afraid my oxygen may run out before I complete it. It’s a shame that such a vital commodity is invisible.
There was no sum I could pay the engineer to get to my house in time before sundown. He had a schedule to maintain. I stepped off the train and hurried through the wooded path. I had no way to tell that my fears were justified before I was ambushed, but I realize now that the preemptory sensation of fear does not mitigate the fear which one experiences upon finding that it was well founded.
As I had my eyes trained on the branches overhead, I could not have braced myself for Steiner’s tackling me from the side. He, however, wasn’t prepared to face me. Strength training is the outlet for my paranoia, and, although I dropped my bag of ingredients upon his impacting me, I commanded our fall, swinging him about so that I fell on him. I stood up on him and bellowed in face in order to intimidate him, but he did not flinch, so I suspected there was some insurance he had.
I leapt away from him in time to dodge Jackson’s sweeping at me from overhead. I returned to the partially moonlit path so that I had better light to see them by. Their vibrant red eyes gave them away in the woody darkness, but I didn’t dare to look into them, for fear of being transfixed. Jackson, as I had run back to the path, had apparently picked up his stalking buddy, and when I looked back they were slinking toward me.
“Fancy meeting you two out here at this hour.”
They didn’t respond; they simply donned diabolical grins.
“Would you rather ignore an appeal to logic or a valiant warning?”
This time Jackson spoke in a voice of velvet, “Whichever you prefer.”
I took off and without looking back to them I called, “You’re better off letting me find a cure for you. Won’t you come inside and kindly bind yourselves so that I may begin researching one?”
They were pursuing me midair by now because I couldn’t hear their hooves hit the ground.
I barely saw where I was headed; the image of Jackson’s smile and his teeth was burned in my eyes. There was no way to draw my rapier without slowing my sprint, so I just ran.
When I ascended the gravel ramp, I noticed that my pursuers had slowed down, anticipating a magical barrier around the house. They couldn’t stop themselves, and the absence of a barrier led them to plow into the porch rails. I had opened the door for myself and slammed it, but I saw that it was nonetheless ajar.
Two sable left wings had been crushed but nonetheless were holding the door open. Their owners both hissed in hellish agony, but I knew I would not be able to force their wings from the door before they opened it themselves. I bolted through the dining room, slipping once on the floor and bashing my cheek against the wall. I heard the door open and resumed my flight to the pantry, opened the door, and slammed it behind me.
Pull as they might, they could not open the enchanted door without my consent, and they would not get it. I was obviously in the weaker position, but I taunted them all the same, just as one beckons an imagined figure in the darkness to fight even though he or she knows the figure is an innocuous fantasy. What’s more, I thought I heard them close the door behind them as they had entered after me. The silly force of habit has trapped them with me, and we shall see who outlasts whom.
The way is shut.
The scare hasn’t worn off just yet, but sleep beckons me away from the immediate danger. I’m sitting in a wood crate I was planning to fill with food; it keeps me out of the dampness.
Good night, my world.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this entry can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugBkFWaepHw
Entries 17, 18, and 19
Entry 17
I’m back on the train. Starfall has given me a ride to freedom, wherever that is. The conductor doesn’t intend to give any favor to me beyond permitting me to ride, even though I paid the fare, so I don’t know whether I slept for a day or for several in the basement. It is daylight now, and I anxiously await Starfall to rendezvous with me here.
I had been dreaming of doughnuts and rye bread before I awoke to the sound of a shouting female voice and a few loud thumps overhead. I climbed out of the box and proceeded to the door but warily backed away. It was some diversion, I thought, to get me to walk into their trap. However, Starfall’s grunting off the pain from being launched into the kitchen cabinet assured me that there was a struggle I had to join.
I ran out and found Steiner approaching Starfall. I called out, “You’re going down, fiend!”
Starfall cast a beam at him before I had time to charge ahead, but he sidled out of the way.
“Don’t look into their eyes, Zeta!”
Starfall pushed herself from the cabinet. As she did so, Steiner made to push her back against it. She grabbed his forelegs, though, and they were suddenly in a deadlock. She was looking in his eyes but had conjured a magical lens which apparently neutralized his gaze.
I drew my rapier. “I’ll take care of Jackson.” I ran into the lounge and found his cinders. Hunters’ familiarity with other hunters’ weaknesses had apparently worked in her favor this time.
Starfall was nearly out of breath. “You can’t. Dead.”
“I’ll just slay Steiner, then.”
“No, you mustn’t.”
“Oh, right! We can arrest him and find our cure!”
“Not that. I’ll deal with Steiner. You must leave; I’ll teleport you to the train. Tell Princess Luna that the nightmare has not begun until the head hits the hay.”
Before I could question her command and cryptic message, I found myself on a train headed back to Manehattan. It’ll be nightfall by the time I arrive. I’ll stop by the bank to pick up the money I’ll need for the fare to Canterlot.
I am trying not to fear the worst, but, now that I’ve written the events down, it is clear that Starfall had no intention of emerging from the mansion. Why save me, though? By now she must have brought herself to hate me. Perhaps that’s just it. All this to spite me.
Vindictive or not, she gave me a final wish to fulfill, and I kind of want to speak with Luna myself.
___
My face was too familiar to the train ticket clerk. I had conceived that my exile was self-imposed, but I am physically barred from entering Canterlot on account of the debacle I caused. They probably want me dead as soon as they want Chrysalis’s head, but they can’t get me for an accident.
I have decided to keep myself at St. Periwinkle’s place.
I made a large withdrawal from my bank account and trotted from there to St. Periwinkle’s. Unlike in the mountains through which we in the train rode, snow was scheduled to fall here, and it’s terribly frigid outside. Even with my coat and scarf on, I was shivering.
As I passed through this low down district of Manehattan, I spied a dirty filly walking all on her lonesome into the middle of the street. One became a witness to this from time to time during wintertime in this place; it was the death march that young, abandoned foals embarked on as despair finally seeped into their instincts. They would not otherwise dare to emerge from the shadows that had borne them so far into their lives.
I took a string from my coat and tethered my diary to my back as I offered her my coat. I dumped about fifty bits from the heaping pile contained in my purse into the pockets and told her earnestly, “Friends, though absent, are still present.”
She just ran off with my donation, but I knew my way was short yet, so I didn’t mind her not thanking me.
I found St. Periwinkle outside his hotel, knocking down sinister icicles with a rod. They were all high enough to be deadly, but they didn’t exist on the top three floors’ sills. It used to be that the heat couldn’t reach just the top floor. His business, I assumed rightly, had gone back to the tank after I left.
I called to him, but he refrained from appearing to acknowledge my voice, as was his peculiar way, “I’m here on behalf of the mayor of Manehattan. The city has issued an ordinance to have this building repurposed, and it offers you this as remuneration for your compliance and restitution for your inconvenience.”
The place really should have been condemned before I even arrived here the first time, so even he had to have seen this coming. He turned to me, protruded his lips, and nodded in understanding but resumed his task without missing any more beats. Once he had knocked down all the icicles, he turned to me.
“Glad ‘e waited, sonny.”
I handed him the bag of coin.
“’Tleast ‘e don’ hafta deal with no tenant ‘e be displacin’.” He began to walk away to somewhere, but he turned back to me and said, “Deed’s behind the an’ient cider barrel in th’ back.”
I rushed inside and closed the door. It smelled worse in there, but at least it w
WAS WARM – RIGHT
I recognize your hoofscratch. I know you could’ve been watching me write, Starfall, but I had no idea writing in it worked both ways.
SUCH IS THE PLAGUE OF THE IGNORANT
Let’s be civil. Are you one of us or not?
A BETTER QUESTION IS – WHEN WILL YOU BE ONE OF US
You know such a question only begs denial.
IMPUDENT RENEGADE DO YOU NOT SEE THAT IT IS FITTING THAT OUR CREATOR JOIN US
I see it only fitting that I should cleanse the souls I have inadvertently
KEEP YOUR ETHICS WHILE YOU CAN THEN YOUR MIND’S STRUGGLE IS EQUALLY APPETIZING
I will, seeing as your clues to my whereabouts are mute – and scarce.
PREDATORS HAVE AN AXIOM – THE PREY’S BODY WILL ALWAYS BETRAY ITS MIND – YOUR SCENT TRAIL IS AS CLEAR TO ME AS THIN POND ICE
Follow it, and I shall drown you.
THIS HORSE SHALL SIMPLY DRINK FROM IT
Entry 18
I can’t believe there’s no good parchment for me to write on. I guess it really doesn’t matter if Starfall finds that I’ve been continuing my entries from the back of this book, anyway, so long as I’m careful not to say where she can specifically find me. St. Periwinkle is a stingy stallion! He doesn’t even have a calendar. The clock says it’s a quarter to eleven in the evening, but I don’t trust it.
I do trust, however, that Starfall is neither sufficiently stealthy nor sufficiently crafty to find me tonight. I do not doubt her capacity to find me, though. I guess I must stand and fight with my back to the wall. Our confrontation may happen tomorrow night or a week from now, but it looms. I must slay her.
Perhaps then Princess Luna will forgive me. Or perhaps not. Perhaps my redemption can only come from an ultimate victory. Perhaps she leaves me to my likely death because she wants no more trouble from me.
Am I just a pest? Can she only forgive me once I can hurt her no longer?
In this bug-ridden room there is a dingy full-length mirror. St. Periwinkle must’ve been fairly vain. I look at it and see my Cutie Mark and the symbols of my destiny. I guess I bumped my cheek pretty bad; it’s a hideous purple.
The road can’t end while I still have purpose. I will find a way. Starfall obviously can’t be persuaded to receive the cure formulae, but maybe someday some likeminded pony with the ability to restrain one of the beasts will aid me.
First things go first, though. I must sleep. Then, our hunt for each other will commence.
Entry 19
I returned to the bank today and bought myself another coat even though it’s not quite as cold outside. It’s been overcast most of today, although in the distance there appears to be a thunderstorm. It’s a little strange to have one in the winter, but it must be one of those anomalies, and I guess the distance can be attributed to the fact that nopony wants to be responsible for knocking out the grid here in Manehattan.
I’ve retreated to the top floor of the building in order to evade the bugs. I went ahead and took the deed St. Periwinkle pledged to me, not that it’ll be of much use. Also of little use is locking the doors and windows to this place, but I’ve done so all the same.
I’m going to sing for the two hours or so left until it is nighttime. I shall wait for her to find me on the roof. I’m placing this journal just outside the door to prevent myself from concentrating on anything else for now. I just want to sing it out. I’ll sing battle songs and maybe a Tonus Solemnis for our impending fight. I will not sing a dirge. I would be a failure to sing my own dirge and, in the case that I succeed in slaying her, all the more reprehensible to have sung one for an enemy.
___
I’m really glad it hasn’t rained on this journal. It was rather stupid of me to keep it out here with clouds overhead. The weather ponies could not be faulted for making it rain, but it hasn’t yet, so I’m thankful.
I had really hoped that Princess Luna might make an ultimate attempt to make contact as I slept last night and into the day, but that was a hollow, not to mention shallow, hope. I can’t help but wonder where her attention is focused right now. Maybe it’s the dual duel against the Changelings and the Vamponies. Maybe she’s reading or conducting some other mundane task.
There’s ruin in my name, and I wish I’d never stepped on the train to the mansion, but I know my besmirched journey mustn’t end here on this roof.
I know it must be the deadly dread in my stomach nauseating me, and standing among the dense accumulated snow augments my vertigo because I feel like I’m on a swaying cloud. I brave to stand up and check around the surrounding rooftops. Nothing. I look around in the sky. The lightning and rumbling thunder have ceased.
I put the book down to start pacing. I’d like to keep the chill off me if I can. At least day mitigates the cold. I really hope that filly is quite all right. She and the three copies of this book are my only certain positive legacies. Well, maybe that filly still has no chance, but I’d like to think I did something right.
Sure, The Solution may appear as a footnote in the history books that teach of the Inquisition’s achievements, but my failure will be the main paragraph on the page. Long from now, a history teacher will cover this paragraph, and sufficient time will have passed for him to get away with a facetious comment on it that overshadows my intent yet imbeds itself much more fully in the students’ minds. So typical will be my case if I cannot amend.
I see very faintly a figure frenetically flitting among the magenta clouds in the distance. Starfall hasn’t likely spotted me yet, but she’s on her way. Jackson is lurking about somewhere. It’s show time: time to break a leg.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading of this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez6DwgnAUHg
Entry 20
Entry 20
I have never been in a hospital before, but, if I was to imagine visiting one, it wouldn’t be like this one. It is desolately silent here in the infirmary. I would have expected a little more bustle in a health facility, but maybe that makes recovering ponies nervous. To me the lack of busy raucousness is perturbing. My physicians have told me all the information about my injuries I need to know and have kindly permitted me to continue writing in this journal, which somehow survived beneath my coat.
However, these professionals are far less cordial than I had imagined them to be. They must know who I am. They won’t tell me the time! It’s maddening.
I presume this facility is in Manehattan, but I can’t be certain because I’ve never heard of one being here. I guess I’m not as familiar with here as I’d like to be.
The doctors say that St. Periwinkle’s building collapsed. It was a good thing I was on the roof and had nothing to tumble on top of me to break me. I was found with much plaster covering me. They said I looked dead, but my vitals were alright. I should be released later today, but they keep me in a bed still. I have not seen any of the professionals pass in the hallway outside for about an hour.
I do not know how long I have been asleep. I’ll ask the gentlecolt in the bed next to me once he awakens. I have not told my caretakers about the dreams I experienced for fear of jeopardizing the professional amity they’ve apparently managed to regard me with during my slumber. I am sound of both being and mind at the moment; I have them to thank for this.
Anyway, I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget the events right before the collapse, for in my dreams I witnessed them close to twenty-nine times.
The beginning started the same every time. I stood in murk with two prodigious, pony-sized eyes facing directly at me. They were solid white, having no pupils or irises. They were two-dimensional. I walked over to the right of the set of eyes and found that, if I stood perfectly perpendicular to where they faced front and back, I would see nothing of them. From this point I would turn around and run unseen. At some point I would suddenly fall midstride over a vertical edge. I would fall with no wind until I hit a springboard that would propel me, shattering the otherworldly darkness and placing me back at the scene of our confrontation.
Each time the events recurred I saw things unfold from a different angle: one time it would be from far overhead, another time it would be from some distant building, another time it was from my eyes, another was from Starfall’s eyes, and yet another was from some odd angle close to the roof or from the perspective of an insignificant snowflake lying on top of it.
It took Starfall quite a few minutes to spot me. She was pretty far up in the clouds, obscured from casual public ponies’ glances, and definitely not in the best position to see me. While I waited I kept reverting back to the thought that the ashes I had assumed were Jackson’s remains were, in fact, planted there to give the impression of his slaughter. I fidgeted, and the cooled night air began to penetrate my coat. From the detached angles of the unconscious mental replays I could see that I had many times my head turned away from Starfall. I felt certain that I’d be ambushed before I was even spotted.
Eventually, I did turn my head back to Starfall, and her outline had become bigger and more distinct; her eyes were definite and locked on me even as she swooped about her descent like an autumnal leaf falling. Still, my guard was raised; I never thought I’d get so well acquainted with the motion of checking over my shoulder. She did not land on the building but merely hovered overhead, making a slow circle around me low enough so that the edge of the roof concealed her from potential passersby from the streets below. I was not intimidated by this initial formality, but the wildness of her vampiric look, copiously hairy ears, and terribly protruding fangs gave me cause for intimidation.
“Funny to see you so nervous.” She addressed me in a breathy whisper, and I kept my eyes away from her, knowing that she was the diversion.
Suddenly, I found myself unable to glance backward. In fact, I could not move anything but my mouth and my eyes. Terror didn’t seize me immediately, but I felt it coming. She was floating behind me somewhere, but by sound I could not tell how close she was.
“There. If you can’t bring yourself to be calm, you’ll be at least close to it.”
“Is Jackson coming or not?!” I tried to shout, but her spell kept my voice as low as hers was.
She floated before me, gave a jerk of her head, and hissed at me. “You assail me with such a question. You are one ungrateful little foal.”
I couldn’t comprehend it.
“You definitely don’t get the whole picture. Hmm.”
Before she could develop her thought, I buzzed in, “Why slay Jackson, then?”
“Be careful. You tempt me even though I am exercising all the self-discipline in the world t—“
“Does time really matter if you’re not going to give me a fighting chance?”
“Then let me explain. The truth should be obvious to you, but it has apparently not crossed your mind. I’ve certainly thought about my choice to become what I am now. I spent all those months you mentioned not hearing from me in waiting. I knew Jackson would come for you, but I could never have hoped that you would bring yourself to fight him if he caught you. You’ve never had to bring down one of your own, so you wouldn’t detach yourself enough. You’re also incapable of incapacitating a pony by any means other than poison or brawn or blade. All he needed to do was match your brawn, and no feral hunter could ignore such good chances forever. So I waited until my augmentations to the mansion’s defense enchantments detected his presence.
“I approached the mansion in a haze of doubt, but, as soon as I opened the door and, with a spell, stopped Steiner and Jackson from charging me, all my ideas fell into place. You see, I promptly destroyed Jackson. His mind was completely corrupted by the vampirism, and I didn’t want him tempting me or killing you. Steiner, however, I could use because he and I were about equal in strength. I could struggle with him some in order to wake you up. After I teleported you, I let Steiner do his work on me long enough sire me, and then I destroyed him. He could have drained me too dry, or worse, he could have still pursued you while I transformed.” She laughed gutturally with her mouth closed at her cleverness.
“I don’t believe you, and, if I did, I still wouldn’t get you.”
“Won’t you look for the honesty in my eyes?”
“Even you told me not to look in them. Remember, during our previous. . .meeting?”
“You choose to put your faith in the order that disowned you – twice. You will be made to understand that other things are at play here.” She began to slowly dip in altitude and arise again when she was in front of me as she performed her circles.
“I have decided that you are an enemy. Whether my allegiance to the Inquisition played a part in that is irrelevant.”
It looked as if I had hurt her again. “You won’t even look at me to see whether I’m honest.”
To be truthful, I was afraid to. “By what reason could I possibly expect honesty?”
“Because you asked your friend a question about a mutual friend.”
“No, he was an enemy even to you.”
“Then the enemy of my enemy. . .”
“He’s dead by your account if I am to believe you!”
“Then I’d say you owe me a look.” She flew before me, “I promise. . .”
“Yesterday’s promise is worth dirt even before the broken word is appraised. And still, I haven’t proof you aren’t setting me up.”
“I missed that self-righteous impudence.”
“You’re a monster.”
“Nothing is so foolish as mistimed wisdom, my friend. As a friend, not an Inquisitor, look at me.”
It seemed there was no way to progress by remaining adamant. I looked into her eyes, and I was not entranced.
“Jackson is dead.” Forcing her to repeat it was a mistake. I caught sincere plaintiveness in her eyes, and although I could not move, I felt less ready to fight her.
I exhaled audibly. “Okay.”
“You know, your lack of preparation for this encounter disappoints but does not at all surprise me. Just like your ideals, you, too, are jaded. You will need to develop for the hunt, and you will have all the time to do so once I have turned you.”
“What brainwashing has brought you to such notions? Why did you become a Vampony?”
She grinned widely and stuck out her tongue. “I protested your ideas at first, but I soon got down to thinking. Why didn’t Luna put your ideas down?”
“The idea soon proved too efficacious to not fully imbibe, I thought.”
“In a sense, yes, but you’re thinking in terms of the war on the Changelings. Indeed, that’s probably what most of Equestria has come to believe. Can you imagine any other reason?”
“I have no idea.”
“You answer too quickly. Anyway, I realized that she must have actually seen this coming from what you said to her way back in her study. Once the Vamponies became real again, I realized that Princess Luna had more foresight than even that. There’s a connection between the fall of the Vamponies and Nightmare Moon’s fall.”
“Starfall, their defeats were centuries apart, and I hope you’re not leading to your being an NMC (this was our acronym for a Nightmare Moon cultist).”
“I’m no NMC. Anyway, you missed the point. She had grown that powerful, Zeta! The Vamponies had obtained such a presence as to outlast her even though she was around only briefly. Now they’re back and more rampant than even then, and it’s not even Luna’s doing, yet I’ll wager that any day now she will vie to wield them once again.”
“Why not stick around to potentially stop her, then? You’re good at hunting them yourself, Starfall, you could have achieved so much in bringing them down!”
“Mmm. Keyword there: hunt. I realized I would become an even better hunter with a Vampony’s thirst in my throat. Not only this time do the Vamponies have a real chance to rise, but we also have ponies in existence with the ability to control their own thirst.”
“Sired Bat Ponies?”
“You betcha. Luna let that happen, too, in preparation for this.”
“I don’t see where I play a big role in any of this. I don’t need to be a Vampony, and I am not by any degree a Bat Pony.”
“True, but I can teach you to overcome it, skipping the middle process. Think of all the Earth ponies added to the ranks of late. Only somepony as high as up as Luna could have orchestrated such a radical change. She saw it coming a century ago when ponies were becoming bats, and now unicorn-bats like me are being turned. You’ve got a brain on your burly shoulders; you just need to think the right way. In a battle of sheer strength I still cannot prevail against you. You saw me with Steiner; although I am stronger now, without magic I would have been able to slay neither him nor Jackson. Many Inquisitors like you will stand paralyzed before sentient, lucid Vamponies like me. However, this shall be the first time. Isn’t it a luscious thought?”
“Without your magic, you couldn’t have secured becoming the siren standing before me.”
“Such cruel words from a stallion who proclaims to be so caring!”
“It is clear you’ve taken my theory too far, and you’ve warped its purpose.” I began to struggle against the magic. Although I couldn’t budge, I could express my disapproval that way.
“Are you getting dizzier from my circling you? I’ll stop before you get sick.”
“Why don’t you let go of me instead and see if I can’t slash you?”
Starfall began to sigh but then coughed an unholy, dry, harrowing cough. “Why must you force so many words from me? The least you could do is to offer me a drink.”
She freed me, but I was still wobbly from my sensations of deadly nerves, vertigo, and the dizziness she rightly guessed at. I slapped myself from my daze and found her levitating before the edge of the building. I couldn’t let her run away still a threat, so, not bothering to draw my sword, I sprinted and performed a flying side kick.
That was rash. I have no idea how I would have survived even if I had connected the blow. Instead, she caught me, and this was when I noticed her Cutie Mark. It was a cerulean-hilted sword pointed straight down, the very tip coated with blood, with a crimson ribbon attached to the brassy pommel. Partly by magic she had caught me midair, but she was nonetheless gripping my left hind leg when she said, “Try again?”
She flew up, did a somersault in the air, and chucked me down onto the roof. The pain struck me, but the affront impacted doubly as a personal blow, and tears came.
Starfall was descending from the sky. The magenta clouds in the background outlined the red in her irises. She smiled callously, “Weep if you must. I’ll listen as the blood rushes to your head.”
I wasn’t sure at the time if the blow to my head from the impact was making me dizzier, but I fought it to stand up. She landed on the roof before me and stepped diabolically slowly toward me. Each crunch in the snow, I realized, was a grain of sand running out of my hourglass, but I was really wobbling and about to fall over. I looked in her eyes and saw her suddenly look down. I felt my scarf constricting me, and I wrestled it off, but by the time I had done so she was gone. I had the sensation of weightlessness and had a few seconds to realize that my throwing off the scarf was an illusion. I must have been falling unconscious, I reasoned, from the cutting off of blood to my brain.
However, that was not the case. I am in the hospital because the building had collapsed; I really was falling. Starfall must’ve flown away when she noticed that the hotel swayed beneath her.
The pony in the bed immediately to my right is named Indigo Sky. He told me that the thunderstorm on the day of our confrontation was in fact a battle for his life. Somepony was trying to murder him by zapping him. He used to be indigo, he said, but now his pigment is what I’d call a laser blue.
He started crying as he told me how he had no idea why anypony would be out to kill him. Even by his voice one could tell that he is of a very gentle disposition.
I couldn’t help but mention, “These are dark times we’re in. Changelings and Vamponies make the news, and still there’s room for reckless murder among ponies.”
“What’s the world coming to?”
I had no way to respond to that. Whatever it is, I am responsible for it. I have effected a terrible wrong; whether it’s viewed as mistaken or not, I am to blame. I’ve had to reread this whole thing, and it shreds me.
I don’t know what to make of the cryptic message that Starfall gave to me to send to Princess Luna. By that point her delusions must have seized her. Having been on the inside of the Inquisition for a while, though, she must’ve known that I’d be barred from seeing Princess Luna. Was it to get me away so that she could chase me? Had she slipped so far over the edge as to forget that I actually couldn’t see Luna? Is the message really only meant for me?
The Inquisition must have stopped caring about me, or I’d have some support in fighting Starfall. I don’t know how, but I will slay her. I don’t like to think this way, but, if she does make me one of those things, the Inquisition may finally have its clear-cut reason to neutralize me. If that is its wish, I trust the judgment. Otherwise, maybe I’d be able to undermine the Vamponies once I’d regained conscious thought.
I refuse to think like Starfall, but it has crept into my mind that Luna has plans for me and is waiting for me to succumb to the vampirism. If this is the case, I must undermine it as soon as I’m released. I will do it. For the princesses, for the innocents, for my former comrades, for my own name, for the Inquisition, for sanity, for peace, I will stop them, however significantly.
Luna should have learned her lesson, but I will take the fight to her if that is what the situation requires of me. I will if my name isn’t Z—
Do tell, Zeta.
Curses on you and your soulless kind.
Take it easy. You don’t have much time left.
I assume you were the one to put out all the lights here?
I’m glad they left you here. You know, they vacated the place two hours ago. Ponies are fleeing like mad. We’ll begin the raid on your hospital in just a few moments.
It could have just been a power outage. You’re toying with me! Not even you could tell me where I am from what little I know about this place.
You’re room 408, which means you are on the fourth floor. Clearing your floor will be my job.
I can’t conceive it.
Let the record stand that I cannot leave this place. I do not acquiesce to what may transpire here. It is dark in the hallway, and I am in unfamiliar territory, so I cannot escape. . .
First floor – CLEARED
I cannot bring myself to yell. . .
Basement – CLEARED
I may wake Indigo. He doesn’t deserve to witness this horror. Let him pass in a gentle manner fit for him.
Second floor – CLEARED You know, the stairwells here are dreadful. Far too narrow.
I may be in a hospital, but I am a dead pony. I hope the remaining copy of this is in safe hooves.
Third floor – CLEARED
I should’ve been a police pony. The stairwell door opened with a thud in the distance, and I hear no hooves on the ground. Anticipation kills.
Yes, it does.
The Journals of Zeta Cherrypaste, Changeling Hunter
Author's Note
The audio reading for this installment can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikbGNJiMg_A
Entry 13
Entry 13 – November 2nd, 1122, 14:00
Perhaps the energy of yesterday and the day previous kept me from the realization, but Starfall insisted that I haven’t been in the hunt long enough to realize just how portentous the surprise at the party was. I can’t stop reading the transcription of the press conference with Her Majesty Princess Celestia. Surely enough, she said we can’t possibly think of coexisting with the Changelings. She said “beings;” I’d say that’s pretty diminishing but not pejorative enough.
The appearance of those two hundred some Changelings has disturbed even Princess Luna, as far as I could tell. I was dreaming of a swarm of Changelings trying to get inside the mansion. I woke up to the sound of two hunters knocking at the door. Casting those spells must have exhausted Starfall more than the physical exertion did to me, because she hadn’t awoken yet. The hunters bade me wake Starfall and come with them to the Academy to hear her speak. We did, and the event was profoundly perturbing.
I should have expected the ferocity and ardor with which she would speak by the fact that she wasn’t given a microphone to begin with. Whereas Princess Celestia had lamented the loss of those numerous, not to mention important, mares and stallions who were now known to be missing (likely, husks), Princess Luna drove home the conclusion that there needed to be a proper retribution. An “earth-shattering effort to VINDICATE THIS HORROR and all the others,” as she put it. It was wise wording, for it begged the question of who else was being wronged.
We’ve not had an incident this big since over a century ago, and the slaughter has thrust the Inquisition into the spotlight.
“As the security threat has reached a point beyond what anypony has dared to imagine, it is necessary for the Inquisition to conduct itself a little more openly,” she said.
What an understatement! She said it like the Inquisition had any choice but take the light, too. The essence of the tirade that was to follow was that we would eliminate them without question and find where Chrysalis was and stamp her out, too. I looked at Starfall at the mention, and she looked back at me. Her eyes conveyed to me that she, Luna, and everypony fighting alongside us knew the wretch’s location, but we simply didn’t have the power to take her on.
“To wage war against her directly in our lifetime,” her eyes seemed to say, “Would be impossible.”
Princess Luna’s remark at the moment answered why, “But before we must get to her, we must neutralize the threats within our borders. Until then, the threat of these FREAKS OF NATURE looms to effect the ruination of our kingdom.”
Indeed. Starfall gave a nod of assent. Princess Luna proceeded with that such was the nature of the successful mission we had undertaken the evening before.
One of the media questioners asked, “The order Your Highness heads seeks transparency. Will you disclose the identities of those forces you sent?”
Princess Luna couldn’t have possibly seen us in the audience since we were in the back behind all the resident students. Starfall and I looked gravely at one another.
“There were many heroes that night, and it would go against our order’s generally secretive nature in conducting its operations to mention just all of them, but two principal ponies played paramount parts in what transpired. I will tell you their names and some about them.”
She paused. Starfall’s eyes widened, and she was frowning hard. My legs went stiff.
“A rising star among the Inquisitor’s Changeling hunters was deemed suited for the task of reforming and training a dropout from our Academy who had his heart set on creating for us a new weapon which we were not yet prepared to receive. In time she discerned the practicality of this device, as we’ll call it, and banished the desperate chains that had laid hold of its machinist. She and he implemented the device against those with their UNHEARTS SET ON USURPING the mayor of Manehattan that night. The Inquisition now recognizes its mistake in time to capitalize on what one of its few merciful acts has produced--”
“Do you intend to make amends?”
“I HAVEN’T GIVEN THEIR NAMES YET, and, if you don’t mind, my little pony, I shall disclose them as was asked of me.” You could obviously tell she was not comfortable with giving our names despite her brutal reaction to the questioner’s interruption. “Hunter Starfall Escarleta was the capable pony, and Zeta Cherrypaste was the untapped resource.”
Silence. I didn’t know whether to rejoice or feel disappointed at not being recognized by the crowd.
A low voice from somepony among the students shouted out, “Yeah, you go, Starfall! You’re a comet to light the way!”
Princess Luna smiled for the first time in her entire speech. “That’s right. For the Academy’s initiates, she’s an idol whose recognition has been hard-won and well earned. We’re planning to force her to take a vacation for the first time in her life.” Starfall’s jaw dropped with dread. “Of course, all our operatives shall be paid handsomely for their work that night. And we have special plans for incorporating Zeta back into our operation.”
By this point I had tried three times to escape the hall through one of the doors. The door I was trying just as she said this opened, but it creaked. Hundreds of eyes found me. Starfall was readying a spell to teleport us, but Princess Luna was quicker on the draw and hadn’t a single eye on her to notice that she was the one who bailed us out.
We reappeared in Luna’s personal study. I can’t tell you what it’s like in there specifically due to legal constraints, but I can say that it was very “her.” Two hours passed before Luna joined us.
Starfall, who had been grumbling to me for the entire span, initiated our conversation, “What do you mean you’re going to ‘force me to take a vacation?’”
“I’ll have to, now that the public is omnipresent and ready to vilify me in case I don't.”
Starfall shot needles from her eyes into my own when I made to ask her for the fortieth time why a vacation was so beneath her to take.
Princess Luna gave me my answer, “Let us say that I think Ms. Escarleta works herself too hard and has to spend some time with some certain ponies, including Jackson, whom she’s not seen for much time on account of foalsitting you.”
“Welp, there’s your justification, Starfall.” She turned to me, and I was surprised to see her embarrassed instead of enraged.
Princess Luna let out a humored breath. “Poorly played, Scarlet Cheeks.”
I didn’t want any spite, but there wasn’t probably going to be any. “Why teleport us here of all places? You must really need to talk to us.”
“Precisely. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I needed to see the rest of your outfit from your mission. That reminds me,” she conjured two bags replete with coin, “Here’s your 500 bits for your good work.” We each got one. It was amazing; I’ve never held so many coins all at once. “You know that your payment for keeping your comrade has been sent to your account?” Starfall nodded.
“Wow, this a lot,” I said at length.
“You really don’t have the foresight to realize that that’s not all you’ll be getting?” She had been facing away from us but was now looking directly at me. “We’ll conduct a private Acolyte coronation here. I doubt you want to be standing beside a bunch of students for such occasion, and I doubt any students want to stand beside a dropout at their ceremony, even if he happens to have contributed to their cause greatly.”
“Take the deal, Zeta; I’m not sure I would have liked to have you there if I didn’t know you as a pony and were in their place.”
“I can’t refuse it.”
“Very well. Next, I must let you know that within the next week you will begin teaching the method of brewing your potion to several hundred alchemist ponies, and you shall be paid roughly twenty bits per pony.” I gave her a confused look, for I had relinquished my notes to the Inquisition back when I had informed them that my work was finished. “Your script is indecipherable.”
“It looks like I’ve brought this work upon myself.”
“Don’t worry; all you’ll you need to do is give a lecture and a demonstration for the ponies to take proper notes. They will, in turn, disseminate the recipe, and by that point you’ll be off to make acquaintances as you join Starfall on vacation.”
Starfall raised a brow. “Is that so? Do tell.”
Princess Luna dropped her head toward Starfall. “Do you know how many friends Zeta Cherrypaste has?” I suddenly felt as blue as my surroundings.
“Sorry,” Starfall’s head fell with dejection.
She hadn’t meant to come across as disdainful of me, and I’m sure she wasn’t, but Princess Luna cemented her lesson, “You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“Zeta has fewer real friends to fall back on than he has legs to stand on. I didn’t mean to push you away. . . .”
I was already crying because the reality really hadn’t struck me until that moment. “I forgive you, Starfall. I wouldn’t lose you for the world.”
Luna gave me enough time for us to embrace and for me to settle down, but she hadn’t lost a beat. “There’s a whole world out there that needs to be retaken. I’m not certain if your potion has come soon enough to aid us.” There was a window she turned to, and my eyes followed hers outside it. “You need to let us know all the ingredients so that we may procure them. While we have this advantage we need to systematically exploit it.”
“Well. . .” I immediately recounted all the ingredients and what proportions were required of the potion. Memorizing it had been what I had spent my daylight hours on at the hotel between shopping and gym visits. I practically heard those Bat Ponies’ snores again and chuckled aloud at the thought.
Princess Luna and Starfall’s expressions told me that I probably didn’t come across as the sanest stallion at that point in time.
“Anyway, I think I have another theory to test, but it’s a little strange, and I don’t want to lose your good grace once again.”
“Come now, you must be teasing us.”
“In a way, but it’s not a theory I’m really proud to have conceived. If it bears any fruit, at any rate, I’ll let you know.”
Starfall said, “You better.”
Pensively, I stated, “I’ll give you a hint.” At this moment I recalled the line that I needed. “You may remember, Princess Luna--”
“You can call us Luna, dear.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. If you’ll recall a line you said during your speech, ‘Changelings may be big and swarm our hair, but they are mere insects still,’ that’s the basis of my hypothesis.”
“I don’t discern the point you approach.”
“Me, neither.”
I looked at Starfall. She’d be least pleased to hear it.
“Leave it to me to test it, and we’ll see from there,” I said sternly.
The whole notion is preposterous, and I shan’t disclose it to you, journal, for fear of Starfall’s snooping, but, if I’ve hit another breakthrough, I might just see the ultimate conclusion of this conflict. Since ponies and Changelings have come into contact, the Changelings have always assumed the predator’s role. The hunters and the Inquisition are the minute exception, but there’s little we gain from slaying them beyond our own security. I might be able to change this.
