Start of Negotiations (Twilight) - Revised V2 Part 2

The study was much as I’d left it. There were a couple file cabinets that stored several projects of mine aligned against the wall. Next to them was a shelf full of various odds and ends that conveniently hid a few items acting as wards – just on the off chance somepony did try to tamper with my more sensitive projects.

On the other side of the room were more shelves with books. They really did seem to end up in every room of the castle, although that was more a matter of organization than anything else. It was incredibly frustrating to have to keep walking back to the castle library for a reference book every five minutes into a project. It took up significant amounts of valuable research time. I had tried teleporting to get the books I needed, but that simply tired me out after a while.

In the end, I was forced to order a large number of extra copies of books I already had and create little pocket libraries about the entire castle. Normally, I hate ordering extra copies. They’d be so much more useful somewhere else with somepony who didn’t already own the book, but I literally lost hours to walking back and forth from the library sometimes.

Next to the shelves was what Dash called my ‘Egghead Boards’. These bulletin boards could be host to a number of things at any given time depending on my current projects. They tended to hold visual representations of cognitive maps and other various models I might need to keep track of my current line of thinking on a project. A lot of good research came out of those boards. Of course, my friends only tend to remember the more embarrassing ones, like the time I made one trying to figure out how and where to ask Flash out.

I swear, I didn’t know it was considered socially taboo to follow a romantic interest around at the time. I mean, it was only several years before that I’d made my first real friends at Ponyville, and I’d never even had the slightest interest in romance before. I just approached it like I would any other new topic to me: scientifically, and that meant I needed to gather data without tainting the subject. Of course, the stalker jokes took weeks to die down, but let it never be said that I didn’t get the results I wanted.

Embarrassing memories aside, I cast my gaze to the center of the room expecting to see some noble griffon or perhaps a quizzical zebra.

There was, however, no pony else that I could see in the room. The glare I gave Discord spoke volumes.

“Huh…” That was all that escaped Discord’s mouth as he glanced around the room, stupefied. It would have been quite amusing to watch at the time if I wasn’t panicking at the implications of an unknown foreign force rummaging through the castle.

“Looking for me?”

Words and phrases such as ‘Oh, Celestia! It’s behind me!’, ‘Kill it! Kill it with fire!’, and ‘Die, vermin! Die!’ came to mind at the soul chilling buzz that filled the air, and an instinctive and overpowering fear filled the very core of my being. Turning swiftly, i gave the thing behind me a swift kick to the stomach. This was followed with me pivoting in place to sock it in the jaw with all the momentum I could muster.

Rainbow Dash would have been proud to see those classes paying off.

As my eyes finally settled on just what exactly I had attacked, I got a second boost of adrenaline. We’d heard nothing on the changelings since the invasion. It was if they had disappeared without a trace, and it left us incredibly wary not knowing anything at all about their movements. We couldn’t even be sure they’d left Equestria considering their shape-shifting powers.

And now there was now one lying directly in front of me.

To say I was freaked out was just the tiniest of understatements and being hopped up on adrenaline was not helping. Luckily, I am not an inherently violent pony. Having got past the shock of being snuck up on, my body had become fairly rooted in the flight half of the fight or flight instincts.

Of course, I couldn’t run with Discord having bolted the door on me, so I just ended up freezing in place and hoping to Celestia the draconequus knew what he was doing here. Given his track record, my hopes weren’t all that high, but he had managed to pull through in some odd and unexpected ways before.

The changeling had been knocked back into the wall by my assault, and as he stood I managed to get my first good look at him. Most of what we knew of changelings at the time came from nothing more than fairy tales and the terrified accounts of the invasion victims. Neither of those could give us what any good scholar would consider quality info, but it was all we had.

One of the more consistent pieces of accounts in the fairy tales was that there seemed to be various tribes or subspecies of changelings. It was something I could actually confirm having personally confronted both Queen Chrysalis and her lesser minions during the invasion.

There was no denying that the changeling in front of me belonged to whatever subspecies Chrysalis had been. He was relatively tall and spindly, and he had proportions more matching those of an alicorn rather than the average pony size most of Chrysalis’ minions had been.

He seemed younger than Chrysalis, although that was difficult to tell. I was mostly guessing that from his size. Chrysalis had been about the size of Celestia, but this changeling was only slightly shorter than Luna. Thus, he was either still maturing, or males were naturally smaller than females.

Like Chrysalis, he was equine in shape and covered in black chitin with a number of hollows in his hooves. His wings, mane, and tail were that same dark teal and filled with small holes. His jaw was somewhat blockier than Chrysalis’, though, much like a stallion’s would be.

When he finally stood in front of me, he gingerly put a hoof to his face. “That hurt much more than the data would have suggested for a mare of such an academic lifestyle. I am sincerely glad that you didn’t have access to the earth pony strength given from your ascension.” His voice had an odd thrumming buzz to it that created a small, distorted echo of whatever he said.

“Well that’s what you get for surprising a princess!”

It was nice to see somepony besides me glare at Discord for once. “If ve recall correctly, that was part of the bargain you wanted to provide us this meeting.” I, of course, had to add my own glare at Discord upon hearing the changeling’s words.

The draconequus chuckled deviously. “I wanted you to startle her, not scare her half to death. I’ll admit, your way was better.”

It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

The changeling ground his fangs before sighing and letting it go. “Alright then, let us get down to business. Princess Twilight Sparkle. At the risk of being assaulted again, I am here to apologize for the Hive of the First Father’s ill-conceived invasion of Equestria.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Are you really sorry, or was it just ill-conceived because you were defeated?”

The changeling vigorously shook his head. It was quite amusing to watch actually. I almost thought he was going fast enough to dislocate his jaw given the rattling I heard from it.

“No. After the invasion, we looked at everything we knew and tried to discover how we had come to lose. We ran the numbers for weeks on end, yet they repeatedly returned a ninety-seven percent success rate for the invasion. We found nothing about why we should have lost.”

I snorted at that, ready to turn him away. That all but screamed that they were preparing for another attack.

What he said next made me pause.

“That is why my mother, Queen Chrysalis, abdicated the throne to me. Having failed to both provide for the hive and to discover why she had failed she passed that charge onto me.”

My eyebrow remained cocked and ready to fire sweet skepticism. “And you are?”

He stood up straight and bowed to me at the question. “I am Prince Morpheus, Your Highness, and I am the current ruler of the Hive of the First Father. Ve must admit ve had some doubts upon the throne being passed down, but, after several years, ve are somewhat more confident in my abilities.”

My ear twitched violently as he said all that. It was an affront to the ears, and I simply had to ask before we could continue. “Why are you doing that?”

The prince tilted his head in confusion. “Pardon me?”

“You keep switching subjects. Sometimes you talk perfectly normally using the subjects ‘I’ and ‘me’ when talking about yourself, but other times you seem to randomly switch to using ‘we’. I’d be tempted to say you’re having trouble shifting away from the use of the royal We, except there’s no pattern to your flip flops! You’re not slipping into archaic speech. You’re just randomly using a plural subject when you’re talking about yourself for some sentences, and it’s absolutely infuriating!”

I had started my explanation calmly. To most ponies’ surprise, I wasn’t actually a perfectionist when it came to grammar. I could understand why they would think that, but, honestly, most of the rules of the Equish language were just randomly generated by one ancient noble or another in an attempt to leave a mark on society. There are lots of little rules that seem to lack any sense, and rules that make no sense annoyed me much more than broken rules in general.

Combined with how Equish is, above all, a more pragmatic language compared to more artistic languages such as Prench, and it just was not worth scolding the user in most cases when some little nonsensical nuance of Equish escaped them. That being said, I did have certain standards. This was crossing one. By the end of my explanation, my voice was raised ever so slightly and my nostrils were flaring in irritation.

Morpheus continued to stare at me with his head tilted to the side, staring at me blankly. He was like that for about a minute, eerily still with blank eyes staring at nothing. Sometimes he muttered softly to himself, and he cast his head from side to side as if looking at several things I couldn’t see.

I was just starting to get worried when he blinked and then raised his head in the classic light bulb moment pose. “Oh! I’m sorry. I never really had a chance to study the specifics on pony language before leaving the hive, so ve needed to take a second to dig through the archives and figure out where we stored Equish grammatical information.”

He bowed his head. “Ve sincerely apologize for the delay. It’s not often that ve need to dig that info out. Most of the time, a changeling simply learns it in school and never needs to try and find it in the archives. You are talking about the Equish rules on the use of the singular and plural pronouns referring to the self, correct?”

I will admit I was extremely lost by this point in his explanation. I wasn’t even sure it was an explanation, and I was tempted to ignore what he was saying and chalk it up to an elaborate joke.

Discord’s snickering was not helping me in that regard, but, nonetheless, I nodded yes to his inquiry.

The prince nodded in turn before responding. “Ve thought so. You, as a pony, your highness, are used to only referring to yourself as an individual through terms such as ‘I’ or ‘me’. We changelings…” He trailed off furrowing his brow. “Hrm… How can ve explain this? Ve have never needed to explain it to a non-changeling before.” He cocked his head to the side again. It took a while to gather his thoughts, but he eventually continued. “I think I know how to explain it.”

I twitched in frustration at the switch again. He’d been doing so well to stay consistent for the past couple sentences that I had grown complacent.

He smiled at me, which wasn’t very comforting given his fangs. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, how many ponies are in your head?”

There was a moment of awkward silence as I processed that question.

Then Discord fell on the floor and began flailing about in laughter, a rather impressive feat given the range of motion his large serpentine body was capable of.

I, on the other hand, could only bemoan my fate. “You locked me in a room with a changeling that hears voices in his head. I swear to Celestia, Discord. If he decides to snap and kill me, I will haunt you.”

Prince Morpheus looked confused again. “Hears voices? When did I say anything about me hearing voices? I simply asked how many ponies were in your head.”

I facehoofed. I couldn’t help it. Apparently today was the day I was supposed to explain to a changeling prince just what it meant when one hears other ponies in their head. I could only pray to Celestia that he took to understanding just how insane he was as well as I was taking to the insanity that was my life right now.

“I only have one pony in my head, Morpheus. I’m only supposed to have one pony in my head.” My headache was coming back with a vengeance, so I began to massage my temples again.

I was just taking a quick break from my explanation to collect my thoughts on how to continue when the dear, sweet prince decided to interrupt. “Exactly! You, as a pony, only have one pony in your head, namely yourself. I, as a changeling, have both myself and the hivemind.”

I could only stare at him in utter confusion. “What?”

Morpheus bowed his head. “I will do my best to explain, Your Highness, but please keep in mind this is the short version. As much as I’m sure an academic like yourself would enjoy the long version, my time here is entirely dependent on Discord’s cooperation, and you know how that fares when he’s bored.”

Discord, for his part, was finally collecting himself from the floor. He was still snickering every so often, but I understood what the prince meant. I did not want Discord gallivanting off with Morpheus. I had invested a lot of patience into not strangling Discord today. If he disappeared before we even got anything constructive done, I was going to murder him.

Morpheus continued on, oblivious to my thoughts on draconequicide. “Simply put, all changelings are connected by the hivemind. It is the total accumulation of all knowledge any changeling has ever possessed, and it acts like a giant archive for any single changeling to access such knowledge.”

I was doing my best to keep up. It was, admittedly, an alien concept to me. There were maybe one or two books I’d read out of a sample size of thousands that had anything even remotely similar for me to compare it to. And those books were in the most obscure corner of the science-fiction part of the library.

I was not Celestia’s prized pupil for nothing, however. “Are you saying there are two personalities inside every changeling? They have both their individual self and their hivemind self?”

He arched an eyebrow. “That is a matter of debate. Technically, no, but any sort of explanation on that would bore Discord to tears with its length.”

The scholar in me was demanding answers. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to get info on changelings, so I opened my mouth with the obvious intent of asking questions.

“No.” His voice brooked no argument.

“I know you want to ask, Twilight, but I don’t have the time to answer you right now. I came here to parley for peace. My people are starving, and their only chance is a peaceful union with Equestria. And even that chance is small – at an approximate current success rate of thirty-seven percent.

“I had to track down and beg the spirit of chaos of all things to get a meeting with one of the princesses. That meeting, of course, comes with all the nonsensical stipulations you’d expect an avatar of chaos to demand.”

He had shifted his stance subconsciously at some point during his tirade, and my own body tensed in response to what it perceived as a potential threat. His wings had flared out – buzzing harshly – and his fangs were prominently on display. As I shrunk in upon myself slightly his voice fractured and multiplied. What had once been a slight echo was now a veritable chorus. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t try anything. If he’d wanted to, he would have tried long before now, but that didn’t make things any less tense as he continued.

“And then I arrive only to be assaulted by the princess and harassed about my grammar of all things! Consider yourself lucky I’m answering your first question, but once that’s done you need to hear me out. I know you don’t trust me. Your emotions are laced with all kinds of bitter tastes that stem from distrust. Want the answer to a free question I know you’re thinking? Distrust tastes bitter because that’s what most poisons taste like.

“There’s your trivia fact for the day! There is nothing more poisonous on the emotional scale than distrust. Other negative emotions can be overcome with support from others, with allies, but you can’t get support if you don’t trust anypony! Fascinating, isn’t it? Of course, even if changelings could trust the other races, none of them trust us! That’s why I’m here.”

At some point he had come forward and I had moved back. The prince all but loomed over me.

My pulse was racing.

I felt the adrenaline rushing through me again.

I was ready to bolt.

I looked to see if Discord was getting ready to stop the Prince.

And saw the draconequus calmly reading an old issue of the Canterlot Times upside down and backwards.

It was from the day he reformed – the day Fluttershy proved there was good in even the foulest of villains.

That was when what the Prince was saying started to really hit me.

“The executioner’s axe is hanging over our heads, and if we don’t get a pardon soon the changelings will go extinct, so excuse me if I don’t want to answer every one of your hive-forsaken questions right now! If you can’t handle that, just tell me now and I’ll leave without bothering you with my proposal.” His tirade finished he deflated and hung his head.

He wasn’t angry.

He was just as scared as I was.

I brought a hoof to my chest breathing in deeply. I held it for a second before exhaling and trying to push the panic away.

Where before I saw an emotion eating predator I now saw a breaking facade. Flared wings and a widened stance were a defensive measure not an aggressive one. Pegasi were much the same when frightened.

The voice was harder to puzzle out, but it had started to echo with that frightening chorus effect only after I’d become scared. It could be an instinctual response to my fear much like my fear was an instinctual response to his threatening stance. It would make sense that a species that could sense fear would instinctually know how to capitalize on it.

But that just didn’t seem right to me. If he truly wanted peace, he wouldn’t want to scare me. I set that to the side for now to focus on calming down.

A tense silence filled the study as he finished. Neither one of us dared to make the first move to upset the fragile balance the quiet brought. It was a superficial balance, of course. Things were about as far from okay as they could be for a diplomatic meeting, but we could pretend things were okay as long as the silence continued.

Then Discord opened his mouth.

“Holy horseapples, Twilight. Celestia may be the cryptic one, and Luna may be the plothole, but this guy is something else. He is most definitely the ballsy one. I suggest you dissect him for science in the hopes that we can learn how to make Equestrian stallions more like him. Think about it! The common mare would do nothing but swoon. The royal harem – which is still technically legal by the way if you’re interested in getting one – would reopen in seconds. And the royal guard would finally stop being such pansies.”

He paused, and for a second I thought he was done, but of course it was all for naught.

“I mean, honestly, do you know how embarrassing it was to face the guard when I escaped? They are the biggest pansies I’ve ever met, and I met Private Pansy who was the origin of the insult. The level of incompetence they show for any threat beyond a senior citizen littering in the park is astounding. Seriously, defeating them is like taking candy from a foal and then deciding to eat the foal instead. It’s a fine metaphorical case of both foal abuse and equicide with a little bit of cannibalism tossed in if you happen to be a pony. Thankfully I’m not a pony, but you have to see my point! If I don’t turn ponies to stone out of the goodness of my heart, how could I ever hope to resort to metaphorical murder! Thankfully, teleporting them all to the Badlands bought me some time to try and think of a solution to my dilemma, but it was not a true solution in and of itself. I couldn’t think properly with them buzzing around me like flies, but there were only so many times I could teleport them somewhere else. Even to think of doing it more than once was almost blasphemous to my chaotic creed of creativity…”

This went on and on with no end in sight. Needless to say, it was worse than the silence. It seemed to take an eternity, but finally Morpheus regained enough composure to clear his throat.

“Ahem…” The prince banged his hoof like a gavel for attention.

“Oh, thank Celestia!” Discord was obligated, of course, to continue to put his two bits in everything.

The fact that his two bits were wooden jangles to everypony else never came into the equation at all for him. “I thought you’d never get started again. I know I probably have enough nonsense in my head to babble like an idiot until the end of time, but by then you two would be dead and I definitely wouldn’t be getting any more entertainment from you.”

Morpheus paused for a second to make sure the draconequus was done before clearing his throat again. “Ahem…” He glared as if daring Discord to interrupt him further. Seeing that he could keep going he sighed. “The answer to your question, Twilight, is that changelings refer to themselves with singular pronouns when they are talking about knowledge and experience they gained through their own actions. When they refer to thoughts, feelings, actions, or anything else that they do because of the knowledge they took from the hivemind, that is when they refer to themselves in plural pronouns.”

He looked piercingly into my eyes and I knew this was more than an answer to my question. “For example, I took the throne when mother abdicated. Ve had our doubts that somepony as soft as us could lead, but I proved I could be strong where it mattered when I stopped not just one but two coups bloodlessly. Ve came to trust our judgement from that, and I came to you to parley for peace because I thought it was our only chance as a species. I was not lying when I said my hive is slowly starving. Ve had significant doubts anything would come of peace talks given the general consensus on changelings, thus I took precautions to ensure you would take my offer of peace very seriously. Understand?”

There was a rather grim finality to the prince’s tone as he finished. I hadn’t fully grasped the concept he was explaining yet, but for once I decided not to ask any follow up questions on something as small as grammar. Taking my ponderous silence as consent to continue, he opened a small pocket dimension to withdraw a piece of paper coated in a complex magical diagram. I almost asked what warranted the security of storing one piece of paper in a small bubble of hammer space, but then I got a better look at the arcane writing scrawled across it. I let out a whistle in appreciation of the sheer magnitude of the spell.

I had no idea what it did, but it had far outclassed anything I had ever seen before. There were at least nine layers of magic circles from what I could see. Even the most advanced spells I could think of only went up to five. And that wasn’t even counting the sub-circles. I’d heard of sub-circles before, but only in the highest levels of theoretical magic literature. They were discussed – and only discussed, mind you – as a control mechanism for how we might be able to experiment with potential spells classified as apocalypse level or higher.

In short, I could only assume whatever he had just pulled out was very dangerous magic that I should not touch with a ten-foot pole.

Morpheus watched us both, gauging our reactions. “This is the culmination of my preparations to show you just how serious I am about this peace. I had to send my agents scouring the globe to find all the pieces.”

It was quiet at first, but Discord was chuckling. It was a low, deep, almost sinister chuckle. “Oh, my… Oh my… Is that what I think it is?” It began to build in volume, filling the whole room as the prince nodded. “You really are desperate aren’t you?” It was a full-throated belly laugh that could not help but send shivers down my spine. It was such a jolly sound, but something about it was horribly wrong.

Morpheus knew what he held. Discord knew it too. Apparently I was the only one out of the loop here, and I needed to fix that. “What is it?”

Discord held up a paw to stop the prince from explaining while looking at him very carefully. I’m not sure I can forget what the draconequus said next. It’s hard to explain, but every so often as Discord’s babbling on and on he’ll suddenly say something oddly profound or serious.

Sometimes I catch it, and sometimes it’s lost amidst his inane jokes, but it happens. There seems to be a method to his madness, and for some strange reason part of that method is the odd moment of clarity. This was one of those moments. Actually, it was much more than a moment. I had never seen Discord this serious before.

Normally, his voice is full of some kind of emotion. It didn’t necessarily matter if the emotion was appropriate to the situation or not. The point was that it was always full of the energy that comes with an emotive voice. Right then and there his voice was strangely subdued.

“You know, you really are the ballsy one if you’re planning what I think you’re planning. I’ve been around since the beginning of time, and I’ve seen every empire that’s ever been on this little ball of dirt rise and fall. I’ve seen every ruler under the stars, and let me tell you there are only three other rulers I’ve seen who would even think to work up the gumption to attempt what I think you’re proposing with that little paper from Tartarus.”

He pointed to himself. “Me, because, when I ruled, I was just plain insane enough not to worry about the consequences.”

The draconequus pointed to me. “Miss Magic-of-Friendship, because she is not only naïve and idealistic enough to believe it’s possible, but also powerful enough to pull through her mistakes.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that given the darn draconequus wouldn’t let the changeling explain what the paper was or what it would do.

He wasn’t done, however. He waved his hand in front of him and a small but cheery sun appeared. “And Celestia, because only her kind of boundless compassion and wisdom would let a ruler realize such a sacrifice was truly necessary. It would destroy her to do it, to be sure, but she would do it to protect her little ponies.”

The draconequus loomed over the prince, bending down to look him in the eye. “The question that needs to be asked is which of those three, if any, are you? Then again, maybe you’re different, or simply a fool. I can assure you though – quite confidently, in fact – that there’s no going back once you sign that.”

And just like that the draconequus’ normal pep was back. He turned to me and gave me his classic cheeky grin. “Sorry, Twinkles. You’re just a little star and this is quite out of your pay grade. Hay, this is out of my pay grade. Give me a couple minutes to grab Madame Grim-about-Grins and her little sister Miss Hates-Fun-in-the-Sun. They’ll want to see this no matter what they’re currently up to.” He snapped his fingers and was gone. After a second, however, his voice echoed back through the room. “Oh! And, whatever you do, don’t sign anything!”

I snorted and kicked the study floor. “Did he really just run off to grab the others without giving me any explanation at all? He knows I hate being left out of the loop, and they all do it too, not just Discord.”

I turned to focus on the prince. “Care to actually explain now that there’s no pony here to stop you?”

Morpheus nodded. “It is easiest to think of the spell as a legal document, a contract between two parties if you will. The difference between this spell and simple written documents is in the spell’s name. You see, your highness, this is the Unbreakable Contract. It is not necessarily literally unbreakable, although there were several versions that apparently would overwrite the free will of the parties involved should they decide to violate the obligations they agreed to, but it may as well be given the consequences normally involved in such contracts. As they are magical in nature, a magical punishment can be bound within the contract to trigger the instant an obligation is broken.” He gave a morbid grin. “In this case, the punishment to be inflicted on me should I not carry through on my end of the bargain is death. It would be instant and painless, but it would be death nonetheless. You are starting to understand just how determined I am for peace now, yes?”

I swallowed very slowly. “Y-you mean you’re—“

Morpheus continued on, apparently not actually expecting or looking for a response. “Yes, I assume unavoidable magical punishments such as death would seem rather frightening. One could even argue that’s the reason all records of it were supposed to be burned in the first place. Not that all the books on it actually finished their way to the crematory until recently. I’m pretty sure I destroyed the last of them. Of course, that was after I read them. The only records left now are those ve possess in our personal archives. And ve will most certainly not be telling others how to make one anytime soon. The real danger, you see, is that the spell matrix is so complex that it is next to child’s play to abuse the phrasing within them to get what you want. If you think modern lawyers are nothing but demons who twist words, you should see the stories ve found on how lawyers who dealt with these things ruined lives. Apparently, it’s very easy to sneak yourself in as a third party when you’re the lawyer. All it takes is a little tweaking from there to get whatever you want.”

He tapped his noggin as he said that, and I knew the records he was referring to were in the hivemind. Before I had simply found the idea of the hivemind simply fascinating if a little confusing, but that little comment made me realize some of the more insidious consequences of that aspect of his species.

It was the ultimate manner in which to control and limit knowledge.