Chapter 11

Friendship Set On Fire

Bicho and Twilight led the way for must have been the strangest army in Equestria’s history. As we traveled the hills and valleys of the cave, more and more changelings followed us.

“What’s with these guys?” Vinyl complained, waving off a changeling flying near her head. “They’re actin’ like I’m coated with honey.”

I walked over to her and said, “Quietus told me they feed off of love. Your love of Octavia is like a buffet to them.”

Vinyl tilted her head at me in confusion. “Huh? How does that work?”

Bicho looked behind him and explained, “Love is the greatest, most savory emotion in the world. We changelings devour this energy in order to live.”

Twilight’s ears pricked up. “Have you always been like this?”

“No. According to our elder scriptures, my race once only fed on the magical field that helps keep this world intact. Then a serpentine demon with various animal limbs discovered us. He altered our bodies so that only love or equally powerful emotions could keep us alive. Except for hate, it seems. He was also the same being that gave us the ability to imitate any species of equal size.”

Rarity gasped. “Why in Celestia’s name did he do that?”

“Legends say he desired a race that could infiltrate any country. Then he discovered that we can’t stay disguised forever. Being tired or sick would disrupt the illusion.”

“Why didn’t he return you guys back to the way you were?” asked Pinkie.

“He wanted to see if we could flourish with his new designs. Since we cannot stay above ground for long without being detected, we learned how to absorb love from afar.”

“Talk about a platonic existence,” quipped Vinyl.

Twilight asked, “Is this demon still around?”

“He abandoned us when he fell in love with a goddess. For centuries we prayed for his return so that he would reshape us into what we once were. Then we cast aside prayer and settled for this meager existence.”

Twilight and I exchanged knowing glances. She mouthed his name. Discord.

He sounded distant and weary of the world. “We have known for a long time what it’s like to be used. What Quietus has done to us is far worse. Once word of this gets out, my people will be hunted by the surface races.”

Twilight shook her head. “No, that’s not going to happen. Princess Celestia can help relocate your people."

“Why would she do so much for us?"

Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Because she’s the one who imprisoned the demon, as you call him. He was frozen in stone for the last thousand years.”

Bicho and the rest of the changelings stopped and stared at her in shock. A moment later, he asked, with a twinge of anticipation in his voice, “Can she make him change my race back to the way we were?”

She shook her head apologetically. “She can’t. He was stolen from our princess and then later escaped from this world. I’m sorry. But that doesn’t mean she can’t still help you. After all, no one should fear persecution for something they didn’t do.”

“Been there,” grumbled Pinkie.

Bicho squinted at Twilight. “You are remarkably generous to someone you know almost nothing about.”

“In my hometown, there’s an old saying. ‘Deeds make the pony’. You tried to prevent Appleoosa from getting attacked, at no small cost. Your people kept us from getting killed in front of that cave. That good deed makes you our friends.”

“Just like that?” Bicho looked bewildered.

Pinkie chirped, “Sure! Why not?”

I asked, “Why are you so surprised?”

“As a rule, we have never mingled with the surface world. We don’t know how to make friends with anyone outside the hive.”

He gestured to the changelings that buzzed around us. “My race’s parasitic nature forces us to stay away from the surface, for fear of persecution. Our beloved Queen Chrysalis broke that rule when she struck a deal with that damned pony ghost.” He hung his head and sighed. “Now our hive is falling apart.”

Bicho continued walking again, his fellow changelings dutifully staying close.

“It’ll get better,” reassured Pinkie as she trotted beside Bicho. “I know what it’s like to be in a bad spot, believe me. My friends will turn things around for you, just you wait!”

“I sense something in you,” remarked Bicho. “Did Quietus possess you at some point?”

Pinkie’s ears flattened. “No, but the goddess that he’s trying to bring back did. She . . . she made me kill one of my friends. Now half of Equestria thinks I’m a murderer. That’s why I live in the badlands, to stay out of sight.”

I sidled up to Bicho. “Do you sense something similar in me?”

He regarded me for a moment. “Yes. Are you hiding from the world, too?”

“No. Quietus told me that Nightmare Moon gave me her ability to absorb pain as if it were food.”

“What?” cried Pinkie. “That’s so weird! Once the doctors stopped doping me up, I kept feeling like a million bits tax-free in that asylum. Are you saying that we’re, I dunno, pain vampires?”

“For lack of a better term, yes.”

Twilight asked, “Why would she do that to you guys?”

I shrugged. “I’m a Mortis. Maybe she wanted me to know what it was like to be her. Maybe if I fed off of pain long enough, I would start to like it so much that I’d join her side.”

Pinkie shook her head. “No way in a bazillion years would I ever torture somepony on my own. No matter how good it might make me feel.”

Vinyl said, “I just thought of somethin’. After my dad’s funeral, Tavi and I felt a lot less miserable. Maybe you aren’t just absorbing pain, Equus. You might also have the ability to take it away.”

“Shared pain is lessened, Vinyl,” said Octavia, matter-of-factly. “But pain can’t ever really disappear. It’s not like removing a bad tooth.”

“Finding happiness is not the same as ending pain,” I observed. “We all have some idealistic vision of paradise.”

“I bet your vision’s a tropical island,” Vinyl remarked.

My jaw dropped a little. I asked, “How did you guess?”

She waved a hoof at me. “Pfft. People always imagine a distant island or secret garden where they think they can be happy all by themselves. That was never my idea of paradise. I always imagined my slice of heaven as a mare’s embrace. One that’s warm, grey and ticklish.”

Octavia chuckled. “I never imagined my personal haven with anything other than my cello until I met Vinyl. Now I can’t imagine being happy without her.”

When they gazed into each other’s eyes, the changelings around them appeared to grow a little bigger. It must have been a trick of the ambient lighting, I told myself. That was it. Maybe.

I saw Applejack looking at Vinyl and Octavia wistfully, with a limp tail and drooped ears. Her pain of loss would never be far from her. Changelings flew up to her, but buzzed past for happier climes.

Pinkie nudged me in the ribs. “What’s your idea of heaven, Morty?”

I nodded at my newest friends. “Even if I didn’t have the power to soak up somepony’s pain, I would still help you guys walk away from the graveyard however I could. All I ever wanted was to help people with their grief. The monster fighting’s just something I do to help accomplish that.”

“Ooh, so you’ve found your island already!” said Pinkie.

Looking at my mother, I replied, “There may be more than one island, Pinkie.”

Vinyl smirked. “Well, if you ever need a energy boost, Equus, I’ll come cry on your shoulder.”

“Okay.”

“I was kidding.”

“I wasn’t,” I replied, firing her smirk right back at her.

Vinyl nodded at her marefriend. “Oh, yeah. He’s a keeper.”

Bicho said, “I envy you ponies. You are able to give each other so much love so freely. If just one of you lived with us, we could live like kings.”

Pinkie asked, “You mean you can’t feed each other? None of you can give love?”

“No. We have always been a taking species, Pinkie. We have never given anything to anyone.”

“That’s not true,” insisted Pinkie. “Anyone can give as well as take.”

“You get what you give,” I added. “I don’t think your race is so far removed from us for you to not comprehend that.”

“Our altered nature limits what we can do, Equus,” Bicho said. “But I think I understand what you mean. If one wants love, one must first give love. Right?”

“By Celestia, I think he’s got it,” Octavia remarked.

“Our boy’s finally all grown up.” Vinyl fake-sniffed as she wiped away an invisible tear.

Bicho’s wings twitched as he tilted his head in confusion. “What?”

“It’s a joke, Bicho,” Pinkie assured him while patting his shoulder. Did he grow a little just then? “Someone will have to teach you humor later.”

There was a huge swarm of changelings around us now. We all knew what was at stake. Rescuing the remaining residents of Appleoosa was bound to bring Quietus down on our heads. That suited me just fine. I owed him for nearly murdering me. For bringing so much death into this world. For enslaving a race that never wanted to harm anyone.

When we entered a smaller cave, I could smell a brief whiff of copper. Blood. Lots of spilled blood. Several hundred ponies’s worth, I wagered.

As the scent grew stronger, so did my body. My ears swiveled as they located distant screams. My injuries no longer hurt.

So much pain. So much delicious pain.

Some dark, primal, slope-browed part of me was licking it’s lips in anticipation, pining for the chance to add Quietus’s blood to what was already staining the ground.

“Equus?” said Pinkie, her voice trembling.

“Yes?”

“I wish I had a mirror.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to see what you look like.” Her lower lip was quivering. “Seeing your wounds made me recall everything I did to Rainbow Dash. Right now, you look like me when I was killing her.”

“I’m not a monster, Pinkie.”

“Then why are you grinning?”

What?

Author's Note

"Cyclops" by Yello is good theme song. Let's use that.