Chapter i: They Live

I asked them why they came here. They told me they wanted to join the Hive. I just stood there, watching them enter the throne room and the five changelings crowding around the door to listen in on the conversation. Something was off. It was like I had been here before. I watched the executioner go into the room. I heard the horrible scream of dying wretches. It echoed through the walls of the Hive and forced me to look down. Blood. I was bleeding. I looked over my hooves, no wounds. I started feeling my snout. One fang. My tongue reached for the empty spot; it was dry. I moved my tongue to the corner of my mouth; it was wet with tasteless blood. I closed my right eye and found complete darkness. When did I lose my left eye?

Barbarian came out of the throne room; the doors slammed shut behind him. Everything became brighter. Knocked out of my stupor, I looked around again. No blood. Both fangs. Both eyes. Was I imagining things? He beckoned me and the rest of the troop along.

“Those defectors came from a hive to the South. We’re to track them down and kill them all.”

Those last few words bounced in my head for too long, giving me a bad headache. Then there were words in my throat: those doubtful words that a past me wanted to say. I swallowed them. I replaced them with something better.

“I’m not going.” I sat down on the cool stone ground of the Hive. I crossed my forelegs. “And you guys shouldn’t either.”

They all sighed at once. Even the quiet assassins. The top assassin looked back toward me with disgust in its eyes.

“You would.” It sneered.

“It’s a suicide mission!” I insisted.

“Leaving us to die...” one of the quiet ones said with a deeper voice than I had ever expected.

“Just sitting here alone then?” the other one spoke up, with a voice not unlike Chrysalis’s.

“Come on, Carnal... Please,” the first pleaded in its still strangely deep voice.

I shook my head. “You guys never talk! You never said anything the first time!"

“Well,” the top assassin began to explain. “The breeder still had his heart, and Barbarian still had his jaw last time.”

I looked past the three, the cocoonist was coughing up what appeared to be a mixture of blood and his standard slime. Barbarian turned back toward me, fear in his eyes and his tongue hanging limp as his lower jaw was missing completely. Drop by drop, blood slowly made its way down that tongue until finally splashing into a pool. The pool spread faster and faster as the blood poured from Barbarian's mouth. The blood spread across the floor, making its way toward me. I was too shocked to move. The goop touched my hooves.
Everything went dark.
The five's presence vanished.
I was not alone.

Crack. Crack. Crack...

Their wretched Queen appeared behind me from the shadows, heads twitching in the darkness. I was no longer on the cold stone ground of the Hive. Both of its heads fought over that same position. The cracking would not stop. Their teeth gnashed at me with each pass. The mouths were filled with fangs, crooked and almost chattering as it took bites out of the air behind me. Its body twisted as it shambled toward me. I ran from it. It shambled faster. It stayed just behind me, despite my speed. I saw a light in the distance... Green like blood, but flickering like a fire. I could feel the heads' breaths on my tail as the gnashing loomed closer and closer. I jumped through the flame. The light pushed the heads back. They faded into the darkness. I tried to catch my breath. Then the laughter started. Like changeling soldier laughter before a fight, but twisted like a hyena being disemboweled. I tried to ignore the voices. I looked into the fire. Beautiful patterns of flame danced without a source. Then they slowly moved together before a spark ignited into a new form...

Barbarian's jawless face burst from the flame, making that horrible scream. The sound ricocheted inside my head. Covering my ears did nothing. I curled into a ball. It would not relent. I closed my eyes tightly to shield from the light of the face. The scream continued. A tear dripped down my snout.

It tasted like blood.

Then there was total darkness, and unholy silence.