Mending Existence

"Hello? Is anyone there?" Twilight scanned the walls of the cave as her horn illuminated most of the surrounding area, worriedly searching for some hint of familiarity as she gently bumped into her own reflection. The sound of laughter drew her ears as she looked frantically for the source of the noise. She turned around, only to back into the wall as she fearfully asked "Where am I?"

A green tinted image of what she thought to be her old foalsitter Cadance filled the surface of the wall behind her and she backed away while it spoke. "The caves beneath Canterlot, once home to greedy unicorns who wanted to claim the gems that could be found inside. And now, your prison."

Twilight tried to flee but could not find an exit among the cold walls that encircled her completely. "Help! Help!" she proclaimed, only for that impostor to berate her with ill-disposed laughter.

"It's no use. No one can hear you. And no one will ever think to look for you, either. Most ponies have forgotten that these caves even exist, which is why they are the ideal place to keep the ones who try to interfere with my plans." She punctuated this with a sort of half baked evil laughter, the kind one does after having laughed evilly for too long so their throat has gotten a little sore. I'd probably prescribe honey and lemon tea since I don't have many chemicals down here, but I'm sure they have tea up there.

"Plans? What plans?" Apparently Twilight wasn't accustomed to bad mares having plans by now, which made this declaration rather surprising for her. And of course, the malicious mare merely responded with a somewhat innocent smile, differing from the malicious grin she displayed earlier as she clarified herself.

"The plans I have for your brother, of course." This declaration drove Twilight to gain some composure, her horn glowing more... erratically? I can't say violently since it still looks rather soft.

"Don't you dare do anything to my brother, you... you monster!" She yelled rather pathetically at a wall.

"Only way to stop me is to catch me!" Announced the mare in the mirrored crystal walls, her image disappearing only to reappear elsewhere. "Over here!" Disappearing again as Twilight's magic rebounded off where the image once was and almost hitting the caster herself. "Nope, over here!" The mare continued to taunt, Twilight apparently having used the previous reaction to adjust her spell for a more violent outcome.

Her spell destroyed a few off the crystals scattered about the cave before destroying a chunk of the wall itself, a chunk that I was calmly resting against, so I'd ended up flung against the far wall as Twilight directed her aim towards the somewhat battered mare sitting in the middle of the room. "No! Wait!" Cried the real Cadance as Twilight tackled her to the ground. "Ugh! Please! Don't hurt me! Twilight, it's me! Please, you have to believe me. I've been imprisoned like you. The Cadance who brought you down here was an impostor."

"Likely story!" So likely in fact it could be true. Though there was the teeny tiny chance this Cadance was just a disguised changeling. I know she isn't since I checked myself, and Twilight doesn't know about the other changelings yet. So the most likely answer for her to come up with is that this Cadance is real, especially since the Queen upstairs has no reason to be down here. At least, I'm guessing she's a Queen.

"Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves..." chanted Cadance, the oddity of the words not lost on me as I picked myself up off the ground. Maybe they were some kind of secret code? Like a weird handshake or something.

"...and do a little shake." They both finished, Cadance giving Twilight her most pathetic 'winning' smile while Twilight gave her best 'overly attached puppy' imitation.

"You remember me!" She proclaimed as she flung her hooves around the pink Alicorn, the positioning giving me some reprieve as she barely missed the bandages around Cadenza's withers.

"Of course I do. How could I forget the filly I love to sit for the most?" Too many plot-convenient ways I'm afraid. Though the nice break in monotony was good for a change. And just as the two were in the middle of their hugging the Queens distant laughter pierced through the air. This cave was really lacking in echoes, maybe the material density of the crystals and the way they naturally formed served to dampen sound waves?

"We have to get out of here. We have to stop her!" Exclaimed, I'm running out of synonyms for 'yelled' I'm afraid, Twilight as she charged a short distance ahead. And finally it was my turn to step in, rather reluctantly I might add.

"And how are you going to do that? The stop her part I mean. Getting out of here is rather simple considering this was once a mine built with a heavy set of safety precautions so it's only inevitable for there to be an exit. The crystal walls themselves are also strong enough to support the caves so it isn't likely that any exits slash entrances have caved in on themselves."

I couldn't tell if my sudden appearance and challenge to her plans was what stunned her or if it was just my appearance. I'm willing to bet on the latter considering I was wearing one of my older coats when I went to question the impostor and my hair was a little messy since I'd decided to jump during the teleport just in case she stuffed up and I ended up half-way into the floor. "Uhhhh, I'm sorry but who, or what, are you supposed to be?"

She gave Cadance a sidelong glance, probably in some silent plea for her to explain my presence. I'm actually more relieved she didn't think I was a changeling or some other hostile being. Then again she didn't know what a changeling was... yet. "Her name is Sal, Twily, she helped patch me up after my doppelganger let her anger out on me yesterday."

"Which I'm still sorry for, being the reason for that anger. Apparently she wasn't too pleased when I asked who she was during dinner, so the drama Queen took me aside and teleported me here before coming down herself. Once she realized I didn't care too much about her questioning methods she tried to use Cadance as a bargaining chip. Her offer was terribly pathetic though, so I decided to nap for a bit and she apparently threw the princess against a wall. By the way she really needs to control her anger issues more because someone that gets angry so quickly isn't really suited for any kind of position of power, though with her races physical abilities being more towards subterfuge, I guess I can see how they might be able to pull off a blitzkrieg if they gathered enough resources."

Once I'd finished my own ramblings I turned to Twilight, hand outstretched as I smiled to her. "And what the Princess has kindly forgotten to mention is my title. Pleasure to meet you Twilight Sparkle, my name is Doctor Sally. Please don't let your foalsitter's apparent need for nicknames corrupt you."

Shakily, Twilight extended her hoof to my hand and I gently shook it. My introduction had been enough to sate her curiosity for now but the way she flinched slightly on contact as well as the way her eyes scanned my face made it clear she had forgotten my original question. "I'm sorry if my appearance disturbs you at all, I didn't have any spare makeup on me after Queen bee put me here. But you'll have to put that aside for now and answer my question. What is your plan for confronting the impostor?"

"Oh, right, my plan."Twilight shook her head as if to dismiss her own curiosity in favor of dealing with the situation at hand. "Well, I was just going to bring the real Cadance to the wedding. Then, when everyone realizes the one getting married is a fake, Princess Celestia would be able to step in and capture the impostor!" Boy is she pleased with herself. Just for her sake, I'm not even going to point out all of the issues with that plan.

As doomed as her plan is, there was at least something I could use to my advantage. "So you have a way of getting out of here then?" Twilight nodded, looking pretty smug as she pointed towards an old mine cart not too far-off from where we were. Apparently my hypothesis towards the link between a herd mentality discouraging curiosity and a stunted ability to determine the safety of certain environmental properties without repeated trial and error held some grounds here. I may have lost track of my thoughts somewhere but allow me to sum them up. "Absolutely not, I doubt you even know where the track leads considering your earlier 'rampage' against the cave system. Any other ideas?"

She gave a small chuckle and a sheepish smile as she tried to avoid my gaze, looking around the cave for some kind of answer as her eyes slowly drifted towards her horn. "Hm, well I do know a teleportation spell so we could follow the tracks and I could use the spell to get us over any large gaps."

Thankfully Cadance had chosen to stay out of this conversation, no offense to her but her limited abilities, while quite powerful, were almost useless in this situation. "You're saying you can cover large distances with this spell, approximately how far is your limit? And since you haven't used it by now then I can assume you need direct eye contact with your destination?"

Twilight thought to herself as she recalled what she'd learnt of the spell so far as well as her own limitations. "So far I can only cross a distance of about three-thousand hooves if I'm using binoculars. I don't need direct contact with a destination, I should be able to teleport anywhere within range so long as I have a view of the destination as it will be when I teleport. It's a safeguard to make sure I don't teleport inside anypony by accident."

Ugh dammit, of course they use primitive forms of measurement. Okay, the average hoof size is around four to six inches so that'll account for about half a foot. Two hooves per foot means I can take the three thousand and half it to get the approximate distance in feet, then to convert that into meters I divide it by three point two-eight-zero-eight. This gives me around four hundred and fifty seven meters to work with. The wedding itself is being held approximately, I'm sorry if use of this word is getting grating but I'm in a slight rush, two hundred and thirty meters above the base floor of the castle. Going by the relative formation and molecular density of the rocks determined by Twilights explosion earlier and taking into account the height of the mountain itself, I can assume we are at most two hundred and thirty meters below the castle itself. The way Chrysalis' teleportation set up that ring would suggest it sent Cadance and I to a pre-determined location and due to the Queens apparent starvation when she must have arranged the array I can assume her magic would be somewhat less powerful than Twilights. So it isn't likely she sent us along a vector that strayed too far across from the coordinates of Canterlot Castle so there isn't much need to learn any horizontal measurements and rely on Pythagoras from there.

Alright, to sum up everything, we are just in range of the wedding itself but I would not like to take the risk of a few meters as I do not know the adverse effects of the spell. Taking into account everything then, it would be safer to teleport to one of the lower floors, at least a two floors down, and make our way upstairs. While Twilight grew impatient I calmly pulled a ring out of my pocket, slipping it over my finger and ignoring the slight piercing sensation as it projected a screen above it and I cycled through the different cameras I had hidden around Canterlot.

"Alright Twilight, I know you're getting impatient so ju-" I swatted her nose gently as she tried to look over my shoulder, her rather large nose blocking my view, "Keep still alright? Your curiosity will get you killed someday. I took into consideration the data we have available and I managed to deduce that our safest bet would be to teleport.... here."

My decision had Twilight blushing and stammering for a while until Cadance decided to have a look as well, now both of them are blushing but at least Cadance isn't stammering. "You don't really have the time to argue with me do you? Your brother is in danger isn't he?" That question had made Twilight shake off her apparent inhibitions, swallowing her pride as she nodded and charged up her spell while keeping an eye on the display. Even as she was firing off the spell I was rechecking my own calculations and making a mental checklist of anything the Queen might have tampered with. Chances were low since the castle was still intact, but it didn't hurt to be certain. Well, it kind of did hurt, since while I was thinking to myself I'd forgotten my usual rule for teleportation.

When the three of us had arrived, much to the surprise of the stallion at the urinal nearby, I was a little agitated at the way I had arrived. Of course the miniature equines had designed their teleportation around small horse physiology. They probably used the brain as a center and since it wasn't likely they used it with other species they hadn't likely been made aware of its issues. Twilight and Cadance were apparently so caught up in the spells 'success' that they hadn't noticed me when they left in a hurry.

I sighed as I quickly went about slicing apart the bottom of my lab coat, my lower pair of arms were undamaged at least, but if I didn't take care of my waist soon then I would probably pass out and die soon. If you haven't caught on yet, my waist down had been merged with the floor thanks to Twilights spell, meaning I would have to cut myself apart first before I could do anything. The fact that the spell apparently fuses one sector of space with another was something to think back on later, because this would mean the spell also took into account the oxygenation of the body thanks to the fusion so it likely displaced matter in a gaseous state which was a rather simple concept, but it shows the spells creator had some foresight at least.

Holding down the urge to regurgitate, I let my stomach fall to the floor as I fell onto my back. My goal was to use the now useless smaller intestines in order to patch the hole that was now present on my lower half before I suffocated. I'm hoping you'll understand why I was worried about suffocation because right now I'm a little too busy to explain. I grabbed at my collar with one hand as the others went about organizing the mess of stomach. I wasn't happy about doing this kind of delicate work on a bathroom floor, a public, men's, bathroom floor no less, and I didn't even have any forceps so I was forced to just carefully tear apart my stomach into patches while I reached into my mouth. In my collar I managed to pull out the long thread of silk I'd kept stashed inside while I unhinged my jaw. The pain was there obviously but it was more to notify me of injuries so right now it was only a distracting. Reaching further into my mouth I found the cavity in my only remaining wisdom tooth and pulled along it, carefully sliding out the needle I'd stashed inside. For whatever reasons Celestia forbade me from bringing any equipment to the dinner table.

Once more I cursed my lack of sterilizing agents while I organized the pieces of intestine into a nice patchwork before setting about attaching it to my lower half. Most of my body was made to survive long periods of time without vital parts but I could only keep my breath held for another three minutes at most. I was just about finished when I heard hoof steps rushing around the hall outside and a little bit of screaming, so as I heard the steps come closer I played dead, using my remaining large intestines to cover up the 'repairs' I'd made to my lower body. I kept one eye pinned on the door as the other gazed towards the large mirror on one wall.

When the guards barged in and saw me one of the guards took on a gross green tint before rushing over to a toilet, the other one dismissed my body as he moved behind the other guard in an apparent gesture of comfort. Then he took out his sword and clonked the other guard in the back of the head, making him collapse against the bowl with his head partially inside. The 'guard' then dropped his disguise and went about sticking the real guards hooves to the ground with some kind of goo before putting his disguise back on and leaving. Thankfully changelings were far too good at sensing emotion, so they tended to rely upon it far too much.

I went back to work sealing up my lower half before carefully stabilizing the air pressure inside my body. After a few test breaths I tied the rest of my thread around my wrist and snuck the needle inside the cuff of my sleeve. Managing to stabilize myself, I used my four arms to stand up and made sure to place them in the most efficient positions. I made sure to get used to this odd fashion of movement before I checked on the guard. He was alright for the most part so I lifted his head before placing it down on the toilet seat instead, then went about checking the area of impact. Remarkably it looked like I wouldn't need to treat him beyond putting a few wads of wet toilet paper on the back of his head to hopefully help with the swelling. I could probably attribute that to the changelings method of attack, they'd probably had the aim to cause the least amount of damage possible so that they'd make more reliable food sources.

Maybe if Celestia isn't too angry with them I could take a few to test on when I get back to the lab? Their design could do with a few changes as well so I should make sure to get as many details about them before I get around to making my own. These are thoughts for the future though, so maybe next chapter I'll think of what to do with them if I get any. I need to reprimand myself more for planning things before I have reliable materials. So, focusing on the present, it's going to be an absolute pain to make a new set of legs. As if I'm going to find the right parts around here so I'm probably going to either fashion my own or investigate the rumors of simian like creatures in the west. Oh I'm thinking ahead again, dammit.

Heading outside of the bathroom slowly, I carefully pulled the door back and peeked outside. It wasn't too much of a stretch considering how stupidly small these horses are. No signs of activity down either side of the corridor so I headed towards the closest staircase. My best bet was to get to Celestia and hopefully she could get me a wheelchair or something for now. I think I had a pair of prosthetic's at the lab but I'll have to redesign them somewhat. Ugh that damn tapping, I'd forgotten about the ring I'd used to access my cameras. I stopped for half a second and took it off, throwing it into one of the nearby trashcans. It was only a one-use item anyway, no point in keeping it.

The climb upstairs would've been daunting if I went by Celestia's suggestion to only bring two arms. Using all four however, I was able to climb up the railing and use that instead. I admit I was gloating at the Princess' lack of foresight and I made it a point to mention it to her later. No changelings around this floor either, which means there are probably a few on the floor above while the rest are going out on the town. Ah! Almost got spotted there, I barely managed to flop onto the stairs below as a few changelings were walking towards my direction. I kept my head horizontal as I peeked over the top stair, waiting until the changeling guards turned away on their patrol route. As much as I could praise their methods of attack, their guarding could use some work. The patrol of two changelings ahead of me split up with one heading away from me while the other went down a corridor on my right.

Once I was sure no one was coming downstairs I made a bolt for the first corner. I made sure to memorize what I could of their patrols before turning along, walking on my hands apparently helped with being stealthy though my apparent sneakiness could once more be chalked up to the changelings dependence on using emotions to see. Kind of like how a bat can still see but they will prefer to use echolocation if their prey is an insect. I took note of the balcony as I passed, moving up behind the changeling. Once I was within what I hoped was my range I leapt and grabbed onto the changelings fetlocks, flipping myself on top of its back and dislocating its hind knees while I covered its mouth with my lower hands. No doubt the other changelings were going to sense its distress so I steered the now panicking bug towards the wall, still covering its mouth, while I pressed the tip of its horn to the wall and slammed my palm into the base. There was a sickening snap as I levered myself onto its back properly then started dragging it to the balcony and closed the doors behind me.

I let out a sigh of relief as the changelings on this floor began to panic and search around. It had only been a guess that the horn was the focal point for whatever hive mind these creatures possessed, but it was the right one as none of them came near the balcony. I calmly maneuvered the changeling so that I could see its face, giving it a quick slap to stop its screaming before slowly taking my hand off its mouth. "Hello there little guy, I'm just going to ask you a few questions and then I'll go okay?"

My smile wasn't as comforting as I thought it would be, the changeling trying to back away as tears ran down its face. At least it nodded. "Good. What is your name, age, gender, date of birth, and do you have a history of family illness?" It seemed a little confused at first before making a few clicking noises which I assumed meant it was trying to answer. My hopes fell as I sighed, the earlier changelings display coming to mind. "I assume you can't speak Equish without taking the form of a pony correct? And that even then you aren't speaking but the disguise itself is imitating speech through some other means?" It nodded for the first part and shrugged for the second.

They don't even have basic knowledge of how they work, how... irritating. It wouldn't be long until the guards found this spot though so I would ask just two more questions before I left at most. "Since you changelings are walking around and... flying around," I said while absently glancing at the scenery of Canterlot behind me, "I'm going to assume the Queen has come out into the open?"

A nod from the changeling, it wasn't fidgeting as much so I could assume it had some form of adrenal gland numbing the pain. Or maybe their horn was more important than I thought? Questions for later. "Last question, you're all out in the open and no one has done anything about it yet. So I'm assuming the Queen somehow managed to incapacitate Princess Celestia?" Another nod, oh goody. I was going to have to put in a bit more work than I first thought.