The changeling and the medic

I stayed sitting beside the changeling in the storeroom, just going over everything in my head. Everything had happened without warning, and neither I nor any other pony had had a plan to deal with any of it. We all had our training, so the guards knew how to fight, and I knew how to heal them, but none of us had any significant experience, and none of us had a particularly good idea of what we were supposed to be doing beyond trying to defend Canterlot. I was constantly worrying about whether I'd made the right decision - the changeling would be perfectly capable of pinning me against the wall again when it woke up, and it might then choose to take revenge on me for what the corporal had done. I was under the impression that the changeling approved of my decision to tell the corporal to stop torturing it, but it was perfectly possible that thanking me was a ruse to make me empathise with it so it could catch me off guard.

I wasn't sure exactly how long I spent in there just thinking about what had just happened. It couldn't have been much more than an hour from when it was realised that we were under attack to me dragging the changeling into this room, but I likely spent a lot more than that trying to make sense of it, especially those last couple of minutes in the corridor.

It seems strange, but having the changeling beside me made me feel safer - it was ridiculous: The changeling was going to be completely unconscious for hours, and therefore incapable of protecting me from anything, and when it woke up it would become a significant risk to my welfare. It was more a sort of psychological effect, like a foal might get from a stuffed toy. I was slowly stroking the changeling's neck for most of the time I was in there. At the time I was too preoccupied with thoughts to consider how ridiculous it was to take comfort from being with something more dangerous than anything else I'd ever touched.

After however long it took for me to come to terms with what had just happened my mind turned to working out what was going to happen next. I could hear that there was still fighting going on outside the castle, so neither side seemed to be getting anywhere, and there would likely be a lot of injured ponies who would need my help. The changeling would likely be safe in this room, but if it woke up it would be a danger to me and any other ponies it came across. My situation was actually relatively simple. I needed to leave the changeling to go and help other ponies, I couldn't leave the changeling where it would be dangerous, and I couldn't just kill it because of my duty as a doctor. The obvious solution was to find a place where I could leave the changeling where it wouldn't be able to harm anypony, and the only suitable place for this would be the cells in the dungeon.

I knew where the cells were, but with a battle going on and the order to kill changelings on sight it would be almost impossible to get there without being caught. To have any chance at all of reaching them while carrying a changeling I'd have to work out how ther battle was going to find a clear path, so I made the decision to leave the changeling alone, but only for a few minutes.

I walked to the door and put my ear to it. I could hear a small group of ponies slowly moving towards us, talking about where they were supposed to be going and how to find a good defensive position. They began walking onto the balcony, probably to start firing from it. It wouldn't look too suspicious if I walked out of the store room at this point, and I wouldn't be in any immediate danger as there wasn't any fighting. I casually opened the door and walked out, making sure to close it behind me.

An orange pegasus was leaning against the wall, on his hind legs and holding a spear. He appeared very relaxed, considering that he was standing in a room full of corpses in the middle of a battle. He looked at me, slightly surprised, and said "Hey" in a slightly inquisitive tone. I looked back, possiby just as suspicious of him as he was of me. I looked to the other ponies, and noticed that they were all pegasi, and were preparing to fly from the balcony. I looked back, about to answer with an excuse about picking up medical supplies (the room I'd come out of was for bed linen, but I doubted that any of the soldiers would know what was in what storeroom) when the orange pegasus suddenly launched forwards and flew off of the balcony at huge speed, and the other pegasi followed.

I looked out after them, and saw that there were far fewer changelings in the air than there had been. There were plenty of pegasi still in the air, fighting them, and it looked likely that the battle was going in our favour. The group that had just left turned their path to the other side of the castle and moved out of my vision. Looking for a few seconds more revealed why there were few airborne changelings as a dark blue blur shot out from where the pegasi had just flown to. As it neared the balcony I recognised it as Princess Luna, who had apparently been woken by the battle - it was likely that she wanted to compensate for her absence at the previous changeling invasion, and it was a good job, as she was easily able to shoot individual changelings out of the sky, and was likely making a significant differences to our chances of victory.

As Celestia was half way across the known world, in Griffonstone, Luna was acting regent for the day, and it was likely that it was both a matter of pride and responsibility for her to defend Canterlot without her sister. Luna circled in front of me, chasing changelings and shooting them out of the sky. Whenever she neared me I noticed that she was shouting profanities in the traditional Canterlot dialect, which surprised me somewhat. This was a side of Luna that I'd never seen before, but I imagined that it would have been the norm during the wars of a millenium ago, when Discord was in power, when Sombra invaded the north, and when Luna fell to darkness. I'd thought about the cultural differences between our time and that time before, and how they impacted on her, but I'd never considered the effect of Luna going from nearly constant war to the relative peace we'd been experiencing for the past few years. It was likely that she'd have been incredibly bored with the lack of military action.

The few changelings left in the sky were making obvious efforts to try to avoid the Princess, and it occurred to me that when she left I might have a clear airborne path to the cells. As soon as I'd worked out my plan the Princess made a sudden change in her flight path, and flew straight towards me and landed on the balcony in front of me. As soon as she landed she shouted at me in the royal voice "WHEREFORE WOULDST THOU STARE AT THY PRINCESS IN THE MIST OF BATTLE! DOST THOU NOT HAVE A DUTY TO PERFORM? DO OUR ACTIONS INTEREST THEE MORE THAN THY DUTY?" I bowed before her, mostly out of fear. Her response to this was to shout louder at me "DISPENSE WITH THE FORMALITIES, SQUIRE! WE ARE AT WAR!" and stamp her hoof on the ground so hard that it seemed for a second that the balcony might be shaken off of the side of the castle. I instantly stood up as straight as was possible.

I'd never spoken to either of the Princesses before, and I felt uncomfortable enough being in my situation with the changeling and being surrounded by death without having the second most powerful pony of all time yelling at me. With her fury and bloodlust I felt like she might just vaporise me on the spot. I managed to remain enough composure to avoid humiliating myself by breaking down and crying or losing control of my excretory systems, but not enough to keep any information from her.

I pointed at the room I'd just come out of, and managed to explain the general gist of what had happened, though my fear did mean the way I went about explaining wasn't very eloquent. My ears were ringing slightly from the Princess' voice, so I ended up shouting it rather than saying it, but I managed to transmit the words "Er. Changeling! I have a captive. I've captured a changeling. In the cupboard. Closet. Thing. Help!"

Thankfully the Princess appeared to calm down after this, which allowed me to do the same, and she switched to the voice that she'd learned after her return. "What condition is this changeling in?" She asked.

"Unconscious. I gave it some anaesthetic." I replied, with some fear and confusion still apparent in my voice. "I wanted to move it to the dungeon before it wakes up so it can't hurt anypony."

Luna looked to her left, off of the side of the balcony, likely doing so to check that she wasn't being attacked from behind. She walked past me towards the door. I was immediately relieved. I no longer had to be the one who would make the decision about this changeling. Whatever the Princess ordered I would be able to do without any questions from any other ponies, and even if she killed it, ordered me to kill it, or had somepony else kill it, the blood wouldn't be on my hooves (at least not metaphorically. As it was, I had a fair amount of blood on my hooves, both that of the changeling and the dead ponies).

Luna opened the door with her magic and looked inside. She saw the changeling, then lowered her horn towards me. For a second I was wondering if she was going to kill me after all, but instead she produced a beam of cyan light which moved towards me, and entered by chest a short distance. It tickled slightly.

"Just to check that you are not a changeling yourself." She explained, quietly. Her horn glowed again, but pointed towards the changeling, and it popped out of existence. I looked up at her. She walked back towards the balcony and turned her head back to me.

"I have sent your captive to a cell in the dungeon. Go there now to ensure its safety, then return to your duties".

I nodded, and the Princess took off, flew into the air again and rejoined the battle, if blasting a few terrified changelings could be called that. It was clear that the majority of the fighting was now taking place inside the castle, and that we were winning. I figured that as long as I stayed to the central parts of the building I'd be unlikely to run into any changelings, and I made my way down the nearest staircase and walked across a bridge to the keep. I walked past a few ponies, and though I had green bolts fired at me from range while on the bridge, I managed to run out of the way.

Once inside the keep it was a simple matter of going down as much as possible, and I knew my way around the castle reasonably well, having trained and worked in it most of my life. It took a few minutes, but I eventually found the dungeon gate. I explained to a guard pony that Princess Luna had sent a prisoner down into one of the cells and that I was to check on them, and though he was suspicious he let me through, but decided to follow after me. The gate had a magic disabling field over it, in case any magical prisoners were sent down or if any magical visitors decided to break any prisoners out. It occurred to me that the changeling wouldn't have passed through it, but I could point this out to the guard on the way out so he'd seal the changeling's magic.

I walked down the short staircase into the dungeon. It was small - a large dungeon wasn't needed in a thousand year long peace. There were four cells down each side of a small hallway. In the first cell on the left was my sleeping changeling. I walked over to the cell and touched the bars. The gaps between them were large, so a thin pony or changeling would have been able to fit through them with a little effort, but there was a magical shield connecting them to block any prisoners from doing this.

The third cell on the right had a pony in it, and he was hitting the magical shield of his cell and shouting at us to let him out. He had a brilliant blue coat and a short, light brown mane, with a long handlebar moustache. I noticed that the guard had a similar moustache, but his was grey. The guard and his prisoner looked about as different as they could - the guard had a dull brown coat compared to the bright blue of the prisoner. The prisoner was thin and tall, while the guard was short and quite fat. The guard had a short grey mane and rough stubble, while his prisoner's mane was brown and flowing and reached nearly all the way to the floor. The prisoner's beard was fairly long and wavy like his mane, and tapered to a point a little below his chin. The guard's irises were a shade of brown that was almost black, while those of the prisoner were white with a tint of orange that was barely noticeable from my position. The only thing the two seemed to have in common was their moustaches. I wasn't sure why, but this single identicality between the two made me feel uneasy when contrasted with all of their stark differences.

The guard gave a loud, but not quite shouting answer: "No." It was eerily similar to what I'd heard minutes before from the corporal. I'd done what I needed to do, and I didn't feel like staying in this place. Everything felt wrong about it, somehow. I expected that it was just because I'd been thrown by the events I'd just gone through, but this idea didn't make me feel any more comfortable in the dungeon.

I told the guard about how the changeling would have bypassed the disabling field. He just nodded, and I went on my way. Hopefully I'd be able to just do my job without having to deal with ponies and changelings torturing each other. I tried to put all the images of death and all of the other confusing or disturbing events of the day out of my mind so I could focus on what I was supposed to be doing from the start: healing the injured.