Accursed Ambition

Have I been drugged?

I felt as though I had to swim through syrup for consciousness, and despite every attempt at making my limbs move or my eyes open they wouldn’t obey. I felt a glow deep inside of me, satisfaction unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

Euphoria demanded that I release myself to its clutches and let myself slip entirely out of awareness… but a tremendous ache in my head and the sensation as though I couldn’t breathe was prompting me to struggle out of this feeling. My lungs burned for oxygen, but my body ached for blissful sleep.

I felt as though everything were going to be okay… and yet my panic mounted higher and higher as I struggled into reality.

My first breath drove sharp needles of pain through my chest, but I didn’t care at that point. The thick syrup I’d been swimming through started to lift, until my limbs began to respond with motion. The euphoric glow of love died like a sputtering candle, replaced instead with my own anxious fears.

What happened?

It was a combination of moments I’d felt before, but multiplied; like waking suddenly from deep sleep… and leaving behind a book you’ve thrown hours into reading and have to struggle to bring yourself out of the world you’d just left behind. Strange and alien concepts were latched onto by my desperate mind as I struggled into awareness, but eventually -with a great amount of effort- I managed to piece together enough.

I was lying on my side, my body moving in a frantic panic against something that wasn’t even touching me anymore. Nothing had been touching me; I fought physically against the demand that I return to blackness.

My chest hurt. My legs hurt. Everything hurt with a dull ache, with sharp needles digging and wiggling at my chest and down my right flank.

I thought I could hear… something… amidst all of this swirling sensation. I tried to say something, but wasn’t even coherent enough to know what to say. A rough sound of something near alarm managed to make its way from my throat.

“Nnhh!”

Of course the vocalization didn’t make any sense, but… it made me feel as though I were accomplishing something. Pieces of the puzzle continued to fall into place, and my eyesight finally returned with yet more pain, this time in my head and pounding. I heard muffled ringing, I tasted the sharp bitterness of iron; my own blood.

On my side, surrounded by sheetrock and destroyed paneling. Inside a home. Canterlot. The invasion. Ringing, ringing, pounding, needles of pain across my chest and the feeling as though a pony was shaking me roughly.

No. I was being shaken. A shape resolved slowly in the harsh blurs of light and color that my vision still was.

Not a pony… a changeling. My vision continued to clear until black carapace and bright, almost luminescent blue eyes came into focus so that I could tell what it was that was demanding I wake up just as adamantly as the pain in my body.

“Na! Na, get up! Come on, come back to me!” said the changeling, the voice unfamiliar when speaking that pony language. I recognized my given name, though.

“Ynhh!” came another non-sensical sound from my throat. It hurt to talk. Hurt to breathe.

“Yeah, I know it hurts. But come on!” exclaimed the changeling drone, shoving roughly at me again. Oh wow… oh that made things so much worse. Please stop shoving me.

What happened?

We had been sweeping this house. I remembered that part. I remembered three other drones with me, and our Captain.

No. No, that was wrong. Pieces of these facts flicked out of my mind’s grasp, tugged away by reality returning. These were the pieces of the situation as Apoidea, my form, had understood them. It was the drone, following its ‘Captain’ into this house to sweep.

I had been following along with the changelings from the Chrysalidae hive as they swept this house clear, having seen a guard in front as though it were important. I remembered the occupants scattering, chased by changeling drones. I remember the Captain changeling taking care of the single guard.

And then light. Heat. Pure joyous love flooding through me as something struck me physically, throwing me hard against the wall. Euphoria and pain. The sheetrock and wall joists shattered around me, a cabinet had come down across me, and then… nothing.

“Get up, Na!” shouted the drone, shaking me again. I wished it’d stop that. It had helpfully pulled the cabinet from my body, throwing it aside and uncovering me so I could get up. “Shit… you’re hurt. You alright, can you move?”

Yes, now you ask. I didn’t give a verbal response, instead trying to get my legs up underneath me, and working myself upright. My whole body hurt, and I could feel the wetness of my own blood running down my chest; my carapace had cracked from the impact, from the shoulder down to my sternum ridge. I didn’t know how badly… but from the large green stain on the floor, stickying up my hooves, it seemed like way too much.

Who was this drone? They knew my name -my real name- so clearly they weren’t one of the Chrysalidae. They must be one of my own kind, still disguised as a mere drone of this other breed.

Was my own disguise still up? I thought so; the thought patterns of Apoidea, my disguise, weren’t coherent… but the pale blue of my wings let me know I was still in that form.

“Who…?” I managed weakly, finally making it to my hooves.

“This is Taku,” said the drone, still in the pony tongue. Yes, one of my own kin then. “Everything’s out the window, we need to bail. Now.”

What? “What’s going on? Invasion? Are we losing?”

“The Hive lost,” Takuta corrected, grimacing as though with a sour taste in their mouth. “Some kind of emotion superweapon; invasion’s fucked.”

I took in my surroundings; still the same house, furnishings shattered around me. The wall between living-room and kitchen had been blasted apart by my impact, but the house itself stood firm. Whatever explosion had thrown me to the side hadn’t done anything at all to the structure.

I saw two bodies. Drones. One was thrown against a fridge in the kitchen behind me, neck twisted at an absurd angle by the force of the blast. The other was laying across the ground, pierced by the spear of a pony from front to back and covered in blood… whose chest their own horn had gored through.

The third drone and that Captain must be upstairs, I thought. I didn’t want to go looking.

So, I’d survived. I was much the worse for wear, I was still bleeding and my head was pounding… but I was alive. And it seemed, so was Takuta.

“The others?” I queried, trying to keep my balance. I felt the other changeling slide themselves alongside me, their own carapace slick against mine but stable enough to let me lean on them. They looked intact, and not nearly as bloody as myself.

“Don’t know,” was the answer. “I saw you come this way. Fountain absorbed a lot of the impact. Whatever that thing was, it sent everyling flying. Guess we slipped through, so maybe the others are alright.”

“I look bad…?”

I didn’t get an immediate answer; even pupiless, I could feel the other’s eyes roving over my body for a moment.

“...we’ll clean you up,” was Takuta’s offered response after a bit, trying to sound positive. They didn’t sound positive. “The ponies are going to be in emergency mode still. We can hide in the panic. Get you fixed up.”

I was glad it was Takuta who’d come to my aid. They were the type to try to stay optimistic, the type to try to stay focused and find actions to move towards a goal even when they didn’t have a goal. Of all of the other four of my own kin that could have found me, they were probably my first choice for dragging me, bloody and broken, from a ruin.

Not that I would ever choose to be dragged, bloody and broken, from anything.

I gave a weak nod, putting my weight against the other changeling, feeling their own settle on me in turn to brace me upright. A faint little chitter of confirmation escaped them, and then we were moving forwards, guiding me over the broken remains of the wall and a shattered table.

Across the living-room, I could see the doorway, the door itself on the ground in front where we had knocked it entirely from its hinges however long ago it had been. Some time, maybe; I saw the light of early afternoon outside in the street.

We’d almost made it to the door when we were interrupted by an unexpected sound: a soft gasp of breath. I turned my head to follow the sound, trying to find its source.

The changeling ‘Captain’, a much more independent and intelligent form of changeling, had never made it upstairs. The blast of whatever it was had thrown them too against a cabinet, this one filled with heavy china that had then fallen forwards on top of them.

The changeling captain tried to lift their crested head, sucking in a harsh breath; no success. They weren’t going anywhere, and it didn’t take very long to see why. Their entire lower body had been crushed by the heavy cabinet and shattered remains of expensive china and decor. Maybe magic would have done some good… but that was magic that neither of us had.

Takuta followed my line of sight and grimaced, looking as though they were physically pained. “...oh. Oh that’s bad.”

“Poor bastard,” I said in agreement.

“You want to… take care of this one?” my companion asked me. I glanced towards him, happy to tear my eyes away from the struggling of the doomed changeling. “You need it more than me,” Takuta then added.

It was true; I needed the help a lot more than they did, by the look of things. I could feel my body already wanting to slump back down from weakness; the room felt as though it were starting to wobble lazily about me.

Nodding, I was helped towards the fallen cabinet and the trapped changeling, which finally noticed that it wasn’t alone. I didn’t want to look, but I could hardly help it. Their eyes were wide with panic, and even more widened with desperation upon noticing us.

I felt a psychic touch, a prod from the changeling in front of me, trying to make contact in a feeble attempt to assert control.

I didn’t even have to push them away; the psychic tendril dissolved from their pain almost as soon as it had flicked out.

“Drones,” the ‘captain’ managed to chatter out in the hiss-clicking of the native changeling language. “Help me... escape... this furnishing...”

It was a command I ignored, slumping down off of my hooves next to them, Takuta right behind and keeping watch. Or more likely just trying to avoid looking down at the grim scene and pooling green blood. I didn’t have the luxury of doing the same, but I was far too shocked from my own injuries to worry about it much.

“Sorry,” I offered apologetically in the same tongue. “...you’d be gone before we got to the door.”

For a moment, the changeling seemed inclined to argue in desperation, but pieces of what was going on started to click in their head. I saw confusion after a few moments from me speaking, not understanding why this drone was refusing, and why it could even give such a complete response.

After all, drones were... simple creatures, usually. Depending on job and on breed they were barely above foals at best in their capacity.

Myself? Far, far above that. Far beyond even this ‘captain’.

“Wh-” the changeling started, confused still, though desperation surfaced again. “P-please…”

“Shh,” I hissed quietly, reaching out with one forehoof to brush lightly across the thick chitin just behind the changeling’s horn, trying to sound soothing. “It’s alright… I’m here.”

They didn’t seem to want to be comforted, and didn’t seem to even understand it, but when their eyes locked with mine and I pushed forwards with my own presence, I felt them suddenly relax.

“That’s it, dear,” I muttered soothingly, stroking the armored plating of the other changeling in a way I think might have seemed, to a pony, motherly. “...I’m here for you.”

With the injuries the changeling captain had, even my own injuries were little hinderance to exerting my own presence. My own breed was perfectly capable of subduing the lower castes when allowed free reign, smothering them.

“Careful,” I heard in the pony tongue behind me. “Don’t get too carried away, they’re almost gone as it is.”

I nodded very slightly, taking the advice from Takuta and stifling my instincts’ drive forwards. I felt that rising pressure in my chest, urging me to cut loose entirely and break the lesser creature in front of me into nothing, wanting desperately to make them my own, turn their will to mine, and feed on their devotion.

They weren’t going to go anywhere in this condition.

I wondered, with my psychic presence held in check, what thoughts were going through this captain’s head while I was focused on other tasks. Were they wondering as to who I was, if not a drone? Were they hoping that I was a delusion, or praying that they would be rescued by me? Were they giving themselves up entirely to me?

I’d never know.

I opened the pathways in myself to drain emotion, as though faced with a pony rather than a changeling; were I one of their own breed, nothing would have happened… but as soon as I started to pull at them, their energy flowed like water towards me, their resistance smothered by my psychic presence. It was like inhaling a breath that wasn’t with the lungs or with air, feeling a tingling, delightful, intoxicating surge of power flow in and through my limbs with a taste that wasn’t even a describable taste.

I closed my eyes. I hated this part. With my hoof against them, pulling at what emotional energy remained in their body, I felt them shudder and squirm… and fall still. A last twitch lept from their head down to the rest of their body as the ebbing flow of their life gurgled to nothingness, and the ‘captain’ laid still.

I hated that part. But the strength I’d cannibalized from this already-doomed changeling flowed through me, my aches receding and the harsh needling of pain in my chest from the crack in my chitin starting to fade; I could put this power to use before it turned into raw emotional energy inside of me, helping heal my wounds somewhat… but there was no telling what was to come, and so I left much of it unused.

I could let the rest of my wounds heal on their own.

“Practically a saint compared to Hyse,” said my cannibal kin behind me. “They’d have smacked the thing down and drained them in a second.”

They would have, yeah. Hyse, another of my breed, had little concern for their prey. In, subdued, drained, done. But I couldn’t bear to be so cold; even if these lesser creatures were of another breed entirely, they were alive. Prey or not.

“Let’s get out of here,” I replied, not wanting to discuss it further. It’d been ages since I’d fed from another changeling, and my feral instincts tugged at me to find more to sate its drive… but of course, there were none here save for my kin. And Taku wasn’t prey.

“Yeah, sure,” the bug in question said, trying to make their voice sound positive. Still wasn’t working. “These Chrysalidae forms aren’t any good to us anymore. We need to be ponies.”

I gratefully left the grim corpse of the captain behind, standing on my own now that I’d recovered somewhat and moving away to stand next to Takuta. When I wasn’t leaning against them, I stood almost an inch taller in height.

“We won’t be able to sense the others that way. We don’t have that kind of hivesense like these guys, we have to be changelings of some kind if we-”

“I know,” Takuta interrupted, shaking their head. “But we don’t have that option. This is now enemy territory, and every pony in this city is up in arms over this attack. It won’t take long for them to come up with some changeling-detection methods, either; you know how resourceful unicorns can get.”

I did; more often than not, unicorns could find a magical solution to an emergency in days if not hours. In changeling form -any changeling form- we could sense other changelings as we passed them by. It was the easiest way to hunt and stay in touch, as my own breed lacked a proper hivesense. In pony form, we’d be locked away from that… but at least we’d be safe.

As far as I knew, not even a member of the royal castes could detect a Sapygida changeling when they were in the form of a pony.

“....alright. Who’re you being?”

“Going to be Lane, who else?”

I sighed quietly, and Takuta gave me a slight grin. Lane was… a difficult pony to be around, at least sometimes. They were very physical in their affections… and very free with them. Not even I was exempt from such things.

“...fine, but tell her to keep her hooves off of me.” I said, relenting. “We’re in the frying pan right now.”

“Will do. What about you? Magic or flight, should think about those options now while you have a chance.”

It was a hard choice; the freedom to cast magic whenever I needed it or the freedom to fly anywhere I wanted to go?

In the end, as we headed towards the door, I picked flight. A quick escape was always a good thing. I tapped into my magic, and a flickering and pale purple light started at my horn -a stark contrast to the green of the Chrysalis-led changelings- and moved down my body in a sweep towards my hooves. I felt my carapace itch and burn a bit as it changed entirely into something else.

“....she’s new,” commented Takuta, widening one eye as they had no eyebrows to raise.

It was true; this cream-coated pegasus mare I’d taken the form of was a form I’d only taken very sparingly before, and never around my kin. I’d forgotten to put her yellow mane up into a ponytail with my change, but didn’t think it mattered if I looked a bit unkempt. There’d just been a changeling invasion after all.

I felt my thoughts and emotions fluctuate, the familiar change-over to a new personality entirely. Where these other changelings had to put on an act, my own breed placed new personalities over our own to complete our forms.

She wasn’t a happy pony at the moment… and so, neither was I.

“I’m... Sunny June,” I said, feeling a creeping anxiety tighten my throat. “J-June, please.”

The changeling gave a little nod; I was glad I’d at least remembered to tell someone what name I preferred considering how shaken I still was. For a moment, that same flickering violet light cascaded down the form of my friend, leaving them instead replaced by a unicorn mare with a pale blue coat, and a violently-purple, frizzy mane. Where I was standing naked, they’d at least managed to create a thin vest of white cloth with green trim to accessorize. She'd even matched the green to the color of her eyes.

Lane gave me a smile of encouragement, nodding towards the door. “Alright, babe,” she said. “We came here home scouting, city was invaded. We holed up in here for as bit and now we're lost and in shock.”

“We...we kinda are, Lane,” I said anxiously. I liked the idea, Lane… Takuta… always had great ideas. “The whole plan's up in smoke. Everything. If this invasion hadn't ended things, this...this disaster definitely did!”

“Hey, we'll be okay. Hyse and the others are out there. So we're going to find them. Then we'll figure this out.”

Lane gestured towards the doorway again, and I heard the distant sound of a siren. Faintly, I could hear ponies shouting and even even the roar of what sounded like cheering. Victory.

Not our victory though, not even close.

“Trust me,” the unicorn said, noting that I still wasn’t reassured. “We started this together, Na. June. We’re together to the end, alright babe?”

She sidled sideways, scooting herself closer until I felt the warmth of her bare flank pressing against mine. It was both a gesture of affection and of encouragement, the other mare leaning herself against me; unlike in our other forms, she was now the one an inch taller.

“...a-alright.”

“That’s my mare. Alright… let’s get things done. We just survived a shapeshifter invasion, after all.”

Side by side, we made our way out into the street; two accursed cannibals in a capital city on high alert.