Let's Try This Again

by HypernovaBolts11

Rating: teen
Tags: Romance, Original Character, Princess Celestia, Sex, Twilight Sparkle, Main 6, Drama, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Sad
Length: 34930

Queen Chrysalis and her son have been driven out of the Badlands, and gotten themselves captured by the guards stationed in Baltimare. Upon their transferral to Canterlot, Celestia arranges to get information from them by any means necessary.

CURRENTLY UNDERGOING REVISION
If one could wind time back, imagine what power one could possess. If they could erase their missteps, their wrongdoings, their enemies and themselves, what does that mean for everyone else?
Princess Celestia has that power, and she isn't necessarily merciful in its use in negotiations with Queen Chrysalis, who has, along with her last heir, been driven out of the hive after their crushing failure to conquer Canterlot.
But Celestia has connections to this heir, and knows who his father was.

Story takes place before and during Games Ponies Play/Just For Sidekicks, and ends sometime after Magical Mystery Cure, but before Twilight's coronation.
Rated teen for vague and moderate descriptions of wounds, and kissing.

Published 2016-04-17 22:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-06-25 23:40:44 UTC

Chapter I - Timed

Chrysalis's voice shook him awake, breaking his dormancy. He opened his eyes, and glanced around. He was being carried, by what he couldn't tell, as his sense of touch had been cut off by the halter on his face. He focused his attention on the strange object, and tried to puff air through his nostrils, only to find that he'd lost conscious control over his diaphragm.

He was unable to hold his breath, feel his heartbeat, or even turn his head. He was, for all intents and purposes, completely immobilized. He began to panic, frantically wondering where his mother was, what they'd done with her, whether they'd killed her or not. His brain demanded too much oxygen, and his breath didn't speed up to compensate, so he blacked out.

He awoke a few seconds later, his body in a sort of sitting position, with his head pointed forward. He saw a white pony, slim and tall, with both wings and a horn, piercing purple eyes, and a look that demanded every ounce of his attention. She smiled at him, not warmly, but businesslike, warning, and removed.

He didn't understand much of the tongue she spoke, and wished that he simply knew what had become of his mother, what they'd done to him, why he wasn't able to even breathe on his own accord. He watched in great fear as a sharp, shimmering object loomed in front of his face, and a white hoof removed the halter from his nose.

He promptly collapsed, unable to even breathe without the halter's help. He wheezed for a few moments, then blackness crept into his vision. He saw his mother, sitting completely still, a halter on her muzzle, watching him with a horrified look in her eyes. He heard her speak in a langauge he understood, and the halter on her nose snapping, "Stop!"

He felt her warmth envelope him, her calming embrace, and her heartbeat slamming in her chest. He heard her breathing alarmingly fast, her swallowing, and then her crying as the last one, her final child's last remaining tie to the living world, was held to a knife, threatening to drop him into death.

His eyes slid closed, his mind accelerated to one thought, and he managed to say, "M-mother, I'm... I'll see father, tell him. you.. love..." His mind screeched to a halt, his body went limp in his mother's embrace, and his labored wheezing stopped. He was dead, asphyxiated right in front of his mother.

He thought he heard something say, "You're almost done." Then he didn't... anything.

Chrysalis screamed at Celestia, and buried her nose into the body's shoulder. She began to cry, holding him one last time, and she sobbed against her son's dead body. "H... N-no... Don't go..." she whispered into his triangular ear her sobs, and tightened her grip on him. She could feel his love fading, her last source of sanity dying right in front of her.

Celestia spoke, coolly, calmly, and without compassion, "Now, Chrysalis, do you understand how serious I am?"

Chrysalis continued to cry, but nodded. When she and Celestia had talked, she knelt down on her knees, lowered her head, and pleaded through bleary eyes, "Please... I. You could have saved him. We were run out of our home. Starving, we came here in search of your help, but you kill him."

Celestia sighed. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "I knew all of that already, Chrysalis. But you have proven yourself to be an impossible force, and I am out of options. With him, you could just as easily have destroyed Canterlot as breathed," the princess told the former queen.

"You..." Chrysalis's vertical pupils narrowed into slits. Her horn sputtered green sparks of magic. Her entire face turned a bright green, and she felt her mind being overcome with rage, rage unimpeded, rage unheard of on any world. "Your brother loved me! That's why we came here, and you knew that!" she shouted.

Celestia kept a straight face as the queen stood up to hold their noses against one another. She said, "And you signed an agreement, may I remind you." She had never seen anyone so angry. Not Nightmare Moon, not Tirek, not Discord at his worst, was this angry.

Chrysalis leaned forward, locked her horn against that of the princess, and growled, "I care not what oaths I've made, for blood is thicker than water, and I care for whom the bell tolls, unlike you, Celestia, who have ordered systemic murder and genocide of my children, children who had done no wrong to you."

Her lips curled back in a vicious snarl, displaying her fangs to the alicorn. She reared on her hind legs, and lit up her horn with blazing green fire. Her eyes, whites and all, were replaced by brilliant white orbs. She heard the guards coming up behind her, and stomped her hooves against Celestia's chest, pushing the princess onto the cold marble floor. She loosed the ball of fire that had built in her horn, and it expanded, filling the room with unquenchable fire.

When the spell fell away, there was a pile of ashes where the throne had been, and a hole in the floor where Princess Celestia had just lay. The guards screeched to a halt behind the queen, who turned to face them. She pointed a hoof at her son's dead body, and declared with three voices at once, "Revive him! I have harmed no one, and you have killed an innocent today!"

The guards exchanged nervous glances, and froze when they looked behind the changeling queen. There, floating, eyes burning white, was Princess Celestia, who motioned them towards the door with a hoof. They bowed and promptly fled the throne room, leaving their weapons on the floor.

Chrysalis turned to face Celestia, and the two held gazes. White fire met white fire between them, and visible waves of yellow and green magic emitted from their horns. The ground nearby to them began corroding, smoldering, cracking, and falling away in small grains. Then the walls began to dissolve, and the waves of magic which flooded the castle escaped into the open world, tearing apart any organic matter in their wake.

Eventually, Celestia closed her eyes, and she nodded. "Very well, let's try this again," she said. She lit up her horn, and everything around her began to undo itself. The walls and floor reassembled themselves. The waves of magic returned to the two creatures. Chrysalis turned around to see the guards running back into the room, but backwards.

Chapter II - Regretted

When the world reached a specific point in time, Celestia sat back down on her restored throne, and watched as the guard came hauling in the unconscious body of Chrysalis's son, and the queen herself. She watched as they were set down before her, and the changeling prince woke up. She smiled at him, and looked Chrysalis in the eye. She asked her, "Now, are you willing to tell me all you know about the hive?"

A knowing look about her, Chrysalis waited for the nearest guard to remove her halter, and closed her eyes. She nodded, and glanced at her son, who was still breathing, still alive, still here. She said, "I... Yes, Celestia, I am willing." She looked at her son, and back at Celestia. "Please... help him."

Celestia thought for a moment, and said, "Well, I'll need your word on this, as you have been less than cooperative." She lifted a paper and quill in front of Chrysalis, who immediately signed the bottom of the contract. She looked at Celestia again, eyes pleading.

Celestia shook her head slowly. "You yourself once said that blood is thicker than water, and you cared not for this very oath," she told Chrysalis. "I will need much more assurance than your name on a piece of parchment. I can't be sure that you won't turn on me the instant I help."

Chrysalis clenched her jaws, and glanced at her son, who was completely still. She whimpered, and lowered her head, she closed her eyes, and began to cry. She knew that her son, barely living, barely even thinking, could hear her, and that he was looking for her, his brain demanding more and more of his blood than his forcefully slowed lungs could provide. Such a state of panic was unsustainable.

Celestia stood up, stepped forward, and said to Chrysalis, "I will need his secret name from you, or I will never be able to trust you." She lowered her head to look the great changeling in the eye. She was still not showing any emotion, but could not see any better options, or she wouldn't have done any of this.

Chrysalis cried more loudly, and she whispered, "It's... It's..."

Celestia leaned closer to her, and said, "It is best that we create another contract, so you will be sure that I don't harm him, should you turn on me."

Chrysalis's will caved, and she nodded slowly, tears streaming down her face, and falling onto the floor, where they formed the shape of a small heart, which separated, leaving a crack in the middle of it. She heard Celestia standing up, grabbing another piece of paper, and holding it in front of her.

She read it, carefully this time, and her sobs died down. She whispered, "I... I loved you, Celestia... And now..." She lifted the quill to the paper, and swallowed hard. She felt another wave of pain approaching her, and she looked over at her child, who had passed out, and was still breathing. "He... Please don't... I will do anything but this..." She felt her throat freezing up, and her entire face numbing. "I... 'Tia, I can't sell out-" She was wracked by a fit of coughing, and kept talking. "-his son... Please, ask if this is what your brother wanted."

Celestia finally winced, and her eyes flared with rage for a brief moment. She sighed, took a deep breath, and considered this. She said, "I will think about it, Chrysalis, and in three days, if I have not made my decision, I will send both of you on a boat to the southernmost reaches of the Celestial Sea."

Celestia lit up her horn, shook her head, and wound back time just a moment. She heard Chrysalis finsihing her last sentence. She sighed, bit her lip, and said, "Chrysalis... I... Comsos would not approve of my actions, no. But you must understand that, no matter how many times I've had this very conversation with you, I have his best interests in mind."

Chrysalis didn't even waste a second before saying, "Forcing me to sell out our child to you is not with his best interests in mind. Scarring me for life by forcing me to watch him die, was that with his best interests in mind? Ordering me to give up his soul to you, where are his best interests in any of that?"

Celestia opened her mouth to speak, and closed it again. She sighed, placed her horn on the queen's forehead, and said, "I... I have regrets." She lit up her horn, just late enough to hear the queen ask one more thing. She answered, "I wasn't aware that this one was my brother's son, though I suppose his ears should have clued me in. And, in any case, what's done is done." With that, the room undid itself, and she slowly stepped back to her throne.

She watched as, for the umpteenth time, the guards carried the two changelings towards her throne. No matter what she did though, Chrysalis's questions still burned in her mind. It haunted her, but she'd been asked it a million times before. "Is screwing with time one of them?"

Chapter III - Escaped

Celestia sighed when the two changelings were set down before her. She stood up and marched forward, but to the queen's surprise and horror, she stood before the youngest of the two. She closed her eyes, and lowered her head to face the young changeling prince. She said, "I know that you're scared, and to that you have every right. I am something to remember, little one, but you needn't worry."

Chrysalis's eyes clamped shut as she recalled all the princess had done to her children, assuming that her last son would meet a similar fate. She glanced at her son's eyes as the princess held his gaze. She willed her jaws to open, with all of her willpower, she fought against the halter's spell.

The prince focused his attention on the leftmost edge of his vision, towards his mother, just in time to see her halter snapping, ripping apart under her will. He watched as a dozen guards pinned down the queen, holding spears at her head and pinning her hooves against the ground with their own, and summoning shackles with their magic.

Princess Celestia stood up, and looked at the queen, who wasn't even resisting the guards as they restrained her. She felt pity for the queen, who had traveled so far, and fought so hard to find her. She opened her mouth to speak, but froze when the smaller changeling fell forward, and his horn connected with hers.

In that instant, everything fell impossibly far from Celestia's control. A flood of raw, untamed magic flowed from her body, through her horn, and into that of the young changeling. She collapsed, drained of her power, and bounced off the ground a few times, her crown landing a few centimeters away from her nose.

The guards assumed that this was some trick of the queen, and that she had killed the princess. Perhaps out of bravado, perhaps of idiocy, perhaps of good intentions but misplaced actions, a spear was driven through the queen's skull, and she lay there for a moment, bleeding, before her eyes rolled closed.

The prince's halter, unable to handle such a flood of magic from its captive, burst into shimmering dust. The young changeling stood, and opened his eyes, showing the guards two orbs of endless, merciless fire. His horn erupted into an earthen green flame, which spread across the surface of his body.

He should have been unable to control so much magic, so much power, but his father had left him that capacity. And this changeling possessed, in that moment, more power than any other living creature on the planet. Not Celestia, from whom his new strength was taken, could have stopped him from destroying Canterlot.

Discord, who had, in all likelihood, the ability to cripple such power, could have done nothing in the face of so much rage. This timid changeling, only half alicorn by blood, was the most powerful being in existence.

Celestia frantically glanced at the window, dismayed to find that the sun was not up. She could not have moved the sun at that moment, nor could she have turned back time to undo this mistake. She was at this changeling's mercy, and, by the fire in his eyes, he was not too keen to provide her anything.

She hoped her death would be quick.

The guards made such haste, practically vanishing altogether, as the new superpower before them marched. He stopped at his mother's dead body, and when he blinked, the fire, the rage, the hatred for whom had done this, evaporated from his face. His toxic green eyes welled up with tears, and he wept, for he could not know what power he possessed, nor what he could do for his mother, likely the only person who could help him manage this magic.

He stood, then knelt, nudging his mother's shoulder with his nose, urging her in his native tongue, "Please... come back..." He traced his mother's shape with his gaze, then that of the spear, which was still buried in her head. He whimpered faintly, and spoke in English, which he'd stolen from absorbing Celestia's magic. "I... I will do what I can... for my home..."

He sniffled, and cared not for whom may have been watching. He bawled, constantly slipping between changeling and pony words, "G-go see father... Tell him that I-" He coughed as the stench of sweet ichor flooding his nose drowned out the world he'd already forgotten. "I miss him, and you."

He closed his eyes, lit his horn with a green glow, a bit too brightly to pass as normal, and his mother's horn glowed in turn. He knew that she wanted him to have it if she ever died, that it was her wish that he take it with him, carry a piece of her. He knew that she wasn't coming back, but wished that he didn't have to confront it every day for the rest of his life.

Celestia's eyes widened as the queen's horn was snapped off, leaving nothing of it on her head. An instant later, the rest of Queen Chrysalis's body disintegrated, and blew away in the wind, which had been let in by the suddenly open windows. She didn't know how to feel about this.

On the one hoof, one of Equestria's greatest enemies was dead, and her only heir was hundreds of kilometers away from his kingdom, which had just evicted him, so they wouldn't have let him back in anyway. She didn't have to worry about more changelings being born. This was good.

On the other hoof, that heir was her nephew, and had just stolen nearly all of her magic. He was unstable, wrought with grief, and suddenly more powerful than she was. Her nephew, who probably didn't know that he was her nephew, had just lost his mother, who hadn't even resisted the guards after freeing herself. She was surely about to die.

On the other other hoof, she couldn't undo any of what had just happened, move the sun, or explain to him why he shouldn't kill her. He didn't know how to reverse time, nor did he even realize how much he needed her advice in order to manage his newfound powers. Reason might dictate assisting the poor child.

But she couldn't do anything, as the changeling prince charged towards the window. He slipped between the panes of glass, and dove straight down. This alarmed Celestia, for if he died while carrying most of her magic, it would all die with him, disperse back into the world, and she would not be able to even consider undoing all of this for a very, very long time.

The princess of Equestria lay there, purple eyes glazed over, mane solid, lying flat against the ground, crown standing on the floor. She remained there for a few hours, until Princess Luna came flying down the hallway, shouting, "'Tia, why is the sun still down? I've already lowered the moon a-" She landed, eyes wide, watching her sister breathe. "'Tia!"

Chapter IV - Lost

Through the streets of Canterlot, while the ponies were whispering of a late sunrise and an incident at the castle, a lone figure wandered. He had a light grey coat, a pair of quiet, somber, brown eyes, a short, indigo mane and tail, and a pair of well preened avian wings.

His cutie mark was a Hearts and Hooves Day heart, crimson in color, with each side of the heart showing pearly white, so they looked like great fangs, set upon chomping the heart. He didn't care where he was going, so long as it was safe. Nopony could remember who he was when he passed them on the streets, but kept their distance from the stallion.

He stumbled through the extended night, not caring for where he was, which direction he was going, or what ponies thought of him. He just wanted to go home, wherever that was. He didn't care about his freezing wings, nor for his pounding head. He could feel so much, hear so much, smell so much more than he ever had, and he hated it.

He couldn't handle his new amplified senses. He couldn't deal with so much all at once. With his last ties to family gone, he didn't see himself as a self, just another drone, far too far from his home, wherever that was. He was only so smart, barely able to think for himself, just a bit more free a thinker than a foal at the age of five.

Without his mother, his queen, he was nothing. He was a nothing, trying to contain within itself all that had made this land. It was a nothing, trying desperately, to hold a cap down on the magic which had built the world. Faust herself had granted this magic to Celestia, and now, he had it, but knew not what to do with it, or if he wanted it.

Finally, after hours of walking, just as the sun rose at the will of Princess Luna, he collapsed in the middle of the street. Before his nearly unconscious body was a great tree, with windows and balconies, upon one of which a little telescope sat. He saw an owl land in front of him, fold its wings behind itself, and cock its head a bit to the side. It hooted at him, and everything went black.

His unconscious body lay still within the walls of the Golden Oak Library, tucked into a bed, under a blue quilt, decorated with little stars, white and yellow, solid and outlines alike. His eyes slowly slid open, and he still lay there, staring at the ceiling, blankly as anything ever had.

His gaze wandered after a while, having thought more than he should have in that span of time. He sat up, and looked around, grunting as his neck flared with pain when he turned his head, lying back down. He reached a hoof to his shoulder, and massaged it gently, trying to make sense of everything he could remember.

He remembered his mother dying, his horn touching that of the big, white pony, and his seemingly endless walk through the streets. He remembered collapsing in front of a tree, and then nothing. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, and he began to wonder how badly the changelings would treat him if he returned to the hive.

Perhaps they'd kill him, but maybe they'd let him live out his pitiful little life in the dungeon. Maybe he'd be allowed —or forced, depending on who you asked— to serve as the next ruler's concubine. That wouldn't be so bad. He'd been raised with the task of reproduction at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Or he could just find the nearest pony, reveal himself as a changeling, and lower his head for them to cut off. That would be quick, relatively painless —especially compared to the torture methods exercised by the changeling elite— and at least, that way, he'd die without anyone important seeing it.

It was sunset, and the sky had faded into a red twilight, leaving the horizon to glow a bright gold across the mountains in the distance. When he looked at the small window, he could see his own reflection, onto which he focused his gaze, and only saw a poor, lost foal, who couldn't tell where he was going. The apparition of his bleary eyes felt cold, distant, and so helplessly lost.

He made up his mind when the bedroom door creaked open. He watched as a lavender unicorn stepped through the door. He didn't think much of her at first, as she looked fairly normal for a unicorn. He hoped that she wasn't one of the more recently discovered "seers", ponies who, for whatever reason, could see right through a changeling's disguise.

She spoke, "You passed out on the street. I checked you a few times, and you seem just fine, so what happened to you?"

He cleared his throat, running through his mind all of those pony sounds he'd been taught, but found speech so much easier than he should have. He said, "I don't know, truth be told. Thank you, and I'll be out of your mane before you know it Miss..." He let that hang in the air, and stood up. He made his way towards the unicorn, then froze. He winced as his head lit up with new pain, and the world began to shatter around him.

He felt the presence of something, something all too powerful to be real, something impossibly strong, and much too close. He screwed his eyes shut as he rubbed his forehead from side to side, trying to soothe what his gut told him was a problem with his horn, which he didn't have —not that his body knew that.

He felt lightheaded, fatigued, and sore. His body made the worst decision it could have possibly made at that moment, and his disguise evaporated. He wanted to blame his body, as that only meant a temporary problem for him, but he knew that someone somewhere had forcefully removed his disguise.

The unicorn gasped as her guest erupted in a pillar of green fire, a flame she recognized all too well. Before she could do anything more than jump backwards, the changeling, now without a disguise, fully exposed, fell flat on its side, its eyes clamped shut, its lips pulled back, its unusually ponylike ears pinned against the sides of its head, and its green wings quivering.

He lay there, grunting in pain, twitching as an immensely powerful gaze fell upon him. His grunts became yelps of terror as the beam of magic focused on him, drawing away his will with each shockwave of magic that hit him. He felt his limbs freezing up, his chitin growing numb, then it stopped.

The unicorn had enclosed him in a dome of purple magic, shielding him from whatever had been causing him so much pain. The dome contracted around him a few times, swelling back to its original size between the strikes of magical energy, then it stayed as large as when it had been first cast, and the offensive magic left.

The changeling lay still for a moment, still encased in the purple magic, breathing heavily, recovering from his initial shock. He felt the gaze of the powerful being move away from him, and he sighed in relief. He looked around, then locked his gaze with that of the unicorn, who held a hoof against the shield spell she'd made.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded him, her voice just barely muffled by the walls of the bubble. "You're here to steal my place, aren't you? That's why you came towards me, to knock me out, or tie me up, or kill me." She pinned her ears back, narrowed her eyes, and waited for him to answer her.

He slowly sat up, wincing as the right side of his neck burned, having received most of the force from the magic. He lifted a hole-filled hoof to massage the chitin on his neck, and shook his head, emphasizing his answer by pausing. "N-no..." he said. "I... I had no destination in mind, but home."

The unicorn narrowed her eyes even more, now jotting down notes on a clipboard she'd summoned. She wasn't even looking at the quill as it flew across the paper. She held the changeling's gaze, and asked him, "You expect me to believe that you have a home left, after Queen Chrysalis was blasted away in Canterlot?"

He whimpered at the mention of his mother's name, his ears flopping down, his eyes widening as memories rushed through him. He felt the grief returning to the forefront of his mind, and he began to cry. He clamped his eyes shut, turned around, and lay down. "M-my m-m-mother didn't die during the invasion," he corrected her, trying to contain himself.

The unicorn asked him, "So she's alive, then?"

He burst into tears, and remembered the horn. He lit up his curved horn, and summoned the jagged, crooked horn that had once adorned his mother's head. He held it above himself, so the unicorn could see. "Sh-she was," he corrected her, then hugged the horn to his chest. "Th-they killed her... just yesterday." Tears began streaming down his cheeks, and he threw his head into his hooves, sobbing pitifully.

The unicorn went silent, and the scratching sound of her quill on the clipboard stopped. She made no sound, aside from her calm, thoughtful breathing. Her shield spell faltered for a moment, and the bubble flickered. She lost her concentration, this time, long enough that the spell died.

The changeling's sobbing came to a sudden stop, which threw the unicorn into a panic. Perhaps the crying had been an act, and it'd succeeded in making her drop her guard. She frantically tried to remember the spell, but only managed to shoot a few sparks of purple magic from her horn.

He sighed when he realized that she was trying to cage him again. A plan formed in his mind, and he remembered that he was a changeling, master manipulator of the Equestrian world. He said, "Go ahead." He sniffled. "Just assume that I'm here to hurt you, like those guards, who killed her for no reason."

The unicorn stopped, and said, "W-well..." She lost her words, and could only swallow as the changeling rose from the ground, teleporting his mother's horn away. He slowly turned around, and she began to back away from him. She tripped, and frantically continued to move backwards. She found herself pinned against the wall, with the changeling coming terrifyingly close to her.

The changeling stopped when his nose was mere centimeters from that of the unicorn. With such a look of terror about her, he recognized her, and recalled —from his mother's ramblings— a few things about this unicorn. "Speak, pony, or have you forgotten who is supposed to be smarter in this situation? Twilight Sparkle, have you lost your mind, letting a predator get so close?" he asked her, his voice authoritative, confident, and melodious, but deeper than it ever had been.

Twilight swallowed hard, glanced to her right, and smiled at the changeling. Her eyes filled with smugness for a moment. She said, "Sleep well."

The changeling opened his mouth and asked her, "Wha-" Then something solid, heavy, and blunt hit the back of his head, and he wobbled on his hooves a bit, before falling over. He hadn't even heard the purple and green dragon coming up behind him, nor had he smelled ash on his breath, nor had he heard the creature grabbing a book with which to hit him over the head.

He grunted, still awake. "Well played," he admitted. Then the book returned to strike the back of his head, and everything went black.

Chapter V - Caught

He woke up with a pounding head, sat up, and found that he preferred the bubble. A few pieces of metal were attached to his body in some of the most bothersome places. A shackle had been closed around each of his hooves, and a few chains were woven through the holes in his front left leg. There was even a cold metal choker around his neck. He snapped fully awake upon realizing that, and tried to track the chain, finding it firmly rooted to the wall.

He frowned at the thing, and bit his lip. He gave the chain an experimental tug, only to shudder when the rough metal rubbed against the sensitive inner flesh exposed on the walls of the holes. He hated that feeling, and promised himself that, if he ever had the chance, he'd put similar holes in one of Twilight Sparkle's legs before threading a rope through them.

"Do those holes serve any purpose?" a painfully familiar voice asked him.

He narrowed his eyes at Twilight, who was on the other side of the bars that formed the fourth wall in his cell. He watched the candle flame next to her flicker a bit, dancing back and forth on her breath. He bared his fangs and pulled his lips back in a snarl. He tried to melt the bars with his magic, so he could at least see his capture without obstruction, perhaps seduce her, and make himself a delectable meal in the process.

Nothing happened, and he growled at her as he prodded his horn with a hoof, to find a sort of ring attached to it. He maintained his growl, and slowly leaned forward, imagining how good her magic, perhaps her fear, maybe even her pride, would taste to him. He fell forward, and yelped like a hurt dog as the chain in his leg pulled his hoof back.

He sat back up, and considered his leg with scrutiny. He sighed and held up the leg, jangling the chains a bit, cringing at the sensation of cold metal on his soft flesh. "These holes. You see how thick the chitin is at the base of my leg?" he asked the unicorn, glancing at her to check that she was looking.

Twilight nodded slowly, and jotted down notes in a well bound book, with a hard black cover and perfectly aligned pages. She said, "Yes." She gave him a curt nod, seeming to forget —or not care— that he had just growled at her, and, before that, pinned her against the wall.

He continued, "Well, the unfortunate thing about chitin is that it's really heavy. And, rather than needing to lug around so much chitin, there are holes in my legs, which have no chitin at all." He watched her for a moment, a bit intrigued that she was being serious about the question. "Aside from serving as the worst pleasure points ever, they can also be trained to secrete different toxins, a few of which I have learned to make, but not nearly as many as a few soldiers."

Twilight seemed to be completely fascinated by this information, and only looked up from her notes when a sudden realization hit her. "Oh, sorry about that," she lit up her horn, and the chain in his leg thinned, as though squished, then drew itself back between the holes, not touching his inner flesh even once as it went. It bundled itself up, and lay down next to the wall.

The changeling examined his leg for a moment, glancing up at the unicorn a few times, a bit surprised, and searched his memory for that term ponies used. He slipped his tongue between the holes in his leg, cleaning them of dust, which he spat out. "Th-thank you," he said, unsure of himself.

Twilight watched him intently, and said, "No problem." She sat still as the changeling finished cleaning out his leg, then made a few more frantic notes. She waited for him to finish before asking, "So, if you're not a soldier, what are you, exactly?"

He frowned, and admitted, more to himself than her, "Lost." He looked down at the floor, and traced shapes in the dust on it with an idle hoof. He said, "I... I was the Queen's last drone... but the others decided that they'd had enough of monarchy, and chased us out. So now I'm just... lost." After a long pause, his unusually equine ears pricked up, and he muttered, "Though, you probably meant to ask why I have some pony features. I'm not supposed to engage in combat, so I don't need every part of my body to hug my chitin in order to avoid getting sliced off, so my ears can be shaped more like yours."

That was a lie, a logical explanation, but far from the truth. His ears were shaped like those of a pony, and he could move his eyes independently of his head, not because of any advantage, but because his mother had no sense of self preservation when she saw something she wanted, and when she wanted something she couldn't have, she would do crazy and stupid things to get it; drinking a potion, whose most frequent users were interspecies couples who wanted children, for example.

Twilight's quill made an emphatic scratching sound, then the book closed. Twilight stood up, moved a bit closer to the bars of his cell, and asked him, "This has nothing to do with the book, but I feel like I should ask, what's your name?" Her horn just poked into the cell.

He snorted, amused, and looked up at her. He held her gaze for a moment, thinking about how to even answer such a ridiculous question. "Queens and heroes have names, but I don't have one," he said. He thought for a moment, recalling a sort of pet name his mother had used to address him when he'd been little. "Love Bite, that was, I suppose, a sort of name."

Twilight had to be at least a little conscious of how easily he could have darted up to her, placed his horn against hers, and drained her of all of her magic. She was risking so much just by standing there, but he didn't know why.

He lunged forward, and placed his curved horn against hers, attempting to steal her power, only for nothing to happen, save for the unicorn flinching a bit. He blinked, stupefied as to why that hadn't worked. He looked around, trying to see if there was some shield spell between the bars of the cell.

Twilight touched her hoof against the ring on his horn, reminding him.

He winced at his own idiocy. He couldn't even understand how he'd forgotten about the ring. Perhaps taking the form of a pegasus had let him forget what a horn felt like, and a lack of one had become the norm on a subconscious level. But, no, if that had been true, he wouldn't have tried to massage it when it hadn't been there.

Twilight giggled at him, an act that he didn't quite understand her reasoning for. Was she laughing at his mistake? Was she amused by his childhood nickname? She didn't make any sense to him. She seemed to despise him, yet, found him a joy to be around. She sat down at her book and opened it again. She lifted her quill to the page, jotted down a few things, and asked him, "What do you think about love?"

He blinked at her, and tried to figure out what social rule she was exercising that he'd forgotten. He eventually, having come up with nothing, said, "It tastes nice, I suppose." He looked at her, and narrowed his eyes. "Why do you ask? You are a pony. You can feel love, so why bother asking me about it?"

Twilight shrugged, her quill flying over the paper. She said, "It seems like a good question to ask someone who eats it. It's the kind of question most ponies have the same answer for." She looked up at him, and held his gaze for a moment. "Do changelings fall in love?"

He shook his head and said, "Not in the way you're thinking about, no." His eyes pointed at the floor, then wandered aimlessly, until they locked onto the unicorn again, who was busy taking notes, enthralled in her project of sorts. He watched her for a bit, not really watching, but wondering.

"I... When a changeling is summoned to incubate eggs, because the population isn't high enough, it goes to the queen, who produces eggs. The changeling is given eggs, and is fed for three months, until its eggs hatch," he told her.

Twilight looked up at him, and raised an eyebrow at him. She said, "I don't think you should waste your time staring at me like that." She sounded cold, removed, maybe warning, but he couldn't tell why.

"Am I not supposed to look at you?" he asked her. He lay down, crossing his front legs.

"You're staring, that's different," she told him. She folded her front legs in front of her and smiled. It wasn't a cool, wry smile, but a warm, homely one. "Are you sure that changelings don't fall in love?" She seemed smug, knowing, almost too much so. She seemed to be bordering on laughter, but not quite.

He nodded and said, "Yes, I'm positive. Workers are connected by a hive mind for the majority of their lives. They don't have feelings, but feed upon those of prisoners. They can barely think as individuals. It is best they think as a collective. I'm a drone, and I'm barely able to think for myself, much less feel anything."

He cleared his throat, then continued, "I miss my mother. I wish that my father wasn't dead. I suppose that I'd like to see you on the ground, while I sapped your body of magic, but it's not necessary for my survival, so I don't care." He looked her in the eye as she wrote fervidly.

"But I don't feel. I cry. I fear. I fight. I fly. I want. I hurt. I die. But I do not love. The mere thought of such a thing seems ludicrous to me. I am, by all accounts, another animal, a smart animal, maybe even a dangerous animal, but an animal, not a pony," he told her. He slowly lifted a hoof to one of the bars on his cell. "I am a changeling, albeit an odd one, but not a pony."

Twilight's quill scritch-scratched on the paper, paused, dipped into a small container full of ink, and the page turned before it continued. She asked, "What about those infiltrators, don't they separate from the hive mind in order to better fill a role as a pony?"

He shook his head. "There are several hive minds. One for the workers, who go about their lives maintaining the hive, tending to the queen, and reproducing. The soldiers, who will one day become infiltrators or spies, are mostly independent. One for the infiltrators to use between missions, exchanging information with the spies. The spies are always keeping track of targets and relaying information to the infiltrators," he told her.

Twilight nodded slowly. "How are you any different from a worker?" she asked him. She continued taking notes, occasionally glancing up at him, as though, if she didn't, he'd somehow escape. She knew for a fact that her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, not only because he was locked up, but because if he did get out, he'd have nowhere to go.

He said, "I was born, not hatched. I was born as an only child, without any clutchmates. I have never been a part of any hive mind. I have always been nearby to the Queen. She was a constant in my life, until..." He trailed off, trying not to remember the sight of his mother's eyes as they'd rolled closed, having never even said goodbye.

He sniffled a bit, and shook his head. He said, "Perhaps, I, as one so removed from them, can experience basic things, such as sadness, anger, joy, surprise, et cetera. But such a seemingly complex thing as love, I think not. I would appreciate my mother to be still alive, but I don't think I loved her. All of my attachment was likely a direct result of necessity. I needed nourishment, and she gave it to me, so I came to depend on her."

Twilight sat up and waited for her quill to finish with its task. She yawned a bit, and said, "I'm going to bed. It's almost midnight. Good night, Love Bite." She stood, arched her back like a cat, and stretched her legs in front of her. She smiled at the changeling and added, "Maybe tomorrow, I can start removing chains, if you feel as cooperative as you were tonight."

He watched her as she turned around, and stuck his hoof between the bars. "Twilight... You should just pass me to the royal guard. They'll kill me quickly, get it over with, and you'll never have to deal with me again. I'll starve here, and it'll be less than pleasant for both of us, as I'll grow more and more desperate with each passing day," he said.

Twilight looked at him, wiping her eyes with a hoof. She leaned down, blew out the candle, and said, "I won't let you starve. You're too important to wind up pushing up the daisies." She turned back around, and made her way to the back of the room, whereupon she ascended the spiral staircase which traced the inside of the wall.

He caught himself staring at her again, for which he scolded himself. He waited for the wooden door to close, then hissed at himself in his native tongue, "Can changelings fall in love? What a silly question." He looked up at his horn, the ring making a bothersome image in his vision. He sighed, and lifted a hoof over his head. He lined up one of the holes in his leg with his horn, and carefully lowered it over the pointed bone.

He rotated his hoof carefully, so the pointed tip of the horn wouldn't puncture his sensitive flesh. He kept pulling the hoof down, shuddering as the ring bumped against the outer rim of the hole. He snarled in frustration, and willed his body into a few different shapes, widening the hole, until the ring slipped through it.

His leg met his forehead, and he smirked proudly. "Silly unicorn," he chuckled to himself. He closed the hole as tightly as he could, clamping it down on his horn. He grit his teeth as the straight grooves in the bone were filled with soft, slick flesh. He bit his lip and pulled his hoof up, pushing the ring off of his horn, and sending it flying through the air.

The silver ring clattered against the cold stone of the ground, and rolled a bit, then sang as it spun down, and finally came to rest. It lay there, its spell broken, its usefulness expired.

The changeling prince smiled as he felt raw magic flowing through his body, his power restored, freed. He lit his horn, and lifted the quill from its place outside of his cell. He lifted it to the keyhole in one of his shackles, and fiddled with it for a bit. A triumphant glee filled his eyes when the tumbler clicked, and he pulled the shackle open. He repeated this process with the rest of his restraints, each clattering to the floor.

He stretched his hooves out in front of him, and yawned as he arched his achingly unused back. He flitted his wings a few times, and craned his neck, glad to be free of the choker. He walked over to the ring, picked it up in his magic, and turned it over so he could better see it.

He slipped the ring through one of the holes in his leg, which he then tightened around it, so it was hidden. He paced about his cell for a bit, trying to walk normally with the piece of metal in his leg. Once he was satisfied that the unicorn wouldn't suspect his movement, he galloped in circles through his cell.

When he tired, he sat down, lifted the choker back to his neck, and clicked it into place. He shackled himself back up, moved the matter displaced by the ring in his hoof to his horn, and reshaped it so it appeared that he still had a silver ring over his horn, as though he'd never even removed the ring. He lay down, and, a bit uncomfortable, but proud, closed his eyes, allowing sleep to consume his tired mind.

Chapter VI - Confused

He awoke to the sound of footsteps, a door closing, and the freshened scent of newfound strength, the renewed vigor of a well rested pony, ripe for consumption. He didn't allow his eyes to open, nor did he allow a smile to cover his lips. He held his breath, and —thanks to his mother's insistence that he learn— ever so slightly tensed his chest in rhythm with his heartbeat, masking the sound of life.

With his heartbeat silent, his breath held, his eyes unmoving, he listened. He waited for the unicorn to sit down, greet him, then grow shocked at her prisoner's lack of movement. He heard the cell door opening, then footsteps. He waited for them to stop, holding in his mind the best estimate he could make of his prey's location.

Just when the unicorn's hoof was about to touch him, he sprang to life. He stood, opened his eyes, and, with lightning speed, he placed a hole in his leg over the pony's horn. He expanded the hole, and used his magic to push the inhibitor ring down on her horn. He smiled at the shocked expression on his warden's face, and used his magic to easily open what shackles hadn't fallen off in his fervid pounce.

As the choker clanged to the ground, he reset his appearance, and said to the unicorn, "I'm glad you can't taste emotions, because fear, your fear..." He flicked out his tongue, and drew in a deep breath of air. "...tastes delicious." He smiled at the lavender pony.

Twilight backed up out of the cell, and looked around desperately. She was pouring fear into the air, so much of it. The section of her horn below the ring lit up a bright purple, but the rest of it was still blocked. She had no magic available to her, and she couldn't even speak, much less convince him not to kill her.

He wouldn't kill her, but she didn't know that. He would just have a quick snack on her magic, shackle her, and be on his merry way. He didn't march towards her, nor did he even say anything else. He just stepped out of his cell, and stretched. He eyed the unicorn proudly, reveling in his successful catch.

He watched her back up into the wall, freeze, and close her eyes. She lifted her hooves in front of her face, and sat there, powerless. He frowned at the unicorn, and lifted himself into the air on his wings, which blurred into a cloud of green gossamer. He landed before the unicorn, and considered his options.

She was his first catch, his very first prize. But, looking at her, cowering in impossible fear, he longed for something else, something about this situation to be different. He thought for a moment, still examining the unicorn before him, then hissed in changeling tongue, "Alright, fine!"

He used his magic to pull the inhibitor ring off of her horn, out of pity, perhaps, or just an urge to do something else with her, he couldn't tell. He had wanted a good, delicious first catch, but, now that he had it, he wanted it to stop. He didn't want to see her incapacitated, nor did he want a meal.

He set the ring down on the floor, and said, "Okay, let's try something else." He looked down, then sat. He lowered his head in submission and stayed still. "I... I'm not a pony, but I'm only half changeling, so what says that I can't be merciful? I'm... I'm not going to steal from you, not fear. I... Why does seeing you so scared hurt me?"

Twilight slowly lowered her hooves, and scrambled back against the wall. She froze when his words sank in, and she calmed back down, so much so that her fear tasted weaker and weaker by the second. She sat there, watching the changeling prince, whose head was lowered to her, who had just spared her from his hunger.

He sighed, and admitted, "I... I don't have anything to do with my life, nowhere to go, nothing but a dead crown to my name. I'm a changeling, but I don't know what that means anymore. I don't know what or how you ponies do that makes you so much... better... at everything than changelings. I... I don't know why your fear hurts, but I know that you can give me something to do, even if just for a little while."

With that, he stood up, turned around, and slowly walked back towards the cell. He stepped through the door, turned around, still looking down, and lay down. His horn lit up, and the door swung closed. He let out a heavy sigh, and said, "After you've kept me warm, saved my life, and then didn't turn me over to the guard, the least I can do for you is help you better understand the changelings, who may still be hunting you. Perhaps I can help you defend yourself against them."

Twilight blinked at him, confused by this changeling. One moment, he was telling her exactly how the changeling systems of government, class, and reproduction worked, then he was trying to make a grand escape, feed upon her, and grinning, then he was locking himself back up.

At least Queen Chrysalis had been consistent in her goals, and her tactics. She had been manipulative, infiltrating the royal family, taking out the captain of the royal guard, nearly disabling the elements of harmony by antagonizing her, all with the goal of taking over Canterlot in mind.

But this changeling, who seemed to be neither unintelligent nor powerless, couldn't choose between ignoring her, hurting her, or helping her. His mother had been both powerless and arrogant, but even her plan had accomplished something in its short life. He was likely more powerful than his mother had been, without being quite as arrogant, and had just turned down the opportunity to avenge his mother's defeat.

She couldn't make sense of this changeling, what he thought, why he behaved the way he did, or how he ticked on even the most basic of levels. She found him intriguing, and something about the mystery drew her back into her determined, thoughtful inquiry.

She stood up, shaking a bit, as she hadn't fully calmed down. She swallowed hard, and shook her head at him. "No," she said. She walked over to the cell, and used her own magic to pull the door back open. "You've already proven that you can get out of any trap I put you in, and that you won't hurt me given the chance."

He glanced up at her from his brooding, then looked at the floor again. He picked up one of his hooves and traced a small star in the dust on the cold floor. "Why? Do you trust me?" he asked her, pausing from his idle fidgeting to look her in the eye. "I'm... I'm Queen Chrysalis's son, and she tried to kill you, but you somehow believe that you can trust me." He returned to his fidgeting, looking back down.

Twilight said, "Your family's actions have nothing to do with who you are, and you shouldn't be judged for what your mother did. You especially shouldn't judge yourself for her actions, or those of any changeling. Just because you're a changeling doesn't make you untrustworthy, useless, or evil. You are who you are, not what your family did."

He lifted his hoof from the ground, and looked up at her, catching her gaze. He held eye contact for a bit, and slowly stood up. He didn't really understand why, but felt compelled to do something other than staring at a pony's eyes. He said, "I, Twilight Sparkle, am a changeling, master manipulator. How can you be sure that I won't try to feed upon you again, and that me backing away wasn't a part of some plan to make you a more willing meal?"

Twilight lifted her hoof, pointed it at his chest, and said, "It's called benefit of the doubt, Love Bite. I'm assuming that you won't do it, but if you do try again... well, I'll have learned my lesson." She gently set her hoof against his chest, causing him to jump back a bit, his ears pinned back in surprise.

She was okay with touching him. That didn't make sense to him. Any book about changelings would tell a pony that any and all physical contact with a changeling was dangerous, though different books gave different explanations and reasons to not touch a changeling.

He stood there, a bit shocked at her boldness. He asked her, "And... What if I attempt to seduce you? What are the consequences for me if I try anything out of line?" He slowly stepped forward, his entire being going at odds. His body told him that a pony so brave was dangerous, but his mind told him to trust her.

He didn't see what he had to lose, so he slowly stepped out of the cell. He hadn't taken his eyes off of her since she'd talked about individuality, having little trust in her, and being less than eager to let her make any more physical contact than she already had. He didn't want to imagine what she could do if she was willing to touch him, as a confidence in her fear had been comforting to him earlier, but now he knew better.

Twilight closed the cell door behind him and locked it with a key she summoned. She turned to him and said, "Okay, now we've established that neither of us is out to harm the other. There's some common ground." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she walked past the changeling.

He turned his head to follow her as she walked to the other end of the room. He looked her over and asked, "Okay, so... Now what?"

She turned to face him and said, "Let's start with a few basic conversations about ourselves, what we can agree on, and what we have in common. This is how most friendships start. Although I wasn't any good at making friends until fairly recently, I'm confident that you and I can at least learn to stay on good terms."

He blinked at her, cocking his head slowly. He asked her, "Friends?"

Twilight thought for a moment, trying to figure out how she could explain such a concept to someone who'd never heard the word friend in his entire life. She hit a bit of an epiphany, or, more of a new perspective really, on these sorts of things. She had always taken some things for granted, even though she tried not to, like a basic understanding of what a friend is.

She said, "A friendship is a bond between two ponies, a sort of unspoken agreement that they'll be nice to one another, talk, and help one another. The two or more ponies who have a friendship are called friends. When you share a friendship with somepo-someone, you say that they are your friend, or that you are friends with them."

That all seemed rather simple to him, terminologically at least, but couldn't get his head around one particular thing. He gave her an look of confusion, and asked, "But why? Why would ponies want to talk to each other? Why would they agree to help without knowing what kind of help they may be called to give later? Why would they be nice, and how do they know who's worth being a friend to?"

Twilight's head crowded with his questions, ones that even she'd have been able to answer in magic kindergarten, not that she would have answered, for she'd have been so busy studying, but she could have answered them. She said, "Okay. First of all, ponies only make friends with other ponies they already know. Friendship doesn't happen immediately between two ponies who've never once heard each others' names."

He stood there, waiting patiently for more answers, and looked at her more closely. He sat down, not really thinking about it, but froze completely when he heard the door open. He burst into green fire, and sat as his pony form, the light grey pegasus that Twilight had originally found on the street. He turned his head to the right, watching as the door creaked open.

Chapter VII - Introduced

A small purple and green creature stepped through the door. It hopped down the staircase, finally setting on the ground to Twilight's left. It turned to look at Fangheart, and then tapped the mare on the shoulder. The little creature asked her, "Twilight, what is this guy doing in our basement?"

Twilight leaned to her left a bit, not looking away from the disguised changeling. She whispered to the little thing, "He's the same one I found outside yesterday. I'm trying to explain to him what friends are." She sat up, and said to the stallion, "This is Spike, the best assistant I could ever have."

Spike looked at the guest, and asked Twilight, "Where'd he vanish to when that changeling popped up?"

The stallion coughed and said, "I'm Fangheart." He smiled warmly at the little creature, which he now recognized as a baby dragon. He reached out his hoof to the dragon, who ran over to him to shake it in his claws. He shook his hoof back, a bit weakly, but convincing nonetheless.

Spike ran back over to Twilight and said, "He seems like a nice guy. And if you don't mind me saying so, you'd make a cute couple." He was about to spring back up the stairs, when he spotted the shackles, which were lying in the cell behind Fangheart. He added, "I guess the royal guard was having a fast day."

Fangheart stammered, "Wh-what about the guard?" His smile faltered, and his brown irises flashed green for a short moment, while Spike was looking at his boss. His expression filled with rage for a moment, and he stood up. "Y-you called the guard?" he asked Twilight, more an accusation than a question.

Twilight shook her head quickly, after making sure that Spike wasn't looking, and said, "Spike, Fangheart is going to be our guest for a while. The guard were pretty fast with that changeling last night. Fastest arrest I've ever seen." She cast a small silencing spell, and ushered her assistant upstairs. "And it's not like that," she added as she closed the door behind him.

Fangheart was shouting, his eyes closed, his ears pinned back, but no sound came out, and when he slammed his hoof on the floor, that was also silent. He stopped when he realized that he couldn't make any noise, and began to panic, looking around frantically for a weapon of some kind.

Twilight teleported over to her guest, and placed her hoof on his shoulder. "It's okay, nopony here is calling the royal guard. You're my guest, and I'm going to make sure that you don't have to worry about anypony getting hurt," she assured him, then lifted her silence spell from him.

"Exactly, but I'm no pony, in case you've forgotten." He narrowed his brown eyes at her, and said, "And, I'd prefer that you don't call me Love Bite while I'm still... What's the word, when you're upset by someone's death?"

"Grieving?" she suggested.

He nodded slowly. "That was her nickname for me, and I'd rather go by the name on my flank than one that could stir up memories of the hive while I'm around ponies," he said. He grimaced at her, and then made a few other faces at the ground. "This feels weird, having so many muscles to move in my face."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at him, and he mirrored her expression. "I was going to ask why your facial expressions seemed so limited. Your eyes and mouth were the only things that seemed to move," she said.

He burst into flames again, this time making sure that everything was changed, his internal organs better lining up with his pony exterior. His whole body felt less charged than it had as a changeling, but he also felt more comfortable, like he actually belonged in this body. He looked at her again, crossing his eyes at her when he realized how close she was to him.

Twilight stepped away from him, only for his right wing to stretch out from behind him, reaching towards her, then freeze as if he weren't entirely sure of what he was doing. She looked at his wing, then smiled at him. "Well, something's more pony about you," she said.

Fangheart looked over his shoulder, and immediately folded his wing back at his side. "Hm," he told himself. He looked down his side, stopping when he spotted his cutie mark. "I'm not very good at much of anything, but I've outdone myself with this body. It feels natural, a bit too much sometimes, and this doesn't feel like a disguise," he said, more confident than he had been previously. Perhaps he was getting better used to this body than his original one. It'd always been his go-to choice when making a quick disguise, and he'd become rather used to it.

Twilight squinted at him, and began to circle him, walking clockwise around him. She maintained a respectable distance between them, a good two meters, as she looked over his disguise. She asked him, "Would you be okay with me sketching you in my notes?"

"Not while I'm Fangheart, I hope," he said, chuckling a bit. The laugh didn't sound very realistic, but it wasn't awkward enough that anypony would think him suspect. He kept her in his line of sight as she came up behind him, moving from his left to stand in front of him. "But sure, so long as that dragon isn't going to see me."

Twilight nodded as she sat down in front of him. She said, "I don't recognize this pony." She looked him up and down, just to be sure that she'd never seen the real Fangheart. "Did you kill somepony for this identity?"

He shook his head. "No, Fangheart, in any context, is me. He's my persona, an original disguise. I didn't steal anything from anyone, and I've never killed a pony. I made him completely up. So, you don't need to worry about meeting someone else who looks like this on the street and mistaking them for me," he said.

Twilight nodded slowly, and said, "I'll go make sure that Spike won't be around for the day, and you can ask me questions while posing for that sketch." She stood up, made her way up the staircase, and looked at him for a moment, catching his gaze with hers, and smiling at him before she closed the door.

He smiled experimentally, trying to familiarize himself with this more pony form than he'd usually needed. Most disguises were thrown up in a panic, and only needed to look convincing to a guard, who would usually only give him a second long glance, then move on.

Internal transformations weren't easy to do, and being completely pony was a new experience for him. He'd have to better blend in if he wanted to actually meet another real pony. That required good acting skills, confidently lying about his past, better understanding social rules, customs, and behaviors, and learning how to get by with these heavier wings.

He looked at his back, and spread his wings a bit, keeping them folded and close to his sides, but flight wasn't his immediate goal. He just wanted to get used to all of these new muscles, nerves, and sensations that he'd never possessed in his previous renditions of Fangheart.

He stretched his wings out completely, letting his gaze glide over the light grey feathers. He gave the limbs a few experimental pumps, slowly raising and lowering them, reveling in the sensation of changing air pressure on the leading edges of his wings. He smiled as the new muscles in his back —where his wings met his nervous system— moved at his will.

Suddenly, he felt confined, like he was still chained up, like the great tree above him was resting on his back. He felt trapped, but knew that hitting had changed. He was alone in a basement, as he had been for nearly half a day, but he felt surrounded by everything, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. His wings felt uncomfortable, stiff, and the bones within them felt warm. His new body told him that if he didn't fly that instant, he'd be trapped forever.

He folded his wings again, but the feeling persisted, and only seemed to get worse with every passing moment. He was acutely aware of the several seconds that ticked by, each taking longer than the last. The discomfort was only ailed by his lack of a horn, which he could have used to ease the feeling.

The door finally swung open, and the sound of it closing snapped his ability to contain the itch in his bones. By the time Twilight set foot on the floor, he was a writhing mass of fur and feathers, gently gnawing on the leading edge of his left wing. They exchanged looks, immobilizing one another with their gazes. They didn't say anything, for a lack of anything to say. They both sat down, not breaking eye contact.

He moved first, slowly returning to a more dignified position, sitting with his wings flat against the ground. He felt odd, more so than he had since his arrest, which was saying quite a bit. Something about the mare's lavender eyes felt strong, sharp, and confident. He found himself slowly moving towards her, but didn't feel compelled to stop himself.

When he was merely a meter away from the unicorn, still staring into her purple eyes, he said, "So... These friendships, what exactly do they mean?" He was then sitting right next to her, his right side mere centimeters from her left. He looked down, and his cheeks turned a dark shade of red. "A-am I breaking any rules here?"

Twilight smiled a bit, amused by the poor changeling's complete confusion. She would have confirmed that he was breaking a few rules by coming so close to her, as he was neither her friend nor another mare, but he was just learning how pony social life worked. "No, you're fine for now. Just don't get so close to anypony in public, or to whom you don't feel especially close."

He thought about that for a moment. "I... But if I'm already sitting so close, then how would I feel distant?" he asked her.

She laughed and moved a bit closer to him. She said, "Close, as in, on very good terms, to the point of romantic attraction." She smiled at him, still amazed by his lack of understanding. She found this project to be an interesting exercise in her studies, one that she would have to tell the princess about in one of her letters.

She came back to his first question. "Friendship is like..." she said. She paused, deciding that friendship wasn't really like anything else, and that trying to compare it to something else would only confuse him even more. "It feels nice, pleasant, warm. It's a way of stabilizing one's place in the world. When two ponies are friends, they know that they'll be able to depend on each other, that they matter to each other."

He turned to face her. For a moment he felt safe again, as though he'd been found, like a lost kitten might feel when the fire brigade returns it to its owner. He felt like his mother was there again, and he was safe. He felt like he was home, that he could relax, free of fear or pain.

For the short period of time the feeling held him, he was reminded of an infiltrator who had told him, "Love feels like the whole world, the entire planet, everything you've ever known and seen, is revolving around one other creature. Everything you've ever done, all that you'll ever see from that point forward, would all bow down to the one you love."

Just as soon as the feeling held him, it evaporated. He shook his head frantically, trying to cleanse his mind of whatever spell he must have been under. He stood up, took a few steps forward, and returned to his changeling body in an instant of fire. He turned to the side, and remained perfectly still, posing so Twilight could get to her drawing.

Chapter VIII - Shocked

At that very moment, there was a loud gasp from the door, a burst of light blue magic, and a pony jumping from the top of the staircase to stand between Twilight and the changeling. The white unicorn had a mane and tail somewhere between blue and purple in color. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl, and her horn was surrounded by a light blue aura.

Before the changeling could do anything to defend himself, a bolt of magic landed on his right shoulder, sending electric jolts through his body, leaving his front right leg paralyzed, stiff, and lame. He grunted in pain, then, breathing through his grit teeth, summoned a shield between himself and the unicorn.

A wide rectangle glowed a bright green, upon seeing which the unicorn's eyes narrowed, and she launched another beam of magic at the changeling. The edges of the rectangle began to reach towards one another with a thin sheet of green magic. Just as the last hole in the shield was about to close, the blue beam slipped through, some of it dissipating in the defensive spell, but enough got through to the changeling that the wall immediately collapsed on itself.

Twilight summoned a bubble of purple magic around her friend, but, as it had been when she'd used it to contain the changeling, no attacks could get out. The unicorn continued to launch magic at the changeling, but stopped when she realized that the shield around her was stopping them.

Rarity turned to her friend, who summoned a similar bubble around the changeling, preventing them both from attacking one another. The imprisoned unicorn spoke in a raging voice, bordering on a sort of silly madness, "Twilight, that was close." She glanced around herself and asked, "Why am I in here?"

Twilight slapped her forehead with a hoof, and began explaining her situation to Rarity. "Okay, he's not going to hurt me. This is a good changeling. His name is Fangheart. Don't call the royal guard or contact the princess about him. He's under my protection," she rambled.

The right side of the changeling's face was paralyzed, locking his expression in one of pain, which only involved a closed eye and snarling lip, but it was specific enough to be understood by the unicorn who'd shot him. The left side of his face was free to show anything it wanted. He was lying on his side, having lost control of his right leg, which had given out under him.

He slowly propped himself up on his left leg, standing shakily. He sat down in his bubble, looking over the two unicorns as they talked. He spotted something out of the corner of his eye, and lit up his horn before anything bad could come of it. He set Spike down in front of Twilight, and said, his words a bit slurred, "I'm gonna let you guys talk this out. I'll just um... sit here." He watched the three people argue.

"It's a changeling!" Rarity exclaimed from inside her bubble. She poked her horn against the pink bubble, causing the spell to shatter into a dozen little pieces of magic, which collapsed on themselves. She turned to look at the changeling, and pushed Spike towards the creature, saying, "Spikey-Wikey, be a dear and keep a close eye on that thing!"

The little dragon's eyes seemed to widen when the unicorn touched him, and he immediately nodded before hopping over to the purple bubble. He turned to face the changeling inside, and sat down, his eyes thoroughly glued to the monster. He didn't move for a while, and the changeling couldn't do anything about it, for Rarity added a blue bubble onto the purple one, preventing anything inside from having magical influence outside.

The white unicorn continued to speak, "Why do you call it a he? And why on earth have you given it a name? And why in the world have you kept it?!" All of these questions came in such rapid succession that the purple unicorn couldn't even answer them before the white one loosed another volley of questions. "Why shouldn't I call the guard? Has it hypnotized you?!"

Twilight placed her hoof on Rarity's lips to silence her. "Stop it, let me answer you," she said. She took a deep breath, and gave the changeling a soft, reassuring smile. "He is a male, who gave himself that name, and has chosen to behave cooperatively with me. He is under my protection, and he wouldn't hurt me. I've been under an anti-mind-control spell all day." She removed both of Fangheart's prisons, allowing him to speak for himself.

The changeling nodded slowly, both to confirm Twilight's words and to assure Rarity that he could understand every word she'd said. "And I'm not just a thing," he corrected the white unicorn. "I have my own thoughts, emotions, and a full comprehension of everything you say about me."

He then, not taking his eyes off of the unicorns or turning his head, pulled back the left corner of his lips in a quiet growl. The growl was directed at Spike, who was experimentally poking at a hole in his left leg. He then pulled his hoof away from the baby dragon, and said, "Careful, that's really sensitive, and I'm not above being hungry."

The dragon backed off, returning to the side of the white unicorn, who put a hoof down in front of him, defensively shielding him from the changeling.

Rarity —apparently not in the mood for jokes— took this as evidence that the changeling was definitely bad. She turned to look at her friend, glancing at the changeling, and said, "You saw that, right? You're clearly under some sort of mind control spell, Twilight. This monster has gotten into your head!"

"Pardon me, but these holes don't even have a measly layer of skin to protect them. How'd you like it if someone else decided to poke at your inner body without asking for permission? And you, Rarity, should note that, while some changelings do eat meat, I —being a drone— am an herbivore," he said, narrowing his eyes at Rarity.

"And don't even think of calling me a monster. Monsters are big things, or things that will, at the very least, eat you. I couldn't eat you even if I wanted to. You're much too big to fit inside of my mouth, much more valuable as a love factory than a meal, and besides, I don't like my meals to talk about me like I'm some sort of mindless monster," he added.

Rarity stared at the changeling, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open, and her ears standing on end. "I-it. H-he..." she stammered a bit, unable to formulate proper sentences. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She said, "Has it occurred to you, Twilight, that Queen Chrysalis was the only changeling that could talk?"

Twilight nodded to her friend, and turned her head a bit to face the changeling. She asked him, "Would you like to explain why it is you can talk?"

Fangheart shrugged and said, "Well, my mother insisted that I learn to speak Equish, but I have been startled by my recent increased skill in speaking it. It's not like I stole it from anywhere, if that's even possible. I suppose that being in my pony form for more than a day could have burned it into my mind. Or, watching my mother die might have snapped me into speaking it, perhaps in subconscious tribute to father."

He froze, already knowing that he'd said something bad, and bit his lip. He shouldn't have mentioned his father. That had been rule number one around ponies. He hoped that the unicorns wouldn't ask what he had so carefully avoided answering for so many years.

Twilight told her friend, "He's not evil, okay? He already had the chance to kill me twice, and he's said for himself that he'd rather help me defend against other changelings than use me as a source of food. He's not like Chrysalis. He isn't Chrysalis. Imagine what we could do if we had a changeling with political power on our side."

Fangheart relaxed, then corrected the purple unicorn, "First of all, my mother wasn't evil. She could have gone about it in a better way, but the invasion was an act of desperation. Much of the workers in the hive were starving, and she had no better options. She made her mistakes, but goodness knows she wasn't evil."

He lay down on his stomach, sighed a bit, then continued, "Secondly, I wouldn't have killed you. Why would a changeling kill a pony? Ponies are much more useful as love factories than edible matter. I knew that if I did kill you, Celestia would stop at absolutely nothing to make me pay. She would carve my bones into a new throne, upon which she would sit every day, crying over your dead body."

He crossed his front legs and said, "Thirdly, I am absolutely worthless to the hive now. Without their queen, their numbers will dwindle as they starve to death, and no new changelings will be born until they get a new queen. I am, without my mother in power, just another potential concubine for the new queen. If she doesn't want me, I can at least try to escape before she chooses between torturing me for information and just stoning me to death."

He scrunched up his face, and relaxed it again, clearing the effects of Rarity's paralysis spell. He sighed deeply, letting his eyes close. He sensed all of his magic coursing through his whole body, freely flowing alongside his blood. He could sense the raw power of everything.

He didn't know that he had more power than Celestia did at the time, as that magic was locked away somewhere he couldn't detect it. He could still sense strength though, and he had missed the ability to move for a while. He'd spent a good day in Baltimare prison, unable to lift his own weight, and the days before that had been spent flying, then walking, then crawling as he and his mother had slowly lost their strength in the desert.

And now, he could sense his virility returning to him, the world becoming crisp and sharp as his eyes opened again. He was prepared for every changeling in the hive to chase him right back out of the Badlands, and he'd laugh at them, for he would know that the north was better than the south.

The two unicorns led him upstairs, into the library's one bedroom, and, after rummaging through the main catalog, dumped a mountain of legal code onto the floor. He could hear the unicorns arguing about his merit as a person. They bickered about his mental acuity, debating whether he was a barely sentient creature, or something equivalent to them in rights and ways of thought.

They argued and debated about what he could or couldn't do, which rights he also possessed, and which of them was more sane than the other. They provided hypothetical examples of potential scenarios a changeling might have found themselves in while living in Equestria.

Fangheart listened as best he could, dressed in his pony body so as not to upset Rarity. He lay upon the large bed in the bedroom, watching Spike transcribe the whole debate. He watched in utter fascination as the dragon's little claws expertly guided the quill, which guided the ink, which became letters, which became words, which became entire mountains of parchment.

This left the stallion as the only one in the room who didn't really understand what the two unicorns meant half the time, and with nothing to do. He rolled around on the soft bed, figured out how to preen his wings —which he knew was a private matter, but nopony even noticed— and wandered around the library, picking up books and putting them back where he'd found them.

He assumed that he wasn't allowed to go outside, which was a familiar rule to him. He'd never been allowed to leave his mother's private quarters, unless she gave him explicit permission to join her at her throne and attend meals —which were not at all like pony meals.

But when the front door to the Golden Oak Library opened, and the sounds of metallic footsteps persisted after it had closed, he slammed the book in his hoof back onto the shelf, and zipped up the stairs before he could get caught. He burst into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, and everyone inside stopped what they were doing to look at him. "G-guard," he said, his eyes and voice saturated with pure, instinctive fear.

Before anyone could say anything, he was consumed by a shell of green fire, and the changeling vanished. The door creaked open, and those inside of the room could only see a faint, almost mirage-like outline of the wall moving out of the door's way. A pink pony stepped through the door, carrying a large stack of pie tins on her back.

She spoke faster than any of them could understand, but they all heard her clearly say, "Hi, Fangheart." She was facing the wall to the right of the door when she said that. Then she continued on rambling about parties to the other people in the room, like nothing odd had happened.

Twilight got the pink pony to hold her tongue for just a moment, took a deep breath in preparation to speak, and then the door slammed closed on its own. The lock clicked shut, and everyone aside from the queer earth pony, who just kept looking at her friend, awaiting her words.

There was a flash of green fire, and Fangheart materialized from behind the pink pony. He was in mid-air, having just pounced, and in his fully changeling form. Before he could understand what had happened however, the pink pony was a meter to his right, as though she'd teleported so perfectly, so precisely, that no scan would have detected anything changing.

The changeling met the floor with a loud, "Oof!" His limp body bounced ever so slightly, and when he landed again, his fall was blocked by a pie tin full of something he didn't recognize. His nose fell into the pie tin, and the rest of his body followed suit —but without a nice cushion in the way.

The changeling lay there as the pink pony returned talking, her nearly endless droning filling the bedroom. No one even noticed when she stopped talking, as they were all staring at the rather oddly behaved changeling, who was curled up on his back, with the pie tin pressed to his nose, and his tongue audibly cleaning the tin of anything he could find.

When the pie was gone, the changeling examined the tin with an odd scrutiny, and a blob of apple dripping down his chin. He bit down on the metal pie tin, then, finding the taste of the metal unpleasant, made an exaggerated gagging sound. He looked up at the pink pony, licked his lips, showing his luminescent, green tongue, a contented smile on his thin, chitinous lips.

He asked the pink earth pony, "D-do you have any more?" And with that, a small burp escaped his mouth. He immediately said, "Excuse me, ladies." He eyed the few crumbs resting on his slightly distended stomach. He summoned a small piece of white cloth, and wiped his lips clean before dismissing the napkin.

Rarity elbowed Twilight gently with her left leg. "No one told me that changelings had manners," she whispered, holding a hoof in front of the right side of her face. She added, "Had I known that, I might have asked him to go to dinner with me. I need a better date than Prince Blueblood so I can make that hunk of a unicorn jealous."

Twilight rolled her eyes, and said, "Okay, Pinkie Pie, don't tell anypony else that Fangheart is staying with me. Don't even tell me how you know each other." She turned to face her bed, where Spike was curled up into a little ball, his quill still held between his little claws. She retrieved the writing utensil from Spike, and set him down in his bed.

The changeling said, indicating Pinkie Pie, "I have no clue who this mare is." He stood up, wobbled a bit, not used to carrying around material inside of his stomach like this. "I... I'll just sleep... here." He slowly lay down, burst into flames, returning to his pegasus body, and closed his eyes, as the first stars blinked into visibility through the window.

When Fangheart woke up, he found a single talon placed over his lips. He blinked at the thing, and jumped when he heard a smooth, deep voice tell him, "You know, Fangheart, I was expecting more from you." The changeling turned around to face the one who had roused him from his slumber.

He looked around, not seeing anyone. He wasn't anywhere he recognized, nor did he recognize anyone around him. He was marching forward, weighed down by heavy metal armor, his hooves sinking into the mud below him with every step. The whole legion around him kept marching, so he continued to tread forward.

The voice spoke again, "He gave you more than you knew, Bite. I don't quite understand how you haven't already used his powers."

Fangheart looked around, searching for the voice, only to find himself sinking into the mud below him, while the soldiers continued to trudge forward. He sank and sank, until his shoulders were about to be swallowed by the marsh. He reached to his shoulder with his jaw, and bit through the leather strap they held his backplate and chest plate onto his body. He managed to grab a passing soldier's hoof with his own, and finally dragged himself out of the mud.

He ran towards the hole in the marching force that he'd left, and fell into pace with the others. He kept marching, even as the voice spoke again, "Very good. You lost some equipment, but you got back up." He shook his head to clear it, closing his eyes for a short moment. "Perhaps there's hope for you yet, boy."

Chapter IX - Traveled

Twilight hauled herself out of bed, her mane in a tangled mess. She blew a clump of keratin away from her eyes, and lifted her hairbrush before her mirror. She heard a faint, high pitched, whistling sound, as though someone was whistling as they exhaled and inhaled. She glanced at the edge of her mirror, still brushing her mane.

She spotted Fangheart, lying against the wall in an uncomfortable position. She wiped her eyes clear, and, satisfied with her mane, turned to face the stallion. She figured it best that he not sleep in too much, and at least invite him to have breakfast. If changelings really ate anything, she didn't know if it was necessary for their survival, but he could at least talk to her while she ate.

She looked her calendar over and darted to Spike's bed, grabbing her bags from a drawer by her bed. She shook the dragon awake and said, "Spike, you need to get up. The others and I are going to the Crystal Empire today." She began lifting various objects from around the room into her bag and strapped her luggage to her back.

Spike groaned and rolled out of bed.

Fangheart's brown eyes snapped open in an instant, and he was standing on all fours before she could blink. His lips were pulled back in a snarl, and his wings were tensed at his sides, prepared to fly an a moment's notice. He whipped his head from side to side, surveying his surroundings for anything dangerous.

He focused his gaze on Twilight, and relaxed. His shoulders slid back as he calmed down, assured that nothing intended to eat him. He smiled at the unicorn, not consciously, but warmly. He couldn't have explained his expression, nor did he realize that he was smiling. "Hello," he said, nearly whispering.

"Hi," Twilight said. She thought for a moment and asked him, "Have you ever taken the train before?"

He raised an eyebrow at her and said, "Of course I took the train. There's no easier crowd to hide within than on a packed train."

Twilight hemmed thoughtfully, and said, "We'd have to buy a ticket at the station, but I'll take care of that." She smiled at the false pegasus and declared, "We're going to the Crystal Empire."

Fangheart had shrunk against the back corner of the train car, less than eager to be surrounded by a bunch of ponies who, if provoked, wouldn't fall for his usual defenses, which tended to really on his mother's presence, who would play a pony to vouch for him if things went poorly, or a complete lack of anyone who knew his true identity.

And he knew that he had neither his mother nor anonymity to save him if he screwed up his act. He'd already made plans to forget his own identity, erase whomever the hive had once known, and become Fangheart, another pony. If he couldn't make other ponies believe that he was a pony, he'd never be able to convince himself of such a notion.

Twilight was sitting in another booth, talking to her friends about wherever they were going.

The train's whistle blew, and the car lurched forward.

Fangheart braced himself against the wall and took deep, slow breaths. Every fiber in his being was demanding to move closer to his mother. He said that he'd been on trains, not that he liked them. He swallowed hard as the train picked up speed, hustled and hurried by the steam flowing through its mechanical body.

The train accelerated, going faster and faster as time went by and the landscape of Ponyville scrolled out of the window across from him. He thought it would never end, but a few seconds later, the train stopped accelerating, and maintained a constant speed —or one constant enough that he couldn't feel the difference.

Fangheart slowly stood up and lay down on the seat next to him, keeping his head low. He only stood up when he heard his name, and looked at the group of mares in the next booth. He watched them for a moment, and asked, "What was that?" He took a long look at the group, trying to see if he could name any of them.

Rarity was sitting next to the window, on the side of the table closest to his booth. Twilight sat across from her, looking at him expectantly. To Twilight's left sat an orange earth pony, with a blonde mane that was tied at the end with a red ribbon, and to whose left sat Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie sat across from a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane and red eyes. Sitting between her and Rarity was a pegasus with a yellow coat and a pink mane.

Twilight pointed to the earth pony next to her and said, "Fangheart, this is Applejack. She works at Sweet Apple Acres."

"How d'ya do?" Applejack asked him, tipping her hat up a bit.

He bowed his head slightly, not enough warranted by royalty, but enough to convey proper respect. He'd been taught how to function in pony society —even if his teacher's sources had been a thousand years out of date. He'd been taught to speak as infrequently as he could, to never tell more than one story at a time, and to never, no matter what, draw attention to himself.

Twilight pointed her hoof at the cyan pegasus and opened her mouth to speak, but the mare with the multicolored mane had already flown over Fangheart's head, and sat down across from him in his booth. "Rainbow Dash, and you'd better not be here to swipe the Crystal Empire's chances at hosting the games," she said, leaning forward a bit and narrowing her eyes.

Fangheart gulped and shook his head. He straightened his back, trying to convey confidence and trustworthiness.

Twilight pointed to the last pony he hadn't met, the yellow pegasus. She said, "This is Fluttershy."

Fangheart stepped out of his booth and walked over to theirs. He said, "I appreciate the introduction, Twilight, but you still haven't explained to me where it is were going and what we're gonna do there."

Twilight said, "We're going to visit The Crystal Empire to act as the welcoming committee for the Games Inspector. It just so happens that my brother runs the place, so this was more of a favor than anything else."

Rainbow Dash flew in front of the stallion and sat down in her own seat. She said, "And if we don't get it right, The Crystal Empire won't get to host the games." She sounded like one of those crazy salesponies whose only goal in life seemed to involve selling useless stuff.

He said, "Well... This all sounds important. What exactly was your brother's name? I don't think we talked at all about your family since our first meeting."

Twilight answered immediately, "Shining Armor, and he's married to Princess Cadance."

Dozens of alarms went off in Fangheart's head. Almost every word in that sentence meant bad news for any changeling, but him especially. His mother had spoken spitefully of those two ponies and their weapon against changelings, and often spoke of weddings as buffets placed atop giant mousetraps.

He nodded, keeping his cool as best he could. "And I'm here because it was convenient, and Spike was distracted enough by his cake?" he asked.

Twilight nodded.

Rarity's eyes focused on the him, and, through either quick thinking or spite, said, "Well, I'm not sure dragging him along was the best plan, Twilight, but it's a good idea for him to meet your family. You two make a cute couple, and I'm sure your brother won't find him objectionable."

Both Fangheart and Twilight turned to Rarity, speaking in unison, "It's not like that!"

Everyone at the booth stared at them, giving them the sense that no one believed them. They weren't a couple, and, now that they thought about it, creating an alibi in advance would have been a nice idea.

Twilight sat up, and requested that Applejack and Pinkie stand up. She made her way out of the booth, and said, "Be right back, just need to sort a few things out."

Fangheart smiled, stepping out of her way, and said, "Okay, good luck."

"I meant both of us," she added, gripping him in her magic, and dragging him along with her. She only took him into the next cart, closing the door behind them with her magic, and set him down in front of her. "Okay," she said. "We need to get our stories straight before we tell any lies."

Fangheart cocked his head a bit, and said, "But we didn't lie."

Twilight nodded. "Not yet, we didn't. But it'll be unavoidable at some point in the future, so let's say..." she trailed off, looking down a bit, thinking. She sat there for a while, leaving Fangheart with little to do. After a few seconds, she said, "Okay, if anyone asks, you're unemployed, and just happened to be wandering outside the library when you collapsed of exhaustion, and I'm just taking care of you until you can get back on your feet."

He nodded, and pointed out, "Not a word of that is a lie."

Twilight nodded, "That's why it's such a good story. Now, if anyone asks you for more specific details, avoid them until I can come up with more."

Fangheart rolled his eyes just before the six mares all fell over, landing on top of one another, the train screaming to a halt. He jumped, adrenaline coursing through his body as the deceleration felt to him as extra weight, and he steadied himself against the table with his hooves.

When the train stopped, the conductor poked his head through the front door, and said, "Crystal Empire, ladies. Watch your step leaving the train." He opened his eyes, and backed up when he spotted the aforementioned mares, all of whom had collapsed, and were groaning at various volumes.

Applejack said, "Probably should'a watched our step while we were still on it, too."

Fangheart's heart pounded furiously, and he whipped his head from side to side, trying to locate and assess any threats. He found none, and only stopped looking when Twilight walked over to him.

She asked, "You sure you've been on a train before?"

He nodded frantically, and swallowed hard before standing up. "Yeah, I've been on a train, just... never had to worry about the fight or flight response," he told her, and stumbled out of the train car, onto the station floor. He slumped down against a pile of luggage, and panted for a moment.

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow at the grey pegasus, and muttered to Twilight, "Are you sure that your boyfriend is even a pegasus? Handling acceleration is the first thing I learned at Junior Speedsters Flight Camp."

"He's not my boyfriend, and he didn't get invited to Junior Speedsters," Twilight told her.

Pinkie Pie had grabbed a pastry of some sort from under a counter, and stuffed in her mouth as she turned around. Her eyes went wide, and she spoke with her mouth full, her lips still stained with pastry, "Wow. The Crystal Empire looks crystalier than ever!"

Fangheart looked up from the floor, and his chest went still as he looked. He sat there for a moment, his jaw dropping to the floor, and he said, "Wow." He stood up, and darted towards the group of six. He took a liking to the place almost immediately. Everything felt charged with energy. The walls, the ground, the ponies, all brimming with love.

Everything shimmered brilliantly. The flowers glittered in the sunlight. The ponies all had a certain luster to them, vibrance and strength filling the whole city. He could feel a warmth in the place, a soft, but all encompassing source of love, which grew stronger as they strode towards the palace at the city's heart.

To him, it felt like a hearth, glowing, homely, warm, and comforting. It was like the palace itself was radiating emotion, like the city itself was in love with its citizens, and their love for it thickened the air with the sweetest fragrance to any changeling, that which was love.

If his mother could only see it, she would have...

He froze mid-stride, his hoof a mere centimeter off the ground, his train of thought slamming to a disturbing halt, much like the very engine that had brought him there. He pinned his ears back, and wore a humbler demeanor, remembering. He sniffled a bit, and looked down.

His reflection stared back up at him, showing not Fangheart, but him, for who and what he really was. He stared at the apparition of a black, vile, venomous creature, who could only stare back up at him, never blinking its cold, poison green eyes. He wiped his hoof over the changeling's face, and shook his head, trying to wish the image away.

He hated it. He hated himself. He hated that thing that was only worried with itself. It only thought of one thing when it saw this place, food. It demanded of him to march towards the nearest pony, hit them over the head, and drag them away from their home, from this love the city felt for them.

He sniffled again, and slammed his hoof down on the monster's face, trying to dispel the apparition. He grunted, having hurt his hoof, forgetting that it was fur and flesh now, not chitin and slime. He frowned at the thing, and looked away. He shook his head, and ran to meet the others, determined not to think about changelings, their ways, or himself until he died.

His mother, all because of his mother. This was all her fault, for making his father drink that compatibly potion.

He shook his head, and ran through the doors of the salon just before they swung closed. He shook his head violently, and stammered, "G-go away." He slumped against the wall, and said, "N-no."

A hoof touched his shoulder, and he curled up into a little ball. "D-don't... Don't look at me," he murmured. He could smell it, the love, the pity, the disdain.

Twilight's voice asked, "What's wrong, Fangheart? It's okay."

He began to shiver, unable to find any difference between himself and that monster. All he wanted was to take, to steal away what made this place so perfect, what made it whole. He whimpered, and said, "It's... It's too much... I-I'm a monster... I... I take what I can't understand and hate what I am for it, but I can't stop."

He heard a dozen or so voices go silent. He sniffled, "I can't... This place has too much, and everything in me tells me to take it. I don't want it, but th-that thing, it can't... I can't stop being a monster."

A soft voice spoke from behind Twilight, "What's going on?"

He looked up, and wiped his eyes clear of tears. With bleary eyes, he recognized the destroyer, the one alicorn who was said to kill hundreds in an instant. He stood on shaky legs, and lowered his head. He took a deep breath in, and said, "It's nothing. No one is hurt, and it's nothing to bother you with, your highness."

Princess Cadance said, "I'm willing to assume that you're here with my sister in law."

He nodded, and said, "I... I'm sorry for my outburst. It's been a really difficult week." He bowed, having forgotten to do that.

The alicorn lifted his chin up, and said, "No need for such formalities, we're practically family. I'm sure that your week will get better."

Twilight slapped a hoof to her forehead, and groaned. She said, "Cadance, he and I aren't any more than friends. Why does everyone continue to assume, just because I have a friend who happens to be a stallion, that he and I are romantically involved?" She then lifted up a hoof and said, "Don't answer that."

Fangheart closed his mouth, having been about to answer her question. He turned to Cadance, and said, "I do hope that you don't mind me asking this. I've heard so much about the changeling attack, and I simply must know. How did you defeat Queen Chrysalis's army so dramatically?"

Twilight's left ear twitched once, and she immediately stepped between the two, telling the stallion, "I'll explain that to you later. It's a very long story, and my sister in law and I have a lot to do by the end of the day. I'm sure that you can find some way of occupying yourself while my friends and I are meeting with the Games Inspector."

Before he could blink, the unicorn had pushed him out the front door, and he whipped around to speak to her.

Twilight covered his mouth with a hoof, and whispered, "Are you trying to get yourself in trouble?"

He shook his head, and pushed her hoof away from his mouth. "It's called small talk, and I have plenty of information about the invasion from my mother. I was her confidant, so her most crippling defeat was all I heard about in the time since it happened," he explained. "I also heard a lot of prisoners talking about a..."

He closed his mouth, realizing that it would get him arrested if he spoke any more. He bit his lip, and asked, "Twilight, are you sure I'll be safe on my own?"

"You've been by yourself before," she said.

"Yes, for all of one night, which ended with you dragging my unconscious body into the library," he confirmed.

Twilight blinked, and asked, "You were alone for eight hours? Your mother died eight hours before we met. You said the guards killed her. You had just escaped when I found you?"

He nodded and said, "I informed you that she'd died the previous day."

She shook her head clear, and said, "We'll talk about this later. Why don't you go visit the barracks and run some laps with my brother, just tell him that I sent you. Cadance will be in here if you need anything." She then ran back inside, closing the door behind her.

He sighed, and turned to look at the castle. He forgot about his fears all at once. Like warm butter, they melted under the sight of such grandeur. He knew that in all of the years his mother had spent building up the hive, it would never be as beautiful, as breathtaking, or nearly as clean as this palace.

He began to walk towards the palace, slowly, so as to look around. The first thing he noticed was the cleaning operation. No crystal pony who was able bodied and not still a foal was cleaning. They scrubbed their windows, the flowerpots, the very street upon which he trod.

He knew that ponies didn't share a mind, but they all had the same look on their faces, wider smiles than any changeling could physically make. Their eyes all beamed with eagerness, excitement, jubilation so intense that he could barely help himself from consuming some of it.

He knew that this was a city out of time, cut off from the world for a thousand years, and to its residents, not a single day had passed until they'd rejoined the world. They were brimming with energy, magic flowing through the ground beneath them, as though they were saturating the earth with emotion.

The whole thing seemed cruel to him, that his mother would never see it.

Chapter X - Advised

The left in a pair of large, crystalline doors creaked open as the grey pegasus nudged it. He poked his head through the cracked doorway, and scanned over the area. There was a green patch of shimmering grass in the middle of the stadium, which was bordered by the track itself. The seating arrangement was just a few dozen levels of bleachers.

A white unicorn with a striped blue mane and tail blew a whistle at the top of his lungs. His red baseball cap flew off for a moment, then set back on his head as he let the whistle drop on the string around his neck. His hooves were visible under his shaggy white coat, and his hip bore an indigo shield below three turquoise stars. On the shield was an irregular six pointed star, lavender in color, a near perfect copy of Twilight's mark.

He gulped when the unicorn's blue eyes found him, and he slowly made his way forward, closing the door behind him. He watched the racers for a moment, then darted across the track once the last one had passed him. He stood just a meter away from the prince, and said, "I'm Fangheart. Twilight sent me."

Shining Armor smiled at the grey pegasus, and said, "Twiley has a-"

"No, I'm not her partner," he interrupted the buff unicorn. "Everyone I've met today has made the same assumption. It's bordering on creepy at this point."

The unicorn shouted at the top of his lungs, directly at the competing racers, "C'mon, pick up the gait!" He addressed the pegasus before him, and said, "Sorry about that." He narrowed his eyes at Fangheart, and asked, "You're not saying that you have no interest in romance, are you?"

Fangheart shook his head, his eyes widening. "N-no, sir. I... Your sister's fantastic and all, but I'm not really... I'm more concerned with getting my life back in order," he said, taking a nervous step backwards. Surely he couldn't have seen through his disguise. He wasn't a seer, or he'd have never been such an easy target for the invasion.

Shining Armor gave him a scrutinizing look, and asked, "And you don't have any plans about dating my sister?" He looked over his shoulder to shout at the racers, "Move! Move! Move!"

Fangheart gulped, and said, "W-well... I mean, I hadn't really thought about it. I only met her a few days ago, and I'm still getting over a recent loss, and I really haven't had time to think about it." He looked down for a moment, shuffling his front hooves uncomfortably, then said, "She's been good to me, and I'm still trying to deserve that."

Maybe the unicorn had been given the sight after being brought back from his mother's spell. Maybe he had developed a sort of spell that let him see through changelings' disguises.

Shining Armor placed his hoof on the pegasus's shoulder. "That's a good plan, kid," he told him. "If you ever decide to advance on that front, make sure you check the chamber, sharpen your spears, and always have a backup plan. Do that, and you'll have a good shot at success. You have my blessings if you ever need 'em."

Fangheart looked the unicorn in the eye, and said, "Th-thanks, captain."

He smiled at him, and said, "No problem."

Perhaps it didn't matter whether or not Shining Armor knew. Maybe he had, and was aware of the fact that he'd just allowed a changeling to consider dating his sister. But maybe he hadn't seen anything more than a timid, frightened pegasus, and has still given him his blessings.

The latter didn't make a shred of sense.

Fangheart stiffened, and a strange pang of itchiness poked at his right shoulder. He scraped at the muscles with his hoof, and said, "I... I hope you like surprises."

Shining Armor laughed, "After a princess saying yes, a changeling attack, and becoming more popular than my school bully, nothing can surprise me." He seemed so sure of himself, so proud, so naïve. He watched the racers cross the finish line, and said, "Alright, let's go again, gang."

Fangheart faked a laugh, "Yeah... Okay."

The doors swung open as Shining Armor blew his whistle.

Fangheart would have looked to see who it was, but he was already in the lineup. He launched himself forward, his eyes focused only on the track in front of him.

A purple object fluttered through the corner of his vision, and he kept running, swinging around the first turn in a thin arc. He didn't look away from what was in front of him, and jumped as the first hurdle came within a half a meter. He made it to the other side, losing some momentum, but not stopping.

He heard Twilight's voice, "...worst castle tour ever..."

He jumped again, just in time for Shining Armor's shout to fill the whole stadium, "Come on, gang! Are we gonna gallop or are we gonna trot?"

He landed on the front of his hoof, tripping, and tumbling over his back. That should have done him in, but he landed on all fours, and, after a fraction of a second spent idling, continued to sprint down the track, not really thinking about what had just happened, but relieved that he hadn't made a foal of himself on his first race.

He made a sharp turn, hugging the inside of the track, and jumped over the third hurdle. "Let's move, move, move!" came Shining Armor's shout.

He landed, his heart racing faster than he was. He felt his legs burning, his blood pumping, the wind on his fur. It felt good to be a pony.

He heard the doors burst open again, and veered out of the way just in time for an overly excited pony to overtake him. He promptly leaned forward, not really trying to catch up with the reckless pony, but trying to make sure she didn't lap him and knock him over.

He reached the finish line, and made a sharp turn to the left, panting as he screeched to a halt next to Twilight. Noticing that Rarity was missing from the group, he turned to Rainbow Dash, who told Shining Armor, "Wait. She's the Games Inspector. Let her do her thing."

The inspector in question was charging past the other racers, pushing them aside from the finish line. She was a yellow pony with a green mane and tail, the former of which had a pink band in it. She shouted, "Good, oh, these hooves, I'm outside."

Shining Armor asked Dash, "Why would she do that?"

Rainbow said, "I have no idea. But that's why she's in charge of choosing who gets the games and we're not. Heh."

Not a second later, there was a crashing sound, caused by the Games Inspector crashing through hurdles, which she did again. She crashed into a third one, causing a flowerpot on its post to fly through the air. It landed over her head, causing her to stop running, and shout, "Aah! Oh. Get me outside for a run." She turned left, and took off.

Shining Armor shouted, "Look out!"

The door was blasted into splinters as the inspector ran right through it.

Rainbow Dash flew into the air, saying, "Yeah. Okay. We need to stop her." She and Fluttershy both took off after the inspector, the latter a bit less hastily.

Fangheart would have followed them, but he'd never used his wings, and he'd just finished a race.

Twilight and her two remaining friends took off after the triad, along with her brother.

Fangheart spread his stiff wings, and grunted as his right shoulder lit up with pain. He knew, from the presence of a creature far too great, what was about to happen. He looked around, and darted towards the tunnel connecting the stadium to the palace. He closed the doors just in time for his entire neck to go numb.

Every muscle in the effected area tensed all at once, cramping. He grit his teeth, biting back any sound that might give away his position. He'd be lucky so long as no one saw him when the worst of the attack hit him.

He clamped his eyes shut, and forced his neck to roll, loosening up what muscles he could. He propped his back against the wall, and kicked his right foreleg a few times, trying to force the stiffness away.

The gaze of many a power left him, looking elsewhere for what it sought.

He sat there, panting, relieved that he'd not lost his disguise. Such an event once might have been explained away by some quirk of magic, but twice. Someone was actively trying to hurt him, and they knew what they were doing.

He looked up and down the hallway, making sure that no one had seen him. He stood up, drawing a sharp intake of air through his clenched jaw. He sat back down, and decided that he couldn't cause as much trouble if he stayed there.

He felt the city, and some spark of its emotion being fed into the wall behind him. He could feel it, love, simply flowing through the glass wall behind him, like blood through a pony, like water through a river. He reached a hoof to a small, black circle painted on the wall —not that he knew why.

His aches and pains melted away, as the city fed love into his hoof. He smiled a bit as his neck began to heal. It felt warm, like he was sitting next to a fireplace, cozied up with a cup of hot cocoa —which some of the infiltrators had shown him how to make, and proven to him that pony food was worth having.

He took his hoof back, and stretched a bit, checking that he'd be okay to walk. He stood up, and walked back into the stadium, before sprinting after Twilight and her friends. He heard Pinkie Pie's overly exaggerated shout of, "Nooooooo!" He then heard her immediately follow up with a dramatized, "Yes!"

He slowed down when he spotted the others heading to the train station, assuming that they'd return to the spa later. He'd just walk there and see how things were going with Princess Cadance. Now that he'd relaxed from his breakdown, he may as well talk to her, and see if he couldn't learn a thing or two about changeling specific offensive spells.

He froze when he felt it, the source of the city's love. He'd purposefully avoided it on his way to the stadium, but it was too intense to ignore any longer. He looked up, realizing that he'd come to the palace. And at the center of the city, where its four great roads met, stretching perfectly straight in all four cardinal directions, the emotion was too strong.

He spotted it, his eyes locking onto the city's mind, its heart, the one thing that made the city so much like a person. It spun so incredibly fast, blurring into a mass of love, shimmering and gleaming like the most polished diamond that could ever be.

He stepped towards it, his hooves moving without command.

It glowed, perhaps only to him, visibly. The air and the ground around it were glowing with love, so thick, so potent, so sweet, and so very fragrant.

He shook his head, snapping out of his stupor. His hoof had set down on the pedestal, and he could only gulp down his spit, which had formed in response to his hunger. He didn't feel very hungry, not as truly hungry as he had in the desert, but with the emotivore equivalent to a Hearth's Warming meal right in front of him, just sitting there, he couldn't tell any difference.

He'd only have one little bit, just a tiny fraction of what would even make a noticeable difference. It just had so much, that no one would notice if such a small bit went to ensuring his survival. Just one minute of feeding, one second, one breath. He'd be full for a year on just a tiny tiny bit of that.

Goddess, this thing could feed the hive for decades without problem. No one would ever know if he had so little.

He opened his mouth, prepared to inhale just the tiniest bit, just the equivalent of a single lick.

He bit his lip, and whipped his head around. He walked past it, beating himself over the head in his mind for doing the exact opposite of everything he'd been taught, of everything he was. Any sane changeling would've smashed the pedestal to bits, grabbed the spinning object, and shrunken it down so they could carry it.

He gulped again as the heart gave off a sudden wave of energy, as though it were calling out to him, signaling that it was there. He clamped his eyes shut, and continued walking.

Chapter XI - Discussed

He made his way to the spa, and pushed the door open a bit. He looked around for a moment, and walked over to Rarity, who was fiddling around with Cadance's tricolored mane, which had been laced with gems, shimmering and extraordinary. He sat down a meter or so away from the seamstress, watching with interest as she worked at the bundle of keratin.

He felt as he had when he'd first seen Spike transcribing the legal debates over his rights. He was able to understand what she was doing on a basic sense, but he couldn't understand how she did it so well, so cleanly, and with so little energy. The unicorn was fussing over individual hairs, and without the use of any external help.

No changeling could do that. Every worker needed instructions from the hive mind in order to do anything, otherwise it would simply sit there, waiting for orders, and if none came, it would simply starve to death. The workers didn't understand how their own bodies worked, how they did anything.

A worker would be told to fly, and it would simply flap its thick, elytrous wings until it reached a specific altitude, or rose until it suffocated in the upper atmosphere. But in the worker's own mind, it wasn't moving at all, it wasn't doing anything, it was simply doing what it had to in order to stay a few meters above the ground —not that it even understood what the ground was.

They didn't keep or make any memories. They had specific recollection of what they had already done in regards to their current instructions, but once the task was complete, a worker forgot everything. They had no personality, no thought process, and no emotion.

Workers could recognize patterns, but that was the only thing that persisted between tasks, which the hive mind kept safe for them, so all workers had the same shapes memorized. A worker hatched just two days ago was just as smart as the oldest worker alive.

The queen never forgot anything. She had a hive mind all to herself, like a backup server for a computer. She could remember everything that had ever happened to her, and only forgot things she consciously chose to delete. Sometimes the memories could become corrupted, and became less accurate over time, but she was the one giving orders, not taking them.

Ponies, ponies were different.

Fangheart had never been told the limits of a drone's mind, but he knew that he'd never be as talented or as specialized as a pony. Ponies could remember processes, think creatively through problems they'd never been taught to solve, attain skills, and, from what he'd seen, reach a much higher state of mind, where familiar work took almost no effort at all, best known as the zone.

Drones were, as he understood things, necessary for the survival of the changeling race, but useless for anything else. Drones were sperm donors, and that was that. They could act in very specific ways in familiar and foreign environments, so long as they had been taught to behave that way.

Fangheart had been taught how to behave in all of the situations he'd come across since he'd escaped near certain death in Canterlot. Most of his actions had been basically the same things his mother had taught him to do in the situations he'd found himself in. He'd not had to think outside of his small, helpless box.

He'd never had a creative thought, and all of his escape plans had been more or less basic knowledge to him. The only things he'd done in any variation from what a perfect changeling might have, were the ones he wasn't even proud of; sparing Twilight from even the smallest portion of his hunger, failing to take the well of emotion in the Crystal Empire's center, and not avenging his mother's defeat in Princess Cadance.

Drones were supposed to be happy, mindless chromosome factories. They were supposed to be proud of everything they did, of every changeling they knew was their child.

What a terrible drone he was then. He wasn't proud of anything he'd done. He didn't have a single child, and he'd never have any, now that he was on the farthest corner of the continent from the nearest changeling. He'd been a pretty big screw up as far as drones went, and he was the last drone in existence.

Great, so the changelings wouldn't go out shouting their war cries, singing their songs, or even feeding upon some prisoner of war. The changelings wouldn't go extinct because of the desert winds or the lack of food. They wouldn't go down with glory.

All of the infiltrators had forgotten those songs, were still waiting for their next orders from a dead queen, and could never form an army now. Their last battle had been a crushingly decisive defeat, with a mortality ratio of zero to a few thousand. And, on top of all of that, the last male changeling wasn't even good at being a male or a changeling.

Princess Cadance asked him, "So, Rarity tells me that you're not romantically involved with Twilight, but that she's the one who dragged you along."

He sat up straight, and nodded. "Yes, that's all true," he said.

She added, "And nopony was ever named Fangheart in the census before."

"I changed it from something else," he told her, which wasn't a lie.

Rarity took a step back from the princess, and declared, "All done. I'll just um... walk over here while you two get to know each other." She took a few steps back, then darted to the opposite end of the spa.

Princess Cadance narrowed her eyes at the pegasus. "And what was it previously?" she asked him.

"Love Bite," he answered immediately, wincing. Again, that wasn't a lie. He figured that was all she needed to convict him of being a changeling. Little did he know that there was a very unfortunate foal elsewhere, whose parents had named her a combination of their pet names.

She asked him, "Where are you from?"

"South of Appleloosa," he said. Again, he wasn't lying.

"What happened that made you leave?" she asked him.

"Familial issues," he answered her. That was technically true, if a revolutionary war between a monarch and her thousands of genetically distant cousins and descendants counted as familial disputes.

That wacky technicality was only true due to an odd quirk in changeling physiology, which basically dictated that Chrysalis's eggs only had the minimum amount of genes necessary for a changeling to do its job. Variations could only be introduced by drones —who were basically genetic wildcards— and infiltrators, the latter of which picked them up by stealing them from any ponies they'd managed to seduce.

Princess Cadance leaned ever so slightly forward on her couch, and she asked him, "Someone die?"

He winced, and nodded. He looked down, and said, "So I h-"

"Was it your mother?" the princess asked him.

He nodded again and said, "Is something wrong, your highness? You seem to be a bit on edge."

Princess Cadance leaned back a bit, and said coolly, "Just answer one more question for me. Will anyone have to worry about more people like you?"

He gulped and said, "No, your highness. It's just me, and I don't think I'd like to see any more."

She said, "Then stay out of trouble, and make sure that you don't try anything too radical. If what you say is true, then any civil rights movement would be a wasted effort."

"Yes, your highness," he said, his voice dry and timid. He looked up at her, and said, "I... I know that you have a lot of reason for your bias, but the remaining ones might do something stupid, and I won't be held accountable for it. I may be the smartest left, but that doesn't mean I have control over them."

Cadance nodded. "I understand, Fangheart," she said. She sat there for a while, and eventually added, "I'm sure that the city has shown you its kindness. You know, the crystal ponies were once quite comfortable around changelings. They would feed upon the Crystal Heart with discretion, and served as the bulk of the military until Sombra took over."

He hadn't known that, but didn't doubt her so much as to think she was lying. "So, that's what that thing was," he said. "I... I'll recommend this place as a home to any changelings." He took a moment to think, and added, "Assuming I don't turn them over to the royal guard, of course."

Cadance nodded, and said, "I'm sure we can arrange an alternative to the guard. Perhaps a sort of... underground railroad could be set up for these people."

Princess Cadance stood at the balcony on the palace, joined by the real Games Inspector, and her husband. She held a microphone to her mouth, and announced, "The next host of the Equestria Games is..." She paused, so as to let the suspense build for a moment. "The Crystal Empire!"

All of the crystal ponies on the ground below her erupted into cheers, shouting and waving flags in the air. Rainbow Dash shouted, "We did it!"

The road began to glow, expanding outwards from the Crystal Heart.

"Congratulations, crystal ponies," Cadance said.

The glow receded, and the Crystal Heart was surrounded by an aura of love, one which everyone could see. It began spinning, and sent a golden glow up the Crystal Palace, which then shot a rainbow into the sky. The beam of love met the first cloud, and erupted into an outwardly expanding ring, trailed by tendrils of various colors.

Fangheart looked up, smiling at the whole display. While his actions hadn't felt right at the time, he was glad to have let the crystal ponies have their moment, their city, their home, and their family. All of which he lacked, but found that minor detail trivial compared to the charge in the air.

He turned around to catch up with Twilight, and froze.

A crystal pony had sat there, rather than celebrating, cheering, or even acknowledging the princess's announcement. It was a filly, barely old enough to speak, but one he'd seen running around all day with one of her friends. She cocked her head at him, and blinked a few times. "What're you?" she asked him.

He knew that look, from stories rather than practice. That was the look of a seer, one who didn't even know what they were looking at, what power they possessed. He swallowed hard, ruffling his wings a bit, and said, "I'm just a figment of your imagination."

The filly narrowed her eyes at him, and said, "You look like one of my friends, but she's gone now. Momma tells me that she was a chan-j-ling, but won't tell me any more."

Fangheart went completely still, and asked, "Do you think that changelings are bad?"

The filly shook her head, and asked, "Why would they be bad? She was funny, liked playing tag, and said my drawings were good."

Fangheart's mind felt like it was melting. He was talking to a pony, who wouldn't assume anything bad of him. Even Twilight, the most accepting pony he'd met until that point, had accused him of bad intentions. This filly, this child, this pony, associated changelings with good memories.

Little did he know, so little he did know. If only he'd known to whom the child was referring, he'd have dropped his disguise right then and there, if he'd only known. The naïve foal was referring to one of the Crystal Empire's princesses, her foal sitter, the sister of Princess Mi Amore, who Sombra had killed.

If he'd have stayed even a minute more, he would have learned so much more about his place in the world, but it was not to be.

Twilight's voice broke through the sounds of delighted ponies, "Fangheart, we have to go."

Fangheart called back, "I'll be right there." He turned to the child, taking her hoof in his, and told her, "If you ever meet a changeling, and are in need of help, tell them this. Siro pahak. Tell any changeling that, and if they do not help you, run. If they repeat it to you, they are your friend. Siro pahak. Siro pahak."

The filly nodded, and repeated the phrase with disturbing skill, "Siro pahak." She may not have understood the significance of that phrase, and she may never have found need of it, but it calmed Fangheart to know that the foal would never be harmed by a changeling. Such innocence as hers, and her untainted perception of changelings, was more than worth protecting.

He nodded to her, and repeated, "Siro pahak. Never tell it to a pony. Never let your parents hear it. Remind yourself of it every chance you get. It will save your life, and if you ever see me again, tell it to me." And with that, he stood up, and left.

Chapter XII - Drawn

Fangheart was standing at the base of a long stairway, so tall that it reached into the distant horizon of the setting sun, where the golden light met the blazing glory of the star. He saw a ticket booth next to the base of the stairs, and a ticket in his mouth.

He darted forward, about to present the booth with his ticket, but stopped. He took a few steps back, and looked to his right.

There was a pony, his eyes showing only jealousy. He was old, missing an eye, and the left side of his face had a great scar on it, running all the way from his missing eye to his lips. He made no sound to indicate that he'd seen Fangheart, but his eyes screamed regrets, so strong, and so great.

Fangheart glanced at the stairway, and saw the pony at the ticket booth sticking his head out to call, "I'm gonna need a decision soon, kid."

Fangheart held his ticket, thinner than paper, brilliant as gold, in his hoof. He glanced at the poor old pony, whose eyes made contact with his. He reached out a hoof to help the old stallion onto his feet, and he said, "Go, you need this more than I do." He gave the old pony his ticket, and, when the old pony looked him in the eyes, surprised, he added, "I have regrets yet to make."

He waved to the old stallion as he set down his ticket, and charged up the endless stairs, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. He shouted to the old pony as he went, "Fly you high, sir!" He watched in awe as the old pony became a streak of golden light, which rushed up to join the setting sun as the staircase fell away behind him.

He smiled, a sensation of tingling warmth dancing across his face and chest. He watched as the very last sliver of the golden sun, slowly sank below the distant mountains. He saw, in the last day of sunlight, a pair of ponies, one waving down at him, the other crying.

He felt tears welling behind his eyes, a sure sign that he was sad. But he wasn't upset, not in the least. He was fine. He was proud to be himself. He was happy for the old stallion, whose beloved had been waiting for him, and for his beloved, who he had reunited.

The deep voice from his dream spoke again, "Oh... Boo hoo hoo! You can't go now, don't you get it. That was your only chance, you foal. You're not understanding what I'm trying to tell you."

He blinked one of his tears away, and found himself in a completely different, but all too familiar place. He was back in the throne room, watching from behind Celestia. He seemed like air, and deeply troubled. He could see himself, just sitting there in that stupid halter, and his mother, whose eyes were lit with horror.

Everything seemed black, slow, and heavy. He turned to look away, and found himself facing a completely different situation. He saw Twilight, pinned against the floor of the Golden Oak Library, with two big changelings holding her down, and a third marching towards her. Queen Chrysalis stood above Twilight Sparkle's helpless body, her horn glowing with a fury he'd never seen.

He turned around again, and the voice said, "This is a dilemma, isn't it, C? You can save one, but not the other. One must die, and one must live." He had a body again, and he was standing between the two scenes, bordering between them. The divide between the two situations grew shaky, and a crack formed below his feet.

A scythe appeared in his grip, and it began to swing down, ever so slowly, towards the library, right at Twilight's neck. He tried to pull the weapon back up, but it only went down, so he turned it to face the other way, this time, aimed right at Chrysalis's neck, while she was still in that halter, her eyes filled with endless fear for his life.

He tried to moved the scythe away from them both, and managed to hold it parallel to the crack between the two realities, which was widening by the second. His left hooves were placed on the throne room, and his right on the library. He strained to hold the scythe away from the two people, and a million of his mother's words flowed through his head.

"Blood is thicker than water... The changelings will go extinct without me... You will never understand your father's death quite as well as I do... Do not pretend to know who your father was... I hate alicorns... And your father too... Don't you dare forget who's in charge here... I'm so sorry, Love Bite..."

He pointed the scythe away from his mother, unable to lose her again. He wouldn't lose her again. He couldn't lose his mind all over again. The divide below him widened, and his legs were at right angles to the ones next to each other. He glanced at Twilight, and panicked when he saw the scythe so close to her neck. Her words slipped through him.

"Your family's actions have nothing to do with who you are... He's not evil... He's better than Chrysalis... It's a way of stabilizing one's place in the world... They know that they matter to each other... It feels warm, pleasant, nice... He wouldn't hurt me... Good night, Love Bite... He's my friend... Can changelings fall in love?"

He pushed the scythe away from Twilight, and recentered it between the two realities. He moved so that he was underneath the scythe, holding up the handle. The ground underneath him began to crack, then it completely disintegrated as the voice spoke again, "Now do you see it? You cannot have both. You will have to live with the decisions you make, and I cannot rewrite history... unlike some people I know."

Fangheart grit his teeth as the tip of the scythe's blade made contact with his back, sending shivers up his spine. "D-Discord! Don't give me that pile of roadapp-" The ground caved in beneath him, and he hit some sort of solid ground. He put a hoof down under himself, and pulled himself up, just as the scythe swung, and buried itself between his wings.

Fangheart snapped awake, panting for breath. He looked around frantically, checking that he still had all of his limbs. He checked for his wings, tail, mane, and found no cut in his back. He sighed in relief, and slumped against the wall. He let his eyes drift closed as he took deep breaths to calm himself.

He stood up, and yawned as he made his way down the staircase, deciding to see if a nice walk would do him any good.

Twilight was already downstairs, reading something aloud, "From one to another, another to one, a mark of one's destiny, singled out alone, fulfilled."

Something bright and colorful drew his attention, and he paused to further examine it. Inside a glass container, placed atop a purple pillow on a wooden pedestal, were six trinkets, five of which were necklaces, the one closest to the stairway being a crown of sorts. The five neck ornaments were golden, each with a different gem in the center.

One was shaped like a balloon, baby blue in color, in front of and to the left of the crown. The one in front of and to the left of that was a dark purple rhombus. The gem before and to the right of the crown was a red lightning bolt. Further in that direction sat a gem in the shape of an orange apple —despite the differences between those two fruits. Between the apple and the rhombus was a pink butterfly shaped gem.

The piece of lavish headgear was also golden, with one central gem, a purple six pointed star, shaped like the largest star on Twilight's cutie mark. As Twilight finished reading her terrible poem, the crown's jewel began to glow, and connected to the other five with beams of purple light.

When the light died down, the gems all took on their own white auras, and the colors they took shuffled back and forth, flowing between the shapes like different costumes.

It was then, that Fangheart decided that he wasn't interested in messing around with spirit gems, and darted back upstairs, wrapping the rug on the floor around himself like a blanket, and pretended that he was asleep.

Spirit gems, he knew, were not to be tampered with, unless in a life or death situation, out of other options, and willing to trade any and all use of magic for the sake of a slightly longer life.

A voice came from right next to him, and he jumped, casting aside the rug as he backed up against the wall. He stammered, "Wh-what'd ya want!?" He fixed his gaze on a copy of Twilight, but with eyes that he had hoped to never see again. He glared at Discord and said, "No more fun and games. What do you want?"

The false image of Twilight grinned widely, the corners of its lips mere millimeters from its ears. Its yellow eyes and oddly sized red pupils filling with what might have been pride. "Do you remember a deal your father made with me? Of course you wouldn't, we made it after he died. The point is that I am supposed to keep you from dying until your mother joined him," he said.

Fangheart's expression became one of reserved interest. He didn't look at Discord directly, deciding that the fewer of his reactions Discord saw, the better. He said, "And... You're only telling me this now because..." He held his hoof upturned, as though presenting a spot for the chaos god to place the rest of the sentence.

Discord said, "And now that your mother is dead, and has, therefore, joined your father in the afterlife, I am free to let you die. Now that I am no longer protecting you, I suggest you stop relying on luck to save you." The god of chaos dropped its smile and said, "But, from what I've seen of your decisions, you'll be dead in a few hours, maybe days, if you change your behavior."

Fangheart was about to ask more questions of the spirit, but it vanished in an instant of multicolored smoke and the sound of a sheep baaing. The stallion looked around, and sighed when he realized that he was still in the library, and that the sky was still dark and dotted with millions of stars.

He closed his eyes, and thought he heard someone calling his name. The hypnic jerk shook him awake, and he snapped open his eyes. He looked around and pinned back his ears, more in annoyance than alarm at that point. He sighed, and whispered to whomever might have remained to watch over him, "Please have mercy upon my mother's soul."

He looked up from his spot on the floor, and found Twilight looking down at him.

"Rise and shine," the unicorn told him. "Would now be a good time to let me get those drawings?"

Fangheart nodded, and let the unicorn lead him to the basement. He burst into flames, pinning his ears back, and blushing bright green as he nodded. He stood up and turned to his side, not taking his eyes off of Twilight, who was looking at him intently. He knew that she needed a rough outline of a changeling so she could better understand how to defeat one, but he still felt embarrassed about just standing still while she looked at him.

Twilight picked up her book, moved her quill and ink next to her, and dipped the quill into the ink. She traced several basic shapes onto the empty paper, making an outline of an equine creature. She said, "So, what's up? You were comfortable with staring yesterday, and now you're blushing just because I'm looking at you."

His black cheeks had been completely blocked out by the forest green blush on them. He tried not to move, though his wings didn't seem to understand that, and the chitinous membranes quivered excitedly as he though he were a pony asking their soulmate for marriage. He said, "Your brother assumed that we were partners, or that I was trying to make things that way."

Twilight glanced up from her book for only a moment, raising an eyebrow at the changeling, and looked back down. "And you bring this up because?" she asked him, carefully making elliptical outlines in the drawing's legs. She drew the ridges between his armor plates.

He said. "I just thought it was interesting. Everyone kept thinking I was romantically attached to you, and, if he didn't know at the time, Princess Cadance has probably told him what I am. I wonder if he'll take his blessing back, or if he's onboard with Cadance's underground railroad plan."

Twilight made a few clicking sounds with her tongue, shaking her head without looking up from her drawing.

Fangheart turned his head to look at her, and waited for her to stop clicking, before saying, "I had to tell Cadance that I had come from someplace south of Appleloosa, my mother had recently died, my family life was going bad, and I'd changed my name from Love Bite."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at him, and asked, "Why'd you have to tell her that?" Her quill made dozens of strokes, back and forth, angling itself so it traced careful arcs, deepening the holes in the drawing's legs.

"She kept pressuring me, and she was nice once we'd established what I was. She even said that she'd take in changelings on the run," he told her. He couldn't help but let a smile form on his lips, and he said, "How odd, that she is called Kortsanich', destroyer, and now she offers help to the very ones she defeated."

Twilight said, "Cadance has always been understanding. It's not surprising in the least that she'd be helping those she hurt; the changelings didn't have a choice in the matter. She can understand that." She looked down from him, and back at her drawing, which had been given its wings and horn.

He frowned. "The bulk of the invasion force were soldiers, not workers. They were... not really free to choose, but more than capable of rebelling if they hadn't liked it," he told the unicorn.

Twilight looked back up at him, carefully tracing his tail with her eyes. "You still haven't explained to me how the hive minds work," she said.

"The soldiers... aren't necessarily bound to anything. They can become spies, and if not, the queen forced them to become infiltrators. But, biologically speaking, they can do anything. They're... I don't want to say crazy, but the proper term for their condition doesn't have parallel in Equish," he said.

Twilight asked, "What condition?"

He pondered this question for a while, letting silence hang in the air.

Twilight documented their conversation, taking careful notes on his explanation, before returning to her drawing. She outlined the frills on the back of his neck, his eyes, the holes in his wings, his fangs, and his ears. She picked up a pencil, and began shading in the drawing.

He finally said, "They don't have changeling logic built into them. They aren't scared of ponies when they have no disguise. They don't take orders until they assimilate into a hive mind. They aren't required to follow any rules. They can reproduce, but not with the queen."

Twilight's eyes widened, and she asked, "So... They can..."

"They develop in much a similar way to ponies, from what I understand. They are rather tame in their early lives, but experience a long period of... rampant instinctual drive, often imploring the queen to let them mate with her, and if not her, then me. Most of them end up rutting one of the reserve workers, often more than one at a time," he told her.

Twilight thought for a moment, and said, "So... They experience a sort of puberty."

He then added, "Oh, and, before becoming a spy or infiltrator, they eat meat."

Twilight shuddered, and shook her head. "Okay, so they're carnivorous changelings, which have a rowdy teenager phase, and then have to decide between one of two jobs," she said. "And what exactly can they reproduce with?"

"Pretty much anything," he said flatly. "But their partners only bear one child at time, which aren't even changelings, so they can't make separate hives."

Twilight nodded, and resumed her shading. A question began surfacing in her mind, nagging at her until she finally asked, "Can you reproduce with ponies?"

Fangheart thought for a moment, and could only say, "As a changeling, almost definitely not. As a pony, perhaps." He let the unicorn return to her drawing, and only after she was done did he add, "I don't think I want to find out. The product of such a process would live a horrible life in pony society, and an even worse one in the hive." He transformed into his pony form, and stretched a bit, clearing away what sleepiness had persisted.

Twilight set her book down in a drawer, and turned to speak with him, but was interrupted by a grumbling sound. She glanced over her shoulder, taking a look at her stomach, as though it'd done something wrong. She looked back at her guest, and said, "I think I should have breakfast."

Fangheart yawned, and smacked his lips, before saying lazily, "Yeah, you go do that, and I'll see if I can't get some sleep without spirits trying to mess with me."

Chapter XIII - Felt

Fangheart rolled over in his sleep, pinning back his ears, and pulling the rug he'd used as a makeshift blanket over himself.

The sound of a slamming door roused him immediately.

He bolted onto all four legs, and stood in a defensive stance, his hooves spread apart from one another to widen his center of gravity, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring as his mind began working into high gear. He heard someone say, "This is bad. This is very, very bad."

He shook his head, and told himself, "It's just Twilight." He lay back down on the floor, and pulled the rug back over his side, closing his eyes. He couldn't dismiss the frantic discussions taking place downstairs, and he finally sat up when Twilight lay down on her bed.

She took a deep breath, and, employing a sound to rival his mother's voice, began to sing. He would have taken no shame in telling his mother to her face that the unicorn who had bested her on the field of battle sang like an angel, despite the sentence to the dungeon it would've earned him.

Her voice seemed to fill the world, gently lifting it into another plane, one that her mind was better projected upon. Her sorrows flooded the air, saturating it with pain, but beautiful nonetheless. "I have to find a way, to make this all okay," she sang, her many thoughts flowing from her tongue, and into the room.

She moved to gaze out the window, and softly sang, "I can't believe this small mistake, could have caused so much heartache." And then, a question she delivered unto the world, one which had no answer, "Oh, why? Oh why?" She let the question hang in the air, before adding a bit of momentum to the melody, "Losing promise, I don't know what to do. Seeking answers, I fear I won't get through, to you."

"Oh, why? Oh, why?" she repeated, and set her head down on her mattress, hiding it beneath her forelegs. She sniffled once, and looked up at Spike, who had made his way to her bedside, and asked, "Oh, Spike, what've I done?" She promptly threw her head down, and began to cry.

Fangheart poked his nose over the side of the bed, and stood up. He lifted himself onto the mattress with his hooves, and lay down next to the sobbing unicorn. He looked up at Spike, and asked, "What happened?" He draped his right wing over the pony next to him, and ran a hoof through her deep blue mane, his eyes directed at one of the stars on the bed.

He wasn't okay. He had no other words to describe his current state of mind. He wasn't happy, nor was he angry. His throat was choking up, and he perceived the world in a way he never had before. He was sad, sorry, maybe even depressed. He... felt... badly, very badly, like everything was bad.

It was like when his mother had died, but with less rage involved. There was nothing to be angry at, nothing to direct any false emotion towards. No lessons from his mother had prepared him for this. He didn't understand how to operate in this situation.

He couldn't hide from his mind's pains anymore. He felt... He felt sad, very very sad, despite the fact that he had no truly personal reason to feel anything.

He shook his head, closing his eyes, trying to force his own thoughts away. He was a changeling. He couldn't feel anything. He could only follow instructions. He was emotionless, he had to be. He tried to cling to those thoughts, like a poor butterfly caught in a hurricane.

He was a changeling, dammit, not capable of what he was sure he was doing. He wasn't a pony. He couldn't feel emotions. He couldn't feel sorry for a pony. He couldn't possibly be hurt by words. Words had no power over changelings. Words carried no threat, so why was he in pain?

He had to accept it. He was sorry. He hurt for the poor unicorn beside him. He felt sad for her. He cared about her struggles. He wanted her to be happy. He felt her pain. He felt.

He wrapped his forelegs around the unicorn, and set his head against her neck, tears welling from his eyes. He said, "I... I'm sorry."

That was such a foreign thing to him. Apologies only got so far with changelings, and it was the kind of thing a rebellious infiltrator would say just before it lost its head. But, while it felt so strange, he meant it. He could sense the meaning he put behind it. He felt genuine.

He smiled a bit, and nuzzled Twilight's neck, no longer acting on his mother's teachings, not following instructions, not acting for the sake of feeding. He was simply reacting to the world, by acting upon what it made him feel.

He felt... free. He was scared, because he didn't know what this new and diverse world would throw at him, or what he'd do when it all happened, but he felt happy, relieved, enlightened. He wasn't bound by the changeling code, like a computer, but free to do as he pleased, like a pony.

He began to cry, and sniffled. "I... I feel sorry," he said, softly, as though it were a well guarded secret. "The Twilight I know doesn't give up. If you'd given up after my mother imprisoned you, the entire world would be different. If you'd given up, my mother would be in charge of everything, and, knowing what I do now, I wouldn't want that."

"You've done so much good for this world, for your home, for your friends, and for your people. As someone whose never had or done any of those, you are amazing, Twilight," he said, and gently placed his nose against her neck. "You can fix this, Twilight, or I'm not my father's son."

The unicorn's sobbing lost momentum, and she looked up, still covering most of her face with her hooves. She sniffled, and shook her head. "I can't. I don't know how," she insisted.

"Did you always know how to defeat my mother? Did you always know how to use magic? Did you always know how to be you? You can't know everything from the get-go. You have to use what you do know to figure it out. I don't know much about you, Twilight, but I know that you know a whole lot of things, so I have no doubt in my mind, that you can fix this," he told her.

He looked down, and added, "And if you can teach a changeling to feel, then what can't you do?" He sighed, and shook his head slowly. "That's not relevant. The point is, that if you've done so much, what's stopping you from trying at this?"

Twilight set her front hooves on the windowsill, and looked down at the street below. "I... I just can't..." she said.

Spike walked over to the sulking unicorn, and placed one of his claws on her shoulder. He told her, "He's right, Twilight, you'll figure out a way to fix this. These are your friends, and we're both here to help you."

Fangheart sat down to the left of Twilight, and wrapped his wing around Spike, hugging the two other creatures toward him. He added, "Because that's what friends are for. Goddess, I sound like a pony, but it's true."

Twilight looked up from the window, and turned around, a look of solid determination on her face. "You're right, guys," she said, and hopped onto the floor, only to tell Fangheart, "And we'll discuss how much I told you so about changelings feeling later."

The pegasus blushed madly, and glanced at Spike, who was tapping his claws impatiently as he waited for him to get moving. He hopped off the bed, and followed the duo downstairs, a smile on his face. "She never told me that it was possible, merely insisted on questioning my conclusion," he muttered to himself as he spotted the spirit gems. He skirted against the wall, not wanting to go near them.

Twilight walked up to the fireplace, above which sat a picture of her surrounded by the same ponies she's taken the train with the previous day. She smiled up at the picture, and said, "And they mean more to me than anything. My friends." She was surrounded by a bright white glow, against which both Spike and Fangheart raised a limb to block.

"Twilight? Are you alright?" Spike asked, straining his eyes against the ever brightening glow.

"I've got it," Twilight declared, "I know what to do." She turned around, and made her way upstairs, returning with a bejeweled chest.

"You do?" Spike asked.

"What does the problem have to do with those? Are you getting rid of them?" Fangheart added.

Spike slapped his forehead with a claw, and asked, "Did she seriously not explain this to you?"

The two males looked up at the unicorn as she placed the five necklaces in the chest, and the crown on her head. She said, "These are the Elements of Harmony, and if you'll just read this book-" She levitated a book in front of the pegasus. "-you'll understand quite a bit about them. Basically, my friends and I are the six embodiments of the Elements of Harmony, generosity, honesty, laughter, kindness, loyalty, and magic."

Fangheart took the book, and held it under his right wing, which he folded against his side. "Elements..." he said thoughtfully, and looked down for a moment. "The Elements of Harmony. My mother was so worried about them that she tried to antagonize you, and nearly had your friends convinced that you were being possessive of your brother, who then revoked your invitation."

He thought for another moment, and added, "The whole point was to render the Elements of Harmony useless, and ensure that none of the other bearers would look for you after your outburst. The plan was to turn the others against you, and thus, face no resistance when she finally had Shining Armor." He looked back up, and blinked at the unicorn.

Twilight was staring at him, a small hint of discomfort in her eyes. She said, "I... wasn't aware that Chrysalis even knew about the elements. She acted very little like Cadance, and her plan only worked through dumb luck."

Fangheart couldn't help but laugh, and fell onto his back. "No, no, the entire point of acting strange around you was to tip you, and you alone, off. She had the perfect excuse for being strange to your friends, the stress of arranging a wedding. But she needed to single you out, and acting unlike Cadance was the perfect way of doing that," he said.

Twilight gulped, and said, "We were..."

"Playing right into her hooves, the whole time," he finished. He sat up, and pointed a hoof at the box full of gems. "My mother's worst defeat aside, you still have a plan to finish."

Twilight nodded, and said, "Anyhay, I may not be able to remind my friends of who they are, but I can show them what they mean to each other. They'll find the part of themselves that's been lost so they can help the friend they care about so much." She looked back and forth between the two boys. "Fangheart, can you carry this?" She set down the chest on his back, and marched towards the door. "Come on, guys."

Fangheart dragged himself towards the duo, who had already flagged down Fluttershy, and collapsed under the weight of the elements in front of the cottage. He wheezed, "Nope... Not strong enough." He glanced at Spike, who was giving him a raised eyebrow. He just asked, "Can you carry this?"

Spike took the chest from Fangheart's back, and pulled out the necklace with a butterfly on it. He presented it to Twilight, who then attached it to Fluttershy's neck. The gem changed color, and the pegasus's eyes went wide as various images flashed across them. Her cutie mark changed from a set of three balloons, which he could have sworn belonged to Pinkie Pie, into three pink butterflies.

Fangheart made his way to the back of the cottage, maneuvering carefully around forest animals, some of which he'd never seen before, and began untying a bound Rainbow Dash. He paused when he heard Twilight singing again.

"A true, true friend helps a friend in need. A friend will be there to help them see," Twilight sang, before prompting Fluttershy to pitch in, "A true, true friend helps a friend in need, to see the light that shines from a true, true friend."

Fangheart finished untying the cyan pegasus, and asked, "So... Do ponies rehearse these songs?"

Twilight addressed Dash, and sang, "Rarity needs your help-"

"No one ever told me that ponies simply burst out into song," Fangheart interjected, then ran to keep up with the others, who had all left the cottage.

"-She's trying hard, doing what she can," Twilight sang.

Fluttershy pointed at the checkerboard clouds, singing, "Would you try? Just give it a chance. You might find that you'll start to understand."

Rainbow Dash was already level with the clouds, and flying through them, dissipating the collections of water vapor and dust. A smile formed on her lips, and she flew forwards, flapping her wings in such a way that when she stopped, a small vortex of air carried on in the direction she was facing.

"A true, true friend helps a friend in need. A friend will be there to help you see. A true, true friend helps a friend in need, to see the light that shines from a true, true friend," Fluttershy and Twilight sang. The latter placed the lightning bolt necklace on Rainbow Dash, who went still as her element changed color, her cutie mark changed, and her eyes flashed with images.

The cyan pegasus pulled herself off the ground, and asked Twilight, "Um... What just happened?"

Twilight shook her head, and said, "There's no time to explain, but we need your help. Applejack's trying to make dresses."

"Say no more," the pegasus said.

The day went on like that, with the group running back and forth through the town, gathering their friends, and reassigning them their proper cutie marks. Fangheart simply did his best to keep up, humming to himself the song they were singing.

When the group returned to the library, Fangheart sat down in the center of the room, and tried to catch his breath. He watched the six mares and Spike gather around a book in Twilight's possession. He stood up, and stood next to Twilight so he could see the book.

Twilight wrote on a blank page of her book, reciting her words aloud to the group, "From all of us together, together we're friends. With the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without end." As she set her quill down to mark the period, closed the book, and set it down, her friends came in for a hug.

The star on her crown began to glow, and the other bearers all took a step back. The glow's intensity bore down on all in the room, and each of the other element blasted beams of their corresponding colors towards Twilight, next to whom Fangheart was standing. The beams met around the two ponies, and a white ball of energy formed.

There was a collective gasp, the sound of wind rushing by, and a truly blinding light.

When the light died down, Pinkie, Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Spike, all looked around frantically for the absent pair of ponies.

Author's Note

Sorry if this chapter seems forced. I'm not the best author at rewriting episodes of the show, but it had to be done, and I am very pleased with how it turned out, so please enjoy. Hit the like button if you feel so inclined, as it really does help me stay motivated to continue this project.

Chapter XIV - Convicted

The world slowly came into focus, and a black mass of chitin groaned in pain as it stood up. The holes in its legs were giving off tendrils of thin, green smoke, and the edges of its tail had been singed off. Its frills had also lost a bit of mass, likely the result of a forced transformation.

Fangheart's entire body ached, and when he tried to stand up, his legs gave out beneath him. He grunted, pinning his ears back, and clenched his jaws, shaking loose a bit of dark green dusk that had been burned off. He shuddered as sensation returned to his body.

He glanced up, and panicked immediately when he realized what was towering over him. He tried to stand, but any muscle he moved cramped up, and he could only scream in pain as his whole body failed to obey his commands to relax. Everything burned, and his only consolation was the swiftness of his impeding doom.

A great figure, slim, tall, and decorated with fine jewelry, was standing before him, its hooves firmly rooted on the starry ground beneath them. It glowed, like a long awaited dream or a new delicacy, but its stance told the ailing changeling that it meant business, serious business.

It glowed so well that no shape or shade existed on it. It was all the same white, untainted, incorruptible, unyielding brilliance. It leaned down its head over the helpless drone, and touched the tip of its horn to his forehead.

Fangheart's eyes shot open, and he relaxed. His whole body eased, and his pain went away, even the post cramp aches that should have plagued him for hours. His green eyes filled with fear, then denial, swiftly succeeded by acceptance, remorse, longing, and understanding. The back of his eyes glowed bright red, and the glow moved forward, until he finally closed them as the white figure stood back up.

"F-father?" he asked, still unable to move, his eyes opening again, returned to their normal shade of toxic green. Behind the green, pain burst forth, and tears welled up.

The figure turned around, and began to walk away.

"Dad?" Fangheart cried, and forced his legs to move. He rose on shaky limbs, and darted towards the white figure. "Please... Don't go, not again. I... I just..."

The figure looked over its shoulder at him, and lifted the drone's chin up with a hoof. Perhaps through the dreamscape, perhaps through magic, or perhaps through a product of building insanity, it seemed to tell the changeling, "Go, and show the world who you really are, all the good you can do, all the progress you've made, all that you strive for."

And with that, it vanished.

Fangheart collapsed, and he felt the world materializing around him. His chest landed on the cold stone floor, knocking the wind out of him. His lower jaw collided with the chains, only softening the landing a bit. His hindquarters hung in the air for a moment longer, before they too met the ground.

He lay still for a while, stunned.

When he lifted his head from the ground, he saw a white pegasus, with deep blue eyes, dressed from mane to hoof in shimmering golden armor, holding a spear next to his chest. The guard smiled at the changeling, and said, "Not so strong now, are you, metamorph?"

Fangheart coughed, and corrected the stallion, "It's xenomorph."

The guard smiled, and pointed his spear at the changeling. "The Princess says that you heal fast. I hope for your sake that's true," he told the prisoner. "How many people have you killed?"

Fangheart shook his head, and wheezed, "Zero."

"Here's for lying," the guard said, and drove his spear forward.

A scream could be heard echoing throughout the dungeon. By the time the sound reached the outside world, it was barely audible, the faintest of whispers on the wind, easily mistaken for the wind beating against the mountain, or the quiet tussling of a mouse rolling over in its den, trying to better sleep.

Twilight landed in Ponyville, greeted by her friends, and then the Princess. When the night was over, and the coronation planned, she knew that she had to ask the one incriminating question she could.

Now, Celestia sat upon her throne, listening to her student's roundabout way of asking where the changeling was. The conversation had started with an off hoof comment about foreign policy, and had rapidly jumped from The Crystal Empire, to weddings, to Chrysalis.

Celestia lifted a hoof to get a word in, and when Twilight calmed down, she asked, very calmly, and with the same formal dignity as she always did, "The changeling, it found you, didn't it?"

Twilight shook her head, and spoke frantically, "He didn't find me, so much as I found him out cold on the street. He was disguised at the time, and when his illusion fell apart, I chained him up, and started taking notes on how changeling society works. He has more comprehensive knowledge of the hive than all historical records combined."

Celestia said, "The changeling is Queen Chrysalis's heir. It already took several lives, and will face court tomorrow."

Twilight could say nothing. So long as he was getting a fair trial, she had little reason to intervene with the process. She did make one last push to see that he was represented fairly, "He... He's the last changeling capable of reproduction, and he promised me that nopony would ever be harmed by him. He... He's good, so please consider that."

"I will. Now, goodnight, Twilight Sparkle," the princess said, and waited for her student to leave, before standing up, and making her way through the many halls. She addressed every guard by name on the way, and came to a large double door, which she placed her horn against, and unlocked with a quick turn of her head.

She stepped forward, and the two guards at the door swung it closed behind her. She carefully stepped down the long staircase, and became acutely aware of what the sound she'd dismissed as noise actually was. She came to the bottom of the stairs, bowed to the assigned guard, and said, "I think that's enough."

The guard grumbled, and yanked his spear back from between the iron bars of the cell, eliciting another agonized scream from the prisoner. The spearhead was a personalized one, as he was an elite guard, serrated, and now, coated in thick green slime, which he wiped off on a rag he kept under his wing.

Princess Celestia turned to the changeling, and asked, "You are aware of what you stole, yes?"

Fangheart whimpered. One of his legs was that of a griffon, with talons bleeding from the claws. Another leg was thin, bony, and covered in thin fur, that of a donkey, with a black hoof at the bottom. His other two legs had been cut off from different joints, but were rapidly growing back, giving off faint green light as he healed.

Open wounds and sores had formed, some from chemical burns, thanks to the guard's compulsion to dip the spearhead in any puddles of venom he'd given off. His right eyelid was swollen shut. Green fluid was running down his face from where his left ear had once been. His left fang was missing, lying on the floor next to him, its base still covered in green blood.

The princess said, "You are hereby found guilty of mind controlling an unwilling person, murder, emotivorism, conspiring against the royal family, and reckless application of love spells. The minimum capital punishment issued to each of these crimes is much worse than your previous conviction."

Before Fangheart could even speak, he was teleported out of his cell, and being strapped to a table by his legs. He managed to shout, "I will plead guilty of emotivorism, and nothing e-" It was then that a machine lowered a surgical knife to his forehead, and he screamed.

Fangheart stopped screaming, and opened his only remaining eye, to find that nothing had happened. He looked around as much as he could without turning his head, and looked up at the knife. He blinked a few times, and looked over at a shower of sparks that had sputtered from one of the machines.

The sparks weren't moving. Nothing was moving.

He could only assume that Discord had, despite no longer being required to do it, saved his life. He'd have to remember to thank the draconiquus, before slapping him across the face for not saving his mother.

He looked back at the scalpel above him. He lit up his horn, and carefully removed the knife the mechanical arm holding it in place. He then used the knife to cut each of his limbs free, and quietly made his way towards the guard, who was also frozen, holding his spear proudly, watching the table as though someone were still on it.

He thought for a moment, and removed the guard's spear from him, deciding that he'd need it a lot more if he wanted any chance of escaping. He twirled the spear over his head a few times, then spat on the tip of it, wiping the flat part of it against the guard's white fur. "You won't need this without any more prisoners to torture," he told the guard, and rapidly bolted up the spiral staircase that the princess had come down from.

He couldn't think about how much this wounds hurt. He was on a time limit he didn't know, and he had to hurry if he wanted to escape before Discord changed his mind.

He paused when he came to a large door, with a small hole in it for a horn to go through. He thought for a moment, and burst into flame, transforming into a copy of Princess Celestia. He inserted his horn into the lock, which clicked as the doors opened, and smiled. He stepped outside, grabbed the two guards from their posts at the door, carried them back down the stairs, and swiftly locked up all four ponies in the cell he'd just inhabited, but not before placing an inhibitor ring on Celestia's horn to buy more time.

He made his way back up the long flight of stairs, slammed the door shut on his way out, and ran to the nearest window, smashing it with the blunt end of the spear. He felt the world catching up to him, and turned around just in time to see a pair of earth pony guards chasing him down the hallway.

He smiled at them, and gave them a quick salute. "Farewell, losers," he told them, and jumped, transforming into a copy of Rainbow Dash as he fell. Exercising the disguise's knowledge and skill in flight, he zipped straight towards Manehatten. This was a basic diversionary tactic, running one way while they're looking, and then turning around.

He glanced over his shoulder, and narrowed his eyes at the window from which he'd jumped. He held the spear in his front hooves, and gave it a heavy toss, sending it plummeting to the ground, where its tip buried itself in the dirt, still pointing towards Manehattan.

He flew down to the ground, landing in the cover of the trees, burst into flame, putting on his original disguise of a grey pegasus, and hummed to himself as he turned around, heading towards Ponyville.

Author's Note

Sorry for the shorter chapter. I'm considering making alternate endings to the story, so I don't want to commit to too much.

Chapter XV - Loved

The walk was slow, long, and without incident. All of that was by design, but when he arrived at the Golden Oak Library, with the sun rising, he couldn't help but take pause for thought. He was, for the second time now, an escapee, arriving at the same library, at the same time of day as he had a few days ago.

It didn't seem like the kind of thing to worry about, but it made him feel odd about the whole thing, like he was going around in circles. Ponies had a term for that sensation, déjà vu. He knew that the phrase was Old Unicorn for "already seen", and that it was one of the more intangible experiences to a pony.

He lifted a hoof to the front door, and rapped on the entrance. He began to wonder if he'd ever move on from this place. Twilight had never specified how long his stay would be, or what her end goal was. She wanted knowledge, but that was all he knew. Perhaps even she didn't know what to do with him.

The sound of hooves clapping against the wooden floor inside me this ears, and he tried his best to look as nonchalant as he could. But all the excitement of being nearly killed, saved by the god of chaos, and escaping custody wasn't entirely gone. He was shaken a bit, and longed for sleep.

The door opened, and he smiled Twilight, who grabbed him with a hoof, yanked him inside, and slammed the door closed behind him. He found himself pinned to one of the bookshelves, with a million questions being thrown at him, most of them ludicrous, the rest of them being based on false presumptions.

He had to shout in order to calm her down, "Twilight!" He placed a hoof on his forehead, and let off an exasperated sigh. "I've never killed anyone in my life. I've never tried to hurt a member of the royal family. I thought love spells were a myth. I don't know any if they exist. On top of all of that, I've had a really bad day, and I really need to sleep.

"I'm not a threat to you. I've never harmed you. I made a promise, Twilight, and I intend to keep it. I... I thought I was outside of being flawed, subject to what you call emotion, and the thing you call love. But I was wrong, okay. I didn't kill anyone, and I just narrowly escaped a surgical knife being driven through my skull."

He took a deep breath, and slumped against the shelf. "Who said those things about me?" he asked her.

"Princess Celestia," she answered immediately, a new pair of wings rustling at her sides. "You had a trial, and you killed so-"

"No, I didn't. I will go to court. I will let you read my mind. I will do anything, because nothing you're saying is true. I wasn't given a trial. I wasn't even allowed to finish one sentence in my defense before your perfect princess strapped me to a table, and tried to carve out a piece of my skull," he informed her.

"I spent hours in a cell, with a guard driving a spear into every part of my body he could find, dipping it into my venom, burning me, knocking one of my fangs out, and ripping off my ear, along with removing the same leg twice," he told her.

He shook his head slowly. "You call that a fair trial, then I don't know what kind of messed up world this is, where that princess is your idol," he added. "Oh, and you're an alicorn now, so I'm probably about to be banished, executed, or tortured to death. I..." He choked up, and bit his lip.

"I... I thought I loved you, Twilight, but I think I was overreacting to the whole thing. I miss my mother. I miss my father. I miss my home, Twilight, and I can't get any of those things back. Now with Discord willing to let me die, I'm a changeling, the last link to any chance of my race's survival, stranded in a world of people who just want me dead," he declared, his voice shaking, his eyes filling with tears.

"I... I can't... I can't be the last one... I'm a failure by every standard, and no one will even give me a chance anymore. I never did anything wrong, and I'm still on death row, for a dozen crimes I didn't commit," he said, and wrapped his forelegs around his head, hiding between them. "I... I hate myself for what I am, but no one seems to understand that."

He finally cried, and, despite every part of his mind insisting that this was a changeling thing to do, he knew that he wasn't a changeling anymore. He was only half changeling by blood, and at this point, he'd lost all right to even call himself one.

"My dad... He loved my mother, but she hates him, and now they're both dead. They're both dead because I'm a failure! Why did he throw his life away on me? He had forever left in front of him, and he died defending me," he sobbed, and his breath caught as he sat there.

He wasn't a changeling. He wasn't a pony. But he sure as heck wasn't safe where he was. Then again, he wasn't safe anywhere now. His home had kicked him out. His parents were both dead. The only pony who'd ever given him a chance was accusing him of murder, and he had actually liked her, if not loved her.

He was a wreck, a failed experiment, but one which an alicorn and a queen had both died defending. And he'd let them both down. What a waste of chitin and space he was. What a mess he'd made of everything. What had they been thinking as they died, that they believed in him, or that they'd been in the wrong places at the wrong times?

His chest stung. His face and throat were both numb. His wings were limp at his sides.

He erupted into a instant of fire, and cried as he truly was, the mess of a drone who never should have been born. Several of his wounds were still there from when the guard had inflicted them, and his ability to heal them had been thoroughly drained by the wounds he'd already recovered from.

He felt a soft object touching his shoulder, and he flinched, scrambling away from the warm hoof. He shook his head, and told her, "Don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't pretend I'm worth it. Go away!" He fell onto his side as his back slammed against another shelf, and his right wing got folded underneath his body. He yelped in pain, but did nothing to solve the problem.

He saw something warm, rich in love, and practically glowing with affection, moving towards him. He did nothing this time, and cried through his closed eyes as her warm hooves picked him back up. She sat him up, and carefully examined his injured wing, saying, "Ssh... It's okay. I'm nice. I'm here to help."

He continued to cry, and closed his jaws down over his left leg, loosing a muffled yelp as the chitin in his leg splintered like ceramic, with slivers of it digging into the softer flesh in his leg. He would have ripped it off if Twilight hadn't used her magic to pry his jaws open so she could remove individual pieces of chitin from his mouth.

She examined his hoof, and cast a pain killer spell on him, before removing any more splinters from his leg. She wrapped his leg in a white bandage, and put a splint on his bent wing, whispering softly, "You're not a failure. You're not a failure. You're not a failure, Fangheart."

After another few minutes of treating his wounds, burns, and trying to restrain him to prevent the wounds from worsening, she turned to look him in the eye, and spoke in the single most stern tone of voice she'd ever used, "Dammit, Fangheart, you're not a failure. You're my friend. Now, get into the bathtub so I can stop what damage I can."

He went completely still, letting her carry him in her magic. She set him down in a porcelain tub, and turned on the hot water. She made sure he kept his injured leg out of the water, and went about removing what noxious fluids she could from his chemical burns.

He just sat there, and only whimpered as she scrubbed down one of the sores on his side with a sponge. He lifted his only uninjured leg to his mouth, and felt around the gum where his fang had once been. He let out a deep breath, and muttered, "If I ever see another piece of armor, it'll be too soon."

Twilight didn't look up from her task, and said, "At least you aren't being as negative as you were a moment ago."

He looked at her, and then down, somehow ashamed of himself, but not quite in the way he had when he'd started crying. This shame was more reflective, assessing his more recent behavior than the deaths of his parents. He pinned back his one remaining ear, and said, "I... Sorry."

Twilight glanced up from the wound she was treating, and raised an eyebrow at him. She said, "You mentioned your father, how he had an eternity left. Who was he?"

He would have run away from that question, as he'd been taught to never answer that particular question. But he didn't have any more to lose at this point, and, besides, it wasn't like she'd believe him anyway. He said, "Prince Cosmos, Celestia's and Luna's older brother."

She narrowed her eyes, but didn't roll them, much to his surprise. "You're half alicorn?" she asked him.

He didn't respond.

"Celestia had a brother?" she pressed.

He didn't move, much less speak.

"Alicorns can die," she muttered, a logical conclusion, and one that rung painfully true to Fangheart's one ear.

"He... He was commander of the planets, ruler of the stars, and overseer of time. He made sure everything followed a single timeline, and that the planets were in the right places every night and day. Now, those two tasks are divided between his two sisters, and I am his illegitimate heir," he said, more to himself than anything.

"I could rule two kingdoms at once, but neither of them like me, and the one my father ruled isn't up for grabs," he said. He looked at Twilight, who was busy breaking every expectation he had by not laughing. He sighed, "I look even more pathetic now, don't I? I should have two crowns, but I've lost them both."

Twilight's eyes pointed back at his wounds, and she squeezed out her sponge, letting green and black liquid tint the bath water. She picked up her first aid kit, and asked, "Why haven't you healed yet? I thought changelings healed very quickly."

He sighed, "A changeling's healing ability is directly linked to the amount of love they have stored up and are receiving. Given how many wounds the guard inflicted, I used all of my reserves on healing those, and I'm empty now." He shook his head slowly, and snorted, "At least you won't have to worry about an unfair trial. I'll just starve to death."

Twilight paused, and shot him a burning look. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. None of what you say is your fault was within your ability to prevent or stop," she said.

She took a deep breath, and lifted his good hoof to the side of the tub, where she held it between her own hooves. She said, "I'll do some investigating on your case, and ask an impartial party to perform their own investigation. I'll advocate that you were treated unfairly, and I'll raise public awareness of your mistreatment.

"Celestia cares about what's right and her public image more than anything, and she'll listen to the population, if not me. You had no say in your conviction, sentence, or arrest. I'll make sure this doesn't happen again, and that Celestia learns from her mistake," she assured him, gently patting his hoof with her own, maintaining eye contact with him.

Something about that felt good to him. The whole thing was warm, tender, and he sniffled, the steam of the hot water having loosened up his sinuses a bit. He didn't notice the waves of affection pouring off of her, or the scents of oxytocin, dopamine, and a dozen other chemicals coming from her.

He didn't see any of that, nor would he have cared in that moment. He just smiled as she used a bit of gauze to soak up the blood from what remained of his left ear, and he asked, "Twilight, do you... I... Do you..." He paused to collect his thoughts, and took a deep breath. "I..."

"I love you too, Fangheart," she said.

His mind went wild. It probably said a lot about him that his changeling side demanded that he feed. He didn't listen to it, though he probably could have without ruining everything. He knew that if he fed upon her now, he'd do it again the next day, and again, and again, until the promise he'd made a few days ago didn't make any sense.

He bit his lip, and said, "I... I love you, Twilight Sparkle." Those three words sounded so weird to him when they were in his voice.

She lifted a sterile pad of gauze, and placed it over the top of a bottle of disinfectant, which she then turned upside down for a brief moment before righting it. "This'll sting, but it's necessary," she said, and dabbed the piece of cloth on his missing ear.

There was a shrill whimper, a reassuring voice, and a sigh of relief, followed immediately by the sound of splashing water.

Twilight slapped her forehead with a hoof, and muttered, but her question quickly became a shout, "Is this going to become a regular thing, you marching to my home at dawn and collapsing from exhaustion shortly after escaping my mentor?"

Fangheart could only jump when his body realized that it didn't have any oxygen, as his nostrils and mouth had both been submerged when he'd collapsed. He sat bolt upright, coughed up a bit of water, and did the first thing any changeling would do in his situation.

Twilight blinked at the changeling, who then jumped back when he realized what he'd just done, and how seriously dead he should have been. She giggled as she watched him scramble backwards in the tub, getting nowhere, and said, "Fangheart, at least give me a Unicorn kiss if you're going to panic afterwards."

He went still, and asked, "Y-you're not mad?"

Twilight shook her head, and said, "First of all, you need to promise me a few things, if we're going to have a serious relationship."

He gulped, and nodded. "Sure, anything," he said.

"No more sulking about your hierarchical status. No more random drop ins and collapsing at dawn. No more cover stories to my friends. No more impossible promises," she said. She then added, "You may feed in any way that doesn't hurt me, whether you're seriously injured or perfectly healthy. You can walk around in your natural form when we're inside. If your natural form bothers someone, please turn back into your pony form."

He blinked, and asked, "That's all?"

Twilight added, "And I get a proper kiss."

"Now?" he asked.

"After you heal, so you don't hurt yourself," she said, nodding.

He opened his mouth, and readily consumed the copious amounts of love she was pouring into the air. His burns went away first, then he used his fang to remove the bandage from the leg he'd bitten as its chitin grew back. He removed any and all other bandages, any wounds or unwanted holes sealing themselves, giving off a bright green glow. The crease in his right wing glowed as it straightened itself out, and he cast aside the splint. His ear grew back all at once, and he closed his mouth just before he could cause Twilight harm.

He transformed once, shortening his one remaining fang until it could have been mistaken for that of a bat pony, the extra space being filled in by flat teeth. He lunged forward, hopping out of the bathtub, and wrapped his forelegs around the lavender alicorn, hugging her. He placed his lips to hers, and opened his mouth, slipping his tongue into hers.

Twilight flinched a bit, surprised by the speed at which he'd recovered, and leaned into the kiss, wrapping her new wings around his back. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to consider what sort of legal hassle this odd relationship would cause if they ever got married, and then she remembered, he was a xenomorph.

The bathroom door creaked open, and a very sleepy Spike stepped inside, carrying a rolled up comic book under his left arm. He froze when he saw the strangest thing on the planet, and said, "Okay, staying up was a bad idea. I'm going back to bed." He turned around, and closed the door as he returned to his bed.

Fangheart pulled away from the kiss, and turned to look at the door. He asked Twilight, "Did you hear something?"

"Spike stayed up all night planning my coronation with Celestia and me. I think he saw us, and is convinced that his lack of sleep is causing him to hallucinate," she told him.

Fangheart smiled a bit, and said, "Then we should start relationships more often. Maybe we can kill his habit of staying up to take the longest bubble baths on the planet." He turned to look at her, and hugged her ever closer to himself. "Thank you, for everything, Twilight."

The alicorn wheezed, "Can't breathe."

He released her, and blushed, his cheeks turning green. "Sorry. I... It occurs to me that, if my mother could see me, she'd kill me," he told her.

"Why's that," Twilight asked, using her magic to pull the plug in the bathtub, letting the tainted water drain out.

"Because I'm in a relationship with three of the things she hated the most. Twilight Sparkle, the pony she feared the most, an alicorn, a race she loathed, and a bearer of an Element of Harmony, the weapon she had managed to disable, but still lost to," he told her, and nuzzled her affectionately.

"Well, I'm sure some of her rules made sense," she said.

He thought for a moment, and shook his head. "The only way I could break all of her rules, is if I somehow was an alicorn, but I'm no you," he said.

"Haha," Twilight said dryly. She watched the last of the water swirl down the drain in the tub, and said, "Okay, now get back into the tub."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you clearly don't know what a bath is. I can smell every piece of dirt you've ever touched since you were born. Along with that, it's always fun to pretend that someone you know is a toddler," she said, and turned on the hot water. "Now, go on, get in."

He pinned back his ears, and, whether he intended it or not, did the most toddler like thing he could have possibly done in that moment. "No," he said, and quickly ran through the door he pulled open, zipping around the library at top speed.

Twilight shouted, "Let me add a clause to our relationship agreement; you need to be clean if I'm getting in the same bed as you!"

In a scant two seconds, the changeling had slammed the bathroom door closed again, jumped into the water, taken a collection of water in his front hooves, and thrown it at her. He smiled as the warm liquid soaked her mane through, and asked, "When you say sleep, what do you mean?"

Twilight frowned as she used her hoof to move her sopping mane away from her eyes, and said, "Stay off my bed until I can clean you off." She took in a whiff of air, and added, "Hang on. Let me get the hose."

"What's a hose?" he asked her, displaying more naïveté than necessary to form a smile on the alicorn's lips.

She simply said, "You'll see."

Epilogue

Princess Celestia sat at her throne, her eyes narrowed, her hoof tapping against the arm of her lavish chair impatiently.

Discord materialized at the front of the room, along with a crowd of cardboard cutout ponies, all with their hooves in the air as they silently cheered on the draconiquus, who bowed to each of them as he made his way down the isle, and finally came to the base of Celestia's throne, whereupon he threw his head back, and flipped backwards in a sort of reverse bow.

The solar monarch was not amused, and she said, "I assume you know why I called you here, Discord."

He shook his head, his front legs held behind his back. He snapped his talons once, and a cardboard cutout of a certain changeling appeared in front of him. He put on a black top hat, a black vest, and a monocle, and blew bubbles out of a pipe he held between his lips. "Let it be known," he said in the most stiff and formal voice he could muster, "that I, Discord, was not responsible for the escape of this fine looking fellow right here." He draped his taloned arm over the cutout, and leaned against it.

Celestia winced, and she asked, "Then how did he escape?"

Discord said, "Elementary, my dear Celestia. You see, after Cosmos went ahead and croaked, he made a pact with me, dictating that I would protect his only son until the boy's mother joined his father's soul in the afterlife." He took a moment to puff a few bubbles out of his pipe.

Celestia raised an eyebrow at the spirit, and said, "But his mother is dead."

"Well, yes, but there arises a minor paradox. You see, just because she is dead, does not mean she is in the afterlife. Her soul has stuck around, and she is still watching over her son. Even still, when she moves on, she will be sentenced to an eternity in Tartarus, not Elysium, where her late lover is. So she will never join him, and thus, my powers were diverted to saving the changeling's life when you nearly killed him," he said.

Celestia said, "You claimed no part in his escape."

"That I did, but I was not able to consciously choose to spare him. My powers were simply sucked away from me, interrupting a lovely chat I was having with the Smooze, you remember him, and I had no way of stopping it. I am the victim here, Celestia, and you cannot deny that a pact is a pact. I had no choice," he said.

Celestia bit her lip, and held her forehead with a hoof. "Okay, so if I attempt to kill him, he'll just get away. There is no process by which the pact can be dissolved, as Cosmos has moved on, and I still can't fix the course of events," she said, gritting her teeth.

Discord snapped his talons, forcing his outfit and pipe to vanish. He grinned, and said, "Well... Maybe you can't, but I know someone who can."

Celestia looked up from her throne. "Who?" she asked.

Discord shook his head, and said, "I cannot say. See what happens when I try." He opened his mouth to speak again, but a piece of duct tape appeared over his mouth, and he couldn't make it disappear no matter how many times he snapped his talons. So he simply glanced at the cardboard cutout he'd brought into existence.

He vanished, leaving the princess to stare at the image of her nephew, which then fell backwards as its stand was removed by one of Discord's talons, which then grabbed it and pulled it into the floor.

To be continued...

Author's Note

Yes, this volume of our story has come to a close, leaving many questions unanswered. Will Celestia face charges for her swift condemnation of Fangheart, and why does she seem so eager to kill him? Will Fangheart go public as the first changeling citizen of Equestria? Will the world take Fangheart's case seriously, or will he be locked up for the third time in just under a week? What's happening to the hive in the absence of a monarch?

Prologue

The large changeling stumbled into the cell, ushered on by the spears pointed at her. She tripped, landing clumsily on her face, with her backside hanging in the air for a moment, before it made a thud against the cold stone floor. She released a small, barely audible groan, and lay there.

The cell door closed behind her, and the lock clicked as a guard turned the key. He was just about to remove it again, when one of his comrades grunted, "Got one more." He looked over his shoulder, nodded, and opened the door again. He helped the other guard pitch the second changeling into the cell, and smiled once he'd locked and teleported the key away.

The queen and her prince lay still for a while, silent as rocks, not whispering, not breathing —at least, not audibly. They just didn't have the strength in them to do anything, much less escape. They'd been driven out of the hive, and now, having come so far to escape the other changelings, starving, locked up below Baltimare.

The prince, while confident in his mother's ability to survive nearly anything, worried that she'd be unable to take him with her, wherever she would go. He grunted, straining, and lifted a shaking hoof off the ground. He lifted himself up, one toxic green eye closed, and whimpered in pain, before collapsing back onto the ground. He glanced at his mother, something other changelings couldn't do without turning their heads.

Her eyes were closed, peaceful, and unconcerned. She was always like that, confident in her good luck and ability. Even starving, she was likely working out some plan to get herself free. They had approximately a day before they'd be transferred to the dungeon in Canterlot, which, for her, was ample time for one of her brilliant plans.

He would have smiled if he'd had the energy, but wished for sleep, brilliant, soothing rest, to wash away the world, help him forget the journey north, and let him escape this whole mess. He let his eyes drift closed, and within a minute, his breathing was slow, deep, and rhythmic.