Author's Note

this chapter has been edited by an proof reader. so the story might have changed just a little.

Chapter 1: Birth

Floating.....and drifting. This is my life since the moment I came to be. From the very first thought, I was able to "remember", if that is what one would call it. Floating and drifting. That is what my life is and all I can remember it to be....well that's not strictly true, I have memories. The only thing that I know without a doubt is the memories are not mine, also they're not even good memories...or bad...or anything. They're just memories; knowledge about the world, outside this… place. Because of these I know what a tree is, even though I have never seen a tree, I still know what it looks like, know what the bark feels like, taste like, smell like. All because of the memories.

Clouds, grass, ponies, merponies, gryphons, minotaurs, and much more. I know everything about them even though I have never experienced meeting them myself. It's very annoying, but so very useful. After all it kept me entertained for such a long, long time. It's hard to explain, how even though I have these memories, I didn't know what they meant. I had to slowly piece them together piece by piece...it took a while, a long while. But it was all I could do.

My first memory, though simple, took me....I don't even know how long, I didn't understand the passing of time yet....Ha that's a hoot, I'm not even sure I know what the passing of time is right now. Well anyway like i was saying, my first memory was of a cat.

.....Sounds easy right? Yes and no. Picture this you see a big fat, long haired orange cat, with soft eyes and long whiskers that was sitting in the middle of a grassy hill. It was purring unendingly slow, which was soft and warm and gave you a weird funny giddy feeling in the center of your chest, and the only thing you wanted to do is push your face deep into its fur and nuzzle it as you pet it's neck and rub it's belly as you lay on the springy but unyielding ground.

Now, here's the hard part. You don't know what a cat is. Or what fur feels like, or the scent of grass that hangs in the air or what the sound a cat makes. If that doesn't work, try adding that you don't know what that feeling is in your chest or that your chest is called a "chest" or the fact you don't know what you are using to pet the strange animal and why it is connected to your body, or why you even have this feeling in the first place. Now take it a step further, you don't know that you are, and you are not the person in the memory. And you don't even know what a memory is. It was a large, confusing mess for me to think about. But I eventually understood everything....eventually. In the end I learned everything that I could learn from my "memories" and I often went over them to improve my knowledge...and also to make my unending drifting pass quicker.

Even now I'm merely talking to myself just to improve my social skills and to relieve me of my boredom. But after all this, the explaining of these “memories” and what I went through, and what I had learnt and how long it took me, it was all done just to help the passage of time go quicker.

And even that is starting to get boring.

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Slowly floating, my consciousness was drifting in and out of sleep, and once again I lost track of all time.

Waking from one such conscious exchange, I gave a great yawn and stretched out my hooves in all directions when suddenly my bottom left hoof touched something. My heart jumped and I snatched back my hoof back as I stared unseeingly that way as my heart pounded into my ribs.

‘That's new.’
When my heart gained a steady pace again I slowly stretched out my hoof. It came in contact with a soft barrier of some sort. Moving my hoof up, down, left and right I found the barrier stretched as far as I could move and I realized it fully encased me. It was a oval room, curiously I pushed hard against the barrier but though it was soft, it was unyielding as stone.

‘What's this?’ I asked as I felt the entirety of the wall.

At the back of my mind I felt a memory trying to come to the surface. Closing my eyes, which didn't change much, it was still dark as Tartarus, but it helped me concentrate better as I grabbed the memory threw it out into the open conscious that was my mind. A perfect image of a oval shape came into view. It had black veins and was encased in a smooth, black substance which I know for a fact was once goo. It's surface was an even, milky grey color

‘Your egg’ I thought of as a flicker crossed my vision. I froze, staring hard at the direction it came from. Something flashed across my vision again, from across the shell. Pressing my face against the shell, I watched as light flickered all over the place. I could barely make out anything, but colors slowly became more and more prominent.

My chest tightened as I experienced color for the first time. It was like the whole spectrum of colors flashed before my eyes as it quickly grew brighter. It was beautiful; vibrant greens, bright yellows and deep blues filled my vision and only continued to get brighter. So bright, it started to strain my eyes quite a bit. But I couldn't look away, ensnared by the colors around me. That was until my horn poked the top of the egg.

‘Did it grow smaller?’ I did a quick feel around the egg, and yes, it was shrinking.

‘Idiot, you're growing.’ I retorted back at the other voice as a flood of heat suddenly came through the egg shell and made its way directly toward my face. Scooting back, I tried to escape the....whatever in Tartarus it was but inside the shell, there was nowhere to go.

The heat swirled slightly around my head, and I could feel the heat pressuring my lips slightly. I tried to fight it, my hooves moving through the heat but it was solid as air. With a suddenly with a flash of insight that vaguely reminded me of memories, I knew what I had to do. Opening my mouth and with a slight surge of my will, my innate power seized the heat and pulled in me, quickly storing it in my stomach.

The heat exploded, sending warmth through my entire body. From the tip of my wings to the bottom of my hooves. Not only did the heat strengthen my limbs and muscles, but it also energized me to my core and I felt a massive spike of energy blossom inside me.

‘Magic.’ saying it instantly, even before I could ask myself what it was. Another question was forming when my chest started to burn, not from the heat but from the lack of oxygen and the burn wasn't on my chest, but in my lungs.

I started to panic slightly before another memory surfaced quickly, it was of another changeling using his horn to escape from his egg. He used his horn to stab the egg and slid his horn down from top to bottom. He slid out of his egg, the greenish liquid spewing across the cave floor. I didn't wait before I moved to point my horn against the egg’s membrane. That's when I noticed that I had very little room to move.

'Well, time for a change in the address. It's getting a little crowded in here.’ With a push, my horn easily punctured the membrane. It was hard, but with some effort, I cut down the length of the egg. The liquid around me gushed out through the hole, just like in the memory. When the mucus, which by the way, ew, was lowered enough, I took a deep breath, relieving the pain in my lungs. Before the hole was large enough, the egg split along where I was cutting and I spilled out, tumbling on the rough floor.

Blinking away the mucus and taking more deep breaths, I looked around. Light flooded down from a hole in a corner of the roof, it wasn't that strong, so it might be something being reflected or multiple somethings.

Because of this I was able to see the room somewhat clearly but there were quite a few shadows. The room I was in was a cave. It had a high ceiling and slimy walls dripping with water. Me and my egg were sitting next to a pool of crystal clear water. Multiple species of moss and mushrooms grew around the edges of the pool, but that wasn't the most important feature of the cave.

Not far away stood another changeling; he was partially hidden in the shadows. Behind him was a hole in the wall, which I can only suspect was the entrance to this otherwise enclosed cave.

"Are you full? Are you strong enough to move?" He asked in a rough and slightly gurgling voice, like he was trying to talk with a mouth full of water.

I stared at him for a moment, before looking around to make sure he was talking to me, and then nodding at him, "Yes, I think I can move."

I saw him nod from the shadows and I could see his head was misshapen. "Good, then you need to get up.” Walking forward, the changeling's back leg was causing him to limp. The reason for that was because most of it was missing, leaving only thin bone and patches of chitin. He eventually came out into the light and his visage terrified me to the point I let out an involuntary scream.

He looked like a normal changeling. Black carapace-like skin, short legs with holes in them, as well as webbed hair. His eyes were a royal purple, though there were no pupils. Though what made me scream was the fact that his head wasn't misshapen. He was missing a full quarter of his head, which made it look that way. There was a giant gash where his left eye should be. Shattered chitin surrounding muscles hanging off his head in strands. Shards of bone jutted out of the wound. The bone was showing bits of his of his brain which pulsed lightly.

"My Queen, we need to go. Your enemy is coming, and there is little I can do to stop them." He said urgently while coming up to me and bowing slightly.