A Tale of Dusk

CHAPTER 14:

Chrysalis shuddered as she felt the black wave of emotional bile lap against her door, tendrils of the vile stuff oozing around the doorframe in response to its owner’s malice.

It had been a profitable week, and even with her actively toning down her performances as ‘Pearl Shiner’, the bits and notes begging for ‘private’ shows had kept rolling in … and Pecker’s smile turned decidedly sharper every time he followed her out onto the stage for his turn, or, after Chrysalis had quietly begged Low Craft to let the attention-obsessed Pegasus go first in an attempt to placate Pecker’s ego, the way his smile would turn into a scowl for a heartbeat before flickering back when Chrysalis would step onto the stage after him and the crowd would cheer louder.

She had propped the only chair in the room under the door-handle, telling Low Craft that it was just ‘insurance’ against a fan that might be able to sneak past the bouncers when one of the other girls had complained about ‘Pearl Shiner’ having a lock on her door when nobody else did, but the expression on the Strip-Club owner’s face had told Chrysalis volumes about how much he believed that lie even as he agreed with her ‘precautions’. Pecker might have been a physically attractive stallion, but Chrysalis knew damn well that like most body-beautiful types, his form was carefully sculpted, built for aesthetics and visual appeal rather than actual practical reasons. All those muscles on that slender frame and none of them would be able to do more than provide a short burst of energy because Pecker kept himself nearly dehydrated to keep his muscle definition at its peak. He was literally five minutes from exhaustion, but five minutes was more than enough to do harm with the right motivation and a short burst of physical energy.

In short, if things came down to a fight, all Chrysalis had to do was make sure Pecker had to burn through his reserves very quickly and his own obsession with the absurd heights of social concepts on physical beauty would turn the tables on him. The problem was she’d have to survive long enough for that to happen, and her current ‘persona’ wouldn’t be able to believably hold off such a physically powerful specimen without magic, and ‘Pearl Shiner’ had been carefully crafted to be a non-combatant.

So in theory I can outrun him … if I can just get to the exit and he keeps to the ground. Why did I have to pick a Unicorn as my identity? A Pegasus would be able to fly away, and with my magic I could easily outpace that glorified peacock once we were out of sight of any witnesses, or if I’d chosen an Earth Pony, I could just use my superior strength as a Queen Caste without arousing any attention! Chrysalis cursed, holding a pillow to her chest and rocking back and forth on the narrow bed as the door-handle squeaked and turned, the door thumping against the chair wedged under the handle, before she heard Pecker curse and storm off. Oh give it a rest, I needed magic to be able to pull off the lost, robbed waif act, and I’ve always favoured using magic over brute force anyways. I might have to just dine and dash, just soak up as much ambient emotional energy as I can, after-tastes be damned, and run off tomorrow night. It’ll be another month and a half before I can sneak myself onto a train heading straight to Canterlot, but fuck me sideways with a cactus if I’m going to spend any longer in this place!

Which sucked, and not just because it would mean crafting another persona and bumming around this seedy little border-town for all that time without a roof and some form of social connection to keep her safe, housed and occupied. She’d made some nice contacts here, who might even become friends if Chrysalis could risk staying longer. Many of the other dancers and staff were very friendly once they got over any feelings of envy and the Queen-in-Exile found it oddly sweet that even though she was more flexible and stronger than most of the more established staff, her willingness to help them with exercises and routines around the pole built a very solid foundation for them all to …

It’s like what I wanted the Hive to be. Chrysalis thought to herself sadly as she waited for the sickening psychic stench that followed Pecker everywhere to fade away enough for her to risk doing anything else but huddle in her room. Family, working together not out of desperation and a race for personal gain before the others claimed it first, but to advance and empower each other so that the whole family could thrive together. It is what the Hive, my Hive, will be once I can make it to Canterlot and start to accumulate all that love-energy that swirls around the Princess from all of her subjects. Just a fraction of that power would be enough to make me strong enough to come back home and wipe out my mother and sisters in one fell swoop. Then I could start smuggling the members of the Hive willing to follow my way of doing things back into Canterlot, let everyone feed, begin teaching a new generation of Changelings how to infiltrate and live peacefully within Equine society, rather than the old way of kidnapping and sucking the psychic energy out of Ponies until they become brain-dead and have to be discarded.

No. As much as I should and how much it would simplify my plans, killing the Old Guard would make me no better than they. As disheartening as it is, I’m going to have to accept Hive Pupae is as good as dead and strike out on my own to make an entirely new Hive. Find a magically powerful Stallion amongst the Ponies, since it’s highly unlikely I’m going to be able to steal a proper Prince from any of the Hives that still exist without bringing down the wrath of an entire Hive’s worth of Queens on my head in the process, and try to start a Hive that way. Chrysalis sighed and squashed the pillow against her middle, suddenly gaining a deep appreciation of why Ponies and other sentient races kept pets. Something to cuddle when one was feeling lost and lonely without the concerns of having to deal with a fellow sentient beings needs and emotional quirks getting in the way sounded absolutely wonderful right about now. That said, the type of Stallion I’ll need to sire a generation of Changelings has to be just right, and from what I’ve heard of Canterlot, there’s only two real sources of genetic material I can be aiming for. The Nobility, or the Royal Guard.

On the one hand, the Royal Guards are utterly devoted to their Princess, trained into skilled and powerful soldiers and no doubt have wills of iron, so I’m not going to be able to waltz in, pick a target and lift my tail to get the job done. I’ll have to pick one who has an impeccable bloodline, excellent base-line physical abilities before their training kicked in and a powerful magical talent, and that kind of Stallion is likely to be highly placed within the military hierarchy, have a plethora of Mares chasing after him already and might already be married or in a relationship. The disguised Queen gave a deep, heartfelt sigh and fell over onto her side, still cuddling the pillow. On the other hand, the Nobility boasts exceptionally powerful bloodlines that are world-famous for their magical prowess, and let’s be honest, if the intelligence I gathered on my previous trips is any indication, many of the Nobles are very inclined to be quite free with attractive commoners and in the unlikely event I can’t find a sufficiently powerful Noble-blooded Stallion, I can always take on a male appearance, mate with a Noble-blooded Mare and try to siphon an egg or two out of her to fertilize with my own.

Hardly ideal, considering I would be fusing two eggs together rather than an egg and a sperm, but at least I would produce a powerful offspring which could then help me expand the Hive in more traditional methods. I’ve only ever practiced the extraction method a few times, but the Drones who were willing to practice with me said the sensation was enjoyable, if a little odd to have something sucking on their cervixes.

It still didn’t give her many options, or peace of mind. A score or so of drones per mating, close to a month between ‘genetic material gathering’ missions to allow the eggs to incubate enough in her body to remain viable after she would then use her ovipositor to deposit them in a specially prepared nest … to produce enough numbers to make a self-sufficient Hive would take years, all the while Chrysalis would have to keep herself under the radar of the Royal Guard, find a place where her Hive could grow safely without random Ponies could just walk in on them and also try to make sure her newborn Drones wouldn’t just walk out undisguised to feed … even with the accelerated growth process of the Drone-caste, that would still be twenty or so Drones to train, feed and keep occupied until their minds caught up to their bodies.

It could take a year or more before her Hive was self-sufficient, and Chrysalis would have to feed, train and protect her brood all on her own. The deeper she thought about it, the more concerned and doubtful Chrysalis became, but the prospect of living a life flitting from one persona to the next and scavenging to survive filled her with a deep and abiding sense of horror. Even the most talented Infiltrator Drones kept to a handful of personas, and the Infiltrators who swapped forms too often and avoided assuming their natural forms for too long usually ended up either going mad or at war with themselves as the personas eventually took on a life of their own and tried to wrangle control of the body from the original identity …

Okay, focus, all this doom and gloom isn’t going to help me succeed. Be aware of what can go wrong, but don’t become concerned with only that. Remember your training. Chrysalis groaned and rolled back onto the bed, still clutching the pillow tightly to her middle, mentally reciting the basics she’d picked up from the few Infiltrator Drones who had been willing to risk talking to her back at Hive Pupae. Rule number 1) An alternate persona should not stand out unless you are trying to draw attention to yourself. Rule number 2) Simple is best, a convoluted backstory gives you too many opportunities to screw up and expose yourself in simple conversation. Rule number 3) Know the ground-rules of the region you are trying to infiltrate. Nobody ever did their job while being locked up in jail for violating one of the locals’ silly little laws.

So that meant whoever she ‘became’ in Canterlot had to be a unicorn to avoid social bias, had to be pretty enough to be able to seduce a stallion without being so noticeable that they’d be easily recognized in a crowd, and have a valid reason for being in Canterlot, sniffing around the Royal Guard and the Nobility that wasn’t overly convoluted or outlandish.

Chrysalis was so busy trying to assemble that jigsaw puzzle of her new identity that she completely missed the absence of Pecker’s emotional bile leaving the building and taking off into the air, heading towards the barracks of the nearby Border Guard outpost, and the threads of dark red anger that had begun to shoot through the inky black bile of jealousy and envy that consumed his psychic aura.

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Dusk looked on at the situation with equal parts anger, arousal and amusement.

Spine looked back up at Dusk with an expression of frustration and reluctance.

Fluttershy just squeaked and tried to hide behind her hair, which was the source of Dusk’s amusement considering the state he’d found them in following Dusk’s franticly-written scroll asking for him to come over and help.

It was not hard to see what the problem was: The two women were on all fours, butt-to-butt, with what looked like the largest toy Dusk has ever seen sharing space with their unmentionables, which was also the reason they needed help.

“So, do I just grab one of you and pull or …?” Dusk smiled tightly as he joked about the situation, trying to repress his irritation. He’d wanted Spine to find other Ponies to befriend, a way to ease their co-dependence, and yes, maybe find a way to solve their own physical entanglement given the lingering sibling-like attachment he had towards Spine. He hadn’t expected to find Spine in the middle of a raging lesbian escapade less than two weeks into their adventure, and certainly hadn’t expected to feel so hurt about it consider his original intentions!

That and since the Sunstone medallion remained intact and pure and Ponyville wasn’t the site of a sun-fuelled inferno courtesy of an outraged Princess of the Sun on the world’s most violent over-the-top-over-protective-mother-themed rampage, it also meant the Pegasus hadn’t been using some form of dark magic on his assistant. That said, the difference in size between the lushly-figured yellow Pegasus and the slender, petite Drake raised a whole slew of questions that the Mage wasn’t sure he could get the answers to without looking like a complete letch and a hypocrite.

“T-that would be bad, we’d be hurt if you did that.” Fluttershy squeaked, one large, green eye peering out from a gap in her pink mane. “Th-the toy has a lot of soft rubber points on it, and knots. Wh-we need aaaa-ah! Spine has to … to get bigger again.”

“Wait, you aged, Spine? Please, please tell me you didn’t have a Greed episode and took advantage of this poor mare?” The purple Unicorn’s head snapped around to glare at Spine, who glared back at him, which had far less effectiveness than the Drake probably wanted with her bared ass and tail up in the air before him.

“Well, yeah, I filled out a little but it was totally consensual. We might have, uh, broken Fluttershy’s shower cubicle. And her bed. And the kitchen table. Then she said she wanted to see if I’d react better to a dildo modelled on a dragon’s cock than a pony’s, so we tried, I came super hard and … I can’t get age myself up anymore.” Spine grumbled, wiggling back and forth as she tried to work herself free and instead giving Dusk quite the show as Spine’s tight rear and Fluttershy’s perfectly heart-shaped backside wiggled and jiggled against each other for a few seconds.

“And why can’t you just pull out?” Turning to the resident hermit of Ponyville, Dusk rubbed at both temples to try and massage the migraine he could feel coming on away.

“… I got a little carried away?” She squeaked before seeing Dusk’s expression and hid back behind her long hair. “It’s ah, uhm, very big model and when Spine snapped back to normal, and looked so young, I was very shocked and I, uh, clamped down and I’m too stressed to let go.”

Dusk tried very hard to not think about the gripping power required to hold a device that big inside a body when a being as strong as Spine was, even in her default state, was furiously tugging away at her own end, and found himself very grateful he’d chosen to wear baggy slacks today in an attempt to hide the outline of his body from Ponyville’s more insistent mares.

“I think I’m tapped. I don’t suppose …” The draconic half of the lewd Pushme-Pullme before him asked nervously, tail slowly wagging back and forth in the air as she gave Dusk her best puppy-dog eyes.

“First of all, every time I’ve recharged your magic for you, Spine, you’ve either aged up, eaten five times your mass in ice-cream, then proceed to vomit over everything I’ve owned or you go on an even worse Greed spree than before, and that’s how you’re in the mess you’re in right now. Secondly, how many times did you two go at it and forcibly trigger Spine’s growth-quirk to the point that it could be possible to exhaust a draconic pool of magic in the space of half a day?” Frustrated at both his own arousal and the possible ramifications of such given the situation, the words slipped out of Dusk before he could stop them.

“Fifteen times?” The butter-yellow Pegasus squeaked helpfully from under her mane of hair.

“In this room.” Spine added, a nervous grin on her face.

“… A part of me desperately just wants to leave this room and leave you two to sort out this, ah, interspecies exchange on your own, but I have a duty of care towards Spine, and another part of me is going to enjoy watching you two squirm, literally, as I get that thing out of you.” Sighing heavily, Dusk looked around the kitchen where he’d found the two entangled idiots, his horn flickering with magic that glowed in the grooves of his horn as he opened every drawer and cupboard door he could find before pulling out several likely bottles. “Okay, so we’ve got … canola oil, rice bran oil, flaxseed oil … My Faust, but you have a lot of open jars of peanut butter.”

Fluttershy turned even redder, if that was possible, and squeaked in distress.

“Yeah, I’m not going to ask why, I’m already on the verge of an aneurysm as it is. Alright, I am officially over this by a wide margin, we’ve got enough oil to slip a Tatzlwurm through a Breezie’s ass, I’ll just pass you two the bottles and … go wait in the other room.” The purple Unicorn began, before Spine’s hand shot out and grabbed his ankle.

“And how in Faust’s left tit do you expect us to get loose in this predicament without your help? We were pretty well lubricated when this happened, just in case we weren’t clear before!”

“You’ve got your new lube, just … keep going at it until one of you works your way loose and solves the problem.” Dusk protested, trying to pull away and yelping as Spine’s hand clenched hard enough to crush his flesh against his own bones. “Spine! Dammit, that hurt!”

“I don’t give a crap! This … thing inside me fitted perfectly, Dusk. Perfectly. When I was the size of a fully grown Dragoness, not a small teenager! Unless I get bigger, it’s not coming out and I am not walking back to Ponyville with a two-foot-long dildo rubbing me stupid every step of the way! I don’t think I even can walk right now.” The Drake snarled back up at him. “Loan me some magic so I can age up right now and pull out!”

“No way, I give you any of my magic and you’ll just have another Greed attack, with even less self-control than normal!”

“Dusk, I swear to Faust we are not having this conversation when I’m spread open like a new train tunnel with another Mare attached to my backside in the same situation! Stop being a damn baby and gimme the juice already!”

“Isn’t there anything else we can try? If giving Spine more magic is dangerous, couldn’t you try using your magic to shrink the toy?” Fluttershy asked softly as Spine and Dusk glared at each other. “Uhm … sorry? I don’t know all that much about Unicorn magic …”

“It’s not a bad idea, but the problem with magic-fields is that you need to have a good visual grasp of the object you are manipulating. That or know the object intimately to avoid causing damage to the object … and the things around it.” Dusk explained, trying to shake Spine loose but to little effect. “Since I can’t very well ‘see’ what’s going on, I’d need to use a tactile field instead to properly map the entire object, meaning I am going to have to cover the object in a thin field of my magic. Even though it’s an energy wave-form, you’re both going to feel the tactile field spreading up and through certain parts of your bodies in a very personal manner…”

“Fuck! Dusk, just say you’ve got to get a TK grip on the dildo before you can teleport it out of us! This isn’t Faust-damn College tutoring lesson, just do it!” Spine snapped and gave Dusk’s ankle a hard squeeze before letting go.

“… I’ll try to limit the amount of time I spend building up the field to limit the sensation. Again, Miss Shy, my deepest apologies that you got caught up in all of this.” The purple mage grimaced and began to cast his telekinetic field, the simplest and most basic spell every Unicorn learned in their childhood, sending a wisp of purple-red energy down between the two very different backsides and latching around what little of the toy could be seen emerging from its two new homes.

Spine, being long familiar with Dusk’s magic, only gritted her teeth and groaned around the barrier as the strange feeling of static electricity buzzing against her lips grew stronger and stronger, while for Fluttershy, new to such things, a full-throated gasp escaped her and she threw her head up, eyes wider than normal in shock as Dusk’s telekinetic field began to slowly work its way up the device that trapped her and Spine together.

“Oh my sweet, loving Faust, what on Equiss were you two thinking? This thing’s a torture device!” Dusk said without thinking as the tactile field gave him a very precise image of exactly what was holding the two women together. Dreams of becoming a mare again, if only to avoid the charade he was forced to live because of that wretched day, had of course involved fantasies about having his own natural plumbing back again, but the thought of something like this going anywhere near something as vital and sensitive a body part as the sexual organs made Dusk nearly flinch and lose control of the spell.

The soft spines were one thing, except rather than being the mere nubs he was used to seeing on such lonely-night aids, these had been sculpted to look more like rose thorns that had been broadened and flattened with rounded ‘points’, and the knots … he could understand that Spine might possess some sort of physiology that could accommodate, perhaps even properly function around such an evolutionarily extreme measure, but an equine like Fluttershy?

And of course it was very hard to focus on the spell with Fluttershy, and to a lesser extent, Spine, thrashing around on their respective ends and constantly shifting the object he was trying to map with their wild movements didn’t make the job any easier, nor did the way his concentration kept shifting from the task at hand to the very intriguing sights and noises coming from the show being put on literally at his feet.

Trying to keep a hold of the rapidly object and maintain a good impression of it for the teleportation under this situation meant thickening the telekinetic field, which only made things worse as Spine and Fluttershy reacted violently to the increasing amount of magic inside them, giving up entirely on holding themselves back and thrashing wildly in blind animal need against each other, gasping and moaning like there was no tomorrow.

“For the love of … stop moving around, if I make the field any thicker …!” Dusk began, then grunted as he strained to keep the field intact as Fluttershy twisted left, and Spine bucked right, and for one brief moment he thought the damned dildo was going to break before the two slammed back together again, eyes vacant and mouths open only to emit low, animal noises before they started to thrash wildly against each other again, and Dusk decided to take a risk.

As they pulled apart, Dusk thickened the field as much as he dared, trying to ignore the delighted shrieks and then … teleported the damned object away.

It was a gross violation of dozens of teleportation theories and rules, but he’d thrown the device as far away as his magical reserves would allow with a single, panicked casting, directly upwards and away from Fluttershy’s house, where there surely would be no innocent beings in the path of the teleportation spell, and quite frankly he hadn’t had time to set a distinct re-entry point for the sex-toy. He had just wanted it out of Spine and Fluttershy before things got freakier than they already were.

If he were to guess, the damnable thing was probably somewhere on the moon right now if he was calculating the amount of power he’d thrown into the teleportation spell and the instinctive ‘jerk’ he’d applied to ‘remove’ the object from its nests.

One small leap for equines, one massively awkward question for all of equine-kind when some poor sap finally steps onto the moon and finds that thing just wedged into a pile of moon-rocks.

Looking down, Dusk was profoundly glad once again for wearing baggy pants as he caught sight of Fluttershy and Spine face-down on the floor with their trembling, fluid-stained hips in the air. Thankfully, the cascade of Fluttershy’s tail granted her some small token of dignity, but given the slow, lazy wag of both tails, the interaction of his magic on nerve-rich flesh had been … welcome.

Can I just leave, right now? Like, just walk out and hoof it back to Canterlot? I think I remember where Princess Celestia stashes her favourite brandies, and right now I could do with getting completely hammered without having to worry about getting jumped while my defences are down. The purple Magi groaned out loud and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, stepping back and away from the exhausted mare and drake, and from temptation. Whatever had happened here needed to be discussed rationally, intelligently and without screaming hissy-fits about what Spine might have done to their kinda-sorta-maybe-perhaps relationship with whatever sexual marathon she’d indulged in with Fluttershy. Of course, then I’d have to let the Princess know that Spine just had a Greed rampage that ended up with her stuck ass to ass with a literal pin-up of a Mare and me having to pry them apart at the fun bits. Faust knows what would be left of the town after that little discussion …

On second thought, he’d probably be better heading down to Zebrica and trying to disappear into the jungles rather than being anywhere near Ponyville if and when Princess Celestia heard about this …

Dusk’s musings were interrupted, again, when first his left leg, then his right, were grabbed, prompting the Magi into looked down, startled at the fierceness of the grip.

“Agaaaaaaaain…” two voices whispered up at him in tones that sent chills down his spine and whatever arousal he had been feeling before fading like snow under a blazing summer sun.

“Oh buck no!” Dusk managed to yelp before he was dragged to the ground, horn blazing with power.

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On the Moon

A silver-shod boot prodded the object that had so recently added a new crater to Their Domain, withdrawing quickly and with a soft ‘ew’ as strands of cloudy liquid clung to the offending object.

There were questions one did not wish to know the answers to.

“That said …” The being murmured, turning away from the offending object that perverted the purity of Their Domain, and turned large, green eyes with slitted pupils to the beautiful gem, that world of white, blue, green and more that had remained just out of reach for almost a thousand years … and the nearly invisible barrier that had kept Them trapped on the arid surface of Their Domain.

While the offending object had not broken the barrier, no mortal magic or object, no matter how bizarre and unnatural, could break Her magic, after all, but it had come from somewhere, and while the barrier might prevent Their magic from directly reaching down to the surface, it did not stop Them from tracing the likely trajectory …

“Hmmph. Close to the Castle then. A thousand years to rebuild and expand, and maybe to forget We existed? To defile our Domain with such a …” The being dragged it’s besmirched hoof across the lunar rocks and sighed as chalk-like dust was stuck to their hoof instead. “… We would give a Prince’s ransom for some water and soap right now.”

Sadly, despite their Divine status, no miraculous bucket of cleansing agents appeared to solve their ill, nor had any such wish been granted in the past thousand years.

And so they waited, one leg held out firmly from their body until the offending secretions dried, and waited with ill-concealed impatience for their long, unjust Exile to end.