Are they lies or is there truth? (fleshed out)
A sandstorm raged outside of the wooden tavern, bringing with it some much wanted and unwanted refugees through the glass doors. It was quite hard to see anything, hence why the owner painted several neon bands of paint to shine through the sand clouds as much as possible. In fact, the barkeep hid behind his counter when one of the ponies fleeing held the door open for everyone behind him to get in.
"Hey!" The barkeep waved a hoof at the good samaritan. "Maybe NEXT time think about all the work I have to do to clean this place when you keep the door open!" he complained.
"Up yours, stallion!" the refugee replied in kind. "Our skin was getting flayed."
"Then you should've opened the door every time a new pony arrived!"
"Bah!"
The barkeep bared his teeth at the newcomer stallion with an added scowl, but the hostilities didn't go any further. At least the gray stone floor wasn't cobbled. It would be easy later on to clean it with a broom, and it fit well with the wooden interior decorated with polished furniture made in the rustic, thin style reminiscent of old-west homesteads. Of course, wood never had a single, full color, so patches of dark and lighter browns would break through the bright tan shades and create an almost artistic expression from all the materials used. All, save for the bar counter. It was an almost black wood polished and waxed to the point of looking like a gem. It extended to accommodate about eight ponies at the bronze stools decorated by yellow cushions with blue stripes. Behind the barkeep were several empty alcohol bottles on display, each with their own shapes, colors, and intricately patterned stickers.
The bar was lit by a few chandeliers dangling above with glowing crystals placed in their six arms. The one closest to the entrance wobbled around from the wind and sand that had been let in. The barkeep himself stuck out like a sore thumb. His coat was a blinding white and his mane and tail a very pale blonde also bordering on white. His eyes, them, were pink, but the pupils were off. They were three lines: One horizontal, another going upwards diagonally from a little to the left of that line's end, and another following the pattern. They would have formed an equilateral triangle were they connected.
He was busy cleaning some dirty glasses and mugs and would place them underneath the counter for future use. He tossed a used cloth into a small box at his hooves then resumed cleaning using his fore hooves despite being a unicorn. It would be easy, certainly, but...
His thoughts were interrupted by another figure stepping in from outside the sandstorm. They were covered in a brown cloak torn at places due to the intensity of the sand. The rattling of the shutters was loud indeed, but their struggling against the wind and their locks were drowned out by the loud echoes of the newcomer's stomping. Every step louder and louder until they reached the bar and casually hoisted a leg over to take a seat.
They heaved a loud sigh of relief and pulled down the mask they had protecting their face. They slammed a metal cylinder in place of their right arm onto the counter and barked.
"A cider, barkeep," he ordered with a gruff voice.
The barkeep looked to the side, partially forgetting that he was said entity and questioning if he was the one being called. "Alright, sir."
The customer was passed a large mug filled with sparkling cider in it which he didn't hesitate to bring to his lips and make a long exhale after savoring the flavor.
"A good drink, this is. You've kept it at good temperature," he praised.
The barkeep grumbled. "I suppose so." He continued to frown, disregarding the sense of 'hospitality' one is supposed to give in restaurants and bars.
There was nothing remarkable to the newcomer aside from their bulky size twice that of a pony...or rather, a regular one. The barkeep internally raised a brow.
"A bigger customer means more drink to sell and more money to make, although..."
Their attention was diverted by a colorful changeling laughing after stepping in from an almost-separated section of the tavern. She stepped to the bar with a smile on her face.
"Can we have another bottle of cactus-kiwi rum? I love the sour taste it has," she stated with a smile and a drool.
"Sure," the barkeep answered flatly.
While he delved into several fridges beneath his counter, the changeling gradually met eyes with the newcomer. "Hello!" she said gleefully.
"Uh...hi..." He took a drink from his mug and awkwardly stared at the changeling.
She wasn't unaware of it and started to jitter uncomfortably on her chair. "C-can I help you with something?" she asked with cracking in her voice.
"Yes...what exactly are you? I've never seen your species before."
"I'm a changeling," she stated with a smile.
The newcomer choked on his drink and coughed multiple times. He punched his sternum with the side of his fist and took in several gasps of air. "What? But you look nothing like one!" He pounded his chest with an open hoof. " *I* know what changelings look like and how they behave, and you're not acting like one at all!" he bellowed.
"Sir, please calm down or I'll throw you out into the sandstorm," the barkeep threatened.
"You keep saying that but you never deliver!" a mare yelled from the background.
The barkeep responded by picking up a chair with his magic and chucking it at her. "You'll be paying for that as well if it's damaged!" he yelled.
"WHAT?!"
The newcomer continued. "What brood are you from?"
"Br-brood?" the changeling repeated. "King Thorax's."
"King?" The stallion drank some more and rolled his eyes. "Changelings don't have kings. They have queens!"
"Y-yes, but Chrysalis was chased off, and we chose Thorax af--"
"CHRYSALIS?!" he yelled louder. He grabbed the changeling's shoulders with his left foreleg. "Do you remember me? You have to if you're from her hive."
He looked at the mare with a desperate smile and gestured to his face, but his smile gradual faded away as the changeling just stared at him, squinting the whole time. The barkeep passed the bottle to the changeling, saw her off, and the mare said goodbye to both. The newcomer remained frozen in place for several seconds, then his arms dropped limply to his sides. He put an arm on the counter then dropped his head onto it and let his other arm fall atop that like some kind of sandwich. The impact caused the counter to shake, and the bottles and glasses would have fallen had the barkeep not caught them all with his magic.
"HEY!" he shouted. "Watch where you're dropping that rock." The client started to sniff loudly between his limbs, catching the barkeep off-guard. "What the hades. What's wrong with you now? You hurt your head?" the stallion mocked.
"They were MY changelings!" the client growled. "MINE!" he yelled even louder. He sat up and pounded his broad chest. " *I* was supposed to be taking care of them. Me! No one else! They were MY responsibility. MY friends! MY BROOD! They were MINE above all others!"
"That's why you need to yell so loud?" the barkeep complained. He slapped the customer with a dirty rag. "Shut up and drink."
The customer looked into their mug and grumbled. "Can I have some hard cider this time?"
The barkeep stared at him blankly. "Th-that was hard cider."
"Oh." He looked back into the cup. "What the hell does your NORMAL cider taste like? Water?"
The barkeep leaned against the counter and spoke in a calm-but-threatening tone. "Keep that up and maybe YOU'LL become the next drink." He pushed back then resumed his tasks.
"A great threat," the customer noted dismissively. There was a long moment of silence, allowing the storm to bash the walls and shutters with impunity. He was going to drag his right foreleg across his head but just ended up bonking himself on the head with it. "Ow! I keep forgetting I don't have my 'hand' anymore."
The barkeep raised his head and an eyebrow. "Hand? What hand?"
"Something I was given for what I did in the past."
"I see..."
"I was supposed to be a deep scout for..." He burped and shook his head. "Well, they don't exist anymore." A chuckle preceded the next bit of his tale. "And oh, was I so excited for it. I was born with a right arm." He shook the right foreleg to prove it. "So I had issues others didn't, so when I joined said group, they decided to give me this metallic arm. All modular and using the magic that flows in our bodies to work." He grinned. "You should've seen my parents when they saw me walking around with that. Ha."
"And? Why are you talking about your childhood?" the barkeep complained.
"Sorry. Got lost there." He readjusted himself. "Anyways, we were always sent outwards into the wild in hopes of coming into contact with civilizations we had never seen before. Something new, something old. Lost ones, new ones. Preferably still inhabited and not lost." He shook his mug for a refill then continued. "So there I am walking in this giant tundra. The sky is gray and the winds cutting through me like whips flaying my skin. Several mountain ranges both starting close and far away. The ground is uneven and multiple dead trees dangle precariously from the mountain edges and the sides of the basin I was walking in." He gulped loudly. "Then it happened. The ice plates was walking on ceded."
"I guess you should have seen that coming."
"I didn't. That's the funny thing. There were multiple layers of thick ice built atop each other, creating this irregular toy floor."
The barkeep scoffed at the story. "I suppose you fell in the water and almost drowned, then the changelings saved you and you became great friends."
"No." The barkeep's smile faded in response. "I fell through a weak section of the ground because it was the entrance to a tunnel dug through and underneath the basin. I recall tumbling and smacking my head and body multiple times through the dark tunnel before landing on hard permafrost below."
"You sure hit your head several times of you expect me to believe this tale."
"And uh..." The costumer frowned. "What's with your eyes?"
"I'm an albino. I had bad eyes. They were replaced. The end," he explained aggressively.
The customer shrugged. "Well, I found myself in the dark, and I couldn't see, so I couldn't find my pack that had flown off somewhere. That's when I saw them. Glowing eyes and teeth dripping with venom gleaming in the dark." He lifted up his metal arm and tapped it with the other foreleg. "That's when I used the more 'dangerous' function this thing had and kept it spinning, so to speak." He chuckled. "The tunnels illuminated immediately, and I saw hundreds of these little black things clinging to the walls and hypnotized by my arm."
"They were attracted to loud noises and spinning things?" the barkeep questioned.
The other stallion shrugged. "I suppose so. That's when I started moving my arm around to see how they responded. They eventually started to back away, letting me walk around the hive so long as my arm spun around, but the green glow coming from their horns showed me in what state these creatures were: Disheveled, malnourished, parched, sick, living in filthy conditions." His head shook. "They were never going to survive if they stayed in the tundra."
"So as the good samaritan you are you took them in," the barkeep mocked.
"No."
The white pony rolled his eyes. "Of course 'no'. Why would it be 'yes'?" he complained under his breath.
"I traveled through the tunnels, trying to talk with some of them, but every time I approached, they'd flee further in the tunnel, and so I kept traveling, and then I found the hatchery. Smelled rancid and sour, I have to say," he joked. "But I saw the queen there. Chrysalis."
"YOU saw Queen Chrysalis and she DIDN'T try to trap you?"
The storyteller shook his head. "She was just as frail as the others, and the hatchery was only a few white eggs and lots of that gross, mucusy crap dripping all over the walls." He scratched his chin. "She was quite small, too. So cute, with her giant eyes and tiny head." The stallion squee'd. "She was reluctant at first and very aggressive, but after showing her my arm as well, she started to calm down."
"Your story doesn't seem very likely. Maybe you had enough hard cider."
The storyteller scoffed. "I don't think water makes you drunk." He took another drink, smacked his lips, then continued. "I tried talking with her, but she only hissed in response. The other changelings imitated her, but some were parroting the sounds I was making. After a few or so, I'm not sure." He waved an arm in the air. "I couldn't tell. I got out with their help and went back to the people I worked for. It was my first civilization discovered, and I was responsible for them." He smiled widely. "I was responsible. They were mine. I rushed back to that nest as fast as I could and shared my books with Chrysalis." He looked at the barkeeper and shook his head. "She and the other changelings had no idea what they were. Some tried to eat them, but couldn't get through the hard covers. So I spent my days there teaching them how to talk and using the pictures in the books."
The barkeeper looked into a glass then placed it under the counter while he talked. "I suppose you felt weakened every time you got there?"
"Y-yeah. I didn't know how they fed yet, but they were very...affectionate," he trailed off. "They gradually started to fly around me and resume their activities around the hive. Many even liked to stay around me. They'd jitter like crickets and cicadas, but since I didn't understand their way of talking, it was hard to understand what they wanted." He sighed in his reminiscing. "Little tiny things coming to me to learn, and I learned about them in return."
"And what did you learn? That they were extremely aggressive beasts?"
"I learned that they were actually very kind creatures, but I still couldn't help feed them. A few months later, Chrysalis started speaking to me, but with a broken vocabulary. She taught me that they fed on love, so I shrugged and watched how they fed." He breathed through clenched teeth. "Very aggressive. She even showed me, and I recall shaking my head in disappointment. She was angry, but I showed her the best way to get that without hurting anyone."
"And that would be?"
"Compassion and gentle approaches. It took...quite a while because they would constantly attack each other to capture them. It was..." He frowned. "Frustrating."
"I can imagine. Training bugs is hard," the barkeep mocked.
"Yes. I had to intervene often, and I sometimes got caught in their fighting." The story teller exhaled. "It wasn't fun to get caught in a fight between vicious creatures."
The barkeep scoffed at the idea and grabbed another two bits from the storyteller to pass him another large mug of cider. "That's when Chrysalis would intervene, grab them, then bash their heads together as if this were some kind of cartoon." He laughed wholeheartedly. "You should've seen her when she got angry." He pretended to be angry and 'quietly' yelled, imitating her. "So enraged! The changelings would, quite literally, turn into tiny versions of themselves and skitter away."
The barkeep was starting to get more annoyed than his 'default form' would imply, but there couldn't be more to the story. With a heavy heave of an internal sigh, he continued the conversation. "And then what? If they really were that adamant about learning to better feed themselves from you, there must've been a positive outcome."
The storyteller chuckled. "Well, they became genuinely kind and surprisingly compassionate," he bobbed his head to the side. "After several months of training." He shrugged and continued. "Although they did retain their more violent nature against intruders." He put his left hoof to the side of his face and whispered. "Some became a little pudgy, too," he snickered.
"Hm. Apart from the last bit, that sounds a lot like the reformed changelings." The barkeep refilled the glass of another customer, dragged the bit in, and started checking his inventory. "Where the hades is the cherry-mint gin?" he mumbled angrily to himself.
The storyteller, on the other hand, waved his right appendage. "I wouldn't know about them. I didn't even know they still existed. I thought they were all...killed...after Canterlot," he stated with a heavy heart. "I've just been in contact with other broods...or I've been trying to." He scratched his chin and hummed. "But...they did change. Gradually, over time, they started to become distant...and I don't know why. They were reverting to their old ways and hiding in the dark. I recall entering their tunnel one day and being greeted with the same hospitality as when I first fell in there."
Guys? What's wrong? Why are you being this way? "I asked them." Don't you remember me? It's me! The one who has been helping you live better. We've been sharing stories! "When they didn't answer, I tried to use my arm here again." Remember this? "I struggled to use my arm, and the barrels wouldn't spin." He rubbed his left arm, regret plastered over his face. "They just...stayed there. Unmoving."
"And then they killed you."
The storyteller looked up at his patron staring at him with a smirk on his face. "I'd slapped you if I could reach you."
The barkeep scoffed at the notion. "I find this all hard to believe, but that's why you were crying?"
"Actually..." the storyteller fiddled with his glass and looked back to the violent dust storm outside. "There's more to the story. When the people I worked for learned about my troubles, they started to create task groups to search for and interact with the changelings they could find."
"This 'group' of yours seems awfully suspicious and potentially dangerous." The barkeep snorted. "Perhaps you should explain who and what they are."
The storyteller shook his head. "No."
"A lot of 'no' with you."
"Would you rather I be verbose and create ten paragraphs worth of me just saying 'no'?" the storyteller asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Fine," the barkeep agreed reluctantly. He opened a bottle, sniffed it, then pulled back immediately. "Rancid. Time to throw these ones out and order new bottles."
The storyteller had a hiccup-burp before resuming his tale. "Should maybe stop drinking this...So as I was saying, I and a few others, namely one of my superiors, popped up in the tundra one day to see that this strange, blue light was surrounding the entrance to the hole I had made, and because I had so many issues lately, they thought best to...well..." His metal limb strained the wooden counter. "She sent two other teams of two elsewhere, then she went to me and split me apart. I don't remember the names, but the one person she was going to send in my stead..."
"What?! They're MY changelings. Let ME take care of them. I know them best!" I yelled at the commander.
"No excuse. You've not managed to reel them in, and now they refuse to even talk to you. They're a potential threat, so I'm sending a fresh face to make potential progress," she told me.
"When I turned around, I saw the other guy hopping towards the hole and yelled 'Oh no you don't!' and rushed towards the hole. I yelled that they were my changelings and it became a race, but he reached it first and phased through the barrier...but I didn't. I pounded and pounded on that icy barrier." He mimed the action with his left arm. "Over and over again!" " 'Why won't you let me in?!' I cried out. 'It's me! I'm your friend! You've always known me!' I continued." He scoffed. "Eventually I was detained, scolded, and pulled away from them, and yet I still struggled."
The barkeep stared blankly at his customer. "I know this story," he spoke dismissively. "They ended up liking him...or her, you didn't say--"
"Him," the storyteller interjected.
"Whatever, I don't care," the barkeep waved the notion off dismissively. "So you ended up hating them because they got along with the changelings and now you--"
"Not at all. He vanished."
The barkeep blinked several times. "What."
"He vanished. Just...'Poof'." he spread his forelegs apart. "And then the others followed soon afterwards. Every. Single. Person they--"
"Pony."
The storyteller gave pause and stared right in the barkeep's strange eyes when he resumed. "Person." He grunted at the barkeep and rotated his chair. "By that time I was already gone from their group, so I don't know what happened then, but a few years later, and they attack Canterlot. That's when lost of mysterious attacks were resolved almost instantly." He scratched his chin, entering deep thought while he did that, then looked at his right arm. "I learned later on that the person responsible for working on my arm had sabotaged it, hence why I could spin the barrels anymore." He frowned. "I still don't know why they wanted me to stay away from the changelings so much..."
The albino looked to the side silently, then back to the storyteller. "So...if this were true, what is supposed to have caused them to get back to their old ways but exclude you from the 'disappearances'?" The barkeep asked. The storyteller shrugged and looked outside the door. "I'm also curious about something you didn't answer earlier: What 'other' broods? Chrysalis' was the only one, and we developed ways to detect them a mile away. How could these ones have slipped past the net?"
The storyteller sighed and dropped his head onto his clenched 'hoof'. "I don't know, but I know they're out there. Chrysalis told me that there were probably other changelings, and they were all identified by their colors."
"Colors?" the barkeep repeated.
The storyteller nodded. "Chrysalis' brood was predominately blue or shades of blue-green. I never paid attention to it until she pointed it out. I thought that was how all changelings were." He took another sip of cider and savored the taste a while.
"Yet you said you don't know where they are. How would she not?"
"Would you know where exactly there are other ponies in the world had we no way of communicating with them?" the storyteller asked.
The barkeep thought a moment on it then conceded. "A fair point, although this makes one think whether or not these 'broods' were just her throwing out theories with you since you were there."
The storyteller ground his teeth against each other, creating a painful screeching noise. "I won't let them take them from me this time. They're MY changelings, and I WON'T lose another brood! I won't lose my friends again." He slammed his arm on the table several times. "Never again."
The albino leaned against his counter in response. "But would you manage to replicate the same effect as you did with Chrysalis'?" He shrugged. "What if they're much more aggressive?"
There was a long moment of silence, and the storyteller opened his mouth to say something until a color blinded him momentarily. He pointed outside and yelled. "It's the red brood! I saw one! I saw it!"
"Are you crazy?! That's the light making the orange of the sand look red. Nothing can survive out there unprotected. This isn't basic sa--"
The storyteller ignored the barkeeper and dashed off the chair and outside, gradually disappearing into the vicious storm. The albino and the clients were left dumbfounded at the event, and the barkeep was left with two questions: Were his stories true, or was he just crazy?
