Bubbles, how do bubbles get in there? I see them often, but there's no leak for air to get in.
These are the things I contemplate during my time now that I've been sent to affection collection duty. I tripped and spilled some royal jelly from a hatchling queen's meal and suddenly I'm a monster among my kind; we're not exactly beings of light, lings. But try to get anyling to listen to me is pointless now; I'll be doing this until the day I die, then I'll be packed into a wall to add to the structural integrity of the hive's walls.
The day is long off, and I'll do my duty the whole time I'm here, as a good changeling does; but that doesn't mean I can't have some fun. I now have access to the spell that lets me see into the dreams of our hosts, those that don't know we live in their land and feed off of them through their entire lives. A shiver between the glands in my thorax make me chitter without noticing it's coming.
My hemothorax nodes tremble in embarrassment and if anyling was nearby they'd smell the pheromones I'd just released marking me as a fool that can't control my impulses. It's fine when any other ling goes feral with hunger, but release some pheromones and suddenly you're outcast, more than usual.
A sigh leaves my mouth and I walk to the restricted pods to see how the big ones are doing. The path is rough along the floors and walls, but the ceiling is usually clear along the other rooms so I take that route and drop when I get to the hive pathway. “Locked,” I say softly and remember that I have to unlock it with a spell, an easy one, but still difficult because most lings aren't in the habit of learning spells anymore.
Combat hasn't been needed for almost three hundred years, not since our Great Empress took the last pockets of rebellion into our hives. “May Chrysalis live forever and conquer the stars.”
A prayer we all say when we think of or speak of her in title or name. It's an honor to be a ling in this day and age; we want for nothing and want nothing as well. We're good drones for the One Hive and... “May the Hive cover all worlds as it did the first, under our Great Empress, may Chrysalis live forever and conquer the stars.”
I walk through the hole that opened, just large enough for one drone to get through before it closes and locks for security, only the empress can access it freely. I feel a tremble inside me and something presses inside my head as I fight the urge to say the prayer. Why do I have the choice now? What's that I feel when I walk in here?
I exhale a breath of warm air and feel grass under my hooves while a wind blows through my mane sending it into my face, but I don't care because it's nice here. I look around and see the cocoon pods holding the five eternal providers and move to the largest one. A white pony as large as the empress twitches in her dream and I light my horn, touch it to the pod, and fall into her world.
“Princess Sunset Shimmer, I present you to the land of Equestria as it's newest member and may you lead the ponies to the future you were meant to be as the Princess of Inspiration. I've never been prouder of one of my students.”
I watch from her eyes and listen to her thoughts while the day passes by agonizingly slow. Food tastes great when ponies eat, but when I'd tried to eat grass like the ponies in the pens do and it was terrible. Ponies eat differently than lings, though. Same for the other races of the first world, I suppose.
“Who's there?” Celestia asks and I recall the names of all the five princesses, and that I'm not guarding my mind well enough so she may be able to hear my thoughts. “I will not be upset, just come out and we can talk about this problem of yours.”
Problem? I don't have problems, the Empress provides for us all and-
“Empress? Ah, I remember now,” she nods and memories flood her mind faster than I can handle and I'm pushed from her mind falling onto my haunches. I rub my head as images of Chrysalis flitter through my mind.
Her first appearance at the royal wedding and her victory, the escape of Luna and the rebellion she and Celestia led that was doomed to lose with thousands of us to each pony. She, Celestia, was able to last so long as a leader because... Gah, I can't remember.
I move to the next dark pony and touch my glowing horn to the pod, the feeling of fear fills me as I enter her mind and her vision becomes mine.
“-cannot win, sister. They fight with the tenacity of a beehive defending its queen! All will be lost in short time, we have to release Discord and bind him to our will, as I suggested when last we fought.”
I watched as Celestia, dirty and smelling of unwashed business stood at a cave entrance and watched as the sky seemed to move in the daylight. She wouldn't talk, answer our demands, or take them to heart. The thought of becoming Nightmare Moon again became strong as we spoke to our sister.
“Tia, you must listen. If you refuse to waken Discord, which I now realize is near impossible because he is in the gardens surrounded by the new royal hive,” I felt myself foolish for not thinking of such a thing; a fool would look down upon me had I continued on such thoughts aloud. “We should take the remaining creatures of our world and flee. We have at least four worlds to go to and-”
I stopped speaking when she looked askance at me with the fury I'd seen hundreds of times recently. Her horn lit and she turned her eyes outward again. “Sister, what are you doing? There is no spell to defeat the entire changeling army, or is there?” We looked at her and then followed her gaze. Our heart felt as though it fell out of our body and to our hooves.
A shield surrounded the entrance to the cave system but heat still poured in from cracks, fissures, other entrances and exits. We watched as she drew the sun itself closer to the surface, the changelings in the sky fell, dead and streaming smoke as they fell. I lit my horn, cast a half dozen spells at once that I'd been prepared to cast for other reasons and activated all the wards around the entrances sealed them from the outside.
We couldn't tell if it helped, but a quiet prayer to anything that would listen was enough.
“Tia, you cannot do this,” I said calmly as I walked to her, “it is a fools errand to attempt what you're doing. Please,” I moved my hoof to her and touched her withers; she was freezing and trembling like it was hours in a blizzard. I moved around her and looked at her face, tears streamed from her eyes, vaporizing when they moved an inch down her cheeks.
Her teeth bared like a beast while she breathed calmly; I'd never seen her this way. This was no longer the mare I knew as a ruler of a realm, this was a broken goddess unleashing her wrath upon her enemies. I moved beside her and sat, using both my forehooves to gently touch her face. “Celestia, do you remember when we were foals?
“You were actually an adult when I was a foal, but semantics,” I chuckled in a very unregal way, adding a snort like I used to do, “my mother was walking with me through a market when you ran by us chasing that thief. A catman, I think it was, not as though it matters. Do you remember what you shouted?
“I do, you shouted that if he didn't stop you'd stuff him full of his own litter,” I snerked and laughed at the imagery flashing through my mind, “you were a unicorn then, and when he stumbled you cast a spell that ensnared him,” I laughed loudly as the memory became a reality in my mind, “and he meowed, fell into a pickle barrel that tipped and spilled him out with a grand cucumber indeed stuck in his maw,” I felt tears rolling down my cheeks and my forelegs.
I looked at Celestia again, her pink eyes were looking at me with a slight smile on her muzzle. “Her name was Fluffers,” Tia said and I burst into laughter so hard I fell over and mirth flooded my entire being. I kicked and rolled side to side laughing at everything, but also laughing for all the times I couldn't since I was being a leader.
Those times are over now, I realized that mere moments ago. The brightness peering through my eyelids fades and I feel my sister lay her head on my neck and only then do I realize I've started crying. Crying for everything I've ever done wrong by any extension of the word. The whole of my life I've handled things poorly, and now, at the winter of my life, as the sun sets, do I truly realize how far I'd fallen without any reason to do so.
We turn and hold each other tightly and cry as ponies start to scream in terror. They don't know where we are, but the wards prevent them from escaping in the same way it stops the changelings from coming in. In my haste to protect the ponies I cast wards to hide them if changelings found them, little did I think ahead to the fact that changelings tunnel.
They saw the one place the fire didn't touch, my sister's golden shield that kept us safe shone like a sun unto itself while washing the fires of the star away. The few that didn't burn to death were quick to go underground and spread word of where we were. The ground rumbled below us as the memory faded and I left the mare to her fate.
I know its not normal for my kind, so I turned into a pony alike one I'd seen in another pod just so I could cry.
I held my hooves to the translucent chitin and nuzzled the surface. “I'm sorry,” I whispered and kissed the barrier. I turned away from it and across was one that was darker, kept in a shadowed alcove unlike the others in here.
The purple one, Twilight was actually set the highest and under the most lighting we could make ourselves. This one, she's the one that barely lives as only a trophy to what She is capable of. Her deception, lies, trickery and planning led her right to the victory she'd always wanted.
I move closer to the pod and the pheromones scream danger when I get close enough. I stumble back and realize that there's a reason she's in shadows; most of her body is damaged, but her head... Empress, her head. How can anything live through that much damage? I watch her for a moment and she twitches like the others, only this makes her move unnaturally. She sways and her twitches make her look like she's aware, then her eye opens and focuses on me.
We stare at one another for maybe a minute... then her mouth opens, and keeps opening until it unhinges, if it ever was, and the silent scream she makes my spiracle tremble, my breath leaves me in a squeak, then I turn over to my hooves and run to the purple princess and touch my horn to her pod, escaping the horror of what I'd just seen in her mind.
“She's evil,” I shout proudly and with utmost confidence I strut into the room and up to my brother and the hussy he's marrying. I know she's just after his title and probably won't even be faithful for a week before stallions are cycling through her room. Then she'll be pregnant with some stallion's foal, but it won't be my brother's.
She'll take him for a ride with a gilded bridle across the nation and then he'll have an accident, he'll be hurt really bad and she'll play the part of a grieving wife until she has to get back to being some pampered princess and she'll leave him broken in both body and mind, alone in some place where we won't know until he's gone crazy from isolation!
We'll take him home and have to nurse him back to health, only for him to-
I stop my triumphant gloating when she starts crying, the next few seconds fly by in which the ponies and Princess Celestia leave me alone in the reception hall. I lay, crying on the stairs when Cadence returns. I apologize with all the passion I can in my heart to her, and then I'm frozen in shock. The memory is moving too fast, why is it so fast?
Ah, the one time queen is teasing me, making me blast crystals in futile attempts to destroy a reflection. How simple can this pony be? Ah, the last crystal has been destroyed and now... I feel her remembering this, rather than living through it. How odd.
“Twilight, it's me, Cadence, the real-”
I stumbled back from the pod and looked at the purple alicorn with shock and disgust. My mind will be haunted by what I saw her do to what she thought was the changeling queen, the singular blast that was strong enough to destroy tore through the pink princess and at that moment, Twilight's mind broke.
There was more, so much more happening in her mind while she was remembering that event, but it was weird. I look around at the ponies in pods and wonder what horrors were spared more than caused by these ponies being sealed in pods.
I turn back to Twilight and cast my spell again, pressing my horn to the surface and I touch her mind. This time everything seems to be normal, normal enough anyway. For a pony's life, that is. I'm standing back, watching inside Twilight's mind while all her life up to the wedding speeds past, then it slows and the moment before she attacks Cadence everything stops and then everything changes.
She doesn't attack out of rage, she listens and waits a few seconds before the pink alicorn does a silly dance and Twilight joins in at the end. After that the world progresses at a normal pace and I lose myself in the adventures this unicorn goes through for the next two years. Mere minutes pass by in the real world, I know all too well, but this world, this fantasy she's made is remarkable.
Twilight's created an entire reality to cover the murder she-
Everything shakes and the Twilight I was looking through steps away from me, turns and glares at me. “Who are you? Why are you in my mind? What lies are you trying to make me believe?”
I look down and see my black chitin. She can see me? “I... am a guard, I am here because I was curious about what you and the other eternal providers truly were.”
“What lies are you spitting at me, changeling? I'm not going to fall for your tricks, how many of you are there?”
“Your highness,” I fell to my belly and prostrated myself, “please don't harm me, I was only curious. Your power is feared by all my kind and I was simply curious as to what you were truly like. Please, let me live so I may return to my hive and tell them of your greatness!”
She looked at me and stood tall, watching me for several seconds before sighing. “You're not here to cause trouble?”
“No, your majesty. I am here to observe only, for my own curiosity. I have no need for anything as I want nothing and have no needs that cannot be met by my Empress,” I spit the word out and surprised myself as well as Twilight. “I.. I apologize! I love my hive and the All Mother, please, don't smite me.”
A giggle tickled my ears and I looked up, Twilight was grinning with a hoof over her mouth. “Smite you? You have some weird stories about me, I guess. Please, call me Twilight; I don't really like being called Princess. And you're not in danger as long as you don't cause any trouble. I was actually on my way to-”
“Meet Pinkie Pie and have a cupcake or three while talking about the twins?”
She nodded and rolled her eyes. “You've been following me for a while, haven't you?”
I stand and shrug. “It's what my kind do, Your High... T-twilight?”
She nods. “That's better. So, would you like to come along?”
I shake my head and back away. “I must return to my hive before they notice I'm missing, but perhaps someday I will join you.”
“I'd like that. Do you have a name? Or do changelings not have names?”
“Oh, my name is Thorax, but please don't tell anyling I've been here, alright?”
She smiled and looked at the sky. “Thorax, that's a nice name. Maybe you'd like to meet Spike?”
She turned to look at me but I had changed into a small rock and then pulled myself from the memories. That mare is insane! And that doesn't explain how she became an alicorn while in a pod, do we have to worry about other ponies ascending at random?
I moved down the steps and to the last pod, the first I'd passed, and at the blue colt inside. He was an alicorn as well, so I touch my mind to his; it's short. He's inutero, then born, then fed warm milk that's sweet and smells of mommy, purple is the first color I can see, then I'm in the pod as it fills, screaming and crying for mommy, but she doesn't come. Only shadows move around my poor sight. I'm hungry and scared, but I don't want to eat this stuff, it's not sweet and it doesn't smell like mommy.
It's green, it hurts to breathe. Everything is dark now, I'm alone and sleepy. Maybe if I sleep I'll wake up and mommy with be there for me with sweet milk and happy smells. Just, a little-
I open my eyes. I'm still a pony, but my face is wet and matted. I've cried I don't know how many rations of water for what reason?
Why did I come here? What do I have to gain from seeing the lives of these mares and how they'll never be freed, how they're bred and only allowed enough extra gel to foal and feed their bastard children. Disgusting creatures with their skeletons inside their bodies, their procreation at will. Their food, their love, their culture and society.
“We destroyed all of it,” I said in a deep male voice that reverberated through the chamber. For such a large chamber there didn't seem to be much else in here. The higher pedestal Twilight's pod rested upon, the stairs leading up to it, the princesses holding court while I watched from the sidelines, proud to be Celestia's pupil and honored to be by my sister's side after so many years alone.
Finally, to split ruling the nation and to make amends for what I'd done so long ago that it became legend. A nightmare come to life...
I realized I'd been turning in slow circles as memories of the room and its history flittered around in my mind from all the minds I've touched. I stopped when I saw a tall changeling standing at the entrance to the room, I wasn't in here long enough for the security to reset, have I been? I fall to my elbows when I think of who it is that's coming up to me.
“Thorax, that is your name, right?”
“Yes, Exalted One. All Mother and Empress of the hive worlds, may you-”
“Silence!”
Her voice sends every part of my body trembling, she can squish me and never think of me again. I like being alive, it's something I'm good at.
“Do you know why you came into this room, youngling? At such a young age, to be placed in such a position of power and to have access to such highly regarded secrets?”
“No, All Mother, Empress of the hive worlds and-”
She stomps over to me and I feel her presence as she just exists near my worthless shell. “Do not speak of me in that manner when we're in this room, do you understand me?” I nod while grinding my muzzle into the ground so hard I can feel it inside my body. “Stand, and come with me.”
I follow her orders and follow her to the pods. “What do you see when you look at these ponies, Thorax?”
“Uhm, food?” The glare she snaps at me takes years off my life, I just know it. “I, I mean...” I sigh, “I see beauty that noling alive knows. I see the past and what happened to them, to their world, and what led to our empire,” I started to say the mantra but stopped, even before she gave me the look that would burn entire worlds.
She stood for minutes that turned into hours, and while I wasn't one to get tired, I was growing hungry. One does not feed in front of or before the Empress herself, so I waited. The gravity changed, the temperature shifted, and finally on the second afternoon she turned to look down at me. “You are the one, Thorax. You can fix all I've broken, the lives I've taken and the worlds I've laid siege to.
“Take the foal from his pod and stand by me, beside Twilight.”
One does not hesitate when the Empress gives an order, so I promptly moved to the pod and scratched the underside, spilling the sweet and succulent goo across the floor along with the colt. He has a black mane, it's very fetching on him. I carry him to my Empress and she lights her horn; a second later we're outside the hive. I didn't know there was an outside so close, but thinking about the layout of the throne room turned changeling deli, it makes sense.
“Empress?”
“I will give you this memory orb, a technology from a world I infested ages before you think time as you know it came to be, and you will use it when you cross the threshold and arrive on the other side. You will be the changeling I realize we all should be, and the prophesy shall be complete,” she looked at the sky. My eyes followed hers to the purple swirling miasma, I didn't see what she must have seen because she smiled and I didn't. “Remember,” she said baring her teeth, but it wasn't to eat me and that was odd, “friendship is magic.”
