The Changeling King's Consort

Dawn came over the bleak landscape after a long and cold night, scarcely illuminating the world of dust and dreary barren wastes below it. The land was mostly flat, with a small rock poking up here or a blade or two of dull-green grass there. It was a world of endless nothing, yet one object of interest did dwell here, hidden away as it seemed, as it had for countless millennia. What overlooked this land, like a single monstrous mountain of darkness amidst a submissive desert, was a great tower of black rock.

Within that dust, upon that barren ground and in front of that obsidian tower, a lone figure of white fur and blue mane stood. Clad in master-forged royal armor colored a regal purple, and wielding her gilded warhammer, was one Magna Bellatrix.

Long had she, a unicorn of Equestria, journeyed over harshest terrain, chasing after the visions in her dreams first felt in her home, so far away and comfortable in comparison to this foreign place. And now, here she was. The thing in her dreams that she saw most frequently -- a titanic citadel of black rock, sticking out like a sore hoof from this land of bleakest brown and grey.

Magna poked back the top of her crested helm a tad to get a better look at the thing where it rose to. It stretched higher than the living cloud of the dust storm that enshrouded it, but faintly the beginnings of a jagged peak could be witnessed. Meanwhile, at its base, but a single, tall opening was visible. A sinister cold breathed out from the entrance, as though inviting outsiders in, if solely to seal their doom.

Indeed, this place looked wicked, terrible, and the appropriate vibe it gave off was one Magna Bellatrix had never before felt. It was fitting that she entered it immediately, giddy at the prospect of what might lay within. At once she was greeted by a long, tall and lightless passage, and without fail she strode down it.

The passage went on forever, or so it seemed. Minutes passed. And then more. And more. Slowly, Magna grew more used to the off feeling abound in this place, and her steadying nerves brought about simple, agonizing boredom. She tried to sate it by looking to the smooth walls on either side of her, or else looking up at the stalactites pointing downward from the ceiling high above.

Finally, the end of the corridor came into sight. At once Magna broke into a trot, coming to a large, open chamber now. almost as a throne might be, its foundations and twisted by a very non-pony design.

And there, far in the back and atop that twisted throne, sat a lone figure. It was clearly not something that she was merely mistaking for being a living thing, it was too... pony-shaped. Pony-shaped, and, much like her as a unicorn, had what seemed to be a horn -- a long, crooked horn -- pointing up from its head.

"Hello?" Magna called out to it first in her rasping voice, hoping to receive and answer before attempting anything rash. The silhouette did not answer, but it clearly stood up from its throne. Then it began moving down its throne's steps and onto the floor, in the direction of Magna.

The being steadily showed itself the further along it came. Its eyes were the first things that became clear. The eyes themselves, situated with their dark sockets, were like two orbs aglow with a fell green color. The arcane energies they gave off were something dark, something unnatural...

To go against those fell eyes, the creature's flesh, his flesh, was purely ebon in its texture. What little light there was in this room showed off of it in a vivid sheen. Magna's eyes squinted. Upon a closer examination, that flesh of his was... chitinous. Black and chitinous and reflective all the same. He wore no armor, save that exoskeletal skin, and a set of transparent wings that rested on his shelled back. His face, dwelling beneath his gnarled horn and amidst a webbed mane of sorts, resembled that of a pony's, in spite of being a chitin-covered thing. And yet, in its own way, it was somehow a shapely visage. It was... almost ethereal in its queer beauty.

This was no pony. That fact, and the others, only fueled Magna's thirst to know just what manner of being this was. "Who are you?" she questioned first because of it, naturally.

"The king of this place, and sole ruler of this land you have waded through," he replied, after only a few more quiet seconds of sauntering closer to his visitor. His tone was a deep, smooth, otherworldly thing; it felt like a cold yet gentle hooftip, carefully stroking over her ears and her soul in equal measure. "I have waited a long time to meet you, Magna Bellatrix."

Magna blinked. "You know who I am?:

"I know all about you, my dear," he softly said.

Magna only huffed. "I... see my reputation precedes me."

This apparent "king" let his lips pull back, revealing a smile of white fangs. "Indeed it does. You have much to be proud of, given your many feats of valor and might."

He continued pacing toward her. Magna kept her eyes trained on him as he moved and prattled on, realizing while doing so that his was a figure that stood a few proud feet taller than her. "You have won countless battles and many wars for your dear princess and fellow ponies. You have beaten down fearsome and horrifying beasts that have brought low so many others on their own. They say a thousand princes, kings and lords from over a hundred lands have asked for your hoof in marriage, but you cast down them all without batting an eyelash."

"Okay, on that last one, there were only fifty-two," corrected Magna, smirking. The creature merely snickered back.

"Then make it fifty-three, my pretty gem." The dark king raised a chitinous, hole-filled foreleg, the motion reminiscent of a kindly beckoning gesture before a ballroom dance betwixt two participants. "Your hoof coming with mine is the chiefest reason why I guided you here, into my humble home and before me."

Only just managing to hold herself back from puffing out a hearty snigger, Magna nearly laughed at those words. "You? I think not; on your paltry offer, and on that claim."

"Oh, but I assure you, it was indeed I who did so. You were so far away once, and now you're right here, all according to my design."

"No," denied Magna again, now grimacing. "I came here because of the visions that came to me in my dreams. My own princess told me they were sent from the Goddess-"

"They were from me, I'm afraid to say," sighed the creature. As much as she disliked to admit it, Magna could detect no trace of untruth in his voice. Or in what words that followed. "A long, grand journey was what you were shown. A dead land, a tall and strange structure at its end... I alone promised you these sights, and many others, and they all came to pass. Well... all but one."

"And that one would be...?"

"Something that will at last sate the fantastic desire that as of now eternally gnaws at your very essence." His brow fell and his posture rose haughtily. "I will take you on as my mate, and you will take me on as yours. You will become my queen and consort, and as such, you will find that what pleasures I shall share will satisfy you forevermore. That is the destiny fate holds for both of us, and one I have been patiently waiting to fulfill for many eons."

The warrior mare's helmed head tilted. "Are you... are you real?"

He nodded. "Very much so, as you can see."

Magna sneered and hoisted her hammer into a better part of her grasp. "Yes, 'very much so' now. But for much longer? Hmm..." Her head shook and her cheeks puffed out. "Not so much, I'm afraid."

The "king" only hummed and smiled. His gnarled horn glowed green for a brief instant, and his form dissipated. With that and the image of kicked-up dust settling where he was just standing, he was gone.

Magna's head reeled back. Blinking thrice, her eyes moved rapidly about, searching for the creature wherever he had vanished to, until an almost instinctive chill crawled up her spine. Yes, Magna felt his presence looming behind her now. The idea of allowing him to simply strut up to her and land the first blow of this bout provoked her to act first.

In response to this pitiful 'king's' attempt to strike at her with so cheap a tactic, she started to spin about with the intent to deliver a heavy blow against him with her mighty hammer, and do so with a smile on her face. That image, though, of her surefire victory in one broad stroke, was cut short. She felt something, a sudden flash of pain, a vivid sting, come about from her neck.

"Ack!" Magna hissed, forgetting her attack in that instant and opting instead to jump back and away. He view spun immediately to the shadowy entity. He was standing right there where the unicorn had leapt away from, and he was looking at her through the webbed mane that had been, if for a brief moment, swept over the fore of his face with his preternaturally swift bout of movement. Shimmering through those many strands while they fall back into place around his neck, his eyes were cracked to simple lids, the green glow filling them now more sinister than ever.

Magna lifted her free forehoof to feel her neck, and the most her touch could detect with the limited feeling it possessed was a slight pain still lingering there. "What... what was that?" she demanded to know, moving the hoof from her surely minuscule injury and stomping it to the floor of this cavern.

The creature replied by opening his abyssal maw, showing that a pair of extremities that had distended from its roof. They were... they were fangs, crooked and long, a clear substance dripping at their sharp tips.

"Venom, of my own design," he almost casually revealed, retracting the appendages and closing his mouth to an easy, sharp and pearly-toothed smile. "A simple little injection, my future consort. A meager dosage it might have been, but I assure you, it will be more than enough to fulfill its intended purpose."

A realization dawning over her the moment she heard him utter the v-word, the stubborn, weary mare's brow crinkled with a budding fury. "And what, pray tell, would that purpose be?"

"Many things, my dear. One such example is that it will aid in fulfilling your dearest wish..."

Magna would have none of that. She bellowed, she charged, and she lunged. The being had swiftly sidestepped her, fluently moving away like the jagged shadow he resembled by the time her hammer came crashing down, breaking through black stone and leaving a great crater.

"But first," the creature again spoke up, "it ensures that your reaction time will become exceedingly... slowed."

White-hot anger had consumed the mare now, and scarcely had Magna heeded her more common senses when it was unleashed. "Damn you!" she screamed, the warhammer flying out of her hooves as she sent it at him like a comet of gilded metal. With a touch of magic from her horn to bear it, this sort of attack she learned had been known to barrel through and crush whole regiments of enemy soldiers or outright kill towering monsters when aimed at their ugly heads, as she now aimed at for this fiend. However, the one flaw that could screw up this attack presented itself; the halo of purple magics that guided the weapon suddenly dissipated. It flew away on its own, smashing to the ground a clear several feet from its intended target.

Magna blinked her blue eyes in disbelief, and the moment they reopened, the figure was standing not two feet in front of her. Without even taking the second to see what smug expression he was now wearing, she reacted accordingly.

Magna took a powerful swipe at entity, her punches well known for how many jaws of her past challengers that had been broken by their lightning-fast impacts. It missed by a mile. Undeterred and more enraged than ever, she sent another hoof his way, but this one he caught in his own.

Unable to wrench it free, Magna looked up at her hated foe with eyes begat by a blurring sight, a numb feeling overpowering every one of her other senses. He was looking down at her, grinning in turn. Biting her lip and grunting, she tried pulling her hoof out of his grip, and only after he let go of it of his own free will did it return to her side.

The spot on the side of her neck where this being's cruel fangs had penetrated into her flesh still stung, but the agony was barely a sour thought compared to her lurking dread. This... this venom had taken its hold on her, and its reach was only increasing. She would be rendered unconscious in a minute, maybe two if she was lucky.

And if she fell unconscious and at the mercy of this abominable thing, then... then...

"No... no!" she roared, if only just, her throat and voice strained and hoarse. She attempted one last step forward, one last defiant move against this wicked creature that was now cackling at her; mocking her vain efforts. And then, like a tower with its foundations crippled, she collapsed. Cold hooves caught her instead of the icy floor, and the figure they belonged to held her still in a light embrace as the venom overwhelmed the mare. Her purple helm slipped from her head, clattering to the ground while her blue mane sprawled out and dangled.

Panic, a foe Magna had not faced in some time, overcame her. Erratic images of fear etched their way around her brain; they were fears about this venom, about this fiend that had delivered it, about what was going to happen to her. when she felt the last of the control she still held over her succumbing body leave her. Her will to fight was dulled and mellowed, and her strength finally faltered and failed.

But this entity, this alien entity of black, insidious magics was there with her, still holding her limp form in his gentle hooves. "Sleep now, my bride. Sleep now, my queen," he whispered into her ear so softly, so lovingly. "Dream of things that make your sweet soul flutter. Dream of things still yet to come. Soon you shall again awaken. And when you awaken, all your wants and desires shall be sated at long last..."

The last thing the great and indomitable Magna Bellatrix could remember before a cold and creeping darkness took her was a smile; a pearly white smile, and two lax and loving eyes gazing down upon her, a malevolent, lusting green energy seeping from their edges like a cool, encroaching mist...