Crystals & Chitin

by Nytus

Rating: teen
Tags: Crystal Ponies, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Romance, Changelings, Original Character, King Sombra, Adventure
Length: 54094

Carina's on a mission to secure the Crystal Heart... little does she know that King Sombra beat her to it.

Wendigos are such a nuisance. Because of those detestable monsters, the three southern pony tribes are at each other's throats and are utterly miserable.

We can't feed on that.

Luckily, there is a fourth tribe, far away in the frozen north. These so-called 'Crystal Ponies' surround their home in an aura of light and love, radiating from the largest love crystal in the world!

My name is Carina, and I am an Infiltrator sent to secure the Crystal Heart for my queen. Failure means the end of my hive. Failure is not an option.

Published 2019-06-11 00:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2022-08-20 17:34:27 UTC

02. | There's a Place I Have Gone

Author's Note

The following chapter contains a scene depicting violence.

Had you been present in the room where it was happening, it would be gratuitous violence deserving of a place in the early chapters of a Fallout Equestria fic... but thankfully—through the art of protagonist self-narration and this author's desire to keep the story solidly in the 'T' rating—the details are largely omitted and are described in a way that should get the point across without being needlessly graphic.

I just thought I should mention it. While the story does have the 'dark' tag, this is as far down that particular rabbit hole as I am going to take it. If you are okay with this, the remaining ten chapters will be a breeze.

update:
Originally posted on the 17th of June, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 3rd of March, 2020.

02. | There's a Place I Have Gone

This is ridiculous, I thought as I caught my breath on the floor of the schoolhouse hideout. My lungs burned more than my muscles did, being the more overlooked detail of my current form.

As soon as I have a moment to myself, better lung capacity is at the top of my alterations list.

That’s not to say that getting winded was my only issue with the training regimen I was now undergoing. It certainly didn’t take long to realize that the fleshy, soft body of my disguise was too weak to become the proper soldier Warden wanted to shape me into.

His training was logical, for a pony, but no amount of exercise would build up muscle faster than simply reforming the disguise itself. I just couldn’t take it seriously, knowing that I had a much simpler solution available to me.

Of course, I lamented, to take advantage of that solution would take just as long as doing it the hard way. I’m going to have to make disguise adjustments over time. It’s going to cost me a lot of energy... thankfully, having the filly around should offset the energy requirement significantly.

I turned my head to observe Double Time as my breathing slowed to a more manageable level. Over the past few weeks, she had steadily grown more accustomed to having me around. She no longer stuttered when she spoke to me, and I could feel her confidence battling with her embarrassment every time we’d make eye contact.

“Are you done already?” she asked from her perch on the former teacher’s desk. It had been pushed against the rear wall, opposite the main entrance, where its surface would have likely collected chalk dust if lessons had been ongoing. It provided both a raised platform for her to sit on as well as a source of reasonable cover should she choose to duck beneath it. The Empire-issued desk was made of a material that would be far too thin to protect against an assault of any kind. Still, it may have proven useful for avoiding detection if the school was assaulted thanks to the front panel—designed to keep colts from staring at the more exciting portions of their teacher during class, no doubt.

She was watching me train again today, as she did most days. I figured she had read the few books in their refuge already, some more than once. It came as no great surprise that she’d find the exercises Warden left for me to complete to be more interesting than the various textbooks collecting dust within the desks scattered around the room.

Show me a colt or filly who voluntarily opened a school book, and I will show you a poorly trained changeling trying to pass themselves off as a real infiltrator.

“Yeah,” I replied, “but I won’t tell Warden if you don’t.”

I rolled my shoulder a few times as I sat upright. I reached out and soaked up the fleeting mirth my comment elicited from my audience of one. The half-hearted training wasn’t especially draining, but there was no real reason to pass up the offering. That would be wasteful.

Double Time hopped down from her overwatch position with a thump, albeit one that resonated with a faint cracking sound. It reminded me of a frozen pond spider-webbing underhoof, preparing to end your days, though no matter how many times she’d done it, there was never any actual damage to the floor.

I will never get used to crystalline architecture.

“Tell me what?” came Warden’s voice as the front door slid open just enough for the old guard to slip inside, closing it again behind him.

He was a good soldier, I had learned that the first day I met him. He carried himself well, was more than merely proficient with that spear, and he had a keen sense of perception and tactical awareness that always forced me into cautious vigilance, lest I give myself away.

The one trait he possessed that I didn’t approve of was predictability. He had spent his entire life in the service of the royal family. Every minute of every day was structured and scheduled.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that. Any self-respecting hive is the living embodiment of structure and order among chaos and evolution. I completely approve… I am just saying, I could have set a watch if I had one, based solely on Warden’s afternoon return to the schoolhouse and only be a few seconds off.

Then again, maybe that was beneficial out there, I thought. Everypony beyond those doors functions like clockwork. Perhaps Warden is actually accounting for that… yet another example of tactical awareness?

It was something I would have to evaluate further.

Double Time laughed softly as she raced toward her surrogate father, launching herself into the air and forcefully hugging him.

“Oh, Headway was just skipping leg day again. He said we didn’t have to tell you about it, but that’d be cheating, right, Warden?”

Snitch.

“Is that so?” Warden said, allowing a bit of amusement to creep into his words as he pried the young mare off of his neck and set her down in front of him. “Well, I am sure we can all keep a secret this one time,” he continued as he smirked and made eye contact with me.

Cheesy, but a clever social deception for foals. Doubtlessly used as humor to provoke a response. From the pained expression on Miss Time’s face, I could tell that she shared my assessment.

His expression shifted to a more serious one after a moment.
“The neighborhood has been picked clean. I am going to need your help starting tomorrow, Headway. We have to cross one of the busier streets to gather supplies moving forward. I’d feel better having you out there with me.”

I should have guessed this is what he meant, I thought to myself as I sat between two buildings, staring down the road watching for any ‘affected’ movement. So far, I had seen numerous emotionless zombies hustling up and down the main road a few hundred hooves away, but nopony had deviated from their paths to come down the side streets.

My patience was tested after a quarter of an hour.

After another quarter-hour of staring at nothing, I slipped away and backtracked to a blind corner that I had made a note of on our way here. Green flames rapidly swept over my body, hugging me in an emerald embrace before departing just as quickly. Outwardly I didn’t look any different, but I knew I’d appreciate the internal tweaks to my musculature and respiratory systems, which I’d just made.

Half an hour after I resumed my watch on the roadside, Warden appeared in a storefront display window across the street. I crept from my hiding place, alert for the sounds of ponies nearby, and scanned the road in both directions before motioning to the former guard that it was clear to return.

Once the two of us were safely away from the road, he set his saddlebags down with a muffled metallic clang and opened the top flap, revealing his haul and proceeded to underwhelm me with the details.
“I was able to grab a dozen cans of various fruits, mostly blueberries, it seems. Not too bad for one trip. How were things here? Any trouble?”

I shook my head and scoffed. “Nothing. I am not sure why you were concerned about crossing this road, nopony even glanced this way. Those soulless mockeries out there may as well be wearing blinders.”

“Well, you shouldn’t make assumptions just yet,” he said. “We may have gotten lucky with our timing today, but I can assure you that they do traverse these connecting streets often enough to be a concern. Don’t let your guard down.

“Oh, and incidentally, I wish you wouldn’t call them such things. These are good ponies who are simply not strong enough to resist evil magic.”

My fur bristled at the reprimand—a feeling I was sure I’d never get used to—but I chose to remain silent. The effort expended to hold my tongue would have been taxing in years past, but experience had taught me to pick my battles.

“Right, sorry.”

“It’s all right. Come on, we should be able to clear a few more houses before heading back. You’re right though, this street seems to be emptier than I had expected. It should be safe enough for us both to cross.”

Once again, we walked out into the street at that unusually brisk pace, just shy of a full trot. It wasn’t taxing by any means, but it was uncomfortable to maintain. Thankfully, as soon as we had crossed the road and started down another residential side-street, we were able to slow down to a more comfortable gait, knowing there wouldn’t be anypony around to see us.

Densely packed homes forming cul-de-sacs along these side-streets seemed to be the norm in the Empire. It made hiding remarkably easy, and I was honestly surprised that the city fell as quickly as it did.

Silly ponies. Couldn’t any of you have found a basement or attic to hide in until after the hypno-squad passed through your neighborhood? Warden can’t seriously be the only source of intelligence among the crystal tribe. Right?

I was shaken from my silent disapproval when the previously mentioned pony stopped in front of a pair of houses set back from the road slightly farther than the rest of their neighbors.

“Go ahead and search these two. Grab any boxed or canned food you can find. If you run across any lantern oil or, better yet, a magic-powered lamp, by all means, snag those too. Just don’t get your hopes up, we aren’t likely to find such luxuries so far from the affluent parts of town. Unicorn lamps are too valuable for the working class to justify unless absolutely necessary.”

He gestured toward the opposite side of the cul-de-sac, adding, “I am going to start on the far end and work my way back toward you. Four or five homes worth of supplies should last the three of us quite a while. At least, hopefully. Our current rations didn’t take into consideration adding another mouth to feed, so we should stock up a bit. Happy hunting, and see you in a bit. If anything goes wrong, make your way back to our side of the main road and meet me behind the first house on the left, the big green one.”

I nodded once before turning toward the first of the two homes and walked up to the front door. I was just about to buck it open when it dawned on me to check the knob.

The door swung open effortlessly.

Of course, I thought, ponies are too trusting. I bet there aren’t more than a dozen locked doors in this entire city.

Stepping inside, I was assaulted by a nauseating smell. I knew that the mind-controlled ponies were sent home at sunset from wherever they were ordered to go during the day. Apparently, that was the extent of their evening programming. They were forced to maintain a sleep and meal schedule in order to continue functioning as living beings, but Sombra either neglected to include bathroom breaks, or they simply didn’t align with this particular family’s biological schedule.

Considering his penchant for misery, I was convinced it was the former scenario. Even if their nightmare ended, they’d be horrified all over again upon returning home to the accumulated filth. Honestly, I was somewhat surprised more of the afflicted didn’t develop respiratory diseases—or maybe they did, and were simply unable to physically react to the symptoms.

Was it possible to deny coughing fits through brainwashing? Did Sombra’s power supersede autonomic responses?

At least the sofa and mattress merchants will have a booming business for a while, I joked to myself, trying to make the most of my situation.

After dry heaving a few times during my sack of the kitchen, I abandoned the search for food—I now understood why Warden was only collecting sealed containers—long enough to make my way to their restroom. As I suspected, it was, in fact, the cleanest room in the house. I wasted no time in pulling down one of the towels from the rack, wetting it in the sink, and then binding it securely around my muzzle.

Once sufficiently buffered from the stench, I resumed the search for non-perishables. The kitchen was neatly ordered with everything exactly where you would expect them to be. While it made finding what I was looking for incredibly simple, I sneered at the homeowner’s lack of imagination.

Anypony that is this stereotypical deserves their current fate, they were zombies long before they were affected.

After cleaning out the pantry, I realized my saddlebags wouldn’t hold everything, and there was no way I was emptying it of its contents. My queen would peel my carapace off if I lost the love crystals.

So, I made my way back down the hallway and stepped inside one of the bedrooms. My goal was to acquire a bed sheet to bundle up my haul, but I discounted the bedding already in place, for aromatic reasons.

Instead, I opened the closet door and began rummaging around for their linen. I found the homeowner’s collection of blankets and grabbed the topmost one, yanking it unceremoniously out of the closet.

I would have simply made my way back to the kitchen had it not been for the slight thud I heard as I did so. Turning my attention back to the closet, I noticed that a small jewelry box had been hidden under the blanket I had just removed, and the violence with which I had snatched it up caused the little black box to hit the floor.

I don’t usually put much stock in pony finery beyond what is necessary for my disguise, but I realized such a thing might be a useful tool for earning Double Time’s affections.

Picking it up, I flipped the lid open and looked at my prize. It was a silver link necklace with a pathetically small sapphire clasped in a nondescript setting.

I may not care for such accessories, but even I knew that this was barely more than costume jewelry. Disappointed in my find, I snapped the lid shut and shoved it into my saddlebags before exiting the room.

If this is the best these ponies can afford, it might be a disservice to free them. Why bother hiding it though... it’s obvious at least two ponies are living here, aren’t they already married?

Curiosity got the better of me, so I spent the next few minutes quickly exploring the rest of the house. The only other room I hadn’t seen yet was a foal’s bedroom, reinforcing my observation about the cohabitating ponies of this house, but at least I found a half-full bottle of lantern oil in a hall closet.

Looking at the bulging blanket now sitting by the front door, I didn’t think there was any real need to loot the second house, but as I wasn’t due to meet up with Warden for probably another quarter-hour or so, I figured I should at least peek inside.

As before, the door wasn’t locked, so I let myself in.

While the smell was the same as in the previous home, the decor was just about as different as it could get. There was garbage all over the floor, chairs overturned, and large tears in the back of the living room sofa. Curtains were shredded or hanging uselessly to the side of the windows from rods attached to only one point on the wall. The place looked like it had already been ransacked once.

It was hard to tell how long ago this might have happened, or even whether it happened before or after Sombra’s take-over. Had Warden not directed me to loot this home specifically, I would have probably just assumed he’d been the one to do this during the weeks following the affliction.

That meant that somepony else had done it, and possibly quite recently at that. I scanned the entryway and living room briefly and picked up a hefty-looking drinking glass with a thick weighted base. Not the most ideal weapon, but it would do in a pinch. I didn’t expect to run into whoever had been here before me, but it would have been foolish not to prepare for the possibility.

The funny thing about expectations, however, is that they are so seldom accurate.

The only warning I had was a faint sense of fear, which was curiously more potent than I’d come to associate with the afflicted.

I ducked in time to avoid a brass bedpost being hurled at my face.

The offending piece of jagged metal clattered across the floor behind me as my attacker silently charged at me from his hiding place behind the kitchen island counter, eyes glowing that familiar shade of green.

My opponent was a crystal pony. Male. Pale yellow coat, silvery-blue mane. Reasonably well-built, possibly worked as a construction pony before Sombra dominated him. Cutiemark obscured by filth.

I braced my rear legs in place, dipped my left shoulder just as he came within striking distance. I then hurled my body up underneath his barrel with as much force as my forelegs could muster.

His movements were likely a bit more sluggish than he would have been capable of under his own direction. Still, he was surprisingly healthy and quite a bit heavier than I anticipated. He slid over my back rather than be shoved away, biting my tail as he passed and yanking on it hard.

He managed to pull me off my feet as he crashed down behind me. I was barely able to swing my right hoof around to slam the base of my weapon of opportunity against the side of his head, staggering him long enough to regain my hooves before he could.

I swung the glass at him a second time, only to have it knocked out of my grasp as he threw his hoof up to block it. He lunged at me in return, wrapping both front hooves around my neck as he tried to bite me like some sort of savage animal.

This time I deliberately threw my rear hooves forward, converting my body into dead weight and dragging him off balance as I slid across the garbage on the floor beneath him, bucking him in a somewhat tender spot as I did so.

“Ahh,” he screamed with tears forming in his eyes, stumbling backward away from me and cradling his injured pride with one hoof. His eyes were magenta for just a moment, his face—and more importantly, his emotions—were filled with a mix of shock, confusion, and panic before they vanished into the background once more. I watched as his eyes lost focus and resumed their green glow.

Now that was interesting. A decent shock to the system, or perhaps pure pain, could potentially snap a pony out of the tyrant’s control, if only briefly.

I would have to experiment with that discovery a bit further at a later date.

He reached down and grabbed the bedpost he’d thrown at me earlier, swinging it at my side with all the force of a mad pony. Momentarily distracted as I was, the impact knocked the wind out of me. The broken hunk of metal tore a crimson line along my ribs, just behind my left front leg.

This fight was full of surprises. I was no stranger to a pony’s form, but I’d never actually been injured while disguised as one before. I was suddenly reminded that a blow that would have bounced right off my carapace was a legitimate threat when wearing flesh.

I slumped to the side, favoring my injury as I scanned the room for other improvised weapons. My attention was divided, however, as the pony-shaped puppet pressed the attack. Another swipe at my sides was narrowly dodged, followed by a third. He was swinging wildly, throwing everything he had into each swing. An average pony would be holding back just a little to avoid overexerting or even damaging themselves, but he wasn’t controlling his actions and wasn’t able to care about self-preservation—only victory.

Between my injury and his disregard for fundamental security, he had a clear combat advantage.

Realizing there was nothing of significance I could use against him close to hoof, I waiting for his next swing and leaped back, avoiding the attack and placing myself in the hallway leading toward what I assumed was a bedroom and bathroom.

I ran down the hall with his rapid hoofsteps following close behind me until I reached the first door. The bathroom. I wasted no time in turning and bucking the drainpipe off the bottom of the sink. Snatching the corroded pipe off the floor, I brought it up just in time to meet the pony’s bedpost, clanging together and reverberating in each of our hooves.

I rushed forward and slammed the top of my head into the bottom of his muzzle. I could feel his teeth crashing together and could only imagine how much damage that would probably do to the poor stallion’s future family photos. I followed up my attack by bringing the drainpipe down on his left rear leg, just above the fetlock with a sickening crunch.

I was preparing to do it again when I felt the serrated edge of his broken bedpost bite into my belly. It didn’t sink very deeply—thank the queen—due to his angle, but he made it clear that there was plenty of fight left in him.

He landed several more shallow hits on my barrel and legs as we grappled in the hallway, all the while snapping at my face or ears, trying to bite me. My own attacks were proving just as ineffective, focusing on his rear legs. I figured they were a primary target, as an opponent who can’t effectively chase you—but is programmed to do just that—is all but defeated and can be finished at your leisure.

I was glad that I had so recently altered my disguise to improve my muscle mass a bit, but now I really wished I had gone even further. My endurance was failing, and I knew I couldn’t win through simple hoofticuffs.

When he finally managed to grab my ear and grind it between his teeth, I screamed and jumped back, releasing the grapple. His vacant face as he began chewing brought my attention to the severity of the injury he’d just delivered. Only after I saw the top third of my right ear slip from between his still-moving lips and patter against the floor did I really feel it, a throbbing pain coursing through my head, keeping time with my now-elevated heartbeat.

His indifference enraged me, and with a flash of brilliant green, I dropped my disguise and immediately launched a barrage of emerald bolts at the vile creature.

Each magical projectile slammed into him, pushing him backward and leaving darkened, furless patches of skin behind. I must have fired dozens of emerald bolts before it dawned on me that the new sound in the room was his whimpering.

Eventually, I relented, though that was mostly because I had expended far too much love energy in assuring my victory—even if it was cathartic. I watched him through a pair of glowing eyes of my own as he cried like a foal on the floor. I reached up to my ear, finding it wet and sticky even in my natural form.

“Thank you, little pony, you’ve taught me something valuable,” I said mockingly as I slowly advanced on his prone form with my horn alight with emerald superiority. “I see you are awake, so it is possible to force somepony out of the afflicted state. Good to know, but that brings us to a new problem. You’ve seen me, and you’ve hurt me, so I suppose that makes two problems. Thankfully, there is a remedy for them both.”

“Wha-”

His confused response was interrupted by another emerald missile slamming into his chest. This time the glow surrounded him and remained in place, seeming to paralyze his wracking sobs.

“Don’t worry, this isn’t going to hurt. You won’t feel anything at all. In fact, you might even find your peace.”

For the first time in months, I fed, ravenously, and without concern for the wellbeing of my prey. I placed my mouth next to the immobilized pony’s face and inhaled deeply, pulling vast quantities of love right out of his gaping maw and channeling it into repairing my wounds.

His love wasn’t enough, though, having spent so long in the clutches of pure fear, so I begrudgingly took one of the love crystals out of my saddlebags and drained it as well.

Down to three, I mentally took note, replacing the now-dull gem in the bag next to the other two I had already used on my way to the Empire. It’s a shame that I got hurt. It would have been nice to use his love to refill one of these rather than drain another.

Magical healing is possible for changelings, but it drains our love reserves very rapidly. I took everything I could from that unnamed stallion and left him useless on the floor. My ear was reattached as the gashes in my belly and side were sealed up. I would recover, but everything would be tender for several days, all the while draining my internal stores of love to finish the healing process.

Thankfully, my disguise for this mission had no means of using magic, and therefore no reason to have spent any, so I had an abundance of reserve energy to draw from.

With one final magical dart to the chest, the pony’s waking nightmare ended. Before the poor stallion could slump to the floor, however, I could have sworn that his eyes changed again, only this time within the dim green glow, his irises were blood red, and his pupils were slit like a cat’s.

For some reason, my blood chilled, but when I rolled him over to double-check, only his natural magenta eyes stared up at me.

I called up a spell that all infiltrators are taught relatively early in their training and burned the remains to a fine ash, incinerated in glorious green flames to remove the evidence of our encounter. Generally reserved for the cremation of fallen changelings to preserve the secrecy of the hive, in this case, it had been necessary to hide his presence from Warden.

I scattered the ashes around the living room and placed bits of newspaper and a few rotting vegetables I found sitting on the kitchen counter over the charred spot on the floor. With the volume of garbage and filth already present, any remaining ash could easily pass as dust and be entirely unnoticed.

Satisfied with the result, I bathed in the comforting flames of transformation once more and resumed my role as Headway. I picked up the blanket from my previous haul and headed for the meeting place to await Warden’s return.

“We’re back, Miss Time,” Warden called out as we stepped into the schoolhouse.

A moment later, a pale green blur launched itself toward us and wrapped her hooves around the old soldier’s neck. It was a daily ritual that I usually found enjoyable if only for the emotional snack I could intercept between them. Today, however, I simply stepped around the pair and made my way into the large open room to deposit my blanket-wrapped spoils into the pile of collected resources to the side of the teacher’s desk.

I didn’t really need the top-off since I had been forced to drain another love crystal. I was entrusted with six charged crystals for my mission. I used two on my journey to the Empire, which meant I had to save two for the return trip. If I was successful in acquiring the Crystal Heart, I could probably siphon some love out of it in a pinch, but I wasn’t sure if my queen would approve of such a tactic. That left two for emergencies, of which one was now dark. I would have to be more careful in the future.

“Headway?” I heard the young mare inquire. “Are you okay? You look… different.”

I performed a quick once-over of myself. It would have been a problem if I had left a detail out of this iteration of my disguise. Satisfied that I had not, I looked up at Double Time and smiled faintly.

“Yeah, I am all right. I just wasn’t anticipating the smell involved in scavenging for food. Just give me a bit to unwind, I’ll be right as rain. Promise.”

She beamed at my answer, overflowing with relief and sympathy. This time I opened myself up and absorbed some of what she was offering.

There is something to be said for pure emotions. The energy stored in a crystal is condensed, potent, but for lack of a better term, tasteless. It is usually a mixture of many different emotions and often from several various sources. They blend together and become difficult to separate into ‘love’ or ‘gratitude’ or ‘pride.’ It just… is.

A pure emotion—one that you absorb directly from its source and is directed at or intended for you—is entirely different. To an empath, that difference is like comparing freshly picked apples to an expired can of applesauce. They are technically the same thing, but one just tastes better and brightens your mood just a bit more.

“Oh, Miss Time. I almost forgot. I found this today and couldn’t see myself taking advantage of it. I don’t have the complexion for it, you understand. Maybe you’d like it.”

I fished out the little jewelry box I’d found hidden in the first home I’d ransacked and placed it on the floor next to my discarded saddlebags.

Curious, she approached it as if it were a snake that I told her was really a fashionable scarf. She picked it up and slowly flipped the lid up, gasping as she looked upon the tiny sapphire necklace within.

“Headway, it’s amazing! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed, throwing her hooves around my neck the same way she was accustomed to doing with Warden.

It took us both a moment to recover our collective composure.
She quickly disengaged and scooted away from me, flooding my senses with gratitude, joy, and a healthy dose of embarrassment that renewed itself and doubled down every time she looked up at my face.

I, on the other hoof, was not expecting such a physical reaction coupled with the deluge of emotions and had to limit what I consumed. It wouldn’t do to encourage her affections only to drain them away so quickly.

Every crop takes time to grow. If you rush things, you might only get one harvest.

A chuckle from across the room caused us both to look away. Warden, who had just turned his back on the scene before him, made a show of examining the bar as he slid it into place across the front door.
I could tell he muttered something to himself, and the sense of mirth he was giving off informed me that he was reading into my actions deeper than I would have liked at this stage.

Thankfully, he didn’t have all of the facts and misinterpreted the exchange as a pair of young ponies flirting rather than a changeling setting up her prey.

I cleared my throat and looked back at Double Time.

“I would say ‘you are welcome,’ but I didn’t do all that much. It’s not like I paid for it or anything. The previous owner doesn’t need it right now, and I am sure they won’t even notice it’s missing after all of this blows over. Making you smile now is well worth the risk of paying reparations later.”

Again she absolutely gushed with gratitude and embarrassment, but it was slowly becoming tinted with a much more delicate flavor. One that I honestly thought would take longer than a few weeks to cultivate, even considering the age of my target.

Food source: secure.

03. | There's a Beast and I Let It Run

The sun never came out the next day.

The natural climate up north is certainly no better than down in the lands of the other three tribes, though the Crystal Heart can hold back the wild weather and create its own within the aura of light and love.

Ever since I arrived inside the perimeter of that aura, this was the first cloudy day I’d seen. To me, that meant only one thing: Sombra was upset about something, and I had a sinking suspicion that something was me.

I hadn’t told Warden about the pony I… er, encountered the day before⁠—for obvious reasons⁠—and nopony witnessed the brawl to my knowledge. Was it possible Sombra had some direct control over these ponies?

That could explain why this particular pony had been indoors while everypony else had left for their slave labor assignments hours before. If that were the case, though, what was he searching for? The house didn’t exactly scream ‘rich and powerful’ to me.

“Headway? Son? Where are you at? Come back to us,” Warden said, swinging his hoof in front of my face.

I must have missed something while deep in thought. Both Warden and Double Time were staring at me expectantly. I also noticed Double Time was still wearing the necklace I had given her last night. As cheap as it was, it seemed like she had no intention of ever taking it off.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about the weather. Didn’t you say it was always nice inside the city?”

“Yes, and it’s for that reason that we should stay indoors today. I don’t know what it means, but I have no doubt it is a result of Sombra fooling around with the Crystal Heart. If we are lucky, he is merely trying to figure out how to control it.”

“And if we aren’t?” A wave of anxiety washed over me from behind as Double Time spoke up. It wasn’t extreme, but I could tell she was ready to let it run away with her if she didn’t like the answer. While that could provide an opportunity to comfort her and build up her dependency for me, it would mean more work than I wanted to put into mealtime right now.

“Don’t worry about it, Miss Time,” I responded before Warden could tell her the blunt truth, which there was little doubt would be forthcoming. “Whether he’s mad about something or not, we’re still safely anonymous here. Maybe he’s just upset about how much snow is piling up outside the barrier. I don’t know how it works, so it might be a drain on his magic. Or, maybe he just likes it a bit gloomy. He’s an evil tyrant, who knows what he finds desirable? For all we know, he’s just bored.”

“Mad!? Why would he be mad?”

Smooth. Yeah, why would a recently thwarted dictator be mad? It’s not like I’ve reduced his workforce by one or anything. I need to be more careful, one misplaced word is enough to give yourself away. This is elementary stuff, Carina! Pay attention for the queen’s sake.

Warden stepped forward and wrapped a foreleg around her shoulders. I could almost feel her tension dissolve at his touch. I still had a ways to go before I had such an effect on her. “Don’t be afraid, dearheart. Headway was just saying that even if he was angry, we’d still be safe here. That’s all.”

He sighed.

“Tell ya what, why don’t I have a quick peek down the road? It’ll only take a couple of minutes, and then we will have a better idea of what’s going on. I’ll leave Headway here this time to keep you company.”

I couldn’t exactly tell him how bad of an idea that sounded to me, not without telling him why I thought so. But when it came right down to it, I considered Warden to be expendable… all I really needed to complete my mission was the mare.

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll keep Miss Time safe while you’re gone. If you do end up needing help out there, yell. Loudly.” I joked, mostly for Double Time’s benefit as I felt a small burst of mirth mix with her trepidation. I didn’t even consume it⁠—I wasn’t especially hungry, and the more positivity she could store up, the less her worries would overwhelm her.

“Funny,” he commented, shaking his head with a slight smirk, much like a father would after his child’s amateurish joke. His eyes were confident and reassuring, but he didn’t realize that there were two of us in the room who could feel the fear building within him.

“I should be back in about twenty minutes,” he said as I walked with him toward the door. Before stepping outside, he leaned in toward me and whispered. “If an hour passes, assume the worst. Take Miss Time and find a new hideout. If I am enslaved, there is a genuine chance that Sombra will pull the location of this school out of me. If that happens… well, just don’t be here if that happens.”

Time to go to work.

“Right,” I said as I turned back toward Double Time, the door closing with an audible click behind me, “he won’t be too long. Don’t worry about that old soldier, he can handle things on his own. In the meantime, how shall we entertain ourselves?”

Her face scrunched up as if I asked her to perform complex mathematics. I suppose some ponies might indeed resort to that given the question I posed, but I knew she was much more of an athlete than an egghead.

“We could… sing, or tell each other stories, or… um, maybe we could make something? I think there are some wooden sticks and bottles of glue in the back room. Are you any good at making models?”

Technically speaking, I have indeed ‘made a model’ in the past, but I don’t think tall, lithe unicorn disguises were what she had in mind.

“That could be something we do with a little more time on our hooves. We’re just killing a few minutes here, so why don’t we start with a story?”

I could feel her excitement grow at the chance to talk about better days and perhaps learn something about ‘Headway.’ My disguises cover a lot of personal aspects to pass scrutiny, but I would likely have to fill in some details to make something entertaining for her.

“Okay!” she exclaimed and ran over to the teacher’s desk, hopping up onto her favorite perch like a cat. “Let’s see…”

Perfect. Having her go first will give me all the time I need. Perhaps former disguises can fill in for foalhood friends.

“Oh, I know. When I was a blankflank, my parents were always at work. They are crystal palace guards, you know.” She paused at this statement for dramatic effect.

“I didn’t realize that.” Yes, I did.

“Yep! Dad and Warden have been guards for, I dunno, forever? That’s how they met—my parents, that is. Mom joined the guards a year or two before I was born.”

Of course. If they’d met a year or two after you were born, I would have had some questions, I commented internally, attempting to entertain myself through Miss Time’s slow-starting story.

She continued. “Anyway, this one time, my parents were at the palace protecting the princess—hey, that was alliteration! Oh, sorry, we were covering alliteration in school when... “

She trailed off before shaking her head, vigorously. “Sorry. Sorry! Um… oh right, I was left with my best friend and her mother for the weekend. Silly and I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. We ran up to the north field just outside the city. There was a rumor that it was haunted, and the shadow pony lived there, coming out at night to eat primroses and other night flowers. There was a dare going around school to wait for him to come out then place a lamp in front of his cave so he couldn’t go home, melting away when the sun came up.”

Interesting, didn’t Warden say Sombra went to that north field too, right before he conquered the city? I might have to go find this cave of hers.

“Silly?” I asked. I knew pony names were descriptive, but I haven’t met many mares who would influence their foal’s destiny with such a name.

“Oh, yeah. Her real name is Cilantro Lime, but she doesn’t like to be called that very much, so we shorten it to Silly,” she said through giggles. Some of the first actual laughter I’d heard her produce.

“Ah, I see.” Of course. Ask a Silly question, get a Cilantro answer. I paused for a moment, blinking away the pun that just ran through my head. Uhg, pony humor is rubbing off on me. “Go on.”

“Well, we snuck out there and placed the lamp, but we didn’t wait around to watch the shadow pony melt. We ran home as soon as we put it down. It was scary, and a little fun, but we got in trouble the next day when Jasmine Dream knocked on the door to return Silly’s lamp.”

Smiling at her memories, Double Time fidgetted on top of the desk, staring at me expectantly. With Warden out of the way for a while, I drank deeply of the joy she was emitting. Her smile gradually drooped, but not before I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

“Well, maybe it wasn’t as funny as I thought…” she said, her shoulders slumped slightly. Her energy returned quickly, though, when she asked, “What about you? Tell me one of your stories!”

“All right. Let’s continue the foalhood stories then. When I was a colt, I was the oldest of my siblings. We didn’t get along very well, but our mother was pretty demanding, so we did as we were told and maintained a reasonable enough peace whenever we thought that word of our adventures might get back to her. Now, when we were isolated and alone with each other, all bets were off.”

She snickered slightly, not realizing how accurate my words really were. I continued the story but changed a few details to seem more pony-like. I wouldn’t want to scare her with just how violent a clutch of nymphs can be when trying to impress their queen.

“One of my brothers was exceptionally good at digging, and we had followed one of our other brothers to this little cave—probably much like your shadow pony’s cave—where he’d curl up and sleep, away from all the noises near our home. Well, my brother and I noticed he’d come back to this exact spot to sleep almost every single day. So, after a week or so had passed and he hadn’t changed his pattern, we came up with a pla— er, prank.”

Thankfully, she didn’t notice the near slip of my tongue.

“What did you do?”

“We went further into the cave and began digging a tunnel under the rock where our brother slept while he was busy doing other things for our teacher. I wedged a few stones into place to make sure the rock itself wouldn’t move—until we wanted it to—and then dug straight down for a hundred or so hooves.

“It took us all of our free time for several days, but eventually, we had a sizable pit that emptied out into a big underground pond. Once it was done, we went back to the stone I’d used to wedge his sleeping rock in place and slid a couple of clay pots of water into place next to them with their spouts facing the dirt walls.

“The next time our brother came to rest in his private little cavern, the extra weight crushed the pots and soaked the dirt under his rock, converted it all into mud, and the whole thing slid down the pit, dropping him and his rock into the pond below.”

She laughed, enjoying the story and misinterpreting an attempt at fratricide for a fun little water slide prank. She didn’t know my brothers were both changeling nymphs, nor did she know that nymphs—as a general rule—couldn’t swim very well.

“Was he mad when he got out?”

When. There’s another difference between changelings and ponies… trust a pony to expect a happy ending.

“Oh yeah,” I replied. “He spent years trying to get back at my brother, but I don’t think he ever knew I was involved. I rarely participated in their roughhousing.”

Well, that’s not strictly true, but noling ever knew when I did so. I was always the brain behind one of the others’ brawn. I never got the credit for my success, but I also never took the fall for any failure. Good trade in my book.

“I had to be the role model,” I said.

You’ve no idea how hard that last sentence was to say aloud with a straight face. I may have served as a ‘role model’ for someling, but it certainly wasn’t any of my hatch mates.

“Sounds like fun. Sometimes I wish I had a big sister so we could have played around like that. I was only allowed to see Silly on weekends. Throughout the week, I was in a boarding school set up for families of the guards. It was boring and taught by retired guardponies, so it always felt like we were being trained for army duty rather than real life, and we never had recess. I mean, come on, are you kidding me?”

Lucky for me you don’t seem to have been a very good student then.

“Um, Headway,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice, “has it been twenty minutes yet? There’s smoke over there.”

I looked up at the window she was pointing at. She was right, wafting up into the sky, there was clearly a thin column of black smoke rising.

In a normal situation, that wouldn’t be alarming. It was barely equivalent to a simple fireplace chimney output. The thing was, the affected didn’t light fireplaces. That meant it was either a deliberate act by Warden—unlikely, considering his goal was to not be noticed—or it was an accident, and he was in trouble. In either case, that plume of smoke would be summoning every power walker in the city soon.

Fear.

The raw panic slamming into my senses was nauseating. Double Time was worried about Warden and sinking deeper into a massive downward spiral by the second.

“Headway, please?”

Two words. That’s all Miss Time managed to get out through her growing despair. It was pitiful, really, but it forced me to reevaluate Warden’s importance.

She considered him family. He wasn't just watching over her, he was important to her, and if I did nothing to rescue him, I would lose whatever emotional attachment I might have been building within her. My only reliable source of food was in jeopardy.

Ugh, I have to do this, don’t I?

“Miss Time, stay here. I will go see what I can do. If this door opens before you hear one of our voices call out to you, run out that teacher’s door and don’t stop until you can’t breathe. Don’t go straight to it—you’re gonna want to cover your tracks through the snow somehow—but try to hide in that cave you told me about and wait for us.”

She was shivering and didn’t say anything, but she did manage to nod her head a couple of times as if she understood me.

I crept out the front door, making sure no surprises were waiting for me in the road before doing anything rash.

Looking up, I found it was easier to pinpoint the smoke once I was outdoors. From the looks of it, I would say it was coming from the same neighborhood that we scavenged the day before.

At least I knew how to get there.

I ran until I came to the side street. The difference in activity was like night and day. Dozens of helmet-wearing ponies were all converging on the neighborhood, just as I predicted they would.

Two or three teams of two had already made their way into the cul-de-sac. There was nothing I could do about them, but I could at least lead the others away… assuming they weren’t being ordered to investigate the smoke above all else that may be going on around them.

If that were the case, nothing short of magic could save Warden, and given my current disguise, that wasn’t going to happen.

I had spent some time studying this street while waiting for Warden previously. There were many small shops and various restaurants on either side of the road, most of which were abandoned with their doors unlocked and window signs flipped to ‘OPEN.’

Not very many of them would be useful to me, but I did recall seeing a pair of adjacent shops with second floors that seemed to indicate the owners lived above their stores.

Trusting that at least one of them was unlocked, I darted out from my hiding place and galloped directly toward the nearer of the two.

It didn’t take long to reach the front door, and there was no doubt that every pale green eye on the street was staring daggers into my back.

I placed my hoof on the doorknob and pulled. It opened smoothly with a tiny little tinkling chime as the swinging door brushed against a bell hung above the frame.

Teddy bears, pillows, blankets… this was some sort of bedding or foal-care store. I immediately discounted anything in there to be of use to me. By their very design, every product in the store was meant to comfort, not impede.

I jumped over the counter, knocking a decorative wooden cash register to the floor as I did so, and reached for the door I assumed led up to the living area.

Locked.

I found the only locked door in the city.

Wonderful.

I didn’t have long to complain to myself, though, as just then the little door chime came to life once again as two affected guardponies entered.

I quickly spun to face them, all the while raising my haunches and delivering the strongest buck I could manage to the door behind me.

I was rewarded with a dull ache in my right rear hoof, where my aim was slightly off—resulting in my kicking the knob rather than the door itself—but also the sound of splintering wood and the metallic clang of the doorframe’s brass strike plate hitting the floor.

As expected, there was a stairway leading up, which I quickly ascended and charged into the residential kitchen above.

The first useful object I found was a large iron skillet. I grabbed it and turn back around in time to see the first of the two guards reach the top of the stairs.

I charged her before she could get a solid footing inside the apartment and swung with all my might. I hadn’t counted on the spear.

Rather than knock her down the steps into her partner, as I intended, she brought up her guardspony spear and blocked my attack with its haft.

Meanwhile, her partner’s spear snaked out beside her hooves and jabbed at me. It was a bad angle, and the second mare was unable to put much power behind it, so I easily dodged the attack, but in doing so, I was forced to step back and allow the first guard to follow me into the kitchen.

My cooking utensil-turned-improvised-weapon took on yet another new role as a shield against the thrusts of the two pony slaves intent on doing me harm.

Below, I could hear additional ponies entering the shop, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before this already lopsided battle became hopelessly one-sided in their favor.

When I could spare the moment to look away from my assailants, I noticed the room next to the kitchen was a more spacious open room that acted as both living and dining areas for the shopkeeper.

It would provide more area to work with, but it would also allow more than one guard to participate in the assault at a time.

Instead, I focused on the light being cast across the floor. I could see a pair of windows facing the street, but that wasn’t the source of the light. The morning sun, in the southeast, was casting its golden rays through a window outside of my viewing angle, but I knew it faced the second building I was interested in.

Abandoning the kitchen and the single-file conga line of spear tips extending down the staircase and into the shop below, I made a mad dash into the next room, turned the blind corner, and threw myself through the window with a loud crash.

Once again, I was reminded of the shortcomings of pony anatomy versus changeling carapace.

My aim, thankfully, was adequate. I managed to defenestrate one shop and force my way into the second, but each window that shattered around my soft, squishy body lacerated me with fairly deep cuts and gashes across both sides of my body as well as a few on the top of my head.

Unable to waste any time contemplating my second injury in as many days, I quickly located the stairway leading into the store below and raced down it, taking the steps three at a time.

My shoulder slammed against the door at the bottom. A thinner decorative panel in the center of the door cracked, and my momentum forced it out of the door like a pane of glass, allowing me to tumble out through the doorway, which would typically have opened in toward the stairs.

I regained my hooves and ran at full gallop out the front door.

Of course, there are more of them, I thought bitterly as I once again found myself in the street. From either direction, I could count at least a dozen more ponies.

I managed one quick glance down the cul-de-sac before turning toward an unfamiliar residential road. I couldn’t see any guards down there, but the smoke was getting thicker. Hopefully, that meant Warden was able to flee into an adjoining neighborhood, leaving the burning building behind him to mask his escape.

Speaking of which, I needed to make my own.

I ran down the street into yet another cul-de-sac. The uniformity of this city was starting to irritate me, but at least no guards were waiting for me.

I chose one of the closer buildings and ducked behind it, hiding in the backyard for a moment as I caught my breath.

Seeing that I was in a reasonably private area, I called up the welcoming embrace of transformation. With the familiar green flash of flames, I once again took on the feline disguise I used the first day I arrived in the empire.

It seemed like a perfect plan until I realized that the wounds I accrued in my diversion were still present in this form. I hoped that the mindless zombie soldiers out there wouldn’t consider me worthy of notice, regardless of how much it looked like I lost a week-long turf war with a rival alley cat.

I took advantage of the new form’s agility and leaped up onto the privacy fence surrounding the home I hid behind. Padding along the narrow top edge of the wooden slat wall, I slowly made my way back toward the billowing smoke.

Luckily, I was right. The affected took absolutely no notice of me as I sauntered across the side street like they were the intruders. Once across, I worked my way toward the fire by passing between the storefronts. They were too closely positioned for ponies to squeeze between comfortably but were no problem at all for a cat.

Now that the immediate threat to myself seemed to be over and the adrenaline was starting to wear off, I began feeling every tiny scrape and abrasion I’d picked up. Nearly my entire body was uncomfortable, and a few of the deeper cuts caused actual pain, depending on how I turned my body, but I was satisfied that at least I wasn’t disfigured or in danger of passing out. My wounds would be an annoyance for a few days, but they’d heal.

Stepping out from between the buildings, I saw smoke coming from the house I had encountered the stallion in the day before.

So much for coming back to find out why he was here, I thought to myself.

I couldn’t see any flames, but the smoke was thick enough now to engulf the homes on either side of it. None of the affected seemed concerned about putting out the fire if there even was one, but that wasn’t surprising given their lack of free will.

Fear. Anxiety. Resolve.

Found ya.

One of the homes I passed on my inspection of the cul-de-sac looked ordinary enough, except for the emotionally-active pony hiding within.

I looked around the neighborhood as I selected a new hiding place for myself. Two guards remained motionless in the center clearing. It looked like I was successful in drawing off the majority of them.

Stepping behind the house Warden was in, I bathed in emerald flames and resumed my disguise as Headway.

It was a little risky, transforming so close to his hiding place, but I was confident that he’d have his eyes on the front window, not the rear.

Once in pony form, I tapped lightly on the back window.

A moment later, I saw Warden creep over toward me, the tension in his eyes and shoulders eased as he recognized me.

He slid the window open and slowly crawled out. He’d have hit the ground somewhat hard if I hadn’t caught him, but otherwise, I had to admit his exit via window was far more graceful than my own.

“I’m glad to see you, but where’s Miss Time?” he asked.

“She’s fine. I left her at home, but told her to go out the back and hide in a certain place familiar to her if somepony other than us approached the front door.”

He breathed another sigh of relief before taking notice of my condition. “And what about you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I just got cut up a bit diving through a pair of windows to distract the guards. You’re lucky I did, too, or else this place would be crawling with affected. I counted at least twenty in the street out there. As it is now, there only seems to be two in the cul-de-sac.”

He nodded, but rather than looking toward the center, his gaze turned toward the backyard.

“Good, we should be able to avoid two of them,” he said. “But we will have to swing wide and come back around toward home from the south side of town. All it takes is one pair of eyes to follow us back, and we have a much bigger problem on our hooves.”

He paused a moment, obviously allowing his thoughts to wander a moment.

“When I got here, I didn’t expect to run into a full unit of guards tossing the house you looted yesterday. I barely ducked in here before being spotted. It was certainly a surprise to see Sombra himself show up.”

That was a surprise.

“Sombra was here?”

“Sombra is here. That’s what that pillar of smoke out there is. It’s one of his favorite parlor tricks. His attention is inside the house, thankfully, or you’d be able to see those freaky red eyes of his in the cloud.”

Freaky red eyes? Was that Sombra who was staring at me through that love buffet yesterday? If it was, that means he’s seen me. The real me. If he knows what I am, what I came for…

“Warden, we have to go.”

It took us almost an hour to make our way back to the schoolhouse.

Double Time, predictably, flew into Warden’s embrace the moment we stepped inside, but less expected was how briefly she remained there before stepping back and launching herself at me.

Joy. Gratitude. Concern. Relief. Love.

There it is. I’ve been waiting for that one.

I drank deeply of the offered emotional feast. I diverted a healthy portion of it toward easing my pain and healing the worst of my injuries, making sure not to do too much. They could both plainly see my cuts and bruises. It would be challenging to explain how they vanished right in front of them.

“Thank you, Headway. I knew you’d bring him back. I just knew it! Thank you,” she gushed as I slowly took in her concern, both figuratively and literally.

“Give the lad some space, dearheart. He’s had a long day,” Warden chuckled, giving off some gratitude and joy of his own. “I don’t know how we got so lucky the day he joined us. If it hadn’t been for our young hero here, I might not have gotten away from Sombra.”

She gasped at the mention of the tyrant king’s name. Her eyes grew wide as she looked back and forth between Warden and me, still hanging from my neck, before bounding up and planting a kiss right on the side of my cheek.

“Thank you, Headway. I always knew you were a good pony!” She slid down my barrel as she released her hold around my neck and stepped back, gazing at me in a way that I was trained to cultivate.

Except that I am not, I thought to myself. I hadn’t expected a physical display of affection so quickly after finally establishing a proper claim to Miss Time’s love. It threw me off, and I stopped absorbing her energy. I am literally feeding off you both intending to drain everything I can from you to build up a magic reserve before facing off against King Sombra.

I barely noticed when Warden retrieved a small first aid kit and passed it to Double Time. I spent the rest of that evening on autopilot as I sorted things out in my head.

I didn’t pay attention as Miss Time dutifully bandaged the deeper cuts or dabbed aloe on the scratches. I registered her emotions and sipped on them slowly out of habit, but otherwise, I remained rather stoic.

He was searching the house I fought off that stallion in. Why? What is in that house that is so important? Or is the better question, who lived in that house that was so important? There’s no chance of finding anything of value now, not after he ransacked the place personally…

The only thing that shook me from my thoughts was Warden’s announcement just before retiring for the night.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll be going south.”

Author's Note

Another chapter in the books, pun intended.

update:
Originally posted on the 25th of June, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 4th of March, 2020.

04. | Now It's Running My Way

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

I was sure that I heard him clearly enough, but I never expected him to actually say such a thing. Perhaps I misjudged the old stallion, or maybe he considered the threat significant enough now to admit that he couldn’t win on his own. In either event, did he really mean to infer that he was going to leave the mare with me?

Talk about entrusting the cat with your canary, I thought. It actually took some effort to suppress my grin.

Warden sighed before elaborating. “I said, I will be leaving in the morning. Something has changed, and the usurper is no longer ignoring my presence. There was a possibility of acting against him when he simply found me amusing, but what we dealt with today changes the game.

“We’re going to need help. There’s nopony left in the empire to recruit, so we have to look further afield. That means asking ponies from the southern tribes.”

Double Time sank to her haunches with an audible thud against the crystalline floor. “You’re leaving? But… the other ponies won’t care. They haven’t come to help us yet, and they’re all fighting each other already. Why would they stop arguing with one another just because you asked them to? Why would they walk through the blizzard to save us now, when we weren’t worth their time before? Warden, you can’t go!”

Though young, she was hardly a filly and seemed to have a surprisingly sound grasp of the situation. I could respect that, even if she was arguing against the former soldier’s decision to leave me alone with her.

“Now, now, Miss Time,” he consoled her as he crossed the room and wrapped a hoof around her shoulders. “It will be okay. Finding the tribes will be the hardest part. Once I manage that, I am confident that they will send help after I explain how things stand here. Commander Hurricane and I were friends once, and I have heard Princess Platinum is more than reasonable so long as compensation is offered. I am sure there is something in the palace that could convince her to send a few of her unicorns north.”

“You know,” I spoke up, “I came up from down that way when I returned to the city. The wendigos and their storms are stronger than I’ve ever heard of before. You’re talking about a few months worth of travel in the best of cases. Since I can’t imagine you intend to bring Miss Time along, I am guessing that means you plan for me to watch over her?”

Obviously, but it never hurts to get specific details out in the open. Hearing it from her guardian will allow the mare to accept it more readily than if I suggested it.

He nodded. “If it’s not too much to ask. It’s no safer out in that cold than it is here. At least if you remain here and the worst should happen... if the two of you should be discovered—”

That’s not actually the worst that could happen, especially for her.

“—you’ll still be breathing and can be rescued.”

Well, okay, yes. Everypony would still be breathing… and technically could be rescued, though that would be unlikely in the particular ‘worst-case’ scenario that I am thinking of.

“Outside of the Empire, there are no such guarantees. But yes, Headway is correct, Miss Time,” he confirmed. “The trip will take quite a while. I know that I promised to protect you until your parents woke up—”

There’s an interesting way to phrase it.

“—but somepony has to go, and I know the ponies who can help us. I’ve seen how resourceful the lad can be, you’ll be safe with him.”

Flattering. It’s almost a shame that there is no ‘him.’

I half expected her to argue with him, or launch herself at him in the hopes of changing his mind. Instead, Double Time choked back a sob and slowly approached Warden. She sat down next to him and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Come home soon, Warden. I’ll miss you.”

Huh. That was more mature of her than I thought possible. That’s the wonder of adolescence, I suppose. A filly one minute and a mare the next.

I gave them both three days before I set my plans into motion.

It was always possible that Warden would be forced back into town after underestimating the blizzard, and as for Double Time—she may have worn a determined face to see her guardian off, but I could feel her emotional turmoil. She needed to mourn her imaginary loss before I could work my magic.

The day he left, I didn’t go out. With the recent activity in the next neighborhood over, it was easy to convince Double Time that we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves or to Warden as he made his way slowly out of the city.

I went out on the second day. I assured Double Time that I would be careful and limit my search to just a couple houses in the opposite direction from the previous neighborhood.

As soon as I was out of sight from the schoolhouse, however, I let the soothing flames consume me and took the form of some local species of bird that I didn’t even know the name of.

The flighty little avian was in no way attractive, consisting of a solid grey coloration with splotches of black on its wings in a seemingly random pattern. The only color on them was a single tuft of dull orange on its neck. Its voice was not particularly pleasant either, but it had one useful advantage: they were everywhere. I could literally fly right up to the palace balcony without a second thought or glance.

So I did.

From my perch on the balcony’s railing, I could see into the throne room. I had to keep moving my head around like a moonstruck moron—I really hate these birds—to maintain the deception, but I was able to make out quite a bit of the room nonetheless.

The self-styled king was quite the fan of those black crystal formations, as almost the entire room was covered in them. They rose around the former royal family’s throne like a crystalline claw reaching up from the floor, ready to pull the uncomfortable old chair into the pits of Tartarus.

Lounging on that throne was what appeared to be a dark gray unicorn. However, I knew enough about both unicorns and impersonation to know that appearances could be deceiving.

His horn was curved and unusually smooth for an equine. It almost looked like my own aside from the red tint rising from the base and the disgusting purple bubbling effect that his otherwise familiar green magical corona included.

King Sombra interested me because, according to Warden’s account, the stallion had grown up living in the Crystal Empire as one of them. Presumably, that meant some crystal couple raised him as their own, therefore, either his appearance changed the day he seized the city or nopony in the empire could recognize an Umbral when they saw one.

The most obvious giveaway was his eyes. Crimson iris, with solid green where it should be white on a pony. I felt it safe to assume that those were a recent change since I very much doubted that anypony would willingly adopt a colt with such eyes. Most ponies would run from him looking like that, foal or not.

At least I can definitively confirm that what I saw the other day was indeed Sombra looking at me through the mad pony’s eyes. Not that it matters now, but I imagine all that mindless rage didn’t even come from the stallion. It was probably Sombra’s.

I watched him for several minutes before I had to abandon my surveillance for fear of giving myself away.

During that time, he never moved or spoke a word. His eyes were open and giving off rippling purple tendrils of his two-toned magic, but they were unfocused. I assumed that meant he was actively puppeting one of his conquered pony pets somewhere in the city.

I flew over the central commons where tents and slightly more permanent fair stands still stood abandoned—mute evidence that Sombra’s rise to power was sudden. The ponies of the empire were celebrating something and hadn’t even been given enough warning to close the food stalls and crafts tents set up in the street. Their various contents scattered across the roadway as tables were overturned in their haste to flee.

From high above, specific details were a bit out of focus, but empty tarps drawn over poles weren’t what I was looking for anyway. The prize I sought would excuse my absence.

I had been out longer than Warden usually was on his runs, and I was sure Double Time would have noticed by now and begun worrying. The last thing I needed was for her to try and be a hero, leaving the schoolhouse in an attempt to rescue me from whatever dangers lived in her imagination.

The sunlight made it difficult to spot what I wanted, even with the bird’s unusually sharp eyesight, but eventually, I found it once I started landing on window sills in the more affluent part of town.

There it was: a unicorn lamp, active and shedding its magical light in some noble’s counting room.

My disguise was suddenly inadequate. The bird was not large enough to carry the lamp, nor was it strong enough to open or even break a window to gain access to it.

Sombra already knows there is a changeling in town. He may not comprehend what changelings are or what we are capable of, but our appearance, at the very least, is no longer a secret. The only pony in the empire that I have to hide from now is Double Time… I doubt the affected are going to tip her off.

Resolving to retrieve my prize au naturel, I allowed my disguise to dissolve around me in emerald flames. I was confident that my position on the third-floor balcony of this empty noble’s mansion was secluded enough that I let the change happen slowly. I have never known a greater joy than the feeling of transformation magic washing over me, and it was rare that I had the opportunity to truly enjoy it.

Even taking it slowly, the euphoria ended, as it always does, much too quickly. After a few moments, I stood on that balcony with my chitin gleaming in the sunlight, greedily absorbing the light to make itself the envy of all who saw it. Polished to a beautiful sheen. It was almost a shame that nopony could see it, but that was kinda the point I suppose or else I’d have never reverted to ‘Carina’ in the first place.

I tested the balcony’s door and found it to be locked, as were the two windows flanking it.

Of all the doors to actually be locked, why bother with one on the third floor? There are no pegasi this far north.

Rather than taking another new disguise—as much as the thought of doing so made me smile a bit—I opted for a quicker solution, one which I rarely had reason to employ but I felt like it was a trick I may want to brush the dust off of if the situation turned sour on me.

Calling up my magic, I formed a circle of green fire around me and sank into the floor.

Like all changeling magic, the flames were heatless, but that didn’t stop them from rising up consuming me, flashing like a stage magician’s powder before winking out just as quickly, taking me with them. The world slides away from you when fire-portalling. For a single heartbeat, you stop existing. You float in a void that you can’t even see before being pulled back into the real world somewhere else with the ghost of green flames flickering out around your hooves.

I stepped out of the ring of fire as it burned itself out, looking around the moderately large office for anything else I might as well take while I was here. I settled for a pot of ink, several stacks of blank paper, and a book titled ‘Origins of the Faire’ which was sitting open on the desk.

Initially, the book was of personal interest to me as it depicted the Crystal Heart on the page it had been open to. Unfortunately, after a quick skimming of its contents, I realized it was merely an account of the ritual used to recharge the Heart. I had my own means to charge it, once it was in my possession, making the text less valuable to me.

Speaking of which…

I grabbed the lamp, turned it off, and added it to the rest of the things I was procuring from the counting room.

I then swept the mansion for affected ponies very quickly, keeping my horn lit and ready to defend myself properly. I made my way to the kitchen, promptly cleaned out the pantry, and tossed my loot into a very ornate bathroom towel with an embroidered monogram of the letter ‘T’ in the corner.

The fact that the mansion was clean and didn’t seem to have the usual filth I’d come to associate with life as an affected contaminating the building wasn’t lost on me, but it was a curiosity that could wait for another time. I was simply thankful for the small things.

Once again, I called up the ring of fire and sank into it, disappearing from the marble home to step out of a similar ring as it faded around my hooves behind one of the houses surrounding the school building.

The distance was more significant than I anticipated, as was the draw on my reserves. While much faster than walking, or even flying, the fire portal was too taxing to use regularly. Its energy requirement wasn’t quite exponential, but it certainly ramped up quickly the further you needed to go.

A smile crossed my lips as I called ‘Headway’ to mind and allowed the soothing flame to melt me down. The magic reforged my body into that of the squishy silver pony I’d been posing as, providing an opportunity to once again tweak my temporary muscle tone just a bit more.

With Warden away, I felt safe in giving myself just a little more than would be realistic. He may have noticed the incredible progress, but I was reasonably sure Double Time’s untrained eye wouldn’t.

My smile faded with the magic’s embrace. It was always fleeting.

I picked up the towel-wrapped treasures and shifted the weight on my shoulders before stepping out into the cul-de-sac. A few dozen steps later, I opened the schoolhouse door and stepped inside, only to have a green blur assault me and a pony’s weight hanging from my neck.

“Headway! Are you okay? What happened? You were gone a lot longer than usual,” Double Time said between sobs. I could feel her concern, but it was fading quickly, to be replaced with relief and joy.

Before I answered her, I took a moment to replenish some of the magic I used up with the fire portals, taking in a bit of her offered emotional energy. It wasn’t equivalent—not by a long shot—but if I sipped on her strength a bit all night, I was sure I could replace what I lost by morning.

“I’m fine, Miss Time. Better than fine, in fact. I found a few things that you might like,” I said as I shrugged the towel full of acquisitions off my back.

“I know it gets a little boring here, so I thought you might like a new book.” Seeing only a slight interest in her face after seeing the title, I quickly moved on. “Or, if you are a bit more creative than inquisitive, I also brought back some paper and ink. You could draw or keep a journal or fold paper animals. I don’t know… I am not very good at crafts myself.”

She laughed softly at my admittedly false admission. Simple crafts were a requirement of infiltration. You never knew what skills your disguise was expected to have.

And now it’s time for dinner.

“Oh, and I almost forgot… I also stumbled across a unicorn lamp, no big deal.”

Skepticism. Curiosity. Wonder. Joy.

Her gasp was delivered as I felt the wonder burst out of her.

“Oh! Where did you find one of these? I haven’t seen one of these since leaving my house, and I didn’t think anypony around here would have one,” she exclaimed before the smile on her face gradually faded. “But… they’re awfully bright, and they don’t flicker at all. Won’t that give us away?”

I rubbed my hoof over her mane with a chuckle.

“Nah. If anything, it is a lot safer than using oil lamps. A flickering flame means somepony had to light it. That I would think is the more dangerous scenario. If nopony has noticed the lights we’ve used in the past, I doubt anypony is going to notice the unicorn lamp. They don’t wear out, so it’s not unthinkable that it’s been on for months or even years with nopony around to turn it off,” I replied.

Her happiness returned in a flash, and mine did as well once I was able to start siphoning it off again. She sat down with the lamp, paper, and ink then began to write something down. She spent the evening at the teacher’s desk, sitting in the chair rather than on the surface. I am not entirely sure what she wrote that first night since she hid it from me whenever I walked past.

“Thank you, Headway,” was all she said when she decided it was time to sleep. It’s all she needed to say. Everything else that I needed from her was already being put to use.

“Headway, wait a moment,” she called out to me as I was walking out the front door the next morning.

I slowly closed the door again and turned toward her.

“What’s wrong, Miss Time,” I asked her. “Is there something specific you’d like me to bring back this time?”

“Yeah. Me.”

I took a moment and paused as I tried to figure out what she meant. Her emotions didn’t provide many clues either, they were a jumbled mess.

Excitement. Embarrassment. Anxiety. Fear. Hope.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?” I eventually prompted her for an explanation.

She fidgeted a moment before responding, taking an unusual interest in her front hooves before nodding to herself, looking up into my face and forcing herself to maintain eye contact.

“I want to come with you.”

Interesting.

She continued, “Warden treats me like a foal because he feels responsible for my well being. I know how things are out there, and I want to help. I need to do something, anything, besides huddle in the corner with a coloring book. It’s more frightening sitting alone in the silence, not knowing if the two of you will make it back with another day’s worth of food that I didn’t contribute to than it would be if I was out there with you. I don’t deserve that. My parents are royal guards, I can handle myself, and I can watch your back. I promise!”

Very interesting. Warden wouldn’t like it, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, I mused. On the one hoof, having her with me would provide more opportunities to strengthen her dependence on me, granting me quicker and deeper access to her love… on the other hoof, having her tag along will definitely slow down my search for the Heart.

“Headway?”

I shook my head and focused on her face, which was anxiously cocked to the side with big puppy-dog eyes engaged.

“Sorry. I was just considering your proposal,” I said. I took a breath for dramatic effect before answering her with a perfectly modest smile on my face.

“I don’t know if I’d be comfortable taking you with me on the more dangerous trips deeper into the city, but I don’t see why you couldn’t come along most days on simple grocery runs until you get a little bit of experience. So, why not? Come on.”

We walked out the door together, pausing only briefly as Double Time blinked several times to adjust to the direct daylight. Grinning to myself, I draped one hoof lazily over her shoulders and squeezed her to me in a brief hug before descending the five short steps of the main entrance and leading her through the empty cul-de-sac.

I could feel her embarrassment and confusion trailing behind me.

'Remember to perform minor, seemingly random, physical displays of affection every so often. It’ll establish a correlation between proximity to yourself and your prey’s personal safety.'

I couldn't help quoting that bit of infiltrator training in my head. It was a lesson few of my peers bothered to remember, which is why I was so much better at this sort of thing than they were.

I had intended to return to the palace. However, I had to come up with a new plan, now that Double Time would be coming along.

Despite her assurance that she could take care of herself, I was unenthusiastic about taking her more than block or two from the schoolhouse. Opting to avoid the neighborhood that held Sombra’s attention, I led the way through the local backyards and into the gardens of the adjacent community.

“All right, when we are in the yards or buildings, move slowly and quietly. Any time we have to be in sight of the streets, especially the main roads, you’ll have to walk rather briskly. It’s not gonna be comfortable, so we’ll try to avoid it for today.

“All we need for now is a bit of food. I am sure Warden has already searched these homes, but I am also sure he limited his search to the kitchens. What we are going to do is raid the basements. Many ponies have pantries, and some have full-on preserving cellars for jams and other do-it-yourself canning projects. Pickles, sugar-water preserved fruits, and so on. Maybe even cider, if we’re lucky,” I said, winking once with a grin on my face.

She blushed briefly before nodding her head in the affirmative.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said as I shrugged out of my saddlebags and started flipping through the contents. A moment later, I brought out one of the towels I had collected recently and proceeded to tear it half lengthwise and passed one of the halves to Double Time.

“Here, tie this around your muzzle. Trust me.”

A few minutes later, we were standing behind the nearest of the houses. There was no sign of anypony living here, but that wasn’t unusual to me. It did creep out the young mare beside me, however, as I could feel her reluctance and fear. To her credit, she never voiced her concerns or hesitated when I directed her on how to do something.

We were in and out of the house in just a few minutes, having not found a basement in the home.

After several hours had passed, we had searched every home in the neighborhood. Only two of which actually had basements, but thankfully my prediction was correct about one of them, and the two of use hauled dozens of canned good out of there, barely leaving a dent in the disaster survivalist’s dream that the homeowners had accumulated. There would be no need to find a new source of food for at least a few weeks.

We spent another hour or so making multiple trips back and forth between the schoolhouse and our treasure trove of sealed glass jars with various edibles floating within.

By midday, we had brought back more food than the schoolhouse had cumulatively stored the entire time I was with them.

“Not bad,” I teased while cracking open a jar of peaches, “for a beginner.”

A rude sound came back to me in reply, followed by mirth, pride, and contentment.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “All I am saying is that I brought back more food today than Warden has all summer… it is still summer, right?”

She let her legs collapse beneath her as she wrestled with her own jar of preserved fruit. Her insistence on slamming the lid of the container against the floor to loosen it made my squishy flesh crawl due to the crystal sounding like cracking ice once again.

I’ll never get used to that sound.

“Autumn, actually. At least it would be down south. I am not sure what it should be up here, I’ve been away too long to keep track.”

The cracking sound ended abruptly as she gave up on doing it herself and instead tossed it to me.

“Here, you do it. You’re the strong one here.”

I almost dropped the jar when I instinctively reached for it with my magic, only to realize a split second before it was too late that I didn’t currently have a horn to work magic with. I scrambled to catch it with my hooves, diving to the floor and arresting its descent, mere inches before it would have done what the ground sounded like it was doing every time the young mare jumped on it.

I spun the lid off for her and passed it back, only then noticing that my dash to save her lunch cost me my own. I watched as the open container rolled across the floor behind me, shedding halved peaches along its path.

I picked it up and dumped what remained directly into my mouth—two split peach pieces and a quarter of the jar’s volume in sugary juice.

Double Time giggled and tapped the floor beside her.

“My hero. I suppose I could reward you by sharing some of mine,” she quipped.

I grumbled a bit for appearance’s sake, then slid over next to her, accepting a whole strawberry she pulled out of her jar and offered me.

It was good. I might even say it was delicious if I wasn’t comparing it to what else I was surprised to find myself consuming at that moment.

Love.

She was wearing her heart out on her sleeve, and forgetting the outside world existed at that moment. It was pure and enjoyable, and the strongest I had siphoned from her yet.

The only unusual thing about it, though, was the fact that I hadn’t actively manipulated that scenario. I didn’t pull it out of her. I didn’t trick her into thinking about it. It was naturally occurring and entirely her idea.

It was still the fleeting love of an adolescent—hardly even comparable to the powerhouse of true love—but it was filling, all the same.

The next few months look to be promising. Don’t hurry home, Warden.

Author's Note

update:
Originally posted on the 8th of July, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 4th of March, 2020.

05. | There Are Things I Regret

I think a bit of clarification may be in order before I continue. I can see that some of you are cringing and expect that I destroyed that young mare’s life.

Contrary to what you might be imagining, I did not spend the next several months draining every ounce of love energy she possessed.

I certainly could have, but there was no need to do so. I wasn’t going hungry, and the mare posed no threat to the secrecy of my hive. So long as she continued to overflow with emotions from one day to the next, I had no incentive to harm her.

It occurs to me that you might have a few misconceptions about my kind.

A changeling hive—and by extension, the changelings within it—is a living thing, and like all living things, it adapts. A proper hive is structured, disciplined, and moves forward with a purpose every single day. Our queen dictates what that purpose is, her princesses train and lead specialized units like a general overseeing her troops, and then the drones march to their tune in the name of our queen. It is our purpose, the reason we draw breath. Nothing, not even our own lives, is as vital as the hive or our queen.

With that said, keep in mind that the hives you may be familiar with today did not exist yet in the time of the Empire. Other queens may do things differently. My queen, Serosa, was every bit as powerful and commanding as Chrysalis—but unlike that megalomaniac, my queen was actually sane. Sure, if somepony threatened the survival of our hive, they were dealt with swiftly and thoroughly, but never cruelly. We fed on ponies because we must, both for sustenance and for magical reserves, which we do not produce on our own.

Ponies are our primary prey because their very existence is the embodiment of love. They create love in such abundance—literally coloring their world—that without it, they devolve into shades of muted grey. They replace consumed love so quickly that even draining them completely doesn’t necessarily mean having to find a new food source. No other species in the known world is as resilient and emotionally regenerative. One healthy pony can feed dozens of active changelings or close to a hundred in a state of rest. They are a perfect food source.

Now, make no mistake, Double Time was absolutely my prey. I fed on her without remorse the same way bears feel no sympathy for the fish they catch or how ponies feel no empathy for cows. That’s actually an excellent comparison since cows are every bit as sentient as ponies but are locked in a barn and treated like, well, cattle. My point being: sustenance is necessary, and the method of extracting that sustenance may seem cruel to those who are being fed upon, but it’s not like she wasn’t getting something out of it too.

While I still don’t approve of Thorax’s hive-wide metamorphosis, I do at least now understand his reasoning, and I certainly approve of his leadership more than I did that of Chrysalis.

Of course, that’s getting ahead of the story a bit. I hadn’t yet discovered the value of symbiotic relationships back then. That is a much more recent development.

No, the font of magical potential that she represented to me was much better reserved for after I located the Crystal Heart. I was quite sure that King Sombra would not part with his treasure easily. I would need to squeeze everything I could out of her eventually, but that energy would be far more potent if left untouched until it was truly needed.

If things seemed routine when Warden was in charge, the weeks that followed his decision to head south in search of a miracle blurred together into a mass of entirely forgettable monotony. Let’s not mince words here, that’s precisely what it would take for any of the tribes to withdraw from their conflict with the other two long enough to care about their northern neighbors.

For several days, Double Time and I went out together to scavenge supplies. It delayed my real mission for a while, but it was time well spent as she became more and more comfortable around me. Her strength, both physical and emotional, grew in leaps and bounds.

I taught her how to be stealthy, how to recognize potential escape strategies no matter what sort of room she may find herself in should she encounter an affected pony in her search. I also showed her a few self-defense moves designed to create an opening long enough to enact one of those escapes.

She was eager to learn and remarkably capable. Her natural athletic ability didn’t take long to come back to her once she had more space than a single cluttered classroom could offer her to move around in.

By the end of the third week, she was self-sufficient enough that I encouraged her to try a run on her own.

“Really!?” she exclaimed, “you think I am good enough to do this by myself?”

Excitement. Pride. Joy.

“Of course. You’ve been ready for a few days now, I just wanted to be sure of it before saying anything,” I told her.

She wiggled like a cat ready to pounce, which prompted me to tighten my neck and shoulders to support the extra weight that was about to be wrapped around them.

She surprised me, though, when she instead straightened her back and stood tall, throwing her hoof in front of her forehead in a poor but well-meaning imitation of a military salute.

It was adorable.

“I won’t let you down,” she said enthusiastically. “Of course, there isn’t too much that we really need at the moment. We still haven’t gone through all of the preserves we found that first day.”

A thought seemed to cross her mind as a brief surge of curiosity and suspicion flowed out of her.

“So, what are you going to be doing while I am out there alone?”

“Well, I will be out there too—nearby, in case you need me—but I will be looking for a few bigger ticket items that will be a bit trickier to bring home.”

A raised eyebrow was her only response to that. Still, her suspicion was replaced by excitement once again before she picked up the modified towel she used as her face mask of choice and quickly slid into her saddlebags, wrenching the belt tight with her teeth once it was in place.

“You like what you see there, big guy?” Her voice called out to me as she struck a pose by the door.

She hadn’t turned to look my way, and judging from the amusement in both her voice and emotions, it was clear she was making a joke more than accusing me of staring at her.

This was lucky for me because her words alerted me to the fact that I was indeed watching her closer than was strictly necessary.

Ugh, I gotta find that Heart and get back to the hive soon. The last thing I need is for this mare’s Buckholme Syndrome and my disguise’s hormones to conspire against me.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re gorgeous... for a dirt-encrusted mare who hasn’t seen a mirror, brush, or bath in almost a year.”

Shock. Self-consciousness. Sadness.

Great. Think before you speak next time, moron.

“But... don’t you worry about that, Miss Time. I am just teasing you,” I quickly amended. “Now go have some fun breaking and entering, you little delinquent. Bring us back something useful, and I might have a surprise waiting for you when you get back.”

That did the trick, as her emotions immediately returned to what they had been moments before. She looked back at me with a tear still in her eye but a smile crawling across her face.

“Deal!” she said as she walked outside, closing the door behind herself.

Well, so much for getting back to the search today. I guess I have to spend the day looking for something to surprise her with.

I waited about ten minutes for her to make her way a suitable distance from the school before I stepped out. Right away, I ducked behind my favorite house—the one with the blind corner in the backyard, surrounded by a whitewashed wooden privacy fence on two sides and a once-trimmed hedge wall along the rear property border.

Once out of view, I called up the comforting flames of transformation and bathed in the intoxicating feeling of melting away and reforming into something completely new.

The only thing that ruined the moment was the form I took.

I really hate these northern birds.

Taking a moment to quickly inspect my wing and tail feathers—a precaution I took seriously considering how poorly these animals actually fly. I would only spread my wings and throw myself into the air once I was satisfied that they wouldn’t spontaneously fall out upon hitting the first breeze.

I decided to return to the mansion in which I found the unicorn lamp. The layout was at least somewhat familiar to me, and I knew the third-floor balcony was an obvious access point.

En route, I had a clear view of the activity within the city. There were dozens of two and three-pony patrols actively entering buildings—something I hadn’t seen them do before without direct intervention from Sombra.

Teams of two would enter buildings together and leave again in the time it took for me to fly out of sight. They were obviously not looking for hidden objects. What they sought could only be to flush out free-thinking ponies, assuming there were any others left in town.

Inconvenient. I am reasonably sure there are no others in the city, which means he’s either looking for Warden or for me. Possibly both.

I was able to watch a three-pony team performing a search as well, though they seemed to act slightly differently. Only one of the ponies would enter while the other two remained outside the front door. These teams took significantly longer to move on, either being more thorough or simply because there were half as many bodies doing the actual work.

In either case, it meant that it was only a matter of time before we would have to defend or abandon the schoolhouse. Thankfully, the city was relatively large, and the patrol groups seemed to be radiating out from the central palace, meaning it would likely be a few days, if not weeks before they found our little shelter in what amounted to the suburbs.

It was something that would have to be monitored, but as I approached my destination, I had to put it out of my mind to focus on the task at hoof.

Alighting on the familiar counting-room balcony railing, I hopped along the length of the marble to look inside as many windows as I could. It was evident at a glance that the building had already been searched since I was last there.

Vases once filled with wilted flowers were not shattered on the floor beneath the thin tables they once stood upon. Chairs—once neatly tucked under desks or tables—were overturned and, in some cases, across the room from the furniture they had once been matched to.

It looked as though an effort was made to look into every room of the mansion, but not actually search through it, as bookshelves remained untouched and wardrobes went unmolested, safely hiding their contents away without having been opened in months.

Convinced that the building was in no immediate danger of a second visitation any time soon, I hopped down off the railing and made my way to the door before taking my natural form and walking inside.

I already knew there was nothing of interest in the counting room, so I simply made my way to the opposite door and stepped out into the hallway.

I had a few hours before I expected Miss Time to return to the school, so I was in no real hurry. I turned left and walked down the hall to the first door on the left and entered it.

The room was another study of some sort, with bookshelves built into the walls on either side of a highly polished table. Unlike the counting room, this room looked like it was used often with multiple stacks of books piled up on the table itself as well as the floor next to a pair of chairs.

I took a few minutes to browse the titles but didn’t see anything that I thought a young mare would find interesting.

Moving on, I worked my way around the third floor one door at a time. Among the rooms, I discovered three different bedrooms as well as a second library. I looked through the mare of the house’s closet and briefly considered bringing back a fancy dress or two, but they all seemed to be much too large for Double Time.

She was filling out quickly, having easily put on a few stones since Warden left, both from a natural growth spurt as well as our much healthier diet since finding the cellar full of food. However, she was still gracefully athletic, whereas the mare these clothes were designed for was easily twice Miss Time’s girth. In short, they were for a rather matronly build, and I wasn’t terribly interested in trying my hoof at tailoring.

I descended the main stairway overlooking all three levels with its grandiose chandelier and floor to ceiling windows to the second floor.

Here I found a few more bedrooms, but these seemed to be intended for guests, as there were little more than folded towels in the otherwise empty dressers and closets. There was also a lavish bathroom with polished stonework around the sink and sunk-in bathtub that could have comfortably sat four or five ponies.

The only thing of value I liberated from the second floor ended up being two bottles of expensive-looking shampoo and a half dozen bars of soap, each wrapped in some kind of wax paper.

I made my way down to the ground floor, ignoring the kitchen, which I had already searched once, and began opening doors.

Aside from the opulent sitting rooms and ‘family’ rooms that were meant to impress visitors but showed little evidence of actual use, most of the first floor was dedicated to housing servants, it seemed. Two larger bedrooms with multiple beds in each, likely split between stallions and mares, served as a sort of barracks for the hired help.

Nestled between the two rooms, however, was precisely what I was looking for. Stepping inside the comparatively smaller hall whose doors opened into each of the servants’ quarters, I examined my prize.

It was twice as wide as a pony, slightly longer front to back and not quite as tall as my shoulders in height… it would be difficult to move.

Knowing the strain it would put on me, I reasoned that the investment would be returned tenfold within just a few days, so I pictured the burning ring of my fire portal and made sure that it completely encircled the object as well as myself.

I was momentarily worried that I had made a mistake as I sank into the ground and watched Miss Time’s gift melt away next to me in slow motion. The time spent in the realm of nothingness seemed to last far too long, and I began to panic that I may not have enough energy to exit on the other side of the portal and be stuck in-between.

Thankfully, the flames eventually receded around me, and I found myself in the middle of the classroom we called home with a substantial piece of porcelain next to me.

I staggered backward, feeling more drained than I ever had before. I barely had enough strength left to remain upright, which forced me to do the one thing I really didn’t want to do.

I was barely able to pull myself free of my saddlebags before quickly rifling through them in search of my love crystals. I pulled the small wooden box which housed them from the bag and fumbled the lid open, dropping two dull gemstones on the floor in my haste.

Ignoring those for the moment, I grabbed one of the remaining charged crystals and drained it hungrily. I could feel the strength returning to my limbs, and my horn lit briefly as I absentmindedly pulled the discarded treasures back to me in an aura of pale green and replaced them in the box.

Setting the box down next to my saddlebags, I bathed in the soothing flames once more and melted into the shape of ‘Headway’ mere moments before the front door opened. Double Time backed herself into the room while dragging a relatively large burlap sack up the few stairs and into the school.

Rather than put the box away properly, I quickly slid it next to the pile of blankets I used as my bed and moved my saddlebags in front of it to keep it out of sight.

With her back still turned toward me, Double Time let go of the bag she was dragging long enough to close the door and begin talking.

“You would not believe the stuff some of our neighbors have left lying around their houses! I found a full suit of guardpony barding and enough spear tips to make dozens... of...”

Her voice trailed off as she turned in place to look my way, her eyes fixed and staring at what now rested where students once sat, daydreaming of the hour in which they could go home.

She blinked, unmoving before finding her voice again.

“Um, Headway, there’s a bathtub in the classroom.”

I stepped around the massive white obstacle, chuckling softly to pull her attention away from my barely-adequate hiding spot.

“You noticed. Very observant of you, Miss Time. Truly, you could have a career in investigation,” I teased her. “I told you I would have a surprise for you when you returned. It was harder than I thought, dragging that thing back here without being seen, and we don’t exactly have running water or a proper drain in here, but give me a few hours, and I can solve at least one of those problems.

“We should be able to get you cleaned up sometime this evening.”

A blush, followed by a strong wave of embarrassment as well as a curious hint of excitement.

It didn’t take a genius to realize I had inadvertently implied more than I had intended. While the wording worked in my favor, I knew I had to dial it back and act the part of modesty, for now.

“Oh! I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, you know, you could use it to wash up in by the end of the day, if you wanted to… not that I would be involved in the process. I mean, beyond getting it all set up, that is.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon inside.

I was putting together a makeshift aqueduct as a drain pipe. She was sliding desks around, creating a sort of divider between the bathtub and the rest of the classroom.

My plumbing solution wasn’t perfect, but short of digging up the floor to run pipes underground, it would have to do. Thankfully, the tub was lifted off the floor by four clawed griffon feet, so there was at least some decline to my trough leading out to the emergency exit.

I didn’t dare leave the rear door open or cut a hole into it, so the homemade drain simply stopped just in front of the former teacher’s entrance and allowed the water running down it to empty onto the floor and seep under the doorway.

The drain trough itself was cobbled together using crafting materials we found in the schoolhouse; several long strips of flat crystal bound together in a V-shape with twine and some sort of glue along the seams in an attempt to keep it watertight.

I chose not to read the adhesive’s label. There was one particular ingredient involved in the production of glue that I always found repulsive. How ponies could use the remains of their friends and families in such a way, then cheerfully use the end result in arts and crafts, always struck me as more deviant than anything a changeling could think up.

If you still don’t understand, look it up for yourself.

“There,” I said once I was reasonably convinced the glue seals had dried, “that should do it. There is still an hour or two of daylight left if you want to help me carry in a few dozen buckets of water from the well out back.”

Double Time grinned widely as she made one final adjustment to the overturned desk she was repositioning between her gift and my sleeping area before looking over at me with large round eyes.

“Um, okay. Let’s do this!” Miss Time happily exclaimed before the grin slid off her face in slow motion. “The water’s going to be cold, isn’t it?”

I laughed at her comment, enjoying a moment of schadenfreude.

“Oh yeah. Sure is… but you know what they say about beggars?”

“They get everything that they want?” she chirped hopefully.

“They can’t be choosers,” I finished the phrase, deadpan, as I bent down to pick up the bucket we customarily used for bringing in drinking water. “Now hurry up; grab another bucket, and let’s get started, or you’ll be waiting until morning to take a bath.”

She picked up a wooden pail from the pile of useful items that we may one day find a use for and followed me outside.

It took a lot longer than I thought to fill the basin up to roughly shoulder height—two buckets at a time—but we managed to complete the job just as the sun was setting and the brainwashed neighbors started filtered into the cul-de-sac for the night.

“I can’t wait,” she said dreamily. “I don’t even remember the last time I was clean and pretty.”

She launched herself around my neck and nuzzled the side of my head.

“Thank you, Headway. This is the nicest thing anypony has done for me all year. The only thing that could make it better is if you also found some soap.”

Drunk on the affection I was consuming, I replied before I thought about what I was saying.

“Oh, I found soap. Shampoo, too, they are over there in my saddlebags.”

She gasped as she dropped off of me and raced over to my sleeping area quicker than I could have imagined possible.

“In here?” she asked as I could hear her lift the flap of my bag. “Oh, I found them. I can’t wait! Ooh, this smells like rose petals! This is the good stuff, Headway. You picked…”

She trailed off just as a chill ran down my back. I couldn’t see her over the wall of desks she erected, but somehow I knew what caught her attention.

I think I was grinning, still enjoying the feast she had provided me, but my face fell into a determined resignation once I heard the sound of a wooden box sliding out from its hiding place among my blankets.

Well, this is it. She’s going to be a liability now. How unfortunate, I had hoped to keep her around a bit longer.

“Headway,” her awestruck voice drifted over the divider. “Are you a Crystaller?”

“A… what?”

“A Crystaller. You know, the pony who performs the ritual that recharges the Crystal Heart. The one who dedicates foals and introduces them to the whole Empire! You have Crystalling purity shards over here.”

I shook my head vigorously as I stepped around the desks to look her in the eye. She wasn’t angry, nor was she curious about the love crystals. She recognized what they could do, but misinterpreted what I was using them for.

That’s when it hit me.

Changeling love crystals are the same thing as these purity shards. They are both reservoirs of pure love energy made from flawless gems. The only difference is that the changelings draw from them like emergency rations while ponies fill them with love to feed into the artifact. That means… there are probably more of them around!

“Ye— Yes,” I stammered out, responding simultaneous to thinking my way through a revision to my disguise’s backstory. “I mean, I was, before I left the city. Now that King Sombra has the Heart, though, I don’t think there is too much need for a Crystaller.”

Her eyes softened a bit from their previously vast state of wonder.

“Oh, right. I guess that’s why two of them are still charged, huh? You couldn’t deliver them to the Heart.”

“That’s right. Though those two were filled outside of the Empire. I ran across an expecting couple during my travels several months ago,” I lied. “When their twins were born, they begged me to be their Crystaller. Their little village participated, even though only the couple and their foals were actually from the Empire. I was coming back to feed them into the Crystal Heart when Warden found me.”

Not a bad story for something cobbled together spur-of-the-moment. It doesn’t even contradict anything I’ve told them before.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I hope you get to finish the dedication soon,” Double Time said with a bit of sorrow starting to well up and seep out of her. “It must be nice. I never had a Crystalling.”

I didn’t know everything there was to know about crystal ponies, but I knew enough to be skeptical of that statement. Every crystal pony goes through that ritual, long before they are even capable of walking in most cases.

“Are you sure? I mean, everypony is introduced to the Empire. I am sure you were just too young to remember.”

She shook her head slowly as she sat down next to my bedding. “No, mom and dad told me several times that they were sorry it hadn’t happened yet, but they were planning to hold my Crystalling soon. It was always ‘soon’, but never ‘today’.

“They were both just so busy with their duties as royal guards, you know. It wasn’t hard to spend time with them, just not at the same time. They rarely had a day off together, and they insisted that they both be present for my special day.”

She sighed.

“Eventually, the topic just stopped coming up. I loved going to all the Crystallings I heard about, though, and I used to pretend it was me up there being presented to the crowd and the Crystal Heart.”

I saw an opportunity here.

“Tell you what, Miss Time. As soon as we buck the mind-controlling tyrant to the curb and restore the Crystal Heart to its rightful place—” my queen’s throne room, “—I will be your Crystaller.”

I’ve never felt a more energetic rush of pure love in my life than I did in that instant. I fully expected that declaration to strengthen her dependency on me a little and perhaps enjoy a second helping of the affection I was dining on earlier. Still, I was unprepared for the flood that threatened to drown my senses entirely. It was nearly uncomfortable how much raw love energy was being directed at me, and I quickly felt bloated. To date, I think that may have been the only time I have ever cut myself off.

Once again, I felt another pony’s weight hanging from my neck; only this time, that weight was accompanied by a distinctly damp barrel as the young mare wept against me.

“Thank you, Headway, thank you!” she cried. She stayed there, pouring her heart out at me, quite literally.

Had I not been so overwhelmed by her response, I would have done the intelligent thing and refilled one of the crystals. Unfortunately, the mare had counted how many were dull and which remained charged. If a third one suddenly lit up, it may have been difficult to explain.

“There, there. You’re embarrassing me. Besides, your cold bath water is getting room temperature,” I joked.

With a sniffle and a laugh, she backed away from me. Quickly picking up the bottle of rose shampoo and one of the wax paper-wrapped bars of soap, she ducked behind the room divider.

“No peaking now,” she giggled as I heard the telltale sound of water splashing. I suppose it doesn’t take a pony long to prepare her bath when the only piece of clothing they wore was a cheap silver necklace.

The sounds of vigorous scrubbing died away after half an hour or so and were replaced by a contented sigh and still waters.

“Headway?” she asked, completely relaxed.

“Yes?”

“Do you think Warden is okay?”

No.

“I am sure of it,” I replied.

“I hope so. I’d like for him to be at my Crystalling too.”

“I have no doubt that he will be there. I am sure he will be just as proud of you as your parents. I haven’t known you very long, but I know I will be.”

Several long minutes of silence followed before the sound of her getting out could be heard. The gentle drip of water hitting the crystalline floor also slowly faded as she dried herself off.

“Headway?” she called again, voice heavy with contentment and fatigue.

“Yes, Miss Time?”

“I’m going to bed now. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Miss Time.”

I decided to follow her lead and made myself comfortable on my pile of blankets. Just before I fell asleep myself, I could just make out three words whispered in a very groggy voice. No emotion flowed along with them, so I couldn’t be sure if they were intended for me to hear or if she was speaking in her sleep, but for some reason, they gave me pause and made it harder to clear my thoughts for slumber.

“I love you.”

Author's Note

update:
Originally posted on the 22nd day of July, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 4th day of March, 2020.

06. | You Can't Forgive, You Can't Forget

“I love you.”

I don’t think I slept at all that night. It made no sense to me, but for some reason, those whispered words on the edge of sleep bothered me.

This one feels… off, was my only conclusion as I rolled out of my blankets, grabbed the burlap bag the young mare had been dragging in the day before—and promptly forgot about upon seeing the bathtub—and swung it up onto my back, holding it in place with my teeth as I walked outside.

I left our schoolhouse sanctuary several hours before dawn and long before the affected’s morning roll-call at the palace.

For whatever reason, I chose to remain ‘Headway’ as I made my way through empty streets. There really wasn’t what you’d call a morning chill, thanks to the Crystal Heart’s aura surrounding the city, but it was still noticeably brisker before the aura’s artificial sunrise made itself known. I convinced myself that the layers of fur and fat in my pony form was what made the choice logical.

It’s not like she’s the first pony to fall for me, I am reasonably well practiced after all. This is what infiltrators are trained to do... I am just giving the situation more weight than it deserves because of how overfed I feel right now. That’s all.

Alternatively, maybe it’s how similar this whole Crystalling thing is to our own process of recharging love crystals? The chance of extending my reserve supply may be making me act more lenient toward the pony.

I mean, creating an infatuation to feed off of is perfectly routine. Yeah, there is nothing special about her. Buckholme Syndrome can affect both parties, given a long enough period of isolation. I just need to complete my mission and get out of here.

It wasn’t until the buildings on either side of me began to grow into immensity that I cleared my mind and decided it would be prudent to be a little more inconspicuous. The affluent part of town was entirely too close to the palace to be lost in contemplation, even if most of the guards were still asleep elsewhere in the city.

I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to put together one of these so-called Crystallings for her, or at least something vaguely resembling one. I could refill one of the love crystals and make her happy at the same time.

Bah! She’s just a pony, a common prey animal who happens to possess speech. How significant an archaic ritual is to her is irrelevant.

Except...

Shaking my head viciously, I stepped inside a gated wall surrounding one of the mansions surrounding the crystalline spire that acted as the castle of the empire.

Like all nobles and aristocrats the world over, the owners of this home overdid everything. They obviously had an inflated notion of their own importance.

There was a massive garden full of overgrown rose bushes and orchids taking up the majority of the side and rear yards. An ornate fountain with a skillfully carved statue of an alicorn spouting clear water from her muzzle into the basin below dominated the path leading up to the front doors, which were large enough for a dragon to comfortably enter.

Thankfully, my goal was not intended to be yet another useless expenditure of my resources and time. I had a limited window of opportunity before the hivemind of affected ponies became active for the day, so I fixed a new disguise into my mind and allowed the ecstasy of flame to wash over me, molding me into yet another pony.

This one was modeled after one of the various guards I’d seen during my previous silent audience with the king. She was a creme colored mare with blue eyes. Because of the armor’s enchantment to make the pony within to look the same as every other guard, I had to guess what her mane color and style might have been.

Thankfully, that wouldn’t matter for very long. Swinging the potato sack down off my back, I extracted the various pieces of armor that made up a guard uniform.

The illusion weaved into the material didn’t snap into effect until the final piece was secured into place.

I imagine ponies took some time getting used to the feeling of their manes still pressing against the back of their necks while appearing to actually be pulled up into a mohawk through a hole in the top of the helm.

Pathetically inferior disguise magic compared to ours, but I suppose they don’t need to do more than provide anonymity by obscuring mane, tail, and cutiemark. Stage magic like this is more than enough for that.

I made one more alteration before attempting to leave my hiding place—I forced my eyes to shed that same pale green glow that everypony else in town seemed to possess.

The official guard helmet wasn’t going to be able to pass as the mind-controlling helms so many ponies were donning these days, but not everypony was required to wear one. I hoped that included a few ordinary soldiers as well, and my eyes would be adequate enough to avoid detection.

Adopting the unusual walking gait of the affected was made easier once I purposefully selected a pony of the intended build to impersonate.

I stepped back onto the road and walked directly toward the crystal spire, which straddled Mane Street. I risked a small upturn of my lip as I passed directly between two mindless guards and cantered inside.

The unicorn lamps lining the main hall hadn’t been turned on—likely a deliberate choice by the current occupant of the royal apartments—causing the entire building to be cast in deep shadows.

Not daring to slow my pace to allow my vision to adjust to the low-light conditions, I instead turned into the first side room I came across.

Closing the door behind me, I scanned my surroundings for anything living. Satisfied that nopony would be asking questions about my presence, I removed a dusty tablecloth from the long meeting table that took up most of the room and packed it against the base of the door I had entered from.

Everything is going according to plan. No sense in exposing myself by letting the light of my magic be seen under the door.

I quickly bathed in an emerald fire for a third time that day just to adjust the internal structure of my eyes to be more forgiving of the darkness. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but this was the first opportunity I had to pursue the Heart, and I wasn’t going to cut corners while on-mission.

I estimated that there was still a little over an hour before dawn, so I decided to begin my search in the throne room since it seemed unlikely that I’d be able to once Sombra left his bed-chambers for the day.

The large room had been opulent once, but all that adorned the vaulted hall now were various lengths of black crystal jutting from the floor and walls at unnatural angles.

I spent several minutes examining various features of the room before focusing on the throne itself.

It was structurally recognizable, though what was almost surely once blue crystal had been tinted a deep purple-gray, and the backrest had smaller black crystals growing out through the top.

These, I poked and prodded individually. It struck me that an artifact of such power would not be left to slaves to protect. Sombra would obviously be watching over it personally, so I was convinced the secret lay within the throne somehow.

No matter how much I fiddled with it, however, I never found a secret compartment or hidden switch.

It frustrated me nearly to the point of wanting to just blast the thing with emerald energy bolts until it presented me with what I sought.

Fear.

It was faint, but I was able to recognize the weak broadcasts for what they were. Several brief spikes of fear emanated from multiple affected ponies just before they thrust spears in my general direction, providing the briefest of moments to react before being skewered.

I jumped away from the throne and crouched into a combat stance, my forelegs spread wide as I appraised my opponents.

A team of three castle guards—two stallions and a mare—each in armor similar to my own. Their attack ended as quickly as it began once I turned to face them, each of them merely standing at attention, as though they had conflicting orders, the moment they locked eyes with me.

Very interesting, it seems my imitation of their mindless eye color is good enough to fool them after all. Are the affected ordered not to harm each other?

I wasn’t given the luxury of considering the question for very long because mere moments later, the larger of the two stallions blinked. When his eyes reopened, they were no longer glowing but were distinctly non-pony. The whites of his eyes were sickly green, and his irises, previously not even visible, were now blood red with draconic slits for pupils.

I turned my eyes away from him the moment I realized who was staring at me. Luckily, King Sombra either couldn’t use his mind-control spell through a puppet, or he simply hadn’t realized right away that he needed to since my eyes looked like I was already under his control.

“A crystal slave,” came an oily voice, echoing throughout the room and drawing out the ‘S’ sounds like a filly imitating certain reptiles. “Or are you something else, something darker? Perhaps I already know what you are.”

I took a step back, watching the other two ponies for any sign of movement. Thankfully, they seemed to be content to stand there for the time being.

Open combat with Sombra was not on my to-do list for the day, so I did what came naturally to my skillset: misdirection, evasion, and hiding.

“Well, that’s a shame, I’ve always been fond of introductions. Unfortunately, Your Highness, I don’t have time for this,” I said in the voice of my guardpony disguise before hopping to my left, shifting my weight forward and bucking one of the larger black crystals jutting up from the floor.

It shattered with a resounding crack that filled the room. The shards rained down on the three ponies confronting me like a storm of needles, and each individual piece that splashed against the ground echoed down the hallway like a frozen waterfall.

Before the last of the shards added to the cacophony, I raced toward the balcony and leaped off. I could hear multiple sets of hooves in motion behind me as I did so.

I released my disguise midair, watching as the crystalline armor pieces fell away from my body during the transformation. I then called forth another spell nearly every changeling is taught before they are trusted to leave the hive alone. Before the transformative flames had even flickered out, I cocooned myself in even more emerald energy, descending like a falling star to slam into the ground below.

The magic did as it was designed to do; it absorbed the impact for me, leaving behind a crater twice the size of my natural body.

Wasting no time, I got up, shook off what momentary disorientation the use of that spell always instilled, and immediately flew away at top speed.

As I put distance between the palace and myself, I noticed that the door on nearly every home I passed by stood open. The affected had been roused by some magical summons and were milling about in the streets. Unlucky for me, they were also looking up.

I made sure to remain as low to the ground as possible and weaved my way through side streets and formerly-manicured yards to confuse anypony who may have seen me.

Once I was reasonably confident that I was safely out of sight, I put on my Headway disguise once again and made my way back to the schoolhouse.

It took several hours to do so while ensuring that nopony saw me. When I arrived at the cul-de-sac, my breath caught in my throat.

The school was under attack.

A dozen or more ponies, likely the neighborhood residents, were systematically rearing and bucking the front door.

Considering the level of activity throughout the rest of the city, I should have known our little corner of town wouldn’t be unique. Sombra’s alert to hunt me down must have gone out to every affected pony at once, regardless of distance.

I was quickly putting together a plan to rescue my meal ticket when a flicker of light caught my eye. A thin shaft of light passed over my face two or three times in rapid succession, drawing my attention up to a second-floor window in the home where we found the cellar full of canned goods.

Double was hiding up there. Apparently, she had the foresight to either grab a hoof mirror or break a shard off of a larger one that she could use to signal me with.

Smart little mare.

I ducked back behind the building, which had shielded my approach to the cul-de-sac and slowly made my way toward her hiding place, cutting through the various yards and gardens of our neighbors.

Upon reaching her temporary refuge, it became apparent what her method of entry was. She must have been spooked when the locals started pounding on the school’s front door, because it looked like she dove into the house through the kitchen window, leaving shards of broken glass and droplets of sticky red blood contrasting against the black and white checkered floor.

“Miss Time?” I called out softly as I brushed away a few pieces of glass still in the windowpane as I crawled in after her.

“Headway, is that you?” came the reply from the top of a flight of stairs. “What’s happening?”

I held a hoof to my lips as I acknowledged her, then beckoned her to come downstairs.

Ten minutes later, I had bandaged the few shallow cuts she had acquired on her forehooves and face and returned my small medical kit to its usual place within my saddlebags.

“There. Nothing too serious, you’ll be fine, Miss Time,” I said.

She nodded, glancing toward the living room and the door leading outside on the far wall. I couldn’t ignore the fear radiating from the young mare as she did so, but her face at least made an effort to hide her anxiety.

“Thank you. I didn’t know what else to do. When I woke up and you were gone, I got scared. Then when those ponies started beating on the door…”

I stepped to the side and wrapped a hoof around her shoulders, squeezing her to me. She stiffened up at the contact, but melted into my barrel almost as quickly, sniffling and getting my coat wet.

“None of that, now. You had your bath last night, I wasn’t planning on one of my own for quite a while. I’m several months behind you, after all. I am not sure I’ve earned one just yet,” I joked, eliciting a chuckle from her lips and a much more pleasant offering of gratitude and mirth from her emotions.

“Hmm, you might be pretty close. Two or three more life-or-death rescues should be plenty to make up the difference,” she replied, her voice muffled in my fur before pulling away from the hug and wiping her eyes. “Thank you, Headway. You really are my hero.”

For some reason, I felt a bit of sadness of my own at her words.

If you only knew the truth…

“Stay here,” I told her, “I am going to go make some noise a few blocks away. Don’t be afraid if you hear the commotion, I am gonna have to do something fairly big to draw them away from here. I should be back in an hour or so. Keep your head down until then, and no more jumping through windows! Leave the defenestration to the professionals, okay?”

With that said, I crawled out of the broken window and made my way toward Mane street.

By the time I returned, the schoolhouse had indeed been cleared of our overly-nosy neighbors. The doors held against the civilian assault, though there was clear evidence that it wouldn’t have for much longer. Had even one of the ponies trying to kick it in been a soldier, we’d have been forced to find someplace else to call home.

I walked up to the house with the cellar and politely knocked on the front door. “It’s okay to come out now. I don’t think ‘Imperial Thoughts’ is going to be hosting another book signing any time soon, but I did at least learn exactly how flammable various kinds of rare inks are during my recent visit.”

The door eased open after a moment, allowing Double Time to poke her head out at me. Watching her brow raise as she stared at the cloud of black smoke behind me was, admittedly, entertaining.

“And in case you were curious, the answer to that is: very.”

With a nervous chuckle, the door fully opened as she stepped outside to join me on the threshold. Her eyes remained on the darkened sky, but she didn’t hesitate to fall into step beside me as I turned toward the schoolhouse.

She broke the silence of our short walk as we arrived at the front door.

“What happened? Where did you go? Were you… um... were they looking for you?”

Sharp kid.

“Maybe. I ran into a couple of affected ponies while I was out near the nobles’ mansions. They might have raised an alarm of some sort.”

As we entered, she stepped over the drainage trough and walked around the room divider as I shrugged out my saddlebag, dropping it on the pile of blankets I called my bed.

“Okay,” she began. “I guess that makes sense, but why were you in the nobles quarter to be—ah!”

The sound of metal striking against crystal rang out in the classroom, followed by the staccato clatter of panicked hooves.

With all the speed I could muster, I spun toward her sudden scream and shouldered my way past the stacked desks to find a single guardpony advancing on her.

He was older, not quite as grizzled as Warden, perhaps, but much more muscular. His coat was a dull blue that almost seemed to have a tint of purple in it, his mane was the same shade of pale blue that all guards in full armor shared thanks to the illusion of anonymity.

He wielded a standard-issue spear identical to Wardens, held low after prying it up out of the floor where his previous thrust actually managed to chip away the crystal. The impact produced exactly the spiderweb design I had been waiting to see form every time Double Time jumped down from the teacher’s desk.

I reared just out of his reach and stomped down hard, trying to catch the weapon with my hooves, hoping to snap the lethal metal tip off of it.

He pulled the weapon away faster than I would have expected from an affected pony and brought it around to bludgeon the side of my head with the haft.

I managed to duck the swing and charge forward, slamming my body into his armored peytral. He staggered back a single step before rearing up himself and delivering a massive hoof strike as he came down on my shoulder.

It hurt more than I expected it to, prompting me to take my eyes off him for a split second, foolishly glancing at my shoulder. There was an unusual bruise pattern already forming where he landed his blow. Looking down at his hooves, I noticed the armored shoes he wore were of royal guard design and included small ridges along the edge of the hoof similar in form and function to the minotaur weapon known as brass knuckles.

I can’t let him do that again. I’m going to have to get those shoes off him or take his legs out from under him.

I could hear Double Time whimpering behind me, muttering a single word over and over again that I couldn’t quite catch in the heat of the moment.

At least she’s safely out of the way for now.

The guard lunged forward, swinging his spear up and thrusting toward my face.

It was all I could do to jerk my head aside. He shifted his weight and converted the weapon’s forward momentum into horizontal movement with just a flick of his forehoof. The spear tip—which had missed me only a heartbeat ago—smashed into the side of my head as he pulled it back.

My ears were ringing after that, and it became difficult to maintain my balance. I shook my head a few times, but that only served to heighten my vertigo.

Again he thrust forward, forcing me to step back.

Ugh, why did I ditch that guard armor when I jumped from the throne room? It’d be advantageous right about now.

I always hated combat training against spears back in the hive. The slightest movement by the changeling holding the spear translated into a considerable amount of movement at the pointy end. It took so little effort to twist the shaft just slightly, and suddenly a miss becomes a whole new attack from a completely different angle, ending in a perfect guard position in the same motion, ready to do it again. If your opponent was strong enough to wield it properly and had the endurance to chain multiple attacks in quick succession, they could make it almost impossible for you to close with them without risking grievous bodily harm.

And that was with a hard chitin exoskeleton…

Again and again, he pressed the attack, forcing me to give ground with each thrust. At one point, I tried to improvise a weapon of my own by collapsing part of the room divider Double Time had built from student desks, but my opponent simply leaped to the side and continued to pursue me.

I was losing stamina much faster than he was, and it started to show in my reaction time. I managed to avoid being skewered, if only just, but I had to come up with a solution to those secondary shaft strikes. I could sometimes deflect the weapon far enough to the side to deny the opportunity, but the grand movements required for that were what was taking its toll on me.

Eventually, the fight brought us next to my bedding. I jumped away from a thrust, rolled once, then came up with one of my blankets in hoof. I spun it a few times like athlete ponies do in the locker room, and snapped it forward, hoping to wrap it around the spear.

I succeeded, to an extent, but I couldn’t pull the weapon out of his highly-trained hooves. All I managed to do was tangle it up and force him to close with me, once again rearing and aiming those horrible horseshoes my way.

Twice he launched those hooves at me, and twice I was forced to rear up with him to reduce the distance he had to build up momentum. The blows were still somewhat painful, but at least they didn’t break anything.

A third time he rose to a great height, and again I stepped into him, only this time I ducked my head under his barrel and shoved, pulling on my blanket to force his spear to become tangled up between his rear legs. He staggered, as I had hoped, but my momentary victory was pyrrhic.

As he crashed down, I watched in slow motion as those steel-encased hooves of his landed on my saddlebag. The sound of splintering wood and shattering crystal echoed in my ears.

I froze, horrified as the reality of what just happened washed over me. I felt it, half a year’s worth of rationed energy blasted out of my belongings, dissipating into the ether wastefully. I was able to gasp in a brief taste as it exploded, not even a long enough draw to heal my bruised shoulder.

The destruction of my queen’s love crystals was accidental on his part, but it was the most crippling blow he could have delivered to me.

I was still dazed when he resumed his assault, successfully freeing his spear and thrusting it at my barrel.

I don’t even remember the sequence of events over the next few seconds. However, I do remember Double Time slamming into me from the side and tumbling in a mass of flailing legs into the remaining blankets of my sleeping area.

Her face was a mess of tears, and I was finally able to identify what she had been muttering throughout the battle as she stared up into his face from the floor beside me.

“Daddy, stop! Please!”

By the Queen, this is Stalwart? Her father destroyed my only hope of making it home?

Stalwart, eyes still glowing an emotionless pale green, gave her pleas no attention. He lifted a hoof and brought it down across her face, sending her skidding across the floor.

He then swung his spear around to point it at her crumpled form, tensing his muscles for the thrust.

He’s going to kill her. He’s broken my love crystals, and now he’s going to kill my only living source of love.

I can’t do anything to him like this. ‘Headway’ is useless in this scenario, but the girl… is it worth saving her if it means revealing myself? I’ll lose my food source either way.

“Daddy?” came her choked voice. “Please.”

I can’t expose the hive.

I can’t.

She isn’t worth it.

She’s one pony.

She’s food.

“Daddy, no…” she sobbed again, scooting herself back across the floor until she came to a stop against the teacher’s desk.

I’m going to lose my food source either way.

His hoof drew back, poised to strike.

“Headway!”

There’s no going back from this, I thought as I released my disguise in a flash of brilliant green.

I jumped into the air, hovering out of reach as the stallion turned his attention to the new threat in the room. I charged my horn and fired off three quick blasts of emerald magic, slamming into his helmet, hoof, and spear successively.

His armor was apparently enchanted with more than just the standard anonymous guard illusion, as the crystal headpiece showed no discernable sign of damage, nor did the armored shoe on his hoof.

The spear, however, snapped cleanly in half just above where he had been holding the shaft.

Like the professional he was, he took aim and threw the broken shaft of wood at me as he stooped down to retrieve the half with the spear tip.

The over-glorified stick bounced harmlessly off my chitin. I swooped low, firing off several more bolts of energy at the old guard.

The battle had been entirely one-sided before resuming my natural form, but now I was finally landing a few blows of my own.

He was agile, but not fast enough to dodge magic. Several bolts found their marks, peppering his flanks with darkened scorch marks and filling the air with the scent of burnt hair.

Once he started staggering from the numerous blasts he took to the legs, I was shocked yet again when Double Time ran in front of him, directly in my firing line.

“Leave him alone, you monster!”

The wave of anger and defiance coming off of her was palpable. It nearly gagged me. Had I thought her love was filling, the depth of her hatred nearly robbed me of my breath.

Unfortunately for her, the zombie that was Stalwart only saw an opportunity, rather than his daughter. I watched as he again raised the broken spear, aiming at her exposed back.

I reacted instinctively and charged my horn with what I had available to me at the time. The blast of emerald energy flew past Double Time’s shocked face to slam into Stalwart’s neck, blackening a large portion of his fur.

Double Time began openly crying as she turned her head toward her father.

He blinked several times. A few times when he opened his eyes, they were azure blue rather than pale green, and a look of horror passed over his face in those brief moments of clarity.

Fear. Shock. Desperation. Despair. Shame.

His emotions were strong, but I felt them being suppressed. His breathing came in ragged gasps, which deliberately slowed as the pale green of mind control resumed its dominance over his eye color.

He’s in there. Aware of what is happening to him...

Again he raised the half-spear, and again I blasted him with all the force I could muster, this time striking his forehoof just above the shoe.

The spear clattered to the floor.

Then, a moment later, he followed suit. I watched as his eyes changed yet again, this time emitting a purple aura. His iris turning crimson while the whites remained green.

King Sombra was once again puppeting a pony who was facing off against me in my natural form. If he had been bluffing about knowing what I was previously, there was little doubt remaining that he considered me a credible enough threat to directly oppose me.

Double Time was crying.

He lifted and turned his head in each direction, taking in the details of our schoolhouse refuge. The wound I’d given Stalwart must have swollen his throat shut because he tried to speak—likely an attempt to taunt me—but nothing came out except a low gurgling rattle.

Sombra locked eyes with me, forcing Stalwart to smile creepily before blinking and abandoning his expired slave.

He may not know which school this is, but there are only so many in the empire. It won’t be long before a dozen more guards come to finish the job. We’ve got to go.

In the classroom, she was crying.

Author's Note

Fun fact:
This story's 200th unique viewer (approximately 4:45 PM Eastern, August 9th) was also its 500th overall view.
:twilightsmile:

Thanks for taking the time to read my horse words. I hope you all are enjoying it so far.

update:
Originally posted on the 9th of August, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 6th of March, 2020.

08. | You Sent It My Way

Had I known what I had just borne witness to, I am not sure if I would have made it out of the empire with my sanity intact. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even have tried to escape at all, preferring to hide in the cave and slowly go mad from the knowledge that alicorns actually existed. As it was, I am not entirely convinced that I didn’t do just that once I found out.

I had just finished encasing Miss Time in a feeding cocoon when a concussive blast of raw, ancient magic washed over us. It knocked me off my hooves with enough force that I briefly envied the young mare’s unconscious gel-encased state.

By the queen! I don’t know which one of them did that, but it’s long past time to say goodbye to this horrible city.

I lifted the young mare in my magic and floated her out through the cavern entrance before resting myself atop the cocoon, digging in with my hooves and lifting us both into the air with frantic wing beats.

I made sure to keep as many objects between us and the city as I could. Rocks, trees, it didn’t matter. If I could have hidden behind a sleeping manticore, I would have. The last thing I wanted was to draw the attention of a victorious brainwashing tyrant with a literal city-sized army—or worse, the self-proclaimed nightmare who seemed to be beating him—at that moment.

It seemed like it took hours to make my way down the short mountain path. Sure, I was technically flying, but I wasn’t really keen on gaining altitude and silhouetting myself against the sky. I followed the hoof path until it curved back toward the city, then made my own way down among the jagged rocks, straight toward the unnatural line that separated temperate conditions from a world blanketed in snow.

I paused briefly, mere moments before I reached that border.

But not because I was tired…

The sky lit up like mid-day, even though the choking cloud cover Sombra put into place earlier made telling the exact time of day all but impossible. A brilliant and horrifying white light filled my vision, no matter where I turned my head, even if I closed my eyes—which I did almost immediately.

When my vision cleared, the clouds were gone, and I could see that it was, in fact, close to noon. That troubled me momentarily.

All right. I will admit, things happened incredibly fast today, but I am sure that more than a couple of hours has gone by since I abandoned my mission in the throne room. I am tired enough to be convinced that it should be nearly nightfall.

I convinced myself that I was simply coming down off of a post-combat adrenaline rush, which persisted during a tense stealth extraction.

I moved on quickly before I thought about it too much, making a point of not looking back. I was content that flight would be sufficient to deny any ground-based trackers, and the snowstorm we suddenly found ourselves in beyond the protection of the Crystal Heart would have made visual tracking equally tricky. Anypony who could have followed us would be far too much of a problem for me to overcome at that moment anyway.

I carried my comatose prisoner in short flights of about an hour at a time. Infiltrators were highly trained, but we were generally not expected to retrieve physical food sources—that was menial drone work—and so I was unaccustomed to, and overtaxed by, the burden carried beneath me.

That first night on my journey home, I was exhausted. It felt like I’d been awake for two days straight, but at least I was safely away from the empire. I made sure not to settle in for the night until that wretched city was a comfortable distance.

We were probably still within the official imperial borders, but just the fact that I could see no trace of that blue crystal spire clawing at the sky behind us was good enough for now.

I found a slight recession in the rocks of the foothills that, if one were incredibly generous, might be called a cave and deposited my cargo as far back into the outcropping as I could. Changeling mucus—once crafted into a chrysalis—was quite durable, but not overly useful as insulation. If I wasn’t careful, my charge could freeze before I got her back to the hive.

“Well, Miss Time,” I said to the young mare, knowing she couldn’t hear me. “I’m sorry it ended up this way. I realize that you’re in no position to believe me, but over the past few months, I really did start to enjoy having you around.

“I’d have preferred using you to recharge my crystals, grabbed that ridiculously powerful Heart of yours, and left you alive and well, if slightly colder, in your little schoolhouse with Warden.”

Sighing, I crawled up on top of the green mass and looked down into her sleeping face before opening my mouth and inhaling deeply. A pale green mist began to seep from the eyes and mouth of the entombed pony I so recently shared a bedroom with. I drew in a small amount of her energy, feeding off whatever dream she was having in there.

It felt wrong.

As an infiltrator, bringing back at least one consolation prize was expected, even on a failed mission. I always knew that Double Time would be such a gift to the next generation.

So why did I feel guilty?

She’s a pony, I thought to myself for the… I wasn’t sure how many-ith time. She’s just a source of love. Nothing more. Once she’s presented to the queen, she’ll never be anything else.

That felt wrong too.

I cut off the flow of energy, taking in significantly less than most infiltrators would have. I reasoned that I would have to ration what she had available within her if I was to make it home, which was true.

I used the new energy to restore my emergency combat capability, then curled up on top of the cocoon to get some rest. The warmth radiating up through the hardened shell lulled me to sleep despite the snow still whirling around beyond the impromptu shelter.

I wasn’t sure how the war between the pony tribes had faired. There was still a significant snowstorm blustering about, but it was far from the enraged blizzard that howled around me on my journey north.

I had seen evidence of at least one pegasus and shivered at the memory of the dark unicorn who defied Sombra—no small feat for a creature in chitin—but I had seen no evidence that earth ponies had come to aid the empire as well.

Logic and combat doctrine led me to believe there was only one explanation: Princess Platinum and Commander Hurricane must have allied against the earth tribe. After their victory, they then marched north to annex the Crystal ponies after hearing Warden’s story.

I wonder if that’s who I saw. Did Hurricane’s shadow pass over me in the streets? Was it Platinum who declared herself Sombra’s nightmare? That might explain her arrogance, but I didn’t think that snout-in-the-air mare had that kind of power.

Convinced that the earth ponies had been soundly defeated, I plotted our return trip through lands which I knew to be former farming communities.

Coming out of the Crystal Mountains, we spent a night near the massive waterfall the unicorns called Neighagra. There was evidence that ponies were drawn to the falls themselves, so I made sure to avoid the river and took great pains to hide our camp that night.

Thankfully, the weather cleared up significantly once we left the mountain range behind. It was surprisingly pleasant to see grass again.

My overall mood was improved, but each night as I made a new camp, my smile slid away from my face as I stared down at Double Time and fed for the following day’s energy.

I decided to give a wide berth to the Canterhorn. My belief that the unicorns had come out on top seemed reinforced by the ivory city jutting out audaciously from the mountain top.

I swung wide to the east through a seemingly untamed forest. I am sure the ponies had a name for it, but it wasn’t marked on my map. The only settlement east of the unicorn kingdom was an earth pony town called Hollow Shades.

The village was deserted, just as I expected it to be. Not a single earth pony remained, and it looked for all the world as if it had been abandoned decades—if not centuries—ago. I chalked it up to nature, reclaiming what was hers at an accelerated pace within these dense woods.

We stayed there for one night before moving on. The following morning I had barely taken to the air with the cocoon cradled between my hooves when a burst of colored light filled the sky, radiating from a singular point on the northern horizon.

“The Crystal Heart,” I said, not knowing how I was so sure that the empire’s artifact was responsible.

I stared at the multi-hued ribbons of light dancing across the sky for what seemed like hours but was likely only a few minutes before they dissipated.

Nothing good can come from that, I thought. Such a flashy display of raw power must be Platinum’s experimentation with the Crystal Heart. I guess that means Sombra lost.

“Good news, Miss Time," I said with a certain amount of sadness in my voice. "It seems your friends may have just woken up.”

It’s just a shame that you won’t be joining them.

Shaking the sentimental nonsense out of my head, I tightened my grip on the cocoon and flew off to the south.

I had to briefly cross another mountain, but I angled myself in such a way as to quickly leave it behind us within a few short hours.

By mid-day, however, I encountered something that caught me off guard.

A metal box dragging several other metal boxes behind it screamed a high pitched whine as it barreled toward us, following a road made of metal strips and wooden beams.

It charged by without slowing down and without leaving the unusual road. Within most of the boxes were ponies! Dozens of them, of all three tribes, were sitting on plush-looking chairs.

Is that some sort of war machine? Why would the nation controlling it not segregate the tribes? Were the earth ponies servants to the other two? That would explain why they were permitted to sit among them.

I decided not to follow the metal road for fear of being discovered by another pony-mover.

Instead, I quickly crossed the unusual path and made my way toward the next cluster of unnamed mountains. These, too, I discovered, had metal roads along the foothills, but I was able to find a suitable shelter higher up the slope.

All in all, I made significantly better progress without the snow slowing me down, even with the additional baggage slung between my hooves as I flew along. What had taken me two months before the Wendigos were defeated took barely three weeks on the return trip.

“Beyond this river and the woods on the far side of it lies the Badlands," I said to the still-unconscious mare. "In three days… well, in three days, I will be home. You’ll… feed the hive.”

The forest was home to a pair of pony towns between the river and the Badlands, though: Hoofington and Colton. Both of which were quite familiar to me. In essence, Colton was traditionally where all aspiring infiltrators are first introduced to their prey, while Hoofington was often an advanced course before declaring a new infiltrator. They were both tiny little hamlets that were easy to spy upon, even for complete novices, but Hoofington had more hoof traffic and traded significantly with outsiders.

It became fairly apparent, though, that we would not be stopping by for a visit. As I approached the sleepy little homestead, I caught the distinct gleam of highly polished armor.

Two ponies in full battle dress were walking side by side down the only street, one with impressive white wings poking through his peytral, and the other had a slender horn protruding from her helmet.

Pegasi and unicorns wearing the same armor... Just how deep did the alliance go? Did Platinum and Hurricane join their clans?

Rather than risk discovery, I decided to spend the night in the small clearing the hive customarily used as a base camp when training young ones. It was extremely overgrown and looked as if it hadn’t been used in a very long time.

I supposed that made sense. With the Wendigo blizzard raging and the nearby earth pony villages being depleted for their battle against the other two tribes, there would be almost no reason to risk the next generation’s safety with such a dangerous excursion. True, I hadn’t heard that the princesses were discontinuing practical training, but it didn’t strike me as unreasonable.

As I lay there, once again curled atop the dozens of sticky green layers separating myself from Double Time’s unmoving form, I tried to accomplish the impossible: rest while remaining alert.

Typically, young ones sleeping here would have been protected by the princess responsible for training them, as well as several armored guard drones based on the size of the expedition. The campsite was as safe as the hive itself as far as the lives of the prospective infiltrators were concerned, but I didn’t have that luxury. I was the one who had to stand guard while still recuperating my strength for the next day’s travels.

These woods were familiar and even seemed peaceful, but the reality was that there was no way anypony—or anyling for that matter—should ever assume them to be safe. Manticores, chimeras, as well as the occasional cockatrice, could be found among these trees, depending on the season. You couldn’t even rule out hydras, because the forest turned into swampland just a day or so southeast of the clearing. The only nice thing that could be said about them would be the lack of timber wolves.

So I lay there, eyes closed but listening intently to the various wildlife of the evening forest. I wasn’t trying to pick up any new sound; instead, I was paying attention to any of the existing noises which might suddenly go silent.

Thankfully, the night was uneventful, but my vigil left me sluggish the next day, which could explain how things went south so quickly…

I reached the edge of the badlands shortly after mid-day. I dove into a ravine, which would shield me from sight for several hours along my route back to the hive. This segment of my journey was so close, so familiar that I progressed without needing to think about where I was going. I caught myself nearly dozing off a few times as I found a comfortable pace. Each time I did so, my wings would slow and I’d jerk awake due to the brief loss of altitude.

Outrage. Self-confidence. Urgency.

These emotions assaulted me, merely a heartbeat or two before the changelings did.

From the walls of the gorge on either side of me, numerous green bolts of energy came flying out at me. I counted four hostiles to my left and three more along the wall to my right. Looking up, I could see another drone, likely one of the hive’s perimeter scouts, overseeing the ambush from the ridgeline.

Morons! I haven’t been gone so long that the hive guard should have forgotten me. I’m going to report this to the queen—

Another barrage of emerald rage flashed out at me, interrupting my train of thought.

As an aside, yes, I do now know what a train is. That first encounter with one left quite an impression, so I made sure to learn what I could about them as soon as I had the time to do so.

That opportunity came quite a while after this point in the story, but I figured clarification may be in order, considering I previously referred to them as metal boxes. The term ‘train of thought,’ as an expression, wouldn’t make much sense otherwise.

The initial surprise attack must have been a warning. Where the first volley missed and impacted the rocks around me, this second wave of energized pain struck true. I was simultaneously slammed by seven missiles. Most impacted my natural armor, doing little more than knocking the air from my lungs and singeing my otherwise beautiful carapace. However, one lucky shot tore through my wing, sending my unconscious cargo and I plummeting to the floor of the ravine.

I landed hard on my side, hearing a sickening snap as well as a wet squelch and crack upon impact. I lifted myself up halfway before collapsing to the ground again. Looking down, I saw that I had landed on an upthrust stone, which now had black chips of chitin decorating it as well as a fluid that I didn't want to acknowledge. I reached a hoof under myself and felt the jagged edge of a full-on puncture through my carapace.

I gasped for breath as I crawled behind a boulder, hoping it would serve as a temporary shelter. Immediately, I drew as much magic as I could to seal off the breach in my exoskeleton.

I was forced to leave Double Time’s cocoon where it landed, hoping that the guards wouldn’t attack her just to flush me out—not that I was in a position to do anything else with the sticky green pony-sized lump of love. She was far safer than I was at that moment.

“By the queen! Who ordered you to harass a returning infiltrator?” I yelled out to them once I was able to form words. “Stand down! I’m Carina, returning from the Crystal Empire.”

There was a pregnant pause. I couldn’t hear what the border patrol might be saying to one another, but doctrine would dictate the need to verify my claim and identity.

“Stay there. Move even one hoof, and we will present your prisoner and your carcass to the queen ourselves.”

I took that moment to call up some of my own stored energy to start mending my wounds. The initial blast tore a hole right through the membrane of my wing, but my less than graceful landing did far more significant damage.

My already injured wing had bent beneath me upon impact, snapping the cuticle that held my weight aloft. There was also a visible puncture in my chitin, just below my left foreleg, which caused my breathing to hitch whenever I moved my hoof.

I didn’t even want to start speculating about internal injuries.

Well, that’s just great, I complained to myself as I increased the flow of magic substantially. At least I am close to home. This would be difficult to repair on my own. I am definitely stopping off at the feeding pool after reporting to Sarosa.

“All right. Step out of hiding, imposter, and leave your little pony snack where it is,” the one on the ridge finally shouted back to me. “It now belongs to us.”

Imposter?

It had taken them perhaps a quarter of an hour to respond, just enough time to reduce the severity of my injuries from ‘potentially life-threatening’ to somewhere around ‘maybe you shouldn’t be on your hooves for a while.’

“Who are you calling an imposter, grub?” I replied. “I demand to see Queen Sarosa immediately! I’ll have your flank for this insult. I was personally assigned this mission, you—”

“So one of the traitors fancies calling herself a queen now, does she? Well, Queen Chrysalis has issued no such mission to the Crystal Empire. However, I have no doubt that she would absolutely love to hear all about her new rival. Why don’t you come with us, we’ll have a nice little chat. I insist.”

Disgust. Condescension. Deciet.

Nice try, but if you plan to lie to an infiltrator, perhaps you should learn to mask your emotions first, amateur.

But what was that about traitors? Queen Chrysalis? Did something happen to Sarosa while I was away!? Was I too late? Did the queen starve before I could return?

No. No, that isn’t right… the queen would be the last to fall. She’d be fed long before these guards would be, and I don’t recall there being a Princess Chrysalis.

I risked poking my head up from the rudimentary cover of the boulder long enough to focus my attention on the scout.

I hadn’t noticed the details in my half-asleep state, but now that pain and adrenaline had served to wake me up, I could make out numerous small inconsistencies.

The scout was bulkier than a drone from my hive had any reason to be, and she lacked the carina ridge of cartilage found across her wing plates, which were so common among Serosa’s children—a distinctive feature for which I was named. She had glossy black plates with notable silver highlights within her chitin, and the pattern of her leg holes was utterly foreign to me.

Realization set in and robbed me of my breath just as surely as any sucking chest wound could have...

This is no longer my hive.

Author's Note

Another shorter chapter, but at least I can say it was a deliberate choice this time around.

I broke this entry up into two parts (the second half of which will be added to what I already had planned for the next one) because my plans for chapter nine would probably not have otherwise even reached 3,000 words without unnecessary filler.

Besides, who doesn't love a good cliffhanger? Am I right?

update:
This chapter was edited the same day it was posted. All chapters from here on will have already gone through one editing pass. Please feel free to continue providing suggestions and corrections, however. :twilightsmile:

09. | So Take This Night and Wrap It Around Me Like a Sheet

This is no longer my hive.

“In the name of the true queen, we demand your surrender,” came the scout’s insidious voice. “If you step out now, you will be permitted to retain whatever love you have left in reserve. However, if these fine soldiers here have to exert themselves... Well, they might just be authorized to replenish the energy expended on your capture before returning to the hive’s feeding pool.”

Yeah, that is not my queen’s modus operandi. Serosa would never allow feeding on another changeling, especially not a returning infiltrator.

I forced myself to set aside any ‘what-ifs’ floating about in my mind and focus on the situation. There would be time enough to worry about something that has already happened later.

Work now, brood later.

I knew there was no chance of fighting my way out of that ravine. The alternative—surrendering myself to a hostile hive—would only be acceptable if I were tired of life. Which, for the record, I was not.

The scout had, quite accurately, guessed that my reserves must be nearly depleted. I had enough love left to create one short-range fire portal, perhaps medium-range if I were willing to abandon Miss Time.

A quick scan of my immediate surroundings told me that the only moisture in the cracked soil around me had been a result of my unfortunate landing. There was very little vegetation that I could use to conceal myself. If I were to step away from this boulder, any critter I might disguise myself as would be thoroughly scrutinized. I had already declared myself an infiltrator after all.

I knew that the hive was still an hour or so away, even as the crow flies. Hence, it was unlikely that the various caverns scattered among the cliffs on either side were directly connected to it, meaning reinforcements would be unlikely to arrive quickly. If these drones were merely a semi-permanent perimeter defense team, they would likely keep the cocoon with them to feed on without having to replenish love crystals from the hive.

I could leave her here, fire-portal to Colton to feed, then come back in a few days to reclaim her. Except, that is the textbook response to this situation. They’d assuredly watch the nearby settlements, waiting for me.

Alternatively, I could...

“Tempting,” I called back between labored breaths, “but I have a counter-proposal.”

Amusement. Suspicion.

Perfect.

I overcharged my horn with as much magic as I could still produce and formed the emerald ring of a fire portal around Double Time’s cocoon. It was challenging to see through those flames, thanks to the amount of power I threw at it.

Next, I lunged from my hiding place and dove toward the portal as the cocoon began to sink into the ground. As I passed into and then beyond the blinding aura of magic, I assumed a new disguise. I gambled on the fact that my audience was hopefully too far away and at least partially shielding their eyes to notice.

I cracked one eye open and silently watched the young mare slip into the ground and disappear as I slid to a stop on the far side of the fading portal. From my new position, I waited for their reactions.

I wasn’t overly concerned about the soldiers. I knew enough about their training regiment to know that they were unlikely to see through my ploy. It was the scout on the ridge above me that had me worried. She was the one I would have to deceive.

In a perfect world, the changelings around me wouldn’t notice the inclusion of one more rock among the former riverbed. And, if all went according to plan, Miss Time would be comfortably resting among the treeline just beyond the badlands, back the way we had come.

There was no movement.

Even after an hour of sitting there, locked in place as an inanimate object, not a single soldier or scout approached my hiding place, nor did anyling pass through my limited field of vision.

One hour became two, and the effort to suppress my emotions gradually became a strain that I was destined to lose. If even one of them had remained nearby and reasonably alert, they’d have soon detected my subterfuge.

I need to be quick and act before it gets any darker. It is already late enough in the day to make the flash from disguise magic visible against the shadows in the ravine. Every minute I waste at this point makes it less and less likely that I will escape notice.

I decided to change into a small indigenous rodent known as a gorge pika, which resembled a mixture of squirrel and rabbit. They were exceedingly abundant vermin that scurried among the rocks in these ravines like starving rats. They were small, with stone-grey fur on their backs, tan on their face and sides, and cream-colored fur on their bellies. They were challenging to spot against the rocky terrain and were far more prolific than any other animal in the badlands.

Even if the transformation was recognized, I should have enough time to vacate the immediate area before anyling could effectively pursue me. Once I made it to the ravine cliff edge, I would be all but invisible.

Unfortunately—though unsurprisingly—my suspicions turned out to be accurate. Even as I was melting into my new disguise, multiple magical darts blasted rock chips into the air, scorching the ground around me.

I raced toward the cliff wall as fast as my diminutive little legs would take me, doing all that I could to ignore the renewed agony in my chest.

Emerald death rained down around me as I ran. Amplified by my relative size, the otherwise ordinary combat spell seemed all the more intimidating. Thankfully, that same matter of scale worked both ways. The soldiers had a difficult time hitting such a small, moving target.

Twice during my mad dash, I was forced to abruptly change direction and dive for cover among the scrub brush or behind a rock, but to remain in those impromptu hiding places would mean capture.

I kept moving from cover to cover in what I hoped would be unpredictably varied direction and speed until I eventually made it to the rocky face, which was absolutely pock-marked with small burrows, bird nests, and rodent dens.

After a few quickly chittered words with the understandably irate owner of the refuge within which I invaded, I allowed myself a moment to catch my breath. A few minutes later—and amongst the sounds of changeling energy blasts impacting the rock around my hiding place—I wreathed myself in flames once more, slipped into the ground, and left that ravine behind, possibly forever, even though I really didn’t want to think about that yet.

I managed to dig a shallow burrow for myself, where I exited the fire-portal. I no longer had enough magic to travel directly to where I sent Double Time’s cocoon, so I was forced to walk for the better part of the following day.

I reserved just enough energy to assume the appearance of the hostile scout I had observed. If she crossed my path, I would be in trouble, but at least this way, I could avoid any other changelings who might be looking for me.

My wing was still broken, and the puncture in my carapace remained a significant concern, but the disguise allowed me to mitigate the trauma to an extent. I couldn’t ignore the pain entirely, and I had precious little energy left to devote to healing myself. The best I could hope for was to subdue it and make it manageable while focusing on more immediate issues.

By late afternoon on the second day, I finally found myself staring hungrily at Miss Time’s cocoon. I had been deeply worried that the hostiles would locate it before I could limp my way back to where I sent her, so the relief that washed over me to find the chrysalis undamaged was palpable.

I clambered up on top of Double Time’s mobile prison and opened my jaw as wide as I was physically able. I fed on all the love I could wrench out of her, greedily yanking out surface-level emotions as well as deeper subconscious feelings that even she may not have been aware of having.

My gluttony was so great that the raw emotions I was forcefully consuming were actually visible as they passed from her eyes and mouth, through the cocoon’s membrane, and down my throat. At first, the energy appeared as pale minty green wisps that resembled smoke but quickly coalesced into a single nearly-opaque flow... the color of her natural coat.

Her natural coat? Her natural coat!

Feeding off the surface thoughts and outwardly projected love that ponies have such an abundance of doesn’t hurt them. Even when a pony dreams, which is usually the case with cocooned ponies, it is safe to siphon off the feelings that those dreams produce.

However, it is possible to continue feeding even after those surface emotions are depleted. Doing so is akin to murder, however.

You see, ponies are inherently magical creatures. Magic makes up a significant portion of their physical essence—one of the primary reasons they are our prey of choice. Their emotional energy replenishes itself very quickly because of this magical nature. Once the available supply of love dries up, the magic that restores that potential works overtime to do so and ends up being drained just like the emotions themselves.

When that happens, the coat and mane colors fade into shades of grey. Their eyes lose their luster, and eventually, even their cutiemarks become transparent and slowly vanish...

Which is precisely what I had nearly done to Double Time.

I snapped my jaw shut, literally severing the flow of energy between our bodies. In my ravenous attempt to restore my strength, I hadn’t limited my indulgence, resulting in the consumption of some of the mare’s core magical reserves.

Oh no, I thought in a panic. How much did I take from her? If I fed too thoroughly...

What? She’d be hurt? I’d have to find a new source of love to feed on? She’s just a pony like any other. Hoofington or Colton could provide me a dozen more just like her.

Well... not just like her...

Shaking my head in a vain attempt to refocus my thoughts, I resumed the internal process of converting love into healing, sighing slightly as I felt my wounds begin to stitch themselves back together once more. It would be many days before I would be back in combat-ready form, but at least progress was being made again.

I gazed down upon the sleeping face within the cocoon. Gone was the soft smile that had been there through the induced dreams, replaced by a grimace of pain.

While it made me uncomfortable to see her like that, I had to put that aside for the moment and face a new reality. Now that I had recovered the young mare, I was faced with the problem of transporting her.

I couldn’t fly yet, and I certainly couldn’t carry her. And while it may be possible to roll the cocoon, I would almost definitely be seen, either by the hive—which had to be looking for me—or by some hapless pony that I’d be forced to deal with.

Staying there was also out of the question. I had no way of knowing if the hostiles also used this route to infiltrate Colton. If they did, a whole class of young trainees, as well as their instructor and guardians, could pass by at any minute. Even uneducated grubs would notice a feeding cocoon laying in the undergrowth as they approached the forest, so it was unreasonable to expect it to go unmolested.

My best bet is to release Miss Time. She’s incapacitated right now, so I should be able to herd her... wherever it is we are going.

And that’s when it hit me... I had nowhere else to go.

For the first time since encountering the scout and her ravine ambush, I had both the time and the clarity of mind to examine my current situation.

All right, remain calm. Sit rep.

The hive has been defeated, somehow. I doubt that they simply starved in the time that I was away. Food was tight, and my mission was absolutely vital, but the hive should have been able to survive another year or more on the reserves stored in the feeding pit.

The Crystal Empire is unsafe. Either Sombra repelled the ponies and tightened his grip on the city, or the ponies have retaken the empire. Either way, I can’t just take the mare back there and find a new safehouse, nor can I deliver her to Warden and say: ‘whoops, sorry about ponynapping your goddaughter.’

The pony tribes have obviously reconciled to some extent. Their level of technology seems to have exploded since my last assignment in Unicornia. I doubt that’s natural... is Discord involved somehow?

Why would the lord of chaos help ponies, though, unless there was something in it for him? He’s insensitive, but I wouldn’t exactly call him cruel. I fail to see any entertainment to be found in earth pony slavery... assuming, of course, that all three tribes weren’t already enthralled.

No, that doesn’t make any sense. Those unicorn and pegasus soldiers I saw in town would be wearing chicken feathers or polka dots if he was involved, not polished brass. Also, nothing seems to be floating upside-down in the sky or has been turned inside-out... so, there’s that.

Shaking my head to clear the absurdity from my thoughts, I came to the only conclusion that my situation permitted—I would have to camouflage the cocoon somehow and nurse my wounds before I would be able to move her again.

The forest provided ample resources to do just that. It wasn’t difficult to dig away enough soil to partially conceal Miss Time once I managed to roll her into the narrow ditch. From that point, it was a simple matter of covering the brighter green shades of the cocoon with the darker green of leafy tree branches and some of the dirt I had exhumed in the process of carving out her current resting place.

I had left a small window of her prison uncovered. I told myself it was so I could feed once her strength returned, but I found myself checking her face far more often than was strictly necessary. It would be days before it was safe to drain her again.

Over the next several days, the love I had taken from her had begun to restore my strength and gradually seal the puncture wound in my chest chitin. It wasn’t going to be a quick recovery, but at least I could move without excruciating pain.

When I was healed enough to do so, I made my way back into pony lands and headed toward one of the farms which border and supply Colton.

Several hours past sunset, I approached one of the larger barns with a hayloft. Serenaded by the protest of squeaking hinges, which seemed much louder due to the prevailing silence of the night, I coaxed the large wooden door open and stepped inside.

Thankfully, it was a storage building rather than one meant for livestock. What I came for was quickly found and just as easily removed. Within minutes, I had unloaded the majority of the contents that occupied the bed of a two-wheeled cart, stole a rather large blanket I found draped across several bales of hay, and began pulling my acquisitions down the road behind me.

Once I had returned to my makeshift camp, I exhumed Double Time’s cocoon and attempted to place it in the cart. Unfortunately, I came to another one of those annoying revelations which had been cropping up so frequently—it wasn’t going to work the way I had hoped.

The plan was to simply roll the cocoon up a pair of branches onto the cart, cover it with the blanket, and ease my traveling burden by pulling rather than lifting the unwieldy thing.

You see, feeding cocoons are roughly egg-shaped. Without going into the technical—or magical—details of their formation, suffice it to say that they have to be approximately three times larger than the creature they encase to avoid permanent damage to the prisoner.

Thankfully, Miss Time was not a large pony, but her prison was still too insecure on the back of that cart to move at a reasonable pace without fear of losing my precious cargo. Regardless of orientation, it rested on the side rails rather than down in the bed, causing it to want to roll back whenever the cart began to move forward.

Several design modifications came to mind, but I didn’t consider myself very skilled at engineering. While I could have carved out sections of the cart to serve my purpose, I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself by pulling a personalized vehicle with such a uniquely shaped mystery under blankets in the bed. I needed to maintain some degree of stealth, and in this case, that meant hiding in plain sight. Anything that stood out as unusual could spell disaster.

Sighing to myself, I fell back on plan b.

My horn glowed steadily as I leeched the energy out of the feeding cocoon. The bright green skin covering the chrysalis began to shrivel up like a raisin. Small cracks appeared in the creases while the glossy surface slowly became dull and lusterless. Slimy liquid oozed out of the various breaches that soon formed, and finally, the once-taut membrane split open like a grape, exposing Double Time to fresh air.

Her natural breathing resumed almost immediately, though it remained slow and weak in her unconscious state. If it weren’t for the tiny air bubbles her exhaled breath created in the ooze-like fluid... well, let’s just say I was relieved to see them.

I used a bit more of my magic to lift her out, clean her off, wrap her in the blanket, and place her into the cart. She had been encased and aggressively fed upon for quite a while, so I wasn’t expecting her to wake up any time soon. There was thankfully no need to bind her.

Due to the reduced weight, the trip back into pony lands was less exhausting than I had planned for, though not any quicker. For obvious reasons, I chose to bypass Colton entirely, forcing me to take less-traveled and more poorly maintained paths through the woods. Most of the trails I followed weren’t even roads; they were made by wildlife rather than ponies and not really intended for carts.

A day after leaving the woods behind us, we came upon a small pony community that I didn’t remember from our flight south. It was just as primitive as I had expected it to be; there were perhaps a dozen small buildings facing each other across what was presumably the only road. There was even a small fruit orchard of some sort on the northern side of town. It looked like a typical frontier town, except for one detail. What really stood out to me was the set of metal rails that came to an end in front of an unusually long building with a raised platform behind it.

There was no doubt that these were the same sort of rails upon which that horrifying troop mover I encountered had traveled along. Could this town be a defensive outpost in the making? Were the ponies now aware of the hostile changeling hive on their southern border? It was possible, I supposed, but something about that idea didn’t sit well with me. There were no soldiers in the street.

I needed more information, and this little town seemed perfect for a bit of reconnaissance.

I unhitched myself from the cart and hid it behind a rocky outcropping. Then, with a flash of emerald flame and an enjoyable tingle running up my spine, I disguised myself as an earth pony.

I needed to speak with a few ponies, sure, but I had no desire to make those conversations personal in nature, so I will admit that my temporary identity was rather rudimentary; I would become Bale Flake. Stallion. Brown fur. Two-toned yellow and tan mane cropped short. Green eyes. A cutie mark of two stacked hay bales. It would be sufficient for what I had in mind.

I approached the settlement with feigned confidence while scanning the road and the gaps between buildings for threats. I couldn’t feel any malice or suspicion, so after a few minutes of wandering around and looking in windows, I approached a colt who was loitering in the street.

I learned that this place was called Dodge Junction and was supposedly famous for the cherries that grew in a nearby ranch. The metal rails were indeed a road intended for the boxy vehicle, which I now knew was called a train, and that it was not a troop mover but rather a civilian service that connected all of Equestria.

His words were difficult to believe, and I spent more than a little effort trying to coax him into a lie that I could detect through his emotions. Rather than guilt, smugness, or pride, all I felt directed toward me was his annoyance at answering so many questions.

My questions must be considered common knowledge for him to react this way. Obviously, more has happened to these ponies than their alliance against Sombra.

They’ve formed an entirely new empire, this Equestria as he called it, in the time it took me to infiltrate the Crystal Empire. That shouldn’t be possible. The logistics of currency, infrastructure, even simple information distribution, and civilian acceptance... it’s just not possible in such a short time.

As I stood there working through the issue, a loud whistling sound broke my concentration. When I looked up, the sight of a so-called train greeted me as it gradually slowed and came to a stop behind the long building. At least that saved me from asking yet another question I was now sure I was expected to already know.

I thanked the colt for humoring me and made my way closer to the iron behemoth. I watched as ponies entered and exited the boxy passenger sections, as well as official-looking ponies who were busy removing cargo and luggage from flat areas with no walls.

I also saw ponies exchange small gold coins with each other as they transitioned onto the train. I made a mental note of it and reasoned that pony money must have also changed since Equestria was formed... yet another indication that more time had passed than I felt possible.

Needing to distance Miss Time and me from my former hive, I decided to take advantage of this new vehicle while I had the chance. Quickly returning to the outcropping which hid the cart, I lifted the still-comatose mare in my magic and projected a fire portal beneath us.

We emerged behind a stack of luggage on the flat train car. It took very little time to adjust a few boxes to eliminate any line of sight to our hiding place, and within minutes the train began to move.

It was unnerving at first to have the ground beneath my hooves rocking from side to side, and the sense of rapid motion without effort was disorienting. Every time I looked down at Miss Time’s sleeping form, I grew ever so slightly more jealous that she didn’t seem to care about the situation at all.

Thankfully, after just a few hours, the train once again blew its whistle and began to slow down. Faintly, coming from one of the passenger compartments further forward in the train, I could hear one of the official-looking ponies call out:

“Now arriving at Ponyville station!”

Author's Note

Long time no see!

Sorry about my absence, as I may have mentioned previously, I no longer have a comfortable place to do my writing. The first half dozen chapters were written from my private office at work during long periods of downtime between customers. My new job no longer has such downtime, nor do I have a private office. Any writing I do now is being done from my home PC, which is more suitable for gaming than writing.

This chapter is a little shorter than I expected it to be, but I decided not to split the next portion of the story up between two chapters and will instead be including it all in the next chapter.

I can't promise to be back full-time, but hopefully you won't have to wait a year for the next installment. There are only a few chapters left in my timeline, I'd like to finish the story for you.

10. | I know I'm Not Forgiven but I Need a Place to Sleep

"Now arriving at Ponyville station!"

The official announced yet another town that I didn't recognize. Unless the ponies decided to start renaming their settlements after the creation of Equestria, they were expanding rapidly. I supposed it made some amount of sense, considering the ease with which they could now travel. Resource distribution wouldn't hinder colonial growth very much after the advent of this train, and who knows how many of these machines they may have built.

I briefly considered walking off the train once it came to a halt, but Double Time was still unconscious. We would doubtlessly attract attention if I slung her across my back, and levitating her in a sphere of green magic would probably not go over well with the locals.

I had no other choice but to expend energy—again—on a fire portal to disembark. As it was already approaching evening, the light produced by the flames would be too conspicuous once we stopped, so I opted to make our exit while still in motion.

Lifting Double Time with my magic and placing her across my back, I once again created an emerald ring of flames but paused momentarily to consider a change in the portal's appearance.

The fire appeared to be reaching toward us as though a great wind was trying to blow it out, and it took me a moment to realize the portal itself was affixed to the floor while the flames coming off it were trying to remain in place as the train moved forward without them. Thankfully, though, passing through the portal was just as soothing as every other time I had ever created one.

Considering I had only brief glimpses of treetops from our hiding place, the fact that our exit point was in yet another forest didn't surprise me very much. Honestly, I was just relieved to have not exited into a solid object.

The trees around us were old. Much older than the comparatively youthful woods surrounding Colton or Hoofington. The canopy overhead was dense and shut out a significant amount of what little light remained of the day, as though it wasn't welcome—and we were barely a dozen steps beyond the treeline.

Looking back toward the train, I could make out the town and surrounding area quite clearly. Ponyville was significantly larger than Colton, Hoofington, and Dodge Junction combined. There was a tall circular building in the center of town, dozens of one- or two-story homes, and numerous colorful buildings with sculpted decorations—which I assumed to be places of business. Beyond the outskirts of town were massive fields of various grains and vegetables, as well as the single largest apple orchard I have ever seen.

If the number of ponies that field of trees could feed was anywhere near representative of the local population, these ponies had multiplied at a ferocious rate since I last traveled through this region.

Everything I saw seemed unnatural to me. It just wasn't possible to create a place like this in under a year—or even twenty! The Wendigo blizzard alone would have made planting those crops and trees all but impossible.

For that matter, I hadn't even given thought to how the Wendigos were defeated. That had to have taken significant effort and time. Right?

Too many significant events have been taking place down here in Equestria. Although, knowing ponies, they probably just sang the Wendigos into submission.

Imagine my surprise—years later—when I finally heard the story of Hearth's Warming, only to realize that my sarcastic remark turned out to be, more or less, the truth.

A stirring on my back broke my train of thought and reminded me of Double Time's presence once again. She was no longer—strictly speaking—comatose, though she wasn't quite awake yet either.

I retreated further into the ancient woods we had used as our exit point from the train and slowly explored our more immediate surroundings. The light that managed to pierce the treeline and canopy was dappled at best. Best of all, there was almost no evidence that ponies ever came more than a few steps beyond the line-of-sight from their village, so it didn't take long to find a place I considered safe from prying eyes.

That is not to say I considered the forest to be safe—far from it. Any natural environment that intimidated ponies demanded respect, even from a changeling.

I placed my captive on a hastily gathered pile of leaves and slumped down next to her to rest. I hadn't walked far, but the combination of her added weight on my back, the dense foliage I was trailblazing through, and the drain from multiple fire portals had finally caught up to me.

No longer concerned with the possibility of discovery, I relaxed my guard slightly and dropped my pony disguise. Once I was 'Carina' again, I began visually inspecting Miss Time from where I lay.

She had accumulated a few minor scratches from the bushes along the way but was otherwise unharmed. The fact that she was still unconscious worried me slightly, as it had been several hours since I dissolved her cocoon, but short of keeping her safe until she woke up on her own, there was very little I could have done.

After a brief rest, I got back on my hooves and gathered a few plants and berries from the area immediately around our makeshift camp. We were absolutely surrounded by foliage, but I wasn't confident in my ability to identify which were actually edible. Thankfully, I recognized enough to provide us with adequate sustenance.

After swallowing a mouthful of vegetation, I ground up all the safe berries I could find using a pair of smooth stones and collected the resulting juice on a decently large leaf which I then slowly poured down Double Time's throat—a few drops at a time.

"I'm sorry, Miss Time," I said out loud. "I didn't really intend to capture you when I came to your city. I was after the Crystal Heart so my queen and hive wouldn't starve to death... ironically, I seem to have failed in both my immediate and long-term objectives. I thought bringing you back would at least buy the hive a few more months... I thought..."

I thought... what? What did I think? Did I expect that explaining myself to this sleeping pony would absolve me of my failure? Did I hope that my release of one walking love buffet would bring my queen back!?

My thoughts turned bitter as I stared at her sleeping face. Her complexion had recovered, and she actually looked peaceful...

...and at that moment, I hated her for it.

The following day was spent gathering berries and other plants that looked edible. I was unfamiliar with this forest, so my haul was sparse; a few bushes worth of blueberries, a couple of pathetically small carrots, and some daisies I found in a small clearing.

This is it? I thought as I deposited the food on a large leaf I'd plucked from a nearby tree to act as dinnerware. I am sure that there is more to eat than this, but I've never seen most of these plants before. I'm sure I could cope with a few bad meals, but the pony is gonna be hard enough to feed without poisoning her.

Not for the first time, thinking about Miss Time drew my eyes toward her. She had shifted in her sleep while I was foraging, but there was still no sign of her regaining consciousness. Knowing what I did about cocooning prey and forcibly draining ponies, it wasn't too concerning when she didn't wake on the train, but I'd have expected her to be mobile by now.

I found myself watching her breathe, slowly in and out, as I ate my meager meal and settled in for another evening in the forest.

After waking up, I wasn't sure if it was actually morning yet or not due to the canopy of leaves above us, but I rose from my pile of leaves anyway.

"Why won't you wake up," I asked, not expecting a reply.

"Hmm? It's too early; the sun's not even up yet," came a distinctly feminine and decidedly groggy response.

My surprise must have been audible because a moment later, Double Time shrieked. She tried to get to her hooves and flee but stumbled and fell on her face—probably because she'd not actually used her legs for weeks.

"Get away from me! Help! Warden!? Where am I?"

Recovering my wits, I tried to calm her by sitting down and reaching out toward her with a single hoof.

"Calm down, Miss Time. It's okay, you're safe here," I said, forgetting I was in my natural form. "It's me, Headway."

"Headway," she replied, "no, you're not! You... you did something to him! You killed him, didn't you? And now you're gonna kill me?"

Again she lept to her hooves, managed to remain upright, and launched herself through the underbrush which surrounded our campsite.

"Oh, for the love of queen and hive..." I muttered as I ran after her.

I half expected her to be far easier to catch than she ended up being. For a pony who had effectively been in a coma for as long as she had, adrenaline overcame any weakness she may have had.

Our race through the trees took us through game trails and small clearings before she lost her balance and crashed headlong into a lazy brook winding its way through the woods.

I slowed my pace as I approached the stream, coming to a halt just shy of entering the water.

"Calm down, Miss Time, I am not going to hurt you," I called out to her as she regained her hoofing. "At least, not anymore."

She didn't look convinced, but she did hesitate before backing away from me again. The impromptu bath left her mane plastered to her face, forcing her to blow errant soggy locks out of her eyes.

"I don't believe you," she replied, then repeated her earlier question. "Are you going to kill me?"

"No," I responded immediately. "I was never going to. I'm... I'm sorry. I took you out of the Empire because you knew what I really was, and my mission was too important to risk. Then there was something worse than Sombra in the city... Everything happened so fast that I automatically resorted to my training. I regret what I did to you. Again, I am so sorry."

The words tumbled out of my mouth faster than I intended, but a burden I hadn't even realized I was carrying seemed suddenly lighter.

Miss Time stared at me while I explained myself. Her expression remained doubtful, but I could feel traces of confusion, sadness, and even a little bit of hope swirling around in the emotions she gave off.

It was difficult not to take advantage of that.

"I..." she began, "I don't know. Are you really Headway?"

I made the mistake of smiling when she asked that.

It entirely slipped my mind at the time that bearing my fangs would be viewed as aggressive. Changelings, unlike ponies, are omnivorous, which means we do, on occasion, find meat on the menu.

I was just about to respond when she screamed and wheeled around to flee once more.

This time, however, she didn't get far. Almost immediately, I heard a thud and what sounded like the air being knocked out of her.

Shock.

Horror.

These were the overwhelming emotions that flooded out of her, even before I breeched the groundcover myself. Although, the roar that followed was obviously not produced by Double Time.

Shouldering a bush out of my way, I ignored the thorns which tried to pierce my carapace as I came face to face with a hydra!

Immediately, I took flight and charged my horn for battle.

Two rapid flashes of emerald energy impacted the beast, pulling its attention away from the prone pony. Another blast of green fire sank into the beast's hide, all-too-briefly igniting its scales as I tried to gain an altitude advantage.

One of its massive heads roared again as it rounded on my position. Its two other gaping maws lunged toward me, snapping closed in the air where I had been mere moments before.

I dipped low, flying beneath its chest, and aimed two more quick bursts into its less protected belly before banking to the side and climbing away from it.

On the ground, Double Time finally managed to get to her hooves. Like a deer in the presence of wolves, she remained frozen in place, staring at the monster trying to eat me.

Magical attacks have a limited ability to penetrate those scales, I recounted to myself. What can I become that could actually drive this thing off?

Several options popped into my head, and each one was ruled out for one reason or another. I continued throwing weak rapid blasts at the hydra to keep its attention while I considered my options.

The obvious answer is Maulwurf.

"I'm going to do something, Miss Time. Don't be afraid," I called out as the idea came to me.

Drawing out as much energy as I could from my emergency reserves, I wrapped myself in green fire, shivering in the delight of transformation.

I grew in size; doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and beyond. It was taxing, and the energy requirement was nearly as immense as my body was becoming.

It had been a few years since I last studied the Maulwurf. It resembled a mole (if moles grew to the height of trees) with excessively long claws, protruding teeth the length of a full-grown pony, and a thick hide that very few physical attacks could penetrate.

It was this aspect of the creature that I was most thankful for.

I had little time to inspect my work, however. The hydra took my new appearance as a personal challenge and lunged at me as I dropped from the sky above him.

Each of its heads bit into one of my limbs, drawing blood but doing no significant damage. Yet. There was a jaw locked onto each of my legs as well as my left forearm. That left my right claw free to return the favor.

Thank the queen for small favors, I remember thinking to myself. As I aimed my free claw for an eye gouge, it finally dawned on me that this hydra was still technically a juvenile—it only had three heads, the rest had not yet sprouted from its body.

An interesting fact for the aspiring scholars among us: Hydras are born with a single head and grow additional ones as they age. It's unknown how many they can theoretically acquire since their vicious nature and low intelligence ensure they, shall we say, 'are removed from the threat pyramid' long before reaching their full potential.

On occasion, rumors of one with eight or more heads circulate, but nopony credible has ever documented more than six. Most only ever live to see their fourth or fifth head grow in.

Be thankful for that, little pony.

My aim was good, and while I inflicted far less damage to its face than I had been hoping for, I did manage to poke him in the eye with what was effectively a pony-sized splinter made of keratin.

Its scream confused the other two heads, which let go, dropping me the rest of the way to the ground. As soon as I got my footing, it was my turn to lunge.

I sank my teeth into the soft tissue between its left front leg and underbody, then wedged my claws into the wound and pulled hard—as though I was digging through the ground.

All three heads dove toward me and retaliated. One had resumed its former place on my right arm, wrenching it away from its wound. A second head tried to extend its jaw wide enough to engulf mine. It failed—thankfully—but having a predator's teeth sink into the back of your neck is the stuff of nightmares, even if the Maulwurf's hide was thick enough to protect my spine. The third head tried to assault me as well, but the other two had given it no room to find an angle, and so it resorted to dragging its teeth along my sides like razers.

I continued to rake my own teeth and free claw into the gash I opened up, sawing back and forth against whatever tendon or muscle I could reach. I expected the young horror to retreat if I caused enough pain. I only hoped that it would give up before I did.

Unfortunately, the rest of the battle doesn't make for a very compelling story. Once we were committed to our mutual holds, the only thing that changed was the heightened amount of daylight now streaming through the trees. I continued trying to widen the wound while the hydra was unrelenting in its attempt to crush me in its jaws or pull me away. Neither of us gave much ground, and from Double Time's point of view, it probably looked like we were hugging each other rather than inflicting grave bodily harm.

Finally, after what felt like days but was probably less than an hour, I felt a snap beneath my claw. The force of the taut tendon was like an immense whip cracking across my face, showering me in viscera and blinding me with fountains of bright red.

All three heads howled at that, releasing their grip on me and roaring into the sky. The hydra stumbled backward, knocking over trees as it did so, and fell over when it tried to put weight on the ruined limb.

The thrashing monster shook the ground as it landed hard, and its massive tail swung back and forth aimlessly as it tried to roll over and stand up. In its excessive throes, it managed to slap Miss Time, sending her flying quite a distance before slamming headlong into the trunk of a tree.

Once it was clear that the hydra had disengaged, I resumed my natural form and rushed over to check on her. I could tell that I was wounded again, but the adrenaline coursing through me allowed me to ignore it for the time being.

I was careful about moving her when I saw how she was lying—crumpled as she was—at the base of the tree. I used more of my dwindling magic to lift her and rotate her onto her back without moving the relative position of her head. The last thing I wanted on my recently awakened conscience was to break her neck.

She was breathing, which is always a good sign. There were several angry bruises already forming under her fur, but—thankfully—it didn't seem like anything was broken. I charged my horn once again and sent tendrils of magic into her flesh to inspect what I could.

I am not, nor have I ever impersonated a doctor, but the nature of changeling transformation requires extensive knowledge of anatomy. I used my remaining energy to tend to her wounds before apologetically siphoning some of her own to finish the job. In the end, if nothing else, I was at least satisfied that her neck was not broken.

Realizing that remaining where we were would be tantamount to suicide, I gingerly placed her on my back and limped out of the clearing.

The rush of battle and fear for her safety subsided, and I suddenly felt all of my own injuries. Both my rear legs felt as though the chitin had been punctured in multiple places. My left foreleg, too, felt like it was on fire with Miss Time's additional weight on my back. There were long scratched rent into my abdominal carapace, and the back of my head throbbed with as-yet-unknown damage.

A few hours of hobbling through the dense forest eventually took its toll on me, though. I stumbled more frequently and nearly dropped my pony charge from my back on more than one occasion.

Ultimately, I could go no further. I slid Miss Time off my back and collapsed next to her. I had intended to merely catch my breath and recover my strength, but once on the ground, I found it almost impossible to convince myself to rise again.

Darkness closed in around us like the shadow of Cerberus, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I had managed only a few minutes of rest before a rustle in the undergrowth alerted me to the approach of some nocturnal beast.

I forced myself to my hooves, then jumped into the air, hovering above Double Time's prone form. I charged my horn with what little energy I had left and prepared to defend myself and the slumbering pony beneath me.

In hindsight, that was a foolish decision that I can only attribute to exhaustion. The glow gave me no advantage, as it was too weak to pierce the surrounding foliage, but perfectly drew any eyes nearby to my position.

Within seconds, my strength gave out, and I could no longer buzz my wings hard enough to stay aloft. Against my will, I slowly lost altitude and eventually resorted to simply draping myself protectively across Double Time's body as the magic stored within my horn grew dimmer and flickered out.

I tried—futilely—to fire portal us away, even if only a few dozen paces. Such a short hop would do nothing to protect us from an intelligent opponent, but displays of magic often frighten away lesser threats, and that is what I was counting on. Embarrassingly, the emerald flames that surrounded us were barely powerful enough to start a campfire. They were nowhere near strong enough to envelop us in a sphere of teleportation magic and, consequently, flickered out almost immediately—as did the green glow of my now-spent horn, leaving us defenseless.

My eyes lost focus, and as I struggled to remain conscious, the only thing that went through my mind was:

At least I will be with my queen soon.

Thankfully, it was not a three-headed guardian dog—or a revenge-driven hydra—that found us. The creature that stepped out of the foliage was much more pony-shaped than I had expected and far more surprised.

I barely registered the husky sing-song voice of a zebra before everything went black.

"Oh, my word. What have we here—A changeling holding crystal dear? In no fit state is either soul; how long's it been since each was whole? Into my care, I'll take these two, in time revived by special brew."

I dreamed of my hive and of faces that I'd never see again.

Author's Note

Did you miss me?

I wrote the first 1500 words or so right after posting the previous chapter then utterly failed to get back to it due to real-life issues. The rest of the chapter flowed out onto the screen over a two-day period this weekend.

As a result, I was excited to get this out to you and it may contain a few missed typos. As always, please let me know if you find one or would like something made a bit clearer.

11. | So Take This Night and Lay Me Down on the Street

Author's Note

This one is short, but hey... at least it wasn't half a year since the previous chapter, right?

I debated continuing the story or filling in the word count, but I don't want to bloat the story just to ensure 3-5k word counts per chapter. This one says what it needs to, and I have other plans for the next couple.

11. | So Take This Night and Lay Me Down on the Street

I woke slowly, fighting to remain in a world where my queen still drew breath, unsure if I even wanted to open my eyes and face the guilt of another day.

It was warm, wherever I was. Grudgingly raising my head and allowing the stab of daylight to wipe away the last of my fleeting happiness, I discovered that I was inside a cottage.

Bottles were hanging from knarled wooden racks suspended from the ceiling, which itself seemed to be part of a living tree. Decorations fashioned from feathers and bone adorned the walls, and the air smelled strongly of herbs and flowering plants.

Beneath me, I took note of the bed made of hay, feathers, and a thin stack of blankets which I lay on. Obviously not a permanent piece of furniture, it nonetheless showed more care than I'd have expected shown to a changeling. Most ponies didn't even know we existed, and those who did view us as hostile, if not outright monsters.

Standing, I continued to surveil the room.

I was relieved to see Double Time slept on a similar assortment of cobbled-together bedding. The sunlight filtering into the room illuminated her still form. Her coat was dimmer than it had been when I first met her but was much improved over the past few days. Her face wore a neutral expression but was otherwise peaceful.

All things considered, she looked better than could be expected after all I'd put her through. I suspected the partially empty bowl of broth on a table nearby had much to do with that.

"It gladdens me to see you rise; your chosen camp was most unwise." A sing-song voice broke the silence and startled me out of my scrutiny of Double Time's face. "Be not afraid, I mean you no harm; it was not my goal to cause alarm. Your crystal friend is most unwell; perhaps you'll fill me in a spell?"

I am not sure why I trusted this strange zebra, but I felt that the amount of effort and care she showed us while unconscious earned her a story.

I told our host, who introduced herself as Zecora, most of the story I've just shared with you. I explained my queen's mission for me into the empire and our hive's need for the love crystal they held. I glossed over the months spent living in the schoolhouse, feeding on Warden and Miss Time.

I told her about King Sombra and the pony invasion that spooked me into leaving the city. I told her of the trek south and my first encounter with a train, the unexpected growth of the pony villages, and ultimately the discovery that my hive had been conquered by a new queen named Chrysalis.

When I was done, more than an hour had passed, and I suddenly realized how foolish I was for confiding in a stranger while both Double Time and I were so weakened.

If she decided that I was a threat to her or Miss Time, I was not in any state to defend myself. I could barely stand, and once again, my pony companion remained asleep.

"Your tale is not what I expected; the life you've left was well connected. This crystal mare, much does she mean, for you to guard against the queen. "

"Chrysalis is not my queen," I growled, more aggressively than I intended. After seeing her expression shift slightly, I backpedaled. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you like that. You'd have no reason to understand the politics involved within changeling hives."

It wasn't always easy to follow her speech pattern, but I managed to learn quite a bit. We continued to talk for another few hours, and to say my incredulity was intense would be an understatement. The things Zecora told me explained so much of the last few days, but they were not easy to believe. If it were not for her earnest demeanor and the occasional moment to let me take in what she was saying, I'd have written her off as a crazy pony.

A thousand years had passed in the literal blink of an eye, probably while Double Time and I were still in the cave outside of town. There were multiple god-like ponies out there ruling the tribes now—called Alicorns—two of which were responsible for the attack on King Sombra and, perhaps more shockingly, a mere unicorn student of theirs for his downfall post-time-jump. The changeling queen who now resided within my old hive had attacked the ponies—in broad daylight—just a few months before we arrived in this new world.

Ultimately, as the sunlight began to be replaced by candles, Zecora stood up and walked toward me. I could feel her emotions pouring out at me, and in a panic, I bowed my head, trying not to gorge myself on our generous host.

"Your courage I can much respect; you have no need to genuflect. You've suffered so with dignity; take sustenance in sympathy."

Zecora's words forced me to reconsider my choice to avoid her emotional offering. There was no real love in the mixture, but the respect, pity, admiration, and sympathy were strong enough to restore a fair bit of my energy.

It was an unusual feeling; we changelings can feed on any emotion, though we obviously prefer love for the vast amount of magic it possesses. Even just a little love can sustain a drone for days, so you can imagine the benefit we receive from draining a pony. Lesser emotions take longer to accumulate the same sort of recharging effect, and they taste different. Some among my hive once theorized that the flavor of other emotions could even influence our own emotional state, but no actual research went into it—at least, not before I vanished.

"Thank you," I said. "I should be able to take Miss Time home now."

"Sad to say, I disagree. It'd be wise for her to stay with me. To travel abroad with whom you cherish; in both your states, you'd likely perish."

I was about to say something—to argue that I had managed to bring her this far—but considered her words a moment before mutely nodding my head instead.

Obviously, Zecora was a very wise pony—evidenced by her ability to live alone in this unusual forest—where beasts such as hydras roam freely.

The zebra mare spoke again after giving me a once-over with her eyes. "More healing brew I'll surely make. Very soon, she will awake. A friendly face is what she'll need, not fear renewed that you may feed."

"I would never... Miss Time's not... I get it," I replied as I slowly built up the magic necessary to reassume my crystal pony disguise. While not as comfortable as my natural form, I suspected Zecora may be right. Double Time would likely be less inclined to panic around Headway rather than Carina.

With a brief flash of emerald flame, I shifted into my most recent alter-ego.

To her credit, Zecora squinted her eyes briefly against the flash of light. Otherwise, she took it in stride without so much as a comment.

"You're right, of course. I did this to her. She will probably never trust me again. What should I do? I owe her a debt."

Zecora smiled sadly when she next spoke.

"As her healer, I'll speak true: a tension rests between you two. It will not help to mend her mind if your presence is viewed to be unkind. If I may provide suggestion, regarding your unique digestion, a pegasus friend who fears the sky perhaps can help; seek Fluttershy."

Zecora had briefly mentioned Fluttershy during her story about the events I had missed over the past millennium. She had said the buttery mare lived up to her name but may also be the most compassionate pony to have ever lived. She was known to speak with animals and care for them like family members rather than simply pets or dangerous beasts. She was also a very powerful pony, bearing the so-called Element of Kindness which apparently could defeat evil alicorns and even Discord himself.

Zecora also told me that the timid pegasus saw the good in every creature. Asking such a pony for an emotional handout was demeaning, and feeding off her kindness seemed like taking advantage of her, but I had to admit that I could see all manner of benefit from such an ally.

One thing, above all else, was evident, though: without some form of sustenance, I wouldn't last very long without a hive.

"Take care of her, Zecora," I said as I got to my hooves and walked toward the door of her cottage. "She means more to me than I do to her, but you are right... it is time for me to go."

12. | I know I'm Not Forgiven but I Hope That I'll be Given...

"Excuse me, Miss Fluttershy?" I apologized as the door slowly swung open. It was just wide enough to glimpse the head and one shoulder of the home's occupant. "I'm sorry to bother you. Zecora sent me to see you. She thought you might be willing to help me."

The buttery mare I addressed was just as timid as I was told she'd be, hiding behind her hair like a young filly, but more was going on in her emotional state than I expected.

Curiosity. With an opening line like mine, why wouldn't she be? Concern. No surprise, there is a stranger at her door after all. Compassion. That's promising. The zebra's name must carry a lot of weight for her to offer sympathy before opening her mouth or hearing my name.

"Oh, um... of course. I don't know what she thinks I might be able to help you with, but if Zecora suggests it, I will be happy to do what I can. Please, come in. My friends and I were just having some tea."

She stepped to the side and fully opened the door, inviting me inside with a wave of her hoof. Her cottage was full of animals, ranging from rabbits and snakes to wolves and bears. They were all gathered around a blanket set out on the floor, and, oddly enough, those with grasping appendages were sipping tea from porcelain cups.

I hesitated a moment, taken aback by the scene before me. I had been told this pony's cutiemark allowed her to speak with lesser animals, but I didn't realize that meant she preferred their company. Zecora's assurance that none would be more accepting of me than Fluttershy made significantly more sense now. Among all the ponies alive, she could be trusted with my secrets.

Fluttershy happily resumed her place among the various critters and indicated a spot for me to join them; all the while, a pair of birds were busy carrying a napkin and spoon toward me from the kitchen, and the bear was reaching for the small steaming pot in the center of the blanket.

The rabbit, however, stared me down like he knew who I was.

"I hope you like it. Angel Bunny makes a wonderful cup of tea, Mister... Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Well, that's actually a central theme surrounding my problem. To properly introduce myself may be alarming. May I use magic without frightening you or your animal friends?"

Her facial expression changed immediately, and her emotional state added wariness to the mixture swirling inside her head, but her curiosity was also spiking.

"Oh, um. Is it really that bad? How can your name be surprising?"

I hung my head slightly as I nodded. "Well, my name isn't so much the surprising part," I said as I got to my hooves. "Please don't panic; I mean you no harm."

With a slow release of my sustained magic, the once-comforting green flame washed over my body and erased my disguise, one limb at a time, as though I were stepping out of an elaborate costume.

Predictably, Fluttershy let out a started 'eep' and dove for cover behind the bear, who did not precisely look pleased but was more concerned with the mare shivering behind him than he was with me. The birds scattered, but strangely the rabbit continued to stare daggers at me, unmoving.

As the last wisps of transformative magic evaporated from my now-glossy carapace, I again hung my head. "Please, let me explain. My name is Carina, and as you can see, I am a changeling. I know you've recently been attacked by a changeling hive, but I swear I am not one of them. That queen is insane or, at least, supremely desperate to have risked the safety of her hive like that... and I think... I think she destroyed mine. My hive... my queen. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come."

I didn't realize putting the events of the past few months into words would choke me up so badly. I am an infiltrator; I have been trained to be the master of my emotions, both genuine and feigned. Exposing weakness like this was unacceptable.

I turned toward the door and lifted a hole-ridden hoof, preparing to leave. I had to get away.

Except I couldn't.

An overwhelming wave of compassion assaulted me almost as physically as the yellow pony who was suddenly hugging me.

I was told she was timid, fearful, and unsure of herself by all accounts. Still, she made herself physically vulnerable and fed me more sympathy than even Zecora after only the briefest introduction.

To embrace an exposed changeling... there was a time I would call that reckless and take advantage of her. Today, I would call her one of the bravest ponies I've ever met.

"Oh, you poor thing. I'm so sorry. My friend Twilight told us about changelings after the wedding. It must have been so difficult for you when you lost your family like that."

I was at a loss. My hive was less critical of ponies than Chrysalis' brood, but in my wildest dreams, I'd have never put a single bit on a member of our primary food source embracing one of us in our natural form.

As an aside: Of course, seeing what they became years later, perhaps I held too strong an opinion of them, but I will never understand the 'reformed' hive's choice of pastel colors, and I will never follow their lead. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate their choice to embrace friendship, but my queen never caused us any racial guilt. One can change their outlook on life without such drastic measures. I mean, how much self-loathing do you have to have to abandon your own body?

"Thank you." It was an inadequate response, but it was all I could manage at that moment.

Once I had composed myself, I joined her indoor critter picnic and spent several hours bearing my soul and getting to know her. She criticized several of my decisions as I shared the past few months' events, but that's not unexpected from a pony's point of view.

"...and that's when I came to see you," I finally said. "Zecora seems to think you'd happily submit yourself to feeding me. Rediculous."

She tapped her muzzle with her hoof for a moment before responding. "I think Zecora might be right," she said, much to my surprise. "I think I can help you!"

Fluttershy must have seen the incredulity on my face because she quickly added, "oh, not about the feeding thing, but I think you may have misunderstood her intentions. I can help you by letting you help yourself. How would you like a job, Miss Carina?"

I spent the next few days following that optimistic little pony around her cottage and surrounds, learning the names of all her critter friends and what they preferred to eat. She also taught me how to understand simple animal body language. I couldn't communicate with them the way she did, but at least I'd be unlikely to provoke a hostile response from them.

At her suggestion, I wore a new pony disguise. Fluttershy thought it would be best not to frighten the ponies of the nearby village. Many were somewhat xenophobic, and the attack on their capital city by Chrysalis' hive was still fresh in their minds.

She wanted to reveal my identity to her friends, the other Elements of Harmony, but I asked her not to. I had started to believe the stories Zecora told me about her kindness, but asking me to expose myself to somepony else was entirely different. Thankfully, she understood my reticence and allowed me to decide if and when I did so.

Animals, as it turns out, show affection very quickly once their fear of you wanes. My new job may have saved my life—in more than one way. I fed off the simple emotions directed toward me as I made my rounds feeding Fluttershy's little friends. Still, the most significant sustenance came in the evenings, when I would join the buttery mare for dinner, discuss the day's events, and share stories.

I would tell her about my hive and life in a world before alicorns. She would fill me in on world history from the past thousand years.

Initially, I viewed these sessions as vital reconnaissance for survival, feeding her obsolete and useless trivia in exchange for information I would need to establish new disguises.

In hindsight, it should have been no surprise that I was simultaneously learning something even more significant.

I assumed that my strength was returning to me because of the animals. Fluttershy told me that befriending her critters would sustain me, but the gratitude and compassion she provided was the more filling offering and required no effort to draw out of her. A phrase she repeated on occasion gradually started to make more sense: friendship is magic.

Friend, I thought to myself one night after saying goodbye to my pony benefactor. Are we friends?

It was possible. I certainly formed an attachment to Double Time that was uncharacteristic of a changeling, but I never really thought of her as a friend per se. How was Fluttershy different?

Lies, I realized. Fluttershy knew what I was within minutes of meeting me and accepted me despite that knowledge. Conversely, I lied to Miss Time for months before she found out in one of the most traumatic ways possible.

The following morning, instead of heading to Fluttershy's cottage, I wore my new disguise and made my way into town. It wasn't technically the first time I had been to Ponyville, but the only other time had been our arrival on the train, and the flight from our hiding place left little opportunity to get to know the area.

I wore the face of a fictitious silver unicorn stallion with a blue mane and tail that I named Locke Tumbler. Ponies rarely secured their doors, so claiming to have a locksmithing cutiemark would be a conversation starter that would likely not require further demonstration.

The village was quaint and exactly what I'd come to envision a modern pony town to look like. Peaceful. Quiet. It seemed like nothing exciting ever happened, nor would it.

I wandered the main roads for nearly an hour before finding the building I was looking for. Above the door hung a sign with a couch and a quill on it. A strange combination of goods to sell from the same place, but perhaps neither product was popular enough to pay the bills alone.

"Excuse me," I began as a cheerful-looking salespony approached me. "I am looking for some stationary. I need to write a letter to an old friend."

After paying for my purchase and asking for directions to the nearest post office, I sat at an outdoor cafe table, ordered a daffodil sandwich, and began writing.

"Dear Warden..."

Author's Note

This one is short again, but at least I am trying to get new content to the few of you still waiting for updates.

Writing is hard with my current schedule, but you likely already know that.

13. | Some Peace

The hardest part of moving on is accepting that you need to.

It had been a few weeks since I came to Fluttershy's cottage, and I had settled into a routine that kept me well-fed and brought me up to speed with world events.

I already knew that the changelings who attacked the pony capital did not represent my queen, but now I was confident that my hive no longer existed.

Attempts to make contact with the hive had gone entirely ignored ever since I regained the strength and confidence to employ them. Granted, new protocols might have been enacted over the past thousand years, but I refuse to believe that noling would investigate such conspicuous changeling magic expenditure.

You see, Queen Serosa's hive developed a spell that we could use if an Infiltrator's cover were in danger of being blown. They could signal for help by condensing love energy into an orb and launching it into the sky. The resulting burst of love would be entirely invisible to ponies—or anything else for that matter—but would be felt by every changeling within miles, assuming the amount of love expended was significant enough.

I poured every spare bit of emotional energy I acquired into a nightly beacon. Unfortunately, the only potential response came from a tan-colored pegasus who seemingly went out of his way to walk past the cottage one evening with a perplexed expression on his face.

His presence briefly gave me hope, especially after I realized he was trained to shield his emotions—much like an infiltrator—but he never probed mine in any way, which I hope no self-respecting changeling of this era would have failed to do. After the briefest of investigations, he continued on his way without ever looking back at me. He may have been sensitive enough to feel the love beacon, but I doubted he was a changeling.

Eventually, I gave up.

That was the first motivator for my next decision.

Double Time—and what I took from her—was the second.

I sent a letter to Warden, telling him where to find his young charge. I suppose I didn't need to do so; no doubt Zecora would have contacted him once she believed Miss Time was well enough to travel.

In the letter, I explained what I had done. I told Warden about my real identity and the windigos starving my hive in the south. I told him about my mission and the importance of the crystal heart. Then I told him what I had done to Double Time and what I had done for her. I told him about my failure and Zecora's timely rescue.

I explained myself to him but never once asked for forgiveness. I didn't deserve that.

And so it was, one autumn morning, that an elderly crystal stallion set hoof in my benefactor's garden. "Excuse me, miss," he began. "I am looking for a young pegasus named Fluttershy. Would she happen to be nearby?"

I didn't expect to hear that voice again. It was no surprise that Warden didn't recognize me; I was neither in my natural form nor did I appear to be Headway. The fact that I was currently a pale green earth pony mare called Glade Whisper went a long way toward hiding my identity.

"Uh... yeah, she's feeding the fish down by the stream," I shakily replied, unable to hide just how taken aback I was by his appearance.

The old war veteran had aged visibly in the months since I had fled his country with his adopted daughter in tow. The worry and grief I caused him were evident in his features, and I was sure his mane had thinned. Where there was once battle-hardened muscle tone under taut fur, there seemed to be loose, deflated skin, as if he had personally felt the passing of the thousand-year skip.

As he nodded to me in thanks and turned toward the water, I called out to him. "Warden," I began, "wait a moment."

He froze in place. He didn't immediately turn back toward me, but I saw his shoulders stiffen. He went on alert as he heard his name leave my mouth, and I could tell Warden had already come to an assumption about who I was from that one simple clue—considering he hadn't told me his name.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That doesn't excuse my actions, of course, but I want you to know that. Maybe... maybe we should talk before you go see her." I sighed, still looking at the back of his unmoving head. "Care for some tea? Fluttershy has an extensive collection inside."

Several long seconds passed before the tension in his body eased, and he turned to face me again. His eyes were tight, but they were the eyes of a cautious warrior, not an enraged bull. His emotions were guarded, but I could still sense some compassion there.

"Very well, Headway, perhaps we should talk. It's been a while."

The conversation was awkward. It was challenging to begin with the old stallion staring at me in silence. I could feel the anger boiling out of Warden, and I couldn't even hold it against him. He had every right to be angry, and I didn't know how much of this new world that we found ourselves in he'd been introduced to.

Thankfully, once I began speaking, the story I told him didn't differ very much from what I am telling you now and didn't take as long as I'd feared, though it was approaching sunset. Warden remained silent the entire time until my words began to recede, and my thoughts became less focused.

"I see," he finally said. He went quiet for a few moments, leading me to believe that was all I would get out of him before he spoke up again. "How long has it been since you last saw your home, your family?"

"Almost two years," I replied with a lump in my throat, "and never again."

Warden sighed and simply said, "I see," before drawing a long breath. "I understand, Headway, and I am sorry for your loss. Two years can be a lifetime during monumental events. Your whole world can change—in some cases literally—in the blink of an eye. Your goals, your values, your very sense of self."

Sympathy.

Forgiveness.

Gratitude?

There is no way a pony could be thankful toward a changeling. A carrot doesn't forgive the rabbit who eats it.

I was sure he had misunderstood something, so I quickly decided on a course of action and released my disguise. I made no attempt to make it gradual; a flash of green and a wave of emerald flame washed over me, erasing Fluttershy's young animal care helper, revealing my glossy black carapace.

To his credit, Warden didn't even flinch, nor did I detect any alarm—neither in his demeanor nor his emotions.

"My real name is Carina, not Headway, and I'm actually what you would consider a mare. I was one of Queen Serosa's hoof-picked elite infiltrators... it was my duty to ensure the survival of my hive during the love drought and great Wendigo blizzard. I never meant to harm you or Double Time. I just needed to bring enough stored love home to feed my queen... my family. I needed the Crystal Heart... but..."

It felt weird to willingly surrender the details of my mission, even if it no longer mattered.

"Your letter claimed Miss Time is unharmed," he said, interrupting my downward spiral. "Why did you not bring her home?"

I sighed. "Because of our last interaction. When the alicorns attacked the city, I didn't understand who they were or what they could do. I didn't think the ponies had a chance of defeating King Sombra, so when I heard the proof of their prowess echo across the city, I realized my mission's window of opportunity was closing. There were brainwashed soldiers everywhere, including the schoolhouse, so I fell back on my training.

"I came to care about Miss Time during our stay. I tried to be honest with her. I revealed myself to her, just as I have with you, but she panicked.

"My hive was dying, and my mission had become untenable. In such dire situations, infiltrators are taught to claim any victory, however small, and return with whatever love they can safely transport. Usually, that comes in the form of love crystals, filled throughout the mission. Except mine were destroyed in the school battle, crushed underhoof defending Miss Time.

"I knew my mission had failed. I knew I didn't have enough energy to make it home—and, even if I did, there was the possibility that we'd all starve within a few months due to my failure.

So, my only logical option was to bring Double Time with me as both a personal energy source for the trip and a feeble offering to Queen Serosa. Miss Time is bursting with life and love; she could easily sustain my queen. Even if she could never hope to feed everyling, at least the hive would have a chance to rebuild one day, as long as the queen survived."

Understandably, Warden briefly bristled with anger at the mention of turning his would-be daughter into a food source. What surprised me, however, was how quickly he smothered those feelings.

"Thank you for telling me, Carina," he said as he stood up and turned toward the cottage door. "I think I will take my leave now. I wish to look in on Miss Time and make the acquaintance of her zebra benefactor before it gets too late."

As he left, he paused briefly on the doorstep. "I do not appreciate what you have done, but I understand the panic and despair you have endured. We are old friends, guilt and I. If you are truly as remorseful as you say, perhaps we can be as well, one day."

He closed the door behind himself, walked into the Everfree Forest, and out of this story. I saw him again, of course, and we did indeed become friends, though I wore a new disguise by the time that happened.

The next day, I had just arrived at Fluttershy's home to begin my rounds feeding the critters when I heard a familiar voice.

"...don't think that would be a great idea. I just wanted to stop by and thank you. Zecora told me you had something to do with keeping him from hurting ponies. He... my father's not here anymore, so I am grateful for whatever it is you did."

Her father? Oh, Stalwart. I almost forgot about that, I mused, surprised to find a bit of self-loathing building up inside myself. The momentary relief and joy I felt at seeing her conscious again were diluted by guilt.

Fluttershy looked over as I walked in, sending both an apology and a warning through her emotions. It was a clear message and one I had difficulty paying heed to.

"Good morning, Fluttershy," I said as I stepped through the door. "Oh, sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt."

If I thought meeting Fluttershy was the epitome of nervous response to new stimuli, the instant panic that poured out of Double Time upon hearing a voice coming from behind her nearly floored me with disgust.

"Oh, um... good morning, Glade," Fluttershy greeted me. "I was just entertaining a guest before we started our chores. You're welcome to join us if you want to. Or, you can head out to the field if you wish. I am sure our little friends are ready for breakfast."

The fact that Fluttershy acknowledged me with her characteristic kindness put much of the tension out of Miss Time, but she still took a step back as she, too, turned to face me.

"I see that," I began. "You must be the young mare from the Crystal Empire that Zecora has been taking care of."

Looking into Miss Time's eyes as she greeted me turned my stomach. "Oh, yes. I'm Double Time." Her eyes were hollow and barely seemed to reflect any light. Dull, nearly lifeless.

"Double Time was just telling me that her friend has come to bring her home. It must be so exciting to return to the Crystal Empire. It's such a beautiful city; my friends and I just came back from there. I particularly liked the main square where the crystal fair took place... all those adorable little ewes!"

No matter how often I reminded myself, it still took me a moment to accept the difference in our relative timelines. And, from the look on Miss Time's face, it seemed the same could be said about her.

"That sounds... lovely, Fluttershy," I said before directing my full attention toward the crystal mare. "I'm sorry about your father."

Double Time's expression didn't change much, but the wave of sadness that emanated from her was palpable.

"Thank you," is all she said.

"Fluttershy, would it be alright if you fed the critters alone today? I'd like to have a word with our guest, and if she's really going home soon, I may not have another opportunity to do so."

"Of course, um, Glade. Just... be nice?" Her tone as she said that was unusual, but I understood her meaning.

Double Time raised an eyebrow as she looked back and forth between us. "I'm sorry, Glade, do we know each other?"

Not really.

"I've met Zecora recently as well, and she told me a few things about you," I said. It wasn't a lie—she told me not to do exactly what I was now doing, talk to her before she's ready.

Thankfully, my infiltrator misdirection training paid off, and the young mare across from me relaxed.

"That's not exactly comforting. What did she tell you?"

"Nothing much, only that a... a monster... had pretended to be your friend only to hurt your father and foalnap you from the empire. You were still unconscious at the time."

"My friend," she said with a sorrowful expression. "He was. I think. The... monster... claimed to have been my friend the whole time. I didn't believe it at first, but Zecora said it protected me and left me with her to get better."

"I did—or rather, I am sure it did," I replied, then hurried on to cover my mistake. "If you want to talk about it, I've been told I was a good listener. I recently discovered that my mother is no longer with us, and I wasn't around when it happened. I can sympathize."

Empathy.

Concern.

Joy?

"I'm so sorry to hear that, Glade," she said, finally with a glimmer of the familiar, caring tone of voice I remembered.

If only she had said 'Carina' instead of 'Glade.'

"May I ask you something, Double Time," I prompted her. Without waiting for her response, I spoke the words that ultimately decided my own future. "You referred to the one who took you from the empire as a monster. I get that the situation was probably quite frightening, but do you think the monster was evil?"

She cocked her head to the side for a moment before opening her mouth. "Evil? I don't know. Maybe not? It looked scary and had holes all over its body. It pretended to be my father, even after it was the one who... who... well after it hurt him. It attacked me, foalnapped me, and took me away from my home."

Her emotions were all over the place, and it was turning my stomach in a very physical sense, but I remained silent.

"I will never forgive it for what it did. Never," Double Time said with uncharacteristic firmness but shocked me when she continued. "But, Zecora said she spoke with it before I woke up. She said it risked its life to protect me multiple times and willingly released me once it found out Zecora was a healer. She said it came here to see Fluttershy and that she helped it. If somepony like Fluttershy saw some good in a creature like that, maybe it could be better than I give it credit for. Thinking about it that way, no. I don't think it is evil."

Smiling and with a tear threatening to leave my eye, I stood up and walked toward the cottage door.

"Thank you, Miss Time," I said, opening the door. "If you will excuse me, I need to get back to helping Fluttershy feed our animal friends."

She looked confused at the sudden cessation of our conversation but nodded and followed me outside. "Of course, sorry to have distracted you. I am sure all those critters are looking forward to seeing you this morning."

I closed my eyes, lifted my head toward the sky, and let out a deep breath I hadn't noticed I took in. "Perhaps. It's just about time I moved on, though."

I stopped and looked over my shoulder at the young crystal mare to whom I was, even now, lying by omission.

"I don't think we will ever meet again, Miss Time. Take care of yourself and look after Warden. Tell him I am sorry and that I look forward to 'one day'."

"Do you know Warden? What are you sorry for," came her confused reply.

"He'll know what I mean. It's time for the two of you to go home... say goodbye to your father."

With that said, I walked away from the cottage, angling myself toward Ponyville and the train station found therein.

The last thing I ever heard Double Time say was one final shout, "weren't you going to feed the animals with Fluttershy?"

I didn't respond. Once I passed through the town and boarded the train, I deliberately chose an empty car. One more time, I let emerald flames wash over my body, stripping away the disguise known as Glade Whisper. In her place was a new pony... one I resolved to fully become. A new mare. A new life.

The conductor called for final boarding, and in short order, the mobile metal box that scared me so badly just a few weeks ago was taking me away from everything I knew and regretted toward the promise of an unknown future.

"This journey will be uninterrupted to our final destination," came his voice from the adjoining car. "Next stop, Las Pegasus!"

My name was Carina, and I was a monster. But maybe, in another life, I don't have to be.

This was my story, a thousand years in the making.

Author's Note

And so ends the story of Carina, Double Time, and Warden.

It has been a rough few years for my writing, and I apologize for any decline in quality. In the early chapters, I had multiple people proofreading them. I reread the whole thing each time I sat down to write again, just to make sure of consistency, but, eventually, my schedule became so chaotic that I just couldn't do that anymore, especially once the story crossed the 20,000-word mark.

Thank you all for being patient and for enjoying my story. I admit the last few chapters feel a bit more rushed to me than I would have liked, but as I stared at the screen I just couldn't find any additional words to add. I said what I needed to and anything else felt like bloat for the sake of word salad.

That said, any editors out there who may disagree and want to help pace the story a bit better, please contact me. I would love to get this story to the quality level expected of printed media. I always wanted to see a small run of physical books.

Anyway, this is the end of Crystal's & Chitin. I have more content for Carina's next steps in modern Equestria, but I am unsure what, if anything, I will do with it. Right now, there are a few thousand words already typed out introducing the next story, but I don't want to promise a whole next fic only to let it slow down like this one did, or worse, remain 'incomplete' and forgotten.

Maybe an epilogue? Let me know what you'd like to see. I will start the next story if there is interest and understanding that my chapter release speed is horrible.

01. | There Are Things I Have Done

Two years.

Two years can be a lifetime during monumental events. Your whole world can change—in some cases literally—in the blink of an eye. Your goals, your values, your very sense of self. Everything can be taken away, replaced with something else, something you have no control over but ultimately something you have to make for yourself… and that is genuinely horrifying.

My name is Carina. I was one of Queen Serosa’s hoof-picked elite infiltrators... but as far as I can tell, I am now the only survivor of my hive. More recently, I have come to believe that I may also be the only ‘unreformed’ changeling left in Equestria.

This is my story, and it’s a thousand years in the making...

The bitterly cold wind stabbed at me, seeming to pierce my glossy chitin as I stood at the crest of a snow-covered rise. Below lay the Crystal Empire.

It’s about time, I thought to myself as I looked down upon my destination. It had taken me nearly two months to arrive by hoof, which was significantly longer than it should have. An eternal blizzard was raging across the lands between my hive and where I found myself at that moment, making flight all but impossible, but at least my goal was finally in sight.

Removing the weatherbeaten old saddlebag containing the few essential items I possessed, I crouched down to build a short windbreak out of packed snow. It was a process that had become so routine during my journey north that I was able to multitask, reviewing everything I knew about this fourth tribe and the frozen north they called home while going through the motions.

The most obvious physical feature was the towering crystal spire that straddled the central square of the oddly star-shaped city. It was certainly an imposing structure, but not much more so than one of our hive’s guard spires.

The Crystal Heart, my mission’s primary objective, was likely housed within. It was described to me as a single shard of clear crystal, approximately the size of an average pony’s torso. It functioned similarly to a massive love crystal—which is to say, as a battery capable of storing love energy to be consumed for major magical expenditures.

I had six such crystals with me, two of which were already dull and loveless, having been consumed on the long journey here. Those that made the trip with me were each the size of a quartered apple.

Needless to say, I could understand my queen’s desire to claim a love crystal many dozens of times larger than the ones I was entrusted with for the mission. The fact that every pony in this country routinely and willingly infused it with pure love meant that it was almost undoubtedly fully-charged as well. Such a treasure could sustain the entire hive for months, maybe even years!

Focus, I berated myself, no self-respecting infiltrator would be distracted by a fantasy. You are here to do a job. The queen demands you secure an object? You secure it. What it does is not your concern.

I put the Heart out of my mind and moved on to reviewing more critical matters.

The city streets were laid out in a wheel spoke pattern, all leading either toward the central square or perpendicular to it, connecting two spokes together. Only along these secondary streets will you find lesser side roads with residential housing on them. The main thoroughfares were congested with businesses and government buildings, and the closer to the center you traveled, the more important or expensive things became.

Looking down on the city once more, everything I was told about the place seemed to line up with what I saw.

No. Correction: almost everything.

Scattered throughout the city rose large, jagged black crystals that contrasted sharply against the blue and white crystalline architecture.

I personally found them more to my liking than the native color palette. Still, those obsidian monoliths weren’t mentioned in my briefing, and that made me more than a little nervous.

Infiltrators are trained to treat anything out of the ordinary as dangerous. Even something as seemingly mundane as a geological outcropping may have a cultural meaning that locals would understand. Reacting to them in the wrong way could arouse suspicion and jeopardize the mission.

Shivering and reluctant, I picked up my saddlebag and left the protective windbreak behind as I made my way down the slope. The snow made the descent challenging as it hid stones and crystal formations from my sight, which reached out to welcome my hooves most inconveniently. The swirling snow blowing up into my face seemed to delight in watching me stumble. The chill breeze seemed to giggle, and more than once, I watched the world invert itself as I acquainted myself with the ground.

My shoulder ached by the time I was standing at the bottom. Otherwise, the dark carapace covering my body did its job in protecting the critical bits. My pride refused to allow me to look back at the trail I had blazed, knowing the number of body-shaped indentations in the snow was a number greater than zero.

I was now close enough to the city to be noticed, so it was time to make a few decisions.

My new disguise would be named ‘Headway.’ I decided on a slate grey coat color with a cobalt blue mane and tail. I’ve always felt mane maintenance was a bother, so I opted for a relatively simple design that I could more or less ignore without much fuss. My new eyes were the color of emeralds.

Unfortunately, crystal ponies were almost entirely made up of the earth pony variety, so that made the decision between wings or a horn easy enough for me. Since either one would stand out, I was effectively forced to choose neither.

The only thing remaining was to select a cutiemark. Personally, I’d never really seen the appeal of a tattoo that dictated your life. Still, they hold a certain amount of significance for ponies, so some degree of thought had to be put into it. I kept coming back to the idea of a circle, split between two colors, mixing truth and fiction together in an everflowing duality, so that is what I settled on. One half of the loop I made green, to symbolize one of the most common pony coat colors up here, and the other half was a dark grey, the color of changeling chitin.

I was no rookie, I was selected for this mission. I knew my disguise would absolutely hold up to scrutiny until I remembered the one detail that would add difficulty to this particular infiltration.

Usually, the inhabitants of the empire were a bit more subdued than our southern prey. The except to this was whenever the power of the Heart was utilized, everypony in the city would suddenly become crystalline and slightly transparent. I wasn’t sure if that would include my disguise or not.

It wouldn’t do to blow my cover by being the only opaque pony in town, but how was I going to make immediate modifications to myself without ponies noticing? The process was a little flamboyant, after all.
My mind was still abuzz as I approached the road leading into the city. A few crystal formations were lining the street at various intervals, so I selected one of them to hide behind.

I waited there for what seemed like hours, hoping to catch somepony entering or leaving town. It was my intention to interrogate someone about the black crystals, but none ever crossed my path.

Another red flag, I thought to myself.

A city of this size, even one as isolated as the empire—what a misnomer that is, now that I think about it—should have ponies coming and going all day long. Traders, farmers, even foals playing in the fields… but nopony ever left.

I realized that I would have to do my own reconnaissance.

Deciding that a domesticated house cat would be the least conspicuous disguise, I called upon my inner reserve of magic and bathed in the comforting warmth of emerald flames.

All too soon, it did its job, melting away my flawless body and molding it into that of a fluffy grey alley cat.

Assuming the form of non-carapaced creatures takes most changelings a while to become comfortable with. Some never get used to having an internal bone structure or soft, weak skin covered in hair. It certainly took me longer than a few others in my clutch, but up here in the cold, I could appreciate the advantages of large quantities of fur and layers of fat.

I left my saddlebag at the base of the crystal formation and deliberately sauntered into town like I owned the place.

Once I had entered the city limits, I knew it immediately. The snow was suddenly left behind, as though neatly shoveled along an intangible line surrounding civilization. The temperature rose dramatically with each step, and by the time I was surrounded by buildings, the thickness of my fur seemed almost oppressive.

As I padded my way toward one of the black formations, I selected a privacy wall and leaped to the top of it, using my momentum to transition into a sitting position as I landed in one fluid motion.

I sat there, nearly motionless, flipping the tip of my tail in apparent boredom as I waited for somepony to approach. I needed to see how the locals responded to these unusual black stalagmites.

Unfortunately, hoof traffic was rather sparse. It was almost half an hour before the first pony walked past.

I am not sure how long it will take me to forget the moment I first encountered what I would later refer to as the affected. Perhaps I never will.

The first was a mare. She was athletic, sporty even, and of average height. Her coat was perhaps a shade or two lighter than my own. She walked at an unusually brisk pace and did not move her head, even as she passed my impromptu observation post. I would have said she seemed like a typical pony if not for the full face-covering helmet she wore. Strange enough on its own, but my blood ran cold when I saw a familiar shade of green glowing from under the eye slits. I stared daggers into the pony as she continued on her way, utterly oblivious to her surroundings.

That looked like changeling magic, was my first thought. How? This is my mission. How could someling else have beaten me here? Was there a second hive somewhere that my queen didn’t know about?

She projected no outward emotions, and I had to concentrate reasonably hard to sniff out any emotion at all.

Fear.

That was all she felt, and it was buried so deeply that I almost couldn’t find it. She didn’t think about anything that would trigger an emotional response. She didn’t daydream. She didn’t worry about bills, meal plans, friends. She didn’t feel anything except fear.

Shock. Sadness. Anger. Robbed of the chance to please my queen. A myriad of emotions surged through me, seeming to make up for the mare’s lack. I raged internally and felt my fur bristle and stand on end. My voice came out as a low, growling hiss.

I probably would have mauled a small animal right then had two more ponies not wandered by. I quickly silenced myself as I examined the newcomers.

Upon examination, confusion replaced the rage within me. These two did not wear the same sort of helmet the first pony did, yet their eyes were likewise glowing a soft green.

I reached out with my senses and came back with the same results; fear rooted deep, and nothing else.

These two aren’t changelings, and they aren’t under a queen’s hypnosis, I mused to myself. I need to figure this out. There might not be a rival hive at work here, but clearly, something other than me is in play.

I hopped down off the wall and backtracked toward the crystal formation. Once out of sight, another flash of green flame covered my form. Again I delighted in the feeling of my body liquefying and flowing into a new shape held within my mind. It was intoxicating but far too brief.

When I was done, ‘Headway’ took physical form for the first time. I quickly retrieved my belongings, rolled my shoulders to settle the bag into a more comfortable position, and cautiously approached the city.

I was glad of my earlier expedition into town. Where I would have initially chosen to walk down the street in a comfortable, confident manner, I instead opted for stealth and patience.

The streets were virtually abandoned, but there were enough locals patrolling—for that seemed to be their only purpose—to force me down a side street or into a perfectly intact, but otherwise wide-open and abandoned, storefront to hide as they passed me by.

Cover to cover. Shadow to shadow. I thought I was doing quite well for myself until I rounded a corner and came heart-stoppingly close to discovery.

Two ponies wearing city guard armor, wielding spears, and donning the now-familiar helmets were traveling parallel to me along an adjacent street when they suddenly turned onto the main road just as I was about to do the same.

My world tumbled. An immense weight crashed into my side while a hoof flew over my muzzle, clamping it shut. I looked down at the sky as the ground rushed up to knock the air out of my lungs. Piercing blue eyes made contact with mine, inches away, though only long enough to ensure I wasn’t going to scream. They retreated as the hoof came away from my mouth, leaving me to lay on my side, gasping for breath with an incredible anger building within.

“You’ll be fine, just try not to make a sound,” whispered the pale blue stallion who’d just tackled me.

I watched as he spun in place, readying the same sort of spear I’d seen the city guards carrying as he crouched low into a recognizable combat-ready stance, watching the main street from which we’d just come. It was evident that he’d been formally trained. Not that it mattered to me at that moment.

The nerve of this pony, I thought, to give me orders… to assault me in the streets! Why would he show me his back? I will end him now, the old fool.

I was just about to energize my horn, intending to send a blast of flaming death into the back of his skull, when I realized the power wasn’t coming forth.

Oh, right. No horn. It doesn’t matter! I can just drop my disguise and blast him in the name of my queen.

As I was formulating a brilliant plan of revenge, I watched the tension in his body relax. He stood up straight and turned to face me, resting his spear against one shoulder as he looked down.

Suddenly realizing I was still lying in the street, I scrambled to my hooves and focused on the pony before me. I will admit, it was a relief to feel complex emotions coming off one of the locals.

Relief. Joy. Curiosity. Guilt.

His reaction intrigued me, so I shelved my plans for his imminent demise and returned his scrutiny. Since he seemed content to stand there sizing me up, I took the opportunity to do the same.

Crystal Pony. Older but clearly in combat-ready shape. Grizzled, short-cropped mane and tail. Crows feet surrounding hard, alert eyes. Government-issued weapon. Likely a former soldier. No noticeable injuries or weaknesses to exploit.

After a few brief moments, the stallion broke the silence between us and introduced himself.

“Sorry about that, son. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt, but I was watching you make your way down the street and knew you wouldn’t be able to see those guards in time to react,” he said. “I’m Warden, Captain of the Roy-” he choked on his words, and I was slammed by a wave of remorse. The emotion was quickly checked, proving he was in control of himself, but the intensity of it was unexpected.

It nearly made me nauseous.

“Well, just Warden now,” he amended as he lifted his head and resumed eye contact.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” I replied, somehow recognizing the correct response to the social situation I had been presented with, even though I hadn’t yet realized just how significant his choice of words was.

“My name’s Headway,” I resumed. “I’ve been away for a while and came home to this. What’s going on?”

“You certainly have been away a while if this is new to you,” he replied. “Come with me, we’ll go somewhere safer, and I will fill you in on current events. Keep your head up, eyes forward, and match my pace exactly. If you see anypony deliberately turn their face toward you, try to remain as expressionless as you can. And most importantly, unless somepony changes course suddenly or readies their weapon, don’t react to them.”

Well, if nothing else, Warden seems to understand the modus operandi around here, I silently acknowledged. Half the drones who train to become infiltrators never manage to accurately assess enemy doctrine.

The difference in our stamina levels became evident as he led me through the heart of the city. My legs burned like I’d run a marathon at a gallop, and it wasn’t because my disguise was out of shape. I’d learned that lesson years ago. It was merely a matter of proportions—Warden was taller than I was.

As ponies we passed entered my vision, I’d started to piece together something somewhat odd about them.

Everypony traveled at precisely the same pace, regardless of age, build, or gender. Taller stallions strode forward at a casual canter while foals and smaller mares were forced into a perpetual trot. It was almost as if they were all clockwork toys whose keys were wound to the same tension and released together.

It figures I would run into absurdities on this mission, I lamented. Hopefully, Warden provides a suitable explanation for all this, whenever we get to wherever we’re going.

I tried to eliminate possibilities as we traveled, but convincing a city full of power-walking zombies that you too were a power-walking zombie takes more concentration than it sounds.

This would be a lot easier without Warden around. Giving myself a pair of glowing eyes would make me almost totally invisible to these guys.

I stored that revelation in the back of my mind for later use.

So these ponies have no emotional responses. They haven’t been tricked into believing their actions are reasonable, they are being used like mindless dolls, I theorized. That rules out pony magic. Some deranged unicorn might be able to enslave one or two of these weak-minded buffets, but a whole city? Doubtful.

Additionally, I continued my inner monologue, our magic may be green, but our eyes are blue. That rules out changeling drone replacements and very likely royal hypnosis. The queen or one of our princesses might be able to pull this off, had they already taken control of the Crystal Heart, but why would they send me here to retrieve it if they were planning to do so personally?

Lost as I was in my thoughts, I barely noticed when Warden suddenly stopped. We had arrived at a small schoolhouse nestled within a small cul-de-sac neighborhood off one of the side streets.

One quick scan of the area was all it took for me to understand why this was his refuge of choice. It was precisely the sort of place I’d have looked for in a hideout.

The school stood within a relatively sizeable grassy square, which made up the center of the little community. A dozen homes surrounded it in a horseshoe pattern with the only point of entry being the road we came in from.

The schoolhouse was a stout building with high-set frosted windows, designed to allow plenty of light in but to discourage foals from distracting themselves from their studies.

Smart. With no pegasi in the empire, what was meant to defeat foalish curiosity will now keep any wayward zombies from looking in.

There was only one main entrance that faced the majority of the small square of open terrain that obviously doubled as the school’s playground. It was a solid double door that locked into the floor and upper door frame.

I see he added a second layer of defense as well, I thought to myself as he opened the door and held it for me. These brackets have been mounted to the frame recently, no doubt so he could set a bar across the entrance at night or during an attack.

I noticed a smaller, secondary door on the side of the building, which seemed to be meant for the teacher’s use. I was actually impressed when I realized it was only made to look like it was sealed shut. After a moment of quick study, I saw that the exterior knob had been removed, and the planks of wood that covered the entrance were nailed to the door, but not the surrounding frame.

It’s a rather ingenious emergency exit. I may have underestimated this pony, Warden is by no means a common soldier.

As we stepped inside, I was immediately alerted to the presence of a second pony nearby. An audible gasp and the wave of panic that assaulted my senses put me on guard. I crouched, staring into the open classroom, awaiting my opponent.

“It’s okay,” he called softly into the building. “It’s just me, Miss Time. Oh, well, I’ve also brought a guest,” He spoke slowly and softly, as though consoling a filly.

I relaxed my stance once I felt the panic fade, to be replaced by relief and curiosity.

“Warden, is something wrong? Why are you back so early?” a young mare’s uncertain voice called out.

I began to map out the room as I scanned for the source of his conversation partner’s voice. Large, open design. All the desks and chairs had been tipped over and moved against the walls, then stacked up in some areas to provide cover during a battle, or more likely, hiding places for non-combatants.

“Nothing is wrong, dearheart, nothing at all. As I said, we simply have a guest,” he paused as he turned toward me. “This is Headway. I saved him on Mane Street. I had to cut the scavenging run a little short, but we should be fine for tonight. Come introduce yourself.”

My ears folded back, and my flesh crawled at the sound of crystal scraping against crystal. I watched with a grimace on my face as one of the overturned desks slid noisily away from the wall revealing a young mare as she stepped out into view.

“Headway, this is Double Time. She’s the daughter of one of my soldiers,” he said by way of introduction. “Her parents are… among the affected, so I have been looking after her.”

You didn’t have to be a changeling to know there was more to the story that he wasn’t sharing with everyone in the class. As before, a fresh wave of guilt and sorrow flowed out of him in a sickening torrent before he slammed the floodgates shut again.

“It’s the least I could do for Stalwart and Opal,” he finished, lapsing into a brief silence.

I took that opportunity to examine Double Time. Perhaps it was an infiltrator habit, but I always filled downtime with observation. You never know when you may require a new disguise, be forced to use your surroundings for a plan, or even make a hasty escape.

Double Time was young. She had her cutie mark—a pair of linked horseshoes—but it was evident that she was not yet full-grown. She had that gangly appearance adolescent ponies get while transitioning from filly to mare, which always seems to embarrass them. Her eyes, mane, and tail were all a striking shade of blue that reminded me of ice cubes while her coat was a flat pale green covered in patches of dirt.

Under different circumstances, I may have simply assumed she was an unusually active youth who liked getting dirty. Perhaps she played hoofball or was a budding archeologist. Given the situation in this city, however, it was far more likely that their stronghold simply lacked an adequate bathroom to wash up in, giving me some indication as to exactly how long they’d been in hiding.

I bowed my head, maintaining eye contact with her. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Time,” I greeted her, deliberately imitating the mode of address that Warden used for her. “I hope I didn’t startle you. Warden invited me inside but neglected to mention that he shared the space with one of the empire’s true beauties,” I followed up.

Blatant flattery often lowers a pony’s emotional defenses, making it easier to feed upon them.

Surprise. Embarrassment. Curiosity.

I could feel her wariness toward meeting a stranger in her home wane and be replaced by cautious optimism that my entering her life might be a good thing.

I could use that.

I had to suppress my own satisfaction to keep it from showing on my face. With how few emotionally-active ponies there seemed to be left in town, it was a significant windfall for me to locate what may be the only female teenager left.

At that age, it was incredibly easy to convince a pony that they loved you. And once that thought was planted, young mares would pour their love out at you as if they were a watering can. It took so little effort. They want to fall in love once they think they know what it is.

What kind of changeling would I be if I didn’t encourage and capitalize on such a gift?

“Um, he- hello, H- Headway,” she stammered, bashfully breaking eye contact and looking at the ground. “It’s nice to meet you. A- Are you going to be staying with us?” she asked as she lifted her head, shifting her gaze between Warden and me.

I sampled her pure emotions and almost sighed in contentment. She was nervous, but under that, I tasted a hint of hope and joy.

I have always been slightly more adept than the average drone at deciphering nuanced emotions. Love was child’s play, literally, as every nymph learns to feed on it from the moment they hatch. Hate, similarly, was also easy to identify as it left you with a foul aftertaste. These were the two outliers and the most potent, most natural emotions to detect as they were usually directed outward. The smaller feelings often remained internal, with only a bit leaking out for an empath—such as a changeling—to identify.

Teenagers, on the other hoof, wore their hearts on their sleeves, and that was entirely okay by me. She projected everything she felt with no reservations whatsoever. It often took ponies well into their adult years to learn a few of life’s bitter truths and close themselves off from the world.

Sure, Warden could have sustained me with camaraderie and perhaps a bit of sympathy if I devised a clever enough sob story to feed him about why I had been away for so long, but now I could keep my account simple. So long as I made myself useful to them, that adorable little green-furred buffet over there would keep me fed indefinitely.
Speaking of stories…

“I am not sure yet,” I answered her before turning my attention toward Warden. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on. That’s why we came back here, I think.”

Warden nodded as he stepped past me, selecting a seemingly random point on the floor to call his own as he sat down. The spear, I noted, never left his side, even while resting within the shelter of his makeshift fortress. He propped it against his shoulder and seemed to lean into it. I could tell it was a position he not only employed often but had come to consider comfortable.

“Yes, I promised to fill you in once we arrived. How much of our story do you already know? I am guessing you haven’t been home in years.”

I simply nodded my head at his statement, indicating that I knew nothing. Our scouts rarely entered pony settlements. Their job was to locate potential feeding grounds, make a note of any apparent defenses or influential residents, and provide a rough headcount.

In this case, our queen already knew about the existence of the Crystal Empire. It was no secret that the fourth tribe stood aloof from their cousins because of the artifact that shielded their city from the wendigos. As the earth, unicorn and pegasus nations cowered together in a cave, the crystal ponies lounged about in temperate comfort within the protective aura of the Crystal Heart, going about their daily lives… blissfully oblivious to their cousins’ suffering to the south.

That’s why I was sent here, after all. Time was of the essence, so the decision had been made to bypass the usual scouting phase of this mission. My queen was exceptionally wise to do so, as it turned out... I was specially trained to ration my love reserves, and even I consumed two full crystals to get here. Spending the resources on a scout would be wasteful this far from home when I was more than capable of handling things on my own.

Unlike the other tribes, these ponies were still full to the brim with love to take… at least they were before someling beat me to it.

“It’s been a little over a year since Sombra took over. He lived here and seemed like a typical colt growing up, but one day, he wandered back into town from the northern snowfields where he’d often play and marched on the castle. Nopony took him seriously until he turned into a cloud of black smoke and flew directly toward Princess Amore’s balcony.

“He took control of every guard who rushed to the defense of the castle; brave, true friends and loyal to the princess. I trained each and every one of them personally,” he commented bitterly before scoffing and continuing his story.

“He decided to use them against me. Miss Time’s father, Stalwart, and I were the last two free-thinking guards in the throne room. He sent our friends in waves against us, and it broke my heart every time a familiar face forced me to answer the question: ‘him or us’... I don’t know how many of my friends I cut down to protect the princess.”

He paused momentarily as he looked over at Double Time. When he resumed, he lowered his voice as if not wanting to share what came next with her.

“I saw Opal laying among the fallen at one point. I don’t know which of us the beast forced to face off against her, but I hope it was me. I couldn’t stand the thought of Stalwart having to strike down his own wife...”

He paused again to collect his thoughts before pressing on, returning his voice to that of normal conversation.

“In the end, he claimed Stalwart’s mind as well and turned him against me. I watched in horror as Sombra turned Princess Amore into a crystal statue, then shattered her right there in front of me. I couldn’t do anything to stop him as Miss Time’s father backed me into a corner. He laughed at my failure, not even bothering to take control of my mind before he started redecorating the throne room in those horrid black crystals of his.”

Double Time walked up to him as he spoke and wiggled her way under his free hoof, comforting him with a quick nuzzle and just being close to him. I caught a brief glimpse of his gratitude as it was directed toward her, and couldn’t stop myself from siphoning off some of the love she sent in return. It’s not like he really needed it anyway.

“And so, bloodied and bruised, armor in tatters, I limped out of the castle unopposed. For a while, there were pockets of resistance, and I did what I could to organize them, but all it took was a single moment of eye contact with Sombra to claim somepony as his own.”

Well, that at least is useful information. Eye contact is required for him to establish mind control, much like a cockatrice’s petrification. At least now I knew how to defend myself should I encounter him.

“Entire neighborhoods fell in a single afternoon,” Warden had continued, “Within a month, the only pony I was able to keep safe was Miss Time here, and only because I don’t think he knows about her yet. I think the maniac has deliberately left me alone to witness my failure every time I open my eyes. It’s almost like he feeds on my sorrow. I know. Silly, right?”

And there it was; the difference between us.

He delights in fear and misery, I thought to myself, putting a few pieces of the puzzle together. Our methods are diametrically opposed and cannot coexist. He revels in negativity, whereas I have to feed on positive emotions.

Thankfully, changelings are nothing if not adaptable. He’s stolen a march on me, which puts me at a disadvantage, but at least I have these two mobile meals at my disposal. Yesterday’s prey can be tomorrow’s allies of convenience. I can still complete my mission, even if it means helping them achieve theirs.

“I understand how things stand now,” I said, addressing my inner thoughts rather than answering Warden’s rhetorical question. “The tyrant has to be stopped. These ponies need to be set free—” —if I am going to feed on them, I finished the sentence in my head.

“That’s what I like to hear. Okay then, let’s get started.”

Author's Note

Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to read the first chapter of my first story. I really appreciate your interest and look forward to any feedback you may have for me.

As my very first story, you will almost certainly find a few errors here or there. Perhaps an inconsistency or a side plot down the line which I may have forgotten to follow up on. Please don't be shy. Let me know what you like and what you didn't so I can improve both my writing in general and this story specifically.

update:
This chapter was originally uploaded on the 10th of June, 2019.
An editing pass was made more recently, on the 2nd of March, 2020.

Additional editing passes of the chapters which follow this one will be made and similarly documented in the author's notes as they are completed.

07. | There's a Gift That You Sent

Author's Note

Howdy.

I am sorry this chapter took so very long to be published. I wish I could say there was a good reason for it, but there really isn't. I lost my comfortable space for writing shortly after dealing with a very stressful situation late last summer and simply never felt like resuming.

I'd like to say that has been resolved, but if we are being honest with ourselves, it hasn't been. These 4000 words make up the shortest chapter in the story yet and took me far longer than any other chapter has so far.

I can't promise regular chapters, but I really do want to get this story out there to you, so I can promise it won't be canceled. I hope you can accept that as fair trade?

Now, toward the end of this chapter, many of you will realize exactly what is going on. A dialogue will be presented that sounds familiar. It is not my intention to plagiarize another writer, so I am providing credit here:

Silly Filly Studios wrote the original transcript of the conversation Carina and Double Time overhear. You can watch the scene play out in their video The Fall of the Crystal Empire. Just search YouTube if you are one of the few in the fandom who hasn't already seen it.

This will be the only time in my story where I use somebody else's horse words, but I felt it fit perfectly as a background event while our story happens elsewhere but near enough to witness some of the action.

It gives you, the reader, knowledge of what is happening that our narrator, Carina, doesn't know. Ya know?

update:
Originally posted on the 10th of February, 2020.
An editing pass was made on the 6th of March, 2020.

07. | There's a Gift That You Sent

“Come on, we have to leave.”

She ignored me, still sniffling and hugging her father on the floor of the no-longer-secure refuge.

“Double Time, let’s go. Sombra saw us—saw the classroom. It won’t be long before every school in the empire is surrounded by brainwashed soldiers.”

Again, she gave no indication of hearing me. Her emotions were a chaotic whirlwind of anguish, fear, loss, and—somewhat bizarrely—acceptance.

“Miss Time…” I began for the third time as I approached her. The clack of my chitinous hooves as I stepped toward her was what finally broke her out of her grief—long enough to lift the dangerous end of Stalwart’s broken spear and awkwardly thrust it out toward me.

“Get away from us!” she screamed through wracking sobs. The spear wasn’t truly threatening in her hooves, not with the way it was trembling, but the fact that she was willing to wield it against me spoke volumes about her current state of mind. “What did you do to Headway?”

She’s in shock. It hasn’t dawned on her yet what just happened.

“Miss Time,” I said, raising a hoof and halting my advance. “I am Headway. It’s a long story, one we don’t have the time for right now. Just come with—”

“No!” she yelled, once again brandishing the ruined weapon in a way that I am sure she thought looked menacing, all the while trying to maintain some semblance of control.

Of course, there was little chance of that succeeding, considering her emotions may as well have been an open book to me.

“You’re not Headway. You’re not even a stallion! You’re obviously a mare of… some sorta buggy pony. You’re a… a... I don’t know what you are, but that’s my point!”

Once again, the thought flashed through my mind: there’s no going back from here.

“The word you are looking for is ‘changeling.’ My real name is Carina, and yes, I am actually a mare. The ‘Headway’ you knew doesn’t exist. I made him up when I entered the empire because I thought I needed to blend in. I can explain all that later, but for now, we have to hurry.”

She hesitated, tears welling up in her eyes again, forcing her to blink them away. “I don’t believe you. Headway would never have…”

A noise from outside caught both our attention. The sound of many armored hooves striking the street outside meant that we had run out of time even sooner than I had thought we would.

“Ugh, there is no Headway!” I said, exasperated, as I quickly battered her ineffective spear aside, threw a hoof around her, and called up the magic of my fire portal, coating us in green flames as we quickly sank into the ground.

A moment later, we stepped out of the ring of fire as it evaporated like mist around our hooves. I wasn’t overly picky about our destination, other than ‘the outskirts of town,’ so we found ourselves just inside the perimeter of the Crystal Heart’s aura. There were no buildings within a few hundred hooves of us, nor was there any snow, but it was still noticeably colder this close to the unfiltered frozen north than it was in town.

I took a moment to get my bearings. The fields of snow provided no clues, as the drifts shifted regularly depending on the wind, and the roads leading off in various directions had long ago been swallowed by the storm, leaving only the occasional crystal formation to mark the route.

In those few heartbeats of confusion—during which I made several mental adjustments to ‘plan b,’ which until that moment had been only a vague idea in the back of my head—I had taken my eyes off the girl.

When it dawned on me that no new insults, threats, or wracking sobs could be heard behind me, I turned around to find no sign of her.

She obviously didn’t run into the snowy fields, as there were no tracks, so it wasn’t hard to figure out what her intentions were. She had run back into the city, likely to return to the schoolhouse and her father.

I growled a bit as I raised my front hoof to pursue her, pausing before taking that first step as a chill ran through me.

A shadow passed over me, too quickly to realize what I had just seen, as something raced toward the palace overhead.

A shadow accompanied by fierce, unwavering emotions...

Sadness.

Anger.

Determination.

Compassion.

Hope.

In hindsight, looking back at the arrival of the Royal Sisters, it still surprises me just how many world-altering events can take place in such a short amount of time.

Their existence made my life extremely difficult for quite a while, and I am not sure if I will ever forgive them for the role they played in the loss of my hive.

The weeks that followed were among the hardest that I have ever had to face—before or since.

That was the largest pegasi I have ever seen, was the first thing that crossed my mind, followed by, If Warden has returned with the southern ponies, I have to catch Double Time before everything is lost.

I had barely come up with a plan to find Miss Time when the air around me vibrated with the force of a mighty voice.

“SHOW YOURSELF, COWARD,” it boomed so loudly that the nearby formations echoed the pony’s declaration of war in crystalline song for several seconds.

Mother of the Queen, what was that!?

The demand was answered by a deep rumble emanating from the suddenly darkening sky overhead, followed by Sombra’s voice. His words were soft as though he were right next to me, but it was evident that they were magically projected, emanating from the swirling black clouds above with no one discernable source. He wanted all of the city’s invaders to hear him.

“So much hatred! You speak of cowardice—have you forgotten whose domain you are in?”

“I CARE NOT WHAT DARK PACTS YOU’VE MADE. YOU WILL FAIL.”

“I can taste your wrath, and it is delicious,” came the tyrant’s mocking reply from the air around me.

“SILENCE, YOU CUR!”

The irony of the silence that followed was not lost on me. I took that opportunity to collect my thoughts and put a new plan into motion.

Obviously, Warden brought some powerful unicorn in addition to the pegasi I saw. If he was able to gather aid from two of the three tribes, there very well could be an army of them marching north, assuming that they weren’t here already.

The window of opportunity had closed on me.

I had failed in my mission to acquire the Heart. With free-willed combat-trained magic users swarming the castle, I knew I wouldn’t be given another chance.

I tried to comfort myself with the reasoned assumption that if the tribes were sending help to the empire, they must have ended the Wendigo threat to the south, and the hive could begin gathering food again.

The best I could hope for now was to return to the hive empty-hoofed with perhaps a consolation prize in tow.

Wrapping myself in flames, I sank into the ground. Once again, I stepped out of the void between worlds and into the familiar schoolhouse. I was gambling on the fact that Sombra was distracted and was pleased to find the only occupant of the classroom was the unmoving form of Stalwart.

I lifted him up in my magic, studying his features carefully. I would have to get this right on the first try with precious little time to note all the little nuances. Typically, a glance is enough to make an acceptable disguise, but my audience would be looking far closer than usual.

With a flash of green flame—which, for once, I didn’t even enjoy—I put on my newest disguise.

After a quick once-over, I floated Miss Time’s father into the corner behind my bedding and covered him in blankets. It wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, but I didn’t plan to stick around long enough for anypony to start nosing around the place.

I picked up the pointy end of his broken spear, walked out the front door, and was met with a gasp.

“Daddy?”

I placed my free front hoof over my throat, feigning the injury he sustained in our skirmish and nodded, soaking in the massive amount of love pouring out of Double Time.

She threw herself around my neck in a familiar way, sobbing and squeezing like she had no intention of ever letting go of the ghost I was pretending to be.

It made me feel ill for some reason, but that didn’t stop me from storing as much of it as I could for what I was sure would be coming our way shortly.

“Okay, okay,” I whispered in a deliberately hoarse voice. “We need to go somewhere safe for now. The streets are about to be chaos.”

Sniffling, she disengaged and wiped her eyes.

“All right. Where are we going?”

The cave was serviceable. It was far enough away from the city itself while managing to remain just within the protective dome of light and love that kept the Crystal Empire warmer than the surrounding arctic landscape.

It was also reasonably secluded. The entrance wasn’t visible from the city, having a rather sizeable boulder-strewn outcropping jutting out in a crescent-shaped arc. The resulting cavern entrance rested almost parallel with the face of the mountain itself.

I would have called it a very peaceful, quiet location had it not been for the whimpering young mare curled up by the admittedly diminutive campfire that I managed to get started.

“Daddy?” came her weak voice, as though she were afraid to say what was on her mind. “I’m so glad you were able to break free of King Sombra. When you attacked Headway I…, I didn’t know what to do.”

I stared at her face for a moment before closing my eyes and nodding my head. It was a rehearsed movement, intended to buy myself time to think while giving her the impression that I was at a loss for words—one of the earliest and simplest misdirects taught to young infiltrators.

If the southern tribes manage to defeat Sombra, there’s no way I am going to convince her that we need to flee the city, which means I have to get us moving before that happens. Depending on how long the battle lasts, I may not have very much time at all to convince her to come willingly.

Would it be better to continue wearing her father’s face, retake the form of Headway or drop my disguise entirely?

She’s already seen me, so the damage has been done. No matter what, I can’t let her go now. The secret of the hive must be maintained, even if it means…

The final option presented itself to me in stark contrast to the alternatives I’d been considering.

Sure, I could convince her that Stalwart was taking her somewhere safe, but I didn’t know enough about the old soldier’s personal life with his daughter to pull off that disguise for much longer. Sooner or later, the supposed throat injury would have to heal, and I’d have no further excuse to remain silent.

Becoming Headway presented a different set of issues. She saw me drop that disguise, and how would I be able to explain the sudden disappearance of her father? She’d spend hours, if not days, searching the entire mountain for him. That was time I simply didn’t have to spare, and that was assuming she’d accept Headway back into her life at all.

Dropping my disguise seemed like the most logical approach. It would allow me to reserve the last of my love supply without spending some of it on maintaining the fictional body. It was possible, if doubtful, that after calming down a bit, she might be reasonable enough to accept my natural form and that I really was Headway the whole time.

Failing all of that, in my natural form, I could easily cocoon her. It would undoubtedly make feeding off her on the trip home much more accessible, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy the thought of carrying a cocooned pony half-way across the continent by myself…

“Daddy?”

It’s now or never.

I stood up and made my way over to the cave entrance. Once assured that I controlled her only route of escape, I turned back toward her and gave her what I hoped was a reasonable recreation of her father’s best smile. This would be the last memory of the old stallion she’d ever have.

“I’m sorry, Miss Time, but I am not your father,” I said sadly as I let the green flames of disguise magic wash away the illusion of Crystal Guard Captain Stalwart.

Double Time gasped as her eyes widened in disbelief and horror. “You! What did you do to my daddy? Where is he, and where’s Headway?”

She was visibly distraught, but as she had made no move to run from me or to attack, I allowed myself to sit, hoping it would put her at ease for the time being.

“I told you once before, I am Headway. Well, more so than anypony else could be. I’m sorry to say he doesn’t actually exist. I completely made him up the day I came to the empire. As for your father, I…, you watched me defeat him back in the schoolhouse. I didn’t mean to ki—I am sorry about how that ended up. He was being controlled by King Sombra, but he still didn’t give me any choice in the matter. I had to… do it.”

Why am I hesitating and sugarcoating my words? She is just a pony, only an ambulatory love buffet. I don’t owe her an explanation… do I? Ponies don’t apologize to the hay and flowers they grow, do they? Oh… By the queen, I bet they do… ugh.

“Look,” I resumed, “I’ve been living with you as Headway for what, five… six months now? If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done so hundreds of times over. It is actually in my best interest to make you happy, not horrified, and certainly not to hurt you.”

She looked to be on the verge of tears, and I wasn’t entirely sure she heard a single word I had said.

“Let me explain,” I sighed, unsure of why I was doing so. “My real name is Carina. I am a member of the species your bedtime stories refer to as changelings. Unlike the stories designed to scare little fillies into staying under their covers all night, we do not eat misbehaving ponies. That detail is a corruption of the truth… we eat normal pony food, mostly, just like you do. The story about eating ponies is actually based on how our magic works.”

I decided to gloss over the fact that changelings also consumed protein more directly than traditional herbivores do. We generally didn’t eat anything sentient, but I suppose there is no biological reason why we couldn’t. It seemed best to me not to bring that up with the young mare who was already hyperventilating in front of me.

“You see, we can’t use magic the way unicorns do. They can use their horn to draw in raw energy from the aether and supplement it with their own talent to move things around. Changelings can’t tap the aether. All of our power has to be stored inside us like a water tank. Whenever we use magic, the water tank empties a little bit. That magic is gone, used up. The problem is, we can’t replace that magic by ourselves.

“Our horn isn’t used to collect aetheric energy, it is more like a funnel. It absorbs magic directed at it in the form of emotions, condenses it until it becomes powerful, then stores it away—refilling the water tank. Certain emotions, like gratitude, joy, or love, are easier to pull into the horn and convert than others, and some emotions are outright unusable.

“Out there? All those mind-controlled ponies in the city? They feel nothing. The slightest hint of fear is all they give off. Without you and Warden, I may have been in big trouble.”

I thought that went well. It was surprisingly liberating to share a secret like that, and now that she knew that she was more valuable to me alive and happy than scared, or worse...

“Wait,” she said quietly. I could feel her nervous tension fading away, being replaced by confusion and settling on… anger?

“So… changelings are real, and you eat love? That’s… that’s horrible! You eat love, turn it into magic and blast it away into nothing once it is used up? Every fireball you throw is somepony’s fillyhood crush being dissolved. Memories of somepony’s mother making everything okay again by kissing their bruised knee after falling down the stairs are destroyed to fuel the telekinesis you use to lift a glass of water?

“Just now, when you made yourself look like my dad, you used magic to do so. You used magic you funneled out of me over the past few months. Did you eat one of my memories!? Did you use my love for daddy to… to… You’re… you are a monster!”

Okay, I didn’t expect that one.

“No, Miss Time, that’s not how it—”

An explosion in the city interrupted me, large enough and loud enough to be heard from our cavern refuge.

Sombra’s disembodied voice could still be heard clearly the entire time I was explaining things to Double Time. I had tuned it out since only one side of the conversation could be heard, and I was reasonably sure anything the tyrant had to say was either a threat or a lie. Now, however, I was paying attention again.

“So be it,” came his victorious, oily voice. “Such a shame.”

I figured the southern ponies wouldn’t have an easy time defeating him, but I expected the battle to last longer than it did. My own anxiety was building as I realized I was out of time. The single-minded hunt for Miss Time and I would begin again soon.

“Miss Time, we need to go,” I unconsciously repeated myself from earlier. “King Sombra just won against the ponies Warden brought back with him. He’ll be coming after us any—”

Again I was interrupted, though this time, the distraction was more than merely unexpected; it sent chills throughout my body.

A pony was laughing, a very dark and foreboding mania could be heard within that booming female voice which replied.

“You think you’ve found an ally in darkness? Do you comprehend the powers you were gifted with—the same powers I was born into?”

Oh no.

“Where do you think the shadows all go to hide from the precious light? Just who do you think stands against them? What you possess is a mere fraction of their might. The same might I stand unyielding against each and every night.”

“Stay back!” came Sombra’s voice, though it carried none of the triumphs it had just a moment before.

“You are nothing compared to them. You are nothing compared to me! You claim to know fear!? I shall show you true terror!”

“What… are you?”

The mocking chuckle that followed would have sent me into cold sweats had I been in a squishy pony body. Thankfully, chitin doesn’t have pores.

“I? I am a nightmare.”

There is somepony worse than Sombra… somepony Sombra fears. Somepony Sombra is losing against. Oh, my queen, I’ve got to—

Even my inner monologue was being interrupted. Just as I was about to lose focus and flee from this accursed empire, love source or no, a blow to my chest snapped back into the moment.

In my panic, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the angry pony in front of me. She had somehow acquired the partial spear I brought along with us and had attempted to stab me with it.

Once again, I was thankful for my carapace.

“Stop it,” I demanded, probably a bit more harshly than I meant to. Double Time wasn’t exactly a threat to me. She may have been related to earth ponies (honestly, I am still unclear if your average crystal pony is considered its own subtype or merely a slight physical mutation of their southern cousins). However, she still wasn’t strong enough to pierce my body’s natural armor.

Two more explosions rocked the empire in rapid succession, dislodging loose debris from the walls and forming slight stress fractures in the stone which made up the cave’s ceiling.

“We don’t have time for this!” I yelled at her, ineffectually.

She made no reply to my words other than to swing her head back and forth like a young dog playing tug-of-war; only instead of a rope in her mouth, she held a broken spear.

It didn’t take much effort to avoid her attacks, and some were so clumsy and weak that I didn’t even bother trying. They vibrated off my chitin harmlessly.

Each of her swings at me would have been entertaining under other circumstances, but as it was, her insistence on physically assaulting me was getting my last nerve.

The sounds of battle filtering in from outside the cave shifted subtly. The ground-shaking explosions seemed to stop momentarily, to be replaced by rays of dazzling magical light in shades of blue and purple streaking through the sky.

Where those beams of energy passed, whole buildings were leveled. When one of the purple blasts effortlessly ripped through the rock forming the cave’s camouflage, I decided it was past time for the final option.

“Enough of this. I’m sorry, Miss Time. I had hoped you might understand my position, but we really don’t the time to be wasting like this. If you won’t come willingly…”

I charged my horn with green light, holding it for just a split second as I locked eyes with the young mare who only then seemed to recognize that I finally meant to fight back.

I never broke that eye contact, even as I released the bolt of energy, which crossed the distance between us almost instantly, slamming into her chest and sending her flying.

Disbelief and sadness.

Her eyes, louder than her emotions, screamed against what was happening to her. As she came to an abrupt stop against the cavern wall, she cried out in pain before collapsing to the ground.

She lay there, unmoving, crumpled on the floor as I approached her with a second bolt charging in my horn.

“You dumbfound me, Miss Time,” I said to her unconscious body. “I’ve been doing this for quite a long time, you know. Nopony has ever impacted my mission as much as you have. It’s a shame you weren’t born a changeling. I think I might actually miss you.”

I stood over her as I readied myself for what was to come next. I never really liked this part of the job. It was messy and uncomfortable. I felt it building up in the back of my throat.

As I spat a gooey wad of waxy phlegm out onto her body, coaxing a second wad up through my throat, I found myself staring at her tear-streaked face.

Ten minutes later, it was done.