Smolder looked down at Ocellus with a mocking smirk. “You’re chicken.”
“I’m not chicken,” Ocellus said. She grinned. “Unless you want me to be chicken.”
In a flash, Ocellus sprouted a pink beak and teal feathers. Wings replaced her front legs.
“How’s this?” she said, gesturing at herself with one wing.
Smolder cracked up, and Sandbar chuckled. Their laughter ran down tunnels and came back in distorted echoes. The three of them were deep within the old changeling hive, surrounded by glowing lightshrooms and damp, fragrant air. For Ocellus, these were familiar sensations, to the point she felt a twinge of nostalgia, except for two facts. First, she had never seen the tunnels so empty. Second, she’d never seen something like this.
They stood in front of a bluish film stretched over a tunnel entrance, blocking them from going farther. Pheromones lacing it delivered one powerful message to her: do not enter.
If Smolder sensed them, they must have triggered her rebellious streak, because she poked a claw into one edge. The film stretched but didn’t break.
“Seriously, though,” Smolder said, “we can slip in, take a look around, and slip back out before anyone notices.”
Sandbar scuffed the ground. “I don’t know. It could be dangerous in there. Maybe we should go back up.”
Ocellus empathized with him. Gallus, Silverstream, and Yona were on the surface, celebrating with King Thorax and the other changelings, and no doubt anxious for their return. Ocellus invited them all to explore with her, but had been turned down by Gallus (“Crawling through tight spaces? I’ll pass.”), Yona (“Changeling tunnels too small.”), and Silverstream (“Not when they’re going to bring out a seventh kind of mushroom pie!”)
That said, she was enjoying her time with Smolder and Sandbar. They were fun to be around, and she liked Smolder’s confidence, but Ocellus couldn’t deny that she also enjoyed their particular kinds of love.
Each of Ocellus’s friends had flavors of love as distinctive as they were. Silverstream’s bubbled and tickled, while Yona’s surged in geysers. Gallus’s was cold and distant, but piercing like stars. Sandbar’s flowed like a river, steady, deep, and endless. Smolder’s, though…
Smolder lived up to her name, because her love was a burning coal. Leave her alone, and her love smoldered. Show her even a little attention, and it erupted into flames.
“Let’s do it,” Ocellus said. “If anyone tries to stop us, I’ll…” She transformed into a copy of Thorax and continued in his voice. “Command them to step aside, as I’m escorting these representatives of the Dragon Lands and Equestria on official Kingdom business.”
Smolder’s love exploded, and Ocellus relished every spark of it as she returned to her own form. Ocellus drifted to the entrance, ready to barge through, when she noticed Sandbar shying away. In school, she had gotten used to telling what mood other creatures were in by how their love felt. However, Sandbar’s love was too consistent for that, so she had to read his body language too. Now he cowered away from the entrance, his tail swishing, his ears low.
Ocellus landed. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Thorax didn’t forbid things unless he had a reason to. There could be sickening gas or giant rocks primed to fall on them behind the film.
But Smolder’s eagerness was infectious, and her burning love warmed Ocellus. It wasn’t selfish of her to savor that, but she needed to keep Sandbar happy too.
“It’ll be okay,” Ocellus told Sandbar as she wrapped a leg over his neck. “We won’t stay long, and if we see something dangerous, we’ll go back.”
He smiled, mollified.
Smolder cut a U-shaped flap along the bottom of the film and slipped through. “The good news is I don’t see anything dangerous,” she said. “The bad news is I don’t have any idea what this place is.”
Ocellus and Sandbar stepped through and entered a vast, warrenous space. Stone ramps and stairways cut across their field of view, connecting levels stacked in erratic tiers. Holes dotted each level. Film covered some, but others were dark and yawning, hinting at open spaces beyond. A stale odor filled the air. Withered lightshrooms cast faint glows throughout.
Smolder turned her head, her mouth agape, until something caught her eye. Her mouth clenched shut into a smirk.
“So this is where Chrysalis kept her treasures.”
“No,” Ocellus said, apprehensive about discussing her, “Chrysalis didn’t care about treasure. She just wanted to steal Equestria’s love.”
“Then what’s that?” Smolder pointed up. High above them, a speck of sparkly white emerged from a gloomy entrance, like a diamond half buried by dust.
Ocellus flew up and got a closer look. The “speck” was a limp sheet hanging from a metal pole. She picked up one edge. It was as light as silk.
It was silk, part of an elegant dress left in the dirt. Who would leave a dress in an off-limits part of the old changeling hive? The dress would fit a changeling, but as Ocellus examined it more, she thought it could be one of Professor Rarity’s creations.
Past the dress, farther down the tunnel, Ocellus saw more. A wagon with dual harnesses. A vendor stand. Stacked balls, hoops, and helmets. Tables, chairs, a bench. Desks for foals and a chalkboard. Shelves of books, racks of pots and pans, walls of tools, and crates that all looked like they’d be at home in Ponyville or Canterlot…
Ocellus realized where she was, and why Thorax had blocked off this part of the hive.
“What is all this stuff?” Smolder asked beside her.
Ocellus yelped in surprise, but stopped herself from turning into something inconspicuous. Smolder had flown up and carried Sandbar with her.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of storage,” Sandbar said. He hesitated, no doubt asking himself, why are all these pony things locked away in the changeling hive?
Lies sprung to Ocellus’s mind—to say she didn’t know, or that it wasn’t what it looked like—but she couldn’t deceive her friends. She hadn’t aced Professor Applejack’s classes just to be dishonest when it mattered.
“It’s a prop room. When changeling spies were getting ready to infiltrate Equestria, they’d train in a room like this so they could see genuine Equestrian articles. They might want to get used to sitting on furniture, or practice working with tools, or get ideas about new cover identities.”
Smolder squinted at her. “How do you know all that?”
“Other changelings told me. Almost everyone old enough to leave the hive did some espionage.” Ocellus shivered, more from memories than the cold. “Chrysalis made changelings rotate jobs pretty often so no one got to know each other. It’s harder to plot against the queen when you don’t know who you’re plotting with.”
Smolder only cast her eyes down, but her love flared and reached out for Ocellus. It felt as good as a hug.
“I guess there isn’t anything interesting here,” Smolder said. “You want to head out? We might get back in time for some of that mushroom pie Silverstream was going crazy for.”
“Sure,” Ocellus chirruped.
Smolder nodded. “What do you think, Sandbar?”
Sandbar didn’t reply. In fact, he’d vanished. Ocellus looked around for the pony, but all she saw were pony things. It was like he had blended in.
“I hear you!” he called out, his voice distant. “But, uh, can you come here?”
Smolder and Ocellus lifted off and followed his voice to a green tail poking out from a nook in the wall. He glanced over his shoulder at them, his expression worried.
“I’ve seen this stuff before.”
He stood in front of a polished box turned on its side. It supported a menagerie of items: a large, ornate pocket watch with its cover open; a small wooden pony doll; a patterned gray rock; an enormous knife with a wolf’s head pommel; a promotional postcard from the Equestrian Postal Service; a book with a red cover and gold leaf; a green bottle; a little brass chest; a tiny seashell; and a checkerboard-pattern party mask. Behind the box sat an impressionistic painting of Ponyville.
Sandbar picked up the party mask. “When I was growing up, I knew this colt named Arbor Sky.” He moved onto the doll, turning it on its side and chuckling. “His parents built him this cool treehouse way out in the mountains. This is all the stuff he kept up there.”
The book was next. Sandbar flipped through it until he reached a page that made him smile.
“It was weird, though. His parents wouldn’t let him attend school with the rest of us, but he really wanted to go, so he’d ask me what school was like. Sometimes Princess Twilight or one of her friends would teach a special class, and Arbor Sky always wanted to hear everything about them when it happened.”
Ocellus’s heart sank. Based on what Sandbar was saying, she knew what “Arbor Sky” had been.
Smolder cocked an eyebrow. “Wait, why didn’t his parents let him go to school?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did you ask his parents?”
Sandbar had reached the bottle. He looked through its opening like a telescope. “Oh, I never met his parents.”
“You…“ Smolder began incredulously, but froze. She understood.
Sandbar turned to the brass chest. Its lid cracked open with a squeal, revealing yellow slips of paper nestled inside. A few showed foalish scrawls across them.
“Ha! They’re still in there.”
He replaced the chest.
“Do you think changelings stole all of this from him?” he asked. Worry for his colthood “friend” strained his voice. “He moved away from Ponyville a five or six years ago. I lost touch with him after that, but I bet we could look up where he went. I mean, he might not care anymore, but at least he should know.”
Sandbar turned around, his expression innocent.
“Guys?”
Ocellus winced. She couldn’t hide this from this.
“I don’t think Arbor Sky was a colt.” She spoke in as comforting a tone as she could muster. “I think they were a changeling spy in disguise. It sounds like they were following the Element Bearers, but they had trouble sneaking into Ponyville’s school. So they pretended to be your friend. Then, when the Element Bearers did anything at school, they’d get information about it from you.”
Sandbar’s expression soured, and he shook his head.
“No, no, Arbor was a great friend. He let me read his book, and he taught me about painting. Look, I did these trees!”
He jabbed a hoof to the painting and circled some trees on it, tracing brushstrokes.
Smolder sniffed. “What’d he do with that giant knife?”
“That was for woodcarving,” Sandbar insisted, his jaw trembling. He faltered. “I mean, that’s what Arbor told me.”
Anyone could see that such a large knife was useless for delicate woodcarving. For self-defense, though…
Ocellus felt Sandbar’s love changing. It was still a river, but now it rush in raging torrents and smashed against rocks.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He plodded away. Ocellus bowed, ready to leave too, but stopped when she felt another change in love. Not from him; Smolder’s love had shrunk. It was no longer a roaring fire, or even a glowing coal. As Ocellus focused on it, she felt Smolder’s love sputter out.
Smolder turned away from her and took to the air. Now she knew what changelings could do, and who they could hurt, to steal love. Ocellus sank into herself.
Sandbar stopped. “Wait.”
He trotted back to the box, his ears perked. He examined everything arranged on it, from the watch to the mask, his eyes lingering on each piece. With a determined expression, he stopped on the little brass chest, picked it up, and looked inside again.
“What are those pieces of paper?” Ocellus asked him.
“They’re secrets. Arbor and I would write down stuff like who we had a crush on or rumors we promised not to share with anyone else, and then we’d put them in here so they’d be safe from everypony else.”
He turned to Ocellus. “Maybe this is stupid, but I want to keep this to remember Arbor Sky.”
“Why?” Smolder asked. “This guy was just some changeling spy.” She said “spy” with a venom that stung Ocellus.
“Sure, that may have been why he came to Ponyville, but I remember him being my friend. Those are my memories. I won’t let anyone take that from me.” He turned back to Ocellus. “Do you think it’d be okay?”
Objections popped into Ocellus’s mind—it was stealing from the hive and proving they’d been in here—but for Sandbar, she ignored them all.
“Of course.”
Sandbar smiled. His love still flowed more fiercely than before, but it had left the rocks and entered a smooth trough. He walked away, the brass chest balanced on his back.
Smolder watched Ocellus, not aggressively, but in a probing way. She had seen what changelings could do to steal love, enough that it shook her trust in Ocellus. Even though it pained Smolder, her distrust lingered.
But it didn’t last long. As Ocellus approached her, she felt Smolder’s distrust fade and her love reignite.
