Blood Thicker Than Venom

Chapters

Some Things Never Change
The Unthinkable
For the Hive...
...or the Brother?
A Heavy Task
To the Hunt
Complications
Stratagem
Smokescreen
Vigil
Dawn of a New War
Regrouping
Two Fronts
Raid
Work and Discipline
Back on Track
On the Move
The Objective
Discovery
Keep up Appearances
The Deception Game
Burden
The Ultimate Unthinkable
A New Era
Debating Discoveries

Some Things Never Change

“They what?!”

“I’m just telling you what Menace overheard the Canterlot Royal Guards talk about!” Locust flinched. “It wouldn’t be impossible, considering they failed to report as scheduled three times in a row as of today!”

“But Glutton and Killer are capable infiltrators and have been in Tall Tale and Salt Lick City for years! How did they mess up now? And both on the same day at that?”

“I have a theory, Sir, but you won’t like it.”

“More than I don’t like the fact that we’ve lost three infiltrators in a week?”

“Well, yes, it kind of does involve Coxa. I think she must have told them when they captured her. Whether it’s some new interrogation technique we don’t know about or if she succumbed to the temptation of whatever they promised her in exchange for cooperation, I don’t know, but she did know about them and could tell the ponies. Glutton was her mentor and she knew Killer from an assignment they were sent on together. It would also explain an oddly-phrased remark that Menace overheard as part of that guards’ conversation. He relayed it verbatim and admitted that he didn’t understand what it meant.”

I groaned and rubbed my temple. Coxa’s record had been spotless until her failed infiltration of Trottingham! It had been hard enough to believe the report of her capture, and now this! If Locust’s theory turned out to be true, she’d be in even bigger trouble in Chrysalis’ eyes than she was now! And I might, too; after all, I had been the one to recommend her for the assignment! Could I have predicted this?

“Does Chrysalis know?”

He winced.

“Yes. I was going to come to you first, but she intercepted me. She said to find you and tell you to select replacement infiltrators, and to be careful not to mess it up this time. It’s due tomorrow morning.”

“Where is she now?”

“I saw her head to the hatchery.”

“But she already completed the inspection earlier today!”

Locust looked away.

“I didn’t get the impression that she was on the way there before I ran into her,” he said. “She might have gone to find Coxa’s eggs. You know, the ones she laid a week before deployment?”

I’d forgotten about that! Of course Chrysalis would go smash the eggs! If getting captured hadn’t been proof enough of her unworthiness to produce the next generation of warriors, betraying her comrades certainly was!

I nodded.

“If there’s nothing else to report on, you may return to your duties.”

“Yes, Sir!” He saluted and left.

I trotted off in another direction. I had a scheduled armory inspection to attend to, but with this unforeseen complication, I would have to get there earlier than I’d planned if I wanted to do it properly before moving onto the task Chrysalis had just given me through Locust. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more delays!

But things weren’t working in my favor. Halfway to the armory, I heard a splash and a startled yelp coming from one of the passages up ahead, followed by a clang of metal, and then laughter. I went to investigate, cursing inwardly. This better not be what I thought it was!

My hopes sank as soon as I heard the familiar feeble voice.

“What have I ever done to you? Please leave me alone!”

Not again, I thought in frustration as I approached the passage the sounds were coming from.

Sure enough, two dawdling drones were bothering the local wimp. Again.

“Don’t you two have readiness drills to work on?” I shouted at them.

They snapped to attention.

“We’re already done, Sir!”

“Then do them again!” Maybe some useful work could get your minds off of pestering my brother, I thought. Or at least it would keep you too busy.

They hesitated.

Obviously they needed plenty more of those drills they’d claimed to have completed; otherwise they would have responded instantly. And I was in the mood for proving a point!

A burst of my magic transformed me into an oversized-spider-like monster, a form I preferred when an extra dose of intimidation and display of dominance was required. The looks on their faces made it clear that they realized they weren’t going to like what was coming.

And I had no intention to disappoint.

I swung a tentacle and launched them into a wall with a single strike. An easy move; I’d done it plenty of times, both in combat and in dealing with insubordinate rookies!

“Are you deaf?” I roared at them for good measure.

Whether through the power of my voice or their brains finally kicking in, they were gone, leaving only plumes of dust in their wake.

Satisfied with the result, I restored my own form and turned to my brother, who was by now cowering in a corner with his broom, soaking wet.

“A word with you,” I gestured him to follow.

He set the broom aside and trotted along as I led him to our sleeping burrow. A considerable detour from my duties, yes, but I didn’t want anyling interfering. By now, I’d come to terms with possibly having to cut the armory inspection short to make time for selecting new infiltrators; another delay to get rid of any drones too stupid to know not to interfere in personal matters was the last thing I needed!

Once we were there, I motioned Thorax to enter the burrow, cast a glance around to make sure we were alone, and joined him.

“What is wrong with you?” I lashed out, my patience running thin.

“What do you mean?” he asked back, voice quivering.

“You know all too well what I mean! You don’t even try to defend yourself from bullies anymore, and how long did it take me to get you to even stop apologizing to them? Who in their right mind tries to be polite to someone who attacked them? It took me forever to get you to realize that looking for friends was a futile pursuit for a changeling and turn you into a marginally passable fighter, and just when I finally began to think we’re making enough progress to give you a worthy assignment so you can start being useful to the hive, you throw it all away again! Do you have any idea how much persuading it took to convince Chrysalis to let me include you in the Canterlot invasion force? I was hoping the problem was that all the training drills were too hypothetical for you and that real action is what you needed to awaken your bloodthirst and get you on the right path, but no! My sweet little brother had to goof around and get distracted by a friendly encounter between some pathetic ponies and relapse into stupidity!”

“Pharynx, I told you-”

“I know what you told me! Look, I get it that first encounter with a different nation can leave you confused, but the invasion happened well over a year ago! Get a hold of yourself, Thorax! You’ve had plenty of time already to snap out of it and resume combat training, yet you keep refusing to act like a changeling and insisting on this fool’s errand! You’ll never get out of janitor duty like this, let alone gain respect and stop being picked on! Why do you think Chrysalis is so eager to punish you for every smallest mistake that she might ignore if it were any other changeling? In fact, the only reason she’s even letting you live after all you’ve done is because you’re my brother!”

“Pharynx-”

“Don’t interrupt me! I know what you’ll say, that I don’t have to do this, but I can’t stand idly by while my brother disgraces both of us by rejecting everything that changelings have ever been! Do you think anyling in this hive will ever start trusting you if you keep goofing around like this much longer? And while you’ve sunk so low that you don’t feel like there’s anything left to lose, do you really expect Chrysalis to keep trusting me much longer after I’ve failed to snap you out of it by now? Who do you think will protect you if I lose my rank?”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, hanging his head.

“Well prove it then, and do it quick, because I’m running out of ideas how to keep convincing Chrysalis to give you one more chance!” I sighed. “I’m not one to give up easily, but you’re really starting to seem like a lost cause.”

Having vented my recently-accumulated frustrations, I left him there and hurried back to my duties.

Several hours later, I was still sitting in the records-and-archive section of the hive, reviewing soldier records, trying to find appropriate drones to replace the captives. I’d started out diligently, but after a while, I realized I couldn’t stop thinking about Thorax.

Why was he such a pitiful fighter? It made no sense! The rest of our brood hadn’t had such a problem; even if they had died on duty, they’d served the hive devotedly and honorably! Why couldn’t Thorax do the same? I’d spilled my guts to get him to accept the changeling ways, and though I could see no effect for years, my persistence had finally paid off just in time for the invasion of Canterlot, and even then only marginally! If I’d known sending him there would undo all that progress, I would have left him in the hive until I could see some solid results! But knowing it had happened, would I really have been right to trust him to hold on to his training if I’d postponed his first mission?

Could I have made the same mistake with Coxa? Had I failed to recognize that she hadn’t been ready to deal with capture?

Was I losing my edge?

Enough of that, Pharynx, I told myself. I was one of the best fighters in Chrysalis’ army, and I hadn’t become First Commander by being an incompetent fool! After all, we didn’t even know for sure what had happened yet; getting all worked up on Locust’s theories wouldn’t do the hive any good.

I got back to the scrolls.

A while later, I realized I couldn’t remember anything I’d read in the last few dozen soldier records. I wasn’t even sure whose records I’d reviewed! Morpheus, Banshee, Ripper, Shadow, Predator, Poison… Grim, Rascal, Trickster… all the names had blurred together, and I couldn’t reliably recall even one point from any of their records! How was I supposed to recommend the best candidates to Chrysalis in the morning at this rate?

At least the armory inspection hadn’t produced any complications. If it had, I had no idea how I would handle all that in a single afternoon all by myself!

Reluctantly, I decided to take a break and rise early to finish the selection. If I were still a drill instructor, I might have come up with a few candidates from memory, but it had been too long, and most of the drones I’d trained who hadn’t died on duty were already deployed somewhere or assigned to various duties in the hive, and the hivebound ones capable enough to undertake an infiltration mission had duties that couldn’t be trusted to many other drones and would therefore have to remain here. I had to rely on service records for this! If all else failed, I could find one of the current drill instructors and ask for recommendations, but that would not look good for my reputation! Commanders were supposed to give orders to their subordinates, not ask them for advice!

Thorax was already in our sleeping burrow when I got there, crying again. I didn’t bother asking what was wrong this time; most likely it would have been those bullies from earlier today, or maybe some other ones that I hadn’t been around to chase away. I didn’t feel sorry for him; if anything, it annoyed me to see him like that. Maybe if I let him have a few punches from time to time, he would finally toughen up!

Who was I fooling? He wouldn’t! My brother was the living proof that, even in the changeling hive, some things never changed, no matter what!

The Unthinkable

A few hours of sleep had done wonders. I was back in the archive well before morning roll-call, going through the records with great efficiency, having already found several good candidates to replace the captured infiltrators, more than I needed actually, and in much less time than it had taken me yesterday! I could have gone to Chrysalis with what I had, but thorough as I was, I didn’t want to miss any in the remaining scrolls.

One, however, I could dismiss without a glance: Thorax’s record had somehow found its way into the pile of useful drones. I rolled my eyes and moved it to the unworthy-of-a-second-thought pile.

At least he’d gotten up early today.

Normally, he clung to our sleeping burrow every morning, reluctant to start his daily duties and often whining about the so-called senselessness of our lifestyle or the bullies waiting for him out there or some other such thing. A scowl and a hiss had in the past been enough to snap him out of it, but ever since Canterlot, it would usually end with me throwing him out and yelling at him to pull himself together, or threatening to personally beat him to a pulp unless he stopped the charade, and in extreme cases, with me dragging him by the ears to the storage-and-maintenance section and shoving the broom in his face, or fulfilling the aforementioned threats, or both. None of that had been necessary today; he had already been gone when I woke up. Maybe my yesterday’s ranting had actually paid off and he’d finally decided to get a grip and make himself useful for a change! I wasn’t going to celebrate just yet - I knew better by now - but if this proved to be the start of a trend…

I was almost done with the scrolls when I heard commotion outside the archive. Now what? It couldn’t be Thorax on the receiving end of bullies again; he didn’t have the clearance to be anywhere near here, and he certainly would have known better than to try to impersonate a higher-ranking drone even if he somehow learned their clearance code, not to mention that he had no reason whatsoever to come here! Had we been attacked? And if that was the case, why hadn’t the airborne sentries put the hive on alert? Why hadn’t they and the border patrols stopped the intruders? Were they dead? Who could have defeated them so easily?

I galloped out into the hallway, ready to switch into my battle disguise.

A swarm of guards, led by sub-commander Hornet, were searching the hallways and adjoining chambers and burrows furiously, shouting reports as they went. Whatever it was they were looking for, they weren’t finding it.

“What is going on here?” I outyelled them. “Report!”

“First Commander Pharynx?” Hornet finally noticed me. “Is that really you?”

“Of course it’s me!” I recited my clearance code. “What’s gotten into you all?”

Hornet closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why was I getting the feeling that I wasn’t going to like what she had to tell me? As in, more than I didn’t like other bad news?

“Earlier this morning, Sir,” Hornet began, “sub-commander Apex reported to Chrysalis that you had left the hive without authorization, having claimed to the airborne sentries that you were there for an unannounced inspection, and slipped away above them when they weren’t looking. While he was reporting it, Maintenance Supervisor Proboscis came to report that Thorax hadn’t reported for duty and she couldn’t find him anywhere! So Chrysalis ordered all the guards in the hive to look for you two!”

Every last remnant of my good mood evaporated instantly. What had Thorax done now? Not what it sounded like, I hoped!

“Just to make sure, everyling else is accounted for?”

“As far as I know, yes,” she said. “We were told to report any other drones that turn out to be missing, and the search teams have been in contact with one another ever since we started looking for you. If any of them had found out about any more missing drones, they would have spread the word by now! Speaking of which, Sir, I should inform the others that you’re here and verified as yourself!”

She summoned the nearest of her subordinates and sent him to relay the news to the other teams.

I was still trying to process what she’d told me. Surely I’d misunderstood something! We all must have misunderstood the situation! Thorax couldn’t have been that stupid to do what he seemed to have done! Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? This couldn’t be happening for real! He had to know that he’d get tracked down and tortured and executed for running away! He hadn’t really done it, right? He couldn’t be so delusional to think he could escape punishment, and there were many better ways to die if that had been his intention! Even I couldn’t escape punishment with all my skill and cunning if I’d pulled off that kind of a stunt; with his skill level, catching him would be easier than beating up a training dummy, and he had to be aware of that!

No. This wasn’t happening! I had to stop overthinking things based on wild guesses and half-informations!

“Wait… let me get this straight…” I spoke to Hornet, rubbing my forehead, “what you’ve been trying to tell me is, Thorax disguised himself as me and escaped from the hive?”

“It does look like it, Sir.”

“And the airborne sentries let him?!”

“It doesn’t look good for them, I admit, but for the record, they did think it was you, and only discovered otherwise when Chrysalis told them that she hadn’t authorized any unscheduled inspections, let alone your departure.”

“I thought they were supposed to look up as well as down! Thorax - if it really was him - couldn’t have flown away that fast! They should have been able to spot him!”

“Don’t look at me! I’m not their drill instructor!”

Of course she wasn’t. But the airborne sentries were selected from the best of the best; it should have been common sense to them not to allow for such oversights! They shouldn’t have needed to be specifically told that ‘keeping their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary in any and every direction’ by definition included the direction of above! Worst of all, I’d noticed such oversights happen before, I’d pointed them out to the sentries, I’d made sure their drill instructors would remember to work on correcting that weakness in our defensive perimeter… I’d really thought we’d made an improvement!

Of course, if I hadn’t vented about it in front of Thorax, he might not have known about a weakness he could exploit! I was as much to blame as any of them! How many other weaknesses of the hive’s security had I foolishly revealed to him? Why hadn’t I predicted that he might decide to run away at some point when he couldn’t take any more bullying? Had I assumed that he wasn’t listening to my words or that he’d forget them as had seemed to be the case with probably everything else I’d said to him? If I’d kept my mouth shut about things he didn’t have the clearance to know about, he may have been discovered before having gotten away, while he may still have had a chance to explain his actions as a transgression less serious than abandoning the hive!

And if I’d tried harder, I scolded myself, he wouldn’t have even thought of leaving.

But there was no escaping the truth: my only surviving brother, the pathetic wimp and the hive’s laughing stock, had become a traitor.

And I had only myself to blame for it.

What was I going to tell Chrysalis?

For the Hive...

I retreated into the archive to finish reading the last couple of soldier records and to think about how to best handle the situation. The records turned out to be too unremarkable to have any bearing on my earlier decision, but the orders for that had come before my brother’s unthinkable act; were they still standing in the light of the more recent events? Would Chrysalis still trust me? Or had Thorax condemned me as well as himself? And he was condemned, no doubt about it; but Chrysalis’ wrath was legendary - would I be caught in it too? Was I still First Commander to her? Or would she see me as nothing but a traitor’s brother from now on? As much as I hated the possibility of losing my rank and reputation, I couldn’t deny that it wouldn’t happen without a good reason: Thorax had been my responsibility, I’d defended him to Chrysalis more times than I could remember, I’d used all my influence with her to keep him relatively safe from her, to give him one chance after another, I’d promised her a million times that I’d make a warrior out of him, and how had it ended? I’d failed! I’d failed worse than I’d ever thought possible for a changeling to fail! Not only had I failed to turn my brother into a worthy member of our society, I’d failed to stop him from turning his back on us!

How would I ever make this right in Chrysalis’ eyes?

Thorax, what have you done? Why did you have to run away? Do you have any idea how much that whim of yours might cost me?

Do you even care?

“First Commander Pharynx?” A guard’s voice snapped me back into reality.

“What do you want?” I shot back, hardly bothering to look at him.

“The Queen wants you to report to the Throne Room, Sir,” he said.

“Of course she does,” I muttered to myself. Then, to the guard, “Noted!”

He saluted and left.

Never in my life had I found it this hard to get up and obey an order; even as a rookie nymph, I’d had more guts and discipline to face the consequences of my mistakes! But all the mistakes I’d made then had been minor ones; not in a million years could they measure up to the mess I was certainly in now!

Was this how Thorax felt all the time?

Probably not. As a soldier, I’d been taught to ignore fear, to suppress it and turn it into rage, to use it against my enemies; I’d succeeded in it, and even though I was facing all kinds of terrible consequences, maybe even the most violent and gut-wrenching of punishments that Chrysalis could think of, I wasn’t afraid. As a soldier, I’d learned to accept pain as part of duty, as part of life; I’d learned to stare death in the eye and sneer at it!

But this time it was different, somehow. There was no fear in me - not the kind of fear I knew of, anyway. But the weight on my soul wasn’t giving up. What would happen to me? What would happen to the hive if I would no longer be around to keep it safe? What would happen to Thorax? Could he survive on his own out there?

Suppose I went after him, a loose thought crept in from somewhere. Could I protect him from Chrysalis’ wrath if I joined with him and kept him close?

Ridiculous, I scoffed at myself, banishing the idea back into whatever crazy corner of my mind it had crawled out from. I would never abandon the hive! Protecting it was what I lived for!

I approached one of the castle entrances and absent-mindedly recited my clearance code. The guards stepped aside and I entered and immediately proceeded to the nearest vertical shaft that would take me close to the Throne Room.

As much as my instinct screamed to protect Thorax as usual, I knew he was out of my reach by now, and whether or not he returned to the hive at any point in the future, voluntarily or otherwise, that wasn’t going to change. I couldn’t plead for him with Chrysalis again after what he’d done; any such attempt would make me look like a traitor too! He would have to fend for himself from now on! Did he even realize what the outside world was like? Did he know what beasts might await him? Would he know how to blend in among whatever creatures he would end up with? The little training he’d received was way too insufficient to prepare him for every possible threat he could be facing! If only I’d paid more attention to him, worked with him more in my free time; he might not have been kicked out of the training program, and things might have worked out differently!

Then again, he had a creative and resourceful streak, even if it hadn’t had much chance to show itself while he’d still been here. He would have to rely on it heavily, but if luck served him, maybe he would manage to improvise his way out of trouble.

Having approached the Throne Room, I took a deep breath to compose myself, outwardly at the very least, and stepped in.

Chrysalis was sitting in her throne, frowning as ever, but there was an unusual severity in that frown today. Not without reason, I knew!

“First Commander Pharynx reporting, Your Highness!” I bowed upon approaching her.

She responded by blasting me with her magic. Stunned by its effect, I nearly fell over, but managed to remain standing. I knew the main purpose of that blast had been to remove any disguise I might have put on - and after what had happened, I couldn’t blame her for wanting to verify that she was indeed looking at the highest-ranking soldier in her army - but still couldn’t help but wonder how much of it had served to relieve her fury.

I couldn’t blame her for that, either.

“The guards tell me Thorax is nowhere to be found,” she got to the point.

“Have they finished searching yet?”

“The preliminary search is done as of a minute ago. As always, you’ve timed yourself perfectly.”

I gave no response.

“But then again, we weren’t expecting them to find anything, were we?”

Was there a tone of accusation in her voice?

“I’ve been told that someling left the hive without authorization disguised as me,” I replied cautiously. “Until we prove that all remaining drones are who they say they are-”

“Do you take me for a fool?” she lashed out. “Only your brother would think of pulling a stunt like that! Every other drone is loyal to me! Are you suggesting he persuaded one of them to leave?”

“Of course not, Your Highness. It was foolish of me to think anything of the kind!”

“Indeed you were! Foolish to think that any other drone would betray the hive and even more foolish to think that Thorax wouldn’t! How many times did you beg me to spare him, promising you’d handle him yourself? How many times did you claim you’d turn him into a warrior, and I quote, ‘if it’s the last thing I’ll do’? Now look at what he’s done! You were with him all the time; you shouldn’t have been blind to the warning signs that must have been there! And I should have killed him while I had the chance! What will the hive think of their Queen now? That I’ve gotten weak? That I’ve become unable to exact punishment on those who deserve it? If they decide they can stop obeying me, it will be your fault and your fault alone! Don’t think I can’t handle them if it gets to that, but you shouldn’t have let even one lousy drone get out of control!”

I said nothing. What was there to say? Whether or not I wanted to admit it, she was probably right!

“Did you have something to do with it?”

“Me? Of course not!” I’d half expected her to make such an accusation, but did my best to sound like a possibility of me having anything to do with it had never entered my mind. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Then how did he know to disguise himself as you and to fly above the airborne sentries where they often forget to look?”

I shrugged.

“Lucky guess?” Did I sound genuine enough?

“And you’re sure you didn’t give him any tips on how to get out of here unnoticed?”

“If I’d known he was planning to escape, I wouldn’t have let him!”

“You didn’t even make an unintentional remark that he could take advantage of?”

“I know better than that, Your Highness!” I lied. I should have known better than that!

Her glare drilled fresh holes in my body. Had she realized I wasn’t telling her the truth? Why hadn’t I told her the truth?

“Tell me again: you’re sure that Thorax escaped on his own volition and you didn’t help him in any way?”

“If I may speak freely, Your Highness, if I did have something to do with it, I would have planned it out in such a way that you’d never know something wasn’t right! I certainly wouldn’t have incriminated myself!”

“There is such a thing as a double bluff,” she looked at me sideways.

“Maybe so, but it would put an unnecessary risk into the equation.”

“Hmmmmm.” More glaring.

“Your Highness, I swear to you with my life, I’m loyal to the Hive and would never do anything to betray it, including help another drone escape! If there’s anything I can do to repair the damage, just say the word and I’ll do my best to fulfill your expectations!”

“Oh, you will,” she smirked in a way that sent chills down my carapace, and after all the training and real combat experience I’d accumulated over the years, that wasn’t an easy thing to do. “I’m sending you to find Thorax and bring him here for his punishment!”

“But that could take forever! I haven’t the slightest idea where he might have gone!”

“I realize that, you fool! I don’t expect you to comb through the whole world and find him personally, though it might be a slight point in your favor if you do! No, you’ll command a swarm of soldiers who will do the work for you! Take as many drones as you need, plan a strategy, and if I approve of your plan, you’ll be leaving with them at dawn if not sooner. You’ll brief them as you go,” she commanded.

A field mission? I hadn’t been on one for years! I hadn’t even been included in the invasion of Canterlot because Chrysalis had refused to trust the hive to anyling else in her absence! Not that I was worried about possibly being out of practice - I could handle anything - but who would handle hive security while I was gone?

“What about my duties as First Commander?” I asked.

“I’ve already assigned Psycho as acting First Commander until you return,” she declared, and Psycho nodded from his post at the side of the Throne Room. “Bring Thorax back and you can reclaim your rank and duties. I want him alive! If you find that it’s too late for that when you find him, then bring me his dead body, but don’t kill him; I will do that!”

I might have known she would want something like that, I thought.

“Understood,” I said to her.

“Then you’re dismissed! I don’t want to see your face again until you have a strategy to present for approval!”

“What about those replacements for the captured infiltrators that you wanted me to recommend?”

“Psycho will handle that after you select your team! Now go!”

I caught a glimpse of his sneer. Trying to seize my job already, Psycho? Don’t bother carving your name into a First Commander’s helmet just yet! I’ll be knocking you back down the chain of command before you can blink, and so hard it’ll make your mother’s eggshell dizzy!

Casting him a vengeful scowl, I bowed to Chrysalis and headed to the exit.

“Oh, and Pharynx?” Chrysalis called to me when I was almost at the gate. “You’re a talented soldier, valuable to the hive, but not irreplaceable! Remember that!”

In other words, bring Thorax back soon and don’t give me a reason to doubt your loyalty, or you’ll take his punishment for him or along with him, whichever happens.

I nodded and left.

...or the Brother?

The search was still ongoing when I left the Throne Room and the castle, but not nearly as passionately as when I’d first witnessed it. Word must have spread throughout the hive about what had happened, which would explain the lack of enthusiasm, but the drones would likely keep searching until given permission to stop, which obviously no one had thought to do. Were they simply trying to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything? Had it been Chrysalis’ orders to keep it up?

I made a point of ignoring the search teams as I trotted aimlessly through whatever corridor presented itself. Initially, I wanted to call off the search, finding it obviously pointless, and admittedly annoying, until I remembered that I’d stopped being First Commander, if only temporarily. Did I still have the authorization to command them anything? Did they know already that they were going to be answering to Psycho until further notice? Even if they didn’t, they would soon! They would know I’d been reduced to… what, exactly? Chrysalis hadn’t said anything, and I’d been so worked up that I’d forgotten to ask! Was I at least a sub-commander? A low-level grunt? Or had I become entirely rankless?

On the bright side - if one could call it that - the drones were still too busy with the search to pay much attention to me. I could seethe and grumble over my disgrace all I wanted and I’d probably be left alone!

My wandering brought me into one of the many battle-drill chambers that were scattered throughout the hive. From the looks of it, a training session had just ended and noling had cleaned up yet. That might have been one of Thorax’s duties for the day, I thought and immediately tried to push it out of my mind, but the thought was persistent.

Well, a training session being finished or not, there were still some props and dummies relatively undamaged by the hurricane of soldiers that had passed through and wreaked havoc almost everywhere they went, destroyed almost everything they touched. And I was itching to leave my contribution!

So I did.

A salvo of roaring, hissing, and punching and kicking at the props ended with pulverized training equipment, a few puddles of my venom on the floor where it was leaking from the training dummies I’d ripped apart, and, thankfully, a somewhat less turbulent state of mind to put to work on fulfilling the promise I’d given to Chrysalis.

Having shaken the debris out of my leg holes, I returned to my aimless wandering through the hallways, once again deliberately ignoring the search teams everywhere. How had they not given up looking for Thorax by now? This was getting ridiculous!

Actually, I finally asked myself, were they even looking for Thorax? I had assumed so, but now that I thought about it, I faintly remembered Chrysalis say something about the search being over with undesirable results. What, then, were they trying to find? Had the first search been merely for an undisguised Thorax, and this one a repeat with possible disguises kept in mind? It made no sense; they would have looked for anything out of the ordinary and suggestive of a disguise the first time! That was standard procedure with missing changelings, not that it was required very often! So if not for Thorax himself, what were they still looking for? Evidence of his guilt? They didn’t need it by now! The route he might have taken on his way out? Possibly; Chrysalis would want to know about any more security breaches. Evidence that I, or someling else, had helped him? No matter how much I disliked that possibility, I couldn’t dismiss it!

Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hive’s outer surface. How had I failed to notice that I’d left the tunnels and gone outside? I was a soldier, darn it; I was supposed to be aware of my surroundings! For that matter, why hadn’t the guards that should have been watching the tunnels that opened to the outside stopped me? Hadn’t they seen me? Had they all been sent to participate in the search?

At least the airborne sentries were fully vigilant for once. Every single one of them had noticed me and were hovering close, ready to intercept me if I showed signs of intention of shapeshifting, or taking to the air, or whatever else they deemed suspicious.

I rolled my eyes and waved at them dismissively, then headed for the nearest tunnel opening.

Back inside the hive, I forced myself to stop pouting and pull myself together. If I kept going like this, things could end up as bad for me as they were guaranteed to for Thorax! I would do better to sit in one place where I could think of what to do undisturbed and undistracted! But where would I find such a place with the whole hive in an uproar?

My sleeping burrow was the only place I could think of, and it was close enough.

Once I got there, I realized how weird it felt to be there at this time of day. Normally, I only came here to sleep, with the occasional exception of having to pull Thorax aside to lecture him or to rant about something he had - or hadn’t - done, rather than lash out at him in front of witnesses and potentially give them ideas for the next pestering episode. If I’d known that yesterday was going to be the last time…

Enough of that, Pharynx, I scolded myself again. I was to capture him and make sure he got punished for what he’d done, not to defend him again! He’d committed an unforgivable act of insubordination and the whole hive knew it! Even if Chrysalis were to forgive him - and she would die sooner than do anything of the sort - the swarm wouldn’t! If I failed to bring Thorax back, they would do it, one way or another, with or without authorization to leave the hive! And if they got a hold of him… I didn’t think even Chrysalis could do such intense damage as a swarm of changeling soldiers bent on vengeance!

He deserved it, I kept telling myself. He’d betrayed the hive, and I’d never held any mercy or understanding for traitors!

He deserved the worst punishment Chrysalis could come up with! He’d betrayed the hive; there was no forgiving him!

He was a traitor... He deserved punishment...

But he was also my brother, the last surviving member of our brood beside myself. Not even our dead brother and sisters had cared to keep him safe from trouble that he’d always had a talent for getting into due to his soft nature; the three of them had pretty much given up on him since day one, and I’d been the only one trying to toughen him up and keeping him safe whenever I could! I still didn’t understand the instinct that had led me to stubbornly and persistently keep doing that all these years, but the more I tried to convince myself that capturing Thorax and dragging him to his punishment would be a good thing, the louder that instinct screamed to help him get out of harm’s way again!

But if I acted on that instinct, I would become a traitor myself! How could I turn my back to the only life I’d ever known, the home I’d sworn to protect with my life?

If only there was a way to reconcile the two, to protect Thorax by making Chrysalis and the hive think he wasn’t a threat anymore! It would be a thin and risky line to walk, a task that would stretch my skills and talents to the limit, but if I could pull it off…

No, I told myself, it would never work! They’d figure it out and stop me!

Unless I made sure to be ten times as careful as I normally was...

No, Pharynx! Don’t betray the hive yourself! It's not worth it!

But I couldn’t abandon my brother, not after everything I’d done to keep him alive and safe... traitor or not, he was still my brother...

I could do this... I knew I could... What use of my experience and cunning if I couldn’t pull this off? What right did I have to call myself a changeling if I failed to execute a deception plan, at least to give myself more time to investigate the situation and think things through and make a definite decision what to do once I learned more, even if that decision turned out to be the fulfillment of my orders rather than helping Thorax? It would be insanely risky, given who I’d be working against, but I’d be damned if a First Commander, even if stripped of rank as it may be, couldn’t handle the challenge!

If I pulled it off, Thorax might finally live the kind of life he’d always wanted, or if he died without finding what he was looking for, at the very least he’d be spared of whatever awaited him upon getting captured.

And if I failed?

If I failed, at least he would have gotten a glimpse of freedom, of life without everything he’d endured in the hive. Would it be enough for him? It would have to be; it was more than he would have gotten from anyling else!

Finally fully alert and focused like a soldier should be, I began planning my approach.

A Heavy Task

Some time into the afternoon, I returned to the Throne Room. Chrysalis wasn’t there at the moment, so Psycho suggested I should go do something and he would send a drone to find me when she returned.

I told him I’d wait, thank you very much Psycho.

The wait was shorter than I’d expected. Chrysalis strolled into the Throne Room and walked right past me as I bowed, ignoring me as if I were a drained cocoon. Only upon flying up onto her throne did she acknowledge my presence.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“I’ve come up with a rather simple and straightforward plan: to send out as many teams of hunters as you’re willing to grant me, each with their own territory to cover, plus my own team to coordinate the others. I have no way to be sure where Thorax would have gone, but if I had to guess, I’d put my hoof on Equestria. It’s the only place he’s ever been deployed to and thus the only culture he would know anything about, which would make blending in easier, despite the drawbacks of it being an obvious choice considering his familiarity with the destination as well as a risky one after the failed invasion of Canterlot and the ponies’ increased wariness of our possible return. If I can get as many teams as I’d like, I’ll have some of them cover other lands too; if not, I’ll have them focus on Equestria only. As for the teams themselves, I estimate that three hunters would be the right size. Three trained soldiers should be able to handle most of the conceivable dangerous situations easily, and the teams would still be small enough to go around unnoticed.”

“I’m inclined to grant you enough teams to cover all lands, not just Equestria.”

“Thank you, Your Highness!”

“But you forgot to clarify how they are supposed to cooperate with the infiltrators already in position.”

Okay, soldier, here come the slippery grounds.

“Actually, I’d rather keep them out of it.”

She raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“And why is that, exactly?”

“Considering the recent trend of losing infiltrators, I don’t want to risk that the ponies find out about Thorax if any more infiltrators get captured. Not that I expect them to get captured, but I didn’t expect those last three either, so one can never be too careful. What the infiltrators don’t know, they can’t reveal to the enemy.”

“Are you covering for that lousy brother of yours again?” she lashed out at me through gritted teeth.

Yes, but good luck getting me to admit it!

“I’m not!” I kind of was trying to keep him as safe as I could in the circumstances, but why tell her that, especially since I had no promise that my own team or any of the nearest ones would be the one to find him? For all I knew, I was just postponing the inevitable! “Think about it from the enemy’s perspective, Your Highness: we know that Thorax is a useless wimp with too low a clearance to know any relevant stuff, but they don’t! If they get word that a changeling has betrayed the hive and is running loose, possibly somewhere in their land, not only would they make it a priority to catch him, but their efforts would put our own hunter teams in danger of getting caught too! We don’t even know what Thorax might have figured out on his own that could be useful information to the ponies if he’s that far gone as to outright cooperate with them if they find him, which I hope he isn’t but wouldn’t put past him at this point, not to mention that he’s certain to cave under the most laughable of interrogation techniques they might subject him to, but if any of the hunters get captured before or alongside Thorax, they most definitely would know stuff that could damage us if it gets into the wrong hooves, and after that fiasco with Coxa, I wouldn’t trust anyone to not sell out our secrets given enough probing, regardless of how trained they are to resist interrogation!”

“Makes sense,” she said after a moment. “What would an individual team’s strategy look like, then?”

“Whatever is most appropriate in a given environment. Flexibility would have to be key. A rough guideline would be to disguise themselves when going into populated areas, look around for anything that might suggest a changeling in disguise, and shadow any suspicious individuals until they know what they’re dealing with; just basic common-sense stuff that they already know. They wouldn’t necessarily need a disguise in uninhabited areas, but it might be a good idea anyway. Also, they’d have to establish a base camp where they’d stash their battle gear and hide any prey they catch, and where they would regroup in case they have to split up.”

“What about communication?”

“Daily updates at scheduled times, except to report task completion or any matters of urgency, which should be done as soon as conditions permit. I will relay everything of importance to you on a daily basis, say, in the evening hours.”

“So none of the teams would be in direct contact with the hive?”

No, because I want to be the first to know if they capture Thorax in case any interventions on my part are feasible before you get word of what’s happened.

“I don’t see the need to, but if that’s what you want, I will comply.”

Was she convinced?

“Where will you set up your headquarters?”

“I was thinking Everfree Forest or Foal Mountain. Both are located in central Equestria which would be convenient in case of any complications with Equestrian teams that would require my direct intervention, practically uninhabited by ponies which minimizes the risk of discovery, and relatively close to Canterlot in case something happens that will force us to contact the infiltrators there and ask for their assistance regardless of my concerns that I’ve stated earlier. A slight downside of Everfree is that we’d have to be more careful about its wildlife, although the presence of the said wildlife might work to our advantage by keeping ponies away and giving us a wider variety of credible disguises should we need them anyway. I’m more inclined towards Foal Mountain, however; ponies hardly ever go there despite the lack of dangerous wildlife, and though I’m sure our soldiers can take on any monster that we come across, they could focus on finding Thorax better if they don’t have to worry about getting eaten all the time.”

“Have you considered which soldiers you want to include?”

“I have.” I held up a scroll I’d brought along. “This is my preferred roster of soldiers made with the assumption that I would get as many teams as I want.”

She took the scroll in her magic and skimmed through it.

“Impressive! It usually takes you longer to make such rosters, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but this time it was easy because I still remembered what I’d read in the soldiers’ records after you told me to select replacement infiltrators for Trottingham, Tall Tale, and Salt Lick City. Most of the names on that scroll I’d originally considered for that task, and I’m afraid that Psycho may have a hard time tackling that selection now that I’ve taken most of the good ones.

I snuck a smug glance at Psycho, who bared his teeth in reply.

“He might if I don’t decide to make changes to your little list, that is,” she smirked.

Psycho returned me a smug grin, and I looked daggers at him. I’d watch that attitude if I were you, Psycho! You’re still acting First Commander!

“As you wish,” I told Chrysalis, careful to avoid an annoyed undertone in my voice, or she might send Psycho to rearrange my roster in such a way that I end up with only the worst soldiers. Why had I even said that? I didn’t normally lose control over my big mouth in front of Chrysalis like that!

“Do you have anything to add that we haven’t covered?” she asked.

“No, I think that’s all.”

“Then you’re dismissed! Go do something while I think it over. I’ll send a drone to find you when I’ve decided.”

I bowed to her and left.

About an hour later, Locust found me in one of the training chambers, destroying some more equipment that probably should have been left alone until a group of rookie soldiers assembled for their next drill session. I’d barely noticed him with all the dust flying around and the noise I’d filled the chamber with.

“Chrysalis sent me-” He ducked to avoid a rock I’d launched toward him. “-to find you! Watch it with that!”

“What, you have to become the new wimp now that Thorax is gone? She in the Throne Room?”

“No and yes.”

“No what and yes what?”

“No, I don’t have to become the new wimp, and yes, she’s there.”

“It’s ‘no, I don’t have to become the new wimp, Sir’ and ‘yes, she’s there, Sir’!”

The fact that he may not have had a reason to call me Sir anymore was beside the point. I used to be higher in the chain of command than him and I intended to return there! And I didn’t want him to think otherwise!

“Right. I’ll remember that, Sir!”

“Dismissed!” In other words, get out of my sight!

I caught a glimpse of him flicking his tongue at me as I turned to go, and before he realized what had happened, I sprang back, bit into his tongue and pulled at it, first until its full length was out of Locust’s mouth, and then until he lost his balance and fell face-first and bit his own tongue in the process.

He squealed, turned into a mouse, and dashed away into the nearest burrow faster than I’d sprung at him a second earlier. Lesson learned, I thought, and went to find out what Chrysalis had decided.

“You’re clear to go,” she told me as soon as I set hoof in the Throne Room, before I could even bow to her.

“I am? I mean, do I need to modify my proposed strategy in any way?”

“I’ve made a few adjustments to your team roster, but nothing too drastic.” She gave me back the scroll, and I saw some names crossed out and new ones written in their place, but not as many as I’d expected. “Psycho has already begun gathering them. Other than that, your original plan will do just fine.”

I hadn’t expected that! I’d thought she would insist on having the infiltrators know what was going on even if they weren’t going to actively cooperate, or that she would want the teams to report to the hive too, or most likely, that she would reject my plan entirely and make me come up with a different one or task someling else with it! This would make my job a whole lot easier!

But would it? She had, after all, made modifications to my proposed teams, and one such modification affected my own team. She would have had plenty of time to brief that soldier about our mission and task them to keep an eye on any suspicious business on my part! I’d have to be careful!

“When do we head out?”

“At midnight. Since not all of you are going in the same direction, and since you’ve prepared the plan so quickly, you may brief them here rather than after you move out.”

“Understood.”

“The soldiers will bring their battle gear with them. Go grab your own gear as well as the communicators while you’re waiting for them to assemble.”

“Right away!”

To the Hunt

The darkness of the moonless night reflected my sullen mood as the swarm flew north, towards the vast jungle that bordered the changeling territory. The teams assigned to lands south and east of the Changeling Kingdom had separated from us early on, the Griffonstone team still had some way to go before doing the same, and the rest of us would spread throughout Equestria. I’d even assigned a team to Yakyakistan, though I doubted it’d be necessary. If Thorax would manage to get that far undetected with so many of us searching everywhere for him and remain undeterred by the yaks’ lifestyle enough to want to stay there, he’d deserve to be let loose!

Deployment had been somewhat delayed by Apex’s insistence that the airborne sentries should verify every single hunter’s identity and authorization, as well as check all our battle gear and communicators, before letting us proceed. Most of the hunters had been ready to jump out of their carapaces and start a fight with one another by the end of the ordeal, and though a small part of me shared their frustration, I was mostly glad the sentries had taken their jobs seriously this time.

If only they hadn’t chickened out when Thorax had decided to pull stunts, none of this would have been necessary!

At least they seemed to have learned from their mistake.

“Commander Pharynx, Sir?” one of the hunters approached me as we were reaching the jungle at near-dawn.

“Yes?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Sir, but how much longer do you want us to keep flying?”

“Tired already, soldier?”

“No, Sir! Forget I asked!” She turned to put some distance between us.

“Listen here, soldiers!” I spoke out loudly enough for everyling to hear. “I know visibility isn’t much at this hour and we couldn’t search the wasteland properly, but it doesn’t matter because Thorax would be a fool to still linger so close to the hive where any regular patrol would have spotted him by now! Our work begins when the sun goes up! When we get enough light to see properly, we’ll fly through the jungle and look for our famous deserter! There’s still some time left until then, so use it to spread out so we can cover as much ground as possible! As for you,” I said to the hunter who had approached me a minute earlier, “you’d better hurry to get in position if you want a moment to sit down and rest your wings!”

The others burst into laughter.

“What’s your name, anyway?” I asked her.

“Grim, Sir! My name is Grim!”

The name was familiar: it had caught my eye before that Chrysalis had put it in place of one of my suggested ones. I checked the scroll to make sure which one. Yep, as I thought!

“This says you’ve been assigned to Foal Mountain.”

“Yes, Sir, that’s what I’ve been told.”

“Congratulations!” I sneered at her. “Looks like we’re in the same team!”

A few nearby soldiers snickered. She got as close to being a tortoise as one could get without shapeshifting into one.

“Yes, Sir,” she stammered weakly.

“A word of suggestion: just because I’m used to being around a wimp doesn’t mean I like to be around one, so work on your attitude! Or don’t if you enjoy being yelled at all the time. It’s up to you, and rest assured, I can yell!”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Didn’t hear you!”

“I said I will, Sir!”

“Hm. Marginally better.” I checked the sun. “Okay, we’ve got the light! Let’s move!”

We were done searching the jungle by the evening of the next day, but none of the hunters had found any sign of Thorax. So, either he’d made an effort to fly over the jungle at top speed without stopping and we were yet to catch up to him, or he’d taken his time and we’d passed him already without realizing it, or he’d gone in an entirely different direction and some other team would find him. I’d assembled the communicator on the first evening to hear from the southern and eastern teams, but they’d had nothing to report.

It was of no consequence. I hadn’t expected we’d find him so soon anyway, and even if the others had, they were smart enough to not test my patience by showing it. One of the teams would find him sooner or later; there were only so many places a traitor could go to, and hardly any where he would be welcome. Add to that that he was alone and in a relatively unfamiliar environment, and he was bound to slip up and reveal himself sooner or later. He’d be easy pickings from there!

All we would have to do then would be to drag him to Chrysalis.

But the wait could take weeks, months even. Years? I didn’t think so, but if luck served him, anything was possible!

All that, of course, assuming he hadn’t been killed already.

There were dangerous animals in the jungle, some of which he knew about, but only a few basics, and I was pretty sure there were a few he wasn’t aware of… or hadn’t been the last time I’d bothered to check. Any of them could have attacked him, and his fighting skills weren’t good enough to save him from them! Could he be dead already? None of the hunters had reported having found evidence of battle or remains of a changeling or something that might have been one. Had they looked? They would have, I told myself. Those had been the orders: to find Thorax or whatever was left of him and bring him to the hive! Or to bring his remains to the hive or whatever other credible evidence of his death we might come across, whatever. Just because I wasn’t stressing that part all the time didn’t mean it wasn’t important! The hunters would know it! They would, wouldn’t they?

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure anymore.

But with Thorax being as exact-opposite-of-battle-ready as he was, if the wild animals had gotten to him, would there even be any signs of struggle to suggest it? What if Thorax was dead and there was nothing to find, not even a snapped twig, to clue us in on his unfortunate fate?

Unfortunate. What a choice of words! Compared to what Chrysalis would have in store for him if he lived to see the day of his capture and punishment, getting eaten by any wild animal would surely have been a blessing and an easy way out! And I didn’t know anymore which outcome to wish for him!

The last of the hunters were gathering at the north end of the jungle. I’d assembled the communicator again while waiting, but the reports from other teams were the same as the evening before. So I turned to the swarm.

“Attention!” I shouted.

All heads turned to me.

“Report! Any of you found Thorax?”

No response from anyling.

“In case you were wondering, I’ve just finished talking to the other teams, and they have nothing to report either! That means we’re still hunting, in fact, we’ve only just begun! We’re about to enter Equestria, where we all spread out as assigned, so it’s time for the last roll-call before we separate! Any questions?”

There were none.

Slowly and steadily, I roll-called every team one by one, asked about Thorax again, got the same negative response as before, then gave them their communicators and instructed them when to report in. They all gradually set out, except for a few whose members had taken their sweet time in the jungle and were still arriving. Eventually they were all accounted for, again with nothing to report, so they just joined their teams and left like the others. One of the stragglers had incidentally been a member of the other team headed for Foal Mountain, the team that would do the actual hunting as opposed to mine whose sole purpose would be to coordinate the others and supervise the immediate area around our base camp.

We travelled there together, or better said, the two teams travelled there in close enough proximity to each other to maintain visual contact at all times, but none of the soldiers separated from their own team to approach the other one at any point. The closest we came to each other had been at the roll-call prior to entering Equestria, and finally at our destination after we landed. We agreed to set up separate base camps in order to avoid interfering in each others’ work: ours was an abandoned mining shaft that we’d found first, and theirs was a rotting, half-fallen-apart shed. Though we’d kept the non-interference agreement, we still ended up being close enough that face-to-face reporting made more sense than use of communicators - the shed might have belonged to the mine in its active days, though it wasn’t quite as close to the mine as I would have thought logical and practical, but whoever had built it must have had a reason for such an arrangement, not that it mattered to our purpose - so we decided to do that instead unless something forced either team to relocate.

By the time my team had finished setting up, the first updates from the Equestrian teams that had reached their destinations were due to come in. The ones covering northern Equestria, Crystal Empire, Yakyakistan, and Griffonstone weren’t due to report yet; they would do so as soon as they arrived to their destinations, which was expected for tomorrow for northern Equestrian teams and the day after for the other ones, unless they ran into trouble or happened to find Thorax while still underway. They hadn’t reported either scenario, though, and the expected reports form the other teams were just as unremarkable as before.

I relayed all of this to Chrysalis. She acknowledged my words and told me there had been no unexpected developments that I would need to know. Also, Psycho had found the replacement infiltrators with hardly any trouble.

I bet he had, I thought. He must have altered my roster to grab a few soldiers from it while Chrysalis had been ‘thinking about my plan’!

Whether or not that had been the case, there was nothing I could do about it now, and regardless of Psycho, I intended to complete my task to the best of my ability.

I only had to hope that Thorax wouldn’t mess it up.

Complications

About a week had passed since our deployment. All the teams had reached their destinations safely and begun searching their designated territories. All of them were sending reports regularly, and all those reports were the same: nothing to report yet, Sir! My answers were equally consistent: keep looking!

Chrysalis wasn’t thrilled to keep getting the same news from me day after day, but she had to admit that finding a changeling who didn’t want to be found was bound to be a difficult task, bordering on impossible depending on the skills, wits, and determination of the changeling in question. Skills alone were going to be easy to surpass in this case, but wits and determination... that could be a whole different game: Thorax had every reason in the world to keep away from us, he had to have figured out that Chrysalis would have sent her soldiers after him, and he would undoubtedly use every advantage he could muster to stay one step ahead of us, and after the way he’d improvised his escape - and despite what anyling might say, I had a feeling that it was improvised rather than planned, or else I would have caught a hint of something odd in his behavior in time to do something about it - I’d gained a new appreciation for his resourcefulness, so much that I was almost beginning to trust him to succeed on his own! Assuming, of course, that he was still alive. In my reports, I’d mentioned the possibility that that might not be the case anymore a couple of times, and though she hadn’t openly responded to it, I didn’t want to be too insistent on it or she might get the idea that I was hiding something. She would only be half wrong, though, and I was asking myself at times if I might have made a mistake by wanting to secretly help Thorax out if I could, or by building the hunting strategy in such a way to allow me to actually do it, or both.

The dull routine was broken one evening when the Everfree team failed to report in as scheduled. I gave them about an hour before I had to submit my daily report to Chrysalis, but eventually I couldn’t delay it any longer. Just in case, I tried hailing the Everfree team first, to no avail.

“What do you mean, they didn’t respond?” Chrysalis roared at me from the communicator array when I told her about it.

“They were due to report an hour ago, but just because they failed to do that and to answer my hails doesn’t have to mean they’ve betrayed us too if that’s what you’re thinking! They could be following a trail, or their communicator might have broken down, or something else is keeping them busy… It’s easy to jump to conclusions, Your Highness, but they’re good soldiers, and I’m sure they’ll report in as soon as they sort out whatever is delaying them!”

“You’re not usually that trusting!”

“I’m just trying to keep a cool head! We all knew from the beginning that any team could at any point run into complications that could interfere with their progress, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the worst! Of course, sometimes it does, I agree. In my experience, situations like this turn out to be either something completely harmless and we all laugh about it later, or it’s already too late by the time we start suspecting something has happened, and I do remember a few months ago when you told me your own experiences were very similar to mine in that regard. Either way, it’s getting dark outside and they’re too far away for a quick glance at their supposed locations; I don’t think we can do anything about the team at the moment, not without the risk of blowing our cover or getting in the kind of trouble that would be easily avoided in daylight. You know well enough how unpredictable that place is!”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I was going to wait until morning, give them time to sort out whatever it is they’re dealing with, and if they still don’t report in by then, to send two drones from the Foal Mountain teams to investigate.”

“How will they know where to look?”

“All teams have reported the locations of their base camps upon arrival to their designated areas. I’ll have my soldiers start from there, maintain frequent contact with me, and report everything they intend to do and everywhere they intend to go. If they so much as sneeze, I’ll know about it!”

“Fine, do that!” She neither looked nor sounded satisfied, but at least she seemed to trust my judgment on this. “I’ll want frequent reports too!”

“Understood!”

Morning came without bringing the belated report from the Everfree Forest, so I assembled both Foal Mountain teams and relayed the situation.

“So you want two of us to go find the Everfree team?” asked Carapace, a member of the other team.

“Yes. The rest of us will stay in Foal Mountain and attend to our usual tasks.”

“‘The rest of us’? Why aren’t you volunteering yourself?” grumbled Brutus of my own team.

“Who put you in command?” I hissed at him.

He scoffed but said nothing.

“I’ll go,” Jackal from the other team volunteered.

“Me too,” said Grim.

“No, Grim, you’re staying here,” I countered. “Brutus will go, since he’s so full of energy this morning!”

“I swear, one of these days I’m gonna-” he muttered, walking away from us.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he shot back.

“Any questions?” I looked at the others.

There were none.

“Good then! Jackal and Brutus, the Everfree team’s base camp is in a ravine spanning mid-forest, you can’t miss it; start from there! Carapace and Vermin, keep looking for Thorax as if nothing has happened! Grim, you’ll be patrolling the area around the command base while I’m at the communicators. Remember, anything out of the ordinary is to be reported, especially you two heading to Everfree! I want to know every step you make!”

I got yessir’s and understood’s from everyling except Brutus, who just rolled his eyes. Then they left to their tasks.

A communicator lit up a couple of hours later.

“Reporting already?” I asked Jackal and Brutus.

“We found the Everfree team’s camp, but no sign of the hunters,” said Jackal.

“There kind of is, actually,” Brutus corrected him. “Something we found before the actual camp, but it’s close to it, and anyway, we found the camp while looking for a safe place to report this find from.”

“Well, what is it?”

“There’s some disturbed ground almost at the edge of the ravine, and destroyed bushes, suggestive of battle. We weren’t going to give it much thought initially with all kinds of beasts that could have left such a mess, but then Jackal noticed these lying about.” He held up half a helmet and a couple of broken spears. Changeling battle gear, I realized. “Something must have attacked them. We don’t know what, but if I had to guess, I’d say timberwolves.”

Great. Absolutely wonderful! Chrysalis was going to be properly thrilled to hear the news!

“If you’re right about it being timberwolves, then our team is most likely dead,” I agreed. “You’ve seen the area. How recent does the... damage… look like?”

“It couldn’t have happened this morning, Sir. I’m pretty sure they were dead by the time we were expecting their report.”

At least I hadn’t left them stranded by opting against sending backup immediately. But what could have happened? My proposed roster for the Everfree team hadn’t been altered; I knew their records had suggested well-trained and resourceful fighters, perfectly capable of dealing with the many perils of Everfree! That was the very reason why I’d assigned those three soldiers to that area! What had gone wrong? Had they been overwhelmed by too large a pack to handle? Had they been exposed to something in the environment that had hindered their combative abilities? Had they been distracted? By what? And an unlikely option, but not an entirely impossible one: had their records been exaggerated?

“See if you can find out more about what happened,” I commanded. “Chrysalis might want to send another team there, and I don’t want a repeat of this if they don’t know what to expect! But don’t risk your own safety for it! I’d rather be left with a mystery than with two more dead soldiers! Understood?”

“Yes, Sir!” they said in unison.

“Good. Report if you find something, collect any gear they might have left there that’s still undamaged enough to be useful to ponies, and be back by sundown!”

I heard from them again after another couple of hours.

“Sir, we didn’t find anything really useful in that area, and we’re still inclined to suspect timberwolves, but we took a slightly different route back and, well, there’s something curious here. We don’t think it has anything to do with our lost team, but we figured you might want to know about it anyway.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s this strange hollow tree here, turned into a hut for someone to live in. It’s got weird decorations too. They remind me of some I saw in passing in Zebrica on one of my previous missions.”

“Our infiltrators in Ponyville already reported a zebra living in the Everfree Forest. She’s a shaman of sorts, and mostly harmless by the sound of it. If that’s all-”

“It isn’t, Sir. We only took a quick look around when we realized no one was home, purely out of interest and the off-chance that Thorax might have hidden there, and we were about to leave when one of the hundreds of jars on the shelves caught Brutus’ eye, and get this: there’s two labels on the same jar, one that says ‘healing ointment’ and one that says ‘changeling revealer’.”

“A what?! Are you sure you didn’t misread it?”

“We’re sure, Sir. The writing is as legible as can be. Basically, we were wondering-”

“You wanted to know what to do with it,” I finished Jackal’s sentence. “I suppose you were smart enough not to mess with anything?”

They nodded.

“Are you still in the hut?”

“No, we found ruins of some old castle nearby.”

“That jar, if its contents are what the labels say they are, could be valuable to us. Do you still have it?”

“We left it in the hut. We thought the zebra might notice it missing if she returned while we were reporting this.”

I had to agree it had been a smart thing to do.

“You think you could go back there and see if this ‘changeling revealer’ is the ointment itself or an object hidden inside it? And, whatever it is, can you bring it with you in something that wouldn’t be missed? If it’s the ointment, don’t take too much in case the zebra knows how much of it there’s supposed to be!”

“We’ll do that, Sir!”

Once they were back with their loot, which had turned out to be the ointment iself, I reported to the hive.

“What took you so long?” Chrysalis snapped at me immediately.

“The situation was developing gradually so I decided it would be better to give you a full report when we’ve sorted things out.”

“And?”

“I have some bad news and something I’m not sure whether to consider good or bad.”

She raised a questioning eyebrow.

I told her about the dead team. She would have pulled my fangs out and driven them into my eyes for it if we were in the same room, and it took all my persuasion skills to convince her that it had already happened by my last report to her and that I couldn’t have done anything to prevent it! In the end, she decided to send another team like I’d predicted, even if Thorax wouldn’t have been expected to survive in such an environment.

Then I told her about the peculiar potion that Jackal and Brutus had discovered by chance.

In a flash, her fury about the lost team was replaced by curiosity that seemed to have drowned any lingering misgivings about my handling of the incident. I could almost hear the gears in her head turning: if this really was what the label had claimed, we could study it and maybe find a way to counter its effects, or to use it against our enemies! At the very least, the knowledge of this substance’s effects would be invaluable! But we would have to know more, and I was pretty sure Chrysalis would make studying this a priority!

“You said they brought some of it with them?”

“They did.”

“Guard it with your life! I’ll send a team to bring it to the hive right away!”

Stratagem

The news of Rascal’s capture and the discovery of the strange disguise-removing substance had been the last highlights of our mission so far. Several days after finding out that it hadn’t been Thorax who had gotten captured in Canterlot, I’d received an update from Chrysalis, saying that her drones had made contact with the imprisoned hunter for a brief moment, only long enough to confirm our timberwolf theory, but he’d been taken away again before he could offer any further insight. No drones had been able to get to him since, or even to find out his exact whereabouts, assuming he was still alive.

The zebra’s ointment had proven to be a tough shell to crack: no matter how hard they tried, neither the drones in the hive nor Chrysalis herself had been able to learn anything about it beyond its obvious effects. Not its composition, not the process of production, not even a plausible theory of its origins, and especially not how to disable its disguise-undoing effect! Chrysalis had vented about these failures once or twice over the communicator link, but though she’d done an admirable job of presenting every outward manifestation of anger, I believed much of that had been a mask hiding the fear inside her, and I couldn’t blame her; after all, I shared much of those concerns myself. How would we conduct covert missions if such a substance became widely available to ponies? How would we deceive our enemies if this cursed concoction was to be found at every step? How would we fight it if we couldn’t figure out how it worked? And while it was true that an ointment was an impractical thing to easily apply on unsuspecting victims, how long would it be until the zebra, ponies, or any other creature with knowledge of this substance discovered a form of it more suitable for use on enemies, such as a spray or a poisoned dart, maybe even a poisoned raincloud for extreme situations? Could they have figured it out already?

No further developments on either front had come up as the weeks turned into months. My teams’ work had long ago become dull routine again: teams were still reporting no news on Thorax’s whereabouts, not even a hint of a rumor, not even a trace of anything to go on! Relaying such reports to Chrysalis had been hardly a problem at first - neither of us had realistically expected the teams to find him in the course of the first few days - but it had gradually become awkward to the point that she would sometimes snap at me for such repetitiveness. Was I even trying? Was I hiding something? How had I failed to find my lousy, incompetent brother for this long? Did she have to come to my camp personally and tear it apart to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything from her? I could swear, she almost had shown up a few times!

Despite my training to endure the physical and mental strains and challenges that missions would often bring, the gravity and treacherous nature of the feat I was hoping to accomplish had eventually taken a toll on me. Often times recently, I was getting so exasperated by trying to maintain a façade of loyalty and obedience while plotting to help Thorax to safety if I could, so fed up and unable to think straight, that I’d started wandering through the woods most evenings after report-issuing hours, trying to clear my head. It had gotten to the point where I would spend hours in the darkness of the forest, flying or trotting alone, sometimes relieving my tension on a trunk of any unfortunate tree that happened to be nearby, or by grabbing a wild animal to put into a cocoon and thus turn into a lamp like the ones we had in the hive. Grim and Brutus had silently disapproved of my behavior at first, but they’d gotten used to it pretty quick, and there were times I suspected they’d barely noticed I was gone. No trouble had ever arisen in my absence, and by now I trusted their ability to keep it that way.

Not so long ago, I would have been ashamed of needing to clear my head so often. Why would a skilled and fearsome soldier, I would ask myself, need an outlet of this kind? A true warrior’s outlet should be to wreak havoc with his enemies! He most certainly wouldn’t be seen strolling through a forest! Only a wimp and a loser would do that… or so I’d believed.

Now look at me.

If anything, my nocturnal adventures allowed me some time alone to think about Thorax. Where was he? What was he doing? Had he found what he’d been looking for? Or had something found him? Lions? Flash bees? Timberwolves? Would I return to the base camp and find a team reporting they’d captured him? Would I get a chance to let him escape before he got dragged to the hive, to Chrysalis?

Was there still anything left to save?

Snap out of it, Pharynx! Of course he’s alive! He has to be, or all of this would be pointless!

But if he was alive, how come we hadn’t found a trace of him for so long? How long had it been, anyway? Three months? Four? How could anyone vanish for that long, even if they were a changeling? He had to have left some kind of trace! Something, anything! Even if he’d been killed, there had to have been some clue as to what had happened! What were we missing?

Could he have been killed along with the Everfree team back at the beginning? My heart skipped a beat upon realizing that would be a likely explanation: there had been signs of struggle at the site, after all, but how many changelings had taken part in it? Three? Or four? But if Thorax had been there, why hadn’t Rascal told the drones sent to find him in prison? If he’d had the time to tell them about timberwolves, he would have had the time to tell them Thorax was dead! That should have been a matter of higher priority to report than some stupid timberwolves!

Could Thorax have fallen victim to the same timberwolves at a different time? Had his death been masked by the deaths of the hunters sent after him?

Before long, I knew the answer.

One night on the brink of winter, my wandering took me along one of the many routes I’d taken at some point since developing the habit. As the trees had lost their foliage over time, the nuances of the terrain had become clearly visible in the moonlight, and I could make out more details now than the first time, when the moon had still been obscured by the dense canopy. I knew there was a cave in the area, its entrance blocked off with piled-up rocks for as long as I’d been aware of its existence. I would sometimes pass by the mouth of the cave, wondering what beast might have lived in it, if any. None were using it now, obviously, but my fighter’s instinct longed to know what I might have faced if I’d arrived at a different time, when the cave had still been accessible.

Tonight, however, something was happening there. I could hear voices and sounds of punching before I’d come close enough to see the source of the commotion. The voices I recognized as those of the other Foal Mountain team: Carapace, Jackal, and Vermin; they sounded fiendishly delighted about something. But why the punches? It didn’t sound like they were in trouble! They weren’t arguing, either! Had they come across a pony they wanted to feed on? But what would a pony be doing here, especially at this hour, and why hadn’t they incapacitated him quickly like they normally did with the prey were feeding on during the mission?

Getting a bad feeling about this, I decided to sneak up on them and see what was happening.

Still out of their sight, I looked around for any unwanted witnesses, and having found none, I transformed into a bat with working eyes, then went to fly over the area that the noise was coming from.

I found them right in front of the mouth of the cave.

Some of the rocks that had once blocked the entrance were now lying about as if something had thrown them in a fit of rage. Among them, a few steps from the newly-opened entrance, the three changeling hunters were gathered in a circle, kicking viciously at the form curled up defensively on the ground, cheering and hissing excitedly as they delivered each punch.

As soon as I heard the yelps and whimpers of their victim, I knew who he was.

How had they found him? Had he been in the cave? But how had he gotten in? And when? And what had made them go look inside now if they hadn’t for all this time they’d been here?

Had they seen me? No, it didn’t look like they had. They were too busy to notice things! And with no other creature around to see what was about to happen…

I retreated to the place I’d been at when I’d first heard them, where I knew I would be out of their sight. They probably wouldn’t have noticed anything anyway, being in such a state they were in, and I doubted they’d remember much anyway after what I intended to do, but one could never be too careful!

I unleashed a flash of my magic; the bat became an ursa, and I walked briskly but silently back to the cave, where the punching and kicking was still in full swing. When I was close enough to see them, I launched into a full gallop, headbutting the whole group a good distance away, careful not to accidentally hit or step on their whimpering victim.

Ignoring him for the moment, I checked my surroundings and approached the pile of soldiers. Jackal and Carapace were knocked out cold, but Vermin was still moving. I stomped him so he would join the other two in oblivion. Then, after a moment to make sure I was safe to do what needed to be done, I turned to Thorax.

Even in the dark, I could see blood running down his carapace from a dozen if not more gashes; his wings were torn up, one leg bent at an unnatural angle, he may have been missing a few teeth, including part of one fang, and his eyes were swollen shut. But he was alive and conscious, trying to lift his head off the ground, looking at me with one sort-of-still-open eye as if expecting to get chewed up and swallowed any second.

I dropped my disguise.

“Seriously? I still have to keep saving you?” I exclaimed. One would think he’d have figured out how to stay safe in this land if our hunting teams had failed to track him down when he’d been right under our snouts all along!

“What are you doing here?” he rasped weakly.

“What does it look like?” I snapped back. “Now shut up or we’ll both be in trouble!”

Before he could prolong the conversation, I stooped down and sank my fangs in him.

He flinched as my venom found its way into his bloodstream, and moments later, he was unconscious. Leaving him there momentarily, I returned to the three hunters and repeated the process on each of them. It may have been unnecessary with them unconscious already, but if the venom managed to erase their recent memories like it was known to often do… I wanted any advantage and failsafe I could get!

I dragged Thorax into the cave. Considering his condition, I’d intended to put him into a healing cocoon and hide him, but when I got inside, I already found a broken one hanging from the ceiling and a pool of healing slime on the ground. I almost laughed with relief at this point! So that was why we couldn’t find him! He’d gotten badly injured at some point, probably in the Everfree Forest! He’d wandered off to a less dangerous area, found a secluded spot in this cave, as safe from being discovered as he could get under the circumstances, and cocooned himself! And to think I’d been wandering right past him all along and asking myself if I’d ever see him alive again!

How had Carapace and his team failed to find him for so long? It had been their task to search the area as best as they could, even if I’d merely pretended to want the teams to find Thorax so they wouldn’t accuse me of treason! If I’d noticed the cave at nighttime, they would have had to see it in broad daylight! Had they, like me, assumed there might have been a potentially dangerous animal in the area and opted to keep their distance? Had they deemed the cave unworthy of their effort due to the blocked-off entrance? In any other circumstances, I would have punished them severely for such a stupid oversight… but as it was, I could only be thankful they hadn’t gone in. Thorax had merely picked the wrong moment to break out of his cocoon! Would he ever know how insanely lucky he’d been that I just happened to be in the area?

I filled up his old cocoon and put him back inside it, then rearranged the rocks to close the cave again. He would need time to heal, and if this setup had kept him safe so far, it could do it a little longer, only this time, I knew where he was and could keep an eye on him until he was ready to get out again. Where life would take him from that point on, I couldn’t predict, but at least I was in the position to make sure he got there, even if I couldn’t follow. He would just have to learn to take better care of himself, even if it meant never dropping his disguise for the rest of his life!

But this was all months in the future, and I had a more immediate task to attend to.

I returned to the three unconscious drones. Taking the form of an ursa again, I proceeded to inflict injuries on them, one by one. I paid special attention to slash up the parts of their carapaces where I’d bitten them; no use fabricating a story if physical evidence wouldn’t support it!

I didn’t like doing that, especially to Vermin, who had been left severely injured by my stomping him, worse than the other two. All my life I’d worked to protect the hive and its drones from harm; though injuries were often unavoidable in training drills, I had no problem with them as long as the experience would teach the injured drone how to avoid getting the same injury in real combat. Even the combat wounds weren’t really a problem for me as long as the soldier had earned them honorably and protected the hive in the process! But this, a massacre of unconscious drones for the sake of covering up a lie, even if they would recover? On any other day, I would have demanded the worst punishment one could think of for a drone who had deliberately wounded his or her teammates in order to save a traitor! And here I was, not only doing that very thing, but expecting to get away with it! How could the hive possibly benefit from my actions? And Vermin may not even survive! Was Thorax’s life really more valuable than Vermin’s?

Every drone in the hive would say it wasn’t. Chrysalis would say the same, and even more, she’d say that Thorax’s life wasn’t worth anything! But me? Thorax was my brother, the only surviving family I had!

I had never realized it meant that much to me.

I had considered the hive my family… but Thorax had been part of the hive, and though one would never have thought it by looking at us, we shared the same blood, just the two of us among the millions of changeling drones.

Yes, I finally dared to admit it to myself, I would do anything to keep Thorax safe.

Even if it meant killing another changeling.

Even if it meant crossing the threshold I’d never thought I’d cross and betraying the Queen… betraying the hive.

And I’d just crossed that threshold.

I’d crossed the threshold I’d vowed to never cross and there was no going back, even if I’d wanted to keep my options open at the beginning of this mission.

Even if I returned to the hive victoriously in Chrysalis’ eyes, I couldn’t reclaim my old life. I couldn’t truly be First Commander again, not after what I’d just done, not after the epiphany I’d just had! I couldn’t ever again look Chrysalis in the eye and swear honestly that I would serve her with my life and my death!

I could lie to her, of course. I could tell her what she wanted to hear like I’d been doing all along since the first day of Thorax’s absence. But the duty of a First Commander demanded honor and loyalty, and I’d squandered that, turned my back to that honor for the sake of saving my brother!

My brother, the traitor.

Now I was the traitor too, even if the hive didn’t know it.

If I could have done things differently, protected Thorax any other way, I would have. But I couldn’t have, not under the circumstances.

I was done with faking injuries on my subordinates’ unconscious bodies. I would put Vermin in a healing cocoon later, when Jackal and Carapace began to wake up, and I expected that they would in a few minutes.

There was just one thing left to do before they did.

Still in disguise, I swung my paw at myself over and over, leaving deep gashes wherever my claws pierced the skin. I punched myself repeatedly, hard enough to leave bruises, almost hard enough to knock myself out. I threw myself at the ground and into the trees, creating more injuries on myself and signs of struggle on the alleged battlefield. The wounds would carry over to my own form, and I was going to need them if anyling were to believe the story I intended to tell!

Maybe the physical pain could serve as a makeshift punishment for my actions.

Author's Note

Those of you who have read Walk Where There Is No Path, you thought a certain chapter was a dream, didn't you? Nope!

Smokescreen

“Ow… my head…”

I paused building a healing cocoon momentarily to cast a glance at Carapace, who was beginning to stir himself awake from the unconsciousness I’d caused him.

“Hey! Get over here and help me build this thing!” I commanded.

He got up and wobbled over.

“What… what happened?”

“An ursa attacked your team earlier tonight. I don’t know what you were doing around here in the middle of the night, but it’s a good thing I went for a walk after reporting to Chrysalis, otherwise you’d probably all be dead now. Don’t you remember any of it?”

“No, I don’t think I even know why we came here. What happened to Vermin?”

“The ursa stomped him. I think he’s dying- will you start with that cocoon already?!”

He did. We worked in silence for a few minutes, then Jackal woke up and I told him the same thing I’d told Carapace.

“But how did you defeat the ursa all by yourself when the three of us couldn’t?”

“I turned into a bigger ursa, and one twice as cranky, of course,” I shot back. “And there were two of you by then, fighting in your own forms. How in the name of eggshells did you expect to defeat the darn thing like that, anyway? Have you forgotten how to fight in disguise?”

Their eyes avoided mine.

“I don’t know what happened, Sir,” Carapace finally said, ”but I guess we must have been careless. We might have endangered our mission, and whatever punishment you think is necessary, we accept it.”

“I’ll take your injuries as punishment enough for now,” I told him. After what I’d done, I couldn’t punish them for it, even to maintain my lie’s credibility! “But I will reconsider that decision if Vermin doesn’t make it despite the healing cocoon!”

They nodded in agreement.

“Sir?” Jackal asked as we were completing the cocoon and enclosing Vermin in it. “What happened to the ursa?”

“It ran away.” I’d debated with myself whether to tell them that it had come out of that cave and that I’d trapped it back inside upon defeating it, but opted against it lest I give them a reason to go in to take a look at the alleged beast. “I didn’t bother chasing it when the three of you were injured. But we better not stick around too long; I don’t know how badly I managed to hurt it, and it could be back if this is part of its territory.”

“You think there’s another entrance to that cave and it lives in it? Or used to at some point?”

Great. Just what I needed! Get curious about the cave again, why don’t you? How many times will I have to feign incidents before you stop trying or, more likely, get suspicious and find out what’s really inside?

As for any more entrances, I hadn’t seen any, but knowing that I hadn’t really bothered to search for potential other exits, I made a mental note to return and take a closer look at a more convenient time, soon if possible, and conceal or block off any I manage to find.

“Possibly, but I think it’s too risky to investigate in our condition. We’d better return to the camps!”

We left the site in silence, the two of them carrying the cocoon with their teammate, me pretending to be on the lookout for any more beasts and actually trying to spot any witnesses of my charade that may still be lingering about. I didn’t see any, so either I was safe, or they were really good at remaining hidden.

I escorted them to their camp and ordered them to stay put until further notice, then headed for my own camp, still trying to spot any tails I might have picked up, thinking about Carapace and Jackal. Had they believed my story? Had my venom erased their memories of the incident like I’d hoped it would? Or had they simply pretended? They probably didn’t remember anything after all, I kept telling myself; they would have confronted me right then and there if something I’d told them hadn’t rung true! They wouldn’t have let my supposed superior rank stand in their way! But could some small fragment of their real memories have remained, something they weren’t yet aware of, but the significance of which they could realize at a later time? Could I convince them that that real fragment of memory had actually been a dream or something along the lines of a wishful-thinking-induced hallucination, which was a pretty rare thing but not unheard of? Only time would tell, but for now, I seemed to be in the clear, at least as far as they were concerned.

“What happened to you?” Grim asked as soon as I was back at the camp.

“Ursa,” I said, not bothering to elaborate. She was about to hear the details pretty soon anyway. “Has anything happened here?”

“No, Sir, we’ve been safe.”

“Good. Now move over, I’ve got to talk to Chrysalis!”

“Isn’t it a little late in the night for that?”

“Do I look like I care?”

But when I activated the communicator, Locust was the one who responded. He looked like I’d woken him up, and I realized I must have; Chrysalis couldn’t sit at the communicators day and night waiting for any unscheduled reports from me, so Locust must have been ordered to cover that during the nights, or at least during this particular night, depending on how Psycho had organized the drones assigned to the communication hub for the time being.

“What?” he asked groggily, then snapped to attention when he realized who he was talking to.

“Get me Chrysalis,” I commanded.

“I can’t! I’m under explicit orders not to disturb her until morning!”

“Even in emergencies?”

“Well, I suppose she would forgive me if I came to tell her the hive was under attack, but anything less than that, I’d probably go to Psycho if it’s important enough.”

“Then get me him, you idiot!”

It took him a few minutes, but eventually Psycho was there.

“Tell me you caught him,” he grumbled.

“No. We had an ursa attack,” I said and relayed my fabricated story and some of the injuries I’d caused to myself and the others. “We’re going to need a drone to replace Vermin, and preferrably another drone to carry him to the hive. I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep a cocooned changeling here, even if it is away from pony settlements.”

He frowned.

“What about you and the rest of Vermin’s team?”

“I can keep doing my duty, and I’m sure Carapace and Jackal can too.”

“Fine, I’ll tell Chrysalis in the morning. She might want to hear it from you directly, so don’t stray too far from the communicator.”

With that, he ended the link.

In the morning, the communicator lit up as Psycho had predicted.

“What’s this about an ursa attack?” Chrysalis asked as soon as her face appeared in the magical bubble.

I repeated the story again, hoping she would be convinced. She listened without interrupting.

“Why didn’t you go after this ursa?” she asked when I was done.

“We didn’t come here to hunt ursas, Your Highness. I saw it as a higher priority to make sure my team was alive and safe.”

“Too bad you weren’t around when the Everfree team could have used a little help!”

She was still mad at me for that?

“With all due respect, Your Highness, how could I have known they were going to be attacked? And even if they had called for help as soon as the attack started, what could I have done from hours away?”

“Ugh, fine. Psycho will select a replacement for Vermin. Now try to not have any more teams killed before we capture Thorax!”

“I’ve been doing that all along, but some things are simply beyond my power!”

“That wasn’t your attitude when you were First Commander! Watch it, or you might become a useless maggot like your brother!”

“Maybe I’ve just learned to stop overestimating my abilities,” I muttered loud enough for her to hear it but not so loud to make it obvious that I’d wanted her to hear it. I didn’t think I was overestimating my abilities, but she needed to hear some kind of an explanation for why things weren’t going the way she wanted them to go, so better this than the truth.

“Maybe I’ve been overestimating them too,” she growled and walked away, leaving the link open.

“You think you’ll be able to keep looking for Thorax while you’re injured like that?” Just as I was about to end the connection, Psycho stepped forward so I could see him. How long had he been there? And how many other reports had he been allowed to listen to? “Until the replacement hunter arrives, I mean?”

“We’re fine, Psycho,” I repeated with a hint of annoyance. I may have feigned a loss of self-confidence to Chrysalis, but I wasn’t going to let him think we were incapable of completing our mission, and more importantly, I didn’t want to give up my post here to someling who would go digging in that cave and find Thorax!

“You sure you don’t want replacements of your own?”

Why was he so insistent all of a sudden?

“I said we’re fine!”

“Fine! Have it your way!”

With that, he ended the connection.

Vigil

The drones arrived about a week later. The cold winds and blizzards had delayed them, but fortunately, they hadn’t encountered major trouble. A medic examined Carapace’s team and me, found our condition to be in line with what I’d reported over the communicator, suggested that we take it easy for a month or so, and agreed with my judgment that Vermin’s injuries were too serious to expect him to undertake any missions in the foreseeable future, which also made it unlikely he’d be joining us again unless the hunt got prolonged beyond anyling’s expectations and more drones got injured in the process. As I’d predicted, they were to take him to the hive where his condition could be monitored, but they opted to wait for nightfall lest any ponies see them. No disguise would be credible now that they had to transport a cocoon!

Vermin’s replacement, Wasp, had only recently completed her advanced training, but Psycho had insisted that she had excelled every test she’d been given and that she would fare no worse in the field despite my misgivings. According to him, just because this was her first mission didn’t mean she was destined to mess it up; though I agreed in principle, I would have still preferred an experienced drone, if for no other reason, then because they tended to be predictable. I couldn’t tell him that without revealing why predictability was so important all of a sudden, of course, so I pretended to be concerned about her lack of experience in a real situation as opposed to drills and battle simulations. Not that the discussion would have changed anything; though it had taken place before the drones had even left the hive, the decision to deploy Wasp had already been made and gotten Chrysalis’ approval, and Psycho had merely decided to inform me about the new hunter I was to work with.

Though I might have approved of Psycho’s choice in different circumstances, I took an immediate dislike of Wasp. Like most soldiers fresh out of training, she’d expressed her absolute and unreserved dedication to the mission - nothing wrong with that per se - but at the same time, she was unabashedly and overly eager to impress, acting so flawlessly by etiquette of changeling army that I found it more irritating than commendable, and holding herself like she intended to work double-time in order to compensate for her injured teammates’ hindered efficiency. Undoubtedly she had some fine qualities and good skills or Psycho wouldn’t have chosen her, but I got the impression that she would work too hard for her own good and stumble upon the one thing I didn’t want her to find!

Was that eagerness why Psycho had selected her? Had he deliberately looked to send a soldier with an overwhelming itch to prove his or her superiority, one who would work day and night in order to outperform his or her teammates, even at the price of collapsing with exhaustion at the worst possible time?

I’d have to keep a close eye on her, I realized. She had just the right attitude to go to that cave and dig up the rocks! Not only that, but her obvious need to excel might drive her to dig up those rocks even if she were, hypothetically, warned against the possible dangers within the cave or even given a direct order to stay away from it! In fact, such a warning or order could inspire to do the very thing she’d have been told not to do, even if she wouldn’t have cared to do it otherwise!

But how would I stop her? Carapace was the leader of her team, and she was thus going to follow primarily his orders! The most I could do was make suggestions to Carapace about what his orders should be! But that was potentially risky; what if he became suspicious about my intentions and decided to investigate?

If only I could rearrange the teams in such a way that Wasp ended up in my own where I could supervise her more easily and assign Grim or Brutus to Carapace’s team instead of her! But that couldn’t happen without Chrysalis’ permission, and she would expect a very good reason why I thought it necessary… and I couldn’t think of one that would be plausible in the long run, neither to her nor to the drones involved. Whether I liked it or not, I was stuck in a position where an over-eager soldier could derail my efforts!

I had already made a decision to maintain my habit of wandering at night so I could visit Thorax’s cave inconspicuously, but now it could prove vital! If the other team found Thorax again, they were bound to realize I’d lied to them, and then they might go straight to Chrysalis rather than confronting me first! I had to be able to stop them if that happened!

...or to be ready to run away if it turned out to be too late to stop them.

I’d never been one to run away from anything, and it surprised me that the idea to do so had come so easily now. But would it be an act of cowardice? No, I realized, I wouldn’t really run away… I would disappear only in a hope to find Thorax, or if they would have captured him, I’d keep close enough until I could get him out of their grasp, and then we’d leave together, me keeping him safe from what would be bound to come, because he would most definitely need it more than ever! It would be an absolute last resort, I wouldn’t undertake it lightly, and I hoped I’d never need to; a good part of me despised myself for this sacrilegious thought of leaving, and I searched every depth of my skills and cunning for a better solution, but if it came to that, I would have already been revealed as a traitor, I would have already lost every chance of returning to the hive as a free and respected soldier! I would be running away from my own punishment, yes, but only for the sake of protecting my brother!

I just hoped it wouldn’t be in vain… that there would still be something left to protect.

Such thoughts occupied my mind endlessly as the days and weeks passed, even after Wasp had proven herself capable of obedience despite her screaming desire to push herself to the limit and beyond, even if it had taken a few occurrences of losing her composure and stepping out of line against Carapace’s authority in the beginning to get there. How he’d gotten her to behave herself again without outright punishing her for her transgressions, I didn’t know, but it had worked, and by the time our wounds had almost healed, she had never once directly disobeyed an order or taken a matter into her own hooves! I was beginning to relax, but didn’t want to let my guard down completely. What if this was just a show? What if she was just waiting for me to slip up before she began with whatever she’d wanted to do since the first day? Could she have been instructed prior to deployment to try to flush out any secrets I may be keeping? Was this really her first mission like Psycho had claimed?

There was really only one thing I could do about it: to go about my business as usual and to give her no reason to change her behavior. So far, I’d been successful.

Reports to the hive, however, were getting harder every day. The teams were still largely reporting nothing of interest, as expected; only occasionally would one of them claim to follow a lead but invariably be disappointed a few days later, and one or two had experienced weather-related issues, but other than that, they were still failing to find Thorax, unaware of the fact that I was secretly watching over him as he slept in a healing cocoon, peaceful and safe at least for the time being, hidden from vengeful fangs’ reach. And, unsurprisingly, Chrysalis wasn’t getting any less intolerant of our failure to track down the traitor. Hoping to get her to call off the hunt eventually, I had become more daring in suggesting that he might have died, sometimes providing made-up suggestions of how it might have happened and trying to keep it at a realistic level and vague enough to avoid alerting her that I might know more than I was revealing, but whether or not she was taking any of my theories seriously, I couldn’t be sure.

My persuasiveness wasn’t the only issue, though: over time, Chrysalis had become... distant, somehow. I’d ignored it at first, thinking she simply didn’t have anything to tell me, but as time went on, there were days when she would just listen to my report and acknowledge it without any signs of interest, or refuse to answer something I wanted to know. By the end of winter, she didn’t even bother to receive my reports personally like she’d been doing at the beginning of my mission, sending Psycho to talk to me instead. He acted much the same; though I’d tried to get him to tell me if something was going on, the only things he would say amounted to ‘not your concern’ or ‘you’ll find out soon enough’. Had they stopped trusting me after I’d failed to drag Thorax back to the hive for so long? Were they suspecting I had something to do with it in a way I wasn’t supposed to?

Had they figured me out? Was I about to get captured and dragged to the hive as a traitor? Had Vermin woken up with memories unaffected by my venom and told them everything? Were they keeping me in the dark so I wouldn’t run away like Thorax had?

At first I was sure it had to be something of the kind, but as time passed and no one had come to arrest me or to capture me at some vulnerable, off-guard moment, I began to relax a little. But what if that had been the plan all along: to make me nervous, then give me all the time I needed to slip up and reveal myself before they took me? A ridiculous strategy in my own opinion, but I’d learned long ago that Chrysalis took great pleasure in tormenting others, even if it delayed what would be considered the real punishment. So why not torment me if I was already doomed?

Like with Wasp, there was only one way to go about this too: keep a cool head, stick to routine, and give them no reason to confirm any suspicions they might have formed.

So I kept taking reports from the other teams, relaying them to the hive, and wandering the forest at nights, visiting the area of Thorax’s cave as often as I dared without it being suspicious in case anyling was keeping track.

Every time, I found the cave exactly as I’d left it.

Until one night in early spring, when the entrance was open again.

A trap? Or had Thorax healed and gotten out?

I pretended to not care about the opened mouth of the cave and kept going until I got far enough away, then transformed into a bat and went back. If there was an ambush inside, a bat might arouse less suspicion than a changeling soldier!

But the cave was empty: no drones lying in wait, no unexplained objects that could be changelings in disguise, and Thorax’s cocoon was broken open again.

This still didn’t necessarily mean I was safe, so I left and went back to the camp as if nothing of interest had happened. If the other team found this, I was going to act upset and make a show of scolding both them and myself for having neglected to check the cave; if not, I would destroy the cocoon the first chance I got.

Over the next couple of days, none of the hunters had shown any signs of knowing about what had happened with the cave, not even a hint of trying to discreetly feel me out for any secrets I might have kept, and I was soon able to get rid of the evidence of Thorax’s presence in Foal Mountain undetected.

Dawn of a New War

The next morning, I woke up better rested than at any point during the course of this mission and with an unusual sense of relief. I took it to be the result of Thorax’s successful recovery and continuation of his journey to wherever he intended to go. Ever since I’d found him getting beaten up and pulled that crazy stunt to get him out of it, I’d been looking over my shoulder, expecting any of my teammates to notice any tiny discrepancy in my story, any little detail I’d neglected to explain that could come back to bite me if put in the right context; I’d kept my eyes open for any wild animals acting uncharacteristically, creatures that could be disguised changelings under orders to supervise me without my knowledge and report any strange behavior to Chrysalis. But now the danger had passed: Thorax had healed and left to look for whatever he wanted to find, I’d destroyed evidence of him ever having been here, and Chrysalis hadn’t sent anyling to capture me for aiding a traitor! She still could, though, and I intended to keep up my habit of wandering at night a little longer for the sake of appearances, then maybe abandon it gradually. Why stick to it when its only purpose had been to monitor Thorax’s cave throughout the winter? If he had any sense in him, he wouldn’t have lingered here; he would have anticipated the possibility that someone might have found out about him and gone away immediately! He was beyond my reach now - he would have had to be! And with nothing remaining to tie him to this place, I could deny any knowledge of his previous whereabouts all I wanted and no one would be able to prove anything! And I wouldn’t even have to lie about his current whereabouts; I genuinely had no idea where he might have gone to!

But there was a downside to it, and not a small one: though it was true that I wouldn’t be able to betray his current location, I could do nothing to keep others from finding it out on their own! Though keeping him hidden had been strenuous, at least I’d known where he was at any given moment, and by extension, where he wasn’t at any given moment, and I could easily keep track of the half-dozen hunters who would have had an opportunity to find him and act accordingly if they got too close for comfort; now he was going into the territory where any group of hunters could find him, and I wouldn’t be able to save him from the consequences, simply because I would be too far away! And that wasn’t even counting the danger of ponies and wild animals!

But he would know that too. He had been on one mission to Equestria, after all, therefore he was somewhat familiar with the territory and culture, which would help his disguise, and he could probably come up with one that wouldn’t stand out.

So despite some residual concerns, I believed Thorax might stand a chance against the hunters, and as a result, I was in a good mood.

But it wasn’t meant to last.

It was still morning when the communicator array lit up with Chrysalis’ face.

Had something happened? In all the time we’d spent here, she’d never been the one to initiate a communicator link except that one time when she’d wanted to hear about the alleged ursa attack, and I’d expected her to do so! What was going on? Not what I thought it might be, I hoped!

“Your Highness!” I approached the communicator. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m cancelling your mission, recalling most of your teams, and sending the rest of you on another one,” she got to the point.

“But we haven’t found Thorax yet! Or did I miss the memo?”

“You didn’t miss anything! In fact, I’m starting to believe he really is dead like you’ve been guessing! Why else would your teams have failed to find him by now? They are all good soldiers; a target as weak and incompetent as Thorax wouldn’t have stood a chance against them!”

I nodded, but inwardly, I found it strange that she would believe me all of a sudden when just days ago she’d insisted that we find him, without a hint of doubting he was still around somewhere. Something didn’t add up, but demanding explanations from her usually ended in all kinds of ways except getting the explanation, and I figured that insisting on one now wouldn’t do me any good, so instead of forcing the matter, I decided to play along. Maybe I could find out more later!

“So what is this new mission?”

“I want you to capture and replace the leaders of Equestria and their closest associates,” she said with an excited grin and a bloodthirsty glint in her eyes.

“All of them?”

“There are only a dozen that matter. You’ve handled far worse in your time!”

Ambitious, I had to admit. Replacing twelve ponies was no big deal in and of itself - changelings were doing that every day, after all - but the leaders were bound to be well protected, especially after that fiasco in Canterlot! How would we even get close to them? And if we succeeded, could we really fool their guards and aides and other subordinates in their direct service into thinking we were the real thing? No doubt they would have ways to verify the leaders’ identities, such as clearance codes, passwords, magic spells… For all we knew, they could have developed a morning routine of gathering together in a room every morning and lathering themselves in that changeling revealer ointment we’d discovered a few months ago in front of a legion of guards to demonstrate they were really who they claimed to be! Replacing Cadance the first time had been easy, I knew that despite not having been there myself when Chrysalis had trapped her, but the ponies had to have learned their lesson since!

I shared my concerns with Chrysalis.

“You think I haven’t thought of that?” she shot back. “Why else do you think I’ve been missing half your reports lately? I had to hear what the infiltrators learned about the security measures! And you’ll love this: they’re practically nonexistent! We attacked their capital city, we keep abducting their populace for food, and they aren’t even trying to make it any harder for us! All they do is catch the sporadic drones whose disguises fail at the wrong time!”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! They’re not even trying to devise ways to keep us out of their land?”

“Lucky for us, they don’t seem to realize how big their problem really is, or they would have done something about it by now.”

“Okay, we’re replacing the leaders. That would be Celestia and Luna in Canterlot, then Twilight Sparkle in Ponyville, and I’m guessing her five henchmares too, or six if we’re counting the dragon?”

“We are.”

“And Cadance and Shining Armor in the Crystal Empire, I take it?”

“Yes.”

I counted them in my head.

“But that’s eleven! Who’s the twelfth?”

She smirked.

“Cadance is expecting a foal. It’s due any day now, and though I don’t especially care for the little brat, I expect he or she will have gotten to know the happy parents pretty well by the time you’re ready to replace them, and foals tend to have an uncanny ability of figuring out something’s wrong even if they can’t put their hoof on it or tell you about it! Plus, with each parent having a horn, it’s pretty much a given that the foal will have one too, and you’ve heard of the weird stuff baby unicorns can sometimes do with magic.”

“If the foal blasts the so-called parents, it could collapse their disguise, among other things,” I caught on.

“Exactly. I’ve seen a few otherwise flawlessly-planned infiltrations fail over the centuries because of that little oversight.”

“So the foal has to go for the sake of our cover, and we have to put in a fake one so the ponies don’t notice anything.” I pondered this. “So we’ll need twelve changelings to impersonate the ponies and the dragon, and preferably some more as a support team standing by to help out if necessary. What should we do with the ponies?”

“A few extra drones will go in with you and carry them to the hive. I should have done that with Cadance the first time! If I had, Twilight wouldn’t have found her so easily, and we would have won the invasion! This time I’m not taking any chances!”

“Are you taking the role of one of the ponies? Celestia maybe?”

“No, I’m staying in the hive this time and coordinating the rest of you. I’ll leave the masquerading to the drones!”

“Do I get to pick the drones I want for this?”

“You’re not commanding this mission, you fool! I am! You’re just preparing to impersonate a pony and making sure the rest of you follow my orders!”

“Forgive me, Your Highness! I got carried away!”

“I can see that!”

“Can I at least know who the team members are?”

“I’ve selected them from your hunter teams and am about to inform them about the change of assignments. You’ll brief them about the details and assign roles; I’ve got more important things to do than repeat that to each of them. You are to rendezvous with them in Ponehenge and take them to your camp where you’ll practice your roles until you’re ready. Psycho will keep you up to speed with the current events that you’ll be expected to know once you start impersonating the leaders. The support teams will arrive later, so for now, expect just the nine impostors.”

“My entire team is included in the mission, then?”

“Yes. Carapace’s team is being recalled to the hive, but they’ll leave their gear and any caught prey for you to make use of.”

“Why not keep them on the mission since they’re here already?”

“Because I have other plans for them!”

I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. Did it have something to do with the so-called ursa attack? Was she suspecting they might know something they hadn’t shared and was planning to question them personally within the safety and privacy of the hive? Had Vermin woken up and told a story different from my own, a story that didn’t sound like a dream? Or was Chrysalis’ decision completely innocent in regards to my worries, unrelated to my antics from a few months ago? If only I could find out without risking to reveal myself!

At least Thorax would have an easier time going through Equestria now that the hunter teams were to return to the hive.

“Just one more thing in case it isn’t obvious,” she said in the end.

“Yes?”

“Even though we’ve agreed that Thorax must be dead by now, there’s no proof of it, so don’t think I’m letting the matter go! If he does turn up alive at any point, you’re still expected to drag him here for his punishment!”

Well, so much for that.

Regrouping

I relayed the news to Grim and Brutus.

“Mission over? Just like that, huh?” Grim mused.

“Yeah right,” snorted Brutus. “She probably found a drone who can actually get the job done!”

“Then why not tell us that?”

“How do you know she hasn’t? I wasn’t anywhere near the communicator while they talked! For all we know, Pharynx is just trying to save face!”

“I can hail Chrysalis back if you don’t believe me,” I interjected. “In fact, I think I will! Come here, Brutus, let’s see how she likes explaining it to you!”

He rolled his eyes and left, grumbling something about having to sharpen the spears.

“Why don’t you ever punish him for acting like that, Sir?”

“Honestly? I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” Probably because I’d been too busy worrying about Thorax to invent ways to punish Brutus that would be creative enough to maintain my reputation of a ruthless commander no one in their right mind would want to mess with. Come to think of it, had my failure to discipline my subordinates clued them in that something was off? Maybe the creativity of disciplinary measures wouldn’t have been as necessary an element as I’d thought!

“What are our orders for today?” she asked after a moment.

Before I could say anything, Carapace, Wasp, and Jackal came in, hauling their battle gear, communicator, and other supplies, including two lamps and a cocooned griffon.

“Chrysalis says we’re leaving,” Carapace said, dropping the bag of supplies on the ground. “You might need these.”

“Any word on where she’s sending you next?”

“No, she says we’ll find out once we’re back in the hive.” Wasp dropped the griffon. “This one’s pretty drained, not that there was much love in him to begin with, but I guess he can last another day or two, depending on how hungry you are.”

“Do you know why you’re staying and we aren’t?” Jackal asked Grim as Carapace and I were attaching the griffon’s cocoon to the ceiling.

“It’s classified,” I told him. “Not even the other drones involved know anything yet!”

He nodded. “Understood.”

“You should go now.” It was a command, not a suggestion, and they took the hint. They fired up their transformation magic, and a moment later, three crows got out of the camp and flew into the sky.

I watched them go. Once they were out of my sight, I returned into the camp and feasted on the griffon they’d brought, then turned to Grim, who was waiting patiently for her turn at breakfast.

“You wanted your orders a few minutes ago. Here they are: you guard the camp, and Brutus is to go catch a pony for us to feed on next. That last unicorn we caught isn’t in much better shape than this griffon, and there’ll be twelve of us here pretty soon. If Brutus can catch more than one pony, even better!”

I turned to leave.

“How long will you be gone, Sir?” Grim halted me.

“How should I know? She didn’t say where the others are travelling from! If it’s somewhere close like Canterlot or Ponyville, I’ll probably be back by evening; if it’s Klugetown or Zebrica or some such faraway place, I could end up waiting for them for over a week! You hold the fort till I get back!”

“At least take the extra communicator in case of emergencies!”

“Your emergencies or mine?”

“Either or both. We don’t know what could happen!”

As much as I didn’t want to appear insecure or incapable of handling dangerous situations, I couldn’t deny that having a way to contact other changelings was a wise precaution.

I grabbed the communicator and left.

I found Ponehenge easily enough, even though I’d never been there and only knew its approximate location. Such a peculiar formation of rocks was impossible to miss, especially since it was surrounded by miles upon miles of nothing but trees, and despite having been almost reclaimed by the vegetation! What had its purpose been, again? Something about protecting Equestria? Yes, it used to be the headquarters of the team of protectors of Equestria in its first days of existence as a country of the united pony tribes! I’d read about it in some obscure scroll I’d stumbled upon at some point near the beginning of my duty as First Commander!

It was obvious why Chrysalis had selected this place in particular as the rendezvous point for our reassembled teams. On the practical side, it was a unique landmark, much less likely to be mistaken for something else like any random cave or derelict cottage was; the drones would have to be both blind and crazy to fail to recognize it or to mistake something else for it! But the selection also showed the Queen’s sense of irony and poetic justice: this site, once the focal point of the magic that had kept Equestria safe, was about to become the starting point of the operation that would bring about its undoing.

But first I had to secure the area. The place may have been forgotten by the pony world to the best of our knowledge, abandoned and unused for centuries, but that didn’t mean some residual safeguard spells or traps couldn’t still be active despite the derelict and overgrown state of the area, just waiting for intruders such as myself to crawl in recklessly and be crushed, disintegrated, sliced up into pieces, or whichever other fate the ponies of that era had fancied for their enemies! And even without such security measures, some ill-tempered wild animal might have decided this would be a nice home!

I spent the rest of that day and most of the next one poking around, clearing out the vines and brambles, keeping an eye out for any signs of traps, but all I found were some snakes and puckwudgies that I duly catapulted out of the way, unfazed by their respective hissing and thorn-launching. I tried to detect any protective spells, but none stood out from the background noise leftover from the magic that had once been wielded here. It was unbelievable: no traps, no protective spells, nothing! Had they all been triggered already when nopony was around to reset them anymore? Or had they never even existed? I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised by the latter, especially after what Chrysalis had told me about the current pathetic security measures around the most important ponies alive today! How had these imbecile creatures survived for so long if they were too trusting for their own good?

Satisfied that my teams could land safely, I disguised myself as a bramble-covered rock while waiting for them to arrive.

The first team arrived around sundown. They looked around as if confused, asked one another if this really was the right place, to which their leader replied that it must be because this was the only rock formation of the right size they could find in the entire forest.

They’d anticipated an overgrown rock formation, I realized. Had my efforts to keep us safe made it harder or even impossible for the other teams to find us?

The second and third team arrived close to dawn, minutes apart. By then, the members of the first team had all taken turns guarding the area while the other two slept. Even I had dozed off a few times! The newcomers took notice of one another and of the team already here, who had all woken up by now, but they all kept to themselves, some guarding their gear, some pacing around, some just sitting in place and looking at the surroundings. I waited a little longer to see if any of them would say anything eventually, but they didn’t, and anyway I was getting tired of waiting. So were they, by the looks of it.

I revealed myself to them.

“Identify yourselves!” I commanded as if I knew whom to expect rather than tried to find out who they were.

“Sub-commander Morpheus, East Neighagaran Plateau team,” one of the last evening’s arrivals spoke out, then pointed to the other two from his team. “My teammates Poison and Buzz.”

“Sub-commander Raptor, Seaddle team,” said one of the new arrivals. “These are Acid and Trickster.”

“Sub-commander Fang, Griffonstone team,” the remaining leader introduced himself. “Banshee, Leech.”

“Clearance codes?” As if I knew them! But better to keep appearances; they didn’t have to know that I was as much in the dark about my new team as they were!

One by one, each drone recited their own clearance code.

“Were any of you followed here?”

“No, Sir!” they said in unison.

“Good. Now that you’re all here, we should get moving! The mission isn’t going to complete itself!”

I grabbed my communicator from under the central rock where I’d stashed it soon upon arrival, then took to the air.

“Aren’t we supposed to wait for one more team?” Morpheus asked.

“The fourth team is my own! I’m taking you to them!”

“Why didn’t they come here?”

“Because the mission requires preparation and we can’t do that here. This was merely a rendezvous point that you were going to find more easily than our actual camp!”

Seemingly satisfied with my explanation, they picked up their gear and prepared to follow me.

I led them into the forest, beneath the foliage, where we were less likely to get noticed by any pegasi, airships, or other airborne enemies that may be in the area. Not that I expected there were any in such a secluded part of the world, but one could never be too careful!

Soon after we left Ponehenge, Raptor approached me with a questioning look.

“Sir, if I may ask, what is this new mission?”

“I’ll brief you all once we’re at the camp,” I retorted.

None of them said a word for the rest of the trip.

Two Fronts

We’d barely landed at our camp when I noticed my communicator scarabs glowing in their bag. Almost at the same moment, Brutus came out of the mining shaft, noticed us, and stuck his head back inside.

“You can stop trying! They’re here!” he yelled, presumably to Grim, and the scarabs’ glow dimmed.

“What happened?” I asked Grim, who was just coming out herself.

“Chrysalis just called. She wanted to talk to you, but I told her you weren’t back yet, so she told me to pass the message. Anyway, the hive’s lost contact with the entirety of Manehattan’s infiltration force. The last contact with any of them was three days ago. She sent a few infiltrators from Fillydelphia to investigate, but they haven’t reported in since, so now she wants to see if you can figure it out.”

“Me? Has she forgotten that I’m supposed to be preparing for a new mission of great importance?”

“She hasn’t, but she said a few days’ delay won’t make that much of a difference. Besides, if they’ve figured out a way to detect us…”

“...then we’ll have to rethink the whole strategy for this,” I caught on. “But why me specifically? Bostrot and Fillydelphia are much closer to Manehattan than we are, and there have to be some skilled drones there beside those you said went missing! Why not send them?”

“I didn’t ask, and she probably wouldn’t have told me anyway, but I got the impression that she trusts you better than any other drone to sort this out.”

“How very flattering,” I said dryly. “Did she say how she wanted it done, or am I free to act as I see fit?”

“She said to take one of the soldiers from the new team with you, and to try not to attract too much attention, but the rest is up to you.”

I nodded. Compared to some other demands that I’d had to deal with over the years, this was pretty generous and straightforward. It would make my job a lot easier: the less I had to worry about adhering to her technical expectations, the better I could focus on the actual task!

“Oh, and Psycho gave me the names and aliases of all infiltrators and the locations of everyling’s hideouts, as well as the names of the drones from Fillydelphia that got sent to investigate first.” She gave me a scroll. “I’ve written them down for you.”

I accepted the scroll, skimmed through it, then turned to the drones I’d brought from Ponehenge.

“You’ve heard what happened. Obviously I’m taking one of you with me, and the rest are staying here to prepare for the mission you were sent to before this stupid complication came up. Which of you have experience in covert investigations of this kind?”

Fang and Acid stepped forward.

“Okay, Fang, you’re coming along, the rest of you are staying here. I’ll brief you now so you can start working until Fang and I return, assuming we do return.” I proceeded to tell them everything I knew about the mission, then assigned roles to each of us. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“Then get to work! Grim is in charge until I return, and I’ll have the communicator with me in case you run into problems she can’t handle! Fang, let’s go!”

We arrived in Manehattan disguised as ponies and found one of the hideouts on Grim’s list: a humble cottage in the poorer suburbs of the city, where a drone named Rampage lived as an alleged repairpony. We didn’t expect to find him there if he’d disappeared like the others, but it was close enough to where we entered the city and as good a place as any to start looking.

We knocked on the door and got no reply.

“If you’re looking for Handy Wrench, you won’t find him,” a pony called to us from the neighboring yard.

According to Grim’s list, ‘Handy Wrench’ was Rampage’s alias for this assignment.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I figure he won’t. They got him in that raid the other day, you know.”

Fang and I exchanged glances.

“Raid?”

“Seriously? Where have you two been?”

“Out of town,” I improvised, guessing where this was going. “We only just came back. What happened?”

“Just your luck! Some filly and her dad were looking for the kid’s lost dog and stumbled upon a changeling of all things! The whole city tried to chase him down - cops, civilians, you name it - I wasn’t there, but I heard it was just like Canterlot that time when Princess Cadance was getting married!”

“I’m sure it was quite a shock, but what’s it got to do with Handy Wrench?”

“I’m getting there, buddy. Anyway, the darn thing got away, but the cops weren’t giving up on finding him, so they organized a city-wide raid, and didn’t even spare people’s homes while doing it! Gave my wife quite a scare when they broke in! Not that they found anything in our house, but they struck gold there!” He pointed to Rampage’s cottage. “Turns out Handy Wrench is a changeling! Would you believe it?”

We feigned shock and disbelief.

“You don’t say!”

“I never would have guessed!”

“So what did they do to him?” I asked.

“Dragged him away in chains, of course! What else were they supposed to?”

I was on the verge of suggesting they should have killed him on the spot, but stopped myself. Chrysalis might decide to execute him anyway when our soldiers manage to snatch him away from ponies, but no need to give them ideas for any future incidents, even for the sake of my own disguise’s credibility!

“You’re right,” I sighed instead. “Well, looks like we came here for nothing!”

We left and kept walking until we got to a park and found a relatively secluded part of it where we could discuss the news.

“Sir, if they raided the whole city, I don’t expect we’ll find any of our infiltrators,” Fang said when we were out of ponies’ earshot. “They must have all been taken prisoners.”

“I agree. But they could have missed some for one reason or another, and I’m willing to allow for the possibility that any such drones went into hiding for a while for their own safety, and we should find them.”

“Good idea. They might know which of them got noticed.”

“That, and it’ll work in their favor to have it known that they’ve dodged capture when Chrysalis starts giving out punishments.”

“You’re right, Sir. If they do get punished for this, it’ll likely be something mild, unlike those who got caught, assuming we can get them out of pony prisons and drag them to the hive.”

“What do you mean, ‘assuming we can’? Our soldiers won’t give up until they do, no matter what it takes!”

Fang said nothing.

“Sir, I’ve been thinking,” he broke the silence after a while.

“And what brilliant conclusion did you come to?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it brilliant. But suppose Thorax is still alive; do you think he might have come here? For all we know, he could have gotten captured with the others!”

That caught my attention. Indeed it was possible, and the thought had crossed my mind, and if it had happened, I didn’t think there was anything I could do to help him… other than, maybe, try to keep Chrysalis from finding out so she wouldn’t send a swarm for him. Despite my utter despise of ponies, I still thought Thorax would be better off at their mercy than at Chrysalis’! But what if he was still out there, roaming free? If that was the case, our actions here could have a bearing on his fate; for all I knew, we could even run into him if he was in the area! I had to keep Fang’s mind off him! But could I? I decided to play along for now and see how determined he was to capture my brother, then plan accordingly.

“And how do you propose we find out?”

“That’s the thing, Sir; I have a couple of ideas but they are either risky or have a low chance of success. Assuming he did come here, he would have had plenty of time to establish a false identity for himself, so his story would be similar to the one we heard about Rampage, except that he isn’t on our list and we don’t know where to go looking for him. And the city is too big to question every single pony on the off-chance we’ll find one who’ll know of a hideout that the list doesn’t cover and could qualify as his.”

“So we do nothing?”

“Maybe not. If we can find out how many changelings got arrested…”

“...and the number is one higher than our count of missing drones, we could deduce that they’ve got him.”

“Exactly. Unless any other changelings are unaccounted for other than the captured infiltrators and the drones sent to investigate first?”

“More traitors?” I hissed at him. “You really think more drones would be that stupid?”

“No, Sir!” he corrected himself quickly. “I’m sure everyling else is loyal to the Queen!”

“Hm.”

We walked in silence some more.

“Do you really think they knocked down every door in the city?”

“What?”

“The cops involved in the raid. Wouldn’t it have been too much of a task to go on a blind hunt in a city of this size? And they seem to have captured all of our drones!”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Couldn’t they have had help, as in, a source of information where to look specifically?”

I gave him a blank stare. Was he trying to say what I thought he was?

“Couldn’t have Thorax revealed our infiltrators to them?” he asked.

“That’s ridiculous! Thorax wouldn’t know where any of them are! Even I didn’t until I saw that list! And why wait seven months to do it?”

“He might have thought Chrysalis wouldn’t connect it to him if he allowed some time to pass after his escape. Or maybe it took the cops that long to organize the raid and the changeling sighting was just a coincidence or a show for the public with which they intended to gain the populace’s cooperation.”

Creative thinking, I had to admit, but I doubted Thorax would have done any of that. Even if he had somehow found out about the location of one or two hideouts, he couldn’t have known about every single one of them, and he certainly wouldn’t have had the guts to sell them out! What would it gain him, anyway? At best, it would only win him some marginally useful points in pony eyes, and he had to be aware that Chrysalis would investigate the disappearance of so many infiltrators!

“Why would he do it at all?” I retorted.

“He’s a traitor! What more do you need?”

So that was that? He was a traitor, therefore everything that ever went wrong for us was his fault? I would have laughed at that logic even if Thorax wasn’t my brother!

But Fang was obviously too far gone to be reasoned with on the matter; I had to find a different approach if I wanted to keep him away from Thorax.

“Okay, so what would you do if you were in charge?”

“It’s evening already, and since there’s too many names and places to visit them all if we’re going to get the same story everywhere, I’d sneak into the police station and review the raid logs, see how many changelings they’ve captured. We should be able to find out that much even if something goes wrong and we have to get out quickly. If we have the chance, we can read the logs in detail and see where the arrests happened; some of them had to be at the hideouts and we can cross them out. Then we only have to check the remaining hideouts if we still see the need. It could be even less work if we find that any of them revealed their true names to the ponies, whether due to stupidity, cowardice, or by succumbing to interrogation.”

I couldn’t deny that the strategy made some sense. But sneaking into enemy defense headquarters was always risky business, and even the best plans sometimes failed! I knew I could fight my way out of it no matter what a bunch of pony cops tried, but could the same be said for Fang? Despite him drooling venom at the thought of capturing Thorax, I didn’t want him to join the Manehattan infiltrators in prison, and not just because of what Chrysalis might do to either of us! I knew I might end up having to pull another stunt to keep the news of Thorax’s whereabouts a secret if it turned out he’d been captured along with the others, but that didn’t mean I had to like it!

If nothing else, finding out who got captured directly from the ponies involved might ease my mind about Thorax, at least until the next episode. Also, I might have actually come up with a strategy similar to Fang’s if I were alone and free to act as I needed to, and would have relished outsmarting the ponies on their own guarded turf, but having to keep a close eye on a soldier I’d had no excuse to leave behind and couldn’t afford to let roam unsupervised in a city that could be Thorax’s new home soured the whole ordeal as much as the possibility of finding my brother’s name on the list of prisoners.

Reluctantly, I agreed to raid the police station.

Raid

We found the police station easily enough; it was a solidly-built structure in one of the bigger streets of the city’s central area, its location indicated by sign-posts in a number of spots across the city. Night had fallen by then, and though a few cops were busy corralling some thugs out of a carriage and toward what I assumed was the side-entrance closest to the jail cells, the place was pretty quiet compared to some other stations I’d seen in Equestria during my early years in Chrysalis’ army, and compared to what this same station probably looked like at daytime. The place would never be completely empty for us to raid as we please, but most of the cops should be at home at this hour as far as I knew, leaving only a smaller force active overnight in case of emergencies. This would inevitably include at least a couple of higher-ranking individuals, who were more likely to possess the logs we needed than some random low-level cop, and if our luck served us well, the pony in charge of the raid logs would have been assigned to cover some other night shift, and he or she wouldn’t have carried the logs home.

Fang and I hid behind some trash cans and turned into rats when nopony was paying attention, then snuck in through the side-door that had been left open after the group of thugs had gotten in. A guard was posted at the entrance, but he took no notice of us as we scurried past him. Some of the prisoners noticed us as we ran past the cells, but hardly any of them responded to our presence, and the biggest reaction was a mildly annoyed scoff that nopony would have cared to heed. The cop who had opened the door to the rest of the building, thus inadvertently letting us in, blasted his magic at us, missed as we ran around a corner, and swore under his breath, but didn’t bother to pursue us. Apparently, much like we’d assumed, rats were a common sight in the jail section of this station, and we couldn’t have been the first ones to have found their way into the more respectable parts!

Our original plan had been to transform into cops upon finding a secluded place inside the station, but a better opportunity presented itself in the form of a janitor who was just getting out of a storage room.

Having made sure the corridor was otherwise empty, we dropped our disguises and shoved the janitor back where he’d come from, and before he had the chance to cry out, Fang held him in place while I sank my fangs in his neck, careful to pierce the skin where his mane would hide the telltale bite marks. Then, I took his form and Fang pretended to be a broom that I took with me. We were now ready to tear the place apart and nopony would suspect a thing! Much like in the hive, the ponies weren’t going to take on cleaning duty if there was someone else designated for it; the only difference was that pony janitors were known for a fact to not have their movement restricted by security clearances. As long as I looked the part, nopony was going to ask for my credentials or clearance code in order to let me into a room!

I went around room by room, and instead of cleaning, I signalled Fang to drop his disguise whenever we were out of ponies’ sight, and we tossed every room together, looking for anything that could be useful.

“I think I found it,” Fang announced in, probably, the tenth room we’d gotten around to.

“Let me see.” I dropped a stack of files and joined him.

“It says, ‘Operation Bug Stomp’. Who’s naming this stuff?”

“Never mind the title! Does it list our infiltrators?”

He skimmed through it.

“Not the names, but there’s an awful lot of addresses… Do you still have that list that Grim gave us, Sir?”

“How would I have hauled it around as a rat without drawing all the attention to myself, you idiot? I tucked it into a gutter behind those trash cans, along with the communicator!”

Admittedly, I could have planned that part out a bit better. I looked around. The room had a window, so theoretically, one of us could fly out and fetch the list, but which disguise could we use without drawing undue attention to ourselves? Even pegasi cops didn’t go in and out of their offices through windows, and though this one wasn’t barred like some of the others, what if somepony noticed us and realized we weren’t the ones working in this office even if we disguised ourselves as cops like originally intended?

Then my gaze fell onto an object on the cupboard, partially hidden by donut bags. Is that what I think it is?

“Sir?”

I pushed the donut bags aside and took the polaroid camera in my hooves. Perfect! I’d only used one of them once before; I hoped I still remembered how!

“Can you hold that report up so I can snap a picture of the whole thing?”

The report consisted of several pages, but he managed after some fumbling.

I got in position, adjusted the aperture and shutter speed, and snapped the photo. The resulting flash caught us off guard; for a moment, we were sure it had given us away! We braced for battle, but nopony came in, and soon the photo had gotten out of the camera and developed itself enough to show the text would be readable, albeit tiny. Satisfied, we returned everything the way we’d found it, then backtracked to the storage room, where we arranged the still-unconscious real janitor as if a box had fallen on his head, and gave him an appropriate lump that he would have gotten from the said box. If anypony were to wonder why the station hadn’t been cleaned, that would explain it, along with why he couldn’t remember what had happened to him… or, in worst-case scenario, nopony would be very surprised to learn that he’d had a strange dream about having been randomly attacked by a couple of changelings.

Once we were satisfied, I folded the photo I’d taken so it would be small enough, which was easy with it being significantly smaller than Grim’s scroll, then turned into a rat again, only this time, I gave myself two extra appendages on my underside that would be unnoticeable by a casual observer while still allowing me to carry the folded-up photo out the same way we’d gotten in. It took some waiting until a cop opened the door to the jail section, but we were ready to zigzag-scurry to the other end of the hallway at full speed to avoid getting hit by any more spells aimed at us, not that it mattered in the end because the cop who opened the door this time was an earth pony too busy reading a piece of paper to notice and stomp pests running about at his hooves, and the guard at the side-entrance was half-asleep and might not have noticed us if we were in our real forms.

Safely out of the building, we returned to our trash cans, where we restored our previous pony disguises and retrieved the scroll and communicator I’d hidden. We then set out to find a quiet place where we could study our find undisturbed. Fang suggested doubling back to Rampage’s hideout; I dismissed that immediately. Even if the neighbors weren’t aware that the place was empty, we couldn’t be sure the cops hadn’t posted any anti-changeling security measures inside the cottage itself, or that they wouldn’t decide they needed to check something in there and that it couldn’t wait until morning!

Eventually we settled on spending the night in a cheap motel we’d come across, deeming it safer than trying our luck with any seemingly abandoned shop or cottage that could turn out to be thug headquarters or overnight shelter for homeless ponies. Not that we were concerned about not being up to the task of fighting them if it came to that; we simply wanted to stand out as little as possible! Paying for a room wasn’t an issue, either, since we’d been saving whatever bits our prey happened to have at the moment of becoming food and Fang had forgotten to leave his team’s stash behind at Foal Mountain.

Once in the room, we got straight to reading the report from the photo I’d taken and comparing the list of arrest locations with our own scroll.

By morning, we were done comparing lists and discussing the findings, and were ready to report to Chrysalis. Fang drew the curtains to give us privacy from any pegasi that might get too curious for their own good, and I activated the communicator.

“What have you found?” she asked right away.

“From what we’ve learned so far, one of the infiltrators got spotted in his own form by accident, and it prompted the cops to perform a city-wide raid to catch all the changelings they could find, and it looks like they were admirably successful. I don’t know how they figured out where to find our infiltrators yet, but the police report lists most of their hideouts correctly. Seven got captured elsewhere, unsurprisingly, and the drones you sent from Fillydelphia are on the list too judging by the date and time of the last arrest, but three more got captured in between, specifically the day after the majority of the infiltrators, and that’s three more than we have on the list Psycho gave Grim. Did he forget to count anyling in?”

“I’ll ask him, but there’s another possibility. The team of hunters you assigned to Manehattan never returned. They should have by now, considering how all but the most distantly-deployed teams are back.”

“They were listed as a group arrest,” Fang interjected, having checked the report again.

“Are you both saying they got captured?” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly.

“It does seem likely. Pharynx, you picked the hunters personally, and you insisted they were the best you could find. How are so many of them suddenly this incompetent? First the Everfree team gets eaten, then the Foal Mountain team can’t fight off an ursa and the Yakyakistan team can’t dig themselves out of an avalanche, and now the Manehattan team gets captured and the Rainbow Falls team gets their hideout discovered on the same day, possibly minutes apart! What is going on?”

Rainbow Falls too? What had happened there?

“What are you suggesting, Your Highness?” I was pretty sure I knew, but wanted to hear it from her.

“Is Thorax alive and are you protecting him?”

I think so and yes, but why should I tell you?

“How would I know? I haven’t seen him since the evening before he escaped!”

“And you’re sure you’re not pulling any elaborate schemes on the off-chance that he’s alive?”

I am pulling schemes, but good luck getting me to admit it!

“Yes, I’m sure! Ask Fang if you don’t believe me! We were discussing the likelihood of him having been captured along with the others and possible scenarios how it could have happened!”

She looked at him and he nodded.

“Pharynx finds it unlikely that Thorax would have successfully taken the place of one of our infiltrators, and I tend to agree. But it could have happened if a drone got seriously injured or something like that and was unable to fight back. It would be a good disguise for him, after all. Either that, or he simply got captured along with the others and one infiltrator is still free, lying low until the dust settles.”

“Or Thorax chose to pretend to be the one infiltrator lying low until the dust settles.”

“Possibly. But we haven’t found anything to prove or disprove any of that.”

“Did you find out which prison they were taken to?”

“Hold on... “ I consulted the photo. “I know I’ve seen it somewhere… ah, there it is! They were taken to Alcatrots, all of them.”

“I’ll have Psycho assemble a team to deploy there.”

“What are your orders for us?”

“You’ve found out enough for now. We’ll see if anything else might need clearing up eventually, but for the time being, you can return to Foal Mountain and continue preparing for your mission.”

“Understood,” we said in unison and terminated the link.

Having made sure we’d left no trace of our business here, we checked out of the motel and set out for our camp.

Author's Note

Some of you might have noticed that I write stories by creating a buffer of completed chapters before posting anything, rather than uploading every chapter as soon as it’s finished like a lot of other writers do. It started out like that accidentally, and I’ve stuck to it since because it makes it easier to make adjustments to the story if I notice anything that needs correcting before it gets published (thus minimizing the need to retcon stuff), and as a bonus, it allows me to keep a consistent schedule.
Why is that important? Just a bit of random trivia: this is the last chapter I managed to complete before the Season 9 finale.

Work and Discipline

By the time Fang and I returned to our camp, the preparations for the new mission were in full swing. Well, Trickster and Morpheus were in full swing with preparations, anyway; they had picked a spot near the entrance to our mining shaft to practice their roles, and were so focused they hadn’t noticed us arrive.

“Sir, do you need me for anything?” Fang said as we approached the clearing near the shaft entrance. “I’d like to go practice my flying if it’s okay with you.”

“Uh-huh, go,” I said absent-mindedly, eyeing the other nearby drones.

He saluted and flew off.

“Okay… one more time…” said Trickster, transforming into a pink mare. “Hi! Are you up for a party? I’m making one for the whole town and I want you to-” She went into a coughing fit.

Morpheus burst out laughing.

“Very funny!” she yelled at him. “You try talking in that crazy squeaky voice all day!”

“Then you better practice, because once we’re off, you’ll have no choice!” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, since you’re so smart, why don’t you do it?”

“I don’t have to!” He transformed into a yellow pegasus, then continued in a whisper. “My assigned pony is so quiet I might as well whisper in my own voice and nopony would notice anything wrong with me!”

He got an exasperated groan in reply.

“There’s more to a role than squeaky voices or whispering,” I stated, attracting their attention. “And repeating phrases isn’t going to be good enough. You have to learn what your assigned ponies are like, get in their heads, understand their mindset. Only when you master predicting how they would respond in any given situation will your disguises be convincing! Physical appearances and tones of voice are the least of it!”

“Yes, Sir, we learned that in basic infiltration course!” Morpheus replied.

“In Fluttershy,” I commanded.

Still wearing the disguise, he relaxed his posture, fixed his eyes to the ground, and fidgeted his hoof.

“Erm… i-i-if you say so, Sir,” he whispered.

“Could be better, but you’re getting there,” I told him, then turned to Trickster. “Now you!”

She leaped into the air and grinned widely. Maybe a little too widely.

“Yessir, Pharynx Sir!” she squeaked loudly.

“Eh, it’s passable, but that grin needs some work. Where are the others?”

“Buzz and Raptor are out hunting, Grim is inside with Acid, Leech, and-”

A loud crash interrupted her.

“-that would be Poison. I think she’s been overdoing her role a little, if I may say so.”

“A little? What does she think she’s supposed to impersonate, a maulwurf?”

But the crash might not have been related to roleplay practising; soon we heard arguing voices echoing from the shaft, and the anger in them seemed to be too genuine for a practice session, not to mention uncharacteristic of their assigned ponies.

What were they doing in there?

I stormed in; whatever was going on sounded like trouble, and changeling fights were known to end badly if allowed to get out of control! And we’d had plenty enough setbacks and complications recently!

Almost immediately, a clearly audible, roaring threat reached my ears and made me realize just how urgently I needed to act or Chrysalis would end up listening to yet another report of the kind she didn’t like to hear:

“Liken me to Thorax once more and I’ll kill you!”

This was followed by an unintelligible grumble, a couple of sounds of transformation spells, Grim shouting “Enough!”, and another transformation sound.

And more crashes and thuds.

And a pained hiss, soon drowned out by the continuing noise.

I finally broke into one of the lower chambers, just in time to see an oversized spiky dragonfly slam an appendage at a just-as-oversized winged scorpion, who fell to the ground next to me and fizzled back into Grim. She quickly shook herself back into focus and charged at the dragonfly undisguised, only for both of them to get tackled by a mantis-like thing that I hadn’t noticed had climbed onto the ceiling in the meantime.

Grim had by then managed to bite the dragonfly, who reverted to Leech’s natural form when the venom started to take effect… but now, the mantis was holding her in its grasp in such a way that she couldn’t bite again and shaking her violently.

And I’d been standing there long enough, even if it had been only a couple of seconds!

Not bothering with a battle disguise, I lunged at the mantis, dodging its attempts to swat me out of the air, and landed on its shoulder and delivered a bite of my own.

The mantis tensed up and crashed back into its normal form of Poison as she fell into unconsciousness.

Not wasting a moment, Grim rushed to the far end of the chamber.

“Darn it,” she muttered just as I noticed the last figure in the room, one I hadn’t bothered to perceive in the commotion: Acid’s motionless body hung impaled on one of Brutus’ spears, blood dripping into an already-impressive puddle on the ground.

“What happened?” I roared at Grim, my patience vanishing from existence.

“The three of them have been at each others’ throats ever since you and Fang left for Manehattan. I’ve done my best to make them behave, but… well, I’m afraid this was inevitable.”

“And the others?”

“They conveniently found someplace they needed to be or something they needed to do every time these three showed signs they might start acting out.” She hung her head. “I’ve failed you, Sir. You left me in charge and I’ve betrayed that trust. I deserve whatever punishment you give me!”

I looked at Acid again. He was clearly beyond help now; even if he was still alive, he wouldn’t be by the time we managed to build a healing cocoon.

“Chrysalis will decide that,” I told Grim, my gaze still fixed on Acid. “This mess is beyond my level of authority.”

She tried to hide a wince.

I went to activate the communicators. Grim followed at a distance, then stood just inside the chamber while waiting for me to establish the link.

Soon enough, Locust’s face appeared in the bubble.

“Get me Chrysalis,” I commanded.

He left without a word, likely noticing in my posture or the sound of my voice that it was better not to ask what had happened, and a few minutes later, I was looking at the Queen’s face.

How was I going to explain this to her? She’d sent me the teams that must have been the most capable of completing the mission by her judgment; I knew they were capable, having picked them for our previous assignment myself! They should have been the prime examples of infiltrators’ efficiency and military discipline, and what had they done? Instead of focusing on the given task and ignoring all distractions, they’d relapsed into recklessness and anarchy! Not only that, they’d killed one of our own! And the others hadn’t even had the guts to try to stop them! Where had it gone so wrong? How had they lost sight of what truly mattered? Did warrior’s honor and the will of the Queen mean nothing to them?

Even before I spoke, I knew what Chrysalis’ judgment was going to be: punishment about as bad as the one Thorax would have gotten if we’d succeeded in capturing him.

...if I hadn’t sabotaged his capture, I corrected myself.

At least Thorax had never killed anyone.

And I’d never thought the day would come when I’d see it as a good thing.

“This better be important,” Chrysalis spoke.

“Your Highness, something has happened and you’re going to be mad.”

“Don’t tell me there’s another mess-up,” she groaned.

I told her.

As I spoke, her frown intensified and she gritted her teeth; by the end, I was surprised that I couldn’t see fury steaming out of her ears and venom spraying from her fangs. She did, however, compensate for that by bellowing a string of threats and curses that even I would have had a hard time coming up with! This went on for a while, long enough that I was beginning to wonder if I’d gotten stuck listening to her for the rest of eternity… until, finally, her outburst ended with a frustrated snort.

“Psycho!” she called out.

“Yes, Your Highness,” he spoke shortly, somewhere out of the communicator’s visual reach.

“Send guards to Foal Mountain to grab Leech and Poison and drag them here,” she commanded. “They had a fight with Acid and killed him.”

“On it!”

He must have started to leave, as Chrysalis then barked, “I’m not finished!”, after which he returned close enough that I could see part of his head displayed in the communicator bubble.

“Are all the hunter teams back yet?”

“No, the ones from Zebrica and Abyssinia are still on the way, expected to return by tomorrow night according to their last report, unless something delays them.”

“Whichever of them reports first, redirect them to Foal Mountain! They’ll have to replace the lost soldiers!”

Even though I’d expected that Leech and Poison would fare no better, it was still jarring to hear how easily she’d written them off. Then again, she’d done the same with Thorax after he left the hive, even if she hadn’t yet gotten her hooves on him; but I knew all too well that she very much would carry out those punishments without a moment’s notice or a hint of hesitation! But what would she do to the others? To me? Surely she would want to punish us all; the others for not interfering, and me for failing to establish my authority in such a way that none of them would have even dared to think of committing such an excess! If sending just one replacement team was any indication, then it was safe to assume she was going to let us live… for now, anyway. Not that I was afraid of dying, and I would have probably deserved it had she deemed such a punishment necessary, but who would protect Thorax if I was gone? The hive had already replaced me as its chief protector, therefore I could safely assume keeping intruders out of our land wasn’t my concern anymore; but no matter how slim the chances were for me to be in a position to make a difference, maybe Thorax could still benefit from my assistance! That, at least, was worth staying alive for!

“Understood,” said Psycho on the other end of the link.

“Dismissed!” Chrysalis turned back to the communicator. “Is that Grim standing behind you?”

Grim stepped forward and I moved aside to let her approach the communicator.

“Maintaining discipline was your task in Pharynx’s absence,” Chrysalis continued. “What excuse do you have for failing this thoroughly?”

“None whatsoever! I should have tried harder, Your Highness,” Grim gave the only reply that Chrysalis was going to accept. “I deserve whatever punishment you give me!”

“Oh, you deserve worse than you’re going to get! Be glad we have an unexpected shortage of soldiers that could take over for you, otherwise you’d be joining Leech and Poison! As it is, I’ll only revoke your egg-laying privilege! But one more mistake and I promise you that I won’t be so understanding next time!”

“I understand.” She bowed and withdrew herself from the communicator.

“I expect you’ll want to punish me too,” I asked upon returning to the communicator.

“You were away so I’ll let it slide for now, but I don’t need to tell you that I won’t tolerate any more mess-ups! We’ve had plenty enough already as it is! But even though you’ll get away with it this time, the rest of your team won’t after they’ve ignored the problem! As an immediate measure, you’ll see to it that every one of them, Grim included, is denied food for a week! You and Fang may eat, but none of the others! And they can all forget about producing eggs for the rest of their lives regardless of how successful this mission turns out! Understood?”

“Perfectly.” The team wasn’t going to like it, but they were going to have to grin and bear it; they should have known better than to throw discipline into the wind, especially on a mission of this magnitude! This ought to teach them a lesson!

Having heard my answer, Chrysalis terminated the link.

I found Grim pacing angrily outside, muttering curses at Leech and Poison, or at least that was what it sounded like. She noticed me, tensed up, and tried to leave, but I halted her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“What does it matter?” she snapped at me. “I’m a failure and a disgrace!”

“And I’m your commanding officer on this mission, and I order you to quit whining and get back to work!”

“You think that’s easy? I spent ten years working night and day, pushing myself past the limit, accepting every single task I’d been given, just so I could earn the privilege to lay eggs, and when I finally do, there aren’t any males with the same privilege readily available, and I don’t mind waiting a little longer after all that time, but guess what? Not a week after earning that privilege, I get sent to hunt down a traitor and then reassigned to another potentially long-lasting mission, and it’s been seven months - no, close to eight by now - and still no sign of the day when I might return to the hive and exercise my privilege, and then this happens and I can forget the eggs! All that effort for nothing! And you’re asking me to just shrug it off and pretend nothing happened?”

“Yeah, yeah, my heart bleeds for you,” I retorted, dripping with sarcasm. “Disappointed or not, you’ve brought it upon yourself, and the sooner you accept it, the better!”

“Easy for you to say when you’ve never lost your life’s work,” she muttered to herself, but loudly enough that I heard every word.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I said through gritted teeth. I was on the brink of throwing myself at her and beating her to a pulp, but managed to restrain myself. I knew it wouldn’t end well, and there’d been enough bloodshed earlier today already! Besides, Chrysalis had been right: we were experiencing a bad shortage of soldiers recently, and while putting Grim out of commission might have relieved some of my anger with the situation, it would only increase the problem. But she’d unknowingly hit a nerve: I too had spent my life trying to achieve something, in my case trying to raise Thorax to be a proper changeling, and I’d earned my rank of First Commander thanks to the ruthlessness and never-give-up attitude I’d developed in the process, only to have it all crumble when he decided to run away! And even then, I hadn’t learned my lesson; I was still trying to protect Thorax despite his actions costing me everything!

At least Grim was being realistic about her future.

I thought I was beginning to understand why she’d acted like a pathetic, spoiled pony on the first day of the traitor-hunting mission: she must have still hoped at the time that the mission would be over quickly and allow her to return to the hive and produce offspring when a chance presented itself, but as the days were passing without any real progress, she must have gradually accepted having to wait longer than anticipated, which might have helped her push the matter out of her mind and focus on the mission, eventually having proven herself trustworthy enough for me to leave her in charge of things in my absence.

If she’d accepted her fate once, she could do it again, I believed. So why couldn’t I? I knew by now that helping Thorax would be near-impossible in my current situation, so why was I still prioritizing it? Why couldn’t I let it go?

Back on Track

Though the team was showing little regret over the fates of Acid, Leech, and Poison, they were less than thrilled by the food restrictions, and Brutus and Morpheus outright protested the decision, calling it unfair and unnecessary, even potentially harmful to the mission. Their protesting was short-lived, though; it was a simple matter of implying that I would relay their grievances to Chrysalis. They didn’t say a word since.

The mention of no chance of egg-producing privilege in the future for the entire team was met with similar enthusiasm, except by Banshee, who had already earned that privilege twice before and whose nymphs were currently old enough to be somewhere through military training. Whether or not they actually were there, Banshee didn’t know; as was the norm among changelings, she’d never met her nymphs or learned about their lives; she didn’t even know their names. In all likelihood, at least some of them were still alive and contributing to the hive in one way or another, and though Chrysalis would have gladly smashed the eggs of any of us as punishment for what had happened, even she wouldn’t go as far as to kill the already-hatched nymphs for the sins of their parents… at least I hoped so.

Having caught Grim’s jealous stare at Banshee’s mention of her offspring, I intercepted her after the announcements, before she could disappear somewhere.

“I saw the way you looked at Banshee a minute ago,” I got to the point.

“So?”

“Are you going to have a problem being on the same team with her?”

“With all due respect, Sir, what do you care?”

“I don’t care about your feelings, or anyling else’s for that matter, but we’re on one of the most important missions in changeling history, and I need to know if any issues you may have with your teammates are going to interfere with that mission!”

“I don’t have any issues with Banshee, Sir!”

“Maybe not right this second, but that jealous look you gave her hasn’t convinced me!”

“Okay, so maybe I am jealous! It’s not like I’m the only one on the team who has a reason to after Chrysalis forbade all of us to ever lay eggs!”

“Except that noling else is showing it!”

She rolled her eyes. “What would you do about it, anyway?”

“We’re still early enough into the preparations that I can assign you a different role.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure? You wouldn’t be the first drone to lose control over themselves and do something foolish at the worst possible moment!”

“I’m not Leech or Thorax, Sir! I’m more disciplined than you think!”

“Like you’ve been showing ever since that conversation with Chrysalis?”

“It’s helping me get it out of my mind so I won’t dwell on it later when it might actually interfere with my performance like you’re worried it might.”

I glared at her for a minute.

“Okay, have it your way. But don’t come to me begging for a team reassignment later, because neither you nor the drone I swap you with will have the time to perfect the new role and I won’t stall deployment indefinitely until you do!”

“I know that,” she retorted and left.

I still wasn’t sure leaving her on the team with Banshee would be the right decision, but then again, maybe Grim had been right. I couldn’t know for sure that she was the only one jealous of Banshee and her children, or the most jealous one. I could just as easily make things worse by reassigning roles! And I’d gotten to know Grim during all these months of having her on my team; I was inclined to believe her when she said she could separate her personal wishes from the mission at hoof. I would still keep an eye on her just in case, though.

Though it had killed the initial mission-eagerness and some team members’ hopes, the punishment had at the very least been a sobering moment for the whole group, and they moved on diligently with the preparations from that point on, avoiding further conflict that could escalate into a repeat of Acid’s fate.

Several days later, the Zebrica team arrived to take over the roles that had been left vacant by the uncalled-for incident. Having arrived only a day after Psycho’s team had dragged the Leech and Poison away from Foal Mountain, they had been welcomed with mixed feelings: some couldn’t get their minds off the punishment awaiting the two drones, some were glad to have gotten rid of them, and though a few from each side were completely indifferent to the newcomers, the rest had taken it upon themselves to make the consequences of any mistake very clear to them, even before I’d gotten around to doing so. Ordinarily, I would have been proud of such a display of discipline, but the price paid for that discipline had left a bitter taste in my mouth. Chrysalis may have decided against blaming me for the incident, but I was still the team leader; I should have noticed signs of potential trouble and done something to snip it in the bud! But I hadn’t, and one of my subordinates had died needlessly, and two more were about to pay the same price for my mistake if they hadn’t already!

I didn’t deserve to be First Commander again, not after this, even if I ignored that one time I’d already forfeited my rank by saving Thorax from my own team!

Pushing that thought aside and assuming the stance of a stern and confident commander, I briefed the newcomers and assigned them their roles. Cutter and Sting were happy enough about getting to replace famous ponies, even if the roles were somewhat more demanding than some of the others, but Plague showed clear dissatisfaction for drawing the role of a yet-to-be-born foal, though without making a scene. All three got to work immediately without further questions.

A couple of months later, our preparations were still in full swing, and no more incidents had occurred to hinder our progress and provoke Chrysalis’ wrath. For once, she and I were both satisfied with how the preparations were going, and once I was fairly sure the team members could be sent into the field with little likelihood of being detected due to uncharacteristic behavior, she agreed it was time to send me part of the support teams. They weren’t going to replace anypony so their presence hadn’t been necessary in the early stages, but now that the next stage of preparations was about to begin, we were going to need their assistance if wanted to pull this off. Until deployment, they would have two main tasks: one, to analyze pony security systems and strategies and find any and every weakness we could take advantage of, and two, to help us keep up-to-date with the current events in Equestria without the risk of the main team getting captured in the process. Both tasks were going to take time.

The first wave of support drones arrived a few days later. I hadn’t expected to find one of the lowly drones, one I didn’t hold in high regard, assigned as their leader!

“Locust?” I exclaimed in disbelief after they’d landed at our campsite, then quickly composed myself. “Aren’t you supposed to be tending to the communicators back in the hive?”

“I got promoted! Elytra is in charge of the communicators now!”

“Who’s Elytra?”

“She just completed basic training recently. You wouldn’t know her.”

“And whose wise idea was to send you of all drones?”

“Oh come on, Pharynx, I know you’ve been isolated from the world lately, but even you know what’s going on with our troops! That fiasco in Manehattan left us seriously short on deployable soldiers, and the failures of your own teams didn’t help any! It’s a wonder Psycho didn’t have to resort to sending out soldiers who are supposed to protect the hive itself! But,” he continued with a smug grin, “at least your mess-ups have brought me a chance to shine in the field like a proper changeling!”

“Emphasis on ‘like a proper’, of course,” I matched his smug grin with my own.

“You’re just jealous that I’m moving up in the hierarchy and you’re not!”

“Jealous? I’m still way up higher than you!”

“Not for much longer if you keep failing like that!”

Then he closed his eyes and flicked out a mocking tongue.

Forgotten the lesson already, Locust? Looks like you need a reminder!

Balancing on rear legs, I reached out and slammed his mouth shut over his tongue full-force with my forehooves. He yelped and recoiled, clutching his snout as he fell onto his rump.

The whole campsite burst out laughing. Even Grim, who was still mostly sulking over her undestined eggs, couldn’t hold back a snicker! Locust groaned, recognizing defeat.

“You do realize that the only reason why you’re part of this mission now is that Psycho and Chrysalis are short on actual soldiers for the time being?” I barked at him.

He gave a feeble nod.

“In that case I suggest you check your attitude because you’re this close to being sent back to the hive in ten separate healing cocoons and I don’t care if I get punished for putting you in them!”

He gulped and nodded again, whispering something that might have been a barely audible yessir. I could see in his eyes that he knew I’d meant every word!

I turned to the others.

“Don’t you have work to do?” I shot at the group that had been here since before.

They left to their tasks without a word. Ignoring Locust, I approached the new arrivals, who then introduced themselves to me, and I got the impression they were going to take their job seriously, even if they didn’t have a lot of field experience. Locust must have gotten the lead role purely thanks to longer active service, I decided; any one of the other drones would have been a better choice!

I assigned Locust, Mantis, Thorn, and Gallow to find out everything there was to be found about the security in Canterlot Castle, and Thunder, Gossamer, and Nemesis to do the same in Ponyville. Phantom, Scar, and Viscera were already on the way to the Crystal Empire, and hadn’t even bothered making a stop here.

I heard from Phantom two days later.

“Sir, we’ve been trying to get to the Crystal Empire,” he said, “but it’s not going to be as easy as we expected.”

“Explain!”

“A snowstorm is raging all around us. We got in as far as we could, but the gusts of wind are so strong they keep throwing us around! We’ve tried walking, flying, weighing ourselves down with rocks, transforming into indigenous wildlife… it’s no use! I sent Viscera to check the last train station we’d passed on our way in and she said all the trains have been cancelled in this weather until further notice, so we can’t even use that! We’ll have to wait until the storm dies down a little - if it’s going to die down, because we can’t see it happening any time soon - or someling will get injured if not killed!”

“The hunters I’d sent there to find Thorax said nothing about such weather, soldier!”

“I understand, Sir, but I’m not exaggerating! They must have gone in and out under better conditions!”

Wonderful, I groaned inwardly. Chrysalis was going to love another setback! But, it sounded like we didn’t have a choice.

“Alright,” I relented. “Abort mission and get to Foal Mountain. I’ll find you something to do until the storm calms down.”

They were here by the end of the next day - I’d explained the situation to Chrysalis in the meantime, and she’d been less than pleased, but had to agree there was little else to be done - and I assigned them to assist the other two teams until further notice. They spent the night in the camp and were out by dawn.

Nearly another month had passed before the weather around the Crystal Empire cleared enough to let my team go in, but once it had, I wasted no time in pulling them from their substitute assignments and deploying them to the original one. This time, they reported safe arrival, and were going to begin investigating first thing in the morning.

I breathed a sigh of relief. The mission was finally back on track, and would hopefully stay there!

On the Move

“Sir, how much longer are we going to keep doing this?”

“Every successful mission requires patience, Locust, and I’ve told you that a thousand times already!”

“But patience makes sense only when trying to crack a pattern in the enemies’ ever-changing defense strategies, and these ponies haven’t changed or modified a single one of them ever since we arrived! Not a one! Even the duty shift rosters are awfully predictable!”

“Yes, I know their security could use plenty of improvement - not that I’m complaining about an easy job - but how do you know that they don’t simply have longer intervals between switching to a new security protocol? You’ve only been there a few months!”

“Because Menace swears than Canterlot security is exactly the same now as it was on the day when he first arrived here! And I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but he was here long before Cadance’s wedding, and getting launched out by that blast along with the invading troops didn’t stop him from going back and continuing his mission as if nothing had happened!”

“I know what he did! What’s your point?”

“My point is, if Menace swears that the Royal Guard hasn’t changed their tactics in years, not even after our invasion, what are the chances they’ll randomly decide to do it now?”

“Menace hasn’t been able to keep as close an eye on them as our team! How would he know the details?”

“He’s picked up a good deal nevertheless, and his long-term observations match the trend of what we’ve found during these few months, and the last time I checked, not even you could think of anything that we might have missed the first thousand times!”

“So, your expert opinion would be that we’re ready to move in? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Sir, I’m saying that we could have replaced the ponies ages ago.”

I rubbed my temple, pondering his words. His skills had admittedly gotten marginally better during the time he spent investigating Canterlot security, which gave a bit of sense to his claims, but unfortunately, his ego had grown exponentially along with his skills and was now bigger than an overgrown ursa major, not that it had ever been as humble as it should have been for someling of his rank. Normally, I wouldn’t have tolerated the way he talked to me as the result of that ego - as if he’d absorbed the entire wisdom of the world - but he was too far away to take a beating and I was too busy with other things to go looking for him… and it might as well have been a good thing, because if I had gotten to him, he would have needed fifty healing cocoons instead of the ten I’d promised him when he’d arrived! Not that I would have shed a tear over his predicament, but we were on a mission, and the mission came first; I could always rip his throat out later!

Ego and attitude aside, I had to admit that there was some sense in what he’d been telling me lately. I’d known since before that ponies were mostly useless at keeping enemies at bay, so it had hardly come as a surprise that our targets would be pretty easy to deal with even without knowing the particulars of the few defensive measures they had, but I had to be sure. I would have felt better about it had the investigation been done by someling more trustworthy, admittedly, but this was going to have to do.

“Noted,” I told him. “I’ll take it into consideration, but ultimately it’ll depend on whether or not the other teams say they’re ready.”

I knew what they were going to tell me even before contacting them.

“I wasn’t expecting you’d call, Sir,” Thunder said, responding to the communicator after I’d spent a good amount of time trying to reach him.

“Am I going to blow your cover?”

“Not at the moment, but better make it quick just in case.”

“If we were to deploy today,” I got to the point, opting against having him recite through all the expected security measures and how they related to the actual findings like I’d intended originally, “what would you tell us to be careful about, and is there anything that could surprise us?”

“You’d only have to be careful about getting noticed in your own forms, Sir, and there’s nothing we could find that we don’t know what to expect from. Ponyville is woefully unshielded from any threats whatsoever! I mean, they don’t even have Royal Guards, for crying out loud!”

“Twilight Sparkle probably didn’t see the need for them after all the battles she’s won single-hoofedly,” I agreed. “Makes our job easier if we only have her to worry about.”

“Does that mean we should expect you soon?”

“I still have to check with the Crystal Empire team, but if they’re ready and Chrysalis gives the order, then yes.”

“Good. We’ve gotten tired of all the cuteness in this town, even if it does provide some love to boost our regular meals!”

“Then eat while you can, because you might be getting out of there any day now!”

That left just Phantom, who answered my hail immediately.

“Yes Sir, we’re ready,” he told me. “The Royal Guards here like to make a show of themselves, but they wouldn’t be much use against us, and there are no other security measures that we could find.”

“Then you might as well start packing. I still have to report to Chrysalis, but I can’t imagine why she would hold us back now, especially with how impatient she’s been lately.”

“One more thing, Sir.”

“What?”

“If you’re deploying now, you might want to hurry. We’ve been keeping track of the weather and it looks like it could get nasty again pretty soon. I can’t promise it won’t cut off your access path for who knows how long if you take your time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said and terminated the connection, then proceeded to contact the hive.

The remainder of support drones arrived a few days later. They’d already been told which drone would go where, and we’d been expecting them and getting ready to move out, so all that remained after their arrival was to take our stuff and get going.

“Listen up!” I spoke to the team while we were still all there. “Our preparations are complete, and the real mission begins as soon as we fly out of here! You know already that this is one of the most important missions in changeling history, and almost certainly the biggest one any of you will ever be a part of, so don’t mess it up or Chrysalis’ wrath against Thorax will seem laughable compared to the wrath she’ll have for you! Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Sir!” they replied in unison.

“Do you all know and understand the strategy for capturing and replacing your assigned ponies? And dragon,” I added, looking intently at Buzz.

“Yes, Sir!” the group sounded.

“Why are you looking at me?” Buzz protested.

“I don’t want any free interpretations of the word ‘pony’!”

“I know what my task is,” he retorted with a frown.

“Then let’s hear it!”

“We arrive in Ponyville Castle after nightfall. Twilight Sparkle is the biggest threat and should therefore be dealt with first. We’ll take Spike while we’re there. Glimmer is said to be away at the moment and can be dealt with at a later time if necessary, not that we expect her to be any wiser to our deception than the rest of the town. Once Cutter and I are in position, the rest of the team will go replace the other five.”

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“How will that go?” I pushed him.

“You recommended that the team deals with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie next because the former can make a quick getaway to get help if she notices us and the latter can attract way too much attention to us in no time. That will put Fang and Trickster in position, and the rest of the team will then get Rarity and leave Sting in her place. Any screaming on her part will most likely be attributed to her usual drama-queen self and thus ignored by anypony who hears it. After that, it would be the apple farm, which is big enough to stash the already-captured ponies temporarily and remote enough from the rest of Ponyville that they shouldn’t notice any commotion if Applejack and Big Mackintosh put up a fight. That dog of theirs could potentially raise Tartarus, so the team should take care of it before going for Applejack. The filly and the grandmother will be easy to deal with if we get noticed. Worst case scenario, Brutus will have to bite them to erase their memories of the fight, and any injuries they receive in the fight can be attributed to farming accidents. Lastly, Morpheus shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with Fluttershy, since she’s one of the biggest cowards in the world.”

“So you do remember what I said!” I feigned astonishment. “I am impressed!”

He rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“And Canterlot?” I turned to Banshee and Grim.

“Celestia may be the more powerful one, but Luna will be awake when we arrive, so she’ll have to go first,” Grim answered. “We’ll have to be careful to sneak up on her while the guards aren’t looking, but I’m pretty sure I can pull it off without a problem.”

“And Celestia will be easy pickings unless Grim causes a commotion and wakes her up,” Banshee added. “I’m actually more worried about how the supports will smuggle the cocoons past the night guards.”

“Locust swears on his eggshell that they aren’t as dangerous as they make themselves look,” I retorted. “Which isn’t to say that you can afford to be careless, even if we can trust his judgment. Celestia and Luna each have enough magic to tackle us on their own and derail the mission!”

“We know,” they muttered.

“Any last-minute questions?” I asked the whole group.

There were none.

“Good! Grab your shares of the gear and let’s move out!”

Sitting on a train heading for the Crystal Empire, disguised as a nondescript pony, I watched the scenery through the window, glancing every now and then at the other passengers, some of which were my disguised teammates. They had each bought their own ticket with the money we’d gathered up from the ponies we were feeding on during the preparations, and were sitting dispersed randomly throughout the train car for the ride, partly due to which seats they’d found unoccupied, and partly for tactical reasons: the other passengers would be less likely to notice we were together, and if trouble arose anywhere in the train car, at least some of us would be in a favorable position for fighting.

Ordinarily, I would have preferred to fly to the Crystal Empire, but Phantom’s last report before our deployment had warned of the impending snowstorm more urgently, and I was concerned that we might find ourselves as stuck as Phantom’s team when they were on their way in, and even if we made it through, the support drones were going to have a hard time getting out. Trains were faster, at the very least, and though stuck in a metal box with limited escape options if something were to happen to jeopardize us, at least we were going to arrive at our destination on the same day as the other two teams would at theirs. I’d debated with myself over the past few weeks whether to deploy my own team before the other two, deploy everyling simultaneously and have the other teams wait until mine was in position, or allow the other two teams to strike first and then have my team finish the job on our end as soon as we could. Neither option would have been without risk, but this last-minute one might have eliminated some of the risks I’d anticipated in the other three options, and so far, it looked like the journey was going to pass without trouble.

Appeased for the time being, I focused my mind on the mission itself. The preparations for it had been a welcome change of pace initially after the hunt for Thorax and my attempts to cover up my sabotage and keep his healing cocoon safe. As time went on with neither news of his capture nor confirmation of his death, I’d been able to relax and stop worrying about him eventually, believing he would have found someplace to live safely in by now. I had nothing to worry about anymore; in fact, this mission had been the highlight of my life recently, something I’d been looking forward to, something I could excel at and prove to the hive that, though I’d lost some respect following Thorax’s escape and our subsequent failed hunt for him, I was still the soldier they’d known, trusted, and feared!

By all accounts, I should have been drooling venom since the moment Chrysalis had cleared us to invade and capture the ponies. But I wasn’t. For some reason, I dreaded what might happen once we arrived there. Something in the back of my mind kept nagging at me, keeping me from relishing the anticipation of completing our mission. But what, and why?

Trying to get to the bottom of it, I reflected on everything that had been said over the past several months, everything that had happened, everything I’d done. There had to be something that could explain it: some strange remark, a tone of one’s voice, a piece of news I’d dismissed as irrelevant… but I couldn’t think of anything! And the harder I tried, the more it escaped me!

I tried shifting my attention to something else, but that whisper in the back of my mind wasn’t going away. If anything, the closer we got to the Crystal Empire, the louder and more persistent it became, but still no clearer than it had been when I first became aware of it!

What was going on? What was my instinct trying to warn me about?

The Objective

We arrived at the Crystal Empire in the late afternoon. Most of the passengers had gotten off the train before then, and the few that remained were paying little attention to us. They were all crystal ponies, and must have assumed we were tourists or something like that, even if we were arriving at a pretty late hour for sightseeing. And I had to admit that the sight was impressive, even if I wouldn’t choose to live in such a place permanently: crystal homes interspersed between flawlessly-maintained trees and shrubs, and benches and flowerpots placed here and there, and a network of streets polished to perfection. The sun’s reflection shimmered on every surface, and for a moment, I wondered if the crystal ponies had built their city in such a way in an attempt to blind any incoming enemies.

Probably not, I decided. They must have just wanted the town to look pretty. Had they overdone it? Maybe, but I wasn’t one to know; I’d never cared much for aesthetics beyond what was the bare minimum needed to achieve visual accuracy of whatever disguise I happened to be using.

One thing here, though, I did care very much about: the city was so insanely overpacked with love, the whole hive could easily feed on it for decades and it still wouldn’t run dry! I’d known to expect a strong aura, but this… this was more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams! If I hadn’t sensed it myself, I would have never thought it possible!

I fought the urge to drop my disguise right there in the streets and start gorging myself till exploding. The rest of my team were having the same problem, judging by their wide eyes and the tongues that were almost hanging out their mouths. And how wouldn’t they?

“Control yourselves!” I hissed at them quietly, having made sure no ponies were close enough to overhear. “Are you trying to blow the mission? You’ll have plenty of time to eat later!”

I got groans and mutters in reply, but at least they weren’t on the verge of revealing themselves anymore, if only for the time being.

I looked ahead at the towering spire in front of us. This would be our ultimate destination, the Crystal Castle where our targets lived, and the place we were going to attack around midnight. An aura of love radiated from within, much stronger than the one from the rest of the city, if it was even possible, and I was pretty sure I could guess the source of it. I wanted to relish this feeling, this anticipation of victory over the one who had defeated us in the past, this glorious and bountiful future nearly ours for the taking, but that ominous whisper in the back of my mind wasn’t letting me, growing ever-so-stronger with every passing moment. Was something telling me we would fail? Impossible! I was going to do whatever it takes to fulfill the mission! Even if I ended up having to do it on my own, I would! This was going to be the one thing Chrysalis wouldn’t be able to accuse me of failing!

Why, then, was I sensing disaster?

I pushed it out of my mind again, determined not to dwell on it until I got some solid reason to worry, something I could put my hoof on and figure out what to do about it. I didn’t need instinct to tell me to be careful; I knew better than to allow myself to be reckless even if my instinct told me that everything would turn out perfectly!

We passed close to the castle and kept going. Our support team was waiting for us in a cave on the outskirts of the city, and though we’d been told the approximate direction where to go, we still had to find the entrance.

Eventually we did, and once we were inside, three crystal ponies approached us.

“Princess Mi Amore Cadenza requests clearance codes!” I spoke the password.

The crystal ponies dropped their disguises, and we followed suit. I glanced around. The cave was bigger than I’d expected it to be and had plenty of nooks where our team could stash their gear away from the eyes of anypony who might wander in by mistake, and there was a deep crevice that ran along the rough midline of the cavern; pretty ordinary, really, except for a peculiar collection of glowing crystals piled up against the far wall. Oh well, probably not much to them, either, I decided; the team must have found them scattered throughout the cave and decided this was the best they could do in order to create some shadows to utilize against intruders. Why they hadn’t thought to simply drop all or most of them in the crevice, I didn’t know, but it was hardly important by now. Unless they had dropped the majority of the glowing crystals they’d found into the crevice and these were the leftovers they’d decided to keep for the purpose of basic illumination? I decided to stop letting myself get distracted by such trivialities, and instead focused my attention on the support team.

“Right on time, Sir,” Phantom said. “Any last-minute complications?”

“No, everything’s been going smoothly so far,” I replied, deciding that telling him about my gut feeling wasn’t going to be of any help. “I take it you three are ready?”

“We’re ready, Sir, and we’d better be. You seen the storm clouds on your way in?”

“Yes, and I intend to have the ponies cocooned up in time for you to take them away before the storm hits.”

“Good to know,” he nodded. “So, it’s just waiting for nightfall now, right?”

“Yes. Eat, rest, do whatever you need, but be ready to move out near midnight!”

“Yes, Sir!”

My instinct screamed its warning steadily as we flew through the cold night, disguised as a flock of birds. Having failed to decipher it so far, I tried to tune it out so it wouldn’t distract me from the mission, but only with marginal success. Maybe it would be easier once things started actually happening, I kept telling myself. Maybe, once we succeeded, the annoying whisper in the back of my mind would finally go silent!

Or, at the very least, maybe I would find out what it was warning me about.

The silhouette of the Crystal Castle loomed steadily closer in the darkness, the reflections of magical ripples in the sky dancing on its surface.

“Hey Phantom, how do we get inside that thing?” Raptor broke the silence.

“There’s an observatory at the top,” he replied. “Viscera has been keeping an eye on the door that leads to the stairwell, and so far, it’s never been locked.”

“And if it is locked tonight?”

“Then you can transform into a lockpick.”

“Very funny!”

“Is that door our only option?” I interjected.

“We could also try the entrances at the ground level, but there are guards patrolling close enough that I don’t think we’ll all be able to sneak past them, so we’ll need a pretty good excuse if we want to be let in without causing suspicion. There are windows, too, but I doubt anypony would sleep with an open window in this cold.”

“Right, I get it, we’ll try the observatory.”

Luck was on our side: the door was unlocked, and nopony, guard or otherwise, was in sight. I took the risk of getting noticed while dropping my disguise - one of us had to if we were going to open that door - and once the rest of the team, observing the sky and the streets below from the balustrade, were satisfied that nopony seemed to have noticed the flash of my magic, I let them inside, where we all took forms of the Royal Guards.

“Okay, where to now?” I asked the supports.

“I scouted the castle,” Scar stepped forward. “Follow me.”

We did, careful to avoid crossing paths with any real Royal Guards; I doubted that even ponies would be so careless to leave their guards unaware of the others’ patrol routes, and even if they were, how oblivious would they have to be to fail to notice that there were too many of us in the same place? But then again, would I really be surprised to find out that they were?

Our caution was almost unnecessary; we’d only had to evade one patrolling guard by the time Scar motioned for us to wait and went to investigate a hallway. He was back sooner than I’d expected, never even having left my sight.

“Yes, this is it,” he reported. “Right down that hallway! It’s the big double doors!”

“Everyling ready?” I asked.

They nodded.

“Then let’s go! And remember, not a sound!”

Creeping silently, we approached the said doors. I pushed them open slowly and carefully, relieved that they hadn’t creaked or scraped against the floor. We all got in, Plague pushed the door closed, and we gathered around the bed faintly visible in the moonlight that shone through the window and the incoming storm clouds, where two of our three targets slept peacefully, unaware of the fate about to befall them.

We dropped our disguises.

At that moment, our plan went to pieces.

Cadance and Shining Armor both woke up instantly, recoiling at the sight of our bared fangs that we were in the motion of sinking into them. I’d considered the possibility that it might happen - our transformation spells were bound to make a sound and a flash, after all - but seeing them so blissfully asleep had made me forget it for a moment. Stupid, I scolded myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could I have allowed myself to be so careless? I might as well have marched in shouting ‘rise and shine, your new changeling invasion is here, you don’t wanna miss it’!

And best of all, if my instinct hadn’t tried to warn me about it…

But not all was lost, as Raptor and Viscera were quick enough to grasp the ponies’ mouths to keep them from calling for help. This only bought us a moment, though; just as I pounced on Shining Armor in order to bite him, he erected his shield, trapping both Raptor and me inside. In the corner of my eye, I saw Plague and Viscera wrestle with Cadance, Plague having succeeded somehow in putting a pillow over the princess’ face while Viscera struggled to score a bite of her own; but none of that was stopping Cadance from grabbing objects at random in her magic and flinging them around. What was she trying to do? To randomly hit one of us? To make noise that would attract the ponies’ attention? Either way, it wasn’t working: she clearly didn’t know for sure where any of us were, except for the two on top of her, and the rest were finding it easy enough to catch the airborne objects and drop them gently and soundlessly onto whichever spot on the floor was nearest.

Shining Armor realized pretty soon that his shield had done nothing, and he dropped it and unleashed a burst of magic, but Raptor ducked and the spell hit a torch on the wall, igniting it harmlessly. This distracted the unicorn enough to allow me to sink my fangs in his flesh and unload a good dose of venom into him. A moment later, Viscera succeeded in doing the same to Cadance, and both ponies succumbed to unconsciousness within seconds.

“Where’s the foal?” I asked Scar, not wasting another minute.

“That room there.” He pointed to a connecting door on one of the walls.

“Phantom, you deal with her! The rest of you cocoon these two before somepony sees us!”

In the meantime, I went to survey the room. It was pretty much what one would expect from a bedroom of two married ponies, if only somewhat more decorated than an average one. Curiously, I could find no protective spells cast anywhere. The supports had been right! If Shining Armor, the former Captain of the Royal Guard and one of the most battle-ready ponies if not the most battle-ready one, hadn’t bothered to booby-trap his own castle against intruders, why expect protective measures anywhere else in Equestria?

Phantom returned with the unconscious foal in no time. The little brat was so spoiled that she hadn’t even noticed something going on in the next room! Such a thing would have been impossible with nymphs! Our future soldiers were notorious for hearing every unexpected murmur and waking up instantly in hissing fits!

When the cocoons were finished, I ordered Phantom and Viscera to bring one of the spare communicators and then stick around in the cave in case of emergencies and delayed complications, and sent the others to carry the cocoons to the hive. Once they were gone, I closed the window behind them, transformed into my assigned role, and returned to surveying the room.

Raptor and Plague finally took a moment to compose themselves. They stood in the midst of the mess, taking in their surroundings, letting the victory sink in.

“Ugh, this is all too cute for my taste!” Raptor groaned eventually, kicking a pillow into an overturned nightstand. “How long are we supposed to be here, again?”

“Yeah, it is unbearable,” Plague sneered, “but at least I have an excuse to wreak havoc whenever I want, which I can already see will be all day! It’s gonna be so fun watching those pathetic ponies try to handle me!”

“Quiet, you two!” I hissed in Shining Armor’s voice, approaching them with a stern glare. “Or at least don’t use your own voices! Are you trying to attract the guards’ attention? There’s a reason we’re here, and I suggest you act accordingly!”

They obeyed. A moment later, the false Cadance and Flurry Heart stood before me.

“Good,” I nodded. “No funny business from now on - or else!”

I returned my focus once again to surveying the room, and immediately noticed an oversight that sent chills down my disguised carapace.

The door was ajar! Had anypony heard anything?

I trotted out into the hallway and looked around. Nopony was in sight, but how could I be sure nopony had been close enough to see the fight a few minutes ago? They could have retreated and called for help by now! But even if it had happened, there was nothing I could do about it now, except prepare for another fight if the Royal Guards did come to assist their leaders.

If they came, we would stash their cocoons in the supports’ cave until more drones arrived to carry them to the hive and to replace the missing guards so nopony would miss them. If not, well, all the better.

Returning to the royal bedroom, I closed the door behind me and lay in wait for any guards. Regardless of how soon or how late the spare communicator would arrive, the report to Chrysalis could wait until I knew it was safe!

Discovery

By the time Viscera had brought one of the communicators from the cave, I was fairly sure nopony had noticed anything amiss. I’d kept my ears perked for any noise suggestive of guards gathering in front of the royal bedroom and watched for any shadows passing by the window; I’d even sent the disguised Plague to investigate the hallway once or twice, but all she had to report was the peace and quiet of a castle oblivious to the threat that had seized it.

When Viscera was gone again, I decided to give it a few more minutes in case she’d been spotted, and then I dropped my disguise and activated the communicator.

Chrysalis was there on the other end, waiting for my report.

“What took you so long?” she barked.

“We wanted to make sure we haven’t been spotted before reporting to you, Your Highness!”

“I take it the invasion went well, then?”

“It did. The cocoons are on their way to you. I’ve kept Phantom and Viscera here to assist in case of unforeseen complications, but so far, everything has worked out the way you want it!”

“Excellent,” she smirked, but that smirk turned into a disgruntled frown immediately. “If only the same could be said for Canterlot!”

“They didn’t fail, did they? Ooh, when I get my hooves on them…”

“They had to abort capture,” she interrupted me. “There was a fire in the castle kitchen, no casualties or anything, but the whole castle got so worked up over it that everypony’s routine got disturbed to the point of unpredictability, so Banshee and Grim decided not to risk it.”

“And you believed them?”

“About the fire? Yes, Menace and a few others reported it too.” She snorted. “As much as I’m itching to punish them for postponing my victory, I have to admit that their decision makes strategic sense. But they will have to do it tomorrow, or I won’t be so understanding!”

“Did the Ponyville team succeed, at least?”

“Yes, perfectly according to plan. Their cocoons are on their way already, too.”

“As they should be!”

“Is there anything else going on on your end that I should know about?”

“No, not for the moment.” Should there be? I realized my instinct was stirring again.

“Then keep reporting regularly!”

“Understood!”

I terminated the link.

I stood there for a few moments, looking thoughtfully at the communicator. Something Chrysalis had said had caused my subconscious mind to start whispering again, or at least I’d become aware of its whispering because of something in the conversation. What had she asked me? Yes, she’d wanted to know if I’d neglected to mention something! But what could I have found that I’d forgotten to mention, having been here so short a time?

This time, the whisper was harder to ignore again. Common sense dictated that I should catch a few hours’ nap like Raptor and Plague were already doing, but I doubted I’d be able to sleep with my instinct’s constant prodding. So, I reapplied the disguise I’d dropped earlier and went exploring the castle.

Chrysalis had seemed to expect me to tell her something more than ‘yes, Your Highness, we’ve succeeded’, but what that something was, I hadn’t the faintest idea! Whatever it was, I got the impression it would have to be fairly obvious, therefore I should be able to find such a thing pretty easily. If it existed.

I wandered around the castle aimlessly, finding nothing that I would describe as peculiar or out of place… not in the context of a pony dwelling, anyway. A drone on his or her first mission might have been pretty confused and disoriented with how different pony society was from our own, but having completed my fair share of missions in Equestria throughout my service, I knew what to expect by now. Even the overwhelming cuteness had left me largely unfazed!

And yet, there was something here that my instinct had recognized as a threat. But what? Not even the few Royal Guards I encountered in the hallways thought too much of me wandering like that; they were all ready to accept my excuse of being ‘unable to sleep for some reason - just one of those days I guess’ and think nothing of it! Everything else was just as the supports had described it, too: a calm and peaceful city full of love and other things ponies valued! No signs of preparations for a battle, no anti-changeling propaganda… absolutely nothing that could be a reason for sudden heightened concern!

But my instinct was still screaming. What about, for Hive’s sake?!

Eventually I did find something out of the ordinary. I was almost ready to give it up for now and go to bed when my path led me past Shining Armor’s office… my office, now. I’d examined it superficially near the beginning of this nightly round of mine and found nothing of immediate concern. I’d decided I was going to have plenty of time to search it thoroughly during the day; anything that could threaten the hive or information on such a thing would most likely be hidden there, but so would heaps of other things of no consequence to us, and I wasn’t going to make much sense of it by randomly sifting through paperwork under the moonlight coming through the window, especially if I didn’t know what I was looking for specifically, and I was going to have a perfectly legitimate reason to be in that room during the day anyway, so I’d opted to get the lay of the land of the rest of the castle first.

I knew I’d left the office exactly as I’d found it: dark, quiet, and nopony inside. Now, however, I saw a line of light under the door and heard soft noise from inside. Noise as if somepony was looking for something...

Spies and traitors among ponies? Not a common thing, but not impossible, either. This, if anything, was worth looking into!

I opened the door and stepped into the office.

A bespectacled orange unicorn with bloodshot eyes, clad in a dark blue cloak and engrossed in scrolls and log books, recoiled at the sound of the door opening. A brief moment of shock and apprehension registered on his face before he pulled the said pile of scrolls and log books to himself, kicked something under the desk, and forced a polite - and obviously fake - grin at me.

You must be Sunburst, I realized. Flurry Heart’s crystaller - whatever that was - and a prominent figure in the Crystal Empire, according to Phantom’s reports. So what are you doing here in the middle of the night?

“Oh, h-h-hi, Prince Shining A-armor,” he stammered out. “I didn’t e-e-expect to see you up t-t-this late! Or would ‘e-e-early’ be the cor-r-r-rect word?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I retorted, closing the door behind me and approaching him. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

“Well, I-I-I was go-go-going to, b-b-but then I remembered-ed-ed that spell I’d g-g-given you toda-da-day, and it wasn’t quite r-r-right, so I went to-to-to correct it before you n-n-needed it…”

A spell? This guy sounded like he wouldn’t be able to make a coherent shopping list, let alone the kind of a spell that a leader of a country’s defense force might need! Then again, Phantom had done a background check on the guy, and apparently he did have solid understanding of magic, if not the ability to perform most of it, so it was at least possible that he’d devised such a spell. Not likely, though; his eye twiched as he looked at me and that stupid grin was still fixed on his face.

I decided to play along for now.

“And it couldn’t wait until morning?”

“Oh, well, um… y-y-you know me… can’t let t-t-things go somet-t-t-imes…”

I raised an eyebrow at him. He winced.

“O-o-okay then, I guess I-I-I’ll leave…” He took a step closer to the door, turning slightly so I would remain in front of him the whole time. “G-g-good night, Prince Cha-”

His eyes went wide and his hooves flew to his snout as the realization of what he’d nearly blurted out hit him. My ears perked up at the same moment and I fixed a murderous glare at him.

I replayed the scene from earlier tonight in my memory. The royal bedroom in a mess, Raptor and Plague goofing around, me surveying the room, and the bedroom doors ajar.

I’d thought I’d noticed a brief glimmer of something in the hallway through the crack in the doors, a glimmer that had disappeared as I approached it. I’d taken it for a random reflection of a torch on a conveniently-angled surface of the crystal hallway; in retrospect, it could have also been a reflection in somepony’s eyes, but having found nopony in the hallway, I hadn’t considered that possibility… until now.

I should have. The glimmer had indeed been a reflection of the torch in somepony’s eyes… or, more likely, on somepony’s spectacles!

He couldn’t have run away so quickly! Had he hidden behind the door? Why hadn’t I checked?

It was of little consequence. If he’d seen what he shouldn’t have, he probably wouldn’t have been too eager to go looking for anypony to help him lest the pony turn out to be another changeling. But he was a loose end either way, and I had to get rid of him!

The nervous gulp and beads of sweat rolling down his forehead told me he’d reached that same conclusion.

I lunged at him while simultaneously dropping my disguise; he’d barely had the time to light up his horn before my fangs found their way into his neck and filled his blood with venom. He let out a gasp and fell unconscious.

I looked out the window. Celestia hadn’t begun to raise the sun yet, but I had no doubt that she would soon. I had to hurry if I wanted to carry Sunburst to the supports’ cave unnoticed! I didn’t want to risk keeping his cocoon anywhere in the castle!

I approached the unconscious unicorn and was about to disguise myself as a pegasus Royal Guard when my gaze fell onto the pile of scrolls and log books that had fallen on the floor, next to a bag he’d tucked under the desk. What had he been looking for in there? A spell of some kind? Something that would help him defend himself against us? Something he could use to reveal our true form? Or was it some classified information that he couldn’t allow to fall into our possession? I decided to take a quick look, just to see if it would give me a rough idea of what we were up against, and whether or not it was safe to leave it unattended until I returned.

One glance into the bag was all I needed to finally know what my instinct had been trying to warn me about… though how it had known was beyond me.

The bag contained a couple of notebooks, some rolled-up drawings, a photo album, and several framed photos. The topmost one was turned face-up and fully uncovered. It featured a happy-looking group posing on the converging point of the Crystal Empire’s streets, next to the heart-shaped crystal I’d seen earlier. Sunburst was there, and Princesses Cadance and Twilight Sparkle, and her henchmares, and the dragon Spike, and a unicorn I believed to be Twilight’s protege, Starlight Glimmer… and, in the middle, the one face I’d never thought I’d see like that. My own brother, smiling at the camera.

Thorax, right here in the Crystal Empire.

Thorax, standing as an equal among some of the most famous citizens of Equestria.

Thorax, fully undisguised in public.

And whether he had ended up living here or had only come for a visit, there was no way that both the infiltrators stationed here permanently and the support drones sent here for this mission would have failed to notice him or learn about his presence and report that find to me or to Chrysalis!

But I’d never heard a single word about it. Not from the supports, and certainly not from Chrysalis!

I’d walked into a trap, hadn’t I?

Keep up Appearances

“Incoming!” Phantom shouted as I flew into the supports’ cave, disguised as a Royal Guard, with the unconscious Sunburst in tow. He and Viscera bared their fangs immediately and reached for their spears.

I dropped Sunburst unceremoniously onto the ground and reverted to my own form.

“At ease, you two,” I commanded with the air of annoyance intended to hide the animosity and distrust that my discovery from a few minutes ago had stirred in me. “This one needs cocooning.”

“What happened?” asked Viscera.

“What do you think?” I snapped at her. “He saw us!”

“What?! How?”

“Does it matter? Now shut up and cocoon him, then decide which one of you is taking him to the hive! And hurry up - it’s almost dawn!”

I stormed out without waiting for a reply and returned to the castle. I’d cut it close; the first rays of the morning sun were showing on the horizon already by the time I’d gotten back into my office. I’d had to leave the window open for myself so some of the night chill had gotten in, which could be a problem if anypony was supposed to come and clean the office this early, but I was pretty sure I could come up with a plausible explanation if anypony asked. Worst case scenario, I’d have to tell them to mind their own business… not that I had a problem with it per se, but it wouldn’t be like Shining Armor, and I wanted to maintain as much credibility as I could.

Assuming, of course, that it still mattered.

I covered up the last of my tracks, restored the Shining Armor disguise, and went back to the royal bedroom. It was for the sake of appearances only; I had no illusion that I was going to get any sleep now, not after what I’d found in that bag!

I’d had neither time nor the presence of mind to investigate the bag’s contents beyond that one photo, not even a cursory glance. It had answered one question I’d been asking myself from time to time, sure, but it had raised a million others, a million disturbing questions that not even the immensely desirable answer it had produced could balance out!

Thorax was alive, after all. I didn’t know how he’d managed it, but he’d somehow found his way here, into the land he couldn’t have known anything about… and not only that, but he’d found a way to convince the leaders of this land, the very leaders who should have been the first to imprison or kill him after what our troops had done to them on their wedding day, that he was harmless and trustworthy enough that they didn’t have to fear him! And they’d believed him!

Had it been anyling else, I might have congratulated him for the ingenious strategy that had succeeded in letting him live safely in the enemy land while he collected all the love and information he could get hold of. For a moment, I wondered if that had been Thorax’s plan all along: to do something that Chrysalis would never approve of if it meant a more effective way to serve his hive and his Queen… but as wonderful as it would have been if my brother could claim such a victory, I knew him too well. If he’d gone to live with the ponies, it was because he genuinely wanted to! He had been droning about friendship all his life, after all; leaving the hive had simply been the final step! He probably wouldn’t even have the presence of mind to try to justify himself as attempting a controversial strategy if captured!

At least he seemed to have found what he’d been looking for. I hoped he’d enjoyed it, because I didn’t see how he was going to keep it for much longer.

If he even still had it.

Raptor stirred awake next to me.

“Morning,” he said, looking at me inquisitively.

“Yeah, yeah, rise and shine, sweetheart, whatever,” I replied flatly.

He rolled his eyes.

“Where have you been all night, Sir?”

“Why, you missed me?”

“The orders were to make sure each of us knows where the others are whenever we get separated, in case you’ve forgotten. Your orders, in case you’ve forgotten that too.”

“So what does it matter where I’ve been if I’m back already?”

He glared at me steadily. What was he expecting me to say, that I’d been hanging out with Thorax and filling him in on my mission and telling him how to best steer clear of us?

“I was scouting the castle, if you must know. Oh, by the way, did you know that a unicorn saw us undisguised because someling forgot to close the door?”

“Didn’t you check the hallway after that?”

“I did. He must have hidden somewhere or gotten away. Maybe even teleported away, though I expect I would have noticed the flash of his magic in the dark. But I caught him looking for spells he could use against us, and long story short, he’s probably halfway to the hive by now.”

Not quite a true recollection of the events, but it was plausible enough, and why would I bring up anything related to Thorax? Regardless of how much my team knew about him, I intended to play dumb for as long as possible, or at least until I figured out a better strategy! The less I knew about him being here, the easier it would be to pretend to be clueless - it would have been even easier if I’d never seen that photo, but it had been a necessary price to pay in order to prevent Sunburst from doing anything that would jeopardize our mission - but, despite all, part of me was glad to know he was alive and wanted to know more.

The first chance I got, I decided, I would look through the rest of Sunburst’s bag. Though it would make it harder to pretend I didn’t know anything about Thorax, it was too late already to sincerely deny any knowledge of his presence here, and it might help prepare me for any further surprises. Maybe I would find things in there unrelated to Thorax that could be useful against ponies in the future, too!

“Aren’t you guys going to breakfast?” Plague asked, walking into the room.

“Breakfast?” Raptor looked at her in surprise, then slumped back onto the pillow. “Ugh, I forgot about that…”

“I don’t like it either,” I prodded him, “but we have appearances to keep up. Move it, soldier!”

He groaned and rolled out of bed, sighed, and finally walked to the door and stepped into the hallway. I followed with Plague riding on my back. We’d been told Flurry Heart liked to do that, therefore I was going to have to grin and bear it no matter how much I didn’t like it.

A few minutes later, we were sitting in the dining room. Plates and decorations had already been placed on the table and the meal was said to be on its way. Plague gurgled and fidgeted in her chair, trying to reach for stuff in front of her every so often, and at some point, Raptor stroked my hoof gently.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I whispered to him through gritted teeth, careful not to be overheard even though the nearest pony was some distance away in the hallway that led to the dining room.

“Keeping up appearances,” he whispered back. “I’m supposed to be your wife, remember?”

“Ugh, fine,” I said, trying to hide an eye roll. “But don’t try to kiss me or I swear I’ll rip your head off, witnesses or no witnesses!”

“As you wish, darling,” he said with a smirk as a servant entered the dining room, pushing a food trolley.

“Good morning, Your Highnesses!” she said cheerfully. “Such a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes, delightful,” Raptor said with a grin. I remained silent.

“Is something wrong, my Prince?”

“No, no, everything’s fine,” I assured her. “Just didn’t get much sleep.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that!”

She looked at the rest of the table as if expecting somepony to be there. I tensed up. Was somepony late for breakfast? The guards? Ridiculous; guards didn’t share a table with royalty, and even if today was supposed to be an exception, they would have known better than to keep their commanding officer waiting for them! Some dignitaries? Possible, but Phantom hadn’t mentioned anything… unless he’d forgotten or hadn’t known about it, which I found unlikely. Who, then? Surely not a certain insectoid fugitive trying to make himself at home in the land of the enemies of his kind… right?

I hoped my nervousness wasn’t showing as I cursed inwardly at the servant for having to be so chatty. Please don’t ask about Thorax please don’t ask about Thorax please don’t ask about Thorax please don’t ask about Thorax…

“Where’s Sunburst?” she finally asked.

Whew.

“He… had to leave for a few days,” I improvised. “He found out his friend was sick.”

“Oh dear! I hope it’s nothing serious?”

“He didn’t say, and I didn’t want to press for details.”

“My, my… I hope his friend gets well soon!” then, after an awkward pause: “Ahem. Here’s your breakfast, nice and warm!”

She moved the trays onto the table.

“Thank you,” Raptor said. “It smells lovely!”

“The chef will be pleased to hear it! Well, I won’t stall you any longer. Bon appetit!”

She left, and Raptor and I exchanged glances.

“Finally! Doesn’t she ever shut up?”

“Something tells me most of them are going to be like that. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

I uncovered the trays. There were pancakes, a few pots of various jams and jellies, some fruit, hot chocolate, tea, and a bowl of some kind of… green mush… stuff.

I frowned. We’re going to have to eat all of this, aren’t we?

“You have any idea what this is?” I asked Raptor, pointing at the green mush.

“Not the slightest,” he shrugged. “But judging by the amount of it, it could be foal food.”

“Glad that’s one thing I don’t have to put in my mouth!” I put the bowl in front of Plague, who didn’t look any happier about it than I’d been.

Raptor and I reluctantly helped ourselves to pancakes. They wouldn’t have any nutritional value for us, but with any luck, eating them would mask our process of feasting on the thing that would sate us.

We were barely halfway through the first pancake when a splat and a crash sounded in the room, followed by a miniature fake alicorn stomping all over the food trays and giggling loudly.

Attagirl, Plague! Destroy as much as you can so we don’t have to keep eating it!

The servant and one other pony galloped in.

“What in the name of Celestia… Flurry! Oh no, the breakfast is ruined! I’m so sorry, Your Highnesses! I’ll tell the chef to prepare more food right away!”

“Oh, you don’t have to… we were just about finishing anyway!”

“I appreciate your kindness, Princess, but you really shouldn’t starve for our sake!”

“No, it’s quite alright! We weren’t actually that hungry!”

“Well… if you insist…” She fumbled with her hoof.

“You might want to feed Flurry, though,” Raptor added. “She barely ate anything!”

“I will, Princess!”

“Thank you. Now, I have to be in the throne room, but do come if Flurry needs something!”

“And I’ll be in my office,” I added.

The servant bowed to us lightly as the two of us left the room; Plague sat on the disturbed stack of pancakes, dipping her hooves in the broken pots of jam and using the gooey substance to paint on the table’s surface. We heard the servant tell the other pony to help clean the mess. I hid behind the nearest sculpture in the hallway to listen in in case they said anything more.

“Does little Flurry always act like this?” one of the mares whispered.

“Sometimes, but I’m more curious about Cadance, really.”

“How so?”

“She doesn’t usually skip breakfast like that. Though… I do think she used to get an upturned stomach from time to time while pregnant…”

“You think she might be-”

“Hush! It’s just a wild guess and you didn’t hear anything, especially not from me! But it would explain why Shining is looking a little unlike himself this morning…”

The mares giggled and got back to cleaning.

I didn’t know whether to be concerned or amused. Raptor was going to love this!

Author's Note

Unrelated to this story.

Today would have been the Pride Day in my city if the pandemic hadn’t messed everything up. I’ve been participating in Pride marches for over a decade and, as every year, have been looking forward to participating again, but the world had other ideas. On the bright side, it’s been merely postponed rather than cancelled, and should be held in September according to today’s announcement. Let’s hope nothing happens to wreck those plans too!

In the absence of actual Pride stuff, have a comic I drew last year:

(Click here if the image is too small to read)

The Deception Game

Back to reality, I told myself while staring at the bag on my desk. Part of me dreaded opening it; what would I find inside? That one photo alone had been enough to crash whatever confidence I’d had about this mission, throw me head-first into uncharted waters, and kill all the trust I’d had in my teammates! For once, I’d had plenty of surprises and complications; I didn’t need any more!

Part of me wished I’d never gone scouting the castle. If only I’d ignored my gut feeling and stayed in the royal bedroom; I wouldn’t have run into Sunburst, I wouldn’t have found that photo, and I wouldn’t be freaking out over it now!

But the rest of me knew it had been unavoidable; if I hadn’t found out alone in the middle of the night, I definitely would have during the day, in front of witnesses - I may have even run into Thorax himself at some point - and that would have easily blown the whole mission if I were to reacted with as much shock and disbelief as I actually had! Not only that, it would have revealed me as a traitor’s accomplice and sent both of us into the kind of trouble we’d never get out of! Therefore, what had happened had actually been a blessing of sorts: it had allowed me to react to the find in safety and bought me time to plan my approach. I wasn’t going to be caught unaware of my brother’s presence here, but if I wanted to keep both of us safe and prevent my teammates from finding out that I knew about Thorax, I had to learn more.

I reached into the bag.

The framed photos were all very much alike the one I’d seen first: locations were different, the ponies varied somewhat, but they all had one thing in common: an undisguised changeling, happy to be there. Not much was obvious in terms of context so I set them aside for now.

Next, I pulled out one of the notebooks. It was a journal of sorts; skimming through a few random paragraphs told me it was likely Sunburst’s. He’d written about books, and about magic spells, and about Flurry Heart, and about his letters to Starlight… I even caught a mention of Thorax once or twice in the more recent pages. It looked to be potentially helpful, but it was pretty long too; I set it aside until I finished going through the bag.

I grabbed the other notebook. It turned out not to be a notebook at all, but a photo album. It started innocently enough, with photos of Cadance and Shining Armor with Flurry Heart, and Twilight Sparkle with Flurry Heart, and Sunburst with Flurry Heart, and the aforementioned ponies in different combinations and company of other ponies… nothing one wouldn’t expect from ponies, really.

But eventually a new face joined in, shyly and gingerly at first, but gradually with more confidence and ease.

Thorax posing with Sunburst and Flurry Heart in front of Spike’s statue. Thorax playing with Flurry Heart in the castle. Thorax building a snowpony for Flurry Heart. Thorax pretending to be a living snowpony for a group of fillies.

Thorax and Sunburst in a snowball fight. Thorax getting avalanched by a stray burst of Flurry Heart’s magic. Thorax halfway dug out of the avalanche, clutching his head while Sunburst and Shining Armor cleared the snow. Thorax and Sunburst laughing in the snow.

I skipped ahead through a few pages of photos of little relevance.

Then, there was a photo of a group at a party, gathered around a large cake with ‘Happy Birthday, Trusty Shield!’ written on it - Thorax and Sunburst among them, along with several off-duty Royal Guards. Thorax dancing with Sunburst. Thorax getting kicked out of balance while carrying a tray of cupcakes. A close-up of Thorax smiling at the camera, his wings shining in the party lights as if he’d fallen into a barrel of glitter.

Thorax in a group hug with a few crystal ponies, gazing into the distance with his mouth open slightly and the tips of his forked tongue sticking out. Had a good meal?

That was the last photo of interest. Finally, I reached for the rolled-up drawings.

There weren’t many of them, but they all had the same overall theme: changelings playing in fields of flowers, changelings being friendly with ponies, changelings doing pony activities, changelings living undisguised among ponies.

No doubt who the author is, I said to myself. I rolled them back up and added them to the pile, then continued staring at it, lost in thought.

Thorax had been living here for a while, then, like I’d guessed earlier. He’d made himself comfortable to the point of living undisguised, and apparently the ponies didn’t mind him in the least. But while obviously beneficial to him, that approach had left him exposed to our infiltrators and the support team assigned to this mission. I found it inconceivable that they would have failed to notice him in all this time! But how long had they known, and where was Thorax now? And why hadn’t anyling told me about him?

The answer, I feared, was obvious: Chrysalis was using him as bait for me, again like I’d guessed earlier, hoping to trick me into revealing myself as a traitor too, and if I knew her at all, taking perverse pleasure in watching me struggle. But did she know things for sure, or was she simply guessing?

Again, where was Thorax now? Was he aware of the danger looming over his head? Could I warn him, send him away to rebuild his life someplace else where Chrysalis would have to start looking for him all over again? But how would I do it without revealing myself to the rest of my team in the process? Surely they would have been instructed to keep their eyes open for me!

Could I give him an indirect warning somehow? Possibly, but I would have to figure out how, and that could take time now that I had to work against my own team as well as against the ponies!

For the briefest of moments, I wished I hadn’t sent Sunburst away. If I’d thought to leave him here until he regained consciousness - if I’d held off from biting him in the first place - I could have interrogated him and maybe learned more! With any luck, I might have even gotten him to cooperate and get Thorax to safety!

Listen to yourself, Pharynx, I scolded myself. Conspiring with the enemy, now? What makes you think he would ever trust you? How would you have ever convinced him that you’re on the same side when Thorax is concerned?

I looked back at Sunburst’s diary. It was useless to whine about a wasted opportunity that might not have even been a real opportunity to begin with, but I could still help myself to a written record of his thoughts. He’d written about Thorax; I hadn’t paid attention to the particulars before, but if I were to read the relevant parts of the diary in detail, there was still a chance it would at least give me an idea of where to look for Thorax, if not an actual address. Either way, it would tell me more about his time here and help me plan my own deception game against the deception game my teammates were already playing against me. Even if I wouldn’t have a clear idea what to do immediately, I was determined to stay in my office and keep reading until I got through the whole diary, no matter how long it took.

Hang in there, Thorax, while I figure this out.

I opened the first page.

That evening, Chrysalis laughed herself to tears when my report got to the point of telling her about the conversation I’d overheard after breakfast.

“Raptor pregnant? Now that’s an idea!” she said, trying to compose herself.

“Do you actually want us to go down that route, Your Highness?” I asked, eyeing her curiously. I’d never seen her in such a state!

She finally succeeded in composing herself.

“We’ll see,” she said. “It would complicate the plan, but if it gets the ponies to produce love for one more royal foal… It could work to our advantage, assuming we can figure out how to handle the actual birth without blowing Raptor’s cover.”

I saw Raptor cringe at the mention of that. I would have too, probably, if the role of Cadance were mine.

“Do I get a say in the matter?” he asked.

“Do you have a suggestion on how to pull it off?”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do it at all,” he muttered.

“In that case, you absolutely will!” she roared. “I’m the Queen here, which means I’m the one who gets to make decisions, not you!”

“Not so loud, Your Highness!” I warned her. “We’re in the castle! Somepony might overhear!”

She looked daggers at me, but stopped herself from lashing out again.

“Okay, if we’re doing this, we’ll need one more drone to act as Cadance’s second foal eventually,” I mused. “And you said we were short on deployable drones not that long ago. Will you be able to spare one?”

“Another generation will have completed their training by then. I’ll choose one of them. It’s going to be easy for him or her to just lie down and sleep all day, with little risk of getting their cover blown, and the rest of you can continue teaching him how to live in disguise as time goes on and the so-called foal grows.”

“Can I at least postpone growing my belly until you’ve selected my supposed child?” Raptor asked.

“Have you forgotten pony biology? The belly doesn’t show until some time into the pregnancy, by which time the new drone will already be there!”

He groaned but said nothing.

“Okay, with that settled, tell me about the rest of the day.”

“Nothing of interest. Raptor’s been handling routine stuff in the throne room, Plague drove her foalsitter insane, and I spent the day digging through security logs in Shining’s office.” Actually digging through Sunburst’s diary, mostly, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. All she had to know about Sunburst was that his cocoon was on its way to the hive, which I’d already covered. “They’re so boring that I’d trade roles with Plague in an instant.” Normally I might have meant it, but with Thorax to worry about, I had to stick to being Shining Armor - wanted to keep the role of Shining Armor - for now. “Anything I should keep an eye on?”

“I’m sure you’ll recognize anything good when you see it,” she smirked.

Like Thorax, you mean?

I nodded, and she broke the communicator link.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Raptor snapped at me. “Why did you have to bring that up?”

“She said to tell her everything, didn’t she?” My real reason had been to try to distract her from the matter of Thorax, if such a thing was possible at all anymore.

“That meant strategic information, not some random chit-chat of two gossipy servants!”

“Are you passing an opportunity to get more food?”

“Isn’t there plenty of that here for a hundred hives already?”

“You know as well as I do that we’re capable of eating all of it and more!”

“Whatever. But don’t expect me to lend a hoof if you get in trouble!”

He conjured up his disguise and stormed out of the room.

Had he just given me a hint about knowing something I didn’t want him to know?

Burden

Several days passed. We’d received confirmation of Celestia and Luna’s capture, and Chrysalis had taken upon herself to raise the sun and moon. The task had required her to feed on a good percentage of the hive’s reserves in order to gain enough power, but she’d felt confident it would only be a temporary measure until she could start draining Celestia. I’d watched the sunrises ever since. They were a bit clumsy, but few ponies were up at such an early hour, so it wasn’t likely to get noticed. The Ponyville team had reported Starlight Glimmer having returned from a trip somewhere and disappearing the same night for an unknown reason, but other than that, the ponies of Ponyville and Canterlot were still oblivious to their princesses and heroes being missing.

The same could be said for the Crystal Empire, I’d reported, and neither Raptor nor Plague had contradicted me. Chrysalis hadn’t questioned my reports, but I suspected she’d been holding back from showing her impatience to hear one particular bit of news.

Raptor was still doing routine royal business in the throne room. Plague was still driving her foalsitters crazy.

I was still spending most of the days cooped up in my office.

In all honesty, there wasn’t much to tell Chrysalis; I’d arranged it that way deliberately. By keeping to the alleged paperwork and security logs - only partially true, because I was focusing on rereading Sunburst’s diary and only checking the logs that had something to do with Thorax - I was avoiding contact with ponies, making sure I wouldn’t accidentally run into my brother or somepony who would bring him up in a conversation. Originally, I’d intended to do that either until I formed a strategy, or until the approach lost its credibility. I’d hoped the former would happen before the latter.

I’d been fooling myself. The time was running out; I was still no closer to forming a solid enough plan to cover for Thorax, and the ponies were beginning to eye me curiously during what little time I spent among them. Soon they would start asking questions, if they hadn’t already, and I wasn’t sure if I’d know what to tell them. I certainly couldn’t vouch for Raptor to keep his mouth shut, or even for Plague if she were to switch to a different disguise for any reason!

They knew, I was sure of it. I’d caught them eyeing me questioningly a few times and exchanging meaningful glances when they thought I couldn’t see them. Had they realized that I’d figured out that they knew? Or were they simply wondering what was taking me so long? But did they know where Thorax was at this moment? Were they planning to orchestrate our supposedly sudden reunion so they could get things to finally start moving along?

It would have been easy to lure us into the same room. It should have been easy - I’d learned from Sunburst’s diary that Thorax had been given a room in the castle itself to live in - but so far, I hadn’t seen any signs of him other than the records of his existence in Sunburst’s bag, even though I’d gone looking randomly through the castle once or twice in the middle of the night. He just wasn’t there, wherever I’d looked. Had he disguised himself? Had he run away? Both were possible, but their likelihood depended on whether or not Sunburst had warned him about us. Had he noticed us at any point after Sunburst’s so-called departure? Pretty much the same thing. Was he away on an errand unrelated to us? Again, I could neither confirm it nor rule it out.

Had he been captured already? Stashed away somewhere out of sight until an appropriate moment came up for Raptor and Plague - and possibly Phantom and Viscera too - to confront me with the truth before sending us to the hive for Thorax’s punishment?

Our punishment.

I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but as time passed without a possible way out coming to me, I realized eventually that there might not be a way out after all, not after such a long time; I was merely postponing the inevitable. I may get to Thorax at some point and convince him to leave and never turn back, I may even join him in exile for both our sake - I’d probably have to by now - but what kind of life would it be? Thorax may blend in easily enough wherever in Equestria we ended up next, having done that once already, but I was bound to stick out like a sore fang! Would either of us be okay with living like that? I certainly wouldn’t, and I doubted Thorax would either with his fantasies of changelings and ponies living in friendship, not if we were to spend the rest of our lives in disguise!

But even then, Chrysalis and her armies would find us sooner or later, I was sure of it. Would we see them coming? Could we give them the slip again? And where would we go, and how many times would we have to uproot ourselves again before we ran out of places we hadn’t yet taken refuge in? Would either of us care anymore after a while? Or would we be so tired of running and hiding and living a lie that capture would come as a salvation?

It was while I lay in bed in the early morning hours, kept awake by my tormenting thoughts and waiting for the morning sun, that a curious feeling washed over me: strange, ominous, both terrible and oddly reassuring, and stronger than the aura of love all around me, larger than life, larger than the world itself.

Whatever was going to happen, I realized, would happen today, good or bad. Today, I would know.

I got out of bed. Chrysalis would raise the sun any moment now anyway.

If anyling had ever told me I’d be considering leaving the hive at any point in my life, seriously planning to turn my back on them for the sake of one pathetic drone, I would have ripped them apart and put their dead body on display as a warning to others against disputing my loyalty to the Queen. Up until a few days ago, I would have done it, I told myself as I looked out the window at the night sky. Now look at me. I’d done the unthinkable, I’d betrayed everything I’d ever worked for, and I’d done it for the sake of the one drone who shouldn’t even be alive anymore by any normal standard! I’d hoped initially that I could find some kind of balance between the two, but I’d been such a fool! That had never been an option; the only option I’d ever had was to betray my hive, or to betray my brother.

And I’d betrayed both.

Up until a few days ago, I would have called myself a first-class coward for making a decision to leave the hive and join Thorax in exile. How perspective had changed in an instant! Bravery and cowardice had nothing to do with it; it was only a matter of what the sensible thing would be! I couldn’t go back to the hive ever again! The only thing I could do was to follow Thorax to wherever life took him next and keep him safe from the perils he would undoubtedly face sooner or later. I had no purpose in the hive anymore - I never would now that they knew what I’d done - but I could still be useful to Thorax! I could find new purpose with him, wherever life took us!

But first, I had to find him. How was it possible that I hadn’t run into him so far, not even heard a stray mention? Had he moved away? Run away? Been taken away?

Was he even alive?

And, for the thousandth time, the most difficult burden of all: what would I do without him? How could I possibly go on knowing that I’d failed him completely?

Raptor joining me at the window snapped me out of my reverie.

“What’s with the sun?” he asked.

I realized he had a point: the sun should be up by now! Had something happened? Why hadn’t Chrysalis raised it yet?

“I don’t know,” I admitted, eyes still fixed to the dark horizon.

“Are we about to have our cover blown?”

“I’m sure Banshee and Grim will think of some excuse.” I didn’t really believe it would convince anypony in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it. “I’m more concerned about Chrysalis. Try to get to her.”

He activated the communicator and waited for someling to reply. And waited. And waited.

And waited.

He deactivated the communicator and tried again. Same result.

“I don’t like this, Sir!” he groaned. “Why aren’t they answering?”

“It could just be a communicator malfunction,” I told him, not really believing it. “They’ll sort it out sooner or later.”

“I don’t know, Sir. First the sun, and now this! Do you think the hive’s in danger?”

“Even if it is, what can we do about it? We’re days away!”

“We could make an excuse to leave unexpectedly and go check it out!”

“No. Our orders are to stay here and pose as the royal family! If something has happened, the supports or infiltrators will find out soon enough and come tell us! Until we have solid reason to believe that the hive is in the kind of danger they can’t handle themselves, we’re staying here!”

“As you wish,” he snorted and applied his disguise before starting his daily duties.

Just then, I noticed a slight change on the horizon.

“The sun’s coming up,” I announced with disputable relief.

Raptor came back and looked through the window again.

“Good,” he said. “I was starting to get worried.”

The Ultimate Unthinkable

The news came late in the afternoon, after another routine day for Raptor and Plague and an increasingly anxious one for me. We’d gathered in the royal bedroom as per habit, and were discussing the events of the day when Plague noticed a slight glow coming from one of the drawers in Shining’s nightstand. She went to investigate.

“The communicator scarabs are glowing,” she announced.

“The hive tried to reach us?” Raptor asked. “When? Did something happen?”

“How would I know?”

“It could be that they were simply trying to answer our own hail,” I suggested.

“We should hail them back! First that thing in the morning, and now this… I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, it’s close enough to our normal reporting time anyway,” I agreed. “Might as well do it now.”

This time, we succeeded.

“Where have you been?” Psycho barked from the communicator bubble. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day!”

“We’ve been doing our mission, Psycho, for hive’s sake! What’s so important that you have to whine all of a sudden?”

“Forget the mission! You have to come back to the hive! Drop everything and get here right now - don’t even bother covering your tracks or making excuses to the ponies! Your supports are already halfway here!”

“Whoa, hold up… what’s gotten into Chrysalis? She’s spent too much effort in making this go smoothly, she wouldn’t just-”

“That’s just it,” he interrupted me. “Chrysalis has been overthrown this morning.”

What?! Of all the things I might have expected to hear…

“Come again?” I couldn’t have heard that right! But I must have; why else would Raptor and Plague have jumped out of their carapaces just now?

“You heard me,” Psycho said. “By order of the new king, all missions, ongoing or pending, are cancelled as of hours ago!”

We had a king now? Who would have dared to oppose the Queen? And succeeded?

“Who is this king?”

“Just get here,” he repeated and ended the connection.

Raptor, Plague, and I looked at one another. The news had caught us completely off guard; regardless of how I felt about her lately, Chrysalis had been the only leader the changelings had ever had, she’d led the hive through good times and bad, through every challenge imaginable, never giving up to failures and setbacks, always prevailing one way or another! She’d been the one constant in our lives; no matter what happened, we’d always known she would be there to get us through it, and the iron hoof of her reign had been a small price to pay for her experience and cunning!

And now, she was gone. Whether dead, imprisoned, or exiled, she’d fallen at the hooves of someling crazy enough to oppose her, crazy enough to dare to call himself king! How had he done it? Hadn’t our soldiers tried to stop him? Had he defeated them too? Or had he won them over to his side? And how? What had he been trying to accomplish, anyway? Surely he couldn’t have been so foolish to think he could best Chrysalis at being the leader!

Was he even a changeling?

He had to be, I decided. How else would he have managed to get in and come so close to Chrysalis? There would have been an epic battle otherwise, and Psycho would have said so!

Unless… had the battle been so horrible that even Psycho couldn’t bring himself to discuss the rivers of changeling blood spilled in a futile attempt to protect the hive?

“This can’t be true,” Plague muttered eventually.

“What do we do now?” Raptor asked.

“We go back,” I said after a moment. “I don’t see what choice we have.”

“What about the mission? We can’t just leave! The ponies will figure out what we’ve done and we won’t be able to come back!”

“What makes you so sure that we’re coming back at all?” Plague asked. “Without Chrysalis-”

“Forget what Psycho said!” Raptor snapped at her. “I’ll deal with this so-called king and help Chrysalis reclaim the throne if it’s the last thing I’ll do!”

“And how will you do that, exactly? Chrysalis is… was… whatever… extremely powerful and still got overthrown, therefore this king must be even more powerful than her! How do you propose to stand up against him?”

“Enough, both of you,” I groaned. “Raptor, your loyalty to Chrysalis is admirable, and Plague, you have a point, but that’s not enough to go on, and Psycho didn’t exactly share any useful information, either, and something tells me trying to hail him again won’t accomplish anything. If we want to figure this out, it looks like we’ll have to go to the hive like he told us to, see with our own eyes what the situation is like, and then plan accordingly.”

“So, what, we just drop everything and disappear? Suppose the crystal ponies get wise to our scheme and attack the hive? We don’t even know how many of our soldiers this new king killed or incapacitated in order to get to Chrysalis! We could find ourselves overwhelmed despite the throne’s magic-disabling field!”

I considered this. He was right; why hadn’t I thought of that?

“Okay, we’ll invent some kind of emergency in Ponyville, keep it vague if anypony asks, and we’ll pretend to go there. When’s the next train running?”

“We should be able to catch the last one for the day,” Plague said, “but we don’t have time to check the supports’ cave before we leave, and we certainly can’t pick up any gear they might have left behind.”

“Then we’ll leave it. Who knows, it might turn out to be a good thing that they’ve left some equipment behind, assuming they have left it. Less stuff to carry back if this works.”

We caught the train just barely in time. The ponies had been surprised by our sudden departure, but none of them had pressed for details, and Cadance’s aide had promised to keep the Empire in check until we returned. Plague had drawn some curious glares, though, and it occured to me too late that Cadance and Shining Armor would have left Flurry Heart in the care of her foalsitters rather than take her with them into a potentially dangerous situation. It was too late to change anything about our retreat by then, though, and all we could do now was hope this oversight wouldn’t give us away.

We sat together in a half-empty train car, each of us lost in thought. Even Plague didn’t bother to act like a foal anymore. Would the ponies find it weird? Or would they pick up on Raptor’s and mine sullen mood and assume the same was the case with our alleged daughter? Would they try to cheer us up? I hoped not; though their efforts might give us some love to snack on, interfering ponies were the last thing I needed right now!

Raptor and Plague shared glances every now and then. What were they thinking about? Our mission? Its uncertain future? The state the hive might be in when we get there? Their failure to trick me into showing what I knew about Thorax being here while they still had a chance?

Thorax. The thought sent a painful stab through my heart.

If only I knew who this new king was, I wished. What was his agenda? Would he continue where Chrysalis had left off, or would he start anew? Would her enemies become his enemies as well? Would he demand that all debts owed to Chrysalis were now owed to him?

Would he see Thorax as a traitor and insist on his punishment? Or could he be convinced to drop the matter?

Had he already gotten hold of him? Killed him?

And what about me? Was I walking - riding, whatever - to my death too?

I cast a long, heavy glance through the window of the train car, at the Crystal Empire about to disappear on the horizon.

Goodbye, Thorax, if you’re still alive, and be safe out there. Some day, maybe, I’ll find you.

And if you’re dead, please forgive me - I should have protected you!

The train kept going as darkness fell onto the world.

We got off the train in Ponyville, adapted our disguise when nopony was looking, and boarded an early train to Appleloosa, one of the southernmost towns in Equestria with a train station. Sun was up by the time we arrived there, and the ponies were out and about, but none of them paid us any attention as we trotted further south, through the wasteland and into the jungle.

Once there, out of the ponies’ sight, we dropped our disguises altogether and took to the air as fast as our wings could take us.

We flew in silence for a long while, until Raptor finally spoke up.

“Who’s raising the sun now?” he asked.

“Of all the things to worry about…” Plague retorted with an eye roll.

“I’m serious! Chrysalis took it up after capturing Celestia, but now that she’s been overthrown… maybe even killed…” He shuddered. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the sun and the moon went up and down much more smoothly last evening and this morning than when Chrysalis was doing it!”

“I see,” she mused. “You think the king’s doing it now?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “And if he is, then he’s got to be really, really powerful to do it that easily! Either that, or Celestia and Luna have managed to escape somehow and could already be back in Canterlot, telling their army what happened. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse!”

“Whichever it is, we’re about to find out,” I interjected, pointing at the edge of the jungle and the barren wasteland that lay beyond, and our hive towering on the horizon. “We’re almost there.”

When we got closer, I noticed something was odd about the hive. It took me a minute to realize what: the central spire was shorter, as if Chrysalis’ castle had been blown up! No, it was blown up: the roof of the throne room was gone, and the current roof had once been the floor of the throne room, if not the floor of one of the lower levels of the castle!

Must have been quite a battle, indeed. I shuddered at the thought.

Closer still, we saw another thing that was new: a large number of creatures, insectoid in appearance much like ourselves, only colorful like ponies, with fancy wings and tails, lacking the fangs and leg holes, and… acting… friendly?

Were these the warriors that had defeated us? They didn’t look at all menacing; on the contrary, if I’d seen them anywhere else, I would have thought them to be utterly harmless! I might have even captured some of them to feed on!

And it would have been a feast, I realized. Love radiated from them in droves, not as strong as the love in the Crystal Empire, but no weaker than the love of any earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus on the happiest day of their life!

Weirder still, they were mingling with the few changelings in sight, and the changelings weren’t fighting back; they didn’t seem to be furious, frightened, or threatened at all!

The three of us exchanged glances. What had happened here? None of us understood! This wasn’t the kind of behavior one would expect from belligerent sides!

We were almost at the hive when a changeling and one of the mysterious creatures flew up to meet us.

“You’re back sooner than I expected,” Psycho said.

“Never mind that!” I snapped. “What’s going on? What are these things?”

“They’re changelings,” he said with an amused smile.

I stared at him. Changelings? Our own kind? Well, if they were in disguise… but why would they have disguised themselves at all in the hive, especially as something this ridiculous? Such beings didn’t even exist, for hive’s sake!

“Why do they all look like that?” I asked finally.

“The colorful ones? They learned to share love and went through a metamorphosis.”

“Shared love? Ridiculous! No changeling would ever give up love willingly!”

“But they did! So many of our kind have given up Chrysalis’ ways and become peaceful!”

I rubbed my temple.

“I can’t believe it… but assuming you’re not messing with us, when did it happen? And how? And why?”

“Because the king inspired it.”

Oh, right. The king.

“Which reminds me, I’d like to have a word with this king.”

“He’s expecting you,” he nodded, then turned to the greenish-and-orange… changeling… by his side. “Hornet, could you get Raptor and Plague up to speed while I escort Pharynx?”

Wait, Hornet?!

“Sure,” she said. “Why don’t we sit down somewhere? This could take a while.”

The three of them descended to the ground, and Psycho led me further up, presumably to whatever they were using as the throne room. We passed several changelings - I still couldn’t believe that was what they were - and though a few flinched at the sight of us, most of them gave us a smile and a wave. I didn’t know whether to cringe, or to yell at them to stop the charade and pull themselves together, or to try to wake up. Okay, I had tried to wake up several times during the journey back and failed every time, so this probably wasn’t a messed-up dream.

“You still haven’t explained how this happened,” I tried to coax a more detailed recounting of the events out of him.

“I’m sure the king will do that,” he replied with a knowing smirk.

What was I missing?

“And I’m sure he has more important things to do! Who is he, anyway?”

His smirk turned into a chuckle.

“Him!” We were finally at the plateau on the top of the tallest spire, formerly Chrysalis’ castle, and Psycho pointed at the figure sitting on the floor next to a pile of rubble with some scrolls on it, reading another scroll.

He was similar in appearance to some of the colorful changelings I’d seen, green with purple eyes and elytra, only much bigger, probably as tall as Chrysalis, and a pair of large orange antlers adorned his head. He hadn’t noticed us land.

“He’s here,” Psycho announced, attracting the king’s attention.

I’d had several theories of what the king would do if and when I met him. At best, I’d hoped he’d be indifferent enough to Thorax and me to allow us to return to the hive unpunished; at worst, I’d feared his wrath would turn out to be much more horrible than anything Chrysalis could ever imagine.

None of that happened. Not even the king’s physical appearance matched my expectations, let alone his behavior!

He cast a soft and benevolent gaze upon me and his face brightened instantly; he grinned widely, dropped the scroll from his magical grip, sprang to his hooves - indeed, he was as tall as Chrysalis - ran up to me and, as if I hadn’t had enough surprises already, wrapped me in a firm hug, holding on as if the universe would fall apart if he allowed himself to ever let go. A surge of love from him hit me harder than a hurricane, and it took all my discipline to hold back from feasting on it.

“Oh, Pharynx, I’m so glad you’re back and alright!” he whispered in a familiar voice.

Too familiar.

Startled, I looked at Psycho and a couple of colorful changelings standing close by. They smiled - grinned, even - and gave a nod in reply to my unspoken question.

Seriously?!

No, impossible…

It couldn’t be…

I pulled myself out of the hug and stared at the king with all the incredulity in the world.

“Thorax?!”

A New Era

“Surprise!” Thorax grinned even wider.

“Wait… what… but how…”

“I know! I couldn’t believe it myself at first! But I guess the impossible does happen sometimes!”

“Okay,” I tried to pull myself together, “so you-”

Wait. What if this was the trap?

“-hold on,” I hissed at him. “How do I know you’re not Chrysalis in disguise?”

He flinched.

“Why would I be?”

“I don’t know, maybe this is some elaborate test of loyalty!” Like making me believe that Thorax was safe so I would lower my guard and admit what I’d done! I’d been away long enough for the drones remaining in the hive to stage this!

“I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me,” he sighed, then turned to Psycho. “We still have some of that thing, don’t we?”

“I’ll bring it,” he said and flew away.

“So…” the king fumbled. “Glad to be back at the hive?”

I glared at him as if ready to pounce him. I was ready to pounce him if he turned out to be an impostor! But how would I get him to reveal himself?

“Oh. You don’t want to talk until I convince you, right?”

I gave a barely perceptible nod, still holding my glare.

“Fine.” He hung his head. “Let’s just wait until Psycho is back. Wanna sit down?”

“I’ll stand,” I retorted.

“Look, I know it’s been a while, and I know that physical appearance doesn’t mean much as a means of recognition since we’re changelings, but I really am Thorax! Didn’t you recognize me by how I greeted you or by how much love I shared with you in that hug?”

“It was… plausible,” I said cautiously. “But I’m going to need more.”

As if on cue, Psycho returned carrying a jar with a greenish substance in it.

“Disguise yourself,” the alleged Thorax said.

“What? Why?”

“So I can convince you I’m not Chrysalis.”

I frowned and tilted my head, then glanced at the jar Psycho had brought. Was it what I thought it was?

“Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you,” he encouraged me. “I just need you to not be in your own form!”

I hesitated. He gave an exasperated sigh.

“Here, I’ll go first!” He assumed the form of himself that I was familiar with, only his wings were as shiny as they’d been in some of the photos from Sunburst’s bag. I’d interpreted it as a trick of the light at first, but could something over there have affected him in such a way? “Please?”

Ugh, fine. I decided I might as well play along.

I opted for my preferred spider-like battle disguise, just in case my suspicions turned out to be true.

“Okay. Now, I believe you know what this is?” He took the jar from Psycho and offered it to me.

“I might,” I said.

“Your teams discovered this in the zebra’s hut in Everfree Forest while on the mission to hunt me down. Could you apply some of it on yourself?”

“Why?”

“So you’d know for sure that this really is the changeling revealer ointment you discovered and not a trick.”

“And then you apply some on yourself?”

“Yes.”

Okay, this would either turn out perfectly fine or lead to a disaster. And I had no idea which was more likely! Logic dictated that he wouldn’t have offered it if he had something to hide, but then again, he could actually be Chrysalis trying to make sure I wasn’t Thorax in disguise. He had pulled that trick once before, after all!

Oh well, only one way to find out…

I dipped an appendage in the jar and rubbed some of the ointment over myself.

Nothing happened for a moment. I was about to swing a claw at him and launch him off the plateau when I felt the ointment tugging at my disguise, gently at first, but getting stronger rapidly, and though I tried to fight it, soon it reached a point when even my best effort couldn’t hold the disguise together anymore.

Just like every test had shown according to Chrysalis’ claims, I reverted to my own form against my will.

Then Thorax, or whoever it was, applied the ointment on himself just like he’d said he would before I could take the jar in my hooves and splat the contents in his face; I’d been sure he wouldn’t do it!

When his magic dissipated, I fully expected to see Chrysalis standing there, gloating over my foolishness and ordering her disguised army to seize me if not doing it herself, and revealing the captured Thorax stashed away somewhere until that point. Instead, the king had simply reverted into his colorful, deerlike form.

“Now do you believe that I’m not Chrysalis?” he asked, reaching for a piece of cloth that Psycho offered and wiping the ointment off himself, then passing the cloth to me.

“Okay, yeah, I guess,” I admitted, accepting the cloth and cleaning myself up. “But how do I know you’re actually Thorax and not some other changeling?”

“Remember when we were nymphs? You told me once that your life goals were to defeat a Dragon Lord in battle, to drain Princess Celestia of her love, and to figure out how to transform into a nirik, and I asked you what a nirik was, and you rolled your eyes and told me that I would have known if I were good enough to qualify for the level of training that taught that.”

“Anyling could have overheard that conversation!”

“Also, before I got deployed to Canterlot, you dragged me into the wasteland and threatened to tell Chrysalis that I’d been the one responsible for losing that crate of spears if I failed to act like a proper soldier.”

“Wait, that was you?” Psycho interjected. “Why did I get torched for it then?”

Thorax gave a sheepish smile. Yes, Thorax! I believed him now! No one could have overheard that conversation; I’d made sure of it!”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Because it was your fault, Psycho!” I retorted. “If you hadn't broken his leg and both wings a few days before the incident, he could have moved that crate before the hole opened underneath, or at the very least, he’d have been able to catch it in mid-air! Good thing I happened to be flying by to catch him before he got splashed into oblivion!”

Psycho opened his mouth and shut it again.

“What?” I barked.

He sighed and looked at the ground. “I almost asked why you didn’t save the crate instead...”

I responded with a murderous scowl that outdid all of my previous murderous scowls combined. Psycho and Thorax both flinched. I decided to deal with the idiot later.

“So, Thorax,” I jabbed him, “why didn’t you describe that incident right away? Why go through all that charade with the changeling revealer?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d believe just one thing,” he said. “And you had every right to doubt me. It wouldn’t have been beyond Chrysalis to obtain that information… one way or another.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered. Then, after a moment, “But she hasn’t been very keen on sharing information lately, either. How much did I miss?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve probably missed a great deal more than you, and Psycho has been getting me up to speed since-”

“Wait… Psycho has been helping you?” I turned to Psycho. “That’s the last thing I would expect from you! How many times did I have to pull you off of him over the years so you wouldn’t kill him? Are you secretly trying to help Chrysalis return?”

“No.” He reached for the jar and rubbed some changeling revealer over himself, and it did its magic, revealing a blue drone.

Okay, what exactly had happened here? I’d never have expected Psycho of all drones to take my brother’s side! How in the name of eggshells had Thorax convinced him?

“As you can see, I’ve accepted the way of sharing love,” he explained. “I thought initially that I’d succumbed to a moment of hunger-driven weakness, but I don’t see it that way anymore, and I’m glad I’ve done it.”

Before I could say anything, a green-and-pink drone landed on the plateau.

“There you are, Psycho!” she said. “We’re just done releasing the last group of ponies!”

“Good.” Then, to Thorax, “Mind if I go?”

“Sure!”

I watched the two drones fly away. When they were out of sight, I turned back to Thorax, and we sat down next to his pile of rubble and scrolls.

“Let me guess. Releasing the ponies was your idea.”

“We don’t need to feed on them anymore, Pharynx! We can create love for one another now, and there’s plenty enough for everyling! None of them have been starving since the metamorphosis, and they’re much happier and much less hostile than they’ve ever been! In fact, Psycho and many others have been showing up here to tell me that they didn’t feel aggressive at all anymore!”

“That’s fascinating,” I said dryly. “At least I don’t have to worry about them bringing Chrysalis back and punishing you for escaping or me for trying to cover for you. I think.”

“Oh.” His posture deflated. “You’ve figured it out.”

“Well, it wasn’t that hard after I saw evidence of you being in the Crystal Empire. What I don’t know is how long she’s known and what gave me away.”

Thorax averted his gaze.

“You know, don’t you?” I asked him.

“Psycho told me,” he admitted.

“And?”

He hesitated.

“Oh, for crying out loud, I already know I’m not gonna like it! So spill it out already!”

“She suspected all along,” he sighed eventually, “even before summoning you to roast you for my escape when she first found out about it. The fact that you then swore your loyalty to the hive rather than to her, and later your decision to keep infiltrators in the dark about me and your claim that it was unnecessary for the hunter teams to report to the hive when they had to report to you and you had to report to the hive yourself anyway… that only solidified her suspicions despite your reasoning, so she told Grim and Brutus and the other Foal Mountain team about her suspicions and ordered them to keep an eye on-”

“Wait, all of them?” I’d suspected that she might have planted one snitch, but five? But then, I must have covered my tracks pretty well at the time if they hadn’t reported me!

“Yes, and Wasp too, later.” He fidgeted his hoof. “By the way, Vermin woke up and he doesn’t remember anything about that day when the ursa attacked. What is an ursa, anyway? I meant to ask Psycho, but he got called off and I forgot by the time he returned.”

“Let me reiterate my statement about the nirik: if you’d bothered to pay any attention in training, you’d know!”

“But it’s a little late for that now, and since it looks like I’m supposed to be the king-” he shuddered, “-don’t you think I should know which dangerous creatures exist out there?”

“Okay, fine. An ursa is like a huge bear with translucent body and stars on its coat.”

A spark of recognition ignited in his eyes.

“Wait, that really happened?”

“The ursa attack? Of course it-”

“No, I mean the dream I had!”

I stared at him blankly.

“I got injured pretty bad and had to put myself in a healing cocoon for a while,” he explained. “While I was in there, I dreamt that a group of drones found me and beat me up, but then a monster that fits your description of an ursa stormed at them and knocked them away, and then it transformed into you, and then you said something and bit me, and I fell through the ground into a bubble of slime, and Chrysalis was there, and she killed me, and-”

“Hold on.” I rubbed my forehead. “You remember that?”

He gave a slight nod.

“Okay, yes, I did save you from that group of drones - they were the other Foal Mountain team, by the way - and I put you back in that healing cocoon, but to the best of my knowledge, Chrysalis wasn’t there. You must have dreamt that part!”

Though I would have preferred that my venom had blocked that memory, I was glad that Thorax had been the one left with residual memories rather than any of the hunters if anyling had to!

He considered this new bit of information. Then, he asked, “Were you one of the timberwolves too?”

“What timberwolves?”

“The ones in Everfree Forest. You know, the two that killed Cringe and Monster and injured Rascal?”

“No I was in Foal Mount- wait, where did you get the idea that there were two of them? And Rascal was injured in Canterlot!”

“I was there.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, really! They were about to capture me but then the timberwolves attacked us. I got thrown into a ravine pretty quick so I didn’t see what was going on, but I did hear things. I thought… I thought that all three of them had died… but then I ended up in Canterlot the next day and lost my disguise in public and got chased and blasted into unconsciousness on the edge of a cliff… The next thing I knew, I woke up at the base of Mount Canterlot and Rascal attacked me - he must have gotten out of that fight somehow - and we fought and I bit him-”

“So that’s why he didn’t say anything to the soldiers sent to find him in prison,” I mused. “I have to admit, you were insanely lucky there. I suppose the fall injuries were what made you cocoon yourself?”

“Yes. Funny thing is, Chrysalis suspected foul play on your part about those timberwolves even though you’d had nothing to do with the incident, she even guessed that I might have had something to do with that changeling revealer ointment - that was an accidental discovery when the zebra treated a wound that one of the timberwolves gave me - but she never seriously suspected anything about the ursa.” He smirked. “Apparently your injuries were pretty convincing. I knew you were skilled at shapeshifting, but I had no idea you were that good!”

“The injuries were real, if you must know.”

“But how… why…”

“What do you think? The medic sent to examine us would have never fallen for false ones!”

He winced.

“You mean… you injured yourself deliberately to prevent them from doubting your story and starting an investigation on why you’d lied? Oh, Pharynx! I’m so sorry! You didn’t have to go that far just to protect me! If I’d known-”

I stifled him.

“Quit whining, Thorax! I’m a soldier, I eat pain for breakfast!”

“But you could have just surrendered me and-”

“But I didn’t want to! Your safety was all that mattered, and I wasn’t going to give it up to avoid a few cuts and bruises!”

“I’ve been told it was more than a few cuts and bruises…”

“And I’ve seen worse in my time, and anyway I recovered, so quit whining already!”

He bit his lip and fixed his gaze to the ground.

“So how did Chrysalis find out, anyway?”

“I turned up in the Crystal Empire,” he said after a moment. “It’s my fault, really. I was careless and didn’t bother disguising myself while on the outskirts of the city, and somepony saw me. They were on full alert for quite a while, trying to find me and any other changelings that might have been around.”

“And Chrysalis never bothered to mention trouble over there.”

“This was all after she’d started believing your claims that I must be dead after all that time your teams had failed to find a trace of me. But apparently something you said in one of your reports had by then inspired her to make another attempt to overtake Equestria, and Psycho said that victory would have compensated for the missed opportunity to, um, punish the traitor. That is, until Blade and Feisty reported to her that citizens of the Crystal Empire were being warned about a changeling sighting earlier that day, and neither of them knew when they might have been discovered, as they were careful not to drop or modify their disguises unless absolutely unavoidable, which hadn’t happened on the day in question. Basically, they wanted permission to leave the premises, but Chrysalis put two and two together and her suspicions arose again, and since your preparations to replace Equestrian royalty had already begun and she already knew that you were going to replace Shining Armor, she told Blade and Feisty about what was going on and ordered them to sit tight and keep her posted about the situation. Eventually Spike found my hideout and helped me get accepted into pony society, which only helped Chrysalis keep track of me, so instead of having me captured right away, she decided to use me to flush out your intentions. And I’m sorry about that… If I’d known there were other changelings there, I would have never-”

“Skip the apologies, will you?” I groaned. “I get it that you weren’t on a suicide mission, and anyway you couldn’t have known about any of these things!”

“But I should have suspected, and I should have been more careful! And I should have guessed that you may have faced the consequences of my-”

“Can we get on with it?” I interrupted him before he started rambling again. “I suppose the support team sent to the Crystal Empire was briefed about the situation and instructed to watch for my reaction to finding you there? And I suppose that Raptor and Plague received similar orders?”

“Yes. A drone was sent to brief all teams during your preparations and sat in waiting near your camp for a few days until it was your turn to go hunting for food.”

“Well, at least I managed to find out about you when they weren’t around.”

He bit his lip again and looked away.

Oh no, don’t tell me…

“What?” I asked in a tone that demanded an honest and immediate answer.

“Remember the other Foal Mountain team?”

“What about them?”

“They were sent there too. Chrysalis was initially going to deploy them to Manehattan to take up some of the newly-vacant positions, but the new development in the Crystal Empire demanded a few drones that would keep an eye on you specifically, so they were reassigned. Jackal became a tapestry in the royal bedroom and Wasp replaced a statuette on the desk in Shining Armor’s office, which were the two places where you were expected to spend the most time. Carapace intended to be a bird or an insect that would follow you around, and he was going to take over your role once we got captured, but it turned out that he didn’t have much to do while waiting for it to happen so he just kept the others up to speed on your movement and actions and maintained communication with Chrysalis.”

I’d been right: I didn’t like to hear all this! I’d thought that I hadn’t been discovered yet and I’d played my game right under their snouts; I’d known myself to be on the verge of getting punished and it turned out that I couldn’t have cut it any closer if that had been my intention! And ironically, it had been thanks to the very drone I’d been trying to get out of that whole mess!

“They were just waiting for me to run into you, weren’t they?”

“Yes, and apparently enjoying watching you sweat as much as Chrysalis enjoyed the idea of getting to kill us. But I was gone by then, and they freaked out because they couldn’t find me, so they weren’t telling Chrysalis everything for fear of punishment. The hive had no idea they’d lost track of me again until I showed up here.”

“Good thing that Sunburst saw us plotting in the royal bedroom, then,” I said. “I was wondering if he’d managed to warn you about us.”

“Actually, I’m the one who saw you.”

That caught me off guard.

“You? What were you doing there?”

“A disturbance in the love aura woke me up and I went to tell Cadance and Shining Armor about it in case it was something important,” he explained. “I didn’t expect to stumble upon the cause of that disturbance!”

“So you came to Sunburst? Not the other way around?”

“Kind of both, actually. He saw the cocoons being taken away and came to my room looking for me, by which time I’d already freaked out and returned to my room, so we compared notes and agreed that I should go to Ponyville and get Twilight’s help, and he decided to stay there and try to sabotage your work. How did he get captured, anyway? He didn’t remember a thing.”

I told him.

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose he would have been too tired to think straight by then,” he sighed. “You could have revealed yourself to him, you know. I’m sure he would have helped you if you’d explained!”

“Don’t be. He had no reason to trust anything I might have told him, and anyway I didn’t know what his intentions were. I get it now that he’s on your side, but it was unavoidable.”

“Do you want to reconcile with him? He went home already, but I can send him a letter-”

“Don’t bother. I’ve never apologized to an enemy for anything and I don’t intend to start now!”

“But the ponies aren’t our enemies anymore!”

“Whatever. Just because you shared love with ponies doesn’t mean I have to!”

“Would you at least share love with changelings? I've asked them to forgive you for essentially betraying the hive, by the way.”

“You mean, share love like you did? What gave you the idea to do it, anyway?”

“When Chrysalis caught me trying to rescue the captured ponies, she got all thrilled that she would finally get to kill me - actually, to see if you would when you came back - and she started draining me of love in front of a roomful of drones, and I wanted to show everyling how much love I’d gathered by sharing in a hope it would inspire them to do the same, and just as much, I wanted to spare you the humiliation of having to kill me… so I gave it all away willingly in a burst that turned out far bigger and stronger than I’d expected it to be. I admit, I fully expected to die in the process, but instead… this happened.” He motioned to himself and the destroyed throne room. “The blast knocked Chrysalis unconscious and cracked her throne, and when the other drones followed suit… it finished the job.”

Something stirred in the back of my mind.

“When did this happen?” I asked cautiously.

“In the morning hours of the day when you were recalled,” he said. “It would have been just after dawn, but the ordeal distracted Chrysalis and kept her busy, so the night lasted a little longer than it should have, and Celestia and Luna raised the sun together afterwards.”

A dawn of a different kind arose in my mind as the implications of Thorax’s words sank in. The love I’d felt from him when he hugged me on my arrival to the former throne room had vaguely reminded me of something, but I’d dismissed the impression. Now I knew why it had been so familiar.

Though much lighter and warmer, it had the same aura in its core as the queer sensation that had suddenly and mysteriously washed over me as I’d laid awake in Shining Armor’s bed for the last time, tormented by worry for Thorax and unable to think of a way to ensure a worthwile life for him after everything that had happened.

I hadn’t known at the time what that sensation was about. Now I did: it had been Thorax himself, unimaginably far away, doing the one thing he’d always done best, and doing it to the limit and beyond!

In his most desperate hour, my brother had decided to lay down his life for the changeling race - for me, not knowing that I’d have been doomed regardless - and I’d felt it on the other end of the world!

Talk about the power of love, Thorax. You have no idea! Yours shook the world apart while the rest of us were fighting for scraps!

“Is something wrong?” he asked, snapping me out of it.

“That… must have been quite a sight,” I said, hoping it would justify the stupid dumbfounded expression on my face that I’d just become aware of. “So what became of Chrysalis?”

“She wanted to fight me when she dug herself out of the rubble, but by then, all the changelings in the area had transformed, the throne fell apart, and the ponies got out of their cocoons, so she backed off from the opposition and flew away disguised as a bat. We’ve been looking for her since, but she’s had plenty of time to disappear anywhere she wanted to by now.”

“Hey,” I smirked, “give me First Commander authority again if you haven’t already and I’ll make sure the troops have her dragged here for punishment by tomorrow! No messing around this time!”

He avoided my eyes again.

“Um… you don’t know yet,” he sighed.

Now what?

“Well tell me then!”

“I’ve… I’ve disbanded the army.”

“You what?!”

“We don’t need the army anymore! We’re peaceful!”

“Hold on a minute… Did I hear you right? You don’t intend to send drones to infiltrate foreign cities and capture ponies, and you won’t wage any wars, so you’ve disbanded the army?”

“...yes.”

“Do I dare to ask what you did about the hivebound security guards?”

He shrugged feebly.

“They’re part of the army, aren’t they?”

“Wonderful, so you’ve disbanded them too, haven’t you?”

“Yes…”

“Well, congratulations! Of all the ridiculously stupid things you could have done, this takes the prize! What were you thinking? How are we supposed to defend ourselves now?!”

“We won’t have to! Celestia has already agreed to negotiate an alliance with us at the soonest convenience, and I intend to do the same with other countries! I’ve already reached out to them with a declaration of peace!”

“And you expect them to honor that declaration?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Because we’ve been at war with the whole world since forever! We’ve been everyone’s enemy for as long as the world can remember, and they have no reason to suddenly trust us just because Chrysalis isn’t at the throne anymore! I might be willing to accept that you’ve convinced Celestia, but the other nations’ armies could be converging on the hive with the intention to wipe us out of existence this minute for all we know, especially since the change of command alone would have left us vulnerable! We need that army now more than ever!”

“And if they are converging here, it won’t look good for us if they find an army in full battle gear waiting for them! How can we expect them to believe in our peaceful intentions with spears pointed at their faces?”

“Thorax, if they have any battle sense in them, they’ll blast first and ask questions later! By the time they think to ask themselves if we might be telling the truth, there won’t be any of us left alive!”

“Isn’t there a ceasefire signal if it really comes to that?”

“Well, yeah, there is, but don’t count on that to save us!”

“But it could work! C’mon, Pharynx, hasn’t such a thing ever happened?”

“Not in changeling history! We’ve never backed out of combat!”

“Not in changeling history, but what about the history of other races?”

“It’s not unheard of, but even if we do accept the possibility that some of them will be willing to talk, not all of them might, and that’s only counting sapient creatures! What about wild beasts? Do you propose to talk a pack of timberwolves out of eating us?”

“I’m sure we can find a non-violent way to deal with them,” he shrugged.

“That’s your plan? Hasn’t Psycho objected? Or any other soldiers?”

“No, they’ve accepted my decision without protesting.”

“I suppose they would have after the way Chrysalis ruled,” I mused. “They probably thought they’d get punished for trying to talk some sense into you.”

“Actually, some of them thanked me.”

“Thanked you? For what?”

“For a chance to devote their time and efforts to something that doesn’t involve endless combat drills and hostile paranoia! Believe it or not, there are drones who actually do want to try other activities!”

“What activities? We don’t do anything other than battle!”

“I’ve started some. So far, there’s an arts-and-crafts group, a group on the way to becoming a choir, and a feelings forum, and a few drones asked for permission to try a hoof at things like science and gardening!”

“So, basically, we’re becoming ponies. Why don’t you rename the hive into ‘Changequestria’ or something like that while you’re at it?”

“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing!”

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” I groaned.

“And I’m sure you’ll feel differently once you share love!

“And become like the rest of you? No thanks! You’ve ruined the whole hive already, but you won’t ruin me!”

“But you’ll feel much calmer and more content with life! Everyling else does! Give it a chance… please?”

“I said no!” I got up and stormed towards what looked like a gate to the hive’s interior. “And don’t come to my crying when you realize the colossal extent of the mistakes you’re making!”

“Pharynx…” I heard him call to me despondently as I marched away through the tunnel I’d found.

He wanted me to accept pony ways? Not going to happen! Didn’t he know who I was? What I was? What I’d always been? How could a fearsome warrior ever find purpose in painting pictures or watering flowers? What satisfaction was I supposed to find in casual dancing or gazing at the clouds? How was I expected to come to terms with my own brother denying me everything I’d ever worked for?

All around me, colorful changelings milled about, talking happily. I could sense in their love auras that they genuinely enjoyed their new life, but I couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t stand their laughter and idle voices! How could they have abandoned their old lives so easily? How could they have betrayed themselves? I could accept Chrysalis’ defeat and exile easily enough, but she at least had known how to maintain discipline and keep us safe!

I walked on. I ripped up a painting that someling had hung on a wall. I kicked a board game that a group of colorful nymphs were playing, sending the pieces flying all over the chamber. I hissed at a green drone who had had the misfortune of coming round the corner and turning in my direction.

None of it made it any easier to face the fact that my brother, one whose life I’d defended even at the cost of my own for as long as I could remember, had just rendered me unnecessary to our home.

Eventually I reached the end of the tunnel, where it opened out into the sky above the wastelands. The sun was coming down on the horizon.

How appropriate, I thought, finally managing to cool off a little. My brother had brought forth a new era, one I didn’t understand, but if anything, it had finally helped him find his place in the world; it had finally earned him the changelings’ respect that he could never have in the old days. Maybe, just maybe, I would turn out to be wrong and what I considered mistakes on his part would turn out to be a good thing… or so I hoped, for his sake.

Only time would tell.

I looked on the outer walls of the hive below me and the endless wasteland beyond, basked in the evening glow. This was my home; this had always been my home, the one thing I cared most about beside Thorax, and would always remain just that.

And I would always defend it from harm, no matter the price I’d have to pay.

No matter how Thorax felt about it.

Looking into the distance, I couldn’t see any incoming armies. Thorax may have been right about his idea that we wouldn’t get attacked, but he may have just as easily been wrong. Just because I couldn’t see an army approaching now and from this direction, didn’t mean that none would come, or that they wouldn’t come from elsewhere, and I intended to be ready. I would set traps, build weapons, stand watch; I would find and organize any remaining drones with common sense, and if and when the enemy forces arrive, they would be dealt with so quickly and effectively that they’d never know what hit them!

But in order to do that, I couldn’t give up my ruthlessness and my intimidating warrior’s attitude. As tempting as Thorax’s offer to share love and tap into a source of ample nourishment might have been, becoming mellow in the process was simply too high a price to pay if I wanted to ensure his and the hive’s safety to the best of my abilities!

Even if it meant going against the King’s wishes.

Even if it meant denying him the support he probably deserved.

Sure, my star had fallen like the sun now behind the horizon. But Thorax’s star had risen at the same time, and from the looks of it, it had the potential to shine just as brightly as mine had. But my star could still shine in the shadows, just like Celestia’s sun was shining now on an unknown land far away beyond the horizon.

I guess our stars weren’t destined to shine together, Thorax.

But mine has had its chance, and it made the best of it, and it never meant to outshine yours.

So may your star shine brightly, my brother, my King, and may it shine for a long time!

And my own star, unseen and forgotten, will lend whatever light it can to help yours keep the darkness away.

Debating Discoveries

That same evening, the Canterlot team reported a possible breakthrough in our search.

“We think Thorax might have been here, Sir,” Hyena told me faster than I could ask her anything.

“Explain!”

“We were searching the city disguised as ponies, when suddenly we heard a battle horn in the distance, and at first we didn’t know what it was about, but all the ponies around us started acting worried or terrified, so we pretended to be too for the sake of maintaining our cover. Soon we realized something was happening on the other side of the city, with an insane number of Royal Guards flying around and blasting their horns, so we went there as quickly as we dared without looking suspicious, and it was all over by the time we got there so we didn’t really see anything happen, but we did overhear ponies mention a changeling.”

Thorax in Canterlot? It made no sense! Why would he have gone there, assuming it had really been him? He may be naive, but surely he couldn’t have been that stupid to try his luck in the city that in all likelihood had better anti-changeling defenses than the rest of Equestria combined after what our army had done there! He’d been there while it was happening, after all! He had to have known better!

“What makes you think it was Thorax? You know we have infiltrators in Canterlot! Couldn’t it have been one of them?”

“You’re right, we don’t know for sure it was him. I sent Crook and Nightmare to ask around and we didn’t find out anything useful aside from the rumor that the guards got him in the end, so it could indeed be one of the infiltrators, but you wanted us to report anything of interest and this has to qualify.”

“It does,” I agreed. “I’ll relay it to Chrysalis. In the meantime, until we know more or get new orders, assume it wasn’t Thorax and keep looking for him!” But don’t be too thorough because it might not have been Thorax. “The last thing we need is to let him slip past us while we think he’s locked away in a pony dungeon!”

“Understood, Sir!”

Thorax in a pony prison? An anticlimactic end for him - and for my task too - but arguably better than what Chrysalis would have had in store for him. For both of us, if she’d figured out that I was hoping to get Thorax out of it! Or maybe he wasn’t in the clear from her yet; she could easily order us to get him out of there any way we can and drag him to her as we would have had our teams been the first to capture him!

Could I just conveniently forget to mention this in my impending report?

It turned out that I couldn’t; Chrysalis had already found out.

“What’s this about a changeling having been captured in Canterlot today?” she hissed at me as soon as the communicator had established the link to her.

“I don’t know any details, Your Highness! My team has only just reported it!”

“How did they fail to get to Thorax first?”

“They were searching a different part of the city at the time and only got there after the fact. Do we have confirmation it’s Thorax?”

“Who else would it be? All of the infiltrators in Canterlot and nearby cities have reported in, in fact, every single infiltrator in Canterlot told me about this and requested instructions!”

“And why are we so sure that none of these infiltrators was actually Thorax in disguise?”

“Are you suggesting that pathetic little imbecile orchestrated the capture of one of my infiltrators so he could take their place and hide from me in plain sight? How would he have done that? He wouldn’t have even known where to find an infiltrator, let alone how to outsmart him in such a fantastic way!”

“Maybe he wasn’t looking for one. It could have just been a lucky coincidence for him. He may have stumbled upon an infiltrator or their hideout by pure chance, maybe revealed them to the Royal Guards somehow in the process… After the way he escaped from the hive, I’m starting to think he may have more cunning than we’ve ever realized!”

I was clutching at straws by now, but if any of this could help him in any way… Hopefully it wouldn’t bury him even deeper in trouble!

“Cunning?” She snorted. “I’d like to see some of that cunning when my infiltrators have gotten to him!”

“That could take a while if he’s locked up in a pony dungeon, and until they do, will you let my teams keep looking for him on the off-chance that it wasn’t him who got captured?”

“Eh, fine. It’s a futile pursuit, but you might as well have them remain in position in case I need more drones to break the containment spells and steal him from there,” she agreed indifferently.

But the next evening, when the time came for my next instance of nothing-to-report, the triumphant glint in her eyes had disappeared entirely, replaced by a venomous scowl.

“How did you know it wasn’t Thorax?” she started her offensive immediately.

“Wait, so it isn’t him after all?”

“Quit pretending! It was Rascal, the same one you claimed to have been eaten by timberwolves! What are you pulling?”

I was incredulous. Rascal?! Rascal of the Everfree team? How? Better to have another talk with Jackal and Brutus about their findings on that little excursion...

“He must have survived somehow,” I muttered, pondering the news. “We haven’t found their bodies… I suppose one of them could have survived and gotten away from there.”

“To Canterlot? What do you take me for? Not even a hatchling would be that gullible!”

“Maybe he was disoriented, left in such a state by the battle that he didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going until it was too late. It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing has happened, and Canterlot is close enough to Everfree that he could have gotten there in the given timespan.”

Whether or not she liked it, she had to agree that it wasn’t impossible.

“So I take it we’re still in business?” I asked.

“You are. Find that traitor already, and enough with the false trails!”

The excitement had died down over the following few days. A team had picked up Jackal and Brutus’ find and taken it to Chrysalis; another team had been deployed to replace the lost one and had reported to me prior to tackling their assignment. I’d briefed them about everything I knew, which admittedly wasn’t as much as I would have liked, but they claimed it was going to be enough to keep them alert. So I had let them begin. I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, anyway.

Another week or so had passed by the time I heard any relevant news. Contrary to what this mission was supposed to look like, the said news had come from Chrysalis herself.

“You might want to know some preliminary results on that changeling revealer concoction you sent,” she told me after I’d recited yet another in the line of no-news-yet reports.

“You found something?”

“Only that it’s exactly what the labels on the jar said. It has no effect on undisguised changelings, but when we tried it on a disguised one, his disguise failed and he claimed he could feel it about to happen but was unable to prevent it. Then we tried it on a few more drones and got the same result. One of the drones was freshly injured in a training session and, sure enough, the wound healed like the label suggested it would.”

“Interesting. Any ideas how we might prevent or counter the effects?”

“We’re still working on that. But what I really want to know is how your zebra came to have such a thing!”

“If I see her, I’ll ask,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?!”

“How am I supposed to know what some zebra has in her possession and why?”

“Don’t you think it’s curious that such a thing exists? And even curiouser that we should find out about it at such an interesting time and place?”

Was she implying that Thorax might have been involved in the making of it?

“Maybe so, but just because we didn’t know about it until now doesn’t mean it didn’t exist until a week or two ago! For all we know, the darn thing could be years old! It could be something the zebra brought from her homeland! Do we have any infiltrators in Zebrica at the moment?”

“There may be one or two,” she shrugged.

“Then ask them about it! See if they can find anything in zebra villages that matches the description of this or hear any stories about the existence of such a thing!”

“You think I haven’t thought of that, you idiot? They found exactly nothing!”

“Then maybe this zebra invented the thing, or discovered unexpected properties of a healing potion she already had.”

“My thoughts exactly. Now, I wonder how that might have happened?”

“Your Highness, if you’re suggesting that Thorax had something to do with it, I can’t deny that that’s a possibility, but only a slight one in my opinion. We don’t know how long the zebra has had this thing, or how long it might have taken her to figure out how to brew it! For example, it could have come into existence right after the Canterlot invasion! Have you forgotten that some of our soldiers have never returned or been heard from since? Wouldn’t it be possible that she had discovered the potion while dealing with them? Or that she had begun working on it in Zebrica and travelled here because she couldn’t find the herbs to get the recipe right? For all we know, the sole reason for her living here could be that the Everfree Forest is the only place where she could find some ingredient essential for the changeling revealer to work! In fact, the healing properties might have been the accidental find!”

She stared at me half suspiciously, half incredulously, as if trying to decide whether I was an accomplice to a traitor or merely a gullible idiot.

“Look, Your Highness, I’m not saying it’s impossible that Thorax might have been involved in this in one way or another - he might have been for all we know - but what do you want me to do? I already have teams searching for him literally everywhere, and they’re as bent on finding the traitor as you are! If I deploy any more teams out there, we might as well call it a full-scale invasion of Equestria!”

“An intriguing idea, I must admit,” she mused. “But wouldn’t you at least deploy more teams to Everfree under the assumption he’s there?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t think he is there. He may have gone in at some point, but if he’s managed to somehow survive one or two contacts with the beasts living there, and he would have had to run into them sooner or later, then I can bet you whatever you want that he got out of there the first chance he got and never returned.”

“You don’t think he could be hiding there disguised as one of the beasts?”

Were we talking about the same changeling?

“Your Highness, he simply doesn’t have it in him to even try to mimic the ferocious behavior of such beasts! The disguise would never work without it! A meek and timid timberwolf would be one step short of putting up a flashing billboard that says ‘Thorax the Changeling Traitor is over there, come and get him!’”

She burst out laughing.

“Oh, you have such wonderful ideas sometimes, Pharynx,” she said, trying to compose herself. “Very well. Do what you think needs to be done, but find him already!”