A Taste of Their Own Medicine
The changeling hive.
A fortress in a desolate wasteland. Full of countless doorways, passages and chambers. Its very existence always shifting, meant as a security measure and as a reflection of its builders.
Deep inside one of the chambers was the incarcerary, what was essentially a prison full of rooms dedicated to solitary confinement. All were empty, save for one.
The sole occupant was a changeling itself. The black chitin dulled, along with its carapace. Fangs hung out of its muzzle, pearly white but quick to deliver a dose of paralyzing venom when needed to. Fins adorning the back of its neck, and its head housing blue compound eyes, one dulled to reflect its new vision ailment. This creature was currently in a very weakened state, and for good reason.
The changeling, known as Caracal, was an infiltrator. He was trained to go into other territories and gather information for the hive's queen to plan operations against other nations in the world, as well as to plot abductions of creatures to take back to the hive so as to allow the changelings to fulfill the most basic need: feeding on energy created by love.
His most recent mission, the abduction of a pony family that found out it would be welcoming a new foal into the world, ended in failure. This failure was of no fault of his own; An earthquake had struck while he had been carrying out his mission, and something no changeling could ever plan for.
He'd been discovered quickly by the family and had been chased off. The failure could've ended then and there, but he'd been compromised upon being spotted by the Royal Guards of Equestria, who gave chase. Despite his best efforts to lose them, they'd tracked him down the whole way to the changeling hive, compromising the location's unknown whereabouts.
It had taken a great many changelings to chase after the guards, who were intent on sending back this valuable piece of information. The location of the changeling hive had been highly sought out by them, as they wished to apprehend the changeling queen for her role in the attempted sabotage of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Captain Shining Armor's wedding in Canterlot, and an attempted invasion of said city. Before any word could be sent back, the guards had been captured, and were placed in cocoons to be drained of their love energy and farmed for more.
While the capture of new "prey" could be lauded, it was viewed as a complete and total failure. The hive's queen, Chrysalis, wouldn't stand for it. She had to make an example of the changeling, to ensure something of this magnitude never happened again. Her decided punishment, however, had an unintended consequence.
Caracal had been brought before her, and she read out his crimes of failing an infiltration mission and compromising the location of the hive. Without even bothering to read out the punishment, she slammed a hoof into Caracal and pinned him to the floor. He had been sure she would rip his throat out and leave him for dead, but she instead did something that would change his viewpoint forever: she began feeding on his love.
He could feel the reserves of love he had drained from ponies and other creatures leaving his body, but after that was gone and he was left starving, he began to feel something much worse. His own emotions were starting to leave him, and he looked at his queen with horror as she fed on him like he were no different than a pony or any other creature that served as the hive's prey.
Once she'd been satisfied with the punishment, she ordered him confined for three days, and then released to only receive half rations of love until a time she saw fit to allow him to have full ones, and then he would have to retrain in infiltration to be allowed to resume missions. However, Caracal knew he could never go on another mission again.
The sensation of having his own emotions drained weighed on him greatly. He could vividly recall the malicious look on the queen's face as she drained him of his own emotions. The happiness he'd had as a nymph play fighting with other nymphs, the joy at the praise he'd received from completing his first mission with success, and the pride he had seeing the hive partake in the fruits of his labor. That, was all gone now.
After he'd been placed in the cell, he simply sat in the middle and contended with the shell shock. He felt nothing inside himself, and for a while tried to figure out why. An hour or so later, and realization hit him: He had just experienced what the victims of changelings experienced. Caracal now had first hoof knowledge of what it felt like to be drained of love. Needless to say, he did not like it.
As he sat and reflected on this going into the evening hours, he then began to think back on the many missions he'd partaken in. The faces of ponies and other creatures in terror as they were either wrapped in cocoons or drained of love on the spot. The worst he recalled had been a pair of foals, brother and sister. They were calling out to one another, pleading for the other to help them. Caracal did not feed on them personally, but his teammates for that mission did, and he looked on with a wide grin as he saw the love and happiness fade in their eyes and into the maws of his compatriots. With his recent experience in his mind, he looked on the incident with intense remorse and did something changelings never did: he sobbed openly in regret.
After having cried himself to sleep, Caracal woke the next day with a realization: he could never bring himself to drain another creature's love again. There was no way he could ever bring himself to feed on another creature as they looked on him with terror in their eyes. The guilt would kill him, or drive him to commit suicide. Honestly, had the means been present for him, he probably would've killed himself out of remorse. But alas, he was made to live to serve penance for his wrongdoing.
His body then gave him a reminder of the ugly truth of his life. He was a changeling, and he needed to feed on love to stay alive. He ignored his urges and instead focused on what he could do. The only idea that he had was to somehow find a way to atone for his past transgressions, but what? What could he possibly do to make up for all the wrongs that he had done to countless creatures over the course of his life.
In that moment, an epiphany hit him: he needed to find a new way. Changelings would always need energy generated from love to survive. There was no way around that. But did they always need to steal it? Caracal was fairly certain they didn't, but that was also a heretical idea; Chrysalis had decreed that idea as treasonous and worthy of death to the changeling who thought it.
So how to go about finding this new way of living, and possibly getting love from less deceptive means? In that moment, he remembered another member of the hive: a drone that had been speaking of his own epiphany. The idea that having friends to share love with could help end the changeling hive's problem of food. The drone's name was Thorax.
On the third day of his imprisonment, Caracal had came up with a plan. He would bide his time until he could return to infiltrator duty. Once he was back at it, he would concoct a mission to justify taking Thorax out of the hive. Then, once out, the pair would never look back. He would help Thorax with his goal as much as possible, while also thinking of how to make amends for his own actions.
The metal prison door opened, and a changeling guard stepped into it. "Okay, failure", the guard addressed him curtly,"Time to go."
"In more ways than you realize" responded Caracal, who rose to his hooves and walked out of the cell, intent on carrying out his plan.
Author's Note
I came up with this story while working on my other story Fitting In Is Hard To Do, going off the idea "What would happen if a changeling were subjected to having their own emotions drained? The proverbial "Getting a taste of their own medicine"? Thus, the title and the story, where the main character experiences just that very thing. While I probably won't write it for a while, I do intend a sequel for this story, tentatively calling it Atonement, but perhaps changing the name later.
